Atom Town Book 2: Hands of the Swamp!

by Jason Scott Nebel

  “You really don’t remember?” asked Eve. Was it Lefty’s control, or the concussion that was causing him to black out the memory of the past few hours? And how was she supposed to explain a crawling hand, powered by strange little rocks that had used him for its own personal puppet show? “How far back-?“

  “No need to go on,” interrupted the Sheriff, nudging a dead arm with his foot. “Don’t know that I’d want to remember all of this. Just knowin’ it’s over is good enough for me.”

  “Well, better get this little guy home,” said Adam scooping up Lefty into his medical bag.

  “Wait, shouldn’t we dispose of him permanently?!” Eve had no intention of going through this again.

  “Oh, I think he’s learned his lesson,” smiled Adam, locking his Medical bag. “In fact, I think we’ve all learned a valuable lesson from this.”

  Eve froze, she knew what was about to follow a phrase like that.

  “You’re epiloguing, aren’t you?” she asked accusatorily.

  “Of course not, Eve,” continued Adam as he propped his leg up on the ball return and rested an elbow on his knee. “I’m just taking pause to admire the beauty of our shared experiences and the lessons of the day.”

  “I highly doubt you’ve learned anything,” said Eve.

  “Of course I have!” assured Adam. “I’ve learned beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and by ‘beauty’ I mean me, and by ‘beholder’ I mean the sighted world. And I’ve also learned that not every battle a man wages is in a swamp, or in two tone leather shoes. No, sometimes man’s greatest battle is with himself. And in a battle with oneself, there is no winner or a loser,” Adam stopped and looked down at his medical kit containing Lefty’s corpse. “Except I totally won that one,” he smiled.

  “Okay, that was an epilogue,” insisted Eve.

  “No, Eve. THAT was sheer genius, and you’re welcome,” smiled Adam.

  Eve’s eyes wanted to fire out of her eye sockets and shoot through the back of his head as the Doctor joyfully headed out through the bowling alley doorway.

  Eve started after him then stopped, noticing the unmanned broom handle. Where had Pete gone? No, she couldn’t get sidetracked, she had to talk sense into Adam. Lefty still needed to be destroyed for good!

  As Eve popped outside, Adam was already gone.

  “Elusive, ain’t he?” said the Sheriff, walking up behind her and dusting off his hat. “Findin’ sense in that head of his, it’s like findin’ water in the desert. It just ain’t there.”

  “Clearly,” said Eve.

  “Is it, though?” he asked. “You made me get on after him, you nearly lost your life, again, I might add. And another Deputy of mine is gone, God rest whatever his name was, and all for what? To do it all again tomorrow?”

  “I thought you didn’t remember anything?” asked Eve suspiciously.

  “Tryin’ my best not to,” sidestepped the Sheriff. “What’s your excuse?”

  “It was the right thing to do,” she said, but as she looked around, she wasn’t entirely sure.

  “If you gonna’ spend all your days chasin’ after that man on every darned fool thing he does, then I got news for ya’. You just as nuts as he is.”

  “Nuts?” started Eve. “Hold on, I’m not the one-“

  The Sheriff held up a hand and turned his head slightly to the left, clearly not interested in her next sentence.

  “Jes’ food fer thought,” he said, patting her hand. “I’ll give you a ride home. We can discuss how crazy you ain’t tomorrow.”

  Eve’s thoughts wandered. Pete once told her that if everyone in town was crazy except her, then by definition, they’d be normal and she’d be crazy. Maybe he was right. Maybe he…

  “Pete!” she said aloud, and started to rush back inside. As she crossed the threshold to the bowling Alley, she heard a knocking outside. It was a metal, hollow sound, and as she went back outside, she could hear a muffled voice accompanying it. It was coming from Pete’s trunk!

  She reached past the dead gator hanging out of the driver’s seat and grabbed the keys still in the ignition.

  She quickly slid the key into the trunk and popped it open, revealing Pete, shoved inside.

  “Thanks, Miss Adams,” he said, trying to climb out.

  “How did this happen?” she asked

  “Don’t ask,” said Pete as he swung a leg out of the trunk and staggered a moment as he returned upright. After a deep breath, Pete lifted his hat, brushed what little hair he had left, then replaced the hat and rubbed the back of his neck, slowly heading back inside the Atomic Bowl.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “Clean up,” he muttered back to her.

  “Can’t it wait?” she asked, feeling the old man should be able to take a night off. “Is that really your job to do all of this?”

  Pete stopped putting a hand along the side of the doorway. He looked inside, then looked back over his shoulder at her.

  “Miss Adams, I'm here to clean up Atom Town, and all that that requires. Only hope you here to do the same.”

  Eve looked at the Sheriff who was already opening his driver’s side door and setting his cowboy hat on the dash.

  “It’ll keep ‘til mornin’,” said the Sheriff, lightly touching a goose egg growing out of the side of his bruised head.

  Eve watched as Pete continued inside the demolished Atomic Bowl.

  She looked back at the Sheriff.

  “Don’t worry about me,” offered the Sheriff. “Bag of ice and some sleep, and I’m right as rain.”

  She looked back to the doorway of the bowling alley.

  “Your call, Ma’am,” said the Sheriff.

  “Cleaning up Atom Town” is what Pete had said. That was it. That’s why he’d been sent in. Sure maybe he’d been taking it literally, but that’s what Pete had been trying to tell her all along.

  “Looks like I’m needed here,” said Eve, and she followed Pete inside.

  24

  Cages

  Inside the Atomic Bowl, Pete was busily sweeping arms up into various piles.

  Eve stepped over rubble towards their former bowling lane. She shoved bits of chair aside to gather her purse from amongst the debris.

  Reaching inside she pulled out her compact and took a deep breath. Sometimes she really didn’t care for this spy business.

  She popped open the compact and the display read ‘Connecting…’ for a moment until finally revealing Simmons on screen holding his thumbs together and his forefingers in the air, waiting.

  Two black gloved fingers leaned into view holding a folded paper triangle. While one finger held it upright on the desk, another flicked it forward, spinning it over Simmons hands and smacking him in the forehead.

  “Goal!” rejoiced D.

  “Excellent shot, sir!” complimented Simmons.

  “Sir?” interrupted Eve.

  “Sorry, Eve,” apologized Agent D. “Very busy, what with saving the world and all.”

  “I see that,” she said, unconvinced. “You want your formula or not?”

  “Let’s have it!”

  Eve held the scrap of paper up from her purse and shoved it in front of the screen.

  “Wait, what is that?” asked D, with slowly increasing curiosity.

  Eve looked down and realized that clinging to the formula, was a scrap of the registration she’d found in that tree, or car, or whatever it was. She pulled it off of the equations and shoved it back into her purse.

  “Sorry, here’s your formula,” she said, presenting the paper again.

  “Simmons?”

  “Got it sir!” said Simmons, as he presumably performed some kind of screen capture to store the image.

  “Now, about the other-” began D, but Eve didn’t wait for him to finish. She slapped the compact shut and tossed it back into her purse.

  She was done. She’d had enough of spy games and Atom Town for one day
. Eve tossed her purse onto the nearby concession stand and immediately hopped up after it, sliding herself backwards then spinning her legs behind the counter as easily as if she’d done it a dozen times before.

  She reached into a cooler and pulled out two bottles of cola.

  “Here,” she said to Pete, sliding one bottle down the counter.

  “Nah, I couldn’t Miss Adams,” said Pete, declining the free soda.

  “I think we’ve earned it,” said Eve, popping the lid off of hers with the cooler’s built in bottle opener and taking a swig of soda. “Gotta’ celebrate a victory, don’t we?”

  “Completed my mission, rescued Adam, and fended off this army. That’s a win,” smiled Eve, pouring another sip of soda into her smile.

  Pete stopped, dusted off his hat and looked around the bowling alley.

  “You see a win in one a’ them piles, Miss Adams?” asked Pete. “All I sees is a mess, and it ain’t gonna’ clean itself.”

  “That’s your mission isn’t it?” asked Eve, hoping for confirmation. “Cleaning up Atom Town, I mean?”

  “And all that might entail, Miss Adams,” nodded Pete. “You mind grabbin’ that, there shovel?” He nodded to a wide-mouthed shovel leaning up against the wood paneling by the lockers.

  “Don’t you think you’re taking that mission a little too literally?” Eve said, hopping down from the counter.

  “Be invisible or indispensable,” said Pete mid-sweep. “It’s how I’ve stayed alive for ten years now. Well, that, and not leavin’ the map.” Pete stopped and looked Eve square in the eyes. “These ain’t just words, they’re rules ta’ live by, and you… You done broke every darned one of ‘em.”

  “The Town is stagnating. The same routines, same patterns, even the same year,” added Eve, scooping some ceiling tile and an arm into the trash. “Sometimes a little change is good.”

  “Maybe so, Miss Adams,” said Pete with a grave look on his face. “But in doin’ so, you woke somethin’ up. I ain’t never seen this in the square before. The Desert, the Swamp, town outskirts, sure. But never in the square.”

  “Then when are you going to talk about it?” asked Eve, THUNKing a chunk of rock from Lefty’s broken crown into the metal trash can.

  “About what?” asked Pete softly, continuing his cleaning.

  “About the Shadow Rock,” said Eve, picking up another arm. “It’s all over the back of the Sheriff’s house, filling one particular room, then we found that car slash tree thing, and it was also on that grave last week.” Eve had folded out one finger from the dead hand for each of her points, then held the three fingered hand in front of Pete.

  Pete snatched the hand away and tossed it in the trash.

  “That rock’s everywhere, don’t need to mean nothin’, just know it shouldn’t be in town is all,” evaded Pete, hoping to stop Eve from going down the conversational road she was heading.

  “You said yourself, you don’t believe in coincidences,” started Eve as she pulled out the registration from her purse and pointed to the name. “When are you going to tell me what happened to Lilly Laughton?”

  “I done told ya’ before. You don’t talk about it!” instructed Pete.

  “I don’t like keeping secrets, Pete,” Eve argued.

  “So said the spy,” whispered the old man between his teeth, emphasizing the point that spies and secrets go hand in hand.

  “Between friends, I mean,” she clarified.

  “Friends?” said Pete curiously, pausing as he decided if the word choice had been appropriate. “I s’pose we been through a battle together. That practically makes us brothers now, or sisters, if you catch my meaning.”

  “Why Miss Pete, I always wanted a sister,” smiled Eve as she flung a couple of arms into the trash. “You want to talk about boys and do each other’s hair?”

  “You ain’t takin’ none a’ this seriously, is you?” charged Pete.

  Eve had checked out for the day, but Pete wasn’t going to let her. Why couldn’t he just play along? Give her one moment of reprieve from the surrounding chaos?

  “Look around,” demanded Eve, swinging one of the lifeless arms to point at the devastation around them. “We just got attacked by disembodied hands in a bowling alley! I saw a man turn into an alligator today, and then back again! We’re prisoners of the ridiculous! If you can’t smile about it, just a little…” continued Eve, shaking her head at the scene around them. “Well, you’ll go crazy!”

  Pete stopped and watched Eve as she angrily tossed the foul little limb into the trash. She returned to her shovel, scooping up bits of trophy and the remains of Lefty’s crown.

  “Am I… Am I going crazy, Pete?” she asked, fearful of his answer.

  “No, Miss Adams,” he said, taking a deep breath. “Life is crazy. You, why you’re just adapting. Problem is, so is it.”

  Eve looked at the remaining chunks of Shadow Rock.

  “Adapting? You mean the fact that this monstrosity is growing, and not just in the desert, the swamp, on trees and evil little hands. It’s getting stronger, isn’t it?” asked Eve.

  “Stronger? Nah” assured Pete. “More creative, more strategic. Usually it just reacts. Responds. But now it’s plannin’, Miss Adams.”

  “Planning what?” asked Eve, expecting to hear something Earth-shattering. But she didn’t.

  “I don’t rightly know,” said Pete, and he began to chuckle to himself. “I really don’t.”

  “Why is that funny?” asked Eve, wondering why the all-business cabdriver was suddenly laughing at what was likely the most disturbing unanswered question she’d heard all night.

  “Maybe I’m set for the booby hatch as well, but I been thinkin’ of this all wrong,” explained Pete. “This ‘monster’ a yours, it ain’t an animal just defending its territory no more. Here…”

  Pete had gotten his second wind and Eve watched as he excitedly dug one of the arms out of the garbage.

  “This,” began Pete. “It ain’t just a tendril of the beast. It’s a field agent, like you or me. They’s just workin’ for it.”

  “Like the Agency?” Eve clarified.

  “Now you getting’ it,” smiled Pete. “We ain’t the only game in town, no more.”

  “So now Lefty is, what? ‘Agent Hand’?” said Eve, using her fingers to make air quotes. She shook her head at the notion of what she’d just said.

  “Likely so,” said Pete. “Which means all a’ this…” he continued, motioning to the surrounding devastation. “This was s’pose to happen. We was s’pose to go to Black Swamp, and most likely, we was s’pose to win.”

  Eve studied Pete’s face. The crow’s feet around his eyes were spread wide. He believed what he was saying, and he’d been right about a great many things, so as crazy as it all sounded, maybe he was right about this.

  “What could it gain from destroying the Atomic Bowl?” asked Eve, trying to follow Pete’s thinking.

  “Don’t rightly know, Miss Adams,” said Pete, going back over the events of the day in his head with suddenly fresh insight. “Can’t see its endgame. Not yet. Let’s jes’ hope this Agent Hand of yours don’t all of this mess against you.”

  “I wish Adam had made sure it was dead,” said Eve.

  “This is Atom Town, Miss Adams,” said Pete. “Death ain’t never stopped no one before.”

  Miles away, deep in Adam’s home laboratory, Lefty was being locked in a cage with a runner wheel and a water bottle.

 

  With one finger, he shifted the wheel, then watched as Adam pinned up the “Bowl to the Death” score sheet. The Doctor patted the cage smugly, then left up the stairs.

 

  The hand looked angrily at the score, or as angrily as a little hand can look. Then he gazed past the score sheet. A calendar on the same wall drew his attention, and then his fury.

 

  It wasn’t March like the calendar maintained, nor
was it nineteen forty-two, but this wasn’t what had Lefty suddenly infuriated. It was the brunette bombshell on the calendar. A teacher in tight curls, freckles on each cheek and a button nose, just like Eve. No. Not just a resemblance but the spitting image.

 

  He began thrashing around the cage, banging violently against the bars! The base of the cage slowly shifted until it teetered off the side of the table, crashing to the floor below!

  Bits of cage littered the tile, the door had flung open and “Agent Hand” was free!

  MUTANT MONGRELS WITH A HORRIBLE HUNGER!

  CAN ANYTHING STOP…

  THE SHREWANTULAS ?!

  Book 3

  SHREWANTULAS!

  SHREWANTULAS!

  "I'm here!" shouted Eve, nearly out of breath from running all the way from the school to the Sheriff's office, but if you'd just been handed a death certificate with your name on it, you'd run too!