The Earth Died Screaming

by Chuck Rogers

  The skull face tilted at me. The skull features did not move. They were bone. But the jaw moved. Our Lady of the Holy Death spoke in Spanish.

  "You know that I am not Death."

  "No, I didn't know that. I mean, I do. I mean, you're the--"

  "I am not the Grim Reaper."

  I gave the scythe a dubious look.

  If she had lungs I think she might have sighed.

  "I am not certain you should be praying to me."

  "Do I?"

  The tip of the scythe lowered to my chest and tapped the Santa Muerte medal.

  Tink-tink-tink . . .

  "I am not certain you should be wearing that."

  "It was a gift." Despite my magnificent hard-on in cold water and a pleasing sense of end-game wellbeing and spiritual confusion I scowled. "Oh, and nice job protecting Lalli."

  The black pits stared down upon me for long moments.

  For a moment I thought I was even more fucked.

  No bones moved in her face but the empty eye sockets radiated profound sadness. "Many have begged it of me, but protecting men and women from the acts of men and women is beyond the power of any saint. Protecting a man or woman from their own folly, not even a God."

  Yeah, fuck you. Loving me was utter folly and this bitch should have tried harder to protect her servant.

  "Then what good are you?"

  The skull cocked.

  "I do not know. What good am I?"

  My hand went to the medallion. "Keepsakes, comfort, you know, opiate of the masses? At least she's cured of your shit now."

  Our Lady gave me the silent, skull-pits stare.

  I thought of Lalli and our last conversation and I knew sudden, terrible fear.

  "Did she do it? Is she with you?"

  "Lalli is not dead. Her faith in me is stronger than ever."

  "What the fuck?"

  "Lalli has never prayed for personal protection. She has always prayed with love, and for others. She prays for her husband. She prays for her daughter. She has fallen in love again, and now she prays for you, constantly, even as we speak."

  "And I'm a mass murderer, dying of radiation poisoning, naked with a hard-on in a creek."

  "And yet I am here."

  Jesus fucking Christ.

  She nodded. "You might be better off praying to the Carpenter."

  "Okay, you're here! What are you gonna to do?"

  Probably not the best way to address the Our Lady of the Holy Death.

  "What is it that you want?"

  That was reasonable of her.

  Of course she'd already admitted she couldn't do shit.

  I thought about it.

  Clearly she could read my mind and knew everything about me, and even if she was just a hallucination of my dying brain reflecting things I already unconsciously knew?

  No harm in asking.

  "Some sound advice?"

  She answered at once. "Don't go back."

  I perked up at that.

  "I'm going to live through this?"

  "Don't go back."

  And she was gone.

  Fucking bitch.

  All sense of wellbeing left with her. Things got dim and things got ugly. The symptoms fell back on me like one of those crushing walls Taliban executioners were so fond of pushing on top of people. I tried to crawl back out of the creek but I was too weak and too sick. The river was no longer a blessing. I shuddered with cold while every inch of flesh itched. I swallowed blood and breathed in creek water and choked. My entire body burned at the cellular level. I cried out for Santa Muerte to come back and take me with her. I cried out for Lalli.

  In the end I cried for my mother.

  All three billion base pairs of my DNA formed a perfect double-helix antennae for the cosmic power of the cosmic all. Like God deciding to speak to man across three billion ham radios and not a single set could contain his might.

  The beam spoke to my body.

  The vessel was weak.

  I lay in the creek.

  I wept as I burned and turned.

  * * *

  I AWOKE IN SUNLIGHT.

  I shuddered with cold but the sun was warm. It seemed I had managed to crawl out of the creek. The itching was unbearable. I scratched at my arms and saw the lumps rising all over it. They were all over my arms and my chest. I felt them on my face.

  Entire swathes of my flesh were raised, red, bubbled and blistered.

  I was lumping up.

  I was shrimping up.

  I started crying.

  I couldn't stop scratching the lumps. They started bleeding.

  Oh God . . .

  Despite transforming into a whimpering, mutating, gutless-wonder, the Frame battle-brain spoke.

  You don't have a hard-on, Frame-o.

  I didn't.

  The sun isn't hurting your eyes.

  My lumped hand went to my head.

  I still had a thick, though currently matted with mud and leaves, magnificent head of hair.

  I looked at the lumps, bumps and swathes on my arms, legs and torso.

  I had stumbled through the forest naked and spent the night in a creek on a Simi Valley summer night.

  Of course I had poison oak.

  Of course the mosquitoes had eaten me alive.

  Upon further examination, more than a few ticks were currently feasting on Frame.

  I shambled back to the truck and looked at myself in one of the side mirrors. I looked like the idiot poster-child for a California State Park pamphlet titled "Camp smart! Don't let this happen to you!"

  I did not look like bowl of lobster bisque with legs.

  The dosimeter told me the truck was rapidly cooling off.

  I stepped away from the truck and I personally gave off a few transient red flickers.

  I had to remind myself that this was not the traditional radiation of my military NBC training. According to Ted it was unfathomable, second-hand cosmic energy being delivered by lunar carpet-bombing. Question was, how many doses could I take? Maybe it affected everybody differently?

  Maybe I was developing a tolerance.

  I looked down at my swollen lumpy flesh.

  Maybe I was in the larval stage.

  I remembered last night very clearly. I've told you. I've been in the Sweat Lodge. I've looked into the darkness. I've looked in the mirror. I have been to exotic places and seen things I could not explain.

  Last night had been my first religious experience.

  Was it a hallucination?

  Was my cosmic radiation boner an antennae to the Gods?

  Regardless, I was pretty sure the Saint of Death had found me dazed, confused and somewhat lacking.

  Regardless, her priestess had given me a job.

  Plan A had worked like a charm.

  Plan B had been enabled.

  For the moment I had my wits about me, the use of my limbs and a truck full of guns.

  It was time for Plan C.

  It was time to get me some Ged or proof of death.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  War crimes and misdemeanors.

  I WATCHED AIR FORCE ONE PAVILLION BURN.

  The fire hadn't reached the rocket factory yet.

  I was going to have to help that along.

  I gave the SOG a full day, watching from a hide on the opposite hill while they bathed in it, cooked with it, brushed their teeth with it and drank it.

  The screaming and gunshots started around sunset and suddenly the terrifying sound of a nuclear attack siren began to wail from Valhalla and echoed out across the Simi Valley. I had never heard a civil defense siren sounded on American soil that was not a drill. The siren howled as the sun fell and the sky-show started. The SOG thought they were under attack. They were, but the external threat was just one man.

  The real enemy was every burned and turning cell in their bodies.

  Air Force One Pavilion burned out of control. Of course that was where the SOG feasted and that's where the pro
pane was. The panoramic windows exploded outward in a spectacular wave of glass and yellow fire. The lights went out in the pavilion but the fire lit up the entire hillside.

  I felt a little bad.

  The Great Communicator had been the only American President I had liked.

  I was irradiating, burning and about to blow up his legacy.

  Then again, if Ronald Reagan was up there and aware that the SOG had taken up residence?

  I think he might have said "Frame, win this one for the Gipper."

  Throughout the night people and vehicles sporadically made exoduses down the hill. Several got halfway down the hill and went off the road. Some of the refugees suddenly found themselves running for their lives as the burned and turned erupted out of Valhalla and chased them. I'd say several dozen bikes and vehicles got away clean and scores of people ran down every side of the hill and escaped through the trees. There was nothing to be done about that, and who knew what kind of irradiated time bombs their bodies had become.

  I stuck to my plan.

  I waited until dawn to make my approach.

  The burning pavilion was a perfect screen for me and I made my ascent right up underneath the smoke. It was a thousand feet of hillside and it took a little time. I hugged the hill and swung around the west side of the complex. Save for the occasional moan or scream it was pretty quiet. It seemed like the turning and burning had mostly burnt itself out. I kept circling and came up by the Memorial Site. I looked past the Gipper's grave and into Gipper's Grove.

  It was a grove of forty-three crepe myrtle trees. The SOG had turned it into a camp and tents and campers filled the lanes between the trees and it was one of the premium real estate spots for members. Bodies were everywhere. Some shot. Some stripped and torn apart.

  Crows and turkey vultures feasted.

  God only knew what eating the meat would do to them.

  I saw Dez's Gulfstream.

  Call it mission creep but I had too.

  I ghosted through the camp.

  Did I mention I had a truck full of guns? It's a pain in the ass to move with two rifles and concomitant ammunition but I wanted the suppressed AR with the last grenade in its launcher and I wanted the M-14 in case I had to hold the SOG off or do some sniping. The M-14 was slung. I carried the AR. The suppressed Ruger was strapped to my thigh and the PPK in my pocket.

  I knelt and reached under the back bumper. The magnetic Hide-A-Key case was right where it was supposed to be. I froze as I heard a moan and the sound of vomiting inside. I put my rifles under the trailer, unlocked the door as quietly as I could, drew the Ruger, flung the door and made entry.

  Dez lay curled fetal on the floor. She was naked save for a pair of pink panties and the bear claw I had given her. About half her hair was gone. Dez bled out of her nose, mouth and ears. She was bleeding out of her eyes. The front and back of her panties were stained red. She was bleeding out of every hole. Pink rivulets ran down her skin.

  Dez was bleeding out of her pores.

  I could almost feel the heat radiating off of her.

  Her eyes swung toward me and there was no white left around the pupils. She smiled and I knew she hadn't burned blind. Her gums were purple and pulling back. It made her bloody teeth look very long.

  "Hey, baby."

  "Hey, yourself."

  "Frame?"

  "Yeah?"

  "I can't find Little Black Cat."

  "I'm sorry."

  "Sometimes he hides over the fridge. Sometimes in the closet. Sometimes he hides in the little floor cupboard." Dez's eyes rolled. "But I fell, and I just, can't seem to get up."

  "Would you like me to look for him?"

  Her bloody gaze fixed on me then. She gave me the skull teeth.

  "We had soooo much fun with Lalli."

  It bounced off. I felt strangely detached. Almost sympathetic. "Del died well."

  "You cut her fucking head off!"

  "I blew her head off with a 40mm grenade. She'd already been shot once. Del died going forward with the knife in her hand. That means something where I come from. You would've been proud of her, and she avoided all this."

  "You did this?"

  "Just like I did Malibou Lake."

  Dez coughed up blood. "I always fall for bad boys . . ."

  She was burning up, but I didn't think she had time to turn. She was going to die first.

  "I loved you."

  "I know."

  "Did you love me? At all?"

  I couldn't tell Dez that I loved her, but I could tell her the truth. "You and I were born to be together. If I'd left Malibu for LA and run into the SOG first? You and I would be married now. But I didn't, and I couldn't let you have Malibu. I was glad that you didn't come on the scouting mission, and prayed that when the battle for Malibu was on that someone else would kill you, or maybe you'd escape."

  "I would have hunted you forever."

  "I know." I looked down at Dez. Lalli had spoken of Dez dying, poisoned, in the grace of no saint or god. There was no grace to be had here. I was uncertain if there was any to be had anywhere anymore, or if there had ever been any in the first place.

  But there could be mercy. Even now.

  Maybe that was almost as good.

  "You want me to do it?"

  "I want you to sing to me."

  That came out of left field.

  I sat and gathered Dez up. I sang her the lullaby my mother had sung to me. Among most Human Beings, songs are owned. Many of the traditional ones have been recorded but a song that is yours is yours, and someone has to ask permission, buy or trade for it if they want to sing it, even to themselves. My mother had given the song to me in hopes that I would one day sing it to her grandchild.

  I stroked the clumps of Dez's remaining hair.

  I sang my mother's lullaby.

  I'd never sung it for Line.

  I'd never sung it for Lalli.

  I sang the lullaby in the words of my people for a dying sociopath who'd loved me. Dez relaxed against me as I finished. "It's so beautiful. I wish I knew the words."

  I stroked her face.

  "My mother sang it to me when I was little."

  "You must have been so cute when you were little."

  Even after the beam. Even after everything that had happened. Even now. There could be mercy.

  There was grace in that.

  I sang the words in English.

  "Go to sleep little spirit,

  every time I see you,

  my heart sings a new song,

  go to sleep little spirit,

  I want to see you in the dawn,

  go to sleep little spirit,

  I want to sing you a new song,

  every dawn,

  forever."

  "That is so beautiful," Dez smiled and closed her eyes. "I--"

  I shot Dez through the temple.

  The trailer was very quiet.

  Smoke oozed out of the suppressor. A little gunpowder added to the smell of dead woman.

  I know what you're thinking.

  She didn't deserve it.

  Jesus Christ, look at her.

  I'd already had my revenge.

  Maybe it was mostly for me.

  Maybe I still had a soul.

  Or maybe I just missed it.

  I snapped around at the slow squeak of hinges behind me.

  I turned in time to see the little floor cupboard door opening of its own accord. Right out of a horror film. The sun streamed in through the blinds above. The interior of the cupboard was darkness. A shadow moved within it and I caught the twin green spots of animal eyeshine.

  I spoke to Little Black Cat in my language like I always did. "C'mon out you little shit. It's safe now."

  Little Black Cat emerged.

  Little black cat wasn't black anymore, or little.

  Little black cat had lost every single bit of fur and turned purple except for broken-open leaking swathes of putrescent pink. She was muscled like a purple
gladiator-cat that had been sent to Auschwitz. Every vein and striation stood out. Her belly distended like she had swallowed a grapefruit or she was pregnant.

  I had a horrible inkling she was, and it was an immaculate, beam radiation conception.

  Little Black Cat looked at me, looked at Dez and then looked back at me. Her eyes flared so wide I thought they would pop out of her head. She arched her back so high and hard vertebrae broke the skin and some kind of vile, non-blood excrescence leaked out. Little Black Cat opened her mouth and yowled.

  It was the most horrifying thing I had ever heard.

  Her mouth kept opening wider and wider and the yowl rose higher and higher. Her mouth kept opening like a crocodile or a snake unhinging its jaw to eat something larger than its head. The yowl kept rising like a civil-alert siren that was being castrated and killed at the same time.

  Little Black Cat launched like an alien that wanted to put what was in her belly inside me.

  I fired the Ruger as fast as I could pull the trigger.

  Little Black Cat burst like a blood bag and fell flailing to the floor.

  I kept shooting.

  Little Black Cat spun shrieking and spurting and refusing to die. The Ruger clicked open on empty. Little Black Cat twirled and conniptioned towards me. I screamed and jumped and hit my head on the ceiling as I tried to avoid her. Little Black Cat crawled trailing blood, membranes, amniotic fluids and squirming, fetal horrors out of her burst belly.

  She kept crawling towards me.

  Eyes locked and unblinking.

  I lifted my knee to my chest and I stomped Little Black Cat. I stomped her until the mess stopped moving and then I stomped the hissing, squirming blind things that were in no way, shape or form kittens.

  I stood there shaking.

  This was the new world. This was the planet's fate as the moon rocks kept falling until they poisoned every last acre.

  I'd already taken way too many doses.

  The fucking Xanax was back in my pack a thousand feet down and a klick away.

  I reloaded.

  I went to Dez's liquor cabinet and poured myself a rocks glass of Southern Comfort. I went to her cigarette stash and lit an American Spirit. I smoked it and I smoked another. I put the pack and the lighter in my pocket.

  Breaking my vows again.

  Fuck you.

  Any trying to quit smoker reading this understands.