Chapter 1 of 48/14 novel

Chapter 1
BZZZZZZZZZZTTT! A spiraling cold-hearted drill powers through unsuspecting dry dirt. The drill cements itself to the inner core as it cracks open a genuine hole by a man with a stained blue button down shirt. “Space Bone” engrained on the front pocket in coarse white stitching, the frightened fray runs from its keeper as the breeze nearly deadlocks his entangled, untamed beard.
The Space Bone worker speaks in a deep, raspy voice, “Yup this is the stuff the universe needs… and it ain’t easy to get to neither!” With his hairy, flabby arms outstretched, the worker feels established. Standing next to him is the brow-clenching crisped man with a blonde haired twelve-year-old boy. The old man narrows his eyes at the hole and walks away. The sound of his heavy boots strikes desperate, unwarranted land below a green, cloudless sky.
The old man opens his mouth, before words tremble out of cracked lips… A war cry from the distance, a deep emphatic, ROOOOAAAAAAWWWWWWRRRRRRRRR!!!!!! It rattles the airwaves and shakes the flaky ground as pebble and rock vibrate in frightened unison. The old man and boy lock eyes as the old man yells, “ALRIGHT! LET’S HUNT!”
He jumps on his bike, revs the throttle, the back tire skids out from the right ‘til it gains traction leaving tread prints. Upon the horizon the roar nears. The boy catches up running at speeds of eighty miles per hour… the motorcycle’s two wheels next to the boy’s legs jolt side by side. He glimpses over with metallic round goggles glistening from the sun. His hair runs backwards as wind tunnels graze past his cheeks. He smirks. The old man returns the grin and excitedly yells, “Let’s GO, Drum!”
A giant monster rises in shadow on top the hill as the sun sets. The sky settles into foreshadowing red as the beast’s growl beckons toward the two hunters. The old man hits the throttle pushing the engine to screams, blowing dust in Drum’s path. The old man looks back laughing as Drum slows down. No vision. Coughing and clearing his goggles with cold small. His pace picks up. Drum disappears, as his silhouette gets lost into a cloud of dust. The old man laughs aloud but in a matter of seconds the ever-fast Drum bursts out of the sandy cloud, rocketing forward past the aged motorcycle. He looks back and returns the dusty trail of revenge running into wave patterns, kicking up a smothering cloud of dust. He whips to the right. The old man veers left yelling a croaky, “DRUM!” His leather gloves reach to the side of his bike into his Bubble-Pak and grips a satchel as he tosses it up in the air. Drum jumps up twenty feet. He grabs the satchel and comes crashing down to the ground and back en route.
Ever nearer, a beast towers over the landscape. It had to be forty feet tall weighing something of eight tons. This was a rare one. Its skin is green, rippled with a bumpy texture. Splotches of yellow spew across its scaly skin. The old man salivates. Blood pressure rises. Feels that hunter hunger. He wanted to drag his dry, cracked fingers across its nostrils and drag it down, crashing him into the ground into a death match, reminding him of his first kill…
The smell of fresh air injected with pride as he sloppily pierced through the beasts head with his spear gun. His first kill, hairy mohawk, scary teeth, nearly bit off the old man’s arms. With all the adrenaline coursing through his veins he was able to stand sturdy and propel that spear right where he needed. His mentor was AmMoBeep, a legendary ocean hunter; as black as the night sky with ivory piercing his nose and a giant tattoo on his back of what he hunted most, savage whales. They were more dangerous than great white sharks, smarter than dolphins and existed solely on Planet Earth 2. AmMoBeep sold ivory tusks on the black market for most of his profit, but he taught the old man, who wasn’t old back then, how to hunt and survive. To sell high price items and keeping the junk while eating the meat. The memory he retains of AmMoBeep’s character was simple in nature but in the waters he was unmatched. He was the best natural swimmer in the universe…
The old man could smell the eight-ton creature’s fowl breath as its teeth grimaced of grays and browns with speckles of blood still soaked from its dinner. He starts running forward, jumping off his bike, grabbing his dagger from his left ankle holster, screaming at the boy, “RUN TWENTY YARDS RIGHT AND SETUP POSTS” Drum’s freakishly fast and strong. He’s been built with the finest mechanical parts and brewed by the best bioengineers tailored to beast hunting.
For being old, the man is nimble as he skids off his bike and straps boosters on his ankles. The creature is blinded from a glaring shine off his knife, pausing its march. The old man lowers into a crouched defensive stance, getting low to the ground for an explosion of speed, kicking his ankle boosts to the max. He charges around it, blowing the thing in the dust, running a ferocious 360 degrees around it releasing the ankle booster’s smog screen. The creature is confused and irritated as smog burn it’s eyes and plugs its airways. The beast stands mute as the old man shouts, “HIT IT” the boy strikes the electrical currents that radiate through posts he stabbed through the surface, surrounding the Sand Kanarck. It stops and looks around in confusion. Electricity radiates through the smoke screen like a violent thunderstorm shooting spirals of bolts. It gets hit from tail to chattering teeth! It moans, raising its gigantic head, letting out a suffocating breath, dropping straight down, SMASHING into the ground as a thunderous slam fires up chunks of the demolished surface leaving it embossed of the corpse. The electrical smog cloud was powerful enough to fry the Sand Kanarck’s brain as steam radiates on top of its rolled back pupils.
The old man proudly laughs and shouts, “GREAT JOB BOY!” Drum exuberantly smiles. The boy is good and he knows it, full of confidence and ignorance. The old man returns the grin as perspiration cools his body. He thinks to himself in arrogant fast breaths, I’m still the best damn hunter in the universe.
Exhaustion kicks in. They lay down near the beast as the warmth radiates enough body heat to keep them warm during a cold desert night. The howls of dreams begin drifting into sleep.
The next morning the old man sets down his Bubble-Pak, opens it, remembering the old advertisement of vintage Bubble-Paks. In a catchy piano tune with female vocals singing,
“Bubble-pak, Bubble-pak… Do you need space?
No problem, man!
Bubble-pak, Bubble-pak has got it allllll!
Any space, every space in the infinite falllll…
for any sized objects in the space to haullll!”
The black and white commercial ends with the face of a thin woman in her early thirties with short hair above her shoulders as she begins to pucker up for a kiss showcasing the only color on the television set. In vibrant red lips, she mouths the words in silence, “The forest rests, illuminate your mind, join us.”
The old man fades into the morning sun, rubs his head back into reality. He sees Drum standing on the belly of the beast watching the sunrise. The old man states, “Isn’t it beautiful?” Drum robotically replies, “Your screams at night… kept me awake.” The old man dumbfounded takes a deep breath in disbelief walking to his bike and grabs his Bubble-Pak.
They skin it in hours and cut out its sharp teeth for knives and weaponry leaving the remains for vultures. After a brutal sun-baking twelve hours. The long worn day comes to an end and they set up camp, establishing a fire. They roast the head-sized heart and eat it for dinner. The eight-ton creature glistens from the moonlight as the old man forgets just how inspiring a big kill is. Not even the disgusting smell fazes him. Falling asleep exhausted and drifts into the night sky.
He looks down as his two feet are running in unison. No wait, they are hopping from square to square. One missed hop and he falls into the dark abyss. He finally looks up ahead of where he’s going and sees the Bubble-Pak woman standing mute in a beautifully distant edge of a dauntingly large red door that are entrusted with heavy metal brackets. A chandelier twirls above her head. He leaps closer to the edge, jumping from multi-colored tile. Green to blue to yellow lighting up on each encroachment toward the decimated brick wall thats held together by the red doors, saving the woman from destruction. She lifts her arms invitingly as her eyes glow a green hue unlike any woman the old man has ever seen. She says in a soft voice, “come with me.” The old man has one last leap, propelling forward onto the last tile as it can’t hold true, giving out to his weight as he reaches for her in desperation but only finds black heavens.
He wakes in a cold panic, gets up and wipes off his face to start the day. He picks up his chainsaw and revs it up. Drum looks at him in gas-guzzling fueled smoke, handing him his goggles. The old man slips them on and starts slashing, cutting up the bones as Drum picks his cutter, pairing their chainsaws to cut the bones into collection size. Hours pass and the old man’s arms begin to wobble and feel like jelly from the vigorous grinding and tension on his decaying yet sturdy muscles. His skin plagued of speckled bone as he brushes it off with thick butcher gloves. He lifts his communicator from his matching brown leather belt and holds it upright announcing, “Ready for pick up.”
Hours later, a large boom scares Drum into a whimper as a glorious spacecraft appears and begins to hover down, spiraling sandy wind tunnels a-buzzing. The old man ducks for cover as blue gleaming light shines down. The side of the spacecraft reads in white painted lettering, “Space Bone” with the “e” extending a long dried paint strip. The wording, must have been freshly painted as it stands out through speckled sand particles intertwining with white flames shooting past jets in an orchestrated fashion. Sands graze across the old man’s tongue as he sits in awe of the massive spacecraft. He sees a silhouette of a savage whale. He closes his mouth and yells at Drum to follow him for cover from the deafening landing. They run through the dismantled exoskeleton and take cover behind the pelvis girdle. The metallic spacecraft slowly drifts down and begins to land, moving the jets sideways and shooting down giant spikes into the ground to stabilize the massive beast. It vibrates back and forth spiraling those spokes downward into a screw-like fashion. With all the air currents spinning violently it creates a crater for the metal behemoth as it finally lands and simmers its mauling mouth. It’s chest spewed open and laid itself upon the quivering sand.
A man walks down on an angled door that acts as a ramp, he limps his way over to the hunters, perhaps drunk. Fraying “Space Bone” stitched on the front pocket of his shirt. They stand up and start to walk toward him. “Hey Frank, how the hell ya been?” Reeking of whiskey, he slurs, “Eh, ya know I’ve been better.”
The captain went to the ship and pushed in a hand-sized panel. It continued on retreat as a larger panel breached its surface. The captain jammed some numbers into the key code as steam traveled through its cracks. He clenched his fist and jaw as he strutted back towards us. An accordion like tube connected to the panel, joining the ship as Frank grabbing the opposite side of the tube stretched it across the mound of bone. The captain sloppily walks back to his ship and slams his fist on a large red button. The ship begins to rumble. The surface begins to shake as the collection of bone chatters against each other. The engine started to blaze full of glory as the stretched tube sucks up the carbon. The tube takes in the bones it chops and grinds it down to fine powder traveling to the bellows of the ship.
Frank leaning against the ship says, “Yup, that sums up a good chunk of change. Hmmmm alright 18,000 zeinos…. Minus shipping/storage/distribution and of course captain fees… you get a nice sum of about 9,000 ziens.” He held up a clunky scanning device and said, “Do you agree with the charges and services?” The old man agreed and scanned his thumb. A robotic female voice shouted, “Thank you 9,000 zeinos have been deposited to your account.” His scanner starts beeping. “Hmm well I gotta go pick up another shipment. I’ll see ya next time. Good luck huntin’!”
The ship clunkily elevates off the ground creaking every which direction until it gains its balance and moves east. The ship hovers the ground for miles. It continues to dance at a moderate pace and is light on its feet. The captain bumbles around the front deck. He mumbles, “One for the moon and two for the stars.” Pouring a shot of whiskey and downs it. He wipes his lips with his forearm and wobbles to the front controls. The monitor repeats.. APPROACHING DESTINATION IN 5 MINUTES. The captain slouches in his seat, “alright lets get there already.” LANDING LANDING… The captain lowers the lever. The gigantic ship sways back and forth as the treetops buckle under the pressure of the air currents. Space Bone beams down onto an empty patch amidst the forest as the ship hunkers down and a man is awaiting the captain’s arrival. The captain moves to a side cockpit putting both hands on the gears to exit. He moves the levers to the right allowing the bubbled cockpit to depart from the main deck. He opens the bubbled glass as pressured air is released, looks at the man to the right. “How are ya today?” The somber man poised with his right eyebrow raised and eyes gazing down, in monotone voice, he speaks, “Do you have any new materials for me as the juggernaut of logistics?” Captain scoffs, “Geez some people don’t have dem’ manners anymore.” The captain looks high towards the sky to meet eyesight with the man who towers over the cockpit. He says, “Ya’s I found something alright. I’m sure you’lls be delighted by this dust.” He grabs a bag of bone dust and throws it at him. The somber man grabs the bag and scowls the captain. Captain says, “Ya’s know it was from that hunter from the desert.” The man intently views the bone dust then looks over at the captain and mutters… “Hunter?”