Chapter 17: Chapter 17 – A Typical Day at a Church in America

In East Texas. The freeway cuts through thick woodlands. Seen from above, the parking lot and structure of the East Texas Freeway Presbyterian Church pops out of the arterial roadway like a brain aneurysm. The parking lot is full. The Sunday service has just begun.

The shooter watches the entrance from the woods. He waits until the last of the worshippers have exited their vehicles. He approaches.

The shooter opens the door of the church. No one is in the lobby. He follows the red carpet to the main door of the worship center. He opens the door quietly.

An explosion in his face. He’s knocked onto his back. Ears screaming, his field of vision a blur of hot white. He’s been shot. A stoic old man with a white beard and a trucker hat labeled “East Texas Rifle and Pistol Club” stands in a shooting stance, smoke drifting up from the barrel of his gun. The shooter acts quickly. The gun carrying church goers are already converging. He pulls a smoke grenade hanging from his shoulder pocket. He yanks out the chain and a cloud of choking smoke bursts forth. He rolls under the pews and starts crawling. Members of the congregation scream and shout. Pew-wood splinters around his head and chest. He rolls out from under the pews and crawls to the fire exit, his path covered by smoke. He manages to squeeze out, bring himself to his feet, toss in a grenade, shuts the door, and blocks the exit with a wedge he had placed by the fire exit. 

Another explosion, but he’s limping away now. He just needs to make it back into the forest. HIs jaw pounds in his head. It feels like there’s sand all over his tongue and inside his mouth. Sticky blood trickles down the collar of his shirt and underneath his bullet proof vest. His vision is nearly completely obscured by the caved in welding mask. It squeezes his temples like a vice. When he tries to move it, he can feel his lower jaw moving with it. He leaves it alone for now. 

The slow moving, geriatric church members, wielding small firearms, stream out of the church. They trudge forward grimly, appearing to walk slow, but closing the distance quickly, like monsters in a nightmare. 

He turns in desperation and sprays the crowd. His vision is still doubled. No, quadrupled. Still, someone groans. He can’t tell if it’s in anger or pain, but the crowd seems to slow its pace. He finally reaches his car in the hole in the wall of trees. He clears the branches from its windshield, crawls in and turns the engine. He floors it, and disappears into the woods. Somewhere along the way, he crashes into a ditch.

#

Peter and Karen get the news while they’re driving to a production meeting together. It’s a preliminary informational set up to discuss a stable of digital talk shows based around the shooter’s stream. Karen, behind the wheel, is in the middle of complaining about another motorist who won’t let her into the next lane when Peter gets the news push notification on his iPhone. “Holy fuck… what the fuck?” His heart sinks into his stomach as he calculates the amount of money he could lose on royalties. 

“What? What happened? You can’t just say holy fuck and not tell me what happened like that.” 

Peter catches his breath. “He’s dead.” 

“Who? Who’s dead?”

 “The shooter. Some guy in a church shot him. Some old guy. Fuck.” 

“Damn… I guess it was bound to happen eventually.” 

“What does this mean for us?” 

“I don’t know…” 

They drive in silence for a few freeway exit signs. Karen smiles despite herself. “I’m kind of relieved in a way.” 

Peter stares out the window like a car sick kid trying to not throw up. “Lucky you.”

#

“Okay, anti-gun fascists. Okay, anti-Second Amendment Nazis. What say you now? Our second amendment was applied with great effectiveness today, by one Texas local, simply defending his church. He did what all of the liberals in the country put together couldn’t do. He shot, and killed… allegedly, allegedly, the lone-wolf mass killer who had been live streaming his gruesome crimes across this great nation, using a website made in Commiefornia’s Silicon Valley, by the way. I mean look at his form:”

They play a clip from the church’s live streamed service, the body of the shooter blurred out. 

“That took discipline. That took training. That took good gun ownership. And can you believe it? Liberal elites in Washington were politicizing the mass killer and attempting to use him as proof they needed to repeal the second amendment and take away our guns. Lot of good that would’ve done. Because it was your guns, and the second amendment, that let us get rid of this evil incarnation of satan. Thank you gun owners. Thank you Church Protector. You are a Patriot.” 

Tucker Carlson does a long salute while smoldering down the barrel of the A-camera.

#

When Ryan finds out the shooter has been killed, he’s in Remedial Algebra. He sees the push notification from the news app on his phone and thinks to himself, sarcastically, “That’s good.” He tries to smirk and to laugh to himself. To hate the shooter and be glad of his death, as a punishment for selling out and not doing what Ryan might have wanted him to do, was much easier to swallow than the truth: that Ryan loved the shooter beyond himself. 

He inwardly curses and says a prayer in his head that the shooter will be taken to Hell, or better yet, completely forgotten after this week’s news cycle. As the teacher drones on about the quadratic formula, Ryan begins to have trouble focusing. He thinks of a couple good memories of the shooter— some quip he’d made after stepping on some barista’s face, or the way he’d shoot into a car’s rear window as it was speeding away from one of his massacres, the shooter gloating about how the passengers in the car probably thought they were home safe. Sadistic son of a bitch, the college student thinks to himself as his forced smirks becomes a wistful smile despite his facial muscles’ protestations.

Ryan cannot see the board because his eyes keep welling up with tears and putting halos around everything in his field of vision. He contents himself to at least sit through the rest of lecture, as some way of making sure the money his parents spent on his tuition was going toward its intended use. When the excruciatingly long lecture is finally over, he commands himself to back his bag slowly. He even walks at the pace of the exiting crowd of students as they leave the lecture hall. It’s only when he gets onto the sidewalk outside of the building that he breaks into a run for his car, for the first time since enrolling, not self conscious, not caring about the probing eyes of his peers. He doesn’t even give a shit about the hot tears streaming down his contorted face. 

Once he makes it to the student parking lot he lets himself slow down just a little. Every shadow reminds him of the shooter, his ability to pop out of corners and ambush whoever’s unlucky enough to be around the other side. Once he gets to his Toyota Avalon he locks himself inside and bawls in earnest. He pounds the seats and steering wheel, then crawls into the floorboard of the back seat, so he can cry freely, hidden from the outside world. He cries until he’s out of tears and then cries some more, until his chest hurts, curling himself into a ball like a person with a massive hangover, exhausted from retching. Eventually he falls asleep and dreams of the shooter guiding him through an idyllic forest, along a babbling brook. 

#

When he wakes up it’s dark outside. He gets out of his car and re-enters to sit in the driver’s seat. He sees he’s been asleep for three hours. He drives to the gas station to buy a pack of cigarettes. Marlboro Reds like the shooter would smoke on his stream, and a yellow bic. He hits the pack against his palm like the shooter would do, to pack the tobacco for a more even smoke. 

He drives all the way to the Manhattan Beach pier before he finds a suitable place to have his first cigarette. He walks along the concrete slabs of the pier before finding a nice brown stone bench at the far end. He puts his feet up on the rusted teal railing. Couples and families walk by. He looks out onto the choppy black water then unwraps the pack. He fumbles with the yellow lighter while he tries to coordinate his sucking with the flame at the end of the cigarette. He coughs when he inhales and then feels the wondrous lightheadedness that comes to novice smokers. He looks out onto the cold water and contemplates jumping in. He sees the blinking red light of an airplane traverse the sky and wonders if that’s what the shooter’s soul might look like as it crosses into Heaven. 

#

When Fritz gets the call, he’s half way through a dripping-with-grease bison burger at a truck stop diner. His phone buzzes, and he stares at it antagonistically while chewing. He takes a long sip from his Coke to wash the burger down. He picks up the phone when it rings again. 

“What?” 

“He appears to be dead. Did you see the news?” 

Fritz clocks out as the voice on the other line explains the shooter’s body has not been recovered, but he took a bullet to the head and crawled into the woods, so in all likelihood the hunt is over and to stand down. Fritz doesn’t hear the rest of the pertinent information from the voice, over the sound of his world crashing down around him, information such as “he should stay vigilant and stay on call until the body is recovered, or until further notice.” Fritz has stopped listening. 

He leaves the cell phone on the counter and takes the half-eaten bison burger with him, its grease dripping through his fingers and onto the checkerboard floor. He passes through the sleepy restaurant to the exit. When he gets to the door, the salty dyed-red-headed waitress calls out in her cigarette burned voice “Were you planning to pay for your meal?” 

Fritz stops in front of the pane glass door, looking at nothing. For a tense moment, he just stands there. Then the bell on the door dings and a family man in a pink polo shirt enters, with his pretty wife and two perfect, auburn haired children in tow. Fritz is blocking the entryway, and the family man says, “Excuse me, mind if we get by?” Fritz stares down at the family man’s thick, combed brown hair, glinting in the sun like he’s in a Tommy Hilfiger ad. Fritz grabs the man around his throat and flings him into the gum ball machine by the entrance. 

The family man barks out a protestation as he slams into the machine and knocks it over. The glass orb of the machine shatters onto the floor and its gum balls scatter across, clattering as they spread across the linoleum tile. His wife screams, “Jim!” Fritz turns to her and gazes into her eyes until she backs away and hugs her children. 

He approaches the family man and turns him onto his belly. He pulls the man’s wallet from its snug place in the back pocket of his khaki pants then counts the money inside. Satisfied with the cash, he peels 3 $10 bills and lays it on the end of the counter closest to him. The family man remains frozen on the ground like an animal playing dead. Fritz turns to the waitress and says “This should cover it.” He puts the rest of the cash into his pocket and drops the brown leather wallet on the floor. 

He exits the diner and passes by the woman hugging her children. He kneels down and tells one of them, “If you follow me, or send the authorities after me, I will rape you all in front of each other, and then torture you until your heart stops.” Fritz caresses the pretty wife’s blond hair while her jaw trembles. He walks to his truck and peels out of the rest stop, clouds of dust kicked up by the rusty red vehicle’s tires. 

#

Fritz drives the highway until he’s almost out of gas. He’s in Louisiana now, headed for New Orleans, City of Sin. The black, vein-like trees reach up out of the water as he journeys along the interstate into the city. They look like reverse lighting bolts, black instead of white, reaching out of the ground into the sky rather than the other way around, or like dendrites in the brain of a demon. 

The rain goes in and out along the seemingly endless stretch of road. A downpour one moment, clear the next. When he gets off the interstate and makes it into the city center, it’s around sundown and the red sun glows brilliantly on the smears of clouds below. Fritz pulls onto Bourbon Street and finds a parking garage to ditch his truck in. He drives it up to a dark corner on the 3rd level and backs it into a space near an air vent. He takes his bag of death from the bed of his truck and stuffs it into the rear of the cabin. He searches for some alcohol in his glove compartment but can’t find any. 

He gets out of his truck and pats the door wistfully, like he’s saying bye to a dog he’s about to put down. He descends the stairs of the parking garage and walks onto Bourbon Street. It’s crowded tonight and a mass of people vibrates through the walking street. Brassy Jazz music blares between the buildings and drunken tourists shout and laugh. Police on horseback maneuver through the crowd, smiling from under their authoritative sunglasses. 

Fritz walks through the sea of faces. He goes to a liquor kiosk and orders 2 hand grenades from the ancient man behind the counter, who smiles through a toothless mouth as he hands the neon green tubes to the rough looking customer. Fritz slurps the mixture of various hard liquors mixed in with Mountain Dew and Red Bull in a noxious icy. He drinks one from each hand to quicken his buzz. Once they’re finished, he slips into a nautical themed dive bar to pound a few shots of whiskey. And like so, he descends into drunkenness until he finds himself sitting against a wall in an alleyway, sharing a bottle of Seagram’s with a thin man swimming in a filthy coat. 

He decides to confess. “I’m killing myself tonight.” 

“Why’s that?” 

“I have nothing to live for.” 

“What changed?” 

“I lost my purpose.” 

“What was your purpose?”

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“To kill the shooter.” 

The man in the filthy coat shrugs and burps painfully. “They haven’t found a body. Who knows?” Fritz stands up to vomit then collapses into a puddle.

#

When the Tourorist gets the news, they’re out in the field by the church. Their contact at Disney tells them to refrain from searching for the shooter or offering additional help. There’s a gray area between fighting off mercenaries deployed against the shooter, and killing average citizens who are trying to kill him, especially citizens who might talk to the media. And offering help to the shooter may be considered unsportsmanlike, for one, but if someone went into the woods to try to do some rescue mission and the search party and news cameras stumbled on them, then people would start asking questions, and there was simply no need for an investigation, so we’d let the kid fend for himself. 

The Tourorist is told to stand by and enjoy their time stateside while they are still on contract. Never knew if something else might come up. When the Tourorist didn’t have something to do, they became antsy, and when they became antsy, darkness tended to set in. A deep melancholy that brought them right back to their Wall Street Days. Baseball games and barbecues. Wedding recitals, baptisms, holidays. A never ending slog through a rigid social system and materialistic circus. 

Not going back there. No. Freedom came from conflict. So, the Tourorist books a ride along with the local police department to get a taste of action that was available to them within the terms of their contract (which explicitly prohibited them from engaging in street rights, global conflicts, riots, or anything that could be considered an extralegal or extrajudicial exchange of violence.) So, a ride-along with a local law enforcement body was the perfect loophole to get near some excitement while completely avoiding the persnickety term “extrajudicial” and anything that could fall under that. 

It’s easy enough to arrange. The Tourorist’s assistant reaches out to the designated police station number, and the next day, the Tourorist was waiting in the lobby of the Embassy Suites, Starbucks in one hand, reading think pieces about the shooter on their smartphone in the other. They’d picked a black t-shirt and a Prada cafe racer style tobacco colored suede leather jacket. Of course, they’d brought a firearm (conceal carry, sitting comfortably on their hip holster.) 

They watch the squad car pull into the hotel driveway from the corner of their eye and shake the Junior Officer’s hand when he walks into the lobby. Shorter guy with a shiny bald head and trimmed chevron mustache. He doesn’t take his sunglasses off when he enters the lobby. “Officer Grieves, nice to meet you.” The Tourorist sits in the back of the squad car as they cruise around the city. 

“Not too comfortable back there, is it?” Grieves asks from the driver’s seat. 

“Oh, I’m just fine. Wouldn’t want to sit here in handcuffs though, that’s for sure.” 

The senior officer snorts. He’s a chubby guy also with a mustache, but he has a graying, receding crew cut instead of the cueball of his partner’s. The Tourorist asks, “What’s a typical day look like for you two?”

“No day is typical.” 

“Sounds fun.” 

“Well, we usually patrol the more crime heavy areas, report to calls if we get called. If you’ve ever watched Law and Order, it’s pretty much like that.” 

“What type of crime do you get around here, mostly?” 

“Eh— the usual, drug dealing, fights, some crackhead shoots another crackhead every once in a while.” Off a look from his senior officer, Grieves walks it back. “Whoops, probably not supposed to say that. Is that too politically incorrect?” 

The Tourorist leans forward to the transparent barrier between them and the officers in the front seat. “Don’t worry. Nothing can offend me, I promise.” 

The senior officer looks at the Tourorist in the rearview mirror. “What was it you said that you do?” 

“I didn’t say. I’m a management consultant. Businesses hire me to streamline their management techniques and structure to make them more efficient. I like to survey as many industries and professions as I can because I work with a wide variety of businesses, and I never know when I’ll find something from one field that I can apply to another. Don’t worry, though, just pretend I’m not here.” The Tourorist knocks on the barrier playfully, for emphasis. 

There’s a call on the radio and the senior officer turns to the Tourorist. “You want to come along? We can drop you off and have another car pick you up, if not. Never know with these things.” 

“No, I want to come. I signed the waiver.” The Tourorist smiles and the junior officer hits the gas and siren simultaneously. They blast through red lights as they jet through the mundane, gray city center. 

The call is about a public disturbance in a park. A couple of Black teens were involved in a fight or possible gang activity. After talking to the teens for a few moments, they handcuff them both and have them sit on the curb. The Tourorist watches from the car, while the teens are seated. The junior officer lazily observes them, the senior officer writes a ticket. The Tourorist calls out from the open backseat window, “He’s reaching for your gun!” The junior officer draws and fires on the two teens, then radios for an ambulance. He thanks the Tourorist. 

When the Tourorist gets back to their hotel room, they watch the Nature channel and masturbate. 

#

With the shooter missing and presumably dead, the development executives are left with a mess in their laps. They have a string of ad sales contracts they are expected to honor, which all sold out higher than premium rates, they have a line of march releasing soon, and they have a few shows in development which all revolve around talking heads discussing the shooter’s exploits. Without a shooter, they have nothing. So Peter and Karen are charged with the unpleasant task of re-casting him. It’s the only way to hit the targeted projections of Q3 profits, and in fact, large wings of the company are depending on it.The ad sales department had been commanded to sell ads on the stream full gear, and to put other Disney properties on the back burner. If the tent pole shooter stream does not move forward, the entire house of cards could collapse. 

Peter and Karen book a private conference room to watch audition tapes and demo reels for the shooter’s replacement. Peter sits back on the couch with his feet up. Karen taps the first dropbox link and sits back while the video file plays on the big screen projection screen at the front of the conference room. The auditioning hopeful is a red headed country bumpkin type with an overbite, rectangular wireframe glasses, and narrow shoulders. “Well, he looks the part,” Peter sighs as he refreshes his Instagram feed. 

The redheaded boy stares into the camera and introduces himself. “I’m John Buckley. I’m out to avenge myself. Against everyone who ever betrayed me.” 

Peter says, “Are you gonna start with your dentist?” 

Karen laughs and says “C’mon, be serious.” 

The redheaded boy in the submission tape continues, “Watch this.” He cocks the pistol in his hand and skulks toward a rundown shack with an overgrown lawn in front of it. He’s wearing camo overalls and work boots. He opens the door, the camera follows him like he’s a police officer on COPS and the light shifts as he busts into the brown carpeted living room of the filthy shack. 

An old man looks up at him from the couch, then falls back to sleep. “I hate you, Dad!” The redhead shoots the man on the couch and the camera clatters to the floor and the footage ends. 

Peter and Karen both jump when the shots ring out. “Jesus Christ, was that real? How the fuck did this footage get sent to us?” 

Karen shakes her head. “I don’t know. That was awful.” 

“Okay, let’s watch the next one. Redhead is a no-go. I’d rather watch paint dry.” Karen opens the next dropbox link. This time, it’s a young woman. She has blue dyed hair and is wearing a skimpy French maid costume. Peter opens his mouth. 

Karen beats him to the punch. “Let me guess, you like her.” 

“I think the two of you would make a cute couple, actually.” 

“Fuck you.” 

“You’d look good together.” 

The maid outfit girl sasses the camera like she’s giving a private cam show to an audience of paying fans. “Hi, nice to meet you. Do you want to play with me? I bet you do. But don’t get too close to me. Because I’m dangerous.” She leans forward, pressing her cleavage together so it’s lit nicely by her ring light, and then whips out a butterfly knife from some hidden place, like a magician. She sits back in her chair and waves the knife around, slowly and sensually. “I’m really, really dangerous.” She makes a girlish sex noise like someone just shoved a huge cock into her pussy. She gasps with pleasure, and then moans. “Come…. with me…” 

She breathes out. It cuts to another scene. She’s filming from a POV angle, from a go pro she’s wearing on her chest or hands, similar to the angle the shooter would use. 

“At least the camera work on this one is a little better.” 

She’s walking through an urban center, looks like it could be Cleveland or somewhere in Canada. She reaches down and pulls out the butterfly knife. She does a trick with it as she walks, flipping it nonchalantly. She cackles quietly in voice over, loud enough for it to get picked up on her mic, but not actually loud enough for anyone in her vicinity to hear. 

“What’s she gonna do with that? That laugh has to go, by the way. Fucking creepy.” 

Her hands tremble while she’s holding the knife and she drops it on the ground. “Oopsie.” She picks it up and we can see her stockinged thighs peek out from under her maid skirt, and the Doc Martens she’s wearing as she picks the knife up from the sidewalk. “Now, where were we?” She quips as through she’s Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad. She sets her path toward a large man in an olive overcoat, walking on a crowded sidewalk across the street, in front of an old museum building. The maid girl picks up speed and jaywalks to run up to the old man, butterfly knife first, and attempts to stab him. Her knife gets caught in the folds of his coat, and doesn’t appear to hit flesh, because he keeps walking, the overcoat lifting up behind him, suspended in the air by the maid and her knife, like a little boy in a Norman Rockwell painting, using a twig to hold up the back of a girl’s skirt. 

She pulls the knife out and tries to lunge at him, but someone off camera yells, “She’s got a knife!” The POV view smashes to the sidewalk as she gets tackled and subdued, howling girlishly that she was using the knife in self defense. The footage ends. 

Pete and Karen stare into space. “What the fuck was that?” 

“How are they sending us these? Is she in a mental ward now?” 

“We’re so fucked.” 

“Play the next one. What else do we have better to do?” The next one is security footage of a would-be school shooting. Police shoot the potential shooter before he gets into the school and his body smears blood on the door as he collapses into it and slides to the ground. 

Pete rubs his temples. “We’re completely fucked, aren’t we?”

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