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

relationships, but that’d be a stretch.”
    With one hand, Rudy tweaked his nipple while the other retrieved the calabash. “She’s not the one.”
    “How do you know?” Trip indignantly dashed out his cig, half-smoked. “You never even met her.”
    “Doesn’t matter. They’re never the one. Because you don’t have a ‘one’. Except yourself.”
    “I am rather fetching, aren’t I?” Trip leaned to check his hair in the rear-view. He flicked at it until the curl was just perfect. “But Roxanne’s no slouch. She’s got a brain. And perfect eyes... perfect smile... more than perfect ass. Special, even, that ass. The things she can do with that ass...”
    “Will you listen to yourself? Why do you keep doing this? We’re free and clear here. The king was drunk enough to let us go, we should take advantage of the good luck. Hell, nobody’s gonna come after us if we just blow him off. You’ll forget her in a week.”
    Trip glared at him. “Dude, she doesn’t wear underwear.”
    Rudy’s eyebrow went up. “Okay, two weeks. Tops.”
    “Maybe. Maybe not.”
    “Definitely.”
    “But how will I know until we’ve had that crucial second date? You know, the awkward one where you actually go out to dinner and have to make small talk over breadsticks? Anyway, there’s still the little matter of having to pay back the Warlord Hu.”
    “And how is going into a zombie-infested department store for a chick you barely know gonna help with that?”
    “The reward!”
    “What reward?”
    “Think about it.” Trip thumbed the dash lighter in, took a fresh cig out of the tin. “We bring Roxanne back, daddy Sorta-King’s gonna be happy. Happy enough to open the town vault —”
    “Would that be the vault you couldn’t crack?” Rudy interrupted, chuckling.
    Trip scowled at him and continued, “— and throw enough money at Hu to get her to forget all about us.”
    “Forget all about you, you mean. She’s already forgotten about me. You heard the Higgins — you’re the one with the bounty on his head. Hell, I could probably make all this go away if I just turned you over to her. Collect myself a nice bounty while I’m at it and retire to some quiet beach in Colorado.”
    “Don’t get any ideas.” Trip’s hand hovered impatiently over the dash lighter until it popped. He grabbed it, lit his cig, then jammed the lighter away. “Turn me in, I’ll remind her how you treated Mr. Charles Xavier Whimsy, Esquire. Bet he walks with a limp now. All spastic and pathetic.”
    Rudy swallowed. “Yeah, okay... But nobody said anything about a reward when we were cutting the deal with the king. The deal was we get Roxanne back, we get to live. And get Hunt-R back. That was it.”
    “Talking money didn’t seem appropriate at the time. The guy is having a hell of a enough  of a bad day as it is. Would’a been gauche.”
    “Would’a been nice to have negotiated it before we took the suicide mission.”
    “It’ll work out. Somehow. Always does.”
    “Right,” Rudy said, resigned. He looked out the window, gnawing on his thumbnail nervously. “So, you got an actual plan or we just doing the usual headlong and heedless full-frontal assault?”
    Trip gave him a sideways smirk and twitched to send the Wound swerving onto the weed-overgrown ramp to I-80. “What kind of asinine question is that?”
     
     
     
     
     

CHAPTER 9: A WALK IN THE DARK
     
     
    “Why, yes, I do think we have been walking in circles, Sister Smart Ass,” Roxanne said. Her voice was quickly lost to the echoless, pitch-black depths of the All-Mart.
    A click beside her and Bernice’s face was illuminated, blue eyes squinting past the flame spouting from her panther lighter’s mouth into the inky dark. “I was just wondering, is all.”
    “At least we haven’t run into any zombies.”
    “Yay?” Bernice sneered and lit another joint. She lowered the lighter, peered into her purse. “Oh, just great — I’m running out of things to