The Dead Town

red numbers were counting down on the bomb clock. But at other times, staring at him too much could wear you out, and you had to turn away to give your eyes a rest. The snow was soft and cool to look at, floating down through the dark like tiny angels all in white.

“The snow’s real pretty,” Nummy said. “It’s a pretty night.”

“Oh, yeah,” Mr. Lyss said, “it’s a magical night, breathtaking beauty everywhere you look, prettier than all the prettiness in all the pretty Christmas cards ever made — except for the ravenous monster Martians all over town eating people faster than a wood-chipper could chew up a damn potato!”

“I didn’t forget them Martians,” Nummy said, “if that’s what they are. But the night’s pretty anyway. So what do you want to do, you want to drive out to the end of town, maybe see are the cops and the roadblock still there?”

“They’re not cops, boy. They’re monsters pretending to be cops, and they’ll be there till they’ve eaten everyone in town.”

Although Mr. Lyss drove slowly, sometimes the back end of the car fishtailed or it slid toward one curb or the other. He always got control again before they hit anything, but already they needed a car with tire chains or winter tires.

If Mr. Lyss stole another car, one with tire chains, and if Nummy went with him, knowing from the start it was stealing, he would probably be a thief himself. Grandmama raised him, so the bad things he did would bring shame on her in front of God, where she was now.

Nummy said, “You don’t really know the monster cops are still there till you go look.”

“I know, all right.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’m a freaking genius,” Mr. Lyss said, spraying spit, gripping the steering wheel so hard that his knuckles looked as sharp as knives. “I just know things, my brain is so damn big. Back there in jail this morning, we hadn’t known each other two minutes till I knew you were a dummy, didn’t I?”

“That’s true,” Nummy admitted.

On the cross street ahead of them, a police car passed south to north, and Mr. Lyss said, “This is no good. We’ll never get out of town in a car. We’ve got to find another way.”

“Maybe we could go out the same way you come in. I always wanted to take me a ride on a train.”

“A cold, empty boxcar isn’t the glamorous fun it sounds like. Anyway, they’ll have the train yard covered.”

“Well, we can’t fly.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Mr. Lyss said. “If your skull is as hollow as it seems to be, I could tie a basket to your feet, blow hot air up your nose, and ride you out of here like you were a big old balloon.”

For a block or so, Nummy thought about that as the old man switched on the defroster and as the windshield, which had started to cloud at the edges, became clear once more. Then he said, “That don’t make no sense unless it was just you being mean.”

“You may be right.”

“I don’t know why you have to be mean.”

“I do it well. A man likes to do something if he’s good at it.”

“You aren’t as mean to me now as you was at first, back when we just met.”

After a silence, Mr. Lyss said, “Well, Peaches, I have my ups and downs. Nobody can be a hundred percent good at something 24/7.”

Mr. Lyss sometimes called him Peaches. Nummy wasn’t sure why.

“A couple times,” Nummy said, “I even sort of thought maybe we was getting to be friends.”

“I don’t want any friends,” Mr. Lyss said. “You take a Kleenex and blow that thought out of your head right now. Blow it out like the snot it is. I’m a loner and a rambler. Friends just weigh a man down. Friends are nothing but enemies waiting to happen. There’s nothing worse in this world than friendship.”

“Grandmama she always said friendship and love is what life is all about.”

“You just reminded me there is one thing worse than friendship. Love. Nothing will bring you down faster than love. It’s poison. Love kills.”

“I don’t see no way that’s true,” Nummy said.

“Well, it is true.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Don’t you call me a liar, boy. I’ve torn the throats out of men who called me a liar. I’ve cut their tongues out and fried them with onions for breakfast. I’m a dangerous sonofabitch when I’m riled.”

“I didn’t say liar. You’re just wrong about love, just wrong is all. Grandmama loved me, and love never killed me.”

“She’s dead, isn’t she?”

“Love didn’t kill her, it was the sickness. If I could’ve took her cancer into me and then died for her, I’d be dead now, and she’d be alive here with you.”

They rode in silence for a minute, and then Mr. Lyss said, “You shouldn’t always listen to me, boy, or take what I say too seriously. Not everything I say is genius.”

“Probably most of it is, but not what you said just now. You know what? Maybe we could skidoo.”

“Could what?”

“You know, like a snowmobile.”

Mr. Lyss steered the car carefully to the curb and stopped. “We could go overland. But is there enough snow for that? It’s like an inch on the ground.”

“Deeper than an inch,” Nummy said, “and lots more coming fast.”

“Where would we get a snowmobile?”

“People they have them all over town. And then there’s the snowmobile place they sell them over on Beartrack.”

“Another damn street with bear in its name. Whoever named the streets in this godforsaken jerkwater had about as much imagination as a stump.”

“Like I said, there’s a bunch of bears in the general area. We don’t got no tigers or zebras to name our streets after.”

The old man sat quietly for maybe two minutes, just watching the snow fall, as if he decided it was pretty, after all. This was a long silence for Mr. Lyss, who always had something to say about everything. Nummy was usually okay with people being silent with each other, but this much quiet from Mr. Lyss was worrisome because it made Nummy wonder what he was scheming.

Finally, Mr. Lyss said, “Peaches, you actually know anyone who has a snowmobile?”

“I know a couple.”

“Like who?”

“Like the Boze.”

“Boze?”

“Officer Barry Bozeman. People call him the Boze. He races off-road all year ’round in one or another thing.”

“Officer?”

“He’s a policeman. He laughs a lot. He makes you feel you’re as good as anyone.”

“He’s dead,” Mr. Lyss said bluntly. “If he’s a cop, they killed him and replaced him with one of their lookalikes.”

Nummy should have known the Boze was dead, because even the police chief, Rafael Jarmillo, was one of the aliens, so every cop was for sure one of them, too. All the real police were dead and eaten like happened that morning to all the people in the jail cells next to the one from which Nummy and Mr. Lyss escaped.

Grandmama always said no matter how sad something was, still you needed to keep in mind that you would be happy again someday, and you needed to go on. Going on was important, she said, going on and being happy and doing the right thing, because if you went on long enough and were happy enough and did the right thing often enough, you would get to go live with God. But God really didn’t like quitters.

“Is he married?” Mr. Lyss asked.

“Is who?”