Foston Slacks - Time's Flies

25

It wasn't until Foston's hand stopped her from moving forward, that she realised he must be keeping his eyes open to see the Breach the whole time. His claws dug into her forearm and she wondered just how much pain he must be in, even as she almost collapsed from the freezing cold.

They had only walked a few steps in the freezing, low gravity of the Moon's surface and then, after pausing, she felt him pull her forward and everything changed once more as they passed through the Breach. She feared opening her eyes, but the pressure on her lungs eased and she tested a short intake of breath. There was air. Not particularly nice air, but air. She opened her eyes.

"That shouldn't have worked, should it?" She felt the reassuring weight of Donkey-Oh-Tea! under her arm and felt a little more comforted.

"No. No, it shouldn't. Without space suits, we should be dead. Time's interference, again, I believe." Foston appeared to be shaking. She touched his arm, almost caring about his feelings. "It is, I must say, the strangest sensation. Having your eyeballs freeze in their sockets. Thank Prinkilla, the god of space-faring luck, for Breach Reset, eh?"

Clara looked around, wondering what wondrous, or mundane, place they had found themselves in this time. It was a dump. Not a literal dump, though not far from it, but a really nasty looking area, where everything seemed a dull, dust covered grey. No trees, no plants, no bushes were anywhere in sight, and a haze of particulates filling the air made the sunlight indistinct and dull.

To their left, a few hundred yards away, she could see the remains of a large motorway. To their right, the remains of a town of some kind. She could see a sign and jogged to see what it said. The words 'Roanoke Rapids - Drive Carefully' adorned the pitted and battered sign.

"Sounds American." She muttered to herself, meaning the motorway was a freeway and they were, most likely, going to be shot at. Again. She turned back to Foston, rubbing his eyes and blinking. "Unless the place has really gone downhill, which, you know, America, then this isn't my Earth, is it?"

"This is Earth eight, eight, two, five, nine, eight. A world devastated by nuclear missiles. All the missiles." As usual, he retreated to looking at his watch, probably getting some good use out his swanky new sensors. "And it's just after noon, by my watch."

"Wow! They actually went ahead and did it on this Earth? Total nuclear annihilation. Idiots." She kicked at dust covered newspaper, the print bleached out and unreadable.

"What? War? Oh, no. This was an accident." Foston rubbed his eyes again. The experience of the vacuum on the moon must have affected him more than she thought. "On this Earth, no-one took the Y2K problem seriously. Come the click over into the new century and every computerised device went haywire. All the nuclear missiles fired at the exact same second. At least everyone died during a rollicking good party, I guess."

"So, this is how a world dies. Not with a whimper, but with a loud bang to the tune of Auld Lang Syne and party poppers." She had a sudden thought. "Wait! Are we safe? We're not going to be battered by radiation, are we. Are we going to die? I knew I should have stayed in that thirty-five mile long conga line!"

"Radiation? Ha!" He tapped upon the face of his watch, looked horrified, looked sad, ignored the warning jingle from the watch and then shrugged. "No. We'll be fine."

"Are you sure? We're not going to have all our hair fall out, or anything? I've just got this hair into a seriously silky state." She tugged at her hair, to be certain.

"Nope. Everything's fine. We're fine. The air is fine. Nothing at all to worry about. For a while." He covered the face of his watch, trying to muffle the alarm. He failed. Then he pointed to the east. "Ooh, look! A diner."

Without waiting for Clara, and still trying desperately to switch off the traitorous alarm, Foston set off walking to a battered, listing diner a few hundred feet away. At one time, the diner, with a big sign outside, reading 'iDiner on the I-95', would have been a stereotypical roadside café. Like a sleek, shiny, enlarged caravan, or trailer as folks in these here parts may have called it. Now, it looked like a battered, distressed torpedo, feeling sorry for itself for being land-locked with no ship to blow up.

Foston didn't even think about any possible danger, striding straight up to the door and opening it. The bell tinkled and jangled in a way that would have informed anyone inside to turn and stare at the newcomer. As luck would have it, there were no anyones inside. Except for one person.

A skinny woman, who may once have been far more sturdily built, stood behind the counter, still wearing a waitress uniform, replete with pencil behind the ear. She turned a weary eye towards Clara and Foston, her eye sockets sunken along with her cheeks. Her waitress uniform dirty and smeared with something that, at first glance, could be something horrific and, at second glance, could be something really horrific.

"We've got nothing. Less'n you want rat. We got rat. It ain't cooked, or even dead, but I ain't gonna stop ya catchin' it." She held a coffee jug that probably hadn't seen coffee in years. "How'd you folks survive the gangs, anyway?"

"We came through a Breach in time, space and reality." Foston sat upon the tired, ripped seat at the counter and smiled at the woman. She didn't return the smile.

"We ain't had any new folks round here since the last one got shot in that booth right there." She pointed with the empty coffee jug at a booth that had similar stains to her uniform upon it. "Gangs."

"And these gangs never bother you?" Clara joined Foston, sitting on the next seat. The woman's dead eyes turned to her, showing no emotion.

"Ain't bothered me since my boobs shrivelled up. 'Sides, my son's the leader and only lets 'em beat me up once in a while. Says killing his mom ain't right." The dead eyes turned back to Foston. "You want the rat or not?"

"Well, I'm not at all weirded out by any of this. Not at all. Can I use your loo?" Clara slapped the top of the counter, widening her eyes questioningly to the corpse-like woman.

"My what?"

"Your loo? Your toilet? Oh, oh, wait. I mean, your bathroom." Clara felt quite proud of herself for blending in to this nightmarish, post-apocalyptic piece of Americana. She nudged Foston's arm as the corpse woman pointed to a pair of doors hanging off their hinges at the end of the diner. "Find a Breach. Get us out of here. I don't want to die here when I could have happily died on that sun-drenched beach surrounded by barely dressed skydivers."

"Don't worry. One's about to open within minutes, somewhere near-by. Be ready for my shout." She gave him the thumbs up and headed toward the bathrooms, leaving him with the corpse woman. "Now, about this rat. Is it fast?"

Clara hauled the door to the bathroom open, wide enough to squeeze inside, and pushed open the first of the two stalls. Retching at the sight of the skeleton inside, she let the stall door close. The second stall, she pushed open slower and more carefully. There was no skeleton in this stall, but neither was there a toilet. This left her in a quandary. She did, in actual fact, need to pee.

Either she peed through the hole in the floor, or she, somehow, removed the skeleton from the other stall. This posed two problems. First, she didn't fancy exposing her arse towards a hole in the floor and, second, she really didn't want to touch a skeleton. She glanced at the sink but, even if she had those simply cheeky high heels, tucked away in her handbag, on, she would not be able to manoeuvre her leg high enough. This would lead to problem C, peeing down her leg and that absolutely would not happen here. That was bad enough in swish nightclubs in the West End. At least there was toilet paper there and several other girls also attempting to pee in the sinks. And adjust their make-up at the same time.

She bit her lip and squeezed her thighs together. Open hole. Move the skeleton. Dribble down her legs. None of these options appealed to her. The least non-appealing option seemed to be peeing into the hole. Bracing herself, she straddled the hole, gathered up her skirt, pulled down her tights and was about to pull her knickers to the side when she saw something that made her scream.

"Foston!" She screamed again, for good measure. "Foston! Here! Now!"

She didn't dare move.