Read Online The Cracked Earth by John Shannon - Free Book Online Page A

drifted into the living room where Lewis sat, readjusting a coffee cup on the fold-down desk with great focus, as if getting messages of divination from the damp circles it left.
    “Stuff you know without knowing you know it. It’s like, every time you get a little shock of recognition from a novel.” His eye came to rest on Jack Liffey’s bare arm, puzzling over the tattoo. “What’s ‘Good Conduct’?”
    “It was an army thing. It’s what gets you out of the shit in one piece.”
    “Looks like it caught up with you. Don’t bleed on the rug, Sergeant. You know, in a deeply ironic sort of way, I was always sorry to miss out on Vietnam, since it was the defining experience of our generation and all that. Just between you and me, of course. I was an SDS organizer.”
    “In my case, you missed out on a lot of boredom. I wasn’t on a sergeant track, by the way. Do you know anything about an outfit called PropellorHeads?”
    “Software and computer games, taken over last year by an Australian venture capitalist named Nick Dunne, who made his fortune on real estate plus an Aussie beer called Castleton. Installed his own management team. How am I doing?”
    “Not bad. Monogram Pictures.”
    “Nineteen-forties, they made the Bowery Boys, Charlie Chan, and a lot of Bela Lugosi B-movies. In the sixties, the Roger Corman cheapies made the name Monogram a running gag for any schlock movie studio, but the French liked the spirit of the place so much that Godard’s Breathless is dedicated to it. On the other hand, the French like Jerry Lewis, so what does that tell you?”
    “Today?”
    “The current Monogram isn’t really a successor. Some Chicago dentists bought the name and the film library, and then Mitsuko bought them, trying to put together a media empire. They’re back in business in a different building with a lot of Japanese capital.”
    “What do they make now?”
    “They have rights to some of the old stuff. And they make TV movies. Disease of the Week. Straight-to-cable horror. Once in a while, like all of us, they try to do better.”
    He sipped at his coffee and made a face, then headed for the kitchen. Jack Liffey caught up with him rummaging in a cupboard.
    “Do you know any connections between the two?”
    “As it happens, yes. PropellorHeads released a computer game called Chan Lives. Might have something to do with Charlie Chan. And it’s pretty clever of me to know that because I don’t use computers. Hush, I hear leprechauns.”
    Jack Liffey listened, wondering what that was supposed to mean. He didn’t hear anything but a dog baying until all hell broke loose. The house began to roll and there was a deep rumble like a big jet nosing down, throttles stuck open, about to plow into the front yard. The fridge walked a few steps toward them, and Mike Lewis tried hard to say something, but it blew itself out against the roar, and then Mike was under the kitchen table on his hands and knees. Jack Liffey got into the door frame, clinging to the wall with both arms as the house bucked again. There was a high-pitched crack, like a big tree snapping off, and a panicky kind of dislocation as he attended to images, then sounds, then touch, checking in on his senses by turns, not knowing which one would turn out to be the key. After what was probably only ten or fifteen seconds, things began to settle and the noise was just gone. He wondered if the noise had existed at all or was just his imagination supplying a sound equivalent to the terrible rolling thrust.
    “My my,” Mike Lewis said. “That was over five.”
    “Amazing how well trained we are,” Jack Liffey said, referring to their taking shelter.
    “It’s like riding a bicycle. You never forget how to fall off.”
    “We know enough not to run outside and get killed by a falling chimney.”
    “Door frames are passé, Jack. They talk about getting under tables now.”
    Jack Liffey looked at the sturdy table. Mike Lewis was sitting up under