The Evening Redness in the West

Midnight Quatermass 22: Westerns, a Birthday, a Pup and Sci Fi Spuds

Evening all.

I just got asked by SFX magazine about Long in the Tooth, this year’s story in John Carpenter’s Tales for a Halloween Night, so rather than repeat myself I’ll talk about two older stories and two future ones.

I never set out to be a short story writer, but have written quite a few now. I like the format. I enjoy not having the space to fuck around. I’ve read Proust and boy did that guy need a decent editor to drag him out of his pit and start cutting. I also like jumping from genre to genre, place to place, time to time and dropping characters into situations they’re probably not going to get of.

However, the first story I wrote for John’s portmanteau collection was a little Weird West story that featured a young girl who not only survived but also kicked a lot of ass.

That story, The Posse, is one that Dave and I get asked about a lot and it’s one of our favourites. For a later book I decided it might be fun to jump forward a few years and see what that particular girl and her gun were up to. As it turned out she was still kicking ass:

That tale became a little homage to HORROR EXPRESS (1972) and was called Gone To Texas. I’m still noodling with a third story featuring her - proof that I do take my time over some of this stuff - so I guess that escapade won’t see the light of day until 2026. Man. Unless I write something for her here in Midnight Quatermass. Maybe. We’ll see.

But I did just hit SEND on next year’s story which is different yet again. Part midnight campfire ghost story part Weird War. The nice thing about Stormking is that they do let me experiment and I’m looking forward to see how we bring this one to life as the format is a little different. It’s called The Waiting House and the few people to read it say its pretty good.

I like writing the occasional war story, but my first love is still the western. I keep promising one day I’ll sit down and write a proper one - no horror, no sci-fi - just hats, horses, spurs and six-shooters. Time though, is a bastard.

I did flesh out a Spaghetti Western inspired tale called Die, Deadman, Die! a few years ago which at the moment only exists as the opening ballad for a movie that never got made. Writing the lyrics for it was a lot of fun and we should probably do more of that kind of thing because Steve and Aniko really did it justice:

Steve just started up his newsletter again by the way. Good stuff.

Moving on and my eldest, Connor, was eight-years old today. This is him, just a few minutes old, watching DIE HARD and making little fists with his toes:

Time doesn’t so much fly as just propel you straight into the future like Kyle Reese. One minute you’re minding your own business in the 132nd under Perry and the next you’re stealing Nikes and police shotguns for a blind date in Tech Noir. Other events though seem further away than they are and time takes on a thick treacle like quality like you’re Bud Brigman breathing pink water, dropping a one way trip nukewards.

So far so good though. Life with the kids is that continual shift between fast-forward and a frame-by-frame crawl. For Connor it’s been a day of do-as-you-please with a pile of presents and unlimited Roblox. His sister, five, had a slightly tougher day as she wants equal footing and finds it tough not to release her inner Yosemite Sam on all and sundry. Jess and I try to coast the day, weather the little storms and ensure no one loses a digit or two before the next birthday rolls over us.

You can hear them, right? The same faint snap, crackle and pop as The Langoliers just over the horizon. Candles on the cake glowing out of sight like a firestorm…

Jess, for some reason, didn’t want to name our first born Joe Dredd or Max Rockastansky so I, and he, had to settle for the name of an immortal Scotsman played by a Frenchman. But speaking of Rockastansky… we took the kids to meet their pup for the first time last weekend:

Monumental I think. Cooper seems about as ready for us as we are for him, but come September 9th we’re all in this together.

Speaking of… it’s ridiculously rare that Dave and I ever get to work in the same room, but we managed to carve out a full week together last week so here he is hard at work on a thirsty chap:

I say working because I was obviously lounging on the other sofa struggling with the Life of the Mind and wresting movies. Also you really don’t want to know what the chap is actually drinking.

I’m not allowed to talk about that book yet, but I will say it’s got a killer title and is set in Alaska. It’s a fucking ride.

Right. I promised not to drown you in puppy pics and another photo of Dave will cause too much swooning so… story time.

JONAH JONAH

A desolate alien landscape. Barren. Apart for the huge silver pencil of a 1950’s style rocket ship - the Lyco One. The name is stencilled down the ship’s side in monstrous lettering that can be read from miles away.

Which is where the small figure walking towards it is. All we can tell for sure is that he’s wearing a bulky space suit and that the voice we hear clearly over his comms has a southern American accent.

“Guys, you’re never gonna believe this!”

~

Inside the ship things are happening fast. Among an array of levers and buttons, spinning dials and lava lamp screens stands Captain Rennie delegating like a motherfucker.

“Quick, he’s on his way back! Cut the comms!”

Lt. Nielsen, Sgt. Francis and Pilot Morrow are running this way and that frantically pulling levers, pushing buttons and studying their lava lamp screens intently.

“Prep for emergency take-off!” barks the captain.

Sgt. Francis is the only one not fully on board with this plan. She looks concerned, conflicted and conscious that what they are about to do is just plain wrong.

“I still don’t know about this guys. Leaving Jonah behind seems a little… harsh.”

Lt. Nielsen rolls his eyes and pushes two buttons at once. Pilot Morrow is flipping a series of cool looking switches above his head.

“We’ve been through this, Francis. It’s a done deal,” explains Nielsen patiently. “We no longer have the fuel capacity or the food reserves to all make it home.”

“Aye, and whose fault is that?” asks Morrow angrily because he already knows the answer.

~

The chap they’re discussing, the chap still outside in the space suit, is Private Jonah Jonah.

He’s young and impossible to upset. His skin is so thick that Morrow has thought more than once about using it to plug asteroid damage in the forward bulkhead. He’s also oblivious as to how the crew actually feel about him despite the mishaps that have already occurred. A week ago he was stood where Francis is now, trying to fix the uniform buttons that he’d somehow got wrong when he leaned his elbow on a large red lever clearly marked DANGER! FUEL DUMP!

Morrow was leading the others back to the rocket ship when they suddenly saw the jets of rocket fuel purge from the top side of the rocket in a huge arc to form a lake between them and the Lyco One.

“Uh oh,” Jonah had said.

“I’m going to bloody kill him,” Morrow had said.

Cooler heads prevailed and Jonah found his access to the flight deck revoked. He didn’t mind as the next day he ran down to the galley. He was so eager to get there early and make a good impression on the completely automated food system that he tripped over his own feet and landed heavily on a large red button clearly marked DANGER! POTATO PURGE!

Morrow sat down heavily outside as he watched hundreds of potatoes jettison themselves from the side of the ship in a slightly smaller arc to land with a resounding wet splat in the pool of rocket fuel.

“Uh oh,” Jonah had said.

“I’m going to fucking kill him,” Morrow had said.

This time everyone agreed with him. Albeit in a roundabout way.

Captain Rennie, then as now, was the voice of reason.

“We take no pleasure in this, Francis. Mission priorities have changed and so mission dynamics have to adjust accordingly. As it is we’ll struggle to make Earth orbit and the last few weeks of the journey home we’ll be down to the emergency kale rations.”

Francis concedes as she straps herself in for the launch.

“No, you’re right. He’s an idiot. Let’s go.”

~

The rocket ship is launching. A huge cloud of dust is kicked up as it pulls itself into the sky and heads for the stars.

The solitary figure has stopped to watch it.

“Erm… guys?”

~

With the hardships ahead still far away the crew are very happy to be leaving.

“Next stop Mother Earth,” announces the captain.

Pilot Morrow stretches his arms behind his head with a grin that suddenly falls apart as his eyes narrow towards a blinking red warning light.

“Hey… no one’s been messing with the Nose Clamp Array have they?” he asks.

The only one who could have answered the pilot was not on board. But just that morning Jonah Jonah’s elbow had spilled his orange juice over a rather sensitive glowing red lava lamp screen. As he had watched the screen change to a deep vermilion he closed his eyes.

“Uh oh!”

But when he opened his eyes the rogue colour was already making its way up from the galley out of sight towards the top of the ship.

“Phew,” Jonah remarked. “No harm done.”

Now eight hours later he simply did not not connect his little accident with the nose cone of the Lyco One suddenly popping open on a giant hinge.

He was too far away to hear the screams, but he could distinctly see the four small figures falling away from the ship.

Jonah begins to speak although there is no one on the planet left to hear him.

“Uh…”

The rocket ship tilts alarmingly for a moment and then begins to fall back towards the ground. It crumples in on itself for a moment as it hits the fuel and potato dump before erupting into an enormous ball of fire.

“…oh”.

Perfectly baked potatoes fly everywhere.

~

Sitting on a plateau on the alien world is a sleek and beautiful strange craft. Around it stand its distinctly non-human crew. They are tall, thin and quite beautiful. Some of them are pointing to the smoke rising into the sky in the distance. They speak to each other in a language that is both musical and impossible to describe. Luckily their evolution has adapted after meeting many many dumber races and each word creates a hieroglyphical image that hangs in the air for a moment - a temporary floating speech bubble for the likes of us. A quick skim read of the air boils down to this:

‘Oh no, the Earthling’s rocket ship went boom boom’.

~

A little while later they see a lone space-suited figure walking back towards them. Jonah Jonah is carrying a scorched piece of metal loaded up with a huge pile of steaming baked potatoes.

Once he’s close enough he has a stab at communicating again. It had never occurred to him that morning during their first meeting that the aliens, now watching him with some amusement, would not speak or understand plain old dumb English.

“So I guess my ship accidentally blew up or something before I could tell them about you guys, but I hope you’re hungry. Any chance I can get a lift back home?”

But understand him they do and agree silently amongst themselves that there will be no harm in taking the harmless small creature back to his tribe.

Plus his offerings do smell delicious…

~

The interior of the alien ship is very sleek and sexy compared to the poor doomed Lyco One. No sharp edges and not a lever, button or lava lamp screen in sight. Just ornate and very comfortable pillows on which lie the aliens themselves in an almost post-coital slumber.

It turns out that they fucking love baked potatoes. No idea if they have a variation on Marx in their culture, but if they did he’d be warning society about the true opium of the masses: chips, fries, mash and roasters.

The equivalent of ship’s commander steps over his slow moving crew to where Jonah is trying to get comfortable and begins pouring diamonds, jewels and slivers of gold into the Earth-man’s lap.

“Gee, that’s nice of you fellas, but just the lift home is fine…”

The commander tries to make his race’s A-OK sign, but falls asleep halfway through the gesture. These potatoes are the shit.

Luckily his ship is super smart and when unable to pick up the needs of its commander and crew locks on to the only conscious entity aboard and awaits a command.

The entity, Jonah, is unfortunately no cosmo-cartographer so when the simplified version of a star chart hovers in front of him he first gives the floating model of their magnificent ship a name. The alien culture has outgrown such trivialities, but Jonah figures a ship as fancy as this one deserves a top notch name and writes it out carefully in the air.

He then merely draws a line from it straight back to Earth. He’s so pleased with the name that he doesn’t notice his line goes straight through the centre of something the alien craft has rendered as a simple yellow circle.

Whatever powers the craft is considerably more efficient than the crude metal tube launched from Earth months ago so in a matter of hours Jonah and the sleeping crew are already bearing down on their destination.

But Jonah, sweating now. His uniform and pillows are soaked as the temperature climbs and climbs and climbs. If there was a lava lamp screen to be had it’d be boiling.

“Hey guys, is it getting a little hot in here?”

And so the first contact between humanity and an alien race rushes to its conclusion as the good ship Icarus falls efficiently and with beautiful grace into the heart of the sun.

~

The only witness to this historic moment is an amateur astronomer named Dennis in New Zealand who mistakes the burning alien craft for a speck of dust on his brand new and quite expensive telescope lens.

“Uh oh!” he says as he wipes at it with a Kleenex and, sure enough, when he looks again the speck is gone.

Fin

Almost on time this week. Thanks for sharing this nonsense. Even more of it to come.

Stay frosty!

Mike