Doomino’s
Apocalyptic Pizza Delivery
Lucas Pederson & Tim Marquitz
© 2017
Cover art and design by Tiffanie Marquitz
Created in the United States of America
Worldwide Rights
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any form, including digital, electronic, or mechanical, to include photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the author, except for brief quotes used in reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Doomino’s
Apocalyptic Pizza Delivery
Thirty Minutes or Death!
Table of Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
About the Authors
One
“All rise!” The bailiff stiffened as the door to the judge’s chambers opened to a loud grunt like a bad-gas rumble ready to boil over. “The Honorable Milton Merryweather III presiding.”
A hush settled over the assemblage as the judge trundled into the room, robes swishing, caught in the maelstrom of his meaty thighs. The subtle waft of fried chicken swirled around him as he lurched forward and took to the steps with gusto borne of pure momentum. Thump, thump, thump. Heavy breaths billowed, and Judge Merryweather dropped into his chair, which groaned in what was clearly a long-suffering protest gone ignored. Once the judge settled, he took a moment to peel his robes out from between his ass cheeks. A moist friiiiiip echoed through the chambers. He then waved a fat-fingered hand at the assemblage, dots of grease flung loose and speckling the bench. At least Penelope hoped it was grease. A Quintuple Big Gulp sat nestled beside his gavel. Condensation sparkled, magnifying the logo. Perfect product placement.
“Be seated!” the bailiff called out. An explosion of mutters and shuffling followed as the gallery flopped into their seats, desperate to see the circus come to town. The room went silent at the bailiff’s scowl, a single gold tooth reflecting the flickering fluorescents. The scales of justice gleamed in diamond from the tooth.
Penelope stared at the judge as she wiggled back into her seat, the mass of chains about her hands and feet jingling. This was the man who held her fate in his chubby mitts.
I’m seriously fucked.
Judge Merryweather was so obese that Penelope expected to see a Greenpeace boat sailing behind him, warding off Queequeg before he put his harpoon to use and speared Moby’s dick. The judge’s four chins looked like a ghetto high-rise modeled after the Michelin Man. Bulbous eyes stared out at her with obvious contempt, her slim and athletic body probably looking like a side of green beans he hoped to scoop into the garbage disposal when the wife wasn’t looking.
Penelope’s court-appointed lawyer—her hotel magnate parents having disowned her after the incident, making it so she couldn’t afford a real attorney—shuffled nervously in his seat, his thumb unconsciously tapping the stack of papers set out before him. He didn’t even own a briefcase, a Wal-Mart shopping bag set alongside his seat stored his files. She could smell Old Spice and onions on him, the pits of his tweed suit stained an ugly shade of yellow that brought to mind Big Bird on a banana daquiri bender. He chewed on a jagged nail as he waited on the judge, doing his best not to make eye contact with anyone, especially Penelope.
The prosecutor, Janice Tillman, sat at a table a few feet away, her smug grin in perfect sync with her white pantsuit. Her black hair was woven into braids and hung halfway down her back in contrast to her outfit. She hitched her ample hip to the side and tapped a foot in impatience. As she’d made clear at the start of the trial, the woman couldn’t wait to see Penelope carted off to jail for the rest of her life. She’d said exactly that a dozen times or more, just in way more colorful language. It was Reading Rainbow for the prison-set.
“We all know why we’re here, right?” the judge asked, turning his porcine gaze on Penelope. She resisted the urge to answer in pig Latin. At-whay ou-yay alking-tay about-way, Illis-way?
“Your Honor—” her lawyer started, jumping in before her tongue finished fellating the words and could spit them out like her lawyer’s mama shoulda done.
“Stuff it, Milborne,” Merryweather shouted, rapping his knuckles on the bench and setting his Big Gulp to dancing. “Now isn’t the time for arguments or lame attempts at defining what is or isn’t insanity, Counselor. We’ve already done all that business last week. This is sentencing day, son. If you had something important to say, you should have done said it a while back, don’t ya think? Now sit down and shut up so justice can have its say.” The bailiff’s hand eased toward his pistol to reinforce the judge’s edict.
Clarence Milborne nodded and sat back down. He glanced at Penelope and shrugged, his practiced expression showing he’d been here before, bent over the table and made to squeal for the banjo-plucking locals far too many times already. “Guess that’s it then. Good luck.”
He’s probably wishing he had a white flag and French ancestors.
Penelope sneered, shaking her head. A drunken, one-nut raccoon with two claws would have put up more of a fight. Would have smelled better, too.
“So, Penelope Bambi Perriwinkle,” the bailiff waved her to her feet as the judge leveled his gaze on her, licking his lips every other word as if he’d missed a spot of gravy, “having been accused of thirty-two counts of vehicular homicide, resisting arrest with violence, assaulting a police officer’s dog, and driving with an expired inspection sticker, would you like to address the court before I pass sentence?”
Penelope scooted her chair back, legs scraping across the floor as she tried not to tangle her chains, and stood, lifting her chin to meet the judge’s stare. She nodded and cleared her throat. “While I would like to apologize for the unfortunate incident with the dog, I really didn’t mean to Tase the poor little guy, and I seriously hope his fuzzy puppy nuts aren’t permanently scorched by my poor aim, those duck-lipped bitches on parade had it coming. Seriously, how many selfies can a person pollute the world with before it becomes an act of terrorism. I did society a favor, if you ask me.”
Her lawyer moaned and laid his head on the table, hands rubbing at his temples. Penelope figured he was thinking it was a good thing he got paid no matter the verdict. The gallery rose en masse and screamed, howling at Penelope, fists raised and feet stomping, the floor trembling. Wails of anguish erupted and threats shrieked her direction. The only thing missing were torches, she thought, standing stoic against the tirade of her victims’ parents. Who bought those twats the damn iPhones in the first place? This shit is their fault, if anyone’s. You raise your kid to suck off a camera in public, you get what’s coming to you.
Judge Merryweather jumped up. Well, bounced up, twice, three times, a Weeble wobbling and proving the advertising true, finally managing to scramble to his feet on the fourth attempt. Chunky fingers closed around his gavel like it had paid him extra for the rough stuff. Harder, Daddy! He pounded it on the bench. “Order! Order, damn it!”
The crowd went silent as the hulking bailiff pulled his revolver and pointed it at them, thumbing
the hammer back with a menacing click. The assemblage fell back into their seats, huddling together to avoid getting shot by the big-ass Harry Callahan special being waved about.
“Penelope Bambi Perriwinkle,” Judge Merryweather said, spittle shining on his lips, “throughout this process, you have shown zero regard for this court and no compassion for your victims or their families. You have shown absolutely no regret for your heinous actions—the word so backwater slippery, Penelope was certain he’d said anus actions—therefore you leave me no choice but to sentence you to fullest extent of the law.” He leaned across the bench best he was capable, glaring at her, waggling the submissive gavel her direction. “On behalf of the great state of Texas, I hereby sentence you to—”
The double doors at the rear of the courtroom swung open and thumped into the walls, kicking up a cloud of dust. Penelope was disappointed to not see a tumbleweed roll by, the whistled theme of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly piped through the overhead speakers.
All the heads in the room spun around like an Exorcist revival to stare at the newcomer. Penelope thought she recognized the dapper gentleman, though she didn’t have a clue from where. Sure wasn’t church.
He strode into the room as if his soles were made of butter, easing his way to the swinging gate that separated the assemblage from the accused. He laid a manicured hand on the separator, the other clutching a plain manila envelope. His white hair was cut short to his scalp, brownish ages spots gleaming across his pate as if he had an army of cockroaches skittering through the weeds. He wore a pair of stylish square glasses that made his blue eyes shine like crystal Ben Wa balls.
“If I might approach the bench, Your Honor,” he said, his voice a blend of sugar and spice.
Judge Merryweather gasped, and Penelope looked back to see the man licking his lips, nodding spastically like a kitten trapped in a porn theater. “Of course, Mr. Doom. Always have time for you, sir.” The judge oozed into his chair, and likely into his panties too, Penelope imagined.
Doom! Now she remembered. The man was Ebenezer Doom, the multi-billionaire owner of the Doomino’s pizza chain. Her parents had introduced her to him once at a gala of some sort long ago, when she was just a kid, and he looked just as he did back then, regal and self-assured, the king of the world in penny loafers. She stiffened in her seat, wondering what the man was doing at her trial. Her parents sure as hell hadn’t sent him.
Doom made his way to the bench. He cast a grin Penelope’s way, offering her a quick wink that was as greasy as old pepperoni before turning his full attention to the judge. “Before you go and pass judgment, Your Honor, I’d like to offer an alternative sentence for this young lady, if you’ll forgive my intrusion.” Doom set the envelope on the edge of the bench and slid it across to the judge.
Merryweather glanced around the courtroom, his bailiff shrugging when their eyes met, and then snatched up the envelope. His fat fingers struggled to unseal the clasp, finally tearing the strip of tape off a moment later. He peeled the packet open, and his eyes bulged, appearing to Penelope as if they might burst from their sockets in premature eyejaculation. The judge stuffed a greasy paw into the envelope and pulled out a wrapped wad of crisp hundred dollar bills. Penelope could tell by how thick the envelope was that there were dozens more of the bundles inside. It had to have been a hundred grand or more.
“Your Honor!” Milborne said, hopping to his feet at seeing the cash. “This is an outrage, sir. Mr. Doom is clearly trying to buy the court’s influence.”
Doom didn’t deny it. “`Course I am, and I’ve an envelope for you too, Mr. Milborne,” he said, then glanced over at the prosecutor, “and one for you as well, Mrs. Tillman, if you’re so obliged, that is. I even got one for you, Big Man,” he said, glancing at the bailiff. “Wouldn’t want to leave anyone out. That wouldn’t be fair.”
Penelope’s lawyer slumped, going silent, finding a thread on his pants to play with. Might have been his dick for all Penelope knew, the stringy little white thing squeezed between his fingers. She rolled her eyes at his meek acquiescence and heard the prosecutor agree without argument, muttering a less than refined, “Hell yeah, I want that shit. Gimme that bag.”
“So, how about it, Your Honor?” Doom asked, looking back to the judge. “Seems your court’s amiable. Care to hear my offer?”
Judge Merryweather glanced into the envelope once more, stuffing the wad of cash back inside, and tucking the whole thing out of sight beneath the bench as if it had never been there. “As a progressive arm of the judicial system here in our fine state of Texas, I would love to hear your proposal, Mr. Doom. Always looking for new ways to rehabilitate our wayward citizens.”
Penelope felt the weight of the justice system crushing her larynx, but not in the fun, sexual-kind of way that one cop had done to her in the backseat of the squad car when she’d been picked up for a lewd and disorderly charge.
Doom grinned and leaned over the bench and whispered, the judge’s eyes growing wider with each passing second. A moment later, the conversation over, the judge leaned back in his seat, a smile splitting his cheeks like a Thanksgiving turkey’s asshole puckered and ready to be stuffed.
“That’s a mighty fine idea, Mr. Doom. I do believe we are in agreement.” He turned his gaze on Penelope, and she spied a silvery line of drool navigating the speed bumps of his chin. “In accordance to the laws of the state of Texas, and without undue influence by this great big heaping pile of cash that appeared out of nowhere and is completely and entirely unconnected to this case or my decision, I hereby remand you to the custody and employ of the Doomino’s Pizza Corporation ZLC until said time to be agreed upon at a later date between myself and the respectable Mr. Doom. This here sentence is to be carried out immediately.” The judge wobbled back and forth in his chair until he got to his feet, clutching the envelope between his moobs. Penelope half-expected the package to pull a Monica Lewinsky and spew Bills all over the judge’s outfit.
“All rise!” The bailiff shouted, his gun still in his hands, raised and ready to rumble. The assemblage hopped to their feet, an unnatural quiet looming over them.
“Best thank Mr. Doom for this court’s leniency, Miss Perriwinkle. Were it up to me, you’d ride the lightning after a lifetime of failed appeals and prison shower romances gone awry, but Mr. Doom here is a philanthropist. He seems to believe a callous, cold-blooded criminal like you still has something to offer society.” The judge shook his head. “I don’t happen to agree, but I hope he’s right. Either way, guess we’ll find out soon enough.” He hugged the envelope tighter to his chest, nipples poking through his robes like sprouting mushrooms. “Regardless, I’ll be watching your sentence play out in Hi-Def on my brand new, big screen TV.” Judge Merryweather waved to his bailiff. “See Miss Perriwinkle out and shoot the first person in the gallery to question my judgement or who mentions the money that doesn’t exist.”
The bailiff came over and snatched her up by her wrist chains, hauling her out of the courtroom, mad-dogging the gallery as they split the middle of them, Black Moses intimidating the Red Sea to part. He couldn’t have scared them more if he’d had on a hoodie and waved a bag of Skittles around.
He tugged her through the courthouse and out a back door where a gray van waited. She spied the Doomino’s mascot imprinted on the side of the vehicle as they walked past, the smiling Grim Reaper holding a scythe in one hand and a pizza box in the other. A slogan she was unfamiliar with was printed below it in a deep crimson, blood dripping from the letters: Thirty minutes or death!
The rear doors opened, its tinted windows reinforced with steel bars, and two huge men in riot gear hunkered down inside, nightsticks out and at the ready. They grinned at her through their visors. “Welcome to the Doomino’s family, convict,” one said, looking her up and down, his eye settling on her tits. “Better inmates, better pizza.” The two men chuckled.
The bailiff handed her off to the men, and they pulled her inside and chained her to a seat. T
he doors slammed shut with a boom, and Penelope stared through the bars as the van pulled away from the courthouse. Today was the first day of the rest of her life.
Of course, it had to be a fucking Monday.
Two
Charlie Vickers snarled as he jammed the gearshift into third, the car juddering as he took the corner of Steers and Deers—the PC Police having choke-slapped the highway department to get them to change the last street name a few years back. Tires squealed and one bare rim kicked up sparks. Black smoke billowed from his exhaust, blocking the view behind him. Not that he cared about that. Forward was the only direction that mattered right then. Least that’s what the motivational poster hung in the shitter told him every time he dropped the kids off at the pool.
The red gleam of the atomic clock of the messenger system implanted in his eye glared angrily above his remaining sentence deliveries {732}, the seconds ticking down way too fast. Deliver. Deliver. Deliver, it flashed over and over, a capitalistic mantra that set his nuts to twitching like Thor’d shoved a lightning bolt up his ass. When the screen wasn’t shouting at him to make his corporate masters richer, it alternated between a half-dozen life-lessons the Texas Department of Criminal Justice felt necessary to inundate him with twenty hours a day, every day. Wash your hands! Work hard! Listen to your manager! Stay out of trouble! Don’t use drugs! Stop touching yourself, Charlie! Each came with its own exclamation point, Corrections clearly feeling the need to belabor the, uh, point. If he ever got out, Charlie had a damn good idea where he’d shove those stiff little bastards.
He growled as the car shuddered, slamming his fist into the dashboard while pressing the accelerator to the floor, feeling it thump sullenly against the floorboard. Someone had figured out his route, not that it was fucking difficult given the media frenzy of the Apocalyptic Pizza Delivery crew at his heels, and stuck a modified spike strip across the alley shortcut. Charlie hadn’t seen it until it was too late. Normally, he wouldn’t have given a fuck, solid rubber tires immune to that kind of petty bullshit, but whoever had laid it had been smarter than your average homeboy. The spikes had been barbed, feral caltrops with an attitude, coated in some kind of fast-acting corrosive that went to town on his tires like a hippy on patchouli-scented pussy.
Doomino's_Apocalyptic Pizza Delivery_A Bizarro Grindhouse Tale Page 1
