Jessica
0000000000
Senior citizen Nazis. Easy, right? Just shove them down, grab the Spike, and be on your way.
That was the theory.
The problem was the Fuhrer. That, and his army of animated Nazi-esque Lion King hyenas that growled behind him.
None of these were Whoopi Goldberg. Half of them had on brown shirts and walked on two legs.
"Uh, hi, Mr. H," I said diplomatically. "You're looking well! Tell me, were you originally a doodle, or did someone stab you with a Spike like Walt Disney?"
"I am myself," he said. "My surgeons did a fine job faking my suicide. Disney is a fool. You do not need to kill yourself to harness the Spike's power. I merely channeled its energy to preserve my youth and create an army. Already we come very close to amassing enough power to vaporize your `Pentagon' and establish Fourth Reichstag."
"Can I ask you something, Hitty? Why Ghermanntown? Why this quaint little wine town in the middle of nowhere?"
Hitler shrugged. "I enjoy the taste of wine, and the town reminds me of golden times in Deutschland. Plus wine helps cover my overhead."
"Are you really an alien named Mizo?"
Hitler screwed up his face. "Vas?"
I shrugged. "It was something they said in The Tommorow People. Never mind."
He pulled out a dangerous looking real burp gun. I'm not talking about some cutesy cartoon weapon, I'm talking about grandpa's version of the machine gun, with the little canister. "Now. You will give me the Spike you carry, or you will die."
Misty tried to shoot him, but Adolf fired first, leaving my friend screaming and clutching her wrist as ink poured onto the floor.
"I have been observing you ever since you arrived at Viktors," he said. "I know your weaknesses, and I know you have something that belongs to me. I could kill you right now, but I am a benevolent Fuhrer. Hand the Spike over, and I will allow you and your friends to live."
"No deal," I said. "As much as I enjoy being a villainess, I draw the line at joining the Aryan Nation."
He pointed the gun at my boyfriend. "This is not a negotiation. You have something I want, and you will give it to me. Cooperate and you shall have a long and prosperous life. Disobey, and you shall die."
I should have kept the Spike in my bikini. It would have been safer. "I...don't know where it is," I lied.
Hitler waved his gun to his hyenas, and we were surrounded.
Our weapons got confiscated, the Spike was stolen, and a group of armed guards put us in handcuffs, forcing us to march further into the complex.
At the sight of all this evil, my baby started crying immediately.
Chad bounced him and tried to calm him down, but it didn't work.
He stopped in the middle of the tunnel. "Isosceles is upset," he said. "I'm going to take him upstairs."
Hitler and two of his hyenas pointed guns at him. "I wouldn't do that if I were you."
"Isosceles needs to be changed," he insisted. "I saw a changing station upstairs."
Hitler shook his head irritably. "Schpline, schpline! Leave us! Take care of your doodoo!" He waved Chad away.
"Make sure he actually changes the baby" he whispered loudly to the guy with the walker.
As Chad left with him, I reflected that this departure had more to do with Isosceles making a mess than an actual rescue plan.
We passed through a room were people in hair nets inspected grapes, a lab where old guys tried to develop more interesting ways to get drunk, and a room where a couple younger guys performed the dangerous operation of spraying out and cleaning the vacuum sealed fermentation vats.
"Once we have Washington," Hitler said, "I shall change the label to the symbol of the Reich. No more disguising our affiliations."
"Good luck getting a kosher seal on that," I said.
Hitler gave me a blank look. "Vas? What seal?"
"Uh...kosher?"
"Is...this like a Bordeaux?"
I laughed.
"He asks if we make wines for the Juden," said the old brown shirt with the oxygen tank.
"Nien," Hitler said.
But then he paused. "Okay, maybe one case. That is all."
I stared at him in shock. "Because...you...poisoned it or something...right?"
Hitler narrowed his eyes, thinking about it. "Poison..."
He rubbed his chin. "Yes...poison. That is brilliant!"
I grinned. "So you didn't poison it."
"Rabbi Kravitz is a very good customer of ours," wheezed the fat Nazi in the power chair. "He also buys a lot of pork sausage from the meat shop."
"We should put poison in his wine," Hitler said.
"He has done very good business for us," the fat guy insisted.
"Fine. We will destroy the Pentagon, then send him poisoned wine. But for right now, we shall punish him for belonging to an inferior race by providing him terrible customer service."
"Begging your pardon, Fuhrer, but by providing terrible customer service, we could potentially lose money."
Hitler frowned. "I must think about this."
He opened a security door, leading us into a giant cave.
It looked like a military base built by Batman, except everything had swastikas on it. Rows of cartoon tanks, G.I. Joe style armored carriers, helicopters, jets, and combination vehicles.
Somehow, they had managed to acquire one real tank, a real Jeep, and a Howitzer, but all the other weaponry was ink and paint.
Along one wall, a machine steadily maintained a portal the size of a car, allowing a group of soldiers to carry more weapons in.
At the end of this chamber, we took a monorail to another cave, probably beneath the cemetery across town.
The entire place was one big control room, with a massive glowing map of various targets around the United States, and rows of computers manned by generic Nazi types from various cartoons.
In the center of this chamber, monitored by GI Joe's iron headed Destro and the darkly attired Baroness, stood a giant science fictiony laser cannon.
On the side facing me, I could see the Spike they were using for power. A socket slightly above this Spike was empty, awaiting its companion. Cords ran from the machine to a series of large electrical transformers. The guy clearly knew how to milk power for all it's worth, but any history textbook will tell you that.
"Um, not meaning to critique your brilliant manipulation of magical power," I said. "But if you really want D.C., why not just unplug all the cords and transformers and just direct all the power to your weapon? I mean, as much as I don't want this country under Nazi rule, I can't help but think that you are somewhat lacking in the planning department."
Hitler backhanded me across the face.
"Do not presume to tell your Fuhrer what to do!"
But then, to Destro, he said, "Unplug the cables."
He took our Spike out of Misty's device, handing it to the Baroness. "Attach this to the machine at once. We will aim it at the Pentagon immediately."
The Baroness took it, giving him the Nazi salute. "Sieg heil."
A guy with a serpent headdress, Serpentor, I believe, pushed a button on the wall, and the ceiling started opening up.
You know how I said it was `probably' under the cemetery?
It was under it.
The moment the roof opened, in came a shower of dirt, caskets, suit wearing cadavers, and granite monuments.
An aquarium full of sharks got smashed to bits, and so did several computers and a laser etched glass statue of the Nazi bird.
That did not stop the Fuhrer's mad plan.
The moment the roof was open, I saw the gun rising off the floor on a tall hydraulic lift. The Baroness had already installed the second Spike, so it was all ready to go.
"Are we going to conquer the world?" Misty asked.
"No," I said. "We're just going to make the world suck a lot more."