“Goddamn it,” growled Yakima as he dug in his pocket for his cell. He punched in the number for his boss at Delta and had to wait six rings before the call was answered. “Carol, what’s this crap I’m hearing about the airport getting shut down?”
Beecher stood and waited while Yakima listened.
“Okay, with any luck I’ll be eating a nice piece of veal at the Restaurant du Palais-Royal before they pull the plug. Thanks, Carol. Keep me posted.”
He disconnected and placed the phone on the table.
“So—what’s the verdict?” asked Beecher.
“Carol says they’re going to do it, but the official order hasn’t come through yet.”
“The storm’s going the other way. Local winds are below twenty and—”
“It’s not the storm. Carol said they were going to impose martial law on western Pennsylvania and maybe parts of Maryland and West Virginia, too.”
“For a riot?”
“She says it’s not a riot. Carol said her brother-in-law works for MSNBC and they’re still running the virus story.”
“I thought they shot that down.”
Yakima spread his hands. “What can I tell you? The good news is that it doesn’t affect us. We’re wheels up in sixty-six minutes. C’mon, let’s get a coffee before we go aboard.”
He closed the flight log and stood up. As they headed toward the door to the crew lounge a short fit of coughing stopped Yakima in his tracks. He coughed for twenty seconds, then waited, listening inside his body for more, and gradually felt the spasms stop.
“You okay?” asked Beecher.
“Yeah. It’s nothing. Tickle in the back of my throat.”
“I have some lozenges,” said Beecher. “In my bag. Want me to dig ’em out? Won’t take a sec.”
“Nah,” said Yakima. “It’s nothing. I have four days off in Paris. If it’s a cold, where better for a little R and R?”
They headed out of the lounge, got their coffee, and proceeded directly to their plane. In a little over an hour they were in the air, flying high over the storms of Pennsylvania, skirting the edge of the worst of it, crossing into New Jersey and then far out over the Atlantic.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TEN
TRICKSTER’S COMEDY CLUB
PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA
The comedian’s name was Jeremy Essig and he felt like there should be sirens blaring and dogs hunting him. Not just there at Trickster’s, but at a lot of comedy clubs. After all, the image the audience saw was a sketchy-looking character looking nervous in a spotlight splashed against an unpainted brick wall. It screamed “escaped prisoner.” If not from a prison than definitely from a facility for people with dangerous social disorders.
And the audience was a lot like a posse. They seemed like nice people, but they could turn mean and dangerous in a heartbeat. He’d seen it. All comics have seen it. One minute you have a crowd hanging on your every word, laughing in anticipation of what you’ll say before you even begin the joke, willing to follow you through twists and turns of skewed logic and occasionally clinical observation, believing that you’ll steer the boat into port in some magical lands. That’s when it’s working right, when the rhythm is like jazz and the words tumble out with the kind of timing that opens minds and unlocks the muscles so that smiling and laughing is the easiest thing to do. Those are the times when the comic and the audience are all together, sharing the ride, understanding each other on a level you can’t really describe.
But then there are those times when everything on the other side of the spotlight looks alien and hostile. Pale faces in the dark, staring with dead eyes, their mouths unsmiling, hands on tables or in laps as if they’re too damn heavy to light for even a token clap. There are times when the joke’s rhythm is off, like a discordant note that paints itself in the air and no matter what else is played that’s the thing everyone can’t look away from. Like that. What sucked most was that there was no pattern to it. Sure, sometimes it’s hitting the wrong note or forgetting to take a look at the demographic. Like busting on the Tea Party in South Carolina, or skewering Obama in Chicago. Like being the first comic to make a joke after a crisis and really seeing firsthand what “too soon” actually means. Rookie mistakes that even the pros make, and Jeremy could remember too many of those moments in his own career.
On the upside, after you survive the moment and crawl out of a dead gig like that, you can take the experience and spin it into material for another date.
Tonight, though, the audience was right there with him. The mojo was red hot and despite the late hour they were all coconspirators in a mad scheme.
Plus, everybody was hammered. Even the waitstaff at Trickster’s was in the bag. And the emcee for the event, Lydia Rose, was smiling the kind of smile only a very happy, very drunk person can manage during that last hour before falling over becomes a gravitational imperative.
Jeremy walked back and forth on the tiny stage, letting movement and the shifting of the travel spot kept any moment from getting stale. He wore an ancient Flaming Moe’s T-shirt and scruffy jeans and looked as comfortable as he felt.
The gig was largely impromptu. What had started with a standard double-bill with him and Tom Segura, and a handful of raw up-and-comers, had become something else. The original show should have ended at midnight, but then word started coming in about how Superstorm Zelda had pretty much wiped a small town off the Pennsylvania map. A lot of people were believed dead. And there was a bunch of wild conspiracy theory crap thumbtacked to the story. Viruses, something about the National Guard trying to kill a bunch of kids, some asshole ranting about the apocalypse, and—this was the best part, as Jeremy saw it—zombies.
Fucking zombies.