Red Scare (The Postmodern Adventures of Kill Team One Book 3) Read online

  “Lily takes way too long to get ready,” Sid says.

  Jeanette Hoffman nods agreeably without any hesitation. He rarely sees much more of a response from her. Lily’s mother has been a psychological trainwreck since she was tortured by Sid’s sadistic brother. None of them know exactly what Victor did to her. She won’t even tell any of her therapists. Sid has plenty of good guesses, considering all the things he saw Victor do when they were living in Afghanistan, but he sees no need to share any of that with Lily or the doctors. It would only make things worse.

  “So you own a strip club,” he says. “What’s that like?”

  Jeanette turns up a bit, with quaking frailty. “It’s okay,” she manages.

  “You ever dance or do you just keep the books and stuff?”

  “I—I used to. When Lily was little.”

  Suddenly, Sid hears a familiar sound in the distance, something insignificant or unnoticed by Jeanette, but which sends him into alert. He stands from the table, knocking back the chair he was sitting in and sending it clattering against the hardwood floor. He pulls the FNX from his pants. Jeanette is already yelping with fright.

  “It’s happening again! He’s back for me! No, please no!” She dives from her chair and cowers in a corner of the kitchen as Sid slinks down the hallway toward the front door with his gun at a low ready position. The drumming from the distance grows to a thunderous pounding as Lily comes down from upstairs, still brushing her hair.

  “Is that a helicopter?” Lily says.

  “Yeah,” Sid grunts. “Stay here, and stay down. Look for hard cover. Treat all windows as active windows.”

  He peeks through the blinds in the front room and sees a big black helicopter making its descent into the street in front of Lily’s house. A half dozen men in black tactical gear lie crouched inside the open chopper door—not enough to put up a fight against Sid. As the bird touches down, Helen Anderson hops to the landing skid and then down to the curb. Sid opens the front door and goes outside casually holding the pistol beside him.

  “What’s the deal, Helen?!” he shouts as he approaches Helen through the grassy front lawn. “You here to get your asses kicked again?”

  “We need your help!” she yells back over the whirring chopper blades. Helen is a lithe woman, tall, and tawny haired, dressed in brown slacks and a buttoned blouse with a heavy black flight helmet that adds a bizarre twist to her business casual attire.

  “Graveyard needs my help? That’s rich. Let’s see. First, you dicks sent me to the desert to live with a freakshow rape gang that tried to kill me with a burp gun. Then you made me kill almost a hundred babies. It was seventy-nine, if you want to know. I’m still not sure why. Then you sent that spooky shadow guy after me in the Wal-Mart.”

  “That guy wasn’t us! We don’t know who did that!”

  “Then you sent Kill Team Two to burn me alive, eat me alive, and shoot me with a sniper cannon—that thing had to be 20mm at least. What am I forgetting? Oh, the ninja! The ninja tried to kill me too! And now you need my help? Nevermind I took care of Victor for you. So, tell me, why should I help you?”

  “Because the fate of the world is at stake!”

  “What else is new?”

  “What do you know about postmodernism?”

  “Like the future?”

  “No, self-aware storytelling with an emphasis on intertextuality, black humor, and chaos.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Postmodernism. You’ve never heard of it before?”

  “No. I would remember. I remember everything.”

  “Have you recently encountered anyone you might describe as a walking literary deconstruction? A living movie or book character? Or maybe just an archetype of one?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Have you experienced non-linear time?”

  “Maybe later I did.”

  “That’s not funny. Have you experienced any unusual synchronicity? Has anyone rambled at length to you about the critical importance of absolute nonsense?”

  “You’re doing that right now. What’s this about?”

  “Something is happening to the world, Sid. Something insidious, something terrible, something subtle enough that no one notices, and I need you to stop it!”

  Sid raises a cynical eyebrow for a split second. “Great! Now get back in your helicopter and fuck off! I’m going to the mall!”

  “What?!” Helen shouts back. “Sid, everybody could die! Everybody! And you want to go to the mall?! Are you out of your fucking mind?!”

  He shrugs and heads back to the house to get Lily. He has never actually been shopping at the mall, only engaged in run-and-gun firefights there, so this should be an interesting afternoon.

  INT. GALLERIA - DAY

  “That thing is a fucking death trap,” grumbles the hollow man. “That’s why.” Sid Hansen is shorter than Kayla expected. The way Lily described him Kayla pictured a musclebound giant flexing out of a spandex shirt and running into a Wrestlemania ring. There may have been tassels tied around his biceps in her imagination too.

  The real thing is relatively non-descript. He is square-jawed and buzzed up top like any typical army guy. He stands just a little over six feet and although he is a sinewy thing, he is not exactly a bulging meat monster. His arms and hands are marred with dozens of scars, the only standout hint at what he really is.

  “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation,” Lily says. “It’s just an elevator!” They stand in front of the reflective metal sliding doors of the Galleria’s only elevators. An elderly couple waits next to them, doing a poor job of hiding their interest in the conversation.

  “Sure. Until some asshole plants a satchel charge on top of the car and blows the cables,” Sid says. “Then you’re plummeting down however many stories of concrete shaft toward certain death wondering why you didn’t just take the stairs.” The old woman nearby, glances worriedly at her husband.

  “You’re afraid of elevators!” Lily says.

  “I’m not afraid of anything.” Sid’s refusal is marked by a wolfish flash of bared teeth and wild black eyes. “I make decisions for tactical advantage.” He turns his head up at the elevator, then leans to follow the overlooking second floor further down the mall corridor. “There are stairs further down. I’ll meet you up there.”

  “Fine,” Lily says as the elevator doors slide open. Sid walks off as she and Kayla board the elevator. Lily holds the doors for the old couple, beckoning them politely from inside. With a layered tutu micro skirt, fishnet stockings, a Driller Killer t-shirt, black lipstick, six-inch stiletto buckle boots, a vaguely Satanic full sleeve tattoo and an upside-down crucifix dangling from her neck, she looks like some kind of post-hardcore vampire. The old woman says they’ll get the next one.

  “Soooo,” Kayla hums as the doors close. “He’s whinier than I expected.”

  “He’s not whiny. He’s... disgruntled.”

  “He sounds like Solid Snake. Does he talk like that all the time?”

  “Yeah. It’s hot, isn’t it?”

  “No. Not at all.”

  “You just haven’t seen him in action.”

  “He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who battles supervillains for great justice or whatever. He’s spookier than that.”

  The elevator doors slide open and Sid is there. “Fu—” Kayla squawks as she slaps her palm to her chest. “How did you do that?”

  “That’s what he does!” Lily says. “He’s just there. Like Batman. Then he’s gone. Like Batman.”

  The Morston Galleria is alive and teeming with the pedestrian traffic of rampant consumerism. The two-floor mall sat closed for months following a supposed terrorist attack that left one wing of the building badly damaged and over a hundred people dead. Now grand re-opening banners dangle from the ceiling over all of the great glass entryways as people window shop for trendy clothes while sipping overpriced coffee once again. The line at Starbucks is a lev
iathan that stretches well out of the store and into the mall corridor. Space at the food court tables appears sparse at best. Legions of preppy dicks filter in and out of Hollister.

  “Why couldn’t you blow up that place during the massacre?” Kayla says.

  “I did,” Sid says, narrowing his eyes at the faux beach-front bungalow as they pass. “Only it was downstairs.”

  “They just put a new one up here,” Lily says. “Even bombs can’t kill bad taste.”

  “What do they sell in there?” The super soldier gazes into Hollister with suspicious eyes, like the answer to the question might be poison or dinosaur embryos. It is a strange sort of naiveté that could make him interesting.

  Lily cringes. “Clothes for tools and cologne.”

  “What’s cologne?” Sid asks.

  “Dude perfume. You know like Sex Panther or Le Zob.”

  “Fucking Le Zob!” Kayla says. The mention strikes a familiar angry chord for her. “Their pop-up ads are ridiculous! I can’t even go to Screenscreams on my phone anymore. It fills up the whole screen and the site crashes every time.”

  “I told you Android sucks,” Lily snarks back.

  “It does it on iPhone too. They do it on everything.”

  “My dad used to say a man should only smell like black powder and blood,” Sid grumbles, still stuck on the subject of dude perfume.

  “Tell that to Giorgio Armani,” Lily says.

  INT. A MODEST HOME - DAY

  The husk of a man sits in his rocking chair in silence. The visitors are hours gone now. Having cleaned the dishes they dirtied themselves out of pity, no trace of them remains except for the stacks of food-stuffed tupperware they left on the table in the next room. Most of it is cake and cookies, things he lost his taste for long ago. He may dispose of it all or leave it sit forever. It does not matter.

  He listens to the silence and becomes more depressed. The last few years were a break from his war, or so he thought then. He wonders now if it was more like a retirement, or even a send-off. Maybe it was his own funeral he sat through today.

  The old ways are all but dead since the wall fell in the East. The self-serving individual greed and graft of the West has replaced idealism there like a blight that grows within a tree. In the South, those he once called his countrymen struggle to feed their people, much less fight to overthrow the greedy imperialists who keep them that way.

  Even the fellow travelers here have fragmented into gibbering bands of angry fools focused on which genitals belong in which restroom and which famous clown misspoke on the internet. They are placated; complacent. They know nothing of the true enemy and they do not care. The people are kept in chains of appeasement now rather than oppression, and these new chains are much stronger. Too strong.

  He settled here with Gloria because his hope was waning and she was a good thing for him. She had a beautiful smile and a manner of bantering humorously that never stopped bowling forward into unexpected territory. It was the reason for his interest in her. But now she is gone. She is gone and he is old. He is broken. He is Red.

  Red does not move as a brick smashes through his window. He does not care. There is nothing left for him now.

  The people who enter his house are filthy and manic. Their movements have a jittery quality that is only seen in drug addicts and people with severe brain injuries.

  “Hey!” the lead figure speaks. “There’s an old guy in here!” He has soot on his face that matches his rotting teeth. He scratches at sores on his chin even as he extends a butter knife threateningly. “Don’t fucking move, old man!”

  He has a single partner, another subhuman parásito social, contributing nothing to the people, but kept breathing and blissful by their charity. His clothes are torn. His arms are marked with needle dots. Bits of mulch cling in his hair. His right hand drips from a bloody gash onto the carpet. It will be more trouble to replace the broken glass than to dispose of these two.

  “Sit right there or I’ll cut you,” says the lead parásito. “You got any jewelry? Guns? Cash?”

  “Just tell us where your shit is,” the filthier one says. “We don’t want to hurt nobody.”

  “And so you will have what you want,” Red says.

  The dirty one doesn’t even have time to question the response to his double negative. More blood ends up on the carpet—a lot more. It takes only an hour to clean up. Once both bodies have been packed away in an old trunk in the basement, Red returns to contemplating his continuance.

  After some time, he decides to go to the casino. Furthering the cause always soothes him, even if it is futile.

  INT. GALLERIA - BANANA REPUBLIC - FITTING ROOM STALL - DAY

  In Sid Hansen’s experience, there are two things better than this thing; one is full-on hard fucking and the other is killing some ignorant gimp that really has it coming. Speaking of coming, he taps Lily on the shoulder to alert her, as per their agreement. The vampy little tramp rolls her azure eyes to gaze up at him as she wraps her wet tongue around the end of his rock hard cock and drinks his salty leavings like sweet nectar.

  “That’s one,” Lily says. “You get three more.”

  “I should have killed more Russians,” Sid whispers.

  “So I was right?”

  “You were right. It’s better here.”

  “Told ya. Let’s go. I want a Coke or something after that.”

  “Weren’t you looking for something in here?”

  “Ew, vom. Only complete tools shop at Banana Republic.” She pushes her way through the stall’s slatted wood door and walks out into the nexus of fitting room stalls and the disapproving glare of a store clerk. “Yeah, I think those pants could use a little more room in the crotch,” she shouts back at Sid for anyone trying on clothes to hear. They leave said diversionary khaki pants on the little bench in the stall.

  They pick up Kayla again on their way through the sales floor and she follows them back into to the mall corridor.

  “Did you guys have sex in Banana Republic?” Kayla asks.

  “No!” Lily emphatically objects. “What kind of girl do you think I am?”

  “You have cum in your hair.”

  “What?! Where?!” Lily squeaks, frantically running her fingers through her hair.

  “You don’t.” Kayla snickers. “So, Sid. What are your intentions with my bestie?”

  “My intentions? I like what she did in that pants store. I definitely want to do that more.”

  “Yeah, but what else?”

  “Definitely fucking.”

  “Definitely that.” Lily brushes against his arm playfully.

  “OHH!” Kayla exclaims, causing Sid to jerk his head around in search of threats. He sees nothing immediately in need of attention, although there is a short black male sitting on the edge of the mall fountain talking to himself and wearing what appears to be a large pair of workout shorts on his head. It could be a radio. “There’s no Starbucks line!”

  Sid raises an eyebrow to her. “Starbucks?” Sid has seen the big white and green signs mounted outside little shops throughout the nation. They were particularly dense in downtown Chicago, where he saw one on almost every other city block. “Coffee?” Sid says.

  “You’ve never had Starbucks?”

  “He’s never had a lot of things,” Lily grumbles.

  “It’s not just coffee,” Kayla says, steering them toward the coffee kiosk. “These are heavenly confections passed down to man from God for the few good works we have done upon this Earth.”

  Starbucks is the most bizarre food experience Sid has yet seen in his travels. Nowhere else has he encountered such a massive conglomeration of nonsense words. The menu board posted behind the counter is cluttered with words like frappuccino, blonde, macchiato, mocha, and skinny—none of which accurately describe food choices if they mean anything at all. Even the drink sizes are tall, grande, and venti, words which mean nothing. He initially eschews any involvement, but Lily prods him to try it, so he asks fo
r the same thing she does, which is a concoction formed from no less than four of the aforementioned nonsense words. He watches as a girl in a green apron manufactures it using a hulking silver machine equipped with spray nozzles, squirt bottles of brown syrup, a spray can of whipped cream, a cup of ice, and a blender.

  “How is it?” Kayla asks now that the three of them have their drinks and are seated around a small table in the open mall corridor.

  “Like pure sugar,” he says.

  “Shhhhh. It’s coffee.”

  “Ever heard of something called postmodernism?” Sid says.

  “You mean like Buffy the Vampire Slayer?” Kayla says.

  “Buffy the Vampire Slayer isn’t postmodern,” Lily snaps back.

  “It totally is. Every episode is an hour long pop horror collage-ey thing. Frankenstein, Invisible Man, Gill-man—they all make appearances. Without even getting into season six, the referency parts are all over. Like when they call Buffy’s friends the Scooby gang, or when Principal Snyder says ‘whatever comes out of your mouth is a meaningless waste of breath, an airborne toxic event’ that’s a quote from like The Yellow Wallpaper or something. Even the main idea for the show is a turnaround reversal thingy of regular horror movie parts where pretty blond girls wandering in graveyards are always horribly murdered by monsters and I’m talking way too much about this aren’t I?”

  “Yes,” Lily says.

  “So what is it?” Sid asks, still no closer to understanding whatever it was that Helen was talking about.

  Lily’s iPhone chimes the theme from Star Wars, a series of movies which Lily made Sid watch in full, and which also begins rather curiously with Episode Four. When he inquired about this oddity she told him that’s just how those movies are. They never made the first three. No one knows why.

  “It’s not anything,” Lily says. “It’s one of those high-brow art words that nobody understands, so you use it to sound fancy, but it doesn’t really mean anything at all,” she says, pulling the buzzing iPhone from her bra and answering it. “Hello?” She listens for a second and then then hands the phone over to Sid with an annoyed look. “It’s for you.”