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

by Mike Leon

  “Get your hands up!” the cop yells. “Get ‘em up!”

  He already has his hands up. They couldn’t be any more up at all. Then Nick has a peculiar notion—a notion that this guy pointing a gun at him might be a little too amped. He might be a little too nervous. He might be too frightened and excited to even see what’s right in front of him. He might want to pull that trigger just so this interaction will be over and he won’t have to be scared anymore.

  “Hands where I can see ‘em!” the cop demands again, needlessly.

  Nick ducks below the dashboard and pushes his foot down against the accelerator. Gunshots ring out over the cycling engine. The Blazer rumbles forward. Bullets crash through broken glass and puncture the padding of the seat behind him. He pulls on the steering wheel, turning blindly into the unknown, but it seems better than driving into the pack of flaming police cruisers.

  The shots stop coming and Nick peeks over the dash to see he’s traveling through a small intersection. He swerves to avoid a honking station wagon, then looks in the rearview to see scattered flames and the lone police officer who shot at him, reloading his gun. Nick punches the gas to get the hell away from all that as fast as he can.

  “I see you came to your senses,” the Player says.

  “It wasn’t anything you said,” Nick insists. “Now where do I find Stephen?”

  “He’s at the Food Stop on Fruitridge.”

  “Still?”

  “Yeah. He’s been in there since last night.”

  “Good. I’ll call you when I find him.”

  “Wha—?”

  Nick hangs up the phone. He can’t stand to listen to that snide bastard. Not now. Not anymore.

  There’s no sound but the noise of the engine as he drives south toward Fruitridge and the Food Stop where Stephen should be. He worries he’ll be stopped by police. It would have made sense to keep the Player on the line to watch out for them, and he regrets hanging up a little now. He wonders why Stephen would spend hours in a Food Stop, of all places. That doesn’t add up.

  The cell phone rings. Probably the Player calling back. Nick considers whether to answer for just a second before he decides it is worth his pride taking a hit. He taps the big red answer button and waits for a salutation while still contemplating what to say to avoid sounding stupid.

  “Hey, Sid,” calls a distinctly feminine voice. “Where are you?”

  “Oh,” Nick verbally fumbles. The conversation he’s having now is more difficult than the one he anticipated. “It’s you.”

  “Priest Sidekick? What’s going on down there? Where’s Sid?”

  “Lily.” Nick stops and takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry. There’s no easy way to say this. Sid is dead. They—They killed him.”

  “What?! How did it happen?”

  “It was quick. He was on one of their trucks when it exploded.”

  “It exploded?”

  “Yes. I—I’m sorry.”

  “Did you see the body?”

  “Did I—No.”

  The phone’s little speaker erupts with hysterical laughter.

  “Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha,” Lily cackles. “Whatever. I’m sure he’s fine.”

  “I don’t think so,” Nick says. Denial is well known as the first stage of loss, and Nick has seen it in many varying degrees of intensity, but never like this. Her manic laughter prompts him to choose his words carefully. “It was a very large explosion.”

  “Yeah. He jumped out at the last second. He’s probably sneaking around right now in the sewers or something.”

  “I don’t…” The poor girl isn’t anywhere close to reality. He knew she was unstable, but this is more extreme than he imagined. When she does come around, the truth is going to hit her hard. For now it’s best to let her take her time. “Maybe. I have to go now, Lily. Once this is all over, if you need someone to talk to, you come see me. Okay?”

  “Yeah, whatever. You tell Sid he’s not getting a single beej until I see dead Russians.”

  “I’m…” he starts to tell her he won’t say that, but then realizes he’ll never have to anyway. “Yeah, sure.”

  She hangs up, leaving Nick shaking his head in pity as he drives south toward Fruitridge.

  EXT. DOWNTOWN STREET - DAY

  Fatimah screams with rage at the discovery of her own cruel continuance. She can see nothing but red as she crawls from the burning wreckage of the van, howling at the sky so hard she hopes to perforate the eardrums of everyone who hears her.

  She stumbles over jagged metal and falls into a searing block of engine parts which burns her hands. Even as her palms sizzle she feels no pain. She pushes away from the thing and walks on. Where? Anywhere. Any direction will take her farther from the acrid center of the explosion. The smoke thins as she hobbles forward, eventually enough that she can make out the gloomy shapes of men ahead of her. She sees their flashing lights and turns away.

  She screams curses in Arabic.

  Sayyid is gone. Her clothes and weapons are gone. She is surrounded by infidel dogs. Her one true enemy, her life’s only remaining purpose, is vanquished. Yet she still lives. She would cry if she still had tears. Instead, she emits a ragged ruined whine that carries on as breathing becomes an unwanted process. If she cries hard enough, she thinks, maybe all the breath will go out of her forever and she will finally die having served God.

  ...Unless the kill team still lives. It would explain why she continues to draw breath from this world, this sickening place where she no longer belongs, this Hell within Hell. He eludes her still. Paradise eludes her.

  “Fatimah!” calls an accented voice, one which does not belong to American police. She looks up from her withdrawn self-pity and sees Muhammad, one of the Muhammads, dangling out of the open passenger door of a dirty brown conversion van. “We have to go, Fatimah! They’re all around us!”

  She rises from the ground, charred and naked, still seething as she approaches the van through the dusty grey cloud. The side door slides open at the hands of another Muhammad, revealing a large block of explosives and a floor carpeted with automatic rifles.

  “Is it done?” Muhammad asks, smiling widely. “Is he dead?”

  Fatimah clutches the stock of an AK-47 and tugs the rifle through the van doors. It quivers violently in her hands as she hoists it to her shoulder and swings it around to point at the flashing police lights. The rifle kicks and barks and spits lead at the unbelievers. The magazine runs dry and Fatimah keeps squeezing the trigger repeatedly in anger. It moves only slightly each time, stopped by the internal mechanisms which prevent it from traveling all the way unless the weapon is primed to fire, and with each slight click she pulls harder, as if forcing it beyond the stopping point will make the rifle work by way of pure rage.

  “What about Sayyid?” Muhammad chases after her.

  “Dead,” she screams as she approaches the lights ahead.

  “But he died killing the Beast. He has found his way to paradise!”

  “No! He died for nothing!” Fatimah screams. “Nothing!”

  “How? How is it possible?”

  “How is it that I still live if my work here is done?” She steps over the body of a police officer lying face down in the street and tears open the door of his vehicle, a big car with a powerful engine.

  Muhammad shakes his head in silence.

  “Get in!” Fatimah orders him into the car. “And give me your radio!”

  The scraggly bearded man hands a boxy radio handset back to her as he sits down beside her in the police interceptor.

  “Where is he!?” Fatimah screams into the radio speaker.

  “Wh-Fatimah? Where is who?” Samir questions in surprise. “Who is this?”

  “The target! The infidel! Where is he?!?”

  “Blown to bits for sure,” Samir states with much bewilderment. “I thought you were too.”

  “He lives. Find him now!”

  “That can’t be—”

  “Find him!”
r />   “Fatimah,” another voice patches through over the radio. “I saw the truck he stole from us driving away after the explosion.”

  Fury escapes from Fatimah in a high pressure hiss. “Where is that truck, Samir?”

  “I’m looking,” he replies.

  She waits, quaking with anger, ready to erupt. She feels an inexplicable urge to bite something, anything, though a fleshy thing might be preferable to any other option.

  “Here,” Samir says. “Ten blocks south of your position.”

  “Go!” Fatimah yells. “Everyone! Go there now!”

  EXT. FOOD STOP - DAY

  “What’s he doing in there?” Nick asks. He’s peeking in the windows of the Food Stop on Fruitridge. Most of the window space is covered in giant stick-on advertisements for 2-for-1 Pepsi twelve packs, but there are a few small gaps. Still, his inspection has yielded no results. The lights are on inside, and he can see some of the automated gadgets running, keeping hotdogs warm and spinning the slushies, but there is no sign of human life.

  “I don’t have a clue,” Player says. The giant Android phone pokes above the top of Nick’s left breast pocket, tightly contained by the thin black fabric. “He went in there with some guy and they haven’t come out.”

  Nick walks back to the store’s automatic sliding doors and waves his hand at them for the third time. The motor that propels them whirs and the man-sized panes of glass ripple slightly as the doors attempt to separate, but they do not budge. It’s as if someone bolted them closed, but left them turned on.

  He pushes at the doors, at first to test them, then more forcefully when he finds them rigid and unmoving. He puts more into it, throwing his shoulder against them, knowing it will accomplish nothing, but trying anyway with a lack of any other ideas. The doors stay.

  “So what now?” Nick says.

  “You have a truck full of guns,” Player says. “Do I need to spell it out for you?”

  Nick looks back at the Blazer. He nods in quiet approval. It’s the only thing left to do.

  He walks back to the truck and yanks at the passenger door handle. The door creaks open loudly and then falls off, clanking against the blacktop at Nick’s feet. He hops back to avoid it crushing his toes, then reflexively starts to worry who will fix it and how he will pay for the damage. He disregards that ridiculous concern after only a split second and leans into the truck to drag the biggest of the guns from the back seat.

  The gun Sid used to shoot at the monster truck is over four feet long and heavier than a small child. Nick pulls it from the car and walks back toward the automatic doors dragging a belt of shiny bullets along the blacktop.

  “Whoa, Nick,” Player says. “I didn’t mean the Bravo.”

  “What’s the difference? They’re all guns. They should all go through the glass.”

  “I—Just try to keep it pointed down.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing. Just go ahead.”

  Nick raises the front of the gun to point it at the dirty tile floor just on the other side of the automatic doors. He pulls the trigger. The gun kicks wildly in his hands and he flinches instinctively before lifting his finger. The tempered glass cracks into an uneven pattern of irregular diamond shapes with the first shot and crumbles after only a few more. The broken pieces cascade toward the ground landing inside and outside the store.

  “Whew,” Nick says. The bullet holes move along the floor away from him and then climb up the far wall of the store. “That’s uh, something.” It seems even more ridiculous now that Sid was able to fire the gun with only one hand.

  “Hello?” he calls into the store. “Is anybody in there?”

  Nick steps through the wrecked sliding doors. His shoes crunch on broken glass bits as he enters and cautiously moves forward peeking down the little aisles of snack food and automotive accessories. He leans over the counter and glances at the floor on the other side, but sees no one there and continues. He moves on toward the rear of the store.

  Then he hears something. It isn’t the hum of the slushie machine or the heat lamp over day-old rolling hot dogs. It’s someone breathing loudly, gasping for air, as if they’re dying. Nick turns the corner into the last aisle and locates the source.

  On the floor, below a Pepsi fountain and rows of 64 ounce disposable plastic cups advertising the new Jack Reacharound movie, a man in a black t-shirt and stained tighty-whities lies huddled in a ball. His shirt is rife with holes and his hands echo the rasps of his hyperventilation. His bloodshot eyes tremble in terror.

  “Hey,” Nick says. “Are you alright?”

  The pantless stranger stops hyperventilating and slowly turns up to look at Nick as if the priest just floated down from outer space to join him there.

  “Aka Manto,” the man says in harsh London English. “Red paper, blue paper, red paper, blue paper.”

  “What? Who are you?”

  “Red paper, blue paper, red paper, blue paper, red paper, blue paper.” The man on the floor continues quietly chanting between loud breaths into his hands. It’s a bad trip. Nick has seen it all before.

  “I’m looking for Stephen,” Nick says. “Stephen. Do you know him?”

  “No paper. No paper!”

  “What’s he look like, Nick?” Player asks.

  “Pale, tall, long hair, kinda gangly. Lots of tattoos.”

  “That’s the guy Stephen was with.”

  “Hi.” Nick waves at the man on the floor again, trying to get his attention. “Have you seen Stephen?”

  “No paper. No paper. No paper.”

  It’s pointless. This guy is on another planet, and that suddenly makes Nick very worried. He knows Stephen came in here. He also knows Stephen didn’t come out. Now, to find the building occupied by someone so drugged up they might be capable of any sick thing and not even realize it...

  He backs away from the man on the floor and glances again around the empty store. He’s certain no one else is here—at least in the show room. There must be a stock room, or an office, or a bathroom. Not a bathroom. He saw those doors outside. Nick walks the store again and spots a little hallway behind the service counter. He goes around the counter and walks down the hall toward a door marked Employees Only, passing a massive steel walk-in freezer door along the way.

  Nick winces, afraid of what he might see, before he pushes open the door at the end of the hall. The things he has seen today outclass any horror he has encountered in his life. Men shot, gutted, decapitated, burned and gored. Those things he can move past, but the idea of finding his boy that way causes him to shudder. He knows that sight will never fade.

  He opens the door and finds only a small office on the other side, a desk, a lamp, many fat three-ring binders marked with procedural labels, a small safe. There is nothing of interest here—the freezer! The concept hits him like a hammer as he stands in the doorway. He wastes no time.

  Nick dashes back to the freezer and grabs the icy steel handle, dropping the machine gun on the floor beside him. He tears back the door and witnesses a sight of terror.

  Inside the freezer, beyond units of cheap shelving filled with ice cream and ice cubes and frozen dinners, is an unordered pile of colorful cardboard packaging lying against the wall. It would appear to be nothing more than a collection of waste if it didn’t have legs. And it is wearing Stephen’s shoes.

  “Stephen!” Nick shouts as he dashes forward to uncover his son from the garbage heap in which he is interred. Frosty fog jets from his mouth as he calls out. “Stephen!”

  He scoops away wrappers and paper bags and a layer of heavy transparent plastic strips to get to the bottom. Under all of it, he finds not just Stephen, but also someone else, a girl with frizzy brown hair and a cinnamon complexion, shrouded under his son’s body.

  Nick claps his hands down on Stephen’s shoulders and yells the boy’s name again without any response. He feels cold.

  “So cold,” the girl says. Her eyes snap open wide. “Who?”
>
  Nick shoves Stephen off the girl and onto the frost covered floor. The conclusion is obvious. They’re all hopped up on drugs. God knows what kind of debauchery went on here.

  “What did he take?!” Nick yells.

  “W-w-w-wha-He d-didn’t t-take anything! W- locked in a f-fucking f-freezer for a whole day!”

  Nick grabs Stephen’s ankles and drags him across the filthy floor toward the hallway. As they pass through the freezer door, the warmth of the outside feels like a stifling tropical jungle. The girl moves to follow him, but stumbles.

  “I-I can’t. Feel my legs,” she says.

  Nick charges back into the freezer and snatches her by the hand. He pulls her to her feet, where she manages to keep an awkward balance, falling more than walking toward the door. He leaves her to flop out into the hallway by herself and returns to Stephen.

  “He doesn’t have a pulse!” Nick says.

  “Oh no,” cries the girl.

  “Nick,” the player says. “You’re going to have to do CPR.”

  “I don’t know CPR!” Nick shouts.

  “I’m going to walk you through it.”

  “Alright. What do I do?”

  “Hang on. I’m looking it up on Wikipedia.”

  “You don’t even know and you’re supposed to walk me through it?!?”

  “You have a better idea?”

  “W-w-w-w-wikipedia is not a reliable s-s-s-s-ource,” says the girl.

  “You,” Nick says, sounding frighteningly like the kill team. “What’s your name?”

  “Melissa.”

  “Melissa, call 911 now.”

  She nods and pulls a cell phone from the pocket of her tiny shorts and begins dialing.

  “Okay, Nick,” the phone rumbles. “You need to start chest compressions. Place both hands on the sternum and press down as hard as you possibly can at 100 beats per minute.”

  “How fast is that?”

  “It’s like that Queen song. Another One Bites the Dust.”

  “That’s not funny!”

  “It’s just what Wikipedia says!”

  Nick puts his hands on Stephen’s chest and begins to imagine the beat of that song. He never cared for that one, and the circumstances make it that much worse. He thumps down to the rhythm. Bump bump bump.