The camera turns in time to catch Famine entering the lobby. “Bloody hell!” he says. He flicks frog giblets from the tassels of his epaulets and shimmies his black leather pants up but fails to conquer the rolling hills of his belly. “Whose idea was that?” he asks the camera, thumbing a finger outside.
“God’s, I think,” War says, entering after him. War is surprisingly timid and never makes eye contact, in that passive-aggressive way that suggests he’ll smile to your face and start genocidal wars the second you turn your back. And upon his legs ride red chaps pulled high past his belly button in a manner suggesting someone else dressed him—his aging rocker mother perhaps.
Pestilence arrives last, as the camera records. “Personally, I love the classics. Boils, frogs ’n’ all that,” he says, chipper. Then again, his optimism is always infectious. Pestilence is a curious fellow, his mouth drooping as though waiting for a sneeze that never arrives. His leather vest is open, revealing a sweaty chest, and lo, he wears white leather pants.
Famine looks around the empty lobby, unimpressed, and then at the camera. “Hey! Where’re all the groupies? The weeping maidens and those blokes gnashing their teeth? It’s the bloody apocalypse.”
“Guys! Ya made it!” An old man walks toward them, his plaid wardrobe last seen on a 1950s vacuum cleaner salesman . . . or a couch. The sparse comb-over, a continental map of liver spots and hunched-over shoulders suggest Death has been making a sport of keeping him alive.
“Laz!” Famine says. “Where the hell is everyone?”
“Our manager,” Pestilence whispers to the camera.
“Bad news, boys. Everyone here is dead. But I checked the rooms and you’re gonna love ’em.”
“Who’s dead?” Pestilence asks.
“The entire hotel. Guests, staff, groupies—lucky bastards,” Laz grumbles before his wrinkles crinkle into an approximation of resigned cheer. “Let’s get ya set up so we can start the auditions. Then ya can let me die—”
“Wait, wait!” Famine protests. “Who’s done them in?”
“No clue. They were like that when I got here. Looks like they all just dropped dead. Hell of a thing. Now, how about we start, huh? The grand show ain’t gonna run herself!”
“Right, I guess,” Pestilence says. He points the camera in the direction of the dead bodies slumped in chairs and in a pile behind the counter. “Isn’t this a bad omen?”
“Nonsense,” Laz says, shuffling back to Pestilence and pulling him along by the elbow. “You were going to knock ’em dead anyways, remember? Now, go get ready, find your fourth band member, and then you can let me die. Chop chop.”
Interviewer: The last time you were all together was during the ’39–’45 World War II Tour.
Pestilence: Yeah, that was brilliant. We really came together as a band.
Famine: We were huge. Poland, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Russia . . . we toured everywhere.
Interviewer: Some critics accused you of just copying the success of the World War I album, that you didn’t really innovate anything.
Pestilence: Didn’t innovate anything?! We innovated everything, baby. Society, technology . . . we’ve never been bigger!
Famine: Yeah, especially with the Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Oh, and them buggers in between.
War: In between?
Pestilence: Jews for Jesus.
War: Oh, right!
Famine: Nobody ever brought them together like us. Not even that Carter fellow.
Pestilence: And when we hit the stage, we’ll make believers of everyone else, we will.
Interviewer: But Death turned you down.
Pestilence: Well, not him per se. But his lawyers were very emphatic.
Famine: Hence the auditions. Can’t be the Four Horsemen without a fourth.
War: Or Death. It’s not the same without Death.
“All settled in?” Laz asks. The camera sweeps around, taking in the ballroom’s high ceiling, with stained-glass cupola, and the sprawling burgundy carpet. Otherwise, the room is empty save for the three seats in the middle of the room and stacks of chairs to the side under a dusty tarp.
“I suppose,” War says. “There’s a pile of dead maids in my suite.”
“At least they didn’t cover your furniture in plastic before they nipped off,” Pestilence says.
“Do you blame ’em?” Famine asks. “Last time we shared a room, I caught cholera and SARS.”
“Right, sorry.”
“Anthrax, botulism, tuberculosis, and VD—”
“Hey! That last one wasn’t mine, you filthy bugger,” Pestilence replies. He takes one of the three chairs in the middle of the room and spins it around before straddling it backward. “So? We gonna talk about the corpses?”
“They’re dead,” War says in a morose tone. “They were going to die anyway.”
“Speaking of dead,” Laz chirps, “how about ya kill me now?” But they ignore him.
“Hey. You think they started the Apocalypse without us?” Famine asks.
“Without the headliners?” Laz says. “Nah, you guys are the stars.”
Famine shakes his head and sits with War, who is taking a napkin to his chair. “Let’s just get this started. War’s right. So they aren’t around for the final encore. We’ll still pack the stadium. You recording?” he asks the cameraman, and receives a thumbs-up in response. The three Horsemen face the center of the room.
“So who’s the first audition?” Pestilence asks.
Laz checks his clipboard. “Drugs. Formerly with Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll.”
“I loved them!” Famine says. He drapes his corpulent arm over the back of War’s chair and stares into the camera. “They were brilliant ’til Sex split and went off with Rap.”
“Drugs was it, mate!”
“So where is he?” War asks, staring into the center of the room. “It’s rude to keep people waiting.”
“Nah! It’s his bag, baby!” Pestilence says with a cheer.
At that, the room shudders and a mushroom cloud of green vapor explodes outward from the middle of the carpet. War coughs and waves away the smoke while Pestilence and Famine lean forward intently. When the vapors clear, Drugs lays on the floor, feather hanging from a leather strip in his spiky hair, with kohl-rimmed eyes, shirtless and emaciated, and wearing blue and green striped bell-bottoms.
“It’s Keith Richards,” War whispers.
“Looks like him a bit, I suppose,” Pestilence says. “He all right?”
Laz kneels next to Drugs while the Horsemen stand over him.
“Look at those track marks!” War says. “Must have OD’d.”
“You know many people who shoot up with ammunition, do you?” Famine asks.
“I—don’t take drugs. I wouldn’t know,” War replies.
The camera focuses on the wounds, large puckered holes along his forearm smeared with dry blood.
“He’s dead,” Laz announces, sounding terribly disappointed. Or jealous.
“Fuck,” Famine whispers. “Dead? Drugs’s been murdered?”
“Hold on,” Pestilence says. “We can die?”
Interviewer: So it was a shock seeing Drugs dead like that?
Pestilence: I didn’t know we could die. It was a wake-up call it was.
Famine: I was in shock.
War: I said a prayer for him.
Pestilence: You what?
Famine: He prayed for him. War found God.
Pestilence: Was he lost? Nobody told me.
Famine: He wasn’t lost! War just found him is all.
Pestilence: If he wasn’t lost, wouldn’t that make War a wanker for finding him? Sorta like Columbus discovering America when folks were already there?
Famine: No, no. War didn’t find God. It’s more of a spiritual thing. Like the Dalai Lama.
War: Nice bloke, that lama fellow. Maybe we should ask him to audition.
Famine: For the Four Horsemen?
War: Yeah.
Famine: Of
the Apocalypse?!
Pestilence: What? War, Famine, Pestilence, and a skinny Chinese bloke wrapped in me mum’s curtains?
War: He’s Tibetan. And no . . . War, Famine, Pestilence, and Peace. Nobody would expect it.
Pestilence: That’s called jumping the shark, that is.
Laz: And technically, boys, War found religion.
Pestilence: Oh! Well, God and religion, they’re not the same thing, are they?
“Who’s next, Laz?” Famine asks, one leg slumped over the arm of the chair. Drugs is tucked inside a rolled-up duvet and pushed against the wall.
Laz checks his list and then exclaims, “Ah, Child Labor is up next.”
“An Asian pop star!?” Pestilence groans. “You’re not going Bollywood on us are you, Laz?”
“He’s also big in Africa and South America,” Laz replies, studying the sheet. “Wouldn’t hurt you boys to hit those markets.”
“We could use the endorsements,” Famine says. “Shoes, tires, clothing—though exploiting younguns hasn’t been in vogue since—”
“Reality television?” Laz asks.
“That fall out of vogue and no one told me?” Pestilence demands.
“Since Calvin Klein, I was going to say,” Famine replies, thinking about it, then he snaps his finger (and somewhere in the world, another supermodel dies with her finger down her throat). “We’d be controversial, though. Think about it—our logos stamped across them all.”
“What? Across the children?”
“No!” Famine snaps. “Shoes, tires, and clothing. I’m tired of advertising in the Good Books. Where’d that get us, eh?”
“You actually considering this?” Pestilence demands. “Going mainstream? Selling out to the man?”
“What man? Christ?” Laz asks.
“Christ a man? We back to that old chestnut?” Famine asks.
As they continue arguing, the carpet unravels, the fibers widening in a spot until the gap is large enough to disgorge a man. Well, spit up really, like a numb tongue rolling out of someone’s mouth. He is wearing fine silks and of an origin that most Westerners could approximate as Oriental (the Orient spanning, left to right, from the Middle East to somewhere just east of the California coastline). The man is lying on the ground, however, not-breathing with the skill of someone who’s practiced not-breathing for the last several hours.
“Uh-oh,” Laz says.
“He dead too?” Famine asks.
“Afraid so,” Laz replies. “Lucky prick.”
War: They don’t get me. Don’t get my sound, you know what I mean?
Interviewer: You talked about going solo.
War: Well, I could, couldn’t I? Fundamentalist rock. It’s my new passion.
Interviewer: So what’s stopping you?
War: Nothing . . . now.
“Sorry, mate,” Pestilence says, grunting as he pushes Child Labor up against Drugs with the heel of his knee-length leather boot. “But the show must go on.”
“Go on?” Famine asks. “Drugs and Child Labor were murdered. Nobody said we could die.”
“I’m just as surprised as you are,” Pestilence replies, taking a seat on Child Labor. He pulls out a cigarette, the tip of which spontaneously combusts.
“I knew, actually,” War says, wandering back into the ballroom.
“Where you been?” Pestilence asks. “Someone murdered Child Labor.”
“Did you check with Murder?”
“Can’t reach him,” Famine replies. “Why didn’t you say we could be offed?”
“I thought everyone knew,” War says. “Ultimately, we’re just concepts, aren’t we? Death told me so.”
“Death,” Famine groans. “He’d be a boring cunt without us.”
“Don’t say that!” War says. “He’s Death, the Omega of Everything.”
“Never said he wasn’t,” Pestilence replies. “But without us, people would just keel over on the spot, wouldn’t they? Dull as a sack of potatoes on black and white telly.”
“Yeah,” Famine says. “We provide the sport. Death just strikes shite down.”
“Smites shite,” Pestilence corrects him.
“Right, smites it. But we’re the real artists. We do it with style. It’s why we’re chart toppers.”
“What about Cancer?” War asks.
“His audition is at three thirty,” Laz replies.
“No, no. Cancer’s number one in North America, right. We’re no longer at the top.”
“We will be after this show,” Famine says. “We’re closing down the house!”
“Old Testament style!” Pestilence shouts, throwing up the devil’s horns.
“Yeah, but it’s fixed, isn’t it? Preordained,” War replies. “We’re number one only because God said so millennia ago. Otherwise, where would we be?”
At that, the three Horsemen fall silent, none of them looking at each other or even the camera. “Turn it off,” Famine says, shoving his hand up to the lens.
Interviewer: Did you ever consider changing your names?
Famine: I thought we were, like, immutable.
War: Actually, I’m thinking of changing mine to Holy War.
Pestilence: Isn’t that, like, a jihad?
War: No! A jihad is a struggle. This is a holy war. It’s like biblical. Epic.
Famine: We’re already biblical! Or did I miss something?
War: I was big in the Crusades. I’m just going back to my roots is all.
The three Horsemen wait in the ballroom for the next audition. They hardly speak, the last exchange weighing on them while Drugs’s and Child Labor’s bodies still rot nearby. They don’t glance at the corpses, which tally up to the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room (minus five hundred pounds or thereabouts, so really, a skinny eight-hundred-pound gorilla), the mortality of the Three Horsemen suddenly realized.
“Shouldn’t we talk about it?” Famine finally asks.
When War throws him a quizzical look, Pestilence nods to the corpses. “You want to solve their murders do you, Scooby?”
“I don’t give a fuck about their murders,” Famine replies. “I want to know who bloody well killed them.”
“Yeah, spot-on,” Pestilence says, moving to the bodies. “Let’s search them for clues, then.”
As Famine and Pestilence look down at the rolled-up duvet holding Drugs, the cameraman scrambles to catch whatever poignant thoughts are about to fall from the two Horsemen. And there it is, captured on camera, that kernel of realization that flickers across Pestilence’s face.
“Anyone else think he looks like a joint?” Pestilence asks.
“Bloody appropriate,” Famine says. He bends over to grab the duvet’s edge. “I think he’d appreciate the irony.”
Pestilence kneels down and both men pull the edge of the duvet, unwrapping Drugs, who rolls and slumps to his stomach with a dull thud. War is behind them, fidgeting with his fingers and apparently equally uncomfortable and curious, judging by the way he cranes his neck. Famine notices him and steps aside, inviting War to participate.
“What? Me?” War asks.
“You know more about this sort of thing than I do,” Famine says. “’Sides, my knees are fucked.”
War looks ready to complain, then predictably swallows his protests and kneels next to Pestilence. Both War and Pestilence nudge the body, then prod it, then poke it when nudging and prodding fail to produce results.
“God,” Famine says. “It’s like watching the Quest for Fire.”
“You want a go at it?” Pestilence shoots to his feet. Famine apologizes by raising both hands and backing off.
“Who do we know who’s good with this crap?” Laz asks from behind them.
“An expert? Like Death? He told us to sod off,” Famine says.
“Well, like Death, but not exactly him.”
“What, like a Mrs. Death?” War asks.
Famine sighs. “Face it. We’re good at dispensing this shite, not solving it.”
“Right,” Pestilence replies, clapping his hands together (and around the world, the smallpox vaccine wears off, leaving many people open for a spectacularly bad week). “Let’s get back to what we’re good at, then, shall we?”
With shrugs and nods, Famine and War drift back to their seats while Pestilence drapes the duvet over Drugs. “Sorry, mate,” he says. “Laz, who’s our next audition? And please, a live one.”
A brown-green mist seeps up from the carpet and coalesces into a dapper-looking gentleman with a white sequined suit, a white rhinestone fedora, shades, and a white glove.
He is Caucasian one moment, then Latino, then African-American . . . or perhaps African-Canadian or African-British. The Horsemen are too embarrassed to admit they can’t tell.
“Finally!” Famine says, relieved that their newest arrival is firmly upright.
“A single white glove? Really?” Pestilence whispers to Laz, who shrugs in reply.
The now-Asian man is about to say something when he notices Drugs and Child Labor to the side and dead. Several thoughts shoot through his head at that moment, such as “Are those dead bodies?” and “Just how seriously are you taking these auditions?” He raises his gloved hand to ask a question, which the others mistake for the start of his audition.
“Introduce yourself first, please,” Famine says impatiently, but it’s War who leans forward.
“Pardon? Who are you speaking to?”
“Global Warming, mate,” Pestilence replies.
“Where?” War asks, looking around.
Famine, Pestilence, and Laz all turn to stare at War, but his expression remains serious, his lips pursed.
“Come again?” Pestilence asks.
“There’s nobody there.”
“You don’t see him?” Pestilence says.
“Who?”
“Global Warming,” Famine snaps. “The bloke who’s standing right there!”
Mystified, War looks in the general direction of Global Warming, who in turn is staring back at them helplessly. “I . . . get that a lot,” Global Warming offers sheepishly, but the others pretty much ignore him.
“Are you sure?” War asks.
“Yes!” Pestilence and Famine shout.
War shrugs. “But nothing’s there,” he says helplessly, his mouth opening and closing in search of something else to say.
“It’s okay,” Global Warming says, even though nobody is listening to him.
Aftertaste Page 34