“And you’re sure we can trust them?” Kevin mumbled to Mel in the back of the ice cream truck as they watched the woman and the rabbit walk into a gas station.
“Yes, Kevin, for the twelfth fucking time. These are my people. Sort of. They’re my people adjacent at least.”
“They nearly shot us.” Kevin shifted to look at Mel’s face incredulously.
“Well, yeah. They’re bounty hunters and apparently we’re wanted. Not too surprising. You’ve been making enemies everywhere we go, you jackass.” She punched his arm with a hint of a smile playing on her lips. Kevin scowled at her good humor.
“All of you are bad influences.” He crossed his arms and plopped back down on the bench seat.
“Look, this is good. We’re with friends and I’m sure they’ll help us find Cassia and the others… As soon as they finish the bounty they’re on…” Mel mumbled the last part.
“Another bounty? And we’re just going to hang out while they do it?” Kevin’s eyes bugged out and he gave a loud sigh.
The back door of the truck swung open and the rabbit, Gerald, hopped in holding a frozen drink. At the same time Anna hopped up into the front seat and began messing with the dials and buttons there.
“Not the same as a slurpee for sure, but it’s not too bad.” Gerald slurped at his frozen blue drink and handed Mel a candy bar then tossed one at Kevin. “I know you said you didn’t want one but I thought it might help with that dang grumpy attitude.”
“Leave ‘em be, Gerald! I almos’ shot the bloke!” Anna leaned back through the middle and put a gentle hand on Kevin’s shoulder. “An’ I do apologize for that bit o’ violence back there. Live and fookin’ learn, as the sayin’ goes.” Kevin stared blankly at the soft hand and Mel gave him a swat on the other arm.
“The polite thing would be to accept the apology.” Mel looked at Kevin pointedly.
“Right. No worries.” Kevin said unconvincingly which evoked a barking laugh from Anna. Kevin was quickly learning that her personality bounced around wildly.
“Alright, are we all good now? Can we move it along?” Gerald climbed over Kevin’s legs and up into the driver’s seat. “Good. Because I’d like to get flipping paid.”
“Yeah, yeah, you money grubbin’ rodent.” Anna flipped a switch and turned a dial. “211, hell of a jump, that is.”
“211? Did she say 211?” Kevin bumped Mel’s knee with his own and pointed. “211 is too far, right? We’ll turn into snails or lose our bones or something, right?”
“Dunno.” Mel shrugged. “We’re along for the ride, Kev.”
“Along for the ride?!” Kevin said incredulously. “You’re all insane.”
“Damn right!” Anna let out a loud whoop and punched a button on the dash. Kevin was getting used to jumps but the stomach dropping sensation seemed to be more powerful on this long of a jump. Kevin could once again make out a sort of hallway or passage and felt them travelling through it. To his right, he could see Anna drifting towards a closed gate and an alarm bell inside his head went off. He could tell that she shouldn’t go there. Something inside of him forced his mind into action and in this strange in-between space he grabbed Anna by the hand and carefully pulled her back into their group.
In a similar fashion, Kevin recognized that they were overshooting their destination. As they began to pass a sleek metal door, he pulled them all to a halt. Normally hesitant, Kevin felt perfectly at peace. He pushed his spectral form toward the door, pulling Mel, Anna, and even Gerald along with him. As he opened the door, everything flashed into motion at once and they were in the ice cream truck again. Anna was aggressively vomiting out the window and Gerald had yet again spilled his frozen slushy. Kevin looked to the side at Mel who had rolled onto the floor.
“That was a fucking trip.” Mel wheezed out as if she’d been punched in the stomach. Kevin stepped over to the window and looked out. The pink ice cream truck was parked on a dusty trail in a desert landscape. In the distance, he thought he could make out a city rising up from the heat haze on the horizon.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“Alrigh’, targets escaped prison on Earth-1 an’ apparently jumped here. Mus’ be hidin’ out.” Anna looked around at the desert out the windshield and looked back down at the tablet she was reading from. “Here, take a look noobie.”
Kevin leaned forward to look at the screen as Anna held it between the seats for him. A blurry security image showed the unmistakable figure of Cassia next to Grit in surveillance video from a cell like the one he’d been only days before when he landed in this mess. He sighed heavily and gestured for Mel to look.
“Oh for fucks sake.”
----------------------------------------
“What exactly is the plan again?” Kevin shifted uncomfortably on the sandy ground between Mel and Anna. He looked from Mel, who was looking through binoculars, to Anna, who was sighting through a long scope, and suddenly felt very inadequate about the small remote he’d been entrusted with. Mel turned his way and rolled her eyes.
“This is recon. Bounty hunting isn’t all busting down doors and blowing up diners.” Mel went back to her binoculars and continued to watch the compound they’d found after driving around the desert for a few hours. He didn’t fully understand where they were but it seemed like some sort of IPF base. A few buildings around a large hole in the ground. Kevin recalled sci-fi comics about giant killer worms in the ground as he looked across the expanse at the small hole in the distance.
They were situated far away from the facility, parked in the shadow of a dune, and were laying flat on a small rise where they could study the surroundings. Kevin looked over at Gerald, who was eating from a party size bag of Doritos. Kevin lay quiet for a few minutes with only the crunching of chips for sound. Letting out a long yawn, he finally turned back to Mel.
“But what exactly are we reconning for?” Mel closed her eyes and exhaled through her nose at the question while a little snicker came from Anna’s direction.
“We know Cassia and Grit escaped the IPF and according to Anna’s tap of the IPF feeds, they jumped here. But, we don’t know why and we don’t know their status. If they ended up here at this facility, it is either important and they might need our help blasting it open or it is a black site prison where they are being held.” Mel turned back to her binoculars after this explanation and Anna chimed in.
“And we need to know which it is before we blow it up.” She gestured to Gerald who held up what looked like a brick of brown clay.
“C4.” He said through a mouthful of chips.
“So to be clear, the plan is look at the place until we decide which part of it to blow up?”
“Sounds stupid when you say it.” Gerald muttered.
“Leave it to Kevin to make black site infiltration sound lame.” Mel nudged him with her shoulder and laughed quietly. She was cut off suddenly but the sound of an explosion and smoke began to rise from the hole in the ground.
“Nuts, somebody beat me to it.” Gerald grabbed the C4 and began hopping back to the van.
“Let’s go!” Mel pulled Kevin up by the arm and they dashed back to the ice cream truck. Jumping in, Gerald hit a switch and a minigun swiveled into place in the back. Anna pointed Kevin to the front seat and mounted the gun, aiming through the side window of the truck as they took off toward the compound.
“Remember, don’t shoot Grit or Cassia!” Kevin shouted over his shoulder. “Actually, I guess Cassia would probably be fine, but don’t shoot Grit!”
The truck raced across the cracked earth and the minigun began to spin up. Kevin looked out nervously at a group of IPF guards at a checkpoint. He caught their confusion and surprise before they began to raise weapons and fire shots that bounced and ping off the truck’s bulletproof frame and windows. The minigun erupted in a staccato burst behind Kevin and he covered his ears in shock. Nervous to add killing police to his list of interversal crimes, Kevin let out his breath when he realized Anna was aiming at the fence they were guarding, shredding the gate from the post before they got to it.
“Ok, I’ll do a lap around but if we don’t see your friends, I think we have to roll back to regroup. We can only take so much freaking gunfire.” Gerald kicked the ice cream truck up to higher speed now that they were in the compound’s grounds. As they circled the giant hole in the ground, Kevin peered through his window and tried not to flinch when bullets pinged off of it.
“There’s something down there I think but I can’t make out what!” Kevin leaned his head harder into his window and craned his neck but couldn’t quite see the bottom. As they closed the lap, Mel let out a noise of frustration as she fired a bean bag cannon out a sliding slot in the back door.
“Can we go around one more time?” Mel asked as she blasted an IPF officer off his feet with a bean bag and laughed.
“We can’t spare the time! One of these shots is going to punch through sooner rather than later!” Gerald was scanning out the windshield, looking for an exit when a rush of air surged from the pit.
“Bloody hell, that your friends now?” Anna was staring, open mouthed at a silver sedan that flew up out of the hole. Kevin could make out Cassia’s face in the passenger seat and waved awkwardly.
“Freaking flying car, some folks.” Gerald whipped the ice cream truck around and raced to follow beneath the hovering sedan.