On The House

by Kathy Kachelries | Jan 16, 2006 | Story | 0 comments

It was going to be a very, very slow night. Tuesdays usually were. Throw in the hellacious thunderstorm outside, and not even a desperate alcoholic would wander in. I had just decided to close the bar up early when the mother of all lightening bolts hit just outside the window, nearly blinding me. After I rubbed the white circles from my eyes, I was startled to discover a man standing three feet in front of me. He placed a copy of that fat New York telephone directory on the bar and asked me for a beer.

“Where the hell did you come from and why ain’t you wet?” I demanded as I placed a Budweiser draft in front of him, then added, “That’ll be $2.00.”

He smiled. “’When,’ you mean,” he replied, “and I don’t have any money from this area. But it doesn’t matter,“ he glanced down at one of them big city watches with all kinds of dials and buttons, “because in exactly 1 minute and nine seconds you’re going to say ‘It’s on the house.’”

Thunderstorms always bring out the crackpots. “Why would I say that?”

He chugged half the beer and glanced at his watch again. “Because, in exactly 58 seconds, I’m going to save your life.”

I inched closer to the baseball bat that I keep behind the bar. “You sure about that, mister?”

He walked to the back corner, where he was practically swallowed up by the shadows. “Because I’m a temporal police officer, and a criminal from the 24th century fled to this time. He needs money. Unfortunately for you, he doesn’t know how to use your century’s projectile weapons. He stole a hair-trigger pistol. You’ll see soon enough.”

Just then, a shirtless maniac came crashing through the door. He was soggy as hell and shaking like a leaf. After he did the drunk-dance up to the bar, he slurred, “Give me all your money, quick,” and yanked some pawnshop gun out of his pocket. He might have been more confused than I was.

“Take it easy…” I started, but my voice was lost in the sound and light from the muzzle of his pistol.

By the time I remembered where I was, I wasn’t there anymore. Instead, I was against the old-fashioned cash register my boss kept around for that “old-time feel.” My ears were ringing, my back hurt, but somehow, I wasn’t dead. Across the bar, the cop guy downed the last bit of his beer, and the would-be assassin was lying on the floor tied up with some kind of glowing neon rope. The New York phone book was against my shirt. A column of white smoke spun up from a big-ass hole in the front of it.

“Sorry I had to let him shoot,” he said as he plunked the bottle onto the bar. “The DA needed enough evidence to put him away for a long time. What do I owe you for the beer?”

From far away, I heard my voice say, “Uh, it’s…it’s on the house”

He smiled again, pressed a button on his fancy watch, and both of them disappeared in a flash of light. I stood there for ten minutes before making up my mind. I grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniels, walked over to the door, locked it, and sat down in a corner booth with every intention of emptying the thing before going home.

Bounty

by B. York | Jan 13, 2006 | Story | 0 comments

Skitz was running as fast as an alley rat could run in the back streets of Terris 4. Even with six legs, he was having a hard time keeping ahead of the bounty hunter. His three nostrils flared and he stopped for a moment to catch some carbon dioxide before taking a glance around.

When he heard footsteps behind him he darted up the wall, using suction-cupped fingers to tug his way onto the top of the building. Below him, in the alleyway, he heard, “Son of a bitch…”

The native of Terris was taking a moment to relax, slumping his multi-appendage body against a radiator core. He plucked a radio from his satchel and spoke into it with labored words between breaths. “Durag! Felakchy oootuhag defgty! Keep the girl safe… he’s coming for her.”

A noise came from the other end of the radio just in time for it to be smacked out of his hands as the butt of a plasma-bolted to be smashed into one of his faces. The Terrisal groaned and turned to see the bi-pedal shadow standing over him. A gruff voice intoned a threat with a vouch of seriousness in it: “Let’s get one thing straight. I don’t climb walls, and I hate using the rocket-pack.”

He kneeled down next to Skitz, not bothering to aim his gun, but the human plucked him in the forehead to make sure he got his attention. “I’m looking for a human. Any human will do. Now, I know there’s at least one… So talk.”

The alien shuddered before his pair of eyes opened and glanced around for escape. The bounty hunter hit him in the head again. “Wrong answer. Look at me, freak.”

Skitz was definitely scared by now, and he was starting to wish he’d never even seen a human. “Der… vulag. Human… I see human long time ago.” The small lie caught a sigh from the hunter, and when the man stood he kicked the little guy in the side. Skitz cried out in agony, grabbing his body and whimpering.

“See, we humans have lived through ten millennia of bullshit. I’d appreciate it if we could not have us live through another.” This time, the gun was pointed at Skitz’s head. “Is it a boy or a girl?”

“…It is a small girl,” the Terrian gasped

“Good. Progress. Where is she right now?”

“… She hide… below industry. Sector 9.”

The bounty hunter grumbled to himself. “Wechals? I fucking hate Wechals. I hated bugs on Earth and I really fucking hate Wechals.” He turned, and began to walk away. His direction was, of course, Sector 9.

Skitz cried out after him, “You no kill girl! You Felag!”

The hunter stopped and looked over his shoulder, glaring at the little shit. “Kill? Are you fucking stupid? We’re an endangered species. I’m just rounding us up.”

The Electric Ant

by Kathy Kachelries | Jan 12, 2006 | Story | 0 comments

“Okay everyone, you know the drill.”

Alex’s partner didn’t break pace between the doorway and the register, and she swung her gun around with the precise grace of someone who had done this far too many times. Her features were hidden behind a fuzzmask, and the sharp tips of her black hair poked from the base of the thin helmet. Nis was a professional: professional thief, professional manipulator, professional drug courier, and professional counterfeiter. She was a professional at everything that skimmed beneath Federal radar. Alex was not a professional. Alex was a nineteen year old boy who’d never pulled the trigger of a pulse rifle.

Behind the counter, a teenage register kid went white.

“Alex,” Nis called without taking her eyes from the boy. “Damage control.”

Alex nodded. He continued into the back of the restaurant, rifle at chest level, listening through the hum of microwaves for hints of movement. Pulse rifles weren’t lethal, which is why they used them. Murder was a level one crime. Robbery was level three. There were two employees in the kitchen: an attractive blond girl no older than twenty five and a man no younger than fifty. At the sight of his weapon, the girl screeched something incomprehensible while the man stepped away from the burger assembly line and coolly lifted his hands to his head.

Quietly, almost calmly, he backed into the wall and listened to his partner’s voice fire orders like the guns he’d heard on television. “Into the back,” she finally said, and the kid appeared in the doorway with Nis’s pulse rifle motionless against his skull. He didn’t look so hot; eyes wide, skin pale, breath coming and going at a rate that couldn’t be maintained for long. His legs moved beneath him like the legs of someone who’d had too much gin, and he stumbled forward to hold his weight against the assembly line.

Despite her panic, the woman was breathing slowly, deeply. The man remained calm. Nis gestured with her head towards the cooler, then nudged the boy’s neck with her rifle. He closed his eyes. “On with it,” she said as she shoved him forward with her other hand, and he promptly dropped to his knees. Alex went to pick him up, and a second later, his world exploded into stars.

Somewhere, there was yelling and movement. His vision was dark and light at the same time, and a dizzy pain pushed its fingers forward from the back of his skull. It took him several seconds to understand that the floor was beneath him, and another second to feel the man’s weight on his chest. The man wasn’t moving. There were three still bodies on the tiled floor. Only Nis remained on her feet. “Get up!” she yelled. Alex tried, but the man’s body was heavy and his own was heavier, so Nis pulled the worker off of him and yanked him to his feet. Alex pressed his hands against the wall to maintain his upright position. “Pulses,” she said, and pushed him towards the register kid. He stumbled but somehow managed to fall only to his hands and knees, then he dug his fingers into the boy’s neck. A dull, rhythmic throbbing. “This one’s cool,” he said, but there was no reply.

“Christ,” Nis said quietly a second later. “Oh shit.”

Alex tried to get to his feet, but failed. “What?”

“She’s cold.”

“She can’t be cold.”

“Oh God. No. No fucking way.”

Alex crawled over to verify. Nis ripped away the girl’s shirt to reveal rubbery skin, perfectly formed breasts. Most importantly, a thin, black line tracing an indented rectangle across her torso.

“She’s an electric ant,” Nis said. There was a thick rope of panic drawn across her voice. “Registered. Let’s move. Right now.”

Alex looked into the girl’s open blue eyes. Polymer. Polymer and pigment. Nis’s hands dug into his shoulders and pulled him to his unsteady feet. Before him, the fleshy pile of shorted circuits lay as still as an unconscious human. Nis ran to the door, but outside, the street was already bathed in red and blue. “Christ,” she whispered.

“It’s been less than five minutes!”

Nis backed up to the register. “Get beside the door,” she ordered as she changed the battery of her pulse rifle. “And don’t let anything get through.”