MEMP’IS
BOOK
SIX – “MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE”
(Sunday
{Venuday}, January 7, 2035, and After)
On
his own, now, Norlin paddles death's white ark south
through the annihilated Memp'is downtown. The din of naval battle fades, eventually,
but there are, still, occasional splashings and
furtive scuttlings on rooftops and through the crazy,
broken windows of flooded buildings. The
current carries Omar's casket past the ruins of a hotel and, on the fourth… or,
maybe, fifth... floor the face of a frogman with sharp, glittering fangs drawn
back in the semblance of a smile glares out at him. Paddling furiously, the Corporal steers the
coffin away into a dense fogbank and, when the vapors lift, the Mississippi has
turned a chemical indigo, and he is passing by the ruins of a military
complex. The top half of a sign reads...
BIORESEARCH FACILITY - CONTAMINATED!
ENTRANCE PROHIBITED
Atop
the sign, another frogperson lounges, elbows hoisted over rotting wood like one
of those graffiti scrawlings from a long-ago war that
Tom Norlin told him of when he was a little, little
boy: Kilroy was here. Kill roi, Norlin muses to himself, le roi est mort. The
King is dead. Long live... he paddles
faster, but there are ululations to all sides - a half-human, half-batrachian
face rising in front of him, others to either side. He lifts his board threateningly, the phibes baring their fangs, and then he remembers...
"Hey! Hey!... you jatesholes…
get a look at this..."
Removing
young Miss Klort's bloodspattered
panties from his jacket, Norlin waves them like a
standard of command, and frogpeople begin croaking
and clicking among themselves… sinuous tongues snaking between jaws in what
might even be interpreted as respectful smiles of homage. Then, those phibes
in front of him dive away, only to reappear in the white coffin's wake…
following, ever following, as Omar and Norlin float
south, ever south...
Finally,
as they approach the rusting, submerged gates of the King's estate, a familiar,
tiresome voice cuts through the persistent fog like a dirty switchblade...
"Norlin!
Hey... hey! you jasshole... what the keb took you so kebbin' long!
I'm freezin' up here, Norlin,
what the keb... that what I think it is?"
Frank
Desperate has been straddling the rusty gate to Graceland in shirtsleeves...
cursing and shivering, the little, simulated Protein Y purse dangling from his
belt. He's not been doing so well since Mondretto's cellular palette began decaying; face already
starting to collapse like one of Cinderella's rotten Halloween
pumpkin-coaches... but his cheerful attitude remains undamaged (after that
initial start at the Corporal's ghastly conveyance). Omar's coffin finally jostles the King's gate
and Norlin reaches out, grabs a rusting iron bar and
hoists himself up atop the ramparts, opposite Frank. The casket floats on, southwards, and a head
rises from muddy, icy water... a green, webbed fist rises up to unsnap the
coffin-lid, another pries it open and then two... four... eight famished frogpeople are digging their snouts into the dead
pretender's white chariot, wrenching bloody limbs and holding up embalmed
organs to the weak Memp'is sun for scrutiny before
devouring them like the spiced, pickled delicacies that they are.
"Give
me back that... that representation
of my wife's purse!" Norlin demands.
Frank backs away, then blurts out, "Jezk'ball!"
The
bloody coffin continues floating downstream with frogman still clawing into it
like hungry buffeteers - lapping up the remains of
Omar-blood and Omar-gristle when there comes a shot, and one of the phibes' heads explodes in red froth. A pair of police motorboats bearing the
bright, spangled flags of East America streak out of the fog towards Graceland
as the dead phibe falls backwards with a sodden
splash (and is immediately attacked by a dozen of his comrades). Norlin turns,
recognizing Lieutenant Kruppe in the prow of the
foremost with Germany Smith and a scarred, disheveled Sergeant Aspid behind him. In
the second, Dr. Skark, Eric Ice and the Blue and Gray
Men train heaters on the roiling waters, suddenly free of bobbing heads.
The
white Taliban Lodge turban and its fake ruby keep floating downriver, back
towards Jatesland.
Germany
Smith raises a bullhorn he raises to his lips…
"It's
over, Frankie. Thanks to Norlin, we've got you surrounded... both of you, now. The King's... uh... relic comes back with
us. Hand it over gently, maybe we'll go
easier on you... time as you’ve got left…"
"We
knew you'd go after Frankie," Kruppe swaggers,
"so all we had to do was go after you..."
It's a curious, sinister affirmation of the Corporal's
quest, so Norlin stands, erect, atop Graceland's
gate, saying: "Then you believed
Mondretto..."
"It
is not belief," Germany retorts,
"only sound police practice..."
"You
might as well know, Norlin... that kebbin' dook disapperated on us,"
Sergeant Chester Aspid calls out. "Right in a kebbin'
holdin' pen... th' one
opposite C-Squad, as a matter of fact... chattin'
away like Paul Parchette's kebbin'
cousin one moment, waitin' on the Doctor and his teatray, then... boomf! That phony doctor down in Stimwood
too! On the other hand, we also took out
that pool in Mormentz las' night, thanks to you. Musta fried a
million kebbin' tadpoles... twenty men with
flamethrowers, spreadin' gallons of congealed solar
plasma over the whole pond... work of kebbin' beauty,
that operation was."
"You'da been there, Corpse," Eric Ice calls out, "coulda ate frog legs till ya
burst like a kebbin' Frenchman back in ol'
Orleans..."
"So
Germany ain't trash-talkin',"
Aspid proposes good-naturedly. "Convince ol’ Frankie here to give up
the fex and you're back on the Force. Back in, an' goin' places... word from Captain Modesty..."
Despite
himself, the Corporal has to glance at Frankie, who simpers back. Germany Smith lowers his bullhorn and pokes
the Captain of his craft.
"Net,
Sykes… gimme the kebbin'
net," the Intelligence Chief demands.
"Trust us, Norlin..."
But
Frank Desperate, whose grin has broadened into an absurd rictus, pulls Reason's
purse from his shirt, dangling it over the fetid riverwater.
"We've learned a few things about you, too… you
delinquent," Germany snarls.
"Won't do for you as it would for us."
"Norlin..." Frankie misdirects the waterborne posse,
"there..."
The
quicksketch avatar's New Plasmic
Adam points towards Elvis' reeking mansion, tossing the purse to Norlin half a second before a fusillade of bullets, lasers
and infrasonar projectiles strike. But, rather than falling into the water...
food for the phibes... Frankie fades away slowly,
lingeringly, tauntingly - his last gesture a fig at the police...
"Sumbitch!"
wonders Chester Aspid. "Floated away, just like kebbin' Mondretto... "
"Bet
you ain't
so permeable when it comes to stoppin' a blaster, are
you, Norlin?"
The Captain's dogsbody Kruppe
gestures towards the murky water between gate and mansion. "Take a look out there... good ol'
Trouble Factory ammunition, or those phibey
teeth? Personally, I'd prefer gettin' pranced. But
there's a third way out of all of this... we'll just sidle up alongside and you
hand over the Veronica and come with us, peaceful-like..."
Norlin looks from the mansion to
the Trouble Factory, then over the rolling waters of the river and makes his
choice... removing the panties from his jacket, he waves them high, towards
Graceland, as a sigil of surrender (or, perhaps, a standard of battles to come)
then, with phibes rising to the surface of the murky
water, thick as logs careening downstream towards a sawmill, he dives into the
muddy Mississippi...
Germany Smith lowers the net, with which he had presumed to
retrieve the purse containing the dried, white fex of
Elvis Presley from his rogue officer - Eric Ice and Chester Aspid
shake their heads and the patrolmen… standing upright in both boats, despite
frenzied warnings to the contrary by the Captains, Sykes and that other one…
stare across the waters at the bloody panties Norton holds aloft --saluting or
crossing their hearts with heavy sighs. Redfaced and glowering with anger through the swirling fog,
Captain Modesty's lieutenant spits and stomps his heavy police feet… Kruppe then leaning out over the waters, swearing…
"Jesk'ball!"