Free Skeletons by Al Sarrantonio Page A

casually, as if they were at the mall. One of them has a rifle, the other a kind of yard tool that looks like a middle-class machete. I don't wait around to see what their ghost images might look like: I see bones and I roll.
    Ol' Marianne hears them, too, but it is already too late for her. Weeping never pays. She turns and spins and kicks one of them, but the one with the machete brings it down on her and cuts her clean across the back of the neck.
    She gasps and goes down to one knee, but keeps fighting. This is a tough cop lady. She actually has her TV knife halfway out of its ankle sheath before the boner with the machete hits her again, taking half her friggin ' head off.
    Gross me out.
    You don't have to be Einstein to see what's going to happen next. But the two boners, bless their knobby heads, save my butt by dragging the dear deceased cop away as she's turning into one of them. The machete one, I see as they pass under the parking lot lights, is actually some kind of farm worker, by his ghostly image. Nice backhand, Juan.
    So I climb up and get into my Lincoln Town Car, quiet as can be, rev the beauty up, praising that kitten engine, and pull out.
    But I don't make it out of the parking lot, naturally. Once a cop, always a cop. In the rearview mirror I see ol’ Marianne, now an official skel , pushing aside her two bonehead comrades and dashing after me. Damned if she isn't going to catch up, too, so I throw the smooth transmission of the Lincoln into reverse, timing it perfectly, and run the bitch down before she can get out of the way. Inside that luxurious interior I hear the faint crunch of bones, and when I pull away, peeling rubber this time, there's a neat little pile of dust behind me, already scattering in the faint Santa Anas . Juan and his buddy are still standing where they were, properly puzzled.
5
    Â 
    By the way, thanks for the traffic info, Marianne.
    I stay away from the freeways, and it's not long before I have confirmation of what the cop said. Wrecks everywhere. Even the exit ramps are blocked. So it's think-back time, a bit of nostalgia about my good ol’ days, growing up the only white boy in my part of East L.A., and all those back roads come back to me.
    What was another of ol' Dad's quaint sayings? "Get me a fresh needle, son."
    Amazingly, no one bothers me. It's just assumed I'm one of the boneheads. What few humans I see are either running for their skins into dirty alleys or in the process of being boned. I'm sure there's lots more hiding in cellars or attics, not to mention the sewers. In the middle of one street I see two boneheads beating up on a third bonehead. They're just skeletons until I get real close. Curious, I slow down to watch the action as their outlines come into faint view under the streetlights. Looks like two druggies pounding a third. As I watch they hit him real hard with something like a cosh and he's down on the ground, then turns to powder.
    So. Even the dead kill the dead.
    Then it's time to hightail out, because druggie one and two have turned their attention to me, their skeleton eye sockets following me, jaws creaking up and down. Can skels drool? I know what these guys want, the Town Car, so it's time to burn some more rubber and move on.
    Up into the Hollywood Hills, which rise into view in front of me after another half hour of twisty turns and back roads, dodging wrecks, fleeing humans, and skels chasing them like Keystone Kops.
    The Hollywood Hills: still lit up like the movies, magical, probably still mostly what it was. Even the "H" on the Hollywood sign is the only one that's been hit by mortar fire, attesting to the mostly intactness of phony-land.
    My kind of place.
    I rev the engine, heading straight for it, and finger open my briefcase with my right hand to pull out my prized bottle of Stoli .
    It's time to party.
    I wonder what the rest of the world is doing tonight?

The inner diary of Claire St. Eve
    Â 
1
    Â 
    At first I thought