|
Keeping Watch
Tremors: the Subtext #18
by Setcheti
Rating: FRT:MV,MP,SLC
Disclaimer: I don’t own Tremors, because if I did the
series would STILL BE ON THE AIR.
Malcolm Reed reached the top of the rickety-looking
ladder fastened to the side of the garage and pulled himself up onto the
roof. The flat wooden platform he settled himself on had once been home to
a wind turbine; he’d found the warped and flattened remains of the turbine,
long since unseated by the same winds it had been placed to harness, in a
rusting scrap-metal heap behind the garage.
Mindful of the turbine’s silent, rusty warning, Malcolm
had affixed a handhold to the platform and bolted two hooks through the
corrugated tin roof into the ceiling beams below. The idea of being blown
off his lookout perch didn’t appeal to him, so the instant he sat down he
fastened his safety line to one of the hooks and clipped a tether attached
to the AK-47 he had with him onto the other. It wouldn’t do to have his
gun blown off the roof by a sudden gust of wind either, especially if he
were to need it.
Needing it was always a possibility, in Perfection.
Malcolm’s gray eyes scanned the valley from behind dark glasses as the hot
breeze ruffled his dark hair and plucked at the loose shirt he was
wearing. The valley was hot and still, and empty as far as his eyes could
see. He unclipped a pair of binoculars from his belt and used them to look
even farther than that. Still nothing, which was both good and bad. Good
because nothing to see meant no monsters in the area, and bad because no
monsters in the area meant the monsters were in some other area and
therefore were not immediately killable.
Malcolm had decided he liked killing monsters. The
valley’s mutations weren’t sentient, and the scientists at the little
research station were just as happy to study them dead as they were alive.
In fact, they seemed to prefer them dead, and in an effort to show their
appreciation for that attitude Malcom and Burt tried to take the monsters
down as neatly as possible. Now that Tyler was more mobile, they’d all
been putting in regular practice time on the small shooting range they’d
situated near to Burt’s compound.
Larry had been practicing with them as well, and he was
steadily improving. Malcolm had to smile at the thought of his
self-appointed protégé. The younger man approached every new situation as
a grand adventure, sometimes reminding him strikingly of…
He slammed down on that thought, his smile
disappearing. He didn’t want to think about where he’d come from, or the
people he’d lost. That way lay madness. He’d think about guns, and
explosives, and killing monsters. Perhaps about the tea H…Jodi had ordered
especially for him, or the tours he had booked for the next few days. The
smile made a faint reappearance. It impressed the tourists to have Tyler riding shotgun with a high-powered rifle when they went looking for El Blanco – not
to mention what it did for Tyler’s morale. And the tourists spread the
story about the ex-NASCAR driver’s near-fatal encounter with one of the
Cyobactyls, which had the effect of turning public sentiment against the
mutations and against the lunatic-fringe environmentalists who were still
hanging about causing trouble. Malcolm’s sensor net had caught the last
caltrop-dropper in the act, though, and Homeland Security had made such an
example out of him that it would probably be a while before any more of
them ventured into the valley.
Not that Malcolm liked Homeland Security; neither did
anyone else in Perfection, and neither did Twitchell. “No oversight,” was
the way their ‘assigned government overseer’ had described his feelings.
“There’s no one watching them, they just run around doing whatever the hell
they want, and if you try to call them on it they’re a bunch of vindictive
bastards. The farther they stay away from this valley the happier I am.”
Malcolm could agree with that. He respected Twitchell;
the agent was serious about his job, about protecting the residents of the
valley. And he seemed to have found the appropriate mix of familiarity and
professionalism, a balance Malcolm knew was difficult to maintain. He had
certainly served under someone who hadn’t been able to maintain it.
But he wasn’t thinking about where he’d come from. He
was thinking about monsters. He was thinking about killing monsters,
because if he didn’t kill them they would eat somebody and that was
unacceptable. He specifically wanted to kill more Cyobactyls, since one of
those had tried to eat his ‘cousin’ and another had come quite close to
eating his cousin’s partner.
And that was something else Malcolm could think about
while he was waiting for monsters to show up. He could think about how
much he should tell Tyler and Burt about himself, and how he was going to
go about telling it once he’d decided. If he decided to tell them any more
than he already had, that was. It wasn’t like anyone would be coming from
his past – or perhaps one might say, his future – to reveal any of
Malcolm’s secrets to anyone. It would, in fact, probably be possible for
Malcolm to take his secrets to his grave with him, if that was the way he
wanted it. He just wasn’t sure what he wanted right now.
Or rather, he was sure…but what he wanted most was his
life back, and that was one thing he couldn’t have. He wanted his own
partner back, but Trip was lost to him.
Something out across the desert fluttered, and Malcolm
immediately raised his gun and peered hopefully through the sight. He also
wanted to kill monsters. That one, he could have.
|