Lump, Part 3

Lump: Escape to Lump Mountain. Part Three: End Sinister

With Nulo under siege by the United States Federal Government, the girls retreat to the boy's restroom with their little interstellar parasite in tow.

The girls and the buggering little stowaway ran into the men’s restroom. Jessica slammed the door shut and turned the lock. Frantic for an extra buffer, she grabbed the trash can to wedge under the door knob.

When she tugged, she realized the trashcan was chained to the floor, an anti-vandalism policy that had improved school life ten-fold. Yet the restroom still oozed the pungent musk of wasting youth and abdominal spews.

Stephanie jumped up and down, jerking the baby left and right.

“Knock it off,” the thing squealed.

“What do you want?!” Stephanie sobbed, leaning back against the wall and sliding to the floor.

“Hey! This floor is disgusting, I could get a disease or infection!”

“You are an infection!”

Jessica intervened, “Guys, come on. Be quiet or those guys will like, shoot us or something.”

Stephanie huffed, armed folded and her jaw extended in a pout, “Fine.” She blew her bangs, “I’m sorry I called you an infection.”

The baby’s head sank, “No, I am sorry. I should never have done this to you, Stephanie. I knew there would be consequences.”

“What’s going on?” Jessica asked.

The baby sighed, looked down at the molded floor, then looked up at Jessica. “They’re here to make sure I can’t escape. They’ve had sleepers all around my crash site waiting for me.”

“Crash…?” Stephanie began.

“…site?” Jessica finished.

“Yes. It was some years ago, I was patrolling this sector of the galaxy when my ship was hit by a stray chunk of debris. My ship fell to the mountains outside this town, and I’ve been jumping from host to host until I could find a way…home.”

“The…mountain?”

Jesica snickered, “I think it means the old memorial hill. Probably a mountain to him.”

The infant started to bawl, “I tried to contact my homeworld but no one knows about this world.”

Stephanie sighed, “We are the Arkansas of the galaxy.”

“Pretty much.” Jessica shrugged, “Okay, so if we get you to your ship will you leave Stephanie and me alone?”

The baby’s eyes perked, “You would help me? Even after I latched onto your friend?”

Jessica took the infant by a tiny hand, “I’m not helping you, I’m helping my girl.”

Stephanie smiled, “Thanks, girl.”

“Don’t mention it, girl.” Jessica tromped over to the door, thighs wiggling with each step. She slowly turned the lock and peeked out.

“Is it safe?” Stephanie whispered.

“Yea…they’re gone,” Jessica mumbled.

“The SWAT guys?”

Jessica turned back, “…everyone?”

Jessica opened the bathroom door, leaving the stink of the restrooms and entering the stink of the halls. The lockers, lined one next to the other against the walls, were riddled with bullet holes. Dead children lay in heaps, gunned down trying to escape. The nearest classroom door was wedged open by the teacher’s corpse, shot through the head before the rest of her class suffered a less kindly aimed fate.

Jessica gasped, “Girl, we are in trouble.”

Stephanie began to wail, but Jessica clamped a paw over her mouth.

“There’s a back exit in the nurse’s office,” Jessica said, slowly pulling her hand away. “If we sneak there fast enough, we can run through the woods. I don’t think they’d follow us in there.”

“Why…not?” Stephanie asked.

Jessica stepped over two boys, Hunter and Rick. She couldn’t help but remember those memories under the bleachers, memories only she would have now. Stifling her tears, she cleared a path and took Stephanie by the hand, running headlong deeper into the school.

The nurse’s office was empty, no corpses or papers or anything. All that remained was a solitary filing cabinet nailed to the wall. Jessica tugged, but it wouldn’t budge, “Look in her desk, Cockshank always said she had a secret exit for her smoke breaks.”

“Why all the ashtrays then?”

“I dunno girl, urmf,” Jessica grunted, heaving herself against the cabinet. “Help me move this thing. Hey, alien guy.”

“Yes?” the lump asked.

“Do have, like, erng, psychokinetic powers or whatever to help with this?”

“I’m afraid not,” the alien sighed. “Telepathy is just a myth, the silly kind of magic that under-developed sentient creatures invent out of boredom.”

“Oh.”

“If we get to my ship, I could remove all the nitrogen from the planet’s atmosphere.”

Stephanie looked down and cradled the little parasite in her hands, “What would that do?”

“The entire world would be engulfed in a wall of fire, and inferno that would reduce everything to ashes in minutes.”

“Oh.”

“I could also activate self-replicating nano-drones.”

Jessica kicked the cabinet, “Could they move this?”

“Yes,” the alien chirped. “They would also spin out of control, deconstructing all matter on the planet and rebuilding it as more nano-drones, which would in turn replicate more drones until all that was left would be an ocean of grey goo.”

“Oh.”

“But the cabinet would be removed.”

“Yea,” Jessica pushed again. “Let’s save that for last. Definitely a Plan B. Sure.”

“I could also release a hyper-breed of wheat that would overtake all other grains and lead to–”

“Why would anyone do that?!”

“Stephanie,” Jessica grunted. “Push, girl.”

Stephanie trudged over to the cabinet and pushed while Jessica pulled from the other end. The filing cabinet swayed, then tilted over and fell forward.

“What do you think was in there?”

Jessica huffed, “I don’t know, girl. Something heavy. Is it clear?”

Stephanie peered out of the opening in the wall, a miniature doorway carved out of the nurse’s office and opening up to a fresh field of grass – next to the parking lot.

Jessica cleared her throat, “So, uh…is it safe?”

“It’s safe?” Stephanie asked herself, stepping out. “There’s no one here.”

“Really?” Jessica stepped out onto the grassy knoll. “Oh wow, nobody. They even got rid of the bodies in the parking lot.”

“I’ve got a bad feeling, girl.” Stephanie shuddered, then pulled the alien to her face by its cord, “Where is your ship?”

“Through those trees, past the ravine.” The other-worldly tot pointed to the forest ahead, “I slithered across a fallen tree before I latched onto – oh.”

“What?” Stephanie asked.

The little baby appeared to sob, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I just – I never wanted to harm any of you simple creatures.”

“Um…” Jessica sneered, “did your baby just call us simple?”

Stephanie shrieked, “It’s not my baby!”

“Actually,” the lump corrected, “I’m more a clone than anything. You see, when I latched onto your friend Chad I absorbed his–”

“Yea, whatever,” Jessica clomped ahead, brushing the overgrowth aside. “We don’t really need to know. This way?”

“Yes, yes.” The little baby bobbed up and down, “But I don’t know what good it would do to find it. The engine is still fractured, leaking coolant into your atmosphere at an alarming rate. If it isn’t fixed in time, the carbon dioxide will build up in your atmosphere, trapping the heat on this world for so long that the temperature exponentially rises, causing a massive–”

“Okay, look,” Jessica sighed. “You have got to stop making up doomsday scenarios.”

The alien chuckled, “Why not? It’s fun.”

“No, it isn’t. All you’re doing is taking one simple problem and building it up until a cataclysmic apocalypse destroys civilization. Do you really think that counts as making it up? That nano-whatever? Who knows how that works?”

“Well, they replicate and–”

“Yes, and spiral out of control. Now the world is a shadowy dystopia filled with a watchman state and dominated by the brutal struggle for survival.” Jessica rolled her eyes, “Whatever, let’s just get this over with before you try to write another hack novella for high school students.”

* * *

“There aren’t, like, zombies are there?” Stephanie asked.

“Oh no,” the alien giggled, “don’t be foolish. Only a buffoon would believe necrotic tissue could reanimate.”

“Yea, Stephanie,” Jessica snipped, “and how would they be in a forest?”

“Isn’t the old graveyard by these woods?”

“Oh yes,” the baby said. “I saw them when I first came here. I tried to meld with one of the bodies but…alas.”

“Couldn’t make a zombie?” Jessica asked.

The baby’s eyes narrowed. He hissed, “Zombies are for fools.”

“And fools always win.” Jessica grunted, heaving her foot down on the fallen tree. “Feels sturdy. You said it was just past this ridge?”

“Yes, I can sense the radiation already.”

“Great, then let’s just–”

A deafening eruption blared over Jessica’s words. Stephanie yelled, “What?”

Jessica looked up. Three jets streaked through the sky overhead.

“Oh dear,” the alien mumbled. “They’re doing it again.”

“Again?!”

“Yes, just like the last time.” The baby sighed, “We are too late. The quarantine strike should hit any minute now.”

“What’s a quarantine strike,” Stephanie asked.

“Well it’s a lot like…” The baby paused. “That is, they…well, they drop a bomb. Several bombs.”

“Bombs?!”

“Yes, by the looks of your town they’ll evaporate the entire place.”

“Why would they do that?” Jessica shook the infant, “What did you do to make them do this?!”

“I didn’t do anything!” Now the alien sounded bitter, a common sentiment among the immortal, “It is your silly little species that wants me dead! They’ve been hunting me since I crashed here.”

“Why would we do that?” Stephie frowned, “I’m sure if you just tried to explain to them–”

Jessica gave Stephanie a knowing look, “Girl, think about Two and a Half Men.”

“Well, okay we are sort of terrible.”

“Explain what?” The baby hissed, “You saw what they did to those protestors. If that’s how your kind treat others of the same species, I shudder at what I’ll be put through.”

Jessica counted on her left hand, “Vivisection, nitrogen freezing, genetic analysis.” She shrugged, “What? I pay attention in class.”

“If we make it to my ship in time,” the lump cooed, “we can hide inside. The engine failed but the shields should protect you.”

“What about our parents?” Stephanie gasped.

“What about them?” Jessica sneered.

Suddenly there was an ear drum tearing shriek in the sky. The jets whistled past and the bombs fell.

“Here it comes,” the infant sighed. “I’m truly sorry, girls.”

Stephanie and Jessica chuckled with that hysteria of imminent death. “Don’t mention it gir–”