Keith Laumer - A Plague of Demons & Other Stories

by Keith Laumer

KEITH LAUMER:
THE CREATOR OF RETIEF AND
THE MASTER OF SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURE

"Spare, clean prose style and muscular storytelling technique... I consider him to be one of the three or four authors who had the greatest influence on me throughout my life, as both a reader and a writer."
David Weber
"For those who are confronting Laumer for the first time... I envy you: you are about to discover a prose stylist whose single aim is to pleasure you."
Harlan Ellison
"One of the most productive and popular writers of science fiction."
Ben Bova
[Laumer's Retief stories are] "Some of the funniest, cleverest, and most (unfortunately) realistic stories ever written about life at the sharp end of international relations. You're about to have fun."
David Drake
"[Laumer's Dinosaur Beach is] unrivalled not only in its class, but in a class by itself." Gordon R. Dickson
"[Laumer's Retief is] a James Bond figure among helpless bureaucrats... adventure tales that are brisk, light and sardonic...."
Publishers Weekly
"Laumer is a master of both science fiction and mystery."
Seattle Times
"[Laumer's Retief stories offer] satirically wild SF adventures... improbable plot-twists and slapstick action."
Kirkus Reviews
"Keith Laumer is one of science fiction's most adept creators... suspenseful action makes this story a first-rate thriller."
Savannah News-Press
"Hilarious! Swinging! Brilliant!"
Galaxy

Baen Books by Keith Laumer,
edited by Eric Flint:

Retief!
Odyssey
Keith Laumer: The Lighter Side
A Plague of Demons & Other Stories
The Bolo Series:
The Compleat Bolo
Created by Keith Laumer:
The Honor of the Regiment
The Unconquerable
The Triumphant
by David Weber & Linda Evans
Last Stand
Old Guard
Cold Steel
Bolo Brigade
by William H. Keith, Jr.
Bolo Rising
by William H. Keith, Jr.
Bolo Strike
by William H. Keith, Jr.

I followed secondary roads, skirting towns, driving at a carefully legal speed. At the first light of dawn I pulled into a run-down motel near the Georgia line with a wan glare sign indicating VAC NCY. From behind a screened door, an aging woman in a dirty housecoat and curlers blinked eyes like burned-out coals nested in putty-colored wrinkles.

"Take number six," she whined. "That's ten ceesin advance, seein's you got no luggage." A hand like a croupier's rake poked the key at me, accepted payment.

I pulled the car under the overhang, as nearly out of sight from the road as possible. I crossed a cracked concrete porch, and stepped into a stifling hot room as slatternly as its owner. In the stale-smelling dark, I pulled off my coat, found the bath cubicle, splashed cold water on my face at the orange-stained china sink. I dried myself on a stiff towel the size of a place-mat.

I showered and washed out my clothes, hung them on the curtain rail, and stretched out on the hard mattress. My fever was still high. I dozed fitfully for a few hours, went through a seizure of chills followed by violent nausea.

Late in the afternoon I took a second shower, dressed in my stained but dry clothes, and went across the highway to the Paradise Eat, an adobe-like rectangle of peeling light-blue paint crusted with beer signs.

A thin girl with hollow eyes stared at me, silently served me leathery pancakes with watered syrup and a massive mug of boiled coffee, then sat on a stool as far from me as possible and used a toothpick. Her eyes ran over me like mice.

I finished and offered her a five-cee bill. "How's the road to Jackson?" I asked, more to find out if she had a voice than anything else. It didn't work. She looked at me suspiciously, handed over my change, went back to her stool.

Back across the road, I started the car up, pulled across to the one-pump service station. While I filled the tank, a heavy-bellied, sly-faced man in a coverall looked the car over.

"Goin' far?" he inquired.

"Just up Bogalusa way," I said.

He studied the pump gauge as I topped off and clamped the cap in place. He seemed to take a long time about it.

"How's 'at transmission fluid?" he asked. His eyes slipped past mine; heavy-lidded eyes, as guileless as a stud dealer with aces wired.

I handed him his money, added a cee note. "Better check it."

He pocketed the money, made a production of lifting the access panel, wiping the stick, squinting at it.

"Full up," he allowed. He replaced the stick, closed the panel. "Nice car," he said. "How long since you been in Bogalusa?"

"Quite a time," I said. "I've been overseas."

"Plant closed down a year ago," he said. "If you was looking for work." He cocked his head, studying my arm. His expression was shrewdly complacent now, like a clever dealer about to get his price.

"You in one of them wars?" he inquired.

"I fell off a bar-stool."

He shot me a look like a knife-thrust.

"Just tryin' to be friendly..." His gaze went to the call-screen inside the station. He took a tire gauge from a breast pocket. "Better check them tars," he grunted.

"Never mind; they're okay."

He walked past me to the front of the car, lifted the inspection plate, reached in, and plucked the power fuse from its base.

"What are you doing?"

"Better check this here out, too." He went across to the station. I followed him; he was whistling uneasily, watching me from the corner of an eye. I went over to the screen, got a good grip on the power lead, and yanked it from the back of the set.

He yelled, dived for the counter, came up with a tire iron. I stepped aside, caught his arm, slammed him against the wall. The iron clanged to the floor. I hauled him to a chair and threw him into it.

"The fuse," I snapped.

"Over there." He jerked his head sullenly.

"Don't get up." I went behind the counter, recovered the fuse.

"Who were you going to call?"

He began to bluster. I kicked him in the shin, gently. He howled.

"I don't have time to waste," I snapped. "The whole storyfast!"

"They's a call out on you," he bleated. "I seen the tag number. You won't get far."

"Why not?"

He stared at me, slumped in the chair. I kicked the other leg. "Sheriff's got a road-block two, three miles north," he yelped.

"How good a description?"

"Said you had a bad arm, scar on your face; 'scribed them clothes, too." He pulled himself up. "You ain't got a chance, mister."

I went over and picked up a roll of friction tape from the counter, came back and pulled him to his feet, reached for his arms. He tugged against me feebly, his mouth was suddenly loose with fear.

"Here, what are you gonna"

"I haven't decided yet. It depends on your cooperation." I set to work taping his hands behind him. "What's the best way around the road-block?"

"Looky here, mister, you want to slip past that road-block, you just take your next left, half a mile up the road..." He was babbling in his eagerness to please. "Hell, they'll never figger you to know about that. Jist a farm road. Comes out at Reform, twelve mile west."

I finished trussing him, looking around the room; there was a smudged, white-painted door marked MEN. Inside, I found soap and water on the shelf above a black-ringed bowl. I took five minutes to run the electroshave over my face.

There were plastic bandages in a small box in the cabinet; I covered the cut along my jaw as well as I could, then combed my hair back. I looked better nowlike someone who'd been hurriedly worked over by a bargain mortician, rather than just a corpse carelessly thrown into a ditch.