by Dalton Wolf
“I want shotgun on that ride if it’s open,” Scaggs said with her head held high, unashamed to admit that she wanted out.
“You and me both, sister,” Trip agreed. “You can take a ticket and stand in line for that one, and the line starts here and ends with those five, he pointed out Scooter, Athena, Sarah, Joel and Gus individually.
“But if we have to go on the ground, I’d also want it to be in something Hephaestus here has made.”
Hephaestus nodded modestly following such praise from two of his best friends.
“Thank you, my friends. But there is only one vehicle that might guarantee that we make it to where we need to go. And I am not done building it. It lies within the Master’s Chamber over there behind that mural. It will probably still take me a week if the smith you claim to have brought me is worth his weight in steel.”
“I am,” Quinn stepped between Calvin and Trip, thick red beard jutting out in challenge. The Armorer had remained silent because he had no idea what to do or how to react. That the world had suddenly turned upside down was a definite. That young Calvin here was the one who was going to get him out of it seemed a little less certain. Exactly what he should be doing about any of it, he had no idea. Until now.
Hef noticed it was the big man speaking now and couldn’t help feeling a small margin of relief when the others turned at the sound of his voice. He was definitely really there. Both metal-men introduced themselves.
“Quinn.” “Hephaestus.” They shook hands and sized each other up.
“You build this?” Quinn looked all around at the walls and ceiling.
“I did. With the help of a few friends,” Festus nodded. “This and all the vehicles in here,” he spread his hands around. “Except for that one, of course,” he pointed at the mustang. “I simply made that one a little better.”
“Nice. You’ll do,” Quinn nodded.
Hef returned the man’s evaluating gaze, up and down, leather-bolstered chain mail, armored boots, and immaculate forged weapons. He studied the rest of the armor-clad gang as if seeing each for the first time, noting the quality of the metal work and the materials used, eyes sparkling when he noticed the blue armor on Calvin and Athena.
“I imagine you will too,” he craned a smile up at the taller man—a rare occurrence in and of itself.
“Wow! Where did you get that?” Scooter exclaimed as a vehicle that actually looked useful for their current situation slowly spun into sight. It had been blocked from sight by an old fire engine. Hephaestus looked up to see what he was pointing at and instantly regretted it, slumping in defeat, crestfallen.
“I built it, Calvin. I just said…whatever. It is one of your new toys. I…now that you brought it up, where did you think I acquired it?”
“No. Sorry. Of course…I mean, well, of course you built it. I just meant…not where did you get it. Look, it was just a turn of phrase, buddy. I know where you got it. I meant what’s the story with it? It looks awesome. Making it for a movie? What is it?”
“It is an extended frame Humvee,” Hef took the lure and swam out into the lake. “I placed turrets on the front and back and—”
“—no. I mean what movie is it for?”
“It is kind of a secret,” he glanced around. “But we seem to be in special circumstances,” he looked around for invisible cameras and leaned down, motioning for them to lean in so he could whisper the name.
“It is called Aftermath 2025,” he blurted in a normal voice, making everyone jump. “It is supposed to be Beyond Thunderdome meets Dungeons and Dragons meets Night of the Living Dead…or something.”
“Those three don’t really go together, honey,” Sarah declared with a laugh.
“And yet here we are on the verge of that very thing,” he responded, eying their armor and weapons with raised eyebrows.
“Well, this thing sure fits the Mad Max genre,” Tripper noted, patting the hood of the Humvee.
“What are those big drum things in the middle for?” Scooter asked. Everyone else moved to look inside the doors at the center of the vehicle where they could see large black barrels hanging in steel baskets beneath both turrets.
“Those are fifty-five gallon drums. They’re filled with your ammunition.”
“Ooh, what’s the ammo?” Trip asked.
Hef smiled and motioned for them to guess.
“Ball bearings,” Scooter said with a shrug.
“Good guess. Close but no cigar.”
“Whiskey,” Athena guessed.
Scooter gave her a withering glance.
“Hey, those tubes could take the fuel up to the cannons up there and turn them into flame-throwers.”
“Ok, but how is that close to ball bearings?”
“I…he could have meant close meaning it is on the Earth. And he said close but no cigar. What goes with cigars? Whiskey. I—just shut up, Calvin. You don’t know.”
“I know I don’t…never mind…is it Whiskey?” Scooter turned on his old friend.
“No,” Hef replied. “But I have done something similar with a moonshine mixture and a pressurized still. It was for a low budget horror movie called Backwoods Dead and Deadfast, set in a Bed and Breakfast in the Appalachians. It was about a bunch of hillbillies making moonshine and killing visitors for food and selling their stuff on e-bay. One of the victims turns their cooker into a flamethrower and fries everyone. Stinkfest of a movie, but I won some awards from people who pay attention to things like that and—”
“—is it cow turds?” Trip interrupted irritably.
“No.” Hef shook his head with a sigh, shoulders slumping again.
“Can we get further away from ball bearings?” Scooter asked in dismay. “Build off of my lead, people.”
“We don’t have time, anyway,” Athena reminded them, ignoring the fact that she’d already taken part in the impromptu game.
“It’s nails,” Scaggs said casually.
Hephaestus beamed and Scaggs felt her knees weaken. She put her arm around Gus to keep her balance in the assault on her senses that was this beautiful man. Gus simply looked over and shook his head with a resigned expression. She kissed him on the cheek as an apology.
“How’d you guess that?” Trip asked her roughly, annoyed that someone had beat him to the punch before he’d given a real answer.
“Guess? What? Are you kidding? Please…those feed belts are thin and wide. The drive tube is obviously formulated to turn the nails the same direction as they flow through, and the drums are schedule three-fifty-five, carbon-coated,” she raised an eyebrow and shrugged one shoulder. “Standard container for shipping bulk nails to distributors. And that tiny load chamber…not much else could fit in there but nails. Pretty simple, really,” she looked around at the rest haughtily.
The group continued to stare, some impressed, others doubtful.
“I’m just sayin…” she said, before breaking out in laughter and picking up a handful of nails from a box inside the open door she was standing next to. “No. I mean, I’m good, but really. Look, there’s a few hundred boxes of nails in cases and it says ‘nails here’ on the door of these drums.” She gave a comical double-tap on the side of a barrel.
“What about that barrel composition and load chamber stuff?” Gus asked, eyeing her sideways.
“I totally made all that chiz up,” she admitted.
“So you were lying to us?”
“In my field we call it improvisation, Sweetie,” she smiled coyly at Gus and his round baby-face lit up. “I gotta stay in practice in case I get a good part. But I won’t do it again if you don’t like it.” She pursed her lips into the cutest of pouts, put one tiny finger to her lips and coyly rolled her eyes up at him and he nearly fell over.
“Forget him,” Scooter said. “It was cool. You should have never told us the truth. Would have driven him crazy,” he nodded at Tripper.
“How’s it work?” he asked Hephaestus.
“The compressors are in the middle of the ca
rrier. One on each side. One bolted to the roof, the other on the floor. The compressor sends air through the feed channel of the gun and it feeds the nail belt through a simple pneumatic gear attachment I made. Let me pull off the molding and show you these gears and how—”
“—sorry, Hef, we’ll need the shorter version,” Scooter held up a palm. “We’ve got rescues to attempt.”
The big Greek simply shrugged. “Right. Of course. It is simple. Flip the switch to turn on your compressor. Use your feet and spin your body on the rails to turn the turret on its base. The turret is basically mounted to a giant roller bearing—very easy to move. Aim here. Pull the trigger to shoot. When you are empty, or something is broken, it will probably not shoot anymore. If that happens, bring it back and I will fix it. That is all.”
“Great. We’ll figure the rest out on the fly.”
“Are nails really going to do it out there?” Trip asked his friend.
Hephaestus sighed. “Always with the doubting.”
Stumping over to one of the refrigerators in the garage, he reached in and fumbled around for a few seconds, eventually pulling out a round watermelon and walking over to an upside-down bowl stand sitting near a cushioned wall. He placed the watermelon in the bowl part of the stand and walked to a group of shelves further up the wall. Selecting a big, heavy-looking black backpack, he slung it over his broad shoulders with a grunt, his tank top exposing a good portion of his muscular, well-tanned shoulders and chest as he adjusted everything on his back.
Felicia and Scaggs giggled and whispered to each other. He turned to them and scowled. “Are they going to stop that soon?” he muttered.
“You take some getting used to, Sweetie,” Athena informed him.
Still scowling, he fumbled with the straps until satisfied with the fit and then reached over his shoulder and pulled what looked like a steel rod from a sheath on the side of a tank. A belt or strap hung from the back half of the rod and connected it to the large backpack. But it wasn’t just a rod. With a flip of a trigger, dozens of tiny, silvery projectiles jetted out to the watermelon twenty feet away, penetrating the melon’s tougher surface and leaving little trace. The ‘rod’ was actually the barrel to a mini-air-gun and the ‘strap’ a feed belt.
“They will penetrate,” he pointed to the tiny holes ripped in the shell.
“A skull is a lot thicker and harder than a watermelon, Hef,” Sarah said hesitantly.
Hephaestus walked up to the watermelon and cut it in half with a machete they hadn’t seen him grab. The insides of the watermelon fell out like a watermelon slushy instead of the solid interior the others had expected. “See,” he announced proudly. “If you hit them in the eye, the nails will go in and sort of, bounce around a bit, mashing it all up and ensuring that you take out whatever it is in the brain that keeps them going.”
“Ok,” Trip conceded.
“Dibs!” Scaggs blurted, then blushed. “On the gun, I mean. Not the man…boyfriend,” she repeated, pointing to Gus. “Boyfriend,” she muttered meekly. “Just want the gun.”
“This is mine,” he said with a possessive hug of the barrel. “It would be too heavy for you anyway. But perhaps we can work up a few more when I am waiting on something else to get fabricated. I am certain we will have to redesign a few parts when we start assembling everything on the…escape vehicle. I ordered the main parts for seven of these little portable guns, but I am not sure I have enough connectors and belts made for that many…maybe three more.”
“Dibs!” Scaggs said again.
“Fair enough,” Hef nodded and for once she just looked grateful instead of giggling like a schoolgirl at her first dance.
“This is just like the Con was,” Felicia screeched; “Door prizes and everything.”
“Yeah, I already got a car,” Scaggs danced a happy jig. “And now a cool air gun.”
“I want a car,” Tripper mumbled. “I broke mine earlier.”
“We will get you something,” Hef promised. “I will show you ladies the rest of the vehicles when you return if you wish,” Hef offered to all of the girls, specifically emphasizing if you wish directly at Sarah and Athena.
It really had not been anything personal. Only Trip, Gus, Joel and Calvin had even been in the garage because he preferred to entertain guests in the entertainment room, hence the name. And why not? It was filled with two dozen monitors for gaming, internet surfing or just for watching television. Through motors in the walls it was able to transform into several different configurations, including one with multiple sound-proof booths for privacy or for anti-cheating gaming control. Joel had always insisted that Tripper was a cheater so as Game Master, which made him maker of rules and implementation of all game play, Hef had started small by erecting a cardboard cubicle to put around Trip so he couldn’t see anyone’s screen or their information. But then Trip had actually played better.
Eventually everyone had tried the cubicle out and liked the idea so Hef, being Hef, had designed an entire room full of gaming cubicles for competition, and two large areas where they could all play or watch movies, or both. And then he and Calvin had designed a few other configurations that they had yet to surprise the others with…which reminded Hef that he needed to fix the monitor in room twelve. The remote mount was getting twitchy and he was having trouble following it on his laps around the track. None of that had anything to do with their current circumstances, of course, but that was how his mind worked. Though he talked slower intentionally, he had been diagnosed in his teens as Hyper-something-or-other and had been sent to private schools, his mind was always working and it took specific drugs and many distractions to keep it even remotely still for any length of time.
What the hell was I talking about? He asked himself. Oh right. Vehicles.
“So, this vehicle is stronger and lighter than your military Humvees,” he explained. “I was able to get better materials for much less than the government pays so I decreased the weight of the frame and parts by a third. An engine mechanic friend built a hybrid motor that is amazing and is nearly two-hundred pounds lighter than the standard motor. I traded that weight for extra armor all around, including underneath.”
Calvin walked over and looked inside the vehicle and began planning.
“It has custom armor along the outside and I designed those safety windows myself. Two layers of two inch shock glass. Each window has a small block in the middle you can open to shoot through and each porthole is fortified between the layers so it isn’t a weak point in the armor.
“It’s like our very own Warthog from Halo,” Joel noted.
“I bet it’s meaner,” Gus pursed his lips in study.
“Ammo won’t hold out as long,” Calvin said, being the realist.
The others laughed when they got it.
“Hedgehog.” Scaggs said.
“Yes!” Gus cried, kissing her on the lips. In what was a surprisingly touching moment under the circumstances, each paused to look deeply into the eyes of the other as if for the first time.
“That’s not meaner than a Warthog, though,” Athena pointed out.
“I don’t know if I’m supposed to be offended or not…” Hephaestus mused.
“Not. No, of course not,” Scaggs assured him a little too desperately, though perhaps her blood was actually pumping a little faster this time from Gus’ kiss rather than the Greek millionaire’s mere existence.
“I would have said Porcupine,” Tripper suggested.
“That’s a rodent, and a herbivore. And they can’t really shoot those needles.”
“I…did not know that,” Tripper admitted.
“A Hedgehog is no hunter, but it’s no wimp either. With Hedgehog, you still get the hog for the nod to the games with the spines of the porcupine to match the nails of our guns. And like the animal, this is armored. And we’ll be out rooting through many hedges of undead for our friends. And if we get into trouble, we’re probably going to go to ground and hide in a burrow until we can fin
d a way out. I know Wolverines and Honey Badgers are better creatures for cool naming—fiercer and what-not—but I think they’ve been used too much. Plus, you only get up to two syllables for a car. It’s The Law.”
“And the award for the longest explanation in history for a car name that no one cares about goes to…” Gus handed her an invisible statue and she curtseyed sweetly.
“Fair enough,” Tripper agreed. “Two Syllables. Although I once drove a vehicle with a long history that went by the name of the Babylon Cruiser because the last three numbers on its VIN were 666. That thing was put through hell and somehow kept running. But Babylon Cruiser, that’s like six syllables or something.”
“Five,” Felicia and Sarah said together.
“Sorry, Festus,” Tripper clapped him on the shoulder with an open palm. “Unless you’ve got something else in mind it looks like you built yourself a Hedgehog.”
“Very well. Although I would think Babylon Cruiser is a more appropriate name. Perhaps I will suggest it for the vehicle name in Aftermath 2025. I will have to look up this Hedgehog animal and see if I have been insulted.”
“You won’t be too disappointed,” Scaggs said with some actual confidence. “I expect you to call me and apologize for your doubt. If we still have phones then, that is.”
“Oh yes!” Hephaestus cried out, reaching into a pouch he wore around his waist. “Everyone needs to have one of these.”
He handed Calvin and Tripper each a handful of dull black ear pieces with little accompanying belt-clip boxes and the pair passed them around to the others. Calvin kept a few sets and put them into his jacket pocket.
“This is part of my own satellite communication system. We can speak with each other on a closed channel that no one else can overhear or block.”
“You guys even have your own Q!” Scaggs squealed. “Can I be double-oh-seven? I mean, I auditioned for Double Dee Seven once, but that project fell through. I didn’t really have the equipment, anyway, thanks mom.”