Peter & Max - Bill Willingham [97]
Bo’s breathing was weak, broken and hesitant for the rest of the trip into town. For most of the way he wondered if she’d still be alive when they arrived.
In which Max plays
his deadliest tune so far,
and then finds his way
to Fabletown, to reunite with
an old acquaintance.
MAX PIPER VISITED AMERICA FOR THE first time in the fall of 1918, in the wake of the Spanish Influenza pandemic’s second wave, the one medical authorities would later name the killer wave, once the total cost in human lives had been added up.
He disembarked from his Argentinean passenger liner at Manhattan’s Pier 61, within just a few dozen feet of where the heavy cruiser U.S.S. Seattle was moored, undergoing its refitting from a convoy escort into a troop transport, in anticipation of soon being able to bring the country’s beloved doughboys home from the Great War. The four-stacked Seattle was a looming presence over the pier, its massive hull painted with “dazzle paint,” angry, knife-edged slashes of dark and light colors, designed to hide its true outline from the deadly German U-boats, which still prowled the Atlantic, even though America’s top generals and war experts insisted, almost daily now, that the Huns’ collapse was imminent. Max paused on the wharf to admire the warship’s giant gun batteries, wishing he could see them fire. Guns were one of the things he liked most about the mundy world, and the reason it had taken him an entire year to make it to New York, after arriving in the world. First, he’d traveled the battlefields and devastated cities of the war like a giddy tourist, glorying in the continentwide abattoir that Europe was making of itself.
But Max had finally, almost reluctantly, turned himself towards his true destination, coming to New York City’s drab and mournful streets dressed to party. He wore a red and white, candy-striped silk suit jacket, over purple slacks, with golden pinstripes. Yellow spats topped his glistening, patent leather shoes, and a jaunty straw boater topped his head, worn at just the perfect angle, to properly convey his rakish charm to the new world. He carried no luggage, not requiring any, since he could magically conjure money, new clothes and personal sundries into existence as he needed them, with only the most minimal effort, and often without any of the wearying aftereffects that plagued him following a greater expenditure of power. He did bring one thing though. He carried the flute called Fire, openly, without covering or case, because he liked to have it always in hand, ready to play at any instant, should the need arise.
Max ignored the lines of black and green taxicabs clustered along the wharf, waiting to pick up arriving passengers, and instead set off into the city on foot. He wanted to explore among these amazing towers of steel and concrete, and walk the famous avenues that sliced their ways between them. More important, he wanted to be among the people he was killing by the hundreds and sometimes the thousands every day.
He’d wanted so much to be a part of the mundy world’s great time of destruction that he simply had to find a way to participate. No, he didn’t create the nasty strain of Swine Flu virus that gave birth to the Spanish Influenza. It had existed already in the mundy world, lurking dormant, occasionally mutating, husbanding its deadly potential and biding its time. But what he had done was to compose a powerful and compelling anthem of death, which had inspired the long-slumbering bug to wake and respond to Max’s call, eager to be his agent in the grim and mortal undertaking.
For a while, Max let whim and caprice lead him on his journey into the heart of the city, going wherever the mood took him, having no specific plan or destination in mind for the day. Owing perhaps to the population’s diminishment by disease and the staggering number of men and boys who’d gone off to the war, but more likely to the strict bans against public gatherings, the sidewalks were much less