The guitar 'Ti-Mouche had given him was on Shiba's neatly-ordered desk, along with his other personal possessions. Money, guns and documentation.
The creature's grin glistened. ''Dirty, Dirty Girl'? 'Your Cheatin' Heart'? 'Blue Suede Shoes'?'
Elvis looked down at his swamp-smeared boots. The mud had dried and fallen off, but he was still dusty. He was feeling light-headed from swamp gas.
The Suitcase People weren't turning out to be the monsters he'd expected. In fact, some of them were proving downright hospitable.
'Get Mr Presley some food, Reuben,' Shiba told a black-skinned reptile indentee. 'And anything else he wants.'
The exec hummed 'Tutti Frutti,' and laughed. His yellow eyes gleamed, blinking.
'Uh, excuse me, sir…?'
'Yes, Mr Presley?'
Shiba bowed honourably, displaying the bony ridges that had risen from his scalp.
'Uh, I don't like to ask, but, uh…well…am I a prisoner?'
Raimundo snarled, tiny nostrils flaring, huge jaws grinding. Obviously, dinosaurs didn't dig rock 'n' roll.
Shiba lashed his tail airily. 'Oh, no. Much misunderstanding. Most regrettable. We mistook you for some other parties. Enemies have been attacking. Hunting platoons comb the swamps. They come from the coast. From Cape Canaveral.'
'The Josephites?'
'Even so. How do you know?'
Elvis wondered if he could recruit any help here. He had the impression that, without Krokodil, he might well need it.
'My friend. The girl you lost in the swamp…'
Raimundo snapped the blade in his mouth and did his best to pout sullenly. It didn't look right on him. His face was too big for such petty expressions to register.
'…we were heading for the Cape. She had business there. The Josephites are our enemies too.'
Shiba was delighted. 'Good. Of course. They are crazy people.'
Elvis wished he knew exactly what Krokodil had wanted to do at the Cape. She had more or less admitted that her salvage story was a cover, but she hadn't confided fully in him. He knew that he had some part in the game that was being played out, but he wished someone had bothered to explain it properly to him.
'They are dangerous,' he agreed. 'Some of them ain't human.'
He realized immediately that hadn't been a tactful thing to say, but Shiba took no offence. Elvis wondered if the Japanese quite realized what had happened to him.
'You are free to go any time, Mr Presley,' said Shiba. 'Although we should like you to stay and enjoy our hospitality.' He laid a scaly hand on the guitar, twanging a chord. 'Of course, if you would care to perform for us, it would be most appreciated…'
Elvis had played some strange shows before, back in the barroom and hootenanny days. But this would be the living end. He picked up the guitar and strummed a few chords. Shiba's mouth stretched into a toothy smile. Elvis sang the first few lines of 'Mystery Train'…
'Train I riiiiide…sixteen coaches long…train I riiiide…'
The music took over, and his fingers found the notes. The words reemerged from the void in his memory into which he had cast them forty years earlier, and meant something to him. He sang about loneliness, desolation and the darkness at the end of the track. The long black train sped from nowhere to nowhere, carrying him along with it. The words of the song were vague. He remembered an argument in the old studio, about whether the mystery train was reuniting the singer with his girl, or speeding her away from him. He had always sung the song neutrally, but there was a persistent despair that crept in. He imagined Colonel Parker in a Casey Jones hat pulling on the whistle, Mr Seth leering like a skull as he wandered through the carriages punching tickets for dead men…and he saw Krokodil standing on the observation platform, waving to him as the mystery train vanished into the tunnel that fed into the depths of the earth and never rose again to daylight.
He finished his song, and said, 'I should find my friend.'
Shiba clapped, alligator tears on his creased green cheeks. Raimundo snorted steam. Elvis put down the guitar, and the music receded inside him. He remembered 'Ti-Mouche's suggestion that the music was his magic, his source of power. He wondered how he could harness it.
'A thousand apologies for the way you have been treated.'
Elvis felt sorry for the humble creature. 'That's okay, sir. I understand. You can't be too careful, what with some of the things wandering the swamps these days.'
'Indeed, indeed…'
Shiba's intercom buzzed.
'Mr Assistant Director,' a voice crackled, 'the East perimeter fence has been breached.'
Elvis heard gunfire outside.
'This is what I had feared.'
Shiba nodded to Raimundo, who charged out of the room, his massive thighs pounding the shaking floor. Elvis had to hang onto a filing cabinet to stay upright. Reuben unlocked a cabinet, and started pulling out automatic weapons.
A klaxon sounded like a hellhound's whine.
'I apologize for this inconvenience,' Shiba said to Elvis. Then, to the intercom, 'Marielle, scramble the defence squads.'
The gunfire was louder, and there were shouts. Through the office window, Elvis could see Suitcase People running towards the break in the fence. Some of them had guns, but others were just armed with the knives in their mouths and on their fingers. A human-eyed pterodactyl flapped past, flying low on leathery wings.
The window shattered, and Elvis ducked to avoid flying glass.
Outside, in the compound, an armoured transport was rolling across the field. Suitcase People were trying to resist a force of well-drilled soldiers in combat fatigues and black hats. Elvis recognized the adherents of the Church of Joseph. The pterodactyl dipped a beak in a Josephite's chest, but was cut to pieces by a chaingun.
The Moulinex was at the bottom of the swamp, but Elvis had had his side-arms when Raimundo brought him in. He picked up the fully-loaded Python from the desk, and cocked it. Shiba was slithering on all fours.
A grapefruit-sized object came through the window, bounced off the desk and skittered on the floor. Unconsciously counting the seconds, Elvis reached for it, but Shiba was there first. The exec took the grenade in his jaws and tossed it back.
It exploded in the air outside, blowing in the wall of the prefab hut, and filling the room with fragments of plasterboard and wallpaper.
Gunfire poured into the office, scarring the opposite wall.
Papers flew. Reuben was shoved back against the bulletmarks, bloody holes stitched across his chest.
'Reuben,' shouted Shiba, scuttling towards the indentee.
The old man's lungs weren't working. Bloody froth leaked from his mouth. Shiba tried to press his paws to the indentee's wounds, but wasn't coordinated enough to do it properly. It would have been no use anyway. The man- thing was dead.
A figure came through the smoke, gun cradled in his hands, and checked the place out for resistance.
The Josephite saw Shiba and Reuben before Elvis, and took aim on the 'gator man's head.
Elvis got off a shot that tore through the Josephite's shoulder, spinning him around. He fired a burst into the ceiling. His hat came off as he steadied himself and brought the machine gun up again.
Elvis went for the head shot, but knew it wouldn't do any good.
The Josephite was Donny Walton. Another one. Blonde and smiling, he had a hole in the middle of his face where his nose had been. He shook his head as if to get the ringing out of his ears and aimed the gun. He pulled back the catch, setting his weapon on single-fire. He was going to take out Elvis and Shiba like a surgeon performing an operation.
Donny Walton pointed the gun at Elvis, and pulled the trigger…
