by Mark Tufo
“Trip, you need to drive!” I was already halfway out of my seat.
“There’s no steering wheel up here!” He was mirroring my panic.
I grabbed his pants. “This way Trip, you need to drive,” I said as calmly as I could.
“Ponch man, I’m so fucked up I couldn’t drive a nail.”
“The cops will let you slide on this one.”
“Phew, good thing, I’ve lost my license in seven different times.”
Sure, I wanted to question it, but when you have what I figured was a two-ton bomb rolling your way, well let’s just say there are better times to do something like that. We began to veer hard to the left as Trip grabbed the wheel to adjust himself in the seat. I banged my head hard against the turret side wall, righted myself, and got into position, pulled the charging lever back, and blew through a few rounds, my heart stuck somewhere up in my throat, jammed in there with my stomach so it seemed.
“Breath.”
I took in two long deep breaths in an attempt to get my adrenaline-flooded system under some semblance of control. I was about to let go of a much more controlled burst when the vehicle lurched hard, to the right this time.
“Steady, Trip, keep it somewhat steady!”
“Keep what steady?” Was his reply.
What the fuck do you do with something like that?
Had a feeling if I was brave enough to look down at him, his feet would be propped up on the wheel and he’d be eating a banana. Instead, I used the lull in his erratic driving to fire again. I blew fist-sized chunks out of the asphalt directly in front of the ball, then finally into the ball itself. It was as the first few bullets made impact with the object that I began to have doubts about the brilliance of my plan. I mean here was something the size of a small car not much more than fifty feet from my present location, odds are it was a bomb of some sort and of alien technology—for all I knew I was attempting to detonate a black hole or a nuke of immense power. I was awaiting the blinding light, followed by the searing heat and/or the all-enveloping nothingness. What I got instead was a massive short-circuiting, bolts of electricity the thickness of my leg shot out from the orb in all directions. In colors vaster than a paint display at your local hardware store.
“That is the best laser light show I have ever seen in my life!”
So captivated by the display myself, it took way longer than it should have for me to determine that Trip was no longer driving.
“Get the hell back over there!” I pushed down on his head.
“Hey man, I paid for these tickets too, I think. The square just wants to have all the fun to himself,” he mumbled as he sat back down.
The good thing about a mad Trip was he seemed to drive much better. The whistlers released another one of their magic light display balls; I had no doubt that if it made contact with this truck, it would completely shut down all of its functions and most likely fry us as if we had grabbed hold of a high-voltage energy line. This one I was able to hit much farther out, was even able to cause some collateral damage as the arcs shot out and, as I predicted, fried the living shit out of those it came into contact with. The leather clothing the whistlers seemed to prefer withstood the assault with little more than some surface scorching and a bit of smoke damage. The soft flesh underneath, well that was a whole other matter.
Blasts of purple and blue shot out from their mouths and ears, and oh man I’m going to roast in hell for this, but where their asses were as well. My guess was it blew through every open orifice first before it, in its haste to get out, just started to create its own exit points. The force was so strong the whistlers were picked up and swept along with the current until it had used up all the burnable parts; what fluttered to the ground was the aforementioned barely damaged clothing, which would probably still fetch a decent price at a secondhand store. Was feeling pretty good about myself right up until I saw that they had released six of the balls, all around us.
We weren’t moving fast and the balls weren’t traveling with any great velocity, so after taking two down I was almost about to pat myself on the back. That was right up until I went to shoot for the third one and realized that I was out of ammunition. Yeah, I kept depressing the trigger like a pissed off New Yorker might the crosswalk button on a street light, thinking that repeatedly hitting the button will somehow make the light change faster. Well riddle me this, if people could magically appear in this shit-fest, why couldn’t bullets? I did have precedence to keep trying what I was doing. Fuck the definition of insanity. I reached down and grabbed my rifle. This was going to be much more difficult and I was not sure that the much smaller round would have the power necessary to punch through the walls of the weapon. Took almost an entire magazine to make the third ball an ozone-smoldering wreck. Three balls to go, the closest within fifty yards, I had four magazines. Sure the math was in my favor, but once these balls were dispatched, then what? The whistlers would still be alive and we had to get past them. Pretty sure they weren’t going to just let that happen. Well, I suppose I could just lob Trip their way, should delay them a few minutes at least. I was thinking on how crappy it was going to be to head into a firefight with no rounds.
“My turn,” I told Trip as I was half lifting him from his seat.
“Oh, is the light show over now? Is that it? Great toady horn spoon!”
I felt like I’d just gotten cussed out by an 1850s sailor.
“Whatever man, just get the fuck up.”
Yeah, Trip was still fuming, but that beat frying, and I was going to do my best to make sure that didn’t happen. I don’t know if the balls were remote controlled or targeted at us, but I was going to drive right at the whistlers and bring our little parasites along. There was something that looked like a speedometer, although the needle instead of sweeping across an arc merely rose up and down, and I don’t know what PZTs are, but I was doing four hundred and twelve of them. In my world, I figured I was hovering somewhere around forty. Respectable for a scooter—not for a weapon of war attempting to outrun other weapons of war. I knew the whistler motorcycles were much faster; my one and only chance was to surprise them. The wheels on the armored vehicle squealed in protest as I banged a U, never pressing on the brakes. I had to think gravity worked differently here, because there is no way we shouldn’t have rolled over.
Trip was up in the turret screaming “Ride ’em, cowboy!” at the top of his lungs.
Funny thing about metallic balls on pavement is that they have very little traction. Somehow, in comparison, this clunky fucking machine was as nimble as a ballerina. Even so, it was getting close.
“Ponch, we in a pinball game? Because the balls are coming!” Trip felt the need to give me a heads up.
It started on the back of my head and worked its way forward; if this thing had a rearview mirror, I was certain that I’d see my hair sticking straight up. I have a fairly traditional military cut, so it wouldn’t be overly noticeable, but when I looked back to Trip and saw that his beard was covering the lower portion of his face as it was pulled up by static electricity, I knew the ball and its payload were dangerously close. The whistlers were scrambling to get back on their bikes when they realized I was targeting them with this giant rolling turd I was driving. I got an answer in regards to how the balls were moving when we gained some ground on our pursuers. My distracting them had also distracted whichever ones were controlling the rolling missiles. Arcs of electricity began to short around on my instrument panel. Trip was laughing his balls off. I turned around to look at him; he had his hands about shoulder height and his fingers splayed, electricity was shooting from the ends of his fingers and into his beard. Looked like he had his very own plasma lamp. You know, the kind that stoners use that keep them entertained for hours. I mean, not that I would know anything about that.
I would imagine, like in any large population group, there were just bound to be some whistlers that processed information a little slower than the rest. While all his friends had hopp
ed onto their bikes and were getting ready for a mass exodus, Leisurely Larry was too busy watching me, so by the time he figured that getting on his bike and riding was a good idea, I was nearly on top of him. And when a bit of good fortune in the way of a flooded engine delayed him even further, I took great pleasure in ramming that five-ton brick house right into his ugly mug. The bouncing around was brutal, much like Trip’s imaginary mechanical bull; my hands were pulled off the steering wheel more than once. We dragged the bike and its occupant for a good twenty feet before they became uncoupled from us. Somehow he was still alive. I caught sight of an arm sticking up, maybe asking for help, and he sort of received it in the form of a gigawatt jolt of electricity as the ball slammed into him and his debris. Another ball slammed into its partner, creating a set of fireworks I was thankful to only witness in the side mirrors.
Trip was a myriad of oohs and aahs, and even clapped when the show was over. We were now Lance Armstronging, meaning there was only one ball left. Yup, I already realize I’m going to hell—if that’s the case, might as well pave the road with empties, is my motto. The plan all along had been to get into the collider, hopefully find the root of our problem, snap that fucking thing’s neck off, and get back home. I had a decent amount of ammo, but I was light one Jack, and that sucked mightily. Trip had the luck of the entire nation of Ireland in his pocket, but I still had to spend some time making sure he was at least pointed in the right direction—a distraction I could ill afford.
“Fuck it,” I said evenly enough, maybe even calmly. It was time to go home, this fun ride had lost its luster fourteen seconds in. This thing was basically a tank on wheels; if something got in my way, I was done with going around. Over sounded much better.
“Trip, you might…” I paused; he was in the process of sitting down next to me. Grabbed his seatbelt and buckled in.
“What’s up, Ponch?” He was looking at me like a golden retriever will its owner when they’re heading to the park.
“You tell me. Seems like you’re in the know.”
“We’re going home!” he said excitedly.
“That’s what I like to hear,” I told him as I settled in.
“Or we’re going to die horrific deaths.”
I wanted to bang my head against the steering wheel.
“Wait maybe it’s we die gruesomely as we’re heading home. Yeah, that might be it.”
“Are you kidding, Trip? It might somehow be better staying here?”
“Pffft, we don’t want to stay here. The time dilations are going to start shredding this place like it’s cheese and they are a grater, or what’s that thing that crunches up the tree branches?”
“Wood chipper?”
“More like that, I suppose, though there will be these weird undulations.”
“This is somehow getting more insane. How much time do we have?”
“Surprised it hasn’t started yet. Want a toke?”
Sometime during his confusing explanation he’d had the time to hunt down a hidden spliff, light it, and take a good third of the joint in.
“Pass,” I told him. He stuck it under my nose. “I said…no, just no.”
“Pass, no, make up your mind.”
He damn near drained the bone on his next toke. If this was an Olympic sport, he’d be medaling. Sure, the Rastafarians might give him a run for his money, but this guy had experience.
We were heading down the road, seeing more and more zombies along the way, some engaged with the whistlers, most drifting around looking for a meal. We’d brought them in hoping they’d draw the whistlers away, and it had worked—to a degree—but like most plans, you can’t prepare for the unexpected. The whistlers had gone out and investigated, but not en masse. We had killed those ones with the charges we’d set, but instead of sending more, they had coalesced around the collider. The reason was not clear to me, but they seemed to know this was ground zero, and they weren’t going to yield it willingly. The zombies would make it to the structure by nightfall; I wasn’t keen on that because then we could throw in everyone’s favorite: Jack’s night runners. And you know what? Fuck that. Just…I didn’t need to swear again, how can anyone be expected to deal with those odds? I don’t know.
Trip sat up like his seat had sprouted a row of tacks.
“Take a right!” He looked to the left.
“What?”
“Take a right!” He pointed left.
“Which way, Trip?”
His next maneuver was something usually reserved for comedy: he crossed his arms over his chest and pointed in both directions. There was something that looked like it could pass for a gopher trail to my right; I took it at full speed. This time two of our wheels pulled away from the ground. Trip had unbuckled his belt and was hanging out the window like you see those sailors do on yachts to keep them from tipping in the wind. Did that make the difference? Maybe. I mean, we didn’t go over. I hadn’t realized how close the ball had been, right on our ass, close enough that I had lost it in the side mirrors. It skidded past us for a few hundred yards before it was able to stop and change direction.
We were once again doing the bucking bronco routine; Trip had not yet come in from his perch.
“It’s stuck,” he said after a while.
“The ball-bomb?” I wanted to be clear.
“The spherical fireworks show.”
“Weird ass weapon.”
“Not really what it was made for, actually a power supply,” he explained.
“From the collider facility?”
“The what now?” he asked.
“You’re like talking to a narcoleptic Einstein; every once in a while you mutter something brilliant in your sleep.”
He looked like he wanted to say something, but at that moment I hit a rut in the road that launched us into the air, felt like I ruptured two vertebrae when we came back down.
“Couple more miles, Ponch.”
“We’re out in the middle of nowhere,” I told him; the further we went, the more the trees closed in on us. “What’s in a couple of miles?”
“I won’t be able to hold in my pee anymore.” I didn’t say anything for a while, too dumbfounded.
“Please tell me that’s not why I came off the road?”
“I mean, I could tell you that’s not why, if you want.”
“Just do it, lie to me.”
The brakes squealed uncomfortably loud as I came to a stop. Trip opened the door and hopped out; he looked back into the cab.
“We did not stop for me to take a pee.” Then he winked and began to undo his zipper and fumble around with his junk, this all while he was facing me.
“Turn around.”
He did so, a heavy yellow stream traveling with him. I hopped out of the armored car and climbed up onto the roof, attempting to get a better vantage point to see where we were and for what reason. Sure, the obvious was the putrid broccoli-smelling piss Trip was releasing, but like a stinky onion, there was another layer. Just that digging for it meant discomfort for all involved. It was somewhere in the neighborhood of three full minutes before Trip jumped up and down, not once or twice but fifteen times.
“Knocking off those final drops,” he smiled over his shoulder.
“You know it’s easier to just shake your junk instead of pretending you’re a kangaroo.”
“Whoa man, that’s pretty intense, I’m going to lock that away as the something new I learned this month.”
“You do that. Now tell me the real reason we’re out here.”
“Need to take a nap, a lot of things have been happening and I’m beginning to crash.”
“Yeah, I get it, you haven’t had your twenty-four thousand calories yet today. Trip, we just left a major battle with the whistlers and they’re not really all that far away. I would feel much better about it if we weren’t just parked here like a couple of teenagers looking for some alone time.”
“Aw man, I remember when I was a teenager, we would snort lines of acid
.”
I wanted to tell him “bullshit,” but what was the point? He’d dragged me out into the woods for more than a piss. For some reason I felt I had to believe that. But I was itching to go; it is extremely difficult to shut off the adrenaline pumps after having been engaged with the enemy. Although when you do shut those injectors off, the crash is inevitable and hard. A half hour previously I had been bouncing off walls, now I was seconds from sleep. My guess is I was gearing up for the next round.
What woke me up will reside along my personal demons for the rest of my days. It was the stench of cabbage pickled in spoiled vinegar that began to worm its way into my dreams. I was a kid, flying a kite of all things, down by the seashore. I was having a grand old time until the water began to recede at an alarming pace. I had turned to watch this phenomenon and was then fascinated, then dismayed to see that the water running away from this corner of the world had left a variety of sea creatures behind, some that were even now decomposing under the blaze of the midday sun.
Skin began to slough off the carcasses of a pod of blue whales, their bodies bloated and reddening. The kite thudded to a hard landing to my left, unnoticed; I was moving closer to the huge animals. A part of me thought they might still be alive as their bodies began to rapidly expand in what I’d mistaken for breaths. I was rudely shown the error of my ways when one of the smaller ones exploded, and not like someone had let air out of a tire but rather like someone had packed a half-ton of C-4 under its body—parts of that thing went everywhere. I was now running that frustratingly slow nightmarish molasses-thick run, attempting to get away from debris the size of refrigerators raining down all around me. I was doing fairly well right up until papa whale detonated; I was smacked across the mouth with a slab of blubber twice the size of my body. I jerked awake and right into Trip’s wet pucker.
“You awake?” he hissed. I could just about see the septic green of his breath.