45) Super Sunday, 12:01 – 1:00 AM – “BAGS of BLOOD!”
At a considerable cost in life and property, Giga-Plex was now secure… though hundreds of enraged shoppers…
overwhelmingly young, male and inebriated… still roamed the One World Mall;
smashing windows, looting merchandise, assaulting staff and other patrons. The nearby Farragut Methodist Church had
tolled midnight, a minute later than the clock in the Food Court; the twin chimes
recalling to consciousness a bloody, beaten Reverend Ellsworth Goodwin, lying
face down in the freezing mud of the construction site behind the Mall under a
menacing array of girders and construction cranes. He rose, dripping, staggered off towards the
beckoning neon. People were streaming in
and out of the vacant CD store - fighting over looted booty in the parking lot…
gangs smashing windows of cars… inside the Food Court, Jean-Francoís
was being robbed at gunpoint of the Baffler’s day’s receipts. Broke (but, at least, unshot)
he refused to turn the Off switch, knowing this abstention would leave the
laughing, swaying head of Ghede operative all night,
cursed America and ran off to check his options in France on the social media.
In Mark Tenison’s office, strategy was plotted… orders barked… Anjelika, Vern Cooth, Big Sonny, Faubourg and Capps huddled round the manager while others
drifted in and out as summoned, or to deliver messages.
“Haven’t heard
jack from the Feds,” Captain Capps observed, grimly, “…from those state or
county pricks either… I just hope those gates are as strong as they look…”
“They are. I’ve had them forged on a little island in
the Caribbean we need not mention,” Big Sonny smirked, “they’ll stand up to a
Category Four hurricane, maybe a Five…”
“But will it stand up to a bunch of
goddam Commanders fans?” Vern objected.
“Certainly a lot longer than that tincan
chainlink covering most of the other stores here…” Sonnenschein smiled.
“It’ll hold,” Mark promised.
“How long can those idiots roam around outside, howling, before it gets
through their heads that it’s cold, and they’ll have to come back tomorrow?”
“Might be awhile. They’re
stealing beer and wine from Giga-Mart and trying to loot the liquor store…”
Hearing this, Big
Sonny opened his cell, trying to raise the GM boss, Estrada. After twenty seconds of ringing, he snapped
it shut.
“Not
answering. Captain, I want all the
surveillance tapes… here and across the way… secured and copied tomorrow
morning. Don’t even send ‘em back to
Waco, find some of those local robbers and make them pay their price off the
books – understand? – one more thing, be sure to get
affidavits; I don’t want some damn lawyer challenging our chain of
possession. Fred, first thing tomorrow
get your fat ass down to… what’s the county seat of this cesspool? College Park?
Baltimore? Bribe the D.A. or
break him – I don’t care. I expect
prosecutions… lots of prosecutions… and none of this suspended sentence BS
either. Criminals have to pay the
price…”
“I’ll do what I
can, but we got lib’rals runnin’
the country, now, sort of – if you consider the TACO or, what is it, RICO?...
on the Superbowl; state and county, too… and that’s
three strikes… besides, this part of Maryland, it’s sorta
uh, dark, you know?
Big Sonny nearly
exploded. “Then use the Revised Patriot
Act! Bring in the choppers with machine
guns if you have to...”
“I’ll do what I
can,” the lobbyist hitched up his trousers, “speakin’
of the dark continent, what do you want to do with
those guys cuffed to the tent?”
“Leave ‘em
overnight, let ‘em piss their pants… get a little hungry and tired, think twice
about ripping off a Giga-Plex,” Big Sonny said with a
mean little glint stealing into his watery, blue eyes.
“Hopefully the
County will be in a better position to take them off our hands so we can clean
it up, that urination problem…” Tenison parsed, “and
the... uhnnn... other? Anjelika, if I get
people, a new batch of temps, in by six, how long till we can get this place
cleaned up and reopened?”
“Before nine,
probably… unless you order these people to work all night…”
“Better let them
get a little sleep… OSHA, you know?” Sonnenschein warned. “Why couldn’t that fat orange fool and that Canadian have shut them down, too? Tenison, there’s got to be a paint store or something where
Mexicans hang out in the early morning; send a truck out with that guy in the
back, run ‘em in and out, pay cash and fuck ICE. Or is there somewhere we can get prisoners?... detainees, they call ‘em, before they get shipped off
to Somalia? Is there a way… can we get
our staff out through the fire door up front if there’s still a crowd
outside? I don’t trust that Sergeant
Mays…”
“He’s loud, but
worthless,” Tenison concurred while Capps opened his
phone, trying to raise the Eagles’ truck.
“Better to just send them through my office door, here, they can go down
the corridor to the inventory space and out into the parking lot. I’ve already called for reinforcements…”
“Can’t reach the
truck. Fuck! Everything in this fuckin’ place is out of
whack…” Lester Capps snarled, scratching his butt.
If anything,
Capps had understated the situation. As
still-terrified Giga-Plex staff coped with the mess,
screams and bangings resounded from both sides of the
metal gates while, outside, mall security was being overwhelmed and screaming
men charged through Giga-Mart, pummeling staff and grabbing merchandise. Earline Soames attempted to hide under a
register but a trio of familiar faces loomed over her… the three grinning
college kids, Alpha, Moonface and Shorty.
“Hello, sweet thang…” Alpha crowed, popping the top
off a fresh beer from the rapidly emptying display case.
“We’re baaack!” Moonface leered.
She screamed, but
the invaders… most headed to the beer and wine display… paid no heed, not even
Rev. Godwin, staggering in after the mob; a bloody and beaten Rev. Godwin in
shirtsleeves and collar – humiliated, cold and crowned in filth. Earline observed a female clerk being dragged
into a restroom, her screams rising, then, suddenly, ceasing. Jack Gobelman,
naked save for his Armani jacket and muddy, skidmarked
untidy whities ambled through the wine section,
blithely comparing vintages before snatching three bottles of warm champagne…
one for each pocket of his filthy suit jacket.
He smashed the neck off the third and swilled through bloody lips, spitting
shards of glass and stumbling out of the Giga-Mart and into the Food Court to
gape at the animated Ghede head… swaying, rotating, fairly trembling with peals of hideous laughter.
In the Title Pawn
cum
One adventurous
soul emptied half a bag of AB negative into a half-filled bottle of Old Mister
Boston vodka, swilled and smiled and started a microfad
that would be streaming cross-country and into the world beyond by Valentines’
Day.
Behind their
gates, the Giga-Plex employees attempted to go about
their business as if it were just another night. Two Mexicans wheeled the last of Voivode
Technology’s Dominators into a rectangle, screens facing out and blasting Dulcolax commercials; Vicki was totaling up her register’s
hefty receipts while Craig… coming back into the store after the closing of the
loading dock… was feeling reckless.
“So…” and he
leaned his filthy elbows on the chrome bagging area she’d just sprayed and
wiped, “nice day, eh…”
Annoyed, she
looked up to the cameras whirring away amidst the catwalks and crevices of
Giga-Plex and the rest of the Mall as if to hope that
somebody in Waco would take note of Synch’s impertinence. Through the image-rotating One World monitor
under the register, she heard the fists banging on the closed metal door of the
loading area, saw the vampire guzzle his bloody cocktail, smack his lips. “Not for me.
Salespeople happy, Mark happy… d’ja get plenty
of tips?”
“Sure… mostly
suggestions on what I could do to myself.
But I made it… I was acting supervisor on the dock and nothing terrible
happened…”
“So you gonna ask
for a raise? Maybe, even, back to the
old minimum of fifteen bucks an hour before DOGE cut it to twelve?”
Craig scrunched
his elbows up nearer the cashbox, ignoring the screaming and banging
outside. “Actually the state is down to
ten, GIGA-Plex kept it at twelve to stop people from
quitting or going into shoplifting. Never
know.
The commotion
outside became too violent to ignore… someone pounding on the fire door built
into the gate… a desperate voice crying out…
“It’s Mays,
Sergeant Mays… for the love of God, somebody let me in! They’re killing us out
here. Killing me…”
“Wow… that
doesn’t sound good, think I should let him in?”
“You’re the one thinks he wanted such
responsibility, now, you decide…”
“Hell no, I’m
deciding. I’m calling… hey, Cappy! Captain
Capps…”
Lester had been
busily trotting towards the satellite corner - he stopped, angry. “What now?”
Craig
pointed. “That Sergeant from Mall
Security outside, it sounds bad…”
And even Capps
could hear Mays and the rest of his unarmed rent-a-cops screaming now and,
under the demonic laughter and scuffling, the Sergeant’s plea… softer now, as
if diminished by broken ribs or a shattered jaw…
“Let me in!
For the love of God… help… anybody…”
The Screaming
Eagle shook his head. “Shoulda known better.
Not our job, kid… we’re safe until this crap dies down, so long as
everybody follows orders. Door stays
closed… and that’s my order.
Thin red blood started flowing under the gates, peppered with
little white specks that Craig decided not to contemplate… still chained to the
tentpole (though, at least, without his dead
companion, now) Westy Soames
called out to Lester…
“Hey officer,
what about us? Me! Ain’t supposed to
be here, I was framed…”
And a couple of wiseguys cuffed to the opposite pole echoed: “Framed!” “Innocent!”
“Shut up, all of you,” Capps snarled. “Maybe I should just throw you out there,
tell them animals that you’re the guys made us run out of inventory…”
With an evil
glare at Craig for disturbing his itinerary with the Mall cops’ tragedy, Lester
returned to Sputnik Station as Ralph Richards, trying and failing to keep pace
with Skinner and McHale’s technical banter, sensed that Soames might be a cut
above the usual thief, telling him…
“We’re all going
to die…”
“Oh man, I don’t
have to hear that…” Westy protested.
Richards’ despair
did have the effect of gaining the attention of the two wunderkinds. Ed picked up one of the advance copies of the
advertisement that would hit the Sunday papers in only a few hours, now. “Not necessarily so,” he said, thwacking the
tech desk as if to kill a virtual fly.
“We’ve got the Eagles, more coming in, and there’s plenty of stuff here
that could be weaponized in the worst-case scenario. Hell, we could hold off an army with those
Blu-Ray 2 disks, break ‘em in half and they’re sharper than ninja stars… catch
some bad actor in the throat, curtains!”
“I think there’s
potential in those smart pest control units back in Appliantology,”
Thunder countered, “…you just have to rev up the dispersion unit with, I don’t
know… pepper spray?”
“Cyanide.
Napalm, maybe…” Total scoffed…
General Westmoreland Soames shook his head. “An’ you’re the psycho fucks locking me up?”
And then, all
turned as Captain Capps stalked back to the sarcen of
televisions to confer with Big Sonny… the big boss hectoring his musicians
who’d been enjoying repeat viewings of the runway models on the Dominator,
waiting for the all-clear signal. With
plenty of scowls, the Soft Shell combo picked up their instruments and dove
into a curiously listless medley of Dixieland standards while Leland B. Sonnenschein slapped Effie Lou on the butt, whispering a
few words into her ear. As if
programmed, she began to dance, the other tired Giga-Grrrlz
following, but without enthusiasm…
“No reason for a
body not to have fun!” Sonny
beamed. A handful of trapped customers
began to gather and, as Capps motioned the Girlzz to
shimmy towards the fire door, four Eagles prepared to eject the gazers and the
gapers – quickly and summarily…
And the Dominator, inexorably, continued radiating evil rays and
broadcasting, at an unpleasantly high, itchy and scratchy volume and pitch, the
pontifications of Evan Augsberg.
“I’m now outside
of the One World Mall, Ted, where I’ve been receiving reports that it’s bad
inside, bad as the January Six riots almost a decade ago, bad as in the
Superdome during Hurricane Katrina, a few years further back. People seem to have lost their heads, and…
wait, sir?”
The commentator
strained to detain one of the fleeing Mall rent-a-cops… face bloody, uniform
torn. Augsberg’s
target sprinted by but, seeing the cameras rolling, bowed to the inevitable
American yen for publicity, turned and made an obscene gesture…
“They’re killin’ people in there! It’s a slaughterhouse,” bawled the security
guard, “…not worth dyin’ for, not for ten-fifty an
hour or even our old wages of seventeen-fifty…
no gun and no benefits. You wanna know what to do, send the Air Force over and nuke the
place…”
“Ted, we may have
to take that out… oh, no?” the newsman added, pretending to jiggle the
microphone comline running across from ear to lip
like a silver scar from a pimp’s knife.
“Well, that’s live television… we’re going to try to get a statement
from the local police but, until then, back to you, Ted…”
Effie Lou Wilson,
rapt with excitement and fear and moving her arms and legs like a puppet with
her strings pulled by a drunken Gepetto once she had
passed the fire door and the vermin at her heels had been evicted, now turned
from an old Fraser rerun on a giant Haier tube to Crystal, Rae and Sabra Martin
while the Dixieland band fell to arguing what to play next…
“D’ja hear that?” she rolled her eyes. “It’s crazy
out there, it’s like… we’re in a jungle!”
“Racist! What do
you know about jungles?” Rae scoffed.
“That they’re dangerous. Wit’ guns and... uh...
flowers, ya know?
I wish all that pounding and screaming would stop…”
“They just love us…”
“Want to eat us up…”
Effie Lou’s eyes
widened another f-stop and she placed a hand across her ample, vinyl-coated
bosom. “That’s horrible, Sabra…”
“Don’t worry,
Effie,” the runner-up cracked, “Big Sonny will protect you… with his, his…”
“His Big Sonnyness?” was the best Crystal could do, but the three
girls still enjoyed a laugh while a solitary tear dripped from Miss Dominator’s
eye, winding its way down the shiny, white bikini-top.
“You’re mean…”
As the band
finally settled upon a vengeful rendition of “St. James Infirmary”, the Grrrlz went back to doing what they were paid for doing…
dancing… even though all their advocates among the Giga-Plex
customers had been evicted; nobody remaining but hardcore looters darting
through the aisles, hollow-eyed bosses and cretinous
staff. Ray Wilson guided Honey Keissler back towards the loading dock, away from Anjelika’s conscript migrant gangs sweeping the floor and
straightening inventory after the long night’s ordeal. There, Tom Eppert
was searching through the much-diminished inventory for the Tungwa
that Mark Tenison had set aside for him – bent
forward like a Sherlock Holmes who’d lost his magnifying glass; Marko… bloody
lip curled into a secret, Balkan smirk, one eye blackened from the pounding
he’d taken out behind the loading dock… was smoking, tapping his feet in time
to the beat as the four remaining Romanian 92’s, throbbed with the soundtrack
to a Time Magazine infomercial for classic soul CDs featuring the sound of Stax, Motown and… at the moment… James Brown. The music pierced Honey like a dirty wind,
sickening and exciting her at once… she started to shake, gulped, gives Ray a
weak smile…
“Guess those
Dominators ain’t goin’
anywhere, tonight?” she inquired.
“Forget ‘em,
kid. I got a better plan!”
Honey took a deep
breath. If James Brown could still sound and
feel good… even after his demise… she could, also. “You do?”
Ray looked around
to be sure that nobody else was watching him… the Mexicans seemed just as
absorbed as Marko with the program, and Tom continued his manic, fruitless
searching. Even so, he lowered his
voice.
“You get off on
that crank?”
“Sure! But I don’t want any more, I just wanna get out of here, go home and crash. I think I made a lot of money today; I don’t
even know how much, maybe a thousand if those damn assholes don’t come back and
return their shit… I make even half that tomorrow and the rest of the month is
gravy, which suits me fine. All I want
to do is sleep and party… I don’t know,” she shook her head, “I’m so fucked
up…”
“How’d you like
to make enough so that you wouldn’t have to come back tomorrow? Or ever?”
“Well sure, but…
it’s crazy out there! Lester said people
were being robbed in the parking lot… uh… that’s not what you’re talking about,
is it?”
“Hell no, girl,”
Ray sneered, “I’m slick, but I ain’t sick. All this shit goin’
down tonight is cover, the perfect cover.
Bet you don’t know where that meth comes from…”
“
“Nope. Right here.”
And Ray pointed downward. “They gotta lab under Oil Change Charlie’s… Charlie and his
guys. It’s perfect. See, the trouble with meth labs is that they
stink, so what’s the perfect place to hide one under? A stinky garage, smells like gas and oil…”
“But some of
those guys are in motorcycle gangs… Bandidos,
Diablos, outfits like that. Wouldn’t it
be dangerous?”
“Who’s to
know? They’ll think some of those idiots
out there stumbled onto the place. Won’t
even think about me, let alone you…”
“Gee I don’t
know…” Honey wavered…
“Only way to mess
up is if someone started movin’ the stuff around
here, so them guys with an IQ of like, two, find out? But me, I got connections out of town. Philly,
Honey bit her
lip, thinking it over. Ray was waiting
for her to make a decision, but that old, creepy idiot, Tom Eppert
had come over, asking his same old creepy questions…
“Hey guys, either of you see one of those Tungwas
around, twenty-seven incher?… had a paper taped to it,
said, reserved for me…”
Ray chose to play dumb, rather than getting into a discussion
with the big goof. “For me?”
“No, for… it’s
mine. M…Mark set it aside for me…” and Eppert smiled, the guy probably thought he was a
comedian. “Put his mark-down-Mark mark
on it. My name. Eppert. Or maybe Tom, just
Tom…”
“Well, there’s
televisions all over,” Ray observed. “Ain’t seen one like that… you better talk to Mark, but wait
until he gets through with that meeting of his…”
And Tom looked
hungrily towards the Manager’s door – shut tight as a bank vault. “Yeah,” he said. “Thanks…”
“Even New York City!” Ray delivered his killshot.
“Money won’t
change you,” James Brown wailed, “but time… will take you out!”
¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾
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