The Radio Magician and Other Stories

THE ICE CREAM MAN

Keegan chose a song from the truck’s jukebox after he crossed 6th Street going south on University Blvd.: “You are My Sunshine.” It was his Thursday route. The music boomed through the loudspeakers, echoing from the late 19th Century houses. Within a minute, doors opened, people wandered down their sidewalks and waited for him on the street. He muted the song as the truck slowed to a stop. Even through his dark sunglasses, the sun was too bright. Every reflective surface bounced the light in painful intensity. He squinted against the intrusions.

An old lady in a broad-rimmed hat that shadowed her face and a lacy blouse that covered her neck to her chin looked up at him. “Do you have strawberry today?”

He handed her a cone with a single scoop.

The tip of her tongue touched the treat. She closed her eyes and sighed. “Best strawberry ice cream in the world.”

He snapped his fingers. “Overripe strawberries are the secret. They’re sweeter. You’re lucky they’re in season.”

The lady put a pint of bourbon on the counter. “Will this do?”

Keegan held it to the sunlight, where it glowed like golden honey. “That’s a couple weeks worth, darling.”

She blushed. “I need a box of .22 longs if you have them. Something’s been in my back yard the last few nights.”

Keegan searched below the counter. “Short rounds, short rounds, short rounds.” He moved the small boxes aside. “Ah, here we go, .22 longs. That would make us even.”

Behind her frowned a middle-aged man with a tiny black mustache like a charcoaled thumbprint below his nose. “Where do you get the ammo, hairlip?”

Keegan resisted the urge to cover his mouth. He smiled instead. “It’s all in trade. I have something someone wants. Somebody else has something I want. What do you want?”

“Nobody trades bullets. They horde them.” He looked suspiciously at the truck. “And how do I know your ice cream is any good?”

Another man a couple folks back in the line said, “Are you going to order, Rich, or are you going to be a pain in the ass? Doesn’t matter if it’s good or not. You can’t get ice cream anywhere else.”

The man scowled. “Vanilla.”

Keegan turned his back to get another cone from behind him. He rubbed his nostril with his thumb, and as he scooped the ice cream he pressed the thumb firmly into the frozen ball before plopping it into place. “There you go, mister,” he said. “Since it’s your first time, it’s on the house.”

The next customer wanted a double scoop of chocolate, which Keegan let him have for a nearly full bottle of powdered cinnamon.

“Can’t get enough good spices,” said Keegan to the man who’d defended him. “How are you doing, Laird?”

Laird leaned on the counter, his tanned arm a sharp contrast to the polished aluminum, liver spots sprinkled across the top of his hand like the map of an island chain. “Pretty good, Keegan. You put a booger in his ice cream, didn’t you?”

Keegan grinned. “I didn’t charge him.”

“Maple-walnut for me, if you have it.”

The ice cream rolled smoothly into the scoop. Keegan liked the cold air caressing his wrists. It felt better than the waves of heat rising from the asphalt outside the truck, and it was only 11:00. Good for business. Hard to work in.

Laird licked a drip off the cone before it reached his hand. “Can’t really blame the guy for his bad temper. He moved in a month ago. No territory. No prospects. Some muta-bastard broke into his house and tore up most of his stores, so he’s feeling pinched.”

“Is he thinking of scavenging north of Colfax Avenue?” Keegan closed the freezer lid. No need to let the product melt, and the truck used less fuel if the refrigerator unit wasn’t working the whole time. “I wouldn’t recommend going alone.”

“You don’t seem to have trouble.”

Keegan swept a damp rag the length of the counter, keeping his eyes down. “I know the area.”

“Speaking of that, did you find the item I asked for?”

“It’s rare. Really rare.” The rag swung loosely in Keegan’s hand as he leaned against the cabinets, squinting through his sunglasses at the sunlight outside the truck’s dark interior. The last two people in line, a middle-aged couple he’d served several times before, wiped their foreheads in unison. Like most folks, they didn’t look at his face. He wanted to cover his mouth again.

Laird sighed. “All right. I can double the sugar for next month.” He leaned forward to whisper, “I found a cache you wouldn’t believe. Geezer who’d filled a double-car garage with goodies before kicking off.”

“Great.” Keegan pulled two boxes of 12-gauge shotgun shells from under the counter. He rattled them before putting them down. “Got a project?”

Laird pocketed the boxes. “Nope. The boys on the Colfax fence say they’re having breakthroughs every night. I want more punch for my dollar. Whatever tore into Rich’s house went through the bars on his window. Something new south of the fence, evidently. One of these days I’m afraid I’m going to stumble on a mutoid that’s all teeth, scales, tentacles and bad attitude, and I don’t want to face it with a popgun.”

“You could move to the country like everyone else.”

Laird turned to look down the street. Many of the houses were boarded up, their windows staring into the street like blind eyes. On other houses, bars covered the windows and doors. Barbed wire separated them from their neighbors. “What, and leave all this? There’s still a lot of scavenging to do before I start scratching dirt for a living. Besides, farms have mutoid problems too.” He licked the last of the ice cream out of the cone. “Could you sweeten this up?”

Keegan dropped another scoop on the cone.

Laird said, “The ammo question was dumb. You know the one I want answered?”

Keegan looked at him through his sunglasses.

“Where do you get the cream? The last true cow died twenty years ago.”

“I have good freezers.”

Laird laughed. “See you next Thursday.” He walked away, waving as he went.

The last couple both wanted raspberry, but Keegan didn’t have any. They settled for a scoop each of chocolate macadamia nut. He placed the set of four sundae glasses they’d brought on the floor. The woman looked suspiciously at her cone.

“Just ice cream in that one, ma’am,” he said.

When he drove away, he flicked the music back on, “Little Brown Jug.” A couple blocks later, a new crowd gathered. By 1:00 he was sold out.

Driving the ice cream truck had been Keegan’s first job out of high school. In the dispatch office, Old Josh Granger had handed him the route and an inventory sheet along with the keys to the truck. “Drive slow in the neighborhoods,” he said. “Nothing sadder than a little kid who can’t catch the ice cream truck.”

Keegan nodded.

“Not that there’s kids anymore.” Granger sat heavily on a stool, cupping his hands over his knees. “God, I remember when the five-year-olds would chase me down. Scads of them. Couldn’t even get their change up to the counter. Little hands holding money. Do you remember kids?” Granger looked out the window onto the lot where the trucks were parked. Canvas covered six of them. “You’re what, eighteen? No, you wouldn’t. You’re one of the last batch.”

Keegan ground the toe of his sneaker into the cement. “They’ll find out what’s causing it. I heard the news the other night. They’re making headway.”

Granger sighed. “Do you have a girl?”

Keegan blushed. “They don’t seem to take to me.” He scratched his nose, covering his mouth.

“Humph! Sorry, son. Maybe it’s for the better. Save you the heartache. No ultrasound horror show. No little bundled buried in the back yard for you…” He trailed off. A muscle in his arm twitched, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Nobody gives you guff about it, do they?”

“No, sir. They’re all real nice.” Keegan thought about the whispers in the school hallway. Once he’d heard an entire conversation. “Do you think he’s a mutation?” someone had said. “Nah,” said someone else. “Cleft palate. It’s just a birth defect.”

Granger said, “Don’t they have operations to fix that?”

“I had it. You should have seen it before.”

For the rest of the summer, Keegan drove the truck. Kids his own age and older waited for him. In the shadows, they hardly noticed his face. “I want a bomb pop,” one would say. “Ice cream sandwich,” said another. For a summer he drove the town, music filling his ears: “Home on the Range” and “London Bridge” and “The Yellow Rose of Texas,” calling, calling, and the folks came out, remembering in the music what it must have been like to be five. He imagined them as children, running after him, their eyes on fire, laughter in their throats. It was the best summer of his life. Then, in August, the company went under, and he had to turn in his keys.

When he left his last inventory in the dispatch office, Old Man Granger sat unmoving on his stool, staring off into an unfocused middle distance.

“Here’s my paperwork, sir. I filled everything out.”

Granger didn’t speak.

“I rinsed out the freezer wells too. The truck’s clean.” Keegan resisted an urge to pass his hand in front of the old man’s eyes. “Well, I got to go.”

When Keegan turned back to close the door, Granger finally spoke. “Don’t ever drive too fast.” He could have been talking to himself. “You don’t want to leave the kids behind.”

It was thirty years before Keegan would drive an ice cream truck again.

The University Blvd. and Colfax Avenue enclave ended south of Cherry Creek, about fifteen blocks from Colfax. Keegan drove through the empty neighborhoods, his music turned off, the ice cream gone, and the boxes of traded goods packed securely behind him. He rested his wrists loosely over the top of the wheel, avoiding road debris with long, sweeping curves. Here the remains of homes sat back from the sidewalk on top of short, weeded slopes. The frame houses that weren’t burned to the ground sagged forlornly, holes gaping in their roofs, an occasional glass shard still clinging to a window, catching the sun. The brick homes fared better, though their roofs swooped to black holes too. Nothing worth scavenging in them now, unless there were secrets buried in their basements. Too close to University. Inside, all the drawers would be pulled out, the sheet rock rotted, wallpaper hanging in ragged folds, their owners either dead or moved to the country to raise crops.

Keegan sighed, checked the fuel gauge, and turned north. A slinky, black form, ten feet long, flowed across the road on short, powerful legs, before vanishing behind some bushes. The sun was still high in the sky. Keegan whistled. Most of the mutoids were nocturnal. He hadn’t got a good look at it, but it moved like a predator. Either it had broken through the Colfax fence, or it came out of the Platte River wastes a couple miles west. Keegan slowed the truck.

It appeared again, beside a house, placed a foot high on the worn wood, then pulled itself up. When its front paws reached the gutter, its hind feet were still on the ground. Then, without a break in rhythm, it poured onto the roof, defying gravity in its sinuous path. Before it disappeared over the peak, it looked at Keegan, small eyes buried in a broad, black skull, like a bear’s. That high, poised in the sun, it no longer appeared black, but a deep, regal purple.

Back on University, two fence men pushed the barrier aside to let him through.

“Saw something big on the road back there,” said Keegan.

“Like a low-riding black panther?” asked the fellow hoisting a scoped rifle.

Keegan nodded.

The man shaded his eyes to look up into the truck. “I got a shot at him yesterday, walking bold as brass in front of those shops on 6th Street. Nothing to eat in the enclave except us, so we’ve organized a hunting party for tomorrow. Find him and then go north for a bit. Clean out the worst of them.”

“About time we went north,” said the man’s partner, wearing thick glasses and a cowboy hat. “The leave-them-alone and they’ll-leave-us-alone policy sucks.” He hefted his rifle, a military issue weapon with a curved magazine. “We need as much replacement ammo as you can get us when you come next week. If we’re going to clean the area out, we’ll be jacking quite a few rounds.”

“Tomorrow, you’re hunting?” Keegan wondered if they heard the quiver in his voice.

“Couple hours before sunrise. We’ve got forty rifles. Figure we can make a sweep as far north as 30th Avenue. Some hotheads on the committee wanted to burn everything in that direction, but we figure a lot of the best stuff is up there.”

Keegan tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. University Blvd. stretched in front of him. The tops of trees in City Park a couple blocks ahead waved in a breeze that didn’t touch them on the street. “No need to go beyond the fence, is there? The majority aren’t dangerous.”

Rifle-scope man looked at him curiously. “Us or them, buddy.”

Keegan nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”

The afternoon routine was the same as always. First he unloaded the truck in the converted bank building’s garage, putting the consumables in the steel-doored storage room, then placing the rest on the shelves except for the glasses he took into his living quarters to add to his display, two rooms of ice cream art under the lights. His favorites were ruby glass banana-split plates, casting red shadows beneath them. Then there were the tall sundae glasses, fluted sides and pouty lipped tops. Fine ice cream bowls of delicate china. Scoops by the dozens, some mechanical (one with a heating element for ease in carving hard-frozen treats), another of ivory, another with knuckle protectors, another with mother of pearl inlay in the handle. In the next room he had the pictures: ice cream trucks from all over the world. Psychedelic ones, and plain ones, and ones that looked like motorized tricycles, and ones shaped like cones or ice cream men or hot dogs or popsicles. Today, though, he didn’t pause to admire the collection. The men were coming!

But what could he do? He spent a couple hours in the ice cream room, beating eggs, adding sugar, stirring in cocoa powder and cream and vanilla. All the variations: chocolate almond, blueberry, mango sorbet, cinnamon, and a triple batch of plain vanilla. Pouring the mixture into the ice cream makers. Turning them on. His hands smelled of chocolate. The air smelled of sweet cream.

He checked the diesel generator and the diesel tanks. Finally, he made a round of the building. All doors bolted. All windows barred. The last shred of afternoon light cast lines across the bank’s lobby, dust an inch thick on the counters where the tellers used to sit. His heels clicked loudly as he walked from window to window.

By the time night had fully fallen, Keegan had restocked the truck, opened the garage, and pulled onto the street. Lights off, he headed north.

He liked the city better at night. The shadows grew velvety, and reflections were soft moonlight or starlight. At 24th Street, ten blocks north of Colfax, he turned the music on. Not nearly as loud as he did during the day. In the dark the sound seemed to carry farther. “Popeye the Sailor” he played, then “Rock-a-bye Baby.”

From out of the empty houses, they came, slowly at first, and then eagerly. Some shambled. Some wobbled on uneven legs. Some trotted, their stony hoofs clicking the cement. Keegan pulled over, went to the back, opened the door above the counter, his scoops tucked into his apron.

“What’ll it be?” he said to the first one.

“Chocolate,” the creature croaked, its horny bill clacking together.

“What have you got for me?”

The three-fingered creature put a box of .45 caliber shells on the counter.

“Where’d you find them?” said Keegan as he swept them out of sight.

“Chocolate,” it said again.

Keegan shrugged, then filled a cone. “Whatever suits you.”

When the creature reached for the cone, Keegan pulled it back. “Listen,” he said. “Go north tonight. It won’t be safe this close to Colfax.”

“Chocolate!” it snapped.

“I’m not kidding. You’ve got to get out of the neighborhood.” Keegan pictured the scene before sunrise. The men would carry torches above their heads, watching for eye-shine in the dark. Guns would explode. The mutoids wouldn’t run. Most of them didn’t know better. Most of them were harmless, the warped children of warped children. Some time a couple generations back, their parents might even have been human. Or maybe their ancestors were dogs or sheep or the zoo animals. Nothing bigger than a rat had bred true since Keegan had been born. There was no way to tell, and why could some of the mutoids speak? Was language passed from the ones who’d been born in human houses and then hidden? Not everyone could give up their twisted offspring so easily. Not every parent could smother a child in its sleep. “Will you go?”

Behind the creature a line had formed. An ape-like animal with an alligator’s face, its loose muscles hanging from the back of hairless arms, held a small keg Keegan knew was full of cream. Behind it a three foot tall crab with a shiny blue shell dangled a basket full of eggs from a stubby-fingered claw. Reluctantly, Keegan gave up the cone. The beast popped it into its mouth in one bite, hummed contentedly for a few seconds, then moaned as it put its hands over its forehead, eyes squeezed shut.

“I’ve told you that you get headaches that way,” said Keegan.

The thing nodded as it staggered off.

“Don’t stay home tonight,” Keegan yelled.

“Cinnamon-maple,” said the ape, its voice a hissing lisp, when it put the keg on the counter. The heavy cream sloshed inside. Keegan didn’t want to think what kind of mutoid produced it.

“The men are coming with guns,” said Keegan. The ape’s long fingers wrapped the bottom of the keg. He tilted his head to the side as if thinking about Keegan’s news.

The ape said, “More cream tomorrow?”

“No, not more cream. You are in danger.” A thin cloud slid across the surface of the moon, darkening the street. Keegan glanced up. Dozens of mutoids crept through the houses’ shadows. They were stalking him, he figured. The tyranny of the sweets. They heard the music. Most of them were small, youngsters. Were they the sentient ones, waiting for a chance to go for the ice cream? And how sentient were they? North of Colfax the boundary between the self-aware and the purely animal blurred.

“I’ll bring cream,” said the ape.

Keegan bent down in frustration, resting his head on the counter.

The crab said, “They’re simple people.” It spoke with a slight English accent and a whir behind its voice as if a tiny windmill nested in its throat. By standing on the tips of its delicate claws, and with a stretch of the clawed arm, it rested the basket of eggs on the counter. Once Keegan had asked it where it got the eggs. “Really old chickens,” it had said.

“You’ll be hunted,” said Keegan. “We’ve got to get everyone out of here, north of 30th.”

“Some might go.” The crab clicked its claws together. “The smarter ones. Not many. Are you sure the men are coming? They’ve never come before.”

Keegan nodded.

The crab’s eye stalks quivered. Was that nervousness, Keegan wondered. Or was the crab laughing?

Turning north, the crab waved a claw. “It’s dangerous out of our neighborhood. There are territories to consider. Borders to be crossed. Not everyone is so friendly as they are here.”

“The men won’t be friendly either.”

“Some of us have talked about burning them out, but we figured if we waited long enough they’d die on their own,” said the crab. It sounded meditative.

Keegan nearly dropped his scoop. “What… what would you do to me?” He couldn’t read an expression in the crab’s eyes or immobile mouth. Overhead, the cloud cleared, and for a moment the moon shone strongly, driving the shyest of the young mutoids back to shadows’ shelter.

“You’re not one of them.” It clicked its claws again. “Do you have any sherbert?”

Numbly Keegan scraped a bowl full for the crab. “Don’t eat it too fast,” he said out of habit.

The crab sidled away.

“You’ll get them to go north?” Keegan called. “You’ll warn them?”

“Those that listen.”

The next mutoid plopped a box of thirty-ought-sixes on the counter. “Vanilla,” it grunted. “With sprinkles.”

“You have to leave,” said Keegan. He shouted to the rest of them in line, to the hidden mutoids across the street. “They’re coming to kill you! You have to run.”

But none of them seemed to understand. Only the crab, and he was gone. By the time Keegan scraped the last of the ice cream out of the last bin and trade goods covered the truck’s floor, he was nearly weeping. It was after midnight. Within a few hours, the Colfax fence would open and the men would march through, their guns cradled, the safeties off.

Exhausted, Keegan leaned on the counter. The street was empty now, and the only movement was the subtle moon-cast edge of shadows crossing the asphalt. Somewhere in the distance a thing howled, a long yodeling uluation that ended like a baby crying.

After a long while, he pulled himself into the driver’s seat, started the engine and headed home. Fifteen minutes later, the garage door lowered automatically behind him. For a moment he considered not turning off the truck. It would be easy to leave the motor running in the closed space, to sit with his eyes shut. He could turn on the music and mix the carbon-monoxide sleepiness with “When the Saints Go Marching,” or “Greensleeves.”

“Us or them,” the man at the gate had said. “Us or them.”

Keegan turned the ignition off. Mechanically he unloaded the truck, putting the cream and eggs in the refrigerator, sorting through the ammunition, putting the other odds and ends in boxes. When he finished, he looked at the clock. 2:30.

The safe thing to do would be to go to bed. He would need to move his business north. No matter how thorough the men were, they were few and the mutants were many. They wouldn’t all be wiped out. He could build a new route in the downtown area, maybe, where the broken skyscrapers crawled with life.

Or maybe he could stop the men.

Keegan opened one of the storage rooms off the garage, turned on the light, scanned the walls filled with equipment: rifles, shotguns, pistols, M-16s, bandoliers, sniper scopes, night vision goggles, gas masks, trip mines, hand grenades, Kevlar jackets, bazookas and mortars. All trade goods that had come in the last year. Boxes of ammo reached to the ceiling. Some shells had spilled. Their brass casings caught the ceiling light. He couldn’t walk without kicking them.

He picked up an M-16, turned the heavy and unwieldy thing over in his hands, and realized he’d never fired it. Wasn’t even sure if he had clips to load it.

And what good would it do? He wasn’t a soldier. He couldn’t kill. “Us or them,” the voice said. “Us or them.” Keegan could hear it in the room quiet as a whisper.

“Who am I?” he said out loud. He smoothed his hands over his apron, sticky with the day’s work. They still smelled of chocolate.

An hour’s labor refilled the truck. All the ice cream he could fit. Boxes of sugar cones. Keegan checked the clock again. Almost 4:00. They’d be at the gate by now.

Steering by moonlight, he pulled onto the street, heading north. “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” pumped out of the loudspeakers, turned loud. The first mutoid stepped from the door of a house in front of him. Keegan nodded his head, but kept rolling. Soon, another joined him, then a third. The music switched to “Song of Joy.” Keegan turned left onto 19th Street, cruising at walking speed. Doors opened. Mutoids crawled from under cars, out of manholes, from behind walls, big ones, little ones, ones that were so misshapen they were hard to look at, and still Keegan drove on, cutting back and forth through the blocks. He beat time on the steering wheel. How far could the music reach?

Old man Granger had said, “Don’t ever drive too fast. You don’t want to leave the kids behind.” Keegan watched through the mirror. Would they keep following? By now the street was crowded. When he reached University again, he turned north. Behind the music, did he hear a gunshot? How far back were the men?

Twelve blocks to go. Fourteen or fifteen if he wanted a cushion. At this speed he could feel broken glass crunching under the wheels. Slowly he passed moonlit cars’ rusted-out shells, drooping road signs. A three foot tall mutoid with a body and head like a frog supported on a pair of slender legs, trotted alongside the truck, waving a box of rifle shells.

“Keep coming,” Keegan called. They rolled through the 24th Street intersection. “Song of Joy,” finished. In the pause between tunes, the patter of feet sounded like rain. “It’s a Small World” covered the noise. Another sharp crack from behind, then, two more over the music. Definitely gunshots.

Ahead of him, a bus that had been turned on its side years ago nearly blocked the road. He steered the truck to the left to go around, over the sidewalk. A shadow stirred on top. Keegan leaned forward to look through the window.

The black creature he’d seen the day before arched its head high, its stubby front claws clasped across its chest, like a giant otter. Slowly, the truck passed the bus, within a few feet of the creature. It cocked its head to one side, as if listening to the music, and Keegan was struck again by its graceful posture, an almost regal pose with the moon-filled clouds behind it. The mutoid parade moved to the side of the houses, as far away from the beast as they could, but they kept following.

A dim reminder of gunshots rang out again. The creature looked south, then dropped to all fours before flowing off the bus, onto the street, toward Colfax Avenue, toward the men. “Don’t go,” Keegan whispered, but the long, black mutoid vanished into shadows.

Keegan didn’t pull over until he was past 33rd Street. By the time he’d opened the counter, the crowd had gathered around. Their bodies bumped against the truck. Over their heads, Keegan saw more coming.

He wiped the counter clean. A dog-like face peered up at him, the creature’s tiny, pink hands holding a screwdriver for trade. Keegan slung the rag over his shoulder. He grabbed a scoop. “What’ll it be?” he said.

When the ice cream ran out, the sun was two hours into the sky and Keegan’s wrists burned. He blinked against the daylight. The last mutoids wandered off, cones in hand or paw or claw or tentacle. But he hadn’t heard a gunshot for some time. He closed the counter. As he drove home, he turned on the music to the inside. “The More We Get Together.”

Five days straight labor replaced most of the ice cream, but Keegan was low on ingredients. It was time to head south again. He’d hadn’t unloaded the truck since his all-nighter, and it took an hour to sort the ammunition and knick-knacks. He opened an unused storage closet to stow the overflow, mostly .22 short and longs, but also an assortment of larger calibers, several boxes of shotgun shells, and four clips of what he guessed were M-16 rounds. The mutoids were good at scavenging, digging deep into basements and warehouses and abandoned homes.

A dozen men including Laird stood at the Colfax fence as he pulled up. They slid the barrier aside to let him in.

“What’s going on?” Keegan asked.

Laird rested his hand on the door. “The boys were eager to see you.” He frowned. “Seems they were pretty successful on their trip last week, and they’re raring to try it again. Acquired a bit of a blood lust, I figure. Rich there is leading the posse.”

Keegan stiffened as he recognized the man with the short mustache from the week before. “How successful?”

Rich joined Laird at the truck. “Not bad, hairlip. Didn’t get as many of the bastards as we might have liked, but we got a trophy out of it.” He gestured to a tarp on the sidewalk ten feet away. A man next to the shape pulled the tarp back, revealing a broad black head and sleek neck. A chaos of flies descended on the corpse.

“Getting ripe too,” Rich added.

Keegan opened the door, stepped onto the street. The sun leaked around his sunglasses, and his eyes teared instantly. He wiped his cheeks with the side of his hand. Up close the fur really was more purple than black. Even a week dead, the creature’s muscles stood out, as if with a flex of will, it could rise, throw off death’s shroud and rip them apart.

Rich said, “We need to trade for more bullets, though. Our supply is low.”

Keegan touched the creature’s head. Its eye was gone. Just a raw socket remained. He remembered it standing on the bus. Why had it gone toward the men? What drove it south? He smiled. There had been young mutoids then, or at least small ones. Ones he’d never seen before, like children. The truck played “Love is Blue,” and “Music Box Dancer,” and “Fly Me to the Moon” while he handed them ice cream. All of them gave him something. He flicked the trade goods behind him, not even looking to see what he was getting. There were so many. He’d scooped and scooped and scooped.

Rich said, “I’ll bet there’s a lot more of them out there, maybe more big sons of bitches like this one. Took all of us to drag him back this far.”

Laird touched Keegan’s shoulder. “It’s an impressive specimen, isn’t it? The men said it didn’t even try to run. Stood in the middle of the street as if daring them to go past.”

“Impressive, hell,” said Rich. “It’s us or them.”

Keegan said, “Yeah, he’s something.”

Rich kicked the body. “You got more ammo, ice cream man? We’ve hunting to do.”

The ice cream man’s back cracked when he stood. I’m getting old, he thought. The rest of the men faced him, none of them under fifty. The last of their kind. We’re all getting old.

“So, what about it? How many bullets can you get for us?”

Keegan thought about the little ones running after the truck. Some of them could speak. Some just pointed at a picture of a flavor. They held their hands open, ready for their treats. He thought about the rooms full of trade goods at the bank, the shiny shells on the floor.

Scavenging’s been tough,” said Keegan. “I don’t think there’s any ammo to be had.”

As he left he played “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf,” and within a block the people came out for their ice cream.