Charles Grant - The Pet

Babyfucks who didn’t know the power of Tanker Falwick, the power of the man who had personally seen the rise and the fall of the armored First Cav, who had crushed Nazis and Fascists and gooks beneath his treads, and who couldn’t understand why a tank had to have all them damned computer things inside when all a man had to do was aim the fucking thing and run the enemy down. It was as simple as that, and he didn’t need a babyfuck TV screen in his lap to tell him how to do it.

They said he was untrainable in the ways of the new army; they said he was unstable because he fought them every step and trench of the way; they said he had to keep going to the babyfuck shrink or they’d muster him out and leave him on his own.

They said.

But they didn’t say anything about the moon, and how it felt on his face, and how the blood felt when he found the kids and tore out their throats and tore out their guts and sipped a little red and gnawed a little meat and howled his signature before moving on.

They didn’t say anything about that.

He rose, skirted the pond, and headed for the ball field and the large thicket where he had watched the concert. He would sleep there tonight and hope for a bit of luck tomorrow, for something more than a squirrel to keep the moon his friend. He needed some badly. He needed something to fill his stomach and something to leave behind and something to remind all those babyfucks that Tanker Falwick was still around. He couldn’t do it anymore in New York, in the state or the city, because they had found the alley lean-to where he lived when the black hooker with the blonde hair saw him one morning dressed in fresh dripping red. But he didn’t mind because there was a whole country out here just waiting to learn.

First stop, then, this burg, whatever name it had.

He didn’t care. All he knew was that it had a lot of kids who thought they were going to live forever.

Despite the fact that it was a school night and his parents didn’t like him staying out so late when he had to get up so early, Don decided not to go home right away. Instead, he pedaled across the boulevard, over the center island, and headed east until he reached his street. He turned into it and kept going, not looking left except to note that the station wagon wasn’t in the driveway, so his folks still weren’t home. And that was all right with him because it was getting harder to stand their sneaking around him as if he didn’t know what was going on.

He had no idea where he was headed, only that he didn’t want to get warm just yet. He liked the autumn nights, the way the air felt like thin ice on a pond, crisp and clean and ready to shatter as soon as you touched it; he liked the trees so black they were almost invisible, and the way the leaves were raked into huge gold and red piles in the gutters, and the way they made the air smell tart and smoky; he liked the sounds of things on an autumn night, sharp and ringing and carrying a hundred miles. It was somehow comforting, this stretch of weeks before November, and he wanted to enjoy it as long as he could. Before he had to go back; before he had to go home.

He scowled at himself then and slapped the handlebar, slamming his hair away from his high forehead with a punishing hand. That wasn’t really fair. He really didn’t have such a bad life, not really, not when you thought about it. The house was large enough so that everyone had his privacy, and old enough so that it didn’t look like all the others on the block; his room was pretty big, and he never wanted for” a decent meal or decent clothes, and he was fairly confident he would be going to college next fall if he kept his grades where they were, nothing spectacular but not shameful either.

But he didn’t want to go home.

Not just yet.

There were two high schools in town — Ashford North and Ashford South. He attended South, where his father was the principal, and he had to work like a dog to get his competent grades because he was the honcho’s kid and favoritism was forbidden. Norman Boyd had been in charge there for five years before his son became a freshman, and Don was as positive as he could be without proof that his father had met with all his prospective teachers privately before school began, perhaps one at a time in his office, and told them that while he didn’t expect them to curry favor by giving the boy good grades just because he was who he was, neither did he expect them to punish Don if decisions were made that they didn’t agree with.

Don was to be treated just like any other student, no better and no worse.

He was sure that’s what had happened. And sure now they were ignoring their boss since it looked more and more as if the faculty was going to walk out at the end of next month over a salary and hours dispute that had erupted last May.

His father didn’t believe him.

And neither did his mother, who taught art in Ashford North.

Besides, she was too busy anyway. She had all her lessons and projects to prepare for and grade, she had her private painting to do whenever she could take the time and get back into Sam’s old bedroom, and she had the Ashford Day Committee that was beginning to keep her out of the house and his life most nights of the week.

And somewhere in between, when she thought about it at all, there was little Donny to look after.

Damn , he thought as he turned the corner sharply, nearly scraping the tires against the curb; little Donny. It wasn’t his fault that Sam had died, was it? Sam, whose real name was Lawrence but called Sam because his mother said he looked like a Sam; Sam, who had been five years younger than Don, and had died screaming of a ruptured appendix while the family was on vacation, camping out in Yellowstone. Four years ago. In the middle of nowhere.

Sam, who was a shrimp and liked listening to his stories.

It wasn’t his fault, and nobody really blamed him for not telling them about Sam’s pains because he wanted to go so badly, but he was the only child left and godalmighty they were making absolutely sure he wouldn’t leave them before they were good and ready to let him go.

He swung around another corner, slowed, and looked down the street as if he’d never seen it before. It was an odd sensation, one that made him close his eyes, and open them again slowly to bring it back into proper focus.

Slower then, the bike on the verge of wobbling.

It was much like his own street — homes dating back to the Depression and beyond to the turn of the century, all wood and brick and weather-smooth stone, with small front yards and old oaks at the curbside, the sidewalks uneven and the street itself in deep shadow, where the leaves still on their branches muffled the streetlights’ glare.

And several cars parked at the curbs.

Nothing at all out of the ordinary, and ordinarily he would have ridden right on. But tonight there was something different, something he couldn’t see, something he thought he could feel. It seemed familiar enough — Tar Boston lived halfway down, in a green Cape Cod with white shutters and no porch — and yet it wasn’t the same.

Slower still, as if someone were behind him, pulling a cord and drawing it beneath the tires.

He closed one eye, opened it, and gripped the handlebars a bit tighter.

The cars.

It was the cars.

No matter what color they were, they were dark — gleaming dark, waiting dark. The facets of their headlamps glowing faintly like spidereyes caught by the moon, and the windshields pocked with the onset of frost. Their sides reflected black; their tops reflected the shadows of dying trees. They were giant cats from the jungle somehow transformed, and all the more menacing for it.

Finally he stopped in the middle of the street and watched them, licked quickly at his lips and imagined them waiting here just for him, waiting for him to tell them what to do. A stable of cars. No. An army of cars. Patiently waiting for the order to kill.