The Earth Died Screaming

by Chuck Rogers

  The brother scowled. "And we're not judgmental people."

  I switched gears diplomatically. "Didn't I see you play at Angel Stadium?"

  His face lit up. Nailed it. I've met a lot of celebrities, and even the ones who shit on their fans and pretend to hate it all love to be recognized. "Well, yeah, you might've."

  "What happened to the dreads?"

  He grinned sheepishly and ran a hand over his coal black dome. "Started moving backwards, man. Happens to the best of us."

  "M'Lawrence Johns," I kept a straight face. "Mar-J the II. Don't call him Junior."

  "As I live and breathe!" He waved dismissively at Ashley. "Hey man, my bad. Forget all that. That's your thing? It's the End of Days. Go ahead and do what you gotta do. You weren't expecting guests this morning and no abomination last night. We all owe you."

  I liked him. I don't give a crap about sports but if I remembered right he'd played shortstop for Navy so that made us military branch buddies.

  "Nice to meet you."

  "Frame," He shook his head in mild wonder. "Bobby talked about you."

  "What'd Bobby say?"

  "Said you were the baddest, bad-ass in LA! And you look it!"

  I craned my head around as the fifth row of stitches went in. "Well, it's a bad piece of ass now."

  "Are you kidding, Frame!" Clarice gazed upon her canvas. "You have a beautiful ass!"

  A thousand free squats will do that for you.

  She gushed on. "And once this heals up? People in Hollywood would've paid big bucks to have their asses cosmetically done to look like yours! And your face? The 'bear-swipe' would've been the new black!"

  Clarice.

  I liked her.

  I suddenly thought about my face. "Can I see?"

  She'd anticipated that. I got a leery look as she gave me Bobby's hand mirror from the bathroom. "This is the next day. Give it time."

  I looked at my mug in the mirror.

  Well, I looked like a guy who had been bitch slapped.

  By a four hundred pound bear.

  Claws and all.

  I was lucky I still had a cheekbone and a chin. The fact that my eye was still intact was a miracle. The right side of my face didn't look human. It was swollen, brutally bruised hamburger. Two horrible, sewn together trenches ripped through my eyebrow and cheek and a third tore down my temple.

  Mar-J was sympathetic. "Dude! You fought a bear! Naked! Give yourself some time."

  "So, listen . . ." I trailed off.

  A phalanx of Latinas marched through the house.

  There is a song that goes '36-24-36? Only if she's 5'3"!'

  She led them. She was a was sweeping hour-glass of curves trying to burst out of a little bib-front overall onesie and a blazing white, straining t-shirt. Her hair was blacker and thicker than mine and I'm famous for it. Her hair was so black it seemed to have blue-highlights in direct light. The face was pure Azteca. Eyebrows arched and sensuous lips slightly turned down in repose. You've heard the term 'resting bitch face.' She had resting sensuous and cruel face. She belonged on top of an Aztec pyramid, bare-breasted, sheathed in gold and jade and up to her elbows in blood as she carved the heart out of some hapless conquistador and offered it up to the Feathered Serpent.

  She gave me a long, inscrutable stone-face of appraisal in passing.

  Mar-J sighed appreciatively. "Ah, man, that's Lalli. She's the Guftason's live-in. I'm a married man and a Christian, but brother? She haunts my dreams."

  I had a feeling she was going to be haunting mine tonight. "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's au pair."

  Mar-J nodded judiciously. "Truth."

  "Yeah," Ted sighed as she disappeared into the atrium. "They're kind of the local mafia now. As you might imagine there's a lot of bartering these days, households trying to get what they need. The domestics make a lot of that happen. I wish we had one. I wish I spoke Spanish. The horse-trading gets real hard around here if you don't."

  I snorted. California couldn't go a day without a Mexican. The post-apocalypse was no different.

  Clarice leaned back and stretched. She'd been hunched over me for a while. "Okay, we're done. Keep 'em dry. Keep 'em clean. I don't think you have a concussion. Ted showed me the meter. It pegged out but if you had acute radiation exposure you'd be manifesting symptoms by now. But if you start getting nauseous? Your stitches start bleeding for no reason? You come see me immediately. Meantime? Drink this."

  She handed me a bottle of iodine.

  "It's going to be awful, but--"

  I pounded it. I'd like to say I'd drunk worse. I was a Marine and I'd been around the world. Oh well, they say if you go in hard and fast you don't get hurt. I managed not to throw up and handed her back the bottle. "That would have been better with lemon and salt."

  "Genuine tough guy." Clarice shook her head and gave me a tube of topical antibiotic. "Twice a day. I want to see your face in five days and your ass in seven. If you can stay off your feet and off your butt for the next twenty-four that would be good."

  "Yes, ma'am"

  Clarice tossed the towel over my ass and raised her voice. "All right! If you don't have a mop or a broom in your hand I want you out! And unless you're bringing him a beer, leave my patient alone!"

  Clarice.

  I liked her a lot.

  Mar-J brought me a beer. A Rolling Rock, and it was a tallboy, and cold.

  I liked him, too.

  I chased the taste of iodine out of my mouth and rested my chin on my hands. I went to sleep to the pleasing sound of other people cleaning your house.

  * * *

  I SAT NAKED WITH ASHLEY in the breakfast nook. I'd found standing for any length of time was a genuine pain in the ass. So I sat perched on one butt-cheek and contemplated the congealed, steel cut oatmeal I'd made the night before and wondered why no one had thought to bring me a casserole or something.

  The gate buzzed.

  I pushed the Uzi's selector switch from 'S' to 'F' and thumbed the voice button on the house remote. "Yes?"

  "Señor Frame?"

  "Yes."

  "It is Citlalli. May I come in?"

  "Lalli."

  "Yes."

  Things were looking up.

  "Please do."

  I buzzed her in.

  Things looked amazing.

  She wasn't dressed to kill going to the club, but professionally dressed to nail a job interview. She'd put on make up but you'd only known that if you had seen her without it like I had this morning. She carried a huge wicker laundry basket that appeared to be loaded with supplies. I saw a bottle of wine, a six-pack of Corona, Spaghetti-O's, mac n cheese, dish soap, a jar of pickles, a can of SPAM and all sorts of odds and ends of food and kitchen and household sundries.

  I realized I was sitting with a sex doll, naked and the breakfast nook table had a glass top. I shrugged internally and tried to smile through the bruising. "You steal all that?"

  "You killed violador de cabra, a collection was taken up. These are your spoils."

  I checked my American cryptids.

  Chupacabra = Goatsucker.

  Violador de cabra?

  Goat violator.

  "Just doing my civic duty."

  She stared at the fist of oatmeal in my bowl. "Give me that."

  Lalli took it before I could answer. She took a jug of milk from the basket. She shook it and I knew it was reconstituted from powder. While the oatmeal was in the microwave butter and honey appeared out of the basket.

  She set my breakfast-for-dinner before me.

  The oatmeal in hot milk with butter melting on top drizzled with honey set my stomach to growling. "Thank you."

  "Eat."

  I ate.

  "Better?"

  "Mmm," I spoke around my spoon. "Much."

  "May I sit?"

  "Of course."

  She gave Ashley a look and sat across from me. "Señor Frame, I would like to work for you."

  "I thought you worked for the G
uftasons? And don't they have the biggest mansion around here?"

  "They do. Señor Guftason is, or was, a very rich and powerful man. To put it bluntly I do not think he fears a sexual harassment suit anymore, and he has made it plain how tenuous my position is. As for his son? And his friends?" Lalli made a face. "Bestias."

  Beasts.

  Great, Daddy Warbucks and the teenage cavemen of the apocalypse.

  "Listen, I can make Guftason see reason, and as for little Guftasito and his pals? I can put the fear of God into them. For you free of charge. Thanks for helping clean up my house yesterday."

  "If you take me on there will be no reason for a confrontation, and they will be reduced to whispering about you and I behind our backs. This I do not care about."

  "Listen, you make great oatmeal."

  "I make fantastic oatmeal. However, tonight I simply resuscitated yours as best I could."

  "Listen, I don't know if I need a maid."

  "Of course you do. You are a man alone. You need someone to maintain your household. I can get things for you that you could not get otherwise. I can tell you everything about everyone in the hills. Whom to trust. Who to beware of. On the simplest of levels? In the world we live in now? You will find you need a second pair of hands and a second pair of eyes. Hands that know hard work, and eyes that are loyal."

  She made a strong case but this was going way too fast.

  And I couldn't stop staring at her.

  She regarded me frankly. "You were down in the bomb shelter for three months?"

  Score one for the muchacha.

  "How'd you know?"

  "Your Cadillac. There is a layer of dust upon it, and spider webs beneath. You did not walk here."

  "You're good."

  "Yes."

  "How'd you know about the bomb shelter?"

  "When Bobby's maid, Gabriella, her pregnancy got further along. I would help here a few hours a week."

  "Listen--"

  "So it has been at least three months since you have known a woman's touch? This is unhealthy."

  I was stirring under the table and the table was made of glass. I tried to change the subject. "I don't know you."

  "The Cutshalls are good people. They will tell you I am a good person. If Señor Bobby were here he would tell you I am a good person, and he was kind to me. You were his friend, and the rumor is you saved him from bad trouble. This makes me like you."

  She looked down through the glass table and perked an eyebrow.

  It was very clear I liked her, too.

  We both stared at my erection.

  Old friend? You've never let me down. Oh, but how often you've betrayed me.

  Lalli nodded. "You may not have my vagina but I am prepared to do other things for you."

  "I . . ." My mind started blurring. "Listen, you don't have to--"

  "I know I do not have to. You are not that kind of man. I am offering."

  "Listen."

  Lalli got up, went to the counter, and brought back my jug of coconut oil.

  Oh dear God . . .

  Lalli poured oil all over her right hand and reached under the table without hesitation. She had to lean way down to do it and this gave me a fantastic view.

  I spoke aloud as she went to work. "Oh . . . dear . . . God . . ."

  She tilted her head at Ashley. "Is this not better than her?"

  "I . . ." I wanted to explain to her that Ashley had been shown more respect than any sex doll outside of a Hollywood movie ever had, but I was just losing too many consonants. I tried to speak but only dumbshit stuff came out.

  "How are your . . . gardening skills?"

  Her hand froze. "I am not a gardener."

  "No, I mean . . . like . . . growing fruits, vegetables . . . and flowers. N' stuff."

  She smiled, gave me a squeeze, and her hand went back into motion. I groaned as she threw in the wrist curl. "That is one of my favorite things."

  I hadn't felt a woman's touch in three months. It didn't take long. With each upstroke she began wiping it back and forth against the glass. I looked down. It was fascinating to watch. Imagine being in a glass bottom boat and a narwhal swam up underneath and began rubbing one out against the hull. Well, quicker than your kid could exclaim 'Mommy! What is that whale doing?'

  Thar she blew.

  Jackson Pollock against the glass.

  Lalli took a good long time making sure there was nothing left of me. She got up, washed her hands in the sink and brought me a glass of water. "Do not worry about the table. I will clean it tomorrow. Tonight I must go pack my things." She turned cold, obsidian eyes on Ashley. "Get rid of that."

  I was strangely appalled. "That's Ashley!"

  Lalli's black eyes went flat as a shark's. "That is an insult to every woman who was ever born, and an abomination before God." Lalli held up her tiny, mighty right hand. "And until it is gone? This is all you get."

  She turned away. For a moment she looked about at the house's expanses of glass. "And I don't do windows."

  "You have to! It's an Eichler!"

  She ignored me and gave the kitchen a long hard look. "We need meat."

  The lady wasn't wrong and my mind went to those deer tracks and the saddle of venison that had been haunting my dreams.

  "I will return in the morning." She gave Ashley the evil eye. "See that the abomination is gone."

  I watched my new majordomo take her leave. She held her head up imperiously but put a wiggle in her walk for my benefit.

  I turned to Ashley. "Baby? We have to talk."

  CHAPTER NINE

  This moment, while it lasts.

  SO ASHLEY WAS BANISHED to the bomb shelter.

  Lalli showed up just before dawn in a little white VW SportWagen 4 x 4 loaded with her earthly possessions, which were few, and what appeared to be box after box and bag after bag of anything she could steal from the Guftason's that wasn't nailed down. She took possession of the guest bedroom, pulled on the rubber gloves and except for the windows, 'You are tall, you do them,' engaged in a ruthless grid-by-grid scrub and restore mission. Then she set about putting the kitchen in order. It was already was in order. She put it in Lalli order.

  I was a nudist so there wasn't much laundry.

  She threw one of Bobby's sarongs in my face.

  So much for nudism.

  I'd done time. Even though you had to be sick or hurt to get there? Infirmary time was sweet time. In the military? Invalid duty was easy duty. I have no shame. My hair hurts? My blood is making funny noises? I can milk a hangnail if I think the powers that be might fall for it.

  Lalli was having none of it.

  She wasn't working for a drone that laid about and did nothing but eat while waiting to mate.

  I think Ted had narced on me about deer stalking.

  "Meat." She reiterated.

  So . . .

  Whatever Lalli wants?

  Lalli gets.

  Meat for dinner?

  Frame was going hunting.

  Hunting with forty-two fresh stitches in your ass can be a challenge. But I'd spent time on the rez. We hunted. We hunted because we were a proud race of warriors and hunters. We hunted because it was traditional. Hunting was our heritage.

  And unlike a lot of people in the modern world?

  Sometimes we hunted because we were hungry.

  Because sometimes the kids watched those government checks go for things other than food.

  Even on reservations that had casinos.

  I went into the garage and it took me about half an hour on Bobby's workbench to knock together a squirrel feeder I was satisfied with. Just a little three-walls-and-a-roof job with a fatally exposed feeding tray/balcony sticking out of it. I tacked the rig up on the little oak tree in the corner of the yard, (acorns, squirrel territory), at about shoulder height. One of the things I hadn't raided before going below was Bobby's junk food. So I loaded the feeder with past their printed date Cheetos. I put a reclining patio chair in the sha
de about ten meters away, took a sofa cushion for my butt-cheek, took position with the sound-suppressed assassination Ruger, and continued my sword and sorcery rampage through Bobby's Kindle with Heroes Road, Book 1.

  It wasn't bad.

  I got busy waiting.

  The presence of Winnie the Penis had understandably demoralized the local wildlife. It took a good hour before the first squirrel came around to the old oak tree to investigate. By noon I had knocked the heads off of four and I finally got to break in my puukko knife.

  In Force Recon I'd been on a joint training mission with the Norwegian Coastal Commandos. Great bunch of guys. Real pros. At mission's end we had exchanged presents and my counterpart had given me a beautiful, eight inch Laplander camp knife with a side-sheath that contained another smaller three-inch puukko for fine work.

  They were gorgeous. Curly birch handles. Brass fittings. Laminated steel blades. The whole bit. The traditional gift of a puukko knife in Scandinavia is considered a genuine gesture of friendship. I don't really care much about 'stuff,' but those blades were one of the few things I owned that had sentimental value for me. They were associated with Norway, a bitchin' mission, working with some real deal fellas and partying with Norwegian women. All the guys there look like Ken dolls, so quite naturally the girls go mad for tall and dark. They forgave gruesome. The knives were mementos of some of my few good-times memories. They looked like something a Viking would carry.

  Because Vikings did carry them.

  The design is at least a couple thousand years old.

  You may recall Bobby's bedroom once had a beautiful oak door. Butt-rape bear had put paid to that. The door was still in one piece but it had been torn off the hinges and repairing it would be problematic. Easier just to steal an interior door from one of the local abandoned mansions. So I lay one end of the oak on the barbecue's workstation and the other on Bobby's folding workbench and I had a very sexy slaughtering board.

  I processed the squirrels, stretched the skins to dry on the BBQ grill, (Given current conditions? Fur might be making a comeback.), and presented the meat to Lalli.

  My girl had acquired some zucchini and tomatoes and by sunset I was eating pasta primavera with squirrel paired with a Fume Blanc from Bobby's wine cellar. The other two squirrels she cut into stew meat and froze along with the bones.