"Hiroshi Shiba."
"Pleased to make your acquaintance. Are you the ranking official here?"
Shiba looked at Visser, whose eyes were tightly shut, and nodded his head, slapping his chest with his lower jaw.
"We have received a surrender from this man. Do you accept it?"
Shiba lifted Visser's head. The Good Ole Boy's eyes opened. He was speechless with fear.
How much had Visser known? Was he another catspaw, or in on Dr Blaikley's schemings? Shiba growled, and felt saliva fall from his jaws.
"Sir?"
"Oh, yes, the surrender. I accept."
"Very well." Marcus nodded to the Suitcase Men, who shoved Visser in Shiba's old cell. The alligator girl locked him in.
"We're not quite sure, you understand," Marcus said, grinning, "whether to treat these people as prisoners of war…or as emergency rations."
Shiba felt his stiff snout forming a smile.
With Marcus at his side, he walked out of the animal room. The House of Pain was messed up. Evidently, a lot of Marcus's people had suffered extensively here and felt the need to wreak a degree of retribution. But even amid the mess, Shiba could make out the remains of Dr Blaikley's programme of experiments. There were half-dissected alligators lying in shallow tanks of blood. And in the vats, bulbous organs were being grown. A child's paddling pool was incongruously lying in one corner, pale-grey quadruped reptile babies swimming in the shallow water. They looked up at Shiba with big, human eyes.
"We've been regrouping since the initial break-out, sir," said Marcus. "Mother Mary Louise has had this coming for a long time."
Shiba would have to get to the .bottom of this backstory eventually. Evidently, his arrival at the Narcoossee compound had come very late in the plot.
"Where is Dr Blaikley?"
Marcus looked at the floor, horizontal lids blinking over his eyes. "I'm sorry, sir…I accept full responsibility…I was unable to maintain discipline…"
He drew back the sheet that had been flung over the main operating table. Bloodied instruments clattered to the floor, and the naked and flayed thing on the red rack writhed, exposed eyes moving in the ruin of a face.
"Old scores, you understand, sir?"
Shiba laid a cold-blooded palm on Dr Blaikley's meaty brow, and felt something approaching regret.
It didn't have to be like this. Marcus's people should have known that the doctor hadn't acted out of malice. She was merely a loyal GenTech employee, doing her best for humanity.
If she hadn't died that instant, Shiba would have ended her life for her.
He paused a moment, in tribute to a woman of science. A woman who had done some good with her life.
Then, he dropped the messy sheet over her and accompanied Marcus back outside, to survey the damage and to resume the organizational reins.
There were reports to be made, and things to be done.
VIII
There was no sign of Colonel Presley's pink Cadillac. Krokodil suspected the old man who had been on the jetty of spiriting it away. It didn't really matter who had taken the car. It—along with all their heavy weaponry—was long gone and would never be coming back. While they had been distracted by the Josephite freaks, someone had cleared a neat profit. Ve-hickle theft was a capital offence in most states of the union, including Florida, but few people ever went to the chair for it. Compulsive car thieves didn't have much of a life expectancy anyway, and the professionals were much too cool to get caught
Krokodil, who still retained a residual prejudice against Sanctioned Ops from her gangcult days, wasn't sure how Elvis would take the loss of the carboat. It was a common panzergirl taunt against Ops that their guts were under the hoods of their machines and that if you took their wheels away they were like turtles on their backs. There was even a whole range of semi-obscene jokes about the relationship between Redd Harvest, the top T-H-R Op, and her G-Mek V-12 'Nola Gay. But, hell, Krokodil had known gangcultists who were just as hung up on their hardware.
Elvis surprised her, by taking the loss as a simple irritant. She had gathered that a good deal of his earnings over the years had been channelled into the Cadillac, and that this would practically wipe him out financially. Apart from the one million he would pick up for this job if he survived, of course. But even a cool mil probably wouldn't replace a '57 Cadillac with more firepower than a US Cavalry cruiser.
"Easy come," Elvis said, "easy go. We better find ourselves a boat to requisition."
"Requisitioning" was a term used by Ops whenever they wanted to steal anything. They would turn over the Walton diner completely before leaving.
They hunted through the ruins of the kitchen and dining room. They came up with a cache of ammunition for the Moulinex machine pistol Elvis had requisitioned from the late Donny Walton.
"Do you reckon any of this stuff is okay to eat?" he asked, indicating a refrigeratorful of supplies.
She wasn't sure. Most of the food looked like the plastic replicas they use for adverts.
"Best be safe."
"Yeah," the Op sighed. "Hell. I could do with a candy bar or something."
"I could catch you a trilobite and we could cook it in swampwater."
Elvis made a face. "I just lost my appetite."
Upstairs, the Waltons had lived in an illustration from an old magazine. Everything was perfect in its place. There were Readers' Digest condensed books in neat rows on shelves, dust-free but blatantly unread. There was no teevee or ceedee. The couches were plastic-covered, and the lamps ugly. A pile of Josephite tracts lay neatly on the table. Happiness Through Spirituality, Miracles by the Moment, Further Down the Path.
"Do you notice?" she asked him.
He looked around. "Nope. Nothing strange here."
"It's what's not here. Colonel."
"What?"
"This is their living room. It's their only room. No bedroom, no bathroom. What kind of people don't need a toilet?"
"Jeeze," he shuddered. "These people are weird."
Krokodil smiled at the understatement. Like almost everyone else in the world. Colonel Presley didn't really know what was going on. It wasn't his fault. She had crossed Elder Seth back when she was a teenager, taken his spectacles and been taught to see the world as it really was, a fragile place being crowded at the edges by the Dark Ones. Monsters and demons walked with her always now. The thing inside her was coiled dormant, but she was forever aware of it, waiting for it to erupt again. She hoped never to see anything like the Jibbenainosay again, but knew that her life held those horrible possibilities, and that she would have to confront them.
"Look at this," Elvis said, pointing to a framed picture.
A talon of fear punctured her heart. It was Elder Nguyen Seth himself, amateurishly painted with an unconvincing angelic smile, standing in front of the Josephite Tabernacle, a glowing halo around his black hat, surrounded by little children who were beaming merrily up at him.
Without thinking, she made a fist and put it through the picture. Glass shattered.
"Whoa there, ma'am. It ain't that ugly."
The picture was torn now, ripped across the face.
In her head, the Elder spoke to her again, taunting her for her many failures. No matter how she strove, she would never stop him. She didn't even know what his Grand Design was; how could she hope to prevent him from the accomplishment of it?
She broke contact with the painted eyes, and stormed downstairs, with Elvis following.
"I never thought to see that face again," Elvis said.
Krokodil didn't understand.
"Mr Seth. He don't look no different now than he did back then."
"Back when?"
Elvis was preoccuppied. "The crazy days. The music days. Him and Colonel Parker ran me like a greyhound."
"This is the same man? Elder Nguyen Seth."
"Now you mention it, I suppose they are the same man. That ain't possible, is it?"