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
turned to Albert, but he was suddenly really busy
wiping his gun barrel. Well--about time she learned:
no hero allowances, and I guess no kid allowances,
either.
     "All right," she said, voice quavering. "What do
you want me to do?"
     Arlene stepped close, lowering her voice so I could
barely hear it. "There's nothing you can do. You owe
me, Jill; and before the mission is over, you are going
to pay."
     When Arlene stepped back, Jill's eyes were wide.
The bravado and defiance were gone. She was scared
to death ... of Arlene Sanders.
     The shock treatment seemed to work. Jill focused
on something more important than her own short-
comings. "God, is the mummy all right?"
     While Albert and Jill went to check out our recruit
from the bandage brigade, I did an inventory on the
soldier with the lousy manners.
     Arlene joined me. "Was he a traitor?" she asked of
the inert form at our feet; "or did we just kill a good
guy?"
     "Or worse, A.S. Is this that perfect genetic ex-
periment we've been half-expecting ever since Dei-
mos?"
     "If he's Number Three," she said, "we'll have
to--to give him a name." She kicked the side
of the machine-guy with her boot. "I'll call him a
Clyde."
     "Clyde?" I asked, dumbfounded. "That's worse
than fatty! It's just a name."
     "Clyde, "she declared, with the really irritating tone
of voice she only uses when she makes up her mind
and can't believe anybody would still be arguing.
"But Clyde?" I repeated like a demented parrot.
"Why not Fred or Barney, or Ralph or Norton?" I
suspected that I might be spinning out of control.
"For Clyde Barrow," she explained . . . and I still
didn't get it. "You know," she continued with the
cultural-literacy tone of vice, "Bonnie Parker and
Clyde Barrow--Bonnie and Clyde!"
     "Oh," I said, finally ready to surrender. "Jesus H.,
that's really obscure!"
     At the precise moment that I invoked the name of
the Savior, good old Albert decided to rejoin us,
reinforcing a theory I've had for years that if you call
on the gods, you are rewarded with a plague of
believers. Not that I was thinking of Albert as part
of a plague just then. The plague was out there, be-
yond us, where it belonged--in the heart of Los
Angeles.
     28
I thought you had a Christian upbringing,"
     said Albert, annoyed at Yours Truly for the blas-
phemy.
     "Catholic school," Arlene answered.
"Oh, that explains it," said Albert, which / found a
bit annoying.
     Further discussion seemed a losing proposition. So
I resumed investigation of the Clyde. Which re-
minded of the earlier discussion about nomenclature.
"Hey, Jill," I called out. "We decided to name this
bastard a Clyde."
     "A Clyde?" asked Jill in the same tone of voice I
had said "Jesus H."
     "Yep."
"What a dumb name!" I decided to put her in my
will. Make fun of my religion, will they?
     I went back to my close study of the Clyde. As I'd
noticed before, he appeared fully human, if a bit
large. Frankly, I didn't think he could be a product of
genetic engineering; the results had been too crude up
to this point. Most likely, he'd been recruited by the
aliens.
     I was sorry the man was dead, because I'd like to
kill him again. It made me furious that any human
would cooperate with the subjugation of his own race.
I kicked the corpse.
     Arlene was a good mind reader. "You think he's a
traitor," she said.
     "What else could he be?"
"You already suggested it."
     "What's that?" asked Albert. Jill was all ears, too.
The time had finally come to lay all the cards on the
table.
     "We've been considering the possibility that the
aliens might be able to make perfect human dupli-
cates," I told them.
     "He could be one," said Arlene, pointing at the
man. "Maybe the first example of a successful geneti-
cally engineered human. First example we've seen,
anyway."
     "I don't buy it," I said.
"But what makes you think it's even possible?"
asked Albert, obviously disturbed by the suggestion.
Arlene took a deep breath. "On Deimos we saw
gigantic blocks of human flesh. I'm sure it was raw
material for genetic experiments. Later, Fly and I saw
vats where they were mass producing monsters."
"In a way," I interrupted, "even the boney and the
fatty are closer to being 'human' than the other
genetic experiments--hell-princes, steam-demons,
pumpkins."
     "And now they've succeeded," said Arlene, looking
down.
     "Hope you're wrong," I said. "It's too much of a
quantum leap, Arlene. Even the clothes are too good!"
"You have an argument there," she admitted.
     "Those stupid red trunks on the boneys were awful."
We looked at the spiffy uniform on the man.
     "He talked like a real person," Jill observed. I
hadn't thought about it before, but everything about
his manner of speaking rang true, even the threaten-
ing tone at the end. If he hadn't been such a total
bastard, I wouldn't have enjoyed killing him so much.
Making a monster was one thing; cobbling together a
first-class butthead was a lot harder, requiring tender
loving care.
     "OK," said Albert. "He looks, walks, talks and
smells like a human being. So maybe he was one."
"Whatever he was, he's good and dead; and that's
what matters right now," I tried to conclude the issue.
The way Arlene kept looking at the man meant that
she couldn't shake the disturbing idea that he was a
synthetic creation. I didn't doubt that they could do
stuff like this in time. My objective was to prevent
them having that time.
     Arlene shuddered, then shook her head hard, as if
dislodging any nasty little critters that might have
snuck in there. "Well, if they did make him, he's only
a staff sergeant. There's a lot of room for progress
before they hit second lieutenant and start downhill
again."
     Albert laughed hard at that. She gave him an
appreciative glance.
     In a way, it was kind of strange to nit-pick over
which was more likely to be true: human traitors or
human duplicates. Either possibility was disturbing.
I let my mind wander over the uncertain terrain
where treason sprouts like an ugly mushroom. If U.S.
armed forces were cooperating with the aliens, were
they under orders from the civilian government? Had
Washington caved in immediately to become a Vichy-
style administration? And what could the aliens offer
human collaborators that the humans would be stu-
pid enough to believe?
     I didn't doubt for one second that the enemy
intended the extermination of the human race as we
knew it. Zombie slaves and a few human specimens
kept around for experimental purposes didn't count
as species survival in my book.
     I must have been carrying worry on my face,
because Albert put his hand on my shoulder and said,
"We needn't concern ourselves over the biggest possi-
ble picture. One battle at a time is how we'll win this
war. First, we destroy the main citadel of alien power
in Los Angeles. Then we'll stop them in New York,
Houston, Mexico City, Paris, London, Rome--ah,
Tokyo. . . ." He trailed off. Already quite a list, wasn't
it?
     "Atlanta," said Jill.
"Orlando," said Arlene. "We must save the good
name of the mouse on both coasts!"
     "You know," I mused, "I wonder how much of the
invasion force Arlene and I destroyed on Deimos."
"Oh, at least half," boasted my buddy; but she
might not be far wrong. We killed a hell of a lot of
monsters on the Martian moons. Each new carcass
meant one less demonic foot soldier on terra firma.
"You know," said Jill, her voice sounding oddly
old, "I could kill every one of those human traitors."
"I'm with you, hon," I agreed; "but you've got to be
careful about blanket statements like that. Some were
threatened, tortured. Hell, some could have been
tricked. They didn't go through what we did on
Deimos! They might have been told that the mass
destruction was caused by human-against-human and
now these superior aliens have come to Earth with a
plan for ultimate peace."
     "I'll bet YOU were a pain in your High School debate
society, Fly Taggart," said long suffering Arlene. "But
you know damn well what she means!"
     "Put it down to my practical side, if you want," I
said. "I like to know the score before I pick a play."
Albert added a note. "Anyone can make a terrible
mistake and still repent before the final hour."
"It's possible," I said.
     "I'm sorry I made that crack about your growing up
Catholic."
     The two atheist females acted suitably disgusted by
our theological love-fest. "The girls don't believe in
redemption of traitors, Albert," I said.
     "I'll pray for anyone," he said; "even traitors."
"Fine," said Arlene. "Pray over their graves."
While we failed to resolve yet another serious
philosophical issue, Jill squatted over the corpse. In a
very short time she'd become hardened to the sight
and smell of carnage. Good. She had a chance to
survive in the new world.
     "Are you all right?" Arlene asked.
"Don't worry about me," Jill said, following my
example and kicking the corpse. "They're just bags of
blood, and we've got the pins. It's no big thing."
No one was joking now. Arlene looked at me with a
worried expression. This was no time to psycho-
analyze a fourteen-year-old who was doing her best to
feel nothing. This sort of cold attitude was par for the
course in an adult, a mood that would be turned off
(hopefully) in peacetime; but hearing it from a kid
was unnerving.
     The words just out of her lips were the cold truth we
created. Do only the youngest soldiers develop the
attitude necessary to win a war? Until this moment, I
wouldn't have thought of Arlene and myself as old-
fashioned sentimentalists; but if the future human
race became cold and machine-like to fight the mon-
sters, then maybe the monsters win, regardless of the
outcome.
     Recreation time was over. Jill went to the
cybermummy and started to lift him; he was really
too heavy for her to do alone, and we got the idea.
Albert helped her, and Arlene and I returned to battle
readiness. The next goal was obvious: find the
safehouse. We couldn't make good time sneaking
through the dark carrying a mummy.
     We were only ninety minutes away. All we ran into
along the way was a pair of zombies, almost a free
ride. I popped them both before Arlene even got off a
shot.
     "You have all the fun," said Albert. "This guy is
starting to weigh!"
     "You don't hear Jill complaining, do you?" asked
Arlene. Jill said nothing. But I could see the sweat
beading on her forehead and her breathing was more
rapid. Arlene noticed, too. "Jill, would you like to
switch with me?" she asked.
     "I'm all right," she said, determined to prove
something to someone.
     Jill managed to hold up her end all the way to the
door of the crappiest looking rattrap in a whole block
of low rent housing. She heaved a sigh of relief as she
finally put down her burden.
     This stretch of hovels didn't seem to have been
bombed by anything but bad economic decisions. The
house was one-story, shapeless as a cardboard box
with a sheet of metal thrown on top pretending to be a
roof. The yard was a narrow stretch of dirt with
garbage piled high. It looked worse than any apart-
ment I'd ever seen and gave the scuzziest motels a run
for the money, if anyone with a dime in his pocket
would be caught dead there.
     The final perfect touch was a monotonous cacopho-
ny of dumb-ass, psychometal "music" blaring
     through the thin walls.
"Let me take it from here," Albert volunteered.
"Be my guest," I said.
     He knocked on a flimsy door covered with streaks
of peeling, yellow paint; I half expected the whole
structure to crash down in a shambles. I figured we'd
wait a long time before any denizens within roused
themselves. Instead, the door opened within a few
seconds.
     It was like stepping back in time to the late twenti-
eth century, when post-punks, headbangers,
     carpetbangers, and other odd flotsam of adolescent
rage had their fifteen minutes.
     There were two young men standing in the door-
way: one was blond, the other was darker, black-
haired, and possibly Hispanic. Rocko and Paco, for
the moment.
     Rocko didn't say anything, staring at us with glazed
eyes, mouth partly open. The only good thing to say
about them was that there was simply no way they
had been taken over by alien invaders! Even monsters
know when to give someone a pass.
     "May we come in?" asked Albert.
"Stoked," said Rocko.
     There seemed no alternative to going inside; there
was no escape rocket in sight. Albert braved the
cavern of terrible noise first, then Arlene, then Jill
with our buddy. There was nothing left but for me to
go inside and witness . . .
     The living room. The place was stuffed with what
looked like the world's largest and bizarrest crank-lab.
There were chemicals of various colors in glass con-
tainers balanced precariously on the ratty furniture. A
large bottle of thick, silver liquid looked like it might
be mercury. I wondered if these guys would blow us
up or poison us.
     Jill laid the still-wrapped cybermummy on the
ground. Then Albert stepped forward. Without saying
a word, he flashed a hand-signal. I recognized it: light-
drop hand signals, based partly on American Sign
Language, heavily modified.
     Earth, said Albert.
Man, responded Paco.
     Native.
Born.
     I blinked. Albert flashed a thirteen-character com-
bination of letters and numbers, and Rocko re-
sponded with another. I raised my brows ... a hand-
signal "handshake."
     All of a sudden, Rocko's demeanor changed as his
face melted into a different one entirely. He gestured
to Paco, who closed his mouth. Both suddenly looked
fifty IQ points brighter.
     Rocko went to the stereo, a nice, state-of-the art
system out of place in these surroundings, and turned
down the music. "Let's talk," he said, voice still
sounding like a stereotypical carpetbanger.
     Things got too weird for Yours Truly. While Rocko
rapped in a lingo full of terms relating to drugs and
rock'n'roll, he produced several pads and pencils,
enough for each one of us. The real conversation took
place on the pads, while the duo spoke most of the
mind-numbing nonsense, occasionally helped out by
Albert and Jill, who could talk the talk better than
Arlene or I.
     The only part of the conversation I paid attention
to came off the pads.
     Our hosts filled in more details of this Grave New
World. Rocko was actually Captain Jerry Renfrew,
PhD, U.S. Army and head of one of the CBNW
     (chem-bio-nuke warfare) labs. His buddy was Dr.
Xavier Felix, another chemical warfare specialist.
But why did they pretend to be crystal-meth
     dealers?
Innocuous, no threat, explained Felix with a
scribble.
     Civilian DEA, Felix wrote. Pose crank cooker stuck
fake crim recs into Nat Crime Info Cen comptrs.
There was a noise halfway between a scream and a
laugh. It was Jill, and she was jumping up and down.
Out loud she said, "I haven't heard that group since I
was a kid!" The music was still blaring in the back-
ground, even though reduced to a volume that didn't
turn the brain to cottage cheese.
     On paper, Jill wrote: I did that!!!!! Mightve done
your's!
     Too young, challenged Renfrew, erasing her apos-
trophe.
     Judge/book/cover, argued Felix, added a circle slash
around the triplet, the international no-no symbol.
We passed all the notes around to everyone; but
each person got them in more or less random order. It
took me a while to make sense out of the jumble.
When everyone had seen a note, Felix or Renfrew
touched it to a Bunsen burner. The notes were written
on flash paper, and they vanished instantly with a
smokeless flare.
     According to Dr. Felix, the DEA, under alien
control, was still staffed by traitorous humans, even
now. They went hunting for people who could pro-
duce the "zombie-brew" chemical treatment used to
rework humans into zombies.
     They specifically hunted for the more sophisticated
drug-lab chemists. It made sense that Captain Ren-
frew and Felix, both infiltrating from opposite ends,
would come together.
     When Felix's hand needed a rest, the captain jotted
down: lab I headed one of few not overrun. He escaped
with all his notes and some of his equipment, grew his
hair long, and returned to alien territory to infiltrate.
Felix was already undercover, already infiltrating
the alien operation, and that's where it got tricky:
DEA knew Felix was really an agent; but they thought
he was spying on the aliens for DEA--who were
cooperating with the aliens in exchange for the prom-
ise of all drugs off the street.
     In fact, Xavier Felix was a double-double agent,
really working for the Resistance . . . unless he was a
triple-double agent, or a double-double-double agent,
in which case we were all sunk.
     Don't aliens investgt horrible noise? I wrote.
They allowed themselves to laugh out loud. At any
point in the music discussion, a laugh fit like a corpse
in potter's field.
     Evidently, excessive noise was not a problem aliens
cared much about.
     Something was torquing me off. After wrestling
with myself, I finally wrote it. How humans make
zombie brew, help aliens evin infiltrating?!?!
Renfrew stared, absently correcting something on
my note. Don't know what. He looked wounded, in
pain. Delib scrwng up recipe. Neurologic poison slow
kills drives mad. Makes useless.
     The captain bent over me and read along. He
flipped his own sheet over and added: we're only hot
chems. Others druggies cooks FDA that kind of crap.
Everyone else seemed satisfied, so I dropped it. I
was the only one, I guess, who spotted the Clue of the
Horrible Admission: even if they were screwing up
the brew so the zombies died or went mad--weren't
they still turning humans into zombies in the first
place?
     How did they live with that?
We showed them more about the cybermummy.
     They had the reaction of any scientist with a new toy.
If there were a solution, they were going to bust
humps finding it.
     They took us into the basement, where the music
from upstairs was merely loud, not ear-splitting. I was
surprised a house in Riverside had one, especially this
piece of crap. Then it hit me like a bony's fist: they
probably dug it themselves. Whatever the case, we
were in the hands of impressive dudes.
     "You can talk quietly down here without fear of
surveillance," Felix whispered.
     "Hooray," said Arlene, but kept her voice low.
"Amen," said Albert.
     We left Felix and Renfrew and went downstairs,
where we rested a moment. I was so tired I felt like the
marrow in my bones had turned to dust; or maybe I
was having trouble breathing down there. Without
intending to, I dozed off on a thick leather couch.
When I came to, the others were unwrapping the
mummy. It was embarrassing to have passed out like
that.
     "You okay, Fly?" Arlene asked over her shoulder.
"Yeah, must have been tireder than I thought," I
said. "Sorry about that."
     "No problemo," said Arlene, yawning. "I'll take the
next nap. You up to joining us?"
     I nodded and moved in for a closer look.
The cyberdude was the same as before, still a young
black man turned into a computer-age pin cushion.
Earlier, we removed enough bandages to see his face.
We uncovered his head and saw it was completely
shaved, the smooth dome covered in little metal
knobs and dials.
     As Albert and Arlene continued unwrapping, Jill
took a step back. The man wasn't wearing anything
but the quickly unwinding bandages. As they started
unwrapping below the waist, our fourteen-year-old
hellion got embarrassed. Oceans of gore she could
take without batting an eyelash, but a nude young
man was enough to make her blush.
     I was deeply amused and grateful I woke up in time
for the entertainment--Jill's reaction, I mean, not the
guy. The more nonchalant she tried to be, the more
fun I had watching. She actually turned fire-engine
red, her normally pale cheeks matching her hair.
I noticed Arlene noticing me noticing Jill. Ah,
women!
     "It's nothing to get worked up about," she told Jill.
"Maybe Jill should leave the room," suggested
Albert.
     "That's her decision," said Arlene.
"I don't want to go back upstairs with the . . .
chems," she said. "At least we can talk down here."
"Don't let them tease you, hon," Arlene said.
"Most everything you're told about sex when you're
growing up is a lie anyway."
     "You mean what they're told in school?" Albert
asked slyly.
     "I w