SLAP!!! “Snap out of it!” screamed Shelia, pulling her hand back to give Martin another good whack to the face.
“I’m up, I’m up. What happened?”
“Well, they were about to reach into your pants when the sludge samples fell out of your pockets. There was lots of screeching and alliteration and they ran off into the woods with the pilot. Do you mind telling me why you keep that stuff on your person?”
The entire airship stared at Martin in disbelief. While the current sludge that pooled in the center of the once thriving town was toxic, it was muddled with snow runoff and mellowed with age. Original samples were not. A pure sample of the sludge was a most perfect biological weapon. A mere drop into a city’s water supply would not only drive the residents mad, but also attract vast hordes of sentient, sex-crazed monkeys. One woman screamed.
“You had that on the ship with us?”
“HE’S A TERRORIST!!!”
SLAP!!! This was to the woman in the third row.
Shelia stood on a seat. “He isn’t a terrorist, he is just an idiot. We are now stranded in the middle of a toxic minefield that’s crawling with dangerous man-monkeys, and we have a bigger problem: now they have the samples.”
Martin, slightly hurt by Shelia’s ability to really bring things into focus, tried to lighten the mood. “But, as you pointed out, we are miles from everything, what does if matter if the monkeys have the samples? They can’t get anywhere from here.”
“You’re forgetting,” said someone who was not quite a man, “they have the pilot and the only thing standing between them and this airship is a handful of mostly flimsy humans.” He cocked his pistol.
“HE’S GOT A GUN!”
“HE’S A GIANT LIZARD!!!”
SLAP!!! SLAP!!!
