47) Super Sunday, 2/19: 1:30 – 2:00 AM – “Vern Cooth
Besieged!”
Tenison, aided by Anjelika, Captain Capps and his security people, had marshaled
the besieged into a line that stretched out the service door and into the
loading dock area. Banging and cursing
resounded behind the metal gates there, but the Manager pressed his ear to the
fire door in a far corner, heard nothing, and smiled. First in line to get the hell out of Dodge
was Lester, the elderly Greeter, still full of smiles. Placing his left forefinger to his lips so
that the besieged would know better than to make remarks during the escape
process, Mark opened the door and cautiously pushed Lester forward… three rats
(one glowing red, the other two green) scampered in and a wall of hands and
faces, teeth and weapons dragged Lester out, still screaming: “Welcome to Giga-Plex!” Three of the
zombies actually forced their way inside before Mark and the Screaming Eagles
could slam the door, provoking a short, bloody battle… the intruders fighting
with tooth and claw, trampling the Manager and a couple of elderly, female
cashiers before Anjelika shoved one against the wall
and cold-cocked him with a right to the jaw, worthy of a heavyweight. Captain Capps, shoving his way through the
crowd, shouted: “Outa my way! Outa my
way!”
He fired his taser at the nearest lunging zombie, but the fellow turned
aside at the last moment, and the prongs sank deep into the robotics salesman
behind him. Blick
collapsed in seizures to Tenison’s floor where
another zombie tripped over him; stumbling forward on hands and knees, the
invader looked up… only to find another Eagle, this one with an old-fashioned billyclub, poised to put his lights out. The last of the zombies, slashing and biting,
actually made it out of the loading dock through the office and into the store
before a single gunshot through his nose, fired at close range, dropped him
like a puppet with its strings cut.
Capps, wielding
the smoking gun, looked to Big Sonny for assurance. “He was askin’ for
it,” said the Eagle.
Though Fred Faubourg put his hand over his face… not necessarily in
disgust nor sympathy, but apprehensive of the litigation to follow… Sonnenschein nodded.
“That’s how we do ‘em in Waco,” said the big boss.
And then, one of the elderly female cashiers, gouged and bitten
during the scuffle, her blouse hanging in strips, wailed…
“They’re
infected!”
There was no
foundation to this apprehension, but panic snaked through the line of putative
escapees, even after… having re-secured the door… Tenison
and Anjelika led her back out through the office and
around the corner to a bench in the employees’ locker room, leaving the rest of
the besieged to wander back into the store, except for Ed Skinner who, without
authorization, picked up the receiver of the Manager’s ancient rotary phone and
dialed home…
“Ma? Yeah, I’m still in the store… it’s kinda
crazy. I tried to call, but… what? Yeah, we got TV, plenty of televisions,
nobody says anything. Typical. Really?
Well, needless to say, I’ll be late.
Probably at least an hour before things settle down…”
Thunder tapped
him on the shoulder. Behind him, half a
dozen employees… Craig, Vicki, Marko Mosrovich, the
kid from the DVD section, two Mexicans… were waiting to use Tenison’s
phone.
“Gotta go… yeah,
love you too.” He hung up, but, before
McHale could grab the phone, he announced: “Somebody’s been blowing up all the
cellphone towers…”
“Why they doing
that?” said the puzzled, battered Marko.
“Somebody must
have figured out the connection,” Thunder opined, “…the government sold off
broadcast television frequencies to the cellphone companies so, in a way, the
cells are to blame for their losing the Superbowl…”
“But how will we stream?
The President said they would
show the Superbowl for the poor people…” Vicki
objected.
“Yeah,” Thunder
allowed, “but how would people know, if they don’t have cable or hi-def…”
Ed proudly volunteered
new information. “Ma says all the
neighbors were throwing their old sets out in the street. Some high school kids in a truck came by and
took ‘em to the school and blew them up with M-80s… boy, are they gonna be sorry tomorrow…”
“But tomorrow is today…” pointed out the finicky
Richards.
Marko shook his
head. “Crazy Americans…”
As Thunder
reached over Ed to grab the phone, Vern Cooth...
roaming Appliantology, surrounded by smart brooms,
washer/dryer combos and the purring Moondreams smart
bed… was giving his disloyal, now ex-employees another piece of his mind,
whether they cared or not…
“Some way,
somehow,” he accused David Lee, “it’s you who’ve been aiding and abetting Trent
Lockett, and I’m going to find out everything.
You’ll be investigated – maybe under the Revised Patriot Act. I’ll bet you and that nig… that…” and then he
bit off another n-word, though barely, “that the both of you have something to
do with those goddam vans driving around broadcasting filth n’ lies that are
messing with licensed frequencies…”
“They’re not
messing with anything…” David said.
“Well how would
you know? Aha!” the Manager
pounced. “You wouldn’t… unless you were
behind all of this. You
and the Russians. And North Koreans.
Interfering with frequencies someone else has bought and paid for is
theft, some kind of theft, subverting police and fire calls, that’s flat out
treason… it’s people like you who are making it impossible for the law to crack
down on all that, that…”
He waved to
indicate the chaos still audible outside the store…
“You should know
better, Vern,” Kristi stepped in. “We’ve been telling the world… at least that
one percent paying attention… that the frequencies aren’t going to be operable
for weeks, if not months. All this shit is
happening because the police are overwhelmed.
People have been seeing their real incomes fall for three decades, now,
they’re losing their homes, can’t buy gas, milk, can’t afford to take their
kids to see the doctor. They’re angry…
they’ve been angry for a long time and now that hey’ve
realized that the President isn’t going to help them, that he’s just another
billionaire who’s used them and dumped them… but as long as they could go home
after working at jobs they hate but can’t complain about, watch some dumb fucks
eat bugs for money or cop shows or the Superbowl, not
only do they sit back and shut up, they blame more or less anyone that we in
the government and the talking heads on the box tell them to blame. Until now.
They’ve finally woken up, just as they always do…”
Cooth wilted. “You
never loved me, you were just using
me…”
“Well, duh…” Kristi answered.
And the zombies
were weaving through the Mall, now, tugging at the heaviest chainlink
gates that still protected a few of the most lucrative shops like the liquor,
jewelry and auto showrooms. Godwin
snored loudly on the bookstore floor; Uncle Raoul peered furtively around the
white, larger-than-life-sized statue of a NASCAR champion, commissioned but not
sold. Looters fled Giga-Mart with
increasingly incongruous treasure… armsful of mops,
canned mushrooms, even pushing gigantic boxes of the fabled Gross of Toilet
Paper across the floor…
Meanwhile a
demented man with an old fashioned, military-issue can opener was patiently
trying to carve a hole in the metal fence guarding the Third-Fifth Bank…
¾ ¾ ¾
Leland Buford Sonnenschein, seventh
son of a seventh son of a shoe salesman from Mascara, Texas, hadn’t made himself
over into the international entrepreneur Big Sonny (he had five franchises in
Canada, two in Matamoros and one each in Juarez and Monterrey in addition to
his American properties) without cultivating uncanny instincts about danger and
opportunity, and developing the initiative to act on his instincts. So, upon finding his cellphone dead, he
snapped his fingers… quickly enough, Mark Tenison
gestured to the hundreds on display near his rotating white statue at the
entrance to the store.
“Help yourself,
boss,” said Mark. “Anything you could
want, we got it right here…”
Had the Manager
made him the butt of a joke? “I should
think so…” Sonny answered.
But, after trying
twice and failing twice, he hurled the second cell across the store, almost as
far as the men chained to the Tech and Credit Tent, their ranks now enhanced by
the three groggy and moaning zombies from the loading dock. Like a clueless puppy, “Billy Obvious” picked
up the smashed device and loped across the floor, holding it out towards the
entrepreneur like a stick…
“I’ve let one of
my people use the phone in the office,” Tenison
revealed as Sonnenschein slapped the offering
away. “Under the circumstances –
sometimes it helps to bend the rules?
That one works…”
Sonny wasn’t
particular gratified to learn that his Manager was such a soft touch, but…
under the circumstances? “Then let’s
give it a try…” he said.
There were still
half a dozen people, including some of Sonny’s own… the trombone player, a
clown with its mouth painted like Jack Nicholson’s as the Joker, and Jarlo Knupp… waiting in line to
use the old phone. Capps, preceding
Sonny, snatched the receiver away as the insolent clown took it from Sammy Mulaire of the 007 Club, ignoring the man’s threats…
“The union isn’t
going to like this…” growled the Joker.
“Screw the
union…” Lester said, and… after wiping about six ounces of greasepaint off the
mouthpiece… he handed the phone off to Sonny, who dialed a
“Hello,
Sonny listened,
answered “Okay!” and disconnected, glancing at the door behind which Lester the
Greeter had disappeared, lingering over the bloodstains on the wall and slowly
drying on the floor.
“Problems in
Dallas and San Antone,” he felt obliged to warn his
troops, “not so bad in
“How long’s it
going to take for them to arrive, boss?” inquired Captain Capps.
Big Sonny grew
pensive. “Coupla
hours… before dawn, I’d think. Once
those guys outside get in and get going, we ought to be able to hold out.”
“Does that mean
we have to stay here all night?”
Effie Lou pouted.
“Probably,” Tenison replied with, what
seemed to Sonny, as an unwarranted haste.
“Best off to try and find a place to sleep and be ready to move out at
sunrise. If people are hungry, I can
break out a couple of boxes of jerky…”
“What are our
chances?” Big Sonny asked the leader of the Screaming Eagles.
“Right now, we’re
armed and they’re not,” Lester Capps nodded sagely. “As long as that metal holds and they don’t
break into the gunshop, we can hold them off…”
“What about
ammunition?” Fred Faubourg interrupted.
“We’ve got plenty
more, in the van…”
One of the
escaped rats… a green one… darted across the wall towards Cyberia and Effie Lou
squealed. Craig and Vicki Gordon had
returned to the latter’s register, bereft of anything else to do… at least,
Craig noted hopefully, she hadn’t told him to go away, this time…
“If it were,
like, the end of the world…” he ventured.
“Don’t say that!”
“Alright. But… I was just wondering aloud, if it were…”
Vicki, after all,
was nineteen. “Are you, somehow,
implying that this situation would make me want to have sex with you?” she
accused.
“N-No, but I…
“No?”
“Well, of course…
yes… yes, but…”
Craig threw his
hands up and began sauntering backwards, towards the general direction of the henge of televisions, almost bumping into a rack of
converter boxes. The Dominator kept
broadcasting what evidently would become an all-night newscast, and a
tired-looking Ted Fraser gave way to Evan Augsberg
again… standing tall and eerily calm outside, in the parking lot.
“Thank you,
Ted. Here at the One World Mall, all the
stores have been closed for more than an hour, but the crowd… if anything… has
grown larger. From what we have heard,
Giga-Plex is a store besieged… its security keeping
people out, but also keeping employees in…”
Three young men
in the curiously festive colors of the D. T. Nation suddenly surrounded the
commentator, making faces for the camera, flashing gang signs…
“Put us on television…” said a tall kid with
a red and green handkerchief wrapped around his skull and a suitcase of Bud
Lite in his arms.
“You’re on!” Augsberg rose to the challenge. “Obviously you’ve been inside the Mall…
what’s happening there, at this moment?”
“It’s dope!” the kid grinned.
Two other DT’s
hi-fived… both wore the same green and red, one holding an outsized plastic
shopping bag, the other had dropped his parcels, returning his hands to his
pockets.
“We getting’
paid,” said the boy with the bag. “Got
me four pairs of shoes… Nike and…
“He got Thom McAnns!” the tall one needled…
“Got a starter
jacket, fifteen pounds of bacon…”
“Batteries!” said
the third kid, pricetags still hanging off his new
clothes. Abruptly, the tall one grabbed Augsberg while the shoe thief dropped his parcels and
started punching the newscaster, while pricetags
pulled a long-nosed Czech handgun from his new jacket.
“And now,” he
grinned, “we gonna get us a camera…”
The picture
tilted crazily, there was a gunshot, then static… and
a shaken Ted Fraser returned to the Dominator, shuffling papers at his desk…
“I don’t know
what is happening, we’re going to hope that Evan is alright and get some help
out there, but what the hell is going on?
We’re seeing
“What’s wrong, asshole, is that people have decided that it’s OK to stop
acting human, seeing as how they haven’t being treated like people for
decades…” David muttered, “chickens coming home to
roost…”
“Huh?” Kristi
said.
“Malcolm X, I
think, or maybe Bobby Seale… somebody from back in the old days…” David
remembered.
Kristi shook her
head. “Those aren’t chickens out there…”
Tom Eppert brushed past them, making his way to the prison tent
where Westy had a new pole-mate… a living one, this
time… the bedraggled zombie knocked out by Anjelika,
still rubbing his chin and enduring the ridicule of the little Giga-Plex penal colony, courtesy of the other surviving invader,
a fifty-something hipster in a light blue, bloodstained, Ban-Lon shirt who’d
been cuffed to the opposite pole, next to the corpse of the third looter and a
fat man in a dark suit and red tie…
“‘Least I got put
down by a man, by a bunch of men with
guns and clubs, not no lame-ass girl…”
Ban-Lon taunted.
“That wasn’t no girl, that was Hitler’s daughter…”
“Man, she beat
him like drum,” Ban-Lon smiled a
bloody smile. “Ka-Pow! Ain’t
gonna collect a cent, beat up by a woman like that. Me, I’m gonna find a New
Hampshire Street lawyer and win so much money that I can buy ten big ol’ sets…
gonna find Johnnie Cochrane…”
“Johnnie
Cochrane’s dead…” Westy
popped his bubble and pointed. “Like that guy.
Robert Kardashian, too. And those girls, their stepfather’s now their
stepmother. World o’ fools…”
And that was when
a passing Tom Eppert butted in. “Speakin’ of fools needin’ a lawyer, you know anything about my set…”
“What set?” Westy snarled.
“Whatever business Raoul and you had, that was his business and you went
and made it mine…”
“I ain’t talkin’ about that
converter and the fuckin hundred bucks you owe me,” Tom disputed, “I had a
twenty-seven inch Tungwa, all mine in the back,
there, and it’s gone missing. You
wouldn’t happen to know where it went, would you?”
“I didn’t steal
your television, but if I knew who did, I’d buy the blood a drink. I didn’t steal no ink, neither, and what
Raoul said or did, that’s his business…” Westy began
repeating himself, sputtering with rage.
“Too bad he’s not
around. An’ what happened to you is
gonna be Freecock’s business, soon enough, they don’t
like having thieving thieves on their staff…”
“Like they don’t
like havin’ fools who can’t even pick up a stack of
money without scattering it all over?”
Redfaced, Tom stormed off and Westy
watched him engage one of the Screaming Eagles in furious conversation,
pointing at the tent. The Eagle, a big
“Somebody talkin’ about breakin’ outa this place?” Andy leered.
Before Westy could answer, the taser’s
million volts were passing through his thigh, up his arm and, through the metal
handuffs and pole, also shocking Anjelika’s
unfortunate zombie. Andy let the juice
flow somewhat longer than allowable, as delineated in most police and private
security manuals, then fanned the air in front of his face…
“Something sure
stinks ‘round here. Have a nice day…” he
saluted the rest of the Giga-Plex prisoners.
While, in Purley, Miz Lottie kept dialing
Earline’s phone, kept getting the same out of service message.
¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾
VISIT THESE OTHER GENERISIS SERIAL ABOMINATIONS…
THE GOLDEN DAWN BLACK HELICOPTERS
THE INSURGENCE of
CHAN SANTA CRUZ!