Editor’s Note: Cornered by Surprise Truck, and put to a moment of truth, intrepid hero Jed Foster experiences guilt when his longtime non-gay friend, Reilly, volunteers for the suicide mission of trying to shut down the truck, while love interest Paulette Standiford and Foster escape on motorcycleback.

Chapter 7: Bomb of Ages

Wham-Bash! Before they knew it, Reilly had managed to climb into the truck’s cab and pulled the emergency brake. He had said it would be certain suicide, and it certainly was; the truck flipped over, rolled a couple dozen times, exploded into fire, and then landed on a facility where the small pox virus was stored. In the mix of smoke, flames, and airborn infections, Jed and Paulette couldn’t make out anything.

“Shit in a windtunnel!” exclaimed Paulette. “That was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen outside of a bravery convention—Bravexpo ’99.”

Jed shed a manly tear for his lost friend, and reserved some little regret that would plague him throughout the book. “It should have been me.”

“Which one? The truck or Reilly? Because it would be weird if you were the truck—”

“Reilly,” said Jed. “This is my adventure. I should have been the one under that monstrous flatbed.”

“We don’t have time for ‘shouldas,’ Jed,” snorted Paulette. “We’ve got to get to N.O.R.T.O.N.”

“Great balls of inflammation!” Jed shouted. “Are you saying N.O.R.T.O.N. is behind this?”

“Yeah, like we should be so lucky!” said Paulette. “No, in this case, N.O.R.T.O.N. is the victim. The real culprit is Ostrich.”

“Now that I think about it, I knew that all along. I don’t know why it didn’t come back to me sooner.”

“Ostrich,” continued Paulette, “is working to get their hands on the nuclear detonation device that N.O.R.T.O.N. is developing. If they do, they could hold the nations of the world hostage in exchange for anything they demand. They could call for environmental laws to be eliminated, they could stage fake elections, they could replace any leader in the world and no one would be able to stop them.”

“Are we still talking about Ostrich, or is this the Republican party?”

“Either or. But Ostrich is after the bomb. So we’ve got to stop them.”

“I don’t get it,” said Jed, the same as when he read “Doonesbury.” “If Ostrich is the most powerful secret organization in the world already, why would they have to steal the mega-bomb?”

“Bomb of Ages.”

“What?”

“I’ve been calling it ‘Bomb of Ages,’” said Paulette. “Not mega-bomb.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“S’alright.”

“Jesus,” said Jed, “I don’t even remember what my original question was now.”

“That’s probably for the best.”

So, with the plot hole forgotten, Jed and Paulette jumped on her motorcycle again and took off for the secret N.O.R.T.O.N. headquarters in Wad, Nebraska. It was an underground facility with the most up-to-date targeting equipment and a storage facility and launch pad for the world’s foremost long- and short-range nuclear weapons. Normally it would take two or three days to drive to Nebraska by motorcycle, but fortunately we novelists can do it in a mere chapter.

Next Chapter: Unpleasant Entry The King of the Road (Part 3)
The band of fellows froze in their tracks, except for the ones who weren’t moving at the time. They just kept up with the not moving. Dorks were foul, displeasant creatures, weak of body and thick of glasses.

A Fistful of Tannenbaum,
Chapter 6: Wheel of Shame
Paulette couldn’t have spoken more timely, or sexier, since Surprise Truck was still barreling down on them like a beer-barrel-ish truck. It’s honking could be heard miles and miles away, and even though it goes 200 miles per hour, it had somehow not hit them while they were talking.

Harvey Potluck and the Wish Bitch
When things seemed they could get no worse, an ominous expression meaning they of course did get worse, he was called to Professor Opatricka Robinson’s office. The Asst. Principal of Hogwash had always been very cool to him, but not cool like the guys it’s okay to smoke pot around.

A Fistful of Tannenbaum, Chapter 5: Surprise Truck
And Reilly was right, for down the street, rolling at approximately two hundred miles per hour, was the largest truck in the world, not to mention the fastest, which I just mentioned.