Exterminator! by William S Burroughs

Author:William S Burroughs [S. Burroughs, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141903408
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2008-11-04T05:00:00+00:00

Twilight’s Last Gleamings

This film concerns a conspiracy to blow up a train carrying nerve gas from the west coast to the east coast where it is supposed to be dumped into the Atlantic. The conspiracy is not political. Only one FBI man is alert to the danger and he cannot convince his superiors that a conspiracy exists. He is playing a hunch and sometimes he doubts the validity of his intuition. Minutes before countdown he has the evidence he needs. He gets through to the President. Army, Navy, Marines converging on headquarters of the conspirators. FBI man rounds up local police and leads raiding party. Raiding party and conspirators wiped out. Marines, Army, Navy rush in through a pile of corpses and deactivate the robot-controlled missile that is designed to blow up the train. Conspiracy succeeds posthumously when a truck driver on LSD trip with a load of high octane gas crashes into the train.

Conspirators include a folksy meteorologist, an embittered homosexual, a Chinese camera man, a Lesbian, a Mexican pistolero, a Negro castrated in his cradle by rat bites. The time and place for countdown depends of course on prevailing winds and the meteorologist is busy with continual calculations, weather maps, barometer and wind reads, telescopic observation of clouds and birds. There are also instruments of his own invention. He is contemptuous of weather reports. “Doesn’t know a typhoon from a fart. You see that vulture up yonder? He can tell you more than a room full of weather maps and barometers. The birds know.”

As the conspirators move across the country the FBI man is always one step behind them. His investigations are handicapped by his belief that the conspiracy is political which sends him down a number of false trails.

Actually the conspiracy is financed by a private inheritance. This sum was left to Clem the meteorologist by an eccentric billionaire perturbed by overpopulation, air and water pollution, and the destruction of wild life.

BILLIONAIRE (on his deathbed): “Clem, swear to me by everything we both hold sacred that you will use every cent of that money to turn the clock back to 1899 when a silver dollar bought a good meal or a good piece of ass.”

Opening scene shows Old Glory in the wind seen through Telstar. “Star-Spangled Banner” is playing. Cut to conspirators headquarters in run-down 1920 bungalow. There are weather maps on the wall and a relief map of the U.S.A.

CLEM (looking up from Telstar): “Now I just wish that breeze would hold up for another 48 hours.”

Audrey the homosexual is looking through the Telstar… U.S. Army Reservation. Authorized Persons Only. Inside the gate the last cylinders of nerve gas are being loaded into a train. The Telstar lingers lovingly on the ass of a young soldier who is bending over to pick up a cylinder of gas.

Cut back to headquarters. Mr. Lee the Chinese camera man takes over at the Telstar. Train doors shut and locked. A gum-chewing MP reading Sextoons presses a button. The gates open and the train moves out.

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