Tiny Tim gets the sack of marshmallows and we
trickle into the yard.
It was a week and a half after Hallowe'en when the vast cool intelligences from
beyond the stars zapped away. The whole year since they'd arrived, the world had
held its breath and tippytoed around on best behave. When they split, it
exhaled. The gust of that exhalation carried the stink of profound
pissed-offedness with the Processors who'd acted the proper Nazi hall-monitors
until the bugouts went away. I'd thrown a molotov into the Process centre at the
Falls myself, and shouted into the fire until I couldn't hear myself.
So now I'm a refugee on Xmas Eve, waiting for fearless leader to do something
primordial and cathartic. Which he does, even if he starts off by taking the
decidedly non-primordial step of foaming the side of our squat that faces the
neighbours', then fixing it, Daisy Duke whanging away on the harness's seal with
a rock to clear the ice. Once our place is fireproofed, Daisy Duke switches to
kero, and we cheer and clap as it laps over the neighbours', a two-storey
coach-house. The kero leaves shiny patches on the rime of frost that covers the
place. My knee throbs, so I sit/kneel against the telephone pole out front.
The kids are getting overexcited, pitching rocks at the glass to make holes for
the jet of kero. Tony shuts down the stream, and I think for a minute that he's
pissed, he's gonna take a piece out of someone, but instead he's calm and
collected, asks people to sort out getting hoses, buckets and chairs from the
kitchen.
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