New Title 1

by Prunty, Andersen

  This was unacceptable.

  This was going too far.

  I was taken in by them at one point, flown to who-knows-where to fight their stupid fake war. I had been bombed by them. I had been shot in the head by them. But I was not going to let them take my life, my previous life which, the more I thought about in comparison to what had come after, was pretty damn good.

  I tried to peel up one of the stickers from the side of my TV stand.

  I heard a sound coming from the kitchen and looked up just in time to see Baxter Baxter charging at me. He was naked. Toilet paper stringed out from his ass like a tail. I barely had time to brace myself before he barreled into me, driving me onto the floor, smothering me with his girth. I was pretty sure he had doubled in size since the last time I saw him. He was growling or snarling. Snarling and growling and drooling. He smelled terrible.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” He pinned my arms down with his knees, crushing my chest with his fat ass. He was probably getting poop on me.

  “I should ask you the same thing.”

  “You smug little shit. You can’t do anything right. Tell me what you’re doing back here.”

  “The war is over. I don’t know what the hell you guys were thinking. There was only one guy there. And he has to be dead. And you killed so many of your own men in battle.”

  “You have no idea.” His penis nearly rested on my chin.

  He stood up and quickly grabbed a gun, training it on me. I knew it wouldn’t kill me but I decided to play along. I needed to get some information from him. I needed to get him out of my house.

  “You’re supposed to be dead.”

  “Is that why you’ve claimed everything in my house?”

  “On behalf of the government. Your house has been declared a fort, a center of operations. Things are very dangerous right now.”

  “How are they more dangerous than before?”

  “What did you see in Grisnos? What did you find?”

  “I told you. One guy living there who has to be dead now.”

  “No. You found something else. I know you did. Fetch said he shot you in the middle of the forehead. I can still see the mark. You found it, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “The water, asshole! You found it.”

  “Is that what this was all about? The water?”

  “Do you know what that water does?” Then he looked at me. Looked back at the bullet hole. “Of course you know what that water does.”

  “You shouldn’t have just tried to take it. That’s not how things work. You can’t just steal other people’s things for your own profit. They teach you that in kindergarten.”

  “You don’t know the half of it.”

  “Illuminate me.”

  “We didn’t need to steal it for profit. If anyone knew about it, the world’s economy would collapse more than it already has.”

  “I don’t understand. A bunch of people living forever seems like a pretty happy thing. More people living, the happier they are, the more they buy things.”

  “Fear.” He looked absently into a corner of the room.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Fear. We would live in a society of people without fear.”

  “So?”

  “Idiot.” Baxter smacked me on the side of the head. “Don’t you realize that most people are motivated by fear? You buy things to keep you alive. You go to work so you can make money to buy these things. Without people working, without people buying, the world goes under. How is that hard to understand? The world is a machine that works. It doesn’t always work well but it does always work, and it’s fear that keeps those cogs oiled. What else did you find?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I find that hard to believe. How did you get back here?”

  “My thinking flying robot.”

  “How did you come by a thinking flying robot?”

  “Found it.”

  “You found something.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Everything’s gone now. Buried when the troops dropped all those bombs.”

  “Maybe they did drop a few but that doesn’t account for the destruction there.”

  “I was unconscious at the time. I don’t really know what happened.”

  “And you probably drank the water, didn’t you?”

  “Of course I did. I was thirsty.”

  “Then you, sir…” He reached into a drawer and pulled out a sticker. He peeled the backing off. “Are property of the Everything Government.” And he pressed the sticker onto my chest.

  Thirty

  “Unacceptable!” I shouted and delivered a powerful blow to his jaw. His head snapped back but he didn’t go down. He aimed the gun at my face and pulled the trigger. I felt the bullet enter just between my eyes and explode out the back of my skull. The impact threw me into the front door and I slumped down onto the ground. Baxter stood over me, toilet paper still trailing from his ass, erect penis jutting at a right angle from his body, a clear bead of semen oozing from the tip, his gun pointed down at me. I struggled to stand up. Bits of skull, brain, and a lot of blood were splattered onto the wall beside the door. Baxter continued to unload with the gun, nailing me in the heart, the stomach, the chest, the shoulder, and just above the knee in both legs. I didn’t know how many rounds his gun held. He could have just kept shooting and shooting. And, while the bullets didn’t kill me, they certainly stopped me. I would try to get up and he would fire off another round, driving me back to the floor. The carpet was soaked with blood and something thicker and pulpier. Perhaps it was viscera.

  After about ten shots, I could tell he was just going to keep shooting. So I lay there and pretended to be, if not dead, then at least immobile. I figured the only way I could die was if he were to burn me into non-existence. He must have been thinking the same thing. He disappeared back into the kitchen, possibly to get some matches or something. He should have handcuffed me or chained me down. As soon as he was out of the family room, I stood up and ran out the door. My robot friend still stood in the middle of the street. The gunshots had attracted a crowd of onlookers. Most of them were gathered around the robot and staring at the house. Then my condition seemed to register and many of them opened their mouths in horror.

  “Do you need me to call an ambulance?” Willie asked.

  “That won’t be necessary.” My ruined mouth made talking difficult.

  Baxter now stood at the edge of the porch, still naked, firing at me, firing into the crowd. His aim was not that great from far away. A middle-aged woman went down and clutched her shattered leg. I mounted the robot.

  “You might want to call an ambulance for her,” I said. “The rest of you will either want to stay in your basements or, if possible, get as far away from this house as you possibly can.”

  I didn’t wear a uniform so what I said didn’t really register. They just backed away from the fallen woman, as though her injury were more dangerous than what had caused it. The robot took me up into the sky. It knew exactly where I wanted to go.

  Thirty-one

  There was a vacant lot out on the edge of town by the old fairgrounds. There hadn’t been a fair there in years so it was really just a vast stretch of asphalt. Along the way, we flew just over top of the houses, my blood raining down. We landed in the parking lot and I dismounted my robot. The day was fading. This was good. I wanted to attack at night.

  I pulled the detached finger stub from my pocket and wrote GUN.

  I looked away and then looked back and there was a gun.

  But, perhaps, a gun wasn’t good enough.

  I needed to get my house back.

  I couldn’t let Baxter win this battle. I didn’t know what would happen after I got it back. I didn’t know what I would be going to in the first place. I imagined Baxter had probably called for some sort of back up. I didn’t want to find the whole army waiting for me. They would have weapons far more advanced than
Baxter. They might actually be able to destroy me. I wondered what would happen to me if I was completely destroyed. I wondered if I really would die and head off into some sort of afterlife. Or maybe I would just become some disembodied soul with no place to go. I already knew my brain didn’t have anything to do with it. It had been completely destroyed and regenerated without a problem. Or maybe, if my body was destroyed, that was it. Everything would be over. While I didn’t want that to happen, that was probably what I was most comfortable with.

  I wrote ROKKET LAWNCHER.

  After looking away, a rocket launcher rested on the asphalt.

  The robot continued to stand there, powered down, waiting to be used again.

  My finger stub was wearing down. I began to realize I didn’t have a limited amount of wishes but I did only have until the finger stub wore out. It was probably possible to obtain more, but I would have to fly back to Grisnos and hope that those charred bodies were still there. I felt certain the army would have had to collect them by now. Besides, maybe charred body parts only had the power after one had drunk the water. I needed to conserve.

  I wrote: ARSNAL

  I turned to look away. When I looked back there was a small mound of weapons. All kinds of weapons, all different makes of handguns and machine guns and things even larger. Bombs. Handheld things like nunchaku and brass knuckles. I now had nearly everything imaginable at my disposal. I was getting my house back. Baxter was going to pay.

  The robot was great but it wasn’t really much for storage. I needed something else.

  I bent back down and wrote: MOOVING VAN

  I looked away and looked back and there was a medium-sized moving van, already gassed and idling.

  The sun was now gone from the sky and I stood in an eerie twilight, wondering if I should really go back to my house and attack Baxter or if I should leave and find someplace else. I didn’t know if being virtually indestructible meant I would also live forever. If I was going to live forever, then I could think of hundreds of places I would rather live than that little house in Clob. I could take my robot and go anywhere. I could go to all those places I had wanted to visit. Paris, London, Munich, Amsterdam, Vienna. Then I remembered that we had invaded and assimilated all those places a long time ago. The stories I had read and heard about those cities no longer existed. They would be different now. They would be cities stretched thin and scared but still reaching for something more. Sad cities. Dying cities filled with dying angry people.

  “Robot,” I said. “I’m going to need your help getting all of this in the truck.”

  The robot snapped out of its restful state and clunked over to the pile of munitions. I opened the back of the truck and began putting the weapons in, one or two at a time. The robot dutifully scooped up entire armloads at a time. We finished much sooner than I would have thought. The last shreds of daylight left the sky, the night becoming full of the flickering, unnatural light of streetlamps.

  I told the robot it could either climb in the back or ride on the top. It crawled up on top. I thought it would sit down but it continued to stand. It looked proud.

  I hopped into the cab of the truck and raced back toward my neighborhood.

  Baxter would pay.

  Thirty-two

  I drove through the city toward home. I hadn’t driven anything since I was a teenager and controlling something the size of this beast was incredibly difficult. I hit a few cars on the sides of the road, setting off alarms. I was careful not to hit any children or pedestrians. This was easier than I had expected. It didn’t seem like anyone was outside. The whole city was hiding indoors, waiting for something. Probably waiting for me to rain hell down upon Baxter Baxter.

  Within ten minutes, my house was in sight. I breathed a quiet sigh of relief at the absence of a large army encircling my house.

  I gunned the engine, ran up into my yard, plowing in to my house by the porch. I doubted this would actually hurt Baxter but it would get his attention. The front of the trunk crumpled and foul smelling steam began hissing up from the hood. I jumped out of the truck, went to the back, and threw open the cargo door.

  “Hop off,” I said to the robot.

  It jumped off the roof of the truck and landed on the ground next to me like a bomb going off.

  “Hold out your arms.”

  The robot dutifully held out its arms. I handed it a rocket launcher and a very large machine gun with a giant banana clip. That should last him for a while. I grabbed a machine gun for myself and stuffed as many grenades as I could into my pockets.

  I looked at the robot. “Now, don’t shoot until I tell you to but if I do, aim for the windows in the house. If you see Baxter… if you see anyone in the house, aim for them. Okay?”

  “Okay. I’m a thinking traveling robot.”

  “Yes.” I paused. “And what do you think about this?”

  “This?”

  “Getting Baxter out of my house.”

  “He will get out of your house.”

  “Yes, but what do you think about that?”

  “He will get dead.”

  “Does that bother you?”

  “I am a thinking traveling robot.”

  He will get dead. I thought about those words. Baxter was the man who I had told I could never kill another human being. And now I was trying to kill Baxter. Did that make me a liar? A hypocrite? If I condoned murder but didn’t condone war, was there some kind of flaw in my thinking? Did that mean I could only condone murder if there was some personal gain to be had from it? But this was a matter of defense, wasn’t it? Wasn’t I defending my home? Wouldn’t I condone war if people were trying to invade the United States of Everything, as opposed to us invading them?

  I shrugged it all away. I had to. Now was not the time to have these thoughts. What did Corporal Grimes call them? Soft thoughts? The only thing I knew was that there was a miserable little fucker in the house I had bought and paid for and I had to get that miserable little fucker out of the house by any means necessary.

  Yes, indeed. By any fucking means necessary.

  And I had a whole truckload of means.

  Thirty-three

  Apparently when I thought of the word ARSNAL I was pretty thorough. Beside my veritable mountain of weaponry was a bullhorn. Perfect. I turned it on and aimed it toward the house.

  “Baxter!”

  I was hoping he would either show his face or begin firing. He did neither. The little fucker.

  “Baxter! I’M GIVING YOU TEN SECONDS TO VACATE MY HOUSE OR I WILL OPEN FIRE.” Should I have said my robot and I will open fire? Did that sound more intimidating?

  The neighborhood crowd was beginning to congregate again. Women, men, children, all gathered around my heavily armed robot and the back end of the truck and stood staring. I lowered the bullhorn from my mouth.

  “You people should not be here,” I said. “You need to get back in your homes. Or, better yet, get as far away as possible.” I almost told them to pretend a tornado was coming but then they would only go as far as their porches.

  My neighbor looked at me. His eyes looked resigned and his white mustache was drooping. “That the guy who shot Paula?” He pointed to the house.

  “Who?”

  “Paula. You know, when you was leaving earlier…”

  “Yeah. That’s him. His name's Baxter Baxter. He works for the government.”

  “I don’t care who the hell he works for, we want him gone. Need any help?”

  I probably needed all the help I could get but I didn’t want to implicate any of these people in my struggle. “I couldn’t possibly ask you to help. It’s too dangerous. This is my battle.”

  “If that shit’s in that house, then it’s all of our battles.”

  “I couldn’t be responsible for that. Fighting this guy would make you guilty of all kinds of crimes, the punishments for which would be very severe.”

  “Suit yourself then.” He walked back to the small crowd of people.

/>   I raised the bullhorn to my mouth once again. If I wasn’t wearing a uniform, at least I could be very very loud. “YOU PEOPLE NEED TO GO BACK INTO YOUR HOMES. YOU ARE IN DANGER IF YOU STAY OUT HERE.” It was probably even more intimidating since I assumed they couldn’t see the bullhorn.

  Baxter popped up from the attic window and shot my wrist. The bullhorn went flying and clattered onto the road. The crowd dispersed. My hand was barely hanging on to the wrist. I thought about picking up the bullhorn and commencing my count. Probably wouldn’t do a lot of good. With my good hand, I grabbed one of the grenades from my pocket, pulled the pin with my teeth and tossed it toward the window. It didn’t come anywhere close. It clanked off the aluminum siding, hit the grass and began rolling back toward me. I ran behind the trunk. The grenade went off and blew up the front of the truck, dirt and metal raining down. I grabbed the gun from the waistband of pants and fired a couple of shots at the window. At least one of them went into the house, the other one only creating a steel blossom in the siding.

  Baxter appeared again and fired off two more rounds. The first took off my left ear. The other one hit just above my right eye, knocking it loose and sending my vision all skewed. It took me a moment to realize it, but this was serious. If he knocked out both my eyes then I was pretty much done for. It was time for the robot.

  “Robot! Open fire!”

  Immediately, things became very confusing and very loud.

  Thirty-four

  I ducked behind the back of the truck and the robot moved to the forefront. I saw it raise both arms—one with a rocket launcher and the other with a semi-automatic assault rifle—and commence firing at the house. I trained my weapon on the attic window and fired continuously.

  There was smoke and fire everywhere.