Motorplex
A great many ideas were contributed by my friend Red and my friend whose pen name is Lust_Demon!
Chuck screamed.
"ROTH! Are you okay?!" Mike grabbed onto ROTH's little arms with both hands and pulled up. He expected bullet holes, or a giant gouge out of ROTH's frame, something horrible. All he saw were the little shattered bits of the field dampener falling off ROTH's frame in pieces, along with little flecks of orange. They dropped with dry little pops off of Chuck's head. Mike gasped. "Rubber bullets!"
Rubber bullets bounced off of ROTH with another roar of shotgun fire. Little manager Maggie was a damn good shot, landing the hit just below the bot's eye. ROTH squealed in distress and struggled to gain altitude. All he managed was slowing their freefall, and the ground was still coming up fast.
"THIEF!" Maggie manager was screamed from the roof. "MY PROPERTY! NO RETURNS!"
Mike grabbed for Chuck's shoulder and shouted, "ROTH, bring us back to the boat! We'll get out that way! Go tell the guys where to find us!"
ROTH pitched hard to the side, and Mike worried for a flash of a second before he realized they were swinging towards the boat. Chuck took in the huge piles of junk on either side, with the tiny little plastic tub sitting right in the middle.
"Wow..." he whimpered. "I'm worth a lot."
Mike took the little opportunity for levity. "You're priceless, buddy."
The relief was short lived. The Motorplex started to rumble all over again, and when Mike checked the roof line, he saw nothing. They were coming down for them in a big hurry. The building started to shake from within, shedding huge hunks of its outer walls. They dropped into the plastic beach below with vicious, noisy crunches and bounced into the acid, where they immediately started to dissolve into foam and dust. The boat rocked dangerously in the waves.
They needed to hurry. As soon as their feet touched ground, Mike and Chuck shoved ROTH into the air and started running. Even this was painful; the fumes from the acid were even stronger than before. Mike could barely see through the tears pooling in his eyelids, and he started to wonder if they had enough air to- no he couldn't think like that right now, they could make it, they had to make it.
"Untie the rope!" Mike ordered.
"On it!" Chuck answered.
Mike jumped in first, holding the boat steady while Chuck made fast work of the knot. He barely waited until Chuck's was fully inside before giving the rope a hard yank. The boat bucked forward rather than moving, and Mike yelped as acid splashed against the sides and came close to landing inside their raft.
"Just go slow, Mike!" Chuck told him. "Steady and slow! They can't follow us!"
He hated this. Chuck's hands landed next to his, and they fell into a rhythm. One, two, three, four, short little tugs that inched the boat off the plastic beach and towards the metal shell covering the acid lake. Behind them, more pieces of building were falling, bouncing, sinking into the acid and coming up sizzling, rocking the dingy from behind.
Chuck checked behind them, always analyzing even during their getaway. "Those upper levels probably aren't built to handle that much weight. Combine it with all the footsteps stomping around inside, the whole thing's probably gonna collapse on itself- oh no oh NO NO MIKE THEY ARE AFTER US!"
"They're what?!"
Chuck took the rope while Mike turned around to see for himself. Shoppers, almost all of them managers in their vests, were pouring out of the front door. Every one of them were carrying their beds. Those weird not-actually-beds Mike had seen them sleeping in- the kayaks, the wash tubs, garden planters, even oversized paint buckets- had all been plucked out of their nooks. Managers jumped in and paddled with spoons, signs, cookie tins, anything, and they were gaining ground.
"Okay maybe we can go a little faster!" Mike got his hands back onto the rope. "Count it out with me, Chuck!"
Chuck shouted the rhythm in a nervous squeal- "onetwothreefourgodOhgodMikeplease"- and kept the boat just far enough ahead of the shoppers. Mike chanced a glance back; that lip-licking freak and her father were right at the head of the pack, jointly rowing a plastic canoe. The others were faltering, stuck in containers that weren't meant to be seaworthy. Some of them had lost half their paddles to the lake, others were drifting to the side rather than moving forward.
Manager Tony caught his gaze and pointed a threatening finger. "You are in violation of our terms of agreement! Your property is forfeit! You will work to pay off the damages!"
Licky-lips paddled as hard as she could with one arm, the other one trying to load the shotgun that she had pinched between her legs. The exertion was tiring her out, and her chin and cheeks were sleeked with drool from her foaming, frantic panting.
One of the managers, at the edge of the fleet, overpaddled and tipped over. The guy went completely under.
Mike's gut ran cold.
The guy came up red, screaming, sizzling-
Chuck jolted. "What was that?!"
Mike's head snapped back to the front. They were getting close to the walls now. "NOTHING just keep going don't look!"
Chuck didn't have to look, his imagination filling in the gaps. The screams were still coming, hardly drowned out- drowned!- by the frantic splashing behind them. "Oh god one of them capsized oh god Mikey what do we do?! We can't just leave him there!"
"I know we can't, but-" Mike dared a look over his shoulder, and Maggie was leveling the shotgun. "CHUCK!"
He barely got an arm over Chuck to pull him down before the shot rang out. The rubber bullets punched through a metal support in front of them, and it buckled, and the entire shell around the acid lake shifted hard to the left. It sent out a wave that rolled Chuck and Mike high enough to touch the ceiling of the wall with their shoulders, and behind them came the telltale sound of splashing and screams and foam rising up from below. Mike held tight to the metal for stability- the dry ceiling untouched by the lake- and checked behind them. A few of the managers had pulled themselves back onto their boats, and to his horror, they were still coming after them. They paddled with their burned, still-fizzing arms, and only those closest to shore were daring to sail back to safety on the island.
Licky-lips shrieked like a toddler: raw frustration at painful sheer high volume. She and Manager Tony were untouched by the acid, unbothered by their people falling and melting behind them, just angry that they couldn't have them.
Mike swore to himself to screw this whole place, and he grabbed handfuls of the wall. "Just go!"
Chuck didn't need reminding. With remaining rope now mostly soaked and dissolving, they only had the metal framework to pull themselves forward. It went only a little faster than pulling by the rope, but it was enough to gain a little ground. Without the rope as a guide or the eyelet hooks to spot, the Shoppers behind them started losing ground in the cave maze. Mike stopped seeing them about five minutes in.
He could still hear them. He could hear them everywhere, when their rafts cracked in half and the acid made contact with their skin. He could hear the bubbling, echoing from every direction. It made his head swoon more than the fumes. Chuck, beside him, was going paler and paler, shrinking into himself and losing his whimpers as the screams grew louder.
They stopped at the low ceiling tunnel. Mike had forgotten about this. It had dropped a few inches down after the framework shifted. He tested the stability of the metal by tugging it, and it wiggled in his hands. There would be no climbing over this obstacle.
Chuck gulped. "Oh no..."
"Can we still make it?" asked Mike. "We had a little room when we went through the first time."
"We did, but- Mike we'd have to push the boat down into the lake! We'd literally be scraping the bottom of the roof with maybe a quarter-inch clearance between us and the skin melting-"
The metal framework wiggled. Behind them, the Managers were snapping at each other in hushed tones, and the harsh shunk of a cocked shotgun cracked through the air.
Chuck choked on his own words. "Oh god we don't have a choice oh god oh god-"
"Just hold onto me, bro, I've got you."
To think, the first time they had done this, they had been cracking jokes. It had been comfortable and quiet. Now, folded up into the bottom of the boat, arms pushing up into the metal criss-cossing over their heads, creeping along the acid lake at a snail's pace to keep the acid at bay while nearly at level with the fumes themselves, Mike had nearly sworn off scavenging for good. Nothing in his entire life could be worth the pain they had been through today- were still going through now. It could have been someone else finding the Shoppers and being kidnapped. It could have been a day with the entire gang there to support each other and break out of the foul building when things got sticky.
Somewhere back behind them, the Managers had hit the same wall. He could feel it, literally, the impact of their canoe against the framework rattled through the metal and into his palms. He and Chuck were nearly clear, and with a laugh of relief, he realized that the canoe rode too high in the water for them to squeak underneath the frame like he and Chuck had.
He dared to whisper. "I think we're safe after this."
Chuck coughed before he spoke, and his voice trembled. "You think so?"
It had to be the fumes. Mike was already a little light-headed, but he had been trained to resist conditions like this. Chuck hadn't, and Mike gave his friend a quick bump to his shoulder to keep grounded. "Almost. Just a little more. She can't reach you now."
"No!"
Mike trembled. Her voice felt so close, and the metal shook when she spoke. She yelled back to Mike, and her words were rough and raw from the constant screaming. "Your payment went through! He is my property! Mine to customize! No returns!"
Mike had a retort on his tongue, about how he definitely wasn't, but before he could speak-
"YOU!" Chuck screamed. "Don't get to TELL ME! What to DO!"
Mike beamed. "Couldn't have said it better."
From the other side, Texas yelled, "Who the hell are you talking to?"
Mike didn't think he would ever be this happy to hear Texas ask a question. He shouted back, "We lost the rope! Did ROTH make it?!"
"He's already fixed up!" Dutch answered. "I'm sending him to come get you, just keep going!"
"Kick it into top gear, Chuck!" Mike planted his hands into the metal and pulled. The boat creeped out of the tunnel by the last little bit, freeing their head and shouders. "Just a little more-"
Maggie gave one last, ragged, painful shriek, and everything shifted down. Wound tight with fear, Mike and Chuck had adrenaline alone to thank for the jump they made out of the boat and into the metal bars above. They climbed fast and without direction, only up, as the entire place started coming down around them. Something happened- something must have pulled sharp at the supports and finally cracked them, pulling them down on top of the little plastic boat and pinning it all the way down to the bottom of the lake. Mike could see faint lights through the gaps in the frame from Motorcity outside, and he reached down to Chuck to hold his hand and haul him up into the higher rafters. Chuck kept pace with him steady, but the more they climbed, the faster the metal below them sank into the lake.
"Keep going up!" Julie shouted from the shore. "We see you! ROTH's waiting for you, just don't give up!"
"Texas has the car running!" Texas called. "Just a little more!"
They were only a few feet away from the outside. ROTH was hovering, arms wrapped around a beam of the metal shell in a vain attempt to keep it from sinking. Mike had Chuck's arm in a vice grip, knuckles white and pained. He could make it. Just those last few inches, he could make it.
Mike's foot slipped.
Without missing a breath, Chuck caught him from below. He could only hold on, he didn't have the muscle to climb like Mike did, but his grip never wavered while Mike found his footing again and pulled them up the rest of the way. Each with an arm around the other, Mike and Chuck grabbed onto ROTH with all that was left of their strength. The little bot pulled up, let go of the metal, and backed away.
Mike gave the acid lake one last look.
Below his feet, he could see it. The plastic canoe the Managers had tailed them in was pinned under the rubble, along with the remains of Manager Tony, abandoned in the boat to be pulled under.
She was right at their feet.
She had her knees hooked around the metal bars, woven in tight for leverage, and with a roar she threw her arms around both their legs. ROTH whirred and popped in disgust, wrenching side to side to get Chuck out of her grip. It twisted Mike's shoulders, turned Chuck sharply enough to pop his spine, faltered their own grip, and she still was not letting go.
"What is wrong with you?!" Mike yelled. "Let go of that thing! Do you WANT us all to die?!"
The framework creaked, buckled, cracked in the middle, pitched down into the acid lake and brought all four of them down with it. She kept her grip solid even as her legs went into the lake, her eyes blazing and yet horridly empty and vacant. Mike, for a split instant, didn't see a person behind that face. He only felt his gaze bounce off that solid wall of jealousy and possessiveness.
Then, in a beautifully unfitting tension-cutting moment, Texas shot her in the face.
Mike and Chuck flew out of her grip like a rubber band. Their eyes squeezed shut against the sight of her falling back into the lake, and they could only blindly grope for Dutch and Julie's arms when ROTH set them down directly in Stronghorn's back seat.
"We ready?!" Texas roared. "Everybody buckle the hell in! TEXAAAAAS!"
ROTH barely got inside and shut Stronghorn's roof before Texas punched the accelerator. Her engines fired.
The little spark of heat from her tailpipes ignited the lake, and Stronghorn went flying.
Crashes were never fun, but it was nothing the Burners weren't used to. Even all crammed into a single car that was currently housing a big flying plastic robot, nobody was hurt. Jostled, maybe, and Chuck was starting to cry, and everybody was upside down, but nobody was hurt.
"Well..." Texas admitted. "That sucked. But hey, we're outside Hector's Mexican food stand, so score one for Texas! Hwoo!"
Julie pulled the masks off Chuck and Mike's faces slowly, obviously regretting touching the slimy cloth. She let it drop to the ceiling, away from her hair that had curled into a pretty little pile under her head. "So, you gonna tell us what happened back there, or-"
"NO!" Chuck shouted. "NO. I don't relive those memories ever again!"
"Dude, that place is going up." Dutch shrunk away from the window. "And I heard people screaming and stuff! Are you sure we don't need firefighting equipment or something?"
"And where's all our cool swag?!" Texas demanded. "Come on, you give us a teaser trailer about being sold on some kinda nerd black market to a princess or something, don't bring us any souvenirs, and now we don't even get a story? This is bogus!"
"Guys..." Mike took a long breath. He had to compose his thoughts. "... I smell terrible."
Julie winced. "Tell me about it."
"YES!" Texas shouted. "THAT is what Texas is trying to get them to do!"
Chuck, hanging upside down with his face turning red, started to laugh, and that laugh was so sweet and innocent and relieved that it brought a wide smile to Mike's face. Even while the rest of the Burners were looking at them funny, Chuck kept giggling. "Oh wow I missed this..."
"You were gone for a day!" Dutch argued.
"Okay guys seriously can we please flip the car over?" asked Chuck. "I feel like I'm gonna throw up."
"I'll tell you all about it at home," Mike assured them. "And somebody tell Jacob to run a bath. And order pizza. A LOT of pizza. I don't feel too good either."
All of his drive to go back to the island, that burning hatred of the place, was fading fast. It was exhaustion catching up to him, pure and simple, and after a long bath at the garage, Mike would find himself falling asleep on the couch in front of his pizza and a group of very tired, very grumpy Burners. The Motorplex and the people inside, on that crumpling island inside a crumbling shell, were something to worry about once he was full, rested, and centered again.
The morning he slept, shadows passed over the island, and a fleet of unfamiliar feet landed on its shores and broke down the doors with a heavy smack to its glass. They entered the Motorplex to a people cowering in the dark, shivering behind heavy boxes and carefully feeding the hungry dogs that had been left behind. Only one dared to approach the tall figures and speak to them.
"Thank you for shopping at Motorplex. New hires?"
They picked up the language quickly. The leader spoke in calm, even tones. "No. We are here to buy up your remaining assets and merge them into ours. You will be given new jobs and relocated to our main office." The leader took a corner of their tired rags in her hand. "Your wages will be increased, as will your benefits."
The Shoppers, puzzled and delighted, muttered to themselves about benefits. They stepped forward, one by one, and left the island in the dead of night with only their most treasured possessions tied to their backs.
When the Burners returned two days later, armed and ready, they found a half-collapsed building on an empty island encased in thick, green, pulsing vines.