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.”