48) Super Sunday, February 19th:
2:00 –
2:30 AM – “Clean-up on Aisle
Six!”
Speaking of the Devil, Uncle Raoul finally
poked his nose out of Lester’s Likenesses, one hand still resting on the
shoulder of a dwarfish Renaissance eminence… Erasmus,
perhaps, or Tintoretto. The Mall
still teemed with looters, but they seemed less noisy and aggressive now, as if
spent… or gathering strength and intellects for another assault on the
remaining commercial citadels. One of
these looters, Tom’s brother-in-law, Stretch, stepped through the window,
nodding at Raoul…
“What they got here, bro’… jeez, lookit’
these things. Heavy! Could set a couple up in the yard for the
birds to crap on but me, gonna git’ myself a
box. Got family, workin’
the inside…”
“Well, bully for
you…” Raoul said for, after all, they were in Washington, almost, and everybody
knew a few choice lines of Presidential jive.
“Guess I… hey-ey,” Stretch pointed, “you
see this ladder?”
“Uh… what it is…”
Raoul agreed.
“Goes up to that
heating vent, I know…” Stretch nodded, “I’ve worked heating, air-conditioning –
years on the job. Probably
a false ceiling. Get up there, no
telling where a body can get into…”
“No tellin’…” Raoul agreed, anything to get this
hayseed honkie on his way to wherever he was going…
“Might even lead
to where they got those Dominators at.
Ol’ Stretch didn’t get where he is today, thinkin’
small… comin’?”
Raoul just waved
good luck, so Stretch climbed up the yellow ladder and grabbed hold of the
vent, pulling himself up… Raoul watched his legs, dangling from the fixture,
then Stretch pulled himself up into a crawlspace full of pipes, dust, unfluorescent rodents, their droppings and, far off, a
door.
He slapped the
side of the steampipe as if it were an old friend who
wouldn’t let him down. “Hope somebody
don’t turn the heat on…” he said to himself.
Then, Stretch crawled towards the door and kicked it open, revealing a
network of catwalks above the corridor – stretching from Petworld
at the far northwest all the way down to the funeral home and Parfumeríe, way to the south across from Oil Change
Charlie’s garage. Here and there, doors
were adjacent to the catwalks. The door
to the bank was locked, as were several of those to Giga Plex,
but the door to the space above the CD store… Zombie Ground Zero… sagged
open. He entered, stuck his head
downwards through the heating vent, muttering another prayer to the God of all sneakthief dirtbag losers that it
wasn’t on a timer just about to activate, called out to the zombies below…
“Hey, yo… dudes! Up here!”
He pointed to the
ladder running up to the catwalks and beckoned; the zombies began to stir,
began moving towards it as he shouted out…
“Hey! Somebody bring a crowbar…”
Tom Eppert didn’t really believe Westy
had anything to do with swiping his Mongolian reward, having been chained to
the tent all the while, so the tasing was punishment
enough for Raoul’s sin. He left the General lying in a puddle of
blood and froth and bodily wastes, drifted back towards the loading dock area,
angrily questioning others whom he passed along the way, until he reached the
stockroom where Marko and the Mexicans were smoking funny cigarettes; Craig
Synch leaning moodily atop a pile of LCD boxes as frustrated zombies continued
beating on the metal door of the loading dock…
“Hey man, I been
straight with you, you straight with me?” he hailed his seventeen-year-old
supervisor…
“Sure…” Craig
said.
“That Mark, he
let me pick out a set, a Tungway ’27. Not the biggest, not the, uh… betterest…” he gave the kid the sort of rueful grin
intended to emphasize that they were just a couple of working guys, man to man,
“but hey, the game’s tomorrow. Anyway…”
and he glanced suspiciously towards the Mexicans, “donde
esta?”
Craig
blinked. “Anything like
that, back here, it’s gone… long gone!
You were here, all the cheap stuff sold out…”
“It had a
reservation, a piece of paper… attached…” Tom’s voice trailed off.
Craig tried not
to smile at how someone could be so old and so stupid at the same time. “Means nothing. Anybody?” Marko and the Mexicans shook their
heads. “Sorry, man…”
Tenison, coming out of his office, couldn’t help but berate
his lazy hirelings.
“Place is a
mess. Anybody believe in working?”
“We on the clock?” Craig shot back.
Tenison’s only response was a sick smile, but that afforded
Tom the chance to press his case…
“Mark, sir…” he corrected
himself, “did you put my set back in the office?”
“Why would I do
that?” said the offended Manager.
“Well, it’s
gone…”
“So?” The distraction angered Tenison. “You think I give a rat’s ass about your
personal problems… you coulda put it in the trunk of
your car. You didn’t, you lose. And you still gotta
pay, you signed a note. Me, I have more
important things to worry about… like these idiots out there who want to kill us, and
all you want to do is watch them do it on TV?”
Grabbing a bullhorn
from the utility shelf, Mark Down Mark stormed off, leaving Tom openmouthed,
and with the feeling that he’d somehow imposed… no one to appeal to but the
guys in the stockroom…
“Yeah, I signed a
note, I paid… and I didn’t take time off to put it in my car ‘cause I was
working. Working! And he fuckin’…”
He couldn’t
finish his thought, shook his head.
“Everything’s fucked up,” Craig commiserated – but now with an
agenda of his own. Tom, you’re married…
how did you, uh, get your wife to uh… say yes?”
“Nancy? I gave her a million dollars…” Craig’s face
fell, “…hold on a minute…”
He’d spotted Ray
Wilson leading Honey and Sabra from the janitor’s closet, whispering into their
ears…
“Hey! Hey! Talkin’ to you, what the fuck were you doing in there?”
“None of your
business, old man…” Ray snapped.
“We are not
letting any of those losers in on this…” Sabra Martin hissed, taking in not
only Tom but the sly-looking kid supervisor, the Mexicans and the creepy Turk
or Russian or whomever with the shifty eyes…
“Somebody stole
my television… my Tungwa!” Tom brayed.
“Keep cool,” Ray
assured the girls, before telling Eppert “Do I look like I got a
TV in my pocket? You wanna
go in there, look around, fine… just don’t slip the
lock behind you. People in here sorta like a nice, dark quiet place, dig?”
His wink nearly
made Tom gag. “I’ll d-do
that…” he promised.
“Knock yourself
out. Too bad you have to go it alone,
but…” Putting an arm around both girls,
Ray lowered his voice. “Let the damn
fool look around, he won’t find anything.
Not the right time yet, but soon as I say so, or just give a little nod,
just kinda migrate on back, an’ we’re oozin’ an’ cruisin’ our way down to Oil Can Charlie’s…”
“You think those… those people,”
Honey gulped, “…have broken into the garage?”
Ray nodded. “Count on it.
But they don’t have a clue about the basement either…”
Looters had, in
fact, breached Oil Change Charlie’s… more than an hour previous, in fact… but
their rewards were meager: the register, the vending machines, a few
tools. A bigger prize loomed next door…
and a looter had finally driven his truck through the One World gates and the
crowd, honking, scattering mall zombies and squishing the fallen as it rumbled
through the Promenade to the Food Court, hung a right past Giga-Mart and Deems
Hardware (with bright, blue signs promising “Propane – Lowest Price in
Town”). Before Prince George’s Luxury
Wheels, the zombie army hooked up chains swiped from Deems to the chainlink gate – then the driver gunned the pickup in
reverse, stripping his transmission, but wrenching a hole in the gate large
enough for all but the fattest zombies to squeeze through. They swarmed over the Beemers,
Ferraris and, even, a few expensive hybrids… while, in Giga-Plex,
Captain Capps held his head, pointing to the Dominator…
“Damn thing’s
making me sick…” he told Big Sonny.
Offended, but
queasy himself, the mogul reminded him:
“That damn thing’s a thirty
thousand dollar set…”
“Something’s still wrong,” Lester shook his head. “Maybe it’s the reception, but my gut feels
like it’s crawling with… I don’t know, spiders…”
“Old woman! Fine,
I’ll turn it off…”
Big Sonny angrily
pointed and clicked… but the Romanian TV wouldn’t go off. He walked up to confront the image that was
taller than himself, pressed the manual power
switch. Still it stayed on, broadcasting the idiot face and voice of Ted
Fraser…
“It’s twenty past
two, now, Eastern Time, and we’re receiving reports of uncontrollable violence
all over the country. From Dallas, Omaha,
Sacramento, even Butte, Montana, and what is so striking, and different from
past incidents, is… for lack of a better word, the democratic composition of
these crowds…”
“They’re a buncha damn looters and thieves!” Sonnenschein
snarled, clicking uselessly. “Any idiot
could figure out that they were Democrats…”
“With me tonight…
this morning, actually… is T. Scott Farmington, Associate Professor of
Psychology at Howard University,” Fraser declared as the great screen in front
of Big Sonny filled up with a big, black man who caused the Big Boss to leap
back, stuttering and shaking. “Dr.
Farmington, thank you for coming out under such difficult circumstances – you
concur that this differs, in some respects, from similar disturbances during
the 1960’s, for example, or after the Rodney King verdict or St. Louis or the
guy who got choked, or the Medicaid and food stamp revocations last summer…”
For all of his
imposing presence on the Dominator, Farmington spoke just like any other Professor…
nothing but euphemisms and accusations, carefully couched in the excelsior of
historical context. “Yes… and no,
Ted. Popular insurrections…”
“Criminality…”
Big Sonny recovered, firing back at the television…
“…always arise
out of longstanding grievances, tinder to which a spark has been added – an
assassination, an unfair legal verdict or, in this instance, denial of a public
ritual that competes with, if not… in some places… supplants Sunday religious
services. To many Americans, their football
is a right and a rite – that is, a religious rite,. And religious wars and movements can gain a
frightening strength, far out of proportion to the causal injury.”
“What’s that… that egghead…” Capps frowned, “talking about?”
Farmington obliged. “After
the Rodney King trial and the more recent police shooting incidents, we did see
a few whites and Latinos in the street, but these were isolated and easily
attributable to the usual radical political suspects and some just out to
liberate commodities from the system… in Baltimore, however, and St. Louis,
organized anarchist communities…”
Big Sonny nodded. “He’s talkin’ about what all of ‘em talk about, no matter how
they phrase it - talkin’ about stealing…”
“…but the present incident is not specifically racial in origin,
although some of the local vehemence may have had to do with the shootings in Nakonset Park, the other night. Football, like few other institutions, is
Big Sonny had stepped back a few paces so that he would be
approximately the same height as Farmington as he furiously clicked the remote,
shouting: “Off! Off,
you bastard… off!”
Mark Tenison, bullhorn clasped in his
folded arms, frowned at the big, black image so as to impress the boss with his
sycophantic loathing. “Maybe you could
change the channel?” he ventured.
“Can’t!” roared Big Sonny, still
clicking and swearing. “Can’t! Can’t!
Damn you, you Commie Dracula bastard…”
So furious he’d become that he actually kicked the side of the Dominator, but all that this accomplished
was that a seam on the expensive, water-damaged crocodile shoe split, exposing
Leland Buford’s big toe, mottled and damp under a sheer, gray silk stocking…
or, wait… the imposing Professor Farmington had reached the end of his spiel,
allowing Ted Fraser to take back control of the moment – a relieved, almost
jolly, Ted Fraser.
“We’ve got Evan Augsberg back with us, broadcasting from a police trailer
that has been set up a block from the besieged One World Mall – somewhat the
worse for wear, but still hanging in there like the old pro he is… Evan, can
you…”
And, as the
besieged of Giga-Plex stopped what they were doing to
gawk at the bandaged and battered newscaster, far above, a crowbar pried open
the door to the catwalk maze overlooking the store. A dozen zombies at the threshold fell to
arguing about who would be first to venture onwards into the Promised Land…
foremost among them Tom Eppert’s brother-in-law,
Stretch, a short and menacingly pugnacious Army washout named Quimper (who
still wore his military uniform) and wild-eyed Bennie, a white guy in
thrift-store leisure duds and an enormous Afro…
Stretch was a
problem-solver, of a sort, he also held a rather higher opinion of himself than
circumstances often warranted… in this instance, because he was the only
nearly-sober brigand among the raffish crew teetering out over the edge of
Giga-Plex.
He’d had a couple of beers, a vodka tonic before coming up the pike from
Dempstertown, a few more beers that some guys were
tossing out into the crowd at One World Mall, a long gulp of tequila from a
common bottle… but he felt fine. Nothing
wrong with his balance… or expert analysis of the obstacles standing between
him and some fine, MHDTV flatscreens, twenty six
hundred a pop, marked down to $2,449,99.
“No handrails, ‘cept every six foot or so
where them beams cross an’ they’re sorta
rounded…” he adjudicated, cautiously…
Quimper, on the
other hand, was ready to rock n’roll. “Columns out there ain’t
so wide you couldn’t wrap arms around ‘em and slide right down like you was in
the firehouse…” he suggested. “Looks
like they got one every fifteen feet…”
“More like every
ten feet in that space between the stoves, down there, an’ that camera and
video stuff…” Stretch calculated.
“I could use one
of them digital camera-printer combinations,” Bennie anticipated. “No more payin’
through the nose to the drugstore for the one-hour service, that ain’t…”
“Ain’t what?” some asshole who’d managed to climb the ladder
behind them challenged. “Ain’t one-hour?”
“Ain’t service,” Bennie leered.
Quimper was channeling his military experience, now. “Go down one of those two columns either end
of the DVDs, or keep goin’ to the wall,” he pointed
out over the expanse of Giga-Plex, “I believe
somebody could climb right down the pile of sets…”
“Could,” Stretch
admitted. “Or just pull one up and keep goin’ through that door like this one,
that goes…”
“…Into that funny
people’s grocery,” Quimper finished.
“Wife used to shop there, ‘fore she had her accident…”
“Well, either of
you gonna do it, or just stand there in the way, cacklin’
like a couple of chickens?” Bennie complained,
Quimper’s temper
flared. “Who you callin’ chicken?”
“Chick chick chick!”
So the military
washout tried leaning across Stretch to throw a punch, but his feet slipped,
and he had to grab onto the rail to keep from falling off. Bennie slid around the both of them and
sprinted out onto the catwalk, arms out like a tightrope artist…
“Here I go! Here I giga-go-go-go!”
he crowed.
Once he’d
recovered his footing, a scowling Quimper stepped out onto the rail. “Teach you
who’s chicken…”
Stretch put one of
those big hands at the end of one of those long arms that had given him his
boyhood name on the soldier’s shoulder.
“Were I you,” he counseled, “I’d stand back and wait a moment. There’s probably some surprise out there,
always is… better that he finds out
for us before we do…”
“Oh! Sounds mighty dishonourable,
though…” Quimper considered.
Stretch
smiled. “Doesn’t it?”
Bennie’s sprint
had quickly eroded to a trot, then the wavering walk of a drunk under a police
flashlight by the side of the road as he leaned a little too far to the right,
trying to get a better look at the digital cameras. He windmilled his
arms, groaned – leaned back and staggered a few more steps onward towards the
media display.
Hanging out by their Tech and Credit Tent, half-hypnotized by
news footage on the Dominator, Total and Thunder were pretending to ignore
their skulking manager when Bennie’s ejaculations from above caused them to
look up…
Skinner
pointed. “Holy shit!” he exclaimed.
So Thunder looked
up too, waving his hands and pointing.
“You’re not supposed to be up
there! That’s trespassing, dude!…”
And, suddenly, it
seemed like everybody in the store was looking up, following Bennie’s
progress. The football zombie kept
walking, garnering oohs and aahs as he nearly slipped
while still high above Appliantology, but Benny gave
his audience a cheery, beery wave and kept sliding past the columns,
obsessively intent on the display of televisions that reach almost to the
ceiling behind the sarcen dominated by the radiating,
raving Dominator. The sax player and
clarinetist broke into an impromptu circus rag.
But, while turning into the corridor between the DVDs and games,
Bennie’s feet failed - he fell some sixty feet and plunged headfirst onto a
rack of Blu-Ray action movies… marked down owing to age or lack of box office
resonance… with a sickening, bloody THPLAT!
The musicians let
their rag trail off into a razzberry…
“Oh, Dude!” Total commiserated.
And Mark Down
Mark, lifting the bullhorn to his lips… twisted, now, into a mean little
grimace… couldn’t help but take advantage of the situation to exert his
authority and impress Big Sonny.
“Clean-up on
Aisle Six!” he ordered.
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!