Flaming Zeppelins (10 page)

“No thank you,” Annie said.

Ned, who had stood silent near Annie, eased forward, touched her elbow with his cold nose. When she looked down at him, she could see he was trembling and there were tears in his big black eyes.

The Wild Westers were given limited run of the island. They could visit one another in their rooms during the day, could venture about the house and veranda, but were not to go upstairs to Momo's private quarters, nor were they to go to what Momo called the Barracks. This was a chain of small buildings at the edge of the compound where his “people” lived and where his laboratory was located. The laboratory he referred to as the House of Discomfort.

They also had access to the closest beach, but were asked not to wander off in the woods, or to the beach on the opposite end of the island.

A few days went by, and one night in their room, Hickok and Annie, having finished lovemaking, lay close and talked. “What kinds of wild animals would be on an island like this one?” Hickok asked.

“Pigs?” Annie said. “Rabbits. Squirrels, maybe.”

“I suppose.”

“Crocodiles possibly. Isn't there some kind of saltwater crocodile?”

“I don't know,” Hickok said. “I believe there is.”

“Monkeys, of course. And parrots. Other kinds of birds. Snakes maybe. Rats. Ships could have brought in creatures like that. I would guess different kinds of lizards. Cats. He said Catherine was made of a wildcat, if you believe that.”

“Why not? I believe he made those guards from monkeys. And Jack from a chimpanzee.”

“I suppose you're right, but she looks to have been a more successful experiment. Wouldn't you say?”

“She's all right,” Hickok said, giving the classic male answer when a female asks a man's opinion of the appearance of another female. He quickly changed the subject. “No big predatory cats would be here,” Hickok said. “Regular ship cats were most likely marooned, mated, produced a wild species, but hardly anything life threatening to humans. Certainly not bears. Not on an island this small.”

“So what are you saying?”

“I'm saying, Annie, that Momo admits to creating humans from animals, if you can call a creation like that human, but at worst, his source for these creations is house cats, monkeys, possibly wild hogs, or dogs. Nothing truly dangerous. But why would he not want us in the woods, or the far side of the beach? What could harm us?”

“The creations themselves?”

“We've seen them. Think about Bemo's sailors. Long arms. Very hairy. Didn't have sense enough to look at you when you were naked. They carry guns, but, unless given direct orders, they seem harmless enough. Not dangerous by nature.”

“He said the one he calls Jack was developed from a chimpanzee. Could chimpanzees be deadly?”

“Probably brought the chimpanzee to the island himself. And I don't believe chimpanzees are by nature particularly dangerous. Unless provoked, that is? Again, I'm no animal expert, but I say what's to harm us? What's his fear? And does he truly care about our welfare? He doesn't strike me as all that worked up about anyone other than himself.”

“Why does it matter?”

“Why wouldn't he want us to wander about other than for our own protection? Could it be he fears we might find a way off the island? A boat perhaps. Is that what he's keeping us from?”

“So, of course, you want to investigate.”

“Of course. But right now there's something else I'd like to investigate…a flat brown mole on the inside of your right thigh.”

“That's not a mole.”

“No?”

“Believe it or not, it's a powder burn.”

“Say what?”

“I've only told Frank this, but when I was young, learning to shoot, I became enraptured with guns. I handled them like a gambler handles cards. Handled them nude even. I once had an old Colt revolver without a trigger guard, just had the trigger hanging out. I thought, what if I turned it upside down, between my legs, barrel pointing out like a man's…you know…”

“Johnson.”

“Yes…well, I wanted to see if I could pull the trigger with the muscles in my…you know.”

“Vagina.”

“I believe I would have said the lips of my Venus Mound, but yes. And, I did.”

“I'll be damned.”

“But the barrel was short, the load was heavy, took a powder flash, burned a spot into my thigh and it's been there ever since.”

“Did you hit the target?”

“I hate to report it was a miss…but the second time I tried it, I hit it. And I didn't burn myself.”

“Can you still do it?”

“I don't know, I haven't tried it since. But you know what?”

“What?”

“There are other things I can do.”

Hickok rolled on top of her, said, “I know that.”

“Yeah, well, there are some things I know you don't know about. Yet.”

“I doubt that.”

“Years of marriage teaches possibilities.”

“Show me.”

She did. And she was right.

That afternoon, out on the beach, Bull walked with Annie and Hickok. The seal followed from a distance, thinking itself hid. Ducking behind rises of sand from time to time, clumps of bush.

Hickok said to Bull, “We were thinking about violating Momo's orders.”

“Bull good at no follow orders,” Bull said. “Momo crazy white eyes. Like to cut him. Think it fun to scalp little man. Like his hat.”

“Jack, you mean?” Annie asked. “Ugh.”

“It would look good on you, Bull,” Annie said. “The hat. Not the scalp.”

“Where Cody?”

“With Momo.” Hickok said.

“Him need help?”

“His own choice,” Annie said. “Maybe he thinks he can find out something that will help us if he buddies up to Momo. And I think he'd like a new body to go with that head.”

“Can't blame him for that,” Hickok said. “But I've known him a long time. He always comes around when the chips are down.”

“Let's walk,” Annie said.

“What about our tagalong?” Hickok said, jerking his head toward Ned.

“I think Ned likes us. Especially Cody. He reads the dime novels. All of us are in them. He idolizes us.”

In an outbuilding stuffed with beakers, test tubes, wires, lights and colored liquids, Momo worked a booger free from his nose with a dirty finger, wiped it on his pants, said, “I doubt your friends understand what I'm trying to accomplish here, but you, Mr. Cody, being perhaps the most worldly of the bunch…I believe you must.”

As Momo talked, Buffalo Bill's head was placed dead center of a long wooden table by Jack. The liquid in Cody's jar had changed colors, gone pale. Cody felt stranger than usual. The turning of the crank by Jack did little to stir the cobwebs in his brain. Cody was beginning to feel — and he had to laugh when he thought it — disconnected; as if his soul were being stretched like taffy.

He supposed there were a variety of reasons for this. The fouled liquid in his jar. The aging and watering of the mechanical devices attached to his neck; the wires that were traced to his brain; the unoiled mechanism of the crank.

At the table's end, directly in front of him, was a square glass receptacle placed on a six-inch-thick metal platform. The glass contained a howler monkey's head. The head was alive, juiced by a power pack situated on top of the container. From the power pack, cables ran into the side of the glass, plugged directly into the monkey's brain. There was no liquid in the container. The monkey looked alert. Its neck swiveled on a rotator.

“He can turn and look in different directions merely by stretching muscles in his neck and cheeks,” Momo said. “It took a bit of effort to teach him, but a man could learn it rather quickly. An afternoon or two, would be my guess.”

“And if you smile too hard,” Cody said, his voice coming weakly through the speech tube, “do you spin about like a top?”

“It takes a special kind of effort. Not hard, but more effort than you would have smiling, or frowning. Or eating.”

“Of course, the monkey doesn't eat,” Cody said.

“Oh, he does,” Momo said.

“But how? It would run into his neck, fill up…he can't.”

“He can, and does. Jack!”

Jack scuttled about in the back, clanking this, clanking that, finally showed up with a flexible tube, fastened it to the sides of the metal platform; the opposite end of the tube was dropped into a metal container, a large can to be exact.

The front of the glass case was snapped free. Jack produced a wild plum, held it up to the monkey's mouth. The teeth snapped as Jack jerked the plum back. The monkey worked its mouth, frantic for the fruit.

“That is quite enough of that business, Jackie-Boy,” Momo said. “Tease him when I'm not demonstrating. He has such fun with that silly monkey head.”

Jack laughed, placed the plum so the monkey could eat it.

It gobbled hungrily as Jack moved his fingers out of the way of the monkey's teeth.

“This way,” Momo said, “though the monkey has no stomach, it can taste the plum. The refuse runs through a gap in its neck, into the box on which the contraption rests. From there it's sucked out by the tubes and into the metal stomach, as I like to call it. Is that not some clever shit?”

The plum gone, Jack turned a key on the side of the box. It began to pump, pulling the plum refuse from the box and into the metal stomach. Cody could hear it plopping into the bottom with a thud.

“For the monkey, it doesn't matter,” Momo said. “He doesn't need food. I give the head an injection daily. This injection provides all the nutrients the brain, the skin, the eyes need. The cables are there for extra help, but I've improved my work so much, he really doesn't need them. An electrical charge is no longer necessary…do you miss taste, Mr. Cody?”

“I do.”

“I thought you might. Put the monkey away, Jack. In fact, get rid of it. I've had it long enough. Perhaps we'll have a new use for our apparatus. A more important one. Huh, Mr. Cody?”

Jack produced a screwdriver, unfastened the head from the platform, pulled it free of wires and tubes with a plopping sound. Holding the creature's head by its fur, Jack shoved the back door open, tossed the head up slightly, gave it a sharp kick, causing it to disappear into the distance.

“Plenty monkeys where that one came from,” Momo said.

They walked along the beach, and as they walked the jungle to the left of them grew thicker and darker and the sounds from it intensified. The ocean crashed over the algae-covered rocks to their right, foamed around them, crashed against the beach.

They were soon past the point Momo permitted, and they kept walking.

The natural sandy beach changed, became more barren, narrow and rock-laden. The jungle turned ever darker and thrived closer and closer to the sea. The sounds of birds and animals intensified.

Once, Hickok stopped suddenly, looked at what he thought was a face poking out of the foliage, but when he blinked, it was gone.

“Did you see that?” Hickok asked.

“What is it?” Annie asked.

“It looked like a wild hog, with large tusks, but…”

“But what?”

“Its face was nearly six feet off the ground. It had to be standing upright. But that can't be.”

Bull grunted. “Was hog. Hog man. Saw it.”

Hickok and Annie looked at Bull. Hickok said, “You saw it too?”

“Bull see.”

“Maybe Momo did have a positive reason to keep us away from the jungle and the other side of the beach,” Annie said. “Maybe he has other creations. Not so successful ones. He said something to that effect. I didn't realize he meant they were…out here.”

“Could be,” Hickok said, “but I'd still like to see the other side. I don't cotton to being stuck on this island forever. Not if I can find a boat. Or someone who can get us off.”

“Perhaps we could take the
Naughty Lass,
” Annie said.

“I wouldn't know how to control it,” Hickok said. “We'd sink.”

“Bemo might help us.”

“Not with that thing in his head. He might want to, but there wouldn't be any way.”

“Talk less,” Bull said. “Walk more.”

They continued along the beach, keeping a wary eye directed toward the jungle. In time they came to a wad of seaweed and driftwood on the beach. As they neared it, they saw something was entangled in it. It was a large man wearing the shreds of a Japanese kimono.

It was the Frankenstein monster, minus an arm. Like Cetshwayo, the sharks had torn it off. Unlike Cetshwayo, the monster had survived. The block of wood had been wrenched from its foot, and now there was only a nub of bone visible.

“My God,” Annie said. “Is he…alive?”

“Fact is,” Hickok said, “he was dead before he was what he is now. Whatever that is.”

“Please see,” Annie said.

Hickok went to check. He raked back some seaweed, touched the creature's neck. “No pulse,” he said. “But I don't know that means anything.”

It didn't. The monster slowly raised its remaining arm, opened its hand and clasped it over Hickok's.

“For lack of more accurate words,” Hickok said, “it's alive.”

Bull stayed with the monster while Annie and Hickok returned to the compound. Momo was on the veranda sitting in a wicker chair, drinking a tall mint julep served by Catherine, the woman who had been a cat.

When Hickok told Momo what they had found, Momo's countenance clouded.

“You went beyond the point I asked of you,” Momo said.

“It was an accident,” Hickok lied. “We just got carried away. It was so beautiful. The weather was so nice. And then we saw the monster. I hope you'll forgive our trespassing.”

“Very well,” Momo said. But he didn't sound very forgiving.

Momo sent a rescue party in a motorized vehicle. Behind the hooded motor was an enclosed, two-seat, black cab. Inside the cab rode Tin and Jack. Tin operated the craft with a stick he wobbled left and right; a pedal he pushed with his foot. At his left was a crank he used for a brake. The cab pulled a flatbed cargo carrier made of wood panels. Annie and Hickok rode on that. The vehicle moved an exciting five miles an hour on flat-rimmed metal wheels. The motor made a sound like something dying and whining in pain.