Zanesville: A Novel

by Kris Saknussemm

  “Did you see that?” splashed Mr. Meese. “Did you?”

  Dr. Tadd was fazed, knowing that something of mystical importance had transpired—but alert enough to hit the accelerator before giant Janet could grope after them. The Wienermobile peeled out, swerving through the rabble and the rubble of Poitier Lane with Mr. Meese sloshing in the tank. They reached the remains of the Katharine Hepburn Hotel’s ballroom and drove inside, joining a zoo of shelter seekers.

  Eidolons of Japanese Zeros from Pearl Harbor buzzed Big Elvis, now the tallest structure in the world atop the Sony Cone, making him flail with rage—and then an escaped Flying Haggis, one of the tartan blimps promoting McTavish’s, bumped into him and he lost his balance falling just as Cubby had, with the needle of the Stratosphere Tower punching through his left eye, triggering a massive head attack, the body busting apart on impact and raining into downtown.

  Clearfather arrived at the impaired but still intact Holy Roller and began scaling the scaffolding to reach the tracks. Big Oprah bludgeoned Janet Jackson with the World’s Largest Burrito, tromped the Olsen Twins, and then twisted Julia Roberts’s neck around so she could see her ass as she stumbled into the Elizabeth Taylor Memorial Rehabilitation Center. Then she trashed old Las Vegas from Circus Circus to the Mandalay Bay, actually eating the pirate ship at the tattered Treasure Island casino, crossbones and all.

  Most of the male-themed robots self-destructed. Their heads blew up or they clutched their chests and toppled. The rest, Big Oprah throttled. One by one she piled the corpses of the miswired celebrities on top of the remains of 20th CenturyLand. (“So this is the way the world ends,” Dr. Tadd would later write. “Not with a bang, but a Winfrey.”) Then she fixed her eyes on the great golden Buddha atop Mount Meditation. Big Oprah grabbed hold of the gleaming statue and began rocking it until it broke free—then she raised it up overhead and heaved it at the Vitessalith.

  The Buddha struck the force field of the grand tower that stood like the last data crystal of the civilization. There came a rumbling not heard since Bigfoot. All around the proud technosentient spike, veins of green lightning ran, encasing it in a throbbing net of emergency overload. The edifice began to waver—and then a roaring came from below its sub-basement, where the master controls were housed in steel-reinforced bunkers. The tower trembled like a rocket on the launch pad and then dematerialized—condensing into a cloud-shaped spire filled with multicolored fire. Slowly it whirled, turning a vivid blue until the unmistakable profile of Dooley Duck emerged. Big Oprah stumbled, killer bees and fruit bats plastered against her, limbs twitching, servomotors smoking. In a chest wound inflicted by Big Jerry Springer, a stranded spider monkey clung. At last she came to the Holy Roller, where Clearfather stood on top of the Loop of Faith. The fur-singed monkey in the gouge in her chest leapt across onto his naked shoulder. He gripped the ivory sphere in his fist. Big Oprah keeled over the roller coaster and burst into flames. Then Clearfather felt a soft blue wind engulf him and down into the graveyard of IMAGINE-NATION he fell.

  The ego is a too much thing.

  —CHARLES MANSON

  CHAPTER 1

  Necropolis Now

  Clearfather crashed back into himself and felt a voice prodding him. He opened his eyes to see a ferociously ugly black man in a tank top and satin gym shorts, with a stitched eyelid and a swollen jaw the color of eggplant.

  “Who . . . are you?” Clearfather asked, becoming aware of his body again. His groin was a dull agony. He was dressed in a white waffle-weave robe and terry-cloth slippers—lying on top of a clean made bed.

  “Xerxes McCallum, man—who you think I am? Former Heavyweight Champion of the Planet—an’ also the Solar System.”

  “And . . . where . . . am I—are we?”

  “Man, this is the Patrick Swayze Center for Serious Depression.”

  “I . . . I don’t remember . . .”

  “They say you bit yo own dick off. Shit, I thought I was depressed. You a muthafukka!”

  “Is this LosVegas?”

  “Whass lefta it. Look outta window, you see some serious-ass deestruckshun.”

  “How long—have I been here?” Clearfather asked, painful flashes of wreckage and faces coming back to him.

  “Since yestiday.”

  “When did everything go crazy?”

  “Two nights ago. Hitler helpin’ Osama bin Laden. Then Big Oprah shovin’ Siegfried up Roy! I never seen shit like that.”

  “It must’ve been scary,” Clearfather said, too scared to touch his groin.

  “I am Spiro Stavros and I want to play Ping-Pong!” an accented voice replied from behind a curtain.

  “Who’s that?” Clearfather asked.

  “Doan know, but he’s a muthafukka at Ping-Pong. But I tell you what—watchin’ robot Sammy Davis Junior kick Frank Sinatra’s ass—an’ then those jets flyin’ over rainin’ fire—next day the streets covered with burned birds an’ pieces of them big-ass machines—like one of Wayne Newton’s hands, man, crawling down the Strip. Shit.”

  “I’m . . . sore,” Clearfather said, feeling like he might pass out.

  “Muthafukka, who wouldn’t be? How could you do it?”

  “It was very large . . . and I’m pretty flexible.”

  “No! I doan mean how’d you do it! How could you do it?”

  “I don’t know,” Clearfather said—and when he saw Kokomo’s face in his mind he thought he’d cry.

  “I am Spiro Stavros and I want to play Ping-Pong!”

  “Well, I heard ’em say you gotta pretty good stump, an’ that may see you through. After all, you a white dude.”

  Despite the man’s appearance, Clearfather could hear in his tone a genuine attempt to help. “What are you here for?” he asked.

  “Was about to jump off the Ellison Tower.”

  “Isn’t trying to kill yourself worse than cutting off your dick?”

  “No way! Well . . . in one way . . . but man . . .”

  “I am Spiro Stavros and I want to play Ping-Pong!”

  “Shut the fuck up, man. We’ll play soon—an’ this time I’ll beat yer ass.”

  “Why did you want to kill yourself?”

  “Where you been? I got whupped by a pansy-ass social worker!”

  “How did that happen?” Clearfather asked. Talking about someone else’s problems helped take his mind off his own.

  “Damned if I know! Muthafukka moved like a mamba. I got a standin’ eight-count in the first twenty seconds. My last five fights haven’t even gone twenty seconds! Haven’t been hit for real in two years—only the droids’ll spar wiff me. Muthafukka! That gay boy hit me so hard in the second round I started to cry—with billions of people watchin’. Doan ’member the third round.”

  “So . . . you lost?”

  “Fuck yeah I lost! My title, my pride. I got whupped by a faggot! I jes thank God he wuddn’t no white faggot—then I wudda jumped.”

  “Well, he must’ve been a good fighter,” Clearfather said.

  “Muthafukka!” Xerxes yelled and began jumping up and down on his bed. “I am a great fighter! I am the Corpse Maker! This fuckin’ sissy knocked me out!”

  “Well,” Clearfather said. “Either he’s not a sissy, or being a sissy isn’t what you thought it was. Anyway, what kept you from jumping?”

  Xerxes McCallum peeked around as if someone might be listening and whispered confidentially, “I had a vision, man—standin’ up there on that observation deck overlookin’ the hockey rink anna Fishbowl Lounge—I felt like my life was over. So I broke down the steel door an’ got out on the service ledge, lookin’ out over all them parks an’ the lights way out on the beach between the lagoon anna Colorado River . . . an’ I saw them giant robots dukin’ it out—bein’ controlled by little people in them fancy blimps—an’ I realized that’s what I was. Jes some robot. I thought I was in charge—but I wasn’t really. An’ I went to jump, thinkin’ I’d end up either on the Zamboni machine or in a big ol’ bowl-a shrimp cock
tail. Then I saw Dooley Duck, man. He was bigger than all those robots. Way bigger. An’ Ubba Dubba came up out of the river. An’ then—this is the really weird shit, man—they had a baby with them. It wasn’t like anything you’ve ever seen, part duck, part orangutan—an’ part human, too. An’ lookin’ out over all the lights an’ shit, I saw that this baby, whatever it was—it was the Future, man. An’ I said to myself, I wanna see that Future—I wanna be part of it. I doan wanna fall in no shrimp cocktail—an’ I doan wanna be no rock ’em sock ’em robot no more.”

  “I am Spiro Stavros and I want to play Ping-Pong!”

  Clearfather looked around and saw that they were in the Alec Baldwin Ward, and from the sounds of things down the hall, the facility was operating at peak capacity. He went to the armorguard window and peered through the curtain. It was dark but the sky was full of blood—powerful Naked Moon searchbeams on the maxicopters probing through the fog like the lights of the battle tractors and cranes sifting through the powdered remains.

  He was speechless. Where before a glittering Kuala Lumpur–cum–Magical Kingdom had risen arrogantly above the Martian canals that linked the desert to the ocean, now what greeted his eyes was more like an endless fuming Kabul or worse. A Nagasaki. The illuminated theme-park domes had all been ruptured or squashed, the great hotels flattened or torched. The casbahs and pleasure dungeons were buried under what looked like a million Taco Bells, and even through the military-specified windows he could smell the stench of burned fuel and flesh, contaminated water and fear—blind mob fear. What have I done? he thought. What in God’s name have I done? But the sickness inside was too intense for him to consider the answer. This was not God’s work. He shuddered with grief as wave upon wave of remorseful realization racked his heart and flooded his being. I had no right to do this, he said to himself silently. No matter what my pain or sadness. For this, I should die. For this, I should die and stay dead.

  “Hey man!” Xerxes whistled. “Stop freakin’ out. Iss time to get back in the game.”

  “What?” Clearfather asked, as if in a dream.

  “Ain’t you heer-a Diyagonole Thinkin’? Get back in the ring! You still alive!”

  The words seemed to echo in the room. Clearfather tried to shake off his daze. The Swayze Center wasn’t an imposing structure, but as one of the few buildings still intact on the southeast side of the city, it dominated the flea market/flea circus that LosVegas had become. In the distance he could make out the charred brontosauric skeleton of a roller coaster. All below was a mess of splintered rickshaws, overturned cabs, and crumpled buses. Most of the surviving colony of bats had taken refuge inside Big Ozzy Osbourne, who’d fallen on a bunch of leprechauns from The 4 Leaf Clover. The satanists were in Heaven with all the dead bodies—their enthusiasm tempered slightly by the hunting dogs and members of the Sacred Aryan Posse who’d taken cover during the siege but who were now fully loaded on bourbon and Benzedrine and keen to lynch any so-called terrorists.

  Vitessa had dispatched robot locusts to contain the killer bees, along with squadrons of drone Securitors to support the LosVegas riot police. The Triads and other gangs had their own enforcers out to defend what remained of their interests, but it was clear that the official strategy was every man for herself and Devil take the hindmost.

  When Big Oprah had hurled the Big Buddha at the Vitessalith, wherever the offices of the Vitessa Cultporation were located, from Mumbai to Stockholm, the Vitessaliths in those cities had all felt the impact. The lights dimmed, the foundations shook—while at the home office in Minneapolis, the most poignant blow to the empire was struck when Wynn Fencer, in the midst of a crisis meeting of the Pantheon, collapsed in a coma on the world’s biggest boardroom table and was rushed to an exclusive medical facility with an aneurysm in the brain. Small wonder that the Pantheon had eliminated all mention of the catastrophe on TWIN—a policy that was about to be reversed by Julian Dingler, who in that same crisis meeting had been named by Fencer as his surprise successor.

  But if TWIN was trying to put a lid on the disaster, American Pirate Radio was broadcasting loud and hard throughout the wards—filled with reports of how Dooley Duck and Ubba Dubba had thwarted total destruction of the city, bashing the Oprahs and protecting the bookstores, universities, and thousands of innocent people in hospitals, psychiatric wards, and brothels. Clearfather took a deep breath and stepped back from the window. He remembered the map, the meeting with Cyrilla Lundquist—Kokomo—the attack inside his mind and how she’d saved him. On top of the Loop of Faith, he’d wanted to take as much of the world with him as he could . . . but then the giant blue cloud had come. The cloud had cooled his hatred and despair. But I fell, he thought—off the tallest roller coaster in the world—with a traumatized spider monkey hanging on. Now I’m here. Alone. With so much blood and cement dust on my hands. There’s no more map to follow. There’s only one more place to go to find any answers . . .

  “Man, you gotta snap outta this shit. I jes lost the Manhood Champion of the World. Whatever happened—you gotta be thinkin’ comeback.”

  “I am Spiro Stavros and I want to play Ping-Pong!”

  “That’s the kine a-spirit I’m talkin’ about.”

  “I wonder how I got here?” Clearfather said aloud.

  “The dude in the baffroom—he brought you. Now he stuck here.”

  “Who?”

  “Cowboy muthafukka. Say he found you unner a rolla coasta. Cat’s been climbin’ the walls, man. An’ those other people comin’ to check you out. Freaky.”

  “What other people?” Clearfather asked.

  “Two white wimmen. Looked like golf pros.”

  Shit, thought Clearfather flashing back to the Greyhound bus. If Vitessa had found Kokomo’s body . . . thinking it was me . . .

  The sound of the toilet flushing brought his attention to the bathroom door. A tall older man decked out like Wild Bill Hickok emerged.

  “You’re up,” he remarked. “Good.”

  “I understand I have you to thank . . . ,” Clearfather began—but given that he’d wanted to die, he wasn’t sure what to be thankful for.

  “Dooley Duck saved you,” the man replied. “I just brought you here. Now I’m not so sure it was such a good idea. You tell him about the clown?”

  “Jes those wimmen and the priest. That muthafukka was not right.”

  “What priest? What clown?” Clearfather asked.

  “Swiggle. The Psychiatric Clown. Supposed to stroll around cheering people up. He’s been in here checking on you.”

  “Sounds like a lot of people been doing that.”

  “Which is why I’m not so sure I did the right thing.”

  “Man, you ass me—that priest waddn’t no priest.”

  “You in trouble?” the old wildcat inquired. “Vitessawise?”

  “I don’t know,” Clearfather answered. “I’m having trouble remembering.” Which wasn’t a complete lie.

  “Well, if you are, I’m sorry . . . I didn’t mean any harm. You look like you’re doing a good enough job of that yourself.”

  “You brought me here?”

  “All the hospitals were full, so I came here. They got a look and took you straightaway. Trouble is they took me, too. Building’s under lockdown. They say your wound’s already healed. Don’t know how. But if you’re in trouble with Vitessa it won’t be long before they make their move,” the buckskinner said. “The good news is that I found a way out of here and I’m a-going to git. You want to come? I feel sort of responsible for you—seeing I got you in here.”

  Clearfather glanced through the curtain again at the mountains of steel and glass. He felt responsible for everything.

  “Shit, man! Trouble comin’ right now!” Xerxes exclaimed.

  Clearfather peeped down the hall and saw four candy stripers. Their hair was blond and shining, their caps and shoes white. Their steps were springy and full of community spirit, but they all had the same face, with eyes the translucent gelatin color
of termites.

  “Now or never, youngster! There’s an air duct in the bathroom that leads to the laundry chute. We can at least get to the basement.”

  Clearfather stood rigid. Then he thought about Kokomo and he knew that she would want him to get away. “I don’t have any clothes,” he said.

  “No time for that,” the old-timer called—standing on the toilet and releasing the grate he’d pried off before. It was a very tight fit inside the duct, but the old man moved nimbly.

  “You coming?” Clearfather asked McCallum.

  “Naw, man. I’ll hold ’em off. You try to keep what’s lefta yer dick—you hear?”

  The candy stripers were almost to the door. Clearfather hoisted himself up and in. The moment they entered the bathroom they’d see what had happened, but they didn’t get the chance because Xerxes unleashed that pile-driver right hand—then the Left of Death. Then he got serious.

  “Hey, Spiro, man! These ladies say you can’t play no more Ping-Pong!”

  By that time Clearfather was sliding down the chute into the laundry room, where the Harijans were loading and unloading the mole-tanks. They made the same gesture toward Clearfather as the Harijans had earlier in the bus stations.

  “We need to get out of here,” he said to them. “Can you show us the way?”

  The machine-creatures buzzed in their mantis language then pointed with their long articulated limbs at a refuse wagon filled with mole-damaged laundry. Once they were hidden under the stiff white piles, one of the Harijans wheeled the cart into the next room. Through the fabric, Clearfather could see a human Securitor.