Halloween and Other Seasons

“I love you, Baby Boss! I’ve loved you ever since our Cyber Selves fell in love!”

“And…I love you too!” Baby replied in wonder.

He jabbed at the Hamster Alarm with authority. “It’s time all the hamsters knew this! Time they all shared in our joy!”

“This will mean the end of hostilities, and the friendship of hamsters and chickens forever!”

“Hurrah!” said Cyber Spiffy.

The alarm was sounded, and the Underground Hamsters arrived to see Baby Boss and Doozy pledging their love.

“Hurrah!” all the hamsters cried.

At that moment the scaffolding gave way, along with the badly designed, half-finished dome, and tons of building material, as well as Cyber Spiffy’s partly finished mural, came crashing down.

No one said, “Oh, shit,” because, this time, they were all dead.

TRAIL OF THE CHROMIUM BANDITS

By Al Sarrantonio

Ride the Wild West.

Ride the Wild West with the hiss of falling spaceships splitting the sky like comet trails.

Ride the Wild West with justice in your heart and the remembered kiss of a woman on your lips.

Ride the Wild West in a Toyota.

~ * ~

Mitch Hilligan hooded his eyes to squint into the lowering sunset of West Texas. Something itched at his fingers, then burned; he looked down to see the raw red end of a cigarette gouging into the flesh of his thumb and forefinger. He dropped the cigarette into the dust and ground it out with the toe of his boot.

“What do you think, Sparky—game’s gonna start soon?” he said. He tried to bite his words before they came out, knowing how useless they were now, but still not quite used to the way things were. “Come on, Sparky, speak to me.” The dog at his feet wagged its tail, its tongue lolling out expectantly. Hilligan cursed shortly and drew a dog biscuit out of the deep pocket of his poncho. He tossed it to the ground and the dog was upon it instantly, making crunching sounds that annoyed Hilligan. He tried to ignore the sound, then suddenly drew his foot back to kick the dog. He hesitated, his anger draining.

“You’re a useless weapon, old pal,” he said, reaching to pet the dog on the ruined head that had once held Sparky’s intact brain. “Not your fault.”

Hilligan straightened, and brought his binoculars up to his eyes. He scanned the horizon below, searching for the telltale signs of a campfire, but found nothing. He cursed and lowered the binoculars. Waiting for night to fall before trying again.

They were stupid, in most ways, but incredibly crafty. Here they were, a band of four, leaving their droppings—candy wrappers, empty food cans, milk cartons, beer cans, liquor bottles, pissmarks, piles of shit—and still, Hilligan had barely had a glimpse of them for three days. One silhouette glinting in the sunset two nights ago, a hint of horizon movement the day before. He knew he was close but still they were all but invisible, leaving a trail of crap but it was the Invisible Man’s refuse.

“Yep, game’s gonna start soon,” Hilligan repeated, to himself.

Hilligan made camp twenty minutes later. The sunlight had dropped; the Moon was a weak sickle just cutting up the East. Stars burned into the purple of twilight; burned brighter into the blackness of night.

Sparky tried to piss, seemed to forget how, mewled as the wetness ran ineffectively down his leg followed by a runlet of tepid shit.

Hilligan cleaned the dog, settled him under the rusting rear of the Toyota Corolla and lit another cigarette. The dog, under his blanket, gave a large sigh and then slept.

Hilligan watched the stars, passing his cold gaze from Betelgeuse through Orion’s belt and down to Risius. The Milky Way stretched gauzily through the ecliptic, a pointillistic band of millions of tiny, distinct flaming suns.

“Games…” he said to himself, and then rolled into his blanket and lightly slept.

~ * ~

He slept heavily. The heat of day, not the light, awakened him. Sparky was still under the Toyota, awake, tongue lolling, dehydrated but not realizing it. He opened his mouth when Hilligan’s eyes met his, and for a moment Hilligan had hope; an aching sense of loss, combined with an overwhelming wish—and need—for the dog the way he had been, washed over him. But only a weak rumbling sound came out. Sparky put his head down on a front paw, still panting.

Hilligan poured water into a bowl and gave it to the dog. By the sun, it was already nine o’clock. It had been stupid to sleep so long; by now the band would be miles ahead.

Hilligan ate a can of beans, washing it down with a warm can of Coors, and then packed the car. The engine resisted, coughing toward death and then suddenly roaring into its bad muffler like a lion. On the seat next to him, Sparky slept. The radio was on, hissing nothingness, the occasional snatch of Country-Western music from a faraway station.

The day, the miles, rolled on.

He found their trail at four. A telltale pile of refuse and body wastes broadcast their direction loudly: West toward Lawrence. He thought fleetingly of Anne; he had left her in Lawrence not four days before, and the salt- taste of her first kiss still lingered on his lips. He saw her amusement at his blush—“Why, Marshall, one would think you’d never been kissed before,” and her deepening amusement and interest when he asked, “This love thing’s sort of a game, isn’t it?” and he remembered the look on her face that said, “Come back, come back soon…”

Hilligan turned his attention back to the bandit’s camp. If anything, they were even less concerned with his pursuit. They had been reading; he found a pile of Mad and Playboy magazines in with the chili and tuna cans; on closer inspection, the magazines were smeared with shit, had been used as toilet paper.

Once again, he stood on a ridge and studied the darkening sky with binoculars.

A movement among a group of live oaks.

Them.

A chill crawled up Hilligan’s back. He knew they had stopped for him. The game was about to begin. The images he had been able to push aside the last three days flashed into his mind, stark and terrible. The town that had been Davidson, Texas, roasted to the ground, the huge trough of their ship nosed into what had been the library; the smell of broiled human flesh left in its wake; black human bodies with open mouths and empty charcoal eyes, smoking ruins that had been buildings, a McDonalds, a 5 and dime; what they’d done to Sparky, half his head roasted off…

He remembered the way the people of Davidson had looked up to him when they made him Marshall not three weeks before, after he came walking out of the desert with his dog like a movie hero, tall, sure of himself, unnaturally handsome, what a Marshall should be. They sensed trouble; he said he’d take care of it. “Thanks, Marshall,” they’d said, giving him his Toyota to use. He’d believed he could protect them. And now their eyes were burned sockets, their mouths silenced even from screams…

Thanks, Marshall. He’d been on the way back from Lawrence when they’d needed him, seeing the black smoke from the desert through the windshield of the Toyota, roaring back into town just as the bandits were leaving, loading Jud Stern’s Plymouth Voyager with tennis rackets and golf clubs and guns from STERN’S SPORTING GOODS, laughing as they did so, turning to regard him with their perfect mirror chrome faces as he’d screamed, perfect human beings covered in chrome, running after them, one of them raising a lazy hand, turning the palm flat toward him but another standing next to the Voyager, smiling lazily, saying, “No, let’s make a game of it.”

The other shrugged, and lowered the hand to Sparky. The hand glowed metallically, and the dog buckled,