Smith's Monthly #17 Read online

  Both Patty and I nodded and Scary Mary turned white under all the makeup.

  THREE

  Madge brought the food at that point, and it gave me a chance to think. My entire premise that the Silicon Suckers were after Scary Mary’s breasts had gone out the window. Most of the time I dealt with the Silicon Suckers because of land problems. They were very, very protective of their land, and had negotiated with the gods, including Lady Luck herself, a compromise that allowed humans to build Las Vegas. But with the recent expansion, there had been many dust-ups lately over land.

  This was looking like another one of those. And clearly the Silicon Suckers were warning each dispatcher in their own way, giving them time to stop, then killing them when they didn’t and starting over with a new dispatcher.

  Scary Mary had had no idea her job was so deadly when she took it.

  After Madge put down the wonderful-smelling hamburgers and fries and left, I started to quiz Scary Mary about the business as we ate.

  Turns out the company only had one large sand quarry in the desert outside of town. And the first mile of road from the pit was gravel across desert as well.

  Scary Mary’s job was to dispatch the trucks full of gravel or sand from the quarry to different jobs around the city or concrete mixing plants. She had to keep track of forty trucks, but in the boom times the dispatcher had managed over a hundred and had them on the go constantly for two shifts a day. She said she used to drive one of those trucks.

  “I need maps of the quarry and the road in and out of it,” I said. “And then I’ll compare them to Silicon Sucker lands.”

  I took a big bite of my hamburger, then stood. “It won’t take long,” I said.

  I headed out the door, and the moment I was on the sidewalk and the young couple walking toward Freemont Street had their back turned, I shouted to the air, “Stan. Need help in your office.”

  Since I didn’t have an office and I didn’t want Scary Mary to know what I could really do, I figured Stan’s office would be as good as any.

  A moment later I found myself in a standard business office and Stan in his normal black slacks and tan shirt stood facing me beside an oak desk with a computer and chair. A couple plants filled the corners and the windows looked out over Vegas from high in the air. Far higher than any office building.

  “I got to teach you how to build yourself an office when you need it,” he said, shaking his head.

  “I can do this?” I asked, stunned, looking around at the furniture and the fantastic view of the invisible floating office. I had always figured that only the gods could build offices.

  Stan just shook his head in slight disgust and then said, “What do you need?”

  I told him which maps I needed and a moment later they appeared in the air, the map of the Silicon Sucker lands floating on one side, the map of the quarry and road on the other.

  “You going to tell me why you need these two maps?” he asked.

  “Just put them at the same scale and overlay them,” I said. “We just might see why.”

  He did, the two maps floating until they merged. The quarry was a long ways from the Silicon Sucker land, but the road was another matter.

  “There,” I said, pointing to one area where the road seemed to touch the Silicon Sucker’s land. “Can you make that larger?”

  The road clearly had been laid out to go around a corner of the Silicon Sucker’s land, making a ninety-degree corner.

  I was betting that corner had been cut off. And people had been dying because of it.

  I glanced around. “Can you put us and this office right over that corner?”

  An instant later we were over the corner of the dirt road, floating in the air still inside the office, only now part of the office floor under our feet was invisible.

  That felt kind of creepy and cool at the same time. I really needed to learn how to do all this.

  Below, I could still see the old road, but clearly a new one had been constructed a few years back that cut directly across Silicon Sucker land. More than likely the owner just figured it was desert land and no one would care. As we watched, floating invisible in an air-conditioned office above, a truck full of gravel powered through the corner leaving a trail of dust.

  “Oh, shit,” Stan said.

  “The Suckers have been warning and then killing the truck dispatchers,” I said. “Blaming them for sending the trucks across their lands. The newest one came to me because she thought she was seeing aliens.”

  “It was worse,” Stan said.

  Then something on the old road caught my eye and I could feel my stomach drop. I wished I hadn’t had that bite of hamburger.

  “Hang on,” I said and teleported to the old section of road.

  The heat of the desert hit me hard and it was a moderately cool day in the fall. I couldn’t imagine how hot it was out here in the summer.

  Right square in the middle of the road was a long mound of sand built crosswise to the road. Beside that were two others.

  “Oh, don’t tell me,” Stan said, appearing beside me.

  I eased over and carefully moved a little sand on one pile with my shoe, just enough to uncover the mummified remains of a human hand, drained of all moisture.

  “Shit!” Stan said.

  All I wanted to do was be sick. I stepped back and tried to take a deep breath of the hot air, but that didn’t help much.

  FOUR

  “Where is the woman you are helping now?” Stan asked, also still staring at the three mounds clearly covering three bodies. He was the God of Poker and been around for thousands of years. And I was a superhero. That didn’t mean that we had gotten used to things like this. You could never get used to this kind of thing. Ever.

  “She’s with Patty and Madge at The Diner,” I said.

  “Let’s go there and figure this out,” Stan said.

  “Scary Mary doesn’t know who we are or what we can do,” I said.

  Stan shook his head. “She’s going to know now.”

  We jumped back to the booth and Scary Mary jumped so hard against the back of the booth, her large breasts just about hit her in the forehead.

  Patty looked shocked as I slid in beside her and took a long drink from a glass of water. Stan pulled up a chair and took another glass of water and drank it.

  Then he reached across the table and extended his hand. “I’m Stan.”

  “Mary,” she said, taking his hand carefully. “People call me Scary Mary. And how did you do that?”

  “There’s a reason you came to us for help,” Stan said. “Just trust us.”

  She nodded and said nothing, but I could tell she wanted to bolt for the door. Seeing aliens was one thing, seeing two men appear out of thin air was another.

  “This has to be bad,” Patty said, “or you wouldn’t have come in like that.”

  “Very bad,” I said. Then with Madge listening, I explained about the corner and what we had found on the old unused part of the road.

  Mary now looked like she would be sick. “I drove for two of them,” she said. “How is this possible?”

  “Silicon Suckers are very, very protective of their land,” I said. “They consider what they have been doing with you a warning to stop sending trucks over their land. They must have done the same thing with the other three.”

  “But you said they might be after my breasts,” Scary Mary said.

  “My first assumption; I was wrong,” I said. “I had an old friend who ended up with silicon breast enhancements that were made from a sacred Silicon Sucker burial ground. She wouldn’t give them back, so the Silicon Suckers took them.”

  “But the issue this time is the road and that shortcut,” Stan said. “You said you used to drive for this company?”

  “Before my operation,” Scary Mary said. “A bunch of drivers built the shortcut across that corner back in the boom times, when we were all in such a hurry to do as many loads as possible. God, such a stupid thing to kill thr
ee women over.”

  “Not to the Silicon Suckers,” Patty said. “All their land is very sacred.”

  “Poker Boy,” Stan said, “you deal with the Silicon Suckers more than anyone. Any idea what we need to do now?”

  I honestly had no idea. There were three bodies on the old road that the police were going to need to do something with. And more than likely that would be a crime scene for some time. If the trucks kept using that shortcut, Scary Mary wouldn’t live very long.

  I turned to Scary Mary who was looking shocked and puzzled, or at least that’s how I thought she was looking under the layers of makeup. Clearly sex-change operations didn’t come with lessons in makeup.

  “Is there another way in and out of that quarry?”

  “South toward the freeway and then into town past the airport,” she said.

  “That’s directly away from Silicon Sucker land,” Stan said, nodding. “I’ll get the police on the bodies and work with Laverne to talk with the Gods of Land Use to get permission to use the road past the Silicon Sucker lands revoked.”

  I nodded. Stan would take care of the surface problems. My problem still sat across from me.

  “Good luck,” he said. Then with a nod to Scary Mary, he vanished.

  “How…how…how…?”

  Scary Mary just kept staring at where he had been.

  I tried one of my French Fries, but it just no longer tasted good. Somehow I still had to figure out a way to save Scary Mary’s life. We would get the trucks stopped, but I had a hunch Scary Mary had insulted the Silicon Suckers for just too long a time. She would need to apologize or end up dead.

  Finally Scary Mary moved her attention from the vanishing Stan to the quiet that rested over the table. She looked at Patty, then at me. “I’m still in danger, aren’t I?”

  Patty nodded. “I’m afraid so. But give us a little time. We’ll protect you until we can get something figured out.”

  “Think fast,” Madge said as two Silicon Suckers appeared near the door and the air in the restaurant got suddenly very, very dry.

  FIVE

  I didn’t know they could teleport. That explained a great deal.

  I stood and stepped toward the two alien-looking creatures. Then in their language of clicks and snaps and grunts, I said, “It is an honor to be in the presence of such great beings.”

  “Thank you, Poker Boy,” the one on the right said in clear English without seeming to move his lips. “The honor is ours. Today you visited the great scar in our lands.”

  “Yes, I did not know about it until today,” I said, having no idea what to say but the truth. “I have become very upset at such an insult to my wonderful friends, the Silicon Suckers. The human vehicles that crossed across your sacred lands and damaged them are being stopped and will not come near your lands again. The humans must retrieve the dead that caused such damage, but then that path near your sacred lands will be closed completely.”

  The restaurant was becoming tinder dry and Patty and Scary Mary sat perfectly still in the booth. Madge stood near her counter, also not moving.

  “When will this ceremony take place?” the Silicon Sucker asked.

  I had no idea what he meant by ceremony, but with that corner being a crime scene, we wouldn’t be able to do anything there anytime soon. I bowed slightly. “May we beg for one half of a moon cycle to prepare and for the humans to finish removing their dead?”

  The Silicon Sucker bowed slightly, then said, “Yes, that will be acceptable.”

  I had just bought us and Scary Mary two weeks. I hoped that would be enough time.

  Then the Silicon Sucker turned and looked at Scary Mary for a moment, then back at me. If they stepped toward her, there would be nothing I could do to stop them that wouldn’t insult them deeply and maybe cause a war between the gods and Silicon Suckers. So far, in my understanding, there had only been two such wars throughout all time. Both fought over land.

  Scary Mary had damaged their land in their minds. No god or superhero could or would stop them if they wanted to take her.

  “Will the human that sent such machines over our land be at the ceremony?”

  “She did not understand what she was doing until she received your warnings and came to me. She is disgusted at her carelessness, and is the reason it is stopping now. She will bow in great respect and offer herself and her gifts in hopes the great Silicon Suckers will allow her to live.”

  He bowed slightly again and then said, “We will be watching.”

  “It was an honor as always,” I said, bowing to them.

  Both bowed in return and then vanished.

  “Open the door and let some moisture in here,” Madge said after a moment.

  I did as I was told and then went back to the booth and drank three glasses of the water that Madge brought.

  We had two weeks to save Scary Mary’s life.

  SIX

  We failed.

  That afternoon at The Diner we tried our best to convince Scary Mary to keep her mouth shut about the murders and what she knew. And never say anything about the Silicon Suckers, but it ended up under questioning she didn’t remain quiet.

  Or couldn’t. I never knew.

  The murders hit the headlines, of course. When it became known that the corpses had been hollowed out, with most of the insides pulled out of the victims’ asses, it got even more sensational. The press called them the “Empty Mummy Murders.”

  I didn’t want to mention to the press that most mummies were empty.

  After the police were done, Stan got the Gods of Land Use to go in and close off and destroy any sign of any road across the Silicon Suckers land, and even had them replant new desert grass and weeds.

  Two major rocks were placed at both ends of the old shortcut to make sure no one went out there over the Silicon Sucker land.

  And, of course, the road to the crime scene was closed off completely from the quarry to the location of the bodies and also from the highway to the location at the corner.

  But Scary Mary just couldn’t keep her mouth shut. She started insisting that it was aliens who had killed the women. And that there were people in The Diner who could appear and disappear.

  That sounded totally insane, so the police started investigating her past and her sanity and came up will all sorts of things that didn’t look good besides her makeup.

  Scary Mary was tossed into custody not only as a suspect in the murders, but also for other events that happened in her past, including the accidental drowning in a pool of Scary Mary’s first wife when Scary Mary was a he.

  Her picture in all its strange made-up glory hit the front page of the newspaper as a primary suspect in the Empty Mummy Murders.

  So on the day of the ceremony, Scary Mary could not attend.

  I wanted to jump into jail and spring her for the ceremony, but Stan wouldn’t let me. He said we didn’t do things that way.

  I did the best I could in the ceremony, leaving offerings of five thermoses of hot chocolate at each end of the now repaired scar in the land. Silicon Suckers treasured hot chocolate as a sacred drug that allowed them to produce more Silicon Suckers. I figured five at each end would show them how serious I thought the scar was.

  Denton, the God of Land Use Planning, who was the God who had originally negotiated the settlement of lands around Las Vegas, appeared and begged for the forgiveness of the great beings.

  There just wasn’t much else we could do.

  No Silicon Suckers showed up, so we left the thermoses sitting in the sand in the desert.

  Four days later Scary Mary vanished from her holding cell. Her body was found where the others had been found two days earlier. All her organs had all been cleaned out through her ass and her skin was mummified.

  Scary Mary became the fourth known victim of the Empty Mummy Murderer. Of course, the case was never solved.

  I was batting zero-for-two. Two women had come to me for help with the Silicon Suckers and both had been kil
led. I moped around for a few days until finally Patty got fed up with me and went with me to talk with Stan.

  We ended up in another floating office far over the city. The view was stunning, but I noticed Stan had his windows turned so that he couldn’t see in the direction of the quarry.

  He was sitting behind a big oak desk with nothing on it. Patty and I dropped down onto the leather couch.

  With Patty pushing me on, I mentioned what was bothering me to Stan.

  He just shrugged. “Nothing you could do when a person won’t help themselves and just keep their mouth shut.”

  “I mentioned that a few times as well,” Patty said, shaking her head. “But he’s determined to feel bad.”

  “It feels like crap,” I said. “Even though I couldn’t do anything.”

  “Yeah, it does,” Stan said. “But do you win every hand you play at a poker table?”

  “Of course not,” I said, almost angry that he had suggested that. “But when I lose a hand there I don’t have someone die.”

  “True,” Stan said, “but you win a hell of a lot more than you lose in the saving-people game. And that’s the key to remember.”

  “Yeah,” Laverne said, suddenly appearing standing beside Stan behind his desk, “remember the ones you saved.”

  Patty and I both jumped to our feet, because when Lady Luck appears, you don’t sit there slouching on the couch.

  Lady Luck went on. “Remember you and your team saved me once. And the entire human race another time. And you’ve even saved a few people from the Silicon Suckers over the last few years, which is more than most have done.”

  All I could do was nod. She was right.

  “So get over it and get back to work,” she said, smiling at me.

  When Lady Luck smiles at you, trust me, you can feel it. And I did. I felt a ton better, and was suddenly back thinking again instead of just feeling sorry for myself for losing Scary Mary.

  “Stan,” Lady Luck said, “teach Poker Boy how to build himself an office, would you? It’s about time he and his team have one of their own, don’t you think?”