Punktown: Shades of Grey (4 page)

“I’m not the one who’s like those things,” she heard the stranger murmur. “Life is hard, little Choom. I’m just a sheep dog. And there are wolves out there.”

“Wolves aren’t evil,” Zandra mumbled.

The assassin did not reply. He had mellowed with the quiet of the night. All she heard now was the distant scraping whir of the scarecrow’s spinning metal face.

She looked up and the fan was spinning above her head, a swirling halo. She looked to one of her wrists, and then the other, and found they were lashed to the wrists of the scarecrow with red ribbons. She looked down, and
a
N’r’j standing below her thrust a spear up into her side…

There was a tugging at her sweater, and she thought the stranger was removing her clothes, having caught her asleep and dreaming. But no, he seemed to be lifting her up. Was it time to go over the wall? She was lifted higher…but she was so groggy she could only just slit her swollen eyes. Her feet dangled off the ground. Crucified, as in her dream? No…she was sliding up the wall, hooks at the end of chains snared in her sweater and belt.

With all her strength, she tilted her head back and saw hunched silhouettes against the sickly green glow of city sky.
Long hair snapping like tattered banners.

She looked back down at the ground, and now made out her companion, still slumped against his drum. They had fallen under the Monster’s spell, she realized, and there it was still suspended in the air, caught between worlds like her, and covered in those pulsating organisms. It lifted its head, paddled helplessly in place.

“Thank you,” Zandra slurred to the N’r’j as they hauled her onto the edge of the roof. “Thank you. I thought he was going to kill—”

She sucked her breath back in a thorny little gasp as two of the grinning stick figures stepped to the lip of the roof, cocked back their arms, and flung sharpened black pikes downward. From the edge of the roof, Zandra could see the drugged stranger flinch hard as the first pike plunged into his shoulder, and then slump forward with the second through his crown and out his jaw.

Her gratitude turned to horror and, oddly, regret. But they had saved her. He was a killer. He couldn’t possibly have intended to let her live after what he’d confessed. He had been keeping her as a hostage; that might be why the N’r’j hadn’t advanced on them sooner, afraid he might hurt her. She was, after all, their new benefactor.

She mustn’t show her horror. She mustn’t let them think she didn’t appreciate her rescue. She staggered back from the roof edge, turned to face the creatures
who
were now her benefactors.

“Thank you,” she told them again.

Three N’r’j loomed before her. Their faces were empty. They were interchangeable, mass produced as if by the factory itself. But they seemed to be regarding her as the alien. And then one of them abruptly struck her across the head with the side of its unthrown spike and Zandra fell heavily to the flat roof at their feet.

“No! Please!” she cried, raising warding hands. “I’m not with him, I’m not!” The blow had dislodged her headset; could they comprehend her meaning? After another moment of regarding her, the N’r’j cocked back his metal rod for another blow. “I’m here to help you!” she wailed and the pike came down.
Raised
. Came down.

Zandra rolled onto her belly. She couldn’t see. Before the spike could pummel her a fourth time, she pulled herself off the edge of the roof in one desperate lurch. The drop wasn’t far, and there were leaves to carpet the fall, but she felt blood pool in her ear.

She dragged herself farther away from the building, so that their hooks wouldn’t reach. All the way to the slippery smooth tiles, she guessed by touching, of the black surrounding wall…hopefully out of the range of an accurate spike throw.

She rested there, alongside the wall. The Monster must be directly above her, she thought. Like a scarecrow, it would keep the demons at bay. Its nearness, which had frightened her only hours earlier, was now her greatest comfort.
Her guardian angel.

The night had become still again. The rustle, only, of stirring dead leaves. The squeaky whir of a metal face. The sweet perfume of a luminous fog, creeping into her mind
, soothing
it, filling it with light to substitute for sight.

She welcomed its peace.
This return to the comfort of blindness.

She was able to roll onto her back, so as to turn her unseeing face to the being’s soft radiance, so as to surrender herself to it. But as soon as she had done so, she realized she could see again. In part, could see again. She saw, strangely, only the glowing extradimensional creatures against a void of solid blackness. She saw a darkly glowing sphere alight on her unseen leg. Another floated onto where her belly must have been. The air was suddenly filled with swarms of the creatures, like soap bubbles drifting to earth. Drifting to her…

They smelled death, she thought. They smelled a soul soon to be liberated, and vulnerable…

She was too weak to do more than run one hand once over her belly. It seemed to pass through the jelly-like beings. More blanketed her.

But in congregating on her they were abandoning the Monster. In fact, its movements seemed to grow more animated, as if it meant to shake off the last few of the vampires.

“Go,” she whispered, smiling feebly. She could save one soul, if not her own. She spread her arms out like wings, to invite the feasting demons.

As Zandra watched through eyes dropping slowly shut, the Monster gave one final heave—throwing back its great faceless head, throwing off its yoke—and slipped backward into the rent it had originally come through. And then it was gone. And Zandra was left in darkness in its wake.

— | — | —

THE HATE MACHINES

Cardiff owned two similar hate receptacles made by two different companies: his Whipping Boy at home, which he’d possessed for six months now, and this newly purchased Scapegoat, sitting before him on his desk at work. His cubicle with its padded partitions was mostly undecorated otherwise save for a calendar his daughter Lena, who was sixteen, had given him as a Christmas present. Each month presented a photograph of their family…either herself from infancy to the present, or their cat, likewise at various points of its life, or himself, looking embarrassed to be photographed (and he was embarrassed to display himself in such a way for a whole month at a time), or his wife, whom he was proud to display, as he often received compliments about how attractive she was.

His supervisor, Ruth, frowned on overly ornamented cubicles, and had told several of her crew to remove such things as movie posters and humorous printouts taken off the net. One day Cardiff had found that one of his few photos tacked to the cubicle’s gray padding had been removed and then pinned to face the wall. The objectionable photo, which he had only brought in because Halloween had been near, showed Lena as a baby blissfully gnawing on the stump of a fake rubber hand. He had hidden the offending photo away in his drawer.

But Ruth could not forbid him from keeping the Scapegoat on his
desk,
as such devices were recognized as a therapeutic rather than trivial personal possession. And so the hate machine watched Cardiff now as he worked, his headset on and his mind linked with his computer…speeding through tunnels and corridors lined with information files like limitless morgue drawers…storing boxes crammed with dusty numbers in one virtual attic or other…opening up and visiting virtual offices (he was not permitted to put any decorations whatsoever on those walls).

His hands, left behind as his mind labored, fiddled with a rubber band. He twisted it around and around his left thumb until the end of it glowed red, as if it might suddenly erupt bloodily.

But his eyes gravitated—inevitably—to the Scapegoat, because of its newness. It was a foot in height—a little smaller than the Whipping Boy—and a fake tarnished silvery color, whereas the other had a faux patina of pale green verdigris.
The Scapegoat’s circular translucent face was subtly lit by a dim bulb behind it
so that it glowed a dark orange-gold color, meant to look like either an anthropomorphic moon or sun…he couldn’t tell which. It had a broad smile, chubby cheeks, amused squinting eyes. Cardiff had never seen a more mocking, annoying face in his life…unless, of course, that was the smirking phosphorescent green jester face of his Whipping Boy.

Glaring at those smug, obnoxious features, Cardiff felt a temptation to turn the device around to face the wall, as Ruth had reversed his photo of the baby Lena, but he knew that would defeat the purpose. The hate machine was designed to inspire his contempt. More importantly, it was designed to intercept, to redirect his loathing. It had been linked to his mind, much in the way he linked with his computer, so that it could bend his anger, his frustration, away from other targets, valiantly bringing these dark feelings to stab its own tiny bosom.

In a little compartment hidden behind two folding doors which when shut formed a silvery rib-cage, there resided a small chunk of living matter, created specifically for use in such devices, more plant than animal but neither, really. It was like some yellowish gelatinous organ. It was at first, anyway. But after weeks and months of absorbing Cardiff’s mental poisons, this miniature organ would gradually darken, blacken, wither and die. He had killed six of these organs already in his Whipping Boy. (They were replaceable, of course.) It was a good feeling, killing one of those ghastly living blobs…torturing it a bit at a time. Besting it at last. He looked forward to killing the virgin heart of this monstrous little fucker that was leering at him even now.

A pen tapped him on the head. It startled him, and for a moment he nearly lashed out at the Scapegoat with his fist; he thought that it was responsible, somehow. But looking up, he saw Ruth standing there, glowering down at him. Hers was the craggy face of a hard drinker, her voice just as craggy. “Please don’t day-dream, Hugh…we’re a day behind, here.” She gestured with her pen at his screen, where swarming ant-like motions had dropped to an idle snail’s crawl. “Why do you still have so many pallets left to store, at this time of the afternoon?”

She seemed to sense, supernaturally, when one was lagging behind…whether it was their fault or not. One was constantly glancing over their shoulder, expecting to see her materialized there. He almost flinched sometimes, hearing that gravelly voice in the next aisle, drifting his way. Even when she didn’t browbeat him for an entire day, he lived in dread of her browbeating. That is, he had. Up until this week. It was all so much easier to deal with her, this week…

Whereas Cardiff would normally stammer, fight to keep tremors of fear and impotent rage out of his voice, to keep the blood from sloshing crazily in his heart, now he found himself merely smiling shyly up at his boss. “Sorry,” he told her pleasantly. “I’ll stay late tonight if I have to, to catch up.”

“Well you’d better.” Her eyes drifted to the Scapegoat contemptuously also, though it wasn’t attuned to her emotions. “Don’t be staring at that stupid thing all day. I don’t see why you don’t just take a pill, or something simple like that.”

“Some therapists believe it’s better not to eradicate any kind of emotion,” Cardiff explained helpfully, whereas in the past he had never felt inclined to chat with his boss. “They think it’s more natural and more beneficial to encourage anger, feelings like that…to let them all out. Just, to let them all out at a hate machine.”

“Well,” Ruth said, still gazing at that irritatingly whimsical visage, “I still think it’s stupid, and if I had my way they wouldn’t be allowed in here.” She switched her gaze to him, now. “I want that work cleaned up, Hugh.”

He smiled again and nodded, watched her walk away. Then he turned back to his monitor. Yes, Ruth was so much easier to take, now.

But from the corner of his eye, he saw that ridiculous face watching him. He could easily imagine what its chuckle would sound like. Laughing at him as if he were the ridiculous one. At that moment he desperately wanted to smash the little bastard’s face in…but the thing had cost good money, hadn’t it?

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