The Big Bust.

“Shhh! Someone’s coming,” whispered Staff Sergeant Jinny Rosko.

Her partner crouched there in suspense, peering intently through the strap-on night-vision goggles.

“There’s three of them,” advised Constable Bill De Floret. “I’ve got three hot spots in the brush. They’re walking east, just this side of the cornfield.”

DeFloret was a good man and a hot trigger, and she was glad to have him here for backup under these tactical circumstances.

She lowered her daylight-type pocket scope half an inch and took a regular look for herself. Three distinctly bulky, black silhouettes were visible in the moonlight to her naked eye.

They were just on this side of the fence-line. Small conifers provided a windbreak, and the men flitted through the shadows for cover.

She could see why they chose the place for an entry point into their patch. The occasional passing car headlights would be easy enough to dodge, and dopers were a paranoid bunch. Their bobbing, round little heads were occasionally backlit by the light of the full moon as they traipsed along.

People walking across farmer’s fields in the middle of the night were an unusual sight, and bound to arouse comment. Some of these people knew their ground very well indeed. It was best not to underestimate the opposition in this never-ending war on drugs.

She keyed her microphone and whispered instructions to her troops, perfectly disposed to interdict and capture what she figured were dope-cultivators. A local farmer, yet still within the city limits, was reporting suspicious activity on his property. He said there were all kinds of nocturnal comings and goings. They had found a trail running across his land, and a dead giveaway, plastic bags, peat pots, arm-loads of stalks and sticks, root-balls, and other garbage dumped in the ditch.

An urgent phone tip half an hour ago brought them here on the double. Their farmer-friend was driving to town when he observed three men on mountain bicycles and wearing backpacks.

They were riding out along Vimy Ridge Side Road. She scrambled half her shift, not sure they could get here in time to deploy in classic ambush positioning.

“Observe and report,” she instructed. “Be aware of booby-traps. These men are presumed armed and dangerous.”

In her earpiece, she heard a series of double-clicks in acknowledgement. Bringing the microphone to her lips, she breathed softly in tension and suspense. There was only the eight of them, four teams of two.

“Hold up, hold up,” she murmured into it.

De Floret was still watching intently.

“They’re going into the trees,” he reported. “They’re following their little trail.”

“Wait,” ordered Rosko. “Everyone just hold up until I say. We need evidence, remember.”

Bill looked over for a moment.

“Safety first,” she added into the mic.

He nodded with a little grin.

“They’re at a hundred-fifty metres,” he advised, pointing across the gloomy fields, to where the dope-trail led into the dark and threatening forest.

“Based on past performance, they should have a couple of lights,” he allowed.

While still speaking at a murmur, silence was not so crucial, now that the quarry was committed. It was vital to catch as many of these turkeys as they could. In a world where social inequality, rampant consumerism, and crass materialism ran amok, people smoking pot represented a challenge to the established social order, without which further economic progress could not be made. And it cost a lot of money—a good bag of pot might run as high as $300 these days. The scum should be spending that money to feed their families; but it just went to more dope and more crime.

The mosquitoes were bad, despite the fact she was liberally slathered with repellent.

It was a known fact the stuff would fade the dye in their uniforms. She cursed the anti-social misfits who put the state to so much time and expense.

Time hung heavy on their hands.

She checked her Rolex.

“They’ve been in there five minutes,” she said quietly.

Jinny made a careful note, and then re-stashed her notebook.

“How long?” asked De Floret, with a bead of sweat trickling down his forehead from under the camouflaged forage cap. “I’ve had enough of this crap.”

“We want to nail ‘em good,” she said. “Let’s catch them with the stuff, all right?”

Checking her watch again, she saw that a fairly large, fluffy cloud was going to go past in front of the full moon.

“All right. All units converge, very slowly now. Soupy’s ETA three minutes, confirm,” she breathed into the radio.

A series of decisive double-clicks avowed their determination to succeed, a form of non-verbal communication.

“Bill?” she murmured.

De Floret was already moving out, his .40 Colt automatic ‘all tuned-up and ready to go,’ the saying went. She shoved the little scope into a pocket and fastened the Velcro properly.

She picked up her weapon.

Cocking the SPAS-12 assault shotgun, she checked it for safety. Her finger would never leave the lever until these guys were in the back of a cruiser, or the scene was secured…Jinny wasn’t taking any chances with these jerks.

Some saw it as a game, a big chess game. But she never traded pawn-for-pawn with these turkeys. There was no ratio. It didn’t matter if you killed a hundred of them for even one of your own, the price was still too high.

Simply put, they didn’t get paid to take risks with their lives. She focused on following Bill silently through the gloom, relying on his unerring instinct and the fact that he had their only pair of night-vision goggles. The department could only afford a small number of the devices, and so she had to share them out, one set to a team. She tripped on a root or something invisible and went down.

Back up in a heartbeat, she gratefully acknowledged that it was a pretty quiet sort of a fall.

And thank goodness for that, because they were right at the black edge of the tree line.

She and Bill both halted for a moment and breathed a sigh of relief when they got out of the direct moonlight.

***

Units Two and Three were deployed to cut off the quarry’s escape route, and Bill and she were following the trail. Unit four was right at the road, anticipating that if the men slipped through the cordon, they would make for the place they normally stashed the bikes before the long hike in. Twenty men would have been insufficient, if truth be told, and she knew it, but…but.

While they hadn’t had time to locate any patches of dope, that was why Two and Three were in close, where they could observe and locate the exact spot the men went.

The night exploded with shots, shouts, and flashes of light in the woods from ahead and off to their right.

“Go, go, go!” she gasped at Bill, but then she stumbled right into the back of him.

“I’m friggin’ blinded,” he gasped in dismay. “Hold up, hold up!”

“Follow along,” she advised, grabbing his sleeve and literally willing the man to move along.

More shots, more incoherent shouts, she recognized some of the voices among them…

More flashes.

***

Stumbling forwards with De Floret in tow; Sergeant Rosko made for the ruckus, still trying to follow the trail in the blackness of the forest.

“Damn! I’ve got to turn on a light, Bill,” she cursed.

“I still can’t see a damned thing,” he agreed. “Down.”

They squatted there in the underbrush as they heard more loud voices, and another shot. It was dead ahead, about forty metres into the thicket.

“That’s Murgatroyd,” gasped Jinny.

“Hold fire! Hold fire!” she bellowed, conscious that they had no idea where that round went, or where it was directed, or who had just fired it. She could see beams of light stabbing around over there.

Everything was very silent for a moment, and then someone off the trail but inches away, just on the other side of a veritable wall of tall grass, leapt up and dashed away off to the northwest, or so she thought. Their breath was ragged, and loud in the darkness, clearly someone panic-stricken with fear…

“Hold fire!” she shouted, springing to her feet and pelting off through the long grass and small shrubs that made for a small clearing in the gloom. Just for one moment, her flashlight picked out a fleeing figure.

“Halt! Halt!” she shouted, slowing down, sliding into position, and freezing into her firing stance.

It was already too late, but she pulled the trigger a eight or nine times in sheer desperation before thinking better of it and putting the weapon up.

She didn’t have a compass…but she was pretty sure it was northwest. Jinny pulled out the microphone.

“Four, one suspect has gone to ground, may be heading to you, over,” and she heard excited voices in response, drowning out all the voices, good, excited cop voices, behind her.

She held the button down, making everyone’s ear pieces squeal for a good thirty seconds, an old supervisor’s trick. When she let it up there was silence.

“All right, I’m coming in, hold your fire,” she ordered. “Bill?”

Off in the distance, from the direction of the city, she could hear sirens—a lot of them.

“I’m right here where you left me,” he responded. “I can see better now.”

“Shine your light, I’m coming in,” she told them. “What have you got, Two and Three?”

***

What they had was one dead suspect, face down in the grass, and two backpacks. One was still on the suspect, and one had simply been abandoned in flight.

“There are two suspects still out there, people,” she advised all the teams, including those inbound.

“Let’s see what we’ve got.”

De Floret gently lifted the dead person’s chin, and rotated the neck to get a look at the face.

“I saw this guy at the drop-in centre a couple of months ago,” he grunted.

She was busy re-deploying available manpower, and waiting for reinforcements. With cruisers parked on all contiguous side-roads, the suspects were probably walking across-country, most likely back to town.

“What was the beef?” she asked.

“Huh?” asked Bill. “No, he was just there. Having a free cup of coffee and some cake, and listening to some lecture on something or other. Mental hygiene, for all I know.”

Bill was there looking for another individual.

“What’s in the bag?” he mused, whistling a nameless tune through slightly pursed lips.

He knelt in the grass beside the dead man and carefully opened up the top while Jinny held a light for him.

The dead weight of the load suddenly let go, and she stepped back as the stuff rolled and tumbled out on the forest floor.

“What the hell?” she gasped in sudden confusion.

The pair of them stood looking at a load of tomatoes, cucumbers, green peppers, and acorn squash.

What the hell was going on here?

Jinny stood there gasping for breath and sanity.

“Three here. We have a blood trail. I repeat, we have a blood trail…”

Bill got up abruptly and went to the other pack. It was the same thing; more vegetables, more tomatoes.

“Aw, for God’s sakes,” he groaned.

Bill grabbed the microphone.

“Approach suspects with caution, and hold fire,” he advised all the teams. “We may have a code ten-one-hundred here. Ten-one-oh-two. They’re probably, I repeat probably unarmed, and not dangerous. Approach with caution.”

Jinny stood there, gazing down at the dead man’s load of stolen vegetables.

“How could we have known?” she asked the brooding night, as silent tears streamed down her face. “How could we have possibly known?”

The voices of a billion crickets, with all of their chirping and rustlings in the grass, was no answer at all.

End

The Weeping Guitar.

Father Ricardo entered the miserable abode humbly, as befitted his mission. While he did not quite know what to expect when he went in, he was pleased to see the place was tidy and well organized, although not exactly clean.

The place bespoke an orderly mind, and the man’s incoherent pleadings completely mystified him. More than anything, the father saw it as a cry for help. So many special souls were just lost in this community, too many simply abandoned by families unable to care for them. It saddened him to think, but Pablo was afraid to talk about something, and the young man had nowhere else to turn.

“Tea, Father?” asked Pablo dutifully.

The young fellow’s eyes regarded him nervously from over the bushy black beard and under the long, unkempt hair.

“I would be delighted,” beamed Father Ricardo.

Pablo gave a quick grin and turning, bolted for what was presumably the kitchen.

“Have a seat, Father!” Pablo blurted, his head popping back into the room from around the corner for a moment.

“Thank you,” said Father Ricardo, wondering how long all this might take.

He wished he knew what it was all about.

It seemed as if Pablo had a serious problem. It was something that he could not talk about in the confessional. Father Ricardo was aware that there were more human concerns than sin and damnation. Maybe Pablo was in trouble, or was shy about asking for help with a job application form.

As the Father recalled, he saw Pablo once or twice at the evening classes for adults, but hadn’t thought to inquire what he was studying. Many of the barrio folk were illiterate. Pablo may very well have been trying to learn to read…it was the only way out of here for unskilled people. He preached that message from his pulpit. The father was delighted to see Pablo take advantage of whatever the church could offer in the way of education.

The silence was oppressive. Father Ricardo noted a fresh breeze wafting in from the rear of the dwelling. With a glance, he saw the front door was properly closed. Small as the place was, he wondered at the lack of noise, but perhaps Pablo went to fill the water-jug or borrow a tea bag…Father Ricardo felt heartsick, something he had once described as ‘a kind of dread and a kind of grief.’

The father was hopeful he could help Pablo with whatever the problem was. God knew that was why he was here. Most likely some simple little problem, although daunting enough to barrio folk. The father had a lawyer friend if it really came down to it, and was known to perform a hasty marriage upon occasion.

There was a faint noise coming from the corner opposite the kitchen door. It was the strangest thing…Pablo’s battered guitar…thin, metallic noises emanated from it. The sounds diminished, and then rose again, still barely discernable…grinning fondly, the father recalled that Pablo could really make that thing sing.

“Huh!” thought Father Ricardo.

Where was Pablo? The father rose and stepped across the room to the far corner from where he sat and had a quick look. Pablo was not in the kitchen. There was a pot of water on the stove, which wasn’t lit. A small pile of kindling attested to no lack of fuel. So where did he go?

Father Ricardo’s initial impatience fell quickly, as it had only been a couple of minutes after all.

He returned to the one and only good chair in the room, although it had seen better days.

In all honesty, the father should be grateful to rest for a while. If only he had the nerve to just fall asleep in Pablo’s chair for half an hour! He realized that guilt or his conscience would not allow that to happen.

“It’s too bad, really,” he muttered.

The noise from the guitar was not exactly annoying, but it was certainly very odd.

Father Ricardo held his breath for a moment, almost cursing as people’s voices, loud and obnoxious, passed by outside the thin and ill-fitting front door.

It was the music of the spheres, or something, he thought inconsequentially. What a sad and mournful tune. It was like a million lost souls, calling on the night breeze, yet caught and interpreted by the strings…stretched taut like a man’s life, with the fates measuring out the thread.

Perhaps it had something to do with the breeze, or some unheard vibrations from the rail lines nearby. Maybe there was a locomotive idling in the yard, and the vibrations were coming up through the ground. It was a dirt floor, and the guitar was perched on a wooden box in the corner.

Still, he couldn’t really account for it, and in the enforced confinement caused by Pablo’s mysterious disappearance, he didn’t have much else to focus on. On impulse, he got up again, and went over and picked up the guitar, thinking that maybe just to move it would stop the weird sounds.

To his surprise, the ethereal music seemed to get louder, and even stranger, the guitar was wet.

Instinctively the father looked up, but the roof, which was really just corrugated galvanized metal sheets, seemed sound enough.

He heard a faint noise, and then Pablo was right there holding two pasteboard cups from the grille just up the street.

Father Ricardo’s jaw dropped at the look of sheer relief on Pablo’s face, his words almost meaningless.

“So you heard it then,” said Pablo.

Father Ricardo held that weeping guitar as if it was the most amazing thing he had ever touched. The two men stood there transfixed, together, listening to the rising, swelling music of the weeping guitar with a kind of fear, and hope, and horror, and sick fascination.

Two hot tears washed down the father’s cheeks, his thoughts raced here and there and everywhere, and he couldn’t think of one single God-damned thing to say.

END

Here's a nice song by Matt Mays.

The Christian Children's Fund.

Lenny lays an egg.

metropolitan hospital.

“Yes, doctor,” replied Nurse Betty-Ann Genomi, a tall, brown-haired woman in her mid-forties with large, cone-shaped breasts.

Saint Athelstan’s was only a stones-throw from the police station, so they got all kinds of winners in here.

"He’s complaining about abdominal pain and the x-rays…well,” she said.

“Is he prepped?” asked Doctor Rolf Ludwig, duty intern on the night shift in this busy “Yeah. It’s real, all right,” he agreed, hands up in the air as he stared at the shots clipped into the light box.

“Wow,” he said.

#

The patient was face down, sedated but conscious. His frizzy red hair, rheumy, bloodshot blue eyes and swollen red nose bespoke a life-long love affair with the sauce. The bedclothes, steamy warm after coming out of the cubby, were pulled back to reveal the patient’s pale and globular gluteus maximae.

A nurse reached up and adjusted the light, and the rays of brilliant white reflected back up from the patient’s heinie.

“What’s your name, buddy?” asked Doctor Rolf.

“Lenny,” said the Caucasian male, who was about five-foot seven and approximately a hundred and forty-five pounds.

“How are you doing?” asked Betty-Ann, right there at his side.

She held onto Lenny’s hand with an open and sympathetic look.

“Am I going to die, doctor?” asked Lenny in a slurred manner.

“Nah,” assured the doctor. “We’ll have that nasty old thing out of there in a jiffy.”

“All righty then,” he noted. “Put a little petroleum jelly on there for me? We’re going in, ladies and gentlemen.”

A small titter went through the assembled class. This was a teaching hospital, and no opportunity was too small to pass up.

"Okay. We’re going to be doing a manual dis-impaction of what looks like a hard and compacted stool. Whether it is from compression during anal intercourse, or some other cause is no concern right now.”

The doctor heard a few more gasps and giggles and he looked up for a moment.

“Pay attention,” he said. “The odds are you will have to do this sooner or later. I’m just grateful, but it doesn’t look like a light bulb, which I have also done.”

He patted the patient on the shoulder, but Lenny was pretty much out of it.

“Give me the retractor,” he muttered, and then the doctor got on with the job at hand.

“That’s strange,” he said. “Lenny?”

“Uh…yeah…?” said the patient and everyone laughed, even the doctor. “Whaddya want?”

“Well, I would kind of like to know what this is, if you have any idea,” said Doctor Rolf.

Lenny stared wild-eyed and desperate at the floor.

“You mean you don’t know?” he gasped, and tears sprung into his eyes.

“Do you feel any pain, Lenny?” asked the Senior Nurse, Betty-Ann.

“No…?” said Lenny.

The room was silent.

“It’s not a stool,” said the doctor.

He watched on the screen as the forceps slid gently alongside the foreign object.

“It’s hard,” said Rolf. “But not too hard. It’s not metal or glass.”

Relief was apparent in his voice and what little they could see of his demeanor behind the cap and mask.

“Well, what have we got here?” he mused, pulling what looked like an ostrich egg from the long-suffering patient, one Lenny Bonsalvo.

#

“Was he drunk when he was brought in?” asked the doctor.

“No,” Betty-Ann shook her head. “But he admits to having problems with alcohol.”

“It’s hard to believe he could swallow that, drunk or sober. I find it hard to believe he could do that, I mean like shove it so far up there,” he muttered.

“He must have had help, Doctor,” she murmured neutrally and in a non-committed tone.

“I tend to agree,” said Rolf. “Well, I guess you can’t blame the man for not wanting to talk about it too much. Do me a favour, nurse?”

“Of course, what is it?” she replied.

“Clean that thing up for me. I want to show it to George. You know what! I think I’m going to show it to poor old Lenny, too.”

#

Lenny stared up from the bed in dismay.

“That thing—that thing was inside me?” he gaped.

“Yeah,” agreed Doctor Rolf. “I have to be completely honest with you, Lenny. I was sort of wondering if someone put it there. Did you have help? I am a doctor, and I’m not judging you, Lenny, but…”

“What! But what?” bellowed Lenny.

“Hey, hey, hey, calm down,” said the doctor. “I was just asking! It’s my job, you know? But I was kind of wondering if somebody did this to you? You know, like maybe as a joke, or even some kind of abusive situation—”

But Lenny clambered up and out of the bed, staying on the far side from Doctor Rolf.

“Lenny, Lenny!” the doctor tried reassurance. “No one is judging you, Lenny. Honestly, I’m more curious than anything. I sort of wondered if you were in some kind of trouble.”

Lenny’s arm shot out and he pointed an accusing finger, seemingly at a loss for words.

"What’s the matter, Lenny, why are you so upset? I’m just trying to help you,” soothed Doctor Rolf.

“Ah! Ah! Ah,” screeched Lenny.

“Whoa! Simmer down,” said the doctor.

“It’s hatching! It’s hatching, that thing is hatching, doctor!” shouted Lenny, then he fell over backwards, hitting the adjacent bed and the patient in that one began screaming too.

Rolf took a quick look at the thing in the jar and his eyes almost bugged out of his head.

#

Doctors Rolf and George Malassori stared at the apparition in the jar.

They had it in a workroom off to one side of the internal medicine lab.

"What the hell?” muttered the normally soft-spoken George.

He straightened up, shaking his head in disbelief.

“It’s like a gecko, all covered in ketchup,” he marveled. “Let me get a sample of the fluid.”

“Yeah,” breathed Rolf. “It’s like a baby alligator or something. This is amazing…just nuts.”

"I won’t contradict an expert,” noted Doctor Malassori. “You’ve just made medical history, incidentally.”

“Huh,” said Rolf. “Lenny did. Not me.”

Malassori laughed in agreement.

“Can’t say as I blame you,” he said.

#

Rolf had other emergencies, and the usual rounds, and he was asleep behind his computer when screams and thumps awoke him with a distinct nervous shock. You could read about adrenalin, and you could dissect the human body, and you could listen to witnesses. But this was real adrenalin and he had no objectivity.

The doctor ran sliding out into the hallway, to be confronted by a small wave of green-clad nurses and screaming people.

They almost bowled him over as he hurriedly stepped back into the room. He reached out and tried to grab an arm as they sped past.

“Nurse!” he yelled but she gave him a frightened glance and just kept going, looking back nervously and sobbing.

“What’s going on?” he asked, but she was clearly hysterical.

She spurted off again, shaking her head and moaning incoherently. Rolf thought about declaring a lockdown. His heart pounded in a moment of indecision. He needed more information.

#

As Doctor Rolf rounded the corner at a dead run, he ran smack into a hellish scene, the likes of which he would never forget for the rest of his life. Their floor security, Mister Nicholby, lay dead on the floor with his chest torn open and a black cavity exposed, and a thick trail of blood smeared in a path along the floor.

Nurse Betty-Ann had the gun up and was drawing a careful bead.

The sound of a shot, quickly followed by another, was shockingly loud in the now-quiet corridor.

The doctor flinched and covered his head, as a little fall of dust came down from the ceiling tiles.

Rolf stood there, open-mouthed, taking in the bizarre scene.

“Got the little bastard,” she said, looking calmly into Rolf’s eyes and blowing smoke from the end of the barrel.

“Nurse…?”

Doctor Rolf swallowed. His unbelieving eyes found a huddled, dirty dishrag-like form up the hallway.

“What the hell is going on around here?” he asked in shock. “What—”

The strident call of the overhead speakers broke into his state of mental inertia.

“Doctor Ludwig to emergency, Doctor Ludwig to emergency,” he heard, in a kind of relief.

Finally, something he could understand. Something that made sense. He was tempted to give his head a shake, or pinch himself or something.

He stepped over to the nursing station, reached over and grabbed a phone. Awkwardly, he put in the number, making sure to get it right first time. His hands were shaking.

“Yes? Doctor Ludwig here,” he reported. “What have you got for me?”

“Please get down here right away, Doctor Ludwig,” came the breathless voice of Nurse Helga Slovodnik. “We have another Lenny. Doctor George thinks we may have another one of those things.”

END

Note: This story originally appeared in 'Wonderwaan.' (Netherlands.)

Bushman.

Bushman froze into immobility, staring at himself in the mirror to determine the effectiveness of his disguise. His ghillie suit was sewn with a thousand little Velcro loops. Bushman had taken the time to study his theatre of operations. Today, a few fresh-cut wild grape vines were woven into his hat, festooning down over all the costume, a few loops of berry creepers, a handful of long, willowy saplings from a young sycamore. A goodly number of fresh maple branches, to give himself volume, and presence. He would blend in. The key thing was to break up the distinctive silhouette of a man.

You wanted to avoid disguising yourself as a nut tree, like chestnuts or acorns, otherwise the squirrels would drive you batty. The leaves were changing, and his suit was printed in a high percentage of a reddish khaki, as well as dark greens, dark browns, and black.

All those years of dance training were paying off. No one had ever even suspected that he practiced being a bonsai when he was alone, always alone. (Always alone, at home in that tiny little apartment, all one-hundred-thirty square feet of it, the rear unit of a sampan floating beside the docks in the wharf section of Toshyo-Kugoyo, which wasn’t even on a map of Japan. Down two then left, hard to remember or navigate, when coming home drunk, in the middle of a pitch-black night, a drizzling cold rain hitting you straight in the eyes, and with a bit of a swell on the bay. And maybe some gusty winds, too.)

That was all so long ago, another story, really. But he had studied with the best, he reminded himself, as he often did when he was alone, which was most of the time.

Studying his reflection with attention, he appeared to have done it yet again. With a little wind on the hillside, to account for small changes of position, necessary to avoid a cramp, he would be undetectable. With his carefully-chosen Carolinian flora woven into the camouflage suit, he would be indistinguishable from a thousand other little bushes. The hills of Ancaster, the so-called ‘mountain’ of Hamilton, the upper reaches of Sixteen Mile Creek, the Bruce Trail, these were the stomping grounds of his home range. Just like a tiger, he had a range, and he loved to roam it. To stand on the cliffs at Rattlesnake Point, while nearby, climbers tested their skills. Trying not to appear too sturdy, in order to avoid being taken for a belaying point—to look out over the land, dropping ever southward towards Burlington Bay, was an additional bonus.

It gave a real visceral fillip to the work.

Bushman loved the taste of the wind, whipping around the corner of a soaking-wet limestone cliff, with fresh-broken shards of frost-cut rock lying all over the hillside. The truth was, he was enjoying the challenge hugely.

He simply couldn’t be too careful. Bushman was going after not the biggest, but possibly the most dangerous game of all—the human being. And considering that the young unattached males, when they entered the breeding age, could be quite aggressive, and would tend to travel in packs, made his caution, the caution of a seasoned hunter, all the more relevant. They were young, aggressive, and testing their own strength, as well as testing their status in the adult world around them.

Bushman would be alone and unarmed, and had forsworn violence, except as a last resort, and only for the good of society. He would exercise discretion, in any case, and try not to hurt anyone more than he might have to, bearing in mind the exigencies of a given tactical situation.

He was obviously considering the fact that they might just be kids or something.

The quarry was being tracked, on weekends, and after hours from when he worked in Dundas as a librarian’s assistant, a glorified title for what was essentially a minimum-wage ‘gopher’ job.

It was a, “Go-for this and go-for that,” sort of a job.

It was all he had.

Early on, Bushman had disguised himself as a tall, slightly balding, unemployed fifty-year old bachelor, not fat but with a bit of a paunch, and then ridden his six-year old large-frame black mountain bike over half the roads in the greater tri-county regional area. Feeling safe behind his distinctive dark green shades, he became familiar with Flamborough, aware of Walker’s Line, infinitely conversant with Milton, he roamed them all, and everywhere seeking the signs. The signs were there at Hilton Falls, and Crawford Lake, and Mount Nemo, up along the cliff-face, where the little pock-mark caves, the rounded kettle caves were to be found. Beer cans, empty cigarette packets and butts, condom wrappers and the used condoms too. Along with wine bottles, whiskey bottles, roach clips, sometimes a shoe or a sodden-wet pair of underwear. So far, they belonged to either sex on a ratio of about fifty-fifty. Jackets and sweaters discarded with plain trash, candy wrappers and the like. If people wanted to party, why couldn’t they just keep a little waste-paper basket in the car? It only made sense, for crying out loud.

The signs were there too, up by the caves at Mount Nemo, and along in Twiss Canyon as well, if you knew where to look. And as the Bushman, he knew where to look.

His quarry drank Bud Light, in tall cans that mostly came from one particular liquor store, a busy street in Bronte, which was a little lake-port village incorporated into the boundaries of Oakville. The product ID codes microscopically printed on every can gave them away every time. Another clue, the village itself, sequestered but with good transportation corridors; with its easy access to the Bruce Trail. The location was brilliant. Far better than Bushman’s little pad in East Hamilton. These beer cans, often dirty and old, but sometimes quite warm and wet, still smelling of beer inside, had been discovered on a number of occasions. They would be found, almost predictably, about three to five kilometres apart, and always on the right side of the road.

Always on the right side—that said something about the person that did it.

And it wasn’t always the same road, not by any means. Studying his little note-book, Bushman saw that it was the same kind of roads. His quarry always went to the same kind of places. He apparently liked creeks, and cliffs, and especially fords in rivers, like down under the Highway 403 Bridge north of Bronte. None of this was really new to him, but it helped to confirm today’s plan in his own mind.

Because what he, she or they really seemed to like was waterfalls. His quarry had visited, or was in the process of striking off of a list…yes, a list. He was striking off a list of every waterfall within a thirty-kilometre radius of somewhere in west Oakville…or maybe Burlington. The two cities butted up against each other with hardly a ripple in the urban sameness. Whoever this was, they really seemed to like waterfalls, and tall cans of Bud Light, as regular as clockwork. Those habits, those modes of thought would be their undoing. And the weekend was upon him.

Bushman considered west Hamilton or even Ancaster, but quickly ruled them out. At least for now. He might get more information, and that might change things. Gingerly, accompanied by the sound of twigs crackling, he crept and pulled himself onto the seat of the Suburban, big and black and ticking still, in the dimness of the rented storage facility. This place was costing him fifteen hundred a month. He had better get some kind of results pretty soon. It would be nice to have something to show for it all, someday.

After carefully pulling the large vehicle out of the storage bay, he hit the radio control button on the little device clipped to his sun-visor, and sat a moment to be sure the big rolling steel door was going down properly. He waited until he heard it thud at the bottom before driving off.

The windows of the truck were tinted an inky charcoal, and he felt confident enough as he motored east up Highway 403, multiple lanes of speeding commuters, heading for Appleby Line.

This is where he would turn northwest, and begin the initial stalk, the approach to today’s target area, by surface road.

Bushman negotiated the vehicle carefully, heart beating strongly as he got north of the new Highway 407. Finally he was heading northwest by the compass, on Appleby Line, as traffic began to thin out and it was clear sailing ahead. Appleby was more of a county road, and tailgaters could sometimes be a problem. But today he was lucky. He was alone on the road for the moment. He had only been going along for about ten or twelve minutes, proceeding nicely in the direction of Rattlesnake Point, when he saw a brilliant pin-prick of intense blue-white light from the gravel verge of the road ahead, on the right side.

With his heart pounding up around his collarbones, and with his constricted throat making breathing difficult, he pulled to a stop as far onto the narrow shoulder as he could get. He practically didn’t even have to get out. It was with a sense of futurity, simple unchangeable fate, that he picked it up and confirmed that it was indeed a recently-emptied tall can of Bud Light.

And it was still cold! Well, chilly was a better word. But still, and sitting in the sunlight like that! He held it upside down, and watched in morbid fascination as a long, slow, hesitant drop of white foam came out and fell to the ground by the toes of his commando boots. One little sniff was enough to convince Bushman. Fresh as a daisy! This was his quarry.

Exultantly, he got back into the truck, stiffly and labouriously to be sure, but with a sense of accomplishment. He had successfully predicted his quarry’s behaviour thus far, at least for today. While it was difficult to tell for sure, whether the person was going northwest or southeast, if it was indeed his quarry, then the can being on the right side of the road was of telling significance. It had to be northwest.

How much do you want to bet? He asked himself that question.

How much do you want to bet that that person is up there, about three to five kilometres down the road, throwing out another empty tall can of Bud Light? Bushman put it into drive, and firmly pushed the pedal to the floor, after carefully checking his rear-view mirror. Once he made a visual identification of the subject, there would be no escaping from his inexorable justice.

Based on past observations, and known behavior patterns, there were really only two ways for the quarry to go: either up Rattlesnake Point, on the twisting switchback Appleby Line, or it would be left on Derry down to Twiss Canyon. All he had to do is catch up to a suspicious vehicle, and follow his instincts from there. They wouldn’t go right on Derry. That way just led to Milton, and that was no place to cruise, drinking Bud Light ( and probably smoking pot too.)

If they went to Twiss Canyon, he knew exactly where they were going after that. Whatever they were driving had to be a small, economical car, given the likely educational levels of the persons who would fit the profile of this kind of perps…their obvious mental poverty.

There. It had to be it. Bushman’s big black Suburban was coming up from behind at an easy fifty kilometres an hour faster than the little red Honda in front of him. As he blasted past at a hundred and thirty klicks, Bushman glanced over. Sure enough, inside were two males and two females, all about eighteen years of age. He couldn’t see if they were drinking, but why were they going so slow? If they weren’t up to no good?

Now all he had to do is pick a spot, left or straight, which would it be? On an impulse, he chose to go left at the crossroads, knowing that if they went straight up Rattlesnake, there was still a chance to come around and catch them again. Playing his own role to the hilt, he tromped the pedal down and went serenely sailing to the west on the paved, two-lane blacktopped Derry Road. He was gratified to see the Honda, the red colour perking up a little as it was hit by a burst of sunrays, had turned as well, and it was now following along behind at a more leisurely pace.

Bushman found himself grinning like a maniac, discovering a strange kind of love for his quarry.

But after all, they were his reason for being.

Bushman figured for sure they were smoking joints and cigarettes and drinking tall cans of Bud Light in there. But he had his job to do, and he knew just exactly where he had to be. If they kept on at this speed, he would just have time to hide the truck, and get into position. With his quarry following true to form, there was about a ninety percent chance. Sooner or later they would have to stop for a piss. The girls would be slower drinkers. The guys would get out for sure.

And besides, he was writing down their license number, just for good measure. But the odds were he would nail them today for sure. All he needed was one can. One tall can of Bud Light, in plain view, or in someone’s hand…maybe setting it on the roof as they relieved themselves.

“Just let me see one can,” he muttered as he concentrated on picking up a few seconds on the slow hairpin turns at the bottom of the canyon, the big black vehicle’s tires howling in protest.

Then he would nail ‘em.

* * *

He just couldn’t believe his luck in the end. It all came off without a hitch. Lurching to a halt by the side of the road in the forest, he leapt out and pulled back a pair of small dead trees. Then he drove the truck into the narrow laneway thus exposed, and quickly threw the camouflage net over it. Scuttling along sideways when necessary to squeeze between the tall, serene trees, with which he felt an important sense of brotherhood, he made his way to his prospective point of ambush.

Within certain limits, forty metres or so, he had a range of tactical maneuver. If they were too far away, the best thing was just to freeze in place, and let them wait for another day. He had it all worked out. He had other work to do, alternate targets to check out if nothing else. Sweat trickled into his eyes, as listening intently, he worked his way into position. He had his little notebook.

The best way to cross an open field or hillside was to move so infinitely slowly that no one would see you. It was surprisingly easy to do. He had watched all kinds of human activities on his stake-outs, all over the tri-county area. Generally speaking no one, not even dogs most of the time, ever gave him a second look or another thought.

If he did it right, there was nothing that could go wrong. Yes, if those poor, crazy mixed-up kids should stop here for a pee, Bushman was certainly going to give them a good piece of his mind. And he had a fairly largish leather pouch on his belt, and it was stuffed with a handful of pamphlets and brochures regarding drug and alcohol abuse, and family planning, contraception, stuff like that, that they might be able to benefit from. Bushman had one pamphlet in particular that was especially important. He was hoping that he could get them to take a look at that one for sure.

That one was about the dangers of smoking, and how it caused cancer, emphysema, strokes and heart disease. He had a half a dozen little yellow plastic trash bags for their car, courtesy of the local Chamber of Commerce, and some screw-cap plastic tubes for the used needles.

"You could at least put a used condom in them, right? Let’s try and keep them away from the kiddies, right?” Yes, he would certainly give them a piece of his mind.

He had it all rehearsed, the whole caper all planned out in his head. Bushman could hear the little red Honda coming around the bend. Sure enough, it was slowing! It was slowing! As they came round the bend, he counted the four little heads in the car. Bushman got ready to leap, all his twigs and branches quivering in sheer suspense, every sense agape at this, the thrill of the chase.

Bushman was just aching to pounce.

End

Author's Note: This story originally appeared in 'Aurora Wolf.'

The A-Team.

My brother has a big TV and basic satellite service. Every so often there’s a free movie channel preview. I watch a bit of boob-tube at his place.

I just saw the last half of ‘The A-Team’ the other day. If you remember the original series with George Peppard as Hannibal Smith and Mr. T as BA, the boys expended about a million rounds of nine-millimetre ball ammo in every episode without ever hitting anyone. It was all right for the times and the intended audience, but lame enough looking back on it now.

That’s the show where it really wasn’t sufficient to wreck a car or even to blow it up, it had to in all cases come up off the ground and do a slow roll in mid-air before exploding and finally coming back down again in order to be completely satisfactory.

The movie is more of the same, only better. It has a huge budget. It’s fast paced. It doesn’t let up for a minute, for to do so would beg questions. Audiences today don’t like questions. They want it all up front. In the modern film, they finally bring themselves to actually kill someone, which is probably good.

But the stunts are clearly impossible, and real human beings would have been killed ten times over while undergoing similar things. Just as an example, when a couple of hundred shipping containers fell off the deck of a ship, most normal beings would have been killed. Too many things were physically impossible for me to really enjoy the film—this is the difference between the early Sean Connery Bond movies and what the franchise eventually became.

Yet I’m not saying this is a bad movie. What it is, is a very, very good movie—judging by the standards of the day, and the expectations of fans of the summer thriller-blockbuster genre. It stands up well against its fellows. It reminded me in some ways of the Fast and the Furious V, the one where Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson, The Rock drag shipping containers on cables at ninety miles per hour in cars that are clearly not structurally capable of taking such loads, through a major city, while destroying official pursuit vehicles by the myriad. I mean, seriously, if you want realism, verisimilitude, go elsewhere. A couple of great actors, but it’s action that counts, non-stop action that sweeps an audience along right up until the last minute. All of these films have plots, by the way. Plot is the least important element, it is merely a starting point for the effects people.

Realism and verisimilitude are not a big consideration for this audience which probably consists of ten year-olds and their long-suffering parents. However, in writing fiction, it’s not all up-front. People have to suck up the coded bits of information, and make the movie happen inside of their own heads.

Fiction requires that willing suspension of disbelief for it to work at all. To try and write like that is beyond my own belief system...for this writer, I can’t use that sort of thing in a book. I need to believe in the thing, and for me, this requires some kind of verisimilitude. It requires grounding in reality, or I am uncomfortable in the writing of it. I also think it wouldn't come across in a text form...unless it was written in comic-book form, using simple little words a ten year-old might get, but an adult would simply toss the book.

My new novel is a thriller, and it pays attention to certain expectations of the genre. But I think because of the times we live in, while my ending might be tame by summer movie standards, (no big chases, no big explosions, no super-hero like escapades,) it’s a bit of a stretch for my comfort zone. I’m wondering if I can make it work at all, yet unless I come up with some other ending for the book, I’m going with what I’ve got and hope for the best. This book was originally inspired by Jack Higgins, (The Eagle Has Landed,) and Alistair Maclean in some odd way. 'The Way to Dusty Death' is one inspiration for my book, call it an influence if you will. Critics say Alistair’s work varied in consistency over the years, but I’ve always wanted to write in that sort of WW II/action/adventure/espionage genre and I guess this is my first shot at actually doing it. It's a way of indulging myself. Those aren't special-effects films, are they?

It's based on historical facts, and is plot-based and character-based without relying on superhuman stunts or unusual states of physical fitness. That is a limitation, no question about it.

But the other thing to remember is the times we live in, the sort of other titles it will have to compete with in its genre, and the sort of expectations that readers will have when they first crack it open.

In that sense, it’s a bit of a crap-shoot no matter how we look at it.

(Photo: original image by Bryan Snelson/Herrick, Wiki Commons 2.0 Attribution/Generic. The car is a 1938 Alpha Romeo Mille Miglia Spyder.)