Flying Quadrunners

Flying Quadrunners
By Jason Earls, author of Red Zen, Cocoon of Terror, & Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy
http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711


The quadrunner was not new. He’d bought it used for $1600 after the previous owner had wrecked it. The small headlights in the front were shattered, the plastic covering over the front tires had been broken and was hanging. The left rear tire was slightly bent and squeaked whenever the brakes were applied. But it didn’t take much effort for Frank to fix those things; and $1600 for a used four wheeler was a lot better than $7000 for a top-of-the-line model. Frank had borrowed the money from his uncle and had already paid him back over half the total amount.

Now, on a lonely Saturday afternoon, Frank was hanging out in his garage, playing some gutbucket blues on his battered Harmony acoustic guitar, and thinking about taking out his quadrunner with Blare, his best friend in the world. Frank’s wife, Sarah, had been excited when he’d first gotten the four-wheeler but now that the new had worn off she was jealous of the contraption and didn’t let him go riding very often. Frank played the intro to the song “Pretty Woman” on his Harmony acoustic while thinking about jumping hills out by the lake with his friend Blare riding behind him. He grinned and strummed a few chords as he imagined all the fun he could be having on his quadrunner at that precise moment instead of being bored hanging around his garage. Next, he played a little bit of ‘Ride of the Valkyries.’ Frank had worked out his own classical interpretation of the song and loved performing it on his acoustic. Mainly he was a gutbucket blues guitarist, but he had a nice fingering laid out for Ride of the Valkyries and could even play the backing chords and main melody simultaneously using the higher strings; it was almost his favorite song and he loved reading biographies of his hero Richard Wagner in his spare time. Frank smiled and played the main melody awhile longer before remembering how badly he wanted to take out his quadrunner.

“Screw it, I’m going in to tell her I’m going riding today,” Frank said.

He carried his guitar in the house, playing a little solo in the higher register of his fretboard as he walked. He had cut away a lower portion of the body near the fretboard so he could reach the higher frets with ease and practice his soloing ability.

Sarah was sitting on the couch, playing one of the video games that went with their cable television package when Frank came in.

“I’m taking my four wheeler out riding today with Blare,” Frank announced in a monotone voice. “I’m gonna go call him now.”

“No you’re not. I want you to stay here and watch the kids while I go shopping with my mother.”

Frank rolled his eyes and set his guitar against the wall. “No way, Sarah. I’m gonna go ride my four wheeler with Blare. You’ll have to find somebody else to watch the kids. I haven’t been riding for months now. I bought that quadrunner to use, not to just let set out in the garage and rust away.”

Sarah continued fingering the remote control, playing her game and not looking in Frank’s direction. “You ride that thing constantly. Just last weekend you stayed out with Blare all night long drinking beer and getting plastered. You didn’t even come home until six in the morning.”

“That wasn’t last weekend, I haven’t been riding in a month!”

“Oh, quit your whining, Frank. I’m sick of it. And I’m sick of hearing about that damn four wheeler.”

Frank picked up his guitar. He took a deep breath and exhaled, trying not to lose his temper. He picked a few notes, but soon his hands did not move and one of them was gripping the fretboard tightly in a death-grip. “What the hell did I buy that quadrunner for if you’re never going to let me ride it!”

“Just shutup, Frank. My mom will be here to pick me up in thirty minutes. So go out there and lock up the garage and get your ass back in here and be ready to watch the kids.”

Frank’s hands were squeezing his guitar tighter now and he was grinding his teeth. He turned around quickly and walked out the back door. He went through the yard past the old blue plastic swimming pool for the kids and the withering tomato plants. Frank wasn’t going to listen to her this time. He couldn’t let her keep controlling every aspect of his life. When he reached the garage, his temper finally got the best of him. He grabbed his guitar by the neck and hit it against the side of the doorway, the body shattering with wood flying in every direction. He hit it five times until he was holding nothing but the neck with four strings attached. Breathing heavily, he looked down at the fretboard of his guitar. Now he didn’t even have an instrument to entertain himself with on this boring Saturday afternoon. Plus, it had been the first guitar he had ever owned and now it was smashed to pieces.

He looked over at his quadrunner. It was setting in the center of the garage. What a beauty. Everything that had been broken on it when he’d purchased it was now fixed. It was gassed up and oiled and ready to go. But his wife wouldn’t let him ride. What a goddamn waste. Paying $1600 for something he couldn’t even use, half the amount still unpaid.

“To hell with this shit,” Frank said. He pulled his keys out of his pocket, went out to his truck, pulled it back toward the garage slowly without revving up the engine. Then he pulled the silver ramps down and loaded up the quadrunner and idled out of the driveway, coasting down the street. Once he was four blocks away, he floored it, racing toward Blare’s house, grinning and thinking about what a great time he was about to have riding his four wheeler.

* * *

Boom, boom, boom. Frank pounded on Blare’s front door, looking in the window screen. “Hey, Blare, I brought my four wheeler! Let’s go riding!”

Blare came running around the corner, his work boots falling heavy on the linoleum floor; he had a perplexed look on his haggard face (he was 26 years old but looked almost 40 for some unknown reason, probably bad genetics). “What’s going on out here? Frank, is that you?”

“Yeah. I snuck away from the wife and I’ve got my quadrunner loaded up. If we want to get in some riding time we’re gonna have to hurry, she could be here any minute looking for me and she’s gonna go apeshit if she sees my four wheeler in the back of my truck.”

Blare pushed open the door and stared at Frank’s four wheeler with a serious and somewhat disgruntled look on his face. And Frank didn’t take his eyes off Blare the whole time. Frank considered Blare to be his best friend in the whole world. He really looked up to him – for making more money than him, for having a good-looking nurturing wife who loved him, for having a more expensive quadrunner, for being three inches taller than him, for keeping his body weight at a constant 185 pounds of firm muscle and lean sinew, for having a full beard when Frank could only grow a small amount of peach fuzz on his chin, for knowing how to take his quadrunner apart and put it back together again in under two hours, for being able to make extra money installing remote control car-starters in vehicles. But he couldn’t play the acoustic guitar like Frank could. That was one thing he had on Blare. Almost nobody could play gutbucket blues like Frank could. Especially on his Harmony guitar. But that was busted to pieces now. Thanks to his wife. The bitch. Still, Frank would get another acoustic guitar from a pawn shop soon and he would remain the best gutbucket blues player in the area and also play Ride of the Valkyries occasionally since that was his favorite classical piece. Frank kept on staring at his friend, noticing that Blare had on his usual green coveralls and a fresh chew of Red Man in his mouth. He looked at some of the grains in Blare’s teeth.

“Come on in,” Blare said. “I just need to change into an older pair of boots. I can’t get mud on these work ones.”

After Blare got his other boots on they went out the back door and into the garage and started working to load up Blare’s quadrunner into his own truck. It was almost a brand new Yamaha four wheeler, much faster than Frank’s, but he didn’t care. He was just glad to have somebody to ride with. They went back in the house and grabbed some beer, barbecue corn chips, and a package of hot dogs and went out and got in their trucks and peeled out of the driveway. Frank couldn’t believe his wife hadn’t shown up yet.

It only took ten minutes to get to the lake. That was their usual riding spot. They rode on the dry banks and since the water level was really low there was plenty of space. The weather on this day was also perfect for riding. A little chilly but pretty sunny for early November. The sky was clear and light blue with only a few long white scattered clouds near the horizon. The lake was surrounded by red clay hills with white blocks of granite dotting the sides. An attractive landscape. But they only had a couple of hours of sunlight left.

Frank turned on his radio as he headed toward the lake and the Ride of the Valkyries theme was playing. He became excited and blasted the volume and screamed out the melody to the music as he drove, following behind his best pal Blare.

They arrived at the lake, parked their trucks, got out and stood looking around for a few minutes. Blare grabbed two beers from his cab and they guzzled them down. Then they got busy unloading their four wheelers. After Frank grabbed his red racing helmet with the big lightning bolt running down the center and Blare grabbed his pure black one, they fired up their quadrunners and revved them for a long time, just to let any people in the area know they were there. The engines were loud and Frank grinned at the powerful sounds as his ears popped. Then they took off riding over the sand, the tires gripping and throwing it around as they turned and swerved. They headed toward the far end of the lake, far away from their trucks. Even if Sarah drove out now and saw their pickups, she wouldn’t be able to see Frank if he was riding on the other side of the lake.

Frank felt slightly cold even though he was wearing his new camoflauge jacket he’d bought at the dollar store for only $15. Blare always wore insulated coveralls, so he never got cold. They chased each other around the lake, ramping little hills and yelling back and forth, challenging each other to do different stunts and revving up their engines and sliding around in the sand.

“Hey Blare, I bet you can’t do this!”

“Shutup, Frank. I’m the best at that.”

“Look at that little car tire, I’m going to flip it up on its end by riding over it.”

“No you won’t.”

“Hey, let’s start a fire and set up a ramp and jump it.”

“Nah, that’s too crazy for me.”

Just a few of the sentences they yelled as they rode around.

An hour and a half drifted away.

Frank forgot about his wife and her constant nagging and manipulative controlling behavior, he forgot about his problems at work and his stomach ulcers. He forgot about everything as he rode around with his best friend, Blare. He felt wonderful and free and happy and was having a blast.

But at one point he climbed a small hill that led to the highway and at the top he accidentally gunned the throttle and when he hit the pavement of the road his four-wheeler tipped back but the bar at the rear of his seat saved him from going all the way over on his back. He skidded across the highway, riding a wheelie, with sparks shooting up behind him from the bar scraping across the pavement. When he went off the other side of the road he quickly regained control and applied his brakes. He stopped with his front tire only about two feet from a 60 foot drop-off to sharp rocks below. Frank put his feet down to brace himself, his quadrunner lightly idling, and looked over the edge of the cliff. It scared the shit out of him, a rush of adrenaline flooded his veins. He had almost went over and killed himself. It was almost dark too. Daylight had drifted almost entirely away but he could still see most of the land because of the full moon shining. The danger at almost having died was still with him and one of the ulcers in his stomach pulsated and sent out a large quantity of burning acid. He rubbed his stomach and chest until the pain went away.

After almost soaring over the cliff and losing his life, Frank noticed Blare riding toward the edge of the lake below. His newer Yamaha quadrunner looked so cool shooting along the bank that he decided to join him. “I wonder if my quadrunner looks that cool,” Frank thought.

The lake had gotten even lower this year. You could barely swim in it anymore. The excessive summer heat had almost dried up the entire mass of water. Frank looked at the water level. “Goddamn global warming,” he said as he leaned over and raced toward Blare. A rush of fatigue suddenly swept over Frank, he could feel it start in the back of his neck and descend toward his feet, stopping briefly at his thighs which were beginning to develop serious cramps from riding. But when he hummed some of the Ride of the Valkyries theme he started to feel more energetic.

He caught up with Blare who was riding a wheelie and Frank popped one and they both rode side by side, holding their wheelies, and smiling at each other broadly. A strong bond developed between them at that moment. They landed successfully and started veering off toward the center of the lake.

Weeks earlier, a small mud ramp had naturally formed near the middle of the lake. Only a foot and a half tall and four feet wide, it was a mound of dry mud that was enough to send a fast quadrunner flying dangerously high into the air.

Blare was the first one to hit the mud ramp. He zoomed up and flew over twelve feet in the air. Then Frank hit the small ramp and started his high ascent. In mid air, they each left their quadrunners from the whipping centrifigal force and their bodies slammed together fast and hard. They were knocked unconscious and flipped around in the air with Frank landing head first down in the mud, while Blare landed flat on his stomach. The mud was still somewhat wet even though the edge of the low lake was still a long way from where they had landed, and most of the other surrounding mud was fully dried. Unfortunately, the mud that Blare and Frank had both landed in was a rare type of quicksand and when Frank hit head first he immediately began to sink. And so did Blare.

Down and down, deeper and deeper, a slow steady submersion of their bodies into the thick, stinking, algea-drenched mud took place. And their quadrunners sank too, although a little slower. The slurping, sucking sounds of the quicksand consuming the metal and plastic was loud and disturbing. When Blare awoke from being knocked out, he pointed his knees downward in an attempt to crawl out, but his legs were quickly captured by the devouring quicksand and down he started to go. Frank went even faster since when his head hit, his body was aimed like a slim projectile pointing down into the mud (before Frank’s body fully submerged, the last thing he heard was the Ride of the Valkyries theme playing in his mind as his soul floated off into the pleroma above). It didn’t take long for the powerful muddy quicksand to consume both of them and their quadrunners too, which they both dearly loved.

They were completely buried after only a few minutes and their four wheelers were totally out of sight as well; and the mystery of what happened to the two men would remain alive for many months since they had told none of their family members where they were going. Their riding trails quickly vanished as well since it rained a few hours after they had died slow agonizing deaths in the muddy quicksand. Only their trucks were visible.

But the next summer, when the lake had dried even more, an elderly gentleman was digging around quite deep into the lake with a small shovel, and he chanced upon Frank and Blare’s bodies fully petrified from the weird algea native to the area. The old man called 911 and a small bulldozer extracted Frank and Blare’s petrified corpses and both of their families consented to have them donated to the town museum, where they were put on full public display. Many researchers and scientists came from other states to view and study the specimens and take samples of the miraculous algea still clinging to their bodies that had helped fully preserve them and petrify their constitutions into a rock hard state.

-end-

(Thanks for reading. If you have any comments, or know of any magazines that would like to publish this story, please contact the author: zevi_35711@yahoo.com. Also, you would be helping out the author greatly if you purchased one of his books from Amazon.com or another online book store of your choice. Thanks again.)

http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711
http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://zombiesofthereddescent.blogspot.com/


Bio: Jason Earls is the author of Cocoon of Terror (Afterbirth Books), Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Zombies of the Red Descent, If(Sid_Vicious == TRUE && Alan_Turing == TRUE) {ERROR_Cyberpunk(); }, Red Zen, and 0.136101521283655... all available at Amazon.com and other online book stores. His fiction and mathematical work have been published in Red Scream, Yankee Pot Roast, M-Brane SF, Scientia Magna, three of Clifford Pickover’s books, Mathworld.com, AlienSkin, Recreational and Educational Computing, Escaping Elsewhere, Neometropolis, Thirteen, Dogmatika, Prime Curios, the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, OG’s Speculative Fiction, Nocturnal Ooze, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens and other publications. He currently resides in Oklahoma with his wife, Christine.