Red Scare (The Postmodern Adventures of Kill Team One Book 3)

by Mike Leon

  Karen has no idea what to say to that, other than to offer some sort of placation that hopefully will cause Jenny to stop talking to her. “Huh. I never thought of it that way.”

  Summer has already forgotten about AIDS and come full circle. “I guess I like Adler then. What do you think, Karen?”

  Karen needs only a millisecond to consider. “I don’t think I would leave him or Carter alone with my drink,” she says.

  “I don’t understand…”

  “Karen is right, Summer,” Jenny says. “They’re both a little bro-ey.”

  “Okay,” Summer sighs. “I guess I like Gavin then. I like Gavin, right?” Karen feels a lump rise in her throat as she imagines that brainless Barbie doll throwing herself at Gavin. He would never... Would he?

  “Sure,” Jenny says, placing two bottles of Mudslide mix into the basket with the vodka.

  “You don’t have to like any of the boys,” Karen says. “If you don’t want to.”

  “No,” Summer answers, looking up into the air and grinding her brain cells for a rationalization that isn’t there. “I do. I need a boyfriend now because I dumped Dwayne. Why did I dump Dwayne again?”

  “Because,” Jenny answers for her. “He was a high school boyfriend, and you need a college boyfriend. We’re in college now, Summer.”

  “Right. So now I need a college boyfriend.” Something clearly does not sit right with her after she says that. She purses her lips as she considers a possible solution. “But if Dwayne is in college now, doesn’t that make him a college boyfriend?”

  “No, Summer. Dwayne will always be a high school boyfriend because Dwayne hangs out with Chad and Chad is a loser who has sex with gross Suicide Girl whores.”

  “Right. I remember now. That makes sense.”

  Karen moves away from the others and their conversation to investigate the magazine selection at the opposite corner of the Food Stop. She fingers through a plethora of women’s magazines: Cosmopolitan, Women’s Health, Marie Claire, and finds nothing of value there. Though she did not expect to find the latest Popular Mechanics in this dive. As she flips through a worn grey tabloid to investigate the details of a cover story about a child born with a second head, she suddenly feels a presence behind her, perhaps caused by a slight ripple in the airflow, or a minute scuff of shoe tread on the waxed floor. Regardless of the reason, Karen turns to see who is there and observes nothing at first. Then the subtle vibration of a living thing standing motionless registers in her peripheral vision and Karen looks down to the sight of a child staring up from the level of her hips.

  Except it is not a child.

  A skeletally thin creature with a bulbous head, hooked nose, and big brown eyes—sad eyes—stands there at Karen’s feet.

  “Ha—” Karen starts to greet her strange company, but chokes out a yelp of surprise before she can finish. “I—uh, can I help you?”

  The little person continues to stare in silence as Karen backpedals, slowly putting distance between them. As she backs off, she notices the silent stalker is wearing a pink patterned sun dress, which is faded from years of wear.

  “Are you lost?” Karen says.

  The misshapen girl does not move even a hair.

  “Kay. I guess not.”

  Then the little person in the dress opens her mouth and speaks in a cold croaking rasp that carries the slight twang of rural America. “You’re all gunna die.”

  Karen feels a shiver down her spine as the words sink in. This has to be some kind of sick joke, or she misheard.

  “Uh, excuse me?” she says, her voice wavering a little more than she expected.

  “You kids. You’re all gunna die.”

  Karen quivers as she searches the store for the other girls, or anyone she might run to.

  “Elsie!” someone—a woman, shouts haggardly. Karen’s eyes dart to the source of the shouting, a heavyset woman in a flannel shirt and blue jeans behind a countertop that is positively overflowing with lottery scratch-off tickets and cigarette lighters. “Elsie, ya goddamn pest! I told you twice to stop scarin’ the customers! It ain’t funny! Now get out!”

  The skinny little female figure leaps upward, then prances and skips toward the front of the store, giggling all the way. “Tee hee hee hee hee! Tee hee hee!” Then she pushes her way through the glass front door and dashes out into the parking lot.

  Jenny and Summer come around the corner of the magazine rack just in time to see the strange specimen on her journey away from the building.

  “Is that a midget?” Summer squeaks.

  “Summer!” Jenny scolds. “Don’t be racist!”

  “Don’t let her scare you, kids,” says the store clerk. “Elsie’s perfectly right in the head. She just thinks it’s funny to scare people passin’ through on account of all the problems.”

  “The terrorist attacks,” Karen says.

  “Oh, well, yeah. That too.”

  “That too? What else did you mean?” Karen says.

  The clerk shrugs. “Well, there’s all them missing people.” She points to a tan colored cork bulletin board mounted on the side of a Pepsi cooler next to the counter. The board is packed with photocopied photographs of smiling people and all the familiar bits of text that always accompany pleas for help finding them, and some that are more unique: missing since; praying for their safe return; last seen leaving a friend’s house; doesn’t have their asthma inhaler.

  “These people all disappeared in the last six months,” Karen notes, scanning the dates on all the leaflets.

  “Yeah. Most are drifters though. Or kids that probably just run off.”

  Jenny rolls her eyes. “It’s just drifters, Karen. Not, like, real people. It’s not a big deal.” She hoists two twenty-four packs of Bud Light onto the counter in front of the clerk. “Come on. The boys are waiting for us.”

  Karen takes one more look at the wall before she reaches into her purse for her driver’s license. “Sure,” she agrees.

  INT. DARK CELLAR - DAY

  “So what you’re saying is that I’m a second class citizen,” Addison says. “I’m of the lower caste. What’s good enough for me isn’t good enough for you.”

  “No!” Lily says. “All I said was I don’t want to use the bucket. It’s gross.” The rusty tin bucket Addison has been using to go to the bathroom is a disgusting cesspool, nearly overflowing with excrement. Lily doesn’t want to go near that thing.

  “You know, in Kenya, where running water is more or less a miracle, people are happy to even have a bucket.”

  “Don’t they have shopping malls in Kenya?”

  “No.”

  “I think they do.”

  “Uhhh... I spent six weeks there in Peace Corps. I think I would know if they had malls.”

  “Okay then.”

  “I’m not going to look, if that’s what you’re worried about.” It wasn’t a concern of Lily’s for even a fraction of a second. She would turn out the single incandescent light bulb affixed to the rafters in the center of the cell if she cared, but professional exhibitionists don’t worry about such things.

  “No.” Lily offers a curious glance at her cellmate. “Why would you look?”

  “I could be gender non-conforming,” Addison snarls back. “You didn’t even ask.”

  “I just really have to pee and I don’t want to go in that gross bucket.”

  “Sure. As long as your individual needs are met, it’s okay to be a transphobic bigot.” Addison snorts. “You sound like Ayn Rand.”

  Lily decides it is best not to continue this discussion anymore. She rests her back against the corner nearest the door and undoes her belt. She tosses her boots aside and then strips her blue jeans and underwear away. She holds them up near her head to keep them from getting wet as she urinates down the cold concrete wall. The relief is extraordinary after holding it for so long.

  “Really?” Addison says. “What about number twos? Are you going to do those in the corner too?”

&nbs
p; “Look, we won’t be here that long. My boy—guy person is a killer badass. As soon as he figures out I’m missing, he’ll call up his creepy talking spy satellite sidekick and come get us out of here.”

  “Of course! Because we’re just helpless damsels waiting to be rescued in some oppressive patriarchal trope. I suppose he’ll expect sexual favors as a reward for his hard fought victory.”

  “Definitely. It’s kind of like the only form of currency he understands.”

  “You know, you’re propagating the rape culture here.”

  “If you’re so upset about it, why don’t you escape on your own?”

  “I would have if I ever got the vent open.”

  “The vent? What vent?”

  “That vent.” Addison casually points to a small rectangular register among the rafters on her side of the cell. Lily approaches it with her pants slung over one shoulder. The thing looks ancient. The aluminum covering is coated with dust and the thin fins that form the grill are bent and lopsided. The vent opening is tiny, maybe a foot long and four or five inches tall. Lily could possibly squeeze through it with some Astroglide or just a lot of lost skin—if they can get the cover off.

  “Where does it go?”

  Addison shrugs. Lily stands on her tiptoes and digs her nails into the edge of the cover, but it refuses to budge.

  “It won’t come off like that,” Addison says. “There are screws.”

  Lily confirms the presence of six screw heads, barely visible amidst flaking paint and decades of dust bunnies.

  “We have to unscrew it,” Lily says.

  “What’s the point? We can’t fit through there.”

  “You mean you can’t.”

  “Wow. I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that, because it’s body shaming, and it’s wrong.”

  “That vent is a size two and you’re like a size twenty!”

  “Um, I’m committed to being body positive. It’s not up to you to judge my body.”

  “It’s up to the vent! You’re way too big to fit through it!”

  “I’ve had about enough of you lording over me with your thin privilege.”

  “Are you offended by everything everyone says all the time? Or is it just me?”

  “Not everybody looks like you, and I think if you go through the vent without me, that’s size discrimination at best, and Social Darwinism at worst. Neither of those things are okay.”

  “So we should both stay here?”

  “I think you need to check your privilege.”

  “I think you need to check your brain for damage.”

  “I’m not going to help you open that vent. We have to find some other way to escape which doesn’t exclude members of our global community based on race, gender, age or body type.”

  “Holy shit. You’ve cracked down here. You’re living out in La La Land, honey.”

  “I am fighting a war! I’m fighting against greed and the corporations! I will not be reeducated and...and…” Addison quiets herself abruptly. “Oh, no. He’s coming.”

  “Fuck.” Lily backs away from the vent and moves toward the locked door as she slips back into her jeans. She can hear the pounding of the Ghoul’s footfalls. In a panic, Lily asks herself the same question repeatedly: What would Sid do? What would Sid do? He would stab the Ghoul in the face. He would dragon kick him in the throat. He would fight that thing and kill it—multiple times if necessary.

  She plants herself along the wall next to the rusted hinges that hold the door in place and yanks her studded belt free from her pants. Maybe if she can get the jump on him, startle him with a good smack in the head, she’ll have a second to run.

  “Is that belt real leather?” Addison says. “That’s disgusting.”

  Shhhh,” Lily tries to quiet her obnoxious cellmate.

  “I did mention that I’m a vegan, right?”

  “Shut your fat mouth, you crazy moonbat!”

  “Body shaming and name calling are NOT okay.”

  The door creaks open and Lily raises the coiled belt over her head anticipating the appearance of the monster’s hideous face around the edge of the wood.

  “The anorexic little slut is right there!” Addison screams.

  “Ah?” Lily squeaks as the Ghoul whips his head around the door like a velociraptor zeroing in on the children from Jurassic Park. She accounted poorly for his towering height when positioning herself here, and midway through swinging the belt she realizes she can barely even reach his head. The belt smacks him in the chin with a clap and then flaps against his armored chest. She might as well crack a whip against the Sears Tower and hope it flinches. “Fuck me,” she sighs.

  The Ghoul picks Lily up and throws her across the room. She barrels into Addison and the two girls tumble to the filthy floor together.

  “Meat!” the Ghoul bellows as it marches forward to catch up with them. The beast’s massive armored gauntlet closes around Lily’s waist and it snatches her up from the floor before she can untangle herself from Addison.

  “Yeah! Take her away!” the dirty hippie screams. “She’s creating a toxic atmosphere in my cell!”

  Lily lashes out with her balled hands, slapping at the Ghoul’s ground burger face as viciously as she can. It seems to have no effect.

  “I… I… I...” the Ghoul says. Lily strikes him one more time before the oddity of his utterance causes her to stop. I? I what? Is it trying to say something intelligible? That would be a first, except for the random exclamations about meat and hunger that the monster occasionally growls out. She watches as it attempts to complete a sentence. “I… Aye…” The Ghoul leans closer, examining her features as he draws an enormous meat hook from a nylon loop on his thigh. “Eye.”

  Oh fuck. He must remember her from when she stabbed him in the eye with a power drill. Lily squirms as he holds the meat hook against her face, the blackened iron point of it threatening to puncture her right eye. This isn’t going to end well.

  “This is what you get for marginalizing the underprivileged!” Addison shouts.

  Suddenly, more than anything, more than wanting to escape from this stinking dungeon, Lily just wishes the Ghoul would kill that bitch.

  “Hey,” she says, looking past the meat hook point and into the monster’s bloodshot eyes. “Look how tasty she looks.”

  The Ghoul emits a hiss from his drooling maw. His broken teeth are like the remaining shards that cling around the edge of a shattered window pane. He appears unaffected as he draws back the hook, preparing to gouge her in one of a hundred different vile ways.

  “She’s so plump and juicy,” Lily says, shutting her eyes. “So much meat. She’s like a big doughy baby.” The Ghoul loves babies—for eating. That’s one of the few facts Lily knows about the monster.

  “Baby?” The Ghoul gurgles out another word from its apparently growing vocabulary. Lily widens her eyes to see the monster pausing in consideration.

  “Yeah. A baby. A big fat juicy baby. Not like me. I’m all bones and no good.”

  The monster slowly hinges its head in the direction of Addison. “Meat,” it whispers. “Meat baby meat. Baby meat.” It lowers the meat hook.

  “What’s he doing?” Addison says.

  “He’s about to try a vegan diet,” Lily says.

  The Ghoul lashes out at Addison, swinging upward and stabbing the point of that meat hook into the soft flesh under her chin. She screams as he pulls her toward him and the iron tip of his weapon emerges from her shrieking mouth. The monster plants his hefty boot on her plump gut and yanks again. There is a sickening pop and something boney clacks against the floor. It is Addison’s jaw.

  The unhinged vegan tries to scream as a faucet of red gore sprays from her skull. She only succeeds in ejecting more gushing blood, which splatters the wall next to her in several great spurts before the Ghoul raises the iron hook again and then brings it down through the top of her cranium.

  Lily remains stationary, frozen as though counting on the remote possib
ility that the Ghoul’s vision is movement based. She even holds her breath as the monster drags the twitching body of her deranged cell mate across the floor and through the door, all the while proclaiming “Baby meat. Baby meat.” He slams the door behind him with a crash that rattles the room. Lily stays stiff against the wall even after he is gone.

  Finally, after seconds that seem like hours, she exhales. The next breath is the first one in which she does not detect the stench of excrement, despite the confirmed presence of the bucket in the corner.

  Suddenly, the door flies open again. The armored body of the monster is framed in the light from the next room as he bellows again “MEAT! MEAT!” He carries with him a big bag of McDonald’s hamburgers.

  Lily screams.

  INT. BRUNSWICK RANCH - DAY

  Trevor enters the Brunswick ranch with nothing but apathetic expectations. He already knows Jenny’s father has money. That means very little to him. His family has money—much more money than any of these middle class simpletons. If Jenny understood how much, she would probably finally give it up for him. Maybe he could try that. He could take her back to his parents’ house in Newport Beach for winter break in a few weeks and see if that gets her panties off.

  “Whoa!” Carter loudly proclaims as he walks into the ranch’s wide-open den behind Jenny and Trevor. “This place is killer, bro!”

  “I know, bro!” Adler parrots. “That TV is huge!” He points at the eighty inch flat panel TV attached to the wall over the fireplace. It isn’t anything impressive. Trevor has a bigger one in his room.

  The ranch is a mostly open-floored log cabin design, with the sort of decor that suggests a mountain lodge in the Rockies. Items affixed to the walls of the den are all reminiscent of outdoorsy activities: a moose head, some mounted fish, a hunting rifle, a bearskin rug at the foot of the couch facing the TV, even a kayak dangles from an overlooking balcony. It’s all too redneck chic for Trevor’s taste.