Inconsistencies Continued: Reboot

The Robot, the Driver, the Atlantean, and the Doctor drove across the wastes in a Chevy from a future that was never to be. In their wake they left bikers and mutants and leftover bits of the Wehrmacht from a past that was as obliterated as the future that Chevy was to have been part of.

When the Robot's power plant had detonated, it had ignited the skies of Earth, sort of. The Robot's calculations had not taken into account the Other Robot's power plant, a vastly more unstable device not built with the safety parameters of Tesla's original tech. When the blast wave found the Other Robot and ruptured his power plant's housing, it reversed the tachyon flow and ignited the antimatter stream, which had done a whole mess of things that the Robot hadn't intended. The long and short of it was that instead of destroying most of Earth's population, the Robot had instead turned most of the planet into a radiation scarred wasteland full of mutants and savage leftovers of modern civilization. Enough people had died so that the dimension hopping demons had lost interest in the planet though, so he counted it as a success.

They were driving as fast as the Chevy could, and the Driver was the Driver, so they were screeching across the cracked and broken road at a dangerous speed spewing loose gravel behind them like rounds from the Gangster's piano, which was in the trunk. They'd left the burning wreckage of a motorcycle gang a few miles behind them, and wanted to be well and truly gone when the looters crawled out of the woodwork.

They drove for miles, till a semi armored in chains and fenders and road signs barrelled out of the desert and onto the road in front of them. The rear end of the trailer slammed down and kicked up sparks and The Driver put the Chevy's pedal to the floor and took the ramp into the back. The semi was big, but just a hair less conspicuous than a Chevy that could do a hundred and forty without breaking a sweat with a one ton Robot in the back. The semi swerved and bucked as the trailer jerked wildly with the Chevy's weight and momentum and The Brick cursed at his allies in German.

The sun beat down on them, Hellishly hot, the ozone layer of the planet had mostly been burned off by the Explosion. Come to think of it, a lot of things had burned in the Explosion. The Atlantean, the Brick, the Gangster (the fat and flesh burned onto the trigger and stock of his piano was all that had been left), and the Robot himself especially so.

There was a point where flesh and bone and metal could be burned black by radiation and fire, but not be reduced to ash. The Robot, the Brick, and the Atlantean occupied the far side of that point, just this side of the edge of the line where everything became ash.

The Doctor's gauntlets had saved him, and the Driver too. The Chevy had survived because it had been built that tough. The Driver still discovered new features and hidden compartments on a daily basis. The Explosion had incinerated the paint job though, and now it was all dull metal and scorch marks that frankly made it look badass in this new wasteland.

The Atlantean was as he had ever been. His alien biology had healed him well enough. He'd had to eat The Robot's weight in Nazis and wasteland motorcycle gangs to get there, but he'd come back from the mewling, blackened thing he'd become following the blast. If anything, he was more pissed off and hungry than he had ever been.

The Brick was burned to a crisp. His flesh was charred black, not like an African's was, but like meat left on the spit over a fire for a month too long. His burned flesh was cracked and wept blood and fluid freely and where it wasn't dead and dried out, there were little clusters of tumors growing like happy little radioactive mushrooms. He smelled like barbecue, and looked like he'd been cremated, but he hadn't felt a thing and could still cave in skulls and walls and such with his thickly knuckled fists.

 The Robot, most notably, was no longer a socialist. Ceasing to exist by being melted down to his component chemical compounds, then having that process reversed when the explosion reached his brother and being returned to life as a clanking and rumbling nearly cremated version of himself had taught him that perhaps, once in a while, the needs of the many do not in fact outweigh the needs of the few. The Explosion had turned his chest into a blackened crater and scorched his metal hide. The Doctor and The Driver had used battered pieces of the Chevy to repair and armor his chest, so it was a mess of rippling and gleaming weld marks and Chevrolet symbols, not quite as strong as his original tungsten hull, but enough to turn away small arms fire and the occasional direct hit from a rocket. 

There was a blast of static over an intercom system and hoarse voice of the Brick thundered in the dim interior of the truck, "Success?"

The Doctor answered, "Affirm, the Chevy has been refueled. Back to the base."

The Brick grumbled something vaguely resembling an affirmative and the semi kicked into a higher gear.

The Driver kicked the driver's seat back and reclined, lighting a cigarette as he spoke, "You think Hitler's dead?"

The Robot's head swiveled to look at the Driver, and there was a dull clunking noise emanating from his head before he spoke, "Does such a thing matter in this world?"

The Driver shrugged and pulled the Gangster's hat from the glove box of the Chevy and pulled it down over his eyes. Still puffing on his cigarette he said, "Just curious."

The Atlantean hissed and said, "I grow weary of boredom, apes. I grow wearier of hunger."

There was a clanking ratcheting noise, the ammo feeds cycling on the Robot's gun arm.

The Atlantean snarled, "The apes are too irradiated, golem. They would taste bitter and foul, I have no desire to sup upon their flesh only to retch it all up almost immediately."

The ammo feeds didn't stop cycling, but the Robot nodded and didn't seem to notice what his gun arm was going.

The Doctor sighed and elected to spend the rest of the ride up front with the Brick.

"They're back there catting and hissing at eachoth-"

"Return to the Chevy," grumbled the Brick, "we are pursued."

The Doctor sighed and returned to the Chevy, bellowing, "Incoming."

The Gangster's fedora flipped up and the Chevy roared into life all in one quick movement from the Driver as the back panel of the semi slammed back into the ground and the Driver kicked the Chevy into reverse, swinging the scarred vehicle around to face their pursuers, a motorcycle gang of a dozen riders with shotguns and chains. The Driver revved the Chevy into motion and howled down the road towards the bikers. 

The bikers fired small arms and they pinged against the Chevy, but the Driver kept facing them head on. Three swerved away from the Chevy, the Driver moved through the road like a shark in water deliberately fishtailing and sending three motorcycles careening away like pinballs as the rear end knocked them away with a crash of metal and screams of pain. 

The Atlantean leapt from the roof of the Chevy screeching like some irradiated banshee. Scything talon took the head from one biker and moving like a bird of prey the Atlantean bounced from one bike to another, toppling this one and following the rider to the asphalt. The screams were drowned out by the noises of gnashing teeth and wet meat being hacked apart. 

With no grace and significant noise the Robot simply fell out of one of the doors of the Chevy, rising from the shattered road with his Gatling gun arm sending a hail of rounds into the bikers. A Molotov cocktail shattered against his hull and he strode down the roadway like some mechanical demon out of Hell, billowing black smoke and shrouded in a clock of burning liquid. Under the hail of bullets, two bikes went down, one exploded and left a crater of flaming wreckage on the road. The Driver rambled over it, crushing the burning biker's skull with a quick swerve of the Chevy's heavy tires.   

Two bikers lashed at the Chevy with heavy chains while the third pounded shotgun shells into the windshield. The Doctor leaned out the passenger window, his fist clenched within his gauntlet, and red lances of whining energy severed the chains and bisected the bikers. Their bikes crashed against the Chevy and the car from the future swerved under the impact, the shining bumper now dented and curling away from the front end of the vehicle. 

The last biker spun his bike around and fled back down the road. The Driver turned the wheel and knocked aside the wrecked bikes, his foot descending a fraction of an inch on the pedal while guiding the car with his knees and lighting a cigarette with his hands. Once his hands were back on the wheel the pedal hit the floor and the engine roared like the Brick had when the Explosion had burned his flesh black. 

"He is fleeing," said the Doctor, "I believe we are done here."

The Driver's eyes narrowed and he pulled miles per hour from some hidden place and the speedometer needle hit the red. 

"I just replaced the fucking bumper. I'm gonna feed his bike to the Chevy."

"Fair enough," said the Doctor as he buckled up. 

The Chevy gained on the biker and the Driver eased up on the gas as he passed the leather clad looter. The biker aimed a few shots at the Chevy with his sawed off, the Driver flipped him off as the rounds pinged against the car. Once the Chevy passed the biker he jerked the wheel hard and pulled the parking brake. The Chevy's tires screeched against the road as the rear end of the vehicle swung around and impacted the biker like a battering ram swung by the Robot. The bike shattered and the rider went airborne. He crumpled against the road in a wet, limp heap, screaming and howling through a broken face. The Atlantean fell upon him like a descending hawk and ate his face. 

"Is...isn't that going to leave a bigger dent?"

The Driver pulled his pack from the visor of the Chevy and lit a fresh cigarette, "Principle of the thing."

The Doctor sighed.