Love and Hydrogen by Jim Shepard Read Free Book Online Page A

frightening of
all the giant insects.
The woman, dressed in white, entangled head to foot, has one arm above her head as if wanting to answer a question. Her head is turned away but her eyes look back at the spider. The spider, tiger-striped in red and black, holds her with three legs and has bright white pedipalps, like teeth. My father bought me the pack that contained this card and I forget which others. This I remember because of the teasing noise he made when he saw it, knowing I was afraid of spiders.
    #31: The Monster Reaches In
    Lost. What I remember: Another blonde wrapped in an embrace, the double green tarsus of an insect reaching through a window. A leg reaches farther in for a soldier, whose bayonet opens a lawn sprinkler of blood along its length.
    #32: Robot Terror
    A greenish robot like a squat peppermill with arms. Three arms: one with a vacuumlike attachment that’s already sucked up half a human; two with pincerlike claws, one of which is driven deep into the center of a swooning young woman in a sundress. It rolls along on low, spiked wheels. On its side, rivets. In its head, a Martian, who looks genuinely sympathetic.
    #33: Removing the Victims
    By some means the aliens had found a way to communicate with
the giant insects they had created. The bugs followed any instruction given to them by the spacemen.
Did the bugs want anything in return? Could humans hear their talk? Were the negotiations difficult? More mysteries.
    #8:
Terror in Times Square.
#9:
The Human Torch.
#12:
Death in
the Cockpit.
#15:
Saucers Invade China.
#17:
Beast and the Beauty.
#18:
A Soldier Fights Back.
#35:
The Flame Throwers.
#38:
Victims
of the Bug.
#40:
High Voltage Execution.
#41:
Horror in Paris.
#42:
Hairy Fiend.
One afternoon Sister Justine confiscated eleven cards from Milton Dietz. For three days she had them in her desk. On the fourth day while I watched from the boys’ bathroom she pitched them into the Dumpster. That night I got them back with a flashlight, one leg sunk into someone’s applesauce from lunch. Milton was crushed at the loss, but I didn’t return them. Worse: I didn’t confess it to Father Hogan. Who knew how closely he worked with the nuns?
    #34: Terror in the Railroad
    A gigantic ant, fire-engine red, filling a curved rail shed, embracing, with three of its six legs, a lighted green railway car, and crushing the top of it in its jaws. My parents worry that when they’re dead I’ll inherit their job as my brother’s keeper. My brother has no one else. That leaves them unhappy when he’s in contact with me and unhappy when he’s not. I maintain the disingenuous position of the good son, offering to do more and deferring to the wisdom of their greater caution. Bodies tumble out of the connecting railway cars. One is outlined with ragged and filigreed white light, suggesting the third rail.
The entire station was thrown into a panic as they
watched the fascinated insect crush several cars the way a child
might crush a toy he had grown tired of.
    #36: Destroying a Dog
    The boy shrieks as he runs to prevent it, both fists raised in protest like a figure on a left-wing poster. The dog, a cross between a German shepherd and a golden retriever. The dog’s coat flies to pieces under the force of the ray, separating like autumn leaves off a pile in the wind. The little mail flag on the mailbox is down.
    #37: Creeping Menace
    Two men sprinting past demolished rural buildings. One man carrying a small boy in a red shirt and white socks. The boy seems to want to tell him something. The giant insect right behind them is indigo with cherry-red eyes.
    #39: Army of Giant Insects
    An entomological Guadalcanal: in the foreground, GIs armed with cannons, bazookas, machine guns, and rifles, the NCO exhorting them to hold the line; in the background, an oncoming storm of insects as far as the eye can see. Air Force jets overhead offer support. One bug flies up into the air backward out