by CG Blade
“Uh oh” Petra mumbled to herself…again. Petra could see his massive repulsive face and haircut sticking up out of the opening holding onto the door to keep it open from the now hard blowing wind. He was looking around to make sure work was still on schedule.
“He probably saw the workers running away Ter.”
“Yes Petra.” Ter replied with much more sarcasm than usual.
She tried to hide behind the six-foot high white steeple section constantly peeking out of the side of it to see if he had recognized her or not.
Directly below Petra, Ray Nelson had just walked into the Oval Office. His Vidset had alerted him earlier that he was needed there immediately and made his way there without haste.
“Why am I here Helen?” Ray Nelson was dressed in his usual red white and blue attire. His long thinning grey hair sat just above his shoulders. He was starting to sit on the white sofa in the Oval Office still soaking wet. President Long was dressed in a lime green pantsuit with matching shoes and sat behind her desk applying a thin coat of plaster to her face and neck. The usual bun sat upon her head with attitude. Strong lightning and thunder was perking their ears and eyes up towards the windows in the Oval Office.
“What the hell are you talking about?” she asked patting on the perfumed make-up thickly. Her facial powder was flying through the air and landing everywhere. “I didn’t call you.” The Oval Office was lit up so Long could enhance her face with the lights always shining down towards her direction.
“Well someone did dear!” Nelson was now starting to take the black leather gloves off his fingers slowly and calmly pulling them off one finger at a time.
Directly above Ray nelson and President Long Petra tried to conceal herself from Kirk by straightening up and acting taller behind the drenched steeple and spire on the roof of the White House. The sky was black for 4:00 p.m. as the lightning and thunder grew closer by the second. Her cobalt blue hair was lying over her feathered armored shoulders drenched and matted.
“Move—you—now!” Kirk yelled
“He needs a new vocabulary Petra. It’s repetitive.”
“I think he just needs to go away for good this time Ter.”
Petra stepped out from behind the steeple, squared up, and faced him. Her hands were making tight fists at her sides. No guns. No weapons this time. Just old fashion ‘guts and glory’. “Mano E Mono” or at least woman against whatever…he was.
Kirk’s shoulders and body wouldn’t fit through the trap door in the top of the roof so he took all of the steel and beams and roofing material around his head with him when he poked up through the opening.
The ruckus from above rocked the Oval Office as Nelson and Long froze in place.
“What the hell was that?” Long quipped forthright wondering what the huge distraction upstairs was.
“Just the workers or thunder,” Nelson assured her. “They’re always so noisy,” he added calmly.
“We’re going to start bar-coding the cattle Ray. We’ll do it by social security numbers on Monday,” she told him calmly applying red lipstick and staring into a compact mirror in her chubby hand.
“Yes that will work out fine Helen. Just fine,” Ray had that weird spacey grin on his face again.
The lightning and thunder became louder and closer towards the roof as Petra was now trying to avoid Kirks thunderous blows. He came at her in his wet black tacky leisure suit as she bobbed and weaved around the steeple. The dark sky and pouring rain made it harder and harder to see as his massive arms and hands took swipes at the target missing several times. There was a loud: BOOOOOINGGGGG! Kirk hit the steeple and loosened it slightly with a swing trying to make contact with Petra’s bobbing head.
“He’s loosening it Ter! He’s the Demolition Man!”
“He’s so thoughtful Petra.”
Kirk’s seven-foot monstrous frame kept coming at her swinging in unstoppable waves of windswept propulsion.
“What’s the matter big boy? Getting tired? Am I wearing you out?” Petra asked trying to egg him on even more from the other side of the steeple.
Kirk kept swinging his crane-like appendages as Petra moved around the steeple avoiding his healthy blows. The thunder and lightning that was cracking and booming was only a millisecond away now as the rain came at them sideways.
BOOOOOOOOIIINNNNGGGG! Another one of the large bolts holding the steeple to the rooftop came loose.
“We need one more Ter one more good swing!”
Petra made sure she was in front of the steeple this time and directly in line of sight of Kirk’s final roundhouse blow. “C’mon big boy show me what you’ve got!” she screamed, rain coming down in buckets over her shiny cobalt armor. Kirk in his black soaking wet suit was standing five feet in front of her and the steeple.
Kirk pulled back and with the force of a thousand men threw his gargantuan arm forward.
Petra ducked and slid under his legs on her knees as his colossal hand went over the top of her head. His large appendage became stuck in the middle of the square steel monument to his masters.
CRRRRRUUUNNNNCHHHHHH!
“What’s the matter big boy? Steeple got your hand?”
Kirk tried to pull himself free flailing about like a mouse caught in a mousetrap pushing on the steeple with his other hand trying to unlock his newly cuffed arm.
Petra walked slowly towards the hole in the roof that used to be a trap door Kirk had so irresponsibly tore up. She turned around to face him at the opening. She stared him down with intent as the rain came down harder. Holding up a copper twisted cable in her hand, she twirled it around like a set of pearls. It was the lightning rod ground cable attached to the spire and the roof. He saw it in her hand following it with his ever-widening metallic eyes. He stopped moving.
“Shocking—positively shocking,” she calmly told him.
CRRRRRAAAAAACCCCCKKKKKKKK! BOOOOOOOMMMM!
The lightning hit with such force it blew a wet and now smoking Petra to the south side of the roof bouncing her off the top of it as she flew over the side. She landed on the wet thorny bushes below eventually being cradled by the budding roses of the garden. Kirk was immediately blown apart as the steeple and his smoking cheap suit flew in all directions. The top of the spire and the steeple—after being ejected from the roof in NASA fashion—landed dish-side down falling past the south window in the Oval Office. It was stuck four feet deep in the rain soaked muddy lawn proudly standing tall straight up in the air smoking and smoldering. Cables were hanging off the top as it continued to flame out from the five-hundred million volt hit. Kirk’s giant smoking arm was still hanging out of the side of the structure sans body.
“A Rose by any other name would smell as sweet—”
“No Shakespeare. Please not now I beg of you Ter.”
Petra’s armor and blue hair still singed and smoking was covered with the busted wet rose pedals and branches off the bushes she had landed in. She brushed herself off as she made her way around the backside of the White House towards the east. Walking past the Jacqueline Kennedy garden and around the east side of the building, she hugged the walls as she made her way towards the north side of the White House.
“Ter call Vice President Roger Harrison.”
“Hello? Can you hear me lieutenant?”
“Sir this is Lieutenant Dace. How’s it going over there?”
“Good Lieutenant. Where are you?”
“I’m still at the White House. I need you to check on something over there at the Capitol”
Petra explained the situation to Harrison and moved stealthily towards the front door of the Presidents’ house.
Chapter 33
ABOMINATION
President Long and Ray Nelson were both at the south window of the now dimly lit Oval Office with eyes and mouths wide open. They pushed the velvet red curtains apart trying to get a better look at their failed smoking future. Long shut off all the lights but the one on her desk so they wouldn’t be noticed by whate
ver was out there lurking in the darkness. Some of the lights in the White House had been blown out by the lightning strike. Long and Nelson were staring down at the destroyed structure sticking up out of the lawn. Kirk’s arm was still waving to them in the wind blown rainy bolt lit afternoon. They turned to look at each other as a woman dressed in a blue silk blouse, short blue skirt and blue high heels stood in the doorway leading into the Oval Office. Her dark blue hair was up on her head in a bun. Blue glasses hung over her nose and sheer blue nylons with a stripe and bow at the back of the ankle adorned her beautiful curving legs.
“Who the hell are you?” Long asked, turning towards her almost sounding jealous at the sight of her gorgeous physique.
The woman silently walked up to both of them and handed each of them a card. It was a sort of five-by-seven inch cardboard placard. Still standing by the window, stinking smoke billowing in the distance, each of them looked down at the card curious of its contents.
“Why do I need a Hover-Bus schedule?” Nelson asked curiously, looking at Long, and then looking at the woman in blue and then back at the card again.
“Because—” The woman quickly changed into cobalt armor from the feet up and her beautiful cobalt hair now engulfed her head. Her irises were a magnificent glowing cobalt blue and her Cobalt Colt- Peacemakers were at her side wanting to play. “—you two can either throw yourselves under one or I’ll do it for you!” Her facial armor was now slowly coming up and HUD calculations reeled in front of her eyes.
“Who in the fuck do you think you are huh?” Long asked yelling at her with force spitting as she spoke. “I’m the President of these United States you—you…goddamned thing! Why is that thing still living Ray?”
“I don’t know Helen! I saw it lying in the morgue at the AL SHIFA hospital!”
“My, my, you have a potty mouth Ex-President Long.” Petra rubbed her right forefinger over her left like a mother scolding her child politely “No you’re not the President but I am First Lieutenant Petra Kayden Dace U.S. Army. I am a vindicator, I am an equalizer, and I am your judge jury and executioner you—Bitch!” I have heard every conversation you two have ever had since I was resurrected. You like spying on the American people don’t you?” The two of them looked at each other shocked as Petra’s facial armor slowly engulfed her head. She was after all torn to pieces in Oman and couldn’t possibly be here right now. “The only things getting bar-coded are both your asses. Did you really think you could control people with your MKULTRA signal? Did you think you could get them to involuntarily comply with your bank robbery scheme because that’s all it was right? It was just another way to lie, cheat, and steal the American people and the world’s countries out of their money.” Petra was now backing up from the two of them with her head down eyeing them both with fire and brimstone in her cobalt blood. The white sofa separated the three of them now. Ter was monitoring Petra’s circulatory system with anticipation of a call to the Meredith Med Lab. Long and Nelson were shocked and stunned that all of this was going down right now. The one thing they feared the most had destroyed their precious plans that were sticking up from the earth in smoking pieces.
The door to the Oval Office had been filling up with the staff and the aides who overheard the loud discussion. Long’s aide Roger Bavary was at the forefront wondering about his boss. “Are you ok Ms. Long?”
“Leave now!” Petra told them waving a Colt in their direction.
Roger and her other aides quickly scuttled off in the other direction of the White House never looking back again.
“You two murdered my father for trying to stop your pathetic coup and you murdered the President of the United States. You two are also responsible for the attempted murder of General James S. Cooper who will live to tell everyone you’re real story. Oh and by the way you—” Petra was now pointing at Long “must be what an older model maybe sixty-six or so maybe sixty-seven? Yep you’re still cold. You didn’t get the hot Crimson tubes like Nelson over there has. What, no upgrade for you? Nelson’s a little harder to read but he runs hot—a lot hotter than humans.” Petra’s thermal scan could tell the big difference between the two of them. Nelson was red in her thermal HUD about 120 degrees Fahrenheit and Long’s thermal scan was blue about room temperature 72 degrees Fahrenheit. “So where is Miss Dreama your creator and your master? You two have about two minutes to enjoy the rest of your pathetic programming with each other!”
“I don’t have to tell you shit you—you thing” Nelson spouted off in anger.
“What’s the matter Kitty, cat got your tongue?”
Nelson charged after Petra leaping over the long side of the sofa as she stepped out of the way of impending attack.
“You see Ray—or whatever you call your pathetic self—my armor is not organic so to speak so if I choose to end your programming right here and now it won’t affect me. Not one bit. You hear that…CRIMSON?” she was staring into his warm metal eye sockets as if they were a piece of surveillance equipment looking back at her. Petra was now straddling Nelson bent over at the waist pulling his face up to hers with his red tie in her fist. Petra put the left Colt barrel to his stomach. Nelson was lying very still on the floor now.
“So I’m pretty sure you two didn’t come up with the plan to infiltrate every American’s brain with a ridiculous vaccine microchip. No, you’re too stupid.” She was staring at Nelson now “And you’re too old.” She turned her head looking at Long now.
Long had moved behind her desk pulling open a drawer while Petra interrogated Nelson. A gun was now pointed at Petra’s backside. Long pulled the trigger of the handgun and unloaded twelve shots into Petra’s behind and back area. The bullets loudly left the barrel of the gun and cracked clinked and clanged around the room landing in various spots in the walls and the woodwork and the red-carpeted floor. Petra was unfazed by her actions and pulled the trigger on the Colt. The cobalt bullet went through Nelson’s abdomen muffled by his insides. Petra stood up as Long quickly backed up her wide load finally hitting the wall behind her desk with her girth rattling the wall and all its possessions. Petra blew the smoke off the barrel and turned to look at Long.
“You think that’s going to harm me a bullet to the gut?” Nelson asked her snidely getting up and running out of the room towards the front doors making his way outside.
“So what do we do with you an older model and one with a brown power tube AA5C39?” Petra asked walking over to Long. She touched the Colt barrel to her cheek singeing the plaster covering the robotic parts that needed replacing underneath. The smoking melting smell of make-up and polymers was awful.
There was a loud explosion on the front lawn of the White House as Nelson blew apart at the bullet’s entrance wound. Petra hearing the explosion outside turned to look at the scene through the window as his top half flew away in the dampening wind and his bottom half fell straight over. Hot red liquid poured out of its exposed tubing and wiring. The top of his pants were missing the rest of his normal red and white ensemble. WASP soldiers that were guarding the entrance to the White House inspected the mess left behind scratching their heads.
“You see Helen cobalt and crimson are a deadly toxic chemical mixture. Once they are introduced to each other it’s only a matter of seconds before they explode and disintegrate. It’s basically the same thing as cobalt poisoning but the effect is much faster and much nastier. Poof! They’re gone!” Petra quickly spread her fingers out in front of Long’s face.
Long was speechless and lifeless. Her programming was shutting down her speech patterns or someone else was making sure she didn’t talk from a remote location. She had no more rants and her eyes were doll-like and glossed over. She had no more cards to play. Her chubby overly perfumed presence would no longer be needed at the Oval Office but Petra had one more card in her own hand to play.
“You my dear Ms. President are as they say ‘history’. Oh and that thing you call a pantsuit covering your polymorphic fat rolls is what lime green for God�
��s sake! It’s absolutely the most horrible looking clothing line I’ve ever seen. Did you have that crap made or get it off the rack at the GAP? You’re an abomination to women’s fashion the world over.”
Petra walked behind the President’s desk and bent over looking underneath for something right in front of Long. “Just as I thought,” she told Long who was still plastered up against the wall. “You haven’t left this room in two years according to my video files. You lost your battery storage capacity a long time ago didn’t you? You have to be in this room to function. They left you here with a faulty power tube.” Petra was squatting now and pulling on cables and boxes stored under the President’s desk. They were giant battery units and adapters for plugging into something and recharging it. She yanked them all out and threw them into the middle of the room. The cables and all the equipment made a huge clunking sound in the process.
“You sent Keller and Sheehan out on the road to do your dirty work? They don’t have a clue do they, do they?” Petra’s feet were now up on the President’s desk as she sat in her chair. “I found your real you and the real Helen in Cryofreeze in good old Mercury. She’s been long dead if you don’t mind the pun.”
“That was really quite good Petra.”
“Thank you Ter.”
“We are everywhere! Crimson is everywhere and you can’t stop it! We are EVERYWHERE!” Long was now going crazy and laughing uncontrollably. Her eyes were rolling around in her head and her arms were flailing as Petra stood up and turned towards the shocked fat doppelganger against the wall in its ugly green attire. Petra’s right hand tightly squeezed Long’s powder covered plastic polymer neck forcing her into the wall behind the desk. Petra stared into her glossed over dead robotic doll eyes and rapped on the top of her metal and polymer hair covered head hard with her left knuckles. “Hello? Whoever is in there? Hello? Whoever’s behind all of this—I’m going to find you—and I’m going to hunt you down and strap you to the top of the Washington Monument!”