by Mike Leon
He knocked over seventeen trees on his journey through the woods, ten miles grumbling and snarling at an enemy that wasn’t there, and punching rugged bark so fiercely that any normal man would be left sobbing over hands broken and bleeding. But he is no normal man. Now he has reached this place on a mission to redirect his frustrations.
If Lily Hoffman won’t fuck him, if she insists on simply playing him for lobster and strange trinkets to no end, then he will do without her. Fuck that bitch. He’ll find another one.
He barely makes it past the front registers before he sees an enticing prospect. He only glimpses her briefly as she pushes an aluminum shopping cart past the end of the frozen food aisle. She’s small, shorter than Lily and more narrowly faced. Tiny red denim shorts expose all the smooth skin of her legs and a flimsy grey tank top hardly covers her top. Her shiny yellow hair sits messily affixed to the top of her head with strands dangling in her face.
He moves quietly, careful not to attract her attention, keeping at least fifty feet of clearance between them and weaving between displays of cola and cereal boxes in the main drive aisle for cover. She doesn’t seem very aware of her surroundings, but that is apparently typical of Americans, and it’s unlikely she would spot him even if she were looking. His technique was conveyed to him by the old man, and to the old man by a ninja master.
She leads him through the underwear section. Big prints of women wearing panties hang over him in silent provocation. He wants to tear off those panties and fuck them—all of them. But he can’t. They’re not here. They might not even be real. The girl with the shopping cart is here. She’s real.
He can’t decide how to approach her. If she were an enemy sentry, he would take her from behind, with a knife to the kidney. A battle tank he would leap atop, tossing grenades down the turret hatches. A zombie he would dismember with a machete or shoot through the head. All of those things he understands…
The girl turns her shopping cart and passes under a high hanging placard which signifies aisle twenty-six: toothpaste, family planning, facial cleansers, bath oils, feminine hygiene.
Sid follows her down aisle twenty-six and silently approaches her from behind as she inspects a pink and white package, turning it over in her hands. He stops short of actually touching her and looms over her shoulder at the unknown parcel. It’s a box of Stayfree maxi pads.
“Hi,” Sid says.
The girl lets out a yelp and spins away from him. She clutches the box of maxi pads to her chest instinctively. It is a cowardly reaction, but Sid expects no less from normal people.
“Oh, god. You scared me,” the girl says, huffing deeply as her heart pounds away.
“You’re very pretty,” Sid says.
“What?” She rattles her head from side to side. “What happened to your hands?” She refers to his bleeding knuckles, split open punching trees on the way here, or maybe the exposed scars on his arms which he did not bother to hide as usual. He is also dirty with bits of brush clinging to his black t shirt. These things are a distraction though. Sid gets to the point.
“Would you like to fuck?” he says.
“Wh—No. Get away from me, you creep!”
She backs away quickly, putting the shopping cart between them.
“I said go away! I’ll call the police!” she says.
Sid grunts and turns away.
He doesn’t walk a full ten feet before he spots another pretty young thing, alone and unaware, haplessly sauntering down the outer aisle while sipping a cream colored frozen drink of some kind. She has big green eyes that sparkle in the bright lights of the store.
“Hey,” Sid says, attracting her jaded half-attention. “You want to have sex with me?”
She sips her drink once as she looks him over suspiciously.
“Is this a social experiment?” she asks.
“No. I just think you’re pretty. Do you want to have sex?”
“This has to be a psych assignment.” She laughs, then looks at him more closely, recollecting something he knows never happened. “Hey, aren’t you in my class? With Neumeier?”
“No.”
“Yeah. You sit in the corner all the time, in the back?”
Sid backs away quietly, avoiding her question. She eyes him curiously until he loses her around the corner of the snack aisle. He moves quickly to the other end and then passes several endcaps. He turns into the book section and happen upon another girl.
This one is standing in front of a rack populated with smutty paperback novels and flipping through one of them slowly. Sid has seen these things before, and was promptly disappointed by their lack of pictures, but this girl seems pretty engrossed and that can only indicate that she’s looking for what he has. Right?
“Want to have sex?” he asks.
“Gross. I have a boyfriend.”
Sid growls with frustration and the girl returns the book to the shelf and backs away without taking her eyes off him.
EXT. ???????????? - DAY
Darkness. Grains of filth. Blood. The stench. The stench is almost as bad as the throbbing pain that fills every centimeter of flesh. She forces open her one good eye and tries to scream in the face of a rotting skull but only a hoarse gag comes from her mouth with dripping bile and a broken tooth. She tries to move but her cracked bones and crushed sinews will not allow it. Another body rests atop hers, its weight three times her own. She wishes only for this to end. She wants to die. She wants it to all be over.
“Fatimah,” a voice calls from above.
It takes all her strength to turn her neck only a tiny bit, but it is worth it. She sees him there for the first time, bathed in light and glory at the lip of the pit where they have thrown her. He is clothed in a gleaming suit of armor. His voice is heavenly and soft.
“Fatimah,” he calls to her. “Fatimah...”
“Fatimah!” someone jostles her, yelling into her ear. She rattles with the world around her and the magical man disappears with the bodies and the rot and stench. She opens her eyes, this time in the real world, and looks to al-Kilij as he tugs at her arm through the open window of her van. “Fatimah wake up! They see him! We’ve found him again!”
“Where?” she rasps.
INT. GAMESTOP - DAY
Sid shoves his way through the front door at GameStop and considers tearing that stupid chime off the rear wall as it beeps. He doesn’t need that chime. He can hear when the door opens. He can see it. It’s right there. The only way anybody would need that fucking thing is if they’re not paying attention to their surroundings. Inattention is for the weak. A warrior has no inattention.
“Welcome to GameStop would you like to pre-order—” Jordan starts, before looking up from one of the computers to see who has entered the store. “Oh.”
The last few seconds of an advertisement blare through the speakers on the overhead television. “So reserve Call of Honor: Comfort Battalion today!” A woman’s pleasurable squeal punctuates that proclamation. “It’s time to do some comforting!”
“What happened to your hands?” Jordan asks as he observes the black medical tape wrappings around Sid’s hands. He found the tape at Target and wrapped them on his walk over.
“Makiwara. It’s a Karate thing.”
“Are you okay?” Jordan asks. “You seem kind of bleh.”
“I’m a little edgy right now,” Sid says. “I spent all last night getting cockteased.”
“We’ve all been there, Dutch,” Jordan says. “If you’re this flustered, she must really be something.”
“There might not be another girl for me.” After the experience in Target, it has become a pressing reality.
“Dutch, if your love for this young lady is real and strong, you’ll stay true to her and resist those lustful urges until she’s ready and you’re ready, within the blessed sanctity of marriage.”
“What?”
“My pastor shared a great tip with me,” Jordan says. “When Stephanie holds my hand or rubs my back, an
d it fans the flames of passion a little, to where something we’ll regret might happen, I look at my purity ring and I think about Jesus.”
Sid dumped two guys named Jesus in that Mexican mass grave along with the real Dutch Van Houten. If Jordan is connected to one of them it could lead to trouble. Sid doesn’t want to stop being Dutch Van Houten. He likes being Dutch Van Houten. For now.
“Tell me about Jesus,” Sid says.
“Jesus is all around us,” Jordan replies.
“You mean he has ears on us right now?”
“Oh yeah. And everybody in the world.”
“I’m really confused. Is this a real person we’re talking about?”
The chime sounds again, louder than ever before. It seems to assail Sid like an air horn blown directly into his ear. He nearly punches a hole in the wall.
Bruce pushes his way into the front of the store carrying a big brown shipping box in both hands and smiling brightly.
“Guess what I got for you!” Bruce says, zeroing in on Jordan.
“Oh no,” Jordan squeaks.
“There are a hundred controllers in this box! All for you to pack up!”
“No. Please no more. I can’t.”
“Come on,” Bruce says as he treads through the store to the back room. “Let’s get this box open.”
Jordan somberly follows Bruce to the back and leaves Sid at the front counter with nothing but the overhead display to accompany him.
“Get ready for Battleground 3: Mobile Operations Assault Recon Fireteam Pandora Seven: Future Fighting Shooter! Over 57 minutes of single-player tutorial action! 32 huge all-new and completely original multiplayer maps, including Dusty Haji Town, Dusty Haji Town 2, Dusty Raghead Town, and Bombed-out Eastern Europe! Over 6 different guns included with the game and 178 purchasable from Xbox Live or WhateverSonyCallsTheirThing®!”
The store’s phone rings. Sid answers it in the middle of the first ring.
“Thank you for calling GameStop, where you can pre-order Polybius 2. This is Dutch. How can I help you?”
“Hi,” a squeakily friendly voice greets. “I’m looking for a good video game for my grandson. Could you recommend something?”
“What kind of games does he like?”
“Well, he’s interested in battles. Oh. And he also loves toads. Do you have anything with battles and toads?”
Sid hangs up the phone. The overhead television continues to blare away. “Get Battleground 3: MOARFPS: FFS today! And look for exclusive items that make miniscule cosmetic in-game changes hidden in select twelve packs of Mountain Dew Game Fuel!”
The phone rings again. Sid picks it up.
“Thank you for calling GameStop, where you can pre-order Lego Fifty Shades of Grey. This is Dutch. How can I help you?”
“I just called about a video game for my grandson.” It’s the same squeaky voice from the last call. “I think we were disconnected.”
“Don’t call here anymore,” Sid says.
“Oh. Oh my. Was it something I said?”
“We don’t have Battletoads. We’ll never have Battletoads. Stop calling.”
Sid mashes the off button and drops the phone down on the counter. He sighs and looks out the store’s front window at the sunny afternoon on the other side of the glass. He sees something, a girl—the same girl who called him a creep in Target. She’s tiny in the distance, pushing her cart to her car across the strip mall’s parking lot. Sid zeroes in on her with his eagle eyes.
“Do it. Take her.”
A voice buzzes in his ear now like an insect, as if his own desperate ego is telling him how to get the thing he wants—the only thing he really wants.
“If she won’t give it to you, take it from her. Put a knife to her throat and show her who’s in charge. Violate her. Hurt her. Make her scream. Then make her die slowly...”
It sounds like something his insane brother would say.
“...in Plainfield, the most realistic serial killer simulator ever released! Lure your victims. Butcher their bodies. Fashion belts from their nipples. Even play online to see who can collect the most excised vulvae before the time limit!”
The phone rings again. Sid snatches it up.
“I’m going to find you and buttfuck you with that Battletoads game until you’re shitting so much blood it just feels like a warm enema!” he growls.
“You have to listen to me,” proclaims a deep, computer generated voice. It has no intonation and the sentences blend together devoid of any natural stopping points. “There isn’t much time they’re coming.”
“Go fuck yourself!”
“Sid,” the robo caller says, using his real name. “This isn’t a prank they’re coming you have to get the hell out of there.”
EXT. THE HIGHWAY - DAY
The pack roars around her. Twenty cars and motorcycles too. Engines rumble and men roar for blood. Outside her window, one of the bike riders holds both hands in the air as he zips forward between the cars all on their way to the kill. On the radio, Sayyid preaches death to the infidel.
إِنَّمَا جَزَاءُ الَّذِينَ يُحَارِبُونَ اللَّهَ وَرَسُولَهُ وَيَسْعَوْنَ فِي الأَرْضِ فَسَادًا أَنْ يُقَتَّلُوا أَوْ يُصَلَّبُوا أَوْ تُقَطَّعَ أَيْدِيهِمْ وَأَرْجُلُهُمْ مِنْ خِلافٍ أَوْ يُنْفَوْا مِنَ الأَرْضِ ذَلِكَ لَهُمْ خِزْيٌ فِي الدُّنْيَا وَلَهُمْ فِي الآخِرَةِ عَذَابٌ عَظِيمٌ
There are so many of them. It all seems so easy. Fatimah slows her van. She doesn’t know why. It’s a feeling in her gut, or maybe a premonition. The Beast will see them coming. It is too direct, too loud, too angry, too certain.
EXT. GAMESTOP - DAY
Sid kicks his way through the store’s front door and onto the gray concrete sidewalk outside. He already hears them rumbling faintly in the distance. It’s the sound of cars, but not the hum of the usual traffic. This is thunder on the horizon.
He holds the store phone to his ear and shouts into the mouthpiece.
“How many?” he says.
The strange robo voice answers. “Thirty cars all different makes twelve technicals nine motorcycles.”
“How? Who are you?”
“They’re watching you with a satellite I’m in their system you need to run now get a vehicle and go.”
“I can take these guys.”
“NoNoNoNoNoNo.” It echoes at a speed only a machine could manage, each word beginning before the last concludes, and both continuing together. “You are not listening they have enough explosives to knock over the Freedom Tower and self-preservation is not on their list of priorities this a suicide mission with one objective YOU now go run.”
Sid could kill them in a shootout. He’d funnel them with a building or some other landscape feature, strip a weapon from the first one he contacts and mow down the rest in a tunnel fight. Easy. But if they’re actually trying to blow themselves up, that changes the game completely. The answer to suicide bombers is to take them out at a distance, but when there are this many of them moving that fast… the voice on the phone is right. It’s time for a tactical withdrawal.
Sid turns and runs back into the store. Jordan looks up from the computer and once again mechanically recites half his stock greeting.
“Welcome to GameStop. Would you like to pre-order Twerk Twerk Revolution—oh,” he stops. “It’s you.”
“You need to get out of here,” Sid says. “You and Bruce both.” He jogs through the front of the store and kicks the door open to the stockroom. Bruce stares blankly at him over a pile of Wii accessories as he holds a cell phone to his head. “You need to get the fuck out of here. Now.”
“Hang on a second Dennis,” Bruce says. He moves the phone away from his head to ask Sid his next question. “You mean like I’m wasting my life here, or we’re standing in the kill box?”
“Kill box,”
Sid says.
“Fuck!” Bruce puts the phone back to his ear. “Dennis, I’ll call you back.” He hangs up without listening for a response.
“What are you guys talking about?” Jordan asks, trailing behind Sid from the front room.
“You don’t need details,” Bruce answers. “If he says we need to go, we need to go. Come on.”
Sid leaps straight up, directing his fist at the flimsy panel ceiling above them. He punches a tile out of the way and snatches the grip of a hidden weapon in one fluid motion. He drops back down to the floor holding a selective fire 5.7x28mm FN P90 PDW with holographic optics, a two-point strap, and two packed fifty round magazines banded to it with electrical tape.
“I knew that was there,” Bruce says.
“Oh God. He has a gun!” Jordan immediately pisses his pants.
Sid stomps through the stockroom and kicks the back door open. “Go! Go! Go!” he yells. The sound of roaring engines fills the air. The fleet is closing in. The chainsaw whir of motorcycle engines comes from just the other side of the building.
“Come on, Chewcaca! We gotta get out of here!” Bruce drags Jordan, bawling his eyes out, through the back door. The lot behind GameStop is a wasteland of gray gravel with weeds sprouting up through it in sporadic locations. Bruce’s Mustang and Jordan’s Prius sit parked near the back door. A massive brown steel roll-off dumpster sits sixty feet from the building, at the base of a towering thirty foot floodlight structure. The store is on the end of the strip mall, so the fleet doesn’t have much to go around.
“Please don’t kill me!” Jordan blubbers, snot already dangling from his chin. “I don’t want to die! I’ve never even kissed a girl before!”
The first motorcycle comes around the corner of the building, the rider shouting a stream of phlegmy nonsense as he raises a Mac-10 from the handlebars to take aim. He’s a small man wearing a leather jacket and grey sweat pants. He rides without a helmet and his head is wrapped in a black bandana displaying white Arabic script. Sid doesn’t recognize him, but the ragspeak and the bandana are all the details he needs.