Darkest Drought

by Tai Goodman

  Everybody agreed, and Tyler added, "Put on your earpieces, that's when we'll signal each other. AND REMEMBER, buy ONE item, and make it CHEAP." The gang headed inside, each with a custom built explosive in their pockets. The entire factory was surrounded with kiosks with tubes running through the ceiling. "Holy hell, what is all of this?"

  Somebody bumped into Phoenix carrying two boxes. "Sorry about that."

  "It's alright." Phoenix then continued his way to an empty kiosk, deeper into the building. He found one, with an electronic label reading: "Unoccupied." He pressed the "on" button on the screen and turned on the kiosk. The words were all in German. "GODDAMMIT." Phoenix used his comms system, "Hans, come in."

  "Ja? Herr Phoenix?"

  "Yeah, it's me. Listen, you speak German- Are you at a machine?"

  "Now I am, ja."

  "Okay. I don't know what the fuck this says."

  Hans went silent for a minute. "Herr Phoenix, I do not mean to insult you, but you do know zhere is an English option on zhe device, right?" Phoenix looked around and noticed a flat button reading, "Speak English? Tap here!"

  He pressed the button and the screen turned into English. "Wow. Technology's taken over this place." Phoenix searched through the catalog.

  "Now what's the cheapest item I can buy..."

  He narrowed the search options down to a single hairpin. "Jesus Christ, this is actually on sale?"

  Phoenix pressed and confirmed his purchase. He looked above at each of the tubes to watch the box come, and without noticing it, the doors slid open with a loud noise. "GAH!"

  The box with ONE hairpin was ready for pickup. Phoenix opened the box, took the hairpin out, and then heard over the comms, "Great, everybody set the timer for 20 seconds and put it in the box. Press the red button on top when you want to set the timer off." Phoenix winded the circular explosive's round shell, as the timer went up second after second until it reached 20. Then when he placed the explosive in the box, he pressed the red button and sent the box back.

  "Done."

  "Got it."

  "Zhe box is sent."

  "Sent it."

  "I got it."

  Then the six stood back from the kiosks and waited. Phoenix put his hands on his hips and then KA-BOOM! There was glass, metal, and smoke falling from the ceiling. Nazi soldiers walked around, confused. "WAS ZUR HÖLLE?"

  Phoenix and the rest headed out to the vehicle, and met up with Tyler on the way out. "Not sure how we pulled that off unscathed."

  "We got lucky, that's how."

  Abhy, Peter, Phoenix, and Tyler arrived at the vehicle. Tyler inserted the key into the lock and unlocked the car. "Wait... Aren't we forgetting somebody?"

  Phoenix took a head count. "DAMN! WHERE'S HANS?"

  The earpiece's audio projected dialogue: "You are under arrest for terrorism in zhe factory-"

  Phoenix walked over to the trunk and opened the secret compartment. All of Phoenix's weapons were in the styrofoam block. Phoenix pulled out his rifle and headed back inside with his mask on. Before he entered the building, he yelled, "STAY THERE!"

  Phoenix wandered down each aisle, being spotted by people. "HANS?"

  Then a Nazi grappled Phoenix. "GIMME YOUR FEET, BOY!" he barked at the man. Phoenix tripped the man over his knee, and grabbed him by his two boots. "NEIN! NEIN!!!!"

  Phoenix started swinging him around in a 360 degree circle. "Never rode a carousel in my life. But I'm sure it would've been like this." Then at a high speed, he released the two boots and sent the Nazi flying into the ceiling. Phoenix continued and then spotted Hans a few aisles down. "Dammit, Hans." Phoenix mashed a button on the side of his rifle, and a scope popped out of a secret compartment in his weapon. Looking through the lens, the ironsight lined up with one of the Nazi's heads, belonging to one holding Hans at gunpoint.

  BANG! One shot, and the Nazi received a bullet between the eyes. The other one wrapped his arm around Hans, pressing his Luger against Hans' head.

  "DROP YOUR VEAPON OR..I VILL SHOOT! I MEAN IT!"

  Phoenix stopped what he was doing. "Fuck." Phoenix threw his gun forwards on the ground, and once it landed, POW! The gun fired one impact. The Nazi's knee was blow out by one bullet. "Mein Knie! Er hat mein Knie geschossen!" he said, grasping the kneecap with his soon-to-be-bloody palms. Phoenix sprinted forwards, swung his arm down to snatch his rifle, stole the rifle from the floor, and continued moving. Right in front of him, the Nazi picked up his pistol with one hand and aimed it at Hans, sprinting away. He fired two bullets, then was pounced on by Phoenix.

  Phoenix pulled out his knife, and slit his throat with a quick slice. "Piece of shit." Then there were some mechanical sounds approaching. Phoenix scooted behind a kiosk and reloaded his weapon. While he was swapping the clips, the sound of steel footsteps were getting louder, shaking the ground beneath Phoenix. "Someone's got some big old feet."

  Phoenix glanced around the corner of the kiosk, and there wasn't anything approaching. He copied the same action for the other side, and a big mechanical robot identical to a gigantic automaton of a Nazi was stomping his way.

  "Well well well. As I live and breathe, the motherfucking Tin Man. You're gonna look nice when I made you into a chassis from all the scrap I'll salvage off your metal ass."

  Phoenix inserted the clip, hearing the CH-CH sound effect from his rifle. "Great."

  Hans appeared out from behind a corner and snatched the dead Nazi's pistol. "Yo! Get back over there!" Phoenix commanded Hans. Hans scooted his way behind a kiosk, sitting still. The sound of steel was as close as it could be. Phoenix watched a big steel boot press on the concrete besides his leg. "HANS! SHOOT!"

  The two started shooting the huge creation in unison. Although, the amount of gunfire appears to have caused little impact. Phoenix looked over to Hans and said, "GET DOWN! GET DOWN!"

  The robot aimed his arm with his other arm and fired the balled fist on his hand into the concrete next to Phoenix's weapon. Phoenix pulled his weapon away as the chain retracted and excised a huge chunk of concrete from the ground. "HANS! HOW DO WE KILL THIS THING?"

  "I DO NOT KNOW, HERR PHOENIX!"

  Phoenix moved over to another kiosk and leaned past the corner to examine the automaton. "Hmm..." The robot's jaw opened as it launched the huge chunk of concrete at Hans, missing, but destroying a kiosk.

  "HERR PHOENIX! HELP!"

  The robot stormed over to Hans and grabbed him by one of his legs. "HELP! PLEASE! HE'S GOT ME!"

  Phoenix then looked over the Nazi's corpse on the floor. And sticking out of one of the pockets of his belt was a grenade on a wooden stick. "He's got a potato masher. Go get it." Phoenix sprinted over to the corpse, and grabbed the stick of the grenade. Then he ran over to the gigantic robot, climbing up the edges of the thing's armor. Last but not least, Phoenix shoved the grenade down the thing's mouth. "OPEN UP!"

  Phoenix took cover behind a kiosk, and the entire top half of the robot exploded into pieces. Hans fell out of the thing's grasp, and hit the floor. Hans coughed three times, and noticed Phoenix's hand besides him.

  Hans accepted the offer and hauled himself up back on his feet. "Vell then, let us proceed with escaping." Phoenix nodded with a skeptical smile on his mask. The two men walked alongside each other, out in front of an entire circle of Nazis.

  "Oh mein gott."

  "Dang, that's a lot of them."

  All at the same time, the soldiers rose their guns that were pointing at Phoenix and Hans. The rest of the gang in the car sat there, watching the ambient silence of the circle. "Herr Phoenix?"

  "What is it Hans?"

  "Vhat are ve going to do?"

  "Good question."

  Tyler moved over into the driver's seat of the rentable vehicle, causing Abhy to ask, "Hey! What are you doing?"

  Tyler inserted the car keys and the technology of the vehicle turned on. "Saving their ass!" he answered, pressing the gearshaft's "FORWARD" button. The vehicle drove out of the parking lot, and sped behi
nd the Nazis. Phoenix noticed over the Nazi's shoulders the oncoming vehicle driving at a high speed. "What in the FUCK?"

  BLAM! Nazis were ran over, and sent flying over the hood and towards the two. Only two Nazis remained. One of them aimed their weapon at the window on Tyler's door, and shot Tyler a few times.

  "SHIT! TYLER, HOLD ON!"

  Phoenix ran over to the Nazi, and tapped him on the shoulder. Once he caught his attention, Phoenix flicked the man's helmet off and slammed the man's skull into the side of the vehicle. Hans on the other hand was shooting up the other Nazi with all of the ammunition in the one clip he had. Then with the grip of his pistol, Hans beat in the Nazi's face into a cave-in of blood, teeth, and bone.

  "FOR FUCK'S SAKE HANS, COME ON!"

  Phoenix snagged Hans by his shoulder and dragged him towards the car. Once Hans entered the vehicle, he heard Nazi footsteps approaching, and he said, "Alright I know you're there, so you might as well turn your ass around and go home." Then the foosteps faded away. "That's better."

  Chapter XI: Loose

  Peter drove the vehicle back onto the road, while Abhy was in the back nuturing Tyler's wounds. Phoenix looked over his seat and said, "Tyler, what you did was fucking stupid! We could have gotten outta that another way!"

  Tyler bent his head up a little bit and said, "LOOK, I'M SORRY- I JUST WANTED TO HELP." Abhy pushed his head back down and kept nuturing.

  Meanwhile, in Washington D.C…

  Anna Pultzei settled in her office, covered in Nazi propaganda. Essentially everything represented the Nazi movement. Her husband enter the room, shutting the wooden door behind himself with a loud thud.

  “You know, Franz, the commercial center for marketing in Topeka was destroyed recently today by the Masked Terror.”

  “Ja, und vhat do you vant me to do about it?

  “Vell vhy vould anyone want to destroy a marketing place? What bad could a building do? This anarchist must be stopped immediately. So I vant you to manage your undesirable control mechanism more closely, just in case zhe Masked Terror arrives there.”

  Franz nodded and said, “Do not vorry, mein love. Ve vill take zhis terrorist down.” Pultzei lit a cigar and said, “Gut. Gut.”

  SOUTH CAROLINA

  “Now time to take down this mind control crap. I’m sick of seeing helpless people on the streets with big old pieces of metal on their heads, forced to do things they don’t wanna do. Franz Pultzei. He’s in control of that stuff. And I will make his ass pay as well as destroy his stuff.”

  There was a central machine surrounded with a fence and some watchtowers. Phoenix arrived on his choppercycle, parked on the side of the road, and then retracted his choppercycle. As he walked through the fence, guards recognized him on the dot. "MASKED TERROR! ALARM!"

  Phoenix punched his fist through one of the guards' chests, stealing their heart, and then squeezing the blood out of it. Then with his boot, he raised it up to the other guard's face and pulled the string, puncturing several metal spikes into the man's skull. Phoenix removed both his fist and his boot.

  "Stupidest bunch of guards I've ever seen." Phoenix waltzed right in. Meanwhile, Franz looked on the surveillance cameras and spotted Phoenix. "Vell vell vell... WIR MÜSSEN AUSSERHALB ALLE GARANTIEN BENÖTIGEN, unser ungebetener Gast ist da! Töte ihn auf Anhieb!"

  All of Franz's men said, "JAWOHL!"

  They all marched out of the room. But then Franz stopped one when he said, "WEICROFT! Kommen Sie für eine Sekunde her." The soldier turned around and reentered the room. Franz held up a bear trap by its chain, and said, "Set zhis up. It will serve as a... 'Good welcome mat.'"

  Phoenix continued his way into the building. Most of the building's hallways were tight with about a few feet of space apart from each wall. He pulled out his pistol, and said, "Armor piercing." The ammunition type switched. Phoenix overheard footsteps approaching his direction. "Come and get some!"

  The first Nazi looked around the corner, and once he spotted Phoenix, he started firing. Phoenix shot the man through his helmet, and kept moving. He stopped for a second before he turned the corner. Phoenix looked down and stole the man's rifle. It was a Sturmgewehr. Wooden stock. Rest of it was electronic.

  "Nobody's got time for a half-ass." Phoenix pointed the rifle around the corner and sprayed fire in random directions without seeing where. Bullet casings hit the ground as much as Nazis. The moment he spun around the corner, he saw three Nazis on the ground, aching and moaning in pain. Phoenix knocked one's helmet off, and then stomped the man's skull in with his boot. "One bitch."

  Phoenix did the same thing with the second one. Blood and brains covered his boot. "Two bitch."

  Phoenix reached the third one, and the man pulled out a hand grenade. "AUF WIEDERSEHEN, ARSCHLOCH!"

  "RUN." Phoenix sprinted away from the explosion radius and concealed himself behind the corner again. The hand grenade exploded, coating the suicidal soldier and the rest in fire and the explosion's radius. Phoenix proceeded to move through the smoke. He then noticed a room. Phoenix wafted the smoke out of his face and it revealed the label: "ARMORY."

  "Candy store for adults. Except everything's free for the taking." Phoenix twisted the knob, and figured out it was locked. "Shit." Phoenix kicked the door in and intruded the armory, where a soldier was sitting in a chair asleep with headphones on. "HALLO! ZIMMERMANN!"

  Phoenix pulled out his knife, while under a surveillance camera's eye view. "ZIMMERMANN! WAKE UP!"

  It was too late. Phoenix stabbed the man through the back of his mouth, and quickly removed the knife. "Errr...! NEIN! AMERICAN! YOU LISTEN TO ME, AND YOU LISTEN VELL. COME INTO MY OFFICE, AND YOU VILL BE DEAD LIKE ALL OF MEIN WEAK MEN!"

  "Yeah yeah, just keep talking, sauerkraut!"

  "VHAT DID YOU CALL ME?"

  "SAUERKRAUT."

  Phoenix was shot repeatedly in the back. Before he died, he turned around and looked at his killer. An anonymous soldier in a black outfit. "Been a while since I fucked up. So much pain in one spot. I can barely move. I feel like a crippled man. But not anymore." The electrocution vest revived Phoenix from the dead and electrocuted the soldier.

  Franz squinted at the security screen. "Vhat in zhe FUCK?"

  Phoenix stood up, as the lead of the bullets started falling out of the wounds on his back, and they regenerated with flesh. The soldier was firing his gun in random directions as he watched Phoenix stroll over to him. "Beats the hell out of dying, doesn't it?"

  Phoenix pointed his pistol near the man's forehead, and fired. One bullet straight through his head and skull and brain. "HOW DID YOU DO ZHAT? YOU CANNOT- AAAARGHHH!"

  Phoenix then looked up at the camera and destroyed it with a gunshot. While he was still in the armory, he looked around at all of the weaponry lockers. "That's a lotta firepower." He walked by several lockers. Then one caught his eyesight the most. A huge revolver pistol. Stainless steel. Golden writing on it. Phoenix broke the padlock and opened the case. "Heh heh heh...." Phoenix stuffed it in his belt pocket and continued to Franz's location. Franz noticed Phoenix was near the hallway leading to his room.

  "Sieg fertig machen..."

  Phoenix busted the door open, aiming his new weapon, and then the bear trap snapped down on his foot. "AAHHH! MY FREAKING FOOT!" Phoenix squealed.

  Then a soldier came out of a corner and put an electronic dog collar around his neck. "Get- GET THIS OFF ME." Franz stood up from his chair and mashed the red button on a remote control. All of a sudden, a huge surge of electricity soared through Phoenix's veins.

  "AAAHHHHH!"

  Franz removed his thumb and then slowly walked over to Phoenix to taunt him. "Vell vell vell.. You are ein idiot for coming here and not picturing anything happening to your PRECIOUS SOUL. Now you may learn zhe truth."

  "You ain't gonna do NOTHING."

  Franz laughed and said, "Oh ja? THEN VHAT IS THIS-"

  He mashed the button once more, and electrocuted Phoenix to the point where he was experiencing hall
ucinations and flashbacks. "GAAAAAAAARRGH!" Phoenix screamed in excruciating pain. He then saw a hallucination of Stanley. He wasn't doing anything, but then he crouched down besides Phoenix and said, "Hey there buddy, how's it been?"

  Phoenix only looked at him, as opening his mouth would make it even more painful. "I see you got yourself in a bit of a uh.... 'Pickle,' wouldn't you agree?" he taunted him, zooming in closer with his body to examine the pain and frustration he was suffering.

  "I bet you're thinking: Whose side am I on? Lemme answer that for you: Nobody's. Sure I was on yours when I was alive, but now that I'm dead, all I can do is threaten you into un-fucking yourself and getting your ass in gear. So when I disappear from this horrendous imagination of your's, I want you to GET UP. And go kill that guy with the remote. Got it? Good."

  Phoenix's mask displayed a retro-style scowl on its screen. Phoenix then fought through the pain, and ripped the bear trap open with his bare hands. The soldier struggled to pull out his pistol. "SCHISSE!"

  Phoenix ripped the collar off of his neck and threw it at Franz. After that, Phoenix unleashed his inner darkness on the assistant soldier, grabbing him by his collar and choking him against the wall. Franz dug around in his desk for a weapon. "Come on.. COME ON!"