Twilight Zone Anthology
Page 36
And this is what happens. A delegation of hard-pressed Mexican peons, including the old man, recrosses the border and latches onto El Moe while he’s hiding from an irate sheriff and equally irate citizens who have just paid a dollar a slug for what tastes like panther piss but is far less salutary in its effects—medicinal or otherwise. They recognize him. They tell him. They know who he is. Please—shed your disguise. Give up your anonymity. Come back and lead your people in their fight against tyranny. Weintraub, though initially denying he is who they think he is, nonetheless ultimately accompanies them. He does this out of honor, compassion, and gut-level courage—also because a posse of vigilantes has appeared and is about to string him up by the cayunes.
Thumbnail chronology of events. El Moe has about as much military knowledge as the Vatican Swiss Guard. He doesn’t know tactics from tacos, but he’s being fed, wined, dined, worshiped, and fallen in love with by the old man’s granddaughter. Deep in his tequila, he maps out a campaign against Colonel Ruiz’s Cavalry. He does this by throwing darts against a map while he’s in such a stupor that he can’t see the wall. The Mexicans whisper amongst themselves. The Falcon has indicated a battle to be fought in a narrow mountain defile impossible to defend. Impossible to take cover. Impossible to win. But it is The Falcon’s considered tactical judgment. So, like sheep they follow this bleary-eyed drunk into what should be their last battle. What happens is that the place is so impossible to fight in that Ruiz and his men file in, rifles slung, altogether unprepared for battle. It’s an absolutely impossible place to fight in, but the Mexicans fight there and they win and The Falcon is looked on with awe, as well as the accustomed reverence. His fame travels across the parched lands. Through the tiny villages. Ultimately to filter through the echelons to the General Staff of the Federales. In the next battle, the god topples. The clay feet show. The Falcon turns into Moe Weintraub. And he’s captured.
The General lays it out for him. The Falcon is dead. But if Weintraub will continue to play the role and come over to their side, leading the Federales, salaried by the Federales—the legend will dissolve. Weintraub is horrified by the suggestion. To betray his men who believed in him? To play Judas to these Christians? To sell his soul for a pottage of silver? It takes him fully five seconds to agree. And off he goes—the display-case General—on his way to wreck a dream.
But someplace it happens. Why—who’s to know? Maybe it’s the hidden well that is tapped and suddenly produces courage. Or maybe every man can suddenly become a giant. But Weintraub becomes El Moe—that slashing, brave giant of a Mexican Litvak. He finds his own well of courage. He escapes the Federales, goes to his friends, admits his deceptions, and then calls on them to fight the next day.
And what of the strategy? The tactics? El Moe is cross-eyed with tequila and his head is the size of the Andes. Once again out come the darts. And once again an improbable battle is fought in an improbable place. And once again—improbably—the good guys win.
El Moe is dead. They can’t find his body. But the last eyewitness saw him fall from his horse, shot 114 times. The second Falcon has been consigned to the earth. But another legend has been born. El Moe. He’s a battle cry. He’s an avenging ghost. He’s a threat to tyranny so long as it exists. El Moe.
There he is—on a train with his new Mexican bride. Moe Weintraub, heading north through Texas—still conning, still cheating, still lying—but adored by his beautiful wife and perversely admired by all the vigilantes who will pursue him—probably for the rest of his life.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Kelley Armstrong is the author of the New York Times bestselling “Women of the Otherworld” paranormal suspense series, the “Darkest Powers” YA urban fantasy trilogy, and the Nadia Stafford crime series. She grew up in Ontario, Canada, where she still lives with her family. A former computer programmer, she’s now escaped her corporate cubicle and hopes never to return.
Alan Brennert was executive story consultant on the 1980s CBS network revival of The Twilight Zone and wrote some of its most well-remembered episodes, including “Her Pilgrim Soul” and “A Message from Charity.” He has won a Nebula Award for his short story “Ma Qui” and an Emmy Award as a producer for L.A. Law. More recently, he is the author of the bestselling novels Moloka’i and Honolulu.
Deborah Chester is the internationally published author of thirty-eight novels in several genres, primarily science fiction and fantasy. Her most recent books include The Pearls and The Crown. She’s also the John Crain Presidential Professor at the University of Oklahoma, where she teaches short-story and novel writing. For more information, go to www.deborahchester.com.
Jim DeFelice is the author of several novels, including Leopards Kill and the forthcoming Helios. Look for him on the Web at www.jimdefelice.com.
With her home office a Twilight Zone landscape of mannequins in vintage dress, no wonder award-winning ex-journalist and novelist Carole Nelson Douglas’s fifty-four books offer surreal TZ touches. They include two Vegas-set series: the Midnight Louie, feline PI, mysteries partially narrated by a “Sam Spade with hair-balls,” and the Delilah Street, Paranormal Investigator, noir urban fantasies of werewolf mobsters and silver-screen zombies. Douglas was the first author of a Sherlockian series with a female protagonist, diva-detective Irene Adler, the only woman to outwit Holmes, debuting with the New York Times Notable Book of the Year Good Night, Mr. Holmes. Visit her website at www.carolenelsondouglas.com.
David Hagberg is a former U.S. Air Force cryptographer who has traveled extensively in Europe, the Arctic, and the Caribbean. He has published nearly seventy novels of suspense, including the bestselling Soldier of God, Allah’s Scorpion, Dance with the Dragon, and the New York Times bestseller The Expediter. He has been nominated three times for the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe award and was nominated for the American Book Award. He and his wife make their home in Sarasota, Florida. His website can be found at www.david-hagberg.com.
Earl Hamner was born in 1923 in a small village in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. Much of his writing is rooted in his growing up in a large and loving family during the Great Depression. Today he lives with his wife of fifty-four years in Studio City, California, where he continues to write and care for his collection of over fifty bonsai. He describes himself as “a good-looking old thing who doesn’t look a day over eighty-four.” For more self-congratulations, go to www.earlhamner.com.
Joe R. Lansdale is the author of thirty novels and over two hundred short works. He has written screenplays, teleplays, and comics. His latest book is the short-story collection Sanctified and Chicken Fried from University of Texas Press, and forthcoming in June from Knopf is Vanilla Ride, his new Hap Collins and Leonard Pine novel.
Laura Lippman has published fourteen novels and a collection of short stories. She has won virtually every prize given for mystery fiction in the United States, including the Edgar, Anthony, Shamus, Agatha, and Quill Awards. She lives in Baltimore.
Author of four novels (Cutdown, Causes of Action, Tropical Heat and, most recently, Coyote Moon), as well as a collection of short stories (Jackson Street and Other Soldier Stories), which won the California Book Award for First Fiction, John Miller is a full-time writer and artist. His short stories have appeared in, among others, The William & Mary Review, Crosscurrents, The Missouri Review, North Dakota Quarterly, and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. A native North Carolinian, Miller resides in the Pacific Northwest.
Mike Resnick is the all-time leading award winner, living or dead, for short science fiction (according to Locus). He has won five Hugos, plus other major awards in the United States, France, Spain, Japan, Croatia, and Poland, and has been nominated for major awards in England and Italy. He is the author of sixty novels, well over two hundred short stories, and two screenplays, and is the editor of almost fifty anthologies. His work has been translated into twenty-three languages.
Lezli Robyn is an Australian writer who sold her first couple of stories in
the closing months of 2008, and in the three months since then has sold to Asimov’s, Analog, and other magazines, as well as science fiction markets as distant as China and Russia, alone or in collaboration with Mike Resnick. She is currently working on her first novel.
Lucia St. Clair Robson’s first novel, Ride the Wind, appeared on the New York Times Best Seller List and won the Western Writers of America’s Golden Spur award. It has been continuously in print for twenty-seven years. She has written eight other historical novels, the most recent of which is Last Train from Cuernavaca. Kirkus Reviews wrote, “Few novelists working today have a better grasp of early American history than Robson.”
Robert J. (Bob) Serling is Rod Serling’s older brother and a prolific author himself, with twenty-five published nonfiction and fiction works, mostly dealing with the airline and aerospace industries. Among his seven novels was the bestselling The President’s Plane Is Missing. Before becoming a full-time freelance author, he was aviation editor of United Press International, and now at age ninety is regarded by his peers as the dean of aviation writers. He served as technical adviser on Rod’s acclaimed TZ episode “Odyssey of Flight 33.”
Rod Serling (1924–1975) worked in the television area for twenty-five years, developing, in addition to the landmark Twilight Zone series, Night Gallery and The Loner, and countless drama anthologies, including Requiem for a Heavyweight and Patterns. During his career he won more Emmy Awards for dramatic writing than anyone in history. He also wrote the screenplay for the very first Planet of the Apes film, which embodied everything Serling was interested in as a writer. He continued to write for television while teaching in Ithaca, New York, until his death in 1975, leaving an indelible imprint on television that would inspire countless future writers and artists.
R. L. Stine is one of the bestselling children’s authors in history. His book series—Goosebumps, Fear Street, The Nightmare Room, Mostly Ghostly, and Rotten School—have sold more than 350 million copies around the world. Stine says his job is to “terrify kids.” But his proudest accomplishment is the millions of kids he has motivated to read. His adult-thriller titles include Superstitious, The Sitter, and Eye Candy. He is currently at work on a new batch of Goosebumps titles. Stine lives in New York City with his wife, Jane.
Whitley Strieber is the author of such books as The Wolfen, The Hunger, Communion, and Superstorm, which have all been made into feature films, and many other bestsellers, including Billy, Majestic, The Grays, 2012, and, most recently, Critical Mass. His website, www.unknowncountry.com, is the largest website in the world featuring daily news at the edge of science and reality.
Tad Williams is the New York Times bestselling author of some fourteen books for adults, which have been translated into twenty-three languages and sell worldwide. Among his bestsellers are The Dragonbone Chair, The Otherland Cycle, and Shadowmarch. He lives and works with his wife, Deborah Beale, and their family in the San Francisco Bay Area.
William F. Wu, Ph.D., is a six-time nominee for the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards and the author of the six-volume young-adult science fiction series titled Isaac Asimov’s Robots in Time. He is the author of thirteen novels, one short-story collection, and sixty short stories as well as one book of literary criticism. Wu’s short story “Wong’s Lost and Found Emporium,” a multiple-award nominee, was adapted into an episode of The Twilight Zone from the 1980s and is available on DVD. He lives in Palmdale, California, with his wife, Fulian Wu, and their son, Alan.
Timothy Zahn has been writing science fiction for over a quarter of a century. In that time he has published thirty-six novels, over eighty short stories and novelettes, and four collections of short fiction. Best known for his eight Star Wars novels, he is also the author of the Quadrail series (Night Train to Rigel, The Third Lynx, Odd Girl Out, and the upcoming The Domino Pattern), the Cobra series (including the upcoming Cobra Alliance), and the young-adult Dragonback series. His latest novel is From the Ashes, a prequel to the movie Terminator Salvation. The Zahn family lives on the Oregon coast.
ABOUT THE EDITOR
Carol Serling has been involved with the writing career of her husband from its very inception, and all through The Twilight Zone years she was his first reader and toughest critic. Since her husband’s death in 1975, Carol has maintained a self-contained industry working with the literary and cinematic legacy that Rod left behind . . . the latest work being this anthology written in the spirit of the Zone.
Twilight ZoneCover
Title
Copyright
Copyright Acknowledgments
Contents
Introduction
Genesis
A Haunted House of Her Own
On the Road
The Art of the Miniature
Benchwarmer
Truth or Consequences
Puowaina
Torn Away
Vampin’ Down the Avenue
A Chance of a Ghost
The Street that Forgot Time
The Wrong Room
Ghost Writer
The Soldier He Needed to Be
Ants
Your Last Breath, Inc.
Family Man
The Good Neighbor
El Moe
About the Authors
About the Editor