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Andrew Roller Presents
THE FADING UNIVERSE
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Chapter Three
Marvin blinked the sleep from his eyes and was about to suppress
a yawn with his hand when he discovered that his wrists were bound
behind his back.
"Damn! I'm a sex slave," Marvin said.
Elsa came into focus. She was lying several feet from Marvin, her
wrists and ankles bound with rope.
"Wait a fuckin' minute! Don't tell me I'm Frankie's sex slave!"
Marvin yelled.
Marvin's shout was greeted with laughter. Suddenly he noticed
dozens of absinthe eyes peering down at him. Marvin rolled from his
side onto his back.
"Oh. Hullo," Marvin said calmly to the mutants who were crowded
around him, as an icy chill ran down his spine.
A desperate cry pierced the air. Marvin could make out Perry's
voice screaming for mercy.
"They're castrating him!" Elsa shrieked to Marvin.
"No!" Marvin yelled, sitting bolt upright, wrestling with his bonds.
Strong hands seized him, thrust him back onto the dirt. In a rage of
blind fury, Marvin struggled against the mutants, twisting to and fro,
but they held him fast.
"Ha! Ha! Ha! You're next," they jeered. Marvin's eyes gaped wide
as Perry's bloodcurdling screams shattered the silence of the tunnels.
Perspiration streaked his brow and blurred his vision. The mutant's
stinking breath filled his nostrils. Marvin gave a violent kick and one
of the mutants toppled backward with a gasp. Suddenly a sharp pain
blazed through Marvin's skull and his world went pitch black.
###
Marvin felt a wetness between his legs. He wrenched himself
upright as a vision of a bloody crotch shot through his mind. He looked
down to find Elsa licking his testicals with her tongue. She glanced up
at him.
"You nearly lost these. I figure I'd better appreciate them while I
can," Elsa said.
Marvin's memory of the leering mutants, with their shrunken
heads, rippling membranous gills, and massive forearms, faded upon a
bare cinderblock prison cell.
Footsteps came echoing down the hall. Elsa hurriedly zipped up
Marvin's trousers, whispering, "We're in the city slammer. The cops
who were sent out after us found us just as the mutants were
castrating Perry."
"Then he's O.K.?"
"No. He's lost his testicals."
Marvin gasped.
A police sergeant appeared outside the prison door.
"Well, I see you finally woke up," the sergeant said to Marvin. "I
guess you could say the city cops saved your balls, boy. Saved 'em for
the electric chair. Too bad about your leader, though. That's what you
get when you double-cross the mutants."
The sergeant chuckled and was about to continue when a blast of
mortar fire rumbled through the prison. For a moment the sergeant
stood stock still, then he regained his composure and said, "Hear that?
We got a war on our hands, folks. Some damn army who I never even
heard of before is attacking the city. But don't you worry, we'll have
everything under control shortly. So if you've got any thoughts of
escapin', forget it. And don't try creating a disturbance either, or I'll
shoot the lot of you."
With that the sergeant turned and hurried off. Marvin looked
quizzically at Elsa.
"A lot has happened since we struck camp last night," she said.
"I'll say," Marvin replied. "I can understand mutants sneaking up
on us while we were sleeping. They've been after us ever since Perry
pulled a fast one on them seven months ago. But what's this about a
war? Has San Diego attacked again?"
"Not San Diego. Some city no one ever knew existed, named
Alameda, from far, far away. But that's not the worst of it. The
insects have finally attacked."
The insects. Desert beetles. Cockroaches, really, except they fed
on human flesh. Periodically the city would be attacked by hordes of
mindless beetles, swarming up from distant corridors in a seasonal
migration toward some unknown destination. The city's police would
don polyurethane suits, masks, and cylindrical tanks with hoses to
fight off the ravenous beetles with poison gas.
"The Alameda army attacked the city early this morning," Elsa
continued. "Within an hour or two they had captured the suburbs. They
were making rapid progress toward the city's center when, suddenly,
the insects attacked."
"I'll bet that surprised them. Do they have insects in that place,
whatever it's called, Amalthea?" Marvin asked.
"Alameda. The story is Alameda's insects don't eat people. These
beetles caught the Alameda army totally unawares."
"Good for them," Marvin chuckled.
"Now the Alameda army is trapped inside the city, with the cops
before them and the insects at their backs," Elsa concluded.
"Sounds pretty hairy, huh, Marv?" Flaherty asked, his words
obscured slightly by a mouthful of potato chips. "This prison is
probably the safest place we could be right now."
Frankie and Harrigan exchanged glances, their eyes drifting down
toward each other's genitals.
"Where's Perry right now?" Marvin asked Elsa.
"The prison hospital."
Marvin was about to inquire into Perry's prospects for recovery
when shouting erupted at the far end of the hall. Marvin walked over to
the door of the cell and peered out. Apparently something had thrown
the policemen on duty into turmoil. Marvin strained to catch what they
were saying but he couldn't make it out.
Marvin had just gone and sat down again beside Elsa when the
police sergeant appeared outside their cell.
"Well, son, you're not going to be electrocuted," he said to Marvin.
The policeman was obviously intent on saying something to Marvin, but
instead of continuing he looked distractedly up and down the hallway,
fingering his cap all the while, which he held in his pudgy hands. He
shouted to a partner running through the offices at the end of the hall,
but failed to catch the man's attention. Finally he said, "The mayor
betrayed the city. All of our poison gas has been rendered impotent.
You lousy bastards are going to get devoured by the beetles!" The
sergeant let out a manic laugh. Marvin jumped up and lunged at the
door. He seized the prison bars and shook them.
"You gotta let us out!" Marvin yelled.
The policeman tossed a pocket-size portable television into the
cell.
"Here, you can watch the latest reports on your impending doom,"
the sergeant said. With that he scurried off down the hall, leaving
Marvin to shout after his retreating footsteps.
Elsa turned on the television.
"It's reported that the mayor made a plot with San Diego several
months ago," an announcer intoned. "The Chief of Police says he saw
the mayor leave the city as soon as it was learned that the insects
were attacking. Chief Pallock told Newsvision that he attempted to
stop the mayor but was unsuccessful."
"A bug!" Flaherty screamed. He leapt up, spilling his potato chips,
as a lone cockroach scurried across the prison floor.
"Stomp on it!" Frankie yelled.
Flaherty shrank fearfully against the wall of the cell as Frankie
and Harrigan bombarded the cockroach with a flurry of footstomps.
"We gotta get out of here," Marvin said worriedly.
# # #
Marvin sat musing. Elsa sat next to him, hunched over, watching
the television as it went through an endless litany of repeating news
clips. Nearby Frankie and Harrigan stood guard against the occasional
cockroach that appeared inside their prison cell. Flaherty crouched in a
corner, whining fearfully about the insects; interrupting that
monologue to complain about the absence of their evening meal.
Marvin used to carry a book around with him that he would use to
start fires. He would tear out several pages and use them to kindle the
fledgling flame. A few times he made an effort to read the remaining
pages when he was bored and had nothing to do. He told Elsa about what
he had read once or twice, but she dismissed it as utter nonsense.
The book claimed that man once lived on a ball of dirt that floated
in nothingness. Instead of an elaborate network of corridors, the
universe was said to be nearly empty, with only an occasional planet or
star to be found. Even Marvin couldn't buy that. He knew that the stars
were like furnaces in a house, and any planet like a cellar coal bin. The
idea that there were once furnaces and coal bins floating around in
emptiness without the house was ludicrous.
Of course, there had been a war, and much of the "house" still lay
in darkness. Here and there a city had constituted itself amidst the
corridors, its citizens clustering around the bright blaze of its
restored electrical supply. Ontario, the city of Marvin's birth, and the
city which now held him prisoner, was a tumultuous place, torn by civil
strife. The Oligarchy which had held Ontario in a tight grip for decades
was rapidly losing ground to the restless, impoverished masses.
Everyone agreed that what was needed was a strong leader who could
reunite the people and restore Ontario's past glory; when it had held
San Diego as a subject state.
Marvin's reverie was interrupted by the noise of a crowd breaking
into the offices at the end of the hall. A mob of people came down the
corridor, unlocking the prison cells as they went.
"Run, friends," a man shouted as he freed Marvin and the others.
NEXT: Corpse Catharsis
30
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