The Baroness, Part 25
We’re Going to Need a Very, Very Good Lawyer
Eight thousand meters (25,500 feet) above Black’s Crossing, Baroness Elizabeth Zemo and her assistant Silicone Sally Rezilyant were moments from unconsciousness and frozen death after the Zemo zeppelin’s ballast tanks had been ruptured by an enraged Shazara Pel.
“There isn’t [gasp] one. They didn’t know I [cough, shiver] was buying it,” Elizabeth replied.
“Gun?”
[Gasp] The envelope’s [cough] reinforced Kevlar . . . bulletproof.”
“Damn that German engineering,” Sally managed to groan.
“There’s . . . parachute . . . in locker, but . . .can’t get out,” Elizabeth wheezed.
“I’ll get . . . them. You think.”
Shivering, Elizabeth desperately inventoried her assets. Laser pistol – useless. Flare gun – almost blew them up but didn’t harm the titanium gondola. Watch. Negaton projector – discharged. Personal force field generator . . . .
“Sally, get over here [cough, cough] with the chutes!”
“I’m trying . . . it’s so cold!”
With the last of her strength, the Baroness placed one parachute on Sally and the other on her back. “Grab me close, Sally, and cover your eyes!”
“You’re . . . cold . . . too.”
“Hold on!” Elizabeth triggered her personal force field and shorted the circuit to maximum overload. The field ballooned outward, contacting the gondola’s walls, and with a surge of energy and multiple sparks, exploded the gondola to shreds. The two women plummetted towards Earth, unconscious and frostbitten from head to toe from the minus 70 C. cold and the 200 kph velocity of their fall. At 1,500 meters, though, the parachutes automatically opened, braking their fall and giving them the chance to defrost slowly as they dropped through warm spring air toward Gothametropolisyork.
At 1,000 meters Elizabeth was able to open her eyes and observe her companion’s translucent body wrapped around her own. The rushing air had stripped Sally’s zeppelin-sailor outfit from her body and she was covered in frost. Elizabeth’s zeppelin captain’s uniform, however, was intact, shielded by Sally. Now it was just a question of where and how the two would land.
At Janis Karpinski Air Force Base (just the other side of the Guernsey Morass from Parodiopolis, and sinking an inch or two a day; it’s now several feet below the surrounding ground level), however, the major on duty was much less sanguine. “It’s a metahuman assault, I tell you! It has to be!”
“But sir,” explained the sergeant at the radar console, “the transponder identifies it as a private zeppelin. It flew over its rating and must have popped.”
“A zeppelin, sergeant? Absurd. It’s a ruse. Scramble Squadron Alfa! Go to magenta alert! Repeat, magenta alert! Cancel all leaves! Get the CBW unit out to Black’s Crossing! Alert Homeland Security! Close the base! Immunize every service member against anthrax! Warn the Navy to deploy frogmen in the sewers! Women and children first! Embark the parachute battalion – send the parachutes later! Mobilize the National Guard! Get the nuclear detection trucks out there! Place Parodiopolis and Gothametropolisyork on red security alert! Roll out the Yurtbusters! Check every garbage truck for hidden explosives! Have the sheriff call out a posse! Tell Governor Rapeape and the mayors to wait for me before they have a news conference! And sergeant!”
“Yes, sir?”
“Be sure the Attorney General is advised that I was on watch here.”
“Yes, sir, Major Disaster!”
“That’s ‘Desastre,’ sergeant! With a soft ‘a.’”
“Yessir. Is it possible, just possible, we’re over-reacting?”
“No one’s going to accuse this unit of ignoring a possible threat. And besides, if we’re wrong, Homeland Security will spin the hot dog cart outside into a major supervillain operation against the national food supply.”
“Right, sir. Are you related to Herbert Garrick in Washington, by any chance?”
“As a matter of fact, I am.”
“Right on the alerts, sir.”
And so it was, that as a frostbitten Elizabeth Zemo struggled to free herself from the harness of her parachute and the sticky, limp grip of a thawing Silicone Sally, the first responder to a thwarted superhuman assault on the peaceful state of Gothametropolisyork arrived to take the surviving baddies into custody.
“Now you-uns just stand right there and get those hands over yer heads, nice and slow now,” ordered sheriff’s deputy Hugo McClintock.
“Thank God you came,” Elizabeth groaned. “We were almost killed up there!”
“Yep, and you-uns were goddamn lucky to survive. A lot luckier than your victims would have been – now stand still there, and don’t move a muscle! You’re under arrest for violations of – violations of. Hell, I don’t know what, but you’re terrorists just the same.”
“What do you mean, terrorists? We’re American citizens!”
“Yore dressed awful strange for an American citizen, hun. What kind of forn terrorist uniform is that purple thing? And yore frenund there ain’t dressed atoll.”
“I’m no terrorist. I’m the Baroness Elizabeth Zemo, and that was my zeppelin.”
“I thought yew were an Amerrucun citizen, huh? A Baroness? Yew must be French, helping out those Hellraiser guys.”
“French!”
Deputy McClintock’s reply was drowned out by the approaching sirens of the state police, the Department of Homeland Security, the National Guard, the Air Force CBW and Nuclear Response teams, the Black’s Crossing police, the state health department radiological and infectious disease control squads, the county hazmat squad, two Army helicopters, seven television news choppers, and various mayors, county commissioners, state legislators, the governor, Senator Schlumer, six congressmen and the Attorney General, all hoping to be interviewed for the six-o’clock news on how they were the ones really responsible for this triumph over the superhuman menace.
“Sally,” Elizabeth whispered to her reviving companion, “you’ve got to get us out of here.”
“Me! We’re surrounded with guys pointing guns, tank cannons and disinfection sprays at us. I can’t stretch that far or that fast. The only way we’re getting out of this is with a very good lawyer.”
“That’s it! Distract them for a moment while I get on my cellphone.”
“Hey, guys, have you ever seen anybody do this?” Silicone Sally called, inflating her undressed upper torso slowly and sensuously. Some remaining frost crinkled and dropped from her bosom. Every eye was riveted on her, including four network news feeds. “And have you ever seen legs like this?” Sally now stretched her legs, turning herself into an over six foot tall vision of a rubbery, nude Valkyrie.
Meanwhile, on Elizabeth Zemo’s phone: “No, I can’t hold for Ms. Waltz. It’s an emergency. I’m a client of hers. I can pay, believe me. Here’s my Dun and Bradstreet number, I’ll key it in.” There was a short pause. “Just tell her I have to see her right now, and that she needs to summon me and my associate.”
“Baroness,” Sally squeaked, “I can’t keep their attention much longer. And I can’t get any bigger. Anywhere.”
“Just another moment, Sally,” Elizabeth hissed. “What’s it coming to when you can’t trust a lawyer to respond to money . . . .”
With a slight pop of inrushing air, the two unfortunates vanished from the scene and reappeared in Lisa Waltz’s office.
“I’ve got to go save the world now, but this consultation is going to cost you $25 grand each,” the amorous advocatrix rasped.
“Put it on my tab, and add 5 K for your trouble,” the Baroness responded. “And can one of your clerks get Sally here some clothes? Just not the size 26 she is now.”
Some time later, almost precisely halfway around the world, another Zemo popped in for a visit to a much pleasant place than a law office. Or at least it usually was. Yes, Baron Ottokar Zemo, unalive practitioner of the dark arts, had sensed that something strange was about to happen in the mystic realm of Lemuria and had decided that opportunity, if not exactly knocking, was pacing near the doorway. And the sanity-mangling watchdog seemed to be away from the house. He had appeared on a hill opposite from where Blair Atoll was gathering the inhabitants for resistance, but, as it happened, close to a recent immigrant who had been out for a stroll.
“Eeek,” exclaimed Losiira of Caph, “who are you? Did the Shoggoth rescue you also?”
“I need no rescue,” Baron Otto declaimed. “I am the Baron Ottokar Zemo von Saxe-Lurkburg-Schreckhausen, and I am here to claim this island as my domain.”
“So you are a lord of this world, sir?” Losiira simpered. “We were told this world had no lords, and needed none.”
“Every world must have its ruler, young one. And as this world has none now, and is erupting with mystic energies, it is only proper that I claim it as my own and turn those energies to my own purposes.”
A low rumble interrupted his oration, coupled with a shaking of the ground underneath.
“Can you control what is happening here?” Losiira asked anxiously.
“I must see. In the meantime, you and the others must obey me, and I will keep my subjects safe.”
“I’d better take you to Miiri. She has a much better idea of how this place works.”
“Very well. Take me to your leader.” Otto winced as soon as he said it.
Next time: Elizabeth and Sally prepare to do battle with the formidable Mrs. Wooster. Elizabeth finally gets a moment to talk with Hallie. Baron Otto may have saved the Shoggoth – or doomed it. And after Herbert P. Garrick goes after Elizabeth, Lisa Waltz finally gets to order that Lamborghini she’s always wanted.
P.S. Points for anyone who can explain the name of the air base and what a magenta alert is.
Playing the part of Baroness Elizabeth Zemo:
J. Jonah Jerkson
VOICE OF THE PEOPLE
ool-43570953.dyn.optonline.net (67.87.9.83) U.S. Network
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