Message-ID: <10999eli$9805071135@qz.little-neck.ny.us> From: Andrew Roller Subject: Fevered Fall part 12 of 12 (NND) Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d Reply-To: roller666@earthlink.net Path: qz!not-for-mail Organization: The Committee To Thwart Spam Approved: X-Moderator-Contact: Eli the Bearded X-Story-Submission: X-Original-Message-ID: <355129E4.148E@earthlink.net> --------------------------------------------------------------- PROBLEMS? Please try viewing this with Netscape Navigator. --------------------------------------------------------------- _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ Andrew Roller Presents NAUGHTY NAKED DREAMGIRLS in FEVERED FALL _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ Chapter Twelve The three searchlights stared vacantly at the pile. A homeless man rummaged amidst the shattered concrete. Otherwise, it was empty. What would have once been ‘a major news story’, with round-the-clock coverage, continuous updates, and unending live video feeds, was instead no story at all. Not that the public had lost its taste for entertainment; rather, other news had so swamped the news that it no longer mattered. Worse, there was so much news now that none of it could lawfully be reported. Martial Law had been declared, cutting off all news while the Imperial government frantically tried to restore order. Smith felt the speed of the Hoodoo suddenly increase. Thorston looked up at the dangling handstraps in the interior of the craft, illuminated by the red Emergency lights. He got up. Without saying anything, he walked forward to the cockpit. When he returned, Thorston sat back down in his sling chair. Perfunctorily, as if announcing tea before dinner, or the arrest of some low-level robbery suspect, he said, “We’re going to blow Clinton Bridge.” “Hmmmm!” Zenger said, grabbing at the pencil behind his ear. He had been staring vacantly into space, but now he grabbed his pencil, his pad, and began to write. “Wasn’t that once called the Bay Bridge?” Zenger asked. “I have no idea,” Thorston answered. He looked at the reporter as if the need to inquire about such a thing was somehow suspect. “Well, it’s called William Jefferson Clinton Bridge now, that much I know,” Smith offered. “I met a girl near there, on my way to Indonesia,” he said to Thorston. “If you pull off onto Treasure Island you get some nice views of the city. You can almost see the White House from there. It’s great for kissing.” The cop nodded. On the bridge, which the Hoodoo was racing toward, traffic had slowed to a standstill. Thousands of people, most of them under 18, thronged the massive structure. They interweaved with the few cars on the bridge. Their very numbers prevented traffic from getting onto the bridge, or from driving across it, if a car did somehow manage to get on. At the end of the bridge a sheriff’s roadblock had been set up. Smith looked at Thorston. “Maybe I should go up front, so I can have a look at the bridge as we come in,” he said. “An ariel view would help. So’s I can get a good idea of how to blow it.” Thorston nodded, granting permission. Smith stood. Zenger stood up too. “Not you,” Thorston said, still sitting in his sling seat. He reached for Zenger. But the younger man was slim and quick. He darted forward, avoiding the cop’s clutching hand. “KLAW goes wherever there is news!” Zenger declared. “Dammit!” Thorston swore. He grabbed at his belt. It was still too tight. He rose up, slow and tired, from his sling seat. He went forward after Zenger, but the reporter was already in the cockpit. The view of the city of New Washington, as the Hoodoo glided in, was astonishing. The TransAmerica Building was dwarfed by larger structures that had been built in later years, but was still visible. Treasure Island, once a U.S. Naval Station, was now a wealthy resort. To the south of Clinton Bridge, almost abutting its southern side, was the new international port that had once been a U.S. Naval Base. Above it all stood the Sky Dwellings, suspended above the city like massive airborne buoys, each one as large as a skyscraper. The Hoodoo flew in under the Sky Dwellings, toward the earthbound part of the city. “If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair,” Zenger said. “Huh?” Thorston asked, coming into the cockpit behind the reporter. Smith stood behind the pilot, Judy Dan. In seeing the spectacular sight of the city, Thorston forgot that his aim in coming forward had been to force the reporter back to his seat. Like many minor functions of a cop, it had been a decision based on his own personal discretion, subject to being changed, on a whim, or merely forgotten. “Just an old song,” Zenger, awed by the view of New Washington, said quietly to Thorston. “I read about it in a book.” “Humph!” Thorston said, and tugged on his belt. He was as incurious about the song, which gave the old, outdated name of the city, as he was about the previous name of Clinton Bridge. Facts, particularly those which clashed with present reality, were never popular with a policeman. “Looks like the D.C. Sheriffs could use some help,” Thorston said, craning his pudgy neck over the helmeted head of Judy Dan. He could just perceive the sheriff’s roadblock. It was at the end of Clinton Bridge, on the D.C. side. It was holding, at the moment, but threatened to break under the pressure of the crowd on the bridge. The radio in the cockpit of the Hoodoo crackled. Something unintelligible, which only the trained ear of Judy Dan could make out, was spoken over the radio. “Roger that,” Dan replied, flicking a switch on the console in front of her. “Will clear.” “...on Treasure Island,” the radio ordered. “Roger,” Dan said. “IMMEDIATELY!” the voice from the radio said. “How fast is immediately?” Dan asked the radio. “There’s a lot of people down there.” Zenger pointed. “There’s the White House,” he said. He and Smith and Thorston looked past the cluster of buildings in the city’s commercial district. Between two tall buildings a small group of white lights could be seen. Smith wasn’t sure he was looking at the White House, but Zenger apparently was. “It was once called the Presidio, long ago,” Zenger said. “When the International Accords were signed, that’s when the president moved there. With Chinese permission, of course.” “Damn Chinese,” Thorston said. His remark was echoed by Smith. It was a reflexive comment, spoken by both men without even realizing it. The Hoodoo swung lower. Dan flicked another switch on her console. She picked up a microphone and put it close to her mouth. “CLEAR THE BRIDGE!” Smith heard the Hoodoo say, from a loudspeaker on the bottom of the craft’s nose. There was movement below, but it was forward, the one direction the crowd wasn’t supposed to go. “Dammit! The sheriff’s lines are starting to give!” Thorston said. Zenger looked up at the T.V. screen above Judy Dan’s head. It was dark. She, or her co-pilot, had turned it off. He wondered, if it were on, what it would be showing. Probably re-runs of Fuller House, or something equally benign, as New Washington lost its grip on its own internal security. Zenger wondered what the president was doing at this moment, over in the White House, beyond the tall buildings of the city’s commercial district. He could see there were flames in the city itself, from where a Sky Building had come tumbling down from its perch above the city. The last thing New Washington needed now, from the standpoint of order and security, was for a horde of rioters to join those already wreaking havoc in the city’s interior. “CLEAR THE BRIDGE!” Judy Dan said again, into her microphone. The bullhorn on the outside of the Hoodoo echoed her voice, at a much larger decibel level. “Where’re they supposed to go?” the co-pilot, also a woman, who was on her first mission, asked Dan. “Back,” Dan said. “Away from the sheriff’s lines. Treasure Island is being set up as a containment area for them. But instead they’re moving forward!” “Shit! The lines are cracking!” Thorston said, gazing down at the crowd on the bridge. It pressed into the sheriff’s lines and the sheriff’s deputies could not hold them back. The radio crackled again. The voice on it was more unintelligible than ever. It sounded like it was screaming, which it was. “The WHITE HOUSE!” it yelled, through a mass of static, that only a pilot, well-trained, could understand. Dan could have gone to video, but she found it a distraction to look at the person talking, monitor what was happening outside her quick-moving craft, so low now between Upper and Lower Washington, and listen. She was a good listener, well-trained in the art of interpreting radio communications. The co-pilot, however, reached for the video control. She flicked on the craft’s Com screen. Smith watched as a person’s face came onto the Com screen. Unlike what the T.V. would have shown, were it turned on, this screen broadcast real news. It wasn’t even moderated by a newscaster, but came straight from official sources. A woman with a rumpled beige shirt and a loosened tie was hunched forward. Behind her was the seal of the D.C. Sheriff’s Department. It was carved in wood and hung up on the wall. With the presence of the video picture a special Video/Level 2 audio input cleared the sound of her voice. Even Smith could understand it, now. So could Zenger, who lifted his camera, and began filming the face on the Com screen. “Clear the bridge, whatever it takes. NOW,” the woman on the Com screen said. “Official from the White House,” she added. She stared at the interior of the cockpit, suddenly able to see all of them, thanks to a camera in the cockpit which turned on whenever the Com screen was on. “Dammit! I can hear just fine!” Judy Dan snapped at her co-pilot. She reached over and shut off the Com screen. The face disappeared. The screen returned to black. The camera recording them shut off as well. The voice, still speaking, became snarled in static again. “Yes, Captain Dan,” the co-pilot apologized. “...NOW!” the disembodied voice coming from the D.C. Sheriff’s Department barked. “What do we do?” the co-pilot asked Judy Dan. Below them, on the bridge, the crowd was breaking through the sheriff’s lines. Dan drew in her breath. It was a long, slow, speculative inhalation. She lifted her chin as she did it, as if contemplating grander things than the problem down on the bridge. “Only one thing we can do,” she said, at last. She said it so quietly that the roar of the Hoodoo’s engines almost drowned out her voice. She turned to her co-pilot. “Gatling,” she said. “But they’re only--” the co-pilot gasped. She leaned forward. She gaped down at the crowded bridge. Behind them, Zenger was still filming. Dan turned. She looked at Thorston. “Clear this goddam cockpit!” she shouted at Thorston. “Yes, ma’am!” Thorston said. He was, like a dog, delighted to have a clear-cut command to obey. He turned. He put his hand over the lens of Zenger’s camera. He pushed Zenger back. With his other hand he indicated to Smith that he was required to obey also. “What?!” Zenger asked. He tried to speak to Dan, over Thorston’s bulking figure. The cop shoved him back toward the cockpit’s door. Smith and Zenger had just been pushed into the main cabin, and were turning to go to their seats, when the Gatling opened up. ZZZUT! ZZZUT! ZZZUT! ZZZUT! The Gatling fired. Each blast from its mighty, circular, double-barrelled cannons shot out multiple blasts of laser fire. The greenish glare of the descending lasers lit up the gunner’s face. He was smiling. Zenger darted toward the opening in the side of the craft, as did Smith. The Hoodoo passed along the bridge. Zenger screamed. Below, he could see the people on the bridge falling as the Gatling tore into them. Her little sister’s last words echoed in her mind. Lisa was screaming, but all she could hear was her little sister, asking again, in frustration, “Why don’t we just fly to Disneyland?” “Because I broke into the damn thing, and it won’t fly with the alarm sounding,” Tod was just telling her, yet again, when laser fire from somewhere above them sliced into their car. It put a hole in their roof and narrowly missed Tod and Lisa. Lisa’s little sister, hunched between them on the front seat of the car, was killed instantly. Lisa screamed, again and again. Tod shouted. He stepped onto the car’s accelerator. The vehicle shoved forward into the crowd on the bridge. Tod watched in horror as he ran over several people in front of him. Then the very pressure of the crowd slowed and finally stopped his car. Laser fire tore into the crowd in front of Tod’s eyes. Lisa was still screaming, clutching at her dead sister. “My God, you’re killing them!” Zenger shouted at the door gunner of the Hoodoo. He was still grinning. He fired continuously from his Laser Gatling, murdering the people on the bridge. “They’re just children!” Zenger yelled. The Gunner paid no mind. Thorston pushed at the reporter. “Sit down, goddam it! Captain’s orders!” Thorston shouted over the roar of the craft and the shriek of the Gatling. “You can’t just kill all those people,” Smith said. He hovered between a desire to obey Thorston, and return to his sling seat, and a desire to do something about the Gatling. The gunner kept firing, mercilessly. Suddenly there was a loud THWUMP! on the outside of the craft. It teetered in the air. The boxes of explosives in the back of the craft shifted. Several tumbled to the floor. Smith turned. He clutched at an overhead handstrap and gaped with horror at the side of the Hoodoo, near the back. A huge hole had suddenly appeared in the side of the ship. The edges of it were burning. Through the hole, obviously made by some kind of high-caliber laser fire from the ground, he could see the lights of the city. The trajectory of the Hoodoo became unsteady, as if there were a 2-year-old in the pilot’s seat, merrily driving it without knowing how. “Dammit! Shit!” Thorston cried. He reached for an overhead handstrap, but too late; he missed, and toppled forward to the floor. Zenger was torn between trying to film something, and grabbing for a handstrap. In the end, he did neither, and fell to the floor with Thorston. Smith held on for dear life. “CODE RED! CODE RED!” A voice, Captain Dan’s, blurted over the cabin’s loudspeaker. The Emergency lights flashed. The Gatling continued to fire, but Smith, staring at the door gunner’s opening in the side of the craft, saw the laser fire shoot out in a high arc, obviously missing the bridge. As he watched, the arc became more inclined. Suddenly, the Gatling’s fire tore into the lowermost windows of an overhead Sky Dwelling. “Omigod, we’re going down!” Smith shouted, to no one in particular. The worst fears of his boyhood phobia about heights returned. He’d ridden in enough Hummers in Indonesia to be able to tell even when a big craft like this unfamiliar Hoodoo was in trouble. The pitch of the cabin became more severe. He gripped the overhead handstrap, hard. It was now not so much overhead as tilting very much toward what would once have been the side of his body, when the craft had flown level. Up was leaning toward Down and Down was leaning toward Up now, as the Hoodoo rolled into a groundward dive. Down on the bridge, a cheer went up. A lone tank, stuck amidst the crowd on the bridge, like some marooned whale, had blown its spout. On its first try, its mighty gun had not only worked, it had hit its target. “Alright!” someone yelled to the girl who had fired the gun. She grinned. She aimed, and fired again at the Hoodoo. This time, she missed. But the first blow looked likely to bring the Hoodoo down anyway, she realized, as the ship went into an unsafe dive toward the ground. Tongsun Anu watched the Hoodoo as it dove into the D.C. Bay. Harold stood beside him. They were on Clinton Bridge. Ahead of them, where the sheriff’s barricades had been set up, he heard gunfire erupt. “She got him!” Harold said, and Tongsun knew who he meant. The girl. The girl who’d asked to drive the tank. She’d known her stuff. But now their situation had grown more deadly, for he could hear the sheriffs opening fire. They were no longer just trying to keep back the crowd. They were killing them. “Everywhere I go there is death,” Tongsun said. “I know. I know,” Harold murmured. They watched the Hoodoo plunge into the bay and wondered, without really caring, whether there would be any survivors. “First they killed Her, my love,” Tongsun said. Harold nodded. Tongsun’s teacher, his lover, had been killed in the crossfire between himself and the police, at his house. “Now they are killing everyone in sight,” Tongsun said. “Yeah,” Harold agreed. He looked forward, along the length of the bridge. Many of the people on the bridge were not, in fact, under Tongsun’s control, but merely young people out for the excitement of the night, watching, or perhaps helping, the Imperium to die. Others, older than the bulk of the crowd, were simply caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. They all suffered the same reaction when hit by laser fire, however. “We’ve defeated the Oakland Police,” Tongsun said to Harold. He looked at his assistant. Behind them the Oakland shore, seen in the distance, was relatively quiet, except for the buildings that the rioters had set fire to. “I don’t want any more of our people to die. If we go forward, we’ll have to fight our way into D.C. They’ll try to beat us back, right down to the last man.” Harold nodded, silently. In the distance, out along the water, there was only a still, black surface where the Hoodoo had gone down. “However,” Tongsun said. “Look. If we can get back to Oakland, quickly, there is a port over there.” “Hmmm,” Harold said. He gazed at the Port of Oakland. Had it been daylight, he would have been able to see the sign, hung on the side of one of the buildings lining the port, which read, “International Port of Oakland.” Ships bulked like black shadows in front of the port. A few were lit, here and there, by cabin lights or by safety lights, unmoving fireflies against the large frames of the ships. “One if by land, and two if by sea,” Tongsun said to Harold. “What?” Harold asked. “If you can’t get through the front door, try the back,” Tongsun said. “Our goal is the White House. Trying to cross Clinton bridge is only going to get us cut up by the sheriffs. Worse, perhaps, we’d have to move our force through the riot-torn city on the other side. That building won’t help any, the Sky Dwelling that somebody dropped down into the middle of D.C.” “Yeah,” Harold said. He looked over his shoulder. The Sky Dwelling had landed smack in the center of the financial district, toppling earthbound buildings and starting a huge fire that burned along its wreckage and stretched toward the sky. “What if the president Jumps to the moon?” Harold asked, looking up. Through the overhead Sky Dwellings he caught sight of the ancient orb. It glowed down at them with apparent indifference to their fate. “Ah, that’s a last resort,” Harold said. He shook his head. “There’s nothing up there but a hotel. I mean, how can you be President of the Imperium if all you’ve got left to you is a hotel?” “What if the Chinese intervene?” Harold asked. He stared again at the fallen Sky Dwelling, blazing hotly in the middle of D.C. He could hear sirens, gunfire. The sounds of chaos. He wondered if a body, inside itself, made similar sounds when it died. “They’ll say it’s an internal matter,” Tongsun said. “That’s my guess. God knows, they don’t want to do us any favors.” “Fucking Chinese,” Harold said. “We have to take the White House, Harold,” Tongsun told his lieutenant. “As someone once said, ‘It’s not over until the fat lady sings.’” “How?” Harold asked. He bit his lip. He wasn’t being difficult, merely asking, to find solutions. “The port,” Tongsun said. “Let’s go. We’ll get our best people and get a small little boat. Not a big one. God knows, we’d never be able to figure out how to sail it. Just a small little boat, and our best people.” “What, and attack the White House, in a boat?” Harold asked. They began walking. It was a long way back along Clinton Bridge to the Oakland side of the shore. He hoped they’d find a car or two to commandeer, and be able to get through the crowd somehow to the Oakland side. Hopefully they wouldn’t have to open fire on people who were nominally, at least, for the Cause. “It’s the path of indirection,” Tongsun said. “The direct way, across Clinton bridge, is like a trip through Hell. But the bay is open, and quiet.” Tongsun gestured toward the water. Together, they approached a car. It looked like someone had hit the forward part of the roof with laser fire, punching a big hole there, but the engine was still running. “Shit, man, I saw something on T.V. once,” Harold said. He turned to Tongsun. “The White House has mines in the bay. They’re not turned on, normally, but now they most certainly will be. We’ll sail right through your peaceful, quiet bay into some fucking mine that’s just waiting for us, in the water!” Tongsun kept walking. Harold hurried after him. Tongsun reached the car. It was a four door car. He pulled open the passenger’s door of the car, along the front seat. He looked at Harold. “Get someone with an Uplink,” Tongsun said. “I doubt they’ve fixed the bug in the computer program that controls the Main Lift Engine on those Sky Dwellings.” “Oh, yeah,” Harold said. He opened the back door, as Tongsun, leaning down, spoke to some female sitting on the passenger’s side of the car, in the front seat. “Shit!” Harold said to himself. “We could do that. I mean, with an Uplink, we could drop a building straight into the bay, right over the fucking approach to the White House. The mines blow, we sail in. Cool.” “Oh my God,” the female in the front seat was saying. Tongsun got in beside her. She had a dead child in her arms. A small girl, wearing a pink jacket. “Howzit,” Tongsun said to the car’s driver. “I’m Tongsun Anu. I need you to get me back to Oakland. We’ll be putting more people in your car, and on the roof, the hood, wherever we can fit them.” The driver’s eyes widened. He turned. He looked back through the car’s rear windshield. “There’s not a lot of room to drive, man,” he said to Tongsun. “This bridge is full of people.” “That’s okay,” Tongsun replied. “I don’t want to have to do it, but we’ve got to get back to Oakland. If necessary, we’ll run over them. Or shoot them. Whatever it takes, okay?” “Are you really Tongsun Anu?” Tod, behind the wheel of the car, asked. “He’s the real McCoy. Shove this thing into reverse!” Harold, sitting in the back seat, yelled out. “Shit. Talk about a back seat driver,” Tod said. “Just do it,” Tongsun told him. “Stop when I tell you. We need to get our people in the car so we can move them quickly. If necessary, we’ll make several trips. Or we’ll get another car on the way back, if we can.” “This thing’s almost out of gas,” Tod said, looking down at the dashboard. Tongsun leaned over. He looked at the gas gauge. “We can make it,” Tongsun said confidently. 30 ----------------------- Dreamgirls! ----------------------- -Back issues (and stories): type http://www.dejanews.com/ into your browser’s “Location” window. Press your “return” key. Click on “Power Search” in the middle of the screen. Next, Type in: roller666@earthlink.net in the box that appears. Click on “find” (the button to the right of the box). -Other providers: Usenet Newsgroup: alt.sex.stories.moderated or by e-mail: file.request@backdrop.com or via the Web: http://www.netusa.net/files/Authors/eli/www/erotica/assm/ -When visiting Barnes and Noble, ask for: Jock Sturges’ Radiant Identities and David Hamilton’s The Age of Innocence. Support art! -Also by David Hamilton: A Place in the Sun, and Twenty Five Years of an Artist Need a book? http://www.amazon.com - JOIN the world’s greatest organization! Send $35.00 to The North American Man/Boy Love Association for a one-year membership. NAMBLA, P.O. Box 174, Midtown Station, New York, NY 10018. -Naughty Naked Dreamgirls (Library of Congress ISSN: 1070-1427) is copyright 1998 and a trademark of Andrew Roller. -END OF story EMISSION -- +--------------' Story submission `-+-' Moderator contact `------------+ | story-submit@qz.little-neck.ny.us | story-admin@qz.little-neck.ny.us |