The Last Place on Earth
Chapter I

Public Domain

Sam Collins flashed the undertaker a healthy smile, hoping it wouldn’t depress old Candle too much. He saluted. The skeletal figure in endless black nodded gravely, and took hold of Sam Collins’ arm with a death grip.

“I’m going to bury you, Sam Collins,” the undertaker said.

The tall false fronts of Main Street spilled out a lake of shadow, a canal of liquid heat that soaked through the iron weave of Collins’ jeans and turned into black ink stains. The old window of the hardware store showed its age in soft wrinkles, ripples that had caught on fire in the sunset. Collins felt the twilight stealing under the arms of his tee-shirt. The overdue hair on the back of his rangy neck stood up in attention. It was a joke, but the first one Collins had ever known Doc Candle to make.

“In time, I guess you’ll bury me all right, Doc.”

“In my time, not yours, Earthling.”

“Earthling?” Collins repeated the last word.

The old man frowned. His face was a collection of lines. When he frowned, all the lines pointed to hell, the grave, decay and damnation.

“Earthling,” the undertaker repeated. “Earthman? Terrestrial? Solarian? Space Ranger? Homo sapiens?

Collins decided Candle was sure in a jokey mood. “Kind of makes you think of it, don’t it, Doc? The spaceport going right up outside of town. Rocketships are going to be out there taking off for the Satellite, the Moon, places like that. Reminds you that we are Earthlings, like they say in the funnies, all right.”

“Not outside town.”

“What?”

“Inside. Inside town. Part of the spaceship administration building is going to go smack in the middle of where your house used to be.”

“My house is.”

“For less time than you will be yourself, Earthling.”

“Earthling yourself! What’s wrong with you, Doc?”

“No. I am not an Earthling. I am a superhuman alien from outer space. My mission on Earth is to destroy you.”


Collins pulled away gently. When you lived in a town all your life and knew its people, it wasn’t unusual to see some old person snap under the weight of years.

“You have to destroy the rocketship station, huh, Doc, before it sends up spaceships?”

“No. I want to kill you. That is my mission.”

Why?

“Because,” Candle said, “I am a basically evil entity.”

The undertaker turned away and went skittering down Main Street, his lopsided gait limping, sliding, hopping, skipping, at a refined leisurely pace. He was a collection of dancing, straight black lines.

Collins stared after the old man, shook his head and forgot about him.

He moved into the hardware store. The bell tinkled behind him. The store was cramped with shadows and the smell of wood and iron. It was lined off as precisely as a checkerboard, with counters, drawers, compartments.

Ed Michaels sat behind the counter, smoking a pipe. He was a handsome man, looking young in the uncertain light, even at fifty.

“Hi, Ed. You closed?”

“Guess not, Sam. What are you looking for?”

“A pound of tenpenny nails.”

Michaels stood up.

Sarah Comstock waddled energetically out of the back. Her sweet, angelic face lit up with a smile. “Sam Collins. Well, I guess you’ll want to help us murder them.”

“Murder?” Collins repeated. “Who?”

“Those Air Force men who want to come in here and cause all the trouble.”

“How are you going to murder them, Mrs. Comstock?”

“When they see our petition in Washington, D.C., they’ll call those men back pretty quick.”

“Oh,” Collins said.

Mrs. Comstock produced the scroll from her voluminous handbag. “You want to sign, don’t you? They’re going to put part of the airport on your place. They’ll tear down your house.”

“They can’t tear it down. I won’t sell.”

“You know government men. They’ll just take it and give you some money for it. Sign right there at the top of the new column, Sam.”

Collins shook his head. “I don’t believe in signing things. They can’t take what’s mine.”

“But Sam, dear, they will. They’ll come in and push your house down with those big tractors of theirs. They’ll bury it in concrete and set off those guided missiles of theirs right over it.”

“They can’t make me get out,” Sam said.


Ed Michaels scooped up a pound, one ounce of nails and spilled them onto his scale. He pinched off the excess, then dropped it back in and fed the nails into a brown paper bag. He crumpled the top and set it on the counter. “That’s twenty-nine plus one, Sam. Thirty cents.”

Collins laid out a quarter and a nickel and picked up the bag. “Appreciate you doing this after store hours, Ed.”

Michaels chuckled. “I wasn’t exactly getting ready for the opera, Sam.”

Collins turned around and saw Sarah Comstock still waiting, the petition in her hand.

“Now what’s a pretty girl like you doing, wasting her time in politics?” Collins heard himself ask.

Mrs. Comstock twittered. “I’m old enough to be your mother, Sam Collins.”

“I like mature women.”

Collins watched his hand in fascination as it reached out to touch one of Sarah Comstock’s plump cheeks, then dropped to her shoulder and ripped away the strap-sleeve of her summer print dress.

A plump, rosy shoulder was revealed, splattered with freckles.

Sarah Comstock put her hands over her ears as if to keep from hearing her own shrill scream. It reached out into pure soprano range.

Sarah Comstock backed away, into the shadows, and Sam Collins followed her, trying to explain, to apologize.

“Sam! Sam!

The voice cut through to him and he looked up.

Ed Michaels had a double-barreled shotgun aimed at him. Mrs. Michaels’ face was looking over his shoulder in the door to the back, her face a sick white.

“You get out of here, Sam,” Michaels said. “You get out and don’t you come back. Ever.”

Collins’ hands moved emptily in air. He was always better with his hands than words, but this time even they seemed inexpressive.

He crumpled the sack of nails in both fists, and turned and left the hardware store.

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