Take the All-Mart! by J. I. Greco

said, shrugging free of the twine and tape as Rudy cut through it. He immediately went for his tin of cigs and lit up, then smirked at Shemp. “When the Sorta-King wakes up... I’ve got a deal for him.”
     
     
     
     
     

CHAPTER 8: ON THE ROAD AGAIN?
     
     
    By Noon, the Wound was speeding away from Shunk, the thrum of her breeder reactor momentarily stopping all work in the barley fields — townsfolk looking up from their weeding to stare as the Dodge whipped by, kicking up clouds of dirt and gravel in her wake.
    Relaxed in the front passenger seat, Rudy finished stuffing his calabash and lit it. “So, what you set the timer on Hunt-R’s emergency abandonment protocol to? Three days? Four? He gonna meet us in Atlantic City?” He sat back, looked out the window just as the Wound jagged left at a fork in the dirt road. His eyes and pipe pointed back at the fork. “Umm... isn’t A.C. that way?”
    Jacked into the Wound , Trip shot a caff pill into his mouth from the Bugs Bunny Pez dispenser. “We’re not going to A.C..”
    Rudy pursed his lips around the bit of the pipe. “Yeah... you’re probably right. Bounty hunters will expect that. Radiation levels this time a year, the fishing will suck anyway. But if we’re not going to A.C., where’s Hunt-R meeting us, then?”
    Trip slipped the dispenser away into a tux inner pocket, took out a cig. He pushed the dash lighter in with his thumb. “Robot’s staying put in Shunk. That was the deal with the Sorta-King. He keeps Hunt-R as collateral —”
    Rudy shrugged. “He will be missed. But... it just so happens I’ve got this design for a new model I’ve been itching to try out.” Rudy fished around behind him in the seat crack until he pulled out a wadded piece of paper. He un-crumpled it, and smiling proudly held the drawing on it up for Trip to see. It was a rough mechanical sketch of a sphere with short stubby legs and arms and a Cyclops-eye dome of a head. “I call him Gonz-O. He’ll be a workhorse. Plenty of gadgets in him. I can start building his central core now, you pull over a sec and let me grab my tools and that Cray we salvaged in Albuquerque from the trunk.”
    The lighter popped and Trip lit his cig. “Will he be less mouthy?”
    “That’s up to you, isn’t it?”
    “I guess.” Trip shrugged. “But it doesn’t matter. We don’t need a new robot. We’ll get that old bastard junk pile of circuits back once we rescue Roxanne.”
    “Sure,” Rudy said, folding the paper and stuffing it back into the seat crack. “But that was just bullshit to get us out of there. Like you telling Morty you’re in love with Roxanne — that was a little cruel, by the way, but guess I can’t complain: I’m not swinging off the side of a grain silo.”
    “Yeah...” Trip blew smoke out the open driver’s window and watched the barley fields giving way back to scrubland. “Bullshit. Except, it’s possibly not.”
    “Of course,” Rudy sighed, putting his calabash in the ash tray and reaching for the shotgun on the dash.
    Trip scowled at him. “What are you doing now?”
    Rudy was trying to get his mouth around the shotgun barrels. He gave up and simply put them flat against his forehead. “Pull over so I can get a clean shot. I don’t wanna get brains all over my t-shirt-shirt. I would like an open casket — I promised mom.”
    Trip rolled his eyes. “Stop being a cartoon.”
    “Stop being insane,” Rudy said, spinning the shotgun around to point both barrels right at Trip’s long nose. “You are not in love.”
    Trip gently pushed the shotgun out of his face. “I could be, you don’t know.”
    “No, I do know.” Rudy tossed the shotgun into the back seat. “You’re not. You never are. Infatuated, yes... all the fucking time. But never in love. Not for real.”
    “But what if she’s the one this time? Huh, you think about that? There she is, the potential love of my life, trapped in the All-Mart. I’m all for long-distance