DRINKS BESIDE THE BEACH WERE a necessity. Tourism could be paused, but it could not be stopped.
“Remember me, Chronic?” said Smoove as he sidled up behind the serving Djinn. Rema froze. “Enjoy your drink, ma’am,” said Smoove to a sexy blonde. “Another’s coming on the house.” The Djinn was fully upright now. His tray trembled. In his ear, Smoove said, “There’s the wife across the way. Anything blows up, you die on the sand. Nothing fancy. Seagulls shit on you and crabs roll you for change. Walk with me.” They walked a few steps. “Who else knows about us here? Before you lie, think utter humiliation. Gifs. On the internet.”
Then the Djinn screamed.
Like a girl.
Smoove hadn’t expected that.
The blonde ran. Seeing this, others ran. Police converged mas rapido.
Desiree hurried toward Smoove, blasting a string of machinegun Spanglish ahead of her and looking so incongruously frantic that Smoove’s first (squelched) impulse was to crack a smile.
The police motioned her to back off and get calm.
“He attacked my boss yesterday,” Smoove accused, backing a step from the Djinn.
“He’s got something against us,” said Desiree and sneered at the waiter. “We’re here on conference—” she made as if to backhand Chronic a quick one. “Racist little bastard!”
“I’m taller than you!”
“Little mind. Teeny dick.”
“Ask anybody,” said Smoove. “He’s the same one on the beach yesterday. Accosted our boss and a client. A model,” he said as the capper. What kind of sick fuck would accost a model?
“I didn’t do anything!” Chronic shrieked, sounding again like a freaked out tween, except sincere with it this time. “I screamed first!”
“You know,” Smoove felt civically compelled to point out, “he was around at the time of the explosions.”
“I work here!”
“Radicals kill economies,” said Smoove. He reached back. “Wallet,” he said, pulling it out and sliding out crisp, professional, glossy business cards featuring a lipstick red logo and a snazzy name. He gave one to each of the officers along with his ID to the nearest, proving he was indeed Robert Thomas Marley, location consultant for Another Fine Mess Modeling & Production.
“You don’t like black people, just say so, mon.” Smoove pointed down the beach. “He scared off one of my models.” To Quicho he said, “Can you go get Ariel?” To the police, “Can she get Ariel? She’s no good without somebody within ten feet of her.”
The blonde was watching from a safe distance, shifting uncertainly from foot to foot.
These officers had learned long ago that not talking was generally the best way to deal with most situations, ‘best’ meaning getting away as quickly as possible when there was no need to smack somebody.
“Yeah, go.”
Quicho trotted off. She waved the woman inward, knowing it’d be construed as The police want you.
“I just want to know what you have against us,” Smoove said directly and pointedly to Chronic Djinn, “and if we need to take measures.”
“He’s threatening me!”
Of course staff and management had come out.
“Rema? Twice in two days?” a manager said.
That’s all the police needed to hear. “He’s harassing guests,” said an officer.
“We’re on high security,” another said. He really wanted to use his baton improperly. High alert was bothersome. Kept him having to deal with people.
The blonde now hovered uncertainly along the fringes. She was pretty enough to be a model. The crazy lady had calmed down. And the Rasta had the air of someone sharp and controlled, so all in all, Rema was more annoying than he was worth.
“You go,” one said with a flick of his wrist at Smoove.
The other one gripped his baton knob and regarded Rema longingly.
Management tried to ingratiate themselves to Smoove and party (the blonde, sensing sufficient American-ness, gravitated alongside them), but Desiree shooed them off.
“We’re done with this place,” Smoove said as the capper. “Except give her another drink.”
And thus did Chronic Djinn become unemployed.
~~~
Lolita Or-Ghazeem. Dead. Gone. Kaput.
But they’d known that all along.
As the author Kurt Vonnegut so rightfully explained, “So it goes.”
Until it came.
Then it hit you in the gut and slapped the life out of everything.
I draw the breath of life and health; I expel the breath of doubt.
But what did that mean? Because as soon as one doubt was gone, a single inhalation brought a lungful right back. A selfish thing, drawing the breath of life and health in a sickened world. Selfish and insulating when it pretended to be restorative…
Milo Jetstream realized he was thinking like the False Prophet again.
He stopped.
Chronic Djinn had killed two people.
Nobody died unsanctioned in the name of Jetstream.
Milo didn’t plan to meditate anymore for a while to come.
He was alone on the beach the way he preferred it. He pulled out his phone and started making calls.
Buford and Manila excluded each other. Tomorrow morning, they’d leave.
~~~
They split up.
Here’s what happened:
Chronic Djinn released his inner child, a thing that—powers or not—remained locked within a Djinn and was never, ever to be willfully freed. This was the only cardinal law of Djinn among Djinn.
The wraith took shape out of the miasmic ether, coming into being from behind nothingness like someone pinching hunks of bread from a loaf. Each torn piece of space-time uncovered more of its shape until the quantum hole was big enough for it to step through.
Its hands in its pockets and its droopy shoulders defined ‘laid back.’
It tipped a chin at the Djinn. “Dude, what’s up? Yeah, OK, I see,” it said as it regarded his comatose body. It sat on the edge of Chronic’s small bed and smoothed the comatose Djinn’s hair. “You have fallen very far. Biblical.”
It looked around for what it would use to kill him. Most Djinns left knives or some such, something quiet and ceremonial. There was nothing immediately usable around Chronic.
“You’re going to weasel out of it?” said the Ic, leaning to grab Chronic’s cheap bedside lamp but settling instead for something less work-intensive. It pulled the pillow from under Rema’s head and casually held it over his face. The Djinn was already in a coma; this was the closest the Ic could come to not having to do anything.
Where Djinns were greedily ambitious, their inner children tended to be lazy and vindictive. The eternal trap of the genie within the genie.
“Not much reason for you to’ve been awake for a while now, huh?” the Ic said to the softly dying man. After Chronic was gone the Ic rubbed its palms together, leaving imprints of raised skin on both that looked vaguely like the dead Djinn. Over time these imprints would fill out into perfect replicas of Chronic.
The Ic looked at the humanoid welts with the satisfaction of new vistas. “Dude, I got the whole world in my hands!”
Ics, as many a dead Djinn split into its component psyches and fused to the palms of its better half would tell you, were not the id to Djinn egos. They were much more terrible than that. They were the separate beast that lived inside and cared absolutely not one whit about the life and times of the common Djinn. They did not seek vengeance. Didn’t retribute much. Far as anyone knew they never hunted down an enemy or forced spite down the throats of the cold, cruel world.
But they were the essence of collateral damage, and in war there are no civilians.
The scars on its palms itched thinking about the aborted revenue caused by Milo Jetstream’s Campaign.
Chronic Djinn may have been reduced to a pool boy, but even a pool boy could slit the throats of a thousand men with a slippery knife on a dark night where the streetlights need service or it’s kind of cloudy or the men have gotten laid off and are drunk to ease the burden but they still have to tell their wives…or, better put, for some unfathomable reason God designed any and everything to be a deadly weapon.
The all-consuming itch was annoying, so the Ic decided it would just have to collaterally make that itch go away.
It looked exactly like a grown-up Macaulay Culkin (for reasons best unknown).
The only thing it did as far as the Jetstreams was cause a huge early morning traffic jam that forced quite a bit of space between Ramses and Milo, and then got Milo’s jeepney diverted by police along a ridiculously meandering route.
The Ic was aware of plans hastily set by its former host. It allowed elements of these to play out.
It cut off communication between the brothers.
Milo, Neon, Smoove and Fiona made up party one.
The Ic planted the impression of where they’d be in the next fifteen minutes; Chronic had made many phone calls on his friend’s cell phone.
Milo knew when he was being corralled, but also knew that a log that rides a river long enough picks up the speed to crack a dam. Riding these rapids was the best way to end this, particularly as he had Smoove and Carel to keep Neon safe.
The Ic, though, saw to it he was cut off from them (except Neon) after the jeepney broke down and a massive surge of hospitality workers swamped the streets to get to work.
Thus on one side Fiona and Smoove were wondering how in the world people who regularly traveled to Atlantis could be like tourists in Times Square and lose half their party, and—after a while—on the other, a vampire, a Thoom, a priest and three Shiftless advanced toward Milo on the outskirts of an old parking lot on the far fringes of Aquino Airport.
This lot seriously overcharged considering how far it was from the terminals, so only those relegated to overflow used it. Right now it was effectively deserted, except for a few sporadic cars waiting for their owners to travel home.
Milo Jetstream couldn’t do anything but sigh.
The Ic projected the itchy thoughts from the little men grafted to its palms straight into Milo’s head.
“You think I don’t have friends, Milo Jetstream? You think just because you ferried my powers frozen in a condom to some igloo somewhere that David Scott, the Chronic Djinn, has no resources at his command? I buy beer, Milo Jetstream, lots of beer, and beer gets you favors! Enjoy the vengeance of the Damned!” And for the first time ever in Milo’s life Milo heard someone cackle maniacally.
David Scott, the former Chronic Djinn, now just destined for uncomfortably close relations with the knotty penis of an Ic, cackled like a fool.
Milo and Neon frowned at one another.
Neon looked aghast.
Milo realized she’d heard Chronic too.
“You tip for shit!” Chronic directed at Neon. “If not for the cleavage I’d have stopped serving you efficiently long ago!”
Earlier Milo had admired her resolve, resolve being a serious credit to inner beauty, but came a time when it was highly appropriate to tap the shoulder of a compatriot. “Milo…I’m freaking out.”
“You go right ahead.” He led her by the hand across the lot. This wasn’t the time or place for a half-assed confrontation. The vampire, a mid-thirties careerist, was staying to the shadows, darting blurred but reasonably fashionable. Vampires were like cheetahs, fast in spurts but not so much over the long haul.
Milo kept an eye on her. She was too skinny to be any real threat, but with all that type A flowing through her veins there was no telling what she’d hyped herself up to undertake. She’d noticed the aforementioned priest too, and held back pending his move.
She’d never actually seen a Jetstream in person. For some reason she’d always thought Milo was short.
Nobody really noticed the three Shiftless.
Between Milo and the airport was the Priest, a steely-eyed mofo of grim visage and gritted teeth. Many priests in Manila wore lightweight white linen frocks over their street clothes. This one threw back the sides of his and pulled out two glossy white guns bigger than Jesus ever holstered.
Neon shouted, “Holy shit!” and backpedaled.
The Priest fired.
Milo grabbed her wrist and swung her in a fast arc. The bullet barely missed her.
The Priest was about thirty yards away. His frock billowed as he ran toward Milo, both guns raised to fire.
Milo really hoped this lady knew how to tuck and roll; he was about to fling her toward a lonely parked car. His spiral came around; when he released her he took off in the opposite direction.
Father Ignatius Poploski (Iggy Pop in another reality) was a good shot. There was nobody in the NRA who would say it was practical to run with both arms stuck straight out and amendment benefactors spitting like water on hot grease, but in the hands of a defrocked priest…it looked cool.
Damned if it didn’t look cool.
But a good shot couldn’t do anything against a highly uncooperative target.
Milo feinted, flipped and zigged the fight far enough away—but close enough to—Neon, all the while advancing the fight toward Iggy. People that shoot at you are thrown off when you run toward them; throws off the balance of power. Adrenalin surges made the Father sloppy. He accidentally winged one of the Shiftless after Milo drew his fire that way. The Shiftless clutched her shoulder and cussed as loud as an empty parking lot allowed, before charging the gun-toting holy rogue in anger. The second she’d seen the vamp and the priest she’d known the odds of anybody actually doing anything to Milo Jetstream weren’t the greatest in the world. Shiftless folk tend to be realistic. So instead, why not rush boldly forward and reach the priest the same time as Milo with a double punch to the dumbass priest’s head?
Iggy Poploski went down. She threw her entire weight at Milo, hoping the other two Shiftless were right behind her—but Milo wasn’t there. Nothing she’d ever heard about Milo Jetstream told her he was that fast and knew jujitsu.
She only had a millisecond to think about this before he spin-kicked her feet from under her, grabbed a whole hunk of Shiftless mensware and yanked Shiftless Two into deflective position of Shiftless Three.
He’d been waiting for the necessary respite to take his pack from his back and pull out what would end this all—
That’s when Valerie jumped out.
She looked waxy, and when his slamming blow across her jaw slid off like ice on butter he knew why; she’d lathered in sunscreen. That meant she was a neophyte vampire. Sensitivity to the sun lessened after a month.
She extended her fangs and tried to clamp down before the arm retracted. He spun and caught her in the back of the head with an elbow, then reversed momentum for a midsection roundhouse kick, pressing the attack till she fell backward.
The Djinn screamed in his head, Swallow My Steaming Come of Vengeance, Milo Jetstream!
The idiocy of this angered Milo enough that the type A vampire turned tail and ran, having seen something in his eyes that foretold the absolute worst few moments of her life mere seconds away. Milo pursued.
The other Two Shiftless rushed. They got within ten feet of Milo before three shots pockmarked an uncrossable line before them.
Neon, with two white guns, was very much pissed.
She shouted, “What?” as challenge, then popped off another for good measure.
The Shiftless froze. They subtly altered their postures to render themselves seen without being seen, and thought to walk away, seeing as Milo was opening up a serious can of issues on the skinny chick.
The gunshot at their heels surprised the hell out of their feigned invisibility.
“Run your monkey asses!” Neon shouted.
They ran, and in that action convinced themselves they’d had no pressing reason for going after Milo in the first place; as soon as they dissolved into the surroundings of a liquor store everything would be Oh dash Tay. Even in running, the Shiftless seemed made of bits of other human beings.
She fired another shot because they physically irked her.
Shiftless didn’t run as a general course, so they stopped and looked at her wearing identical ‘What the fuck?’ frowns.
Seeing her take better aim they communally agreed it was best to continue running.
Chronic Djinn screamed the Seven Screams of Loss like the point of a drill into Milo’s brain.
“I slept with your mother! I’m less meaningless than you! High school was it! No love for you when you’re weak! Your friends feel obliged! You should have been born white, you’d have more fun! No worthwhile popular culture in the last seventy years!”
That last one almost made Milo falter, and that almost was all a vampire needed to sneak a bite in. She only managed the tip of one tooth but, like many a mother would confirm, the tip is all it takes.
Milo yanked her head back, getting a good blonde twist of hair to keep her from running from the fist on its way.
Neon watched with a sick fascination. She herself had almost been snatched once, and had been through her share of pointless scrapes with boyfriends, but this woman was getting her ass kicked on a new and different level, one Neon didn’t find herself objecting to because, obviously, the skinny chick was a weird level of strange herself.
Neon inventoried: she was in a parking lot holding a modified white Beretta off a priest, which she’d used to shoot at some shiftless mofos while this cute broheem from the Department of Homeland Security went all medieval on Ann Coulter’s sister—
(right about here, Milo broke the vampire’s leg; she went down screaming)
—so, yes, pretty much everything was that weird level of strange.
Milo waved Neon to him urgently.
She shook her head.
That’s when Coulter’s sister took hold of that skinny leg, gritted her teeth, and twisted to set the bone back in place.
Which was also when Neon ran like hell to Milo. They bolted across that parking lot, then another, then to the first commuter line they saw. Communications were still out. Milo hoped Ramses was having better luck than he was.
Milo wished this again about a half hour or so later.
By then, their plane was going down.
Not in the good way.
The pilot had been seized by the urge to masturbate himself into a frenzy from which there was no turning back. He got his thing caught in his zipper, which caused him to knock the plane into a nosedive. Sudden change popped an engine. The only good luck was Milo and Neon were the only passengers on the small twin engine.
The moment Milo flung open the cockpit door, he fully realized sometimes it’s best to take whatever luck comes your way, no matter how small.
That was a landmass getting bigger through the windscreen.
Djinn’s Ic gripped its knobby dick. This was about to get good.
Milo grabbed the controls and pulled. He wasn’t a pilot but he knew planes were supposed to operate on the horizontal because the vertical was troublesome. He’d seen enough movies to know “Getting the Nose Up” was appropriate and prudent.
The pilot, sensitive to death, forcibly roused himself from the Ic’s stupor and grabbed—in very pilot-like fashion—the controls, fighting the machine for supremacy.
Pilot lost.
“Find some water, brother,” Milo advised.
“No time.”
Then the pilot froze stock-still. There is pain, and then there’s the realization that your penis is still firmly stuck in a zipper.
That’s called clarity and focus to the exclusion of all else.
The plane was leveled enough that at least when it hit the ground to explode, it waited till they were a good distance from it.
~~~
Milo applied bandages to the pilot’s delicate bits.
“What’s your name, brother?”
The man mumbled something.
“Well, now they can call you sharkbite.” He answered Neon’s eyes bugged out behind him. “Levity heals, Ms. Temples.”
“I don’t think me sucking him off would help right now,” she observed, but didn’t his little half-dead ass perk up a touch?
She almost spat.
One kept explosions around him. The other crashed a plane so he could jack off. They were on the outskirts of probably some damn rainforest (no, she did not know if there were rainforests in or near the Philippines and did not care). She ached, she hurt, and—she slapped Milo upside the back of the head—she’d scraped both a knee and an elbow when he’d flung her in the parking lot.
“I need to get back to my plane,” said the pilot.
“Dude, your plane just blew up.”
The pilot stared down at Milo who was holding his sad, pale penis like a wounded puppy as he applied the last bandage. “Did it tear a nerve?” the prone man asked. “I can’t feel my leg.”
“It ain’t there,” Milo said. “Don’t worry about it though.”
There was a medicating patch above the stump of his knee, and contoured to the stump was a gelatinous blob that the pilot, Jacob Rao, could feel cooling as it solidified. Another patch was right above his groin.
The pilot looked at his former passengers. Milo, as evidenced by the large red stain sticking the shirt to his chest, had a cut across his pecs. Neon had a swollen eye and her hair was fucked.
The pilot was stretched out with his manhood bandaged and right leg somewhere off getting barbecued for whichever scavenger happened across it that night.
In a fit of hysterics he pointed this out to them.
Milo forcibly took the pilot’s red shirt off and rolled it into a pillow.
“Whatever drugs you had on that plane,” said Milo, “are gone. Rest comfortably. I need to go find something. Neon, if he decides to go, let him walk.” Milo stood up. Wilderness, lots of wilderness, as far as the eye could see. “We weren’t the ones jacking off on a plane,” said Milo, then he left.