Installing Linux on a Dead Badger (and other Oddities)

by Lucy A. Snyder

  Bob opened a Telnet window and started tapping in commands. “Junkyard dogs ain’t got nothin’ on badgers. I seen a 15-pound badger send a 60-pound pit bull mix yelpin’ and bleedin’ back to his mamma. I mean, lookit the claws on this sucker. This bad boy could dig his way through highway pavement–”

  The badger abruptly lurched to its feet and leaped on Bob, chomping down on his left forearm. Bob hollered and fell backwards into a table of disassembled PCs. The badger worried his arm furiously as it tore at his belly with its clawed forelegs.

  I started forward to try to help Bob, but he waved me back frantically with his free hand.

  “No! Git the iBook! Type in ‘kill 665’!”

  I did. The badger froze, still latched onto Bob’s forearm. His tee shirt was soaked in blood from the deep slashes in his belly. He awkwardly shook his arm, but the badger wouldn’t budge.

  “Well that’s a helluva system bug,” he said weakly. “This little bastard’s bit me right down to the bone. Launch FleshGolem, would ya? It’s in the Dock.”

  I spotted a dock icon that looked like Frankenstein’s Monster and clicked it. A program opened that looked a lot like the Mac port of the old DOOM first-person shooter game. Instead of a game screen there was a pixellated black-and-white image of Bob’s face.

  I was seeing through the dead badger’s eyes.

  “Cool,” I whispered.

  “Yeah, it’s real cool, get this critter offa me! Hit the ‘escape’ key!”

  The badger unclenched its jaws and fell to the floor with a heavy thump. The screen told me the badger was resetting itself. Bob clutched his bleeding arm, wincing. The badger righted itself and sat like a dog, awaiting new commands. The blood on Bob’s shoes shone like tar through the eyecam screen.

  “Dang, this stings,” Bob said. “Where’d I put that medical kit, I gotta–”

  The bars hit the pavement outside with a tremendous clanging crash. One zombie was pinned beneath the bars, but the other four poured in through the shattered window.

  “Aw, dangit! Can’t a man finish a presentation ‘round here?”

  Bob pulled a shotgun from a shelf beneath the work table and fired it at the rushing zombies. My ears rang from the boom. The blast hit the lead zombie squarely in its chest, but it barely slowed down.

  “Git back an’ get the badger running,” Bob called loudly, apparently a bit deafened. “An’ don’t forget to initialize NecroNull in ‘options’, or he ain’t gonna be much use.”

  Clutching the iBook, I ran to the back of the shop and spotted a closetlike restroom. I ran inside, flipped on the light, and locked the door behind me. The lock wouldn’t hold for more than a minute or two, but I hoped Bob could keep the zombies busy long enough to figure out what I was doing.

  Amid the roars and shotgun blasts, I set the iBook on the sink and moused around, trying to get the badger up and biting.

  While the basic controls were indeed fairly simple and DOOM like, there was menu after menu of advanced controls for a mind-boggling array of behaviors. There was even a Karaoke menu so that you could hook up a microphone and attempt to speak through the primitive vocal cords of the creature you’d reanimated.

  Pushing aside the mental image of a frat boy drunkenly singing “Louie Louie” through a dead Pomeranian, I found the NecroNull combat option and clicked it on.

  The eyecam screen shuddered and turned technicolor. A new menu of fighting commands popped up for regular Kombat mode and IKnowKungFu mode, the latter of which came with a warning that it was only good for five minutes before your golem spontaneously combusted.

  My inner freshman giggled: Spontaneous combustion? Fire is cool! Fire fire fire!

  I told my freshman to buzz off and set to kicking some zombie hiney in Kombat mode.

  All I could see was a mass of legs, so I hopped the badger onto a nearby chair for a better view. Bob was leaping from table to table, trying to dodge the five zombies as he reloaded his shotgun. He’d blasted away parts of their limbs, heads, and bodies, but he’d only just slowed them down. Even the one who’d lost both its lower legs and all of one arm was hopping around on stumped thighs, gamely trying to grab Bob’s ankles.

  Bob turned his head toward the badger. “A little help here?” he called. His voice came through the iBook’s speaker a half-second after I heard it through the door.

  I leaped the badger onto Runs On Stumps. As the badger bit into the back of its neck, the zombie went rigid, and its skin went white and ashy. The zombie’s NecroNulled flesh crumbled like clay beneath the badger’s teeth and raking claws.

  “Good one!” Bob said. “The others won’t go so quick ‘cause they ain’t hurt so bad.”

  I attacked the next zombie, which had only a superficial shotgun wound to its shoulder. As the badger’s teeth sank into its neck, the zombie roared and punched the badger into a pile of empty computer cases. I heard a dull snap from the speaker, and the badger shuddered.

  The screen flashed:

  WARNING! SPINAL TAP IN PROGRESS! Kombat mode not possible. Continue via IKnowKungFu? (Y/N)

  Fire! Fire! Fire! my inner teen chanted.

  I hit the “Y” key, and the screen went red. The badger rose up, up in the air and floated against the ceiling, scanning for targets. The zombie who’d fractured the badger’s spine was flaking apart like asbestos, and the remaining three had cornered Bob, whose shotgun had apparently jammed.

  Then Bob looked up, saw the badger, mouthed Oh crap and dropped to the floor, covering his head.

  The badger screamed down on the zombies, jaws snapping and paws clawing faster than the computer could track. It went clear through one zombie’s head like a fuzzy buzzsaw and ripped through the others. I caught a glimpse of Bob crawling desperately for cover at the back of the store. The badger dove in and out, faster and faster, like a small furry dead Superman.

  WARNING! OVERLOAD IMMINENT!

  I gave the iBook the four-finger salute, but the program was locked. I was just about to hit the power button when the badger exploded.

  You know how matter can turn into energy? I found out later that the reason NecroNull is buried in FleshGolem’s options is that when IKnowKungFu sparks a spiritual overload, it causes all of the still-living matter in the golem to become energy. A few bacterial cells, usually, or maybe a dying roundworm. Not enough to match the power of a nuclear weapon, but plenty to create one hell of a bang.

  Is it a bug, or a feature? I guess it depends on how many zombies you have to kill, and how badly you want them gone.

  The boom rocked the entire building, and I was knocked flat. The iBook clattered onto the dirty floor, its keyboard popping free and its screen blacking out.

  I got to my feet and cautiously opened the door. Bob lay in an unconscious heap against the back door. The computer shop was a complete wreck. Smoke and zombie blood hung in a thick, rustred mist. The remaining windows were shattered, and the front door had been blown off its hinges. There was not a single zombie in sight.

  Two middle-aged women in pink beautician’s smocks stood on the sidewalk outside, squinting into the dark shop. One clutched a Mossberg shotgun. Though their faces and smocks were smudged with soot and blood, their bouffants were immaculate

  “Are you okay in there?” the older of the two women called.

  “I’m fine, but Bob needs an ambulance,” I replied. “Does your shop have a phone?”

  “Shore do. I’ll go give the boys at ‘t VFD a holler,” she said.

  It took me three days to get back to civilization. I didn’t end up killing my editor; when I got back we had what diplomats call “a frank and cordial exchange” and, well, we parted ways. After that, I did what any good American would do: I sued.

  But all’s well that ends well. I used my settlement proceeds to start up the Kritter Karaoke Klub, and the college kids can’t get enough.

  Wake Up Naked Monkey You’re Going To Die

  THE KETAMINE-LACED tranquilizer dart was wearing off. Jimbo
raised his head, but all he could see were the glowing rainbow sprites swirling above him, moth-fluttering around the smoky oaky torches bolted to the cavern’s ceiling. Pretty lights, oo, he’d love to float among them like a supernaut. If only he wasn’t tied down to this rusty old sacrifice throne.

  “Kill tone! Jelly smash!” yelled the Feeb. The shout cut Jimbo’s brain-haze like a razorblade on a punch-swollen eyelid. Thank God for ol’ Feeb; he missed the Brainy Train all right, but what wits he was dealt never went dull, no matter how much booze or weed was in his system.

  The Alleygat Autocrats had surely spat gigantic rainbows in all their minds, but Feeb, he knew how to keep everyone on course. A coarse, hoarse course, of course. Fuck him and the horse he coursed in on …

  Jimbo’s head fell sleepy-dead to his spattered chest. “Explorers, come out and plaaaay!” screeched the Feeb. “Wakey bakey,” Jimbo snorted, his eyes popping open. He focused in on Bobby, who lay in a darkening pool of stickiness. The monster’s minions had bobbed his legs clean off below the knee. A gummy machete lay mere feet away, just out of reach.

  Fucking minions, Jimbo thought, his head clearing a bit more. What kind of nihilistic fuckclowns firebombed their own city and worshipped a big jiggly sonic death slug that wanted to apocalyze the whole planet? Big Slime could’ve promised to poop pure gold for all Jimbo knew, but who could cash it in if the world was cashed out? Stupid mooks.

  Jimbo saw Bobby’s chest rise and fall. His leg vessels had probably rolled up inside the stumps, saving him from a quick bleeding death so he could look forward to slowly melting in the belly of the beast.

  Ain’t life a peach? Always cut down, and not across, kids, Jimbo thought.

  “Hey Bobby,” Jimbo called, his throat dry and rough as the hemp ropes binding his wrists behind the wrought-iron throne. “Wake up, Bobby.”

  They’d crippled Bobby because he was the strong one, the one they couldn’t rely on drugs and itchy ropes holding. Now Jimbo had to be Hercules. But first he had to bust free of this damned chair.

  He craned his neck at the Feeb, who’d been strung up on meathooks through the flesh of his back in a suicide suspension. He’d survive, if they got him down and to a doctor before infection set in.

  They were in a freaking charnel house; the greasy remains of countless bodies lay in festering puddles around them. Thank whatever God still cared about this pisspool of a city that their noses closed up shop soon after they found an entrance to the tunnels beneath the cathedral.

  Hunt the Wumpus. Raise a rumpus, he wants to jump us … crap, stay focused! he thought.

  “Bobby! BOBBY!”

  Bobby stirred and faintly laughed.

  Jimbo knew Bobby was off bouncing in Happyfunball Land like he’d been. Still was. He had to give them both something to focus on.

  “Bobby, did you know that Catholic priests can bless beer?” he asked. “They can even bless seismograph machines.”

  “You’re shitting me,” mumbled Bobby.

  “No, I am being completely true with you. A Catholic priest could most especially bless that machete beside you, even though it’s done you wrong, like that gal in that country song. You got no legs, Bobby, so don’t try to walk, but get that blade and crawl over here with it. Bobby!”

  “I got no legs?” Bobby started to drunkenly hum a Monty Python tune.

  “Think of the nice blessed seismograph! ‘St. Emidius, pray for us, and in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, protect us and also this seismograph from the terror of earthquakes,’ the nice priest says. Save us from the terror of singing puddings, Bobby Boy. You’ve got to.”

  “I can be abundingly Van Helsingly heroic now, Jimbo,” Bobby replied, reaching for the machete. He gripped it, and started to king-snake forward, then went slack, his eyes glazed. “Pretty pretty blood, is it all mine?”

  The Feeb wailed and fought his fleshhook chains. “Ring ring ring the devil’s calling! Come out, come out wherever you are!”

  “Beer is life, Bobby! Bring the machete,” Jimbo implored. “It’s Miller time for sure! We gotta hump or we’re skunked!”

  A low, weirdly modulated rumble rolled from a nearby tunnel. It was the sound of a thousand pounds of ancient clotted slime dragging itself across the floor of the catacombs.

  It was the sound of pure impending death, a sound older than evolution, a cosmic alarm clock blaring WAKE UP NAKED MONKEY YOU’RE GOING TO DIE! Every rat brain would fear it like the roar of an exploding star.

  Jimbo saw Bobby’s pupils expand as the adrenaline hit his blood, and suddenly Bobby was up on rawtorn hands and knees scrabbling to the back of Jimbo’s chair, sawing at the knots. Jimbo felt the ropes give and he pulled his hands free, swinging his arms in a pitcher’s windmill.

  A Catholic priest could bless anything. A perfect, crystalline memory surfaced, lit by synaptic fire: the shutout game he’d pitched against St. Francis DeSales in high school. Their coach Father Santoro blessed his baseballs before the game: May God guide your arm like he guided David’s sling against Goliath, and with the Lord’s help we’re gonna beat the snot out of those rich little nancyboys at St. Francis. Amen.

  He felt in his pocket for their salvation: the aluminum jar of caustic salt was still there. The last priest alive in the city had blessed it. The minions didn’t think to strip them of anything but obvious weapons. Stupid mooks.

  The ancient acidic God Slime crawled into the flickering torchlight like an enormous, unholy pudding glistening with a million emerald eyes. It was humming, vibrating, getting louder. They only had a few susurrous heartbeats until it reached the deadly tone to batter bones and muscles to pulp, liquefying their flesh so the acidic abomination could sponge them into its hundred stomachs.

  Jimbo pulled out the blessed jar and gripped it splitfingered for a fastball. He whispered, “Sing a song of sixpence, slimeball, ‘cause I got a pocket full of lye!” He wished to himself, prayed to God and pitched as hard as he could. The shiny jar hit the mark and sank fast into the hungry, stanky flank.

  The God Slime’s ravenous jelly ate through the aluminum, and suddenly its innards started blistering, bubbling, foaming. The caustic salts bloomed whitely inside the green, translucent flesh. The monster thrashed, melting faster than a sugar witch in a rainstorm, hissing a song that was pure delight to the heroes and ghosts listening, rejoicing in the vanquished catacombs.

  In The Shadow of the Fryolator

  EMMA LEGRASSE CRANKED the key in her Ford Festiva’s ignition a third time, to no avail. She stared through the smeared windshield at the snow-blanketed hood and entertained a fleeting daydream of a sweet frosted fairyland ruled by a benevolent Jelly Donut King. Dismissing her snacky fancy, she opened her cell phone and called her boyfriend.

  “Yo,” answered Benny, far too loudly. She could hear him typing furiously. A dragon roared through his computer speakers. “‘Sup, Em?”

  “Hi, honey, my car won’t start–”

  “More DoTs! More DoTs! Don’t go near the whelps, dumbass!” Benny screamed in her ear. Through the ringing she heard a fireball whoosh and a computerized female voice groan in death. “What an idiot! Uh, whadja say?”

  “My car. Won’t start. I’m kinda stranded here at the diner. Could you come pick me up, please?”

  “Sure, I guess, after the raid,” he replied, his voice flush with indifference.

  “After?” The darned raids lasted forever. There wasn’t a bus, and a cab would be at least $50. She wouldn’t get home until after midnight. “Honey, please, I’ve been cooking for 10 hours straight, and I’ve got to be back here at 8 a.m.–”

  “Em, we’ve gotten wiped in this dungeon twice … we gotta take Zirconia out this time! I’m tanking; I can’t leave now! Look, I’ll see you later. Gimme a call if you catch a ride or somethin’.”

  The line went dead. Emma managed to resist smashing her cell phone against the dashboard in frustration. Heaven forbid she ever got pregnant from his Mountain Dew-addled sperm – she’d hav
e to call a cab if she went into labor on a game night.

  Why do I put up with this? she wondered, then almost immediately heard the echoes of her mother’s lectures that a girl had to have a man in her life, that men weren’t perfect, that a good girl made do with what she got.

  Criminy. Benny was preferable to her mother’s handwringing and dire tales about the fate of single women. If Emma reported a breakup, her mother inevitably brought up the urban legend about the elderly woman who was devoured by rats the day after her divorce. That story never got old.

  She dropped the phone and her car keys back in her purse and rubbed her numb hands on her black pants, staring balefully at the snowy hood. Cars weren’t rocket science, no matter what her ex-boyfriend from Flint had tried to convince her. Changing a spark plug was easier than building a computer – which she had done, thankyouverymuch – or even just making a really good risotto.

  Emma yanked the hood release and heaved the door open. The mucus in her nose froze with her first breath, and her sneaker-clad feet sank ankle-deep in the powdery snow as she went to the front of the car to wrestle the hood open. Her fingers felt like they’d been beaten with a hammer by the time she succeeded. She twisted on her keychain flashlight and examined the engine. The alternator belt hung limply on its rusty spindles, a section raggedly snapped apart. Viscous pink icicles dripped from the cold-gnawed edges of the belt. Had her transmission gone bad, too? Darn it.

  Shivering, she slammed the hood shut and picked her way through the snow and icy car droppings to the back door of the Zuberoa Diner. She pushed into the warmly-lit hallway beside the cozy employee lounge, stomped the snow off her shoes, and hung her purse and coat by the door.

  A weird, musky-fishy odor greased the air; she’d first noticed it around noon. She’d taken out the trash and searched the kitchen for errant sprats and prawns, to no avail. Maybe something had fallen between the counter and the fridge; she’d get one of the guys to help her pull it away from the wall if the stink persisted.

  She spotted a gleaming, patterned trail of oil or slime leading from the door to the kitchen. Darn it, she’d told the busboys not to wheel their bikes through there. The tires always tracked mud and grass and who-knew-what onto the floor. Who’d be riding a bike on a day like this, anyhow? Probably Carlos; he was training for the Mountain Madness race.