Doorbusters (1)
Nov. 26th, 2011 12:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hwrnmnbsolThe Omnimax. Shit. It's been five years since I hit the Omnimax. It's been five years since I told myself I would never go back. That's a hellish life, hitting the sales as hard as possible, getting what you can and getting out while you still can. After a while, even a hard man longs for a quiet living. He swears to live out the days that remain to him in peace, far from the megastores, far from the crowds and the screams of the dying and the screams of the living.
But times change, you know. We have to bring up the next generation. And the next generation wants things. My Bruno, he reads the circulars. I tell him not to, but he picks them out of the gutter. And the circulars tell him things. They tell him: there's a sale, Bruno. It's a big sale. We're having a big HUGE sale at the Omnimax, Bruno, and all the shit you've ever wanted is here, it's cheap, we're practically GIVING IT AWAY.
But there's a catch, Bruno, the goddamn circulars tell my boy. You can get that Panaround Triddy for fifty bucks, cash or charge – but you gotta be one of the first fifty through the door. And it's one day only, Bruno. One day.
Black Friday.
I try to talk him out of it. Bruno, I tell him, it's a trap. You KNOW it's a trap. They want you bad. But Bruno's not listening. He's thinking of a fifty dollar triddy in his living room. How bad can it be? So my Bruno figures he'll round up some of his buddies, all tough kids, and they'll hit the Omnimax hard.
Oh, Bruno. You're a good boy, but you wouldn't last five minutes in the Omnimax. Not on Black Friday.
So I tell him I'll come along. We'll make a run of it, me and him and his pals. Maybe we'll even score a nice triddy. Bruno's over the moon. Thanks, da, thanks, he says, tears in his eyes. Sure, boy, I tell him. I don't tell him that I lied to him earlier. The Omnimax doesn't want him bad.
It wants ME.
I look at the half dozen youngsters in my front yard. Shit, they're just kids. What am I doing taking children into a war zone? There's Bruno, a big strong boy, all hands and arms - the picture of his mother, God rest her soul, who we lost at Macy's the day after Christmas. There's his best buddy Scales, who thinks he knows how to use a fire axe. There's the twins, Gamble and Chary, who finish each others' sentences but never correctly. They fight a lot. There's also Lugs, who's bigger than Bruno but soft. We'll lose him early, I figure.
Then there's Irina. Irina is Bruno's girlfriend and she's ninety pounds soaking wet. But there is a hard, cold glint in that girl's eyes. She's always been nice as pie to my boy, but you can tell, when you've been around long enough, who'll stick a knife in somebody who irritates them and who won't. Irina will definitely knife somebody. That's the kind of shopper I'm looking for. That's the person I want on my team. Because on Black Friday, when you look at your fellow shoppers, you'll see that hard, cold look reflected back at you from every other eye in the place.
Okay, says Bruno, here's the plan. We're gonna use bikes. We're gonna roll up to the Omnimax in goddamn motorcycles, push everybody else out of the way, bust down the doors, get our triddy, and…
And what? I ask. Son, how do you plan on getting a huge freaking triddy out of the store when you're on a cycle? He doesn't have a response. Awkward moment.
Okay, I say. Let's think about plan B. You want a triddy? Fine, we'll get a triddy. But we're going to need the right tools for the job.
I've never let him in The Barn. I undo the padlock and roll up the door. The floodlights still work. I show Bruno and the kids my Shopping Cart.
It runs on diesel, an even thousand horse, V-16. I took a cow-catcher off a tractor and mounted it on the front. It's got twin machine guns forwards, scything blades along the running boards, and there's a deck behind the engineer's cabin with a flamethrower mounted on a swing turret. The whole center section is a big open basket for the non-choosy bargain hunter. There's even a pallet jack on the back, and handholds on the sides for authorized passengers. The handholds are grounded, so I can electrify the rest of the hull. That's for the unauthorized passengers. There'll be plenty of those. It's Black Friday.
The kids are giddy with their new toy. Only me and Irina are sober about this. Think we'll make it? Irina asks me in private.
I could lie to her, but I don't. No, I say. I think we're not going to make it.
She nods. She's cool with that. I think she already knew that, but she's going along anyway. She loves my Bruno.
That Irina. She could be a hell of a shopper.
**
The Shopping Cart tools its way down the freeway. The other cars give us a wide berth. We look somewhat hostile. That's good. It's always wise, when shopping on Black Friday, to look hostile. Bruno's on the flamethrower, and he sends a flare over the heads of anybody who gets close, just to keep 'em honest.
Up ahead of us is the offramp to the mall. There are lots of stores there, including the Omnimax. All of them are running specials today. Few of the cars get off. They're not crazy, like us.
There's a checkpoint at the offramp. Police in riot gear man a barricade. A big sign flashes next to them: ABSOLUTELY NO HEAVY ARMAMENTS PAST THIS POINT. PLEASE SHOP FRIENDLY. Every year they try, our government does. Every year they fail.
I take a hard right long before the offramp. We go offroad, plowing our way through the tall grass and the muddy trench to hop the curb on the feeder road. We zoom past the cops, who shout at us but don't shoot. They're probably afraid we'd return fire. And we would, too. Smart cops. That's probably the last we'll see of the fuzz for this shopping expedition. Only dumb cops try to keep the peace during Black Friday. And the dumb cops probably got whacked an hour ago.
Many of the other stores have been open since midnight, but the circular for the Omnimax says that it opens at seven AM. We're right on schedule. It's six fifty. To get one of the fifty triddies, you can't be late. You also don’t want to be early. To get a triddy in this situation, you've got to be a doorbuster. That means being right on time.
The intersection that goes under the freeway is deserted. The traffic lights are all blinking red. A semi is overturned next to the road. We have to pass it in order to go left under the freeway and reach the Omnimax. I nudge Bruno's shins. Boy, I tell him, light up that truck before we get to it. He tries to give me some lip, but I shake my head and keep pointing. He takes the hint and lets go with the flamethrower. An arc of flame leaps out and bathes the trailer, the hot gasses licking over and behind the truck.
There are, as expected, screams. There are always bandits on Black Friday – people who don't have the guts to risk the hell of the stores, but who figure to waylay the schmucks who come rolling in with cash in hand. No shopper worth his salt gets ambushed by a bandit. Old Zarny survived a stickup before the Big Fridge Giveaway of '48, but he was never the same afterwards – hung himself out of shame. We all felt bad, but he had done what we would have done. We were Shoppers. We had pride.
Whoever's behind that truck isn't quite dead yet. We receive some incoming fire. Small arms stuff, nothing to risk the Shopping Cart. But we have some of the crew clinging to the right side. Lugs is hit. He loses his footing on the running board, holding on by one hand to one of the handles. Irina tries to edge over and grab his wrist, but Lugs can't hold on. He drops away, hits the ground, rolls and lies still.
I told you Lugs would go early. But there's no way we're turning around. I explained all this to Bruno and the rest earlier. When you're shopping, and you lose somebody, you don't stop and go back. You leave them behind. It's better to lose one shopper than lose everybody. You can shop as a team, but in the end, the ultimate lesson of shopping is: it's everybody for themselves.
We turn under the gloom of the overpass. Something is guttering in the darkness, back away from the road. I let 'em be. Probably just vultures looking for easy bones to pick on the way out. We won't be making ourselves easy.
Then we're through the other side, and there's the parking lot, with the stores beyond them. It's as bad as I ever imagined. There are police helicopters overhead, buzzing the place, but they don't swoop low or drop anything anymore. They used to try that, a long time ago, before people started shooting back. Police got wise to the fact that on Black Friday, you don't get between shoppers and deep discounts.
Hardwick's and Grammonica are on fire. There's some kind of a pitched firefight going on in front of Uber*Mart. But things are quiet in front of the Omnimax. That's perfect. That's just the way I want it.
I cut the engines into low gear, so the other shoppers don’t hear us coming, and size up the situation as we glide behind the rows of cars. Long rows of other shoppers are clustered around the doors. They're armed to the teeth and eyeing each other nervously. Of course they're going to shoot each other, eventually, but there's an uneasy truce right now. It'll last until the doors open, and then they'll start taking each other out.
Amateurs.
I check my watch. Six fifty-six. We're too early. I turn the corner, the Shopping Cart's motor grumbling and purring, and line up facing the doors. We're about two hundred yards from the store. The rearmost people in the crowd hear the engine noise. They turn and look at us. They're suspicious, edgy, but they don't know what's about to happen. They definitely don’t turn around and sight their weapons on us. After all, we're WAAAAAAY back here. There's LOTS of other scary people right next to you.
We wait. Waiting four minutes is hard. Bruno keeps licking his lips. Scales nervously chunks his fire axe into the roof of the car next to us, again and again. The twins fight. Irina is quiet. I don't say much either. I just look at my watch.
With twenty seconds left to go, I throw the engine wide open and start rolling for the doors. NOW we have everybody's attention. I turn on the high beams. I scavenged them from a 727 airplane. They're kind of bright. I set the machine guns on automatic.
A large number of shoppers are cut in half immediately, partly from the gunfire, and partly from the blowback as the shots that miss ricochet off the bulletproof glass of the store doors. I don't feel too bad for my fellow bargain-hunters. They would all cheerfully do for me or Bruno. I just got to them before they got to me.
Somebody doesn't get out of the way fast enough. This proves to be a poor move, survival-wise. The cow catcher throws part of them up. The rest goes down, and under the Cart's heavy tires.
We bear down on the doors. The doors are still not open. Bruno cuts loose with the flamethrower, sweeping right to left. The twins have the front positions on the running boards, and they spray shotgun fire into the crowds, who are mostly still engaged in the business of getting the fuck out of my way. Scales and Irina are assigned the task of repelling boarders. Scales does this with his axe. Irina has a chainsaw. I'm not wild about the chainsaw decision; too much chance of mechanical failure. However, I like the girl and am willing to write this off as a failure of youthful exuberance.
The doors are still not open. Goddammit, why are the doors still not open? We are only fifty feet from the doors and my watch says seven, straight up. There's nobody left standing in the killbox in front of the doors. There are people to either side, however, and they've had enough time to get over being scared. Now they're starting to feel anger. Two of them swarm the running boards on the left; Scales decapitates one and starts wrestling the other. Irina shrieks at her crowd as she chops off two hands that look a little grabby; this deters the right. There are, however, people with guns. They start shooting. This is a bad development. Bruno can't light up both sides at once.
Daylight! There is daylight between the doors. They're starting to open. But they're slow, so slow.
Bruno chooses to light up the right side, where his girlfriend is. People are on fire. They are bad people and they want my triddy; they can't have it, or my pity for that matter. A hail of fire crashes in from the left. Scales dies messily and falls off the cart, taking his combatant with him. Three more enemy shoppers jump the running boards on that side. I electrify the hull. They die.
The doors are opening. We hop the curb in front of the door and charge down on the killbox. The doors are opening. But they are not quite open enough.
The cowcatcher hits the doors. We learn that doors that are bulletproof are not necessarily Shopping Cart proof, not when a great wedge-shaped steel blade catches them in the four-foot gap and shears them away. The doors tumble into the door, spilling the armored store-clerks who were opening them, and the Cart rolls over the elderly greeter wearing Neutral colors. I try not to feel bad about that, too. I succeed.
And then we are free and clear, cornering nicely through the wide aisles of the Omnimax, rolling over a kiosk full of disposable cameras, headed towards the rear of the store and Electronics. I can hear the howl of the crowd behind us, following us into the store, but their wrath at us largely forgotten in the wake of them achieving their objective – getting in.
Above me, Bruno howls. I know what he's feeling. He's feeling the surge of adrenaline that comes from successful shopping on Black Friday. I get that. I used to feel that all the time. I just got tired of it, when the cost became too high and I became too jaded.
The Panaround Triddies are stacked up ahead of us. We're going to get ours, that much is plain. That's not the question.
The question is: will we get back out again?
But times change, you know. We have to bring up the next generation. And the next generation wants things. My Bruno, he reads the circulars. I tell him not to, but he picks them out of the gutter. And the circulars tell him things. They tell him: there's a sale, Bruno. It's a big sale. We're having a big HUGE sale at the Omnimax, Bruno, and all the shit you've ever wanted is here, it's cheap, we're practically GIVING IT AWAY.
But there's a catch, Bruno, the goddamn circulars tell my boy. You can get that Panaround Triddy for fifty bucks, cash or charge – but you gotta be one of the first fifty through the door. And it's one day only, Bruno. One day.
Black Friday.
I try to talk him out of it. Bruno, I tell him, it's a trap. You KNOW it's a trap. They want you bad. But Bruno's not listening. He's thinking of a fifty dollar triddy in his living room. How bad can it be? So my Bruno figures he'll round up some of his buddies, all tough kids, and they'll hit the Omnimax hard.
Oh, Bruno. You're a good boy, but you wouldn't last five minutes in the Omnimax. Not on Black Friday.
So I tell him I'll come along. We'll make a run of it, me and him and his pals. Maybe we'll even score a nice triddy. Bruno's over the moon. Thanks, da, thanks, he says, tears in his eyes. Sure, boy, I tell him. I don't tell him that I lied to him earlier. The Omnimax doesn't want him bad.
It wants ME.
I look at the half dozen youngsters in my front yard. Shit, they're just kids. What am I doing taking children into a war zone? There's Bruno, a big strong boy, all hands and arms - the picture of his mother, God rest her soul, who we lost at Macy's the day after Christmas. There's his best buddy Scales, who thinks he knows how to use a fire axe. There's the twins, Gamble and Chary, who finish each others' sentences but never correctly. They fight a lot. There's also Lugs, who's bigger than Bruno but soft. We'll lose him early, I figure.
Then there's Irina. Irina is Bruno's girlfriend and she's ninety pounds soaking wet. But there is a hard, cold glint in that girl's eyes. She's always been nice as pie to my boy, but you can tell, when you've been around long enough, who'll stick a knife in somebody who irritates them and who won't. Irina will definitely knife somebody. That's the kind of shopper I'm looking for. That's the person I want on my team. Because on Black Friday, when you look at your fellow shoppers, you'll see that hard, cold look reflected back at you from every other eye in the place.
Okay, says Bruno, here's the plan. We're gonna use bikes. We're gonna roll up to the Omnimax in goddamn motorcycles, push everybody else out of the way, bust down the doors, get our triddy, and…
And what? I ask. Son, how do you plan on getting a huge freaking triddy out of the store when you're on a cycle? He doesn't have a response. Awkward moment.
Okay, I say. Let's think about plan B. You want a triddy? Fine, we'll get a triddy. But we're going to need the right tools for the job.
I've never let him in The Barn. I undo the padlock and roll up the door. The floodlights still work. I show Bruno and the kids my Shopping Cart.
It runs on diesel, an even thousand horse, V-16. I took a cow-catcher off a tractor and mounted it on the front. It's got twin machine guns forwards, scything blades along the running boards, and there's a deck behind the engineer's cabin with a flamethrower mounted on a swing turret. The whole center section is a big open basket for the non-choosy bargain hunter. There's even a pallet jack on the back, and handholds on the sides for authorized passengers. The handholds are grounded, so I can electrify the rest of the hull. That's for the unauthorized passengers. There'll be plenty of those. It's Black Friday.
The kids are giddy with their new toy. Only me and Irina are sober about this. Think we'll make it? Irina asks me in private.
I could lie to her, but I don't. No, I say. I think we're not going to make it.
She nods. She's cool with that. I think she already knew that, but she's going along anyway. She loves my Bruno.
That Irina. She could be a hell of a shopper.
**
The Shopping Cart tools its way down the freeway. The other cars give us a wide berth. We look somewhat hostile. That's good. It's always wise, when shopping on Black Friday, to look hostile. Bruno's on the flamethrower, and he sends a flare over the heads of anybody who gets close, just to keep 'em honest.
Up ahead of us is the offramp to the mall. There are lots of stores there, including the Omnimax. All of them are running specials today. Few of the cars get off. They're not crazy, like us.
There's a checkpoint at the offramp. Police in riot gear man a barricade. A big sign flashes next to them: ABSOLUTELY NO HEAVY ARMAMENTS PAST THIS POINT. PLEASE SHOP FRIENDLY. Every year they try, our government does. Every year they fail.
I take a hard right long before the offramp. We go offroad, plowing our way through the tall grass and the muddy trench to hop the curb on the feeder road. We zoom past the cops, who shout at us but don't shoot. They're probably afraid we'd return fire. And we would, too. Smart cops. That's probably the last we'll see of the fuzz for this shopping expedition. Only dumb cops try to keep the peace during Black Friday. And the dumb cops probably got whacked an hour ago.
Many of the other stores have been open since midnight, but the circular for the Omnimax says that it opens at seven AM. We're right on schedule. It's six fifty. To get one of the fifty triddies, you can't be late. You also don’t want to be early. To get a triddy in this situation, you've got to be a doorbuster. That means being right on time.
The intersection that goes under the freeway is deserted. The traffic lights are all blinking red. A semi is overturned next to the road. We have to pass it in order to go left under the freeway and reach the Omnimax. I nudge Bruno's shins. Boy, I tell him, light up that truck before we get to it. He tries to give me some lip, but I shake my head and keep pointing. He takes the hint and lets go with the flamethrower. An arc of flame leaps out and bathes the trailer, the hot gasses licking over and behind the truck.
There are, as expected, screams. There are always bandits on Black Friday – people who don't have the guts to risk the hell of the stores, but who figure to waylay the schmucks who come rolling in with cash in hand. No shopper worth his salt gets ambushed by a bandit. Old Zarny survived a stickup before the Big Fridge Giveaway of '48, but he was never the same afterwards – hung himself out of shame. We all felt bad, but he had done what we would have done. We were Shoppers. We had pride.
Whoever's behind that truck isn't quite dead yet. We receive some incoming fire. Small arms stuff, nothing to risk the Shopping Cart. But we have some of the crew clinging to the right side. Lugs is hit. He loses his footing on the running board, holding on by one hand to one of the handles. Irina tries to edge over and grab his wrist, but Lugs can't hold on. He drops away, hits the ground, rolls and lies still.
I told you Lugs would go early. But there's no way we're turning around. I explained all this to Bruno and the rest earlier. When you're shopping, and you lose somebody, you don't stop and go back. You leave them behind. It's better to lose one shopper than lose everybody. You can shop as a team, but in the end, the ultimate lesson of shopping is: it's everybody for themselves.
We turn under the gloom of the overpass. Something is guttering in the darkness, back away from the road. I let 'em be. Probably just vultures looking for easy bones to pick on the way out. We won't be making ourselves easy.
Then we're through the other side, and there's the parking lot, with the stores beyond them. It's as bad as I ever imagined. There are police helicopters overhead, buzzing the place, but they don't swoop low or drop anything anymore. They used to try that, a long time ago, before people started shooting back. Police got wise to the fact that on Black Friday, you don't get between shoppers and deep discounts.
Hardwick's and Grammonica are on fire. There's some kind of a pitched firefight going on in front of Uber*Mart. But things are quiet in front of the Omnimax. That's perfect. That's just the way I want it.
I cut the engines into low gear, so the other shoppers don’t hear us coming, and size up the situation as we glide behind the rows of cars. Long rows of other shoppers are clustered around the doors. They're armed to the teeth and eyeing each other nervously. Of course they're going to shoot each other, eventually, but there's an uneasy truce right now. It'll last until the doors open, and then they'll start taking each other out.
Amateurs.
I check my watch. Six fifty-six. We're too early. I turn the corner, the Shopping Cart's motor grumbling and purring, and line up facing the doors. We're about two hundred yards from the store. The rearmost people in the crowd hear the engine noise. They turn and look at us. They're suspicious, edgy, but they don't know what's about to happen. They definitely don’t turn around and sight their weapons on us. After all, we're WAAAAAAY back here. There's LOTS of other scary people right next to you.
We wait. Waiting four minutes is hard. Bruno keeps licking his lips. Scales nervously chunks his fire axe into the roof of the car next to us, again and again. The twins fight. Irina is quiet. I don't say much either. I just look at my watch.
With twenty seconds left to go, I throw the engine wide open and start rolling for the doors. NOW we have everybody's attention. I turn on the high beams. I scavenged them from a 727 airplane. They're kind of bright. I set the machine guns on automatic.
A large number of shoppers are cut in half immediately, partly from the gunfire, and partly from the blowback as the shots that miss ricochet off the bulletproof glass of the store doors. I don't feel too bad for my fellow bargain-hunters. They would all cheerfully do for me or Bruno. I just got to them before they got to me.
Somebody doesn't get out of the way fast enough. This proves to be a poor move, survival-wise. The cow catcher throws part of them up. The rest goes down, and under the Cart's heavy tires.
We bear down on the doors. The doors are still not open. Bruno cuts loose with the flamethrower, sweeping right to left. The twins have the front positions on the running boards, and they spray shotgun fire into the crowds, who are mostly still engaged in the business of getting the fuck out of my way. Scales and Irina are assigned the task of repelling boarders. Scales does this with his axe. Irina has a chainsaw. I'm not wild about the chainsaw decision; too much chance of mechanical failure. However, I like the girl and am willing to write this off as a failure of youthful exuberance.
The doors are still not open. Goddammit, why are the doors still not open? We are only fifty feet from the doors and my watch says seven, straight up. There's nobody left standing in the killbox in front of the doors. There are people to either side, however, and they've had enough time to get over being scared. Now they're starting to feel anger. Two of them swarm the running boards on the left; Scales decapitates one and starts wrestling the other. Irina shrieks at her crowd as she chops off two hands that look a little grabby; this deters the right. There are, however, people with guns. They start shooting. This is a bad development. Bruno can't light up both sides at once.
Daylight! There is daylight between the doors. They're starting to open. But they're slow, so slow.
Bruno chooses to light up the right side, where his girlfriend is. People are on fire. They are bad people and they want my triddy; they can't have it, or my pity for that matter. A hail of fire crashes in from the left. Scales dies messily and falls off the cart, taking his combatant with him. Three more enemy shoppers jump the running boards on that side. I electrify the hull. They die.
The doors are opening. We hop the curb in front of the door and charge down on the killbox. The doors are opening. But they are not quite open enough.
The cowcatcher hits the doors. We learn that doors that are bulletproof are not necessarily Shopping Cart proof, not when a great wedge-shaped steel blade catches them in the four-foot gap and shears them away. The doors tumble into the door, spilling the armored store-clerks who were opening them, and the Cart rolls over the elderly greeter wearing Neutral colors. I try not to feel bad about that, too. I succeed.
And then we are free and clear, cornering nicely through the wide aisles of the Omnimax, rolling over a kiosk full of disposable cameras, headed towards the rear of the store and Electronics. I can hear the howl of the crowd behind us, following us into the store, but their wrath at us largely forgotten in the wake of them achieving their objective – getting in.
Above me, Bruno howls. I know what he's feeling. He's feeling the surge of adrenaline that comes from successful shopping on Black Friday. I get that. I used to feel that all the time. I just got tired of it, when the cost became too high and I became too jaded.
The Panaround Triddies are stacked up ahead of us. We're going to get ours, that much is plain. That's not the question.
The question is: will we get back out again?
