CHAPTER EIGHT
While he drove, he drank and he drank with such blind disregard that even Savage, in the backseat and a drunk himself, was astounded at how gracefully this toothless punk abridged his weapon, finishing bottle after bottle of whiskey and gin and vodka and cachaça and Sambuca and Poitin and rum and port and he especially loved the port because it made his breath feel and stink like an old roadside mattress.
‘Pull over ere” said Savage. “This is as far as we go wit a motor. We walk da rest. Da bomb is about four blocks up from here.”
“What about da graveyard? Yer man wit da red right hand, he told me dere’d be two graveyards and me mammy was in one.”
“What do you tink London is? One big fuckin graveyard man.”
“Right,” said Shane, peeping around a corner and drinking from a small bottle of nail polish remover.
The pair staged themselves close to the wall so that the buckles and badges sewed onto their pants scraped against the crumbling brickwork. Shane could barely keep one foot in front of the other. He was trying to slide his right foot over his left and creep sideways through the alleys and dark shadows like he had seen in the movies but gravity was playing tricks on him and someone must have had attached an invisible set of water bails to his shoulders because with every step he took, he felt the whole other side of his body being wrench over and his conscious mind, willing him back, felt like a paper cup in a wicked rapid and try as he may, in this state, well-oiled and serving his worth, he couldn’t creep up on a coma patient.
Shane thought about the boat train he had come off and how boats swayed back and forth and up and down and as he thought about this, he too went with an imaginary swell swaying back and forth, on his heels and to his toes and it looked like at any second he might just keel over and bother no one for the rest of the night. But this, as legend has it, is where Shane MacGowan is naturally beyond reproach.
The sound of popping gunfire was ringing out above and around them. The road was splintering from automatic rounds driven, from helicopters above, into the searing London ground and the little pieces of lead would whistle as they ricocheted off of tin cane and chunks of bitumen and the sides of buildings and the thick heads of drunken hooligans, running through the streets waving their shirts in their hands and throwing bottle drenched in gasoline and rocks barbed in wire and yelling and cursing and willing an end to the world and thinking this was just an ordinary riot, the end of an ordinary match, just an ordinary Sunday night and they had no idea that none of this was about football or left or right or up or down or any religious creed, this was all about rock n roll.
“Get your hands on your head or I will shoot” sounded out a speakered voice from above.
The alley below, where Savage crept and Shane drunkenly swept, was now lit up like early morning as a helicopter hovered above them, shining its flooding light down below. Shane stared down at the ground, mainly because his head felt too heavy to lift, anchored by promise and a heavy sickness.
He watched the shadows of the rotor blades spinning through the blinding light and he chose one in particular and followed it as it turned around and around and around and around and the sound of the rotors above him was so fast but their shadows travelled do slow and there must have been some intermitting delay between the two, at least, that’s what his mind was thinking moments before he started to vomit.
“Put your hands on your head or I will shoot” commanded the voice from above.
“Me arse ya will,” said Savage, pulling a pistol from his pocket, aiming somewhere through the flooding light and emptying up and through the light with the hope of hitting the pilot, the rotors or the commanding voice’s forehead.
Instead the first bullet clipped the floodlight and darkness fell like a cold blanket on their burning eyes and the bullets that followed hit the commanding voice square in the chest and his buddy beside him who was busy loading his gun and one bullet clipped the rotor and was the cause of all the black smoke pluming from the rear of the chopper and the last bullet was caught between the pilot’s teeth and Savage would have celebrated, had he not taken a hundred rounds himself.
Behind them, at the entrance to the alleyway, came a truculent tribe of clones, all of them wielding sharp stabbing instruments of pain and all singing and cursing under the spill of fire that from above them rained.
“Get the fucking Pogue” yelled one of the tribe.
They all jeered and squealed like starved pigs, scurrying upon a tiny slither of meat and they ran with their weapons scraping against the walls and cursed “to destruction, to death and to Paul” and they charged down the alley but there was nowhere to run, for a vomiting Pogue and a savage with no gun.
Shane vomited.
Savage spat out some blood and wiped a red stain across his cheek.
The Beatlemaniacs charged onwards and kept with their verse and more of them came every second. At first what had been a small group was now in the hundreds and in the thousands.
Shane vomited again.
Savage spat more blood.
There was a click of a gun.
And Beatlemaniacs started dying.
A thousand rounds were fired from a hundred guns in the hands of fifty men who had burst from the far end of the alley and stormed forward, creating a shield around Shane as he crawled from the floor and pulled himself onto his knees and took from his pocket a silver flask and pressed it against his lips.
The sickness he had been feeling passed like water in an open sink and the sensation now burning through his mind was one of invincibility. He had passed the barrier of mortal man and entered the drunken ravine of the gods. His mind felt light and at ease. There was not a bullet on earth that could graze his concentration.
“Hold your fire” yelled one man.
The fifty men with a hundred guns holstered their weapons and the silence that followed was surreal. The smoke that lifted from their burning barrels blocked out the flashing reds and glowing oranges of the fiery night sky and everything seemed so calm and tranquil and wasn’t this the way it always was before someone was about to die?
Through a thick plume of smoke and dust and spectacular aura stepped an old punk, with all his teeth, in a long overcoat and terrific shades.
“Shane, can you hear me? It’s Joe.”
Shane said nothing.
“It’s almost over. My part, it’s done. You’re here now. If you can hear me, Shane, the rest is up to you.”
Where he was, in his mind, no words or thoughts could interfere. This was a place reserved for only the favoured, those few humans who could gather the thoughts, the musings, the colour, the strain, the hurt and the love and the fear and the hate, the pounding fists and the strumming chords and the contemplated humming of the gods and they could take all of this and on Earth, as they did in heaven, they could write a fantastic song.
“Ivan” shouted Joe, “arrange your men. I’m taking him through to the bomb. Any sign of trouble…”
“It’s all chilled on dis end Mr. Strummer,” said Ivan, tapping at the trigger of his gun.
Joe leaned down and closed the eyelids of Savage whose still eyes were as glaring as they were when he took down that chopper and I’m sure he escaped to wherever it might be imagined that dead people go and he was shooting those authoritative pricks some more and some more.
Joe took Shane under his wing and they hobbled through the smoke for the last could of blocks and when they came to a clearing they could see, sitting under a fiery sky, the largest bomb every created and beside it, The Musical Madman, responsible for all those ‘Revelations’ styled I told you sos.
“Well, well, well,” said The Musical Madman.
“It’s over,” said Joe.
“Of course it is. In two minutes, this will all be over and there’s nothing you can do.”
“We have Shane MacGowan.”
“Shane MacGowan? Ha. You might as well have brought me, Bono. Shane MacGowan is nothing. He has no power, no gift,
nothing, just the echo of his dead whore girlfriend and now his scared bitch of a mother.”
Behind The Musical Madman, a small statured figure squirmed under a hood with their hands tied and their mouth gagged. Joe knew it was Shane’s mother.
“Let her go,” said Joe.
“And spoil the fun of seeing Shane MacGowan cry like a baby. Never” The Musical Madman shouted.
The sky above was now roaring and crackling. Not from the firing rounds, the exploding cars or the burning buildings, but from the sound that heaven made when it tore a hole in itself like a breech in a man’s strides, letting cruel and violent things out to bring death to existence and invite the slain innocent blood from whence the cruel hand came.
“They’re coming, to judge us all. It’s done. Shane can’t do anything. My weapon is armed and tethered by god. Yours is sober and uninteresting.”
“Our weapon. The weapon of mankind. The weapon of hope and salvation. Our weapon; Shane MacGowan, is scuttering drunk” said Joe.
The smile that The Musical Madman wore no longer fit his face.
“That’s impossible. He can’t drink anymore.”
“Shane. It’s time” said Joe.
Shane returned from the abode of the gods and his eyes were like two headlights and The Madman like a frightened deer, stopped in his last word and unsure whether to call their bluff or to run, as fast as he could.
“There will be no end of the world,” said Shane. “Not tonight.”
Shane pushed away from Joe and stepped up the long ramp that lead to the platform behind the bomb where The Musical Madam stood, in front of his microphone, shivering and silent.
“Why are ya doin it? Are ya dat sore?” asked Shane.
The Musical Madman said nothing.
“Ya don’t ave ta speak. I know everyting.”
“It wasn’t supposed to end up like this.”
“Of course it was. Everyting ends up da way it ends up, but what did ya tink was gonna happen?”
“I was supposed to be defeated.”
“And ya are being dat.”
“Not by you. By The Beatlemaniacs. We would show the world that The Beatles were bigger than Jesus. That we could save the world and I could be their messiah. Beatlemania was supposed to save the day, not… punk.”
“Phony Beatlemania has bitten the dust” shouted Joe.
“So what was supposed to happen. Dey sweep in, put out da fires, disarm da bomb, arrest da terrorist and save da day? Den what? Flower power and crumpets?”
“Kind of, yeah.”
“It didn’t work. Yer just one Beatle. Ringo, he fecked off quick and da Beatles aint da Beatles witout John and George. Ya couldn’t disarm a newborn, not witout da four of ya. Did ya not fuckin know dat?”
“I am the greatest musician in the world.”
“Yer not relevant anymore. It’s time ta step down.”
“What about you? You shouldn’t be here. You’re sober. Your whore girlfriend died. I watched it. I made it fucking happen. You were supposed to be fucking sober. JC said you would be sober.”
“Ya did a deal wit da Lord, wit JC? Ya fuckin cunt. Ya fuckin killed me, Teresa. Yer da fuckin reason I hurt?” screamed Shane, stabbing his accusing finger.
“And I’d do it again.”
“Tank you. Tank you tonnes” said Shane, throwing his arms around The Musical Madam and hugging him like he would his own long lost father.
“What the hell is wrong with you? Get off me you stupid drunk.”
“I love ya, man.”
“Are you insane? I murdered your whore girlfriend.”
“Aye, ya did and because o dat I hurt like never before. Because o you, I realized how much I loved er. Every second of my life felt like a scorchin fuckin drought in my soul, sucking my emotions dry. Me heart is turned to stone. I couldn’t let er out and could let nobody else back in. Fuckin hurt it did, every second of my existence tryin not to remember findin her dere, sprawled out on da table, her knickers by her ankles and dat needle poking out o her arm and dat look on her face, just staring up inta nowhere. Yeah, it fuckin hurt alright but dat’s love man, and it only means sometin when it hurts, when someone takes it away. You taught me dat so tank you and fuck you” said Shane.
“You’re supposed to be sober.”
“Well I’m fuckin drunk and I’ll apologise for all dis in da mornin but for now it’s all about the troot. Now, Paul, stop being a feckin edjit and let me mammy go and turn off da fuckin bomb.”
“It won’t turn off and look around. It’s too late.”
Shane looked around.
The sky had opened and a hurricane wind was ripping through the air, picking up the fire that danced about and spitting it down like rain upon the people below.
“Use your sword Shane” shouted Joe.
Paul McCartney took off his mask, no longer hiding behind some revered identity. He looked small and frightened and his eyes were focused on a tiny clear bag, filled with a dirty brown powder.
“No, not junk, you can’t do this. It’s too late” screamed Paul McCartney.
Shane pressed the cold needle against his vein and his mind slid out of the surreal and into a godlike reality and he heard as it were, as the drug coursed through his veins, the noise of thunder and one of the four beast sang; “come and see” and now, with junk swimming on his mind and with whiskey for blood, he saw and behold, a white horse and upon him, a grand historical figure, come to reap the harvest of mankind.
“JC,” said Shane.
“It is I.”
Paul McCartney was still standing before him, gripping his squirming mother and the bomb was still ticking away counting down the seconds until the end of mankind and Joe Strummer and his Guns of Brixton were still taking arms down below, waiting in apparent tension for an invisible army that had already come to take their souls, an army that only Shane could see.
“I have da song,” said Shane.
“It doesn’t matter anymore Shane. Father has tired of your droll musings. The time has come. You have a place in heaven if you just lay down your sword.”
“Get down off yer horse and yer men, get em ta stop dey’re reapin. I still have time” said Shane.
JC stepped down off his horse and the blinding glow that emanated from his majestic steed no longer shielded the look in the idol’s eyes.
“Yer fuckin kidding me?”
“The only one who knew was our pet; Ringo.”
“Roast Ring,” said Shane, understanding everything.
“It was in his name.”
“And da Ring of Fire?”
“We tried to speak to you through our music, but you wouldn’t listen.”
“JC, da Lord our saviour, Johnny fuckin Cash. Dat’s grand.”
In the background, through the shrieks of banshees and the baying of hell hounds and a hundred million angels singing whilst carrying these beasts on their leashes, Shane could hear, far off in the distance, the sound of pipers piping and the sound like god’s heartbeat of a big kettle drum thumped away somewhere through the crack in the sky and being carried down to where the angels all lined up with their savage beasts, ready to slaughter humanity.
Shane put the needle again to his vein, this time with enough junk to make him a god and undo this wretchedness.
“Halt” screamed JC. “I have something for you before you die, a moment of pure heaven, before I damn you to hell if you put down the needle.”
Shane stopped for a second and saw in his two visions; his drunken and is junked, on one side his mother, bound and then gagged and on the other his lover, climbing off the back of the white horse and walking slowly towards him.
“Teresa” he shouted.
“Not so fast. I can give you, one second with your lover. I can stop all of this for a moment and you can be with her if you drop the needle now” said JC.
“Yer a gamblin man?” asked Shane.
“I am,” said JC.
“Den gamble wit me, h
ere and in da real world too. We play one hand and I keep me mammy and Teresa and we forget about all dis.”
“One hand, I’ll give you your mother and your lover for one second before I and the kingdom of heaven, tear this fucking shit heap apart.”
“Deal,” said Shane.
“What is your game? Poker?”
“Paper, rock, scissors,” said Shane.
“What?”
“Ya play it wit yer hand and…”
“I know what the game is. Wouldn’t you rather pit the fate of your heart on a game with a culture of gamble and loss?”
“Never, in da history o man, has a game mattered as much as dis. And I want ta be remembered as da man who saved da world playin paper, rock, scissors.”
“Ok,” said JC hesitantly.
The two men, one a mortal punk rock messiah, the other, the bad ass of country and the son of god himself, Johnny fucking Cash, stood eye to eye with one hand tied behind their backs and the other shaking like a ten tonne hammer before their faces, beating imaginary nails into idealism’s coffin.
“One, two, tree and….”
JC went early.
Shane stumbled into his hand.
“For fuck’s sake. It’s one, two, tree, den go. Not one, two, fuckin go. I taught ya played dis before, Jaysus”
“I’m sorry. I did. It was a while ago, though.”
“Fuckin amateurs. Ok, again, after tree. One, two, tree.”
The two men both threw their hands and a massive bolt of thunder clapped through the ears of mankind and lightning struck through the sky.
“Fuckin paper, paper. Ok we go again, after tree” said Shane.
The shook their hands again and again and each time, they came up even; rock and rock and then then scissors and scissors and it went like this for what could have been seconds or aeons, but the tension was all getting too much.
“One more hand,” said Shane.
They shook once more and once more after three they threw their clenched fists forwards and undid their weapon to a shrill of surprise; rock for the drunken punk and paper for heaven’s son.
“I won” shouted JC jumping up and down on the spot then running about sticking his middle finger up at all the little children that had gathered by heaven’s gate, then back at Shane who had slipped by him during his celebration and taken the arm of his mother and his lover.
“What is this?”
“Pride goes before the fall,” said Shane as his mother and his lover both put a needle into each of Shane’s arms and injected his veins with enough junk to induce an omniscient depression, one that only a god could conjure.
JC stamped up and down like angered child.
“It’s not fair,” he said. “It’s not darn tootin fair.”
The angels all looked at one another, wondering whether their command would come or not. The bomb was still sitting on top of the platform and the small red dial still showed ticking numbers, moving back towards zero. The hounds at the ends of their leashes all thirsted for human flesh and the angels themselves were anxious and impatient having waited the entirety of this version of existence, to commit this moral and biblical atrocity.
The bomb was armed and set to explode and the angels were ready to arrest and accost every soul but up on the stage, the toothless punk, his mother and Teresa; the woman who had turned his heart to stone, were gone.
“Here put dis on,” said Mrs. MacGowan.
Shane took the jumper from his mother.
“Fuck, ya brought da small one. Don’t you know what clothes even fit me?”
“Sorry Shane. Dere was a lot goin on. I taught I did ok, on account o bein kidnapped by Paul McCartney and all. What’s his deal anyway? Doin a pact with yer man JC.”
“He wanted his wings,” said Shane.
“Fuckin hated dat band,” said Mrs. MacGowan.
“Where are we Shane?” asked Teresa.
“I dunno but da moon looks all fancy and shite. Purgatory I suppose, Siam maybe” said Shane.
“I love ya,” said Teresa.
“I love ya too,” said Shane.
“Ah wisht up. He’s my son, you’ll never love em like I do. You’ll love anyone for ten quid.”
“Mammy, I’d love anyone for ten quid,” said Shane. “You wouldn’t have a tenner would ya? I’ll buy ya a drink.”
“Wisht up Shane. Da hear dat?” said Mrs. MacGowan.
“Is dat a trumpet?” asked Teresa.
“Feck it, it’s too late. Shane, do you remember da song. Sing da feckin song” yelled Mrs. MacGowan.
Shane focused and cleared his mind. They had escaped from the evil Paul McCartney and his bloodthirsty master JC and they were sitting in an old pub in New York City and beside them, as he tried to think of the song he had to sing, the boys in the NYPD choir were singing Galway Bay and the bells were ringing out for judgment day.
“Not dat feckin song. Focus before da trumpets.”
But it was too late. The trumpets sounded and Shane was stilled with not a thought pestering his mind.
“Where do I know dat from?” he said.
“Quick Shane. Sing da song. We’re gonna die. Please, Shane” pleaded Teresa.
The trumpet sounded again.
“Dat’s it. Bitches Brew” exclaimed Shane.
‘What?” said Mrs. MacGowan.
‘Miles fuckin Davis. Ah, yer kiddin me. If I knew he was gonna play the trumpets, Jaysus.”
“Shane, da song.”
“I told ya. It’s Bitches Brew. Fucking classic Miles Davis. Ah man, I saw dis on YouTube once, like from ’70. Da shit was fuckin real. Yer man god has got some fuckin taste you know.”
“Shane, da song” yelled the whole world.
“I will ya, hold on, ah listen, dis is the best bit.”
Also by C.SeanMcGee
A Rising Fall (CITY b00k001)
Utopian Circus (CITY b00k011)
Heaven is Full of Arseholes
Coffee and Sugar
Christine
STALKER WINDOWS:
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