by C. G Harris
“Hey,” I snarled in pain and spun toward a man who now retreated backstage. He glanced my way but didn’t offer so much as a screw you by way of apology. The guy seemed pretty ordinary. Mid-forties, glasses, slacks, button-down shirt, and the age appropriate hair and waistline. He carried a long, black duffel bag, webbed handles stretched with weight, but even that wasn’t the thing that caught my eye. It was the guy walking next to him.
Saying the man walked next to him was a bit of a stretch. The guy was Velcroed to Average Joe’s hip. He wore WWI style fatigues, not the American flavor. This guy wore a German uniform, complete with the spiky helmet, and the antique apparel looked like it had come straight out of the trenches. Every inch looked to be threadbare and torn and hung heavy with mud. The Nazi matched Average Joe’s every step, never touching him, but all the time whispering in his ear.
My mouth crooked in a half smile. If Nick had hired this guy as a prop for the show, he had really gone all out. I looked around, but no one paid either of them any attention. Not a wave or a wow, nice makeup work. They just marched straight through the crowd of busy stagehands, headed for ... What could they be headed for? The show would be on stage. Why were they walking away? For that matter, how would a Nazi fit into Nick’s presentation?
I glanced down at my empty cup and sighed. Religious experience or not, the coffee would have to wait. If Average Joe and the Nazi were up to something, I needed to find out what.
Chapter Ten
An ordinary looking guy wearing a Nazi on his hip shouldn’t be all that tough to pick out of a crowd, but somehow, they managed to disappear among the throng of whizzing bodies rushing back and forth behind the stage.
I scanned all the people with growing concern. I had promised Alex nothing would happen during Nick’s speech. If this wound up being the birth of the Fourth Reich, I would never hear the end of it.
Maybe Alex should be in on this manhunt. Too bad she was nowhere to be found either. How could three people disappear in such a small area? I hurried forward, bouncing between stagehands dressed all in black, wearing bulky one-eared headphones. I was tall enough to see through most of them, but I still hopped up every few steps to try and get a bird’s eye view of the area. Still nothing. By now, the Nazi duo could be just about anywhere. I started to head down a hall labeled dressing rooms when a worker carrying a huge stage light caught my eye. One of those big, black can jobs with all the colored filters that hung over the stage from a scaffold or a catwalk.
My eyes went up, and sure enough, there was my Nazi party, lumbering high overhead like a couple of Hitler Monkeys. Unless Nick had a paratrooper act planned, any hope that these two were innocent bystanders just went out the window. Where had Alex run off to? I thought about calling security, but what would I say? Excuse me, sir, but I believe the Nazis are planning to invade the MiRACL extravaganza. Watch for an air raid.
Any blockade fell solely on me. I needed to find a way up to their position and go Iwo Jima on their ass.
I scanned the area, looking for a hidden stairwell or out of the way ladder leading into the web work of lights, cables, and framing overhead. Nothing stood out in the shadows. I began to panic, then I noticed a bold sign pasted on a door, Catwalk Access. Leave it to the theater geeks to hide a thing like that in plain sight.
I huffed out a breath and jerked the door open. Inside, I found an innocent set of stairs that led up to a not so innocent set of steeper stairs. I made my way to the top and peered across the huge, hanging scaffold over the stage. Cables and wires drooped from the roof to the steel framework, along with retractable vents and safety rails. It was like looking through a building collapse. Everything was black and shadowed by the lights below. I would need a search party and half a dozen bloodhounds to find my bad guys up here.
The scaffold had been set up like a grid. At least there was that small mercy. A catwalk hung every few feet that led all the way to the other side of the stage. Problem was, if I picked the wrong aisle, I would have to backtrack all the way to the side walkway to run them down on the correct one. I shrugged. Only one way to be right, and that’s to risk being wrong. I set out on the center walkway, figuring I had the best chance of spotting the Nazi Duo from either direction. Below, the crowd began to applaud, and I glanced down below my feet to see Nick, his hands up, working the crowd as he paced back and forth, grinning like a mad man. The guy really knew how to work an audience. He wasn’t alone, as I thought he might be either. Ryan, the autistic savant, joined him and so did Coffee Guy, who appeared every bit as full of himself as he had at the refreshment station. He waved out at the crowd as well and stuck to Ryan like glue.
Stage lights began to flash and roll, making the shadows on the catwalk dance in crazy, robotic angles. Music boomed out of speakers somewhere below, and everything began to feel like some sort of high-rise horror fun house. I grabbed onto the rails to keep my balance and tried to pick a spot to focus on. Colors moved across the ceiling. Yellow, blue, green, then when the shadows shifted and the lights turned red, I saw my culprits. I squinted across two aisles and could just make out Average Joe and the Nazi facing me on a catwalk twenty feet away.
The lights shifted again, cycling through the colors. Every time they looped back to red, I could see the odd duo through the shifting shadows, and each time, a little more of their plan became clear. The Nazi never stopped his whispering, ever crouched near Average Joe’s ear. One cycle. Joe put his bag down ...
Cycle ...
Joe unzipped his bag and reached inside ...
Cycle ...
Joe is assembling a ... I squinted but couldn’t make it out ...
Cycle ...
Joe chambers a round into a rifle.
I felt my eyes go wide, and I stared down at the stage. Joe had a perfect shot at the podium from where he stood. I looked up at him again. All the lights had steadied now, showing Joe as he searched for a clear position over the rail. The distance between catwalks appeared to be about ten feet. No way I could make the jump once, much less twice. Joe pulled the rifle up and sighted in using a scope fit for a space station. I shouted down, cupping my hands to my mouth, but as I did, the crowd’s applause came to a crescendo once again. I crouched, ready to dive for cover if Joe turned his gun on me instead. He never even flinched. No one heard my cry. Joe continued his methodical process, all the while Nazi whispered in his ear.
I shouted again; Joe adjusted his scope. I waved my arms and jumped up and down, trying to at least distract him, but all that did was draw a glance and a sly, sick smile from the Nazi whispering in Joe’s ear. At that moment, he and I both knew the same thing. Joe was about to pull the trigger, and there was nothing I could do about it.
Chapter Eleven
If I couldn’t stop him from pulling the trigger, at least I could keep him from seeing his target. I reached down to one of the big, can stage lights and wrenched it around so the beam shined right into Average Joe’s face. He squinted and reared back as if I had hit him with a ten-thousand-watt fire hose. For the first time since I saw them, Nazi stopped whispering in Joe’s ear and straightened to look at me. The moment he did, Joe seemed less than oriented, holding his rifle more like a tree branch dipped in Polio.
He released his trigger hand and let the weapon go limp in order to shade his eyes and look around. Joe’s clueless expression told me he had no idea where he was or what he was doing. Even more odd, he never so much as acknowledged the Nazi trench zombie standing next to him. His hitchhiker recovered much faster. The silver-tongued leech began whispering in Joe’s ear, hijacking his brain all over again. The moment Nazi began whispering, Joe’s demeanor changed. He pulled his rifle in, crouched back into a predatory stance, and began to reposition to a spot where he could take a shot without my makeshift solar flare hitting him in the face.
Damn! I glanced around in a panic for anything I could use to stop him. Short of the denarius that stayed perpetually on my person, I had nothing. I really needed to ta
lk to Alex about letting me arm up for these missions.
There was only one way to put an end to the inevitable. I had to separate Nazi’s ugly mug from the side of Joe’s face. And to do that, I had to be on the catwalk two aisles over. There was no time to run all the way back to the end and then back up their aisle, which left only one option.
I clambered over the railing meant to keep me from plummeting to my death and reached for one of the scaffolds holding the lights beneath my feet. I managed to perch a foot on one of the thin, metal mounting tubes while using the electrical cables overhead to keep my balance. It was like a high wire act, only with enough juice to fry me into overdone bacon. Plus, if I kicked off one of the heavy can lights right over Nick’s head, the shooter wouldn’t need to pull the trigger at all. I’d smash Nick’s melon, and Joe and his Nazi comrade would get away scot-free.
I tried not to think about the fall, the electricity, the melon smashing, or even the shooter and concentrated on moving as fast as possible through the mess of wires and mounting apparatus. I made it over the rails of the first catwalk and into the tangle of suspension webwork again by the time Joe found a new position. I only had a few more seconds. Nothing left to do but go for broke. I tiptoed across the mounting scaffolds like a ballerina in a fat suit and hit the opposite rail with a thud, throwing off Joe’s aim once again. Nazi paused his whispering to glare at me, and this time, Joe paused as well, as if Nazi had pressed some sort of pause button while he considered what to do with me.
In that moment, I realized I had no real plan for Nazi either. I didn’t even know what the thing was. A ghost from Christmas past? Luftwaffe Zombie? How was I supposed to fight this thing? Nazi must have come up with a battle plan of his own because while Joe stood by on pause, the creepy ghost-zombie thing came toward me, looking less than thrilled that I had interrupted his master plan. I flipped over the rail and onto the catwalk, looking for any sort of makeshift weapon. Nazi must have recognized my panic and grinned as he sped up to close the distance between us. I saw his face now. All rotting flesh and bad teeth. His hair streamed out from under his helmet in long patches, and his eyes bulged so far out of his head I wasn’t sure what held them in.
Nazi all but ran the last couple of steps and seized me by the neck with an iron grip made of bone and sinew. I choked and gasped, pounding at his arm. That’s when I felt something warm on my leg. For a second, I thought I had peed myself for real and wondered how much humiliation I would have to endure. I would be known as the guy with the Nazi pee defense. But then it got hotter, way hotter. Like hot enough to melt my pants off hot. Nazi jumped back in surprise as I batted at my leg, wondering if I had somehow contracted the world’s worst case of syphilis.
Much to my surprise, my hand came up holding a ridiculously large battle axe—and it was bathed in bright orange flame. A cartoon wouldn’t throw something this ridiculous into an ogre’s hands. It caught me so off-guard, I almost dropped it. Less to my surprise, my pants were on fire.
I beat at my pant leg as the fabric disappeared, consumed by the heat and smoke threatening to crawl to my more sensitive regions. I managed to put the fire out with my free hand before flaming underwear became a fashion choice and thanked the Heavens for my Topside healing capabilities.
Nazi no longer looked so confident. He took a step away from my Dungeons and Dragons pyro-axe. The billboard-sized bonfire on a stick had to be a perk of the denarius coin, which offered an unusual, if not useful power, when I needed it most. If the denarius wanted to give me a goliath cartoon weapon to fight with, then by the coin, I would use it.
I stepped forward and swung the axe over my head, ready to bring it down on the Nazi’s skull. The gigantic weapon had all the weight of a sheet of typing paper, making the move comically fast. I came up short when the business end got tangled in the overhead chains that suspended the light scaffolding. I winced and let out a sigh of relief. If I had managed to catch one of those high-powered cables, bacon flavored Gabe would have been on the menu.
The miscalculation caused me to stumble, forcing me to back up a few steps to wiggle and wedge my axe clear. Nazi stood there, first with fear written on his face, then confusion, then I swear, I recognized a smug grin of amusement. He took a step forward, but I managed to free my power torch and swing it into his face again, this time with a more cautious arc. The move wasn’t dramatic. More like a three-year-old swinging a tee-ball bat for the first time, but he got the message.
Nazi jumped back as I mini-swung and thrust the pyre of molten metal at him, trying not to get tangled in the web-work of cables, wires, and chains. Joe never moved, and eventually, I forced Nazi away from him altogether. Once I stood between him and his puppet, Joe seemed to come around and stand up straight, taking on that bewildered expression again. Nazi hissed at me like a cat and tried one more lunge, but I would not let him past. With no way by, Nazi retreated the other direction on the catwalk and disappeared.
I took a step to go after him, but a voice stopped me. It was Joe. He was coming out of whatever stupor the Nazi had put him in.
“What is this? Where am I?” Average Joe took a step away from me and looked down at the rifle in his hands—then he raised it and pointed the barrel at my head. “What did you do to me?”
Chapter Twelve
Trading in one problem for a shiny, new set of unpredictable issues was not my favorite way to resolve a conflict. Part of me knew any injury, even a gunshot wound, should heal while I was Topside. On the other hand, he had a rifle pointed at my head, and as far as personal experience went, all this instant healing mumbo jumbo was still theoretical. I had never tested it, at least not to this extent. Having a coffee-break-commando canoe my skull with a hunting rifle was not my idea of a controlled experiment.
“Easy, buddy.” I held out my hands in a placating gesture only to realize my right hand still contained the oversized pyro-hatchet. I jerked the battle-axe back, holding it away from him.
“Don’t worry about that.” I tried to set the flaming cleaver down on the catwalk, but when I opened my hand, it stuck to my palm like gum on a shoe. I raised a finger to my would-be assailant, asking him to wait a moment while I tried to shake off the axe like a persistent booger. Nothing worked. No matter how hard I shook, the flames just whapped against the air, and the axe held fast to my hand.
“What are you doing?” Average Joe poked his rifle in my direction. “Stop waving your hand around like that.”
His voice cracked with panic, and I glanced back to look at him. To my surprise, his eyes were not on the inferno, but on me.
I narrowed my eyes while my brain tried to catch up.
“Wait. Can you see this?”
I brought the axe around, clanging it on the rail by accident. The sound made Average Joe jump, but his eyes went everywhere but to the axe.
“See what? How did you make that noise? Start talking or so help me ...”
He took another small step in my direction, twitching the gun to finish the sentence.
“All right, calm down.” I kept my burning axe hand off to the side and tried to avoid bumping, burning, or cutting anything else. “I know this all seems a little weird, but I am here to help you.”
“You can help me by telling me what I am doing here.”
“All right.” I lowered my voice as much as I could and still be heard over the crowd cheering below us. “You are here because ...”
I searched for a plausible reason to explain why an otherwise ordinary man would be up on a catwalk with a high-powered rifle.
“You are a deep-hypnosis security agent for the federal government.”
The man stared at me. Even I didn’t know why I chose something this ludicrous. Now that the ball was in my court, all I could do was run with it.
“You are a part of an experimental group of agents who perform undercover operations for the government while you’re hypnotized. I’m your handler, but this op has gone wrong. You woke up. You were only to provi
de eagle eye security for the convention below but ...”
I tried to look embarrassed. “Well, I was so proud of your progress in the program, I wanted to come check out the operation for myself. That’s when I accidentally triggered the wakeup protocol.”
Average Joe lowered his gun a little. “Wakeup protocol?”
“Yes, I said the word ‘pastrami.’”
He raised an eyebrow.
“I didn’t mean to.” I shook my head. “I wanted to find out if it would work. So stupid.”
I beat at my thigh with my fist and turned away from him in shame.
I saw the rifle lower the rest of the way out of the corner of my eye. “Don’t worry. I can start over. So, I ... sort of sleepwalked through everything?”
I nodded. No wonder the Nazi picked this poor guy to be his assassin puppet. If he bought into this cockamamie story, he would believe anything.
“Under hypnosis. We program people to be the perfect agents. Insecurity, doubt, family life, none of it is an issue. When you are a deep-hypnosis agent, you live two separate lives. I’m not supposed to tell you this when you’re awake, but I am a little jealous. You’re pretty amazing.”
“I am?” I reached out and took the rifle out of his hand. He handed it over almost absent mindedly. “I did sleepwalk a lot when I was a kid.”
“Exactly,” I said. “That’s what made you a perfect candidate. How about we get you down from here though? We need to head back to the labs for some real rest. You’ve had a big day.”
Average Joe nodded. I started to point toward the way out, but realized I held a rifle in one hand, and an apparently invisible, flaming axe in the other. I nodded Joe in the direction of the stairs then searched for the duffel bag he had used to tote the rifle. If I could stuff it back in there, at least my assassin’s accoutrement would be hidden from view on my way out.