Go, Mutants!

by Larry Doyle

A SAUCER hovers over the street.

  LITTLE CREATURE

  Gee whiz!

  EXT. HOUSE—NIGHT

  The Little Creature steps out of its house, wearing cowboy-themed pajamas.

  The saucer lands. Its outer energy ring POWERS DOWN, leaving a geodesic globe.

  The Little Creature stands in the middle of the street, gazing up at the large eye-shaped portal in the middle of the sphere.

  The triangular flap slides open and an intense light pours forth, at its center the shimmering silhouette of a BIG CREATURE.

  BIG CREATURE

  Hello, son.

  FEMALE VOICE (O.C.)

  Jim?

  The Little Creature turns toward its house.

  A Cat-Woman stands in the doorway, unclothed.

  CAT-WOMAN

  Baby?

  his mother hovered, licked.

  “You were so asleep,” her smile attenuated by her eyes, “I thought you were dead. Again.”

  She sat at his bedside, in a chiffon negligee that made J!m believe he might be dreaming still, and a little fretful this one might turn Buñuel. He drifted in and out, not yet ready to return to the awake world. He looked at her with child eyes.

  “Dad came back.”

  She smiled and placed her hand on his chest. It sizzled.

  “Me-yow!” she yelped. “You’re burning up! Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” both true and false.

  Miw lapped her palm, thinking perhaps it was time to tell him what she knew, which was less than she thought.

  “Jim.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Never mind. You’re going to be late for your field trip.”

  j!m and johnny were in back, not speaking, with Jelly contentedly lodged between them, poppling along to the song playing in the bus.

  The leeches are humongous,

  The ants are so immense,

  And the killer shrews are vicious but

  They’re dumb.

  One seat up, Rusty sat, her hair wild and her smile sublime. After all these years of feeling she didn’t belong, to discover she truly did not was a dream come true.

  Giant crabs absorb the brains

  Of folks who poke their cages,

  But the xenukeeper never ever comes.

  A few rows ahead, Marie was depressed, guilty, angry, all the bad emotions roiling into one abysmal one, with a German word for it: Scheissegeist. Across from her, Sandra Jane cradled Tubesteak in her hand while he sucked her whole face.

  At the Xenu,

  At the Xenu,

  Russ was by himself, eating his shame and rage. Nobody knew what he was, but he knew, and for that somebody would have to die. Several somebodies. Or, more precisely, some things.

  Russ’s eyes grew warm. He shut them tight, afraid he had bared his soul.

  At the Xenu,

  At the Xenu . . .

  “Tom and Jerry by request,” pattered over the speakers. “You’re listening to,” with tinny fanfare, “Marshall Kaufman!”

  In the morning!

  the Marshallettes sang.

  “Here on K-BOM!”

  The atomic-blast effect coincided with a sharp forty-five-degree pitch of the bus, unconnected, a turning quirk of Dynowheel vehicles, compensated for by how grand the bus cabin looked traveling inside a single gyroscopic wheel.

  A-merican Rock!

  the Marshallettes further sang, having been called in urgently the previous afternoon when management decided that the alien gimmick was played out, effective immediately.

  Entering the Manhattan Xenological Gardens, the Dynowheel Omnibus ran a speed bump and went airborne, bouncing through the gates, another quirk they might have considered before building ten thousand of them.

  miw picked at her mouse inattentively, almost letting it get away.

  “With threats here and abroad, do we want a commander-in-chief who was arrested for being an alien collaborator?”

  “That was twenty years ago. And Senator Kennedy was acquitted, along with every other member of Congress.”

  “Now, I don’t know about that, Helen,” Ronald Reagan chuckled, going avuncular, anything to close the gap, eight points with a week to go and his running mate doing all she could to widen that, most recently claiming to have saucy viz of Kennedy with Mothra yet failing to produce it, infuriating the populace.

  Luckily, the Gipper had his old playbook.

  “What I do know is he pals around with Hollywood aliens. His running mate was an actress until only a few years ago.”

  “Mr. Vice President, you were president of the Screen Actors Guild.”

  “And I think my record of reporting aliens is well established.”

  “Your wife, Nancy Reagan, was an actress, and is an alien.”

  “I’ve answered that, and I think it’s time to move on, to deal with dangers we have here today.”

  “You didn’t answer the question.”

  “Tell that to the parents of the five young boys who lost their lives in an alien attack this weekend in the town of Manhattan.”

  “Nobody was killed. And the authorities say it wasn’t an attack.”

  “That’s not the information I have, Helen. And I think I have better information than you.”

  Miw did not like where this was going. She had been there before.

  “students,” dr. rand lectured the assembled seniors, most of whom were already escaping.

  “This is crucial,” he added.

  He spoke before a red, craggy enclosure duplicating the surface of Mars in painted cement. Behind him, a Rattarachirotacean, a rat-spider-bat-crab from Mars, trundled out of its cave and made its way to the front.

  “I want you to give particular scrutiny to the morphology of each alien species . . .”

  The Martian spider reached across the railing with its spider-limb-ending-in-a-crab-claw.

  “. . . and try to postulate a common phylogeny . . .”

  Just as its pincers were about to deflate Dr. Rand’s ego, a xenukeeper blasted the improbable chimera with an Ultra-Taser, sending it back into its cave.

  Dr. Rand concluded, “. . . that could account for such xenobiological diversity,” as the last of his students drifted away.

  “This is not a day off!”

  the “it” habitat was poorly planned, combining incompatible Its from Beneath the Sea and Outer Space and Beyond Space, none of which liked the It Bits provided for them.

  “Should they be eating each other like that?” asked Rusty.

  “Why not?” said J!m.

  She had followed him there, and in turn had been followed by Jelly, who had forgiven Rusty her trespasses and was willing to start over, as often as necessary. She was hoping he would go away. The winds favored her.

  “Churros!” Jelly detected, finger in the air. He pointed in a direction and went there.

  Rusty waited seven seconds.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Wanna talk ab—”

  “No.”

  “Okay.”

  An It from Beyond Space mounted the It That Conquered the World, an ignoble demotion.

  “So,” J!m asked, “does your brother know?”

  Rusty smiled. “I’m waiting until dinnertime.”

  johnny watched the Ro-Men, a bizarre species with the body of a gorilla and a skull head inside a brass diving helmet, huddled in couples, grooming, or romping with their adorable robot monster babies.

  A young Ro-Man peered back at Johnny, trying to ascertain how he had escaped.

  Marie sidled up. “What are we going to do about our boy?”

  “Fuck him.”

  Marie, rueful: “Easier said than done.”

  jelly woggled, two dozen deep-fried pastries jutting from his head in a native headdress, blissful and unaware he was being surrounded.

  “Hey, Russ. Churro?”

  Russ pushed Jelly against the railing.

  “You know what? I like the ne
w face. It suits you. Little greasy, though.”

  Russ grabbed the back of Jelly’s waistband.

  “A wedgie? You’re going to be disappointed.”

  Toad and Ice grabbed Jelly as well.

  “Do you mind my asking what you’re doing, since it’s to me?”

  “Disinfecting the planet,” Russ said.

  They heaved Jelly over the railing into the enclosure.

  “One disease at a time.”

  The boys ran off to their alibis, not wanting to be clipped for defying the clearly posted ordinance:

  DO NOT FEED THE GORGON

  Jelly landed on his back, and splattered somewhat. He consolidated and began accounting for the churros, some protruding from unlikely places.

  A titanic shadow fell over him. He looked up.

  “Wow,” he said.

  No one had ever heard Jelly scream, but when he did, it was unmistakable.

  sheriff ford was apoplectic. This had gone so far beyond adolescent prank, yet half these kids were snickering, and the rest were visibly inconvenienced.

  “Nobody saw anything?!”

  “I saw . . .” Bennie said, still seeing it, “these . . . giant ants!”

  The sheriff felt a twinge of relief, and that upset him further. He had a good idea what had happened here, and could have prevented it, if he could correct mistakes cascading back two decades. Unless it was irredeemably in his blood, or hers.

  Russ was next to his father, on the wrong side of the law but unconcerned with being caught, except that it might interrupt his spree. He glared at Marie, over with the freaks, and visualized what price she would have to pay.

  Rusty was crying, which came as a revelation only to herself. “He was so . . .” she blubbered, “Jelly!”

  She buried her face in Johnny’s chest. He patted her back.

  Russ erupted. “Get your freakin’ paws off her, you damned mutant!”

  “They’re hands, Russell,” Dr. Rand corrected him. “He’s a radioactive primate hybrid.”

  Deputy Furry wiggled her gun at Rusty and Johnny.

  “Everything in sight, girlie.”

  “Put that away, Peg,” the sheriff said, as usual.

  The deputy holstered her weapon but kept it unsnapped, in case things got too friendly.

  A xenukeeper arrived carrying a chum bucket.

  “Not much left.”

  He waved the bucket around vaguely, looking for somebody to take it. J!m accepted the remains.

  “Whoever did this,” the xenukeeper said, “t’wasn’t an accident. Gum’s stuck on all the cameras.”

  Ice unwrapped a fresh piece.

  Mourners, officials and the curiously morbid gathered around the bucket. Russ took the opportunity to slip the deputy’s gun out of its holster and slide it down the back of his pants.

  There wasn’t much to see. About a cup of goo, a mass of extremely inanimate cells.

  “I can do something with that,” Dr. Rand said.

  Chapter 26

  To Bring Back the Dead!

  dr. rand plunged the jumper cables into the bucket.

  The response was a hideous shriek.

  “That’s encouraging,” the doctor said.

  He retracted the cables and the shriek tapered off.

  He put them back in and the shriek resumed.

  “Jim,” he said, scratching an eyebrow with the positive lead, “could you crank that to four-fifty for me?”

  J!m, assigned to the Rand Voltronic Shock-o-Box, hesitated.

  “I’d rather not.”

  “It is absolutely essential that you do,” Dr. Rand said, dropping the cables. He impatiently flipped the switches himself. Various Jacob’s ladders and cathode tubes around the garage lab sparked to life, for no reason.

  “Are you sure,” Marie said, “that electricity is the answer here, Dad?”

  “I think I know what I’m doing, Marie,” petulantly pedantic. “After all, I created him.”

  “You—?”

  Dr. Rand dipped the cables back in.

  Fwoom!

  Flames shot out, accompanied by an emphatic yowl. Dr. Rand threw a towel over the bucket and patted his eyebrows out.

  “He needs his rest.”

  An irate whir preceded Mrs. Rand, driving her pan, its lights blinking erratically and her hair electrofluffed in the Elsa Lanchester style.

  “What the hell is going on out here?”

  “I’m resurrecting Larry Sweeney,” Dr. Rand explained.

  “Is that a good use of your time?” his wife asked, insinuating otherwise and also that she should have married Arnold Gordon, who owned a Barris dealership.

  “I said I’ll get you a body,” his temper lost, “and I’ll get you a body!”

  Mrs. Rand did her cackle, spun in her dish and whirred back into the house.

  Dr. Rand composed several astringent ripostes in his head before returning to his current crime against nature. He lifted the towel off the bucket and was choked with smoke.

  “Maybe,” Marie said, “we should ask Pop-Pop.”

  “May-be,” her father responded, his calm a harbinger. “He’s the genius, right?”

  “Well, he—”

  “““World’s Smartest Human,””” his fingers overdoing the air quotes. “Though, to be accurate, that was before he denounced mankind and locked himself away up in that observatory of his. But I’m sure he hasn’t gone at all batty after all these years, and still knows more than I do about absolutely everything, including the field of study that I single-handedly invented!”

  Marie grabbed the bucket and turned to J!m.

  “Can we take your car?”

  the buzzer climbed the winding road into the Manhattan Hills, leaving behind businesses and billboards and civilization itself, undisciplined nature replacing the comfortable commercial order. The area was officially a park, but no one went there anymore; the PLEX reception was spotty, and frequent escapes from the adjacent xenu meant that not everybody who went in came out.

  J!m drove, his rigid frame zigzagged into the driver’s seat. Marie held the bucket of Jelly in her lap.

  They had exchanged directions but little else. J!m had not activated the aud when they first got in, and after the first couple of minutes, he was afraid that turning it on would have been an admission of the awkwardness between them, and so he let them ferment in silence.

  Finally: “I’m sorry,” he said. “For kissing you,” the prepared speech unraveling. “I’m not sorry I . . . but I didn’t mean to . . . I just . . .” sincerely, “am sorry.”

  “Let’s get Jelly well,” Marie said, neither forgiving nor further punishing.

  “Right,” J!m said. “I’m sorry.”

  the observatory sat atop the highest Manhattan Hill, on clear days overlooking the fields to the east, the ocean to the west and Nixon International Airport to the south. The facility had been the premier outpost for stellar exploration, until a series of interstellar invasions quenched the thirst for that knowledge.

  The lot was empty but for a family of Mercurian deer grazing on the young sprouts that grew from the fractured pavement. They let the Buzzer get very close before begrudgingly flapping away.

  J!m and Marie were at the foot of the observatory steps when the door swung open and a tiny, bald man emerged carrying a large shank of barbecued meat.

  “Pop-Pop!” Marie cried, running up to kiss him.

  “Children!” Dr. B. “Buck” Roberts exclaimed, generously, and oddly, including them both. He hugged his granddaughter and held her out to look at her.

  “Marie! You’ve gone through puberty! Good job!” He offered his meat. “Coyote?”

  “No, thank you,” Marie said.

  “Watching your figure,” the doctor nodded. “Now, Ji’ ’im,” using the pronunciation J!m had not heard in years, “you’ve gone through crystallogenesis, so you don’t eat at all?”

  J!m had not eaten in three days. “I guess not.”

  �
�You’re electric now, boy! And photovoltaic!” Dr. Roberts pointed the bone skyward. “You’re eating the sun!”

  J!m was embarrassed he hadn’t worked that out, as well he should have been.

  The professor started back up the stairs, bidding them to follow.

  “Superefficient but too bad, really. Eating is one of the highest animal pleasures. And pooping. And one other one, I don’t remember . . .”

  He took a big bite of coyote.

  “dr. roberts,” j!m began as they entered the dark, cool planetarium.

  “Please,” said Dr. Roberts, “call me sir.”

  “Pop-Pop,” Marie said, “we were hoping you could help us with our friend Jelly . . .”

  She offered up the bucket. Dr. Roberts peeked inside.

  “Ah, Gelatinized Offensive Organism. And you say it’s friendly? That was unintended.”

  “Can you fix him?”

  “You should ask your father,” the old man said. “He’s good at monsters.”

  He turned away to fiddle with the console of the Star Projector.

  “Now take a seat. The presentation is about to begin.”

  “What presentation?”

  “The truth about your father, Ji’ ’im.”

  J!m sat.

  “But,” Marie asked, “how did you know we were coming?”

  “I didn’t,” her grandfather said.

  The lights dimmed.

  “I always do a three-o’clock.”

  the planetarium dome radiated with the Regulus system, a blue-white binary and two dwarf stars, evoking in J!m a sense of false nostalgia, a yearning for a past that never was.

  Dr. Roberts was seated at a small desk near the projector, the reading light reflecting up into his face.

  “From Alpha Leonis,” he narrated, “the heart of the lion, in the Constellation Leo, from a little gray planet orbiting a dying orange star, he came.”

  A stimulating, simulated flight through the Milky Way followed, with Buck Roberts ad-libbing, “Not very accurate, this part, but exciting, don’t you think? Whee!”

  The sequence slowed as it entered the solar system, past Neptune, Uranus, etc., to Earth.

  Dr. Roberts cleared his throat and returned to the text.

  “Five hundred trillion miles he came,” with footage of the ship landing during the play-offs, of J!m’s father stepping out, “bringing a message of fellowship.”