Quantum Cheeseburger Page 4

  Which, apparently, gave me superpowers.

  Maybe.

  I got to my feet. My body ached. Muscles protested every movement. My stomach twisted and rumbled. Poor thing had only gotten two (spiked) bites of Guydoro’s burger and nothing else since.

  I needed food, but first I needed to test my superpowers.

  There was a nearly full moon above, shining dim light through the spruce trees. I went up to one of the trees. I pulled my fist back and gave it a super punch.

  The next moment found me rolling on the spruce needles, holding my aching hand against my body and moaning in pain.

  Holy mother of bat farts, that hurt.

  By some miracle, I didn't break my hand.

  I wiped tears from my eyes and stood up. Okay, maybe I didn’t have super strength. I knew I could jump up to the top of a mountain, though.

  I crouched. Took a deep breath.

  I leapt, reaching for the sky.

  A fraction of a second later I returned to earth. Rocks and pine needles dug into my bare feet. I stumbled. Nearly fell.

  I doubted I got more than ten inches off the ground.

  What the hell?

  I held my bruised hand to my chest. Went back to my cave and sat on the cold stone. Had I used up my superpowers already? No, that didn’t seem likely. They had been inactive between getting shot at by Julie’s buddy and getting shot at by Mattany’s marines.

  There had to be some kind of trigger. The only common element I could think of was plasma fire. Did I have to get shot for my new powers to activate?

  That would really suck.

  I tried to imagine myself as a superhero, running around saving people and whatnot. But what if I had to carry around a plasma gun and shoot myself with it every time I tried to do a good deed?

  Hey, look, here comes Captain Suicide!

  No, that just wouldn’t work.

  There were other problems with the superhero concept. Namely, my clothes disintegrated when I ran at super speed. What kind of respect would a naked superhero who shoots himself get?

  Hey, look, here comes that naked douche bag who keeps shooting himself.

  Yeah, I’d save the world because everyone would be rolling on the floor laughing instead of fighting.

  With a sigh and a heavy heart, I let go of my superhero fantasy.

  Which left me no choice but to contemplate what I was going to do next. I was naked, cold, hungry, and miles from civilization. I was hunted by the U.S. Military. And other hostile people with guns. Possibly by a member of a scary alien species, too.

  It made me wish the cave I’d found was deeper. I’d just hide in it until everything blew over. Maybe I could live off of tree bark and juniper berries.

  In a couple decades, I’d come down off the mountain, my beard and my hair having grown long enough to cover my butt and my bits. I’d have lost the ability to speak human language, so I’d use gestures and grunts to communicate. I’d be like the Sasquatch of the Sacramento mountains. I’d get cleaned up, learn how to speak again, then make the rounds of the talk show circuit.

  Assuming some redneck didn’t shoot me the second I walked out of the woods.

  I really needed a better plan.

  I didn’t want to spend the next twenty years living in the woods. The rent was due on my apartment next week, and I didn’t want my landlord to confiscate my vintage CD collection.

  I sat and stared out into the darkness. After a while, I became aware of a flickering light down the hill from me. My heart froze. Were they coming for me? There wasn't anywhere I could hide. Plus I was naked. And my superpowers were unreliable.

  In my stillness, I watched the flickering light. It didn't come closer. It didn't get farther away. Finally, it got through my thick head what it was.

  Someone was camping down there.

  Twelve

  Campers meant food. Clean water. Clothing. Maybe even transportation.

  And food.

  I eased out of the cave. Rubbed my hands over my night chilled arms. Rocks poked painfully at the bottoms of my feet. I caught the scent of wood smoke and…oh my gosh, cooking meat. My stomach gave a plaintive, twisting rumble. I told it to shut up. We didn’t need to scare the campers off.

  They had things I needed.

  I took a slow, cautious route toward the fire. I muffled my screams every time I stepped on a sharp rock or bumped my junk into a juniper bush. How in the hell did our naked ancestors manage this crap?

  They probably stayed in their caves at night.

  Then those smart bastards invented clothes.

  I crept up to the campsite. The fire, neatly ringed with rocks, was down to embers. About twenty feet away was a two person tent. A couple backpacks sat outside it. And two pairs of boots, one smaller than the other.

  The smell of charred meat still hung in the air. It made my stomach growl like a hungry bear. I wasn’t worried about the tent’s occupants hearing it, though.

  The tent jittered and shook like a mound of jello. Moans and sighs and grunts issued from the tent. Someone was having a good time.

  I crouch ran to the tent and grabbed the packs and the larger pair of boots. I hid behind a tree and rummaged through the bags. Both campers had packed light, curse their efficient souls.

  There wasn’t any food either.

  Smart campers didn’t leave food in their packs, though. Critters small and not-so-small abounded in the mountains. I glanced over the campsite again. There. A thin nylon rope tossed over a branch. From the line dangled a bag.

  Food.

  Bears aren’t common in the Sacramentos, but there are other hungry critters. Ground squirrels and the occasional porcupine will be happy to relieve people of their burdensome edibles if given the opportunity.

  I went back to digging through the packs. At the bottom of the the smaller pack, I found a pair of shorts. I slipped it on. It was tight and constricted the boys. A pair of ladies shorts. Of course.

  The other pack yielded a light jacket. It actually fit well. A small victory.

  Other than a camp stove, a pot and three boxes of extra large condoms, there wasn’t anything else in the pack. I put the pack aside and looked at the boots. A nice pair of mid height Merrels, somewhat new. They didn’t look like they had that many miles on them.

  I pined for my own boots. They were just a pair of Dunhams, but they were well broken in to my big gunboats.

  The boots had sweaty socks balled up in them. This guy was obviously a novice or he didn’t care. I pulled the socks out. Prayed the guy didn’t have athletes foot. I dragged the icky, clammy wet socks onto my aching feet. Ew.

  The boots were too small. Of course. Apparently the extra large didn’t extend to the guy’s feet.

  I loosened the laces and crammed my feet in. My toes were pinched but it was better than going barefoot.

  Feeling more civilized, I crept past the tent. It was shaking now and a woman’s voice called for various deities. Over and over.

  The one time Julie and I went camping she rebuffed my romantic advances. She told me if I wanted to get some that weekend, I should have booked us a room at a nice bed and breakfast.

  I untied the nylon line from the tree. The rope slipped through my fingers and crashed to the ground with a clatter that sounded like glass.

  The noise from the tent stopped.

  I jumped to the bag and scooped it up. One side was wet and smelled like beer. No wonder the guy’s pack was so light, it must have been filled with booze.

  “Hey!”

  I glanced back. A head with tousled black hair stuck out of the tent flap. The face below the hair looked pissed. A hairy arm came out of the tent. The hand at the end of it held a pistol.

  “Drop it you son of a bitch!”

  By the time he finished the sentence I was already sprinting into the darkness. A shot went off. Something zinged off a nearby tree. Guy was a decent shot.

  I ran faster, juniper bushes scratching my thighs. My toes scream
ed in protest with each step. I told them to shut up. They could complain when the rest of the body wasn’t in mortal danger.

  Two more shots followed. Something slapped the jacket I wore. My feet stopped complaining and went into overdrive. The rest of my body struggled to keep up. I stumbled down the mountain, the man’s curses bellowing after me.

  That guy had a legitimate excuse to shoot at me.

  I felt guilty stealing his stuff. But this was a matter of life and death. He wasn’t the one being pursued by the military and assorted bad guys.

  After a while, I stopped, leaned against a tree. Heaved cold air in and out of my overworked lungs. My side ached. My thighs and shins felt shredded. Don't even ask about my feet.

  I rested, taking deep gulps of cool, spruce tinged air. The half moon gave me enough light to inventory my ill-gotten booty.

  Two packages of freeze-dried chili. One package of freeze dried apple cobbler. One pepperoni stick. Five bottles of beer. Two packages of crackers and cheese with the little spreader stick.

  I shook my head. What an idiot. Where were the granola bars? Where were the tortillas? We lived in frigging New Mexico for chilies sakes. Everyone had tortillas. Other than the extra large condoms, the guy wasn’t showing his lady much of a good time.

  I wolfed down the pepperoni stick and the crackers and cheese. The beer wasn’t the twist off type. It was some foo foo micro brew I had never heard off. I finally broke the top off of one bottle and guzzled it down.

  It was awful. I’ll admit I’m not much of a beer connoisseur, but that stuff tasted like bottled horse piss.

  I ripped open one of the dehydrated chili packages and crunched on it while I considered my next move. My options didn’t seem very bright. Both sides wanted to kill me. What could I do?

  Was there a third side to this conflict? I thought about the alien, the Stickman. It was after the professor dude. Probably for whatever he slipped into my burger.

  I felt a brief stab of pain as I remembered Guydoro’s. (Sob!)

  Could I make a deal with the Stickman? How would I even find him?

  I crunched some more freeze dried chili, which tasted just like you think it would. I was almost down to the tree line. Below that the ground was rockier with steep drop offs. Through gaps in the trees, I saw the distant lights of Alamogordo. Or what I assumed to be Alamogordo.

  What was the place they held me at? It sure as hell wasn’t the old Holloman Air Force base. Not with those freaky cloaking poles, or whatever they were.

  Not that it would be the first time the government had put a super secret military installation in the middle of the New Mexico desert.

  I watched the lights for a while before I realized some of them were moving. White dots moved back and forth on the plain. At first, I thought it was cars on the highway. But no, these weren't moving in straight lines. They were tracing long arcs. Going to one point, stopping then moving back.

  It didn’t take long before I realized they were slowly getting closer.

  Thirteen

  Here was a big, fat bag of duh. Could those spooky lights crisscrossing the desert floor possibly be hoverjets? Searching for moi? Something told me they weren’t out looking for General Mattany’s lost schnauzer. The only thing I should be surprised at was that they weren’t already scanning the mountain.

  I shivered in the cool night air. Though my stolen, and mostly ill-fitting stolen hiker clothes made it a little more bearable. The dusty, crunchy taste of the dehydrated chili I kept shoving in my burger hole wasn’t doing much to diminish my appetite. I watched the lights with a sinking feeling in my growling gut.

  They’d be here before long. Already one of the lights was arcing toward the foothills.

  They wouldn't be searching with just spotlights. They'd be searching with infrared, looking for human sized heat signatures. They might even have pheromone collectors tuned to my DNA.

  It made me mad. I still hadn’t done anything to deserve this. I was the victim here. All I’d been doing was having a late lunch.

  I stood up and slapped my fist onto my palm. Those jerks needed to leave me alone. If my super powers were reliable, I’d give Mattany and his marines as super butt kicking. I’d...

  The nearest light stopped. It hovered for several seconds. Then it started heading straight for me.

  My heart sped up.

  The light got larger. I heard the distant whine of turbofans. A second and third light stopped, then angled toward me.

  What was happening? Were they actually coming at me, or was this just a heart-stopping coincidence? I decided I didn't want to find out.

  I put my aching feet in gear. My feet remembered they didn’t like my new boots and protested. I reminded them life or death situations required them to suck it up and keep moving.

  The hoverjet’s searchlights played over the scraggly spruces and broken rocks below me. The whine of the turbofans got louder, drowning out the sound of my own labored breathing.

  I begged my superpowers to kick into gear and give me a boost of super speed. I tried jumping. I flew for about a foot, landed in a stumbling, cursing heap among the spruce needles and rocks.

  The hoverjet roared up the ravine. Searchlights stabbed out like daggers. Dust swirled under its stubby wings. Spruces and juniper bushes shook and trembled in its wake.

  I got to my feet. Pain shot up my right leg. I reached down and my hand came away wet. Blood. It looked black in the pale moonlight.

  I ran.

  The hoverjet closed in. The searchlight found me. Brightness exploded in a blue-white circle around me. The wash of the turbofans pelted me with sand and sticks. I stumbled forward. I couldn't see anything beyond the circle of light that trapped me.

  A voice boomed from the hoverjet: “Halt! If you do not stop immediately we will open fire on you.”

  Did I really want to find out if plasma fire activated my superpowers?

  No.

  I stopped and raised my hands above my head.

  Fourteen

  Twenty minutes later I was jammed onto a very uncomfortable seat in a military hover jet. For the second time that day. This time they chained me up like I was Lex Luthor. Manacles bound my wrists and ankles. Heavy chain looped around my waist and connected the wrist and ankle cuffs.

  My mother would die if she every saw me like that.

  Not that she was going to ever see me again. I was going to disappear into a secret military installation, never to be heard from.

  All because I wanted a cheeseburger.

  “Do you have anything to eat!” I shouted.

  The spartan inside of the hover jet was noisy. It stank of jet fuel and sweat. Two marines in silver armor sat opposite me, plasma rifles aimed at my chest. Their visors were up. The one on the left flicked his cold, blue eyes down.

  “Nice shorts,” he said.

  My cheeks went warm. The shorts I stole from the campers were bright pink. They hugged my body in a way that was not flattering.

  “Don’t talk to him,” the other marine said, “You know the orders.”

  The first marine smirked. He gave me a wink and blew me a kiss. The jerk.

  I yanked at the chains holding me. I really wanted some super strength so I could break the chains and give Mr. Smirky an ass kicking. The whole situation just burned me up.

  “Take it easy, sister,” the first marine said, “Don’t make us barbecue you.”

  “Shut up,” the second marine said, “Orders.”

  I let out a slow, hot breath. I pictured my fist slamming into the marine’s face. Smashing the teeth out of his head. My fingers wound around the chains linking my wrists. I pulled.

  “What the hell is that!”

  The pilot. We all looked toward the cockpit. Red light flared through the windows. The hoverjet lurched. Alarms bleated from the cockpit. The two marines grabbed for support handles.

  I was chained to the wall. I got thrown around like a piñata.

  “Bogie! Bogie!
Bogie!” the pilot shouted.

  I clung to a grab bar as best I could. The hoverjet dipped and turned. Red light flashed past the windows. Another hoverjet? Or something else?

  The hoverjet shuddered. Then plummeted for a couple gut-wrenching seconds. The pilot got it under control, but the airframe trembled and shook. One of the engines coughed and sputtered.

  “We’re going down!” the pilot shouted “Brace yourselves!”

  The first marine, Mr. Kissyface nudged his buddy with one armored foot. “We should shoot him. You know, so he doesn’t escape.”

  “No, you shouldn’t!” I shouted, “I haven’t done anything!”

  Except raid a campsite like a skinny, hairless bear.

  “Command wants him alive,” the second marine said, “for whatever reason.”

  The hoverjet shook like a wet dog. My vision went blurry. Acrid smoke filled the cabin. Alarms still bleated from the cockpit. The pilot shouted May Days, giving his coordinates. I was torn about whether I hoped someone heard them or not.

  The first marine pouted. Then we hit the ground.

  The impact threw me against the chains. Assuming I survived I was going to have chain link shaped bruises all over my body.

  The hoverjet skidded along the ground with a horrendous metallic screech. It bounced to a stop with a crunch and groan of tortured metal. The rotors from the remaining engine wound down with a shuddering whine. The stench of jet fuel clogged my throat and made my eyes water.

  I struggled against the chains. Getting nowhere. Stupid superpowers.

  My bodyguards rose up. The servos in their armored suits hummed and hissed.

  “You check the pilot,” the second marine said, “I’ll keep an eye on this guy.”

  The first marine looked like he wanted to protest. But he flipped his visor down and went up to the cockpit. I lay my head back on the wall. Tried not to breathe too much of the fuel and plastic tinged smoke.

  The first marine clomped back. The pilot limped behind him. He had a gash over one eye, but otherwise seemed okay.

  “Do we have hostiles out there?” Marine number two asked.