NUKE Love!: A Road Trip Through the Zombie Apocalypse... (3 page)

A
s the bus burns down the road, Howdy hits the brakes and slows to a crawl.

              “Look!” he cries. “Jesus Freaks!”

              A gathering of wide-eyed apocalypsts stand at the side of the highway, holding signs and waving placards.

THE END IS HERE!

And,

REPENT SINNERS!

And,

BAPTISE YOUR DEAD!

              The bus slows and Burno, he slides down his window and hangs out to his waist. Waving his arms wildly, he makes a face and hollers, “Keep it in the church, you nutbags…!”

              An old, blue-haired lady with a SMILE, JESUS LOVES YOU sign screams back, “Fuck you, you dirty hippie…!”

              The bus erupts in hysterical laughter.

              “Ha! Holy shit! I think they’re picking up rocks,” announces Burno, eyes on the rearview.

              In the distance, a small plane falls from the sky.

Y
ou’ve gotta be kidding me, Deb… How the hell do you expect me to be there for you if I really love you?

              My point exactly, Jones. Look, I think you need someone to talk to about this. Instead of calling my radio show, why don’t you find one of the other guys up there and—

Rocket Jones turns off the satellite radio with a
click!
Glances around the cold room. The other colonists have been dead for a long time.

They were already dead when Jones had launched the Z-Globules from remote satellites down to Earth. Already dead when he’d locked out TALBY’s authorization codes and AI nuke enthusiasm routines.

He’d killed them the day that Debbie had fucked the Burning Man kid. And talked about it on the air.

The other colonists, they’d listened to the show and laughed at him behind his back—and right in front of him.

But second thoughts breed second chances. Rocket Jones has forgiveness in his heart. He unlocks the authorization codes. Restores the enthusiasm routines.

Turns back on the radio.

              …and that’s really all I have to say about that. You are sooo low on my list of priorities, Jones. I really, just don’t have the time for you right now. So let’s see, we’ve got another ‘Three for Friday’ all queued up, and it looks like we have—

DEAD AIR.

Jones watches the fireworks on Earth through
Tranquility II’s
viewing window.

The Bombs are exploding—flickering lights all over the once-blue planet. Lighting it up like the Rapture.

              Love—true love—comes only once in a lifetime.

And it's beautiful...

***

About Scott Christian Carr

Scott Christian Carr
has been a radio talk show host, editor of a flying saucer magazine, fishmonger, spelunker, psychonaut, journalist, award winning poet, TV producer, and author. He is a Bram Stoker Award nominee, Scriptapalooza 1st Place Winner for Best Original TV Pilot, and in 1999, he was awarded The Hunter S. Thompson Award for Outstanding Journalism

Scott is a contributing editor and columnist for Shroud Magazine (his column Someone Oughta Sell Tickets…! focuses primarily on bizarre fringe culture), and a 2010 Choate Road “Spotlight Scribe” - But his most satisfying and rewarding job is that of “Dad.” He lives in a home once owned by George Hansburg (inventor of the pogo stick) on a secluded mountaintop in New York’s Hudson Valley with his two children.

His novels include THE THOUSAND YEAR NIXON, a serialized novel for the Amazon Kindle, HIRAM GRANGE & THE TWELVE LITTLE HITLERS available from Shroud Publishing, the soon-to-be-released illustrated (by Danny Evarts) novel MATTHEW’S MEMORIES from Baby Rhino Press, and the upcoming WASTELAND BLUES trilogy (co-authored with Andrew Conry-Murray) from Dog Star Books. Scott’s stories have appeared in dozens of  anthologies, including Sick: An Anthology of Illness, Death Be Not Proud, Desolate Places, Beneath the Surface, AnthoCon Anthology 2012, Anthocon Anthology 2013, Demonology: Grammaticus Demonium, Scary! Holiday Tales to Make You Scream, and the upcoming Terror at Miskatonic Falls. Scott’s fiction and journalism have appeared in countless magazines and publications, including Shroud Magazine, The Dream People, GUD, Pulp Eternity, Horror Quarterly, The MUFON Journal, Weird N.J. and Withersin. His novella A Helmet Full of Hair was recently translated and reprinted in the prestigious French quarterly, Galaxies: La Revue de Référence de la Science Fiction.

Carr is an award-winning writer and producer of film/television. He is the Sr. Writer/Co-Creator of The Learning Channel (TLC) television series Dead Tenants. As Head of Development for both the Emmy Award-winning Triple Threat Television and the Academy Award-nominated Fredric Golding Productions Scott developed original programming for MSNBC, ESPN, CNBC, A&E, The Hallmark Channel, Discovery Networks and The Learning Channel.

Scott is the creator and executive producer of the post-apocalypse scifi film The NUKE Brothers (featured at DragonCon the World's Largest Scifi & Fantasy Film Festival and the 2012 AnthoCon Speculative Art & Fiction Conference) and writer of the tie-in comic book The Continuing Adventures of Fat Man and Little Boy...

He writes every day.

http://www.scottchristiancarr..com/