The Earth Died Screaming

by Chuck Rogers

  Colin's shoulders twitched. "They're haunting."

  Jeff laughed. "The boy ain't wrong, but I think the new Malibu Ranch Hound shows promise. I already asked for two, but bet I can get Cecilia to give you the pick of the litter and train it up right for you. Guarding, herding, hunting? I think these dogs have legs."

  I looked to Lalli.

  "I have not had a dog since I was a little girl."

  Apparently Lalli had no problem compartmentalizing getting a house hound and her earlier willingness to cook a Pug in mole poblano sauce.

  Keith grinned over his beer. "I'll throw in an RV, a good one."

  That one caught me by surprise. "What am I going to do with an RV?"

  To his credit, Keith dealt with me patiently. "An RV is a second house, Frame, on wheels. If I give you one with solar that's a second power station at half a kilowatt-hour plus. I'll give you one with the gas, water and propane tanks full. I don't know if I'd take it to Yosemite just now, but if things suddenly get bad again there are worse things you can do than park your RV in some back canyon and wait for things to blow over. It's what me and the family did."

  "You can spare it?"

  He waggled his eyebrows. "I have a fleet of them."

  "Oh, and Joanne isn't here," Colin said. "But she's willing to bring you some of her new chickens. There's plenty of lumber around but I'll bring you wire and help knock the coops together."

  Lalli made a happy noise. "Chickens!"

  I made a mental note to never let her play poker with our house money.

  I already knew, but I asked. "And what must I do to receive all this largess?"

  Mar-J spoke. "I was in the Navy. Word is you're Force Recon. I told everyone what that meant."

  "You want me to go take a look around."

  Sophina nodded. "That is the size of it, Mr. Frame. We won't ask you to go to LA, but we need to find out what is happening north of here. We would like you to go see if the 101 is open and what kind of traffic is on it. The next town north of Malibu is Agoura Hills. The fires hit it very badly, so of course that meant the flooding hit it even worse. But there are some holdouts up there. Some of them are friends. There have been rumors of marauders and raiding. I have a friend, Alice, who lives on Malibou Lake. She heard motorcycles up in hills to the north. A lot of them. The next day they found a man who lived up there had been shot. His daughter is pretty and one of the blinded. She was missing and so were some of her clothes. I don't know if it was an isolated incident or something organized is jumping the 101. If it's the latter, then sooner rather than later they'll be here. We need to know who and what is out there. Is there any law at all? Any state of federal government presence locally? What are the other nearby communities doing? The bad news is that hardly anyone who has ventured out has come back, and we got our last horse courier from Agoura weeks ago."

  "Tell me what do we know."

  Ted spread out a map of Southern California. Sophina started pointing at municipalities. "Like I said Agoura Hills got hit very badly. The rumor is a very large chunk of moon rock hit Thousand Oaks like a bomb. What little word that came out of the Conejo Valley, I wouldn't have believed it." The acting Mayor of Malibu made a face. "Until Ted told me about our bear problem. The fact is we know almost nothing about what is going on outside Malibu, and we need to get on top of the situation."

  It was a no-brainer.

  I'd have been going out anyways. Lalli and I and our Eichler of love were on borrowed time. I needed to know what was out there before we made any kind of decision about our future. That didn't mean I felt any shame whatsoever in letting them pay me to do it.

  I mean, I'd never known I even wanted an RV until Keith offered me one.

  Sophina's face went first black lesbian mayor pro tem of Malibu. I'm pretty sure she read my mind. "We would want some kind of commitment out of you, Mr. Frame. That you are going to stay for a while."

  Ted held up a placating hand. "We mean, assuming another beam doesn't hit or we're about to be invaded or something. We understand you and everyone else's situation is fluid."

  "Well," I conceded. "I've got crops in the ground, and Lalli wants chickens."

  I looked at Lalli and thought about everything she'd told me. I reached under the table and gave her hand a squeeze. "I'm prepared to stay here another nine months. Then we'll see what comes, and make an assessment."

  Lalli's big dark eyes got huge.

  She knew I was talking about Eduardo and Najelli and the year she had to give them before she and I became official.

  "I'll leave in two days."

  Ted sighed. "You know I feel bad about you facing the bear alone. I'd go with you on this one. But I think I'd just slow you down."

  I knew Ted was for real. "I appreciate that, Ted."

  Mar-J nodded. "That's why I'm going with you."

  "Naw, you'd just slow me down."

  "I'd slow you down?"

  "As a matter of fact."

  Mar-J made a face.

  "Sophina, with your permission I'd like to drop by tomorrow and have Clarice take a last look at my face and my ass before I head out. I wouldn't mind a more in depth conversation with you about the exact status of Malibu. We may need to start thinking about how many citizens are willing to get behind a gun, as well as roadblocks and other defenses when I get back."

  "I would like that very much, Mr. Frame."

  I decided tomorrow would be a day of rest. "Anyone else want another beer?"

  Everyone did.

  * * *

  THERE IS ONLY ONE THING MORE TERRIFYING than waking up knowing there is an intruder in the house. That's waking up with an intruding standing over your bed pointing a .357 Magnum at your face.

  Joran Guftason smiled at me. "Hi."

  How had this grinning fuck gotten past the motion sensors and the alarm?

  He hadn't.

  I knew with sick clarity he'd never left. The squealing tires had been a ruse.

  I needed that dog Jeff had been talking about. I needed a pack of post-apocalyptic attack-Huskies raised on human flesh. I needed to keep Guftason talking, monologuing if possible.

  "I thought I told you to get the fuck out of my house and stay out."

  "Oh, I heard you the first time."

  "What do you want?"

  "I want things back the way they were." He waved the pistol vaguely in emphasis but not enough to give me an opening. "You know. Lalli back. You gone?"

  Again I would have preferred him snarling or stone cold. He was disturbingly conversational.

  I shrugged. "She's yours. Take her."

  "I already have. Actually, I haven't taken her yet. Let's just say she's firmly in my possession now."

  "Well give me three steps, mister, and you'll never see me no more."

  Joran gave me a pained look.

  Yeah, it was lame.

  "So . . .?"

  "So people are going to think you went off on your little reconnaissance mission, and didn't come back. Not surprising. Most haven't. Lalli is going down in my basement, and she is never going to see daylight again."

  "What did you do to her?"

  Joran seemed to weigh answering. "I pistol whipped her and tied her up."

  I searched for something to say.

  Joran was enjoying himself. "I can't believe these people pinned their hopes on you. I mean you're no Navy SEAL or Special Forces. You're just a fucking Marine. Marines are assholes. I mean what? Did you drop out of high school?"

  Dick.

  "Then, what? You killed a diseased bear? It took you three guns and a car and you still almost lost? You are not impressing me, jarhead."

  Two guns and a jeep, asshole, and it had been epic. As for the jarhead? He didn't get to use that, but I needed to work on my rebuttal to the gigantic eight-shooter in my face.

  My right hand was already under my pillow and touching the PPK.

  I would have about one heartbeat to beat him

  And Gufto liked to tal
k.

  "You think you can walk into Malibu and steal my shit? You think you can steal my servants and fuck them before I do?"

  "I already did."

  For a second I thought I'd gone too far.

  The cylinder full of gleaming hollow points turned as the hammer of that meat-grinder 'click-click-clacked' back to full cock. My window of opportunity went from a heartbeat to a blink.

  "Brock's birthday is coming up, and I'm going to watch while my son and all his friends fuck her. Then I'm going to show them how you punish a woman correctly, and see that to it that they learn and can demonstrate their mastery. We're going to have to dig new holes in her body before we're done. I kind of want you to watch."

  I went cold inside as he gave me the Winnie the Penis look.

  "I really want to make you suck my dick."

  Eew.

  "But trying to tie you up might be problematic, and I don't think you'll do it willingly. At least not yet. So you're going to beg. Beg good, and maybe that will influence how many times I shoot you, and where."

  I was out of options.

  "I said beg or the first one is in your knee."

  I had a feeling he was going to shoot me in both knees anyway. Then he would flip me over, slap the bear scars as he rode me to victory and donkey shoot me as he blew his load.

  It was go time.

  "And I think I want you to take your right hand out from under the pillow. Very slow."

  There went my one eyeblink.

  It was genuine, dead-to-rights, Frame-o situation.

  There was one slim chance in hell to earn my eyeblink back.

  I looked up into the meat-grinder with all those hollow-points gleaming at me and then grimaced over at the Uzi on the nightstand.

  Guftason looked at the Uzi and his piggy little eyes were so happy.

  "Go for it."

  I went for it.

  My hand closed around the Walther's grip and my finger snaked against the trigger.

  Gufto blinked.

  I wasn't going to make it.

  It was one of those situations where everything happened very fast but time seemed to dilate and slow down.

  A shadow appeared in the hall.

  Gufto's arm shot straight as he leveled the big pistol.

  The PPK cleared the pillow an eyeblink late and my mortality short.

  There was a sudden short "Brrr-rip!" noise and Guftason did a psychotic series of head fakes as his eyes burst and his cheeks geysered blood.

  The magnum went off like a bomb and sent splinters flying from the headboard.

  While this was going on I shot him seven times in the chest.

  I rolled aside as he fell to the bed.

  Lalli stood in the bedroom doorway with Danny racked open on a smoking, empty chamber. There were still bits of rope around her wrist. Blood crusted her face. He'd pistol whipped her and tied her up but he hadn't searched her and found her knife. Lalli was utterly calm as she reloaded.

  "I have been wanting to do that for a long time."

  "Yeah, me too. All my life and I didn't even know it. Fuck him."

  "Frame?"

  "Baby?"

  "Señor Guftason's son, and his friends. I want them gone before you leave."

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Love my country. Fear my government.

  I DROPPED BY a little before noon.

  Brock and the teenage cavemen of the apocalypse were out back poolside, about nine of them, drinking, laughing and playing grab-ass. I smelled weed. Zero security on the perimeter. Either they didn't know or didn't care that Gufto the Elder had not returned from his midnight assassination mission. The girls were all topless, laughing a little too loud and shrill except for the bruised ones who were flinching and not laughing at all.

  Every few moments the delinquents would 'Whoo!' fist bump, and shout "Wolfpack!"

  Oh, this shit ended right now.

  I walked right up with my M-14 jauntily across my shoulders and threw Gufto the Elder's severed head into Gufto the Younger's lap.

  Little Gufto screamed. His pals screamed. The girls screamed. Little Gufto's Glock clattered to the patio. A couple of his pals had guns close to hand but they froze in deer-in-the-headlights horror.

  I used my speaking calmly after I've thrown your father's severed head in your lap voice.

  "Take what you can carry. Get out of Malibu. If you're still here tomorrow it's war. Your father died easy. The neighborhood watch has orders to shoot you on sight."

  An older guy, and by older I meant in his twenties rather than his teens, shot to his feet spilling his statutory rape victim to the lawn. He was of some indeterminate olive complexion, deeply tanned, wearing a Speedo and had his black hair pulled back in a short ponytail and he appeared to spend a lot of time bench-pressing.

  By his pupils he was something stronger than liquor or pot.

  I made him for the driver.

  He pointed an accusing finger at me while still holding a red party cup. "He isn't gonna come in here and shoot us all! Fuck him!"

  Little Gufto actually saw some reason. You're dad's severed head will do that. "Damian, don't."

  His name was Damian.

  Of course it was.

  "No! Fuck him! He won't shoot us." Damian threw his cup aside and gave me the come hither with both hands. "He won't shoot us! I will fuck his ancient ass just like I fucked Tina's and just like I am going to fuck that Mexican maid." He stepped forward gesturing me in. I couldn't tell in what, but he moved like he'd had some training and wanted to use it. "Come on, bear-fucker! Show me what you got!"

  Show him what I got?

  What? Was he near-sighted?

  I had an M-14.

  I snapped the rifle off my shoulder and shot Damian five times in the chest. He stopped just short of doing a backflip into the pool. With his lungs ventilated he sank straight to the bottom and stayed there in expanding clouds of scarlet.

  The five shots echoed pleasingly against the hills.

  "I want every gun in the pool. Now."

  The teen jack-holes gave their weapons to the chlorine.

  "Ladies, it's time to go home."

  The girls scrambled off in a pack.

  I shook my head at Little Gufto. "I killed Luther and his friends. I killed the goat-raper. I killed your faggot father."

  (That was a lie. Lalli killed him. It was also a bit rough and non-PC, but it tripped off the tongue.)

  Little Gufto started crying.

  "I killed Damian. He was actually kinda brave. I liked him. But you're a pussy Brock, and I don't like you at all. Get out."

  Gufto wept for the end of his little fiefdom.

  I reached behind my back, pulled the M-14's bayonet and clicked it in place. "Get out."

  Gufto howled. "Please!"

  He shrieked as I lunged the bayonet through the sole of his left foot.

  "I can play pin-the-bayonet on the Brock all day long! I will hang you by your heels from a fucking tree and do it!"

  Little Gufto jerked up and started hopping inside.

  I roared after him. "You lost your privileges! Get in a car and go! Now!"

  Little Gufto pulled a set of keys off a pegboard and hopped towards the garage. One of his toadies went with him.

  I nodded at the remaining miscreants. "Fuck off."

  They fucked off.

  Tires screamed as Little Gufto peeled out. A beautiful, British racing green Land Rover Defender tore down the road.

  That was a sweet set of wheels driving away.

  I should've killed him.

  I shrugged.

  I couldn't wait to grab Ted and toss the Gufto mansion.

  Spoils of war.

  Share with your friends.

  * * *

  I CAME HOME to find Lalli in the backyard with a tall, beautiful Latina with a purple streak in her hair.

  And a dog.

  It was a puppy.

  I'd say between eight and twelve weeks.

&
nbsp; "You must be Cecilia."

  "Just call me C, everyone does."

  We shook hands. "So this is the pick of the litter?"

  C smiled. "Isn't she beautiful?"

  Lalli beamed.

  The puppy stared up at me vacantly.

  I scooped the puppy up and examined it.

  I'd seen real hounds in my youth. Genuine working dogs not bred for their looks, conformations or coats. The dog was double-coated and the outer and the under coats appeared to be locked in a salt and pepper battle to the death. It was the nappiest, Muppet-hemorrhaging-stuffing out of every stitch dog you ever saw. The ears were not docked and were never going to be, so incongruous hound ears flopped down around the giant schnauzer face.

  Then there were those eyes.

  Colin hadn't been kidding.

  We've all seen dogs with blue eyes. It can be quite striking. This dog's eyes literally looked like they were made out sky-blue sea glass. Strangely empty. That was the Catahoula Leopard Dog gene. Except for the fact that they moved they looked like taxidermy eyes. The mask of black fur around the face magnified the effect. I'm sure in an adult dog those eyes would've been haunting. If a pack of them were chasing you those empty eyes would be terrifying. In a puppy that was already growing bushy mustaches and a beard with its tongue lolling out of its mouth it was a full-on The manufacturer is recalling the entire Malibu Ranch Hound litter. You may qualify for compensation. Call the law offices of...

  It was the dumbest looking dog in the world.

  It was all paws and head.

  It was going to grow big.

  It was indeed a she.

  It hung from my hands giving me the Mona Lisa moron look.

  I asked Lalli, but I already knew the answer. "You like her?"

  "I love her."

  Well?

  That was that.

  Lalli stood beside me and admired her new dog . "What do you wish to name her? An Aztec name? Or perhaps something from your tribe?"