tmp_f59497a75d8ceb820dc0aeddc2b436a0_SyoNZl.fixed.tidied

by Regolith (mobi)

  Jackson felt water on his arm. At first he thought someone was peeing on him, but after frantically jerking his head around, he discovered it was only his own tears. Someone kissed his forehead and he was shocked to see it was his own father, who was kissing the top of Lisa and Lorena’s head. To his knowledge, his father hadn’t kissed him since he was a baby. Jackson was shocked to see the professor fight back his own tears. He had not even cried over the death of his wife of fifty years, as far as Jackson knew. The girls, in contrast, were going to flood them.

  Even through his earplugs he could hear someone yelling for help. Disentangling himself from his family hug, he crawled through the mattresses, Chava trailing him, passing the white cameraman who apparently wet himself. Jackson’s ears were plugged, his eyes still glazed over, but his nose worked just fine as the stench of urine gave him yet another reason to feel sick.

  He felt for a pulse and found none. He lifted the guy’s visor up and saw a look of sheer terror. Jackson looked up at Chava’s camera and sadly shook his head in sorrow. He couldn’t even remember the chubby guy’s name.

  Jackson continued toward the screaming, fighting his claustrophobia as he crawled between the mattresses.

  He found Larry filming the Kitt Peak director hunching over his wife, who was screaming bloody murder. None of them wore their helmets. Between her legs was a mess of what must have been their baby. Ah, hell, he didn’t want to see that. He was going to have enough nightmares as it was.

  Another light investigated the mess, which Jackson assumed was Chava. Horror filled Jackson’s face as he carefully crept closer to see if there was anything he could do. Both cameras turned into him. That woman needs a hospital, was his first thought. And she ain’t gonna get one, was his second. He and Dennis shared eye contract and Jackson felt for the man. They both knew she should not have been here, or previously on Kitt Peak, especially since she had free transportation and shelter up north. Her stubbornness just cost them their baby.

  Although he barely knew the man, Jackson hugged him for way longer than he wanted to. Only when he sensed Kowalski mentally pull himself together, did he break off. He motioned for the cameramen to leave them alone. Kowalski was clearly devastated and in no mood to grieve on camera.

  Little Chava scrambled away into the mattresses while Jackson escaped to the side where he could stand upright and not feel like a sardine in a can. He breathed deep a few times in the absolute darkness to relax himself as he side-stepped over to his family. He couldn’t shake the smell of urine, the sight of a bloody embryo, or that woman’s screaming which still echoed in his ears. Jackson needed to see his family again, just to be sure. This whole experience was just too much. Even for him.

  Lisa was missing, as was his wife, so he crawled back between the mattresses to look for them. Like a near-death experience, he moved to the light. Which turned out to be Chava’s, who had a kick ass lamp on his camera. His father was putting Lorena’s helmet back on, over her neck support, while Lisa took a swig from a water bottle through her visor. Boy did that water look good. Better than that $10,000 bottle of wine Lisa downed a little earlier. In the back of his mind he noticed she had not yet peed herself, despite drinking so much. There goes $20. Because she would collect.

  Lisa offered him her bottle and, smiling through a pained expression, quipped, “Worst hangover ever!”

  God he loved his little girl!

  Then thunder struck from above, shaking the shed like a matchbox. Through the mattresses Jackson felt his head slam against the ceiling. Someone’s flashlight spliced open his left cheek and smacked his left eye, which immediately got puffy and teary. He was now as ugly as his mood.

  The gamma-rays! No bullshit, Jackson thought he peed himself, until he saw Lisa’s empty water bottle. His father motioned with his hands for everyone to get flat under the mattresses. Jackson, throat parched, stared at the water on his clothes for a second too long before his father literally kicked him in the butt. Fear only dried his throat that much more.

  Jackson dived deep into his claustrophobia until he found his helmet. His brand new helmet, with its new car smell, saved him from vomiting, but drops from his cheek wound started bloodying his visor.

  Then fucking nothing. Either the silence was deafening, or wearing ear plugs under the best motorcycle helmet money can buy really can cut off all sound. The world was suppose to end in either a bang or a whimper, not in a people sandwich. Damn he needed gum or some hard candy to un-sandpaper his throat. All Jackson could hear was a persistent ringing like someone surgically inserted a phone in his head that he couldn’t answer. All he could see were helmets and gloved hands. All he could smell was piss, vomit, and blood. And all he could feel was fear and anxiety.

  Chava’s camera propped up the mattress between them so that he could film the Jacksons. Jackson didn’t see the point, given you couldn’t even see anyone’s facial expression. Laying there motionless like that, they looked like dummies in a dumpster. And felt even dumber.

  With a camera on her, Lisa felt compelled to perform, so her gloved hand signaled rock, paper, scissors. Jackson gamed up, naturally going to rock. Lisa, anticipating his obviousness, beat him with paper. That bitch kept getting the best of him.

  Then it came, smashing them like a hammer. Whereas the first detonation just violently shook the shed, this threw it around within the confines of the hole in every direction. Thank God they accidentally made the hole too big and he decided to ring it with used tires to function like shock absorbers.

  Jackson expected to spend Judgment Day inside one of his sheds with his family. He just assumed it would be in Fairbanks, where he set up his headquarters. They planned to leave on Saturday, but noooooo, Cooper finally agreed to meet him on Sunday at sunrise. Was that really just this morning?

  The next explosion was going to hurt. Even waiting for it was a real bitch. Which made him think of Sarah Palin. Knowing the White House was not safe from mega-tsunamis, she took her family with her to Belgium to convince the Europeans to join America in stopping the evil communist Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Belgium was probably far enough north to avoid big meteorites and falling regolith, so Jackson Twittered his approval because America needed a president during a crisis. Not that she, in particular, was any good, but even she was better than nothing. She deliberately scheduled this Belgium meeting for Judgment Day because, after months of downplaying the danger, she couldn’t just stay home and drown. She may be a hypocrite, but not a fool. And Jackson knew she only recently woke up to the danger because her family were not originally suppose to go with her.

  He checked his glow-in-the-dark watch and saw that it was just twenty-three hours ago that his cameras caught that prick Cooper finger-fucking his future daughter-in-law in his driveway. That sure took a lot of balls for a presidential candidate. Lisa knew he had access to the cameras. That was why she tried to distract him, in case he had a window open on his computer screen that showed Cooper driving up. Which, looking back, he should have had. But no, he had to fast forward the muted video of his main camera while talking Cooper to death after they switched positions around the card table. It took all of his self-control to hide this discovery because there was nothing he would have enjoyed more than using the video to smack that arrogant grin off Cooper’s face. He even over-compensated by offering Cooper a billion dollars.

  He inched forward and reached for his wife’s hand, who squeezed back to let him know she was okay. Chava the faceless alien, obsessed with his own reality show, crept closer with his camera. The whole situation seemed so ridiculous that a part of Jackson wanted to laugh. However, his mouth hurt too much to do more than grimace in pain. Just then he discovered that his low back was killing him. Every time he tensed up too much, his back betrayed him. The shrapnel in his left shoulder also bothered him more than usual. He began progressive relaxation exercises to let go of the tension. Maybe focusing on his breathing would distract him from the awful smells nauseating him. It would
really suck to vomit in his helmet while being filmed.

  His father and daughter, also holding hands, crept closer between the mattresses so the five of them formed a ring. Like metal to a magnet, his daughter probably sensed a video camera turned on. They looked kind of silly, the five of them with helmets on, not being able to see or hear each other. Yet getting it all on tape. The age of reality TV had finally gone too far. Again.

  You know a show is reality TV when it’s completely scripted. Jackson would prefer an honest sitcom to a reality show.

  Then a third hammer dropped and their world exploded. King Kong shook their little box like a tambourine. Good thing they were all laying flat with their arms and legs spread wide, or they would be been thrown against the hard metal wall like crouching Chava, flying Latino. As it was, his wife sailed into him, her knee smacking his side and her big titties window-wiping his helmet. He tackled her like a quarterback.

  That one felt worse than the damn asteroid impact. The concrete floor above them must have collapse because Jackson sensed a pressure wave push hard against their shed door. For the first time, the shed was on tilt. Unfortunately, it tilted away from their only escape hatch.

  The professor motioned with his gloved hand for them all to stay put. At least that was Jackson’s first interpretation. His head was ringing so loudly, his eyesight so suspicious, that his father could be flipping him the bird for all he knew. Not that it mattered. He didn’t have the energy to do anything more than pee. Which he had to concentrate not to do. Shit, not with Chava to record it. His family would never let him hear the end of it.

  Lisa, lifting her visor, was the first to speak.

  “Woo-hoo,” she whispered. “Someone call Disney!”

  Normally Jackson would have bettered her, saying something totally fucking wicked that made her look lame. Or so he assured himself. But concentrating on not peeing left him with no energy to think clearly. If that were at all possible in the first place. Dead tired, he faded out of consciousness. Again.

  Jackson woke up completely confused. Someone was snoring and it turned out to be Lisa. The mall was open, but nobody was shopping. He looked around -- where the hell was Chava when he finally wanted to film something? Five flashlights beamed around him, but failed to illuminate. He lifted his head, only to hit a mattress. As everything quickly came back to him, he barely avoided emptying his bladder into his blue jeans.

  There! He heard it again.

  “Open the fucking door!”

  Jackson watched his father slither like a pro, the old man besting them all. Someone kicking the door now became impossible not to hear. Their nightmare nearly over, they stampeded out of their mattress sandwich.

  In the one foot of space along the wall by the door Jackson saw his family step over what must be Larry Bond. Without his helmet, he smashed his head against the low ceiling, popping his head like a zit. Now that’s just fucked up, Jackson thought. The guy survives the fucking asteroid impact, a trillion tons of space rock landing not forty miles away, only to die from the gamma-ray warheads meant to un-bury them. That’s just not right.

  Then Chava popped up, so Jackson pretended to check the guy’s pulse and gave a sad shake of his head, hoping this wouldn’t become a damn habit. No sooner did he think this than Chava motioned to where the Kitt Peak director and his wife should be. Exhausted beyond imagination, Jackson slowly crawled back into the mattresses, losing his battle against claustrophobia, passed the dead white cameraman who peed himself, then found Dr. Kowalski laying dead next to his wife. Fuck. With barely concealed impatience, he checked both of their pulses, then looked into the camera, and sadly shook his head again. Jackson tried not to look at what used to be a baby, but really, how can that be avoided? These horrible images will have to compete with each other before turning into nightmares. He quickly slithered out of the mattresses so he could stand up like a normal person.

  This really was too much. Not while sick, claustrophobic, and nauseous. He had enough of dead bodies for one morning. Five of the ten people who stayed in this shed died. Thank God his wife and daughter didn’t have to see them.

  His father was right when he gave them 50/50 odds.

  Someone must have opened the door because a bunch of dust invade their coffin. The professor dug out a filter mask that went over the nose and mouth and held it up so everyone else would put theirs on. Then he put his helmet back on to avoid vaporized people clogging his ears, eyes, and throat. Putting their masks and motorcycle helmets on, his family looked like a surgical team lining up to enter a motorcross race.

  Then his father disappeared through the doorway and a yell of victory went up. His hand then re-entered to help Lisa through. Lisa and Lorena each carried a portable computer wrapped in bags that they hid between the mattresses. Their cell phones, cameras, and small electronics were placed in socks, then folded in towels. Jackson hated waiting in lines, and now, nauseous, claustrophobic, and needing to pee, it was especially bad, but he couldn’t go before his wife and daughter. Literally, they were blocking his way forward and there was nowhere to push them aside. So he closed his eyes and concentrated on slowing down his breathing.

  After doing Kegel exercises to not pee himself, Jackson finally went through the doorway only to nearly get killed by a canister of gas that his father was tossing from the other shed into a basket tied to a rope. He immediately understood: his hydrogen-fueled heloplanes were the only vertical takeoff aircraft with the range to reach them. It didn’t, however, have enough fuel to return the thousand miles back to civilization, so they stockpiled a ton of compressed hydrogen gas to refuel.

  Jackson looked straight up into Hell. At least, that’s what Hell usually looked like in movies. No blue or white. Falling dust and dirt painted the sky various reds, oranges, and yellows against a dark gray background, while he heard the sonic booms of rocks exploding beyond the clouds.

  It looked like the sky was falling. On Mars.

  “Help me with this,” his father ordered.

  Together they manhandled an amorphous metal safe (another global business he was quickly dominating) that contained a million dollars in cold, hard cash. Fuck-in-a! That money will come in handy. He had over $100 million cash in safes buried in Fairbanks and Chugwater, on the assumption that buying stuff using credit or debit cards may not work for a while. They tied it to a rope and pulled twice so those above could pull it up.

  Chava just finished scampering up a very long hill, somehow carrying Larry’s camera in addition to his own, to join the bald aliens pulling him up with a rope tied to a rescue vest. Jackson turned around slowly 360 degrees, and discovered that he was in the middle of ant hill. He sure as hell didn’t see any evidence of his home. Not even the concrete foundation.

  He somehow got nearly a hundred insurance companies to over-insure his home in October. He would be up a few hundred million if they all paid up.

  Wow, getting those sheds out is going to be a bitch.

  The three gamma-rays indeed saved their lives, and left a crater of loose dirt in their wake. That’s about the length of a football field to the top, he estimated, starting at a 45 degree angle before leveling off. Thank God his son evidently brought a lot of rope. This cone will funnel a lot of rain into the sheds.

  He poked his head into the second shed and helped his father with the last of the canisters. The rope with the vest descended and he motioned for his father to go next. Not out of chivalry, but because he had to take a massive piss.

  The porta-potty was fucking gone. That’s when he noticed the top edge of the sheds blackened by intense heat. Unlike metals, amorphous metal (which is technically a glass) has such a high temperature threshold that it must be cut by a high powered laser. A welding torch simply isn’t hot enough. Yet something melted the fuck out of it. If he put standard shipping containers instead of amorphous metal sheds, they wouldn’t have survived.

  He unzipped as soon as his father started getting slapped against the rising slope
and the relief from urinating was immediate, profound, and intense. He pissed away not only urine, but stress. It may not be therapy, but it sure felt therapeutic.

  “Urine the money,” he sang to himself, enjoying the flow.

  It never failed to dismay him how often he needed to empty his bladder since he turned forty. Diet and exercise kept most of his body’s betrayals at bay, but not his need to pee several times a day. He couldn’t even get through the night anymore without having to get up to go. And if he drank late, then he would be up at least twice. His father used a urine bottle so he wouldn’t have to leave the bed, but Jackson just couldn’t get himself to pee in a bottle. Not with his beautiful wife lying next to him. He may be fifty, but he didn’t feel his age. At least, he didn’t want to.

  His Zen-like trance deepened with the urine flow when something struck his head. Good thing he wore a helmet. He saw the rope with the vest and wondered how the hell his father got up so fast. How long had he been peeing? He shook off the remaining drops, tucked it in, then strapped on the vest. He pulled twice, then nearly lost a boot when the rope rapidly pulled him up. He must have kissed the slope a dozen times before he got to the top. His left knee smashed into something that made him see stars.