Andrew Roller Presents
THE FADING UNIVERSE

Chapter One

	"Well, I think it's immoral," the fat boy said.
	"We did it anyway."
	"Yeah, Marv; but, I mean, think of all the innocent little children we killed.  And we didn't even get her."
	Marvin yawned.
	The steel girder jutted awkwardly out over the bice blue pool.  The two boys sat perched atop it, fishing.
	"How could Perry have known the police chief's daughter would be playing hooky the day we blew up the elementary school?" Marvin asked defensively.
	"You ought to be our boss instead of Perry."
	Marvin shook his head.  "No, Flaherty.  Perry may have syphilis, but he's still the best strategist the tunnels have ever seen.  Do you think I could have mapped out that escape route we took after we blew up the school?"
	"People bomb buildings all the time."
	"Yeah, but they don't sit across the street on lawn chairs and watch," Marvin protested.  "They watch it on the evening news.  Or read about it in the paper."
	"I've got one," Flaherty announced, suddenly distracted from the discussion.  The chubby youth shifted to his knees and reeled in the line.  "Feels pretty big."
	Suddenly the line snapped.  Flaherty let out a yelp as he toppled forward.  Marvin grabbed the back of his checked shirt and, straining, pulled the chubby boy upright.
	"Damn.  Fuck!  What a cheap line."  Flaherty glared at the water.
	Marvin reeled in his own line and cast it out farther.  He chewed absently on a wad of gum as he slowly drew the line back toward shore.
  	It was hard to tell Marvin's age.  His face had been charred in a fire when he was 12.  He appeared to have a receding hair line; thin patches of hair were all that had ever grown back through the portion of his scalp that crowned his forehead.  Only the hairless, sculpted chest between the unzipped halves of his tattered mulatto vest hinted that he was a teen.
	"Hey!  She's gone!"
	Marvin and Flaherty glanced over their shoulders at Perry; a skinny boy running in frantic circles amidst the banks of equipment that stood in silent clumps, their glowing frames stretching to the ceiling that arched over the lake.
  	"What I don't understand," Flaherty continued, "is how someone who dotes on little girls, like Perry, could bear to blow up an elementary school?  I mean, there must have been dozens of pretty little things who attended that institution."
	"I believe you're turning into a pedophile, Flaherty."
	"No I'm not, Marv.  But I am empathetic."
	A girl with luxurious shoulder-length hair and sunglasses stepped down out of a battered delivery truck.
	"I'm glad your little girlfriend ran away.  You shouldn't be fucking 5-year-olds," the 15-year-old brunette snapped at Perry.
	"She's not 5, she's 8," Perry, his own eyes hidden behind a pair of shades, retorted.
	"If you ask me, she's run away for good," Marvin called out.
	Perry spun on his heels and stomped off between the racks.  His retreating figure carried with it an air of the ridiculous.  He wore the threadbare remains of what had once been a splendid suit; and he had run outside without first pulling on his trousers.  His bony legs were white and hairy, his black dress socks sagged beneath his ankles.
	Marvin laughed to himself.  The shadowed recesses of the metal cavern echoed as Perry took out his frustration on the stoic columns of machinery.  Auxiliary lines cut in automatically, bypassing the damaged circuits.  A few shafts flickered and died. 
 	Countless generations had abused the corridors and their contents.  Doubtless many more would.  Perhaps they had a right to.  After all, it was man himself who, ever increasing the number of his species, filled the universe with a latticework of metal tunnels; fenced in the stars and harnessed their power to feed the inhabitants of billions upon billions of tiny apartments all bursting with happy, productive people.  Or so the story went.  The one Marvin had read once in a book.  Today nobody really knew anything about life before the War.  During the dim centuries since that cataclysm the ancients' only legacy had become the metal catacombs; glowing with the feeble incandescence of emergency power.
	"Ouch!  I cut my foot," Perry whined.  He hobbled out from behind a rack, his sock torn and dripping blood.
	Elsa glanced at him contemptuously, tossed back her hair, and strode over to the beam that held Marvin and Flaherty above the deep pond.
	"Let's get out of here," Elsa said to Marvin.  "If Perry's little squeeze finds her way back to the city she'll lead the cops straight to this lake."
	"Perry," Marvin called.  "Let's get going."
	"Can't," Perry said.  "Harrigan and Frankie are still off somewhere frigging."
	"Fags," Flaherty scoffed.
	"We'd better find 'em, then," Marvin said.  "I'd rather see those two die from AIDS than from the electric chair."
	Ten minutes later Frankie and Harrigan were led stumbling out of a nook between the racks.  Harrigan was clumsily divesting himself of the bondage gear which had restrained his six foot figure while Frankie, still playing, nipped the man's ankles with a riding crop.
	"You've got a semen stain on your pants," Elsa remarked to Harrigan.
	"Is that out of fashion, dearie?"  Harrigan asked Elsa.  His voice was deceptively deep for a homosexual.  But it matched his bald pate, puffy cheeks, and gap-toothed smile.  Harrigan was always smiling, in a stupid sort of way, his eyes squinting behind his smeared, circular, gold-rimmed spectacles.
	Marvin grinned at Harrigan.  "You think you could loan that get-up to Elsa this evening?"
	"No way," Elsa said.
	"Can't lend it," Frankie piped up.  "Harrigan's been powerfully naughty and I must punish him all night tonight."  Frankie was quite forward for his size.  A dwarf, he stood only three and a half feet tall, and the oversized red wool ski cap atop his head only emphasized his childlike aspect.  The sleeves of his pullover sweater were rolled up to the elbow of the fabric, but Frankie's fingers barely managed to clear the cuff.
	Frankie continued to cavort about Harrigan as the man seated himself behind the wheel of the van and started the engine, wrapping a cord around Harrigan's thick neck in a playful attempt to strangle him.  Marvin sat nonchalantly in the seat beside Harrigan.  He gazed through the cracked windshield at the chromium walls that snaked away into eternal twilight.  Behind him Perry was quoting to Elsa from St. Jerome.  Flaherty popped open a can of beer and gulped down its contents as he rummaged through a set of makeshift wooden cabinets for a snack.

CHAPTER TWO

	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 

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