The True Meaning of Smekday

I floored it and drove around the edge of the pit.

“J.Lo, are we going to explode?”

“Maybies. The Snark’s Adjustable Manifold is very instable. But Tip said she wanted to drive anyways.”

“Well, I got this crazy idea we were going to be exploring, not exploding,” I said. Then I glanced at J.Lo’s face.

“You came with me. Even though you thought the car might explode.”

A flash appeared to the northeast. The Gorg had finally brought down the second Boovish ship. J.Lo pressed his face against the passenger window.

“He’s out of the ravine,” I said. “Chief Shouting Bear. I bet Slushious can catch him if we don’t blow up first. What are you looking for?”

“They are coming back. Gorg jetpackers. I see sevens.”

“Oboy. What…what can we do?”

J.Lo had a real hopeful sort of look on his face. Like he needed to borrow money.

“The Boov have never before captured a Gorg teleclone booth. It is the most important thing,” he said. “The most important thing is to not give it back.”

I sighed and shut my eyes and nodded my head. My mind raced, searching for a good idea.

“Allll right. Here we go.”

I cranked the steering knob way to the end of the a.m. dial and spurred Slushious on toward the approaching jetpackers. Their taillights traced alien symbols in the air as they drew closer. I liked thinking that they really were as small as they looked and would smack our windshield like the pests they were. But they kept getting closer and larger. They saw us and dropped lower in the sky, and I finally got a decent look at the things. It was just as well that I hadn’t before or I never would have let myself get so close to one, much less seven. When they were within a hundred feet they aimed rifles the size of streetlamps at us.

“Whatfor will you do?” asked J.Lo.

“They’re in our way,” I said. “I’m going to honk at them.”

I mashed my palm into the horn as hard as I could. Just like it had two weeks ago in Pennsylvania, the hood flew open and belched orange fire into the sky. The Gorg scattered, and I turned hard to the right and hit the gas.

“I don’t suppose that got rid of any of them,” I shouted, as our windshield was blindfolded by the clanking car hood and I had to drive with my head out the window.

“No. But they needed some seconds forto their eyes to readjust. And for this they did not see the boothtruck. They are following on us.”

I glanced up at the center of the hood. You could see the Snark’s Adjustable Manifold there, hissing and spitting blue fireworks against the window glass.

“That thing looks ready to pop,” I said. I could feel it buzzing through the steering wheel and in the seat of my pants.

“Yes. Drive unto the arroyo.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, my eyes snapping back and forth between the Gorg in my side mirror and the dark desert ahead. “I was thinking—”

“I have a idea.”

I pressed on toward the highway and checked the mirror just in time to be blinded by the flash of the Gorg rifles. They pockmarked the ground all around and sheared off our antennas, and I weaved Slushious right and left and behind flagpoles and fence posts.

“J.Lo, I really think we should—”

“Please onto the arroyo,” he said as he searched his toolbox and produced what looked like a pencil sharpener made of lemon Jell-O that, when cranked, would spit out super-strong yarn that smelled like ginger ale. “Trust on me.”

I retraced our path from the day before, through the hilly obstacle course that shook every last thing out of J.Lo’s toolbox but made us a hard target. Gorg fire sheared the tops off of dunes and filled the night with pulverized dirt. In the meantime I chewed myself up inside trying to decide whether I should see J.Lo’s plan through or do what I really thought was best. I was furious that he’d put me in this position—we both knew I was the smart one.

“Almost to the arroyo,” he said. He’d tied one end of the superyarn around his middle, the other end around the passenger seat. “Turn into it.”

The Gorg were gaining. They were faster and more nimble. They’d love it if we went into the arroyo with all its rocks and low branches and high logs. Plus, I could barely see.

“I hope humans and Boov go to the same heaven,” I said as we skimmed down the hill. “I might want to say a few things to you later about this plan of yours.”

I gave us an extra cushion of air under the car and squinted into the rushing wind and stinging bugs. We barely missed boulders and fallen trees, and barely hit shrubs and thin branches that came from nowhere and whipped against the bumper, or hood, or my face. The Gorg were down in the trench, too, and blasting a red smoldering path through the brush.

“What are you doing?” I shouted to J.Lo, though it was pretty obvious he was climbing out the side window and onto the windshield. He shouted something back that was lost to the roaring wind.

Just then, a Gorg blast came awfully close to the car, and J.Lo lost his grip. He tumbled sideways and down the side of Slushious until his yarn lifeline went taut.

“Hwhoa,” I heard him say.

It was hard enough to navigate through the wash with a small army of flying death on your tail without worrying about J.Lo getting smacked against some tree trunk. I was beginning to take us up out of the arroyo when his face appeared in the window again.

“No!” he said. “Only oneother minute!”

He pulled himself hand over hand back up the yarn and onto the windshield again. The he peered backward over the roof of the car and reached for the Snark’s Manifold, which I was shocked to see was glowing hot pink.

The Gorg drew closer. J.Lo looked back over his shoulder at the Manifold, then squinted at the Gorg again.

“What,” I shrieked, “in GOD’S name are you—”

J.Lo ripped the sparking Snark’s from its place in the hood and threw it over the back of the car, trailing blue lightning in its wake. I watched it catch in a tangle of thorny branches right in front of the swarm of Gorg, then Flash! Bam! and the cabin of the car went bright with blue-white light, and the big clap of force somersaulted Slushious over and again on its fat pink Safetypillows.

We shuddered to a stop.

“Wroooo,” said Pig.

“Yeah. Me too,” I answered. “J.Lo?”

I could see one of his hands wiggling.

“I am fine.”

He was fine, pressed firmly between two cushions on the hood.