Cop Chases Suck

"...And that's how I know the Earth is flat." Jethro concluded his twenty minute rant, which I had been subjected to since we left his bunker.

"As 'interesting' as that was, why don't we listen to the radio for a while." I suggested, in hopes of getting a break from his nonsense.

"Normally I don't trust radio waves being beamed toward me, but it's been a couple weeks since I checked the broadcasts, so I'll make an exception this one time." He flipped a knob on his dashboard, powering on the van's radio.

🎵Country paws, take me home

To the cave where I belong

West Bearginia, mountain mama

Take me home, country paws

He flipped to another station.

🎵Ocean Bear, take me by the paw

Lead me to the land

That you understand

Jethro shook his head. "Looks like those bearstards took over all the music stations."

"Try AM." I responded.

He flipped over to some random talk radio station.

"You know, in my opinion Papa Bear is the beariest bear that ever beared." A deep narrator-like voice spoke.

A whiney, nasally voice responded,"I disagree, Papa Bear isn't even a real-... Uh, who are these people..."

The feed suddenly cut out and went to static.

"It's even worse than I thought." Jethro let out a sigh, as he flipped back to the music stations.

🎵 My heart's a beareo

It bears for you, so listen close

Bear my thoughts in every no-ote

The two of us just settled on the bear themed covers of popular songs... To be honest, they started to grow on me after a while. It seemed like they grew on Jethro too, because before long he was singing along...

"It's getting hot in bear. so take off all your fur."

I hated to cut him off, but it looked like we had some company in our rearview mirror. "It's the po-po!"

He pulled over to the side of the nonexistent sand covered road and pointlessly put his hazard lights on. "Shoot... just act cool. We can't have him catching on that you're an alien. Pretend you're an inanimate object like a vacuum or something."

"Yeah, I'll definitely be 'pretending' alright." I sarcastically responded, as I remained idle in the passenger seat, like usual.

The ordinary looking police SUV pulled up behind. There was the sound of a car door opening and footsteps. Jethro flipped open the reinforced metal panel that covered his window, leaving an opening big enough for his face to peek through. "Is there a problem officer?"

As I should have expected, the cop that approached our window was no ordinary officer... "Bearcense and Beargistration." The officer wore a regular police uniform and aviators, but underneath he had on a grizzly bear onesie.

"I got that right here." Jethro handed a license to the officer.

I was surprised he even pulled over in the first place, let alone was willing to comply with law enforcement.

The officer took a single look at his ID then cast a suspicious gaze at Jethro. "Your name is Joe Mama?"

"Yep." He didn't hesitate to respond.

The office still looked skeptical. "Says here you're from Florida, but this van's got Nebraska-..." He coughed as he corrected himself. "...I mean Bearbraska plates."

Jethro shrugged. "It's a rental."

The cop didn't seem sold. "I can assure you that nothing on this Bearhicle is legal. I'm going to have to ask you to step out while I search the-."

Jethro didn't even let him finish as he slammed his foot on the gas pedal and sped off. "I was hoping I could get us to Lincoln without any issues, but it looks like that's not happening." He glanced out his side mirror. "Do me a favor and open that glove compartment."

"Why is it that you humans keep forgetting that I don't have arms?"

"I swear, I have to do everything." Jethro huffed, as he opened up the glove compartment and reached in. He pulled out a dark green baseball sized object with a yellow smiley face painted on it.

"You keep a grenade in your glove compartment?" To be honest, I really wasn't all that surprised.

"Course I do. Having a live hand grenade in your car is just as useful as a spare tire... Maybe even more." He grabbed the pin between his teeth and pulled it out. He then lobbed it out his window toward the cop car.

There was a delay of a few moments, followed by a boom. A plume of sand was kicked up from the explosion, clouding the cop car.

"Did you get it?" I wondered.

He glanced back, waiting for the dust to settle. A set of lights and a siren cut through and continued pursuing us. "Tch." He clicked his tongue.

There was a sudden bang, followed by the sound of lead ricocheting off of metal. The officer hung his left arm out his driver's side window with a 1911 pistol in hand. He slung a few more rounds of .45 ACP at the back of our truck. Luckily Jethro's makeshift vehicle armor was stronger than it looked.

"Guess it's on to plan B." He pulled a jerry rigged lever to the right of his steering wheel. There was the sound of a metal hatch opening. "I've been waiting for an excuse to use this!" He excitedly pressed a red button on the center of his dashboard. I could hear the sound of flames igniting from behind us.

The cop car attempted to ride our tail as close as possible, but our speed quickly increased, putting more distance between us by the second. Jethro intentionally aimed for a steep sand dune ahead of us.

"I'd grab onto something if I were you."

"I already told you I don't have hands." If I had teeth I would've clenched them just now.

Everything seemingly went in slow motion, as we launched off the dune, getting airborne. A bearody of a particular song coincidentally started playing over the radio.

"🎵 Won't you fly high, free bear, yeah." *Four minute long guitar solo*

After being projected out probably close to 60 feet, Jethro managed to stick the landing without killing us. The cop on the other hand wasn't so lucky. He tried to follow us, but ended up rolling his cop car and landing upside down when he attempted the jump.

Jethro just casually continued driving onward, not bothering to look back. "All that excitement made me hungry." Jethro reached into the center console and pulled out a brick, which he placed on the accelerator. "Watch the steering wheel, alien. I'm going to microwave a burrito in the back."

"Nice to see that you trust that brick with our lives."

He ignored my comment, as he stepped out the driver seat and into the back cargo hold of the van where he had a mini-fridge and a microwave ratchet strapped to the interior wall. After nuking his burrito for about three minutes, he returned to the driver's seat with it in hand.

He took a bite out of it. "Ah! Don't you hate it when you burn the roof of your mouth?" He stuck his thumb in his mouth.

"I wouldn't know." I sighed.

He held the burrito toward me. "You want a bite?"

I rolled back in my seat. "Considering I don't have a mouth, what do you think?... I could use a charge though."

He reached back into the center console. "Lucky for you, I made a car adapter for your charger." He plugged it into the cigarette lighter and attached the charging cable to my proprietary port.

After letting his burrito cool for a few moments, he scarfed it down. "I gotta take a leak now." Once again, he placed his trusty brick on the gas pedal and crawled into the back of the van where I was subjected to the sound of him attempting to use his pee bucket in a moving vehicle.

"Wouldn't it be easier to stop?" I shouted back toward him.

"No way! Every second we're not moving is a second wasted. If I'm going to save the world, time is of the essence." He finished his 'business' and returned to the driver seat. I suspected his ‘mission’ didn't go as planned, since he was now wearing a different pair of pants.

We continued onward with our journey across the Nebraska wasteland. I still wasn't particularly sure how far out we were since Jethro refused to give me that information. Not to mention back at the bunker he removed my gps module from my internals, so I could use my internally downloaded maps.

As I stared out at the repetitive sandy landscape, I couldn’t help, but wondered if Eddy was actually still alive. There was no way someone like him could survive long on his own, but if he was still out there, I was curious how he was holding up…