FEUD OF THE WORLDS - MARCO PALMER (best fiction novels of all time TXT) 📗

/> The two aliens doin’ the muee-latin of the cows was mighty surprised, and before they could float back inside, one of our bullets got one in the head and put a second hole there, ‘causin’ the alien to fall to the ground and splatter its green blood all o’er the place.

Then the space ship starts fightin’ back but instead of bullets there is rays of light that burns things to a crisp in an instant, and with those deadly beams of light, three Tanners and two Cartwrights was a cremated on the spot.


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We all retreats from the pasture, and dives for cover behind anything we could hide behind.

I takes to hidin’ behind a tree, and lookin’ up I can see the space ship floatin’ over head searchin’ for us. As my eyes follows the space ship and watches it pass over head, I turns ‘round and suddenly yells, cuz I comes face to face with an alien. Then I sighs in relief and realize it’s only my boy Shibboleth.

”Shibboleth! What you doin’ here son?” I asks.

Shibboleth removes his ten gallon hat so he can talk out the hole in his head, and he says, “The aliens done kidnapped Ma and I aims to get her back! Look what I built Pa.”

Shibboleth then pulls out some fancy gadget with buttons from a pocket in his jeans, pushes a few buttons and then out of the sky, that giant moonshine still he’d been workin’ on lands nearby, and then I realize, it looks almos’ like the alien space ship.

All the Tanners and Cartwrights come out of their hidin’ places and gather ‘round Shibboleth and me.

“You only thought I was buildin’ a giant moonshine still,” ‘splains Shibboleth. “But really I was buidin’ an inter-g’lactic space ship so we can follow those heathen aliens to the edge of our galaxy and beyond if need be! I knew this day was a comin’. I built a radio trans-a-mitter that can pick up their signals, so I knews


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they was a comin’ even ‘fore they got here. Taken’ Ma, was the last straw, and we is gonna have ourselves an inter-g’lactic feud and we’s gonna feud on behalf of the whole Earth!”

Shibboleth pushes another button and a door opens on his space ship. My boy then starts walkin’ over to his ship and as he’s headin’ there he says, “There’s plenty of room for y’all, Cartwrights an’ Tanners alike! Come on board!”

All us feudin’ mountain men whooped, hollered and followed my son into that ship – first time in my life I’s proud to have a son like Shibboleth – and with Shibboleth doin’ the drivin – we blasted high off the ground – and movin as fast as lightnin’ we was soon right behind those aliens, given ‘em what for with matter meltin’ buckshot guns Shibboleth made for his ship – and we chased ‘em all over kindom come and even out into space past Mars and Jupiter and now I don’t know where we is, but that’s how the feud of the worlds began and how it ends and what happens next- well, you’ll just have to wait for the ‘propriate time for me to sits down at this transcribin’ machine ‘board Shibboleth’s ship and I sets down the record, but that’s a yarn for ‘nother time.

Imprint

Text: COVER ILLUSTRATION BY RODNEY MATTHEWS
Publication Date: 01-31-2009

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