“Help her!” Gary yelled, forgetting Steve and his conspiracy theories, at least for the time being. “Help her, Doc, she’s bleedin like a stuck pig!”
“You know I’m not a real physician, don’t you, Gary? Just an old horse-doctor is all I-”
“Don’t you call me a pig,” Marielle interrupted him. Her voice was almost too low to be heard, but her eyes, fixed on her husband, glowed with baleful life. She tried to straighten up, couldn’t, and slipped lower against the wall instead. “Don’t you… call me that.”
The old horse-doctor turned to the cop, who was standing just inside the kitchen doorway, barechested with the belt now stretched between his fists. He looked like the bouncer in a leather-bar where Steve had once worked the board for a group called The Big Chrome Holes.
“I have to?” the barechested cop asked. He was pretty pale himself, but Steve thought he looked game, at least so far.
Billingsley nodded and put his bag down on the big easy-chair that sprawled in front of the television. He snapped it open and began rummaging through it. “And hurry. The more blood she loses, the worse her chances become.” He looked up, a spool of suture in one gnarled old hand, a pair of bent-nosed surgical scissors in the other. “This is no fun for me, either. The last time I saw a patient in anything like this situation, it was a pony that had been mistaken for a deer and shot in the foreleg. Get it as high on her shoulder as you can. Turn the buckle in toward the breast and pull it tight!
“Where’s Mary?” Peter asked. “Where’s Mary? Where’s Mary? Where’s Mary?” Each time he asked the question his voice grew more plaintive. The fourth repetition was little more than a falsetto squeak. Abruptly he clutched his face in his hands and turned away from all of them, leaning his forehead against the wall between BARON, a Labrador Retriever that could spell its name with blocks, and DIRTYFACE, a morose-looking goat that was apparently able to play a number of rudimentary tunes on the harmonica. It occurred to Steve that if he ever heard a goat playing “The Yellow Rose of Texas” on a Hohner, he would probably fucking kill himself.
Marielle Soderson, meanwhile, was staring at Billingsley with the intensity of a vampire looking at a man with a shaving cut. “Hurts,” she croaked. “Give me something for it.”
“Yes,” Billingsley said, “but first we tourniquet.”
He nodded impatiently at the cop. The cop started forward. He had the tongue of his belt threaded through the buckle now, making a loop. He reached out gingerly to the skinny woman, whose blond hair had gone two shades darker with sweat. She reached out with her good arm and pushed him with surprising strength. The cop wasn’t expecting it. He went back two steps, hit the arm of the old guy’s sprawled-out easy-chair, and fell into it. He looked like a comic who’s just taken a pratfall in a movie.
The skinny woman didn’t give him a second glance. Her attention was focused on the old guy, and the old guy’s black bag.
“Now!” she barked at him, and it really did sound as if she were barking. “Give me something for it now you quacky old fuck, it’s killing me!”
The cop struggled out of the chair and caught Steve’s eye. Steve got the message, nodded, and began edging toward the woman named Marielle, drifting in from the right, flanking her. Be careful, he told himself, she’s flipped out, apt to scratch or bite or any damn thing, so be careful.
Marielle thrust herself away from the wall, swayed, steadied, and advanced on the old guy. She was once more holding her arm out in front of her, as if it were Exhibit A in a trial. Billingsley backed up a step, looking nervously from the barechested cop to Steve.
“Give me some Demerol, you weasel!” she cried in her barking, exhausted voice. “You give it to me or I’ll choke you until you bark like a bloodhound! I’ll-”
The cop nodded to Steve again and sprang forward on the left. Steve moved with him and threw an arm around the woman’s neck. He didn’t want to choke her, but he was scared to go around her back, maybe grabbing her wounded arm by mistake and hurting it worse. “Hold still!” he shouted. He didn’t mean to shout, he meant to just say it, but that wasn’t how it came out. At the same moment the cop slipped the loop of his belt over her left hand and up her arm.
“Hold her, buddy!” the cop cried. “Hold her still!”
For a second or two Steve did, and then a drop of sweat, warm and stinging, ran into his eye, and he relaxed his choke-hold just as Collie Entragian ran the makeshift belt tourniquet tight. Marielle lurched to the right, her baleful falcon’s gaze still fixed on the old guy, and her arm came off in the barechested cop’s hands. Steve could see her wristwatch, an Indiglo with the second-hand stopped dead between the four and the five. The belt held on at her shoulder for a moment and then dropped to the floor, a loop with nothing in it. The counter-girl shrieked, her huge eyes fixed on the arm. The cop looked down at it with his mouth open.
“Get it on ice!” Gary bawled. “Get it on ice right away! Right aw-” Then, all at once, he seemed to really realize what had happened. What the cop was holding. He opened his mouth, twisted his head in a peculiar way, and unloaded on the photo of the cigarette-smoking parrot.
Marielle noticed none of it. She staggered toward the clearly terrified veterinarian, her remaining hand outstretched. “I want a shot and I want it now!” she croaked. “Do you hear me, you old woman? I want a fucking shuh-shuh-”
She collapsed on to her knees. Her head drooped, hung. Then, with an immense effort, she got her chin up again. For a moment her gimlet gaze met Steve’s. “Who the fuck’re you?” she asked in a clear, perfectly understandable voice, then slid forward on her face. The top of her head came to rest inches from the heels of Peter, the man who had lost his wife. Jackson, Steve thought suddenly. That’s his last name, Jackson. Peter Jackson was still turned to the wall with his face clutched in his hands. If he takes a step backward, Steve thought, he’ll trip over her.
“Fuck a duck,” the cop said in a low, amazed voice. Then he looked down and realized he was still holding the woman’s arm. He walked stiffly toward the kitchen with it held out in front of him. The sound of rain hissing down seemed very loud in Steve’s ears.
“Come on,” the old party said, rousing himself. “We’re not done yet. Get that belt on her, son. Buckle in toward the breast. You game?”
“I guess,” Steve said, but he was very relieved when Cynthia the counter-girl picked the belt up and then knelt beside the unconscious woman with it in her hands.
From “The Force Corridor”, Episode 55 ofMotoKops 2200, original teleplay by Allen Smithee
ACT 2
FADE IN ON:
INT. CRISIS CENTER, MOTOKOPS” HQ
The room is dominated, as always, by the huge Situscreen. Standing before it on a floatpad is COLONEL HENRY, looking grave. Sitting at the horseshoe-shaped Crisis Desk are the rest of the MotoKops squad: SNAKE HUNTER, BOUNTY, MAJOR PIKE, ROOTY, and CASSIE.
On the Situscreen we see a SPACE VIEW. In the distance is Earth, just a blue-green coin at this distance. It looks peaceful enough.
SNAKE HUNTER (with customary scorn) So what’s the big deal? I don’t see anything that looks very-What the-??!!
Suddenly the FORCE CORRIDOR appears on the Situscreen, almost filling it, blotting out the stars on either side. It’s like watching the arrival of Darth Vader’s dreadnought at the beginning of the first Star Wars movie; in a word, awesome!
The CORRIDOR consists of two long metal plates with big square protrusions sticking out at intervals. The CORRIDOR HUMS OMINOUSLY, and BLUE FIRE CRACKLES from side to side between the square protrusions.
CASSIE STYLES gasps, looks at the Situscreen with dismay. COLONEL HENRY pushes a button on his hand-control, and the screen goes into FREEZE MODE. We can still see Earth, but with the corridor on either side, it looks caught in a potentially lethal WEB OF ELECTRICITY!
COLONEL HENRY (to SNAKE HUNTER) That’s the big deal! The Force Corridor, artifact of a long-vanished alien race! Destructive… and headed directly toward Earth!
CASSIE (dismay)
Oh, gosh!
COLONEL HENRY Relax, Cassie-it’s still over 150,000 light-years away. This is a composite shot.
MAJOR PIKE
Yeah, but how fast is it moving?
COLONEL HENRY That’s the problem. Let’s just say that if we don’t resolve this crisis in the next seventy-two hours, I think you can cancel your weekend plans.