ECOPOCALYPSE CH.3 - WE NEED A PLAN

ECOPOCALYPSE CH.3 - WE NEED A PLAN By Ryan Hunter

“This isn’t right,” you say.

“Damn skippy,” Milo says. “This bird should be stocked with, like, peanuts or something.”

You cut your eyes to him just long enough for him to know you aren’t in the mood for his jokes. “Sorry,” he mutters.

“We need a plan,” you say.

“We have a plan: go to Mexico.”

“We can’t do that.”

“Why, did they close the borders? How would you know that? I’m wearing the cans too and I haven’t heard anything,” Milo says, tapping the headphones he’s wearing over his ears.

“No, they haven’t closed the borders, at least not as far as I know. But we can’t leave.”

“Why can’t we?”

“ Milo , look out your window. Whatever’s happening down there, we caused that. That’s our fault.”

“You don’t know that,” Milo says. “Not for sure.”

You glare at Mio again but choose not to respond. Instead you say, “I’m going to set her down outside of the city and we’ll figure something out.”

“Where outside of the city?”

“I don’t know, outside of it.”

“ Mexico is outside of the city.” You shake your head, hoping Milo doesn’t notice the grin pulling at the corners of your mouth. “It is, I can show you on a map.”

You pull a little on the stick to adjust but the helicopter doesn’t respond. You pull a little harder but still nothing happens. “What the hell,” you mutter under your breath.

“That’s not the sort of expression one dreams of hearing from one’s pilot,” Milo says.

“It’s just… I don’t…” you mutter. You look under the instrument panel to find a nest of wires, frayed and intertwined. You look closer and notice the teeth marks on the brightly colored wax that once covered the wires.

There’s a shuffling in the back and you and Milo turn to see a woman with the same pale complexion and dead eyes as the others.

“Sara?” Mio says. “Hey, it’s Sara Tobin from HR. Fancy seeing you up here, Sara. What brings you?”

Sara digs under her flower skirt and comes out with a handful of feces. “Oh shit,” Milo says.

She raises her hand to fling it at him but the copter pitches, bolting from horizontal to vertical.

You and Milo, secured in your restraints, remain in your seats; Sara, however, is thrown to the back of the copter where the handle of a fire extinguisher impales the back of her skull.

“Oh my God!” Milo screams. “I think we just killed Sara!”

“Yeah,” you say, swallowing back the bile threatening to fill your mouth. “Well, we’ll have to put that on the list of things to worry about if we land.”

“You mean when we land.”

“Well, we’ll definitely land, just how we do it is anybody’s guess. I don’t have any control.”

Milo shrugs. “Just hit the B button.”

You pulled desperately at the stick trying to reengage it by force.

“Seriously, hit the B button,” Milo says.

“Dude, no matter how much you want your life to be like Xbox it just isn’t going to happen. There is no B button,” you yell.

“The hell there isn’t,” Milo says, flipping a cover you never knew existed to reveal a large red button marked with a B.

“Where did that come from?” you ask.

“I installed it,” Milo says, slamming his fist onto the button.

An artificial female voice flows from the headsets. “Hello, Milo, how can I be of assistance to you?”

“Is that…” you mutter, “is that Siri?”

“I’d thank you not to mention that bitch's name in my presence,” the voice says.

“Huh?” you mutter.

“I’d like to introduce you to Biri,” Milo says.

“Biri? Really?”

“Oh, come on, it’s funny,” Milo says.

“Well, what can Si… excuse me, Biri do?” you ask.

Milo turns to look at the control panel in general and says, “Biri?”
“Yes, Milo?”

“We’d very much like to not die.”

“I can understand the impulse,” Biri agrees.

“Could you please straighten us out and land just outside of the city?”

“Yes, where would you like to land outside of the city?”

“Do not say Mexico.”

“Very well,” Biri says, “I will not say Mexico.”

“Just set us down at the first possible place to the east of the city,” Milo says.

“Very well.”

The copter levels out and flies east as if there had never been a problem with the controls at all. You relax into your seat. “Biri, huh?” you ask Milo.

“Yup, pretty handy, huh?”

“I have to admit, I’m glad she’s here. That bitch comment was a bit surprising.”

Milo shrugs. “I like my ladies saucy.” He turns and looks back at Sara who is lying a heap, her life’s blood dark but streaked with yellow, pooling beneath her. “But not that kind of sauce. Blech.”

The copter touches down softly on a meadow just to the east of the city and the doors automatically swing open “You have arrived at your destination,” Biri says.

“Thank you, Siri,” you say out of habit.

The doors slam shut and Biri says, “I asked you not to use that name in my presence.” Buzz saws on retractable arms slid out of hidden panels in the walls. “I’m afraid I’ll have to punish you now.”

You look at Milo. “Buzz saws? Really?”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” he says.

“How could it possibly…?” You start to ask, but stop when a saw slices through Milo’s neck, causing his head to tumble to the floor.

As the blade begins to slice through the skin directly below your hairline you have time to think, “Damn you and your saucy wom—”

Oops...Return to Chapter 3

HARDWOOD BLOOD CH.3 - NO COINCIDENCES

BLOOD ON THE HARDWOOD CONCRETE CH.3 - NO COINCIDENCES

By Ryan Hunter

You stare down at the door mouse between the man’s legs. It’s like a car wreck, terrible to look upon but impossible to look away.

“What now?” Curly asks.

His voice shatters your reverie like a sparrow flying into a plate glass window. “Get a picture,” you say to him, looking away before you can be ensnared again by the siren draw of tiny junk.

“You need something to look at later tonight?” Twiggy asks.

“That’s cute,” you say. “Just for that, you fellows get to take Wee Willy Winky’s bare ass down to the station.”

“That’s nice,” Sweetwater says, pulling a cell phone out of his pocket and snapping a picture. “What’s your number?” he asks.

“What the hell do you need that for?” you ask.

“So I can text you the picture.”

“I’ve got a rotary sitting on my office desk, can you text to that?”

“You know I can’t text to that,” Sweetwater says.

You reach out and pluck the phone out of his hands. “In that case, I’m just going to have to hold onto this for a while.”

You walk down the alley away from the ‘Trotters. Sweetwater yells after you, “Man, you better not be using up my minutes. Don’t think I won’t be checking that bill.”

Without turning you offer him a one-finger salute as you tuck your heater back into its holster under your coat.

“And what are you going to be doing while we’re playing delivery boys?” Curly asks.

“What I do best,” you yell back to him as you turn out of the alley.

As you head back to the scene of the crime, you pull the brim of your fedora down low on your forehead, stuff your hands deep into the pockets of your overcoat and cast your eyes down to the sidewalk. The last thing you want is to be noticed snooping around the body.

Of course, with the circus of reporters, police and rubber-neckers milling around, you probably wouldn’t be noticed if you stripped bare and ran around the block jumping up and down. Actually, you think, that might be the only thing that would distract people from the excitement of a poor woman robbed of her life.

Still, you keep your eyes fixed on the ground, watching the litter dance around your feet. It only takes you a moment to realize there’s uniformity to most of the litter. White 1 X 3 cards have been sprinkled over the sidewalk like confetti after a parade.

You scoop one of the cards off the ground and examine it. It’s a business card for a place called Different Happyness. You arch an eyebrow at the Y in happiness and wonder if it was intentional.

The card is clean and smooth; it obviously hasn’t sat outside under heavy foot traffic for long. 

You tap the card absently against your palm, thinking over the events of the last few moments. A woman was killed scant feet from where you were sitting at dinner, most likely by the very person you’d just been hired to find. Then, when you went out to investigate, you were distracted by a small-penised flasher. It is possible that these are nothing more than a series of coincidences, but you’ve never been fond of coincidences.

You’re sure there’s something going on, and you think the road to answers just might begin with Different Happyness.

You turn your back on Gino’s, promising to never darken their doorstep again. It’s the same promise you made last night and the night before and every other night for the past five years, and it will likely be the promise you make tomorrow.

The lobby of Different Happyness is furnished nicely with a blend of wicker and watercolor. Musak pours out of speakers mounted in the ceiling and a woman sits alone behind a desk on the far side of the small room.

She looks up from her Vanity Fair as you enter. “Can I help you?” she asks.

“I hope,” you say, crossing to her while pulling Sweetwater’s phone from your pocket. You glance at it, expecting buttons, but all you see is a screen. You never had much to do with these contraptions, but you’d assumed there’d be buttons. You hold the phone out to the desk clerk. “You know how to work one of these?”

“Um,” the woman says, taking it from you and examining it. “Yeah, I guess. I mean, I have one like it.”

“Great, pull up the pictures, would you?” you say.

The woman pokes the screen a couple of times and, through some magical incantation or other, brings a picture up on the screen. It is not one you were expecting.

“Did you want this picture of the naked African American man hanging from a trapeze with one, two, three…six equally naked women?” the woman asks, her expression a blank.

“No, that’s not the picture I wanted at all,” you say, turning your head to look at the picture of Sweetwater and his harem from a different angle. 

The woman swipes her finger across the screen and another picture appears. “Perhaps you wanted this one of the same African American man with the same lack of clothing jumping through a ring of fire with what appears to be eight other women.”

“Nope, not that one either.”

She pulls up another picture and says, “What about the same man, same naked, what appears to be a baker’s dozen naked woman and a tiger?”

“Keep going,” you say, sighing and wondering what else Sweetwater has been keeping from you.

She continues, pulling up picture after picture of Sweetwater and his erotic, circus-themed orgies, each picture more disturbing than the last until, at last, she stops. “Oh my,” she says as she looks at the picture Sweetwater took of Wee Willy. For the first time her face shows emotion. “That’s Paul.”

“Paul?”

“Paul Nordic.”

“Paul No-Dick?” you say.

“Nordic,” she corrects. “But I suppose that would be appropriate.”

“How do you know him?” you ask.

“He works here.”

“And what exactly do you do here?” you ask, spying a jar of lollipops and grabbing one.

“We are an adult entertainment business specializing in… unique desires.” She nods to the picture on the phone in her hand. “Paul was a flasher. People paid him to run up to someone on the street, flash them, and then run away. He was very popular because, well… his presentation was memorable.”

“Yeah, I guess it would be hard to forget getting flashed by a Ken doll.”

The girl giggles behind her hand.

“So he was on assignment tonight?”

“Oh gosh, he must have been. Paul never moonlighted.” She giggles again and says, “No pun intended.”

“Mm hmm,” you say, not paying much attention to the conversation. If Paul was hired to be outside Gino’s, then he must have been there just to distract you. If he was there for you, somebody knows you’ve been put on the case. The only person who should know that, outside of the Trotters, is the Chief.

“Any chance you can get me the name of the guy who hired him?”

“Oh, I don’t know, I think that’s confidential,” she says.

“Look, your buddy could have been killed tonight,” you say.

“So he’s not dead?”

“Nah, he just took a Spalding to the place where he’s balding.” You wink at her at pop the sucker in your mouth. “But he could have, and I think the guy who hired him set him up.”

“Oh,” she says, flipping through a box presumably filled with records.

“How does somebody get involved in this line of work anyway?” you ask as she searches.

“Oh, different ways, some answer ads on the internet, some are referred to us by employs, some just come in off the street. I was sort of hoping you were coming in for a job; we have a request for someone with just your body type.”

You look skeptically down at your gut and then back at the girl. “Well, I’ve never been much for flashing,” you say.

“Oh, it’s not a request for a flasher. This job just needs someone in a chicken suit willing to Fetisherize.”

“What the hell is that?”

“Oh, it’s detailed in this manual,” she says, handing a booklet over the counter to you.

You take a moment to read it over, spitting your lollypop out halfway on the chance that it may have been involved in something like this. “Good God, why would anyone do that?”

“Flip the page.”

You do and you’re almost as shocked as you were when reading the Fetisherize description. “Five thousand bucks for one night?” you say.

“For one hour. If they want you longer, they have to pay extra.”

“Hmmm,” you say, flipping back to the description and reading it over again with a slightly broader mind.

The phone rings in the girl’s hand just as she pulls the name of Paul’s client out of her records box. She presses a green box on the screen and hands it over to you.

“Hello,” you say, hoping this thing works like the phones you can actually operate.

“Hey man,” Curly starts to say. 

Sweetwater yells in the background, “You know this is costing me minutes, make it quick.”

“Okay, shut up,” Curly says, obviously not to you. “We got naked-guy booked, what—”

Again Curly is cut off when Sweetwater yells, “And tell him not to be looking through my pictures. I’ve got… personal stuff in there.”

You’re not kidding, you think.

“All right, don’t look at his pictures,” Curly says to you. “Now, what do you want us to do next?”

Do you...

A. Tell the ‘Trotters to hang out at the station because you’re heading over to confront the chief about who else knew you were on the case?

B. Tell the ‘Trotters to meet you at the address of the guy who hired Paul so you can sweat some answers out of him?

C. Say, “Screw the case,” send the ‘Trotters home, and take the lucrative Chicken Suit/Fetisherize job?

WELCOME TO HELLYWOOD CH.2 - SECOND PROCEDURE

WELCOME TO HELLYWOOD CH.2 - SECOND PROCEDURE

By Ryan O'Neil

You call the receptionist and make an appointment for the second procedure - a full body lift.

“You’re in luck! We have an opening this Tuesday at 10am,” the receptionist tells you. Her voice, nasal and piercing, reeked of pure Staten Island diva attitude. She asked, no, demanded, that you arrive promptly and refrain from eating 24 hours prior to the procedure.

“I thought it was eight hours prior to surgery?” You question. “24 hours seems kind of dramatic if you ask me,” you say with a chuckle.

“Look Sugar, rules are rules, mmmkay? We’ll see you Tuesday at 10 sharp. Buh-bye now.”

CLICK

You stand motionless with your iPhone still held firmly to your ear listening to silence. I did it, you think to yourself. I fuckin’ did it!

A wave of fear crashes against you, making you almost puke where you are standing, but the thought of being an A-lister again soothes your worries and calms your fears.

That night you sit naked once again on your bed in front of the mirror that you dragged in from the changing room. You gaze at your current topology and know that in a few short days your stomach will be flat and youthful once again.

You swing around and slap your ass. “Bamm! Good bye!” you say.

All of this excitement and posing is making you hungry. Naked, you slip down the back stairs and into the kitchen to make a sandwich. While slathering a piece of whole wheat bread with a thick layer of honey mustard a thought hits you: refrain from eating 24 hours prior to the procedure. You recoil as the voice of the Staten Island receptionista echoes through your head. 24 hours…24hours…24 hours…

Quickly you open the nearest cupboard and fish out the first thing that touches your fingertips. As luck would have it you pull forth a can of vanilla frosting. You tear open the lid and stick your tongue into the sugary white goodness. It tastes like Heaven in a can. You grab an ice cream scooper and begin to shovel the creamy sweetness into your mouth. Soon the scooper isn’t enough and you plunge your entire hand into the can. You scrape the contents up and fill your mouth.

The next few hours are spent sampling every morsel of food that you have in the house. From pickled pig’s feet to an entire log of pimento loaf, nothing is safe from your ravenous desire to eat the world.

Your hands covered in sauce and frosting, you reach for your iPhone and begin to dial. “Yes, can I get a meat lover's pizza and a meat lover's pizza with extra meat delivered?” You hang up and launch your phone into the air. It lands with a plop into a pot of something that once resembled butterscotch pudding, but now looks more like something a flunky from Hell’s Kitchen cooked up.

You cannot wait another thirty minutes for the pizzas to be delivered. You must eat, and eat you must. You have gone mad. Your brain is toast. Mmmmmmm toast. You run screaming through the house pulling your hair out in chucks. Mmmmmmmm alfalfa sprouts! You shove a handful of hair into your mouth and begin to chew. You fall onto the couch face first laughing like a lunatic. You rip open the couch cushions and begin to eat the fiberfill innards. Tastes like chicken! You work your way outside where you launch yourself onto the front lawn. While attempting to eat a sprinkler head (Mmmmmmm, cherry slushy) the system goes off and fills your insides with gallons of water. It is here that the pizza delivery boy finds you 22 minutes later: dead, naked and bloated, with water shooting from your backside like some sort of freakish water fountain that could only be found in Ron Jeremy’s private meditation garden. The pizza boy drops the steaming boxes and grabs his cell phone. This has GOT to be worth something, he thinks to himself as he records the scene that will eventually get 28 million hits on TMZ and YouTube.

Congratulations! You’re famous once again!

THE END

Oops...RETURN TO CHAPTER 2

RED PLANET STOWAWAY CH.8 THE PLAZA-BILITIES ARE ENDLESS

RED PLANET STOWAWAY CH.8 - THE PLAZA-BILITIES ARE ENDLESS

By R.A. Hunter

The Plaza, that’s your best bet. If Charles Barclay has an in with the president, then he’s your ticket. He proved himself to be a nice – and somewhat gullible – guy when he gave you the 100 enloms, and you’re pretty sure you can convince him to help you save President Womack.

You wait nervously until you come to the appropriate stop, then jump out ahead of the crowd. You run into the Plaza to find the lobby surprisingly deserted. You expected a throng of Team Earth fans to be milling about, trying to get a glimpse of their B-ball heroes, but all you find is a single clerk behind the desk shuffling receipts and a Martian janitor buffing the floor in the corner.

You run up to that desk and slap your hand on it quickly to get the clerk’s attention.

“Yes?” he says in a bored voice without looking up at you.

“Can you tell me what rooms Team Earth is staying in?” you ask.

“Of course, it’s our policy to give out information regarding our high profile guests to anyone who walks in off of the street,” he says.

You gasp for a second not believing your luck -- until you realize there’s a reason you shouldn’t believe it. “You’re being sarcastic, aren’t you?” you ask.

“Give the man a cigar,” the clerk says, shuffling another receipt.

“Would it help if I told you it was vitally important that I speak with the team?” you ask.

“What do you think?”
“Yeah, that’s what I was afraid of.”

You turn and walk slowly from the desk. You kick yourself for not realizing how difficult it would be to speak with the team.

Suddenly, you perk up. The smell of warm gooey cinnamon slaps at your nostrils. Over there near the far wall is a Mars-A-Bon stand. You pat your pocket and feel the cash left over from the 100 Barclay gave you. You may not be able to save the president, but at least you won’t starve to death.

You walk toward the stand, but stop when the janitor shuts off his floor buffer and says, “Big fan of the team?”

“Huh?” you say. “Oh, they’re all right I guess.”

“If you aren’t a big fan, why did you want to see them so badly?”

“Oh, well, I’m trying to stop an assassination attempt on President Womack and I thought that the team could help me. Particularly Charles Barclay, as he is the man’s son-in-law.”

The janitor sighs. “I was afraid that might have something to do with it,” he says.

You look at him, shocked, the gooey treats temporarily forgotten. “You know about the assassination?”

“Yes, it was me who ordered it.”

Now you’re really lost. Why would a Martian want to impede the peace treaty? After all, it meant that Earth could really step in and show them the proper way to govern.

“You’re confused,” the janitor says. “Please, let me explain. For years you have studied our planet, trying to unlock the secrets within. What you did not know was that for millennia we have watched you evolve…”

“Really? You’ve been able to watch us for that long?”
“Oh, indeed. We have capabilities which you neither know of nor could

understand. Yours was only one of a number of planets which we have studied intently.”

You gape unabashedly.

“We were hesitant to let you know of our presence. We have seen how your people have a tendency of… influencing other cultures whether they would like the influence or not. When we realized you had developed the technology to take photographs of us, it was really a simple matter of sending you the images we wanted you to have -- that of a barren desert -- in the hopes that you would give us up for a lost cause.

“Of course, that could only last until the first manned exploration, at which point we chose to greet you with open arms, for, after all, you are our celestial neighbor. That was twenty five years ago, and already we stand on the cusp of losing all that once made us who we are.”

“What do you mean?”

“We are in a hotel fashioned upon those on Earth, we are standing near a kiosk which is an obvious rip off of a successful Earth franchise. This entire conversation has been held in an Earth tongue. There is very little Mars left on Mars -- which, by the way, is your name for our planet, not ours.”
You think for a moment. “Yes, all right, but surely you aren’t willing to assassinate a man because of a few cosmetic changes to your planet.”

“It goes far deeper than the cosmetic, sir. We are speaking of the eradication of not one but hundreds of cultures simply because they are not your own. I think preserving those is more than compensation for the life of one self-important man.”

You look the janitor up and down. “Who are you really?”

“I was once the king of the land on which you are standing. I was a firm but just ruler and my people wanted for nothing. Your people, though, decided that was an improper way of conducting government and rallied my citizens to overthrow me.”

“Ah,” you say. “So it’s revenge, then. You want to kill the president and regain your crown.”

“My crown is forfeit. Even if the kingdom is reinstated, no one would have a man who’d been once overthrown for their ruler. What I do I do solely for my people.”

“You realize the breaking of the treaty would mean open war.”

“We are more than capable of defending our planet, I assure you, sir.” The janitor turned and walked toward a door recessed into the wall. “Step into my office. I think I have something which will prove to you that I speak the truth.”

You consider following but stop yourself. It could be a trap.

The smell of the Mars-A-Bun grabs you again and pulls at your aching empty stomach.

The doors to the lobby burst open and in walk Team Earth. They are all abuzz about the upcoming game.

“We are going to kick some Martian ass,” Michael Jardin says.

“I know, I want it so much I can taste it,” Shaquille O’Neil agrees.

“Let us not be hasty. Remember, Oscar Wilde said, ‘The two great tragedies in life: not getting what one wants and getting it,’” Charles Barclay says.

“Huh?” the entire team says in unison.

“Um, I mean it’s going to be turrible how bad we beat them Martians . . . just turrible.”

WILL YOU...

A. Follow the janitor/king into his office??

B. Get yourself a Mars-A-Bon?

C. Catch up with the team as you originally planned?

RED PLANET STOWAWAY CH.6 SHUTTLE TO CYDONIA

RED PLANET STOWAWAY CH. 6 - THE SHUTTLE TO CYDONIA

By R.A. Hunter

You decide that, no matter what, the president must be protected. You run to the shuttle ticket office. “One to Cydonia,” you say.

“That’ll be Greel Pinlax,” the ticket agent, a Martian woman who resembled Earth women save for her gray-tinged translucent skin and complete lack of hair, said.

“Come again?” you ask.

“I didn’t come the first time,” she says.

“In English.”

“I don’t know why I should speak English; this planet doesn’t even have an England.”

“You’re saying everything else in English.”

“That’s because you wouldn’t understand that I was intentionally ignoring you if I said everything in Galflorn."

“What’s Galflorn?”

“My native language.”

“I thought that was Martian.”

“Yeah, it’s Martian. Just like you speak Earthenese.”

You take a deep breath and try a different tactic. “Look, I’m sure you get a lot of demanding tourists here who expect you to cater to them without even bothering to learn basic… what was that, Gandalfish?”

“Yeah, sometimes people don’t even know what the language is called,” she says with an eye roll. “Some people actually think it’s just called Martian.”

You sigh a little. “Okay, that’s fair. I apologize. But I’m not a tourist. It’s very important that I get to Cydonia.”

She stares at you, blankly, her sarcasm entirely vanished. “Why is it so important that you get to Cydonia?” she asks coolly.

Suddenly you realize that this lady may be more than just a pain in the ass. You decide to proceed very carefully.

“I’m… meeting someone there,” you say.

“Oh, all right,” the ticket lady says. The cold edge melts from her voice and you tentatively breathe again and she turns her attention to her keyboard on which she begins typing. “But I hear traffic is being tied up over some big wig or something staying there.”

“Yeah, it’s President Womack,” you say without thinking. You bite on your lip but it doesn’t bring back the words.

The ticket lady looks up at you quickly. “I didn’t know anyone knew about that,” she says, striking a final key which produces a bright red ticket.

She tears the ticket from the dispenser slides it under the divider separating the two of you. “That’ll be twenty Zircons.”

You pay her quickly without making eye contact and cross to the line forming at the shuttle door. You watch as the customers board one by one handing their tickets -- which you can’t help but notice are white – to the conductor as they do so.

You glance at the red ticket in your hand. She gave me the wrong one. You think but just as you realize this you are shoved to the front of the line where the conductor takes it from you.

“Ah, sir,” he says after glancing at it. “You want the next car.”

He points to the second car of the two-car shuttle craft and you walk in that direction. You stick your head inside but no one is there to accept your ticket. You look back at the conductor who is now speaking with the other customers.

You shrug, assume someone will be by shortly to take your ticket and sit in the seat which looks most comfortable. You can do this because there is no one else on board this car.

You pull a magazine from the back of the seat in front of you and become engrossed in an article on mustard-based diets. You don’t realize how much time has passed until the shuttle’s engines growl and you feel it lift of the ground.

You drop your magazine onto the seat beside you and look out the window. You’re already sixty feet in the air; these new shuttles aren’t short on pick-me-up.

You look at the people milling about on the ground. You can’t be sure but you think you see Malloy standing just below the shuttle. He’s standing there and he’s… he’s waving… at you.

Suddenly you here the unmistakable sound of your car unlocking from the rest of the shuttle train just before the shuttle blasts off to Cydonia -- and you plummet right back down to the unforgiving terrain.

THE END.

Oops...RETURN TO CHAPTER 6

RED PLANET STOWAWAY - CH.2 TAKE THE LADDER TO NOWHERE

RED PLANET STOWAWAY CH.2 - TAKE THE LADDER TO NOWHERE

By R.A. HUNTER

Malloy’s voice booms from behind you, you can’t understand what he’s saying but that really isn’t your concern now. You consider the door to your right. With all of that noise there might be something heavy in there that you could use for a weapon but there are almost certainly grinding gears into which Malloy could easily chuck you if he so desired. You don’t even want to think about the room to your left.

You choose the ladder.

You close the distance in seconds jumping up onto the third rung of the ladder and not pausing to think before you begin your climb. You look up at the circular opening five rungs above you. You still can’t make out where it leads; all you can see is a sea of white.

You pop your head through the opening but don’t stop until the rest of you is through as well. At last you step off of the ladder and turn to look around. You discover you are in a large, round room painted a sterile white, unblemished saved for several cans strewn about the floor and surrounded by dots.

You walk carefully over to one of the dots and crouch to examine it. It appears to be a bean. Timidly, you reach out and pluck the dot from the floor. Indeed it is a bean and it is cool to the touch. It is a cool bean. You are surrounded by hundreds of cool beans.

Actually, you’d go as far as to say that they are cold beans. Very cold.

Well, you think to yourself, I suppose this goes a long way toward explaining the stench downstairs, but what’s the deal with all of these beans?

You step over to a can. No surprise, it once contained beans. You pick it up but drop it immediately when it is so cold that it burns you. It shatters to the floor.

“There you are,” Malloy’s voice growls from behind you.

You turn and see his head poking up through the opening. You can tell by his bare shoulders that he hasn’t bothered with a shirt and you wonder for a moment what the view is like from below.

“What’s up with the beans, Malloy?” you ask, forgetting for a moment that you are running for your life from this man.

“You didn’t expect us to just sit up here unprotected because the president wants to make nice with the grays, did ya?”

“So you froze a bunch of beans for protection?”

Malloy sneers. Good God, that must be what he looks like when he’s happy.

“The beans were just target practice,” he says. “But now we’ve got something much better.” Malloy offers one last sneer before turning and climbing back down the ladder.

For a long moment you are alone in the room. Suddenly, there is a whine of a hidden motor and a dozen doors open in the wall. Twelve men step into the room. They’re wearing helmets and goggles, which hide their identities, and are carrying white, bulbous rifles with blue streaks swirled on them.

The first man sneers so much like Malloy he could be his son. The thought of that man reproducing sends a chill down your spine.

“Do us a favor,” the sneering man says. “We’ve had nothing to shoot but bean cans. Run around a little, make it interesting.”

You stand dumbly. Your brain can’t process what your ears are hearing.

“Suit yourself,” he says with a shrug. He nods at the guy next to him who hoist his rifle to his shoulder and fires.

A beam -- the same color blue as the swipe on the rifle -- flies out of the barrel and hits you in the left arm. You scream as cold fire swallows up you left side. The force of the blast pushes you against the back wall. Colliding against it, the appendage you once used to write with and, on certain nights, used to relieve a little tension, shatters.

You gape at the cavity which was once your shoulder. Since the initial burning faded to numbness, there is no feeling. No physical feeling anyway. Inside you feel violated and betrayed -- but a surprisingly large part of you wants to yell, “That was awesome!”

Before you can do anything, though, another blasts freezes your leg. It shatters under your own weight, sending you careening through the ladder opening and crashing in a heap on the floor below.

“Good, I was hoping to get at least one in,” Mallow growls from somewhere to your right.

You turn your head and immediately wish you hadn’t when you discover the shirt isn’t the only piece of clothing Malloy decided not to bother with.

Your last thought as Malloy raises his own rifle is, Why does his junk have to be the last thing I ever see?

THE END

Oops...RETURN TO CHAPTER 2