I charged the little bastard’s jar. That got me in range of his grabbie-wabbies. So naturally, he struggled with the controls and grabbed me. Thank God not around my collapsed neck that time. Just by the shirttail.
“You son of a fuck!” the Old Man spat at me. His face looked bad. He was turning from a kidney bean into a navy bean, like all the blood was draining out of his body. He was quivering in the inch of goo he was trying to stand in.
“What’s the matter, preemie?” I said. “You don’t look so good. I haven’t seen you out of the drink in a long time. Just the once, actually.”
He quivered with anger. “I’ll kill you!”
It was funny hearing his voice without the microphone. Like a tiny, whiny little girl. Extra tiny, really. Hard to describe. And hearing him so angry, it made me laugh.
“I bet you’re reaching the end of your natural life. You can’t even stay out of the drink at all anymore. You’re a cock’s hair from being a braineater, aren’t you?”
“I-I…” He was hardly even making words anymore.
But the automatons were walking forward tentatively. They seemed not to know what to do. The other arm of the Old Man’s machine—the one that wasn’t already holding me—clamped down on my head.
I figured that was the end. But it was a good end. At least I double dog died knowing everything I had set out to figure out. I felt the clamps start to squeeze. In a minute, my eyes would pop out of my head, then a minute after that, my brain would squish out through my ears. Good-bye, cruel world.
Then it stopped. I heard an unearthly moan. I looked over and saw the little fetus, eyes glazed over, little flipper-arms stuck out like a Frankenstein. He groaned again. Goofy looking.
I turned. “Well, are you idiots going to help me, or what?”
The Tin Men all looked around at one another. Yeah, there were definitely meat brains in those metal bodies. It took me some time to wiggle my way out of the Old Man’s clamp. No thanks to those traitor deadheads.
“Oh, I get it,” I said, once I was free. “You can’t talk. You’re just brains.”
One of them nodded. I walked toward him. He backed away. I showed him my hands to prove I was friendly, whatever that meant. I lifted up the metal mask covering his brain jar.
It was pretty gruesome, even by my standards. There was no way to get them to talk. That required jaw and muscle and tongue and everything. But the Old Man—or some of his underlings—had left the eyes and the ears connected to the brain. They were latched onto the jar in a mockery of a face. They could still see and hear; they just couldn’t communicate.
I took a look at his metal hand. Probably couldn’t even write. They weren’t the most dexterous hands in the world. Who would agree to something like that? Someone desperate, I suppose. As desperate as the Old Man to stay alive.
I held up my gun. “I’ve only got five shots left. I can take care of each of you, if you want. It just means two of you have to line up. If you want to stay like this, that’s fine. But the Old Man won’t be here to take care of you—or to give you orders—anymore.”
I guess they had all decided ahead of time. Three wanted to be offed, two wanted to live. The last sat in the corner morosely, unwilling to participate. I counted that as wanting to live. Or whatever you call our mockery of life. Then again, who am I, of all people, to judge?
It was lucky, I guess, that only three of them wanted to go. I didn’t really want to line them up. That was grisly. I shot two of them about as ricky-tick as these things go. I couldn’t let myself get involved. Sure, they were my kind, technically, but they were way past being my kind. For once, I guess I understood how breathers felt about us.
The last one looked at me for a long time. Maybe he didn’t look at me for a long time; maybe I looked at him. I suppose he didn’t have much choice in the matter. They say the eyes are the window to the soul. I don’t know if that’s true when the eyes are severed, but still, there you go. He looked terrified and sad. Or I imagined that he did. If it was even a he.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “Death gives us meaning.”
He gave me a quizzical look. Or again, I imagined it. The eyes hung there, attached to that jar.
“Anyway, sometimes it’s better to go out at the top of your game. Or just after.”
I plugged him between the eyes. Shattered the jar, smashed the brain. The other three followed me, a bit defeated. They were the type in life—or unlife—I imagined were too miserable to live but too cowardly to off themselves. I had to pity the poor bastards. Who knew what the Old Man had done to them? Or offered them?
Speaking of the Old Man, I made the mistake of sticking my hand into his jar. Little braineating bastard bit off my finger. His jaws must have been as strong as mine. That sparked something deep in my neocortex.
I had a recollection, rather clearly, of my youth. My youth as a person, not as a monster, or whatever we are. I worked at a park once. I was quite young, probably no older than eight or ten. Not entirely sure why I was working at the park, but the memory was quite clear.
It was an outdoor park, but to avoid the hazards of bringing folks around wild animals, they had collected a number of beasties in a cabin. One of them was a snapping turtle. Real neat little bastard. It could’ve bitten the buffalo out of a nickel with those hydraulic-powered little jaws.
We used to have to rake the walkways and paint the benches. Boring stuff, you know. Getting to watch an animal consume another animal was like a little miniature boxing match, Christmas day, and Amos ‘n’ Andy all rolled into one.
Once, it was my turn to feed the turtle. I ducked the worm way too far into his tank. He took a huge chunk out of my finger. Leastways, it seemed like a huge chunk at the time. In retrospect, it was really just a bit of the fingertip. But I had blood spurting everywhere, and it was the only thing that happened all summer cooler than getting to feed the turtle.
It was the first thing I remembered clearly in a month. Maybe it all would come back to me. Maybe it never would.
I grabbed the Old Man around the torso and carefully fished my finger out of his jaws. He was chewing on it like a chew toy, in the fashion I had seen true braineaters gobbling flesh in real life, only miniaturized. Then I squished his little head in. That was the end of that.
I turned to the remaining Tin Woodmen. “Well, the Old Man believed you were the future of our kind. I don’t know about all that, but you’ll be welcome in our community, for what it’s worth. Follow me.”
I led them out of the caverns and up into Hallowed Grounds. The place was empty except for the big gorilla’s corpse splayed out on the bar top. They must’ve heard what sounded like a demolition derby twenty thousand leagues under the earth and scampered.
The gorilla slouched back onto the ground beneath the bar, making me think I had missed the mark in putting him down. But no, Lazar was standing there, no makeup on, wiping his hands with a dishrag. He must’ve pulled the beastie down below just then.
“Didn’t think you’d make it,” Lazar said. “Thought I might’ve come down here for nothing.”
“I’d hate to think I’d leave you in the lurch like that,” I muttered.
Our eyes locked for a moment. I remembered thinking he was a real Valentino the first night I saw him. Without the makeup making him look like one of our kind, he was even gorgeouser. For the first time, I could see myself going with a man the same as with a woman. I still wasn’t sure about bringing a breather home to mama, though.
“Who are your friends?” he asked.
I looked at the mute metal men testing the walls and the floor. One grabbed a bottle and smashed it immediately with his viselike hands. They probably had no idea what their own strength was. I held up a finger, and he nodded, knowing that he wasn’t going to do it again.
“Haven’t really named them yet,” I said. “That one’s…Clanky.”
“Is the Old Man…?”
I sat down at the bar, grabbed a bot
tle of Crow, and poured myself a tipple. “Double dog dead.”
“Good work, I guess.”
I sized him up out of the corner of my eye. “I thought you weren’t coming back.”
He shrugged.
“I guess I have a soft spot for you… I mean, your kind… after all.”
“You going to take over?”
He shrugged. “You think they’d accept a breather like me into the fold?”
“Personally”—I stopped only to take a long, effervescent sip of bourbon—“I think we’d take anybody into the fold, assuming he keeps us wet. Case in point being that squirmy little shit I just squished.”
Lazar nodded. “Well, it’s his own fault, I guess. He tried to squeeze me out entirely. Had to have the whole bootlegging operation or nothing. If he had left me a little slice of the pie—”
“You would have stopped me,” I said.
“I might have warned him,” he agreed. “But hey, I’ve got no other way to make a living. I guess I’ll have to take over the whole shebang.”
“Good for you,” I said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go hang up my hat.”
I started to walk toward the stairs.
“Uh, Jones?”
I turned back. “What?”
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
I looked around. A dozen sets of mechanical eyes stared at me unblinking. The three I had saved were just the beginning. More and more were filling the bar, crawling out of the subterranean dungeon the Old Man had incarcerated them in.
“Come on, kids.”
December 1, 1934
Two pressed suits stood outside my office when I woke up in my chair. I straightened my tie with one hand, and with the other, I reached for my bean-shooter.
“There’s no need for that, mister…” The stuffed suit on the right, the one in the inch-thick spectacles, trailed off, staring at my door.
My glass door sign had been smashed in, probably when I first got on the outs with Lazar. There was still a part of the “B” and most of the “I,” but otherwise it was gone. Homer had, at some point, cleaned up the shattered glass—though not all of it, as a foot full of glass powder attested—but had never gotten around to replacing it. On the plus side, I didn’t have to worry about taking my keys anywhere. On the con side, security was kind of a joke, like my unlife.
“Just call me…” I trailed off too. What was there to say?
“Call you what? Lightning?” That was the one on the left. He snorted like a pig. What an asshole.
“You coppers?” I asked. That’d be a first. Coppers in the Mat. Yah fookin’ roight, as our Mick friends would say, if they ever sobered up long enough to say anything. In fact, Righty Tighty said as much.
“Yeah, well,” I said, rubbing my ass as I eased myself out of my chair, “not a lot of… citizens dress the way you two do.”
“Deadheads, you mean,” Lefty said.
“Jumbee, in the parlance of the Caribbean,” Righty added.
“Ghouls. The walking dead.” That was the one on the left again.
“Christ, minus all the religious bullshit,” Righty Tighty tried.
“Oy,” Lefty said, crossing himself.
Catholic, must have been. Orthodox maybe. Was it a funny crossing? Who knows. Sure as shit, I’d never seen a deadhead cross hisself, and everything before that is still such a haze. Words, places, gestures… no, I guess it was normal. Probably just a papist.
“I don’t care what you call me,” I said. “Just don’t call me late for dinner.”
“Clever.” That was Righty.
“Yeah, that’s been fresh since before the war.” Lefty that time.
“A real joker, this one. You should go on Broadway or something.” R.
“I don’t think they have jokesters on Broadway. Cohan productions and what-have-yous, maybe, but not so much the stand-up comedians.” L.
“Pretty lame for a comedian. You might even say we were being facetious before.” R again.
“Now that I think about it, you never ate dinner in your whole unlife, did you, you stinky Red deadhead bastard?” L here.
“Language.” R, getting feisty—or more likely faux-feisty—said.
“Hey!” That was me that time. “Fellas! Time out.” I made the “time out” signal with my mitts. I heard some cogs clanking and clunking from the broom closet. Not a good sign. They were watching. I glanced around the room real quick. The ones I couldn’t stuff in the closet were scattered around the room in various states of repose. Hey, even a robot’s got to sleep when he’s got a deadhead brain.
So far, the guys who claimed they weren’t coppers either hadn’t noticed the stack of tin detritus spread around my office, or they didn’t care. Likely they both noticed and cared but chose not to say anything just to mess with what’s left of my brain.
“Who is you two?” I said. “That is to say, who are yinz?”
“Friends, you could say,” the one on the right said.
“Call me Mr. Land,” Righty said. “This is Mr. Day.”
“Hi,” the newly christened Day said.
“That’s what you’re going with?” I asked.
“Gotta go with something,” Land said. “We’re looking for a fellow named Herr Hinzman. Know where we can find him?”
“Never heard of the guy,” I said flatly.
Day knelt down and picked up a couple glass shards from what had formerly been my door. He held three larger chunks together. “Hey, he’s right, Land.” Day held the glass toward his partner. “Take a look here.”
Land leaned forward.
“Says here his name is Jones,” Day said.
“Can’t be the same guy we’re looking for, then.”
“Let’s get out of here, partner.” Land jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
The two starched suits stepped out of my office. I waited for the sarcastic flourish—from that crackerjack Land, no doubt—that would accompany their return. After about thirty seconds, I stood and stuck my head around the door.
They grabbed me and threw me to the floor. Day put his knee into my spine and his arm around my neck. I heard a loud clanking and clattering, but I still had one hand free to wave the Tin Men into silence. I guess they understood enough to back down.
Land crouched down in front of me, dangling a sharpened screwdriver back and forth between his thumb and forefinger. “All right, here’s the scoop, Hinzman. You’re going to tell us everything.”
“About what?”
“About everything.”
“You got all day?” I asked.
Land nodded toward his partner. Day let me go and stepped into my office. I popped my head onto my hand and jammed my elbow into the floor as if I was a teenage girl lounging on her bed with her friends.
“Who do you work for?” I asked. “You with the Boston mob or what?”
“You’re the detective,” Land said. “You figure it out.”
That was when Day stepped out of my office, flipping through the pages of this very journal. “Here, listen to this, Land.” Day rattled off a few of my questions.
Land eyeballed me up and down. The shiv of a screwdriver was pressed to my earlobe. “You really don’t remember anything?”
“I’m starting to,” I said. “Now I’m off whatever Lazar was dumping in my booze. It’s coming back in dribs and drabs.”
Land stood to his full height and gestured for me to join him. “You know there’s a war coming, ‘Jones.’”
“With who?” I asked. “The Bolsheviks?”
Day stepped forward and slapped me full across the face with my own diary. The nerve of some people. I rubbed my chin and worked my jaw to make sure it was still all in one piece. I heard a whirring behind me in the office. I hoped I didn’t look too panicked or tip my hand as I gestured to the damn robots to calm down.
Land spoke again. “Guess again.”
“Well, then I guess I can understand why you mig
ht be interested in William Hinzman. Last I heard, the guy was dead.”
Day was still pawing through my book. He looked at Land and shook his head as if he had been looking for something specific. Land looked me up and down, glanced back into the office, then down at Homer’s fence.
“I suppose if he shows back up—”
“You’ll be the first to know,” I said. “Leave me your calling card, and I’ll be in touch.”
They exchanged a glance. Land nodded. Day slugged me in the gut as hard as he could. Damn near ruptured my spleen, I noticed later upon taking it out and checking it.
“What was that for?” I grunted.
“We’re going to keep a close eye on you, Jones.” Land used his sharpened screwdriver to wipe some fuzz from his jacket. “Like we did outside that phonus balonus deadhead’s apartment.”
“Yeah, that was us,” Day said, nodding. “He sang like a bird, all about you.”
“If we can’t count on you to be a patriot, we’re going to step in.” Land drove the screwdriver into my drywall, up to the hilt.
I saw no need for that. I had pretty much gotten his point. But a man with a spike has got to use it, or he’ll feel as though he didn’t need it in the first place. They took a few steps down the stairwell.
“Hey!” I shouted.
They looked back up. It was one of those looks that said, “You don’t want me to come back up these steps.”
“Forgetting something?” I asked. Who cared? It wasn’t as though they could threaten me with any meaningful bodily harm. There wasn’t a whole lot left to take away from me. Except the one thing that bastard was holding.
To his credit, Day, or whatever he was really called, tossed my journal a few steps up from where he was standing. I bent down to grab it.
“Give my best to President Roosevelt,” I said, and the door slammed almost as soon as I said it.
Got a caller after the feds rolled out. Mighty Dull. Go figure. Guess he’s still in the… whatever business he’s in. Lazar referred him. Stolen property case. Mighty had lost one of his girls’ favorite torsos. My old friend Brigid. She was furious. Maybe I’d get to see her again during the new investigation. That thought brightened up my day.
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