Junkyard Pirate

  Junkyard Pirate

  Jamie McFarlane

  Fickle Dragon Publishing LLC

  Copyright © 2019 by Fickle Dragon Publishing LLC

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Preface

  1. Junkyard

  2. Cohabitative

  3. A Rosie Life

  4. Good Doctor

  5. Ground Rules

  6. Diego

  7. Stupid Question

  8. Survey Says

  9. Honeypot

  10. Up the Voltage

  11. Misery Loves Company

  12. First Date

  13. Hostile Takeover

  14. Crazy Eyes

  15. Alice was an Amateur

  16. Ordinarium

  17. Contraband

  18. Always the Hard Way

  19. At the Gate

  20. Port of Entry

  21. Final Respect

  22. Escape Which Mountain

  23. Stars in her Eyes

  24. That's a Big Twinky

  25. Hero or Fool

  26. Duty

  27. Finale

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Jamie McFarlane

  Preface

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  One

  Junkyard

  "Hand me that twelve-millimeter box-end." Albert Jenkins’ hand poked out from under the hood, the rest of his body invisible as he leaned into a salvaged 1989 Subaru four-door DL.

  The vintage Subaru was a piece of crap, but its old Mitsubishi engine was a prize, as indestructible as a Briggs and Stratton lawnmower engine and weighing only a couple hundred pounds. The car was notorious for breaking timing belts at a hundred twenty thousand miles, so most people opted to scrap the cheaply made cars instead of throwing good money after bad.

  He felt the thin handle of a wrench land in his hand and applied it to the rusted bolt. It took exactly four tools and a hundred fifty dollars to repair the engine, something at which he'd become an expert. The only other investment was time. Since he'd been fired for drinking on the job after his wife died, time was a commodity he had in excess – that, and piles of scrap cars in the family-owned junkyard.

  "Don't know why you work on these old junkers," Darnell Jackson said. "I know you've got enough to get along."

  Darnell Jackson was either Albert’s best friend or his biggest pain in the ass, depending on the day. The two had met in Vietnam and forged a strong friendship that came from watching each other's backs. Those experiences weren’t the sort of thing they talked about, but had made them who they were, all the same.

  The conversation was an old one and AJ didn't mind. He enjoyed the company. "Six hours of work and I net four fifty. Ten millimeter, please."

  "More like eight hours and two fifty," Darnell pushed back, pulling a 10mm wrench from the tray and placing it in AJ's outstretched hand. "You're not including salvage title and parts."

  "Fine, two fifty." AJ pulled off the valve cover. "That's still what? Forty bucks an hour?"

  "Try thirty. Tell me again why a lead aerospace engineer from Pacific Aerodyne can’t do better than thirty bucks an hour?"

  "Covers booze and girls. Man doesn’t need more than that," AJ said, skootching his gut off the grill. He stood and tried to straighten, but a degenerated disc in his lumbar region stopped him. Shrugging, he pulled a silver flask from his pocket and took a hit of cheap bourbon.

  Darnell choked back a laugh, knowing full well his buddy wasn’t joking. AJ smiled and offered him the flask.

  "You’re a real renaissance kind of guy," Darnell mocked, holding his hands up to show he wasn't interested. "If Lisa smelled that on me, she'd have my hide."

  "Suit yourself." AJ took a second hit and stowed the flask. "Appreciate you letting me know about that Air Force salvage contract. I got a load coming in this afternoon."

  "Not sure what you want with a bunch of burned-up old rocket husks. Metal fatigue from re-entry ruined them for anything military. Those Air Force boys were glad to unload them."

  "Life of a junker," AJ said. "Pennies per pound. Someone will need it someday and I'll have a crap ton, just like these old Subaru parts. You just gotta have patience – not that Mr. Bigshot CFO needs any of that."

  "No need to be grumpy. Are you sure you won't come over for dinner? Lisa's been asking about you.”

  "Bubba, you're a terrible liar," AJ said. "That woman's always had a strong distaste for white men."

  Darnell laughed. AJ loved trying to bait him. "You sure it's not your sparkling personality? She doesn't seem to have the same aversion for our other friends. Seriously though, are you eating okay?"

  "I appreciate your concern. I've got a pot pie I'm gonna nuke once I get those rockets off the truck."

  "Lisa's making meatloaf on Friday," Darnell said. "I'll bring some over Saturday after the game."

  AJ made a face, but the sound of heavy trucks on the street distracted him from lobbing insults at Lisa's prized meatloaf. "You sure you gotta go?" he asked. "Might be fun to see what they brought."

  "Nope, I'm on a short leash. Cody is starting tonight against the Crusaders," he answered, referring to his grandson, a cornerback on his junior high school football squad.

  AJ smiled at Darnell's pride in his family. He'd always felt lucky to know Darnell and wished he could be more like his friend. The toot of an airhorn spurred him to action. "Okay, you'll have to let yourself out. Don't let Max off the porch."

  He walked over to the fence, grimacing as his right knee complained. The doctor told him he needed to lose fifty pounds, stop drinking, and quit smoking before he'd approve a much-needed replacement. AJ had politely indicated to the doctor which orifice he’d been keeping his head in and the two had agreed to disagree.

  Unhooking a chain, AJ slowly walked the gate back in a wide arc, then kicked a brick in place to hold it open. His eyes grew wide as a caravan of flatbeds carrying not just rocket bodies, but battered engines, hydraulic lines, cowlings, and so much more, drove onto the lot.

  He shook his head as he hobbled over to the lead truck. The driver jumped down and met him with clipboard in hand.

  "You sure all that's for me?" AJ shouted over the sound of the heavy diesel engines. "I only agreed to pay four thousand."

  The truck driver shrugged. "Orders were to dump it all. You got enough room?"

  "The guy said you'd leave the flatbeds and give me a few days to get 'em unloaded."

  The man handed him a business card. "We're to unhook anything we can't get unloaded tonight. Call this number to arrange for return transport."

  "Around back," AJ said, pointing past his ramshackle home to the stack of wrecked cars. "Just drop ‘em in front of those stacks."

  "We got eight," the man said. "I see room for maybe five."

  "Dang. Eight?" AJ scratched the white scruff on his chin. The man was right. There was no way they were getting eight, fifty-three-foot flatbeds back in there. He shrugged. "Just junk, right?"

  "Got me," the man said with a shrug.

  "Back 'em in, one at a time. I'll unload with the front-end loader. It'll make a mess, but I won't hold you up too long."

  "You're the boss. Just need a signature."

  AJ signed. That was the one thing he liked about junk; it could alway
s be piled higher. By the time the last truck pulled out, he'd successfully unloaded all of it, packing the already crowded yard.

  "We should open a spaceship store, Max," he joked as he walked into the screened porch where his old bulldog grinned at him with a face only a bulldog owner could love. She'd left a mess, but he couldn't blame her; she'd been locked inside far too long. He held the screen door open. "You want to go check your new toys?"

  The old girl struggled to her feet and hobbled outside. Like him, Max had bad joints, but she still preferred to pee in the yard and would insist on checking out the new arrivals. He worried for a moment that the hastily arranged piles might shift and fall on her, but there wasn't much he could do about it.

  Entering his dad's kitchen always felt like coming home. He and Mary Beth had lived a comfortable life together in the suburbs, but when she'd passed, he sold their house and moved back here – home. The worn wooden floors sagged on failing joists, but he saw right past the decay.

  Albert took a bottle of home brew out of the refrigerator, popped the top, and took a long draw. He’d run out of bourbon in the first few minutes of stacking the aged rocket parts and now he was parched. Disappointment flared when he discovered no frozen pot pie in the freezer. The empty box at the top of his trash can reminded him that he'd eaten it the night before. Shutting the freezer, he grabbed the plastic ring that held the remains of the six pack he'd started and hobbled to his chair, making sure to grab the remote control.

  "High winds in front of that cold front tonight, Jeff." A pretty blond in a bright red dress smiled winningly across the television studio, stepping away from a large weather map.

  "What can we expect, Ashley?" Jeff asked.

  AJ shook his head. No one should get that excited about weather.

  "Gusts reaching as high as sixty miles per hour after midnight," she said.

  "Well, there you have it," Jeff said. "Turning to other news …"

  Albert flipped channels until he found public broadcasting. He seemed to remember a semi-dramatized series about life on Mars that he'd found interesting, or was that on the Discovery Channel? He opened a second beer and settled back to flip back and forth until he found the show or fell asleep.

  The sound of a screen door banging incessantly woke AJ. "I guess that cold front's here," he muttered. Over the howling wind, he heard a dog's yelp and realized he'd forgotten to let Max in. It wasn't a particularly new phenomenon, but she wouldn't appreciate being left out in the rain he heard pelting off the metal roof.

  "I'm coming." He struggled out of the easy chair and grabbed a flashlight from the counter. The change in weather made it nearly impossible to navigate on his bad knee, but he wasn't about to use a cane. He hobbled from one door frame to the next and pushed open the screen door, fully expecting Max to come bobbing in. When she didn't, he called for her, shining his light into the yard.

  Max yipped twice more and AJ heard the tall piles of vintage space hardware shifting in the wind, their metal surfaces groaning as they rubbed against each other. The beam of his light caught a patch of the dog’s light gray fur. The old girl was barking at something, her hunting instinct pushing her past the pain in her joints.

  "Max, darn it. Leave it alone," AJ called, his voice carrying a sense of urgency as he watched the poorly assembled stack above her list in the high wind. Her squiggly bulldog tail wagged with excitement and she lunged forward, pouncing at her foe. She twisted her head, confused at having missed whatever she'd tried to catch.

  "Ah, crap. Max, you'll be the death of the both of us," AJ complained as he hobbled into the yard. She was as stubborn as he was, and no amount of calling would get her back if she had rat scent in her nose. The rain intensified and sheet lightning illuminated the sky, thunder booming directly overhead.

  The pile above Max swayed in the increasing winds, groaning its complaint to whomever would listen. AJ looked at it nervously but refused to stop. He'd survived nearly eighty years, living through Vietnam, Agent Orange, and the loss of his wife to leukemia. Tonight wasn't his night, he was certain of that.

  "Come on, girl." He leaned down and grabbed Max’s collar. She barked, unhappy with his attempt to pull her away. She lunged forward, barking frantically, realizing she was about to lose her opportunity.

  "You're gonna get us killed." He peered ahead, wondering what could have her so riled up. That’s when he saw the flickering image of a ten-inch-high woman, standing on the ground, waving her arms. Her lips were moving, but AJ heard nothing. He blinked his eyes and she disappeared.

  "Come on, girl. Just the light playing tricks on old eyes." Lightning flashed again and the pile above them shifted. "We gotta go. Now, girl!”

  Her collar slipped through his fingers as she lunged. The image of the small woman reappeared. She was pointing over his head.

  "Aw, crap," were his last words as tons of space debris toppled over on top of him and Max.

  Two

  Cohabitative

  A steady drip on his face was AJ’s first clue that he hadn’t died. Squinting in the bright sunlight, he tried to look away, but was unable to move.

  “You shouldn’t try to move,” a woman said. “Are you able to understand me?”

  “Who’s there?” he asked, flicking his eyes from side to side. Through the glare, he saw Max. Her eyes were gray and unblinking. He knew she’d die someday, but had hoped to beat her to the punch. “Aww, Maxie.”

  “Are you attempting to converse with the deceased canine?” the woman asked. “This is not logical. The domesticated canine is incapable of coherent communication at the level you have requested. Further, there are no known sentients within this sector with the capacity for postmortem communication.”

  “Who the heck is talking?” AJ asked, irritated at his grief being interrupted.

  “You have not provided adequate confirmation that we have established mutual understanding,” the woman answered.

  AJ managed to turn his head toward the voice. At the edge of his peripheral vision, he was just able to make out the figure of a tiny woman seated on the edge of a rocket hull. “Are you a fricking elf or gnome or something?”

  A stream of water chose that moment to release and pour down from above the woman’s position. Her image flickered and disappeared. AJ blinked and tried to focus on the area still at the edge of his visual range.

  “Are you still there?” he asked.

  Receiving no response, he tried to turn back to Max but was unable to move his head. It occurred to him that he was unable to feel anything beyond a slight coolness on his cheek where water continued to drip. His eyes felt heavy and he closed them, drifting into unconsciousness.

  “Human, your biological readings show that you are approaching consciousness.” The woman’s voice woke AJ. He was in shadow and considered the sun’s position. He’d been out for five or six hours. “Would you please acknowledge my queries?”

  “Who in blazes are you?” he asked.

  “May I assume you’re addressing me?” she asked.

  “What sort of idiotic question is that? Who the hell else would I be talking to? You already told me I can’t talk to my dead dog. Thanks for that, by the way.”

  “Albert Jenkins, do you not understand the imminent peril in which you find yourself?”

  He strained to locate the tiny woman and again found her seated on the edge of a spent rocket. “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “I am Beverly 49231125-0-B, a parasitic sentient from Beltigersk Five,” she answered. “Why are you not concerned for the cessation of your biological construct?”

  “Biological construct? Don’t you mean mortal coil? I always figured I’d recite Shakespeare on my way out,” he said. “My biological construct has been approaching cessation for years now. It’s the rest of me that I’ll miss the most. Well, that and a glass of Scotch over ice, or maybe a busty stripper, or a cheeseburger with bacon that doesn’t back me up for a week. Oh geez, that sounds good. I think I’l
l miss cheeseburgers the most.”

  “Albert Jenkins, do you not understand? You will cease to function in a short period of time,” she said. “Your life functions will cease. I am not capable of communicating this information more succinctly.”

  “Geez. I’m terrible at this,” he complained. “I’ve invented a midget alien sentient projection to bore me to death.”

  “Terrible at what, Albert Jenkins?” Beverly asked.

  “Oh, for f’s sake. What do you think we’ve been talking about? I suck at dying! What else do you think happens when a load of used rockets grinds you into the dirt? But, no, I have to go crazy first.”

  “You doubt my existence?” Beverly asked.

  “You’re a damn projection, Beverly 492-yada-yada-0-B. No, you’re a hallucination. Oh wait, maybe I’m lucid dreaming. Take your clothing off and make me a cheeseburger,” AJ said.

  “Beverly is the name of my wife’s aunt,” he continued. “That’s how hallucinations work, but I’m not sure why I’m explaining that to you. So, that’s a no on the cheeseburger and the other thing?”

  “My physical appearance is purely a calculation based on human norms with a bias toward encouraging interaction with the male of the species,” she said. “Given your age, you should no longer experience a biological imperative for reproduction. Some species, however, continue the patterns of mating well beyond viability. As I am merely a projection, I find no value in fulfilling your request for a modified visual presentation. I also have no capacity to produce physical material, which I believe would be required to produce the item you refer to as cheeseburger.”