Free The Apocalypse Club by Craig McLay

rumble. “Give it more gas!”
    My foot was already as far down on the accelerator as it would go. After a moment, the pitch began to rise and the camper van started creeping forward instead of backward. There was a bump as the front wheels hit the sidewalk in front of the store and climbed over the edge, pulling the vehicle up like a sea monster climbing out of a swimming pool.
    I looked at the gear shift. Max had pulled it over and down, but he hadn’t pulled it far enough. Instead of reverse, we were in fourth, and now that the sidewalk was out of the way, the van was getting ready for highway speed.
    I let out a yell and tried to stomp on the brake, but I missed and hit the clutch again instead. The van had enough momentum to drive forward over the sidewalk and straight through the front window of the store, shattering the glass and sending a large display of energy drinks rolling across the floor.
    The owner of the van was standing at the counter holding a knife while the clerk was in the process of emptying the contents of the register into a large but uncooperative plastic bag. The van owner was younger than I thought. He had a bald head, heavy five o’clock shadow and a T-shirt with the words “No, Fuck YOU” printed on the front. The sight of his vehicle crashing through the front window was apparently too much for him to process, as he just stood there for a moment with his jaw hanging open.
    “Hey!” he shouted as comprehension dawned. “That’s my fuckin’ van!”
    Turning momentarily away from the clerk and the register, he took a step toward us and tripped over a loose can of Roid Rage, which caused him to fall sideways into the lottery machine. Forgetting the clutch, I grabbed the gear shift with both hands and pushed it into reverse, smashing down on the accelerator at the same time. The van lurched a couple of times and then rocketed back out into the parking lot, where our rearward progress was sharply terminated by a telephone pole.
    I was shaking my head to get the two steering wheels I was looking at to resorb back into one when I heard a voice from the back seat.
    “Hell’s goin’ on, Maynard? You get them smokes?”
    A woman with oily yellow hair and horrific green teeth stuck her head between us. She looked at me first and then Max. Her eyes were bloodshot and she had some kind of band aid stuck to her chin. She seemed to have no awareness that we had just crashed the van into a pole.
    “Where’s Maynard?”
    My vision came back into focus and I saw Maynard pulling on the front door of the convenience store. Our crash through the front window had bent the frame, however, and it looked like the door was stuck. Realizing that the door was not going to open, he climbed over the ice cream freezer and started making his way through the hole we had made.
    “Abort abort abort!” I shouted, grabbing the handle and pushing open the driver’s side door. Operation Rolling Thunder had, I decided, reached the point of no return. The van was probably damaged beyond repair and had an unpleasant-smelling blonde woman in the back seat, both of which were definite cons in terms of assessing it from a mission effectiveness standpoint.
    I hit the ground and ran blindly down the street with Max on my heels. I could tell he was yelling something, but my head was so full of white noise that I didn’t know if he was trying to get me to go back and complete the mission or if Maynard was right behind us and he was imploring us to run faster.
    We only made it about half a block before the police cruiser caught up and arrested us. Max told them that we had seen what looked like a robbery in progress and, since we didn’t have a cell phone on us at the time, had done the next logical thing, which was to drive a van through the front of the store.
    It turned out that Maynard had sliced open his radial artery trying to climb through the window and was taken to the hospital, where they determined that he had lost