Billy Booley stood behind us chanting, "Drink it. Drink it. Drink it."
Of course, I wouldn't. Any water on Shiners that hadn't been through the plant was too dangerous to touch, let alone drink. Anyway, it smelled bad. Really bad. Like skunk spray. As it was, I held my breath for a long as I could. The smell was so bad, just breathing it made me want to puke. Worse, little things twitched and swam around down in that thick, murky brown water.
Talmidge twisted my arm more, making my shoulder hurt worse. My elbow twinged painfully. "C'mon, Becky. One drink."
My breath burst . "Oooow! Talmidge, you're hurting me!"
"Daaah. One sip and I'll stop."
I caught a deep whiff of the swamp, almost gagged, and yelled at him, "Talmidge, Stop it or I'll tell."
He just laughed and tried pushing my head into the water, but I pushed back, yelling, "Stop it!"
Just then, somewhere behind me Tommy Choi said, "Cut it out. It isn't funny."
All the sudden Talmidge let go of me. When I sat up, I saw Tommy had a fist full of Talmidge's T-shirt. He twisted around and they started punching each other. Being a little smaller, Tommy got the worst of it, but he broke away and ran off a few steps. "It isn't funny. My parents say the swamp water is poisonous."
"Your parents are stupid, LaChoy Boy. There's nothing wrong with the water. I've been in it before."
Tommy didn't say anything, just stared at Talmidge.
Talmidge looked at both of us. "Shit. Stay here then. We're going to the Big Mud."
Nose bloodied, Tommy watched Talmidge and Billy Booley head away down the boardwalk.
"Tommy," I nodded at his nose, "you okay?"
Still staring after Talmidge and Billy Booley, he used his shirt to wipe his nose and whispered, "Asshole."
I just shrugged. "Nobody can tell Talmidge anything he doesn't already know. He never listens to anybody. You know that."
He finally looked at me. "You want to go back to the colony?"
"What for?"
"Well …." He looked after Talmidge.
"I'm not afraid of him. I still want to see the bulliwogs." Unless …. "Did he lie about them being there?"
"No. They're there. I've seen them," Tommy said. "You sure?"
"Yeah. Let's go."
"Okay," he shrugged his brows and we headed down the board walk.
Talmidge only does that kind of stuff to try to keep me from hanging around. As long as I don't give in or cry, he always leaves me alone for a while. Anyway, I think he likes it better when I don't give in. It's like I'm proving I can take it. In some twisted way, Talmidge sort of respects that.
So, Tommy and me headed down the board walk after Talmidge and Billy Booley, sneakers clunking along the rubber coated plastic treads the biologists laid down on the swamp. Otherwise, we would be up to our rears in those swimming-twitchy things and muck. The truth is, we weren't even supposed to walk down to the Big Mud at all without adults. Even then, we never used the board walk, that was for the biologists. We took hovers. Sometimes, Talmidge gets a good idea to do something, so you just go along with him, because that's what you do with Talmidge. You go along with him.
Keeping an eye on the backs of Talmidge's and Billy's bobbing heads, Tommy asked me, "so how do you like Shiners so far?"
I rolled my eyes at him. "You mean besides the smell."
Talmidge ripped off a huge mouth fart. "Must be the frogs."
We all laughed. It was a good one; peeled off long and really, really wet like someone farting out a poop. Billy Booley got laughing so hard, he grabbed his wiener through his shorts and staggered several steps before he got control of himself. Talmidge grabbed him by the back of the shirt and shook him around, "Don't whiz on yourself, Billy. Don't whiz on yourself."
Billy laughed so hard, tears started running down his face.
Talmidge kept jerking him back and forth, "Don't whiz! Don't whiz!" until Billy got mad, swore at Talmidge and jerked away to run ahead a few steps. That's Talmidge. He always has to take things a little too far. Nothing can ever be pure fun with him. He always has to be a little mean about stuff. He always has to spoil things a little.
Billy Booley is probably the only kid in school who is a big enough idiot to put up with him all the time. Almost as soon as Billy cursed off Talmidge, he fell into step right next to him again, competing with Talmidge for the best armpit fart and giggling about frogs.
I really didn't care what they did, as long as we went to the Big Mud. I wanted to see the bulliwogs. I read all about them on the transport that brought us to Shiners. So, me and Tommy clunked along behind Talmidge and Billy, keeping just far enough back to make it too much of a pain for them to turn around and bother us. Watching the back of Talmidge's head, Tommy said, "If you came all the way from Earth, then you must made most of the trip cryo."
"Yeah. So?"
He shrugged, "What was it like? In cryo, I mean?"
"Like being a popsicle, Asshole." Talmidge scoffed, "What do you think?"
Billy Booley giggled. "Yeah, Assss-hole. A popsicle."
Tommy ignored them and looked at me. "Well?"
"There's nothing to remember, except going to sleep and waking up. My hands were sort of tingly for a few days after I woke up." Talmidge muttered something dirty about being tingly, but I ignored him and told Tommy, "After we woke up we boarded a big transport and stayed there about four weeks until it reached Shiners."
"Yeah, " Tommy looked up through the hazy tree tops, "you can see the ships come into orbit on a clear night."
"When the air isn't full of swamp farts." Talmidge said over his shoulder. He squinted at Tommy. "Jeeesis, La Choy Boy, you gonna kiss her or what?"
Tommy blushed.
Talmidge was always ranking on Tommy like that, like he couldn't be friends with me, or just talk to me about stuff. When Tommy finally looked up from the board walk again, I pointed my index and pinkie fingers at Talmidge, making devil horns at the back of his head. Tommy went one better, and made double devil horns for both of them with both hands. We giggled.
Talmidge looked over his shoulder again. He squinted but he didn't do anything. He didn't catch us.
When he kept staring over his shoulder, I ignored him and told Tommy, "Transport was boring anyway. All I ever did was look at disks on Shiners and the stuff the colony scientists are doing here."
"You miss Earth?"
I did, but I wasn't going to say so. It would have set Talmidge off for sure. "Shiners is sort of like Louisiana." That's where me and my parents came from. Except, the sky here isn't so much blue as a kind of dirty white. It's like a Louisiana summer all year round here being all the time sticky and warm, but the air is safe to breathe, and there are trees and grass and water, lots of water. "It's okay here."
"It sucks here." Talmidge snapped. He hated Shiners. Come to think of it, he spent a lot of time trying to make everyone else hate it, too. What he especially hates is the Big Mud. Tommy told me once that Talmidge almost drowned in it when he first came here. That was Talmidge's own fault. He tried walking on it by tying tennis rackets on his feet like snow shoes on snow or something. Well, it didn't work. He not only almost drowned, but he got in trouble for stealing those tennis rackets from the recreation concourse in Shiners Center.
Suddenly, Talmidge charged away at a dead run toward a bunch of thorn trees ahead of us. He jumped, shrieking, "Eeyaa!" and kicked off a spike longer than he was tall, then scooped it up. He shook the spike at the tree, shouting and pounding his skinny chest like a caveman. Billy laughed, then charged the tree and yelled, "Eeyaa!" and kicked off another spike. They ran ahead shouting, "Bulliwogs!"
Looking ahead of them, I saw the gravy brown Big Mud stretch way out beyond the trees, but I couldn't make out anything floating on the surface from here.
Tommy shrugged at me, picked up a long thorn from the ground and trotted after the others. I did the same, not being tall enough to kick a one off the tree. As I ran passed, I noticed the wounded tree oozed white stuff.
The board walk ended where the swamp opened up to a long stretch of beach. It's the only solid piece of land on the other side of the swamp. From there the Big Mud goes on forever, all the way to the sunset. That mud is evil stuff, too. You can't walk on it, because it'll suck you down in a snap. It's so thick and heavy, little pools of water get pushed up to the surface. They scatter across the Big Mud all the way out to the horizon like thousands of glittering silver coins.
Tommy looked out over the seeping, brown sludge beyond the beach. "The cow is gone."
Last week one of the Holsteins broke out of the livestock graze area up in the Agrow. She wandered down here and got stuck. The farmers did everything they could think of to free that cow. Even my parents flew out with the big research foil. They used it to work out on the Mud all the time doing tests and stuff. They threw a rope around the cow and tried to pull her out. They almost tore her in half. She thrashed around and mooed sort of strangled and hoarse. Other kids came down with their parents who came to try to help. Some of them turned away covering their ears. Some even cried.
The Big Mud wasn't giving up that cow. That was all. So a man came with a rifle and shot her in the head. I guess that was better than letting her drown.
Talmidge saw that and said, "Man, I'd like to do that to this shit hole." He pointed his finger like a gun and cocked his thumb, aiming in it at the ground, then his thumb snapped forward and he made a noise like the gun was going off. Billy Booley giggled. I just felt a little sick to my stomach listening to the silence, because I could still hear that cow mooing in my head. Talmidge. He didn't think a thing about that poor cow. He doesn't think a thing for anybody.
Looking around, I noticed him and Billy Booley were already half way down the beach. They stopped beside one of those silvery pools. There was a cluster of what looked like billowy, yellow mushrooms about the size of watermelons. Some were bigger. Some were smaller. They bobbled in the up well current of the pool.
Talmidge stood there, pointing his thorn at them and announced, "Bulliwogs."
"I know that. I read all about them."
He sneered, "'I read all about them.' But you never saw a real one before."
I shrugged as I walked toward him and Billy, looking along the edge of the beach for whatever might be left of that cow. She was definitely gone. Sucked down, I guess.
"You know what we do with bulliwogs?"
I shrugged again, but I realized why Talmidge really wanted to come down here. I realized why he knocked a thorn off the tree. I realized why we all had them now. My stomach flip-flopped.
"We-" he raised his thorn high in both hands and brought it down, spearing a bulliwog. "Aaah!" He roared. The bulliwog shuddered. When Talmidge yanked his spear out, the bulliwog gushed a fountain of yellow stuff like cream of corn soup. It smelled like pee.
Billy Booley laughed and laughed until tears spurted out of his eyes. Tommy Choi just stepped back, wrinkling his whole face and muttered, "Gross," which was kind of what I was thinking.
"You better stop that, Talmidge." I should've known better. He never listens to any body. "What if its mother shows up?"
"These things don't have a mother." He laughed, watching the bulliwog ooze as it turned away and tried to paddle out of his reach. He pushed his spear into the hole in its back and dragged it toward him. It gave out a little croaking sound. He speared it again, grinning, and lifted it out of the pool, drizzling cream-of-corn soup blood, while it shuddered and wiggled and began to peep. Loud.
The hair on my arms stood up.
Billy laughed, "I never heard them make that sound before."
Talmidge shook the bulliwog off his spear onto the bank. "What the…?."
I backed away, watching the mud. "It's calling to its mother, Talmidge."
Talmidge sneered at me. "Call your mother." He muttered, "Stupid girl." Looking at me, he stabbed that bulliwog again. It went quiet.
Billy Booley laughed like an idiot. Tommy Choi didn't say a word.
All the sudden, the other bulliwogs started croaking. One by one, they started up. They got louder and louder until some of them started peeping. Pretty soon they were all peeping. Loud.
Still backing away, I shouted, "Talmidge! Stop it!"
Tommy Choi looked back over his shoulder at me. His eyes were so wide that I knew he read something about bulliwogs, too. All the sudden, he was right there with me, backing up the beach, getting away from the edge of the mud.
Even he shouted, "Talmidge, you better stop."
"Go kiss your girl friend, La Choy Boy."
Well, Talmidge wasn't about to stop. He was too mad and started spearing bulliwogs right and left. I guess he was trying to make them shut up. He threw them up on the bank where they kept peeping and spewing creamy yellow blood and flipping around on their backs, flippers going like mad in the air. That idiot Billy Booley ran around in circles, poking them and giggling.
That's when she came up. She burst from the pool, throwing a spray of mud and water across the beach. She was bigger than the pop up me and my parents lived in. And that had six rooms. She just brushed her babies aside as she threw her big, round belly on the bank, then planted her clawed flippers to hold her in place. Through her skin, I could see some of her insides. That cow that got stuck in the mud last week was all squashed up in her first stomach. Mostly horns and bone was all that was left.
The two tiny, shiny black eyes on the top of bulliwog's head didn't even look for Talmidge and Billy Booley, she just seemed to know where exactly they were. They started to turn toward the sound of her wet body slapping on the bank, but they weren't nearly quick enough. Her wide mouth opened and, with a quick nod, she snapped it closed on them both, then slid down the bank. A second later, the pool was still again, except for a fresh whirl of mud where the mother bulliwog went down.
And that was it.
She snatched those boys off the beach and left nothing behind but their muddy sneakers. The only sound on all of Shiners, was the tiny lap-lap of those baby bulliwogs as they paddled back into the pool. Tommy and me just stood there. Maybe neither one of us knew what to do. Maybe we were in shock. All I know is that I noticed how peaceful and quiet it suddenly was with those two boys gone. I didn't feel bad about Talmidge one bit. I didn't feel bad about that idiot Billy Booley either.
After a while, Tommy said, "Why couldn't he just listen for once?"
"Talmidge didn't listen to anybody." I noticed those empty sneakers sticking out of the mud all cockeyed. "And now? I guess he never will."
E.A. Gundlach is a professional webmaster/writer/illustrator happily living in upstate New York, raising medicinal herbs, heirloom roses, and Rotweilers. Her science fiction and fantasy short stories have appeared most recently in Alternate Realities, BeyondtheBorderline, Curiozine, and GateWay SF Webzine! Her SF webnovel RAVISHING THE SUPERVOX is currently in e-print on www.mortonvischer.50megs.com and has received over 2200 hits so far. Visit her website www.eagundlach.50megs.com to see her fiction, illustration and webmedia galleries. She first appeared in Aphelion in our Sword and Sorcery theme issue with Wardog Refresh.
E-mail: egundlach@yahoo.com
URL: www.eagundlach.50megs.com
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