“I used to watch movies about you.”
“They liked me in Hollywood. I was the perfect foil for the insufferable Wyatt Earp.”
Jim eased in a question before Doc Holliday could embark on a tangent of recollection. “There is one thing I don’t understand.”
“And what might that be?”
“I didn’t create you out of my fantasy. I’m certain I didn’t create any of this.”
“Of course you didn’t.”
“So what am I doing here?”
“That’s a good question.”
“Is there an answer?”
Doc took a pull on his flask. “Even in death, no man is an island.”
Doc Holliday seemingly took a delight in elliptical conversations, and Jim figured that, for the moment, the best policy was just to wait out his loops. Eventually he would come across with something approaching an explanation.
“The first thing you learn when you start building an existence here in the Afterlife is that a billion other sons of bitches are doing exactly the same thing. In my father’s house there are many mansions. Unfortunately, they all have walls as thin as a cold-water walk-up, interconnecting doors and unending corridors. You start colliding, overlapping, banging into each other, and setting up a general interlocking confusion.”
Jim framed his next words cautiously. Now he knew that the stranger was, at the very least, an analog of Doc Holliday, his survival instincts still told him it was probably unwise to piss him off, real or not. “That doesn’t quite tell me how I got here.”
“I can tell you why I’m here.”
Jim figured that this was better than nothing. “So why are you here?”
“The truth is I was already here.”
“You were?”
Doc gestured airily to the eruption behind them. “I was up on the volcano disposing of a power ring that had turned out to be singularly destructive. It’s the only way to get rid of those damn things. You bring them to life and after a while you find they’re not only taking on a life of their own but also taking over yours. You have to burn them up in either an active volcano or the breath of a dragon. I imagine that, in your case, you were probably wished here by whoever’s throwing this al fresco wingding.”
“Me?”
“You may not know it, but you’ve got something of a rep around the hereafter.”
Jim groaned. It seemed that history had been repeating itself. “And my memory got scrambled in the process?”
“You got it. Unless you’ve been hitting the absinthe or ingesting alien fungoids.”
“I’m afraid I’m still confused.”
Doc chuckled. “You’ll be even more confused when you find out about the other problems.”
“Other problems?”
“Like how the bit players in the fantasy also take on a life of their own.
“Would you care to explain that?”
“I’m not sure there’s going to be time right now.” Doc gestured to a point above them, a rocky promontory higher on the slopes of the volcano. “I fear Moses is come upon us to smite the fornicators.”
Jim turned and looked where Doc was pointing. A tall bearded figure, angular and bony in a tattered and dirty woolen robe, and with a mass of gray hair that hung well past his shoulders, was standing on the rocks, glaring down at the orgy around the Golden Calf with the disapproving stare of patriarchal wrath. Jim glanced at Doc. “That’s really Moses?”
Doc shook his head. “I very much doubt it. Just some turd-shoveler putting on the style. In point of fact, Moses was bicameral and he couldn’t make a move without his right brain telling his left brain that it was the Voice of God. He probably transcended millennia ago, and now he’s sitting on what he fondly believes is the right hand of Jehovah.”
Jim saw that the Moses figure was actually carrying a pair of stone tablets like miniature headstones. “He seems to have the Ten Commandments with him.”
“Of course he does. They go with the costume.”
“So what does this turd-shoveler want?”
“Like I said, he’s most likely here to smite the fornicators.”
“Can he do that?”
“Sure, that’s probably the reason he set up this rat-shit drunk, buck-naked hoedown in the first place. Nothing these Bible-thumping retards like better than smiting a mess of sinners in flagrante. Doubtless that’s why you were dragged here at the unfortunate cost of your memory.”
“Moses set this thing up?”
Doc was getting to his feet. “Sure he did. A pristine piece of ego tripping. His mission is to punish sinners, so he has to create a few sinners to punish. He also buses in outside talent like you to give the proceeding a measure of heft.”
Some of the celebrants below had broken off from their fun and games and were staring up at the figure on the mountain with its stone tablets. The drums faltered and stopped together. Jim also scrambled to his feet. “Are you saying we’re going to get smitten?”
Doc pushed back his coat, revealing a nickel-plated Colt .45-caliber automatic with a mother-of-pearl handle inlaid with a gold lightning flash. “Not if I can help it.”
As Doc spoke, the Moses figure braced his legs, drew himself up to his full height, and raised the stone tablets above his head. His voice, monstrously amplified and heavy with unnatural and highly electronic reverb, roared out and echoed around the mountains, “I SAY TO YOU, OH ISRAEL, YOU HAVE CORRUPTED YOURSELVES!”
The impact of the sound was like a thunderclap, and, even inured as he was from his days on Earth to super-amplified noises, Jim flinched momentarily. The roar of Moses was certainly enough to bring the orgy to an abrupt stop. Drunks halted in their tracks and copulating couples froze in midthrust. Individual revelers broke away from each other, retreating for supposed protection in the shadow of the Golden Calf.
Moses advanced down the mountain, bearing the tablets of stone above his head. “YOU HAVE ERECTED A GRAVEN IMAGE AND MADE YOURSELVES AN ABOMINATION IN THE EYES OF GOD.”
Jim glanced at Doc. “I don’t even believe in God.”
Doc smiled grimly. “I don’t recall that ever giving one moment’s pause to any Bible-thumper.”
“THOSE WHO REFUSE TO LIVE BY THE LAW MUST THEN DIE BY IT!”
Threateningly bright and powerful streams of plasma energy undulated from the stone tablets and circled Moses, ducking and weaving but growing in strength. One suddenly darted out, swooped down into the amphitheater, and struck the Golden Calf, burning off one of its horns, and a large chunk of the idol’s golden head. It also totally vaporized the Debra Paget look-alike. This seemed scarcely fair or just to Jim. Bound and restrained as she had been, she was about the only one at the party whose participation in the depravity hadn’t been obviously willing. He could only assume that prophets and patriarchs still operated on the principle of guilt by association. If you’re there, you’re guilty, and damn the extenuating circumstances.
Doc growled angrily in his throat as a second plasma stream struck the Calf on its haunches, vaporized a dozen or more sinners in a single dazzling explosion, and scattered a fine rain of molten gold over the terrified crowd. Now the guests at the orgy were scurrying in every direction, looking for any way out or any available cover but finding none. A third plasma bolt struck home and the amphitheater began to resemble a battlefield more than a party.
“I think it’s time I did something about this.” And so saying, Doc Holliday drew the Colt automatic from under his coat and pointed it at Moses.
Jim looked at him as though he were crazy. “Surely you can’t kill anyone in the Afterlife? I mean, we’re all already dead.”
Doc grinned unpleasantly. “I can still fuck him up some. This piece was made for Elvis and the bullets are gold. It should have some effect.” He gestured with the gun in the direction of Moses. “Depending on that son of a bitch’s belief structure, a gold bullet going through him could trigger a bunch of possible responses. The Elvis connection should also make its contribution.”
“You’ve really got that thing loaded with gold bullets?”