The Space Whiskey Death Chronicles

by Vitka, William

  “To gremlins, your war machines are playthings.” Copernicus studied Miller intently. “And I suspect that many of the men who wear your uniform view those vehicles in quite the same way.”

  Miller lowered his eyes and stared at the dirt.

  Faraday cleared his throat again at excessive volume and then, “If having a maniac making your meals isn’t enough of a ‘reason,’ here’s the gremlin-centric one. That cook comes out here sometimes. He does it when you aren’t around. Does it when his friends are the only ones listening.

  “Know what he does? Uses his pistol. Know on what? Us. Know why?” Faraday shrugged and threw up his claws. “Because he can.”

  As if to underscore the point, a number of gremlins in the circle held up fragments of chicken bone and scrap as mock guns. Faraday put two bony claws up to the side of his head and then pointed them at Miller, cocking and releasing his thumb in trigger-pulling mimicry.

  Miller raised a wary eyebrow. He checked the pistol on his hip without thinking, snapping the lock on the holster open. He let his hand fall onto the butt of the gun.

  “He’s gotten to be a good shot…” Faraday said, trailing off. “We live for a very long time unless violently brought to an end. And we just want to spend the years we have left in peace. To date, that cook has killed twenty-seven of us. Before, he was going after innocents on the battlefield. Now, he’s going after us – and probably you. Since we’re all friends, don’t think for a moment that that piece of crap will differentiate.

  “Something must be done.”

  The bare ceiling had no answers for the sergeant.

  He stared anyway, sleepless.

  It was hard to adjust to the idea of sleeping during the day – the body rebelled, even when exhausted, it rebelled, regardless of the fact that the night shift utterly drained Miller every single time. He had blackout curtains in his room to keep the sun at bay. He had bottles of whiskey to knock himself into a stupor. None of it helped.

  Not when his mind twirled and spiraled and fought to wrap sense around the gremlins and their claim that the cook murdered people for fun.

  And maybe was going to murder all the gremlins.

  And maybe was going to murder him, too.

  Boots walked down the hall. Boots walked up the hall. Vehicles outside. Planes overhead. The base’s natural noises punched through the walls and the windows.

  Miller turned his headphones up higher to shut it all out. He flipped to his side and watched old Warner Brothers cartoons on his laptop to help his mind find Looney Tune-d peace.

  And he drank, more and more, hoping his brain would settle into oblivion. It didn’t. Instead, memories of Afghanistan lunged up from the darkness.

  Pain. Heat. Gunfire. Bombs. Casualties. The insurgents.

  His troops, gone now. Himself, stripped of active duty. His leg, meat.

  Miller put his hands over his eyes and pressed, letting the pressure fireworks bloom behind his eyelids.

  Then, an idea.

  Maybe he could still be one of the Good Guys.

  Miller had to duck a flying socket wrench as he entered Duffy’s workshop.

  “Christ, Duffy!” Miller shouted.

  “Whoa, goddamn, kid,” Duffy started to laugh nervously. “Sorry. Wasn’t expecting anyone to be there. Had some pent up aggression. Can’t get this stupid machine to turn over.” He tapped an enormous engine at his side. “Glad the boom boom didn’t mess up your reflexes too much, though.” He smiled.

  Miller picked up the wrench and limped over to the mechanic, handing the shiny tool over. “I’ve got some skills. Dodging airborne metal is apparently one of them.” He hesitated a moment and then asked, “Duffy, I trust you –”

  “God, don’t ask me out on a date,” Duffy laughed.

  Miller grimaced. “How much do you know about the gremlins and the cook.”

  Duffy’s laughter died. He wiped his stained hands on his overalls. “Listen, boyo, just don’t go near any of that, all right? Be friendly, fine. Give them food, fine. Start thinkin they’re on the level, not so fine. Don’t take sides. You can’t really trust them any more than you can trust any animal. Don’t let them talk you into anything crazy.”

  The young sergeant nodded, walking slowly towards a work bench. He picked a drill up and hefted it. “Is the cook a killer?”

  Duffy was startled quiet.

  Miller held his ground.

  “Is the cook a killer? Some child killer? Moved around like the Church moves pervert priests around to hide them… Were the gremlins telling the truth about that?”

  The mechanic picked his wrench up again and stared at it. Then he hurled it against a far wall. Metal clanged. Sharp echoes bounced. He turned his back on the young sergeant and lit a cigarette.

  The gentle sloshing of alcohol in a flask caught Miller’s ear.

  Duffy turned back around and offered the silver booze-container to his guest.

  “Have a nip,” Duffy said.

  Miller did, and took one of Duffy’s cigarettes as well.

  “You volunteered, didn’t you,” Duffy said.

  “I did.”

  “Yeah. You struck me as the type. Wanted to make a difference and all that. Kid, not everyone wants to make a difference. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not attacking you. You’re real. You’re honest. Just saying, is all.

  “You got a hundred good men and one bad one. The hundred men do a great deed together, as one, and the bad guy does a terrible deed all by himself. Who gets remembered? Who gets talked about? The ratio’s outta whack. Thousands of troops march bravely. Ten go nuts and kill kids. Who gets talked about? It’s the bad, always the bad.”

  Miller took a drag from his cigarette and drank from the mechanic’s flask. The smoke burned pleasantly in his lungs and the whiskey scorched his throat. Duffy grabbed the flask back and sucked.

  “Thing you gotta realize is this: military’s a family. We protect our own. Even the ones who maybe shouldn’t be protected,” Duffy said.

  “So it’s true,” Miller said.

  “Yes.” Duffy drained the flask. “Anthony Carreto is a bastard.”

  “That’s his damn name?”

  “That’s his damn name.”

  “Figures,” Miller said. “I never did get along with Italians.”

  Duffy burst into a fit of laughter and Miller couldn’t help but join in.

  When they had calmed themselves down, Duffy said, “Kid, you’re all right. Good and weird. Turn that frown upside down, yeah?”

  “Getting blown up changes your disposition.”

  “Cute, but listen, I was serious about keeping the gremlins at a distance. Don’t let them talk you into something you’ll regret. And don’t rope me into anything, either.

  “There were other night guards before you. And going up against Carreto was something all the gremlin lovers ended up regretting. Accidents in The Boneyard ain’t an unheard of thing. If I was you, I’d lay low. Just relax. See the gremlins if you want, but don’t broadcast it and just stay outta the cook’s way.”

  Miller considered this.

  And promptly ignored it.

  “Got any dirty magazines?”

  “OK, ready? Here’s the plan. You, Lefty, hold him down. Copernicus will start gnawing on his leg. And I will sit on his face to nauseate him into surrendering.” Einstein made his claw into a fist and held it, shaking, in a Mussolini pose. “Brilliant, is it not?”

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Miller said. “I’m talking about a little recon first. You know? Learn more about him and go from there. Maybe get him transferred out. Or fired. I can’t just let you chew on him. Not quite ready to side with the gremlins over the humans when it comes to spilling blood.”

  “Maybe we’ll let him chew on you instead,” Einstein said with a grin.

  “How those dirty magazines working out for you?” Miller asked.

  “Oh, they’ve been very educational. Especially the letters.” Einstein tapped his claw
s against his chest. Click click click. His grin got wider. “Some of you mammals are really filthy, did you know that? Females playing with females and … I am overcome with an urge to find twins of your species. And put certain things to a test.” He made squeezing motions on his chest. “Milk gland things.” That grin never went away.

  “Oh, Jesus, stop. Please.” Miller dug the palms of his hands into his eyes. “I can’t unsee that in my mind.”

  Einstein, Faraday and Copernicus all laughed.

  “You enjoy my pain, don’t you.” Miller said.

  “A little,” Faraday responded. He threw a steel cog at Einstein’s head. The machine part bounced off the other gremlin with a fleshy thud and whang of metal. Einstein squeaked out a mewling “Bastard!” as he went sprawling, landing face-first in the dirt.

  “I enjoy his pain more.”

  The circle of scaly-ones smirked and joked in the firelight. For whatever it was worth, they did seem to be having a good time.

  Faraday asked, “OK, in all seriousness, you got a plan, Lefty?”

  “I do, actually. Which one of you is the smallest and fastest?”

  “Oh, that’s easy,” Faraday said. “Heisenberg! Get your speedy butt over here!”

  A short, jittery gremlin with white splotches began to make its way through the crowd. Some of the others growled. One threw a hunk of debris at him – which he dodged easily. Miller noticed that the little guy was less than half the size of any other creature, making it about ten inches tall. Heisenberg also appeared to have a tic that made its left eye twitch randomly. And his color was odd, too. Einstein and Faraday, like most of the gremlins, were dark green with darker green splash patterns. The oldest ones, like Copernicus, had grey creeping along the edges of their camouflage. This one, however, had enough white to make him really stand out.

  “Too much coffee?” Miller asked jokingly.

  “Never too much, never too much,” Heisenberg mumbled, eye twitching, rubbing his claws together, peering from side to side.

  Faraday shrugged. “He’s been like this for forty years. Got into some crazy batch of Colombian slow roast. For a while I thought it was the anti-freeze Einstein made him drink. Or that we’ve all always kinda picked on him Nope. He just, uh, got like this after the Colombian thing. Fast though.”

  “Fast, fast,” Heisenberg said.

  “Hey!” Miller shouted as he tapped Heisenberg on the top of his head with a finger. “Pay attention!”

  The little gremlin was startled into something like coherence. It stared at Miller with apologetic eyes. “Sorry. Sorry. I just, sometimes, I get wound up. Wound up like a spring ready to snap. Snap. Snappy. Snappity.” His eye twitched.

  “Seriously?” Miller asked in a whisper to Faraday.

  “The guy moves in a blur when he needs to. And he’s not stupid. He’s just a little off.”

  Miller looked at Heisenberg, and the runt smiled back at the sergeant. A little bit of his heart melted for the diminutive gremlin and its affection. The thing could be a parrot on his shoulder. A weird parrot, but a parrot-creature nonetheless. And Miller was, after all, a new breed of pirate, sailing The Boneyard, looking for loot in the barracks, aiming to strike fear into the heart of the evil cook Anthony Carreto.

  “OK,” Miller said and held out his arm to Heisenberg. “Crawl on up to my shoulder. You and I are going to be pals now.”

  Heisenberg looked as if he’d been hit again. Then his eyes widened and he smiled harder. “Yes, yes, good, indeed, very good, excellent! This is wonderful! Wonderful!” He grabbed onto Miller’s hand and scurried up the sergeant’s arm. His claws, regrettably, dug into Miller’s skin with just about as much enthusiasm.

  “Ffffffuuu – gah, gentle, gentle!” Miller shrieked. He could feel little wounds open up on his forearms, biceps and chest. They stung like paper cuts.

  “It’s OK. I’m not contagious anymore,” Heisenberg said as he found purchase on Miller’s right shoulder.

  “Good to know,” Miller responded.

  Faraday started to ask again about the plan, but was cut off when Einstein clubbed him over the head with a length of pipe.

  “Now we’re even,” Einstein said.

  The other gremlins laughed.

  Miller realized then that he was living through a prolonged Chuck Jones cartoon.

  “You brought one back.” Duffy said unbelievingly. “You brought one back? Into the base?!” Duffy repeated. He stared at Heisenberg.

  The runt waved a tiny white-green claw. “Hiya.”

  Duffy sat down hard.

  “This will not end well,” the old mechanic said as he put his head in his hands.

  “It’ll be fine,” Miller said. “It’ll work.”

  Duffy looked at Miller through his fingers. “This will not end well.”

  “The little guy just needs to get to Carreto’s room and look for a journal or private notes or whatever. This is recon. We’re gathering intelligence. He finds a planner or a datebook or something – or even what the bastard has on his calendar. We just need to know what his post-work plans are. When he’ll be gone. When we know that, we’ll know when we can get back in there later and plant stuff that’ll get him kicked out. Or off the base at least.”

  “What kind of stuff can you plant in the room of a guy that the Army knows killed civilians. Seriously.”

  “Gay porn?” Miller asked.

  “You’re doomed.” Duffy said.

  “Drugs?”

  “No, really, you’re doomed.”

  Miller thought for a moment.

  Duffy eyed him. “Don’t you think you shoulda done this thinking before you brought one of them back?”

  Miller held up a hand. Stop… wait. “Kiddie porn. It’s horrible, but I can find it, and it’ll get rid of Carreto. If they think he might be a pedophile on top of everything else, he’s a goner. If nothing else, when word gets around the base…”

  Duffy considered this. “Might work. Better than killing him.”

  “Not by much,” Miller said.

  “Not by much, not by much,” Heisenberg parroted.

  “Just keep the gremlin away from me, OK?” Duffy pointed at Heisenberg. “He gives me the willies. No offense, little guy.”

  Heisenberg frowned.

  Being the runt of gremlin society had made him at once quietly hostile to others and dismissive of their wishes, yet also intensely interested in gaining their approval and acceptance. To be himself dismissed by a human hurt.

  Miller gave him a cube of cheese and scratched him just beneath his white, scaly jaw.

  Heisenberg made a chirping noise.

  The war-weary sergeant was getting downright attached.

  Heisenberg began smiling again, happy to have a very tall friend.

  And also cheese.

  Dawn crawled across the Arizona sky on rosy fingers.

  Heisenberg was running, stopping, hiding against the pale white walls of the base, using his own weird white camouflage pattern to blend in with the shadowy nooks and crannies of the corridor that led to the cook’s room.

  Soldiers passed under him as he clung to the heating pipes and electrical wiring over their heads. How odd, Heisenberg thought, that they never looked up. They were only used to dealing with what was right in front of them. And sometimes, not even then.

  He moved – happy for his own nervous speed once he saw how slow the humans were – ever closer to his objective. Failure never entered his mind. Disappointing Lefty did, but only briefly. He knew that he wouldn’t mess up, though he knew this for no real reason that he could pinpoint. Possibly because he had finally been trusted with something important, and that was enough.

  Heisenberg scaled the wall next to the cook’s door like a gecko, looking for the small, loose vent that would allow him entrance. He found it.

  Close now. Close, close. Yes. Yes.

  Ah! Ah-ha! Hahaha, yes yes yes.

  Heisenberg stuck a claw into the screws of the vent cover and b
egan turning them. Once he had all four out, he pulled the cover off and slid it into the passageway ahead of him. No reason to be too obvious.

  The cook’s room was creepy. It had the strange air of hidden hatred in it. Smells. Smells like anger and fear and cowardice, all at once, blooming like rotten flowers. It assaulted his delicate nose.

  He scurried over to the room’s desk, listening to the click-clack of his nails against the ground. Find drawers, Lefty had said. Search spots where the cook might hide things. Find books with pages that the cook had written himself.

  Heisenberg searched and searched. The drawers held nothing. Some of the pictures that Einstein liked so much. Human females. Milk glands. Baby canyons. Nothing useful.

  Search search search.

  Dirty pictures. Dirty magazines. Action movies that had the words ‘bloodthirsty’ and ‘carnage’ and ‘death’ on them. Books with photos of sports people chasing balls.

  Heisenberg felt the minutes pass painfully.

  The terror of disappointing Lefty resurrected itself.

  But he thought thought thought.

  Under the mattress. Yes! Lefty had suggested that. Said that maybe the thing they were looking for would be really well hidden under the mattress.

  Heisenberg mustered all the strength his action-figure frame could muster and lifted the corner of the cook’s bed just enough to see the edge of a leather-bound book.

  This! This! Yes, yes yes, this must be something. Something hidden is always something.

  Yes. Something leather-bound. Something different from the perverted photos of girls doing things without clothes. Something different than spare sheets of paper with the cook’s writing written haphazardly. This was positively full of cook-writing. Cover to cover. And there were smells coming from it. Smells Heisenberg could see as well as a bright light. All that hate and anger and fear that lingered in the room was condensed here, in this thick terrible binding of pages. This was that something hidden.