As soon as he relaxed enough for his head to sink back into the lazy chair of all bus seats, a video screen dropped down in front of him, adjusted itself to his vision, and panned across a junkyard of a comic book city and came to rest before a lantern-jawed actor who was the very archetype of rugged manhood, that might have been his Uncle Joe, changing a tire with a hand wrench, and wiping off his hands on his jeans. The man stood from beside his white, 1971 Chevy, on the side of a road, in front of a country western bar, where cowgirls danced on the porch and old timers drank beer while seated on porch swing barstools, and said, in a voice like a diesel engine, “Do you miss the Good Old Days, the things that men do, the women that adore them?”

With that a pretty young thing with curly blonde hair leaped into his arms and kissed him on the cheek. He grinned indulgently, set her down, patted her on the butt as she ran off to play with her friends and winked at the camera and said, “Well, partner, isn’t it about time you relived your glory days? I once felt like you—drawn, tired, worn, unappreciated. But at the Iron Ranch we knock off that rust, lubricate those pistons, and polish your tool, Bro. Join me, Grant Stictland, at the Iron Ranch.”

“What a raft of bullshit this is!”

The big black lady answered him, “Just enjoy the show, Mister Man—nice meeting you.”

He nodded absently to her as this Grant douchebag began introducing the staff at the Iron Ranch:

-the auto-mechanic who looked like some washed up Russian boxer

-Mary Ann, the dietician, a delightful bimbo in pig tails and denim shorts

-Ginger, the willowy card shark

-Grace, the water aerobics instructor...

The theme was beguiling for an old dude and must, he mused, cost a fortune.

“Later, Old School,” snarked some thug as he offloaded, to whom Tom Jones paid no never mind as he became more and more fascinated that such a garish paradise of oldsters existed. Heck, if he didn’t have Betty and he was loaded, he might consider moving in, what with Freya the Swedish Massage therapist, on staff—Freya, I’ve fallen and can’t get it up!

“This shit is too much. Whoever thought this up must be making a boat load of money.”

The commercial then closed with an announcement, followed by paragraphs of tiny type, “Congratulations, you have reached the Iron Ranch, just to your left, as the coach pulls in at Old Armistead Gardens, one of our numerous, certified Glory Days franchises.”

The bus then hissed to a stop in what was left of the pattering rain and the female voice said, “Valued Senior, this is the end of the line, your bus pass is redeemable at the sponsoring facility.”

“What, I got on the Nineteen. The Nineteen goes to Asquith and North, not Armistead Gardens?”

“Valued Senior, this is the end of the line, your bus pass is redeemable at the sponsoring facility.”

A young man now stood before him, a yo-punk in assless pants. “Yo, Mister Man, dey rerouted dis joint so you old folks can live wit da company dat supply da bus driver console. Da las’ Twenty-fo be commin’ end dat gets you ta Norf Avnew.”

Tom got off reluctantly with the helpful young punk behind him and, as the bus light turned red and the coach pulled off, asked “So you work here, at the Iron Ranch?” nodding to the hideous barbell shaped archway that led to the Mac Truck front door of the aircraft hanger type structure, with various windows lit with the flicker of video screens.

The yo-punk then slapped him across the face and said, “No, I works da dyin’ white btchez dat comz hea! Give it up, Mister Man, the bus pass, the wallet whachever yo gotz!”

Tom Jones’ shoulder had been blown for 50 years. Even when he was still fighting he couldn’t throw a Philly hook to save his life. But a shovel hook he had, and it came from the hip with a sharpened pork chop bone between his fingers, the rib held in his fist, popping this baby black faɡɡot in the chest and snapping off in his hand."

The yo-punk went down, but Tom had missed the liver, lost the element of surprise. He decided to stomp the kid or maybe fall on him. But when he limped forward it turned out that throwing that half-pivot hook had frozen his ailing hip and he just stood and lurched slightly forward.

The yo-punk was squirming, crying and cussing and raging as he got to one knee and managed to tear a handgun out from the waistband of his assless pants.

He pointed the gun triumphantly and squealed like a girl, tears rolling down his face, “Yo fuckin’ white bitch I’ll shoot yo ass dead—yo a dead muvafucka!”

With that a red light flashed from a drone pole over to the right, startling them both, as the buzzsaw sound of the drown rotors came and they both felt a wave of fear. The boy threw his gun down and ran, but the red-lazer pointer was on the back of his head.

“Pop” sounded the dart as the boy squealed and writhed on the ground. The drone—a microwave-sized, mechanical insect—was then hovering over the boy, zipping his limbs. A zip-tie went on each ankle and each wrist. The drone backed off and a small sonic boom sounded and the zip-ties magnetized and the kid was instantly trussed up like a hog for slaughter.

As the drone hovered menacingly back to its box, Tome Jones backed away toward the bus shelter, away from the struggling, trussed form of his would-be robber, his almost murderer. The boy had made it nearly to the shrubbery on the side of the gravel driveway and was struggling with awful panic.

Tom backed into the shelter and sat down, all the Devil’s pains shooting down his leg as he did so, watching with morbid resolve the struggles of he who had called him Mister Man, he who was now attracting the unwanted attention of the denizens of the shrubbery, vary-sized, gray, red-eyed and whip-tailed, the rats, sniffing, bounding tentatively, then testing, then biting, then wriggling between cloth and skin, a swarm soon engulfing the squealing head, slithering around the neck, pouring like a hairy school of vipers in through the assless pants.

He wondered, as the yo-punk was eaten alive—eyes, face and genitals first, his muffled agonies sending a sickening, soul-wrenching chill up Tom's spine—at the uncharacteristic aggressiveness of the rats. This was not normal. These rats normally would have waited for him to leave, for the homeless to strip him, and then, in the hours before dawn—if the homeless had not been feral feasters who quartered him for food—come to feed. But these rats seemed driven, seem to have been waiting, seemed intent on their devouring quest, no lookouts posted, no worry about him, simply feasting without an above-ground rodent’s normal concern. And that was the most chilling part, when eh realized that he witness not many rat minds, but one, feeding as one many-bodied thing upon something greater which had fallen into its unforgiving clutches.

Tom Jones was, literally and unapologetically, one tough, old, son-of-a-bitch. But this went beyond tough. Unable to look away and equally unable to accept what he saw, he felt his impromptu diner, hastily had by the BLM fire—what a paradise that now seemed—rise in his craw and found the trashcan in time to avoid fouling the shelter. After he emptied his small belly into the trashcan, he felt a more ominous chill run down his spine. Rising and turning his head as one, Tom Jones looked to the rat-covered, half-fleshed carcass of his would-be waylayer, and saw that every rat had halted mid-feast, that every pair of those red rat eyes regarded him, looking up to him reverently as if he were some great god having sacrificed a prodigal son to the teaming mortals for their salvation.

This momentary spell was then broken by a flood of white bus light, which blinded him and sent them scurrying.