Bovine Bloodbath

by Chris Lowry

  "Yeah."

  "Then go on. Get participating," he said on the verge of shouting. "And keep your voice down."

  "I'm not the one screaming."

  "I know who is screaming and who isn't," Carver muttered. "You remember the way we got down here?"

  "Kinda."

  "Kinda my ass. We going to need you to remember it if we're going to get out."

  "I think so."

  "Think? Man, you got to know."

  "Alright, I remember."

  "That's better."

  "I think."

  Carver shook his head.

  "You're going to get us killed."

  "I look at it like this," Dawes explained.

  The two men trailed behind the mirror lens wearing super soldiers leading them into the belly of the ship.

  "If we go with them, we're probably going to get killed too. If we stay here, someone is going to try to kill us. Might as well try while we're getting away."

  Carver nodded.

  "Yeah man, I like that. That's better we got a shot down here."

  "Not shot down here. A chance down here."

  "That's what I meant."

  "That's not what you said."

  "Man, I know what I said. You got to listen."

  "Besides, I don't think I'm going to get killed down here."

  "You got a good feeling? A gut instinct?"

  "No, I just think they'll shoot you first."

  "Cause I'm black, isn't it."

  "Yeah."

  "Man, that's just wrong."

  "You're right. But it's true."

  "You think it, but that don't make it true."

  "I'm just saying dude, statistically speaking, you have a better shot at getting shot than them shooting at me."

  "You ain't making no sense. It's like you're speaking a bunch of bull," Carver's voiced hitched up in volume as his anger grew.

  "If you're learning to speak Bull back there," Duke called over his shoulder. "Don't bother. We're programming translators."

  The super solider pulled up short at the plane.

  "Get in," he turned to them.

  "See man, you made us miss our shot."

  "Oh we can still shoot you," Nuke grinned.

  "And we don't have to pick which one to go first. There's one of you for each of us."

  CHAPTER SIX

  Dawes and Carver strapped into narrow jump suits behind two pilot chairs. The interior of the plane was tight, they were practically shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the space occupied by consoles full of buttons and gauges.

  Duke pulled shoulder straps onto his torso and locked down, while Nuke did the same.

  “The launch sequence is pre-programmed,” Nuke called back to them. “We’re airtight until we reach the ship.”

  “Hey man, don’t we need space suits? Last time we had space suits.”

  “Relax,” Duke grinned. “You’re here to advise and observe. Let the professionals handle this.”

  Carver whispered out of the side of his mouth.

  “Relax and observe. That’s kinda like supervising, right? Hey, we getting paid to supervise.”

  Dawes grinned.

  “Think I could put that on my resume?”

  “Man you ain’t going job hunting no more. We got a job.”

  “You are not super soldiers,” Nuke chastised. “Leave that to us.”

  “It’s space soldiers,” Carver corrected. “The General called the mission super secret, not ya’ll.”

  “Have you had the super serum?”

  “Steroids.”

  “It’s not steroids,” Duke snapped. “It’s the super soldier serum.”

  “That’s Captain America bullshit man. It ain’t real.”

  “It’s real,” Nuke said. “And we got it. You don’t. Like I said, just sit back and enjoy the flight.”

  His fingers moved across the keys and brought the engine to life.

  The roof over their head trundled back to reveal the daytime sky.

  “Man what time is it?”

  “Time to fly,” said Duke.

  He thrust a simple throttle lever forward and the rocket plane lifted off with a gentle hum.

  It floated through the air and drifted toward the open sky.

  “Open up once we’re clear,” Nuke instructed.

  “Roger that.”

  "What's that button?"

  "Don't press it," Dawes slapped his hand away as Carver's finger drifted toward the purple button in the console.

  "I wasn't going to press it, I was just letting you know which one I was talking about."

  "There's only a one button on that panel."

  "Yeah, but you might have been looking somewhere else."

  Dawes knocked his hand away from the button again.

  "You're doing it again."

  "I ain't done nothing yet man. I'm just wondering why they put that button right there in the middle all by itself. It must do something important."

  Dawes looked at the back of Duke and Nuke's head as they sat in the pilot's seat.

  "If they wanted us to do something, they would have told us."

  "Them?! They don't know nothing. You remember the last time we went up in a rocket. It was all automatic and stuff."

  "Auto-pilot," Dawes nodded, remembering.

  "Yeah, and these guys don't look like pilot's do they?"

  "How do you know that a pilot looks like?"

  "Like astronauts, man. Fishbowl heads and padded marshmallow suits. We in those?"

  Dawes glanced down to the battle fatigues they wore instead of the space suit he wore last time.

  "I guess not."

  "Guess? You got eyes, don't you? You can see we're all in the same clothes. No spacesuit means we ain't going to be out in space."

  "They said we were going to outer space. That's where the cow ship is."

  "Man, cow ship is getting deep around here. I know what they said. But what they showed us, I've been thinking. What if it ain't true?"

  Dawes let that roll around in his head a little bit, turned it over to examine it. It was tough to remember everything they had shared, exactly.

  In fact, a lot of it was a blur.

  He felt like he was on a speeding conveyor belt that rolled them down a line at lightning speed.

  Wrong turn. Shot in space. Nine foot lizard men fight. Back in space. Try to escape. Lost in space.

  Then the crash landing, the supersonic flight to the secret base and another alien threat.

  He felt it all whirling around inside his head and blanched. The center could not hold.

  "You all right man?"

  "Huh?"

  "Your eyes got a little wobbly and weird. You gonna be sick or something? Don't throw up on me."

  "I'm not going to get sick."

  "I'm warning you man, if you throw up on me, I'm going to bust your ass. I ain't playing."

  "I was just thinking about all the stuff that got us here."

  Carver thought about it as the engines rumbled to life underneath them.

  His finger drifted closer to the purple button and jabbed it. He stared at his finger with his mouth hanging open, as if it betrayed him.

  "What did you do that for?"

  The rumble changed pitch.

  "What the hell did you do?!" Duke screamed. He spun around in his seat and fought to get the straps unbuckled, eyes blazing in fury.

  "He looks pissed," said Dawes.

  Nuke spun around and had one strap off as he tried to work the control panels with one hand, slip out of the second restraint with the other.

  "So, does he."

  Duke shrugged out of the straps and tried to stand, just as the floor opened up under Dawes and Carver.

  Their seats dropped through the floor into a cramped pod. The floor whisked shut above them with a pop.

  "That hurt my ears!" Carver shouted.

  The rumble of a rocket engine sounded underneath them as they were jammed back into the
ir cushions.

  The pod shot from the underbody of the ship, slammed into the dirt and bounced across the deserted landscape.

  The door seal automatically cracked open and whisked them out.

  Carver spilled out first, coughing and waved the plume of dust the pod created away from his face. Dawes crawled out next to him.

  They watched the flying ship race toward the stratosphere and disappear in a brilliant flash of orange flame.

  "Damn," Carver drew out the word.

  "Did you press a self destruct button?"

  "What kind of idiot builds a ship with a self destruct button out there in the open all by itself?"

  Pieces of debris scattered in the sky as trails of smoke traced the descent path.

  "What kind of idiot presses a button that he doesn't know what it does?"

  "Don't call me an idiot man. I've got a curious nature."

  Dawes pointed to the white puffy cloud of what remained of the XJ-22 in the sky.

  "You know that happened to the cat, don't you?"

  "Yeah man, but we're alright. You're alive, ain't you?"

  Dawes checked his limps, moving his arms and legs.

  "Everything seems to work."

  "Good. Now what?"

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  "Did we kill them?"

  "What do you mean we?"

  "I'm serious man, do you think they're dead?"

  "How should I know," Dawes stared the flaming wreckage spread across the Texas countryside. "It is kinda messy."

  Carver licked his lips.

  "Man, it'd be hard to survive that don't you think?"

  "Probably."

  "Probably! It's in a million pieces."

  "I didn't count."

  "You need to be serious man. This ain't funny. You know they'll pull you up on manslaughter charges on something like this."

  "Not if they think we're dead too."

  Carver stopped and his eyes grew big.

  "They think we're dead? You think they think that?"

  "I don't know what they think. But we were supposed to be on that ship and we're not."

  Carver nodded his head, trying to convince himself and Dawes of the logic.

  "You're right though. They do think we're dead. If they think that, then they can't bring us up on charges."

  "You're very worried about that," Dawes said in concern. "You had a brush or two with the law before?"

  "You know how hard it is for a black man to get a fair trial in Texas? They'll probably blame me for blowing up the ship, killing those two dudes and you too."

  "I'm not dead."

  "So! They don't care about the truth. All they care about is it's my fault."

  "But you're dead."

  "Am I? Am I really? That ship cost somebody millions of dollars. They gonna be looking for someone to blame and you sure as shit ain't going to blame a cowboy in this state."

  "I think you're overthinking it."

  Carver paced around, five steps forward, five steps back, boots shifting up small puffs of dust to drift over the scrub covered ground.

  "Ain't no such thing. You don't know what it's like. The way they look at you, the way they always watching."

  Dawes stopped him.

  "Dude, I've been a drifter for years. I know exactly how you feel."

  "You comparing being homeless to being black? You can get a fucking house tomorrow, but I'll always be black."

  "It's not like that."

  "Just admit it. You don't have any idea."

  "Alright, I'll admit it. You're right."

  "I am? Of course, I am. That's the truest words you've said since we've been doing this."

  Carver nodded.

  "Sorry I tried to compare the two. It's apples and bananas.""

  "Don't you mean oranges?"

  "Can't it be bananas? They're not like apples, and it's comparing two different things."

  "Yeah, but the words are apples and oranges. You can't just go changing it because you feel like it."

  "I'm just trying to think different."

  "Well stop. This ain't no time to be thinking different. We need to come up with a plan."

  "Someone is going to come check the wreckage. We could wait for them."

  Carver spun on his heel and raised a finger.

  "See, I told you that you was going to blame me too. Wait here and the first thing they gonna do is lock me up."

  "They would probably lock both of us up."

  "Yeah, but it'll be worse for me."

  "Then what's your plan Einstein?"

  "Get as far away from here as we can."

  Dawes indicated the space age combat boots they both wore.

  "These boots were not made for walking."

  "Then we'll hitch a ride."

  Dawes glanced around the flat landscape.

  Southeast Texas stretched all the way down to the Gulf, broken only by scrub brush and stunted trees.

  "On what?"

  "There's got to be a road somewhere out there."

  "Wandering through the desert doesn't seem like a good idea."

  "Beats waiting here to get arrested."

  Dawes shrugged. He didn't particularly feel like getting arrested and Carver was right.

  They probably would blame them for the deaths of the two super soldier's in the plan wreck. General Houston had seemed fond of the rough men and he wasn't the type to let it go unless orders came from on high.

  He pointed left, then right and raised an eyebrow.

  Carver glanced in both directions, then picked one and they trudged through the hard packed dirt not really sure what they were searching to find, but hell bent on getting there anyway.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It turned out to be pretty easy to hitchhike.

  A couple of guys trekking along together in black fatigues through the back roads of Texas was just another Saturday afternoon in militia friendly country.

  A good old boy with a jacked up truck slid into the dirt on the shoulder of the road in front of them. He leaned through the slider in the back window and told them to hop in.

  They did.

  It was tough to talk over the roar of the wind and the rumble of the knobby tires on the blacktop, so they rode in silence.

  The truck dropped them off on the edge of a town, which was on the southern side of I-10, if the direction the driver pointed out to them was right.

  They were in the parking lot of a bar b que joint, a ramshackle side of the road with screened doors, screened windows and an abundance of mesquite flavored smoke that lingered around the building like fog.

  “You hungry?”

  “No money,” said Dawes.

  Carver dug into the cargo pocket on the side of his pants and pulled out two crumpled twenty dollar bills.

  “Where did you get that?”

  “My momma always told me to have a little back up cash because you never know.”

  “Your momma was a smart woman.”

  “Don’t you talk about my momma,” Carver snapped.

  Then it registered that Dawes had said a compliment.

  “Unless you saying nice things,” he amended.

  He led Dawes into the dim interior of the shed. A long bar lined one wall, with a shelf on the wall behind it stacked with paper plates, rolls of paper towels and large white Styrofoam cups.

  An ancient black man stood behind the counter wiping it with a towel that in a previous life had been white, but was now a dull gray after years of polishing the bar top.

  “Inside or out,” the counterman grunted.

  Carver pointed to a wooden picnic table by one of the screened windows in the corner then took the gunslingers seat so his back was to the wall.

  Except it was another screen open to the outside. The construction of the shed was unique in that all four walls were garage doors that could rolled up during the day to let in the breeze and smoke, and shut at night.