I Kill Monsters

by Dennis Liggio

  "Guys," said Sutton, gesturing to the soldiers around us.

  I prepared for the kill order.

  "Guys," said Sutton more insistently. "Wounded?" He said, using the chiding voice that reminds someone of something they should know. "Give them room to get through. Jesus. Without your officers, you guys wouldn't know your heads from your assholes."

  The commandos around us seemed to bristle at this, but reluctantly they nodded and moved their armored bodies to either side. I suddenly felt like I could breathe again. The soldier who had been talking resumed giving Sutton his update while we limped right by them.

  I'll admit I was completely surprised that this worked. As bad as this whole Minerva infiltration mission had gotten, we seemed to be the two luckiest sons of bitches on the planet. I would have jumped for joy and done a little jig if Mikkel wasn't learning on my shoulder and said jig would have cost us our lives.

  We limped in the general direction of the triage, feeling the looks fall off our backs. The triage workers were busy, so they may not have even noticed us... or noticed when we walked right past them. We were still technically in view of Sutton and the commandos near the doorway, but nobody was really watching us. Everyone else was more concerned with their own affairs and we weren't particularly looking suspicious.

  Past the triage was what was left of the parking area of the garage. At this time there were only three black SUVs. They were unguarded and unoccupied. The garage entry was also unguarded. This wasn't surprising. They had no reason to guard vehicles in their own garage. They had two main concerns, monster containment and us. Monsters weren't going to steal their SUVs and we were supposedly inside the med center and could not get past their perimeter.

  Mikkel and I walked over to one of the SUVs, at this point abandoning the limp and taking off our masks. We had a quick and nonchalant high five as he got in one SUV and I walked to the other vehicles. He started looking for the key. He would hotwire the damn thing if he needed to, but a key left in the vehicle would make sense. If they were more communal vehicles without a dedicated driver, there was a chance the key was irresponsibly put under the sun visor or in the drink holder.

  My job was more mischievous. Drawing the combat knife I had kept with me, I jammed it into the two tires of the second SUV. There was a satisfying hiss with each stab, not loud enough for anyone else to notice. Then I moved onto the third SUV and similarly disabled it. I'd like to see them try to follow us now.

  By this point, Mikkel had the SUV started. I walked back to it, nonchalantly opened the door, and slid into the passenger seat.

  "Key was in the glove box," said Mikkel.

  "The third most likely place to hide a key," I said. "The car equivalent of under the doormat."

  Mikkel nodded. He had seen the same bullshit facts I had and also knew our experience the few times we needed to borrow a car. This was the time we felt least bad about borrowing a car. We felt pretty damn good about it. I began regretting disabling both SUVs - maybe we could have stolen two.

  I admit that at this point we could have just driven away. We could have inconspicuously left the parking garage, just like commandos under orders, maybe to get coffee for Sutton. We could have left anonymously, leaving Sutton and Minerva Technics to wonder about our whereabouts. We could have done this easily.

  But this is not who we are. We are young and reckless. We are sadly petty individuals who make bad decisions. I especially am the king of recklessly bad decisions. But this reckless decision was backed up by Mikkel, so I felt it couldn't be too bad a decision.

  Mikkel swung the SUV around toward the command center. We were parallel to the command center, the SUV pointing straight toward the garage exit ramp. Mikkel stopped and let the engine idle. He lowered the window and looked over to Sutton. I leaned over to look out too. Sutton was still half on the phone and half getting updates from commandos. He had paused to take a drink of his coffee when Mikkel beeped the horn.

  Sutton and his group of commandos turned to look at us. Shock slowly etched on Sutton's face as he lowered his coffee. Mikkel gave him the middle finger, while I gave him the double middle finger salute[46].

  Sutton's face changed from shock to rage. It was such a delicious expression to observe in another human being whom I hated. Then I leaned back in my seat while Mikkel slammed on the gas. The tires screeched as the SUV leapt into motion. I could hear Sutton barking orders. We didn't hear gunfire until we had reached the exit to this floor of the garage, the bullets glancing at the cement wall behind us.

  We screeched up the curving garage ramp. I would have loved to see Sutton's face when he realized how I had disabled the other SUVs. Unfortunately, waiting around would have just gotten us killed. I had to settle for imagining his arrogant face twisted into raging frustration.

  One last curve and the SUV shot up the final ramp, making a screeching turn out into night air and a Midtown street. As we sped away from the Clark Building, I looked for SUVs in pursuit, but I saw none.

  I turned to Mikkel and he turned to me.

  "We fucking did it!" I said.

  Laughing, we turned up the radio and drove off in freedom.

  Famous Last Words

  Ultimately we had to get rid of the SUV. I'm sure that on some level Mikkel would have liked to make it the Pork Chop Express II. But it was a stolen vehicle and who knew if MT had a tracking device in it. Luckily, Mikkel "knew a guy" and the next thing I knew the SUV was off our hands and we had some extra cash. That was nice for just a short while before we figured out how much it would take to repair the Pork Chop Express and pay our motel bills. Then we realized we were barely breaking even. We might actually be losing money. And of course the money Jessica had promised us initially never materialized. Maybe that was for the best. It was that money that drew us into all this bullshit. Even if we got it, that cash might have been cursed for all the trouble it brought us.

  We hadn't gone home after our escape from the Clark Building. Our apartments weren't safe. They had been monitoring them before our infiltration, I'm sure they'd keep up their watch since Sutton wanted us dead. They might have bigger fish to fry, but it wasn't a risk we wanted to take. We lived at a motel for a few days until I got a call from Jessica.

  When I first saw the call, I didn't want to answer it. In fact, I didn't answer the first time she called. I was dreading hearing what she might say. Was she going to yell, was she going to tell us what we did wrong? I mean, we fucked things up, but it was no fault of our own. And it was her organization that wanted to kill us. There was some part of me that feared that the moment I answered my phone that they'd know where we were and black helicopters would descend on our location. I knew that was preposterous (probably), but it went far to illustrate why I didn't answer the phone.

  The second time she called, Mikkel saw it and told me to stop being a damn fool. So after a deep breath, I answered the phone.

  "Szandor?" Her voice was very tired.

  "Yeah, it's me."

  "Szandor, where are you? Are you okay?"

  "Oh, we're fine... we're just... not at home. We're hiding, admittedly," I said. "How are you?"

  "Alive and busy," she said. "Why are you hiding?"

  "Well, you know... things didn't go well in the Clark Building," I said. "And the whole part about Sutton wanting us dead."

  "Sutton doesn't want you dead. He wants a lot of things and is willing to do much to achieve them, but he's not a murderer."

  "Really? Because he threatened as much when we..." I stopped. Did Jessica know we saw Patient Zero? If she didn't, would her opinion change if I blurted it out now?

  "When you what?" she said.

  "When we wouldn't tell him where Ezra was," I lied.

  "He was just trying to scare you," Jessica said. "He wouldn't actually kill you."

  I'm not sure I believed her. Her voice made it sound like she believed it, but after our experiences with Sutton, I'm not sure I would ever trust that man again. Give the ch
ance, Sutton would have loved to make Mikkel and I disappear. Jessica telling me he's really a paper tiger did nothing to change that opinion.

  Jessica must have taken my silence for disbelief. "If it makes you feel better," she continued, "he's in no position to do anything."

  Jessica went on to give me a brief and obviously cleaned up version of the damage control that was done at the Clark Building. Since Sutton was security, most of the blame fell on his shoulders. She gave me no specifics, but it sounded like Sutton was getting demoted or fired.

  "Officially, neither of you two were there," she said. "I would be very happy if you would keep to that version of the story too."

  "Thank you for protecting us," I said.

  Jessica laughed tiredly. "I've done nothing of the sort. Szandor, you have no idea how angry I am with you. This? This is all controlled politeness because yelling at you would be pointless. There was millions of dollars of damage, we lost most of our research specimens, many MT employees died, and we nearly had a specimen breach in the heart of New Avalon. The only reason I'm not yelling at you is because I genuinely think you didn't know what you were doing. You're naive enough that I actually think you two thought you were doing the right thing. I think you two idiots were actually trying to rescue me."

  "Thanks?" I said. Yes, we fucked up. People died. None of it was ever our intent. But we had be doing it for a good reason - for her, even. But she made our motivation sound like an insult.

  "We're not telling anyone about you two because it would just make things worse for everyone," she said. "That's why you two need to be quiet about it too. Do you realize how much worse it would be if it got out you two were the cause?"

  "No," I said, genuinely not understanding.

  "That's not surprising. You have no head for business," she said with a sigh. "Sutton doesn't want anyone to know about you. In addition to everything else that he's had to answer for, Sutton would have to explain how two kids infiltrated our high tech facility and uploaded a worm. As it is right now, he's better off saying it was just Ezra, who was a known risk and had access. You two would make everything appear to be a greater failure. And you're just as much a liability for me, as I would have to explain that I was the one who hired you two. And as for you, well, you two don't want it known you were involved, because you'd suddenly become an official thorn in MT's side. You don't want that. The company would destroy you." Her voice went icy there at the end.

  "So we're good then, right?" I said hopefully. "We say nothing and we're cool, right?"

  "Szandor, I'm keeping my calm, but I'd like to say that I never want to see or hear from you again," she said, her voice not regaining any of the politeness it had earlier. "I should have never hired you two in the first place. That was one of my worst ever decisions."

  "So no second date?" I said.

  "Don't," she said in a hiss. "Don't even make me think of that mistake." She forced herself to be calm and her voice returned to its previously even tone. "Look, Szandor, you can understand how angry I am with you and how you fucked things up. I'm doing you a favor keeping you two from MT's crosshairs. I didn't even want to call, but we need to know. I need you to answer honestly. Do you know where Ezra is?"

  I rolled my eyes. "Is that what this is about? You didn't call to ask how we were or tell us that we could go home. You called because you need to know something. I thought you were different, but corporate people are all fucking the same! It's bullshit!"

  Her voice was even but sour. "You done?"

  "Yeah," I said. I sighed. "No, we don't know where he is."

  "No bullshit, Szandor?"

  "No bullshit."

  "Alright," she said. "If you get any more info, you let me know. Otherwise, please don't contact me ever again."

  "But -"

  She hung up on me.

  Mikkel was relieved to go home, but for me it was a bittersweet homecoming. While he had Jillian fussing over him for being missing, I went home to an eviction notice. My landlord was not pleased by the raid of what he believed was an unknown government SWAT team. My further absence without explanation meant to him I was either a criminal or would never be back to pay rent. I'm actually fortunate that he gave me the benefit of the doubt of a week. I came home the day before the eviction was final.

  Getting Mikkel out of bed with Jillian to come over and get all my stuff out of my apartment before the locks were changed the next day was an ordeal. Then having to sleep on the couch and try not to hear Mikkel and Jillian was a further ordeal.

  I lost my job. I wasn't surprised, but somewhere in the back of my mind, I was expecting it. My phone had blown up with angry messages from Frank for every day I not only missed work but didn't call in work. Eventually there was a final message vacillating between frothing anger and cold passive aggressiveness as he detailed my inadequacies at length and told me that any of my possessions left at work would be left in the dumpster.

  I never got to talk to Yasmin. She didn't have my number, I didn't have her number either. I logged into our website email to see if there was anything, but then I laughed at my foolishness. Why would she contact me there? Even if she wanted to contact me, that had been enough of an issue that she would have had to swallow some pride to contact me there. So unless I stalked the doors of Helping Hands, I was never going to see her again. I felt bad about that.

  No job, no home, no money. I wasn't sure how much lower my life was going to get after that. I didn't have a car to get towed, but I'm sure it would have if I had one. When things get low, you get introspective. I decided to distill all my bitter lessons learned in my days on Mikkel's couch.

  Don't trust corporations. I already kinda knew this one - punk albums had not steered me wrong. But learning that Minerva Technics had its own military security force that could drag someone from their home was a new wrinkle. Learning that they had been capturing and experimenting on monsters was even more horrifying. That their head of security wanted to kill us just drove the whole point home, despite Jessica's assurances that this was not true. Fuck Sutton and Minerva.

  Don't trust scientists. Ezra had played us. He had wound us up, aimed us at the Clark Building and let us go like toys. And we did everything he wanted. We uploaded the worm and disabled the lockdown. I'm sure it did a few other things that we didn't know about. It's possible he put the delay on the lockdown to give us time to get out, but I'm not sure if that was for our benefit. Mikkel pointed out that our initial security breach would get Sutton on site. If Ezra's target was Sutton, then the delay in disabling the lockdown would have been perfect for getting Sutton in the trap. If that was true, he was hoping we got caught and raised the alarm. Ultimately, we didn't know for sure other than we were used. Fuck Ezra.

  Don't trust so easily. I should realize that I am an idiot. Jessica was a mistake. I was blind to the signs that she was not who I thought. Mikkel had wondered if we were getting the full story right from the beginning, but I didn't listen to him. And she played us both - especially me. She slept with me to win my protection, and I bought it. But she had known much that she declined to tell us. Jessica had known she was dosed with the cocktail which created the pheromones which attracted ghouls. She hadn't known who did it and who wanted her dead, so she needed us to protect her. And we weren't the only ones she played. Jessica lent her friend her clothes to wear to a club, which Jessica had to know had that pheromone on it. And then her friend was killed. She either made a stupid mistake or... or she used her friend as a decoy, hoping that would throw off whoever wanted her dead. Jessica may not have outright screwed us like Sutton or Ezra, but she had twisted my strings and I danced for her.

  Don't trust my first impulse. That sums up much of my experiences. Mikkel likes to joke how I am reckless, but he's right. I made a bunch of bad decisions and he had to bear the consequences of them all. I'm lucky to have a brother like him.

  So who's worth trusting? My brother. Mikkel has been there for me and continues to be there. Surpr
isingly, Paulie and Meat were there for me when I didn't expect them to. For all I complained about them, they had my back as much as I let them. They were far more deserving my trust than Ezra or Jessica.

  What I have I learned? I am an idiot and I need to listen to my brother and friends. And that I'm somehow a very lucky idiot.

  A few days later I was sitting at Mikkel's computer going through the internet classifieds looking for a new place to live. Mikkel had just barely woken up and was standing in the kitchen in his underwear holding a glass of whiskey while frying up some eggs. A cigarette dangled from his lip. I heard the notification from my phone that I got an email.

  I saw that the email was from E. Ezra.

  "Oh fuck off!" I said.

  "Eh?" said Mikkel turning to look at me, some of the ash from his cigarette falling to the floor.

  "An email from Ezra," I said.

  "That ought to be good for a laugh," he said, sliding his eggs onto a plate and walking to the couch.

  "It's just an audio file," I said.

  "Play it, brother!"

  I nodded and played the file, putting my phone down on the coffee table so we could both hear.

  Ezra's voice crackled through the phone speakers. "Greetings my young friends! From all my intel, neither of you is dead. If one of you is, you have my condolences. I understand that your adventure into the Clark Building was quite eventful. I was glad to see that you put both my information and my worm to good use. Sorry about the little ruse with the rescue; I probably should have mentioned that Jessica would have been safer if you had never gone. Oh well, hindsight it always so much more accurate, as the expression goes.

  "I just wanted to thank you for your intervention. By uploading that worm, you temporarily gave me all the access I needed to grab all the data on my projects and Patient Zero. I was also able to divert MT security from my location and the airport. I was finally able to make my getaway. I've left the country, in case you are curious. I'm somewhere that MT can't get me and I have you two to thank. Since I owed you so much, I felt it would be poor manners if I didn't call and gloat. Sayonara my young friends!"