Here goes. Stop me if you've heard this one before.
A hitman, an ex-CTU agent, and two Feds walk into an S-Mart . . .
Something struck Martin Blank about the man in the next aisle, as he delicately drew a box of 9mm target rounds from the sporting goods shelf. No one he recognized, but entrepreneurs like himself learned not to rely on rap sheets to identify another killer. It was in his walk, in his constant poker face, in the way he slumped his shoulders in false exhaustion while his eyes darted up and down in the way of a man who had stood on both sides of death. He glanced his way, and Martin felt the pistols under his black coat screaming, "Packing heat! Hired gun, right here, right now! Come kill him before he steals your job or pops you in the head!"
Did the other man notice? Martin watched him from the corner of his eye, pretending to look for another box of bullets. (Was there a benign, non-threatening way to shop for bullets?) The other man looked away to pick out Rice-a-Roni.
It was a skill, to spot people carrying. People that survive, learn. Martin doubted the other man had anything more than a pocket knife, but that didn't mean he didn't keep an arsenal in his car.
Jack Bauer was dead. He'd died in Los Angeles a few months ago, as witnessed by a trusted fellow agent, and in his place, Frank Flynn had wandered across the country into the Midwest. It had been peaceful: he worked at a gas station, unsure how long he would be staying in Dearborn. It was a numbing, bewitching pleasure to know that no matter what happened to him, the world would keep tumbling along. He could sleep through the afternoon if he wanted. He could go get drunk.
That was, until he noticed the careful man in the undertaker's suit browsing the sporting goods aisle. No one could ever really hide it when they were armed, not from an expert. Jack wished for his service pistol and picked out some dinner, then headed toward the front of the store to watch the exits. That was his best chance to follow the man. Then…he'd figure something out.
Jack pretended to be interested in the garden tools in the aisle by the door, pacing back and forth to spot the other man if he went to the checkout. He gritted his teeth. It was a gamble, since anyone determined to get away could take a back exit. But that would mark him on the security cameras. If the man was smart, he'd leave by the checkout like everyone else.
Martin was smart. He also needed to buy a funnel and some motor oil, near gardening.
Jack caught a glimpse of him and stepped out of view behind a guy and a girl and a cart full of beer.
The lights flickered out, leaving only the cloudy sunlight from the front windows.
Deeper in the store, a clerk cursed.
And in the dimness, Jack had felt a fleeting, irrational certainty that something was watching him—scrutinizing him—dissecting him—the thing was rooting around inside him as though to say, "I own you—body and spirit, I own you and I can crush your soul like a mosquito any time I want."
Revolted, he jumped against the shelves, out of the way—out of the way of what? There was nothing there. He'd never given credit to the paranormal, but there was no time for logic now, not with the eyes driving the darkness and his gut coiling and his feet tensing to run—
The feeling vanished, and he came to his senses, checking up and down the aisle. Two shoppers: young male, athletic; young female, not. Neither likely to be armed. Exit twenty yards behind him. The man in the black suit was one aisle up. The blackout must be his doing—where were his co-conspirators, and who was he about to kill? He passed the couple and the cart with quick soft steps, then froze, the hairs of his spine prickling with a dread that was nothing like combat.
Behind him, the young woman shrieked like a cat in a trap. Jack spun into a crouch, to see her vault over the shopping cart and tear her teeth into her boyfriend's throat, toppling him to the ground. Her head spun backward on her neck to fix him with maddened, fungus-white eyes, blood bubbling from a corner of her snarling mouth, then the rest of her twisted round from underneath, and she hurtled over the thrashing corpse, right at Jack: arms stiff, feet only brushing the floor, head lolling to the side, still shrieking without pause for breath. As she sailed into his face, Jack smashed his elbow into her chin.
The blow knocked her head back like a Rock'Em Sock'Em robot. Jack stepped back, hoping she would fall over—no human neck could bend back like that without snapping—but instead, she lifted her head with both hands and set it back on her neck, turning her blank eyes on him. Jack grabbed a weapon from the garden rack—a hand cultivator, little more than a serving fork. But it was all he could reach by the time she locked her icy hands around his throat.
Her hands were very, very small, which was the only reason the world hadn't started fuzzing and fogging as they squeezed for his arteries. He could still see her snarling lumpy face (had she been that ugly before the blackout?) and he could still pry at her head and claw her in the throat with the garden fork. Then she switched her grip, and Jack's pulse began to surge and pile up under her fingers. Suddenly he couldn't see properly…the fork slipped from his hand.
A pistol shot cracked.
Martin had shot the woman in the leg: civilians got attention when they died, even if they had just ripped out their boyfriend's throat with their teeth, so he'd picked a non-lethal target. He prayed the cameras were down with the lights.
Then she turned her head his way and he realized he had bigger things than the law to worry about. This was not a person.
"You shall die!" she wailed, stretching up her arms and one leg in a horrible parody of the Stork Pose. Martin widened his stance and drew his other gun.
She lurched to her feet, jolted off her feet, and glided toward him just like a target in the training range. As he poured his bullets into her, she twisted—left, right, backward, never slowing, not even when the shots ripped gobs of muscle out of her skinny vegan shoulders. She was almost on top of him as he shot her in the face, then she bowled him over. For an instant, he lay on his back pushing her off by the neck as she strained her short little arms. Then a shovel sliced past his nose, followed by a gallon of reeking blood.
Jack kicked the corpse off Martin, who couldn't see a thing and was pawing and flailing to get it off. "It's dead," Jack barked, still hoarse. Then he noticed the headless body struggling to its feet, so he swung his shovel through its good knee. He helped himself to Martin's fallen gun and methodically shot out the body's other joints with what was left of the clip, then secured the other pistol while Martin was still wiping blood out of his eyes. Jack worked well on the edge of unconsciousness.
"You're alive," came a breathless voice from behind them. Martin turned around, and realized that he was now the only one without a weapon—Jack had snapped up his pistols, and this new guy, an employee, had a sawed-off shotgun. He was a short blond man, clutching the gun like a mystical talisman.
"Looks like it," Martin started to say, but the corpse interrupted him.
"Imposter!" the severed head screamed. "You shall all die!"
The men all started and backed away. Jack and Martin glanced at each-other, seeing the same thought run in their heads: If he's hearing this, too…
"I'll swallow your souls! Imposter! Where is the warrior?" continued the head. They all stood, frozen, staring at it: a disfigured face with pink plastic eyebrow-rings staring blindly at the ceiling, jaws flapping wide and puppet-like. "You shall all die! Imposter! I'll swallow your souls!"
"How is it talking?" Jack asked the employee, who twitched, as though roused from a trance.
"Our guy normally shoots them with the sawed-off to shut them up," he said.
The head kept screaming at them, as the employee watched, knuckles white on the sawed-off's barrel.
"And I guess that would be me," he said finally. He swung the muzzle down, the twelve-gauge boomed, and as the ringing died down the store grew mercifully silent, except for a wailing child somewhere deeper in. Pink custardy goo coated the floor and the fertilizer bags on nearby shelves for yards away. Some of the bony chunks still twitched.
"First time on the job?" Martin remarked.
"Normally?" Jack demanded.
The blond kid sighed and rubbed gore off his forehead. "Every few months or so…people come in here and turn into these things."
Martin looked up and down the shelf, found the plastic tarps, and ripped one open. "Help stuff it in," he said.
"Don't touch the crime scene," Jack snarled, pulling Martin's gun out of his pocket. "There's got to be an investigation. Call the police station and ask for a medical examiner and a hazmat team. Call 'em. Now."
Martin cursed under his breath. For a minute he'd been confident the other man was a fellow outlaw. Cold-blooded bastard. He'd make a hell of a mole.
"That won't be necessary," said a new voice. A red-haired woman in a suit, holding an FBI badge, with quiet, a dark-haired man beside her. "I'm a medical examiner. My partner and I are with the Bureau."
"Agent Scully, Agent Mulder," said the man, waving between himself and his partner before offering a hand to the employee. "And you are?"
"It was clearly self-defense," he squeaked.
"You…want to tell us more about it?" the medical examiner asked, trying to reassure him.
"Self-defense," parroted Martin, trying to balance nonchalance with shock at being involved in such a violent and unusual incident. He'd dealt with cops before, but when you were as good as he was, you didn't meet cops. Bad luck had come back big.
Joe whimpered, eyes wide and staring behind their backs.
They spun around. The dead girl's boyfriend had lurched to his feet, sporting a shredded black hole under his chin where his throat should be. Jack hefted one of Martin's handguns and figured he had three bullets left. Martin noticed Joe seemed happier to hold onto the shotgun than use it.
The dead man waved his arms wildly, as though puppeted with sticks, then staggered forward. They waited for him to fall on his face. Instead, he sprang up again and whirled into a series of jagged gymnastic front-flips, blood flying from his neck. Martin wrenched the shotgun out of the blond kid's hands and fired as they all backed away, swinging the lever action open and shut like a castanet and aiming for the joints. The targets whirled, but he managed to cut the corpse down to one hand and one leg—still coming. The shotgun ran out.
Jack waited, holding his shovel like a quarterstaff, sidestepped, and smacked the thing to the ground. With another swing, the head was off. The body staggered to its feet, arms windmilling, until Jack kicked it in the rear and chopped at its good knee. "Reload that shotgun," he snapped. Joe passed Martin a handful of shells.
"Hang on, I'll run and get the chainsaw," said Joe. He brushed past the FBI and sprinted for the stockroom.
"Feds," the manager grunted to himself. "What d'you know." He watched Mulder and Scully tape off the gore-soaked gardening aisle as Martin and Jack hung nearby, drenched in blood and eyeing each-other suspiciously as they pretended to wait for questioning. He hoisted his Levis up the front of his beer gut and sauntered over. "You two. Why doncha come down to the back and wash up, get out the first aid kit, before you catch AIDS or somethin'. Don't worry," he told Scully, "They won't slip off. C'mere, Joe! Feds've got some questions for ya!" He all but herded Jack and Martin into the stock room, back to a floor drain next to a garden hose.
As Jack, with quick, efficient swipes of the hose, rinsed the blood off himself, the manager drew Martin aside, a meaty arm around his shoulders. "Nice shooting," he said with a grin. "You got a cool head on your shoulders. Very nice."
"Just exercising my Second Amendment rights, Mr…?"
"Babbitt. Jeff Babbitt." He smiled at Martin, eyes crinkling. "And save the bullshit for the Feds. Yer a pro, boy."
Martin smiled back uneasily. "Let's not talk about work, it makes me edgy."
"Then I'll make this quick. How'd you like to work for me?"
"Work for—what, here?"
"Security position. We could use two competent gunslingers around here. Medical…dental…as for salary, make your bid."
Martin leaned in and whispered a figure into Babbitt's ear.
The manager blanched. Then he blinked and leaned toward Martin. "Per…week?" he asked.
"Per day."
Babbit leaned away, abashed.
"As far as I know, that's the going rate for professionals of my caliber," said Martin. "Anything less, he'll scare the customers, get high on the job, steal your VCRs…you get what you pay for."
"Oh. Sure. Of course," said Babbitt. He glanced over toward the hose, which lay gurgling in the drain. "Where'd he go?"
Martin frowned, puzzled. "He must not like Feds."
"Yeah, yeah," sighed the manager, rounding up a roll of blue paper shop towels and shoving a yard or two into Martin's hands. "I remember when I was your . . . okay, about half your age, and I was at this swingin' party, knocking back a couple of beers, little tequila, some of the ladies are getting a little loosened up, and next thing I know, there's sirens and lights everywhere--"
He ambled over to the stock door, locked it, and pressed his ear to the crack for a moment. "--My buddy Dick's got a bottle in his hand, and when the cops bust in, what does he do but he flings the thing, and then the next thing I know, I'm in the pokey, and Dick's on the other side forgetting his uncle's phone number so it's another two days before anyone bails me out, and it's not like the old man would spring for anything . . . So I'd understand if you felt a bit inclined to . . ."
Babbitt back from the door at an empty stockroom. ". . . skedaddle," he huffed. "That's gratitude."
After a long and disturbing afternoon getting interviewed by Feds and watching them bag up half-animated body parts--for some reason, cops could never be bothered to clean the brains off the shelving--Jeff Babbitt stuffed himself into his chair and scooted up to his desk, nodding at the blond clerk, whose hands were full of Hostess cakes and instant coffee. "Ah," he breathed, taking a long slurp. "When Ash gets back, remind me never to tell him I offered the other guy dental."
I assume you all know Jack Bauer. On tax returns, Jack Bauer can claim the entire world as his dependents. If CTU sent Jack Bauer into a room with three terrorists and one bullet, he'd kill the terrorists and save the bullet. Jack Bauer died for his country and lived to tell about it. If everyone would only listen to Jack Bauer at the start of each season of 24, the show would be called 12.
Agents Scully and Mulder need no introduction, but they don't get much face time because I didn't watch much X-Files.
Martin Blank, the antihero of the movie Grosse Point Blank, once killed the President of Paraguay with a fork--though he is more at home with a high-powered rifle, digitalis, or a fountain pen. His dreams are haunted by regret at standing up his high-school sweetheart, Debbie, on prom night to go join the Army. He discusses this weekly with his psychotherapist.
Ash Williams was having the time of his life at the World Championship Pumpkin Chunk in Delaware.