The strappers were coming, so we got out of there. Yes, it was early, but that is when it was best to catch your enemy off guard. It was best to strike a strapper in the head, behind the neck, that was the sensitive place. Jerry and I knew that. We went astray when our battleship crashed, and we waited for commands from our base, but they never came.
They left us trying to decide what to do. “Do we go forward and battle? Or do we hold off and set up an ambush?” I didn’t have these answers and by the time tomorrow came, it might be too late. Jerry was not paying too much attention to what was going on.
The militia was right behind our asses.
“Wake the FUCK up Jerry!”
“What? What?”
“We have to find a new place, strappers from the North are closing in on us.”
“Ugh, come on McGuire, we got time.”
“No, Jerry, NOW! NOW!”
There was no time. The strappers sent out an air patrol the next morning and could spot us a mile away. The Magnolia was a large ship, so it had us on its radar. We darted for a bush when one of its spy ships landed in the area. Jerry pinned up and launched his magus53, a semi-automatic rocket launcher, that could fire off six small rocket lasers at a time.
By the time Jerry hit the spy ship and blew it up, they had already dispersed the strappers. They had green melon-like heads and were wearing what appeared to be protective heat seeking black goggles. Their short round bodies didn’t afford them great speed in the bush, but each could shoot laser beams from some fashionable high-tech wrist band they wore on both arms. Ashley Mortar arrived at the scene from the Forty-Fourth Circuit Squad. That was the name of our ship.
“We got to get out of here, strappers from the North are coming, hundreds.”
“It’s good to see you too Ash,” said Jerry.
“I blasted one of the spy ships they sent after us, they are four or five in the bush now, stay alert.”
Ashley must’ve had a profound influence on him because now it was Jerry taking initiative, giving orders like they had promoted him to general.
“McGuire, I need you over on point.”
That meant I was to hide behind this large rock that overlooked the smoldering spy ship.
“Ashley where is Willie?” asked Jerry.
“A strapper got him coming up the hill. I turned around and his whole body was turning blue, frozen in the strapper’s stream, until his body burst into fragments.”
“Those bastards! McGuire they got Willie.”
Then Jerry showed anger on his face which me or Ashley had never seen before. As, they attacked us by two Strappers, Jerry fought with vehemence. In defending off one, Jerry threw his arms up and braced the intruder’s large sword with his rocket launcher. He then narrowed it down and blasted the fucker to kingdom come. The shot blew a hole so wide through the Strappers gut you could see the ravine across the way.
The other one that watched for victory retreated into the bush. We were never sure what happened to the other crew belonging to the spy ship sent from the Magnolias. In almost a second a devilish ghost bus pulled up. It was a regular old looking school bus from two hundred years ago, painted red, and filled with many dark spirits. The dark spirits flew all around us, and out of the dark spirit cloud, one grabbed the strapper’s.
The dark force grew loud and soon it disappeared back into the bus with the strapper’s body and drove off on an imaginary road in the sky. We could hear them marching in a line. The loud stomping of the tired and worn out Strappers coming up the slope from the North. By the time they had reached their comrades blown up craft, we were nowhere to be seen. It worked as the perfect decoy for us and the three of us eventually made it to a gentlemen’s club in the town of Basbis.
