by Eirik Gumeny
“Hey,” said the man in the overalls quietly, nudging Easy E. “Think we can eat that thing?” He kicked at the manticore’s body.
“Only one way to find out,” replied the skinny man, rubbing his hands together eagerly.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Just Be Glad He Wasn’t Prairie-Dogging
Thor Odinson fidgeted in the smallish cab of Dr. Lee Arahami’s gargantuan, overly-chromed all-terrain tractor-trailer, en route to replacing the transformers across the Montana grid. His knees hit the glove compartment and the door didn’t have one of those ledges where an arm could be rested, forcing the thunder god to try to rest his elbow on the narrow lip of the window. Not surprisingly, his arm slid off more often than it didn’t, and he continually bonked his head against the glass.
“You know, Charlie’s tank is a lot nicer than this,” said Thor, rubbing his head. “It has heated seats.”
“That’s great,” replied the roboticist.
“Why doesn’t your truck have heated seats?”
“Because I don’t use it that often. It’s only for transporting large pieces of equipment, and generally not very far. It seemed a little extravagant to add a bunch of amenities for something I drive once a year.”
“Don’t you want to be comfortable?”
“I am comfortable.”
“Don’t you want me to be comfortable?”
“You’ll be fine if you stop thinking about it.”
Thor muttered to himself, then tried to rest his arm on the window lip again. His elbow slid off again and he hit his head again, this time cracking the window slightly.
“Are we there yet?” he grumbled.
“We’ve been on the road for two hours, Thor,” said Dr. Arahami.
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means we’re not there yet.”
The former Norse god sighed theatrically. “When are we gonna get there?”
“Twenty hours, give or take,” said the doctor with a small shrug. “A lot of it will depend on how intact the old interstates are.”
“I thought you said we had a compass.”
“We do,” said Dr. Arahami slowly and with more than some confusion, pointing toward the antique brass compass duct-taped to the dashboard, “but that’s not going to change the fact that the truck moves faster over flat, paved highway than crumbling wastelands.”
“Are there any crumbling wastelands?” asked Thor, staring out the window at the blowing snow and breathtaking red cliffs flanking the road on either side. “Because so far this is pretty boring.”
“Probably not. We’re going west to the Grand Canyon, and then it’s a straight shot north. That should keep us on some fairly preserved roads, although Idaho might be rough. The killer potatoes really did a number on them.”
“Fucking potatoes.”
The Great Potato Riots started shortly after McDonald’s figured out a way to create french fries entirely from excess fryer grease, with no actual food involved. While a hit with discerning fast food patrons and hungover college students the world over, this slight against the venerated tater did not sit well with farmers or nutritionists.
In a tense showdown with Ronald McDonald and his army of frothing Grimaces, the potato originalists, as the farmers and dieticians had taken to calling themselves, managed to overturn an entire convoy of trucks hauling the new french fries. Unbeknownst to them, though, the recipe for the new french fries required congealing the grease with older grease for the better part of a week. As the convoy toppled to the ground, truck after truck, spilling its only half-solidified cargo, the potato originalists watched with horror as an ocean of chunky, fatty oil poured forth instead of the dreaded fake fries.
The half-congealed grease flooded across miles of the endless emerald potato fields of Idaho, seeping into the ground and waking the sleeping root vegetables from their eternal slumber.
The potatoes were not happy.
Pulling themselves from the fatted soil in a tangle of roots and excess eyes, the incensed spuds set upon those that had disturbed their rest. Within minutes, the road was nothing but a nightmare of stripped bones and engine parts. The largest of the potatoes stood atop the crumpled trailer of one of the overturned transport trucks, screaming into the ether with cold fury and holding above it the severed head of Ronald McDonald.
The world was doomed.
Thankfully, though, the soulless massacre didn’t actually spread much farther than the edges of Idaho before the killer potatoes began to rot and die, slumping to the ground in wrinkly, mushy heaps. They were, after all, only vegetables, and all vegetables go bad eventually.
“I have to pee.”
“Again? You haven’t even had anything to drink since last time.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t have to go.”
“If we keep stopping we’re never going to get there.”
“I can pee on the floor if you want.”
“What? No, that’s disgusting,” said Dr. Arahami. “Just go out the window.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Some Things Are Harder Than Others
After several hours of walking through dark, frozen scrublands; a few hours hiking through the jagged, blackened remains of an incinerated forest; one very quick, painful hour running and weaving and shoving and occasionally jump-kicking through a sprawling encampment of displaced, angry android veterans of the Robot Wars; and then a couple more hours trudging through uneven hills of sandy desert – all of which were done during a near whiteout – Chester A. Arthur XVII and Queen Victoria XXX finally found the abandoned spaceport in the southernmost fringes of Las Máquinas. They had been tasked with retrieving the trivection cooling unit, and stealing a thirty-year-old suborbital space plane was the only way to get to England that didn’t involve swimming across a mostly dried-up ocean.
More importantly though, Chester A. Arthur XVII and Queen Victoria XXX found an unattended maintenance shed with a working shower, a cot, a space heater, a refrigerator with a bunch of unmarked lunches, and a large window that faced a small camp of homeless astronauts.
Discretion and a lack of a signed disclosure agreement forbid discussion of what exactly went on in that maintenance shed, save that it involved the shower, the stares of the homeless astronauts, the shower wall, the cot, a few lengths of bungee cord, a bench, some extraordinary flexibility and ingenuity on the part of Queen Victoria XXX, a jar of maple syrup, a very thorough inspection and appreciation of the newly non-robotic body of Chester A. Arthur XVII, the windowsill, some more gymnastics on the part of Queen Victoria XXX, some curling toes, some heaving breaths, a nap, and then the shower again, this time with a drop cloth thrown over the window.
Twenty minutes after that, the cloned queen and the remade president were in the lower part of the thermosphere of Earth, having stolen and hotwired a derelict low-orbit spacecraft, acts which required significantly less thought and effort than anything they had done in the shed.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Last Train to Clarksville
Ali Şahin, Catrina Dalisay, and Boudica IX stood huddled around a burning trash can on a desolate, damaged train platform on the outskirts of a desolate, damaged city just off the desolate, damaged interstate in the middle of a desolate, damaged desert. They had been forced to abandon the warmth and armor and remarkably deep MP3 collection of Charlie’s tank several miles east of the city when its engines seized up and died. A cursory investigation, and a hard-coded fear of it being anything else, led them to diagnose the problem as a simple lack of fuel. Boudica IX did her best to get them a few more miles, but her farts were far too sporadic and uncontrolled to be counted on for more than that. Ultimately, try as the trio might – and try they did – without Thor they simply didn’t have the intestinal fortitude or undiagnosed digestive issues necessary to pass enough gas to power the methane engine of the vehicle.
The donut merchant, the hotel employee, and the re-created Celt shivered beneath
the benighted sky, soaked from the thighs down after slogging through miles of wet, packed snow, waiting for a train they weren’t even sure would come. Dr. Arahami’s only two parkas lost in the supply run to Los Alamos, the women stood in little more than heavy sweaters, while the skinny brown-skinned man shook slightly beneath his fleece sweatshirt. The trio pressed against the flaming trash can, the pain of the burning metal scarring their legs almost indistinguishable from the hypothermia. Often they leaned directly over the fire, inadvertently singing off stray hairs or eyebrows.
With the power out, the arrivals board was useless, and the only brochures the three found were a jumble of out-of-date maps and complex algebra problems. They knew they were somewhere between the city-states of Phoenix and Las Vegas, though whether they were on the edge of Las Máquinas, in the heart of the unforgiving geriatric stronghold of the Arizona territory, lost somewhere in one of the sweeping Mormon reservations, or standing squarely on some piece of contested land in between, they didn’t know. Only time, and whether they got murdered or converted to a new religion, would tell.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
He’s the Father of All Lies, and the Uncle of All Convoluted Schemes
The grey-haired man in the crappy suit crouched in the snow, a hand on the nearby wooden fence post for balance, speaking slowly and softly through the razor wire fence to the rash of albino wolverines growling before him.
“... and then you need to gnaw on the foundation of that building until it collapses, too.”
The unmistakable clack of a shotgun being chambered echoed behind the man’s head, despite there only being a mess of furry carnivores and a very sharp fence for the sound to echo off of.
“What in the sugar-frosted fuck are you doing with my wolverines?” said someone behind the man in the suit – presumably, he thought, the same someone holding a shotgun against his skull.
“I can explain, miss,” said the leather-faced weasel whisperer, his voice trembling. He stood slowly and placed his clearly empty hands behind his head.
“Turn around.”
The man did as instructed, his body as shaky as his voice, turning eye-to-gun-barrel-to-eye with the shotgun wielder, a busty brunette in a fur-lined greatcoat.
“Persephone?” he asked, tilting his head around the weapon to get a better look.
“Lucy?” replied the woman, doing the same. “Is that you?”
“Please don’t call me that,” said the man with a confidence uncommon in someone with a gun in his face. His sleazy salesman air had disappeared. Even his suit looked better.
“You walked out on me. I’ll call you whatever I want.”
“It’s Satan, Seph,” grumbled the man in the suit, lowering his hands slightly. “You know I prefer Satan.”
“What are you doing with my wolverines?” she asked, the shotgun still pointed directly at Satan’s face.
“I didn’t know they were yours. I promise. I only came to borrow them for a little while. There are a few nearby buildings I need gone and these guys are small enough to get under the napalm fences and angry enough to get past the armed elephant guards.”
“You can’t have them,” the former Greek goddess snarled.
“What do you need wolverines for, Seph? You can lay curses down on mankind with the snap of your fingers.”
“You know I don’t know how to snap!” Persephone shoved both barrels of the gun against the grizzled man’s nose.
“I can get you your powers back,” he offered, his voice calm and collected, although somewhat squeakier than usual.
“If you could do that you wouldn’t have a gun up your nostrils.”
“I promise I will reimburse you should anything happen.”
“That’s not going to help me while they’re gone.”
“I can get you a job, with me, instead.”
“Snap, crackle, bullshit, Lucy. You’re a professional liar, even without your powers. You think I’m going to believe anything you say? Knowing who you are? What you did to me?”
“If you wanted me dead I’d be dead, Seph. Put the gun down.” Satan slowly and deliberately pulled a fancy-looking business card from the interior pocket of his suit. He handed it to Persephone. “Here. I wasn’t lying about the job thing.”
Persephone took the card with her free hand and read it thoroughly, several times. Eventually she lowered her shotgun from Satan’s face and tucked the weapon under her arm.
“For real, Lucy? You can set me up.”
“You know I’m not one for props,” he explained, thumbing gun oil from his nose. “I’m one hundred percent on the level. About this anyway, right now. Give me a hand with a few errands and I can get you in as a vice president. No more wolverine farming for you.”
“I don’t farm them. The wolverines are here to keep the underground moose away from the steak-o’-lanterns.”
“The what?”
“They’re meat-filled pumpkins.”
“That sounds awful.”
“They are. But people buy them.” Persephone shook her head. “Fucking mortals.”
The goddess of the underworld squinted at the card one more time, her dark eyes glinting, then flicked the edge with her finger.
“You can really get me in with him. For life?”
“Forever,” replied Satan, smiling. “Once I put these last few parts in motion, we’re golden.”
“Last few ...” began Persephone, gears clicking. “Are you the reason I’ve been living by candlelight for the last month?”
“No, the blackout was simply the impetus for the idea, a stroke of good luck. I had nothing to do with it, swear to whoever,” the former ruler of Hell explained. “I may have had a hand in plunging the world headfirst into a new ice age, though.”
“Pele[xxi]?”
“She is so easy to get riled up.”
“So then the wolverines are for ... Atomodynamics, down the road a spell? And Magma Machines Incorporated?”
“Among others.”
“That’s a lot of strings you’re pulling, Lucy.”
“That’s kind of what I do.”
The brunette glared at the grey-haired man standing before her.
“Can you guarantee I’m not going to regret this?”
“I can guarantee you anything you want.”
Persephone raised the shotgun again.
“I’m sorry,” said Satan, lifting his hands, “force of habit. In all seriousness, Seph: There is no way this plan can fail.”
CHAPTER FORTY
Long Way to the Top
Amen-Ra, former Egyptian creator of the universe and God-King of the Sun, was leaning back in his executive chair, his feet on his enormous mahogany desk. A half-empty jug of fortified beer sat pooling in itself next to the phone. The expansive office was comfortably warm, honest-to-goodness sunlight flooding in through the large glass walls, and Ra, finished with his appointments for the day, had taken off his jacket and tie and settled in for a rejuvenating nap. His pet lioness, Bambi, was doing the same, curled on the carpet at the front of his desk.
Ra was the owner and CEO of Heliopolis, the world’s largest solar panel manufacturer. The sun god had started the business several years earlier – shortly after mathematics had put the beatdown on organized religion and he was cast down from Aaru, the Field of Reeds – back when he was nothing more than a confused, alcoholic has-been. And now look at him, he was fond of saying, a successful, alcoholic entrepreneur! Hell, the greatest alcoholic entrepreneur of all time!
The trick, as Ra always said, had been the willingness to work hard, the integrity to never give up, and, after he had nearly driven the first iteration of the company into the ground through mismanagement and shoddy investing, the ability to get stupid, sloppy drunk and accidentally tap into your latent deific powers and inundate your immediate delivery area with constant, abundant sunshine. Easy-peasy.
The most recent solar storm, the one that caused the blackout that was still wreaking havoc over
the rest of the planet, had been a boon to Heliopolis. While other manufacturers’ solar panels had shattered or melted, Heliopolis’ Ra’s Finest™ brand solar panels had thrived. When the ejection of solar energy hit them, they actually began to run more efficiently than before. And they were already the world leader in efficiency.
As people scrounged for every bit of energy they could find, trying to thwart the ongoing power outage, word spread about Heliopolis’ nigh-immortal panels, sales skyrocketed, and Ra remembered how to party like a god-king should. Even when the volcanic winter showed up to drop a deuce in his orgy, blocking the sun and rendering Heliopolis’ solar panels inoperable, Ra wouldn’t let it stop him. Raising his middle fingers to the sky, he burned away the clouds of ash for a thousand miles in every direction from the headquarters of Heliopolis. The sun had shined nonstop ever since, its warm brilliance radiating down on Egypt like a heat lamp over a fast food cheeseburger.
Someone timidly knocked on the office door.
“Come in,” boomed Ra, opening a single eye.
The door opened slowly and a tiny, frail old man in a jumpsuit shuffled a few steps into the room.
“S-S-Sir,” he said, shaking like a chihuahua in a snowstorm, “there’s – there’s been an inc-c-cident.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
The Little Engine That Could
After what felt like several hours – mostly because it had been several hours – the faint sound of a train whistle drifted across the empty platform and Ali, Catrina, and Boudica IX emerged from their shuddering, half-dead stupor. Turning and squinting into the distance they could just make out the lights of the oncoming train. The locomotive approached quickly, its constant plume of white steam nearly lost in the sheets of frozen moisture falling from the grey sky.
Somewhere deep in the linty back pockets of their minds, the trio knew that this train was all that separated them from retrieving the spork-headed screwdriver and the isotonium, that the fate of the continent’s ability to run a hair dryer or play Angry Birds again rested on this single locomotive. Mostly though, they were hoping the train had a toilet and a temperature warm enough to let them thaw their bodily fluids and use it.