The Place of Dead Roads Read online

  When it comes to hand to claw feet fang poison, squirt, quill, shock fighting, animals beat humans in any direction.

  Kim had of course thought of living weapons. The only animal that has been trained to attack reliably on command is the dog, though many other animals would be vastly more efficient as fighting machines. The bobcat, the lynx, the incomparable wolverine that can drive a bear from its kill, and the purple-assed mandrill with its huge razor-sharp canines and rending claws is one of the most savage animals on earth. Kim looked in disdain at Jerry's dog Rover, a skulking, cowardly, inefficient beast. Kim usually spotted the squirrel before Rover could sniff it out. When Jerry wasn't around, Kim would corner Rover and transfix him with his witch stare as he intoned "BAAAAAD DOOOGGG" over and over and Rover begins to cower and whimper and lift his lips in a hideous smile and finally, desperate to ingratiate himself, he rolls on his back and pisses all over himself. While Kim enjoyed this spectacle, it was not enough to compensate for the continuous proximity of this filthy, fawning, vicious shit-eating beast. But then who am I to be critical, Kim thought philosophically.

  Kim has just read a juicy story about African medicine men, ancient evil of pestiferous swamps in their snouty faces and undreaming reptile eyes. They capture hyenas and blind them with red-hot needles and burn out their vocal cords while they intone certain spells binding the tortured animals to their will, twisting their own eyes into the quivering pain socket, they lead blind mouths to the target, pouring the mindless ferocity of their crocodile brains into the hyena's terrible bone-cracking jaws to fashion a silent dedicated instrument of death.

  Kim looked speculatively at Rover and licked his lips and Rover crept whimpering behind Jerry's legs.

  The Colonel filled his pipe..."They attacked at dawn. Like gray shadows. I saw a boy go down hamstrung, next thing his throat is ripped out...I couldn't see what was doing it...like a ghost attack...But the boys knew and the cry went up: "SMUNS!"

  That's the native word for hyenas blinded by the beastly medicine men...We intended to capture a male gorilla of the mountain species...somewhat smaller than the lowland breeds...we had a cage just so big and big enough and I managed to nip into it and lock the door...I'll never forget my boys pleading to be let in as the hyenas tore them apart...couldn't chance it, you know...One boy wedged in the door and that would have been it...but in their blind animal panic they simply could not appreciate my position...would you believe that some of them cursed me with their last breath?"

  "Lesser breed without the law," Kim put in.

  "Ah yes Kipling the writer chap...awfully depressing all that..."

  There lay the rider distorted and pale

  With the dew on his brow and the rust on his mail

  Yes Kim had considered smaller living weapons...so much more reliable but still in need of precise guidance. He assumes a professorial manner, his eyes twinkling out through his bifocals.

  "Gentlemen, most illnesses kill indirectly and as it were accidentally by the uh cumulative damage of their occupation. So host death is a by-product of the invading organism's life cycle."

  But wouldn't it be possible, Kim thought wistfully, to find an agent that will act directly on the Death Center, which some occultists locate in the back of the neck?

  A Death Organism—in short, a D.O.

  "That would be keen!" Kim's face blazes in a glowing boyish smile. His grin splits the sky and fades into a vast crystal skull of stars, lighting the ruined cities and bleak landscapes of a dead world...the light always fainter as the stars go out one after the other.

  D.O. acts as a binary. It doesn't do anything until it receives cellular instructions from the Other Half. Like an L.A., that is Latent Agent, stationed near the target and alerted by a central signal to act. The L.A. may wait for years...(An old gardener who had worked in the General's garden for ten years killed him with a scythe. The General was planning a campaign against the Old Man's fortress at Alamut.) Or he can be used the next day.

  A selective pestilence puts the selector in a position of unique safety...The selector will be well advised to bear in mind at all times that the road to Heaven is paved with solid bricks of safety. He must think ahead. Not just who is a threat to my safety right now but who will be a threat in ten, twenty or a hundred years since ultimate safety must be computed in immortal terms.

  So beware of fools' safety.

  Consider the menace potential posed to you and your compadres by decent churchgoing folk...You want to take care of these vermin without endangering your fellow Johnsons. Now, what characterizes these shits? They have to be right. They need the approval of others. Both needs are so constant and so compulsive as to assume the proportion of biological needs like the need of an addict for morphine...A page from the Denver Post passed through his mind...Pet owners panicked by mysterious dog deaths...A new disease it seems. Confined to dogs...Man made dogs in his own lousiest image...dogs exhibit all the worst characteristics of human animals. They are fawning, filthy, vicious, servile, literally convulsed by their need for approval just like a religious lawman fawning on the Lord and fingering his nigger notches. A dog has to be RIGHT. He is RIGHT to bite someone who has no right to be in that yard, that house...Well if it attacks dogs, chances are good it will attack human dogs, right in their ugly, snarling, ingratiating, cop-loving, priest-loving, boss-loving, God-loving, epicenter, the vile groveling worshipers of the Slave Gods. When a disease agent moves from one host species to another, with no natural immunity to that strain, the agent can become incomparably more efficient. And this can be accomplished with rather rudimentary tinkering...Most attempts at germ warfare, in fact, start with animal diseases like glanders, parrot fever, anthrax. Kim paused to reflect that a plant virus, once it got root in human soil, might produce a Garden of Eden while you wait...a paradise consisting of plants and fertilizer.

  We have a virus which we may term the RIGHT VIRUS already occupying the target. We have a disease agent K9 programmed to attack selectively any host occupied by R.V. Our agent K9 is further linked with D.O. the Death Organism. Just formulate the thought "I AM RIGHT" and YOU ARE DEAD.

  Kim made a code note at the bottom of the page...meaning follow up on this when conditions for doing so become available, in this case a laboratory and technicians.

  P.S.: We could give it to them at their deadly church suppers.

  Kim remembers the Odor Eaters of Tibetan mythology who build fantastic cities in the clouds, which are washed away in rain. Kim would take a big dose of cannabis tincture and sit for hours watching the clouds, occasionally reading from Rimbaud and writing a phrase down in his notebook...One of Kim's Cloud Stations is the Place of the Half Humans. This is an area of big trees and vacant lots. Some of the houses are boarded up, others have an air of being semioccupied. On a porch a rusting bicycle is overgrown with morning-glory vines and weeds grow up between cracked blackened boards. Silence takes on the quality of a dimension here, fragile words break on the dead leaves that rustle across the worn cobblestones and cracked concrete, a derelict railroad car with a tin cabin on top sits there on a rusty weed-grown switchback. On the other side of the tracks a slope leads down to the river and looking upriver you can see a ten-story building that never got finished, a maze of twisted girders growing from stained concrete on many levels, ladders, catwalks, and precarious lookout cabins. From this launching site the Halfs make their solo flight soaring from an upper level down to a sandbar by the river. They can do all the things you do in dreams like start at the top of a stairway and soar down to the bottom step...And they keep switching identities. Who was I in the last century? Steep slope down to the tracks. Here and there are stone steps overgrown with weeds and vines. A cable threaded through iron loops serves as a handrail down to a cold black pond where, toward perfumed evening, a sad child releases a boat frail as a May butterfly. The morning glory has made another loop around the rusting bicycle. Another green shoot has sprung up through black rotting boards on the porch. A
vague area/'terrain vague of vacant lots and rusty machinery, quarries and ponds. They are half visible their steps so light they don't crush the dead leaves drifting over paths in the sky endless beaches covered with white nations full of joy new flowers new stars new flesh ladder of Tibetan mythology, launching clouds...morning...black pond...boat frail as a dead leaf...precarious cities. A call. Three dead on porch...the cold evening...a sad child. Silence...boards on the porch...rusty machinery the other side of the tracks their steps half visible looking upriver...new flesh. No dogs will enter this area but there are cats and raccoons and skunks and squirrels. From one house drifts a heavy odor of flowers and unknown excrement and the musky smell of impossible animals, long sinuous ferretlike creatures that peer out through bushes and vines with enormous eyes. This is a gathering place for the Odor Eaters who build the cloud cities. Now, sated with odors, some are visible, silent and immobile in a clearing of rusted garden furniture dusted with leaves by a cracked concrete pool green with algae. A frog plops into the water, making a black hole in the green surface. A taste of ashes in the air an odor of sweating wood on the hearth stale flowers, mist over the canals...There is a swamp with a nest of white beasts in the melancholy golden wash of the setting sun the arched wooden bridge down by the river luminous skulls among the peas, roads bordered by walls and iron fences that barely hold back the undergrowth, wind from the south excited the evil odors of desolate gardens, in a puddle some very little fishes. Ectoplasm addicts measure doses from a lead bottle.

  4

  Kim occupies himself with his sketches and maps, poems and stories. He'd written a story he wanted to publish in Boy's Life. It was, he thought, very educational, entitled "The Baron Says These Things."

  THE BARON SAYS THESE THINGS

  Wrapped in a living cloak of fur-bearing oysters, the Baron rides his swift Arn. The Arn is like a streamlined turtle with a shell of light flexible metal that serves as a means of locomotion and also as a weapon. Their claws are razor-sharp and they can strike six feet with a bullet-shaped head to ram or slash. On this remote satellite of the Dog Star, Arn fighting is an esteemed art. The cloak lovingly outlines the Baron's lean form, the narrow waist, the flaring buttocks, the powerful thighs. The neck supports a broad jaw. The Baron leans forward, knees bent like a skier, his long sharp teeth glinting in icy starlight. His eyes are like black opals. He wears a wicker headdress from which the hood of a spitting cobra protrudes. He is scanning the path ahead with a blue laser beam from his third eye.

  The long night is coming and he must find a pod for the Ordinate Sleep. He has picked up a pod but there is something wrong, some lurking danger. It is just off the path. He guides his Arn into a courtyard and a Greenie steps forward to bed down his Arn and put his cloak in a nutrient solution. He removes his headdress and hands it to the Greenie, petting the reptile, which emits a servile hiss, rubbing its green furred head against his hand. The Greenie leans forward to take the headdress, his breath heavy and rank as the exhalation from a greenhouse in the icy air. "Be careful, sir."

  As the Baron squeezes his naked body through a diaphragm in the side of the pod, the clinging mucilaginous passage rubs and excites his genitals. On the satellite Fenec, the penis is not confined to a sexual function but serves as a general means of social communication. To enter a public pod without an erection is an act of gross aggression, like coming in with a snarling dog.

  As he pops through into the soft pink light of the pod his lightning reflexes are already activated before he hears the foreign voices scream out:

  "What the fuck are you doing in front of decent people?"

  He throws up a protective shield, deflecting projectiles from primitive exploding weapons as he cuts his assailants to steaming fragments with his laser eye. He looks down at the badges and weapons...B.B.s...Bible Belts. Barbarians from Planet Earth. The thought forms that had for a moment been solid are fading. The Baron throws himself petulantly on the padded floor of the pod.

  "People of such great stupidity and such barbarous manners...Intolerable!"

  A total solution to the B.B. problem must be found. The war must be carried to Planet Earth. He knows that the B.B.s are a minority and he will find many potential allies. Allies must be contacted and organized. A plan is forming in his mind. In response to his peremptory erection the Greenie appears with a glass of Schmun.

  "Sorry about that, sir. I'm not equipped for such encounters."

  The Baron sips his Schmun, looking speculatively at the young Greenie. These creatures breathe in carbon dioxide and give out oxygen from the pores of their skin.

  "I want to sleep with you."

  The Greenie youth blushes bright green with pleasure.

  "Oh sir, of course."

  During the three months of the long night they will curl in the tiny pod in dreamy symbiosis.

  The Baron stretches, takes a deep breath of the warm dank compost-heap smell, and squeezes out of the pod. It is now spring. Time to continue his journey to Summer City. The Greenie hastens to prepare him a meal of fuel eggs. The eggs are laid by radioactive reptiles that inhabit the coldest regions of the planet in an area of total darkness. The eggs glow with a soft blue fire as the Baron savors the sweet nutty eggy metallic taste. After a go with his Greenie he straps on his summer Arns and puts on his cobra headdress. The reptile is tumescent with venom. The Baron will not need his cloak for this is the season of nakedness.

  The fuel egg is working and he straps on a penis shield connected to a jet over the anus. The first coughing spurts soon settle into a steady blue flame carrying him along at a thirty-mile speed. Suddenly he finds himself surrounded by a crowd of frenzied B.B.s, some carrying ropes and many with the primitive projectile guns. Scorning to use his laser eye he engages them in a classic Am fight, jetting around in circles, kicking sideways with his Arn as the heads lash like loaded whips and his cobra sprays venom in all directions. A drop the size of a pinprick on the skin will cause death in a few seconds. The posse of B.B.s is a mass of steaming entrails, blood, brains, and shattered bone already fading into nothingness.

  He comes to Summer Lake and now the Arns spread their retractable wings as he turns the jet up full blast and skims over the water like a hovercraft. His ass is sputtering out the last of the fuel as he glides to the pier.

  Summer City slopes down to the lake and spills into the water in a maze of piers and catwalks and disk-shaped houseboats. The Baron checks his jet strap and releases his Arns to disport themselves in the water. The long sleep and the fuel eggs have made him hot. He can taste sweet metal in his mouth and his ass burns with soft fire. At the foot of the pier he encounters a group of Sloane porters with red skin and bright blue eyes. They flex their huge muscles and bare their teeth in greeting and invitation...

  "HI HI HI HI HI HI HI HI"

  The Baron is tempted but he knows that the cadets have arrived from Planet Earth and he must see to their training without delay.

  On the waterfront he runs into two boys who must be from the Planet Earth. They are strolling along in white naval uniforms. One is red-haired, the other has kinky hair and yellow-brown skin.

  "You are the cadets from Planet Earth?"

  "Yeah. Nice place you got here but where are the women?"

  "Women? What is that?"

  "You know. WOMEN." The boy makes a gesture in the air.

  The Baron gets the picture and turns into a naked woman with long red hair, skin like the white of a pearl, shivering softly with rippling lights.

  "WOW!"

  He leads the boys into a sex pod and satisfies them both three times. In the course of this encounter he learns a great deal about conditions on Planet Earth. The B.B.s are completely possessed by a Venusian virus. The whole Christian religion, Catholic and Protestant, is a Venusian ploy.

  Later he addresses the fifteen cadets. To put them at ease he takes the form of Old Sarge:

  "All right, you jokers, you're here to learn and learn fast. Your planet is riddled
by the walking dead taken over by a Venusian virus. I will show you how to recognize these virus-controlled bodies. Many of them are Christians. In fact Christianity is the most virulent spiritual poison ever administered to a disaster-prone planet."

  "You mean, Sarge, that most of the trouble on Earth is caused by Venusians in human bodies?"

  "Now you're getting smart."

  "Wouldn't it be a good idea to kill these mothers?"

  "Now you're getting smarter. You are here to learn the theory and practice of Shiticide. Boys will be organized into Shit Slaughter troops...the S.S., with two phosphorescent spitting cobras at their lapels...

  "Slaughter the shits of the world. They poison the air you breathe."

  "But sir, aren't the B.B.s and their equivalents in other countries, the bigoted ignorant basically frightened middle class, just dupes and lackeys of the very rich and the politicians, exploited for votes and labor and the consumption of consumer goods while they also serve as convenient guard dogs to protect the status that benefits the very rich?"

  "Yes, but they are still vectors, carriers of the virus. How do you control yellow fever? You kill the mosquitoes first, right? Now some vectors are more potent than others. Look at Jesus Christ for chris-sakes. As an integral part of the Shiticide Program master vectors will be pinpointed and assassinated...You gentlemen and the trainees who follow you are chosen to be the elite, the masterminds of the glorious S.S."

  And Kim composed a marching song for the Johnsons: