ECOPOCALYPSE CH.1 - TAKE BACK YOUR HOUSE

ECOPOCALYPSE CH.1 - TAKE BACK YOUR HOUSE

By Steven Novak

Milo slams his hand against the passenger door of your car. “Come on! Move your ass! Let's get the hell out of here!”

For the briefest of moments you consider doing exactly that. You have the keys to a relatively functional DeLorean in your hands and there’s a rabid horde of poop-soaked lunatics stomping through your mansion upstairs. Running makes perfect sense. Heck, flooring it all the way to Mexico, changing your name to Paco Sanchez, and living off the money you’ve stashed in your multiple offshore accounts makes even more sense.

Milo is leaning out of the car now. He looks really confused and equally pissed. He’s pounding his closed fist against the car’s metallic exterior and screaming at the top of his lungs. “Come on, moron! Stop dragging ass! What the hell are you waiting for?”

You don’t want to move to Mexico. Sure, the Tequila is great and the senoritas are spicy, but you don’t want to move to Mexico. You certainly don’t want to change your name to Paco.

You don’t look anything like a Paco.

Those freaky-damn shit monsters are tearing apart your place. They’re destroying every inch of it in a desperate attempt to find you. You can hear glass breaking and wood shattering. Not only are they making a mockery of your stuff, but they’re lathering it in what seemed to be mostly human feces. They’re mashing the disgusting awfulness into your carpet and rubbing it onto your cabinets and spraying it onto your bed. You worked hard for your carpet and your cabinets and your bed.

Well, actually, you didn’t.

You love your carpet and your cabinets and your bed.

Well, maybe, you don’t.

Still, that’s your damn carpet, not theirs! Those are your beshitted cabinets! That’s your motherfucking bed!

You know what you have to do.

You toss the keys in Milo’s direction. “Take the car.” They land almost three feet short, forcing Milo to crawl across the concrete to retrieve them, and admittedly, sort of ruining the impact of the moment.

He looks up at you from his hands and knees. “You’re not coming with?”

“This is my house, Milo. That’s my carpet. Those are my cabinets. That’s my bed those shit-covered assholes are rolling around in! Those are my sheets and my slippers! I can’t just let them destroy everything I’ve worked so hard for! I can’t! I won’t! I won’t let them destroy everyth–”

The tires of the DeLorean squeal and the car peels out of your underground garage.

Milo was always sort of a douchebag.

You spend the next ten minutes digging through your underground lair looking for anything remotely resembling a weapon while keeping an ear on the carnage above. It’s a warzone up there – a squishy, sloppy, slippery warzone. What sounded like mostly human voices when the PooCrew originally burst through your window has transformed into something else entirely. The screams have turned animalistic, guttural and moist, from throats clogged with the diarrhea of half-digested pasta and bargain basement soy sauce-heavy Chinese food.

After ten minutes of searching you manage to find yourself an axe and a crowbar. It’s not much, but it’ll have to do. You slide yourself into some old catchers gear from your college baseball days and head for the doorway leading into the house.

Those shit-slappy assholes are going to pay. You’re not sure exactly how you’re going to make them pay, but you’re going to make them pay. You don’t really have a plan. Who cares?

Fuck plans.

Those dung-drenched dillweeds are probably stomping across the rug President Widmer-Schlumpf gave you when you visited Zurich last summer. One of those turd turkeys is more than likely wearing your Nobel Peace Prize right now. They might’ve even discovered your collection of Playboy magazines from the 60’s. Christa Speck’s boobs are probably smeared with corny bits of fecal matter.

No, the time for plans has long since passed.

The time for ass kicking has arrived.

The instant you burst through the doorway and into the house you’re greeted by the somewhat surprised faces of no less than fifteen shit-soaked wackos. They instantly halt their mindless rampaging.

The room goes silent.

There’s a pool of lumpy brown liquid at least an inch high on the floor. It’s up to your ankles. The god awful liquid is dripping from their bodies like the devil’s sweat. Awkward chunks of human nastiness cling to the few bits of exposed flesh of their otherwise coated faces. A river of chocolate terror dribbles from the chin of a wide-eyed, shit-slick-haired lothario in the back of the room who immediately sucks it back into his mouth like he’s sipping from a frosty milkshake. A woman with bright red eyes and a freakishly long rope of dookie dangling from her neck takes a single step in your direction and tilts her head to the side like a dog. A still steaming tube of toot-butter slips from beneath her dress and splashes to the drink. When she smiles she flashes you a set of chompers so stained with Cleveland fudge they look like a package of Slugworth’s chocolate covered raisins.

A log of Lincoln’s finest smacks you right between the eyes.

You drop your weapons and vomit.

Hands slippery with still-warm mush latch onto your limbs. The growling mass of brown and greenish-brown flesh hoists you into the air and carries your flailing body into the hallway. You’re weightless when one of their pooey digits worms its way into your mouth and partially down your throat. There’s an ever-so-subtle hint of burrito hidden beneath the gooey brown nastiness suddenly coating the interior of your mouth.

Paco’s not such a bad name. Mexico’s a pretty nice place.

You probably should have changed your name to Paco.

The crowd of shit-crazed freaks reaches the bathroom and deposits you into the melted puddle of buttnugget juice slathered across your obscenely expensive tile. Slippery fingers grab a handful of your hair and drag you to the toilet. Your eyes are burning. Your nose is filled with the scent of excrement and dingle berries and the combined, partially recycled scat of a million ample-waisted Americans. With the bowel explosions of an entire nation still pouring from the bowl of the toilet like cocoa lava from some butt-Vesuvius, the mob of fudge fiends shoves your face into what remains of the once porcelain-white bowl with a splash.

Chunky sewer sauce slips into your nose. It seeps into your ears. It sneaks past your lips and worms through the spaces in your teeth. When you try to breathe it fills your throat and finds its way into your lungs. You’re dying. You’re dying face down in a pool of the most awful of awful. When you open your eyes you see only an unending torrent of speckled brown.

This isn’t how it was supposed to end. Not like this. Not face down in the juicy rear end muck of the very same people who enabled you to buy the carpet and the cabinets and the bed you foolishly decided to fight for.

It’s difficult to tell, but you think you might have crapped your britches.

Not that it matters.

Miles away, Westbound on the 405, Milo turns off the radio and pops in a CD of The Human League’s greatest hits. In less than three hours he reaches the border of Mexico. In less than three days he’s changed his name to Eduardo Rodriguez. In less than five he’s being pushed back onto a soft bed as a particularly sultry Mexican girl pulls off her sundress and prepares to take him to heaven and back.

Eduardo is a much cooler name than Paco.

Oops...Return to Chapter 1

ECOPOCALYPSE CH.1 - MONDAY

ECOPOCALYPSE CH.1 - MONDAY By Tomara Armstrong

You’re vaguely aware that the sun has risen. Shades of pink paint the inside of your eyelids, while the memory of last night is a blur of alcohol-scented flesh-colored money. You just want to sleep it off, but the swamp of saliva you’re resting in keeps bubbling and tickling 

your nose, preventing a deep, restful sleep.

The door rattles and footsteps cross the room. You’re pretty sure it’s Monday, which means Rosalinda, your cleaning lady, is here to clean up your weekend shenanigans.  She kicks a gaming controller across the floor on her way to the kitchen and flicks on the television. You don’t care that she’s cursing you in a foreign tongue—your leather sofa is like a cloud 

sent from heaven, cuddling you ever so gently.

Your head throbs, and you groan as Rosalinda pitches last night’s bottles and cans into the enviro-bin. You roll over, covering your head with a pillow, exposing your bare ass.

At what point last night did you lose your pants?

You shrug it off and smile, trying to ignore the draft and push further into your cavernous sofa.

She turns up the volume on the television, loudly announces that she intends to run the vacuum, and strongly suggests that you seek the comfort of one of your many bedrooms. You grunt, pulling the pillow tighter around your head, trying to drown out the TV.

… Our investigative reporter Gail Silverman is live on the scene. Gail?

Thanks, Dave. I’m standing outside of Smart EcoGen, President and CEO...

Your eyes pop open. Did she say your name?

Surely not. You close your eyes again, trying to get comfortable.

Picketers have started camping out in front of the mansion since reports first started pouring in that their popular waste recycling generator, the Environaut, is responsible for a slew of health related problems cropping up around the world. President and CEO…

You sit up. She definitely said your name. You fumble for your glasses and accidentally spill a beer on your cover of Scientific American. “Shit!”

...has yet to make a comment, but a Smart EcoGen representative stated early this morning…

You jump up, flinging the beer across the floor and onto the TV. Rosa shoots you the stink eye and stomps off down the hall.

…are looking into the reports, but insisted that the safety of the public has always been first and foremost…

You’re ashamed. Ashamed that you had too much to drink, ashamed that you had too many friends over, and ashamed that you burned the other copies of Scientific American to make s’mores—ten copies with you on the cover, sacrificed in the name of snacks.

…What started as a peaceful display of vulgar signs and chanting has become more…

While you mentally make the vow to NEVER drink again, something hits your window.

…Oh my god, Dave! Protestors are flinging…feces at the mansion! This peaceful protest just got ugly.

Your stomach turns as the clods of human waste thud against your home. Rosalinda is going to quit for sure.

“What happened to your pants?” You swing around and see your best friend, Smart EcoGen VP, Milo Sabe, sprawled out on an angora rug. While he has pants, he also has a moustache and “DERP” written across his forehead—you’re guessing with Sharpie.  You keep the information to yourself as you dig a pair of shorts out from under your couch.

“You hear what’s going on?” you ask, slipping on your shorts.

“Protestors outside—throwing shit? Yeah, I heard.” He rubs his eyes, shaking his head.

“What’s that about?” You walk over to the window and peer outside. “Uh…”

Outside, picketers have scaled the outer walls of your property and are quickly crossing the lawn toward the house. They’re dirty—real dirty. So dirty, in fact, you think that they’ve covered themselves in the very stuff they were flinging at your home moments earlier.

Milo jumps as a window breaks. You back away slowly at first, but as the bodies begin pulling themselves into the room and blood drips down the broken class, you decide it’s time to go.

“Come on!” You pull Milo’s shirt and run off down the hall, leaving the protestors' incoherent shrieks behind you. They’re still trying to get into the house and starting your way.

Heading toward the center of the house, you slip in a puddle of water in the hallway. You skid to a stop, but Milo slams into you, sending you through a bathroom door. You quickly hop to your feet, averting your eyes. “Sorry, Rosa.”

She is sitting on the toilet with her head down. The water is on, and the tub is overflowing.

“Rosa?”

She lifts her head, and looks at you, chewing on her thumb.  “Are you ok?”

Her bloodshot eyes stare through you, as she peels the fingernail off with her teeth and spits it at you. You watch it hit your chest and fall to the floor, sinking into the pool of water collecting at your feet. Drops of blood swirl for a fraction of a second then disappear with the current.

You feel beer vomit tickling the back of your throat as Milo pulls you back into the hall and gives you a shove. “Time to go!”

The sickness fades as you run toward your bedroom. Once inside the room, you slam and lock the door.

“What now?” Milo’s eyes scan the room as you palm your bookshelf, remembering the access combination for the secret passageway. “Plan ahead” was your motto when you had the house built five years ago—it’s finally paying off.

“Aha!” The door swings open and you pull Milo into the dark hallway.  You can hear protestors banging on the door as you close the entrance and head down toward the emergency bunker below the house.

Your hand traces the wall, flipping on the light. The fluorescent bulbs buzz and pop, illuminating a massive room filled with cutting edge technology.

“What the hell, Bruce Wayne? How long have we been friends? You never told me you had a Batcave. I hate you,” Milo says.

“Oh, shut up. What’s the point of having all this money if I can’t indulge in a little frivolous spending?”

“A little?” Milo snorts, looking over the extreme gadgetry and flickering control panel. “I want a raise.”

You fire up a large display, push several buttons, and instantly you can see the whole perimeter of the house as well as many of its rooms. It’s quickly filling with protestors. You see their painted faces and wild eyes on the monitors. A thought creeps into your head and you shiver. They’re hunting you.

Milo is staring at the screen too—the color drained from his face. “What button do I push for the Batmobile? You have one right?”

“Uh… Yes and no.”

You press a button and the room begins to vibrate. A door opens, revealing an impressive display room filled with boxes of comics ordered alphabetically. Action figures fill glass displays—some loose, others with original packaging. In the middle of the room, on a pedestal, sits the Batmobile—a miniature replica fit for a circus clown.

“Shit.” Milo deflates. “That’s not going to get us out of here.”

“No, but I have a car.” You smile and press another button. A garage door opens, exposing a custom DeLorean DMC-12.

“Of course you do,” Milo rolls his eyes. “Does it run?”

“Sh-yeah.”  You think it does anyway.

Milo hops in the car and you grab the keys, pondering your plan of action. 

Should you:

A. Head to Smart EcoGen HQ and see if you find out what's going on;

B. Hold your ground and take back your house; or

C. Screw this! Just drive!