Godless Murder Machine (The Postmodern Adventures of Kill Team One Book 2) Read online

  “Those are Catholics,” Nick explains as a husky man with a bushy mustache pulls a heavy black vest over him. “I’m an Orthodox priest.”

  “Huh. I always thought Orthodox were Jews. Doesn’t matter by me. Jew, Krishna, Mormon, blood drinking Satanist—you talk this guy down and you’re okay by me.”

  The mustached SWAT cop hands Nick a small set of headphones wired to a palm sized metal box which he clips to Nick’s belt.

  “The Lieutenant’s gonna be in your ear the whole time,” the SWAT cop says. “It’s already set, but we’re on channel three in case you mess up the dial.”

  “Okay, look,” Beekman says. “There are at least five hostages, and one of them is wounded. We don’t know how bad. I got a sharpshooter with eyes on the prayer room from that building across the street.” Beekman points at a red brick structure, three stories tall, lined with windows, and topped with green shingles. It’s a private club of some kind. “If you can get him to stand by one of the windows, you know. We all want a happy ending here, father, but if my guy has to make the call, you know which way he’s gonna make it.”

  Nick sighs as he looks at the building he’s about to enter, with its white stone walls and tall brass topped minaret. It’s a place that was hardly a side note in his life just this morning—the Morston Community Islamic Center.

  “I’ll pray it doesn’t come to that,” Nick says.

  EXT. DRIVE-IN – NIGHT

  Lily rubs her face against Sid’s neck. She sits straddling him in the passenger seat of her car, licking and kissing him as he fondles her with his steely hands—his killer hands. She loves those hands more than any other part of him. It’s because of the fear they invoke. She’s seen them tear men limb from limb. They could crush her skull, snap her bones, choke the life from her. The rush is intoxicating. It’s better than handling a venomous snake.

  “You’re missing the movie,” Sid says as she pets his buzzed black hair and presses her face against his tanned cheek bones.

  “Confession,” Lily whispers in his ear. “I didn’t come here for the movie.”

  This is technically true, as it is Triple Terror Tuesday at the drive-in and Lily has seen Evil Dead II and Pet Sematary already, more times than could easily be counted. Only the third movie, Dario Argento’s 1975 masterpiece, Deep Red, is something she hasn’t seen before.

  She nibbles on his bottom lip.

  “Do you think we should use a condom?” he says.

  Lily stops nibbling and scrunches her face into a look of annoyance. The suggestion is unusual because Sid knows Lily is sterile, and if he’s concerned about her having STDs, that ship sailed twenty hard fucks ago. “Do we have a reason to?” she questions.

  “Ye…” he starts to say through the narrow squint he always does when he’s trying not to give away that he doesn’t understand something. “No.”

  “Is this something somebody told you?” she asks. It sounds like the kind of thing he would pick up from a PSA, or maybe one of the jerks at GameStop, and not quite grasp with the same savvy as everyone else in the modern world.

  “I read in Maxim that you should always wrap it up.”

  “Oh. Well if it was in Maxim...” Lily halts the sentence there. “No.”

  She reaches underneath him and yanks on the handle to release the seatback. Sid falls backward and she goes with him. She stops nose-to-nose with him, her hair hanging in both of their faces.

  “We’re gonna have to switch places for this to work,” she says as she unzips his weathered camouflage pants. He really could use some new pants.

  “Have you done this a lot?” he asks.

  “Yeah, but not in this car. I really want to break it in.” She grins.

  He scoots out from under her and she lies face down on the seat. She lets him tug her black yoga pants down below her butt and then he lies down on top of her. She feels his breath on the back of her neck and she quivers with anticipation as she waits to feel him inside. He wraps his arms around her and takes her hands in his.

  “You’re really pretty,” he says. Yuck. It sounds especially awkward in his deep and raspy action hero voice.

  “No. Just be quiet. And don’t hold my hands,” she says.

  “Why?” he says.

  “It’s lame. This isn’t Mayberry. You’re a killer. Give it to me like a killer.”

  “I’ll swallow your soul! I’ll swallow your soul!” the stereo cackles in the ragged voice of a zombified creature from the movie.

  Sid places his hands on the seatback. Lily breathes deep, waiting for him to jab into her insides and set her senses on fire.

  What comes instead is just a bland and factual occurrence, devoid of strong adjectives or any necessity for the use of them. It can only be described in the most clinical terms. His penis penetrates the boundary of her major and minor labia and comes to occupy her vagina, where it reciprocates.

  It’s boring. It feels good, maybe as good as a back rub, but it’s not the explosive fucking she wanted. The boys she went to high school with could give her this. She wants more. She needs more.

  “Here,” Lily says. She snatches his left wrist in her hand and pulls it closer. She guides it to her neck. “Choke me.”

  “What? No,” he whispers in her ear, brushing against it as he continues thrusting into her.

  “Do it.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you.” Bleh. Boys say things like that when they think their dick is bigger than it is. That’s not how Sid means it now, but it feels just as laughable.

  “Quit being a pussy and choke me while you fuck me.”

  “No,” he says. He finally stops moving.

  She turns back to look into those void black eyes over her shoulder, eyes that give away nothing and hide everything. Behind them could be a thousand thousand horrors, adventures, unspeakable things, and none of it matters. All she can see tonight is mundane puppy love.

  Lily sighs.

  “I’m just not feeling this tonight,” she says. She pulls her pants back up.

  “But you said—”

  “No means no.” Lily turns over underneath him.

  “Really?”

  “Can we just watch the movie?” She wants him still. She wants him to refuse to take no for an answer. She wants him to turn her back over. She wants him to ram it in her and not stop to ask if she’s alright. She wants him to fill her with his...

  “Okay,” Sid answers. The only thing that fills Lily is disappointment.

  INT. MOSQUE – NIGHT

  Nick leans into the stone double doorway leading into the prayer room and knocks on the frame with his index knuckle the way he might before walking into a friend’s open house when arriving early for a party. This is the worst party ever, if that’s the case.

  “Ron?” he calls out in the big empty square space. His voice echoes back to him unimpeded by soft substances like carpet or upholstery.

  “We’re right here if you need anything, Nick.” Beekman’s voice is in Nick’s ear.

  “Father?” comes a reply from Ron inside the prayer hall. “Issat you?”

  “It’s me, Ron,” Nick says. He walks through the big doorway slowly, holding up his hands and turning to show he has no weapons. The prayer room is like a church hall in most ways, except for all of them. There are no pews or benches, no altar, no chairs, no saintly depictions. The only decorations are non-descript patterns of color on the walls and lining the shoulder height windowsills. The windows are spaced every ten feet or so along three of the four walls. It’s a big room; ten thousand square feet by Nick’s judgment, all of those feet empty except for a few at the opposite wall.

  “You don’t have to do all that, father,” Ron says. “I don’t want to live in a world where a priest comes heavy, so you can just shoot me if that’s how it is.”

  Nick lowers his arms as he steps into the center of the room. The hostages are lined up along the far wall. They are unusually quiet for their predicament, but they don’t have the view
Nick does—the one where they look like they’re ready for a firing squad. There are six of them; three women with head scarves, two of them Middle Eastern and another gingery white. There’s a small brown boy with curly black hair holding onto the hip of one woman. A man with a goatee bleeds profusely from a hole in his leg as he lies propped against the wall. The last is the Imam, signified by his wide round white cap and lengthy grey beard.

  “You wanted to see me, Ron?” Nick asks as plainly as if they just ran into each other at a pee wee baseball game. “How are you?”

  “Tired,” Ron mutters wearily. His chrome revolver sags down to his remaining knee. His other one is just an empty pants leg from which a graphite rod extends into his right sneaker. It’s a streamlined thing, unnoticeable under long pants, but Ron is wearing Bermuda shorts today. His left hand rattles slightly. His right is a set of aluminum pincers that terminates in a cup around his elbow.

  “Everybody gets tired. Jesus got tired.”

  “He had this on him.” Ron reaches into his front pocket with his pincers and carefully retrieves a big black iPhone. It looks brand new, like it might have been unwrapped this afternoon. He extends his hand to offer it to Nick as he switches his view nervously between Nick and the hostages. “It’s to trigger a bomb. Maybe bombs.”

  “Who had it now?” Nick asks as he takes the phone and gives it a cursory glance, more for show than out of any serious concern. He tucks the phone away into his coat pocket.

  “The one I shot. The insurgent.” Ron points at the man on the ground with the bullet in his leg. He doesn’t look good at all. Sheen sweat covers his sheet white skin. His eyes don’t move, not even to blink. Nick thinks he probably bled out only a few seconds before.

  “How sure are you, Ron?”

  “You calling me a liar?”

  “No. I’m only asking how sure you are. If you’re sure, you’re sure.”

  “I’m sure. You’re just like the rest of them. You don’t believe me. I’ve been onto these rags for weeks! I’m telling you they’re planning something big!”

  “Okay, Ron. I believe you. I’m listening. Just help me through it. What are they planning?”

  “We have nothing to do with anything like that!” the Imam says, stepping forward from the wall. “Islam is a religion of peace.”

  “Shut up, old man!” Ron belts out as he turns and cracks the Imam in the cheek bone with the butt of the revolver. The Imam tumbles backwards into the floor where it meets the wall. “You can’t listen to them. They’re full of fucking lies! It’s called taqiya, father. Look it up.”

  “Talk to me, padre,” Beekman says in Nick’s ear.

  “It’s okay,” Nick says, trying his best to stay discreet by speaking to both of them. “It’s okay, Ron. I’m not listening to him. I’m listening to you. What are they planning, Ron?”

  Ron looks up from the Imam and slowly steps toward Nick. “It’s like this,” he starts.

  “I got a shot lined up,” someone calls over Nick’s radio.

  “What’s it like?” Nick creeps forward nonchalantly, placing himself between Ron and the nearest window.

  “Take it,” Beekman says.

  “I can’t,” the sharpshooter replies. “The priest is in the way.”

  “Ron, walk me through it,” Nick says, trying to ignore the police in his ear.

  “We need you to move away from the window, father,” Beekman asks politely.

  “They got bombs, father. Enough to take out a couple skyscrapers,” Ron says.

  “Who? That man there?”

  “More than just him. There’s a fuckin’ army of them. I seen it. They have an encampment in an old scrapyard out in Harper Heights. They’re building stuff out there. Technicals. Tanks maybe. It’s a full scale invasion.”

  “Here? In Morston?”

  “Why not? They blew up the mall a few months ago.”

  “I thought that was isolated. A few wackos, Ron. It was a fluke. Morston is in the middle of nowhere. Why would they go to all that trouble? Why not L.A. or New York?”

  “That’s what I said, until I thought about it.”

  “Padre. Move. Now.” The commands come through the earpiece with bold intensity.

  “See, it’s deeper than that. You would hit a big city, unless you were planning a false flag attack. Then you don’t want to do any real damage. You do it out here. Pick a random everytown that only sorta matters to people because of how average it is. That way when they see the pictures on the news, they get extra upset. They want something done about it and done fast. Bam! You get what you want.”

  “Which is?”

  “Control. They can pass legislation that’ll make the Patriot Act look like the Emancipation Proclamation. What do you think all the camps they just built in Texas are for?”

  “What did the police say about this?”

  “I can’t go to the police. Are you nuts? They’re a part of it! Got to alert the people! I told the guys at the VA, but they laughed at me. My family didn’t care. Nobody cares.”

  “I care.”

  “Do you?” Ron glares into Nick’s eyes, reading him, looking for what Nick is trying to hide.

  “Yeah, Ron. I want you to get out of here okay. I want you to get back to your family and get better.”

  Ron sighs bleakly and glares down at the floor.

  “You’re just like them!” Ron shouts angrily. “You don’t care! You think I’m crazy!”

  “No, Ron.” Nick speaks as softly as possible, but his voice his shaking now. He’s trying to say Ron’s name as much as possible. He read somewhere that has an anchoring effect, a humanizing quality that builds trust, or maybe not. Nick can’t remember. He’s not an expert hostage negotiator. “But don’t you see this isn’t the way? Violence is never the way.”

  “You always say that. Father Pacifist. Violence doesn’t solve anything.”

  “I believe that, Ron. In my heart of hearts. Violence is always wrong.”

  “But they don’t say that, and they’re winning, man! They’re taking over!”

  “Calm down, Ron. Who are you talking about?”

  “Them!” Ron waves his gun at the hostages. “The barbarians are at the fucking gate man, and you don’t even care! I’m talking about white genocide here! Shit’s on the Georgia Guidestones! You don’t care and you don’t care and you don’t care and nobody cares! And all I can do is go down takin’ as many as I can with me!”

  “Ron, these people didn’t do anything!”

  “I’m sorry, Father!” Ron jabs the muzzle of the revolver against the Imam’s right temple and pulls back the hammer as he screams. “You hear me, clit chopper?! Now burn, motherfucker! Burn!”

  “Ron, NO!”

  BANG! The sound of the gunshot floods the room only after the cracking of glass. Blood spatters Nick’s chest. It is invisible against his black shirt, but shows brightly against the white of his collar.

  The Imam clutches his chest and a woman screams as Ron flops to the floor, squirting red ooze from his head.

  “He’s down,” the sharpshooter says.

  “Good job, Miller,” Beekman says.

  “I had to hoof it to the roof to get the shot.”

  Nick looks down at the broken body of the disturbed veteran he tried to save and then through the shattered window to the tiny police sniper on the roof across the street, slapping a high five with the spotter next to him.

  INT. GAMESTOP - DAY

  “Would you like to reserve Super Street Brawler Beta VI EX Plus Turbo Squared to the Tenth Remix with your purchase today?” Sid asks, looking up at the woman across the counter, a short brunette with heavy rouge over pockmarked cheeks. He guesses her to be roughly twice his age, which puts her in the mid-thirties. She’s thin, but not particularly shapely.

  Around them, GameStop is like the stomach of some huge living thing; a small space, rumbling with noise, insulated from the outside world, able to digest only items filtered through the esophagus of geek
culture that pipes in through the loud promotional video displays mounted on the walls.

  “No, that’s okay,” the customer answers. She smiles very briefly, a fleeting and insincere gesture of goodwill.

  Almost all of them decline, but Sid still asks every customer every time. It’s one of the mission protocols for his job here according to the employee handbook. Sid waves the shrinkwrapped plastic case for the game she wants, Call of Honor: Modern Battlefield 3: Progressive Warfare, past the red eye of the scanner next to the computer and continues with the transaction.

  “You know,” Bruce, the store manager, chimes in. “Call of Honor 4: Counter Counter Terror 2: Oslo Explosion comes out next month. If you reserve it now you get the GameStop exclusive Anders Breivek police uniform skin.”

  “Who’s Anders Breivek?” the customer asks.

  “Uh...He’s on Vine. He’s huge. You should check it out.”

  “My kids love Vine! I better reserve that.”

  “Sure thing,” Bruce says. “Just put your name and phone number on this little paper and Dutch will ring it up.”

  Everything Bruce just said was a lie, including the part about Dutch ringing it up. The real Dutch Van Houten is at the bottom of a mass grave somewhere in Mexico. Sid left him there. Now he is just another face in Sid’s bag of stolen ID cards. His first name adorns the laminated paper lanyard dangling from Sid’s neck. Hello, my name is: DUTCH. Join PowerUp Rewards today!

  The uniform restrictions at GameStop are lax, and that works to his advantage. Sid wears his standard camo pants every day with a long sleeved black shirt and fingerless gloves to hide the scars that mar every inch of his arms below the elbows.

  Bruce winks and returns to his previous activity, turning the crank on a small black plastic device known as a SkipDr. Sid takes the customer’s payment via credit card and wraps her game in a plastic bag. An alarm chime mounted at the back of the store beeps three times as she exits through the front door and leaves Sid and Bruce alone at the counter.

  “You like how I swooped in and got that pre-order?” Bruce asks. He’s a short light-skinned black man with a medium length afro and a scruffy patch of a goatee that seems less like a decision and more like the product of laziness.