Eric Stever - Non Metallic

But Jeanine stood where she was, gripping her bucket. Fear rooted her to the spot.

The Droolie spun, whipping above them, and then began to shout, his dry croaking voice amplified across the copper pit, “Ra-nolds, Raeeeeynnnnnolds.”

“What is that,” Jeanine whispered. Her hands were shaking as she threw the rocks into the bucket, sometimes missing the bucket altogether. “What is it saying to us?”

“ReynoldReynold—Reyyyynolds,” the Droolie croaked.

“He’s saying his name,” Emma said quietly. The Droolie was moving faster now, getting ready to fire, to kill one of them. When the lights moved that fast, it meant someone was about to die. Unless…

Emma stood up. She had seen the look Reynolds the Droolie had given her. The longing. His desire for women would be the last thing to go. Maybe she could use that…

She glanced at him, and tried to smile. The circle he flew in became more erratic, and then slowed. Reynolds was staring at her. Waiting. The disc whistled as it bounced in the air.

“What are you doing?” Jeanine asked. Her voice was near hysterical. She picked up her bucket. “Run Emma, just run. Remember the plan—”

“We can’t run anymore, he’ll kill us if we run.” The sun had fallen behind the pit’s sidewalls and the cold downslope wind ran through her thin coveralls. But she did not shiver. Emma felt as if she and Reynolds were alone. He would not have been bad looking before the attack, Emma guessed.

“Hello Reynolds,” she said. “Hello Reynolds, I’m Emma.”

The Droolie slowed. “Reynolds,” it said again. It sounded like a question.

“Yes Reynolds, I like you too,” Emma said. “Would you like to… go out on a date? With me I mean.”

The wink she gave him felt self-conscious, but it worked. He was a man after all. Easily manipulated.

Reynolds turned his head to one side, and the corners of his mouth twitched. The disc slowed and then lowered to the ground. The lights subsided. He was sobbing, breathing heavily, snot bubbled from his nose. Then all at once Reynolds stopped crying and closed his eyes. In the sudden stillness his ruined face looked wistful, almost sad. Emma watched his chest rise and fall a few times, before she spoke.

“He looks tired,” Emma said. Her words were barely audible, but she felt as if they echoed across the pit, even louder than the Droolie’s mechanically amplified voice.

The men standing on the wooden platforms waved at her. They held oblong black tubes in front of them, to show her that their weapons were ready. But Emma shook her head. The Droolie’s thin film of protection was still up and she had not lured him close to the crusher. She had failed.

“What did you do?” Jeanine asked, her eyes wide and blue.

Emma glanced at her palm. The grooves were stained black with dirt and blood, but it was superficial. “I think I just made him my boyfriend,” Emma said with a brittle laugh. “Let’s go, before Prince Charming wakes up.”

The two girls hurried back to the rock dump, and wasted as much time as they could there before the bell sounded to signal the end of the shift.

Emma knew where Reynolds the Droolie would be, even late at night. At first the elders of the town had wanted Emma to go after the head one, the Captain, whose ship seemed the most functional. But logic had prevailed over blind hope, and after a few nights they had located Reynolds and told her where he was. The elders had decided, while Emma sat there silently, who it was that she would seduce first.

And now here Emma was, stepping out into the moonlight, leaving her childhood in the closet of the old theater where she had changed into her formal dress. In the late evening air Emma paid the price for her bare shoulders and lack of stockings. Her mother had hemmed the dress she’d picked out ages ago for her Junior prom. It was shimmery white with crisscross lace patterns around the collar that reminded Emma of snowflakes. When Emma had first seen it in the thrift store last spring, she’d rushed over to it, and refused to put it down even for an instant. The grubby women who shopped there were forever hiding away beautiful things, as if those talismans could bring back their youth.

But as Emma walked down the abandoned street, she could feel the cheapness of the dress, how it stretched out when she moved against the fabric, how her shoes squeaked when she walked, each step drawing her closer to… him.

Emma’s heart thudded in her throat when she turned the last corner. Even from this distance she could see the shimmer of the force shield reflected off the wall of the crumbling supermarket. Was he waiting for her?

The Droolie’s stench was overpowering, a mix of old milk and rotting meat. Emma stopped, leaning up against a broken out storefront window, not caring if it smudged her dress. The wind shifted and Emma realized she couldn’t possibly be smelling him at this distance, half-dead or not. It was the old supermarket that turned her stomach, a vestige from her former life. Had she really cried when they turned down her job application? Last summer, had that been a reason for sorrow?

On the wind a few notes floated, just audible above the whirring of the disc’s engine. It was not loud, and had Emma kept walking she surely would not have heard it. But once heard it could not be ignored. Reynolds the Droolie was singing.

“All around the mulberry bush… the monkey chased the weasel… all around the mulberry bush…”

The words were hard to understand, but the tune was not. It was a song from her childhood, from Reynolds’s childhood too.

Emma could follow it, could chase the tune down the maudlin path to her own childhood memory: her father singing to her as they lay, laughing, in the soft caress of carpet on her bedroom floor, counting the projected stars from her toy turtle. But she would not follow that path. Because Reynolds was just a gut-shot deer waiting to be put down. He was no more than that.

All at once Emma turned her back to the supermarket. She would not do it. Damn the elders, with their grimaced lips, covering coffee stained dentures. She would return to the theater, shiver for effect, then shake her head and sit down. What would they say? Emma pictured her sister and her mother looking sad, but no more so then they had when she left. They would understand.

Emma’s anger flared. And to think she had almost consented to it, for the town. The town came first and so the elders ate double helpings while begging out of the hard work because of a back-ache. The town came first… and so she would murder. But she could not kill someone with the mind of a child because it was convenient.

Reynolds stopped singing, and for a few seconds Emma heard nothing but the whir of his disc as it bobbed up and down. And then she heard him cry out, a lovers croon.

Reynolds’s disc rose above the edge of the concrete wall of the bombed out Ace Hardware store. For a moment, Emma thought he had not seen her, but his head lolled in her direction and Emma’s heart dropped.

“A penny for a spool of thread,” Reynolds said with a grin. His head fell to the side, but his eyes, those terrible far-seeing eyes, bore into her. “Penny for a needle…”

She could not run, not now. Reynolds the Droolie knew she was here. As much as she wanted to believe it, she wasn’t so sure she could best him again and get away. He was a man after all. A brain-damaged dictator with the power of an entire army at his spasming fingertips. He would not be denied.

Emma touched the small hard metal taped to her back and grimaced. Just like a deer, she told herself. A gut-shot buck that needed to be put down so we can eat. She walked into the opening at the end of the street, near the edge of the supermarket parking lot. He shoes clopped loudly against the asphalt, her ankles unsteady in even those modest heels.