Moby Jack & Other Tall Tales (10 page)

‘I guess not. So, colonel, we’ve had all these exercises, albeit on celluloid, but what have we learned? What do we do with them? What do you suggest is our approach?’

‘Blast them to hell, general, begging your pardon. If there’s one thing we’ve learned it’s that if you give ’em an inch, they’ll take a planet. They’ve got Nebraska. That’s almost an inch. We need to smash them before they go any further. Blow them to smithereens before they take Kansas, Iowa or Wyoming, or God forbid, Dakota.’

I always err on the side of caution, that’s why I’m still a one-star general I guess.

‘But what do we actually
know
about these creatures? I mean, why come down here looking like Charlie Chaplin?’

The colonel’s eyes brightened and he looked eager.

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘I have a theory about that, sir. You see
,
we send crap out into space all the time.
I don’t mean your hardware
,
I mean broadcasts
. They must have picked up some of our television signals. What if their reception had been so poor that the only thing they picked up was an old Charlie Chaplin movie? Eh? What if it was one of those movies in which he appears on his own—just a clip—and, and here ’s the crunch, they,
they
thought we
all
looked like that?’

The colonel stepped back and nodded.

‘You mean,’ I said, ‘they think the Charlie Chaplin character is representative of the whole human race.’

‘Exactly, sir.
You’ve got it. We all look alike to them. They came down as Fifth Columnists, intending to infiltrate our country unnoticed, but of course even most Nebraskans know Charlie Chaplin is dead, and that there was only one of him. The Nebraskan dirt farmers see a thousand look-alikes and straight away they go, “Uh-huh, somethin’s wrong here, Zach...”

‘So, they did what any self-respecting mid-western American would do— they went indoors and got their guns and started shooting these funny-walking little guys carrying canes and wearing bowler hats. I mean, what would you do?’

‘I see what you mean, colonel. They’re not from around here, so they must be bad guys?’

‘Right.’

‘Blow holes in them and ask questions later?’

‘If you can understand that alien gibberish, which nobody
can.’

‘I meant, ask questions of yourself—questions on whether you’ve done the right and moral thing.’

‘Gotcha, general.’

I pondered on the colonel’s words. Colonel Cartwright was an intelligent man—or at least what passes for intelligence in the Army—which was why he was a senior officer in COP. He had obviously thought this thing through very thoroughly and I had to accept his conclusions. I asked him if he was sure we were doing the right thing by counter-attacking the aliens and blowing them to oblivion. Had they really exterminated the whole population of Nebraska?

‘Every last’s mother’s son,’ answered the colonel, sadly. ‘There’s not a chicken farmer left.’

‘And we can’t get through to the President for orders?’

‘All lines are down, radio communications are being jammed.’

‘The Air Force?’ I asked, hopefully.

‘Shot down as it crossed the state line.
There’s smoking wrecks
lying all over Nebraska.
Same with missiles.
We were willing to wipe out Nebraska, geographically speaking, but these creatures have superior weapons. We’re the nearest unit, the last line of defence, general. It’s up to us to stop them.’

‘How many men have we got, colonel?’

‘A brigade—you’re only a brigadier-general, general.’

‘That’s true. Still, we ought to stand a chance with four to five thousand men. They—they destroyed our whole Air Force, you say?’

The colonel sneered. ‘The Air Force are a bunch of Marys, sir. You can’t trust a force that’s only a century old. The Army and the Navy, now they’ve been around for several thousand years.’

‘Are we up to strength?’

‘No, sir, with sickness and furlough we’re down to 2,000.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘We go in with two thousand, armour, field guns and God on our side.’

‘You betcha!’

A corporal came into the room without knocking.

‘Yes, corporal?’ I said, icily. ‘I’m busy.’

‘I thought you ought to see this, sir. It’s a message—just come through.’

She handed it to me. ‘From Washington?’ I asked, hopefully.

‘No, sir, from the alien.’

‘The
alien
?’ I repeated, snatching the signal. ‘You afraid of plurals, soldier?’

‘No, sir, if you’ll read the message, sir, you’ll see there ’s only one of him—or her.’

The message read: YOU AND ME, OLIVER,
DOWN
BY THE PLATTE.

‘Looks like He’s been watching John Wayne movies, too,’ I said, handing Cartwright the piece of paper. ‘Or maybe Clint Eastwood?’

The colonel read the message. ‘How do we know there’s only one?’ he asked, sensibly. ‘It could be a trick.’

‘Our radar confirms it, sir,’ the corporal said. ‘He’s pretty fast though. It only looks like there’s multiples of him. He seems to be everywhere at once. He’s wiped out the whole population of Nebraska single handed.’

‘Shit,’ I said. ‘What the hell chance do I stand against an alien that moves so fast he becomes a horde?’

‘Fifty percent of Nebraska was asleep when they got it,’ said the colonel, ‘and the other half weren’t awake.’

‘What’s the difference?’

‘Some of ‘em actually do wake up a little during daylight hours.’

‘Gotcha. So, you think I stand a chance?’

The colonel grinned. ‘We’ll fix you up with some tricky hardware, sir. He ’ll never know what hit him.’

‘But can I trust him to keep his word?
About being just one of him?
What if he comes at me in legions?’

‘No sweat, general,’ said the colonel. ‘This baby,’ and here he produced a shiny-looking hair-drier, ‘is called a
shredder
.
Newest weapon off the bench.
One squeeze of this trigger and it fires a zillion coiled razor-sharp metal threads. Strip a herd of cattle to the bone faster than a shoal of piranha. The spread is one mile every foot after leaving the muzzle. You only have to get within ten feet of the bastard and you can annihilate him even if he becomes a whole division.’

‘Can I hide it under my greatcoat?’

‘Nothing easier, sir.
And we’ll wire you with a transmitter. He’s only jamming long-distance stuff. You can tell us your life story. Oh, and one more very important thing.’

‘What’s that?’

‘We have to give him a nickname, general.’

I stared at the colonel. ‘Why?’ I said at last.

‘Because that’s what we’re good at.
We always give the enemy a nickname. It demeans them. Makes them feel self-conscious and inferior. It’s our way of telling them that they’re low forms of human life.’

‘Or in this, case, alien life.’

‘Right, general.
So, we have to give him a humiliating nickname—like Kraut, Slopehead, Raghead, Fritz, Dink or Charlie...’

‘We can’t nickname him Charlie, he’s already called Charlie.’

‘OK, I take that on board. Now, his name’s Charlie, as you say, so how about we call him
Chuck
?’

‘Doesn’t sound very demeaning to me.
My brother was called Chuck.’

‘Depends on how you say it, general. If we’re talking about your brother, we sort of
say
“Chuck” in a warm kind of tone. But if
we’re
 
talking
about
Chuck
, we use a sort of fat chickeny sound—
Chuck
—like that.’

‘I think I understand, colonel. Well, let’s get me armed and wired. It’s time I taught
Chuck
a lesson.’

So that, as you know colonel, is how I come to be walking down to the Platte
river
at three in the morning. Are you listening back there in the base? The moon is gleaming on my path as I reach the banks. Here in the humid Nebraskan night I wait for my adversary. Single combat.
Mano a mano
.
The gunfight.
The old way of settling differences in the American west.

Hell, what am I saying?
we
didn’t invent it.
The
old
, old way.
The chivalric code of the knights.
A tourney. A duel.
An affair of honour.
Rapiers at dawn.
Pistols for two, coffee for one.

And I am ready. You didn’t send me out unprimed, did you, colonel? You made me submit to
brainstorming
—
masses of data has
been blasted into my brain in the form of an electron blizzard. Every alien invasion movie ever filmed is now lodged somewhere inside my cerebrum, waiting to be tapped. Any move this creature makes, I’ll have it covered. Hollywood has foreseen every eventuality, every type of extraterrestrial intent on invading and subduing us earthlings. They’re all in my head.

Chuck’s
coming up over the ridge, thousands of him doing that silly walk with the cane and twitching his ratty moustache.
‘
Don’t let him get to you with the pathetic routine
,’ you warned me, didn’t you colonel? ‘
You know how Chuck can melt the strongest heart with that schmaltzy hangdog expression. Don’t look at him when he puts his hands in his pockets, purses his lips, and wriggles from side to side
.’
Well, don’t worry
,
I
hate
Charlie Chaplin
. That pathos act makes me want to puke, always did. If he tries that stuff I’ll shred him before he can blink.

He’s getting closer now and he’s suddenly become only one, a single Charlie Chaplin.

My fingers are closing around the butt of the shredder. I’m ready to draw in an instant. The bastard won’t stand a chance. Wait, he’s changing shape again. Now he’s
Buster Keaton
. I never liked Buster Keaton.
And yet again.
Fatty Arbuckle this time.
I detest Fatty Arbuckle. Someone I don’t recognise. Now Abbot and Costello.
The Marx Brothers.

Shit, he’s only eleven feet
away,
he’s suddenly changed again. He’s gone all fuzzy. He’s solidifying. Oh. Oh, no. Oh my golly gosh. God almighty. It’s—it’s dear old Stan Laurel.

‘Hello, Olly.’

Did you hear that, colonel? Just like the original. He—he’s beaming at me now, the way Laurel always beams at Hardy, and I—I can’t do it. I can’t shoot.
Of all the comic actors to choose.
I
loved
Stan Laurel. I mean, how can you shoot Stan Laurel when he’s beaming at you. It’s like crushing a kitten underneath the heel of your boot. I can’t do it. The flesh may be steel but the spirit’s runny butter.

Whaaa! Oh God, he’s shot me—right through gut—with some weapon of strange foreign design—not Japanese though—it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before—but deadly. It’s—it’s left a hole in my belly you could drive a tank through. He even had the gall to blow away non-existent smoke from the weapon’s muzzle. I’m dying colonel. I’m a dead man.

Wait, he’s standing over me. I think he’s going to speak. Listen to this. Are you listening, colonel?