Badlands

“When we heard about the cosmic drag, he didn’t see me, just a chequered flag,” remarked Cherry. Beside her the pink-haired girl hit an anticipatory chord.

“And I knew I’d never keep my hold,” Cherry went on, “once he’d set his sights on the galactic gold.”

Come home safe from the big space-race,

Two harmonizing female voices carried clear in a blaze of spotlights, then Cherry unto the subsequent second of silence breathed:

Please, baby.

At which lyre and vocals kicked in for real, the beetle bassist wailing a high as lonely and wild as the outstretched road while steady rhythmic pulsations from the strings were cylinders throbbing in a cobalt-blue space-rod, each engine-heartbeat bearing the single-seat chassis further from the theatre interior. Across the small round table-tops which dotted that shadowy crowded cavern the halogens swung their beams like headlamps, piercing even to the blackness of the great ceiling-arch, and so disclosed two chairs which less than an hour ago had been occupied but now were empty. No longer sat Contamination at the table in the corner, hunkered over his drink and mingling with the lone candle’s glow a bluish luminescence which his own body perpetually emitted, whilst at the very opposite extreme just below Cherry’s high-heeled feet her most faithful and favoured fan had vanished from his accustomed vantage-point. If the star of the show noted either one’s absence however, her performance suffered nothing from it as she launched into the first verse:

So I sit in my bedroom and murmur a prayer,

To think of his turbos on full burn up there;

Tight-winding town streets fell behind the one-seater in a thigh-quivering succession of lurches through the dark, but for where bar-room windows spilled snapshots which ended before a breath had begun, or explosions dropped their blurry blooms into the phantasmagoric night. With one clawed hand Contamination clutched at the bundle of brown tunic-pleats flitting across his field of vision and strove to shove them and everything they were attached to aside, even as his other talon grappled with an overstrained steering-wheel which was becoming ever more insistent about springing back to centre.

“That’s it, Mini-Flash, keep those bright red pants of yours squarely in my face,” he hissed. “I can’t think of a more helpful contribution you could be making under our present circumstances.”

At faster-than-lightspeed the planets whizz by,

Can you hear me, my darling? Here’s what I cry...

The melody swelled for a momentous pause, leaving the robot drummer’s last precision-programmed beats to lead Cherry and her backing-girls into that hush reserved for their voices alone:

Come home safe from the big space-race;

Please, baby.

Come home safe from the big space-race;

Another insectoid vocalization howled out and the chugging bass struck up anew, while for Contamination and his struggling terrified passenger percussion continued to originate somewhere behind their tailpipes and boom into being altogether too close by. Flashthunder, his none-too-lucky luckiest garments facing front and his head stuck out in the slipstream, was better-positioned to witness what pursuer relentlessly hurled these bombs. It rode upright on a bat-winged platform, and over long gloves and boots of tight black leather wore an incongruously-coloured rose-petal robe from whose voluminous folds it produced its steady supply of ordnance. Perhaps it was crouching, or perhaps it was of dwarfish stature, but there seemed to be little by way of head. Its deep cowl began around its waist, and from what should have been one side of its chest glowered a solitary unblinking eye.

In and out of the rival rockets he’ll weave,

At a rate astrophysicists wouldn’t believe;

Luminous speed-trails of nucleonic motive force, attended on by incandescent pockmarks from the hooded one’s unceasing grenades, were as much as many revellers glimpsed of the deadly chase. Two cat-headed aliens exiting an eatery whipped their feline faces southward to yowl after these ephemeral vestiges, as a buffeting backwash blew fur into spikes and split-seconds later caused great embarrassment for several Mini-Flashes further on down the lane. Contamination gunned his reactor-core yet harder as the cluster of nightspots began to fall away, and ahead gaped the forbidding emptiness of this barren planet’s untamed veldt.

Other female life-forms say I must be so proud,

But that's not why I yell his name aloud...

The pink-haired girl and her six-legged friend proceeded to jam, her guitar and his huge electronic instrument a nitro-injection for the up-tempo instrumental as Contamination in cognate high gear accelerated for the escarpment edge on which the town was built. Beyond was nothing but inky void, and Flashthunder pressed both palms to his cheeks rather than choose between this view or the stunted thing atop its glider gaining yard by inevitable yard. Contamination gripped the handbrake.

“You never could stop on a one-phillin piece, Forcelife,” muttered he. “And seeing as little else about you seems to have changed...”

Risking meltdown to finish first!

Sudden inertia was akin to colliding bodily with a solid block for Contamination and poor Flashthunder, but the former’s linkages held true, and brake the mismatched duo did sideways-on to the rocky lip in a massive miasma of desert-dust. Forcelife overflew their still-bowed heads and before he knew it was the one vivid bullseye amid endless Stygian firmament.

Comets look like they’re in reverse!

Twin chanteuses smartly closed their couplet as Contamination blasted his erstwhile pursuer out of the sky. Thus Cherry’s song rounded itself off to the tune of heavy hauling intakes from two pairs of lungs, and distant bits of burning wing passing the precipice on their way to the plain below.

Come home safe from the big space-race…

Come home safe from the big space-race…

At length Contamination swung out of his racer, allowing Flashthunder to flop onto the seat-cushions he had not so far touched. “What was that?” he moaned.

This question brought back to Contamination the relatively recent words of a different Mini-Flash. “One of my friends,” he answered dryly.

Then, as if on an afterthought, he thrust a claw up Flashthunder’s skirt and hoisted him by one of his elastic leg-holes before flinging him face-first upon the ground.

“Would you mind not doing that?” the Mini-Flash asked.

Contamination towered over him, grimly businesslike, his terrible bare arms and chest fuming with blue-white fire. That was when something else struck Flashthunder which he’d been ill-equipped to notice during the chaos, but the form-fitting leather Contamination wore elsewhere on his lean body was clearly cut from the same bolt as that which had clothed the creature chasing them.

“So let me guess, lately you’ve resigned your commission?” the shrill accents supposed. “You have this habit of showing up at Joe’s meetings with some pertinent piece of information, and it’s obvious you never miss a good concert, but standard Flash Club duties don’t seem to be keeping you very busy.”

“You must know active service is pretty much voluntary for boys these days,” Flashthunder sniffled.

“I heard you,” returned Contamination in loaded tones. “Every word you and your warbling inamorata whispered to each other the minute you stepped into that music-hall and recognised me. Yes, from the other side of the room. Acute auditory senses,” he added, indicating his extremely large pointed ears. “Your paths have crossed mine just once, Mini-Flash. The pair of you know rather too much about me to suggest our being on this planet at the same time is a mere matter of chance.”

Flashthunder sighed, well aware Contamination had every right to be suspicious. A while ago, after all, the Mini-Flash and Cherry had telepathically accessed that one’s innermost with neither his knowledge nor consent, in the furtherance of a psychic quest on which they were embarked. If this could have been quickly and easily explained Flashthunder would have been glad to do so, but as it was, he stood instead and dusted off his underwear.

“Cherry and I do need to give some account of ourselves,” he admitted. “For now though, please believe me when I tell you that that’s got nothing to do with our bumping into each other like this. It’s a small galaxy. Haven’t you ever heard of coincidence?”

“Just think how convincing that would have sounded if only you’d whimpered it out before the Alliance sent their Four Heroes poster-boy and girl after our faction on Drenthis,” Contamination sneered. “Things being the way they are however, I think I’d prefer to learn a little more about these plans against us you’re so manifestly involved in.”

“My plans for tonight involved having a nice sit down and admiring my girlfriend,” said Flashthunder somewhat pettishly. “Is that the only reason you abducted me? Paranoia?”

“Having seen how well you cope with my paranoid delusions I’d recommend you keep a spare pair of pants on standby when next you confront reality,” was Contamination’s response. “And your pretty little self isn’t leaving my sight until I’ve some evidence of what you claim.”

“Can you really picture me as a secret agent?” Flashthunder implored him. “I’m telling the truth! I don’t have the faintest clue what you’re doing on this world!”

Contamination turned to the crag and looked out on unbounded lowering gloom.

“This world is where my memories begin,” came back an answer of sorts. “I’m certain of nothing before the illegal scientific experiment which made me what I am. There were other victims besides me, and as you may have already deduced, some of them lacked my charm. That notwithstanding, the illustrious Joe’s circle of imbecilic supporters is in dire need of assistance, so it’s been decided I’m to revisit the chamber of horrors and find out whether my long-lost fraternity might be amenable to helping us. You’ll agree we’re off to a promising start.”

Meekly Flashthunder joined him on the clifftop. “Then where to now?” he asked, his voice a little softer and less indignant than it had been.

Contamination’s hooked fingernail traced the line of his gaze.

“There,” said he. “Out there. The old laboratory complex. Across the desert.”