ECOPOCALYPSE CH.1 - JUST DRIVE!

ECOPOCALYPSE CH.1 - JUST DRIVE! By Wayne DePriest

You slip into the seat and crank the engine. Your DeLorean is one of the ‘AXI’ models, so you’re sitting on the right. You thought it was cool when you bought the car. One of the advantages of this model is it doesn’t have all the crap forced on it by the government for sale in the US, so it’s gonna be fast—just what you need at a time like this. The engine catches, you hit another button on the remote, and another garage door opens behind you, revealing a well-lit tunnel.

“What the hell?” Milo exclaims.

One more click and the car starts to rotate.

“Holy shit!” Milo is wide-eyed. “This is too cool! You never told me about this!”

“It was my little secret. My version of the Batcave.”

“Where does it go?” Milo asks as the car stops rotating, now pointed straight at the mouth of the tunnel.

“I don’t know,” you say as you drop the tranny into first and hit the gas. “I’ve never used it.”

The car leaps forward and shoots into the tunnel. You double clutch and hit second. Then third. The lights are a blur as you and Milo barrel down the tunnel. You shift into fourth and see the tunnel curve to the right ahead of you. Around the corner you see the end of the tunnel. The opening is obscured by some kind of brush. You figure the builder put it there to camouflage the entrance because he’d seen your Batman collection. The brush can’t be too dense, certainly not enough to stop a DeLorean. Milo grabs the seat belt, slams the buckle home and presses his feet against the floorboards.

“Are we doing 88 yet?” Milo’s laugh is just a bit hysterical.

“Close,” you say, glancing down at the speedometer.

“Be the shits to bust through into 1985 or something.”

Just before the DeLorean hits the brush, the obstruction drops away. You realize there’s a pressure switch under the floor of the tunnel, like at a busy intersection for a left turn. The car shoots out of the tunnel and rockets onto a weed grown two lane track through a stand of trees. You back off of the gas as the car jounces over the uneven ground.

Milo’s whooping and hollering like a kid on a thrill ride at the state fair. You’re trying to keep the damn car on the road so you don’t slam into one of the trees. Up ahead you see some blue sky, fewer trees. You’re breathing a bit easier as the car slips between the last trunks. Your foot stomps on the gas pedal and the car leaps forward the last few yards to the top of the hill.

And over.

Only there isn’t any over. There isn’t any anything. Except a long Thelma and Louise drop into the jumble of heavy equipment eighty feet below where they’re constructing another Environaut. The front end of the DeLorean crashes into the bucket on a front loader. The stainless steel folds like an unpaired poker hand. You and Milo are thrown forward as the engines pushes through the firewall, crushing both of your legs against the seat. Milo’s seatbelt snaps from the strain. Your head bounces off the steering wheel while Milo’s bursts through the windshield. A broken nose for you, to go with the mangled legs. Milo’s nose breaks, too, but not until his head rolls off the crumpled hood, bounces off a tire of the loader and lands face first in the dirt. Blood is running out of your nose, but not as much as is pumping out of Milo’s neck stump and you frantically pull at the seatbelt, thumb jabbing the button to release it. The pain in your legs and nose is making you dizzy as you struggle with the door. It won’t open. You start to puke from the smell and sight of Milo’s headless corpse. Knowing a human body voids waste when it dies is not the same as being trapped in a car with the body doing the voiding. The vomit splashes against the window when you turn your head. Physics being what it is, some of the nasty bounces back into your mouth, which sets off another round of ralphing. Somehow you manage to crank down the vomit-covered window and pry your useless legs free. The smell of smoke kicks a burst of adrenaline into your bloodstream.  You pull yourself through the window and tumble to the ground eight feet below, landing on your left shoulder and snapping the collar bone. A scream escapes your lips as the bone breaks and your mutilated legs flop into the dirt. A loud whump! makes you look up at the car teetering in the bucket above you. The gas tank has exploded, upsetting the delicate balance of the car. Bits of flaming debris hit you, scorching your clothes, your face, your arms. But it’s nothing compared to sight of the flaming DeLorean tipping backwards and slipping off the bucket. The last thing you see is the vanity plate.

Up close.

SHT HPNS

Oops...Return To Chapter 1

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