46) Super Sunday: 1:00 – 1:30 AM – “Willie Wonka’s
Oily Factory!”
The One World
shops, with only glass frontage facing either the parking lot or corridors running
north to south… as opposed to those where chainlink
or full metal gates had been drawn over the windows… were falling to the
mob. Looters had pillaged Linens 2 Go
and Roasted World Nuts… some stuffing cashews and pistachios into their cheeks
like chipmunks before turning south towards the Parfumeríe
and funeral home, or across the corridor to Deems’ Hardware. A man (or vampire) who had clearly lost his
mind guzzled wino plasma… straight, no vodka… out of a plastic envelope from
the stab lab, one of many establishments largely left alone after the cash
registers had been violated. A handful
of puzzled zombies drifted through Lester’s Likenesses and the Prescott Funeral
Home and the bookstore was deserted too, except for a few excited teenagers
thumbing through Playboys, Maxims and freshly minted copies of “The Anarchist’s
Cookbook”…
Outside, by the
loading dock, Jerry Eames from the local television station drove up through
the mob at precisely the appointed time, expecting to be richly rewarded for
all the free publicity afforded the franchise. To the amusement of
at least fifty other shoppers, he beat his fists on the gates… and began to cry
out: “We had a deal, motherfucker! We
had a deal!”
One of the
disgruntled, a fat man in camouflage and a hunter’s vest waved his dishonored
receipt. “We all had deals…”
An older guy
pointed to the newly arrived Screaming Eagle reinforcements, who’d poured out
of their militarized bus, but remained at its perimeter in a bristling
semicircle; weapons drawn, eyes anxiously scanning the angering multitude. “It’s their
fault…” a thin woman, one of only a few, pointed.
In the Giga-Mart,
rough hands hauled Earline out from under the register and ripped off her
clothes. Surrounded by men, mostly drunk
or still swigging beer and wine, she bit one of the assailants in a sensitive
spot as he sprawled atop her, causing him to fly off, howling. As one of the fraternity boys replaced him,
Jack Gobelman swigged champagne, threw the bottle
aside and snatched a boxcutter from beneath the
register. The screaming and laughter could be heard as far off as the petshop at the far Northwestern corner, opposite the Giga-Plex security door across the corridor. Rev. Godwin, dragging his newly looted sixpack of Busch like a dead cat, drifted
aimlessly out the door and into the Food Court, under the chortling head of Ghede as the clock over the opposite portal struck
one. Humanitarian zombies rampaged
through the pet shop, opening cages – releasing birds and cats and
monkeys. The glass enclosure of
fluorescent rats was smashed, allowing dozens of unsold glowing Christmas
rodents to scamper to freedom...
On the opposite,
Northeastern corner, other zombies were taunting the shepherds, dobes and pitbulls in Kearsey’s Kennels.
These fighting dogs, like humans, all seemed unhinged by the flashing
lights and booming bass of the Dominator, still radiating apocalypse in
synchronicity with the chaos behind the Giga-Plex
gates. Out of their minds with rage,
they smashed their snouts against their cages, or lowered their heads, panting,
waiting for their time to come around…
Still holding their beer – and a canister of beef jerky – Alpha, Moonface and Shorty backed out of Giga-Mart with hesitant
steps and whitened faces. “Dude,”
Shorty grimaced, “he was like… he… I don’t think I’m ever gonna forget…”
“Just forget,”
Alpha ordered, despite the churning in his own stomach. “Dude was psycho. We weren’t there, we aren’t here!”
“What about
cameras?” Moonface worried. “They got cameras in those places, up on the
roof. They might have caught us on
film…”
“Video!” Shorty corrected him.
“Then they’ll see
it was the old guy, not us. We don’t
know the dude,” Alpha sighed. “We were
just in there to buy beer but, if anybody asks, we lost the receipts…”
“I wanna go back to the house,” Shorty wailed…
“Yeah. Yeah,” Alpha
determined, “but, first…”
¾ ¾ ¾
On the floor of Giga-Plex, Mark Tenison whistled for attention.
“Alright, it’s past one… everybody’s clocked out as of now. Long day today, another long day tomorrow…
today… Departmental managers and all security, you’ll stay behind while we sort
out what’s to be done tomorrow. Everyone
else… we’ll evacuate through the fire door in my office. I want an orderly line, seniors and women
first, guests, temporary then staff…”
As the crowd
migrated into the storage space… poundings and cries resonating from beyond the
metal doors to the loading dock… then towards the manager’s office (with the
Dixieland band playing a sardonic “Hit the Road, Jack!” as they marched),
Kristi, David and Vern were accosted by Big Sonny, vowing retaliation for the
Chief Executive’s speech, three hours ago.
“I’m probably going to lose fifteen, twenty million in sales tomorrow,
nationwide, thanks to your leaning on the President to give in to that mob…”
“Not me!” Vern
reacted instantly and then trained a long, thin finger on David and
Kristi. “It was them… those two, and a couple others… if all those bums with their
cheap old unmod sets didn’t have agents on the inside, they would never have risen up.”
All that David
Lee could do was laugh. In fact, he and
Kristi had spent the last half hour contemplating the process and particulars
of their own suit against the Commission and its renegade Manager to be filed
once the sun came up on Monday. “Yeah,
Vern, blame me. Of course that
announcement was fucked up, but what’s goin’ down so
far was just the appetizer… do you realize what thirty million people not watchin’
the game tonight could’ve been capable of…”
“A lot of damage…” Kristi exclaimed.
“Yeah, but when
they come to their senses this morning… or, well, afternoon… where do you think
they’d have had to go to replace all the stuff that they destroyed? To you, Sonny, that’s where… who… aw fuck…
you gotta get that band to shut up, they’re not
helping…”
Sabra Martin had stopped dancing, honing in on Ray and
Honey, who’d drifted off to the side of the line converging on Tenison’s office.
“Word’s out that
you’re a candy… man…” she purred.
“Word’s gonna get his tongue ripped up
out by the roots, spreadin’ words like that… but
yeah, I can give you a taste…” Ray allowed, “seein’ as we’re all in this together.”
“We’re gonna
score a lot of candy…” said an
ebullient Honey.
“Your name Word?” Ray snapped back at
her. “You want me to get Mark’s bullhorn
and that fuckin’ whistle, so’s
them as still don’t know here hear?”
He looked Sabra Martin over more closely… a tweaker,
no doubt, but she seemed to have the right combination… strong body, weak mind…
and she’d be far away, inaccessible,
when the bikers from Oil Change Charlie started looking up snitches to lead
them to potential suspects…
“You wanna make a little money?” he said.
“Doesn’t
everybody?”
And Honey,
suddenly less ebullient, complained: “Why do we have to have her along?”
“To haul more
candy out of Willie Wonka’s oily factory, down there;
carry it upstairs and put it in my Explorer… and, also,” he smiled, “because,
since you already told her, either she’s in or else I have to waste her…”
Sabra smiled back, as if she didn’t take the threat
seriously, which irked Honey all the more.
“Why your Explorer?” she whined.
“Isn’t my Corolla good enough?”
“That tiny rice-burnin’ block o’shit? ‘Cause I know how to move the merchandise and
not get caught. You want payoff in candy
that you’d rather move yourself, well, that can be arranged…”
“A little of both
would be nice…” Sabra mused.
Ray, of course, had no intention of paying the girls off in candy,
cash or anything more valuable than lead. But he favored Sabra
and Honey with a big smile, and even managed to pat both on the back.
“That’s the
spirit. Of course there is one little
problem; to get to where we’re going, we have to go down below. It’ll be dark, won’t smell very good… full of
little things that bite…”
“Long as there ain’t no more of those fools
outside! How do we get around them?” Sabra asked, jabbing at her cellphone
and then frowning when the screen revealed: “No signal!”
“Like I said, we
go down. There’s a trapdoor in the janitor’s
room… some tunnels they use once every few years when somethin’
goes wrong with the boilers…”
“And you’ve been
down there?”
“As far as a certain door in the vicinity of Charlie’s. Which necessitates this…”
Ray couldn’t help boasting as he removed a box of Altoids
from his pocket.
Honey reached for
it. “I could use something to freshen up
my breath… mind?”
Ray jerked it
away, but with a smile. “You don’t want
to put this stuff in your mouth. The
Double-oh-Seven Club is not the only spy shop operating in Ray’s ‘hood.”
¾ ¾ ¾
Uncle Raoul angrily wheeled the big
From this
doorway, Raoul could see down the corridor, including
both the armoured-up Giga-Plex
and ravaged Giga-Mart… also, a constant stream of looters charging in and out
of that latter store. Reverend
Godwin stumbled by – oblivious to Raoul, as to all
others, even some of those who’d followed him up from Nakonset
Park and, now, rewarded the Reverend with cheery greatings, merry waves and
high-fives. He passed the
still-gated liquor store and looted Roasted World, finally lurching into the
bookstore, where a few bloody, bedraggled zombies were thumbing through popular
tomes and popular magazines – they glanced at his collar with ironic
detachment, then returned to their reading.
“Says here,” a
bearded zombie dangling a paperback assailed a fat woman – probably a trannie, Godwin noted, riffling through
“I hate vampire
movies,” the fat lady snarled, “Ashton Kutcher is so much more reliable…”
“This isn’t
Dracula,” Beardo spat, showing the cover of Ernest
Becker’s “The Denial of Death” to Godwin as, perhaps, a neutral observer as he
declaimed: “The hero… or schizophrenic…
transcends death only through complete personal servitude to… to…”
Even this far
off, the Reverend could hear Evan Augsberg – booming
through the metal gates surrounding Giga-Plex. He popped the top of his last looted beer,
waved off the literary debaters, saying “I am, also, very, very tired…” and,
finding a quiet niche behind a rack of self-help paperbacks… most having to do
with diets or relationships… he scattered a few handfuls over the floor to make
a nest, lay down and promptly fell asleep.
¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾
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