NUKE Love!
Copyright © 2014 by Scott Christian Carr
Publisher: Hotkins Books
Published: 19 October 2014
The right of Scott Christian Carr to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This book may not be circulated in any format.
Cover design by Scott Christian Carr / Hotkins Books
Book design by Hotkins Books
http://www.scottchristiancarr.com/
Earlier Printings
NUKE Love! has been previously published in:
Death Be Not Proud
Edited by Thomas Erb
Dark Quest LLC (2011)
ASIN: B00G9KRKGM
(September, 201)
For Debbie — Let’s go to Burning Man…!!!
NUKE Love!
by Scott Christian Carr
The sun is hot in the sky, just like a giant spotlight…
The people follow the signs,
And synchronize in time…
It's a joke nobody knows: They've got a ticket to the show!
–Lenka
The Bus, man, it cuts a swath through the desert, careening from side to sandy side of the empty heat-puddled highway. Headed for the Heartland—Burning Man, just a neon memory in the rearview.
Fizzy is fiddling with the radio, twisting the ancient knob between sunburned, mud-caked fingers. Smoke-stained beard.
“Anything?” Howdy calls out from the smoke and tie-dyes. Burno, he just takes another long pull on his joint.
“Debbie, man! Look for Debbie—you KNOW she’s on…” Gregg smirks. “Go on, bro. Tune in and turn on your girlfriend!”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Fizzy roars. Turns from his seat, hands off the wheel. She’s—”
“Eyes on the road, man!” Burno sputters a lungful of blue smoke.
Fizzy yanks the wheel. The bus, it swerves—narrowly avoiding a jaws-of-life epilog with a rusty minivan barreling down the otherwise empty interstate. In the rearview, the peeling bumper sticker:
THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME!
“Whoa…!” Burno laughs. “They were close enough to smell the crap in my pants!”
“This shit can’t be happening,” Howdy is chewing on his knuckles.
“It’s not,” says Burno. “Fizzy missed ‘em.”
“Not them. I mean THIS SHIT, it can’t be happening, right?”
“It ain’t,” Fizzy calls from the driver’s seat, eyes locked on the road. Still fiddling with the radio.
“But your girlfriend said—”
“She’s not my girlfriend!” Fizzy’s denial is contradicted by a blasting voice of clarity from the radio—
—and, we’re back. This is everybody’s favorite girl, Diamond Debbie. And we’re in Day Three of what the authorities are calling The Catastrophe, but what we here at Satellite Underground like to call, The Big Shit. That’s right, folks, grab your tickets and pop your popcorn, ‘cause this is no joke. Looks like the dead are still walking the Earth…
“Dude, I can’t believe you fucked her…” snorts Burno.
“Yeah, I did!” Fizzy smirks. Fingers tapping the wheel.
…and this next one goes out to my favorite booty call, who was lucky enough to be at Burning Man when The Shit hit the fan for the rest of the world. And for all we know, he’s still out there, burning away…
“No fucking way!” The bus erupts into raucous applause.
“No fucking way,” Howdy’s tone, more somber. Gazing out the window. “What the fuck is that?”
Behind the amorphous, hulking shapes that for three days have floated lazily across the skies—like dark clouds, but solid. Almost organic, and heavy despite their airless drift—something new:
Laser lights from horizon to horizon. At first, like distant heat lightning, then taking shape and form. Connecting. Spelling out letters in neon green. Burning through the clouds, etching the sky.
SYSTEM ERROR
All eyes turn to the windows of the speeding, flower-painted bus. Mouths agape.
“Uh oh. Dat ain’t good…” Burno breaks the stoned silence.
The self-proclaimed antichrist, he sits in the Philly bar working on his fifth Pabst Blue Ribbon. Shot of Jack on the side. He calls himself The Bad Man, but just about everybody else—they just call him Stephen Redding.
“Yo, Koop!” the Bad Man hails the bartender, “’Nother order of nuclear wings.” The Chicken Koop boasts the hottest wings on the planet.
“You got it, Steve-O,” crusty old Koop dries his hands and flips on the radio as Alan the Alchy staggers in from the cold.
...welcome back to Love Talk –just kidding, you’re tuned into Acid Rock, only on Satellite Underground, but you already know that, unless you’re dosed and trippin’ the stratosphere, which brings us back to point—time for a friendly public service announcement from yer favorite gal pal Debbie Diamond. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, or haven’t left the bar in three days, you know that the dead are walking, and man, are they hungry! So get to your shelters, folks, and lock your doors. Get to your churches, ‘cause it’s time to start praying—grab your honeys, call a priest, ‘cause Daddy-O, I’ve been released! Yee-haw! And now that that’s outta the way… we’ve got Rocket Jones on the line. How are we doing today, Spaceman?
“You gotta be shittin’ me,” Alan announces in his loudest need-a-brewsky-quick voice, not to be outdone by the radio. “Hoooo-ley! What’s goin’ on outside! Friggin sky is falling… Looks like the goddamn heavenly operatin’ system done crashed!” He waits for a reply, receives none. “Go out an’ look up, you don’t believe me,” he dares his lifelong toasting buddies. “The hell’s next? Friggin’ zombies here in Scranton?”
“Not in my backyard!” from the far end of the bar.
“Amen, brother!” Redding holds up a beer and a wing. His long, greasy black hair nearly touches the bar—his arm, a tattoo study of flaming skulls and upside-down crosses. “Not in our backyard, indeedy… Let the rest of the country eat themselves silly in sin. Scranton don’t play that game!”
“Well, they got ‘em in Wilkes-Barre,” Koop drops a fresh plate of wings in front of Redding. “An’ Billy-Boo says they saw some over on Cedar Street. By the church. Stumblin’ around an’ smellin’ up the place…”
“Sumbitch…” Redding shakes his head, nuclear wing paused between the bar and his mouth. “Christ Savior—I’ll bet dollars to donuts that Father Bob and his faithful flock of devotees got all their on-again, off-again dead, not dead friends and relatives shacked up in there with ‘em…” He turns to the far end of the bar. “Whatchoo got to say ‘bout that, Schmoe?”
“Uhhh…” Schmoe is uncertain. “Not in my backyard?”
“That’s right!” the antichrist declares. “Not in OUR backyard! What say ye, good men?” he starts the chant. “Not in our backyard…! Not in our backyard…!”
“NOT IN OUR BACKYARD!—NOT IN OUR BACKYARD!—NOT IN OUR BACKYARD!”
“You know what they say, dontcha?” Redding asks the crowd, “When bad things happen…?”
The crowd is stumped.
“More bad things happen!”
“MORE BAD T
HINGS HAPPEN!—MORE BAD THINGS HAPPEN!—MORE BAD THINGS HAPPEN!”
“How do we know they’re not harboring their dead?” the Bad Man shakes his head and smiles.
“It ain’t right,” Alchy Alan frowns.
“Damn right, it ain’t right,” Redding grins. Takes a bite and smiles a mouthful of sharp, nuclear teeth. “And you know WHO ain’t right, right?”
“FA-THER BOB!—FA-THER BOB!—FA-THER BOB!”
“He ain’t right in the head,” says Alchy.
Redding sucks the last of the meat from his wing and turns to the mob. “Drink up, boys! Cuz we gonna blow this taco stand…!”
Debbie… Debbie… how could you do this to me? To us? Me stuck up here, and you… you…
That’s right, Jones. You ARE stuck up there. On the friggin’ Moon. And you’re not coming back. Get over it. Did you really expect me to wait for you? Forever? Come on, get real! Especially with what’s going on down here? Life’s too short—
Debbie… I love you…
Look, Jones. What we had was… Look, I’m not trying to be mean. I’m just trying to be realistic. What we had was… I’ll always have a place in my heart for you… And I did wait for you. I waited when you said you were going on the three year lunar colony mission. I waited through all the postponements and delays setting up Tranquility II—I waited for you when NASA scrapped the project, waited through all of the failed ‘bring the boys back home’ retrieval missions… And then, when they told me you weren’t coming back, ever, I—
You ran out and you fucked the first guy you could find!
Honestly, Jones… I can’t believe that you want to do this on the air. I mean, really. This is what you want? To broadcast your needy paranoia all over the entire planet? Really? You honestly expected me to just dry up and die alone, waiting for something that’s never gonna happen? You say you love me, and that’s what you wanted for me?
I wanted you to love me—I thought you loved me…
You wanted me to die alone. Like you. That’s selfish and unfair, Jones. And I’m sorry, but you’re not coming home and I am not going to become a spinster for you. Look, I can’t do this. I’ve gotta play another song.
How many?
Excuse me?
How many were there, Debbie? How many men have you fucked while I’ve been stuck up here? How Many? How many? HOW MANY?
“How many, Bill?”
“I’m sorry, excuse me?” Lt. Colonel Bill Hendricks glances up from his laptop to the geographic targeting screen spanning the length of his underground bunker. He turns down the radio—the Rocket Jones tear-fest will have to wait.
“How many?”
“How many what?”
“Pensacola, Florida… Waupaca, Wisconsin… Reno, Nevada… The list goes on and on and on… How many targets shall I set for the first volley?”
“I dunno… First things, friggin’ last, TALBY. First we’ve gotta clear up this system error. I don’t know where to begin… Are the Bombs ready?”
“Initiating…” a series of clicks and whirs as TALBY’s artificial, computerized voice murmurs meaningless streams of access codes and runtime logarithms.
Bill waits. Taps his fingers. Despite the space heaters and re-circulated air, he can feel a chill creeping through the mile deep, six foot thick, lead-lined walls of the launch bunker. He’s never felt so alone. Even TALBY’s overly enthusiastic AI interface feels shallow and artificial. Bill feels a pang of sympathy for Rocket Jones—but unlike Jones, he doesn’t even have the cancerous pain of lost love to cling to. Bill’s never had a girlfriend, and the chances of that happening now… Bill doesn’t want to admit it, even to himself, but he’s falling apart down here.
He waits for TALBY and stares at the launch screen. A pale geographic representation of the United States. Tracking the Z-Globules that drift mindlessly across the nation’s skies, and broken into territories and outbreak zones (zombie clusters marked in red, and almost always largest around the country’s smaller cities and larger suburban areas. Strange, thinks Bill. It would seem that the larger cities, with their high-rises and extensive police and military presence, were not conducive to spreading of the z-germ. And the rural areas just don’t have the population numbers to support a major outbreak). Across the length of the map, thin letters designating the ground and laser communication signals strategically placed around and above the continent spell out the sky-written words,
SYSTEM ERROR
“Bombs are online and awaiting orders,” TALBY breaks the silence.
“Alrighty, then,” Bill punches his pass-code into his keyboard and slides his microphone closer to him. “You guys ready for action?”
“Well…” the distinctly female, yet still artificial, voice of one of the Bombs comes over the speakers. “There’s just one thing…”
“What are you talking about?” Bill blinks.
“Well, we’ve been having a little bit of a pow-wow, me and the other Bombs… And… Well…”
“Spit it out,” Bill’s patience, wearing thin.
“We don’t want to explode.”
“I feel so bad for him…” says Margie, sipping her Mai Tai. “I mean, he’s stuck up there. Stranded… And she just left him!”
“I think she’s doing the right thing moving on,” Ron dabs at a Mai Tai stain on his Hawaiian shirt. Pushes his wire-rimmed glasses further up the bridge of his long, middle-aged nose. “I mean, like she said… What’s she gonna do? Wait?”
“I think she’s a slut.” Burt doesn’t pull any punches, as his sideburns and the flamingos that decorate his own flawlessly ironed shirt will attest.
“I dunno,” Margie takes another gulp of Mai Tai and leans over the railing of the boat. “I just feel bad for him.”
“Well, we ain’t here to feel bad, Marge,” Ricky smiles and pats his wife’s flabby arm. “This is the END OF THE WORLD – GET OUTTA DODGE cruise… And we’re here to parrr-ty like it’s… Well, like it’s the end of the world. Now hurry up and finish that drink, because I’ve got another batch of Mai Tai’s getting warm. And these good peeps,” he motions the twenty or so lounge lizards milling about the deck, chatting, sun worshipping and sipping their drinks, “are getting thirsty!”
The white van idles in the driveway of the rural Apple Valley home, thirty miles outside of Barstow. It’s night and there is no moon. In the neon green, system error skywriting, the bumper sticker is just barely legible:
THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME!
From the van’s radio—
So hoard your food and load your guns, folks. ‘Cause the Big Shit has really hit the fan! Board up your windows and keep the kids quiet, ‘cause this thing’s only gonna get worse. I’m thinking that just about the only safe place to be these days is on a boat… So says Diamond Debbie!
Inside the house, Mark and his wife are huddled around the TV with their two children. Alice cradles newborn Lucy in her arms. Four year old Max stares at the television, too, frowning but not understanding the gruesome images of man biting man. Mark, he’s got his shotgun by his side.
From outside, the sounds of raucous laughter and a breaking bottle. The doorbell rings—followed by violent, overzealous pounding. It’s locked, but someone is turning the knob.
“The hell?” Mark rises from his chair, grabs his gun.
“Help! HELP!” from outside. “There’s zombies out here!” the sounds of muffled laughter. “Please! Quick! Let us in!”
“Don’t open it,” Alice hugs the baby to her breast. “Mark…”
Mark looks at his wife. Looks at the door.
“What do you want?” he calls. Tries to keep the tremble out of his voice.
“Pleeeease!”
Mark pauses, stares at the knob. “We can’t just…” He opens the door.
And with a heavy shove, they are in—three men in their late twenties. Harsh crew cuts, baggy cammo pants and oversized ‘Property of the L.A. Dodgers’ shirts. Two white guys—one short and powerfully muscled
, the other, a hulking monster leading with an impossible beer gut—and a diminutive black man with coke-bottle glasses, tape over the nose. One arm crossed over his belly, he’s hiding a bundle of something under his shirt.
“Gotta use your bathroom, bro” the muscular dude pushes past Mark. The giant is on Alice in three strides, towering over her, leaning in and patting the baby on the head. His only expression, an impenetrable, sickening sneer. And the black guy, he strolls about the room. Picking up vases, flipping through books, wiping greasy fingers on the walls.
“You hear me, bro? I said, where’s your bathroom at?” the short, muscular dude pulls a smoke from his pocket and lights it. “Simon, you still gotta go, right?”
The black guy nods.
“Upstairs,” says Alice, eyes down on the floor. Clinging to her baby. Simon bounds up the stairs.
Bo, the big guy, he’s opening closets, peering into rooms, flipping the lights on and off. The baby, she starts to cry. Mark’s shotgun, it hangs limply at his side.
Little muscle guy, he’s leering at Alice. “Name’s Mike, by the way. Big Mike,” he grips his belt buckle. “Pleased to meetchya!” Standing on tiptoes, he leans forward and plants a sloppy, wet kiss on Alice’s forehead. After a moment’s consideration, he kisses the baby, too, then turns to the stairs, “You giving birth up there? What the fuck, Simon!”
The toilet flushes. Simon appears, all wide grin and wet hands. Wipes them on his loose, baggy shirt. “All good!” he grins.
“Then let’s go!”
And as quickly as they entered, they leave. After the door closes, no one speaks. Mark looks at Alice, she looks at the floor. The baby continues to cry, joined now by her brother, Max. The interlopers are laughing outside, by their van. Loud abrasive brays. A beer bottle shatters against the house, an engine roars to life, and they are gone into the laser-sky’d night.
NUKE Love!: A Road Trip Through the Zombie Apocalypse... Page 1
