This Story Sucks

[Dleg]

VTE sniffled and wiped his eyes as he rode along behind Goredalff, wondering what had happened to all his friends and, especially, his dogs. He had enrolled them in obedience school before he left, but the class on zombie defense had not yet taken place.

They rode along quietly for a few hours, passing through low, rocky hills, and then into a narrow ravine. VT saw something dark move through the brush to their left, and heard a snarl from the right.

Goredalff halted DVINNY and peered into the rocks on the left. He had also seen something move. He placed a hand on the hilt of his sword.

 

[Dleg]

"Cougars?" VTEnviro asked.

Goredalff responded in a whisper: "I don't think so - we passed through cougar territory yesterday."

More rustling was heard, and a rock rolled down a slope to their right. Now, a voice could be distinctly heard, speaking in a strange, guttural sounding language.

"I think I know that language!" whispered VT. "It's -"

Suddenly, a horde of dark-clothed, armored creatures appeared in the road behind and in front of them, growling and holding swords at ready.

"Klingons!" cried VT, burying his face in Goredalff's back.

 

[Dleg]

"No! Dorcs!" Goredalff leapt from DVINNY, pulling VT with him and setting him down on the road. He withdrew his sword, and moved towards the Dorcs in front of them. DVINNY wheeled around and lowered his horn at the Dorcs behind them. VT covered his head and whimpered.

"Here, take this!" Goredalff tossed something to VT. VT looked up and saw the object on the ground in front of him. It looked to him like a silver-colored toilet plunger. "Use it!" Goredalff cried, as he charged forward toward the Dorc horde.

 

[Dleg]

Gordalff ploughed into the mass of attacking Dorcs, slicing off heads, arms, and legs. Occasionally he would let loose a blast of lightning from his staff, and one, sometimes two Dorcs would explode. DVINNY met the rear Dorc force with similar ferocity, goring at least a dozen with his horn, and dealing fatal kicks with his two rear hooves.

But still, three Dorcs managed to get past the two, and converged on VTEnviro, who held the plunger in front of him and spun nervously around, waiting for the attack. The Dorcs circled him menacingly. Finally, a big Dorc that appeared to be wearing glasses lunged for him, swinging a massive hammer.

Some sort of fight-or-flight instinct switched on in VT's brain, and told him to fight. He dodged the hammer blow and jabbed the plunger at the Dorc, contacting it in the lower back. Using it as he assumed was intended, he pulled back hard, and the Dorc's internal organs were sucked out of the hole left by the plunger, along with huge quantities of black Dorc blood.

"Aw, that's fudging disgusting!" cried VT, but his instincts kicked in again and he similarly dispatched the other two Dorcs.

But more and more Dorcs kept pouring from the brush along the sides of the ravine, and by now Goredalff and DVINNY had been pushed back-to-back with VT in the middle.

 

[Dleg]

Suddenly, the Dorcs stopped advancing and turned to face the sound of clanging swords some distance ahead on the road, and then fled back into the brush. A large Dorc was engaged in a swordfight with something much smaller about 50 meters down the road. Suddenly the Dorc's head rolled off its shoulders amid a spray of black blood, and the object of the Dorc's fear emerged victorious.

"What the hell is that?" asked VT, lowering his plunger. A short, bald, one-eyed creature sheathed its sword, and began walking toward them.

"Why, it's only the greatest sword fighter in Middle West!" Said Goredalff, elated. "PE-ness!"

 

[Dleg]

"I always pictured him being ... taller." said VTEnviro.

"I wouldn't say that to him if I were you. Besides, it's a little cold outside today, if you know what I mean." Goredalff the turned to face PE-ness, who strolled confidently down the road toward them. "Where's your little buddy?"

"Behind me somewhere, I guess. He always is."

Just then a strange, round little creature rolled out of the brush and came jogging up from behind.

"Aha! There you are, Testee!"

 

[Dleg]

PE-ness strolled up to where they were standing, placed a boot on a dead and dismembered Dorc, and bragged "Nobody who has ever dared to cross swords with me has lived to tell the tale. We will have no more trouble from those Dorcs today, my friends!" He threw a shoulder back, causing his cape to drape back in a heroic fashion.

"Yes, thank you for that PE-ness." Goredalff sheathed his own sword and took hold of DVINNY's reins. "Your skills with a sword are truly formidable, but I think we would all be wise to avoid cockiness. These were no ordinary Dorcs. There will be many more. We need to get to the Castle of King Touchdown as swiftly as possible."

 

[Dleg]

"Certainly! It is not far." PE-ness rubbed his chin. "Goredalff, if I may ask a favor of you, I seem to have misplaced my ride..."

"Oh, but of course, PE-ness, hop up behind VTEnviro and myself. DVINNY can get us there in no time. And Testee?"

"I'll just hang back here!" said the strange little creature, as he slung himself from PE-ness's belt.

 

[Dleg]

VTEnviro felt awfully uncomfortable, sandwiched between Goredalff's back and ... PE-ness. And to make things worse, his companion in the rear seemed to grow harder and taller as they bounced along. VT tried to think of something else.

"Hey Goredalff, if I was able to receive an e-mail - "

"Eagle mail" Goredalff corrected him.

"Right, eagle mail " VT rolled his eyes, "can I also respond to the sender?"

"Of course! This is the Internet!"

"Well, don't you think that's kind of an important thing here? I mean, ****, we can communicate with the outside world?"

"The outside world is all fudged up. You said so yourself!" Responded the wizard.

"Yeah, but, my friends MA_PE and Big Ray obviously survived. Maybe there's still some way they could help?"

Goredalff stopped DVINNY and turned around to face the hobbit. "Wait, did you say the message came from Boston?"

"Yes! Boston!"

"How far is Boston from Washington DC?"

"Fudge if I know! Weren't you Vice President once?"

"Twice, actually, but that was a very long time ago. I've tried to forget, and I have succeeded." Goredalff looked troubled for a moment. "But I do remember that I left another Node deep in one of the tunnels under the White House. I disguised it as a giant globe and made up some baloney about the atmosphere warming up as an excuse to take it around with me while I traveled. But I had it re-installed when my Colorado node was finished."

"So are you saying I should tell them to come find it?"

"Well sure, why not?"

"Because you told me before that only two real humans could fit in the internet!"

"That's preposterous!"

"You did!"

"Well, I was wrong! But, there is a limit to how many people can get inside a Node...."

 

[Dleg]

"What limits it?" asked VT.

"Mostly..." Gordalff hesitated, "mostly the fact that I don't want a bunch of other naked people in the Node with me. You, for example, showed up uninvited. I would have never let you in if I had known you were coming. But don't take that wrong. LOL!"

"But why would you care? Once you're in the Internet, you really lose all sensation of what's happening with your real body, right?"

"Yes. You are absolutely correct. It's just that I don't want some naked guy in the Node with me." Goredalff shrugged :dunno:

"Well, how do you think I felt about getting in there with you?! Do you know how bad it reeks in the Node?!"

"Again, yes, and yet another reason I don't want other people in the Node with me. But, the Washington Node is separate. They can fit as many people in there as they can, as far as I'm concerned."

"Well then, how many people will fit in one of these Nodes, you know, maxed out?"

 

[Dleg]

"Well, let's see... The Node is about 30 feet in diameter, and what's the equation for the volume of a sphere?" Goredalff asked.

"Oh! Oh! I know!" VTEnviro was happy to finally have something to take his mind off the fact that PE-ness was pressed up hard against his back. "Four pi R cubed divided by 3!!!"

"OK, so let's approximate pi as 3, which gives us 4 times .. " he mumbled, doing the math in his head, "say, 4 times 225, which is .... 900. Nine hundred cubic feet!" DVINNY's ears twitched.

"And let's assume a typical human occupies a space 6 feet by 3 feet by 2 feet, that's um...."

"Thirty six cubic feet!" VT answered, enthusiastically. DVINNY's ears twitched even more, and he swatted his tail.

"So that's... say, rounding the human down to thirty.... Twenty five humans!"

"AWWW ******* IT!" DVINNY spoke. He had finally had enough. "You can approximate pi as 3.14. I'm fine with that. But you can't just go approximating it as 3. Jesus, Guys! And you can't just round down like that when you're trying to figure out how many things can fit inside something. You have to round up!"

"Well, you may be correct, DVINNY." Gandalff reached inside his robe pocket and pulled out the calculator VT had found the day before. "Let's do this correctly. Here we go, where's pi, ah! There it is! Pi, Enter!"

A deafening thunderclap echoed across Middle West, and a sickening beam of orange light suddenly illuminated them, emanating from deep within Lindor.

VT looked at the light in horror. "Aw crap, Goredalff!!!"

 

[Dleg]

DVINNY carried the four as fast as he could toward the Castle of King Touchdown. The sky was growing dark again in the vicinity of Lindor, and dark flying shapes rose up in am immense flock in the distance, converging along the fiery beam which pointed toward them.

"I am such a fool! I have spoken the forbidden language of the Dork Side! We need your friends as fast as possible, VT!" Goredalff lamented.

"Can I send an e-mail from here?"

"Eagle mail!"

"Sorry, an eagle mail?"

"Not unless we stop, and we can't stop." Goredalff looked toward the growing horde coming from Lindor and cursed himself again. "Did you bring anyone with you to the Colorado Node?"

"Yeah!"

"Well, quickly! Call them in here!"

"How do I do that?!"

"Plug your nose, close your eyes, and blow!"

"Are you serious!? That's asinine!!"

"JUST DO IT!"

VT plugged his nose and blew. Nothing happened. "Harder!" Goredalff urged. He blew harder, until he could feel his eardrums distending and air leaking past his eyeballs. Suddenly everything grew quiet and dark, and he found that his head was sticking out of the sphere, upside down, inside the enormous dark cavern. He released the pressure and took a deep breath.

"HEEEELLLLLPPPP!"

 

[Dleg]

The scream startled cement into dropping his sandwich. He had been inside the cavern for three days now, waiting patiently in a lawn chair next to the Suburban, taking turns keeping watch with his driver JR. Neither he or JR had any idea that civilization, as they knew it, had ended in the world above them.

cement stood, stretched, and began the long walk across the acrylic catwalk to the sphere. VTEnviro shouted again "Hurry up ******* it! This is a serious emergency! Bring JR and get inside the sphere!"

A voice came from the back of the Suburban. "Aw Hell no! I'm not getting in that thing with you guys! It's nasty in there!"

"I'm serious guys! This place is all Middle Earth and **** and there's Dorcs and..."

"You're telling me!" grumbled cement.

VTEnviro went on with his explanation as cement walked along, and JR stood and began getting dressed. "Guys! This is not a joke! The world has ended up above you, don't you understand? You probably don't know because you've been stuck down inside here!"

"Ah, ********!" cement said angrily. "Gore's always sayin' that kind of stuff. And besides, I've been in there. Nothing but **** and trees and hippy ****!"

"Yeah well, not anymore, here, let me show you" VT reached backward, up inside the sphere. In Middle West, he was reaching behind him, blindly reaching for anything to prove he was really there, and getting hold of the strap that suspended Testee from PE-ness's belt. But from cement's perspective, VT was just reaching up toward his naked ***.

cement had finally reached the platform when VT pulled Testee out to show him. The basketball-sized, pink, hairy ball opened its eyes and said "Oh hello there!"

"Aw Jesus Christ VT! Do ya always have to be showing me disgusting ****. Put that thing away! I don't wanna see your elephantitus balls!"

Dammit! VTE looked for something else to show him as proof that he was really in Middle West and in trouble. He reached back blindly again, this time getting hold of PE-ness's cape.

"Greetings! I am PE-ness, the undefeated sword master of Middle West!"

"Aw come on VT! I told you, I don't want to see your ***** ventriloquism **** anymore!"

JR had made it halfway out the catwalk, and chimed in "Yeah! Cut that **** out!"

Suddenly, VT's head was pulled back into the sphere, and Gore's head emerged. "You fools! We need you in here now!"

 

[Dleg]

^up to page 97, post 4822

 

[Dleg]

"Gore, you're such a whiner! What is it now? The troll farts are causing your atmoshpere to turn brown?" cement turned and laughed derisively in JR's direction.

"Wait a moment..." Gore's head disappeared for a moment, and then he reappeared, cheeks puffed out, and slung a dead, bloody dorc's head onto the acrylic floor of the platform.

"Oh Jesus Christ, Gore! Why'd you have to kill VT?!"

"That isn't VT you idiots! Does VT have black blood? That's a dead Dorc!"

"Well, VT's a Dork! And I have no idea what color his blood is! Murderer!"

Gore was losing his cool. He ducked his head back into the sphere.

JR had reached the platform by now and examined the Dorc head. "Hey, this isn't VT. Nope, see here? This is a Klingon. VT always dresses as Spock at our conventions."

Gore had re-emerged by now, and this time he had his staff. He aimed it just to the right of JR's shoulder and let loose a lightning bolt. 300 meters away, the Suburban exploded in a ball of fire.

 

[Dleg]

Gore now pointed the staff at cement. Suddenly he had long white hair and a white beard, and his voice thundered "Get in the sphere!!!!"

cement held up his hands. "Whatever you say, Santa Claus! What, you're gonna cut my head off next?!" He unbuckled his belt and began removing his pants. "Jesus! What an *******!"

 

[Dleg]

Goredalff kicked DVINNY into his fastest gallop in anticipation of the entrance of cement and JR. As expected, the two materialized and dropped onto the road behind them, rolling painfullly to a stop on the sharp rocks. DVINNY halted and Goredalff looked back.

cement slowly came to his feet, clutching his lower back. "Aw crap, Goredalff, did you really have to drop me in like that?" He looked up at Goredalff, and then, in sudden alarm, back down at his own feet. "Aw ****, Goredallf, a Hobbit? Again? You know how I hate being a hobbit!"

Goredalff's anger had subsided. "LOL! Now, cement and JR, take a look to the east - see that black cloud? That's an entire flock of very bad things headed our way. Come, and I will lift you on to DVINNY and get us to shelter."

JR looked at his hands and feet. "Sweet! I'm a hobbit! Hey VT! They got pipeweed here, too?" VT looked down and smiled, and opened his coat revealing three or four kilos of the stuff overflowing from his inner pockets.

 

[Dleg]

snickerd finally reached the last box of MRE's inside the storage area of the dark bunker where President Dleg and the Cabinet had finally found refuge from the zombie attacks.

"This one's expired, too!" She reported, throwing it into the pile of other expired MRE bags in the center of the room.

"Feed it to Frenchie! They haven't made him sick yet, and maybe he'll be fat enough to feed us all by Friday!" Said Dleg, casting a vicious look at the French President, who was chained to a nearby wall.

"But Monsieur President Dleg! I knew nothing of zis! I swear!"

"Eat it, Frenchie!"

Secretary of State frazil grabbed Dleg's sleeve in alarm, begging in a desperate whisper "Mr. President, Sir! You have to stop this cannibalism talk! The rest of the cabinet is getting frightened!"

"Well what the hell else are we going to eat? We can't go out in those hallways, they've been crawling with zombies for days! And the last time we sent anyone up to look out the manhole, he was shot by British soldiers!." Dleg slammed an MRE bag onto the floor. "Damn that Queen Elizabeth! I knew she looked untrustworthy!"

 

[Dleg]

Just then, a tapping was heard at the bunker door. Two Marines near the door raised their weapons. Supe, Chairman of the National Sexual Exploits Reporting Board, was nearest the door, and motioned for everyone to be quiet. The tapping continued.

"Yep, that's the code!" said Supe, recognizing the rythm of "Labamba", which was the secret tune of the day. "Let him in!"

The door was opened and Secretary of Agriculture Slugger stumbled into the bunker, out of breath, and collapsed on the concrete floor. He was sweaty, filthy, and smelled of sewage that had turned septic days ago.

 

[Dleg]

"Give him some air!" President Dleg pushed the gathering cabinet members aside.

Slowly catching his breath, Slugger pushed himself up off the concrete floor, and held out three dead rats, which were eagerly taken away by Secretary of Health FLBuff, who had become the de-facto rat chef due to his ability to make a delicious marinade using the tobasco, salt, pepper, and soy sauce packets from the expired MREs. He also secretly added grape jelly to his blend, which he carefully guarded in an inner pocket of his suit coat, and added only when the others weren't watching, for fear of losing his usefulness and being eaten by the President, who had grown increasingly obsessed with cannibalism over the past day and a half..