Hoss was outside, leaning on his horn so long I thought it was broken.

“I’m coming, I’m coming!” I shouted as I came out on the porch. He grinned at me from the truck.

“Fourth of July, bud! Whoo hoo!” He howled like a dog. I got in the passenger side, pushing the beers and whisky down the bench seat as he tore across the neighbor’s lawn in a cloud of exhaust and dirt.

“I got a surprise for you,” he shouted over the roaring engine. “Fun times before the fireworks!”

He winked and patted the pistol in his belt.

 

We never thought of the Japs as men. They was insects to us, deadly insects that would creep up in the night and slit the throat of one man and leave his two buddies to discover him in the morning. And we was right on top of them, since that whole stinking island wasn’t nothing but a bunch of tunnels. Only way to make sure was to burn ’em out. That was my job, seeing as I was a flamethrower operator. I’d stand next to a hole and spray that napalm down into it like they was a wasp’s nest.

It ain’t hard if you got the stomach for it. Walk ’em out.

If you don’t want to hear talking, you can use a gag. Me, I’m interested, Sometimes they want to talk. Funny, most of them don’t beg or bargain or nothing. By the time they get to me, it’s pretty obvious what’s going to happen. They know what they did to land themselves here and there’s no going back.

Funny thing I realized is that they know it’s just business, and being business it will be a professional job. Maybe they take some comfort in that. Maybe not.

“You get him fixed up?”

“I put so much tape on him he looks like a whatsis. A caterpillar.”

“Where’d you put him? Not in the building, right?”

“You think I’m fucking stupid? No. He’s lying in a car in parking lot. It’s parked far enough away that he should be fine.”

“Should be? Or will be?”

“He might get a little hot. That’s okay. Boss will like that part.”

“You got that gas can? Good. Pour it around the base of the stove, there. I’ll get the rags.”

“Sure is a waste. All this great booze.”

“Yeah, well. Rules.”

 

My father was obsessed with nuclear war and knew all about it. He knew the effects of radiation, the half-life of the various types of detonation. The other neighbors had a pool, but we had a shelter of reinforced concrete sixty feet below the ground with provisions enough for five years.

When it came, it wasn’t like we expected. Many of the cities got hit, but not ours. It was over pretty fast. Then the rains came, weeks of rain that flooded the shelter and made them all sick. I’m all that’s left now, I guess. Why, I don’t know.

Kevel slung his leg over the crossjack yard and peered into the fog. It was thick as cream. He could see nothing.

The Master called up from the deck, the disbelief evident in his voice. “Well? What do you make?”

“Nothing but the damned fog.”

Kevel was confident in his reckoning. He could feel the loom of the land, though none yet could smell it.

And then, as though Neptune himself commanded it, the fog vanished in an instant. The glittering harbor was full of strange craft none aboard had ever seen the like of before. They had no sails.

 

“That’s just fucking great,” said White. His hands were tight on the wheel, jaw muscles rippling with repressed rage. “Sheep on the goddamned road.”

“It’s supposed to be a highway. The map must be  wrong,” said Black. He jabbed at it. “See for yourself.”

White closed his eyes, shaking with the effort  to control himself.  So much was riding on their timing. “The map is not wrong. The clock was not wrong.”

“Well,” said Black. “We all have our opinions.”

White’s annoyance eased after he began to plan how to get rid of Black’s body once this job was finished.

 

Friday Fictioneers

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I must fly across the rooftops, making no more noise than a beetle crawling on the desert sand.

Hadiq was lucky to have been admitted to the  Guild at all. He knew this. Clumsy, obvious, far too nervous. He came seven generations of brigands, burglars and assassins, but the talent that made his name feared and respected throughout Turkey seemed to have skipped him altogether. Failing for a third time to pick a pocket, the Master had given an assignment usually reserved for children and dolts: to bring an unsuspecting tourist to the Alley of Thieves and then quickly vanish.

 

Hanly, full of fury, threw in his lot with the brigands despite the odds. After the oaths were sworn out proper, I got him aside and asked what had pushed him over the edge. After all, at one time he had led the dissenters who said that opposing Earl Haethelmar was akin to self-murder.

“Well,” he said, wiping his mouth, “the thing that done it was the snow. I passed on the edge of his land, freezing and hungry.  I saw his face in the window, fat and sleek, watching me for some offense, eager as a dog to catch me.”