Nightshift 42: Hal's Used Cars

[fencing_captain]

[ from here]

The business had been open when the changeover happened, so the doors were unlocked. Juri pushed them open with one of her feet. It was too quiet as she stepped into the dark showroom. It wasn't as big as she expected such things to be, but silent cars surrounded the offices. The stench of the dead filled the air though. Her ears didn't

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[toxicspiderman]

[from here]

The used-car dealership was one of those small, urban lots, where the cars were backed up against each other rather than sprawled over acreage so large that people would buy something just to drive it back to the showroom. The obligatory tinsel-and-flag regalia hung limply from poles. No breeze. No fresh air. Just the rising stench of decaying flesh. He should be used to this by now, right? Just pretend the fog was a putrescine stinkbomb. And watch your back. Shit. He wasn't equipped for this. At least the yard was quiet. Quiet enough that he should hear the things with enough time to run for it.

Somewhere in the race to the future, the cars had all come to look alike. Even the ones that were some unholy mating of station wagon and Jeep. How the fucking hell did they get those past the CAFE standards, even with the cookie-cutter aerodynamics? And aerodynamics they had -- all those sterile curves, cancerous growths on the fuel economy of a nation. The results of endless nights of Cambridge postdocs masturbating in wind tunnels and then selling the results to the highest bidder. Or a row of metallic-sheened turds, washed up on an asphalt shore.

"Find something cool, man. I'm going to do something really fucking stupid."

S.T. scowled at them all and found the ugliest of the Jeeps -- since when did Japanese companies make gas-guzzlers? He popped the hood. At least some things didn't change. He yanked out a rubber hose and dropped the hood shut again. This was going to be disgusting. He poured one soda bottle out on the ground while he popped the gas cap. The tube made a passable dipstick -- there was a fair bit of gasoline in here. Then he put his lips to the tube and sucked.

The best thing he could say about an accidental mouthful of gasoline was that for a split second, he couldn't smell death. Then he was spitting and hacking, one thumb still over the end of the tube. He'd successfully made a siphon. One bottle was filled, then another, then a third, before the level dipped too low and a pocket of air snuck into the tube. He capped the bottles, took a sip of the remaining all-artificial crap (jury still out on whether it improved the gasoline aftertaste).

He didn't notice that they'd been followed into the lot. Two zombies had snuck up behind him. A pair of moaning sighs, like the worst Playboy Bunny centerfold ever, echoed in both ears. He made a noise that was by no means a shriek and jumped up onto the running board, hands scrabbling at the roof rack for purchase. "Spider. Help? Now?"

[iwascloned]

Spider didn't want to watch S.T. suck off the jeep, but some stubborn sinew in his neck prevented him from looking away. And when the car began ejaculating gallons of transparent liquid, Spider's disgust melted into a kind of horrified curiosity. What did they fill their cars with in this brutal past? Blood plasma? Vodka? The piss of mental patients? The latter could serve as a cheap, renewable resource as long as the whole world was being institutionalized at the same rate as this New Jersey hellpit. Might be wise for him to ask S.T. about this before he actually started urinating on all the cars. The question was laboriously forming in the recesses of Spider's brain when a two-part-harmony of ghastly moans tickled his eardrums. At first he assumed it was the car. S.T. was servicing it pretty good. But just to be sure, he turned his head.

Before S.T. could even ask for help, Spider was charging.

"THESE ARE OUR CARS, YOU ROTTING MAGGOT-ORGY!" He howled, simultaneously ripping his entire forearm through the lead zombie's solar plexus. His fist came out the other side clutching a knot of rancid intestines, which spooled out of the carcass like a firehose drenched in spaghetti sauce.

"DIE YOU BASTARD, DIE!" Spider screamed, shoving his arm through the creature until there was no more arm to shove. The zombie's stomach flesh sagged spongily against Spider's shoulder, but still the thing moved. Its gnarled hands reached out for the journalist's tempting bald head, and the brains it contained.

[toxicspiderman]

The roof-rack was designed for kayaks or possibly just to suggest the owner might someday be rich enough to go on Safari, but it was sturdily attached. S.T. yanked himself up one-handed, rotator-cuff tendons shrieking but holding.

He kicked at the skull of the disembowled zombie. He tried not to puke his guts (in the figurative sense, thank fuck) up. Both succeeded. The skull bent a little under his feet. But soft-soled tennis shoes are not the same as steel-toed workboots, and the zombie only stumbled back.

"Go for the head, moron. Don't they have movies in the future, or were you too much of a poxy shut-in as a kid that you spent all your time hunting for scrambled porn?" S.T. paused to kick again. "Or are you actually a space alien? No, wait, if you were a space alien, you'd have to have watched television. Lightyears of Mork and Mindy reruns."

Spider's arm was sort of wiggling, covered in viscera. "Addendum: if you're going to have a monster burst out of your chest, get it the fuck over with."

[iwascloned]

Few things are as disturbing as watching a walking corpse reach hungrily for your tasty brains. But try watching a walking corpse reach hungrily for your brains while you have your entire arm solidly enmeshed in its clammy intestines. With two dead-pale hands inches from Spider's face, some vicious instinct shoved his anemic common sense away from the controls and took over. The journalist's intestine-drenched hand shot upwards, grabbing the back of the creature's head, then forced the dented skull down onto Spider's waiting knee, where it made a noise like a gorilla fucking a grapefruit.

"FUCK YOU!" yelled Spider, "SCRAMBLED PORNOGRAPHY IS A LEGITIMATE AND NECESSARY MEDICATION FOR MY CHRONIC SEX DEPRIVATION."

[toxicspiderman]

"No thanks, dude. And I read Playboy for the articles." Right now, he would read it for the articles if he thought he could find a copy. The information drought was killing his brain cells. Much longer, and he'd be drooling like the thing walking over (no, through) its fallen comrade. He could only imagine what it'd be like for a serious journalist.

Wait. Spider? Serious? Was that a glaring contradiction? He hopped down from the roof and contemplated the possibility while he scooped up the gas cap as the only thing within reach to keep from skinning his knuckles on zombie eye socket. Naah, all journalists were nuts. Sometimes that meant screwing the story in the Harbor, though usually it just meant empty promises and tell-alls at restaurants that damned well better have beer. And sometimes it meant Zombie Hunting 101. Time for show, not tell.

He aimed for the bridge of the nose. Classic self-defense move. The ones they taught to girls and long-haired protesters of any gender, on the grounds that someone would come for them eventually. It was supposed to drive the nose into the brain. Instead, the nose just squashed. S.T. twisted, and the cap turned, and then clicked wetly.

The zombie toppled over backwards, gas-cap still protruding like a gameshow button in Double Dare: Back From The Dead. He stepped on it, and the requisite goo put in a cameo.

"Let's get the fuck out of here. The sales staff are circling."

[iwascloned]

Whether they ran on piss, vinegar, or nitroglycerin, the cars at least LOOKED similar to the metal murderbeasts of Spider's present. That was good news in the circumstances, as it meant one less hurdle in the race to select and steal a vehicle. Given the circumstances, Spider opted to yank his bloody arm out of the now-ex-zombie and hop immediately into a nearby rash-red convertible. He ran a slimy hand over the leather seats, then began poking at the plastic plate under the steering column.

"How do your cavemen cars start? Do I need to jam my feet through the floor and sprint us to safety, or are there high voltage wires in here that I can cross at random until something starts moving?"

[toxicspiderman]

"Got it in two. Should be a panel under the steering wheel. If it has screws, beat on it until they give." He was about to hop in over the door himself, when he heard something. A voice. High and feminine and speaking in full sentences.

Two figures were visible through the showroom windows. Both moved with purpose. Looking for something?

S.T. set the bottles in the backseat and nodded to Spider. "Don't electrocute yourself, man. I'll be right back."

[jumping down to here briefly, back in a flash]

[iwascloned]

Unfortunately for Spider, whatever godforsaken Nipponese factory put this car together had done it properly. No amount of finger-prying was getting the steering column open. Maybe there was some kind of tool in the glove compartment ... a pry bar or a gun, or a chainsaw maybe.

In fact, the glove compartment contained nothing but an owner's manual, a copy of the car's registration, and ...

A PACK OF CIGARETTES.

Before he even realized what he was doing, Spider had ripped the top off the pack and had all of its contents between his lips, ready to smoke. But how to light them!

The car had to have a cigarette lighter. The little black knob at the bottom of the dashboard emblazoned with a stylized cigarette would be a good candidate. The problem was figuring out how to work it. Pressing it did nothing. The button merely popped back out. So Spider tried pulling it. It came out. He stuck it in his mouth, next to the cigarettes. It did nothing. He stuck his finger in the empty socket. Not even a spark. DAMMIT THE CAR NEEDED TO BE ON.

"DO NOT WITHHOLD FIRE FROM ME, DEMON CAR!" he yelled, once again attacking the steering column with his fingers.

This time, he got it loose.

[toxicspiderman]

[aaaand back from here]

Spider hadn't even noticed he'd had gone, had he? S.T. drummed his fingers on the doorframe and sneered. "Move it, Mister I Can Only Hijack Flying Cars." He vaulted the door without waiting to see if Spider could react in time (he did), and landed directly in the gooey zombiejuice contrail Spider had left on the white leather. It wasn't an unfamiliar feeling. He'd gotten back in the old van after a gig wet and slimy on more occasions than he could tally, but it didn't make it appealing. And rotting fish beat rotten human in the scent department even when creepy fuckers hadn't installed odor amps in his head.

Whatever. At this point, he probably owed Bart royalties on that phrase, but it still bore saying. What the fuck ever. He eased the seat back, reached down between his legs, and started yanking. At the wires. Then he stripped them with his teeth, spat any resulting toxins over the window, and grinned. "Watch and learn."

Before he started connecting wires, he did a belated sniff test for gasoline fumes. None managed to penetrate the miasma of putrescine and cadaverine. Besides, it was probably too late. He grabbed the severed head of the cigarette pack and used it to twist -- the plastic would do as an insulator. The seatbelt alarm chirped. S.T. ignored it. A second twist and the engine growled its way into the menagerie.

"Bingo." He glanced at the dash. All systems go. "And we've got most of a tank. We can get halfway to nowhere." The seatbelt alarm was still beeping. He fastened his seatbelt. It didn't stop. Must have a pressure sensor, since a second symbols was still illuminated. "Strap yourself in and let's put the pedal to the metal."

He threw the gearshift in reverse and started backing out of the space.

[iwascloned]

Spider briefly weighed the pros and cons of wearing the seatbelt as opposed to constantly standing up in his seat and swatting at zombies as they flew past. One way would spare him the horrible high-pitched danger noise. The other way allowed him to constantly stand up in his seat and swat at zombies as they flew past. He opted for option C. He fastened his seatbelt and jabbed at the cigarette lighter with his finger. While waiting for it to warm up, he turned to S.T.

"Want a cigarette?" he said around a mouthful of cigarettes.

[toxicspiderman]

S.T. ignored Spider's seatbelt antics with the aplomb of an MBTA driver on quaaludes. Instead, he glanced past him at the mirror, long enough to get the perfect movie-camera bracketed shot of a zombie getting pulled under the wheel while the label proclaimed that objects in mirror may be closer than they appear. Or he assumed that was what it said; he couldn't read it from here in the dark.

Thump. The car bumped up and over several zombies. S.T. was pretty sure he could feel some of them squirming as he rolled over them.

Then he leaned over and plucked a cigarette from Spider's mouth. He wiped it off on his jeans. Good enough.

"Save a few of those for later. Might need them to light the matches." He jerked a thumb at the back seat, where the half-made Molotov cocktails were managing not to spread so many fumes as to light the car on fire now.

The cigarette lighter popped; S.T. lit his, then passed it to Spider. With an overdramatic flourish, he threw the car from reverse into drive, and peeled out of the lot. Zombies growled; the engine, and S.T., growled back.

[to here]