The Dinosaur Chronicles (7 page)

I looked. Instead of an ankle, I saw a gnarled, braided knot of scar tissue that still, after all these years, looked like yesterday’s hamburger. I swallowed hard, barely keeping down my tea and my breakfast.

At that point the screen door slammed again.

“Pa!” Jeremy’s sharp voice rang out but quickly dropped to an uneasy patronizing timbre. “Are you filling our guest’s head with your stories?”

I looked up at the youth. It was the first time I’d met him eye-to-eye. He was trying to smile, but the corners of his mouth twitched. His explanation came quickly, with words tumbling out in bunches punctuated only by gasps for breath.

“Pa’s had a stroke y’see that’s why he’s got that cane—and the burn on his leg’s an old farm injury—and since his stroke he tends to fib a lot—”

“Jeremy!” Hoger blurted out, interrupting the stream of words, and his eyes widened till you could see the whites all around.

“—fibs a lot since then,” the boy repeated. “He likes to tell his fables to the slickers, just to see how gullible they are.”

Hoger growled, “Don’t you call your Pa a liar!” Hoger lifted his cane and waved it back and forth. “I may be old, but I can still tarnish your hide!”

The boy glanced at his father, then looked back at me. A lock of his pompadour had fallen across his forehead and now lay pasted to the emerging dampness on his baby-smooth brow. Jeremy said, “The stroke also affected Pa’s temper, as you can see.”

For a moment, both Hogers were silent, and I should have kept my mouth shut as well. But I didn’t. You can blame my education and my penchant for cold scientific analysis. “Your explanation,” I said to the son, “almost makes sense. But it doesn’t explain the three workers burning the circle.”

Jeremy blinked, and his voice took on an edge. “No it doesn’t, does it?” He turned on his heel and dashed back into the farmhouse, and I got a real bad feeling in my gut.

“Thanks for the tea and everything, Mr. Hoger,” I said as I rose from the chair and hustled down the porch steps. I didn’t wait for the old man’s reply. I was fifteen paces from the house when I heard the screen door slam one last time.

Hoger’s voice carried over my shoulder. “Jeremy, No!”

I ran. Fear bristled up my back and I hardly noticed the path of dead earth as I crossed. A rifle shot broke the stillness of the fall afternoon, and the whistle of the shell as it whizzed by my ear made me gasp. Ahead of me, a large golden pumpkin shattered, spilling pulp and orange and white wriggly spaghetti about half an inch across.

Punkin’ vipers!

I skidded to a stop. For a moment I forgot about Jeremy’s rifle and simply stared, horrified yet fascinated by the writhing, twisting mess.

Jeremy’s laugh broke through my astonishment. “That’s them, Mr. Smarty. They don’t last long outside a pumpkin, but long enough to run after the nearest sound they hear. Go ahead,” he taunted. “Take a step.”

I angled off to one side. The worms, which had been wriggling aimlessly in the midst of their destroyed pumpkin, took off immediately in my direction. For their size, their speed was breathtaking. Like the leading rivulet of a flash flood, they raced through the irrigation gullies and tractor treads, making an undulating white arrow pointed directly at the object of their wrath.

They were fast, all right, and I could barely outrun them. But with dodging pumpkins and fighting the clumpy footing with my dress shoes, I knew I couldn’t keep up the effort for long.

Another shot rang out. Ahead of me, another pumpkin exploded. In my mind, I saw again the terrible scarred flesh of Hoger’s ankle, and I changed direction once more, drawing my way a new tangle of white hellfire even as the first worms finally fell off the pace.

Jeremy yelled, “You think I’m gonna let you kill the industry, Mr. Smarty? And kill my farm?
My
farm? I earned it! After my brothers and sisters left, who was there to take care of Pa and the farm?
Me
. And you’re not gonna take away what’s mine!”

My legs began to shake even as I pumped my arms harder. I puffed, “So you’re going to kill me—in front of all these witnesses?”

Around the edges of the field, workers had stopped to watch the spectacle. A few were crossing themselves. Others hid their eyes.

“Who’re they going to tell?” Jeremy shouted.
“I
nmigración
?”
 

The word had an electrifying effect. As I ran, I saw more of the workers turn their backs.

So most, or all, were illegals. That didn’t surprise me. And I doubted that few, if any, would tell a story about a man in a gray summer suit burned to death by parasites the world knew nothing about and would certainly not believe.

I looked over my shoulder. Jeremy was leisurely dogging my steps. Because I was the closest source of noise, the released vipers followed me and not him. Whatever they were, they were simple organisms with simple reflexes. But that didn’t help me now.

“Pa
did
have a stroke,” Jeremy yelled as he followed. “It fried some of his brain cells and it’s the reason he can’t keep his yap shut when he ought to.”

Another shot. Another pumpkin obliterated, and I had to turn again. It was obvious Jeremy was a practiced marksman. And playing with me. He could have killed me a dozen times already.

And I was running out of steam. Air came into my lungs in hot, dry blasts and my ears pounded with a pulse like knocking pipes. Sweat ran into my eyes, blinding me, and I stepped into a depression I didn’t see.

I fell, nearly putting my fist through a pumpkin and landing with my nose pressed against the vegetable’s fat surface. I gulped. If my hand
had
penetrated that mass ...

“Stay right there,” Jeremy’s voice called, “face to the pumpkin, and it’ll be over real quick.” He laughed, and my adrenalin-laced senses picked up the click as he fed the rifle. I scrambled on hands and knees as he fired again, and a shower of orange pulp spattered my back. I took a quick look. I didn’t see any white. The pumpkin must have been one of the uninfected ones.

I heard Jeremy curse. In his anger, I knew the time for playing was over. His next target wouldn’t be a pumpkin.

And then I saw a chance—a small chance.

Among the rows of swollen gourds there lay one runt pumpkin. I ran to it and picked it up. The skin of the orb writhed in my hands. It was loaded with worms.

I’d played soccer in high school. That was a long time ago. But I still knew how to effect a throw-in. Over my head, with both hands, I launched the honeydew-sized runt into a high arc. Even I was amazed at the loft.

But if I was amazed, Jeremy was surprised. Resistance was something he hadn’t expected, and he reacted instinctively.

He took his rifle and fired.

I may be a city slicker, but I’m also a physicist. The bullet split the pumpkin into pieces, but the momentum of the pumpkin couldn’t be stopped by one mere bullet.

And, just before the rain of orange pulp and wriggling white engulfed him, Jeremy let out this long plaintive wail:

“Paaaaa—”

I turned and hustled to the edge of the field. Shrieks of torment echoed through the valley, followed by rasps like the spitting of a wounded animal. But I kept running; I had no wish to gaze on the result of Jeremy’s error. No, Jeremy would never be welcomed as an Elvis lookalike again; perhaps, if he survived at all, he could usher at a
Nightmare on Elm Street
revival.

I crossed the burn path once more. Behind me, the shrieks had become guttural, rolling sobs. Ahead of me, at last, was my sedan.

I started the car, punched the transmission into drive and roared out of there, wheels spinning and gravel flying. I might be a physicist, but when I got back to Boyer State my first stop would be the biology department. I’d grab the department head, plunk him down at his desk, and tell him all about—
punkin’ vipers!
 

Afterword

“Punkin’ Vipers” first appeared in
Futures
V.3/#22 (April/May 2001), as by T. Rex. The publication still exists as
Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine
, and is worth checking out.

There are stories that are Great Fiction, and there are stories with Great Meaning. “Punkin’ Vipers” is a Halloween story, full stop. There are no Great Meanings to be culled from its pages.

So go ahead: drop a rock in my trick-or-treat bag. I can take it.

“Do what you can, yourself. Forget automation. Unhealthy. Sedentary. It’s why no one uses ‘bots these days—unless they have to. Understand?”

Yeah, yeah,
Ferguson thought as he shuffled across the unlit bedroom. The surgeon’s advice and his own stubbornness had sped his recovery, but there had to come a time when practicality superseded the dictum.

He’d still be in bed now, not gliding about in icy slippers, if only he’d asked the house computing unit to close the window for him. A simple voice command. So why hadn’t he done it?

Maybe he wanted the excuse to get up, to sort it out once more, to put the matter behind him—if he could. He hadn’t been asleep anyway when the storm began.

As he stepped to the window, raindrops invaded the opening and pricked his bare shins like cold metal darts.

He thumbed the sash control and the lower frame dropped smoothly to the sill.

His right leg twitched uncomfortably, but he fought the urge to strap on the automatic crutch. It would be too easy to get used to it again.

Instead, he pulled a chair to the window and sat.

Storms here were sporadic curiosities, rarely violent. But violence, natural or deliberate, could never be wholly held back, not even in the whitewashed, house-and-garden hamlet in which he lived.

A long flash of lightning lit up a steeple, barely visible in the distance. To the rear of that church lay the cemetery. And in that ground, awkwardly tipped in adjacent plots, lay the one close friend he’d had.

—

Ferguson met Tar F’set on the shuttle that bridged the twenty million kilometers from the hyperspace transfer station to the planet’s spaceport. He had been looking out the forward view panel, trying to keep his back to the other humans on the ship, trying to ignore the stares and the thoughts he knew were there:
That’s Jack Ferguson, the man who put six billion out of work.
An exaggeration, surely. Sixty million was closer to the mark, and the layoffs that resulted from his unwitting discovery had lasted but a quarter.

Yet the feeling of being shunned persisted, and Ferguson wondered how much of it was real, and how much was overreaction—a psychological callus borne of the frictions that followed his disclosures.

So he kept his eyes on the view panel, two thirds of which showed a fraction of the system’s huge red giant. The star was passing slowly to the right and looked through the viewfilters like a great hairy blanket, all afire. At the far left, his destination appeared as a small brown dot.

In the reflection of the panel, Ferguson eyed the other travelers, and he saw Tar F’set, the shuttle’s one alien, approach. Ferguson would have ignored him as well, but with the size and bulk of a garden tractor, the creature projected a presence hard to ignore.

“The world seems far too close to its sun, Human.” The alien’s voice crackled in the air. It wasn’t really a voice, but the work of vestigial wings stridulating over the creature’s carapace. Eons of evolution had replaced the beat-points on the creature’s back with a complex matrix of knobs and rills, giving it the ability to mimic speech. Ferguson had heard of the ability but until that moment had never experienced the synthesis personally. The effect was something like a voice broadcast over soft static.

But how to reply? Ferguson knew little of the large, insectoid race of which the Tarapset was a member. After some thought, he responded with the obvious. “The red giant is a weak star. If the world were any farther, it would still be frozen, as it was for most of its history.”

“In my mind,” the Tarapset said, “I understand. Nonetheless, actually seeing the situation is much different.”

Ferguson knew what the creature meant. If the Tarapset’s presence was imposing, the red giant’s was overwhelming. And, there was the psychological hit of coming to live on a dying planet. The bloating of its star had made the world a habitable, even pleasant place for the moment, but its spring would be brief and come only once. “The astrophysicists,” he said, “say the situation will be stable for another twenty thousand years.”

“Then,” the Tarapset added, “matters will again become more interesting.”

The star would lose its momentary quiescence and resume its expansion. The planet would be boiled dry and any life on it would come to an end.

Which was, of course, why they called the planet Evensong.

And, in a decision Ferguson once described as the most arrogant assessment of Man’s future yet given, the Interworld Association had decreed that no permanent settlements would be allowed on Evensong, only research stations and
retirement communities
.

“We can make plans to leave before that happens,” Ferguson told his accoster.

The Tarapset produced a rough, rolling rendition of laughter, and Ferguson stared. The alien had evidently made a study of human social interactions.
And why not?
Thought Ferguson. If it intended to live on Evensong, it would have to know the people with whom it would associate. Ferguson doubted there was even one other of its kind on the planet.

The effort required for such cross-cultural understanding by a being so unlike a man had to be considerable. Ferguson nodded his appreciation and soon found himself trading introductions with what he could only think of as an overgrown bug—a beetle on steroids.

And later, because immigrants tended to settle in the most-recently built (and most vacant) of the planet’s communities, it came as no surprise to Ferguson that Tar F’set’s bungalow sat less than a kilometer from his own.

—

Ferguson pressed the sash control again, creating a centimeter-high opening. How quickly the room had become stuffy. But Ferguson remembered. His mind forwarded a year, and he recalled the exact date: April 34, local calendar.