by Matt Wallace
He’s reaching for the first one when Hara appears in his line of sight, unheard and unseen a second before that, ever the silent mountain.
Hara wraps his arms around the reindeer’s body, almost able to clasp his hands together, and lifts the entire impossibly large animal off its hooves.
It’s amazing, even for Hara.
The giant slams the reindeer to the rooftop floor and crushes his weight atop it, grappling it into submission.
“We got this, Ritt!” Moon announces from far, far in the background.
“Yes, what the lad here said,” Ryland echoes.
Ritter spares a glance at Cindy.
She’s down, but moving, and she doesn’t seem to have any major injuries.
Ritter looks back at Moon. “The bag! Toss me the bag!”
Moon looks around, spotting the duffel bag where Ritter dropped it.
He picks it up in both arms and with great effort tosses it to Ritter, who stops its momentum as gently as he can while still catching it.
“Make like a ramp,” Ritter yells at Hara as he continues wrestling with the reindeer, trusting his longtime friend to hear and understand.
Ritter backpedals several steps and then breaks into a fast run, charging toward Hara, unzipping the duffel bag.
The giant leans over the reindeer and straightens his broader-than-broad back.
Ritter bounds up onto him, needing a full step to traverse Hara’s spine, then, bracing himself, leaps as fast and high and far as he can off Hara’s shoulder.
He’s ten feet in the air and twice that distance from Santa’s war sled when he swings the open duffel bag, launching its contents at Santa Claus himself.
Dozens upon dozens of brightly colored Easter eggs fly above the rooftop.
Demon Santa has just finished cracking his whip at the chefs’ skirmish line for the hundredth time when he catches the arc of the eggs in the corner of one eye. He swivels his massive, bearded head.
His horrific, jolly laughter ceases.
The eggs break upon his face and torso in one epic volley. His screams are the furthest thing from “jolly” imaginable. A hundred awful, lethal things happen to Santa Claus all at once. It’s a living tableau of indescribable horror.
In fact, in Hell it will become known as the single most horrific death ever to occur on Earth. That’s like winning the Oscar for best picture down there.
In the end he somehow seems to melt, invert, expand, explode, transform, and disintegrate all at the same time.
What’s left is a living Picasso.
One of the crappy ones. But also sprinkled with nightmare fuel. Everyone who bears witness will have nightmares about it, some of them for the rest of their lives.
But at least he’s dead.
To his credit, Dorsky rallies the chefs and Boosha through the sanity-testing scene. They break from their skirmish line and terminate the remaining elves and reindeer, with help from Hara.
Ritter occupies himself with Cindy. She has several deep cuts from catching the base of the reindeer’s horns, although thankfully none are mortal.
He kneels over her, taking off his coat and bundling it up to compress the bloodiest wounds.
“Did we win?” she asks tightly, obviously fighting to stay conscious.
“I don’t think that’s an applicable term under the circumstances, Cin.”
“I get the assist on that last one though, right?” Moon asks, standing over his shoulder. “I mean, I was all over that toss-me-the-bag thing.”
“Oh my god shut up so much, Moon!” Cindy yells from where she lies, the force of it prickling her wounds and causing her spine to bend.
Ritter calms her.
She looks up at him earnestly.
“But is it over?” she asks.
Ritter doesn’t have an answer.
RED-EYES
“I can’t raise anybody,” Dorsky says, his tone dark and urgent. “No cells. I call the hotel, they give me the fucking runaround. I can’t get a hold of Bronko, Jett, any of them out west.”
They’re in Bronko’s office, Dorsky, Ritter, and Cindy. They entered the sanctum, a firing offense on any normal day, to search for contact information for Allensworth in case of an emergency. No one but Bronko has ever dealt with Allensworth or his people directly. All of their gigs and marching orders came from the chef.
But they can’t find anything. There are no numbers, no instructions, no secret red phone.
Nothing.
They’ve spent the last hour triaging the staff, getting everyone patched up and tucked in safely in Jett’s hospitality wing of the building.
Hara and Moon are still on the roof burning all the bodies, even the elves Ryland turned to stone, just to be on the safe side.
The cops seem to know to stay away from Sin du Jour, but if the police come, they come.
They’ve got bigger problems right now.
“Are we sure there aren’t more of those things coming for us here?” Cindy asks.
She’s sitting gingerly on the edge of a plush leather couch big enough for Bronko to crash on when they’re in the weeds with a big job. Cindy holds one hand against her side. There are bandages wrapped around her torso from her waist all the way up under her breasts. It’s seeping in several places. Ritter wanted her to rest, but Cindy wouldn’t relent.
“How do we know anything right now?” Dorsky fires back irritably.
“If there were more,” Ritter states with finality, “they would’ve sent them after us already. That was the point. To wipe us out.”
“How do we even know Allensworth hasn’t sold us all out?” Dorsky demands.
“We don’t! But reaching out is our only option. There’s nowhere to hide from this. We need protection.”
“It’s not an option anyway,” Cindy says. “We don’t know how to call the man.”
“We need Bronko,” Ritter says. “We need him to reach out. We need to warn them. We need to make sure they’re safe.”
“How?” Dorsky asks.
“I’m going out there. Now.”
Cindy looks up at him. “Commercial?”
“No. I know a guy with a jet. I can be there by 3:00 a.m. West Coast time.”
“Let’s go, then,” Dorsky says.
“No. You’re still in charge here. You’ve got injured people. You need to stay, fortify this fucking place from top to bottom, and wait. Cindy and Hara’ll stay too.”
He expects Dorsky to argue, but he just nods gruffly.
Whatever else he is, he’s committed to his people, and he respects the chain of command and his responsibilities to it.
“You ain’t going alone,” Cindy says. “And don’t throw me any high-handed bullshit on it, either. I’m not in the mood.”
“Fine. If you can make it, let’s go.”
“Will you get to them in time?” Dorsky asks him, and there’s a desperation, a vulnerability in his voice Ritter has never heard before.
“I don’t know,” he says. “But either way, Hell isn’t done getting kicked in the nuts tonight.”
He helps Cindy to her feet and the two of them exit Bronko’s office, leaving Dorsky there to soak in his role.
“That was a good line,” she tells him when they’re in the hall. “You were watching Billy Jack again, weren’t you?”
PART III
THE AFTER-AFTER-AFTER-PARTY
PROLOGUE, TAKE THREE: BRONKO IN HELL
Bronko wakes to the sound of his own soul frying in a blazing vat of demon oil, then he smells succulent flesh cooking and realizes it’s not his soul; it’s bacon. Someone is cooking bacon.
His hands grasp the bare flesh of his own torso and his eyes blink rapidly at the rough surface of a wooden cabin ceiling.
He’s back. Bronko instinctually knows it’s the truth. He’s back in the living, waking world of flesh and blood. His fingers touch the patch of flesh that was expertly pierced by Allensworth’s blade. There’s a subtle line there, but nothing that fe
els like the deep stab wound that killed him. It’s already a fading memory, and he knows soon there’ll be no evidence the wound was ever there.
The first time his soul returned from Hell and he woke up in his body anew, Bronko wept. He curled up in a fetal ball and sobbed until his eyes, nose, and throat were raw and wasted from the letting of tears.
That was many years ago, when the knowledge of his ultimate fate was a devastating revelation.
Now, having returned from a brush with eternal torment for a second time, Bronko just feels hollow.
He sits up in bed and looks around the simple guest room in which he’s been placed. Bronko stares out through a large picture window behind him. A rolling green countryside stretches to a tree-lined horizon. He must be upstate somewhere.
Bronko finds a plaid robe large enough to fit his stout frame hanging from a simple hook on the door to the bedroom. He leaves the room and follows the cooking smells through what turns out to be much more like a lodge than a cabin, with many rooms and winding halls leading to the top of a staircase. Bronko descends the steps, an open kitchen adjoined to a living room revealing itself as he does.
Allensworth stands in front of a ’50s-era gas stove. He’s wearing an immaculately pressed Adidas running suit and tennis shoes. He expertly cracks two eggs into a hot frying pan beside another lined uniformly with darkening strips of bacon.
“Welcome back, Byron!” he cheerfully greets Bronko. “Breakfast will be up in a few minutes. I’ll thank you not to judge my culinary attempts too harshly. I am, after all, a novice impressionist painting for Renoir here.”
Bronko shuffles into the kitchen. “How did I get here?” he asks, each word stinging his dry throat. “And where’re we at?”
“Oh, we have our ways. You were spirited off before anyone from your staff saw you . . . incapacitated on your office floor. This is a little getaway I keep for myself. We’re a few miles outside of Tuxedo, New York. I wanted you to reenter the mortal plane somewhere comfortable, secluded, and . . . friendly, I suppose.”
“How long?” Bronko manages before having to clear his throat. “How long was I . . . gone?”
“Oh, how inconsiderate of me.”
Allensworth retrieves a clear carafe and a glass. He quickly places the latter on a round kitchen table draped with a checkered cloth in front of Bronko and fills it with water.
“Please, sit. Drink.”
Bronko yanks a chair out from under the table and lurches down into it. He takes up the drinking glass with a trembling hand and gulps the water gratefully, not even caring when he begins hacking up air afterward.
“Three days,” Allensworth informs him, returning to the stove. “You missed the rest of the weekend, I’m afraid.”
“Me and J.C.,” Bronko mutters, pouring himself another glass of water and chugging it down, stifling his gag reflex.
“I also had the large stain in your office attended to. It’ll be as good as new upon your return. As to that, you gave your staff an extended weekend off after the trials of Prince Marek and Princess Bianca’s wedding this past weekend.”
“I did.”
Allensworth nods. “Very generously, I must say. They’ll all return to work tomorrow, as will you.”
Allensworth reduces each burner’s flame to nothing and begins loading a plate with the breakfast dishes he’s prepared.
Bronko’s eyes drift from the man’s back to a wooden block beside the stove, from which half a dozen plastic knife handles protrude.
“What would happen if I stabbed you?” he asks Allensworth casually.
Bronko’s benefactor shrugs, seeming totally unperturbed by the question or its implication.
“I’d die, I imagine,” he says.
“And then what?”
Allensworth sighs, carefully sliding two sunny-side-up eggs onto the plate. “I imagine it’s different for everyone, even if the destination is the same.”
“I hope not,” Bronko says quietly, a deadly edge to his voice. “I hope we end up in the same place someday.”
Allensworth remains unshakeable. “Byron, I’m hardly the source of your celestial problems. You created those all on your own, long before we met.”
He sets the plate carefully in front of Bronko. “Now, eat heartily. We’ve got to get you back to work. You’ve got a new event on the books, something that just cropped up. Something . . . different.”
“What is it?” Bronko asks, staring down at the food in front of him with no appetite.
“It’s a movie premiere party in Los Angeles,” Allensworth informs him brightly. “They’ve requested Sin du Jour specifically and vehemently. I think you’ll find it stimulating. A change of scenary will do you good.”
Bronko picks up his fork, but drops it as soon as images of slicing into his own guts seem to scrape the surface of his brain. He has to lean away from the table and blink hard several times to banish them.
“Are you all right?” Allensworth asks him with what certainly sounds like genuine concern.
Bronko nods. “I just hate Hollywood.”
“Byron, come now. You adore Hollywood.”
“Yeah. Sure. I’ll go either way.”
As long as I don’t have to step foot inside a studio, he thinks.
Bronko’s had a belly full of bright lights and television cameras, enough to last an eternity.
BOFFO BOX OFFICE HEAVEN
At the end of the night Producer One summons the chefs, plus Pacific and Mr. Mirabel, to the hotel kitchen where Nikki prepped most of her desserts and dishes for the after-party.
He pops the cork on a bottle of Cristal and pours it into six flutes, handing one to each chef and taking the last glass for himself.
“To the after-after-after-party!” He toasts them.
They all clink their glasses together and drink deeply.
“Damn, that’s the stuff,” the producer concludes after downing half the contents of his flute.
“It tickles where you want,” Bronko agrees.
“You know, I want to share something with you folks. It’s . . . not something I’d ever confess to anyone in town, but I feel like y’all are in a unique position to hear me on this.”
Lena looks over at Bronko uneasily.
He just shrugs.
“I’ve been in this business for twenty years. Made . . . fourteen features? Half of them were boffo box office smashes. Grossed something like a combined three billion worldwide.”
“What about the other half?”
“Lena!”
Producer drops his aw shucks for a moment, then quickly replaces it with a smile.
“It’s cool. It’s cool. My point is . . . I’ve done everything you have to or can do to get your movie made in this town, and I’d say ninety percent of it is shit no one should ever have to do or see.”
They all start to laugh, but it quickly becomes apparent he’s not exaggerating.
Producer ignores or doesn’t recognize the sudden awkwardness.
“And honestly, none of it bothers me anymore. Except for one thing. One thing. Still gets to me. No matter how many times it’s necessary for one of my movies I just can’t stomach it without about five handfuls of Xanax. And even then I have nightmares.”
He stops.
He waits.
He looks at them all expectantly.
Lena is the one who finally asks: “So what is it? What’s the one thing?”
The producer takes a deep breath, staring into his glass.
“These goddamn human sacrifice rituals,” he says.
None of them attempt even an awkward forced laugh this time. Instead they stare at him in confusion and discomfort, as if he’s just told them an overtly racist joke.
“I mean, look,” he continues, almost talking to himself now, “I’ve taken out the occasional assistant or PA or, y’know, try living in Malibu for a decade and not killing a few hookers every now and then, especially when your connect gives you monkey hormones instead
of HGH and doesn’t fucking tell you till you’ve already shot your ass full of the stuff. Am I right?”
He laughs then, shaking his head at the memories playing in montage fashion in his own head, an appropriate Kenny Loggins song playing over it.
“But what’s going to happen to y’all,” he concludes soberly. “It’s just . . . it’s not right. It’s not normal. You know what I mean?”
Lena, of course, doesn’t, but by now she’s not only confused by his words, she’s confused by language itself. In fact, she stopped being able to comprehend words right before the bit about the hookers.
She tries to speak and it’s as if she’s sucking on the innards of a fresh lemon. She also realizes her hand holding the glass has dropped and spilled the rest of its contents down the leg of her chef’s pants.
Lena looks from the stain over at Darren, Bronko, and the rest, her eyes seeking comprehension more than help.
That’s funny, she thinks with that automatic, dreamlike acceptance of an absurd reality. She didn’t even hear them fall, yet they’re all sprawled unconscious on the floor.
It takes much more effort to turn her head this time, to regard the producer, who’s grinning at her.
“You know what?” he asks, raising his hand and thrusting a pointing finger at her around the glass. “You’re a bad bitch. I can tell. Tough. Not afraid to speak up. I got stuck with a director like you on one of my first movies, before I realized why we don’t hire women to direct and had the stroke to make sure it never happened again. She gave me no end of shit about every little bullshit artistic detail. Used words like ‘story’ and ‘character agency’ and whatnot a lot. Movie tanked, of course. I made sure that cunt never worked again. Hard.”
Of course, long before he’s done talking Lena has passed out and collapsed on the floor.
The producer looks down at her over his glass. “They’ll save you for last. They like breaking bad bitches down. They’re a lot like we are. No creativity, though.”
He drains his glass, making a satisfied sound as he swallows. The champagne tastes perfect, not a hint of the chemical sedative his assistant added to it that afternoon with a long syringe.