Quantum Cheeseburger Read online

  I slammed the gearshift into first, then peeled out, turned around and headed back.

  Another hoverjet screamed overhead. The sonic boom almost made me crap my pants. The hoverjet landed in Guydoro’s parking lot, next to the first one. Soldiers in silver space armor poured out of the side.

  That should have been enough to make me reconsider whatever dumbassed thing I was about to do.

  But no, I kept hearing Dr. Kincaid in my head. Don’t bleep this up! If you bleep this up it will be the bleeping end of your bleeping career! Do you bleeping hear me, you bleeping bleep head!

  Imagine it being shouted at high volume from a red-faced man who looked like he was one cheeseburger away from a heart attack. A red-faced man who could indeed end my bleeping career.

  I liked my career, such as it was.

  I even liked Dr. Kincaid. When he wasn’t screaming at me, he was kind of funny.

  Plus, he trusted me to get his formula safely to Holloman.

  I sent the Jeep skidding into the parking lot. A cloud of dust put a brief screen between me and the soldiers. I jumped out and ran toward the building.

  Yes, I am that stupid.

  As the dust cleared I saw a solid line of soldiers in sleek silver space armor forming a circle around the building. The thick, black plasma rifles mounted to their arms buzzed.

  I stumbled to a stop. That was the point where my plan of action ground to a halt. What was I going to do? Burst through a line of armored soldiers, run into a building containing a hostile looking alien and demand the return of Dr. Kincaid's memory stick?

  Yeah, my brain stopped me there.

  I put my hands to my head. Dr. Kincaid was going to kill me. He was finally, as he liked to threaten, rip my bleeping head off and poop down my bleeping neck. Only with actual swear words.

  Something hard touched the back of my head.

  “Don’t move.”

  I turned around. Did I mention that I’m stupid?

  It was the big guy in the black coat. His massive brows furrowed. He jammed the warm barrel of the plasma blaster up under my nose.

  “Didn’t I just tell you not to move? Didn’t I tell you that? Tell me that I didn’t tell you that?”

  I raised my hands. More movement. “Sorry,” I said.

  “Did I tell you to raise your hands?” he asked, “No, I told you not to move.”

  I lowered my hands and apologized again.

  The big guy rolled his eyes and stuck the black hand cannon back in his coat. He grabbed my arm and dragged me away from the circle of soldiers.

  “Hey! What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Shut up, moron.”

  “One of you stole Dr.–my memory stick!” I said.

  He stopped next to my Jeep. “Shut up and get in,” he said.

  He didn’t wait for me to climb into the Jeep. He grabbed the back of my shirt and my belt and heaved me in like I was a sack of beans. I landed halfway in the back, my face pressed up against my pack and my hiking boots.

  Before my life blew up, I’d been hoping to do a little hiking around Cloudcroft.

  The Jeep creaked and tilted as the big guy got in. I had made things easier for him by leaving the key in the ignition. Yes, I know, I’m stupid, please stop reminding me.

  I dragged myself to the passenger’s seat. The Jeep spun out on the gravel and I hung on to the roll bar to keep from being flung out.

  “Hey! What are you doing!” I shouted.

  “Shut up, idiot,” the big guy said.

  The Jeep bumped onto the highway. Something exploded behind us.

  I looked back to see an orange and red mushroom cloud blossoming where Guydoro's used to be.

  Bits of wood and metal spun through the air in lazy arcs.

  Something big passed over us.

  “Look out!” I screamed.

  The big guy jerked the wheel as a massive commercial grill smacked to the pavement in front of us. Flames roared from torn gaps on its stainless steel sides.

  We barely missed it.

  I caught a hint of seared beef and bacon as I passed just inches from it. My heart ached for all the burgers that would never be cooked there.

  I looked back for just a few moments. Black smoke billowed from the shattered husk of Guydoro's. The armored soldiers fell back to their hover jets. Still shooting at the structure with blasts of blue-tinged light from their plasma guns. Had they killed the Stickman?

  I turned back. Slumped down in my seat.

  Honestly, I couldn't care less about the Stickman. It was the loss of Guydoro's that really broke my heart. Sure, there were other burger places. But they weren't Guydoro's.

  I hoped the owner had survived the blast. I also hoped he had the place insured.

  The big guy wrenched the wheel to the right. The Jeep left the highway and bounced down a dirt road.

  Hoping for my personal survival was right up there in my top five wishes, too.

  "Where are you going!" I shouted over the rush of air and clatter of metal. My poor Jeep was designed for off-roading–three-quarters of a century ago.

  “Shut up!” the big guy yelled.

  I held the roll bar with a death grip as we bounced down the rutted road. A plume of dust rooster tailed behind us. I considered jumping out. The scenery rushed by in a blur. Scrub grass, rocks, clumps of hedgehog cactus and stunted Cholla trees.

  I decided to stay. For the moment.

  We passed by fields of chili peppers, then swung a hard left at a small pecan tree orchard. Down from the orchard sat a small adobe house. Big man pounded the brakes and slid us to a stop in front of it. The cloud of dust that had been chasing us caught and enveloped us in its rusty brown dirtiness.

  The big man glared at me, brushed red dust from his black coat. “Why couldn’t you have a real car instead of this toy?” he asked.

  Before I could answer he shoved me out the side. I landed with a bone jarring thud. Which sent up another cloud of dust. I got to my feet, hands balled into fists. Maybe the guy was three times my size and had a gun that could rip me in half like tissue paper, but I’d had enough.

  The guy came around the back of the Jeep and saw me. He laughed.

  I ran at him.

  He stepped aside, moving so quick I struck nothing but air. I stumbled. Fell to my knees in front of the adobe house.

  I noticed feet in front of me. Small feet in worn hiking boots. I looked up. She had her hands on her hips. A frown marred her beautiful features.

  Julie.

  My fiancé.

  Five

  I sat at a wobbly wooden table inside the adobe house, the goon had dragged me to. The air inside was hot, stifling and smelled of coffee. Julie moved over to a stone topped cabinet. The interior of the place was quite rustic.

  For the moment I put aside why my fiancé was making coffee in it. Interfering with her coffee ritual was not recommended.

  Really, really not recommended.

  Julie took the metal coffee pot from the small gas burner and poured the contents into a dark green thermos.

  She was kind of a coffee nut, drinking it morning, noon and night, no matter hot it got outside. I remember she once belonged to a coffee of the month club. She got mad when they discontinued it.

  Things got broken that day.

  She also didn’t sleep much.

  My beautiful fiancé was about five foot eight. Slim, but rounded in all the right places. She had long, black hair and eyes so dark they might as well have been black. She was model perfect.

  Way, way, way out of my league.

  I didn’t know how I’d gotten so lucky. At the time.

  This fine, crazy day she was dressed in bottom hugging, charcoal gray hiking pants and an equally body hugging black tank top. Her hair was pulled back in a no-nonsense pony tail.

  “Julie, honey, what’s going on?” I asked.

  She screwed the lid on the thermos, then poured the last of the pot into a chipped blue mug. It had white letters
on it that said: Of course I’m having a nice day. Fuck you for asking.

  She glared at me and sipped from the grouchy cup. She didn’t add any creamer to her coffee. I like it black as a politician’s heart, she liked to say.

  “I’m guessing you screwed up again,” she said, “That’s what’s going on.”

  That didn’t seem fair. Well, maybe a little. It seemed like I was at least somewhat an innocent victim here. But it looked like the blame train was getting ready to pull into my station. Again.

  The front door creaked open and the big guy walked in, brushing more dust from his black coat. He made the little, one room hut look even smaller. His head nearly touched the whitewashed beams that held up the ceiling.

  “I hid his stupid car,” he said, “We can’t stay here, though. The Navy’ll be going apeshit from here to Alamogordo in the next few hours.”

  Julie continued to stare me down. I tried not to cringe, but I couldn’t help it. That look of hers made me feel like I was four years old and I had just had an accident in my pants.

  “Could someone please tell me what it going on?” I asked.

  “Where’s the professor?” Julie asked. She still glared at me, but the question was directed at the slab of meat in the dusty black coat.

  “Dead.”

  Julie closed her eyes. “What happened?”

  “Stickman got the drop on us at the restaurant up the road,” he said.

  “What restaurant? Are you talking about Guydoro’s? Why the hell did you stop there?” she asked.

  Here eyes bored into me like red hot knives. I found a sudden fascination for the wood patterns on the battered old table I sat at. She never even offered me any coffee.

  “Dumb dumb here decided to stop for a snack,” the big guy said.

  I gave him a glare of my own. “It wasn’t a snack. It was a Guydoro’s burger, for god’s sake. Don’t you know what that means?”

  “Yeah,” he said, “It means you’re an idiot.”

  He cracked his knuckles in a way that could only be called menacing.

  “Enough,” Julie said, “You two should have waited. We had the rendezvous worked out. Give him the stuff, copy the stick, let dumbass here go his merry way.”

  Dumbass?

  “The professor said it was a good time to–”

  “Professor’s a dumbass, too. And dead now, isn’t he?”

  I stood up.

  “I don’t know what’s going on here, and I really don’t care,” I said. I turned to the big guy. Tried to puff myself up. “I need that memory stick you stole from me.”

  The big guy snorted. “Good luck with that,” he said, “The professor had it.”

  “Shit, how could you have let the professor get killed?” Julie asked.

  The big guy gave her a narrow-eyed look. "Maybe you didn't hear the part about the Stickman? And if that wasn't enough, about a minute I got out of that shack, a hover jet full of Marines in full armor dropped out of the sky on us."

  Julie put her hand to her head. She was still for a long moment. Then returned to glaring at me.

  “Why did you have to stop?” she asked me, “Were you wanting to start an interstellar war?”

  “I was hungry,” I said, “And I wasn’t doing anything wrong. How about you tell me why you’re out here in this hut with the Terminator here? I thought you were back in Albuquerque.”

  She shook her head. “You don’t know anything about anything,” she said. She motioned to the big guy. “Tie him up and let’s get going. Maybe we can salvage something out of this operation.”

  The big guy moved fast, his meaty hands reaching for me. I was quicker.

  I tumbled out of the chair. Rolled across the creaky wooden floor. I jumped up. Hurled my body at the open door.

  Not fast enough.

  The big guy’s hand whipped out. Iron fingers wrapped around my throat. He lifted me in the air.

  “Maybe we should kill him,” he said.

  Julie paused. Like she had to think about it.

  My head felt like it was going to pop off my body. I couldn't breathe and my heart tried to hammer its way out of my chest.

  “Julie. Honey. Sweetikins,” I said in a strangled gargle.

  “Maybe you’re right,” she said, “He’s too dangerous now.”

  Me? Dangerous?

  The big goon pulled the black plasma cannon from his coat.

  “Wait!” I gurgled.

  The big jerk threw me against the wall. I slid down to the floor, gagging and coughing. Julie gnawed on her thumbnail as the big guy raised his gun to me. The end of the gun barrel loomed like a bottomless pit.

  Then something weird happened.

  Six

  Sweat ran down my face. I scooted my butt backward on the uneven wood floor. I ran up against the wall. The little adobe hut was like the inside of a furnace. It smelled like dust and Julie's coffee. And ozone from hot plasma. The big guy in the black coat pointed the plasma blaster at me. His eyes glittered. There was no mercy in his face.

  The gun hummed.

  I blinked at the crackling muzzle of my own death.

  Time seemed to slow down.

  I saw dust motes drifting slowly in the sunlight that streamed through the small window above me. Like tiny stars in a constellation, they glinted and twinkled.

  The cup in Julie’s hand steamed, lazy waves rising.

  I wanted to scream at her that I hated coffee. I hated her moods, her controlling nature, her casual dismissal of my job and my–admittedly meager–accomplishments. I remember having lunch with a group of coworkers. I was excited because Julie was joining us for lunch. As she walked in the door one of them had whispered to me, damn, she’s out of your league, dude.

  She was.

  I stared down the barrel of the plasma blaster, expecting my life to flash before my eyes.

  Instead, my anger surged. I wanted to live. I didn’t deserve an end like this. It enraged me.

  The big guy pulled the trigger. I squeezed my eyes shut.

  A blast of searing heat and light washed over me.

  Something exploded.

  Cooler air washed over me.

  “What the hell!” Julie cried.

  That’s when I realized I was still alive. For the moment.

  I opened my eyes.

  The big guy and Julie had identical shocked expressions on their faces. I glanced behind me. There was a huge, smoking hole in the wall. The air stank of burned mud and wood.

  “You missed! Shoot him!” Julie shouted.

  The big guy gripped his gun in both hands, pointing it at me. The gun whined with power.

  I tumbled backward out of the hole in the wall. The gun blasted another hole in the hut. Sprayed me with hot bits of dried mud and wood.

  I scrambled to my feet. Ran for the nearby orchard.

  Behind me, Julie screamed obscenities. Her big goon friend would be out of the hut in moments. I had no idea where I was going to go.

  I caught a flash of something red. My Jeep!

  I sprinted for it, my lungs burning. I was in decent shape, but I was more of a walking person. Running wasn’t my thing.

  Something else that used to piss Julie off. She liked to go jogging in the morning. I preferred to stay in bed.

  I scrambled into the Jeep. More luck! The big goon had left the key in the ignition. Who’s stupid now!

  The engine turned over and caught. I slammed it into gear and pounded the gas pedal. The Jeep leapt forward.

  The pecan tree to my left exploded. Leaves and nuts pelted me.

  I didn’t look back. I ran the Jeep down the row of pecan trees and out onto the road. I drove like a maniac down the rutted lane, nearly bouncing myself out of the seat. I could see the low line of the Sacramento mountains ahead of me. The highway was somewhere between me and them.

  A minute later it was there. I stomped the brakes and skidded to a stop. Left would take me back toward Albuquerque and Dr. Kincaid. Along with the bur
ning husk of Guydoro’s, space marines and maybe a hostile alien. Right would take me toward Alamogordo and failure.

  Actually that wasn’t quite accurate. Either direction would take me toward failure. Left would get me an ass chewing in person. Right would get me an ass chewing by phone.

  No, that still wasn’t accurate. Right would get me an ass chewing by phone, and then another one in person from General Mattany.

  Crap.

  I turned the wheel right and gunned the engine. Sent the Jeep out on the blacktop. Holloman was only about fifteen miles away. I also figured if I went there I wouldn’t run into any aliens. Or people who would shoot at me with plasma blasters.

  I guess I was still stupid.

  Seven

  A few minutes later I turned the Jeep off onto LaLuz road. Hot wind rasped against my face. My ears still rang from the plasma blasts the goon had shot at me. Even the hot ozone stench of it was still with me. I kept checking the rearview mirror, expecting Julie and the goon to be following. As it was, the highway was strangely empty of traffic.

  The blacktop on the way to Holloman was cracked and crumbling. Even the desert on either side was mostly barren. Just the occasional Cholla cactus sitting sadly off by itself. The sky above was clear and metallic blue as the afternoon sun beat down on me.

  The base had been deactivated a couple decades ago after the Air Force was split into the Space Corps and Naval Air Command. DARPA had taken over parts of it for research projects, including Dr. Kincaid’s quantum lattice study. I was supposed to deliver his final formulas so the lab boys could run it through their neutron accelerator.

  Dr. Kincaid like to say that his theory could make Earth the most important place in the galaxy.

  I wasn't a scientist or a mathematician, so I couldn't make heads or tails of any of his formulas. I programmed the doc's computers and kept his equipment running. Basically, I was Igor to his Dr. Frankenstein. Except, without the hump or the googly eyes.

  I pushed the pedal to the floor and the Jeep rumbled along the rough highway. Hot, dusty wind rushed through my hair as I drummed my fingers on the wheel. Fine, red New Mexico dust left a grit on my lips.