XLIII

Blowfish could not feel urgency, did not know panic or recognize the need to put itself beyond the range of the ballista. Nothing would hurry its steady rise to a hundred feet, then two hundred feet and more. The next ballista shot never came, and the blimp’s five passengers shivered in the blood-soaked gondola as the temperature dropped with the increased altitude.

Mortimer welcomed the wind in his face as it helped dry the panic sweat and wash away the smell of blood.

“Hell, I sure hate to lose a man.” Ted still held the tiller, heading them toward downtown Atlanta.

Reverend Jake took off his top hat. “May the Lord guide his soul to Heaven.”

“You better tell him to guide our sorry asses back to the ground,” Ted said. “Larry was the pilot. I kinda sorta know how to steer this thing. Maybe.”

“And the radio,” Jake reminded them.

“Problems?” Mortimer didn’t need these guys crapping out on him now.

“A moment please while I confer with my colleague.” The reverend went aft, leaned in to converse with Ted in hushed whispers.

Bill plopped down in the bow of the gondola. “What now, boss?”

Mortimer shrugged. “Let’s see what they come up with.”

Bill frowned, pulled the Union hat down over his eyes for a quick nap, arms crossed tight against the cold.

Sheila was back at the rail again, standing close to Mortimer, looking down. “I’ve never seen it like this. I mean, I’ve been up on a mountain, seen what things look like far away, but not like this, with nothing underneath us at all.”

“Afraid of heights?”

“No. I like it up here. We’re disconnected.” Houses, trees, roads, shopping centers, fields, all passed silently below, too distant to detect the destruction and decay. “You could almost believe everything was okay down there.”

Dorothy coming back from Oz, thought Mortimer, floating in the wizard’s balloon. There’s no place like home. Except this time when Dorothy lands, sees Kansas up close, she’ll see it was torn apart by a twister.

Reverend Jake returned from his conference with Ted, cleared his throat. “We think it might be best to put down in one of the nearby open spaces, a field or parking lot maybe. Ted’s dubious ability to steer Blowfish might become hazardous if we were to venture among the taller buildings and narrow avenues downtown.”

“And then what?” Mortimer asked.

“And then we walk,” Jake said.

Landing involved a controlled deflation of the blimp. There was much pulling of lines and opening of valves. Nothing seemed to happen at first, so lines were pulled further and valves opened wider.

Then suddenly they were dropping rapidly.

“Shit almighty, too much,” Ted yelled. “Close the valve. Close it.”

They were not plummeting, but neither had they achieved the gentle descent they’d intended. The ground grew big beneath them, and Ted jerked frantically on the tiller, attempting to guide them toward an overgrown suburban baseball diamond.

“Brace yourselves,” he shouted.

They set down hard but without incident and climbed out.

Mortimer pointed to a set of bleachers. “Bill, get as high as you can, look around.”

“Right.” Bill jogged toward the stands.

Mortimer looked at Ted. “I need to talk to you.”

“Talk.”

“Is there a plan B?”

Ted cackled, shook his head. “There was barely a plan A.”

“Tell me.”

Ted explained. He was part of a ragtag, underground army whose goal was to wrest power from the Red Czar. Here’s how Mortimer would help. He would get close to the Czar and find out his evil plans, specifically when the Czar planned to attack Armageddon. Warned ahead of time, Armageddon would be able to organize a surprise counterstrike. It had been Ted’s plan to take Mortimer all the way to downtown Atlanta via Blowfish, landing under cover of darkness on one of the tall buildings. Using the ham radio (now smashed on the road back in Stone Mountain Park), Ted would have coordinated with their “man on the inside,” one of the Czar’s trusted men, to capture Mortimer and take him to the Czar. By then it was hoped the Czar’s spies would have reported that Mortimer had recently busted out of Armageddon’s prison with secret knowledge of Armageddon’s defenses, his military strength, etc.

“The Czar won’t be able to resist. Once you get close to him, you find out his plans, kill him if you can.”

Mortimer sighed, looked up, taking in the blue sky and puffy white clouds, scratched his chin. “That’s a pretty feeble plan.”

“Well, it’s a fucked-up plan now,” Ted said. “We’ll have to improvise. First, we need to get Blowfish out of sight. The Goats will spread the word and the whole metro area will be on the lookout for it.”

They deflated the blimp, the compartments going flaccid as it collapsed in on itself. They shoved the thing into one of the Little League dugouts. All of them together pushed the gondola into a small circle of trees, covered it over with branches.

They walked, Reverend Jake on point a hundred yards ahead of them, ready to signal them into hiding if necessary. They zigged and zagged through a residential neighborhood, finally finding an abandoned house with a fireplace just after sundown. They were all exhausted and slept like rocks.

They yawned and stretched awake at the first crack of sunlight, Mortimer spewing a string of curses after remembering they’d lost the coffee the day before. “I wish we’d been able to hang on to our gear.”

Bill hid a yawn behind the back of his hand. “I still have a few of the cigars in my shirt pocket if you want one.”

“Later. You sleep okay?”

“Could have been better. I was right next to Ted. Guy has bad dreams and talks in his sleep. Man, he sure hates Jane Fonda.”

“We have a long march ahead of us,” Reverend Jake told them. “Let’s start the morning right with a quick prayer. O Lord, hear us in our time of need as we march into the bowels of Satan’s stronghold, to wrest a once-prosperous city from his evil clutches. And if it is Your will for us to be gutted and beheaded and our heads put on pikes for the crows to eat our eye sockets hollow and the black flies to plant maggots in our ears, then so be it, although, naturally, we’d prefer that not to happen.”

“Amen,” Mortimer said.

XLIV

The five of them marched steadily, either Reverend Jake or Ted scouting ahead, finding the open path. They passed the debris of an extinct nation, hollow Exxon stations, Subway sandwich shops, Dollar General, Cracker Barrel, check-cashing places, pawnshops, banks and a Laundromat with a yellow Hummer crashed through the front window. On the back of the Hummer was a bumper sticker that said I BRAKE FOR GARAGE SALES.

They passed through another residential neighborhood and crossed into a park on the other side: swings, slides, trees, benches. The grass was long and brown.

“Break for lunch here,” Ted told them. “I need to scout around, get my bearings.”

Ted left them in the park.

“Benches over by that odd-looking tree.” Mortimer pointed. “We can take a load off.”

They walked toward it and realized it wasn’t a tree at all but something fabricated of metal and wires, meant to look like a small weeping willow. When they were standing right in front of it, Mortimer saw that the trunk of the tree had been fashioned from several car bumpers welded and bent. The limbs were car antennas. Headphones and iPods and electrical charge cords hung from the limbs, draped nearly to the ground.

Sheila knelt, ran her hand over a wooden plaque, letters burned neatly into the surface:

NEW WORLD WILLOW

– ANONYMOUS