In the Deadlands (15 page)

I said to Anne. “No, I'm not going to have the treatment.” I turned and walked away. Behind me, she asked Michael, “But, why not?”

And Michael said, “I don't know. There's a lot about him I never understood.”

He was right about that. He never understood.

I wouldn't let them steal it from me. If I cooperated willingly with their soul death, then that would only prove their argument—that it was never true love at all.

Maybe it is just a little piece of this and a little piece of that; something in the genes and something in the hormones; maybe it really is all those things they say—but whatever it was, I felt it and it was real to me.

They could take it away from Michael and they could even take Michael away from me, but they cannot take away the fact that it happened. They can deny it—I won't. Never.

But, Michael, oh, damn you, damn you, Michael—I'm so angry!

AFTERWORD:

No, this is not about a real person. It is not about how I had my heart broken.

But I do admit that getting into the narrator's head, putting on his voice, brought up a lot of feelings about love and loss and that curious moment that occurs when someone you care about looks at you with distant eyes.

Afternoon with a Dead Bus

I was sitting at a stoplight, waiting. Breathing bus farts.

It was hot. I was unhappy. I was impatient to go and I couldn't see what the holdup was. All I could see was the billboard on the ass of a rabid-transit behemoth.

After a moment, I realized I was fumbling around on the dashboard, looking for the button to arm the lasers and launch the missiles and wondering why I couldn't find it.

It should have been there. I had the Belchfire V8, with Mach-Turbo-HyperBabble and pre-Lucas Art Drecko Techno-Gingerbread. I had the passenger-eject button, the James Bond axle-grinders, and the sound system from Hell. But I'd forgotten to stop at the ammo store to reload the weapon bays. Q was going to be very unhappy with me.

This was California in the 60's. Our cars were the physical manifestations of our identities. And my identity had decided to be very, very bad. All I could do was go along for the ride.

The light changed and I went home. I turned on the typewriter and this rolled out.

A bus had stalled at the corner of Sunset and Vine, and a crowd of automobiles quickly gathered around it. It didn't look good for the bus. The cars kept making ominous growling noises. The smaller ones kept dashing in to nip at the bus's wheels.

More cars kept arriving all the time, until finally the intersection was blocked on all four sides. It was as if they had caught the frightened monoxide scent of the stalled bus and converged on this corner from all over the city. The pack versus the beast at bay.

Their motors were angry and incessant. The smaller cars were trembling with feverish anticipation. They kept revving their engines impatiently and their exhausts were blue and smoky.

The bus was worried. It kept fretting and beeping nervously, as if to warn away the cars. The big yellow leviathan wasn't any too happy about being hemmed in; the cars were small and vicious and hungry.

It was a sad-looking bus, way past its prime. Its eyes were small and heavy lidded; it was half blind. Dirt was caked gray on its windows, and there were too many places where its paint was chipped and peeling. Its grime-encrusted flanks bore too many old scars; unhealed and untended, most had gone to rust. Even the billboards on its sides were faded and torn.

A Mustang stamped and whinnied its uneasy defiance of the dispirited giant. Nearby, a Firebird screeched in anger. The two cars seemed to overcome their natural antipathy toward each other in order to direct the full range of their fury on the hapless bus. The Firebird kept belching clouds of hot smoke into the air. Its lidless eyes glared balefully.

The other cars echoed that anger. There was a bright angular Corvette with flashing teeth; it mourned like a banshee. A sleek and brassy Barracuda lurked behind a toothy Cougar and a swollen Impala, while nearby a squat-looking bug tooted from an alleyway; the bug was a hated scavenger, it kept an uneasy distance from its larger cousins.

Farther back a fat Cadillac smoked and belched, watched and prodded, and occasionally roared its chrome-plated hunger. The other cars echoed its cry in discordant cacophony. They blared obscenities at the bus and challenged it to battle, knowing full well it could not respond. The younger and flashier cars—the Mustang and the Firebird and an eager Camaro—vied for the chance to draw first blood. The rich Cadillac honked impatiently for it.

It was not long in coming. A rough-sided Camaro elbowed the Mustang aside and faced the big bus head on. The bus rumbled warningly, deep in its throat; its big slow eyes watched the Camaro warily.

The Camaro began to harass the bus. It began a taunting little dance just in front of the giant's wheels. It showed the bus its tail and roared its motor. It puffed smoke from its rear end; it screeched its tires on the asphalt. Then it spun around, grinning, and made as if to attack. It chivvied and snapped and feinted at the other's throat. Then it scuttled backward to the safety of the pack to start again.

The bus was slow moving and slower witted. In fact, it was that very slowness which so angered the automobiles. Had the big yellow beast displayed just one bit of rapid flashing anger, its tormentors might have held back.

But it didn't. Unsure of itself, it kept edging backwards, away from the splashing Camaro—back, back, backwards, one uneasy step at a time, until the sudden blaring cry of the Firebird startled it forward with a frightened lurch.

The Camaro sidestepped the heavy wheels easily, but there was a quick scraping-metal sound, a high-pitched
HHAAAGKKK
of first blood being drawn. When the Camaro leapt away, there was a fresh scratch along its flank.

The rest of the pack was frozen for a moment, as if in drawing its breath. They waited for the Camaro's reaction, for the bus's reaction. Horrified by what it had done, even if only inadvertently, the bus fretted uneasily back, away from the Camaro. The Camaro roared in triumph and circled again for another advance upon its prey. It was in the center of the ring now and enjoying the admiration and support of its fellows. The cars growled and whinnied, honked and hooted; they urged the scrape-fendered champion on to greater and more inspiring deeds.
The Camaro circled proudly, displaying its wound like a badge of honor. There was a fresh scratch on the bus's flank too, and the scent of machine blood wafted over the pack like a sigh.

Buoyed up by its first encounter, the Camaro turned again toward its prey, but the Impala, hungry and impatient, also moved out of the pack. It was a heavy and powerful car, and it rumbled a deep, throaty challenge. It rolled menacingly forward.

The bus took a step back, but it couldn't escape. It was hemmed in by the vicious flashing teeth of the other cars. It found itself being snapped at and unable to back up any more. Worriedly, it fretted from side to side.

The Impala advanced. Encouraged by the excited beeps and honks of the others, it closed in, sighing through aching teeth. The Camaro made as if to move forward and join the Impala, but a low growl from the bigger car warned it off. The bus is mine! The Camaro scooted back, complaining loudly.

The bus was watching the Impala now. It was a dangerous adversary. It was not playing the feinting game of the Camaro. The bus rumbled warningly, but to the Impala it was only further challenge.

Then the bus gave a lurch forward, as if to scare off the other. It wouldn't scare. The Impala rolled smoothly forward, stalking, stalking, until it was almost nose to nose with the ponderous other. Its four bright eyes held only the promise of glittering death.

Startled, the bus took a step back, and in so doing, crunched into the snuffling Firebird; the car had been lurking behind it—it howled, more from shock than hurt. But it was a signal. The pack edged in, each car moving just a little bit forward. The Camaro was in the forefront.

The bus lifted one great wheel in warning, but the pack ignored it. The Camaro, overcome with its own daring, dashed in to chivvy the bus's throat—and found itself pinned
beneath the wheel. It uttered a gashing, crashing, agonized scream—a howl of shock, rage, anger, frustration and despair, all in one. It was suddenly cut short.

As one, the cars gave a cry. The roar of their engines rose. Black smoke belched from their exhausts. An acrid and pungent odor filled the air: the smell of death, realized and impending.

The autos moved. Unmindful of the danger to themselves, for they were no longer acting as individuals, the cars rolled in. With a sharp rasping snarl, the Cougar leapt at the back of the bus. Its claws scrabbled for purchase. Farther along the great beast's flank, a blue Corvette had sunk deep fangs into the bus's side. Metal ripped and shrieked. The smell of gasoline and oil and diesel fuel swung heavy in the air.

The Corvette had torn a rent in the bus's side. It lapped at the flowing ichor and buried its fangs again. The bus grunted in finally realized pain and swung halfway around to strike at the sportster, flinging it away and onto the sidewalk, a flimsy pile of metal and fiberglass. Its proud angles and wings were torn and crumpled, and it lay there gasping and sputtering.

But if it was out of the battle, it had still inflicted heavy damage on the bus, and others moved in to widen that gaping wound. Already a Barracuda was slashing into the torn metal-flesh, its sharp teeth rending and tearing.

The bus howled at it, howled at the Cougar that was clawing at its back. It shook and heaved and issued a deep, agonized cry. But the Cougar had a firm grip and wouldn't be moved, and the Barracuda kept lunging in again and again.

Frenzied, the bus threw itself fiercely back, then forward. Its great tail lashed from side to side, smashing windows and crumpling fenders. The cars swarmed forward at it, around it, biting at its wheels and its unprotected flanks.

The bus rose up in agony, shaking and screaming. The Cougar slipped off its back and crashed down onto the Firebird that had been doing something to the rear of the bus. The Barracuda was flung away too. Heavily, the bus struck out at its tormentors, but it was outnumbered hopelessly. Already the Cougar was scrabbling onto its back, widening the fissure of torn metal, ripping open the flesh, scooping in with its claws. The bus's black blood ran down its sides and into the streets.

The Cadillac moved in then. Barking and protesting, the smaller cars were edged out of their way. It shouldered roughly through and began to rip great chunks of rubber off the bus's tires. It ignored the bus's shrieks as it stuffed bleeding gobbets into its maw.

The rest of the cars had fallen onto the bus already. Its heaving attempts were no longer strong enough to shake them off, and they were ripping and tearing hungrily at its flesh, always trying to reach its throat. They fought with frenzied lust.

The Cadillac was eating everything it could. Gobbets of bus-flesh dripped out of its lips. It masticated in rapid jerking motion. It stuffed and gobbled—pieces of the other cars as well as hunks of the bus, the fender of the Impala, too, crumbling bits of the pavement. The bus was almost ignored as the Cadillac grabbed at everything that came near it. Its hunger was manic and insane.

The mighty leviathan was making one last effort to escape. In a heroic effort, it rose to its feet, unmindful of the cars hanging from it, the great holes in its sides, and the bleeding entrails that hung out of its wounds—at which the cars still snapped and bit.

It was a doomed effort. The bus was little more than a shell now—still reacting, still feeling, but its vitals were being torn out even as it moved. The Mustang hanging sharply at its
throat like a terrier had struck home, and transmission fluid was leaking all over the street. The bus sank back down onto its knees, almost a kneeling, supplicating posture.

The death blow was not long in coming. It came not as a single thundering end, but as a series of vicious bites, as a continual rending and tearing, as a slow, agonized ripping away of the vital organs, as the painful, aching process of the feeding of the pack. The bus shuddered once and was still.

The cars plunged inward hungrily, climbing and clambering over each other in mad intensity. They leapt onto the back of the bus, or into its gory sides. They thrust their muzzles deep into it, swallowing without chewing. Their ravenous hunger overcame them and they fought amongst themselves, clawing and scratching.

The body of the bus was invisible now, blanketed by the flashing bodies of its attackers. The only piece of yellow skin visible was the small tender scrap that a young Volkswagen was contentedly chewing.

The noise was horrendous: scraping and scrabblings, clawing, shrieking—the continuing sounds of gobbling hunger being sated. The stench was awful. Reeking fumes swept up the streets, outward in all directions.

The black blood ran thick on the pavement. The cries of challenge and triumph had long since faded into the slobbering sounds of choking motors, eating, gnawing, snarling, tearing at the bus's frame. They steamed and stank.

They still swarmed over the giant corpse, but with lessening intensity. Their initial frenzy had been fed, and now they were feeding their stomachs as well. The Firebird was repaying the insult of its crumpled grill. It belched and farted happily, joyously.

The cars made quiet gobbling sounds of satisfaction. The bus was being quickly reduced to its bones—and even those were being eagerly torn away. The Volkswagen crept out of its alley again to lap at the bloody streets.

The big Cadillac growled sluggishly and parked itself against a wall. Even
its
hunger had been sated. It belched its gluttony into the air.

And then they heard it.

The sound. The deep, rumbling, far off sound.

And the scent, far off but still distinct—the scent of diesel.