He used the string that Lefty had provided him with to tie the tome around his waist. He double-knotted it clumsily, wondering if the thing would hold if he had to scamper upside down.
Crawling out of the cook’s room, replacing the vent cover, and scampering up the side of the wall, he knew that it would.
He escaped, undetected, and Lefty was happy to see him.
Miller untied the string around Heisenberg and fed the gremlin another cube of cheese. Lefty leaned in a little and scratched the underside of the runt’s jaw. Heisenberg craned his neck so that the human could better attend to him.
Then, pausing from the affection, Lefty opened the book, “OK, let’s see what you’ve got.”
Heisenberg watched his human read over the other human’s scrawl, having no clue exactly what Lefty was reading or if it was really important. He’d gotten his cheese and his scratchies, so he assumed that he’d done a fine job.
The fact that Lefty kept saying, “Bitch in a basket” very excitedly, over and over again, helped solidify this sentiment.
The gremlins were, in comparison to their previous behavior, downright solemn when Miller told them that the crooked cook Anthony Carreto planned to annihilate them all with stolen explosives.
Einstein was still screeching about making the bastard suck his farts, however.
“Awe-inspiring power of your farts notwithstanding, I think we need to come up with another plan,” Miller said.
Carreto’s personal journal was a catalogue of violent insanity. Rage directed at foreigners. Hate directed at his superiors. Fear directed at women, then homosexuals, then minorities, in that order. An overabundance of desire to do real damage to everything around him.
Especially the gremlins that scurried and played in the dark corners of The Boneyard.
He didn’t just want them gone. He wanted to eradicate them.
Miller also found entire pages dedicated to what the cook planned to do with him.
Again, it wasn’t just a fight. Wasn’t a simple bullet to the back of the head. The cook wrote screed after detailed screed about how the sergeant – the ‘gremlin lover’ – had to be stripped, whipped, and tortured until he renounced his friendliness with the scaly ones.
Then, and only then, would the cook put a bullet between his eyes.
There was, of course, the question of whether or not Carreto could have really obtained enough boom to wipe out the gremlins. Miller didn’t want to chance it.
The loon had figured out more or less where they slept while the sun was up. The geography, as far as Miller could tell, seemed accurate. Carreto planned to take C4 and Semtex, ring it around the fifty-yard area where they rested and just … hit the switch, according to the weird, chicken-scratch diagrams and maps in the cook’s journal, anyway. It all looked like Wile E. Coyote blueprints to Miller.
There was no mention of what the Army might do when they heard the explosions. There was no mention of what the troops might do when a sizeable chunk of the airfield exploded. The cook didn’t care. This had the air of a ‘final mission’ – that one act Carreto wanted to complete before he died, consequences be damned.
They had talked for hours now, the gremlins with their human compatriot.
And in that weird time, Miller felt himself grow closer to them.
The why of it couldn’t be answered quickly. Maybe it was the fact that they were all displaced. Robbed of what they really wanted to be doing. For the gremlins, dancing on wings. For the sergeant, doing his own dance on the battlefield.
Miller watched them, lost inside his head. Again floated that strange image. But now he too was with the black figures on that enormous pier in the sky – all waiting for the flying whales to come and guide them.
Heisenberg chirped like a young kitten.
“Needy little thing, aren’t you?” Miller said as he scratched the runt gremlin.
The sergeant looked out on the mass of green mottled monsters. They were his monsters now, he supposed. His own bizarre way of replacing the frontline family he’d cherished for almost a decade.
Was he still a Good Guy? Was this an acceptable substitute?
He decided it was.
Copernicus said, “So … how long until he realizes his book is gone?”
The gremlins all stopped, looking up from their games and meals. Their faces took on the shape of concern and terror. In the firelight, fear and trembling lizard lips were all there was.
Miller had hoped to have this night to read it and then return the wretched tome when his shift ended. He shifted his weight from good leg to damaged leg, wondering why he hadn’t paid attention to how often the journal was updated.
Was it every day? Every other day?
A whisper rushed through the air.
A whisper the sergeant remembered from being under fire in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Dirt shot up in a sharp pft near his feet.
Another whisper, and Miller’s right side registered the fiery impact of a bullet just below his rib cage.
Failure. Already.
“Down! Everyone get down!” Miller screamed.
He dived left, slamming his already-damaged leg against the husk of a bomber. He yowled as pain burned its way up his calf and thigh. A jagged piece of aircraft bone had sliced him open. Bubbles of memory burst in his brain.
Heisenberg dug his claws into Miller’s shoulder in an effort to hang on and Miller screamed again, feeling trickles of blood drip down his back.
The gremlins hobbled and scampered, trying to take cover. Some scrambled headfirst into the corpses of aircraft. Others climbed wings and bolted for darkness.
Faraday and Einstein were helping the elderly Copernicus move. One was under each greying arm, carrying him.
Einstein shot Miller a dirty look over his scaly shoulder.
It was a look that blamed the sergeant, telling him that this was his fault.
Miller felt shame and anger well in his chest.
“I want my book back,” Carreto howled. “You went into my room? My room? Where are you night guard? I saw you. Where are you?”
The cook’s voice bounced off the decrepit bodies of bombers. The echoes made him hard to pinpoint.
Miller pushed himself into the shadows, listening for the cook’s footsteps. He had to be careful, so careful, or he’d end up severely dead.
“I’ll kill all of you freaks,” the cook bellowed.
Another whisper from the silenced pistol that Carreto carried.
A whang of metal. A scream of pain.
Miller peered out of the darkness in time to see a gremlin fall dead fifteen feet ahead of him and five feet behind Einstein, Faraday and Copernicus. What the cook had been aiming for wasn’t clear, but the shot had been too close to his closest friends.
Heisenberg’s grip on Miller’s skin tightened.
“Do something,” Heisenberg hissed and implored. “Do something.”
Another whisper from the gun. Another gremlin body dropped.
There were hushed wails of agony from the hiding creatures.
Miller snapped the lock open on his holster. His hand hugged the butt of his service pistol. It felt good there, the weapon in his palm, begging to be used.
More sparks and flashes of Afghanistan.
The pain was there, yes, but there was also the triumph of watching an enemy die. Defending his position. Defending his boys, taking care of them. The bullet spiraling from the gun. The bastard blood spilling. The feeling of protecting his brothers. Being the Good Guy.
But this would be killing a human in favor of saving little green men. He had made it sound so good to himself before, but now confronted with the reality…
Doubt.
Miller ran a hand through his hair. Fingers came away streaked with sweat. He listened for the cook’s footsteps, trying to determine Carreto’s position.
“They’re monsters,” the cook shouted. “Monsters who’ve tormented us for a hundred years. All those crashes
due to ‘pilot error’? That’s them. They go after civilian transports now. Airliners with kids on them. And you want to be friends with them?”
Kids?
Carreto was making his way toward the fire. Straight up to the center of the meeting ground. The cook was just a dozen feet from the sergeant, not quite stumbling, but hobbling with age toward the light.
An old, angry man, looking to do damage.
Or was there truth to what the enemy said? Was this destruction or retribution?
“We never did any of that … please,” Heisenberg begged in Miller’s ear.
Miller moved, crawling in pain, to get himself behind the cook.
Duffy’s voice burst into his head: Don’t let them talk you into something crazy.
But he knew Carreto had killed children. Duffy himself had confirmed that. He knew the crazy cook was violently off his rocker. He was a dangerous, evil person, even if the gremlins hadn’t been entirely honest.
Right?
Right.
Miller pulled himself out of the shadows once more, side and leg crippling him. He stared at Carreto’s husky, hunched back and raised his pistol. (What’re you gonna do, sergeant? Monsters or humans, pick a side and be quick.) He took a pained step forward as the cook raised his own weapon.
Carreto pulled the trigger.
Another whisper.
Faraday’s head burst.
“No!” Miller shouted.
The cook turned and grinned. His insane eyes twinkled in the firelight.
Miller saw Copernicus and Einstein tumble as the body of their kin fell off to the side. They shouted in surprise and dismay. Copernicus dropped to his knees. Einstein did his best to hold the increase in weight but failed.
The cook turned to the gremlins. “This is what I do with freaks, night guard.”
Carreto fired again.
The bullet struck Copernicus’ left leg. The appendage splintered. The old gremlin cried out in anguish.
Heisenberg leaped from Miller’s shoulder. He landed on Carreto’s head and began scratching maniacally, digging into soft flesh. The cook grabbed Heisenberg by the throat, screaming, and hurled the diminutive gremlin against the wing of a dead plane.
Miller watched Heisenberg’s small body bounce and lay still.
Carreto walked forward, intent on finishing off Copernicus.
“Just watch, night guard. I’ll kill this one and then I’ll get to you,” the cook said.
Carreto whipped around and fired a round into Miller’s already bleeding left leg. “Watch, but do not catch up. Don’t want that happening just yet,” the cook said.
White took over Miller’s vision. Pain flared. He felt everything. Nothing. He fell to his knees, blinking, struggling.
Get up and aim that gun, a voice said. This doesn’t hold a candle to being blown up.
When the cook turned his back again, Miller stood. He limped, following the cook’s insane stroll. He braced himself, close to passing out, on the bodies of bombers.
“Just gonna do this one,” the cook mumbled as he shambled. “Just gonna do this one then blow this whole place sky high to take care of the ones I missed, yes, yes.” Carreto stood over Copernicus, who didn’t have the strength to crawl away.
The old gremlin looked up and sneered.
Carreto aimed.
Miller pulled the trigger.
It wasn’t a whisper, but a bang.
The back of the cook’s head popped. The knees holding his enormous bulk up buckled and snapped unnaturally. Carreto’s body flopped down with a squish. It spasmed, then relaxed.
Then quiet. No pier. No whales. Just here. Just now.
Miller limped to where Heisenberg lay, sweat and blood dripping along the barrel of his handgun, hitting the ground in hushed taps.
The runt woke up after some gentle prodding. “I’m fine, fine, fine.” Heisenberg brushed the dirt from his little body and clamored back onto Miller’s shoulder, coughing.
Miller closed his eyes against the brutal hurt the gremlin’s movements caused, fishing a flattened piece of cheese from his pocket and popping it into the creature’s mouth. He hobbled over to the cook’s body, noticing the crow’s feet around the man’s dead eyes and the rolls of fat on the back of his neck.
Heisenberg hopped down and kicked the dead man’s blubbery side with a small white foot before scurrying unsteadily to where Faraday lay. He let out a short sob as other gremlins joined him in mourning.
Miller made his way to Copernicus, whose leg looked much like his own after the IED in Afghanistan.
“I’ll be all right,” Copernicus said. “We heal well with enough time.”
“You sure?” Miller asked, hands braced against his thighs, red falling from him. “I did just kill someone, so I don’t think stealing a first aid kit will get me into too much more trouble.”
“I’m sure. And you won’t have to worry about the body if you do me one favor.”
Miller waited. He raised his eyebrows.
“Pick me up and set me on him,” Copernicus said.
What was going to come next would be disgusting. Miller didn’t want to have any part of it. His brain told him to walk, and shed a tear for Faraday maybe, but his arms grabbed the gremlin anyway and then set the creature down on Carretto’s fat corpse.
Copernicus brushed the hair out of the body’s eyes. He leaned in close. “I told you I’d get you in the end.” He buried his face in the cook’s neck and began chewing noisily.
Miller felt sick.
Other gremlins joined in the meal. Dark green became dark red. There was the sound of liquid falling like thick rain. Whatever traces of sadness the things had for their fallen comrades disappeared as they gnawed.
Einstein held a chunk out to Miller.
“Human?”
Miller plopped down on the cool Arizona dirt below him. He was out of breath. Exhausted and disgusted. His side and legs ached from bullet wounds and trauma. He examined the damage. Somewhere behind, he heard the sound of whiskey in a flask.
“I figured it wouldn’t be pretty,” Duffy said, kneeling. “They’re animals, any way you slice it. Like I said.”
Duffy regarded the scene for a moment, then shrugged.
“Brought booze.”
Miller turned on his butt, “Where’d you come from? Glad to see you and all, but …”
“You aren’t the only one who knows what goes on here. Told you that, too. Saw the cook heading this way, knew he had an interest in you, them, followed. That’s all.”
“You couldn’t have, I don’t know, helped?” Miller pointed to the new holes in his body. “I mean, I got shot. Twice.”
“Could have. Didn’t. From what I understand, you got yourself blown up once, too, but that didn’t stop you. You’re young. Non-involvement in this crap is part of the reason I’m still around. You gonna drink or what?”
The sergeant drank and bummed a cigarette from Duffy. “I’m gonna need a doctor.” A pause. “Do the bosses ask questions?” Miller asked.
“When a bad apple goes?”
“Yeah.”
“Think this is the first time a bad apple got et?”
They watched the gremlins feed, getting drunk instead of sick.
Heisenberg climbed up Miller’s arm, taking what he now considered his rightful place. The creature’s breath stank of blood and meat. Red pittered and pattered onto Miller’s shirt.
The diminutive gremlin licked a claw.
“Welcome to The Boneyard, Lefty.”
1. Was Grey
I never anticipated what might be waiting. Never could have guessed. The doorway had stood unnoticed inside my Brooklyn kitchen until one stupid night when a breeze began to flow through the cracks.
Buried under decades of paint and plaster, it was ignored. The latch sat under half an inch of off-white, hardened goop representing several decades’ worth of coating. Previous renters of the apartment hadn’t seemed to care about the hatch and it didn’t budge
when tapped or knocked into, so why would anyone really notice?
Hell, I had lived in the apartment for three years and never thought about the painted-over space that sure-as-shit looked like a small door in the wall standing three feet above the floor. My fiancée had been living with me for two years and never wondered out loud to me about what sure-as-shit looked like a door that might open onto something weird inside the building – or below.
There was never any curiosity about it until one drunken night, standing in the kitchen, tossing back shots, our minds demanded to know: What is that? Does it go somewhere? If that’s an old dumbwaiter, there might be something cool inside.
“What’s a dumbwaiter?” my fiancée asked.
Her cousin, as many sheets to the wind as we two were, said, “It was sort of like a primitive munchies elevator – for food and small stuff. Sombody’d put something on a tray on one floor, and then pull on the pulleys and the tray would either go up or down. Tom Jefferson used one.”
He was still preening, proud of himself for remembering the architectural history lesson, while I was digging the straight end of a crowbar into the paint to see if I could gain any leverage. Something slipped. The sharp hook of the steel tool jumped and landed between my eye socket and temple. It should have hurt, but I was drunk and I didn’t even know I’d sustained damage until my fiancée started saying “Ohshit ohshit!” as drops of blood fell from me.
She padded my head with paper towels.
When her cousin, oohed I realized that the little door must have popped open.
With Brawny held tight against my skull, I leaned forward and peered into the darkness. Red droplets ran along the side of my face and fell into nothingness. I grabbed a small but powerful flashlight from the counter to penetrate the tunnel of black with white.
There was no dumbwaiter there. No remnants of times passed. Just a shaft yawning down. Cobwebs and electrical cables serving mundane purposes greeted us.
“How far down?” her cousin asked.
I bounced the beam of light around, “Can’t tell. Far. Past the basement.”
The Space Whiskey Death Chronicles Page 9