The Fractured Earth Read online

  "No," he muttered under his breath, “they like the mass carnage, you yellow grongight."

  "What was that, Grodge?"

  "I said 'Yes sir, you're right!' I'll take off ... let's see ... all of those intersection crashes—most of the humans are surviving those anyway. Too bad their seat restraints weren't electronic like the crash bags. It would have been far better if their corpses had been flying out of their cars."

  "Great observation, Grodge. Perhaps next time we could find a way to counteract that without being too obvious. Keep up the good work."

  "Thank you, sir!" Grodge said, honestly for once. Praise from Pactain the Virulent was rare indeed.

  Grodge set about his tasks, setting the time event back to zero hour. It actually wasn't very interesting until about forty-five seconds later, when the subsurface vessel commander started shouting obscenities, so he set the start for that point. Anyone tuning in to channel one would catch the start and could watch through to the current time. Grodge then removed the intersections loop and bumped everything up a channel. Viewers loved putting their sets on a particular lower channel and letting it switch with whatever the Plannel decided.

  Once he had the channels aligned, he began the task of making it all more interesting by cutting out any boring shots of humans doing nothing, humans crying—they seemed to a lot of that, pitiful creatures—humans comforting other humans—way too much of that, too—and anything that wasn't boring or titillating. He located the most dramatic, bloody, terrifying scenes, and cut a commercial in between the start and finish. He had to change the sequence of a few of them, since there was this one part where a human fell down a ladder and cracked his skull wide open, followed almost immediately by some sort of pipe exploding nearby. He added other various things between them. Most viewers had little choice but to watch the short commercials, because switching the channel would restart the loop, and fast-forward was only available at a premium charge. Most people owned a multi-set and could watch up to four channels at once on it, but the system was smart enough to jump the sequences around so that all four would play one large commercial all at once.

  Those types of commercials made the Plannel a lot of credits, so Grodge took his job very seriously when it came to the timing of various scenes. The better he was able to closely match their lengths, the easier is was for a Megammercial to appear.

  His workstation was huge, given that he was responsible for the very important bottom looping channels as well as the bleeding-hearts. Each one of the loopers was displayed on its own opaque holographic display unit across the top of the workstation. Under that was another row of displays. The leftmost held the commercial sequence list, the right had two views: one was the average viewer's four screen choices and their positions, and the other the top four overall channels by viewership. The center held his work displays where he made the changes, waving his arms and fingers and occasionally using a keyboard or stylus to make edits.

  Grodge the Merciful could not make direct channel substitutions, but he could make recommendations, and there was some automation that could bump his ratings. Each approval or autobump increased his ranking among all the channel editors. He was the First Rank of his channel group, with three other Borelings taking shifts throughout the day and night cycles. He got to pick the cycles that everyone worked—his only real perk, choosing the afternoon and evening of Earth. He might switch it up later, depending on how the mayhem progressed, but guessed that this would be the best time. He'd been through three other Scary Mayhem Planet Reality Apocalypse Show seasons in his seven cycles of working for the Plannel Entertainment Corporation. Each season was a little different, depending on the most deep-seated fears of the largest technical societies on the target planet.

  The first planet had been a very peaceful one. It had a single continent, like most planets, very mild weather, and a unified society that mostly worked in gardens and fish farms. But they were terrified of the huge storms that brewed occasionally under just the right conditions. The western coast of the continent was sure to get a few small storms every year, and one big one every twenty or so years.

  The Corporation pounded them on both coasts with four storms in a row, keeping them strong across the entire continent, even turning them around and hitting the same cities again and again. They even made one of the storms a salt-rain storm!

  "Hilarious," Grodge said out loud, thinking about the time a wind-driven plank had speared three people into a wall. Their society quickly collapsed when their gardens no longer grew and their food stores were exhausted. The Corporation also spoiled their fish farms, gradually making the fish taste terrible. Watching them trying to feed a starving child the horrid food had been a popular pick. Grodge's group ran a loop on channel one for almost an entire cycle that was nothing but children gagging, throwing up and dying by the hundreds.

  "I sure hope we get something like that again this year," said Grodge.

  The second planet almost bankrupted the Corporation. Some high-level idiot didn't disable their planet-buster atomic weapons. When they blocked their sunlight and destroyed all their light-making technology—they were terrified of the dark, living in a double sun system—one continent launched nuclear weapons at the second, who retaliated in kind. The loops of people dying from radiation poisoning was good for a little while, but the Corporation barely recouped their investment since the whole Apocalypse only took three months. The executive who messed up took three months to die, and the Corporation managed to make a decent profit from the sale of that torture to Plannel 19, which handles all of that sort of entertainment.

  This new planet, Earth, that they were featuring had great potential. They had a bunch of nuclear weapons, but nothing like those planet busters. And not only a half dozen continents, but hundreds of different languages and cultures. There were very specific fears that could be induced, and even planet-wide fears where it was easy to strike.

  They are afraid of everything, thought Grodge. Religious fears, global diseases, wars, comets and asteroids, even a supremely silly thing called "zombies.”

  "We could make this last for years and years, bringing out a new terror just as they start to get back on their feet," he said out loud to his doglard that had just returned inside. "Hilarious!"

  Speaking of zombies, Grodge caught sight of one of them killing some random human on a scroll rolling along the bottom right corner of his workstation. He jumped it back a couple of hours and saw that it wasn't being featured by anyone, so he put it on alternate channel seventeen—the one channel his group could directly change—and entered it in the request queue for his eight primary channels.

  If his change to alternate seventeen started appearing on the top four in the rightmost monitor, Grodge could instantly move up a whole rank.

  He watched the scene unfold with a smile and crossed his fingers, tapping his double-thumbs together with a clack.

  --- --- --- --- ---

  "That's my son, and I'm going to kill you." said the larger human. He turned back to what appeared to be his son, dying on the road. The man who'd shot him ended up getting into a truck with some other people. There was a female driving the truck backward.

  Grodge entered commands to follow the truck and the man and woman with the dead son, then marked the shooter and the driver as clean, and the others in the truck as dirty. He marked the two left alive on the road clean as well, hoping it would play out well and the evil man would get his chance at revenge.

  He also re-enabled one car down the road, just long enough for it to stop and pick up the woman and the father.

  "My son is hurt, can we get a ride to the hospital?" the man asked the driver—a young Asian man with an impeccable three-piece suit.

  "Sure, yes, put him in the back seat there. Let me help. Oh my ... is that blood? What happ—" He never finished. The man clubbed him over the head with the tire iron.

  "Let's at least put him off the road," said the father. "And see if we can find som
ething to cover him."

  "This guy's expensive jacket will do fine," said the fat woman. She took the tire iron from the man's hand and bashed the guy in the head again, finishing him. She dropped it and then removed his jacket. The two pulled him to the side and covered his upper body. "We'll be back for him if we can," she said.

  "Yes," he agreed. "But first we need to get to a hospital."

  Grodge chuckled with glee. Yes, do it! he thought. He was getting really good at setting this stuff up!

  He tapped a key to queue up a commercial for Fruity Sweet Stim Sticks, then turned back to watch the progress of the two killers and their race to intercept the truck at the hospital.

  Chapter 4

  —————

  Erin

  The first block to the marina was anti-climactic after the … experience … at home. I struggled with the awkward backpack-bag combination, shifting the bag around a couple of times until it wasn't flopping around. I kept my baton in my right hand.

  Passing the first block, I came across an actual policeman, standing in the road as though to direct traffic.

  No traffic, dingus. Move along.

  I tried to skirt around behind him.

  Didn't work.

  "Miss, stop please," he called out, then started walking toward me. I pretended not to hear him. Maybe I could pretend not to speak English?

  Probably not—I wasn't tan enough.

  "Miss, I need you to stop and tell me where you're going."

  I stopped. I doubted I could get away with a hairy knuckles comment and just walk off like I did at the school.

  "Yes, officer?" I said in my best Valley Girl ditzy voice. The cop looked at me askance. I don't think my act fooled him, since very few Valley Girls walked around with batons in their hands and machetes on a tool belt.

  Unless they were Buffy.

  I put the baton in my belt and kept my hands slightly up so he could see I was unarmed.

  What a stupid word, "unarmed." It was the one-armed man, claimed Dr. Kimble!

  He stopped an arms' length from me, his hand on top of his gun. That was a bit scary, but I think it was at least still clipped.

  "You look decked out for a riot, or a camping trip in Sarajevo," he said. "Why are you sporting a baton and a machete, and where are you going?"

  Should I tell him the truth? That I was attacked in my home by a zombie mom, and in my yard by Bubba Lecter? Probably not. I'd spend a night or two in a psych ward.

  Think fast.

  "I'm on my way home, officer, from school. My last period was a drama class, but when the power went out, we were told we could go home. I tried to call my mom, but the phone didn't work and the buses aren't running. I live near the marina, so it's only a few blocks. I figured I could walk it."

  Geez, what a lame story. Even Mr. Airhead wouldn't believe that one.

  "Alright, Miss, just keep those props on your belt and take care, I've seen a few crazy-looking people walking around, so watch yourself."

  Holy smokes! I can't believe that worked. I thought cops could always tell when you were lying. Either I was good at it, which I knew I wasn't, or I gave him plausible deniability, which seemed more likely.

  "Yes, sir, thank you, sir. I will."

  He was either really nice or a total doofus.

  I walked down the street and around a corner. As soon as I was out of sight, I pulled out the baton again. No way was I going to walk around unarmed.

  Or one armed.

  Less than six blocks to go. Maybe seven. I turned the corner after the cop encounter and was going down a street I rarely, if ever, went down. I wanted to get out of his sight, and it would have been two more blocks before that happened if I'd kept on my normal route.

  Talk about redneck alley! No wonder I never came this way—it was all cars on blocks and rusting washing machines. I looked for a toilet sporting flowers in the bowl. Bubba Lecter must have walked over to my slightly less rundown neighborhood from this one.

  I thought about turning back, but it was just one extra block, then I could turn left again toward the ocean.

  As I neared one house, I could see a couple of guys in wife beaters on a porch, probably kicking back some Bud and watching the apocalypse unfold. One of them got up and went inside the house, but the other wolf whistled at me.

  How he even knew I was a girl was beyond me. Maybe the stupid Frozen backpack. That thing was gonna get me killed.

  "Hey, Buffy, headed for a campout? You're welcome to stay in our backyard!" He laughed loudly at his own joke. Stupid, but not dangerous.

  And apparently watched teen dramas when he was a kid.

  Then he stood up. "Come on, let's see whatcha got in the bag, honey!" He laughed loudly again. I walked faster. He didn't move off the porch, but I kept the side of my eye on him and tried to pick up the pace. Fortunately, it didn't look like he was going to come and chase me.

  He didn't. He didn't need to. He was the distraction. His buddy grabbed my bag from behind and pulled me. He'd snuck around while the other guy kept my attention.

  I stumbled off balance, but managed to whip the baton around and grazed the guy's arm, but it didn't really hurt him. Then the other guy got to me and grabbed my right arm. I kicked with all my strength at his groin, and yelled for help, but the flab in his thighs softened the blow and he put his foul hand over my mouth and wrenched the baton from my grasp.

  DON'T TOUCH ME! my mind screamed.

  These guys are gonna pay.

  "None of that now, Buffy," he grunted, his breath smelling of beer, chips and salsa. "We're just gonna have us a little looksie to see whatcha got for us."

  I struggled, but the two of them frog-marched me up to their porch and inside their house. It was as bad as I'd believed. There were dishes on almost every surface, and boxes of old clothing. A big old chow sat on the couch, and some other kind of hound must have left gray hairs everywhere—or maybe some big tomcat. The place smelled of unwashed bodies and stale food.

  "Now I'm gonna take my hand from your mouth, and you're gonna be real quiet. Otherwise maybe I'll grab some undies from that pile and wad it up in your mouth with tape." He chuckled at his own joke.

  I looked at Mr. Chuckles and nodded, as much as I was able with his hand pressed hard against my face. He chuckled again and removed his hand.

  I spat on his couch.

  He frowned for a second, then shrugged and laughed again. "Heh, there's worse stuff on that couch than a little girl's spit." He chuckled again.

  I shuddered.

  The bag was pulled off my back, along with the backpack. The other guy fumbled at the tool belt. I knocked his hands away and removed it myself. When I handed it to him, he wouldn't meet my eyes. He took the belt, but kept looking at my waist where the belt had been tied.

  He licked his lips.

  Crap. Must be a graduate of the Creep Squad.

  "Get a zip tie," said Mr. Chuckles. The creep didn't move. "Hey!" he said, popping the back of the guy's head. "Wake up! There's plenty of time for that—just get something to tie her hands!" He looked at me and lifted my baton. "You! Sit!"

  I sat.

  This was going south real fast, but I couldn't do anything with Mr. Chuckles holding my baton and slapping it against his meaty paw.

  Mr. Creeps finally woke up and looked around stupidly, then picked up a piece of nylon cord.

  "Tie it tight," said Mr. Chuckles. "I like it tight." He guffawed at that joke. A real comedian, this guy.

  I held out my hands with tight fists, knowing this was my best chance at getting these guys complacent. Mr. Creeps sure enough didn't know what the hell he was doing. As he wrapped the rope around, I pushed against it with my closed and clenched fists, making it as loose as I could. Mr. Creeps tied it as tight as he could, but it was plenty loose for me whenever I relaxed my hands.

  I tried to look frightened and worried. Well, really I didn't have to try too hard—I was frightened and worried.

  Mr.
Chuckles put down my baton and picked up the backpack, while Mr. Creeps just backed away and stared at my chest, licking his lips.

  I tried to breathe slowly. I tried to count down from twenty.

  When I reached zero, I started again at nineteen.

  My breathing calmed. I looked away from Mr. Creeps, who was still staring at me, and looked at Mr. Chuckles. "Nothing in there but clothes," I said. "Food is in the other bag."

  Mr. Chuckles looked at me, then continued riffling in the backpack. But Mr. Creeps looked away toward the bag and turned to walk over to it.