by C. J.
“Joe, so nice of you to join us again,” said Suzanne as she stopped by the family room. “It’s always nice when people make it easy at the end.”
“Wait, did you go out the living room window and then come around the house, or is there another guy running around in here?” asked Danny.
“No, that was me, I prefer the element of surprise,” Joe replied.
“Oh my God, is that Suzanne? It’s hard to see after that damn flashbang,” Danny exclaimed, pointing at Suzanne who was dressed head to toe in desert camo. Of course, no one could see this given all the weaponry strapped to her body. She cradled the riot shotgun, in her arms, and had the AS50 sniper rifle slung over her shoulder, with extra ammo for every weapon in an ammo sling bag strung over her other shoulder. Strapped to her left thigh was a Hecker & Koch .45, and strapped to her right was a Taurus 24/7 .45. Nasty looking throwing knives were tucked into her boots.
“Did you escape from prison? Haven’t you done enough damage to us, and to the world, by stealing a simple formula and then turning it into a slow poison? For God’s sake, weren’t you happy enough as a corporate spy for Teaberry? Did you have to try to annihilate the human race as well?” Danny took a step back and wound his arm around like a baseball pitcher, then let fly by pointing at Suzanne and proclaiming, “You are beyond evil, Suzanne; I don’t think there’s a word to describe what kind of foul creature you are.”
“Sociopathic malevolent entity?” offered Kevin.
“Well done, that does rather describe me, but it was you two morons that came up with the formula and sold it to the unsuspecting public. It was all you,” Suzanne countered.
“Us?” Danny replied, “We were just lab drones that worked for a huge company. You were the one that blew up our lab and was incarcerated. Now, God help us all, you escaped. Like anyone else, we are just trying to survive, live our lives in peace and hope we don’t turn to gelatin at some point. You two are the ones that came storming in and blowing things up. Yes, we are armed, because the world has become an even unfriendlier place than it used to be, not to mention slightly overcrowded. People seem to draw the line at living in an 100-degree desert environment, so we are pretty much left alone except for the occasional roving band of crazies. We find it peaceful out here with the cacti and road runners.”
Joe stepped forward, “Suzanne’s correct; don’t try to act all innocent. As hard as it is for me to believe you buffoons came up with anything that would be good, harmful, or otherwise, the fact is you two are responsible for the formula that caused the end of the world as we knew it, and now you have to pay the consequences. Fuego, how did you team up with these felons? This is treason, you know. I knew there was something off about you the moment I saw you. You were too fussy; you put on too much of a Hercule Poroit, Monk, Sheldon Cooper, Felix Unger act. No one could be that anal and paranoid about the outdoors. You were really gathering intel the whole time and acting the fool. I should have seen right through you. Feeding us false information and stringing us along the whole time.”
“Yes, that’s right,” Humberto answered as he pushed to the front of the group.
“I was stringing you along the entire time. Playing the umm, err, fool as you say.” Faint snickering could be heard from Humberto’s team. “I, I mean, we could not allow the government, my government, to manipulate the people they are supposed to work for. We are not cattle to be pushed around and then put down when things get difficult. Yes, there are a lot of incredibly stupid and ignorant people in the world, but that is no reason to treat citizens, people that you work, for like a giant game of Stratego.”
Ashley turned to Joshua and to ask “Stratego? Is that the right analogy?”
“Shhh, he’s on a roll.”
“Your boss,” Humberto said pointing at Joe. “And because you are acting as his puppet, you must be stopped from assassinating these fine people.” Humberto rose up to his full height, took a deep breath and said in a loud, clear voice with hardly a waiver, “There is too much ignorance and evil in this world, and you brought both to this household, and the SFPGABIBOONATDAP will not allow it.”
Spontaneous applause broke out among the Danny and Humberto teams.
“That was the corniest yet most heart-rending speech I’ve heard in a long time,” Maggie sniffed, wiping away a lone tear.
Suzanne, not surprisingly, had a very short fuse regarding most everything, and interjected forcibly with a round to the ceiling. “What was that last part? Is he having a stroke?” I say we go to plan D.”
“Are we at D, already?” Joe started counting off on his fingers and then inwardly said, Just fuck it, as something in him snapped. The entire day had been filled with morons under his command who couldn’t carry out a simple mission against mere office workers, for Christ’s sake. Half of their targets were pencil pushers, and the others were lab geeks. Joe’s entire reputation was at stake. He didn’t know or honestly care what happened to the men who’d disappeared into this house before him, but it was going to end. It was going to end here and now, with this psychotic bitch next to him.
“Hey, what’s plan D, Joe?” Humberto asked in what he hoped was a calm and soothing voice (but actually came out in a cracked and croaky tone).
“Fuck you pencil pusher,” Joe snarled and reached for the pistol strapped to his leg.
Humberto and Danny had been watching for any sudden movement from the two hired guns in front of them, and now fired simultaneously. Both Joe and Suzanne were knocked off their feet and stunned for several seconds. Suzanne was struck with Humberto’s beanbag shotgun directly in the stomach, which took the fight out of her for approximately five seconds. Joe was shot with something entirely different but just as effective. Suzanne gasped for air for a few seconds, then looked over at Joe who was also gasping like a fish out of water while wiping a whitish substance off his outer vest carrier. “Potato!” he muttered.
“Did you say potato?” Suzanne moaned as she and Joe crawled behind a relatively intact kitchen counter.
“Yes, I just got shot with a fucking potato!” Joe shouted and fire several rounds into an adjacent dishwasher.
Danny’s voice could be heard from a distance. “Correction, you got hit with both barrels, mother fucker.”
Joe stood up and fired several rounds from his M16 in the general area of Danny’s voice and felt something strike his left thigh. Something else shot between his legs and impaled the refrigerator he was standing in front of. Joe immediately took cover and accessed the situation. He saw that he had only been grazed by. “What the fucking fuck is that?!” Joe regarded the projectile that had brushed his thigh and was now impaled in the refrigerator’s door.
“Shit I wonder if that is going to screw up the ice maker” Maggie mumbled to herself as she took advantage of Suzanne’s and Joe’s dumbstruck looks and sprinted past them as they sat, staring at the refrigerator door, and waved at the others to disperse.
“Wow, that worked even better than in the test trials,” Kevin told Danny as they fist-bumped and ran to find cover.
Suzanne finally broke her and Joe’s silence. “It looks like an ear of corn. I know it’s not; it must be some shell design that just resembles”
“A fucking ear of corn. It’s a fucking ear of corn! I just got shot with a fucking ear of corn! What the hell is going on here? Potatoes and corn. Are we being attacked by crazed farmers? That’s it, we’re taking off the kid gloves and going all out. Bring out the heavy artillery, Suzanne. Do not hold back!” Joe shouted.
Before he could reach his assault rifle, all hell broke loose from above. Danny grabbed his M16, which he had partially hidden behind a desk. In one smooth move, he launched the 40mm round from the grenade launcher on this M16 rifle he had aimed at the ceiling. The fallout, so to speak, gave everyone who had frozen in terror earlier enough to time to spread throughout the house. The dust hadn’t even started clearing, when Suzanne began firing rounds at pretty much anything that moved.
“
Watch it, woman, you are going hit me!” shouted Joe, since he had nearly been hit by one of her shotgun blasts.
“Then stay out of my way!”
Their argument ceased as the kitchen counter they were hiding behind disintegrated from fully automatic firepower.
“Shit, the nerds have some decent firepower. Where are your big boy toys? We need to step it up a bit,” Suzanne growled.
“You don’t have to ask me twice.” Joe showed Suzanne his FN F2000 assault rifle. He turned it to fully auto and aimed it toward the area of what used to be the family room, scattering people in every direction.
“They are headed for the master bedroom. We can trap them there. You follow them, I’ll go around!” Suzanne shouted.
“Oh God, this is so much louder than I thought it would be!” Maggie yelled as she grabbed Danny’s hand and ran for the master bedroom with the others. Kevin had been shooting behind him as he ran, hitting absolutely nowhere near either Joe or Suzanne. He ran into Ryan and Bernard, who were stopped dead in the hallway, leaning against the wall and breathing heavily. Kevin could hear Suzanne’s shout and scrambled over Ryan and Bernard leapfrog style as he yelled they should toss a flash bang, and headed into the bedroom.
While another flashbang hit the family room, a headcount revealed two missing heads in the hallway area. Humberto gave the assembled the news “I am sorry to report that we lost Anthony and Joshua shortly after that speech I gave.”
Kevin interjected, in the midst of gasps and murmurs of disbelief. “I am so sorry for your loss, but we are seriously short on time. We are down to ten people; we need to break up into two groups. I hope you remember the extras we have in this house. Help should be coming shortly, I hope. Whoever is staying, come with Melissa and me. The rest of you thank you is not enough. The keys are under the driver’s visor. Let’s go.”
Ryan could be heard telling Bernard that this was like playing a life-size version of “Clue,” but a lot louder.
Back in the kitchen, Joe could see Suzanne was screaming about something, but he had put his earplugs in. Since he quite enjoyed the muffled noise, he decided to keep them in until something pressing came up. He slowly crept down the short hallway to the master bedroom with his rifle up and ready. He led with the weapon into the bedroom, kicking the door fully open in case someone was lurking behind it. The bedroom appeared clear. Joe put his back alongside a window, opened it carefully, and stepped away. He waited until Suzanne, and all her gear, came through the window, then they both continued to search the room.
“Closet?” Joe mouthed.
“What, as if all twelve of them are in there? You ass.”
Joe still had his earplugs in but got the gist of what she said.
“Bathroom,” he mouthed, pointing toward the master bath with his rifle.
They checked the closet and the bathroom but found no sign of life at all.
“I don’t suppose you saw 12 people running across the desert when you went around the house, did you?”
Suzanne just looked at Joe. “Those fucking idiots. IT, come in!”
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
EARLIER AT IT CENTRAL, namely the Audi Q7 SUV they were in, a lively discussion had broken out amongst Cody, Alex and Jeremy. The argument had been started by Cody who had been trying to get the best signal while avoiding the wrath of the two primary psychopaths out there. “Hey, guys, have you been getting interference in the system?”
“Only by you just now,” snapped Alex who also was in terror of the heavily armed nutcases out in the desert. They were apparently shooting everything in sight. He was thinking to himself, Wouldn’t it be tragic if the psychopaths were part of the casualties as well, and with heavy hearts, we had to drive far, far away from this desert paradise?
“Actually, I thought it was my headset that had gone wonky.” Jeremy leaned over to look at Cody and asked, “So it’s not just my equipment, then?”
“No, I think a signal has been transmitting from this area, and it’s not us.”
“Well if it’s not us, you don’t think that it’s...” Cody trailed off as he started to trace the signal. “Oh God, we’ve gone viral.”
Jeremy jumped out of the SUV, looked down the road, heard all the noise coming from the house, jumped back in the vehicle, and shouted, “How long has it been out there? How long do we have?”
Alex, looking ready to either faint or vomit, held up his hand and stepped on Joe’s transmission just as Joe called for IT.
“Sir, this is IT, come in Sir.”
“What the fuck is going on out there? Aren’t you paying attention to what’s happening around the perimeter? Where did they go? Did they go on foot or in a vehicle? Did they fucking fly away? Speak to me.”
“To answer your question, Sir, no one exited the house except for, umm, the woman who is with you. We have video on all sides of the house. However, uh, Sir, a new and more urgent development has arisen that needs your attention, Sir.”
“Go back and check the northeast side of the house where the master bedroom is. You should see Suzanne exit the patio area and go around to the bedroom and enter one of the east windows. Before that, you should see a mob of assholes exit that room at some point.” Joe said.
“Jeremy is looking right now, Sir. You need to know a signal just went out from the house. Apparently, it was on a delay. From the time the kitchen exploded, a distress signal has been going out from the house with the house’s coordinates and some audio. You need to get out now, Sir. No one was seen leaving the bedroom on the video. Maybe they never went in. There must be another door or something. It doesn’t matter. You need to leave before this situation gets any worse, Sir.”
Suzanne found Joe in the kitchen area emptying a clip into the stainless steel refrigerator’s door. Corn kernels were scattered all over the floor.
“Why are you killing the refrigerator? Is there someone one hiding in it? Let me see, let me see,” Suzanne gleefully asked.
Joe slapped Suzanne’s hand away as she grabbed for the refrigerator door. “We need to get out of here. Weren’t you listening to your earpiece? A distress signal has gone out from this rubble for the last few minutes, and we will have to hurry up and take care of business. By the time the cavalry comes way out here in bumble fuck, this problem needs to be one with nature. Dead and buried so to speak.”
“Even though we are at the corner of Bumble and Fuck,” said Kevin as he strolled out of the West bedroom with Danny and Maggie, “we do have neighbors. There is a military base, a SWAT training school, and a state police academy all within 15 miles of here. They like being in the middle of nowhere too.”
Maggie was holding a grenade launcher aimed Joe and Suzanne’s heads.
Melissa, Humberto, and Cathy exited the “Q” room, each holding a Steyr ACR Assault Rifle, which were also aimed at Mr. and Mrs. Psycho.
“Wait a second, where did you guys come from? What kind of funhouse is this?” Suzanne said, nearly pushing Joe over in trying to get a better look at what Melissa was holding. “And where did you get those rifles? Those are experimental semi-auto rifles that the military experimented with ages ago.”
Melissa started to explain that they were semi-auto at one time, but was interrupted by the sound of a large engine starting up in the garage.
“Let them be,” warned Melissa, “unless you want a demonstration of how fully automatic these babies can be.” Melissa saw a tan Marauder speed off into the desert through the now spacious patio viewing area.
“A vehicle just left the garage. Do you want us to follow?” asked a hopeful voice from IT.
“Well, time for us to disappear, boys and girls,” sang Suzanne as she rolled a familiar looking soup-can type object in between the two groups.
“Let the vehicle go. Keep your position,” barked Joe.
“Oh crap, everyone into the garage,” said Melissa as she kicked the flashbang toward the fleeing duo as they exited out of the patio doorway.
All in Maggi
e’s group heard the boom as they safely made it into the garage. She flashed Melissa a thumb’s up. “Thanks, Melissa, that was the first time today I didn’t get blasted by one of those damn things.”
After the last flashbang, cracks appeared in the dining room floor. From below it, faint shouts could be heard.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
RUCKER AND RIDGEWAY had found themselves in a padded room, the roof of which had immediately closed up after they had fallen in. They had yelled themselves hoarse and tried their communication devices and cell phones to no avail. Their padded cell seemed soundproof, but every once in a while they could hear muffled bangs. The small room was a quarter the size of what they remembered the living room to be, and since it was padded, it was not uncomfortable. Rucker tried using his knife to cut through the padding and climb up to the top, but only succeeded in cutting through the soft material and sliding down a la Douglas Fairbanks cutting his way heroically down a sail in that black and white pirate movie of old. Loud snickering was heard from Ridgeway, who used his phone in flashlight mode to assist Spiderman as he crashed, cursing, to the floor. Rucker had tried shooting at the trap door as soon as they hit the floor, only to be greeted by a ricocheting bullet that whizzed past his head. Ridgeway told Rucker to put his fucking gun away or he would find a new holster for it. Ridgeway noticed that every time an explosion was felt, slight cracks appeared in the trap door.
“Look, Rucker, that last blast puts some large cracks in the trap-door. If you boost me up, maybe I can force the fucker open.”
Rucker, who was glad to finally be able to do something, braced himself against a wall and boosted Ridgeway onto his shoulders. Just as Ridgeway balanced himself on Rucker’s shoulders, a China cabinet crashed through the trap door and into the cell, flinging plates, cups, and saucers everywhere.
