Monkeytown

by Chris Vola

  Titus and… “They’re dead?”

  Davis nods, cackles. Toothy grin. Another blast in the hallway, this one close. He puts his visor down. “When I took him out, one of those agent fucks, Rogers, I think, was walking past the room, heard the shots. He ran. Tried to take him out, only clipped his arm. He must have woken up the rest of them. They made it to the firing range, took most of the ammo before I could let my crew in the Southwest entrance. We’ve got grenades, but they’re still soldiers.”

  The Southwest entrance. Near the big hallway, the firing range, Franco’s lab? Doesn’t matter because we can’t get out of this room. Smoke billows in, B-movie fog machine thick.

  “Take this,” Davis says. He unclasps a pistol and some extra ammunition clips that had been holstered to his belt. He checks something on the AK. “Know how to use it?”

  I click off the safety, stuff the other clips into my cargo pocket. Bright flashes.

  “Can’t stay,” he says, crabwalking through the scattered bursts of concrete and mattress feathers, gun raised. Where did he learn to move like… “…and you’re gone unless…put on something different,” he’s shouting above the gunfire. “…too…chaos. We need to get to the storage closet, find some gear. Stay…behind.”

  I follow him to the door, the pistol in one hand, my shank in the other. I try to mimic his posture, but my leg pulses, rubber vibrations. Pant fabric pushing below the skin into the pink layer.

  The hallway – a cathedral of sharp echoes.

  Davis points right with his scope, darts into the smoke. Shit. I follow his lead, and in the two seconds it takes to adjust to the eye-burning smog, I catch Thompson in the periphery, shirtless, bleeding from shrapnel wounds in his neck, charging at me fast, fear-drunk, the electric end of a cattle prod pointing at my chest. Without thinking, I duck the prod and swing the shank in an uppercut motion that connects below his beltline. Another sharp jab through his massive gut and he stumbles backward, surprised when he recognizes me. He bends over to reel in the clumps of intestine spilling out of his ripped cargo pants onto the floor.

  There’s smoke everywhere, the smell of rust and burning hair. The lights have been shot out or are failing in wild shocks of electric seizure. I can’t see Davis. Two men in riot gear kick open one of the classroom doors about twenty yards down the hall, AK-47s, infared scopes. Before they see me, I duck back into my room. I pop out when they’re closer and unload the clip, just like at the range. Three bullets hit one man and are absorbed by his bulletproof vest. As he’s falling backward from the force of the blast, he inadvertently fires two rounds that pierce the helmet of the other man and splatter brain matter in a starburst pattern onto the concrete.

  A grenade rolls by, settles under Thompson in the puddle made by his escaping belly. He grunts, reaches down to pick it up. A second later it explodes, sending most of his right leg across the hallway and through the surviving soldier’s chest. The soldier gurgles, dies. The rest of what used to be Agent Thompson spreads out everywhere, paints the ceiling. The force of the explosion knocks me to the ground, blinds me for a moment. I pick a few new pieces of shrapnel out of my thigh, watch the dark red tributaries congeal against my leg hair. No pain, only the rush. Severed arms and legs hang from light fixtures like dripping pairs of sneakers. Nothing is left of Thompson besides the puddle. The two men in riot gear are tangled in a fleshy knot. One of them lies half in the crater, head blown apart, the scope of his rifle still cutting a neon red beam into the smoke.

  A symphony of meat.

  I skirt the moist wall, pistol raised. The aftershock from the blast rattles through my skull. Can’t think, just move, move… Visibility is bad; about two or three feet in front of me, that’s it. Another grenade explodes maybe twenty feet away. The first two rooms are dark, lights blown out. Inside are low moans, announcements of impending extinction.

  Another man in riot gear runs past, AK-47 raised, doesn’t see me. When he passes, I let loose a clip in his direction. The bullets rip through his kneecaps. I run over to where he’s lying, kick the gun out of his hand. I smash his helmet in with my heel. He’s young, twentyish, blue-eyed, scared. Not an agent.

  “P-p-please,” he stammers, “fuck, fuck, fuck, please…I’m not going to…”

  He’s fumbling for the blade holstered to his hip. I shove the pistol down his throat and pull the trigger. Another grenade explodes.

  The storage closet is open, light’s on. A shrill squeal. I sidestep the door, twist my neck around, peek in. Everything’s been blown apart, except here, among the gray and off-white structural rubble, colorful pieces of fabric, chunks of plastic rifles, other indeterminate props smother the hardwood, apocalyptic piñatas.

  Kane, blood stained white tee shirt and bare feet, hair partially burned off, is kneeling over Annabelle’s naked, convulsing body near the center of the room, wiping a knife on his leg. Davis is standing behind him, AK-47 jammed into the small of his back. Kane drops the knife, spreads his arms, and stands up slowly. Annabelle is bleeding from a fifteen-inch diagonal gash that starts on the left side of her neck and ends just above her punctured, deflated right breast. Choking, drowning in her own fluid. Alaska, screaming wildly in a blood-smeared blue party dress, kneads her mother’s shins. She crawls to the opposite corner of the room, curls into a ball, tries to hide in the debris.

  “Don’t you want your momma?” Kane smirks. Davis knocks him to the floor with the butt of his gun. Alaska covers her face with her tiny hands.

  I walk into the room, pistol raised. Davis nods, stays focused on his target.

  “X!” Kane says. “Shit's real fucked up buddy, look at this. Davis swindled us, fucking coon. Take him out.”

  Davis kicks him in the kidney. “Agent Harper was trying to cop a quick piece of poon.” he says. “She didn’t feel like partying so, typical disgusting hick, he decided it wouldn’t matter as long as she was still warm, barely noticed when the bombs started to drop.”

  Annabelle goes limp, stiffens. The expanding red puddle staining the handle of a shattered cattle prod.

  “What are you doing?” Kane asks, blinking in Davis’s scope’s glare.

  “Buddy,” I repeat.

  “Yeah,” Kane says, “He tortured you, he killed Titus. You understand?”

  “No.” Annabelle’s eyes are open, dilated pebbles.

  Kane’s jaw quivers. Then, in one burst of motion, he grabs the bloody knife, tries to twist around and stab, or maybe sling it at Davis. It never leaves his hand. One bullet and his head bursts. The blast leaves a trail of glistening pink along Annabelle’s bony torso, covers her eyes.

  Alaska is whimpering, a puddle of piss expanding on the floor under her dress. I lower the pistol, kneel down next to her. She shrieks, tries to squirm away, but I hug her into me until she relaxes a little. “Shhh, shh,” I murmur, “it’s going to be OK, we’re going to leave, we’re going to be safe…”

  I keep hugging her tight against me, not letting her look at Annabelle’s body.

  “Mommy?” she moans.

  “No,” I whisper, “she’s –”

  “Step back,” Davis says.

  He’s aiming the rifle at us, more specifically at Alaska’s forehead, the red neon ball glowing between her tear-struck eyes.

  I stand up. Alaska’s tiny fist latches onto my pants.

  “I got the OK to take you, that’s it. Step back, Josh.”

  Alaska has my mother’s eyes. I can accept that. I want that. Anyone leaves, it has to be her.

  “She’s not yours,” Davis says, lowering his AK. “I found out the college connection between you and Annabelle. Fed her pills and smoke until she thought, really believed, that you were the baby-daddy. It was the only way I could get her to help me, to help you.” I stare at the piñata dust and blood hardening in the crook of Annabelle’s elbow. “She was dead before today,” Davis says, “and the girl…you can’t bring her out of it. We’re doing her a favor.”

  “No,”

&nbs
p; Something larger than a grenade explodes. Pieces of ceiling tile shatter, cake us in ceramic crumbs.

  Davis takes a quick step forward. “Look I don’t know how else to say it. We make it out and some hillbilly happens to be turkey hunting on the mountain tonight and sees something. We can’t run, especially carrying the girl, they’re going to need scapegoats. They’ll parade us around, domestic terrorist freak-show, the Connecticut chapter of al-Quaeda. The girl will testify, we’ll be in Guantanamo with the real scum. You have to understand.”

  “We’re the scum.”

  Another grenade.

  “Huh?”

  I push Alaska away. She screams. “You’re right.” I step backward until I’m a foot or two behind him. Alaska is crying, silently now, her body frozen. As Davis raises the AK-47, she closes her eyes, tilts her head back. She’s watched this scene too many times not to know what’s going to happen, another plastic act.

  Davis nods, squints into the scope. “Glad we’re on the same page,” he says. “It’ll be over before –”

  The shank shreds into his gut a few inches below the bulletproof vest. Nothing hard in the way, only the spongy grating pull, the internal shift of organs. Davis drops the rifle. His mouth opens. The blade slides out easily, and with it, the satisfied release of something that should have happened a long time ago. A shit that had to be taken.

  His jaw locks because he’s going into paralytic shock, his eyes turning to glass. Like Annabelle’s. He crumples to the rubble, almost gracefully, but in a way that doesn’t strike me as dramatic. Barely any blood. He moves his throat muscles, trying hard to gurgle something. I jab through his Adam’s apple until I feel the hardwood underneath him. There’s the blood. You should have known.

  An explosion blows the storage room door off its hinges. Alaska screams. I leave the shank sticking out of Davis, kneel down next to her, hold her tight.

  “Mommy?” she moans, struggling to touch the cold, empty husk that was Annabelle. “MOMMY!”

  “Shh,” I whisper, “she’s –”

  “Daddy?” She sputters.

  “He’s not here, but –” I realize she means me. “No, Josh,”

  She goes limp.

  “OK, OK,” I say. “Can Alaska listen carefully to Daddy and do exactly what he says?”

  She nods, sniffles. “Yes.” She rubs her face, wipes a layer of dust and blood off my forehead.

  “This is what’s going to happen,” I say, “Daddy is –”

  Another violent explosion, yelps and bullet fire from multiple directions. A heavy thud, tremors. Alaska bites into my tee shirt. I pick her up, coil my legs for a blind dash. No thoughts, real-time. I stand up, turn and there’s the beam from a rifle scope, boring into my skull through the smoke.

  A man in riot gear, rifle pointed. “All right, dickslap,” he says. Dickslap? “Giving you two seconds to drop her before –”

  “Billy?”

  I put Alaska down.

  He flips the visor open, squints. “Josh?” he asks. “Fuck, man.”

  I look around the room, what I can see of it, the bodies, then back at him. Seems bigger, healthy, action-hero status, the black cammo, the bulletproof vest.

  “Davis was going to kill her,” I say, blankly. “She’s my daughter.”

  “Daughter?”

  I pick up Davis’s rifle. “You can’t touch her.”

  “Right, the shoot-everyone orders. Not sure how much they matter at this point, since I’m pretty sure that I’m the last man standing, besides the agents. Cover your ears.” He rips a grenade out of his Batman utility belt, pulls the pin and rolls it into the hall. The explosion knocks Alaska to the ground. Too stunned to cry anymore.

  The orders. Billy, Soldier Boy. Never broke character once. Not when we were shitfaced in Manhattan. Not when Harry and I nursed him out of whatever pain he’d been thrown into. And the only thing he can say is Fuck, man. He wasn’t planning on running into me. Freakish coincidence is the only reason we’re in the same room. Davis – mangled jugular squirting fluid into a pink snaky tube that must be his esophagus.

  Footsteps in the hallway, coming fast. Billy plucks another grenade, rolls it. We cover our ears, wait for it.

  “It was supposed to be quiet,” he says after we’re done bracing, “all the targets asleep. We grab you, get out. Something made Davis rush things. We came in through the back door, they were waiting for us. Ton of firepower. Davis had no idea. Even with maps of the compound and GPS, smoke’s too heavy. We knew this place was falling apart, but no one factored in such a shitty ventilation system.”

  “Davis filled me in on the basics,” I say, picking up Alaska, who’d been playing with one of Annabelle’s feet. “At least he took the initiative to tell me why you brought me to the compound.”

  Billy spits, rubs it out into the blood puddle, stares at the jagged floor. “It was selfish.”

  “Then why did you wait for so long to take out the compound? Simple: Davis realizing he was going to be terminated. Titus saw through the limitations of that acting job.”

  “We needed proof,” he says, his upper torso and one arm concealed in the smoke. “Video proof in real-time. We needed to see the attempt on the life of a real American soldier. Bureaucracy – all asses must be covered. Harry, the kids from the meth labs didn’t count. When I didn’t fit the criteria, we thought we were all set. But for whatever reason he told Davis to take me out back, Old Yeller style. No martyr video. He was too preoccupied or stoned to ask one of the Canadians to tag along for documentary practice. He trusted Davis. We didn’t anticipate it would take so long for there to be another retirement send-off, they used to be more regular. With Miller’s video, we had our first opportunity.”

  The hallway is broiling, dead quiet. They’re waiting. The limit of my usefulness becomes painfully clear.

  “Look,” he says. “When we’re outside, you don’t have to say another word to me, I don’t care.”

  This isn’t about me. Alaska tugs at my pants, points, embarrassed by the fresh stains on her dress. No time to consider Billy’s motives. “OK,” I say. “What do we do?”

  “We exit left,” he says. “At the end of the hallway I’m going to activate this –” he touches a small metallic box on his utility belt “– high-grade charges. Melt the entire wing down from the inside. The rest of the compound is newer, fire-resistant. Once I program the detonator, we run to the big door that leads to the firing range. The keypad’s been blown to shit, won’t be locked. I already texted Franco. He’ll be waiting for us at the lab entrance. Once we’re inside, the calcium silicate doors will block the heat. Won’t want to get caught anywhere near here. Big fucking fireball.”

  “Franco.” I say. “Really.”

  “That Euro-sexual numbfuck isn’t doing anything but following the same orders.” Billy says. “The rest of the wings have been getting good reviews. Titus was the only one with bad grades. Used to be they looked the other way. It’s different now.” He takes a BlackBerry out of a pouch on his belt, scrolls around the screen. “You’re going to have to carry her, like now,” he says. “That going to be a problem?”

  “No,” I say, testing my metal-infested leg. No pain. Just the rush. “Alaska?”

  “Yes?” The smallest whimper.

  “Hurry up, bro, hurry…” Billy mumbles, checking something on his gun.

  “Do you know how to play piggy-back?” I ask her.

  “Yes. With Mommy.”

  “This time you’re going to play with Daddy.”

  “Hurry the fuck up,” Billy whispers as he rolls a grenade into the hallway. “That’s my last.”

  Alaska screams when it detonates, bucks against me. More ceiling tiles fall, burying most of what’s left of Kane, Davis, and Annabelle in snowy asbestos fuzz.

  “Right now,” I shout, dropping to my knees and arching my back, “be Daddy’s little piggy, come on, jump.”

  Doesn’t hesitate, she straddles my shoulders, wraps her arms aro
und my neck, near suffocation. I stand up, adjust to the added weight. It isn’t much. Just the rush. Billy tosses me a pistol clip. I feel Alaska’s hot, quick breath against my neck.

  A rocket blast demolishes most of the door and wall and washes us in concrete and plastic flecks.

  Billy disappears into the smoke.

  Grenades detonate in opposite directions. Bullets and screams, instant sinus-burn. Alaska’s coughing, her thick phlegm painting the back of my neck, but holding tight. The floor is spongy, slippery with assorted viscera, pieces of soaked uniforms and plastic, syrup-slick residue. Billy, yards ahead, crouching over the metal box, BlackBerry screen shimmer.

  “Come on!” he shouts, muffled. “…starting…timer now!”

  Break into a jog, and my foot catches on what feels like a large, curved piece of door frame and I almost fall. Alaska squeals but holds on. The snag is a hand that’s latched onto my ankle, perma-gripped. It belongs to what’s left of Agent Rogers. Both of his legs have been blown off above the knee and it’s clear that the black syrup on the ground is a strong acid, eating through his clothes, foaming pink and greenish white in the stump holes. Hair has mostly melted off, and as he ties to gurgle something that sounds like “Fruit-flies-power-trip!” chunks of his jaw peel from his face, Play-Doh slow. I shake free, land a hard kick to his head that dislodges most of his teeth and an eyeball.

  I sprint to Billy. He’s typing on his BlackBerry, connected to the bomb by a USB cable. He looks up. “She OK?”

  I grunt. Her sweaty fingers fusing under my neck.

  Billy snaps the cable from the box, stands. “Two minutes,” he says. “One sprint to the big door, another to the computer lab. Plenty of time.”

  Bullets rip through the smoke. Alaska screams. We duck.

  “Fuck!” he yells. “Go!”

  We run. I focus on Billy, sprinting ahead through the dust storm. Shouts from behind, more bullets. How many of them are there? My lungs fill with smoke and the little air I can force past Alaska’s death grip. Awake. Billy stops so abruptly I knock into him. The big door – obliterated. Rusted-out wires convulsing where the ceiling used to be.