by Mike Leon
“Yeah. Black metal. It means the music is black, not the peo—”
“You mean like Gorgoroth.”
“You know Gorgoroth?”
“I know music. My dad was a roadie for a bunch of bands.”
“Do you know Venom?”
“Yeah.”
“What about Nekrogoblikon?”
“Yeah. Do you know D.A.?”
“No.”
“It’s cool. They’re super obscure.”
“Did you just do a hipster name drop in the freezer?”
“Yeah.” She snickers. “I feel a little warmer now.”
Stephen doesn’t feel warmer at all.
“So does your dad have like, the hook up at the record companies?”
“He died a long time ago.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. He really wasn’t around much. With tours and stuff.”
“I know how that goes. And when my dad is around we just fight. That’s how I ended up staying with Gash. I ran away.”
“That probably wasn’t a great move.”
“Yeah. It’s weird like that. Yesterday I thought he was the shit, you know? Like if you asked me what he was like I’d have described like a leather jacketed demi-god with a wall of flames behind him and bats flying in the air and just wailing so hard on guitar. But then I met him, and it’s not like that at all. It’s really like one of those scary hobos you see talking to himself on the sidewalk, and you don’t know if he’s gonna hurt you or whatever, and I just wanna walk to the other side of the street. I just want to go home. You know?”
“Yeah. Me too.”
“We will. Somebody will find us. I promise.”
EXT. T-MOBILE - DAY
T-Mobile. It’s a strange name. What does the T stand for? Nick wonders these things as he parks on the edge of the lot in front of the smoothly painted little red brick building. The spaces up against the sidewalk in front of the store were all full, even though the store looked almost empty. The nail salon next door must stay busy. He gets out of his Prius and looks up at the big pink sign and the glowing pink lights bordering the windows that make up the entire front of the store. He looks to his right at a little hamburger stand, a tiny building, hardly more than a tool shed with no room for indoor seating, only a collection of picnic tables outside in the grass surrounding the structure. For a second he’s fascinated by the juxtaposition of the enormous tech giant next to a tiny mom and pop grill. Then he takes notice of the overwhelming number of grill patrons staring into their hands as they sit at the picnic tables, ignoring their company.
Nick remembers the days before cell phones, days in which people had to make plans significantly ahead of actually following through with them. He remembers when he had to show up on time for dinner dates and such, lest incur the wrath and worry of people wondering if he stood them up—or something terrible happened to him. Kids don’t act like that now. They move like hummingbirds, flitting from one flower to the next, no planning, no discipline. Maybe it’s a shame. Maybe he’s just a cranky old coot.
He opens the door to the T-Mobile dealer and immediately finds his definition of cranky to be inadequate.
“I signed a contract! Now get me a phone that works! This thing hasn’t worked for two weeks! TWO WEEKS!” The shouting comes from a slightly hefty looking man in a crisp black wool jacket with silvering hair gelled back into little spikes. He points angrily at a newer looking iPhone that sits on the countertop between him and a worried looking young man dressed in a polo shirt bearing the T-Mobile logo in no less than five locations.
“I can’t really find anything wrong with it though,” answers the sales guy. He’s Todd, the store manager, according to his shiny gold name tag. “It makes calls just fine here in the store.”
“Are you saying I’m a liar? Do I look like a liar? Who’s the manager here?”
“Oh-Okay,” Todd stutters. “Let me see what else I can do.”
“And I don’t want the same piece of shit iPhone I got last time. I want the new iPhone. The one that came out last week!”
“Hi,” Nick politely interjects.
Todd and the angry customer both turn to look at him curiously.
“I’m just here looking for—”
“Hey!” the customer barks. “Wait your turn, buddy!”
“I have kind of an emergency...”
“So do I! I need a new iPhone!”
“What’s wrong?” Todd asks.
“Are you gonna do your job or chat with this guy?” the customer says with a beleaguered sneer.
“I uh,” Todd studders. “I—” He’s flummoxed, but his eyebrows raise with a fear that is too great to be brought on solely by a disappointed cellular subscriber. He’s spying over Nick’s shoulder, through the wide glass storefront that looks out over the sidewalk and the cars parked at the curb. He’s looking at something outside.
Nick turns to look for himself just as the front door opens and a man who can be described only as a harbinger of death stomps onto the pink carpet that fills the showroom. His black shirt and army camouflage pants are caked with dirt and soot. His face is coated in a layer of sticky blood and oily black filth. His arms, crosshatched by old scars, drip blood from new wounds where tiny glass shards erupt from his skin. A dust covered and badly scuffed motorcycle stands on the sidewalk behind him. A laminated paper card hangs from a lanyard around his neck and it reads: Join PowerUp Rewards today!
“You!” bellows the interloper, his bloody hand outstretched in accusation of Todd, his voice a booming threat. “I want the phone numbers for all of the cell phones you sold two days ago at fourteen twelve!”
“I— I don’t know…” Todd whimpers.
“What the hell is this?” the angry customer says. “Everybody gets to cut in line today? Wait your turn, asshole!”
Walking Death growls at the man. “Leave. I don’t have time for this.”
“You don’t have time for me?” the customer squawks at Todd with an appalled tone.
“He looks serious, mister,” Todd squeaks.
“He looks serious? I’m serious! I’m the customer and the customer is always—”
The ragged and bloody stranger darts across the room and snatches the customer by the scruff of his neck before he can speak another word. The stranger slams the man’s face down against the iPhone lying on the countertop as he takes his feet out from under him. Pieces of the shattered phone stick to the customer’s face as the stranger lifts it away from the counter. He drops the poor limp bastard in a heap next to the counter.
“The numbers,” the stranger says to Todd again.
“I’ll try,” Todd says. “But I don’t know what numbers you want.”
“The numbers you sold at fourteen twelve two days ago.”
“Where?” Todd whimpers back. “Fourteen twelve?”
“It’s military time,” Nick says. “It means two o’clock. Two twelve.”
The stranger growls again. He shifts his coal black eyes to Nick. They are animal eyes, depthless and empty. Looking into them is like peering into the abyss and having it peer back. Nick averts his gaze.
“Okay, I’m looking,” Todd says. He clicks away at the computer on the counter next to the smashed iPhone.
Suddenly, the sound of an electronically synthesized generic cellular ringtone fills the space of the room. Nick looks to Todd with rising dread. This lunatic just smashed some guy’s face in over a three second interruption. He might burn the whole store down with them inside if Todd’s phone is ringing.
Todd looks awkwardly back at Nick and shrugs.
“That’s me,” the stranger says. He reaches into his pants pocket and produces a cell phone which is almost the size of an iPad. Its screen is badly cracked, though it still displays an image under the spiderwebs of smashed glass. The stranger sets it on the counter next to the broken iPhone. “Yeah,” he says.
“You’ve got company,” calls the instantly recognizable voice of Optimus Prime
, fearless leader of the Autobot Transformers. “There’s a van headed south on Wayne now. You have less than a minute.”
“Fuck!” the stranger curses. “Does this store have a back door?”
“No. Wha—Is that Optimus Prime?” Todd says.
“Am I on speaker?” Optimus Prime says. “Why am I on speaker?”
“The numbers?” the stranger asks again.
“Do you know the name of the guy who bought them? I can find them faster that way.”
“I don’t have a name. Try Muhammad.”
“Wait. You mean that weird middle eastern looking guy?”
“Probably.”
“He was so weird. He wanted like thirty prepay phones. Um, Aman, Anan, Adnan!”
“Adnan Nasser?” Nick says.
“Yeah! That’s his name!” Todd says. The coincidence is frightening. That was the full name of the man shot dead in the mosque by Ron Dunham. “You know him?”
“We don’t have time for this!” the stranger yells. “We have to go now!”
“I’m trying to find the numbers!”
“There’s no time! Follow me!” The stranger scoops up the enormous broken cell phone from the counter and stomps out through the front door, leaving Todd and Nick standing in confusion with the unconscious and bleeding man the stranger bludgeoned.
“Should we follow him?” Todd says.
“I think we should,” Nick says. He doesn’t know why. He can’t even hazard a guess at the reason. It simply feels like the smart thing to do.
Nick pushes open the front door and steps out onto the sidewalk as the stranger pulls a handgun from his pants and points it out into the street.
“Oh shit!” Todd says, stepping through the door behind him.
“Run!” the stranger yells as he aims the gun at something off in the distance.
Looking over the stranger’s shoulder, Nick sees a big black utility van with rust collected around the wheel wells and a grill half punched out by some unknown accident. It speeds down Wayne Way in their direction, blowing through a stop light and then weaving off the road to cut through the parking lot of the hamburger stand next to T-Mobile.
The stranger fires a single shot at the van. The vehicle swerves sharply left, then right. It tips, its driver’s side wheels lifting up from the ground as it speeds toward the T-Mobile store. The van hops the short blacktop bump between the burger stand parking lot and the phone store before Nick realizes the horrifying reality. It isn’t going to stop.
“Go! Go! Go!” the stranger screams as he dashes through the parking lot toward the street.
Nick grabs Todd by the arm and tugs as the store manager looks on in a confused daze. He takes off behind the stranger, loses his grip on Todd, and then jumps back to grab at him again. The second time, the kid gets it. They both run from the building as the van careens into the side of it, smashing through the brick wall with a loud crash. Nick looks back at the store and sees the van lying sideways in the middle of the showroom on the other side of the glass. He slows his pace.
“Keep running!” yells the stranger. It sounds like a good idea.
“Keep running!” Nick repeats back to Todd.
Then the world turns grey and Nick comes off his feet. The ambient noise of the burger stand and passing motorists is drowned out by the loudest silence imaginable. Silence gives way to shrill ringing and Nick looks back at the T-Mobile store as he realizes what has happened. The building is gone, replaced by a cloud of blackened smoke.
Next to him, the stranger pulls Todd up from the ground. “You got a car?” the stranger shouts.
“Yeah,” Todd groggily says. “It’s—” He points back toward the cloud of destruction that once was a T-Mobile store and several automobiles. “It’s gone.”
“This day just keeps getting worse,” the stranger says.
Nick’s eyes dart left and right, at the sky and the blacktop underneath him. He realizes he’s sideways and pushes himself up, then turns his head to look both ways again. His Toyota Prius is still parked right behind them.
“I have a car!” he yells, as if waking up from a dream world where cars do not exist and having to remind himself. “This is my car!”
“Keys!” the stranger holds out his hand for them as Nick stands up from the ground.
“I’ll drive,” Nick says, digging into his pocket to produce his WWJD keychain.
“Keys!” the stranger demands even louder. Nick doesn’t argue. He hands over the keys. The stranger opens the driver door and motions back to Todd. “You! You’re coming with me!”
Todd gets into the car without looking at the stranger or Nick, as if his eyes have lost the ability to focus on anything. Nick has seen that look before. At the VFW they call it the thousand-yard-stare. Nick opens the rear passenger door and jumps into the back seat to join them inside the car.
EXT. T-MOBILE- DAY
Sid sits holding a keychain full of doodads up to the steering column of a Toyota Prius that is not his. The keychain does not include a key, only a little black remote with buttons to lock and unlock the car doors. He looks to the feeble twerp in the seat next to him and sees nothing but useless shellshock staring back. Then one of the rear doors opens and the car’s owner dives into the vehicle.
The owner is a chaplain. Sid can tell from the bizarre uniform he wears, which includes a bright white choker or collar of some kind with black pants and shirt. There was a man like this at the base he operated out of in Afghanistan, though he was of little interest to Sid. The old man always said religion is for the weak. A warrior has no religion.
“How do I start this fucking thing?!” Sid yells back at the chaplain.
“It has a button!” the chaplain says, pointing to a round blue button to the right of the steering wheel. It says POWER over a standby emblem. “Push that!”
Sid pokes the button and the car emits a faint click, then nothing. The dashboard comes alive with brightly colored lights and a video display depicting an image of a car.
“It’s not working!” Sid says.
“It’s on!” the chaplain says.
“I can’t hear it!”
“How can you hear anything?!”
Sid will never understand why people are such pussies about explosions. That wasn’t even that big of a bomb. It was a child’s firecracker by some standards.
He reaches to shift the car into reverse and discovers a small blue joystick rather than a gearshift. It sits in a lower case h shaped groove surrounded by the letters R, N, D, and B. The B is a mystery, but Sid doesn’t have time to ask about it. He moves the joystick to R and mashes his foot down on the gas pedal. The front wheels spin before gaining traction on the blacktop and pushing the car backward. He cuts the wheel hard and pounds his left foot down on the e-brake. The car spins into a squealing J turn and the chaplain screams even louder than the tires. Sid slaps the joystick left and down to the D and powers forward, taking the car around the shattered building and tearing out into the street. A small sedan brakes hard and blares a horn at him as he turns in front of it onto Wayne Way.
“Who are you?” the chaplain says. “Who are these people? Why did they blow up the phone store?”
“I ask the questions!” Sid says. He slaps the cell phone sales guy on the shoulder. “Where else can I get the phone numbers I’m looking for?!”
The phone store manager continues to gaze forward in slack-jawed dismay. “Computers were in the store. That guy was still in the store…” he says.
“He was an asshole!” Sid yells back. “The numbers! Where?”
The phone salesman shrugs, shaking his head slowly. Sid smacks him in the mouth and that seems to jostle some sense into him.
“I need those numbers to stop this!”
“It’s all gone,” Todd mumbles. “All gone.”
“I might know where the numbers are,” the chaplain says. Sid whips his head around to glare at the man, who shrinks back fearfully into his seat.
“
Where?”
“Adnan Nasser died two days ago, in a… an accident. I was there. I saw it. His phone had a bunch of contacts that weren’t names on it. They were, I think, I think they were license plate numbers.”
“Sid,” the Player chimes in. “That HAS to be it.”
“Where’s the phone now?” Sid asks. “Who has it? The police?” He isn’t looking forward to shooting his way through a police station to seize this stupid cell phone.
“My son has it,” the chaplain says.
“Great!” Sid says. It’s the best news he’s heard all day. He should be able to wrap this up within the hour now. “Call him up and get those numbers from him!”
“I can’t. He won’t talk to me.”
“You have to be fucking with me… Why?”
“He ran away! I’ve been looking for him since last night!”
“We need to find him!” Sid yells.
“That’s why I was at T-Mobile! To have them trace the phone and tell me where he is!”
“We can’t do that,” Todd says.
“What do you mean?!” the chaplain shouts back.
“He means you went to the wrong place!” the Player shouts. “International telecom conglomerates don’t trust user’s private location data to peon retail clerks. That guy probably doesn’t know an IMSI from an IMEI.”
“A what?” Todd says.
“Where was the last place you saw your son?” Player says.
“Uh, last night. I chased him outside a club downtown called The Abyss.”
“Sid!” the Player shouts, before the chaplain can finish. “The white Camry coming at you in the oncoming lane!”
Sid pushes down the power window to his left in preparation. The car the player described is rushing down the street just on the other side of the double yellow a third of a mile out. Only one other car shares the road with them.
“I see it!” Sid says.
“See what?” the chaplain asks.
Sid hangs the Glock out the driver’s side window and blasts away at the Camry. He’s moving fast and firing one-handed at a fast moving target which is way out of the effective range of this pistol. He pops off seven rounds before he scores a hit on the driver. The Camry weaves unsteadily, but remains in its lane speeding toward them. They have to go off-road before the Camry reaches them.