Buddy Holly is Alive and Well on Ganymede by Bradley Denton (my reading book .txt) 📕

the face on the movie screen commanded. “ALLOW THE MINISTERS OF THE CORPS TO BRING THE TRESPASSERS TO ME.”

The stones stopped, and I stood up beside Pete and Gretchen. Shielding my eyes from the welding-torch-bright light, I watched as Boog, bloodied but still grinning, shoved his way out of the crowd and leaned on the Barracuda’s fender. The other members of his gang, minus their vehicles, began struggling toward us as well.

“BRING ONLY THE FOUR ON THE AUTOMOBILE. THE OTHERS ARE PUPPETS. THROW THEM OUT WITHOUT THEIR SHOES.”

Boog’s friends were seized by a multitude of Willyites and dragged away. Boog started forward as if to rescue all fourteen of them, but as he did, eight men in brown suits appeared before us. Four of them held wrist-braced, rubber-surgical-tubing-powered metal slingshots loaded with ball bearings the size of marbles. The ministers were pointing them at our heads.

I jumped down and grasped Boog’s arm. “If you make a move, they’ll nail us. And I’m the only one with a helmet.”

Boog stopped, but his massive body remained tense. “Tell me again why you wanted to get here,” he said.

“BRING THEM TO THE SNACK BAR,” Bill Willy commanded.

“Oh, yeah,” Boog said. ” ‘Why did the Antichrist cross Oklahoma?’ ‘To get to the snack bar.’ “

They took us out of the light and marched us through the mob to the center of the lot, where the Reverend waited atop a cement-block building. A truck with a cherry picker sat nearby, but our captors lifted us by hand to fellow ministers who hauled us up and threw us onto the tar-and-gravel roof as if we were tuna.

I was the last one. The gravel bit into my bare hands, and energy thrummed into my palms as if I were touching an electric fence. I was almost where I was supposed to be.

When I raised my head, I saw the life-size version of William Willard standing on a platform and looking upon me with contempt. My contact-weary eyes hadn’t recovered from the searchlight, so I saw him bathed in a greenish aura.

“SO THIS IS THE MAN WHO CLAIMED HE COULD SAVE THE WORLD,” Bill Willy said.

I rose to my knees. “No. Buddy read a sign that said to contact me for assistance, but I didn’t have anything to do with that. Besides, that only meant assistance for him.”

Pete was on his knees beside me. “How do you know?”

It occurred to me that I didn’t.

“Your Reverendness,” Gretchen called out, “I agree that this schmuck”—she indicated me—“couldn’t save his way out of a wet paper bag. But he doesn’t pretend to be able to, either.” She and Boog were both kneeling as well, and a Corps minister stood behind each of us. I didn’t like it. In the movies, the gangsters make you kneel like that when they’re going to open up the back of your head.

Bill Willy laughed. “HERE THEY ARE, FLAPPING THEIR FORKED TONGUES, SHOUTING THAT THEIR LEADER HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS INVASION OF OUR WAY OF LIFE! OF COURSE YOU DIDN’T, SATAN. YOU’RE AS INNOCENT AS A BABY’S BEHIND. WE BELIEVE HIM, DON’T WE, GOOD PEOPLE?”

The crowd screamed, “No!”

“Shit heel Mickey Mouse!” Boog bellowed. “Y’fuckin’ morons! It’s only television!”

“MORE THAN THIRTY YEARS AGO,” the Reverend continued, “I WARNED THE PEOPLE OF THIS NATION ABOUT THE DEMON EMBODIED IN ROCK AND ROLL. ‘BUDDY HOLLY AND HIS ILK SING MUSIC TO STEAL HUBCAPS BY,’ I TOLD THEM. BUT THEY WOULDN’T LISTEN, AND NOW THE DEMON HAS INVADED EVERY TELEVISION SET IN THIS WORLD SO THAT NO ONE CAN ESCAPE IT! IT CONTAMINATES OUR LIVES, SCREECHING ITS DARK HYMNS OF DEGRADATION—”

A red mist replaced his aura, and I recognized him. His was the face of the pastor from 1967, the one that Mrs. Stummert had dragged me to when I had sung “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” in Vacation Bible School. His was the face of the pastor who had called me a piece of dogshit and put his hands on me….

I lurched up from my knees and stumbled toward him. “You don’t talk about my life like that, fat butt!”

I was within four feet of the platform when I was knocked down from behind and kicked onto my back. A minister stood over me with his legs spread in a macho stance on either side of my feet. His slingshot was aimed at my crotch.

“AND NOW HE REVEALS HIS TRUE NATURE!” the Reverend said triumphantly. “A SNARLING, WEAK-KNEED SERVANT OF EVIL!”

“So’s your mother!” I cried, and scissored my legs. My heels hit the macho minister in the ankles, and he fell on his ass. The slingshot’s aim was ruined, and its ball bearing smashed one of the floodlights shining on Bill Willy. The crowd shrieked like banshees, and the Corps ministers on the roof were distracted.

Pete tripped his guard as the man came to assist the one I had toppled, and Boog grasped his own minister’s lapels and flung him off the building. Gretchen grabbed her guard’s slingshot tubing and whirled him from the roof as well. Boog threw mine after Gretchen’s.

Pete’s minister was still down, but as I stood, he managed to ready his slingshot and point it at me. Other Little Davids emerged from behind the lights and equipment and stood in a semicircle, all aiming at me.

I have no innate courage, but whatever had drawn me to that place had damped my usual cowardice, and I saw what would happen if the Corps let fly. I spread my arms wide. “Fine! Drill me full of steel! Meanwhile, my friends can take bets on how many shots’ll hit the Reverend!”

That gave them pause, and I took advantage of the moment by leaping onto the platform and putting my arm around Willard’s shoulders. He tried to twist away, but I held him tight and faced the bizarre image of my helmeted self hugging him on the movie screen.

The crowd, enraged and screaming, began to flow up the sides of the snack bar.

“Make them stay down,” I said into the Reverend’s ear, “or I’ll do something perverted to make your ministers shoot, and we’ll both be Swiss cheese.”

The Reverend gave me a malevolent glare and spoke into his microphone. “REMAIN WHERE YOU ARE, BROTHERS AND SISTERS! THIS CREATURE CANNOT HURT ME.”

The crowd melted back to ground level, and the ministers on the roof froze.

I tightened my grip. “Now tell the Corps that if they hurt my friends, I’ll put my fingers through your eyes into your brain.” I was pretty sure that I couldn’t really do that, but it sounded John Wayneish.

“NEITHER CAN HIS MINIONS. LET THEM BE.”

Boog, Gretchen, and Pete stepped past the ministers and joined me and the Reverend on the platform.

“What now, yorkface?” Gretchen asked.

“Beats me,” I said. “I’m just following a cosmic impulse, and it hasn’t told me what to do next. Except to ask the Reverend to order his boys off the roof and out of the building. This snack bar is mine.”

Bill Willy covered his microphone. “All right. But if anything happens to me, all these people are gonna chew you up and spit you out on the fucking dirt.”

“Hey, he can talk like a normal person,” Boog said.

The Reverend took his hand from the mike. “BROTHERS, LEAVE THE ROOF. EVERYONE INSIDE PLEASE EXIT, I WILL DEAL WITH THESE DEMONS.”

The Corps ministers were reluctant, but they and the technicians climbed down to the mob. When they were gone, I handed Willard to Boog, removed my helmet, and spoke into the microphone.

“I need to get inside,” I said. My voice didn’t boom the way Bill Willy’s did, and on the movie screen, my eyes looked uncertain. “At least, I think I do. So I want that cherry picker to take us down, and I want everyone to back away at least fifty feet. If you don’t clear the space, or if anyone attacks us, then whatever happens to the Reverend will be on your heads. I’m serious.”

“Spoken with all of the authority of Barney Fife,” Gretchen said.

The crowd, muttering darkly, began to back away. The air vibrated with engine noise, and the cherry picker rose and swung toward us. The basket set down beside the platform, and then I saw the flaw in my plan. We couldn’t all squeeze into the basket with our hostage, but if we didn’t, whoever was left behind might take a ball bearing in the skull.

“Anybody have any suggestions?” I asked.

Pete pointed south and yelled, “Hit the deck!”

The engine noise had not come from the cherry picker alone. Flashing wingtip and belly strobes were bearing down on the snack bar from an altitude of less than a hundred feet. A red-and-white fuselage flashed through the searchlights; we flattened; and the plane cleared the roof by three yards. It was a V-tailed Beechcraft Bonanza.

As it flew past the theater’s north fence, it went into a climbing turn and almost clipped the oil refinery tower. Then it swung to the east and dove to buzz us again. This time, a window popped from the starboard side and fluttered down to the crowd like a scrap of cellophane. A massive, pointy-eared head poked out of the hole, and there was no mistaking its identity: Ringo.

The Bonanza had to pull up sharply to avoid flying through the movie screen, and the Willyites went into a thrashing panic.

Pete shook his fist at the sky. “Those rotten kids! Laura doesn’t even have her license yet!”

I stood, holding my helmet strap in my left hand, and spoke into the microphone. “Folks, we’re coming down in two groups. The first will consist of the Reverend and this guy.” I nodded at Boog. “They’ll enter the snack bar, and if anything untoward happens while we’re waiting for the basket to return, the Reverend will be made into Bill Willy burgers. In addition, our friends”—I looked up at the circling Bonanza—“will strafe you with an Uzi.” I lowered the mike to Willard. “Kill the searchlights, Reverend, I don’t want your boys testing the range of their slingshots on the airplane.”

He complied. “WE HAVE NO FURTHER NEED OF OUR SIGNALS OF FAITH, BROTHERS. THE LORD HAS SEEN OUR LIGHT.” A few seconds later the searchlights went off.

Boog pulled Bill Willy to his feet, and they entered the basket, which rose a few inches and moved toward the edge of the roof. Pete and Gretchen stood as well, and Gretchen looked at me with something almost like respect in her eyes.

Pete was watching the Bonanza. “You two are in big trouble!” he shouted. “You’re grounded for a week!”

“But they saved our tails,” I said.

Gretchen groaned. “Guess again.”

Twenty feet away, at the south end of the roof, stood the Bald Avenger. He took a pistol from his jacket and walked toward us, his face rigid with determination.

In the cherry-picker basket, Boog put his hands on the Reverend’s throat, and Bill Willy waved his arms at the Avenger. “No, brother! If you harm them, this creature will harm me!”

The Avenger ignored him. As he walked, he aimed his pistol at the floodlights illuminating the roof and shot them out one by one. I began to feel the February chill.

The crowd moved toward the building again.

Boog released the Reverend and vaulted back to the roof. Willard leaped from the basket as well, knocking over the video camera in front of the platform. The movie screen went black, and Bill Willy scrambled off the roof into the arms of his followers.

With the screen dark, I, my friends, and the Avenger stood on an electric island in a sea of shadowed flesh. The Avenger shot out the last