The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai (28 page)

11:26 P.M.—(Mrs. Johnson’s note) After getting the word from Reno, I led my troops to a building near the hangar, inside of which we surprised several Lectroids in a lunch room. They were snacking, I guess, is the only word for it. Nearby a couple of naked ones had lit a fire in the middle of the room and were performing a kind of ritual* over the fire while the others cheered them on. *
(I have mentioned that Lectroids do not bathe as a rule except twice in their lives; they do have a ritual of self-fumigation, however, which also constitutes recreation for them. A fire using their excrement is started on the floor and several of them strip and shake their clothes over the flames. Small parasites which infest their bodies fall out of their clothes and into the fire where they explode with different noises, depending upon the parasite’s size. The cumulative effect of all these little explosions is, to the Lectroid ear, the sweetest kind of music, akin to a symphony.)
We tossed in a couple of grenades and kept moving. I didn’t look back, but a second later all hell broke loose. There was an explosion, and then someone must have pushed the alarm because it started blowing like crazy.”

11:29 P.M.—Sporadic alarms* begin sounding throughout the camp. *
(It has been a matter of great speculation why the alarms at Yoyodyne were not sounded sooner and why, once sounded, many failed to function. A subsequent investigation by the FBI revealed that much of the alarm-system wiring in the camp had been chewed through, presumably by the Lectroids themselves.)
Small groups of Lectroids begin emerging from various buildings only to be strafed by Casper Lindley. Tommy and I start to get anxious, wondering whether they have heard the alarm inside the hangar. We haven’t long to wait, as several Lectroids poke their heads out a side door. We’re on them immediately, John Parker expediting a couple of them while Tommy and I lead our teams inside, by now joined by Mrs. Johnson and her group.

11:40 P.M.—(Secretary of Defense’s note)—“I had followed Bigbooté underground to where they had the girl locked in the rocking chest over the fire, although at the time I didn’t know what was in the chest. I thought it was something they were cooking . . . Bigbooté and two of his cronies. He called one of them O’Connor. ‘What has she said?’ Bigbooté asked. ‘Nothing,’ they said. ‘She won’t talk.’ In the mean time the telephone rang, and Bigbooté answered. He said something into the phone like ‘I’ll be right there’ and then hung up, looking extremely agitated, like his mother just died. ‘That was John Whorfin, John O’Connor,’ he said. ‘We’re under attack by Buckaroo Banzai’s boys, and he wants us to kill the girl and go up there.’ ‘To go home?’ O’Connor said. ‘With what?’ said Bigbooté. ‘The Overthruster John Whorfin is building with Buckaroo Banzai’s help,’ said O’Connor. ‘Forget it,’ sighed Bigbooté. ‘He wants us to go up there to die with him.’ ‘What’s wrong with that?’ said O’Connor. ‘If you want to die, that’s your business,’ said Bigbooté ‘Yoyodyne is my business, and I’m not going to stand by and watch it destroyed ‘What can we do?’ asked O’Connor. ‘I’ve been thinking of eating Whorfin’s brain, John O’Connor,’ said Bigbooté, and O’Connor’s eyes nearly popped out. ‘Eating John Whorfin’s brain? Are you crazy?’ said O’Connor. ‘He’s our leader.’ ‘He’s the only one they want,’ said Bigbooté. ‘Who?’ ‘The Nova Police. They left us alone all these years. They left us alone to get rich. It wasn’t until John Whorfin came back that they came down. If I ate Whorfin’s brain, they’d leave us alone.’ ‘What about Buckaroo Banzai?’ asked John O’Connor. ‘I can deal with Banzai,’ said Bigbooté. ‘I’m a born negotiator.’ ‘But he saw us kill the hunters and the highway patrolman,’ said O’Connor. ‘Are you forgetting?’ Bigbooté suddenly lifted O’Connor off the floor and shook him. ‘You with me or not, John O’Connor?’ he screamed. O’Connor nodded. ‘How about you?’ Bigbooté asked the other one. ‘I’m with you, John Bigbooté,’ the other said. ‘Then let’s take the Oath of the Flying Fish,’ Bigbooté said. They all raised their hands, made some kind of sign, and then started upstairs. ‘What about the girl?’ John O’Connor said. ‘Turn up the heat,’ Bigbooté said. O’Connor dropped more coals on the fire, and they left. That’s when I came forward at considerable personal risk to myself and saved the girl.”

11:45 P.M.—High above the hangar floor in that room called by the Lectroids the Shock Tower, Buckaroo Banzai is nearly unconscious and Whorfin-as-Lizardo is growing desperate, as the tide of battle turns against him. As we press the attack forward and B. Banzai refuses to help him build the OVERTHRUSTER he craves, Whorfin-as-Lizardo reacts predictably—increasing once again the voltage of B. Banzai’s shock treatments. “Devil take you, Banzai!” he screams. “Blast your eyes!” “It’s no use, Whorfin,” mutters B. Banzai, trying to keep from drifting into that deep twilight that makes his speech slow and heavy. “You’re running out of time.” “
You’re
running out of time, Banzai!” But Whorfin knows he must make a decision and with quivering dread does so as John Bigbooté, John O’Connor, and John Gomez report to him. “Ready the Panther ship,” he says. “We’re taking off.” “Where are we going?” asks Bigbooté. “When we’re airborne, I’ll ask your advice,” says Whorfin. “Now go!” On that understanding they part, Bigbooté and O’Connor roughly pushing aside their own fighters to board the ship. “Now I’ll deal with you, Banzai!” says Whorfin, his hand moving again to the rheostat when suddenly Perfect Tommy and I burst into the room and Whorfin leaps over the railing to the hangar floor several stories below. Again, Death will have none of him, as he picks up his broken bones and with the assistance of several Lectroids is taken to the Panther ship. Though weakened after his ordeal, B. Banzai shoots out the door after his prey the moment we free him from the constraints of the electric chair. He races down the steps to the hangar floor, leaping perhaps the last twenty feet, and, joined by the swift John Parker, gains the Panther ship as its last tether is dropped away. The scene is pitiful: retreating Lectroids with the knowledge that their leader is aboard the ship, the doors to which have been closed and locked to them by his cowardly concern only for himself. The raving Lectroids even for a moment succeed in moving my heart; but only for a moment, as they bang on the doors of the ship panting and snarling, blaspheming with every insult their language furnishes.

11:52 P.M.—B. Banzai and John Parker climb to the rear of the giant craft, kicking away stranded Lectroids, and succeed in shooting their way into an escape vehicle attached to the larger ship. Once inside the tiny auxiliary craft, reminiscent of the Adder thermopod which brought John Parker to Earth, they seek to gain entry to the Panther ship, only to experience the sensation of a sudden lurching movement. “We’re taking off!” John Parker exclaims.

11:53 P.M.—The evil face of John Whorfin-as-Lizardo can be seen through the Panther ship window, his closest aides, Bigbooté and O’Connor beside him, and behind them with a brooding face, the unknown quantity of John Gomez. The beams of their crude OVERTHRUSTER flash out from the ship and attempt to focus on the giant hangar doors. At all events, they are not waiting for the effectiveness of the OVERTHRUSTER, as the ship lurches forward on rails once more. Only futile conjectures can be made as to the conversation inside the ship. One can imagine, even see, John Bigbooté twisting his hands with furious energy . . . Whorfin-as-Lizardo with utter disregard for their hopeless situation, ordering the ship forward while wildly trying to control the aiming beams of his primitive OVERTHRUSTER.

11:53 P.M.—(Penny Priddy’s note)—“The Secretary opened the torture cradle and stood leering at me for several seconds. I then asked weakly if he would put out the fire burning beneath me and in the same breath must have mentioned something about the OVERTHRUSTER in my purse, because he immediately forgot me and began searching my purse. Once he found it, that was the last I saw of him. He ran away with the OVERTHRUSTER, leaving me in the silence and the gloom of that hard rocky place, still lying in the torture cradle. It was not until several minutes later when Mrs. Johnson came along that I could at last imagine myself to have survived.”

11:54 P.M.—The Panther ship charges forward, crashing into the other dimension but only partially so, its OVERTHRUSTER clearly defective, and yet effective enough to work a miracle. As we battle the last of the Lectroids willing to resist (for now with the retreat of their masters, the fight has truly gone out of them), New Jersey, who has been fighting like one whose strength cannot be measured, yells out to me: “Reno! Look behind you!” Thinking it a warning meant to alert me, I whirl in time to behold a handsome young Italian wearing a laboratory smock and a look of the most intense consternation; despite the fact that his hair is black and he is roughly fifty years younger than he was when I last saw him, I would know him anywhere. He is the young Lizardo and has just stepped out of the wall where the Panther ship has become half-lodged in the Eighth Dimension. I shout at him to take cover, for there is still fighting and then I glance upward at the cockpit of the Panther ship, where Whorfin-as-Lizardo has been transformed into the most hideous of Lectroids, his mere appearance ample enough cause to have made his name a word of fear to all. At last, perhaps sensing that his fate is upon him, he shrieks loudly enough even to be heard where I stood, as, like so many of his race, he seeks forgetfulness of self in violent action, once more attempting to penetrate the wall of the hangar and escape into the Eighth Dimension. But something is clearly wrong. The Panther ship spurts forward again, this time the Eighth Dimension closing its door completely to him; and the ship plows through the hangar doors, simply knocking them down and lumbering on its way.

11:56 P.M.—Four minutes until midnight, our deadline, and Whorfin is airborne. He lacks an effective OVERTHRUSTER, but does John Emdall know that?

Buckaroo Banzai and John Parker, only now recovering from the shock of crashing through the hangar doors and an almost-as-brutal takeoff, are frantically back at work, trying to open the door and enter the main ship, but it is hopeless. Unknown to them, however, the cutthroats in the cockpit are about to give them an unwitting helping hand.

Because there have been so many versions and so little real evidence concerning what happened in the Panther ship cockpit during those crucial minutes of flight, it occurs to me that the reader might like to share with me a document recently sent to the Banzai Institute by Federal Express. It bears no traceable return address and must simply be attributed to that still-unearthed Adder espionage network on this planet, but after careful study of its chemical composition, I believe the parchment to be authentically Adder. It purports to be a record of cockpit communications among John Whorfin and his aides during those fateful minutes aloft monitored by the Adder father ship. It is not my purpose to quote extensively from it—it will be published in due time in its entirety. The key section, however, bears upon what happened next in our narrative, and so I will reprint it:

John Bigbooté:
Where are we going?

John Whorfin:
To Planet 10!

John Bigbooté:
Without the Overthruster? They’ll shoot us from the sky!

John Whorfin:
One more word out of you, Bigboote—

John Bigbooté:
It’s Bigbooté

John Gomez:
Careful, Whorfin, my liege, he means to eat your brains!

John Whorfin:
What?

John Bigbooté:
No! Help me, John O’Connor!

John Whorfin:
Stop him! Release the pod! No one leaves!

(Apparently, John Bigbooté runs from the cockpit in hopes of reaching the emergency pod and making good his escape. The pod is released as this point.)

11:57 P.M.—Buckaroo Banzai and John Parker find themselves jettisoned from the main ship and falling rapidly to Earth. Flipping switches, turning strange knobs whose functions are unclear, they grapple with the instruments in an unwieldy effort to reverse their plunge. “Can’t you fly this thing, John Parker?” Buckaroo asks frantically. “It’s different from ours,” John Parker replies. “Anyway, I failed flight school. I’m just a cop.” “In that case, try the radio,” says Buckaroo Banzai. “Messenger John Emdall, tell her Whorfin has no Overthruster. He is no threat.” “I’ll try,” John Parker vows. While John Parker attempts to work the radio, B. Banzai continues to try his hand at the controls, in effect faced with the task of having to learn an entirely new flight system and its practical operation within the twenty seconds remaining before the pod hits the ground. (That he succeeded in doing the seemingly impossible is now universally known. It is pointless to toy with the reader and play tug-of-war with his emotions. B. Banzai simply did it; to ask how is to ask too much. One may confirm his success by simply looking out the window.) At all events, the pod’s course suddenly righted, Buckaroo flies in hasty pursuit of Whorfin’s ship, testing the new controls as he goes. “Any guns on these things, John Parker?” “Boy, I hope so, Buckaroo Banzai.” And so it goes, the two of them, John Parker trying to reach John Emdall over the balky radio and Buckaroo Banzai at last locating the air cannon, which with each blast somersaults their round flying pod.

11:58 P.M.—John Whorfin’s Panther ship spots and zeros in on by Buckaroo Banzai. John Parker is still unable to reach John Emdall but senses a grave development if Buckaroo Banzai fails. “John Emdall will destroy the world,” he says. “No question about it.” “Thanks. That’s all I need to hear,” states Buckaroo Banzai, still closing fast on the Panther ship from seven o’clock. And then he fires.

John Whorfin:
John O’Connor, you’re the weakest individual I’ve ever known. You’re unworthy of your father’s blood.

John Gomez:
Something’s on our tail!

John Whorfin:
What was that?

John Gomez:
We’ve been hit! We’re going down!

John O’Connor:
We’re going down! What do we do?

John Whorfin:
Die like Lectroids.

(B. Banzai darts past them.)