Krokodil Tears

It was a convoy. An arvee and ten or twelve outriders. The Sandrat recognized the set-up. She had herself travelled with groups like this. It was a gangcult war party. There was a ninety-five percent probability they would be hostile. Gangcults were in the hostility business, after all.

She dredged up her past, recalling the girl who had been Jazzbeaux, who had been a War Chief. The Sandrat assumed the chapter was finished. The business at Spanish Fork had left them dead or gone. That would nullify all the treaties that protected them. There would be an open season on scattered singletons.

She had none of her 'pomp colours left, but she knew she was still recognizable. The eyepatch was a give- away.

They were bearing down fast. There wasn't time to find a sandhole and hide. She would have to take her chances.

She unflapped her holster, and shifted it round so it hung behind her waist, out of sight.

Maybe they would want a girl for recreational purposes. She could put up with that if it got her to a city, or within reach of a ve-hickle she could scav. It would be no worse than she had lived through before.

The outriders were almost on her. She stuck out her thumb.

It was worse than she could have imagined. The arvee was painted red, white and blue, and had a Statue of Liberty hood ornament. An ice cream truck musichip played 'Yankee Doodle.' The point rider wore tight white- and-blue striped pants, a red tailcoat, a dyed white beard and a stars-and-stripes stovepipe hat. On his cyketank was a bright legend, AMERICA? DON'T FREAK WITH IT!

It was the Daughters of the American Revolution, with a few Minutemen thrown in. And they remembered only too well who she was.

The pointrider turned and skidded to a stop, signing to the rest of the convoy to follow suit.

'Well, looky-looky-looky,' said Uncle Sam, 'if it ain't that commie ratskag Jazzbeaux Bonney, late of the Psychopomps, late of the human race. You look like somethin' the goat wouldn't rut with…'

The Sandrat stood stiffly, wondering whether she had a chance.

The arvee doors opened up, and the DAR piled out. Miss Liberty was there. She tucked her unlit torch under her arm, and smiled. She had more teeth than a game-show hostess on ZeeBeeCee, and breasts like udders.

'My deah,' she cooed, croaking like Katharine Hepburn, 'it's been sempleah ages…'

The Sandrat didn't give them any resistance as they took her weapons away from her.

Miss Liberty raised her veil and kissed the Sandrat on the cheeks. The President of the DAR chapter was old for the gangcult game, twenty-three or -four. It must be the politics.

It was late afternoon. The light would be going soon. A couple of Minutemen were binding together two cloth- padded lengths of wood. They got their cross put together and planted in the sand.

'Such a shame about President North's Big Bonus, wasn't it?' said Miss Liberty. The Sandrat had no idea what she was talking about. 'Well, I've always said that Sollie Ollie was just a tad too radical to hold high office in these heah United States.'

A teenage matron squirted gasoline on the cross with a flyspray. Uncle Sam brought out a box of marshmallows and some skewers. Three blonde-haired, freckle-faced children in immaculate overalls, with Old Glory on one tit and the swastika on the other, sang 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat.'

'I think we're gonna have us a regular patriotic cook-out here, Madame Prezz,' said Uncle Sam.

Miss Liberty put her arm around the Sandrat. 'My deah,' she said. 'You wouldn't happen to have a light, would you?'

The Sandrat spat in her face.

Miss Liberty smiled, and wiped the spittle away with a lace-edged hankie she produced from her sleeve.

'Oh well, nevah mind.'

She took out her torch and twisted it. A jet of flame shot out and fell upon the cross, which caught light immediately.

'It warms your heart, doesn't it? This used to be a hell of a country, before we started letting red slits like you run loose in the streets frightening the children with their hammers and sickles.'

The children joined hands with Uncle Sam and danced around the burning cross.

The Sandrat was shoved roughly towards the cross. She felt the heat wafting across the evening air towards her.

'I guess what we've got here, Jazzbeaux,' Miss Liberty said, 'is a triumph for Truth, Justice and the American Way…'

VIII

In the Outer Darkness, the Ancient Adversary waited while the Dark Ones swarmed towards the light. It had long since ceased to define itself except in terms of its enemies. The game that was being played out in the shadows around the planet Earth was old beyond even its understanding.

For an eternity, it had been alone against the Dark, unsupported even by the fragile hopes of humanity. Now, it was reaching out, spiralling its essence down towards the wormhole in the fabric of the Dark, ready to feed itself into the earthly plane, to become one with the Vessel. It had observed the Vessel from afar, peering through the lens in the moon, tracking the human dot through the sandscape.

Without knowing why, it assumed a ghostshape. Dimensions meant nothing in the Darkness, but it stretched its tail across the shadows, and thrust its snout towards the light. Sharp teeth grew in rows, rough ridges raised across its back. Flat toadlike eyes blinked, watering. There was nothing to see yet, but that would come.

Clawing at the substance of the dark, it wriggled towards the Gateway, squeezing its eternal purpose into the elongated bulb of its lizard brain.

Without knowing why, it talked to itself.

'Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock…'

Down on the Earth, the Vessel was waiting, and so was the Prey…

IX

Miss Liberty marched her towards the cross.

'I just want to ask you one question,' the leaderene said.

'Go on,' spat the Sandrat.

'Are you now, or have you evah been, a member of the Communist Party?'

Flames licked the darkening sky. The DAR stood around, waiting for the entertainment. The children had stopped singing, and were lighting cross-shaped sparklers. They waved them around, chanting 'burn the commie, burn the commie' until Uncle Sam cuffed one of them around the ear.

The Sandrat felt the old skills coming back. Human speech returned, and her brain raced. 'Like the man said in the song, 'you have nothing to lose but your chains.''

She twisted out of Miss Liberty's grip, and sank a foot into the woman's midriff. The leaderene went down with a satisfying thump, her spiked coronet falling off.

The Sandrat darted back in time to avoid the spear of flame from the torch, and flung a handful of sand at Miss Liberty. The Daughter dropped the still-burning torch and a pool of fire spread around her. Her robes went up. That put her out of the fight for the moment.

There were only twenty-five or thirty more of them. Not easy, but she could do it. After all, she had been given a brain to think with while these patriots were being force-fed The Thoughts of Spiro Agnew, The