by Mike Leon
“No,” answers a growling subwoofer voice. The Ghoul steps into the kitchen through the demolished back doorway. His heavy armor is torn to strips and threads below the waist. His bare legs are covered completely in red and yellow mottled scar tissue. His crotch is a null lump where genitals may have once been. His tongue slips between shark-like teeth and blood dribbles from his open mouth. “But this body is more than adequate.”
“Uh oh.” This is bad.
“What’s happening down there?” Player says.
Sid ignores the question and blasts the last four shots from the 460 into the Ghoul’s throat and face. Pieces of jaw and spine blow out the back of the monster’s head, but it remains upright. It even tries to speak, though its words are slurred by missing teeth and its unhinged mouth.
“Red Scare has assimilated the Ghoul,” Sid says.
“Red Scare? Where did he come from?!” Player shouts.
The monster gurgles “ZZzzzziiisss voughty. Ziiss voty ughs.” Sid slaps open the 460 cylinder and slides five fresh shells inside. Unintelligible mumblings turn to English words as the creature’s face regenerates. “Iss body does not die. It lives on like us, able to regrow better now because of us. Together we are stronger.”
And then the Ghoul leaps across the kitchen at Sid Hansen with a quickness he has never seen from the monster before. It swings at him with its right hand, which Sid weaves under, but a massive foot comes up from the floor to kick at Sid’s chest. He tries to block it with both arms but the awesome force of the monster’s strike slams his arms against him and knocks him flying into the air, where the Ghoul punches him in the guts and sends him sailing through the kitchen door. Sid takes the door and its hinges with him as he is smacked all the way back into the den.
“This body is faster now too!” the monster shouts after him. “And we have you to thank!”
“Red Scare was a world class martial arts expert, Sid!” Player shouts through Sid’s headset. He can hardly get up from the floor. “If he has the Ghoul’s body you’ll never be able to fight him!”
Sid spits blood through his wired teeth as he climbs to his feet. “He just made that abundantly clear.” Next to him, Karen screams. Her eyes look like they could pop out of her head and Sid can see her uvula twerking like one of the dancers at the Black Omen. It’s a kind of screaming that only accompanies permanent mental breakdown. Sid has seen it before. He makes for the door.
A La-Z-Boy recliner shoots past Sid’s shoulder and smacks into the front door, blocking his way. “Our strength is incredible!” the Red Ghoul bellows from behind him. “We no longer need the strength of numbers! We—I have become the dictator!” There is no time to move the chair. Sid draws his other 460 and blasts all eight remaining bear-stopper cartridges at the monster as he dashes up the stairs to put some distance between them. Blood pours from the Ghoul’s face and chunks of flesh flap and fall as he follows Sid up the steps, regenerating the massive amount of damage done by the guns.
“These bear guns do nothing!” Sid shouts, reloading his guns as he runs down the second floor hallway past several open bedrooms.
“I might have an idea,” Mary Sue says. “I’ll flip the jammer on and it should knock him out. Then you can just drag him outside and—oh. Uh oh.”
“Uh oh? What uh oh?!”
“The battery is gone.”
“You forgot the fucking batteries?!”
“I’m sorry. I’m such a huge failure.”
“Kids, cool it,” Bruce interrupts. “Sid, you’re gonna have to lure him outside. Just stick to the plan.”
“Easier said than done!” Sid turns into a bedroom at the end of the hall as the Ghoul stops to cackle at him from the top of the stairs.
“With this power I will crush the American oppressors!” Red Ghoul growls. “I will march to your White House and strangle your oligarch on his throne! I will abolish all capital and consume his flesh to make it one with us! From the ashes of imperialism will rise a new society—a society of meat!”
“If you guys thought he was crazy before, you need to hear this shit,” Sid says. He fires a shot through the pane of a bedroom window, which explodes into thousands of tiny fragments before he jumps through it to the brown shingled outcropping of roof outside.
“My hunger is the hunger of the workers!” The Ghoul charges into the bedroom as Sid fires two more shots into its lower body from outside the window. Shooting it in the head doesn’t seem to do much. Maybe it will be more annoyed by lead stuck in its abdomen. “Flesh from each according to his ability, meat to each according to his need!” Too big to fit through the single broken glass pane, he smashes into the window sash with his massive elbow. The wood cracks in two from only a single blow and the other pane shatters. The monster steps out onto the roof through the completely destroyed window. Sid shuffles up the angled rooftop toward higher ground.
KA-BOOM! A rocket blasts off from the car out on the driveway and leaves a smoking trail through the air as it whizzes just past the Ghoul’s shoulder and off into the clouds where it explodes harmlessly.
“What the fuck?!” Sid shouts. “At least wait for me to get clear!”
“Sorry!” Mary Sue says. “I figured you would jump off or something.”
“Gimme one sec,” Sid says as he yanks an M67 from the MOLLE webbing on his vest and rips the safety pin from the top. The spoon flips away and slides down the inclined roof as he tosses the grenade at the Ghoul’s feet and then dives over the crest of the rooftop for cover. BOOM! The grenade explodes, shredding the shingles beneath the monster’s bare feet. The tattered roofing buckles under the monster’s considerable weight and Sid sees its hulking black form slip down into the cabin as he glances over the crest. “You should lay off the fatty foods!”
“Hey! I love my chubby twenty one inch waist…” Mary sulks.
“I was talking to him! It’s a snarky one liner.”
“That’s a terrible one liner,” Bruce agrees while Mary reloads the rocket launcher. “I’d of done something with that Macklemore song. You know, Like the Ceiling Can’t Hold Us.”
“Oh. That IS good,” Mary says.
“I don’t even know what that is! Just shut up and shoot a fucking rocket through that window!” Sid points at a bedroom window below.
CRACK! A massive black gauntlet erupts through the rooftop at Sid’s feet and locks around his ankle. “Whoafuck!” he yelps as he attempts to extricate himself of the monster’s iron grip. He draws a 460 and fires three shots through the kevlar joint encircling the monster’s wrist. The hand holding his ankle goes limp like an empty glove and Sid hops away.
He has only a millisecond to react to the flash of the rocket launcher as Mary Sue fires again. He dives from the edge of the rooftop as the rocket shatters through the bedroom window and half of the roof explodes in a deafening yellow flash that sends shingles and bits of rafter into the sky. Sid hits the grass twenty feet below and flops clumsily through a break roll. His head hurts entirely too much to stick any kind of stylish ninja landing right now.
“What the fuck?!” he shouts at Mary again as he props himself up on an elbow. “Are you paying ANY attention at all? I was right fucking there!”
“And you jumped off! See?” she says.
“There’s no way that got him.” Sid stands up and walks around the corner of the house into the front yard. “He’s definitely still in there somewhere.”
“I have more rockets,” Mary says.
“That’s comforting. Not.” Sid pops the cylinders of his behemoth revolvers and replaces the spent casings with fresh cartridges as he walks across the front lawn toward the Cadillac. “Come on out, douchebag,” Sid shouts back at the front of the house through meters of dense black smoke. “I’ve got some capital proletariats that you can bourgeoisie.”
“Do you know what those words mean?” Mary says, now directly to him as he approaches the car.
“Nope.”
With a loud crack, the monster’s s
carred and bloody foot comes through the front door, splitting it in half like it was made from glued together toothpicks. The door halves topple out onto the little wooden porch. A shape emerges through the doorframe and dust, but it does not belong to the Ghoul alone. The squirming body of Karen, screaming incoherently, comes first through the door, suspended at the end of the Ghoul’s naked left arm, outstretched ahead of him as a human shield.
“Hit him,” Sid says.
“No!” Mary snaps back, looking down at him from the sun roof in disgust.
“So you’ll blow me up, but not some random bitch you don’t even know?”
Bruce fires up the Cadillac, shouting “It’s coming right for us!”
“Give me the rocket launcher!” Sid snarls, reaching up to grab the RPG-7 from Mary’s hands. She recoils away from him, stuffing the huge gun down into the car. “Give me that!”
“Please!” Karen shrieks. “Don’t let him kill me!”
“Yesssssssss!” Red Ghoul taunts as he stomps toward them. “Do it! The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few!”
“I’m in no shape for this right now,” Sid growls at Mary and Bruce. “Give me a rocket! You two move! And you better shoot that fucking thing as soon as the girl is clear!” Bruce issues an affirmative nod through the window, but Mary winces apprehensively.
“Give him the rocket,” Bruce says.
Mary passes one of the remaining HEAT rounds, its launch charge attached, down to Sid. The Cadillac reverses down the driveway. Sid remains to face the super-powered invincible death monster with no known weaknesses alone with two pistols, a knife, and a three foot rocket to use as a club.
The explosives in an RPG-7 rocket are triggered by a simple button on the nose of the warhead, which has no time delay, and comes from the factory covered by a removable safety cap. Sid unscrews the safety cap.
“Dangerous,” Red Ghoul rasps through his jagged teeth. Sid can hardly hear him over Karen’s shrieking.
“You know the drill,” Sid says. “You come near me. I stab you with this rocket. Rocket explodes. Not even you will live through that.”
“We hunger for your flesh, imperialist!” Red Ghoul suddenly charges at Sid full bore, holding the girl out as a screaming shield. So much for that plan.
Sid dives sideways to get a clear shot around the Ghoul’s kicking hostage. He fires a 360-grain slug into the Ghoul’s left eye, then also the right. That does not even stagger the mind controlled monster, but it does blind him. Sid uses the seconds while the Ghoul has no eyeballs to holster the 460, yank the KM2000 from its torso sheath, stick the knife in the monster’s right knee, then roll to the other side of the giant beast. He whips the other 460 from its holster and blasts away at its right forearm until its hand is a sack of limp meat dangling just like the shredded kevlar that swings from its elbow. Karen falls on the ground and Sid grabs her by the wrist.
“Run!” he says, dragging the disoriented and screaming girl along the grass so fast that he may as well be hauling her from a truck. He approaches the absolute minimum safe distance before he shouts “Do it! Hit him now!”
KA-BOOM! Mary Sue’s rocket launcher spits flame and smoke from a hundred meters down the driveway. Sid shoves Karen into the dirt as he dives to the ground himself. Behind them, the front of the house evaporates into a cloud of dust and showers of debris. Sid looks back just in time to see the Ghoul reaching for his leg.
“What the hell?!” Mary Sue shrieks. “I know I didn’t miss!”
The bowling ball sized hole in the monster’s chest, currently dripping sizzling red gore on Sid’s flak vest, indicates she is correct. The rocket, with its extreme velocity and shaped charge designed for use against battle tanks, obviously burned right through the relatively soft Ghoul and went on to detonate somewhere in the Brunswick household. So much for that plan too.
“We will feast on your tasty meat!” Red Ghoul says as he presses Sid into the ground with his good left hand. It feels like a wrecking ball sitting on top of him. He empties the half loaded 460 into the monster’s throat, but that doesn’t slow it down any. The other gun is already dry and there is no time to reload. “Meat!” it bellows as it widens its vicious maw and lunges to bite into his throat.
“Eat this!” Sid snarls as he spears the Ghoul in the mouth with the rocket. He should be dead. They should both be dead. But the rocket sticks between the monster’s gaping jaws, its tongue flitting at the fuse switch, the butt of the launch charge digging into the dirt and keeping the Ghoul away from Sid like a jet-fuel filled tent pole.
The Ghoul reels away from the rocket to lunge at him again, but Sid presses the explosive harder into its mouth. The Ghoul lifts his good hand from Sid’s chest to snatch the rocket, and Sid rolls free.
The monster flings the rocket aside. “Hunger! We will feast on you! Tasty!” the Ghoul bellows as it limps forward, its enormous chest wound still oozing and its ruined arm now making rudimentary movements as it chokes on the many bullets Sid fired into its throat and body.
“Sid!” Mary Sue screams. “I thought you were dead for sure!”
“Whatever. Look at it,” he says, reloading the huge revolvers with lightning quickness. “It’s slowing down. And it forgot all about communism.” He blasts all the cartridges from both guns into the Ghoul’s ankles and brings the creature to its knees.
“I think that the more you hurt it, the more it has to eat.”
“We will chew your flesh from your bones!” the monster howls as it hobbles forward using its hands and knees, and half standing on the splintered ends of its shin bones. Sid dashes for the fallen HEAT rocket and scoops it up from the dirt. He charges at the limping Red Ghoul, plunging the rocket into the coincidentally rocket shaped cavity in the monster’s chest. He avoids one tree trunk sized right hook on his way, but the other mostly-regenerated fist catches him in the shoulder and sends him tumbling through the air.
Sid hits the ground with a dislocated shoulder and a lost revolver, but the rocket remains stuck in the Red Ghoul’s chest. “Now!” Sid shouts as he dashes for the split open front of Brunswick ranch. “Aim for his feet!”
Mary wastes no time launching another HEAT round, this time into the dirt where it will surely detonate on the monster’s exact position. The explosion triggers the charge stuck in the Ghoul’s chest cavity and the resulting explosion atomizes everything within meters.
Sid emerges from the inside of the demolished house to find confetti of unidentifiable viscera, worms, and rolled homogeneous armor fragments.
INT. HOLDING AREA - DAY
Dmitry leans across a stainless steel table like a tackle on the line of scrimmage and Assistant Director Rudy Donaldson is the defensive end. The director sits up straight, and shows no empathy in his voice or facial expressions. There is only aggravated skepticism in his words.
“We can’t pull the tapes because there are no tapes,” Donaldson says. “The psychos that shot the place up went into the surveillance room and destroyed everything.”
“Psycho. Singular. Psycho. It was one guy. They called him Kill Team One. Like a codename. Look it up! Run it by Interpol!”
“I’ll jump right on it.” Donaldson shakes his head and laughs. “Right after I fax them that warrant for Bigfoot and the BOLO for the Loch Ness Monster.”
“This isn’t funny!” Dmitry looks to the only other person in the otherwise empty cell. Max Wintergreen stands against the yellow painted wall in relative silence. “Tell him, Max.”
Wintergreen shrugs. “I don’t know, Chad. I never saw anything.”
“He never saw anything!” Donaldson repeats. “Here’s what I see! I see an over-budget fuck-up of an undercover op that failed to produce any results, at least three gang related massacres, a mass shooting, a media circus, and a tatted up cokehead agent at the center telling me a character from Conspiratalk AM is the culprit.”
“Conspiratalk AM?”
“That nutso radio show. The bureau gets FOIA requests f
rom them every week. Kill Team One. No such thing.” Donaldson rolls his eyes, but Dmitry feels suddenly dizzy, like he just tilted his head up to the night sky and the ground dropped out of sight so that nothing is visible but an endless blanket of stars. “It’s not even a clever name.”
“Chad,” Wintergreen interrupts. “Why did the Syndicate shoot up the casino? Was it to cover up a job? Who was the target?”
“Kill Team One was the target. The people in the casino were trying to get him, and he shot them, but not enough of them, and they took him to the snuff house.”
“Where they make the snuff movies for a secret network of rich global elitists?” Donaldson says with scathing sarcasm.
“Yes.”
“And these geriatric slot machine players all worked for the Russian Syndicate?”
“No. It’s complicated. They were mind controlled.”
“Aw fuck, Chad!” Wintergreen curses loudly. Just as Donaldson opens his mouth to start shouting, the door to the holding room pops open and his secretary leans in.
“Mr. Donaldson,” she says. “Agent Watts is on line two.”
Donaldson rises from his chair and points at Wintergreen, who only winces as his career circles the drain. “You. With me.” Wintergreen follows the Assistant Director out the door. Dmitry stretches his legs out on the tile floor expecting a long wait, but the door isn’t closed for more than ten seconds before it opens again.
The man who comes through the door is not anyone Dmitry has met before. He is tall and thin with the dark blue sleeves of his dress shirt rolled up to the elbows. He has suspenders rather than a belt to hold up his grey Hugo Boss trousers and his salt and pepper hair is sculpted with gel.
“Dmitry Fedosov? Chad Billingsley? Whoever you are?” the mystery man says. His voice is nasally and calm, slightly effeminate. He sounds like he should be hosting a show on National Public Radio. “Nice to meet you.” He extends his right hand to shake, but Dmitry holds back.