Death and the Black Window
“Son of a fuck,” Red groaned.
Something was different, he thought, kicking open the back glass of the camper shell. There was an earthy smell in his nose, and he hadn’t shivered himself awake like usual. He stuck his throbbing head out of the back of the truck to see what was up and saw that the intrusion had been the vestigial bloom of life. Spring was coming once again to the foothills.
Red winced, gently extricating himself from the back of the F-250. It had been his home since before E-day, since he’d come out here to the highlands with nothing but unpaid alimony and a craggy liver to his name. He leaned against the old truck and unzipped, his brain feeling like it was the size of a beach ball, fixing to pop his eyes from his head. What dribbled out was tea-colored and strong smelling, and when he caught a whiff, his stomach roiled in thermobaric war with itself. It felt as if he’d shotgunned a tall boy of battery acid.
He shook himself dry, hot pressure pushing at his bowels. Red sighed, hobbling like an old geezer towards the leanin’ tree where he dropped trou and grunted out his morning constitutional. His calloused feet ached horribly in the morning, big toes feeling fit to burst with hot lava, and he gasped a little bark of pain. It was like someone had ripped a strand of barbed wire from his rear with the same enthusiasm as yanking the chain-drive on an old mower. He almost didn’t want to look at what came out of him, but he did anyway. A lump of tarry black, speckled with blood.
Yep. No surprise there.
Rising to his full height, Red breathed deep of the clean mountain air. That was one benefit of the end times: no tractors, semis, buses, tugboats, or refineries with their noise and noxious fumes. No lifted trucks rolling coal down Main Street anymore.
He irritated the coals of his ash pit into coughing up some embers, added some kindling, and worked up a fire. Rummaging in the cab of his truck, the old man found some food and cooking utensils, but his hands shook so badly he dropped the plastic container. The impact and the crash of scattering cutlery across the logs split his skull. Red cursed, squinting at the pain, knowing he needed some drink in him soon, like, ASAP. But… there was the ulcer, which had become a big problem as of late. Anything that prevented him from drink was a big problem. Food helped, if only a bit.
Scooping out a glob of deer tallow, Red tossed it into a grimy cast iron skillet, and took out the skinned squirrel carcasses he’d processed the night before. He turned the small muscular bodies over in his hands for a long moment, then shook something loose in his head. The skewers threaded easily, in one end and out the other, and Red sat watching them blister over the fire.
While they cooked, he dug into his backpack and came out with the old two-liter Pepsi bottle, clear plastic stained by the corn mash sloshing within. 120 proof. Tasted like paint thinner and could probably do that job just as well. Red unscrewed the cap, his gorge rising at the initial smell. Just a taste, he thought, taking a tiny snoot and rolling it around in his mouth. The burn across the inside of his cheeks didn’t bother him anymore. What comes after… that makes you sweat, don’t it, old son? He snickered through his teeth and swallowed.
The fire bloomed in his belly again, weak and waiting for what was to come. It wasn’t more than ten seconds when he felt the stab, like someone pinning his guts to his spine with a red-hot ice pick. He doubled over, reaching out to anything that would have him, but a gray veil dropped over his vision, and he collapsed against the truck.
“Got damn…” Red hissed, waiting for the pain to subside.
Any further communion could wait until the squirrels were done. He ate them both without tasting the stringy, gamey meat. Just getting it down so the sauce could follow. This time, Red took three small sips, with only a few of Hell’s needles accompanying it.
The hands that shook at his wrists had steadied themselves just a little more.
Something was different, he thought, kicking open the back glass of the camper shell. There was an earthy smell in his nose, and he hadn’t shivered himself awake like usual. He stuck his throbbing head out of the back of the truck to see what was up and saw that the intrusion had been the vestigial bloom of life. Spring was coming once again to the foothills.
Red winced, gently extricating himself from the back of the F-250. It had been his home since before E-day, since he’d come out here to the highlands with nothing but unpaid alimony and a craggy liver to his name. He leaned against the old truck and unzipped, his brain feeling like it was the size of a beach ball, fixing to pop his eyes from his head. What dribbled out was tea-colored and strong smelling, and when he caught a whiff, his stomach roiled in thermobaric war with itself. It felt as if he’d shotgunned a tall boy of battery acid.
He shook himself dry, hot pressure pushing at his bowels. Red sighed, hobbling like an old geezer towards the leanin’ tree where he dropped trou and grunted out his morning constitutional. His calloused feet ached horribly in the morning, big toes feeling fit to burst with hot lava, and he gasped a little bark of pain. It was like someone had ripped a strand of barbed wire from his rear with the same enthusiasm as yanking the chain-drive on an old mower. He almost didn’t want to look at what came out of him, but he did anyway. A lump of tarry black, speckled with blood.
Yep. No surprise there.
Rising to his full height, Red breathed deep of the clean mountain air. That was one benefit of the end times: no tractors, semis, buses, tugboats, or refineries with their noise and noxious fumes. No lifted trucks rolling coal down Main Street anymore.
He irritated the coals of his ash pit into coughing up some embers, added some kindling, and worked up a fire. Rummaging in the cab of his truck, the old man found some food and cooking utensils, but his hands shook so badly he dropped the plastic container. The impact and the crash of scattering cutlery across the logs split his skull. Red cursed, squinting at the pain, knowing he needed some drink in him soon, like, ASAP. But… there was the ulcer, which had become a big problem as of late. Anything that prevented him from drink was a big problem. Food helped, if only a bit.
Scooping out a glob of deer tallow, Red tossed it into a grimy cast iron skillet, and took out the skinned squirrel carcasses he’d processed the night before. He turned the small muscular bodies over in his hands for a long moment, then shook something loose in his head. The skewers threaded easily, in one end and out the other, and Red sat watching them blister over the fire.
While they cooked, he dug into his backpack and came out with the old two-liter Pepsi bottle, clear plastic stained by the corn mash sloshing within. 120 proof. Tasted like paint thinner and could probably do that job just as well. Red unscrewed the cap, his gorge rising at the initial smell. Just a taste, he thought, taking a tiny snoot and rolling it around in his mouth. The burn across the inside of his cheeks didn’t bother him anymore. What comes after… that makes you sweat, don’t it, old son? He snickered through his teeth and swallowed.
The fire bloomed in his belly again, weak and waiting for what was to come. It wasn’t more than ten seconds when he felt the stab, like someone pinning his guts to his spine with a red-hot ice pick. He doubled over, reaching out to anything that would have him, but a gray veil dropped over his vision, and he collapsed against the truck.
“Got damn…” Red hissed, waiting for the pain to subside.
Any further communion could wait until the squirrels were done. He ate them both without tasting the stringy, gamey meat. Just getting it down so the sauce could follow. This time, Red took three small sips, with only a few of Hell’s needles accompanying it.
The hands that shook at his wrists had steadied themselves just a little more.
#
Before e got to his usual chores, Red made his way to water. There was a lot to do, but as he drove down to Jack’s Fork, the sight warmed him quicker than the poison ever could. It ran cleaner and clearer than ever. He relied on the precious, spring-fed stream for not only bathing, but also drinking water, and more for his still. It was his own river Styx.
Before soiling the clean water with his grimy flesh, he dunked his head in, and drank deep of the mountain stream. The cold water eased his roiling gut into a pleasant nothingness, and Red plunged his naked body into the stream. Inhaling sharply as it hit his solar plexus, he figured the water was more than just a tonic, it was a salve to everything. Like the corn, he wouldn’t be alive without it.
The sun came up, burning away the mist that pooled in the hollers and bottoms of the foothills, just a few feet shy of true mountains. Red was grateful for the numbing effect the stream had on his crystal-packed joints. He’d always heard the hippies swear by cold showers and didn’t kin to that just on principle. After having immersed himself in the perpetually cool stream every morning, he had to admit it: the long-hairs had been on to somethin’ all along.
Cleaned and hydrated, Red filled the other two-liter bottles with spring water and saw the flashes of trout darting through the stream. A brief surge of hope flooded him at the sight. Spring meant good fishing. Spring meant no more coon and squirrel for dinner or trying to track and hunt the elusive mule deer across the wilds. He tossed the bottles into the truck, thinking of how a nice pan-fried Rainbow or bass would taste, and spit filled his mouth.
That done, the old F-250 rumbled up the mountain slope to his little private farm. The corn-juice was hard on the old girl’s engine, but she took it willingly enough. Red had learned the hard way that gas expired, so she didn’t have much choice. As he rolled up to the farm, he thought of those few golden months after E-day, when most of the populace had killed itself off in a violent frenzy of mass suicide. Cars full of gas and liquor stores full of Wild Turkey and Uncle Jack and all those delicious spirits he’d taken for granted... they were just left behind.
Red turned on the irrigation system, remembering when the hippies had lambasted the advent of GMO crops. He had been skeptical at first, too, thinking the idea of crops that could grow regardless of season and climate just wasn’t right somehow. Nothing good could come of such chemical sorcery. But he was glad for the “franken-corn,” now that the stalks were almost up to his shoulders. The soil was thin and rocky up on the mountain, not meant for farming like the fertile bottoms down in the boot-heel. Red knew damn well that without the engineered crops, he’d be shit out of luck. “Shoulder-high by July” was no longer a valid saying.
He went to the ethanol distiller, very similar to his shine-still, but sporting a few extra attachments to process raw ingredients into E85. A farmer named Otis Bauer had hired him right before the shit hit and showed him how to work it. The state had given the old man serious tax breaks for helping make the E85 ethanol that was slowly phasing out lead gas. During his time there, the old man had shown him how to run the operation and tend to his humble corn crop. Barely a day after Red had gotten it all down perfect, ol’ Otis had found a nice ponderin’ spot, and decided to suck-start the barrel of his twelve gauge.
Damn shame, Red thought; he had liked the guy.
Thankfully, the still was pretty self-sustaining, aside from some basic maintenance once you added the corn sludge and expired gasoline. Red didn’t want to think about what would happen if the still broke down, or if the old diesel truck decided she couldn’t take the harsh corn-juice anymore. He figured he and his daddy’s old farm truck had a lot in common in that regard.
The farm duties tended, he took Hogback Road, the one meandering brown vein that went up the side of Deschutes Mountain. It was carved in from the town of Buck’s Point below, and snaked down the other side, to where his hidden mash-still was. He drove slow, the truck wheezing and struggling to shift to 4-lo.
Red braked hard when he saw the boot prints in the road, his ticker lurching over itself. Two sets. It looked like they came in from the woods to the left and followed the dirt road down. He glanced over at the old scattergun he’d had to pry from Otis’s stiff, dead hands. It took a long time of cleaning to get that crust of blood off. He hoped he wouldn’t be adding a new coat today.
Before soiling the clean water with his grimy flesh, he dunked his head in, and drank deep of the mountain stream. The cold water eased his roiling gut into a pleasant nothingness, and Red plunged his naked body into the stream. Inhaling sharply as it hit his solar plexus, he figured the water was more than just a tonic, it was a salve to everything. Like the corn, he wouldn’t be alive without it.
The sun came up, burning away the mist that pooled in the hollers and bottoms of the foothills, just a few feet shy of true mountains. Red was grateful for the numbing effect the stream had on his crystal-packed joints. He’d always heard the hippies swear by cold showers and didn’t kin to that just on principle. After having immersed himself in the perpetually cool stream every morning, he had to admit it: the long-hairs had been on to somethin’ all along.
Cleaned and hydrated, Red filled the other two-liter bottles with spring water and saw the flashes of trout darting through the stream. A brief surge of hope flooded him at the sight. Spring meant good fishing. Spring meant no more coon and squirrel for dinner or trying to track and hunt the elusive mule deer across the wilds. He tossed the bottles into the truck, thinking of how a nice pan-fried Rainbow or bass would taste, and spit filled his mouth.
That done, the old F-250 rumbled up the mountain slope to his little private farm. The corn-juice was hard on the old girl’s engine, but she took it willingly enough. Red had learned the hard way that gas expired, so she didn’t have much choice. As he rolled up to the farm, he thought of those few golden months after E-day, when most of the populace had killed itself off in a violent frenzy of mass suicide. Cars full of gas and liquor stores full of Wild Turkey and Uncle Jack and all those delicious spirits he’d taken for granted... they were just left behind.
Red turned on the irrigation system, remembering when the hippies had lambasted the advent of GMO crops. He had been skeptical at first, too, thinking the idea of crops that could grow regardless of season and climate just wasn’t right somehow. Nothing good could come of such chemical sorcery. But he was glad for the “franken-corn,” now that the stalks were almost up to his shoulders. The soil was thin and rocky up on the mountain, not meant for farming like the fertile bottoms down in the boot-heel. Red knew damn well that without the engineered crops, he’d be shit out of luck. “Shoulder-high by July” was no longer a valid saying.
He went to the ethanol distiller, very similar to his shine-still, but sporting a few extra attachments to process raw ingredients into E85. A farmer named Otis Bauer had hired him right before the shit hit and showed him how to work it. The state had given the old man serious tax breaks for helping make the E85 ethanol that was slowly phasing out lead gas. During his time there, the old man had shown him how to run the operation and tend to his humble corn crop. Barely a day after Red had gotten it all down perfect, ol’ Otis had found a nice ponderin’ spot, and decided to suck-start the barrel of his twelve gauge.
Damn shame, Red thought; he had liked the guy.
Thankfully, the still was pretty self-sustaining, aside from some basic maintenance once you added the corn sludge and expired gasoline. Red didn’t want to think about what would happen if the still broke down, or if the old diesel truck decided she couldn’t take the harsh corn-juice anymore. He figured he and his daddy’s old farm truck had a lot in common in that regard.
The farm duties tended, he took Hogback Road, the one meandering brown vein that went up the side of Deschutes Mountain. It was carved in from the town of Buck’s Point below, and snaked down the other side, to where his hidden mash-still was. He drove slow, the truck wheezing and struggling to shift to 4-lo.
Red braked hard when he saw the boot prints in the road, his ticker lurching over itself. Two sets. It looked like they came in from the woods to the left and followed the dirt road down. He glanced over at the old scattergun he’d had to pry from Otis’s stiff, dead hands. It took a long time of cleaning to get that crust of blood off. He hoped he wouldn’t be adding a new coat today.
#
His still was located in what he’d dubbed “Possum Holler,” on account of the many marsupials populating the little grove. Red figured the musty vomit smell of the corn fermenting drew them in, snouts filled with the sugar and yeast he’d spilled hundreds of times while getting the initial mixture right. More than once, he’d found a few of the critters stone-dead from lickin’ up the foreshot that dripped out of the condenser intake valve.
The start of the trail was a quarter mile hike from the bend in the road, marked by an inconspicuous pile of short-pine boughs. It stood out like a sore thumb to Red, but for the average passerby, it just looked like a clump of deadfall. He idled past it, then crunched to a stop, that old pressure flooding hot against his bowels. Someone had kicked the pile of boughs aside.
Red groaned softly at the implications, then moved the truck off the road. It died with a wheeze and belch of burnt oil smoke. He made a quick mental note to run into town to get some Sea Foam for the ol’ girl, providing he made it out of this little scrap alive.
The old man set his jaw against the grinding throb in his feet, cautiously making his way down the trail with the shotgun set at port arms. He found them in no time at all. His first thought upon seeing them was that they were young. Late twenties, early thirties. Hard to pin down from the grime and the beards. Second, they were in withdrawal, both stooped over the crossover bar of the still, spastically poking around like monkeys at the bulge of an anthill. One of them had his hand under the outflow valve at the end of the catch barrel, where impurities were condensed and bled out at a steady drip.
Red grinned. They couldn’t figure out how to get the outflow going.
“Piece’a shit don’t work, Russ, I done told you,” the one with the belly said, scratching at the greasy mop of thinning straw on his scalp.
“No, I done told you, dumbass, I seen that ol’ boy come out here like clockwork. It works, we just gotta—” Russ had frozen mid-rant, folded at the waist. He waited, the sleeve of his camo hunting jacket hanging over one quivering hand, trucker hat askew.
All three looked skyward, their eyes darting at anything they could see. The sounds of the forest went flat, as if an invisible giant had fitted the dome of a snow globe over their heads and sucked all the oxygen out. Red reached for his flask and gulped back a fist of lava as the slate-gray sky, ceilinged with low clouds, opened up above them. It was like God himself had popped open a window housed in the fabric of space-time. A neat, perfectly black rectangle unfolded in the sky above where they stood, about the size of a football field.
“Aw hell, hurry it up, Russell!” straw-hair said, his voice high with fear. They started kicking at the pipes and trying to wrench them free. Now that just wouldn’t do, they were gonna break the goddamn thing.
“I’m tryin’ Clayton, goddamnit!” Russ brayed.
The old man was hoping to just sit and wait for the suicide ray, or whatever it was, to do its thing. He could already feel that pulling behind his eyes, that scrambling of synapses or whatever it was that made people do what they did. But another second, and they were going to tear the condensation trap off the first boiler.
Red came out of the thicket and came toward them at a slow but steady walk, the shotgun trained on the camouflaged one, Russ. The boy was bent over, trying to shoulder his larger partner out of the way to wrench one of the brass pipes free. The barrel of the Mossberg wavered slightly, as Red was aware of the black window right above them. Even through the stunting haze of shine, he could feel the whispers tickling his ear, that ephemeral white noise that was the last thing anyone heard. They ended up shooting themselves, or slashing their own throats, or using damn near whatever was handy to do the job.
He whistled a single high, shrill note, sounding funny in the blunted acoustic sphere that surrounded them. Neither of the men had even noticed his incursion, they were so out of sorts and jonesing for sauce. Russ shot his head up at the noise like a prairie dog, exactly like Red had hoped he would. He fired with no hesitation.
Red hadn’t had cause to fire on someone since Qui Nang, and that had been through a scope, from two hundred yards of forest canopy. This was ten feet, and the twelve-gauge slug wasn’t as neat as a 5.56 NATO round. The top half of Russell’s head exploded in an awesome corona of gore and bone. His trucker hat, emblazoned with HUZZAH VALLEY FLOAT TOURS, fell in a cloud of burnt shreds over his shoulders. The thunder of a shotgun normally called out for seconds up in the valley, but under the hole in the sky, the report was cut off as neatly as scissors through a silken bow. Russ fell on his back, the rest of his noggin spilling out onto the ground like a bowl of spilled oatmeal.
Red swiveled toward Clayton, who was flailing around on the ground like a salted slug, hands pulling at his ugly pate of hair, not even aware his buddy got slicked.
“No… nuh… no!” he gurgled, body contorting wickedly as he tried to fight whatever it was that was projected into their brains. Whatever it was, the booze had helped silence Red’s own. The immediate threat neutralized, he just looked on, debating inwardly on just how this ol’ boy might buy the farm. Red considered just shooting him and putting him out of his misery, but then remembered the bowed condensation pipe, which elicited a flair of anger. Months of hard work ruined by a single kink in the system.
So, he just watched.
The straw-haired boy abruptly shot to his feet, eyes all bloodshot sclera as he peered at his partner’s scooped-out noggin. He muttered some sibilant nonsense, floundering around for something, anything to destroy himself with. Red quickly took another snoot of shine, watching the scumbag dart away. He lunged towards the large, salmon-colored rocks that populated the Saint Francois highlands like pimples on a greasy nose, swerving in front of one half the size of Red’s truck. Clayton corrected and ran dead at it full speed, diving face-first into it with all the enthusiasm of a swimmer at the crack of the starter pistol.
Red winced as he heard the definitive, splintering crunch of the boy’s skull. The recoil on impact snapped the chain of neck vertebrae, the sound so much like a pile of wet branches underfoot. The man let out the glottal squawk of a crow, rearing his drooping head back like a drunken marionette. Red had just enough time to register the sickening dent in the boy’s forehead. What was left of Clayton brought his skull against the rock once more, and again, with startling force.
Gouts of blood jumped up onto the rock like frogs, and the straw-haired form skittered down the rock to lay twitching spasmodically against the ground. Red walked from the scene, the sharp tang of urine coating the air. Stains darkened the seat of Clayton’s pants as his body sprawled beneath the rock, and nothing was sacred, just a poor inscription for a fitting headstone.
Red leaned over the ruins of his still, trying to bend the kink out of the pipe, but it would never be right again. He covered his face with his hands, but through his fingers, he heard a low, sonorous throb fill the air. It went below his skin, pulsating deep enough to make his molars vibrate. He whipped his head up and almost stumbled into the snare of the pipes. A drone hummed above the ground near him, close enough to swing a broom at.
He’d seen them before, the only sign of life from those obsidian rectangles in the sky. No epic armada of spaceships, or little green men with lasers, not for this invasion. Nothing so melodramatic. Just the black squares in the sky, opening silently. The drones had come a few months after most of humanity committed the mortal sin, but this one was close enough to bring up the hairs on Red’s arm. He’d seen them zooming around like little sharp-angled meteorites flashing across the horizon, the distant sonic booms left in their wake reminding Red of the F4’s coming in low to drop napalm on fishing villages. No screaming jet engines, only a noise you felt, instead of heard.
They tore the sky in all directions sometimes, but more often than not it would just be a single shape, every other week. The hellish things had been appearing more and more as of late, eyeless corners glaring. It reacted to his movement, receding to maybe forty feet above him, then advancing again just as smoothly.
Origami. That was the first thing to come into Red’s mind. The thing looked like some great black origami husk, all triangular planes and odd canted angles. It was so black it seemed to eat the light around it, swallowing the high noon sun down an endless, unseen throat. It just hovered there, the low pulsing drone making Red’s eyes water like a punch to the nose.
For a long time, they just went on like that, a kind of Mexican standoff with no guns pointed. Red felt a twist in his gut, like he was somehow hiding out in the open. A non-entity. He cursed and racked the shotgun at the thing. The drone did not move.
“Fuck you,” Red said simply, and fired at the thing. He had no idea what to expect, perhaps maybe a ricochet, or a spark as lead met metal, or whatever the hell the thing was made of.
Instead, the slug disappeared into the drone, the shockwave blurring the sharpness of the edges. Red blinked as the wavering particles moved slowly back into focus. It was like he’d fired into a pyramid of static.
He heard a high-pitched whine then, like one of them stratosphere spy jets winding up for takeoff on the tarmac. It was a sound that spoke of immense mechanical power, and Red waited to be obliterated by some yet unseen weapon.
The thing blasted off instead, the wash knocking his lungs flat against his ribs. Red was suddenly back at the Crazy Q the day Jezebel tried to learn him how to fly. Dust in his eyes, boots over his head, then liquid blackness.
The start of the trail was a quarter mile hike from the bend in the road, marked by an inconspicuous pile of short-pine boughs. It stood out like a sore thumb to Red, but for the average passerby, it just looked like a clump of deadfall. He idled past it, then crunched to a stop, that old pressure flooding hot against his bowels. Someone had kicked the pile of boughs aside.
Red groaned softly at the implications, then moved the truck off the road. It died with a wheeze and belch of burnt oil smoke. He made a quick mental note to run into town to get some Sea Foam for the ol’ girl, providing he made it out of this little scrap alive.
The old man set his jaw against the grinding throb in his feet, cautiously making his way down the trail with the shotgun set at port arms. He found them in no time at all. His first thought upon seeing them was that they were young. Late twenties, early thirties. Hard to pin down from the grime and the beards. Second, they were in withdrawal, both stooped over the crossover bar of the still, spastically poking around like monkeys at the bulge of an anthill. One of them had his hand under the outflow valve at the end of the catch barrel, where impurities were condensed and bled out at a steady drip.
Red grinned. They couldn’t figure out how to get the outflow going.
“Piece’a shit don’t work, Russ, I done told you,” the one with the belly said, scratching at the greasy mop of thinning straw on his scalp.
“No, I done told you, dumbass, I seen that ol’ boy come out here like clockwork. It works, we just gotta—” Russ had frozen mid-rant, folded at the waist. He waited, the sleeve of his camo hunting jacket hanging over one quivering hand, trucker hat askew.
All three looked skyward, their eyes darting at anything they could see. The sounds of the forest went flat, as if an invisible giant had fitted the dome of a snow globe over their heads and sucked all the oxygen out. Red reached for his flask and gulped back a fist of lava as the slate-gray sky, ceilinged with low clouds, opened up above them. It was like God himself had popped open a window housed in the fabric of space-time. A neat, perfectly black rectangle unfolded in the sky above where they stood, about the size of a football field.
“Aw hell, hurry it up, Russell!” straw-hair said, his voice high with fear. They started kicking at the pipes and trying to wrench them free. Now that just wouldn’t do, they were gonna break the goddamn thing.
“I’m tryin’ Clayton, goddamnit!” Russ brayed.
The old man was hoping to just sit and wait for the suicide ray, or whatever it was, to do its thing. He could already feel that pulling behind his eyes, that scrambling of synapses or whatever it was that made people do what they did. But another second, and they were going to tear the condensation trap off the first boiler.
Red came out of the thicket and came toward them at a slow but steady walk, the shotgun trained on the camouflaged one, Russ. The boy was bent over, trying to shoulder his larger partner out of the way to wrench one of the brass pipes free. The barrel of the Mossberg wavered slightly, as Red was aware of the black window right above them. Even through the stunting haze of shine, he could feel the whispers tickling his ear, that ephemeral white noise that was the last thing anyone heard. They ended up shooting themselves, or slashing their own throats, or using damn near whatever was handy to do the job.
He whistled a single high, shrill note, sounding funny in the blunted acoustic sphere that surrounded them. Neither of the men had even noticed his incursion, they were so out of sorts and jonesing for sauce. Russ shot his head up at the noise like a prairie dog, exactly like Red had hoped he would. He fired with no hesitation.
Red hadn’t had cause to fire on someone since Qui Nang, and that had been through a scope, from two hundred yards of forest canopy. This was ten feet, and the twelve-gauge slug wasn’t as neat as a 5.56 NATO round. The top half of Russell’s head exploded in an awesome corona of gore and bone. His trucker hat, emblazoned with HUZZAH VALLEY FLOAT TOURS, fell in a cloud of burnt shreds over his shoulders. The thunder of a shotgun normally called out for seconds up in the valley, but under the hole in the sky, the report was cut off as neatly as scissors through a silken bow. Russ fell on his back, the rest of his noggin spilling out onto the ground like a bowl of spilled oatmeal.
Red swiveled toward Clayton, who was flailing around on the ground like a salted slug, hands pulling at his ugly pate of hair, not even aware his buddy got slicked.
“No… nuh… no!” he gurgled, body contorting wickedly as he tried to fight whatever it was that was projected into their brains. Whatever it was, the booze had helped silence Red’s own. The immediate threat neutralized, he just looked on, debating inwardly on just how this ol’ boy might buy the farm. Red considered just shooting him and putting him out of his misery, but then remembered the bowed condensation pipe, which elicited a flair of anger. Months of hard work ruined by a single kink in the system.
So, he just watched.
The straw-haired boy abruptly shot to his feet, eyes all bloodshot sclera as he peered at his partner’s scooped-out noggin. He muttered some sibilant nonsense, floundering around for something, anything to destroy himself with. Red quickly took another snoot of shine, watching the scumbag dart away. He lunged towards the large, salmon-colored rocks that populated the Saint Francois highlands like pimples on a greasy nose, swerving in front of one half the size of Red’s truck. Clayton corrected and ran dead at it full speed, diving face-first into it with all the enthusiasm of a swimmer at the crack of the starter pistol.
Red winced as he heard the definitive, splintering crunch of the boy’s skull. The recoil on impact snapped the chain of neck vertebrae, the sound so much like a pile of wet branches underfoot. The man let out the glottal squawk of a crow, rearing his drooping head back like a drunken marionette. Red had just enough time to register the sickening dent in the boy’s forehead. What was left of Clayton brought his skull against the rock once more, and again, with startling force.
Gouts of blood jumped up onto the rock like frogs, and the straw-haired form skittered down the rock to lay twitching spasmodically against the ground. Red walked from the scene, the sharp tang of urine coating the air. Stains darkened the seat of Clayton’s pants as his body sprawled beneath the rock, and nothing was sacred, just a poor inscription for a fitting headstone.
Red leaned over the ruins of his still, trying to bend the kink out of the pipe, but it would never be right again. He covered his face with his hands, but through his fingers, he heard a low, sonorous throb fill the air. It went below his skin, pulsating deep enough to make his molars vibrate. He whipped his head up and almost stumbled into the snare of the pipes. A drone hummed above the ground near him, close enough to swing a broom at.
He’d seen them before, the only sign of life from those obsidian rectangles in the sky. No epic armada of spaceships, or little green men with lasers, not for this invasion. Nothing so melodramatic. Just the black squares in the sky, opening silently. The drones had come a few months after most of humanity committed the mortal sin, but this one was close enough to bring up the hairs on Red’s arm. He’d seen them zooming around like little sharp-angled meteorites flashing across the horizon, the distant sonic booms left in their wake reminding Red of the F4’s coming in low to drop napalm on fishing villages. No screaming jet engines, only a noise you felt, instead of heard.
They tore the sky in all directions sometimes, but more often than not it would just be a single shape, every other week. The hellish things had been appearing more and more as of late, eyeless corners glaring. It reacted to his movement, receding to maybe forty feet above him, then advancing again just as smoothly.
Origami. That was the first thing to come into Red’s mind. The thing looked like some great black origami husk, all triangular planes and odd canted angles. It was so black it seemed to eat the light around it, swallowing the high noon sun down an endless, unseen throat. It just hovered there, the low pulsing drone making Red’s eyes water like a punch to the nose.
For a long time, they just went on like that, a kind of Mexican standoff with no guns pointed. Red felt a twist in his gut, like he was somehow hiding out in the open. A non-entity. He cursed and racked the shotgun at the thing. The drone did not move.
“Fuck you,” Red said simply, and fired at the thing. He had no idea what to expect, perhaps maybe a ricochet, or a spark as lead met metal, or whatever the hell the thing was made of.
Instead, the slug disappeared into the drone, the shockwave blurring the sharpness of the edges. Red blinked as the wavering particles moved slowly back into focus. It was like he’d fired into a pyramid of static.
He heard a high-pitched whine then, like one of them stratosphere spy jets winding up for takeoff on the tarmac. It was a sound that spoke of immense mechanical power, and Red waited to be obliterated by some yet unseen weapon.
The thing blasted off instead, the wash knocking his lungs flat against his ribs. Red was suddenly back at the Crazy Q the day Jezebel tried to learn him how to fly. Dust in his eyes, boots over his head, then liquid blackness.
#
When the old man came to, he thought maybe a tornado had touched down. Trees lay flattened and obliterated around him. He saw parts of his beloved still-works strewn about like some exploded brass carcass. Once he saw what had happened to the mountain, Red didn’t have time to wallow in the sight of his beloved booze-factory in pieces. Awe usurped the space in his heart where the dread had been.
The shine-site was tucked into a hollow that created a natural earthen bowl on three sides. But now, one wall of the mountain was neatly bored through without a crack or fissure to be seen. The ageless rock that had seen the great lizards die had been punctured like the leather of an old belt, ancient karst and sandstone bedrock punched through with laser precision. Red remembered the thing winking out of sight, only leaving the blast of its travel behind.
He stumbled up to look into the hole, then stepped back. The mouth of the tunnel wasn’t a circle, instead shaped like the shifting body of the probe. It couldn’t have been less than a mile through, but Red could see hazy, viridian waves rolling gently onwards on the other side, split by a line of brown. A neat path of demarcation marked by what must have been fallen trees and gouged out earth through the green of the mountains.
The direction it headed was southwest. He pried his face from the massive, triangular spyglass. Far off in the distance, Red could hear a noise under the air, something like Tom Sauk Falls after a hard rain. It was the dull roar of great volumes of water moving, but reduced to a polite volume, like the snore of a cat. He had known Bull Shoals and Norfolk Lake to be in that direction, and wondered if they were still there.
The shine-site was tucked into a hollow that created a natural earthen bowl on three sides. But now, one wall of the mountain was neatly bored through without a crack or fissure to be seen. The ageless rock that had seen the great lizards die had been punctured like the leather of an old belt, ancient karst and sandstone bedrock punched through with laser precision. Red remembered the thing winking out of sight, only leaving the blast of its travel behind.
He stumbled up to look into the hole, then stepped back. The mouth of the tunnel wasn’t a circle, instead shaped like the shifting body of the probe. It couldn’t have been less than a mile through, but Red could see hazy, viridian waves rolling gently onwards on the other side, split by a line of brown. A neat path of demarcation marked by what must have been fallen trees and gouged out earth through the green of the mountains.
The direction it headed was southwest. He pried his face from the massive, triangular spyglass. Far off in the distance, Red could hear a noise under the air, something like Tom Sauk Falls after a hard rain. It was the dull roar of great volumes of water moving, but reduced to a polite volume, like the snore of a cat. He had known Bull Shoals and Norfolk Lake to be in that direction, and wondered if they were still there.
#
Red looked through the chaotic mess inside the local ACE hardware, making a mental note of how much shine he had left. Other than the four shots or so left in his flask, all that remained was half a two-liter bottle in his truck. Enough for perhaps three days. Coming across a beautiful red and white can of Sea Foam, along with an expired bag of honey-roasted peanuts, he had to marvel at the cruel irony of the universe. He’d come to Buck’s Point for a fresh start, trying to climb out of the bottle with greasy feet. The taste for grog had started in the lush green hell across the ocean, where he’d learned how to shine not from some toothless Appalachian hermit, but a South Vietnamese shaman. Everyone called him Lulu, fermenting bamboo and sugarcane into a sweet but fierce brew that could be bought with cigarettes and Playboys.
He’d come home and immediately self-medicated with the bottle, because back then no one knew what war truly does to a man. No one knew what PTSD was. So, he drank. Got fired from every job he picked up. Scared the bejesus out of Darla and the boys at night, waking up with chest-crushing anxiety. When his eyes closed, he was back behind enemy lines, stumbling through his two-bedroom split level with his Ka-bar shining in the night-lights. Red executed the modified saber grip the corps had taught him, his dreaming eyes wide and feral, scanning the windows above the small bodies of his children.
The remote Ozark town had received him, and he vowed to try again. To dry himself out, get his shit together. When E-day came down, he was entering his “one last Bourbon hoo-rah” bender before swearing off alcohol for good, and in a mesmerized stupor, watched as the world around him lost its mind. And now here he was, relying on the devil’s nectar just to keep himself alive. Thing was though, as he took stock of the organs shutting down in his wreckage of a body, the high-test corn mash finishing what the Agent Orange exposure started, he wondered if this was a fool’s game. What was the point? Why fight, anyway? Why--
Something shocked Red out of his moribund introspection, his head snapping toward the shattered-glass frontage of the store, toward the street. The absolute silence of the town cut through by a quickly approaching engine. It was so unexpected that he thought for a second an episode of the DTs had sidestepped his maintenance drinking. The distinct, throaty rumble of a diesel engine grew steadily louder.
Red crouched behind the cashier’s counter and waited. He heard the vehicle slow down, its stripped brake pads squealing. The old man’s knobby hands tightened around the shotgun, and he slowly raised his head, heart stutter-stepping in his chest, and peered through window.
What he saw was one of those oversized family-haulers from the seventies—a white Chevy Suburban with a brush guard and knobby off-road tires. The sides of the doors were accessorized with speckled holes of buckshot. Judging by the thick rind of dust and body damage, the lumbering vehicle had been on the road a while.
Red blinked in confusion at the occupants. In this day and age, it seemed like only the dregs of society were left: vagrants, shitheads, cut-throats, and alcoholics (both functioning and non-functioning alike). Instead, he saw an intact, honest-to-God family unit: a middle-aged man in the driver’s seat, an exhausted looking woman beside him, and a small, vacuous boy in the back. Red’s stomach knotted at the glazed-over stare on the boy’s face, eyes bleary and half lidded, mouth agape. It reminded him of when his own little boy, Evan, was put on painkillers after the squirrely son of a gun broke his arm falling out of a tree.
What a decision that must’ve been, he thought. Risk your child trying to kill themselves, or load them up on something to get them through this strange new apocalypse. How would Pops have done it anyway, liquor-laced fruit juice?
The driver got out, a Glock handgun held at the ready. Red judged by the trigger discipline and the way the man carried himself that the fella had been either law enforcement or military in a past life. Pops placed one foot in front of the other, bloodshot eyes darting to the windows and alleys, gun barrel slowly swiveling like a radar dish.
“Hey, fella,” Red called from behind the desk, having to shout over the low rumble of the idling diesel engine. He’d heard of some people able to retrofit their diesels to run on used grease, and this one’s exhaust smelled like French fries. Smart.
“Who the fu—Show yourself!” the man called out, his voice shaky, but still authoritative. Cop. Red clocked it as easily as a mother intuits a child’s impending sickness.
“Easy… easy, man. I’m coming out now, don’t mean no harm. Don’t shoot.” He felt his testicles get a good view of his stomach as he revealed himself from behind the counter. Drunk or not, the man’s reflexes were quick. The barrel immediately came to rest on Red’s center mass. He had the shotgun pointed skyward in one outstretched arm, and the other in the air, a sign of placation.
“Put that gun down or I’ll put you down,” the driver barked.
Red obeyed, knowing this man wasn’t a bandit or a marauder. Perhaps a cliché alcoholic detective from one of those pulp-noir books. He decided to hedge a bet with his ulcered gut that the man wouldn’t shoot him in cold blood. Loneliness plus a life of service. Red let the gun rest on the counter, within easy reach. That way, he’d have something to work with if things went south. A shotgun and a fraction of a second are the bars of a mountain man’s crucifix.
“Name’s Red,” he said, trying to remember what a friendly, conversational tone was supposed to sound like. His eyes kept glancing over to the gossamer strands of drool on the kid’s lips. “Welcome to Buck’s Point… or what’s left of it,”
He’d come home and immediately self-medicated with the bottle, because back then no one knew what war truly does to a man. No one knew what PTSD was. So, he drank. Got fired from every job he picked up. Scared the bejesus out of Darla and the boys at night, waking up with chest-crushing anxiety. When his eyes closed, he was back behind enemy lines, stumbling through his two-bedroom split level with his Ka-bar shining in the night-lights. Red executed the modified saber grip the corps had taught him, his dreaming eyes wide and feral, scanning the windows above the small bodies of his children.
The remote Ozark town had received him, and he vowed to try again. To dry himself out, get his shit together. When E-day came down, he was entering his “one last Bourbon hoo-rah” bender before swearing off alcohol for good, and in a mesmerized stupor, watched as the world around him lost its mind. And now here he was, relying on the devil’s nectar just to keep himself alive. Thing was though, as he took stock of the organs shutting down in his wreckage of a body, the high-test corn mash finishing what the Agent Orange exposure started, he wondered if this was a fool’s game. What was the point? Why fight, anyway? Why--
Something shocked Red out of his moribund introspection, his head snapping toward the shattered-glass frontage of the store, toward the street. The absolute silence of the town cut through by a quickly approaching engine. It was so unexpected that he thought for a second an episode of the DTs had sidestepped his maintenance drinking. The distinct, throaty rumble of a diesel engine grew steadily louder.
Red crouched behind the cashier’s counter and waited. He heard the vehicle slow down, its stripped brake pads squealing. The old man’s knobby hands tightened around the shotgun, and he slowly raised his head, heart stutter-stepping in his chest, and peered through window.
What he saw was one of those oversized family-haulers from the seventies—a white Chevy Suburban with a brush guard and knobby off-road tires. The sides of the doors were accessorized with speckled holes of buckshot. Judging by the thick rind of dust and body damage, the lumbering vehicle had been on the road a while.
Red blinked in confusion at the occupants. In this day and age, it seemed like only the dregs of society were left: vagrants, shitheads, cut-throats, and alcoholics (both functioning and non-functioning alike). Instead, he saw an intact, honest-to-God family unit: a middle-aged man in the driver’s seat, an exhausted looking woman beside him, and a small, vacuous boy in the back. Red’s stomach knotted at the glazed-over stare on the boy’s face, eyes bleary and half lidded, mouth agape. It reminded him of when his own little boy, Evan, was put on painkillers after the squirrely son of a gun broke his arm falling out of a tree.
What a decision that must’ve been, he thought. Risk your child trying to kill themselves, or load them up on something to get them through this strange new apocalypse. How would Pops have done it anyway, liquor-laced fruit juice?
The driver got out, a Glock handgun held at the ready. Red judged by the trigger discipline and the way the man carried himself that the fella had been either law enforcement or military in a past life. Pops placed one foot in front of the other, bloodshot eyes darting to the windows and alleys, gun barrel slowly swiveling like a radar dish.
“Hey, fella,” Red called from behind the desk, having to shout over the low rumble of the idling diesel engine. He’d heard of some people able to retrofit their diesels to run on used grease, and this one’s exhaust smelled like French fries. Smart.
“Who the fu—Show yourself!” the man called out, his voice shaky, but still authoritative. Cop. Red clocked it as easily as a mother intuits a child’s impending sickness.
“Easy… easy, man. I’m coming out now, don’t mean no harm. Don’t shoot.” He felt his testicles get a good view of his stomach as he revealed himself from behind the counter. Drunk or not, the man’s reflexes were quick. The barrel immediately came to rest on Red’s center mass. He had the shotgun pointed skyward in one outstretched arm, and the other in the air, a sign of placation.
“Put that gun down or I’ll put you down,” the driver barked.
Red obeyed, knowing this man wasn’t a bandit or a marauder. Perhaps a cliché alcoholic detective from one of those pulp-noir books. He decided to hedge a bet with his ulcered gut that the man wouldn’t shoot him in cold blood. Loneliness plus a life of service. Red let the gun rest on the counter, within easy reach. That way, he’d have something to work with if things went south. A shotgun and a fraction of a second are the bars of a mountain man’s crucifix.
“Name’s Red,” he said, trying to remember what a friendly, conversational tone was supposed to sound like. His eyes kept glancing over to the gossamer strands of drool on the kid’s lips. “Welcome to Buck’s Point… or what’s left of it,”
#
It was a suspenseful twenty minutes of tense, clipped conversation before the two men dropped their guards enough to palaver. “Jerry Dukes,” the man said, running a large brown hand over his jaw. “My wife Danetta, and this is Alvin. He’s my boy. We barely made it out of Corpus Christi with our asses intact.”
“Why come all the way up here from Texas?” Red asked as he led them toward Lutz Park in the center of town. Good sight lines from all directions, a nice clear view of the sky, which was vital, and honestly, it just looked real pretty with the dogwoods and white oaks in bloom. It seemed a good enough place for two strangers to feel each other out.
Red offered them some deer jerky, which they took gladly. In return, Jerry produced a bottle of Kentucky Gentleman. Considered bottom shelf swill back in the day, Red almost wept at the sight of the whiskey.
“Shit, man… haven’t you heard?” Jerry asked, unscrewing a sippy cup to pour in a finger of gentleman, then covered it with a cupful of Hawaiian Punch. Danetta wouldn’t meet Red’s eyes, instead staring forlornly at the ground. There was a pained look on her face as she handed the spiked punch to her boy. Seven and a half, according to Jerry. The boy didn’t talk, just made cooing noises like an infant.
“I haven’t heard squat,” Red said. “So, far as I could tell, the world outside of here don’t exist.” He made a circling gesture with his finger, indicating the town. Jerry nodded.
“Yeah, forgot. When the assholes came, they knocked out power to everything with a computer chip in it. Well—” Jerry sighed and took a nip of Gentleman straight from the bottle. “They’re takin’ the water, man.”
Red didn’t say anything for a spell. He told himself it didn’t make sense, but of course it did. They, whoever they were, had to have come here for a reason. It was hard believing that a space-faring species would come to the one planet in this part of the galaxy with sentient life, then aim fucked-up suicide rays at us just for shits and giggles. He thought of the probe that had shot off towards Bull Shoals, and many others crisscrossing over the sky. There was a purpose, and they moved to wherever it pointed with unholy speed.
“The Gulf of Mexico… it’s gone, man,” Jerry said. “You’ll see them things, what you call them... drones? They’re lined up in neat rows for miles and miles, just sucking shit up. Columns of waterspouts as far as the eye can see. They gotta have a portal or something. The water’s gotta go somewhere, cause those damn ships obviously can’t carry an entire ocean’s worth.”
Red took the bottle when offered and sipped. Compared to the corn shine, it was like sipping ambrosia. It didn’t even make his ulcer act up when the liquor hit his gut.
“Talked to some folks coming down from Chicago,” Jerry continued. “They said Lake Michigan is almost gone. They were coming south to see if things were better.”
“I take it they aren’t,” Red said, handing the bottle back.
“They aren’t,” Jerry said.
They talked for a little longer. Red told them how he eked out an existence on the mountain with his stills. “Well, shit… the still now, the one and only,” he said, offering Jerry and Danetta a small sip of his corn mash, and finding a strange mirth in all of it somehow. The man, little more than a stranger, accepted it with a grin. Whistling and smacking his lips, Jerry shivered a little, then proceeded to cough his head off. Danetta kept staring off into the distance, listless. Alvin continued to drool. Tapping the flask against his thigh, Red was struck with an idea.
“Say, how much of that stuff you got left?” he asked, gesturing towards the KG.
Jerry narrowed his eyes slightly. “Couple cases in the back. Why?”
He gulped, feeling the walls bricking back up. “I know that behemoth you drive is a gas guzzler. How’s about a little trade?”
“Why come all the way up here from Texas?” Red asked as he led them toward Lutz Park in the center of town. Good sight lines from all directions, a nice clear view of the sky, which was vital, and honestly, it just looked real pretty with the dogwoods and white oaks in bloom. It seemed a good enough place for two strangers to feel each other out.
Red offered them some deer jerky, which they took gladly. In return, Jerry produced a bottle of Kentucky Gentleman. Considered bottom shelf swill back in the day, Red almost wept at the sight of the whiskey.
“Shit, man… haven’t you heard?” Jerry asked, unscrewing a sippy cup to pour in a finger of gentleman, then covered it with a cupful of Hawaiian Punch. Danetta wouldn’t meet Red’s eyes, instead staring forlornly at the ground. There was a pained look on her face as she handed the spiked punch to her boy. Seven and a half, according to Jerry. The boy didn’t talk, just made cooing noises like an infant.
“I haven’t heard squat,” Red said. “So, far as I could tell, the world outside of here don’t exist.” He made a circling gesture with his finger, indicating the town. Jerry nodded.
“Yeah, forgot. When the assholes came, they knocked out power to everything with a computer chip in it. Well—” Jerry sighed and took a nip of Gentleman straight from the bottle. “They’re takin’ the water, man.”
Red didn’t say anything for a spell. He told himself it didn’t make sense, but of course it did. They, whoever they were, had to have come here for a reason. It was hard believing that a space-faring species would come to the one planet in this part of the galaxy with sentient life, then aim fucked-up suicide rays at us just for shits and giggles. He thought of the probe that had shot off towards Bull Shoals, and many others crisscrossing over the sky. There was a purpose, and they moved to wherever it pointed with unholy speed.
“The Gulf of Mexico… it’s gone, man,” Jerry said. “You’ll see them things, what you call them... drones? They’re lined up in neat rows for miles and miles, just sucking shit up. Columns of waterspouts as far as the eye can see. They gotta have a portal or something. The water’s gotta go somewhere, cause those damn ships obviously can’t carry an entire ocean’s worth.”
Red took the bottle when offered and sipped. Compared to the corn shine, it was like sipping ambrosia. It didn’t even make his ulcer act up when the liquor hit his gut.
“Talked to some folks coming down from Chicago,” Jerry continued. “They said Lake Michigan is almost gone. They were coming south to see if things were better.”
“I take it they aren’t,” Red said, handing the bottle back.
“They aren’t,” Jerry said.
They talked for a little longer. Red told them how he eked out an existence on the mountain with his stills. “Well, shit… the still now, the one and only,” he said, offering Jerry and Danetta a small sip of his corn mash, and finding a strange mirth in all of it somehow. The man, little more than a stranger, accepted it with a grin. Whistling and smacking his lips, Jerry shivered a little, then proceeded to cough his head off. Danetta kept staring off into the distance, listless. Alvin continued to drool. Tapping the flask against his thigh, Red was struck with an idea.
“Say, how much of that stuff you got left?” he asked, gesturing towards the KG.
Jerry narrowed his eyes slightly. “Couple cases in the back. Why?”
He gulped, feeling the walls bricking back up. “I know that behemoth you drive is a gas guzzler. How’s about a little trade?”
#
The Gentleman barely gave him a buzz as Red drove down route W, headed southwest toward Bull Shoals. It was his first time leaving the comfortable security of his mountain town since the shit hit, and the anxiety grew icicles in his stomach. Damn it all though, he had to see for himself. And if what Jerry said was true, well then… Red was going to do something about it.
Despite the sweltering 85-degree day, he kept the windows of the truck closed to the Spring weather outside. Red snickered hoarsely at the old joke. “Spring don’t come to Missouri, boy,” the ranch hand had said, brushing Jezebel until her coat was like burnished copper in the sun. “Barely so much as stops by. Sorta like… a mailman droppin’ off a package, but with a pit bull takin’ a bead on his ass.” He felt like an orchid, stinking of dead meat in a hothouse, and sweated out the whiskey as fast as he could put it away.
After trading Jerry some thirteen gallons of corn juice for a ten-bottle case of the Gentleman, Red filled his own tank with the very last of the ethanol from the storage tanks. That ended up giving him around three-fourths of a tank. It was seventy miles to Bull Shoals. The truck got about ten miles to the gallon, even with the routine maintenance and oil changes. Red had a feeling he was going to be hoofing it for the last portion of his unholy mecca, especially with the quagmire of stalled cars littering the road. That was alright. He was doing something now, being active. The past year and a half he’d spent on the mountain was nice, but it was quickly becoming a ritualistic purgatory. He had a sense of purpose now. He was on a mission, one that was very likely suicidal, but it was better than just sitting around letting the liquor dissolve his insides.
As route W turned into state highway 70, which would take him through Taneyville and eventually Forsyth (where the main Bull Shoals marina was located), he came upon a jam of cars that went on for a couple miles. Red switched the truck to 4-lo and took the muddy shoulder on down, grateful he was out of the high country for the time being and the going mostly flat. He made it a point not to acknowledge the sun-bloated corpses littering the road, or the packs of coyotes and turkey vultures that took flight as they snacked on their well-aged human jerky. Another reason he kept the windows up: even through that glass barricade he caught the high, sickly-sweet rot that only a decomposing human body made. At least they weren’t burnt to a crisp. It took Red many years of being stateside for the smell of a BBQ pit to not turn his stomach.
He eventually came upon the source of the congestion: the remains of a military blockade. A cargo truck lay on its side like a beached whale. Next to this was an M1226 Armored Personnel Carrier with a silent compliment.
Red stopped and got out, bracing himself for the physical waves of putrescence to slam into his nose like an unseen fist. Despite his prior experience dealing with such things, he still had to take five minutes to yak up an expired can of Campbell’s clam chowder and his digestif of whiskey. He quickly went back to the truck, dousing an old snot rag with the bottle of Gentleman, and covered the lower half of his face with the wet, encrusted cloth. The sharp tang of whiskey did an admirable job as Red held the rag to his lips, blocking out that horrible combo of spoiled milk and ripe roadkill.
The presence of the troop transport told Red that the higher ups must’ve known what was coming. By the chaotic way E-day had transpired, he’d assumed it was a surprise to them all, but this changed everything. The fact that these boys had the foresight to drive all the way from Whitman AFB and set up checkpoints along ingress/egress points would suggest otherwise. It shouldn’t have surprised him. He had learned the hard way that everything fell under the purview of “need to know” basis with the spooks.
Red eyed the M4s the dead National Guardsmen had let fall outside the APC. He checked the magazines and each one had only spent a single round. Made sense, of course, judging by the array of ventilated noggins around. He checked the ammo for signs of lime scale and fired off a test round from each magazine with the weapon least damaged by being left out in the weather. It was under a nearby Mustang, and the car had protected it from the elements, mostly. Red was able to discharge a few more than he expected before it jammed, so he figured a good cleaning and some oil would fix it right up. He tossed the gun and the remaining magazines in the back of his truck, where it joined the meager supplies of booze, food and camping gear he had.
He noticed they were stopped up right behind a bridge that crossed over the Black River, and wondered why they chose this point to set up shop. Red entered the APC and stopped in his tracks. Blocks of Semtex had been removed from their crates and left out next to a few grenades. Fuckin’ psychos were gonna blow the bridge, Red mused with horrified amazement. He didn’t even try to understand the rationale behind it, and just grabbed the plastic explosives along with the detonator wires and the wireless remote. Red assumed Semtex and C4 were kissing cousins, their detonation characteristics resembling each other, but it didn’t really matter. He was taking the same train regardless.
Taking the last of what he deemed of value, Red reluctantly searched the corpses of the guardsmen and found the keys to the APC. He had no idea if it would start up or not, but to his surprise, it did. With a hitching grunt from the ten-cylinder engine, the big vehicle roared to life. Red pressed on the accelerator, and it managed to crawl five feet before the thing up and died on him, like a shot deer trying to cross the road. That was alright. He figured he had just enough clearance to get his truck onto the bridge.
He managed to get onto the bridge minus one side mirror, sheared off in the tight squeeze, but that was alright. Not much traffic on the road these days anyway.
Despite the sweltering 85-degree day, he kept the windows of the truck closed to the Spring weather outside. Red snickered hoarsely at the old joke. “Spring don’t come to Missouri, boy,” the ranch hand had said, brushing Jezebel until her coat was like burnished copper in the sun. “Barely so much as stops by. Sorta like… a mailman droppin’ off a package, but with a pit bull takin’ a bead on his ass.” He felt like an orchid, stinking of dead meat in a hothouse, and sweated out the whiskey as fast as he could put it away.
After trading Jerry some thirteen gallons of corn juice for a ten-bottle case of the Gentleman, Red filled his own tank with the very last of the ethanol from the storage tanks. That ended up giving him around three-fourths of a tank. It was seventy miles to Bull Shoals. The truck got about ten miles to the gallon, even with the routine maintenance and oil changes. Red had a feeling he was going to be hoofing it for the last portion of his unholy mecca, especially with the quagmire of stalled cars littering the road. That was alright. He was doing something now, being active. The past year and a half he’d spent on the mountain was nice, but it was quickly becoming a ritualistic purgatory. He had a sense of purpose now. He was on a mission, one that was very likely suicidal, but it was better than just sitting around letting the liquor dissolve his insides.
As route W turned into state highway 70, which would take him through Taneyville and eventually Forsyth (where the main Bull Shoals marina was located), he came upon a jam of cars that went on for a couple miles. Red switched the truck to 4-lo and took the muddy shoulder on down, grateful he was out of the high country for the time being and the going mostly flat. He made it a point not to acknowledge the sun-bloated corpses littering the road, or the packs of coyotes and turkey vultures that took flight as they snacked on their well-aged human jerky. Another reason he kept the windows up: even through that glass barricade he caught the high, sickly-sweet rot that only a decomposing human body made. At least they weren’t burnt to a crisp. It took Red many years of being stateside for the smell of a BBQ pit to not turn his stomach.
He eventually came upon the source of the congestion: the remains of a military blockade. A cargo truck lay on its side like a beached whale. Next to this was an M1226 Armored Personnel Carrier with a silent compliment.
Red stopped and got out, bracing himself for the physical waves of putrescence to slam into his nose like an unseen fist. Despite his prior experience dealing with such things, he still had to take five minutes to yak up an expired can of Campbell’s clam chowder and his digestif of whiskey. He quickly went back to the truck, dousing an old snot rag with the bottle of Gentleman, and covered the lower half of his face with the wet, encrusted cloth. The sharp tang of whiskey did an admirable job as Red held the rag to his lips, blocking out that horrible combo of spoiled milk and ripe roadkill.
The presence of the troop transport told Red that the higher ups must’ve known what was coming. By the chaotic way E-day had transpired, he’d assumed it was a surprise to them all, but this changed everything. The fact that these boys had the foresight to drive all the way from Whitman AFB and set up checkpoints along ingress/egress points would suggest otherwise. It shouldn’t have surprised him. He had learned the hard way that everything fell under the purview of “need to know” basis with the spooks.
Red eyed the M4s the dead National Guardsmen had let fall outside the APC. He checked the magazines and each one had only spent a single round. Made sense, of course, judging by the array of ventilated noggins around. He checked the ammo for signs of lime scale and fired off a test round from each magazine with the weapon least damaged by being left out in the weather. It was under a nearby Mustang, and the car had protected it from the elements, mostly. Red was able to discharge a few more than he expected before it jammed, so he figured a good cleaning and some oil would fix it right up. He tossed the gun and the remaining magazines in the back of his truck, where it joined the meager supplies of booze, food and camping gear he had.
He noticed they were stopped up right behind a bridge that crossed over the Black River, and wondered why they chose this point to set up shop. Red entered the APC and stopped in his tracks. Blocks of Semtex had been removed from their crates and left out next to a few grenades. Fuckin’ psychos were gonna blow the bridge, Red mused with horrified amazement. He didn’t even try to understand the rationale behind it, and just grabbed the plastic explosives along with the detonator wires and the wireless remote. Red assumed Semtex and C4 were kissing cousins, their detonation characteristics resembling each other, but it didn’t really matter. He was taking the same train regardless.
Taking the last of what he deemed of value, Red reluctantly searched the corpses of the guardsmen and found the keys to the APC. He had no idea if it would start up or not, but to his surprise, it did. With a hitching grunt from the ten-cylinder engine, the big vehicle roared to life. Red pressed on the accelerator, and it managed to crawl five feet before the thing up and died on him, like a shot deer trying to cross the road. That was alright. He figured he had just enough clearance to get his truck onto the bridge.
He managed to get onto the bridge minus one side mirror, sheared off in the tight squeeze, but that was alright. Not much traffic on the road these days anyway.
#
The truck ran out of gas some fifteen miles before Forsyth, but he’d managed to liberate a mountain bike from the back of an overturned RV. Red had thirty pounds of shit strapped to him, and the going was awkward with his gouty feet, but it was better than walking. The terrain picked back up as he approached the Arkansas border, the tips of what he assumed were the Boston Mountains visible from far away. As he reached the crest of those gentle, rolling buttes, his head felt like it would explode. Red could see and hear everything.
It was exactly as Jerry had described. Row upon row of the impossibly black probes, each one siphoning a swirling vortex of water from the ground. Above them were several of the square black portals, and Red had never seen more than one opened at once. He stopped dead as a powerful surge of static raced across his mind, causing him to fall off his bike. It was so intense that he felt his personality being eaten away, and watched his hands turning the mouth of the shotgun toward his face.
He beat his arms and hands against the thorny bike pedals, knocking the gun loose, and in a violent spasm, floundered for his hip flask. Red unscrewed the top with bloody fingers and downed the contents in three burning gulps. The Gentleman tasted far better than the corn shine, but he hadn’t considered his sailor’s tolerance when he made the trade. Shine tasted like jet fuel, but it got you ripped in a few swallows. He had to chug the KG to get the same effect.
Pain ripped through his guts and Red doubled over on the side of the road. The static surge died away, fading to a faint tingle in the back of his mind. Now, all he could hear was the ever-present roar of water being violently agitated.
Red picked himself up, his whole body in mutiny. Head swimming, guts throbbing, asshole puckering. He felt more blood-tinged diarrhea building to erupt, and got back on the bike. The one remaining gallon bottle of Gentleman was tucked away in the bike’s modest storage basket, the other one busted on the road in a tragic shattering of glass. He’d have to make his move quick before he ended up like everyone else.
He unscrewed the cap and took another swig to fortify the tipsiness he now felt, and let the bike coast down the long descending valley road, towards the lake where he’d spent so many summers with Pa.
It was exactly as Jerry had described. Row upon row of the impossibly black probes, each one siphoning a swirling vortex of water from the ground. Above them were several of the square black portals, and Red had never seen more than one opened at once. He stopped dead as a powerful surge of static raced across his mind, causing him to fall off his bike. It was so intense that he felt his personality being eaten away, and watched his hands turning the mouth of the shotgun toward his face.
He beat his arms and hands against the thorny bike pedals, knocking the gun loose, and in a violent spasm, floundered for his hip flask. Red unscrewed the top with bloody fingers and downed the contents in three burning gulps. The Gentleman tasted far better than the corn shine, but he hadn’t considered his sailor’s tolerance when he made the trade. Shine tasted like jet fuel, but it got you ripped in a few swallows. He had to chug the KG to get the same effect.
Pain ripped through his guts and Red doubled over on the side of the road. The static surge died away, fading to a faint tingle in the back of his mind. Now, all he could hear was the ever-present roar of water being violently agitated.
Red picked himself up, his whole body in mutiny. Head swimming, guts throbbing, asshole puckering. He felt more blood-tinged diarrhea building to erupt, and got back on the bike. The one remaining gallon bottle of Gentleman was tucked away in the bike’s modest storage basket, the other one busted on the road in a tragic shattering of glass. He’d have to make his move quick before he ended up like everyone else.
He unscrewed the cap and took another swig to fortify the tipsiness he now felt, and let the bike coast down the long descending valley road, towards the lake where he’d spent so many summers with Pa.
#
Rage, awe, and a bone-deep sadness filled him as he witnessed the huge lake being drained. The obsidian machines must’ve only recently started work on the lake, as the previous waterline from the shore was some fifteen feet from where it had originally been. In his drunken haze, he had vivid flashbacks of his daddy taking him out there on his little ten-foot aluminum jon-boat, the countless summer afternoons they spent getting sunburns and filling the live well with dinner plate-sized crappie and bluegill. The fish fries that ensued afterwards, with hush puppies, French fries, and always, always, using Louisiana blue-bag breading.
It was like watching some brat take a shit on a family heirloom. Red didn’t know what his plan had been before he got out here, but he knew that unslinging the M4 and firing a whole magazine into the nearest of the onyx sentinels wasn’t it. Despite his drunkenness and his rage, he took his time, firing in short, controlled bursts, Corps training taking hold even in his inebriation. He stood watching as the goddamned thing absorbed the flurry of rounds like rain on a wool blanket. Nothing happened. It didn’t stop sucking up the lake, and he could see the occasional silver body of a fish caught up in the spout. It didn’t turn to face him and blast him away with some futuristic death ray. It stayed right where it was as if he hadn’t done a thing.
Red felt like a cicada bonking his head against a streetlight, and this enraged him even more. “Fuck you! Fuck you, you goddamn fuckin’ fucks! Show me what you got!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. After changing magazines, he kept his finger depressed on the metal tongue of the trigger and lit up the one he’d shot at previously, wondering if perhaps there was some force field he could overload if he just kept hammering at it. No chance. Red may as well have been tossing pebbles at a sunbathing hippo. He threw the M4, turning end over end until it fell in the receding mud of the shoreline. The corpses of dinghies, house boats and dry docks lay beached and useless.
He sat down heavily on the concrete boat ramp which now extended into mud. It was where he’d helped his father guide the boat trailer into the water, feeling like such a badass manly-man. Pa had allowed a twelve-year-old Red to drive the truck over to the parking lot while he got the boat gassed up at the marina. He took huge gulps of the cheap liquor, not even tasting it, ignoring the ripping burn in his gut and the increasing pressure in his chest as he drank, and watched the water receding still further from him.
It was like watching some brat take a shit on a family heirloom. Red didn’t know what his plan had been before he got out here, but he knew that unslinging the M4 and firing a whole magazine into the nearest of the onyx sentinels wasn’t it. Despite his drunkenness and his rage, he took his time, firing in short, controlled bursts, Corps training taking hold even in his inebriation. He stood watching as the goddamned thing absorbed the flurry of rounds like rain on a wool blanket. Nothing happened. It didn’t stop sucking up the lake, and he could see the occasional silver body of a fish caught up in the spout. It didn’t turn to face him and blast him away with some futuristic death ray. It stayed right where it was as if he hadn’t done a thing.
Red felt like a cicada bonking his head against a streetlight, and this enraged him even more. “Fuck you! Fuck you, you goddamn fuckin’ fucks! Show me what you got!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. After changing magazines, he kept his finger depressed on the metal tongue of the trigger and lit up the one he’d shot at previously, wondering if perhaps there was some force field he could overload if he just kept hammering at it. No chance. Red may as well have been tossing pebbles at a sunbathing hippo. He threw the M4, turning end over end until it fell in the receding mud of the shoreline. The corpses of dinghies, house boats and dry docks lay beached and useless.
He sat down heavily on the concrete boat ramp which now extended into mud. It was where he’d helped his father guide the boat trailer into the water, feeling like such a badass manly-man. Pa had allowed a twelve-year-old Red to drive the truck over to the parking lot while he got the boat gassed up at the marina. He took huge gulps of the cheap liquor, not even tasting it, ignoring the ripping burn in his gut and the increasing pressure in his chest as he drank, and watched the water receding still further from him.
#
There he sat for a long time, putting a good dent in the gallon bottle of whiskey, feeling helpless, feeling stupid, feeling like an ant under the shoe of some sadistic ten-year-old with a magnifying glass. It wasn’t until the sun started to set, and his vision began to double, that he spotted the kayak rentals sitting next to a sharply listing floating marina. There were ten of them lined up on T-racks, tied down with chains and padlocks. $30 For The Whole Day! a sign said in a cute little nautical font. That was when the idea sprung.
He made his way down the steeply inclined dock walkway, the Semtex in his backpack tapping against his spine. Ten pounds of it to be exact. He’d seen what just a pound of C4 could do to a Vietcong machine gun nest. Ten pounds of its new, improved big brother could probably put a serious damper on someone’s day, even if that someone came from a galaxy far away and had super fancy-shmancy force fields.
He shot off the chain, dragging out the lightest of the kayaks, twice almost falling into the receding water as he did. Red looked at the water level. Down another twenty feet since he’d first come out, and he marveled at it. If they came all the way out here to start draining the smaller lakes, the oceans and the Great Lakes had to be gone. The old man wondered if they had sucked up the Ohio and Mississippi too, smiling as he thought of them trying to process that primordial soup of radioactive waste and toxic run-off. He hoped they choked on it.
Dragging the kayak and a small carbon fiber paddle back up the walkway, Red’s brain and heart pounded with the effort, each heartbeat laced with sharp stabs of pain now. His poor feet screamed as he tried to keep his balance and walk with his fifty-pound cargo.
By the time he dragged the kayak down the boat ramp and into the mud, he was panting, sweating, his vision going gray at the edges. In that moment, he could feel the results of the year and a half spent binge drinking and what minimal manual labor had done to his body. He felt like a wholly different man than the one who could track Charlie through miles and miles of the unforgiving, steam-choked wilderness of North Vietnam and Laos. Red looked towards those scintillating funnels of water again, his heart misfiring steadily, even at rest.
Kicking off the tattered scraps of leather that had been his boots, the old man looked at the horrors attached to his ankles. His feet were red and almost comically swollen. Red had somehow made it through two years in the green hell without jungle rot, and now here he was, back in the States, goddamned arthritis eating him alive. Another irony to add to the growing list.
Red dropped the backpack with the plastic explosives into the hull of the open-top kayak, along with the half-empty bottle of KG. He began the arduous trek of trudging through the mud, dragging the kayak along with him, slipping and falling as he made a beeline for the water. The cold mud felt good on his hot, swollen feet, and he focused on the small reprieve.
Grunting and dizzy, Red managed to flop into the kayak, almost dumping himself and his precious cargo in the process. Once he was balanced and floating towards the nearest artificial cyclone of water, he stacked the Semtex. The oscillating waves of the drone’s engines were deafening, tightening a steel band around his brain.
He took one more nip from the KG and got to work. Though piss drunk, Red was soon back in the jungle again, wiring the explosives on muscle memory. Ten minutes finished the task, with another ten to fill the pockets on his cargo pants and flannel shirt, tucking the last few bricks down the back of his pants. He thought of the Hanoi kids and their bonsai belts. The way one shivering twelve-year-old girl could lure in a whole platoon of naïve marines, none of them knowing about the secret surprise tucked away under her shawl.
Yes, it would be just like that. Except Red was going to pack a bit bigger punch than a couple of jury-rigged frag grenades.
The kayak was drawn in from the jet-suction of the drone, so he held the remote trigger in one hand, the KG in the other. What’d Jerry say, again? That water’s gotta go somewhere, and he was right. Though the drones were big, they could maybe only hold a couple thousand gallons each. Bull Shoal’s weren’t no ocean, but the ten aloft in single file couldn’t hold all of her.
Red drank steadily, the whispers growing insistent. He was taking the express exit out either way, but he was going to do it on his terms, goddamnit. No death ray was going to take him out before he could give the bastards every oath available in his lexicon, not gibbering some alien bullshit.
“Come on, you sugar-tipped cockgobblers! You goddamned yellow-bellied shit-eating pussies! Come suck on this! Suck it, you fucking--”
His litany was cut off the moment the vortex curled over him, yanking the craft violently upwards. It felt like he’d gotten sucked into the turbine of a 747.
He made his way down the steeply inclined dock walkway, the Semtex in his backpack tapping against his spine. Ten pounds of it to be exact. He’d seen what just a pound of C4 could do to a Vietcong machine gun nest. Ten pounds of its new, improved big brother could probably put a serious damper on someone’s day, even if that someone came from a galaxy far away and had super fancy-shmancy force fields.
He shot off the chain, dragging out the lightest of the kayaks, twice almost falling into the receding water as he did. Red looked at the water level. Down another twenty feet since he’d first come out, and he marveled at it. If they came all the way out here to start draining the smaller lakes, the oceans and the Great Lakes had to be gone. The old man wondered if they had sucked up the Ohio and Mississippi too, smiling as he thought of them trying to process that primordial soup of radioactive waste and toxic run-off. He hoped they choked on it.
Dragging the kayak and a small carbon fiber paddle back up the walkway, Red’s brain and heart pounded with the effort, each heartbeat laced with sharp stabs of pain now. His poor feet screamed as he tried to keep his balance and walk with his fifty-pound cargo.
By the time he dragged the kayak down the boat ramp and into the mud, he was panting, sweating, his vision going gray at the edges. In that moment, he could feel the results of the year and a half spent binge drinking and what minimal manual labor had done to his body. He felt like a wholly different man than the one who could track Charlie through miles and miles of the unforgiving, steam-choked wilderness of North Vietnam and Laos. Red looked towards those scintillating funnels of water again, his heart misfiring steadily, even at rest.
Kicking off the tattered scraps of leather that had been his boots, the old man looked at the horrors attached to his ankles. His feet were red and almost comically swollen. Red had somehow made it through two years in the green hell without jungle rot, and now here he was, back in the States, goddamned arthritis eating him alive. Another irony to add to the growing list.
Red dropped the backpack with the plastic explosives into the hull of the open-top kayak, along with the half-empty bottle of KG. He began the arduous trek of trudging through the mud, dragging the kayak along with him, slipping and falling as he made a beeline for the water. The cold mud felt good on his hot, swollen feet, and he focused on the small reprieve.
Grunting and dizzy, Red managed to flop into the kayak, almost dumping himself and his precious cargo in the process. Once he was balanced and floating towards the nearest artificial cyclone of water, he stacked the Semtex. The oscillating waves of the drone’s engines were deafening, tightening a steel band around his brain.
He took one more nip from the KG and got to work. Though piss drunk, Red was soon back in the jungle again, wiring the explosives on muscle memory. Ten minutes finished the task, with another ten to fill the pockets on his cargo pants and flannel shirt, tucking the last few bricks down the back of his pants. He thought of the Hanoi kids and their bonsai belts. The way one shivering twelve-year-old girl could lure in a whole platoon of naïve marines, none of them knowing about the secret surprise tucked away under her shawl.
Yes, it would be just like that. Except Red was going to pack a bit bigger punch than a couple of jury-rigged frag grenades.
The kayak was drawn in from the jet-suction of the drone, so he held the remote trigger in one hand, the KG in the other. What’d Jerry say, again? That water’s gotta go somewhere, and he was right. Though the drones were big, they could maybe only hold a couple thousand gallons each. Bull Shoal’s weren’t no ocean, but the ten aloft in single file couldn’t hold all of her.
Red drank steadily, the whispers growing insistent. He was taking the express exit out either way, but he was going to do it on his terms, goddamnit. No death ray was going to take him out before he could give the bastards every oath available in his lexicon, not gibbering some alien bullshit.
“Come on, you sugar-tipped cockgobblers! You goddamned yellow-bellied shit-eating pussies! Come suck on this! Suck it, you fucking--”
His litany was cut off the moment the vortex curled over him, yanking the craft violently upwards. It felt like he’d gotten sucked into the turbine of a 747.
#
People returned from near-death experiences with stories like this. Red shot through a phantasmagorical tunnel of colors he’d never known before, travelling at unfathomable speed. He tried the trigger, but his hands were gone, his whole body for that matter. The utter painlessness of his gouty joints and failing organs was a heaven unimagined. Red hadn’t realized for a second that his atoms had destabilized, that his body was an ephemeral mist traveling through a portal that reconstituted him on the other side, no less than an eternity away.
When he came to, he was gasping in a giant container with slate gray walls, like the swimming pool at Mount Olympus itself. Floating in the stolen lake, his eyes were open, but his lungs were closed. Of course, there wouldn’t be oxygen up here, wherever here was. Red’s lungs began to melt in his chest, and he closed his eyes to keep them from exploding out of their sockets. Fuck that, he thought through the tearing agony, this couldn’t be it. He had to see them, the ones that orchestrated it all. Red opened the wounds of his eyes.
They were like oblong shapes of mercury, forming then dissolving limbs that reached for him, floating across the great expanse, suddenly aware of the anomaly in their plunder. Long, accusing fingers grew and pointed at the invader from every inch of their chrome bodies.
He felt the remote trigger in his hand as three of the things honed in on him, their bodies scintillating against some unseen light source. Red crushed the trigger, and pain ceased to exist, his body coming apart in the heaven of disintegration once again, rocketing through the eye of the rainbow.
When he came to, he was gasping in a giant container with slate gray walls, like the swimming pool at Mount Olympus itself. Floating in the stolen lake, his eyes were open, but his lungs were closed. Of course, there wouldn’t be oxygen up here, wherever here was. Red’s lungs began to melt in his chest, and he closed his eyes to keep them from exploding out of their sockets. Fuck that, he thought through the tearing agony, this couldn’t be it. He had to see them, the ones that orchestrated it all. Red opened the wounds of his eyes.
They were like oblong shapes of mercury, forming then dissolving limbs that reached for him, floating across the great expanse, suddenly aware of the anomaly in their plunder. Long, accusing fingers grew and pointed at the invader from every inch of their chrome bodies.
He felt the remote trigger in his hand as three of the things honed in on him, their bodies scintillating against some unseen light source. Red crushed the trigger, and pain ceased to exist, his body coming apart in the heaven of disintegration once again, rocketing through the eye of the rainbow.