ECOPOCALYPSE CH.5 - HOME SWEET LAB

ECOPOCALYPSE CH.5 - HOME SWEET LAB
By Matthew C. Plourde

Your hands shake as you connect the wires to the companion cooling tank. Sweat greases your fingers. Your face rotates between flushed and clammy. You know you’re not sick. This is just that sinking feeling you get before totally losing it.

Mum and Milo are dead. Your life is dissolving to shit around you. And you may be responsible for more deaths than any other individual in the history of the human race.

Great. And here you are, affixing a souped-up coolant tank to a shitter.

Flush the release chamber. Connect the ground. Wipe brow through the hazmat suit. Release the gas into the vapor chamber. Fill the caustic chamber—slowly. Steady hands.

“The suit will protect you,” Madge says, her voice muffled behind her oversized, protective helmet.

Deciding she could do more good at the lab, Madge decided to accompany you in the helicopter. Though you saw a few sludge zombies shambling around the outside of the building, the lab’s only reminder of their presence is long streaks of fudge along the walls and floors. Thank God for the hazmat suit!

“There,” you declare, stepping away from the Environaut as it quietly purrs to life.

Madge steps to your side. “What did you do?”

“Connected a supplemental cooling system to account for the caustic soda from the mercury. It should block the mercury poison from going gaseous and causing… well, you know.”

She looks into your eyes and asks, “Should?” Memories of your childhood together leap to your mind—it was a typical Madge I’m not sure you know what you’re doing expression. She wore that look a lot. You never were in control of anything. Especially not now.

This time, however, you know your own stuff. Milo’s notes refreshed your memory about some early mercury units which failed. Milo had a solution. The co-coolant unit will do the trick, but you slouch into a chair when you realize the truth.

“It’ll work,” you say, defeated. “But what’s the point? We can’t produce and get this out to millions of units today. I’m not a fuckin’ medical doctor or pharm expert. I can’t make a cure for the mercury poisoning. All I can do is fix the Environaut, not the frothing feces-flingers. The damage is already done.” You kick the table. “Shit.”

Never one to surrender, Madge puts her hands on her hips and stares down at you. “You fucked up. Fine. That’s in the past. I told the president’s CDC liaison that we’ll have a fix for the millions of units in American homes.” She turns to the altered Environaut on the table. “Am I looking at that fix?”

You nod, still empty with defeat. Only one thing makes sense.

“We just have to wait it out,” you say, your voice barely a whisper.

“Wait. What?”

You glance at your sister and say, “The people know to avoid the Environauts. And those who have used them are fucked anyway. Without a cure, we’ll have some new infections crop up. We just have to give this design to whoever can mass produce and distribute installations of it.”

“The president ordered the shutdown of all power grids!” Madge said. “And who knows how many can respond to that request. For all we know, the employees have been turned into shit zombies, headed home to try and save their families—or died in the chaos.”

She’s right. How could anyone possibly manufacture and distribute this fix to millions of homes across America and the world? Never mind convincing thousands of skilled handymen/women to install the units while poo monsters fling chocolate sludge-pies at them.

A laugh escapes your lips involuntarily. Then another. Soon, you are cackling like a maniac as you realize what you've really done: you caused the apocalypse. It wasn’t meteors or aliens or nuclear war that did the earth in; it was you and your magical toilet.

You close your eyes to the world and laugh because it’s the only thing that makes sense at the moment. The only thing keeping you totally from the dark chasm of total insanity. The only thing you can do.

Eventually, you snap out of your moment of hysteria and only the occasional half-laugh interrupts you.

Madge sighs. “Wow. Thought I lost you there for a moment. What the fuck was that?”

You don’t answer as you keep your dead eyes fixed on a blinking light near the corner of the room.

“Well, I don’t think that’s an option,” she says. “Let’s get this unit to the CDC and see if they can help. It’s why they exist, after all.”

You look up at your sister and see determination in her eyes.

What do you do?

A. Hole up in the lab and wait out the shit storm. It'll all blow over, right?

B. Go with Madge to the CDC with the fixed Environaut. They will will know what to do, right?

C. Get your shit together and call in all your favors--maybe you CAN make an antidote to save the poo zombie population. You are a scientist, after all...

ECOPOCALYPSE CH. 4 - I WANT MY DADDY

ECOPOCALYPSE CH. 4 - I WANT MY DADDY
By Nandy Ekle

He’s gone. Milo is gone. Your best friend’s death is like a sharp finger poking you right in the middle of your forehead. You’re sitting across from Madge and she’s just going on and on, talking about what you have to do to fix this, but all you can think about is the fact that Milo died in a stew of his own sewage.

“Hello?  Earth to Mr. Poopy President. Are you listening to me at all?”

You look up from where your eyes are fixated, staring at a brown stain under your fingernail. Where exactly had that brown stain come from? Was it from the flying fecal matter at your house as you ran away? And what about that running away thing? What kind of leader runs away from his problems?

You look up into Madge’s eyes. “What?”

“I said, what kind of a leader runs from his problem?”

A gasp blasts out of your mouth. Did she read your mind? You’re sure you thought the question up yourself; or did she plant it in your brain? Does she have psychic abilities you never knew about? And how come you never got a share of that?

“I, um . . .”

Her eyebrows are scrunched up and her mouth is posed in a pucker as if she actually expects you to say something intelligent.

The answer suddenly pierces through your consciousness. Screw it! Screw them all! Your business is tanked. Your reputation looks like the offending crap all over your house. Your best friend is dead. And now your sister demands you pay attention to her as if she were the smartest person in the world. You don’t need this. You don’t need any of it and you damn sure don’t have to put up with it.

You stand up and turn your back to her in mid-sentence.  “Go to hell,” you say as you walk toward the door.

“Get back here! We have to get this worked out!”

You run out the door and head for the stairs leading up to the roof. You need to get away just for a moment to mourn Milo, your mom, your career, your life. You need . . . fishing. Madge said your dad was on the yacht in the Pacific. You feel a sudden urge to pull on Daddy’s pant leg and beg to be hugged and rocked to sleep.

As you reach the roof you jump in the chopper and aim it toward the west, your main thought: “I want my daddy!” The sun glints off the water below you—or is it the water leaking from your eye?

Surprisingly, Dad’s boat is not far out on the sea and the size of the yacht makes it easy enough to spot. Lowering the copter to the deck you jump out of the aircraft. You see your sixty-year-old father running toward you.

“Dad!” You throw your arms out to him as you yell his name.

Instead of taking you in his arms for a comforting paternal hug, he pulls his fist back and punches you a hard one across your jaw. Rubbing your face, you look at the man who raised you. “What the?” You ask in a stunned tone.

“Get the hell off my boat, you murderer!”

“It wasn’t my fault! The lab substituted components in the formula! I didn’t do it! I swear!”

“You sold those things all over the world and got rich off people’s doody, boy. I don’t want your disease close to me. I don’t want anything to do with you again. Now get this confounded whirlybird off my boat before I throw you and your toy overboard.”

“But you’re my dad. You’re supposed to be on my side.” The man who had helped you build a Pine Derby race car for scouts when you were eight years old now looks as though he would harpoon you like a whale and gut you like a fish.

“My wife is gone, and your sister probably will be too if she keeps working with your zombies. Even the dog died. You’re no boy of mine.” He takes a couple of steps toward you. “I didn’t raise you to turn the world into sewer zombies.” 

As you stand there rubbing your jaw, your father grabs your arm, runs you to the side of the boat and pushes you over. You hit the water and the only thought in your head is that the brown stain under your fingernail will finally be washed away.

The rhythmic sound of a cello plays from somewhere in the air. Your dad looks not in your direction, but past you. He laughs and points, and you’re afraid he’s gone crazy and will jump in and drown you.

As you start to swim toward the yacht, the cello music gets louder and more intense. Then a new thought jumps into your mind as you feel something massive brush against your leg. You know that music! As the identity of the sound gels in your mind you see the circle of red around you grow larger. Suddenly your left leg is cold. LEG? What leg? You realize your left leg is missing and the blood is coming from you.

You open your mouth to scream for your daddy when the giant great white shark clamps on your other leg and pulls you under.

Oops...return to chapter 4

ECOPOCALYPSE CH.4 - KABOOM

ECOPOCALYPSE CH. 4 - KABOOM 
By MJ Heiser

As you watch your sister introduce herself to the switchboard operator at the White House (can you believe they still process phone calls through a freaking switchboard?), something inside of you snaps.  Last night you were partying Bruce Wayne-style: lots of strangers—most of them in varying states of undress—gallons of booze, and lines of narcotics laying around. Through it all Milo was there as he always was, suspended upside-down and beer-bonging his way into the record books.  Now those party guests have the world's nastiest case of rotgut, and Milo . . .

You've just watched Milo die.

"Gotta go," you tell Madge.  She looks up from her phone call, her mouth slack as she registers the look of madness and desperation in your eyes.  You turn your back on the room even as she begins to fling at you reasons for you to stay.

"Wait!  I can get the President to neutralize everything!"

Fuck that, you think to yourself.  Somebody's got to pay.  Something's got to blow the fuck up.

You decide you need backup and you burst into a silent waiting room full of quarantined and terrified people.  In one corner are several burly guys you hope are either football linebackers or Navy SEALs.  You can tell already that the hospital staff are none too happy with the way you violated their weak excuse for quarantine; somebody has taken it upon themselves to set off a loud, insistent alarm.

Considering the fact that unknown numbers of security personnel are on their way to throttle you, you decide to cut about 98 percent of your speech.  "You guys want to just sit here and wait to find out if you're carrying the shits, or do you want to do something about it?"

Just as you'd hoped, the big burly guys stand up, biceps and pectorals twitching.  The biggest of them—your mind has already nicknamed him Hoss—smiles menacingly and says, "We thought no one would ever ask."

You're suddenly glad you've never been the publicity hound Steve Jobs was.  You're a virtual unknown.  "I know where the asshole who caused all this is keeping the master switch."

A guttural cry of assent breaks out among Hoss's friends, and they—along with several other twitchy people—follow you out of the waiting room.  You run towards the Emergency Room, and you hear distressing noises behind you, like Hoss and his friends are using their fists to prevent your capture.  You refuse to look back.  It will only slow you down. 

You burst through the Emergency Room doors to a scene of depressing chaos.  There's shit on the walls in a startling variety of colors.  The smell in here is ghastly.  Your eyes start to water from the smell.

"Cover your mouths and noses!" you yell through your hand, hoping you haven't already caught the airborne nastiness.  You then spot the crash doors leading outside, and—miracle of miracles—there's an open ambulance waiting there.  "Come on!"

You weave your way through the equipment in the back of the ambulance and sit down at the driver's seat.  You feel the back of the ambulance sag a little under the weight of your burly new friends, and, without waiting to ensure everyone's on, you gun the engine.  You smell a distressing aurora of gasoline fumes around you and wonder if the last EMT driving this rustbucket ruptured a fuel line. 

Fuck it.  The gas gauge says I have enough fuel even if I spill half of it on the way.  Okay, I have my crew, you think to yourself, giddy with excitement and high on adrenaline.  Now I need some explosives.

"Any of you guys know where I can find a few bombs?"

Dead silence from the back of the ambulance.

You turn around and see that all of your new friends have brown fluid leaking from their eyes.

Fuck.

"Did you think I wouldn't know who you are?" Hoss asks you as he advances on you.

"Wait," you say, whipping your head back around to not crash into a building.  "Come on, man."

"Were you really so arrogant to think that big guys like us don't keep up with scientific principles or breakthroughs?  What did you think we were, linebackers?"

You say nothing.  Again, you're hoping he's just angry and, of course, sick.  "I'm not the person you're looking for, dude, remember?  I'm taking you to the person responsible."

"We're fucked," Hoss says, inching closer.  You think you hear a clinking noise.  Shit is getting too real, so you swerve the ambulance to the emergency lane on the freeway and put it in park.  Then you turn back to see what's waiting for you.

Hoss now has something brownish coating the inside of his mouth.  His eyes are producing so much brown fluid it's falling in droplets from the edge of his square jaw.  You see that he's carrying a cylinder of oxygen in his hands.

"We're so . . .fucked," he says, his voice slurring a little.  He stumbles, but regains his balance on the edge of the gurney.  "I speak for all my guys when I say we aren't going to wait for this shit to take us.  We're going out, man.  But we aren't going alone."

You know enough about oxygen to know it can't burn by itself—but suddenly, you realize it doesn't have to.  That spilled-gas scent is stronger.

One of Hoss's friends has a match.  Another one has the emergency escape axe.

What happens next is so quick you'd think it had been rehearsed.  The guy with the match strikes it on the matchbook, then sets the rest of the book on fire, dropping it to the bottom of the ambulance.  Next, the guy with the axe buries it in the oxygen cylinder's neck with such force it splits the tank open.

The concussion from the explosion isn't the worst of it.  The worst of it is inhaling pure fire down your throat.

Oops...head back to chapter 4

ECOPOCALYPSE CH.4 - TO THE HOSPITAL!

ECOPOCALYPSE CH.4 - TO THE HOSPITAL!
By Mandy Ward

The Helicopter dips as you momentarily lose control from shock. How could it get this bad? What on earth is causing this?

As usual, Milo reads your mind.

Milo shudders. “What the hell is causing this, man? We did all those tests and there were no malfunctions or side effects from the prototypes. Shit, we even had a whole fricken town testing them for a whole year!”

“I don’t know. I haven’t been able to get close to an Environaut recently, so how the fuck would I know?” you point out irritably as you wrestle the ‘copter back into stable flight.

“So what’s the plan?” Milo is jiggling his right foot and tapping his left hand on his left knee.

You ignore the annoying movement and concentrate on flying. “Not sure at the moment. I know that I’m not going to run away from this until I’ve had a damn good look at what’s causing it.”

Milo laughs. “Man, you’ve got so much money stashed all over the place that you could just go to ground. Why not let the Government sort it out?”

Glancing at him, you realise that his eyes have glazed slightly and his skin is looking far too yellow, even for an Asian.

You frown. “Did you use the john this morning before I woke up?”

“Yeah.” Milo’s voice is starting to sound slurred. “Man, I don’t feel so good.”

“Shit! Shit…just…shit!” you give yourself over to a bout of swearing as you swing the ‘copter around in the direction of the Iscariot Hospital. “Hang in there, buddy, I’ll get you to my sister at Iscariot.”

“Thanks.” Milo wipes a dribble of brown away from the corner of his mouth. “You got anything to drink in this thing? I’m parched.”

“Sorry, Milo. I don’t allow food or drink in here.” Risking a glance at your friend’s face, you increase your airspeed. I have got to get him well; I can’t fix the Environaut without him. Using the auto pilot for a moment, you text your sister about Milo. Her answer is predictable:

He’s a shit anyway; it’s just like finding like. Bring him in. We need a guinea pig that isn’t too far along for the treatments we’re developing.

Smiling, you put your phone away and take control of the ‘copter back from the auto pilot. “Madge says they’re developing a treatment. Trust her to be on the ball!”

“Yeesssrrrgh” Milo gurgles. Brown liquid is dribbling from the corners of his eyes.

“I just hope I can get you there before you try to attack me.”

“Yeesssrrrgh”

Dropping the helicopter cleanly onto the helipad at the hospital, you scramble out as the rotors slow.

A group of ER nurses rush out with an odd looking trolley. It’s one of those metal cages that the hospital uses to transport boxes and bags around the place, but it’s been covered in acrylic sheets and reinforced with metal. There’s a soft looking waterproof mattress on the base of the cage, and a bottle of some kind of gas attached to the side.

All the nurses are wearing hazmat suits, and they bundle Milo out of the helicopter and into the cage before he has a chance to complain. The door is bolted and one of the nurses turns the tap on the gas canister.

A loud hissing fills the air and Milo’s eyes droop before he collapses to rest on the mattress.

“Anaesthetic?” you ask anxiously.

One of the nurses turns towards you. “We’ll keep him sedated. It seems to slow down the rate of decay and hopefully it will give us time to administer the treatments."

You blink. It isn’t a nurse, it’s your sister. “Madge? Why are you in one of those?”

“Why do you think I am? It’s an airborne contagion, you idiot!” she marches towards you. “You had to go and invent something that turns people into Golgothans, didn’t you? Why couldn’t you just have gone and been an astronaut or a surgeon?” Madge looks upset.

“What’s happened?” you ask, moving closer.

The rest of the nurses wheel Milo away. Madge links her arm through yours and pulls you along behind them.

“Have you used a toilet this morning?” she asks.

“Not yet.”

“Have you been in close contact with any of the affected people?” Madge is strangely insistent.

“Did you not see the news this morning, Sis? They invaded my house and flung poop at us.” You snap back. “What’s with the twenty questions?”

“I’ve been dealing with the results of your little invention. Did you realise that three quarters of the patients I’ve had in the last two weeks have had a significant level of mercury in their systems?” she blinks. “Mum was one of them.”

“Oh.” You can’t think of anything else to say. You might have been estranged from your parents since going to college, but that doesn’t mean that you didn’t care about them.

”She died.” It wasn’t a question and you blink back the tears. “Time enough to grieve later, little bro.” Madge pats your shoulder. “Did you ingest any of the feces thrown at you?”

You gag a little at that thought. “I don’t think so. I hope not.”

“We’ll run some tests on you and put you through decontamination.” She eyes the suit you’re wearing. “A pity we’ll have to dissolve the suit in acid, but it’s the safest way to do it; burning just puts the infection vector back into the air.”

Two hours later you are pronounced safe from infection and, dressed in a set of scrubs and a hazmat suit, you are allowed to visit Milo with your sister.

“Hey man!” you wave at him inside his plastic encased cage.

He raises his head and you stumble back at the rage in his eyes and the brown, foul smelling sludge dribbling from his eyes, nose and mouth. He’s wearing nothing but a hospital gown, and there is brown gunk everywhere around him.

“He’s been through decon and had the treatment.” She gestures at a second gas canister. “It’s just a case of waiting now.”

“How many people have you cured?” You ask, feeling guilty.

She looks sad. “No one yet.”

Ushering her out and down the corridor to her office, you fire questions at her. “Do you know exactly what is causing this? Why do they start spitting up brown slush? What is it that the Environaut has done to cause this? Am I liable for any of this? Is Dad all right? What about animals? How widespread is it?”

She shuts the office door behind you and pushes you down into a seat. You unzip your hazmat suit and push it down to your waist in relief. Phew these things are hot.

Madge just unzips the hood.

“You’re a stupid excuse for an intelligent man,” she snaps. “The mercury in the Environaut’s coolant system is causing the zombie state. It’s affecting the brain in a completely new way, and there’s not much we can do to counteract it. The treatment we’ve come up with works about fifty percent of the time.”

You remember what Milo was swearing about. “Shit. The mother fucking board interfered with the design specs! They must have used the older design internally and the new design externally.” You collapse back against the chair. “What about the sludge?”

“That’s the remains of their internal organs; they go into rapid decay for some reason. While our treatment has been successful against the zombification, humans can’t live when they don’t have a heart, lungs or nervous system.” She raises an eyebrow as you dive for the waste paper bin and throw up in it.

Wiping your mouth on your sleeve, you turn back to her. “Why is that happening?”

“We don’t know. And the only way we’re going to be able to find out is to take samples from a working Environaut.”

“Aren’t there any in the hospital?”

She snorts. “You have got to be kidding. The hospital board vetoed acquiring Environauts when you refused to discount the price per unit.”

But that wasn’t me! That was the board; I remember fighting them on it six months ago. You swear in fluent Russian.

“Enough of that.” Madge aims a slap at the back of your head and you duck. “To answer the rest of your questions, if it was an internal fault that caused this then yes, you are liable. Dad is fine; he’s on his yacht in the Pacific. Animals don’t seem to be susceptible and it’s happening everywhere that your invention has penetrated.” She folds her arms. “So what are you going to do about it?”

You walk over to her office window. Outside the hospital, the numbers of shit covered zombies are growing, hunting down anyone still capable of movement. You remember Hal at EcoGen. “How are you keeping them out?”

Madge joins you at the window. “All the doors from the ground are locked. We have a thousand or so patients in here that we can’t risk. That’s why we’re keeping those brought in by helicopter up here in isolation.”

“How do you get supplies?”

“The Army airlifts them in.”

“What the hell can I do about this?” you wail. “Milo is the engineering genius. I’d need all the plans and a lab, not to mention…” you trail off and stare at your sister. “Will he survive?”

There’s a knock at the door and a nurse in a hazmat suit hurries in. “Sorry to interrupt, Dr. Tebid–Fewmet, but the patient is asking for your sibling.”

The two of you suit up.

“I don’t know why you haven’t gone back to your maiden name, that bastard is long gone,” you say, zipping Madge’s hood up for her. “Besides, his name is almost as ugly as his face.”

She shrugs and stalks away down the corridor after the nurse.

Milo is sitting cross legged on the mattress. Brown slush has dried in long streaks down his body and, looking at the state of the cage, you’re glad for the canned air in your suit. That place must reek.

“What’s up, buddy?”

“You have to fix the damn machine. I know what’s wrong, but I don’t think I have enough time left to help you.” Milo coughs and a deluge of brown gunge splashes over his legs.

He ignores it. “First you have to get everyone to cut the power to the machines; that will stop anyone else being affected. Then you have to destroy the main processing plant. The fuckers on the board must have used mercury in there as well; the presence of mercury in the individual units would just cause toxification, not all this as well.” He waves a hand at the slurry around him.

You blink. “Did you understand that, Madge?”

She nods. “I can call the President to order a shutdown of the power plants. That’s the fastest way to kill the power to the machines.”

“Milo, how do we fix the Environaut?” you ask your oldest friend.

“My notes…” he coughs, “…at the lab… change the… coolant and…” a veritable flood of decayed internal organs emerges from his mouth. He slumps to the floor of the cage and the light goes from his eyes.

You find yourself crying. Poor bugger. What a horrible way to go.

Madge steers you back to her office. “Let’s get this sorted out.

So what do I do first? You think, sitting down while Madge makes her phone call. Destroy the main processing plant or pick up Milo’s notes? Or shall I just call it a day and do a Dad?
What's next?

A. Do you head to the marina for your yacht and join your dad in the pacific until it all blows over?
B. Do you try to retrieve Milo's notes from the lab in the hope that they hold the key to saving your hide?
C. Do you assemble a team to destroy the Main Processing Plant?

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

ECOPOCALPYSE CH.3 - ROOKIE BLUE POOP THUNDER

ECOPOCALYPSE CH.3 - ROOKIE BLUE POOP THUNDER By James McShane

On any other day, flying your helicopter over the vast metropolis would be a thrill akin to becoming the world’s first triple Nobel Prize winner—of course, seeing that you are unable to make change of a ten, write a poem worth reading, or even know what a goddamn quark is, Nobel is no-dice—but this is not just any other day. Mankind is smothering under the weight of its own shit, and it’s all your fault.

         “Mexico will have to wait,” you shout over the sound of the chopper as it veers first one way, then another.

 “So where to?” Milo screams back. You suddenly remember to turn on communications. No use wearing headphones if you can’t hear for shit, right?

Shit. That word again. If you make it out of this alive, you’re going to petition Webster to remove it from the dictionary. The guys over there owe you—big time. It was you who asked them to include iPoop as a new word.

You still have to answer Milo’s question. You hover over the city for a while, taking in the disaster below. You look around and see the police station. As you fly closer you see that the cops are performing their civic duty as only they know how: They’re shooting at anything that moves. Political correctness be damned!

“We’re going to need guns,” you say into your mouthpiece.

“Lots of guns,” Milo says.

You've always wanted to use that line and are pissed off with Milo for stealing it from you. “Yeah,” you mutter. “A fuck-load of guns?”

“Is that bigger than a shed-load?” Milo winks from behind his visor. Okay, you can’t see him actually wink, but as sure as eggs is eggs, the twerp is winking.

“Let’s go and see if the boys in blue have any spare weaponry. See if we can shoot our way out of this.”

“Would be better if we just flew our way out of this,” Milo whines. “I don’t see how we can help them.”

You ponder this as you look for a place to land, then nod in agreement. “Okay, they’re on their own, but we will still need to defend ourselves one way or another. We’ll stop here, on the roof, bail downstairs, grab some guns and ammo, then fly the fuck back to the lab.”

“The lab?” Milo is agog. “Why the fuck would you want to go back there?”

“I started this,” you say as you expertly land on the roof of the police station. “And I’m going to finish it. Properly.”

Milo opens his side of the chopper and jumps out. “This is where I bail, boss,” he says. “I’m sorry it had to come to this, but you’re on your own.” He runs in the direction of the door at the far end of the roof. You shake your head. All these years, having my back, and he has to bail now, when I need him the most. You’ve given Milo enough room in your thoughts. Now it’s time to do what needs to be done. You follow him, head through the door, and run down the stairs. There is an elevator, but you’re over elevators now. Stairs are the only way to go.

The further you go down, the louder the commotion becomes. You hope you’re not running straight into a Cop vs. iPooper free-for-all—that shouldn’t be the case, because as you flew over, you saw the cops shooting out of rather than back into the station. You gamble that the station is free of iPoopers.

No, the commotion is something else entirely. The cops are fighting amongst themselves, and at the heart of it all is Milo. He points up at you and shouts to one of the cops nearby. All of a sudden you’re the centre of attention, like at a Playboy party when all that the guests want is a piece of you. These cops want a piece of you all right—but not to play with. There is vengeance in their eyes. They wish to call down the wrath of the Maker and smite you from where you stand.

“Smite this, motherfuckers,” you rant, grabbing a service revolver from a nearby cop. (There are a lot of nearby cops, by the way. Well, there would be; it is a police station, after all.) You shoot in the air. “This is your last warning, gentlemen. I need some guns so I can put things right again.”

Milo stands near the front of the vengeful policemen. “See what I mean, guys? My ex-CEO wants to cure the world once more! My former employer wants to return to the scene of the crime and bring more madness upon us. I say it stops. I say it stops now! What say you all?”

The shot that hits your thigh is answer to Miles’ question. Maybe coming here was a bad idea after all. Back to the chopper! You beat a hasty retreat back up the stairs. You thank the Maker for all those hours you put in the gym, but the pain in your wounded thigh isn’t getting any better. The higher you climb, the fuzzier your head gets. You can’t slow down. Milo and his Keystone friends are hot on your tail.

You make it up to the roof and into the chopper before you just about pass out from blood loss. You start the motor running and slowly ascend into the sky. You feel a weight from underneath the helicopter. You look out and see Milo and some cops hanging on the landing blades. There are enough of them to keep you from climbing too high, but not enough that you can’t move away from the roof. Your awareness of what’s happening around you begins to fade. You wish you had more time to stem the loss of blood. There are things you must do to make this right again. You have to atone for your own misjudgements and the actions of your motherfucking Board. They are too dead to answer for their own crimes.

But you can’t atone now. You are powerless to do anything except glide the chopper along the roof. In a moment you’re over the city, with Milo and Company keeping you company. Your demise is imminent, you know. Perhaps you can take a few fucking iPoopers with you. You barely have enough strength left in you to position the chopper over a hoard of shit-stained, shit-smelling, shit-excreting maniacs. You switch off your motor.

You plunge.

You sit back and enjoy the ride.

YEEHAW!!

Oops...return to Chapter 3