Cover by Rocky Kelley

As we barrel toward the August 29 premiere of Rayguns Over Texas at LoneStarCon 3 (aka the 71st Annual World Science Fiction Convention) in San Antonio, I am presenting book excerpts, one contributor per day.

Today’s selection comes from Aaron Allston‘s “Defenders of Beeman County.”

A government agent comes to a rural Texas community to check on unusual energy readings, in Aaron Allston’s story straight out of the Twilight Zone.

At Ayers’ insistence, they took two cars, the sheriff’s department cruiser and Ayers’ sleek black limousine. They drove out past the city limits, the transition from houses and mowed lawns to dry scrub land a sudden one, then headed north on a back road.

Ayers glared ahead through the haze of summer dust the sheriff’s wheels kicked up from the gravel road. Cothron drove too fast, making sharp turns, catching air on bumps and rises, all the maneuvers more demanding than was good for the limousine. Ayers wasn’t in the mood to skid off the road into rocks and tarantula nests and sheep crap.

He very much looked forward to killing the sheriff.

They left the gravel road to turn west onto Bull Dog Run, a rutted dirt track. A few hundred yards past the turnoff, with no buildings nor Sandstone Hollow in sight, the sheriff’s car pulled off to the side and stopped.

Ayers pulled up behind it. Cothron had already exited his vehicle and was heading off on foot across dry terrain toward a scattering of pumpjack oil wells — equipment that looked like a mad welder had attempted to create impressionistic sculptures of giant brown
grasshoppers.

Ayers hit the button to lower his passenger-side window. Hot air washed in across him. “What’s the holdup, sheriff?”

“Gotta pee. Bladder the size of a marble. Be right back.”

Ayers rolled the window up and glowered after the sheriff.

Cothron walked perhaps fifty yards off the road, stood with his back to the cars, unzipped, and then stood with his hands on his hips. Ayers looked around, impatient. There were no people to be seen in any direction, no movement at all other than the slow bobbing of
some of the pumpjacks.

A few moments later, Cothron zipped up again. But he didn’t turn around to return. He bent over to examine something on the ground. He turned, saw Ayers looking, and waved the Washington man over.

Shaking his head, Ayers left the comfort of his car and walked to the pee site. “Get your ass back in your car, Cothron. Whatever’s going on here isn’t relevant to my assignment.”

“You’re going to crap yourself when you realize how relevant it is.”

Cothron jabbed a finger toward the ground before him. “Take a look at that.”

Ayers moved up beside him and looked. All he saw was a patch of once-dusty ground, now spattered with liquid, rapidly drying out to become dusty again. “I’m missing it.”

“That’s okay, I don’t miss anything.”

Then Ayers heard it, the sound of metal clearing leather, and felt a handgun barrel pressed hard into the side of his head.

Ayers cleared his throat. “Sheriff —”

Excerpt from “Defenders of Beeman County” © 2013 by Aaron Allston.