by Eirik Gumeny
“Who the hell are –” asked the girl driving.
“I’m chasing after the guy who hitched a ride with the guy you’re chasing,” explained Queen Victoria XXX.
“Oh, OK,” said the boy riding shotgun, before noticing Vicky’s advanced level of grunginess and adding, “Are you our mommy?”
“I really fucking hope not.”
“Why don’t you want to be our mommy?” pouted the boy. “Did we do something wrong? Don’t you like us?”
“She’s diminishing us in an attempt to put up a brave face and mask her own fear and emotional immaturity,” corrected the girl.
“No, it’s mostly the first thing,” said Queen Victoria XXX. “Sorry.”
“It’s OK,” said the feral boy, “I just really miss having a mommy.”
The sheer adorability of the sadness sucker-punched the cloned royal’s uterus. Queen Victoria XXX reached out a hand and patted the boy gently on the head. Something bit her finger, but she kept it there anyway.
“I –” she began.
“We have a mommy,” said the girl. “But she said he couldn’t have ice cream for breakfast so now he’s pretending she doesn’t exist.”
“I really like ice cream,” said the boy sadly.
“It’s been three days.”
The queen removed her hand from the boy’s head fairly forcefully.
***
The reconstituted monarch and the two feral siblings rode on for a few miles in silence. Well, not silence exactly, as the bikes were really loud and everyone was still coughing and occasionally shouting insults at the handsome Australian man.
Then they rode on for a few more miles.
They rode on for half a mile more and then Queen Victoria XXX got bored.
“Why are you chasing after that guy, out of curiosity?”
“He stole our coal,” said the boy.
“Coal we mined and then sold for exorbitant and unethical rates,” said the girl.
“Why would you even do that?” asked the queen. “Don’t you guys run on electricity? Or garbage? Or midget-marathoners? You know, like civilized people?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” asked the feral girl. “If we switched off of coal our entire economy would collapse! We’d have to create one or even three identical economies to take its place. That’s madness.”
“Where are we?”
“The Galactic Republic of West Virginia,” said the boy, saluting.
“Ah.”
After all the petroleum reserves were used up – rendering the Middle East useless to the West and allowing them to finally get on with their lives instead of constantly being pissed off at everyone about their exploitation by other countries – the first dinosaurs were cloned. After an elementary school science teacher explained to the scientists in charge of the procedure that dinosaurs were only converted to petroleum over a lengthy and complicated process, and that there were a number of easier and cheaper, though admittedly less cool, options for fuel available, the scientists went ahead and pursued those instead.
The oil companies lost their shit and launched a full-scale attack on the common sense of the American consumer, complete with Orwellian-level double-speak, subliminal messaging, and proton mind-control bombs. The attack was thankfully short-lived, as a troupe of giant, angry, mutated shrimp rose from the Gulf of Mexico and destroyed the headquarters of BP, Exxon Mobil, and every other oil conglomerate they could find on Wikipedia.
The auto industry, meanwhile, converted wholesale to coal. Shortly thereafter, the same elementary school’s gym teacher explained to the auto industry all the reasons that this was a terrible idea and they moved on to electric-, garbage-, and midget-powered vehicles instead.
Everything was great and pollution went away forever.
Except in West Virginia.
Much like the oil companies before them, West Virginia had lost its shit when fuel sources were switched away from coal to saner alternatives. Unlike the oil companies, though, they couldn’t launch a full-scale assault on anything, so they seceded from the galaxy instead, just in case Earth, or some other planet, tried to institute an interstellar standard at some point.
The entire convoy of motorcycles, ATVs, cars, and mechanical horses began veering wildly, before colliding with one another in a tremendous crash. Queen Victoria XXX was thrown a solid ten feet, while the two children and the dune buggy repeatedly somersaulted over each other, like Cirque du Soleil acrobats trying to walk across a stage.
“What the fuck was that?” shouted Queen Victoria XXX, picking herself up and marching over to the feral siblings and the buggy they were pinned beneath.
“There was an old lady pushing a puppy in a baby carriage!” explained the girl. “We had to swerve to avoid her!”
“You are a disgrace to your crazy-looking hair,” said the queen. “And now I’m never gonna catch that turd.”
“The guy you were chasing?” replied the boy, pointing with his scratched chin. “He’s right over there.”
Queen Victoria XXX turned and saw Andrew Jackson II in the distance, berating the handsome Australian as he attempted to claw his way out of a pile of coal. A number of other vehicles were scattered about the scene, overturned, on fire, or otherwise messed up. A large majority of them were in a conveniently placed ditch running parallel to the road.
“Does this happen a lot?”
“The exhaust makes it really hard to see sometimes,” said the girl.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Gimme Some Sugar, Baby
Chester A. Arthur XVII and Catrina Dalisay flew over the extinct animal sanctuary of Cretaceous Park, jetpacks powered by mini-nuclear reactors strapped to their backs and entire flocks of unfortunate birds evaporating in the atomic wake behind them.
“This is worse than the flamingos!” shouted Catrina, the wing of a stray goose smacking her in the face.
“I’ll have to take your word for it,” shouted Chester A. Arthur XVII in reply. “These things don’t feel the most stable. I hope we don’t explode. I probably couldn’t take that twice in one week.”
“Dr. Arahami promised they wouldn’t.”
“I know, and I trust him, but you’ve got to admit having a modular fusion reactor on your back is a lot more unnerving than you would have imagined. And the duct tape he slapped onto mine doesn’t inspire confidence.”
“Everything that’s happened since I got up on Tuesday has been more unnerving than I would have imagined,” replied Catrina. “At least Thor will be around to avenge our deaths.”
“That’s not as comforting a thought as it used to be.”
“Well, good luck stopping him. He’s always looking for a reason to smite someone,” said Catrina. “Which is kind of weird actually, given how he is the most ungodly god I have ever met.”
“I met Hermes once,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII. “He weighs more than eight hundred pounds and has to wash himself with a stick.”
“Have you seen Thor eat pancakes? It’s disgusting.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t eat pancakes with him.”
“Then who am I going to eat pancakes with?”
“Your new boyfriend?”
“That’s a little ambitious,” responded Catrina, blushing slightly. Although it could also have been windburn. Or radiation. “We haven’t even gone on a date yet.”
“The cross-country basket ride wasn’t romantic enough for you?” said Chester A. Arthur XVII. “You two have been flirting and giving each other googly-eyes since I came to. There’s no reason to deny it.”
“How can you be this insightful about my relationship but you still can’t see what you have to do with Vicky?”
“A deep-seated and rock-hard sense of denial,” said the cybernetic presidential clone. “It’s ... difficult to analyze or understand.”
“Maybe for you,” said the hotel clerk. “Vicky told me all about it. And I mean, like, everything. You guys are into some weird shit.”
> “I really like her.”
“Would you go so far as to say you love her?”
“I’d never actually say that, no,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII. “Then I’d lose.”
“You guys might be more fucked up than can be fixed.”
“We can make it work.”
The president and the girl swerved to avoid a trio of pteranodons.
“Aw, Ali’s never seen a dinosaur before,” said Catrina. “I feel a little bad leaving him at Dr. Arahami’s.”
“I’m sure he’ll be fine,” shouted Chester A. Arthur XVII over the sound of his jetpack.
***
“Pneumatic penis you say?” replied the donut merchant. “What do you have in the way of chainsaw hands?”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
His Blood Alcohol Level Is, Like, Eighty
“Th– The thing ish, Mark,” slurred Timmy the drunken super-squirrel, sitting on the desk in the Holiday Inn office, “it’sh been monthsh. I’m dead for all they know. Lasht time ... lasht time, when I dishappeared and came back, sh– she jush got mad. No ‘hooray, yer back,’ jush ‘where have you been, I’sh been worried shick.’ And then, then when she found out about the powersh ... The kidsh– The kidsh were all weird around me. You’d think they’d think it was cool, but they were all ... they were all real dicksh about the whole thing, Mark.”
“Yesh,” slurred Mark Hughes the drunken hotel owner, his feet precariously perched on the desk, “but they’re yer family, and you all love the shit out of each other. That’sh what a family is. Does.”
Mark burped.
“And thish time it’ll be different, right?” he continued. “I mean you don’t have powersh anymore. You– Yer normal now. Yer jush some squirrel again.”
“I am talking to you with my brain.”
“Yesh, but they don’t know that.”
Marked poured another shot of rum for the squirrel, then chugged a large amount from the red plastic container himself.
“I have had lasagna, Mark,” said the squirrel. “I– I’ve got a tashte for it now. I can’t go back from that.”
“Why don’t you move them all in here?” replied Mark, spreading his arms and nearly falling over. “You’re tiny and we’ve got so many roomsh. The entire fourth floor is full of Thor and Catrina and Vicky and Charlie and all their crap and it’s shtill not full! You should ... you should stay here, Timmy.”
“Are you shure, Mark? You shaid that Sheila –”
“Sheila is a vending machine.”
“The – the one with the hole in the shide?”
“Yesh.”
“Yer dating a vending machine?”
“We’re very happy.”
“Well, congratshulations for that then,” thought Timmy, shrugging his furry shoulders. “I would imagine dating a vending machine serioushly would have shome –”
“How are you slurring inside your own brain?”
“I DON’T KNOW.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
She Didn’t Find the Rest of the Duck Until the Next Day
Chester A. Arthur XVII and Catrina Dalisay touched down in the Galactic Republic of West Virginia, covered in feathers and bird innards.
Catrina pulled a severed bill from her hair.
“That was by far the worst thing I’ve ever been involved with.”
“The footprints end ... here,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII, poking the dirt with his foot. “Right where they run into ... about fifty-seven sets of tire tracks. A lot of motorcycles, a couple off-road vehicles ...”
“I honest to god didn’t know there were that many birds in the world,” continued Catrina, brushing caked blood and at least one tiny, bent bird leg from her person. “And that family of hang-gliders ...”
“There’s no way this level of pollution is good for the environment,” continued Chester A. Arthur XVII, looking at the thin layer of soot that had settled over everything.
“And the pogo-stick championship ...” she said, her voice cracking. “Why were they jumping so high?!”
“There are a large number of ambulances up there. If we’re looking for motorcycles, that’s probably a good sign.”
“I ... I need a shower and a lot of alcohol.”
“No time,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII, walking towards the ambulances. “And you’ve still got about half a duck in your hair.”
Catrina ran her hand backward through her hair until she found it. She trembled convulsively.
“I’m ... I’m going to walk home now, Charlie ...” she said, weeping softly.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
A Rivalry as Old as Time
Andrew Jackson II sprinted across the verdant green plains of North Virginia, Queen Victoria XXX less than a hundred yards behind him. Ahead of them was a large trailer park surrounded by a chain-link fence. Manufactured trailer homes, campers, RVs, Airstreams, school buses, tour buses, semi-trailers with no cabs and pick-up trucks with jury-rigged roofs over the beds stretched for miles. The residential area appeared to be organized on the northern side – with the fanciest homes, the double-stacked trailers and solid gold Airstreams, on the eastern edge, since that had the best views – while a slew of neon and burnished-metal signs denoted a booming industrial and commercial section toward the southern end. In the distance beyond this metropolitan oasis could be seen the forever-smoking ruins of Washington, D.C.
The reimagined president lifted himself up and over the fence in a single bound. A wooden sign announcing the trailer park as the City of Bruce rattled against the chain-link.
“Any chance for another truce?” shouted the reconstruction of royal DNA, following him over the fence. “I hear they have great margaritas here!”
“You can take a truce if you want,” yelled the president, darting down a gravel path and then ducking behind a Shop-Rite truck that had been converted into a condo.
“Aren’t you thirsty? I’m pretty sure dinosaur blood is a diuretic. And that aftertaste ...”
Queen Victoria XXX stopped at the far corner of the Shop-Rite truck as the screen door of a trailer home to her right snapped shut. From inside came the grunting of several hippopotamuses. She heard another screen door snap shut.
“Holy –” shouted a clearly winded and freaked out Andrew Jackson II from the opposite side of the trailer. “Hey, if I said I was sorry I killed your boyfriend would you stop hunting me down?”
“Are you still planning on slaughtering humanity for no reason?” asked the queen, inching along the edge of the trailer home.
“It’s not all of humanity, and I have a reason!”
“Then no.”
Queen Victoria XXX cleared the trailer, only to be greeted by two more manufactured homes and an unhitched mobile laboratory, all of which had doors banging shut. Judging by the various signs affixed to the various roofs, the first trailer home was a flamethrower and incendiary arms manufacturer, while the second was a whiskey bar going by the name “Helga’s Place.” The laboratory belonged to NASA, though it appeared to be abandoned.
The queen bit her lip, staring at the three “buildings” in front of her.
“Fuck it,” she said, “he’s got to be at least as dehydrated and radiation-poisoned as I am, right?”
“Right,” she answered, walking up the plastic stepstool that led to the bar’s door.
***
“Wait, hold on,” said the hulking Swedish man sitting on the barstool next to Queen Victoria XXX. “You know Thor Thor, the God of Thunder?”
“We live in the same hotel,” replied the queen, slamming down her empty glass. The bartender immediately slid another pint of water in front of her. A large crowd of even larger Scandinavians was massing around Vicky, entranced by what she was saying. “I can introduce you if you want,” said the queen.
“But,” she continued, “there’s this thing I have to do first ...”
***
The lead slug sliced through the shoulder of Queen Victoria XXX, sending bl
ood floating into the zero-gravity laboratory. She flipped herself vertically and fired her bazooka. The post-Second Civil War expansion pre-enactor exploded into a million little pieces. All of which floated in the air between her and Andrew Jackson II.
“Cowboys, Andy?” she asked. “Where the hell did you find cowboys at this hour?”
Andrew Jackson II stood solemnly, a walking stick in his hands, his feet on the ceiling.
“Never presume a man does not have cowboys at his disposal.”
Vicky righted herself and kicked backward, putting more distance between herself and Andrew Jackson II.
“They were disposable, yes.”
She pulled the trigger on the bazooka. Nothing happened.
“You only had two shots,” said the dead president dismissively.
“You make it sound like actually firing the bazooka was part of the plan.”
The edge of an axe blade emerged from the wall of the chamber on Andy’s right. Then two more blades appeared on the other side. There was a slight hiss of air. The floating blood and cowboy chunks sloshed to the ground. The president followed, head first.
“Vikings,” growled Andrew Jackson II, raised on one elbow and staring at Vicky across the viscera.
“The neo-Viking movement settled here after Sweden and Norway burnt down,” replied a smirking Queen Victoria XXX. “They like to drink, I like to buy.”
The wall to the left of Andrew Jackson II was kicked in by an enormous red-headed man dressed in fur and wearing a horned metal cap. He held a very, very large dual-bladed battle-axe in his hands. Behind him were his friends.
The wall to Andy’s right came crashing down. The red-headed Viking was very popular.
“COWBOYS!” shouted Andrew Jackson II. There was a small explosion at the end of the laboratory behind him. A dozen boot- and vest-wearing men appeared, striding through a wall of settling dust.