open dash ashtray and reached into the back seat to grab a milk gallon of Morty’s Finest and a spiked motorcycle helmet. He strapped the helmet down over his fez and stuck a bendy straw into the beer jug. He sucked up a good slug while rotating his left nipple all the way up. “Okay, now I’m ready.”
Trip slipped the Pez dispenser away and sat back, lacing his fingers behind his head. “And we’re off,” Trip said, tensing for acceleration and twitching his left eyebrow.
Nothing happened.
Bewildered, Trip crunched his eyebrows at the steering wheel and twitched again. And again. And again, this time whacking his palm against the dash-mounted GameGear.
Rudy cleared his throat. “You’re manual, remember?”
Trip grunted. “And you said I’d never need a second jack,” He grabbed the steering wheel with one hand, shoved the Wound into Drive with the other, and stomped down hard on the gas. The Wound leapt forward, kicking up a cloud of dry wasteland behind it as launched towards the All-Mart.
“So,” Rudy said, grabbing the dashboard, “pretty ironic, this.”
“Right!” Charged by the caff pills hitting his system, Trip’s hand left the steering wheel and flashed out like lightning into Rudy’s throat, edge-on.
“Worth... it...” Rudy choked out, massaging his Adam’s Apple as the Wound hit the expansion front.
Tendrils of nanochines struck out for the Wound as it sped through, only to snap back as if in pain, tendril tips sparking from contact with the car’s electrically charged depleted uranium armor plating.
And then they were through. Into darkness that seemed to stretch out forever.
Trip twitched to turn on the hi-beams. When that didn’t work, he swore, then pulled out the physical light knob. Twin beams stabbed out into the dark over endless bare concrete, illuminating row after row of support columns and empty space. He punched the scanner’s activation sequence in to the GameGear — Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A — and after a moment the GameGear’s tiny display screen blinked on, showing a wireframe representation of the All-Mart’s interior.
Rudy released his death-grip on the dash and yawned. “That was fun.” He took a sip from the beer jug and placed it on the seat next to him, then curled up against the passenger door. “Wake me up when we get there.”
“Yeah, whatever.” Trip slowed the Wound to around fifty miles per, slotting it between a row of support columns. He checked himself in the rear-view — the RATpack antenna was blinking yellow. He sighed. “Well, it was just an idea —”
He cut himself off as the antenna tip began blinking red, establishing a connection with its paired unit.
Roxanne’s unit. Had to be.
Trip broke into a huge grin and jogged the steering wheel hard left, swinging the Wound to point towards the signal, and fishtailing the car’s back end through a support column in the process.
Rudy grumbled, opening one eye briefly. “Hey, keep it down. Trying to nap here...”
Thirty seconds later. A mile deeper into the All-Mart. The ceiling lights were on now and the signal between the RATpack antennas was growing stronger every second.
Now was not the time for Rudy to be peacefully snoring away, Trip thought. He grabbed the jug of beer from the seat between them and poured it out over Rudy’s crotch. Rudy came awake with a start, groggily looked down at his soaking lap. “What the...?”
Trip handed him the near empty jug. “You were drinking in your sleep.”
“What, again?” Rudy sat up, draining the jug empty before noticing the blinking RATpack antenna. “That mean you’re getting something?”
“Yeah. Decent signal, too.”
“We close enough for contact?”
“Nah, we’re still about three miles off, give or take. But it’s got to be her, and she’s making it easy on us. She’s standing still.”
Rudy nodded, stretched over the back of the front seat to grab another gallon of beer. Sorta-King Morty had stocked them well before sending them off on their mission. He uncapped it, took a swig. “You know, I was thinking... she didn’t get snatched up by herself.”
“Yeah, so?”
“We gonna try and help the others?”
“Hadn’t really thought about it,” Trip said, lighting a cig with the car lighter. He pushed the lighter back into the dash. “I suppose... no.”
“Really?”
Trip shrugged. “I’m focused here. On Roxanne. Everybody else, let them find some other sucker to rescue them.”
“Even the hot ones?”
“Well... okay, but they’d need to have rich dads willing to pony up a reward.”
Rudy scowled. “How we supposed to figure out their parent’s net worth? We gonna screen them?”
“It’s not