by Mike Leon
Victor turns to face him instantly, dropping the woman on the floor.
“Sid!” Victor says.
“Victor,” Sid says.
“Long time, no see. How is everything?”
“Terrible. Economy sucks. I couldn’t keep a job at a video store.”
“I heard about that. You could always join up with me. I’m about to crush civilization to dust and usher in an age of constant roving violence.”
“How’s it pay?”
“In blood and pussy.”
“No dental?”
“I liked you better before you found sarcasm.”
“I never liked you.”
Sid raises the M4. Time to finish this. He taps the trigger for quick single shots. Victor won’t eat bullets that easy. He needs to test him. He fires off a shot and misses. Then another. Another.
Victor points a 240 Bravo Sid’s direction and Sid responds by holding down the trigger.
Victor’s victim dives for the floor between them as the crossfire begins. The walls begin to flake away from flying bullets. Sid roars and Victor laughs like a raving lunatic as they fire off everything they have at each other. Sid can feel bullets whizzing past his skull and shoulders. He should dive for cover, but his hate keeps him here, shooting like mad, fixated on his target with an intensity that excludes all self-preservation. When his rifle runs dry, he pulls two pistols and continues shooting. The pistols click empty the same second Victor’s machine gun sucks up the last of its belt.
The two of them remain standing, unharmed.
“You’re empty,” Sid says.
“That’s what the prison shrink told me,” Victor says. He drops the Bravo and extends the kris blade Sid’s direction.
Sid pulls his KA-BAR from its sheath.
“All right,” he says. “Let’s do this.”
Sid cautiously steps down the hall, his right hand extended with the KA-BAR pointing at his brother. He must not overcommit. His brother is not a slob like the soldiers he fought his way through to get here. He can leave no opening and make no mistake. He has dueled his brother before; he has never won.
They come together and the tempest forms.
Sid jabs. Victor swats it aside and counters. Sid deflects the stab away with his elbow. He slices high, low. His brother dodges.
Victor brings down an overhead stab that Sid needs both hands to catch. He stops the blade only inches from his nose. Steel grinds on steel as he tries to overpower his brother. He cannot. He leaps away.
“You’re still weak,” Victor says.
“You’re still an asshole,” Sid answers. He takes a swipe at Victor’s head, but hits nothing.
Victor comes back with a flurry of attacks. The knives smack together—Clack! Clack! Clack!—as Sid deflects each of the blows.
Victor punches him. He tastes blood as Victor connects with his jaw. He jumps back. No. A mistake. Victor will expect him to disengage.
It’s too late. Victor is already there bashing him again. He kicks Sid in the shin as he advances and stabs his kris knife through Sid’s arm. It slides between the bones, impaling his right forearm. Sid screams. Victor levers his blade to twist Sid’s arm. Sid’s knife slips away in a rush of sharp pain, but he catches it in his left hand. He stabs at Victor, but his brother is too quick. Victor grabs Sid’s knife and kicks him in the chest. The kris knife, gripped firmly in Victor’s hand, breaks free in an eruption of blood as Sid sails backward into the woman on the floor. She collapses underneath him.
“Pathetic,” Victor says. He stands with both knives in his hands, shaking his head in disappointment. “This isn’t even a challenge.”
Sid rises as Victor tosses both knives to the floor behind him. Sid swings at his brother with his right fist, blood dripping from the open gash. Victor catches his arm and proceeds to pummel him with punches and kicks. Victor bars Sid’s sliced arm and swings him against a wall with a hard thud that ignites a burning pain in his shoulder.
“Fuck!” Sid screams.
Victor rolls his eyes. The woman attacks him.
INT. GRAVEYARD BUILDING – DAY
Victor knows that bitch is behind him. He knows she picked up his knife from the floor. He is always aware. Never let your guard down, the old man always told them. Victor never lets his guard down.
He turns and catches the knife blade in his left hand, inches from his throat. The woman appears shocked. He squeezes down on the blade and his blood oozes from his clenching fist. He does this only for show. He wants her frightened. He wants her terrified. Her eyes widen and she changes tactics.
To Victor, the tiny, involuntary movements she makes are like flashing neon signs declaring what she is about to do. She shifts her weight to her other foot. The muscles in her neck tense up on the left side even before she lifts her arm. He sees these things instinctively, and marvels at her incompetence as he snatches her punching arm with his free hand.
Victor head butts the dumb cunt in her stupid face for what she did. She deserves it. He’s careful not to damage her too much. He wants her whole for the fun he’ll have with her later.
She tries to kick him. That he simply ignores. She’s no kung fu master. She’s even an embarrassment compared to the other useless faggots he murdered here. Her kicks feel like a rolled up newspaper smacking against his legs.
“I’m going to have fun fucking you raw,” Victor says.
“It’ll never happen,” comes a raspy voice from over his shoulder. It’s Walter Stedman. “Not with your spaghetti noodle dick.”
Victor turns and sees Walter, barely standing, bleeding from four bullet wounds, challenging him. Spaghetti dick? How dare he? Victor does NOT have a spaghetti dick. His dick is a fearsome weapon and Walter Stedman is a pathetic old man who does paperwork and gives orders—not a real warrior.
He laughs at Walter.
“Come on, Victor.” Walter says. “I’ll show you what a real man has hanging and then maybe I’ll let you suck it.”
Victor takes his knife away from Helen and drops her to the floor again. His fun has been interrupted too many times today. There will be more deaths to atone for this.
Walter has his own knife, a Gerber Mark II dagger.
Walter lunges at him, careless, angry, slow. Victor catches him in the guts with the kris blade and Walter’s eyes widen. It was a laughable attempt, unless he had some other motive . . .
Walter raises his hand to show Victor the grenade he is holding. The spring loaded handle flips away and tumbles to the floor.
“Run,” Walter says. He’s talking to that stupid cunt.
Victor tears the grenade from Walter’s hand and throws it down the hallway. It clanks against the corner at the end of the hall and then lands amidst a pile of bodies fifteen meters away. Victor uses Walter as a human shield as the grenade explodes and shrapnel peppers the hallway.
Victor drops the old dead fool when this is done. His brother is gone. That woman is gone. The case is gone. Victor grunts in anger.
INT. LILY’S CAR – DAY
Lily’s headphones block out all sound except that pumping through her iPhone speakers. She sings along to Beyonce Knowles’ epic megahit “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).” Available now from Columbia Records.
“Wuh. Uh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Wuh—”
The passenger door swings violently open.
“AAAAAaaaaaahhhhh!” Lily screams. “Don’t kill me!”
It’s Sid. He’s lugging a big stainless steel briefcase with him. He dumps it on the floor mat and falls into the seat next to her.
“You had on headphones?” he scolds.
“You said stay awake,” she screeches back. “I was up all night driving!”
“Drive! Go!”
“Where are we going?”
“It doesn’t matter! We need to get the fuck out of here! Go!”
Lily turns the ignition and shifts the car out of park. As she nudges down on the gas and the car begins to lumber forward through the dirt on the way back to
the Interstate, she notices Sid is bleeding profusely from his arm. It drips onto the seat covers and smears the dash and window—everything he touches is gore stained.
“You’re bleeding everywhere!” she says. As if it matters anymore; the car already needs a new roof and a steam clean. Her hair is crusty with spilled blood and her skin is covered in a red film. She looks like one of the models at a horror convention, or do the models at a horror convention look like her? Is this life imitating art imitating life imitating—
“You need to drive faster!” Sid roars in her face.
“Okay!” she yells back. “Which way do you want me to go?”
Sid reaches under his seat and snatches something that looks like an RC car remote from underneath. Lily has seen enough Bruce Willis movies to recognize what it is: a remote detonator.
“What are you doing with that?” she says.
He slides out the aluminum antenna and presses the trigger. Lily sees a smoke plume stretch into the sky in the far off distance.
“Holy shit! What did you do?” she says, unintentionally slowing the car as she gawks at the explosion on the horizon.
“I blew up the building,” he says.
“Why?”
“To establish rapid dominance! You need to go faster!” He’s screaming into her ear now.
“What? Which way?”
“Away from that!” He points out her window and she sees it: a black semi, just the truck with no trailer, rolling toward them down the interstate with the massive cloud of explosion dust in the distance beyond.
The tires latch to the blacktop as she pulls onto the highway from the desert soil.
“You need to go—”
“I know!” Lily shouts. “Faster!”
She stomps the gas pedal to the floorboard and the car lurches forward, pushing her back against her seat.
Sid climbs over her shoulder into the back seat and picks up a handgun from the floor. He shoots into the rear windshield. The gun going off in the car with the windows up feels about as comfortable as putting a firecracker in an open tin can and holding it up to her ear. The windshield cracks into a spider web of a thousand strands, but doesn’t break.
“Hey!” Lily attempts to interject as Sid kicks the winhield entirely out of the car. It flaps away in the wind before crashing to the street behind them. The semi crushes it under eight of its sixteen wheels.
He’s already shooting at the semi through the gaping back of the car. It’s not nearly as loud this way.
A rapid succession of plinking sounds alerts her to something frightening. A glance in the rearview mirror confirmed her fears.
“Is he shooting at us?” Lily yells.
“Yes!” Sid continues shooting at the semi.
“Who is that?”
“My brother!”
“I’m glad I’m an only child!”
Sid shoots at the semi more, but it shows no sign of slowing.
“Why don’t you, like, throw a bomb at it or something?” Lily says.
“I know how to blow up a truck!” Sid shouts.
“Then why are you shooting at it?”
“Do you want to switch seats? Huh?”
“No . . .”
“That’s what I thought.”
He throws a grenade out the back of the car.
“That’s what I told you to do!” Lily whines.
“Shut up!” Sid says.
Behind them, the grenade vanishes under the grill of the semi and then explodes in a sharp crack. Acrid black smoke pours from under the truck as it surfs on hot sparks, fishtailing and swerving back and forth across the yellow line.
It finally flips and rolls behind them, then vanishes behind a curtain of dust and smoke.
“Holy shit! Holy shit!” Lily exclaims. “I just lived a Jim Cameron movie. This is awesome.”
“Don’t stop,” Sid says. He climbs over her shoulder again and flops into the passenger seat. His arm dribbles more red onto her lap as he goes over the seat.
“Your arm,” she says. “It’s still bleeding!”
“Shoulder’s dislocated, too,” Sid says. He grabs his bloody right wrist with his left hand and . . .
“What are you doing?” Lily asks.
He slams his shoulder against the passenger door until it emits a loud crack. He growls like an animal.
“Ew!” Lily squeals.
“We need to hide the car somewhere,” Sid says. “And I need to stitch this up.”
EXT. GRAVEYARD BUILDING – PARKING LOT - DAY
Helen heaves to push a car door open past whatever obstacle is keeping it closed. She manages about six inches of clearance before the door won’t budge anymore, and gives up. The inside of the car is covered in thick dirt and other debris. She can’t see anything out there.
She was lucky, though. She was already climbing into the car when she heard the blast. Otherwise she would be buried in that shit, crushed to death or bleeding out or asphyxiating in there.
She closes her eyes and squeezes through the little bit of clearance she has, groaning the whole way. She finally pushes her hips past the crack in the door and stretches out onto the roof of her Hummer. The front end has been smashed in by a boulder of concrete and rebar. The Graveyard building is nothing but a pile of rubble three stories high.
“Motherfucker,” she says.
“The demons did this.”
She yelps, startled as someone speaks from behind her. It’s the ninja. He stands atop a steel I-beam lying at an angle across some nearby cars. A long piece of torn cloth is tied around his head, covering his eyes.
“Your eyes,” Helen says.
“Will heal. For now, the flow of chakra around me is the only sight I need.”
He steps toward her, but trips on a piece of rebar. He topples onto the roof of the Hummer next to her.
“That seems to be working real well,” she says. Standing up on the roof, she offers the ninja a hand.
The ninja hisses quietly as he pushes himself to his feet without her help. As he regains his feet, he lashes out with his sword in a single swing that lasts only a nanosecond. The blade is sheathed again before she realizes what happened.
Helen isn’t sure what she just saw. For a second, she thinks he waved his hand at her, or sneezed. Then the bottom of her flak jacket falls to the ground, sliced in half. The blade didn’t cut the tank top she has on underneath it.
“Touché,” she says.
“We now face a grave threat. The demons have reunited to bring hell to Earth once again.”
“I don’t think so. Sid ran away with the case. He tried to kill Victor.”
“He burned my eyes and destroyed the compound!”
“He saved my life.”
“Perhaps you were confused. You are but a woman.”
“Fuck you, Tanaka. I went head to head with death incarnate in there, while you were what? Beating your face against a hive of killer bees? You can either be constructive or you can shut the fuck up and I’ll leave you here.”
The ninja emits a growling sigh that Helen can only describe as very Japanese.
“We must find Sid Hansen,” Tanaka says.
“That’s more like it,” Helen says.
INT. LILY’S CAR - DAY
A neon sign reads Office in blue letters. Beside the word is a glowing red arrow pointing down and to the left. It hangs in a window next to a brown steel door held open by a wedge on the linoleum floor beyond the door frame. Sid observes these things from the passenger seat of Lily’s car, parked in the blacktop lot outside this shoddy building.
He has a mysterious box that the most dangerous people in the world will kill to obtain. He has a madman hunting him. There is no ammunition remaining, and Lily wants a motel room. Sid doesn’t like any of this at all.
“You can’t use a credit card,” he says. “They’ll know right away.”
“How long do I have to stay off the grid?” Lily asks. Sid hangs on the phrase she uses, like she th
inks she’s an operator now.
“Depends. I took out everybody that can I.D. you, except the Ghoul.”
“The Ghoul?”
“The bulletproof guy in the skull mask.”
“Oh. That guy. Where do you think he went?”
“No idea.”
“Well, we need a place to stay where we can get cleaned up.”
“I don’t like motel rooms. There’s only one way in and out. It’s like asking to be cornered.”
That is true, but she still may be onto something. If Sid can find a way to get her a room without using a credit card or identification, then he could leave her there for as long as it takes him to finish this business with his brother and Graveyard. Of course, she’d have to be smart enough not to give up her cover while she stays there. Sid isn’t so sure about that part.
Lily turns the rearview mirror to look at herself. She brushes her blood-spattered hair back and begins tying it behind her head with a scrunchie she retrieves from the console.
“What are you doing?” Sid says.
“I’m going to get us a room.” Lily reaches into her bra and pushes up her breasts.
“You’re covered in commando gibs. You can’t let anyone see you like this.”
“I got this, dude,” she says, exiting the car. “You just have to trust me.”
He watches as she tiptoes up to the motel office barefoot through the parking lot. She rolls her skirt up along the way, to make it shorter, and pulls it lower to expose her hips. Then she vanishes beyond the door beneath the neon check-in sign.
He waits five minutes.
Then ten.
He’s about to walk into the office and kill everyone he sees, when she emerges again, smiling at him. She dangles a key on the end of a ring with a big plastic room number tag attached.
Unbelievable.
“How the fuck did you do that?” he asks, as she opens the door and sits down in the driver’s seat.
“Never underestimate the power of pussy, Mr. Kill Team,” she says.
“You’re covered in blood.”
“I said I just came from a GWAR show.”
“A what?”