KILL KILL KILL
Page 59
He fooled himself with that line for years.
Maybe he could start over with Kevin. Introduce himself like they never met and be totally honest this time. Hi. I’m Walter. I assassinate men in the dead of night. I order massacres. I kill kids.
Nah.
It doesn’t bother him like it did. He has been trying what Van told him. Never look back. Never second guess. It works most of the time. The old man ought to know better than anyone.
Lucy comes out of the house with a plate of raw burgers and another beer which she hands to Kevin. She doesn’t have one for herself, which is out of place, and Walter knows what it means. He’ll wait for the two of them to tell him on their terms though, and he’ll act surprised.
He finds himself looking strangely at the burgers as Kevin places them on the grill. He sees a world a hundred thousand years in the future, where the cows have industrialized nations and they drive cow cars to their cow jobs and eat grass fast food on their cow lunch breaks. Will some of them be humans in disguise?
“How do you want yours done?” Kevin asks.
“Daddy likes it still mooing,” Lucy says, before Walter can answer.
“Daddy’s getting a little old for rare meat, sweetie,” Walter says. “Maybe a little pink in the center.”
They haven’t seen or heard from a reptoid since Walter watched the Ghoul butcher Damien Adams. Zap said it is quite possible they hunted the creatures into extinction, though Tom disagreed.
After the mess in Siberia was over, Van spent two days lingering around Graveyard before he vanished again. He told Walter that the real enemy was still out there in the desert, and he was going to go look for him.
Yoshida Tanaka remained at the building meditating and, karate chopping boards, and doing whatever bizarre zen shit ninjas do. He said he didn’t really have anything to go back to in Japan, and Walter didn’t mind having him around one bit. A ninja master is a valuable asset. He never did tell him about the vault. Some things are better left unsaid.
Victor Hansen was bound with steel shackles on a gurney and locked inside a four-sided bulletproof glass cell completely surrounded by US Marines at all times inside a specially designed panic room at ADX Florence. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t even blink. It’s like he’s a corpse in there. Walter hopes he stays that way.
No one knows exactly what became of baby Kill Team One. Sid Hansen simply disappeared without a trace. Walter would like to know what happened there, but he probably never will.
He is getting used to the idea that closure is a unicorn – fit only for children’s fantasies. There are no happy endings. There are only happy moments that come and go. This right here is one of them.
“So, Mr. Stedman,” Kevin asks. “Are you thinking about retiring any time soon?”
Walter smiles.
“You can never retire, son. No such thing. You have to kill kill kill until the day you die.”
If you liked
KILL KILL KILL, there’s probably something wrong in your head, but that’s okay. I’m like that too. Definitely check out the sequel series, The Postmodern Adventures of Kill Team One
In it, Sid gets a job at a video store, hooks up with a stripper, fights with Graveyard, gets hunted by an army of suicide bombers, and battles a mind-controlling swarm of nanomachines.
The Postmodern Adventures of Kill Team One
And join the Graveyard on Facebook for free giveaways and other stuff.
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In the sub-sub-basement, far below the racket of the helipad and firing range, hidden away from the hustling analysts and paper pushing desk men, an ancient thing has completed his task.
It was difficult to gather the photographs that began all of this, and even more difficult to end it. He did not expect them to kill Eli before the opening moves had even been played, but part of making plans is breaking plans. He was able to compensate with only one simple nudge from the shadows.
He wishes his cause were a noble one, but it is not. He arranged this to settle a score from many, many lifetimes ago.
Now he rises from his creaking chair and discards the mask which feeds him poison with every inhale. His silvery hair grows back in seconds and his withered form becomes that of a man robust and agile.
He leaves this place and this persona behind.