by Dan H Kind
Chapter 21
The Sting Op
The beer truck sat with the Olde Eden Brewery logo on its side sat in front of the Governor's Palace, smack dab in the center of downtown Eden, standing out like a modernistic sore thumb amidst the faux eighteenth-century environment. So far only two human beings had wandered up to the mobile suds dispensary, both of whom had purchased a pint of draft beer. Captain Promo didn't like letting these individuals drink the beer, but he had been told to wait for five minutes while his associate got ready. As long as the lucky pair didn't drink six pints of brew, they would only gain a few bonus years of life and perhaps never catch a head cold again, and that was it. No permanent damage done.
When the “Governor's Address to the People” performed every hour inside the Palace ended, the five minutes was up, and people began trickling into the street from the Palace gates.
Captain Promo sauntered up to the truck's counter, elbowing potential customers out of the way. His face locked in a grim expression, he brandished his badge and said, “What are you doing?! You can't bring motor vehicles into downtown Eden! And you can't sell beer out of a truck within city limits!”
Coyote smirked from behind the counter. “Why, whatever do you mean, officer? Say, are you even a cop? That badge looks mighty strange to me.”
Promo shoved the badge into Coyote's face. “Captain Promo, fire marshal. And what you're doing here is right up my alley!”
His yelling drew stares from the roiling waves of humanity now pouring into the street. A small but curious crowd was beginning to form around the beer truck.
Coyote sneered with undisguised enmity. “Well, take a look at what I've got, mister fancy-pants-captain-fire-marshal.” He shook an official-looking paper at Promo. “People are permitted to drink within a twenty foot radius of our vehicle.”
Captain Promo snatched the paper from Coyote. He made a show of scrutinizing the form, which was indeed a permit for what Coyote had said, and quite lawful despite being written in an ancient American Indian cuneiform. He grumbled to himself while poring over the document, every now and then letting out an exaggerated huff or puff. The surrounding rabble had swelled and now surged about the beer truck as an amoeba-like mass. Groups of tourists were snapping off photos with gusto, possibly believing it was all just another colonial reenactment show.
Captain Promo slapped the permit down on the counter. “This permit is not legit! It has the signature of some vice-president at Colonial Eden, not the president!”
“President, vice-president, what's the difference?” growled Old Man. “It's a permit, isn't it?”
Captain Promo snorted. “It's still illegal to sell beer on the streets of Eden.” He grimaced. “I'm going to head back down to the station and have a chat with my superiors about this.” He took a few steps backwards, and his eyes burned into the Tricksters. “Expect to see me real soon, friends.” He turned and walked away.
Coyote watched the rollicking mob surrounding the beer truck swallow the fire marshal. The Trickster gulped, shook off a strange feeling of disquiet, then turned and cried, “Free beer here! Olde Eden Hoppy Heaven Ale! The best beer you'll taste in your short, pitiful lives!”
Old Man poured out a pint, and the smell of Hoppy Heaven Ale pervaded downtown Eden. The suddenly salivating crowd surged forward.
The first customer in the press was a hippie. He wore a tie-dyed Grateful Dead t-shirt, patchwork pants of earthy colors, a red and black bandanna. A tangled gray beard adorned his cheeks. Dark, wire-rimmed sunglasses perched upon his hawkish nose. He looked like a weird hybrid of Jerry Garcia and Tommy Chong.
He flashed a peace sign and said in a stoner's drawl, “Lemme tell you, I think it's totally heady what you dudes are doing here. Reminds me of when the Dead played at Bill & Gary Hall back in '78. You shoulda seen it, man! People running naked through the streets, climbing the buildings, drinking beer, smoking ganja. Why do you think they banned the Dead from town after that night?” He shook his fatty dreads in laid-back indignation. “None of 'em, from Jerry to Bob to Phil, could set foot in Eden city limits after that concert.”
Coyote and Old Man had gone slack-jawed during this barrage of hippie-speak, while behind the dreadie the swarm of humanity buzzed at steadily increasing decibels.
The hippie grinned a ganja smoker's yellow-toothed grin. “Now lemme get two pints of that beer. I just love microbrews.”
Old Man had been staring at the hippie as if the dreadlocked one had just beamed down to Earth from his spaceship. He awoke with a start when Coyote's fingers snapped in front of his face.
“Right, then,” said Old Man. “Two pints of Hoppy Heaven Ale, coming right up.” He rotated to the beer spigot behind him. As he began pouring, it seemed as if he moved in slow motion.
The crowd behind the hippie was getting more restless and unruly by the second. If Coyote didn't start getting beer into these people's hands, they might begin to riot. He could already feel the truck rocking from the packed and pushing tourists surrounding it on all sides. They wore fanatic, inhuman expressions on their faces—and they were all staring right at him. Coyote gulped as memories of angry mobs chasing him down assaulted his mind (it always ended badly for him). He turned, watching the horde from the corner of his eye, and began pouring from the second spigot.
Then four shots rang out over downtown Eden, and the murmurs of the crowd turned to screams.
People ran away from the vehicle in a blind panic. Hoppy Heaven Ale began flowing from the side-wall of the truck at the astonished Tricksters' knees in a quadruple waterfall.
Coyote twirled around and looked into the hippie's suddenly quite un-stoned-hippie-ish eyes. The dreadlocked one held a smoking revolver leveled at Coyote's head.
“Gotcha, suckers,” said the hippie. He adjusted his aim, shot once, adjusted, and shot once more. Coyote felt a stinging pain in his left foot and looked down at a smoking hole in the tongue of his Vans shoe. Old Man, shot in the ankle, began hollering and hopping about next to him. The tiny Trickster held one hand over his bleeding foot and another up in the air in a gesture of surrender.
Coyote ducked below the counter and pushed Old Man towards the front of the truck, out of the hippie's sights. That revolver held only six rounds—which the hippie had just used up.
“Start the truck!” snarled Coyote. He began mixing invisible ingredients into an invisible pot of soup before him, then stood up to his full height.
The hippie was dropping ammo all over the place, reloading his revolver. Coyote flung out his hands as if throwing this invisible pot of soup onto the hippie.
The invisible concoction landed on the hippie, and a queer expression crossed his face. “What beautiful, beautiful music,” he murmured. The revolver dropped from numb fingers, and he began waltzing around in circles. “I can't help but dance to such beautiful music.” He pirouetted on nimble toes in the cobblestone street.
The truck started with a roar, and Coyote grinned. “They don't call me Coyote the Songmaker for nothing, Sherlock,” he said with a guttural laugh.
Coyote smelled something burning and sniffed the air. Something nearby was on fire. He shook his head. It was probably just a bonfire burning outside someone's fake colonial home. After all, this was eighteenth century-ville . . .
“Get us moving, Old Man! The crowd ran off, but there's still people around here somewhere! Let's just let 'em swarm over the truck and lick the beer off the floor!”
Old Man put the truck into first gear. But when it rolled . . . it didn't. There was a metallic screeching sound, and the vehicle lumbered to a halt in the street.
“Something's wrong!” yelled Old Man. “I think we've got a flat!”
Coyote snarled in annoyance and jumped down, landing nimbly on his feet despite his recent injury, which was already healing. They needed to find some human beings to drink this beer dribbling out of the truck and onto the road soon, or the boss would be pissed!
Ignoring the entranced
Sir Arthur—who was still dancing in the streets, humming, his eyes closed in bliss—he checked the tires on the passenger side of the vehicle. The rubber was melted onto the rims. He walked around to the other side of the truck, cursing in a long-forgotten dialect, and was hit in the face by a punishing stream of flame equivalent to the breath of a fire-breathing dragon.
Yelping, Coyote fell to the street, his form flashing between human and animal. Old Man lay a few yards away, unmoving on the cobblestone. A dark, menacing figure stood over Coyote, but he could not make it out because it felt like his eyeballs had melted into his skull.
Captain Promo of the Eden Fire Department stood over the smoldering, whimpering Coyote, shaking his head. “A shame. And so much potential there, too.”
“Indeed,” said Sir Arthur, who no longer danced. His eyes were clear and collected, as if he had never been under the sway of the Song. “But let us withdraw, Prometheus, before your buddies arrive.”
“Yeah, can't be caught out here,” said Promo with a grin that only a Titan could pull off. “What would my earthly boss say if he knew I was setting things on fire in downtown Eden?”
Sir Arthur and Captain Promo departed the scene, each with a Trickster slung over their shoulders. When they were a hundred yards from the Palace, the flames found the gas tank, and the Olde Eden beer truck exploded, right in front of the just-arrived E.F.D. fire truck.
The blast took out a decorative brick wall and some hedges on the Governor's Palace's front lawn. The fire truck's paint blistered and peeled a little. There were no injuries.