Take the All-Mart! is a post-apocalyptic, pre-singularity science fiction buddy comedy road trip adventure.
The world's been flattened and rebuilt a dozen times over -- but not the Wasteland. It stayed flattened, the perfect place for a couple of cyborg reprobates on the run. Reprobates like Trip, with a head full of mind-machine interface gear, and his brother Rudy, his gut home to a chemical factory constantly pumping THC directly into his bloodstream. Fleeing to the Wasteland in their two-hundred-year-old mind-controlled Dodge after Trip left a warlord queen on the altar and Rudy almost killed her cat, they need to score big to keep the cannibal bounty hunters off them. And what better way to do that than by robbing the beer capital of the Wasteland blind? It's a great plan, until Trip gets distracted by the locals -- one sexy, orgy-loving cybergal local in particular.
And when that cybergal gets herself swallowed up by the Wasteland’s least popular, most horrifying tourist attraction, the world devouring nightmare of a shopping experience called the All-Mart, Trip’s got no choice but to go in after her. Because she just might, maybe, possibly be the “one” — but how will he know until they’ve had a second date?
Bio
J.I.Greco is the writer and artist responsible for the webcomic Warlord Unit 23. He lives, writes and draws in southwestern Ohio, USA with a bitchin’ wife, two generally annoying cats, a yard full of trees that make Autumn a real damn chore, and what is either a ghost or a smudge on his glasses.
What will readers like about your book?
For starts, mind-linked, hover-surfing cannibal bounty hunters. And then it gets weird.
How long does it take you to write your first draft?
About six months of two-hour a day early mornings. It maybe would have gone faster if I had killed the internet during my writing sessions, though.
What inspired you to write this particular story?
My dad retired to Florida and got a part-time job at Walmart... Every time I visited him the store was bigger and that got me thinking about what department stores will eventually evolve into.
Excerpt
“You know,” Trip said, taking a final drag off one hand-rolled cig, jabbing it out in the overflowing dashboard ashtray, and immediately lighting a new one with the car lighter, “I’m seriously thinking about giving up this whole reprobate adventurer thing and going into accounting.”
Trip was 23, tall and wiry, pale and twitchy, with jet-black hair sculpted into a Jack Lord curl. He wore a grime-caked long-tailed tux jacket with the collar popped and the sleeves rolled up to the elbow, a t-shirt that simply read “Game Over”, ripped and faded black jeans, and red canvas hi-tops kept together with duct tape.
“Have you ever given any thought to lion taming?” Rudy asked, along with the sound of a zipper being yanked down, all wet and mushy.
“No good — I’m allergic to chairs.” Trip glanced over at Rudy in the passenger seat, and instantly regretted it. He winced, quickly looked away. “Vishnu’s nipples, man, can’t you keep your hands out of there for five fuckin’ minutes?”
“Not if I want to keep my buzz going, I can’t, no. I’m burning through mix like nobody’s business today. I blame stress. By which, of course, I mean you.” Rudy was 22, compactly stocky but muscular, with ruddy skin and a flame-red soul patch. He was already balding. What hair he had left jutted out in curly tufts from under a crumpled leopard-print fez. He wore a Peace-symbol t-shirt under an ammo bandolier, forest camo parachute pants, and
steel-toed hikers.
Rudy plunged a hand through the zippered opening in his own stomach, pushing aside intestines to rummage around in his guts with practiced abandon. “Let’s go East, you said.” Rudy’s fingers found what he was looking for hiding behind his spleen. “They love us in the Wasteland.’” A twist and a hiss and he pulled out a thumb-sized cylinder, empty and dripping with viscera. “Ass.”
Rudy tossed the empty over his shoulder into the back seat, then slid a fresh, full cartridge out of his bandolier. Biting his lip, he shoved the cart into his gut, squirmed around to fit it into place. A twist the other way and with a sharp hum the chemical synthesis plant in his belly came back online, refueled, almost instantly re-flooding his bloodstream with fresh THC-analog. Rudy went all content and withdrew his hand, zipping his stomach back up and patting his hairy belly. “Ahh, sweet pseudo-cannabis bliss. I’m ready for death, now.”
Links
Full first chapter
The Take the All-Mart! page at eviluniverse.com/take-the-all-mart
My blog: eviluniverse.com
Barnes and Noble US
Smashwords
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