Editor’s Note: Jed Foster and sidekick Reilly have found their lockbox, for whatever it matters. But before the story could be successfully closed, some asshole named Fango popped in, with a buddy and a gun.

Chapter 4: Different Day, Same Bullets

Projectiles projected everywhere as Jed and Reilly ducked for cover, behind a duck. But the yellow-belly mallard skirted away from the firefight, leaving Jed and Reilly scrambling. The two flipped a table on its side, spilling salt and pepper shakers and dumping a plate of bread, and shielded themselves behind it.

“It’s amazing we haven’t been hit yet!” shrieked Reilly.

“Yep, better to not let the reader dwell on it.” Jed drew a handgun from his belt and pulled back the trigger. “You packing heat?”

“My balls are a little sweaty, but other than that, I’m alright,” Reilly said. He brandished a weapon. “Thank God for my reliable thirty-eight.”

“Amen to that!” said Jed. Then, in a John Woo-esque display of imaginative poetic violence, he leapt aside from the table, firing well-targeted shells into the henchman not given a name. The anonymous drone cried out weakly and tumbled to the floor.

Fango, startled by his partner’s demise, hugged the wall—a little too tightly, you ask me. He fired a barrage to keep Jed pinned behind a pile of dustbunnys, where he had taken cover. Rats! he might have thought. In one swift, commendable move, Jed had halved his enemy’s numbers and put him in a fight with two fronts.

Before Fango had a chance to articulate his respect in the form of applause, or perhaps a “bravo!” Reilly had rolled the table toward him until it solidly crunched his foot. The big toe—no way to get out of a big toe hold. Jed crossed the floor quickly, a little less graceful than before, but nobody’s complaining, and held the gun to Fango’s temple.

“Well, well, well, old friend,” said Jed, “it looks like things are going my way now.”

“Damn your sharp wits and manly beauty, Foster!” snapped Fango, throwing his gun to the ground. “I told them not to saddle me with that unnamed flunky! That slacker always goes down the first bullet anybody fires.”

“They? So you are working for someone?” asked Jed.

“Drat!” cursed Fango. “I fell for your clever trap!”

“Not really a trap, I didn’t even bring it up. You did.”

“Then apparently I’m just a bigmouth.” Fango ran a finger along his waxed mustache. “Yes, Jed, it’s true. I work for Ostrich now.”

“Ostrich!” exclaimed Reilly, who hadn’t said anything for a few minutes. “The giant flightless bird who buries its head in the sand or the elite corporate oligarchy who really makes all the decisions that affect the world?”

“That’s the one.”

“The bird?”

“The oligarchy.

“Ah. That makes more sense.”

“We don’t have time for this,” interrupted Jed, although actually they did and he just didn’t want to hear it. Jed held the lockbox aloft for them to see and rattled it. “Ostrich can do what it likes now. We’ve got the lockbox, and we’re not giving it up without a fight.”

“Oh, it will be a fight, I assure you, Jed Foster,” said Fango, smiling ominously, with bad teeth. “In fact, keeping that lockbox out of the hands of the world’s most powerful group will be the fight of your life!”

Jed and Reilly made haste as they left the cabin and started down the mountain, leaving Fango to clean up the place before calling for a helicopter service to pick him up.

Next Chapter: Surprise Truck 1997: The Conquest of Saturn Soil
“Oh? The ship must be compensating for its loss in capsule pressure by increasing section in the back part,” Mike Harder said scientifically.

Alistair Schit
None of these things, however, happened to Alistair in his small room, all alone. He might have sang a song, if that’s your pleasure, but probably mostly he touched himself in an illicit fashion I will not detail. But at some point, he ungirded the protective casing on a window. Did I mention there was a window?

A Fistul of Tannenbaum, Chapter 3: Danger Cabin!
Jed ignored his temporary partner and unrigged the door, snipping the wire carefully with his bomb-neutralizing scissors, $500 from the L.L. Bean catalogue. He nudged the door open with his foot, shielding himself behind Reilly just in case, and nodded. The smell of old wood and Ben Gay wafted from the cabin.

My Dinner with Sanjay: The Screenplay
SANJAY: (pause) Did you, uh… you were looking into buying that Chevelle the last time I saw you.
EDWARD: Yeah, yeah, I remember.
SANJAY: Did that…?
EDWARD: Oh, no. The guy wanted too much.
SANJAY: (pause) That’s too bad.