Schaefer allowed himself to take a few small steps before halting again. He was barely able to stand now but his gaze on the target remained unwavering.
“Hey, asshole,” the target’s attention was pulled back to Hazzard, now grinning at him through blood-soaked teeth. “I’m you’re enemy.”
The jaw muscles bulged and tightened on the sides of the target’s face as he brought the chainsaw closer.
“Shut up, Silas!” Schaefer warned but Hazzard continued, his lips still locked into a feral grin.
“And you’re my enemy, which means your mission is goin’ outta here in a body bag.”
“SILAS, SHUT UP!”
The target’s arms were now trembling with rage, the whites of his eyes almost burning holes in Hazzard’s face.
“Get down on your knees,” he said with a blood-curdling calm before a globule of blood splattered across his face.
“Fuck you!” Hazzard replied, with now half of the blood expelled from his mouth.
“Silas, what the fuck you are doing? Why do you keep insisting on putting yourself in the middle of all this? You don’t have to! Jesus Christ, Silas, he’s going to cut your fuckin’ head off! Be smart!”
Hazzard then offered him a reassuring glance, “There’s a lotta officers out there, Schaefer. The moment my head leaves my body…his head leaves his.”
“You’d just love that, wouldn’t you?” Schaefer said with a boiling tone.
“For this fuckin’ animal, you bet I would.”
Fuck! He’s not giving up! Both of them are going to be dead! You have to give the signal now! There’s no other way! No! There has to be some other way! There has to!
Schaefer’s eyes hurriedly jumped from the crumbled structures around him, then to the clouds that stretched across the ceiling above him and back to the soundstage beneath him.
Think! Think, goddamn it! Another way! Anoth-Wait! Yes! Yes! That’s perfect! Yes!
Hazzard was now being forcibly lowered to his knees with his hands behind his back. The target brought his chainsaw so that it was now at the back of his neck.
Schaefer subtly brought his right hand to his ear and began tapping on it, praying that everyone behind him could see it. At the same time, he brought his other hand all the way behind his back and began dipping it up and down, making flowing motions with it.
I hope they get this! Please let them get this!
Hazzard was now on his knees, head bent down, reciting a prayer under his voice with the calm, dignified desperation of a prisoner about to be executed.
Come on! Come on! Where is it? Hurry up!
The chainsaw approached Hazzard’s neck just as the heavy, resonant sound of water rushing towards them from somewhere down the street finally made itself known.
The target froze along with his chainsaw, the tips of its teeth lightly glazing the hairs on Hazzard’s neck.
Schaefer took a few more steps towards them.
The target was now walking backwards, away from Hazzard, his gaze locked into a catatonic trance on the vanishing point of the street ahead.
Without missing a beat, Schaefer lunged toward Hazzard and dragged him up off the floor.
“Come on! On your feet!”
They were now racing back towards the entrance; Schaefer could see the technicians through the small window as he once again signalled to them by tapping his ears, this time a little harder.
The sound of the rushing water now grew louder.
Hazzard suddenly slipped from his grip to charge back towards the target. Schaefer’s gun was now in his hands and blazing.
Schaefer was faster as his arm latched onto Hazzard’s uniform and pulled him back with all his might.
Hazzard’s arms flung backwards, bringing his firing weapon to the clouds, causing a shower of sparks to rain down upon them as it shot at some of the strobe lights they were concealing. The sight was surreal.
Losing his balance, Schaefer found himself falling backwards, dragging Hazzard in tow. They both tumbled down the shuddering stairs just as the door ahead of them was already opening.
In an instant, Schaefer and Hazzard were back out in the alley and the door behind them locked shut.
A team of ten officers this time were already surrounding Hazzard whilst Schaefer shot back to his feet, almost tripping over on his way up.
“Keep him over there and make sure he stays there!” he ordered angrily, his sharp stabbing fingers pointing to the bins where everyone had been hiding behind before.
The officers took it a step further as they escorted a kicking and screaming Hazzard out of the alleyway entirely, “He’s a fuckin’ dead man, Schaefer! He’s fuckin dead and so are you! You call yourself a police officer? You’re no better than that fuckin’ barbarian in there! You’re soft! People like you don’t survive in this world for long! Believe me, it’s gonna take you down, son!”
Schaefer now stood toe-to-toe with the door in front of him, desperately trying to hide the fact that he was shaking and on the verge of having a complete breakdown.
Relax! Just relax! Take it easy! Breathe!
He could see the target with his back turned to him, still unmoving and still entranced as the sound of the waves continued to amplify. The juxtaposition in their respective body languages was startling and yet it allowed Schaefer to calibrate and centre himself. His composure slowly began to return.
Schaefer paused for a moment, closing his eyes and allowing himself to take a big, deep breath.
Once he let out a relieving exhale, he slowly reopened them.
“Alright,” he said, “Let’s finish this.”
And with that he gave the final signal to the eagerly awaiting technicians on his right.
Impenetrable blackness immediately devoured the space within the warehouse as every single light blinked out for an instant, an instant that allowed the three enormous dump tanks, which hung from the ceiling at the end of the warehouse, to unleash an ungodly and unseen tsunami of water down the fake street towards the target.
The darkness vanished amongst the reawakening of the strobe lights as the target’s eyes opened on the gargantuan liquid entity that was only twenty seconds away from him and closing. His body never moved and yet it was no longer frozen.
He had fifteen seconds.
An unbuttoned blazer accompanied by an undone tie draped a section of ground beneath him.
Tearing the dress shirt off concealing his broad torso, the now bare-chested army major fished out the dog tags of all of his squad members from his trouser pocket and tightly wrapped them around his right hand.
With his posture stiffened by a confrontational defiance, the major let the chainsaw in his left hand crash into the ground.
He allowed a moment before calmly detaching the flamethrower that hung over his shoulder. Now hanging at the end of his outstretched left arm, his hand sprung out and let it drop as well. That same hand was now reaching for something in his left side holster.
The colossal wave was five seconds away from effortlessly and cleanly sweeping him along with it.
Now savagely wielding a crude machete in his left hand, a much lighter weapon, the major unleashed a primal roar before his legs screamed down the violently shuddering street towards the tsunami, absolutely refusing to collapse with world around him.
The current lunged toward him in incredible fury a split-second before his body was aggressively catapulted into the air. Smashing into the ground with the wave, he powerlessly rolled and tumbled back towards the entrance.
“I did it! It’s about fuckin’ time you came out of hiding!” the major yelled out, struggling to resist the wave that he was now an inseparable part of.
He finally detonated his body outwards before the wave struck him back down.
He shot back up again; drilling both feet into the ground and, in a psychotic frenzy, began frantically slashing at the frothy current with his machete.
&n
bsp; Not even the water splashing into his mouth could stop him as he continued, “We were on a mission! We weren’t supposed to be intercepted by you!” before suddenly punching his right hand into the air where his dog tags chaotically dangled, “They weren’t supposed to be killed by you!”
“Begin draining,” Schaefer ordered.
The major’s hysterical slashing intensified once he saw the water levels around him beginning to descend. He wasn’t going to stop. He was winning.
The liquid entity completely immersing him had almost absorbed the horrific cries of his men, cries which it once silenced, cries which shot into his ears, reverberating throughout their vast tunnels, drilling sharply into his head.
He mindlessly swung his machete in all directions, decapitating the heads of thousands of aquatic demons surrounding him, swallowing him, overwhelming him, “Come on! Take me down! I’m right here and I’m not goin’ anywhere! I’m all yours! You killed them! Now try and kill me!”
The veins riding down his muscular arms were on the verge of bursting out of his skin as they pulsated under the desperate strain.
He continued to impale the water as it was being drained via the sinkholes situated at every corner of the soundstage. The beginnings of a triumphant smile soon began to stretch the bottom half of his clean-shaven face.
His legs ploughed through the thick, surging current, charging back down the street, whilst his machete soared majestically into the air before plunging back down into the water, swinging, slashing, and stabbing. The wound in his leg infused what was left of the tsunami with his blood, forever tainting it.
The sinkholes continued to devour streams and streams of liquid until the water curtain soon went completely down to reveal Sergeant Major Alan Bushell of the United States Army, from 1998 to 2008.
The thunder and the rain gradually stopped altogether, making way for complete silence.
The blood of his slain enemy now cascaded relentlessly from the tip of his machete as his chest rose and fell with relief.
Things suddenly began to shift all around Schaefer.
“Wait!” he shouted, clenching his fist in the air, stopping every single police officer behind and to the sides of him from moving an inch further. “Just wait,” he repeated, now in a hushed tone.
All eyes were now on the figure framed by the small window.
With the machete still drawn, Sgt. Major Bushell carefully surveyed the street around and ahead of him, waiting for anything else to jump out. His body and his eyes became one as they slowly swept the entire area, from the ground to the clouds, tracing a full revolution with their movement. The only water that remained lay in the corpses of puddles scattered everywhere.
Schaefer eventually saw the contentment relaxing the contorted features on Major Bushell’s face, completely unaware that it was directly mirroring the transformation in his own face.
The machete eventually joined the ground once it resolutely slipped out of his hand.
The stillness that had suddenly possessed the complex machinery underneath the soundstage accentuated the posture of a man that was straightened by the pride of having settled a score whilst being the last and only one standing.
“Alright,” he said as he unlocked the door and motioned to everyone around him, “…now go.”
Another wave in the form of alert police officers, alarmed psychologists and psychiatric ward workers soon moved in but Major Bushell, now leaning more on his left leg, remained standing and dignified.
For Schaefer, the relief was almost euphoric, bordering on nearly paralysing.
He felt the pat of another fellow officer on his shoulder, “He don’t even realise how close he was to being shot down. I’ll tell you what, Schaefer, nobody deserves the heavyweight title of ‘Real Humanitarian’ more than you. Looks like they might be doing this for every basket case who’s feeling a little violent. Of course, each of them is gonna need their own unique playpen to act out their own little fantasies or confront whatever demons they have floating around inside. Come to think of it, I might need some of that too with my long list of regrets…and, uh, certain fantasies of mine.” The officer gestured to some of the figures in white coats waiting outside the warehouse’s entrance, excitedly murmuring amongst themselves, “An apple of this catharsis will certainly keep the doctors away.”
Exhausted, Schaefer offered a weak glance to the grinning officer, “Do it when they haven’t escaped next time, huh?” before finally letting go of the door knob he’d been leaning on the whole time and collapsing into a small puddle below him, waiting for someone to come and pick him up off the ground.
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