“To tell you the truth,” Evangl said eying a haunting image of Adolf Hitler, fighting the urge to spit on it, “I always thought that the Lama was just using Dumont to foot the bill for those radioactive salts he uses. They cannot be cheap.”
Gary shook his head as he shifted through hundreds of files on nearly every major America politician and celebrity. “The salts must be expensive or else they wouldn’t come in those pipsqueak vials, but the Lama wouldn’t do that. Don’t forget, I’ve known him a lot longer than you and let me tell you, he’s got money coming out of his hooded ears.”
“Personally, if I had access to something that powerful, I’d want to carry it around in buckets,” Evangl commented as she moved over to a roll-top desk.
“Even if you did, I don’t think it would work on us. We’d need that weird Tibetan ring the Lama wears to handle that kind of power,” Gary said, wiggling the fingers on his right hand. “At least that’s my theory. It’s not like the Green Lama and I ever sat down and chatted about that kinda stuff.”
“You think he talks to anyone?” she asked sliding open the roll-top desk.
“Probably Magga. I always figured those two were an item, you know. Two Buddhists, knocking boots.”
“Gary! Get your head out of the gutter.”
“Well, I was in the sewers up until a few minutes ago, so the gutters would be a step up.” He paused looking over a detailed map of the eastern United States, small flagged pins and red circles Swiss-cheesing the coast, each dot indicating the location of a Fifth Columnist cell. “Jeez, correct me if I’m wrong, I thought we already beat the Fifthers a few years back.”
“You know how these fascists are, stop one and another one pops up and tries to kill your President. So typical. What I wouldn’t give for some originality with our villains.” Evangl opened up a large folder on top of the desk and began leafing through the various pages and photos. At the top was a short typed written letter addressed to an unnamed Lieutenant and signed with the initials “R. F.” Evangl skimmed past it to the hundreds of newspaper clippings beneath it. The articles were placed in chronological order, each notarized with the letters “GL” in the margins. Some were about the mob, some the Murder Corporation, several were about the Fifth Columnists, and more than a couple told of madmen dressed up like it was Halloween. She reached a familiar photo paper-clipped to a stack of papers. Lifting up the photo she read over the instructions beneath and her face went white. “Oh no…”
Gary spun around. “What is it?”
“We’ve been set up… The Fifth Columnists aren’t going to try and kill Roosevelt…” she breathed. “They’re going to kill Jethro Dumont!”
• • •
THE CABIN echoed with the pop of gunfire. Blood spurted onto the deck and Caraway watched the Nazi keel back, spinning end over end as he fell to the earth, blood trailing out from the bullet wound in his head. Caraway couldn’t help but grimace; heroism was a terrible profession. The ice cold wind of the sky tugging him out into the abyss, Caraway reached out and grabbed hold of the door to pull it shut. Peering out into the star-speckled night, he saw two winged shadows approaching.
“Aw, Hell.”
Slamming the door shut, the plane eerily silent without the rush of air, he ran toward the cockpit. “Helen! Helen, let me fly,” he shouted as he charged in. “Helen! Lass mich mal steuern . . . Helen, lass mich doch!
Startled, Helen jumped out of the pilot’s seat, spun around and fired her pistol, the bullet breezing past Caraway’s ear and into the wall.
“Jesus Christ! It’s only me dammit!”
“Mein Gott, John! I am so sorry!”
“Don’t worry, don’t worry, just… sit over there,” he said, indicating the copilot’s chair. “What is it with women and shooting me?” he grumbled as he took the pilot’s seat.
“Are we safe now?” she asked, analyzing his expression.
“Oh yeah, we’re fine,” he said offhandedly as he worked over the controls.
“John, what is it?” she asked, panic beginning to creep into her voice.
“It’s nothing,” he replied as gunfire began to lace the air in front of them with a muted brapp-brapp-brapp. Caraway swallowed the massive lump in his throat. “Okay, I lied. Little more than nothing. Just two fighter planes chasing after us, no big deal,” he said with a shrug. “Kids, you buckled in? ’Cause this going to get real bumpy real quick.”
• • •
“NO! NO, PLEASE!” the woman screamed, desperately trying to push her attacker away, her blouse ripped, her comely features twisted in terror. His head was slumped down, hiding his face, thin wisps of hair floating in the breeze as he continued to press forward. “Get off me!”
“Hey, asshole,” Jean called, cocking her pistol. Her heart was racing, the corner of her lips curled up. “The lady doesn’t want a kiss goodnight. Take the hint, go home and play with something else.”
The man’s arms fell slack to his sides, his head tilted sideways as if he were struggling to hear something in the distance. The woman fell back against the brick wall behind her and quickly slid away, keeping her eyes locked on her attacker.
“All right. Now back away,” Jean commanded.
The man slowly turned his whole body to face her in a long, lumbering motion. Jean stifled a gasp. She had seen a lot of horrific things in her time, but this one threatened to take the cake. His skin was pale bordering on grey; the large veins in his neck pulsating and black. Obsidian tears ran down his cheeks, staining his shirt. On his forehead was a horrific red scar: a triangle inside a circle, a bloody concave puncture wound in the center. The pit of her stomach turned; there was something so familiar about this…
“Well, I wasn’t expecting that…” she whispered.
Someone screamed behind her. She whipped her head around to see Erin, eyes wide in terror. Just what she needed: a damsel in distress.
“Erin!” Jean shouted. “Get out of here!”
In a blur of motion, the man rushed forward and grabbed Jean by the throat, lifting her off her feet and slamming her head against the wall. There was an instant of vertigo, but she kept her wits about her. One drunken louse was nothing compared to the monsters she’d faced.
“Whoa, there buddy, don’t you think we’re moving a little fast here?” Jean rasped. “I mean I am technically spoken for.”
The man gave her a guttural, wordless response, putrid black slime oozing out from between his teeth. Jean tried to squirm free, but the man’s fingers began to clamp down onto Jean’s throat, his jagged nails digging into her skin. He leaned his head forward, his black pit of a mouth widening. His breath smelled of formaldehyde and alcohol. His eyes, twin milky-white orbs, rolled around in his head, blindly looking her over; his nose twitched as he took two quick sniffs.
“All right, it’s going to be like that,” she said, pressing the business end of her pistol against the man’s gut. Jethro usually frowned upon violence, but Jean’s morals weren’t so stringent. Besides Jethro was in D.C., and well, this guy probably deserved it. “Watch out, sexy, this is going to hurt,” she said as she squeezed the trigger, the sound of the shot echoing around the narrow alleyway.
The man’s tensile grip on Jean’s throat instantly slackened and she dropped back to her feet. His mouth agape, hanging loose as if the ligaments had been torn in half, the man glanced down at the torrent of thick black fluid pouring out of the bullet wound. But it wasn’t an expression of pain, Jean realized, it was a numb consideration, as if he had been pelted with a pebble rather than shot through with a bullet. He turned his gaze back to Jean, a mindless rage boiling behind his black eyes.
She swallowed the growing lump in her throat. “Oh, this isn’t good.”
With a speed and ferocity she hadn’t thought possible, the man snatched Jean’s arm and twisted. She howled in pain as her gun fell from her hand, the bones in her wrists threatening to shatter. Jean fell down hard to her knees, the cobblestones scraping her legs. T
he man pulled her hand up to his mouth, black drool flowing down his chin.
Great, he’s a cannibal. Jean realized. Even better. Always keeping it classy, aren’t we, Farrell?
“Erin!” she shouted. She wasn’t ready to panic. Not yet. Jean Farrell didn’t panic; but some help would be nice. “Erin! Now would be a perfect time to step up and do something, thank you!”
As the man’s teeth tapped against her skin, Jean risked a glance left and right, and discovered she was alone.
• • •
IT WAS all so surreal. Bells like klaxons rang around him, a small red light flashing off and on high above. A metal man, a walking bag of straw, a girl in blue and white, and a small terrier were standing before him; and all around him, the shocked expressions of the crew.
“Jesus Christ, Clayton!” Victor Fleming shouted as stormed down the road of faux yellow bricks, script pages twisted in his hand. “What the hell are you doing? You almost ruined the shot, you jacka—!” His shoes squeaked against the floor, the color leeched from his face. “Holy—You’re covered in blood.”
Ken glanced down at his outfit, unmoved by the massive wet, crimson stain that covered his shirt. “Hm. Don’t worry, it’s not mine… I think.”
The director opened and closed his mouth. “What do you mean?”
Ken waved this away. “Nothing. Listen: I quit.”
“What?” Fleming shook his head. “Wait. No, but… you’re… you’re our Cowardly Lion.”
“Recast me. Call up someone like Bert Lahr, I know he was dying for the role,” Ken said with a shrug. “Look, I just need to move on, is all,” he added, off Fleming’s baffled expression. “Hollywood just isn’t my scene anymore, you know? Too many… bloodsuckers. But listen, you guys ever do anything out East, give me a ring, okay?” Ken took one final look over the Technicolor set, eyeing Garland’s ruby red slippers. “You know, they’re silver in the book?”
Fleming blinked once, twice. “What?”
“Anyway, Judy, Ray, Jack, it’s been fun,” he said with a salute. He turned to the stunned crew and gave them a dramatic wave as he walked toward the exit. “Everyone, I’ll miss you all and… oh.” He paused and pressed a thoughtful finger to his lips. “Also, you’re probably going to need another member of the Lollipop Guild. Don’t ask why, just… Yeah, new member of the Lollipop Guild,” he murmured as he began jogging to the exit.
Ken passed by Roger Edens, one of the film’s uncredited composers, and stopped short. Ken pressed his eyes shut, shocked by what he was considering. “Ah, hell,” he sighed. “I won’t ever work in this town again anyway.” He walked up to Edens, put his hands on either side of his face and kissed him firmly on the lips. “You’re ever in New York,” Ken whispered, “be sure to look me up.”
“I… uh…” Edens stammered in a heavy breath. “Sure.”
Ken smiled. “Great.” He faced the flabbergasted crew one last time, threw his arms open and bowed. “So long, Hollywood! It’s been fun.”
• • •
“GARY! BEHIND YOU!” Evangl Stewart-Brown shouted.
Gary whipped around to see a Fifth Columnist burst through the door. “Cripes, where the hell did you come from?” Gary grumbled nonplused as the Fifth Columnist dove at him. He had been in too many fistfights to be phased by a single Fifther—besides the Green Lama had trained him.
He stabbed at the Fifther’s throat, an open palm move that drove his fingers hard into the trachea. The Fifther let out a harsh hack, but was undeterred, swinging his fist hard into Gary’s jaw. Gary stumbled back, blood coating his tongue. It hurt, but it was nothing compared to getting his nose broken; and he planned on breaking the Fifther’s.
“Gary, stand still so I can shoot him!” Evangl shouted; her pistol aimed directly between the two brawling men.
“How do I know you won’t shoot me?!”
Evangl grimaced in annoyance, must they always argue? “Stop being such a baby!”
“Which of the two of us used to be a gangster, sweetheart?” Gary asked as he charged at the Fifther and thrust his elbow into the man’s sternum. Undeterred, the Fifth Columnist rushed forward, slamming his shoulder into Gary’s stomach and driving them back into the far wall. Gary’s breath was slammed out of his lungs as the collection of small flagged pins rained over them. A framed image of Hitler was shaken loose, smashing to the ground, sending glass flying across the floor. Gary wrapped an arm around the Fifther’s neck, immobilizing him, then pounded down on his kidney. “Yeah, I bet that hurt,” Gary laughed as the Fifther howled in pain. “Not that I don’t trust you, love,” he said to Evangl. “It’s just that I have been shot before.”
The Fifth Columnist broke free of Gary’s hold and landed a powerful uppercut, sending Gary stumbling back. He silently chided himself, back in the old days—when he was running with the Lama everyday—he would have never let himself get sucker-punched like that.
Evangl gave her husband an exasperated shrug as if he had just proven her point. “So, if I shoot you, you’ll know how to deal with it!”
“That doesn’t give me a lot of confidence!” Gary shouted as he threw a fist into the Fifther’s nose, flattening it against his skull. Blood and snot squirted out, covering Gary’s knuckles. The Fifther fell back and collapsed unconscious to the ground. “I can’t believe you were going to shoot!” he groused, wiping his hand off on a map of Europe. “You didn’t even have a clear shot!”
“Well, then it’s a good thing you took care of him! And besides, didn’t you tell me I was an excellent shot!” she protested, jabbing an accusatory finger into his chest. “And I wasn’t going to shoot you—I was gonna shoot him!”
“I never said you were an excellent shot!” Gary balked, jutting his bruised chin forward. “I said you shoot well for a post-debutante.”
“What does post-debutante even mean? Your nose is bleeding,” she observed.
Gary casually wiped away the blood trickling from his nose with the back of his hand. “Dammit, the Fifther must have clocked me in the nose at some point,” he grumbled at the sight of the scarlet fluid.
“You have to be more careful.”
“I was ‘more careful,’ but you were aiming a gun at me!”
“Are you going to go back to that?”
“‘Back to that?’ We never left it—”
“Stirb, du Ami!”
Gary and Evangl exchanged an exasperated look and glanced over at the door to find another Fifth Columnist, machine gun in hand.
Gary’s face fell. “Aw, jeez.”
• • •
IGNORING THE unending torrent of pain flowing down from her wrist, Jean threw all her weight behind her free hand and bashed her attacker violently in the jaw, a telltale snap, crackle, pop, as the jawbone was struck free. The man’s head twisted hard to the left, but his grip on Jean’s wrist remained. She swung again with a sharp jab into the bleeding bullet wound, warm black ooze splattering over her hand. The man grunted in muted pain, but it still wasn’t enough. He easily lifted Jean off the ground like a rag doll and tossed her across the alleyway. Tumbling through the air, she bounced off the opposite wall and onto the ground with an audible crack.
Please don’t let anything be broken, Jean prayed to whichever deity was listening—she had met a few so she wasn’t going to be picky. She pushed herself up off the ground and onto her knees, an effort that took more strength than she cared to admit. Her wrist was on fire and her body was bruised to hell, but thank Whoever, nothing was broken. I guess there are still miracles in this world, she mused. She looked over to see the man running toward her, a wobbly gait that brought to mind a gorilla at the zoo. He let out a loud, horrible sound—at once a screech, a growl and a moan.
“All right, buddy,” she grumbled, shaking her head. “You’ve officially gotten on my nerves.”
Something metallic glinted in the corner of her eyes, just out of arm’s reach. Her lips curled in to a smile. Rolling over the cobblestones, she snatched up h
er pistol and fired, hitting the center of the scarlet wound on the man’s forehead, the back of his head exploding out in an eruption of brain and black. He stumbled forward, his legs moving impossibly one step, two steps forward before giving out completely. His body dropped to the ground with a slippery crunch, his head cracking against the ground, black fluid flowing out like a sickening waterfall.
Jean sighed in relief and found her way to her feet, her eyes never leaving the black bleeding corpse. There was something so unsettlingly familiar about this, like an echo of a dream or an after-image of another life. Her teeth began to chatter, but not from the cold. She glanced down at her hands and realized they were shaking violently.
Far above her, there came a crack of thunder and the clouds opened up. She tilted her face up to the rain, hoping it would wash everything away.
• • •
THE SPITFIRE from the German airplanes laced the sky around them, hot white streaks of light that burned in Caraway’s retinas and brought back awful memories of Bloody April. His throat tightened at the memories of air and fire, but did his best to keep his mind focused on the terrifying here and now. He worked to evade the gunfire, weaving through the air; but the plane was too fat and slow. It was only a matter of time before the German bullets hit home. They were over water; an endless black and purple speckled blur rushing below them. He had hoped to make it back to the States, but if they could just cross the Channel and make it on to English soil, they might be all right. At least, that’s what he hoped.
Keep it together, John, he reminded himself. They ain’t as bad as the Baron. No one’s as bad as ol’ Red. Keep it together for Harry.
“How you kids doing back there?” Caraway shouted back pleasantly, putting on the best smile he could manage. “Enjoying the roller coaster?”
“Robert threw up,” Nancy replied.
The Green Lama: Crimson Circle Page 3