Take the All-Mart!

CHAPTER 17: SHOTGUN





“The sad thing is, this is actually going better than usual.” Rudy reached under his t-shirt for his nipple as the elevator slowed, approaching the top, ground floor.

Bernice’s hand got there first, giving his nipple a good tweak while she gave him a smile. “Guess that’s something.” She let her hand linger there while she turned to look at Roxanne, out cold and slumped over Trip’s shoulders in a fireman’s carry, his hand on her ass. “I don’t get it — she’s not glowing — her skin’s clear. How can she be a zombie?”

Trip shrugged as best he could. “I’m guessing it’s got something to do with that flesh thing in her jack. It could be some kind of Pack network device, giving the All-Mind direct control over her without nanochines.”

Bernice reached for the biomass behind Roxanne’s ear. “Then let’s take it out.”

“Not yet.” Trip swung Roxanne’s head away from Bernice. “She might have nanochines in her, just dormant, as a backup. Taking it out could activate them. Anyway, I want to prove a theory first.”

“You thinking the Pack connection works both ways?” Rudy asked as the elevator dinged and the doors opened.

Trip smirked, drawing his elephant revolver with his free hand. “We’re gonna find out.” He took two long strides out of the elevator, firing blindly and randomly in all directions as he quick-stepped for the Wound, parked twenty feet away across a patch of barren concrete. “Element of surprise, mother f*ckers!”

The echo of the gunshots was deafening inside the elevator. Bernice threw her hands over her ears. “He’s an idiot!” she yelled at Rudy.

“You’re just realizing that?” Rudy yelled back, watching as Trip reached the Wound, opened the driver’s side door, and dumped Roxanne into the back seat. “But he is giving us a window of opportunity.” Rudy grabbed Bernice’s hand and yanked her along as he ran, hunched over, around the trunk for the Wound’s passenger side.

They hadn’t bothered to look around while they ran. Standing at the passenger side door, head still low, Rudy cautiously checked out their surroundings. There was nobody around. No zombies, no Security, no nothing. Just the empty concrete ring around the knobby Hub, and beyond that the shanty hovels of Origin City. “What exactly were you shooting at?” he asked Trip over the roof.

“Oh, I have to have a target now?” Trip asked. “You getting in or do I have to open the door for you?”

“Shotgun,” Bernice said as Rudy opened the passenger door.

Rudy, surprised, first looked at Bernice, then over at Trip, then back at Bernice, then back at Trip. His lower lip was trembling, like he really wanted to say something.

Trip smirked. “You heard her, she called it.”

Bernice patted Rudy on the shoulder, then reached in to pull the back of the front seat down for him. “In the back, lover.”

Rudy grunted, then ducked into the back seat. “Feel free to play with the radio. He loves that.”

“There’s a radio?” Bernice slipped into the front seat, shut the door. “Sweet.”

Trip sighed and got into the car, settling in behind the wheel. His hand automatically reached for the patch cord cable coiled up on the dash and found the jack. He blew on it, jacked it in behind his ear. He shivered with the familiar inrush of the Wound’s telemetry.

While Trip was probing the Wound’s systems, feeling around for anything that didn’t feel right and might be a sign of zombie tampering, out of the corner of his eye and through a twinge from the Wound he caught a glimpse of Bernice fiddling with the dash-mounted GameGear. He slapped her hand away. “That’s not a radio. — You wanna control your date, bro?” he asked Rudy through the rear-view.

“Hey, you’re the one that gave her shotgun.”

“Speaking of which.” Trip reached across Bernice to grab Rudy’s sawed-off double barrel off the dash. He handed it to Bernice. “You know how to use one of these?”

Bernice smirked at him and cracked the shotgun open over her knee to check it was loaded. “Got my Small Arms badge when I was eight,” she said, sharply snapping the shotgun shut.

Trip smiled. “Well, hoorah for the Sisters of No Mercy.”

“Dude!” Rudy whined in protest from the back seat.

“I don’t wanna hear it — shotgun goes with shotgun.” Trip twisted around in his seat, pointed at Roxanne. She was lying next to Rudy with her head resting against the doorframe, mouth open and drooling. “Anyway, you’re gonna be busy on baton duty keeping Roxanne stunned, okay?”

“Fine,” Rudy said, growling under his breath. He grabbed the baton from the floor well and, closing his eyes, gave Roxanne a short shock on her bare ankle. He rested the baton on his lap and reached for his calabash, jamming it between his teeth without lighting it, just for the oral fix. He looked around outside. “Why aren’t we being overwhelmed with zombies about now?”

“I’m thinking if that really is a Pack connection device, Roxanne and the All-Mind are tight enough in her brain that stunning Roxanne blew-back and caused a sympathy stun of the All-Mind. But don’t expect it to last much longer — the All-Mind’s gonna figure out it wasn’t really stunned here any second and mobilize.”

“So why aren’t we speeding away yet?” Bernice asked.

“Patience.” Trip lit a cigarette with the dash lighter. Through the telemetry link, the Wound showed him infrared views of the hovels surrounding the courtyard. Hovels filled with glowing blue shapes, zombies going about their daily routine. Or at least they had been up until a second ago. Now they were, en masse and as if obeying the same command, heading for their doors to come outside. Trip smiled proudly over at Bernice and twitched. “Okay, now it’s a race.”

The Wound leapt forward. Trip aimed her at the narrow gap of a street they’d been escorted down when they’d arrived.

The Wound’s telemetry showed Trip the blue zombie blurs shambling from their doorways. And of course, all of them seemed to be heading in the Wound’s general direction. One of the blue glows on the telemetry became an Associate zombie stepping out of a hovel into the street. The zombie turned to face the oncoming Wound, unafraid.

Trip slowed, glanced into the back seat. “Remind me again, where we are on running these things over?”

Rudy frowned at him. “They’re innocent people, dude.”

“So, maim but don’t kill?”

“Yeah, that’d work.”

“Gotcha.” Trip gunned the engine, jogging the Wound slightly to the left to sideswipe the zombie. Still, he hit the right bumper hard, went flying back into the wall of a hovel. Trip didn’t bother checking the rear-view to see if the zombie was still kicking — the Wound’s telemetry was showing him a blurry blob of blue slowly separating itself from a collapsed hovel wall. “This is too easy.”

“When do I get to shoot something?” Bernice asked.

Trip swallowed. His head was filling with blue blobs. And not the small, normal sized blobs, but the bigger, broader blobs of Security zombies. A whole hell of a lot of them, converging at the end of the street where it spilled out at the edge of Origin City’s dense ring of hovels.

“Oh, pretty soon, now,” Trip said, twitching to send the Wound left through an empty hovel.

Rudy reflexively ducked as hovel debris showered the Wound. “What’s going on?”

“F*ckers’ trying to roadblock us up ahead.” The Wound plowing full-speed through hovel after hovel, chunks of roof and wall battering harmlessly against her armored-plated skin, Trip reached for his elephant revolver. He slapped the chamber open, giving it a few good bumps to drop the spent shells from it, then motioned at the glove compartment. “Be a dear and get me a couple eighty-fives, will ya?”

Bernice rifled around in the glove compartment, taking care not to spill anything out, until she found the half-empty box of .85s. She tossed it to Trip, then kept rooting around in the glove box. “What about for me? I’m not seeing any shells.”

“Rudy,” Trip said, “share with the nice lady.”

Grimacing, Rudy shrugged his bandolier over his head and handed it to Bernice.

The Wound sped through another hovel and out of Origin City proper. Ahead of them was clear concrete all the way to where the merchandise racks started up, maybe two miles away. To their right, maybe a hundred yards away, a bunch of expectant but now disappointed Security zombies waited in ambush.

“We out-thunk ‘em, for now.” Trip loaded his gun, slapping the chamber into place. “Won’t last long.”

Rudy stared out the side window. “They’re already catching on.”

Trip didn’t need to turn and look. The Wound showed him random Security zombies breaking off from the mass, chugging their way towards them. And fast.

“Man, those things can move,” Rudy said.

Trip closed his eyes, felt around in the Wound’s telemetry... and found what he was looking for. Faint, but there, out on the open concrete plain. He angled the car towards it, and hit the gas, dozens of security zombies in pursuit. Without opening his eyes he turned towards Bernice. “You ready to use that thing?”

Bernice settled the bandolier into place over her chest. “I could shoot something, yeah.”

“Just have to keep them off us until we’re in range.” Trip twitched to roll down both Bernice’s window and his. He pushed himself up through the open window, trusting she’d get the idea and do the same.

The second he was out, he was twisting around and firing a shot into a Security zombie arcing down towards the trunk after a running leap. The shot caught the zombie in the crinkled, carapace covered face. Took it half off, but didn’t stop the zombie from landing squarely on the trunk on all fours. After a moment it steadied itself and tried to growl up at Trip, but with half its face missing, the best it could do was a sad gurgling as it coiled to leap at him.

The gurgle was cut short as Bernice’s both-barrel shot took it square in the chest, unbalancing the zombie at just the right moment to send it tumbling away.

Impressed, Trip smiled at Bernice across the roof. She was already reloading. “So, you and Rudy...” he began, firing behind them at a Security zombie he sensed through the Wound’s telemetry.

Bernice looked up from loading the sawed-off. “What about us?”

“What are your intentions?” Trip pulled off another shot, demolishing the leg of the closest Security zombie at the knee. The zombie stumbled, became a leap-frog for the other zombies running behind it.

“What?” Bernice snapped the shotgun shut and fired both barrels into a leaping zombie, winging it but otherwise barely causing it to falter.

Trip fired off his last round into the zombie Bernice had winged, right in the throat. The zombie’s head went rolling away. Trip snapped his head around to smirk proudly at Bernice. “You’re not his usual speed. Don’t f*ck him over.” A tingle in the back of his consciousness and he pointed his gun down at the Wound. He gave Bernice a wide-mouthed half-grin. “That’s my job. — Well, gotta go.”

He slid back down into the car, not waiting to see if she was doing the same, and settled down into his seat. “This is range, right?” Trip asked Rudy through the rear-view.

“Range for what?” Bernice asked, slipping back inside herself.

Rudy leaned forward, squinted out the windshield, up at the ceiling, mouth moving as he did silent calculations. “Yeah. Just about. Might not have enough room, though.”

“We’ll have room.” Trip twitched. The Wound slowed to under twenty and the GameGear screen went white, the words “Kitten Ejector” flashing in red, with a countdown beneath. 5, 4, 3...

Trip shot Bernice an excited, eyebrow-raised smile. “Watch this.”

1...

The Wound’s hood split open, right down the middle, and spat out a fireball. From the fireball emerged a short missile, no longer than a forearm. It seemed to hang in the air for a moment as stabilizer fins popped out, then took off, blue flame spurting out its ass. It dipped low to fly along the floor out ahead of the Wound.

Bernice’s eyes followed the missile, astonished. “You had that thing all along?”

Trip smirked. “Think we came in here without a way of getting out quick?”

The missile jerked upwards then, straight for the ceiling — and the homing beacon, still embedded right where Trip had shot it. On impact, the roof rippled, tearing and shredding upwards and out with an expanding fireball.

“Oh, great, you made a hole,” Bernice said as the smoke cleared, daylight streaming through the jagged-edged tear. “You bring a ladder?”

“What, and leave the car here?” Trip grabbed the steering wheel with both hands. “You’re gonna want to hold on,” he suggested, slamming the brakes. The Wound skidded to a stop just below the hole. As Security zombies swarmed in for the kill from all sides, Trip twitched.

The GameGear screen went white again. This time the words “Deus Ex Kangaroo” flashed red, but there was no countdown.

The Wound leapt. Straight up, lifted by a quartet of single-use jump-jets anchored to her undercarriage, one inside each wheel. There was just enough juice in the jump jets for the Wound to clear the lip of the hole and hover there a second before Trip triggered auxiliary rockets in the rear bumper to give the car a nice little push away from the hole so they were over rooftop. Trip twitched again, blowing the tires up to twice their size just as the jets sputtered out of fuel, dropping the Wound the few feet to the roof with a thud.

“Hey, what d’ya know,” Trip said to the steering wheel, “it actually worked this time.”

“And you’re welcome,” Rudy said. Bernice twisted around and leaned back over the seat to grab his head between her hands and pull him towards her, kissing him.

“Oh, brother.” Trip rolled his eyes at them as he twitched the Wound into park and let her wheels deflate back to normal size. “Rudy, you’re up front.”

“Wait a second,” Bernice said, letting go of Rudy’s head, “shotgun doesn’t expire.”

“Not shotgun. Behind the wheel.” Trip popped his door open, got out and flipped the front seat forward so Rudy could get out. “I wanna spend some quality time with my unconscious maybe zombie maybe girlfriend.”

“No shit?” Rudy got out, giving Trip the stun baton. “I get to drive?”

“Who said anything about driving?” Trip thumbed at the patch cord in his neck. Trip pushed Rudy out of the way and slid into the back seat. He fixed Rudy with an icy stare while he pulled back the front seat. “Just sit there and don’t touch anything,” Trip said.

“Sure, sure,” Rudy nodded, settling in behind the wheel. He kept reaching out to touch the steering wheel only to shiver and retract his hands. Next to him, Bernice giggled at his hesitation and snuggled herself up against him.

In the back seat, Trip laid Roxanne down, her head on his lap. He stroked hair away from her closed eyes, rolled her head over to get a better look at the biomass in her datajack. Its mottled skin pulsed as if it was breathing. “Okay, you disgusting little thing, you gotta go,” he said, and plucked it from her neck.

Roxanne’s eyes sprung open. The skin around her eyes was suddenly streaked with glowing blue spiderwebs.

“Vishnu’s balls!” Trip exclaimed, caught off guard. The unplugged biomass dropped from his fingers and he reached for the stun baton on the seat next to him only to find Roxanne’s hand already around its handle. And she wasn’t letting it go. She wasn’t trying to use it against him, though — just holding it, firm, so he couldn’t use it against her.

“Jack in!” Roxanne’s voice was coarse and crackling.

Trip wrapped his fingers around the baton, hoping his fingers would find the trigger. He’d stun them both unconscious is he had to. “That’d be a bad idea...”

Roxanne’s voice went soft, distant, her eyes staring up into his. “Jack in... or I kill her.”

“And of course you will.” Trip let go of the baton and grabbed the patch cord connecting him to the Wound. “I’m gonna regret this.” He gave it a yank, pulling the other end from the dashboard. As it whipped out, it almost hit Rudy’s ear.

“Hey, watch it,” Rudy said, twisting around. “What the...?”

Trip looked up at him. “I do anything weird, yank the cord, right?” Without waiting for a confirmation, he snicked into Roxanne.