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Grappling hooks. Two of them came down. One landed in the pool. The other conked Herbie on the head. He yelped. I saw blood.

Everything was perfectly clear in the light.

The tigers looked interested.

Herbie pulled out a gun.

No!

I scrabbled for the grate and yanked the pin, out along with my forty-five.

A tiger put his paws on the bottom rung.

Herbie shot.

I shot.

Herbie fell.

The tigers investigated.

I stood there shocked.

A heavy net dropped through the opening. I stared at it trying to compute what was going to happen.

Holy shit!

Herbie must have had a tranquilizer gun. They were going to airlift the tigers out after they’d been tranquilized.

Then I had another thought. How was Herbie, a hundred-poundweakling, going to drag a six-hundred-pound unconscious tiger onto a net that was now dangling in the pool along with the grappling hook?

I didn’t have to wonder long.

The human-size door opened again, and in walked Godzilla. Not quite but almost. He wore a grey sharkskin suit, tailored for him. Who had shoulders like that? Bull head, hair slicked back. This was not a guy I wanted to meet anywhere. He looked at me and then at the tigers.

“What the fuck is going on? I heard two shots, they’d supposed to be out by now.” He thought I was Herbie? Herbie was out of sight, sprawled in a concrete ditch.

“Shoot them,” he said. Did he think I had a tranquilizer gun?

One of the tigers growled. That was enough for me to step back. A big step.

He had his own gun out and I saw him push off the safety and aim for the tiger as it took another step forward.

Godzilla backed up.

In the background I heard the fireworks, overhead, the roar of the helicopter.

Think! Think!

“Wait,” I said, “I’ll tranquilize them, you get out for a minute and then we can haul them off. Everything’s under control.”

“Shoot ’em now or I will.”

“Boss wants them alive.” I made a wild guess.

“Fuck it. The chopper can’t stay there forever.”

The tiger took another step. I thought he was just curious, but then I wasn’t the one it was advancing on. Godzilla must be sweating. Probably didn’t smell too good, or maybe he smelled really good to the tiger.

Bam!

The human-size door hit the wall and there stood Melissa.

Oh, shit!

“I saw what happened. What’s going on? What are you doing to Rufus and Betty?”

Rufus and Betty?

“Who are you?” The human momma tiger. Even Godzilla was about to back away from her, then he remembered the tiger. The lady or the tiger?

“Rufus, back,” she said in a commanding voice like she was talking to a puppy.

“You,” this to Godzilla, “Put that gun away, he’s not going to hurt you.”

I glanced from the tiger to Melissa. Who would I believe?

Godzilla looked at her like she’d just dropped from Venus. He was trying to keep the gun on the tiger in front of him and Melissa behind him.

Then she saw me. “What are you doing?” she said to me. “You lied to me. You’re the one who’s going to steal the tigers.”

Godzilla’s head was swiveling between us. Good, he thought I was with him.

Or did Melissa really believe I was one of the bad guys?

“Get over there,” he told her, gesturing to Rufus.

“Yes, of course, I’m moving slowly, because it’s not a good idea to move quickly. Good, Rufus, come to mommy.”

She was even with Godzilla now. The tiger moved toward her.

Godzilla was bringing his gun up, aiming at the tiger. I was sure he was about to fire off a round at it.

All of a sudden there was a hiss and Godzilla was screaming. Rufus backed up fast. Melissa was spraying Godzilla like he was a cockroach. I could smell the stuff-Mace.

Rufus didn’t like the smell and was moving away.

Betty was taking playful-for a tiger-swats at Herbie who looked like he was moving.

I ran over and kicked Godzilla’s gun away as he groveled on the cement.

“Put this on,” Melissa shoved a mask at me and put one on herself. “I’m going to get Rufus and Betty out of here. Who’s that? Herbie? What’s he doing here? This place has more people than the viewing area.” Her voice sounded strange through the mask.

“Call an ambulance,” I said, my voice sounding weird also. “And Security.”

“I am Security,” she said, pulling out handcuffs and bending over the writhing Godzilla, “For Kendall Security Systems.”

She wrestled with positioning his wrists. “Your daughter says Hi.”

MISCAST by Micki Marz

“Bounced him on his head till his neck broke,” Aram said.

“What a stupid sonofabitch,” Eugene said.

“Don’t worry about it,” Aram said.

The overturned bucket on which Aram sat rocked, because the handle ends bent but did not flatten on the floor. He scooted the bucket nearer the wall and leaned his spine against a stud for better balance, then closed his eyes as if to saw some Zs.

Eugene did worry about it. He said, “Bo had better get his ass in gear or he’s gonna be meat hangin’ on the rack hisself one o’ these days, go around actin’ like that.”

“Shuddup, Eugene,” Aram said, like a man mumbling in his dreams.

“Shuddup yourself, Armpit.”

Jim Daniels walked around the two men and stopped a few feet from the window with the yellow coating bubbled up and cracked. Behind it, a flit of wings became a fast shadow and then was gone. Jim rotated his head to give the chubby one, Eugene, that look that would catch a shirt afire. “You’re it, Eugene. You’re gonna kill him.”

“Not me! No way. No fuckin’ way. I ain’t killin’ him.” He pushed off from a short file cabinet on which he had been perched. “I ain’t killed nobody in my whole damn life and I ain’t gonna start now.”

Jim looked through a peeled portion of the coated window again and said, “Your choice.”

And poor Eugene knew right then that if he didn’t give in to Jimmy D this time he’d have to the next. That, or Jimmy D would mark him for doom down the road. You were either with Jimmy or ag’in him. Eugene broke out in a cool sweat in the shed that served as an office for the auto salvage yard Jimmy Downed on the edge of Henderson. The thermometer outside read 98 degrees.

It wasn’t Bo, the nutcase who bounced the life out of an enemy, that Jim Daniels had it in for. This month, anyway. It was an actor kid from L.A.

Jimmy opened the door of his shed-office and went to check on the new hire he had tasked with moving General Motors cars to a different spot in the yard, to the middle section instead of the end. He wanted the Jap cars at the back of the yard. While he strung a yellow line of plastic tape to demarcate the end of where the ShitZu-Itzi-Sans should go, he cast a gaze at the mesquite stand by the culvert this side of the south razorwire fence. Things there were still where they should be, no man or animal appearing to have worked the ground.

He approved the workman’s work so far and went on down the rows, mentally taking inventory. All the while, that actor squirt kept popping up in his mind, for Jim D was a bitter man. He didn’t start out that way, but it’s what the world made of him, is what he told his latest ex-wife. He even knew he was obsessing over that actor dumbo, but he learned a long time ago that he couldn’t fight it when something like that came over him, so he might as well make his plans.

Pinhead thought he was such hot steamin’ shit. Even that attitude Jimmy would have been able to overlook, if the clown didn’t have to go and shit on Jimmy’s doorstep. No, the shrimp took something from him, and that was not going to go unpunished. In a softer second, Jim thought maybe he wouldn’t kill him. Just mess him up. Yeah, that’s the ticket. See how many casting directors would slot him for a show then, buddy.