Andrew Roller Presents PERMANENT PERIGEE Anton was hungry. He peered through the gloom at the bulkhead. A winding flight of stairs clung to the upright partition. A clutter of splintered crates and heavy appliances lay at the bottom of the stairway. A tangle of corpses sprawled amidst the makeshift barrier. Anton wondered whether there were any dead Controllers left in the heap. Someone near Anton coughed up phlegm. All around him dark figures crept forward through the knot of charred bushes. "Now!" a hoarse voice cried. The band of people rushed forward. Gunfire burst from the landing at the top of the stairs. A woman near Anton screamed. He ran faster. A toppled refrigerator loomed in the darkness. Anton dove behind it. The door was missing. He pulled a limp form from the refrigerator. Was it a Controller? Anton recognized the face. It was Viola. Anton crawled inside the gutted appliance. It smelled of rotted flesh. Several bullets ricocheted off the refrigerator. Anton gazed back at the clump of bare shrubbery. It was twenty meters behind him. Anton heard a shout and the enfilade abruptly ceased. He surmised that someone had crawled up the stairs and killed the sniper. Anton licked his lips. He rolled out of the refrigerator and leapt over it. Anton joined the group as it clambered up the stairs. A minute later he was on the landing. Anton stepped onto the terrace atop the bulkhead. He cast his eyes about in search of the sharpshooter's body. It was gone. Anton spied two men huddled in a corner. One caught Anton's gaze and eyed him maliciously. Anton quickly looked away. Several overturned tables gave the only indication that the veranda had once been a restaurant. Great panes of translucent glass had once formed the back wall of the gallery. Now rows of cinder blocks walled off the control center of the space colony. Several burly men beat on a steel door set in the wall. Anton drew a sharp kitchen knife from his belt. All his life he had wanted to get inside the control center. His mind raced with visions of what must lay inside. He drooled at the thought of the succulent inhabitants. Lori worked quickly. She pressed a series of bright buttons on a console. "Novosibirsk Two, this is the Calendonia," Lori reported in Russian. "We should have a docking procedure worked out in five minutes, max." She shouted to be heard above the din outside the control room. "Repeat please, Calendonia," the Soviets requested. Lori spun about in her chair and yelled to a man across the room. "Can't you stop that riot out there?" "Lori," the man replied gently. "There are only three of us now." Lori's face went pale. "Where's Robbie?" Lori shrieked. A man poring over sheets of computer printouts looked up and shouted, "He's in the stomaches of those bastards outside!" Lori began to sob. "Still can't read you, Calendonia," the voice from the space freighter Novosibirsk Two crackled through Lori's desk top receiver. Anton pummeled the cinderblock wall with a wrought iron table leg. He had already beaten through one layer of blocks, he was working on the second. Suddenly the reverberating din was broken by whoops of triumph. Anton turned to see figures scrambling through a hole that had been knocked in the wall. A salvo of shot streamed out of the cavity. The crowd pressed Anton toward the opening. Then, suddenly, the fusillade stopped. Anton climbed through the gap. For a moment he just stood and gaped at the long rows of blinking computer banks. Then Anton ran forward, propelled by the emptiness in his stomach. The lifelong dreams of everyone in the room were shattered in the next few minutes. The lives of Lori and her two companions ended in a nightmare as their last refuge in the space colony was overrun and they, and their scant supplies of food, were devoured by the first cannibals to get through the broken wall alive. Anton's dream, shared by the people in the assemblage milling about, that the control room was a bounteous cornucopia of palatable delights that had been withheld from him by evil Controllers who had hoped to starve him and force him to engage in perverse ways of satisfying his stomach, crumbled quickly with every passing emaciated second. Anton smashed his table leg against a gleaming cabinet in frustration, breaking an array of Formica panels and the delicate circuitry beneath. Anton snarled at a glowing screen above the cabinet. He couldn't read the type that flashed upon it. Priority: Alpha. Subject: Space colony Calendonia. Subject description: Contains the last Homo sapiens known to exist after the War. See amendment. Priority description: Subject's orbit around the Earth decaying rapidly. Subject to reenter Earth's atmosphere in 12:47 minutes. Amendment: Space freighter discovered 02:05 days ago. Name: Novosibirsk Two. Condition: Good. (See record 4B715-H for available details.) Occupants: Undetermined number of Homo sapiens (estimate 27), all male. Results of contact: Expressed willingness to dock with subject and pull it to a higher orbit. Priority: Alpha. Anton rammed his table leg through the screen. His gnarled hands tore open the television. "The Controllers must be hiding!" he conjectured. Anton seized a desk top receiver. He was stunned when a voice spoke from it. "Calendonia, this is Novosibirsk Two," it identified itself in Russian. To Anton it could have identified itself in Igorot. "We regret to inform you that you have now entered Earth's atmosphere. We no longer have the ability to aid you. We're very sorry things worked out this way. We'll miss you." Anton seized the speaker. "There they are!" he guessed. "The Controllers are hiding in there!" Anton ripped off the plastic housing. His stubby fingers dug out a lattice of wires. Nothing. All around Anton the mob went mad. A man was trampled to death in the desperate search for food. The multitude fought to determine who would get to consume him. More people were killed in the scuffle. Frustration turned to rage. Perspiration streamed down Anton's forehead and stung his eyes. He leapt into the confluence. Anton threw a woman out of his way as he struggled to reach the food at the center of the throng. The woman fell against one of the control room's three metal walls. In the last few minutes the wall had become very hot. It scalded the woman. The horde became delirious at the smell of roasted flesh. It knocked Anton down and rushed toward the wall. Suddenly the room tipped on its side. Anton dazedly lifted his bruised face off the floor. He couldn't believe his eyes. His dreams had come true after all. Below him, against the wall, lay two dozen broiled bodies. Anton began to climb over a fallen file cabinet. With a roar a sheet of flame burst through the floor just beyond the cabinet, blocking Anton's view of the carcasses. The fire seared Anton. He was surprised beyond belief. His entire physique was metamorphosing into food. Anton eagerly bent forward and bit into his forearm. THE END ----------------------- Dreamgirls! ----------------------- -Free Dreamgirls e-mail subscriptions: send (18 or up) age statement to: roller666@aol.com -My ftp site is: members.aol.com/roller666 -Back issues at Usenet newsgroup: alt.poop? -or send e-mail to: file.archives@backdrop.com -Free minicomics: send a stamped, self-addressed envelope & age statement to: Jim Corrigan, P.O. Box 3663, Phenix City, AL 36868 U.S.A. -Naughty Naked Dreamgirls (Library of Congress ISSN: 1070-1427) is copyright 1996 and a trademark of Andrew Roller. -NEW small Usenet newsgroup: uw.alt.sex.stories -END OF ftp EMISSION