Nanette took a quick breath to argue, but slowly let it out again. She'd been serving him Johnny Walkers instead of gin and tonics, peanuts instead of crackers, interpreting his signals as if he were a red-eye regular. Nothing unusual about that though; she was a flight attendant. The best there was. “You're not an alien, Hon, just a horny frequent flyer from Kansas City having a joke at my expense. You're a sweaty, alcoholic, human man."
"This thing is hot.” Smiling apologetically, Franklin took off his hair. Like an ancient Pekingese falling into a coma, it rolled over and played dead. Next to the sleeping wig, Franklin made a little pile of parts, two nicely shaped ears, a nose, and the gelatinous folds of a human face.
Nanette would have expected to scream, seeing an alien face un-masked, but surprisingly, Franklin wasn't bad looking. There was humor in the set of his three winking red eyes, sensitivity in the flutter of his vertical nostril slits, compassion in the cupid-bow curve of his lipless mouth. Compared to some of the plastic-surgery victims on the talk show circuit, Franklin was a catch. There were scarier things in the world.
As, for instance, Nanette was the only person on the doomed airplane who did something new each time.
"Nan?"
"Shut up. I'm thinking."
"Nan, just sit with me. Hold my hand."
Nanette sat down and took Franklin's hand. His appendage was still covered in fake human skin, and it was warm and rather nice to hold. “Talk fast, Magic Man. I've got flight attendants to bully, passen-gers to soothe, and a plane to save from certain destruction."
The alien sighed and closed his crimson eyes.
They wouldn't let Sal take any of her favorite things onto the air-plane. No knitting needles or close-work scissors—not even a single crochet hook. Nellie wasn't sure how one might go about hijacking an airplane with a crochet hook, but it seemed someone had indeed smuggled something onto the plane, otherwise she and her sister wouldn't be hunched over the emergency card just then, trying to read with trifocals that should have been replaced five years ago. Mr Brabant had offered, but Nellie had never been the kind of woman who could let a man do for her. She and Sally struggled along, poor, but proud.
"Fine time for you to be thinking about that old bastard,” said Sally. “Oh, Mr. Brabant. Your false teeth are so white."
Nellie tapped one of the card's cartoony pictures. “Do you see how you have to hold the flotation device, Sal?"
"Fuck the flotation device."
The security people had confiscated their craft kit down to the last tatting shuttle, and all Nellie could do to fight Sal's fits was do the deep breathing, and try not to scream. “I can't help you unless you help yourself, Sal. You'll have to take off your shoes, so we should undo the laces right now."
"Piss!” Sally's eyes were mean little slits. “Shit-fuck!"
Nellie abandoned the card, clutched her handbag, and turned to look out the dark window at the clouds. There was a syringe in her purse, and enough insulin to send Sally off to Heaven if only Nellie could find the courage to use it. And there was the other option nestled at the very bottom of her bag—but that one was even worse and didn't bear thinking about.
The practice sentences came back to her, as they always did in troubled times. Sal was suffering from dementia. I was only away
for a moment. She must have shot herself up with too much insulin. Calla lilies, Mr Brabant, for my poor Sally's grave.
"We're going to die, Nellie, and all you can think about is that old ass ... ass ... asshole!"
Nellie looked up at a touch on her shoulder. It was the stewardess with the crazy hair, and she had a stain on her ivory silk cravat. “I'm sorry,” Nellie said. “Sal has Tourette's."
As fearless as a battlefield nurse, the stewardess gathered Nellie's hands. “Send Sally to her rest, Miss Nellie. You and Mr Brabant have your whole lives ahead of you."
"B ... b ... but, but.” Nellie ignored the flash of agony in her hips as she slid out of her seat to follow the stewardess up the aisle. “Don't I know you from somewhere?"
The stewardess bent over a very pregnant Hispanic woman and Nellie watched, speechless, as she slipped the woman a pill, and mimed dropping it into a drink. The pregnant woman's handsome young husband was curled up in his seat, gibbering like a little boy having a tantrum.
"This will calm him down,” said the stewardess, “so you can con-centrate on your baby. Jesus loves the little children."
The woman considered the pill. She wiped her eyes, and got a hold of herself. “I keep hoping,” she said, “that Jesus will open the window and suck Hector out. You know. Into Heaven."
While Nellie watched the Hispanic woman drop the pill into her husband's soft drink, she clutched her handbag closer. The sterile syringe crackled ominously, as if to remind Nellie that she had options too. Numb, she followed the stewardess down the aisle, and watched her dropped an amber pill bottle into the lap of a pale blond man reading a novel.
"You can put that back in your stash,” said the stewardess, giving both startled men an accusing stare. “Maybe you can pull your heads out of your butts too. Dying quiet isn't the same as dying brave."
The two young men shifted in their seats, and looked up at the stewardess like actors who'd forgotten their lines. When the two men finally looked at each other and clasped hands, Nellie moved past them with her gaze averted, embarrassed because there was no way to pass without intruding a little. Their whispering was full of sorry, no, I'm sorry, and as she shinnied by, Nellie thought it was a shame how some men had to wait until their last breath before showing each other a little affection.
She found the stewardess in First Class, comforting an ugly albino man in a badly tailored suit. Nellie wanted nothing more than to ask the stewardess what she had meant about Mr Brabant, but the look on the man's face stopped her. Though it was hard to tell his exact expression through all the bad plastic surgery he was obviously in love with the kind stewardess, and wished to be alone with her.
Feeling wistful, Nellie returned to her seat. Sally had been busy decorating the window with feces, and she gave Nellie a jaunty little wave. The stink was the evilest, tonsil-rubbing kind, and Nellie went into her purse for the mint-smelling chest plaster. She groped past the ampoules of insulin, caressed the blue curve of the Vicks Vapo-Rub, then found herself withdrawing the soft, oft-folded bit of paper that lived at the very bottom of the bag. Sunset House, it read. Care for the Disadvantaged Elderly. She knew the number by heart, but Nell kept the paper close to the insulin, to remind her that death was better than a bad life lived on someone else's dime.
She worried they wouldn't let Sally have her crochet hooks at the home. She worried they wouldn't change Sally's clothing, that they would park her in some piss-smelling corridor until at last she died of neglect. She worried that Mr Brabant wouldn't come with her on visiting days, that maybe he wouldn't want her to go either.
The piece of paper was as soft as a shroud.
"This is it, then,” said Nan. “The final pass."
"Don't be afraid, Cupcake."
Some of the passengers were moaning. Portia and Minn were laughing in each other's arms, and the co-pilot was praying over the loud speaker.
Franklin's crimson eyes burned like twin suns.
"Why should I be afraid?” said Nan, sniffling. “Everyone on this crappy flight is just a little bit different now. We'll pop out the other side, and get to the business of living."
"You're amazing.” Franklin stroked her hand reverently. “I could watch you forever. You're so unpredictable, Nan."
There was something in his tone that made Nanette blush to her roots despite the terror crawling along her scalp. “I am not. I'm the same as everyone here, only I'm predictable in my unpredictability.” She sniffled. “There's something you're not telling me, you louse. You don't want things to change."
The alien shifted, searching for a way to hedge the answer. “You know, I never claimed to be a saint."
The
re was a click and a crackle as the captain's voice rang out. “Please put away your tray tables and bring your seats to the fully upright and locked position. In five minutes, we will activate an emergency tone, which will be your cue to assume the crash posi-tion. May God have mercy on us all."
Obeying a sudden compulsion, Nan reached into Franklin's pocket and drew out his ballpoint pen. Like a tired old woman placing her feet on the pedals of a bicycle she took hold of it, top and bottom, and prepared to give it a twist.
Franklin stopped her. “I want to stay. I'd hoped you would forget that part. I always hope you'll forget that part."
She took him by the lapel and shook him. “This isn't a roller coaster with unlimited rides. You've got to get out of here. You're not doomed like the rest of us!"
He took her hands and pressed them against his pale alien face. “Baby, I'm just as doomed as anyone. I heard about this pocket from a friend—” he laughed “—and it seemed like such a perfect way to go out, you know? A nice cocktail, a nice steak, a good view, then goodbye misery. It only took me one cycle to realize I couldn't stay dead, and one more to realize everything I need in life is right here."
The emergency tone sounded, and Nanette checked her seat belt. She felt the deceleration of the aircraft as it emerged from the long holding pattern in preparation for the descent and felt her heart take a turn. “I try to stop this every time?"
Franklin pressed his lipless mouth tight. “Sometimes you slap Hector and call him an asshole. Sometimes you steal Seth's pills and drug the entire cabin. Once, you got everyone blitzed, even the old ladies, and took off your clothes in the aisle to a ballsy rendition of Cole Porter's ‘Let's Do It'."
Nanette felt her face; it was hot. “Was I good?"
"The best.” Franklin made a magician's pass and produced the pen. “We've been here before, Nan, so many times. There's only one thing you haven't tried.” Franklin's voice was rough. “If anyone deserves to get out of here, it's you. Just—blow a hard breath right here.” He indicated the place. “Give a hard twist on the barrel, and away you go into a whole new world."
"We could both go."
"Only enough power for a single being.” Franklin shrugged. “I don't mind staying. I'm not much use out there in the world.” He made the twirling gesture, around and around. “But you. You belong out there, moving and shaking, and changing the universe. You could see alien talk shows you wouldn't believe."
Nanette made a magician's pass and let the alien transport device slide down into her sleeve. Then she mimed an explosion, making Franklin burble a laugh-cry like a wounded child allowing itself to be cheered.
"This is the show I've been waiting for.” She touched his face. “The queen of trailer trash and the alien from outer space are going to save the universe.” She dragged Franklin into the crash position, and with her ear pressed to her wool skirt, Nan gave him a dazzling TV smile. “I'll be seeing you, Magic Man."
Franklin gave a wistful sigh and closed all three crimson eyes. In the juddering moment just before impact, he traced a circle in the palm of Nan's hand.
Copyright © 2008 Joy Marchand
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[Back to Table of Contents]
STREET HERO—Will McIntosh
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Illustrated by Chris Nurse
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Will McIntosh's original story in this sequence, ‘Soft Apocalypse’ (issue 200), was shortlisted for both the British Science Fiction Association and the British Fantasy
Society awards for best short story of 2005. He also has a story in the current issue of our sister magazine Black Static. By day, Will is a psychology professor in the USA.
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"Slow your roll, Slinky, we ain't walking you down,” I shouted as Slinky's skinny, cheekless ass disappeared around the red brick corner.
Did everyone who talked street talk think in perfect TV news anchorman English, I wondered, or was it just me? I also wondered if other people thought about shit like this, or whether I was some sort of street philosopher.
I glanced at Dice; he was licking the edges of his newly-grown mustache, which he'd been doing nonstop since he grew the fucker. It didn't appear that he was wondering about anything at all, but how did I know he wasn't working Euclidian geometry problems behind those beady eyes?
"Hey, appears we got us some buckwilders,” Slinky said, pointing out a couple sitting in the back seat of an old Toyota parked across Broughton. Didn't look like they were buckwilding to me; they were just sitting, the woman with her arm around her man's shoulder.
Slinky scampered over, peered in the window, his hands cupped around his face to block the glare. “Shit!” he screamed, leaping away from the car like he'd burned himself, pulling on the mask dangling around his neck.
"What is it?” I asked, pulling on my own mask and squatting down to look in the window for myself. The dude was dead. His jutting tongue was swollen to three times its normal size, his sinuses and adenoids bulging like there were water balloons under his skin. Some sort of designer virus, for sure.
The woman had it too—she looked like a basset hound. Her eyes were closed, her breathing labored. She was just sitting with her man, waiting to die, practicing good virus etiquette with the windows cranked up tight in the blistering heat. Broke my heart, but there was nothing I could do. I was no doctor, I was a street philosopher.
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"C'mon, Hooper said the executions were gonna start around ten,” Dice said. Most of the time execution rumors turned out to be bogus anyway, I didn't see the hurry.
We cut through Pulaski Square, right near my apartment house. Twenty or thirty vagrants were making a camp in the square. I'd never seen such des-titute people in my life. You couldn't even call what they were wearing rags—more like patches, pieces of material stitched together, half the time not even covering the spots that need covering. There was a teenage girl with her tits just hanging. She was probably good-looking, but she was so filthy the sight didn't turn me on in the least. All the men had bum-beards and long hair, probably crawling with bugs.
They were chopping low-hanging branches off the live oaks and leaning them against the base of the Monument to make lean-to shelters.
"That kills me,” I said. “Makes me sick to my stomach, seeing that beautiful square corrupted like that."
"Somebody should call the berries on them,” Slinky said, snickering.
"They'd have to be hacking limbs off toddlers before the public police would come correct,” Dice said, glancing at me to get some appreciation for his wit.
A skeleton of an old lady was pulling Spanish moss off branches to fire the cooking pots. This display was giving me indigestion. That moss was what gave Savannah its particularity; I loved the way it made the trees look like they were melting.
I pulled my Escrima sticks out of my sock, tucked them into the front of my pants where they'd be nice and visible. Experience has taught me that just displaying exotic weaponry causes people to give pause. Any asshole, no matter how stupid, knows to stay away from a guy carrying Escrima sticks or nunchuks. Chances are if you're carrying them, you know how to fucking use them. And I do know how to fucking use them.
Dice glanced down at the sticks. “You anticipating blood and guts?"
"I just want to have a talk. I ain't going to put up with this desecration."
We crossed the street and wandered along the brick walkway, through the center of their camp. When we hit the end of the square, we doubled back, expecting someone to challenge us, tell us to get lost, but they just went on doing what they were doing. Finally, we approached the biggest and strongest guy.
"Ho,” he said, smiling and nodding.
"Where you coming from?” I asked, hands on hips so he could get a good look at the sticks. Dice and Slinky hovered behind me.
"Bamboo forests to the West,” he said, pointing. He had a peculiar acc
ent; bamboo sounded like bumpoo. His beard was so shaggy I could barely see his mouth, his skin leathered from too much sun.
"You mean the sacrifice zone past Rincon and Pooler?"
"I don't know towns. West. Good hunting there."
"Good hunting? What the fuck do you hunt in the bamboo?” Dice and Slinky laughed.
As if on cue, there was a squeal in the grass behind us. A squirrel twisted on the ground, a little wooden arrow jutting from its side. The girl with the bare tits ran to it, squatted, and brained it with a half-brick. She picked it up by the tail and took it to a steaming pot.
"Shit, that's just malodorous,” Slinky said, lips pulled back from his big square teeth.
The guy just shrugged. “What's those?” he asked, pointing at my Escrima sticks.
Now we were getting somewhere.
"Weapons,” I said, pulling them out and assuming an offensive pose. I launched into Su Ki Kai kata, filling the air with blurry sticks, sometimes veering decidedly close to the vagrant. He flinched, but kept on smiling. I expected the other vagrants to stop what they were doing and watch, but only my mates watched. When I finished, the guy dropped his hands back to his sides and nodded vaguely.
I had figured on a circle of spectators, a little awe in their eyes, and I felt pretty fucking stupid now, the way they'd ignored me.
"You mind taking it easy on those branches?” I said to the guy, still breathing hard, wiping sweat from my eyes.
He squinted, shook his head like he didn't understand.
"The tree branches, would you mind not cutting them?"
"It won't kill the trees,” he said.
"It looks bad."
He stared up at the trees, then back at me like I was whacked. Suddenly I wanted to concave this guy's skull. I loved those trees, the way their gnarled branches formed shady roofs over the streets. And how tough they were—they survived the climate shifts and chemical attacks while the crape-myrtles and azalea, the songbirds, those little green frogs that stuck to windows, they all died. They turned brown or blue and rotted. Brown and blue, the real colors of death. What moron made black the color of death? Black's the color of night, and the potential of a cool breeze.
Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine #215 Page 12