Asimov's Science Fiction - June 2014 (19 page)

Today, tourists visit the Clearing by the busload. A large parking lot has been built beside it. Visitors descending from vehicles listen soberly to the guide's commentary. They read the explanatory signs attentively, like studious schoolchildren, and show the uncomprehending silence of children before a teacher trying to explain, for the first time, a subject that escapes them. Many tourists buy a few postcards that they fill out while downing a can of beer at the snack bar, open in good weather. Then they walk up to the fence that protects the Clearing, and through it—with astonishment or indifference, as the case may be—they gaze upon the invisible. Just for a few seconds; then they take out their cameras, photo or video, to escape the anxiety it causes them to ward off this nonexistent landscape, the very edge of the world.

James Van Pelt's third collection of tales,
The Radio Magician and Other Stories,
received the Colorado Book Award in 2010. His most recent collection,
Flying in the Heart of the Lafayette Escadrille,
was released in October 2012. James has been a finalist for a Nebula Award and the Colorado Blue Spruce Young Adult Book Award, and his work has been reprinted in many year's best collections. The author blogs at
http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com
and teaches high school and college English in western Colorado. It sounds like an interesting, if dangerous, place to live—especially if the area really is teeming with creatures like...

Leon kept to the shadows on Mill Avenue, avoiding the street lights at either end, walking on lawns so he wouldn't kick gravel on the sidewalk and make noise. In one hand he carried a burlap sack, in the other a can of tuna.

A mountain wind stirred the pines behind the houses, hissing through the dry needles. Decatur was much longer than wide, contained in its mountain valley. Houses ran up the slopes a short way, like weathered lumber and cracked brick waves lapping at the cliffs. On one side the elevated interstate hummed with passing cars and trucks, but other than their lights illuminating the slope above, the residents never saw them. If it weren't for summer tourist traff ic, and the county schools at the east end, Decatur wouldn't exist at all. Its heyday as a mining center had ended a century past. No house stood younger than eighty years, and all were designated historic landmarks. Even the tiny bar and the Empty Bucket Café with its five tables sported brass plates on their exteriors touting their cultural significance.

Leon didn't care. His mom had moved them there after the divorce when she had taken the forest service job that made her commute sixty miles home on the weekends from the park. During the week, he lived on his own, an ideal situation for most high school seniors, but it made him angry. He would stalk through the old house with its peeling wallpaper and crooked doorways and hazy windows, glowering at it all. Everyone's related to everyone in the one-exit town, he thought. Bunch of inbred children of mountain hippies.

Now, though, as he tiptoed up the street in the dark, he focused on the task: cat hunting. Feral cats plagued Decatur. People, mostly summer residents, left milk in bowls for the cats, who were said to be good luck, but Leon didn't see them that way. During mating season, they would spit and yowl and keep him awake at night.

He turned the corner onto Seventh, checking under parked cars as he went. Now he walked in the middle of the street, which traveled two blocks before it stopped on the mountainside. He saw the evening's first cat under a new Chevy Tahoe. Definitely a tourist's car. He set the tuna can on the asphalt, flipped the lid open, then stepped back. The cat, black and white with a missing eye, didn't move for minutes.

"Here, puss, puss, puss." Leon held the bag in both hands. When the cat crept out, to sniff the fish, Leon pounced the way he'd practiced so many other nights. About half the time he succeeded. The other half the cat would shoot away like a furry missile. Here, the cat exploded into a rage of scratching and kicking, all claws and teeth and venomous attitude, but the thick canvas contained it. Leon clamped the top tight with his hand, holding the bag away from him in case a claw sliced through. He trotted down the street, keeping his eye out for pedestrians or cars. Explaining why he had a cat in a bag didn't appeal to him.

Behind his house, backed up to the mountain, a low, bowed building leaned to one side. A hundred years ago it might have been an overnight stable for horses, or a place to store a wagon. The door was too narrow for a car. Thick scrub oak shielded the structure from the house, making it invisible to someone who didn't know where to look.

Leon squeezed down a narrow path formed by the brittle scrub oak on one side, and the splintered wood on the other. Just above eye level, a window punctuated the wall. He listened for a moment before moving. No sounds inside the shed. He unlatched the window, pushed it open, and dumped the cat inside. It clung to the canvas for a second before dropping to the dirt floor. The window flopped closed when he released it, and he latched it again.

Inside the shed, the cat hissed, a truly angry sound. A flurry of scrambling, rushing movement. Something thumped against the wood. Another hiss. Then, a cat-like screech, followed by a wet rending rip, as if someone tore a soaked telephone book in half. Finally, cracking and slurping.

Leon pressed the button on his watch to illuminate it. 11:15. He needed to finish his algebra before he went to bed. No time to find another cat.

"Hey, ass hat," said Beau Harmon. He punched the back of Leon's head with his fingertips. Leon concentrated on his book. Mr. Gleedy had assigned
Crime and Punishment
last week, and today was supposed to be sustained silent reading, a time for Mr. Gleedy to check his Facebook page and for the students to do the reading they hadn't done at home. Nothing about the book interested Leon, except he heard there might be an ax murder in it.

"Ass hat." Punch.

Leon hunched forward, trying to move out of reach.

"Ass hat." Punch. "Ass hat." Punch. "Ass hat."

Leon's shoulders tightened. Nothing. He turned to see what Beau was doing. The fingertip punch caught him in the forehead. "Ass hat." Beau smirked.

"What's your problem?" said Leon. Beau wore a flannel, lumberjack shirt with a torn pocket. Leon couldn't stop looking at the pocket. At least his own clothes were well tended, he thought.

"You're a queer bait ass hat, and a waste of space to boot." Beau smiled. His teeth were white and straight. "I'm hoping you'll get pissed off enough that you'll take a swing at me so I can stomp your ass hat head into a greasy spot."

"Get a life." Leon's balls felt like they wanted to crawl up inside him, and he gripped the desk's edge so as not to bolt from the classroom.

"Get a death," replied Beau. He raised his hand. Leon flinched. "Bathroom, Mr. Gleedy," Beau said before pushing from his chair. He threw an elbow at Leon's head as he passed, but Leon ducked. Mr. Gleedy had looked back to his computer as soon as he'd given Beau permission to leave, so he missed the exchange.

No one else seemed to notice either, or if they did, they weren't meeting Leon's eyes as he scanned the room. Then he saw Beau had left his hat on his desk, a worn Colorado State University cap that had faded to a blotchy green with the rams logo partly peeled away. It was an ugly hat.

Leon checked the room again. Everyone had their head buried in their books or were sleeping (or texting under their desks, glancing up at Gleedy to make sure he wasn't looking).

Leon slid the hat off the desk and into his backpack.

The bell rang before Beau returned to class, so Leon left without having to face him.

Liselle Benividas wore a black, tight and very short leather skirt over black stockings. She preferred black boots, and she liked low cut shirts that revealed she didn't have much cleavage but way more skin than most girls showed. No one knew her hair's true color because it had changed every month or so since third grade. Today's version featured a light brown with green streaks.

She leaned against the lockers next to Leon while he tried his combination for the third time. It never opened on a first attempt.

"You know the smart girls stay away from Beau Harmon. He's got a permanent case of genital herpes. Beau's an STD buffet. The smart girls, if they see some dumb girl hanging with him, call her Petri dish."

"Why are you telling me this?" Leon couldn't remember ten words she'd spoken to him this year.

"No point. Just saying." She pushed herself away from the locker, put her ear buds in, then said, a little louder than necessary, "He might have a thing for sheep, too. Have you seen how much wool he wears?"

At lunch in the library, Leon cruised websites looking for information on velociraptors. They weren't huge as they were in
Jurassic Park:
three feet tall, but six to seven feet long and feathered. Serrated teeth, like a shark. A mouthful of steak knives. They were related to larger raptors, who had similar characteristics. He spent a long time studying the dinosaur's sickle claws, long, sweeping, retractable, curving bones. One article suggested velociraptors jumped their prey, using the long claws to hook on while they began to feed. The prey might not be dead, even, but die later from blood loss as the velociraptor tore away more and more flesh.

By the end of lunch he'd read four more articles. It turned out that scientists argued all the time. Were the long curved claws sharp enough to disembowel the prey? Did the velociraptor flap its arms, the vestigial wings, to keep itself in place as it fed on struggling animals? Did it hunt in packs? What color were its feathers? Did it have a voice?

They agreed on some ideas, though. The velociraptor wasn't sluggish. It must have been quick to catch its prey. The long tail would have stabilized it when it ran, and it may well have been intelligent. Fast, smart, and built to kill. You wouldn't hear them coming, low to the ground, sprinting on bird legs, until they were on you, which would be too late. Cretaceous back-alley muggers.

Student Senate kids surrounded Mrs. Dorsey, who stood in the library hallway. She taught math for four periods and did student senate the fifth. Her grey hair matched her grey face, which looked even greyer because she wore bright red lipstick. The kids held felt-tip markers and encouraged other students to sign the poster.

"Will you take the pledge?" Mrs. Dorsey said to Leon as he passed, on his way to P.E.

"What are you selling?"

"No sale," she said, brightly. "This is anti-bullying week. If we get 50 percent of the school to sign by Friday, Dunlop Photography has offered to do pictures at the dance for half price. It's a good cause."

A student senate member said, "The theme is 'Mountains Under the Stars.' We're going to turn the football field into the best outdoor dance floor ever, if the weather holds."

On the poster were slogans: NICENESS IS PRICELESS—IT ISN'T BIG TO MAKE OTHERS FEEL SMALL—STEP UP SO OTHERS WON'T GET STEPPED ON, and BULLYING IS MEAN AND SHOULD NOT BE SEEN.

"Are you a freshman?" Mrs. Dorsey said. "The freshmen sign in green, sophomores in orange, juniors in red, and seniors black." She held out a green pen.

Leon shrugged. "I don't like dances."

She didn't remember him. He'd had Mrs. Dorsey for math for his first three years and she didn't remember him.

After the other boys had changed and headed to the gym for day four of ping pong rules, Leon went through the unsecured lockers. He found two twenty-dollar bills in Simon True's jeans that he put back and a quart-sized plastic bag filled with pot that didn't interest him, but he took one of Simon's socks. Simon hung out with Beau Harmon, serving as Beau's chief of staff. Beau provided malevolent intent and muscle. Simon brought the brains, telling Beau when to back off, and mouthing lies that sounded so plausible after. "The kid was hurt when we got there, Mr. Quinault," he'd said to the assistant principal. "Beau wasn't even there," he'd said another time.

Leon took one sock each from two other lockers: Grant Haver and Lewis Lake, both part of the loose group who hung out with Beau. Each had stashed something interesting in his backpack. Grant had a pair of pink panties, which made Leon a little sick. There had been a story last year about Beau Harmon, his buddies, and a girl from the middle school the police found drunk, wandering beside the highway. Leon regretted picking the panties up. In Lewis's bag he found a gun, a small one with a pearl handle like a lady's antique.

Leon paused at the gun, a
serious
breach, like a federal crime, the kind that could get a kid tossed in jail. He placed it back, thought for a second, took the weapon out again, unloaded it, and then returned it. He tossed the bullets in the trash can on his way out to the gym.

During P.E. Leon lost every game, until he played Grant Haver, a biggish lump with a circus juggler's hand-eye coordination, who decided to switch to lefty when he saw he'd drawn Leon. Grant said, "It wouldn't be fair to show him my good hand."

Liselle played two tables down, knocking off one opponent after another with a mean slicing backhand and a backspin shot that hit the table at an angle but popped straight up, making it nearly impossible to return.

Grant won the first six points in a row against a listless Leon who didn't like ping pong, P.E., or Grant.

Grant stuck his right hand behind his back. "Maybe I should turn my paddle around and hit with the handle, or I could spot you twenty points." His served a high-sailing softball next, so Leon lashed at it, sending it toward Grant faster than anything he'd seen all period. Without rushing, Grant returned it too, then looked down the tables at the other players, hitting the ball languidly to Leon without appearing to pay attention. "Hey, Liselle," Grant said. "Did you get those gym shorts on sale?"

Liselle looked confused. "I don't know. Maybe."

Grant leered. "Because if you were with me, they'd be one-hundred percent off."

Leon swung at the ball coming toward him, let his paddle go, nailing Grant square on the cheek. The bigger boy howled and dropped as if he'd been poleaxed. The P.E. teacher rushed over with a towel. "What happened, boys? What happened?"