Chet stopped and looked at Stacey sideways. “Unless I am mistaken. Stacey, have you been putting carcinogens in your prostate?”
She shook her head no.
“Okay. Now Let’s say you wake up and—POW! You have lung cancer. What did you do to get it? You smoked like a California wildfire for decades and decades. Grave-dancing people will give you a hard time about it, and they will be right. You put all those carcinogens into your lungs and you’re probably going to die.”
Chet took a long drag and said, “Cancer is cancer. We all die of Cancer if we live long enough. At least I’ll be having some fun on the way to mine. Smoking is awesome!”
“Smoking can kill you.” Stacey nabbed the pipe out of Chet's mouth, and threw it into a nearby alley.
“My precious pipe!” Chet screamed and dove into the alley after it.
He found it and relit. “Oh, sweet, sweet tobacco.”
“You should quit,” said a man lying on a mattress in the alley.
“Quit!” Chet exclaimed. The pipe fell out of his open mouth and landed on the concrete. “Sweet mercy!”
Chet made to dive for the pipe and the man produced a shotgun.
“You better put your hands up.” Stacey raised her hands and Chet did likewise. He heard once that partners began to mirror each other and didn’t want to seem unsupportive in the relationship.
Chapter 24
Floyd was concerned with the amount of time Chet and Stacey had been gone. He did not like Chet’s idea of a ‘foraging expedition’ but didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so he let him go without argument.
Floyd assumed that Chet was just looking for a little alone time with his new girlfriend. It was true that there had been nothing to forage for a long time. It did annoy Floyd that Chet spoke of the expedition like it was something that he and Floyd did often. Like it was some sort of routine. Routine didn’t really have a strong foothold in their lives. Chet liked to zing from one whim to the next like an ADHD mosquito on cocaine.
His buddy and his buddy’s new flame had been gone for an hour. A lot can happen in an hour, especially when in the company of Chet. Floyd hurried down the road in the direction they had taken.
Just a few blocks down the road, he found him. He heard Chet before he spied him sitting with his back against a wall, down at the back of an alley.
Chet was a loud and ugly crier. His face screwed up in saliva dripping sobs of anguish. It was the type of crying that made people want to shut him up rather than sooth his hurts.
Floyd stepped into the alley and took a throwing star in the shoulder. He hit the hard concrete floor of the alley and rolled behind a pile of rotting wooden crates. A few throwing stars pinged off the wood or brick wall around him. He put a hand to his bruised shoulder and for once was very thankful that the weapons were blunt.
“Chet! It’s me, Floyd. Stop throwing those darn things at me!”
Floyd waited a moment. No stars came. “I’m getting up. Don’t hit me with those stars.”
Floyd stood up with a groan. His shoulder really hurt from that shot. Chet began to cry anew.
“I have lost my one true love Floyd!” Chet sobbed. “Now I have compounded my tragedy by hurting my only friend. Woe is me!”
“I’m not hurt bad,” Floyd said. “Those stars couldn’t hurt an anemic infant. We should really get you a sharpening stone or something.”
“You don’t know anything Floyd. If I sharpen them, the weight and balance I am so accustomed to will be off. My aim won’t be as good. My emotional state will suffer due to the relapse in skill. In my despondency, I will withdraw within myself. This lifestyle will alienate my friends will lead me to die cold and alone in the wilderness.”
“Sharpening your throwing stars would lead to you dying a alone in the wilderness?” Floyd said.
“I don’t just make these things up Floyd,” Chet said. He began to cry again.
“Don’t cry Chet. I mean it. I really need you to stop. It really bugs me,” Floyd said. “I’m sorry. I really hate myself for it. It’s just your tone when you cry and the volume. It’s pretty rough on my ears. You know you have my full support.”
Chet wiped his tears on his shirt. “I’ve never hurt this bad Floyd,” Chet said.
“What happened?”
“Some guy came and took my girlfriend. Stacey is gone. I tried be man enough for her. I have vigor, Floyd, and I thought it resonated to her in a way that would make her never want to leave. We had something special. A love that can never be replaced. Now that it’s gone, it took a little of my soul along with it.”
“You’ve known her for about forty hours.”
“Love doesn’t have a time frame Floyd,” Chet said. “Love is beyond your understanding of time and space. My love is even more complicated than that. For Stacy was my heavenly biscuit, I was her little Chettykins.”
Chet looked like he was going to start crying again, so Floyd decided to try another way of getting through to his friend.
“What do you think made Stacey want to leave with that guy?” Floyd asked.
“His style maybe,” Chet said. “His rugged looks. Maybe it was his shotgun.”
“He pointed a gun at you?” Floyd said.
“Yes.”
“You moron!” Floyd grabbed Chet and pulled him to his feet. “She didn’t leave because she liked the guy more than you. She was taken at gunpoint.”
“It was a pretty smooth move,” Chet said. “The guy didn’t even have to say anything. She just went right with him. That guy must have been a real chick magnet.” Floyd slapped Chet hard across the face.
“She’s been taken and will be eaten if we don’t find her and bring her back. She’s been kidnapped!” Floyd screamed.
Chet pushed Floyd away. “A true man knows when he’s beaten, Floydaroo. He’s the better man this day. The problem is that I am left with only my sorrow. I don’t think I can live without her. I miss my little Stacey so much. Goodbye cruel world. Goodbye Floyd. You can have my pipe.”
Chet sat on the ground, took out a throwing star and threw it at his own head. He sat there for a moment and then rubbed his head. “I should really get a sharpening stone or something for those things. What do you think Floyd?”
“Let’s go save the girl.”
“I’m with you Floyd.”
Chapter 25
Floyd decided to drive since Chet was so distraught over losing Stacey. They drove down the street in the direction Chet indicated the man went.
They were lucky to find some abandoned vehicles they could siphon gas from. Pickings were getting pretty slim, and soon enough gas would become pretty scarce.
Floyd knew there was little chance of finding them but didn’t want to tell that to Chet in his current state.
They scanned the homes and alleys for any sign of life. There were no lights or fires. No noise was heard, but that didn’t mean much. The Volkswagen did run a little loud.
Floyd drove for the better part of an hour. He was about to break the news to Chet about calling off their search when a brick smashed the windshield.
Men poured out of alleys towards the car on all sides. Chet leaned out the passenger side window.
“We found you!” Chet yelled. “Unhand my beloved!” A brick hit him in the side of the head and knocked him unconscious.
Floyd pulled Chet’s torso back into the car. He slammed the car into first and hit the gas. It would have been a great move except his timing was off, and the car lurched forward, stalled, then died completely.
Bricks smashed the car on all sides. Some came in the passenger window, bouncing off of Chet’s limp body. The car was destroyed within moments. The driver door was ripped off the side, and Floyd was torn from his seat and beaten bloody in the middle of the street. Before blackness closed in, he saw Chet’s girlfriend Stacey standing with the others.
Floyd woke up tied securely to a chair across from Chet. Chet had regained consciousness and was working his bonds in a
frenzy.
“No ropes can hold the mighty Chet!” He screamed as he struggled and swore. His jerking tipped the chair he was tied to over, and he thumped to the ground. His head hit the floor, and again he was out cold.
Floyd took this opportunity to look around the room. There were no windows and the floor was hard packed earth. There were a couple candles burning, which gave off the room’s only light. He was in a cellar for sure. He tried his own bonds and found them almost too tight to move.
He heard a loud bang from behind him, and a stream of light flashed across the floor. The noise roused Chet, who cursed from the floor and kicked his feet forward at some unseen enemy.
“How are you doing down here?” a man’s voice said.
He put a hand on Floyd’s shoulder. Floyd toyed with the idea of biting him. “Good to see your friend is a man of spirit. He’s going to be needing that shortly.”
The man stepped behind Chet. He was larger than the both of them. His arms rippled with muscle. He was just as dirty and disheveled as everyone else was these days, but his muscle indicated that although he was dirty, he was well fed.
He picked up Chet, chair and all, and set him upright. “We decided to keep the girl. We have enough food around here for our little group. What we don’t have is entertainment.”
“What a coincidence,” Chet said. “Floyd and I are a part of the entertainment industry. Recently we were involved with a pit-fighting venture. We weren’t one of the original contributors, but we made some drastic changes that were really influential to how the business is run today.”
“What did you do?” the man said.
“We killed everybody and got away,” Chet said. The man’s face didn’t twitch.
“The girl said that about you. She said you were dangerous,” the man said.
“What girl? My girl? You have my girlfriend?” Chet looked shocked.
The man laughed and put a huge hand over his belly. “I think she’s a lot of people’s girlfriends.” He bellowed once more and spat on the dirt floor.
“I would watch how you talk about my woman,” Chet said with a sneer. “We may not be together anymore, but I still have feelings for her. I will not allow her good name to be dragged through the mud.”
“No matter what she says about you, you don’t look like much to me,” the man said. “There’s not much you can do to me tied to that chair. Even a mad killer such as you.”
“I am not a mad killer. I am a gentle soul,” Chet said.
Floyd snickered.
“Floyd! You know my character. I would never do such a thing as hurt another human being.”
“Together we’ve killed or assisted in killing about 250 people. That’s in the last three months alone.”
“That’s a rough estimate!” Chet said.
“Well, give or take fifteen or twenty—it’s still a hell of a lot of dead people we’ve accounted for. Serial killers aren’t nearly as busy as we are,” Floyd said.
“We’ve always had a good reason. We’re good guys Floyd,” Chet said.
“Yeah,” Floyd said. “In some weird twisted way I think we are.”
“Shut the hell up the both of you!” the big man shouted. “Damn! For people who are beat to hell, trussed up in a basement and about to die, you sure are a chatty couple. Don’t you want to know what’s going to happen to you?”
Chet and Floyd both shrugged.
The man sighed. He took out a long knife from the back of his belt and cut the bonds to free up one of Chet’s hands and one of Floyd’s.
“Bring down the table,” he shouted at the stairway.
Four men dragged down a small circular wooden table and placed it between Chet and Floyd.
“It took four of you to do that?” Chet said.
“It’s not heavy,” one of the men said. “It’s just pretty cumbersome.”
“Still,” Chet said, rolling his eyes. The man looked a little sheepish.
More men and women came down the stairs and crowded on either side of Chet and Floyd. The room grew hot, and with the general hygiene of people after the apocalypse, it didn’t smell too good.
The big man took a gun out of his pocket. It was an old six-shooter that looked too decrepit to be anything dangerous.
“I have in my hand a gun that will decide your fate,” the big man said. “Only one of you is going to leave this cellar alive, and that choice will be up to you.
“I have in my hand a gun that contains one bullet. One of you will shoot the other. If that person lives then the other person will shoot. We will keep doing this until one of you is dead.” He finished his speech and looked solemnly at the trussed men.
“Is that it?” Floyd asked.
“Yeah,” Chet said. “That’s not very imaginative. Is that what passes for entertainment around here?”
“There aren’t many rules for one thing,” Floyd said. “It’s pretty simple.”
“Doesn’t it complicate things that the two of you are so fond of each other?” the man said. He put the gun down on the table.
“Not really,” Chet said. He picked up the gun and shot Floyd.
Floyd screamed. His chair fell backwards and he landed on the ground with a thud and a pained grunt. Blood ran from the wound in his shoulder.
“Chet, you suck!” Floyd said. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I didn’t make up the rules,” Chet said. “Don’t hate the player, Floyd. Hate the game.”
Floyd was thumping his head on the floor and moaning out of agony. The big man picked up Floyd’s chair and set him upright. The bullet had taken Floyd in the left shoulder. The whole left side of Floyd’s shirt was already soaked with blood.
“I didn’t know you were such a bleeder Floyd,” Chet said.
“What the hell did you shoot me for?” Floyd screamed, spit and blood flew from his mouth and rained on the table.
“When in Rome Floyd. You always tell me I have to learn to fit in. I am assimilating.”
“You shot me in the shoulder,” Floyd said accusingly.
“Sorry about that,” Chet said. “I was aiming for your head.”
The big man slapped them both hard across the face.
“Will the two of you just shut up for one minute?” He looked to the small crowd around them. “Round two.” He put a bullet in the pistol and handed it to Floyd.
Floyd turned the gun on Chet. “Were you really trying to shoot me in the face?” Floyd asked.
“Yes I was,” Chet said. He raised his one free hand apologetically.
“How could you have hit me in the shoulder then? We’re like eight feet apart. You’ve dead aim with the throwing stars.”
“That’s just the thing Floyd. You can’t compile those two weapons together. One’s totally western while the other is ancient and eastern.” Chet snorted. “I also don’t have any Zen with a gun. I am in tune with the stars.”
The big man made to slap them again, but Floyd pointed the gun at him.
“Don’t worry,” Floyd said to the big man. “I’m going to shoot him. I just need him to finish his train of thought.”
“He was just probably nervous,” the big man said. “That’s why his aim was off. It happens down here all the time.”
“He wasn’t nervous,” Floyd said.
“I wasn’t nervous!” Chet said. “I just have a weird shoulder-shot thing about guns. I used to watch a lot of action movies—and I mean a lot of action movies. I loved them so much. I would lose nights of sleep over them. If I could have injected them into my jugular like a sharp hit of heroin, I would have.”
“He really did like action movies,” Floyd said to the big man.
“I love action movies!” Chet said. “Now, anyone who watches action movies knows that the hero of the movie is going to get shot. No matter what, the dude is going to get hit with some hot lead. But he doesn’t ever get shot in the face. Does not happen. Even if the guy has a submachine gun and is shooting at the dead, still hero in
an open field, the guy is not going to get hit in the face.”
“That would really make for a short movie,” Floyd said. He’d stuck a finger in the bullet hole in his shoulder and ebbed the flow of blood a bit.
“Exactly,” Chet said. “If that happened, then the movie would last five minutes. James Bond would leap into a room; Lockjaw would shoot him in the face. End of movie. That wouldn’t work at all. No the hero doesn’t get away scott-free, oh no. The hero has to get shot. He has to prove he’s tough, but he always gets shot in the shoulder. Always in the shoulder. Have you noticed that?”
“Yeah,” the big man said. “It is always in the shoulder.”
“The shoulder is perfect!” Chet said. “It is universally accepted that the hero of a movie can get shot in the shoulder and still be okay to jump around, run and kill everyone. He just grimaces a bit at the pain and holds a hand up to the wounded area every now and then to remind people of what a badass he is.”
Floyd pulled back the hammer on the gun.
The click made Chet skip a beat in his story, but he continued on. “From watching all those movies, I’ve ruined my chance at ever becoming a crack shot with a gun. I could be at point blank range and miss. Subconsciously, I am for the shoulder. That’s all I can see. Shoulder. Shoulder. Shoulder. If there was a shoulder shooting contest, I would win it. It’s like a disease. Before the apocalypse I even applied for government aid due to this handicap. They looked at me like I was some sort of freak. I should get compensation for this sort of emotional deformity. I have a disease.”
“Just think about the bad guys then. They die all the time in those movies,” the big man said.
Chet and Floyd looked at him like he was an idiot.
“What?” he said.
“That won’t do him any good,” Floyd said. “Use your brain.”
“Yeah,” Chet said. “Don’t be such a moron.”
“What’s wrong with that idea?” the big man asked.
“I agree with you that in movies the bad guys die all the time, but they never die the same way. One of the challenges of writing action flicks is coming up with new ways for the bad guy to die.”
Chet & Floyd vs. The Apocalypse: Volume 1 Page 10