On the outskirts of Shreveport, Louisiana, a patrol car marked Desoto Parish Sheriff sat under a cypress tree. Two officers sat quietly in the vehicle, glad the tree’s Spanish moss hung down to hide them from what they were watching across a small bayou. A short distance along a two-lane highway, two mechanical fighting machines walked across the empty parking lot of a strip mall. The officers had been shadowing the machines through the southern outskirts of Shreveport for some time now.
The deputy in the passenger seat tapped the sheriff on the arm and pointed. “Hey, look at the liquor store.”
The sheriff noticed a pickup truck had crashed, rear-end first, through the sidewalk-to-ceiling windows of Kenny’s Liquor Store. The alien machines had noticed, too. They were moving in to investigate.
“Looks like they’s doin’ our job for us,” said Deputy Horton.
Sheriff Bemis leaned over his steering wheel to watch. “That’s old Wiley’s pickup, ain’t it? Man, has he got a surprise comin’.”
Inside the liquor store, Don Wiley staggered a little as he walked into the stock room for the umpteenth time. Cases of liquor were all around him.
“Lawdy!” he crowed. “I done died and gone to Heaven.”
He grabbed a case of Jim Beam, four half gallons, clutching it to his chest and pushing his way out the swinging stock-room door. He staggered along the aisles of booze bottles to the store’s shattered front and plunked the case onto the tailgate of his pickup, sliding it in alongside his growing pile of liquor cartons. There were two or three cases each of Jack Daniels, Southern Comfort, Johnny Walker and Bacardi. He winked at two pit bull terriers panting out the passenger window.
“Patience, boys!” he said. “I’m almost done. Y’all wouldn’t want me to do without, would ya?”
He went in again and a minute later came out of the stock room with a case of Old Bushmills, but he stopped short. Outside the liquor store he saw trouble, real bad trouble. Two evil-looking machines stood just beyond the right-front fender of his truck.
“Hoo-wee,” he moaned. “Please be the DTs. Please!” Sometimes Wiley saw things that weren’t there. Maybe these were just hallucinations. He blinked a couple times and shook his head but the machines refused to disappear. They just stood right where they were. His dogs whined, letting him know they saw what he saw.
Wiley’s arms took to shaking and the liquor case slipped from his hands. When it hit the floor the bottles shattered and Old Bushmills, maybe a hundred bucks worth, spilled across the linoleum tile. He caught the sharp smell of the liquor puddled at his feet but was too busy looking outside to glance down. The machines’ canopies opened and what he saw nearly stopped his heart. Two eerie-looking lizard-birds leered out at him, tilting their heads like inquisitive cockatoos. “Yeah,” he murmured, “this’s gotta be the DTs.” He blinked a couple times more but they wouldn’t go away. And to top it off, they started talking, jabbering something back and forth, sounding like two crows cackling. It kinda sounded like they were laughing, too.
Watching their mouths full of dagger teeth, Wiley felt kinda woozy. “Oh, Sweet Jesus,” he moaned, dropping to his knees in the spilt liquor and clasping his hands together to pray. “Dear God, I’ll never knock over another liquor store, I swear. And I won’t never touch a drop again.” That last bit was a pretty steep price but he figured he was bargaining for his life.
Despite his penitence, the creatures didn’t leave. They dismounted their machines and came to stand just outside the busted front windows, looking at him and cackling a blue streak. They seemed pretty amused by the situation and were sizing him up for something. Just what, Wiley wasn’t sure.
One of the pit bulls growled, giving Wiley an idea. The creatures were just a few feet from the dogs.
“Kill, boys!” he shouted, turning to crawl behind an aisle of liquor bottles. He heard the dogs claw their way out the window, snarling as they attacked. And he heard the creatures set up an awful hissing and screeching as the dogs tore into them. It sounded like the dogs might make short work of them but Wiley was too scared to watch. He crawled away on hands and knees to hide in the stock room.