The Golden Voyage of Barney Rubble, part 3

The day passed in an unrestricted fury of gore.

My odoriferous beast surged, unprompted along the glowing gridlines, mangling all of the hapless marauders and stopping only briefly to drink, eat and shit in enormous, rapid bursts. Still, even given the efficiency of this fine killer triceratops, I saw dark, black smoke billowing up above the greater Bedrock Metropolitan (suburbs, exurbs and surrounding farms) Area. The wild men were gaining toe holds in their relentless campaign of destruction.

In late afternoon, the triceratops slowed slightly and trotted in the general direction of the Bedrock Dam, his snorting snout dropped to just above the gridline. As we topped a small incline, I saw a nerve-tingling sight: the wild men had nigh breached the base of the dam. I foresaw an End of Days.

I bade the triceratops retreat, which he eventually did, though at a lackadaisical lope. Looking back over my shoulder, I feared the worst and entreated him to climb up a rise within Bedrock herself. Smiling, chatty people were going about their Stone Age business, unaware of their personal impending, total doom.

Suddenly, the water came.

Into Bedrock surged the roiling wall of water, engulfing us all in a panic-inducing cataclysm. The triceratops fortunately remained upright, although he floated around chaotically, like a huge rubber dummy in a titanic, draining bathtub. Most people around me were forfeit, but I noticed some had evaded immersion and death by obtaining rooftops above flood level.

At least this would also kill the wild men, ending their suicidal, anarchic reign of foolishness.

Still the waters rose, swirling and cascading with increasing rapidity. I clung to the bloody beast’s back and hoped for surcease. Slowly the water discontinued its rise and slowed, within the boundaries of the Bedrock River valley. I breathed a little easier and looked around. On the horizon were four ships, one glinting brightly in the afternoon sun.

The ships glid arcwise closer upon us. Upon their arrival nearer, I could discern the dynamic hullaballoo and chatter of morons. It was now the Rubble Fleet, led by the Golden Ship, with Barney leaned against the prow, shouting “Kaieeodee There!”

“What the fuck?” I called. The triceratops paddled serenely through the warm reptilian bathwater, farting and blowing jets of water into the sky from his powerful nostrils.

“Why didn’t you save the dam?” asked Barney.

I glared at him, then asked that I come aboard. This took quite awhile, given the proclivity of my mount for mayhem, but was accomplished by shovelling grain into the Mouth of the Beast as I negotiated a hempen ladder from behind his hornplate. Once aboard, the crew caught a breeze to pull us back from the dumbly paddling and munching triceratops. We left him adrift and moving off toward high ground. I was not unhappy to be rid of him, lest he turn on me in the style of his recent rampant bloodthirstiness.

From the poop deck we surveyed the devastation of Bedrock. It appeared near total with perhaps a few hundred remaining souls, clinging to rooftops and much fewer livestock. Upon the high ground we could see no living beasts, except the scant amphibious few crawling ashore.

We shook some bone fragments in a rattle jar to divine our future ramblings as the morons snorted, loped and tended ship like true seafaring veterans. Occasionally, Barney would club one of them over the head when a quarrel was starting or laziness manifested itself. For the meanwhile, we sailed in a wide circle of zigzag arcs.

The bone fragments made it seem propitious to put out to the world ocean for a destination beyond the known. We re-tried the bones many times over with the same result. The bones indicated fair weather and good fortune in a certain splashway following known constellations into unknown land.

Barney whipped the morons into a fine frenzy, hooting and pounding the golden deck with his bludgeon, making his intent known by gradation. The morons pounced up and down upon the deck then set a course for the Unknown.

The morons sang their incoherent song of sailing, which went something like:

Tar wah, tar wah hoon!
Wah wah tarry tar, tar wah hoon!
Hoo hoo hah! Hoo hoo hah!
Hah hah hah-hah hah, a pim pim
Hah hah hah-hah hah, a pim pim
Tar wah hoon!

The pale sinking sun cut the mists of Bedrock behind us and we sailed off alone in the golden boat as the other three ships sailed off in other directions, slowly decreasing in size upon the watery horizon.

to be continued