Semple watched with bated breath, her previous anger forgotten, and even Jesus and Mr. Thomas were leaning in, rooting for the big guy. “Okay, now go for the people. Go for the people on the roof.”
As though for Semple’s benefit, one of the mysterious second units closed on the potential targets on the roof. To Semple’s undying delight, the God-King of Necropolis appeared on the verge of a very ugly panic. He paced and he raved and was obviously wishing that he could order violence done to someone he could hold responsible. Sadly, from Anubis’s point of view, the only entity responsible for his current predicament was green and vastly unassailable. Gojiro, on the other hand, continued to be completely unaware of Anubis’s existence.
“Get him, you great idiot.”
Of course the King of the Monsters couldn’t hear her, so she flashed around on Jesus. “Isn’t there any way you can direct his attention?”
Jesus fumbled with the remote, shaking his head. “He doesn’t seem to be interested.”
Semple’s fury rolled back in again. “Then make him interested, damn it.”
Jesus attempted a few halfhearted commands but to no avail. “He doesn’t want to know.”
“How can the damn thing be so fucking useless?”
“Wait a minute.” Mr. Thomas nodded to the screen showing the close-up of Anubis. Anubis was issuing orders to his rocketeer guards. Although the dome was not blessed with sync sound, his intention was obvious. He had clearly decided that the monster might, in fact, not be as unassailable as it appeared. The rocketeers moved to the edge of the roof and formed a double line. As one, they raised their weapons. Each jacked a round and switched to full auto. Semple could hardly contain her excitement. “Will you look at him? That half-witted maniac thinks he can hurt Gojiro with machine guns.”
***
Jim should have expected the graveyard. The disembodied pain, the opium den, the frozen heart of hell-why not a fucking graveyard? By this point, he wouldn’t have been surprised to suddenly find himself a womb-entombed fetus. Jim could, as yet, see no pattern in what Dr. Hypodermic was doing to him or doing with him. He didn’t believe the bullshit about finding him a context. Perhaps he was being sucked into some deeply convoluted Afterlife version of addiction, but he couldn’t even see a pattern that might lead to that. All he could see was that the graveyard was elaborately Catholic; white marble angels clutched their brows and wept while seeking the support of broken pillars. Porticoed family mausoleums reared like baroquely munchkin cathedrals, and flat-topped sepulchers lay sprawled so large they would do justice to a Transylvanian count. Depressed and depending willows and sinisterly contorted pines drooped over an acreage of crosses and headstones so closely packed that the avenues between them resembled the narrow streets of a dark miniature city; along them blue vaporous tumbles of wraith-fire danced and flared. Overhead, ten thousand almost unflickering stars shone down from a cold velvet sky, mirrored on the ground by ten thousand flickering candles, which dripped wax on almost very available flat surface.
Dr. Hypodermic gestured in a proprietorial manner. “You like the candles.”
Jim showed no emotion. “It’s like the lighters at the end of a Grateful Dead concert.”
“My cousin, Le Baron Samedi, spends a lot of time in places like this.”
“This isn’t a real place, though, is it?”
“It’s largely symbolic.”
The two of them drifted rather than walked through the graveyard, almost becoming an extension of the wafting wraith-fire. Jim wondered if this was how it felt to be a ghost. If it was, maybe he should try it sometime. “I hope this isn’t my funeral. I’ve already been buried.”
“This isn’t your funeral.”
“So whose funeral is it?”
“Here it is now.”
A funeral procession carrying more candles, and dressed in scarlet robes, moved down one of the broader avenues between the tombs, making for a small vacant plot with a freshly dug grave. Two Shakespearean sextons leaned on their spades and tried to look unobtrusive. A white, child-sized coffin was borne on the shoulders of four black-clad pallbearers. Jim looked hard at Hypodermic. “I asked whose funeral it is.”
The Doctor’s eyes glowed eerily. “Does it really signify?”
“It looks like a child.”
“It’s a dwarf who was bitten by a poisonous spider.”
“Can they see us?”
“They can see you, kind of.”
“What do you mean, kind of?”
“They think you’re the Gatekeeper of the Underworld. If you stick around, they’ll offer you the traditional libation. A few shots of that stuff and you can really wail.”
“Why is it I have the notion that this graveyard libation can quickly become one bad motherfucker of a habit?”
Hypodermic smiled as wryly as is possible for a naked skull. “Because you know me too well.”
“I’m starting to remember.”
Jim noticed the woman who led the mourners was carrying a gold chalice. He was all but tempted to check out the libation. “But I’m not the Gatekeeper of the Underworld.”
Dr. Hypodermic brushed tiny diamond particles like lint from one black sleeve. Where the hell had they come from? Tiny stardust from the largely symbolic sky? “The gig could be yours if you wanted it. If you got a taste for the stuff, you might really enjoy it.”
“But I don’t want it.”
“The gig or the libation?”
“Neither.”
The woman with the chalice was coming straight toward Jim. Hypodermic treated him to one of his most penetrating stares. “You sure you don’t want to try it?”
Jim shook his head. “Not even for a dwarf who’s been bitten by a poisonous spider.”
“I thought you were always ready for a new stimulant.”
Jim continued to shake his head. “I’ve got enough confusion going for me.”
“Are you turning soft on me?”
“You can’t dare me to drink it. I’m past that.”
“You’re not afraid of me anymore, are you?”
“All that stuff about finding me a context was bullshit, wasn’t it?”
Dr. Hypodermic’s eyes flickered from red to yellow and back again. “I asked you first.”
“Am I still afraid of you?”
“Right.”
“No, I don’t think I am.”
“You’re only afraid when you’re running away from me?”
“Right.”
“Then we’ll have to do something about that, won’t we?”
With an illusionist’s flourish of white gloves, Dr. Hypodermic snapped his fingers and Jim found himself in a brightly lit padded cell.
***
The rocketeers opened fire and Semple had to give them credit for acting with heroic panache while engaging in what they must have known to be a suicidally impossible action. They had formed two firing lines, the front kneeling, the rear standing, and on their God-King’s command they started blasting. Even the ceremonial Nubians sought to get in on the act, taking short runs across the flat roof and gamely hurling their spears at the great beast. The spears, unfortunately, all fell short, and although the small-arms fire hit the target, it did Gojiro no harm whatsoever. All it achieved was to get his angry attention. Semple shook her head in disbelief. “I wouldn’t have thought even Anubis could combine that degree of arrogance and stupidity.”
Gojiro also looked as though he couldn’t quite believe the audacity of these human survivors. The first bursts of automatic fire hit him in the side as he sat digesting his meal of U-248. His eyes opened; he blinked three times and turned his huge head. The next burst hit him square in the face, dislodging flakes of loose skin, like dinner-plate-sized dandruff. At first he’d only been mildly interested; now he was exceedingly pissed. He flexed his shoulders at the effrontery and rose majestically to his feet.
“GGGGGGGGRRRR0000000AAAAARW!”
Again, Semple had to give the rocketeers points for blind courage. Even in the face of Gojiro, drawn up to his full height and mad as hell, they didn’t break and run. They held their orderly ranks and went right on firing. This was absolutely too much for Gojiro. He took two fast steps and, like a man who, wishing to make a dramatic point in the grip of a temper tantrum, furiously clears a shelf of ornaments with a single sweep of his arm, the reptile sent the two lines of Anubis’s masked police flying clean off the roof and out into empty air. At the same time, in the background, unnoticed by anyone-even Semple-the Dream Warden quietly vanished, leaving only a rapidly collapsing gray robe. Unable to resist the hopeless flourish, a Nubian guard hurled one last spear. With the range less than a quarter of what it had been previously, the crazy Nubian actually managed to lodge his spear in Gojiro’s left eye. It hung there for a couple of seconds before the monster blinked it away and then reached out for the unfortunate man. With an impossibly delicate neatness for one so vast, Gojiro lifted the Nubian between thumb and index finger and brought him up to eye level, turned the Nubian over twice, and then closed his fingers, squashing him to a red smear.