Every Day is Like Doomsday (9 page)

“You know what?” he said with a smile as he
thought about the implausibility of this conversation, “I
actually have.”
“See. Now you know what I’m talking about. You
just…
pferde
.” Innya’s gaze shifted as she looked down
the street they were crossing. “Walk faster and don’t look
that way.”
Of course Elliot couldn’t just take her word for it.
He had to look. And as he did he saw a very large, burly
man in a pair of jeans and a royal blue hoodie coming
out of a liquor store. There was a flat, brown paper bag
beneath his arm and a bottle of something alcoholic
wrapped in another brown paper bag in his hand.
“Who’s that?” Elliot asked just as the man looked
up and Elliot recognized him. Most people probably
wouldn’t have recognized him because they only saw him
masked but Elliot had met him without his mask on several occasions because he was his father’s favorite crime
fighter. Mr. Magnificent. And he had seen them. And
now they were going to get into trouble.
“Run,” said Innya and took off without waiting for
him to follow her.
“Hey, get back here!” shouted Mr. Magnificent. He
started to run towards Elliot and so Elliot took off as well.
Adrenaline only let him catch up to Innya quickly and then
they were neck and neck running through the yellow pools
of light created by the streetlamps. Elliot heard shattering
glass and a curse and knew that Mr. Magnificent had just
dropped his bottle of liquor and by the sound of his voice
he knew that he had to be gaining on them.
Elliot tried to run faster but his earlier exertions
left him ill equipped to keep this pace up for very long.
Luckily they had already walked a lot of the way back and
they reached the VA in record time. Or at least what he
assumed was record time. Elliot stopped but Innya kept
on running.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, panting and catching up
to her once more, “Why don’t we stop?”
“Keep going. You’ll see.”
Within moments they had crossed the red paint
line that marked the boundary between their city and the
next. Innya grabbed his shirt and pulled him to a stop
beside her. Then, breathing heavily, she turned around.
They watched Mr. Magnificent slow from a sprint to
a jog, then to a walk. He wasn’t even out of breath. It must
have something to do with his awesome super strength and
stamina. He actually came all the way up to them and then
stood on the other side of the line, facing them.
“Hello, nemesis,” said Innya with a teasing smile.
“Hello,” said Mr. Magnificent said far too calmly
for someone who had just sprinted several miles. “You’re
not supposed to be off campus. This makes twice now.”
“Twice that you’ve seen me, anyway. And you can’t
do a thing about it because I’m outside of your jurisdiction. So, you see, we are at an impasse.”
To prove her point, she turned around and stuck
her butt out at him. Her butt cheeks alone crossed the
red line and Mr. Magnificent reached for them with both
hands, as if he could catch hold of them and drag her
entire body back across the line and cart her off to jail or
wherever it was he took the Villains he caught.
But Innya was too fast, and she hauled her derriere
back across the line before the swipe was completed. “Oh,
you dirty old man, trying to touch a young girl’s behind.
You should be arrested for that. Elliot, make note of this
so that we can leak it to the papers tomorrow morning.”
“Uh…” Elliot said, dumbfounded that he was even
in this situation. “Innya, maybe you should stop.” She
didn’t. She just kept sticking her butt, her foot, her fingers,
her boobs across the line and whatever it was, Mr. Magnificent always took the bait and tried to grab it. Elliot
felt like he was watching a couple of children teasing each
other with neither of them having the power to end the
argument for good, or a battle between bugs bunny and
Elmer Fudd, or Wil-E-Coyote and the roadrunner. No
matter how he looked at it, it was cartoonish and silly and
Elliot wasn’t at all sure he wanted to be a part of it.
“Look,I can still get away even with my eyes closed,”
Innya said. Then she proceeded to prove it. Mr. Magnificent seemed to grow tired of the game and instead of
playing grab-ass started digging through the pocket of
his trench coat.
When he pulled out his hand Elliot almost
screamed, “A gun!” But instead it came out timid and terrified and sounding more like he was asking if it was a
gun, more like, “A gun?”
Mr. Magnificent smiled at Elliot and Elliot turned
to Innya. “Come on. He’s got a gun. You’ve pissed him
off and now he’s going to shoot us. Are you happy now?
Knock it off, Innya.”
“He won’t shoot us. He’d get into trouble,” she
responded with her eyes still closed. She didn’t even
bother with pulling her butt back over the line now that
he wasn’t grabbing for it. She just let it hang there like
an incredibly beautiful target as Mr. Magnificent finished
putting the tiny gun together, took aim, and as Elliot
watched, impotent, fired at Innya’s butt.
“You asshole!” she shrieked. But there was a poisonous dart sticking out of her flesh so instead of coming
out strong, her angry assertion sounded more like, “You
assssssssssssssshoooooooooooooooooooooo…” Elliot
assumed that if she had still been conscious that last
consonant would have been pronounced.
“Oh God!” Elliot said in a shrill voice that he hoped
fully conveyed the panic that was currently gripping his
body and making him want to soil himself. “Oh God, you
killed her.”
Mr. Magnificent smiled, seemed every pleased with
himself, unscrewed the barrel from the butt of the gun,
placed everything in his pocket and then finally looked
at Elliot. Recognition seemed to light on his face as it
dawned on him that he had met Elliot before.
“Hey, you’re Senator Vane’s kid, right?” he asked.
He had the croaky voice of a man who had smoked three
packs a day for twenty years. He reminded Elliot, as he
always had, of Hulk Hogan; not the young, flashy Hulk
Hogan, but the older, sadder Hulk Hogan with strangelooking muscles stretched taut beneath old, orange skin.
His breath smelled of Old E.
“I am. But what does that matter now? You killed
her. My only friend.”
“If she was your only friend then you have problems, kid. She’s a bad seed, this one. I’ve been chasing her
almost every night since she got to the school. I’d stay
away from her if I were you.”
“Well that won’t be hard, will it, seeing as how she’s
dead
?”
“No she’s not.That was only a tranquilizer dart. She
was right. I can’t kill the students or I’d get into way more
trouble than you would for sneaking out in the first place.”
Elliot stopped a moment as his heart settled back
down in his chest and stopped flapping all over his rib
cage like a psychotic bird. “If you’ll get into trouble then
why’d you chase her?”
“For one, she has instigated me every night. I’ll bet
she led you down this road because she knew that today
was my liquor store day.”
“You have a liquor store day?” Elliot asked, getting
more confused by the second.
“Yes.”
“Is today porn day, too?” he ventured sarcastically.
“As a matter of fact it is, but that’s none of your
concern. The other reason I chase her is because… well…
have you
looked
at her while she’s running? She’s not
a bad cat to be chasing. That ass…” and then his voice
faded off and the look of wistful longing on his face as he
started at Innya’s comatose form lying in the street made
Elliot shudder.
“That is just wrong. She was right.You are a pervert.”
“Takes one to know one. Take it from me, kid. This
one is a bad seed.” He started to walk away but Elliot
suddenly had a question.
“Wait! When was the last time you talked to my
dad?” he asked.
“Sure, I’ll tell him you said ‘hi’. Goodnight, kid.”
And then he turned and jogged back toward town.
Elliot watched until the superhero was long gone, then
looked down at Innya. How the hell he was going to get
her back into the VA without rousing suspicion? There
was only one answer: he had to carry her.
He knelt on the asphalt, hoisted her awkwardly
onto his shoulder like he had seen people doing in the
movies, and started to walk, or rather stumble, back
towards the hole in the VA’s compound wall. He knew
she was short and slight but she was lighter than he had
imagined. It was easy work and he gave credit to the
adrenaline that flooded his system and made his muscles
looser. He would probably pay for all of this impromptu
exercise tomorrow.
He was just in sight of the hole in the fence when
he saw three figures walking toward it from the inside.
Elliot quickly jumped behind a shrub, dumping Innya’s
body unceremoniously into the grass because it was much
harder to jump out of sight while carrying a person over
your shoulder than he had expected.
From his hiding place he watched the others bend
back the fence and escape. They passed close by his hiding place but never even looked in his direction. As they
walked brazenly under a streetlight, no doubt completely
unaware of the epic battle between good and evil that had
just taken place at the nearby city limits, Elliot made out
the faces of Red, Sonic, and Ventriloquist.
He wondered what they were doing out of the school
at night, positive that it was something unpleasant. But he
was also surprised to find that he and Innya weren’t the
only ones using the broken fence to escape. He had always
imagined that the VA would have taken extreme security
measures out of necessity. Now he realized that it would
take something extreme, like shock collars, to keep the students in if they wanted to get out. The VA just didn’t have
the means for such an effort so it opted for broken fences.
Now that he was on the other side of those fences Elliot
certainly wasn’t going to complain.
Once the coast was clear he hefted Innya back over
his shoulder, whimpered as his exhausted muscles protested and almost dropped her out of spite, and trudged
to the opening. He propped her up against the fence as
he bent the chain links out of the way. Then he climbed
inside and pulled her body through the hole.
“She’d better appreciate this,” Elliot muttered to
himself as he hoisted her back up on his shoulder and continued to trudge through the campus looking for the dorm
rooms. She felt a little heavier this time and he stumbled a
bit as he tried to center her weight across his shoulders. He
tried to stay close to the wall and in the shadows, noting
which other students were out at that late hour.
There was a kid hanging bat-like from a streetlight.
He saw a few kids with cans of spray paint marking various things on the ground, wearing robes and chanting.
He steered clear of that group lest he become some sort
of human sacrifice. And then just as he was about to turn
the final corner that he thought would take them to the
dorms he spotted a behemoth of a man walking in his
direction. In the mist and the low light the creature truly
looked like a monster. Elliot sat very still in the shadows,
wondering where to go.
He watched with fascination, his legs getting shakier, as Lester, somehow sans muzzle and straightjacket,
waddled down the street, looking from side to side as
if trying to choose between all of the delicacies in the
buffet. It took a while but it appeared he settled on an
old U.S. postal service mailbox that had been left behind
when the military compound had become the school. He
knelt and wrenched it free to the sounds of screaming
twisting metal. And when it finally did come loose Elliot
was treated to the sight of something he hoped to never
have to see again but he knew would haunt him for the
rest of his life.
In the silence of the night, the silence that wasn’t
filled with chanting and hoots and hollers and other
general kid noises, Elliot heard a popping sound like
someone’s shoulder being dislocated and then Lester’s
mouth opened and it didn’t stop. He maneuvered his bulk
so that he was looking down on the mailbox and slowly
started to lower his open maw over the rusting metal bin.
Elliot watched his lips sliding down inch by inch, the
saliva running down the sides, and heard his teeth grating against the metal. And he wanted to barf.
“It’s disgusting, isn’t it?” asked a voice to Elliot’s
left. Elliot jumped and saw one of the male orderlies
who had wrestled Lester in the classroom earlier in the
day. The man’s eyes were locked, unblinking, on Lester,
as if studying him.
“Yeah. Gross.”
As soon as Elliot spoke the man seemed to snap out
of his trance and turned to Elliot. “You should get inside.
His play time is almost over and he doesn’t like being
muzzled again. It’s not for the faint of heart.
Nothing here is for the faint of heart,Elliot thought.
But he said, “Sure thing,” and headed off to his dorm.
He was so eager to be in bed and asleep that he
almost ran. Innya’s head slapped gently against his back
as he did so, her hands waving wildly, her legs almost
kicking in his crotch but missing by just that much. He
was inside, in the elevator, and then in his empty dorm
room before he even knew it.
If Vlad is out I just hope he’s out for the night, he
thought. He laid Innya in his bed but he took the pillow.
Exhausted, he emptied his coat pockets onto his desk,
took of his coat and hung it over his desk chair. Once he
was situated on the floor and as comfortable as he could
be given the circumstances, his stomach growled loudly at
him. He was too tired to care. He was just falling asleep,
too tired to even wonder what this night meant for him,
when Innya started snoring in huge, buzzing waves of
aural annoyance. It sounded like someone was waving
a chainsaw above his head. After a while, however, even
that faded into the background and he fell asleep.

She had woken up in a strange bed in a room that
smelled like someone had boiled old socks, cabbage, and
dog feces in a rusty pot and then left it in the sun all day.Her
panic had faded once she saw Vlad the creep asleep in his
bed and Elliot on the floor. At first she had thought it was
very nice of Elliot to bring her back to his room instead of
leaving her outside with Mr. Magnificent but when she sat
up her right butt cheek smarted, which made her wonder
what had happened. Hence her current position: perched
on Elliot’s chest and glaring at him like a giant bird of prey
would glare at a tiny rabbit wriggling within its claws.

She had pinned Elliot’s arms beneath her knees
so even though he tried he couldn’t push her off of him.
“And why does my butt hurt?” she asked a moment later
because she figured the two were related.

“Air…” Elliot gasped. At first she thought he was
joking because she certainly wasn’t
that
heavy but then
his face started to turn purple. She let up just enough for
him to breathe but held her position.

He took a few gasping breaths and once the normal color returned to his face he said, “Mr. Magnificent
shot you in the butt with a tranquilizer dart last night. I
couldn’t just leave you in the middle of the street and I
didn’t know where your dorm room was so I brought you
here. Vlad wasn’t here when I fell asleep. Nothing else
happened. I swear.”

She already knew that nothing had happened.
Elliot just didn’t have that particular brand of evil in him.
But just to keep him on his toes she pretended to study
his face for a sign that he was telling the truth. After a
moment, seemingly satisfied, she ruffled his unruly brown
hair and stepped off of his chest. “I believe you.”

Elliot coughed and sat up, looking cross. “You’re
welcome.”
Innya ignored him. She wasn’t one to give thanks
because giving thanks was for suckers. She turned on the
TV and the disturbingly bright world of the Teletubbies
filled the screen. She shivered. “I am really disturbed by
these guys. They’re so creepy. Let’s see some world news.”
Innya flipped channels until she hit one of the 24
hour news stations and stopped when she saw Elliot’s
name across the bottom of a grainy surveillance video of
him letting Greg and Billy into the football game with
their homemade bomb.
“Hey, it’s you,” she looked over her shoulder to
make sure he was watching. He had sat up and was staring at the TV. His skin paled as he realized what they
were showing. He looked as if he might throw up.
“I can’t believe they have footage of that,” he said
in disbelief.
“Of course they had surveillance. How else do you
think they caught you so fast?”
“No one ever told me.”
“This was a first time thing and they expected it to
be a disaster so they came prepared.”
“Oh.”
And then the picture on the TV changed to another
grainy shot, this time of a boy and a girl standing in the
middle of a poorly lit street talking to a large man who
was wearing a trench coat. Then the girl on the screen
turned around the bent over and started shaking her
behind at the man as if she were a stripper.
“Oh my G.O.D.,” Innya said with a smile. She
couldn’t believe that there was footage of what they
had done last night but it didn’t really bother her like it
seemed to bother Elliot. She watched the whole thing,
the taunting, the attempted grabbing, and thought that
her butt looked awfully cute in her jeans.
“I can’t believe this,” Elliot moaned at her side.
She ignored his moaning and turned up the volume
just as the scene switched to live footage of Elliot’s father
on Capitol Hill, scowling and waving away the cameras
that hounded him as he walked to the entrance.
Reporters hammered him with questions like,
“How did your son avoid jail time after trying to blow up
the school?”
“Did he get off just because he’s your son?”
“Did you pull strings to get him sentenced to the
VA instead of banished?”
Through it all Elliot’s dad ignored the reporters
and kept walking. Innya watched his expression carefully as the camera zoomed in. Something in the way
he moved gave her the impression that he was slightly
pleased with the attention he was getting.
“Why isn’t he defending me?” Elliot asked pathetically. She felt a little bad for him. At least she knew what
she was and her parents embraced it. Elliot was stuck in a
place with a bunch of people he never should have had to
associate with but neither could he ever return to his old life.
Someone in the crowd shouted, “How do you
respond to allegations that you are a consultant in the
firm that set up the VA?”
Senator Vane stopped. He turned toward the
camera, opened his mouth, and then Tinky Winky was
digging through his enormous purse and pulling out a
giant pink stick to give to the other Teletubbies.
Innya and Elliot both turned around to see Vlad
sitting up in bed, holding a remote, and looking sleepy.
“My TV,” he said.
“Can it, pedophile,” she said and snatched the
remote from his hand and changed it back. But the story
was over and the program had moved on to the ballooning prices of wine and champagne and cream sauce now
that France was trying to shut itself off from the rest of
the world like a crazy old man who wore tinfoil on his
head to protect his thoughts from alien mind control rays.
Innya looked at Elliot,who had stood up and started
looking through his suitcases for some clothes.She couldn’t
see his face but everything about him screamed ‘sadness’to
her. She wasn’t used to feeling bad for anyone and so she
was shocked to realize that she felt bad for him. He was
like a lost puppy dog and though some Villains preferred
to torture small animals she wasn’t one of those.
She had no experience in comforting someone in
pain and so she said the only thing she could think of,
which was, “That sucks.”
Elliot looked at her then and she could tell he was
trying hard not to cry. A sarcastic comment danced on
the tip of her tongue but he just looked so miserable that
it died before it passed her lips. Instead of making fun
of him she leaned in and kissed him on the lips. It was a
chaste kiss, only lasting a moment and certainly not the
best showcase of her talents, but Elliot’s demeanor lightened instantly.
When she pulled back Elliot looked shocked.
“What was that for?”
“You were sad,” she started but when his face softened and she thought he might try to hug her she added,
“It was annoying. I had to stop it.”
“And you thought a kiss would be the best way to
stop it?”
“How else do you think I get what I want? Now
let’s go get breakfast.” She led the way to the cafeteria
without bothering to see if he was following her.
Breakfast was probably one of the healthiest meals
at the VA, with eggs and fruit and waffles or pancakes,
and for that reason Innya thought it was disgusting.
Elliot seemed so happy to finally be eating that he didn’t
even comment on the fact that Innya’s plate only had one
waffle drowned in so much syrup it had completely lost
its waffle-like shape. Maybe eating would be enough to
take his mind off of his father’s cruelty.
“You want to go back to the arcade?” she asked.
“You can kill things and pretend they’re your dad or your
friends. It will make you feel better.”
Elliot swallowed his food and said glumly, “I don’t
know. Maybe. This town isn’t that big and I don’t relish
the thought of running into my friends again. If I have to
watch them make out…”
She rolled her eyes. He was really stretching Innya’s
empathy muscles, which were sore and stiff from nonuse.
“If we saw that I’m sure you could think of some way to
enact revenge,and they’d deserve it.Or I could just deposit
you in your room and instruct you not to leave for the
next two days because at least there you’ll be safe. Then I
can spend the weekend doing what I want without ‘Black
Hole Elliot’ sucking all the happy out of me. And don’t
think putting on a puppy dog face will get another kiss.”
“Let’s go to the arcade,” Elliot said without hesitation and took another bite of eggs.
“Good choice.”