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he was safe, but he mustn’t look.
    Downstairs, though, it was his living room. Dreams were like that. Completely real one minute, nonsense the next.
    Like Alice in Wonderland. Like the Brothers Grimm or Time Bandits.
    Who’s real, kid? Not me. Not you. I promise.
    Don’t wake the Red King.
    Don’t pinch yourself unless you want to know who’s dreaming.
    Don't open the back door and look into the alley, because here I am.
    He turned on his flashlight.
    Right behind you.
    The black bag—if it was a bag—came down fast over Brent’s eyes and whipped shut around his neck, smothering. He got lifted up and thrown across a bony shoulder. The sneakers started squeaking as he heard the alley gravel scatter.
    Say bye-bye to Mommy and Daddy.
    He was dreaming, this wasn’t real.
    There, that's what I meant, whispered the voice.

    * * *

    “Sneakers” copyright 1983 by Marc Laidlaw. First appeared in Shadows #6 (1983), edited by Charles L. Grant.
     

400 BOYS

    We sit and feel Fun City die. Two stories above our basement, at street level, something big is stomping apartment pyramids flat. We can feel the lives blinking out like smashed bulbs; you don’t need second sight to see through other eyes at a time like this. I get flashes of fear and sudden pain, but none last long. The paperback drops from my hands, and I blow my candle out.
    We are the Brothers, a team of twelve. There were twenty-two yesterday, but not everyone made it to the basement in time. Our slicker, Slash, is on a crate loading and reloading his gun with its one and only silver bullet. Crybaby Jaguar is kneeling in the corner on his old blanket, sobbing like a maniac; for once he has a good reason. My best Brother, Jade, keeps spinning the cylinders of the holotube in search of stations, but all he gets is static that sounds like screaming turned inside out. It’s a lot like the screaming in our minds, which won’t fade except as it gets squelched voice by voice.
    Slash goes, “Jade, turn that thing off or I’ll short-cirk it.”
    He is our leader, our slicker. His lips are gray, his mouth too wide where a Soooooot scalpel opened his cheeks. He has a lisp.
    Jade shrugs and shuts down the tube, but the sounds we hear instead are no better. Faraway pounding footsteps, shouts from the sky, even monster laughter. It seems to be passing away from us, deeper into Fun City.
    “They’ll be gone in no time,” Jade goes.
    “You think you know everything,” goes Vave O’Claw, dissecting an alarm clock with one chrome finger the way some kids pick their noses. “You don’t even know what they are—”
    “I saw ‘em,” goes Jade. “Croak and I. Right, Croak?”
    I nod without a sound. There’s no tongue in my mouth. I only croaked after my free fix-up, which I got for mouthing badsense to a Controller cognibot when I was twelve.
    Jade and I went out last night and climbed an empty pyramid to see what we could see. Past River-run Boulevard the world was burning bright, and I had to look away. Jade kept staring and said he saw wild giants running with the glow. Then I heard a thousand guitar strings snapping, and Jade said the giants had ripped up Big Bridge by the roots and thrown it at the moon. I looked up and saw a black arch spinning end over end, cables twanging as it flipped up and up through shredded smoke and never fell back —or not while we waited, which was not long.
    “Whatever it is could be here for good,” goes Slash, twisting his mouth in the middle as he grins. “Might never leave.”
    Crybaby stops snorting long enough to say, “Nuh-never?”
    “Why should they? Looks like they came a long way to get to Fun City, doesn’t it? Maybe we have a whole new team on our hands, Brothers.”
    “Just what we need,” goes Jade. “Don’t ask me to smash with ‘em, though. My blade’s not big enough. If the Controllers couldn’t keep ‘em from crashing through, what could we do?”
    Slash cocks his head. “Jade, dear Brother, listen