by Mike Leon
“It’s a metal band. I dated this guy who—just don’t worry about it.”
“Okay. What were you going to do if it was a girl at the check-in desk?”
She raises an eyebrow. “It was a girl at the check-in desk.”
A deluge of visuals pours into Sid’s mind as he fills in the blanks. It is unexpectedly intriguing.
“Did you figure out what the MacGuffin is yet?” Lily asks. The metal case he recovered from the Graveyard building still sits on the floor under his feet.
“Why do you keep calling it that?”
“Cause that’s what it is. It’s a MacGuffin.”
“What the hell is that?”
“It’s a plot device in movies and stuff, like the diamonds from Snatch or the briefcase from Pulp Fiction.”
“I don’t follow.”
“It’s just a thing that everybody wants. You don’t even really have to know what it is, but all the characters will do anything to get it.”
“Walter Stedman died to make sure my brother didn’t get it.”
“That’s classic MacGuffin,” Lily says. She feigns choking. “You. Must. Cough. Make sure the MacGuffin never falls. Cough. Into the wrong hands . . .”
She’s joking, but Sid doesn’t laugh. This thing is trouble.
“Let’s go get cleaned off,” Lily says. “You go first. You smell like a bleu cheese factory’s dumpster.”
EXT. DESERT - DAY
Who watches the watchmen? The question has fascinated Helen for most of her life. She has been a watchman for most of it now. She was literally a watchman for a large department store in high school. Then she worked in the Ombudsman’s office at Yale. Then she went to work at the IRS. Then on to the NSA. At all of those places, the watchmen needed watching. At (almost) all of those places, the watchmen were being watched. At Graveyard, no one watches them. Most people don’t believe they’re real. And therein lies another problem.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? is the original Latin phrase about the watchmen. It had nothing to do with politics or dictators in its original usage. It was about keeping a cheating wife in line. Translated literally, it is Who will guard the guards themselves? The question is more applicable when stated that way. It turns out the answer is no one. No one is watching Graveyard and no one’s guarding them, either.
There were no emergency crews back at the building. No National Guard. No FEMA. Not even a fire truck showed up. If there is a contingency plan for what happens when somebody blows up the secret base of the invisible black ops commandos that don’t exist, Helen does not know what it is.
The two of them picked through what rubble they could lift, salvaging very little. She found a shotgun inside a smashed-in locker with another flak jacket. They met up with the guys from the gate station and a few operators who were on a sub level when the building imploded. No one had a car. The parking lot was buried in an avalanche of concrete, glass, and steel. The chopper on the roof went down somewhere in the dust cloud. There was another on the airfield behind the building, but no one knew how to fly it. Helen and Tanaka didn’t have time to stand around waiting for help that might never come, so they started walking.
It took them an hour to reach the interstate.
“This truck brought a shipment of ammo crates to the back dock this morning,” Helen says. She puts her hand on the shredded rear tire of the semi, which rests on its side near the brim of the road. They’ve found it flipped and abandoned out here. She initially hopes they can turn it over somehow, maybe with a jack—who knows. In any case, the truck is useless now.
“He travels east,” Tanaka says. The ninja stands closer to the road, observing the wilderness around them—with what, Helen can’t say. His eyes don’t seem to work.
“It looks like Sid shook him. These tires are shredded. Probably a grenade.”
“Here,” Tanaka calls from the dirt ahead, closer to the road. He moves like a cat. He’s there one minute and gone the next. It’s getting on her nerves.
Helen hustles ahead to catch up. She’s disgusted by what she sees when she closes in. Lying in the dirt, at the tips of the ninja’s tabi, lies a soiled and bloody cadaver. The truck driver, she suspects at first, but then she gets closer. It’s a teenage boy, maybe a college kid, with some flip flops and a rock band T-shirt.
“The truck driver?” Tanaka says. The ninja is stone faced as always.
“No,” Helen answers. She grimaces. “Victor must have taken another car.”
Helen kneels down and turns the body to check for I.D. She doesn’t know what good it will do. Graveyard’s analysts are probably all dead, and the FBI isn’t likely to help her. Even if they do, Victor isn’t likely to keep the car more than a few hours.
“There is a car approaching,” Tanaka says.
“Seriously?” Helen says, surprised.
Helen is amazed by everything the ninja does. She has to strain her eyes to see the tiny speck moving toward them along the road. Tanaka knew somehow before it even came over the horizon.
“Here,” she says, tossing her shotgun down in the dirt. “Help me move this body away from the road.”
Helen grabs the body under the arms and lifts. The head dangles like a nylon stocking filled with lead and drags along the ground as she tugs the body away from the street. Tanaka picks up the legs and helps.
They dump the cadaver far enough from the road that it won’t easily be spotted, and Helen drops her flak jacket in the dirt.
“Now hide behind . . .” Helen fruitlessly searches the open, gray landscape for somewhere the ninja can hide. “. . . something?”
The ninja is already gone. Exactly where he went is a mystery, but she doesn’t care. Helen walks back to the street and waves her hands in the air to flag down the car coming her way. It’s a small red sedan—a Chevy Impala, she sees as it comes closer.
The car slows to a stop and the driver’s side window slides down with the whir of an electric motor. The man inside is middle-aged and serious looking, even in a sweaty maroon tank top. He wears black horn-rimmed glasses that dwarf his gaunt face.
“You have an accident out here?” he says, tipping his head back to the wrecked semi.
“I’m a federal agent, sir,” Helen says, leaning down to the window. “I’m gonna need to commandeer this vehicle.”
“Are you a cop? You have a badge?” the driver says, incredulously.
“This is my badge,” Helen says. She draws a 9mm M&P Shield from her pants and points it in the window. “Now step out of the car.”
The driver flinches at the sight of the gun. He blinks several times, as if uncertain what to do, then opens the door, stepping out to the pavement. As he exits the vehicle and stands up in front of her, Helen realizes she has a problem.
The driver is over seven feet tall.
He looks down, almost straight down, at her as he closes the door and leaves nothing between them.
“Oh,” is all Helen says, eyeing the huge figure.
He bats the pistol from her hand with a slap, and the gun tumbles to the dirt beside them.
“Help!” Helen yelps.
The ninja appears at her side instantly. He waves his hand in front of the hulking motorist and speaks calmly. The motorist stops advancing on them.
“Your mind has become clouded,” the ninja says, waving his hand between them. “You are very confused about why you are here.”
“I’m really confused about why I’m here,” the motorist says. He gazes off into the desert without focus.
Helen picks up her pistol from the ground at her feet and then goes to retrieve her shotgun and flak jacket. “You’re going to have to teach me to do that.”
INT. MOTEL ROOM – NIGHT
Sid grinds a stake as he sits on a fluffy upholstered chair in the corner. He’s fashioned his makeshift weapon from a broken bedpost and a sharp rock he found. It is far inferior to the KA-BAR knife he lost in the Graveyard building, but for now it will do.
The
motel room has a bed, table, nightstand, TV, and the chair Sid is sitting in. It’s a palace by his standards. Though he did, for a time, live in a cave where he subsisted on the cooked flesh of his enemies, so his standards are not high.
Sid showered, wrapped his arm in toilet paper, and walked to a Kroger store down the street, where he stole a bottle of rubbing alcohol, a pack of surgical sutures, some clothes for both of them, and a bucket of chicken. He came back to the room, stitched his arm, and ate some of the chicken. He did this all while Lily was taking a bath. He is nearly finished carving the edge of his stake as she emerges.
“You’re making weapons,” she says. “Why am I not surprised? Do you ever stop?”
“You can never stop,” he says. “I told you that’s the worst part of it.”
“I think it’s exciting.”
“You’ll learn.”
He glances up from his carving and sees she is wearing nothing but a towel wrapped around her hair. She’s still dripping on the carpet.
“You’re naked,” Sid says, realizing he has never seen her naked before. Even when they had sex, she kept her clothes on.
“Yeah,” she answers. “Are you in the Taliban or something?”
“No.”
“You sure you don’t want me to put on a burqa?”
He doesn’t answer the question. He’s not sure he even understood it. He can’t remember what he was doing a few seconds ago. She could have toweled herself off in the bathroom. Why didn’t she?
She smiles at him over her shoulder and removes the towel from her head. Her shimmering, wet, raven hair dangles loosely beyond her shoulder blades, dripping onto her heart-shaped butt. She drops the towel on the floor in a way that raises his suspicion. No one is that clumsy.
“Oops,” she says. Her legs remain straight as she arches her back and bends at her hips to reach all the way down to the floor, salaciously exposing all of her lower intimate parts to him. She retrieves the towel and begins drying her wet hair.
He studies her body as she turns to face him. Her skin is smooth and milky white, shaven clean all over. Her taut breasts are tipped with tiny pink nipples that seem to belie the little girl underneath all the black dye and tattoos. One of them seems to be placed curiously like a warning at the gate.
“Why wasteland?” Sid says. It’s a playful question. He means nothing by it, except to tease her maybe. “What does it mean?”
Lily narrows her azure eyes at him. Not the reaction he expected.
“It’s personal,” she says, as she finishes toweling herself dry. She flips the nearby light switch and the room goes dark. She remains there for a moment in the darkness. If she thinks he can’t see her, she’s wrong. He has the night vision of a cat. He watches her hands at first. Hands don’t lie. He sees where they go, and then he sees the fleeting look of sadness on her face. She shakes it away in an instant, but he saw.
She flops down on the bed, and there they are, alone in the dark.
“Sid,” she says. “How many people have you killed?”
“It’s personal,” he says, as he pulls his shirt over his head, throwing it to the floor at his feet. He can’t wait to feel her bare skin against his.
“I see what you did there,” she says. She laughs.
“Yeah?”
“How about we play a game?” she suggests, giggling. “I’ll answer a question for you and then you answer a question for me. We’ll take turns. Sound like fun?”
“Okay,” Sid responds rapidly. “I go first. Tell me about the wasteland.”
“Except that.” Lily shakes her head. “That one is off limits. And I go first.”
“I don’t like the way you play this game,” he says, standing up and setting the wooden stake on the nightstand between them. He sits down on the bed next to her and begins taking his shoes off.
“How many people have you killed?” she asks.
He thinks about it for a moment to tabulate an answer.
“Uh, four something,” he says, dumping his shoes on the floor next to the bed.
“Does it ever bother you?” she asks, staring up at the ceiling.
“You’re cheating.” Sid lies back on the bed and removes his pants. They fall next to him, on top of the shoes. “It’s my turn.”
“Fair enough.” Lily rolls over to face away from him and sighs. “Go.”
“How many men have you fucked?”
“Twenty-six,” she answers, without even a second to think about it. She had the number ready, as if it’s one she keeps in her mind all the time.
“Holy shit!” Sid exclaims.
“What?” Lily squeaks.
“That’s just a really high number.”
“You killed four hundred people!” She punches him in the shoulder.
“Four thousand,” Sid corrects her. Four hundred kills? When he was a toddler, maybe.
“What?” Lily howls. “How did you have time for anything else?”
“I didn’t.” He shrugs. “What’s your excuse?”
Lily rolls her eyes, sighing. She pulls up the edge of the comforter underneath them.
“It’s my turn,” she says, curling up at the top of the bed and then slithering under the comforter to get away from him. “Ass.”
“No it isn’t,” Sid says. He frowns, annoyed at the featureless lump off flowery fabric next to him. “I just answered two in a row.”
“You did?”
“Yeah.” He pulls back the comforter on his side of the bed and crawls underneath to join her in the cold blackness of fresh sheets. “You asked me ‘What?’ and ‘How did you have time for anything else?’ and now you asked me what questions you asked me and I answered that, too.”
“Fuck. You’re too good at this.”
“I’ll call it even if you answer a really good one for me.”
He scoots in close to her. She’s warm. Her soft neck buzzes against the tip of his nose like it’s electric. He puts his bandaged arm over her. The feel of her flesh against his is intoxicating.
“Yeah?” she says. “I bet I know what that’s gonna be.”
“Then answer it,” he says. He didn’t care about the answer before. It was just something stupid, but the more she resists, the more he has to know.
“It means exactly what it says,” she says.
“That’s not an answer.”
“What is it with you men that you’re all so dense you need it spelled out?”
“That’s a question.”
“I can’t have babies because of what happened with Ted. I just thought wasteland was a metal thing to put there because of it.”
“Metal?”
“Yeah. Like death metal. Self-destruction. Nihilism. We’re all slowly dying. That kind of thing. This other one is a quote from a serial killer.” Lily brushes her fingers across the script that reads ‘Death comes with the territory. See you in Disneyland.’ “How come nobody ever asks about that?”
“There’s just something attention-grabbing about the other one. I think it’s the location . . .”
His hand glides along her flesh and across the wasteland. He places a finger between her moist lips.
“You’re doing it wrong,” Lily says. She takes him by the wrist and places his hand on her hip.
“You wanna show me the right way to do it?” he says, moving his hand back to her feminine parts.
“Are you gonna kill Ted for me?”
“Seriously?” He can’t believe she’s still on about that. After everything that happened, he didn’t even remember she asked him to kill somebody.
“Seriously.” She slaps him away again. “We made a deal.”
“I told you, I’m not killing anybody so you’ll have sex with me.”
“Then I’m not having sex with you.”
Sid turns over and lies on his back. His erection rages like a bound attack dog. He seethes with frustration. She knew this would happen. She came out of the bathroom naked and wet, rubbing herself dry, making his bl
ood boil over. She planned this. She’s playing him.
He turns over and places his arm around her again. He cups her breast in his hand and pulls her close to him forcefully. He whispers into her ear.
“You know, I really don’t need your permission,” he says.
“Excuse me?” she says. She turns over and faces him. Her nose rubs against his whiskers. “No means no, asshole.”
He glares at her with his killing eyes. She glares right back at him.
Lily will fight him. She’s not the kind who lies back and cries woefully as she’s taken. He would have to beat her, or choke her, or break some of her fingers. Unconscious or otherwise, she would comply then.
He can’t do that to her.
He growls, turning away.
“Of course . . .” she says. He feels her fingers close around his epic anger boner. “If you do what I ask, yes could mean yes.”
“Fine,” he says, begrudgingly. “I’ll do it.”
“I knew you’d come around,” she says.
“All right.” He puts his arms around her again. He places one hand at the small of her back and draws her close to him. “Let’s do this.”
“Hold your horses,” she says. She braces against his face with her elbow to push him away. “Not until you do the job.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Nope. I want you to bring me his head first.”
“Where is he?” Sid starts to reach for his shoes. “I’ll go do it now.”
“He’s in prison in New York State. He gets out in two months.”
“You’re fucking torturing me here,” Sid says. He drops the shoes and falls back down next to her again.
“Chill out,” she says. She plants her hands on his chest, pushing him down against the bed as she climbs on top of him. “I’m going to do something to help you relax, but first I’m going to show you how to touch me the right way.”
She comes through on both promises.
INT. VIDEO TIME – NIGHT
Amy waves goodbye to Glenn from Xtreme Clean. There’s a guy with a dirty job right there. She couldn’t do what he does. Mopping up dried blood and other bits would wear on her nerves. She couldn’t even watch him clean the floor. She stayed in the stockroom, studying for tomorrow’s econ exam, the whole time he was there.
