"No," puffed Reverend Juniper Jackman, who had come to Abominadad to upstage and liberate Cooder, only to end up his cellmate. "Why should I care? Gettin' out alive's all that matters."
"We just witnessed a turning point in history," Cooder went on, his voice taking on a stentorian timbre. "Maddas, the Tyrant of Irait, has suffered the same overreaching fate as previous Iraiti despots. Someone has to inform the world."
"If I spot a phone booth," Reverend Jackman said distractedly, "I'll let you know."
"I'd give anything for a four-wire line at this crucial, pivotal, important moment in history I have been privileged to witness."
"And I'd give anything if someone would just beam me back to Washington. As a famous man said once, 'Fame is fleeting, but my ass is forever.' "
The crowd was scurrying like ragged lemmings for a cliff. Don Cooder and the Reverend Jackman were carried along by fear and the threat of trampling feet. If they tripped or stumbled, they would be instantly stomped into bloody rags. The thought of the closed-coffin funerals that would result made their blood run cold. Neither of them had come to Abominadad to be denied a last moment in the limelight-even if it was while lying amid black crepe and purple velvet.
As the stampede of men, women, and children flooded into the city proper, it was forced into a channel made by two lines of office buildings.
"Think they'll ever stop?" Cooder gasped.
"Up with hope," Jackman wheezed.
A cold, blocky building suddenly appeared in the path of the human flood. It almost blocked the other end of the street.
The crowd attempted to go around it. But the momentum of their flight was too great, the multitude pressed too closely, for most to manage.
"Oh, shoot," Reverned Jackman moaned.
Part of the leading edge of the crowd actually smashed into the squat building like starlings into a 747's intakes. They made quite an ugly sound as they began piling up.
The more nimble members of this surging clot of fleeing humanity thinned, and broke in two directions.
Suddenly the way before Don Cooder and Reverend Jackman parted like the Red Sea. They saw the slumping bodies.
And they saw the limestone facade, a bulwark of bodies crushed before it, seemingly coming at them.
"I'm gonna die in a heathen land!" Reverend Jackman yelped.
"I'm gonna die," Don Cooder moaned, "and there's no one to film my tragic yet ironic conclusion."
Jackman turned around, eyes sick, anxious, as if a camera might somehow materialize to preserve their last heroic moments on earth.
Then he noticed it.
"Hey, showboat, wait up!" he yelled.
"Are you crazy? I'll be trampled."
"No, you won't," said Reverend Jackman, his voice suddenly far away.
Cooder's head snapped back, thinking Jackman had fallen under the remorseless feet of the crowd.
But when he looked back, he saw Reverend Juniper Jackman bent over, chest working like a bellows, retching as he tried to get his wind back.
The stampede that had been hot on their heels had veered away in both directions to avoid the squat building.
Realization dawned on Don Cooder. That meant he could stop too.
He no sooner signaled his brain to slide into a skid than the side of his head slammed limestone and he joined the pile of slumped Iraiti bodies.
"You dead?" Reverend Jackman asked after he had regained his breath and sidled up.
"Is my face still photogenic?" Cooder asked, clutching his head.
"No. Never was."
Cooder closed his eyes. "Then I'm dead."
"For a hick Texan with bags under his eyes clear down to his belly button, you make a lively noise, though," Reverend Jackman added.
"Then I won't ask you to put me out of my misery," Don Cooder said, sitting up.
"You won't have to. I'll bet any amount of money that folks think we're dead already."
Don Cooder's glowing black eyes lit up.
"Think of our triumphant return to the States: 'Hostage anchor and irrelevant black politician turned talkshow host return from the dead.' "
"Hey, cut that 'irrelevant' part out, hear? I'm shadow senator of the District of Columbus now."
"It's District of Columbia, and if they break programming when they get the glad news, it'll be on account of me, not you."
"Let 'em," Reverend Jackman muttered, looking up to the sky. "I just don't want to be dead for real. 'Cause if my people hear I'm a goner, they're gonna insist the President bomb the pooh out of this heckhole in retaliation. "
"We must find shelter!" Don Cooder's head jerked this way and that. "Do you see anything? Anything that looks substantial?"
"Nothing," Jackman said airily. "Unless you count this fine upstanding building you slammed into."
Cooder's eyes came into focus then. "Oh. Yeah," he said weakly. "That."
Jackman helped the anchor to his feet.
"You are one hell of a reporter, you know that?" Jackman growled. "You run smack into probably the best bomb shelter in town and you don't have sense enough to notice."
"Even Cronkite would be rattled after what happened to us," Cooder said, straightening his wrinkled suit. With a grandiose gesture he flung the door open. Then, recalling where he was, he executed a sudden reversal, saying, "Ministers before anchormen."
Cautiously Reverend Jackman crept in. Cooder counted to ten using his fingers. When he heard no gunshots, he followed.
The place was dark. The electricity was off. The signs were in Arabic so it was impossible to tell what purpose the building served.
"What did happen to us?" Jackman asked. "It came and went so fast, it was kind of a blur."