Neil McMahon - Revolution No.9

The voice could have been a man’s, high-pitched or disguised, but he was almost sure it was Shrinkwrap’s.

Monks had just gotten inside the lodge when he heard a faint, faraway gunshot-the signal for a group of cranked-up young militants armed with knives and Mace to start hunting each other’s hair.

He leaned back against the wall, resting. The urge to keep running had been with him all the way. But his fear of getting caught and arousing Freeboot’s wrath outweighed his fear of staying on.

One thing was clear by now-Freeboot’s brand of trust had teeth.

Then there was Hammerhead. Monks had become the target of his anger, for reasons that didn’t much matter. What did matter was that the thin membrane of safety that Monks had started to feel had been shredded by Hammerhead’s shoulder-especially as Freeboot had watched it happen, and not said a word.

“He said you were going to bring him more soup,” someone said quietly.

Monks jerked toward the voice. Marguerite was standing in the doorway to the kitchen. He realized that the he referred to Mandrake. She must have gone in to check on him.

“I’m heating it up,” she said. “I could fix you something, too.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

“It’ll have to be another sandwich. They cook down at another place and bring it up, but right now there’s not much.”

“Anything but venison,” Monks said.

She looked puzzled, but then drifted back into the kitchen. Monks followed her, again smelling marijuana. A saucepan of broth for Mandrake was heating on top of the wood cookstove. She gave the pan a stir, then went to the refrigerator, taking out cold cuts and bread. There was a big supply of those; apparently, sandwiches were a staple here.

“It seems like you do all the work around this place,” Monks said.

“I don’t mind. It’s better than doing nothing.”

“That’s a pretty name. Marguerite.”

She did not seem displeased. “It’s not my real one.”

Monks was surprised. It was the only name he’d heard here that seemed normal.

“What is?”

She glanced at him warily. “I can’t tell you.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry. Why Marguerite, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“There’s this old story, Faust? He sells his soul to the devil?”

Monks nodded encouragingly.

“Marguerite is, like, the woman who saves him at the end,” she said.

So-along with Freeboot’s vision of himself as part Spartacus and part Übermensch, there was a dash of Faust, who had dared to go beyond all limits.

“Is that how you see yourself, saving Freeboot?” Monks asked. “Faust made Marguerite put up with a lot of trouble along the way.”

“Hey, man, I didn’t pick it. Freeboot did.” This time her voice had an edge.

“Don’t get me wrong, I meant that as a compliment,” Monks said quickly. “In the story, Marguerite is very bighearted, very loyal.”

She ignored him, using a plastic knife to lather mayonnaise on a slice of white bread, then adding baloney and cheese. It was looking like lunch all over again.

But then she said, “He gives everybody a new name. It’s, like, getting rid of who you used to be and becoming a new person.”

“And all the names have a special meaning?”

“Kind of. He sees deep inside you, to who you really are.”

Monks made a quick mental tally of the names that he had heard. Some, like Hammerhead and Sidewinder, seemed to suggest that Freeboot hadn’t found much to work with in the way of deep character qualities. Coil, unsettling though Monks found it, did touch on Glenn’s intrinsic restlessness; and Shrinkwrap probably referred to her being a psychologist. Some of the others were more obscure.

“What about Captain America?” Monks said, watching to see if mentioning Marguerite’s lover seemed to strike a nerve.

She tossed her hair dismissively. “He’s good-looking, cool. There’s this old movie Freeboot likes, Easy Rider? It came from there.”

Monks called up a vague memory of the movie. The Peter Fonda character, that was it.

“I couldn’t help noticing that you and he seem, ah, close,” Monks said.

She shrugged. “He’s a maquis. I’m a bride.”

“I don’t understand what that means.”

“Ask Freeboot, okay?” she said, sounding edgy again. It seemed that this was sensitive turf. She put the sandwich on a plate and pushed it toward him. “There’s chips, and wine if you want it.”

“Thanks,” Monks said, moving a little closer to her as he picked up the plate. He was trying to zero in on the unhappiness he sensed in her-trying to gauge whether he could coax her into helping him. He decided to probe another sore spot that he had sensed.

“Motherlode told me she owned this place,” he said. “Is that true?”

“She inherited it.”

“Really?”

“Along with a trust fund the size of California. Her grandfather was a big logging guy.” Marguerite took a bowl from a cupboard and started pouring the warm broth into it.

“So she’s kind of the princess, and you’re the help?”

Marguerite didn’t answer, and her hair hid his view of her face. But her hands stopped moving.

“What does being a bride mean?” Monks said. “You sleep with anybody Freeboot tells you to? While he breaks in new brides?”

She left the room quickly, not speaking, clutching the bowl of soup in both hands.

Monks ate in front of the fireplace again, leaving her alone to feed Mandrake.

A few minutes later she came out of the bedroom and walked to the main door, still without looking at Monks. But when she reached it, she turned to him. Her eyes seemed defiant and perhaps fearful.

“I’m here because I want to be,” she said. “We all are.”

“Not Mandrake,” Monks said.

She hurried outside, slamming the door behind her.

And not me, he thought.

Freeboot waited beside the bonfire in the forest, silent, listening, attuned to the night. Occasionally, he dipped his knife blade into the canister of meth and inhaled it.

Twenty-four hours from now, Mr. and Mrs. Robert J. Emlinger of Atherton, California, would join the list of assassination targets that were baffling police around the country.

The only question was, which one of the men out stalking each other in the forest right now was going to earn the privilege of putting them on that list.

The answer came when a hulking figure lunged out of the tree line, running toward the fire like a charging bull. It was Hammerhead, the first man back-panting, face ruddy and shining with sweat, eyes glittering with crazed elation. His knife was clenched in his right fist. He thrust his left fist forward for Freeboot to see.

It held a thick swatch of Captain America ’s wavy blond hair.

Freeboot smiled.

He stepped to a niche in the rocky cliff and took out a silver goblet. It was filled with a special cocktail that he had invented: red wine saturated with finely powdered hashish and laced with XTC.

He walked back to the fire and handed the goblet to Hammerhead.

“Take this, brother, may it serve you well,” Freeboot said.

“You are no longer an ordinary human being, you understand that?” Freeboot hissed into Hammerhead’s ear. “The rules don’t apply to you no more. The human deer will cower before you. You will walk among them and be their master, yet none will know you. You are the best of the best, the top of the elite. You are on the edge of immortality.”

They strode along the dark foggy path toward the camp, Freeboot gripping the young man by the back of his belt to steer him. Hammerhead was lurching, his head weaving, wild-eyed, from side to side at the rush of perceptions flooding through his brain. Freeboot had been walking him around in the forest for half an hour, giving the drugs time to take hold, gauging his level of response. By now, Hammerhead was in a world that was hallucinatory, dreamlike, intensely heightened. His mind was wide open and defenseless. Freeboot was high, too, just enough to tune in to that but still stay firmly in control.