Desert Angels

by George P. Saunders

  Walter flapped on top of Jack and pecked him. Jack shook the bird off; forgetting for the moment who Walter was. But Walter was insistent. Jack finally got the message, as he listened to the growing roar of the Maddog army. Walter circled high above both man, woman and bird.

  Jack looked up and reached a hand skyward.

  "Angela!"

  But Walter was gone, racing back toward Eden. Fast.

  Something, Jack quickly realized, he had better do as well, lest the Maddog army come upon them and really even the odds up.

  "Hold on, baby," Jack cooed to Laura, picking her up and placing her in the Humvee. As Jack turned the ignition, he

  could see far ahead the mighty Maddog Machine appear over a nearby ridge.

  What he saw made his heart sink.

  The Ball Job was in the forefront of the hoard of running figures, appearing as small ants from this far away. Other figures, moved at a slower pace, almost robotically, and of these there numbered well over a hundred. But Jack cared nothing for the human contingent (a phrase that, under the circumstances, he had to use loosely); it was the Ball Job that caught his immediate attention. And gripped his usually unshakable faith in hope and tore it out of its rebellious foundations.

  Against the Ball Job, Jack realized sickly, Eden had not a chance in this hell or any other.

  * * *

  The Stiffer was bored again. Things were too easy; as humans once put it, "going off without a hitch." No challenge. Blah.

  He could see it now. In a short time, Jack and his festering little followers would all be smashed. History. And he would be off and searching for greener pastures to brown or otherwise muck up. Ho hum, he thought; he had overestimated the competition. Jack Calisto was truly just another two-legged maggot that would squirm and die in his palm; there had been no resistance at all. There wouldn't even be a fight, the Stiffer realized disappointedly. Jack's defenses now were, at best, inchoate.

  But because he was bored, he got careless. And because the demon within the Stiffer's body was a thing of enormous ego, it did not acknowledge its own errors – or consider the damage that had been done as a result of those errors.

  Jack's woman had escaped.

  It came as a mild surprise (though he had rarely been surprised in his long existence; just recently only the irritating bird woman had surprised him in the laboratory). He did not believe that Laura's present condition would have allowed her to slip past the guards – or at best – slip past him.

  But she had.

  Somehow.

  It didn't matter. It would have been fun to use the girl to torment Jack further. Perhaps there would be opportunity to do this still; but he would have to play that one by ear a little later. If and when it came up.

  For right now, the Stiffer was divided in attention and energy. One part of him still occupied the diseased remains of what had once been Ted Alison, CPA, back in the Dome laboratory, happily planning his "escape." The other half of his conscience was within the Growler's body, preparing for a battle with the Maddogs that wouldn't be a battle at all – just a boring massacre. There was a certain amount of concentration involved in this subdivision of mind; and this much effort to the Stiffer was tedious.

  He wanted to get on with it.

  The Stiffer was already thinking about the future. Where he would go from here, who or what he would gleefully torture. Nothing here on Earth, that was for sure. All tortured out. Jack was definitely the last show in town.

  Maybe he would take to the stars again. Find his haughty cohorts, the Big Brother Demons and show them that he had come a long way since the Beginning. Yeah, maybe he'd do that for sure.

  After all, he was going to live forever, wasn't he?

  Kick ass.

  For a quick fix of meanness, he glared at the worm called Mathias sitting next to him.

  * * *

  The Growler was at the controls, Mathias next to him in the Ball Job's cramped cockpit. The General had permitted this. Mathias wagged his erection proudly. Something about this new Growler, he thought lasciviously (and he didn't know what) just made him get a woody now and then. Excitement over the kill? Mathias wondered madly. Or just plain old apple-pie love? Mathias shrugged unconsciously; probably the Growler was making his dick hard deliberately. 'Cause that was the kind of guy the Growler was; mean and nasty.

  Mathias now knew this for a fact.

  He had taken time, (as there was really nothing else to do in the interim) to watch his newborn leader. He noticed, of late, that the Growler did not breathe – any more than the resurrected corpses he had commanded forth from the radioactive earth. Nor did the Growler, especially in the past few hours, seem to acknowledge Mathias' presence; it was as if the General was focused on something so distant and so remote that his mind, here in the Ball Job with Mathias, was actually vacant. The eyes of the Growler said it all.

  Don't mind me, just stepped out for a few; but I'll be back.

  You know I'll be back.

  Mathias knew. Kick ass.

  What propelled the Growler forward, Mathias surmised at last, was probably the same wicked force that allowed the dead to walk, his fossilized dick to get hard, and his pain to disappear. And this force, wherever it was at a given time, be it within the Growler, or a thousand miles away, had very little need of the company of the Maddogs, Mathias or Red Riding Hood's third cousin twice removed.

  It needed no one.

  No doubt about it.

  Within Mathias' own demented spirit, fear and uneasiness regarding the Growler's transformation had given way to sheer awe and hope. He had sold out, in a way, for the gold at the end of the rainbow, which in this case was Big Jack. And in one way, he was loving it.

  In quite another, he was not.

  Ahead, was Eden. Within the hour, it would be destroyed – or rendered helpless and at the Maddogs' mercy. The Growler had made all of it happen. He commanded life and death.

  Mathias would follow him through hell and back.

  Mathias glanced out of his porthole. The mutants running alongside the Ball Job, or riding cycles or driving jeeps looked spirited and enthusiastic. The sense of victory was electric,

  as pervasive as the very strong sense of pure evil Mathias felt within the cockpit, next to the Growler.

  "Today we win, general," Mathias blurted out loudly, testing the mood of the place and getting a pretty good sense that it was pretty piss poor. The Growler said nothing and continued to stare ahead, working the Ball Job's controls as deftly as Laura herself could have done. Perhaps better.

  Then, for some reason he would never understand for the rest of his life, Mathias asked the question that had been haunting him since the night before. The question he had promised himself not to ask. The question he was not sure he really wanted answered, fearing the truth that might be given to him in return for such boldness. Perhaps it was the rational, frightened curiosity of Mathias' forgotten humanity; the pathetic creature inside that was dying, that was not really bad but had been made bad by the recent turn of events in the world. Perhaps it was that tiny portion of Mathias that still wanted to do good that made the question seem so desperate, so important.

  So inevitable.

  "Are you him?" was how Mathias put it, his voice shaky with fear and wonder.

  And the Growler turned, his eyes red and deep.

  The eyes stared at Mathias.

  And said it all.

  Mathias swallowed hard, and lowered his eyes slowly. The Growler returned his blind attention to the controls and the sand ahead.

  Mathias cried inside, the sobs of a helpless, confused child. He had received his answer. Those eyes, those red, infernal eyes. They told him what he already knew.

  That he was lost.

  There would be victory today. Jack Calisto would suffer a crushing defeat. But like all great triumphs or prizes, there was a price attached and Mathias now understood what the price was and how it was to paid.

  The eyes of the Growler
had told him this.

  The price was the soul of humanity, or what was left of it.

  Mathias wept quietly next to the uncaring, and probably, deaf thing that guided the Ball Job inexorably forward.

  * * *

  The time is near.

  And I see the future. Minutes remain – and I must hurry. There will be death again.

  Oh, God.

  Help me.

  SIXTEEN – WALTER

  "Get them in the shelter!"

  Jack was yelling over the growl of his Humvee, as he skidded to a sandy stop about five feet from where Gleeson and several others were hauling cumbersome cables from the Dome.

  "They're coming," Jack shouted, reaching for Laura and gently picking her up. He made straight for the Dome entrance, while Gleeson, unhesitatingly waved his arms to the general population of Eden still resting on the lower ledges of the mountain just behind the Dome.

  Laura clutched at Jack, desperately, making gurgling noises in her throat.

  Jack put her on a sofa, brushing her long blond and now blood-soaked hair out of her face.

  "Quiet, sweetheart –"

  Laura grabbed his shirt with both hands and forced coherent words out.

  "It's - going - to - blow, Jack –"

  Jack froze. Laura's eyes widened in pain and her breathing became faster. Jack felt weak as he made a quick prognosis; one lung was probably collapsed, filled with fluid and blood. Laura needed immediate surgery – the kind he feared he would not be able to give her with the Maddogs only minutes away.

  "The – Rover – Jack, I rigged it to – detonate. Understand?"

  He did.

  His eyes looked past Laura for just a moment, then back to her. She appeared stronger than when he had found her on the

  desert; the effects of the epinephrine compound, he guessed, having some fortunate effect. She coughed violently and painfully, but when she spoke again, it was with a clear, low intensity.

  "Dad's handicap. I used it."

  Jack wiped the perspiration from her face.

  "What's the yield, honey?" Jack asked gently, feeling the Black Hound welling up within him for one last, lovely lunge for his sanity.

  "Five kilotons."

  Christ! The figure hit him in the stomach like a piled river. Five kilotons of atomic fire, one-fifth the strength as the bomb that vaporized Hiroshima, but enough to vaporize everything within a thousand yards.

  "When?" he asked numbly. For some reason he was thinking about the airplane he had painted in the desert a few days ago. With Walter. Just painting and killing Stiffers and drinking beer. Now those were the good old days. Those were –

  Laura coughed, her eyes rolling. Jack loved her more as she fought for lucidity. Her hands, weakening their hold on him, were a ghastly white and shaking.

  "Minutes. Maybe – seconds!"

  Laura fell into a kind of mumbling half-sleep. Jack gave her another injection of adrenalin then fled outside.

  Creeping over the furthest horizon, the Maddog war machine appeared.

  Many of the Edenites were now in a long line, following Gleeson's instructions to reenter the massive underground shelter annexed to the Dome.

  "Move it, Gleeson!" Jack screamed in a voice that Gleeson had never heard Jack Calisto use before. A voice of finality, Gleeson thought unhappily. A voice that said, "Oh, boy, are we in shit-water this time." Turning, he saw the distant, ant-like figures of the Maddogs, along with Laura's secret weapon. He did some screaming of his own at the Edenites.

  Jack turned back to regard Laura, whom he thought he heard scream, and found himself flying through the air.

  * * *

  In the Ball Job's cockpit, the Growler smiled.

  Mathias stared ahead, not daring to face his general again. For the first time ever, Mathias felt that to be dead now would not be half bad. A strange feeling to have, he mused unhappily, with the prospect of total victory so close at hand.

  But those eyes, man, you didn't see those eyes! They told me I'm going to burn and hang by my dick for fucking ever and ever.

  He was giggling to himself now. He couldn't help himself. And the Growler didn't seem to mind, Mathias noticed, so he continued. Just whooping it up.

  Just him and Woody in his hand.

  Far ahead, Mathias could see the Edenites, obviously caught off guard and unprepared for attack. Though still almost a mile away, it was clear that the annoying deterrents of a few days back in the form of tangled barbed wire, electrically booby trapped, had disappeared under a sea of sand. Obviously, the great storms had passed this way and destroyed any effective defense Jack Calisto had constructed and which had, indeed,

  presented so many problems for the determined Maddogs in the past.

  Also obvious, depressingly so, was the fact that the Growler – or whatever had taken over the Growler's body – knew the Edenites were defenseless. Like he knew everything. Him and his eyes, Mathias giggled wildly.

  The Growler's hideous smile made Mathias shudder. He felt suddenly like crying. He thought he just might cry if he could only get rid of the giggles.

  Mathias thought that the Growler, still smiling, was simply happy to have finally arrived to Eden, to kill, to pillage, to destroy. To kick ass.

  He could not have guessed the real meaning behind the mutant's cheerful expression. Or what immediate consequences it was about to have for Jack Calisto.

  * * *

  Jack crashed into a wall, his head ringing out, an instant later informing the rest of his body that a leg had just been broken. Racked with pain, his vision a white and yellow tabloid of shock and surprise, Jack struggled to focus in on his attacker. Focus was not what Jack needed at the moment; he felt a good solid ax or bazooka would be a fine alternative. Or even a good strong stick.

  The Stiffer just eyeballed Jack for a few seconds - and this time, Jack was sure, it was smiling at him.

  Laura moaned, half on, half off the sofa, her head rolling from side to side.

  The Stiffer, practically on top of the girl, reached down and picked her up.

  "No!" Jack screamed, finding the strength somewhere to throw himself forward like a mortar.

  The Stiffer was caught off guard. It dropped the girl as Jack's full weight plowed into the giant zombie's midsection, sending both man and monster tumbling backwards. Laura, now conscious enough despite her pain to realize what was happening, crawled her way into an inconspicuous corner.

  Again, Jack found himself airborne.

  The Stiffer growled with fury, angered further by the impudence of the puny human that had presumed to treat it like a laboratory specimen. It roared and padded over to where Jack had crumbled.

  A thousand miles away, Jack noted that his arm had just been fractured. Infinitely closer was the clear fact that unless he found some kind of weapon, fast, he was going to die. It also occurred to him that the Ball Job was getting closer and could be expected to ignite any second.

  So many cheerful thoughts converging at once did not preclude the more terrifying concept of leaving the Stiffer alone with Laura.

  Which is exactly what would happen if he did something dumb and got himself killed.

  Explosions and gunfire pounded from outside the Dome. Jack could hear screams, some of panic, some of pain, some belonging to Gleeson giving orders. The Maddogs had begun their attack – and Eden, as Jack had feared, was about to suffer its cruelest battle.

  Jack's good hand tightened around something hard and circular. Chancing a look downward, he could see a piece of detached piping, shattered from one of the Dome's ventilation systems by the force of Jack's helpless and careening body. The Stiffer lunged forward, and Jack responded with pipe in hand.

  The metal caught the Stiffer in the teeth, shattering a few fangs and causing blood to fountain everywhere. The Stiffer howled with rage and pain. Jack, restricted to hopping, tried to get past the Stiffer and move toward the door in order to seal off all entrances and exits to the Dome. Much as he hated
to be trapped inside with the Stiffer, he felt this was a preferable alternative to being vaporized by the Ball Job's ultimate fireball, which he guessed to be only a few seconds away.

  He never made the door.

  The Stiffer brought a surprisingly large arm around full circle and caught Jack in the ribs. Crippled, Jack folded onto himself in a ball, screaming as the wind blew out of him. The Stiffer delivered a vicious kick to Jack's back. White pain made the world look suddenly sunny and blind. Jack fought for consciousness, feeling the Hound of defeat and death only seconds away. He had lost his pipe. His insides were on fire, and his appendages dangled uselessly.

  The Stiffer assumed its good natured grin once more. The thing inside thought: Let the good times roll!

  It was tired of playing around. The smile disappeared as the Stiffer moved slowly forward for the kill.

  * * *

  Most of Laura was involved with the very personal act of dying. It was a confusing business, full of colors, sounds, memories, failed hopes and surprising revelations, now made more confusing by the violent circumstances surrounding her. Death, she concluded deep within her suffocating brain, was something that really demanded complete concentration, lest all the details and challenges be missed.

  She would have reluctantly agreed with Mathias; death was indeed a bitch.

  If only it could be done in peace.

  The distractions in her immediate vicinity, however, forced Laura to surface again to the painful levels of consciousness.

  When she opened her eyes, it was to catch Jack flying into a wall, making a horrible squelching sound as he hit it. The thing stalking him was somehow not too surprising to see; it was as if she had always known that the Stiffer had this final scenario in mind.

  Surprise, Jackie and Laura! From the Horny Host of Hell himself, we're bringing you this last round of good times – just to let you know how we feel about you! Enjoy!

  Laura watched the Stiffer move. Jack, she could see, was being slowly murdered. She had never seen him so helpless and beaten.