55) Super Sunday, 2/16: 4:10
– 4:20 AM – “For the Cause!”
The construction crane Tom Eppert
hotwired was half again as tall as the cherrypicker at
FREECOCK – it growled to life with a tumultuous roaring and shaking that might
just have been poor maintenance but felt, to Tom, as he climbed the ladder to
the crows’ nest, like God’s favourite stallion,
freshly saddled and rarin’ to run. Feeling no pain, Easy tried climbing after
him but the vibrations made his teeth rattle so he stopped, swigged from the
looted pint-bottle of peppermint schnapps in his pocket… disgusting stuff!… and
called out, extending his gun, handle-first…
“Here, man, you
need a friend?”
“A gun? Man, this thing… it could run over a Hummer,
squash it like a bug…”
Easy considered
this. “Yeah, but you never know. Go ahead, we got plenty… there’s guns all
around… means we trustin’ you now…”
“Well, if you put
it that way…”
Tom leaned over
and grasped the weapon, juggling it, the looted TV from Tenison’s
office and his grip… finally, he held the tiny set against the ladder with his
chest and stuffed the pistol in his belt, grinning down below to his captors,
pointing to the bottle in Easy’s hand…”
“Gimme a slug for the road, too?”
Easy took a last
swallow of the crap, tossed the bottle upwards.
“Take it all, man. Nasty…”
Now juggling
ladder, pistol, TV and schnapps – Tom took a healthy swig, grimaced, took
another and lodged the bottle next to the gun…
“If this sumbitch
goes wild and shoots off my balls…” he warned…
“Yeah?” said
Slim, expecting the worst; that he’d have to climb that giant crane.
“Then I guess…”
Tom broke into peals of peppermint laughter, “…guess I’d have no balls…”
And he continued
climbing.
¾ ¾ ¾
In the meth lab under Oil Change Charlie’s, Dusty’s
battered face fairly stretched out into a wide, putrescent grin at the sight of
all the dope that Ray and the girls had had to leave behind – not to mention
the few loose twenties and fifties on the floor. He did a shambling, little dance, then ripped
open one of the plastic bags with a long, dirty fingernail, lit his foundling
cigarette from a pack of matches left next to some glass cage thingy, took a deep
drag and then lay the butt at the edge of the table. Cupping his hands, he scooped up at least a
cup of powdered, pure crank and inhaled deeply, powdering his face like a
clown. His eyes widened like saucers,
and he did another little dance, more frantic, this time, pumping his fists
into the air and crowing…
“Yes! Yes!
Yes! Now, uh… candy! Man!
Candy, candy, candy, man, under the sink…”
Stumbling
pathetically, Dusty grasped the fixture, sank to his knees, and began batting
away all of the old, oily boxes underneath while, on the table, the forgotten
cigarette smoldered – brighter and brighter and brighter. He tossed another box over his shoulder… and
found himself staring into the eyes of Charlie’s guardian viper. The snake looked at Dusty, Dusty looked at
the snake. Tendrils of blue flame began
issuing from the cigarette…
“Hey there, li’l bro’!” Dusty
hailed the reptile.
¾ ¾ ¾
A few moments after Capp had intimidated the Giga-Plex staff into silence… or, more probably, a score of covert,
decentralized schemes of escape and revenge… the zombies massing above launched
what must have been conceived, in their minds, as a broad, well-coordinated
assault. It began with a feint –
simultaneous suicide attacks from the east and west sides near the front of the
store. Waves of suicidal looters,
self-selected by lust to watch the big game and by strong spirits, if not
actually recruited by a centralized intelligence, leaped from catwalk to
support stanchions and attempted to scrabble down onto the floor… some failing
and falling in flailing horror and despair, some others shot in the act; a few
even making it down into the cellphone and satellite sections where, weaponless
and apparently brainless, they sprinted (or limped) towards the television
section. The Eagles, including all those
drawn from the loading dock and northside
departments, were waiting for them, taking cover behind the circle of big floor
models that surrounded the Dominator. A
terrible slaughter ensued; bodies piling up along the wall short of the Hi-Def henge and at the base of Big Sonny’s bloody, revolving
statue… the prisoners cuffed to the tech and credit tent found themselves
caught in two crossfires and General Westmoreland Soames’ pole-mate caught a
bullet in the bowels, just after “Billy Obvious”, peeking up from behind a
desk, was drilled between the eyes. As
the screams of wounded and just plain nuts berserkers rent the air during a
lull in the shooting, Westy appealed to Capps and
Mark Tenison, hiding behind a chest-high Samsung
console…
“Captain! At least give us a chance… I ain’t done a damn thing… oww…”
A bullet grazed
his forearm, then plunged into the shoulder of the other detainee, who screamed
anew. Capps looked towards Tenison, who shook his head vigorously…
“You’re
thieves. Once this affair is concluded,
you’ll be turned over to the authorities and you will have your day in court…”
“I’m innocent!” Westy protested…
“Innocent!” the
four men cuffed, two to a pole, on either side of him echoed – a gallows chorus
punctuated by the singing bullets.
“Shut up,”
Captain Capps advised them, one and all, “and duck…”
“I was framed by Tom Eppert, framed!” Westy
persisted. “Do you see him
anywhere? He’s a deserter… one of them.
Ergo, I’m innocent. And,” he
appealed, “I was in the service, too.”
He looked up – not to Heaven, exactly, but to a more impartial authority, “It’d be on
camera…”
Capps couldn’t
help laughing. “On camera? Ergo?
Guy has a
“He’d turn it on
us…” Mark warned.
“Maybe. Would you?” the
Captain asked Westy.
“Or, if I did let you go, and gave you a weapon, would you give me your
pledge that you will fight, fight with us, fight for
the cause?”
“Don’t do it!” Tenison waved his arms, frantic. “If you let one of them go, why not all of
them? What are you, Captain, some pussy
Democrat?” the Manager sneered.
“What cause?”
asked a suspicious Soames.
“The defense of
civilization,” Captain Capps declared, as if to imply that both Soames and Tenison were inferior Americans for not standing
straighter, and saluting… although he did acknowledge that the black man
probably was what he’d said, and was at a disadvantage for being handcuffed to
a tentpole in the center of a firefight. So, he added: “And, also, saving your own
ass…”
“That?” Westy bit.
“Sure! Anything…”
Capps tossed a
tiny key towards the tech and credit tent.
It fell a couple of feet short… under withering fire from above, Westy reached out, grabbed the key, uncuffed
himself and dove towards the henge…
“He’s coming this
way,” Mark appealed to the Captain.
“Shoot him!”
Westy scrambled behind a sixty-inch plasma set, already
shot and leaking.
“Gun! I need a gun!” he screamed, pointing upwards.
Capps followed
the presumed shoplifter’s finger upwards.
“Stu?” he designated his best sniper to take the shot.
Rifleman Stu took
aim at one of the armed zombies trying to balance himself atop the wall of
televisions and pick off a defender simultaneously. No luck!
Stu drilled him between the eyes, and his cheap revolver struck the
floor a second before the man himself. Westy grabbed the weapon, turned, and… to Mark Tenison’s horror… trained the gun on the Manager, then
raised it and fired at the looter behind him, hanging on to Big Sonny’s bloody,
rotating statue like a kiddie ride and aiming at Tenison’s
back. The zombie dropped…
“Not bad,” Capps
nodded. “So... been in the service?”
“Fallujah…”
Soames recalled. “Waziristan… wazooistan… whatverstan…”
Lester pointed to
a couple of automatic pistols by the bodypile. “There’s better shit out there, grab what you
can, soon as we’re safe…”
“Are we safe,
yet?” Westy hollered back.
“Not yet.” The Screaming Eagle had spied another
furtive form crawling, face down, on the catwalk above the registers. “Stu!”
¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾
VISIT THESE OTHER
GENERISIS SERIAL ABOMINATIONS…
THE GOLDEN DAWN BLACK HELICOPTERS