Gorg’s great trunk of an arm swung fast and wide, and struck the Chief in the head. He was felled with one blow.
I’m sorry for that word “felled.” I only looked it up just now. I had to have just the right one to do this justice. Mark Twain said the difference between the right word and the almost right word is like the difference between lightning and the lightning bug, and people think he was good, right? Didn’t write any decent girl characters, as far as I can tell, but otherwise fine.
The Gorg felled Chief Shouting Bear. The Chief’s legs shot up from under him, and he came down hard on his back with a sound louder than I thought a human body could make. Then he lay there. There was a red X on his forehead, getting larger, and it was the only thing that moved.
“DO NOT BE IMPUDENT, BOY. THE GORG CAN DO TERRIBLE THINGS TO YOU.”
I had been thinking of something clever to say, but now that part of my brain was static. It was all I could do to keep my eyes open.
Gorg squinted some more at me, then nodded, satisfied. He turned on his heel and thundered off like an angry building. He turned Slushious over and scattered the piles of scrap metal. He threw washing machines like huge dice and cracked each bathtub with a blow from his fist. Large sections of the outer fence fell under a volley of tires and engine blocks. Then he knocked a wall of the Chief’s house in with a rusted-out town car and took the rest of it apart, piece by piece. When there was no longer any house standing, I wondered what had become of J.Lo and Pig. And Lincoln. And the booth. Gorg tore the basement door off its hinges and squeezed down the stairs. Angry noises roared up from below until he emerged a minute later. Finally, with everything in ruins, Gorg looked around to where I sat pressing the Chief’s hat to his head. Then he grunted and went back into the sky, where he belonged.
Seconds stretched out like little lifetimes as I crouched there on my legs and willed the Chief to wake up and be fine. Suddenly J.Lo was at my side, holding Pig.
“Run get his bedsheets, or a towel,” I said. J.Lo dropped Pig and ran off. Pig went and hid inside Slushious when Lincoln returned from wherever he’d been hiding and licked the Chief’s head.
“No, Lincoln…don’t…”
J.Lo arrived trailing a white bedsheet. I bunched it up and pressed hard onto the head wound. Right away the sheet blossomed like a red carnation.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said. “I think we need to take him into town.”
We tied Lincoln to something heavy and managed to get Slushious right-side up with nothing more remarkable than a tire jack. The car was in sad shape now. The left side fin was crushed again, and the roof was crumpled like a paper sack. But it still floated, and it was the only way we were going to get one hundred and fifty pounds of unconscious Indian to the UFO museum.
We spread out the bedsheet and slipped it under the Chief’s body. It was only then that I noticed the two circular cuts in the fabric.
“This is your ghost costume. You’re not wearing your ghost costume.”
“No. I will get outfrom Slushious befores we arrive. I will hide.”
We needed a ramp to get the Chief into the hatchback. Luckily, we were surrounded by a little of everything. J.Lo stacked sections of white PVC pipe up an old refrigerator door, and we rolled the Chief in.
We got a good start, coasting down the shallow hill with the setting sun behind us. I kept checking the movement of the Chief’s chest in the mirror. Then I looked at J.Lo.
“Where were you? Could you see everything?” I asked.
“Only did I hear,” said J.Lo. “I hid. I feared the Gorg might smell me. They haves very good noses.”
“Not this one,” I murmured. “He had a cold.”
“Get out of town.”
“He did. He had a cold.”
“He could no have had this. The Gorg do not get sick.”
“He sneezed.”
“Tip was probably very scared. Imagined it.”
“I did not—”
I paused when I noticed we were nearing one of those mechanical cat hunters.
“Get Pig down. Hold her there. Shoot, we should have left her at the scrap yard.”
“No Gorg around,” said J.Lo. “A few cat robots, but no Gorg.”
“Suits me.”
“I also. But if the Gorg have put onto the land a working telecloner, they could be everyplace. Why not for?”
“Maybe Gorg don’t like being around Gorg any more than we do. C’mon, we need to run some more.”
Another ten minutes and we were close to Vicki’s apartment and the UFO museum.
“You better get out here,” I said. “Take your toolbox and go see if you can find some food and water, and a police car or something we can borrow. Please,” I added.
J.Lo ran off, and I started shouting.
“Hey! Anybody! Help! Heeeelp!”
The combined members of BOOB, Roswell Chapter, came running out of the museum.
“Oh, man,” said Trey when he saw the Chief. “What happened?”
“He tried to stop a Gorg from hurting me,” I said.
“What’s a Gorg? Are those the new aliens?”
“You saw one up close?” squealed one of the boys.
“It tried to hurt you? Cool!”
“Boys, quiet,” said Beardo.
“Hey, Chief,” said Kat as she and Trey eased him out of the car.
“Hey,” said the Chief.
“He’s awake?” I shouted, and ran to the Chief’s side.
“Hey, Stupidlegs.”
He was slurring his speech a little.
“Has he been drinking?” asked Vicki, who’d just come across the street. I gave her a dirty look but it bounced right off her. I was so mad I could have spit acid.
“No, Vicki,” Beardo said. “He got hit by one of the big aliens.”
“Don’t you look at me like that. I was just asking is all. Indians drink—I saw a special about it.”
Chief Shouting Bear was carried into the UFO museum and over to the alien autopsy exhibit. The fake dead alien was pushed aside and the Chief was placed on the gurney. The adults leaned over him while the boys, already bored, moved into the lobby to play some kind of slapping game they’d invented.
“God, he probably has a concussion,” said Trey. “You shouldn’t even have moved him.”
“Well, I couldn’t call an ambulance, could I?” I said. “How did the Gorg know where to find him, anyway? They knew his name and everything.”