toward it. A hunched figure, dressed in rags like a scarecrow, hobbled out from behind a section of the tail and scurried quickly into the blessed shadows. Plissken watched the human vulture gimp away, knowing that he would probably come back later to feed on the remains in the cabin.
Sitting on the twisted bulk of a wing, he got the radio back out again and turned it on. “I’m at the plane,” he said softly, eye still wandering. “Nobody made it”
He was startled by a beeping sound. “Wait a minute,” he said, looking down at the homing compass. It was flashing a tiny red light, northeast on its dial.
He slid off the wing. Looking down at the dial once again, he let his eye drift in the direction indicated. He was looking down a narrow, smoke-filled alley. He began to follow, moving slowly at first, then faster.
As he walked, he brought the radio up to his mouth. “I’ve got his pulse,” he said. “Right up ahead. It’s moving, to the… northwest.”
Hauk’s voice, loud, deafening. “YOU HAVE TO GET GOING, PLISSKEN..”
“Damn!” He shut off the noise and looked around. If there was any attention to attract, he did it. He picked up the pace and looked at the lifeclock strapped to his arm. It read 18:30:23, then changed to 18:30:22.
XII
18:17:34.: 33, 32…
It was the only building with any light on the whole block: an old theater, its jutting marquee blank and shattered, reflecting the state of the art.
Plissken came up on it slowly, using the line of gutted, rusting cars as cover. The front was all boarded up, glass long gone, as a defense against the elements. Hard yellow light peeked through the cracks between the boards, escaping into the night in tiny, narrow shafts.
He looked at the homer. The blip was pulsing, pointing directly at the theater.
Moving in a crouch from between the cars, he ran up into the shadow of the boarded ticket booth. There were muffled sounds coming from inside the theater which sounded like music.
Darting from cover, he got right up to the window slats, listening. There was music… and laughter. The sound was small and far away, but it definitely was coming from within. He bent down slightly to try and look through the cracks in the wood, when suddenly a boarded-up door flew open right next to him.
He tried to melt back into the shadows, rifle ready, but it didn’t matter; the man coming through the door was moving in the opposite direction. He was wearing a tattered top hat and tails. He wore no shirt, and his trousers were missing from the knees, trailing long stringy frays.
He wobbled as he walked, and was muttering under his breath. He flung the door wide and staggered off. Plissken grabbed the door before it closed and, hiding the rifle behind his back, moved into the building.
He was in the lobby of an old-time movie palace. Once a jewel, it was now a rhinestone. Its red carpeting was faded and water-damaged; the candy counter had been smashed to glittering slithers and long ago looted; its aquatint wallpaper was disfigured with large brown water rings and hand-painted obscenities. The lighting was dim; the gassy odor of kerosene lamps mixed with the carpet mildew to make the place smell like some sulphurous bog.
A small man wearing a filthy one-piece sat perched on a high stool near the door-the ticket-taker. His little round head was bent forward, lolling around on his chest. He snored lightly, easily. Plissken saluted him quietly and moved past him, toward the sounds.
He walked through the lobby, past the ragged curtains on the auditorium door and in. It was a big place, with enough seating for hundreds. The walls were lined with torches, big things with jumping orange fire on their ends and ugly black smoke curling from their tops. A hole had been cut through the ceiling to the outside to vent the smoke, and it rolled along the ceilings to tumble through the opening like a reverse drain.
Plissken looked at the stage. There was a chorus line of grizzled old men in outrageous female drag. They had linked arms and were kicking high as they sang:
“Happy days are here again.
The skies above are dear again.”
The band played in the orchestra pit, fiercely, intently: an out-of-tune piano, a section of jew’s harps, a few crudely fashioned stringed instruments that pounded out the sound. Off key, out of control, but music. It filled the hall, bottoming the singing voices, strengthened by the jumping feet that pounded the wooden stage.
“Let us sing a song of cheer again.
Happy days are here a-gainnnnnnn!”
He let his eyes rove the audience. There were about twenty of them-most of them were old, all of them out of luck. About half were asleep, heads rolled to the side, feet up over the seats in front. They looked comfortable, like they were born and raised right in those seats. The rest were shouting at the people on stage, laughing as they’d trip and fall. Their voices twisted with the singing, beating out the rhythm in time with the throbbing torches.
This wasn’t where the President was. Plissken looked some more. There was a man seated toward the back, listening intently, foot tapping with the beat. Almost like he felt the heat of that single, searing eye on his neck, he turned to stare at the Snake. His face was large, expansive, his hair thinned to nothing. His circumstances were apparently better than the others, because he wasn’t nearly as emaciated or dirty-looking. But that wasn’t the strange part. When he stared at Plissken, it seemed to the Snake that there was recognition in the man’s face. Some sort of familiarity.
The hint of a smile slowly seeped across the man’s face. Plissken tightened the slash of his mouth and started to move toward him, when a hard shot bolted pain through his shoulder.
He sagged with the blow, but didn’t go down. It wasn’t that hard. He came around to face it slowly, grimacing, keeping the gun behind him.
A large man stood before him. He was a bullet head: no neck, sloping, hairless skull. His eyes were dull, lips thick and twisting. He had a large, gnarled club in his hand that he kept slapping into the palm of his other hand. Splat. Splat.
Beside him stood the little man from the front door. And he looked scared, more scared of the man with the club than of Plissken.
“How’d you get in here?” the big man asked, and his eyes were two pissholes in a snow bank.
Plissken was rotating his shoulder, trying to work the pain out. “The front door,” he answered.
The big man turned to the ticket-taker, moving his whole body around as if his lack of a neck made it impossible to turn his head any other way. The little man was trembling.
“What the fuck is he doing in here, Boyle?”
Boyle gulped, eyes darting, looking for a way out. “Musta slipped by,” he said, just because it was all he could think to say.
The man with the club shook his head, his body turning with it as he did. Then, without warning, he swung out viciously with the thing, knocking Boyle to the ground.
“Okay, okay!” the man on the floor said, arms up to protect his face.
“Get back on that door!” the big man yelled, and the man crab-scurried across the floor back into the lobby. “You can be replaced, you know,” he called after him.
The big man turned back to Plissken and began beating the club against his hand again. “Two cans to see the show,” he said. “Three cans for a seat. Another can to sleep in it.” He held out his beefy paw, raising the club with the other. “No loitering.”
Plissken heard the homer beep and looked down at it. It was still pulsing, dead center in the dial. He brought the rifle up and jammed it in the big man’s stomach.
“You’ll have to excuse me,” he told him.
The man froze, club raised, like some statue in a horror wax museum. Jack the Bopper. Only his eyes moved, and they were cruising, running up and down the length of the barrel.
