Looks like ol’ Rip Torn barely made it. Thats how it works for descendants of the greatest actor ever to grace the silver screen.
The fall of mankind didn’t catch everyone by surprise. A couple of people saw the writing on the wall, and happened to be well-situated to do something about it. Not to prevent the downfall, not to save the world and the people within, hell no. Though they did try, for a time. But after expending years of effort and large chunks of their personal fortunes, after losing blood and loved ones and an eye and several toes between them, after beating their heads against the wall of humanity’s inevitable downfall for too many years, Messrs. Wayne and Stark threw up their hands in disgust, pooled their considerable resources, and built themselves an escape pod. A spaceship as tall and heavy as the old Saturn V rockets of a century ago, the Ark rested in its cradle at the Stark skunkworks, occupying the former Boeing plant in Huntington Beach. Mr. Wayne’s staff had just finished removing the shrinkwrap from the pilot’s control console and were testing the titanic (if elderly) Marion crawler Wayne had purchased from the NASA fire sale after the shuttle program ended, when the news came over Twitter: Chelsea had snapped, and everyone had about fourteen minutes to get their affairs in order.
Wayne roared back from Starbucks and skidded his antique black Lincoln Futura down Skylab Road to the hangar, screaming into his weird one-off smartphone (the one that glowed red every time his bowling partner Gordon called). “Now! Get it outta there now!” he bellowed, to no apparent effect. The staff had Twitter accounts and mostly functioning brains and had read the drill memo every morning before they were allowed lunch, so they had already fired up the Marion crawler and were moving the Ark out of its camouflaged shed, but even when it was new the Marion had a maximum loaded speed of one mile per hour… and the sixty-year-old crawler-transporter was long overdue for an oil change.
Wayne stabbed a button on the phone. “Stark! Where the hell are you?!” And then the breeze blew Wayne’s rug askew. He looked up, holding onto his hair, as Stark’s massive Helicarrier hove into view. The same age as the Marion, but considerably better-maintained, it hovered over the Ark, tow cables at the ready. Stark leaned over the side and waved at Wayne. “Hey, dude! Need a lift to the Launchpad?”
But that smartass Stark had forgotten to wind his watch, and his fourteen minutes expired like an unpaid magazine subscription. The blast didn’t do more than warm his protective ferrous suit, but the Electro-Magnetic Pulse was Stark’s literal downfall. The Marion’s tired engines died for good… as did the Helicarrier’s. Down it plummeted, landing directly atop Wayne’s freshly SHITGO-equipped black custom Lincoln Futura, catching Mr. Wayne with his pants unfortunately literally down.
And there stood the Escape Rocket, perched forlornly atop its wheeled (yet unpowered… thanks again, EMP!) platform. The Ark itself was fully shielded against EMPs, of course (unlike the laptop in its cockpit containing the library to educate you damned kids), and suffered no damage. For years, it just sat there, patiently awaiting the day it would ferry its masters to a new world. Wayne and Stark, being retro-futurists at heart, had given their craft an elegant, smooth form with clean lines and a virtually frictionless surface. As the only hatch into the Ark was 300 feet straight up, and the nearest Launch Tower, the one across the Employee Parking Lot which Stark had hoped to ferry the Ark to with the Helicarrier and shave a few precious minutes off the crawler transport time, had been utterly crushed by the massive Helicarrier itself, nothing and nobody could get inside the Ark.
My mom was an acquaintance of Mr. Stark’s before the fall, and knew of the existence of his Rocket. She was there, as a matter of fact, when a stabilizing spar from the falling Helicarrier smashed Wayne’s cranium into jelly. At that moment, Sally Kruger knew her internship was over. She dropped her clipboard, ran to the hangar, locked herself into a clean room, changed out of her sweaty hazmat suit, and waited. After the chaos outside had subsided into silence, she waited another six hours, changed into a fresh hazmat suit, and ventured outside to look for survivors. It was deathly quiet. Sally wondered why nobody else seemed to have been observing the suit protocols; the facility was littered with corpses, but none were wearing hazmat suits. A moment’s thought gave her the solution: her initial suspicion from that morning, when her training supervisor insisted she suit up, had been correct: making the intern wear the heavy, cumbersome, uncomfortable suit was nothing more than a bit of FNG hazing. Nobody else seriously thought the suits would be needed that day. Twitter or no Twitter, they thought it was a drill. Sally shook her head, wondering why Wayne habitually hired such idiots.
She went out to the parking lot, but her WRX wouldn’t start. Then she remembered the EMP. After a moment’s thought, she returned to the wreckage of the Helicarrier and rummaged around until she found Stark. Well, most of him, anyway. That stupid metal suit of his had pinched his torso in half. She rummaged wetly around in the lower half until she found a ring of keys, then headed for the motor pool. She emerged a couple minutes later, mounted on Stark’s beloved old Indian Chief Black Hawk motorcycle. After a cursory look around, she headed home to Anaheim to see what (if anything) had survived. Within a half hour she was distracted by a battle for survival that lasted another ten years, but she remembered her old gig at the Stark plant… and she held on to the file folder in her worn leather backpack. The file that had been sitting on Stark’s private workbench, next to his old Indian.
The file that turned out to be almost complete. Almost.
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Bastards didn’t get my gas, they got my booze. I keep it in five gallon gas cans. Pours better that way. They knew what they were looking for. Probably saw Wizard give the cans a huff and move on. Weird dude that one, turns down booze because he was hoping it was gas…
Anyone needs repairs I got ya covered. Free repairs for whoever finds me some cement to put in my doors. Baby needs a thicker skin.
If we are gonna be nosing around the Stark Skunkworks, count me in. I wouldn’t mind finding some more defensive armaments for Baby. Besides, a door three hundred feet up isn’t impossible to reach, just gonna take a little engineering, and a dumbass or two to climb/be launched up there. Bound to be all sorts of fun scrap in there.
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I can see why you’ve survived so long in the Wasteland, if you’re descended from that Rip Torn.
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Foie gras, or even grass would be fine. I wish I had some syrup. No, this is not corrupt-a-wish, so feel free not to respond.
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@SteampunkBanana Many thanks for the assist, mister Baltar. I believe you just jumped to front of the line in my repair queue. I’m off to reconfigure, give me a yell if there’s a need.
Also, the bit where you knocked down the light pole that skewered five zombies? That was beautiful, and I just might have captured it on vid. Maybe.
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| ENTRY #2 |,""---:___
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| ~~ /< _...==...____| | | ___ |
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Hello, Everybody. Sorry I’m late!
Given as I managed to escape the notice of the Monster Trucks of Riverside, I thought I’d have time to stop by Richard Nixon’s Presidential Library in Yorba Linda. Sorry, @gwwar, didn’t realize you got the attention of a monster truck, but I’m glad to learn you know how to handle…oversized loads.
Now what do I see as I’m pulling into the parking lot of the Nixon Library, but some other asshole pulling OUT with the Presidential Bust as his hood ornament.
Now, normally, I might have engaged just for bragging rights of that marvelous bust (no offense ladies). But since I was already a bit licked, I was NOT about to engage anyone brazen enough to roll with fucking chandeliers on the hood of their caddy. (that’s not bad photoshop, it actually glows white in that lighting). Maybe if I’m lucky I’ll run into him again.
So here I am, doing a K-turn in the library’s parking lot, when I notice a lot of zombies around. Well, not proper zombies, more like stoners. Hippies. They seem peaceful enough, so I figure I’d pop my head in and see if there was anything else of value.
Man, that was a strange scene. There were like two dozen people hanging out in the main entryway to that museum, all chill and hanging like they were bassking in the presense of ssome ssun god. To be honest, it seemed like a bunch of stoners who had dreamed their whole lives of occupying a Nixon building and this was their chance. I glanced around, and seeing the place was looted to hell, nothing of value to be found, I turned and made for the exit.
But… in front of the exit, right in my way, was some dude in a bathrobe, some relic of the radiation. His skin looked all irradiated to the point it had gotten scaley and rough, and his fingers looked as if they’d fused from 5 to 3. I tried to walk by, all cool like I strut, and he commanded me, “Take Thiss. Deliver it to the Adresssee, Or Elsse.”
Since we’re all about to trek off till our doom, I’ll be level with you all. I mean, maybe it was the contact high making me all paranoid, but he scared the crap out of me. Literally. And I don’t need to tell you how much fuel economy I lost with that shart.
So, likes I was saying before I got all wussy there, I’ve got a package to deliver to someone, somewhere, I don’t know, and I can’t read the fucking label.
Hey you @awjt, you’ve got eyes that look like they can…read. Can you tell me what the label on this package says?
{when a literati agrees to read this, I’ll PM the translation}
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I’m sorry, man, I gotta breathe here… I don’t know which of those three illustrations of yours made me laugh hardest, but the Space Jam wrapping paper just sent me round the bend.
I’m gonna need a moment to recover!
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You’re some kind of alright, kid. I appreciate the wrench, let’s see how @JonasEggeater or @penguinchris translate this trade.
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I can’t believe it. I think it says, “Boost Dorcas McG’s hit points to 50.”
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I hand over the exquisitely wrapped package to Dorcas.
{when the package gets to it’s correct destination, I’ll PM the contents}
LOL, I have been instructed to reveal the true message, which is:
WHOOPS! Sorry. This:
I have NO idea what it means.
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Well, thanks for pronounciating it, hon, but I don’t know what “bree teeesh eeeesh ooo” means either.
Still, here’s a gallon of gas for your service. Mind if I pour it on ya?
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Now we’ve got a party.
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ooc: I used to live down the street from the Nixon library. Nixon’s Marine One (edit: not Air Force Two, thanks @daneel… even if it’s only when Nixon is on board…) helicopter is parked out front - guess somebody else already took off with that or you would have noticed, could have been great salvage.
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Yoink!
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Marine One, surely?
Isn’t Air Force Two the Veep’s plane?
(and they only have those call signs when respective person is on board…)
Hey You.
You’re BreeTeesh, aren’t you?
And you drive an Eyesooo, don’t you?
Well, I’ve reason to believe this package is meant for you.
{Junior hands over present}
{contents sent via PM}
{Junior wipes hands on jeans}
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Sssssweeeet!
[ahem]
What I mean to say is, this is jolly exciting. A t-shirt of my favourite of your presidents.
It’ll go jolly nicely with my tweet suit.
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