Quentin McFury - The Last Defender

By Patrick T. Gorman

One day, everyone disappeared…

Everyone except Quentin McFury. When he fell asleep in English class, Quentin never thought he'd wake up with drool on his desk and no one else but him on Earth.

In search of answers, the teen will steal a spaceship, fall for a snarky purple gal, and make friends with a strange robot who denies he's a robot. Together, the three of them will fight through a universe Quentin never knew existed to rescue humanity. But will he find his fellow humans before a group of mysterious pursuers catch him first?

Read the new book from the acclaimed creator of STAR WARS TRILOGY IN 30 MINUTES.

"The best and only way to describe Quentin McFury: He's sort of like if Douglas Adams and Nick Hornby had a love child and it was up to that kid to save the universe. I fell in love with Quentin as he bumbled his way through the galaxy. And I'll be honest, he broke my heart a little along the way."

- Sarah Watson, Creator of THE BOLD TYPE and Writer for PARENTHOOD and THE MIDDLEMAN

• Language: English
• Publisher: Patrick T. Gorman
• Release date: Jan 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370807321

Patrick T. Gorman

Patrick T. Gorman is the acclaimed playwright and director of such hits as STAR WARS TRILOGY IN 30 MINUTES, the stage adaptation of Quentin Tarantino's RESERVOIR DOGS, and FOUR GUYS EATING OUT. In addition to having plays performed to sold-out audiences around the world, he's also written screenplays for Universal Studios and Twentieth Century Fox. Mr. Gorman's work has been called "extremely funny" by George Lucas, "unfailingly imaginative" by Variety, and "quick-witted and pithy" by the London Stage. Mr. Gorman has also been featured on CNN, ABC's Nightline, the Los Angeles Times, BBC, and Variety. Patrick lives in Santa Monica, California with his wife and two kids and would like to keep writing and making up stories forever. (Unless he could be a Time Lord and then he'd totally be a Time Lord. Or a space pirate.) Find out more about Patrick at: http://www.patricktgorman.com

Book preview

QUENTIN MCFURY

THE LAST DEFENDER

Patrick T. Gorman

I AIN’T GOT NOBODY by Roger Graham & Spencer Williams (1915) Public Domain

Cover Artwork by April Johnston

Copyright © 2013 Patrick T. Gorman

All rights reserved.

Published by KMRIA Publishing, 2013.

ISBN: 0615891004

For Tricia

The measure of my dreams.

CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE

DEDICATION

CHAPTER ONE - Wreaking Havok

CHAPTER TWO - School's Out Forever

CHAPTER THREE - Stowing Aways Away

CHAPTER FOUR - Ghost Town

CHAPTER FIVE - Meet Trinta

CHAPTER SIX - Doggone It

CHAPTER SEVEN - Boxed In Foxtrot

CHAPTER EIGHT - Mile High City

CHAPTER NINE - Not a Date

CHAPTER TEN - Not E.T.

CHAPTER ELEVEN - Raining Cats & Dogs & Snakes (Or Maybe Just Snakes)

CHAPTER TWELVE - Driving Lessons

CHAPTER THIRTEEN - Timeout

CHAPTER FOURTEEN - Moving Through Time and a Little Bit of Space

CHAPTER FIFTEEN - The Cheeve Rises to the Top

CHAPTER SIXTEEN - Balls

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - Knocking Over Blocks

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - The Measure of Dreams

CHAPTER NINTEEN - Fatherland

CHAPTER TWENTY - Follow Me Nose

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - The Wormhole Corridor of Queasiness

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO - Meeting the Mother

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - The Remotest Reaches of Space

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - Home and Away

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CHAPTER ONE

WREAKING HAVOK

"Yeah, I’m grateful, muttered Quentin McFury. Grateful not to be dead. Grateful not to be blown into 93,573 pieces. Not yet anyway."

Shrrrrrrrrrrrrrrraakkkkkkkkkk!!!

Explosions rocked the ship, but the battered Havok held together . . . barely, just barely. Grabbing the stick, Quentin pulled up on it with all his might, until his muscles shook and stretched so much he worried they might snap. His once thin, finger-sized fingers turned red, squeezed out like plump sausages from his driving gloves.

"I am NOT going to die today," he growled.

Krrrrrrrrzzzzzzzzzzzzshhhtttt!!!

Ooookay, I might totally die today . . .

As flames ripped across the back of the cockpit, he now knew for certain that the Striker attack fighters bearing down on him weren’t looking to chat about what the best Clash album was. (And even if they were, Quentin didn’t have time to argue it was clearly Combat Rock.) Hell, he didn’t even have time to put out the fire, even though he knew not putting it out would be suicidal with an added dollop of burny.

So, as blasts flew across the bow, the Havok’s pilot had a decision to make. A decision other pilots never had to worry about as all their ships had clever fire extinguishing capabilities. (Some even had hovering extingui-bots in tiny red helmets behind "Break in Case of Emergency" glass just waiting to show their tiny little stuff.)

Quentin had none of that. All he had was the willingness to hold his breath and crack open a window when the time was right. And that time was now.

Although the Havok moved swiftly for a heavily-modified science freighter, it wasn’t really designed for space combat. Four times the size of any of the zip-fast Strikers, the bulky Havok trudged through space like a lumbering sheep dog. Whereas the cat-like, single-piloted Strikers were built for speed, the Havok was single-mindedly built to protect whatever was inside it. Thus, making it easy prey for the faster fighters.

The dark screaming Strikers barreled downwards, each one firing point blank on the Havok, the barrage shredding the shields. No ship could take the beating the Havok now took. Each and every one of those Striker pilots smiled the confident grin of cocky jerks everywhere who knew they were about to get an easy victory, an easy score. Such smirks, however, are generally always premature and not recommended, especially as karma, fate, God, gods, etc. despise such smiles and take a giddy glee in turning those smiles into smashed-up, tear-stained frowns.

In the Havok’s cockpit, just as it was about to be obliterated into melting metal and hunks of human chunks, that ship’s pilot took several deep breaths. On the last inhalation, Quentin held his breath tight and flicked a series of green buttons above his head. Thirteen microseconds later, all the air from the ship was sucked out with a whooshing clap!

Clinging to the controller as his body flew up out of his seat, Quentin flitted about the cabin like a spider about to be slurped into a vacuum. As his body bounced around the cockpit, the ship twisted and spun through space with a crazed flurry of jerks and turns that made the Havok look like it was having a fit.

The Strikers rapidly tried to scramble out of the spasming freighter’s way. But every time those Strikers swerved to safety, they were met with a random move that put them right back into the path of danger. No flight experience in the universe could have prepared those pilots to attack a ship while simultaneously defending themselves from their target’s kamikaze-like frenzy.

Without warning, the Havok veered upwards and then back down in the blink of an eye. Unfortunately a Striker pilot blinked and the Havok clipped him, sending his fighter into an uncontrollable spiral out of the action. Even though unintentional, that act showed its pursuers that the Havok wasn’t rolling over in this fight.

Inside the cockpit, Quentin grinned widely. He couldn’t believe self-preservation could be so much fun, nor so destructive. If there were air to breathe, he’d have been giggling maniacally that his ridiculous plan to put out the fire roaring through his ship by taking out the air fueling it actually seemed to be working. But since he could neither breathe nor laugh, he instead desperately tried to figure out how to repressurize the ship while not losing complete control of it.

I don’t know where I am or what I’m doing or who the hell I’m fighting, Quentin McFury told himself, but this feels just about right.

Realizing he could only flail around so long while holding his breath, he stretched out a hand to shut the hatches and turn the oxy-generator back on. Desperately, his fingers trailed across a host of switches, none of which gave him his precious air. He thrashed like an insect right before dying.

With another mad turn by the Havok, his head smashed against the side of the co-pilot’s chair, nearly knocking him out. But what didn’t render him unconscious did leave a bulbous red welt as a reminder that no crazy plan goes unpunished.

I’m not gonna cry. Maybe later. But not now.

Outside, the remaining six Strikers bore down on the Havok. They’d had enough of this kid, who they loudly referred to over their comms as a little twarpo.

Flash the pan! Striker Leader 4217 (also known as Bripsy) shouted.

The Strikers sprayed the area with indiscriminate blasts, showing no respect for the hunt or the art of battle. But that wasn’t their job. Their job was simple and destructive: wreak as much annihilation as possible with balletic ballistic precision. Years spent honing their piloting skills yielded a level of dogfighting combat that struck terror through all.

Chosen as toddlers, potential Striker pilots distinguished themselves from other children based on how their cunning spatial skills melded delicately with their thirst for blowing things up. (Basically, the assessment involved how well a toddler knocked over other kids’ blocks and then how much joy they felt watching their victims cry.) Striker pilots weren’t defined just by their appetite for destruction but also by their ace flying skills. It was said that any Striker pilot could fly through the eye of a needle while simultaneously shooting holes in a thousand other needles.

Now though, these ace pilots weren’t shooting at needles. They were shooting at a lumbering block of zigzagging metal that annoyed them two steps too far. And they wanted to end this now.

The Havok, on the other hand, did not have such a skilled flier at its helm. To be quite honest, Quentin McFury’s flying ability at the best of times would be rated amongst the worst in the universe. But his piloting skills weren’t that important as, at that moment, the Havok didn’t really have any sort of pilot at all. It just had something with arms and legs trying desperately not to die and praying for a miracle.

With bulging eyes, a giant crimson welt across his forehead, and a spleen about to be vomited out, Quentin could name several moments in his life he preferred over this one. However, it was his deep desire to have more moments – some good, some bad, and some that might include kissing – that gave him the strength to take one last swing to restart the oxy-gen.

So when the ship twirled around with a ferocious gut-wrenching dip, that hopeful pilot let go of the stick and reached his hand out as far as he could . . . so far that the very end of the very tip of the longest fingernail on his longest finger just barely . . . just slightly . . . just ever-so-gently tweaked the life-giving switch. And right there . . . right then . . . that fingernail quivered and bent.

In that tiniest of moments, the nail could have bent back and ripped off, leaving Quentin gasping his last breath. It would have been the final, painful insult to the abuse his body took during this little escapade. And if that nail broke, he surely would have nodded at his ex-nail with a smirk that said, "Fair play. You did the best you could, little fella."

But the fingernail did not give! The nail held, the switch flipped over, and the oxy-gen roared back to life. And so did Quentin! As air flooded back through his ship and into his lungs, he howled with what little air he had left:

Yeeeeeeeeeeehhhooooooooohooooooooo!!!

Gulping down air, his body ricocheted across the cockpit as the Havok continued to soar wildly out of control. The ship had its air back, but still no one at its controls. Quentin tried to curl up into a ball as he thumped back and forth! Off the ceiling! Against the chair! And then back against the wall!

As the ship took another hard right, his foot got caught between the arm and seat of the captain’s chair, nearly ripping his leg off.

ArrrrrrRRRRRRRRRrrghhhh!!!

As the Strikers renewed their assault and tore through chunks of the Havok’s remaining shielding, Quentin’s body found itself at last hooked into a fixed position as his ship flew out of control. With each swoop and jagged swing of the ship’s madness, his leg bent back further, creaking like a tree about to snap and crash to the ground. But even with his leg wrenched painfully in the chair, he now had a thimbleful of hope to get himself out of this mess. And excruciating pain aside, that made him feel almost good.

Grimacing, Quentin pushed against the back wall, spinning the chair around to the console. A tear galloped down his face, but he didn’t have time to wipe it. He furiously hit buttons and then pushed the stick straight down, causing his engines to scream in agony. The engines didn’t like it. They didn’t like it one bit.

Outside the ship, the comms of the six remaining Strikers burst with crackles and wild beeping. A steely female voice followed, shouting in their ears so piercingly loud and with such frosty disdain that if their helmets weren’t attached to their heads, the pilots surely would have ripped them off and thrown them into space.

I want that ship! the voice yelled.

That’s what we’re trying to do! Striker Leader 4217 (aka Bripsy if you recall) yelled back. Bripsy cringed as soon as he said it. No one spoke back to Baiwyk Stanz, commander of the Striker fleets. No one.

Sorry, Baiwyk, Bripsy muttered meekly.

The other Strikers said nothing. Despite the earsplitting engines tearing through space hot on the Havok’s exhaust, each of these pilots could only hear the hiss of the comms.

They waited. Waited for a response, any response. Waited for Baiwyk to chew Bripsy out so bad he might wet himself. Waited for Baiwyk to demand Bripsy return to base for punishment. Waited for Baiwyk’s hand to rip through the comm and end good ol’ Bripsy’s day. Waited for something.

After an interminable silence, Baiwyk spoke.

"Get me that ship."

Certainly, Baiwyk, said Bripsy. My fullest apologies. Please don’t tell the Mother of this.

"Now! Baiwyk snarled. Don’t make me come do your job for you!!!"

The comm went silent. The other Strikers didn’t say a word. They had pulled back, keeping the Havok in sight but at a distance as it continued to dart back and forth across space. Holding their positions, they awaited instructions from their leader as Bripsy eyeballed the target of his rage angrily.

Taz the ship, Bripsy barked. Prepare to hold packages.

Instantly, the Strikers spread out from each other. Their targeting screens glowed with the Havok in their sights. All at once, their engines roared and the six remaining Strikers lined up, ready to unleash a terrible oncoming blanket of destruction. The Havok would soon be toast if not for . . .

With warning clarions echoing loudly and the engines screeching in grievous pain, Quentin wanted to tear his ringing ears off. He’d have felt bad for what he was doing to the ship if he didn’t feel so bad for himself. His shields were failing, his weapons – what little peashooters they were – were offline, and his engines were millisecs away from shredding and ripping the ship apart from the inside out. All of this would have caused more experienced pilots to cry, eject themselves from their ships, or commit suicide. (In a similar scenario once, one pilot did all three.) Thankfully, Quentin didn’t know any better and unleashed a tiny, microscopic smile.

Chugging forward, the Havok groaned with purpose. This sizeable green chunk of science-trucking wasn’t served well by a pilot who treated the ship like a wrecking ball. Thankfully, the Havok was built to take all kinds of beatings to protect its contents. So even with the shields beginning to fail, the reinforced hull gave its pilot some extra time. It wasn’t time he needed the hull for though.

As the Strikers descended on the Havok, ready to finish him off, Quentin McFury watched as their laser blasts bounced off the front shields. Each smack caused a flicker and shook the screaming ship’s mad dash, jarring him as he clutched the controls. But as the Strikers bore down to strike their final blow, Quentin hit the brakes and stopped his ship cold, using every bit of the ship’s capability for movement against itself. The fore thrusters were aimed against the aft thrusters, the rear engines were focalized directly at their opposite positioning, and all the stabilizers were activated at max capacity as if the Havok was going to land.

The Havok shook violently, the hull almost snapping under the intense pressure. But the Havok took it like a champ and stood still though. The Strikers, however, did not. They shot past, each narrowly missing the sci-freighter. And before they could figure out what happened, Quentin barreled right down on them. It didn’t matter that he didn’t have any weapons and his shields were down to nil. His ship would be the weapon.

Maxing out the engines, the Havok smashed into each of the unsuspecting Striker ships, crushing them one by one like eggs. (Granted, really explody eggs.) None of the fighters had a chance to get out of the way, so shocked were they by the Havok’s stopping still.

SMASH! CRASH! CRUNCH!

Bowling right through each tiny Striker ship, Quentin turned himself from victim into victor. And while ramming through the last of the Strikers (poor ol’ Bripsy), Quentin dared to dream that whatever this whole ordeal was was over.

As his ship rattled through the wreckage of his former pursuers, the Havok’s pilot shook as though going over a bumpy road. His vessel flew on, but only just. The engines continued their melancholy wail until he hit a series of buttons and they shut down. Drifting on, the whole ship appeared to exhale in relief.

Quentin, himself, sat back in his chair, closed his eyes, and exhaled, too. He wasn’t sure he was safe. He wasn’t even entirely sure he got every Striker. But it didn’t matter. He didn’t have anything left anyways. No energy, no tricks, nothing. Thus, he rested his head back and closed his eyes, cherishing the calm darkness.

For the whole minute he was able to savor his little victory, it was brilliant. Then all at once, all the pain that had been taken out on credit came back with interest. His leg suddenly tingled excruciatingly with a thousand little shocks raging through it, followed by his head beginning to throb. All the other bruises, dings, and cuts also decided now was the time to formally re-introduce themselves and did so with a terrible vengeance.

Arrrrrrrggh! Quentin groaned, mostly as that’s what manly men in pain always said in the comic books he used to read. Arrrrrrrggh, arrrrrrrggh, and double arrrrggh!

In his roughed-up blue jeans and his ragged LCD Soundsystem t-shirt, Quentin limped out of the cockpit and down the passageway toward the med-chamber. A fully stocked med-chamber would have him feeling slightly better (or at least feeling slightly less). Of course, he knew when he got there he wouldn’t find a fully stocked med-chamber. He might find a couple band-alls and some old school Earth aspirin . . . if he was lucky.

He didn’t care though. He survived. Even surrounded by the wreckage that sprawled through the passageway (and probably only gave a taste of the shipwide disaster he was sure to face), he limped on with a dodgy yet joyful spring in his step. He was alive. And it was his birthday. Nothing better than surviving certain death on your birthday.

One year ago, Quentin McFury was the last person on Earth. And, for all he knew, today he might be the only Earth human in the universe. But that wasn’t today’s big news. No, the big news was that today:

Quentin McFury turned sixteen-years-old.

Hobbling down the corridor, he snarked, Wonder if I should go back and take my driver’s test?

CHAPTER TWO

SCHOOL’S OUT FOREVER

One year ago . . .

Quentin McFury woke up angry. So very, very angry. He’d gone to bed angry. Fell asleep angry. Dreamed angry, angry dreams. And woke just as angry as when he went to bed. He never questioned why he was furious all the time. Maybe it had something to do with his name. Maybe it was due to North Platte, Nebraska, the railroadin’ cowtown he lived in. Maybe it had something to do with being a boy as boys are built angry. (For most boys, anger was their sad.) Or maybe the root of his anger revolved around his age.

For today, Quentin turned fifteen-years-old. And the birthday boy felt alone. Awkward. Angry.

Last night, he yelled so much at his mom and dad for "ruining his life!" that he wasn’t sure if he’d gone too far. Laying back in bed, he realized there was no such thing.

Stupid parents . . . he muttered.

All kids at one point or another say it. And they mean it. And sometimes they’re right. Some parents are stupid. Very stupid. Very stupid with cheese, bacon, and a cherry on top. And to be perfectly honest, Quentin’s mom and dad weren’t the best parents in the world. (That went to Joe and Esther Fudge of Ontario, Canada.) But the McFurys, like most all parents, do what they can, fumble a few bad decisions, and generally don’t ruin that many lives. Quentin, however, was a teenager. And to him, his parents should be brought up on war crimes.

Slamming the door loudly behind him, Quentin closed his eyes and savored the crushing perfection of that slam. His dad had the gall to ask him why he didn’t score any goals like Nick Grabenstein did. After informing his dad that defenders don’t score and calling him as dumb as a bag of cat farts (under his breath), he dropped his spoon loudly in his bowl of cereal, grabbed his bag, and burst out of the door with an idiot-shaming, ear-shaking bang.

Storming away from the house with a satisfactory smile though, his grin turned into a grimace. In the heat of the moment, he forgot one simple, soul-crushing fact: he didn’t have a way to get to school on his own. His bike needed a new tire and only now did he remember he had to wait for his driver and oppressor to take him.

With churning resignation, he slunked over and leaned against the crummy old Sentra. He huffed and puffed and pulled out his iPod, cranking the volume up so loud he wondered if his head might actually break. It wasn’t smart. It wasn’t necessary. It wasn’t good for his ears. But as the music washed over him, it made him feel better. (If only slightly better.)

As Arcade Fire’s No Cars Go faded out on his headphones though, the sound of a less angry door shutting popped Quentin’s eyes back open. Out of the two-story brown house next door sprinted Steve Zbyszywiski (Steve Z to his many friends, of which Quentin was most definitely not.)

A year ahead of him in school, Steve Z outpaced his neighbor by a million miles in popularity and coolness. The two boys couldn’t be more different. Whereas Quentin had dark and scruffy hair, Steve Z had a blond crew cut. Whereas Quentin was the left defender on the high school’s JV soccer team, Steve Z was the quarterback phenom of the varsity football team. And whereas Quentin was tall and gawky, Steve Z was the good-looking, muscular epitome of the perfect teenage boy.

Jumping into his brand new hulking F-150 truck, Steve Z spotted Quentin staring and chuckled at his odd classmate, What’re you lookin’ at, freakjob?

Quentin hurriedly turned away. But the humiliation already crawled across his face, his cheeks crimson. Not fast enough, the shiny red truck then roared to life and sped off, leaving the embarrassed birthday boy to glare daggers at the four wheels and a bag of macho fading away in the distance.

Nineteen agonizing minutes later, the senior McFury – proudly wearing a green button-down shirt Quentin thought made his dad look like a bald angry leprechaun – shuffled out of the house and boomed: Let’s roll in the Grey Fox!

Hurrying into their tombstone grey Sentra, Quentin tossed his bag in and sat down in a huff. On the drive to school, his huff grew more huffy as his dad turned the radio on to HuskerShuck, the radio show that annoyingly blared up-to-the-second information on the state’s beloved Cornhuskers football team.

Passing house after house, Quentin eyeballed the well-cut lawns, the pick-up trucks in the driveways, the fact that each house was basically the same. And the people inside no different from their neighbors, he sneered, and no different from anyone else. Hell, there’s probably only six or seven real individuals in North Platte. Maybe even the entire state! I’m one. And Jane . . . Jane, too.

Oh, yes . . . Jane! Jane Douglas. A sophomore and not just an original, but damn near perfect. She dug cool music. She was smart. And she treated Quentin like a human. Jane also just happened to be very, very pretty, which may or may not have played a role in his assessment.

But outside of himself and Jane, Quentin considered everyone else – his parents, his teachers, his classmates, the death-smelling Wal-Mart greeters, the cute Runza clerks – not only not original but mindless, soulless ants, each going about their day with little reason or life.

". . . And they’ll have to play over their heads just to stay in the game, but I tell you, it’ll be one hell of a battle! We can win if we just smash it down their throat . . ." the Husker radio host whooped.

Quentin’s dad nodded in agreement as the show went to a commercial and he turned the radio down. This meant he was about to say something for which his son had to listen. Knowing this rigmarole, the younger McFury showed him proper courtesy and removed one of his ear buds.

Since you’re fifteen now, Quentin, his father declared, Your mom and I thought we should get you something, especially now that you have your learner’s permit.

The teen’s eyes went wide before he could stop them. A car! They’re getting me a freakin’ car!!! They might not be the worst parents after all. They might—

So, here you go, kid, his dad said warmly.

But instead of magical car keys, Quentin’s dad handed him an ugly cell phone. An unimaginably ugly, clunky, old, orange cell phone. At first, the freshly-minted fifteen-year-old wasn’t entirely sure it was a cell phone. And if it was, if it was made this century. As though being ugly and old wasn’t enough, one side of the phone even appeared slightly melted. Plus, it didn’t have any screen to watch anything on it and