Last God Standing Read Online Free PDF Page B

point during the Civil War, the whole country would have been damned before the Battle of Bull Run.
    Chick Flaunt, Herb’s second in command and co-star, sprang out of the aisle between GPS Options and Satellite Radios.
    “Come on, Herbie! Get your bony butt up and tank that bird sonofabitch!”
    Flaunt, a smallish barrel of a man, was wearing his “Old Elvis” costume: white spandex unitard with sequined armpit wings, oversized sunglasses, elevator shoes and plasticene black pompadour. The shiny hairpiece sat slightly askew atop Flaunt’s actual hairpiece. As the camera crew dodged around them, Flaunt herded the ostrich toward Herb. Herb was on his hands and knees gasping for air.
    “Herbie! Heads up!”
    While long on personality, Herb was a deceptively small man. On a heavy day, after a weighty meal and a stroll through a pounding rainstorm, he topped the scale at a buck fifty. His balding pate shone through the thin spots in his dyed black hair, which he wore long, combed backward and slicked down to within an inch of its life. During his more frenetic commercials his hair would spring up around his head, the long comb-over bouncing furiously; a demented Cab Calloway in cowboy chaps. In another life he might have been one of the godfathers of rock & roll; a contemporary of Chuck Berry or Fats Domino. In this life, he was the lunatic who wrestled live anacondas on late night cable access.
    “Herbie! We’re burnin’ daylight!”
    Herb hopped to his feet and advanced, lunged, grabbed again for the ostrich’s neck while trying to sling his leg over the saddle. The ostrich swung itself around, dragging Herb along, and whipped him across the room. Herb slammed into the vending machine and shattered the glass front, sprawling among the chocolaty treasures inside.
    Flaunt threw an improvised “lasso” (an orange outdoor extension cord from the service center) over the ostrich’s head. The ostrich chest butted him into the magazine rack. Issues of Autotrader flapped skyward.
    “Hey!” I shouted. “Guys, wait!”
    But both men leaped to their feet, Herb bleeding now from a shallow cut across his forehead.
    “Flank him, Chick!”
    “Yeah! Just like the ’Cong in the Ashau Valley! July 10th, 1969!”
    Herb circled around behind the ostrich, who was rooting through a bucket of Puppy Chow. Flaunt countered, ducking and weaving like the referee of a crackhead kickfight.
    “That’s right, Herbie Boy! I’ll get him on his blind side!”
    They’d reconnected at a Republican VietNam veteran’s reunion/gambling boat trip up the Mississippi River in 1982. After bonding over tales of their heroic exploits (which included dawn patrols in a Honolulu whorehouse), Herb invited Flaunt to help him run Cooper & Sons Automotive International LLC. They’d been best friends and conjoined pains in my posterior ever since.
    “Flank him, Herbie! Flank his black ass good!”
    Despite what some fundamentalists claim, I didn’t hate anyone. When you’ve seen the ugly scars that mar the majority of mortal souls one is much the same as any other. But Chick Flaunt could rupture the patience of Job. My Old Testament Self would have gleefully burned him alive just to resurrect him and feed him to starving bears.
    “That’s it, Herbie! Now coldcock the bastard!”
    Sensing its imminent violation, the ostrich hissed and raised one massively muscled foot, its killing claws extended. A healthy adult male ostrich can weigh over two hundred pounds, run at thirty miles per hour, and gut a lion with one kick. Herb and Flaunt tensed for one final, mutually destructive pounce.
    “Stop!”
    Herb glared at me. Flaunt scowled, one oily lock of his Elvis pompadour dangling between his eyes. The ostrich glanced over at me, its deadly foot held at the ready.
    “You know these people?”
    “Yes. They’re harmless.”
    “I don’t believe you.”
    “You’re right. They’re idiots.”
    “I don’t have to put up with this. I’ve done