EVIL DEAD: THE SERIES Episode 4 "Shop Til You Drop"
The Time: 6:55 a.m., Friday, November 27
The Place: Just inside the front doors of the Super S-Mart Deluxe Home Center, just southeast of Detroit, Michigan.
Store manager Oliver "Bud" Palmenterri paced before the troops.... or, more accurately, before a crowd of his S-Mart employees. He was a chunky man, with hair rather unconvincingly groomed over his head to form a would-be cover for his bald spot.
"This is it," he growled. "The day after Thanksgiving, official start of the Holiday Shopping Season. The biggest shopping day of the year."
He glanced over his shoulder. They could see crowds of shoppers eagerly awaiting the 7 a.m. opening of the gates. The fever in their eyes, Palmenterri often thought to himself on these occasions, must be what those who run with the bulls in Spain felt each year.
"Now, we're going to get some flak over the fact corporate only sent us a dozen Furbys," Palmenterri said, "and that we have the Pansontronic VCR mispriced in the sale fliers at $19.99 rather than $109.99. But calmly explain to the customers that we can't honor that price, and if they put up a fuss, direct 'em toward me..."
Palmenterri paused as the crowd muttered. He smiled smugly, knowing that he would be able to hide in the huge store and avoid any such confrontations.... in his twenty years at S-Mart, he had become an expect at hiding from angry customers.
"... or Assistant Managers Williams or Rammer," Palmenterri continued.
Ashley J. Williams, clad in a short-sleeve shirt and clip-on necktie, nodded, as did Teddy Rammer, a lanky man with dark hair and a weaselly gleam in his eyes.
Palmenterri struck a dramatic Patton-esque pose. "Now, go to your posts and brace yourselves. And remember, tell each customer..."
"Shop Smart, Shop S-Mart," the crowd said in unison.
With a wave of Palmenterri's hand, the crowd dispersed as employees went to their departments in the huge store.
A pretty sales clerk looked up at Ashley Williams. "What's it like, running the cash register on a day like this?" she asked nervously.
"Imagine you're the only hooker on duty and the fleet's in town," Ash replied.
The woman groaned to herself.
It didn't take long for Ash to realize that not only was Palmenterri doing his usual bang-up job of avoiding the angry customers, Teddy Rammer was too.
Ash and Teddy had been working together for years, first at the old S-Mart in Pleasant Springs and eventually being promoted to assistant managers at this new location... a Super S-Mart, which was a substantial promotion. Too bad both of them got it; Ash had often considered Teddy a back-stabbing, two-timing, double-crossing son of a bitch, and that was on days he was being kind.
Ash couldn't think of anything worse to deal with on a day like today.
A taxi cab made its way through the bustling traffic on the roads leading to the Super S-Mart.
As it slid into the fire lane, the cab almost ran over a heavy-set, mean-faced middle-aged woman clad in stretch pants and a sweater with a Christmas Tree in sequin on the front.
The woman stared hatefully at the cab.
The back door flung open, and Belinda Macreary slid out of it, clad in a provocative black silk blouse with dark red miniskirt and four-inch heels. Her face had been transformed by a mixture of makeup and a complete "attitude adjustment"; gone was the mousy museum assistant, and in her place was a sexpot.
Behind her, Bad Ash let go of the driver's neck, and the driver slumped forward on the steering wheel.
"Thanks for the lift," Bad Ash said with a cruel smile.
"You almost hit me!" the heavy-set woman snapped as Bad Ash emerged from the back of the cab.
"Not my fault, blame the driver," Bad Ash replied.
The woman stormed over to the driver's side window and scowled in. Then, her eyes went wide and she took a step back, bumping into Bad Ash.
"Th--that man's dead!" she stammered.
"Small world," Bad Ash said, grabbing the woman by the neck. "so are you."
Alfonse Cobb, a doddering black man in his early 60s who passed out sales fliers just inside the front doors of S-Mart, looked up, surprised, as Bad Ash strode in carrying the heavy-set woman in his arms. "This woman has fainted," he said, "where's the nurse's station?"
"Over by the optical department, where it's always been," Alfonse said, pointing.
Bad Ash nodded and headed that direction.
Belinda followed him in to the store, then paused and examined Alfonse carefully. "Something wrong, old timer?"
"I thought Mr. Williams was in the store somewhere already," Alfonse replied.
"Any idea where?" Belinda asked, a playful smile on her face.
Bad Ash walked into the nurse's station, carrying the heavy set woman, and shut the door behind him.
The nurse looked up, surprised. "What happened?"
"Well, I killed her, but I couldn't just leave the body lying out there, because otherwise people would notice it pretty quickly," Bad Ash replied. A devilish smile spread across his lips. "Oh, I mean... she fainted."
Before the nurse could scream, Bad Ash snapped her neck like a twig.
"Buncha wimps in this century," Bad Ash said, cracking his knuckles. "Back in the good old days, people worked, developed some muscles, you had to give em a good twirl to break their necks."
He sighed disappointedly. "Well, on the bright side, I expect Goody Two-Shoes to put up a good fight."
"-- and so, you see, we wish they'd sent us more Furbys, but they just didn't," Ash explained to some angry customers.
"I bet you're hiding them in the back so you can jack up the price," one of the customers growled.
Ash started to say something, then took a deep breath. "Sir, we just sell them for retail," he said, "trust me, if we had more we'd be selling them."
The customers scowled at Ash, obviously not believing his protests that the toys were sold out, then the small crowd dispersed.
At the back of the crowd was a sexy-looking woman staring intently at Ash... none other than Belinda Macreary.
"You here for a furby?" Ash asked.
"That's an interesting word for it," Belinda purred.
Ash was taken back. His eyes widened further as she stepped forward and kissed him, then ran her fingers through his hair.
"Look, lady, I'm not sure what you're after..." Ash started.
"Yesterday was Thanksgiving for you yanks, right?" Belinda asked, her British accent lilting.
"Yeah..."
"Did you get all the dessert you wanted?" Belinda asked, pulling him in for a deeper, lingering kiss.
Ash stammered incoherently.
"Say, is there a cozy little place we can go to, to continue this... conversation?" Belinda asked.
Ash tried to think, but other than formulating the first draft of a 'Dear Penthouse forum, you'll never believe this..' letter, his mind wasn't working quite right at the moment.
Let's see... place to hide... dressing room? No, too many customers who'd want to use it; bathroom? same problem; stock room? too many stock clerks replenishing merchandise; loading dock? too cold; inside one of the children's mini-houses on Aisle 36? too creepy. Then, Ash smiled.
Palmenterri's office.
That was the last place Palmenterri would be today, of all days. After all, people would know to look for him there.
Bad Ash played with a stethoscope, listening to his own heartbeat and then listening to the lack of a heartbeat in either the nurse or the heavy woman. "Handy little instrument," he said, "though it's much more fun to just tear out the heart and see if it's beating that way..."
He peered out the small window in the door of the nurse's station. "Surely by now, that little harlot of mine has found Ash and managed to distract him," he said smugly.
He looked back over his shoulder at the dead nurse, who lay on the table.
"What's that?" Bad Ash asked, though no question had been made. "You're wondering what I'm up to?"
Bad Ash smiled broadly. "I'd tell you, but... then I'd have to kill you."
Teddy Rammer was pointing a woman with several screaming children toward the carpet department when he saw Ashley Williams strolling his way.
Or, more precisely, Bad Ash, though Teddy had no way of distinguishing between the two. The fact that this Ash was wearing different clothes didn't even register; all Teddy knew was that his fellow assistant manager was acting way too casual for as busy a day as this was.
"What's your problem, Williams?" Teddy asked. "Shouldn't you be helping customers, like I've been doing for the past few hours?"
"Customers?" Bad Ash asked. "Like... that man over there?"
He pointed to a middle-aged man who was examining pillows, trying to find one that would scrunch up to his liking.
Teddy nodded.
"Excuse me, sir?" Bad Ash asked. "Can I help you with something?"
"No, I'm fine," the man replied.
"You see," Bad Ash said, "he doesn't need my help."
Bad Ash held out his hand, and a ball of flame the size of a baseball formed in it. Teddy's jaw dropped.
Bad Ash flung the ball, engulfing the middle-aged man in flames. The man screamed as he fell dead to the floor.
"He's beyond help," Bad Ash said with a smarmy grin as Teddy turned and ran.
In the manager's office, Ash looked up from the couch as he heard yelling outside.
Belinda, her blouse off, kissed his neck. "Ignore it, whatever it is," she sighed.
"No, something's going on out there," Ash said, starting to get up.
His shirt was torn open, the buttons and the clip on tie scattered in various directions.
"I SAID, ignore it," Belinda said, her voice rising.
Ash looked up at a video monitor that showed the store floor.
People were running for dear life as someone stood on a display case tossing firebolts in every direction.
"Aw, shit!" Ash said. "Sorry, lady, but I've got to go!"
Belinda pulled her fist back and slammed it into Ash's face, knocking him across the room.
"I'm no lady, "she snarled.
Ash got to his feet as Belinda's facial features shifted, taking on a demonic aspect. He had seen this back in ancient England, when Sheila, a beautiful maiden he had fallen for, was taken over by the Deadites.
Belinda smiled as she approached, flexing her fingers as if preparing to claw him to death. "I can see the little gears turning in your head, trying to figure it all out," she said. "It's so cute."
Ash grabbed a lamp and slapped it across her face, sending the demon-possessed woman for a backwards loop.
She got to her feet and lunged at him, and he grabbed her with his mechanical right hand and held her at bay.
"Gotta kill ya," she said, "no offense."
"None taken," Ash replied, flinging her back over Palmenterri's desk.
He reached behind him and pulled on the lamp, yanking the plug out of it.
As Belinda leapt across the room towards him, screaming like a banshee, he held up the torn cord.
Electricity coarsed through her body, knocking her back against a far wall. Her hair was frizzed out in all directions, and her eyes rolled back in her head as she fell face-forward on the ground.
Ash declined the temptation to declare her behavior 'shocking' and ran out the door of the office, heading toward the sales floor.
Reporter Wayne Peacock stood outside the front doors of S-Mart. He was a blandly handsome man with a lantern jaw and blond, carefully-styled-and-sprayed-solid hair. He glanced at his cameraman, a scruffy goatee-wearing slacker named Phil, and shrugged.
"Okay, Phil, let's get this crap over with," Wayne said.
The light came on the camera.
"I'm here at the Super S-Mart off Trademart Boulevard," Wayne said, his voice suddenly chipper and enthusiastic. "It's the first day of the Christmas rush, and let me tell you, people are really rushing in these doors..."
Behind him, the doors to the store flung open and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people raced out, screaming hysterically. Wayne and Phil were knocked down and pulled under by the panicking crowd.
A display shelf of Tickle Me Elmos proved no match for one of Bad Ash's mystic fireballs.
As the toys burst into flames, bouncing and giggling until their parts melted, Bud Palmenterri poked his head around the corner of the arts and crafts department.
"Williams, what the hell are you doing?"
"Going on a maniacal rampage," Bad Ash repllied. "So when it's all over, I'll be shot, or arrested, or tortured, or whatever it is your constabulary does these days."
"Consta-whaaa?"
Bad Ash sighed. "Look, little pudgy man, I'm afraid you're going to have to die now that I've told you what I'm up to..."
Palmenterri jumped back as a fireball set the crochet display on fire.
"Attention S-Mart shoppers," came a voice from behind Bad Ash.
He spun around to see Ashley J. Williams standing on a counter top holding a shotgun.
"Blue light special on dead assholes, Aisle 19," Ash said, firing a blast.
The shot knocked Bad Ash off the display shelf he had been standing on.
Ash jumped down and ran that direction, then rolled to one side to avoid a firebolt thrown by Bad Ash.
"Mind telling me who the fuck you are?" Ash asked.
"Three guesses, Goody Two-Shoes, and the first two don't count," Bad Ash replied.
"Aw, fer the lovva God!" Ash replied as he reloaded his shotgun and fired again.
Bad Ash staggered back, then looked down at the holes blasted in his shoulder. "These clothes weren't cheap, you know," he said.
Ash ducked down the aisle of carpetry as Bad Ash threw another firebolt, igniting the area rugs.
Bad Ash stalked around the shelves, looking for his prey.
"Come on out, I won't hurt you," he said, "I've reformed, I've seen the light, I'm a Goody Two Shoes now myself..."
"Glad to hear it," Ash said, spinning around one of the displays and putting his shotgun right against Bad Ash's chest, "because I'm not that good."
He pulled the trigger, and the shot blew Bad Ash backwards.
Ash reloaded again, then fired at Bad Ash, blowing his left leg off.
Bad Ash screamed, more in anger than in pain.
"Why'd you come here?" Ash asked.
Bad Ash smiled warmly. "I wanted to fuck up your life as much as I possibly could," he said.
Then, Bad Ash fell backwards and slumped, his facial features morphing from those of Ashley Williams to those of a very dead Constable Kirk Tullian.
Ash stared down at the dead body. Then, he looked up as a SWAT team raced down the wrecked aisles of the store and leveled their weapons at him.
Ash dropped the shotgun and raised his hands. "Um... this is all a big misunderstanding," he said.
The body bag was one of a dozen lining the floor of the Detroit Coroner's office.
The coroner lay on his side, dozing softly after the formaldehyde had taken effect, and the dark-clad figures stepped over him to grab the body bag and heft it out of the room.
The bag was carried out to an unmarked grey U-Haul style truck and thrown in the back of it. Then, the truck started up an drove away.
After a moment, a light came on in the back of the truck.
A hand reached down and unzipped the body bag, revealing the dead face of Kirk Tullian.
"You can drop the act now," said Newton Fisk, the man who had just opened the body bag. He was sitting on a folding chair, and three machine gun-wielding guards stood near him, their weapons aimed at the body.
The body did not move.
"Let me clarify," Fisk said. "You can drop the act now, Baddy Two-Shoes..."
Tullian's dead eyes rolled around to look at him.
Then, Tullian's face morphed into that of Bad Ash.
"Who the hell are you?" Bad Ash asked.
"I represent certain... interests," Fisk replied. "Interests that didn't appreciate what you did."
"What are you, friends of his?"
Fisk laughed. "Hardly. We just... oh, let's say, need Williams to stay out of jail, or anywhere else he'd be very carefully monitored."
"Too late for that, I'd guess," Bad Ash chuckled.
Fisk chuckled along with him, which perturbed Bad Ash.
"Oh, we've already gotten Ash freed," Fisk said. "You'd be surprised how persuasive my employer can be with local law enforcement. As far as anyone is concerned now, Ashley Williams was just one of many employees terrorized by an unidentified assailant in an attack on the store yesterday... An assailant, might I add, who was using Molotov cocktails in an attack on the 'capitalistic system', and was killed by the SWAT team in a final showdown... We've got another vehicle bringing in a body to represent said assailant to replace YOUR body bag as we speak."
Bad Ash considered this. "Why?"
"Because," Fisk said, "Ash is our concern, not yours. We don't appreciate the competition. In fact, my employer has been specifically keeping creatures of the night from attacking him, to lull him into a false feeling of security. We've been doing that for four years and thanks to you, all that lulling is down the drain now."
"So sorry," Bad Ash snarled. "So, who's your employer?"
"Lajos Szabo," Fisk said. "But you wouldn't know him by that name."
"Oh? And what name WOULD I know him by?"
Fisk leaned close and whispered something.
Bad Ash's eyes widened, mostly in surprise though there was also a hint of fear in them.
The truck pulled to a stop, and Fisk climbed out, followed by the guards.
"Where are you going?" Bad Ash asked, trying to sit up.
"This isn't a safe road," Fisk explained. "And we're kind of scared."
He pulled the door to the truck bed shut and looked around, nodding at the driver.
The driver shifted the truck into gear and jumped out.
Fisk, the guards, and the driver watched as the truck plummeted into a rock quarry, bursting into flames when it hit the bottom.
Fisk pulled out a cell phone and hit '666'.
"Is it taken care of?" Lajos Szabo's voice asked.
"Yes, sir," Fisk said. "Though I still think we should have recruited him."
"He won't suit our needs," Szabo replied. "Oracle researched it very carefully, and we do indeed need the Good Ash. This other one is just another fly in the ointment that we don't need to have around."
Fisk walked with the other men to a waiting limosine. They climbed in and started to drive off.
"You sure we need to go on to stage three?" Fisk asked. "It seems like overkill."
"Just do it," Szabo's voice replied over the cell phone. "We can't stop 'Bad Ash', but we can certainly slow him down some."
Fisk nodded to one of the guards, who held up a remote control device and pressed a code into it. Behind them, the quarry erupted as barrels of TNT blew the rock apart, caving it all in on top of the smashed remains of the truck.
"Whatever you say, boss," Fisk replied after the rumble of the explosion died down, then shut off the cell phone and sat back as the limo sped down the streets away from the explosion.
"Say, any of you guys hungry?" Fisk asked. "While we're on a business trip, it'll go to our expense reports..."
END.
The Time: 6:55 a.m., Friday, November 27
The Place: Just inside the front doors of the Super S-Mart Deluxe Home Center, just southeast of Detroit, Michigan.
Store manager Oliver "Bud" Palmenterri paced before the troops.... or, more accurately, before a crowd of his S-Mart employees. He was a chunky man, with hair rather unconvincingly groomed over his head to form a would-be cover for his bald spot.
"This is it," he growled. "The day after Thanksgiving, official start of the Holiday Shopping Season. The biggest shopping day of the year."
He glanced over his shoulder. They could see crowds of shoppers eagerly awaiting the 7 a.m. opening of the gates. The fever in their eyes, Palmenterri often thought to himself on these occasions, must be what those who run with the bulls in Spain felt each year.
"Now, we're going to get some flak over the fact corporate only sent us a dozen Furbys," Palmenterri said, "and that we have the Pansontronic VCR mispriced in the sale fliers at $19.99 rather than $109.99. But calmly explain to the customers that we can't honor that price, and if they put up a fuss, direct 'em toward me..."
Palmenterri paused as the crowd muttered. He smiled smugly, knowing that he would be able to hide in the huge store and avoid any such confrontations.... in his twenty years at S-Mart, he had become an expect at hiding from angry customers.
"... or Assistant Managers Williams or Rammer," Palmenterri continued.
Ashley J. Williams, clad in a short-sleeve shirt and clip-on necktie, nodded, as did Teddy Rammer, a lanky man with dark hair and a weaselly gleam in his eyes.
Palmenterri struck a dramatic Patton-esque pose. "Now, go to your posts and brace yourselves. And remember, tell each customer..."
"Shop Smart, Shop S-Mart," the crowd said in unison.
With a wave of Palmenterri's hand, the crowd dispersed as employees went to their departments in the huge store.
A pretty sales clerk looked up at Ashley Williams. "What's it like, running the cash register on a day like this?" she asked nervously.
"Imagine you're the only hooker on duty and the fleet's in town," Ash replied.
The woman groaned to herself.
It didn't take long for Ash to realize that not only was Palmenterri doing his usual bang-up job of avoiding the angry customers, Teddy Rammer was too.
Ash and Teddy had been working together for years, first at the old S-Mart in Pleasant Springs and eventually being promoted to assistant managers at this new location... a Super S-Mart, which was a substantial promotion. Too bad both of them got it; Ash had often considered Teddy a back-stabbing, two-timing, double-crossing son of a bitch, and that was on days he was being kind.
Ash couldn't think of anything worse to deal with on a day like today.
A taxi cab made its way through the bustling traffic on the roads leading to the Super S-Mart.
As it slid into the fire lane, the cab almost ran over a heavy-set, mean-faced middle-aged woman clad in stretch pants and a sweater with a Christmas Tree in sequin on the front.
The woman stared hatefully at the cab.
The back door flung open, and Belinda Macreary slid out of it, clad in a provocative black silk blouse with dark red miniskirt and four-inch heels. Her face had been transformed by a mixture of makeup and a complete "attitude adjustment"; gone was the mousy museum assistant, and in her place was a sexpot.
Behind her, Bad Ash let go of the driver's neck, and the driver slumped forward on the steering wheel.
"Thanks for the lift," Bad Ash said with a cruel smile.
"You almost hit me!" the heavy-set woman snapped as Bad Ash emerged from the back of the cab.
"Not my fault, blame the driver," Bad Ash replied.
The woman stormed over to the driver's side window and scowled in. Then, her eyes went wide and she took a step back, bumping into Bad Ash.
"Th--that man's dead!" she stammered.
"Small world," Bad Ash said, grabbing the woman by the neck. "so are you."
Alfonse Cobb, a doddering black man in his early 60s who passed out sales fliers just inside the front doors of S-Mart, looked up, surprised, as Bad Ash strode in carrying the heavy-set woman in his arms. "This woman has fainted," he said, "where's the nurse's station?"
"Over by the optical department, where it's always been," Alfonse said, pointing.
Bad Ash nodded and headed that direction.
Belinda followed him in to the store, then paused and examined Alfonse carefully. "Something wrong, old timer?"
"I thought Mr. Williams was in the store somewhere already," Alfonse replied.
"Any idea where?" Belinda asked, a playful smile on her face.
Bad Ash walked into the nurse's station, carrying the heavy set woman, and shut the door behind him.
The nurse looked up, surprised. "What happened?"
"Well, I killed her, but I couldn't just leave the body lying out there, because otherwise people would notice it pretty quickly," Bad Ash replied. A devilish smile spread across his lips. "Oh, I mean... she fainted."
Before the nurse could scream, Bad Ash snapped her neck like a twig.
"Buncha wimps in this century," Bad Ash said, cracking his knuckles. "Back in the good old days, people worked, developed some muscles, you had to give em a good twirl to break their necks."
He sighed disappointedly. "Well, on the bright side, I expect Goody Two-Shoes to put up a good fight."
"-- and so, you see, we wish they'd sent us more Furbys, but they just didn't," Ash explained to some angry customers.
"I bet you're hiding them in the back so you can jack up the price," one of the customers growled.
Ash started to say something, then took a deep breath. "Sir, we just sell them for retail," he said, "trust me, if we had more we'd be selling them."
The customers scowled at Ash, obviously not believing his protests that the toys were sold out, then the small crowd dispersed.
At the back of the crowd was a sexy-looking woman staring intently at Ash... none other than Belinda Macreary.
"You here for a furby?" Ash asked.
"That's an interesting word for it," Belinda purred.
Ash was taken back. His eyes widened further as she stepped forward and kissed him, then ran her fingers through his hair.
"Look, lady, I'm not sure what you're after..." Ash started.
"Yesterday was Thanksgiving for you yanks, right?" Belinda asked, her British accent lilting.
"Yeah..."
"Did you get all the dessert you wanted?" Belinda asked, pulling him in for a deeper, lingering kiss.
Ash stammered incoherently.
"Say, is there a cozy little place we can go to, to continue this... conversation?" Belinda asked.
Ash tried to think, but other than formulating the first draft of a 'Dear Penthouse forum, you'll never believe this..' letter, his mind wasn't working quite right at the moment.
Let's see... place to hide... dressing room? No, too many customers who'd want to use it; bathroom? same problem; stock room? too many stock clerks replenishing merchandise; loading dock? too cold; inside one of the children's mini-houses on Aisle 36? too creepy. Then, Ash smiled.
Palmenterri's office.
That was the last place Palmenterri would be today, of all days. After all, people would know to look for him there.
Bad Ash played with a stethoscope, listening to his own heartbeat and then listening to the lack of a heartbeat in either the nurse or the heavy woman. "Handy little instrument," he said, "though it's much more fun to just tear out the heart and see if it's beating that way..."
He peered out the small window in the door of the nurse's station. "Surely by now, that little harlot of mine has found Ash and managed to distract him," he said smugly.
He looked back over his shoulder at the dead nurse, who lay on the table.
"What's that?" Bad Ash asked, though no question had been made. "You're wondering what I'm up to?"
Bad Ash smiled broadly. "I'd tell you, but... then I'd have to kill you."
Teddy Rammer was pointing a woman with several screaming children toward the carpet department when he saw Ashley Williams strolling his way.
Or, more precisely, Bad Ash, though Teddy had no way of distinguishing between the two. The fact that this Ash was wearing different clothes didn't even register; all Teddy knew was that his fellow assistant manager was acting way too casual for as busy a day as this was.
"What's your problem, Williams?" Teddy asked. "Shouldn't you be helping customers, like I've been doing for the past few hours?"
"Customers?" Bad Ash asked. "Like... that man over there?"
He pointed to a middle-aged man who was examining pillows, trying to find one that would scrunch up to his liking.
Teddy nodded.
"Excuse me, sir?" Bad Ash asked. "Can I help you with something?"
"No, I'm fine," the man replied.
"You see," Bad Ash said, "he doesn't need my help."
Bad Ash held out his hand, and a ball of flame the size of a baseball formed in it. Teddy's jaw dropped.
Bad Ash flung the ball, engulfing the middle-aged man in flames. The man screamed as he fell dead to the floor.
"He's beyond help," Bad Ash said with a smarmy grin as Teddy turned and ran.
In the manager's office, Ash looked up from the couch as he heard yelling outside.
Belinda, her blouse off, kissed his neck. "Ignore it, whatever it is," she sighed.
"No, something's going on out there," Ash said, starting to get up.
His shirt was torn open, the buttons and the clip on tie scattered in various directions.
"I SAID, ignore it," Belinda said, her voice rising.
Ash looked up at a video monitor that showed the store floor.
People were running for dear life as someone stood on a display case tossing firebolts in every direction.
"Aw, shit!" Ash said. "Sorry, lady, but I've got to go!"
Belinda pulled her fist back and slammed it into Ash's face, knocking him across the room.
"I'm no lady, "she snarled.
Ash got to his feet as Belinda's facial features shifted, taking on a demonic aspect. He had seen this back in ancient England, when Sheila, a beautiful maiden he had fallen for, was taken over by the Deadites.
Belinda smiled as she approached, flexing her fingers as if preparing to claw him to death. "I can see the little gears turning in your head, trying to figure it all out," she said. "It's so cute."
Ash grabbed a lamp and slapped it across her face, sending the demon-possessed woman for a backwards loop.
She got to her feet and lunged at him, and he grabbed her with his mechanical right hand and held her at bay.
"Gotta kill ya," she said, "no offense."
"None taken," Ash replied, flinging her back over Palmenterri's desk.
He reached behind him and pulled on the lamp, yanking the plug out of it.
As Belinda leapt across the room towards him, screaming like a banshee, he held up the torn cord.
Electricity coarsed through her body, knocking her back against a far wall. Her hair was frizzed out in all directions, and her eyes rolled back in her head as she fell face-forward on the ground.
Ash declined the temptation to declare her behavior 'shocking' and ran out the door of the office, heading toward the sales floor.
Reporter Wayne Peacock stood outside the front doors of S-Mart. He was a blandly handsome man with a lantern jaw and blond, carefully-styled-and-sprayed-solid hair. He glanced at his cameraman, a scruffy goatee-wearing slacker named Phil, and shrugged.
"Okay, Phil, let's get this crap over with," Wayne said.
The light came on the camera.
"I'm here at the Super S-Mart off Trademart Boulevard," Wayne said, his voice suddenly chipper and enthusiastic. "It's the first day of the Christmas rush, and let me tell you, people are really rushing in these doors..."
Behind him, the doors to the store flung open and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people raced out, screaming hysterically. Wayne and Phil were knocked down and pulled under by the panicking crowd.
A display shelf of Tickle Me Elmos proved no match for one of Bad Ash's mystic fireballs.
As the toys burst into flames, bouncing and giggling until their parts melted, Bud Palmenterri poked his head around the corner of the arts and crafts department.
"Williams, what the hell are you doing?"
"Going on a maniacal rampage," Bad Ash repllied. "So when it's all over, I'll be shot, or arrested, or tortured, or whatever it is your constabulary does these days."
"Consta-whaaa?"
Bad Ash sighed. "Look, little pudgy man, I'm afraid you're going to have to die now that I've told you what I'm up to..."
Palmenterri jumped back as a fireball set the crochet display on fire.
"Attention S-Mart shoppers," came a voice from behind Bad Ash.
He spun around to see Ashley J. Williams standing on a counter top holding a shotgun.
"Blue light special on dead assholes, Aisle 19," Ash said, firing a blast.
The shot knocked Bad Ash off the display shelf he had been standing on.
Ash jumped down and ran that direction, then rolled to one side to avoid a firebolt thrown by Bad Ash.
"Mind telling me who the fuck you are?" Ash asked.
"Three guesses, Goody Two-Shoes, and the first two don't count," Bad Ash replied.
"Aw, fer the lovva God!" Ash replied as he reloaded his shotgun and fired again.
Bad Ash staggered back, then looked down at the holes blasted in his shoulder. "These clothes weren't cheap, you know," he said.
Ash ducked down the aisle of carpetry as Bad Ash threw another firebolt, igniting the area rugs.
Bad Ash stalked around the shelves, looking for his prey.
"Come on out, I won't hurt you," he said, "I've reformed, I've seen the light, I'm a Goody Two Shoes now myself..."
"Glad to hear it," Ash said, spinning around one of the displays and putting his shotgun right against Bad Ash's chest, "because I'm not that good."
He pulled the trigger, and the shot blew Bad Ash backwards.
Ash reloaded again, then fired at Bad Ash, blowing his left leg off.
Bad Ash screamed, more in anger than in pain.
"Why'd you come here?" Ash asked.
Bad Ash smiled warmly. "I wanted to fuck up your life as much as I possibly could," he said.
Then, Bad Ash fell backwards and slumped, his facial features morphing from those of Ashley Williams to those of a very dead Constable Kirk Tullian.
Ash stared down at the dead body. Then, he looked up as a SWAT team raced down the wrecked aisles of the store and leveled their weapons at him.
Ash dropped the shotgun and raised his hands. "Um... this is all a big misunderstanding," he said.
The body bag was one of a dozen lining the floor of the Detroit Coroner's office.
The coroner lay on his side, dozing softly after the formaldehyde had taken effect, and the dark-clad figures stepped over him to grab the body bag and heft it out of the room.
The bag was carried out to an unmarked grey U-Haul style truck and thrown in the back of it. Then, the truck started up an drove away.
After a moment, a light came on in the back of the truck.
A hand reached down and unzipped the body bag, revealing the dead face of Kirk Tullian.
"You can drop the act now," said Newton Fisk, the man who had just opened the body bag. He was sitting on a folding chair, and three machine gun-wielding guards stood near him, their weapons aimed at the body.
The body did not move.
"Let me clarify," Fisk said. "You can drop the act now, Baddy Two-Shoes..."
Tullian's dead eyes rolled around to look at him.
Then, Tullian's face morphed into that of Bad Ash.
"Who the hell are you?" Bad Ash asked.
"I represent certain... interests," Fisk replied. "Interests that didn't appreciate what you did."
"What are you, friends of his?"
Fisk laughed. "Hardly. We just... oh, let's say, need Williams to stay out of jail, or anywhere else he'd be very carefully monitored."
"Too late for that, I'd guess," Bad Ash chuckled.
Fisk chuckled along with him, which perturbed Bad Ash.
"Oh, we've already gotten Ash freed," Fisk said. "You'd be surprised how persuasive my employer can be with local law enforcement. As far as anyone is concerned now, Ashley Williams was just one of many employees terrorized by an unidentified assailant in an attack on the store yesterday... An assailant, might I add, who was using Molotov cocktails in an attack on the 'capitalistic system', and was killed by the SWAT team in a final showdown... We've got another vehicle bringing in a body to represent said assailant to replace YOUR body bag as we speak."
Bad Ash considered this. "Why?"
"Because," Fisk said, "Ash is our concern, not yours. We don't appreciate the competition. In fact, my employer has been specifically keeping creatures of the night from attacking him, to lull him into a false feeling of security. We've been doing that for four years and thanks to you, all that lulling is down the drain now."
"So sorry," Bad Ash snarled. "So, who's your employer?"
"Lajos Szabo," Fisk said. "But you wouldn't know him by that name."
"Oh? And what name WOULD I know him by?"
Fisk leaned close and whispered something.
Bad Ash's eyes widened, mostly in surprise though there was also a hint of fear in them.
The truck pulled to a stop, and Fisk climbed out, followed by the guards.
"Where are you going?" Bad Ash asked, trying to sit up.
"This isn't a safe road," Fisk explained. "And we're kind of scared."
He pulled the door to the truck bed shut and looked around, nodding at the driver.
The driver shifted the truck into gear and jumped out.
Fisk, the guards, and the driver watched as the truck plummeted into a rock quarry, bursting into flames when it hit the bottom.
Fisk pulled out a cell phone and hit '666'.
"Is it taken care of?" Lajos Szabo's voice asked.
"Yes, sir," Fisk said. "Though I still think we should have recruited him."
"He won't suit our needs," Szabo replied. "Oracle researched it very carefully, and we do indeed need the Good Ash. This other one is just another fly in the ointment that we don't need to have around."
Fisk walked with the other men to a waiting limosine. They climbed in and started to drive off.
"You sure we need to go on to stage three?" Fisk asked. "It seems like overkill."
"Just do it," Szabo's voice replied over the cell phone. "We can't stop 'Bad Ash', but we can certainly slow him down some."
Fisk nodded to one of the guards, who held up a remote control device and pressed a code into it. Behind them, the quarry erupted as barrels of TNT blew the rock apart, caving it all in on top of the smashed remains of the truck.
"Whatever you say, boss," Fisk replied after the rumble of the explosion died down, then shut off the cell phone and sat back as the limo sped down the streets away from the explosion.
"Say, any of you guys hungry?" Fisk asked. "While we're on a business trip, it'll go to our expense reports..."
END.