stage. There was no superamplified clunk to follow.
Nazi Kurt slipped and fell on his ass in astonishment.
The sudden, total silence whooshed in like a shroud to compress the eardrums. The drop-off was vertiginous; Nicky felt as if he were fighting to respirate in a vacuum.
Hi Fi and Archie were still hammering away, grimacing, posing, busting strings, until they discovered they were putting out zero sound. It took exactly two heartbeats.
Slurpee stopped drumming. The sight was so lame it was nearly comic. Double-Ought, ditto.
The arena manager peeked out from behind the wing curtains. He stuffed his fist into his face, dropping his clipboard to the floor. It landed with a solid, flat whack that almost startled Archie into a power dump.
Every single preamp, power amp, power booster, contour amp, and PA speaker had overloaded, arcing across protective fuses to crisp the circuitry. The speaker elements and conduits were puddles of chrome plasma. Three of the techs were still writhing from severe electrical hotfoots. The tapes, running at 15 IPS, had flash-melted into useless Frisbees of plastic as the recording hookups had cooked down to slag.
Slurpee put his sticks down gingerly. Gently, quietly. In his time he had seen sound frequencies blast glass to smithereens, crack rubber, induce coma, roast lab animals. He cleared the sweat from his eyes with the back of his hand.
The arena was littered with fallen garments. Pimp boots, trashy lingerie, metalzoid jewelry, fatigues, jeans, punk shirts, yee-hah hats, dirty undies, halters, tubes, belts, lace, thongs. The empty cavern of space resembled a sloppy flea market . . . or Nicky’s bedroom, he thought, as administered by his first wife.
Mixed liberally into the piles and wads of unoccupied garb were clinking pints of booze, smuggled dope, fake IDs, smuggled weapons, scratch cash, and several thousand ticket stubs. Somewhere in front was Jambone’s pirate codpiece, nestled in the clothing of the person who had battled for it.
But no people.
Jambone cursed loudly and it bounced back to meet him. He gave a disgusted shrug and stomped offstage, past Nicky, lending him only a venomous glance that said, “We have another gig one day and four hundred miles from here and what the ratfuck are we gonna do about this baby-rapin’ mess?”
Nobody spoke. Not even the arena manager.
They had all been cowed silent, afraid to make any sound, lest they vanish, pop, the end.
Nicky walked slowly out to center stage and sat down, right on the edge. His feet dangled where the bouncers in their yellow shirts—
Had been.
Okay. Item #1: You want fame, you just got it.
Item #2: Their gear had completely filled two forty-five-foot longbed trucks. Now it was all useless and ruined. Slowly, Nicky’s head dipped to rest in his hands.
Item #3: Their audience had completely filled the arena . . .
The arena manager had left the premises. Presumably to locate a telephone that was not melted into gooey junk.
Nicky had coveted the covers of Rip and Rolling Stone, not Time and Newsweek. He stayed as he was, sitting on the edge of the stage, until men at last came for him.
How long? Time had stopped. Who cared?
Ladies and gentlemen, Gasm has left the arena.
“Excuse us.”
Nicky looked up and saw three men in suits. The arena manager was standing out of range behind them. Tattlers always stand back when the poop is about to hit the propeller. FBI? CIA? Secret police? Death squad? Exactly how did you punish someone for something like this?
“You are Nicky Powers? You manage the band Gasm?”
Nicky prepared himself mentally for the cuffs. He did not answer. The lead guy seemed anxious to get the particulars correct. He spoke hesitantly.
Nicky returned the man’s frank gaze. He did not read threat. He read nervous excitement.
“These gentlemen and I represent the Defense Department of the United States.”
Call it intuition, but Nicky knew in a flash that Gasm would make its next concert date, no sweat. Not drop one. He smiled his very best dealmaker’s smile and stood up.
The Oxford English Dictionary credits David J. Schow for coining the term splatterpunk, a type of horror fiction critic S.T. Joshi noted as “utilizing elements from popular culture (especially rock-and-roll music and slasher films) to underscore the violence and sterility of modern life.” Rock musicians pop up in several of his short stories and the band Gasm from “Odeed” also makes an appearance in Schow’s debut novel The Kill Riff (1988), a story of vengeance and madness in the world of rock and roll. A Bram Stoker Award-winner and recipient