Next to the wedding party, a man all wrapped up in bandages wearing a gold mask and headdress with a snake coming out of the forehead danced on the stage of a place called — according to the neon lights behind him — the Radio City Museum of Unnatural History, while thousands cheered.
Beside Mr. Burn Victim and his audience, a masked man in a powder blue cowboy outfit brandished silver six–shooters on the back of a silver Tyrannosaurus, hot on the trail of a mustachioed man in brown wearing a swastika, while over their heads a fat man in a red uniform with white trim flew through the sky in a sleigh pulled by eight black bat–winged jets. He had bags full of guns, ammo and bombs in the back of the sleigh, which a bunch of children with pointy ears were dropping down to a guy in metal armor labeled “King Arthur” and his knights so they could battle a guy in bamboo armor labeled “Genghis Khan” and an army of men and woman in green uniforms with red stars on their caps and red books in their raised hands.
Further on there was a man in a green and gold uniform with the number 12 emblazoned on it and a ‘G’ on the helmet throwing a missile to a man vanishing in the white glow of an atomic mushroom cloud. And finally, at the far end of the wall, the ape returned, squatting in its tattered wedding dress and studying the fire–blackened helmet with the G on it.
Like I said, crazy. And as I looked around, all the junk and the way the guardians revered it flashed me back to something the original me had learned about back in ranger training — something called the Ranger Dilemma. One of my instructors had told us that at some point every Ranger had to decide how he or she wanted to do their job. Was she going to help others find their way into a better future, or was she going to help them somehow get back to the good old days of the past?
The Guardians were definitely on the “back to the past” side of things, that much was clear, and their example would make that philosophy seem like madness. But was it the “wanting to go back” part that was insane? Or was it the hoarding and worshipping part? Not everything in the past was bad. In fact, a lot of it would make life in the here and now a hell of a lot easier if we could get it up and running again. Maybe it was the inability of the Guardians to make any kind of value judgments about all the stuff from back in the day that was the problem. Electric toothbrush? Yes! The ancients made it so it had to be good! Atom bomb? Also yes! Crazed super computer that wanted to wipe out all humanity? Hell yes! The Guardians loved it all.
On the other hand, there were the folks that felt we should abandon the past completely and create an entirely original future. Also not a bad idea on its face, seeing as how the ancients in their wisdom had already destroyed the world once. It seemed to me that that must have been Finster’s original goal, but once again he’d taken it to a fanatical extreme. It had sent that idea spinning toward hell in a hand basket faster than you could say mutant abomination, and the crazy bastard had ended up turning himself into an android and poisoning everyone who worked for him in pursuit of his dream of a new beginning.
Maybe the problem was that leaders always seemed to start by picking a philosophy first and then trying to shape the world to fit it, instead of shaping their philosophy to fit the world they were living in. Or maybe the problem was that people followed the leaders who shouted their philosophies the loudest, and not the ones who were just trying to get along.
I popped out of my reverie to find that Hell Razor was answering Ace’s question.
“Some of this shit they find,” he was saying. “Some of it they make. Interpretations of their sacred texts.”
“Wow,” said Ace. “Those texts gotta be something else.”
“Save the “who are they?” stuff for later,” said Vargas. “Right now we gotta focus on “where are they?”“ He swept his hand around the big hall, indicating objectives. “Ace and Angie, watch that hallway to the left. Hell Razor, Thrasher, take the one to the right. Ghost and me and gonna make sure that elevator ain’t workin’. Move out.”
We all started forward together, but before we’d taken five steps we heard movement from the two side hallways .We faded into the ranks of strange statues that lined both walls — me with Angie and Ace on the left, Vargas with Thrasher and Hell Razor on the right.
The Guardians were back, and more organized this time. They stayed in the cover of the corridors and sprayed lead our way in a thundering crossfire. We hugged pavement as statues and busts exploded in showers of marble and plaster above us. Bronze shrapnel flew everywhere. Right over my head a statue of a man with one glove and the world’s tiniest nose flew to pieces and covered me in a fine white powder. Across the room a bust of a uniformed man with a narrow mustache and a droopy hairstyle toppled off its stand and shattered across Thrasher’s back.
We fired back from within the thicket of legs and pillars, trying to find targets in the darkness of the corridors. It was no good. The Guardians were dug in good and cutting down our cover one statue at a time.
“Be ready,” said Ace. “Got an idea.”
He picked up a fist sized piece of rubble and mimed pulling a ring from it, then hurled it like a hand grenade.
“Fire in the hole!” he shouted.
The rock bounced into the hallway to the left and terrified Guardians came running out and diving for the floor. We filled most of them full of lead before they landed, but one rolled and took refuge behind a life–sized bronze of a man in a coonskin cap. Angie put a bullet through the statue’s boots and blew a hole in the man’s face.
“Nice,” I said. “Any ideas for the other side?”
Hell Razor was way ahead of me. He fired the last LAW rocket from behind a statue of clown in an orange and red jumpsuit. Guardians came running out of that hallway as it screamed toward them, but they didn’t get a chance to dive. The blast caught them way before that, scattering their body parts all over the hall.
“Come on!” said Angie, surging up. “While they’re reeling!”
We pushed up after her and dodged through the statues toward the left–hand hallway as Hell Razor, Thrasher, and Vargas were doing the same on the right. Angie reached our hallway first and sprayed her AR around the corner without looking. We heard a scream and charged in. A handful of wounded Guardians were retreating around a corner ahead of us. We fired after them, then pulled up and looked back. Thrasher, Hell Razor and Vargas were covering the other hall just like we were.
“Alright, hold up,” called Vargas, then started toward the elevator. “Ghost. Cover me.”
I jogged to meet him and kept my eyes scanning in all directions while he looked over the railing into the hole from which the elevator rose.
“What’s down there?” I asked.
“All I can see is the shaft and the support beams goin’ down into the dark,” he said. “No lights. No nothin’.”
He moved to the elevator doors and stabbed the buttons beside them. Nothing happened — no far–off generator spinning up, no electrical fritzing; no pneumatic hiss.
“Maybe it’s busted,” I said.
Vargas smashed in the face plate of the buttons with the butt of his rifle, then reached in and tore wiring out through the hole with his gloved hand.
“It is now,” he said. “Alright, back with Ace and Angie. Let’s clear these sides.”
“Got it,” I said, and I started trotting back toward the left corridor.
He called after me. “And keep an eye out for the rest of those keys.”
The three of us entered the corridor and worked to the first corner. There were two doors along the way, both on the left wall. I kicked through the first with Ace and Angie covering me, then Ace did the kicking at the next door when there was nothing behind the first. The second was also empty.