I start to realize I am talking to the Executioner himself.
“Because you only look at me once, and then you have to die.” The Executioner aims his pistol at me with a smirk on his face. This time I think it’s real.
“Wait.” The Pillar wakes up from his fall. “Don’t shoot the girl. It’s me.”
The Executioner slowly turns his head. The Pillar is covered in dust, so it makes sense not to recognize him right away. But why would he recognize the Pillar in the first place? I am confused.
“Carter Chrysalis Cocoon Pillar!” The Executioner squints at the professor. “Is that you?”
“In the flesh.” The Pillar tucks what’s left of his cigar in his mouth.
I am baffled. I’m Alice’s all lost and delirious thoughts mixed in a bag of mushrooms and M&M’s.
The Executioner gets off his mushroom and stares at the Pillar with wonder. It might be my mistake, but the look in his eyes is that of a man fascinated with the Pillar. “Is that really you, Pillardo?”
Pillardo?
The Pillar mumbles something in Columbian, and the two men embrace like old friends.
“You know him?” Sorry, but I have to ask. I mean, what the mushy mushrooms is going on?
“Know him?” The Executioner raises an eyebrow. “Who doesn’t know Senor Pillardo, the most legendary drug lord of all time?”
Chapter 19
Radcliffe Lunatic Asylum, Oxford
Dr. Tom Truckle could not believe what he saw on national TV. People had come out on every street in London to stir all kinds of chaos.
He saw a man in his underwear with a baseball bat chasing his family out on the streets. Another maniac woman had gone into an unexplained episode of road rage, chasing her co-workers with her damaged car. The owner of Tom’s favorite soup shop had locked everyone inside, confessing to serving them frogs and now forcing them to drink his soup until they puked.
Tom watched the BBC’s TV host, and her crew abandon their camera and run away, leaving it to record all of the mayhem.
This must be the end of days, Tom thought. He hadn’t dared switch on the channel to take a look at what was happening in America or the rest of the world.
What troubled him deeply was everyone in Oxford had gone just as mad, which suggested his asylum was in danger now.
“Lock up the asylum!” Tom shouted at his guards. “And by that, I mean use the Plan-X system.”
“Are you sure you want to do that?” the guard asked on the other side.
“I am sure. The time has come to lock every one of us within these steel walls inside,” Tom said.
Running down the stairs, he entered the underground ward and walked among the Mushroomers on both sides. They were panicking, afraid of the world outside. Tom couldn’t help but remember all of the Pillar’s warnings about the world outside the asylum, how they were the real mad ones, not the Mushroomers.
“You’re going to be okay,” Tom tried to calm them down, looking for Waltraud.
“We want Alice!” the Mushroomers said.
Tom had no idea what to tell them. Alice and the Pillar had left on one of their crazy missions. As much as he loathed them both, he also felt sorry for them, having to deal with the mad world outside.
“Waltraud,” Tom called upon seeing her, mushing the brains out of a patient. “Stop whatever you’re doing.”
“Why?” she said in her German accent.
“Why?” he roared at her, his hands reaching for his pills already. “Apocalypse is why! The world is ending outside. I am issuing Plan-X. We’re closing all doors and will self-contain ourselves inside.”
“But—”
“Stop interrupting me! I’m only waiting for my children to arrive, and then the doors will seal shut. I want you to order our people in the kitchen to open up all the reserve refrigerators and start pulling out all food and supply.”
Plan-X had been the asylum’s contingency strategy since long ago. Actually, it had been Tom’s father’s idea. The old man, now in his grave, had predicted the end of the world long ago. Thus, the asylum was pre-prepared with food and living supplies for one year on.
And the time has come father, Tom thought.
But Waltraud Wagner stiffened in her place. She couldn’t pull her eyes off the TV. Something about what was happening outside seemed to appeal to her.
Tom had no time to argue with her. He should have shoved her in a cell long ago. After all, he’d only hired her because she had killed her own patients back in the day, when she was a nurse in Vienna.
Tom turned to the bald Ogier and ordered him to speak to the people in the kitchen.
Ogier nodded obediently and issued the process.
“Don’t worry,” Tom addressed the panicking Mushroomers. “You will be safe in here.” He couldn’t believe he’d just said those words. Never had he loved the Mushroomers, but with the world going down in flames outside, he saw how weak they were. He suddenly began to relate to them.