He opened Flash Freddy’s briefcase to get the whip. It was lying on top of a whole array of things, the six-hundred page contract, several legal files (the top one was marked LOUIS HUGO DEVILLE with a slashing red CLASSIFIED INFORMATION stamped across it), a packet of cigarettes, dozens of personalized Zippo lighters, and numerous EZPZ drug bottles. He shook one. Then another. Both rattled like a baby’s shaker, stoking his anger to exploding point.
He glanced up at the desk. The rat was now telling Flash Freddy and Santosa that if they didn’t have valid union cards, they would have to fill out a “Lost Card” form and go back to the end of the line. He would assess the claims after he had dealt with everyone else.
Some part of Louis wanted the lizard to suffer for his lies and let him wait at the back of the line. Except, what would that achieve? He would have to wait out every prolonged second with him, and he had just about had enough of this god-forsaken tunnel. This wasn’t the time to be spiteful. It was a time to do something about this good-for-noth’n official on a power trip.
He hitched his toga and opened one of the drug bottles. He could feel Smiggins’ watchful gaze on the back of his neck, but he didn’t give a hoot. He took the pill and removed the whip, raising it above his head and flicking the tip toward the desk. Neither the official, Flash Freddy or Santosa saw it coming. The whip cracked into the desktop just as the rat was about to hand over a “Lost Card” form to Santosa. The rat squealed in surprise, his wide eyes blinking even wider. “Let us through or the next one’s for you,” Louis said.
The rat quickly regained his composure. “What’s the meaning of…”
Louis cracked the whip across the official’s paw before he could finish. This time the rat squealed with pain and hugged his paw to his chest, much to the delight of the waiting suits. Louis warned him again, actually enjoying the fear in his wide eyes. It must be the pill, he thought. Goddamn thing’s working quicker than the last one. He raised the whip for a third time. “Do I need to use this again?”
Whimpering, and still hugging his throbbing paw, the rat shook his head in short, rapid jerks. Someone from the line yelled out to whip him again anyway.
Louis ignored the request, tempted though he was. “Then me and my friends will just pass through and you can get back to what you were doing,” he said.
The official nodded with short, sharp nods.
Santosa was beaming beneath his oxygen mask. Flash Freddy’s eyes were sparkling. “Let’s go,” Louis said. “I’ve had enough of minor officialdom to last me for the rest of my After Life.”
He walked past the desk, but before he handed back Flash Freddy’s briefcase he threatened the official with the whip, just for the hell of it. The rat cringed and Smiggins, Flash Freddy and Santosa burst out laughing. Only Tiffany Tidbits said nothing. Santosa removed his mask, sneering at the quivering official. “Don’t think you’ve heard the last of this.” Then to his PA, “Get his name and union number. I want to personally organize his punishment. Something suitable, like the Fires of Oblivion.”
The official began whimpering even louder and begged for mercy.
Santosa laughed and told him to shut up. “I’m showing you mercy by not having you punished immediately. You’re lucky I have a meeting to attend.”
Santosa wheeled himself through the archway while Tiffany took the official’s citizenship details. “You did a mighty fine job back there, Louis. You’ve got the right attitude to make something of yourself at LeMont.” He burped long and loud. “I’m personally going to put in a good word for you. The Boss will be very pleased.”
Louis gasped and stopped. It wasn’t so much as what he had heard as what he had just seen. He had emerged onto a ledge somewhere high on the face of a cliff and was now looking down upon the never-ending sprawl of LeMont International Enterprises.
It was the biggest goddamn thing he had ever seen.
CHAPTER TWELVE
First Class Service
“HERE we are, Mr. DeVille,” Flash Freddy said. “How do you like your new home?”
Louis didn’t answer for the moment, just stared. Pinpricks of gray light shimmered from millions of windows and streetlights with the same sick grayness he had hoped to leave behind in the tunnels. It was the sheer size, though, that struck him. LeMont International Enterprises was a mega-city of dreary office blocks, industrial factories, chain stores and apartment buildings that spread beyond his field of vision. He had been to the lookout on the Empire State Building many times and seen the sprawl of New York City stretch for miles upon miles. This was bigger. Much bigger. This was New York City, Mexico City, London, Paris and Tokyo all rolled into one. He hitched his toga and said, “What’s the population?”
Smiggins sniggered and punched some numbers into his calculator. “Six and a half billion.”
Louis reeled. “That’s the entire population of the world.”
“Things have moved on since you were alive,” Smiggins said, punching in some more numbers. “This is over half the total number of humans that will ever exist.”
Louis frowned. “I never thought humanity had a finite existence.”
“Ever heard of Global Warming?” Santosa said through his oxygen mask. Tiffany had just stepped through the archway and grabbed the handles behind his wheelchair.
“Of course, but I thought that was all horseshit. What happened to the other half of humanity?”
At that point, Flash Freddy stepped forward and put his dry, scaly arm around Louis’ shoulder. “Would you believe everything you see has been excavated from rock?” he said. “You’re actually inside the largest underground cave ever constructed.”
Louis had figured as much. As far as he could see, the cliff face extended in a shallow concavity and presumably circumscribed the entire mega-city. He couldn’t help but think that he had just stepped inside a prison with the ultimate, impenetrable wall. There was also no sky to speak of, compounding this god-awful feeling of internment. He had really hoped to see some daylight. Instead, where the clouds and crisscrossing vapor trails of highflying aircraft should have been, there was just a low vault of gray rock that stretched from horizon to horizon like a permanent sunless winter. From the ledge high upon the cliff face, the ceiling (it was actually so vast it was more like a ‘sky-vault’ than a roof or ceiling) seemed to sit just above his head, as if all he had to do was stretch up on the tip of his claws to touch it. It merged seamlessly with the upper section of the cliff and confirmed Flash Freddy’s statement that they were inside a gigantic, hollowed-out cavern. The sky-vault’s proximity was something he wasn’t sure he would get used to. He could almost feel the weight of it bearing down on his shoulders, and he had to glance up several times to make sure the goddamn thing wasn’t going to fall down around his whiskers.
After one last wary glance upward, Louis turned his attention back to the mega-city and its millions of glimmering gray lights. Everything seemed to have been designed by the same architect. Except for one towering scraper toward the middle that actually touched the sky-vault, none of the buildings were higher than ten or twelve stories; and just as uninspiring, all were symmetrically rectangular or square with sharp, well-defined lines and angles, like buildings made of giant Lego. It was a city of United Nation’s buildings. With one major difference, however – this was a city of the dead. A goddamn necropolis.
“That’s LeMont Head Office,” Flash Freddy said, pointing toward the tower. “The Boss lives in the penthouse. No one gets invited up there. Certainly no one I know has.”
To Louis it looked like a mythical Greek pillar holding up the sky, the only thing from keeping the vault from crashing down onto the rectangles and squares beneath it. A gray neon light blinked on and off from the top. What initially looked like a large, staring eye was actually the LeMont logo, the alpha-fish contained within the omega-horseshoe. He couldn’t look at it for too long without feeling an overwhelming sense of dread, as if the sign was watching everything he did and penetra
ting his innermost thoughts. The others too, he noticed, couldn’t look at it for longer than a second or more.
Louis glanced up again, still uncomfortable with the rocky ceiling so close above his head. “What’s above the sky-vault?” he asked.
Smiggins sniggered. “Just more rock. What else would there be?”
Flash Freddy hooded his eyes and Smiggins immediately shut up. “Let’s not worry ourselves with what we don’t know,” he said to Louis. “There are much more important things to concern ourselves with.”
Santosa hooked down his oxygen mask and burped. “Like my meeting. I’m late enough as it is. If you want a lift in my Limo then you better come now.”
Before Louis followed the toad and his PA down to the sprawling metropolis, he took a moment to get his bearings should he ever have a need to return. Chiseled in the rock above the archway entrance was a sign: CONDUIT NUMBER 1. It wasn’t the only tunnel he could see. Scattered all over the cliff like black polka dots were hundreds, if not thousands, of dark holes with similar signs above them. Conduit Number 2 was nearby to his right. A little further on, Conduit Number 3; and beyond that, Conduit Number 4. Steps had been fashioned from the ledge of each mouth, zigzagging down the face of the cliff to the buildings below. A constant stream of suit and ties ascended and descended the stairs, like navy-gray ants marching to and from their nests inside the tunnels. Work never ends, he mused.
He suddenly noticed that the others had already begun the precarious descent and hurried to catch up. Followed closely by Smiggins and Flash Freddy, Tiffany was pushing Santosa down the slippery narrow steps as though she were on a midday stroll around Central Park, unmindful of the danger. The oxygen cylinders on the back of the wheelchair clinked every time the wheels clunked down each step, like a loud odometer counting down the cliff. Clink. One. Clink. Two. Clink. Three. Nobody was foolish enough to try and pass Santosa on the way up and risk getting knocked off the cliff. Instead, they waited at the only available place to overtake, at an elbow, where the stairs kinked back beneath itself as it zigzagged down.
Two hundred and fifty clinks later, Louis stepped onto flat ground around two bus-sized boulders embedded in the sidewalk. Santosa was scanning the empty street that ran from the base of the steps toward The Tower. “Where’s my Limo?” he said. “It should be here. I’m late enough as it is.”
Like a gorge abutted on either side with sheer-faced rock, the street cut directly through symmetrical buildings all the way to LeMont Head Office about twenty or so miles away. Though presumably one of the main thoroughfares, the street was surprisingly empty; with a population of six and a half billion, Louis expected every one of its six lanes to be choked with traffic. Now that he was focusing on it, there were only a handful of pedestrians on the sidewalk too. Maybe it was the middle of the night (he still couldn’t get his head around the permanent twilight yet). Maybe it would be a different story when everyone woke up in the morning. Absolute goddamned mayhem, he reckoned.
He was then drawn to the alpha-omega logo where the pillar-tower merged with the sky-vault. The feeling of dread overwhelmed him again. Only sheer will power enabled him to tear his gaze from its Big Brother stare back to the immediate surroundings. It was difficult not to keep looking back, so he concentrated on the nearest thing, a street sign on the corner building: BOULEVARD 1. Then, grateful for the distraction, he caught movement half a mile or so toward the nearest intersection. A gray stretch Limousine pulled out from around a corner and headed toward them. With his new eyesight the number plate was clearer than newsprint with bifocals: TOAD 10.
“Here it is,” Santosa said, and burped. “About time.”
The Limo stopped and the chauffeur jumped out to open the door. Another goddamn rat, slightly smaller than Smiggins though no less repulsive. “My apologies, sir,” the chauffeur said. “The engine wouldn’t start. I had to call a mechanic. Said it was something to do with inbuilt obsolescence. We’ll have to think of replacing it.”
Santosa harrumphed that he had never heard such rubbish; the engine was less than a thousand years old and still under warrantee. The chauffeur slid a wheelchair ramp from the floor and helped Tiffany push Santosa into the back. “If there wasn’t such a shortage of chauffeurs, you’d be looking for a new job by now,” the Grand Pooh-Bah said.
Tiffany set to work securing the wheels to inbuilt clamps, then sat down on the back seat, knees pressed together, paws on her lap. Louis, Smiggins and Flash Freddy sat on the seat that backed the driver’s cabin. Before the chauffeur shut the door, Santosa told him to drop his friends at the LeMont Hotel. The chauffeur hurried to the driver’s seat and the Limo was soon accelerating down the boulevard. Through the tinted glass Louis could hear muffled music from the radio, and if he wasn’t mistaken it sounded like Karen Carpenter singing Top of the World. Just his goddamn luck. He hated that song, and to cap it off he found himself humming along to the words… I’m on the… Top of the World, lookin’… down on creation…
“The Boss must think a lot of you,” Santosa said. “The LeMont’s the finest hotel in the city. Every room has a view of The Tower and the piazza. What’s your position?”
“Interim Management Consultant,” Louis said, still humming in his head… And the only explanation I can fiiiiind…
“Impressive. Have you signed the contract?”
“Not yet. I just wanted to go over the fine print. Devil’s in the detail, you know.” He laughed at his own joke, but everyone else remained deadly serious. “It’s… uh… practically a done deal,” he said. “I’ll be signing it soon.”
“Good for you.” Santosa burped long and loud. The Limo filled with the stench of horseshit and made Louis’ eyes water. “Let’s celebrate. How about some champagne?”
Tiffany Tidbits popped a bottle of LeMont Imperial Brut from the mini-fridge and filled five champagne flutes, hers less than half. They toasted to Louis’ new role in the After Life and an eternity of new friendships. Out through the window he caught a flash of white graffiti on the side of a building: WRFF, from which a drop of paint coursed from the base of the middle F like a long white tear. Louis sipped his champagne. It looked like goddamn dishwater and tasted like bubbly cow juice, but he didn’t care. He was on top of the world, you could say. Limos. Champagne. Five-star hotels. What more could a weasel want?
He sank into the seat and hitched his toga. He was really going to enjoy it here.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Streets of LeMont
THEY continued to sip champagne as the Limo went down Boulevard 1. Two things struck Louis about LeMont International Enterprises as they drove. Firstly, it was so goddamn clean. Almost too clean. There was no garbage spilling out of trashcans. No TV’s or sofas or refrigerators dumped on the sidewalk. No wheel-less cars jacked up on bricks. There was virtually no graffiti, save the occasional WHITE RABBIT FREEDOM FIGHTERS or WRFF hastily sprayed to the walls, and just as hastily cleaned. Not that he preferred garbage to cleanliness (hells bells, when the trash men went on strike in Manhattan the stench was almost unbearable), hell no. Just what he had seen so far was as sterile as a goddamn hospital. It didn’t look lived in, kind of like a sofa that had been kept in plastic sheeting for fear of getting soiled. Something his wife would have approved of.
The other thing that struck him was the deceptiveness of depth. The second bottle of Imperial Brut was almost empty and yet, when he turned to glance ahead through the tinted screen, The Tower was still some distance away. He begrudgingly readjusted his initial estimate of twenty miles from Conduit Number 1. It was more like forty or fifty, and even then he wasn’t sure. It could be another fifty miles further still. Although LeMont International Enterprises had seemingly been built on a Manhattan-like grid system, which should have made getting his bearings a hell of a lot easier than, say, a tentacle sprawl like London or Paris, every block they passed was identical to the last one. Judging distances was virtually impossible. Each building looked identical to its neighbor. E
ach intersection was the same as the next. Even the goddamn shops fronting the boulevard were the same between each block, right down to the sequence. It was doing his damn head in.
Staring out the window, he decided to play a little game. He reckoned the Limo had driven down enough blocks by now to predict the names of the stores they were about to pass. He waited until the next intersection to test his theory, and sure enough, on the corner just like the last, was a goddamn 24/7 mini-market. “We Never Close,” its motto bragged. Next to it, predictably, was a video store, Big Screen Classics. Then something called a Happythecary that had CHEAP WAYS TO FEEL GOOD posted to its window like some kind of fifties drugstore.
As expected, the Limo then went past a fast food outlet with a large, gray neon BB motif flashing on and off: THE BURGER BOSS. Goodness Is Just A Bite Away. Hundreds of lizards, ferrets, rats and weasels were lining up along the sidewalk to get in. Some were wiping their snouts with handkerchiefs. Others were coughing. A few even had yellow Post-It notes stuck to their backs. It was the most number of suit and ties he had seen since the end of Conduit Number 1, something he was kind of glad about. He had started to think there was a curfew keeping everyone indoors at the home or office, but the more distance the Limo put between itself and Conduit Number 1, it seemed, the busier the sidewalks were becoming.
“The only cars I’ve seen are Limos,” he said, “and there doesn’t seem to be many of them on the road.”
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