parts after only a few years. Since animals were similarly affected their remains also joined the undulating mass.
Add to that the wild wolves, coyotes and packs of feral dogs, living and dead, that terrorized the landscape, it became too dangerous to keep the Internment Facilities clean. Dead tissue, once carefully buried, was now dumped with less ceremony than garbage once received. Decent folks complained about the hellish scene the countryside had become, and Authority reacted by building walls around cities and constructing a network of elevated highways connecting them. Everything else was left to the wild and the dead.
Like most of the cities that remained, Greasetown was insulated around its inland perimeter by a thirty-foot tall barrier. This allowed the good citizens to worry about their own doomed existence without the distraction of thinking about the great living graveyard growing at their backs. The Landfill was rumored to be a haven for Authority fugitives and groups of reassembled bandits. Rumored among the dead was the tale that these lands held hope and promise for the future. One day a call would come, and they would go.
I understood that these lands held the future for the human race. It was simple enough to me. We would all end up there someday-sooner or later. Another one of the perks that came with the Change was that the living didn't grow old. Or if they did, it was at a rate too slow to be detected. Scientists-fast becoming the brunt of most jokes-couldn't explain that either. Staying alive meant apparent immortality, but sooner or later, the longer you lived, the better the chances of dying a violent death. Then came the ignoble end-the shambling, withered fragments of a once proud species. I sighed. Thoughts like these were inevitable while crossing the Landfill. That's why I always traveled over it with a bottle of whiskey clamped between my legs. Visions of undead lungs howling at the moon danced in my head.
I pulled on the whiskey and let the hot bite in my throat burn my mind onto different tracks. If this Simon fellow was at the treatment center he would know that someone knew something about Jan Van Reydner. Mr. Adrian, as president, was not likely taking calls for Simon, so I was pretty sure he was the same man. I'd soon see. In preparation for my role as Gingold the Sublime, the dead mime, I had smeared gray makeup onto my hands until they were sufficiently ghoulish. I had also done my best to introduce curlicue crispness to my clown makeup-an understated nuance of the 'avant-garde'. It screamed Paris; it screamed France.
At four forty-five, I pulled off the highway onto an elevated track that ran into an opening in a huge stone wall. This surrounded a gigantic black stone mansion that rose on a natural granite promontory many stories into the cloudy sky. I supposed the wall was to keep peace and quiet in and the discord of the dead out. I listened for the howl of the wolf.
Beside a pair of great iron doors was a parking area. I pulled to a stop. Far below me, I knew that gray, twitching worm-shapes inched their way around the base of the wall. I shuddered against such macabre unreality. My hair tried to stand on end. I felt Tommy's psyche titter wildly. I let my ears roam over the silence until they fixed upon a distant clicking, whispering sound, like a surgeon's hand in viscera. I took another snort of whiskey, and fumbled for my cigarettes. Imagination was not always an asset.
The iron doors before me opened suddenly. A long black truck, windowless, except for a slit in its bulbous nose, drove silently by on solid rubber wheels. It reminded me of the old super chief trains I had seen in pictures. The truck picked up speed and left me alone at the closing gates. I imagined the happy dead customers inside, all pink-cheeked and fresh from the Simpson special treatment. Once home they'd begin their regiment of self- maintenance to wait for the madness that would come for them. I could understand the lack of windows. It just would not do to expose clients to the sights of the Landfill. Insanity would arrive without prompting. I felt a chill go through me as I contemplated the reason Simpson's was located in such a neighborhood.
I slipped my gun into the glove compartment and got out of the car-then began my dead man act. It wasn't hard; I just stiffened my muscles and moved mechanically, and tried to blink slowly and methodically. Watching Elmo every day did more than remind me of my mortality.
There was a brass panel marked 'guests' fixed with a large red button. I pressed the button, while crushing my cigarette beneath my heel. I felt eyes looking at me. Set in the enormous gates was a people-sized door that popped open automatically. I walked in wondering what could cause such corporate paranoia, as to build these formidable gates. I doubted it was fear of Landfillers. Competition was stiff in the death business.
I entered and was met by a tall, thin man in a black uniform. His jacket had a high martial collar. A white with red-trim shirt blazed underneath. He smiled with pink lips that were puckered pining for mother's breast. I was amazed at his youthfulness. The skin on his peanut-shaped face looked soft, and seemed to be covered by a light down. I tried to register nothing in my face.
'I'm Gingold the Sublime.' I kept my voice flat.
'I am Tobias, welcome to Simpson's Skin Tanning and Preservation for the Deceased, Mr. Gingold.' He smiled with small pearly teeth. I smelled formaldehyde on his breath and pronounced him dead. Simpson's did a real job if Mr. Tobias was an example of their work.
'I'm sorry I came in makeup, but…' I put fingers to my cheek. 'My complexion underneath is so-well, disfigured.'
He nodded, smiled sweetly under a Peter Pan nose, and then laughed with cherubic vigor. 'Oh, I understand-I understand. I was in such a state myself when I first stepped over into my new life. Have no fear. Please, try to relax. You've come to the right place.' He gestured to a small, motorized cart. 'If you please, the courtyard is enormous. I'll take you to your New Life Host.'
'Thank you,' I said and followed him to the vehicle. We crossed a walled enclosure that housed fountains, gabled gazebos and wandering pathways over grass and garden. I wondered how they managed to keep the flowers in bloom. There was plenty of water, but no sun, and with the walls, the courtyard was that much darker. As I sat beside him I felt a pang for a cigarette-I wasn't sure if it was me or Tommy.
The mansion piled into the sky before us, castle-like with minarets and towers. Lights glowed in many windows, the occasional spectral shadow passed behind curtains. I growled silently, looking at it all. Finally business had found a perfect niche. Death created a steady supply and demand.
Chapter 15
I was shown through an elaborate lobby and lounge decorated with a thousand carved angels. Blood-red Persian carpeting covered many hundred square feet of floor and stair. Great leather couches and chairs held quaint positions under potted palm, or by the roaring fireplace you could park a truck in. At the foot of ornately carved columns, corpses reclined in wheeled divans and chairs-a few had books or magazines. Some were bandaged from head to toe; all had a thoroughly antiseptic smell about them. There was also the distinct aroma of money. Tobias led me past three dead people engrossed in a discussion about religion and up a broad staircase with gilt banister- then to a huge set of doors.
Embossed in the brass was an elaborate reproduction of Bruegel's, The Triumph of Death. I wasn't an art expert. This particular painting had become the rage since the Change. In it, people ran, terrified, through a scene not unlike my image of the Landfill. Mobs of skeletal demons performed imaginative butchery upon the living-a hanging here, a decapitation there, here a skull, there a skull-everywhere a skull-skull. Everyone died in the picture, peasant, businessman, saint and king. No matter where the people ran, they died-none with dignity worth mentioning. Briefly, I imagined a figure in a clown's greasepaint dancing gleefully through the carnage. Tommy grew excited inside me. I felt his erection press the canvas of my coveralls.
'Beautiful,' Tobias whispered when he saw my attention upon the doors. He fluttered hooded eyes. 'Mr. Adrian is a collector of rare art. He had that made from the original.' He gestured to the doors. 'Morbid to the timid living, perhaps, but there is no shame in death; and, we are all aware of the denial that life is.' He pushed lightly upon the doors and they swung silently open.
'Mr. Adrian's office.' He bowed slightly sending a shock of black hair over his brow.
I left him and entered the room. Its corners were lost to me in black shadows. I followed a tender glow from ceiling lamps until I saw the shape of a man behind a huge desk. It grew out of the darkness like an oil tanker. It was so big he would have to walk to the ashtray. I stood for a moment in feigned awe and studied Mr. Adrian in the soft light.
His head gleamed slightly over a synthetic tan. Hair curled in golden ringlets from an exposed crown. He
