Everybody Scream! (25 page)

Dingo Rubydawn, Mitch Garnet’s Choom security man, stepped up to the counter and took patient aim into the stinking black whirlpool of cloud.

Back at the mall, Noelle heard the detonations of the two explosive bullets. This was enough. She wanted to go home.
Now
.

“Blast
me
,” breathed Bern Glandston, blindly inserting a dilky into his mouth, then chewing it unconsciously. He stared, mildly awed, at the leg.

It was a free attraction; putting a tent around it and charging admission had been considered but would detract from the effect of the great spider-like appendage emerging out of empty air. Lights illuminated it and there was a sign nearby with information. Two years ago it had appeared, at first just the mechanical-looking claws at the end and a bit of leg, high in the air. Slowly, imperceptibly, more had emerged as the foot lowered toward the ground. After two years the foot was still two inches from touching ground. It was as black, glistening and reflective as obsidian, with cruel barbs, odd mechanical joints, tough bristles, and the words “Toby Fucks” sprayed on the upper part of the leg in the nearly impossible to remove paint favored by graffiti artists.

Bern stepped around to the back of the leg. He craned his neck. He thought the cross-section where the leg emerged from thin air might show an actual cross-section; bones, nerves, veins, whatever. The surface was just a flat black disc. Bern moved around front to read the sign further. It had been suggested that this extra-dimensional creature had been drawn to the site by the color, noise, or activity. “By the smell of dilkies,” Bern muttered to himself, cramming one in his mouth. The sign went on that the leg was seven feet in length this year. Scientists had taken samples of this one, and in the air over a certain bank here in Punktown two hundred and forty-three of these legs had materialized. They had been fitted with lights to keep helicars from striking them at night, and a disintegrating unit had later been attached by brackets to two legs to catch a dribbling liquid which had started to rain out of the blue sky onto the bank, and which scientists later identified as a kind of waste product. The dribble had stopped after four months. It still remained to be seen whether or not those legs would have to be sliced away by the authorities in the future, pending further developments. The origin or nature of the creature was still unknown.

“Two hundred forty-
three
,” muttered Bern, wagging his head, chewing. Staring. What kind of thing loomed above him now, cloaked in invisibility, standing in this same space but in some other dimension? What did it want here? It was enough to make even Bern Glandston ponder a few more moments, even if nobody else seemed interested, too busy rushing from ride to game to food stand.

But he did sense a presence close behind him now, and he turned.

Though he had never seen an alien of this type before he was more curious than startled. It was huge, almost as tall as the leg, and sturdy, muscular. The head was like a hornless cattle skull with intelligent human-like eyes set in the deep cups of the sockets, the teeth devoid of gums and covering lips. It was naked, its muscle definition thus clearly displayed, and this showed that while the helmet of a skull was entirely turquoise, around the jaw and neck there began a pebbly chainmail of tiny smooth scales, turquoise and black in various sizes and patterns which changed in accordance with the area of the large body. The scales and their patterns were beautiful. The towering being was staring down at the ground in front of Bern, not at the mysterious leg or the sign discussing it. Though not afraid, the proximity and size of the being made Bern want to say something to get on its good side. But then, it wasn’t looking at his face, and in another instant Bern might have walked past it if he didn’t notice something he hadn’t at first for the darkness the creature glistened in. There was a large area of dullness which did not glitter with lovely scales on the being’s chest, extending up over one shoulder and presumably down the back. This area was deeply indented. The scaled skin had been removed from the area.

Those cow-sized but human eyes lifted from his shoes to stare directly into Bern’s eyes. Even without brows to lower or lids to squint, the eyes glared. And Bern felt a silent bomb of horror explode inside him, its cold tingling fallout spreading through his limbs, as he realized he was for the first time staring into the eyes of a Torgessi.

It clearly didn’t matter to this particular Torgessi that Bern’s shoes were
silver
and black, and couldn’t have been made from the hide stolen from its own body. A low, ominous rattling rose from deep in its throat. Some of those distinct muscles shifted in its chest and shoulders like a restless sleeper under a blanket.

“Hey!” said Bern, and he spun on the heel of his slipper, and bolted.

It was after him. Bern wasn’t sure how speedy a cold-blooded Torgessi would be but he held nothing back. It had stopped rattling so he couldn’t judge its nearness by that and he didn’t dare look over his shoulder. The suspended leg had been a little removed from the thick of carnival activity, and it was toward this that Bern ran, hoping the monster would be afraid to pursue him in public.

He plunged into a wave of people, bumping them, shouldering past some roughly, who glowered after him. He plunged between two game booths, jumped over a coiled drunk lying in the alley, and on into another corridor of the carnival labyrinth. Now, at last, he risked stopping to turn around and look for the creature. He panted, his heart somersaulting down the staircase of his ribs over and over.

The Minotaur stepped into the alley he had ducked into, its smoldering eyes falling directly on his. “Dung!” Bern cried hoarsely, bolting again.

Bern ran up to a group of apparent college kids who might prove sympathetic. “Hey,” he wheezed, holding onto a boy’s elbow, “you’ve gotta help me.” The boy jerked his arm away but Bern hardly noticed as he watched behind him for the monster. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, smearing his black lipstick. “There’s an alien chasing me…a Torgessi…it wants to kill me.”

“Well don’t lead it to us,” one of the girls in the group sneered.

“Tell a security guard or something, will you? Call the police.” Bern made ready to flee again, seeing that this was no shelter. “Has anybody got a gun?”

“No.”

“Come on, please, I’ll buy it from you.”

“Learn how to handle yourself,” the sneering girl hissed, disgusted with this groveling display.

“There it is!” Bern took flight. The security headquarters, where was it? He had to look for the administration trailers. He couldn’t very well leave the fair, with Pox yet to meet, his big deal to be made, especially with so many people already promised for tomorrow.

As he moved Bern patted his clothes for his hand phone, so as to call the three-digit emergency number for the police, but his frisking of himself became more frenzied as he realized he couldn’t find the device. Dung! He must have dropped it, or had it stolen from his pocket, while barreling through the throngs of carnival-goers...

Bern stayed in the main thoroughfares, hoping to become totally lost to the monster in the flood of people, but this also slowed his progress. At times it was like swimming upstream against a strong current. He came to a full halt, tangled in the knot of people gathered around an open tent in which men were arm wrestling. Moaning in despair, Bern glanced behind once more, and cried out. The towering alien was calmly but implacably striding toward him, its head above most of the bobbing heads, those eyes ever fixed on him. Bern panicked, tried clawing his way through the knot. “Hey, slime!” a man growled, elbowing him in the ribs. Bern grunted but persisted. He was almost through…

“Hey, kid.” A huge, uniformed security guard loomed up abruptly, taking hold of Bern’s arm sternly. “Take it easy.”

“Thank God!” Bern gasped, and pointed crazily as the guard drew him a few steps away from the knot of people. “Help me...that Torgessi is chasing me...it wants to kill me!”

The guard looked. The alien had stopped in its tracks, a pillar around which the waves of people lapped, so multi-colored as if the carnival lights reflected on their watery surface. Its eyes hadn’t left the boy. “Why?” grunted the guard.

“I have Torgessi-skin shoes...but hey, y’know?”

The guard glanced at the dusty slippers, back up at the Torgessi. “Hey you,” he called. “You. Move along. Get lost. We don’t want any trouble.” No response. “Hey! Torgessi! Look at me!” At last, those eyes slowly rolled to the right to acknowledge the guard. “Be on your way...I’ll have you expelled! Do you
hear
me?”

If it didn’t understand the words, it understood the meaning. Slowly, reluctantly, the Torgessi turned away. Moved off in another direction. It didn’t look back. The guard and Bern watched after it a long while until no sign of it remained. The guard released Bern’s arm and grumbled, “Fucking aliens. This is an
Earth
colony. They’ve got no respect for us. You’ll be okay kid...any more trouble just report it, okay?”

“Oh thanks...thanks so much. I thought it was gonna snuff me! Is there a pay phone I can use around here?”

“On the side of the piss shed, down by the mall. Go on, you’ll be okay now. That lizard makes trouble with you again I’ll personally make you a jacket out of him.” The barrel-bellied guard chuckled bitterly.

“Thanks again, man.” Bern wearily walked off in the rough direction he figured the mall area must lie.

Bern was correct, and the guard was correct that he was not attacked along the way. He waited his turn at a pay phone fixed to one side of the lavatory shed, punched Pox’s number out. The vid plate came on but was malfunctioning, showed only a colored blizzard. The voice of Pox’s beautiful girlfriend came on, groggy. She was perpetually groggy.

“‘Lo, this is Bern Glandston–is Pox there?”

A long, barely tolerant sigh. “
No
. He’s out.”

“Out? Out where?”

“Out–I don’t know. He’s going to that carnival tonight.”

“Yeah, he was going to meet me here–I’m at the carnival.”

“Well look around.”

“Did he tell you where abouts he’d be?”

“He doesn’t tell me anything,” said the blizzard of snow, for a moment almost coalescing into a beautiful but unpleasant face. “He just said he had a few errands to do and then he was going to the carnival...”

“A few errands to do first? Like what?”

“I don’t fucking know, alright?” The line went dead.

“
Whore
,” Bern hissed, punching his phone dead also.

Sighing, he turned to survey the carnival. If Pox were here already it still might take all fucking night to find him. What an arrogant, unprofessional scumbag. Disgusted and exhausted, Bern moved into the lavatory shed to fix his hair and makeup and wipe the dust from his shoes.

“Three dead,” Del breathed. “From one snipe.”

“And one kid with his hand half ripped off,” Dingo added, handing Del a coffee. They stood in the security headquarters trailer–for the carnival’s security team, not the town’s commissioned team. Behind a desk a female security team member was making out some reports on the snipe attack. Mitch Garnet, not in attendance, was occupied elsewhere.

“They’re mostly scavengers–if you leave ‘em alone they’ll keep their distance. Sometimes they’ll prey on a drunk in a subway, but...”