Tommy Lee Tucker the pig man was the seventh runner

that May. Under the knife-bright Central California sun,

three DisLex guards squinted through their mirrorshades

while Tommy broke from Dorm B jogging group. He veered

past the pea green barracks, straight toward the

electrified fence which surrounded the Education Center at

Camp Roberts.

Tommy was fifteen yards from the fence when the

nearest guard raised his Remington 870 twelve-gauge and

took aim at his back.

"Hey, man, he's headed for the fence!" called another

guard, as he started after Tommy in a slow trot.

Tommy didn't turn. His ankle gave as he hit a ragged

chunk of cement, hidden amid the tall spears of sawgrass

near the fence. Time seemed to stretch as he fell to one

knee. The guards and the internees watched: fish twins

barely out of their teens, the three other pig men, the

bear man who liked to brag he'd been a technodance dee-

jay, and the dozen other freaks of assorted sizes, shapes

and colors who occupied the bunks in Camp Roberts

Dorm B.

The guard in the tower slammed the alarm button and

screamed down at the others, "stop the runner!" One

guard, open-mouthed, stared at the tower instead of

Tommy.

The one who had been trotting broke into a full run.

He paused and brought his hand to his mouth. "Damn

it, he's gonna fry!"

Tommy was on his feet again, limping. He turned

back, eyes like small black olives in his fleshy pink

face, and held up his right arm, fingers forming a "v."

That night, when the XO debriefed the security staff,

the guard who'd trotted after Tommy, a forty-five year-old

divorcee named Karl Hehle, insisted that Tommy had

flipped everyone off. At the same moment in Dorm B, the

freaks whispered in their bunks, evenly divided as to

whether Tommy had given a peace sign or a victory sign.

No one was going to ask them for their opinion, but they

argued anyway.

Karl Hehle was within twenty feet of the running pig

man. He stopped, went to one knee, and took aim with his

twelve gauge. It was a riot gun and he was armed with it

in case the freaks got out of hand and decided to charge.

It wasn't the kind of gun anyone was supposed to fire at a

running target. Running away, at any rate.

"Hey, freak," he yelled. "The fence is on." Then,

he squeezed the trigger and discharged a sandbag. The

sandbag hit Tommy square between his shoulder blades.

Tommy's arms flew up and his chest slammed into the

fence.

Some of the freaks said later that a blue spark shot from

the back of his head. Not everyone saw that, but everyone

saw the flash. Everyone heard the sick, crackling sizzle.

Tommy's sneakers smoked as he jerked like a dancing

puppet. The freaks made a few steps forward, but

everyone knew not to touch him.

Raymond the dog man started to cry.

"Fried shit," said Karl Hehle, cradling his weapon.

The tardy guard who'd been gaping at the tower

arrived and took out his comm. "Runner on the fence," he

said. "Sector five jogging track. We need the truck."

Three miles away, the comm roused the Camp Roberts

paramedics from their backgammon game. The tallest of

them swore under his breath as he crumpled his can of

Sunkist Orange and tossed it through a miniature Lakers

hoop into the recycling bucket.

"Another three-pointer," he said. They were still

laughing about the lucky shot as they climbed leisurely

into the truck and pulled on their gloves and masks.

"You know what's the worst?" the driver said as they

bounced along the one-lane ribbon of asphalt toward the

jogging track. "They stink so damn bad."

Yeah, yeah, the others agreed. Lewis Starr, Jr., the

tall paramedic who'd made the three-pointer, was wishing

he had another Sunkist Orange. "Like barbecue," Lewis

said, staring out the window at the rolling green hills.

Come summer, the grass would be golden brown. The

fires would begin. Lewis Starr was from South Carolina

and he'd eaten a lot of barbecue. The favorite meat there

was pork, cooked for hours with brown sugar and vinegar

and a touch of crushed red pepper. They called it chop

meat or pulled meat. People drank Pepsi while they ate it

on a squishy white bun with coleslaw on top. When it got

seared in the pot with some melted Crisco it smelled just

like one of the runners did after they got racked up on

the fence. Lewis Starr kept his thoughts about pulled

meat and barbecue to himself.

His thoughts grew even worse when they got to Tommy

Lee Tucker and Lewis Starr saw that he was a pig man.

They had finally turned the fence off and Tommy Lee

Tucker's charred corpse lay crumpled in the grass. When

Lewis Starr bent down, he saw that the pig man's orange

polyester coveralls had burned clear through to his broad

chest, and the fabric and flesh had sealed together in a

blue-black welt. Karl Hehle stood by, gabbling about how

he'd tried to stop the disaster. Lewis couldn't read the

pig man's I.D. off the coveralls. It had been blackened

away, except for the last two numbers.

"It was Tucker," Hehle said. "I saw his face."

"They'll make certain tonight when they count heads,"

Lewis replied. The pig man's face was turning purplish.

He looked like a black hog. Maybe a little like a black

man.

Back in South Carolina, they didn't have many freaks.

Nothing like California. When he'd left Carolina, Lewis

had felt few misgivings about going out West and taking

the job at Camp Roberts. DisLex paid well, and Lewis

needed the money to get through medical school. It had

seemed like a good idea at the time, even though before he

had left Greenville, his oldest auntie had asked him

whether or not he felt right being around all those "ugly

niggers." That was how all the church ladies of a certain

age referred to the freaks.

Lewis Starr would never eat pulled meat again. Not

with cole slaw, not with anything else.

The surviving freaks from Dorm B crowded around as

Lewis and the others lifted Tommy Lee Tucker's body

onto the stretcher and wheeled it toward the truck. They

knew Tommy Lee was dead but they still stared, some

with angry glares, others with expressions of sympathy or

sadness on their godawful faces.

"He shot him," Raymond the dog man said, pointing at

the guard Karl. "Then he hit the fence."

"Damn murderer," said one of the fish boys under his

breath.

Lewis searched their faces. Then, he looked at Karl

Hehle. Shiny mucus ringed Hehle's mouth and there were

flecks of food on his chin. A few paces away, Lewis

spotted the mess where the guard had lost his breakfast.

It looked like something a puppy might do.

It wasn't Lewis' business to ask anything, but he

caught Hehle's eye. "He was heading for the fence?"

"Yeah," the guard said. "Everybody was hollering at

him." He looked at Tommy Lee Tucker's body, then back

at Lewis. "The stupid shit flipped me off."

"Man, if they're gonna do it, they're gonna do it,"

one of the other paramedics said.

Lewis cinched a black woven strap across the body.

"Did you try to stop him?" Lewis knew the answer. Like

all the freaks, the pig man was hot with HMV, the virus

that made people pray for AIDS instead; worse than any

killer out of Africa or Asia.

"Hell, yeah!" Hehle crossed his arms, indignant.

The man reminded Lewis of his middle school football

coach, only his crewcut was shorter, the skin showing

bluish white beneath the bristly hair. There were liver-

colored moles here and there on his scalp. Lewis figured

that if the guard's barber shaved too close, he'd cut one

of those moles clean off. Maybe he had. There was a

crusty scab above Hehle's right temple. HMV insinuated

itself right through torn skin. A little gob of spit from

the dead man's cheek could get on the guard's fingers,

then the guard might rub his head. Not that Hehle or any

of the others would have thought that far ahead, or in

that much detail. Hehle just wouldn't have touched the

pig man if he could help it.

One of the twin fish boys stepped forward. "It ain't

right," he said in the wet, mucousy voice all the fish

people had. Lewis had to avoid looking straight at the

fish boy, because his narrow, almond-shaped eyes were

not at all human. The pupils were too big, not quite round.

Periodically, a bluish, filmy membrane would slip up like

a window shade, obscuring both iris and pupil.

The fish boy grabbed Lewis' arm. "Do something,

man," he said. "It ain't right." Lewis remembered that

the fish boy's name was something crazy, like an old-time

rock star. Elton. Or Elvis.

Lewis shook his head. With a hard, freezing look on

his face, Karl Hehle stepped in and roughly shoved the

fish boy aside. The others stepped back, unwilling to

confront the guard.

As Lewis climbed in the truck, he looked over the

group of freaks. "You all take care now," he said, his

voice sounding childish and sanctimonious, as if he had

been back in church choir. "It's all over."

The driver squirted Ozium into the truck as they

left. It did nothing for the stink, just adding a sharp

odor of chemical disinfectant to the stench of burnt meat.

Lewis gagged, remembering the fish boy and the others.

He had no idea what it would feel like, seeing your friend

break and run toward a high-voltage fence. Seeing him

fry, jumping around like a six-inch trout on a hot iron

griddle.

Lewis knew about trout and griddles. Back in his

locker, Lewis had the card of a man he'd met fishing a

couple of Sundays before at Lake Nacimiento. Lewis went

out early most weekends. He hardly ever saw anyone until

he'd been out a couple of hours, but this man had been out

on the lake one morning, with his line in the water,

sipping hot coffee. They'd got to talking. Lewis had

shared the man's thermos of coffee, and he had taken the

man's card. His name was Frank Curtez and he said that

he was a DA in San Luis. He had been interested in what

went on at Camp Roberts. Said he'd heard some stories.

Lewis had almost thrown the card away. But maybe

just from laziness, he'd thrown it in his locker. He

covered his mouth and nose with his hand to stop the

burnt odor. The man who said you'd get used to that kind

of stink didn't know what the hell he was talking about.

Maybe he'd go fishing again on Sunday, out in that clean

lake air. Maybe he'd call Frank Curtez. God knew he

couldn't stand by and watch another man rack himself up

on that fence without doing something.

The body of Tommy Lee Tucker slipped from the

stretcher as Lewis and the driver wheeled it up the steep

ramp of the morgue. The other paramedics weren't very

careful about picking him up, and they let his burnt head

slam against the cold cement.

Tommy Lee Tucker's eyeballs had been cooked way back

to the nerve and that makes changes in the flesh, no

matter whether you were a freak or as tall, straight-

limbed and normal as Lewis Starr. The eyeball slipped out

of its socket and flopped wetly against Tommy Lee

Tucker's temple.

The driver started laughing. "Anybody for a couple

holes of golf?" Everyone chuckled nervously except

Lewis. An eyeball isn't much smaller than a golf ball. It

looks a lot bigger than most people think, once it's out of

someone's head.

Lewis Starr always followed procedure and unlike two

of the others, he still wore his rubber gloves. Very

gently, Lewis pushed Tommy Lee Tucker's eye back into

place. He couldn't shut the pig man's eyes, but he drew

the sheet up over his swollen face. None of the

paramedics laughed.

The pig man's cooked egg white eyes haunted Lewis

Starr that night. He had to call that man, Frank Curtez,

because if he didn't, he knew that those opaque blind eyes

would haunt him forever, and Lewis Starr knew that he

could never tolerate that.

                                                  #