Pym_ A Novel - Mat Johnson [124]
“Guwk,” the Tekelian said back to me. And then, in a moment of vertigo I first attributed to my losing consciousness, the beast dropped me and fell on top of me. The weight was impossibly heavy, but I could already feel that it was a limp weight, devoid of all flex. Pushing desperately out from beneath him, I saw the metal tooth of the gardening hoe planted halfway into the creature’s skull. And beyond that, my friend Garth Frierson standing in his work clothes, covered in dirt, staring down.
“Well, dog,” Garth said, his gaze fixed anxiously on his own lethal handiwork. “That Negro island you keep talking about is sounding better and better to me.”
* The left hand being used for toilet duties, unlike in the West, where we are willing to get both hands dirty to get the job done.
† This was no longer that powerful, given he had only one eye to do it with.
‡ A question not of willing but of able.
§ For years I’ve had the common anxiety dream of running away from danger without being able to distance myself. In Thomas Karvel’s heaven, even my dreams came true.
‖ For a creature used to the extreme cold of this polar climate, getting wet was probably the most sacred of taboos.
SAUSAGE Nose didn’t even have the chance to grow colder before Garth and I devised a scheme to get the hell out of there. Our planning didn’t take long. We didn’t really have many options to consider. There was no negotiating with the monsters now. Even if the two beasts who had just died did so only because of the heat, how could we feign innocence at this point? How could we even stall for time? Soon the Tekelian Army above us would be wondering why its prominent citizen hadn’t reemerged.
Our plan: we’d get the rest of the crew and the Karvels off the roof, then turn up the boiler as high as it would go. Then, while all of them were occupied with their pudding, we would sneak out the back, take the snowmobiles, supplies, and sailboat. And then we would sail to Tsalal!
“Or Argentina,” Garth pushed. “Argentina would definitely be a good first choice. Matter of fact, if the others ask, just say Argentina, okay? That would be better.”
We packed the food ourselves, placing a selection of the remaining canned goods and vacuum-sealed packets into the base of the fiberglass sailboat. Garth even wanted to take the microwave popcorn, but I wouldn’t let him. I understood his motivation: the day’s feast had seriously depleted the stocks of the kitchen’s dry goods closet. Maybe there was more food hidden somewhere in the building’s storage units, but even still, there had to be an end to how much food the Karvels had. Falling into a moment of clarity, I realized that the instant the Creole crew had arrived at Karvel’s utopia we had lost our chance for long-term survival here: there were simply too many mouths to feed.
But there was still the problem of what the Tekelians would do when they didn’t see their lead warrior coming out with us to greet them. At first I gave this matter little thought, assuming they would take no notice. But already we had been gone so long. And what if they were starting to get sick upstairs as well? Maybe succumbing not quickly, like the child monster did in the heat of the dome, but slowly, comforted as they were by their normal temperature. They were expecting their massive, hooded, sausage-nosed thug to return, and anything less would send off warning signals. So this is what we decided to give