“Lemuel, Lemuel, stop!” I cried. “It’s just a game!”
The big boy wasn’t listening, still intent on Julian. With manic ferocity, he vaulted over the sill and was hit in midleap by an old-fashioned, enameled-steel candy machine. It cracked his skull like a Goober-filled shillelagh, and as he went down, it struck him again for good measure, thick glass and thicker skull fracturing together in a burst of brain matter and candy-coated peanuts.
“What the hell do you people think you’re doing?” asked Alice Langhorne, setting down the vending machine and helping Julian to his feet. “Oh shit, did you just lose your arm? Unbelievable-that’s gonna take a week to mend. Can’t I even go to the drugstore in peace? Let me tell you, I’m getting a little tired of all the horseplay, people. This is not in the story-there’s no dismemberment in Archie, I can tell you. If this continues, we’re going to have to start taking away privileges. You want to be benched all season? Yes, I’m talking to you, Moose.”
Things were getting out of control.
Lemuel’s jealousy was just the tip of the iceberg: the weekly football games were Coliseums of rampant carnage, two dozen Mooses going berserk on each other, and the lost body parts raked into a pile until their owners could claim them.
Then there was the conspicuous consumption of the Reggies, Veronicas, and Richie Riches, who were engaged in a race to see who could acquire the most stuff, all of them amassing huge stockpiles of worthless “valuables”: jewelry, designer clothes, original art, antique furniture, cars, boats, planes, and enormous estates in which to hoard it all. If one mansion got too cluttered, they took over another.
Likewise, the wasteful appetites of the Jugheads and Dagwoods were depleting the food supply for miles around, and they contributed nothing to the common good except perhaps a comforting example of human repose… and the occasional clever quip.
On the other hand, the blond Bettys were the workhorses of the community, volunteering for the most onerous tasks (such as helping the Veronicas get more stuff) and doing it all with a smile. In fact, the Bettys would have been perfect if not for their unhealthy obsession with the Archies… an increasingly violent obsession, which caused them to do almost anything for an Archie’s attention, such as jump in front of a speeding car or set themselves on fire-especially if an Archie told them to do it.
The Diltons, on the other hand, had no real faults, being the junior problem solvers and tech wizards of the neighborhood-Julian Noteiro was top Dilton. All they lacked was a sense of fellowship; their clinical solutions sometimes lacked consideration for social niceties; they were cold, clinical nerds.
Then there were the Archies.
Archies were the stars of the town, the planets around which all the other stories orbited. An Archie might be hated or he might be loved, but everyone knew that he among us all was the name on the masthead. Archie was the Hero, the Holy Fool, the Boy Next Door, and Jake played him to the hilt. Jake Bartholomew had been born to play Archie-he even looked like Archie.
But there were other Archies out there, and some of these gingers took great license with the brand. Archie is a bumbler, yes, so at first their accidental catastrophes were taken lightly-it was accepted that no vase, sculpture, or windowpane was safe with an Archie nearby, and ladders were acknowledged instruments of havoc. But the harmless blunders soon escalated to unnecessary heights of mayhem: The school science lab exploded, destroying Dr. Langhorne’s research, along with a wing of the building; then a fireworks display went haywire, causing a wildfire that burned down half the village. Both times it was an Archie that caused it.
That was just the beginning: Soon neighboring towns burned, bridges sagged, dams broke, and power lines went down-all in the wake of well-meaning involvement by Archies.
The Weatherbees, Flutesnoots, Grundys, and various other authority figures attempted to rein in these extreme manifestations of “character,” to channel them in more positive directions, but this only led to more opportunities for destruction. By the same token, increasing restrictions and curfews on one Archie just made the others act up. There was talk of eliminating the role of Archie altogether, replacing him with a less-destructive persona. But it was too late; the play had developed its own momentum and could not be controlled. It was like a runaway train, careening faster and faster to some unknown end.
The end came on a Monday night, right after the football game.
After a bad call, the game degenerated into a brawl, with players fighting and hooligans running onto the field with weapons. A tanker truck was driven onto the field, scattering the combatants and smashing through the goalposts before ramming the stands and exploding.
Flaming spectators swarmed down and made it a riot, then the whole population joined in and made it a war. The battle migrated from the stadium to the center of town, everyone savaging everyone else and being savaged in turn. All traces of Archie and the gang were erased. All the nice outfits were ripped to shreds (if not burned away entirely), all the neat houses were trashed, and all the tidy townsfolk were reduced to antic horrors, frenzied skeletons jigging to the music of The Monkees.
Perhaps because of the jukebox, they left the malt shop for last… but finally its time came. As if by some prearranged signal, the mob poured in, breaking down the door and crashing through the windows. The cash register became a weapon; plates and silverware became missiles. The level of crazed destruction was far beyond that of ordinary Xombies-this was violence for the sake of violence, mansized ants attacking each other and spiraling into even more extreme havoc, so that to a human witness, the scene would have been a blur, a chaos-making whirlwind.
“Stop,” I said.
The mob came at me, rearing up with everything it had to slice, dice, and make julienne fries.
“I said stop.” My voice had a power over them; they bumped into it like hitting an invisible wall.
Then the power went out.
Just like that, the lights winked off, the music died. Anything running on electricity clunked to a halt. All at once, Loveville was silent but for the crackling of flames. Somewhere in that silence, a telephone rang-it was the malt shop’s pay phone.
Grumbling, Emilio Monte answered it, saying, “Hello? Yeah. Uh-huh. Uh-huh… uh-huh… uh-huh-no shit. Okay… I’ll tell ’em.”
He hung up and just stood there, ruminating over whatever he had just heard, while everyone else in the room waited expectantly in the dark, frozen in midfight. It was the first time the phone had ever rung. At last, Emilio picked his way through the wreckage of his shop, footsteps clinking on dishes and broken glass.
“Attention,” he said. “I got an announcement to make. That was Arlo Fisk on the phone, calling from the nuclear plant. He says he’s under attack.”
“Under attack! By who?” I asked.
“Another boomer. It’s a French boat-Triomphante-class. Arlo says they entered the reactor facility and routed his team. Says they stole the fuel rods, cleaned the place out.”
“Were they Xombies?” asked the charred corpse of Harvey Coombs.
“No. Just ordinary humans.”
This caused a stir.
Coombs said, “We should go after them!”
Alice Langhorne scoffed, “How? Swim?”
“No! Return to our boat! Get her reasonably shipshape, and start a search pattern.”
“That other sub will be halfway to Africa by the time we do all that.”
“Well, we have to do something. Look at us!”
“Coombs is right,” said Phil Tran. “If we ever want to catch them, we need to act like we give a damn.”
Dan Robles said, “Isn’t acting what we’ve just been doing? And look where it got us.”