Feels Like Fire

A brilliant flash filled the sky like electric lightning. The two bums in the alley instinctively ducked. The light flew toward them. One bum threw himself behind a trash can, while the other took refuge behind a metal fire escape. The light blinded them for several minutes. When darkness came back to the alley, the bum behind the trash can came out looking cautiously around him.

“Hey, Tooner. Gawd. That was a close un. We were lucky this time. Reckon it were the guvment? That couldn’t been real lightnin’.”

His friend didn’t reply, and he looked around for him. Tooner was caught in the fire escape, the metal twisted around his forehead. His buddy came up carefully to look at him. Suddenly, Tooner’s eyes opened.

“Hey, Tooner. It’s jus’ ole Rascon. You okay? Lemme help you.”

The metal was still soft and Rascon pulled it off his friend without any trouble.

“Hey, hey. You were really lucky, Tooner. It didn’t leave no scar or nuthin. Come on. Let’s go look for supper.”

Rascon turned to leave the alley. He didn’t see the strange light in his friend’s eyes, a light that was a reflection of the light that had passed them earlier. And he didn’t feel the metal railing that Tooner used to open his head like a melon. Not for long, anyway.

The newscast told of the bright light the night before. In an unrelated story, the number of violent deaths were up in Chicago.

Van Therlin was watching the recorded broadcast. She had been on Jupiter the night before and had missed the unusual phenomenon. She watched the screen closely as she played and replayed the scene where one cameraman had gotten an actual picture of the ‘lightning.’ It looked to her like a cross between electric lightning and a plasma torch. But there seemed to be no point of origin.

“Interesting, isn’t it?”

She turned from the screen to look at the man. Thad Clouse was her partner in their Adventure-Seekers, Inc. business. Van was the usually one who stumbled across suspicious happenings and Thad was the one to apply logic and reason to get them out of trouble. Now, Thad had found the strangest thing and she was slightly jealous of not being able to have seen this thing first hand.

“Any hypothesis on what it could be?”

He shrugged. “A couple at the moment. But I was wondering if you would come up with the same connection that I did. The story that followed the ‘lightning’ story? Did you watch that one?”

“Kinda. What’s so new about violent deaths in the world?”

“What if I told you I did some checking and found they were all in a certain neighborhood in Chicago. One where the lightning went through in a direct path?”

“Okay, you’ve got my curiosity. You think there might be a connection?”

“There’s nothing else to do. And I thought maybe we could get in a little mental exercise. Keep us fit for when some paying customer might come along.”

“I’m ready. My travelpass is still warm from this morning.”

“Great. I thought you would say that. I’ve got passage on the next hyperbeam to Chicago.”

They left London and were in Chicago within the hour. Their first stop was the local enforcement agency to obtain all the information they could on where the recent violence occurred in reference to the lightning flash the previous night. The local General Enforcer laughed off any notion that the two might be connected, in spite of the evidence that the lightning flash had not been seen anywhere else. Thad hustled Van out of the decrepit building before she had a chance to vocalize some theories of her own about the GE’s ancestors.

“Steady, sweetheart. We can’t afford to get the gendarmes mad at us in case we need them later,” he told her. “Let’s just get our map and start the footwork.”

They crossed the street to stand at the corner of the opposite block. The lot beside them was strewn with metal objects of various sizes. Van eyed the lot with interest while Thad studied the sky. Dusk was eminent.

“Were those cars?” she asked him.

He glanced at the lot. “I think so. Amazing, a lot seem to be holding up well, thanks to the Pollution Reduction Act of 2114.” He walked up to the nearest hulk and looked closer. “These must be over hundreds of years old. Around the turn of that century, they began to meld steel, aluminum and plastic together to make the main body. The mixture was supposed to be able to resist oxidation better.”

“Looks like it worked.”

“Well, reducing the pollution helped. Sometimes back in the Twentieth, you couldn’t go outside because of the health alerts.” He looked around. “But we still haven’t been able to control ground pollution or vandalism. If anything, the strict controls have made people worse about dirtying their own back yard.”

Van shrugged. “Debris is garbage, no matter if it’s supposed to walk on two legs or not.”

He shook his head. “You have a low opinion of your fellow man.”

“Not MY fellow man. Besides, the opinion matches most of the status quo. Most people are either where they want to be, or they don’t care enough to do what’s necessary to get there.”

“So, you just write off a large portion of humanity.”

She sighed. It was an old argument between them. “They wrote themselves off. And I’m not gallant enough to rewrite the pages of history. Too many millennia of history.”

Before he could say his lines, she grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back to the shadows of a nearby car. He followed without questioning and looked where she pointed.

A well-groomed man stood in the midst of the dilapidation of the lot. They watched as he jauntily looked around. He carried something long, thin and silvery over his shoulder. Thad recognized it as last year’s Kemstarr model golf club. He had looked at the line himself before buying his Earthenware 7942 set. He also recognized the club as a driver, made of chromesium with genuine rooskin grip.

The man arrogantly stepped up on one of the cars. He pulled something out of his pocket and placed it on the car in front of him. It resembled a glowing golf ball. He took his stance, then swung and connected. By the end of the block, the ball had elongated, picking up speed as it went. As their casual interest turned to stares, the ball became the phenomenon they had seen on the televiewer. The man watched it a moment before stepping down and walking away. Without smiling, he projected satisfaction with his actions.

They pulled back into the ever-darkening shadows as he passed. At the end of the block he paused and took out a pocket transformer and disappeared.

Instantly, Thad had out his own PT. He calibrated a few seconds, then silently held his hand out to Van. She gave him her PT and he hooked them together to boost the gain. Finally, he unhooked them and handed hers back.

“He’s got a very good scrambler. I can’t tell where he’s gone.”

“Then you think he does have something to do with last night?”

“If he doesn’t, there’s a lot of it goin’ ‘round.”

She looked back the way the plasma had streaked. “Guess we foot it from here?”

“No, we need arms if we’re going down there, especially after dark. It would be bad enough without the trouble that stuff brings.”

“What? You, expecting the worse from humanity? I may faint.” She grinned at him.

He grinned back. “Just being prepared. Just because I’d like to think the best would happen doesn’t mean I’m going to be caught with my pants down.”

She set her coordinates. “Come on, then. This is getting better.”

In less than thirty minutes they were walking the street along the projection that Thad had worked out. Six blocks from the Enforcement Center, Thad’s miniature sensit began to pick up traces of phos-plasma stuck to anything metal. Another block along, they found the first body.

Thad bent over the body with his sensit while Van kept a cursory lookout. It was only a moment before he stood up.

“Just what he appears. Caucasian male about fifty, probably drugged since his teens, if not before. Death due to loss of the back of the head. Dead about fifteen minutes.”

“So, the grim reaper could still be around?”

They looked up and down the street.

“I’d say he’s gone on to more mayhem,” Thad said.

“He? Why he?”

“The majority of Streetus Bumus is male, aged between, oh, thirty-five to fifty or so. Younger and they’re usually hustling somewhere. Older, well, they usually just don’t last longer. They’ve been drugged for years. Either pills or alcohol. Anything to escape reality. And most of the time they’re sleeping on the streets, no matter the weather.”

“Nice little lecture. I’m so impressed.”

“Just thought you’d like to know a little more about that ‘debris’ you’re so contemptible of.”

“They don’t have to be like that.”

“There has been this class of people – yes, people – for centuries. They can’t have the life we have, and they can’t handle the hardships of the life they can have.”

She shook her head. “Sorry, keep your lecture. I can’t find it in me to care. Maybe somebody did this bum a favor by bashing him. He won’t have to handle anything anymore.”

“When you have a blind spot, it’s a good one.”

“We all have our flaws. Shall we follow the trail?”

The phos-plasma traces were gone. But in the next block they found two more bodies with similar openings to the back of the head. For the next six blocks, they discovered a dozen more bodies, all in the same state of demise. The last body they found was different. There was no visible evidence as to how death occurred. Thad knelt and did a scan.

“This one was loaded with phos-plasma. It’s all through his body.”

“Cause of death?”

He shrugged. “Near as I can tell with this portable unit, the technical phrase would be burnout.”

“Burnout?”

“Almost all his cells are burned-out.” The body was lying face down. Thad reached out and turned the body over.

They stared at the face in silence. The eyes were wide open, but not in the death stare. They were like shining orbs, with no pupils or irises or anything. Van leaned closer. “They look like the lightning. Like somebody took out the eyes and put in phos-plasma spheres.” Thad stood up. “He’s holding a piece of metal with a lot of blood and matter, close enough that I suspect this poor fool’s our murderer. His frenzy ended with his own death.”

“Look at his eyes now. The glowing’s fading.”

“His eyes are turning black. Like they’ve been....”

“Burnt-out. Like you said his cells were.”

“Yeah. Under a scope, I’ll bet the cells look like his eyes.”

“Not a great way to go. At least a blast from a photonizer is quick and not eternally painful. Even his victims must have died faster.”

Thad gave her an ironic smile. “Going soft on me?”

“Just making an observation.” She looked up and down the street. “Say, shouldn’t the Gestapo be coming along soon?”

“Good point. Let’s get back to our hostelry and check what we’ve got.”

“Right. After what happened back at Quarters, I don’t think I want the gendarmes finding us standing over a body, even if it is just a bum.”

They touched their PTs and were gone.

“After five days of tracking, I believe I can conclusively say the bolts have all been initiated from the same spot.”

“Well, it certainly seemed that way to me when he showed up there the last three nights.”

Thad looked at her. “You went there and watched?”

“I know, pretty unsophisticated surveillance. But it corresponds with what you’ve been able to do from here and you still don’t know where he’s coming from.”

Thad shook his head. “No. He’s got a good covering device. Probably just in case the gendarmes decide to look for suspicious characters outside the neighborhood. I don’t think even they could trace his PT.”

“That good, huh? Which means we’re talking funds and power, lots of both.”

“He can’t be sanctioned. There isn’t anyone that believes in whole-scale murder anymore.”

“Maybe just a bigwig’s psycho son.”

“But where’s he get the stuff for the bolts?”

“Maybe he’s one of those mad scientists. You know, like you hear about through the old library vids.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Mad scientists, like from the 19th Century or thereabouts, who take human body parts and try to make a living being and give them strange concoctions that have terrible side effects like baying at the moon or – something like that.”

“That’s fiction. You’re talking fairy tales of centuries ago.”

“Maybe so, but how do you know they don’t have some basis in reality? I’m sure that if the results hadn’t been successful on many medical inventions that the scientists who were trying to invent them would have been called crazy. It all boils down to what worked and what didn’t.”

“Point taken. But why would he invent these bolts? What purpose would they serve?”

“You’re not gonna like my answer. He’s getting rid of the scum.”

He studied it a minute. “You’re right, on both counts. I think that’s what he’s doing, and I don’t like it.”

“I think I know how to stop him.”

“Wait a minute. Part of the reason you came to that conclusion faster than I did is because you feel the same way about the people who are dying. I know why I would want to stop him. How about you?”

She made an impatient gesture. “I’ve got a very good reason. Sure, I couldn’t care less if I never came into contact with people like that again. But I don’t take it personal. I just ignore them. This guy’s different. He’s doing something about it. Something destructive. Where does it end? Is he gonna shift his idea of people again when all these are gone off the streets?

“It’s said killing becomes a habit. Especially when it’s so easy and he’s really not involved in the final result. My main concern is; is that bolt going to be coming my way someday?”

They looked at each other in silence a minute.

Van continued. “He’s got to be stopped. I have a plan.”

He appeared suddenly in the darkness. He threw a quick glance around and concluded he had been unobserved. What he did not see was the interested eyes underneath a bum’s lowered lids. Nor did he catch the electronic message that went to its fellow trans-rec around the corner. He did hear a large crash and then the approaching sound of running feet. He pulled back in the shadow of a doorway as the runner turned the corner.

Without appearing to see him, the runner dashed into the same doorway. She pulled herself behind the archway, hugging the inside wall.

Their eyes met for a brief second before she turned hers to watch the street.

He heard others now and turned to watch. Two gendarmes on foot were stopping to catch their breath. Another two pulled up in their airvan.

“Where’s your motor, fellows?”

“She wrecked it, Serge. Shot her laze right through the uptake.”

The Serge shook his head. “Then you lose her. This ain’t gonna look good on the report. Get in.”

The two on foot hesitated.

“Gawsh, Serge. Can’t we walk back?” one asked.

“You screw up, you pay. In the back with the rest of the slime.”

Dejectedly the two opened the back of the van and got in. The van flew off down the street.

They waited in silence for ten minutes. He continued watching her while she watched the street. When all seemed quiet enough, she started to leave the doorway.

He caught her by the arm. “I’d like to introduce myself.”

“So tell the lamppost who you are.” She shook his hand off and started off again.

“But the lamppost won’t tell me who you are.”

She turned to face him again, this time really looking at him. “Queen Elizabeth the Twenty-third. Why?”

“I just find women who run from the gendarmes appealing. Especially when she outwits them. What’d you do?”

“Nothing.”

“And you managed to get two gendarmes to chase you? On foot, no less. Takes a great deal more than nothing to do that.”

“I’m so talented, even my nothings are great.”

He laughed with pure delight. “Yes, I think I’ll like you. Why don’t I forget my little errand here, it can wait till tomorrow night, and buy you a drink somewhere?”

“I don’t go into bars in this neighborhood.”

“Neither would I. Let me take you away from all this.”

She looked him over carefully, taking in the elegant way he was dressed. Suddenly she gave him a dazzling smile. “Take me to Sheran’s and I’ll go with you.”

“All right. And I feel I must warn you. Try to take me for anything, and I’ll cheerfully kill you.”

Her smile got wider. “You know, I just might end up liking you after all.”

Sheran’s was semi-dark and noisy. It was a mixed crowd, some meetings obviously business and other tables with couples and triples in amorous moods. Van took a quick glance around as they walked in, noting the familiar face that had gotten there previously, in case her plan had worked.

They seated themselves and he signaled to a harassed waitress. After giving an order, he turned back to Van.

“What should I call you?” she asked him.

“Interesting, the way you put that. Don’t you really mean who am I?”

She shrugged. “You somebody important? Not too, ‘cause I haven’t seen you on any televiewer.” She turned wide yellow eyes on him that suggested their innocence was hiding something deeper.

He laughed again. “Okay. I’ll call you Elizabeth and you can call me Philip.”

“Funny, you don’t look like pictures I’ve seen of my husband. But it’ll do.”

“You do keep me laughing. What were you doing down in that part of town? You’re obviously not an inhabitant. You’re dressed rather nicely, very nicely for that part of town. And you’re obviously educated. I can tell in the way you talk, even if you do try to sound hard-nosed, and you understood my reference about Philip. So, tell me. I can keep secrets.”

She leaned closer to him, letting her top fall open. “I’ll bet you can. Actually, my daddy is head of Chicago Security and I’m running away from home to do my bit in keeping the streets safe for anyone who wants to actually walk but doesn’t want to come into contact with people who have to walk. If I’m successful, I plan on opening an exterminating business and making a fortune off other people’s unfortune.” She touched his shoulder lightly. “Then I can buy myself as many men like yourself as I feel I need.”

“You’re adorable. What if I said you could have one man like myself for free?”

“Depends. What were you doing hiding in my doorway?”

“I’m just a private person. I was down there because there didn’t seem to be anybody on the streets.”

“There! You see? You’re one of the people I would have for a customer. You like to take walks, but you don’t want to meet anybody.”

“I met you. And I’m glad I did.”

“You’re pretty easy to look at. Why don’t you take me to your place for … a drink? I promise I won’t make a mess on the floor. Maybe.”

He looked down her cleavage again. “Why not? Let’s go now.”

“Great. I really don’t have all night. But I’ll do really well with the time I do have.”

Van was standing at the window looking out at the view of the lake. The sun was coming up and the day was going to be clear.

A sound from the bed behind made her turn around.

“No wonder they made you queen, Elizabeth. Everything you have and everything you do is majestic.”

She smiled at him. “Thank you, Philip. You’re pretty good yourself. I don’t think I’ve ever had such good sex. Now I know what they mean when they say it feels like fire.”

“It was pretty great. How’d you like to move in for a while?”

“Sorry Philip, I can’t. See, I didn’t come here for the sex. I came to find out where you lived.”

“That’s flattering. Especially after what you said last night. It wasn’t all heat of passion, huh?”

“No. None of it was that. I’m really kind of sorry if you believed anything I said.”

He pulled himself up to a sitting position in the bed. “What do you mean?”

“This.” She pulled out her miniphotonizer. “Remember I told you I was going to exterminate the scum? Well, I’ve decided you’re one of the scum. I know about your phos-plasma and I don’t like the implications of it.”

“So, you’re designating yourself judge, jury and executioner?”

“Just like you, darling.” She shot. A brief beam of light engulfed him. She went over to the bed. “That’s right. You’ve only been hit with the paralyzing beam. It’s much more fitting you should die by your own invention.” She put her hand in another pocket and pulled out one of his glowing golf balls. “I’ve been up for hours. Of course, the fact that I finally managed to slip you a mickey helped. You had it hidden well, but you hadn’t counted on a professional adventure-seeker. I also found your notes, so I know all I have to do is stand across the room and throw this at you. The friction from going through the air will dissolve the thin protective coating and when it hits you, then same thing that happened to those bums on the streets will happen to you. Except you won’t be killing anybody before you die. The paralysis will last beyond the time it takes for your cells to burn themselves out. And you’ll feel every minute of your demise. Don’t worry, you won’t disturb anybody, as you know, you can’t even whisper much less call for help.”

She turned, walked to the door of the bedroom then turned to face him again. “Yes, I am a little bit sad to see you go. I don’t know if I’ll ever find a physical specimen like you again. But I can’t live with your mental personality. And neither can you. Bye, Philip. See you in the nether world.”

She threw the glowing ball at him and went out the door, closing it behind her.

She pulled out her trans-rec and signaled Thad.

“All through here. I’m coming back. I’ll give you the coordinates and you take it from there.”

“Sure, Van. You okay?”

“I’m fine, sugar. Coming home.”

THE END

Bio: "I have been storytelling for half a century and writing for almost as long. I have been a member of Women Writers of Fiction and Essays, co-founder, and Secretary/Treasurer of the Illiana Writers and Co-founder and President of the National Writers Group. My publishing credits include: Monthly columns in The Writers’ Newsletter and The CPU Computers Newsletter, reviews in Compute Gazette, short stories in the anthologies: Sunlight and Shadow; I Writer, Therefore I Am? I Am!; Beware! Annual WWOFE Outings, 1993; the sci-fi newsletter, The U.S.S. Borta S Final Frontier; and two booklets of poetry; Erindonia and Fantasies Of My Soul. I am currently living in Central Illinois in my own “castle” with my husband and our 2 kitty babies, Calvin N Hobbs, and Princess Charcoal."

Website: Donna Carlene at the Indie CD.org Website

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