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drinking out of goblets was medieval and badass. Two: Robots could save the world.
3.
That s a fuck ton of gasoline that guy with hair is using, Cobra says.
Rambo says, Yep, he s got gasoline and legs.
It s a pointless observation. The church is really burning now. The Reverend
says something about building a mountain to God and throws himself into the fire.
Rambo forgets where he is, forgets what he s watching, and chalks it up to the
gasoline intake or maybe thinks he has a slag stuck somewhere in his head.
The sky is blue.
The smoke is black and covering it up.
Cobra has two eyes and a unibrow and for a second Rambo wants to punch him
in the face to make the unibrow separate in two.
Smells like burning, he says.
Cobra coughs and asks if he wants to go to the refrigerator graveyard and see if
Commando s there.
Rambo can t remember where the refrigerator graveyard is but says okay and
that he thinks the El Camino is sick and he s pretty sure there s a dead woman filled with
slags in the bed of it.
Cobra tells him the world is mostly water and evil anyway and they pull away,
chugging gasoline straight from the plastic milk jug.
Neither one of them can remember what Commando said about goblets. He
might have been talking about goblins.
4.
Five hours later they finally reach the refrigerator graveyard. During this time they
pass the burning church several times. Sometimes Rambo points out that the church is
burning. Sometimes it s Cobra.
It s dark by the time they get to the refrigerator graveyard. It helps that it s the
only remaining place in town that has electricity. The front of the graveyard, which is
actually called Flemion s Scrap and Metal, is just a trailer. Out back, stadium lights shine
on junked cars, washing machines, dryers, old school buses, and random piles of
miscellany. But, perhaps oddly, the most predominate things are refrigerators. They line a
central walkway. They are in virtually every color, some loud and vibrant and others more
muted.
Neither Cobra nor Rambo can remember seeing a refrigerator that was anything
other than white or black in a house or trailer.
Where the fuck you guys been? Commando asks. He sounds mad a lot.
Rambo says, Somebody burnt down the church.
Cobra says, Like five times.
Rambo says, How are the robots coming?
You get the shit I asked for?
Uh, Cobra says. We got a car with a dead girl in the back and the Reverend
burned down the church.
Burned down himself, too.
I sent you specifically to the hardware store. Please tell me you went to the
hardware store.
We couldn t find the hardware store, Cobra says.
Did you get more gas?
For the car? Yeah.
Commando punches Cobra in the stomach. Cobra drops to the ground and
vomits. Gasoline fumes waft from him.
For the generators, fucker. How do you think the lights stay on here?
Cobra can t say anything. He continues to writhe around on the ground and flap
his arms.
We thought everything runs on magic. That s what you said.
No. Commando shakes his head. That is not what I said.
Oh. Rambo looks up at one of the bright stadium lights and continues to stare.
First the light is white and then blue and then orange and then pink and then they re
spinning all around and he stops thinking or seeing.
5.
What Commando actually told them was a version of what his grandfather had
told him a very long time ago. Commando couldn t help but think his grandfather knew
the slags were coming. Even though he never lived to see it, he predicted something like
this was going to happen.
He said somewhere out in space was a place called the Garbage Planet. That
probably wasn t its real name, the smart name, but it was out there. On Garbage Planet,
people found a use for waste. He said it was evolution. He said they were training it.
That s what recycling was. It was our attempt to train garbage to be something else.
That s why he opened the scrap yard. So he could surround himself with garbage and
things people just didn t want anymore. On Garbage Planet, he would have been a king.
This was mostly metal garbage he collected. Expensive stuff. It was worthless to most
people because they didn t want it anymore, but if you added up what people had
originally paid for this stuff, he would have been a millionaire.
The problem with Garbage Planet was that, once the garbage evolved, it could
first live alongside humans and then it would overtake them. People and trash would
become so indistinguishable nobody would be able to tell which was which. Then the
only things able to live would be the maggots and the roaches and the parasites. And they
didn t know how to do anything but expand and expand and expand and take over as
many hosts as possible. He said eventually they would start taking over whole planets.
And that was how he said we d know when we were fully evolved. Humans, he said,
aren t really given to suicide and it would take something apocalyptic to make the planet
remotely livable, to get rid of the excess humans.
Commando was too young to know what to believe but now he believed. He
believed the slags arrival heralded the shift in evolution. They d entered the next phase.
Even their biology had changed. It would take some sort of symbiotic relationship with
the garbage surrounding him if he wanted to survive.
6.
Rambo wakes up in roughly the same spot where he collapsed. He stands up and
nudges Cobra with his foot. Maybe they can sneak out before Commando knows they re
awake. Maybe they can drive into town and see if there is anybody left who has anything
left inside. Most people have gone crazy. He wants to do more than nudge Cobra. He
wants to kick him and just keep on kicking.
Cobra flaps his hands and says he s awake, that his eyes are out of his head.
Rambo has to piss and thinks about pissing on Cobra. His mouth tastes like
gasoline. His stomach is burning. He might be blind in his left eye.
Cobra stands up very slowly.
Commando storms from the back of the trailer and into the scrap yard. He holds
a piece of paper and something Rambo thinks is a stapler only he s pretty sure it s called
a slambox.
You guys are going back into town. This time I made a list. He shakes the
piece of paper in his left hand, slaps it to Cobra s cheek, and staples it there. Cobra says
ow once but doesn t make any attempt to stop him.
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