Six Scifi Stories (12 page)

 

*****

When I was a little girl, my friends and I used to run through the Cambio on a dare, dodging the shifting landscape and trying not to get killed. We only ever lost one of us--Ernesto Chiapas, who disappeared down a sudden sinkhole in the middle of a run.

Maybe I was going to see ol' Ernesto again after all those years. The terrain of the Cambio was just as unpredictable and dangerous as before.

As Guapo, Frogface, Manny, and I walked onward, following a faint human blood trail with Guapo's sniffer glove, the land was in constant upheaval around us. Geysers and steam vents erupted without warning, spraying us with water and heat. Landslides rumbled down hillsides, and tremors shook the ground. Spines and humps and shelves of rock thrust up suddenly alongside or in front of us...and in one case, underneath us. We tumbled ass over teakettle down the rising slope, barely missing a jagged, deep crevasse as it opened below us.

To me, it was just a typical day in the Cambio...but Guapo and Frogface weren't as easygoing about it.

“What the
hell
, Lupe?” said Guapo after a flying, head-sized rock almost took off his head. “This place is
loco
.”

“No one knows for sure what causes the instability.” As I said it, a stream of bubbling red lava ran out of the side of a nearby mesa that hadn't been there five minutes ago. “Some say it's the nexus of powerful cosmic energies, focused by an immense celestial convergence. Some say it's the intersection point of multiple dimensional rifts, moving in and out of phase with our reality. Others say it's Mother Polvo's rectum, and she's got a thousand-year case of Montezuma's revenge.”

“It's beautiful,” said Manny. The multicolored swirls on his skin shifted from mostly green and yellow to a peach and purple scheme. “It's violent and terrifying and beautiful.”

“You're flappin' cracked.” Frogface grabbed Manny's left arm and bit into the tricep. Rainbow blood ran down his duckbill lips and chin as he chewed the mouthful of meat. “Thanks, bro.”

Manny smiled and nodded. “
De nada
,
Ranito
.”

“How can you eat at a time like this?” said Guapo.

“I always eat when I'm nervous.” Frogface leaned in for another bite. “Oh, is this good.” He kept chewing as he talked. “Tastes like chicken marsala.”

Guapo watched a flume of steam burst out of the ground twenty yards away. “What the hell.” He slung his ultraviolet rifle over his shoulder and headed for Manny. “Save me some a' that.”

As usual, I turned up my nose and turned away.

 

*****

Two weeks later, when Guapo and Frogface were long dead, and I hadn't eaten in over a week, I stopped turning up my nose at Manny.

The jerky, fruit leather, and nutri-paste from my backpack were long gone. I had collapsed from hunger and exhaustion during another of our endless marches under the blazing sun of the Cambio.

Manny held my head in his lap and lowered a finger to my lips. He was smiling, and the sun cast a halo around him.

“Go ahead,” he said softly. “It's all right.”

I was so weak with hunger and fever that I could barely shake my head. “I...won't.”

“Just have a bite,” said Manny. “I won't tell anyone. Nobody will know what a flappin'
hipócrita
you are.”

I remember thinking at that moment how much I hated myself...first, for smiling at the tutti-frutti bastard's joke, and second, for wanting him.

For wanting more than anything in the universe to eat his flesh.

But what really amazed me was how little I cared when I finally bit into him. When he slid the tip of his index finger between my teeth, and I nipped off one tender bite and chewed.

I remember there were tears in my eyes. The flesh was sweet and soft as lobster, and it tasted faintly of drawn butter and paprika.

He pushed the finger further into my mouth. “Have some more.” There was no trace of gloating or sarcasm in his voice, just concern. “I've added meds for the fever.”

I nipped at him again, and this time the bite was bigger. It tasted even better than the first, and I closed my eyes as the flavor surged through me.

“More.” Manny pushed the finger deeper.

I bit down again and pulled more meat from the bone. Again, the latest bite tasted better than the one before.

“D-does it hurt you?” I swallowed and licked my lips. “When someone...eats you?”

“Yes,” said Manny, and then he pressed another finger toward me. “Now have some more.”

 

*****

Two weeks before, on my first day in the Cambio with Guapo, Frogface, and Manny, I couldn't imagine that the time would come when I would taste a Ration. I honestly thought I'd let myself die first.

Our quarry seemed to feel the same way. His first target, when he came after us, was not the Ration.

It happened that first night, after we'd made camp. Thanks to the marker beacons planted long ago by explorers of the Cambio, we'd found a
bolsillo sólido
--a solid pocket, a rare area of limited geologic change...compared to the rest of the Cambio, anyway.

We were sitting around the campfire in the
bolsillo
, winding down. As usual, Frogface was nibbling on a hunk of Manny, and Guapo was trying to get a taste of me.

If I'd just given Guapo a little love instead of pushing him away, he might still be alive today. Instead, he stomped off to take a whiz...and it turned out to be the kind of whiz you don't come back from.

My last words to the man who, as much as he annoyed me, I had never been able not to love for long? “Go flap yourself, flap-face.”

Two hours later, we found him by flashlight, fifty yards from camp. And fifty-five yards. And seventy-five, seventy-eight, eighty-two, and eighty-six yards.

Guapo had been ripped into little-bitty pieces and scattered all over the landscape. Most of the pieces didn't have much meat left on them, either.

“It was the man-eater,” Frogface said in a horrified whisper.

“Ya think so?” Even as I pushed around pieces of Guapo with a stick, recognizing the occasional beauty mark or shred of clothing, I couldn't believe this was all that was left of him. I couldn't believe that such a big, forceful presence was gone from the world.

Most of all, I couldn't believe that none of us had heard a single sound when such a noisy sonofabitch had been torn apart and devoured.

 

*****

I think Frogface knew he'd be the next to go.

The morning after Guapo's death, Frogface begged me to take him back to the
Puerco
. He was almost in tears when I told him he'd have to walk out himself.

“I'll never make it,” he said. “If the
reflejo
doesn't get me, the Cambio will.”

I slung Guapo's rifle over my back and nodded in Manny's direction. “I'm sure your little chew toy will watch your back.”

Frogface brightened. “That's true.” He grinned at Manny. “He's got a gun.”

That was when the tutti-frutti bastard surprised me. “No can do, Froggy,” he said. “Don't you think Guapo would've wanted us to finish our mission?”

“No,” said Frogface, but the look in his eyes told me he knew better. “He'd say the flap with it.”

Smiling like always, Manny walked over and stood beside me. “Somebody has to stop the man-eater, right?”

Frogface looked back in the direction of the border, then looked at us. Finally, he sighed and shook his head.

“There oughtta be a fresh trail after last night.” He drew a sniffer glove from his belt pouch and pulled the glove onto his hand. “We'll get a bead on that thing for sure.”

I glanced over at Manny, who was still standing beside me. To his credit, he didn't say a word...just met my gaze, then broke eye contact.

I, on the other hand, opened my big mouth. “Kiss my
nalgas
all you want, you good-for-nothing flap-head.” I spit in the gray sand at his feet. “I still got your number.”

Manny just smiled. “Someday,” he said, “you'll have to tell me why you love me so much.”

 

*****

Cornucopia pointed a color-swirled finger at my brother, Roto, who sat in the prisoner cage at the front of the courtroom.

“That's him,” said Cornucopia. “That's one of the boys who stole me from Señor Gustavo.”

I was eight years old, and Roto was twelve. It was the day after we were caught holding Cornucopia the Ration captive in our shack in Barrio Sucio.

The day after Miguel and Oswaldo died from eating the Ration's poisoned flesh.

The prosecutor waved his cigar toward Roto. “What role, if any, did he play in the group that stole you?”

“He was the leader.” Cornucopia nodded. “He gave the orders.”

“Thank you.” The prosecutor ran a hand over his wavy silver hair. “You may step down.”

“In the matter of the province of Pesadilla versus Roto Calderon,” said the jury foreman, “we find the accused guilty.”

“Roto Calderon,” said the judge. “I sentence you to ten years of hard labor at the Campo Esclavo maximum security facility. Take him away.”
As they led Roto from the courtroom in shackles, I was free to go. Roto had taken all the blame, lied that I'd been trying to stop him...and Cornucopia had backed his story.

Why she did it, I'll never know. Did she feel guilty and think she'd ruined my life enough? Or did she think I would suffer more this way?

Through it all, the sparkly little smile never left her tutti-frutti face. The whole time that she was helping send away the only person I had left in the world now that she'd killed my other brothers, she smiled.

As her owner bit into her shoulder, and I was turned out, starving, into the street, she smiled.

 

*****

Twenty-four years later, I felt Manny's hand touch my shoulder, and I didn't brush it away.

“That's enough,” he said. “Don't keep watching.”

But I had to. The man in the video flickering on the wall of the bone-strewn, bone-white cave was Roto. My brother.

And he was a changed man.

We had watched it happen, Manny and I. We had followed the trail of poor, dead Frogface's body parts to the cave, where we had found the video diary. We had switched on the blood-smeared projector and watched the whole horrible story of my brother's transformation, as urgent and immediate as if it were not recorded but happening live right there in front of us.

In the early entries, Roto had been bitter but hopeful. Prison had scarred but not broken him. He had come to the Cambio to live among the
reflejos
and learn their secrets. He had recorded his observations in the video diary and planned to use it as the raw material for a documentary.

In later entries of the diary, Roto had become more and more excited. His frizzy brown puff of hair had bounced as he talked about how he had been hungry all his life, but feeding the
reflejos
had changed all that.

“I was wrong,” he had said. “I always thought the most important part of life was to
eat
...but it's more important to
be eaten
.”

Shortly after that, Roto had started singing in a language I'd never heard before. He had stopped wearing clothes and had shaved all the hair from his body. Mysterious wounds had appeared on his flesh. He had started crawling around on all fours and making animal noises.

Then, there had been one last coherent entry.

“Must feed others now,” Roto had said. “Feed
humans
, not
reflejos
. Become like a
Ration
...but how? I can't feed others my flesh like a Ration.”

Roto had paced back and forth in the video, mumbling and striking his forehead with the heels of his hands. Then, he had stopped. “Wait!” His eyes had flared with mad inspiration. “I know what to do! Rations
kill
! I will
kill
like a Ration.”

The next time we saw him...

“No more, Lupe.” Manny tried to turn me away from the video. “Please.”

But I couldn't look away.

Until that moment, I had thought that a man-eating
reflejo
had killed all those people on Polvo. I had thought that a
reflejo
had torn apart Guapo and Frogface and captured Roto.

But a
reflejo
was not to blame.

In the video flickering on the cave wall, Roto used a hunting knife to kill a man. Then, he...

“Don't look, Lupe,” said Manny, tugging on my shoulder.

Then, Roto fed pieces of the dead man to another man chained to the floor. The man wailed and spit out the human flesh, but Roto forced in more, and the man started to choke.

“He thinks he's a Ration.” My voice was a whisper.

“The
reflejos
did something to him,” said Manny. “Or the Cambio changed him. Or both. He lost his mind.”

“No!” The voice of my brother, Roto, echoed in the cave. “I
am
a Ration!”

My heart hammered in my chest. Roto's voice was not coming from the video.

All of a sudden, he sprang up in front of me, between the projector and the cave wall. “
Hermaaana
,” he said. “You're just in time for
dinner
.”

Naked, hairless, and blood-smeared, Roto gaped at me with wild, red eyes. In his left hand, he clutched Frogface's half-eaten arm; I recognized the sniffer glove that Frogface had been wearing when he'd disappeared.

“Luuupe.” Roto held out Frogface's arm. “I am a
Ration
. Let me
feed
you.”

Video of Roto stuffing more human meat into the choking man's mouth flickered over his body. He smiled at me with blood-stained teeth.

Behind me, I heard Manny cock his rifle.

“Close your eyes, Lupe,” he said, and this time I did what he told me.

And then he pulled the trigger.