Krokodil Tears

by Jack Yeovil

  Dr Ottokar Proctor fell…

  Throughout the world, seismic instruments exploded at the same instant. Clocks stopped, or raced towards an unimaginable future. Millions subject to epileptic fits fell frothing, and hundreds of thousands of others, hitherto unaffected, joined them. It was as if a maxiscreamer the size of Saturn had been let off next to the planet.

  Globally, a number of people equal to the population of the largest megapolis on the planet, died. Heart attacks, spontaneous human combustion, asphyxiation, a new species of instantaneous cancer, cerebral haemorrhage, suicides, massive discharges of bodily electricity, and simple shut-down were the major causes of death, but there was an increase of hostile activity in all the world’s war zones, and an epidemic of murder that swept around from country to country like a contagious disease for weeks afterwards.

  The computer records of a major corporation, located in a site under Nevada secure against nuclear holocaust, were wiped, precipitating an international money-market collapse that even rocked the solid foundations of the GenTech corporate empire.

  Firestorms raged throughout the arctic tundra, and chunks of ice the size and shape of Silbury Hill poked through the sands of the Sahara Desert.

  A ring of spy satellites recently put in place by a Gottschalk Geselleschaft in conjunction with the Soviet Union as an attempt to counterbalance GenTech’s orbital superiority burned out at the cost of nine hundred billion ECUs. Every nation in the no-longer-terribly-exclusive Doomsday Club opened their silo doors and chained button-pushers to their consoles in readiness for an attack from the unknown.

  A stretch of the Caribbean rose to the surface, bearing with it the wrecks of numberless ships and the ruins of a pre-human civilization, while a wave of water rippled across Louisiana, carrying away what little was left there. Solar flares jetted a million miles into space.

  Beyond the galaxy, stars went spectacularly nova, snuffing out lens of thousands of life-bearing planets in a fireworks display whose light would not reach the earth for a billion years.

  There was no one in the entire world, in the entire universe, who did not hear, feel or experience somehow the side-effects of the moment.

  “Wilma, what was that?”

  “Oh, honey, don’t you bother. It was just another air crash out at Edwards. Why those wingboys bother, I don’t know.”

  “Aw, Cheeze, I thought it was the Trump of freakin’ Doom or somethin’. I near crapped my pants.”

  “Oh, honey, don’t talk crude. You know Mama don’t like it.”

  “Shaddup, and get me a brewsky, Wilma.”

  “Another beer?”

  “Wilma…”

  “’Kay, honey.”

  Hawk-That-Settles thought he was travelling horizontally until the ground loomed up like a wall, and he found himself stuck to it by gravity.

  His head spun, and he knew which way was down again, thank the Lord. His ankle was still crushed, and he had other broken bones. But he was not spread out on the desert like a paste.

  Sand was falling around him like rain, and he had to struggle not to be buried.

  It was like trying to keep on the surface of a sea. He pushed himself upwards, letting the sand flood in below him. thrashing with his good leg and his arms.

  Then, the rain was over. The winds were passing. Somewhere, Krokodil and the Jibbenainosay were wrestling, but Hawk was being left behind.

  He rolled over, broken, and saw someone coming across the desert. At first, he thought it was Dr Proctor ready to finish him off. He almost wasn’t sorry about that. Relieved, he pulled his shirt away from his throat. Being a good Indian was better than trying to stay alive and sane after today.

  But it wasn’t Dr Proctor. It was someone riding a horse.

  Laughing painfully, he propped himself up on his elbows, and waved.

  The horseman wore a battered stetson, and had his kerchief up over his face. Like his steed, he was thickly coated with desert dust. But he was reassuringly solid. The horse had a firm footing, and trod carefully across the sands. Hawk had a funny feeling about the horseman, as if he were seeing the earthly aspect of a manitou, or the spirit of a great warrior from the days of his ancestors.

  “Stranger,” he shouted. “Over here.”

  Rider and horse heard him at the same time, and both heads turned to look.

  The horseman twisted his reins, and dug in his heels, spurring his animal to a gallop.

  The stranger rode across the desert to Hawk, and the Indian felt safe again.

  God was in his Heaven, it snowed in Indianapolis in the wintertime, the President of the United States was a good and honest man, you could get a free lunch, a buck could buy four quarters, the white man always honoured his treaties with the red, nobody got cancer, his father was hailed as a great chief, Jennifer White Dove kissed on a first date, a good Navaho could always hold his liquor, and…

  “Friend,” the horseman said, his voice rich and deep, “you look as if you could use a hand.”

  … and there was a Lone Ranger.

  “Mr President, you are cleared for the red phone. The connection is being made… now.”

  “Boris, talk to me…”

  “Our people tell us they’re on Def Con 3, too. The missiles are not in the air.”

  “Boris, what the freak are you guys playing at?… What do you mean, ‘what are you doing?’ This has nothing to do with us, either…”

  “He’ll be in the bunker under the Kremlin, Mr President. Soviet chain of command has been established. If we struck at the Minsk switchboard intersection, we could gain perhaps five or ten minutes on our first strike.”

  “Boris, I’ve got scientists out my ass telling me the world is ending. We’re the only guys big enough to do anything about it, except maybe one or two Japcorps, and the UEC, of course, and maybe a couple of Moslems, and… Hell, you know what I mean. I have to think you know what’s going down, you know. What… ? ‘Going down?’ It’s an American expression, it means, like… uh, happening, I guess…”

  “Is that a no, Mr President?”

  “Yes, goddammit, Alex. I mean, yes that’s a no… Boris, I’m sorry. I have someone shouting at me.”

  “The think tank suggest you act.”

  “Look, Boris, I’ll put it this way. You stand down, and we’ll stand down and maybe we’ll get to go to the New Century party at the end of next year.”

  “Our sleepers in GenTech Tokyo just woke up, sir. They report that the corp are taking advantage of this window to sink a couple of Russkie ships in the Sea of Japan. We could go in with them…”

  “Alex, shut up. Boris, look, we have some information that may be of use to you.”

  “Sir, we have a secret treaty with GenTech confirming our neutrality in any corporate war with the Soviet Union. You are bound by the terms of that agreement not to share the intelligence I have just given you with Premier Yeltsin.”

  “I’m the President, Alex, I can do any freaking thing I want to… Boris, look behind you. Off your Asian seacoast. This has nothing to do with us. We’re sharing intelligence, here. We’re helping you, now could you please just stand down and we’ll stand down… Boris, you know I can’t speak Russian.”

  “Mr President. I would like to tender my resignation.”

  “Shut the freak up, Alex!… Boris, have you got that? We’re sending you charts on the satellite hook-up. The Sea of Japan. Get it to your navy.”

  “Sir, they’ve stepped back to DefCon 2.”

  “Boris, thank you, I love you! Boris? Boris? He’s hung up! He can’t hang up on me, the commie bastard!”

  “Sir, we’re still at DefCon 3. We could still hit Minsk. This way, we’d have twelve full minutes.”

  “I’m the President! He can’t hang up on the President, can he?”

  “Sir…”

  “Oh, freak it, Alex, stand down. Get me a press aide. I need someone to write me a speech…”

  Dr Proctor was the mouse. Above him, a giant-sized hou
secat was tangling with an equally huge bulldog.

  He stumbled across the littered desert, trying to keep out from underfoot as the growling, snarling, miaowing monsters locked in their mutually destructive embrace.

  Chase, catch and eat! That was the cycle of all life. Chase, catch and eat!

  Dr Proctor would not be eaten today. He was too small a morsel.

  “Holiness, we have the latest data from Mapache. I’m not sure, but there may be some help. Meanwhile, we have some reports from our man in Salt Lake City.”

  Pope Georgi studied the strip-prints. Cardinal Brandreth, the camerlengo, look them from him and studied them himself.

  Outside, the square of St Peter’s was full. People had just stopped what they were doing and flooded towards the Vatican. They knew something was happening, but weren’t sure what.

  The Pope considered. “We must send Sister Chantal to Arizona. Have her summoned.”

  Father O’Shaughnessy bowed, and kissed the Pope’s ring.

  Elder Seth was back in Jessamyn’s childhood, her backstripes stinging. The nightmares poured in, as he clung to his disciple.

  The focal point within his body, where the Jibbenainosay had lodged, was open again, and the Darkness was pressing at it. He was himself a gateway to the Outer Darkness.

  In the beyond, the Dark Ones swarmed.

  The Jibbenainosay reeled under the counterattack. The Ancient Adversary was turning its form against it. It realized how little it knew of the physical being of this universe. It had to concentrate, to pull its cloaking Darkness around its Cynosure. The Pawn of the Nullifiers had melded with the woman, and was its superior in terms of this universe. In the Outer Darkness, the Jibbenainosay would have dwarfed the Adversary, but here the match was disturbingly even. It funnelled its power into a vast tentacle, and thrust it through the Adversary’s energy field, pumping the Darkness through…

  On Monsters’ Row, they were going wild. Voorhees had wrenched his door off, and was being held down by a dozen officers. Rex Tendenter hung naked from his bars like a monkey, chattering like a mad creature. Staig, Mizzi, McClean and Brosnan were howling like beasts. Etchison was laughing uncontrollably, plucking his eyelashes out one by one. Myers just stared at the walls of his cell, unperturbed by it all.

  Voorhees got a cattleprod away from one of the officers, and shoved it through a uniformed chest. Hector Childress clapped as the blood sprayed, and called for more. Tendenter leaped to the floor. His bars had been bloodied. He licked the fast-drying red greedily, smearing his face. Colonel Reynard Pershing Fraylman lay on his military-perfect bunk, his tongue lolling, his face blackening. He had been struck dead early in the riot, brought down by a burst blood vessel. Herman Katz shouted in a womanish, high-pitched voice.

  Voorhees had killed five of the guards, by now. Tear gas canisters exploded and Staig swallowed his tongue, choking quickly to death. Three hefty officers in transpex riot gear jogged through the door, and levelled their guns. Rubber bullets bounced off Voorhees’ broad chest, and spanged against the bars.

  “Don’t freak around,” shouted a sergeant who was trying to hold his arm onto his shoulder, “kill the motherfucker…”

  Herman Katz cringed at the bad language.

  The riot bulls levelled semi-automatics, and filled Voorhees’s chest. The hulking moron kept stumbling onwards.

  “Come on guys,” shouted the sergeant, “plug the fat…” He was cut off by the next burst. Ricochet bullets slammed into him, and he relaxed, his arm slipping into his lap. Three other officers died in that volley, and Voorhees kept walking.

  The riot bulls put ScumSloppers through Jason Voorhees’s eyes, and the back of his bald head exploded.

  “What a mess,” said Herman. “This will never wash out, you know, never. This dress is ruined!”

  They were still screaming. Tendenter dipped his fingers in Voorhees’s spilled blood and brains, and raised the chunks to his eager lips.

  “Freak,” said Officer Kerr, “it’s time we settled these bastards’ hash once and for all.”

  He shot Tendenter between the eyes, and the Bachelor Boy slumped, still smiling, in his cell.

  Childress realized what was happening, and ran to the back of his cell, hiding behind his bunk. Officers shoved their rifles through the bars and shot the chainsaw murderer through his bedding.

  “Who’s got the keys?” asked Kerr.

  “No one.”

  “We do it through the bars then,” said Kerr. “Sandall, you take Myers with the burpgun. He’s the worst of them.”

  Sandall shoved his weapon through the bars, and looked into the empty eyes of the Haddonfield Horror. Even without a mask, his face was a blank. He flipped the safety catch, but the murderer moved too fast for him, and he found himself hugged to the iron. His head wouldn’t fit through the gap, but Myers pulled it into the cell anyway, leaving ears, hair and chunks of flesh on the metal.

  “Myers has got a gun. Take him.”

  The sirens stopped, and more officers arrived. Myers tossed the gun into the corridor, and sat down again.

  “What’s going on here?” asked Deputy Warden Crighton.

  “The monst… the inmates attempted escape, sir.”

  “There’ll be a full enquiry, Kerr.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Crighton looked down Monsters’ Row, at the corpses jumbled against the walls.

  “Freak, what a mess! This is worse than the Tasmanian Devil’s leftovers.”

  Rex Tendenter was buried in the asylum grounds while an overwhelmingly female crowd of over 300 piled lavish floral tributes against the walls of the institution. The widow of Officer Lyndon Sandall, who had been one of five mourners at his modest funeral a week earlier, threw a petrol bomb into the crowd. Sixteen died, forty-one sustained serious burns, and Clara Sandall moved into Sunnydales’ Low Security Wing.

  The home had kept Dr Proctor’s “confinement area” empty for him, just in case he was ever recaptured. Nobody really wanted him back.

  Meanwhile, Jason Voorhees’s body disappeared from the morgue.

  Krokodil felt the Jibbenainosay’s arm pumping lethal filth into her spirit body. Concentrating, she reversed the flow, and sent the darkness rushing back through the tentacle into the body of the demon.

  Physically, she was just standing there, the Jibbenainosay towering over her. But spiritually, she was containing the Dark One, spreading her power around the invader.

  This must be the Seventh Level.

  Dr Proctor thought he wanted to go home now. He wanted his books, and his cartoon videos, and his lawyers, psychiatrists and interviewers.

  He turned away from the dog-and-cat fight, and walked into the desert. His home was out there, somewhere.

  In the Surfside Pyramid, Gari the Guru raised his arms, and the Congregation joined in one long “ommm.” The House of Worship was on the strip, within sight of the best surfing beach on the coast.

  Gari told his tanned and even-teethed flock that it was okay to make money and still be spiritually healthy. He put them in touch with their selves, and purged them of any residual feelings of guilt they might have over their worldly success. He taught them to actualize their potential, and not to look out for the other guy. After all, in life there were winners and losers, and there weren’t any Gods for losers.

  In his audience were the heads of three Hollywood media conglomerates, four ostentatiously anonymous movie stars, a world-renowned porno stud who had recently turned devout, a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon who claimed to be second only to Dr Zarathustra in the field, Sonny Pigg of the Mothers of Violence, Shirley MacLaine’s personal astrologer, a gaggle of surfie chicks and dudes Gari could have sworn were runaway sexclones, the CEO of the LA GenTech subsidiary, the West Coast editor of Guns and Killing, ZeeBeeCee TV personality Lynne Cramer, author of best-selling roadway action fiction Derek Duck, bonsai tycoon Mike Miyagi, sonic sculptor Ritchie Bassett, the Deputy Governor of California, and the religious affairs cor
respondent of the Los Angeles Times, Harlan Ellison, who would be writing the Pyramid up in his Church of the Week column.

  “Today, I want to rap with you about one of our former co-worshippers,” Gari said, waving his crystal-tipped wand.

  He pulled down the poster-size picture of Bronson Manolo. The Op was standing beside a surfboard, with a bikini babe, caught by the camera in mid-jiggle, on either side. His teeth shone, and his implanted chest hairs could have been painted on his sculptured pectorals. His ballsack swimming pouch made him look as modest as Michelangelo’s David.

  “When you look at Bronson Manolo, guys,” the guru said, “I want you to see a loser!”

  The Pyramid People hissed like Dracula confronted with a crucifix.

  “Loser, loser, loser,” they chanted. Some people threw things of little value: gold fountain pens, diamond earrings, last year’s wristwatches. Gari would have them picked up later.

  “Here was a cat who seemed to have it, but inside he was just a zeroid waster or else he would be here today.”

  They were shouting now, screaming their hatred at the outcast.

  “Remember, guys, the beautiful never die!”

  “Never die, never die, never die!”

  Gari was happy. He had his people at the pitch he wanted them. The collection later would be his best yet.

  “Winners never die,” he shouted, “never die, never die, never die!”

  He stopped shouting, and let the Pyramid People’s adulation get to him. It hit him like a cocaine rush, but it was better than that. It gave him a thrill in his penis, and he knew he could convert this feeling into anything. Afterwards, he could have any of them, have all of them if he wanted. Promise people eternity, and there was nothing you couldn’t get out of them. Nothing.

  “Never die! Never die! Never die!”

  Gari showed his teeth and extended his arms. His multicoloured robes caught the light.

  From the back of the Pyramid, looking out through the clear-glass windows down to the beach, Gari the guru was the only one who saw the tidal wave coming.