Halloween and Other Seasons (12 page)

Hilligan kept walking.

At one o’clock he had to stop. He ate a sparse lunch, sipping at the water canteen instead of gulping, until his thirst was slacked. Sparky ate a dog biscuit, fighting the blurred mechanism of his mouth to work on it.

As Hilligan watched the dog slap his tongue tentatively at the shallow bowl of water, he heard the unmistakable crack of a rifle shot.

The dog tensed momentarily, then resumed drinking as if nothing had happened, completely ignoring the round hole in its left eye.

The dog drank, liquid dripping down its ruined face into its water bowl, and drank its own fluids until its body suddenly collapsed.

The dog shivered and lay still.

Hilligan was already half way up the side of the outcropping. He hoisted himself between two peaked rocks as another shot rang out below him. “Just had to make sure,
Marshall
,” a voice shouted, laughing. This time he saw where it came from.

He took aim at the spot and there, in his sights, was a blinding chromium head.

He pulled the trigger and the head flared in a shower of metal and flesh fragments as the soft pink fleshy head exploded.

The rifle shot echoed, then the tranquility of the desert returned.

Cautiously, Hilligan returned to his pack and removed his binoculars. He climbed the hillock and scouted.

A mere mile ahead was the remainder of the band. They had stopped in the bare shade of a stunted stand of cottonwoods, waiting for their compatriot.

He hoped they had seen what had happened to their scout; and then knew they did because the three of them abruptly walked out into the sunlight, blinding him with the metallic brilliance of their heads.

When his eyes had adjusted, he saw that between them they had two weapons, one of which looked like an automatic rifle. The third carried an inappropriately small red pack, the kind children carry schoolbooks in, stuffed to overflowing; as Hilligan watched the other two tried to load it further until the one bearing the pack suddenly lashed out, knocking the other to the ground.

Hilligan put the high power binoculars down and tried to sight through the rifle, but they were too far away.

He returned to the desert floor, mounted his own pack, and moved on.

~ * ~

When he got to the cottonwoods, the bandits were long gone. A scatter of Ritz Crackers and empty juice cartons attested to their stupidity. He hoped the juice had gone down burning hot.

He went on.

He spotted them forty-five minutes later, as they moved into the low hills. On the other side of those hills was the town of Lawrence. They were moving fast, spread out, twenty or thirty yards between them.

Hilligan sprinted to the nearest rock outcropping, balancing his rifle carefully on the lip of the overhang, and caught the nearest in his finder. It was the weaponless one with the pack, standing at the limits of range. Carefully, using the rock to steady him, he pulled off a single shot, watching the bright metallic head shatter, scattering the sandy ground with cookies, plastic jars of peanut butter, and soft flesh.

The other two glanced around, then broke into a run.

Night was coming, and they had made it to the hills.

~ * ~

The stars were up. The Milky Way rose like a glowing band. The night was Moonless, but Hilligan could see his way by the blue glow of the Milky Way alone.

He saw with his ears as much as with his eyes. He thought of a novel he had been given by Anne after taking the job of Marshall in Davidson. It was one of the Leatherstocking Tales by Cooper. With the book, Anne had also given him a book by Mark Twain with an essay marked out in it about how lousy a storyteller Cooper was. According to Twain, most of the suspense in a Cooper novel developed when someone made noise by stepping on something while sneaking around. Someone was always stepping on something and giving themselves away.

Up ahead of Hilligan, someone stepped on something.

“Sorry, Twain, Cooper was right,” Hilligan muttered.

There was a line of jutting rocks ahead, threaded by a stony path. Hilligan crept to the first outcropping, avoiding any stepped-on somethings of his own.

He waited, and then there was another sound, very close.

Suddenly one of them appeared, the silvery luminescence of his head turning a mere yard from Hilligan.

It was the one with the automatic weapon.

Hilligan was quicker, and as a spatter of lead lined the rock wall to his right he pulled a shot out of his rifle and hit the other square in the chest.

The night flared and Hilligan briefly covered his eyes at the hissing explosion as the thing dropped its rifle, uttering a tiny cry as it was blown apart.

Beyond it, in the night, Hilligan heard the other one running.

Fast.

Hilligan followed. They had entered a desert forest of cactus, up the side of a small hill. The cactus looked like they had been planted, lined up in neat rows up the side of the hillock, each giving the next just enough room to catch any available water.

Hilligan caught a brief glimpse of his prey, heard a scraped tumble of rocks that splashed down past him to the foot of the hill below.

“I’m coming for you, you bastard!” Hilligan shouted up into the darkness.

Only silence greeted him.

In the dark, with the night over him, Hilligan moved upward, from cactus to cactus. Cursing his boots, he knew that he was the one making noise this time as he kicked a scuff of shale that slid down the mountainside.

He stopped, leaned into the curve of a prickly pear without touching it, and waited.

Still nothing.

The night breathed silence.

He felt presence; heard the faintest of sounds—

A silver-white hand appeared from behind the cactus and was on him before he could react.

He was knocked to the ground. A chrome head loomed over him. He heard his rifle slide away down the hill in the darkness. His attacker raised a Colt .45, then tossed it contemptuously away and held his palm downward over Hilligan.

“This game’s over,” the bandit hissed at him. “Tomorrow I’ll play games in Lawrence. And then everywhere else on this miserable planet…”

The palm began to glow with silver light.

Something flashed in the darkness, hovered overhead, dropped on the alien’s back.

The alien cried out and fell off into the night.

Hilligan pushed himself up to see the bandit clutching at his ripped-out throat, see it thrash helplessly before lying still.

“That would have been you in another second,” Hilligan heard in his head, weakly. There was familiar laughter behind the words.

“Sparky,” he said.

The dog lay panting a few feet from the imploded corpse of the desperado. His head looked like a scooped-out bowl, the top completely collapsed, wires and bio-tubes hanging uselessly. But there was the old look of unmistakably intelligent though weakening fire in one of his eyes.

“Should always check to make sure your sidekick has really stopped playing,” the dog’s thoughts said to him. “That bullet they hit me with fused a couple of the right circuits back together. It was like waking up from a bad dream. And you were gone.” There was more humor than blame in the voice.

“Sparky—”

“Don’t apologize, Mitch. I had just enough left in me to save your ass and this planet…” The voice trailed off tepidly.

As Hilligan watched, the weak light began to fade in the dog’s eye.

“So long, pal…” the dog said in a dying whisper.

Hilligan stood in the darkness for a long time. The Milky Way, a blue glowing ribbon cutting the night, passed overhead toward the West and morning.

~ * ~

Finally, as the Milky Way faded, Hilligan picked Sparky up in his arms and headed back to the Toyota. He pulled off the camouflage, lay the dog gently in the back, and headed out.

The morning colored the east purple and yellow. Hilligan smoked a cigarette and thought about his own spaceship hidden out in the desert. He thought about the four bandits he had been sent to catch who had terrorized and destroyed so many other worlds, and about how his race’s addiction to games had probably saved himself and this planet. And he thought about Sparky, his only weapon, and how he’d been constructed to look like any Earth dog. Hilligan thought about the thin plastic flesh that covered his own chromium skin.

Hilligan thought about what he would do now. He could go home, but somehow, the remembered kiss of a woman named Anne made him want to stay for awhile.

He had a feeling that love was a good game to play.

There was a tool kit out in that spaceship buried in the desert; perhaps he could spend his spare time trying to fix Sparky up. A good sidekick was hard to find.

Perhaps the town of Lawrence needed a Marshall.

Hiligan rode the Wild West in a Toyota.

THE MAN IN THE OTHER CAR

By Al Sarrantonio

I think I saw his face as we went by. We passed his car as you pass most cars, using peripheral vision and a vague radar sense of distance and speed. I think the car was blue, possibly gray. The plates were green and white, in-state, I think.

My son was the first one to bring it up. “Dad, did you see that guy?” he asked, and my eyes were on the road and my mind elsewhere because I grunted and said, “Why?”

“The guy in the car you just passed—the one that looked like ours—did you see him?”

My first instinct was to glance in the rear view mirror—at Rusty’s face, half filling it on the right, the features matching the worried tone of his voice—and then at the car in the right lane, now receding, almost as if it had stopped. It was at least a quarter mile behind me now. I could see the front grill, a lot of plastic chrome, squarish, just like my car and a million others on the road. There was a glint off the windshield.

“What about him?” I asked.

“He just looked…” Rusty left the statement unfinished, and I glanced at him again in the rear-view mirror. I moved my head so I could briefly study Mona, sitting next to him. She, too, had a strange look on her face.

“Did you see him, Mom?” Rusty asked.

“No,” Debra said, in a clipped tone.

“No need to snap at the kid—”I started, but she cut me off, as always.

“I’ll say any damn thing I like,” she said, and without looking at her I knew she wore
the glare
.

I took a deep breath and said, “Let’s try to keep the trip pleasant.”

“Pleasant as you like,” she said, only now I was studying the rear view mirror again, my kids in the back seat whose looks had turned stony.

“So what did he look like, Rusty?” I asked, trying to change the subject in the suddenly quiet car.

He shrugged, looking away.

“Whatever,” he mumbled.

“Look,” I said, in a measured tone, knowing I was using the conciliatory tone they all knew a mile away. “I know the trip has been difficult so far, but I think we should try to get along better.”

Debra was silent, eyes closed, leaning back into the headrest. Rusty and Mona were looking out each of their side windows, lips tight.

“Christ,” I said, letting out my breath. I almost yanked the car into the right lane and then into the service lane, where I would slam on the brakes, but I had already tried that and nothing had come of it. I briefly studied my hands, tightly gripping the steering wheel.

“
Christ
.”

“Just drive, Harry,” Debra said, keeping her eyes closed.

I counted to ten and watched my hands relax on the wheel.

For a while I looked at nothing but the road in front of me. The radio had been turned down during one of the previous fights and I turned the knob back up, flooding the car momentarily with oldies music before turning it back down to a reasonable level.

“Sorry,” I said, but still kept my eyes on the road.

Suddenly the music started to annoy me, and I twisted the knob, turning the radio off. I studied the faces on the three people in the car with me.

I counted to a hundred, then said, “Anybody hungry?”

There was a brief silence, then Mona said, not too glumly, “Sure.”

“Rusty?” I asked, waiting for his reply.

“Why not,” he answered, sulkily.

“Eating now might be a good idea,” Debra said, opening her eyes with her head still on the headrest. She was staring at the visor in the up position in front of her. There was a little mirror on it.

“All right then!” I said, forcing cheer into my voice and beginning to study road signs. “Anyone spots a fast food sign, let me know.”

A few moments later Mona said, “There!”

Sure enough, a billboard for the golden arches had appeared, as if by magic. TWO MILES UP, it said.

“We’re on the way!”

I eased the car into the right lane, then, two miles on, left the highway and we ate.

The meal started well enough; the food seemed to revive everyone’s spirits, and Mona and Rusty, between sips of cola, had enough energy to begin sparring lightly. When it looked like it might go past the giggling-pushing stage I stepped in, since Debra wasn’t about to.

“That’s enough, kids. Save it for the park.”

“I still don’t think we should go,” Debra said, and I knew that we were on the same old path and that the moment of peace had ended.

“We discussed all that before we left,” I said, watching myself ball my napkin, squeezing it tighter and tighter.

“I know—” Debra began coldly, but then the kids chimed in.

“You said we could, Mom!” Rusty cried, almost simultaneously with Mona, who reached out imploringly, without touching her mother.

“You said we could!”

Debra was silent, seemingly studying the empty, grease-stained fries carton in front of her.

“Then let’s go,” she said suddenly, getting up, not waiting for the rest of us to catch up as she pushed through the glass door to the parking lot, where, arms folded, looking away, she waited for me to unlock the car door.

~ * ~

It didn’t take long before the fighting began again. Like a virus, it spread from the back seat, where Rusty and Mona continued their giggling and pushing but soon started jabbing and yelling at each other. Then it spread into the front seat where Debra, lips clenched, said so that only I could hear, “I told you this was a bad idea.”