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Sunday, January 2, 2011
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Parade of the Wooden Soldiers by Jimmy Callaway
Neil Powack (director of media relations, Central Intelligence Agency): The very idea that the CIA would employ actors in the capacity being discussed here is ludicrous. And actors such as these men? Beyond ludicrous.
Conner Tomlinson (adult film star): Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they? They said Chuck Barris was a liar, too. Hell, even I still think Barris was full of shit. But I know what I did, and what others have done. Whether anybody else knows or believes or cares doesn’t change that one bit.
“Big” Jim McGarrity (talent scout/agent): It’s almost to the point where I don’t believe it, and I was there at the very beginning. I had a little office down on Chatworth, a little strip-mall type place that I repped out of: models, strippers, and actors. Mostly women, y’know, I didn’t get into this biz to look at dicks all day. But some of those dicks brought me in a nice ten-percent, so I always had a couple of the boys on the payroll.
Anyways, one day, this little guy in a brown suit, glasses, real Wally Cox-type comes in and asks me if I want to help serve my country. I says to him, “I’d rather get paid, mister.” And he just smiles a little, and I’ll never forget this, he says, “Mr. McGarrity, that’s what I said.”
Bob Tyron (adult film star): I was having a good time, man, a fuckin’ great time. I was getting paid tons of money to fuck the world’s most beautiful women. I had more money than I could spend, and more pussy than I knew what to do with.
I spend a lotta time these days, man, thinking about why I gave up all of that, started not just a whole new life, but a life no-one woulda even dreamed I could have. I think about that a lot and, man, y’know?
I just don’t know.
Johnny Reardon (adult film star): Oh, I know exactly why I went to work for the CIA. The same exact reason I went into porn: girls and money.
Those are the only reasons to do anything, really.
Conner Tomlinson: I never had any real love for my government. Especially all that censorship stuff, they arrested Harry Reams, the whole Deep Throat trials. It was all a sham, and a fascist sham at that. But then this company man came along, giving me a bunch of patriotic talk and how freedom wasn’t free and all this. And I’ll admit it did kind of begin to stir up in me some love for my country.
But not as much as the huge sums of money he offered me.
Johnny Reardon: He never gave us a name, just said he was with the government. We didn’t even know he was CIA until after we’d had basic. Tomlinson always called him “the company man,” so that was a good enough name for the rest of us to call him.
“Big” Jim McGarrity: All I told those boys was this man wanted to see them, to be all down at my office that Monday morning. The company man came in, and he gave them some shit about how true heroes didn’t need recognition, and how America needed some true heroes. I remember he mentioned that our government at the time depended on men like them to do the dirty work, men who were not afraid to get in there and do what must be done. Hell, I’ll be honest, by the time he was done, I was ready to join up for the cause.
And all the boys pretty much signed up right then and there. I never saw a one of ‘em again.
Conner Tomlinson: I guess besides the money, there was something else that appealed, though at the time, I wouldn’t have admitted it. Basically, I was bored. We all were. And what the company man was offering us, it didn’t sound boring at all.
Bob Tyron: I remember looking around at the others, like, Can you fucking believe what we’re hearing? We’re porn stars, man, we’re not soliders or whatever. Definitely not patriots. I’ve never voted once in my life. I looked over at Johnny, and he was just like, y’know, whatever. Malcolm [Comstock] was all hyped up, his face all red, although that was probably all the coke he was doing at the time. Walt [Malice], you could never get a bead on, you could never tell what he was thinking. But I saw the look on Conner’s face, man, this look like, it was just like, y’know? Finally. Finally, we’re gonna do something.
Conner Tomlinson: Bob’s a nice guy, but he was a fucking idiot. Still is, I’d imagine.
Bob Tyron: See, I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but here’s what I think I got figured out. None of us went into porn with our eyes closed. We knew the score, man, we were just pieces of meat. Nobody’s watching these films for us, for our acting abilities. They just wanna see the girls. And really, for the most part, that’s just fine.
Still.
A guy’s gotta have an identity of his own, y’know?
A fuckin’ purpose.
Johnny Reardon: No, I never understood why they picked us. I never thought to ask, frankly. Why wouldn’t anybody want me to do anything? I’m a fucking god. And I mean that literally.
The fucking part, anyways. Not so much the god part.
Conner Tomlinson: I asked the company man that once, why us. A buncha porn stars. It was after he’d given us his big pitch and we’d all signed our lives away. I said there’s gotta be thousands of guys out there who’d already had the training, who didn’t need to be persuaded with a ton of money. So why headhunt us, y’know, why bother?
He just looked at me and said I’d answered my own question.
I still don’t know what that’s supposed to mean. And I think I’d rather it stay that way.
Johnny Reardon: Basic training sucked big ol’ balls. I fuckin’ hated it, but whatever. The shit I’d been through my whole life, I could handle six weeks of some loudmouth needle-dick screaming in my face.
Conner Tomlinson: Basic was as bad as they tell you, but it definitely helped that there was only the five of us. To this day, I don’t even know where the base was that they trained us at. They flew us there in the dead of night, black bags over our heads and everything. I think we all still thought it was a gag or something, like McGarrity was just fucking with us.
Bob Tyron: Aw, man, basic. The fuckin’ worst, man. This D.I., his name was Owens. At least that was what they said his name was. Just a real uptight prick, man.
Conner Tomlinson: Owens ran us like dogs, but frankly, I think we all needed it. Nothing fazes Reardon, and Bob’s too dumb to really take anything too seriously. But Malcolm, that guy was a world-class fuck-up. And you could tell he really took to being bossed around like that, humiliated in the name of making himself a better soldier. I’m no psychologist, but anybody could tell you that guy had serious daddy issues.
Johnny Reardon: I’d known Malcolm Comstock for a while, I worked with him on his first film, Permission to Come Aboard. Me and him teamed Christy Canyon. He was a nice enough guy, pretty funny guy. But his shoots would go on and on for hours sometimes.
He couldn’t keep his dick hard to save his life.
Conner Tomlinson: And Walt, well, shit. I never liked Walt, but nobody really did in our old lives either. And to do what we were doing, being likeable was not a requirement. But I remember once when we were out on the artillery range, I looked over at Walt as we were both reloading, and not to sound corny, but he had this look on his face, it was just...beatific. I can’t think of another word for it. And the thought occurred to me—and not for the first time—that we were finally home.
Johnny Reardon: The guy was fucking crazy. End of story.
Conner Tomlinson: I mean, obviously, I was wrong about Walt. But whatever happened later, I felt really good at that time. Really good, to where I can still remember how it felt. And you know, that’s enough for me. I don’t care what happened after that. There was a time when all was right with the world.
And surprisingly enough to no one less than myself, I wasn’t having an orgasm at the time.
Bob Tyron: But when the real black-ops training started, man, that was fuckin’ great! They teach you how to kill a guy in five thousand different ways, man! Just crazy shit. All those James Bond gadgets and everything. A pen that is also a hand grenade. Condoms made out of a solidified flesh-eating bacteria. Man, that’s some cold-blooded shit. A solid year of that, can you fuckin’ imagine?
Conner Tomlinson: While we’re away at CIA death-dealing camp, they found body doubles for each of us to continue acting in our place. And to continue partying in our place too, I’d guess. I have no idea where they dug these guys up. But I’d be willing to guess they were mighty grateful for that assignment.
Johnny Reardon: Black-ops training was hands down my favorite part of this whole thing. For a year, they trained us in just about every form of martial arts I’d ever heard of, and several more I didn’t even know existed. We learned counter-intelligence, counter-espionage, fuckin’ counter-everything. I’d never felt before like I was less of a man or anything. But after that year, I wondered how I had ever been able to look myself in the mirror, not knowing how to kill a man with his own kneecap.
Conner Tomlinson: Personally, I found the book-work we did in that year far more interesting, far more useful. All that false flag stuff, how to work propaganda, basically all ways to get people to do your job for you. I’d always suspected that the human animal was, at its most basic, completely brainless. Now I was having it confirmed for me.
Johnny Reardon: So those early years in Nicaragua were a blast, really. Those monkeys down there, they loved us. A lotta the guys working under us, the Contras, each squad had, like, whole libraries of porn videos. So they knew who we were, although obviously we weren’t officially even there at all. But they knew.
If you want to fuck somebody, you call on old Uncle Sam.
Conner Tomlinson: I can count on one hand the number of wet jobs I actually went on in Nicaragua. The company man felt my strength was in propaganda, y’know, in an advisory role a lot of the time. It helped that I spoke fluent Spanish. Hell, I was married to Victoria Del Chichonas for most of the late ‘70s. So I knew how to speak Spanish as well as how to fuck with people’s heads.
Bob Tyron: I don’t wanna sound, y’know, like...I know killing is wrong and stuff. But y’know, they say the same thing about fucking, too, right? And yeah, maybe both things are wrong, y’know, morally speaking or whatever. But you know what else?
I’m pretty good at both of ‘em.
Johnny Reardon: Walt never did anything really weird that whole time, even though he definitely was no fun to hang around with. But he never had been, really. And he was a consummate professional. Once, we running an exfiltration on some chemical warheads the Sandinistas had gotten a hold of, and this fuckin’ Sandy dropped out of nowhere with a knife to my throat. I barely got out a squawk, and Walt dusted that motherfucker, bingo. Right between the eyes. One-Shot Malice, I called him after that.
Bob Tyron: Yeah, Malcolm was an okay guy, and y’know, he was definitely on edge. I dunno if it was too many drugs or not enough or whatever. There was one time when he and I went in to take out this rabble-rouser, this workers’ organizer named Cisco Francesco. We watched him for a few days, learned he went and saw his mistress every Tuesday at around siesta time. So we set up shop across the street from her apartment. Malcolm was a good sniper, y’know, definitely the best out of all of us dudes. So he sets up his rifle, he gets a bead on the guy as he’s across the street, fucking away. And his goddamn rifle jams.
It was no big deal, y’know, fuckin’ plan B, I just walked across the street and slit both their throats. But man, Malcolm was so pissed, screaming and carrying on, I thought the whole neighborhood was gonna come out and wonder what the fuck was going on. The guy had tears running down his face, he was so mad. Eventually, I got him calmed down and we got the fuck out of there. I never really gave it much of a second thought, y’know.
I guess I should have.
Johnny Reardon: Man, that was a great story. We all broke Malcolm’s balls for a week on that one. But yeah, looking back, fuckin’ Walt never laid off the guy.
Bob Tyron: Walt was a mean guy. I mean, I’d been there when it looked like Malcolm was cracking, y’know, I’d seen it. But he was, y’know, he was one of us. A brother-in-arms, man.
But Walt was always ragging on Malcolm, man. Little things, y’know, calling him Mrs. Comstock, or Ol’ Limpy. Shit like that. Really childish, man.
Conner Tomlinson: I guess that’s where my leadership skills should be called into question. I won’t deny it. But I will say in my defense that we’d all had the same training, we’d all been doing the work for a good amount of time. If Walt or Malcolm were going to go section-eight, I don’t know what I could have done about it, even then.
So Nicaragua went okay, despite the end results. By the time of the Ollie North trials, though, we were all already in El Salvador. And of course, that’s where it all pretty much ended.
Johnny Reardon: If you ask me, I don’t think there ever was a biological weapon, any kinda super-virus. You ask me, they had run over our black budget, and the company man set us up to get taken out. Fuckin’ suicide mission. But nobody’s ever asked me, and really, who cares. I made it home alive.
That’s all that matters.
Bob Tyron: Yeah, El Salvador coulda gone a whole lot better, man. But then again, I guess it coulda been worse. Fuckin’ I dunno.
Conner Tomlinson: The mission was fairly simple, not unlike any other operation, really. Word was the FMLN had this scientist set up in a secret lab deep in the jungle in some old monastery or something like that. His name was something like...Van Hessel? Van Husserel. Dr. Van Husserel. Some expatriated Nazi or something. It all sounds like the plot of a bad movie, I know. I’ve been in a few.
Johnny Reardon: Supposedly, this Van Husserel was working on a virus that specifically targeted the genetic structure of Caucasians Put a little of it in the drinking fountain at the Pentagon, and next thing you know, every white person there was gonna have their intestines shooting out their assholes. Couldn’t have that, God knows.
Bob Tyron: The company man told us, or told Conner anyways, that there wasn’t much security, y’know, the fuckin’ Femmies didn’t even believe this Van Husserel could deliver on his promise. And that was true, the five of us got in that night with very little resistance or whatever.
But once inside, we almost got compromised by a couple guards, so we had to split up. That’s how Walt and Malcolm got to the lab before we did.
Conner Tomlinson: It had been a while since I had actually been in the field, so I think I was more concentrating on getting back into the groove, y’know, I wasn’t paying much attention to much else. Completely my fault, and I am one lucky son of a bitch that I didn’t pay for that mistake with my life.
By the time Johnny, Bob, and I got to the lab, Van Husserel was already bleeding out on the floor. There was a lot of blood, but that was nothing new. But I guess that’s why I didn’t notice that Walt was already bleeding like a stuck pig.
Johnny Reardon: Walt said they’d taken another couple guards by surprise on their way down to the lab. He said Malcolm fucked up and his guy got away from him, and the guy managed to stick Walt before Walt slit his throat for him. Even at the time, under pressure, the clock ticking, it sounded like bullshit to me.
Bob Tyron: Malcolm just sat there at the lab table, fuckin’ Bunsen burners and whatever all over the place, broken glass. He just sat there and hung his head.
Conner Tomlinson: Walt said he’d beaten the truth out of the good doctor Van Husserel, that he held in his hand a syringe of the only perfected batch of the super-virus. He said we had saved America again, that he was the fucking Lizard King, I don’t remember his exact words. I was trying to get them to come on, we had to burn the place out. I had already called in the coordinates, and air support was on its way to fire-bomb the place back to the Mayans.
Johnny Reardon: Walt looks at me and he says, “This is fucked.” I dunno why me, I didn’t like him or dislike him more than any of the others, but he says, “This is all fucked. We have been fucked.” And he’s bleeding out. I say something like, C’mon, Walt, let’s get home, we’ll patch you up. And for a second, he looked like he got his head back, and he took a step toward me.
And then he just collapsed.
Bob Tyron: Walt’s bleeding out, he can’t even stand. Malcolm’s just sitting there. I come over, I say, y’know, “Malcolm, c’mon, man.” And he looks up at me, and he was...he was just so pale. And I knew it before he even said it.
“Walt infected me.”
Conner Tomlinson: All I knew was we had to get the fuck out of there. We can conjecture all day if we want to, but even had I known then exactly what had happened between Walt and Malcolm, it wouldn’t have made any difference. If we’d hung around, Walt would have been right.
We would have been fucked.
Bob Tyron: I said, y’know, “What? What’re you talking about?” And Walt looks up at me, looks up at Johnny, he says, “I had to preserve a sample, man. You guys have got to take Malcolm back, let the lab boys get a sample from him.”
And I was like, “Man, are you out of your fucking mind?”
Johnny Reardon: I guess carrying the sample home in the syringe would have made too much sense. No, I’ll tell you exactly what happened: Malcolm fucked up and got Walt stabbed, so Walt infected him with a virus that would turn his digestive tract into fuckin’ molten lava. Walt was an asshole.
Malcolm was a bigger asshole.
Bob Tyron: So I grab Malcolm, I say, “Look, we’ll fuckin’ get this shit straightened out at home, let’s get the fuck outta here.” And Malcolm says, “Yeah, let’s get the fuck out of here.” And for a second, I was like, Sweet, he’s thinking clearly.
Then he grabbed my .45 out of my belt.
Conner Tomlinson: The official story in the Adult Video News was that Malcolm Comstock died quietly of pancreatic cancer at his home in Malibu, and a week later, Walt Malice died after he ran his Ferrari off the road in the Hollywood Hills. But I was there.
Malcolm shot Walt in the face. And then Malcolm shot Malcolm in the face.
Johnny Reardon: I’d suspected our run was about through before then. And after that, I knew for a fact it was over. But here I sit now with plenty of what? That’s right.
Money and girls.
Bob Tyron: This set-up we got now, y’know, it’s not bad. I can’t see my family or nothin’, but y’know. I never really cared much about that anyways. We can’t leave these grounds, but we’ve got plenty of money, and y’know, the fuckin’ Internet, it’s pretty much like having the outside world brought to your door.
Plus the CIA flies in all kinds of girls for us to fuck.
Conner Tomlinson: It’s pretty much just summer camp for the rest of our lives. Which, when you think about it, is not unlike the adult entertainment industry. My freedom, such as it was, is sorely missed sometimes. But I’m a big boy, I knew what I was doing when I signed up with the company. And I made it out alive.
There’s one thing you learn right away when you show up at your first shoot, your first audition, or whatever. It’s a jungle out there, it really is. And there’s only one law in the jungle.
Fuck or be fucked.
Of course now, I’m hard-pressed sometimes to tell which is which.
Conner Tomlinson (adult film star): Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they? They said Chuck Barris was a liar, too. Hell, even I still think Barris was full of shit. But I know what I did, and what others have done. Whether anybody else knows or believes or cares doesn’t change that one bit.
“Big” Jim McGarrity (talent scout/agent): It’s almost to the point where I don’t believe it, and I was there at the very beginning. I had a little office down on Chatworth, a little strip-mall type place that I repped out of: models, strippers, and actors. Mostly women, y’know, I didn’t get into this biz to look at dicks all day. But some of those dicks brought me in a nice ten-percent, so I always had a couple of the boys on the payroll.
Anyways, one day, this little guy in a brown suit, glasses, real Wally Cox-type comes in and asks me if I want to help serve my country. I says to him, “I’d rather get paid, mister.” And he just smiles a little, and I’ll never forget this, he says, “Mr. McGarrity, that’s what I said.”
Bob Tyron (adult film star): I was having a good time, man, a fuckin’ great time. I was getting paid tons of money to fuck the world’s most beautiful women. I had more money than I could spend, and more pussy than I knew what to do with.
I spend a lotta time these days, man, thinking about why I gave up all of that, started not just a whole new life, but a life no-one woulda even dreamed I could have. I think about that a lot and, man, y’know?
I just don’t know.
Johnny Reardon (adult film star): Oh, I know exactly why I went to work for the CIA. The same exact reason I went into porn: girls and money.
Those are the only reasons to do anything, really.
Conner Tomlinson: I never had any real love for my government. Especially all that censorship stuff, they arrested Harry Reams, the whole Deep Throat trials. It was all a sham, and a fascist sham at that. But then this company man came along, giving me a bunch of patriotic talk and how freedom wasn’t free and all this. And I’ll admit it did kind of begin to stir up in me some love for my country.
But not as much as the huge sums of money he offered me.
Johnny Reardon: He never gave us a name, just said he was with the government. We didn’t even know he was CIA until after we’d had basic. Tomlinson always called him “the company man,” so that was a good enough name for the rest of us to call him.
“Big” Jim McGarrity: All I told those boys was this man wanted to see them, to be all down at my office that Monday morning. The company man came in, and he gave them some shit about how true heroes didn’t need recognition, and how America needed some true heroes. I remember he mentioned that our government at the time depended on men like them to do the dirty work, men who were not afraid to get in there and do what must be done. Hell, I’ll be honest, by the time he was done, I was ready to join up for the cause.
And all the boys pretty much signed up right then and there. I never saw a one of ‘em again.
Conner Tomlinson: I guess besides the money, there was something else that appealed, though at the time, I wouldn’t have admitted it. Basically, I was bored. We all were. And what the company man was offering us, it didn’t sound boring at all.
Bob Tyron: I remember looking around at the others, like, Can you fucking believe what we’re hearing? We’re porn stars, man, we’re not soliders or whatever. Definitely not patriots. I’ve never voted once in my life. I looked over at Johnny, and he was just like, y’know, whatever. Malcolm [Comstock] was all hyped up, his face all red, although that was probably all the coke he was doing at the time. Walt [Malice], you could never get a bead on, you could never tell what he was thinking. But I saw the look on Conner’s face, man, this look like, it was just like, y’know? Finally. Finally, we’re gonna do something.
Conner Tomlinson: Bob’s a nice guy, but he was a fucking idiot. Still is, I’d imagine.
Bob Tyron: See, I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but here’s what I think I got figured out. None of us went into porn with our eyes closed. We knew the score, man, we were just pieces of meat. Nobody’s watching these films for us, for our acting abilities. They just wanna see the girls. And really, for the most part, that’s just fine.
Still.
A guy’s gotta have an identity of his own, y’know?
A fuckin’ purpose.
Johnny Reardon: No, I never understood why they picked us. I never thought to ask, frankly. Why wouldn’t anybody want me to do anything? I’m a fucking god. And I mean that literally.
The fucking part, anyways. Not so much the god part.
Conner Tomlinson: I asked the company man that once, why us. A buncha porn stars. It was after he’d given us his big pitch and we’d all signed our lives away. I said there’s gotta be thousands of guys out there who’d already had the training, who didn’t need to be persuaded with a ton of money. So why headhunt us, y’know, why bother?
He just looked at me and said I’d answered my own question.
I still don’t know what that’s supposed to mean. And I think I’d rather it stay that way.
Johnny Reardon: Basic training sucked big ol’ balls. I fuckin’ hated it, but whatever. The shit I’d been through my whole life, I could handle six weeks of some loudmouth needle-dick screaming in my face.
Conner Tomlinson: Basic was as bad as they tell you, but it definitely helped that there was only the five of us. To this day, I don’t even know where the base was that they trained us at. They flew us there in the dead of night, black bags over our heads and everything. I think we all still thought it was a gag or something, like McGarrity was just fucking with us.
Bob Tyron: Aw, man, basic. The fuckin’ worst, man. This D.I., his name was Owens. At least that was what they said his name was. Just a real uptight prick, man.
Conner Tomlinson: Owens ran us like dogs, but frankly, I think we all needed it. Nothing fazes Reardon, and Bob’s too dumb to really take anything too seriously. But Malcolm, that guy was a world-class fuck-up. And you could tell he really took to being bossed around like that, humiliated in the name of making himself a better soldier. I’m no psychologist, but anybody could tell you that guy had serious daddy issues.
Johnny Reardon: I’d known Malcolm Comstock for a while, I worked with him on his first film, Permission to Come Aboard. Me and him teamed Christy Canyon. He was a nice enough guy, pretty funny guy. But his shoots would go on and on for hours sometimes.
He couldn’t keep his dick hard to save his life.
Conner Tomlinson: And Walt, well, shit. I never liked Walt, but nobody really did in our old lives either. And to do what we were doing, being likeable was not a requirement. But I remember once when we were out on the artillery range, I looked over at Walt as we were both reloading, and not to sound corny, but he had this look on his face, it was just...beatific. I can’t think of another word for it. And the thought occurred to me—and not for the first time—that we were finally home.
Johnny Reardon: The guy was fucking crazy. End of story.
Conner Tomlinson: I mean, obviously, I was wrong about Walt. But whatever happened later, I felt really good at that time. Really good, to where I can still remember how it felt. And you know, that’s enough for me. I don’t care what happened after that. There was a time when all was right with the world.
And surprisingly enough to no one less than myself, I wasn’t having an orgasm at the time.
Bob Tyron: But when the real black-ops training started, man, that was fuckin’ great! They teach you how to kill a guy in five thousand different ways, man! Just crazy shit. All those James Bond gadgets and everything. A pen that is also a hand grenade. Condoms made out of a solidified flesh-eating bacteria. Man, that’s some cold-blooded shit. A solid year of that, can you fuckin’ imagine?
Conner Tomlinson: While we’re away at CIA death-dealing camp, they found body doubles for each of us to continue acting in our place. And to continue partying in our place too, I’d guess. I have no idea where they dug these guys up. But I’d be willing to guess they were mighty grateful for that assignment.
Johnny Reardon: Black-ops training was hands down my favorite part of this whole thing. For a year, they trained us in just about every form of martial arts I’d ever heard of, and several more I didn’t even know existed. We learned counter-intelligence, counter-espionage, fuckin’ counter-everything. I’d never felt before like I was less of a man or anything. But after that year, I wondered how I had ever been able to look myself in the mirror, not knowing how to kill a man with his own kneecap.
Conner Tomlinson: Personally, I found the book-work we did in that year far more interesting, far more useful. All that false flag stuff, how to work propaganda, basically all ways to get people to do your job for you. I’d always suspected that the human animal was, at its most basic, completely brainless. Now I was having it confirmed for me.
Johnny Reardon: So those early years in Nicaragua were a blast, really. Those monkeys down there, they loved us. A lotta the guys working under us, the Contras, each squad had, like, whole libraries of porn videos. So they knew who we were, although obviously we weren’t officially even there at all. But they knew.
If you want to fuck somebody, you call on old Uncle Sam.
Conner Tomlinson: I can count on one hand the number of wet jobs I actually went on in Nicaragua. The company man felt my strength was in propaganda, y’know, in an advisory role a lot of the time. It helped that I spoke fluent Spanish. Hell, I was married to Victoria Del Chichonas for most of the late ‘70s. So I knew how to speak Spanish as well as how to fuck with people’s heads.
Bob Tyron: I don’t wanna sound, y’know, like...I know killing is wrong and stuff. But y’know, they say the same thing about fucking, too, right? And yeah, maybe both things are wrong, y’know, morally speaking or whatever. But you know what else?
I’m pretty good at both of ‘em.
Johnny Reardon: Walt never did anything really weird that whole time, even though he definitely was no fun to hang around with. But he never had been, really. And he was a consummate professional. Once, we running an exfiltration on some chemical warheads the Sandinistas had gotten a hold of, and this fuckin’ Sandy dropped out of nowhere with a knife to my throat. I barely got out a squawk, and Walt dusted that motherfucker, bingo. Right between the eyes. One-Shot Malice, I called him after that.
Bob Tyron: Yeah, Malcolm was an okay guy, and y’know, he was definitely on edge. I dunno if it was too many drugs or not enough or whatever. There was one time when he and I went in to take out this rabble-rouser, this workers’ organizer named Cisco Francesco. We watched him for a few days, learned he went and saw his mistress every Tuesday at around siesta time. So we set up shop across the street from her apartment. Malcolm was a good sniper, y’know, definitely the best out of all of us dudes. So he sets up his rifle, he gets a bead on the guy as he’s across the street, fucking away. And his goddamn rifle jams.
It was no big deal, y’know, fuckin’ plan B, I just walked across the street and slit both their throats. But man, Malcolm was so pissed, screaming and carrying on, I thought the whole neighborhood was gonna come out and wonder what the fuck was going on. The guy had tears running down his face, he was so mad. Eventually, I got him calmed down and we got the fuck out of there. I never really gave it much of a second thought, y’know.
I guess I should have.
Johnny Reardon: Man, that was a great story. We all broke Malcolm’s balls for a week on that one. But yeah, looking back, fuckin’ Walt never laid off the guy.
Bob Tyron: Walt was a mean guy. I mean, I’d been there when it looked like Malcolm was cracking, y’know, I’d seen it. But he was, y’know, he was one of us. A brother-in-arms, man.
But Walt was always ragging on Malcolm, man. Little things, y’know, calling him Mrs. Comstock, or Ol’ Limpy. Shit like that. Really childish, man.
Conner Tomlinson: I guess that’s where my leadership skills should be called into question. I won’t deny it. But I will say in my defense that we’d all had the same training, we’d all been doing the work for a good amount of time. If Walt or Malcolm were going to go section-eight, I don’t know what I could have done about it, even then.
So Nicaragua went okay, despite the end results. By the time of the Ollie North trials, though, we were all already in El Salvador. And of course, that’s where it all pretty much ended.
Johnny Reardon: If you ask me, I don’t think there ever was a biological weapon, any kinda super-virus. You ask me, they had run over our black budget, and the company man set us up to get taken out. Fuckin’ suicide mission. But nobody’s ever asked me, and really, who cares. I made it home alive.
That’s all that matters.
Bob Tyron: Yeah, El Salvador coulda gone a whole lot better, man. But then again, I guess it coulda been worse. Fuckin’ I dunno.
Conner Tomlinson: The mission was fairly simple, not unlike any other operation, really. Word was the FMLN had this scientist set up in a secret lab deep in the jungle in some old monastery or something like that. His name was something like...Van Hessel? Van Husserel. Dr. Van Husserel. Some expatriated Nazi or something. It all sounds like the plot of a bad movie, I know. I’ve been in a few.
Johnny Reardon: Supposedly, this Van Husserel was working on a virus that specifically targeted the genetic structure of Caucasians Put a little of it in the drinking fountain at the Pentagon, and next thing you know, every white person there was gonna have their intestines shooting out their assholes. Couldn’t have that, God knows.
Bob Tyron: The company man told us, or told Conner anyways, that there wasn’t much security, y’know, the fuckin’ Femmies didn’t even believe this Van Husserel could deliver on his promise. And that was true, the five of us got in that night with very little resistance or whatever.
But once inside, we almost got compromised by a couple guards, so we had to split up. That’s how Walt and Malcolm got to the lab before we did.
Conner Tomlinson: It had been a while since I had actually been in the field, so I think I was more concentrating on getting back into the groove, y’know, I wasn’t paying much attention to much else. Completely my fault, and I am one lucky son of a bitch that I didn’t pay for that mistake with my life.
By the time Johnny, Bob, and I got to the lab, Van Husserel was already bleeding out on the floor. There was a lot of blood, but that was nothing new. But I guess that’s why I didn’t notice that Walt was already bleeding like a stuck pig.
Johnny Reardon: Walt said they’d taken another couple guards by surprise on their way down to the lab. He said Malcolm fucked up and his guy got away from him, and the guy managed to stick Walt before Walt slit his throat for him. Even at the time, under pressure, the clock ticking, it sounded like bullshit to me.
Bob Tyron: Malcolm just sat there at the lab table, fuckin’ Bunsen burners and whatever all over the place, broken glass. He just sat there and hung his head.
Conner Tomlinson: Walt said he’d beaten the truth out of the good doctor Van Husserel, that he held in his hand a syringe of the only perfected batch of the super-virus. He said we had saved America again, that he was the fucking Lizard King, I don’t remember his exact words. I was trying to get them to come on, we had to burn the place out. I had already called in the coordinates, and air support was on its way to fire-bomb the place back to the Mayans.
Johnny Reardon: Walt looks at me and he says, “This is fucked.” I dunno why me, I didn’t like him or dislike him more than any of the others, but he says, “This is all fucked. We have been fucked.” And he’s bleeding out. I say something like, C’mon, Walt, let’s get home, we’ll patch you up. And for a second, he looked like he got his head back, and he took a step toward me.
And then he just collapsed.
Bob Tyron: Walt’s bleeding out, he can’t even stand. Malcolm’s just sitting there. I come over, I say, y’know, “Malcolm, c’mon, man.” And he looks up at me, and he was...he was just so pale. And I knew it before he even said it.
“Walt infected me.”
Conner Tomlinson: All I knew was we had to get the fuck out of there. We can conjecture all day if we want to, but even had I known then exactly what had happened between Walt and Malcolm, it wouldn’t have made any difference. If we’d hung around, Walt would have been right.
We would have been fucked.
Bob Tyron: I said, y’know, “What? What’re you talking about?” And Walt looks up at me, looks up at Johnny, he says, “I had to preserve a sample, man. You guys have got to take Malcolm back, let the lab boys get a sample from him.”
And I was like, “Man, are you out of your fucking mind?”
Johnny Reardon: I guess carrying the sample home in the syringe would have made too much sense. No, I’ll tell you exactly what happened: Malcolm fucked up and got Walt stabbed, so Walt infected him with a virus that would turn his digestive tract into fuckin’ molten lava. Walt was an asshole.
Malcolm was a bigger asshole.
Bob Tyron: So I grab Malcolm, I say, “Look, we’ll fuckin’ get this shit straightened out at home, let’s get the fuck outta here.” And Malcolm says, “Yeah, let’s get the fuck out of here.” And for a second, I was like, Sweet, he’s thinking clearly.
Then he grabbed my .45 out of my belt.
Conner Tomlinson: The official story in the Adult Video News was that Malcolm Comstock died quietly of pancreatic cancer at his home in Malibu, and a week later, Walt Malice died after he ran his Ferrari off the road in the Hollywood Hills. But I was there.
Malcolm shot Walt in the face. And then Malcolm shot Malcolm in the face.
Johnny Reardon: I’d suspected our run was about through before then. And after that, I knew for a fact it was over. But here I sit now with plenty of what? That’s right.
Money and girls.
Bob Tyron: This set-up we got now, y’know, it’s not bad. I can’t see my family or nothin’, but y’know. I never really cared much about that anyways. We can’t leave these grounds, but we’ve got plenty of money, and y’know, the fuckin’ Internet, it’s pretty much like having the outside world brought to your door.
Plus the CIA flies in all kinds of girls for us to fuck.
Conner Tomlinson: It’s pretty much just summer camp for the rest of our lives. Which, when you think about it, is not unlike the adult entertainment industry. My freedom, such as it was, is sorely missed sometimes. But I’m a big boy, I knew what I was doing when I signed up with the company. And I made it out alive.
There’s one thing you learn right away when you show up at your first shoot, your first audition, or whatever. It’s a jungle out there, it really is. And there’s only one law in the jungle.
Fuck or be fucked.
Of course now, I’m hard-pressed sometimes to tell which is which.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Up on the Housetop by Brian S. Roe
Blog Post “Mark’s Shining World” 12-18-2010:
“Good to see my corporate masters are doing so well right before the holidays. Yes that’s right, Allied Intelligence Technologies is running deep in the red. Bonuses are going to be slight if nonexistent this year. It’s stupid that we come to rely on them but the last couple of years have been sweet. Now when we don’t get them, and need them. They pull them away like we’ve been bad puppies or something. I guess it’s like feeding birds or a stray cat. If they keep feeding us we’ll keep showing up.
XMas is going to be a little barren for the family this year. I’ll still get them all something but I’ve got a ton of DVDs and games that need bought for little ol’ me. And since I can’t count on The Fam to get the right ones then the responsibility falls on my capable shoulders.”
Blog Post “Mark’s Shining World” 01-14-2011:
“Well a big fucking Happy NEW Year to you A.I.T.!!! Lay me off?! Me? I’m not saying that I will but I could shut your whole little playhouse down. I’ve got the I.T. keys to your kingdom babies. And to walk me out on a Friday? In front of everybody else? Were you trying to piss me off? Were you trying to get me to shut you down? I can you know!”
Tweet from MFMark 01-15-2011:
“drunK man drunk. fuck them all man. drunk”
Tweet from MFMark 01-16-2011:
“puking should help my abs.”
Blog Post “Mark’s Shining World” 01-18-2011:
“So I got some friendly emails reminding that I need to keep my mouth shut about certain things at the old corporate slave holders. I guess they actually take those contracts I signed serious.
Fine bitches, fine. I can post what I want and you can’t stop me from speaking my mind.
I got a pretty good severance deal and unemployment for at least six months.
Time to hit Game Stop and Safeway, and stock up. MF Mark’s going into hardcore hibernation.”
Blog Post “Mark’s Shining World” 01-20-2011:
“The rest of you suckers better be on my junk. i’m livin the fucking life. I got the fridge full of pizzas, burgers, pop, and other shit. I spent 1000 dollars flat on DVDs and games. I’m fucking unplugging for a while. No computer shit. No TV. Just me in my crib playing games and watching movies. I don’t want to see nobody. I don’t want to go nowhere. Y’all just gonna haf to git along without me. This is MuthaFuckin’ Mark OUT!”
*
What day was it? Mark rolled off of the futon and stood on unsteady, chubby legs. He stumbled into the kitchen and tore open a pack of Pop Tarts then opened the fridge and saw that his supplies were getting low. Fuck. Back out into the world soon.
He stank, he’d been wearing the same clothes for a couple of weeks. His skin had gone bad from all the sugar and fat he’d been dumping into himself. He went to the bathroom to piss. The smell that came out of his sleeping pants disturbed him. Guess it was time to shower again.
No clean towels, he used a pretty clean t-shirt instead. Whatever. Fresh clothes made him feel better. That and a couple of cans of soda. Ride that sugar rush man! Might as well get to the store while he gave a shit.
He’d seen only one person in the two months of his self imposed exile from humanity. About a month back the mail lady had pounded on his door and dropped off a bag of letters, flyers, and other shit from his mailbox. She seemed a little shocked that he was still alive. Yeah mail lady, I’m still alive and kicking!
As he tied his tennis shoes he looked over the wreck of his living room. So much trash, foam noodle bowls stacked feet high. Paper plates, soda cans, and cardboard rounds from so many frozen pizzas. He smiled at his junk fueled debauchery. He kicked through a stack of plastic wrappers as he walked to the patio door.
The blaze of light hit his eyes like a punch to the face as he twisted the vertical blinds open. The courtyard of the apartment complex was green and sunny. It actually looked pretty nice outside. He looked over at the paused video game screen on his TV. One more level of Zombie Massacre and he’d have finished one of the most grueling video games he’d ever played. One more level and then he’d start Murder Corps: San Antonio. But first he needed to lay in more supplies.
The light from the patio door was so bright that it took him a moment to tell what had actually happened. The TV screen blacked out. What the fuck? Not only the TV but all of the power in the apartment. The sound of the refrigerator stopping seemed oddly ominous to him.
His phone had died weeks ago and in a fit of spite he hadn’t recharged it. Now he couldn’t call the power company to see what was up. Not that they ever had an answer. Maybe he’d call while he was at the store.
There was a man walking across the courtyard. Drunk or crippled the man zig-zagged back and forth with no real sense of direction. Great, Mark thought. I have to walk right by that idiot to get to the car.
As he was watching the man he noticed a woman who was standing down by one of the apple trees in the courtyard. She was swaying a bit and gnashing the air with her opened mouth. What was her deal?
Mark opened the sliding door and walked out onto the cracked concrete of his patio. He pulled the screen closed behind him and yelled to the woman.
“Hey! Are you okay? Do you need some help, or, something?” He didn’t really want to help but he wanted her to go away. Maybe if she knew somebody was watching her she’d get the clue and go trip somewhere else.
The woman turned towards him and for a single beat of time seemed to be ignoring him. Then her pasty eyes lit up and she stumble-sprinted towards him, lurching up the grass incline that led from the apple tree. She breathed out like she was trying to scream. But her vocal chords didn’t make sound, only a long rasping exhalation.
“Awesome!” Mark thought. They were doing a zombie walk! He’d been in one last Halloween with a bunch of his friends. Annie had done some amazing make-up that had actually made him a bit sick to his stomach when he first saw it. They’d had a great time walking down the street and grossing out the squares in the cafes along the avenue. Zombie walk! Hell yeah!
And then a smell hit him. Puke rot worm dirt hell vomit kill dead maggot rat shit hole burn cry scar grave rip bile pus infection Oh God mommy make it stop! It was the smell of summertime bait shops and the bottom of damp stones, biology class fetal pigs and infected toenails.
The smell woke him up and made him woozy. The woman was still coming for him but having trouble getting up the hill. The smell. It can’t be real.
He saw the drunk man weaving towards him making the same empty and mostly silent roar, his black teeth opened like a bear trap heading straight for Mark.
The screen door was suddenly against Mark’s back as he scrambled backwards. He tried to push through the screen but it wouldn’t give. He didn’t want to turn his back but he couldn’t reach behind him at the same time. They were so close now.
The smell coming from both of the stumbling figures was a noisome shock attack, it made him want to dig into the concrete to get away. Some part of his brain was firing that had never fired in his twenty-eight years. Lizard brain primal, full flight mode engaged. He finally tore through the screen and landed in a heap amongst the garbage in his apartment.
He scrambled up out of the trash. They were on the porch. He rolled over the futon. They were at the patio door. He ran to the front door and undid the lock. They were in the room.
The chain was still on the door. It opened and then bounced out of his grip. The man and woman were stumbling over the futon and garbage in the living room. Mark grabbed the door handle and pulled with a power fueled with desperation and total terror. The chain ripped out of the doorframe and Mark was out of the door before it hit the wall and bounced shut.
Two story apartment building, four apartments on the bottom floor, four on the second. Front and rear doors that opened away from the building, mail boxes attached to one wall, a central stairwell.
At the front of the building two teenagers pushed against the door and smeared their ragged lips against the tall glass windows beside the door. They didn’t seem capable of understanding how the door worked. The back door didn’t have windows beside it but Mark could hear bodies thumping against it. Up. He had to go up.
He edged his way to the bottom of the stairs. The two teens began to furiously push against the glass. It will hold he thought, it will hold. He focused on the teens as he grabbed the railing at the bottom of the stairs. Then he heard a rasping hiss and looked up and behind him at the top of the stairs. An old woman, gray hair and frumpy dress, made her hands into claws and stepped off of the top step.
Which she completely missed and hurtled down the stairs towards Mark. Her black-gummed mouth seemed focused on his neck as she flew down towards him. Gut reaction saved him. As she fell Mark twisted and flattened against the wall. The old woman face planted on the bottom stair with a sickening crunch. Her momentum flipped her body over so she was still looking at Mark. With her head snapped back against her shoulders. And then she started to crawl towards him.
Mark flew up the steps as quickly as he could. He missed one and ripped his shin open. He quickly got to his feet again and topped the stairs. He felt nothing in his leg; shock had set in deeply.
The woman was crawling slowly up the stairs, her head crunching on its broken vertebrae. She would reach him in a couple of minutes.
Even as Mark had run back into his apartment there had been a small yet nagging doubt that this was an amazing and disturbing put on. The best zombie walk ever, super make up and acting, and a stink bomb designed to mind fuck anybody who smelled it. Although his body had reacted without him he would have been okay if someone had shouted “Surprise!” “You’ve been punked!” “Candid Camera!” God how he prayed that that was the case.
But as he watched the broken old woman drag herself up towards him he realized exactly what she was and what had happened to the rest of the world. All of the movies, and books, and games, and Oh God it can’t be real! He knew it already. So much fiction had told him exactly what to expect, there was a survival guide for Christ’s sake! He had killed millions of zombies in video games. Last year he had acted like one in Annie’s disturbing makeup.
Here it was. Crawling up the stairs towards him. Real. Horrible. And hungry.
There was a laundry room on the top floor and Mark walked back to it. He couldn’t run anymore. Like prey that knew its time was up but still couldn’t lay down to die. A sense of utter calm caused by too many nerves and neurons firing. He looked at the ceiling and saw an access hatch to the roof with an attached folding ladder. He reached up, grabbed the cord, and pulled the ladder down. He climbed up the ladder. He opened the door to the roof and climbed out.
*
Journal Entry 1:
“What day is this? April something? I’ve been living up here for a couple of weeks now, hidden in a space between two buildings where they can’t see me. As long as I stay hidden and don’t make noise they just mill around. But the second they spot me they rush against the building like a wave of walking corpses. No, not like. That’s what they are.”
Journal Entry 2:
“I’m writing this in a Batman notebook that I found on one of my apartment scavenging missions. I found a way to swing down onto the second floor balconies that lets me have access to all of the second floor apartments. I get canned goods and dried food. I even found a pistol and box of bullets. I figured out a way of getting water from the hot water heaters. It tastes nasty but is clean and doesn’t make me sick.
The little cubbyhole on the roof is getting pretty cozy. And thank God I found a box of earplugs. When the air gets moist their vocal chords start to work again. A couple of thousand rotten voice boxes moaning at you will surely keep you from falling asleep.”
Journal Entry 10:
“I found a girl on the roof of one of the other apartments! Her name is Theresa. She was sick in her mom’s apartment when everything fell apart.
We had to figure out a rope bridge to get her over to me. I was so afraid that she would fall. But I also knew I would dive down after her.”
Journal Entry 14:
“It’s getting colder. They are getting sluggish, slower. Good to see that even though they’re against the laws of God they still have to obey thermodynamics.
We’ve cleared out several apartments and started knocking holes into the walls of the other buildings. We’ve got enough food and vitamins to last for a while. We found another gun. It seems so worthless.”
Journal Entry 16:
“Theresa’s asleep on the pallet, covered in sleeping bags. Her hair is getting long but she always keeps herself clean and beautiful. Her body smells sweaty, smoky, but so alive. I kissed her and she jerked awake reaching for the pistol. Then she saw it was me, smiled and went back to sleep.”
Journal Entry 20:
It was a warm, moist day and it made them so loud. We have been trying to build up the roof shack and every time I moved the whole mass of them followed me and roared at me. I got pissed off and stood on the edge of the roof. “Hello Cleveland! Are you ready to rock?” I had the largest crowd ever assembled and the fuckers just wanted to eat me.
Journal Entry 28:
“Really cold tonight. We’ve rigged up a small stove so we’re warm. I remember reading My Side of the Mountain so I made sure we had vents for air. We slept well.”
Journal Entry 29:
“We woke up to a surprising sound tonight. The sound of the wind. We haven’t heard anything so subtle in months. We looked down and all of the bastards are frozen. But their eyes still glisten with frost as they look up towards us.”
Journal Entry 32:
“We’ve decided that we have to leave while we can. We’ve exhausted the food here and don’t have what we need to grow it. I figure we have another solid month of freezing weather.
Maybe with so many of them frozen around us there will be clear spaces somewhere to the north. And honestly we just need to move. We feel trapped on our little island, trapped and slowly sinking.
This will be the last entry for a while.
We leave tomorrow.”
Bio:
Brian S. Roe lives in this very same apartment, minus the food garbage and at least for now the zombies, and often ponders how screwed he would be if an actual zombie plague occurred. And while a part of him really has no problem with becoming one of the walking dead, he’s really never been much of a joiner. Living in Indianapolis is too much like being surrounded by zombies anyway.
“Good to see my corporate masters are doing so well right before the holidays. Yes that’s right, Allied Intelligence Technologies is running deep in the red. Bonuses are going to be slight if nonexistent this year. It’s stupid that we come to rely on them but the last couple of years have been sweet. Now when we don’t get them, and need them. They pull them away like we’ve been bad puppies or something. I guess it’s like feeding birds or a stray cat. If they keep feeding us we’ll keep showing up.
XMas is going to be a little barren for the family this year. I’ll still get them all something but I’ve got a ton of DVDs and games that need bought for little ol’ me. And since I can’t count on The Fam to get the right ones then the responsibility falls on my capable shoulders.”
Blog Post “Mark’s Shining World” 01-14-2011:
“Well a big fucking Happy NEW Year to you A.I.T.!!! Lay me off?! Me? I’m not saying that I will but I could shut your whole little playhouse down. I’ve got the I.T. keys to your kingdom babies. And to walk me out on a Friday? In front of everybody else? Were you trying to piss me off? Were you trying to get me to shut you down? I can you know!”
Tweet from MFMark 01-15-2011:
“drunK man drunk. fuck them all man. drunk”
Tweet from MFMark 01-16-2011:
“puking should help my abs.”
Blog Post “Mark’s Shining World” 01-18-2011:
“So I got some friendly emails reminding that I need to keep my mouth shut about certain things at the old corporate slave holders. I guess they actually take those contracts I signed serious.
Fine bitches, fine. I can post what I want and you can’t stop me from speaking my mind.
I got a pretty good severance deal and unemployment for at least six months.
Time to hit Game Stop and Safeway, and stock up. MF Mark’s going into hardcore hibernation.”
Blog Post “Mark’s Shining World” 01-20-2011:
“The rest of you suckers better be on my junk. i’m livin the fucking life. I got the fridge full of pizzas, burgers, pop, and other shit. I spent 1000 dollars flat on DVDs and games. I’m fucking unplugging for a while. No computer shit. No TV. Just me in my crib playing games and watching movies. I don’t want to see nobody. I don’t want to go nowhere. Y’all just gonna haf to git along without me. This is MuthaFuckin’ Mark OUT!”
*
What day was it? Mark rolled off of the futon and stood on unsteady, chubby legs. He stumbled into the kitchen and tore open a pack of Pop Tarts then opened the fridge and saw that his supplies were getting low. Fuck. Back out into the world soon.
He stank, he’d been wearing the same clothes for a couple of weeks. His skin had gone bad from all the sugar and fat he’d been dumping into himself. He went to the bathroom to piss. The smell that came out of his sleeping pants disturbed him. Guess it was time to shower again.
No clean towels, he used a pretty clean t-shirt instead. Whatever. Fresh clothes made him feel better. That and a couple of cans of soda. Ride that sugar rush man! Might as well get to the store while he gave a shit.
He’d seen only one person in the two months of his self imposed exile from humanity. About a month back the mail lady had pounded on his door and dropped off a bag of letters, flyers, and other shit from his mailbox. She seemed a little shocked that he was still alive. Yeah mail lady, I’m still alive and kicking!
As he tied his tennis shoes he looked over the wreck of his living room. So much trash, foam noodle bowls stacked feet high. Paper plates, soda cans, and cardboard rounds from so many frozen pizzas. He smiled at his junk fueled debauchery. He kicked through a stack of plastic wrappers as he walked to the patio door.
The blaze of light hit his eyes like a punch to the face as he twisted the vertical blinds open. The courtyard of the apartment complex was green and sunny. It actually looked pretty nice outside. He looked over at the paused video game screen on his TV. One more level of Zombie Massacre and he’d have finished one of the most grueling video games he’d ever played. One more level and then he’d start Murder Corps: San Antonio. But first he needed to lay in more supplies.
The light from the patio door was so bright that it took him a moment to tell what had actually happened. The TV screen blacked out. What the fuck? Not only the TV but all of the power in the apartment. The sound of the refrigerator stopping seemed oddly ominous to him.
His phone had died weeks ago and in a fit of spite he hadn’t recharged it. Now he couldn’t call the power company to see what was up. Not that they ever had an answer. Maybe he’d call while he was at the store.
There was a man walking across the courtyard. Drunk or crippled the man zig-zagged back and forth with no real sense of direction. Great, Mark thought. I have to walk right by that idiot to get to the car.
As he was watching the man he noticed a woman who was standing down by one of the apple trees in the courtyard. She was swaying a bit and gnashing the air with her opened mouth. What was her deal?
Mark opened the sliding door and walked out onto the cracked concrete of his patio. He pulled the screen closed behind him and yelled to the woman.
“Hey! Are you okay? Do you need some help, or, something?” He didn’t really want to help but he wanted her to go away. Maybe if she knew somebody was watching her she’d get the clue and go trip somewhere else.
The woman turned towards him and for a single beat of time seemed to be ignoring him. Then her pasty eyes lit up and she stumble-sprinted towards him, lurching up the grass incline that led from the apple tree. She breathed out like she was trying to scream. But her vocal chords didn’t make sound, only a long rasping exhalation.
“Awesome!” Mark thought. They were doing a zombie walk! He’d been in one last Halloween with a bunch of his friends. Annie had done some amazing make-up that had actually made him a bit sick to his stomach when he first saw it. They’d had a great time walking down the street and grossing out the squares in the cafes along the avenue. Zombie walk! Hell yeah!
And then a smell hit him. Puke rot worm dirt hell vomit kill dead maggot rat shit hole burn cry scar grave rip bile pus infection Oh God mommy make it stop! It was the smell of summertime bait shops and the bottom of damp stones, biology class fetal pigs and infected toenails.
The smell woke him up and made him woozy. The woman was still coming for him but having trouble getting up the hill. The smell. It can’t be real.
He saw the drunk man weaving towards him making the same empty and mostly silent roar, his black teeth opened like a bear trap heading straight for Mark.
The screen door was suddenly against Mark’s back as he scrambled backwards. He tried to push through the screen but it wouldn’t give. He didn’t want to turn his back but he couldn’t reach behind him at the same time. They were so close now.
The smell coming from both of the stumbling figures was a noisome shock attack, it made him want to dig into the concrete to get away. Some part of his brain was firing that had never fired in his twenty-eight years. Lizard brain primal, full flight mode engaged. He finally tore through the screen and landed in a heap amongst the garbage in his apartment.
He scrambled up out of the trash. They were on the porch. He rolled over the futon. They were at the patio door. He ran to the front door and undid the lock. They were in the room.
The chain was still on the door. It opened and then bounced out of his grip. The man and woman were stumbling over the futon and garbage in the living room. Mark grabbed the door handle and pulled with a power fueled with desperation and total terror. The chain ripped out of the doorframe and Mark was out of the door before it hit the wall and bounced shut.
Two story apartment building, four apartments on the bottom floor, four on the second. Front and rear doors that opened away from the building, mail boxes attached to one wall, a central stairwell.
At the front of the building two teenagers pushed against the door and smeared their ragged lips against the tall glass windows beside the door. They didn’t seem capable of understanding how the door worked. The back door didn’t have windows beside it but Mark could hear bodies thumping against it. Up. He had to go up.
He edged his way to the bottom of the stairs. The two teens began to furiously push against the glass. It will hold he thought, it will hold. He focused on the teens as he grabbed the railing at the bottom of the stairs. Then he heard a rasping hiss and looked up and behind him at the top of the stairs. An old woman, gray hair and frumpy dress, made her hands into claws and stepped off of the top step.
Which she completely missed and hurtled down the stairs towards Mark. Her black-gummed mouth seemed focused on his neck as she flew down towards him. Gut reaction saved him. As she fell Mark twisted and flattened against the wall. The old woman face planted on the bottom stair with a sickening crunch. Her momentum flipped her body over so she was still looking at Mark. With her head snapped back against her shoulders. And then she started to crawl towards him.
Mark flew up the steps as quickly as he could. He missed one and ripped his shin open. He quickly got to his feet again and topped the stairs. He felt nothing in his leg; shock had set in deeply.
The woman was crawling slowly up the stairs, her head crunching on its broken vertebrae. She would reach him in a couple of minutes.
Even as Mark had run back into his apartment there had been a small yet nagging doubt that this was an amazing and disturbing put on. The best zombie walk ever, super make up and acting, and a stink bomb designed to mind fuck anybody who smelled it. Although his body had reacted without him he would have been okay if someone had shouted “Surprise!” “You’ve been punked!” “Candid Camera!” God how he prayed that that was the case.
But as he watched the broken old woman drag herself up towards him he realized exactly what she was and what had happened to the rest of the world. All of the movies, and books, and games, and Oh God it can’t be real! He knew it already. So much fiction had told him exactly what to expect, there was a survival guide for Christ’s sake! He had killed millions of zombies in video games. Last year he had acted like one in Annie’s disturbing makeup.
Here it was. Crawling up the stairs towards him. Real. Horrible. And hungry.
There was a laundry room on the top floor and Mark walked back to it. He couldn’t run anymore. Like prey that knew its time was up but still couldn’t lay down to die. A sense of utter calm caused by too many nerves and neurons firing. He looked at the ceiling and saw an access hatch to the roof with an attached folding ladder. He reached up, grabbed the cord, and pulled the ladder down. He climbed up the ladder. He opened the door to the roof and climbed out.
*
Journal Entry 1:
“What day is this? April something? I’ve been living up here for a couple of weeks now, hidden in a space between two buildings where they can’t see me. As long as I stay hidden and don’t make noise they just mill around. But the second they spot me they rush against the building like a wave of walking corpses. No, not like. That’s what they are.”
Journal Entry 2:
“I’m writing this in a Batman notebook that I found on one of my apartment scavenging missions. I found a way to swing down onto the second floor balconies that lets me have access to all of the second floor apartments. I get canned goods and dried food. I even found a pistol and box of bullets. I figured out a way of getting water from the hot water heaters. It tastes nasty but is clean and doesn’t make me sick.
The little cubbyhole on the roof is getting pretty cozy. And thank God I found a box of earplugs. When the air gets moist their vocal chords start to work again. A couple of thousand rotten voice boxes moaning at you will surely keep you from falling asleep.”
Journal Entry 10:
“I found a girl on the roof of one of the other apartments! Her name is Theresa. She was sick in her mom’s apartment when everything fell apart.
We had to figure out a rope bridge to get her over to me. I was so afraid that she would fall. But I also knew I would dive down after her.”
Journal Entry 14:
“It’s getting colder. They are getting sluggish, slower. Good to see that even though they’re against the laws of God they still have to obey thermodynamics.
We’ve cleared out several apartments and started knocking holes into the walls of the other buildings. We’ve got enough food and vitamins to last for a while. We found another gun. It seems so worthless.”
Journal Entry 16:
“Theresa’s asleep on the pallet, covered in sleeping bags. Her hair is getting long but she always keeps herself clean and beautiful. Her body smells sweaty, smoky, but so alive. I kissed her and she jerked awake reaching for the pistol. Then she saw it was me, smiled and went back to sleep.”
Journal Entry 20:
It was a warm, moist day and it made them so loud. We have been trying to build up the roof shack and every time I moved the whole mass of them followed me and roared at me. I got pissed off and stood on the edge of the roof. “Hello Cleveland! Are you ready to rock?” I had the largest crowd ever assembled and the fuckers just wanted to eat me.
Journal Entry 28:
“Really cold tonight. We’ve rigged up a small stove so we’re warm. I remember reading My Side of the Mountain so I made sure we had vents for air. We slept well.”
Journal Entry 29:
“We woke up to a surprising sound tonight. The sound of the wind. We haven’t heard anything so subtle in months. We looked down and all of the bastards are frozen. But their eyes still glisten with frost as they look up towards us.”
Journal Entry 32:
“We’ve decided that we have to leave while we can. We’ve exhausted the food here and don’t have what we need to grow it. I figure we have another solid month of freezing weather.
Maybe with so many of them frozen around us there will be clear spaces somewhere to the north. And honestly we just need to move. We feel trapped on our little island, trapped and slowly sinking.
This will be the last entry for a while.
We leave tomorrow.”
Bio:
Brian S. Roe lives in this very same apartment, minus the food garbage and at least for now the zombies, and often ponders how screwed he would be if an actual zombie plague occurred. And while a part of him really has no problem with becoming one of the walking dead, he’s really never been much of a joiner. Living in Indianapolis is too much like being surrounded by zombies anyway.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
The Inescapable Sound of December (and November too Somehow)
Tis the season to fight. The next round will rock the titles of classic Christmas music. If you are one to celebrate the day Jesus was born, you will probably know most of the songs we use this December. If you don’t celebrate Christmas, I’m sure your local malls, radio stations and TV specials have given you a festive—if a little aggressive—crash course. Either way, Title Fights wants you. Your level of interest in Holiday Cheer isn’t much of a factor. We want you to take a Christmas title and go another direction with it. This coming round embodies the unifying nature of Christmas or, if Christmas isn’t your thing, the unifying nature of yuletide marketing.
If you want to fight this December, email us at titlefights@gmail.com, tell us you’re interested, and we’ll send you a title of your very own. The deadline to get a title is Christmas day. The deadline for submitting is New Year’s Eve. Good Luck.
If you want to fight this December, email us at titlefights@gmail.com, tell us you’re interested, and we’ll send you a title of your very own. The deadline to get a title is Christmas day. The deadline for submitting is New Year’s Eve. Good Luck.
Let the Boy Show You by Brian S. Roe
Screen door creak and slam. Tolliver’s arms full of brown paper grocery bags, frozen foods falling from the top. Pizza rolls, corn dogs, and crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwiches threatened to tumble from the moist rips at the lip of the bags. The supermarket had those white plastic bags but Tolliver didn’t like those. They felt like they came from another time. He liked the brown paper bags, they felt like childhood and home. He remembered his regular task of putting the canned goods away every week after the family grocery trip. They always ate sandwiches on those days so mom wouldn’t have to cook.
Tolliver stamped his foot loudly. Shut up down there!
He walked back out to the van and brought in two cases of soda. He still missed the tall, returnable glass bottles of his childhood. One of his earliest sexual memories came from the thought that his lips were touching the same bottle that hundreds of other lips had touched. The thought still made him shiver with secret delight.
Another noise from the basement. Another muddy boot stamp on the linoleum.
He turned on the gas oven and went into his bedroom.
When he came out he had changed into a terry cloth bath robe and slippers. He still wore his white socks and threadbare white briefs. He was still too nervous to buy new underwear so he tried to make these last. The thought of the girl, it was always a girl, at Kresge’s looking at him as he bought underwear filled him with a falling elevator feeling. Maybe he could get them some other way.
He took a grease blackened cookie sheet from the cabinet and laid out his dinner. French fries and soft pretzels from the freezer, corn dogs and pizza rolls from the new groceries. He never read the boxes for each item. He baked everything at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. That should always be enough.
There was another sound from the basement, a grueling sob or the retch of vomiting. Tolliver went into the living room and turned the television up to drown out the sounds. You will not ruin my suppertime he thought determinedly.
He watched a show about people doing something for awhile. All the shows were an hour or longer now. He missed half hour shows. They made cooking easier. After what must have been thirty minutes he went into the kitchen and took out the cookie sheet using an oven mitt that had been his mother’s. The mitt was gritty inside and had a scorch mark along one side from having been too close to a burner. He never washed the mitt. He knew his mother’s sweat had crystalized in the glove and he didn’t want it to ever go away. Whenever he took the oven mitt off he always licked his fingers. He poured the food onto a large melamine serving platter, shook salt over it and poured a large puddle of ketchup in the center.
There was a television show on about something. He watched as he munched the food. some of it was cold in the center, some of it was burnt. He rammed each piece through the ketchup puddle and ate.
He was turning channels when he saw a woman dancing. The camera must have been laying on the ground because she seemed to be taller than him as she shook her ass and tits. Occasionally a man would appear and scream at the camera but it would always cut back to this woman as she shook herself to the beat of the music. Tolliver felt himself getting hard. He opened the robe and touched himself as he watched the woman. After he was finished he turned off the TV and went to sleep.
Sounds from the basement woke him from a dream about his dog.
Tolliver had had enough. He walked into his bedroom and put on coveralls, gloves, heavy boots, and a welder’s mask. He felt like he was putting on armor, like a knight or a riot cop. Then he picked up his bat, a yellow plastic Wiffle Ball bat filled with quickset concrete and a single piece of rebar. The bat was so heavy that he rarely had to swing it with any force to subdue the monsters in the basement. A slight swing seemed to hit them with just enough power. And the plastic didn’t tear the skin as bad so they lasted longer.
Hefting the bat he unlocked the basement door and turned on the lights. Six banks of fluorescent bar lights sizzled on as the monsters scrambled away from the brightness. The walls of the basement were smoothed concrete, as finished and water proof as a swimming pool. The join between the floor and wall was a quarter round fill and the basement floor sank smoothly to a large drain. Metal mesh covered the ceiling and the lights. The stairs had to be lowered from the upper floor and were pulled up every time that Tolliver left the basement. The concrete was stained from the liquids inside of the monsters.
The stairs descended smoothly and chunked nicely onto the basement floor. As Tolliver slowly walked down the stairs the monsters scrambled away from him with more anxiety than they had from the lights. Tolliver grinned beneath the welder’s mask, happy to see the reaction. He loved to see the monsters try to get away from him.
Wait. What’s this? One of the monsters was staring at him, sitting with his back against the wall his forearms propped atop his knees. Just staring at Tolliver with an expression of boredom. The other monsters tried to crawl into the concrete to hide but this one just sat and looked at him.
This couldn’t happen could it? He was the monster’s master. He had collected them, from schoolyards and parks, he had thrown them in here and beaten them into submission. They had to be afraid of him! This wasn’t fair. This little monster wasn’t playing fair!
Tolliver strode over to the sitting figure and rammed the bat into his shoulder. The monster rolled with the blow and grunted.
“ You can go ahead and smash my head in you fucking cocksucker or you can shove that bat up your ass.” the monster said softly.
“ What...wait, what?” Tolliver stammered.
“ You heard me you stinking jack-off. Kill me or go fuck yourself. I’m tired of sitting down here.”
Tolliver hit the kid in the mouth with the bat before he knew he’d done it. Yeah that was right, they were kids. Seven young boys, like he had been once, young boys who had been picked by Tolliver to pay for his own painful childhood. Bullied and alone he had sworn vengeance. But his vengeance had to be against the same type of boys who had teased him. Besides they were easier to beat up than adults.
“ Y-y-ou be k-k-k-quiet.” Tolliver stammered.
“ Y-y-y-you go f-f-f-FUCK yourself!” The kid mockingly stuttered out around a bloody mouth of smashed teeth.
The cable ties around the kid’s arms were looped through ties on the other boys. They were all cable tied together in a mass. This mass now pulled away from Tolliver and pulled the defiant boy along with them. Tolliver took a step towards the boys and then stopped. He had to get out of here fast. He thumped quickly up the stairs and pulled them up behind him.
He wheezed a little as he poured soda into a plastic glass. He threw back the soda like a drunk swallowing a shot of whiskey. How could this happen? All the months that he’d been keeping these kids to beat and abuse he had never had one stand up to him, never heard anything but sweet begging and pleading. Now he had one who would curse and spit at him. He would have to get rid of the new boy. Cut his ties and take him away somewhere. Tolliver knew the boy would have to die but he wasn’t sure where to dump him afterwards.
He needed to sleep, to calm down. He’d understand things better after he’d slept. He went into the bathroom to run a bath and relax.
The roar of the water into the tub drowned out his thoughts for a few moments. He eased himself into the water and laid against the back of the tub. He turned the water off and the silence made his thoughts come rushing back, broken only by the drip of the tap.
How dare that little monster talk back to him? Tolliver was the big bad man now. Tolliver was tough and strong and not afraid. The little monsters had to be afraid of him, wasn’t that right? Tolliver sank down into the water to try to hide from something that he had not yet named.
It was when he sat up again that he heard the voice from the basement. It came up muffled and quiet but still determined and strong. The little monster who’s teeth he’d smashed in. He was talking to the other boys, like he was giving a speech or something. The other kids moaned or whimpered but the kid kept talking. Tolliver reached over and punched the floor next to the tub. A scream that could only be “fuck you!” spat out of the basement. Tolliver stopped himself from punching the floor again. The moans and whimpers of the other boys stopped.
That night Tolliver had trouble sleeping. There were voices from the basement all night long. He wasn’t sure what they said but they sounded secretive and scheming. But if they were trying to keep their talking secret why were they talking so loud? It was like they wanted him to know that they were plotting against him. He no longer heard the defiant monster’s voice as separate from the group. All of the voices whispered in the same low rumble of kids whispering loudly. Even when Tolliver fell asleep their angry whispering was in his dreams.
Time to finish this for once and all. He couldn’t go through another might like last night. He got out of bed and put on his coveralls. There was no sound from the basement. They must all be asleep. Tolliver quickly drank a cup of soda to give him energy. He reached into a kitchen drawer and pulled out a heavy pair of kitchen shears. He’d cut the loudmouth out of the bundle and take him away to kill him. Tolliver would not give up the weeks of pleasant torture that he had planned for the other six. He was still the big man, still the toughest and strongest. The game would still be played by his rules and this time he would win.
The basement door opened quietly, the lights blinked on quickly, the stairs descended smoothly. The concrete filled bat in his gloved hands felt hard and reassuring. He stepped slowly down the stairs into the basement.
Tolliver had expected to see the seven boys asleep in a pile against one wall, the way that they normally would be before he woke them up. He blinked behind the welder’s mask to clear his eyes. None of the boys were asleep.
Instead they all sat facing him, as much as the cable ties would allow, and glared at him with a feral anger. It was a more pure version of the anger he had felt as a bullied child but Tolliver had always had his anger dissipated by doting parents and junk food. None of the boys seemed to blink, they tracked his movements as a group, each set of eyes and each head slowly nodding as he walked down the stairs. The mass of boys was suddenly very solid and very dark., They seemed to breathe together, the mass of heads, bodies, and limbs rising and falling slowly with each breath, in the rhythmic way that a prowling lion breathes. Tolliver began to sweat behind the mask.
*******
When the patrolmen finally walked down into the basement of Tolliver’s house they found something that had once been a man. Although it still mewed and squirmed it could no longer be called a man or even a human.
Small sets of hands had dragged Tolliver down as he reached for the troublemaking boy. The hands had long nails that crept under Tolliver’s defenses and scratched and tore at his skin. The boys moved in a mass, like an amoeba moves, and pulled him down to the concrete floor.
Their childhoods had been stolen by Tolliver in an attempt to torture away his own feelings of weakness. But the seven little boys had taken it all back using a pair of kitchen shears and a concrete filled Wiffle Ball bat.
*
Brian S. Roe narrowly escaped a situation once, too. Most of the time, though, he was unable to escape and found himself very Stockholm'd. He has acclimated very well to the sunlight, though, the internet and prose. One day his diaries will outside the Bible, because only in the his diaries will there be more violence and redemption. I'll make sure of it.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Use Your Mighty Wisdom by Jimmy Callaway
Two hours now after his arrest, Bronson knows there are thirty-four and a half acoustic tiles in the ceiling of this room. The table is about ten and a half hand-lengths long by exactly seven wide. He knows that his Batman and Robin t-shirt is pre-shrunk, 100% cotton, and should be machine-washed cold with like colors. He knows that there are sixteen shoelace eyelets in each of his shoes, and that “Material Girl” has been stuck in his head since he woke up this morning.
What he doesn’t know is what this asshole Detective Mazursky has been doing these past two hours. And as the big, dark-skinned cop himself shoves back into the room, slamming the door behind him, Bronson doesn’t know that he’ll bother to ask.
“Do you know just how much shit you’re in, Goodale?” Mazursky says.
“Man,” Bronson says, “I just wanna get outta here. I don’t even know what this is about.”
“So you’ve really got no idea, huh?” Mazursky leans on the table knuckles first, and puts his face right in Bronson’s. He smells like tea.
“No, I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about,” Bronson says.
“Goodale, I saw you running from the scene with my own eyes. I chased you into that store myself!”
“I was running because I had to take a shit, and they know me in that store—”
Mazursky slams his palm on the table, and Bronson bites off the end of his sentence. “Don’t get fuckin’ smart with me!” Mazursky screams, and then lowers his voice. Very husky, very Dirty Harry. “Now, here’s how this is gonna happen. I’m gonna ask for your supplier’s name. You’re gonna give it to me. Then we’re gonna go talk to the DA’s office, and you’ll be on your way. Got that?”
“Look, sir, Detective,” Bronson says, “I really don’t know what you’re talking about, honest. Wait, wait, before you yell at me again, I just wanna say, since I’m under arrest here for whatever it is you said I did, I just think I ought to be able to call my lawyer, that’s all.”
Mazursky frowns at him, then laughs. Laughs out loud, and a fleck of his spit lands on Bronson’s lip. Bronson doesn’t wanna move to wipe it away, so he slowly moves his lip, trying to get it off his face, all without taking his eyes off the big detective in front of him. It’s not easy.
Still laughing, Mazursky sits seven hand-lengths across the table from Bronson. Bronson wipes his mouth quickly while his back is turned. “So,” Mazursky says, “you’re completely innocent, yet you want a lawyer. Why would you want a lawyer if you’re innocent?”
“Look, no offense? But I don’t think I should answer any more questions. I mean, you’re, y’know, obviously convinced I’ve done something wrong here, and since I don’t know what you’re, uh, talking about, it only seems, y’know, fair that I have a, uh—”
“‘A, uh, A, uh,’ listen to you, Goodale, you’re stammering and stuttering like a retard.”
Bronson frowned at him. “Hey, there’s no need—”
“Your ass is mine, you fucking little weasel! You’re under arrest, get that through your fucking skull! All the lawyers in the world aren’t gonna change that. The only people who can possibly change that are you and your scumbag running buddy.”
Folding his arms, Bronson sat back in the chair. He tried to put just a little bit of hurt on his face. “If you’re just gonna yell, I don’t see—”
“Shut up, shut up and listen. Now, I’ll explain it so even you can understand: you and your buddy, you’re the lowest rung. The dumb-ass street guys. You’re caught, it’s over for you. Now, it doesn’t matter to me if you take the fall for this shit all by yourself. But my boss and his boss, they want the next rung up. See? You follow so far?”
“Not at all, no.”
“You give me a statement, where you got the stuff, who you work for. Then you walk, just like that. I’ll even get you a cab. But you’ve got to do it right now, because I’ll tell you what, my partner’s in the next room right now with this Lienhardt asshole of yours, offering him the very same deal.”
“Sir, look, I dunno why you dragged me and Mal in here, okay? I don’t know anything about suppliers or higher rungs or anything like that. All I know is that you said when you handcuffed me before that I got a right to an attorney, so I’d like to call him now, if that’s okay with you.”
Oh, man, Mazursky really looks like he’s gonna blow his top now. Lookit him, clenching his jaw like that, his skull is gonna pop out of his head.
A knock at the door. Another cop comes in, a guy in uniform. “Detective?”
Mazursky tamps it back down, straightens his tie and goes over to speak with the other cop in low, buzzing voices. They pepper glances back at Bronson. Behind the befuddled look Bronson’s plastered to his face is: “‘Cause we are liii-ving in a material world, and I am a material girl! You know that we are liii-ving…”
The other cop goes out, gently closing the door behind him. Mazursky ambles back over to his chair and sits down, all shit-eating grins. “Well, that’s about it, Goodale,” he says.
“I can go?”
“Oh, no, no, no, no. No, that’s about it for you,” Mazursky says, “Your buddy just gave you up.”
Bronson rubs his chin. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight. You’re accusing Mal and I of possession of stolen goods or whatever, and now you’re telling me that Mal has shifted the blame all on me and this, uh, supposed supplier of ours, and now I’m gonna go to jail and Mal gets to go. That’s what you’re telling me.”
“That’s exactly what I’m telling you. Now you’re getting it.”
“Uh-huh.” Bronson sighs, rubs his face.
“But here’s the good news. Your record’s pretty much clean, a couple chicken-shit misdemeanors. Lienhardt there, he’s got an actual record. Assault, B & E, shit like that. I’d much rather have a guy like him, a danger, off the streets, and let an idiot like you skate. So I’ll offer you the deal one last time. What do you say?”
Bronson looks at him.
“I don’t know what you’ve got to think about here! You still tryin’ to protect your buddy? The one who just now sold you out? C’mon, man, don’t be a sap all your life! What do you say?”
Bronson smiles.
#
“Let me get this straight,” Mal said. The waitress came by, and he waited until she’d refilled his coffee cup and gone. “Your girlfriend said I tried to get into her pants, and you believed her.”
Bronson balled up his napkin, smoothed it out again. “No, no, of course I don’t believe her. I’m just telling you what she said.”
“Yeah, but why? Why tell me this?”
Bronson shrugged. “I dunno, conversation? Now you’re pissed off, I shouldnt’a said anything.”
“No, I’m not pissed off. I’m not. I just…” He let out a breath, wiped his glasses off on his tie. “C’mon,” he said, taking a last sip of coffee and grabbing the check.
“You’re not pissed?”
“No, I told you. But I got something at home I think you should see.”
Mallory at the park with some dude. Mallory at the zoo with some dude. Mallory slow-dancing with some dude. Mallory with her tongue down the throat of some dude. All the shots were clearly taken from a distance, but all the shots were clearly of Mallory fucking around, in at least some capacity, on Bronson.
“Jesus Christ,” Bronson said.
“Yeah,” Mal said.
“Where’d you get these?”
Mal said, “Stillwell had a few days off the other week. I slipped him a few bucks, hoped my gut feeling was wrong. But this broad’s trouble, man.”
“Man, you said you weren’t pissed off at me. But now, what, you’re showing me these to get back at me for—for—”
“Okay, now I am getting pissed off,” Mal said, “Use your fuckin’ head, will ya? This broad’s trying to make herself feel better about, y’know,” he gestured at the photos, “by trying to make you jealous or some shit, make you think I’m the problem or something. Meanwhile, I’m the one watching your back.”
“Yeah,” Bronson said, “Okay. It’s just—fuck, man, lookit this asshole!” He held up a photo of Mallory at a sidewalk café with some dude. “He’s got a pony tail, for chrissake!”
“Yeah, I know. Look, man, here’s my point. I’ve got no reason to try and fuck you over on anything. None. Okay? We’ve known each other too long and been through too much shit. Right?”
“Right.”
“So next time some twat tries to make you think otherwise, you know what to say. Right?”
#
“What do you say, Mr. Lienhardt?”
Mal says the exact same thing he’s been saying for the past two hours: nothing. Mal has only one thing to say to Detective Lapierre here, so he wants to make sure he times it just right, that he gets his cue right on the nose.
But not yet.
Lapierre sits there, all mustache and tolerance, and exhales knowingly. “Mr. Lienhardt, I’m a patient man. But even I have my limits. I wholly respect your right to silence, if that’s what you want. But allow me to once again go over the facts.”
Mal sips at his coffee. It’s not bad, really, for police station coffee.
“Fact: Detective Mazursky and I arrested you and Mr. Goodale fleeing the scene of a crime.”
Fact: these two dickheads happened to drive past the little shop of stolen textbooks that Mal and Bronson had set up in an old van, selling them to college kids over near State. They got the van, which gives them nothing since Mal stole it the night before. They got the books, which also gives them nothing as Mal and Bronson wore gloves the whole time they handled them. If these cops had some sort of buy-in going, they might have caught Mal and Bronson red-handed, game over. As it was, Mal was sure they’d just fallen ass-backwards into this extremely minor operation. Every pig has his day, after all.
“Fact: the stolen goods you had are not illicit. So you’re in less trouble than if it were drugs or porn or something. But the amount of books as well as the amount of cash found on your person will show to a judge that you and Mr. Goodale exhibited a level of criminal sophistication, which can in turn lead to a more severe punishment.”
Fact: it’s not against the law to have a fat wad of cash on your person. These cops must think Mal’s an idiot. It is against the law to run from a peace officer after he’s identified himself as such, yes, but Mal and Bronson could have been running for any number of criminally unsophisticated reasons.
“Fact: we are far more interested in your supplier here, Mr. Lienhardt. No offense, but you and your buddy are fairly small potatoes. But if you guys cooperate with us, give us a statement, agree to testify, then things will go so much easier for you. And that is very much a fact.”
Fact: Mr. Bob Romano could have both Mal and Bronson killed right here in the holding cells of this cop shop. But really, more than that, let’s say they give Romano up and live to tell the tale, what are they gonna do for work then? No one’s gonna let any kind of rat hang around, not even Romano’s competitors. So what then, pull up stakes? Get real jobs? Mal will sooner blow this pudgy little detective here than even ask for an application down at the Subway. And that’s a fact you can hang your hat on.
“Now, this isn’t a fact so much as speculation, Mr. Lienhardt, but hear me out. I’d say you’re made out of a little sterner stuff than Mr. Goodale. And my partner, who is not a very patient man and can—strictly between you and me—be a real asshole when he wants, is in the next room giving your partner the same speech. Only he’s not gonna be as nice about it as I am. And I’ll tell you another thing, Mr. Lienhardt, between you and me, I don’t think Mr. Goodale is gonna be cut out for it.”
Mal looks at him.
“I know, I know, you don’t wanna turn your back on a buddy. I can respect that. But think about it, Mr. Lienhardt. You’ve been to jail, you can handle it. Mr. Goodale, he’s got some priors, but I don’t think he’s looking to return to lock-up. In fact, I think he’ll do about anything to stay out of jail, including throwing you and your supplier to the wolves, so to speak. Now maybe I’m wrong. But then again, why take that chance? Why risk your own neck for a guy that wouldn’t stick his neck out like that for you?”
Mal holds Lapierre’s gaze for a second, then looks up at the clock, at his coffee.
“So, given all that, Mr. Lienhardt, given all these facts before us. What do you say?”
Mal clears his throat.
#
“The fact is,” Louis said, “the guy’s just gonna have to do a little bit of time.”
“How little?”
Louis shrugged. “Two, three months, tops.”
“Fuck,” Mal said, “That’s the best you can do?”
“Hey,” Louis said, removing his smoked glasses, “I know he’s your friend and all, but watch your fuckin’ tone with me, kid. I’m doing you a favor even taking this case. You think I got nothing better to do?”
“No, but—”
“Do you?”
“No, Louis, look. I’m sorry, it’s just—”
“Hey, c’mon,” Louis leaned forward on his desk and smiled. “You’re worried about Bronson being locked up for the first time. But you’ve been in county before, right? It’s a picnic, even for a guy like him.”
“I was driving,” Mal said.
“Uh-huh,” Louis said, “Wait, what? When?”
“That night. I drove into that lady’s yard, not Bronson.”
“Are you shitting me? Oh, man!” Louis sat back in his chair and held his sides as he laughed.
“C’mon, man, it’s not that funny.”
“No, no, you’re right, it’s not. It’s actually a lot funnier!” And then he roared some more laughter, so Mal could see his fillings. Mal sat there and fumed as Louis got himself back under control.
“All right, all right, all right,” Louis said, “Okay, tell me what happened.”
“All right, what happened,” Mal said, “We were out at the bar, but Bronson was getting over a cold, so he didn’t feel like drinking. I, on the other hand, very much did.”
“Why didn’t you just have him drive home?”
“Well, I fuckin’ know that know, man! I was wasted, I wasn’t thinking clearly. Y’know, it was only a few blocks—”
“All right, all right, go on.”
“So I’m trying to change the tape, I take my eyes off the road for one second. Next thing I know, we’re in this lady’s begonias.”
“Right, Mrs., lets’ see...” Louis shuffled some papers on his desk, “Mrs. Johanson.”
“Yeah, I guess so. So Bronson shoves me out the driver’s side and tells me to run. I say, what the fuck you doing? He says with my record and all, it’ll be easier for him to wriggle outta this, especially since he was sober. All he had hanging over him is that failure to appear, and what is that? A fine?”
“Well, normally, yeah. But Mrs. Johanson is married to an Officer Larry Johanson. So, you know. If Officer Larry whispers in the judge’s ear...”
“Yeah, I get that, but...fuck.”
“Look, kid, I did my best. But with time served, he’ll be outta there before you know it. So just go down there, visit, put a little something in his commissary. Hell, bring him some of those comic books he likes so much. It’ll make the time go quicker for both of you.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“C’mon, bubby, buck up! Y’know, you’re a lucky guy to have a friend like this.”
Mal looked up at him. One corner of his mouth tugged itself up a bit. “And that’s a fact, counselor,” he said.
#
“What do I say to that?” Bronson says, “Well, that’s simple.”
#
“I say,” Mal says, “Give me my fucking phone call.”
*
Jimmy Callaway lives and works in San Diego, CA. Thanks to Josh Converse for line edits, and a very special thanks to Michael Berberich for technical advice. Please visit attentionchildren.blogspot.com for more.
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