The Subatomic Kid (33 page)

“Let’s get out of here,” Hunter wheezed; his fight with Copernicus and Aristotle had consumed precious oxygen. The crowd parted to let them pass, and they ran out of the bowling alley and into the parking lot just in time to see the kid’s limo pulling away.

DECAY

It was an hour before dawn, the dark time of night that gives birth to the day. The limo crawled along a deserted road, its headlights blasting into the darkness, but there was precious little to see other than the ghostly shape of ruined buildings on either side of the road. The kids were tired and hungry and looking forward to going home, but the deeper they drove into this desolate landscape, the more remote that chance seemed.

“No,” John said evenly, “it’s worse than that. A lot worse.” The three of them racked their brains trying to imagine a predicament worse than the one they were in.

“I give up,” Tex sighed. “How could things possibly degenerate any further?”

“We’re in a different world,” John said in a resigned tone, “a completely different world from the one we started out in.”

Kate, Cal, and Tex thought about it for a moment, and then they began to laugh; it was the most preposterous thing they had ever heard.

Kate suddenly remembered the feeling she’d had when they crossed the freeway. It had all been too easy, as if some unseen hand were at work. “Ohmigod, he’s not joking!” she said hysterically. “He’s not joking!”

Cal and Tex were confused; the only memory they had of crossing the freeway was a sense of relief. “Now they’re both in on it,” Cal joked. “They’re trying to top our Manly Suspenders routine.”

“Yeah, but when you think about it, it does answer a lot of questions,” Tex pointed out. “It was weird in that bowling alley, and those people were—”

“But we can get back, can’t we?” asked Tex anxiously. The silence that followed told them more than words ever could. They were totally and completely lost, in an alien world, with no home to go to.

“Please say we can,” Cal said, hopefully.

“The truth is, I don’t know!” John whispered.

“Well, can I inquire just when you may know?” Kate asked, trying to keep the edge out of her voice. “Because this is kind of super-duper important.” She was really angry, but she wasn’t quite sure where to direct her rage.

“Now, come on, he admitted he doesn’t know,” Tex reassured. “There is some hope in that.”

“Gee, you really can grasp at straws,” Cal said ironically. “We’re in a whole other world, with those spindly putrid Nerds! And this devastation!” He motioned at the crumbling architecture surrounding them.

The sun was on its way up, and a faint streak of red splashed over the horizon, which served to make everything gloomier and full of doom.

“It’s going to be impossible to survive,” Kate sobbed, “and I won’t have any girlfriends, and you idiots will drive me insane.”

“Well, we could dress up,” Cal said seriously, trying to hide his wit, “and pretend to be girls.”

“You see what I mean?” she said, exasperated. “You’re making me nuts already; and besides, we don’t have any clothes, and even if we did there’s no frigging mall here, and even if there was we don’t have any money!” She had spiraled up to a hysterical high that was going to be hard to bring her down from.

“Listen, I’ll find a way out of here,” John said with determination. “I haven’t let you down yet, and I don’t intend to start now.”

Kate suddenly felt very guilty; she had done the worst thing she could do. She had acted like a spoiled child, giving in to her own emotional needs and desires, and ignoring everyone else’s.

“I’m sorry,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes, “I lost it! I realize we can only get through this together. It was the shock of it all, I suppose.” Tex and Cal smiled at her, and then both of them jumped up, leaned over the seat and tried to hug her.

“I can only think that it’s me,” John interjected. “Since my accident I’m sure my atomic signature is flashing out like a beacon across time and space, and it’s attracting the attention of every parallel world in existence. Those guys were just following us, and now they’re trapped too.”

“Why do you assume it’s you?” Kate asked reasonably. “Just look at how many people mysteriously disappear all over the world, never to be seen again!”

“It’s too complicated,” Cal said. “You’d have to be a combination of Sherlock Holmes and Einstein to work this problem out.”

“Well, just how are we going to work it out?” Tex asked.

“I don’t know,” John replied, “but it’s pointless to keep driving, ‘cause there’s nowhere to go, and this looks like as good a place as any to think about it.”

A huge metal and neon sign advertised THE OPEN AIR MOVIE PALACE
,
although the neon tubes had probably ceased to function many years ago, and the paint on the metal surface was peeling and rusted. The sign stood on a single pole that stretched high into the air to make it visible from miles down the road, and in the pre-dawn light it looked forlorn and forsaken.

The exterior of the drive-in was surrounded by a corrugated metal fence, and all along its surface strange symbols had been painted long ago. These symbols too were a victim of the elements, because chunks of paint had flaked off and left them looking very moth-eaten.

“One day in science class the teacher was talking about alchemy, and he drew that symbol and some others on the board,” she explained.

“Well that figures,” John said, “’cause this is a world of science. It’s governed by scientists, and all those people in the bowling alley were probably cloned.”

“Ugh, that’s so disgusting,” Kate groaned. “Imagine looking exactly like all your friends, and then looking exactly like everyone else. It’s the worst!”

“I have a hard enough time looking like me,” Cal said plaintively.

“Well, that’s easy to understand,” said Tex sarcastically.

John turned off the road into the dilapidated entrance to the drive-in. Any gates that may have hung on the frame they passed through must have rotted away long ago, or been stolen. The surface they drove over had once been tarmac, but the heat had gouged huge fissures into its surface, and grateful clumps of grass had squeezed their way through to bask in the sun.

It was an echo of a bygone era. Speaker posts stood in rows across a huge field, and at the far end a massive white screen reflected the cold early rays of the sun into the car. Above them the sparkling stars in the sky were beginning to lose themselves in the flood of dawn light cascading over the horizon. It was entropy in action, a modern day temple giving itself back to nature in an endless matinee. About halfway across the field John stopped the car, and the four of them just sat and gazed at the glorious splendor of dawn, in a dead drive-in movie theater, in an alien and hostile world.

***

Anger is a frustrating emotion; it’s like a guest invited to a party who stays long after everyone else has left. It’s insidious, it gets under the skin and stays there, and if one lets it, it will turn life into a living hell. Temporarily blinded by fury, Hunter kicked and screamed uncontrollably at one of the flattened tires on the limo. “Those damn little pieces of crap! When I get my hands on them, I’m gonna rip their heads off, and stuff ‘em—” He never got to finish the ubiquitous phrase because two things happened. First, his conscience kicked in and he realized what a complete waste of time and energy getting angry actually was, and second, some exceptionally strange music drifted into his ear and stole his attention.

Steve was torn between two opposing emotions, the primary being the fear that the smelly geeks were going to pluck up some new courage and come charging out of the bowling alley and stone them to death with bowling balls. The secondary was a strange mixture of empathy and amazement at Hunter’s abject abandonment of sanity.

After leaving the bowling alley and seeing the kids drive away, he and Hunter had run to the car, expecting to leap in and give chase. But when they arrived to see the poor limo stranded in the parking lot with four flat tires like a beached whale, Hunter had completely flipped his lid and erupted into the most explosive tantrum Steve had ever seen in his life.

It was a war dance of epic proportions, marked by staccato body movements and flurries of kicks and punches at nothing in particular. It was scary, and the most bone-chilling aspect of the performance was a wild blood-curdling cry that seemed to emanate from the deep dark depths of his soul. Steve was just beginning to wonder what he would do if Hunter went completely off his rocker never to return, when he too heard the sound of diabolically odd music drifting on the breeze, and the two of them turned and scanned the parking lot, looking for the source of the funky tune.

“What is that?” Hunter asked.

Steve hesitated to call it music, because it was unlike anything he had ever heard before. “It sounds like Frank Sinatra in a washing machine,” he ventured.

Hunter turned and stared at him, contemplating his answer. “You know, that’s a very apt description.” He was pleased; the lad had some imagination. “Would you like to hear more of that music?” Hunter asked matter-of-factly.

“Not particularly,” replied Steve.

“Oh, I think you would,” Hunter said, reaching into his jacket and pulling out his pistol. “I definitely think you would.”

Steve stared back at him trying to divine his secret meaning, and then the realization dawned. “Oh yeah, right, I love this music,” he answered, smiling and drawing his own gun. “And now that I’ve heard it, I don’t think I can live without it.”

Two young pimply Nerds sat in the front of what seemed to be an old Ford Apache pickup truck. At least it bore a resemblance to that vehicle, but this one was much sleeker and aerodynamically shaped. Presumably they were engaged in the teenage dating ritual of cranking the music really loud, in preparation for some serious fooling around. Who could tell—the males and females in this neck of the woods looked exactly alike.