From pkrouse@dev.tivoli.com Fri Jun 16 12:16:54 2000 Return-Path: Received: from devmail.dev.tivoli.com (devmail.dev.tivoli.com [208.230.244.136]) by ernestine.MyCause.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id MAA26017 for ; Fri, 16 Jun 2000 12:16:51 -0400 Received: from kenya.dev.tivoli.com (kenya.dev.tivoli.com [146.84.26.101]) by devmail.dev.tivoli.com (8.9.1/8.8.8) with ESMTP id LAA18030 for ; Fri, 16 Jun 2000 11:15:31 -0500 (CDT) Received: from curry.dev.tivoli.com (curry.dev.tivoli.com [146.84.23.87]) by kenya.dev.tivoli.com (8.9.2/8.9.2) with SMTP id LAA21571 for ; Fri, 16 Jun 2000 11:15:31 -0500 (CDT) Received: by curry.dev.tivoli.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id LAA24121; Fri, 16 Jun 2000 11:14:02 -0500 Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2000 11:14:02 -0500 Message-Id: <200006161614.LAA24121@curry.dev.tivoli.com> From: Pierce Krouse To: frank@mycause.com Subject: Wild Hair Status: R Stumpy hadn't exactly *meant* to shoot himself in the foot, but sometimes that's the price you have to pay for a free life in the wild. At least that's what he kept telling himself as he wrapped a semi-clean bandanna around his foot, and put what remained of his little toe in the beer cooler until he could get back to town. He stood up off the old cypress stump by the big bend in Boggy Creek. Stumpy had to laugh, because the whole thing reminded him of a joke he had heard once about a bad car accident where someone got their toe cut off. The joke ends up saying that someone ran to the phone to call a toe truck. See, NOW it seemed funny to Stumpy. That's just the kind of guy he was. -------- Having quickly finished the two beers that his toe had displaced from the cooler, Stumpy felt steady enough to travel. Not that the beer would really steady him, or even give him a buzz, but mostly that he had run out of ways to delay the inevitable. His foot throbbed, but surprisingly, it wasn't all that bad, even when he put his weight on it. He reloaded his shotgun, just on principle, and threw it over his shoulder and headed back down the trail. Again, he couldn't help but chuckle out loud. For 15 years he had been called Stumpy, but never because of his feet. Now he had two reasons for the nickname. He figured if he got to town within an hour, he'd stand a good chance of saving the toe. It only took 5 minutes to get to the cabin. The door was open, and he could see from the general chaos of things thrown around inside, that no one was there. Though they HAD been there recently and probably didn't find what they had been looking for. -------- First he had to find the damn keys. The mess made it harder to find them. Not that he wasn't used to messes -- he was. It's just that this wasn't *his* mess any more since he had been visited. He knew the recent visitors hadn't been anyone from the government because all his guns and porno tapes were still there. Weren't local teenagers either, for that matter. Stumpy relaxed a little, and drank another beer to help kill the toe pain that might set in. Preventive medicine and all that. Still no keys, dammit. Stumpy decided to call Earl and see if he could drive him into town. No answer there? He knew Earl wasn't out fishing because his boat motor was still in the shop. No telling when he would get that thing out of hock. Too hot to go hunting. Damn! Where was Earl! He was working the graveyard shift lately at the sawmill, but he ought to be awake by now. Something was wrong, definitely. Bad wrong. Earl should have been at home watching TV, because Bass Masters was coming on in a few minutes. Stumpy finally gave up and hot-wired the truck. He didn't go to the clinic though. That would wait. He went to find out what happened to Earl. -------- As Stumpy drove away from Earl's place, he tried to make some of the pieces fit together, but they just didn't. It's sort of like trying to put Earl's brains back into his skull. No...don't want to go there, Stumpy just barely caught that thought in time. He really didn't want to think about it. But the more he didn't, the more it kept replaying in his head. He mostly managed not to really get a good look at him when he left, sitting in that chair in his living room. Saying he was asking for it wouldn't do much good. And Earl couldn't help Stumpy. Certainly not now. Earl's place had been ransacked, probably by the same people that hit Stumpy's place. They had been gone for hours. They. Who in the fuck were They. All Stumpy knew was that whoever They were, They were after him. And They were probably making their way back his way right about now. Going to town was now out. They were probably there waiting. Maybe Old Doc Walters could help him, if he was still alive. Doc had been living out on his own for almost 6 years now, and had little to do with most folks. Even if he made house calls, he wouldn't be of much use to old Earl. Hee Haw. Sure, he had his reasons, but still...how could he even THINK... and a smile started to work it's way out between Stumpy's chin and nose, as he thought about a bunch of people in a fake cornfield telling bad jokes. He couldn't help but chuckle to himself. "Great show." Then quickly his thoughts went back to Earl, "Poor bastard." Again, on principle, Stumpy reloaded his shotgun. -------- Doc Walters was nowhere to be found. Looked like he had been in the house recently though. Doc's mess was, well, a mess. Still, it looked like a peaceful kind of mess that the crazy old Doc might leave, and not an angry, confused mess like They might make. Jugs of moonshine (for medicinal purposes, thought Stumpy) were lined up on the shelf in the kitchen. Stumpy took a swig and blinked about twice before biting his lip. Hollering out loud might not be a good idea right now. Then Stumpy, good intentions and all, did a bad thing. He took off his boot and poured some of the 'shine on his throbbing foot. When Stumpy came to, he had the worst hangover he could remember. Then he made his eyes focus, and realized he was on the floor in Doc's place, staring at the ceiling. He was about 8 feet from where he poured the 'shine on his foot. The swelling had left his foot all right, but it moved right to his head! Damn, it hurt BAD. Earl's had probably hurt worse for just a second though. The bump on his head was enough to convince Stumpy that he had hit the stove with it on his way down. Damn stove was, what? 10 feet away? Long way sideways to fall, thought Stumpy. Then he heard the dogs barking. Doc always kept a few hounds in a dog run out back, and they were baying something awful right now. In fact, they woke Stumpy out of his slumber. Stumpy walked, a little unsteady what with his boot being off, over to the window and looked out in the back yard where the hounds were. There he was, bigger'n Dallas. -------- For as long as he could remember, Beauregard had been with Doc Walters. He weighed 175 pounds, if he weighed an ounce. 175 pounds of muscle, drool, slobber, and fur. Beauregard was an odd mix of St. Bernard, Rottweiler, German Shepherd, and a few other things that were harder to identify. He was a pretty friendly dog, though 175 pounds of friendliness jumping up on you wasn't exactly most people's idea of a good time. Stumpy could see that Beau had just chased the other hounds away and was busy having himself a grand old time, finishing off his meal. The other dogs were eyeing Beau's catch greedily, but they'd wait their turn, as old Beau ran the yard. Stumpy walked out to the porch to get a better look at what old Beau had caught. There wasn't much left, and it was pretty hard to tell from just a few bones sticking out of a corpuscular lump of meat, and by this time the other hounds had been allowed to join in on the scraps. Looking closer, Stumpy saw something white between the flecks of red stained flesh. About the same time as Beau noticed Stumpy, Stumpy realized what the white fabric was. Doc Walter's lab coat. The one he always wore. By now it was almost a reflex. By the time Beau had leapt in the air towards Stumpy, he had already moved his shotgun into position. He had two times today already to warm up, so his aim was true. Unfortunately, when 175 pounds of mad dog is flying at you, even a 12 gauge shotgun isn't going to stop it in mid-air. --------------- Death is a strange thing indeed, thought Stumpy. In realty, Stumpy didn't think the word 'indeed'. Stumpy didn't even know that word, but still, it was a word Stumpy would have thought of at that moment if he had known it. So here he was, fighting off a dog that had taken a full charge of 00 Buckshot right in the neck at close range. Thanks to old man Newton, the dog just *had* to land on him. The dog was dying, no doubt about it. You can't stay alive long when all the blood vessels that connect your brain to the rest of your body have been chewed up by chunks of lead. Then again old Beau wasn't known for using his brain much, anyway. Stumpy rolled over and pushed the almost-dead dog away from him. Then he wiped the fresh dog blood, fur and meat off of his hands by rubbing them on the grass. If he hadn't plunged his hands in where the dog's neck used to be, old Beau would have chewed his face right off in the last 15 seconds of pseudo-life he had left. The other dogs, a classic mixture of blue ticks, curs, bloodhounds and blue heelers, looked at Stumpy as if he was a God. Sure, their whole social pecking order was messed up, but with Beauregard dead and gone, that was a good thing! Stumpy just sat there on the grass in the back yard, picked up his shotgun, and chambered another shell. Where was I? Oh yeah, death is a strange thing, because some things take it really badly, like this damn dog, and don't want to admit they're dead. Some things take it really well, and peacefully -- almost gratefully, like old Earl had. Stumpy reflected on that horrible scene. It already seemed like it was days ago, because Stumpy was trying so hard to forget the whole thing. Hee Haw ain't funny. MY ASS it ain't funny! What had They done to Earl to make him say that? Why did Earl want to die so damn bad? Stumpy thought back to when he and Earl started watching the show when they were just kids. Neither of them had ever laughed so hard in their whole lives. Just the thought of the guys sitting around the scarecrow in the cornfield, singing the same damn song every damn week, made Stumpy smile, even today: Wheeeere oh wheeere are yew tonight? Why did you leave me here all alone? I searched the world over and I thought I found true love, but yew meeeeet another and BOOM, I blew Earl's head open, right there in his own living room, with Bass Masters on the TV. Stumpy didn't care how They did what they did to Earl, he just wanted to know WHY they did it. Why not just kill Earl? Why did They torture him like that and leave him alive? Why couldn't Earl just blow his own damn head open? Hell's bells, he had more guns than half the damn town -- he could take out half the damn town if he wanted to. Wait a damn minute! Stumpy slid the pump on his Remington 870 Wingmaster back and peeked in -- sure enough, he had pumped his last round of buckshot into old Beau. He needed a weapon, and he needed it fast! He'd have to figure out why Beau ate Doc Walters later. He finally figured out why They hadn't killed Earl... They were after HIM. Had to be. He had to get some more ammo -- quick! The drive back to Earl's place took no time at all, and nothing had changed when Stumpy peeked in the window. They had obviously not been back. The sight of Earl, still sitting in the chair, wasn't so horrible any more, he even looked peaceful in a strange kind of way. Stumpy opened Earl's gun case -- the most expensive thing he owned, outside of the arsenal he kept IN the gun case. Stumpy just helped himself to everything he felt like carrying. Two pistols went right in the overalls pockets, a Browning .270 deer rifle over the shoulder, a Winchester shotgun, and an AR-15 over the other shoulder. Night-vision binoculars around the neck, and a tape called "Bikini Girls and Guns" in his back pocket. That one was Stumpy's anyway -- Earl never gave it back. Stumpy decided to leave the shotgun, since he already had his trusty Remington. He loaded up on shotgun shells instead, and an extra bandolier of ammo for the AR-15. After dumping all this in the truck, Stumpy had a bright idea. What if They came back, and Earl wasn't there? Maybe that would throw them. Maybe They would think he and Earl were looking for THEM! Stumpy wrapped Earl's head with a burlap sack to keep all the extra pieces from falling out and making a mess. He tied the burlap sack on with hay rope, shouldered Earl, and tossed him in the back of the truck. Oh yeah, there was blood to clean up. Can't pull off a good trick like this with blood everywhere, now can you? Stumpy grabbed some paper towels, Bon Ami and a bowl of water from the kitchen and got to work. Damn -- there were bits of brain ever-damn-where. Now he realized how hard it musta been for his uncle to clean out that old Continental convertible in Dallas back in '63. 20 minutes later, the place looked good enough. Make it too clean and They might get suspicious. Earl got in the truck again, checked over all the guns and headed out. -------- In retrospect, Stumpy probably couldn't tell exactly when Earl's head started talking. Or talking back rather. Stumpy had been driving around the back roads for the better part of three hours, occasionally making quick stops. At this point he was pretty cautious. He'd park the truck far enough away so that he could get closer on foot in order to see if They were already there. If so, he'd spot Them long before they'd see him and be able to get out safely. For two hours, he had seen nothing more than deserted shacks, empty garages, and occasional scattered debris indicating someone had been there recently. Nevertheless, it was wearing on him. Pretty early on he started talking to Earl. Things he might've said to himself, he'd address to Earl. "Uh oh. I think we had best be careful." "Might be wise to pull off over here, and go the rest of the way on foot, eh Earl?" "Ain't it over by Fouler's Pond where we left us a stash of supplies when we's out deer hunting?" In boredom, Stumpy started to fill in Earl's lines too. "Ain't nobody there neither." "Who'd you expect, Minnie Pearl?" "Nothing there." "You look for tire tracks?" "As a matter of fact, I DID. Same as before. I ain't as dumb as I look." "You couldn't possibly be." "Well, I look a right bit better than YOU! hawhawhaww" Anything to break the monotony. For as far as he could tell, the area seemed to be deserted. No one was around. He did often see tire tracks in the dirt and mud leading up to the rundown places that had been ransacked. But not much else. As time wore on, the dialogue with Earl started to change. It became more of a conversation. He even began making suggestions as to where to look. Not surprisingly, his ideas were no better than Stumpy's. But there was a change. Stumpy stopped thinking about what Earl would say, and just let him say whatever occurred to him. And slowly, Earl's voice even started to sound more like Earl's, at least to Stumpy's ears. "Bedford's Glen." "What was that, Earl?" "Bedford's Glen. You ain't looked there." "That's awfully close to town." "And what's the sense in that? You ain't seen a flea all day. Town's probably as empty as everything else. And if it ain't, they'd all be holed up somewheres like Sam's store, or the Double Nickel or even the Church. They WON'T be in the Glen." "If no one's there, then why should we look there." "They might be there. I...I remember Them saying something about it." Stumpy was too tired to be bothered by it all. He pulled off the road a quarter mile away from Bedford's Glen, hiding the truck behind some bushes. He took the long way around through the forest and took a peek at the glen beyond the clearing. He could make out the fresh impressions of tire tracks on the grass, the same as he had seen elsewhere. And at the end of the tracks, he saw 6 black limousines parked by the edge of the woods. Before he could panic, he heard Earl's voice whisper, "Yep, that's the cars...Their cars. Same ones that pulled up to my driveway. But no one's in them now, so I wouldn't worry about it. Yet." -------- Stumpy just wanted to shoot every damn one of Them. Too bad they were nowhere to be found, and it was getting dark. Then he finally saw one. It was walking back to the group of limos from the woods on the hill on the far side of the glen. He was just able to see it in the falling light. Then Stumpy had a bright idea. He stopped congratulating himself for having a bright idea because he was afraid he'd forget the bright idea that had made him so proud in the first place. If this one was alone he could pick it off with one of the rifles, and that would be one less bad guy to worry about. The night-vision binoculars would do the trick. They worked off of the heat given off by the target. Stumpy knew how the goggles worked because he and Earl had used 'em a lot for coon hunting at night. Nothing could be easier -- look for a coon-shaped green blob in the binoculars, shoot it, go pick it up. Stumpy was pretty good at dropping the binoculars and shooting where he was just looking. He could drop a sackful of coons with his shotgun and one box of shells on a good night. He looked at the woods through the night-vision binoculars to see if he could spot any more of them. Nothing -- no bright green Them-shaped blobs showed up. So anyway, Stumpy saw just the one, and he was almost back to the limos now. Since there weren't any more in the woods, he could just pick this one off and hit the road before any of Them came to find out what was doing the shooting. Stumpy took one last look through the binoculars -- nothing in the woods -- and now a quick glance at ... at what the FUCK?!? Stumpy dropped the binoculars and saw the one walking back to the limos. He kept his eyes on him, and brought the binoculars back up. NOTHING. The guy was right there in the wide open, and he DIDN'T show up any better in the night-vision binoculars! They weren't giving off any heat at all! All Stumpy could do was sit tight. Finally, he saw several more of them coming out of the woods to join the first one. They gathered in a group and touched their foreheads together. Stumpy could have shot them all in the fading light, but he wasn't sure if this was all of them. They piled into the limos and drove off. Stumpy wanted to follow them, but they would be long gone down the road by the time he limped back to the truck. Stumpy finally made up his mind and steeled his nerves. He snuck into the woods in the general direction they came from, trying to find out what they had been doing in there. He kept his shotgun in his hands in case he ran into one of those cold bastards on the way, plus he had the handguns in his pockets, and one of the rifles over his shoulder, so he felt like he was ready to handle most anything. Well, almost anything. He hadn't gone more than 50 yards before he heard something. It was a quiet humming sound, kinda like the electric hum that came from the hydroelectric plant way down at Miller's Falls. This one was different though, it was more of a high-pitched whine. Stumpy walked just a little further, and then he saw it. Looked like something he might see on The X-Files, except it wasn't, it was right here! It was in a clearing in the woods that someone had recently cut. It was a tower about 2 or 3 feet in diameter, 10 feet high, surrounded by a chain-link fence. On top was a globe about 6 feet around. The globe was glowing with a pale green glow. It wasn't a light in the globe though, it flickered and danced a little. Each time it did, the sound of the hum would change. That's about all Stumpy could make out in the pale moonlight. That and the Doberman coming right at him. Stumpy acted on instinct alone and shot the dog when he got 15 feet from him. This thing was little compared to Beauregard, and the shotgun nearly took his little hatched-shaped head right off at that distance. Unlike old Beau, this thing seemed all to happy to die in a heap right in front of Stumpy. Stumpy stopped, lost in thought, and cycled another round into his trusty old pump gun. He grabbed the dead dog by the hind legs, swung him around to build up momentum, and gave a mighty heave. He managed to get the carcass over the fence and almost to the globe on its way to the ground inside the fence. It never made it to the ground though. While the carcass was on the way over the fence, the globe brightened slightly, then a bright green flash jumped off the globe and a tremendous arc of energy smacked the carcass with a wallop. It acted like electricity, but it didn't LOOK like electricity. It was GREEN. Anyway, the carcass took this abuse for a fraction of a second on its way down to the ground inside the fence. About 4 feet off the ground it exploded with a mighty, wet, hollow, crackling THUMP. If it hadn't been for the fence, a lot of the dog bits would have smacked into Stumpy, who fell down anyway out of sheer fright. Stumpy stared at the dog bits that were stuck to the fence. Most of them were burning, most of them were unrecognizable, all of them were smaller than a crookneck squash. In the orange glow of the little flames, Stumpy thought he could recognize some of the parts, but he tried not to. Stumpy figured that climbing the fence was not a bright idea. Well whatever it was and whatever it was FOR, this thing didn't belong here -- that much was for sure. Stumpy walked back out of the clearing, leveled his shotgun and popped a round right at the globe. Nothing happened. Stumpy figured that was because the shotgun pellets were really good at grinding up dogs, but really shitty at grinding up high-powered hyperalloy orbs that come from outer space. Well, he would have thought that if he knew what hyperalloys were, and even what an orb was, but he got pretty close to that thought, which is impressive given his limited vocabulary. Stumpy smiled and unshouldered the AR-15 rifle. Then he clicked off the safety and leveled the crosshairs in the scope right on the globe and squeezed the trigger. The sound of the rifle drowned out any sound from the globe, and when his ears stopped ringing, Stumpy noticed that the sound was different. He walked up and looked at the globe. In the dying flames from the dog meat, there was a big dent where he shot, but no bullet hole. The humming was getting more varied in pitch with each passing moment, so Stumpy walked halfway back to the edge of the clearing and leveled three more shots right at the globe in different spots. When he realized how close he still was to the orb, Stumpy decided to get the hell out of there before something blew, so he turned and ran back toward the pitch black forest toward Bedford's Glen. -------- His run lasted all of 10 yards. As he was running, he could see the trees at the edge of the woods lit up by bright, sickly green flashes of lightning. At first, it was just one or two flashes. No thunder. Then there were a few more. Then about 5 in a row. And then it quickly built up to an almost non-stop stroboscopic light show. He was still too far from the nearest tree. It was at most a second after that that Stumpy felt it. He assumed he must have been struck by that lightning. At least, that was what he assumed when he came to. It took several minutes of sitting around and staring blankly before he actually remembered all that had been going on, and how scared he had been. His memories came back at first as a series of still images and feelings associated with them. He remembered running, afraid the whole mess was going to blow. He remembered the flashes of lightning, and in the flashes, being able to make out the trees in the distance, and how far he still had yet to run. He remembered seeing the grass, arcing away from him, all dead. He was standing in the middle of a big crop circle. Well, not the middle; that big green mess was the center. But he could swear that the grass wasn't brown and dry just minutes earlier. Then he remembered the feeling. Mercifully, it only lasted for a moment. But it was like a fire going through all his nerves, a red-hot poker with one end shoved up his ass and the other end attached to a car battery (the circuit was completed by the other end of the jumper cable's alligator clip clamped on to his dick). All his muscles seized up at once, and he had the sensation of flying through the air (another still picture, looking at Bedford's Glen from 20 feet up). All in all, it was a close second to Old Doc Walter's shine. Though, other than the big burned hole in the back of his shirt, he felt a lot better when he woke up than after sampling Doc's private stock. Stumpy looked around a little. It must have been dark for hours now. Somehow, he was about 100 feet into the woods. He still heard a hum in the distance, but it sounded different, like a different pitch. It might have even been coming from a different location. He got to his feet and discovered he was a worse for the wear. He was incredibly unsteady on his legs, as if they were a bunch of biscuits, soaked in hog gravy. Worse, he discovered that his hands had the shakes something fierce. He could barely hold onto the saplings for support without rattling all the leaves off of them. Nevertheless, he was able to move. He wasn't sure how long he had been out cold, but he realized he had been in the same place FAR too long, and whatever the hell happened back there MUST have attracted some attention. And it'd be mighty foolish to go back there now to find out. He stumbled around the forest unsteadily for several minutes, trying to put as much distance as he could between himself and Them. Among other things that were failing him, he noticed his sense of smell seemed to be working only intermittently. He noticed this because at times he'd catch a whiff of something incredibly foul and putrid and then nothing. Not just it was gone, but he couldn't smell anything. Then a half minute later, his nose would be working again, only the smell was even stronger and nastier. It was during one of the no-smell periods that he was looking around trying to see if he was being followed, when he turned to look forward and collided directly into one of Them. Stumpy dropped his shotgun and fell backwards, flat on his ass, looking up at the shadowy figure staring down at him. At first he couldn't make out anything other than the long trenchcoat and pale, colorless skin obscured by a hat, as he fumbled pathetically for a weapon, unable to get a pistol out of his pocket. It was then that his nose started working again, and he knew what the source of the smell was. On one hand, he was relieved to know he wasn't in immediate danger. Whoever They were, this one posed little threat to anyone now. On the other hand, it was too late to block out the smell, and waves of nausea rolled over him (like Germany rolled over Poland). Worse, he realized that the sticky mud that he was sitting in had originated from the figure. On the other hand, he could make out a few more details about the figure. He did a quick "on the other hand count" and realized that was three hands, but indeed there appeared to be a third arm protruding from the figure's chest. After another few moments, Stumpy realized that it was no arm, but the branch of a tree, upon which the figure was impaled, probably for quite some time, and probably the reason for the putrid smell. Stumpy added his contribution to the puddle of wet mud at the base of the figure. ----------------------------------- After his guts were empty, Stumpy felt a little better. Looking at the dead ... whatever ... Stumpy couldn't quite figure out how it had died. Other than having a snapped-off tree branch shoved through its sternum, that is. Problem was, the blast couldn't have knocked him back that hard. If the blast had been that powerful, it would have knocked down all the trees too, and they were still standing. Stumpy couldn't figure that any one of Them was stupid enough to do itself in, and if it was, it ought to still be smart enough to figure out a better way to do it. Hanging oneself up on a tree limb didn't strike Stumpy as the best way for a body to do themselves in. Oh well, dead or not, Stumpy figured it ought to have a pretty surprised look on its face, so he picked up his shotgun and with the end of the barrel he nudged the brim of its hat up so he could get a good look. Stumpy wished he hadn't done that. Oh, how he WISHED he could replay the last 30 seconds and do something different, hell *anything* different. He'd rather piss all over himself than see that face, and he damn near did that too. Stumpy squeezed his eyes shut really tight, and opened them again. Nothing had changed. Same mess on the ground, same puke, same corpse on the same tree, same branch, same face. Same damned face. Stumpy ran as fast as he could, hurt toe be damned. The little nap he had taken after the explosion left him feeling a little rested, maybe rested enough to get a little scared. Stumpy didn't stop running until he got to the truck. He was winded, but oh-so-glad to be back there. He looked in the bed of the truck. Earl was still there, right where he had left him. He untied the burlap bag and took it off his head. Before he could react, he heard the sound of fast, smooth-running cars coming down the blacktop road. The engines sounded too smooth-running to be anyone that Stumpy knew, so he figured it was the limos. Stumpy figured they were about half a mile away, closing in fast. -------- The direct confrontation stood almost no chance in hell of working. The only hope to get away from them would be to outsmart them. Unfortunately, Stumpy realized that one had to be smart in order to outsmart someone. Therefore, he chose the direct confrontation. "Sorry, Earl," he said has he yanked back hard on the burlap sack still under Earl's head. Parts of his head fell of and slid around in the bed of the truck. Stumpy needed to get at some of the more serious hardware. He figured the limos would be bulletproof, and even if they weren't, he didn't want to be close enough to see them, as that meant they'd see him. And if the globe was any indication, they probably had enough hardware to make his arsenal look like a toy collection. And if the condition of the globe mattered to them, he figured they'd be plenty pissed. The road was swerving all around, which was fine with Stumpy, as it meant they wouldn't see him, nor have a clear shot at him until they were practically riding up his tailpipe. And from the sound of things, it wouldn't be very long till that happened. Stumpy got his hands on the wooden box full of dynamite and chucked it into the front seat with the rest of the arsenal. Stumpy was already doing about 40, rattling like hell down the dirt road, before he had his plan figured out. He grabbed three sticks and twisted the fuses together. He only needed them to light at the same time, not stay together, so accuracy wasn't his biggest concern. He did the "math" to figure out how much fuse they'd need. This consisted of guessing how far behind him the limos were, how fast the fuse burned, how much fuse would need to be left when he jettisoned them, and how much roll they'd have from the speed of the car. In short, he hadn't a fucking clue where to begin, so instead, he grabbed two more sticks "just to make sure." Stumpy navigated the curves of the road, driving with one hand on the wheel, his trusty zippo lighter in the other hand, and 5 sticks of TNT between his legs. Even Stumpy could see where that was headed. He decided to roll down the window BEFORE he lit the fuses. After 10 seconds of vigorous cranking, he remembered that there WAS no window on the driver's side. (It involved an incident with Earl, his dog, his common-law wife Betsy-Sue, and Jack...Daniels, that is. It left Stumpy with a headache for 2 days, and Earl with no window, the dog with no fur, Jack with no bottle, and Betsy-Sue, well, that's another story, but Stumpy and Earl never gave her any back-talk again after that.) He figured this had better work the first time, because They might be smart enough to avoid this trick if They had a second chance. Moore's Bridge creaked out its usual song as the truck sailed across its wooden boards. Stumpy heard that same song 10 seconds later, repeated several times. They were closing in fast. It was time. With a flick of his trusty zippo, Stumpy had 5 fuses burning down towards his privates. As fast as he could, he dumped them all out of the window and picked up the pace even more. About eight seconds later, he heard the first explosion, followed by another, followed by the sound of twisting steel, followed by more explosions. It got quiet after that, and he slowed the truck down to a crawl, so he could hear if anyone else was headed towards him. After an interminable twenty minutes, marked only by his racing heart, Stumpy decided it was time to go back and see what happened. He had run long enough. ------------------ Stumpy thought ahead and decided to back down the road, in case he needed to get out of there in a hurry. Stumpy thought ahead a little further and made sure his shotgun had a shell chambered, then made sure there was a rifle within reach. As he backed down the road, he thought about what he would do if any of Them were still alive. He answered his question by sticking the shotgun out the window and aiming it back behind him as he drove. Stumpy was rarely prepared for anything that life confronted him with, and this was certainly no exception. Stumpy couldn't believe the destruction that 5 little sticks of dynamite could cause. Of course, Stumpy was all-too-familiar with the destructive power of dynamite. Stumpy always shivered in horror when he thought back to the time he and Earl took his brand-new jeep Cherokee out to go duck hunting on Myers lake when it froze over a few years back. What a trip THAT was. Forget the jeep, that was nothing but 5 years of payments on something sitting at the bottom of a lake. This old beat-to-shit-and-back truck that he replaced it with had more appeal anyway, since it ran and was a lot cheaper (and all he could afford now). Stumpy was more upset about his prize retriever. No, Stumpy could not believe how those nice limos could be turned into something not even fitting for Squeaky's junk yard, all in a few seconds. There were 5 twisted heaps of wreckage. Stumpy couldn't believe his good luck; each stick took out a limo. He was really on his game today. Stumpy couldn't get too close to the wrecks because each one was on fire, but there was no movement at all in or around the wrecks. Just to be safe, and to have a little fun, Stumpy dumped a stick in each pile of wreckage, one by one. Stumpy stood well clear as each heap of burning metal was reduced to a scattered mess by the explosion. Satisfied that every damn one of Them had been killed, Stumpy got back in the truck and headed into town to tell everybody he could find that they were safe now, thanks to him. Stumpy had a LOT of explaining to do. Earl was in the back of the truck, dead. Real dead. An ugly kind of dead. The kind of dead you never want to tell someone's mama about. The kind of dead it would take someone like Doc Walters a long time to figure out. Then he would have to explain about Doc Walters. And the thing in the clearing near Bedford's Glen. Hell, Stumpy had too much to think about. If he didn't explain this really carefully, someone like Constable Lawson would think that HE did it all! Forget about motive -- nobody really thought Stumpy needed a reason to start shooting up everything in sight. This didn't look good. Didn't look good at all! Stumpy pulled over to the side of the road to think this through. He figured the only real evidence that it was someone else that was up to no good was the thing he blew up in the clearing. Forget about the body in the woods. Stumpy still couldn't get that image out of his head. That thing he blew all to hell was the only thing that could clear his name now. To make it look a little better, Stumpy moved Earl out of the bed of the truck, and sat him upright, looking respectful, in the passenger seat of the truck. Stumpy never saw the sixth limo, front end only slightly smashed, coming down the curvy dirt road behind him. ------------------ Stumpy turned and look towards the passenger seat, to tell the plan to Earl's head. At that point, the sixth limo lurched forward. In less than a second it closed the quarter mile distance between them, passed Stumpy's truck, and now was slowing down to pull along side the truck. Stumpy looked up and saw the limo, still smoking, with its back end smashed to hell as bad as its front, pulling back towards him. He turned and looked at the limo, and before he could react, he was staring at one of Them, silhouetted behind the tinted, bullet- proof glass. Stumpy began to crank furiously, trying to roll up the window. Before the image of Betsy-Sue, laughing her ass off, could form in his mind to remind him that THIS time there was no window to open or shut, the creature in the car reached through the opening in the car and grabbed him by the neck. Stumpy wasn't sure what to think. He didn't scare easily. He wasn't smart enough. And the main thing that registered in his mind was that this thing had just grabbed him by the throat. He didn't really consider the fact that its touch was cold, or rather, not warm. Nor did he think about the fact that it had been sitting in the passenger seat of the limo when it grabbed him. Actually, it still WAS sitting in the limo. Yet it easily could reach him in his car. And the final thing was that while his truck had no window, the limo did, and its window was still rolled up. With a gurlgling, throaty hiss, it yanked him out of the truck. Actually, it yanked him out of his mind. Because he landed, on his knees, still in its grasp, but he was nowhere near Saddleneck Curve, where he had been. He was by Bedford's Glen, or at least what remained of it. The lanky figure in the black coat still had a grip on his throat, and twisted him to look in the direction of where the green ball had been. Nothing remained except for scorched earth. "Ka-staaa-fa-taaa-kk!" the thing hissed at him. Stumpy wasn't bright, but he knew that he had just been insulted, in some language. The thing then did another 180 with Stumpy over its head, slamming Stumpy into the ground. Except now, as he looked up, he was at the feet of the other Them, impaled on the tree. He didn't want to even think what he was lying in now. "Rrrrrr...fffffkkkk... aaaahht PO!" it spat at him. All he could think was, "So's your mama." Had any of Them possessed any telepathy, they would have been able to appreciate that as the Best Comeback Line of Stumpy's entire life. Sadly, no one had access to his mind, and he didn't know their language to know how right he had been. But that's a bit off topic. It lifted him up, spun him around and the world spun with him. They were outside of Earl's cabin. It leaned back, but before it could throw him inside, a voice, a very human voice, said "No!" The one-of-Them-holding-his-throat had already started to fling Stumpy, but then backed off on the follow through. Stumpy's arms and legs went out flailing, it felt like he just hit a brick wall. It pulled him back and he made a dull "thud" sound as he hit the side of his truck. He was too weak to even make an "oof" sound; he felt like a rag doll. "Enough." the voice said. The thing let out a sound like a tea kettle slowly boiling and hissing. Once more he flew through the air, but this time, at the end of the arc, it let go, and Stumpy dropped to the ground next to the parked limousine. His overturned truck was 100 feet away in a ditch. The door of the limo opened, and a normal-looking man stepped out from the back. Stumpy could see there was another one of Them in the back, as well as one of Them driving. The man wore a dark gray suit with light black stripes going through it, had nice shoes, was slightly heavy-set, and wore sunglasses. His dark hair was short and neat. Without hesitation, the man walked over to Stumpy, looked down and said, "So...I think it's high time that we talked. Don't you?" ------- Stumpy had some ideas about talking all right. Talk to the barrel, Stumpy thought. He reached in his pocket, but before he could even get the pistol pointed in the city slicker's general direction, he yelled "NOOOO!". All of a sudden the black clad one of Them from HELL reached out from behind the city slicker and slapped the gun so hard it flew right out of Stumpy's hand. It landed about a hundred yards away. Hurt like hell, that did. Stumpy wasn't sure how It moved so fast. Maybe it just LOOKED like it was moving fast to Stumpy. Stumpy was kinda beat up at this point, and not feeling his best. He looked at his hand. All the fingers were still there, but It had slapped the gun so hard it left a pistol-shaped impression on Stumpy's palm. Yep, it had slapped the gun THAT fast. It was already standing back beside the city slicker, watching silently, by the time Stumpy looked back up from his still-throbbing palm. The city slicker stuck his face right in Stumpy's still-groggy face. "Heeeeey there Stumpy. Look, after the trouble you've caused me, I don't much give half a damn what you think, so I'm just gonna lay it right out for ya. Got it? Good" The city slicker adjusted his tie, and continued. "I came here to collect a few of you hillbillies for some, uh, customers of mine. Had to use Earl over there as bait, but you STILL got away. I suuuure had fun huntin' you down boy." Stumpy finally realized he had seen this guy before. He just couldn't remember where. Stumpy just stared at that ugly-assed face sitting on the city-slicker suit as it went on to explain that he sniffed out the choice hillbillies for Them, and they paid him well for it. They could only use the dumbest folks though. If you were too smart they couldn't use you. That's when the Suit laughed. The laugh tipped him off. Stumpy was starting to remember... "Yeah, old Earl over there was a good puppet for me and Them to use, but you shooting him in the head like that REALLY made the hunt interesting. Why'd you do that? How'd you know something was wrong with Earl? Huh?" Stumpy had it. Sam Fletcher. Salesman Sam. The most respected used car dealer in the whole tri-county area. He always ended his commercials with a big laugh and his tag line: "If you find a better deal, I'll eat muh brother's hat!". Stumpy thought those commercials were REALLY funny 'cause everybody knew Sam didn't have a damn brother! Stumpy was starting to feel better. His head was clearing up after the carnival-style ass-whupping that that Them -- that strongman on speed -- had just given him. "Well, Stumpy, how'd you get enough smarts to figure out you needed to kill him? We nearly had you, an' then Earl croaks out something on his own, something about Hee Haw not bein' funny, and 20 seconds later you blew his damn head to smithereens. What's up with that?" For the first time in a long time, Stumpy spoke. He got up and started walking back to what was left of the truck first. Sam followed him. Sam really wanted to know where he and Them had messed up. Must have been a BAD mistake for somebody like Stumpy to figure it out, and Sam wanted to make sure he didn't make that mistake again next time he went hillbilly-hunting. Stumpy didn't even have to look back. The way Sam was chattering on, Stumpy knew Sam was following him, and that It was NOT. That was all that mattered now. That and the fact that this low-life in a faggy suit was the reason Earl was dead. Stumpy kept walking, and in a few sentences managed to say that when they were little kids, he and Earl used to watch Hee Haw and laugh till they couldn't even breathe any more, and then Earl said that if he EVER thought Hee Haw wasn't funny, he'd rather be dead. That was the beginning of their life-long pact. They even cut their thumbs and took an indian-style blood oath, so it was pretty serious. By now Stumpy was standing beside Earl. He had been thrown clear of the truck when it flipped over. Everything in the back of the truck had been dumped out, and was scattered around Earl. Stumpy was carelessly sifting through the stuff on the ground close to Earl. Sam was looking down at Earl and over at the wreck and said it was a shame. He paused a moment and then smiled and said he could make Stumpy a sweet deal on a beauty of a new truck. He grabbed Stumpy's arm and led him over to a row of trucks, all lined up next to each other, and each with a gaudy poster in the windshield with the price and some word or phrase in a splash like "SUPER!", "A STEAL!", "SOULLESS!", "BARGAIN!", "NAME IT", "TOO GOOD TOO [sic] PASS UP", "SPEEDY!", "BURNT DOG!", "YOURS FOR ONLY", and "WHAT A DEAL!". Sam pointed out some of the finer points of some of these trucks. Every time Sam said the word "deal" (which seemed to be way too often) streamers and balloons would drop down. It was kind of neat at first, just like it was on TV, but it did get to be a bit distracting, since a typical sentence of Sam's would be, "Now son, I can make you a deal on a car that'd be the deal of a century because I want to deal!" As they walked towards the next row of trucks, Sam pointed down the row and said proudly, "factory certified pre-owned vehicles," then paused and looked around before confiding to Stumpy, "just between you and me, boy, that means 'used,'" his face then brightened again, "but only in the sense that you ain't paying the price them there city folks that ain't got the same kind of sense that you and I got." Next to each truck there were scantily clad women in high heels highlighting the features of the vehicles, such as the gun rack and bumper big enough to hold the best 10-point buck. Stumpy paused to admire the rack on the car, as well as the one on the woman. Sam stopped and looked earnestly into Stumpy's eyes. He grabbed Stumpy's arm in brotherly friendship and say, "Now boy, I know you've been through a lot lately. That's why I want to make it up to you. I want to sell you a truck. And I want to give you the best price you can find." Again, Sam paused, as if he were deciding between two choices that weighed heavily on his soul: business and friendship. But in the end, his smiling face showed that, no matter how much the price might hurt, no matter how much he'd be passing up with that couple that had been by earlier that expressed an interest in that very same truck, there was no choice: he just plain simple had to deal. "5995!!!!" As he said it, the number appeared in neon lights flashing in three different places: over the truck, behind Sam, and behind Stumpy. More streamers and balloons fell down, horns blared, the women all clapped their hands gleefully, and a dwarf walked by throwing confetti at them all. "Ain't no one gonna beat that price boy. And if they do," he paused, and extended his arm out and caught an object thrown at him without even taking his eyes off Stumpy, "I'll eat my brother's hat!" Sure enough, old smiling Sam was holding his brother's hat in his hand. Stumpy was impressed, especially since it was completely unclear where that hat came from. Stumpy decided to give it a try himself. "I don't want to see you eat your brother's hat," Stumpy said suavely. He extended his arm out in the same way as Salesman Sam, and caught an object thrown to him. "I'd rather see you eat my lead." The object was his shotgun, it was pointing right at Sam, and Stumpy used it. Sam crumpled like a wet newspaper, and none of Them ever got either a verbal or mental command from him. Stumpy didn't much care if They killed him or not at this point. He was just glad he got the drop on Sam and avenged Earl's death. The one whose bootprints Stumpy still carried on his ass ignored what Stumpy did, but the other two of Them sure didn't. They started the last of the limos, turned around and headed straight for Stumpy. He was ready for them. As the limo approached, Stumpy lit the fuse on another stick of dynamite from the pile lying by his feet and gave a mighty heave. ------- The one of Them that had opened a can of woop-ass on Stumpy sprung to life. His arm reached out faster than Stumpy could follow and caught the stick of dynamite in mid air. It took two steps back and was somehow now 50 feet away from Stumpy. After examining the stick for a moment, it brought it close to its chest, almost cradling it like a child. A moment later there was the explosion. Stumpy was a little disappointed it missed the mark, but didn't mind getting the final laugh on the thing that got the drop on him. Except the last laugh wasn't Stumpy's. It was more like a shrill metal against metal laugh. Stumpy was struck dumb, well, more than usual, for as the dust from the explosion cleared, there was a slight shimmering in the dust, a familiar bright green shimmer. And beneath the shimmer It was still there, apparently completely unaffected by the blast, laughing, making its unearthly, shrill noise. It was at this moment that he heard another shrill metal on metal sound. The sound of a V-8 engine red-lining. To his right, he saw the limo rapidly accelerating straight towards him. Before he could move, the one of Them that should have been blown up took three steps and was standing next to Stumpy. It reached across and put a hand on his shoulder, and the world spun. It resettled and he realized he was now nearly 15 inches to the left of where he was. The thing had merely readjusted him so he was directly lined up with the hood ornament of the limo, which was now 30 feet away and accelerating through 45mph. Had Stumpy been a thinker, there would have been no time to think. As it was, he just stared at the grille of the car as it plowed right into him. Thinking would have only made it worse. The dynamite-proof thing had done quite the job of positioning. The initial contact was with the bumper and Stumpy's knees, shattering his knees and pitching him forward over the grille of the car. The hood ornament was the next major contact point, piercing into his chest, just below the rib cage by the duodenum. As he pitched forward, it gouged out a large chunk of his lower torso, leaving a spray of blood and intestines in its wake. The next contact was with the bullet-proof glass of the windshield. Although "fortunate" is not a word usually used in this context, Stumpy was fortunate enough in that before there could be any sense of pain that could register with his brain, there was the impact of the windshield with his skull, and subsequently, his brain against his now broken skull, ending any chance of him ever really having to experience the last moments of this trauma. He made a dull "thud" sound as he hit the side of his truck. He was too weak to even make an "oof" sound; he felt like a rag doll. If he was a thinking man, after the limo-pounding he had just received, Stumpy would have been amazed at being conscious at this point. Stumpy looked up into the face of the man in the dark suit who had just emerged from the limo -- again? -- staring down at him. It was ... ...who the hell was he? It was someone he'd never seen before. And the limo, it was parked where it had been, and Stumpy was no worse for the wear -- at least until he tried to move. The ass-whipping he had received from that thing in the black coat was real. Had Sam even been here? Stumpy KNEW he didn't dream up Sam, and he KNEW he didn't fantasize Sam, the shotgun and the limo tearing him open. No way would Stumpy fantasize getting ripped open and left to die by a limo like that. But here he was, right back beside his busted-assed truck, in one bruised piece, looking at some city-slicker in a suit and dark sunglasses. The stranger spoke. "You've been on the run for quite a while now. I'd expect you'd be a bit tired by now. You've been leading Them on quite the chase, you know. You wound up throwing a little complication into their plans. Only a little one though. Not much trouble for Them, really. But it's the little things that bother Them." Why the hell had Stumpy thought of Sam? This guy looked nothing like Sam. He certainly did like the sound of his own voice. But Stumpy didn't mind. The longer this guy talked, the longer Stumpy would have a chance to do something, like shoot him. If he only had a gun. The stranger continued, uninterrupted. "It's the little things that bother Them. Hmmm. You look a little glaze-eyed there, boy. Guess your brains are still rattled from the special welcome you got from this one here." He pointed his thumb towards the dark clad ass-whupping-delivering figure that was lurking over him. Stumpy looked up into its shadowed face. It was at then that Stumpy understood. While the motions had been odd and impossibly fast, there was nothing mechanical about it. The body was wrong, the color was way off, the inhuman death scowl was out of place, but it made sense. Somehow he knew he was staring up into the face of a very dead Sam Fletcher. Stumpy's blood ran cold and his eyes bulged in shock. The stranger had been watching, waiting for this. He spoke again. "Ah. Finally. I see you DO recognize Sam. I figured most everyone in the county would recognize his face. Well, maybe not the way it is now. But you're finally getting it. That's why I wanted him here with me now. Don't know if you know Ray or Squeaky," as he pointed towards the other two standing by the limo, "but you get the idea. Or do you? They use the bodies of the dead, or rather the dying. It lets Them deal with the things in our world in our terms. Much easier than trying to fit in, in their natural form. Or at least that's what I hear. That's what they need the stabilizer spheres for. You know, the big glowing green balls. That's was another thing that kind of bothered Them. Remember, it's the little things that bother Them. When you took out that sphere, they lost a almost a dozen clutches." Stumpy could at least take some solace that he had taken a number of Them down, even if it was unwittingly. Most things got accomplished with him that way. He continued, "They tracked your footprints. I was surprised you hadn't figured more out when you came across your old girlfriend there, out in the woods." The stranger's words hit Stumpy harder than that Sam-Thing had ever done. The memory raced back to him with a vengeance. He was there, in the forest, looking at the impaled figure of one of Them. He looked up into its face, a pale mockery of a human form, twisted with an inhuman grimace that tore the lips at the edges. But it was unmistakable, even without any hair and its pale color. The face was that of Betsy-Sue. The thought of it still made his stomach queasy. The only thing that eased it was the thought of killing that bastard standing next to Stumpy now, still talking to him. "Without the stabilizer, they don't last in a host all that long. They were particularly irked when you iced Earl. Just HOW did he tell you to shoot him in the head? Shoulda been no damn way for him to get those words out, but he told you to anyway. So then you shot him! Without a brain, there's nowhere for them to reside, and until they complete the migration, they're still rather vulnerable there. Earl, you see, was slated to serve as quarters for the ... well ... I don't know what you'd call it ... brigade leader? One-star general? Region coordinator? Well, the upshot is that the stabilizer spheres link the body to Them. They can't just grab any old body, and it takes some time before they can get another one ready. It delayed their plans, and he won't be able to show up for at least a few days, has to relay his commands remotely. Like I said, it wasn't a big setback for them." "But anyway, they typically don't last all that long anyway. As hard as it was on you having old Sam here kick your ass from here to Peoria, it took a lot more out of old Sammy. I mean, lets face it, normally a body's not supposed to move that way, that fast, that hard. And even though the Spheres provides the, uh, 'ooomph' for them to Gate, the rigor mortis and decay aren't exactly helped by that there ooomph, if you know what I mean. Put simply, They wear out these bodies quickly. As a matter of fact, Sammy's about due for a new one. So, we might as well get it over with now." He turned back to Stumpy and said, in an almost sympathetic way, "Remember, boy, it's the little things that bother them." The Sam-Thing grabbed him by the torso, hard enough so that it felt like its fingers were digging an inch into his skin, and hoisted Stumpy into the air. Stumpy started to realize that he was about to die, but there was nothing he could do about it now. The world went gray and everything sounded muffled. It quickly progressed to black and silent. But for an instant, Stumpy almost...understood. He saw 5 Stabilizer Spheres, and understood what they were, how they had to be located, how they are necessary to be able to survive for any time on such a hostile planet. He felt the time tick slowly away during their voyage to this planet. The early successes and failures. And how they were all afraid. Afraid of... Of... Stumpy blinked a couple of times and the feeling faded. He was kneeling, exactly where he was before. A moment later, his ears cleared and he heard the now-familiar shrill sound of the Sam-Thing. But it was different this time. It was on the ground, convulsing, as was the Squeaky-Thing, by the limo. Clutch-mates. He had no idea what that meant, he just understood that's what they were. The Ray-Thing was somehow injured, in sympathy, but not as severely. It was slowly crawling along the ground. The stranger seemed oddly pleased. He couldn't suppress a smile, as he watched, back turned, completely absorbed by the final flailings of the two clutch-mates. "Bastards," he muttered, "couldn't happen to a nicer bunch. Stumpy, I knew you'd be able to --" his words were cut short as the familiar sound of a shotgun rang out. The stranger flew back several feet and crumbled to the ground. Stumpy slowly limped over to him, ready to finish the job. The stranger stared at him, breathing irregularly. He seemed to force himself to gather as much of a breath as he could. He wasn't going to go out without having his say. "You shit!" he said, almost more with disappointment than anger. "I was on YOUR side, you fuck. I KNEW the migration wouldn't take with you. Well, at least I was pretty sure it wouldn't. Now it's just you. You against Them. Guns won't help you. Or dynamite. Or jack shit. But you've got to try. The green balls. You've got to stop them. Deactivate them. There's more than just the one. 4 more. Blow them up and you'll have an h-bomb sized crater on your hands. They're ... heh ... in town. Their stronghold: the court house. Guarded by...just about everyone else. Heh...you're fucked boy." He then looked over and saw Ray slowly crawling towards them. The stranger saw it and said coldly, "they use the bodies of the dead and dying...remember?" He laughed and coughed up blood. "I'd rather not be a part of one of Them. You might not believe I'm on your side, but believe me when I say if Ray manages to Migrate to me I DEFINITELY won't be on your side and the beating Sam gave you will seem like a walk in the pasture. If you don't mind, I'd prefer you just finish the job you started." He then added as an afterthought, "Quickly. In the head. Only way to be safe." It surprised Stumpy that he actually felt a little regret as he leveled the shotgun at the stranger's head and pulled the trigger. All that he heard was a click of the hammer. No ammo. Shit. Stumpy took a breath, swung the gun around, hauled back and began to smash the butt of the shotgun into the stranger's head. It probably only took three or four blows to do the deed, but he continued for a total of 9 times. The stranger's head was no longer recognizable as such, and the butt of the gun glistened with a dark red color. Stumpy looked around dumbly. There were 2 of Them lying dead together, namely the dead bodies of Sam Fletcher and Squeaky (if they still could be considered human bodies). Sam was dead because...well, somehow he couldn't Migrate to Stumpy and then...well he died. Squeaky was dead because as a clutch-mate of Sam, when Sam went, Squeaky then... well he died too. It actually didn't make much sense to Stumpy. Then there was what used to be the stranger. Stumpy had given him a hand in dying, and his face wasn't recognizable as having once been human. Hell, you could hardly tell that it was a human head at all. Stumpy had no idea who he was, but figured it might be worth a quick look-see. He might be packing heat. A quick search revealed an empty holster and a wallet that identified the stranger merely as "John Smith" a Federal Agent, complete with a badge (number 08-327-42), employed by the Department of External Security, whatever the hell that was. The Ray-Thing had been crawling towards "John Smith" but had stopped in mid-crawl once Smith's head had been bashed in, as if sensing that his host was no longer viable. It then looked at Stumpy and started crawling towards him. For no good reason, Stumpy HAD to know if it was a fluke or not. How the hell had he been able to kill Sam? He walked right up to the Ray-Thing, ready to face it. It sank a claw into Stumpy's leg, but not as an attack, only as a way to lift itself up so it could sink another claw into his torso. Again the blackout. Again the understanding. It became a little clearer. He could see where the remaining 4 Spheres had been placed in the basement of the court house, within the critical distance of one another so that the failure of one would set off the others with an unimaginable force. And again, awaking to the final screams of the creature as it writhed on the ground. Just like Sam, Ray was now dead. It was more than having failed to Migrate. The Thing was dying as it retreated back into Ray's body. Stumpy knew that these three dead people had been taken over by aliens, so he didn't mind seeing them dead now. He didn't know if the aliens were giant slugs living in the brains, or, or, ah shit, Stumpy just didn't care. They were dead, all dead. Stumpy was weak and tired, and to top it off, his foot was aching something fierce, but knew what his next stop was. The place he usually avoided as much as he avoided bathing: town. -------- Stumpy looked through the wreckage of the truck. His shotgun was the only gun that managed to survive the wreck. He loaded it with the last 3 shells he could find, and tossed it (and Earl) into the front of the limo, and drove off. The town looked pretty much the same as it always had, but more sleepy than usual. Nobody was out on Main Street. Stumpy cruised by the court house, and saw two guys standing out front. He couldn't exactly tell who they were at first. He just knew by the graying, dead skin on their faces and hands that they had been taken over, and would undoubtedly kick his tired ass if he got within reach of them. Going by the clothes alone, the one on the left had to be Skeeter Watson. The other one was tall enough to be Clay Woosley, but Clay always had his shotgun with him, and this guy was unarmed. Stumpy rubbed the sore spot on his neck, remembering what Sam had done to him a short while ago. Maybe Clay didn't feel like he needed the gun any more. Stumpy had a good look at them, but they completely ignored the limo Stumpy was driving. Thanks to the tinted windows, they didn't know who was driving, and thought nothing of seeing it drive by. Only then did Stumpy realize that the only vehicle he could find was the perfect cover. He stopped at Greasy's Quik-Fry. Nobody there. Stumpy got himself a chocolate malt. When he realized how hungry he was he downed the malt in 3 gulps, looked at the cold, empty grill in the behind the counter and headed over to Hank's MiniMax. Abandoned. He grabbed a handful of Moon Pies, some Fritos and a Big Red. Those didn't last long either, but they satisfied Stumpy's hunger and gave him time to think of something. The spheres were in the basement, superman zombies with a penchant for ass-kicking were guarding it. That's all he knew for sure. Earl's voice hadn't talked to Stumpy in a while, so he didn't expect any more help from him. Stumpy figured he needed more than 3 shotgun shells. he looked in the trunk of the limo. Nothing but a tire iron! Shit! Stumpy drove over to Hoot Gibson's Sport Town for some ammo and maybe a few more guns. Nobody there, and it was locked up tight. Nothing like a slightly messed-up limo to open a door. Stumpy stepped carefully through the broken glass into the empty store, and back to the gun department. The glass cases were all empty, the racks in the back had been cleaned out too. All the ammo was cleaned off the shelves, and carefully too. It wasn't like the place had been raided. Everything that resembled a weapon had been carefully removed from the shelves. It looked like a horror story Stumpy had heard about what it's like to live in Canada or something. Stumpy couldn't even find a BB gun in the store. The gun that Hoot kept behind the manager's counter was gone too. Nothing. All weapons were just gone. That and the rack of trench coats and hats near the end of the aisle. If Stumpy had been the thinking type, that would have made sense to him. The fact that all the catfish bait and hip waders were missing too wouldn't have made sense at all, but that's how it went down. Stumpy had to take out those spheres somehow, he only had three shotgun shells to help him do it, and he had to get used to it. He couldn't blow the spheres up, so he figured he's cut the power to the court house. That ought to work. It was nearly dark, so Stumpy drove back to Main St. and waited. Under cover of darkness he approached the court house from behind and peeked around front. The two men were still standing guard, bathed in the pale light coming from the bare bulb hanging over the front door of the court house. On closer inspection, they were definitely Skeeter and Clay. He saw Skeeter's snakeskin boots on the shorter one, and the taller one's twisted smile revealed Clay's gold tooth. Clay always was a damn show-off. Stumpy knew where the main switch box was because he helped Earl do some maintenance work at the court house last year. That little job, or rather what happened during it, was yet another reason Stumpy didn't want to be seen in town, but here he was anyway. Stumpy quietly pried the padlock off the switchbox using the tire iron. Too much noise and Skeeter and Clay would royally fuck him over like a spring lamb so Stumpy took his time and stayed quiet. Stumpy looked in a window and saw a light on in the hall. Then he threw the main switch, closed the switch box cover and looked back. The light was off. Stumpy remembered from the takeover attempts that the spheres were necessary for Them to take anyone over and stay alive. With no power to them, Stumpy knew it was a matter of time. He just couldn't figure out why there wasn't any damn commotion. There ought to be steely screams coming out of the court house. He looked back at the front. Skeeter and Clay weren't there. Stumpy hid in the hedges near the front and waited. Skeeter and Clay had walked around the court house, trying to figure out what was wrong. Stumpy hid in the hedges near the front door and waited. Skeeter and Clay stopped back by the front door, looked at each other for a few seconds, touched heads, and headed down the block toward the city jail. They hadn't noticed the switch box had been tampered with. Stumpy opened the court house door and eased inside. Pitch black. Good. Stumpy found the stairs and headed toward the basement. Shit, shit, fuck Fuck FUCK! Stumpy saw the familiar green glow coming through the crack under the door, and knew he had wasted his time. These things had their own power source somewhere. Stumpy crept back upstairs and outside. Where the hell was everybody? He turned the main switch back on and headed back inside. The whole place was empty. Skeeter and Clay had been the only ones there. Even the basement was empty. The four spheres were all lined up right next to each other in two of the courtroom's holding cells. Judging by the grime and dirt around the bases of them, Stumpy figured they had been outdoors, just like the one he blew up. They had moved them inside to hide and protect them, but Stumpy didn't figure that out. Where was everybody? Stumpy figured they had to be somewhere fairly close to the spheres, so everybody must be holed up somewhere nearby. Maybe the city jail down the block? Seemed like a good place to hold everybody. Stumpy headed back upstairs and outside. He walked down to the jail. As he approached, he couldn't believe what he was seeing. He blinked and took stock of the situation. Then he realized he had left both the tire iron and the shotgun back in the basement of the court house. -------- The jail, about 2 blocks ahead, was completely unguarded, with the front doors wide open. The front was well-lit by street lights, but most of the others around the block were out, casting shadows everywhere, hiding who-knows-what. He thought about turning back to retrieve the forgotten items, but then realized he'd never make it, and besides, it probably wouldn't even have an effect on Them. He thought about Sam, holding the stick of dynamite in his hand and not being at all bothered by the blast. And of the way he was able to move so far, so fast. Or rather, how he would be one place, one instant and then just be somewhere else the next. Then he realized it had just been a dream. Then he realized it hadn't. Then he had no good idea what was going on, except that he was avoiding thinking about what was up ahead. No matter what was real, he realized he couldn't afford to let Them see him. They outnumbered him and were looking for him. His thoughts returned to the here and now just as he approached the jail. He hugged the walls, and ducked into a dark alley a block away from the dark building with the bright entrance. Up until now, Stumpy was quite happy to have never seen the inside of that building (although there were a number of times he barely just avoided making that be more than a temporary residence for him). Now, he wished he knew a little more about its layout. It seemed like half of the streetlights weren't working, which gave him a brief place to watch, unseen. Skeeter and Clay stepped out of the shadows in front of the steps of the jail. Clay looked around, craning his neck over 90 degrees one way and then back 180 degrees the other. It was not a physical impossibility, yet the way he moved seemed inhuman, even ghoulish. Stumpy had been out snipe hunting at night enough times to know that's not how you look for things in the dark. But apparently They didn't know that. They regarded the bodies they used as nothing more than a vehicle, and who reads the owner's manual these days? So in some sense, he had the home court advantage, as far as using the equipment he was born with. On the other hand, they had no fear of pushing their bodies well past their limits which sort of took away his home court advantage. Apparently Clay was unable to detect anything. Very slowly, he extended his arm out, fist clenched, towards Skeeter, as if it were some slow-motion version of a neighborly punch in the arm. But his arm stopped about 6 inches short of Skeeter. Clay slowly rotated his fist so his knuckles were pointing upward and then opened up his hand. Stumpy saw a brief glimmer of something catching the light as it fell, but he was too far away to make out exactly what had been in Clay's fist. There were three, light, high-pitched metallic "click" sounds as the objects hit the sidewalk and rolled a bit. Stumpy recognized the sound as shotgun shells and realized that they had just been back at the courthouse, waiting for him. Had he turned around to get his shotgun and tire iron, they would have ambushed him. Almost as if to confirm that thought, Skeeter held up Stumpy's tire iron, catching the light of the lamp post. Grabbing it with both hands, Skeeter twisted it into short, spiral cork-screw shape, useless now as a weapon. Stumpy took a step back into the dark. How the fuck can he beat them? Skeeter then turned to the left and looked down the street. His head slowly tilted upward. Stumpy followed the gaze to the top of the building and saw ... Clay standing on the roof, illuminated by a neon sign. He walked around a little, then walked back to the edge. Skeeter then turned and looked at the roof of the jail. Again, Clay was there, looking around. Stumpy then looked back at Skeeter and realized Clay wasn't next to him. There was only one Clay. This time Stumpy anticipated Skeeter's next move, as he looked towards the next rooftop. Stumpy watched, and sure enough, one moment no Clay, the next instant Clay was there, walking around, as if he had been there the entire time. And then, after unsuccessfully completing his search, he...simply wasn't there anymore. It wasn't that he disappeared into the shadows, he just wasn't there. Stumpy looked back at Skeeter, and could see he was looking at another rooftop, and sure enough Clay was there. Stumpy had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He was outnumbered, outgunned, and out-whatever-the-hell-they-were-doing. He watched as Skeeter turned his gaze, as if to direct Clay to search the next rooftop, but there was something different this time. Clay was standing next to Skeeter, and not up top. He looked...bad, even for an animated corpse. Skeeter turned and was gone. Again, he didn't walk away, he just wasn't there anymore. Clay stood there, looking pretty unsteady. Stumpy remembered about what "John Smith" had said, about how all that teleporting or "gating" took a toll on Them as well, or at least the bodies they were using. And Clay had been doing nothing but that for the last 10 minutes. And who knows how long he had actually been one of Them. A moment later Skeeter was back next to Clay with someone else in tow. Stumpy could only make out that it was a small, hunched over figure, with the head and shoulders covered by some cloth. Clay staggered towards the figure. Just like Sam had tried on Stumpy, Clay grabbed the figure by the torso and lifted it up like it were nothing more than a rag doll. The street light illuminated the figure's face and Stumpy recognized her as being Sweet Little Aunt Bessie (bless her heart). She wasn't Stumpy's aunt, it's just what everyone called her. She always wore a shawl "to fight the chill" which fell away from her to the ground. On hot summer days, she's always have a pitcher of lemonade ready for any neighborhood child who was thirsty. Thoughts of summer days danced through his mind, while he stared on. It was like watching a tree sprouting, in fast-motion. It seemed like just moments after Clay grabbed her, Aunt Bessie (bless her heart), had sort of contorted into a painful, stretched pose (especially considering her arthritis). In an instant, she spun her arms around in a circle, breaking Clay's grip and grabbing him in a similar hold. Good for her, Stumpy thought, it's time they learned a lesson on manners anyway. Stumpy never thought of her as tall. Actually he thought of her as short, yet she was clearing holding Clay up WHILE looking down at him. And from one block away, had he not known better, Stumpy would have guessed that Aunt Bessie actually appeared to be taller than he was now (bless her heart). She seemed to pause and take in a big breath. Now she's going to give old Clay a piece of her mind, Stumpy thought. He'll treat her with a bit more respect, that's for sure. And then once again, there was that shrill, inhuman, metal-scraping-against-metal sound, but this time it came from Sweet Aunt Bessie (bless her heart, whatever was left of it). Her grip changed to one hand above the other and she spun Clay around once and then rapidly flung him against the light pole. There was a sickening, hollow cracking sound, and a wet spray shot out from the head. She lowered the limp body to the ground, wound up her shoulders, and then struck him with a powerful backhand blow. Damn powerful. The body went flying through the air towards Stumpy. He stepped back into the shadows just in time to hear a very wet, very loud thud, like a bag of wet sand hitting the ground. He decided he'd wait a bit before investigating. 10 minutes passed, and the only thing Stumpy was aware of was the beating of his heart and the throbbing pain in his foot. Nothing had happened. He stepped closer to the edge of the alley, being careful to stay in the shadows. Once again, Skeeter was in front of the steps of the jail, silently directing the search of the rooftops. But this time it was Sweet Old Aunt Bessie (bless her heart) who was searching the rooftops for Stumpy -- so she could kill him. It occurred to Stumpy that he shouldn't think so kindly of her, since she was, in fact, no longer human, and would, given the chance, kill him in a most gruesome way. Yet no matter what, he could not think of the name "Aunt Bessie" without it being followed by "bless her heart." He even thought she might catch a chill up there trying to hunt him down without her shawl. He quickly snapped out of his daydreaming, as he was dragged back to reality by his nose. Once again, a familiar, and completely sickening smell was choking him. The smell of cooking flesh. It was the same noxious smell that nauseated Stumpy back in the woods. At the time he was unable to take in the fact that Betsy-Sue was dead and somehow one of Them. The fact that her flesh had been cooked was well beyond his ability to handle. He peered around the corner cautiously and looked at where Clay had impacted the wall, about 10 feet down from the alley entrance. The body had broken apart when it hit the brick wall and pieces of flesh had gone flying everywhere. A rotting corpse, propelled 30 feet into the air and 50 feet down the street, and suddenly being stopped by hitting a brick wall, might be expected to fall apart under those circumstances. But why the smell of a burning body? Other than gun ballistics and the dangers associated with them, Stumpy knew little about physics. He knew less about chemistry and exothermic reactions and nothing about the energy required to teleport objects here and there, yet he suspected that somehow it was related to their "gating." He remembered how John Smith said that it took a toll on them, but he hadn't imagined it would be like that. A shiny object on the sidewalk caught Stumpy's eye. Tarnished, covered in some unnamed bodily filth, it still caught and reflected the distant street light. In one quick, careful move, Stumpy stepped out from the alley, stepped on the object (and in the puddle of Clay), kicked his leg backwards flinging the object into the alley, and ducked back into the shadows. No one had seen a thing; they were still concerned with the rooftops. They seemed to care more about protecting the roof of the jail than the wide open front entrance. -------- Back in the security of his alley, Stumpy took a closer look at the object. Stumpy picked it up. It was Clay's gold tooth. Stumpy nearly gagged at the smell of the cooked Clay-flesh stuck to one end of it. Stumpy used his shirt sleeve to clean off his new souvenir. The surface wasn't as shiny as a gold tooth ought to be. There were tiny etchings all over the surface of the tooth. If Stumpy had ever put a CD in a microwave, he would have recognized these patterns. All he knew was they weren't natural. The first rule in hunting is make sure you can't be seen. Stumpy's brain, such that it was, was already in hunt-mode, so he had figured out that he couldn't be detected in the shadows. Otherwise he would have been caught and as good as dead by now because Clay had looked in his general direction more than once during his rooftop teleports. Stumpy kept thinking about that tooth. Maybe the teleporting caused the etched lines. Stumpy remembered seeing what was left of a possum that had eaten through the insulation on some wires of a transformer down at the power plant, so he knew electricity was not always your friend. Maybe the power used in teleporting was slowly electrocuting the subject? Stumpy eased over toward Clay's body to see what kind of shape Clay's mouth was in. Maybe it looked like it was electrocuted too. Stumpy couldn't even find his mouth! Between the cooking the teleporting had done, and the whipping Sweet Aunt Bessie (bless her slow-cooked heart), had done to the recently-vacated corpse, it wasn't visible in the tangled mess. Stumpy wasn't even sure he could find the end the head was supposed to be on. And why had Aunt Bessie, bless her poached heart, beaten the corpse to pieces like that? Maybe the possessed victim still had a vestige of control over their body for a few seconds after transference? Maybe Clay had captured her in the first place, and she was getting back at him for something he did to her? Maybe Aunt Bessie hadn't kept any control. Maybe They were just plain mean. It didn't matter now -- Stumpy had to figure out their weakness fast, or he would be as good as dead. Just like poor old Aunt Bessie, bless her chicken-fried heart. That tooth really bothered him. Here he was only trying to get the only gold tooth in town, and here it was all messed up. Stumpy didn't have time to think about it any more. He heard something. There was a group of them clumsily gathering together outside the front door of the jail, milling around. If Stumpy hadn't known any better, he would have sworn they were nervous about something. In groups of 2, they would simultaneously look up at the night sky, look left and right, look left and right again, then tilt their heads back down. Once they stopped looking at the sky, they would act relatively normal. Then all of a sudden 2 more would act like they were being pulled by the same string, and they would repeat the same odd head dance in unison. Clutch Mates. Stumpy just knew. He studied the group for a few more seconds, and watched their heads jerk back up to the sky again. He figured there were representatives from three clutches there. Maybe only three clutches were left? Were they waiting for an arrival? As suddenly as they had appeared, the group broke up. All of them headed back inside except two. They started the same teleporting routine that Skeeter and Clay had been doing. Stumpy waited a while, expecting the latest flyboy to die after a few minutes of this foolishness like Clay had done. No such luck. This pair kept it up for a good fifteen minutes without stopping. Maybe the new flyboy hadn't been one of Them as long as Clay had been. Maybe. Maybe not. Stumpy smiled a rare, knowing smile. He snuck back down the street, got in the limo and headed straight to Happy's Hardware. Locked up tight. The bumper of the limo made a convincing skeleton key. Stumpy grabbed some bailing wire and sharpened a few of the biggest nails he could get his hands on. He fashioned himself several rigs from these, and headed back out to the middle of town. After parking near the court house, Stumpy headed back down the block to the jail and hid in the alley. He grabbed a rig. He was ready. "WHICH ONE A-YEW FUCKERS WANTS TA GO BACK TA BEDFORD'S GLEN? HUH?!?" Stumpy waited. He saw several of Them come out of the jail, clearly agitated. "YA BUNCHA STINKIN' CHICKEN FUCKS!" Before Stumpy could think of something new to say, one of Them covered the distance from the front door to right in front of Stumpy. He must have teleported to cover that distance, Stumpy thought. It stared at Stumpy just long enough to hear "BEDFORD'S GLEN YEW SLACK-JAWED STINKIN' LITTLE" and then it grabbed Stumpy by the neck and started to lift him over his head like a rag doll. Stumpy wasted no time. He held a nail in each hand. A 2-foor length of bailing wire connected the nail heads. He sank one nail in each side of It as it raised him up. The world spun around, but it was different this time. This time as he rushed through space in a near black-out, there was a brilliant green flash and a hot, sickening smell of roasting pork. He came to at Bedford's Glen. The look of horror and pain on its face was unmistakable. It looked down at its midsection. All the clothes were burned off, its skin was jet black on the sides, and its abdomen was swollen. Stumpy looked back at its face. Still very much alive and livid with rage, it lifted him up and screamed a steely scream... "Shuuuuuuuh, tuuu ... tuu FOOOOSK!!" It grabbed the smoking piece of bailing wire, pulled Stumpy's invention out of its sides and flung it aside with fury. The world spun again, and they were both in the basement of the court house, standing next to the spheres. It was very much worse for the wear now, but the spheres sustained it long enough to grab Stumpy's torso and begin the transference. Stumpy's world went gray, then black. He came out of it just as this one of Them was dropping him. Stumpy caught himself and rolled off of the dying one. After a few moments of convulsing, it was dead. Nothing about their proximity to the spheres could save it now. Stumpy knew its clutch-mates would be dead now too. How many clutches were left? Stumpy took off the heavy rubber gloves he had been smart enough to grab and scratched his head. However many clutches were left, Stumpy wasn't sure he was up for much more abuse like that. Stumpy, sitting on the floor, leaned against the wall and smiled. Those two nails and the bailing wire, still at Bedford's Glen, probably looked a lot like Clay's gold tooth. As he got up off the floor, he stopped. What was that new thing he had seen in the dream state during that last transference? -------- Guns. Lots of guns. Guns guns and more guns. Every gun imaginable. And some that weren't imaginable. Rows and rows and racks and racks. A supply that put Earl's arsenal to shame. As a matter of fact, Earl's arsenal was included there. As was Old Doc Walter's antique musket. Stumpy began to recognize many of the weapons he had seen. Eventually he began to realize that every weapon in town was there. From everything that had ever graced the shelves of Hoot Gibson's Sport Town to the last little Saturday Night Special that sat hidden in the drawer under the cash register in Polly Weaver's diner, it had all been sequestered away. Why? As if to answer his question, the thought appeared: Because Stabilizer Station 1 had been induced into a non-linear state from high impulse pressure forces imposed on the transfer surface from a gas propelled metallic projectile originating from a non-acclimated indigenous unit. Stumpy stared blankly at the words in his mind. After a moment, the thought swirled and changed into something more recognizable: 'cause you shot that there pretty green ball and it got blown up but real good! It was the ultimate in "ruining it for everyone else." Because he had taken out the first Sphere with that rifle, they had methodically removed every gun from town and put it in one place. It was then that Stumpy thought of the next question. Where? The image was a dark, windowless room, with bare lightbulbs. The doors were boobytrapped with some of the automatic weapons rigged to fire when opened even a crack. And there were enough guns per door aimed everywhere to make it damn near impossible to avoid the hail of bullets that'd be unleashed. And the gas. Oh yeah. Seeing it through the eyes of Them, it was just another object. They didn't feel the pain and damage the tear gas canisters were causing the bodies They inhabited. But Stumpy knew all too well what a tear gas canister and the product it produces look like. He was only 11 at the time, but the Marines keep damn good records. So much for a career as a man in uniform. While enjoying the partial the-kid-in-the-candy-store experience of seeing all the hardware, he started thinking about how he would use the weapons. It was then that he began to realize how useless it was. Shooting the Spheres would be bad. Shooting Them wouldn't do anything unless he hit the brain. And lugging around another 20 or 30 pounds of hardware would only slow him down. He realized he hadn't figured out where this was yet. He walked out of the room, in his mind's eye, into the corridor. Bullet holes lined the walls. They had tested the traps before. He tried to avoid recalling the names of all of the humans, ones that were alive that They had never Migrated into, that had been used to test the booby trap. Ones that thought they might have a chance if they could get past that door. Bastards! Poor bastards that never had a chance. And fucking bastards that did that to them. The corridor led past another room. He felt ... fear. Not his, but Theirs. There were 5 of them, working over a vat. They were all Clutch Mates, and were doing their duty with the utmost of fear. They knew They were doomed, but the job had to be done. The vat contained a black, gooey, tar-ish substance. He thought about the smell. It was a chemical, burning rubber, petroleum smell. It also smelled like feet and...catfish bait. The five were making this glob so they could destroy it. The same as the guns, they wanted to gather all the threats to Them, put them under lock and key, and then destroy it in a controlled way. It was the way their mind worked. It must not fall into the hands of the enemy. He also realized that the ones working on the mixture were dead. Not yet, not at the time of the vision, but now, since then. And not just the bodies. They had died because they were cut off and could not Migrate elsewhere. They had died alone. Just as the ones that had tried to Migrate into Stumpy had died. And this terrified them. The mental image wouldn't get close enough to the vat so he could see it well, and not being on the right frequency or channel of the clutch mates working on the brew, he couldn't get a closer view. He needed to still figure out where this was. He looked around, and finally realized where this was. The basement of the jail. Guards were everywhere. No wonder the front door was open. They were trying to lure him in, to the gun room, to an ambush. He saw that the vat was sitting on a smoldering fire, though it was not burning hot at all. It was then that he saw it and understood. The smoke from the fire didn't matter to them. But the goo.. jams frequencies, insulates against electric current, breaks down enzyme uptake inhibition... The words meant nothing to Stumpy, but he knew it was bad to them. The goo bubbled. He realized that the room should be a lot stuffier and smokier than it was, with a fire going. He looked up. Above the vat was an air vent, so the others weren't as at risk as much as the doomed five. The vent went straight up to the roof. Stumpy blinked a few times. The vision faded. The green glow of the Sphere's told him he was still in the basement of the court house with the writhing creature a few feet away from him. He knew it had been a dream or a vision, but he also knew it was real. He also knew what he had to do. Stumpy saw the creature was still twitching a little. On a hunch, he kneeled down next to it, shoved his fist in its face, holding Clay's tooth two inches away from it and hissed an angry whisper into its ear. "THE ROOFTOP MOTHERFUCKER! ME! ON THE ROOFTOP, MOTHER FUCKER! NOW! OR I USE THAT GREEN THING AND THIS ON YOUR SORRY ASS!! I SAID NOW!" -------- Stumpy's vision of the guns must have happened in an instant of real time, because the dying creature still had some life in it. It looked at Stumpy, then at the tooth. When it looked back at Stumpy, it wasn't a look of horror. It just didn't care. Stumpy had no idea how he was going to use the tooth as a weapon, and apparently neither did the creature. Stumpy felt a little silly threatening a dying thing with an energy-etched gold tooth, but it was all he had. In anger, Stumpy nearly threw the creature on one of the globes, much like the Doberman he had thrown at Sphere 1. Seeing the other three spheres in such close proximity made him think again. No telling what might happen if he did something stupid near the spheres. Why not do something stupid somewhere else, then? The thought was as clear as day. Stumpy headed straight for the jail house -- in a roundabout way. First he stopped off at the hardware store and got a tarp and a ladder. Then he drove 2 blocks south of the jail house, grabbed the tarp and carried it up the alley behind it. He kept a set of wired nails handy in case he was confronted by one of Them. He dumped the tarp and went back for the ladder. By the time he had the ladder against the back of the jail house, dawn was breaking. He lugged the tarp up on the roof. There was the vent he had seen in the vision. He realized that They had installed the vent themselves. The went to a lot of trouble to convert that one basement room into a place they could burn stuff in. Why hadn't the gray bastards just dug a trench in the woods somewhere and buried that stinky muck for good? As soon as he thought the question, the answer was right there. Their mind didn't work that way. Not minds. MIND. Their method was simple: (1) Get all the things that do harm in one place. (2) Destroy them. Guns. Goop. People? Stumpy didn't want to find out. For all he knew he was starring in Their version of "America's Most Wanted" because he had killed two clutches already. Why not go for the whole bunch? Stumpy unfolded the tarp part-way so that it was still folded into 4 layers. He tossed the tarp over the smoldering vent and got the hell away from the vent. He figured about 5 minutes of old-fashioned fumigation ought to do the trick. He just hoped that there was still enough goop left. Hoped that they hadn't cooked it all up into thin air. -------- Lying down on the edge of the roof, Stumpy was able to look down on the front entrance while remaining hidden. He thought back to the time when he, Earl, and Fat Freddie Wilson took their BB guns and went target practicing on anything they could find. After the requisite tin cans on fenceposts, they used some melons (years later, they would be using similar targets wrapped in duct tape, but this time with high-powered rifles, claiming they were doing research on Kennedy's assassination), till finally they came across a huge hornet's nest in a dead tree. Even though they knew what would happen, they still did it. Possibly because they had never seen a swarm of angry hornets before. Possibly because they were young kids and thought nothing could hurt them. Possibly because boys will be boys, which is to say: cruel, vicious, little bastards. Or quite possibly, because both Earl and Stumpy knew that while they might not be able to outrun a hive of angry hornets, both of them COULD easily outrun Fat Freddie and that he presented a much larger target to the hornets than they did. So they shot their guns, the hornets went apeshit, swarmed out of the nest, and they all bolted as fast as they could. As expected, Earl and Stumpy easily outdistanced Fat Freddie, and only got stung three or four times between the two of them. Fat Freddie was in far worse shape, but fortunately was not allergic to the stings, and wound up just being a mean, sore, red ball of inflamed blubber. What Stumpy and Earl did not count on was that while they were faster than Fat Freddie, by out-distancing him they were putting themselves in his sights, his fat, little, angry-at-being-left-for-hornet-fodder sights. That and the fact that Fat Freddie had a fancy pellet gun instead of a BB gun, and pellets hurt MORE than hornet stings, especially when fired from a little, angry, snot-nosed bastard that's getting stung to hell and back. Old Doc Walters extracted more than 20 pellets each out of the backs and backsides of Stumpy and Earl. The moral of the story? Stumpy never really found a good one. "Fat Freddie is a fat, fucking, back-stabbing, pellet shooting bastard" was his conclusion. Earl, being the slightly more thoughtful one at the time concluded, "That was all around, big-time dumb-ass." Stumpy's dad, before applying further punishment to Stumpy's sore ass, told him, "Best not to mess with a hornet's nest, boy. Next time just burn the fucker down." Stumpy realized, lying on the roof, that he was waiting for the hornets to come. Or at least, the equivalent of the hornets: Them. And he hoped to hell that he was doing as much damage as the gasoline filled water-balloons and flaming arrows did to that tree (Fat Freddie, Earl, and Stumpy eventually did wind up taking his old man's sage advice). Suddenly, there was a commotion, and ten or twenty of Them poured out of the building. They were running, not teleporting, gating, or whatever else they could do. Some were staggering, others were being dragged. Many of them looked to be in bad shape. Stumpy knew there had been far more inside the building. Stumpy could not help but chuckle to himself at how screwed they were. He stopped chuckling as he saw one of Them look up at the roof, towards him, followed immediately by 20 or 30 of Them simultaneously turning to look at him. Before he could think how screwed he was, he saw one in front of the crowd surge forward. Stumpy realized he was gating up to the roof. "Seriously screwed" would now describe Stumpy's assessment of his situation. In an instant, the one in front was no longer standing on the ground but was right in front of Stumpy. An instant of fright was replaced by curiosity, as Stumpy had not realized that They were capable of flying, yet it was sailing up above the rooftop. They were not. It seemed like it took another instant for the law of gravity to catch up to notice this too, but quickly, it reached the apex of its leap and then began to descend. And right as it crossed Stumpy's eye-level as it was plummeting down, it exploded. Again, the horrible smell of cooked flesh, and a shower of tiny pieces of flesh. Stumpy noticed that many of Them below were covered in the bloody remains of the one that had just exploded. He noticed that as he leaned over to throw up. Now they were covered in bloody remains as well as Moon Pies and Fritos. That fact, along with the wretching, made him feel considerably better. Below, they paused, as if to determine what went wrong. Stumpy knew: the fumes had fucked them up. That was why that one had wound up in mid-air in the first place. And the one jump took as much out of it as 15 minutes of jumping around had done to Clay. He was safe for the moment. The moment passed. About ten of Them walked to the building and began climbing, swinging one arm over the other, as if doing some bizarre front crawl on the brick wall. Stumpy could see little bits of brick chipping away each time they sunk a hand into the wall to get a new handhold. He watched with a morbid fascination, oblivious to the fact that they were climbing to get HIM. Stumpy stood up and ran back across the roof. He could run to the far side and climb down the ladder...and then what? He'd be surrounded by 30 of Them. He needed to go someplace where They could not get him. He sort of had an idea, but he did not want to think about it. If he tried too hard to think, it never worked out. He ran to the tarp and yanked it off the vent. They might not realize the vent was open again. He threaded the end of the tarp around a small hook-shaped pipe next to the vent and tied the end of the tarp in a knot. The grating popped off of the vent with one good tug. He spun the tarp around and around until it became a twisted rope and dropped it down the ventilator shaft. With one hand holding the new lifeline, and one on the top of the shaft, he stepped down into the shaft. Around the time he started to think about how this plan and how it had worked, he heard the sound of the tarp tearing. "Damn, cheap tarp," was all he had time to think. By flailing wildly, Stumpy periodically managed to use his back, his arms, his head, anything, as a brake and slow down his descent down the shaft. Nonetheless, he plummeted straight down, making an incredibly loud racket, similar to a bowling ball in a washing machine, except that the bowling ball generally does not scream and curse for the entire duration of its trip. Stumpy's descent was stopped as he struck the lower grating at the bottom of the shaft. He was splayed out, face down, staring into the big vat of black goo, ten feet below him. Stumpy's thoughts tended to be, "Phew. That was close. Damn close. Good thing this here grating was --" it was at that point, as if to avenge the abuse of its upstairs brother, that the grating broke lose and Stumpy fell the remaining ten feet. He did a modified belly-flop into it, as great globs of black goo sprayed out across the room. Stumpy wound up standing waist deep in the vat, his head leaning over the edge, and watched as a wave of the displaced goo struck one of Them standing in the room. It was one of the five current workers, a Keeper of the Goo, so to speak. Everywhere the goo touched it, there was an electric green glow that burst through the surface. The creature flailed wildly. It was as if it had been a balloon, filled with green light, that became punctured all over. It was breaking the contact between the creature and the Spheres. And They could not survive long without that contact. The creature convulsed in weakening twitches, until it stopped moving. The whole show took no more than ten seconds. It took another five seconds for Stumpy to realize he was standing, waist deep, in a vat of the same goo. He flailed wildly, screamed, and ran around for several minutes. The goo was so thick and oily that it just stuck to everything, like tar. His upper body had managed to stay relatively free of the goo, until he tried to wipe off the goo that was on him. His hands were pretty well covered as he tried to wipe off his pants. At that point, he realized that it was only pleasantly warm, not at all burning. And eventually, he realized that it really was not doing anything particularly bad to him other than giving him a horrible stench, possibly worse than usual. Another one of Them that had been in the room, seemed to be waiting for Stumpy to stop running around. When he did, it moved in and grabbed him by the throat and lifted him up into the air. He waited for it to sink its claws into his torso, attempt to Migrate, and die. But this one was different. This one seemed to be content to just strangle Stumpy. Maybe it knew about the other clutches that had been destroyed by failed Migration. Out of desperation, Stumpy grabbed at its hands that were choking him. The moment he did, it loosened its grip. Its hands were aflame with that green glow. It could not hold him. On a hunch, Stumpy slid his hands down his pants legs and then flung the residual drippy black goo on the creature. It did not take long to destroy it. Stumpy understood why they were so afraid of this glop. Somehow it was the key to the Spheres, to fighting Them, and maybe even getting out alive. But he couldn't just fling some on every one of them. And besides, he needed to get to the Spheres. Stumpy was concerned. He would need to think again. -------- He hated to do that, but he had to. Think, that is. He remembered back to when he took a bet with Earl and peed on an electric fence. Of course, the current shorted through his pecker, grounded through his bare feet and made him see stars. It felt like he had been kicked in the crotch by a boot covered with spikes. He acquired his nickname right after that. Shorting out might just be the way to stop those spheres. After all, shorting out the bodies of Them and worked well when they tried to teleport, so why not go straight to the source and short out the spheres? They were sitting right next to each other, so wiring them would be no big deal. Stumpy's plans rarely came out as brilliant achievements in human history. Things generally worked better when he didn't have to think. He needed wire from the hardware store, but he needed to get there from here, in zombie central, first. Stumpy took a couple of buckets he found lying around, filled them with goo, and stepped out into the still-smoky hallway. He slimed a couple of Them that saw him, but damn near got his head taken off in the process. He also used up both buckets of the stuff. He went to the janitor's closet and got the mop and rolling pail, filled it up with goop and slimed a couple more. Now THIS was fun! He watched the last two writhe in agony. Then he got bored and headed toward the front door. He stood by the bend in the hallway leading to the front door with the freshly-sopped mop handy. "HEY THAR YEW GRAY STINKIN MOTHERFUCKERS! COME AN GIT SUUUUM!" He peeked around the corner, and saw three of them running in from the front door. They turned the corner and all three caught slime in the face. They blindly flailed about, arms moving at a blurred, lethal speed. They were trying to kill him now, no matter what it took. They must have detected the half-dozen he had killed a minute or two ago, and the ones of Them in good enough shape to fight were ready to strike. The three blind Kamikazes burned themselves out in a matter of seconds. All three exploded within two or three seconds of each other. Stumpy retched at the smell, but the dry heaves told him he had exchunkulated all the Fritos and his last Moon Pie up on the roof. Eight more ran in, and Stumpy stepped out to greet them with the same janitorial surprise. He got the first two square in the face, and they started the same blind windmill routine. These two started swinging their arms so fast they actually dismembered the three of Them closest to them. Stumpy loaded up another mopful of fun and heaved it into the melee. This took out the rest of them. From around the corner, Stumpy heard a series of wet explosions. As he started to walk through the stinking pile of zombie-flesh, he saw one of the dismembered ones was still alive. "Hey there floppy! Let's go an' play some baseball", Stumpy said. "I'll let you be first base!" The armless, legless one of Them stuck his tongue out, bit it off, sucked it back into its mouth and spit it at Stumpy! Stumpy had to admire his attitude. He dripped goop all over First Base and headed back around the corner. He moved further back down the hall and was going to back around the corner, just to get away from the smell. Luckily, he heard a bunch of Them coming. He loaded up the mop and got ready to meet them with a spray, then got a better idea. He kicked the mop bucket so that it rolled down the hall. It slammed into the onrushing crowd of Them that were just turning the corner and sprayed them better than he ever could. He couldn't count how many there were. It looked like all the rest of them, in one final assault. The hall was clogged with Them, and every one that he could see had started their swinging dance of death. Again, They were taking out the arms and heads of their brethren that were too slow to get out of the way, and one of them tore a hole in the wall next to him. Some of this bunch, sloppy and fizzling, could still see though, so they managed to hobble through the maelstrom of swinging arms and kept running toward him. Stumpy ran out of the front door, leading the way with his mop in case he ran into any more of Them. He didn't. He was free and clear. He waited to see if any more of Them came out. None followed, so he must have gotten them all. He knew that somewhere inside, there might be a bunch of townsfolk that were still alive and normal, but Stumpy would have to get back to them. Remembering his past, he looked down at his crotch and winced. He had Spheres to short out. He drove to Happy's Hardware one more time and got a bunch of bailing wire. Then he grabbed an axe. He planned on tearing the spheres up after he shorted them out. When he got to the courthouse basement, he couldn't quite believe what he saw. Three of the four spheres sat dark, cold and silent. They were warm to the touch, but it was obvious that they were inactive. Only one sphere had the usual greenish plasma glow. The obvious thing leapt to Stumpy's mind. Since he had killed so many of them just now, and by extension their clutch-mates, he must have gotten rid of a huge chunk of the "Them" population. Since They were no longer alive to drain energy from the spheres, the spheres were no longer generating energy. Stumpy tossed the now-useless bailing wire aside and swung the axe into one of the spheres. He had to hit it three times before he finally penetrated the metal skin, but penetrate he did. As he hacked into it, it smelled like ozone -- that pre-thunderstorm smell you can get when you strike two pieces of flint together. Stumpy hacked at the sphere and the spongy, gritty, strangely-shaped pieces of dark ceramic that made up a lot of the interior. When he had hacked about a foot into it, he figured it was pretty well busted, and moved on to the next one. Then there was only the one sphere left -- the one that still operated. Remembering the barbecued Doberman that exploded near the first sphere in the clearing, Stumpy approached this one with caution. He stood back and heaved the axe at the sphere with all his strength. It hit the sphere hard, but bounced off with a mighty green spark and almost buried itself in the back wall of the holding cell across the hall, narrowly missing Stumpy as it went flying by. There was a dent, but the humming was still the same pitch. Stumpy retrieved the axe and repeated the procedure a half-dozen more times. Finally, the pitch started to change, but only a little. He figured this one wasn't damaged as much as the first one in the clearing was, and this was a good thing. He needed to get clear before it blew, so he high-tailed it out of the basement. He went back to the limo, parked next to the court house, to get the mop in case any more of Them came running. Since one of the four spheres was running, and was running at what appeared to be normal capacity, he figured there should be a good percentage of Them still out there in the dark somewhere. Well, he WOULD have thought if it this way if he knew what a percentage was. As it stood, Stumpy figured there were still a lot of them alive, and that was good enough to make him cautious. Stumpy stood by the limo and looked around. It was a ghost town. He figured if the rest of Them were around, they were hiding. In a strange way, he figured wrong. Stumpy heard the sound of a jet plane flying overhead, and looked up to see it, only it wasn't a jet. It was a small space craft of some sort. It streaked overhead and out of sight. He heard the sound of the craft change, and figured it must be coming back for another pass. Stumpy, scared shitless and fearing an alien anal probe, ran back into the nearest building -- the court house. He hid inside the front door and peeked out through a crack in the venetian blinds in the Tax Collector's office. The craft landed on the courthouse square, and the door to the craft opened almost immediately. Stumpy could plainly tell the door was only about three feet tall. Oh this guy ought to be cuuute, thought Stumpy. He kept his wet mop nearby, figuring he'd douse whatever kinda gremlin came looking for him. A squat creature emerged, dressed in the most wrinkled trench coat Stumpy had ever seen. Then he realized his mistake. The coat wasn't wrinkled, it was balled up. The creature now stood up to its full height of seven or eight feet and looked around. It had tan skin and black, hateful eyes. It ripped the trench coat off in a fury, revealing a body built for killing things. This wasn't the normal one of Them. This was no human body takeover -- it was the commander. "WHERE ARE YOU, YOU MURDERING LITTLE HUMAN BASTARD!" The bellow of the voice let Stumpy know right away that this thing was: (1) Powerful (2) In charge (3) Pissed "I SAW YOU RIGHT HERE BY THIS CAR AS I FLEW BY." Then it reached over and slammed its hand on the limo's hood. The hood buckled. Stumpy could see that from across the front lawn of the court house. If this thing laid one hand on Stumpy, he was gonna be SO fucking dead it wasn't to be believed. Last night, he had seen a bunch of Them looking skyward in unison in a strange little dance outside the jail house. What he didn't know was what they were looking up for. They were looking for the commander. He was Earl's permanent replacement, and he was due to arrive soon. Soon would have been, schedule-wise, some time last night. That means on-time must be right about now, Stumpy figured. "YOU'RE THE ONE I WANT YOU SICK LITTLE PETRI DISH! YOUR GERMS KILLED OFF DOZENS OF MY MINIONS, AND I'M GONNA KILL YOU FOR THAT! I'M GONNA SMEAR YOU AND ALL YOUR SICK LITTLE GERMS ALL OVER THE STREET! I'M GONNA ERASE YOU!" Stumpy looked down at his foot. The side near where the toe used to be was tender, red and a little swollen. Looked like an infection all right. But how could germs from a fucked-up toe kill one of Them? The commander stalked around the car, tearing off rear-view mirrors and doors as he went. Stumpy, in pure fright, dropped the mop on the floor, a load in his pants, and ran down to the basement to hide. This thing wanted to kill him so bad it was practicing on the limo! Stumpy stopped and listened. He heard the car get smashed, and he heard the warbling hum of the sphere get louder at the same time, then die back down. He opened the door to the holding cells and watched gleefully as the green glow brightened. At the same time he heard another horrible crash outside. That was it! This last sphere was the power source for the commander. It was reserved for HIM, not for clutches of Them. The sphere was not about to blow just any second now, so Stumpy picked up the axe and heaved it at the sphere one more time. The hum started to vary a little bit more, so Stumpy, in a rare display of good sense, got the hell out of the basement. He went back to the Tax Collector's office and peeked out again. The Limo was toast. The commander was just giving up on it, and headed toward the court house. He tore the front door off its hinges in a fury, and went straight back and down the stairs. He must have felt his power source vary, and had gone to check it out. That's when Stumpy remembered the explosion in the clearing, and ever-so-slowly began putting two and two together... Stumpy ran out the front door as he heard the commander downstairs, bellowing out a furious wail. Stumpy started to hide in the shrubs at the side of the building, then thought better of it. He looked at the twisted pile of rubble that used to be the limo, and headed across the street to Polly's Diner. He hid behind the counter and took a peek outside. Just then the commander ran out, looking around in a fury trying to find Stumpy. "COME OUT YOU MISERABLE LITTLE BAG OF PUKE!!! YOU HAVE JUST WRECKED A ROOMFUL OF INTERSPATIAL ENERGY TRANSFER UNITS, AND YOU'RE GONNA HAVE TO PAY FOR IT YOU BACKWARD LITTLE FUCKER!!" Stumpy just stared out the front window, too scared to move and without a cold clue as to what to do now. He only hoped that sphere would fucking BLOW already. Come OOOOON! The commander, in the middle of the courthouse square, saw him. His gaze of fury fixed on Stumpy for a split second, and he started running straight toward the diner. Stumpy got up and ran out the back door to the alley. He turned and started running toward the end of the block, and never made it. The last sphere exploded, and the blast concussion knocked Stumpy to the ground. He hit his head on the way down, and was knocked out cold. -------- Stumpy fell in and out of consciousness several times. At one point, the buxom figure of Dolly Toller in his dream was replaced by a mangey, smelly little wiener dog that happened to pass by. French kissing Dolly was much more pleasant, but why fight it. Besides, he realized that the smell could not be blamed on the dog, although with it around, Stumpy had a good excuse. He looked around and realized he was bumped and bruised, covered in dirt, and some light debris, but generally unharmed. He sat up, brushed some paper scraps and twigs off of his chest, and promptly passed out. Again, he and Dolly were together. She had just finished clearing a table, necessitating that she lean as far over the table as possible. For some reason, Polly must've decided to put spotlights on all of the tables, and have all her waitresses wear pasties. Stumpy wasn't complaining. He was hooting, hollering, and slamming his palms down on the table, making the sugar, salt, and pepper dispensers bounce around as much as Dolly. She came up to him and leaned back, placing her head in his lap, looking straight up to him and smiled. Stumpy closed his eyes and reluctantly had to admit that this was a dream. The giveaway was that she had all her teeth. He opened his eyes, and was back in the alley, covered in dirt. He felt some dried blood on his forehead. This time he sat up slower, and the world seemed to oblige him by not winking out again. He looked down in his lap where Dolly's head had been and looked straight into Dolly's eyes. Her head was again in his lap. Eyes staring at him. A smile, shooting back at him, although no longer a fully toothed (but what good would that be anyway?). There were only three things that made this short of perfection. First, his head was still throbbing from hitting the ground, and he was still feeling a bit unsteady. Second, the dead-end alleyway behind the diner was not exactly a private room at the Ritz, and scraps of plaster, wood, brick, and stone are not as comfortable as a king size waterbed. And third, Dolly's head was not attached to her body. Down the alley, Stumpy saw the commander's form wedging itself into the narrow passage (well, narrow for him). He had a headless body in his grasp. Holding the body with one hand, he struck it with the other, back and forth and back and forth. It was like watching some cartoon in which a person is sliced salami-style, with chunks flying to the left and right, until there was nothing left. "YOU! THIS IS YOU! WHEN I GET TO YOU, THERE WON'T BE ANYTHING LEFT!" But it moved at a very slow pace. Each step seemed to take an inordinate amount of effort. Like watching a rehabilitating patient taking his first steps again. Stumpy realized that the blast from the sphere was its own energy. It could not be destroyed by that. However, while this thing was lethally strong and incredibly powerful, without the sphere it was running on fumes. It knew it too. However, if it got within reach of Stumpy, it would juice him like an orange. Out of pure instinct, Stumpy reached for something to throw at the commander. It was only after he threw it that he thought how it might not be respectful to Dolly. The commander batted the head like it was the bottom of the ninth inning with the score tied, bases loaded, and a $10,000 bet riding on the game. Other than the loud , there was only a mist and a few small bone fragments on the wall that indicated that anything had been there before. Stumpy grabbed some bricks that were lying on the ground nearby and threw them. The creature struck and pulverized each one. And all the time it was destroying the things Stumpy threw at it, it was NOT taking any steps forward. It lacked the strength to do both at the same time. Stumpy also noticed that the commander was not invulnerable. Blood, well he assumed it was blood, was oozing from its knuckles. And from its chest. And face. Stumpy was running out of things to throw. He grabbed for some trash can lids and flung them. Then the garbage cans themselves. The commander grabbed them and crushed them. He paused and reared back and bellowed a thunderous roar that seemed to shake the bricks loose from the walls. And then he collapsed. The impact of the massive body with the ground actually knocked Stumpy flat on his ass. He waited a minute two to see if there was any reaction and decided that it was mostly safe. The only way out of the alley was to go past the creature. Actually, due to its size, the only way really was up and over the creature. Stumpy didn't relish the thought, as he had already been mistaken once already about it being dead. Still, he was sick of waiting. He loped down the alley, stepped on its head, neck, over its back and was just about to clear it when his foot hit something slick and slipped out from under him. He fell down the creature's backside and landed in a pool of warm, black ichor, again, flat on his ass, splaying out, and striking his head on the ground. Since Stumpy had never heard of the word "ichor" before, he would have just used the phrase "nasty shit" to describe it, if there was any pressing reason to actually speak. Stumpy slowly sat up, put his head between his knees, and gently touched the place on the back of his head that was pounding. He felt weak and dizzy. He knew he was sitting in an ankle deep puddle of some disgusting mess. There was a familiar, sickening smell. It was a smell of autumn, wet grass, and straw. As he opened his eyes again, he realized he was not sitting in the alley behind the diner. There was dirt on the ground. He was still staring down at the dirt he was sitting on, as he reached around to feel what was near him. His arm hit something hard and coarse. It was not the commander's body, it was too rough and weak. He followed it down to the ground, where it made a ninety degree turn and moved parallel to the ground, just beyond his foot. He moved his eyes outward a little and finally made out that he had his hand on the massive root of a tree. His hand moved back behind him again, to feel the trunk of the tree. >From the position of the root, sticking out of the ground a good six inches, and the position of his prone body, it was quite apparent that he had tripped over the tree. As has been made painfully clear, Stumpy has a singular lack of a philosophical leaning. So the irony of the fact that he was, at that very moment, so focused on the tree that he missed the forest for the trees, was lost on Stumpy. The irony was further enhanced by the fact that at that point, a tree fell in the forest, and no one, besides Stumpy, was around to hear it. It made no noise. Stumpy failed to notice it. Eventually, though, he did start to think about more than just the tree. He realized that there were other trees around. That was the point at which he realized he was back in Bedford's Glen. The pain in his head forced him to move slowly, so he could only slowly turn to look at the tree trunk, and slowly look up to it, so he could once again look at the figure impaled on the tree. Stumpy staggered to his feet and looked at the creature, with the tree limb protruding through its torso. The hat was on the ground, where he had left it. And the face, with its pale lack of color, looked completely inhuman, enhanced by the lack of hair on the head, eyebrows, or eyelashes. The bright red lipstick, blue eye liner, and cheek highlights were unmistakable as the style of Betsy-Sue. She had knack for projecting "cheap whore" with just a minimal amount of gaudy makeup. But this time, he saw something else. Besides the body being completely out of proportion, with painfully long arms and legs hanging down, all draped in the black outfit, he noticed something at the point where the tree branch first projected out from the torso. He saw straw. This time, ignoring any good judgment that might have remained, he touched the trenchcoated figure, and from the give of it, realized that the straw was an integral part of the figure. It was the filling. It was a scarecrow, or possibly Halloween prank, but it most definitely was never alive. He started to back up, trying to remember exactly what happened. What was real? He was sure he had just beaten the commander, beaten Them. Or...had he. Had he seen the ship? Had he seen any of Them up close? Had he been beaten like a wiener dog with weak kidneys in an oriental rug store? He had no idea what day it was. What time it was. How he had gotten there. He touched the back of his head and felt something warm and sticky. Even before he looked, he knew he'd be seeing his own blood. He had no idea how he could get back... back home? Back where? If he was sick, he'd need to see someone. See a doctor. Doc Walters! His legs buckled and he fell down. Darkness and the weight of the world seemed to fall upon him. He had trouble breathing. He forced his eyes opened, wanted to see his fate. The world was dark. But somehow, it was because something was there. Something he could fight. Stumpy couldn't make sense of the world, but if there was something he could slug or curse at, he'd never give up. His lungs started to burn from lack of air. It felt like a 200 pound weight had been attached to his body. He was being smothered. But that meant he was being smothered by someone. Someone he could fight. With a sudden surge of anger, he grabbed at the blackness, he pushed, and he felt it move. Like a massive pillow, it rolled off of him, off of his face and body, and he was born into the world of air and daylight again. He gasped in great lungfuls of air. The world rewarded him by putting out the fire in his chest. After 5 great gasps or so, he looked around. He knew Bedford's Glen would be little more than a memory. He looked at the instrument of his near suffocation. It was Beauregard, Doc Walter's dog. Or ex-dog. To be more specific, it was Beauregard minus most of his brain and large parts of his head. Doc Walter's other dogs just stared at Stumpy, grateful that he had removed the alpha from their group, something none of them had ever been able to do. Stumpy just sat there on the grass in the back yard, picked up his shotgun, and chambered another shell. He walked around and tried to figure out what was going on. The tattered remains of Doc Walters lab coat was still lying on the ground, near where Beauregard had been; the original white was hard to discern from all of the red on it. Dead. Doc was dead. But, who else? Was anyone around? How long had he been here? Had he seen anyone else? How long had it been since he saw another person? Earl! Was Earl alive? No. Stumpy had...he had...he had blown off Earl's head. At Earl's request. Well, at his taunt of Hee Haw, but it was the same as a request. As close to a request as a mind-controlled Earl could manage. What was going on? He almost couldn't stifle a laugh. But it made no sense to laugh now. Nothing made sense. Fucking dreams. Fucking Them. Fucking dogs. Fucking HEY!!! Stumpy remembered that his foot was still wounded as he stood up and put his weight on it. He was getting angry. He was in pain. And the world seemed to be playing games with him. He roared at the world and screamed all the obscenities he knew. The other dogs looked up, but quickly ignored him once they realized he was not addressing them. He still had his gun. He still could defend himself, damn it. He still was not about to give in. No matter what those fuckers did. Who ever those fuckers were. He would show them. He was not going to let it happen again. He was going to stand his ground. He knew what was real. He was in control. Let them try it again. He dared them! When Stumpy came to, he had the worst hangover he could remember. Then he made his eyes focus, and realized he was on the floor in Doc's place, staring at the ceiling. About 8 feet away on the floor was one of his boots and a puddle of Doc's 'shine slowly eating through the floorboards. Stumpy thought back and remembered at some point pouring the 'shine on his foot. But that was...that was then? That was now? This time the laugh caught in his throat, almost breaking free. The swelling had left his foot all right, but it moved right to his head! Damn, it hurt BAD. The bump on his head was enough to convince Stumpy that he had hit the stove with it on his way down. Damn stove was, what? 10 feet away? Long way sideways to fall, thought Stumpy. Unless it was something else that hit his head. He felt his head, expecting to find 3 or 4 bumps and a stream of blood in the same place but he felt only one, one that hurt like hell. This time he got up much slower, with much less confidence. Stumpy had to admit that he felt alone. Frightened. Scared. Alone. But then, what about Beauregard, Doc, and ... He loped over to the window and looked out. The dogs were there, including Beauregard, with a complete skull and as much of a brain as he had always had, but no blood soaked lab coat as a chew toy. Did this mean Doc was... "DOC!" Stumpy's voice was hoarse and raw. It was a combination of the 'shine and desperation. "DOC!" He had to be around. If he wasn't eaten, if he was alive, he'd be here. "DOC!" "Now, just take it easy there a minute, boy. I ain't as young as I used to be." Old Doc Walter's voice, smooth and quiet, yet authoritative. Stumpy turned his head and looked at Doc staring quietly at him. Doc put a reassuring hand on Stumpy's ankle and said, "We're just about done, just lie back down one more minute." Stumpy realized he was lying on an examining table in Doc's office and Doc was working on his foot, which was numb and covered by a small cloth. Doc glanced up again and said, "Damn lucky you got here when you did. You wait much more than an hour and there'd not be much I could do for you." Doc looked out over the top of his bifocals giving him a stern glance. After a moment, satisfied that he had sufficiently reprimanded Stumpy, he smiled and pulled the cloth away to reveal Stumpy's foot, complete with his, albeit bandaged, little toe. "Now, just be careful with that. Damn near got infected. Would've been nasty, boy, real nasty," Doc said. He paused, lost in thought for a moment, before blinking as if he just remembered something. "Damn near forgot. I'll let your 'visitor' in. You got some serious thank-you's to say, boy. Ain't for him, you'd be hobbling around on nine toes from now on." "That ain't that bad," Stumpy mumbled to no one in particular. This time the chuckle got to his lips, and he shuddered and coughed. He heard the door open, but was staring out into space, wondering if he should laugh, talk to Doc, cry, or just kill something or someone, when he heard a familiar voice. -------- Earl came waltzing in, fairly stinking with pride. "Good damn thing I got ya here in time, Huh Stumpy? Heh-heh. Little boys like you oughtn't be playing with loaded guns!" Earl slapped him on the back of the head in his usual affectionate manner. Stumpy smiled, just glad that his toe was going to be OK, and was really glad to see that Doc and Earl were OK. Still, the slap didn't exactly feel good on the back of his head. That huge dose of Doc's moonshine had really put one over on him. Hell's bells, that was the wildest dream he had EVER had. Dealing with the outer space critters taking over the town made the dream bad enough, but imagining that he had killed Earl and then found Doc Walters dead all in the same dream, well hell that was more than one person should have to deal with all at once. "Hell with THIS, I'm goin' back to what I was doing before all this mess started." Earl looked over at Stumpy like he was crazy. "You mean to tell me that you're gonna go back out there again right after gettin' mended? You sure you won't blow your damn head off this time?" "Now Earl, you know this was some kinda freaky thing. I ain't gonna go and shoot myself AGAIN -- that would be plain old stupid. Charlie Sanders stupid, that's what that would be." Earl laughed out loud. "Maybe if you stick your foot up your own ass like Charlie did, you wouldn't shoot it again!" Stumpy tried to think of a smart response to that. He finally gave up. "Go a little easy on that toe, boy, and keep it real clean till it heals, it was pretty dirty when you came in." Stumpy sure didn't mind Doc admonishing him for doing stupid things, but that last comment confused Stumpy. "I thought you said it didn't get infected?" "Well no, it didn't, not really." Doc wasn't used to questioning comments from his patients. They usually took what he said as Gospel. Doc explained that there were plenty of germs in the wound, and in his bloodstream, but his natural immunities had kicked in to fight off the germs and keep the wound from getting infected. "All right Doc, I'll be sure and treat my toe real good for a few days." Doc smiled as they left. Earl smiled too as he and Stumpy got in the truck and headed back to their neck of the woods. Stumpy dropped Earl off at his place and headed back to his cabin. As he drove away he hung his arm out the window and waved. Earl looked back at him, only half-smiling. "I STILL THINK YOU'RE CRAZY AS A DAMN SHITHOUSE RAT!!!" Earl turned and went into his house. At home, Stumpy tossed his keys on the table, got his shotgun and headed back down to Boggy Creek, just 5 minutes from the cabin. All the sounds in the woods helped Stumpy relax, and the woods were busy today. He could hear all kinds of birds and insects. As he walked along, he thought back to the second-most-awful part of his dream. The worst part was finding Earl like he did. He didn't want to think about that. No, the second worst part was finding old Doc in the yard, torn to pieces like he was. Stumpy never quite trusted old Beauregard. Stumpy stopped to sit down. Thinking about all this again was making him dizzy. He felt the back of his head again. It was still tender as hell. He ought to be feeling better by now. He figured walking would help, so he got up and walked on. He took his mind off the pain by thinking about old Doc. Something wasn't quite right. When he got to the big bend in the creek, he needed to sit down again to think about it some more. He sat on the old cypress stump by the big bend. He had a headache from Doc's shine. That much he knew for sure. Oh, and he had shot his toe clean off before that, sure. That's why he was at Doc's place in the first place, to get it fixed. Wait a damn minute. Stumpy wouldn't have given it a second thought, except that the image was SO clear in his head. Stumpy drank the shine at Doc Walters place, sure. But he drank the damn stuff AFTER Beauregard had torn up Doc! Stumpy's head was swimming now. He put his fingers in his ears to cut out all the noise around him. That way he could think about all this and not get distracted by anything. Okay, this didn't add up. If the shine made him dream all this up, then it made him dream it all up *after* he drank it. Made sense. Made perfect sense. That's ALL that made sense. See, how could he dream about all this crazy stuff, and then wake up to see Doc Walters? DOC WAS DEAD BEFORE STUMPY DRANK THE MOONSHINE. Stumpy's head was starting to hurt worse now, no doubt about it. Stumpy pinched the hell out of himself, hoping to wake up from this horrible dream. He pinched himself harder. It was no dream. He was sitting there all alone on the stump, and the forest noise was getting worse and worse. Stumpy looked around frantically. He didn't see any of Them around. There was nobody around but Stumpy, but the noise was getting steadily worse. If the noise was getting worse, it was nothing compared to his next thought. If this was no dream, or the DREAM was no dream, then Earl had to be very, VERY dead right now. And Stumpy had killed him. He had killed him, at Earl's own request, right before driving to Doc's place. At least Earl had asked Stumpy to kill him. Earl practically begged Stumpy to kill him in the only way he could manage, using their childhood code. Stumpy squeezed his eyes shut and clamped his hands over his ears. Had Earl really asked him to kill him, or had he just made some stupid comment about Hee Haw?!? Had Stumpy murdered Earl for no reason?!? Stumpy opened his eyes and took his hands off his ears. The noise was different now, because Stumpy heard himself yelling at the top of his lungs. Stumpy looked at his bandaged toe, and at the shotgun. The toe was the only evidence of all the evil he had seen. His toe WAS evil! They were real, and They were doing this to him. He could see the toe in his mind's eye. He could see it through the bandage. It was glowing a ghostly pale green, just like the spheres had done. Then the thoughts of his toe changed. In Stumpy's mind it was gray, dead and rotting. Just like Them. Slowly but surely, Stumpy was *becoming* one of Them! Without thinking a moment further, Stumpy grabbed his shotgun, aimed it at his toe, closed his eyes and squeezed the trigger. There was a moment of stabbing pain and a blinding flash of light in his mind. Stumpy opened his eyes. Everything was quiet, save for Stumpy's uncontrollable laugher. Stumpy hadn't exactly *meant* to shoot himself in the foot, but sometimes that's the price you have to pay for a free life in the wild. -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-===--==--==--==-==---=-==---=-=---=-=-=-=-=-. Pierce Krouse -- Tivoli Systems Austin, TX http://www.jump.net/~pkrouse Pierce.Krouse@tivoli.com It's always darkest before dawn. So if you're going to steal the neighbor's newspaper, that's the time to do it.