by phuc
I thought about those books I'd garbaged. All of them were junk, but the basic theme to most had been that man was better than the animals, had something inside him that blossomed like a rose and never died, even when the physical body decayed.
I looked out at the fighters in the lot. A guy in a werewolf costume with the mask missing was rolling around on the ground with a fraternity-type guy whose pants had lost their razor crease sometime back.
"And you're saying we'll end up like that too?"
"Could. We last as long as we can, though. Build up some hope. Get's too bad . . . there's always the shotgun."
I thought about Dad kidding Mom about the last two bullets back . . . when? Christ, who could know? Yesterday? Today? A century ago? What exactly was it he told her . . . ?
"When the going gets rough, and it looks like we're not going to make it, I'll save the last two bullets for us."
I looked out the window again. There were people lying on the ground, not moving. A naked man was taking a swift kick in the nuts from a near-naked girl with a punk haircut.
There were other people on the ground, on their hands and knees, grabbing for spilled popcorn and candy. One woman was lapping a spilled soft drink like a dog. She had her rear end to me and her dress was hiked up and she didn't have on any underpants. It was far from sexy. She looked like a desperate, dying animal. I felt sorry for her. For them.
For us.
"Maybe you're thinking about going out there and giving a speech on the unity of mankind?" Bob asked.
"No," I said. "Guess not."
"That's wise. Now take one more piece of meat, chew it slowly, and be a happy animal."
10
We sat there for a time, not talking. I was thinking, watching the storm out there, and the people. I didn't want to watch them fight and kill one another, but I couldn't take my eyes off them. It was sort of like watching the Dallas Cowboys play when they were bad. You hated looking at it, but you had to see it through.
Physically, I felt better. Not ready to do any hurdles or anything, but it seemed my senses had floated to the top once more. A lot of things I'd seen while lost in the ozone clicked together now, and I could see them in a truer light. The little girl with the cape getting kicked to death, for one. Seemed to me I had wanted to kick her too. I could remember thinking that, but for the life of me couldn't remember why. Had I really watched her father get shotgunned out of the air and thought it funny? And hadn't there been something about eating a baby? (Raw as opposed to grilled.) I thought about the jerky I had eaten and remembered what my father's friend had said about it, how it was like chewing on a dead woman's tit. The thought of that and what was happening out there, people eating one another now and then, made me feel weak and dizzy.
Maybe Bob was right. Animals. That's what we were. No different from the animals except for an opposable thumb and a desire to make popcorn and hit each other over the head with rocks, or whatever instrument was available.
Outside, it looked as if things had calmed down. No one was fighting and there were only gawkers. Standing and looking at the bodies on the ground (there were a few of those) and maybe considering them as steaks, but not quite ready to make the move.
But the calm didn't last long. A guy came walking up, and he had a revolver in his hand, a
.357 Magnum. He had a big, loud voice and he was using it.
"Can't do this crap to Merve Kinsman. Merve Kinsman don't take this off anybody. I come here to get my food, real polite like, and I'll be damned if a punk without any drawers with a nigger on his back is gonna tell me dip. I don't take that crap, nosireebob.
I'll blow their heads off, is what I'll do. Knife or no knife. I'll not have it, I tell you."
Merve didn't seem to be speaking to anyone in particular, but he was turning his head from side to side as he talked, as if those who were still milling about were hanging on his every word.
I looked at the concession itself. There wasn't any more activity there, and I hadn't seen Willard or Randy come out. It seemed pretty obvious that they were the "punk without any drawers" and the "nigger."
Merve Who - Didn't - Take - That - Off - Anybody stopped outside the concession and waved the revolver and talked to the air some more. "Ain't nobody gonna talk to my ass like that, you hear. I'll pull their damn head off and piss an ocean down their throat is what I'm trying to tell you."
Merve looked at one of the closest bystanders, an aging hippie dressed in old blue jeans and high-top tennis shoes and no shirt. The hippie tried to look casual. He tried a friendly smile.
"Don't you be looking at me like that, you weird little fart." Merve grabbed the hippie and gave him a rapid pistol-whipping about the head and ears and threw him down on the ground. The hippie lay on his side and tried to look dead, but I could see he was blinking.
Blood was dribbling down his face. This was a long ways from sixties flower power. I imagined he was trying to figure exactly how he had looked at Merve, so if the situation came up again he could play his cards differently.
Merve pulled open the concession door and put a foot in there quick as a door-to-door salesman. He threw his chest out and stepped inside, saying, "Got some bullets here with your names on them, assholes. Come and get 'em."
Then he moved to the right inside the concession, out of view. Patrons who had been hanging around, and still had enough functioning gray matter, sauntered briskly off. A few lay down on the ground like whipped dogs. The aging hippie remained stone-still. A shot was fired inside the concession. More patrons scrambled. More briskly this time.
When no more shots followed, the hippie rolled quickly to his right, came to his feet and darted off. He looked to have been taking lessons from the guy Willard had hit with the baseball bat.
The moments moved by slower than dental work, then Merve Kinsman made his appearance. He came out of the concession walking like a drunk trying to look sober. He had Willard's knife in his right eye. It was buried halfway to the hilt. Merve Kinsman Who-Didn't-Take-That-Off-Anybody was complaining, though not as loud as before. He was now Merve Kinsman Who-Would-Not-Be-Messed-With, By-God, and he wanted every damn one of us to know it. He said something about hell to pay when he found his gun, then he went face down on the lot, the knife point punching up through the back of his head.
Willard came out then. Randy was still on his shoulders, wearing the popcorn container.
Willard had to duck to let Randy through the door. Willard had the .357. He looked real happy. He smiled. There was blood on his teeth (or maybe chocolate). Maybe he had been hit in the mouth or had bitten somebody. (Or had eaten an Almond Joy.)
"The concession is ours, you sapsuckers," Willard screamed. "Hear me? Ours!"
Nobody made with an argument. A few people who had been too dull to run shuffled their feet.
Merve Kinsman Who-Didn't-Take-That-Off-Any-body, alias Merve Kinsman Who-Would-Not-Be-Messed-With, By-God, didn't come back from the dead to debate the point, and I figured if anybody could, or would, it would be that guy.
Willard stepped forward a couple more steps, waved the .357 around. Randy beat his chest and let out with an anemic Tarzan yell. Away from the direct light of the concession, shadows falling across them, it was hard to see where one body quit and the other began, especially with Willard covered in those asphalt-black tattoos.
"We're in charge now," Randy screamed.
Willard waved the .357 around some more, turned, ducked back through the concession door and closed it. He pressed his nose against the glass door and looked out. You could only see Randy's legs. The rest of him was above the door, behind solid wall, that popcorn-cup hat damn near scraping the ceiling, I imagined.
Willard went away; the smudge circle of his nose remained to mark his passing.
"Reckon that concession is theirs," Bob said, "until someone with more firepower shows up."
"You got intentions?" I asked.
"Not me, but you can bet someone does."
<
br /> The blackness above grew cluttered with electric-blue veins, and pretty soon there was more blue than black, and the thunder and the snake-hiss of lightning was tough on the ears, even inside the camper.
Bob got brave enough to open up the back and look out. He said, "Will you look at this?"
I did. The Orbit symbol and the marquee were drawing lightning like decay draws germs.
The lightning was hopping through the symbol, kicking out dark blue lights that mingled with the fairy blue and white. The marquee's red letters looked like bright blood blisters about to pop.
We watched as the electric bolts from the symbol expanded, reached out toward the concession and touched it (like God giving the spark to Adam). The concession glowed blue and white, and those bat and skull symbols in the windows looked almost alive.
"Look at that," Bob said.
He was referring to the symbol again, or rather what was above it. Sticking out of the black was what looked like a green-black tentacle, though it could have been a trick of the lightning, a dipping rent in the blackness like a tornado tail. Out of the tentacle (I preferred to think of it that way as it went along with my dreams of something up there, something in control) the lightning was flowing faster than ever, zeroing in on the Orbit symbol, jetting from that to the strained marquee. The word "Massacre" exploded in a flutter of glass, fizzled. The rest of it looked ready to go, but held. Now another tentacle shape dropped down, twisted in the air and gave lightning from its tip, and this lightning went through the symbol and the marquee, and it made the marquee blow the word "Dismember." And that damn symbol began to spin, rapidly, kicking out more and more bolts of energy, all of it going straight to the concession.
One of the black bats in the window flapped its wings and flew away into the depths of the concession. A paper skull twisted and fell to the floor, out of sight. The lights in there were blinking like a strobe show. They went out. But there was still plenty of light from the energy bolts, and it was a strange light, and it lit the concession up inside and out, bright and garish as a cheap nightclub act.
Then I saw Willard and Randy on the roof of the concession. Willard was still carrying Randy and Randy still had that damn container on his head. Willard had the .357 in his hand. They were spinning around up there in the blue glow, raising their hands, cussing, most likely, though there was too much thunder and hissing lightning to hear.
"Must be a trapdoor up there," Bob said.
"Yeah, but what the hell are they doing up there?"
"Believe me, they don't know."
Willard raised his pistol and shot at The Orbit symbol, and, almost as if in answer, a thicker strand of lightning leaped out of it like a hot, bony finger with too many joints and hit Randy on top of his popcorn container hat, turned him and Willard the color of the bolt, and made them smoke. Willard did a kind of funky-chicken dance across the length of the roof and back again. The lightning made him look like he was moving very fast.
Randy stayed in place, didn't even wobble.
Willard heel-toed it over to the trapdoor, and with the two of them glowing like a nuclear accident, they dropped through the hole.
The concession was lit up like blue neon. The original lights did not come back on. The movies, defying electrical logic, continued to churn.
I looked to see if there were still any paper bats and skulls decorating the window.
Nope.
11
Things went from sho' is bad to sho' is rotten.
The lightning continued to shoot out of the blackness overhead (though the greenish-black tentacles were no longer visible), strike The Orbit symbol, and in turn strike the concession, and shower blueness over it.
Word of what had happened spread pretty fast through the drive-in, and in less time than it took for a messy dismemberment, the bikers showed.
They spun their bikes around in front of the concession and yelled some things. They roared around Bob's truck a few times.
Most of them had guns: shotguns, revolvers of all kinds, A few had knives, chains and tire irons. They looked nasty. There were twelve of them, and I couldn't figure exactly what had prompted them to show up, unless it was the idea of some guy with a gun and another guy on his shoulders taking over the concession that warmed their blood. Or maybe they had planned to take the concession over themselves and were just now getting around to it, mad because some chump had beaten them to it.
I tried to compute when they had taken over B concession, but couldn't. Time was just too screwed up. It could have been yesterday, last week, a month ago, a year back. No idea.
Whatever, they were here now, riding their bikes and yelling, shouting for the
"sumbitches" inside to come on out and take their hanging like men.
To accommodate the hanging, one of the bikers showed up in a wrecker, which I'm sure didn't belong to him. He was more the wind and bugs-in-the-teeth type. There was a noose made of barbed wire fastened to the wrecker hook, and it looked ready for occupancy; one size fits all. I wondered where they had gotten the barbed wire, but not much. People carried everything in their pickups, wreckers and car trunks; all the tools of Texas trades.
There were also a barbecue grill and a bag of charcoal on the back of the wrecker. Not standard equipment. That made me think cannibalism wasn't a crime in the biker book anymore.
The biggest and ugliest of the bikers pulled up in front of the concession door, lifted one hip, farted, and yelled for whoever was in there to come out. Everyone else had quit yelling, and now he was giving it the "I'm the boss" tone. The others stopped their bikes, just sat on them and watched.
The one talking, calling out for Willard and Randy to give it up, was three hundred pounds if he was an ounce. A lot of that poundage was stomach, and it stretched his yellow T-shirt (I think the coloring was due to sweat, not dye) to the point of bursting.
He, unlike most of us in the drive-in, didn't seem to be missing any meals. I wondered how big he had been before all of this. For that matter, all the bikers looked pretty good.
But this guy wasn't just a fat boy. He had arms big around as my head, a head a little bigger around than my arms. His hair was long and greasy, tied back with a piece of black cloth. He was wearing leather pants, chain-strapped boots, and an open leather jacket with BANDITOS on the back of it. Part of the jacket had been cut away, and it gave the impression of being too small; it was about halfway up between his waist and armpits.
I noticed the other bikers had done a similar thing to their jackets, or, if they had leather pants, to the legs of those. It hit me that they were cutting the leather off to eat. Maybe boiling it down in Coke so it wouldn't be so tough; making their own kind of jerky.
Though, after looking at the wrecker with the barbecue grill, I assumed they were willing to try more exotic fare. And that being the case, I sat real still in the camper, looking out of those windows that were blacked on the outside so you couldn't see in. I sat there glad that Bob had the shotgun. I had gone duck and squirrel hunting with him, and he knew how to use it. I fretted over Willard and Randy. Knew they didn't have a chance against these guys, even if Willard was a bad ass and had a gun. There were just too many men out there with weapons and a bad attitude.
For that matter, I didn't even know if Randy and Willard were alive. We had seen them take lightning, lots of it, and walk away, but that didn't mean they were okay. They might have died from it; lying in there now on the floor, Randy's popcorn-container hat still on his head, Willard still gripping the gun.
The fat guy used his feet to push his bike forward, but when he reached the blue aurora around the concession, he backpedaled. It gave him such a shock that the handlebars and his hands smoked. He shook his hands rapidly and frowned.
"Damn you, in there, come on out and take it like a man. That 'lectricity ain't gonna keep you safe. Ain't nothing gonna keep you safe from the Banditos."
"That's right," one of the lackeys behind him said, and the big guy tu
rned to look, as if the agreement had been unnecessary and off-key. The guy who had chimed out smiled wistfully. The big leader didn't smile back. "Shut up, Cooter," he yelled. "I'm the president of this here club, and I'll do the—"
But he cut short when he saw the look on Cooter's face, realized Cooter was looking at the concession.
The leader turned his head forward again, and there were Randy and Willard. They had come out of the concession, and Randy was still on Willard's shoulders and he was still wearing the popcorn-container hat. But the lightning had melted the edges of the container, dripped it down over his head. His features had run together in such a way that one of his eyes was gone and the other had shifted to the center of his forehead. His legs had fused to Willard's shoulders, his knees sticking up like pathetic knots on a charcoaled stick.
Willard's tattoos were crawling all over his body like worms, in and out of his empty, blackened eye sockets. His nostrils had become two large round holes in his face, and his lips were gone, showing a wide mouth with smoldering teeth. Willard still had the gun, but there in the blue lightning you could see that it had fused to his hand, become one with flesh and bone. The tiger Randy had tattooed so lovingly on Willard's stomach was poking a three-dimensional head out and was growling; flesh-colored whiskers twitched against its dark face.
"Man," said the Bandito leader, "you are one geeked-out sucker. But we can fix you."
With that, the biker reached inside his jacket, under his armpit, and pulled out a pistol (also a .357) and snapped off a professional shot that hit Willard between the ears of the tiger tattoo on his stomach.
When the load hit, Willard flinched—a bit. The shot went into a rare pink space on his skin, and the flesh puckered up like a roughed mouth, spat the projectile out with a sputter. An ooze the color of Coke syrup boiled out of the hole momentarily, then the wound closed up.