- NND ---------------------------------------------------------
Visit my FTP site: ftp://ftp.asstr.org/pub/Authors/Roller/ <--click
Click, or put the address into your browser. All my stories are there.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew Roller Presents
GIRL PATROL
Chapter Six
HeÕd learned to survive the werewolves and the vampires, and heÕd
prospered. He was known as Daedal Osiris, but he knew himself by a
simpler name: Fat Arnold.
For five billion years heÕd slept under the unmoving Arizona desert,
kept alive by solar cells that slowly wilted in the hot sun but somehow
kept working. Henry Dorkson had been an ingenious inventer. Just a
trickle from the original solar array was all that was left when Fat
Arnold finally awoke. But it was enough, just barely, to keep Arnold from
joining the dead. In the meantime the whole planet had slipped over the
edge; nothing but corpses were left to roam now, plus spirits and a few
wolves. And the occasional human, though they were best off keeping
themselves under wraps, like Fat Arnold did.
Everyone Fat Arnold knew in Darkness City thought he was dead like
they were. They thought he fed on the occasional human stupid enough to
wander into town, or on the ghouls, humans who had received the kiss
from a vampire but none of the benefits. Fat Arnold kept the requisite
supply of ghouls on hand, but they were remarkably healthy and fit, not
half-drained like most ghouls owned by a vampire. And with his slowly-
built garrison of ghouls, Fat Arnold began to play vampire politics in
Darkness City. Now, with Vlad Tristen and Esmelda fled into the past, he
was number one, the head honcho. And he planned to enjoy every minute of
it. At least for as long as the sun lasted. Fat Arnold came outdoors, high
up in his tower that loomed spire-like over Darkness City. He shielded his
eyes, wearing sunglasses, and looked up at the sun. He let its red light
fall onto his skin; he had nothing to fear. Not from the light, anyway. But
how long would it last? How long before the damn thing gave up the ghost
and blew up? For ten billion years life had thrived on earth, and unlife
too, without a thought for the out-of-control nuclear reactor that blazed
there in the sky, rising in the east, setting in the west, day in and day out,
seemingly for eternity.
Now eternity was over. And it was Fat ArnoldÕs lot to be stuck at
the end of it. Arnold scowled at the sun. The free lunch at McDonaldÕs had
turned into a five billion year sleep and now the free life-giving sunshine
was about to turn into a bomb. Vlad and Esmelda had managed to arrange
their escape into the past, but what about everyone else, alive and dead,
who lived on this dying planet? Were they just to sit here until the end?
Waiting to be roasted? A morbid fear that Fat Arnold had possessed, ever
since he saw Willy Wonka back in the 1970Õs, was that his overweight
body would somehow be cooked and eaten. Well, the sun, whose rays
seemed to shine so benignly down on him, if somewhat off-color, seemed
set to turn that fear into reality. Fat ArnoldÕs only consolation was that
the others, spread out below him in Darkness City, didnÕt realize the end
was near.
Fat Arnold laughed. Yes, the old lie spoken by crazy men in his
childhood was finally about to come true. The end was really near, and
wouldnÕt you know, Vlad and Esmelda had left him in charge of the place,
like the last President of South Vietnam, appointed in the final agonized
hours of that country by its previous president, who fled successfully to
the United States. Well, Fat Arnold might have been dull and lazy in his
youth, if not as cow-stupid as his playmates assumed (He did, after all,
follow the fall of South Vietnam avidly in his fatherÕs Newsweek and Time
magazines when it happened), but he wasnÕt going to take the end lightly.
He was going to get out of here, Fat Arnold growled to himself. And he
was going to pull out all the stops to do it, just like Vlad and Esmelda had
done. He would build his own time machine, and he would...
Fat Arnold paused. His chubby hands gripped the railing along the
parapet where he was standing. The cryogenic machine! It was still lying
out there, in the desert, under the waning sun. If he got some of his ghouls
to set it up, he could go back. To his past! He could perhaps even choose
the same time heÕd come from: he could watch the fall of South Vietnam
all over again, perhaps even start his own news network to cover it, live,
ahead of Ted Turner and...
The possibilities were endless, if only Arnold could get out of here.
Children of his youth might have thought of space travel as a way to
escape. But going to the moon or Mars didnÕt get you far enough away from
a star that was set to explode. There was no way to get out of the solar
system and stay alive, out there in the dark reaches of space between the
stars. And the next star, what was it called? Fat Arnold didnÕt know and
he also didnÕt know if it was far enough away to avoid the blast of earthÕs
exploding sun. No, the best bet was the past, and Vlad and Esmelda,
disappearing suddenly into it with the machine theyÕd built, were proof, in
their nonexistence, of the fact that time travel would work. Fat Arnold
didnÕt know where the two had gotten the know-how to build their
machine, but it was sort of like knowing that the Atom bomb had in fact
blown up over Hiroshima; it was proof that the theory could become
reality.
ÒHow much time do I have?Ó Fat Arnold asked of the sun, as it
glowed hotly on his cheeks. And the sun seemed to answer him: Òall there
is, provided you go back to where you came from.Ó Fat Arnold let go of the
railing and turned back toward the darkness of the rooms inside his tower.
Somewhere amidst the pile of books and half-dead computer memories
that Vlad and Esmelda had left behind must be the answer to their escape.
They had left him in charge of Darkness City, but that was nothing
compared to what theyÕd left, jumbled and seemingly worthless to the
average vampire, in their study. Knowledge. Fat Arnold surveyed the room
that had once belonged to Vlad and Esmelda, and considered the cryogenic
chamber under the desert. Together, both might be somehow combined to
get him out of here. It was worth a try, anyway. ÒGhouls!Ó Fat Arnold
called. A human came rushing into the room, well-dressed and ready for
whatever its master commanded. ÒSearch the computer memories for the
word Ôtime travelÕ and let me know what you find,Ó Fat Arnold ordered. It
seemed like a lame way to start, but wasnÕt it Chairman Mao who had said
something about a journey of a thousand miles beginning with a single
step? Fat ArnoldÕs father had always quoted that to him when Arnold
complained he was fat and his father told him to exercise.
ÒIs Master interested in travelling into the past?Ó the ghoul asked
with frightening perception.
ÒOf course not,Ó Fat Arnold answered. ÒThatÕs impossible. Vlad and
Esmelda told me to work on this research project while theyÕre away. Get
busy; donÕt just stand there.Ó
ÒOf course, Master,Ó the ghoul said in an irritatingly raspy voice. He
went to a computer screen, tapped on it. The screen came to life and
glowed into his face, much as the sun had been glowing on Fat ArnoldÕs
face. Behind Fat Arnold the door to the porch where the sun shone was
now locked; the ghoul must never know, as indeed Vlad and Esmelda never
knew, that Fat Arnold was human, living flesh. It was why Arnold always
wore a cloak, pulled tight across the mouth and tied, to cover his
breathing. It was why the fabric of the cloak was especially heavy, to
cover the fact that underneath his pulse was beating and blood was
flowing in his veins. When heÕd arrived in this God-forsaken future heÕd
been an innocent, but heÕd learned, the hard way. And heÕd avoided
becoming a ghoul like some many humans, those who survived anyway, did.
Fat Arnold looked with contempt at the ghoul manning the computer. He
thought he was so smart, yet there he sat, with breath easily detectible
coming from his mouth and nostrils, with his pulse almost visible in the
veins running along his neck. Anyone who got close to him could see he
was a living thing: a Òblood dollÓ, as the vampires disparagingly called
humans. Despite his apparent stupidity, in the eyes of Henry Dorkson and
Milton, Fat Arnold had learned what almost no other humans in this far
flung future knew: to live, you had to pretend to be dead.
ÒIÕll be in my coffin until the sun sets. Let me know what you find,Ó
Fat Arnold told the ghoul.
ÒYes, Master,Ó the ghoul answered, tapping away on the computer
screen.
ÒAnd make your weekly donation to my blood bank downstairs if you
havenÕt already. Only a pint.Ó Fat Arnold grinned. ÒYouÕre lucky my
special medicines keep me from needing to drain more out of you.Ó
ÒYes, Master. So lucky,Ó the ghoul admitted, still keeping his eyes
on the computer. And so Fat Arnold went downstairs, along the ill-lit
circular stairway. And down in the wine cellar that had so recently been
Vlad and EsmeldaÕs, he got into the big black coffin. It unnerved him to
sleep in a box; heÕd passed five billion years unnoticed in a plexiglass box.
But he did it anyway, for vampires were expected to. As he shut the lid he
didnÕt feel like sleeping. He felt like being very awake, in 1978. And he
would kick the asses of two geeks if he ever got back there.
30
----------------------- Dreamgirls! -----------------------
-- More stories at: http://groups.google.com/ Search by typing:
roller666@earthlink.net Click on ÒPower SearchÓ
Change ÒstandardÓ archive to ÒcompleteÓ archive.
-- Other providers:
IFLC: http://assm.asstr.org and http://asstr.org
AnyaÕs LilÕ Hideaway: http://www.insatiable.net/
Silver: http://www.mr-yellow.com/goodies
The Backdrop Club: http://www.backdrop.com
Usenet Newsgroup: alt.sex.stories.moderated
-- Great art books by David Hamilton and Jock Sturges are at:
http://www.amazon.com http://bn.com (photos of naked little girls)
-- Naked little girls/politics: http://www.AlessandraSmile.com
Man/boy love: http://www.nambla.de Politics: http://www.lp.org
http://www.isil.org http://www.fear.org http://www.fija.org
http://www.aclu.org
-- Naughty Naked Dreamgirls (Library of Congress ISSN: 1070-1427)
is copyright 2001 by Andrew Roller. Dreamgirls, Naughty Naked
Dreamgirls, and NND are registered trademarks of Andrew Roller.
All rights reserved.
-- Visit me at: http://home.earthlink.net/~roller666/index.html
Or at http://www.asstr.org/~Roller/index.html
(It is case sensitive, i.e. type Roller, not roller).