Multiplex Fandango (2 page)

HOT WIRED AND

STUFFED WITH GRIT

By Joe R. Lansdale

Here’s the scoop fair readers, and those among you who are not fair, but are the ugly ones, you know who you are. I have made a general plan not to write introductions any more unless they are to my own work.

This is not because I think I’m above it, but due to the fact that I have now been writing and selling for near on forty years, and have been a full time writer for soon to be thirty years, and I‘m feeling a little short in the extra time department. I have tried to read new writers and I have tried to encourage them, and I don’t think that will cease until I’m in the grave, or burned to ashes and distributed under a rose bush for dogs and insects to crap on.

But, to tell you true, as one gets older, and I’m still in my fifties, so I’m not exactly packing my bags and getting my bus ticket from the grim reaper
—
unless he surprises me and t
hinks we should vacation early—but I
am at an age when I have come to the conclusion that I will only read what I want to read when I want to read it, and writing introductions has become too much of a distraction from my own work. I am writing more now than ever before, and I want to be left to it. Time has become more and more precious to me. I want to write my work, not write about other’s work, and I want what spare time I have after work to be with my family and to read exactly what I want to read when I’m in the mood for it, watch the films I want, do martial arts, and so on.

That said, it should be obvious by now I wasn’t all that enthusiastic when I was approached by Wes Ochse’s editor with a request that I read Wes’s work and if I liked it enough, would I write an introduction to the collection?

My heart sank.

My first thought was:
Not again
.

I know, I have asked writers to write intros for me, and I’m sure Wes does not like to feel or like to think anyone would consider him going door to door with his hat in his hand asking for an introduction, as he’s not that kind of
guy. He’s just an honest, hard-
working, steadfast writer who loves what he does.

Still, I feel I have earned some remova
l from the hamster wheel of pay
back, if only a little bit. Though, to be pretty honest, out here in the wilds of
East Texas
I pretty much had to figure it out myself. All the good ones do. I suspect this has been Wes’s case.

Let me tell you. I read a lot of novels and short stories with the possibility of writing an introduction, and most of them I have to pass on because I don’t care for them, or know they’re good, but just don’t have the interest or enthusiasm in them that’s necessary to write a glowing introduction. I am the first to say that my impressions of these books could be wrong—vastly wrong.

However, there’s this. I had met Wes a few times and we always had really good conversations. He even dedicated this book to me and Ray Bradbury, and being in Bradbury’s company in any manner, shape or form is pretty high cotton. But, it also made the matter all the worse, because if I read the book and didn’t like it… Well, it would make me feel pretty miserable. It’s a little like giving a toast to your wife at your anniversary party, telling how she changed your life, and how much better it’s been since she came along, how she made it all worth living, and when you finish, you lift your glass and smile at her, and she says, “You know, for me, it wasn’t all that great.”

I could use the excuse I didn’t have time to read it, which is a polite way out, and often true, but this was Wes, and I like Wes, and he’s a smart man, so I said:
I’ll read it with the understanding that I will only write an introduction if I like the work. If I don’t, I’ll pass, as I always do, even if I might feel like the disappointed husband in my above scenario.

This was agreed to, understood.

I also agreed that I would not go into the book’s contents blow by blow, but if I liked it, I would trumpet its arrival into the world. I agreed to gladly be there at its birth and wish it the best, and bring it a baby present in the form of an introduction, but I woul
dn’t change its diapers or baby
sit or teach it how to read or walk or tie its shoe.

And then I got this.

The book.

And I was wowed. I mean that. WOWED. This boy, he’s good. And for all his nice words about certain authors and their work, their influences on his writing, he’s his own man.

The bottom line is this. Wes takes very odd things and finds their connections; his juxtapositions are amazing and original and just the sort of thing I like.

This is a book that could almost have been written for me.

I can’t give it higher compliment than that.

As I said, I won’t talk much about the stories, but anyone who can write “Tarzan Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” has my respect; white-hot prose that rolls like a well-oiled roller coaster with briars in the seats, containing screaming patrons with those briars up their ass.

Wes is absolutely fearless. Maybe that’s why so much of his work has appeared in small magazines. I know. That’s how I started my career, and bless those little magazines.

I have a feeling this collection, containing such gems as the aforementioned story, and some personal favorites like “Catfish Gods” and “The Secret Lives Of Heroes”, is about to burst onto the scene like a comet streaking across the sky, entering our atmosphere,
leaving in its smoking wake sky
writing from its tail that says: WES OCHSE, HE’S GOOD.

And he is.

So now, I fade away, and leave you with the stories.

All writers know that in the end, that’s what it’s about.

The stories.

Here they are. Enjoy. I know you will.

Joe R. Lansdale

Nacogdoches
,
Texas
 

MULTIPLEX
–
a
movie theater
complex
with three or more screens.
North America's first
multi-screen
theat
er
was The
Elgin Theatre
, created in 1957 by
Nat Taylor
in
Ottawa
,
Ontario
.

FANDANGO
–
a style of
folk
and
flamenco
music
and
dance
. It arose as a dance of courtship in
Andalusia
in southern
Spain
early in the 18th century.
As a result of the extravagant features of the dance, the word fandango is used as a synonym for 'a quarrel', 'a big fuss' or 'a brilliant exploit.'

Pop-culture references include:


           
Procol Harum
's song "
Whiter Shade of Pale
" contains the line
We skipped the light fandango.


           
Queen
's song "
Bohemian Rhapsody
" contains the line
Scaramouch
,
Scaramouch
, will you do the fandango?


           
The 1985 film
Fandango
starring Kevin Costner and Judd Nelson about five college students from
Texas
in 1971 who go on a 'last' road trip together,
before facing
graduation
,
marriage
, and
the Draft
for the
Vietnam War
.

MULTIPLEX FANDANGO
–
a pop-culture, theatrical, book presentation of the works of Weston Ochse on
Six
teen High
-
Definition
literary screens
.

Table of Contents

Sixteen
Screens of Mayhem, Madness and Horror

Screen 1
             
T
arzan Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
             
   
    
             
        

Screen 2
             
22 Stains in the Jesus Pool
             
             
             

Screen 3
             
Fugue on the
Sea
of
Cortez
             
             
             

Screen 4
             
Big
Rock
Candy
Mountain
             
             
             

Screen 5
             
The Sad Last Love of
Cary
Grant
             
             

Screen 6
             
Catfish Gods
             
             
             
             
             
 
     

Screen 7
             
Forever Beneath the Scorpion Tree
             
             

Screen 8
             
High
Desert
Come to Jesus
             
             
             

Screen 9
             
Low
Men Weeping
             
             
             
             

Screen 10
             
The Secret Lives of Heroes
             
             
             

Screen 11
             
Hiroshima
Falling
             
             
             
             

Screen 12
             
The Crossing of Aldo Ray
             
             
             

Screen 13
             
The Smell of Leaves Burning in Winter
             

Screen 14
             
A Day in the Life of a Dust Bunny
             
             

Screen 15
             
City of
Joy
             
             
             
             
             

Screen 16
             
Redemptio
n Roadshow
             
             
             
             

NOW SHOWING ON SCREEN 1

Tarzan Doesn’t

Live Here Anymore

Starring Andy Friarson as Tarzan

and the Mexican Girl as Lady Jane

“The monstrous love child of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jules Verne and Quentin Tarantino. The Legend of Tarzan will never be the same again!”

–
Stardust Magazine

A SENSAROUND GLAMARAMA PRODUCTION

“Me Tarzan.
You Jane.”

– Johnny Weissmuller,
Tarzan the Apeman
, 1932

The earth was rent as if a leviathan had burst free to sail the galaxy for better worlds to chew.
Four miles long, hundreds of feet at its widest point, and more than a thousand feet deep, the Sonoran Rift was one of a hundred that had rent the Earth in the past three years.
No one knew where they came from nor why they happened.
Most had been kept a secret, but those like the Baltimore Scar and the Edmonton Crater, couldn’t be ignored.
But the Sonoran Rift was the largest of them all, and if it hadn’t been for a disenchanted soldier spilling his guts to the network, no one would have ever had an inkling about it.

Andy’s network had tried four times to get someone near enough to corroborate the unbelievable statements the dying soldier had made, and each of their reporters had failed to return.
The idea that another rift existed would be a news coup for the network that could garner millions in advertizing.

“Do you think what they say is true?” asked
Leon
, who rose from checking one of the seventy claymore mines in their sector.

That there are monsters in there?
Andy didn’t even want to give voice to the thought, so he just stared.

“Hey
Vato
, I’m talking to you.”

“I don’t know what to think,” Andy said.

“This isn’t a test,
maricone
.
I was just asking your opinion.”

Looking at the way the sun sliced into the Rift, then met an impenetrable wall of shadow, Andy Friarson would have to say that yes, if there was anywhere in the world where monsters existed, this was the place.
He’d been to
Baltimore
,
Edmonton
and even the tiny crack in the earth in
France
they called the
Vallée de la Mort
.
All of them were interesting, but they lacked the sense of foreboding that the Sonoran Rift had.
There was a feeling about it that reminded him of the time he was in
Croatia
, hiding in a ditch with his camera clutched to his chest while Serbians lined up an entire village, shot them, and shoved them into a mass grave.
Andy had known that at any moment he would be found out and added to the ditch.
When one of the killers had turned to stare directly at his hiding place, Andy had known that the end was near.
He’d closed his eyes and waited to die, unwilling to meet it face to face.
He’d inexplicably survived that day, but had been left with the memory of the certainty of death he’d felt
—
which he felt again now, walking so near the place where monsters were born.

***

The relief battalion had met in an old silver mine east of
Bisbee
,
Arizona
.
There were three hundred of them.
Many were ex-convicts, with the rest ex-military, fresh from the war but unable to stop killing.
With the promise of $100,000 for six months work and the opportunity to protect the sovereignty of
America
, they showed up in droves.
The advertisements were posted on the
Internet
,
Field and Stream
,
Gun and Rifle
and
Soldier of Fortune
.
Everyone was vetted in
Phoenix
first.
With the help of Sheriff Arpaio, the Network created a criminal history for Andy, and with it, a desire to get out of
Arizona
.
With a faked military record, his bona
fides fit right into the model of a modern redneck protector the
US
government was arranging to guard the Rift and the American way of life.

***

Everyone had their own responsibilities.
Andy and his partner, Leon Batista, were in charge of maintaining the landmines in sector six, an area just north and east of the Rift and one of twenty-two sectors.
The mines were the last line of defense.
If anything or anyone clawed its way free of the Rift, it would encounter sectors of seven rows of ten claymore mines, positioned far enough apart so that each row could operate independently, creating a cataclysmic explosion of ball bearings traveling at 4,000 feet per second if detonated.

But if anything got to the claymores, they were all in the shit.
Andy had been issued an automatic pistol with the reminder that the bullets would be best used on himself so that when he was eaten, he wouldn’t know, or care.

The first lines of defense were right along the edge of the Rift.
There was evidence where they’d tried to cap the crevice.
Some of the steel webwork remained.
But all attempt
s
to cover the mighty hole had been stopped by the monsters.
It seemed that as soon as anyone got within a few feet of the darkness, creatures would stir and come out to feed.
Andy had been offered a tour of the area, but even his reporter’s craving for information couldn’t defeat the fear that locked his joints and filled his guts with lead-heavy dread.

Many of his Network colleagues thought he was a coward.
He’d returned from
Croatia
three weeks into a three month assignment.
He’d tried to explain to them what had happened, but they didn’t want to listen.
They were reporters, they’d told him.
Their job was to go into the mouth of hell itself and report what the devil was having for dinner.
If you weren’t willing to do that, then why be a reporter?

Why, indeed.

Towers with Vulcan Canons were interspersed
one hundred
meters apart along both sides of the Rift.
If anything tried to escape, the cannons could create a deadly web of interlocking fire.
Each 20 mm pneumatically-driven, six-barreled, air-cooled, electrically-fired, Gatling-style cannon was capable of throwing 7,200 depleted uranium rounds each minute into anything that moved.
Each tower had their own specified field to fire within, which kept the gunners from aiming directly at another tower.
The very idea that anything could survive such a fusillade was unimaginable, but as Andy reminded himself, this was only the first line of defense.
By definition that meant that the tactical experts who’d created the Rift Defense System planned on things getting through.

Above the towers flew Predator unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with laser targeting for the offsite medium range missiles, as well as video cameras capable of operating in Forward Looking Infra-Red (FLIR), Starlight, optical spectrum and radioactive modes.
As another line of first offense, each carried three AGM
–
114K II Hellfire missiles with High Explosive Metal Augmented Charges.

Satellites were rumored to be on station even farther above, capable of reigning down Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles if they became desperate.
Andy occasionally found himself glancing skyward, but he could no more prove the existence of satellites, than he could prove the existence of God.
Still, he hoped that all the conspiracy theorists and evangelists were right and that there was something watching over them other than the hot desert sun.

***

That night Andy dreamed of his childhood. Tarzan cavorted through the trees high above a forest where he swung from vine to vine.
Beneath him the earth was rent in much the same manner as it was in
Sonora
.
But where in
Sonora
the darkness hid everything from the visible eye, Tarzan’s gaze pierced the shadow, revealing converging armies of Ant Men, Golden Lions, Leopard Men, Snake People and Winged Invaders, just as they’d appeared on the covers of his old, cherished paperbacks.

These creatures, first introduced to Andy from Edgar Rice Burroughs books and the unauthorized Barton Werper volumes, glittered in the darkness as they stared back at their Lord of the Jungle nemesis.
But fear found home in their eyes.
Tarzan was too much for them.
He’d done battle with each of their ilk and cast them back into the dusty confines of their paperback prisons long ago.

Andy turned in his sleep and groaned happily, safe with the knowledge that as long as Tarzan watched over them, he’d be safe.

Then he awoke to screams.

He twisted free from his blanket and crashed from his upper bunk six feet to the concrete floor.
The claxons and emergency lights had sent everyone into frenzy.
He scrambled to his feet, grabbed his boots, and struggled into them, as he tried to hop and run at the same time.
The door to the bunker had been left open to let in the breeze.
As he approached it, he bumped into the guy in front of him who’d stopped to stare at the sky.

A hundred black silhouettes shot from the Rift into the night, tracer rounds from the Vulcan cannons stabbing them as they rose.
Great black insects with glowing orange wings, each was as large as a World War II Japanese Zero.
Rising, falling and slashing sideways, they twisted and twirled to get away from the fusillade of angry rounds fired from the air-cooled Gatling cannons.

Transfixed by the aerial death match, everyone jumped as a Predator drone strafed the action, unleashing its payload of three Hellfire missiles that exploded in awesome tornadoes of orange, red and green fire.

They stood for ten minutes watching the life and death struggle as the creatures tried to make their way free of the Rift.
Each man wore only boots and underwear, expressions agog at a sight that only made sense to little boys with Tarzan dreams who spent their Saturday mornings watching cartoons.

While everyone’s eyes were on the creatures, Andy’s gaze rested on the darkness from whence they came.
He felt the Rift watching him.
The great gaping hole in the earth was like the eye of that Serbian soldier who’d held Andy’s life in his hands.
The capriciousness of Andy’s existence wasn’t lost to him.
Any moment, he wondered if the soldier of his memory wouldn’t decide to fire, the bullet transporting through time to jerk him back to that moment where he’d die and be buried in the ditch with all the other villagers.

One minute the night was filled with unearthly screams and the sounds of battle, the next all was silent.
Two Predators took off south after something, but otherwise everything was still.
Sometime during the battle the claxons had been turned off but Andy hadn’t noticed until now.
The desert was now eerily quiet.
The only sound was the breathing of the soldiers standing in the doorway of the bunker, all in rhythm as they stared into the night.

Finally someone chuckled.

“Let’s get some sleep.”

They turned and headed back to their bunks.
Andy remained motionless, unable to simply turn off what he’d seen.
The others pushed by him, and as the last of them headed for slumber, Andy reached out and grabbed him.

“What was that?”

The man looked Andy in the eye and grinned.
“The tarantulas exploded.
No problem.”

***

Andy didn’t get any sleep after that.

Tarzan had returned to rule his dreams, but he was no longer the King of the Jungle.
Where he had once strutted across the great branches of the forest’s ancient trees, now he skulked from shadow to shadow.
It wasn’t the Leopard Men or the Ant Men that he feared, nor was it the Golden Lions or the Snake People that sent his heart racing.
He was afraid of what he couldn’t see, what he couldn’t know.

A roar came from somewhere in the forest.

Tarzan crouched and peered sideways.

What was it that set him so on edge?

He squatted there for a time.
This time when he moved, he was more like a monkey than a great ape.

***

“What the hell did he mean when he said ‘the tarantulas exploded’?”

Leon Batista looked at him and spit tobacco juice along the ground.
“Where you from you don’t know tarantulas?”

“Upstate
New York
.”

“They no have tarantulas there?”

Andy shook his head.

Leon
spit again.
He said something in Spanish that was lost to the constant desert breeze.

Andy paused from checking the ignition line of the mine.
He’d been to thirty-seven countries and forty states.
He’d even been to
Antarctica
when he’d had to do an expose on penguin rustling by Japanese fishermen.
He felt the need to demonstrate his worldliness to
Leon
, but forced himself to hold back.
He was supposed to keep his head down and his identity secret.
As far as anyone was concerned, he was an Army reservist who’d survived
Iraq
, gotten into a fight with an off-duty cop in
Phoenix
, and wanted something more than a regular nine to five.
He was a convenience store clerk with saving-the-world dreams.