Shocker

by Randall Boyll

  Jonathan froze him in place. Pinker howled and cursed. “What is going on!”

  Jonathan looked at his watch. It was five minutes before midnight. “Do it, Rhino,” he said, and threw Pinker around some more, waiting for the finale.

  • • •

  “Got it,” Bruno said. “Here’s your piece-of-shit knife back.”

  Rhino pocketed it while Bruno worked the padlock out of its hasp. The steel bar dropped to the ground with a clang, and the door drifted open. Rhino looked at his watch. Five till twelve. Not bad for a gang of amateurs.

  “What now?” Bruno asked, peeking inside. “I can’t see shit.”

  Rhino pulled the heavy rubber gloves onto his hands, then picked up the crowbar. “Stand back,” he said. “I’m going to make a mess.”

  He disappeared inside. Things clunked. Megavolts surged with a high buzzing sound. Rhino started beating something with the crowbar. Bruno frowned. Did Rhino have the vaguest idea what he was doing?

  Apparently so. A huge shower of white-hot sparks belched out of something, stinging Bruno’s face and arms. He pulled back while Rhino roared a victory shout inside the building. He came out with smoke drifting out of his hair, but he was grinning.

  “Found it and short-circuited it. The crowbar’s shot, but just watch what happens.”

  They looked down to the city, where lights sparkled like diamonds. Square by square, they began winking out. In seconds the entire city was black.

  “Bingo,” Rhino said, wiping the rain from his eyes. “I hope Jonathan gets a kick out of this.”

  He did. As the lights dimmed and went out, he strode to where the necklace lay and picked it up. He fastened it around Pinker’s neck. Pinker screeched and howled. “Get that thing off me!” he shouted.

  Jonathan smiled. “A gift from me and Alison, Pinker. We give it to you.”

  Pinker raged helplessly. Smoke sizzled from his neck as the necklace melted his flesh, burning its way to the bone. He began to glow an unholy red. “You want to know your real roots, Jonathan?” he gurgled. “Huh? I’ll tell you. I beat you then and I can beat you now.”

  He stopped, grimacing in agony. Jonathan stepped back, not knowing what to expect. Lightning lit the sky outside, and Jonathan saw in that brief flash that Pinker was decaying, losing himself, winking out. There was a loud explosion of orange sparks. Pinker let out a huge scream of pain and rage as another explosion tore a chunk of him away. When he had almost disappeared there was one final burst of light and sparks, and then he was gone.

  Gone.

  Jonathan slumped onto the bed, exhausted. The room began to sparkle, glowing white. Everything was decaying, as Pinker had decayed. Jonathan held his hand to his face and discovered that it was crawling with dying lines of blue electricity. He could feel himself fading. He lurched to his feet, looking around in desperation.

  The cameraman was standing with his mouth hanging open. The dead camera was still on his shoulder. Jonathan ran for it, then jumped at its lens, knowing it was preposterous, but that it was the only way to stay alive.

  The camera sucked him in, and he was falling once more, spinning through nothingness even as he began winking out.

  Chapter •

  Sixteen

  He crashed out of a television set, shattering the picture tube. Shards of glass belched across the room with a jangling crash. He crawled fully out of the set, cutting his shirt and the cuffs of his jeans. The television exploded, hurling jagged shrapnel. He ducked. When the noise was over the television was a gutted husk, burning wearily. In the wickering light he recognized this as his bedroom.

  He was home. No longer winking out, no longer decaying. He was tired and sore, but he was real again. Some misty future day he might look back on this and judge it impossible, but for now he was content just to know he had survived and Pinker had not.

  He smothered the flames with a blanket, then dumped a glass of water on the remains just to be sure. That done, he went outside. His neighbors were coming out too, looking around under the light of the moon at the strange sight of a city without lights. They laughed and giggled nervously. A man approached Jonathan, staring at him with eyes full of wonder. “Hey, kid! I just saw you on the tube. Was that real?”

  Jonathan nodded slightly. “Real enough.”

  A woman hurried over. “Wow, what a storm that was,” she said breathlessly. “But look up at the sky now!”

  Jonathan looked. The clouds were gone, taking the rain with them. The sky was dense with stars. He walked over to the water-slicked street, able to see a hint of the moon and stars reflected there. The air was damp and cool, smelling clean and fresh, as it always did after a good downpour. As he walked he talked to himself—and Alison.

  “Are you there? Do you see all those stars?”

  “Absolutely beautiful,” she whispered.

  Jonathan smiled. “It is.”

  He stopped, frowning. Standing on one leg, he pulled a shoe off and emptied it onto the pavement. A pretty respectable pile of sand slid out. He emptied the other one, too.

  He walked on with his hands shoved deep inside his pockets, a half-smile on his face.

  It felt great to be alive again. Alive, and well.

  But above him, perched high in the sky with a thousand other stars for company, one star seemed somehow weird to the people who happened to look up to the right place. Instead of shimmering like a tiny chip of diamond, it simply hung there, large and obtrusive.

  Very large. And also very orange.