Slave-trader Bob got spooked and took off when the shit exploded. His caravan had stopped a mile outside of town, when KABOOM! Shit everywhere. KABOOM! KABOOM! Shit to the west, shit to the east. KABOOM! And to the north and south too. It was raining shit: gooey/ oozy, slimy/stinking shit. It was like Hong Kong had volcanoed right then and there, exactly as the Oracle had always predicted.

"But it ain’t the big It," smirked the Sheriff. Up there in the Peace Tower, the Sheriff needed an orb to keep an eye on Mount Hong Kong. The orb was flying evasive maneuvers, on track behind Slave-trader Bob. The Sheriff named her orb Snoopy Dog-dog, after an ancient constellation that, along with the other stars, had disappeared from the sky years ago. "Go puppy," the Sheriff said to her orb. She had always wanted a dog but dogs were as exotic as owls. Anyway, she knew the only creatures to be found on Mount Hong Kong were humans, rats, and insects. The humans turned into ragged heaps and the rats got eaten. So far the insects were winning, especially the dung beetles and bluebottles. Snoopy followed the caravan out of town and returned home without being detected. No shots were fired from Slave-trader Bob’s caravan. "YES!" shouted the Sheriff in mock triumph, "I AM THE LAW." But she didn’t dance. She sent Snoopy to find casualties instead. No one would question her methods as long as Hong Kong kept working. Kongers scavenged through human waste to keep the big environmental industries in business. Who would care? So some low-lifers, with warm bodies for Slave-trader Bob, got hurt in the explosion. So what? It was hard for the Sheriff to bleed for brothers selling sisters and brothers; fathers selling daughters and sons; husbands selling wives; and mothers selling babies. The scum deserved death. And the victims were better off dead. Ugly shit begets ugly shit, she thought. Most of the time, slave trading was a family affair. The only situation that could cause alarm on the corporate level was if a shanghaied stranger turned out to be a missing C.E.O., like that time three years ago. "Freaky," said the Sheriff out loud when she remembered the number of peacekeepers it had taken to find and free the poor bastard. He had been sold to an unregistered factory. A crude kind of justice.

She rolled her shoulders back twice to loosen up. Then, she stretched her neck by placing her hands behind her head and pushing her chin to her chest. Nothing helped. Her vertebrae felt fused. She sighed and wiped her hands on her yellow Nike uniform. Sweaty palms are a bad sign. Maybe I’m infected. She thought about some identified cases of leprosy. But what really scared her were the biohazards. It was illegal to dump toxic waste or any dangerous product on Hong Kong, but what the fuck - the law only worked if you didn’t get caught. I’m gonna die here, she thought. I know it.

She’d been here forever. A fucking eternity. She tried to imagine the faces of her Home sisters. She was an Exxon grad: a corporate orphan, housed and trained. She closed her eyes. Their faces were gone. Just like Slave-trader Bob. The Hong Kong detail was supposed to repay her Exxon debt. This job was rookie crap no one wanted. But the worse part was that it seemed as though she had disappeared as soon as she entered the shadow of Mount Hong Kong.

The East Coast Alliance had a number of hot spots where peacekeepers were sent. Hong Kong [officially registered as Environmental Protection Site 42] was on the main route between New York and Boston. The Sheriff knew big time corporate environmentalists covered her salary. Mount Hong Kong was a gold mine for raw material. The mountain had grown from a garbage scow that had run aground. Legend had it, that it hung onto the land like a drowning man.

Snoopy now sent images that resulted in a dull, pressing pain in the hollow of the Sheriff’s breastbone. She hated mobs. And there seemed to be a rowdy gathering where Slave-trader Bob had bugged out. "Fuck," the Sheriff said. When she had first come to Hong Kong, she had used a robot to deal with Kongers. But four years ago, the remote stalled during a routine patrol: stuck in the black sludge that covered everything and everyone in Hong Kong. In the end, the Sheriff never found out what caused the malfunction. Before she could rescue the robot, Kongers had dismantled it and sold its parts. She was still waiting for its replacement.

It was the Sheriff’s opinion that Kongers weren’t really evil. The Sheriff didn’t believe in supernatural mumbo-jumbo. Real life was grotesque enough. As far as she could tell Kongers were just genetically mean. They were human beings who had survived on a steady diet of shit, hatred and fear from generation to generation. These insights made her cautious when dealing with them. She never left the Peace Tower without her Teflon protective lightweight armor. In addition, she climbed into a seven foot Caterpillar exoskeleton, which made her look like a giant with forklifts for hands. She practiced forklift moves. ZEET-ZEET. Her claws opened and closed. The exoskeleton made her walk like Frankenstein’s monster, but the strength it gave her made up for the slow, plodding movements. In her exoskeleton, she could take on anyone or anything. The biggest problem with the exoskeleton was that she had to stay on the main routes used by the Caterpillar bulldozers, which moved the more than 10,000 tons of garbage that arrived every day. Dodging bulldozers was a sport on Mount Hong Kong. Watching bulldozers sink was a betting game.

All suited up, the Sheriff imagined herself as Maggie the Hatcher, a British Queen who bled her victims dry during the last century. The people remembered her in unflattering songs and stories as the Iron Maiden. The Sheriff placed her helmet on to protect her head from rocks and her nose from the stench. She certainly didn’t care about being loved by shit-eaters. Even the idea of being liked by Kongers made her want to puke. Fuck them, she thought. Fuck love. I’d rather be feared.

When the Sheriff arrived, the mob opened a path for her. They’re scared, not angry. The thought sent a little thrill buzzing through the Sheriff’s stomach. The Oracle was holding court. Man or woman? Those who should know said that the Oracle was a hermaphrodite. Who, the fuck, would want to look? The Sheriff couldn’t imagine. The Oracle was hard to miss in a crowd. The Oracle was the biggest lump of stewing rags at any gathering. One could almost see the steam rising like a mist from its body. And although the Sheriff never participated in Konger culture, she did recognize the Oracle’s power over the locals.

When the Oracle moved aside, the Sheriff saw what had once been a white plastic cube. Now it was just a muddy mess. Inside was a creature no bigger than a six-year-old kid. It was sitting on its haunches because of the confined space. The Sheriff lifted the cube to eye level. The creature was cute. It had a big, round greenish face, with pointed ears, separated by a tuft of blond hair. It had black eyes that sparkled with unrestrained glee.

"This is a devil," the Oracle said. "Vomited from Hong Kong’s bowels in this morning’s explosions. A devil such as this is a bad omen. We must burn it." The Sheriff rolled her eyes, hidden behind the dark visor of her helmet. "It’s a mutant," said the Sheriff. "Did you fall from one of Slave-trader Bob’s trucks?" the Sheriff asked the mutant. "Yesh," the mutant said. "Yesh. Me garden and sew and cook. Home me with you?" Wonderful, thought the Sheriff, like a green thumb is an asset in this shit hole. "Slavery is Illegal," said the Sheriff with authority. She shifted her exoskeleton, which made creaking sounds. "As a representative of the East Coast Alliance, I set you free. You’re free. Go home." Using the powerful arms of her exoskeleton, the Sheriff cracked the cube open like an egg. She placed the mutant on top of a rusted 20^th century Buick a few feet above the mob. "Get outta here before they roast your butt for lunch."

"You can’t do this!" said the Oracle. "The devil is beyond your jurisdiction. He must be sacrificed according to the ancient rites." The mob began to chant: KING KONG! KING KONG! [This was the name they had for the spirit living in Mount Hong Kong. They believed that the mountain was alive and ate their young.] KING KONG! KING KONG! The Sheriff fired a blast of white noise, drowning out and scattering the mob. "Pull your rags aside," the Sheriff said to the mutant. "See," she pointed when the mutant complied, "Six nipples. This is a mutant. Go home. Everyone. You, too," she said. "I be from nosewhere," said the mutant. "I be yours now. Your home." At that moment, the Sheriff thought the mob would have attacked her if it hadn’t been for the exoskeleton. "Fuck. You can’t live with me," said the Sheriff. "I can’t pay you. You’re free. Find your own food and shelter. This is Hong Kong: nothing but junk and shit. Fuck that’s how it got its name. Sell the junk. Eat shit, like everyone else, for all I care." The Oracle and mob backed away from the devil. They’re scared of it, thought the Sheriff. Fuck’em. The Oracle addressed the Sheriff one last time: "The devil’s deeds shall be upon your head." But the Sheriff wasn’t listening. She was headed back to her Peace Tower.

Mount Hong Kong glowed at night with little fires ignited by the decomposing garbage that turned into methane gas. Insects sizzled and exploded: ZIT-ZIT. And sometimes the hum of the flies was so loud it sounded like a passing space transport. There were also ancient batteries going POP, POP, and POP in the night. Here the seasons never changed. Snow melted in the atmosphere and turned to rain, which caused landslides. And on good days, the smell was no worse than the New York sewers. So when Mount Hong Kong finally erupted into a blazing inferno that led to earthquakes and an avalanche, it took a few minutes for everyone to realize what was happening. The Sheriff shuddered along with the Peace Tower when the mountain came to life. Waves of garbage surged like the ocean. The Sheriff flooded the exterior with searchlights so that a few Kongers might head toward the safety of the Peace Tower. That’s if we don’t go down, she thought. Snoopy’s flight pattern became erratic just before it disappeared into the ooze. As the mountain unleashed its fury, the Sheriff placed a call to the East Coast Alliance requesting fire-fighter planes. Then, she slid down onto the floor and hugged her knees to her chest. The Peace Tower rumbled from another earthquake. The lights went out. The Sheriff never heard the screams of those being buried alive in the avalanche that followed. Instead, she imagined the destructive power of the little KABOOMS she had used to frighten Slave-trader Bob. Shit, she thought. Could a spark smolder for hours setting off a chain reaction? The wrong place at the wrong time? Broken electrical wires buried for eons? The Sheriff saw the face of her own death. In her terror, the ghost that shadowed her movements around Hong Kong, day and night, now drew close enough for her to feel its breath.

It took hours for the fire brigade to react to the Sheriff’s SOS. For a while, she had been afraid that the transmission had never reached the base. When help finally arrived, the Sheriff wondered how long it took for someone to realize that they were in danger of losing their precious raw materials. The fire died after being doused with tons of rich, foamy lather. By morning, Mount Hong Kong looked like a ski resort.

In the calm of the morning’s gray light, a young man approached the Sheriff while she was hunting for damaged bulldozers. He looked familiar. "Please help me find my son?" he said. The words triggered a flashback. The Sheriff remembered her first action on taking charge of Hong Kong. It had been to search for a disappeared kid sucked into one of the greasy bogs that made up so much of this living compost heap. That initial experience had shown the Sheriff that the reality of Mount Hong Kong was far more frightening than the imaginary King Kong monster that plagued the locals. Now, after the night’s disaster, she looked at the Kongers. She recognized their expressions of helplessness and horror as being the same as the family of that first victim. Their dirty faces had been washed clean with their tears. They needed to act. They didn’t want pity. These were not the slave-traders and shit-eaters she had come to hate over the years. These were hard working people who were proud that they could make a living without having to beg in the big urban cities. They earned their meager incomes even if it was from garbage. How did she forget these people existed? She climbed out of the exoskeleton and removed her helmet so she could look directly at them. Her eyes watered and her chest burnt. The smell was so vile she thought she would puke her guts out. But her stomach was empty and the bile stuck in her throat.

"We will work together in teams," she finally said. Kongers used metal hooks for their treasure hunts. The recyclers, who were not much better than Slave-trader Bob as far as the Sheriff was concerned, carried the garbage to the big plants, where the plastics and metals were transformed into new shiny products. And the cycle of garbage began again. It was capitalism at its most naked with Kongers at the bottom of the cesspool. Now these same Kongers would use these same hooks to search for their loved ones. They had to work in one-hour shifts because of the smell. The Sheriff returned to the Peace Tower to collect all her bedding, which she then gave to the kids to make bandages. She brought her Vicks VapoRub and offered it to anyone who wanted to block the smell. They worked for days piling bodies onto carts to be taken away for incineration. And the recyclers were the only people from the outside world to really care. They were annoyed that the Kongers hadn’t resumed work. Why weren’t the scavengers looking for treasures to sell to them? In response, the Sheriff banned them from the mountain until the rescues were finished. "Slavery’s illegal," she had muttered to herself knowing that the recyclers had wonderful arguments to counter her accusation. By now, the Sheriff had spent so much time digging with Kongers that even the hot shower she took at the end of the day when she returned to the Peace Tower couldn’t remove the stench of death from her skin. So when the corporate big-wigs ordered an end to the excavation, the Sheriff didn’t acknowledge their orders until she was sure that there were no living beings trapped in the shit.

On the last day of excavation, a rescue team saved a little girl who had survived burial because she had gotten air through a pipe that poked through the sewage. During the celebrations, the Oracle came to get the Sheriff. "Follow me," the Oracle said. The Sheriff no longer feared the Oracle. She imagined the Oracle had found some new horror to show her. And if this was the case, she was ready. Nothing could be worse than what she had already seen. She walked behind the Oracle who was unusually silent. The Oracle led her to a teepeed blanket outside the refugee camp that had sprung up after the disaster: a new shantytown. Without a doubt, the Sheriff knew Mount Hong Kong would continue to grow and eventually swallow this place of refuge. When the Oracle lifted one side of the blanket, the Sheriff couldn’t make out what was inside. It was almost as though she had been momentarily struck blind. The Sheriff smelt a sweet meat cooking. She bent down on one knee and shielded her eyes with her hand. There was the cute, green mutant, sitting cross-legged by a cooking fire. On the spit was a baby, one the Sheriff recognized as having escaped the volcano and avalanche.

"Me no devil," said the mutant. "Me hungry."

THE END

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