SAVAGE SATURDAY
@use a
28) Overnight: Friday the
14th to Saturday Morning, the 15th –
“Satisfaction”
FRIDAY, 11:15 PM
Upstairs, in
Junior’s tiny room, Tom Eppert watched his son
pretend to sleep, then moved the mouse on the boy’s antiquated, dial-up Dell…
there was a ghastly roar and the black screen exploded with the salivating,
grasping undead, stumbling through a mall of the future.
Tom Junior sat up, rubbing his eyes
theatrically…
“Thought I told
you…” his father began lecturing…
“Sorry, dad. But I was looking for streaming video from
the networks… guess its true about all the old televisions bein’
useless…”
Rage still consumed Tom Eppert, but the kid was not to blame. “Well,” he tried to slough it off, “nobody
warned us they’d explode…”
“Yeah.
But, dad, I did find out that some of the programs… some of them, not
all… are carried on the station homepages, though they take forever to download. Some hacker might carry the football game
Sunday… might,” he emphasized.
“You’re a good
kid,” Tom ruffled his son’s hair. “You
deserve a better father, with a better job…”
“Dad…
did you really get fired?”
“Naw, I work
for the government… nobody gets fired,” Tom said. “Just suspended for two weeks… it was kinda
funny actually. Some asshole… don’t tell
your mother bout the French… he straps a big cube of ten dollar bills all
wrong, and when I lift it into the conveyor station it snaps and that money
goes flying everywhere, like confetti…”
And he couldn’t
help chuckling at the memory of it while some of those distant sirens closed
in, warring with the screams and growls from the videogame.
“Wow… but you
didn’t get any…” Tom Junior shook his head…
“I wish… no, I
was up in the crane. Everyone always
screws the white guy as ain’t got money or
connections, remember that! Even Trump,
the… so-called our… President? All he’s given us so far’s
a Nazi salute… middle fingered. But
it’ll come out OK, after I clocked out, I went over to this agency and they get
me this job on the loading dock at the mall.
Less money, but I can cop their employee discount, so we’ll be watchin’ the Skins come Sunday, same as always. ‘Cept I’m gonna
charge the guys or, at least, make them bring some decent beer…”
“I
can get money, Dad, get a job…”
“You’re
only fifteen…”
Tom Junior
stared back at his father. “Hell, I know
ways I can get lots of money, it’s
easy, nobody asking your age…”
Eppert stood up. “I catch you hangin’
with those Tribe lowlifes or goin’ to Nakonset, dealin’ or no dealin’, you’re outta this
house.”
“But dad, there’s gonna be tons of people in the park, fighting for
televisions…”
“I said no.
We don’t mess with colored peoples and their riots; hopefully they don’t
mess with us…”
And then, as the
number and volume of the sirens seemed to swell, and Tom Eppert
swore he could smell smoke from somebody else’s house seeping in through the
window, his son asked: “Dad? Are there going to be riots?”
Glancing from
the window to the liquifying zombies on the monitor, he said: “Don’t know, son. I feel like… I honestly don’t know…”
¾¾¾¾¾¾¾¾¾¾
SATURDAY, 3:30 AM
David Lee’s
fluorescent clock informed the FCC researcher it was three-twenty when the
fourteen opening notes of “Satisfaction” on his cellphone woke him out of a
somewhat disturbed, disturbing sleep at his desk… he yawned and licked his
lips, answered on the sixth ring.
Outside, the sirens hadn’t diminished – he’d just slept through
them. Mick and Mandy were long gone and
the TV off… he turned on a lamp and growled “Whazzup?”
into the tiny appliance. Kristi Chaine, on the other end, barked “David?”
“What, huh…”
“I need you. Now!”
“Thought you didn’t care…”
“Shut up,” the boss warned. “At the office. Oh… I’m just making a phone tree… call Mick
and get all of the researchers in, well, not the juniors. Well, yes, if they’re available, but not…”
“You don’t sound so hot. Is it bad?”
“Bad?” Kristi recoiled. “Look out your window…”
“I’ll trust you. Are you serious about now?”
“Look outside,” she repeated and hung
up. David rolled out of bed, stumbled to
the window, lifted the shade. All across
the city, he could see fires and… were those gunshots among the sirens? He sniffed, coughed. Thick, acrid smoke had already extended
tendrils through the windowglass.
“Guess it’s bad,” he said to himself.
¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾
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