Everybody Scream!

by Jeffrey Thomas

  Sounds beyond the room, a knock, a tech robot opened the door and past it pressed Johnny Leng, arrogantly muscular, and Eddy Walpole, increasingly smirkless. Where was Roland LaKarnafeaux, Del thought, the boss? Johnny was his body and Eddy was his brains. So what was there left of LaKarnafeaux? Del was reminded how inarticulate and lacking in charisma LaKarnafeaux was, like a senile Buddha. The fat man was a balloon filled with hot air of the past and legend. Why hadn’t they overthrown him? Could they possibly be as mindlessly entranced as were the teenage boys who emulated that dozing sage?

  “God!” Eddy gasped, staring over Leng’s shoulder at the starkly dead form. “What happened?”

  “We don’t know,” Dingo said. “It wasn’t a tumor or anything like that.”

  “He’d been acting funny tonight,” muttered Leng, grim. “Staring off into space. He dropped a beer out of his hand. Really fuzzed.”

  “I’m sure this didn’t help,” Del said, pointing at the screen. Leng looked.

  “What’s that?”

  “Iodine, fish, gold-dust…purple vortex. Kaleidoscopes and red shockers.”

  Leng matched Del’s intense, probing gaze. “Yeah…a lot of people indulge. But their heads don’t explode, do they?”

  “Your friend was exceptional…clairvoyant. That’s funny, though, huh? Two of your friends in one night connected to purple vortex; not exactly one of the most widespread drugs.”

  “Yeah, funny–hilarious. I guess you’re happy my friend’s dead.”

  “No…but I won’t wear black tomorrow.”

  “You’re a real smug fuck tonight, aren’t you, Kahn?”

  “Johnny,” Walpole hissed.

  “Watch your mouth, punk,” snarled Dingo Rubydawn, doing a mild imitation of Mitch Garnet.

  Walpole changed subjects quickly, placing his words as if they were his body between Kahn and Leng. “Sneezy told me that he was picking up some kind of transmission telepathically.”

  “Of what nature?” asked Regina.

  Walpole hesitated. Should he mention the Bedbugs? He didn’t want to voice the word, so intent was his group on keeping the secret of purple vortex–more secret than even he suspected. Sneezy wasn’t coming back, so why bother? But then, what if the Bedbugs had murdered him somehow? Had Sneezy told someone that the Bedbugs sold the Lobu the main ingredient of vortex…and had the bugs then found out? Were all of LaKarnafeaux’s crew in danger? It was best if they investigated that possibility mostly on their own, but maybe a few careful clues toward that end wouldn’t hurt.

  “It seemed mechanical. Voices, he said. Not a standard advertising wavelength, apparently–he took blockers for that. And he assured me that he had not been taking drugs.”

  “That’d be a first,” said Del.

  Eddy ignored him. “His temples were pulsing, man…you could really see it.”

  “Zebo over at Zebo’s Saucer diner is a telepath to some extent, I believe,” Del said to Regina. “We should call and see if he’s alright and if he’s feeling any strange vibes.”

  “Good idea,” said Regina.

  Del’s voice was admirably even, considering the tremulous anger…nervousness?…vibrating inside him at his confrontation with Leng. They had spoken with Sophi about Mortimer Ficklebottom and she had agreed to let him go. She had assured Del that they hadn’t threatened her. Would Sophi lie about that? Del felt as if somehow Leng knew that he had given Mitch instructions to cuff one of the LaKarnafeaux boys. Since Leng’s curse at him he’d avoided those hard, almost slanted eyes. Maybe he did feel a little nervous.

  Dingo phoned Zebo’s Saucer. To Leng and Walpole, Regina Brass said, “I’m almost done with your friend for now, then I’ll transfer him to the morgue. I’ll keep analyzing my findings. I’ll let you know when to pick him up–I may need to keep him around a little while.”

  “Well, ah, we’ll be moving on tomorrow,” said Walpole. “We won’t be around.”

  “Is there a way we can contact you?”

  “Ah…we’ll contact you. I’ll call a funeral parlor when I get back to the trailer, then I’ll call and let you know who I choose. When you’re done with Sneeze you can let them know to pick him up. Then they can cremate him and hold onto the ashes until we’re able to swing by sometime…or maybe they’ll mail them to us. We don’t know when we’ll be around this way again.”

  What would they do with the ashes, Del thought…scatter them? Snort them? Ha–that’d be an appropriate tribute to Sneezy Tightrope, he smirked inside.

  “No answer.” Dingo had given up. “Hope he’s alright.”

  “You’d better stay here–I’ll go take a look,” Del volunteered.

  “Ah, doc,” said Walpole. “Could the transmission have done that to Sneeze, or could he even possibly have been purposely murdered with some kind of transmission?”

  “I don’t know at this point. I hope to be able to find out. This one’s a little extra intriguing.”

  Del was outside, heard others leaving the med trailer behind him and stopped to see. Approaching him were Walpole and Leng, looking like they also intended to stop, and speak to him. They did. Del vibrated again as Leng’s eyes skewered him like black pokers heated in a fire.

  Walpole asked, “Mind if we come with you?”

  “If you want. How come?”

  “If Zebo was affected, then it’s less likely it was murder.”

  “Do you have a reason to feel that someone would want to murder any of you?” Del asked in a provocative sort of tone.

  “You ever feel like someone might want to murder you?” Leng replied.

  “Johnny, smarten up,” Eddy hissed.

  Leng whirled on his friend–the instant ferociousness that distorted his face and neck so startling that Del was sure Leng meant to strike Walpole one massive blow that would kill him, and he almost stepped back from them. Leng snarled, “Don’t you ever fucking tell me to smarten up in front of this smug little ass-wipe, Eddy–don’t you fucking ever…you hear me? Huh?”

  Walpole remained calm, perhaps in an effort to appeal to Leng’s reason, perhaps out of self preservation. But he did say, with an understated firmness, “You’re out of control, Johnny. Better think about it.”

  “Think about what? I won’t have you humiliating me in front of my enemies…I won’t fucking stand for it.”

  “Your enemies?” Del echoed, before Walpole could respond.

  The ferocious hatred swivelled to blast him now. Correction–directed at Walpole it had been furious anger. Now it was, however, hatred.

  “Don’t act so stupid, Kahn…Sneezy told us. You couldn’t fool the Sneeze. You sent your dog-boy Garnet down to see us and make trouble…”

  Oh God…so they hadn’t avoided Tightrope’s ability. Then LaKarnafeaux’s people had approached Sophi. That was how she knew he had instructed Mitch, not from Mitch himself, who wouldn’t have betrayed his boss…or pseudo-boss. Del felt naked. He was glad Sneezy Tightrope was dead.

  “You hid behind your rabid little trigger-boy, huh, Kahn? What for, huh? You know something about me you don’t like? Huh?” A savage smile. A tyrannosaur might have displayed such a smile. Johnny Leng’s muscles seemed to extend beyond his physical body, forming an aura around him, tight and electric and dangerous.

  “I know things I don’t like about you,” Del said softly, trying not to swallow, lest Leng hear it or see his adam’s apple rise and drop; thus, perversely, he felt the aching need to swallow.

  “Oh, is that right? Such as?”

  “Let’s go back to the trailer, Johnny…” Walpole tried to interrupt.

  “Such as?”

  “You sell drugs. Strong drugs.”

  “Interesting theory. Anything else? Anything more related to you, maybe?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “No…you really don’t know, do you? You don’t know much of anything, looks like. For one, you obviously don’t know what’s good for you, because you don’t know what I’m capable of. Yo
u don’t even know much about your wife, do you?”

  “Johnny…I’m gonna talk to Karny…”

  “Talk to him!” Leng hadn’t taken his poker eyes out of Del’s sockets. “Huh? You don’t know much about your own wife, Mr. Del Kahn, do you?”

  “What do you know about my wife?” Del couldn’t get much voice past his clogged adam’s apple.

  “Hey, did I say I knew anything about your wife? Hey, I don’t know either. I don’t know what her favorite color is, or what her favorite movie is…but come to think of it now, I do know she has this little freckle or mole or something right at the crack of her ass.” The predator’s grin was Choom-like in size, scarring deep crease lines in Leng’s weather-worn face. “Ha–the first time I saw it I thought it was a smudge, if you get my meaning. Turned me off until I got used to it. You ever been bothered by it?”

  “You scum…you fucking scum…what do you know?”

  “Only what she let me know, Mr. Kahn, sir.”

  “Johnny, you’re going to hurt us. Stop. I mean it.”

  “What did you do to her?”

  “I did to her what she did to me. You want specifics? I wish I had thought to take a vid without her knowing, but I don’t have a camera anyway.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Believe it, little man. Hey–why hold it against her? You had your friends and she had me. Anyway, like she told me, she’s had others before me and you knew about that...so what’s one more?”

  “My wife wouldn’t go to bed with a stinking monster like you.”

  “Your wife got wet because I was a stinking monster. Women like stinking monsters. They just can’t accept it. They tell themselves they want nice little supposedly respectable moneymaking cowards like you.”

  “Tightrope read my mind…that’s how you know about the mole. You can’t fool me.”

  “You look like you’re gonna cry, son…aw, don’t do that. Look, if you don’t want to believe, then don’t. If you want to think Sneezy read your mind, then comfort yourself. But I’m not fooling you. You’re fooling yourself. Alright?” Leng started past Del. His face passed close and Del fought the impulse to withdraw from it. “Give that luscious ass one last kiss for me, will ya? Right on the mole.”

  Laughter. Del took one step after him. Someone had his arm, suddenly.

  Walpole. “Don’t. He wants it.”

  “I’ll kill him,” Del rasped. Now he let himself swallow…it was, indeed, a very loud gulp.

  “Forget it–he’s lying. He’s just intimidating you because of Mort, and he’s upset about Sneezy. He’ll get over it. I’ll talk to Karny. Anyway, we’ll be gone tomorrow so it’s best to let it go. He’s just taking out his frustrations. He’s lashing out. Don’t fall for it…he’s lying.”

  A long shuddery breath rattled out of Del. Something like relief…but it was not something he could entirely exhale out of him.

  Walpole let go of his arm as Leng’s swaggering form receded, went on: “Go see Zebo, man. I’ll call the med trailer later to hear what you find out, alright? Walk it off, man–it’s nothing. Don’t let him make a fool out of you. It’s nothing.”

  “Right,” muttered Del Kahn, and he strode away from Eddy Walpole.

  Eddy watched after him, much concerned. Certain he would see Kahn veer instead toward his home trailer or into the security station, in search of Sophi Kahn. But he didn’t…he seemed truly to be heading off for Zebo’s Saucer. A sigh of relief, but only partial. Only temporary. He was bound to question his wife sooner or later. What if she broke down and confessed?

  A good thing they had already sent Crosby Tenderknots away on his bike with the vortex and the rest…but still he didn’t feel safe. Would Karny agree to packing it up tonight…now? Anyway, if the Bedbugs had murdered Sneezy that was another very good reason to get the hell out of here right away.

  Had Walpole known how Leng had dealt with the threat of Fen Colon and Wes Sundry–discovered by Sneezy–and of the attention it was receiving, he would probably have been close to frantic right now.

  But even then it wouldn’t have occurred to him to hop on his big Dozer and head out alone. He wouldn’t leave Karny.

  The only customer in Zebo’s Saucer was so strikingly hideous for a non-mutant that Del forgot his mission for a moment. He had seen the Mo-mo-mo-mo in books and in vids but never in person. They had hulking, dark orange carrot-like bodies, creased almost into fissures, with a droopy branch-like antenna dangling from the top knob, not really a head in the human sense since the functions of a head were dispersed or not in identifiable evidence. One leg was a thick, twisted club of wrinkly flesh, the other a veiny, scrawny two-toed bird leg. One arm looked like a giant penis ending in long, tactile hairs, the other wasn’t really an arm but a huge warty barrel constantly oozing slime. The one large eye was situated at the barrel’s root. This particular specimen had a diaper-like garment covering the open bottom of its barrel, as it sat at the counter with a coffee in front of it. The Mo-mo-mo-mo were among the most consistently vain races of intelligent beings, arrogantly obsessed with their own self-proclaimed beauty and glamour. To them, the perfect symmetry of humanoids was a ghastly, too mathematical, too mechanical, artificial-seeming arrangement–a perverted ugliness bordering on abomination.

  Zebo wasn’t dead. No cracks in his oversized, hairless head. He was closing up early, however. Though the tiny being never looked vivaciously healthy to Del, he did think that Zebo appeared a trifle wan as he came to meet him at the semicircular counter. “Howdy, Del,” he said.

  “Zebo–how do you feel? Anything funny happen tonight?”

  “What do you mean? Did somebody tell you?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “I’ve been picking up some, ah…”

  “Telepathic transmissions?”

  “Yes, that’s it. How did you know?”

  “We’ve got a corpse down in the morgue. You know Sneezy Tightrope?”

  “Yes.”

  “Dead. His brain exploded.”

  “Goodness. Well…mine didn’t, as far as I know. Ha. Strange.”

  “I thought you might know something.”

  “My customer here told me more than I could fathom.” Zebo nodded at the Mo-mo-mo-mo. “It’s telepathic also…more so than I.”

  “Of course.” Del took in the asymmetrical being afresh. It had its hairy penis hand in its coffee mug. “So what did it say?”

  “Well, it came in earlier…shortly after you were here. Ate, and left. After a big jolt it came back, knowing I was telepathic, to ask me if I had felt it, too…as you’re doing now.”

  “Big jolt?”

  “I’d been receiving something for several hours, mounting but low…then there was a massive jolt. I almost lost consciousness. So did the Mo-mo-mo-mo. There’s been a few lesser jolts since. I took some blockers after the first big one…I don’t know if that’s why the lesser jolts weren’t as bad. The Mo-mo-mo-mo can shut down its perception naturally, like closing an eyelid.”

  “So Sneezy wasn’t murdered. Why’d his head explode, though?”

  “Either he was too weak, or too close to the transmission source. The same jolt I felt, no doubt.”

  “Do you think it’s a malfunctioned advertising wavelength, or some kind of attack on people’s minds, or what?”

  “Oh, I know the what, and part of the why…as I said, mostly through the Mo-mo-mo-mo.”

  “So what is it?”

  “Bedbugs. They’re transmitting over a telepathic amplifier-projector device.”

  “Bedbugs. Is it a weapon?”

  “No–a communication device. And it isn’t their transmissions that are creating the jolts…but the response they’re receiving. That transmission is coming from a creature in another dimension. Not a Bedbug. I can’t tell what.”

  “God,” Del muttered. Bedbugs. Yeah–come to think of it, maybe he had seen one or two lurking about; in their silent scurrying, easily blending into the shadows. He reme
mbered that on two separate occasions, oddly enough, when he and Sophi had visited an art museum in town, they had seen a small group of Bedbugs clustered avidly around a certain ancient stone bas-relief portraying a tentacle-headed, winged mythical creature or god. Other times while riding subways he had seen some of the odd graffiti of that violent rogue gang of Bedbugs, and would think of a news story concerning a train that had been conveying a rival gang in the early morning hours, and which came to an unplanned stop in the dark of a tunnel. It was suddenly swarmed with Bedbugs, who left only two bulging-eyed innocent riders alive amongst the corpses to tell the tale. Strange beings, always conveying the mood of being up to something furtive and sneaky.

  Zebo said, “They’re chanting to it…mostly praises. How intelligent it is, whether animal or being, we can’t tell. It’s some kind of symbolic fertility god to them, apparently.…they keep referring to a harvest of some sort. It seems very near. It must be here, but in another dimension. Supposedly it’s going to come through into our world tonight.”

  “How come?”

  “It pertains to their harvest. The Mo-mo-mo-mo noted something odd. It told me it sensed the Bedbugs observing animals here at the fair…experimenting on them. Something about seeing if their energy could be drawn from them while still alive, rather than after they were already dead.” Zebo chuckled. “I hope they don’t mean to feed their god some cows and bumbles.”

  “They’d better not be experimenting on the animals here, the weird fucks. God…crazy. So that’s what killed Sneezy, huh?”

  “Has to be. I surely felt it.”

  “Of all things. No great loss, I mean…but man. Glad I’m not psychic.” Del glanced at the Mo-mo-mo-mo. God, it smelled. Like baby shit. Sometimes they referred to themselves as the Perfumed Ones.

  “Night’s just about had it,” Zebo said. “Another year gone. I thought I’d close down a little early…I need some rest.”

  “By all means. Well…” Del stepped back from the counter, watching Zebo tap a pen on his closed magazine. “That explains most of the Sneezy Tightrope mystery. I guess I’ll have Dingo send some guards out looking for the Bedbugs to tell them what happened and to be careful what they’re doing. And to see if they’re messing with our animals. This will have to be reported to the police.”