New Tales of the Old Ones

by Derwin, Theresa

  Kilhauser was way ahead of him.

  He cuffed Jenkins in the temple with the butt of the gun, with a solid THWACK that sent the man’s head into the doorframe. Kilhauser grabbed the wheel with his free hand. The truck accelerated as Jenkins hollered incoherently. “Shit!” Kilhauser cried, fumbling.

  “Give me the gun!” Malloy shouted. The truck weaved from one lane to the other, then violently back. Jenkins threw his weight against Kilhauser – it barely moved him, but now they were wrestling for control, and Kilhauser with one hand.

  The gun went off. The windshield webbed out and the road was lost.

  “GIVE ME THE DAMN GUN!”

  Kilhauser tossed the weapon into Malloy’s hands and plowed his elbow into Jenkins’ cheek. The world suddenly heaved and tossed. The truck was off the road. Metal groaned frightfully as they bounded over the terrain. The windshield fell in, and a wave of glass flew into Malloy’s face. He threw his hands over his eyes. The gun fell from them.

  X

  When one awakens from a period of unconsciousness, one appreciates a moment to gather oneself. When Malloy came to, the first thing he saw was Jenkins, lying in a field in front of the truck, his head covered in blood; Kilhauser, towering over him with the gun leveled at his head; and Malloy heard Jenkins scream “WHERE ARE YOUR HOOVES?” and wished he could go back to sleep.

  But he didn’t. He threw open the passenger door, fell out onto the ground, and hollered in the strongest voice he could muster, “Stop, Kilhauser! I command it!”

  Kilhauser looked at him with bemusement. Malloy struggled to his feet and stamped down the tall grass. “I am The King Malloy! Give me that gun, now!”

  Kilhauser rolled his eyes. “Sweet Zombie Christ.”

  “FAKER! YOU LIE! FAKER!” Jenkins howled, kicking at Kilhauser’s legs. “MASK! HE WEARS A MASK!”

  Kilhauser stared down at him. “What?” He didn’t wait for an answer. The revolver jumped in his hand. Jenkins’ back arched, then the life went out of him and he vanished into the grass.

  Malloy’s fit concluded. He looked numbly at the new dead. The wind tousled the grass as if it were a child’s hair.

  “That was a key phrase,” Kilhauser muttered.

  He said to Malloy, “Or is it ‘he wears no mask?’”

  He sat down next to Jenkins. “Sorry King. We each answer to our own higher power.”

  “You killed him.”

  “He did it himself.” Cross-legged on the ground, Kilhauser examined the bottoms of his blue socks. They were dotted with blood. “Hmm.” He yanked Jenkins’ shoes from his feet, a move that shook Malloy more than had the gunshot.

  “Too small.” Kilhauser tossed them in Malloy’s direction. “My ‘hooves’ wouldn’t fit. Now why the hell would I have hooves?”

  Malloy approached the shoes, but did not slip his feet into them. Instead he pulled out the shoelaces. Placing one in his pocket, he began to tie knots in the other. Tight, uniform knots, each an inch apart, and the wind which he was growing to hate subsided a bit in his ears.

  “Guess he thought I was the Devil.” Kilhauser shrugged.

  “The Black Man,” Malloy said.

  “You’re right, it was probably just some racial shit,” Kilhauser said. Malloy let it go.

  He sat, and he and Kilhauser were at eye level. Malloy tied his knots, then untied them, then tied them again.

  “You gone?” Kilhauser asked.

  “I’m still here. Just trying to calm my nerves.”

  “Hmm.”

  “I was in a place called Gallows Hill for a while,” Malloy said. “I was on the open ward for a bit. We each bunked with another patient. There were these two men, one was real nervous, very slight and pale. The sort you really need to watch. The other was slight too, but he had a quiet strength. Dignity. He had a thick brown book with him, always, leather-bound. He read from it to the other man. The rest of us didn’t pay much attention, but I would listen in sometimes – the story was a fantastic epic, with creatures unlike any I’d ever dreamed in my life. He would read the story chapter by chapter, one a day. The little man would always beg him to read more, but when a chapter was finished, that was it for the day. I have to admit, after a while I was drawn into it. Whenever he stopped I wished he would continue too. Can’t even describe the story...it would take hours just to lay out the premise. It was a brilliant tale.”

  Kilhauser listened quietly, picking at his socks.

  “One day I was awakened by screams. Everyone was screaming. The staff, who had seen, and the other patients, who took up the hysterics without hesitation. Everyone was screaming. No one screamed louder than the nervous little man. You know I can’t even recall his name? But his scream, that I remember. Shades of it here and there in the wind.”

  After a moment’s silence, Kilhauser asked, “Why were they screaming?”

  “He’d killed his bunkmate. Pushed his thumbs into the man’s eyes, strangled him. He wanted the book, of course. He wanted to finish the story, and have it to read again and again at his leisure.”

  “But...”

  “The pages were blank. All of them.”

  Another silence.

  Kilhauser stood and replaced the gun in his waistband. “Did that really happen?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you the little man or something?”

  “No, no.” Malloy laughed softly. “But the story had a point, Kilhauser.”

  “Well, I missed it.” He started toward the truck.

  “He was hunting people,” Malloy said. “Jenkins. I think that’s why I’m not so horrified at what you did.”

  “I know. And he said something about us ‘cleaning up’ at Chamber Seat. I guess he thought we’d snuck in there to slaughter the helpless wackos. And, of course, that I had hooves.”

  “So we’re going into the city now?”

  “Right. You still in?”

  “It’s as good a road as any other,” Malloy said.

  Two and a Half

  She was never to speak again, and soon never again to hear the words of her parents – their cajoling, their threats, their weeping. But she continued to draw.

  Dr. Bierce agreed to come and examine her at the family home. His conclusion was that she had indeed gone deaf, but that the condition might be psychosomatic in origin – a reaction to the voice that had made her flinch for so long. He pointed to the fact that she wasn’t flinching anymore.

  He wanted to take her back to Chamber Seat, and Mother and Father immediately gave their consent. Little effort was made to explain it to the girl, now fifteen. She and her drawing materials were packed up and carted away without ceremony.

  She was drawing other figures now in addition to the winged thing, and in finer detail than before. She was completely absorbed in the work. Bierce couldn’t distract her for anything. Eventually he just left her in her room.

  He told her parents she had completely withdrawn from reality. There would be no harm in bringing her back home, so far as he could see.

  On the day they came to take her back, she’d been sitting in the community room, sketching by a window and staring outside. The image she was composing on paper looked nothing like the placid day. It looked like an utter wasteland, a time after the end of time. The shadow of the winged thing darkened the sky.

  X

  The pickup lurched and groaned as Kilhauser struggled with the clutch. “It’s coming back to me. Just take it easy.”

  “I’m fine,” Malloy said.

  “I was talking to the truck.”

  Malloy opened the glove box to see if there was a manual and was confronted by a glistening pinkish mass. It was packed tightly into the compartment, and clear juices ran down and dripped onto his legs. He jerked his knees apart and batted at the hatch, but the latch wouldn’t catch (and he laughed involuntarily at his mind’s Seuss-like narration) and the wet mass was beginning to push its way out like rising dough.

  “What the hell is that?” Kilhaus
er shouted. “Jesus, is it alive??”

  “I don’t know!” Malloy didn’t want to touch the blob, but he knew it was going to fall into his lap if he didn’t get it back in there. He planted his hands against the warm thing and shoved. It made a farting protest, wormy strips of what looked like meat squirting between his fingers.

  It was meat. It was someone’s bloody insides.

  He crammed it into the compartment with a yelp and slammed the hatch shut. He heard the latch squishing through the mess and locking into place. Pink ribbons oozed from the bottom of the compartment. His legs were stained the same color.

  “I think that was the fellow he mentioned,” Malloy said through dry heaves. “The one he was riding with.”

  “We’ve gotta ditch this thing,” Kilhauser said. “Keep an eye out for cars when we get into the city. I’ve got a feeling it’s gonna be slim pickings.”

  “I think I might throw up.”

  “Roll down the window!”

  “Wait. It’s all right.” Malloy placed his hands against the dashboard and, drawing deep breaths, stared at the ceiling. “I’ll be all right.” Thank God the wind was coming in through the windshield, lest he catch a thick whiff of what covered him.

  “We’re both bloody now. We’ll find somewhere to wash up,” Kilhauser told him.

  The big man reached over the wheel to pick and toss a few glass shards. “So Malloy, is this all part of the King’s great plan? Why are your subjects hunting and killing each other?”

  “They can’t handle it, that’s all,” Malloy said. “Men like Jenkins and Bierce, their minds couldn’t handle it. Maniacs like that aren’t part of my court, believe me. It hasn’t all been revealed yet, but I certainly know that much.”

  “How do you plan to get them in line, then?”

  “All will be revealed.”

  “When?”

  “Whenever it’s revealed! I’m a king, not a god! We all answer to someone. Why don’t you tell me why our own government would be doing this?”

  “Tabula rasa,” said Kilhauser. “Some have been programmed to tear down what is, and others to build anew. I don’t know about you, but they picked me for the latter camp. They were grooming me from the start. Through the Colonel, then in flight school, then what came next.”

  “The Colonel? Another doctor, like Bierce?”

  “No. My old man. He was a pilot too.”

  “Air Force? You flew?”

  “Not for long. They pulled me out of there when I started asking about what we were spraying the public with. I was never meant to fly. Never meant to have a wife or a family. They needed to break me down, see, get me into Chamber Seat and program me. But I’m smarter.” He grinned. “You’ll see.”

  The road sign announcing the city was sprayed with a white symbol, a circle with a squiggle falling through it. “What does that mean to you?” Malloy asked.

  “Don’t know it.”

  “I wonder how long things have been like this,” Malloy said. “Wind’s been blowing for more than two years. Could be that most of it fell in the first months...maybe Bierce and the others were mad for all that time.”

  “So you think every person has lost it?”

  “By degrees, yes.” Except me.

  An overpass took them past the rooftops of warehouses, some of which bore large white symbols like the one on the sign.

  “We’re low on gas,” Kilhauser said. “Keep your eyes peeled.”

  Malloy switched on the radio and cycled through various static screams. “What good’s that going to do?” Kilhauser demanded.

  “I don’t know.” Malloy swept back and forth across the dial. “The city’s hardly in ruins. The streetlamps are on. I thought maybe there was still radio.”

  “True enough. It’s mostly the intangible that’s being torn down.” Kilhauser slapped the glove box. “That and guys like this.”

  “Please don’t make jokes. I’m still a little queasy.”

  “Yes, Your Highness.”

  A frequency crackled, and for a split second Malloy heard a voice. So did Kilhauser. “Go back!”

  “—It’s raining fire here on Mars. I can see through my hands,” a man announced in that obnoxious zoo-crew patter. “All potential futures are coming to pass simultaneously. Fifty-five degrees here at your home for the hits.”

  Kilhauser chuckled.

  “Listen to the song, drive-timers,” the DJ said. “Cast your consciousness out among the stars as I have. The song resonates across the whole of the cosmos. It’s not just happening in your neck of the woods, my friends. Everything is changing.”

  “Song? Is it a song you hear, Malloy?”

  A crack sounded through the speakers, then dead air.

  “He shot himself,” Kilhauser said.

  “I gathered.”

  “Shit!” Kilhauser screamed, and slammed on the brakes.

  Pi

  The wrecked cars were piled from sidewalk to sidewalk, blocking the road completely. Glancing down a side street to his right, Malloy saw that it was similarly obstructed. “Well, I suppose we’re walking.” He reached for the door handle.

  Kilhauser seized his arm. “That’s what they want!”

  He surveyed what they could see of the road beyond the vehicles. “I – what is that?” Kilhauser’s apprehension seemed to melt away as he slipped from the driver’s seat and approached the wrecks on the main thoroughfare. Malloy followed, and they stopped several yards short of what they saw.

  She looked to be in her forties, maybe a bit younger, olive-skinned and attractive. She was wearing something thin and white like a nightgown. The wind made cooing sounds as it whistled through the twisted metal that was snarled about her, pinning her in the passenger seat of a blue sedan.

  She smiled, weakly, at Malloy.

  “Don’t shoot her,” he said quietly, stepping past Kilhauser.

  “She may as well be dead already.”

  “Why are you going this way?” the woman whispered. She looked much younger than Malloy had first thought. He tried to compose an answer, something that would make sense. Why not just tell her the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

  “I am The King Malloy,” he told her.

  She bowed her head as much as her confines would allow. His heart leapt.

  Malloy turned, gestured to Kilhauser. Come and see. Overhead, reality’s moorings seemed to groan. It was a disapproving sound – ooooOOOOOOOOOOOHHH!! But the music of the air passing through the shattered cars was as the woman’s voice, gentle and seductive.

  “You should go back,” the woman said. “Into the country.”

  “Not falling for that.” Kilhauser made a display of the revolver.

  “Wait,” Malloy hissed. To the woman he said, “Why the country?”

  “Because, King, that is where you shall find the seat of your kingdom.”

  “Where? Where exactly?”

  “I can’t believe you’re listening to this,” Kilhauser sighed. “She doesn’t even know you. She’s delirious. She’s dying.”

  “You won’t come with us?” the woman’s face fell. “You will abandon your King?”

  “What do you mean, ‘us’?” Malloy shook his head and stepped back. “Both of you, just wait a minute. Let me think.” He needed to assert his authority – dismiss Kilhauser if need be, and take the woman and the truck. As a matter of fact, he really didn’t want Kilhauser along anymore. Here he had found someone who actually understood. Let Kilhauser continue his fruitless quest into the city, into self-exile.

  “Give me the gun,” Malloy commanded.

  “What?” Kilhauser laughed.

  “Give it to him,” the woman said silkily. It only made Kilhauser laugh harder. When blood began to spread beneath the sheer fabric of her gown, the noise died.

  “What the hell is this?” he stammered. She was still smiling.

  “The gun!” Malloy snapped.

  Kilhauser shrank away, actually shrank away! So he sa
w the King for who he was. But he didn’t relinquish the weapon. Instead he backed off, eyes darting from Malloy to the woman.

  “Alien spores,” he muttered. “Corrupt chips.”

  “Only reality,” the woman said. Her smile was terrible now, lips rouged with blood, and Malloy loved it. He reached his hand toward Kilhauser.

  “No,” Kilhauser said. “You’re wrong. YOU’RE WRONG!”

  “And you’re grasping at straws,” said Malloy.

  “The signs.” The woman reached a hand out the car window and pointed to the white symbol spray-painted on an anti-gang billboard. “This is a hostile place. It makes hostile men.”

  “We’ll leave him here,” Malloy told her.

  “What’s this ‘we’ shit?” Kilhauser cried. “You can’t get her out of there! You’re nuts!”

  “No,” the woman said, in answer to Malloy. He saw what she meant, and his resolve faltered.

  “He’s harmless without that gun,” he said to her. “We’ll just leave him.”

  “No. His delirium is an infection. He will spread it to others.”

  Kilhauser was on the sidewalk now. The gun was pointed at the ground, and his limbs were shaking so hard Malloy was afraid he might blow his own foot off. “Stay away!” he howled. “I’m not infected! I’m clean!”

  “Take the gun from him,” the woman said.

  Malloy didn’t budge. “He’ll shoot me.”

  “You are The King Malloy. You cannot die.”

  His blood ran cold at the lie, and he turned to face her. There was nothing beautiful about her. It was a skin of lies, thin and wispy as the gown.

  “Mmm?” the woman smiled at him. She ran her free hand over the strap on her shoulder.

  “Don’t.”

  The gown spilled from her breasts. She drew crimson circles around her nipples with her fingertips, then her hand moved lower, beneath the steering wheel and the gown. “Mmm?” The wind blew strands of hair across her face. She made the sound again, this time deeper. “Mmmmm.” Malloy felt sick and confused, like a child, and he knew he was pinching the head of his growing erection but he didn’t stop. He wanted her to come out of the wreck, to him. She wanted the opposite. He couldn’t. His terror was as great as his arousal.