Invasion from Uranus (2 page)

"Pretty dirty, too," the SFX man said helpfully.

"Actually, the name of the planet is pronounced U-ran-us," Nick explained. "But since everybody says it wrong..." He smiled mischievously.

"And so..." the SFX man said encouragingly.

Puzzled, Nick frowned. "And so the title is a joke."

"You mean there's no anal sex in the whole book?"

Quickly fumbling on the console, Nick found the kill switch and turned off the wall speakers. Blessed silence filled the studio, aside from the gentle snoring of the unconscious DJ sprawled on the dirty floor.

"Now these stories are not in chronological order," Nick said, getting comfortable. "But in a mix that I think compliments each tale and helps maintain a smooth dramatic flow. All of them are funny, in one form or another, ranging from an oddball comedy to dark humor...okay, very dark humor. Yet always with an unexpected twist that is my comedic hallmark."

The SFX man slammed a homemade sign against the soundproof glass that read, "That name is copyrighted!"

"My trademark," Nick corrected brusquely, swiveling away so that he could no longer see the sound effects booth. "So, sit back, relax, and welcome gentle listeners to my shotgun view of a very odd universe."

Reaching into a pocket, Nick pulled out a new trade paperback and opened it to a dog-eared page.

"The first story in my collection is one that I am particularly fond of. The most common theme in all vampire-fiction is about how awful it is to be undead," Nick said into the microphone, getting comfortable. "Well, I decided to offer a mirror-image point of view with this first story."

Gamely, the Sound Effects man hit a button and there came the sound of shattering glass.

"Thank you!" Nick smiled tolerantly, hitting the kill button again to no effect. Damn. "Now, this is one of my 'Eureka' stories so named by my loving and very tolerant wife, Melissa, as I suddenly wake in the middle of the night, lurch out of bed and dashe to the computer in my underwear to pound out a story at 2AM. At first, she used to fix me coffee, now she just rolls over and goes back to sleep." Nick chuckled. "Ain't love grand? Enjoy."

Impatiently, I waited for death to awaken.

The basement of the Los Angeles mansion was dark, but air conditioned and luxuriously paneled in real wood with a plush velour wall-to-wall carpet on the floor. A giant screen TV with a state-of-the-art DVD player adorned one wall, and a compact gym was located nearby, surrounded by an assortment of clocks showing the time around the world. Nice. The only real oddity of the basement was that the windows were bricked shut. But that was a logical precaution for most people.

Slowly the armored lid of the stainless steel coffin next to the jacuzzi opened and the thing inside sat up. He was pale, of course, clean shaven, dressed in light blue turtle neck sweater, black pants and Oxford two-tone shoes. Rather natty actually and he appeared totally human. Turning about, he stared at me in shock, then questioning fear, puzzlement and finally, delight.

"Not armed," I announced, raising my empty hands. "No crosses, wooden stakes, garlic, Holy Water, nothing."

The monster displayed a big smile full of long teeth. "Then you are a fool," he hissed.

I smiled. "Yep. Kill me now."

Stepping out of the coffin, the dapper humanoid paused. "You are...a suicide?"

"Nope, a convert."

Furrowing that noble brow, he seemed confused. "Eh? A what? You wish to become a vampyre?"

I could hear the old world pronunciation. Wow. This guy was really ancient. "Definitely."

Striding closer, the midnight stalker breathed hot and heavy upon me. Oddly, his breath did not have the salty-copper smell of some hellish charnel house, but was minty fresh. He must have just brushed.

"Why?" the blood-beast demanded, looming closer.

"Why?" I gave him a lop-sided grin. "Get serious, dude. Vampires live forever."

"But only at night," he retorted, grabbing me by the collar and lifting my two hundred pounds of muscle as if I was a small child. "Never again shall you see the sweet majesty of the sun!"

"Phooey."

Shocked, his grip loosened and I dropped sprawling to the concrete floor landing on my car keys. Ouch.

"Phooey?" he echoed, as if he had never heard the word before. Then again, maybe he hadn't. Monsters lead such insular lives.

"Can you watch a video tape of the sun?" I asked. "Look at a poster of a sunrise? Touch a painting of a glorious sunset?"

He paused. "Well, yes," he admitted hesitantly.

"Then who cares?"

That stunned him for a moment, then the thing came back strong. "I care!" he roared making the walls vibrate and a rain of dust sprinkled down from the rafters. "To see the sun! The glorious sun just once more..."

"Crap," I retorted rudely, wiggling a finger in my ear to stop the ringing. "You're super-strong, can turn into smoke, fly as a bat, run as a wolf, hypnotize people, shrink to an inch in height, or grow to ten feet tall, you're immune to diseases, get all the babes you want and since you rob your victims, you're filthy rich!"

"Yes, these are true," the thing grudgingly acknowledged. "But in return, my kind are hunted everywhere we go. Forced to live lives of quiet desperation. No family, no friends. And we must kill to live! What is your clever answer to that, sir? The blood of innocent people will smoke on your hands for eternity!"

Smoke? Hmm, nice visual
. I got to my feet and shifted my car keys to a front pocket. "I don't plan to murder innocents."

"And whom shall you slaughter?" he asked in smug contempt, crossing his powerful arms. Wow. He had a 10,000 dollar Rolex Presidential watch on his wrist. Keen.

"Criminals," I said, reclaiming my chair. "Some street muggers, if I encounter any, but mostly organized crime figures. People protected by laws bought under the table. Murdering bastards that no honest cop can touch. I'll fill my belly with their blood. Fat rich blood. I'll drain loan sharks, rapists, drug smugglers, hell, I may move to the Middle East and declare my own jihad on terrorists!"

His eyes went level with mine. "You're serious," he said after a moment.

Stoically, I gave a grim nod. "Damn straight. And if some cop should accidentally get on my trail, why should they stop me? I'm not slaying little children or blind widows or anything like that. I'm zapping crooks, cleaning house for them. Doing the world a favor."

Thoughtfully, he began chewing on a taloned finger. "Perhaps," he muttered hesitantly.

Dramatically, I ripped open my shirt, exposing the neck. "Drink away, old pal. Been exercising and taking vitamins for the past month. No booze, no drugs, no fatty meats, lots of fiber. I'm ripe and ready for the taking. Anxious to become immortal this very night."

"As you request," the vampire acknowledged graciously. "By the Dark One, it will be pleasant to have company after all these decades alone."

Alone, like he knew what that really meant. Now I wasn't thrilled by having another guy place his lips on my throat, but the fangs only stung for a moment. And even as I began to feel woozy, I started to feel fine again. In a minute, he stepped away, a line of red drool flowing down his jaw.

"And that's it?" I asked, tenderly fingering my neck.

He gave a crimson smile, but a friendly one. "Yes. In three days, you shall awaken as one of us. A vampyre!"

"Great," I replied reaching into my pocket. Ah, there it was. "And the term is vampire these days."

He snorted in disdain. "What care I for the chatter of the food?"

I scowled, but said nothing.

"By the way, how did you find me?" he asked curiously, dabbing at his lips with an embroidered handkerchief of fine Irish linen. "I am rather good at hiding."

I shrugged. "Relatively simple. The dogs told me. They knew exactly where you were hidden."

All amusement instantly departed as his cat eyes went perfectly round. "The dogs told you?" he asked confused. "What dogs?"

"The pet dogs of your victims," I snarled, aiming the .32 automatic pistol inside my pocket. "After all they're the ones who asked Bureau 13 to have me find you."

"The Bureau!" the vampyre snarled in rage and rushed forward, talons raised for a kill.

Instantly, I triggered my weapon and he jerked backwards from the sledgehammer impact of the tiny wood bullets as if they were mahogany bazooka shells.
Hmm, not a bad idea. Maybe next time
.

Carefully, I tracked the body as it toppled over, making sure every precious mahogany round hit him in the heart. The last two splintering slugs burst through the desiccated corpse and only a handful of ancient dust sprinkled to the cold stone floor.

The undead was dead. That paid a lot of debts. Satisfied, I used my free hand to beat out the flames on my coat jacket from the discharge of the miniature pistol and started for the stairs. As a duly authorized federal agent for the ultra-covert Supernatural Police, it was my job to patrol the streets of Tacoma, Washington and protect the local citizens from hostile supernaturals: ghostly crack dealers, demon bank robbers, alien weapon smugglers, robot Nazis, atomic bedbugs, whatever. There was a lot of strange stuff out there, and most of it wanted to eat us.

Unfortunately, I was the only SP in my hometown and the job was becoming impossible to handle since I could only work a couple of days a month. So I went to downtown Los Angeles and found a nice California vampire.

When I was recruited by the Bureau long ago, I learned that there are rules about how curses operated. Lots of 'em actually, but the top one was: a big curse cancels out a smaller. Which was exactly what I had counted on here.

As a vampire, I could use my new supernatural abilities to patrol Tacoma and stop crime every night. Every single night, all year long! That sounded mighty good. I really loved my work protecting America and it had just been so damn frustrating waiting for the three days of the full moon to become a measly werewolf.

"Okay, now
this
is my first short story ever sold," Nick said, pausing to take a sip of radio coffee. Bleh. "I was on a panel talking about Humor and Violence, and somebody in the audience stated that the source of all Humor was violence. I cut that off by firmly stating that the source of most Humor was conflict, not violence. One of the other panel members was the editor of a SF magazine and said he'd like to see a story about that. I told him I had one already written..." Nick snorted. "Which was a bald-faced lie. But could I send it to him, say, next week? He agreed, I rushed home to write the story..."

There came the sound of a working typewriter.

"And when I turned it in, he bought it!" Nick chuckled, lifting the mug to salute the memory. "My first short story sale! What the hell, maybe this was how O. Henry got started, eh?"

The beautiful, green planet, Altuna, is located on the far side of our galaxy in a lonely little cul-de-sac, and is the home of the most peaceful, non-violent race in the entire macro-cosmic universe; gentle, humanoid beings who had never built a weapon of any kind, participated in violent sports or even had words for murder, arson or jay walking.

However, this did not mean that the native inhabitants never engaged in fighting, battles...or war.

The First World War, their most horrible escalation of savage conflict, began innocently enough when the Premier of the Northern continent, while trying to entertain her guest, the Czar of the Western continent, publicly made a small joke about the outrageously huge moustache worn by the King of the Southern continent.

Unfortunately, the joke came at a time in the King's life when his wife was divorcing him again and had sighted his infamous facial growth as the third party. Feeling despondent, the King was delighted to have somebody to strike back at and, under the advice of his staunch ally - the Czar of the Western continent - he gleefully activated his most ruthless sleeper agent in the capitol city of the Northern continent, with orders to 'do his worst'.

As a glorious golden dawn broke over the enemy city, the startled population awoke to find every wall poster of their beloved Premier defaced by a hastily scribbled set of devil horns and a snaggle-toothed grin.

The Premier was incensed by the heinous crime, and under the advice of her staunch ally - the Czar of the Western continent, she unleashed her best secret agent to even the score. During the night, the master spy penetrated the defenses of the Southern continent, broke into the palace of the King, sneaked into the man's private office, dialed long distance information for the correct time in the Arctic Circle and departed. Deliberately, and with malice and forethought, he left the royal phone off the royal hook. When the staggering telephone bill for $20.17 was received at the end of the month, the King had no problem getting his furious Parliament to officially declare the two countries in a state of war.

Less than a year later, their avenging armies clashed in moral combat at the primordial jungles of the Equator, the brave soldiers boldly taunting each other with rude noises and by making nasty monster faces. Soon though, the battle degenerated into hand-to-hand combat and thumb wrestling became rampant.

The cruel fighting waged for weeks, and beginning to fear defeat, the Premier, under the advice of her staunch ally - the Czar of the Western continent, got tough and unleashed a crack squad of stand-up comics, who traveled the South performing devastatingly funny impersonations of the King and his moustache.

Demoralized by the unrelenting act of terrorism, the King, under the advice of his staunch ally - the Czar of the Western continent, retaliated by broadcasting to the North a daily television sitcom about a Premier who scratched her head with a dinner fork and needed detailed instructions to operate a light switch.

Luckily, before it was too late, the North and South somehow learned the truth of the matter, joined forces and launched a joint armada of their navies against their common foe - the evil Czar of the Western continent.

But, when both the ships finally landed on the correct beach, the invading fleet was viciously embarrassed by shameless snipers who leaped out of the bushes, dropped their pants and mooned the entire assault force, sending more than one shaken young soldier to the psychiatrist for much needed counseling.