Something Random to Satisfy You With

Chapter 7: And of Course, This Happens

Alan and Charlie had just finished reading the instructional manual, and with their newfound knowledge, both of them wanted to run around screaming like babies. After all, it isn’t every day that you learn that your enemy’s going to kill you, because it’s usually only a fantasy, not a reality. But screaming babies aren’t like mature, tough men who could take care of themselves and could handle any situation. It didn’t matter that both of them were wimps and could never live up to their ideals; together they needed level heads.

“So what do we do?” Charlie wailed.

“Ooh, I know! I have a bomb shelter under my house that we can live in for a couple of weeks!” Alan suggested.

“Why do you have a bomb shelter?” Charlie asked.

“Well where would you want to be when Russia invades us?” Alan asked back. Charlie thought for a few seconds.

“I like the way you think.”

“But there’s only one problem.”

“What?”

“I’m renting it out to some singer. Her name’s Selena and I promised her that she could practice singing too, so things might get a bit noisy...”

Charlie just stared at him.

“Do you have to be there to ruin every good moment? You know what, forget that idea. I know what we can do. We’ll go back to the workshop and load up the tow truck with some supplies. Then we’ll get out of this here town and live life on the run.” Charlie planned out.

“But we don’t have enough money to live life on the run,” Alan pointed out, “and in case you haven’t noticed, we’re stuck in the middle of a traffic jam.”

“So maybe we don’t have enough money. But that’s only if we pay our debts, bills and taxes.”

“Alright, but if we don’t, then there’s not only going to be a chicken franchise assassin coming after us, but also creditors, tax collectors, and people we owe money to are going to be tailing our hinds as well.”

“Hmm, you’re right. Maybe if we could just fill up enough cars with fuel, cars that have people who can pay us, and if we do it for the next hour or so, maybe we’ll have enough money to make it out in the world, as well as enough money to pay our creditors.”

“Fine then. But don’t we have to pay the oil companies half of our profits?”

“Will you stop pointing out the holes in my plan? OK, let’s see, uh, how about this? We’ll quadruple the price of fuel and we’ll make enough money to pay the people we owe money to, as well as keeping a stash of the change for ourselves. Does that sound good?”

“Are people seriously going to pay $6 a litre?”

“Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

“Let’s do it.”

So that’s what they did. While normally it would have been impossible to get out of this traffic jam, thankfully Charlie had ties to the traffic controller’s assistant. As Charlie gave orders to the assistant, the street that they were on cleared up and everything was back to normal, at least for that street. This allowed the two mechanics to get back to the gas station to find a long line of cars that needed gas and would pay money, no matter how bad they were being extorted.

Charlie and Alan tended quickly to the pumps, feeding every car with gas as fast as a gasoline pump could go. But after their fourth car, they ran into a little problem.

A man had driven up in a black, open air car with the hood ornament torn off and mud splattered along the sides. The man was wearing a dirty white undershirt, boots with extra sharp cleats, khaki pants, and broken sunglasses with black shades that were centred in a downward manner. The man had flat, almost invisible ears, tanned skin that looked fit to roast, a droopy moustache that was heavily braided, accompanied by a goatee grown out to be slick and floppy, and long curly hair that came pouring out the sides of his bald head. He had on several belts that held packets filled with some type of cylinder-like items. Beside him lay what looked like a nondescript semi-automatic rifle without a safety. Inside his car was an air freshener that was shaped like a chicken about to be hanged.