Everybody Scream!

by Jeffrey Thomas

  The man, Mitch Garnet, was walking at him fast, bouncing in his white running sneakers. Mitch had an energized swagger. He was, like Del, only medium height at best but muscular without being bulky, though more athletic and restless physically. He had short, curly brown hair and a serious, handsome face, blue eyes under intensely lowered dark brows. He didn’t smile much, his small mouth held with an almost arrogant solemnity. Even his words came over with a bitter, insolent edge. Del liked him, though–but didn’t feel close. Garnet was the chief of security under Sophi. The town had its own uniformed crew–this year they were trying a new outfit after last year’s last day riot. Sophi’s personal crew consisted of just Mitch, a human woman, a Choom man, and the two KeeZees–whose greatest effectiveness was as showpieces, but who still quelled a lot of trouble through direct action. They all wore street clothes to mingle, but for the black-garbed KeeZee duo. Mitch now wore faded jeans, a white polo shirt and a silver windbreaker.

  Del sipped while he waited for him. “Mornin’, Mitch.”

  “Mornin’.” Garnet had reached him. Straight to business. “I’ve got a body in the morgue you might wanna see. We found it this morning behind the Screamer.”

  “Oh boy. How many does that make from last night? Four, now?”

  “Yeah. This one was murdered. Real murdered.”

  “I thought we’d do better than last year.” Del fell in beside Garnet and they walked off another way. “I’m waiting for a day in which we get away with not one fatality.”

  “That kid that fell outta the Dreidel last night got picked up already. Nobody called after this one, though. And we don’t have any I.D. yet.”

  “Can we post a photo around?”

  “Not of the face. We can describe the clothes.”

  “If this morning is any indication of the day to come I think I’ll hide in my trailer until it’s all over.”

  “Last night,” Garnet consoled him. He was hard to keep up with.

  With Garnet, Del had pretty much retraced his steps. One trailer toward the front of the trailer village was Sophi’s formal office, and Garnet’s large security trailer with its holding cells was beside it. Lost children, thefts, myriad problems were reported here. One of two secretary-dispatchers was always stationed, aided by a few unfancy robots. Next to this trailer was a large medical trailer, always adequately staffed, with two small helicars parked on the roof. The town also kept some vehicles on the site, plus a teleporter for real emergency cases having to be sent to a hospital without delay. The town security vehicles and temporary structure were here, and finally Sophi’s security team’s morgue, a large black trailer with the white-stenciled word MORGUE looming on the side. Sophi’s med team turned over the cases they couldn’t deal with on a long-term basis to the town med team, and her security crew turned over their arrests to the town, usually within a day or two, to deliver to Punktown’s police facilities. But the dead delivered even by the town’s hired security crew and medical team remained at the carnival morgue pending pick-up. If not identified upon discovery, the bodies waited there to be claimed. At the end of the season the morgue turned over its unclaimed collection to the town. Those bodies not claimed at the Paxton morgue in six months were then separated into two groups: those killed or first handled by the town teams, and those killed or first handled by Sophi’s staff. Thus were belongings and valuables distributed fairly. The town then disintegrated their bodies, but sometimes the carnival found innovative uses for their share…

  Del waited for Mitch to tap the entry code into a small keyboard; the morgue door slid open. Del followed him inside. Mitch slid the door shut. No other living beings were in here. It was a little chilly, but much of that was in Del’s mind and in the sickly greenish cast of the lights.

  “I haven’t been in here in a week,” murmured Del, scanning about. He sipped his coffee.

  “You’ve missed some good ones.” Drawers with digital readouts for labels lined the walls; Garnet touched a master control and all the drawers slid open simultaneously (but for those containing victims of possibly contagious disease or radiation poisoning). Del hated when he did that. Macho indifference to death carried too far, flaunted. But after the initial shock he did feel his morbid curiosity kick in, and he stepped closer to one of the nearer drawers.

  “What happened to her?”

  “Raped and strangled two nights ago. No callers. She’s twelve, says equipment. Maybe a runaway.”

  “She is pretty made up.” Del agreed, taking in the ruffled mini skirt and red open mouth. So pretty–God what a waste, he thought. “Tall, for twelve.” Her cheek looked so soft you wanted to touch it, her long dark hair straight and silken. Del looked away. “Terrible.”

  “This one smelled to hell when we brought her in–I almost passed out.”

  Tossing his empty cup in a zapper, Del shuffled to another plastic sarcophagus. The transparent cover had remained locked. Inside was a black shiny mass of hair-fringed tentacles, and poking up from them a mushroom-like head with a series of bright red gills underneath. Del leaned in closer. “Ha.”

  “What?”

  “Did you know this is an animal, not a person?”

  “No–are you sure? I never seen one before.”

  “It’s not an Oasis animal. It’s Kodju. It must be somebody’s pet.”

  “Are they capable of extradimensional travel, maybe?” The Kodju people, of another dimension, were capable of this by a difficult but natural process.

  “I, ah, I doubt it. An escaped pet, or maybe the spawn of a pet gone feral.”

  “Is it worth anything?”

  “I’ll look into it. Hang on to it–someone might come in, though I haven’t seen any Kodju.”

  “Maybe it’s not a Kodju’s pet, but an Earther’s pet.”

  “True.” Del continued browsing, hands in pants pockets, as if searching among a jeweler’s cases for an engagement ring. A few gang kids, killed by ugly ray wounds, and one missing its head, one arm and much of the upper chest, obviously eaten away by a weak plasma bullet. A good plasma wouldn’t have left anything, but even black market dealers were careful not to allow into common hands ray or plasma weapons which left no body. Mitch himself was required to only use a mild explosive bullet so that enough would be left for a proper investigative report (when and if an investigation was called for–though Paxton hardly had the resources or time to investigate every killing in town). Mostly this was a precaution to keep him from misusing his power.

  “Fucking gang punks,” sneered Garnet.

  “Well, they’re trouble, but they buy lots of popcorn.”

  “The KeeZees iced that one,” Garnet indicated one gang boy, whose remnant of a head lay a few inches apart from the ragged stump of neck. An explosive bullet hit to the throat. “Most of these bodies are ours, Del. That fucking bunch of potbellies from Fog are too busy flirting with girls and standing in line for corn dogs. When the heat comes up, the Fog disperses. So much for tougher town boys.

  “I know–I’m surprised. It’ll probably be another service next year.”

  “Sophi’s gotta say something.”

  “Talk to her.”

  “I have been.”

  “She probably will.”

  “Well, anyway, we end up with more bodies.”

  “That’s not much of a concern to me.”

  “Yeah, well, naturally people with a lot of money on them aren’t likely to stay unclaimed long unless they’re a dealer of some kind. Ever think of making a horror ride with some of these? You don’t have a good horror ride anymore–that haunted house is pretty stupid.”

  “Come on, it’s a town thing; the school kids made it to raise money. It’s creative.”

  “Whatever, but you and Sophi really need one.”

  “Well, that’s for her to figure, not me.”

  “What’s a carnival without a horror ride or at least a fun house?” Mitch opened the jacket of a gang boy to better see the black-edged ray wound in his white
chest.

  “We’ve got more variety than some I’ve seen, less than others.”

  “I’m not trying to be a jerk,” Garnet said earnestly, his face somber, suddenly concerned.

  “No offense taken, Mitch.” Del didn’t worry about Mitch’s loyalty. He was ever respectful of Sophi, and of him, although Del was not technically a manager despite his great money investment. Garnet was grateful to Sophi for taking a chance and hiring him after he had been discharged from the Paxton police force after too many citations for excessive violence.

  Most of the other cadavers Del had seen before, some from early in the season. As yet unclaimed. A man with a lot of packets of snakebite on him–a dealer, no doubt, his skull bashed in and wallet taken. His killer hadn’t known about the drugs, obviously. A number of derelicts, mostly very old or very mutated, though one was a good-looking young Earth man in ragged stinking clothes, underfed, wild long hair. Scavengers that got in somehow, like the snipes. Del had insisted that security go easy on their kind so long as they weren’t hostile. Garnet’s team were tough but they weren’t utter monsters, and they complied. Otherwise the Kahns largely gave them free rein; they did what they had to do. Only one of these derelicts, a grotesque naked mutant with pinkish-purple folds of flesh and a huge lipless mouth of jagged teeth, had had to be killed by the team.

  Mitch stared at this one a moment, in fact. From its lower jaw projected a much smaller, more twisted version of the grimacing head. Under that emerged two useless tiny arms like those of a baby.

  Del didn’t notice; instead stared at a huge-bellied naked black man with half-closed lids and open mouth, elbows and knees bent, toes and fingers curled unevenly. The skin looked like plastic, or wax. The dead could look so fake–movie corpses were more familiar and realistic. A snipe or smaller creatures had chewed off his nose and upper lip. Inhuman-looking.

  “Where’s the one you want to show me?” Del said quietly.

  The little head had no eyes, and one of the diminutive arms was bent, the fist disappearing back into the jaw. “These guys would’ve been twins. Chooms, looks like,” murmured Mitch. “Wonder how sentient the lesser twin was.”

  Now Del looked. “Couldn’t be very. The big one doesn’t look like it was too sharp, itself.” Del hadn’t known Garnet to get so philosophical over a dead mutant derelict before. “Where’s the one from last night, Mitch?”

  “Yeah–right over here.”

  A teenage girl. Tight black sweat pants, a rubbery transparent jacket over a black bra. The front of her face was mostly eaten away, as if it had simply caved in, the central nasal cavity enlarged to join with the mouth and eye sockets. Only the teeth of the lower jaw remained. The edges of the pit and inside the head still glowed a very soft violet, as if with a plasma that was still active.

  “Vortex?”

  “Yeah,” sneered Garnet. “It reacted with the gold-dust she snorted, and something else…maybe just some prescription drug she was on, or a few buttons, or a few drinks. Vortex can do that, especially mixed with dust.”

  “I’ve never seen it this bad. I’ve seen Cokeheads–they mix vortex with cocaine, and their noses corrode. Stick those metal tubes where their noses were so they can keep snorting…”

  “Mm. I ran into a few on the force. Dangerous, crazy. Vortex does that. This is our fifth death by purple vortex this season alone, Del.”

  “I know.”

  “Let me run that fat fuck out.”

  “It’s our last night.”

  “Let me emphasize that he isn’t welcome next year.”

  “We’ll worry about it next year. I don’t want a crazy scene like last year. Let’s have a mellow night. I hate him as much as you…but face it, one of the big reasons kids come here is to buy drugs, get whacked. He’s not the only dealer here.”

  “Of vortex, he is. He’s so big on vortex I’m surprised the syndy hasn’t either sucked him up or wiped him out.”

  “Well, he is getting too big for a renegade. They can’t keep track of everybody, but he is pushing his luck. Maybe somebody else will take care of him for us.”

  “Del, don’t imply that we need fucks like him selling their drugs to keep this place going.”

  “I don’t like it, Mitch, believe me. But we do. We need the gangs. The psychos. Everybody but him.” He gestured at the two-headed mutant.

  “Frustrating,” grumbled Mitch.

  “Agreed. Can we get out of here now?”

  “Might as well.”

  The restaurant was dark, sophisticated; Kodju cuisine. Incense vaguely creeping, beautiful wall hangings, soft tinkling of Kodju music. A few short decades ago the Kodju had been utterly mysterious beings, a race from another dimension as rare and fleeting on this side as visiting mythical gods, intense humanoid giants adhering to a strict code handed down from their warrior forebears. Now, while these things were not always inexpensive, one could purchase Kodju plants and decorations for their homes, wear Kodju silks, eat Kodju foodstuffs cultivated here. Kodju movies were big, the more violent the better. For all the great beauty of their culture, Hector Tomas was just a little tired of the Kodju.

  But he hadn’t eaten the food in awhile, and it was undeniably good–his favorite, though best reserved as a treat, so as not to become tiresome. He had come for a late breakfast. It wasn’t a usual idea for a breakfast, but that made it more interesting. Mostly he had just been driving, seen this place, remembered the food was good, and come.

  There weren’t many other tables occupied, the five women seated at the table directly behind him outnumbering all the other patrons. Hector’s towering, glowering obsidian-skinned demon of a waiter had just politely left his meal, and as he munched he idly absorbed scraps of the conversation wafting from the table behind him.

  It was quickly obvious that they worked together. One told another that so-and-so had said she was cute. “Cute? Oh really?” the other replied, gratified, but with great nonchalance. They were out for breakfast before work. Some distantly curious portion of his mind strained to determine the nature of their work, while Hector’s eyes followed another robed Kodju as it passed across the room. Once he had yearned to visit their dimension, had made it a goal for the future. Not any more. It wasn’t the same as “crossing over,” but there were still dangerous things that lived in the space between this realm and their realm, waiting to prey on the weak traveler. Anything like crossing over no longer appealed to him.

  They worked at an animal hospital; Hector assumed it was the one not very far down the highway from here. Their giggling, their mocking humor and the topics of conversation now attracted his full attention…and as one discussion began to crystallize for him, Hector seemed to sit up straighter where before he had been languid. He was becoming disgusted.

  From what he put together, a man had recently brought in his ten-year-old dog due to some problem Hector couldn’t ascertain. The man was so attached to his dog that he was shaking when he left it in the care of the woman who laughed as she told the story. He was afraid he would never see it again due to its age. Another added that the dog too had whined as its master left, staring after him yearningly. Laughter. “…he should learn to be a real man,” observed one woman with a touch of distaste. As it turned out, the dog was safely reunited with its owner, but the women wondered what would happen when it had to be put to sleep one day. “You can handle that, Jan,” said one. Laughter. Jan said, “Thanks a lot.”

  Hector had only last year had his sixteen-year-old husky put to sleep due to growing painful ailments, at the very hospital he believed these women to be from–not that he expected human nature to vary much from one hospital to another. The dog had died in his embrace, and he had cried right there in front of the doctor, his tears falling and nose running. He’d found her as an abandoned puppy, had carried her home in his arms. Now he had borne her to death in his arms. Sixteen years. Much of that time she had been his closest companion in life. When he paid his bill at the desk, had one of these wo
men taken note of his red eyes so as to be able to laugh about it with her friends at lunch?

  Frightening. All it proved to Hector was that the man’s love for his dog showed more compassion than all these women combined showed for him, unless some coward wasn’t speaking up. Even the love of the dog, a so-called lesser animal, dwarfed the emotion exhibited by these benighted souls. Shortly after, one of them told the others about a cute metal canister filled with gourmet popcorn she’d seen in a store, which showed colorful cartoon versions of Choom prehistoric animals roller skating. It was so cute! But a dog yearning after its master was a joke for breakfast.

  He should learn to be a real man, was the ultimate line. Unbelievable. Could women still believe that a real man didn’t cry, didn’t shake, didn’t see an animal life-form as anything more than an expendable commodity? Hector didn’t want to meet the men these creatures desired. That ten-year-old dog must put their puny souls to shame, too.

  Was it just their constant exposure to animal pain and suffering? A defense? No, not necessarily. The head vet, who had put Hector’s husky to sleep, had had tears in his eyes when Hector’s mother sobbed over her dog which he had just put to death, and Hector’s cousin had told him that the woman behind the counter at her vet had cried along with her when her dog didn’t survive efforts to save it after a hit and run. It wasn’t the job; it was the type of human.

  Years ago, a friend attending med school had told him that doctors sometimes laughed behind the backs of some of their more amusing patients, trading stories. They were only human, the med student chuckled in their defense. It didn’t sit so well with Hector, who didn’t believe it was unrealistically idealistic to expect doctors to be ethical, professional and dignified.

  Hector had once heard that at a burn unit for children much of the staff commonly referred to the children as “crispy critters”; this was said to be a defense mechanism to keep the staff from becoming too involved, too unglued. Hector had never forgotten it. Did he simply expect too much of people?

  He wanted so badly, so badly to turn around in his seat and say to them that he would never bring his animals to that hospital again, and that he intended to write an editorial about this experience for a newspaper. But they would only laugh, sneer, tell him to fuck off. They couldn’t possibly be made to feel ashamed. Hector said nothing, his attempt at a peaceful breakfast treat rotted.