This choice: Continue reading "The Puppetmasters: An Oral History" • Go Back...Chapter #27The Puppetmasters: An Oral History (3) by: Seuzz   Sunday night passed quietly, with me and my parents sitting in the living room, staring at nothing, until ten, when my Dad had put out the lights. Then we sat around until morning, continuing to stare at nothing.
The door opened around seven, and we turned as one as one of those "government" types came in. He set an insulated cooler, of the type used to keep colas and beers chilled, on the table. No need for a conference this time. "For the school," he said to me, and left.
It made perfect sense. It's hard to get inside people's houses. The cops can't go house to house putting slugs onto people; mercantile establishments are public places where anything might be accidentally observed. But kids could carry the slugs into their parents' houses; and kids gather every day at a common location, cut off from public view. Take the schools, someone had realized, and you take the town.
Our high school, then, was to be the central distribution point for the invaders.
So my dad drove me out there well before classes were to start. I suppose I--or my rider--understood the plan well before I was given the chest. Maybe I understood it even before I'd gone to see Brett, for he was there when my dad dropped me off, and we stood by the bike racks for a few minutes, waiting silently, until Ken pulled up. Brett and I lugged the ice chest into the empty school while Ken took point. We started in the office. "We're raising money for the science club," Brett told the principal after we had him alone in his inner sanctum. "We wanna sell some drinks, maybe some snacks and candy bars--"
"What kind," Mr. Horn asked.
Brett jerked his shoulders--a motion exaggerated by the hump between his shoulder blades--and opened the chest. Mr. Horn peered down into it, at the slugs stacked within. "What the devil--" It was all he could get out before Brett grabbed him by the head and forced him down. Ken already had another slug out from under his shirt and dropped it onto the back of his neck. Mr. Horn twisted about, struggling for a minute, and then we took him under the arms and pushed him back into his chair. After the Titan had him under control, he called the secretary in, and we got her. These were Titans who had already been on a host--their originals had swapped experienced riders for fresh ones--so there was no need to conference.
Brett and Ken and I then swept through the school, glancing into homerooms to see which teachers could be taken. Most of them were candidates, since the school had a staff dress code, and only Miss Bayard--who was wearing a thin, shimmering blouse through which a slug might be glimpsed--got left off the list we took back to Mr. Horn. One by one, teachers--and the school nurse, naturally--trooped into the office as they were summoned over the intercom. Once there, Mr. Horn would smile and invite them to take a seat before him. Brett or Ken or I would then step up behind and put a Titan on them. It went off with assembly line efficiency, and when it was time for classes to start, the secretary took over for us.
* * * * *
It's very difficult to spot someone who is being ridden by a Titan, if the Titan wants to blend in. If you know what to look for, you can see the hump that the slugs form on the back, under the shirt, between the shoulders. But there is nothing in the eyes, nothing in the speech, nothing in the carriage to betray the fact that you're not talking to a human being, but to an intelligence that has wired the human being's mind and body and is pulling the strings. The pack horse is not a zombie, except when it is alone--by itself or in the company of others like it--when it doesn't have to pretend. Even in first period History, my most boring class, I fidgeted in my desk and twirled my pencil and sighed and looked out the window and took furtive glances at my female classmates--
It was many weeks before the Titans discovered sex, so I'm not sure the slug on my back understood why it should steer my eyes over toward Emma Blanchard with such regularity. Perhaps it only knew that that was my habit, and that it should mimic my habits as exactly as it should. Like an actor who has perfectly but phonetically memorized the lines of dialogue in a foreign language, it could speak fluently on my behalf without knowing what it was saying. I do know that the rest of my body did not act as it normally did while contemplating Emma's crisp blouse and skirt and perfectly proportioned calves in their sleek stockings.
But all that is just an aside. As I said, it's very difficult to spot someone who is being ridden by a Titan, and this applies to the Titans themselves, for they only have the evidence delivered (and interpreted) by the senses of the creatures they ride. Of course, they knew who they had personally taken, so I knew that Brett and Ken and Mr. Horn and about half the teachers were now allies. And because the Titans were privy--through their own slug-on-slug conferences--to captures that had been made out of my own sight, I could calmly walk up to Sam Haley at his locker after first period. "Work with Coach in fifth period P.E.," I murmured. "We'll take another delivery at lunch for him to use." He nodded as he exchanged the books in his bag for books from his locker.
But I had to take things at face value after second period when Mike Skinner caught me by the neck and dragged me outside. "You and your fag friends been having fun," he chortled as I choked. "Lookin' up Uranus again?" It was a joke he never tired of.
"That's Vine and George," I gasped. "They--"
He said a word that the son of a preacher had no business using, and kicked my feet from under me. I staggered against the wall, but had the presence of mind to twist so that my shoulder, not my slug, took the blow. "Bet you gave 'em the idea. My dad says you guys should be prosecuted."
"It was just joke."
"You're a joke. And here comes the punchline."
I curled up hard and winced, like I was supposed to, but I felt nothing inside. No fear, no trepidation, no worry, no humiliation. Just stimulation and simulated response.
But the blow never landed. I opened my eyes, and found Harry Gibson--like his friend a linebacker for the football team--holding Mike's arm. "Why are you wasting your time on this dip," Harry sneered.
"Because he is a dip," Mike said. "Him and his stupid friends set up that fake UFO--"
"Is that right, Muller?" Harry demanded of me.
"It was Vine and George," I insisted. "I went out and saw them this weekend--"
"So you are helping them," Harry said. "I heard they're planning on turning it into a for-profit thing."
Mike said another bad word. "What are you talking about?"
"They're gonna set up a little tourist attraction, is what they're saying," Harry said. "Are you gonna be partners with them," he asked me.
"I was talking about helping out, being a friend," I said. The wariness in my voice would have sounded very genuine to them.
"Good. Make sure you're part of it." Harry's face split into a nasty grin. "And everything you get out of it, you pass on to me and Mike."
"I'm not gonna give you a penny!"
"Then you're gonna get it from us. Mike." Harry grabbed me and held me tight while Mike pummeled me hard in the stomach. Shuddering pains swept through me, and the blows were so hard I wanted to vomit. After three such blows, Harris dropped me. "Remember what you owe us."
I flopped to the ground and hung my head as they walked away, and ignored the bell. Still, I felt nothing as I acted out a part I'd often had to suffer for real in the past.
A minute past, and Harry's sneakers appeared before me. He dropped to the ground, grabbed my hair, and wrenched my hair up. "You were at the McLains this weekend?" he asked, staring at me hard.
"Yeah."
He stared some more. "Okay. Sam and I will take the lunchtime delivery. You help Coach during sixth." He dropped me again.
* * * * *
Things were going to have to be that way--agents feeling each other out--until we finally got the school entirely converted. During the day I spotted students going in and out of the nurse's office, but made no approaches to them. Nor did Brett and Ken and I do any talking, except the sort that would be expected of guys who mostly played with AV equipment when not complaining about homework and girls. If Brett was particularly convincing at lunch as he recounted the time he stole Mindy Solomon's panties from the girls' locker room, I felt not even a twinge of satisfaction at the skill of the impersonation. Nor did I pay special attention when I saw Sam and Harry lugging an ice chest from the cafeteria kitchens.
* * * * *
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