8FOLD/ACRA: Jolt City # 22, "October Surprise!" (Part 3 of 3)

[Tom Russell]

The bloody "October Surprise" mob war has ended: Pocket Vito,
Vise-Head, and Fishface are dead, and the demonic gangster Ronove has
positioned Vise-Head's son (and murderer) Peter Pastrone into Vito's
old position as boss of all bosses, and the silent partner in the
Triumvirate. Fix, ruthless buttonman for the O'Lantern crime family,
has traced the beginnings of the war back to Martin Rock. Meanwhile,
Derek thinks he has worked out a solution to the FEVER implant in his
brain that doesn't involve him dying when the secret terrorist group
switches it on.

          "...OCTOBER SURPRISE!"

   EIGHTFOLD PROUDLY PRESENTS
////////////// [8F-118] TOM RUSSELL'S
    ////  //////  /// //////  ////// /// ////// \  //
// ////  //  //  ///   //    ///    ///   //     \//# 22
//////  //////  ///// //    ////// ///   //      //PART 3


On October 24, 2008, early in the evening (at least in these United
States), seven hundred and four pages of documents from the Department
of Homeland Security are leaked online.
   The documents detail the existence of a secret terrorist
organization called FEVER. They explain that FEVER is responsible for
four seemingly random suicide bombings, the disappearance and death of
the student Kara Caller, and the robot attack in Japan that resulted
in the death of Alix Corneau. That they have secretly installed "mind
control" implants in the brains of their victims, including four young
people who raided a top-secret tank research facility in Jolt City.
All this is seemingly done without rhyme or reason, with no goals
furthered or manifestos issued. The group claims to have secretly
kidnapped one thousand United States citizens and twenty thousand more
worldwide, and that those twenty-one thousand can, at any moment, be
placed under the control of FEVER. The government does not take their
claim at face value, but is acting under the assumption that it is
true. And, of course, that the government has kept this secret not
only from its citizens, but from its counterparts across the world.
   It spreads, as things do on the internet. By the time newspapers
hit porches the morning of October 25, 2008, said newspapers are
largely redundant. Everyone in the wireless world already knows about
FEVER. It consumes the internet, the news cycles, desperate telephone
calls, diaries, and the emergency rooms: more than one person shows up
demanding that either their skull or that of their spouse or child be
opened to determine if the implant is present. More than one person
takes it upon themselves to do the opening.
   Speeches are made, but no one is listening. In the United States,
both sitting President George W. Bush and future President Barack
Obama stress that everyone should remain calm. Obama's rival, John
McCain, suspends his campaign; it works about as well as it did the
first time. [1]
   But America is not the only nation on the planet. World leaders
make their speeches as well. Some say to remain calm. Some take the
opportunity to take potshots at the United States. Some are stronger
in their condemnation of such a crisis being kept secret. And North
Korea states outright that these are all lies.
   And amid all this, all anyone can do, and all anyone does, is wait
for the hammer to fall. They know about FEVER now. The question is,
what will FEVER do? When will they do it?
   Have they done it already?

Derek, being above all things plugged in, gets wind of this about ten
minutes after it happens on the night of the twenty-fourth. He calls
Glass; she was just about to call him.
   "How did this happen?"
   "I don't know," says Glass. "We're tracing the leak now. Or trying to."
   "Not to be that guy. But is my, is my name in there?"
   "No," says Glass. "Just in case something like this happens, we
don't list four-colour identities in these files. The index is a
separate file on the Secret Internet." [2]
   "Oh, well, the Secret Internet, it's completely safe then," deadpans Derek.
   Glass ignores him. "We have to assume FEVER is going to act in the
near future. Dr. Fay's made the changes to the implant?"
   Derek nods, then remembers that nods are inaudible. "Yes."
   "So you won't die if they turn it on?"
   "Not immediately, anyway," says Derek dourly. "The new addition
should interrupt the signal though. It'll just be a matter of
surviving the experience."
   "You're sure it will work?"
   "Dr. Fay made it; of course I'm sure."
   "Hold on." Glass puts her hand over the phone for forty seconds. "Boxer?"
   "Still here."
   "To be safe, we're going to be assigning you a babysitter."
   "Someone who can take me out if I go rogue," says Derek. "I
understand. Can she be a hot babysitter?"
   "I didn't say it was going to be a she..."
   "Aw, c'mon, Glass," says Derek. "If I'm going to be murdered, it
better be by a gorgeous woman. I want to leave this world the way I
lived in it."
   "Annoying the opposite sex?"
   "Exactly."
   "I think I've got someone in mind."

Blue Boxer meets Glass, some of her agents, and Knockout Mouse at a
hotel in the middle of the night.
   "So, we all know what to do?" says Glass.
   Bethany nods. "I have to kill him if he starts to act weird. Well.
Weirder than usual."
   "Which shouldn't be necessary," asserts Derek. "The new trigger Dr.
Fay installed should kick in about five seconds after they switch on
the implant. It's just in case."
   "You need to check in every hour," says Glass, handing a phone to
Bethany. "If you don't, we're going to assume Blue Boxer has killed
you. Boxer, roll up a sleeve. Dr. Spencer?"
   One of the agents takes Derek's bared arm in one hand and readies a
needle in the other. "What I'm injecting into your bloodstream is a
compound with traces of a unique metal alloy that can be tracked by
our GPS satellites. So if you do go rogue, and Knockout Mouse fails,
we can find you."
   "Why do you even need me, then?" says Bethany.
   "Side effects may include dizziness, seizures, sudden and
unpredictable bloody diarrhea for the next forty-eight hours."
   "That'll be it, then," says Derek. "Make sure I don't die before
you have to kill me, which again, you won't."
   "I'm just," begins Bethany. "I want to help, but I'm not sure about this."
   "Agent Glass?" says Derek. "Can me and the Mouse have a moment alone?"
   Glass nods; the agents file out.
   "I don't want to kill anybody," says Bethany. "It's against my
code. And yours."
   Derek nods. "You won't have to kill me, though."
   "I don't even want to be put in that position. It's not fair of you to ask."
   "That's not why I asked for you," says Derek. "Like I said, this
thing is going to work." He taps the side of his head. "The problem is
what happens after that. After it works, I'm going to have a lot worse
than FEVER to worry about. I don't know if I'm going to survive or
not. I have a chance. But I just don't know. And, well. I like you,
silly."
   "I like you, too," says Bethany. "Goofball."
   "Derek," he says. He takes off his mask. "My name is Derek Mason."
   Bethany hesitates, then takes off her domino mask. "My name is
Bethany Clayton."
   "I'm twenty years old," says Derek.
   "Twenty-five."
   "I like older women."
   Bethany smiles. "I like younger men."
   "I'm an only child. Both my parents have passed away. I live in my
father's house. I'm this close to losing it. I'm running my own
business as a contractor. Running it into the ground, mostly."
   "I had a sister. She died when she was young. My parents are still
living, but they're divorced. I'm a full-time student."
   "I did some bad things. I used to be a drug dealer for this guy
Samson Snapp. Then I helped the cops put him away. I figured out who
the Green Knight was and decided to help him. And now I'm his
sidekick."
   Bethany bites her lower lip. "I. Uh. We were staying at my
grandmother's place, out in the country, when something crashed. I was
fifteen. I found it. I found... I found this glove. And the belt I
used to wear." She takes a deep breath with her mouth. "They were
broken, and I fixed them, and that's where the powers come from."
   "You weren't experimented on."
   "No, not really," she says. "But with Fitzwalter... I didn't mean
to, I didn't, I..."
   "Oh, Bethany, that's amazing," says Derek.
   "What?"
   "You fixed them? You were fifteen and you found alien tech and you
fixed it? You're a genius!"
   She blushes. "Well, I mean, a little bit, yeah."
   "So am I!, he said, modestly," says Derek. "That's one of the two
things we have in common."
   "The other being?"
   "We're both damn good-looking," says Derek. He kisses her.
   Glass knocks on the door. "If you're both quite done...?"
   They fumble their masks back into place before the door opens.

After Glass leaves, they remove their masks, followed by the rest.
Both have been in this game long enough to be really good at taking
off their clothes in a hurry, to change from civvies to union in
twenty seconds and back again in fifteen. It's something that Martin
drilled Derek on endlessly, and something that Bethany practiced
herself in the eight years before she officially began her career as a
costumed heroine.
   But now it's like they forgot all their training. It is a slow and
halting, herky-jerky sort of work, fumbling with zippers and belts and
snaps, each embarrassed at what they have to offer the other. Until
finally they have nothing left to remove. Nothing left to reveal to
one another.
   He leans in to kiss her, and hesitates. She leans in to kiss him,
and does the same. They smile at each other, and then resolve to make
a game of it, alternating leaning in and pulling away, lips almost but
never touching, hot breath crashing against the other's skin. Until
finally, he does not kiss her and she does not kiss him but rather
they both kiss at once, neither passive, both hungering, and both at
last satisfied.
   He rubs his clumsy hands along her back and her legs. Don't go for
the breasts, he reminds himself. Don't be that guy who's always
grabbing for her breasts. They're just another part of her, they're
not the only part. She's a whole beautiful woman and you need to
respect her and treat her as such. She doesn't want you pawing at her
boobs like some maladjusted perpetual infant. Her neck, her butt, her
legs, her belly, but don't just go for the breasts.
   She pulls back from the kiss, holding the back of his head in one
hand. She smiles, sleepy-eyed and sensual. "Don't you like boobs?"
   "Well, yeah, but I didn't want to, you know..."
   She fills his mouth with one of her nipples.
   "Oh, oh dear," says Derek, pulling back.
   "You, you didn't 'go' already?"
   "No," says Derek. He runs to the bathroom.
   "Side effects," remembers Bethany. She can still hear it over the
exhaust fan. "Oh, Lord. That is unholy."
   He spends most of the night in the bathroom.

October 25: 42426 Danube Street.
   The Green Knight's cell phone rings. It's ADA Dmowski. Martin
answers it. "Green Knight speaking."
   "I know you have a busy plate, with all this stuff going on with FEVER..."
   "I actually don't know what's going on with FEVER," says Martin.
   "Haven't you been online?"
   "Boxer usually handles that. He had to go out last night. Something
FEVER-related."
   "Well, maybe check in on that," suggests Dmowski. "But before you
do, I want you to know that we found Vito."
   "Really?"
   "Someone mailed him to the Chief of Police this morning."
   "Any symbols?" says Martin.
   "Inside a fish," says Dmowski.
   Didn't think he'd give up Fishface. "Maranzano?"
   "Dead," says Dmowski. "Same thing with Vise-Head. Which just about
ends the mob war, I would think."
   "Hope so," says Martin. "So, Gallery?"
   "I'll see what I can do," says Dmowski. "This is certainly proof
that Vito exists, or that he did exist, anyway. I'll see if I can tie
that to what Gallery gave us. GK?"
   "Yeah?"
   "I know you said you had someone making inquiries, going places you
couldn't go," says Dmowski. "Did they... start all this?"
   Martin is silent.
   "I guess I have my answer."
   "Gotta go," says Martin. "Someone's knocking on my door."
   He hangs up the cell phone. He starts to turn the knob while
simultaneously looking out the peephole. It's Fix. Shit.

Fix hears the knob start to turn, and then stop. Immediately he fires
a round into the door. If you know what you're doing, you only need to
fire once. Fix knows.

Martin falls to the floor two seconds after the bullet hits his shoulder.
   He wasn't ready for it, wasn't fast enough. He didn't prepare
himself for the fall, and so his back takes the brunt of it. His back,
long-abused and neglected. It has complained all this year and last
for all the years before of thankless service. Now it's had enough.
   He tries to sit up, but can't; the pain is too great.
   He tries to roll over onto one side, so he can crawl or scramble.
But the moment he begins, he hears himself screaming and rolling flat
on his back.
   This is ridiculous. He is a God damn superhero. He's not going to
let a bad back get him killed.
   AAAARRRGGH! On the other hand, maybe he will.
   He is, after all, a man in his forties. A man who should have
stopped doing this kind of shit a long, long time ago. If there's one
lesson he wanted to impart to Derek, it's that he has to retire when
he's thirty, thirty-five tops. The human body's not made for this.
   Oh God, Derek. He's going to leave the kid alone. He can't leave
him alone. Training's not done. He still needs Martin. Martin has to
live. He has to get up off the floor. Get up, get up...!
   AAAARRRGGH! Please, get up...
   It's not just his back now. His whole body feels like it's on fire.
Like it's burning. Not metaphorically. Actually. Actually on fire. But
he's not on fire, is he?
   (Fix kicks in the door. He aims his gun.)
   It burns worse than anything he's ever felt in his life. His vision
is getting cloudy, and everything looks kind of yellow.
   He hears the gun fire, and he disappears.
   Fix stares at the floor. Not the strangest thing he's seen.

October 25, earlier: the hotel.
   They share a shower, then put on their unions in the morning. Derek
orders a late breakfast for the two of them. Usually he'd just have a
massive plate of breakfast sausages and a couple waffles loaded with
syrup, but he's resolved to put as little stress on his digestive
system as he possibly can. So he just goes with a muffin. "And
Vernors? Do you guys have Vernors?" They have Vernors. "Awesome, send
me up some warm Vernors. Like, I don't know, a dozen cans." Glass is
paying for it, so why not? [3]
   He relays Bethany's order, and then powers up his laptop at 11 AM
to check his email and on the state of the world. As would be
expected, FEVER dominates the internet.
   "God," says Derek.
   A knock at the door; breakfast. Derek alternates bites of his
muffin and swigs of Vernors.
   "How bad is it?" says Bethany as she cuts her waffle.
   "Pretty bad," says Derek. "People are really scared."
   His screen goes completely black. White text appears: OF COURSE THEY ARE
   "Oh, what the shit is this?"
   The text disappears, and suddenly a girl's face fills his screen.
She can't be more than eight years old. "I turned on your webcam so we
could have a hot little chat," she says. "I hope your girlfriend
doesn't mind."
   Derek sets the laptop down on the bed. Bethany sits beside him.
   The girl's face is drenched in sweat, and pale, the eyes watering. Fever.
   "Hello, Derek," says the child. "Don't bother to try tracking it.
I've disabled all your computer's functions."
   "You're the one who was in Alix's body. And in the research lab."
   "Kinda obvious," says the girl.
   "The psychotic genius," says Derek.
   "I don't know about genius," says the girl, blushing. "But psychotic, sure."
   Bethany slides her right hand lazily out of view of the webcam. She
dials Glass on her phone, turns the volume down, and places it next to
the laptop. "So," she says, "what do we call you? Cobra Commander?"
   "Kara," says Derek. "Her name is Kara Caller."
   She smiles sideways. "Good guess."
   "Not a guess," says Derek. "You said you were the common enemy of
mankind. It was a quote. From Gibbon. Describing one of the roman
emperors. Caracalla. Kara Caller, Caracalla."
   "Caracalla will do," says she.
   "It was kind of obvious," says Derek. "Your overdue library book.
Also, the pun."
   "Or, you know, google would have worked."
   "So, that wasn't your real body in the desert."
   "My real body?" she echoes, amused at the very idea. "My real body?
Oh, Derek. What makes you think that any of them is my 'real' body, or
that I have only one?"
   "What I meant was, you're not a woman," says Derek.
   "You know nothing of me and mine."
   "I know you leaked the files," says Derek.
   "Of course I did." Caracalla waves a dismissive hand. "If we
started up a website and told the world that we were everywhere-- that
we were their friends and family, that we were them, and they didn't
even, couldn't even, know it-- they could ignore us. We tell them
there are twenty-one thousand, and they can say, no, they're lying.
But if it leaked. If the government was working so desperately to hide
it from them. Well, then whatever it says in there must be true.
Whether we have twenty thousand or we have twenty, five hundred or
five, right now the entire world is shitting themselves.
   "The Gorgon had the right idea, Derek. With the internet, everyone
can know everything at once. The way to destroy humanity is to
weaponize the internet. And we have."
   "So, congratulations, everyone's scared of you," spits Derek. "So what?"
   "Everyone's scared of us," agrees Caracalla. "Everyone. Seven
billion people, all terrified at the same time, of the same thing. And
fear is what calls them. What draws them near. What breaks the walls
between our universe, and theirs.
   "Can you hear them, slithering their way in? They who rent the
flesh and devour the soul. The defilers of hope and destroyers of
dreams. The Dyzen'thari!"
   A pop-up window appears with a video clip, followed by another, and
another, dozens of pop-ups from around the world. Giant tentacles and
wings and beaks and eyes, hideous eyes, all rip through the sky,
cascading into buildings, into mountains, into people. [4]
   "This... this just got kinda weird," says Derek, feeling sick to
his stomach. He takes another sip of Vernors.
   A final tiny pop-up shows up in the middle of the screen. It's
Caracalla. Derek and Bethany lean in to see it.
   "So, in conclusion, thank you, Derek. Thank you, Bethany. And thank
you, Becky; I know you're listening. You worked so hard to keep it
under wraps. The end of the world was made possible by viewers like
you."
   "We'll stop you," says Derek.
   "Oh, you won't," says Caracalla. "Certainly, they're welcome to
try, doomed as they are to fail. But you, Derek. You won't be trying
anything. I don't usually go for men, but I'll make an exception this
time. Maybe I'll rape your pretty little girlfriend before you
strangle her. I think she'd like that. In any case, this worthless
bitch has outlived her usefulness."
   "No, don't!" says Derek. "She's just a..."
   She holds a gun to her head and pulls the trigger. Her head erupts in blood.
   A second later, Derek feels something tickle in the back of his
skull. "She's flipping the switch. Don't worry. This will work."
   He grabs the case of Vernors and clutches it tight against his
chest. "I might need this for my stomach. Bethany, do me a favor?"
   "What?"
   "You're a genius." His body starts to shake, his limbs flailing
wildly. "So save the world."
   The blood pounds in his head. He screams. His entire body itches
and burns. It burns so hot, burns worse than the time he was actually
burned in the fire. Every muscle throbs and quakes, and then his body
turns a queer and bright yellow, and then
   And then
   He's gone.
   Bethany picks up the phone. "Glass?"
   "I'm here. What...?"
   "I think it worked."

October 18. JCU, the Kistler building.
   "Blue Boxer. To what do I owe the pleasure of your company on this
lovely Saturday morning?"
   "I think I found a solution," says Derek. He hands her a sketchbook.
   She flips through it.
   "It's a little rough," he says. "I'm not sure about some of the math."
   "This is... is this what I think it is?"
   Derek nods. "I can't travel to another dimension. Can't teleport.
It's not practical to try to send me into Deep Space. So I can't
disrupt the signal by changing where I am. But I can change when."
   "You want me to send you back in time," says Dr. Fay. "Do you have
any idea how dangerous that is?"
   "A little bit, yeah," says Derek. "But that's not quite it. What I
want, is I want you to replace the kill switch with a time machine. So
when FEVER flips me on, it'll send me back in time."
   "You want me to build a time machine the size of my thumb," says Dr. Fay.
   "A little bit, yeah." He points to one of his drawings. "Kinda like
this. But smaller. And, you know, it has to actually work."
   "I just, I," the usually unflappable Dr. Fay stammers. "I don't
know if you realize, if you really realize, what you're saying here."
   "Well, you said yourself that you do six impossible things before breakfast."
   Actually, she said that to Derek. Way to rock the secret identity,
kiddo. "It's not the engineering I'm talking about," says Dr. Fay. "I
can do this, sure. Piece of cake. Probably. I'm talking about should
we do it."
   "All roads," says Derek. "Can't change the future, only the past."
   Dr. Fay facepalms. "Not sure if that theory is actually true. But.
I'm not talking ethics, either. Though there is the ethical question
of sending you to certain death."
   "The green guy went through this two or three times," says Derek.
   "Two or three?"
   "Depending on how you count them. I know what it is I'm asking you
to do. But if my options are dying when they turn it on, one-hundred
percent certain, becoming a terrorist when they turn it on and then
dying, one-hundred percent certain, or going to the past where I have
a ninety-nine percent chance of dying and never returning? Well,
one-percent chance of survival: I like those odds best. So can you do
it? Please?"


October 21. 42426 Danube Street.
   Martin's just getting ready to go out and see a man about a
dehumidifier when there's a knock at the door. He starts to turn the
knob and looks out the peephole. It's Dr. Fay.
   "Hey," says Dr. Fay. "Long time no see, fella."
   "Um, prison break, right?"
   "Yes, the time I busted you out of prison when everyone thought you
had murdered me," says Dr. Fay. "Fun times." [5]
   "What can I do you for?" says Martin.
   "Can I come in?" says Dr. Fay.
   Martin shrugs.
   "We alone?" says Dr. Fay.
   "Um, yes," says Martin. "Why? Are you propositioning me? It's been
awhile for me, and, you know, I'd be amenable."
   "Hmm," says Dr. Fay. "Now I see where the Boxer gets it from."
   "The... the..."
   "Derek Mason is the Blue Boxer, Martin Rock is the Green Knight,"
says Dr. Fay. "Yes, yes, I know. I'm pretty much the smartest person
on the planet, so yes, after taxing my mental powers to their limit, I
finally deciphered the layers of carefully-constructed secrecy
surrounding your true identity."
   "Is that sarcasm?" says Martin.
   "Of course it's sarcasm," says Dr. Fay. "You guys are terrible at this."
   "...You didn't come just to tell me that, though."
   "No."
   "...And you didn't come to proposition me? Because it has been awhile..."
   "No," says Dr. Fay, flatly.
   "Fair enough. What is it, then?"
   "You know about Derek's implant?"
   "Implant?"
   "Oh, this is great," says Dr. Fay. "You know about FEVER?"
   "He has a FEVER implant," realizes Martin.
   "He probably didn't want to worry you."
   "I'm probably going to have to kick his ass," says Martin.
   "The signal can be disrupted once it's turned on, if the victim
phases to another plane. To make a long story somewhat shorter, his
particular version of the implant prevents him from doing this.
He's... come up with a way to get around it."
   "That sounds ominous," says Martin.
   "Time travel," says Dr. Fay.
   His face goes white. "He can't be serious."
   "He said you did it two or three times. Which was it? Two or three?"
   "Twice, unless you count the time my consciousness was in Lincoln's
body, in which case three." [6]
   "I'd say two, then," says Dr. Fay. "So you did it twice, and he
says he understands the risks from what you've told him. And I've
heard different things about this kind of thing, about time travel, so
I thought I should ask you what exactly it is that you told him."
   "I told him what I was told," says Martin slowly. "What the
original Green Knight told me. And what I experienced. That you have
to think of time as a living thing. As an organism. And like any
organism, it has antibodies to fight off foreign bodies and
infections.
   "When you go back in time, that's what you are. You're a foreign
body, because you haven't existed yet. And so time fights you. It hits
you with everything it's got. Everything that's alive, in that moment,
in that past, is trying to kill you, every second that you're there.
Coincidence piles on coincidence. Natural disasters. Always bumping
into the wrong people at the wrong time. And it never lets up. Ever.
The past is the most dangerous time to be alive. Any past."
   "You lived through it," says Dr. Fay.
   "I'd say that I was lucky, but when you're in the past, your luck
is nothing but bad. What happens-- well, at least the way it was
explained to me-- what happens is that either time kills you, which it
does almost always. Or it returns you to your proper era, or near it,
anyway. To a time when you are no longer a foreign body. Coincidence
piles on coincidence, until it expels you. Derek... it's going to eat
him alive. You can't do it."
   "I already have," says Dr. Fay. "He said he'd rather take a
one-percent chance of coming through it alive than no chance at all."
   "It's not even one percent," says Martin. "You have better odds of
winning the lottery."
   "Better than one in 13,983,816?"
   "I think what I was told was one in twelve million for time travel,
so I guess it's slightly better than the lottery."
   "Oh, well, that's completely different; so there's a chance," says
Dr. Fay, forcing a smile.
   "Not for Derek," says Martin. "Not alone. Not with his luck."
   "I figured you'd say that." Dr. Fay opens her metal briefcase and
pulls out a small chip.
   Martin nods. "You don't even have to ask. I'm in. Tell me how it works."
   "It will be embedded under the skin in your head. When Derek's time
machine is triggered, yours will be triggered automatically. It will
take you to the same time, the same place. I don't know where, I don't
know when. All I can promise is that it will be planet Earth, in the
past, and probably not under water."
   "Probably not?"
   "Maybe not?"
   "Just gets better and better."

Somewhere & somewhen.
   Derek wakes up in a field. The first thing he sees is Martin laying
beside him.
   Martin smiles. "Hey."
   "Um, hi," says Derek. "What are you...?"
   "Wasn't going to let you do this alone," says Martin. "By the way,
I'm going to have to beat the snot out of you for not telling me about
the implant."
   "Understood."
   "Is that Vernors?"
   "A little bit, yeah," says Derek. "You want some?"
   "Hell, yes. Roll one over here." Martin grabs the can and pops it
open. Struggling, he lifts up his neck and brings the soda bubbling to
his lips.
   "Wouldn't it be easier to do that if you were sitting up?"
   "It would be, yes," says Martin.
   "What was that sound?" Derek sits up. "Oh, shit."
   "Oh shit?"
   "Oh, comma, shit."
   Martin finally gets up, and looks where Derek is looking. He nods
grimly. "Yep. Oh, comma, shit."

TO BE CONCLUDED IN JOLT CITY # 23...

          "...THEIR LAST ADVENTURE...!"

COPYRIGHT (C) 2014 TOM RUSSELL.