“I feel terrible,” he said.
“We need to get you to a hospital.”
“Where are we? What happened?”
“You’ve been hurt. There was a terrible mistake, but it’s going to be all right.”
And it was. There were questions, of course, but I stuck to my story that I’d found Devlin exhibiting vital signs after two days of refrigeration. It was highly unlikely but impossible to disprove, especially with the man sitting there, breathing and talking. Nobody ever connected my missing finger joint with Devlin’s resurrection. I just said I’d had an accident while cutting meat, which was essentially true. Seymour may have been a little suspicious of this story, since he would have expected me to save the severed joint in formalin as a souvenir, but he must have seen that I was in an odd mood when he returned from his camping trip; he asked very few questions.
Devlin didn’t remember anything after leaving the Lemon Tree the night of the robbery. The version of reality that most people came to accept - because any other version simply stretched the mind beyond its capacity - was that the bullet had not penetrated Devlin’s skull at all, but had worked like a hard blow to the head, rendering him unconscious for a protracted period.
Only Jeffrey knew otherwise. He saw Devlin’s body up close. He knows very well what a dead person looks like, and he knows me. But he has never said a word. That’s one reason he is my favorite assistant.
For my birthday dinner, I had a Creole tomato aspic with lump crabmeat and sorrel, a dozen Kumamoto oysters topped with sevruga caviar, a plate of braised veal cheeks so tender they dissolved in my mouth, and a miniature heart-shaped chocolate cake with a chocolate sphere full of raspberry puree somehow concealed in the middle. The last item in particular made me think Devlin knew I had done something more than find him warm on the autopsy table. Like Jeffrey, though, he never said anything. He didn’t have to. He continues to feed me all the thanks I need.
<
* * * *
DENNIS ETCHISON
Got to Kill Them All
Dennis Etchison has won two World Fantasy Awards and three British Fantasy Awards. His short fiction has been collected in The Dark Country, Red Dreams, The Blood Kiss, The Death Artist and the e-collection Fine Cuts, a volume of stories about Hollywood available from Scorpius Digital Publishing.Talking in the Dark was a massive retrospective volume from Stealth Press marking the fortieth anniversary of his first professional sale, and his latest collection is Got to Kill Them All & Other Stories from CD Publications.
As an acclaimed anthologist, Etchison has edited Cutting Edge, Masters of Darkness I-III, MetaHorror, The Museum of Horrors and Gathering the Bones, the latter an international anthology of new stories, co-edited with Jack Dann and Ramsey Campbell. He has also recently adapted 150 episodes of the original Twilight Zone television series as radio dramas, released on audio cassette and CD in 2002.
‘When I wrote “Got to Kill Them All”,’ recalls the author, ‘the latest American success story was the triumphant return of big-money quiz shows to prime-time network television. Such shows had been enormously successful in the 1950s, until a Congressional investigation revealed that some of them were fixed. It turned out that certain contestants, including the scholar Charles Van Doren, were provided with answers in advance to manipulate the outcome and guarantee ratings; when the scandal broke careers were ruined and such programmes quickly disappeared from the broadcast schedule. Eventually smaller, less serious game shows reappeared on daytime and syndicated TV, emphasizing humour and celebrity guests, but allegedly serious, intellectually challenging quiz shows remained lost to history for more than forty years.
‘The first of the new wave of retro quiz shows was Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? An American version of the British original, it debuted without fanfare as a low-budget, limited-run replacement series on ABC-TV. It became an unexpected hit, scoring such phenomenal ratings that it soon began airing several nights a week, opposite copycat shows on other networks, including a revived version of the infamous Twenty-One, another UK transplant called The Weakest Link, and even one simply and shamelessly entitled Greed.
‘At around the same time (February, 2000), one could not help but notice that millions of American children had caught Pokemon fever. The word is the name of a wildly popular Nintendo Gameboy game that also inspired a Japanese anime series and a range of trading cards that picture hundreds of cartoon “pocket monsters”. One of the characters is a boy whose job it is to protect the world by tracking down the “bad” monsters and defeating them in pitched battles with the “good” ones he’s trained for the purpose. His motto, the signature phrase of the Pokemon universe, is “Got to catch them all!”
‘It did not require much imagination to speculate that some shrewd, enterprising producer might attempt to combine these two hot trends and reach an even larger audience. Replacing the word “catch” with “kill” seemed obvious for the story’s title, even reflexive to a horror writer. And what would the show be called? Well, green is the color of American money, which is after all what commercial television is really about . . .’
* * * *
T
he sky was getting darker all the time.
I set the red can under the glove box and drove away from the pumps, steering with one hand so I could gulp down some of the coffee. Then I hit the brakes before I got to the street.
The can worried me.
It was still upright but I heard the gas sloshing. There were a lot of turns between here and the house. What if it tipped over? I’d be sucking fumes before I got home.
I reached into the back seat, grabbed the plastic bag from B&B Hardware and wedged it next to the can. But it wasn’t heavy enough. So I had to shut off the engine, climb out and make room in the trunk, between the spare tire and the suitcase. That way the can wouldn’t move around, no matter how fast I took the corners. I turned the key again and headed east on Washington, picking up speed, with only one question in my mind:
Which of the following is a Burt Reynolds film? (a) Cannonball Run (b) Stroker Ace (c) Smokey and the Bandit or (d) The Night of the Following Day.
I couldn’t remember the winning answer but it didn’t matter now. The gas station was history.
The sky was so dark by now that I had a hard time believing it was still early afternoon. The clock on the dash said the same as my watch, a few minutes past three. Rush hour wouldn’t be for a while yet. I changed lanes, weaving in and out, flexing my fingers till the joints popped, the sound like little arcs of electricity below the windshield. I thought I saw a barricade of squad cars at the next corner, colored lights spinning, but it was only a road crew setting out detour signs. Their red vests glowed in the underpass. I shook my head to clear it and noticed that the coffee was almost empty.
* * * *
I worked my way over between the trucks and sport utility vehicles, heading for Venice Boulevard. It would have been a lot easier to take Sepulveda to Lincoln straight out of LAX. I’d be home now. But this way I had everything I needed. I could do the rest in my sleep. As I turned onto Venice another question flashed before me:
In what film does William Shatner appear? (a) The Intruder (b) The Brothers Karamazov (c) Big Bad Mama or (d) Anatomy of a Murder.
That one was easy. It was from Day Two, Show Five, the one we had just wrapped. How many hours ago? I could still see the answer on the card in front of me. I pretended to play the game, jabbing the steering wheel as if it were a buzzer. The horn went off and he glanced up.
The first thing I noticed was that he might have been anyone.
A beach boy, nothing special, the type you see around here all the time. Sun-bleached hair, sweat collecting in his squinty eyes, and a walk that said he was not going to slow down for anybody. He stepped into the street and one of us had to stop. I could tell by those eyes it had to be me. He glared back like a hot spot on the glass and didn’t move.
Then he did something strange
.
He folded his legs and sat down right there in the crosswalk, daring me to hit him. I didn’t, of course. The light was red.
I opened the window.
‘Hey, you want to move it?’
He shrugged. Not defiantly. He just didn’t care.
Cars were stacked up behind me now and they didn’t like this game. The light changed. I heard a horn tapping.For God’s sake, I thought.
‘What’s your problem?’
When I leaned out his eyes got big.
‘God, you’re him!’
I shook my head. ‘Move your ass.’
‘Yeah! The guy on Green!’
Busted. I didn’t even have my makeup on. Did I? No, that was hours ago, in Honolulu. I would have taken it off. I checked the rearview mirror. My eyes were like two cigarette burns. I had a hard time recognizing myself. The kid’s legs unfolded as he got up. But not to move out of the way. He started walking toward me.
He was going to ask for my autograph.
The rest of the drivers leaned on their horns.
I had to make a decision fast so I unlocked the passenger door. I’d drive around the corner and dump him off once we were out of the intersection.
When he got in I took a close look at him. New Nikes, clean T-shirt and jeans, no dirt anywhere that showed. He was not a beach bum and he didn’t really have an attitude. He had just plain given up. He probably didn’t know he was going to until that moment and then something - the traffic, the sun, all the people on the street who couldn’t care less - made him lose it. Now I could see that it wasn’t sweat under his eyes. He had been crying.
He closed the door and wiped his face. ‘Shit, I’m sorry. If I’d ‘a known it was you . . .’
‘What happened?’ I said.
‘Oh, nothin’.’ He tried a laugh to make light of it. ‘My old lady. We had a, you know, fight. She kicked me out.’
‘Where?’
‘Right here, in the middle of the street. Told me to fucking split. So I did.’
‘I understand,’ I said.
‘You do?’
‘She’s a bitch.’
‘Well . . .’
‘Sure, she is. Acts like you’re always bothering her. No time to talk. When you call, she’s never home.’
‘How did you know that?’
Which is proof that your wife is cheating? (a) Staying out all night (b) mysterious stains on her clothing (c) phone calls from someone who hangs up when you answer or (d) frequent trips to see her ‘mother’ in the hospital.
‘They’re all the same,’ I said. ‘Think about it.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, as if it had never occurred to him, ‘I guess they are . . .’
Now we were close to Admiralty Way and the grid of side streets by the marina. It was hard to tell them apart in this light. Got to bear down, I thought.
‘Where do you want me to drop you?’
‘Wait,’ he said. ‘What do I do?’
What should you do once you know she is unfaithful? (a) Make her account for every hour of her day (b) hire a private detective (c) hide a Global Positioning Device in her car or (d) kill her.
‘Only one thing to do,’ I told him, ‘isn’t there? How about the corner?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Where’s your house?’
‘I can’t go back there.’
‘Maybe you should.’
‘Why?’
‘To make it right.’
‘I don’t know how.’
‘Yes, you do. Think about it.’
‘Okay. I will.’
He squinted at the shadowy rows of condos as we neared the end of the boulevard. We both saw sparks of light like tiny fires starting between the buildings. It could have been the sun on the ocean except that the sky had closed over.
‘I have to let you out,’ I said.
‘Huh?’
‘I can’t take you with me. Not where I’m going.’
‘That’s cool. The market, okay?’ There was a Stop ‘N Start ahead, at the corner. ‘I need some stuff.’
That was cool with me. I could get a refill on my coffee, as long as it didn’t take too long.
I pulled in between a brand-new Land Rover and an exterminator’s truck. The mannequin on the roof had a tux and top hat and a big rubber mallet behind his back and he was standing over an innocent-looking mouse. On the way to the glass doors I saw the little rat out of the corner of my eye, twitching his whiskers and scooting away over the hood. Go on, I thought. You can run but you can’t hide.
Inside the convenience mart I poured a big 22-ouncer, black. The kid was in the aisle where they keep the dog food and soap and aspirin and Tampax, for when you’re running late and she gave you a list and you promised. I popped a lid on the coffee and left a dollar bill on the counter, thinking: Which method is best for a crime of passion? (a) Gun (b) rope (c) knife or (d) gasoline.
‘Good luck,’ I said over my shoulder.
The kid had a couple of household items in his hands. He must have wanted to do the pots and pans or something as soon as he got home. So he was going to try and make up after all. He could hardly wait. The poor bastard. I went out while he was paying for his stuff.
The mousemobile was gone. Now a pool-cleaning truck was parked next to me, the kind I’d seen in the marina, sometimes in front of my own house even though our pool wasn’t finished yet. I wondered if it was the same one. If it was maybe I could do something right here before I drove off and took care of the rest.
Let’s see, I thought.
I hadn’t figured on this part and didn’t have the right tools for the job. It wouldn’t take much to give him the message, say a screwdriver stuck in a sidewall or the radiator, like a note on his windshield only better. He’d know what it was for and look around and I’d be gone. Or I could wait for him to come out and see what his sorry ass looked like. Was he inside? I hadn’t noticed. What should you do to her lover? (a) Make his life a living hell (b) tie him up and torture him (c) castrate him or (d) kill him. But this was his lucky day. I wasn’t sure.
Time to go.
The kid walked around and opened the passenger door like he wanted to get in.
‘One question,’ he said.
‘What?’ I swallowed hot coffee, put the cap back on and took out my keys.
‘Can I get on the show?’
‘I don’t have anything to do with that,’ I said, revving up.
‘But if you put in a good word . . .’
‘I’m out of here,’ I said. The sky went black like a shadow had passed over the earth. Night was ready to fall. I could feel it in my head. ‘Close the door.’
‘Okay,’ he said and got in.
Now he thought we were friends. He was really innocent. Like the Fool in a deck of cards, too busy smelling the flowers to notice that he’s walking off a cliff. I didn’t want to tell him the whole truth. He wouldn’t be able to handle it.
‘I guess you have to be pretty smart, anyway.’
‘Do you watch the show?’
‘Every week!’
‘Then you know the rules,’ I snapped. We were driving again and traffic was heating up. I couldn’t waste any more time. ‘It’s not what you know. It’s what—’
“You don’t know!” he finished for me. ‘That’s so cool. All those other shows, you have to get the right answer. But on Green, one right answer and you’re—’
‘History,’ I said. ‘Look, I have to be somewhere.’
‘Sony Studios, Culver City, seven o’clock. Right?’
‘Not tonight.’
‘But this is Friday . . .’
‘We tape the shows in advance.’
‘You do?’
‘Five a day. I just flew in from Hawaii. Yesterday San Francisco, Atlanta the day before, New York on Monday. A month in a week.’
‘Jesus, when do you sleep?’
‘It’s been a while.’
He held out his hand. ‘Ray Lands, rig
ht?’
‘Lowndes.’
‘I thought you were live.’ He tried to give me some kind of brotherhood handshake but I got out of it.
‘I used to be. Now they want it every night. We had to get some shows in the can.’
“Cause it’s so popular?’
‘Right.’
He put his bag of household crap in the back seat, cheered up already, sure everything was going to work out. It didn’t take much. Even if she threw him out again he could sleep under a blanket of stars and eat dates off the palm trees while he figured another way to get her back. That would be cool. Somebody needed to burst his bubble but I didn’t want to be the one. I had things on my mind.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 13 - [Anthology] Page 24
