by Al
“Cluck-CLUCK! Cluck cl-cl-cluck…” Doozy sang, until she spied Baby Boss and stopped dead in her tracks.
“You—!” she clucked.
“Yes, me!” Baby Boss snarled, jumping out into the center of the cave. Behind him, Squirmy’s drool-covered, asphyxiated body sank to the floor.
“I knew it would come to this…” Doozy avered.
“By all the chittering chipmunks in heaven, you’re right!”
Doozy twirled her umbrella, whose lights dimmed to a soft green glow. A target sight and trigger materialized from the instrument’s handle.
But Baby Boss’s twin six guns were already blazing, and Doozy disappeared in a cloud of brown feathers.
“CLUUUUUUUCK!” she cried, her last word cut off by the rain of deadly lead.
The walls of the cavern trembled and collapsed around Baby Boss’s ears.
“Oh, shit,” he muttered—
~ * ~
REEL EIGHT
~ * ~
“Ha!” Baby Boss cried, brushing dirt from his furry hamster torso as he stood in Hamster Central, the largest of all the underground caverns. “That was close!”
He strode with purpose to the Underground Hamster Alarm, and pushed the large, brightly lit button. Instantly the call went out, a high chirrupy squeal, and before long the Underground Hamsters were assembled before him expectantly.
“Hamsters!” Baby Boss shouted, throwing his paws into the air. “Our day of triumph has arrived! Doozy the Chicken is dead!”
“Not so fast!” came a clucky voice from the rear of the assembly. The sea of hamsters parted and there stood Doozy, unfeathered but alive. A neat line of bullet holes traced through her bodice above her massive dugs.
“But--” Baby Boss sputtered in disbelief.
With a grand gesture, Doozy drew a wing across the front of her body, which fell to the floor. Behind what had been an impenetrable shell, containing her false dugs and the line of bullet holes, each still containing the bullet which had never reached her, was her real chicken chest, brown feathers and all.
“Everyone knows chickens don’t have tits!” Doozy cried, and drew out her Magic Umbrella, already glowing green in weapon-mode.
Pandemonium, and the cries of frightened hamsters, filled Hamster Central until the roof, with a massive roar, suddenly caved in.
“Oh, shit,” Doozy clucked.
~ * ~
BABY BOSS AND THE UNDERGROUND HAMSTERS HOLIDAY SPECIAL…LIVE FROM HAMSTER CENTRAL…!!!
~ * ~
Scene: Hamster Central, a huge, dome-ceilinged cavern, and the underground rallying point for all hamsters. It is Christmas Eve. Hamster Central has been decked out in holiday colors, greenery and red bows, twinkling Christmas lights—it is a veritable Fezziwig’s Ball. From somewhere, the muted sounds of Christmas music is heard, Nat King Cole’s “Christmas Song”. A massive sideboard is crowded with food and drink: a glistening moist turkey, two huge pink hams, a punch bowl as big as a child’s swimming pool lapping waves of spiked eggnog.
~ * ~
In the center of Hamster Central, alone, two figures dance slowly: Baby Boss and Doozy the Chicken. Their happy voices murmur and coo; amidst their whispers of affection the sound of contented laughter. We listen in:
~ * ~
DOOZY (sighing): I wish this evening could go on forever, Baby. I wish this could always be (sighing again) our Christmas Eve.
~ * ~
BABY: Me, too. It’s a mystery to me how one magic evening could change everything. Yesterday we were bitter enemies, and now…
~ * ~
DOOZY (blushing): Yes, now…
~ * ~
BABY (sighing himself, a regretful sound): But soon the Underground Hamsters will be back, and the promised party will begin. (gazes lovingly into Doozy’s eyes, his eyes glittering with a sudden thought): Our special night will be a night to be shared by all!
~ * ~
BABY, SUDDENLY SHY, PUSHES DOOZY GENTLY AWAY AND THEN ABRUPTLY GETS DOWN ON ONE KNEE. HE FUMBLES SOMETHING FROM HIS FUR, SOMETHING WHICH SPARKLES WITH THE CAUGHT REFLECTION OF A THOUSAND TWINKLING CHRISTMAS LIGHTS—
~ * ~
DOOZY: A ring!
~ * ~
BABY: (holding the knuckle-sized diamond up toward Doozy, while placing his other paw over his heart) Doozy Chicken, will you marry me?
~ * ~
DOOZY: Will I? This is a dream come true!
~ * ~
THERE ARE SOUNDS FROM THE MANY CAVERNS LEADING INTO
HAMSTER CENTRAL, AND NOW THE UNDERGROUND HAMSTERS
APPEAR, LAUGHING, JOSTLING ONE ANOTHER, IN GOOD SPIRITS
AND LOOKING FORWARD TO THE PARTY TO COME. BUT, AS ONE,
THEY HALT AND GASP AT THE SIGHT OF THEIR BOSS AND DOOZY.
~ * ~
SPIFFY: It’s Baby Boss! And he’s in the clutches of Doozy!
~ * ~
ALL HAMSTERS, AS ONE: Let’s get her!
~ * ~
BABY (his voice drowned out by the roaring torrent of screaming hamsters around him): Stop!
~ * ~
HE HOLDS UP HIS PAWS FOR SILENCE, BUT IS IGNORED AS THE HAMSTERS, THEIR MOUTHS FROTHING IN FURY, TEAR DOOZY TO SHREDS. FEATHERS FLY MADLY AND THERE IS A SINGLE STRANGLED CLUCK AND THEN SUDDEN, COMPLETE SILENCE.
~ * ~
BABY (staring in horror at what is left of his beloved: a pile of bloody feathers, a beak, two wrinkly feet): What have you done! This was the last chance for reconciliation between hamsters and chickens! And…I loved her!
~ * ~
HE BEGINS TO WEEP AS THE CEILING SUDDENLY COLLAPSES, SENDING TONS OF ROCK, SOIL AND SNOW FROM THE WHITE CHRISTMAS ABOVE DOWN UPON THEM.
~ * ~
HAMSTERS (as one): Oh, shit—
~ * ~
REEL EIGHTEEN
~ * ~
Baby Boss awoke at his desk with the sour taste of bourbon in his mouth.
How long had it been? Two weeks? A year?
He groaned, as memory, along with the desk calendar in front of his face, told him the real story: it had been only a week, for today was New Year’s Day.
“Oh why! Why!” he cried, throwing his paws out, knocking the empty Jim Beam bottle from his blotter to the floor, where it crashed atop a pile of three-dozen others. “Just when happiness was in my grasp!”
He looked up at his paw, which closed into a furry fist—and then a bout of weeping overcame him and he covered his face with his paws and lowered it to the desk. “Oh Doozy, my love, you are gone!”
There came a sound behind him in the doorway that separated his office from the cave beyond. A tentative knock followed.
“Baby, are you in there?”
The voice was a soft cluck.
Could it be?
Baby sprang from the desk and ran for the door, which flew open to reveal…Doozy Chicken!
“You’re safe!” Baby cried.
Doozy smiled—and then pulled from behind her, where it sat waiting in it’s special hidden holster, her Magic Umbrella, glowing with menacing green light. Her eyes were filled with sudden hate.
“But Doozy—our love—!”
“Did you think I’d send the real me to test the depths of your treachery? That was no chicken you asked to marry you—it was a Cyber Doozy, produced in my secret lab at the Center of the Earth!”
She laughed, pulling the trigger, and the evil light intensified to a blinding flash.
“But Doozy—ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh—!”
Baby Boss disappeared in a sour flit of green smoke, leaving only the smell of ozone behind.
“Ha!” Doozy cried, shouldering her weapon and turning about-face. “Now to deal with the rest of the Underground Hamsters!”
The cave roof, with a tremendous roar, collapsed around her—
“Oh, shit—” Doozy said.
~ * ~
REEL NINETEEN
~ * ~
“Ha! That was close!” Doozy Chicken effused, brushing dirt, along with the re
mains of a housing project that had been built above the hamster cave, from her sleek brown feathers.
She stood in Hamster Central, the tip of her wing pressing the Underground Hamster Alarm, which would bring all of the hamsters scurrying to what they thought would be a meeting called by Baby Boss.
“A meeting with their own doom!” Doozy amended, throwing her head back to cluck a laugh.
There was the roar of tiny feet, and the many tunnels leading into Hamster Central were suddenly filled with hamsters armed with atomic pistols—the new, and deadly, Platinum Model. Hate glowed in their tiny mammalian eyes.
And there, pushing his way through the furry crowd in the largest cave opening, and armed with nothing less than a golden Hydrogen Rifle, the most powerful weapon in the Universe, was Baby Boss himself!
“But I—” Doozy clucked in stupefaction.
“Yes, you vaporized me—not!” Baby Boss chortled. “Did you think I was stupid enough to let the real me ask your Cyber Chicken to marry me? That was a Cyber Baby, manufactured in my secret underground facility on the planet Pluto, that you vaporized, you clucking wench!”
He lowered the yawning foot-wide barrel of the Hydrogen Rifle toward Doozy.
“And now,” he cried in triumph, “chicken dinner!”
There came a tremendous roar, and the ceiling of Hamster Central, recently upgraded with what Baby Boss had thought were infallible reinforced concrete arches, providing a dome as smooth as that on St. Peter’s Basilica, and on which had been painted by Spiffy beautiful and colorful scenes of hamster life which, in their intricacy and inspired imagination, rivaled those of that great Michelangelo work, collapsed around them.
“Oh, shit!” everyone said.
~ * ~
REEL THIRTY-NINE
~ * ~
Spiffy said, “I think it was a mistake to leave our Underground headquarters.”
The steel in the hamster’s voice made Baby Boss look away from the port window of Space Station One, where he had been dreamily watching the pinpoint beauty of the stars. “It had to be done,” he said at last. “We had to take this war to Space.”
“But—”
Baby fixed his subordinate with a cold gaze. “The final battle will be fought in the heavens.” He threw a paw out to point through the porthole. “It is here that the fate of hamsters and chickens will be decided.”
Spiffy lowered his head and nodded. “It’s just that…”
Baby let his paw drift to rest on the younger man’s shoulder. “I know. You miss your underground life.”
“Yes.”
“It can’t be helped.” Baby’s gaze wandered back to the porthole, and the beautiful vista beyond, white tiny diamond chips against a background of black velvet. “Soon,” he said, and it was as much sigh as conviction.
~ * ~
Space Station One had been designed to mimic, as closely as possible, the labyrinthine cave lair of the Underground Hamsters. It consisted of a series of steel tunnels radiating from a central hub which, except for its Spartan metal nature, resembled nothing so much as Hamster Central. The dome overhead exhibited a half-finished mural of colorful hamster life.
And, when the Hamster Alarm was sounded, as it was now, the response was no different than it had been on Earth: all hamsters had been summoned, and they ran as fast as their furry feet would carry them to the meeting hall.
Only now when they ran into Hamster Space Central, they converged on the laughing, clucking figure of Doozy Chicken, who stood with the tip of her wing pressed tightly to the alarm!
“You!” Baby Boss gasped. “How—?”
Doozy held up her wing for silence, and then covered her form in the tight fitting latex costume which had gained her entrance to Space Station One. With the body mask in place, she looked exactly like Spiffy!
“But—?” Baby exclaimed.
Doozy clucked a hoarse grunt of pleasure, and pointed upward. All hamster eyes looked to the dome to see the dead, splayed figure of the real Spiffy, squashed between two cartoony hamster figures of his own manufacture—it looked as though he was holding hands with them!
“You fiend!” Baby growled.
“I could have killed you at the porthole,” Doozy shot back. Her eyes gleamed red fire. “But the rules of Space Battle forbade it! But now—!”
She produced her Magic Umbrella, in green-glowing battle mode, from it’s hidden holster secreted in the feathers of her back.
Someone behind Baby Boss tossed him his massive golden Hydrogen Rifle, the most powerful weapon in the Universe, and he cradled its smooth lines against his fur covered ribs as he raised its foot-wide maw of destruction and aimed it in Doozy’s direction.
“Yes, now!” Baby said, preparing to pull the trigger.
Space Station One trembled and convulsed, and the domed ceiling collapsed in a groaning, vacuum-of-space inducing pile of wreckage around them.
“Oh, shit,” Baby said—
~ * ~
REEL NINETY-THREE
~ * ~
“I can’t believe we’re back on the planet Pluto,” Spiffy said. He waved his atomic paintbrush in the air for emphasis. The night sky, black as ink, the faraway dot of the Sun, a lonely cold beacon, all of it was so alien!
“Yes, and I’m particularly glad that we’ve been able to reconstitute you in Cyber form, Spiffy!” Baby Boss put a fatherly paw on the younger hamster’s shoulder. “You always were one of my favorites—and a heck of an artist!”
They shared a chirp of hamster laughter before Cyber Spiffy climbed back up into the massive rigging of catwalks crisscrossing the Pluto Dome, half finished, which, when completed, would ape both Hamster Central on Earth and the lately destroyed Hamster Space Central. Since the soil of Pluto was rock hard, making it impossible to make an underground abode, it had been decided to build a series of above ground tunnels, all leading to Hamster Pluto Central. It would be, in effect, Hamster Space Central lay gently on the ground of the ninth planet.
Baby Boss sighed in satisfaction, and prepared to push the Hamster Pluto Alarm.
“Stop!” It was the voice of Doozy Chicken, broadcast from her Chicken Rocket, which now swooped sleekly in through the open ceiling of the dome and settled in a susurrus of smoke and dying fire next to the waiting Baby.
“Bring me my Hydrogen Rife!” Baby exclaimed, and Cyber Spiffy scrambled down the scaffolding to obey.
“That won’t be necessary!” Doozy cried, jumping from the lowering rocket gangplank to stand beside Baby. There was a strange look in her eyes. “The war is over!”
“What!” answered Baby, dumbfounded. He saw that Doozy’s holster had been taken from its secret hiding spot in her feathers and was empty.
Doozy suddenly took Baby in her arms, and kissed him!
With shock and relief, Baby found himself kissing her back!
“I love you, Baby Boss! I’ve loved you ever since our Cyber Selves fell in love!”
“And…I love you too!” Baby replied in wonder.
He jabbed at the Hamster Alarm with authority. “It’s time all the hamsters knew this! Time they all shared in our joy!”
“This will mean the end of hostilities, and the friendship of hamsters and chickens forever!”
“Hurrah!” said Cyber Spiffy.
The alarm was sounded, and the Underground Hamsters arrived to see Baby Boss and Doozy pledging their love.
“Hurrah!” all the hamsters cried.
At that moment the scaffolding gave way, along with the badly designed, half-finished dome, and tons of building material, as well as Cyber Spiffy’s partly finished mural, came crashing down.
No one said, “Oh, shit,” because, this time, they were all dead.
TRAIL OF THE CHROMIUM BANDITS
By Al Sarrantonio
Ride the Wild West.
Ride the Wild West with the hiss of falling spaceships splitting the sky like comet trails.
Ride the Wild West with justice in your heart and the remem
bered kiss of a woman on your lips.
Ride the Wild West in a Toyota.
~ * ~
Mitch Hilligan hooded his eyes to squint into the lowering sunset of West Texas. Something itched at his fingers, then burned; he looked down to see the raw red end of a cigarette gouging into the flesh of his thumb and forefinger. He dropped the cigarette into the dust and ground it out with the toe of his boot.
“What do you think, Sparky—game’s gonna start soon?” he said. He tried to bite his words before they came out, knowing how useless they were now, but still not quite used to the way things were. “Come on, Sparky, speak to me.” The dog at his feet wagged its tail, its tongue lolling out expectantly. Hilligan cursed shortly and drew a dog biscuit out of the deep pocket of his poncho. He tossed it to the ground and the dog was upon it instantly, making crunching sounds that annoyed Hilligan. He tried to ignore the sound, then suddenly drew his foot back to kick the dog. He hesitated, his anger draining.
“You’re a useless weapon, old pal,” he said, reaching to pet the dog on the ruined head that had once held Sparky’s intact brain. “Not your fault.”
Hilligan straightened, and brought his binoculars up to his eyes. He scanned the horizon below, searching for the telltale signs of a campfire, but found nothing. He cursed and lowered the binoculars. Waiting for night to fall before trying again.
They were stupid, in most ways, but incredibly crafty. Here they were, a band of four, leaving their droppings—candy wrappers, empty food cans, milk cartons, beer cans, liquor bottles, pissmarks, piles of shit—and still, Hilligan had barely had a glimpse of them for three days. One silhouette glinting in the sunset two nights ago, a hint of horizon movement the day before. He knew he was close but still they were all but invisible, leaving a trail of crap but it was the Invisible Man’s refuse.
“Yep, game’s gonna start soon,” Hilligan repeated, to himself.
Hilligan made camp twenty minutes later. The sunlight had dropped; the Moon was a weak sickle just cutting up the East. Stars burned into the purple of twilight; burned brighter into the blackness of night.
Sparky tried to piss, seemed to forget how, mewled as the wetness ran ineffectively down his leg followed by a runlet of tepid shit.