by Eirik Gumeny
Queen Victoria XXX tossed a third penis at Andrew Jackson II. He dodged, turning sideways, allowing Vicky ample time to slide forward and kick him in the back of the legs. He buckled, falling forward, but not before Vicky knocked the second gun out of his hand. Andy’s knees hit the ground. Vicky promptly drove the back of her booted heel square into his junk. He gurgled slightly and fell onto his face.
“What ... what’s ...” began Leif Eriksson XXXIII, having just that moment acquired consciousness. He began to sit up. Chester A. Arthur XVII, freeing himself from the deflated sex dolls that had curtained themselves over him, accidentally elbowed the Viking in the temple.
Leif Eriksson XXXIII collapsed in a heap again.
His enemies detained and his life no longer in peril, Chester A. Arthur XVII strode confidently toward his friends, with a smug look on his face and completely oblivious to the fact that he was flanked on either side by DVDs with titles like A Midsummer’s Wet Dream and Jurassic Pork.
Thor and Boudica IX, however, were well aware and giggled the entire time.
“What?” asked Chester A. Arthur XVII.
“Nothing,” said Thor, standing behind Boudica IX, his arms clasped around her waist, pinning her arms to her sides. Both of them shook their heads frantically. “Nothing. Promise.”
Charlie eyed them suspiciously.
Queen Victoria XXX lifted Andrew Jackson II from the ground by his hair. He was less than appreciative of this.
“Ow! That hurts.”
“Shut up.”
“You wouldn’t by any chance be willing to tell me how to kill you, would you?” asked Chester A. Arthur XVII, leaning over and looking down at the other cloned president. “It would probably make this a lot easier for both of us.”
“You think this is over?” spat Andrew Jackson II. “You think I need guns to end you? I will beat you with my dick if I have to.”
Queen Victoria XXX let go of his hair and took a step back, holding her hands up.
“What? What am I missing?” said Chester A. Arthur XVII.
“I’ve, uh ... We ...” Queen Victoria XXX moved her hands about six inches apart. Then a little farther apart. Then a lot farther apart. Then a little closer. “Look, trust me, he could do it.”
“You slept with him?” The look of disgust on Charlie’s face wouldn’t have been out of place on a teenage girl looking at a dog taking a runny crap.
“What, you wouldn’t?” said Thor.
“I thought we were ...” began Chester A. Arthur XVII.
“Thought we were what, Charlie?” Queen Victoria XXX dared him, a smirk cutting across her face. “This was years ago. The survivor dorms were boring as sin and stocked with nothing but wine and chocolate. We all made some terrible decisions there and you know it.”
“Hey, so, clone lady, here’s a crazy thought,” began Thor. Boudica IX met his gaze, both of them craning their necks at an awkward angle. “After all this is over, and assuming we don’t end up having to kill one another, what d’you say you and I ... y’know." He thrust his hips suggestively. "Find a dark corner to get all horned up and bone down? Or, honestly, we could just get started now, if you wanted. I’m ... not really invested in this fight.”
“Andy was never in the survivor dorms.”
“Well, not technically, but he ran through them once. Or twice. All sweaty and rebellious ... and high on his own principles ...” She smiled dreamily.
“That is extraordinarily flattering, Swedish guy,” replied the redhead, “and with all the sexy talk and the porn and how tight you’re holding me, I am already halfway there – but I’m kinda with Andy at the moment. And he doesn’t exactly share. No matter how many times I ask.”
“Hey, look at that,” said Thor, “suddenly I care again.”
“That bother you, Charlie?” said Andrew Jackson II. “Knowing that I fucked your girlfriend?”
“Yes,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII, before quickly adding, “not that she’s my girlfriend.”
“Jerk,” said Queen Victoria XXX with a smile.
“I propose that whoever was better in bed gets to murder the crappier one,” said Andrew Jackson II.
“OK, fine,” agreed the other cloned president.
“You, uh, you don’t want to agree to that, Charlie,” muttered the queen.
“Seriously? This assclown?”
“I’m a very patient and attentive lover,” explained Andy. “Do you even know what the clitoris is?”
“The clitoris is a female sexual organ homologous to the penis,” stated Chester A. Arthur XVII, “the visible portion being located near the anterior junction of the labia minora, above the opening of the urethra and vagina.”
“Really? That’s your answer? Not ‘that thing you lick to make her legs squirm?’ No wonder you suck in bed.”
“I don’t suck.”
“I know! I just said that!”
“You sure you don’t want to get out of here?” asked Thor. “I’m pretty sure I saw a pizza tent in town.”
“If they’re still doing this in five minutes, sure, I’m in.”
“Isn’t that my line?”
“God willing.”
“Hey, funny story ...”
“I can’t believe I slept with both of you,” said Queen Victoria XXX quietly, rubbing her temples.
“Yeah, me either,” said Andrew Jackson II.
Queen Victoria yanked Andy’s hair again, this time much harder, pulling him into an even more uncomfortable position.
“Right,” said Andy. “I’m tired of this now.”
Andrew Jackson II whistled and a door on the far side of the warehouse detonated in a spray of splinters. Two sasquatches, each at least ten feet tall and covered in thick, dark orange fur, lumbered in from the overstock room to the right of the back office. They roared, shaking the DVD racks and assorted sex toys.
“Well, shit,” said Queen Victoria.
“Huh,” added Chester A. Arthur XVII.
“I got this, guys,” said Thor. There was a sudden, and loud, rumble of thunder. A bolt of brilliant light crashed through the ceiling, striking both sasquatches dead where they stood. The ceiling, unable to be struck dead, decided instead to start collapsing. The entire corner of the building followed suit.
“What the hell, Thor?!” shouted Queen Victoria XXX, taking a step back as dust billowed over the group. “We talked about this!”
“What? I was –”
“No. Outside! You’re in time out.”
“Oh, come on, Vicky, you can’t –”
“Outside, Thor! Now!” she barked, eyes narrowed and arm outstretched, pointing toward the emergency exit built into the nearest still-standing wall.
“Fine,” muttered Thor, letting go of Boudica IX and stomping sullenly toward the door to the left of the office.
“Leif,” called Andrew Jackson II. “Leif!”
The reconstituted Viking shook his head and began lifting himself from the floor, regaining consciousness for the second time in ten minutes.
“Wha– Who? Where am I?”
“Leif,” scolded the president, “come on. I’m not paying you to sleep.”
Leif Eriksson blinked a few times, then looked at his current employer and the pornography depot surrounding him. “Oh, OK, right,” he said, staggering forward. “What do you want me to do now?”
“Go out there and make sure that blonde guy doesn’t kill us with lightning.”
Leif Eriksson XXXIII raised an eyebrow. “But what if he tries to kill me with lightning?”
“Well, honestly, I’d rather that than all of us.”
“Yeah, me too,” added Boudica IX. “Sorry.”
“His friends are in here, though,” Leif Eriksson XXXIII pleaded, pointing at Chester A. Arthur XVII. “He wouldn’t –”
“It’s probably better if you keep an eye on him,” admitted Chester A. Arthur XVII.
“Whatever,” muttered the Viking copy, rubbing his eyes and shuffling outside. Fo
r good measure, he fell into a rack of DVDs and knocked them to the ground on the way out.
“So, anyway,” said Andrew Jackson II, kneeling on the floor, his head once again being pulled to an ungainly angle by Queen Victoria XXX, “where were we?”
“We were arguing about your continued existence and then you summoned a couple bigfoots. My friend, Thor, however, dry roasted them where they stood, so it’s safe to say we’re back to where we were two minutes ago. You can either continue to make pointless threats or man up and concede, but, honestly, either way, we’re done here.”
“You ever get tired of being wrong, Charlie?” asked Andrew Jackson II, pulling the knife from the holster crossing his chest and throwing it at Boudica IX. The blade clipped her left shoulder, slicing the bandolier and spilling grenades across the floor. No less than three rolled to Andy’s knees. He immediately grabbed one and pulled the pin.
“You dick!” yelped Boudica IX, placing her hand on her shoulder and stepping backward.
“Fucking hell,” said Queen Victoria XXX, letting go of Andrew Jackson II and running sideways in the same direction as the reconstituted Celtic leader. The two queens, both staring at Andy and the grenade, collided and toppled into a table covered in sample cases of lube.
Andrew Jackson II dropped the now-armed grenade. The explosive sat spinning on the floor.
“Later, jerks,” he said, scrambling from his knees and bolting through the DVD racks for the front door.
Chester A. Arthur XVII began to follow him, but stopped when he heard the frustrated swearing of Queen Victoria XXX and Boudica IX. The two queens were covered in personal lubricant and fighting with both each other and gravity, trying to get to cover.
They were less than ten feet from the grenade.
“Fucking hell,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII.
CHAPTER TEN
Snap, Crackle, Pop (Although Not Necessarily in that Order)
“I am Thor Odinson! Norse God of Thunder! Kneel before me!” shouted Thor Odinson, former Norse God of Thunder, standing before and pointing a mighty index finger at Leif Eriksson XXXIII. The reconstituted Viking, sitting on the curb, just looked at him.
“I’m not ... Norwegian or Danish or whoever it was that believed in you,” he explained. “I was created in a vat. And not even my own vat. There were, like, eight of us in there. They made us all lapsed Mormons. I still can’t drink coffee without feeling guilty.”
“Oh, I just ... I still don’t get how it works with you guys, what carries over, what doesn’t. Plus I’ve always really wanted to say that.”
“There probably aren’t that many opportunities.”
“There really aren’t,” said Thor, before jumping in place and sparring with the air. “So, fight to the death now?”
“Can I give up and walk away?”
“What? Why?” replied the thunder god dejectedly.
“You’ve got two bullet wounds already and your chest appears to be seared off. Yet you’re still standing here, ready to punch me. And then there’s the lightning thing they were talking about. I’m really not gonna win this one.”
“What if I fight with one hand behind my back?”
“Look, I’m taking myself outta this. Feel free to go back in and help your friends. I’m not gonna try to –”
“Oh, OK. I guess I’ll just –”
“It seems like the thing to –”
“I probably should then, yeah.”
Thor punched Leif Eriksson XXXIII in the upper arm, shattering his humerus.
“Gah!” shouted the Viking, grabbing his arm. “What the hell?! Why’d you –”
“Don’t do anything evil.” Thor pointed at him.
“I wasn’t going to, you prick,” said Leif Eriksson XXXIII, clutching his arm and holding back tears. “Go help your friends.”
“Asshole,” he added under his breath.
Thor jogged back toward the emergency exit.
“I really need to find a better job,” grumbled Leif Eriksson XXXIII, stumbling away from the porn store in search of medical attention.
***
Thor stepped back into the pornography warehouse just in time to see Chester A. Arthur XVII throw himself on top of a grenade. The reconstituted president’s body curled up over the explosive, lifted off the ground slightly, landed back on the ground, and then laid there bleeding.
Thor ran over to his friend, rolling him over. He grimaced and immediately rolled Charlie back onto his stomach. Despite his predilection for lining all of his shirts and pants with Kevlar, Chester A. Arthur XVII was apparently woefully under-protected when it came to taking a small explosive directly to the gut.
Charlie was dead.
“Thor!” cried Queen Victoria XXX, grabbing the table and trying to pull herself up. “What –” Boudica IX, likewise trying to pull herself up, absentmindedly placed her hand over Victoria’s mouth. Queen Victoria XXX bit down hard.
“Ow!” yelped Boudica IX, pulling her hand away and falling to the ground again. “Crap!”
Queen Victoria XXX stumbled slightly, dropping a knee straight into the nose of Boudica IX, but managed to get back to her feet. The redhead, however, blacked out like the Dominican Republic in the summertime.
The reconstituted royal began running toward Thor and Chester A. Arthur XVII, before quickly giving up on that method of locomotion, falling to her knees, and sliding to the dead man’s side.
“Is he ...?”
“OK? No, not in the slightest,” replied the fallen deity. “I can see what he had for lunch. I shouldn’t be able to do that.”
Queen Victoria XXX slumped forward, head in her hands and elbows on her knees. She began crying.
“Vicky ...”
Then she stopped crying.
Queen Victoria XXX snapped her head up and took a deep breath. Then another. Then she kind of ... stopped breathing entirely. Her body was shaking, her fists were clenched. She had a detached look in her eyes, simultaneously vacant and full of boundless wrath. Thor would’ve sworn to his father that they actually went black for a few seconds.
The cloned monarch stood up and calmly walked to the prostrate Boudica IX. She picked her up by her armpits, lifting the redhead’s unconscious body three inches from the ground.
“Boudica!” she snarled. “Boudica!”
Boudica IX didn’t respond. Queen Victoria XXX slammed her into the endcap of the nearest DVD rack. Plastic cases with pictures of well-endowed men and terrible movie title puns went flying.
“Boudica!”
“Wh– What?”
“Andy! Where is he? Where’s he going?!”
“I don’t – I don’t know,” she sputtered. “I met him here. He didn’t tell me anything.”
“Good to know.”
Queen Victoria XXX let go of the redhead. Her feet slammed back to the ground. Then she grabbed Boudica’s head, twisted, and broke her neck. The redhead fell like a rag doll.
“Holy shit, Vicky,” said Thor.
Queen Victoria XXX didn’t respond. She stood over Boudica IX, staring at her limp body and breathing deeply.
“You couldn’t have waited a couple minutes?” asked the thunder god. “Seriously, I doubt it would’ve taken more than five. Why do you get to bang the bad guys but I don’t?”
“I’m going after him.”
“Yeah ... That didn’t end so well for Charlie.”
The cloned British monarch ignored him again and sprinted toward the front door.
“What am I supposed to do now?” Thor called after her. “Everyone’s dead! You’re going to leave me alone in this ...” The former God of Thunder trailed off, looking around at the vast and varied wonderland of dirty movies before him.
“Guess I answered my own question, didn’t I?” he said to himself as he began browsing the aisles.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Car Insurance Industry Was Even Worse, Somehow
“You don’t have insurance.”
“Yes,
I know.”
“We can’t help you if you don’t have insurance.”
“I don’t need help; he does.”
“Does he have insurance?”
“I don’t know, he’s dead.”
“We can’t help him if he doesn’t have insurance.”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” said Thor, dropping the corpse of Chester A. Arthur XVII onto the camping cot in front of him. “This isn’t even a real hospital!” Thor flailed his arms, indicating the trio of tarps draped over braced two-by-fours before him. In the center was a coat rack holding a number of fluid-filled Ziploc bags with lengths of garden hose attached to them.
“I’m afraid it is, sir.”
“Seriously? You think writing HOSPITAL on your tent makes it true?”
“Actually, as far as the insurance agencies are concerned, it does.”
In between the world ending for the fifth and sixth times, a coalition of medical insurance companies – tired of sitting idly by and watching commercial corporations reap all the financial benefits of a zero-human workforce – replaced, en masse, all of their employees with robots.
Sadly, though, the automatons were pre-programmed to work on logic. Claims were still being honored and paid out. In fact, more than before.
This simply wouldn’t do.
The insurance companies tried to reprogram the robots to suck more at their jobs, but found it was a lot easier to simply change the job description. They dropped the “helping people” part of what they did and embraced their reputation as a nightmare of bureaucracy and unnecessary paperwork. They fired the machines and began hiring retired Chinese factory owners and deposed African warlords exclusively. They leveled all the forests in Alaska to make invoices. Insurance policy packets came with a complimentary crowbar to the knee. If a woman wanted to have a baby in a hospital, it usually cost the baby.
The end result was a lot of childless families and lot more people learning how to suture from the internet.
“This is bullshit.”
Thor returned Chester A. Arthur XVII to his shoulder and carried his bleeding corpse back across the town of Joe, sidestepping a number of still-burning townsfolk and heading for the car.
