“I love a par-tay!” he cried.
Half a dozen jokers surrounded Crypt Kicker, standing silent and black to one side. They grabbed him, jostling each other for advantages of grip as they prepared to tear him apart as they had the Colonel.
Then they fell back shrieking, their hands and clothing smoking. The black shirt was melting away from the Kicker’s big chest and shoulders, revealing desiccated, discolored flesh beneath.
From inside the mask emerged a laugh that sounded like the tank army on the move around them.
O. K. Casaday had his Beretta M9 out. He stuck it in the multicolored face of a joker and fired. Eyes popped from sockets, brain and blood flew out in a mist.
He looked around. Vo and the two regulars had their side-arms out and were firing into the mob. The Aussie soak had his face covered with his hands, which was probably as constructive a thing as he could be doing.
“Let’s get back to the temple!” Casaday yelled. “We can fort up there.”
“It’s no good,” the junior PAVN officer sobbed. “They are too many!”
“Then fucking die here!”
“He’s right,” Carnifex said, momentarily out of foes. “Even the Alamo’s better than the parking lot.”
“Him! He’s the one! He got Eric offed!”
“Get the fuckin’ ace! Get him!”
With Sobel turned into organic confetti and Sobel’s entourage proving hard to swallow, the mob turned its attention on the cage. The occupant was supposed to be tonight’s feature performer, after all.
Of course the victim was supposed to be a beautiful, vulnerable young woman. That it wasn’t only pissed them off more.
Mark felt a pang as he twisted the plastic cap off the vial. It doesn’t look quite right, man.
You fool! the Traveler shrilled. What if it’s tainted?
With luck, J. J. Flash thought grimly, it kills us quicker than the mob will.
Mark slammed the contents.
He knew at once that he was fucked.
The earth began to shake. The jokers nearest the cage fell to the hard-packed ground.
A wind began to blow toward the cage from all directions. It scoured dust from the ground, raised it in a swirling, dense cloud that completely hid the cage from view. The jokers turned and scrabbled away, frantic lest they be sucked into the vortex of wind.
The ground kept shaking. The wind grew to a whistle, to a roar. The cloud mounted higher and higher, till it topped the peaked roof of the pagoda.
Lightning split the cloud. And then the whirling pillar of dust… vanished.
With one horrified voice the New Joker Brigade screamed.
Everyone has them inside, the little monsters. Creatures composite of all our repressed anger, all our pain, all our envy and jealousy and unspeakable desire. Like the sixties themselves, with their bright promise of peace and love and dope and hope that turned to shit in Altamont and the SLA, even gentle Mark, the Last Hippie, had his dark side.
He had been driving himself to exhaustion’s jagged edge, the last weeks – and beyond, to the all-too-brief interval in Holland, a halcyon interval of peace between Takis and flight. He had been slamming his Moonchild potion repeatedly, though it took a ferocious cumulative toll. He had been mixing his potions in the worst possible circumstances – on the run, under stress, under less than laboratory conditions. His component chemicals were of dubious provenance and purity.
When he took the unknown potion, he did not summon one of his friends. He opened the gate upon the Pit.
He rose from a crater his lust for substance had sucked from the side of mother Earth. He swelled until he stood a full seventy feet, a manlike figure, mighty with malice, his skin greenish-black, lustrous from a distance, up close rough and abrasive as the hide of a shark. His fingers were tipped with long black talons. Lightnings wreathed his head, which was huge and horned like a longhorn’s. His eyes were rattlesnake eyes, slit-pupiled, and they glowed with the yellow flame of Hell. His breath withered the forest where it blew.
Between his massive-muscled thighs he carried a gigantic hard-on for the world.
He was full of hate and pain. He was hate and pain. He tipped his enormous head back and roared with the awful joy of liberation. The flames of his gut lit his gullet like Moloch’s.
Mark’s alter egos took their names from sixties songs. Hair was overrepresented, with two, and the others came from King Crimson and Dave Mason and the Rolling Stones by way of Johnny Winter. Many of Mark’s favorite groups were totally neglected. There were no Beatles characters, no Dead, no Destiny, no Quicksilver Messenger Service. He had no potion to turn into the Crown of Creation or Mr. Skin or the Ramblin’ Man. But maybe now he had a persona for that other quintessential sixties group, Steppenwolf.
Call this one… Monster.
“What the fuck,” O. K. Casaday demanded, “is that?”
Standing on the temple steps, Carnifex rubbed his jaw, feeling the knobbed adhesions of countless healed breaks. “That,” he said, “is Cap’n Trips’ newest secret identity, unless I miss my goddam guess.”
Monster bent forward. A vast hand swooped down, caught up Rhino. The German joker squirmed, too terrified to try to defend himself with his powerful horn. For all the good it might have done him.
Monster held him up, studying him with yellow fire eyes. Then he tossed the joker down his throat. His fanged jaw slammed shut on a scream.
The New Joker Brigaders took off in all directions. Odds of several hundred to one didn’t look so attractive anymore.
With a squealing clatter like a steamer trunk thrown down a flight of stairs, a tank crashed into the clearing from the far side, shouldering aside young trees in sprays of splinters. “Thank God,” the junior PAVN officer breathed, and crossed himself
Monster swung his massive horned head to bear on the tank. The puny soft things had gotten under cover mighty quickly; it would be inconvenient to root them out. Here was prey that would find it harder to get away.
Casaday’s big shoulders heaved in a sigh of relief. “T-72. They’ll handle the son of a bitch.”
“Five bucks,” Carnifex growled from the side of his mouth, “says you’re wrong.”
With a whining of servomotors the long gun rose to aim at the center of that broad chest. The commander, sitting half out of the top turret hatch, decided the target could likely be considered armored. He muttered into his helmet mike, calling for an armor-piercing sabot round to be loaded.
A moment, and the loader called the round loaded. Immediately the gunner called ready; he didn’t need a return from his laser rangefinder to lock a target that size less than a hundred meters away.
“Fire,” the commander said.
The horrific sound of the 125 practically knocked the little knot of onlookers into the cracked temple faзade. Hot wind slapped them and stole their breath away.
The monstrous being rocked slightly as the round took him in the center of the chest. Hellfire blazed yellow through the hole. The Monster roared his pain. His voice dwarfed the cannon’s.
Unfortunately his hide wasn’t as tough as a NATO main battle tank’s. The round just passed through him, imparting little energy. He threw out his arms and flexed his muscles.
The hole closed up.
Carnifex stuck his hand out. “Pay.” Absently, transfixed by the awful scene, Casaday dug in his pocket for his billfold.
The Monster started walking toward the T-72. Its commander was shouting into his mike, drumming his fist on the low domed turret top to speed his crew. He wanted high explosive this time.
They had about three strides of clawed feet to reload in the cramped confines of the turret. They had considerable motivation. The gunner cranked his cannon to full elevation. It still only bore on the creature’s navel, if he had one. He fired without waiting for command, the millisecond the heavy breech closed. The tank rocked back to the recoil as a flame the size of the vehicle itself bloomed from the cannon.