Page 54 of The Bad Weather Friend

“This isn’t the movies,” Jurgen said. “The monsters in movies aren’t really monsters. They’re just CGI crap. In real life, real monsters can be killed and stay dead.”

“That’s just a theory,” Benny objected.

Mengistu disagreed. “I fear that Jurgen’s statement is not even a hypothesis, let alone a theory. A hypothesis is a statement of what is deemed to bepossiblytrue, but it cannot be taken for the truth until all related facts and further evidence are brought into comparison. As we have no facts, no knowledge, of how or whether the life force in Bugboy can be extinguished, I am confident when I say that Jurgen’s statement is mere speculation.”

A ululant shriek quivered through the forest.

As one, the boys exploded out of the shrubbery and sprinted maybe twenty yards downhill before they recognized the howl of a coyote or perhaps a wolf. That realization brought them to a halt. When they looked back the way they’d come, even the meager moonlight confirmed that Mrs. Baneberry-Smith’s masterwork of cross-species engineering had not risen again. Relief had the same effect on each of them, and they stepped to three different trees to unzip their pants and empty their bladders.

HOODLUMS

Being in the back seat with Benny, one of his hands in both of hers, was sweet. It felt right.

Harper Harper had been getting smoother and bluer year by year until she was now fully smooth but not quite yet fully blue, which is why her baseball cap was emblazoned with just the wordSMOOTH!Very few people knew what smooth and blue meant, although individuals who were on the smooth-and-blue path recognized others progressing along it as well, whether or not they announced it with words on articles of their clothing. It wasn’t a cult; they never attended meetings or produced manifestos or intended to drink poisoned Kool-Aid together. Quite the opposite. Smooth and blue described a condition of the mind and the heart that all but ensured a more stable and happier life than most people experienced.

The funny thing about Benny—one of the funny things—was that he was on the smooth-and-blue path, but he recognized neither that she was nor that he was himself. He seemed ignorant of the entire concept. Harper’s assumption had been that he was by nature smooth and blue but failed to recognize the need to perform maintenance on those qualities, allowing a little rust to form and some of the color to fade. He was a true lamb of a person, but perhaps he had not been able to cultivate those qualities because his life had been so full of extraordinary turmoil.

She decided that she’d be the one to make him aware of his innate smoothness and blueness, and bring him along the path toward the fullness of both. As confirmed by the rollicking events of this evening, that task was likely to be arduous, even dangerous, but her determination wasn’t pure magnanimity. She had a selfishreason to help him be his best and happiest self because, to her surprise, she had in mere hours begun to fall in love with him.

As for the three hoodlums attempting to jack the Explorer, they were as far from smooth and blue as anyone could get. She pitied them, but she was not prepared to tolerate their kind. If Spike hadn’t come into Benny’s life, and if she and Benny had nevertheless ended up together this evening, and if they had encountered these thugs, she would have had to take them down. Even considering her extensive martial arts training and quick mind, she would likely have sustained one or even two serious injuries, not least of all because of the machete. A firearm required that it be aimed with a precision that many shooters lacked, and the awkward shape and heft of a bludgeon like the tire iron conferred on he who wielded it the disadvantages of bad aerodynamics and negative gravitational effects inherent in its design. Large-edge weapons with expertly forged and tempered blades, however, were easily manipulated by piteously stupid people, and they made it difficult for even a master of tae kwon do to get in close and personal enough to damage the assailant.

As Harper and Benny observed the action framed by the driver-side windows of the Explorer, the first attacker to be disarmed was the one with the pistol. For a person of his formidable dimensions, Spike the craggle proved surprisingly quick. Before a shot could be fired, he seized the gunman’s hand and squeezed so hard that Harper thought she could hear fingers breaking like breadsticks. The thug cried out and let go of the gun, the barrel of which appeared to be bent when their destiny buddy tossed it aside. He picked up the would-be carjacker by the throat and crotch and threw him at the snarling fool with the tire iron, andboth hoodlums tumbled backward, through the gap between two gasoline pumps.

“It’s a shame he doesn’t have reproductive organs,” Harper said. “He would be perfect for Chrissy Wenwald.”

“Who is Chrissy Wenwald?” Benny asked.

“She’s the breakfast and lunch hostess at Papa Bear’s. The tall blonde with the nose job that came out just right, so that you don’t look up her nostrils all the time like with so many nose jobs. She’s really sweet and pretty, but she’s so darn unlucky at love it’s heartbreaking.”

“Of course, I’ve seen her,” Benny said. “She seems nice.”

“Sheisnice. But most men these days are a mess. The sexual revolution relieved them of the burden of responsibility, not to mention chivalry.”

The third attacker, a grinning and oily individual with the black and rotting teeth of a methamphetamine addict, took advantage of the distraction provided by Spike’s need to hurl the gunman at the basher with the tire iron. Long-legged and long-armed and as lean as an arachnid, the crook spidered forward, intent on cleaving his adversary’s skull. Exhibiting the nimbleness with which he had changed from casual wear into a tuxedo, Spike shifted out of the path of the blade without seeming to move—was just here and then there—startling his assailant. This clever evasive tactic resulted in a demonstration of the primary problem with an otherwise effective edge weapon. With all the force the thug could muster, he brought the blade down on the roof of the Explorer, against which it rang like an iron bell. The compressed vibrations traveled through the blade, through the haft, into the would-be killer’s hand, causing instant if temporary numbness and weakness extending past his wrist. His fingers spasmed, andhe lost his grip, and the machete bounced off the vehicle. Spike snatched it out of the air, by the haft, and slung it away into the night.

“When you asked Spike if he dated,” Benny said, “I thought you were, you know, interested in him for yourself.”

Amused, Harper said, “Really? Oh, he’s wonderful, very John Wayne and all that, but he’s not my type.”

“Why not?”

“For one thing, he’s a bit too unpredictable. Chrissy Wenwald is up for unpredictability more than I am.”

Tire-iron guy had disentangled himself from the gunless gunman with the broken fingers. Having failed to process recent events to an extent that would have led to an understanding that the towering target of the carjacking was not a common variety victim, the thug still had confidence in the efficacy of his weapon, which indicated low intelligence and a high degree of stubbornness. Holding the L-shaped tool by the short end with the lug wrench, he could choose to use it as a club or, because it ended as a bladed pry bar, drive it forward with the full force of his body and skewer his enemy. Clutching the makeshift spear with both hands, he chose the second tactic. He was understandably surprised when Spike’s right arm abruptly elongated, hand raised in the gesture that is universally recognized as a command to halt. When the blade pierced the open palm, Spike smiled, and his hand closed bloodlessly around the bar, halting the attacker and instantly converting his forward momentum into leveraging energy. Because the attacker held fiercely to the weapon, he went vertical, arcing over Spike’s head, flipped loose of the tire iron, and crashed onto the roof of the Explorer with a sound that suggested he would welcome the swift arrival of an ambulance.

As the chastened thug rolled across the roof and fell past the starboard windows to the ground, Benny said, “‘For one thing.’”

Harper said, “For one thing—what?”

“You said that, for one thing, Spike was too unpredictable. Was there another reason, before you knew he lacks reproductive organs, why he wasn’t your type?”

“Well, you know the answer to that, silly.”

“If I know it, I don’t know that I know it.”

“He isn’t my type, Benjamin, because you are.”

His expression was priceless. He really was a lamb.

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