Hector wasn’t surprised when they blocked the path of the tall linked couple. It was natural; he had anticipated it perhaps before the gang did. Hector’s heart pounded for the couple as they tried to move around the boys, who fanned out to block them. One boy of about nineteen, probably the leader, flashed open a switchblade. Of course–how could they resist that silly, stupid braid? Some of the boys closed around behind the frightened, passive couple. God forbid they should have to flee connected like that. The boy brandished his knife in the air, grinning his huge white grin. The others laughed, taunted the couple, began snatching at their matching purses. No one passing by stopped to help.
The blade hovered high in the air, as if in some ritual the boy, an evil priest, would unmarry these two–as if he were waiting for his dark god to bless the knife before he struck. Hector faintly acknowledged an approach behind him, and Cod’s voice. “Alright, dad, you’re clear to go in.” But Hector walked away from the voice.
“Hey,” Hector said as he drew his gun from inside his black plastic Theta researcher jacket, that nice government agent’s sidearm with no recoil and no sound and plasma bullets that could dissolve you without a trace in less than a minute. “Hey,” he said again, and now took a two-handed firing stance despite the lack of recoil–to keep his hand from shaking.
“Whoa,” said Cod, backing up. Fast.
One of the boys looked over, cried out sharply. The others looked. One jerked his hand toward his underarm.
“Don’t!” Hector boomed, more out of fear than anger, training the gun on this boy. The kid raised his hands above his head. “I’m a forcer,” Hector said. “Leave those two alone or I’ll have you taken in.”
“Hey, Officer Bato, ease up,” the leader laughed, clicking his knife shut and slowly pocketing it. No sudden moves. “We’re just playing, you know?”
“I’m not playing. Move along.”
“Oooh,” mocked one of the fluffy blonde pre-teen girls.
“Stop drinking so much coffee, huh?” laughed the leader. He said something to the others in Spanish, which Hector wasn’t really fluent in despite his heritage. They began to move along, but nice and slow and unhurried. One still purposely bumped against the giant couple as he passed.
“I see any more trouble with you and you’ve had it, amigos,” Tomas said after them, straightening up, lowering his pistol. He did feel like he’d drank too much coffee. Several too many gallons.
“Oooh,” said that girl over her shoulder again.
The married couple stood staring down at Hector. Without eyes or even mobile features, he could still read their gratitude. They both nodded their linked heads, then resumed their gliding away. Stuffing his handgun away, Hector let out the air that had ballooned his heart and turned to see Eddy Walpole standing there regarding him alongside Cod. Hector moved to them.
“Hello again–officer,” Eddy greeted him gravely. No smirk.
The horrible realization came over Hector, and his heart ballooned again. Fate was the clown at tonight’s carnival. Giggling, prancing, spraying water from a lapel flower into people’s faces. “I’m not really a forcer,” Hector said hollowly, as if he himself didn’t believe his own words. “I just said that to scare those boys off.”
“And why would you want to do that–unless you were a forcer?”
“I was concerned for that alien couple.”
“Why?”
“Why?”
“I’m sorry, sir, I don’t have anything to discuss with you tonight.” Eddy began to turn. Hector saw his own hand shoot out and he caught the man’s arm.
“Wait...please...I’ll pay you double.”
“You must think I’m pretty brainless, huh?”
“I’m not a forcer...I’ll show you my I.D....I used to be a Theta researcher, that’s all…”
“Your credentials don’t mean anything to me, sir.” He set us up, thought Eddy Walpole. He’s in this with Kahn. If only Sneezy was here right now.
“Look in my eyes.”
“Hypnotism won’t work, sir.”
“I need your drugs, can’t you see that? You know what it looks like.” Hector took a step closer, still holding Eddy’s elbow. “Look at my eyes.”
Eddy did look. And then he slowly nodded. The knot loosened in Hector’s belly. “Alright,” Walpole said softly. “Come inside. But leave your gun with the kid.”
“Of course.”
Hector half expected the invitation to become a trap, felt defenseless without his gun, but Walpole produced the drugs…even the promised bonus of seaweed for the inconvenience of waiting. Hector thanked him sincerely. Smirking inside, Walpole thought, how could I have doubted him? “You’re a lucky man. We’re shutting down our business for now. You’re our last customer.”
“I appreciate it.” Hector slipped the six pill dispensers into various pockets outside and inside his jacket. “Thank you.”
Eddy smiled, clapped him on the back, showed him to the van’s door. Hector glanced over his shoulder at a bearded fat man who hadn’t said anything. This man smiled at him pleasantly, peering over the top of granny glasses low on his nose. Beside the fat man throughout had sat a boy of eleven or twelve in a camouflage uniform and cap, his hair a crew cut stubble beneath, his eyes on Hector like blade points. Hector didn’t know much about the Martians other than that they exiled their members when they reached thirteen, and had a code of honor that restricted them from shooting a man who wasn’t armed with a gun–though Hector suspected this law had more to do with impressing themselves than anything else, considering their reputation for being one of the most violent and ruthless of Punktown’s newest, or even established, gangs. He seemed to remember reading something about a drug they all took to stay pumped up. Vortex…purple vortex. That was it.
The door slid shut behind him. Mission accomplished. He felt as he had when returning from some of his trips crossing over. Relieved, and shaken. He had to find a place now to roll his weed in the papers they’d given him, smoke it and calm down. Well...maybe it was better to just sit down finally and have a few beers.
He was so relieved that it made him happy and ashamed of himself at the same time.
Hector hadn’t gone too far before he saw the Bedbug.
It was moving along in the crowd, weaving purposefully but not rudely through the generally taller beings. Black, bipedal, beetle-like. Two of its six, pincer-tipped tendril arms–the lower two–had been removed and replaced with mechanical arms with four fingers and opposable thumbs, an artificial adaptation to a humanoid-oriented world. It wore no clothing or jewelry, but slung on a kind of neck strap was a small black device of some sort. A camera? A translator, maybe. Or a weapon.
Hector sort of began to drift along after it, eyes fixed on it.
They lived in another dimension, passed in and out of dimensions in their strange vehicles called trans, locomotive-like things that before disappearing traced intricate patterns on odd beds of tracks, hence the appellation Bedbugs–a derogatory nickname to indicate the negative feelings many had for the race, best called a prejudice. But why this abhorrence, when there were stranger, uglier races? That another of Punktown’s most feared street gangs was a gang of Bedbugs was not a sufficient answer. Maybe it was a feeling people couldn’t put a finger on.
Where was this one headed? To buy some candyfloss? To toss some darts at balloons? To climb aboard some madly circling ride that reminded it of a tran? Hector was thankful that the being was so intent on its destination that it didn’t swivel its tiny head around to see him sort of following it.
A man held his nose after it had passed. Hector felt, if not sorry, at least sympathetic toward the loathed beings. But stronger was the horror, the terror, that made him want to both follow it to its destination, and get as far away from it as possible.
He almost lost sight of it, but it reappeared far ahead and he quickened. Then it turned into an alley between trailers and was gone. Hector began to press forward insistently thr
ough the flocks. He reached the alley, moved through it to its mouth, and halted there. Not far ahead, the insectoid had obviously reached its destination.
It was a great spider-like leg growing out of the empty air. A lighted sign explained the attraction as best it could but was too far for Hector to clearly read. Something about an extra-dimensional being reaching into this plane of existence, like a swimmer testing the water temperature with his toes. Something about two hundred and forty-three legs identical to this one having appeared out of the sky over a bank in town. Yes, yes, he remembered the story. Remembered that dribbling liquid fell from the sky near those legs for four months and had to be caught in a disintegration unit to prevent those who used the bank’s heliport from requiring umbrellas.
There was a dribble from the air here, too, he could see. It puddled a little but seemed to be mostly absorbed by the dirt.
The Bedbug swivelled its head and Hector drew back sharply, but it didn’t swivel far enough behind to see him. He relaxed. Now in its feeler-arms it raised and pointed that device hanging from its neck. It did seem like it was taking pictures with a camera–though a complex-looking one. No one passing took but a casual notice. But Hector stared raptly. His horror, undiminished, and curiosity were one and the same.
No lights blinked on the black device, there was no flash or sound from it. There was, though, a thin bluish smoke as from a cigarette which came twisting out of a grille in the side of it.
Hector remembered reading how the odd mechanical temple built illegally in a cave on The Head by a small group of Bedbugs had produced bluish smoke from various openings and grilles. Someone sucked ice water up the straw of Hector’s spine.
Most people, even scientists, had no real idea why the Bedbugs should be so disdained. But then most people, even scientists who had dissected a few Bedbugs, had no idea how, or if, or what they ate to survive.
Hector knew. He had been told about it, and once toward the end of his career had even seen it. No, not here. Not in this dimension.
It had been in that place he had crossed over into, where the “trace-energies” of human beings such as himself were in constant woe, ranging from brooding melancholy to all-out hysterical anguish. The screaming…thousands, all in a wretched harmony, a unity of fear. They had begged him to take them away, would have clawed him to pieces in their desperation had they had physical limbs.
“They feed on us!” they told him, over and over. “Stop them! Save us! They bring us here…the Gatherers...”
Maybe his associates had learned since his dismissal where the Bedbugs had collected all these tormented souls from, to be kept penned shoulder-to-nonmaterial-shoulder in this place until needed, but Hector didn’t know. He ached to know and to never know.
The government was currently insistent on keeping these findings a secret. Debates were underway. Did they have a right or obligation to protect these souls, trace-energies, reincarnations or whatever they chose to call the tormented beings? They didn’t have legal jurisdiction over the world where these entities were penned and harvested. In fact, they were trespassers there, since the Bedbugs had actually artificially opened or created this great space to store their rations in.
All debates aside, Hector couldn’t help but wonder when he read the obituaries. Read that some child had drowned. When he considered his own inevitable end. Where would he go? Was there no peace beyond? And even if the predators caught him, caged him for a decade or an eon, and then consumed him (the screams), would something of him survive on another plane? Or would his soul, if such it could be called, be reduced to the violet gas that escaped from the rear apertures of the Bedbugs, the noxious smell which caused some to scornfully hold their noses?
The insect-like creature at last lowered its device and moved on.
Hector did not pursue it further. He did, though, cross to the leg, a skeletal accusatory finger, to stare at it and read the accompanying sign. The dribble from the air made sounds in the muddy puddle. He had no idea that no one had ever observed a liquid dribbling from the air before this.
They were back. Eddy stepped out of the van to see what was keeping Sneezy. The small balding man in the flowered tropical shirt stood just beyond the awning smoking a cigarette, looking off, it appeared, into the sky.
“Sneeze–come on in.”
Sneezy Tightrope mumbled something. One word.
“What? Hey–Sneeze. Come on, wake up.”
“Huh?” Sneezy turned around. He looked perplexed, distracted.
Eddy looked up to where his friend had been gazing and saw the bright coin of The Head still low in the sky but rapidly rising.
Mitch’s always tight voice was tighter over the public address system. “Del please come to security immediately. Del please come to security immediately.” Del had just stepped down from his own trailer, fresh again but wearing the same greenish-black silk suit, white shirt, string tie…like nothing had happened. He wasn’t far from the security trailer but hurried even so, feeling guilty that he had shut his phone off earlier.
Several separate bits of information were absorbed simultaneously when he entered the large mobile building. Noelle was indeed not here–had her friend been located? She hadn’t stayed to say goodbye? He was relieved and hurt.
Mostly relieved, because his wife was here. And it was Sophi he focused on, despite Garnet’s extra-grim intensity. Sophi was sitting and looked up into Del’s eyes, shocking him for several moments. Her face was pallid, setting off the redness around her eyes. She looked shrunken, turtle-like, inside her violet sweater and half hidden behind her hair. Her cigarette trembled. Del decided that this matter had to concern her in some way. Not much could reduce his strong, tough wife to this. He felt dread.
Dingo Rubydawn, Mitch’s Choom man, was also present, and spoke first. “Del, you know that girl who came in here looking for her friend? Noelle Buda? Well, she came in here about an hour ago and asked me if her friend had answered her page. No, she hadn’t, so I paged again. No show. So I figured, why not go down to the parking lot to see if she’s partying in one of the cars. Right? Well…”
“What?”
“I found a dead boy and girl in a car. They’d been partying. No clothes on. He’d been shot twice in the head. She’d had her eyes shot out. He had a gun with him but didn’t use it, I guess. I thought I’d found the Buda girl’s friend, but when I looked at their wallets it wasn’t her. They’d broken into the car, too, apparently–we just paged the owners so we can talk to them.”
“So who were they?”
“His name was Wes Sundry. Looks like a punk. She was Heather Buffatoni. We tried calling her parents but can’t reach them. High school kid, looked fairly respectable. I called Mitch.”
“I sent the KeeZees to run a search of the whole lot,” said Mitch. “It didn’t take long to find the next one…just a few rows over. Same deal. Car broken into. A boy shot twice, once in the face and once in the throat. He was naked, had a gun he didn’t get to use. Same make of gun as the Sundry kid. This one’s name was Fernando Colon.”
“And a girl?”
“There must have been. The boy was naked. But no sign.”
“Maybe she escaped. Or maybe she’s the one who did it. Could that girl have been Noelle Buda’s friend? That Moussa guy she went off with might have made his name up.”
“It wasn’t her friend,” said Dingo. “We found her.”
“One of the KeeZees found her. And Moussa. It was his real name,” said Mitch. “They were in a third car. This time it was registered to the guy–Moussa Habash. He was dressed and behind the wheel. He had a gun–not the same brand as the other two–and there were gold-dust traces on a hand mirror on the floor, some seaweed in a little container, and a bottle of booze. He was a law student. Rich father; he’s on his way.”
“The girl,” Del said, impatient.
“In the seat beside him, naked. Bonnie Gross. He’d been shot once in the forehead. The girl had been shot twice in the
face and once in each breast. We’ve got a serial killer at the fair. A psycho,” said Mitch.
“Does Noelle know?”
“She identified those two, but didn’t know the others from their I.D.’s–she’s over in the med trailer having a coffee.”
“Okay,” said Del, shakily, strangely feeling in charge. He hadn’t looked at Sophi again but knew she was in no shape to take control. “All the bodies are in the cooler?”
“Yes. Gross and Habash just came in ten minutes ago.”
“Are you running time of death tests?”
“All the standards. I put in a call to the force, too. They’ll be sending down two detectives to look into it and a cruiser to patrol the lot.”
“Check to see if the same weapon was used at all three scenes.”
“Even if it wasn’t, the killer could have two guns. But that’s another test we’re running. The cars have been print scanned. We’re running the scans through the police files open to us. We tracked down Bonnie Gross’s people and someone is on the way. Nobody to contact, yet, for Sundry or Colon.”
“We’ve got to find out if that Colon boy was with a girl. She could tell us a lot. If she didn’t do it.”
“If she’s alive,” said Dingo.
“Sounds like a psycho who can’t stand seeing a girl and boy getting to it. A repressed fanatic,” mused Del. “Jealous.”
“I don’t want to limit myself to a speculated motive just yet,” said Mitch.
“Three scenes of killings, two with naked boys and naked girls, and one with seaweed that wasn’t taken? Looks sexual to me.”
Everybody Scream! Page 23
