"Really?" said the thick voice. "How has your plan gone astray? Let me read you and learn." Wolfgang felt goose pimples break out all over his body. He shuddered as coarse, boneless fingers dripping with slime turned the pages of his mind.
"Mmm- I see. She is here, then. My ancient enemy. It would be good to meet her in battle once again."
"Are your powers equal to hers?" said Wolfgang eagerly.
"I yield to none," came the proud reply.
"Ask him why he's always getting trapped in pentagons, then," said Werner in a low voice.
"Shut up!" Wolfgang whispered savagely. To the lloigor he said, "Destroy her golden apple and release my army to move ahead, and I will withhold the power of this pentagon and give you all the lives you seek."
"Done!" said the voice. Wilhelm suddenly threw his head back, mouth wide open. A choking sound came from his throat. He collapsed on his back, spread-eagled. A strange, greenish, glowing gas rose from his throat.
Werner jumped from the car and rushed over to Wilhelm. "He's alive."
"Of course he's alive," said Wolfgang. "The Eater of Souls simply took possession of his body to communicate with us."
Winifred screamed, "Look!"
The same phosphorescent gas, a huge cloud of it, now obscured the heart of the battle. It seemed to take a shape like a spider with an uncountable number of legs, arms, antennae, and tentacles. Gradually the shape changed, glowing brighter and brighter. A nearby tower on the festival grounds was as visible in the reflected light as if it were day. Then the glow faded, and the tower was silhouetted in moonlight. A great silence fell over the hills around Lake Totenkopf, broken only by the glad cries of the last contingent of festivalgoers as they made it safely to the opposite shore.
"There's no time to lose," Wolfgang said to Werner and Wilhelm. "Round up some officers. See if you can find Hanfgeist."
Hanfgeist had disappeared. The highest-ranking officer surviving was Obergruppenfuehrer Bickler, visions of dog turds sadly fading in a mind that possessed only a horrid semblance of life. A quick survey showed the four Illuminati Prirni that the Apple of Discord had cost them half their army.
"Onward!" roared Wolfgang, and, tanks in the van, they smashed through the festival fence, raced over the hills, troops trotting double-time, and unhesitatingly charged out onto the bridge. Wolfgang stood in the back seat of the von Rundstedt Mercedes, his black-gloved hands gripping the back of the front seat, the wind blowing through his crew cut like a field of wheat. Suddenly, beside him, Wilhelm screamed.
"What is it now?" yelled Wolfgang over the roar of his advancing army.
"The lives we are about to take," the voice of the lloigor grated. "They are mine, yes? All mine?"
"Listen to me, you energy vampire. We have other debts to discharge, and other projects to complete. There are twenty-three of our faithful servants waiting in the Donau Hotel to be transcendentally illuminated. They come first. You'll get yours. Wait your turn."
"Farewell," said the lloigor. "I shall see you at the hour of your death."
"I will never die!"
"Fool!" the voice shrieked with Wilhelm's mouth. Suddenly Wilhelm stood up, threw open the door of the car, and hurled himself out into the lake. He struck with a huge splash, then sank like a stone. A greenish glow spread in the black water where he had gone down. And then there were four.
Hagbard stood atop a hill, watching the tanks roll across the bridge, followed by the black Mercedes, followed by troop carriers and artillery, followed by trotting foot soldiers. He knelt beside a detonator and shoved down the handle.
From end to end the bridge and those upon it disappeared in geysers of white water. The thunder of the explosions- demolition charges placed by the porpoise horde under the direction of Howard- echoed through the hills around the lake.
The tanks went under first. As the front end of the command car sank under water, Werner Saure screamed, "My foot's caught!" He went down with the car, while Wolfgang and Winifred, their tears mingling with the water of Lake Totenkopf, splashed about in the water with the few remaining Supernazis.
And then there were three.
Hagbard shouted, "I sank it! I sank the George Washington Bridge!"
"Is anything changed?" said George. "Of course," said Hagbard. "We've got them on the run. We'll be able to finish them off in a few more minutes. Then there'll be no more evil in the world. Everything will be ginger-peachy." His tone seemed sarcastic rather than victorious, George noted apprehensively.
"Now I'll admit," Fission Chips said reasonably, "that I'm under the influence of some bloody drug from the Kool-Aid. But this simply cannot all be hallucination. Very definitely, thirteen people took their clothes off and started dancing. I quite certainly heard them singing 'Blessed be, blessed be,' over and over. Then a simply gigantic woman rose up from somewhere and all the sirens and undines and mermaids went back into the water. If this was Armageddon, it was not precisely the way the Bible described it Is that a fair summary of the situation?" The tree he was talking to didn't answer. "Blessed be, blessed be," Lady Velkor sang on, as she and her hastily assembled coven danced widdershins in their circle. The spell had worked: With her own eyes she had seen the Great Mother, Isis, rise up and smite the evil spirits of the dead Catholic Inquisitors whom the Illuminati had tried to revive. She knew Hagbard Celine would later be boasting in all the most chic occult circles that he had performed the miracle, and giving the credit to that destructive bitch Eris- but that didn't matter. She with her own eyes had seen Isis, and that was enough.
"Now I ask you," Fission Chips went on, addressing another tree, who seemed more communicative, "what the sulphurous hell did you see happening here tonight?"
"I saw a master Magician," said the tree, "or a master con man- the two are the same- plant a few suggestions and get a bunch of acidheads running away from their own shadows." The tree, who was actually Joe Malik and only looked like a tree to poor befuddled 00005, added, "Or I saw the final battle between Good and Evil, with Horus on both sides."
"You must be drugged too," Chips said pettishly.
"You bet your sweet ass I am," said the tree, walking away.
… I don't know how the courts will ever untangle this. With five of them shooting at once, and the Secret Service shooting back right away, the best crime lab in the world will never get the trajectories of all the bullets right. Who, among the survivors, will be tried for murder and who for attempted murder? Thafs the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question and… what?… oh…And now, ladies and gentlemen, on this sad occasion… uh… in this tragic hour of our country's history, let us all pay especially close attention to the new President, who will now address us.
Who's that jig standing over there? the new Chief Exec was asking somebody off camera when he appeared on the TV screens.
The Chevrolet Stegosaurus drove into the empty concert grounds and came to a slow halt. The guitarist stuck his head out the window and yelled to Lady Velkor, "What the hell happened here?"
"There was some bad acid in me Kool-Aid," she told him gravely. "Everybody freaked out and ran off toward town."
"Hell," he said, "and this was going to be our first big audience. We're a new group, just formed. What lousy luck."
He turned and drove off, and she read the sign on the back of the car: THE FERNANDO POO INCIDENT.
"How are you now, baby?" Simon asked.
"I know who I am," Mary Lou said slowly, "and you might not like the results of that any more than the Chicago police force will." Her eyes were distant and pensive.
Wolfgang and Winifred were very near shore when the dark, humped shapes rose out of the water around them. Winifred shrieked, "Wolfgang! For the love of Gruad, Wolfgang! They're pulling me down!" Her long blond hair floated for a moment after her head went under; then that too disappeared.