The Earth Died Screaming

by Chuck Rogers

  I went for the ten-inch chef's knife.

  I never reached the knife block.

  The claws missed but the half-blind swing rubber-balled me off the stainless steel refrigerator. I took a knee against my will, turned and tried to make distance and put the kitchen table between us.

  I screamed "Motherfucker!" as claws ripped through my right butt-cheek. They also tore my shorts down around my ankles and I tripped and fell.

  Not good.

  I shoved a kitchen chair at the creature and crawled, ankle-bound under the table.

  It followed howling, slobbering and roaring.

  It felt like a ball-peen hammer hit me in the heel. I prayed my foot was still attached to me as I cleared the table, kicked off the shredded shorts and rose. The bear rose up with the table falling off it. I broke into a limping run. The M-14 and the .44 Magnum by the door sang their siren song but I would never make the loop from the kitchen. I ran back into the atrium slamming one glass door closed behind me. The door lasted one second. I crossed the atrium and swung the second door behind me. I heard it shatter but by then I was at the bedroom and I slammed the door and locked it. That door was lovely oak and lasted a good three seconds before it tore off the hinges. I used the time to snatch the PPK from under my pillow and ran out the sliding door into the yard.

  Walther PPK.

  They barely had any stopping power against humans. Much less enraged sodomy-bears. I ran around the yard and came back in the house through the window the thing had first smashed. The house alarm was still howling. It might have been psychosomatic but I swear I felt ants crawling across my skin as the fucking thing came back in and the dosimeter resumed peeping across the speakers.

  This was turning into a Bugs Bunny chase scene except it wasn't funny.

  And I don't like running.

  It was time to finish this.

  I put the dining room table between us, and that was a beautiful, long, heavy, easily seats twelve slab of African bubinga wood. Ursus Obscenus didn't give a shit. He gave a roar that shook the house and started to climb over the table to get to me.

  I took the PPK in both hands and shot shithead seven times in the face and neck.

  I might as well have just thrown the gun at it.

  I threw the gun at it.

  I ran.

  The thing roared. Only this time it wasn't a roar of rage, sexual or otherwise. There was a note of something wrong in it. I careened down the hall. There was the foyer, the front door, my pack, and my rifle. I skidded to a halt in front of the door. I could see the bear in hall. It was doing its two-footed terror walk. Then it fell to all fours. Then it tried to stand up again.

  There was something wrong with him.

  You keep on malfunctioning you son of a bitch.

  I took up my rifle.

  The M-14 felt awfully heavy so I took a rifleman's kneeling position. That felt a lot better. The muzzle was swaying a bit but I'd had a rough night. I pushed off the safety. Playtime was over. Enough with the hand tools.

  This was the chainsaw.

  Let's see how you liked twenty high-power rifle rounds center body mass, fucko.

  I smiled to show fucko my bloody teeth as he rounded on the foyer. He was listing and his cock was at half-mast. The selector lever clicked to full auto beneath my thumb. I leered at him.

  "And all the King's horses, and all the King's men, couldn't put Yogi and his Boo-Boo back together again."

  Yogi fell snout first to the floor.

  I bled in place, rifle leveled for a good five minutes and watched Yogi bleed out. I wasn't taking any chances. I rose and took the long way around the atrium and found the remote. "Alarm off."

  The house alarm stopped shrieking.

  My skin crawled as the dosimeter kept peeping away.

  Shit.

  I'd had nuclear, biological and chemical training. It all came down to exposure. I trailed blood into the garage and climbed into Bobby's Jeep. It was a beauty of a firecracker red Rubicon Recon with every last possible accessory. I backed the jeep out of the garage and pulled into the carport by front door. I unlocked the winch cable and pulled thirty feet of slack into the foyer. I took Bobby's .44 Magnum in one hand and gave Yogi three good lashes across the skull with the winch hook.

  No movement.

  I looped the cable twice around Yogi's neck for the lynching and cinched the hook tight. It was no hallucination. The ant's crawling across my skin sensation was real. The driver's seat was a sea of my blood as I climbed back in. The Rubicon's tires spit gravel as I reversed down the drive. The cable went taught and Yogi almost got stuck in the front door but he pulled free without taking the jam with him. The dosimeter stopped peeping across the speakers and I took solace in the fact that maybe the bear blood and gore in the house wouldn't be too toxic a problem. I punched the button for the gate and reverse-turned out onto the road. The jeep ground to a halt about fifty meters away from the house.

  I wondered how much blood I had left in my body as I climbed down and stared at the thing in the headlights.

  How to dispose of a rad-pumping, four hundred pound corpse?

  I waved it and the idea way. Fuck that. Leave it.

  I needed help.

  I needed medical help.

  Hell, just leave the Jeep and everything where it was. I'd sleep in the shelter tonight and see about cleaning up the bear, the house and myself in the morning.

  My heart broke as the fucking thing rose up on all fours.

  God . . . damn it.

  Apparently Yogi'd had his nap, a nice drag and a bowl of Wheaties and he was ready for round two. I broke into a stumble. He let out a sobbing roar and I heard his paws slapping pavement. He'd rip me out of the driver's seat before I ever turned the key and got in gear. It was a race between two sinking ships and I was still going to lose. I ran past the Jeep and ripped the fire extinguisher from the brackets on the roll cage in passing. It almost didn't come and I nearly fell.

  If Yogi wanted a second round then he was going to get the retardant and the bludgeoning again.

  I turned to make my stand. I stood wearing nothing but my dog tags, my boots and a bucket of my own blood. I managed a last snarl of defiance.

  "Come on!"

  Yogi came straight in. Full charge.

  I raised the extinguisher.

  Yogi took flight.

  His hind legs ran out from underneath him and he violently threw off the shackles of gravity and swung up into the air.

  Yogi had reached the end of his leash and clotheslined himself against the winch cable at forty miles per hour.

  I swear the jeep moved two feet.

  I roared in triumph as Yogi reached his apex and slammed down to the road.

  "Hah!"

  I staggered past him and got in the jeep. The gears ground and I dragged Yogi until I got up some speed and pulled a bootlegger's turn.

  He actually stood up.

  Bear in the headlights.

  I floored it and gave him his new buddy the winch, the steel bumper and the two and a half tons of Jeep behind them. Yogi went flying and the Jeep lurched as I followed through and ran him over. I threw the Rubicon into reverse and ran him over again. I did that five or six more times laughing hysterically.

  I backed up until the cable went taut and put the Jeep in park.

  I clambered down and surveyed my labors.

  Now that's what I call road kill.

  I swayed on my feet. I thought I might have had a concussion but I felt absolutely lucid. The skin-crawling sensation had turned to pleasing warmth. I passed judgment.

  "Fuzzy-Wuzzy had no hair," My knees went rubber and I sat down on the pavement. "Motherfucker."

  Tires screamed and headlights filled both lanes coming down the road.

  I squinted into the glare and waved jauntily. "Hi!"

  Ted's truck screeched to halt. Armed men leaped out of the bed.

  I waved again. "Hey, fellas!"

  Ted burst out o
f the cab.

  "Hey, Ted!"

  Ted stared at me and my erstwhile, ursine opponent in horror. "What the hell, Frame?"

  "Radioactive rape-bear. Right there." I pointed at the cooling meat mass in the middle of the road and thumbed my chest in triumph. "Put paid to his ass."

  "Frame?"

  I flipped the dead bear the bird. "Fuzzy-Wuzzy had no hair, then Fuzzy-Wuzzy met Frame and he wasn't there! Anymore! Fuck you! Goat-roper!"

  "Don't you mean raper?"

  "Raper!" I felt drunk. I gave Ted a conspiratorial look and stage-whispered. "Goat-ropers are what we call Texans. On the rez!"

  Ted turned to an older guy dressed and armed like a working cowboy. "Jeff, go get Clarice. Tell her to bring her medical kit. Now."

  Jeff bolted for his truck.

  I waved after him. "Thanks, Jeff!"

  I looked down and found I had a raging hard on.

  This pleased me immensely. "Hey, Ted! Look at that!"

  "Yeah, Frame. I see it." Ted's voice rose a bit in urgency. "Someone bring a blanket!"

  People clustered around me. Ted peered earnestly into my left eye in the glare of the headlights and tried to pry open the right.

  I glared past Ted at my opponent and pointed at my dick. "See, Fuzzy? You had a hard on! You came at me! I killed you, and now I've got one! Circle of life, fucker! Pull a bear-boner on Force Recon and you know what happens? Hey, Ted! You know what happens when you pull a bear-boner on Force Recon?"

  Ted nodded back at the road kill. "That?"

  "Fuckin' ay, bubba!"

  Some black guy I didn't know who looked like a famous athlete looked at me in concern.

  "Hey black guy who looks like a famous athlete!" I pointed at my dick. "Check this out!"

  Black guy who looked like a famous athlete just stared.

  I nodded in solidarity. "Wakanda forever!"

  "Is he gonna be all right?"

  "I have no clue," Ted grimaced. "It's hard to tell through the blood and the swelling, but I think it missed his eye."

  I was very happy to hear this. "Yay!"

  Ted threw a blanket around my shoulders. "Lay back."

  "Look, Ted. I like you."

  "I like you, too, Frame."

  "But I'm pitching a tent, and we don't want none of that Brokeback Malibu."

  "No," Ted affirmed. "We don't want none of that. Lay back. Help is coming."

  Someone shoved a jacket under my head.

  I lay on the pavement. My face didn't hurt. Neither did my ass. I was painfully erect but I strangely felt no need to do anything about it. It was a magnificent hard on. Maybe I'd show Ashley later. Maybe I wouldn't. Right now I liked lying in the middle of the road. I liked it a lot. I felt a warm glow of goodwill and wellbeing towards everyone and everything.

  Even Fuzzy.

  Ted was pressing a handkerchief against my cheekbone and a bandana against my brow.

  Boy! Ted sure was a neat guy!

  I looked up.

  "Gosh."

  Imagine a full moon. The biggest you ever saw. Now throw a rock hard enough to break it. Imagine the biggest chunks still fairly close together and you can see them slowly moving. Imagine untold others of every size from definable tumbling chunks to millions of shiny motes spreading out in an ever-thinning line across the night sky. Throw in a cloudless night with no light pollution from LA or anywhere else and billions of stars and the Milky Way competing for the celestial awesomeness. Throw in the aurora borealis of Southern California snaking kaleidoscope reds and greens across the sky.

  Throw in a meteor shower so thick it looked like rain.

  I relaxed back against the road and closed my eyes.

  I smiled and crossed LSD off the bucket list.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Sexy Mexican Maid

  I LAY NAKED on Bobby's massage table. It was a nice one with the hole for your face option. There was also a hole for your crotch section. Go figure. My shredded butt-cheek currently inhabited it. A very nice, farm girl-looking paramedic named Clarice finished stitching up my face. "You're going to have some very exciting scars."

  I leered up at her. "I have exciting scars."

  "Yes, you do." She took a moment to admire her handiwork. "Roll over."

  I rolled prone and she went to work stitching up my ass.

  "You do have exciting scars, but nothing as exciting as these are going to be."

  "Pain heals, chicks dig scars, and glory lasts forever." I quoted.

  Clarice made a bemused noise.

  Eve was sort of assisting Clarice, but she couldn't stop staring at Ashley. Before I'd gone to bed last night and met rape-Yogi I'd put on rubber gloves, broken out the anti-microbial foam and given Ashley and her "sleeves" a good scrubbing, top to bottom, inside and out. Then I'd put her in one of Bobby's kimonos, done her hair up in some kind of loose, anime topknot held together with chopsticks and installed her in the breakfast nook.

  Maybe I'd spent too much time alone recently.

  "You know," Eve said. "I saw a movie about a guy who lives alone with a sex doll."

  "Yeah, I saw that one, too. And like our hero? I've been a perfect gentleman."

  Eve just stared.

  "Hey, that is a primo, k-cup, made in Japan, all three-inputs accessorizable men's sexual health companion."

  "You say that like it clarified anything."

  I looked over at Ashley. "No one understands."

  "No one wants to understand."

  Eve's better half came in. Ted looked haggard. A dozen people I didn't know came in with mops and buckets and brooms and dustpans. Eve kissed Ted. "I'm going to go help."

  Two old codgers came in bearing a huge roll of plastic sheeting between them and they set about shoring up my shattered window and making tent-flap doors for the atrium.

  I frowned. "Don't know if this a good idea."

  Ted held out my dosimeter. The little screen was green and the message read negligible.

  "I checked the whole house while you were asleep. It's clear. Including you. I also checked the carcass. It twitched the graph, but whatever happened to that bear it's cooling off rapidly. But this is the interesting part."

  "There's an interesting part?"

  Ted was getting way too excited about the tech. "Check this out."

  I had to admit he'd gotten way deeper into the dosimeter's workings than I ever had. He called up incident reports.

  There was only one.

  He tapped it.

  It was last night.

  Despite the post 'Happy Fun Time Frame' glow in my fingers, toes and nethers I went cold.

  The brick red graph pegged out at the top of the screen.

  "So . . ."

  "So, here's the weird part."

  "There's a weird part?"

  "Yeah, this is a sweet rig you got." Ted pulled up another graph. "Two Geiger Muller Tubes and its calibrated for the big three."

  "Gamma, Beta and X-rays."

  Ted grinned. "Right!"

  I told you. I'd had NBC training.

  "Look at this."

  I looked. The screen had three graph lines. Each was blank except for a brief message.

  γ: negl.

  β: negl.

  χ: negl.

  "So . . ."

  "So, something spiked your dosimeter off the scale, but the dosimeter can't identify it."

  "So what does that mean?"

  "Dunno, I've never heard of such thing." Ted gave me a funny look. "Frame?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Can I ask you an honest question?"

  "Shoot."

  "Were you high last night?"

  "And if you were?" Clarice piped in. "Can I have some?"

  "Naw, I was sleeping. We had a big day planned."

  "You were completely off the rails. Do you remember anything?"

  "I remember everything." I found myself smiling. "I had fantastic dreams."

  "I bet you did."

  I'd dreamed of Line. Sever
al times. All of them golden, happy and cinematic and when I'd woken alone and realized they were dreams I still wasn't sad.

  Oh, make no mistake. I was coming down off something, and I knew it. But rather than a crash the comedown was a smooth and peaceful glide path with a 'Thanks for playing!' afterglow.

  I watched as the good neighbor brigade picked up glass and mopped blood off the floors and walls. "You organize this, Ted?"

  "Actually, you've built up some serious Malibu cred. People were nervous about you. Now the entire canyon is talking about how Frame fought the goat-raper naked."

  "And that doesn't make them nervous?"

  "Maybe in a glad he's on our side kind of way?"

  Been there, done that.

  "Though I think a lot of it is they wanted an excuse to get a look at you."

  "You told them about me."

  "Of course. They're my neighbors. You're the new kid on the block and this is the apocalypse. You got talked about."

  I winced as the needle went in again. All Clarice had was topical Lidocaine and it and the mystical energy buzz were wearing off. "Almost done."

  The black guy who looked like a famous athlete walked in. He had some kind of clearly non-California compliant, highly modified, AR race gun slung over his shoulder. He took in me and my raggedy ass on the table and grinned. "Hey, Tiger! How's our patient doing to--" He pulled up short at the sight of Ashley. He spoke with an educated but thick southern black accent. "That's fucked up, man. I was going to bring my kids over to meet you."

  "You bring your kids over to Bobby's house?"

  "What are you talking about?" He looked at me like I was an idiot. "My kids love Bobby."

  Okay . . .

  "Bobby lets them swim in the pool. I wanted a pool, but we have little ones, and my wife, she's always afraid one of them would sneak in unsupervised and drown. Did you know Bobby hosts outdoor family movie nights for the block?"

  You know? Maybe I should have spent more time hanging out with Bobby.