Every Day is Like Doomsday (24 page)

They walked through the deserted main drag of
town. Their passage left obvious and easy-to-follow
trails in the snow but Elliot decided that if Innya didn’t
care then neither should he. Innya danced around him
and laughed loudly as they walked and he pretended to
be unmoved by the sight of her even though it pleased
him that she had so quickly gotten over her earlier disappointment. She flicked rocks at the streetlights and
when they hit just right the lights would shatter with
a loud pop and then a sizzle and sparks would shower
down on them.

When they passed by the town’s only independent
jewelry store Elliot stopped, then went back. The pieces
displayed in the window weren’t the most impressive and
the diamonds were a little small, but they would do.

“What’s wrong? Feeling remorse?” Innya asked, and
he couldn’t miss the mocking derision in her voice.
“Not at all,” he said. “I just decided that you deserve
something nice for helping me out all this time. Don’t
you think so?”
Innya followed his gaze to the display of diamonds.
“You never have thanked me properly and I think a pair of
earrings and a necklace would go very far indeed.”
“OK,” Elliot said and a moment later he hoisted the
lid off of a nearby trash can. He grasped it with both hands
for a moment, wondering if he were doing the right thing,
then figured what the heck and hurled it towards the front
window like a lead Frisbee.
So it wasn’t the hardest or the most graceful throw,
he slipped but caught himself before he ended up sprawled
in the snow, and the entire window didn’t shatter into
a glorious cascade of glass shards like he imagined. But
most of the glass did break so his manhood would remain
more or less intact for the evening. To solidify his status
Elliot climbed through the window and plucked as many
pieces of jewelry as he could carry from the display and
then emerged again, victorious.
“My lady,” he said as he placed a white gold necklace with a simple diamond pendant around Innya’s
delicious neck.
“You wish,” she said. He tucked her white-blonde
hair behind her ear and kissed the small part of her throat
that was visible between her hear and her scarf. She shivered and he was about to take it farther when a voice
stopped them.
“Stop right there, Villains!” the voice commanded
and Innya and Elliot sighed and turned around in unison.
“This is what they send to stop us?”Innya asked with
obvious irritation. Elliot knew exactly what she was feeling. He didn’t much appreciate being cock-blocked by an
arrogant man in blue tights.
“Ugh, it’s you two. You will be talking to the proper
authorities. We’re too far from the city limits to use that as
your defense this time, little girl. If you want to get away
you’re going to have to stand and fight.”
Innya just rolled her eyes but Elliot’s adrenaline
drained out of him as he remembered that he wasn’t really
a Villain, he was only playing one, and if Mr. Magnificent wanted to beat his face in he probably could without
much trouble.
“We’re not looking for any trouble,” Elliot started.
Innya shot him a dirty look. “Yes we are,” she said.
“Now’s the time to prove your worth, Zombie.”
At this Mr. Magnificent donned his game face.“And
so it begins,” he said and then he rushed at Elliot.
Innya pushed Elliot out of the way, did a back flip
off the store front, plucked a large shard of glass out of
the window frame and lobbed it at Mr. Magnificent as
he rushed them. The superhero dodged the glass and it
landed intact in the soft snow.
“You could have killed me!” said Mr. Magnificent,
as if he were surprised that someone might actually want
him dead.
“Have you met you?” she asked, “I’m surprised more
people don’t try to kill you on a daily basis.”
“You’re kind of a bitch,” he said.
“Thank you.” She charged him and Elliot stayed out
of the way as the two of them sparred. She was so flexible
and quick that the town superhero rarely landed a punch,
whereas she made contact with nearly every punch or kick
that she threw.
Elliot wasn’t sure if he should intervene and wasn’t
sure what he could even add to the melee. Eventually he
determined that he would just be in the way and sat back
to watch her work her magic. At one point she nearly
twisted Mr. Magnificent into a knot because she seemed
to be everywhere at once. Then she left him alone to stagger into the middle of the street.
“Had enough, old man?” she called out from a little
farther down the road, near the intersection. She looked
barely winded as she stood beneath one of the few remaining unbroken streetlights,a luminescent,sociopathic angel.
“Never,” he panted and took off after her, Elliot forgotten for the moment. Elliot trotted after them, close
enough to see but far enough away so as not to get drawn
into the action.
Just as Mr. Magnificent reached her, out of breath
and staggering, Innya cheerfully announced, “Head’s up!”
then did a series of effortless back handsprings until she
reached the other side of the street.
A moment later a garbage truck slammed into the
hapless hero. The brakes squealed and hissed and it fishtailed a little as it came to a stop, billowing steam in the
frigid air like some great, metallic dragon. While he was
unable to tear his horrified eyes away from the point of
impact Innya had made her way back to him. She grabbed
his hand and said, “
Run!
”
Elliot followed her blindly and with clumsy feet. He
couldn’t stop looking back over his shoulder at the mess
that used to be Mr. Magnificent. Behind them, the driver
was climbing out and running to the front of the truck.
“Stop looking back and run!” shouted Innya and she
took off and left him behind. Elliot picked up the pace and
stopped looking. He didn’t want to know what had happened, what crime he had just committed.
After several blocks Innya pulled Elliot into an alley
and they both paused to catch their breaths.
Innya recovered much more quickly and pulled out
her cell phone. As soon as Elliot’s lungs could tolerate
actual speech, he panted, “Holy shit. We just killed Mr.
Magnificent.”
“What do you mean?” Innya asked so calmly that
Elliot started to believe that she was a sociopath. Then he
remembered that that was kind of the point.
“We just hit him with a garbage truck. He’s dead.”
“No he isn’t” she said. The coolness of her voice
chilled him more than the snow ever could.
“How do you know?”
She held up her phone. “He tweeted 20 seconds ago
that he just got trashed. He’s fine.”
“You follow Mr. Magnificent on Twitter? Why?”
“So I know where he’ll be every day. Duh. I follow
your friends, too, and your dad.”
Elliot stood up and leaned against the wall, letting his head fall back and rest against the rough stucco.
Everything was okay. They hadn’t just killed someone.
Relief flooded through him and washed away all of the
anger that had stymied him all night. He sighed heavily
and smiled.
He felt Innya moving closer and when she spoke
her voice was thick with derision. “Don’t tell me that little
run-in gave you a heart attack.Thought you could handle it
but maybe you’re really just a
scherper
in Villain’s clothing.”
The grin that tugged at Innya’s lips and the one raised
eyebrow told him that she wasn’t being serious but that
didn’t mean the words didn’t sting a little. After the night
they’d had he certainly didn’t want to give her another
reason to doubt his Villainous street cred. He knew that
this wasn’t real, it wasn’t him, and he knew that she wasn’t
good for him but since he had to give in and go with the
program, he did just that. Besides, he rationalized, she was
just so damn sexy when she was doing bad things.
He grabbed Innya, pinned her against the wall of
the building and did his best to wipe the grin off of her
face. By the time they left the alley his tongue was sore,
his jaw ached, the sun was coming up and Elliot felt like
a new man. Ruining his ex-friends’ tryst, a jewelry store
robbery, a fight to the finish with a superhero and a dirty
make out session in an alley had changed him. Finally, he
felt evil.

Once his lingering delusions about his former life
were shattered, Elliot took to his new persona with gusto.
Innya loved it. She loved that he was broken and sad and
angry. Instead of spending all of her time defending him
she found that everyone seemed more accepting of both
of them, which left them a plethora of time in which they
could get it on and plan world domination in the warm
and fuzzy afterglow.

They were both excited when they entered the
classroom for Strategy class, a three-times-a-year class
dedicated to invasion, extraction, and all other manner of
undetected mayhem-causing.

“Get in line, maggots!” shouted Sarge and Elliot
snapped to attention. He hadn’t seen Sarge since his first
day at the VA and from the looks of it the time had not
been kind to him. He appeared to be royally pissed and
out for revenge. For all Elliot knew that could have been
his normal face but he’d rather not chance it.

He and Innya stepped into the line with their peers
and waited. In the room before them stood a dozen glass
desks topped with enormous flat screen monitors. The
monitors were either filled with indecipherable blips or
constantly changing maps of cities, many of them outside
the country. Covering the entire wall facing them was a
huge screen with a map of the world. Along one side there
were pictures of Villains, about 10 at any given moment.
The images changed every 15 seconds or so and when
they did they corresponded to a change in the position
of the red dots littering the map. Elliot guessed that they
were tracking the Villains who had graduated or escaped.

The door to the room slammed shut with a clang
and Innya grabbed Elliot’s hand and said, “Here we go,”
in an excited tone of voice.

Sarge walked slowly down the line as he started
talking. “Here’s the deal. Just so you know where I stand
on this issue, I do not like the Dean’s idea to allow you
cretins to maul my glorious devices a few times a year.
But he is the Dean so I cannot argue, only seethe with
repressed hatred that I will take out on you should you so
much as breathe incorrectly in the general direction of my
machines. Are we clear?”

The row of Villains nodded in resentful silence.
Even Red didn’t dare try his posturing here. Elliot glanced
down the line and saw that the big red bully looked kind
of like he was about to pee his pants. Elliot chuckled at
the mental image of Red crying he stood in a puddle of
his own urine.

In an instant Sarge was standing in front of him,
almost nose to nose, and his breath smelled like tuna fish.
Elliot despised tuna fish. His stomach turned and he
realized that even though he’d been living among them
for a while it still struck him as odd that a full-fledged
Villain would have eaten something as pedestrian as
tuna fish for lunch.

“You have a problem with my rules?” Sarge
demanded.
Elliot shook his head, “No sir,” he said, pleased that
his voice didn’t waver.
“What’s your name?”
“Ell… Uh, Zombie.”
Sarge’s eyes fell to Innya’s and Elliot’s entwined fingers and when he raised them again to meet Elliot’s gaze
his mouth was twisted into a maniacal grin. “You afraid
of me, boy? You need to hold your girlfriend’s hand so you
won’t piss in your diaper?”
Innya squeezed his hand and it gave Elliot the courage to say the first thing that popped into his head. “Not
at all. I’m merely squeezing her hand because it reminds
me of what else I was squeezing before I left for class this
morning and what I’ll be squeezing in a bathroom stall
come lunchtime.”
Elliot sensed the collective intake of breath from
the Villains surrounding him but he didn’t dare look. The
room was so quiet it he could hear the soft hum of computer fans and processors. He didn’t know how long he
stood there, his mind ticking off the moments he had
left to live, before Sarge laughed, which sounded like
two rusty robots rubbing up against each other in a lewd
manner.
“You’ve come a long way since you arrived, Zombie.
If your daddy gave a shit about you he might actually be
proud.”
As Sarge walked down the line to continue berating the other students, Innya’s grip on his hand grew even
tighter. Elliot turned to her, unshed tears in his eyes and
she shook her head minutely. She was right. Not only
would he get his ass kicked if he called out Sarge, but if
he cried he would lose all of the street cred he had worked
so hard for. Sarge had won but Elliot didn’t have to be
happy about it.
He stopped listening as Sarge continued his monologue concerning the rules of the room and the assignment
they all had to complete by the end of the day.
“You should pay attention,” whispered Innya after a
while, “This is actually some pretty cool stuff.” He wasn’t
sure how she knew his mind was wandering but she did.
Was it wrong that as long as Innya was paying attention
he didn’t feel like he had to? Probably, but he couldn’t
help it. He was too busy thinking about squeezing several
of Innya’s best assets.
“You have your orders. Have at it, maggots, but
if you break one of my girls you’re going to die,” Sarge
called out and the line broke and students surged into the
area of the room with the blinking, bleeping instruments.
He followed Innya to a computer station farthest
away from the door. They sat down side by side and as
Elliot stared at the series of green numbers scrolling
across the screen he thought that perhaps Innya had been
right. He now had no idea what he was looking at. Or
was he supposed to be looking for something?
He kept his eyes on the screen as if by sheer force
of will he could extract the answers but just in case that
didn’t work he asked Innya, “So what exactly are we supposed to be doing here?”
“We’re supposed to be… Well, that’s interesting…”
said Innya.
Innya wasn’t normally given to outbursts of nonsense and it caught Elliot’s attention. He looked over
at her but she was distracted by something on the large
screen on the nearby wall. He shifted his gaze to see what
had caught her attention and saw the map with a few
dots in the middle of a map of the U.S., with lines drawn
between those red dots and four boxes of text on the right
hand side of the screen. Elliot read the first name, “The
Ginger,”before the map changed and the names gave way
to other names and pictures.
He had that feeling like when he knew he forgot
something but he couldn’t remember what it was, exactly.
He didn’t like it, it made him feel a little unfinished and
hollow inside and it was bound to drive him nuts until he
figured it out.“What did you see up there that was interesting?” he asked Innya, hoping that her answer would help
him remember that thing he didn’t know he had forgotten.
“Nothing,” she said so quickly that Elliot knew she
was lying. Then, “Oh, look. We have a visitor.”
Elliot followed her eyes just in time to see a female
student lift what looked like a rocket launcher to her
shoulder. The girl wore gray sweatpants, a faded blue
sweatshirt, and had her plain brown hair tied back in a
sloppy ponytail. Elliot had only seen her once before: on
the bus to the ill-fated bank robbery.
“Hey, isn’t that Polly?” Elliot asked.
“Yes. And it must be that time of the month,” said
Innya.
“What does that mean?”
“It means duck,” said Innya as she tucked herself under the desk, pulling Elliot down with her. They
couldn’t see Polly from where they were but they heard
a thin, metallic thump as the rocket launcher went off.
Then the air was rent by screams and an explosion that
vibrated Elliot’s eardrums and the sounds of shattering
glass and bits of rubble. Billowing smoke and clouds of
dust filled the room. Sarge was screaming and Villains
were scattering, some even spilling through the hole in
the wall as Elliot and Innya emerged from their hiding
place. A quick glance showed the perpetrator of the crime
was long gone.
“What was that?” Elliot asked in a daze. Golden
sparks showered down onto the busted desk next to
theirs. He shook his head to clear the muffled buzzing in
his ears. It didn’t work. He had never seen an explosion in
person and it was, for lack of a better word, loud. Sarge’s
beloved computers were toast. The delicate glass screens
with the gracefully arcing lines of red and green and blue
were shattered. And there was a gaping hole where the
wall-sized screen used to be. Winter wind, laced with
snowflakes, blew in through the hole, dampening the few
flames that still burned.
“I think that was our ticket to a free day.”
“I thought this class was important.”
“It was. Now it’s not.”
Innya stood and ran towards the new opening in
the wall and Elliot followed. If nothing else he didn’t
want to be standing anywhere near Sarge when the reality of the situation finally dawned on him and he realized
just how much he had lost.
He joined a grinning Innya on the other side of the
wall, pleased that he was handling all of this as well as
he was, and then realized why she was smiling so widely.
They were off campus. The rocket had blown not only
through the classroom wall, but through the high, brick
outer wall of the VA as well. There were now about a
dozen Villains surging through the hole into the street.
Some of them headed into the unsuspecting town and
others turned down the road that led to other cities, presumably to hitchhike away from the VA and start their
lives anew. The day stretched out before them all, bright
with freedom and possibility.
“So, that was Polly, huh?” Elliot asked as they
started to walk towards town without even discussing it.
“Yep, or as some of the others like to call her,
‘P.M.Essie’.”
“Girls are mean,” Elliot said.
“Totally. But I thought that was kind of a given,”
“Especially during that time of the month,” Elliot
joked and Innya threw him a look that made him wish he
hadn’t opened his mouth.
“What do you even know about it other than the
jokes of comedians and vapid sitcoms?”
Elliot admitted, “Nothing at all.” He almost added
an apology but figured that would just make her angrier
so he bit his tongue.
“Besides, some of us don’t need that kind of hormonal cocktail to boost our bitchy attitudes. You’re lucky
I’m one of those because I’ve learned to control it. Polly
obviously still has some problems controlling her anger,
though I’ve never seen her be so destructive before. They
usually lock her up when she’s feeling all ‘kill-the-world’.
Maybe she broke free.”
“Like a werewolf whose friends chain him up
during the full moon so he doesn’t hurt anyone,” Elliot
mused, trying to relate to this monthly female insanity.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Nevermind.”
Innya lapsed into silence and though that always
made Elliot a little uncomfortable he welcomed the
moment because he had his own issues to think about,
namely, what had Innya seen on the screen right before
all hell broke loose? He knew that she had lied when she
said it was nothing. He wasn’t even sure how he knew,
perhaps it was the way she had answered him so quickly,
as if she was hiding something. He kept seeing the name
“The Ginger” in his mind’s eye and felt that it should be
jogging something in his mind. After a while he realized
that he needed to try to get Innya to tell him what she
had seen again. And even if she backhanded him maybe it
would shake the missing pieces loose in his brain, which
would be a win-win in a demented way.
He finally worked up the nerve to ask just as they
reached the edge of town. “What did you see on that
screen that you found interesting?” he blurted.
Innya stopped walking but didn’t look at him. Her
mouth was taut and her eyes narrowed to slits that told
Elliot he should probably have warmed her up to the idea
of talking about it instead of just caving to his raging case
of verbal diarrhea. To soften the question he added, “You
know, what you were looking at on the big screen before
the rocket launcher… happened…” He let his voice trail
off when Innya still didn’t turn around.
“Why don’t you tell me what you saw?” she asked,
starting forward once more.
Elliot kept one eye trained on her while the other
scanned the sidewalk before them for any patches of ice.
He didn’t want her to be able to change the subject by
taunting him if he tripped. “I saw a name, ‘The Ginger’
right before the names changed. But you looked really
intent on something up there so I think you saw something else. What was it?”
She glanced across the street, where a group of three
girls were traveling in the same direction as Elliot and
Innya. They looked like regular teenagers in their jeans
and heavy coats but when one of the girls took off her
glove and ran her hand across the large front window of a
boutique for women’s shoes and the glass shimmered and
melted beneath her touch, he realized that they weren’t
the only Villains who had headed towards town.
Elliot and Innya kept walking but he looked back
to see the shiny liquefied glass oozing down the stucco
and the girls helping themselves to the shoes on display.
“Interesting power,” he muttered.
“The
bodoh
is going to get us all in trouble because
she can’t keep her hot little hands in her pockets.”
“We’re already in trouble. But isn’t she just doing
what’s in her nature to do?”
“Sounds like your Villain training is finally paying off.” Abruptly Innya turned on Elliot, shoved him up
against the side of post office and pressed her body against
his. She made some noise in the back of her throat that
sounded strangely like a growl, which turned his insides
into instant pudding.
“Did you just growl?” he managed to ask before
Innya crushed his mouth with hers. Her lips parted and
Elliot took the hint, his tongue delving into her mouth
and swirling around her tongue with vigor. His hands
moved to Innya’s hips and he pulled her roughly against
him and she practically purred against his mouth.
This is heaven, thought Elliot as Innya slipped her
hand between them and started dragging it lower across
his belly. He lost himself in the moment, the coconut
scent of her new shampoo, the taste of her strawberry lip
gloss. He forgot where he was and what he was supposed
to be doing. What was he supposed to be doing? She just
felt so good with the length of her body pressed against
his that he couldn’t think straight.
Still, something nagged him about this sudden
public display of affection. And as he heard the thieving
girls from across the street call out, “Get a room!” and, “I
wanna watch!” he came back to himself and realized what
Innya had been doing.
With great regret he withdrew his tongue from her
mouth and closed his lips. As he pushed her away and
held her at arm’s length his libido cried for revenge and
took out a hit on him. Innya was grinning, which only
confirmed his suspicions.
“You were trying to distract me,” he said, his voice
hoarse with desire. He reached down and adjusted himself as his tight black jeans had become much tighter in
the past few moments.
“Guilty,” she said.
“Just tell me what you saw,” he said, certain now that
this line of questioning wasn’t going to get him anywhere.
“No.”
Innya turned and walked away from him but Elliot
grabbed her and pulled her back to face him, surprised
how quickly his hormones, having been denied sexual
release, morphed into anger. “Tell me,” he demanded.
“You‘re not ready to know,” she said. She shook off
his hands and added,“Be careful how you touch me in the
future if you want to keep both of your arms.”
Elliot followed her but didn’t try to touch her again,
knowing that Innya didn’t make idle threats. “You don’t
get to decide what I’m ready to know. Only I can decide
that because I am me and you are not.” Okay, he thought,
so that probably wasn’t the best argument but that’s all he
had at the moment.
“So I tell you and then you shoot the messenger?
Not a chance, dead boy. And I think you had better drop
the issue because we’ve already got some people watching
us from the window of that café across the street and I’d
rather they didn’t call the cops.”
Elliot stopped walking and called after her, “Tell
me what you saw, you evil bitch.”
Innya turned around, a smile on her lips. She
was probably about to thank him for the compliment
but they were interrupted by someone saying, “That was
uncalled for.”
Innya and Elliot both looked over to see Dean
Woon watching them from the inside of his black Escalade. “Get in,” he said, his tone leaving no room for
argument.
“How did you know where we were?” Innya asked
as she climbed into the passenger seat. Elliot sighed and
sat in the back. He fastened his seat belt as they pulled
away from the curb and the Dean performed a highly
illegal U-turn in the middle of the street.
“You were walking down the street in broad daylight,” the Dean said, “It would have been hard to miss
you, especially since we knew you had left. Also, we have
all students tagged with locators.”