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  "Look. I don't have a weapon. I know where you are. I don't want to hurt you. Wouldn't you like someone to talk to some more, Sally?"

  He stood still, waiting.

  She did not move.

  He said, "I have more fresh food. I could share it. I have some cocoa powder, too. I have a nice safe place to stay in the rockets. I don't want to hurt you."

  ––

  The elbow moved.

  An arm appeared. Sally waved. "Hi, Jim."

  "Hi," he said.

  They embraced. She shivered in his heat.

  ––

  He took her not to the rockets, but to the ridge. He wanted her to see the stone faces staring up into the stars that night they finally satisfied their hunger.

  The faces watched them make a fire. They ate and they mated like the animals in the jungle. He felt almost safe in her arms. Then he became frightened. Towards the chill of dawn he slipped from her sleeping form, gently disengaging her arms from his waist and pulling his blue blankie over her to keep her warm. Little One took his place. Sally moaned in her dreams but didn't awaken. He crept to the rocket where he hid things, where he felt truly safe. He fell asleep curled around his ratty backpack, The Jungle Book on his bare chest.

  Morning came. Jim rubbed his eyes as he heard something rustling. The hatch he had not been able to secure had betrayed him. She had found a way inside.

  Sally stood over him with her Glock 19.

  "I should kill you now, but I won't."

  Jim tried to snatch the gun. She drew back. Little One growled.

  "Go away!" Jim said.

  "I intend to do just that."

  "Go!" he said.

  "Well, I am. But do you want to go with me?" Her large eyes blinked away tears.

  Jim shook his head, confused. "This is my rocket. You leave, now!"

  "Jim, please—don't you understand? I'm taking this spaceship. I know how to activate it and I'm going home. The second I saw it, I remembered everything I'm supposed to do. Maybe my mother told me or something or somebody else. All I know is I've got to get out of here, now! I'm leaving this awful place. It's programmed to take us home."

  "Us? Home?"

  "We don't belong here, you know. We never did. We just got stuck here, that's what Mother said before she died."

  "No."

  "Yes. Now you must decide. You can either get out of this rocket or I'll kill you and throw you out and let what's left of the damn humans eat you for dinner."

  Jim pulled out his pocketknife.

  Sally pointed her gun.

  Little One whimpered behind her.

  Sally put one hand on a dull panel that burst into violet and orange hues that pulsated and hummed. "L21—00-systems go," she whispered.

  The rocket thrummed louder, a high-pitched keening. The long dead rocket had come to life, a silver bullet primed to erupt into the heavens.

  "You've got to get out if you're staying. You've got to decide. You're either in or you're out."

  Jim got to his knees and dropped his knife. He couldn't hurt her. "But this is my home. It's not yours."

  "Why can't it be mine, too? Why can't we just share it?"

  "You're stealing my safe place, my home." Jim tried to knock the gun out of her hand and she hit him. He grabbed her wrist.

  "How dare you?" she said. "Who are you?"

  They struggled for possession of the gun.

  She kicked him where it hurt the most. He let go, groaning. He had kissed her. He had . . . loved her? Love. What did that word mean? Hell, what if she wasn't even human? Was she a lost wanderer? A gypsy? An alien monster?

  "I'm sorry. Oh, Jim, did I hurt you?" The gun slid down to the smooth reflective surface and they saw their own scared faces. She kicked the gun and the knife out of the hatch. Their reflections shimmered.

  "Yes, you did—but I hurt you first, didn't I?" Then he understood. If Sally was a lost wanderer, maybe he was too.

  "I don't want to be alone. I just want to go home."

  The hatch slid into place. The strangers stared at each other while the dog licked Jim's hand.

  "But where is home? Where are we going?"

  Sally didn't know.

  He didn't either.

  Maybe it was better that way.

  At least they could be alone together.

  And as far as home went, they'd figure that one out when they got there.

  Sally reached for Jim's hand, the one free of dog slobber. A half-smile touched her lips. Jim sighed as his fingers curled around hers. Maybe they were already there.

  Home.

  "Alone" was originally published in 2006 in Jim Baen's Universe Vol. 1 #4; it was later included in The Shadows, Kith & Kin, a collection of Lansdale's short stories published by Subterranean Press. "Alone" © 2006 Joe R. Lansdale and Melissa Mia Hall.

  THE BIG BLOW

  TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1900, 4:00 P.M.

  Telegraphed Message from Washington, D.C., Weather Bureau, Central Office, to Issac Cline, Galveston, Texas, Weather Bureau:

  Tropical storm distrubance moving northward over Cuba.

  6:38 P.M.

  On an afternoon hotter than two rats fucking in a wool sock, John McBride, six-foot one-and-a-half inches, 220 pounds, ham-handed, built like a wild boar and of similar disposition, arrived by ferry from mainland Texas to Galveston Island, a six-gun under his coat and a razor in his shoe.

  As the ferry docked, McBride set his suitcase down, removed his bowler, took a crisp white handkerchief from inside his coat, wiped the bowler’s sweatband with it, used it to mop his forehead, ran it over his thinning black hair, and put the hat back on.

  An old Chinese guy in San Francisco told him he was losing his hair because he always wore hats, and McBride decided maybe he was right, but now he wore the hats to hide his baldness. At thirty he felt he was too young to lose his hair. The Chinaman had given him a tonic for his problem at a considerable sum. McBride used it religiously, rubbed it into his scalp. So far, all he could see it had done was shine his bald spot. He ever got back to Frisco, he was gonna look that Chinaman up, maybe knock a few knots on his head.

  As McBride picked up his suitcase and stepped off the ferry with the others, he observed the sky. It appeared green as a pool-table cloth. As the sun dipped down to drink from the Gulf, McBride almost expected to see steam rise up from beyond the island. He took in a deep breath of sea air and thought it tasted all right. It made him hungry. That was why he was here. He was hungry. First on the menu was a woman, then a steak, then some rest before the final meal–the thing he had come for. To whip a nigger.

  He hired a buggy to take him to a poke house he had been told about by his employers, the fellows who had paid his way from Chicago. According to what they said, there was a redhead there so good and tight she’d make you sing soprano. Way he felt, if she was redheaded, female, and ready, he’d be all right, and to hell with the song. It was on another’s tab anyway.

  As the coach trotted along, McBride took in Galveston. It was a Southerner’s version of New York, with a touch of the tropics. Houses were upraised on stilts–thick support posts actually–against the washing of storm waters, and in the city proper the houses looked to be fresh off Deep South plantations.

  City Hall had apparently been designed by an architect with a Moorish background. It was ripe with domes and spirals. The style collided with a magnificent clock housed in the building’s highest point, a peaked tower. The clock was like a miniature Big Ben. England meets the Middle East.

  Electric streetcars hissed along the streets, and there were a large number of bicycles, carriages, buggies, and pedestrians. McBride even saw one automobile.

  The streets themselves were made of buried wooden blocks that McBride identified as ships’ ballast. Some of the side streets were made of white shell, and some were hardened sand. He liked what he saw, thought: Maybe, after I do in the nigger, I’ll stick around a while. Take in the sun at the beach. Find a way to get m
y fingers in a little solid graft of some sort.

  When McBride finally got to the whorehouse, it was full dark. He gave the black driver a big tip, cocked his bowler, grabbed his suitcase, went through the ornate iron gate, up the steps, and inside to get his tumblers clicked right.

  After giving his name to the plump madam, who looked as if she could still grind out a customer or two herself, he was given the royalty treatment. The madam herself took him upstairs, undressed him, bathed him, fondled him a bit.

  When he was clean, she dried him off, nestled him in bed, kissed him on the forehead as if he were her little boy, then toddled off. The moment she left, he climbed out of bed, got in front of the mirror on the dresser and combed his hair, trying to push as much as possible over the bald spot. He had just gotten it arranged and gone back to bed when the redhead entered.

  She was green-eyed and a little thick-waisted, but not bad to look at. She had fire red hair on her head and a darker fire between her legs, which were white as sheets and smooth as a newborn pig.

  He started off by hurting her a little, tweaking her nipples, just to show her who was boss. She pretended to like it. Kind of money his employers were paying, he figured she’d dip a turd in gravel and push it around the floor with her nose and pretend to like it.

  McBride roughed her bottom some, then got in the saddle and bucked a few. Later on, when she got a little slow about doing what he wanted, he blacked one of her eyes.

  When the representatives of the Galveston Sporting Club showed up, he was lying in bed with the redhead, uncovered, letting a hot wind blow through the open windows and dry his and the redhead’s juices.

  The madam let the club members in and went away. There were four of them, all dressed in evening wear with top hats in their hands. Two were gray-haired and gray-whiskered. The other two were younger men. One was large, had a face that looked as if it regularly stopped cannonballs. Both eyes were black from a recent encounter. His nose was flat and strayed to the left of his face. He did his breathing through his mouth. He didn’t have any top front teeth.

  The other young man was slight and a dandy. This, McBride assumed, would be Ronald Beems, the man who had written him on behalf of the Sporting Club.

  Everything about Beems annoyed McBride. His suit, unlike the wrinkled and drooping suits of the others, looked fresh-pressed, unresponsive to the afternoon’s humidity. He smelled faintly of mothballs and naphtha, and some sort of hair tonic that had ginger as a base. He wore a thin little moustache and the sort of hair McBride wished he had. Black, full, and longish, with muttonchop sideburns. He had perfect features. No fist had ever touched him. He stood stiff, as if he had a hoe handle up his ass.

  Beems, like the others, looked at McBride and the redhead with more than a little astonishment. McBride lay with his legs spread and his back propped against a pillow. He looked very big there. His legs and shoulders and arms were thick and twisted with muscle and glazed in sweat. His stomach protruded a bit, but it was hard-looking.

  The whore, sweaty, eye blacked, legs spread, breasts slouching from the heat, looked more embarrassed than McBride. She wanted to cover, but she didn’t move. Fresh in her memory was that punch to the eye.

  "For heaven’s sake, man," Beems said. "Cover yourself."

  "What the hell you think we’ve been doin’ here?" McBride said. "Playin’ checkers?"

  "There’s no need to be open about it. A man’s pleasure is taken in private."

  "Certainly you’ve seen balls before," McBride said, reaching for a cigar that lay on the table next to his revolver and a box of matches. Then he smiled and studied Beems. "Then maybe you ain’t... And then again, maybe, well, you’ve seen plenty and close up. You look to me the sort that would rather hear a fat boy fart than a pretty girl sing."

  "You disgusting brute," Beems said.

  "That’s telling me," McBride said. "Now I’m hurt. Cut to the goddamn core." McBride patted the redhead’s inner thigh. "You recognize this business, don’t you? You don’t, I got to tell you about it. We men call it a woman, and that thing between her legs is the ole red snapper."

  "We’ll not conduct our affairs in this fasbion," Beems said.

  McBride smiled, took a match from the box, and lit the cigar. He puffed, said, "You dressed up pieces of dirt brought me all the way down here from Chicago. I didn’t ask to come. You offered me a job, and I took it, and I can untake it, it suits me. I got round-trip money from you already. You sent for me, and I came, and you set me up with a paid hair hole, and you’re here for a meeting at a whorehouse, and now you’re gonna tell me you’re too special to look at my balls. Too prudish to look at pussy. Go on out, let me finish what I really want to finish. I’ll be out of here come tomorrow, and you can whip your own nigger."

  There was a moment of foot shuffling, and one of the elderly men leaned over and whispered to Beems. Beems breathed once, like a fish out of water, said, "Very well. There’s not that much needs to be said. We want this nigger whipped, and we want him whipped bad. We understand in your last bout, the man died."

  "Yeah," McBride said. "I killed him and dipped my wick in his old lady. Same night."

  This was a lie, but McBride liked the sound of it. He liked the way their faces looked when he told it. The woman had actually been the man’s half sister, and the man had died three days later from the beating.

  "And this was a white man?" Beems said.

  "White as snow. Dead as a stone. Talk money."

  "We’ve explained our financial offer."

  "Talk it again. I like the sound of money."

  "Hundred dollars before you get in the ring with the nigger. Two hundred more if you beat him. A bonus of five hundred if you kill him. This is a short fight. Not forty-five rounds. No prizefighter makes money like that for so little work. Not even John L. Sullivan."

  "This must be one hated nigger. Why? He mountin’ your dog?"

  "That’s our business."

  "All right. But I’ll take half of that money now."

  "That wasn’t our deal."

  "Now it is. And I’ll be runnin’ me a tab while I’m here, too. Pick it up."

  More foot shuffling. Finally, the two elderly men got their heads together, pulled out their wallets. They pooled their money, gave it to Beems. "These gentlemen are our backers," Beems said. "This is Mr.–"

  "I don’t care who they are," McBride said. "Give me the money."

  Beems tossed it on the foot of the bed.

  "Pick it up and bring it here," McBride said to Beems.

  "I will not."

  "Yes, you will, ‘cause you want me to beat this nigger. You want me to do it bad. And another reason is this: You don’t, I’ll get up and whip your dainty little ass all over this room."

  Beems shook a little. "But why?"

  "Because I can."

  Beems, his face red as infection, gathered the bills from the bed, carried them around to McBride. He thrust them at McBride. McBride, fast as a duck on a june bug, grabbed Beems’s wrist and pulled him forward, causing him to let go of the money and drop it onto McBride’s chest. McBride pulled the cigar from his mouth with his free hand, stuck it against the back of Beems’s thumb. Beems let out a squeal, said, "Forrest!"

  The big man with no teeth and black eyes started around the bed toward McBride. McBride said, "Step back, Charlie, or you’ll have to hire someone to yank this fella out of your ass."

  Forrest hesitated, looked as if he might keep coming, then stepped back and hung his head.

  McBride pulled Beems’s captured hand between his legs and rubbed it over his sweaty balls a few times, then pushed him away. Beems stood with his mouth open, stared at his hand.

  "I’m bull of the woods here," McBride said, "and it stays that way from here on out. You treat me with respect. I say, hold my rope while I pee, you hold it. I say, hold my sacks off the sheet while I get a piece, you hold ‘em."

  Beems said, "You bastard. I could have you killed."

&nb
sp; "Then do it. I hate your type. I hate someone I think’s your type. I hate someone who likes your type or wants to be your type. I’d kill a dog liked to be with you. I hate all of you expensive bastards with money and no guts. I hate you ‘cause you can’t whip your own nigger, and I’m glad you can’t, cause I can. And you’ll pay me. So go ahead, send your killers around. See where it gets them. Where it gets you. And I hate your goddamn hair, Beems."

  "When this is over," Beems said, "you leave immediately!"

  "I will, but not because of you. Because I can’t stand you or your little pack of turds."