The Once and Future Kings

Urban Decay-6

By the time I’d reintroduced Roman and Ewan via radio, and the former had convinced the latter to not only come with us but to let someone other than himself drive Gargantua (Ewan, we were told, was blind as a bat), and Nigel had escorted the engineer to his quarters so he could retrieve some of his effects, the clock on the wall of the shop read half past one—more than enough time for the Skidders to have organized some type of counter-strike; a fact that weighed heavily on my mind as the women and I began gathering up specs and schematics and Lazaro paced the room impatiently.

“What the hell’s taking them so long? You heard Roman—carnotauruses, heading this way. Oh, I forgot. Nigel’s on Jamaican Time.”

“They have been gone awhile,” said Sam. “Maybe we should—”

“It’s no good splitting us up,” I said. “There’s no telling how quickly we might have to leave. Nigel’s got it—everyone just chill.” I looked at Lazaro. “Can you give us a hand with these? They’re going to be heavy.”

“Why the hell are we carting them along, then?” He snatched up one of the boxes with a huff and headed for Gargantua. “Or him, for that matter? Dude is definitely a few sandwiches short of a picnic.”

“You going to fix this thing when it—” began Joan, but Lazaro was already up the ramp.

We continued working in silence.

At length Sam said, “Who was he, you think? That kid?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Just a kid. Probably been on his own since the Flashback, who knows?” I heaped some manuals into a box—which created a cloud of dust. “He gave me a start, that’s for sure. I didn’t really get a good look at him.”

“I did ...” She paused as though visualizing him. “He had bones around his neck, did you know that? Or teeth—like, really big ones. He’d strung them together as a sort of necklace. Isn’t that odd, you think?”

Our faces were close as I stopped to reflect. “I don’t know. Is it? Maybe he’s extracting them from dead Barneys, like trophies. I confess, my first thought was that he’d gone feral. And yet ... He was wearing contemporary clothes, I remember that. Puffy coat, jeans, tennis shoes. I mean, he wasn’t like Mowgli or anything.”

She looked at me and started to grin. “I didn’t think he was like Mowgli ...”

“All right! Drop your c***s and grab your socks,” belted Lazaro—from the top of the ramp. “They’re back.”

I looked to see Nigel and Ewan entering the shop from the left, the latter seeming like an utterly new man—his hair no longer mussed; his clothes no longer a catastrophic mess.

“Apologies, apologies, a thousand apologies,” he said, before pausing to admire Gargantua. “But a maiden voyage such as this requires a fresh change of clothes.” He looked on a moment longer and then dropped to one knee—began ruffling through his overpacked bags. “Ah, yes, here it is. It’s—I opened it with Nigel.” He withdrew a corked bottle—which glinted darkly in the light from a high window. “Voila! One of eight bottles of Dom Perignon Rose champagne, Vintage 1959, served in Persepolis in 1971 by the then-Shaw of Iran.”

He looked at us with a face flushed with excitement, and we looked back.

“To—to celebrate the 2500th anniversary of the founding of the Persian Empire ... by Cyrus the Great.” Disappointment stole over his face like a shadow. “It’s—it’s to break over the bow, as it were. To christen Gargantua.” Nobody said anything. “Yeah—well. Waste of liquor, anyway. Especially when I’ve got so much celebrating to do. I’ll, ah—I’ll just get the door. Over there.”

He moved up the ramp toward the garage door.

That’s when I thought of Lazaro’s admonition, I don’t know why: You heard Roman—carnotauruses, heading this way.

“Wait, Ewan,” I said.

But he was already there, triggering the great door with his fist, turning to look at us as it rattled upward, pulling the cork from the champagne. “Life is for the living,” he said, and toasted us with the bottle. “And this stuff ...” He poured champagne into his mouth and down the sides, soaking his clean, white shirt, splattering the floor with foam. “This is for howl—”

But then the door was open and they were there, the carnotauruses, and one closed its jaws about his scalp while another laid wide his abdomen (and another took up his legs) so that, howling, he was opened like a pizza being groped by eager hands. And then they themselves howled and piled over his body, and all we could do was to run—everyone save Nigel, who had his trimmer, which he started with a sputter—because our weapons were already in the rover.

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