Godless Murder Machine (The Postmodern Adventures of Kill Team One Book 2)

by Mike Leon

  “Shit,” Sid curses as he cuts the wheel sharply to the right and ramps the Prius up a grassy incline. The car leaps into the air, flying over the blacktop bump that divides the grass from a small drugstore parking lot. The Prius’s creaking shocks compress all the way as the car pounds against the blacktop.

  “I need a plan, Player!” Sid yells. “These guys are really fucking sticky!”

  “I have some ideas,” the phone grumbles back. “But none of them are fabulous.”

  “I’m listening!”

  “Well, if you can make it to Fort Irwin, you can steal an M1 tank and fight them head-on.”

  “I’m skeptical about that one.”

  “It’s not completely insane. The armor on those tanks is a depleted uranium composite. It can take a pounding.”

  “Will it stop a two thousand pound VBIED running into it?”

  “Probably not.”

  “What about that satellite? Can I wreck that shit somehow?”

  “Short answer? No. They’re playing keep away with the comm van they’re using. As long as they have eyes on you, you’ll never get close.”

  “I’m sneakier than you think.”

  “Can you literally become invisible? Because that’s what it would take.”

  “Sometimes that’s not as crazy as it sounds. What else you got?”

  “Hide in the sewers.”

  “Forever?”

  “No. Morston has an elaborate sewer grid. I’m pulling up maps now. The drainage system is gargantuan—which is really weird by the way. You can go almost anywhere in the city through that thing. You can lose them down there and then find a way to 2553 Broad St.”

  “What’s at that address?”

  “The priest’s kid.”

  “How do you know that?” the chaplain says.

  “He has a satellite that can rewind time,” Sid answers.

  “I just backed the video up and followed him.”

  “What?” the chaplain exclaims.

  “Just go with it. There’s gonna be a lot of shit here that goes over your head. Especially if we have to crawl through the sewers.”

  “No,” the Player answers. “That’s the sanitary system. You don’t want to go down there. The pipes aren’t wide enough to squeeze through. Also, like you said, the shit. You’re looking for a storm sewer. That system has tunnels you can crawl through most of the time.”

  “Most of the time?”

  “Yeah. Usually. If there’s a big storm they fill up with water, but it hasn’t rained for a few days.”

  “Good. How do we get in?”

  “You know those grates along the side of the street? You pick one up and jump down there. They’re all tied into the grid somehow.”

  Sid hits the brakes and feels the chaplain smack into the back of the driver’s seat. He glances down at the joystick again, notices the setting for park is a push button kept separate from the shifter, and pushes it. He yanks the door handle and kicks his door open.

  “You!” Sid points at the cell phone salesman. “Run!”

  He has to tell him a second time before the squirrely little man goes sprinting from the stopped Prius.

  “You!” Sid growls at the chaplain, as he grabs the cell phone from the dashboard. “You want to find your kid? Come with me!” He stands up from the car and stomps toward the nearest storm drain, a steel opening in the raised curbside along the edge of the street.

  “Where are we going?” the chaplain asks from behind him.

  Sid sticks his fingers through the rusty brown grated lid, and hoists it away to unseal a square passageway in the asphalt, just wide enough for a man’s shoulders the pass through.

  “Down there,” Sid says.

  “You’re insane!” the chaplain says. “We’ll die down there!”

  “We’ll die up here.” Sid lashes out and snatches the chaplain’s forearm in his iron grip. He pulls the man over to the storm drain and pushes him to the ground.

  “What?! What are you do—?!?”

  Sid presses a boot heel to the chaplain’s back and presses him face first down the drain, screaming and protesting all the way.

  “You realize you won’t get a cell signal down there,” the Player says.

  Sid looks both ways down Wayne and spots some fast moving vehicles headed his way from the North: probably more manual torpedoes. They just keep coming. There could be dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. All of them are prepared to die—maybe they even want it. Irrational. Unrelenting. Impossible to fight in any conventional sense. They won’t stop until they blast him away.

  “I’ll figure something out,” he says.

  Then he jumps down the hole.

  ???. ??????? - ???

  “I need you to do a job.”

  “I was waiting for this call. What kind of job?”

  “Making balloon animals at a little girl’s birthday party. What kind do you think?”

  “For what you pay me I’d be a stripper on a gaycation getaway cruise across the whole Caribbean.”

  “And they say loyalty can’t be bought.”

  “Gimme details.”

  “It’s two men and a utility van. I’ll get you a location as soon as it’s clear.”

  “You want me to do the van too?”

  “Yeah. I want it completely toasted. Vaporized. Got it? I don’t care how. Use thermite, incendiaries, baking soda and vinegar in a two-liter Pepsi bottle. Whatever you keep around that dumpy apartment.”

  “Don’t diss the bachelor pad. I slay epic amounts of ass in this place.”

  “I can rewind and see if that’s true.”

  “Shit. I want you to. The implants on the bitch I brought home last night…I need to show people just so they’ll believe me. Can you make me a tape of that?”

  “No. Just get your gear in order and get downtown. I’ll let you know when it’s time.”

  EXT. CURBSIDE STORM DRAIN - DAY

  Sayyid leaps down from the passenger’s side of the stationary monster truck as a van and two small cars pull up in the little parking lot. He rushes to the curb, approaching the open sewer grate at a hurried pace. He knows better than to look down the hole. It could be a trap. He came prepared for such things.

  He pulls the pin from an M26 fragmentation grenade as he crouches down beside the grate and drops the smooth brown lemon shaped explosive inside. He covers his ears and waits. The blast resonates through the tunnels below and bellows from every open grate a mile in either direction. He leans over the edge of the grate and fans smoke away from his face.

  Others run to join him with rifles and heavier guns.

  “Let’s go!” one of them shouts. “Kill the infidel!” Three men jump down into the smoking sewer drain.

  Their exuberance is cut short by a rapid succession of gunshots that echo from all the sewer grates just as the grenade did.

  A man who arrived seconds later than the others freezes in place before jumping down the hole. He is younger than the others, his beard hardly patches of fuzz and his skin far too smooth to have been weathered by even two decades. His rifle is equipped with a long bayonet, an antiquated and useless item which tells of his inexperience in battle. His frightened eyes move from the hole up to Sayyid.

  “Wait here,” Sayyid says. It is useless to send this child to his death fighting the Beast. “And take that stupid thing off your rifle!” He leaves the green jihadist standing guard over the hole and walks off in the direction of the utility van. He pulls open the back doors.

  Samir jerks around in a startled response. He shields his eyes from the blinding glow of the sun as it invades the dark little box.

  “What now?” Sayyid barks. “How do we follow him underground?”

  “I have an idea,” Samir says.

  “Explain.”

  “He’s using a cell phone he took from this man.” Samir pulls up an aerial photo of Sid taking a large touch screen cell phone from a heavyset black man in front of Family Dollar, the same place where t
he monster truck was damaged.

  “You can hack the phone and trace it?”

  “Uh, no. That’s a lot harder than it looks on TV. What we can do is go get this guy and make him tell us his Google password. With that, we just type ‘find my phone’ into Google and we’ll get a location.”

  “That’s even easier.” Another van screeches to a stop beside them and Fatimah pushes her way out of the creaking passenger door. The black robed figure limps toward the sewer grate with furious determination. Sayyid follows her. “Where are you going?”

  “Down there,” she says, not slowing at all.

  “That’s a snake hole.”

  “If a mongoose can do it, so can I.”

  “Jazakallah.”

  “I will not fail this time.” Fatimah crouches next to the sewer grate, hangs her handicapped leg over the edge, then drops clumsily down into the dark.

  “You,” Sayyid says to the teenager with the bayonet. “Go with al-Kilij. There is a special mission for you.”

  INT. DRAINAGE TUNNEL - DAY

  “So what do you do?” Nick asks. “I’m assuming you work for the government.”

  “I work at GameStop,” Sid answers.

  The two of them are shuffling through a drainage tunnel which is just tall enough for Nick to slouch under the ceiling. He smacks his head every few feet, which is annoying, but the biggest aggravation is the slow-flowing river of water that comes up to his knees. It is pitch black in the tunnels and he shudders to think what might be floating in the cold inky blackness around his feet. With every step he worries his foot will come down on some squishy rotting horror. He tries to avoid thinking about it by asking questions he knows won’t be answered.

  “I got ya,” Nick says. “That’s your cover identity.”

  “No,” Sid replies. His voice is a deep grumble from the darkness ahead. “It’s really my job. Until they fire me. Which is probably going to happen soon.”

  “So how did you get mixed up with terrorists?”

  “It’s complicated. I spent some time living out of a cave in Afghanistan. There were some incidents.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Eh, a few villages got burned. The men were all killed. The women were carried off and raped. Some people got eaten.”

  “Your passive sentence structure is making me a little uneasy right now.”

  “I didn’t rape anybody.”

  “You know, I have several Classics degrees. I understand clever wordplay."

  “Look, I used to be Kill Team One, the world’s deadliest super soldier. I did a lot of shit. Okay?”

  “Isn’t that a science fiction thing? Like a genetically engineered super soldier?”

  “No. Why does everybody always ask that? I’m just a regular super soldier, trained from birth to do nothing but kill.”

  “That can’t be all you do.”

  “Not since I quit, but it used to be all I did. Kill people. Kill super powered mutants. Kill robots. Kill zombies. Well, technically those last two things can’t be killed because they’re not alive, but it’s all kinda the same thing.”

  “Those things aren’t real.”

  Sid laughs. “Isn’t your entire job to talk about a floating vampire guy?”

  “Vampire?”

  “Yeah. I’m just going off of movies I saw. You drink blood and believe in angels that live in a cloud city. Right?”

  “That’s… No. It’s more complicated than that.”

  “It gets even more fucked up than that?”

  “You believe in mutants and zombies, but you don’t understand how I can believe in Jesus?”

  “I’ve actually seen mutants and zombies. Was I unclear about that?”

  “I’ve seen the uncreated energies of the Father in all things.”

  “Good. Maybe you can explain this shit to me.”

  “It’s not shit. And I can’t just explain it all right here.”

  “You need to try, because I need to know everything I can about whatever mystical forces are backing those assholes in the VBIEDs up on the surface.”

  “That’s the second time you said that word. Vee-bids. What’s a vee-bid?”

  “Vehicle borne improvised explosive device. It’s basically a cobbled together high explosive missile driven by a suicide bomber.”

  “And you think God is helping those people in the VBIEDs?”

  “They say God sent them.”

  “That’s not God. That’s just hate. People have been using God as a scapegoat for it since the beginning of time.”

  “Can hate keep you breathing after two thousand pounds of RDX blows the fuck up right under your ass?”

  “I would be tempted to call that divine intervention.”

  “But you’re not sure?”

  “We believe God can do anything. He’s God. But that’s misses the point. It’s a childlike understanding thinking God will come down and magically change things for you. God is more subtle. God inspires. God works through us.”

  “Like he makes a bunch of ragheads hate me, so then they come try to incinerate me with military grade plastic explosives?”

  “I don’t think that’s the case, but God does work in mysterious ways.”

  “I don’t. When I get that phone, I’m going to put every last one of those motherfuckers in the hurt locker, bury it real deep and let ‘em bleed.”

  “Is that how it has to be?”

  “You want me to call a truce with them? We’ll kiss and make up?”

  “No. I’m a man of peace, not an idiot. But why not at least look for some other way? Violence only begets more violence.”

  “Only if you don’t use enough of it the first time.” Sid turns and looks back at Nick briefly, his face is a grey shadow in the tunnel, but it at least has some definition now. Nick tilts to see past the super soldier and notes the tiny dot of white light up ahead.

  “I don’t believe that. Jesus said to turn the other cheek.”

  “You have to tell me about this Jesus guy. What’s his deal?”

  “He’s the central figure to all Christian religion. You really don’t know?”

  “Religion is for the weak. A warrior needs no religion.”

  “That’s funny. The vets at the VFW all say there are no atheists on a battlefield.”

  “So this Jesus guy did what?”

  “Jesus is the son of God and the Messiah. He was born of a virgin, performed miracles, and preached that we should love our neighbors as we love ourselves. He was crucified by the Romans and buried, but on the third day he rose again.”

  “I’ve seen things that keep coming back after you kill them. They’re never good news.”

  “There’s a vent or something up there,” Nick says.

  “I know,” Sid replies. “Pick up the pace a little.”

  The two of them slog their way forward faster through the stream, Nick gritting his teeth even harder in grim anticipation of any ghastly surprises. Thankfully, he encounters nothing but empty tunnel and murky water as he makes his way.

  They reach the source of the light, which is another storm drain like the one they used to enter the system. It is a small room, only six or eight feet across, but with more overhead clearance than the tunnel. The water flows through the chamber and into another tunnel that opens along the opposite wall. The sound of a passing car breezes through the reddened steel grate above them as Nick looks up into the blinding bars of sunlight. He holds his hand up to his face as his eyes adjust as he stretches his back to full height for the first time in what feels like miles.

  “I bet I can get a signal here,” Sid says. He holds the gigantic cracked cell phone up near the storm grate and dials a number on the surface of the broken glass.

  “Who are you calling?” Nick says. “Can’t we just climb out here?”

  “No. They’ll see us. They’re watching, remember? We need to find a way there without leaving the tunnels.”

  Nick doesn’t like that answer at all
. The tunnels are a disgusting nightmare.

  “Do I actually need to be with you?” he asks.

  “Your kid might not believe me when I find him,” Sid says. “I guess I can smack him around if I need to.”

  “I’ll stay.” Nick rolls his eyes.

  He leans back against the cold concrete and rests his head as he listens to the quiet trickle of the flowing water. He can hear the low volume ringing through the phone’s speaker as Sid waits for someone to pick up. He slows his breathing to listen for the voice on the other end as the conversation clicks to a start.

  “Where are you?” says the Player in his metallic robot voice. Nick can just barely make out the words. The echoing properties of the chamber assist in his eavesdropping.

  “I was hoping you could tell me,” Sid says into the phone. He reaches up to the grate and pulls himself up out of the water to peek through the overflow slot cut in the curb above. It takes Nick a moment to notice that he is doing it with only one arm while he holds the phone in his other hand. It’s an impressive feat.

  Then he hears something besides the trickle of the stream and the conversation next to him. It’s a plopping sound, maybe something on the street. No. He lowers his head. It’s coming from the tunnel they just walked through. It’s a faint splashing, like something flapping through the water, maybe some kind of animal.

  “I’m looking out of a grate by—there’s a street sign. I’m at 7th and...G?”

  “Sid?” Nick says. “You hear that? What is that?”

  “I think it’s her,” Sid says, lowering the phone away from his mouth for a moment. “She’s been following us since we came down here.”

  “Her? Her who?”

  “Hang on. I’m getting directions. Say that again?”

  Nick turns and looks down the tunnel but sees nothing in the dark. He only hears the sound, not like someone running and splashing. It’s too slow for that. The splashes are too far apart, like it might be someone hopping, or stepping forward with one foot and dragging the other…