Flash Fiction – Pulp Madness.

Chuck Wendig over at terribleminds.com has requested this week’s flash fiction to be as pulp tastic as possible.  Oh Chuck, oh my.  I always knew one day I’d have an excuse to start a story with the words, “Unleash the ducks!”.

Earth Quack

“Unleash the ducks!”

The sea started to roil.  Huge rapids and waves crashed along the shores of the relatively small island.  Something rose from the ocean depths, disturbing the waters above till half the ocean looked like an insane man’s giant stew pot.  Something from the deep broke the water’s surface and kept rising.  Something huge, something menacing, something…

Yellow.

The madman cackled as yellow rubber duckies the size of icebergs burst from beneath the waves.  His observation platform hovered hundreds of feet above the island shores below, and yet he still had to look up to get face to beak with his creations.  They wore huge rubber goggles and his insignia tattooed on their yellow hides, for no reason other than style.  All the best had style.

Having a captive audience made it all the sweeter.

“You see?!,” he yelled at the bound man sitting next to him.  “It is too late for you to stop me. Already my mechanized fiddler crabs eat away at Ireland’s foundations. Not you, nor Cú Chulainn, nor the whole Leprechaun League can stop me now!”

Agent McBride struggled at his ropes, but they held fast.  His regulation trench coat bunched uncomfortably under his short arms, and his long red beard was tangled in the knots.  If only he hadn’t lost the sonic shillelagh, or still had the shamrock shaped lapel pen with its hidden laser cutter.   All he could do was struggle, curse, and trust in the luck of the Irish.

“Ye damned mad bastard!  Ya cannot seriously expect to steal off the whole island with nothing but ducks and crabs!”

“Oh can’t I?” The madman laughed, tossing back his head and nearly losing his goggles.  He towered over the bound leprechaun. If the ducks said anything about the state of his psyche, they would hint at some serious size compensation issues.  “I managed to take the whole of the Easter Islands with nothing but a gravity ray and a flock of robotic albatrosses!  I can take your blessed isle, and float it all the way to Australia!”

“Australia!” the agent’s mouth hung open and his eyes bulged.  “Why in the name of all the saints that ever shat rainbows would ye take us to Australia?!”

All around the island more ducks were rising, huge as mountains, yellow as raincoats. A net of wires, the finest adamantium imported straight from Venus, stretched from them down into the waters and to the island below.  Agent McBride could see the movement along the wires, hundreds of nano crabs, each able to move tons of dirt with their oversized right claws.  They could slice through the island like a vivisection, letting the ducks take on the burden.

The madman preened, looking along his creations.  He even ignored the single giant duck wearing a spiffy sailor hat.  He knew he hadn’t made a sailor duck, but they seemed to self manifest in some bizarre quirk of nature.  He pushed up his goggles and the agent knew he was dealing with a truly disturbed personality.  Only the entirely insane would wear a monocle under their goggles.

“It is all ingeniously simple,” the madman said.  “I plan to anchor the two islands together, big and small.  Soon, the populations will interbreed, the cultures will mix.  Then I will force the most unholy of unions.  In a decade Fosters and Guinness will be joined in the same brewery!”

The leprechaun felt his jaw drop so low it was amazing his beard didn’t try to crawl off it.  He just sputtered.

“But that’s… ye canna… I mean…”

“Yes, you see now.  The evil children of such a union will either be so delicious as to completely addict the world, or so very obscene to psychologically damage generations of beer drinkers.  Either way, glorious chaos will be served!”

“Ye mad bastard!” the agent repeated.  He stared at the island as it started to quake.  The oceans around had turned brown from the silt and waste of the digger crabs.

The madman watched the special agent of the Leprechaun League process it all.  He could see the conflicted emotions race across his red bearded face.  He knew the building curiosity that such a mad scheme would spark.  He could practically taste the words that would come next.

“So,” the agent said reluctantly.  “Ye, need some help?”

The madman cackled hard enough to loose the monocle. It tumbled into the duck filled waters below as he bent to untie his new minion.