Zombie Spaceship Wasteland Read Online Free Page A

Bryan putting his back?”
    “He already did,” said Trace. “I’m going to go talk to Gary Jay.”
    The first customers pressed against the ticket booth, and I mentally calculated how many half tickets I could sell.
    The last show of the night was at nine thirty. Once I bagged the receipts and wrote the gross in ballpoint pen in the separate brown paper bags, I closed the booth. I had $80 in my pocket from half stubs. I headed downstairs, to where Roddy was Windexing the glass top of the snack bar.
    “You wanna go on a beer run?” I asked.
    “What’s everyone want?”
    Trace came out of the projection booth. He’d probably just rolled Dan onto his belly so he wouldn’t choke on vomit. He said, “Get the one bottle of Mad Dog 20/20. Or something strong like that. And then a case of beer? Pabst Blue Ribbon?”
    “I don’t want to carry a case back by myself. Someone come with me,” said Roddy. “Gary Jay.”
    “He should usher
Adventures in Babysitting,
” said Trace, a little too quickly. “There’s a bunch of middle school douchebags got dropped off by their parents down there.”
    “Well shit, you’re still on cleanup.” Roddy turned to me. “You come. You wait outside the Giant Foods. I’ll get two twelve-packs; we’ll carry those back”.
    I looked at Trace. He was trying to look bland and nonchalant and he was burning a lot of calories doing it.
    “Yeah, I’ll go. Okay.” Roddy and I started toward the stairs leading to the street. Right before I turned the corner to follow Roddy, I saw Trace pivot and bolt downstairs, to the theaters.
    * * *
    “I’m being cool about it, but one of you assholes stole some of my shit,” said Roddy abruptly. We were passing by the big, carved wooden lions in front of the Hunan Garden. The lions’ scoop-jawed, toothy grins seemed to mock Roddy, who, even now, speaking through clenched teeth, looked like his droopy lower lip would slide and puddle onto the front of his shirt.
    “Someone in the theater?”
    “No, someone in the Pentagon, fuck-neck,” said Roddy. “I went in for a second, to get some Freshen-up gum I’d stashed in my
Back to the Future
vest, and some of my shit was gone.”
    “What stuff?”
    “Like you don’t know.”
    I said, “I don’t. Really. I don’t know what you keep in there.”
    Roddy didn’t say anything for a second. We were at the automatic doors for the Giant Foods.
    “You almost slipped up there. See, if you’d said, ‘i didn’t take any of your throwing stars,’ I’d know you were lying.”
    “Someone took—you have throwing stars?”
    “Five of ’em. And I’m a dead shot throwing them. I’ve got air pistols, and Bruce Lee sticks, but no one took any of them,” said Roddy, half to the air around us, like he was putting together a puzzle. “So I’m looking for someone with quick arms. Which you don’t have.”
    I said, “Okay.”
    “See, I’m better’n Columbo at figuring this stuff out.” And then he stepped backward through the hissing-open doors, unable to suppress a girlish half chuckle as the doors opened as he’d hoped they would and he didn’t bounce his ass on glass after uttering his exit line.
    On our way back, Roddy expounded on
Columbo,
which was his favorite show. I realized, just before we reached the theater, that Roddy believed Columbo had a trained owl.
    The last patrons climbed the stairs to the surface and home. Now it was us and Roddy.
    Deep Purple’s
Perfect Strangers
album was blasting through the sound system. Usually, before we started drinking, one of us would run to the tape machine, to try to slap a Van Halen or Hüsker Dü cassette in before Roddy could put in his beloved Deep Purple and claim the soundtrack for the evening. Now, in a misguided attempt to placate Roddy, someone had put in Deep Purple. But the Deep Purple cassette was in Roddy’s room, nestled in its slot in his cassette carrier, among his .38 Special and Eagles and Jimmy Buffett tapes. So already, he