90_Minutes_to_Live (36 page)

“Well, we’re even then,” retorted Mack, “’cause you’re a goddamn
big bitch
!”

“
I’ll kill you
!” Stretch screamed.

“Not if I kill
you
first!
” shouted Mack.

They bellowed and screeched like the wild animals they were descended from, launching themselves at one another.

VI.

The fight raged for several minutes and, by the end, the sparsely furnished room was a complete shambles. The two friends knew each other well, and so, fought in a manner designed to take advantage of each other’s weaknesses. Knowing she was not in any way equal to her friend in size and strength, Mack concentrated her efforts on her gymnastic skills. She rolled and tumbled away from Stretch, as the latter foamed at the mouth in frustration. Her efforts to injure Mack with her fists became futile.

They stalemated at opposite ends of a wooden table and chair set in the center of the room, leering threateningly at one another other as they gripped either end of it. Mack acted fast and upended the table so that it fell legs first on top of Stretch. She then added the chairs as a form of counterbalance to weaken Stretch further, while she searched for an exit.

This search did not last long, as Stretch promptly regained her formidable strength and reduced the pile of wood on top of her to useless kindling. Mack, witnessing the explosion of the wood, tried to get away, only to have Stretch abruptly corner her and stomp a giant foot on top of her own. Using this time to her advantage, Stretch painfully ripped a lock of hair out of Mack’s head and waved it under her nose. Mack, sensitive to anything in her nasal cavity, sneezed and fell back against the wall.

“Stretch, please!” Mack cried, knowing full well she was doomed, as the bigger girl prepared to throw one of her powerful arms in her face, while continuing to grind into Mack’s foot with her heel. “I’m sorry! Everything just came out of me at once after you blew up at me….”

“It’s
too late
for that Mack!” Stretch snapped. “Now I’m gonna do to you what I used to threaten to do to everyone who tried to hurt you when I wasn’t looking. And believe me; you’re
not
going to like it!”

Stretch threw Mack into the wall again with her leg and prepared to advance on her, the heavyweight champion mercilessly confronting a cornered opponent who was smaller and weaker. But when Stretch’s super-powered fist finally connected, it wasn’t with Mack’s face….

VII.

“Holy cow, Stretch! Look at that!”

Mack had managed to duck Stretch’s blow just in time, so when the taller girl’s fist hit something solid, it was, in fact, the wall that she drove through. Though made of seemingly impenetrable steel (as their captors had boasted), the shock of connecting with Stretch’s muscles caused the wall to come tumbling down—and expose a previously unknown avenue of escape for the girls! They gaped in astonishment as soon as that realization came to them.

“Geez!” Stretch exclaimed as she held her fist, showing signs of injury from the impact, but not an awful lot. “That
hurt
!”

“It hurt the wall more than it did you!” Mack pointed out. “The thing fell like it was made out of paper! Now we can hopefully find some way to get out of here, and back home.”

“No,” said Stretch, backing away as Mack tried to grasp her other hand.

“What gives Stretch?” Mack asked concerned.

“We can’t be friends anymore now Mack,” said Stretch. “I mean, I nearly
killed
you! Can you still
trust
me after that?”

“Are you
kidding
?” Mack answered, embracing her. “I need your help now more than ever, pal!”

“But after what I said to you…and what you said to me….”

“
That
only happened because there were quite a few things we clammed up about regarding each other, because we didn’t want to hurt each other’s feelings. We need to do that more Stretch. You know—let each other know there’s some stuff we gotta work on as people. I know we spend a lot of time together but we still can’t possibly know everything about each other, any more than we can our alien buddies. You gotta understand that I can take criticism, just like I expect you can too. Just like your games, you know—they throw you out if you won’t play by the rules. Remember that?”

“Yeah,” Stretch agreed. “I need to be more open with you I guess,” she held up a hand like a Girl Scout reciting a pledge. “Look, Mack—if you can forgive me, I can forgive you and then I promise I won’t
ever
try to kill you again….”

“You don’t need to say all of that, Stretch,” Mack said simply. “I know. And you do, too.”

They hugged and then, walking proudly together, went off to explore what was in that hole created by Stretch’s feat of strength.

VIII.

The hole, it turned out, was actually a crude, forced entranceway into the ship’s ventilation system—which was not unlike those of the buildings of Earth, but, as the Prosperians were always facetiously putting it, theirs were
better
. From their understanding of how the things worked (Mack’s more than Stretch’s obviously) they determined that, if they crawled through the ventilation system, they would likely find some way to escape the confines of the ship. If the ship had taken off, it was simply a matter of stealing a small, portable vessel to return to Earth. If not, they could just escape by running away, if, by the smallest miracle, they ended up being undetected when they quit the scene.

Mack served as the advance trooper for the march through the ventilation shaft, being that she was the smaller and more mobile of the two of them in the confined spaces. Stretch, for once, was the one at a disadvantage, for her massive frame could barely be contained by the system’s narrow causeways. Consequently, she either got stuck for long periods of time or got her head stuck in holes it had been responsible for creating. In both cases it was only through an assertion of her power, and the occasional assist from Mack, that Stretch was able to break this confinement and follow Mack through the limited space of the ventilation tunnels. As she had earlier, Stretch endured these indignities stoically, certain she and Mack would find a way out of their difficult predicament.

Finally, Mack came to a stop, rather abruptly, causing Stretch to create yet another hole in the pipe with her head while trying to prevent herself from running into Mack.

“Ssh!” Mack said to her friend, when Stretch got her head out of the next hole she had inadvertently created.

“What is it Mack?” Stretch whispered.

“There’s a grate in front of me!” Mack said. “If we both get on it together it won’t support us and we’ll fall down onto whatever’s below us.”

“What’s down there?” asked Stretch.

Mack went forward slightly and examined the contents of the room below. She backed up into the tunnel and reported.

“Looks like it’s the laundry,” she said. “All I could hear and see were the machines running.” Then abruptly, she got an idea. “I think we’re in luck Stretch.”

“How so?” Stretch asked.

“Well, we need to get out of here and get our magic mojo back, don’t we?”

“Uh huh.”

“So, we’re beneath the laundry room aren’t we?”

“Yeah?”

“And what do they keep in the laundry room?”

“Washing machines?”

“Besides that!”

“Dryers?”

“Well,
obviously
! But this is a
military
vessel Stretch! The laundry room is where they clean the
uniforms
!”

“Okay. But what has that got to with
us
?”

Mack felt a burst of rage coming forward, as she sometimes failed to see how Stretch—or anyone else for that matter—could be as
stupid
as she was. But this feeling quickly passed and Mack continued.

“We can drop down through the gap in this pipe and snatch a couple of the uniforms,” Mack explained. “Then we fall in with the others. Sooner or later we’ll get a chance to present ourselves in Hamlet’s chambers. When that time comes, we steal that little vessel he’s using to keep our magical powers in and we get ‘em back. Then we threaten to turn him into a toad or something unless he releases us and then we get to go home.”

“That sounds good, Mack,” Stretch said. “But how are we going to get out of here, first?”

“I got that covered,” Mack answered. “I’m small enough to fit through that grating. I’ll get the cover off of it and then I’ll swing down and hang onto the edge with one hand. The other one I give to you and then we just start tugging until we get loose and fall down to the floor.”

“You sure it’s going to work?” Stretch asked.

“And I suppose
you
have a
better
idea?” Mack challenged. Silence was the response. “I
thought
so,” said Mack.

She went to the edge of the vent and began pulling at the handles and locks holding the grate in place over the gap in the pipe. Had the material been sturdier, Mack would not have been able to get it as open as quickly as she did, with a speed that impressed Stretch. Once the panel was removed, Mack quickly got her body down into the gap. With one hand, she held onto the edge, with the other she gestured to Stretch.

“Now!” Mack commanded. “Give me your hand!”

“I…can’t, Mack! I’m stuck here!”

“Well, I can’t hold on like this all day you know. Never mind. I’ll come over and….”

“NO!” Stretch suddenly screamed.

Mack suddenly let go of the edge with her other hand while she spoke. Now it appeared she would be doomed to fall to the ground!

Fortunately Stretch, with her athletic timing, asserted herself enough to send her right hand zooming out and catch Mack’s hair just before she disappeared through the hole. Stretch tried to pull Mack back in but she didn’t have enough of a grip to make her strength count. Her assertions of strength were enough however, to make the tunnel shake in response. Soon a gaping hole emerged beneath where Stretch was writhing and, before either she or Mack could do anything about it, they were falling…!

IX.

Mack and Stretch plummeted down to the ground, screaming as they fell, for they knew full well what waited for them below. Injury certainly, perhaps even death, if the injuries were severe enough. However, they were fortunate enough to hit two objects before they reached the floor. It was unfortunate for the two Prosperian soldiers who broke their fall—they were knocked out cold, as were the girls.

Stretch was the first to regain consciousness and when she did, she screamed loud enough to wake Mack—and everyone else on the ship that was asleep, seeing how far her voice could carry itself.

“What the hell…?” Mack said, as she revived herself and got up off the soldier who broke her fall. “What are you panicking about Stretch?”

“They’re
dead
!” Stretch moaned. “We
killed
them! And when they find out about it, they’ll kill
us
!”

Mack could not reach Stretch’s face to slap her, which would have been the customary procedure to cure this oh-so-obvious case of hysterics on Stretch’s part. So Mack did what she could do—she stomped hard on Stretch’s foot.

“
Ow
!” Stretch shouted as she grabbed her injured foot. “Cut that out Mack! My feet are my fortune!”

“Shut up and stay calm!” Mack barked and when Stretch had acquiesced and restored the traditional stoic impression on her visage, Mack continued.

“We didn’t kill these guys—we knocked them out is all. It’d take somebody even bigger than you to kill a guy if they fell on him. They’re just out cold and they’re in the perfect position for us to strip them and take what’s theirs!”

“Mack!” Stretch was appalled. “We’re virgins, remember? And I don’t know how experienced they are but, with us being only thirteen, I think that would constitute rape, wouldn’t it?”

“
Their uniforms dummy
!” Mack snapped. “We take their uniforms, pretend to be part of the team for a bit and then we find a vessel to get us back home. Is that clear enough for you?”

“Yeah,” Stretch apologized. “Sorry, Mack. But you know how I feel about that kind of stuff….”

“You and your purity pledge!” said Mack affectionately. “I know. Come on. Let’s get ourselves ready.”

X.

Soon afterwards, two new Prosperian soldiers were unexpectedly added to the rolls. One was only slightly bigger than the average Prosperian. The older incredibly more so. Still, in the regulation helmet, gloves, boots, sunglasses, flak jackets and pants, they looked like they belonged. So, if anyone was initially suspicious of them, they eased their minds by chalking the appearance of the two new
men
up to the genetic abnormalities that occasionally occurred on Prospero, through the breeding of the native race with alien organisms.

As it turned out, these two new soldiers had joined at an opportune time. For, as soon as they exited the laundry room, a commandment was issued on the loudspeaker requesting (read: demanding) the presence of all available soldiers to present themselves in the presence of Commander Hamlet in the his chambers or instantly face charges of insubordination and therefore a speedy death. Thus, these two new entries in the Prosperian soldier sweepstakes were carried along a tide of troops to the chambers of Commander Hamlet. It was exactly where they wanted to be.