• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 451 0

Wagons on the floor. It was poking out, almost shyly, from beside one end of the couch. Tak floated it into the air and brought it across the room. It stopped before Seth's dark-brown eyes, hanging in mid-air with its wheels slowly turning while Tak ate the rest of its sandwich. It was the Justice Wagon. Tak sometimes wished it was Little Joe Cartwright's Justice Wagon instead of Colonel Henry's. Then Sheriff Streeter from The Regulators could move to Virginia City and drive the blue Freedom van instead of riding a horse. Streeter and Jeb Murdock — who'd turn out to have been only wounded, not really dead — would become friends . . . friends with the Cartwrights, too . . . and then Lucas McCain and his son would move in from his spread in New Mexico . . . and . . . well . . .

'And I'd be Pa,' it whispered. 'Boss of the Ponderosa and the biggest man in the Nevada territory. Me.'

Smiling, it sent the Justice Wagon around Seth Garin in two slow, beautiful circles. Then it swept the fantasies out of its head. They were lovely fantasies, though. Perhaps even attainable fantasies, if it could gain enough essence from the remaining people across the street — the stuff that came out of them when they died.

'It's getting to be time,' it said. 'Roundup time.'

It closed its eyes, using the circuits of Seth's memory to visualize the Power Wagons . . . especially the Meatwagon, which would lead this assault. No Face driving, Countess Lili co-piloting, and Jeb Murdock in the gunner's turret. Because Murdock was the meanest.

Eyes closed, fresh power lighting up its mind like Fourth of July fireworks bursting in the summer sky, Tak began the job of powering up. It would take a little while, but now that things had gotten this far, it had time.

Soon enough, the regulators would come.

'Get ready, folks,' Tak whispered. Seth's fists were clenched at the ends of its arms, clenched and shaking. 'You just get ready, because we're gonna wipe this town off the map.'

Allen Symes worked for the Deep Earth Mining Corporation in the capacity of Geological Mining Engineer for twenty-six years, from 1969 to late 1995. Shortly before Christmas of 1995, he retired and moved to Clearwater, Florida, where he died of a heart attack on September 19th, 1996. The document which follows was found in his desk by his daughter. It was in a sealed envelope marked CONCERNS STRANGE INCIDENT IN CHINA PIT and READ AFTER MY DEATH, PLS.

This document is presented here exactly as it was found.

October 27th, 1995

To Whom It May Concern:

I am writing this for three reasons. First, I want to clarify something that happened fifteen months ago, in the summer of 1994. Second, I am hoping to ease my conscience, which had settled down some but has been considerably stirred up again ever since the Wyler woman wrote me from Ohio and I lied to her in my response. I don't know if a man can ease his conscience by writing things down in hopes they will be read later, but it's worth a try, I guess; and I may want to show this to someone — maybe even the Wyler woman — after I retire. Third, I can't get the way that little boy grinned out of my mind.

The way he grinned.

I lied to Mrs Wyler to protect the company, and to protect my job, but most of all because I could lie. July 24th, 1994 was a Sunday, the place was deserted, and I was the only one who saw them. I wouldn't have been there either, if I hadn't had paperwork to catch up on. Anyone who thinks being a mining engineer is all excitement and travel should see the tons of reports and forms I've had to plow through over the years!

Anyway, I was just finishing for the day when a Volvo station wagon pulled up out front and this whole family got out. I want to say here that I have never seen such excited people who weren't going to the circus in my whole life. They looked like the people on the TV ads who have just won the Publishers' Clearing House Sweepstakes!

There were five of them: Dad (the Ohio woman's brother, he would have been), Mom, Big Brother, Big Sis, and Little Brother. LB looked to be four or so,