No Direction Home

by Norman Spinrad

  The Supermen scored again halfway through the third period, on a handoff from Johnson to his big fullback Tex McGhee on the Hog forty-one. McGhee slugged his way through the left side of the line with his patented windmill attack, and burst out into the Hog secondary swinging and kicking. There was no stopping the Texas Tornado, though half the Hog defense tried, and McGhee went forty-one yards for the touchdown, leaving three Hogs unconscious and three more with minor injuries in his wake. The kick was good, and the Supermen seemed on their way to walking away with the championship, with the score 17–7, and the momentum, in the stands and on the field, going all their way.

  But in the closing moments of the third period, Johnson son threw a long one downfield intended for his left end, Dick Whitfield. Whitfield got his fingers on the football at the Hog thirty, but Hardly Davidson, the Hog cornerback, was right on him, belted him in the head from behind as he touched the ball, and then managed to catch the football himself before either it or Whitfield had hit the ground. Davidson got back to midfield before three Supermen tacklers took him out of the rest of the game with a closed eye and a concussion.

  All at once, as time ran out in the third period, the ten-point Supermen lead didn’t seem so big at all as the Hogs advanced to a first down on the Supermen thirty-five and the Hog lovers in the stands beat back Supermen fan attacks on several fronts, inflicting very heavy losses.

  Spike Horrible threw a five-yarder to Greasy Ed Lee on the first play of the final period, then a long one into the end zone intended for his left end, Kid Filth, which the Kid dropped as Gordon Jones and John Lawrence slugged him from both sides as soon as he became lair game.

  It looked like a sure pass play on third and five, but Horrible surprised everyone by fading back into a draw and handing the bail off to Loser Ludowicki, his fullback, who plowed around right end like a heavy tank, simply crushing and smashing through tacklers with his body and fists, picked up two key blocks on the twenty and seventeen, knocked Don Barnfield onto the casualty list with a tremendous haymaker on the seven, and went in for the score.

  The Hog lovers in the stands went Hog-wild. Even before the successful conversion by Knuckleface Bonner made it 17–14, they began blitzing the Supermen fans on all fronts, letting out everything they had seemed to be holding back during the first three quarters. At least one hundred Supermen fans were taken out in the next three minutes, including two quick fatalities, while the Hog lovers lost no more than a score of their number.

  As the Hog lovers continued to punish the Supermen fans, the Hogs kicked off to the Supermen, and stopped them after two first downs, getting the ball back on their own twenty-four. After marching to the Supermen thirty-one on a sustained and bloody ground drive, the Hogs lost the ball again when Greasy Ed Lee was rabbit-punched into a fumble.

  But the Hog lovers still sensed the inevitable and pressed their attack during the next two Supermen series of downs, and began to push the Supermen fans toward the bottom of the grandstand.

  Buoyed by the success of their fans, the Hogs on the field recovered the ball on their own twenty-nine with less than two minutes to play when Chain-Mail Dixon belted Tex McGhee into a fumble and out of the game.

  The Hogs crunched their way upfield yard by yard, punch by punch, against a suddenly shaky Supermen opposition, and, all at once, the whole season came down to one play: with the score 17–14 and twenty seconds left on the clock, time enough for one or possibly two more plays, the Hogs had the ball third and four on the eighteen-yard line of the Golden Supermen.

  Spike Horrible took the snap as the Hog lovers in the stands launched a final all-out offensive against the Supermen fans, who by now had been pushed to a last stand against the grandstand railings at fieldside. Horrible took about ten quick steps back as if to pass, and then suddenly ran head down, fist flailing, at the center of the Supermen line with the football tucked under his arm.

  Suddenly Greasy Ed Lee and Loser Ludowicki raced ahead of their quarterback, hitting the line and staggering the tacklers a split-second before Horrible arrived, throwing them just off-balance enough for Horrible to punch his way through with three quick rights, two of them k.o. punches. Virtually the entire Hog team roared through the hole after him, body-blocking, elbowing, and crushing tacklers to the ground. Horrible punched out three more tacklers as the Hog lovers pushed the first contingent of fleeing Supermen fans out onto the field, and went in for the game and championship winning touchdown with two seconds left on the clock.

  When the dust had cleared, not only had the Hog Choppers beaten the Golden Supermen 21–17, but the Hog lovers had driven the Golden Supermen fans from their favorite stadium, and had racked up a commanding advantage in the casualty statistics, 1578 casualties and 23 fatalities inflicted, as against only 989 and 14.

  It was a great day for the Hog lovers and a great day in the history of our National Pastime.

  The Voice of Sweet Reason

  Go to a Combat football game? Really, do you think I want to risk being injured or possibly killed? Of course, I realize that Combat is a practical social mechanism for preserving law and order, and, to be frank, I find the spectacle rather stimulating. I watch Combat often, almost every Sunday.

  On television, of course. After all, everyone who is anyone in this country knows very well that there are basically two kinds of people in the United States: people who go out to Combat games, and people for whom Combat is strictly a television spectator sport.

  IN THE EYE OF THE STORM

  Doug had changed the points and plugs, boiled out the carb, and tuned his scoot to a razor’s edge back in Denver. The engine should’ve been running as smooth as the black lacquer on the tank and frame, by all the rules of God and man. But every time the lightning flashed over the hulking backbone of the Rockies, the engine broke up for a few beats, as if there were loose crud in the fuel lines (which there damned well was not), or dirt in the jets, or one of those electrical glitches that could take you a week to run down. Though the slope was steep as it wound up toward the high passes, the road was almost empty, and the bends were still gentle, so Doug was able to try all sorts of engine speeds in every gear, and there was no relationship between engine speed and the weird coughing in the Harley’s voice. She broke up at thirty, at forty-five, at sixty, at eighty—every time the lightning flashed. ’

  Doug didn’t like it at all. First, because he had never heard of an electrical storm causing an engine to break up, and, second, because of the thing he had about electricity.

  Doug Allard felt no fear in the face of things that would turn the knees of the average citizen, to lime Jell-o—that came with the colors of the Avengers—but he believed that electricity was out to get him, in ways large and small. Once he and his old partner Ted had been tooling along through a light drizzle in Florida when out of nowhere a power line along the road suddenly snapped, whizzed past Doug’s cheek like a cobra spitting sparks, caught Ted across the chest, and fried him where he sat. And almost every time Doug’s chopper was laid up with something he couldn’t handle himself, it was some electrical gremlin. Doug and electricity just didn’t get along. To him, electricity in all of its manifestations was a cold-eyed snake—like the power line that had killed Ted—out to sink its sparky teeth into his hide as often and as deeply as it could.

  So the idea that those bolts of lightning flashing across the strangely clear sky were somehow subverting the loyalty of their little brothers in the ignition system of his scoot not only scared him in a way he wouldn’t like to admit, it pissed him off.

  “Lay off my chop, mother!” he muttered at the approaching electrical storm, feeling foolish for threatening thin air, but feeling better for having done it just the same.

  Doug was headed west across the Rockies to join up with the Avengers in Los Angeles after selling off a crummy grocery store his uncle Bill in St. Louis had left him, and the damned electrical storm seemed to be headed east after God-knows-what, so it wasn’t long before the storm
was directly overhead.

  Lightning danced through a slate-gray sky, slamming and cracking like an artillery barrage, as Doug leaned through the turns, taking them as fast as he could, trying to make as much, time as possible before the deluge began. The sky got darker and darker, but no rain fell. Sheets of blinding light ripped across the heavens and lit up the heavily wooded mountains like enormous flashbulbs every thirty seconds or so now, and the Harley’s engine was coughing more often than not. Doug’s head rang from the crack and rumble of the continuous thunder and the throttle hesitations and stops were making the bike harder and harder to control.

  One weird mother of a storm!

  Up ahead, the road took a gentle left and climbed around the curve of a tree-covered hill. As he started to put the bike over, Doug smelled electricity in the air so thick he almost choked on it Looking up at the crest, he saw a searing white bolt of lightning kiss the concrete not twenty yards in front of him and actually walk toward him before it disappeared in a clap of thunder.

  Then he was cresting the hill leaning into the left turn at fifty-five—and the world suddenly turned a blinding, crazy yellow. Everything seemed to happen at once, and in slow motion. Through the handlebars, he felt a tremendous jar—the whole frame was vibrating as if someone had bonged it with a huge sledgehammer. His body tingled, he choked on ozone, and the engine quit entirely. The chop started to go down, but some sixth sense told him that if he went down in that instant, or even allowed his foot to touch the road, he had had it. Standing up on the pegs still blinded, he threw his body to the right as hard as he could against the bank of the turn, compensating for the sudden drop in speed. The Harley wobbled crazily, there was a tremendous clap of thunder, and his vision began to clear.

  He dimly saw that he was careening across the road, thumping and bouncing toward a steep drop into the heavily wooded gully to the right. He downshifted, slammed on the brakes, the wheels kicked up dirt and screamed, the forward momentum was killed, and the scoot gently slid out from under him. As he rolled away from the bike losing a certain amount of skin, he shouted in triumph.

  How many riders had been hit by lightning and lived? Whoo-eee!

  Picking himself off the ground and making sure nothing major was broken, his next thought was for the Harley. The bike was lying on its side in the tall grass by the side of the road about three yards from having rolled into the rugged-looking little canyon. Grunting, he stood it up on its still-functional stand and inspected the damage. The right front peg was bent at a crazy angle, there was a small rip in the black leather of the seat, and a lot of little dings and scratches all over the right side of the bike, where it had skidded along the ground. There as a strange lightning-shaped strip of paint peeled off the tank, and the metal beneath was etched a dark blue, as if the storm had branded the chop with its own mark. But all things considered, the scoot had come through in fine shape; all it seemed to need to be put into good riding shape was to hammer the peg back into position. Some paint, chrome polish, and new leather, and it would be as slick as before it was hit. But he would try to keep that lightning brand on the tank—maybe try some clear lacquer over it—it was unique; it gave the chop a character that no amount of planning, design, or hard work could.

  Only when he had finished inspecting the bike did he notice the weirdness of his surroundings. For one thing, the sky was now clear, and for another the sun was about two hours lower than it had been when he was hit, only minutes before. And the surface of the road was cracked, pitted, and full of jagged holes as far as he could see. The fir trees were wrong, too; taller and thinner than they should’ve been, the needles very sparse on the branches, but almost four inches long and colored a sickly grayish-green. The air had a kind of chemical aftertaste, not at all the delicious freshness of the high Rockies. Everything seemed old and sick and generally cruddy.

  Muttering to himself and continually, glancing back over his shoulder for reasons he couldn’t figure, Doug hammered the bad peg back into position with his heaviest wrench, checked out his carb and fuel lines, then tromped on the starter.

  Nothing happened, not even a cough. He stomped on the starter ten times without raising a peep. He got off the bike, took a deep breath, looked around at the grayish, sickly forest, the ruined road, shuddered, and tried to dope it out. He just knew it was something electrical. Hell—of course!

  Sure enough, his fuse was blown, and when he got out his little cardboard box of spares, they were blown, too. Electricity had done him again!

  But Doug Allard was damned if he was going to sit in that crummy-looking place just because he had no good fuses for his chop. Swearing, he fished out a half-empty cigarette pack, dumped out the smokes, stripped off the tinfoil, wadded it up, and jammed it into the gap in the fuseholder. It might not provide the protection a proper fuse was supposed to, but that was a chance he had to take. It was either that, or sit here in this damned spot until something came along. From the looks of the road, that might be forever.

  When he kicked the starter this time, the engine caught right away. He cautiously started up what was left of the road, skirting huge potholes and jagged breaks every few yards of the way, creeping along at thirty-five, and wishing his scoot were set up for scrambles. And wondering where the hell he was.

  According to the map, there was a dinky little town about forty miles up the road; there would no doubt be a gas station and a place to get a hamburger and some beer. Doug had taken off his peanut tank for this run and fitted a fat-bob which was still about three-quarters full, but the same could not be said for his gut, which had a food-sized hole in it. And after half an hour of dodging potholes, cracks, and craters on the ruined road, his arms were stiff with tension, and his nerves in need of a few cold beers.

  The countryside still seemed all wrong. The fir trees were like nothing he had ever seen, like crude cartoons of the real thing, and the ground between them crawled with giant purplish toadstools, and raw-looking mushrooms the color of dried blood. As the sun sank toward the high ridgeline of the mountains, the clear sky took on an ugly steel-blue cast, and Doug could hear the droning whine of insects even over the sound of the Harley’s engine. In half an hour of riding through this unnatural landscape, he hadn’t seen a car or a truck or a bike. He didn’t like it one little bit. The only thing that kept him from brooding on the ominous strangeness of the world in which he found himself and on how the hell he had gotten there was the total concentration to keep the scoot upright on this crappy wreckage of a road.

  Finally, with the sun just starting to sink down behind the mountains, he crested a ridgeline and saw a little huddle of buildings off to the right in the next valley. Just a glimpse, and then the road wound down mound the slope of the hill, screening the town from his sight until he reached the valley floor on the outskirts of the little burg.

  Or what was left of it.

  It couldn’t have been much more than a wide spot in the road to begin with: a big Philips-66 station next to a café, a few cinderblock stores, a couple of dozen wooden houses. The town was a burned-out shell, a ruin. The houses were charred skeletons. The store windows were shattered, and it looked as if every scrap of anything of value had long since been carried away. The front of the café had been ripped apart by an explosion and the concrete was pitted with craters left by large-caliber ammunition. There were about half a dozen cars scattered along the main drag, old rusted-out hulks, their tires rotted away, their windows smashed, their body metal so thoroughly corroded that the colors of their paint jobs were now unrecognizable.

  Doug pulled up beside one of the old wrecks and felt a sinking sensation in his gut. It took him a moment more to realize what it was about the hulk that made him shudder. The car body had holes rusted right through it, and when Doug punched the front door, the rotten metal crumbled. The whole body was a brittle shell of rust.

  But it was unmistakably a Chevrolet Vega, and GM had started building Vegas in 1971. And this wreck had to be at le
ast ten years old.

  He had been asking the wrong question: not where the hell am I, but when?

  Electricity, that son-of-a-bitch, had really done him in this time! Somehow, that lightning had kicked his ass into the future, and, from the look of this place, it was a future whose best days were long since past.

  Well, there was no point in whining and sniveling about it. The first order of business was to survive long enough to reach someplace where there were people and play it by the seat of his pants from there. In order to keep going, he had to have food and gas. Three quarters of a tank might or might not get him to somewhere where there was more fuel; it would be stupid to pass up the chance to drain the pumps of the ruined gas station. There must be some jerry cans around somewhere.

  He chugged over to the Philips-66 station, and pulled up by the lefthand bank of pumps. The station building itself was riddled with bullet holes, and it looked like the whole place had been stripped clean. Not a tool or a tire or a can of oil around, and nothing he could use to hold extra gas.

  Well, he had a quarter-empty tank, and two one-quart canteens. Water figured to be a lot easier to come by than gas in the Rockies. He unscrewed his gas cap, plugged the nozzle of the nearest hose into the hole, and squeezed the grip.

  Nothing. The pump was bone-dry.

  He tried every pump in the station with the same results. It figured. If an atomic war or something had caused things to fall apart, gas would be a mighty precious commodity, and looters sure wouldn’t leave it sitting in pumps. And from the looks of this burg, it had been gone over by some mighty efficient looters. It looked like he’d have to search and scrabble pretty hard for gas, maybe appropriate some from some citizens, if he could find some that had any. He still had enough gas in his tank to take him well over a hundred miles. A good thing he wasn’t running a little peanut tank for the looks!