When everything’s come out sideways, there ain’t nothing but to take what’s left and get clear. But when a man ain’t got nothing left, what then?

Get Doc Quick–Mad Max in a Model T.

First, an introduction.

Hidely-ho, reader. I’m the writer best known as David Mark Brown and the infamous RedneckGranola. You may know me from such websites as www.thegreenporch.com or www.onetruepants. But currently you have stumbled upon my greatest achievement.

Reeferpunk is my self-created genre description (a sort of weird-Western, alternate history, 1920′s, humorous adventure thriller thing). Go here for more on that. These short stories take place in the same alternative history as the novels and sometimes involve major and/or minor characters. They are supplementary (but not necessary) to reading the novels and vice versa.

Join the Revolution!

No longer do good stories have to comply to the button-down world of publishing! You won’t find these bad boys behaving themselves under YA Paranormal or Mystery/Thrillers. Reeferpunk stories are written to blast apart retrictive confines of convention while still adhering to the classic elements of story-telling, the tried and true practices that carry us to the edge of of our seats, make us laugh and make us cry. I’m particularly fond of the characters that you will get to know and love over the next decade’s worth* of Reeferpunk.

*The first book will be cataclysmically good. The next three will be somehow even better. I’ll grow fat on my wealth of penny rolls (I like my money in shiny form) leading to a blase fifth book, then rebound for the sixth, seventh and eighth. The ninth will be a terrible attempt to take the characters into space on a diesel-powered locomotive (only read it if intoxicated). And blah, blah, blah.

Reading Get Doc Quick

Doctor Quincy Quick is a Company doctor helpless to stop a raging plague known as the Twitch from consuming the mining town of Thurber, Texas during the winter of 1920. The only thing left to do is to escape along with his wife and young daughter. Get Doc Quick is a heart-thumping Model T chase scene wrapped around a juicy center of redemption and second chances, revenge and moral duty. It’s Mad Max in a Model T! I pity the fool! (Oh wait, wrong T.)

Divided into 10 scenes bursting with thrills, spills and chills, Get Doc Quick separates the quick from the dead. So get your hands where I can see ‘em, and enjoy the show!

• Scene one
• Scene two
• Scene three
• Scene four
• Scene five
• Scene six
• Scene seven
• Scene eight
• Scene nine
• Scene ten

Follow these links for more on ReeferPunk or Fistful of Reefer, the first novel in the series.

Immediately after my shoulder collides with the frozen ground, the stone house detonates. I crumple and skid before being tossed like a rag doll in the shockwave pursuing me out the window. Fragments of the tattered roof whistle overhead and disappear. Then I hear nothing but the ringing in my ears.

Billowing smoke and dust settles over me as I struggle to lift my battered body. While dragging myself away from the house and the remaining Company men, the heavier pieces of roof collide with the tops of the trees on their way back to earth, followed quickly by the smaller fragments of splintered beams.

I pick glass out of my arms until I reach the clearing where I parked. Luckily the idiots had ignored my auto, heading straight for the stone house. I slide through the gaping hole on the passenger side. Cranking it over, I gun the engine and tear a donut in the grass before shooting out the way I came.

Everything goes blood red with thoughts of revenge, as the memories of my dying Dot, my murdered Liz are joined by the rotgut feeling of holding Abby’s blood-stained shoe in my hand. God Dammit! Even Job had been allowed to start over!

Swinging wide around a tight corner, my watch floats across my field of vision, the hands mocking me. The time has finally come, but I’m not going alone. There’s only one thing to do first, and it so happens it’ll fit nicely into the plan. I let up slightly on the gas, allow my racing heart to slow along with the auto.

Finally I see lights in the rearview mirror. Nodding my head in approval, I continue toward the only fitting place for it all to end. Thirty minutes later I bounce onto a dirt road, less than a mile ahead of Vezzoni and his men. I intentionally shoot gravel in an arcing rooster tail, tearing up the ground worse than a deer in rut so Vezzoni won’t lose me.

I speed up to give myself time, whipping past mesquite branches that cramp the little-used dirt road. Skidding to a stop under the giant cedar elm, I rifle thought my satchel for the bundle of letters tied off with string. It’s you and me, Dot.

Gimping toward the tree, I collapse near the rock at it’s base. With a grunt I tip it over, brush off the metal box I’ve kept underneath it for over 40 years. Tears are flowing freely down my grizzled cheeks, lightly slapping its slick, metallic surface. Guilt, regrets, grief, anger, loss, all colliding in the moment. A locket, a photograph, now a bundle of letters—and J.T.’s wedding ring. Just a few years ago, he’d returned, taken it off, buried it with the rest.

When he doesn’t hear from me, he’ll know. He’ll come here first. And he’ll finish the job. Hell’s gonna get crowded.

With the rock back in place, nothing’s left but to blow out the candle. And I got the perfect method in mind. Somewhere distant, cloaked by night, the Company cars are closing in. They smell blood.My carbide lanterns were shattered on Ranger Hill. My windshield gone along with the passenger door. My baby looks like a carcass caught in a trap, but the alcohol reservoir is over three quarters full. I’ve already picked the spot—the wash. Thirty yards back, the dirt road turns sharply and crosses a dry wash before creeping steadily up hill to the edge of the bluff shaded by the giant cedar elm.

Quickly I use the camp shovel to load the trunk with a couple inches worth of gravel. Then unraveling several feet of fuse, I rip up the cushion behind the seat and feed two feet of the wick through into the reservoir welded to the bottom of the Model T. Using my forearm I measure the length of the fuse left, run the numbers through what’s left of my mind and come out with 18 seconds. Eighteen seconds.

Headlights dance through the skeletal mesquite trees and live oaks still clinging to life. I estimate the distance to the bottom of the wash. I wanna make sure I surprise the bastard, get close enough to see the piss soaking through the crotch of his pants.

With the fuse coiled on the roof, I scamper around front and start pushing the auto backwards until its rolling slowly of its own volition. Vezzoni’ll be in the lead car now that he thinks I’ve curled up under a tree to die. He’ll want to finish me himself. Headlights shine into the opening just the other side of the wash.

I climb onto the hood, strike a match and hold it to the tip of the fuse. It sparks to life, sizzling quickly. With one last grunt I hoist myself onto the roof of the Model T on hands and knees. Vezzoni’s car slows to make the sharp turn and angle down into the wash. His cabin lights are on. The fuse burns past the edge of the roof and drops inside the auto. As I stand, stretching out to my full height, I see the man’s eyes following the road across the bottom of the wash and slowly up the other side until he finally sees me.

At first his face reveals nothing but a gloating arrogance—his work-a-day expression. But then something switches. Fear and anger crease his brow as he hits the breaks, stopping dead center in the wash. Rolling toward him at a fast run, I simply smile and nod as the flickering tail of fuse drops through the floor and into the tank.

END