by D V Wolfe
“Yeah?” He said. He paused. “I know Marie! Dammit! Yes, the ice cream made from coconut milk, not soy milk. S’mores flavored, not just chocolate. I just got off work. I’m going to the store now. I….I, yes! And the little weenies...I'm...Jesus Christ, I’m going now!” He hung up and pulled open his truck door. I heard it slam and the engine roared to life.
I started breathing again. I’ve had to injure an innocent a few times when doing the job but I like to call it “subduing them”. And just about every one of them was an asshole up to the point of me “subduing” them. It would have been a shame to break my clean record.
I waited until the truck cleared the side of the building and then hustled back to Stacks and the van. Stacks had the door open now. He moved across to sit in the passenger seat when he saw me and popped the locks. I grabbed the sliding side door, jerked it open, and threw the bag of uniforms in.
“I tried calling you to say I’d gotten in,” Stacks said. “Where were you?”
I climbed in behind the wheel. “Having a heart attack a hundred feet away, wondering if I could garrote an innocent with polyester pants if I had to,” I said. “As always, your timing is impeccable.”
“I aim to please,” Stacks said. I reached for the keys in the ignition.
“So why did they leave the keys in the ignition?” I asked.
“I’ll bet it saves them time. They just have a code to get in the van and then they’re off.”
I shrugged and said a silent “thank you” to the universe that we didn’t have to invoke the god of hotwiring on this occasion. We crept out of the lot, keeping the lights on the van off as we turned up the road. We’d have stopped to pick up Lucy, but Stacks didn’t drive. He could hotwire, break into, and disable cars but he drew the line at getting behind the wheel. I’d have to come back and get Lucy when this was all over. That is if I survived.
By the time we’d retraced our route back to the warehouse it was ten-thirty and a low roil of panic was churning up the overcooked pepperoni in my stomach. It could have been worse though. If I’d still been in my last meat suit, I’d be chugging Maalox just to be upright so, silver linings and all.
I got out of the van and banged on the sliding warehouse doors. When I heard movement from inside, I got back behind the wheel just as Vince and Mick slid them open. We pulled in and they closed the bay doors behind me.
We worked quickly, loading the ten-gauge, sawed-off, Big Joe, Tags’ twelve-gauge, Vince’s pump-action shotgun, and Mick’s modified rifle into the laundry bin. We emptied a couple of boxes of clip-on toilet bowl cleaners and filled the boxes with rock salt-filled shotgun shells. Rosetta and Noah worked at getting the spray bottles filled with holy water and Stacks helped Vince and Mick repack the van.
I walked over to Tags. “Anything coming in on demon radio?”
Tags closed his eyes. “Nothing right now. They were bitching about their bosses earlier and how picky they were. Half of it is in Enochian and I left my translator at home.”
I nodded. “Just as long as they aren’t talking about a hunter barbecue at the Johnson Meredith building.” I looked over at the workbench. “Can you walk me through the cypress and ‘God’s Tears’ stuff?”
Tags shrugged. “Pretty straight forward. The branch was so puny we decided to cut it into stakes, you know, give you a sharp edge to work with. Then we soaked the stakes in the ‘God’s Tears’ Elixir which, they’re still a little damp, and then we rolled them in the Solomon’s Spice.
“They look like corndogs,” I said.
Tags crossed his arms. “Well they’re not corndogs.”
“They just look like them,” I said.
“Corndogs, right?” Noah asked, going by.
“They are not…!” Tags sighed. “Take your corndogs and stick them where the sun don’t shine. I don’t care.”
“Sorry Tags,” I said. “So do I need to say or do anything or just run them through with these corn...stakes?”
Tags shrugged. “The monk isn’t recorded as having said any kind of incantation. Probably for the best. You really don’t want to advertise what you’re about to do to a room full of demons when you’re armed only with a herb-encrusted toothpick.”
I nodded. That part at least sounded easy. I went and pulled the garbage bag full of uniforms out of the van. “Dress up time,” I said.
None of them fit right. It didn’t matter. Vince had to cut his pants off at the knees because they wouldn’t fit over his calves and Rosetta had to roll hers at the top and bottom to get them to a length she could walk in. I stared around at the crew in our yellow and blue uniforms; dirty, tired faces, scars, bandages and stitches, and Vince and Mick’s dog faces which kept flickering into view in the anxiety of what was ahead of us.
We looked like the cleaning crew from hell.
Rather appropriate.
“Alright, let’s saddle up.”
25
We all piled into the van and Mick and Vince had a short “rock-paper-scissors” fist fight to see who was going to drive while the rest of us were already crammed into the back.
Finally, Vince got in the driver’s seat having outsmarted Mick. Mick still looked confused as he got into the passenger side with the canvas bag of boat chain on his lap.
“Have a nice fight, gentlemen?” I asked. Rosetta was half on and half off my lap, Noah’s knobby knee was wedged into my thigh and the cleaning cart full of loaded weapons, probably all which had their safeties off, was pointed at my crotch.
“I totally won. And then he wanted to play rock, paper, scissors and he changed the rules,” Mick said. I felt my impatience ratcheting up.
“Rock beats scissors every time,” Vince said, plugging the key into the ignition.
“You know what beats rock?” I asked. They both turned to look at me. I caught each of them on the far side of their heads and banged them together like coconuts. They both swore and I turned back to face the rear of the van. Stacks and Tags were grinning and I wondered if this would be the last time all of us were together and had something to joke about.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry, that I’m not sorry for doing that. Now let’s go already.”
The drive over to the Johnson Meredith building was quiet. Vince slowed down as we approached the parking garage and I noticed that most of the lights in the building were off except for the top three floors and a few scattered lights throughout the lower floors. Vince took us down to the basement level of the parking garage and pulled into a dark corner. We unloaded the cart, emptied two bags of clean white towels into the bin on top of the weapons, and looked around.
Even under the stretch-waisted polyester pants, I could tell we were all packing. I had the .45 tucked into the back of my jeans which I’d left on under the uniform pants. From the looks of it Mick, Vince and Tags had done the same. Luckily, Vince wore shorts like Noah and they weren’t immediately noticeable under his cut off uniform pants. I was willing to bet Rosetta had her Derringer in her pants pocket or her cleavage. Stacks had his cell phone in his pocket and a roll of salted tape at the small of his back under his uniform top. He pulled the phone out and swiped his finger around.
“Ok, so I have about forty-seven percent battery life, which is still pretty good for one of these phones but chances are that at some point tonight, it’s going to die and the trigger for the looped footage may lag and be able to be overridden. Just throwing that out there.”
“So, not only do we have to do this insane mission,” Noah said. “But now it’s on a time trial?”
“And it’s pretty much graded pass/fail, which I always thought was easier,” I said.
I checked the guns in the cleaning cart. Sure enough, they were all loaded, and two of them didn’t have the safety on. Thank the maker we hadn’t hit any potholes.
The cart was going with Rosetta and Noah as both of them were heading to the back door to defend. The plan was to get all the doors secure, meet up with Rosetta and Noah’s cart wh
ich they would park somewhere central, retrieve all the weapons, and then everyone hold position, not letting any of the party-goers out.
“Now if the shit hits the fan, get the hell out of Dodge,” I said. “There’s a bus station two blocks down or if you catch up with Vince and Mick, come back, get the van and get the hell out of here.”
Stacks shook his head, “You’re not going to do the whole, ‘if I die, I want Stacks to have my truck as he’s been the dearest of friends to me…’”
“No,” I said.
“Caring, compassionate, an excellent role model to men the world over….” Stacks continued.
“You are none of those things, Stacks. And Noah would be getting Lucy. You don’t even drive.”
We handed out rubber gloves, spray bottles full of holy water, feather dusters, mops and brooms, anything that was in the van. Stacks, Tags, and I had cleaning totes. Vince had a bucket and Mick was carrying a dustpan. From the way he was looking at it, I wasn’t sure if Mick knew what a dustpan was. I put my hand on his wrist to stop him from trying to attach it to his spray bottle.
“You’ll be with Vince, just pretend you’re helping him clean a spill,” I said to Mick, taking the dustpan and handing him the cloth bag of boat chain. “Let’s do this.”
I’m not a fan of long goodbyes. If this was going to be it for all of us, I sure as hell didn’t want to say it out loud. We all started down the hallway like it was a funeral march. No one spoke.
“We’re about to hit those cameras, and if we look like we’re marching to our own graves they’re going to know something is up and all of this window dressing will be wasted,” Tags said.
“I don’t know,” Stacks said. “Have you ever worked an overnight cleaning job? I think we’re just about in character.”
“Then look annoyed and bored,” I said. “Not scared shitless.”
“My old hips are too...old for scrubbing these floors,” Rosetta started in a loud voice.
“Jesus, every night, my old hips, my old knees,” Noah replied. “Either get it fixed or stop bitching about it.” I turned to gawk at him and he gave me a wink. Of course then he turned and saw Rosetta glaring at him and he whispered an apology to her.
“Did you see the game last night?” Mick said loudly to Tags.
“Man that was something, wasn’t it?” Tags said. “The way they scored over the other guys.”
“Yeah, and then there was that extra-inning because of the three-point inversion and they had to put that player in the penalty box,” Stacks piped in.
We were doomed.
We made it through the doors with the nonsense conversation going on. I pulled the clipboard down from the wall and flipped through the pages while I walked down the hallway. Noah was pushing the cart behind me, with my cleaning tote resting on the edge. I spotted the camera on the ceiling and we moved down the hall beyond it. The basement was quiet.
“Alright Stacks,” I whispered. “Are we clear?” Stacks set down his tote and studied his phone. He did some swiping and tapping.
“Ok,” he said. “They should be watching the same loop of this hallway that I recorded earlier today. Let’s pray the guy staring at it doesn’t know what time it is.”
I nodded at Vince and Mick. They went back down the hall and wrapped the door handles with the boat chain and secured it with a quick link they’d soaked in saltwater as well.
“Let’s run some salted tape too, just to be safe,” I said.
We left Vince and Mick with their weapons and supplies to finish up with the tape and the rest of us moved on. The elevator was at the far end of the hall and took it up to the first floor. When we got out, we saw Mick and Vince pop out of a stairwell just ahead of us. They headed for the front door. Stacks took off to the north and Tags to the south. No one said anything or gave anyone meaningful looks. I had two stakes shoved down the front of the uniform pants and one in each of my jean pockets in the back. Everyone else had one stake each. I stood still and watched Noah and Rosetta push the cart down the hallway away from the front door. Before they turned a corner, Noah looked back at me and winked.
Now to find Miss America himself.
I decided on the stairs. More chance of escape than if I ran into these assholes in an elevator. I opened the door to the stairs and I hadn’t gone more than two steps up when I heard the door on the landing above me bang open.
“Of course he’s late. He’s always fucking late. That worthless meat suit. I can’t believe he’s the boss’ second in command.” It was a woman’s voice.
“Calm the shit down, Carna,” a man said. “Have a smoke. He’ll get here, the plan will go off without a hitch and we’ll be home on fiery island as war heroes before you know it.”
“Fine, just….ahhhh. Fucking demons,” Carna said.
“It’s ok,” he said. “Most beings hate their own kind.”
“Thanks, Billus,” Carna said. “I just...I need a minute out here.”
I guess I wasn’t taking the stairs. I quietly slipped out of the stairwell and moved back down the hallway on the first floor, headed for the elevators. No sign of anyone else. Either they were at their posts or they’d left already. I wouldn’t have blamed them. This was the dumbest thing I’d done in a long time, which in my case, was saying something.
The elevator dinged and I got in and pushed the button for the sixth floor. Might as well work my way up. The elevator climbed to the third floor and I felt my heart sink when it halted. I moved to the side of the back wall just as the doors slid open. A girl and three guys in pantsuits got on. They all looked exhausted and strung out.
The girl was mid-rant. “They spit on me! Do you see this? That old guy spit on me.”
The guy next to her shook his head. “Valia, that’s puke. You scared him so much, he puked.”
Valia raised an upper lip. “I swear, the second the boss gets here and we can start drinking these hostages, I’m starting with him.”
Perfect. I’d picked a winning crop full of demons for my first encounter. They didn’t seem to notice me at first.
“I suppose you’re wondering why I gathered you all here,” I said. I dropped my cleaning tote to the floor. No time like the present to try the stakes out. I pulled two from the front of my pants and rammed one home through the woman’s belly and the other through the ass cheek of the guy standing just in front of me. The man and the woman shrieked in pain. The air in the elevator was thick with a black haze and their meat suits were shuddering like a full-body heave as if they were trying to eject the demons out of their mouths. But it wasn’t working. The black smoke that usually comes when a demon possessing someone smokes out, didn’t happen. Then they went ballistic, banging into the walls in the elevator, shrieking in pain. The other two demons descended on me. One knocked my legs out from under me and I scrambled to get away from him. My cleaning kit was next to me and I grabbed the holy water spray bottle and squirted him in the face. He screamed and I felt a searing pain in my side. The fourth demon had a switchblade in his hand, now covered with my blood. I felt the familiar dizziness and the burning pain beginning to radiate up from my abdomen. Probably caught a kidney. It was too bad. This meat suit had actually been somewhat comfortable. I stared up into his bottomless black hole eyes and I was ok. If this was how this round ended, as long as the others made it out, I could go now. The demon smiled down at me.
“Oh thank you, everyone below, for sending us such a precious gift,” he spat, foam forming at the corners of his mouth. “The stress had been really getting to us. Being told when we can and cannot kill, what to eat and when, and being ordered around by a fucking Personal Assistant. We just needed someone to tear apart to get our zen back and here you are.”