by J. I. Greco
“We had other priorities.”
“So, this Trig guy, huge penis?” Bernice asked, running her finger luridly along the length of her cigarette holder.
Roxanne looked up from the antenna. “Little obsessed, aren’t we?”
“So, Trig is tiny, then?”
“Trip. Pretty sure it was Trip. And what he had, he knew how to use.” Roxanne gave the circuitry a final poke, blew on the jack, and snicked it into the plug behind her ear. “There we go.”
“Is it working?”
Roxanne frowned as she put the tool box back in her satchel. “It’s powered up... but I’m not getting anything. Is it blinking?”
“You know how it was going all red before?”
“Yeah.”
“It ain’t doing that.” Bernice tapped ashes into the burning, smoking pile of napkins. “It’s back to yellow. Slow and steady.”
“That’s standby. So either it’s working but can’t get a signal, or it’s still fritzing, or I broke it for good this time.” Roxanne shrugged. “Well, it was worth a shot.”
Bernice looked up. “Looks like Mother Superior’s ready.”
Roxanne got to her feet. “Total waste of time and effort.”
“Hey, like you said, worth a shot, right?” Bernice asked, taking Roxanne’s offered hand and pulling herself up. She stomped the fire out with the soul of a stiletto.
Mother Superior cleared her throat. “Gather into a line, girls.”
The sisters did as instructed, standing shoulder to shoulder and all facing the same arbitrary direction Mother Superior was. They raised their arms to the All-Mart’s ceiling as Mother Superior raised her medallion.
“Oh great anomaly of the Wasteland,” Mother Superior began, “again we greet you!”
Her voice was swallowed up by the void stretching out in all directions.
“We hope — “
A noise behind them — a rhythmic hiss of clicking electrical discharges — interrupted her. Almost as one, the coven turned around towards the approaching sound.
“We have really got to stop praying to the damn thing,” Roxanne whispered to Bernice.
“Hey,” Bernice said around the cigarette holder, pointing its tip at Roxanne’s ear. “The antenna, it’s blinking red again.”
“Seriously?” Roxanne’s eyebrows crunched together as she reached for the antenna. “I don’t feel anything... wait a sec. Maybe I do. It’s kinda a tickle, like my leg’s asleep, but the leg is way over there.” She glanced over Bernice’s shoulder. “I think somebody’s on the line.”
“How far away?”
Roxanne closed her eyes. “Not so far. Like, a couple miles. Inside the All-Mart, for sure.”
“Somebody else with a RATpack antenna is in here?”
“These are paired. It’ll only establish contact with the one other unit...” Roxanne’s voice trailed off as the implications hit her and she broke into a grin. “Well, I’ll be an incredibly hot niece of a monkey.”
“He came in after you?” Bernice asked, exasperated. “I don’t fuckin’ believe this. I can’t get a guy to give me the time of day, and you get them coming to rescue you after one roll in the hay.”
Roxanne shrugged. “I think he had a friend. A lawyer, even.”
“Look!” Georgina said, pointing out into the dark — which wasn’t so dark anymore. “Lights!”
And they were coming their way.
Roxanne and Bernice turned and stared as row after row of ceiling arc lights began snapping to life with clanking electrical discharges. They came on in a wave that quickly passed over their heads, illuminating the vast, empty interior of the All-Mart, pock-marked only by thirty-foot high support beams at regular intervals.
“Whoa...” Bernice said.
“Yeah,” Roxanne replied, her voice a reverent whisper.
Mother Superior beamed at the coven. “See, girls? The new god returns our welcome. Now maybe we can convince it to let us out.” She turned her face back towards the ceiling, squinting into the harsh, bare white lights. “We hope you are pleased with the gifts we have provided, and that they have fed your mighty hunger, and now, satiated, you are prepared to forgive whatever transgression we have inadvertently and, I assure you, unintentionally —”
A hiss stopped her this time. A white noise hiss in the distance — from the same direction the lights had swept on. The hiss soon became a rumble, and as the coven watched, dozens upon dozens of columns of smoke erupted from the floor on the horizon and began creeping their way.
“What is that?” Bernice asked.
Roxanne’s eyebrow went up. “I think they’re... shelves?”
The lines of smoke grew nearer and nearer, leaving tall rows of rack shelving in their wake. As they grew closer, it became clear that the individual columns of smoke were clouds of nanochines, extruding the shelving from the store’s floor in a buzzing, single-minded swarm.
Mother Superior lowered her arms and gestured for the coven to huddle around her. “Girls... tighten up, please.”
The girls pressed in towards Mother Superior just as two columns of nanomachine swarms reached them, building shelves on either side of them.
“Okay.” Roxanne watched one of the clouds building a shelf as it passed by. “This is both totally weirding me out but also maybe the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“You’re very strange, Rox.”
The nanomachine columns were soon past, and the girls were left staring at ten foot tall racks stretching back to the horizon, broken by regular gaps every hundred feet. The huddle loosened, the girls relieved. Curious, Roxanne took a step toward a rack and touched one of the empty shelves. It was warm. And getting warmer.
She withdrew her hand just as the shelf began to bubble.
Bernice peered over her shoulder. “What’s it doing now?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s food!” Ophelia yelled. “It’s making food!”
Roxanne and Bernice looked, and sure enough, a little further back down the shelf, All-Mart branded boxes of donuts and iced croissants were emerging from the bubbling shelf tops as if rising from underneath water. Further back, the shelves were already fully stocked with stacks of more boxes, bubbled up by nanochines from the shelves themselves.
“We were hungry, and the new god provided.” Mother Superior bowed her head and raised her medallion to her lips, kissed it. “The new god is merciful,” she said in a hushed, awe-filled voice.
Bernice reached for the nearest box of donuts as soon as it was done forming. Roxanne slapped the top of her hand.
“Oww!” Bernice exclaimed, reeling her hand back in. “What the fuck, Rox?”
“We’re on a diet, remember?”
“But it’s donuts...”
“We’ll find something more hip-friendly.” Roxanne frowned dubiously at the boxes, the donuts shiny and pristine under cellophane, almost as if they were made of wax. “Besides... something about nanomachine-produced food just doesn’t sound right to me.”
“Fine,” Bernice pouted, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Well, I’m not on any diet.” Xanadu slipped between Roxanne and Bernice to grab the box. “Pardon me.” She flipped the box lid back, grabbed a donut — one with sprinkles — and started chowing down, the other girls watching to gauge her reaction, hunger in their eyes.
“How are they?” Bernice asked.
Xanadu swallowed the last bit, then shrugged. “A little stale —”
Xanadu’s eyes suddenly went wide with panic. She dropped the box of donuts, her hands grabbing her stomach as she doubled over. Before anyone could step forward to help her, she had collapsed to the floor, writhing in pain.
“What’s going on?” Mother Superior asked. “Is she choking?”
Roxanne crouched down in front of Xanadu. She had stopped writhing and was now curled up in a fetal position, her face buried in her hands. “Xan... are you okay?”
“I... don’t... “ Xanadu�
�s hands parted and she looked up at Roxanne. A web-work of pulsing blue lines was spreading under her translucent skin from her lips and eyelids. Her eyes were blood-filled, swarming with tiny black dots. “I... don’t... think... so...”
“The food!” Roxanne stood and rushed over to Georgina, slapping a croissant out of her hand just as the sixteen year old was about to bite into it.
Georgina glared at her. “What was that about?”
Roxanne said nothing in reply, only stepped aside and pointed down at an oddly grinning Xanadu, every inch of her skin now turning gray and fully covered in a fine web-work of pulsing blue.
Georgina screamed.
Roxanne looked at Mother Superior. “We can’t eat this food. It’s how they turn you into zombies.”
Mother Superior nodded. “You hear that everyone? No food!” She crouched in front of Xanadu, reached out to stroke her hair, only to withdraw the hand as Xanadu hissed at her, a blood-black tongue darting out to lick blue lips.
“Umm... guys?” Bernice tapped Roxanne on the shoulder. “Not to pile it on, but we’ve got other problems.” She thumbed down the aisle.
Roxanne twisted around to look. “Oh sweet mother of Jebus.”
There, down the aisle a few hundred feet, was a frenzied mass of people making their halting, spastic way up the aisle. Dozens of them. Mostly adult men and women but a few snarling, screeching children. Their clothes were shreds, their skin translucent gray and mottled with pulsing blue webbing. They were pushing carts, biting and clawing at each other as they filled the carts by grabbing boxes at random from the shelves.
“What are they?” Bernice asked.
Her voice carried down the aisle. One of the things looked up, locking eyes with Bernice.
Roxanne was already reaching for Bernice’s hand when the thing shrieked, prompting the others to stop their mindless shelf rifling and rush forward, clawed hands outstretched and mouths slavering.
“Run!” Roxanne yelled, grabbing Bernice’s hand and yanking her up the aisle. Stilettos clicking, they ran for the nearest gap, Roxanne tugging Bernie through it.
And right into the chest of a hulking, seven foot tall... thing. Maybe it was human once, but not anymore, not with that hard dark blue carapace skin and saucer-wide eyes glowing dull yellow. A security badge was set directly in the wrinkled flesh of its chest.
“Welcome to All-Mart,” it said, its voice a deep growl. It reached a gnarled, almost crab-like hand around Roxanne’s head to pluck the RATpack antenna out of her neck. “May I see your receipt?”
CHAPTER 10: TO THE RESCUE?
The Wound parked at the bottom of a hillock, Trip sat on the hood, leaned back against the windshield, smoking and staring all contemplative into the churning maelstrom of the All-Mart’s looming expansion front only fifty feet away and growing closer, inch by slow inch.
“We don’t even know if she’s alive,” Rudy said from under the car.
“All-Marts don’t kill.” Trip flicked the cigarette at the All-Mart with a sharp snap. It arced away and fell a little short, landing on his lap instead.
“You assume.”
Trip sprung up and slid off the hood. The cig butt fell away and he batted at his jeans with both hands until he was sure he wasn’t on fire. “Their original business model was to get market share. This one will have the same, meaning it just turns people into nanochine-filled zombie consumers.”
“Bad enough,” Rudy said between turns of a ratchet. “And begs the question, if we find her... how we gonna un-zombiefy her? Ask the nanochines to leave?”
“Yeah. Politely.” Trip leaned against the fender, lit another cig. “Look, how the fuck do I know? We’ll figure something out. You done under there yet?” he asked Rudy’s hikers.
“Yeah. Give me a hand?”
Trip bent down, grabbed Rudy’s ankles, and pulled. Once he was far enough out, Rudy sat up, slipping the ratchet into his bandolier and pulling a rag out of a thigh pocket. “We’re all set.” Rudy wiped his hands on the rag. “The anti-theft electric shock system will now, instead of delivering a semi-lethal shock of juice, give off a constant low-power, high-oscillation buzz-charge through the frame.”
Trip had gone back to leaning against the fender. “Is that why my ass is tingling?”
Rudy stuffed the rag away and got to his feet. “I refuse to speculate about anything involving your ass.”
“Wise choice.”
“Anyway,” Rudy said, leaning against the Wound next to Trip, “it should — maybe — discourage the All-Mart’s nanochines from trying to break the car down into raw materials. Provided we don’t stand still for long.”
Trip smirked. “And the nanochines don’t interpret the juice as a dinner bell.”
“There is that.” Rudy took out his calabash and held it between his teeth as he reached into the open passenger window to grab the tobacco can from the back seat. “But in that case, you’ll have access to the off switch through your mind-machine interface.”
“Won’t be using it.”
“Yeah, right.” Rudy chuckled in disbelief, stuffing tobacco into the pipe with his thumb.
“I’m serious.” Trip’s hand sank into his jeans back pocket to pull out the RATpack antenna. He held it up to show Rudy. “I’ll be jacked in to this instead.”
“A WOLFpack antenna?” Rudy asked, throwing the can back into the car and lighting up.
“RATpack, actually. One of a pair.” Trip blew on the jack plug then snicked it into his socket. He felt it power on. “Roxanne has the other one. It should have pretty decent range. We get within twenty miles, we should get enough of a signal I should sense her, enough to get a general direction, anyway. Within a mile, we’ll be able to communicate mind-to-mind. No memory sharing, though. That was pretty weird, so the firewall’s staying up this time. Should still work.”
“Well, you getting anything?”
“It might not be able to transmit/receive through that.” Trip pointed the cigarette at the broiling dust and debris expansion front.
“Or,” Rudy said, taking a long drag from the pipe and avoiding Trip’s eyes, “those things only draw power when they’re plugged in — and she’s not plugged in.”
Trip pushed himself off the fender and walked around the front of the Wound. “She’d better be wearing it, or she’s pretty much screwed herself rescue-wise. The All-Mart’s what, at least a hundred miles deep, ten wide? That’s a lot of retail square footage to search just by driving around randomly.”
“We could set up a grid pattern,” Rudy suggested.
“I’ll grid pattern you, you nerd. No, if she’s half the babe I think she is, she’ll know she should be wearing it.”
“If she’s not already a zombie.”
Trip opened the driver’s door. “Get in the car.”
“Okay, ground rules.” Trip settled in behind the steering wheel. The All-Mart looked even bigger and more menacing framed by the windshield. He forced himself to stop staring at it and smirk at Rudy. “There will be no mention of the irony here.”
Rudy closed the passenger door as he got in. “But I came up with a whole list of one-line cheap shots. Some pretty good ones, too.”
“And the first one you use will get you a karate-chop to the Adam’s Apple.”
Rudy grinned around his calabash. “Might be worth it.”
“Second one, the karate-chop becomes a knife and the Adam’s Apple your balls.”
Rudy frowned. “You take the fun out of everything.”
“That’s what big brothers are for.” Trip popped three caff pills from the Bugs Bunny dispenser onto his tongue. “You ready?”
“One sec.” Rudy set the calabash in the open dash ashtray and reached into the back seat to grab a milk gallon of Morty’s Finest and a spiked motorcycle helmet. He strapped the helmet down over his fez and stuck a bendy straw into the beer jug. He sucked up a good slug while rotating his left nipple all the way up. “Okay, now I’m ready.”
Tr
ip slipped the Pez dispenser away and sat back, lacing his fingers behind his head. “And we’re off,” Trip said, tensing for acceleration and twitching his left eyebrow.
Nothing happened.
Bewildered, Trip crunched his eyebrows at the steering wheel and twitched again. And again. And again, this time whacking his palm against the dash-mounted GameGear.
Rudy cleared his throat. “You’re manual, remember?”
Trip grunted. “And you said I’d never need a second jack,” He grabbed the steering wheel with one hand, shoved the Wound into Drive with the other, and stomped down hard on the gas. The Wound leapt forward, kicking up a cloud of dry wasteland behind it as launched towards the All-Mart.
“So,” Rudy said, grabbing the dashboard, “pretty ironic, this.”
“Right!” Charged by the caff pills hitting his system, Trip’s hand left the steering wheel and flashed out like lightning into Rudy’s throat, edge-on.
“Worth... it...” Rudy choked out, massaging his Adam’s Apple as the Wound hit the expansion front.
Tendrils of nanochines struck out for the Wound as it sped through, only to snap back as if in pain, tendril tips sparking from contact with the car’s electrically charged depleted uranium armor plating.
And then they were through. Into darkness that seemed to stretch out forever.
Trip twitched to turn on the hi-beams. When that didn’t work, he swore, then pulled out the physical light knob. Twin beams stabbed out into the dark over endless bare concrete, illuminating row after row of support columns and empty space. He punched the scanner’s activation sequence in to the GameGear — Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A — and after a moment the GameGear’s tiny display screen blinked on, showing a wireframe representation of the All-Mart’s interior.
Rudy released his death-grip on the dash and yawned. “That was fun.” He took a sip from the beer jug and placed it on the seat next to him, then curled up against the passenger door. “Wake me up when we get there.”
“Yeah, whatever.” Trip slowed the Wound to around fifty miles per, slotting it between a row of support columns. He checked himself in the rear-view — the RATpack antenna was blinking yellow. He sighed. “Well, it was just an idea —”