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Friday, December 27, 2013

Amber’s Car 2: Blood on the Nile



 So while Dr.Thunder is busy in South America with his weird cult-thingy, he has been unable to update Ask Dr. Thunder. So in the meantime, here is my latest short story:

"Hey Mike, do you think you could give me a ride home from work later?"
"Perhaps. Why do you need a ride?"
"Oh my car got stolen again."
"Where are you parking your car that it gets stolen this often? The slums of Buenos Aires? Nevermind, I'll assemble the men."
"No need, the cops actually already--"
"TOO LATE! ONCE ASSEMBLED THEY CANNOT BE UNASSEMBLED!"

0900 - Death Valley, California
The Chief hurried through the dank corridors of the S.S. Clusterfuck, a 300 meter land-based aircraft carrier churning through the desert sands on four massive treads.
At his side, Goggle, his lead communications expert strode in his shadow, flicking through a series of files on a tablet in his hands.
"So we can confirm that Amber's Car has been taken again?"
"Yes sir. That's the report we received from command as of 0730 this morning."
"My god man," The Chief pulled off the sunglasses he had inexplicably been wearing indoors. "This is big. That's like some sort of... like when multiple things fit together... like..."
"Pattern, sir?"
"You're damn right Goggle. It's some sort of pattern. And we're going to get to the bottom of it."
"We'll need a new team. Most of the men who survived the first recovery mission are either dead or retired."
"It's been a four crazy months. Don't worry Goggle, I have just the loose cannon badasses for the job!"
They stepped out onto the deck of the carrier into the baking sun where eleven human shaped mounds of angry muscle saluted sharply. The Chief returned the salute and then turned to his comm expert.
"Goggle, meet the new team!"
               
Brick "Meat" Torres- Heavy Weapons
Magnus "Magnus" Magnusson- Heavy Weapons
Warren "Skullcrusher" Skullcrushkowitz- Close Quarters Combat
Dirk "Chilean Thunder" Hardcastle- Heavy Weapons
Max "Blazerbeam" Steele - Recon
Rolf "Blitzkrieg" Schmetterling- Vehicles
Jack "Todd" Jackson- Heavy Weapons
Chet "Wolfman" Powers- Explosives
Ricky "Salvo" Starr- Sniper
Brock "Doc" Rockman- Medic
Rock "Socks" Brockman- Demolitions

He finished the introductions and turned back to the men.
"Alright boys. We've got a mission. For many of you this will be your first mission with the company. Consider this your trial by fire! Some of you may not survive. A couple of you may be killed, resurrected, and then killed again. But one thing is certain: we will get this young lady's car back!"
The men cheered wildly, pumping meaty fists and firing into the air. Meat slung the grenade launcher from his back and fired a single shot into the air as he whooped loudly.
"LET'S DO IT!!"
Moments later it came back down on top of him, blowing him into meaty chunks that scattered across the deck of the carrier.
"A bit overzealous there." The Chief nodded grimly, "but I admire the enthusiasm!"
The rest of the team piled into a massive AC-260 gunship that was far more "gun" than "ship", with six Vulcan Gatling cannons and two howitzers on each side, and took off into the arid sky.
Meanwhile, Goggle retreated back to the command room, where he devoted all 16 monitors to playing Starcraft 2.
"Alright Goggle" The Chief said over the comm, “What can you tell us about this latest theft?"
"Well sir, pretty much the same as the first time around. A brown Honda stolen in Santa Ana. There were some old books in the car this time. Mostly sentimental value."
"Exponential value? You're telling me these books are getting more valuable by the second?"
"That is the opposite of what I am telling you."
The Chief disconnected the radio and turned to the men in the back of the plane.
"Alright boys, looks like there were some exponentially valuable books in that car. We may be dealing with some sort of rare book heist disguised as a car theft!"
The men gasped in surprise at the notion of someone trying to acquire more books.
"This is good though!" The Chief continued, "We just have to figure out where they'll strike next. Where are there a lot of books?"
"The Internet!"
"A Turkish prison!"
"Gone with the Wind!"
The men shouted.
"That's right. A library!" He turned to face the cockpit, "Blitzkrieg, take us to the nearest library to the car theft" He turned back around, "Magnus, Wolfman, I want incendiary rounds in those Vulcans ASAP. Socks, I need 'Ride of the Valkyries' queued up on the sound system. We're going to flush the bastards out."

1100- Santa Ana Public Library, California
Ernest Lehman sat in his school bus out in front of the library and took a bite of his sandwich. It was tuna salad, his favorite. He glanced at his watch and saw with approval that he had started his lunch precisely at 11 am, as he did every day. The kids of Mrs. Preston's third grade class wouldn't be ready for another hour but he knew he would be finished with his lunch by 1130, no later. It was these simple little things that kept the 62 year old bus driver going, a routine, reliability. 
As he finished his sandwich and removed a pudding cup from his old tin lunch box he gradually became aware of a droning sound. It gradually grew louder as he looked back into the empty bus for the source of the noise. It seemed almost familiar, like he had heard it before. He gasped as he suddenly caught sight of the source of the noise: the biggest plane Ernest had ever seen, and it was heading straight for him.
He started having flashbacks to Vietnam and the terrifying things he had seen planes like that do. The sheer destructive power of an AC-130 with air superiority.
As he put the bus unto gear he decided he never really liked third graders much anyway.

"We are approaching the target sir!" Blitzkrieg called from the cockpit, "circling now"
"Get on those guns men!" The Chief shouted as the men hurried to comply. Todd, who did not have a gun to fire, stood by to reload.
The Chief pressed play on the gunships sound system and the opening notes of 'Ride of the Valkyries' blared from the onboard speakers, competing with the drone of the plane's eight engines.
"Open Fire!" The Chief screamed.
The public library below exploded as thousands of rounds of incendiary ammunition and howitzer shells slammed into it. In less than a minute it had been flattened into a burning crater.
"Target neutralized" Chilean Thunder called from one of the howitzers.
"We've got Army jets inbound sir." Blitzkrieg called out as the firing ceased.
"Get us back to the Clusterfuck Blitzkrieg." The Chief said. He smiled proudly at the scorched earth where the library once stood.
"One down..." He muttered to himself quietly.

1230- Death Valley
The Chief stood in the briefing room of the S.S. Clusterfuck his men enjoying celebratory tequila shots all around him. Finally Goggle entered the room, closing the tower defense game he was playing on his tablet and saluting.
"We did it, Goggle. We razed that bitch to the ground! But if we're going to be sure we got the bastards we're going to need to hit the rest of them."
"The rest of what?" Goggle asked.
"Libraries. How many more are there?"
"Like, in southern California?"
"Like everywhere. We need to be thorough."
"I don't know, thousands... maybe millions."
"Damn! We don't have time for that!" The Chief slammed his fist down in frustration. "We need  to catch this book thief and recover Amber's car!"
"Wait, did you say book thief?" Blazerbeam said, "I think I saw something about that on the news."
"That was a trailer for the movie The Book Thief." Goggle said.
"Hey yeah!" Wolfman said, "I saw that too! I think it had Chloe Grace - Moretz and Emma Watson in it."
"We'll need to bring them in alive." The Chief said, "Blitzkrieg, take Doc, Socks, and Skullcrusher to England in the gunship. The rest of you are coming with me after this Chloe Grace-Moretz character. "

1430- Beverly Hills, California
"I'm telling you babe, this role is perfect for you!"
Abigail Breslin's agent continued to pester her as she ate her salad. They were joined at the table by her manager, bodyguard, and publicist. She couldn't remember the last time she had eaten alone.
"I just don't think I'd make a good Captain Ahab." The starlet replied, "And I also really don't want to."
"Come on!" Her agent persisted, "we already have Frankie Muniz as Ismael, and Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson as Moby Dick. It's going to be a blockbuster!"
Before Abigail could respond, her agent exploded from the waist up.

"Target is clear, move in." Salvo radioed as he loaded another round into his "Wrecking Ball" anti-building rifle. When you need to assassinate a skyscraper, you use a "Wrecking Ball".
The street in front of the restaurant patio where Abigail Breslin's was now screaming incoherently cracked and burst as a land submarine surfaced. The Chief, Magnus, Blazerbeam, and Todd burst from the hatch, guns blazing.
Blazerbeam shoved one of his two double barreled Desert Eagles into the bodyguards mouth and pulled the trigger while Magnus sawed the manager in half with the chainsaw bayonet attached to his rocket launcher. The publicist made a run for it, only to be bathed in napalm by Todd’s flamethrower.
"Hello Miss Grace Moretz," The Chief said as he approached the blood soaked starlet,  "we have some questions about the book thief."
"W-what?" Breslin's stuttered. She took a moment to compose herself, "Ok, first of all, I'm not Chloe Grace Moretz, I'm Abigail Breslin. Second, Chloe Grace Moretz isn't in the Book Thief,  you're thinking of  Sophie Nelisse. Third, WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?"
"Sophie Nelisse? Who the hell is that?" The Chief looked over at Blazerbeam, who merely shrugged.
"I loved you in Hunger Games." Todd said.
"I wasn't in Hunger Games either! That was Jennifer Lawrence." Abigail said, as she began picking skull fragments from her hair.
"The guy from Black Knight?"
"No that's Martin Lawrence." Magnus corrected him.
"The founder of Protestantism?"
"No that's Martin Luther." Abigail said. Before Todd could ask another question a shot rang out and the tank of napalm strapped to his back burst, coating him in flames.
"Hostiles!" The Chief shouted as Abigail Breslin's head exploded, along with the front of the restaurant behind her. "Not her you idiot!" The Chief looked up at the rooftop where Salvo was perched and angrily pointed in the direction of two squad cars from the Beverly Hills police department with four officers crouched behind them. A SWAT truck was moving into position behind them.
Another shot from the "Wrecking Ball" tore into the side of the truck, pulverizing half the team inside it.
"Tactical retreat!" The Chief called out as Magnus took out one of the squad cars with a rocket, "back to the sub!"
Salvo took out the remaining squad car but he saw more flashing lights in the distance. He made sure the submarine submerged successfully, before setting up a laser targeter aimed at the ruins of the cafe where they had found Abigail Breslin and grabbed the jetpack he had stowed on the roof. As he took off into the afternoon air an orbital strike demolished the cafe and everything in a 10 block radius.

1600- Somewhere below Los Angeles, California
The Chief grimaced as he sat at the helm of the land submarine. Below him, Blazerbeam, Magnus, Chilean Thunder and Wolfman worked the controls, zeroing in on Salvo's beacon.
"So..." Wolfman broke the tense silence, "do we go after the real Chloe Grace Moretz then?"
"No no..." The Chief waved him off, "I have a feeling she would be just as useless. I'm starting to think this rare book heist was really just a cover for a car theft." He contemplated this for a moment before picking up the radio.
"Goggle?"
"Yeah Chief?" Goggle said, pausing StarCraft 2.
"What kind of engine did that stolen car have?"
"Engine? Just a regular internal combustion engine as far as I know..."
"Internal combustion..."
"Wait Chief!" Wolfman interjected, "I learned in Explosives school that combustion is a fancy word for explosion!"
"My god man!" The Chief put on a pair of sunglasses, "an engine that runs on explosions! That's it!"
"Um Chief..." Goggle said over the radio, "most engine use internal combustion."
"Yes, but if they can somehow reverse engineer the internal combustion engine, into an external combustion engine, they could have... Some kind of... explosions... thing! Wolfman, how many kilotons of explosives can an engine like that produce?"
"Well if I had to guess, I'd estimate it at 10 million."
"Jesus Truckasaurus Christ..." The Chief slowly removed his sunglasses. "But who has the motive to make a bomb like that? We already won the war on terror, Bin Laden's dead!"
"Somali pirates?" Chilean Thunder suggested.
"Of course! To Somalia!"

1940- London, England
The AC-260 flew low over the streets of London, occasionally skidding over the rooftops of taller buildings. Finally, their target was in sight: Buckingham Palace.
A few of the palace guards broke their traditional stillness as they looked up in alarm, some even taking shots with their rifles.
As it approached it suddenly began to tilt upward. The cockpit rotated downward and the guns lining its side migrated to the bottom of the plane. The massive wings split and moved along the plane, shaping themselves into arms and legs. Finally it touched down on the lawn of Buckingham palace, an 80 foot tall robot with a chest full of guns aimed at the Queen's front door.
"Bring us Emma Watson!" The PA system boomed, "Or we shall destroy this place and all who reside within."
Their initial demands were met with a missile strike from several fighter jets. The AC-260 fired, blowing the front of the palace apart in a hurricane of hot lead.
A second strike from the jets found its target, blowing the cockpit, with Blitzkrieg inside, to pieces and sending the bipedal plane crashing to the ground.
Doc, Socks, and Skullcrusher bailed out. Of the vehicle's torso and charged the palace, firing wildly at the scattered survivors.
"Find the Queen!" Doc shouted, "Don't worry about the guards, they'll die if they sting you."
"That's bees." Socks shouted, tossing a grenade.
"Same thing."
The three mercenaries ascended a ramp of rubble up to the second floor where they began sweeping the rooms. Finally they located Queen Elizabeth II cowering behind a massive gilded desk. Skullcrusher grabbed her and gripped her head in in his massive hands.
"Tell us where Emma Watson is!" He shouted.
"I don't know!" The monarch shrieked.
"AAAAAAAHHHHH!" Doc screamed in her face.
"AAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!" She replied.
In the heat of the moment Skullcrusher accidentally crushed her head.
"Damn. We murdered the Queen." Doc muttered.
"Oh hey," Socks said, as he rifled through the things on the desk, "The Queen has Emma Watson's address in her rolodex."
"No. She had Emma Watson's address in her rolodex."

2100- Johannesburg, South Africa
The Chief sat at the controls of the Super-Goliath a 300 foot tall crab like robot with an 80 foot rail gun capable of wiping out whole fleets with a single shot.  It was the second largest vehicle in the fleet. The largest vehicle in the fleet strode through at its side, the Ultra-Goliath a 400 foot tall samurai mech with a 230 foot diamond edged sword and a shoulder mounted 12.1 gigawatt laser.
The two mechs marched into downtown Johannesburg leaving a swath of destruction miles wide as they destroyed everything in their path.
"Keep on it men." The Chief said over the radio, "if we cause enough destruction here, we'll draw the pirates out."
On the ground, Blazerbeam, Magnus, Wolfman and Chilean Thunder moved through the streets, finishing off anyone that The Chief and Salvo, in the *Ultra-Goliath* missed.
"Uh sir," Goggles voice chirped over the radio, "What are you doing?"
"Drawing out the Somalian Pirates, Goggle. We went over this."
Goggle decided not to mention that his base was being overrun with Zerg during the briefing and he had not been paying attention.
"You do know you're in South Africa right?"
"Yes. And Somalia is in Africa."
"South Africa is a country. It's pretty much on the other side of the continent from Somalia."
"Damn it Goggle," The Chief slammed his fist down on the control panel, "I know what I'm doing!"
The Super-Goliath's rail gun misfired, hitting the Ultra-Goliath in the stomach and disintegrating its lower torso. The mecha-samurai lurched and then fell backward, destroying countless homes and businesses and accidentally crushing Chilean Thunder and Wolfman.
The 80 pounds of explosives Wolfman was carrying on his body detonated, blasting a hole into one of the Ultra-Goliath's nuclear reactors.
"Whoops." The Chief said as the reactor suffered a catastrophic meltdown and began burning a radioactive crater into the ground.
The wave of radiation that followed hit Magnus and Blazerbeam who, due to the cocktail of illegal steroids and genetic enhancements necessary to remain their massive physique,  mutated into horrific monsters.
"Yeah that's my bad right there." The Chief slowly backed his mech out of the city as Magnus and Blazerbeam, now roughly 30 feet tall began their respective unstoppable rampages.

0130- The English Channel
Skullcrusher roughly pushed Emma Watson into the room and handcuffed her to the metal chair at its center. Doc tore off the black hood covering her head and ripped out the duct tape.
"Hello Miss Watson." He said, a wicked smile crossing his muscular face, "we have some questions about the book thief."
"Yeah!" Socks added from the corner of the room, "and don't try any of your magic. This room is made entirely out of C4 and if I hear the first syllable of a spell, we're all going up."
"Are you retarded?" She asked.
"We will ask the questions here!" Skullcrusher shouted, "Tell us about the book thief!"
"What the movie? The movie I'm not even in? You're probably thinking of Emily Watson you twit."
"Isn't Emma short for Emily?"
"Emma isn't short for anything!"
"Ah." Skullcrusher looked at Doc and shrugged.
"Where are we right now anyway?"
"We're on an underwater helicopter in the English Channel."
"There's no such thing."
Skullcrusher resisted the urge to crush her skull in and instead went to the corner to sulk.
"Alright Miss Watson." Doc said, "Where’s Amber's Car?"
"Who the bloody hell is Amber?"
"The person who's car you stole! Because of books!"
"Because of books? Is that... some sort of Harry Potter thing? Is that what this is about?"
"She's casting a spell!" Socks shouted. Doc and Skullcrusher grabbed his arms to prevent him from depressing the detonator button.
"You're all a bunch of loonies."
"Yeah well at least we aren't car stealing witches." Socks retorted.
Emma rolled her eyes.
"Ok fine. You caught me. The car's parked under the whomping willow at Hogwarts. Wankers. Now will you let me go?"
"I knew it!" Socks shouted, almost pressing the detonator again.
"I'll radio The Chief." Doc said as he snatched the detonator from Socks hand and ushered him out of the room. Skullcrusher followed them, but turned back to Emma just before he left
"I loved you in Hunger Games."

"Oh man, did you see the photos they released of Frankie Muniz as Ismael from the new Moby Dick? That shit is going to be cray."
"What the hell Mike, I thought you were going to give me a ride home last night!"
"I was too busy solving crimes! Your car was stolen by Emma Watson. She'll be rotting in Volcano Prison for the rest of her sexy, sexy life."
"What the hell is Volcano Prison?"
"It's like regular prison, except inside an active volcano and not like regular prison at all because they throw you into a volcano."
"You are so weird..."