by Mike Leon
The man gives up on the handshake and clears his throat nervously. “They won’t be holding you long. The forensics team already found a lot of bones at that farm you found. They just haven’t told you yet. Did you know that you are statistically more likely to be murdered by a serial killer in California than any other place in the world?”
“Are you a profiler?” Dmitry says.
“Oh, I’m an adjuster. Insurance. You know.” He makes a clicking noise with his tongue as he transitions to a different topic abruptly. “Here’s the thing. The people I represent believe you may have some information, information that they would like you to share with them, and…um…perhaps…not with anyone else.”
Dmitry studies him from across the table without saying a word.
“I think we can comfortably attach a six figure price tag to the information,” says the so-called insurance adjuster.
“What is it that you want to know?”
The insurance adjuster clears his throat again. “We want to know everything you know about the person and-or entity known as Kill Team One.”
EXT. BRUNSWICK RANCH - DAY
Sid presses himself against the side of Bruce’s Cadillac to pop his shoulder back into place. He growls at the pain as the bone slips back into the proper socket.
“Damn, man,” Bruce says as he picks a bright red worm from the grill of the car and flicks it to the dirt at his feet. The front of the car was splattered with dirt and Ghoul bits when the monster exploded, and Bruce has lamented the inconvenience since. “I should of never brought this car anywhere with you.”
Mary Sue hollers back to them from the lawn nearer to the house. “I think we got it all,” she says, poking a scrap of slimy gore with the toe of her sandal. “He’s not coming back from that.”
“Good. I want to clear the whole perimeter,” Sid says. “Check the woods if I don’t find anything.”
“What about her?” Bruce says, pointing to the girl occupying the back seat of his car with her motionless figure and delirious stare. She hasn’t spoken a word since they blew up the monster, and she didn’t do much but babble incoherently before that.
Sid shrugs. “Drop her off somewhere?”
“Hey guys!” Mary shouts excitedly. “Heads up!”
Beyond the farmhouse, in the grassy distance, a solitary figure limps toward them, thin and frayed, caked with mud and spattered with blood, disheveled and without pants. It is Lily Hoffman.
“Shit,” Bruce snickers. “She looks as beat up as you do.”
Sid walks around the car and marches briskly toward his not-so-dead lady friend. Lily accelerates her pace when she sees him. “Sid!” she squeaks as she comes within paces of him.
“What happened to your pants?” he says.
“What happened to your jaw?” she says.
“Nevermind.” Sid shakes his head. Lily slams into him, throwing her arms around his body like a coiling viper. He takes her chin in his hand and raises her head up to glare into her sparkling blue eyes. “You have some explaining to do.”
“We tried to grind the Ghoul up in the metal shredder, back there in the barn, but it didn’t work. Is it dead? Did you kill it?”
“I’m talking about the part where you’re supposed to be dead. That’s the thing I want explained.”
“Oh.” She purses her lips uncomfortably. “Well, I thought that if I...I don’t know...Look, I thought if you thought that I was dead then you would realize you care about me.”
The given rationale takes a few good moments for Sid to work through his skull, as it is weird emotional nonsense that he typically disregards. He takes it one step at a time. “You did all of this to try and make me sad?”
“Well, yeah. But not this…” Lily waves at the destroyed house, “I didn’t know that this would happen.”
“I don’t get sad,” Sid grumbles. “I killed almost every Russian mobster in Los Angeles.”
“For me? Awwww.”
“A lot of people are dead,” Mary Sue says.
“That’s kind of hot…”
“What the fuck, Lily?” Sid snarls. “You have any idea what kind of shitstorm I just went through?”
“A lot of people are dead!” Mary says again.
“I got tortured by a sentient communist super virus, beat up by the Ghoul, had to have my jaw wired shut, all because you thought it would be fun?!”
“Also…” Mary says. “People are dead! At least a hundred innocent people!”
“Shut up, Mary!” Sid growls, turning just long enough to give her a death glare that would unnerve Cthulhu. “This is between me and her!” Mary’s shoulders twinge like she was just soaked with ice water and she backs away in the direction of Bruce’s car.
“I’m sorry!” Lily shrieks. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like this!”
“How was it supposed to happen?!” Sid shoves Lily away, the force of his rippling arms sending her off her balance and thumping her butt down on the grass.
“Why are you so angry?”
“Because you tried to get me killed, you stupid cunt! I dropped a ton of bodies!”
“You’ve never cared about that before.”
“I should put you in the ground right next to them.”
Lily’s upset face slowly molds into a curious one as she studies him. “You’re angry because it worked.” She smirks cockishly. “You do care about me.”
“Fuck you.”
“I think you love me.”
“You’re insane. Completely fucking insane.”
“You think you don’t feel anything. Big badass all the time, but you’re not. You’re fooling yourself. You love me.”
Sid yanks the 460 from the holster in a lightning quick flash and presses the muzzle to Lily Hoffman’s filthy blood encrusted forehead. “Say it again!”
She does not hesitate. “You love me.”
Sid grits his teeth so hard that the chalkboard noise they make should be audible back at the car where Bruce is watching. “I’ll fucking kill you if you say it again.”
“You won’t. You love me too much.” She turns her head up and wraps her lips around the gun barrel. “Go ahead,” she taunts, only in vowels.
Sid glares into her eyes as his arm twitches with pent up rage. The pad of his finger flattens against the heavy trigger of the big revolver. Then he screams as he puts the gun back in its holster and walks away. Lily tries to follow, but he kicks her back down into the dirt.
“I never want to see you again!” Sid snarls back at her. Then he stomps toward Bruce’s car, where the others are waiting.
“I love you too!” Lily shouts after him.
INT. HOWARD’S TAVERN - DAY
It is fifteen after five in the afternoon and Betty has only had the doors unlocked for ten minutes when daylight stretches across the smoky hunting lodge trappings that decorate the walls of Howard’s Tavern. She looks up from the glass she is polishing to the front door and sees a hunched figure in dim silhouette against the outside. As her eyes adjust, and the man closes the door behind him, he comes into contrast and she can see his filthy shirt and mud encrusted hair with bits of leaves and mulch clinging all over his body. He looks like a panhandler, except they don’t have those this far out from downtown, and the blood soaking his pants and shirt indicates he has been in some horrible accident. As he shambles closer to the bar, Betty notices the big wad of rags around his left wrist, soaked entirely brown and red, he holds the cloth tightly with his other hand.
“You okay, honey?” Betty says. “You need me to call an ambulance?”
“No,” the figure says. He sounds worse than he looks. His voice is scraggly and hoarse. “I’m here to buy a drink.”
Betty regards him curiously for a moment, then chuckles. “You look like you need it, I guess.” She puts the glass back in line with the others hanging upside down above the bar. “What’ll it be?”
“I’ll have a Cuba Libre,” he says.
Betty hesitates briefly as
she sifts through thirty years of bartending experience to recall the ingredients of that drink. She frowns just a bit and asks him to be sure. “Well, that’s just a Rum and Coke with lime, right?”
The stranger groans and puts his head down on the bar in defeat.
EXT. CARWASH - DAY
“I contacted the FBI to alert them to Katya Volchenko’s location,” the Player drones through the speaker system in Bruce’s Cadillac. The car inches along a cement pathway toward a zitty teenage boy wearing a dismayed grimace with a polo shirt and ball cap sporting the embossed logo of the car wash company. “They’re picking her up now.”
Sid stretches his legs across the back seat of the car, leaning against the driver’s side rear window. He feels like ass. His head is throbbing, and Mary says he still needs to have his jaw rewired. His chest burns like it is on fire. His legs ache. There is simply no part of him that doesn’t hurt. There is something else that bothers him more, but he refuses to give it any attention.
Up front, Mary Sue presses her palms to her face as Bruce rolls down his window to yell at the bewildered carwash boy.
“What? I hit a deer!” Bruce lies aggressively. “I want the Super Deluxe Ultimate Wax with the underside scrub! Twice!” he shouts with two of his fingers extended. “Got it?!” The boy gives them a nominal thumbs up as Bruce closes the window. “I gotta get all this shit off before it dries on the paint,” Bruce mutters. “And I gotta get it detailed!” He sighs as he pulls the car forward.
“So Sid,” the Player continues. “Are you still so sure you don’t need me?”
“You’re a dick, robot voice.”
“Sid, there are people out there who need someone like you to help them.”
Sid slides down to rest his head on the seat leather and growls through his bloody sewn together teeth. “Fine. But I want whores.”
“I’m not getting you whores.”
“I’m suddenly feeling less helpful…”
“I can’t buy you prostitutes.”
“Shit,” Bruce interjects. “Why don’t you just pay him, and he can buy his own whores if he wants?”
“Yeah! Why don’t we do that?” Sid says, his attitude suddenly improved by leagues.
“He’s a teenager, Bruce!” Player yells, reaching the upper limit of the voice regulator and causing it to crackle.
“He’s eighteen,” Bruce counters. “And what? It ain’t like hookers are more illegal if you’re under twenty-one or some shit.”
“I’m gonna bang so many smoking hot whores,” Sid says. Still, only one whore occupies his thoughts, and he has to force her from them.
“You guys are both really gross,” Mary Sue groans.
FREE STUFF!
If you liked Red Scare, click this link to sign up for my mailing list, and the computer machine will give you a free copy of my superhero comedy novel, Supervillainous! Confessions of a Costumed Evil-Doer.
Supervillainous!
If you really liked Red Scare, make sure you leave a review on Amazon. Good reviews are what keep me writing, so if you want more of this stuff, let me know.