HELLz BELLz by Randy Chandler Page B

started in again or if he’d become so used to it that he’d stopped hearing it for a while—or if the collision with the Moo Goo truck had affected his hearing. Then he wondered why he was doing all this stupid wondering when a crazy ice cream man was bearing down on him with a tire iron. James switched on the ignition and tried to start the Honda’s engine. It whined and coughed, but didn’t turn over. The Moo Goo man was only three feet away now, raising the tire iron over his shoulder.
    “Fuck!” shouted James. “Get out! Get out!” he shouted at Josh, then moved away from the door, hopped over the floor stick and almost into Josh’s lap. “Out, goddammit!”
    The man in the white suit banged the tire iron against the Honda’s driver’s door. “C’mon, kid,” he said with a maniacal grin. “What’ll it be?”
    Josh finally got the message and threw open his door and bailed out. He tried to run, stumbled and took an awkward tumble to the grass of someone’s front lawn. James dove out right behind him, hit the street and rolled to his feet.
    A couple of pre-teens stood on the sidewalk with ice-cream money in their fists, watching the bizarre scene unfold on their tree-lined street. A porch light came on and someone stepped out the front door to see what was going on.
    The man with the tire iron was coming around the rear end of the Honda, smacking the iron against his empty palm, grinning like a cat that just ate Tweety Pie. “Got your ice cream on a stick,” the man said. “Right here. Ring-a-ding-ding.”
Smack
went the iron against his palm.
    “Oh fuck,” said James, suddenly feeling sick to his stomach. “Call the cops!” he yelled to anyone who might be within hearing. “The guy’s fuckin’ nuts!”
    The Moo Goo man said, “Ring-a-ding-ding. I got your ice creeeeeeamm.”
    “They won’t come,” a woman wailed. “They’re all—”
    Gunshots cracked somewhere in the neighborhood:
Crack. Crack-crack.
    “What do we do?” Josh whined.
    The knot of kids had grown to half a dozen or more and they were looting the ice cream truck, only shoving each other at first, but then they began to fight fiercely over the frozen treats.
    A naked woman with a towel turbaned around her head walked across the lawn, her baggy breasts quivering against her upper abdomen. “Coma coma do down down,” she sang softly.
    “Ring-a-ding-dong, yo skull gonna bong.” The ice cream man followed James across the grass, swinging the tire iron left to right, right to left.
    “Get away from me!” James shouted over his shoulder. His nausea mushroomed and he bent over and spewed a gush of sour puke. Hands on his knees, he looked up, coughing and sputtering, to see the tire iron swinging toward his head. He pushed against his knees for leverage and juked to his left. The iron rod swooshed past his left ear and glanced off his shoulder.
    Run!” yelled Josh. “This way!”
    Ignoring the dull ache in his left shoulder, James started running toward Josh but his feet slipped on the freshly watered lawn and he fell to his hands and knees.
    A woman’s shrill voice bellowed: “Johnny, you stop that this minute, you little heathen!”
    The Moo Goo man glanced back toward the street and saw the gang of kids looting his truck. He broke into a shambling jog back to his wrecked vehicle.
    Josh was tugging on James’s arm, trying to pull him to his feet, but James remained on all fours, with his head craned so he could watch the insane ice cream man.
    “Oh, my God,” a man bellowed, “he’s gonna kill them. Hey!”
    The tire iron connected with the top of a little girl’s head. The hollow sound it made sickened James and he vomited on the backs of his hands. The little girl crumpled to the street. The Moo Goo man swung again and pulped the face of a chubby little boy in a Washington Redskins jersey.
    “Ring-a-ding-ding, I got your ice cream right here.”
    A big man in boxer shorts and a white T-shirt loped across the