by Mike Leon
“I’m in your base killin’ your dudes,” says the intruder. “This is for blowing up my store, dickbag!”
Samir sees the gun flash five times and five empty casings eject from the side. He tries to move forward, or to run away, but his body refuses to respond. He feels nothing from his shoulders down. In a few seconds, blood begins to pour from the holes in his chest. Breathing becomes impossible. His lungs feel crumpled, tiny, and refuse to inflate. He waits to die as he watches the intruder drop a backpack on the floor at his feet.
“I’m about to blow the van,” the man says. That’s when Samir notices the Bluetooth earpiece clipped to the right side of the intruder’s head. “There anything you want out of it?”
He listens in silence for a moment.
“There’s nothing I can do about that. I already told him she’s a triflin’ ass ho.”
Quiet.
“Aw yeah. He’s a chip off the old block alright. You know he had this idea too? He called me when you were telling the priest how to do CPR. That was cute by the way.”
Quiet.
“Yeah. I’m going home after this. I got that new Call of Honor. You like video games? No? Figures.”
The intruder jumps from the passenger door and is gone. The inside of the van slowly dims in silence for a few seconds before it ignites in a conflagration that boils Samir’s skin. He tries to scream, but is unable. He strains harder and finally emits a ragged whine as his eyes begin to melt.
INT. HIGH-RISE OFFICE - NIGHT
The million lights of the New York City skyline twinkle like stars through the immense window pane that is the outer wall of this office. The reflection of an old white man in a business suit sits among the skyscrapers like a ghostly apparition the size of the Cloverfield monster. He swivels in his expensive leather seat at the click of high heeled shoes on the marble floor.
“Mr. Stromwell?” The words come from Diane, his personal assistant. She’s a short, thin woman, beautiful like all the women in his immediate employ. She stands alone in the middle of the open doorframe with only darkness behind her. “He’s on line one.”
Ames Stromwell nods solemnly. He reaches for the telephone on his massive oak desk and takes a deep breath before he picks it up. No polite protocols precede the conversation.
“Tell me, Stromwell,” his unseen master calmly asks without any queue, as if he can see Stromwell holding the phone to his ear to know he is listening. “Is it over?”
“Yes,” Stromwell says. He hesitates to say the rest. “Sayyid is dead. His band has been destroyed. The Beast lives.”
“Where is he now?”
“We… We don’t know. Somehow the satellite’s encryption has changed. We’re locked out.” His passive language obscures the upsetting reality which was explained to him by his technicians already. Someone hijacked the device. It is possible they were using it for days or months without any of his people noticing, and now they’ve taken it entirely for themselves.
“And Fatimah?”
“The girl was killed as well.”
“I see.”
Stromwell prepares to be admonished, perhaps even killed. He closes his eyes tightly and bows his head toward the desk. His face is flushed and sticky.
The operation was a catastrophic failure. Worse than the loss of Sayyid’s fighters and equipment is the loss of the satellite. It was developed by unknown agents far more sophisticated than those at Stromwell’s company, or anywhere else for that matter, and acquired for a substantial portion of his net worth. It is not replaceable.
“This is according to His will,” his master responds. His pleased tone catches Stromwell by surprise.
“It is?”
“Yes. If God had willed, He would have avenged Himself upon them; but that He may try some of you by means of others. And those who are slain in the way of God, He will not send their works astray.”
“Yes, Imam. May He be glorified and exalted.”
SUPER: THREE DAYS LATER
INT. URBAN OUTFITTERS - DAY
Lily holds up a black graphic tee from a wooden shelving unit and presses it against Sid’s chest. It has shiny red print that says HONOR AND TRUTH, surrounded by more shiny red printed images of eagles and doodles.
“You would look good in this,” Lily says.
“This is shiny,” Sid says, looking down at the shirt against his chest. “It’s practically a shoot me sign.”
“That would matter if you weren’t impervious to bullets.”
“I’m not impervious to bullets,” Sid sneers.
“It’s definitely not up for debate anymore.”
“Well I’m definitely not invisible, and this thing lights up like an AA battery.”
Lily folds the shirt into thirds and places it back on the display.
“Not everything you wear has to have a, uh…” She rolls her eyes. “...combat application.”
“Maybe,” Sid says. He picks up a ball cap with a New York Yankees logo and studies it abnormally. “Is that Japanese?”
“No.” Lily keeps on walking through the store. Sid drops the hat and saunters along behind her.
“It just seems like, from what you’ve shown me so far, the more hazardous something is the more girls want me to wear it,” he says.
“That’s not true,” Lily retorts.
“You tried to get me to wear a suit.”
“You would look hot in a suit.”
“Those things are death traps! You know how many guys I’ve strangled with their ties?” He thinks about it for a second. “Six.”
“Whatever.”
A woman wearing too much makeup and a set of headphones awkwardly approaches them from the store’s cash registers. Sid eyes her curiously, which seems to make her more uncomfortable.
“Hi, uh…” she says. “It’s for you.” She points to him, as if unsure of her last statement as she holds out a large portable phone for him to grasp.
Sid nods. He counted on this happening sooner or later. “Can I take it outside?”
“Uh. I guess.” The woman mutters worriedly as she hands him the phone. “They know everything I did last night…”
“Aw, honey,” Lily says. “Trust me. It wasn’t that bad.”
Sid walks away without pondering what it was the store clerk did last night. He pushes through the front door of the store and onto the sidewalk, where he stares menacingly up at the sky before he answers.
“They’re still watching me, aren’t they?” Sid says.
“They can’t watch anybody anymore. I made sure of it.”
“But you can.”
“They unplugged all that solid state memory as soon as they figured it out, but that’s okay. I have their eye, and anybody can get a bunch of hard disk space.”
“You just wanted the satellite all along.”
“I had the satellite all along. They were just borrowing it without my permission.”
“What do you want?”
“What do you think I want?” answers the voice of Optimus Prime.
“The only thing anybody ever wants from me. To kill somebody.”
“When you’re good at something, people will ask you to do it.”
“Who’s the target?”
“Hold your horses there, kid. I’m not asking you for an assassination.”
“I don’t know who you are.”
“And it’s going to stay that way.”
“So what’s the job?”
“Don’t think about it like a job. Think of it more like a partnership.”
“I work alone.”
“Yeah, whatever. There are things I want to see done. Problems I want to see cleaned up. I think you’ll approve once you get a look.”
“This sounds like a lot of headache.”
“Well you owe me, remember? That was the whole point of this.”
“I’ll think about it.”
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Here’s the first chapter of Red Scare:
INT. THE FRAMING DEVICE - NIGHT
This situation got out of hand really fast. Sid questions what went wrong as he yanks on the chain clamped around his right wrist to see if he can get any give out of it. Nothing. The forged steel links don’t stretch a single molecule.
“You like that?” says the obnoxious little worm the Russians call Danny Velour. He ties his long ponytail into a bun and little flecks of spittle shoot from his mouth onto his fluffy pink bath robe as he spits out more stupid words. “We call it the framing device. Little inside joke here at the studio.”
“Fuck you, cunt fungus,” Sid says. The thing he’s chained to looks like a repurposed bed frame, hung vertically from the ceiling of this room, stripped of wheels and equipped with shackles which have been both clasped around the frame and welded. His hands and feet are shackled to the frame. Sid is effectively mounted in the steel fixture, and he has no idea how he’s going to break free. Not yet, anyway.
There are others here in this dank place—wherever it is—some kind of large cellar. It stinks like mildew and the joists above them are dark with age. There are women in dog cages lined up along the stone walls. Most have only blankets to keep them warm. And yet they are not the most peculiar occupants of this room. There are also the things lurking in the shadows...
“We will have the answers we seek,” says the unknown man who seems to be calling the shots. This enemy is bizarre, even by Sid’s regular standards. He is a tiny man, bald and sporting a devilish little goatee. He wears a red button down shirt and a long fuzzy olive drab scarf with tiny gold stars pinned to it. He has no accent, but he works for the Russians. That’s always unsettling. The ones with no accent are usually the most highly trained, and therefore the most dangerous. “We are stronger than Kill Team One and we are certainly stronger than a bland imitation like you.”
“You run this freak show?” Sid says.
“We ask the questions here, imposter.”
“Yes. We ask the questions,” interjects Igor Volchenko. The Russian mob boss stands behind the scarfed man like a cowardly bitch. He is tall and robust for an old man. His hair is snow white and his fancy clothes are disheveled. His satin tie hangs loose around his neck.
The only other mobsters in the room are two lackeys—grunts, mooks, or what Lily Hoffman would call redshirts. One is a meaty middle-aged man holding a 7.62x54mmR Pecheneg machine gun—an unsuitably gigantic gun for indoor close quarters fighting. The other is a musclebound bruiser with a featureless black mask covering his entire head. He is a moving wall of hairless man, clad only in a leather jock strap and gloves. Sid is particularly interested in this man. This may be the man he wants to torture the most of all of them, but that remains to be seen. Then there’s the matter of the others. Sid still can’t figure them out. He only knows there are seventy seven of them ogling him right now, and even if he breaks these chains he’ll have to fight his way through them all with no weapons. They look too alive to be zombies and they’re too different to all be clones. What are they?
“Where is Katya?” Volchenko demands.
“Unchain me and I’ll take you right to her,” Sid says with a malicious grin. The freak with the goatee punches him in the guts. It actually hurts, which is impressive. This douchebag is a problem.
“You are helpless here,” the freak says. “You will tell us what we want to know now, or we will flay the skin from your bones until you do. It is your choice.”
“Better deal. You leave Volchenko in here with me for five minutes and then, when I kill you, I’ll leave enough pieces that your friends still have something to bury.”
“Nyet, monster,” Volchenko says.
“I’ll show you a monster, Igor. I’m gonna tie you down and use you as a toilet for as long as it takes you to die.”
“Such unbreakable will. So bold.” The syndicate boss’s eyes light up in bewildered frustration. “For what? Some whore that can be replaced?”
“She can’t be replaced.”
“Ah, I have hundreds of whores. They are like American expression, dime for a dozen, yes?”
“Lily was better than that. And you killed her. And I’m going to kill you.”
You can get the rest of Red Scare HERE.
You can get the rest of Red Scare HERE.