“Great,” said Rudy. “Who the hell am I going to stand behind?”
“I still don’t see why I have to stick around,” Hunt-R said. “I carried the crates from the car for you, isn’t that enough?”
Two AM, and the junkyard rendezvous was a vast shadowy maze of walls made of crushed cars, stacked ten high, and piles of discarded refrigerators and washing machines waiting to be recycled, all under a hazy, full moon sky.
“I knew I should have built you wider,” Rudy said, twisting his nipple for more THC-analog. He peered out from behind Hunt-R just as a thirty-foot long octotank stretch limo skittered on eight armored legs through the junk yard’s main gate. A smaller octotank, this one with an anti-personnel crowd-control rubber pellet autocannon mounted in a turret rig on its top, hopped along after the big stretch, escorting it. Nothing about them screamed “rebel”. They were just your typical rich guy ride and armed protection, like any well-off and sane person would use to get around LA.
Still, Hunt-R slowly began to sidestep towards the Wound, parked a few dozen feet away. “You know, I should really go back to the Home, make sure nobody’s thawing out and that the rats aren’t having a party.”
“Stay put or I roach motel your swim team,” Trip ordered as he stepped out from behind Rudy and walked towards the stretch limo. He waited for it to crawl to a stop in front of him and for the back door to pop open. “Xavier, so nice to see you again,” he said as a short stepladder automatically extended itself, Dinky standing in the doorway impatiently. “And with working legs, even? Glad that worked out for you.”
“No thanks to you,” Dinky said, the powered joints of the support and recovery armature encasing his lower torso and legs giving off a soft whine with every step down the ladder. Under the armature, his legs were wrapped in layers of glistening artificial skin. The bandages were webbed with filament-thin wires, just barely visible under the translucent, lab-grown material, sending timed electrical pulses into his legs to promote rapid healing. “It didn’t take me long to figure out you staged that accident just to get a meeting with me. There were easier ways.”
“But not ones involving blimps, and I know how much you like blimps.” Trip stood back as Dinky walked towards the stack of crates, and to keep an eye on the camo-uniformed soldiers getting out of the escort octotank. Trip gave them and their conspicuously displayed guns a friendly nod. “What’s it matter how we got here and who’s responsible for who breaking what? All that matters is we have guns, you need guns, you have cash, we need cash.”
“These AR-15s?” Dinky asked as he reached the crates. He didn’t move to open them. Not yet. There was a protocol to these kind of things, and to Trip’s relief, Dinky seemed to be following it. He’d wait for Trip’s lead.
“That’s what the crates say, so, yeah, guess they’re AR-15s,” Trip said.
“How’d you get your hands on so many?” Dinky asked.
“That matters how?”
“They’re not originals, are they?”
“You kidding? Not even you could afford originals.” Trip crossed to the Wound and reached into the back seat through the open driver’s side window. He pulled out a rifle—a real, metal rifle with a firing pin and ammo and everything. He tossed it nonchalantly at Dinky. “But they are vintage. Argentinian. From two world wars back. Only used in small border conflicts by little old women on Sundays since.”
Rudy casually sidled over to Trip and asked, softly, “Where’d you get that one?”
“Swung by mom’s last night,” Trip whispered as Dinky cocked the rifle and pointed it at a pile of tires. “Remind me we need to buy her a new front door lock. And a new front door.”
They stood and watched patiently while Dinky, expressionlessly, emptied the whole magazine into the tires. The rapid-fire retort echoed ominously through the junk yard.
“It shoots a little to the left,” Dinky said, tossing the rifle back at Trip.
“It’s a machine gun.” Trip slung the rifle over his shoulder. “Shoot more bullets.”
Dinky nodded. “We never discussed price.”
“I just assumed price was no object,” Trip said with an optimistic smile.
“It’s a bit of an object. Unlike my other business enterprises, the rebellion has yet to turn a profit.”
“Twelve hundred per unit,” Trip said.
“That’s highway robbery.”
“Junk yard robbery, technically,” Trip said. “But you brought twice that, didn’t you?”
Dinky made this little snort of a laugh. “You said it yourself, the rebellion needs guns. But at nine hundred per unit.”
“Done,” Trip said.
Dinky gestured for one of his bodyguard rebels—the one carrying a metal briefcase— to step forward. “How about ammo?”
“There you’re on your own,” Trip said, casually glancing behind him at the top of a wall of flattened cars. He caught a fleeting glimpse of a glint of light flashing off a pair of binoculars and blinked four times. He turned back to Dinky. “Unless you want to go back to twelve hundred per, with the promise of an ammo delivery next week.”
“Done,” Dinky said. “And we never mention Batman again.”
“Who?” Trip said, squeezing his eyes shut just as the sky above the junk yard erupted in light. Bright, blinding sun-like light, from the dozen flash flares streaming into the sky, simultaneously shot up from behind the walls of cars surrounding the rendezvous.
Eyes squinted against the blinding flares, Trip grabbed Rudy and pulled him toward the Wound.
“I can’t see, what’s going on?” Rudy asked, rubbing his stinging eyes.
Trip pushed Rudy down below the Wound’s hood. “Just duck already. The cavalry’s here.”
Or rather the platoon of Chinese Occupation Force soldiers that had been waiting for the Go signal in the shadows of the junk yard.
They streamed in from all sides, through the gaps between the car walls and mounds of refrigerators. Rifles raised in ready-fire position, they quickly surrounded the blinded Dinky and his rebel bodyguards.
Rudy squinted over the Wound’s hood. The Chinese soldiers disarming Dinky’s rebels looked to him like blurry splotches of Mandarin-shouting forest green. “How did they know? And why aren’t they arresting us?”
Trip shrugged and stepped out from behind the Wound just as a soldier walked over to the car. The soldier extended Dinky’s metal briefcase at Trip and bowed. “For you service to the Red Army.”
Trip took the briefcase and returned the bow. “No problem,” Trip said, as the soldier ran off.
“I should have guessed.” Rudy shook his head. “You don’t feel at all bad for betraying the rebels, do you?”
“Nah, I’m sure they’ll work something out.” Trip opened the lid. The cash inside made him involuntarily quiver with delight. “Cali’s full of lawyers, and Xavier can afford the best. He’ll probably end up leveraging this into some kind of concessions from the Chinese. You’ll see, it’ll all work out for the best—”
A round of gunshots and he looked up from admiring the cash. Dinky and his rebels were lying at the base of a wall of cars, dead.
“Or,” Trip said as he closed the briefcase, “they’ll be lined up and shot summarily without a trial.”
“Or they’ll be lined up and shot summarily without a trial,” Rudy repeated, swallowing. “Karma is so going to smack you down someday, you know that, right?”
Trip handed him the briefcase. “Karma can suck it. — Hey, where you going, robot? Grab the crates!”
Hunt-R was half-way to the exit already. He stopped and yelled back, “Why do we need the crates?”
Trip lit a cigarette around a devious little half-smile smirk and walked over to the group of Occupation soldiers propping Dinky’s body up against a car wall to take souvenir and propaganda pictures. “So, how you guys set for guns?”
THE END
Trip and Rudy Will Return In
Take the AllMart!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JAMES IVAN GRECO is an author, doodler, amateur curmudgeon, and pizza enthusiast. He lives in the future apocalyptic wasteland that is southwestern Ohio with his wife, son, two cats, and an ever-growing collection of toy robots, aliens and spaceships.
Visit his official website at EvilUniverse.com or email him at [email protected].
BOOKS BY JAMES IVAN GRECO
DUNGEON BREAKERS
TAKE THE ALL-MART!
WE’RE GOING TO WAR!
THE ZOMBIE MAKERS
ROCKETSHIP PATROL
SPILL
GREED SLOTH ARROGANCE AND SHAME
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Want to know when James Ivan Greco releases a new book? Like free stuff? Kill two robot birds with one mass-accelerated stone by subscribing to his mailing list. You’ll get email notifications about new releases as well as news on special offers, and as a thank you, you’ll get a free eBook copy of his short story collection, Greed Sloth Arrogance and Shame. To sign up, visit EvilUniverse.com and click on the Subscribe to the New Release Mailing List link at the top of the page.
Copyright © 2013 J.I.Greco. All rights reserved.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Published by Chaotic Neutral Media.
Death Blimps of Doom! Page 3
