Chapter Sixteen

Project Overview: Untitled Document is a serial comedy novel dealing with the sort of topics that we so frequently make fun of here at Something Awful. This Chapter: This chapter is defined by climactic confrontations. Some would say that this would make chapter sixteen the novel's climax. However, I like to defy literary conventions by being shitty and having ten climaxes. Take that written word! Raylene and her sirens of subterfuge face off against the combined might of the "Wow! Sector" battlefleet. Who will win? READ IT TO FIND OUT, LAZY.

"Fire." Raylene said into the receiver of the telephone.

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The steering wheel of Jeanne Spooner's pickup began to spin loosely back and forth in her hands. Dust rose on the narrow road ahead of her and the small slate gravel danced strangely across the surface. She had to fight to keep her Ford from sliding into a ditch and she slammed on the brakes, skidding and kicking up a pattering wave of rocks. A low bass vibration shook her body and a deep rumble almost completely overwhelmed the Travis Trit playing on AM 1080.

Jeanne had lived in Wyoming for nearly fifty years and had never once felt anything like it. She turned off the ignition of the Ford and threw it into park. As she stepped out she could more clearly see the rocks on the road bouncing around like pork fat in a hot skillet.

"What in the…" A mile or more off to her left dust and smoke was rising into the cloudless blue sky from the prairie grass in thick columns.

The shaking beneath her feet grew more pronounced, the rumbling grew louder, and Jeanne had to steady herself on the door of the pickup to keep from falling. The air around her began to scream and hot gusts of wind buffeted her so forcefully that she leapt with fear back into the cab of the truck. Bright lights appeared like fire inside the columns of smoke. Jeanne clamped her palms over her ears as the high-pitched screaming and the bass roar fused together in a disorienting crescendo of noise.

The lights broke free from the columns of smoke, seeming to rise so very slowly up into the air, and above them an unmistakable twenty-story metal bullet, the flag of the United States of America visible on its side. Jeanne swung her head away in horror and saw them, all around her, rising into the blue on slow trunks of white smoke.

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"SAC and Ballistic Missile Command report 93% away." A dark haired and slightly sickly looking girl in the black uniform of the Sisterhood reported.

There were fifteen women, some Conservators but mostly line technicians pulled in to monitor the missile attack. They were manning a bank of laptops set up on the tables of the library. A second and slightly smaller group was coordinating with the Russians to guide their nuclear strike to various identified targets in orbit above the earth.