tongue, except that Albert
asked me: "You don't like Mormons much, do you?"
We were in an alley outside a likely grocery store,
taking a breather. Zombies were unloading bread
from a bread truck, an eighteen wheeler. Bet the boxes
didn't contain bread; and I wasn't sure I wanted to
know what was really in them.
     "I have a problem with all institutional churches," I
said. "It's nothing personal." Of course, it was per-
sonal and I'm not a very good liar.
     "If you don't want to talk about it, I'll understand,"
said Albert diplomatically. The big dork had some
smarts.
     Maybe I should talk to him. Fly and I were so close
that we couldn't verbalize everything there was be-
tween us. He had a little-boy quality that was attrac-
tive in a friend but definitely not what I wanted in a
lover. Maybe it was part of the Mormon conditioning,
but Albert projected father qualities.
     The one time I let myself be talked into therapy,
back in college when my family was exploding, I
dropped hundreds of dollars to be told what I already
knew. My ideal male friend would be the brother I
never had. Fly was just what the doctor ordered. My
ideal lover was Daddy. The therapist was a Freudian
so he didn't have much imagination.
     The women's group I hung out with for one sum-
mer had a lot more imagination. It wasn't my fault
that the experiences of my youth fit the Freudian
pattern better than they did the theories of the sister-
hood. It just came down that way.
     So I saw the concern in Albert's face, a guy who
wanted to be a pillar of strength to some All-
American Gal, and it was hard not to cut him some
slack. Here we were, huddled down together in a dark,
smelly alley, ready to save the human race from all the
denizens of hell, and poor old Albert was concerned
about how I felt about his religion.
     A more elemental kind of man would just be trying
to put the make on me, arguing that the human race is
near extinction and let's make love while we can and
think about the future instead of the self, babe.
Not Albert. Not Fly. In completely different ways,
both these men were gentlemen. And Jill was a fine
young lady. I could have done a lot worse in choosing
companions for Armageddon.
     "Albert, I won't lie to you again. I do have a hang-
up about the Mormon Church; but it won't affect us. I
respect you, um, in spite of it."
     His voice was polite, if a little frosty: "Thank you. I
won't pressure you about it."
     Well, if I could tell Fly some of it, I didn't see why I
couldn't talk to the big Mormon. Again the thought
came to me that I could get more off my chest with
this relative stranger. As close as I was to Fly, my
platoon pal, there was a reticence with him I could
never shake.
     If I said to Fly that "there are some things you
wouldn't understand," he'd stare at me with his what
the hell are you talking about expression and make me
feel like a silly, emotional girl; he wouldn't do it
deliberately, but the result would be the same.
The truth was there were certain things I didn't
want to share with Fly. The reasons were emotional;
and those were never good enough reasons for him.
"Albert," I said, feeling the shape of his name as I
spoke it for the first time from a quiet place inside, "I
want to tell you about my brother."
     "I'll listen; but you don't have to if you don't--"
"He was never really what you'd call a real man; I
mean, I don't think he would have made a good
Marine. Had the bad luck to be really pretty . . . not
like a guy; I mean a girly-man kind of pretty. You
know, delicate features, pale skin, long, beautiful
lashes like a girl."
     "Big guy?"
"Yeah, right. When I was twenty, I outweighed him
by ten pounds--I mean, five kilograms . . . gotta be
military here."
     "Ow. That can be rough."
"It got worse. A lot of the older guys in the
theater--he did stage-crew stuff for the Spacelings--
they kind of came on to him. Real aggressive, gay
stuff; sometimes the theater can get like that, and
anybody who says it can't never did theater in L.A. or
New York. I don't even know if they were serious, or
of they just wanted to freak him; but Buddy--"
"Buddy?"
     "Heh, blame him for that. He was named Ambrose,
so he called himself Buddy. Buddy got real scared that
he was, you know, gay. It wouldn't have mattered if he
were; he would've said, 'Hey, like, that's it,' you
know? But he wasn't. He wasn't really anything; so he
totally bugged."
     "I don't know what to say. I've never had that
problem. I've always known I was a flaming hetero-
sexual."
     "So he kept always trying to prove his manhood
. . . you know, shoving little girls around, sticking his
zinger in any doughnut hole he could find. He even
once ..." I hesitated.
     "With you?" asked Albert, suddenly too perspica-
cious for words. Damn it.
     "It was pathetic; really negative zone. I took him
down so fast he cracked the sound barrier between
vertical and horizontal. And it wasn't too long after
that he fell in with a bad crowd and suddenly decided
he would convert to Mormonism."
     "What were you before that?"
"What do you expect? 'Sanders,' Episcopalian, as
close to the Church of England as you can get in the
U.S."
     "How long did he stay with us?"
"Eight months; he moved to SLC, moved back to
Hollywood half a year later. I think he showed up at
the Overland church a couple times, then found a new
savior: a drug called tank. Ever hear about it?"
"Nope. 'Fraid I'm not up on the drug culture . . .
not from the using perspective. Your brother's prob-
lems are his own making," said Albert. "Would you
fee! the same way about the Catholics or Lutherans or
Baptists, if he used them as a rest stop on the road to
hell?"
     That made me smile. "Albert, I had no idea you
were so eloquent! I admit I'm prejudiced; when I'm
thinking about it, I'm pissed at all organized religion;
but only the Mormons cut into my guts like that. I
think church enables aberrant behavior."
     Albert laughed, and I had to admit I sounded
pompous. "Temples too?" he asked.
     "Oh, right," I said. This man had debated at some
point in his life. "All religion, especially the ones that
pretend not to be. They all say theirs is a way of life or
an ethical system or a personal relationship with
God--it's only the other guy who has a religion."
"Arlene, I'd like to ask a favor of you. Please don't
tell Fly about our talk. I like things the way they are
right now between all of us. I don't want to do
anything to distract Taggart from doing the fine job
he's doing."
     "I keep confidences. You listened to my story, that's
all."
     He shifted his bulk against the wall so he could sit
more comfortably. "You mentioned your brother
getting involved with drugs. So did I, from the other
side. I don't like to talk about being a Marine sniper;
it's a private thing between me and the Lord. But one
week, I was assigned to kill a woman who was
suspected of being the primary money launderer for
the Abiera drug cartel in Colombia."
     "No great loss," I said, far too quickly.
He moved closer, as if he thought the monsters
might overhear and report his confessions to Satan
Central. "Arlene, I said she was suspected, not
proven."
     "Oh," was all I could think to say. I said it with
sincerity.
     "I'd never killed a woman before. They call it
termination, but it's killing. I don't make it easier by
playing with words."
     "There goes your career in the military," I said,
liking him better all the time. "So you were to
terminate this woman with extreme prejudice because
she was a suspect."
     He nodded, unable to speak for a moment. "Strong
suspect. But I had a lot of problems with it. It went
against my moral learning."
     I was having an attack of sarcasm and couldn't keep
it bottled up. I hit him with: "Killing all the suspects
in the hope you get the target? The Church of Central
Intelligence makes that a sacrament."
     "No, I mean killing a woman. In the end I decided
if I couldn't justify killing her, then how could I
justify killing a guy who was supposed to be a
renegade colonel from Stasi? I did him the month
before."
     "Now who's playing with words?"
"Killed him the month before. He was training
Shining Path terrorists to be sent over to Kefiristan to
help the Scythe. It came down to one thing: either I
trusted my superiors knew what they were doing, or I
didn't."
     He wanted to be frank with me, but the words
choked in his throat. I helped him along. "You killed
her," I said.
     "I killed her, yes. I still think she was guilty."
Suddenly, I chuckled. He looked at me as if I'd
completely lost my mind. "No, no, Albert, it's not
what you think. I'm laughing about all the trouble
America went to trying to protect fuck-ups like my
brother."
     My use of the past tense brought both of us back to
the immediate nightmare. "I think we're all sinners,"
he concluded. "We all deserve to die and be damned;
we earned that fate when we disobeyed the Lord.
Which is why we need the Savior. I take responsibility
for the blood on my hands, even if I let Him wash it
clean. I don't blame the Church, the Marines, my
parents, society, or anyone or anything else."
"We have a difference there, my friend," I told him.
"I blame God."
     "Then you blame the nature of things."
"Yeah, I guess I do. 'The nature of things' is waiting
for us beyond this alley with claws and horns, light-
ning and brimstone. My only regret is that I won't
meet God when I have a rocket launcher." I knew I
was getting worked up and discussing religion; but I
was talking to a human being, not the President of the
Twelve.
     And really, Arlene Sanders, are you sure you're not
trying to wash away the blood on your hands, the blood
of a whole compound of innocents who might die
because of your stupid mistake, sending a radio mes-
sage to co-opted Colonel Karapetian? I shuddered and
shut off the thought.
     "You can't blow up God, Arlene," he said in an
annoyingly tolerant tone of voice. I expected my
blasphemy would get more fire out of him.
     I tried one last time, while I still had my mad on:
"He made Himself flesh once, didn't He? If He'd do it
again ..."
     "I think you'd find the cross a heavier weapon to
carry than a bazooka, Arlene. Somehow I don't see
you nailing anyone to a cross."
     I almost told him about the row of crucified hell-
princes the pumpkins had used to adorn Deimos and
how I'd happily do the same; then I made myself shut
up instead. I'd said enough. More than enough. The
quiet, easy way he was dealing with my outburst told
me that Albert was a man of faith so strong I couldn't
crack it with a BFG. Besides, I had the feeling he
would start praying for me if I didn't cool it.
"Thank you for telling me about Colombia," I said.
"There's no one I'd rather talk to than you, Arlene.
Now let's get back to work."
     Damn if I wasn't becoming attracted to honest
Albert. For the first time in weeks, I thought about
Dodd, my guy, who was zombified; my lover
     whose body I put out of its misery.
A small glimmer of guilt tried to build up into a fire,
but I doused it with anger. We all had our problems.
We were all human. I was sick and tired of thinking
about all the things I did wrong or could have done
better. Humanity was not a weakness; it was a
strength, and our job was to win back our world, and
damn it, why did I hesitate to think "lover" when I
thought about Willie? Was it because it had the word
"love" in it?
     Darling Dan's Supermarket was the next battlefield.
The zombies finished unloading the crates of whatev-
er and drove off in the bread truck. Now the coast was
clear.
     "Come on," I said.
"Right behind you," he said.
     19
We slipped into the supermarket through the
     back delivery door and worked our way toward the
front. Lights were flickering on and off with the same
irritating strobe effect that Fly and I had to deal with
on Deimos so friggin' often. Maybe these guys weren't
sloppy, slovenly, indifferent creeps; maybe it was
some kind of aesthetic statement. All I knew was
flickering light gave me a headache and made me want
to unload a clip at the first refugee from Halloween
who happened across my path.
     "Come on," said Albert, a few steps ahead of me
now.
     I loved symmetry as much as the next guy. "Right
behind you," I quoted. It was the next best thing to
dancing with him.
     Inside the main part of the store, the fluorescent
lights were on and burning steady. But the refrigera-
tion was off, and there was a rotten smell of all kinds
of produce, milk, and meat that had been let go before
its time.
     "Ew," said my Mormon buddy, and he hit the
center of the bull's-eye. The meat smelled a lot worse
than the bad vegetable matter. And oh, that fish!
If I hadn't been wide awake on adrenaline--
     compared to which caffeine is harmless kid stuff--I
would never have believed what I saw next. Nothing
on Phobos or Deimos had the feeling of a fever dream
compared to the spectacle of...
     "Hell in the aisles," breathed Albert.
The grocery store was as busy as a Saturday after-
noon in the good old world. Mom and Dad and the
kids were there. Young lovers wandered the aisles.
Middle-class guys with middle-sized guts in ugly T-
shirts pushed shopping carts down the center aisle
with no regard for who got in the way. Nothing had
changed from the way it used to be ... except that
everyone was dead.
     Zombies on a shopping spree. Eyes never to blink
again. Mouths never to form words, but to drool foul-
smelling, viscous liquid worse than anything in an old
wino's stomach. Hands reaching out to grab anything
or anyone that fell in their path.
     The sour lemon odor was so concentrated that I had
trouble breathing and Albert's eyes were watering; my
throat was filling with something unpleasant.
The nearest zombie to us had been a big man once,
a football player would have been my guess. Thick
blue lines stretched across his face; I couldn't tell if
they were veins or grooves or painted on. Next to him
stumbled the remains of a cheerleader whose long
hair she'd probably taken good care of a long time ago
in the world lost way, way back ... in the previous
month. The zombie girl's hair looked like spiders had
tangled themselves up in their own webs and died on
her head.
     These two were the best-looking zombie couple.
The nearest family was disgusting; especially the
thirteen-year-old boy (what had been a thirteen-year-
old boy). Part of his head was missing. It looked
melted, as if a big wad of caramel had been left out in
the sun and gone bad on one side.
     A thin, bald man looked like a scarecrow with a
laughing skull on top. His right cheek was missing and
the few teeth that hadn't fallen out on that side made
me think of kernels of uneaten corn or keys on an
unpolished piano.
     Two zombie Girl Scouts carried filthy boxes in their
pale hands. One dropped a box and several fingers
spilled out. A man dressed as an undertaker fell to his
knees and shoveled the fingers into his mouth where
they stuck out like pale worms. A dead priest groped
at the attache case of a dead account executive over a
pile of fish left to rot on the floor. The zombie odor
was so pronounced that I could barely smell the week-
old fish.
     "Are you all right?" asked Albert. I nodded but
didn't look at him. "You're staring at them."
Albert's words were like an echo from Fly. My old
buddy always gave good advice, like not focusing on
any details that wouldn't help the mission. But this
was the first time I'd seen so many of these human
caricatures this close when I wasn't engaged in taking
them apart.
     "I'm okay," I whispered, pulling Albert back in the
shadows. "We're doing fine. The stink in here is so
bad they couldn't smell out live humans to save
their--"
     "Lives," he finished my inappropriate image.
"Let's get the lemons and get out of here."
     There's never any arguing with good sense. But as
we took another look-see, the zombie density inside
the store was worse than a minute ago. "Where the
hell are they all coming from?" I asked.
     "Probably," Albert agreed.
The scene was becoming even more surreal. Zom-
bies pushing baskets up and down the aisles, grabbing
cans and boxes of junk food (which would take a lot
more than the end of the world to go bad). Some of
the zombies were engaged in what seemed to be
purposeful activity, moving items from one shelf to
another and then back again.
     They didn't eat any of the groceries. They seemed
caught up in the behavior of the past, as if the
program had been so hard-wired into their skulls that
not even losing their souls could erase the ritual of
going to the grocery store.
     And then suddenly the lights went out. Whatever
had kept the generator going was defunct. "What do
we do now?" asked Albert.
     "Take advantage of the situation," I said. "This is
fortuitous. We should have put the generator out
ourselves. We can pass easier for zombies if they don't
see us. They're too stupid to do anything about the
dark."
     If there is ever a Famous Last Words Award, I'm
sure that I'll receive sufficient votes to make the final
ballot. No sooner had I made my confident assess-
ment than flickering, yellow light filled the store.
Dozens of candles were lit. I could imagine Fly saying,
in his I-told-you-so tone of voice, "If they can still
shoot their weapons, they can do a lot of other
things."
     It was bad enough when Fly was right so often in
person. Now I was carrying him around in my head to
tell me when I made a mistake!
     Not everything the zombies lit was a normal can-
dle. Some gave off a heavy smell of burning butter or
fat. I didn't want to think about some of the items
they might be using for torches.
     "I wonder how long before they burn the store
down," said Albert.
     "They haven't yet," I said. "Let's get those lemons
and get the hell out of here!" As we went out into the
throng, my heart was pounding so hard that I worried
some of the creatures would hear it. Then they
wouldn't need to smell us out or see our TV-
commercial-smooth complexions to turn us into
today's lunch special.
     Matches still flared as zombies looked for items to
light up. A "Price-Buster" banner suddenly caught
fire and went up in flames. It didn't set anything else
on fire. For the first and probably last time in my life, I
was grateful to be among zombies at that moment.
Real, live human beings would have freaked and
caused a panic more dangerous than a fire. The
zombies didn't care. And of course they didn't bat an
eye.
     To be fair to Fly, he never overestimated zombies;
he just didn't want me underestimating them. For
what Albert and I had to do now, we had to count on
zombie stupidity. I made my way over to a pile of
hand baskets and took one. Albert stuck behind me a
lot closer than Peter Pan's shadow.
     I passed him the basket and noticed that his hands
were shaking. I sure didn't blame him. In fact, I had
the strong feeling that he'd be doing a lot better in full
combat against the monsters. With his religious back-
ground, bodies of the reanimated dead had to be
heavy stuff.
     If I remembered correctly, and I always do, the
Mormons had a more old-fashioned idea of the body.
One thing I could give Fly's nuns--the Catholic
Church didn't make you worry about what happened
to your body in a war zone if your soul was in good
shape. The more spiritual the faith, the more popular
I figured it would be in the atomic age, where we can
all be zapped out of existence in the pulse of a
nucleus.
     20
Albert's fear sort of made me more daring.
     After I got my award for Famous Last Words, I'd use
it to join Psychos 'R' Us. This situation was so insane
that I started to think it might work.
     We turned a corner and saw a zombie-woman
sitting on the ground. She had two candles, a bag of
charcoal, and a cigarette lighter; four items, two
hands. She couldn't decide which two items to hold.
So she kept picking up two of them, dropping them,
and picking up another random pair.
     I looked over at Albert and tried a little telepathy.
As usual, the results were nothing to worry the
neighborhood skeptics. Since Albert wasn't picking
up on my silent message, I stepped forward and
waited for my opportunity. The next time the
zombie-girl dropped her candle and lighter, I simply
reached down and picked them up.
     Now that I'd solved the zombie's quandary, she got
up and stumbled vaguely down the aisle with the
other candle and the charcoal. I started to pass the
lighter to Albert, then changed my mind and gave him
the candle, which I lit. I preferred keeping the thing
that actually made fire.
     Playing somewhere in the back of my head were all
those old horror movies where the one thing monsters
fear is fire. When I was a kid, sneaking those movies
late at night when everyone else was asleep, I never
thought I was boning up on documentaries. At least I
hadn't used a hammer and stake yet in fighting these
bastards; but I intended to keep my options open.
We staggered down the aisle, trying to look suitably
undead, and headed for the produce section. We
quickly grabbed plastic bags and filled them with the
most disgusting remains of lemons and limes we
could find.
     The limes weren't even a little green any longer;
they were dull gray with black splotches. Although the
lemons were still yellowish in spots, the other colors
were dark and unwholesome. They were the sort of
colors I preferred ignoring.
     Other zombies began gathering around us and just
standing there. Maybe our purposeful actions were
too purposeful. Did these idiots have the brains to
recognize nonzombie behavior?
     I tried to think and look stupid, but that wasn't
what was required. Pretending to be mindless is much
more difficult. I let my mouth hang open and tried to
work up a good supply of drool. Albert picked up on
the idea ... the fact I found him immediately con-
vincing shouldn't be taken as a put-down. But, man,
did he look the part when he put on his goggle-eyed
stare.
     The act seemed to help a little. Some of the zombies
left us alone and found other things to stare at. One
large black man--what had been a black man--
dressed as a high school coach, continued to block our
way, staring at the basket of rotting produce instead of
us. He started to get on my nerves. When I moved
either to the right or left, he shifted slightly . . . just
enough to suggest he was willing to block us if we
wanted to move up the aisle.
     We might very well want to move up the aisle
because the crowd was starting to press in behind us,
cutting off that avenue of escape. I couldn't remember
if we had closed the door behind us when we sneaked
in the back. Other zombies could be coming in that
way, dead feet shuffling forward, guided by dead
brains to regain a fragment of the living past.
A sound came out of nowhere. It was so strange that
I didn't even associate it with the walking corpses
hemming us in. It was sort of a low mewling sound,
coming deep from within chests where no heart beat.
A humming, rasping, empty, lost, mournful, aching
sound ... a chorus of the damned calling out to any
living humans left in the world, as if to say:
Come join us; life's not so good! Come and be with
us. We are lonely for company. You can still be
yourselves. The habits of a lifetime do not disappear
only because life has spilled out. If you loaded a
weapon in life, you can still do it in death; the routine
will survive; all that will be burned away is the constant
worry to prove yourself, make distinctions, show pride.
Judge not; there is no point when you're dead.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to take my 10mm and
start firing, and keep firing until I'd wiped them all
from the surface of the Earth. Aboveground was for
the living! The dead belonged underground, feeding
the worms, who still had a function to perform.
The zombies were the pure mob, devoid of intelli-
gence and personality. Staring at them in their own
flickering candlelight, trying to pass, reminded me
how much I hated Linus Van Pelt, who said he loved
mankind, it was people he couldn't stand. Earlier, I
read a book by H. L. Mencken, who said he had no
love for the human race as a whole, but only for
individuals.
     Individuals. The whole point of evolution. Individ-
uals. The only justification for the American revolu-
tion, for capitalism, for love. There were only two
individuals in this cemetery that used to be a grocery
store, and I was one. The other gestured at me that the
basket of rotten citrus was full and we should be
leaving, if we could find a path through the wall of
pale, stinking, shambling flesh.
     Albert took the lead. He picked up one of the limes
and threw it up the aisle. It was a long shot, but it paid
off when an ancient memory reached out fingers like a
groping zombie and touched something in the coach's
brain. He turned and shambled after the lime like it
was a thrown ball.
     We followed in the wake left by the big zombie
pushing through the crowd. By the time the coach
reached the lime, he had forgotten about us, which is
saying it stronger than I intend. We were merely a
series of impressions, of light and sound distracting
the zombie for a brief moment.
     The front door beckoned. It was standing wide
open, so we didn't have to worry about the power. A
fire was burning somewhere down the street, marking
the path we would take if we made it outside.
Our last obstacle was the long line at the checkout,
believe it or not. A zombie-woman stood at the cash
register, responding to old job conditioning as the
others had fallen into the role of shoppers. She stood
behind the counter, banging on the keys of the register
with a clenched fist. The sight was too much, too
friggin' bizarre even after all that we had seen. I
laughed. It wasn't very loud, and I managed to choke
it off at about the half-chuckle point.
     But it drew attention.
Maybe the shred of a brain that still functioned
inside the ex-cashier's head was back from its coffee
break, but she stopped banging the keys and looked at
me. Then she opened her mouth, disgorging a cock-
roach that had been making its home there. A gap in
her neck revealed the probable entrance to the bug
condo.
     Then the bitch made a sound. It was a brand-new
sound, a kind of high wailing that drew the attention
of the others. She was doing a call to arms, and the
wandering eyes, listless bodies, jerking limbs, and
empty heads responded.
     They finally noticed us.
"Run!" I shouted, and I didn't have to tell Albert
twice. There weren't very many between us and the
door. Albert used his bulk to good advantage, and
while he cleared the path I readied the AB-10.
I waited until we were through the door before
spinning around to take care of business. Sure
enough, some of the zombies of higher caliber fol-
lowed us through the door. I expressed my admiration
for their brain power by answering with my machine
pistol.
     It felt good to be killing them again. Most of the
zombies in the grocery store didn't have weapons, but
the ones who followed us outside were armed. I
always thought there was a link between intelligence
and defending yourself; apparently it even applied at
this almost animalistic level. The zombies returned
fire.
     Albert saw I was in trouble and ran back to me, Uzi
ready. "Keep running, it's all right!" I shouted as he
took down a pair of Mom and Dads who took turns
unloading the family shotgun in our direction. As
they collapsed in a heap, other zombies I had shot got
back up, fumbling with their weapons. Before they
could get off another round, zombies coming up
behind them fired, and the bullets tore into the front
line of zombies. We booked.
     The "Fly" tactic worked its magic; the front rank
spun to return fire against their clumsy compadres. By
the time we got behind a row of munched cars
"parked" by the curb, the zombie melee was in full
cry.
     A bunch of spinys appeared from somewhere and
had their hands, or claws, full trying to stop the melee.
"Good job," I said in Albert's ear.
     "The Lord's work," he said, smiling. "I didn't
know they were such a contentious lot." He quoted a
line, I don't know if from the regular Bible or the
Book of Mormon: "Satan stirreth them up continu-
ally to anger one with another."
     "You said it, brother."
We had to get back to Fly and Jill; they'd be able to
hear the ruckus and would wonder what hornet's nest
we'd stirred up. And it was nearly 2200.
     I thought about Albert as we made time. There was
a lot more to this beefy Mormon than I'd first
expected. Fly and I had done all right when he joined
our team, or we joined his. I'd bet on all of us, even
Jill.
     The reasoning part of my brain ran the odds and
concluded that we were screwed. It had done the
same on Deimos where Fly and I had beaten the
odds so often as to give a bookie a nervous break-
down. That was with just two top-of-the-line hu-
man beings against boxes of monsters. Now with
four of us, we had the boxes of monsters badly out-
numbered.
     Albert and I entered the alley that felt like home
after the grocery store. One advantage of fighting
monsters was not having to worry about identifica-
tion and who-goes-there games. There was a certain
gait to a running human that the zombies lacked.
They forgot a lot about being human.
     Fly sighed and shook his head, somehow managing
to say "I can't take you anywhere!" and "welcome
back" simultaneously without speaking a word. We
were together again.
     21
Damn, I was glad to see Arlene again. After
     all we'd been through together, survival was getting to
be a habit. If reality took her away from me in blood
and fire, I wouldn't mourn until I'd finished avenging
her on the entire race of alien monsters. If by some
miracle I was still alive when it was over and she
wasn't, I would mourn for the rest of my life. Maybe
she felt the same, but I couldn't afford to think about
that.
     As Albert dropped the grocery basket of rotting
lemons right in front of Jill--who made one of her
patented "ick" sounds--he tossed a quick glance
back at Arlene, and it seemed to Yours Truly that the
aforesaid returned it with interest. Compound inter-
est. Well, stranger things had happened, especially
lately. But I would never have imagined any chemis-
try between . . . well, it didn't bother me if something
were cooking between them. All that mattered was the
mission, I told myself.
     "That caterwaul was you?"
"Like the good old days," said Arlene, "when we
were young and carefree against a bloodred Mars
filling up the sky."
     "Huh?" said Jill.
"Uh," said Albert.
     When Arlene waxed poetic, she was a happy camp-
er. "Mission went well, did it?" I asked. "All right,
let's apply the beauty treatment."
     Albert bravely set the example, squashing several of
the lemons and a lonely lime between his big hands
then applying the result to his face. Arlene followed
suit, and I, after taking a deep breath, dug in. There
were plenty to go around. Then I noticed that Jill was
hanging back.
     "You're going to have to do this," I told her in my
friendly voice.
     "Yeah, yeah, I know," she said, only the second
time she'd pulled the sullen bit around us. I could well
imagine her giving this treatment to the President of
the Twelve full-time. I wouldn't fault her for that.
"It's not that bad," said Arlene, rubbing one down
the side of her own leg. Staining camo wear was a
nonproblem.
     "Okay, okay," Jill said, picking one up and tenta-
tively applying it to her nose. "It's gross," she said
with heartfelt sincerity.
     "Here, let me help," I said, becoming impatient. I
took a lemon in each hand, squeezed, and then began
rubbing the results in her hair.
     "Hey!" she said, backing away.
"No time to be belle of the ball," I snapped,
continuing the operation on her face.
     "Hey!" said Arlene, coming over, taking one of the
lemons out of my hands and brandishing it under my
nose as if it were a live grenade. "What do you think
you're doing?"
     "Doing my bit for truth, justice, and the American
way."
     "Uh-huh," said Arlene, reeking of a lack of convic-
tion. "Fly Taggart, I need to explain this to you so that
you will understand." Smiling pleasantly, Arlene
stomped on my right foot.
     While I was digesting all the implications of her
argument, she whispered in my ear, "She's a woman,
not a child."
     "Don't treat me like a child!" Jill chimed in, as if
she could hear.
     "Don't act like one." I leaned close, ignoring
Arlene, and spoke to Jill as I would to one of my
squadron Marines who was acting out. "Listen up,
ma'am. When you've got a set of butter bars, you can
start thinking and making decisions. But until then,
you do what / say, and / say this stuff is going on now.
"We've done your hair and face; next step is the rest
of your body. You want to do that yourself, or do you
want to give me a thrill by having me do it?"
She stared, then took the lime I held out. Test time
was over for now.
     We finished applying the lemons. Jill made faces
but did fine; I hoped she wouldn't stay pissed for the
rest of the mission. Arlene lemoned the backs of the
rest of us where we couldn't reach, and then I did the
same for her. After that, we bid farewell to our alley
and moved out.
     Albert took point and led us toward the railway
station. I took the rear. Fortunately, now that we
smelled like zombies, we could walk openly and carry
our weapons. We rounded a corner and found our-
selves in a mob of the previously mentioned. I could
see Arlene start to tense up--understandable after
what she and Albert encountered at the grocery store.
But a moment later she was putting on a good act,
probably better than mine.
     For a moment I worried about Jill's performance:
arms straight out like a bad copy of Frankenstein's
monster, legs too stiff and jerking as she walked . . .
too exaggerated. She'd never make it on the legitimate
stage. But the zombies didn't seem to notice.
We passed through an archway and suddenly we
were surrounded by imps, hell-princes, and bonys,
with those damned rocket launchers strapped to their
backs. I watched the bonys walk with a jerking
motion so bad I could imagine strings pulling them as
if they were the puppet skeletons I'd seen in Mexico
during their "Day of the Dead" festival. If I hadn't
already seen one in action in the truck, I'd think they
were fake. One thing: they gave me new appreciation
for Jill's performance as a zombie.
     Then came that lousy moment when the Forces of
Evil unveiled yet another brand new, straight-off-the-
assembly-line monster. This one wasn't inadvertently
funny in the manner of the bonys. This one was just
plain disgusting.
     The word fat barely described the awfulness of this
sphere of flesh. We passed close enough to smell years
of accumulated sweat, a neat trick considering how
new the model had to be. The thing made me think of
a planetoid trapped in Earth's gravitational field, only
this hunk of flesh comprised fold upon fold of nause-
ating, ugly, yellow, dripping, flaccid chicken flab.
Of course, that was only a first impression. As it
came still closer, I decided that it was a lot worse than
I first imagined.
     All I could think of was a gigantic wad of phlegm
carved by flabby hands into a semblance of the
human form with two beady pig's eyes sunk deep into
the grotesque face. At the end of each tree-trunk arm
was a massive metal gun, starting at the elbow.
In a choice between being blasted by those guns or
touched in any way, there was no contest. I could
imagine a lot of names for the thing, and I was sure
Arlene would have some ideas; but I wanted Jill to
have the honor of naming this one. She'd probably
come up with a better name than the different terms
for excrement unrolling in my mind.
     There were plenty of other monsters and zombies
through all this, more than enough to keep us all on
our toes and plenty scared. But this thing was just too
much for my stomach.
     The two steam-demons looming up before us were
more dangerous; but there was something almost
beautiful about them in comparison. They were well-
shaped, with good muscle tone showing on the parts
of them that were flesh instead of machine. Even their
metal parts seemed clean and shiny compared to the
dingy, rusty-looking metal tubes sticking out of that
fatboy. I knew I was in trouble when I started making
aesthetic judgments about the monsters.
     I didn't like the way the zombies hemmed us in. I
pushed left and right, trying to lead my troops out,
but always shying away from the vigilant hell-princes
and bonys; they kept getting underfoot. . . whenever
I'd try to ghost, there they were.
     It took some moments for the penny to drop: we
were being herded like cattle. By the time I realized it,
it was too late to get out; the zombie mass funneled
together, headed toward a large building. My heart
went into overdrive, and I was already starting to
calculate the odds of bolting, when Albert leaned
close and rumbled into my ear, "Here's some luck--
they're driving us into the train station."
     I looked, and by God if he wasn't right. They were
putting us on a bloody train!
     A man's heart deviseth his way: but the Lord
directeth his steps.
     The only possible fly in the ointment would be if
the damned train were headed east; but I had a gut
feeling it was headed straight into Los Angeles.
We couldn't avoid the steam-demons; they were
standing at the boarding ramp to the open cattle car
that was already starting to fill. Well, we'd decided to
take the first opportunity to get aboard, and this
surely was some sort of sign.
     Those old nuns of mine were receiving a lot of
prayers from me lately. I could never imagine saints
or angels; so when I got in one of these moods, those
withered souls in black and gray habits played across
my memory. I used to think the nuns that taught me
were ugly old crones. With what I'd been seeing lately,
they had taken on a new beauty in my mind's eye.
My prayer was simple. Don't let fatboy get on with
us, please; pretty please with a Hail Mary on it.
It was easy to stay together; there wasn't any room
to be separated. We were packed in like the Tokyo
subway at rush hour. Of course, I realized that if we
were separated, we'd have the devil's own time trying
to get back together.
     When all this was over, I thought I might give
religion another shake; as the door to the cattle car
closed, I saw that we weren't going to have to put up
with fatboy: it got onto another car.
     "It's open in the back!" said Jill in surprise. At first
I made to silence her for fear we would attract
attention, but there was so much noise going on
around us that our words wouldn't be noticed over
the roaring and growling filling the narrow space. We
were being pushed toward the rear of the car, where
instead of a solid wall, there was an arrangement of
vertical wooden posts with horizontal metal slats
running through them.
     "That's some window," Arlene commented.
"I see that none of you were brought up around
livestock," I said caustically. "It's a cattle car."
With a grinding sound, the train started forward
with a great lurch, throwing us into our rearward
neighbors, who growled and pushed us back. The
former humans who were now zombies did not be-
have nearly so well as humans would have; some
responded to being jostled by firing off a few shots.
"Great!" shouted Arlene.
     "If this escalates, we'll be wiped out in here!" I
hollered back.
     "What can we do about it?"
"Nothing!" I admitted. Time again to trust to luck.
The nuns must have been working overtime, because
the shots suddenly ceased. I glanced over and saw
Albert with his eyes closed, moving his lips silently. I
supposed that if praying was going to save us, this was
a job for the pro.
     Jill grabbed the back of my pants; it was a good
idea--I grabbed Arlene, and she caught Albert.
We traveled past several small towns that evidently
held little of interest. The night sky had a weird glow,
but I still preferred it to the return of day, if that
sickening green sky was waiting for us. It was too dark
to make out details, but occasionally we saw fires
burning on the horizon, funeral pyres to mark the
passing of humanity. We finally came to a violent stop
and there was more jostling. Our luck was still with
us; the gunshots did not resume.
     "Damn, I wish we could see through the door," I
said. Behind us was a splendid view of a smashed
building and a nice stretch of barren countryside; but
heavy sounds in front of us indicated some action.
"The designers must not care if the cows are well-
informed," said Arlene.
     As if in answer to my request, the heavy wooden
door in the side of the train was pushed open to
unpack some zombies, and we were greeted by a sight
you don't see every day. A contingent of steam-
demons was being herded by a spidermind. They were
guarding what appeared to be a truck dolly in which a
human form was wrapped up in bandages from head
to toe. There was a slit for his eyes, but that didn't
help tell us anything about the man or woman
propped up on the dolly; we could only assume this
was a human because there were straps across the
figure--a dead giveaway that he was a prisoner.
The sight made me remember Bill Ritch. The only
human they would take care to preserve with his mind
intact was a human with knowledge they needed and
couldn't extract without destroying . . . which meant
that here was someone else we should either rescue or
kill. He couldn't be left in the hands of the enemy,
giving them whatever they needed. They marched
forward out of sight, the steam-demons tramping in
eerie, mechanical lockstep.
     "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Arlene
bellowed at me.
     "Loud and clear!"
"They've got their tentacles on another of our tech
lads!"
     "Listen up!" I screamed. "Have plan!" They gave
me their undivided attention, easy to do in such
cramped quarters. "Grab guy! Run!"
     Arlene rolled her eyes, unimpressed.
"How--move?" shouted Jill.
     "Slowly!"
While we considered the strengths and weaknesses
of our position, the monsters took the bandaged figure
toward the front of the train. Although we couldn't
see very well, it was easy to figure out what happened
next.
     The train started up again, having received its
important cargo.
     "Forward!" I screamed. "Make path!"
Jill wriggled her hand slowly out to where she was
able to extend her fingers and ... the best way to
describe it was that she goosed the zombie-woman in
front of her. The nervous system of a zombie isn't
great shakes compared to when it was alive, but there
were sufficient sparks left to kindle into fire.
The zombie-woman didn't jump or make any sort
of exclamation; but she did move forward with suffi-
cient force to dislodge the smaller male taking up
space right in front of her.
     Jill let Albert get in front of her. He had a lot of
mass and widened Jill's narrow opening. The ob-
jective was clear: push forward to the connection
between the cars. With the speed of a snail we
inched forward. I figured that so long as we didn't piss
off any of them enough to shoot at us, we were doing
all right.
     Just about then, one of the zombies took a potshot.
I didn't see any particular reason for it; but what was I
doing, trying to apply reason to zombie behavior?
The bullet struck another zombie in the throat, and
it went down gurgling. We were packed so tightly, like
Norwegian sardines, that further attempts at argu-
ment by projectile would probably annihilate the
population of the cattle car.
     Jill drew the small .38 caliber revolver we'd given
her and looked scared and determined both at the
same time.
     "Hold your fire, Jill!" I shouted. She didn't make
me repeat it. The zombie with the itchy finger kept
firing wildly and suddenly connected with a point
where a metal slat and wooden post came together. A
heavy zombie near to the point of impact fell back
against the weakened spot and suddenly went right
through, leaving a huge hole big enough for even
Albert to fit through.
     "New plan!" I bellowed.
22
     By now the train was up to speed again,
smoking along at 300, 320 kilometers per hour. At
this speed, the wind could be considered a refreshing
deluxe feature for the typical bovine passenger. As I
attempted to squirm through the opening, I quickly
learned that a typhoon-strength head wind could slow
down the most dedicated Marine.
     The main thing was not to drop my shotgun as I
climbed on the sill, leaned out into the hurricane, and
stretched up until I reached the railing along the
outside top of the train. I hoped the zombies wouldn't
pay any attention to this latest change in their envi-
ronment. At some level they were still human enough
to resent this ridiculous crowding, or they wouldn't be
exchanging shots. Maybe our team would rate zombie
gratitude for giving them elbow room.
     While standing on the sill, leaning forward into the
wind, holding the railing, I reached down to help
Arlene. Her slim, dry hand slipped into my sweaty
paw, and I noted that it was cold. Arlene always had
trouble keeping her extremities warm. I hoisted her
out and up to the roof, where she hooked her legs to
hang on so she could lean back down. Then Arlene
helped me take care of Jill.
     I didn't blame Jill for being terrified. But I was
surprised when she started shaking. Or maybe it was
just the train rocking violently back and forth. I guess
this would be an experience to write home about, if
there were still a home. No matter how brave and
grown-up this fourteen-year-old wanted to be, she was
having one wild-ass situation after another thrown at
her and had to handle each without benefit of
training.
     The terror in her eyes didn't prevent her doing what
she had to do, and I didn't pay attention to the tears.
The angle was bad, but Jill weighed almost nothing--
and I heaved a sigh of relief as I finished handing her
up to Arlene.
     Albert was a problem. He was a big guy and not as
gymnastically oriented as Yours Truly. Arlene and Jill
attached webbing to the railing, then attached it to
Arlene. The webbing is extraordinarily strong, able to
hold tons before ripping. We didn't go into hell
without taking some decent equipment! No way was
Arlene going to fall with that stuff on her.
Now Arlene and I could help Albert up. It was a lot
easier than blowing away a steam-demon.
     We might even have enjoyed our time on the roof if
not for the hurricane head wind. It smelled a whole
lot better than inside.
     We lay on our bellies, and a ferocious gale battered
us. But we weren't blown off; in fact, we could stand
shakily, leaning into the wind. I figured there must be
some sort of air dam up front, otherwise, 300 kph
would have swatted a standing man off the top of that
train like finger-flicking a fly.
     "Listen up!" I shouted against the gale. "Single-file!
Forward! Slowly! Don't fall!"
     Arlene put her mouth right up to my ear. "How far
L.A.?"
     "Two hours--dawn--rescue human or kill him!"
"What?" screamed Jill, clearly horrified. She was
plenty loud enough to be heard. There was no need to
explain to two old soldiers like Arlene and Albert. I'd
stopped thinking of Jill as a young teen, but there was
no getting around the fact that she was a civilian.
"Death better than fate!" God only knew how
     much she heard, but she clenched her teeth and said
nothing more. The brutal arithmetic inside my head
could wait for another time; I hoped she would never
have to decide who lives and who dies. Sometimes I
envy civilians.
     There was nothing else to say. Besides, we'd all be
hoarse from shouting if we didn't shut up.
     I went first; it was my party. I set the pace nice and
slow. It took nearly a quarter hour to crawl the length
of the train; fortunately, the track through Arizona
was pretty straight. But the natural swaying of the cars
could still hurl any of us to certain death; the rails
were laid for cargo, not passengers.
     I looked back frequently; we didn't lose anybody.
Next stop: Relief City! Two cars ahead was the flatcar
with a complement of one spidermind, one steam-
demon, and one human wrapped like a Christmas
mummy and strapped down tight. The spidermind
was between us and the human, the steam-demon on
the other side.
     It occurred to me that these superior examples of
alien monster-building might sniff us out better than
the lesser breeds; and the wind did a lot to erase our
lemon odor. In our favor, we were way downwind.
The wind was so damned loud, I didn't think they
could hear us either.
     I gestured to Arlene. Time for the Deimos veterans
to do their stuff. We crawled closer, where I could see
a very narrow gap between the cars . . . too narrow
for the adults.
     I noted the fact that the spidermind was so big, a
couple of its right feet dangled limply over the side of
the flatcar . . . and that gave me an idea.
     But it was too narrow for the adults. Only Jill could
fit.
     Oh man, this was my nightmare come true. It was
never supposed to be a walk for the kid--but this?
Throw the raw recruit, not even driving age yet, into
the meat grinder against a spidermind and a steam-
demon? It was criminal . . . homicidal!
     But what were the options? Not even Arlene could
squeeze into that slender space; she probably out-
weighed Jill by forty pounds. They were like two
different species, and thinking of me or Albert down
there was a joke.
     Feeling my gut clench, as well as another part of my
anatomy, I said to myself: Time for the recruit to do
her stuff.
     The levity didn't work. I still felt sick.
We crawled back and huddled with the others in the
gap between two cattle cars full of zombies, where we
could hear each other, at least. I felt like a class-A
creep giving Jill her assignment; but nobody else
could do it. Anyway, the kid seemed eager, not afraid.
She'd make a good Marine. Did I say that before?
This time, my plan had more details: Jill would
shimmy down into the tiny gap between the two cars,
using some of the webbing. "Just like Spider-man!"
she said. Well, whatever. We'd use all the positive
fantasy images floating in her mind. She had to
believe in herself absolutely to pull this off.
If they spotted Jill, she'd be dead meat, and the rest
of us with her. Once she made it into the gap, she
would very carefully loop the webbing several times
over the nearest limb of the spidermind and pull it
tight--without allowing the spidermind to notice it
was being hobbled. She would attach the other end of
the webbing to the titanium grappling hook the Presi-
dent had included in Albert's gear. We could do that
before she started out. We'd lose the hook and some
of our webbing, but with luck, we'd lose the
spidermind as well.
     "If she makes it that far," I said, wrapping up, "she
drops the hook to the ground beneath the wheels and
ducks, waiting for it to catch on a tie or something."
"And that gross bug gets yanked off!" she said,
grokking the plan immediately. "Gnarly idea, Fly!"
I let her savor the image of the alien brain scattered
across the countryside. Slamming into the car behind
at better'n 300 per ought to do the trick nicely, and
"Spider-ma'am" would defeat the spider creep with a
thick dose of poetic justice.
     Now all we had to do was make it work.
While Arlene and Albert prepared the hook and
line, Jill let me wrap it around her waist. She asked
me to do it personally. That meant a lot to me. Then I
gave her a gentle push forward and hoped Albert's
God wouldn't choose this moment to desert us. I put
in a good word for Jill with the nuns as well.
Jill climbed down the side of the car we were on,
two cars back from the flatcar. So far, so good. I
climbed down after her.
     We crept forward at wheel level, crawling alongside
spinning death so slowly, it made our previous trek
along the roof seem like a drag race. Mother Mary, I
thought, please don't let there be any fence posts too
close to the tracks!
     We very carefully worked our way around the
wheels; but if we were any higher up the train, the
spidermind might have us in its sights. Hunkering
down at wheel level, we were hidden by the side of the
car itself.
     There was enough light to keep Jill in my personal
viewfinder every step of the way. I imagined her
knuckles were white. Mine sure as hell were. I kept
pressed right up against her back, my arms on either
side of hers to make sure she didn't slip. We finally got
to the edge of the flatcar; now the show was entirely
Jill's, and all I could do was hang and wait.
23
     Cheese and rice, I felt like a weenie when he
took me outside the train. I swore myself I wouldn't
eff-up any more. For the mome, Fly respected me, and
Arlene too. I didn't care so much about Albert, but he
was all right for one of the LDs.
     Now was my chance to prove to everyone! Maybe I
almost wrecked the truck when those missiles went
through, and maybe they don't know how close they
came to being hosed. But if I pulled this off, I'd make
up for everything! Plus I'd pay back one of those
crawly bastards for what they did to my mom. And
Dad.
     He was right, the slot was a tight fit, even for me;
but I could wiggle through. I don't know what they
would have done without me for this. As I slid along, I
got grease on me. Gagged me out at first, but then I
was glad, cuz it made me more slippery. Huh, like to
see one of those wimp LD girls do this! She'd faint,
and the human race would lose the war.
     Suddenly, I saw a thin, silver thing sticking over the
edge. Got wide on the end. I didn't recognize it at
first, seeing it so close up. Then I gasped--it was a
spidermind foot! It was bigger than I thought. It was
bigger than / was!
     The end of the foot fluffed out like bell-bottom
pants, like my grandparents wore, like on the Brady
Bunch. God, I was glad they didn't live to see the
monsters kill their children.
     I stretched, flipping the webbing, trying to loop the
foot; but I couldn't reach that far! That PO'ed me--I
was going to dweeb-out just cuz my arms weren't like
an orangutan's.
     Then the leg twitched. I screamed and jumped--
and fell.
     I slipped down, banging my knee and barely catch-
ing the edge of the flat thing . . . my face was an inch
from the tracks.
     Oh Lord--the wind blew off the ties, freezing my
cheeks, and I smelled smoke. I think I even . . . well,
peed my pants. Shaking like a leaf, I hauled myself
back up. I spared a glance back at Fly; he looked like
he might have peed his pants too. I shrugged--sorry!
I'm sorry, but hacking systems would never seem
serious after this. Just a toy. This was real. I knew I
was taking a big chance, but there was no way else to
reach the foot: I rested my knee on the bed of the
flatcar and stretched higher, and then I could reach
the leg.
     The spider moved again! I wasn't able to get back
down before the leg pinned me back against the
firewall of the car behind. I was stuck like a fly in the
spidermind's web.
     I didn't make a sound; I could barely breathe, but I
didn't panic this time--I didn't have any you-know-
what left. It didn't know I was there ... so I hung.
It would kill me the second it realized I was there,
same way I'd crush a bug; I was still alive because I
was hidden from view by the huge leg itself. 'Course,
it might kill me without ever knowing I was there; if it
put its weight on that foot, it would pulverize me.
The place where it had me firmest against the wall
was at my knee. The upper part of my body could still
move. I still had a good reach. So I did what I came to
do. I didn't let myself think what would happen if I
failed.
     I passed the webbing four times around the leg. My
heart froze each time. I was in Girl Scouts once; the
only thing they taught me that I still remember was
how to tie a square knot. I tied the best buggin' square
knot of my whole life!
     Great. What next? Next you die, girl.
I thought I would cry, but my eyes were dry. My
mouth was parched and my heart raced, but that was
all. When I thought about all the stupid things we cry
about, like boys and grades and losing a best girl-
friend, it seemed strange I didn't cry then.
Then something happened inside. I felt calm for the
first time since I saw the monsters. I didn't mind
dying if I could take one bastard with me. A big one.
I unslung the grappling hook and let it dangle
between the cars. Pinned against the wall, I wouldn't
be able to duck down. Once I dropped the hook, the
spider would be yanked to a stop as the train kept
moving, and I would be crushed to a grease smear.
Thought about my new friends. Thought about
     what if Fly had kissed me. Thought about wishing I
was anywhere else. Then I let go of the hook.
24
     I didn't know what was going on with Jill,
couldn't see a thing. She fell and screamed, and I'd
popped around and seen her half under the track;
then the spidermind shifted and I had to leap back.
Now I didn't dare show myself--I'd get us both
killed.
     I thought Jill would have finished by now. I'd bet
money she wouldn't lose her nerve. Either she was
still waiting for an opening, or something had gone
wrong.
     Then I heard the heavy thud and metal-scraping
sound that could only be the hook dropping under the
train. It bounced up and down, over and over, while I
waited and waited and waited for that big mother
with the brain and the legs to be yanked into oblivion.
What happened next was so stupid and unlikely, it
was like crapping out ten times in a row: the damned
hook bounced up and hooked onto the train itself!
The little voice in the back of my head I hadn't
heard from recently chose this moment to speak to
me in the voice of an old kids' science show: So,
Flynn, what have we learned from today's experiment?
Well, Mr. Wizard, we've learned that if the train is
moving at the same speed as the spider-bastard, abso-
lutely nothing will happen!
     I humped back hand over hand, ducking down to
check under the train, looking for the hook. Saw it! I
slid through the train's shock absorbers. Time for
more help from the nuns. If we hit a bump, the shocks
would slice me in half. Suddenly, the train itself
seemed like one of the monsters.
     I made it through, then slid along the undercarriage
on my back across the covered axles, under the train,
until I could reach the flippin' hook. The damned
thing was caught on an Abel.
     I reached for the sucker and succeeded in touching
it. Yep, there it was. Touching it was a cinch. I could
touch it all I wanted without falling onto the track and
being ground to hobo stew.
     Getting it loose was the problem.
Once upon a time, I won a trophy in junior high
gymnastics; there were only five of us, but I was the
best in that class. I thought I was pretty hot stuff that
day. Looked to be the moment for an encore perfor-
mance.
     I went looser with the legs, increasing the possibility
of falling but giving me a longer reach. I didn't want
to perform this trick more than once.
     Not only did this stunt run the risk of my becoming
part of the track, there was the extra worry of losing
the duck gun dangling precariously from my back.
Not having my weapon could be as close to a death
sentence as getting run over by the Little Train that
Could.
     I got my hand around the hook, heaved, and yanked
it free. I did a war whoop worthy of a Comanche . . .
then I shut my eyes--I hate the sight of my own
bloody, mangled corpse--and dropped the thing to
the ground.
     This time the law of averages was enforced by the
probability police. The hook caught on a spar and
held. I gripped my perch and braced for impact.
I clenched my whole body as the webbing
     tightened--then the freaking stuff broke. It wasn't
supposed to do that! The end whipped like an enraged
snake, lashing across my back. But I didn't let go.
I waited for the sound of that massive body being
yanked to its doom. Still there was plenty of nothing.
This was becoming irritating. But there was some-
thing: despite the howling of the wind and the ma-
chine pounding of steel wheels on steel rails, I heard a
high, piping squeal. It sounded like a scream from
hell.
     As I began clambering back through the shocks and
up the side of the train, I heard explosions. Something
was happening. I climbed faster ... to be greeted by
the scene of the steam-demon shooting its missiles at
the spidermind. The latter was at a disadvantage,
listing as it moved, badly off balance.
     The webbing had torn one leg off the monstrosity. It
didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what
happened next. Losing a leg would put the
     spidermind in a bad mood. It wouldn't be philosophi-
cal about it. No, it would fire a burst from its guns at
the only target in sight: the steam-demon.
     For all their power, these guys had a weakness as
deep as the ocean. Conquerors and masters need
some self-control.
     My primary goal now was to find Jill and get her
out of here; but I didn't see her from this angle. She
was probably still hugging the other side of the flatcar
where she had lassoed the spidermind's leg.
     The train hit a bad bump, exactly the impact that
would have left me beside myself when 1 was doing
my Tarzan of the shocks routine. The two monsters
took the bump personally and increased the ferocity
of the battle. I realized the high piping sound was
from the spider--it probably made the noise when it
lost its leg. The steam-demon emitted more human-
sounding screams.
     The wind seemed to be picking up, but neither
contestant paid any attention to the weather. As I
watched the spidermind tear up the steam-demon
with a nonstop barrage from the Gatling gun, I
remembered how difficult Arlene and I had found
taking one of these down before. The demon was
nothing compared to the other.
     But if there were a cosmic bookie keeping tabs on
this one, the final decision was still in doubt. The
steam-demon followed the optimum strategy for his
position, firing missile after missile at the robot
exterior to the spidermind's brain. Cracks were begin-
ning to appear.
     I stayed put, praying for the best possible outcome.
By the time the spidermind's brain case finally ex-
ploded, the steam-demon was so ripped it could
barely stand. Under the circumstances, things were
working out better than the original plan. After all, if
the spidermind had been eliminated as intended, we
would still have had to contend with the problem of
the steam-demon.
     While I was congratulating myself on the turn of
events, the train took a sudden turn and the tottering,
cybernetic creature nearly fell off the flatcar. That
would have been the perfect climax to the duel of the
titans.
     Dawn started to streak the horizon with a sickening
shade of green. The improved light made it much
easier to pick out details of the local terrain; such as
the high rock gorge we were just then passing over,
thanks to a narrow bridge. This would be a splendid
place for the steam-demon to take its final rest. The
perfect end, as I'd already thought, to the perfect
battle. Then I could find Jill and congratulate her on a
mission well done.
     The only flaw in this scenario consisted of a single
claw--the claw the steam-demon used to grab hold
and save itself as it fell right next to me. Right next to
me!
     It was bad enough seeing the demon this close up.
Far worse . . . it saw me. As weak and near death as
the thing was, it recognized a living human a few
inches away. Very slowly, it raised its missile hand.
It was slow; I was a whole lot faster. I back-drew my
double-barreled shotgun and fired both barrels, one-
handed, squeezing both triggers simultaneously.
Quite a kick. The blast tore off its entire hand at the
wrist... the gripping hand.
     The steam-demon plummeted off the car to the
ground, exploding noisily as it got off one last missile
shot that went straight up through the track ahead of
the train, in between the rails, right on a curve in the
bridge.
     The train didn't bother slowing as it rolled over the
missile-damaged point. I could imagine a cartoon
demon with an engineer's cap, throwing back a shot
of the good old hooch and not worrying about the
condition of the track ahead.
     As we passed, I saw in greenish daylight growing
brighter by the minute that part of the inside rail was
bent up from the blast. If it had been the outside rail
instead, we would have plunged into the gorge. The
President of the Twelve would've needed to audition a
new act.
     "Jill!" I howled. "Jill!" Climbing up to the flatcar
was easy, but I suddenly had a cramp deep in my
back. It was so bad that it paralyzed me for a moment.
I wouldn't let something like that stop me now. I
twisting around trying to loosen up, still calling, "Jill,
Jill!"
     Where the hell was that kid? I was starting to
worry.
     I reached the end of the flatcar, looked down . . .
and saw her there, gazing up at me with wide eyes.
"You all right?"
     She nodded, but not a word came out. Maybe she
was suffering from shock. I reached down and she
took my hand. I didn't care about the twinge in my
back now. I hauled her up.
     "Great!" I said.
"Alive?"
     "Of course!"
"Oh." She still seemed not entirely sure.
     I grabbed and hoisted her. Now my back felt fine,
and for a crazy moment the sick-o green dawn looked
beautiful.
     I put her down. The mummy and we were alone on
the flatcar now.
     A warm glow spread through me, not unlike the
warm jet of a hot tub. My old voice spoke, something
good for once: The debt is nearly paid.
     What debt? Oh. The debt of my stupidity in bring-
ing assault onto the enclave.
     That debt.
"Wait here." I could have sent her up the ladder to
signal the others to join us, but she had earned a rest
as far as I was concerned. Her vacation from hell
might not last longer than a few minutes, but I wanted
her to enjoy every second before I ordered her to face
death yet again. I got them myself, bringing them to
the cacophonous flatcar.
     Arlene and Albert looked as exhausted as Jill, and
as tired as I felt. Next time, we'd fly.
     Arlene bent over and began unwrapping, revealing
the face of another human in a world where being
human was something special.
     Huddling against the forty or fifty kilometer per
hour wind that leaked around the engines and air dam
ahead of us, remnants of the 300 kph hurricane two
meters either left or right, we crouched over our
mummy, staring. We saw the features of a black man,
mid-thirties. As we shifted him around on the plat-
form, I estimated his weight at about sixty-four kilos.
Not a bad weight for 1.7 meters.
     "What done him?" Jill shouted. A good question,
though I could barely hear her small voice over the
roar of train and wind. Computer and electronic jacks
were all over his flesh, stuck like pins into a doll. He
was unconscious. There were so many jacks, he'd
probably be in extreme pain if awake.
     Arlene pulled the lid back from his right eye,
revealing a cloudy white orb, so completely glazed
over that you couldn't make out a pupil. Even after
encountering a who's who of monsters, fiends, and
other denizens of hell, something really bothered me
about seeing this helpless man before me.
     He didn't reek like sour lemons, thank God. He was
no zombie.
     I still hadn't discussed with Jill or Albert what
Arlene and I had mulled over--namely, the possibili-
ty that the Bad Guys were trying for more perfect
human duplicates. Practice makes perfect. We had no
idea how the zombies were created. Sometimes I
thought they really were the reanimated dead; but
other times I could buy the idea they were trans-
formed while still alive. However the enemy was
doing it, the lemon stink was a by-product of dealing
with real human bodies.
     If the enemy ever made perfect human copies from
scratch, there would be no lemon smell, or anything
else to give them away.
     Arlene tried various methods of waking up the
man, even slapping him in the face, but nothing
worked. She looked at me and shrugged.
     Jill reached out and gingerly touched one of the
jacks sticking out from the man's flesh. She managed
to look crafty and thoughtful, even with her red hair
whipping around her face like a brushfire.
     She fingered the jack again and scowled.
Then Jill looked at me and mimed typing on a
keyboard. She raised her brows. What. . . ? I blinked;
light finally dawned on marblehead. She wanted to
hack this guy's brain?
     Well why the hell not?
We all crowded around the mummy, making a
     windbreak for Jill. Leaning so close, I could actually
make out a few words. "Need--jack--find out
     what--wants to fight--can't promise it'll--might be
the break . . ."
     I couldn't hear everything, but I got the gist.
The real question was what on earth was inside that
brain that was worth the protection of a spidermind
and a handful of steam-demons? Back on Phobos and
Deimos, the alien technology we had seen was differ-
ent, biological somehow. They used cyborgs, combi-
nation biological-mechanical, like the spidermind it-
self. Was that what this dude was, some sort of link
between humans and alien technology?
     Or the other way around?
Well, whatever. We weren't going to find out any-
thing in a wind tunnel. . . somehow, some way, we
simply had to get this guy off the damned train.
Somehow I doubted we could just ring the bell and
say "Next stop, conductor."
     I hoped the cybermummy would be enough of a son
of a bitch to join us when we unwrapped him.
"Vacation over!" I bellowed over the gale. "War
on!" Arlene gave me a dirty look, so I knew that the
awesome responsibility of command still rested on
my shoulders.
     The   man   seemed   physically   manhandled   and
bruised, but not seriously damaged, except for their
attempt to transform him into an appliance. The
question was, how would we get him off the train?
If we waited until we rolled into the station in L.A.,
I could imagine a slight difficulty in persuading a large
contingent of, say, steam-demons into helping us with
our cargo. The absence of the spidermind from the
flatcar would take a bit of explaining as well. We
lacked the firepower to make our argument com-
pletely convincing.
     "Suggestion," rumbled Albert. It was hard to pick
out his words; the timbre of his voice was too close to
the throb of the engines, and he wasn't a good
shouter. No practice, probably. I only caught some of
what he said and wasn't too sure about what I did
catch.
     "Father--trains! Trick or treat--Jill's age--
incorrect car--aggravates--emerging break . . . !"
I stared, trying to parse the incomprehensible
"plan." Trick or treat? Jill's age aggravates the emerg-
ing break?
     Or was that brake--emergency brake! Something
about an emergency brake.
     He tried again: "Couple of cars!" he hollered.
"Couple--car!"
     Couple of car. Cars? No, car ... couple-car.
I smacked my forehead. Decouple the car. Which
must activate, not aggravate, the emergency brake.
Jesus and Mary! What a nightmare; a loud one!
That seemed like a plenty good plan to Yours Truly.
Hauling the mummy up to the semiprotected roof,
we staggered overhead toward the last car; that's the
one we would decouple. The train was going as fast as
before, but we humped a lot faster along the roof this
time. Killing the spidermind and steam-demon
worked wonders for our self-confidence. Jill's attitude
was so changed that I could probably dangle her over
the edge, holding onto her ankles, without her show-
ing a quiver, though I was glad we didn't require such
a demonstration.
     There were three cattle cars, which we had to pass
by creeping along the sides, centimeters away from
staring zombies. I thought sure they'd start shooting
at us--what a time to die! At least the demons
wouldn't keep their mummy.
     But the reworked humans merely stared with malig-
nant stupidity. They'd been given no orders, you see
. . .just like bureaucrats at the Pentagod.
     When we reached the last car, an enclosed cargo
car, I looked down through the slatted roof to see that
the interior was stuffed with zombies. As expected.
Albert slid down between the cars in search of the
emergency decoupler. After checking it, he climbed
back up and shouted, "When?"
     Another good question. We didn't want to be stuck
in the middle of the desert. If we hung until the
suburbs of L.A., we should be able to hold our own
combatwise and be close enough to supplies, shelter,
and other transportation.
     I tried to remember the L.A. geography. "River-
side!" I shouted. That is, assuming the train passed
through Riverside. If not, any eastern bedroom com-
munity would do.
     Seeing was considerably easier in the daylight, even
in the pale green light. For the moment, I didn't even
mind the greenish hue of an alien sky. Get rid of these
damned invaders, and we could look up at the natural
color of blue minus the gray haze for which L.A. was
famous. It would take a lot of work increasing the
population to get everything back to normal, but it
would be a satisfying challenge.
     "Single!" hollered Albert. Why was he telling me
that? "Single in couple!" Whoops--signal when he
should decouple the car. He climbed back down.
Arlene tossed me a faint nod and half smile, then
gingerly slithered down the ladder and joined him.
25
     Fly was too good a friend for me not to be
honest with him. But I was so surprised how fast
things were going that there wasn't anything for me to
say. Who could talk in this breeze, anyway?
     Fly, like most guys, made certain assumptions
about women. When we decided just to be friends, I
expected a certain strain. But we were pals, buddies,
comrades. I liked it that way.
     But bring another man into the picture, and there
are consequences. Fly was a big brother. He never did
take to Willie; and I don't think he ever thought
there'd be the slightest chance I'd ever fall for a
religious dude--especially a Mormon!
     "Fall" was a bad image. I squeezed down between
the surging cars, watching the river of brown streaks
racing below us as the ground sped past. Albert stood
on the metal tongue-thing that held the cars together;
he kept switching his grip back and forth as the cars
shimmied. I never realized they moved that much.
I was falling for Albert. Crazy, buggin', retarded.
Nothing short of the end of the world could have
brought this about.
     One "end-of-the-world," order up! Maybe we could
reverse what had happened and give the human race a
reason to go on living. Survivors. Those who refused
to go down until the fat monster sang.
     On Phobos, I thought I might be the only human
being left alive in the universe. Then on Deimos, I
thought Fly and I might be the only two human
beings.
     However few there were on Earth to stand against
the invader, all that mattered was that Fly and I were
no longer alone. And looking down on the wide
shoulders of my new friend, I hoped I'd be "un-alone"
in other ways too.
     Drawing near, I saw his lips moving, reciting words
that could have been from the Bible for all I knew.
Some kind of prayer, I reckoned; it seemed to calm
him, give him courage. Guess there's some good in
religion after all, if you knew where to look.
I wondered if he had the entire Book of Mormon
memorized, or just the "good parts," the passages
that suited his prejudice? I knew, somehow, that
Albert wasn't like that--maybe the first guy I ever
met who guided his lifestyle by his faith, instead of
the other way around.
     He stopped, looked up at me and smiled. With an
opening like that, he could hardly blame me for taking
the next step farther down the ladder.
     "Albert!" I shrieked. He said something, but I
couldn't hear him. I was probably embarrassing him.
That was nothing new for me when it came to
     interpersonal relationships. "I find you really attract-
ive!" I bellowed romantically, secure in the knowl-
edge that he couldn't hear a damned word. Then I
shut up and listened to the train wheels.
     "Something mumble something," he said. Damn,
he was embarrassed. But he pressed on, as brave with
me as he'd been with the monsters. Now why did I
make such a comparison? Typical, Arlene, I said to
myself; always your own worst critic.
     I don't mean to make you uncomfortable, I silently
mouthed into the maelstrom.
     He shook his head and shrugged, which might have
meant, I don't have the faintest idea what you're
saying . . . but I preferred to interpret it as Nonsense,
darling; my religion is really important to me, but so
are you--and I know how you feel about it,
     He had me there. I didn't want to say anything right
then. Physical combat can be so much easier than the
other kind! I listened to the steady rhythm of the train
wheels pounding in my skull like a .50 caliber ma-
chine gun, drowning out even the 300 kph typhoon we
rolled through. The irregular rattling sound of the
coupler, waiting for Albert's hands to reach down and
seize it, sounded like ground-to-air artillery.
I looked at the ground unfurling beneath us like a
giant banner; then I looked up at blurs that might be
trees or telephone poles, shading a dawn green as a
lime before it rotted and became zombie lotion.
"I can't give you what you want," I said at normal
speaking volume. Even I couldn't hear me.
     He said nothing, but looked up shyly at me.
I liked him calling me beautiful. With his eyes, at
least. I liked it a lot. Being honest came more easily
now that we were both admitting our mutual attrac-
tion. Well, you know what I mean--this wasn't
exactly the best spot for a romantic conversation; but
I knew what he would be admitting if I could hear
him.
     It wasn't only that I had problems with his religion;
I didn't like any of them. I don't like turning over
moral authority to a bearded ghost that you can't find
when everything blows up.
     Besides, we might not be compatible in other ways.
Hah, how pure Arlene that was! Telling the man I
wanted all the reasons why it would never work. I was
grateful that it was so noisy down here that Fly
couldn't hear a word. Time to shift from negatives to
positives.
     "But Albert, we could give it a try," I said, not
caring that I was basically talking to the wind and the
wheels. He wasn't even looking at me at the moment,
concentrating on keeping his balance and not losing a
finger in the metal clacking thing.
     "We could, like, date. You know, spend a few nights
together, if we live through this. Who knows? Some-
thing might happen."
     Again he left me to contemplation of the train and
the terrain. He was obviously struggling over what I'd
said. It was pretty obvious that four forces were
fighting in him at this moment: morality, manners,
moi, and volume-comma-lack of.
     Finally he worked up his nerve, craned his neck
again where he could look me in the eye and said,
"Something rumble something question mark?"
     Now that was a conversation stopper. But I only let
it stop us for a moment. "You mean, you're a virgin?"
I asked, incredulous.
     He tilted his head to the side; was that a yes?
"But you're a Marine!" I howled in amazement.
I burst out laughing at my own outburst. The
Church of the Marine loomed larger in my mind than
any competing firm.
     Of course, there are Marines who remain loyal to
their wives or abstain from sex for religious reasons.
Hey, fornication is not part of the job description!
Amazing, but true. Still, the odds were against the
clean-living Marine. "You ever heard the phrase,
'There are no virgins in foxholes'?" I asked.
He watched my animated, one-sided dialogue--it
wasn't really a monologue--in puzzlement, tortured
soul that he was. I couldn't give up that easily. What
about the various ports and landing zones he must
have visited on his sea tour? Bombay, Madrid, Ma-
nila, Hong Kong, Calcutta, Kuwait City!
     Albert smiled at me again. Progress! I had an
admission. I knew how I would conduct the cross-
examination: "So tell me, Mr. Marine Corps sniper,
did you never visit any of the local sex scenes? The
cages of Bombay that hang over the street, where you
have sex with a pross in full view? The port-pros in
Manila? The Hong Kong sex tours, where a soldier
with a few bucks in his pocket can visit a dozen
knocking shops in a day and a half? Kefiri City, with
more glory holes than any other . . . ?
     You don't know? Uh, you place your you-know-
what through a hole in a wall and somebody on the
other side does, you know.
     Yeah, maybe it was morals. Maybe he just didn't
want his gun to turn green and fall off.
     The angle was probably tough on his neck, but he
swiveled his body a little so he could almost face me.
"Something jumble something interrogative?"
     Me? Well no, not exactly. He stared at me awhile
longer. No, those places tend to be attractions for a
male Marine. What would I do with a glory hole, for
Pete's sake?
     Heh, I could work the other side, theoretically. All
right; he might have been naive in some ways, but he
was a man of the world in others. The contradictions
in this big man appealed to me. He contained multi-
tudes.
     I reached out and touched his cheek, glad he didn't
pull away. I was afraid he might have been ready to
write me off as a Marine slut. No dice; I was a
responsible girl. . . responsible behavior in today's
world meant carry extra loads and sleep with both
eyes open. To quote everybody's third-favorite weird
German philosopher, Oswald Spengler:
     Life, if it would be great, is hard; it demands a
choice only between victory and ruin, not be-
tween war and peace. And to the victors belong
the sacrifices of victory. For that which shuffles
querulously and jealously by the side of the
events is only literature.
     Hey, that could be our first date! We hurl quota-
tions at each other from thirty paces!
     26
Riverside was coming up fast, so I took
     another look down at Arlene and Albert. They
seemed to be carrying on a deeply meaningful conver-
sation, though the Blessed Virgin only knew how they
could possibly hear each other over that racket. It
seemed impolite to stare, so I focused my attention on
the horizon. There was a war to fight, a war to fight.
"Albert! Now!" I boomed at peak volume as the
town raced up to greet us. Albert and Arlene started
yanking on a lever atop the coupler. They heaved
again and again, until I thought we'd be cruising into
Grand Central before they got the bloody thing un-
hooked. Then it cracked open and the cars separated
with an explosive bang.
     The pneumatic brakes activated automatically,
slowing the loose car we were on while the rest of the
train sped on, oblivious, impervious. I wondered if
the aliens would even notice that a car was missing.
We destroyed the spidermind; did they have enough
initiative even to count?
     We braked toward a stop, more or less terrifyingly.
The rails screamed, the car rocked and rolled. Jill held
on for dear life, looking as green as the sky. Arlene
and Albert kicked back, cool to the max. I was too
busy watching everybody else to notice whether I was
cool or freaked: I didn't want one of my crew to fall
under the wheels and be crushed to death without me
being instantly aware of it.
     I couldn't bring myself to abandon the car without
expressing an opinion on the zombies sardine-canned
below. I positioned myself and fired a bunch of
rounds through the roof slats. This riled them up, and
they behaved in the approved manner. They attacked
each other with mindless ferocity.
     As the car came to a complete stop, Albert and I
managed the cybermummy between us quite easily.
We hopped down and bolted for cover in an alley.
The streets of Riverside were like the valleys of a
lost civilization or the canyons of a mysterious planet.
We beat cleats up and down to throw off any alien
patrols.
     Although deep in the heart of enemy territory,
surrounded by more monsters than at any other time
since returning to Earth, it was a relief to be off the
train. I didn't know about the others, but I was
for solid ground underfoot again.
     There was no way to tell what were the mummy's
requirements for life support. Perhaps with an IV he
could survive indefinitely in his present condition;
but there was no way for us to be certain without
direct communication.
     Meanwhile, Arlene and Jill took point and tail,
respectively. We were at the part of the mission where
we were truly interchangeable, except for the necessi-
ty of keeping Jill alive until she could do her computer
trick. Nowhere was safer than anywhere else.
We whisked through street and alley, avoiding
patrols of roving monsters. We ran, carrying the
mummy like old bedclothes between us. Putting the
mummy down for a moment, Albert pointedly asked
of Jill, "Are there any safe houses around here?"
Digging into her pack, Jill produced that small,
portable computer, the CompMac ultramicro, more
compact than any I'd seen before.
     "Where'd you get that?" asked Arlene.
Jill answered with a lot of pride: "Underground
special--built by the Church. You can get inventions
out fast when you don't have to worry about FCC regs
and product liability lawsuits."
     She called up her safe-house program and then told
all of us to look away. I doubted that I'd turn to stone
if I didn't comply. Anyway, I complied . . . and lis-
tened to her type in about thirty characters--her key
code, obviously. When she was finished, I looked at
her again as she scrutinized her screen.
     She nodded and pressed her lips firmly together, a
sure sign in my book of Mission Accomplished.
"There's a safe house about a mile from here on
Paglia Place," she said. Then she called up a map of
Riverside and showed the rest of the route the pro-
gram suggested.
     "I see a problem with part of this," said Arlene.
"The route goes within a couple of blocks of an old
IRS field office where I used to deliver papers while I
was a courier."
     "Courier? What for?" asked Jill.
"For two years of college."
     "Whadja get?"
"Minimum wage. Fifteen per hour, OldBucks."
     "No, I mean what degree!"
"Oh. A.A. in engineering and computer program-
ming," answered Arlene, embarrassed. I could imag-
ine why. Arlene's degree must seem awfully trivial
compared to what Jill had picked up on her own.
Jill nodded. "Hip," she said, without dissing my
pal, for which I was grateful. The gal was a pretty
grown-up fourteen-year-old, astute enough to recog-
nize that Arlene was very touchy about only going to a
two-year college. She couldn't afford any longer.
We followed the revised route Arlene traced.
I had some advice that nobody wanted to hear:
"Fly's prime directive is not to use firearms unless ab-
so-lute-ly necessary!"
     Jill was the first critic. "But Fly, it's not like they're
human."
     "Using martial arts might only entertain them,"
Arlene added. "I'm not even sure a shiv would bother
them, assuming you can find their ribs to stick it
between."
     "Is everyone finished?" I asked, a bit impatiently.
"I'm not getting all liberal; I mean the wrong noise at
the wrong moment could bring down a horde on our
heads."
     "Oh, why didn't you say so?"
I wished there were a quick course I could take in
monster aikido; failing that, I'd settle for learning
where they kept their glass jaws, so a quick uppercut
could do the trick.
     We padded up dark alleys and narrow streets,
trying to stay out of the sun. After a couple of klicks,
Arlene suddenly stopped cold. When the Marine
taking point does that, it's time for everyone to play
Living Statue. We froze and waited.
     Jill, for all her fighting instincts, didn't have the
training. She started to ask what was wrong, but I
clamped a hand over her mouth. Arlene continued
facing forward but gestured behind her for the rest of
us to backtrack. We did it very slowly; whatever it was
hadn't noticed us yet, and I aimed to keep it that way.
We backed up about a hundred meters before she let
out her breath.
     "Remember the fatty we saw back at the train
depot?" she asked. "We just bumped into its older,
wider brother."
     We'd been so busy that I never got around to getting
her to name that mobile tub of lard; but I instantly
knew the creature she meant. I'd hoped that maybe
the thing was an exception to the rule, an accident
rather than a standard design. I preferred fighting
monsters that didn't make me sick.
     "I thought it was a huge pile of garbage," Arlene
whispered intently.
     Blinking into the darkness ahead, I finally made out
a huge shadow shifting among the other shadows. The
thing roused itself with the sound of tons and tons of
wet burlap dragged across concrete. It stood to a
height of two meters, only my height actually, but
weighing at least four hundred kilos. The density and
width of the thing was incredible.
     The fatty--if we lived through this one, I hoped I
could talk Arlene into a better name--made slush-
slush sounds as it moved. It was probably leaving
something disgusting behind it, like a snail track. In
the massive, shapeless, metal paws that encased or
replaced its hands, the fatty held some kind of weird,
three-headed gun.
     The thing wasn't facing us. It stood sideways, trying
to figure out from which direction had come the noise
disturbing its repose. Then it turned away from us,
giving us an unobstructed view of its mottled, dis-
gusting back. It made a horrible, rasping noise that I
guessed was the sound of its breathing.
     I pointed in the other direction . . . but just then we
heard stomping feet approaching up the block that
way. A troop of monsters. Just what we needed!
They were led by a bony. If we didn't know how
dangerous it could be, it would seem sort of funny,
leading them with that jerking-puppet gait.
     There was nothing amusing about being trapped
between a fatty in front and the Ghoul Club behind,
between hammer and anvil, with no side streets or
doors to duck into.
     Albert sighed. I watched his shoulders untense. He
unslung his weapon with casual ease, as though he had
all the time in the world; which in a way he did. He
was ready to die for the "cause," whether that was us
or the rest of whatever.
     Me, I was ready to live for mine.
Jill's face went utterly white, but she didn't give any
indication of bugging. After the flatcar, she was a
seasoned vet. Like the rest of us, she had that special
feeling of living on borrowed time. She clutched the
ultramicro to her chest, more upset about failing than
dying. She contemplated our mummy with regret;
she'd never get the hack of a lifetime!
     Arlene whispered "Cross fire" a nanosecond before
it occurred to me. Darting into the middle of the
street, we had the bony in our sights. It stopped and
immediately bent at the waist and fired its shoulder
rockets. I hit the deck and Arlene dodged left. The
rockets sailed over my head, one of them bursting
against the big, brown back of the fatty.
     Enraged, the fatty located the source of this scurril-
ous, unprovoked attack. It raised both arms and fired
three gigantic, flaming balls of white phosphorous at
the bony.
     The center ball hit, but the other two spread,
striking other members of the bony's entourage, fry-
ing them instantly.
     The surviving members were no happier than the
fatty had been earlier; they opened fire, and the bony
forgot all about us, firing two more rockets at fat boy.
Meanwhile, my crew were very, very busy lying on
their bellies and kissing dirt for all they were worth,
hands over heads. All except me: I kept my hands free
and rolled onto my back, shotgun pointing back and
forth, back and forth, like a fan at a tennis match.
I didn't want to call attention to our little party, but
neither did I want us to be noticed by a smarter-than-
average monster who wanted to spill our guts to
celebrate its position on the food chain. I wished it
were still night.
     The bony ran out of rockets before the fatty ran out
of fireballs. The bone bag blew apart into tiny pieces,
white shards so small they could be mistaken for
hailstones, were this not Los Angeles.
     The fatty kept firing. There were plenty of troops
left to take out, and the walking flab seemed to have
an inexhaustible supply of pyrotechnics. Maybe he
got his stuff from the same shop used by the steam-
demon.
     At last, any troops left intact were no longer mov-
ing. The fatty kept firing for a while into their inert
bodies.
     When it stopped, nothing moved anywhere in
sight--assuming those little pig eyes could see very
far. We lay as still as we could; I wished we could stop
the sounds of our breathing. A lump of congestion
had settled somewhere in my head, and I wheezed on
every second breath, but I was afraid to hold my
breath for fear I would start coughing.
     Of course, the monster's hearing might not be any
great shakes. I could see small black holes on either
side of his lard-encrusted head. If those were ears,
they seemed minuscule. I lay still, rationalizing and
wheezing, hoping the thing would do anything
except--except exactly what it did next.
     The fatty was badly shot and cut up, like a giant,
spherical hamburger patty that had fallen apart on the
grill. It rumbled and began to shuffle directly for us. If
the monstrous thing stepped on one of us as it passed,
it would be a messy death.
     27
I decided if one of those massive feet were
     about to descend on any one of us, I would open fire.
There might be a military argument for letting one of
us die if the others were passed over, anyone but Jill,
but--forget it. Not like that!
     As fat boy stumped slowly in our direction, I
realized with a sinking feeling that it was another
genetic experiment copying the human form. The
whole design was clearly functional, another killer-
critter. But if they could make creatures this close to
our basic body type, then they could do copies of us in
time.
     As these thoughts raced through my mind, the thing
took one ponderous step after another, coming closer
and closer--allowing for inspection of its nonhuman
qualities. The skin was like that of a rhinoceros. Feed
this lumpkin an all-you-can-eat buffet (with a dis-
count coupon), and it might top out at half a ton. The
bald head looked like a squashed football; the beady
eyes took no note of us as it came within spitting
distance. It had to be nearsighted. Now, if it were deaf
and unable to smell, it might just miss us.
     Good news and bad: if fat boy continued walking a
straight line, it would miss us all. Alas, Jill's
ultramicro lay directly next to her, and the fatty was
about to step on this critical piece of equipment.
There wasn't time for anyone to do anything,
except for Jill. All she had to do was reach out with
her right hand and grab it. I saw her raise her head
and start to move her hand, but she froze. What if it
saw her!
     With only a second to spare, she worked up her
nerve and yanked the computer out of the way before
the monster would have crushed it flat. By waiting so
long, she solved her problem--the fatty couldn't see
its own feet. The bulk of the vast stomach obscured
Jill's quick movement.
     Fat boy slogged on without further mishap.
I was ready to heave a sigh of relief, clear my throat,
maybe even enjoy a cough or two. Jill started to get
up. Arlene and Albert weren't moving yet, waiting for
the all-clear from Yours Truly. I almost gave it when a
blast of machine-gun fire erupted behind the fatty.
I was too damned tired to curse. We could use a
short rest before taking on new playmates!
     The fatty wasn't happy about the turn of events
either. It screamed with a sound more piglike than the
pinkie demons.
     The bullets sprayed in a steady stream, so many
that some were surely penetrating that thick hide to
disrupt vital organs--however deeply those organs
were hidden underneath a stinking expanse of quiver-
ing flesh.
     As the machine gun cut the monster to ribbons, I
heard bug-wild, crazy laughter, the kind made only by
a human being. The laughter continued, the bullets
continued, until at last the fatty made the transition
from hamburger to road kill. It made a wet, flopping
sound, collapsed into itself and died.
     We weren't playing statues while this was going on.
Guns at the ready, firing positions, we faced . . . what
looked like another human being. A very large human
figure.
     I almost called out, but I checked myself. Despite
my gut-level joy at seeing another human, my innate
suspicion held me back. After all, some real, live
humans cooperated with the alien invasion. Sure, this
guy shot the fatty; maybe he was on our side. But we
couldn't be sure of that; and if he didn't come into the
alley, he wouldn't see us. The alley was in deep
shadow, hidden from even the pallid green light of a
reworked sky.
     Unfortunately, Jill was not a Marine. She was a
young girl, and like most teenagers, she sometimes
acted on auto pilot.
     "You're human!" she yelped. Then she stopped
suddenly, hand over her mouth, as if trying to push
the words back inside. She realized what she had
done. As to the consequences, she'd learn those in the
next moment. So would the rest of us in the black
alley.
     The figure lifted a hand to its head and flipped back
a visor over its helmet. The face underneath seemed
human enough, from what I could see. He wasn't
smiling. Jill made as if she might run, but she was
thinking again. She wouldn't lead him back to us.
"It's all right, little girl," he said, scanning, trying to
locate her. "I won't hurt you." He took a tentative
step in her direction, and she held her ground, not
making another sound.
     Silhouetted against the light gray wall of a
carniceria, he was an impressive sight. But whose side
was he on? This deep into enemy territory, we
couldn't let anything compromise us, not even com-
mon sense or basic instincts.
     Fighting monsters was so black-and-white that
there was something clean about it. This man was not
a monster. Were we about to have the firefight of our
lives, a new ally, or a Mexican standoff?
     He didn't have a flash; probably figured he wouldn't
need one in the daylight, such as it was. In the dark
alley, however ...
     Silently, slowly, I slid my pair of day-night goggles
out of my webbing and slipped them on, flicking the
switch as I did so.
     Now I could make out more of his gear: .30 cal
machine gun, a belt-fed job; backpack full of ammo;
radio gear; a flak jacket that screamed state-of-the-art
body armor; and a U.S. Army Ranger uniform, staff
sergeant. "Come on out, little girl; let me see you. It's
all right." He raised his hand as if scratching his chin
stubble . . . but a crackling sound followed by a rum-
bling voice made it clear that he was talking into a
handheld mike.
     I also saw one more twist: he had a pair of dis-
tended goggles himself on his helmet--night-vis gog-
gles, they had to be.
     When Jill said nothing, he reached up for them. My
heart pounded; as soon as he put them on, he would
see all of us crouched in the shadows.
     As if she sensed the danger--or maybe she knew
she'd blown it and was trying to redeem herself--Jill
stepped forward into the faint illumination reflected
from the dragon-green sky by the pale wall of the
Mexican meat market. "H-Here I am, sir," she called.
"Are you alone?" he asked.
     Jill was a trooper. "Yes sir. I'm alone, sir."
Slowly, the man lowered his machine gun right at
her small, narrow tummy. The universe became a still
picture of the man, the gun, Jill. . . and my hand
tightened on the trigger of my avenger.
     "Take it nice and easy," he told Jill. "You're comin'
to meet the boss."
     "Who's that?" she asked, her voice firm.
"We'll get along a lot better," he said, "if you get it
through your head right now, bitch, that you don't ask
the questions."
     "What if I don't want to go?" she asked.
"Then I'll drop you where you stand," he answered.
The machine gun had not shifted an inch. "Now
move it or lose it," he said.
     Jill moved all right, slowly and deliberately so he
wouldn't suspect anything. The gun followed her, and
the sergeant turned his back to the alley; and I guess
that's what she intended all along, for she took a dive
as soon as his body blocked the line of fire.
I needed no second chance. Mister Mystery Ranger
didn't have the proper attitude toward "little girls."
Not by a long shot.
     Unloading both barrels into the guy's back got his
attention. Arlene opened fire with her AB-10. Be-
tween the two of us, we gave him a quick and effective
lesson in good manners.
     He staggered, but managed to turn around. That
armor of his was something! He started firing wildly
while Arlene and Albert pumped more lead.
     I slammed two more shells home into my trusty
duck-gun and let them go into the son of a bitch's
head.
     The fancy headgear cracked like a colorful Easter
egg and spilled out its contents. Surprise, you're dead!
None of us moved for at least a minute, listening
for the sound of more aliens attracted by the noise.
There were no footsteps or nearby trucks, but we did
hear sporadic gunfire in the distance. Probably zom-
bies.
     "Jill," Arlene called out. Jill returned with an
expression that could only be described as sheepish.
The girl was covered in dust but didn't have a scratch
on her.
     "I'm sorry," Jill volunteered; "I feel like a total
dweeb." The apology didn't save her from Arlene.
"That was a stupid mistake! You could have iced us
all!"
     Defiantly, Jill turned to me, Daddy against
Mommy. I didn't say a word, didn't stop Arlene,
didn't change expression. Sorry, kid--I'm not going
to undermine my second just to save your ego. I didn't
think it was that dumb a mistake; she was just a kid.
But Arlene had chosen to make it an issue . . . and
whatever I thought, I'd back her to the hilt.
Jill started to blink, angrily holding back tears. She
tu