

About the cover: The cover image, titled Space 4 Stock, has been researched in good faith and is believed to be in the public domain. The image can be found at Official-PSDS. Font: Futura.

#####

Verum Et Inventa

DARK FICTION BY RAYMOND TOWERS

This is a magazine of dark fiction, mostly, in the genres of fantasy, horror and science fiction. Primarily, I am here to promote my fiction writing, but I am also looking forward to including submitted material from other writers with similar styles or non-traditional ideas, as well as contributions from reviewers, commentators and, hopefully, one day, even fans. In addition, and following what you might be familiar with from print digest-type magazines, I will also include articles based on my personal research, or the research of others, many of which will be controversial and difficult to absorb for the normies. Honestly, there are plenty of other outlets out there that pull their punches or whitewash what is true and promote what is fabrication. Verum Et Inventa is Latin for Truth and Fables, or Truth and Fiction, if you will. If you've come to read an adventure, I will give you one. If, after that, you want to read an article that might cause you to see things in a different way than before, I'm aiming to provide that as well.

"I have gone into the future and seen what will happen. Everything is going to turn out fine." - Nicolas Maduro, president of Venezuela, early 2019

"In the last two months, Mexico's new president Obrador has put four former Mexican presidents on the defensive with accusations of corruption (Pena Nieto, Fox, Calderon and Salinas). Already, several high-ranking Mexican officials are moving assets and leaving the country. By contrast, in two years Adon Trump has yet to reveal the contents of the Weiner laptop, to release the video of Bill Clinton having sex with a minor, or to expose the corruption of the Clinton Foundation. Well, we did get a new Cold War with Russia and China, so thanks for that, Trump. If Q gives us a hand-job with a happy ending, that's one thing. A hand-job that goes on forever becomes an eternal torment." - Raymond Towers, Spring 2019

#####

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2019 Raymond Towers

**Smashwords Edition, License Notes:** Thank you for viewing or downloading this free e-book. You are welcome to share this e-book with your friends provided that it remains in its complete original form and is not used for any commercial purpose. If you enjoy reading this magazine, please consider posting a review or making a purchase of one of the author's other titles. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All of the characters in this e-book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, whether living or dead, is purely coincidental.

This is issue number 5 of Verum Et Inventa magazine, with an official release date of June 1st, 2019. With any luck, this magazine will be produced on a monthly or bi-monthly schedule, with a minimum of 100 pages of content per issue. Links to back issues of this magazine can be found on the Freebie page at Raymond Towers Dot Com.

Rating: This issue contains a MEDIUM to HIGH amount of controversial subject matter.

#####

### Table Of Contents

Editorial

Science Fiction

From Variant Worlds

Snatched Up!

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

From Inspired By PKD

Dead Man's Lottery

Story Starters

Earth Fairy

Non-Fiction Section

Articles

A Glossary To Speaking Forsooth

A Brief Look At Israel, A Terrorist Nation

Media Reviews

I Want Contributors!

About The Publisher / Author

#####

### Editorial

Verum Et Inventa is back!

Let's see... The last issue was dated for February, so here we are four months later with Issue No. 5. I had (and still have) a pretty heavy workload, plus I was trying to get a steady source for story submissions, or ANY submissions really, but so far that's been a no-go. Here I am producing 100% of the content of this magazine once again, but I am crossing my fingers that somebody out there will send me something, anything at all, that I can e-publish here. _I'm begging you, please, put me out of my misery!_

The good news is that I'm aiming for at least four consecutive issues, based on how long it will take for me to include the entire Snatched Up novella. That's what I'm leading this issue with: the modern dark fantasy novella Snatched Up! Chapters 1 through 3 are found in this issue, with 3 more chapters per issue until I reach the end. This novella is my answer to the first Cube movie, where a bunch of random people end up in a bizarre environment with no clue as to how they ended up there. My original story concept was dated from 2000, I believe, but I didn't get around to creating the story until 10 years later. The novella is part of my fantasy and sci-fi collection Variant Worlds 1, released in September of 2010. This collection is currently available for only 99 cents, so don't miss out!

The bulk of this issue is taken up by the complete novella Dead Man's Lottery. This novella reads like the plot from the 1987 movie The Running Man, starring the iconic movie star Arnold Schwarzenneger, but it is NOT based on that idea. Instead, I was inspired to write the story after reading the novel Solar Lottery, written by Philip K. Dick and published in 1955. Dead Man's Lottery is part of my novella collection titled Inspired By PKD, which was released recently (May, 2019). The five novellas in the collection were all inspired by the early novels of Philip K. Dick.

This issue's Story Starter has inspired me to write the modern dark fantasy short story Earth Fairy. This story is based on the ongoing troubles Venezuela is having with its dictator Nicolas Maduro. You can blame the political left or the political right for that country's troubles, but regardless, I have been following Latin American news for over a decade now, and Venezuela specifically since 2014 or 2015 when Maduro ordered police to shoot student protesters and rewrote the constitution so he could stay in power. The worst thing about the crisis is that the people are still suffering.

Finishing up this issue are two articles. A Glossary To Speaking Forsooth will help writers create authentic dialogue in Ye Olde English, circa the Shakespearean / Queen Elizabeth age. My second article A Brief Look At Israel, A Terrorist Nation, will show you the inconvenient truth that a lot of people don't want you to know, about how this world is really run behind the scenes. Think New World Order here, peeps. You may not like it, but that doesn't change the Facts.

Support my work by purchasing my e-books at Smashwords! Even if you don't make a purchase, you can still pass this free issue, and all previous issues, of Verum Et Inventa magazine to any open-minded persons who might be interested in reading stuff that you won't read anywhere else!

Raymond Towers

#####

### Variant Worlds 1

About the series: New worlds, variant worlds, beckon for you to come and explore them. These worlds are full of fantasy and science fiction. Travel through space, through jungles, into your own backyard and even into your mind. These worlds begin where your reality ends, and they will take you everywhere. In these collections of short stories, you will see, hear and smell the exotic. You will experience everything, and everything will experience you.

About this title: - Welcome to Variant Worlds 1. This is a collection of fantasy and science fiction ranging from short stories to novellas. In these tales, everyday people like you and I must come to grips with the strange and perilous realities that have been presented to them. Only by relying on their inner strength, their wisdom and their humanity will they forge ahead and survive. Rating: MEDIUM controversy.

Non-Retrieval was first released on Sept. 14, 2010. It has recently been revised and re-released. Read the first 20% or purchase this collection at Smashwords, or find out more about the series on Raymond Towers Dot Com.

#####

### Snatched Up!

1

Jesse Contreras glanced at his cell phone, which he'd been having trouble charging as of late. He lifted its dim display up to eye level to place it closer to the amber gloom of the wall-mounted lights. Once he realized what time it was, Jesse dropped his arms in frustration and stared out at the sparse quantity of vehicles sitting in the parking lot. 9:35 pm meant he still had almost an hour and a half to go. Judging by the ratio of customer cars compared to employee cars, he knew the rest of his shift was going to crawl by like molasses.

That he hated working at the Do It Yourself Warehouse was a given, since the twenty-five year old wasn't making much more than minimum wage. The fact that he was working on a warm Saturday night was especially irritating. To make matters even worse, this particular store was in a bad part of San Diego, where the avoidance of illegal aliens, vagrants and gang members was part of the job description.

Jesse should have been out partying. One of his buddies had chosen that specific night to have a Hookah get-together. Although Jesse didn't actively partake in smoking either tobacco or marijuana, he did know such parties were always fully stocked with alcohol. To make matters worse, he'd called his buddy just a few minutes earlier and been informed that there were quite a few females in attendance.

"Man, how lame can this get?" He complained to no one in particular.

As if in retaliation, the walkie clipped to his belt burst into noise. It was the store manager, Bill. "Lot attendant, do you copy?"

Jesse unclipped the device and answered in the affirmative.

"How's the lot looking?"

Jesse knew better than to answer right away, as the store managers sometimes came out and assessed the situation for themselves before they bothered asking. He studiously scanned the large parking lot. "Uh, I've got about 80% of the shopping carts corralled, and I've already swept up the front of the store."

"Good. You want to go ahead and start stacking product?"

"Sure." Jesse was already taking the first few steps towards the small forklift.

"Let me know when you're finished, so we can bring the forklift into the store."

"Copy that." Jesse said, before returning the walkie to his belt. He mounted the small forklift with a purpose. His task was simple; to stack pallets of building blocks or cement sacks on top of one another in case any thieves rolled by once the employees had gone home. If anyone wanted to steal any of those items, they'd have to work hard for them, as the stacks ended up some eight to twelve feet high.

Of course, there was plenty of material still on shelving at ground level or eye level, like bricks or powder mortar, that thieves could easily get their hands on. At least in Jesse's eyes, the exercise seemed a little pointless. It was tedious, though, and time consuming. That alone made it worthwhile. He'd be that much closer to quitting time when he was finished.

After stacking up the pallets in the customer loading zone, Jesse lumbered the slow forklift around to the side of the building and began doing the same to the rest of the outside inventory. An hour and ten minutes later, he directed the lift back towards the front of the store, locked the store's side gate, and drove the lift in front of the huge rolling gate where contractors took out oversized items.

Since the store had closed its doors at ten o'clock, the parking lot looked even more desolate than before. Maybe twenty cars still loitered around waiting for their owners, all of them belonging to employees.

With fifteen minutes to go, Jesse impatiently checked his phone again. All he still needed to do was to wait for Bill to open the rolling gate, park the lift inside the store, and drag two trash cans to the back of the store to empty them into the compactor.

Fifteen minutes left, he thought anxiously, hoping there'd still be a couple of girls without male company by the time he got to his buddy's house. He checked the time on his phone again, watching the digital seconds trickle by, and hung his head down. These last few minutes were going to be the slowest he'd ever suffered through in his life. Fifteen minutes, and...

A sudden jolt broke his concentration. It only lasted a fraction of a second, but it was enough to startle Jesse, as the trembling sensation seemed to start at the base of his feet and shiver its way up his legs and torso. He'd been through minor earthquakes before, heck, he'd lived in Southern California all of his life, but this one felt different, stronger than the rest. Or maybe he'd just imagined its severity. After all, the young man hadn't been expecting the quake since he'd been so caught up in wanting to get out of there.

Still, it might be better if he stood out in the parking lot, instead of in the loading zone with the huge cement pillars and steel beam canopy he was standing under.

The walkie stopped him in his tracks. "Okay, people." It was the store manager again. "We just went through a quick shake, but it looks like it is over now. I want everybody to walk through their departments and make sure everything is still secure. Give me a call back to let me know your status. I'll be checking the front end here and making sure the last few cashiers are okay."

Jesse breathed a sigh of relief. The last time he'd experienced an earthquake was just a few weeks earlier, when he was working the afternoon shift. He'd been busy pushing carts out in the lot and completely oblivious to the short tremor. He wasn't even aware they'd had an earthquake until he saw droves of customers and employees scurrying out of the store. Some people claimed they'd seen the tall shelving inside the store sway about, along with the tons of products stacked on top of them, and a number of screams had preceded their owners on the way out the store exits. When Jesse was asked about it, he simply shrugged his shoulders and wondered what all the hoopla was about.

Jesse took his first step away from the tall rolling gate, intending to head over to the side of the store and see if anything had fallen over. He hoped he wouldn't have to pick up any knocked down blocks or broken cement sacks with only fifteen minutes to spare when...

The pavement again lurched below his feet, the force strong enough to tip his imbalanced frame over. He barely had time to brace his shoulder for the impact with the hard cement floor. Immediately, Jesse turned over onto his stomach, hearing a great rumble like a hundred trains rolling past him at a hundred miles an hour. His body was being tossed about as if he was lying on a giant skateboard and someone was yanking at both ends. He felt suddenly nauseous, ready to vomit, but trying to concentrate on getting away from the building That's when the rumble increased and threatened to deafen him, while at the same time, bits of stucco began breaking into cracks and jumping away from the store wall.

He'd barely gotten to one knee, when a violent shift threw him left and into the stacks of cement bags. His body still rattling, Jesse grabbed at the edge of a pallet and started pulling himself upright, when a second jostle sent him hard to the right, and slammed his body against the side of the forklift.

The edge of the heavy canopy was ripped from one of the massive pillars holding it up. After a brief scream of buckling metal, part of it came crashing down some thirty feet away. The rest of the canopy started to loosen from the stout pillars. For a split second, Jesse still held out the chance that he could sprint across the divide and make it to safety, until the groan of twisting metal dashed his hopes. The canopy, all at once, was going to swing away from the pillars and towards him. Undoubtedly, its massive weight would bring the rest of its length away from the store wall and right on top of his head.

Jesse was doomed. He was about to be crushed to death in a bare handful of seconds. The lights went out suddenly and he was left in the darkness. He wanted to cry out in desperation, wishing he'd gone to that Hookah party and not gone to work at all, job be damned, when he had a sobering thought.

The forklift. It had a sturdy roll-bar frame on top. He recalled some training video where the narrator mentioned that in the case of an accident involving a forklift, the safest place to be was in the driver's seat. Its reinforced steel roof would hold its shape even if the forklift somehow ended up upside down.

Groping blindly, while listening to the canopy groan and hearing its thick metal complaining from the tremendous strain, Jesse hauled himself onto the driver's seat. He crouched close to the steering wheel, gripping it like a life preserver. The young man had a few seconds to mumble the scant couple of prayers he still remembered from church, when the metal canopy finally lost its wrestling match with gravity and came tumbling down around him.

"Not good." Jesse murmured a few minutes later, when the dust had finally lessened a bit and he could breathe more or less normally. "Not good at all."

His first impulse was to call out, but his phone wasn't willing so he stashed it and tried to figure out what to do next. The roof of the forklift held firm, but there might have been a ton of smashed up canopy resting on it now, and he still didn't have the luxury of working lights around him.

"Can anybody hear me?" He shouted, wondering just how deeply he'd been buried, and how long it might take somebody to dig him out. "Anybody out there?" That's when Jesse remembered the walkie still clipped to his belt. He brought it up to his mouth. "This is Jesse out in the lot. Can anybody hear me?"

A few long seconds ticked by, before somebody finally replied. "Jesse, what's your location?" It was Ellis, the supervisor from the lumber aisle.

Sudden relief washed over the young man, now knowing that help wasn't too far away. "I'm sitting in the forklift just outside the rolling gate. The canopy came down on me. I can't get out."

"Are you hurt?"

"No, I'm all right."

"You're gonna have to sit still for a little while, okay? We've got people hurt inside the store, and we're having trouble getting to them because half the store caved in. Hold on." Ellis paused. "Okay, Bill is asking if you can get out of there on your own. None of the phones are working and we haven't been able to call out to Nine-One-One. Can you try to make it to a phone out there?"

How the hell was he supposed to get out? Jesse couldn't even see anything around him because of all the darkness. Once he'd reached a hand up past the roof of the forklift, he could feel the grimy material of the canopy just inches above his head.

"Jesse, you there?"

"Yeah." He sighed. "I'll try to get clear, but it won't be easy."

"Let us know when you get to a phone."

Jesse almost growled a reply framed thick with sarcasm, but he figured it wouldn't accomplish anything. After he replaced the walkie on his belt, he sat back in the driver's seat and contemplated his predicament. To one side, he had numerous pallets of cement, which he'd double-stacked earlier. The pallets were placed so close together there was no way he could squeeze through them. With the canopy resting along their tops, the notion of climbing over them was out of the question as well. But maybe, he considered, he could squeeze between the pallets and the wall of the store. The space there had to be wider than between the pallets themselves, right?

Using the tiny light from his phone's screen for guidance, Jesse carefully climbed off the forklift and hunched down under the bulk of the metal ceiling clinging down on everything. The metal roof was too low to the ground in some places, he realized after he'd gone forward a few feet. He wouldn't be able to fit underneath it.

Crawling backwards, he aimed his feeble phone glare in the opposite direction. The shelving that displayed the various bricks and blocks lay that way. He knew the metal beams that held the shelves together were pretty strong. Even better, he soon noticed, the ceiling hadn't come all the way down on this side.

Jesse crawled as far as he could. He had to drag himself on his belly for a few feet before he came to a wider space, where a portion of the canopy was leaning against the twenty-foot high shelving structure. He could stand, but just barely, finding that the front of the shelving had tipped forward drastically, spilling much of the bricks and blocks into haphazard heaps that effectively barred his path. The rear of the shelving, however, was now tilted far enough away from the store wall that he would have enough room to slip through behind it.

Easier said than done, Jesse frowned. He had to hoist himself up every five feet or so, sliding over clammy beams with bolts that continually threatened to scrape him. Carefully, he stepped over shifty mounds of plaster sand, up-ended foundation blocks and everything else, all in near darkness. He managed the endeavor, eventually clearing the last bent beam and setting foot on reasonably stable ground, but he wasn't too happy about the adventure. He was sure he'd ruined his fairly new jeans with a dozen plus new tears and scrapes.

Jesse expected there to be no lights once he'd taken a few strides away from the store, but what he hadn't expected was for it to be pitch black. There was no moon hanging in the sky. There were no stars to guide him. With growing frustration, he felt his way around by sliding his hands over the top of the collapsed roof, until he scratched his palm on a sharp piece of metal.

"Shit!" Jesse griped out loud.

"Who's there?" Ellis's deep voice called out, just as the glowing eye of a flashlight floated near him. "Jesse! That you?"

"I'm over here." Jesse replied, feeling around his palm to see if he'd drawn blood.

The beam of the flashlight swung back and forth, coming closer to his position. "You all right?"

"No." Jesse replied glumly. "I mean, I'm okay physically, but you know, it's been a shitty night. Point the flashlight at my hand, will you?"

Ellis complied, and Jessie grimaced when he saw the long gash of scraped flesh, but luckily, very little blood seeped out.

"What's it like inside?" Jesse asked.

Although he couldn't see Ellis' face, he might have correctly guessed what it looked like at the moment, as the forty-two year old black man sighed softly. "Well, it's as dark in there as it is out here. Bill was near the front of the store with the last three cashiers, counting out their tills. They got throttled around a bit, but nothing major." He faced away from the store abruptly, holding the flashlight out before him. "There's something wrong here."

"Well, yeah. The whole store just came crashing down."

The flashlight's beam swung down to his feet. "Look down at the ground. You're walking on dirt, not asphalt. Last time I checked, the parking lot was paved."

Jesse gaped at the dark soil surrounding his black sneakers. "What the hell? Where's all the asphalt?"

"The parking lot's gone." Ellis revealed. "We've got the sidewalk at the front of the store, and a couple of feet of driving lane by the exit doors, and then nothing but dirt."

"Bullshit." Jesse shook his head in disbelief.

"Take a look." Ellis motioned with the far reaching light. "You see any cars out there? Any lampposts or landscaping islands?"

"Well, the power went out, and I don't know what happened to the moon, but..."

The flashlight swiveled straight up into the air. "I hadn't noticed that. No moon, no stars, and I know it was a clear night earlier when I went out for a smoke."

"What do you think it means?"

"I don't know." Ellis started away from him and back towards the store. "But we've got more pressing issues to deal with right now. Let's go back inside. We're trying to get everybody out before the rest of the building decides to fall down."

A short stroll later, the pair entered through the sliding glass exit doors, both now lacking power and standing forced open.

"Bill!" Ellis called out in the obscurity.

"Here." The store manager announced from some distance away. "Is Jesse with you? Is he okay?"

"Yeah on both counts."

"We've got some flashlights with fresh batteries on one of the registers." Bill continued. "Have him grab one and come join us over here by the tool barn. We're trying to get everybody accounted for."

Ellis pointed around until he found the items, giving Jesse a moment to grab his own flashlight. The two men walked into the main aisle, which ran across from one end of the store to the other. Bill stepped out from one of the narrower and unkempt merchandise aisles, followed by three female cashiers. Martha, usually quiet and in her fifties, had moist streaks running down her face, and Cindy, an equally frail, blonde eighteen year old, was holding her steady. The last cashier was Brenda, a big, burly and strong black woman in her mid-thirties, whose usually rough attitude seemed momentarily quelled by the disaster.

"Okay." Bill took a deep breath. "We've all got flashlights. I let a few people off early since it was such a slow night, and I'm trying to remember who's still in the store. Ellis, either you or Jesse get a hold of a working phone?"

"No phones, boss."

"Did you see anybody out there? Anybody that can give us a hand?"

"No, sir. Might be a little worse than we figured, too."

"What do you mean?"

Ellis flashed his light towards the open entryway. "Come outside with me for a moment and I'll show you."

"We're on our own for the time being, right?"

"Looks like. You might want to take a look for yourself, though."

"Okay, but not now. We'll worry about that later." Bill blew out a frustrated breath. "Let's do this. We're going to split up in groups of two. Martha, Cindy, you two stay here by the front doors. This is going to be our official rendezvous spot. Brenda, you can come with me. We'll go down towards the garden end and see if we can find anyone else down there. Ellis, you take Jesse and check out the opposite end of the store. Start with as far as you can get into the lumber department and the rear of the store, and make your way back towards here. We find anybody hurt or stuck somewhere, we'll use the walkies to get together and try to help them out.

"I know I've got at least a couple of people in the back of the store, one in flooring and one in plumbing, and I'm pretty sure there were two people still in receiving, so that's a start. Ellis, any idea who was over on your end?"

"Uh, Marcos was handling the electric saw earlier." Ellis admitted. "He was still back there cleaning up when the second quake hit. Florie was over in hardware, too. Not sure who else."

"Like I said, that's a start." Bill said. "If you can make it that far, check the back office. Betty was back there working on some figures earlier, but I don't know if she finished up and went home or not. I'll keep trying to raise anybody I can on the walkie. If any of you get a signal on a cell phone, let me know right away. Let's get moving, people."

"What if it starts shaking again?" Martha fearfully asked.

"Let's pray that it doesn't." Bill stated. "At least not until we get everybody outside. You and Cindy can stand just outside the door if you want to, in case you see any emergency vehicles driving by. Try to flag them down if you can and tell them our situation."

"Come on." Ellis nudged Jesse. With their two bright beams to lead them, the men hurried down the wide aisle.

"What were you doing?" Jesse asked the stout man. "What were you doing when the building started shaking?"

"You know these asshole customers." Ellis huffed as they saw the wreckage to their right hand side. All of the tall shelving frames had fallen over like dominoes, with some bent dangerously crooked and merchandise spilled all over the place. "Always messing up the stacks of wood, tossing pieces on the wrong pile, leaving them all over the place. I was flat-stacking the two by fours when the first quake hit, and I thought, this might be a good time to take another smoke break. Bill stopped me by the front door to chit-chat, and that's when the big one started." The man drew a deep breath, studying the debris revealed by his flashlight. "I'm not seeing Florie over here. Hopefully she found a safe spot in one of the aisles at the back of the store."

They moved on, soon walking up on a considerable obstacle.

"Goddamn!" Ellis cursed. "Can you believe this shit?"

In front of them were great piles of broken sheetrock. Before, the building material was neatly organized and stacked up against the wall, with some stacks almost as high as the twenty-foot ceiling. Now, the material was thrown about here and there is if it were nothing more than some little kid's playthings.

Jesse shifted his beam towards the right, where massive piles of plywood and beams were barring their way, and their vision, through the aisles. "I really hope nobody got caught under that stuff. We'd be picking up the pieces and trying to put them back together again with duct tape. I mean, what a way to go."

Ellis seemed to consider this for a moment. "Let's climb over the drywall. It looks a little easier than the plywood. Once we get to the cement aisle, we should be able to move a little faster."

They started clambering over the destroyed goods.

"Look at all this broken stuff." Jesse gaped around. "Can you imagine marking all this stuff down as damaged merchandise?"

"Yeah, I think we're looking at some ten to fifteen millions dollars worth of damaged merchandise in the store. And that's not counting what it'll cost to repair the building."

They cleared the sheetrock, coming next to the cement aisle. Usually, traces of cement powder could be seen on the floor, from the frequently ripped cement sacks that customers left behind, but this mess might have been multiplied a hundred times worse. Entire stacks of cement had fallen from their high perches and pretty much exploded on impact with the floor. Jagged edges of broken pallets had further ripped into the sacks, and other material like rebar and sand bags was scattered around too.

Ellis' walkie buzzed for a moment, as the store manager called out for any other employees that were still in the store.

"Not too many employees inside the store had walkies, since it was so close to quitting time. They'd already turned their radios in." Ellis mentioned, as they came upon the entrance to the public restrooms and the employee break room. "You take the men's side. I'll check the other one."

Simultaneously, both men opened the restroom doors and flashed their lights inside.

"Anybody in here?" Ellis' booming voice invaded the still chamber.

He was loud enough that Jesse didn't bother to repeat the question. Jesse allowed his flashlight beam to roam across the sinks and under the stalls, but other than water sloshed around on the floor, he saw nothing.

"You got anything?" Ellis asked.

"No, but it still smells like ass in here."

"Wait, listen."

There was a faint moaning coming from somewhere nearby.

"The break room!" Ellis bolted away.

Jesse followed him closely. Soon, both men stood in the doorway to the cozy room, normally lined on one side by the employee lockers, and on the other by three large vending machines. The problem was, all three vending machines had tipped over on their faces, smashing into the two small tables and chairs used by the employees. Below one of these shattered tables was a prone figure.

"Can't get out, man! Hurts like hell!"

Jesse recognized one of the lanky black kids that worked in the garden area. The young man was of a very dark complexion, and most of the employees in the store simply called him...

"Beetle!" Ellis rushed forward, trying to assess the severity of the young man's injury. He swung the flashlight around like a maniac. "I can't see under this table. Are you bleeding? Do you think it's broken?"

"I don't know, man." Beetle answered. "All I know, is my leg is hurting like crazy! Please, man, get this thing off me!"

Jesse inadvertently put the glare on Beetle's face, revealing his tear-streaked cheeks.

"Come on, Jesse." Ellis motioned toward the vending machine. "Grab a corner, and on the count of three we'll try to lift it. We've got to be careful and shift it back towards the wall, or we might make things worse. Beetle, I want you to slide yourself out as soon as you can, because I don't know how long we can hold the soda machine up. Okay?"

"Okay, man, okay."

"Ready, Jesse?"

"Yeah."

Following Ellis' count, and the man's heavy grunt, the two managed to lift the end of the heavy vending machine by several inches. Gasping and shrieking, Beetle dragged his leg free and retreated by a few feet.

"I'm clear, man." Beetle groaned.

The rescuers slowly lowered the machine back onto the broken table, hearing a sick crunch as the tabletop snapped from the returning weight.

"Looks like your leg was the only thing keeping that table intact." Ellis muttered.

As soon as the flashlights were back in their clutches, they poured the light onto Beetle's lower half. One leg of his jeans was ripped and bloody.

"The table leg snapped off and cut into him." Ellis diagnosed the wound. "There should be a first aid kit in here somewhere. Grab it for me."

Obediently, Jesse turned the flashlight about until he found it. He yanked it off the wall and handed it over.

"We don't have enough gauze in here." Ellis rifled through the contents. "The antiseptic is missing, too. Here, Jesse, take my walkie. I'm going to have to carry Beetle back to the front of the store. Can you keep looking for people while I'm gone?"

"You're going to leave me here?" Jesse asked. "By myself?"

"Unless you think you can carry Beetle back on your own, yes. You gotta remember, there might be people around here that need our help, okay?"

Jesse swallowed hard, watching Ellis pull up Beetle's pant leg and hastily start to bandage it up with Beetle's own sock. It looked like the blood was everywhere. "Just hurry back, yeah?"

"You got it." Ellis carefully lifted Beetle and leaned him against the wall. "Grab my light, Beetle. We're going on a piggy-back ride, and you're keeping me going in the right direction. Got it?"

The lanky youth had to grit his teeth as Ellis hoisted him on his broad back. A moment later, they were moving towards the door. "I'll be back as soon as I can, Jess. But you've gotta keep moving, because we've still got a bunch of people missing."

"Okay, okay."

A second later, Jesse was alone. He paced through the small break room for a bit, not an easy thing to do with two thirds of the floor space taken over by chairs, tables and vending machines. One huge section of wall lockers had tumbled over as well, leaving unsecured personal items like purses and jackets either vomited on the floor or snagged on the locker doors and clinging for dear life.

Taking a deep and somewhat encouraging breath, Jesse backtracked out of the employee break room and into the latter half of the cement aisle. After crossing a second corridor that cut through the entire store lengthwise, he came to the insulation and roofing area. The insulation was relatively easy to clamber over, as most of it was plush and rolled up, but a few pallets of the stuff had fallen from the top shelves and were still clumsily secured with straps. These Jesse had to hug and slide across them while on his belly. The roofing portion was a little trickier, as dozens of aluminum strips had jumped from their slots and now poked out dangerously at the approaching young man. Jesse cautiously kicked them aside whenever they got too close, and continued through until he reached the back wall of the store. This was where lengths of rolled up fencing, gate doors and metal posts were usually displayed. He could just imagine the nightmare that the person who had to put it all back in place was going to endure.

On the left corner of the store was situated the Loss Prevention guy's office, but Jesse knew that suspicious bastard had been gone for hours. Next to that was the store manager's office, but other than a bunch of stuff lying on the floor, and the unremarkable executive desk being jerked around a bit, it didn't look anywhere near as bad as the rest of the place.

That left the third door, which led to the computer room and the vault. Jesse tried the door, knowing full well it was always kept locked. He flashed his light through the little window next to the door. It was thrashed inside, with the commercial copier on its side and numerous cabinet doors yawning wide, their contents now emptied out on the counter space and floor. Jesse was about to move on, when he noticed a short length of bare leg just visible under the barrage of office equipment and paperwork.

"Betty!" He shouted through the narrow space under the plastic window, where items like paychecks were passed back and forth under the thick barrier. "Betty, are you okay?" Obviously she wasn't, as she hadn't even stirred at his loud barking. He pounded at the door, hoping she'd get up and come open it. Hoping he wasn't shouting at a dead body. "Shit, what now?"

He'd have to kick in the door. He knew this, but he wasn't about to get fired for any missing and supposedly sensitive documents, or for any money drops that might have been lying around inside the room. He unclipped his walkie. "Bill, you got a copy? Bill?"

It took a good moment for the store manager to answer.

"Bill, I can see Betty on the floor, inside the computer room. She's not moving. I'm asking for permission to kick open the door so I can get to her."

With the approval given, Jesse stepped back and gave the door such a violent blow that it splintered the wood around the knob. He'd expected the door and doorframe to be reinforced, but they weren't. They were just outfitted to look like they were, which made no kind of sense to him whatsoever. His second kick didn't have nearly the same impact, but it didn't need to. The door was cracked enough for him to shove it open the rest of the way.

"Betty?" Jesse hurried in, crouching down to shove items and paper out of the way, and hopefully not step on her in the process. She must have been trying to duck under the counter, he surmised, when she'd been smacked on the head by something. The fax machine seemed to be the most likely culprit. He reached out to touch her ankle, finding it warm, and not cold like he assumed a dead body would feel.

The problem was, Betty was a good-looking woman. She might have been twenty-eight or twenty-nine, recently divorced and harboring a grudge against all male members of the human species, but that didn't keep her from wearing revealing blouses and skin-tight skirts. And from where Jesse was now positioned, he'd just settled one of the more controversial debates circulating between him and a few of the other male employees in the store. She wore a thong, not panties.

Cursing himself for being such a pervert, he quickly snapped a picture with his cell phone and shoved the device back in his pocket. Not the way he would have preferred finding out, Jesse thought, but some of the open bets on this particular discussion were outrageous. He stood to make fifty bucks from that picture!

Jesse looked her over from head to toe, discovering no cuts or bruises other than the big welt on the side of her head. He kneeled down carefully and lifted her upper body close to his chest. He hoped he was doing this right. "Betty? Can you hear me?"

Nothing.

Glancing around, he found a half full water bottle, one of those little plastic deals with the blue band around them. While juggling the flashlight around, he poured a little water into his cupped hand and tried to sprinkle it on Betty's face.

Still nothing.

He tried this a second time, using a full handful of water. "Betty?"

Instead of slowly gaining consciousness, Betty started abruptly, upsetting Jesse's hand on the water bottle and sending it right into her lap, where it began ejaculating its contents.

"Shit!" Betty shrieked, desperately tearing away and trying to get to her feet.

Jesse came up beside her, noticing her unbalanced state, and daring to grab hold of her arms only when he was sure she was tipping over. "I've got you!"

Betty's hands curled around his arms, where her sharp fingernails started digging into his flesh.

"Hey! It's me, Jesse! You're hurting me!"

The claws lessened their ferocity, but only barely. "What are you doing here? Why is it so dark?"

"The earthquake took out all the power."

"What earthquake?"

"You don't remember?" Jesse asked. "We had a big-ass earthquake! It knocked down like half the store!"

Finally, Betty released her grip. Jesse pulled his arms back and started rubbing his fresh, new engravings.

"I remember putting the last few deposits in the vault, and I was typing in the figures on the computer, and... Oh, God, I do remember! How bad was it?"

"Pretty bad." Jesse commented, only now retrieving his flashlight from among the disheveled contents on the floor. "I saw you lying on the floor, but you weren't moving. I kicked the door open to see if you were okay."

Betty took a long moment, before she cleared her throat and answered, "I'm okay. I just have this big headache. My neck hurts, too."

"I think you got attacked by the fax machine." Jesse took a few steps towards the door. "Come on. Bill's got everybody in the store looking for missing employees.

She followed. "What do you mean by missing?"

"So far, the only people we can account for were those near the registers at the front of the store." Jesse informed her. "Everybody else is missing. We found Beetle just a few minutes ago, buried under a soda machine. Ellis had to carry him back to the front of the store."

"Oh, Jesus. Was he hurt bad?"

One of the things Jesse disliked about Beetle was how popular he was with the ladies. He couldn't entirely blame the youth, though, as Beetle did put in overtime when it came to flirting. It wasn't really the young man's fault that the other guys, like Jesse, were more timid around women than he was. Still, if a female was between the ages of eighteen and forty, it was a given that Beetle had tossed at least one or two lines in her direction.

"I don't know. He was bleeding pretty bad from one leg." Jesse said, as he pointed the flashlight towards the shambles in the aisles. "We can't go to the front of the store yet. I have to find Marcos. Last I heard he was cleaning up around the saw. I guess you can stay here if you don't feel like climbing over all this stuff. We'll all go back together once I find him."

"I'd rather stay with you."

"Okay." Jesse replied, picking his spots through the scattered gates and metal posts. Betty's presence slowed his progress considerably, but he was more than glad for the company.

He helped Betty clear a fallen pallet, where six brand new toilets had shattered their cardboard enclosures and exploded porcelain all over the place, when a loud thumping startled them both.

"What is that?" Betty asked, suddenly clutching his arm.

"I don't know." Jesse swung the light around while trying to locate the noise, finally centering it on the emergency door. In its tiny window he saw Marcos' frightened face. He ran over and pushed the door open.

### 2

Marcos was inside in an instant, his eyes gaping wide with fear. "Fucking door, man, fucking door! I've been trying to get back inside for like the last twenty minutes!"

"All right, all right." Jesse grabbed his shoulder. "We got through it, okay? Try to calm down a little bit."

Marcos grabbed Jesse by the front of his shirt. "You don't get it, man. There's some crazy shit going on out there!" He released Jesse and hurried back to the emergency door, making sure it was once again locked tight. "Some crazy shit!"

Jesse didn't know what to make of the outburst. "What are you talking about? I was out there too, but I didn't see anything crazy."

Marcos turned back to look at him. In the flashlight's glare, both Jesse and Betty could see the man's lunacy. "You weren't out there long enough!"

"I had the goddamned canopy fall on top of my head!" Jesse shouted back, now infected by Marcos' panic. "I had to crawl out from underneath that thing! What the hell are you talking about?"

Marcos rushed towards Jesse. For a moment Jesse thought Marcos might try to hit him. "The whispers, man. I can hear the whispers out there, and the eyes. There are eyes in the darkness! They were staring at me!"

Betty cautiously moved from beside Jesse, to behind him.

I don't have the time for this, Jesse thought. "Okay, so you made sure the door was locked, right? So whatever's out there can't come inside?"

"Fuckin'-A I did!"

"Well, Bill is trying to get everybody to the front of the store." Jesse explained. "We're getting to the bottom of this, but first we have to get everybody together. Do you know if anybody else was working on this side of the store?"

"Just me and Ellis." Marcos answered, trying to glance past Jesse and into the void of darkness. "Ellis was cleaning up the front of the department, and I was back here sweeping up all the sawdust. After the first quake, I thought, no big deal, right, but I stayed close to the emergency door just in case. And when the big one started, I said fuck it! I jumped right out that fucking door, because if I stayed in here, I knew I was going to die, and then..."

"Marcos! Think back to before the quake. Was there anybody else working back here?"

"No, no, no, just... Wait a minute! I saw Tony. He was using the electric ladder to put up some cabinets." Marcos became even more agitated. "You think he's okay? I mean, I got scared and I just ran. I didn't even think about it. I just did it, you know."

"Okay, okay." Jesse felt like slapping some sense into the other man. Bad enough he had Betty clinging to him like a life preserver, and now he had Marcos babbling all over himself as well. "Do you think you can walk Betty back to the front of the store, so I can look for Tony? I only have this one light, so you'd have to take her outside and around the building..."

"Didn't you hear what I fucking said?" Marcos stepped in close again, too close for comfort. Right into Jesse's personal space. "There are things out there!"

What the heck could have spooked Marcos so bad? The thought had just crossed Jesse's mind when Betty's hand grasped his arm. She whispered into his ear, "Don't you dare send me outside with him!"

"What did you say?" Marcos looked about ready to charge Betty as well.

"She said we should be quiet." Jesse stated. "In case Tony's trying to call out to us. How can we hear anything if we're all standing here yelling at each other? Tony could be lying around here somewhere badly hurt. Are you going to help us find him or what?"

"Yeah, yeah." Marcos turned to one side and pointed. "He was over there, by all the cabinets. That's the last place I saw him, up on that electric ladder. He said he didn't want to come down after the first quake, since he only had a couple of pieces he still had to put up on the top shelf."

Jesse took a step in that direction.

"Do you think he's dead?" Marcos asked.

Growing impatient, Jesse grabbed his walkie. "Here, take this. Call Bill and tell him you're okay."

Marcos seemed reluctant to take the device. "Do I have to tell him I ran outside?"

"No. Just tell him that you're okay, and that Betty's okay, and that we're still looking for Tony and Florie. And stay right here, because Ellis should be on his way back. You can tell him which way we went. Can you do that?"

"Yeah, I can do that."

"Good. We'll be back in a few minutes, okay?"

"Yeah, I'll just stay right here by the saw. I won't move this time, I swear."

Before Marcos could agitate anybody further, Jesse grabbed Betty's hand and stepped away. They followed the beam of light for a couple of aisles, when Jesse realized what he was doing. He wasn't sure if he should let go of her hand or not.

"Is that guy always so high strung?" Betty asked.

"He likes taking those energy drinks at lunchtime, instead of eating real food. I've never seen him so scared, though."

"What do you think about what he said? Do you really think he saw something out there?"

Jesse was about to answer, when the flashlight swept over the form of the electric ladder. It was a big and clunky contraption, with thick rubber wheels for portability and a telescoping platform capable of lifting one person and a medium stack of merchandise. The problem was that the machine was now lying on its side. As the beam of light traveled parallel to the extended telescoping device, things were looking more and more grim. They found Tony, still strapped into the machine's harness, positioned as if he'd tried to scamper away from the platform, when several heavy cabinets had come down on top of him.

"Not good." Jesse said. It was the only think he could think to say.

Betty shuddered beside him, her grip on his hand tightening, and her body coming in closer to his. If it were any other place or time, Jesse would have been thrilled to have the curvy woman so close to him. Shaking his head, Jesse stopped thinking about Betty and focused on seeing further down the back aisle. His roaming light briefly washed over broken cabinetry, sinks, kitchen counters and finally, exposed a forest of tipped over rolls of carpet.

"Listen." Betty hissed into his ear. "Over there, by all the doors."

Jesse shifted the light into the door aisle, seeing nothing but front doors, closet doors, pre-hung doors and screen doors, all tussled about as if a tornado had swept through the place.

"Down there." Betty's finger penetrated the glare.

Jesse concentrated on the area. He heard someone whimpering.

"Florie? Is that you?" He called out.

The whimpering went up a notch.

"We're coming to get you, Florie!" Jesse started clambering through the distraught corridor. "You're going to be okay!"

Betty tried her best to keep up, Jesse noted, but her tiny skirt kept riding up her thighs.

"Here, I need you to hold the light." Jesse gave her the excuse to stand pat. "Just keep it pointed at me, yeah?"

Without the pretty secretary to weigh him down, Jesse climbed through the tangle of doors like an army. He shoved some aside with his hands, kicked others out of the way, and finally, he reached the spot the whimpering was coming from. It was a dark crevice where medium sized windows were usually stored. Had that shelving faltered, he had no doubt that whoever was hiding down there would have been crushed flat.

"Florie? You in there?" Jesse asked, gazing intently into the darkness, as the light could not penetrate that far.

The whimpering was coming from only a couple of feet in front of him. Jesse dared not reach out, for fear of poking the old woman in the eye. "Florie, you've got to answer me. If you're hurt, say so, and we'll get some help to carry you out of here. If not, just move toward my voice. Okay?"

There was a sudden sobbing, followed by the mature woman's voice. "I'm... I'm not hurt."

"Okay, just come toward..."

The terrified woman might have jumped at him, for the next moment she was in his embrace and in tears. "I thought I was going to die!"

"Easy, easy." Jesse comforted her. "I've got you now. Let's make our way over to the back aisle. I'll take you out to where everybody else is."

He felt her head nodding against his chest.

They'd just started the short, but awkward, trek back, when the flashlight shifted away from them.

"Betty, a little help here!" Jesse called out impatiently.

The light came back towards them, along with Betty's reply. "Somebody's coming."

As Jesse escorted the older woman over the disarray of doors, he asked, "Is it Ellis?"

"I think so." Betty answered. The light swung away again. "We're over here! By the cabinets!"

Jesse found he couldn't navigate well through the cluster of fallen doors, with no guidance whatsoever in the darkness. "Betty!"

"Sorry!" The light came back.

Florie whispered something near his ear.

"What was that?"

"Tony." She repeated in her hoarse voice. She sounded as if she was about to break into tears. "I heard him gasping when all that stuff fell on him. Oh, God, it was so awful! I heard that poor man die! I thought I was going to die, too! I thought nobody was ever going to find me!"

He wasn't very good at these things, Jesse thought. "Let's get you back to the front of the store, okay? Try not to think about Tony right now."

Florie shuddered, but thankfully, she kept quiet as they rounded the fallen mechanical ladder, and witnessed the dead body stretched out to one end of it.

They reached Betty just as Ellis and Marcos arrived, and just as a great crash was heard nearby. In unison, their two flashlights honed on a spot a short distance down the back aisle, where a pallet, probably of plumbing fixtures, had toppled over. One of the lights ascended up towards the top shelf, where a couple of other pallets teetered on the verge of suicide.

"Doesn't look too safe, does it?" Ellis asked the group. "I would not want to be standing underneath all that merchandise when it decides to come down."

"Uh, Tony didn't make it." Jesse mentioned.

Ellis stayed quiet for a moment. "We saw that as we were walking over."

"You got Beetle back okay?" Jesse asked.

"Yeah." Ellis answered. "He's getting his leg bandaged up like a mummy, but he's cracking jokes about it already. Florie, how you doing there, honey?"

"I've been a lot better." The older woman replied. "I could use a cigarette, though."

"Well, you can have one once we get back to the front of the store." Ellis told her. "I wouldn't recommend lighting anything up in here, since who knows what kind of flammable crap might be floating in the air right now."

"So, what do we do now?" Jesse asked.

"We get the fuck out of here, that's what!" Marcos unexpectedly cut in.

"We'll be on our way in just a second." Ellis stated firmly. "Now, I want you all to think back to just before the earthquake. Was there anybody else working back here?"

Nobody answered.

"Betty?"

"No, I was in the back office by myself."

"Marcos, did you see anybody?"

"No, no. The whole back half of lumber was empty."

"Florie?"

"No, nobody except for me and Tony. I was helping him shelve his returns, so..." She started choking up. "So, he could work on the cabinets."

Ellis stepped over and put his arm around the older woman, a task Jesse gladly relinquished. "What a waste of a good man. We'll let Bill know once we get back to the front of the store, but for right now, there's nothing we can do for him. Okay?"

They all heard the loud crack of splintering wood.

"Let's go!" Marcos pleaded. "This whole fucking place is gonna come down on top of our heads! What are we waiting for?"

The five survivors began winding their way back towards the far corner of the building. Along their path, they passed near the emergency door.

This was when Florie shrieked.

Ellis had been in the lead, turning upon hearing her panic. He shifted the flashlight's beam in all directions, but couldn't readily discern the reason for her scream. "What is it, Florie? What happened?"

"I saw something outside!" She was now trembling and cringing behind Betty.

Jesse hurried to the emergency door, flashing his light through the tiny window. "There's nothing there now."

"I swear to you, I saw something!" Florie insisted.

Jesse reached out to push open the emergency door, when Marcos shot forward and shoved him out of the way. "You don't want to do that, man! You don't want to let those things in here!"

"What's he talking about?" Florie sounded even more scared. "What things are out there?"

"Marcos thinks he saw something outside." Ellis tried to calm her. "But he doesn't know what. He told me when I came back here to find the rest of you guys."

"I did see something!" Marcos shot back. "It had glowing yellow eyes, and horns!"

Jesse was about to scold the man for further terrifying the women, but Florie gasped first. "That's what I saw! Two big glowing eyes, right there in that little window! I swear, I'm telling you the truth!"

"We believe you, Florie." Ellis said.

"I'm not crazy! I saw what I saw!"

"I believe you." Ellis repeated. "I just... I just don't know what to make of that right now." There followed an uncomfortable pause. "Let's just get back to the front of the store, okay?"

The small group made it to their destination without further incident, pausing only long enough for one unscheduled stop; Florie had to retrieve her cigarettes from the employee break room.

They found Martha pacing back and forth across the cash registers, with Cindy marking her progress with the flashlight.

"I take it that Bill hasn't come back yet?" Ellis asked.

Cindy merely shook her head.

"What's wrong with her?" Jesse asked, meaning Martha.

"What's wrong with me?" Martha paused from her pacing. "I'll tell you what's wrong with me. I was standing outside for the whole time you people were gone, and I didn't hear anything. No fire trucks, no ambulances, no police, no nothing. It's as if the whole world is gone!"

The comment brought up a whole new wave of distress to Marcos. "Whaddaya mean? Whaddaya mean the whole world is gone?" He bullied his way through the tight cluster of bodies, snatching up a flashlight from the bunch sitting on a cashier station, and anxiously ran outside.

"First he didn't want to be outside, and now he's the first one out the door." Jesse said. He pointed his light at the broken entrance doors, but Marcos was already gone.

"I've gotta have a smoke." Florie traced the fleeing man's footsteps. "Martha, you coming?"

"I don't smoke." Martha commented dryly, as she was vehemently anti-tobacco.

"It's a good time to start." Florie replied. "Besides, I could sure use the company."

Apparently agreeing with one of the two statements, Martha soon left with Florie.

Jesse found himself somewhat relieved that the two fussy older women weren't around.

Ellis scanned the vicinity with his flashlight, until he located Beetle sleeping on the floor. He turned to Cindy. "He okay?"

Cindy shrugged. "I guess. We stopped the bleeding, anyway."

"How about you, Cindy? You hanging in?"

"I'm hanging in."

"Hey, El, you think we should go look for Bill?" Jesse asked. "He should have been back by now, right?"

"Yeah, he should have." Ellis acknowledged. Absently, he reached to his waist, but he halted half a second later. "My walkie's on the blink now. Low battery. Cindy, can I borrow yours?"

"Sure." The meek cashier handed it over. "The battery is a little low on this one, too. I guess all the walkies are low, since it was almost closing time and none of them have been recharged."

By using the flashlight, Ellis checked the power bar on Cindy's walkie. Sure enough, it was on its last marker. He held it up to his mouth. "Bill, do you copy?"

He waited.

"Store manager Bill, do you copy?"

Instead of Bill, he got Marcos on the walkie. "You scared the shit out of me, man. I almost forgot I had a radio on me. It was set it on fucking high volume."

Ellis wasn't in the mood for Marcos' theatrics. "You want to get off the walkie? I'm trying to get a hold of Bill."

"No, listen." Marcos answered. "I snagged a flashlight right before I took off, right. I mean, you know what Martha said, about how it was like the whole world was gone? I had to see for myself, you know? So I walked away, in a straight line, and man, you won't believe this. The parking lot is gone, man, and all the cars that were on it, they're gone, too. And you know all those shops across the lot, the discount store, the taco shop, and the bank? All of those places are gone! There's just dirt here where all those places used to be!"

A knot of dread began growing in Jesse's stomach.

"I found a wall." Marcos revealed. "It's like a big dirt wall, and it's huge. I'm walking alongside it right now, and it just seems to be going on forever, and... Oh, shit!"

"What is it?" Ellis asked.

"Those fucking things that were behind the store, I think they followed me out here. Damn! Listen, I'm going to try to make it back to the store, but I gotta turn the radio down so they can't hear it. And the light, I gotta turn that off, too."

Along with the others, Ellis rushed to the entrance doors in a panic. "Marcos? Marcos, are you there?"

They were greeted by silence.

"Does this situation remind anybody here of a bad horror flick?" Ellis turned to face the others. "Where things keep getting worse and worse until all hell breaks loose?"

"It was on the news." Cindy muttered.

"What was?"

"People gone missing." She shuddered. "Houses disappearing in those new communities they keep building further and further out into the desert."

"I heard about that, too." Betty had been pretty quiet until now. "A house would be gone, like something ripped it out of the ground and walked off with it. And like Cindy said, the people would be gone with it."

"I thought the tabloids were saying it was terrorists," Ellis recalled. "Using some kind of super vacuum weapon. You can't believe everything you hear."

"Not just houses, but buildings, too." Jesse remembered seeing some news bulletin, somewhere online. "I think there was a gas station, and a liquor store. Nothing as big as this place, though. I heard it was aliens beaming things up into a flying saucer."

"Are we seriously considering this?" Ellis asked. "I think it's a bunch of nonsense. Did any of you actually go out to these places and see things for yourself? Did any of you see with your own eyes, an empty piece of land where a house used to be?"

No answer.

"All right then, case closed." Ellis concluded. "Let's stop letting our imagination get the best of us. I need to go and find out why Bill hasn't come back."

"You saw it for yourself." Jesse reminded him. "You saw the dirt outside, where there used to be pavement."

"I was mistaken." Ellis denied, taking a few strides down the main aisle. "You coming or not?"

Cindy's flashlight pointed in Jesse's direction. He shrugged his shoulders and went after the bigger man.

Once Ellis saw he wasn't going alone, he shouted back to the others, "You guys, stay right there by the door until we get back. I'm going to find Bill, and we're going to get to the bottom of this."

Ellis started moving again. Jesse trailed in his footsteps, unsure if Ellis was angry or not. Timidly, he asked, "What's going on, El?"

"It makes sense."

"What does?"

"That theory." Ellis elaborated. "The idea that maybe the store isn't where it's supposed to be. The sudden shake, the dirt instead of the parking lot, even the goddamned stars not being there. It all makes sense."

"Well, why didn't you say so?"

"How could I?" Ellis replied. "You saw how Marcos was acting. I've never seen him that agitated before. How much more do you think it'll take before Martha and Florie start getting amped up like that? Or even Cindy? We've gotta keep our heads together, Jesse. We've gotta sort things out, figure out where we are, and figure out how we're going to deal with it. In those stories you guys were talking about, none of those people that disappeared ever came back, did they?"

In silence, the two men walked through the dark store, with only their flashlights to break through the darkness. The tub and toilet area, the paint department and the lighting department on their left side were all in a shambles. Thanks to the wide center aisle and the seasonal product stacked lightly on the right, there was a lot less obstruction around to impede their progress on that side.

Ellis made a quick detour when he saw the service desk, and more specifically, to the small manager's office located behind it. He found the cabinet where the walkies and their chargers were stored, broken up and with its contents strewn about, and he started digging through the pile. The busy man was turning the walkies on and off, until he found a pair that had more than the minimal charge on them. One of these he passed over to Jesse, and a second he kept for himself.

Jesse flashed his light on the returns desk and on the main entrance doors, before Ellis urged him on. They went by the cleaning supplies, the lawn mower aisle, and the pest control section, all reduced to crumpled shelving and broken-open, smelly product. Towards the latter part of the aisles, they discovered that the roof of the store had caved in.

"I'm guessing Bill didn't head that way." Ellis motioned away from the disrupted aisles, and over toward the sliding doors that led to the outside garden area. "It's not looking good for whoever was working the back of the store."

The back corner was where the lamps and ceiling fans were, as well as the usually pallet-crowded receiving department. Ellis was right. Whoever was back there had a lot of stuff potentially coming down on their head.

"It stinks in here." Jesse commented, catching the strong odor of smashed pesticide containers; both sacks and spray bottles.

Ellis had already stepped outside and into the garden area. "You think so, huh? Wait until you get out here."

Jesse wondered about those words, until he followed the man's footsteps outside. He was immediately suffocated by the stink of manure. There were tons of fertilizer bags stocked on the shelves that ran towards the back of garden. It smelled as if they'd all been opened at once and their contents spread all across that section of the store. "I guess I spoke too soon."

Spotting a more or less clear aisle, Ellis used his flashlight to motion for Jesse to follow. They gingerly stepped over hundreds of shards of broken pottery and garden stakes, directly towards the manure stench.

"Thought I saw a light over here." Ellis grumbled, trying to cover his nose with his shirt.

"Who dat?" Brenda's unmistakable voice called out, followed soon by the glare from her light pointing at them.

"It's me." Ellis announced, capturing the stocky woman in his beam. "We've been trying to call you on the walkie."

"That stupid thing died on us."

"Take mine." Jesse offered, figuring Ellis would have asked him to give it up anyway.

"So, what's going on out here?" Ellis asked. "Where's Bill?"

"I'll show you." Brenda started waddling away. "We found the old guy that works in lighting, what's his name?"

"Russell."

"Yeah, him. He got knocked loopy by some boxes, but he was lucky cuz they weren't that heavy. And out in garden, Richelle was watering the plants, and you know that goofball Dougie, how he's always missing from his department? I guess he was out there flirting with Richelle. That might have saved the poor kid's life, seein' as how the roof came down on the carpet aisles."

"Okay."

"And about Bill, you ain't gonna believe this. You saw how the roof collapsed on receiving, right? Sanders and Janey were back there moving freight, but nothing fell on them. They couldn't come back through the store, cuz of all the stuff blocking their way, so they decided they were going out the back door. I don't know, but they're saying something attacked them back there. They couldn't see what it was, cuz they didn't have any lights at the time, but at least one of them was smart enough to prop the door open so they could get back inside, otherwise... Who knows what might have happened?"

"Trust me." Ellis concurred. "We've got some unexplainable stuff going on over by the front registers, too."

"Yeah? Like what?"

Ellis was about to answer, when the combined strengths of their flashlights revealed a quartet of employees. Dougie, the aforementioned goofball, and Beetle's accomplice in crime, was standing there looking worried and with his hands in his pockets. Richelle, the cute garden associate, who might have been all of nineteen years of age, had obviously been crying and seemed to be keeping her distance from him. Bill and Russell were a little higher up, as they'd climbed on one of the more stable sections of shelving, apparently to get a better look into what seemed to be eternal darkness.

"Bill?"

"Hey, Ellis." The store manager's voice drifted down. "You find anybody on your end?"

"Yeah, a couple of people. Betty, Florie, and Marcos. Beetle's got a nasty cut on one leg. Tony didn't make it. Some heavy stuff fell on top of him."

The store manager could be heard taking a deep breath. "I'm sorry to hear that." He seemed to be taking a moment. "We've got some strange things going on here, Ellis. Things that aren't seeming to make any sense."

"I heard that." Ellis agreed.

"Okay, let's do this. Brenda, why don't you take the kids and head on back to the front of the store. Everybody's still over there, right, Ellis?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. Russell, you can go with them if you like."

"I think I will. I'm getting too old for this kind of shit. Can one of you give me hand getting off this thing?"

When Dougie didn't budge, Jesse stepped up and helped Russell climb down from the makeshift scaffolding.

"Thank you, Lord." Brenda blurted out in relief. "You don't know how badly I've been wanting to run away from all this smelly manure."

"You should stop by the service desk." Ellis directed. "Grab up as many charged walkies and batteries as you can. Only keep one or two of the walkies on at a time, otherwise they'll all run out of charge."

"Gotcha. Guess you can have this one back, Jesse." She handed it over.

Using a lone flashlight, Brenda took charge of the group. They soon retreated back into the store.

Ellis moved forward. "Okay, Bill. What's the situation?"

"I wish I had a clue. Sanders and Janey tried to walk over here in the dark, but something spooked them so bad they ran back inside. They opened one of the delivery doors a crack. The only reason we knew that they were even there was because we heard them yelling at us from under that door, after they saw our flashlights waving around out here in garden.

"They're telling me that there is no pavement, only dirt, behind the store, and that they had the big forklift back there behind the building, but now that's gone too. And I swear, and Russell can back me up on this, that I heard something big flapping around out there. I mean, it wasn't obvious like a helicopter, but it was, I don't know, weird."

"You look up at the sky, Bill?"

"What about it?"

"There are no stars in the sky." Ellis pointed out. "And the moon is gone, too."

"I hadn't even noticed." Bill replied, apparently looking straight up while his head was masked by darkness. "You know, Russell mentioned something like that, too. He said the air smelled a little stale, like there hadn't been a breeze in a while, like the way a closet smells when you haven't opened it recently. The way he smokes, it's a wonder he can smell anything at all."

"Bill, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."

The manager chuckled. "I was about to say the same thing. We're always getting that breeze from the ocean, but I can't smell the saltiness anymore. I think the store moved somewhere else."

"We've got a theory about that." Ellis took a breath. "You hear about all those missing buildings on the news?"

"Are you serious? You think we got kidnapped by aliens or something?"

"I can't pin down the cause, but yeah, we got kidnapped by something. Might even be something natural, for all we know."

"Why don't you guys climb up here?" Bill asked. "I'm getting tired of watching nothing in this blasted darkness. Russell tried to help, but he's getting on in his years. He was up here mostly to keep me company."

Ellis and Jesse clambered onto the second level of the shelving.

"Just this last week, I was at the grocery store." Bill mentioned, as the new arrivals placed themselves to either side of him. "I was standing in line, waiting for my turn at the check-out. The family in front of me had something like three full shopping carts of crap to purchase."

"No kidding." Ellis chuckled.

"Yeah, I knew I was going to be there a while. Anyway, I pick up the latest edition of the Enquirer, because I get a kick reading about that Bat-Boy creature they cover sometimes. Last I read, he was leading the cops on a three state chase."

The other two men laughed.

"Anyway, there was a story in there that got me thinking. It seems there's been some electromagnetic anomalies in some place called the Gulf of Aden, ever since 2000 or 2001. And more recently, this anomaly has grown into a full-blown vortex. According to the article, twenty-seven nations have sent warships out to that area to investigate, supposedly under the excuse that they're fighting Somali pirates. Some people are even claiming that there's some kind of Stargate out there, just like the one in that movie. I mean, I've got Google Earth at home, and I looked up the Gulf of Aden, and there was nothing there. There is plenty of evidence on Google supporting the news that twenty-seven nations sent warships out there, but when I looked up the actual location, I didn't see any of them. It's like, what gives here? The images from Google are supposed to be the latest satellite images."

"And you think this Stargate thing has something to do with what's going on here?"

"I take everything I read in the Enquirer with a grain of salt." Bill replied. "All I'm saying is that I hope I'm dreaming all this. When I wake up, I expect to find myself in my warm bed, inside my warm house."

"I hate to break this to you, Bill. You're not dreaming."

"I was afraid you'd say that."

### 3

Jesse thought he heard something. "Hey, guys. Listen."

"Bill! You there?" It was Sanders' gruff voice. The receiving area was only about a hundred and fifty feet from them, but in the darkness it sounded a lot farther away.

"Yeah, I'm here!" The store manager shouted back, flashing his light around.

"We couldn't find any working flashlights!" Sanders called back. "We did find some boxes with big parasols in them, inside the patio sets. I had to tear open a few boxes to get to them. That cool?"

"Yeah, no problem."

"We're going to use the parasols to fend off whatever came at us earlier. We're coming to you, Bill. You got that side gate unlocked yet?"

Bill's light dropped down to his waist, where he reached with his free hand and unclipped his great set of keys. "Ellis, can you get the gate open? Here, here's the key."

"Got it."

"All right, Sanders." Bill shouted. "The gate is being opened right now."

"Tell me when it's open!"

"Will do!"

Jesse followed Ellis through the obstacle course that the garden area had become, around the more dangerous parts and over the shifty heaps of manure. They reached the gate a minute later, with Ellis unlocking the industrial security lock, while Jesse kept the light on him. Ellis lifted the gate stops and slid one of the wide doors away.

"Gate's open!"

"Okay." Bill acknowledged. "I'm going to tell Sanders to start coming. As soon as he and Janey get inside, you shut that gate up. You got me?"

"Yes, sir."

"And keep your lights visible, too." Bill reminded them. Next, he bellowed out, "Okay, Sanders. We're good on this side!"

"Do you think something will come after them?" Jesse asked Ellis.

"I sure hope not. You saw how nutty Marcos was acting."

Jesse flashed the light around him, illuminating dozens of plastic bags of mulch and bark. Not much use in a fight, he thought, scanning further down. He spotted a fallen pallet of gravel sacks. Finding this better than nothing, he darted over and grabbed a couple of bags of the largest sized gravel he could find.

"Okay, Sanders is coming!" Bill warned them.

"Jesse, get back here." Ellis called out. "What are you doing?"

"Carrying these fifty pound bags." Jesse panted, barely able to hold the weight. He dropped the sacks on the floor and tore them open.

From nowhere, the two men heard the sounds of flapping. Overlapping sounds, is if whatever they were hearing had many wings, or as if there were many things flapping at once. Then they heard a high-pitched SCREE that made them wince.

Jesse wondered if that was what a Pterodactyl sounded like.

A second later, there were dozens of SCREES, coming from all over the place.

And in the dark, they could hear Sanders crying out and struggling with something.

Ellis and Jesse pointed their flashlights towards the scene, but the battle was too far away. They saw nothing.

A figure darted before the gate, startling both men into jumping back a few feet. They both pointed their flashlights at the open gate, watching as the lithe Janey dove in, rolling herself into a ball to get away from the thing that was chasing her.

The thing nearly crashed into the gate, swatting at it with its massive leathery wings, and in a glimpse of light, revealing a man-sized body full of matted gray fur. It SCREED in anger at having lost its prey, and batted its wings until it lifted up and out of sight.

Janey recovered in a moment, positioning herself into a low crouch and making sure she was no longer being pursued.

Ellis turned his light back outside, where the stout form of Sanders finally came into view. In horror, they all watched as another of the furred beasts ripped the huge parasol from the big man's grip. Even as the creature flew away with its prize, two more of the beasts landed on either side of him and SCREED out loud as they extended their wings into fearsome displays. The monsters, which they now recognized as giant bats, stepped awkwardly on their clawed feet, when one suddenly swooped at Sanders and made as if to carry him away.

Luckily, Sanders jumped at the last moment. Still, the bat creature's claws raked into his arm and sent him pummeling nearer to the second beast.

"We've got to do something!" Ellis bolted outside the gate, only to hear the leathery flapping descending right over him.

Jesse reached down to grab a handful of gravel, and threw it into the black air as hard as he could. He must have struck something, as he heard another ear-piercing SCREE right before the flapping moved out of range.

Mimicking his actions, Janey grabbed two handfuls of the decorative rocks and left the protection of the gate. She flung her missiles at the standing creature's back, startling it into flight, before rushing to her fallen co-worker's side. Ellis was right behind her. Between the two of them, they got Sanders to his feet and escorted him back to the gate.

Behind him, Jesse heard a loud crash. He spun around, finding the store manager struggling to get out from the midst of a broken pallet of manure.

"I'm okay." Bill said, waving him off. "I thought I could climb over this, but it gave way when I put my weight on it. I'm not hurt, though."

As Jesse watched, a giant bat dropped down directly on top of the store manager. Great, curved claws clamped onto the man's shoulders, piercing through the clothes and flesh. Bill screamed and struggled, but the creature held him firm. The bat jerked itself up, tearing Bill away from the bags of manure, and although it was expending a good deal of effort, it was able to lift the distraught and vociferous man up and out of sight.

Noting the successful capture, other bats started looming closer to the workers, diving down and reaching out with their claws.

"We've got to get back inside the store!" Ellis cried out, dragging the bloodied-up Sanders along with him.

The gravel idea wasn't going to work out so good, Jesse realized. He dodged one bat by jumping under a shelf, only to see it land and stagger-step in his direction. Grabbing the first thing he could, a bag of loose manure, he stepped out and flung the bag right into the creature's chest. Smelly debris exploded all over the creature, causing it to move back clumsily. The giant bat slipped on the scattered debris and fell to the ground.

Janey appeared out of nowhere, hefting a twelve-inch paver stone in her hands, which she brought down on the bat's human-sized head. The paver shattered into fragments, causing the creature to SCREE and toss about wildly as it tried to regain its footing.

More of the giant bats were landing, their outstretched wings cramped together, yet still large enough to cover the entire width of the aisle. They SCREED at both Janey and Jesse, snapping their jaws at them as the two climbed over the same pile of manure where the store manager had gotten stuck a moment before.

The nearest bat staggered after them, trying to maintain its balance as it closed and opened its wings to navigate through the tighter, clutter-littered aisle.

Jesse's bouncing flashlight revealed a messy row of wheelbarrows to one side, and boxed tool sheds in the other, but nothing they could use as a weapon. Janey grabbed a small box of plastic garden stakes and flung it at the bat, with no effect.

"Of all the aisles in the fucking store!" She cursed, as their pursuer gained on them. "And we had to go through this one!"

Jesse flashed the light ahead, revealing a second set of sliding doors that led to the back half of the store.

"In there!" Janey ordered him. They both jumped inside as the bat snapped at their backs.

The hairy beast retracted its wings, intending on following the humans inside, when Janey rolled to one edge of the sliding doors and tried to close it by force. "Get on the other side! Hurry!"

Fighting back his fear, Jesse positioned himself across from Janey. Between the two of them, they might have managed to shut the doors, except the giant bat's head had already crossed the threshold. The edges of both doors had pinned the creature's neck. It started trying to jerk itself free.

"Hold the doors!" Janey commanded. She rolled across the floor like a ninja, snatching the fallen flashlight from Jesse and bolting away a second later.

The bat rammed its furry shoulders into the door, nearly knocking them off the overhead rails. It was too strong, Jesse realized, hoping that whatever Janey was up to, she'd do it fast.

Another loud SCREE rang through his head, as loud as an airplane taking off.

The flashlight slid to a stop next to his leg.

"When I say GO," Janey ordered. "You grab that light and point it right into that thing's ugly face!"

"Okay." Jesse replied, even as the monster pressed more of itself inside.

"Go!"

Jesse tried to keep his weight on the edge of the door, as he snatched up the flashlight and pointed it at the creature's face. It was repulsively ugly; wiry hair all over, with beady greenish-black eyes the size of tennis balls on either side of a large, flat nose. Its ears were huge, maybe two feet tall. Jesse could see how Marcos had mistaken them for horns earlier. Lastly, the bat's mouth was open wide, revealing two big fangs that looked to be as long as his fingers, and two centered and smaller teeth on the bottom that might have been half that size, along with a large tongue that glistened with drool.

The giant bat opened its mouth wider, as if it were about to unleash another unearthly cry, when an axe came down hard in the center of its head and splattered blood in all directions.

"Keep holding the door!" Janey cried out, trying to pry the long handled weapon away from the bat's head. She placed a black sneaker on the sliding door, yanking at the embedded axe so hard that when she dislodged it, she fell back onto the floor.

The bat cried out furiously, finally withdrawing its blood-streaming head and staggering back the way it had come.

Janey was already on her feet, the crimson-edged axe firmly gripped in her hands. "We should chase it and bring it down!"

"Are you nuts? Those things are everywhere!" Jesse admonished her. "Cover the door, will you, while I go and grab something!" He ran a handful of feet into the first aisle he came to, where the various types of long handled garden tools were kept, and swung his flashlight around crazily until he located one he felt safe using. It was a four-foot pitchfork. The blades weren't as sharp as he would have liked, but they would have to do. He grabbed the walkie, which luckily was still securely clipped to his side. "Ellis, you hearing me?"

"Loud and clear. You guys okay?"

"I guess, considering we just got attacked by giant fucking bats!"

"I can hear you yelling from where I'm standing. Where are you?"

"By the back sliding doors, next to the shovels and axes. Just across from receiving."

"I thought Brenda said the roof had caved in there."

Jesse flashed the light around for a quick second. "It did. We've got maybe eight or nine feet before we can't go any further. This place is thrashed in all directions."

"I'm over here by the pesticides, same aisle you're on, but on the opposite end. From here it doesn't look like you can get to me."

Jesse shined his light up and down the aisle. The roof was sagging dangerously on the shelving, and the merchandise and broken pallets prohibited their passage. "We're blocked off."

"You might have to go back outside, to the pottery aisle. I think that's the easiest aisle to walk through."

"You have got to be kidding me!"

"Sorry, kid. I'm not going to be able to help you right now, either. Sanders passed out on me, as soon as we made it into the building. I wrapped my shirt around his arm, but I think he's losing blood too fast. I want to get him back by the cash registers so we can at least try and bandage him up a little better."

"Okay." Jesse sought out Janey with the light. "What do you think?"

"We're caged in right here." She deduced. "We're like sitting ducks. I say we make a run for it and try to get into the front part of the store."

Jesse pressed the talk button on the walkie. "We'll heading your way, Ellis, as soon as the coast is clear."

"Copy. Brenda, you listening?"

"I've been listening. What you all find out there? Marcos has been screaming about something trying to carry him off into the night, and he's got the scratches to prove it."

"They're bats, Brenda. Giant bats, as big as you or me. They, uh, they carried Bill off with them."

"What?"

"He's gone, Brenda. Just like Marcos said, one of those things carried him off."

"Oh, Lord. And you say Sanders is busted up, too?"

"He almost got his arm torn off. I'm gonna lift him onto a flat cart and start walking him down the main aisle. I'd appreciate if I could get a couple of people to help me clear a path."

"You got it."

"Jesse, Janey, it looks like those bats are gone now, at least on my end. Once you guys get over here, we're going to start barricading the sliding doors so they can't get inside. And the entrance doors, too. I'll send some people to help you guys. I'm out."

Jesse lowered the volume on his walkie as he turned to address Janey. "Before we go, we should get a shopping cart and grab some of these tools so we can use them as weapons. I have a feeling we're going to need them."

"Did you even see a cart around here?" Janey asked.

Jesse poked around with the flashlight, spotting a basket cart just around the corner. Once he'd pulled it out from under a stack of fallen plastic bins, the two workers set about filling it with the various tools they discovered lying on the floor, or barely hanging on their hooks. These ranged from full-sized axes to chopping scrapers to half a dozen hatchets.

"Ready to go?" Jesse asked.

Now armed with two hatchets, the intrepid Janey wasn't just ready to go, she was ready to take the lead. "Yeah. Let's roll."

Cautiously, they pushed the sliding doors open. When nothing immediately attacked them, they stepped out and took a good look around. Only when they were sure there was nothing else out there, did they started their cautious procession through the disheveled aisles. Thankfully, the bats seemed to be long gone now. Despite having to pause often to clear a path for the bulky shopping cart, the short journey through the Garden Department was as uneventful as it was slow.

Several minutes later, they re-entered the store to discover an industrious scene taking place just inside. Under Brenda's watchful eyes, the small army of cashiers and department associates were loading the sturdy flat shopping carts with oversized merchandise. Once these carts were rolled over towards the main entrance, the items were stacked tightly against the wedged-shut sliding doors.

"Ain't nuthin' getting' in here without my say so." Brenda boasted when she saw them. She noticed the shopping cart full of tools the pair brought in with them. "I see you brought us some presents, too."

"Shop 'til you drop." Janey stated, before she drifted off to help the others, with her two hatchets in tow.

"We figured we could use some weapons." Jesse said, rolling the cart before the hefty black woman. "Anything I can do?"

"Sure. You can help Ellis and Marcos load cabinets onto those flat carts." She waved with her light. "They're down that way, over by the bathroom furniture."

Russell stepped up. "Front door's done."

"Already?" Brenda sounded shocked. "I am impressed with you, mister. Why don't you and Florie shift all the flashlights over to light up the garden doors, so we can do that side next."

"Yes, ma'am." The older man nodded and strode off purposefully.

"I guess you've got it under control." Jesse was impressed himself.

"You've just got to put your mind and your body into it, that's all." Brenda tried to downplay her effort. "Go on, now. I'm sure the guys could use a hand."

Feeling energized from the action around him, Jesse started a steady trot down the main aisle. The walkie went off when he was about halfway to his destination.

"Ellis, you copy, sugar?" Brenda's sultry voice saturated the air.

"Loud and clear."

"Can I get you to come up here, with your shirt off?"

Jesse couldn't help but giggle.

Ellis took few seconds to answer. "What can I do for you, Brenda?"

"We're needing some bigger pieces up here. The front doors are blocked off, and we're starting on the garden doors next."

"Big pieces, coming up."

Jesse reached the man about a minute later. He found Ellis with somebody else's tight sweater strained across his thick chest. He said, "Looks like somebody around here has a secret admirer."

"From where I'm standing, it's not much of a secret." Through the glare from Jesse's light, the black man scowled back at him. "My shirt is still wrapped around Sander's arm, and this is the only thing anybody could spare. I brought a windbreaker from home, too, but I had the bad luck to leave the damned thing sitting on the front seat of my truck. I'm not taking my shirt off for Brenda!"

Jesse laughed.

Ellis and Marcos lifted a large cabinet onto the flat cart beside them. A good couple of feet of the item stuck out past the length of the cart, resulting in Marcos having to hold the end up to keep it in balance.

"Hey, she's not so bad." Marcos declared, just out of range of illumination. "She's got a little somethin'-somethin'. A little cushion for the pushin'. If I were you, I'd do her in a heartbeat."

"You want her, you can have her." Ellis replied. "Okay, you two. This one's ready."

Dougie and Richelle emerged from the shadows. Richelle grabbed the cart's handle and started dragging, while Dougie brought up the rear and held the cabinet aloft.

"We got any carts left?" Ellis asked, as both he and Marcos retrieved their lights and started scouring the area.

"I don't see any." Marcos sounded relieved.

"Guess we're on break, then." Ellis said, grabbing an empty plastic bucket. He turned the bucket upside down and used it for a seat.

Beside him, Marcos did the same. "I wish I was getting paid overtime for this."

"Those bat things almost got us, huh?" Jesse recalled their harrowing escape.

Marcos answered first. "Man, I think I ran half a mile with one of those things breathing down my neck. Look what they did."

Jesse illuminated the man, watching as he pulled off his shirt and turned his back. Scrapes that might have been half a foot long were evident on his upper back and shoulder blades.

"Look here." Marcos bent forward, displaying another scratch, this one red and raw, on the top of his head. "Fucking bat almost killed me. Tore my shirt right off my back, too. Good thing I found this extra shirt in one of the lockers."

"How'd you get away from it?"

"I ran back and forth." Marcos explained. "Like a mouse or something. The thing couldn't get a good bead on me that way."

"You're lucky you only had one after you." Ellis commented. "We must have had five or six of them out there in garden."

"How'd you get away, El?"

"Basically, by lunging over all those broken pavers and blocks. The bats started landing and crowding in on each other. Sanders and I started throwing fragments at them. The good thing is that the potted plant aisles weren't too bad to get through. We're lucky we made it back inside before those bats got to us."

Jesse couldn't help but set the man up. "So you got a lot of scrapes, like on your arms and back? Like Marcos did?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"You want to take off your sweater and show me? Like you did for Brenda?"

Ellis stayed quiet for a few moments. "You're going to be riding me all night about that, aren't you?"

Both Jesse and Marcos started laughing.

Once Jesse regained his composure, he asked, "So, what's the deal right now, as far as who's doing what?"

"Well, Cindy is watching over Beetle and Sanders. Both of those guys are drowsy and half asleep anyway. She's watching over Betty and Martha, too. Those two women look like they're ready to have nervous breakdowns, and I can't really say I blame them. They're worried sick about their families. Brenda's got everybody else too busy working to think about that stuff."

"I didn't think she had it in her." Jesse admitted. "Brenda just kind of stepped in and took over, huh?"

"I'm telling you, Ellis." Marcos suggested. "You should go for it. She's got some fucking melons on her."

A bobbing flashlight caught their attention, causing the three men to turn and witness Dougie and Richelle's somber approach. Richelle held the flashlight and dragged one flat cart, while Dougie brought along two.

"I guess we go back to work." Ellis grumbled, right before he got back to his feet.

In about an hour, the determined team had the three entry points into the store, two main entrances plus the door leading out to garden, effectively sealed off.

The fourteen survivors eventually gathered near the cash registers. Beetle was awake by this time, enjoying his use of one of the electric chairs normally reserved for disabled or elderly customers. Sanders had been awake for a short time as well, while his heavily bandaged arm was set into a makeshift sling. Since then, he'd gone back to sleep.

"What now, candy man?" Brenda was still teasing Ellis.

Ellis walked into the center of the crowd, much as Bill would have done when holding an employee meeting. "I'm guessing everybody here is as worn out as I am. What I'd like to do is have everybody go over to the employee break room, where we can all share whatever food we can find inside of the refrigerator."

"I say we jack the vending machine!" Beetle shouted out, eliciting a cheer from Dougie. "That thing owes me like two dollars, and on top of that, it attacked me!"

"Ellis, do you mind if we grab something from the snack stands?" Florie asked. "I'm dying for a piece of chocolate."

"You can go ahead and grab some candy, Florie." Ellis gave his permission. "And anybody else that wants a sports drink or a bottle of water, go ahead and get it. Just remember that our plumbing is not working right now."

"What if I have to pee?" Florie asked.

"We've got like a hundred toilets in the building." Beetle joked.

"Yeah, but they're all in pieces now!" Dougie chimed in.

"We're working out a... a procedure." Ellis stated, rather embarrassed. "Whoever needs to go to the restroom can step outside the store..."

"I am not going out there!" Betty refused. "Not after what happened to Bill!"

"You won't have to go alone. We'll have somebody escort you outside, and we'll keep guard while you do your business. It's the best I can come up with, considering... Considering we may have to use the water still left in the toilets as drinking water, in case we run out of bottled drinks."

"Eww!" Richelle made a face. "I'm not drinking toilet water, and I don't want anybody watching while I do my business!"

"We'll be discreet." Ellis replied. "The point is; we'll be doing our best to keep you guys and girls safe. Once we've all had something to eat, we can all go to the upstairs training room and try to get some sleep."

"Why up there? Why not just stay here?" Russell wondered.

"We can better defend the training room, in case something manages to get inside." Ellis explained. "If we stay by the registers, we're not completely out in the open, but we're close to it. Plus, I don't know if you've noticed, but it has been getting a little colder since the quake. The training room has only one way in, it's on the second floor, and there's an emergency exit near the base of the stairs. It's an enclosed space, so we can keep ourselves warm by proximity, and since we don't have any blankets to cover ourselves with..."

"I'm sleeping between Betty and Richelle!" Dougie joked.

"Any questions?" Ellis ignored the puerile jest.

"Is that it?" Sanders groaned, as he stood up and shook his head angrily. "Why don't you tell us why we haven't heard any sirens? Or why we got attacked by goddamned vampire bats on steroids!"

"We don't want to stay here." Martha said. "We want to go home to our families. I want to know if they're okay."

"I'd like to have a store meeting, first thing tomorrow morning." Ellis tried to quell the uprising. "I'll admit that I don't have all the answers. But between the bunch of us, I think we'll figure things out."

"Bullshit!" Sanders fumed, making as if he'd storm out of the building. "All I have to do is get to my motorcycle and I'm outta here! And I could have done it, if you people hadn't blocked off all the doors!"

Ellis stared in Sanders' direction, his own temper rising. "If you want to go out there, be my guest. We'll move everything out of the way, just so you can try your luck against those bats again. As for your motorcycle, I can tell you for a fact that it isn't out there anymore."

"You don't know that!" Sanders shot back.

"I was outside at the front of the store. Ask Jesse, he was out there, too." Ellis again tried to reason with him. "The parking lot is not there, and the vehicles that were on the parking lot are not there. Marcos went out even further than I did, and he said the entire block is gone. With the exception of this store, there is nothing left of the shopping center where the store used to be."

"Fucking-A!" Marcos nodded. "There's nothing but dirt for at least a quarter of a mile!"

"Oh, God." Martha croaked, reaching out for Cindy's shoulder.

"Is that why we haven't been able to call home?" Betty asked, near tears.

"That's my guess." Ellis answered. "The earthquake didn't just shake up the store, it took the whole store somewhere else, too."

Murmurs erupted among the rabble.

"Right now, we're in the dark." Ellis gathered their attention. "But hopefully, in the morning we can see what's out there. Then we can have our meeting and decide what to do next."

"All right, peeps." Brenda stepped in next. "Anybody gotta go to the restroom?"

In sections, the crowd filtered over to the break room. Their numbers overflowed the seating capacity, with the result that a few people ended up sitting on the floor. Jesse was among these. Despite the horrifying events he'd suffered through, he found he didn't have much of an appetite. He nibbled on a tiny pouch of cheese crackers and took a few sips of soda, but for the most part he sat in the corner by himself.

The conversation had been grim and sparse at the beginning, but with the presence of the two store clowns around, Beetle and Dougie, their immature actions and jokes eventually brought some much needed levity to the group.

There were tears, however, and they were frequent. Martha cried the most, with Betty a close second, and Florie a distant third. Even Sanders seemed at the point of tears at times, but these were being fomented by the anger that threatened to boil out of him.

Jesse wondered if anyone missed at the Hookah party, or if anybody had even noticed his absence, when someone called out to him. This brought him back into the present.

It was Beetle. Somehow, the injured young man had gotten the electric chair in through the break-room's narrow doorway. "Dog, you fall asleep or something?"

"No, I was just thinking."

"I asked you if you saw anybody outside, right before the quake."

"I wasn't paying attention." Jesse thought back. "I'd just finished stacking all the pallets on the side of the store, and I was about to call Bill to open the rolling gate so I could park the forklift inside. That's when the big one hit and the canopy came down on my head."

"That's a lot worse than the vending machine taking revenge on me, but how come you ended up in better shape than I did?" He joked. "Anyway, reason I'm asking is because some people got out in time."

"Like who?" Jesse asked.

"Fat Charles." Dougie spoke up. "He went out for a cigarette after the first quake."

"And Milligan." Russell added. "He was supposed to be working in lighting, but Bill sent him home early."

"Gabriella called off." Brenda rolled her eyes. "She's probably at home and sound asleep right now. She was supposed to be working register one, but I got it instead of her."

"I was this close to missing out on all these good times." Ellis pinched his fingers close together. "I was going out for a cigarette, too. I made it within ten feet of the front doors before Bill stopped me, and then the second quake hit."

"I would have gone outside after the first quake, too." Florie said. "If Tony, rest in peace, hadn't asked me to do his returns for him."

"What about Marcos?" Dougie asked. "He made it outside, and then he turned around and came right back in!"

"Hey, if the fucking back of the store was still there, I would have kept running straight to my fucking house!" Marcos snapped back.

"You shouldn't talk, Dougie." Beetle pointed at him. "You were supposed to be doing your returns in appliances and flooring, instead of being out in garden with Miss Richelle!"

"Well, what about you?" Dougie countered. "You were in the break room fifteen minutes before the end of your shift! If Bill found out, you would have gotten another write-up! You could have gotten fired!"

Beetle opened his mouth to rebuke his buddy, but he sobered up when he recalled the store manager's dire fate. He sighed. "I'm gonna miss Bill. He was a cool boss. He could have fired me a couple of times already, but he didn't. He said he had faith that I'd turn myself around one day."

"Rest in peace, Bill." Someone said.

"And Tony." Florie added. "Don't forget Tony."

Ellis stood up. "Anybody that wants to hang out here, you go right ahead. Just make sure you don't go off wandering through the store on your own. Anybody that wants to call it a day, like I do, can come upstairs to the training room. Grab any jackets or coats you can find in the lockers, so we can use them as blankets and pillows."

"We have a bunch of new aprons in the cabinets upstairs." Betty said. "Size large and extra large. They just came in this week."

Ellis nodded. "We can use those, too."

Some of the older people drifted upstairs after Ellis. Once the aged remainder tired of listening to the younger crowd's crude jokes and antics, the rest of the mature adults followed suit. Betty and Cindy tried to keep up with the faster pace of Beetle, Dougie, and Richelle, but it was clear they were only lingering outsiders. Later, they two women formed another subgroup with Brenda and the foul-mouthed Marcos, where they were equally uncomfortable. Sanders was sitting alone, scowling, with his arms crossed impatiently, and Janey...

Where was Janey, Jesse wondered. He remembered her coming into the break room, scavenging a few granola bars and packs of salted peanuts, but after that, nothing. Jesse started to wonder if he should run upstairs and tell Ellis of her disappearance, when he remembered those two hatchets she'd recently confiscated. If anybody in the store could handle him or herself, he realized, it had to be Janey.

Lean and quiet, usually with her long hair pulled out from the back of a ball cap, the young brunette had struck him as both passably cute, and irritatingly aloof. She did her job, and she did it well, but she was clearly anti-social. Jesse never would have figured the quiet and mysterious woman for the wild, thrill-seeking type, but now, after watching her in action, he was being forced to reevaluate her.

When one too many yawns cleared his throat, Jesse decided to call it quits. He left the break room and climbed up the stairs into the training room, which held together much better than the rest of the store.

Jesse greeted Russell, who'd been assigned to guard the door.

Russell's flashlight glimpsed into the quiet room, revealing that most of the sleeping occupants had taken spots along the furthest wall. After rolling up a store apron for a pillow, and using a second for a blanket, Jesse chose a place next to the door to settle down on. It didn't take long for the young man to drop into a deep slumber.

#####

### Inspired By PKD

About this title: Philip K. Dick was one of the greatest and most influential science fiction writers of his time, of all time. Blade Runner, Total Recall, The Man In The High Castle, VALIS; all came from this man's brilliant imagination. I have read PKD's early novels. They have inspired me to write stories that are part PKD and part me. This is how I stand on the shoulders of giants. Rating: MEDIUM controversy.

Inspired By PKD was first released in May of 2019. Read the first 20% or purchase this collection at Smashwords, or find out more about the series on Raymond Towers Dot Com.

#####

### Dead Man's Lottery

'When you were a boy, didn't you dream of growing up to be a successful assassin?' - Eleanor to Benteley, Solar Lottery, PKD, 1955

All Philip Decker wanted to do was score some weed. He'd been walking around the dead streets of downtown Los Angeles for about an hour by then, but since it was nearing nine o'clock that night, all he was coming to were closed dispensary shops. Thanks the bands of hoodlums that kept raiding those places once the sun came down, the normally busy venues were closing up way too early, instead of staying open until ten or eleven like they were supposed to.

Through their brightly lit storefronts, Phil saw secured shelves zealously guarding what he wanted, in packs or pouches with a million zany names for the synthetic blends. Or more accurately said; Phil was staring at what he could afford to buy with his meager twenty bucks. He sighed, rapping on the window lightly and uselessly as he stared past the black iron bars and thick pane of glass, before he moseyed on in search of another, hopefully open dispensary.

At twenty-five, Phil was a typical young man for that day and age. He'd done a couple of years of college before he'd dropped out due to the high tuitions, missing in getting a good degree but succeeding in acquiring a huge amount of debt. The reason he'd left his pursuit of higher education was because, in the liberal state of California, white boys like him were restricted from getting technical degrees. Instead, the best jobs, or at least the jobs with the highest pay, were being awarded to the children of illegal migrants or to qualified young people from other countries, because, as the recent Cali slogan went, 'We Are Committed To Ending White Privilege.'

The result was that Phil currently worked as a nighttime clerk at a mini-mart and gas station, in a bad part of town where Newly Entitled Asians, Hispanics and Negroes could freely, and legally, come in to poke fun at Phil for his 'obvious' connections to the hated ideas of White Supremacy and the Nazis of World War II. It didn't matter that Phil had never sworn any allegiance to any racist organization; the color of his skin was enough proof of guilt. Thanks to that, and to his Armenian storeowner and manager, Phil worked only three days per week and could barely afford to pay his rent. Never mind that Phil shared a two-bedroom apartment with four other white guys (and slept either in the living room or, if company came over, in the bathtub), and that his creditors kept siphoning the funds out of Phil's bank account with zero remorse. All that pressure on his young mind was enough to give Phil the craving for weed, but alas, he didn't have enough money for the natural version, only for the synthetic GMO shit, and even worse all the fucking shops were closed.

Phil meandered down the dark, dreary sidewalk in search of another dispensary. Because Los Angeles was a Sanctuary City, each and every street had a small community of illegal migrants living out of doors in tents or cardboard shelters, or sturdier structures if the squatters could afford them. Some of these makeshift domiciles had actual postal addresses on them now. It wasn't as bad as San Francisco, which had become a real shit-hole thanks to the tens of thousands of squatters and homeless derelicts, where people were running around stabbing each other with infected needles that the local government was still handing out, but it was getting there. No, despite the strong stink of shit and urine in Phil's immediate vicinity, it still wasn't as bad as Frisco, not yet. Anaheim, for example, was getting pretty bad, as Phil had seen for himself recently when he'd visited his parents. Phil had a buddy in San Diego; maybe he could go there if he got kicked out of his place.

As Phil strode along, he kept a wary eye on the dozens of squatters, even as they kept an eye on him. Not that long ago, the Los Angeles City Council, made up of more illegals than legals, had decreed that minorities could not be at fault for attacking whites, even if the attacks were unprovoked. Apparently, the general idea was to turn Los Angeles into drug-infested and violent Colombia or racism-infested and violent South Africa. The city council's harsh decree was still tied up in federal courts, so the likelihood of an assault on Phil's person was about fifty-fifty, especially if he accidentally came upon any rabid gang members. These people around him, however, looked to be settling down for the night, drinking their cheap alcohol and stoking their little campfires, and not ready to jump on Phil's back to start tearing his hair out.

Phil's anxieties increased dramatically when he saw an ancient Cadillac cruising by in the far lane. It was a relic with a white top and, thanks to the low street lighting, either a root beer brown or dark orange body. The Cadillac slowed and made a broad turn at the intersection, creeping toward the sidewalk Phil was on as if a drive-by shooting was about to happen. Phil glanced in all directions, knowing he'd gone far out of his usual haunts while in his desperate search for weed. He kept walking, more hurriedly than before, hoping the Cadillac and its menace were meant for someone else.

"Hey, sugar, come talk to me." A sweet, thick voice crossed the divide between man and vehicle, from the front passenger's side.

The sexy voice sounded human, and at the same time it didn't. It sounded hollow, as if a person was speaking through a soda can. In TV shows and movies, Phil had heard how artificial people talked. That's what it sounded like, like an artificial person was calling to him from the car.

"Don't be scared of me." The voice purred, stretching a dark arm out, away from the car window. "I promise, I won't bite."

Back in the old days, didn't mermaids and shit draw sailors toward sharp rocks, so their ships would crash into them? That's what Phil imagined now; that the artificial woman, if it was a female since the robots were known to mimic a million voices, was a lure meant to send him to his doom. Phil didn't have shit else going on in his life, and since he couldn't outrun a Cadillac anyway, he gave in and approached the car.

After leaning in, he saw the artificial woman, a big, beautiful, curvy black chick, smiling back at him. The driver of the Cadillac was a white guy wearing sunglasses that surely had enhanced nighttime lenses on them, and a curious fluffy white boa around the neck. Phil's first impression was that he was looking at a pimp and his sex bot prostitute.

"Hi." The saucy sexpot cheerily greeted him. "I'm Tammy. And you are?"

"Phil. My name's Phil."

"You're a good looking man, Phil." The bot flirted.

"I'm sorry." Phil frowned. "I was just out taking a walk." He had to be careful here, regarding the local solicitation laws. "You're very attractive, but I'm afraid I don't have any money for a date with a woman like you."

Tammy pouted at him, while the driver sidled up closer to her, to get a better look at Phil. "Hey, man. You look like a guy who's looking for a score. What's your high, man?"

They were probably cops, Phil assumed, trying to entrap him with prostitution or drugs. "I was just looking for a liquor store."

"No you weren't." The driver shook his head. "We've been tailing you for the last three blocks. If you were looking for booze, you already passed a street that had two liquor stores sitting kitty-corner from each other. What are you really looking for?"

"Why are you following me?"

"Answer the question, man."

Phil threw his hands up. "All right! I wanted to score some weed! That's all! Now what's going on here?"

The driver grinned. "Tammy, you want to tell him?"

The sex bot poked her pretty head out. "I can't say it out loud. If you come in closer, I'll whisper into your ear."

"No, thanks. I'm not interested." Phil said, ready to march.

"Hold on, man!" The driver called out. "Back at my place, I've got Cloud Nine and Ripping Raspberry. How about that?"

Those were synth blends, but they were expensive, high end shit that Phil couldn't hope to afford. The bot was still smiling at him. "I'm listening. What do I have to do?"

"See, you can be a good businessman." The driver kidded, while the bot waggled her finger to entice him closer.

"I like threesomes." She whispered in her hollow voice. "One guy on top and one guy on the bottom. I want you to be my second guy tonight."

Women, real or artificial ones, were hard to come by for young men like Phil. Real women would flock to the rich guys, even white guys and old guys, although the current social trend was for white chicks to hook up with minority guys. From the five white guys that lived in Phil's apartment, including him, they could boast of exactly one real girlfriend, and that was only because her pussy-whipped boyfriend spent every last cent he had on her.

Artificial women were just as scarce in his income bracket. He could spend half his paycheck just to hump one of them, let alone dream about buying one. When Phil set his gaze on the black bot sitting in the passenger seat, what he saw was a delicious flavor of chocolate, with huge breasts and deep cleavage, under a flimsy wrap of glittery pink, purple and orange, and thick thighs covered in white pants. Tammy's smile was focused on Phil, and that simple gesture did wonders for his lonely self. Besides, if the driver, whoever he was, could afford a bot, then certainly he could afford high end weed, on top of that maintained relic from the past he was driving. "If I had a 'puter, I'd ask for your name and make a search on it."

"I'll tell you what's what." The driver said. "If you jump into my back seat, I'll uncode my 'puter and let you run that search. I can't just hand my 'puter over, can I, if you might go running off with it. Then Tammy would have to jump out my car and chase you down, and trust me, she will catch your ass. What do you say, ace, you ready for an adventure with Tammy?"

The bot started making popping sounds with her mouth. They shouldn't have been sexy sounds, but for whatever reason they were. Maybe, Phil suspected, the bot was using subliminal sound frequencies to get him all stirred up.

"All right." He decided. "I'll get in your car."

The Cadillac only had two doors, so he had to squeeze behind the front seat to get into the back. He did not expect Tammy to follow him back there, but she did. He did not expect her to start kissing the side of his neck, or to run her hand across Phil's chest, or to open up his fly, but she did all of that, too.

When Phil opened his eyes the next morning, an unusual white ceiling was making circles over his head. The ceiling was unusual because it wasn't the blue ceiling from the apartment he lived in. It wasn't even the soft yellow tinge of the narrow ceiling from the bathroom he sometimes slept in. He remembered a wild night with a guy that had a lanky body like he did, and with a black sex bot that had curves for ages. The disconcerted young man remembered smoking a lot of high grade synth weed, and drinking a lot of expensive synth booze, too.

"That was some fucking party." Phil croaked with his dry mouth, shutting his eyes and concentrating on preventing the room from spinning.

When he stabilized, Phil sat up and found himself in a huge bedroom, lying on a huge bed with soft and cool satin sheets. The wall paintings, the decorative vases and other knickknacks looked very...

"Expensive. This whole place is fucking expensive."

Phil glanced over at a dark wood nightstand, counting several beer bottles and empty weed packets. He also saw several opened condom pouches.

"Because bots can get STDs." He remembered his host explaining to him the night before. "I did not know that an artificial person could get sick like that. What was that guy's name again?"

Only a few seconds later, he heard a pounding at a door.

"Manafort Gutierrez, open up! We are here on behalf of the California State Regulatory Commission. We told you we were coming!"

Manafort? Wait, that was Manny from the night before, the guy who'd driven that archaic Cadillac. It sounded like a raid, and Phil didn't want to have any part of that. His body felt extra sluggish as he left the bed. The windows were super thick and designed not to open. Phil could only stare out of them, discovering he was in a high rise of some sort. How had he ended up something like ten floors up without remembering it?

The guys in suits had managed to overcome the electronic security lock by the time Phil reached the living room.

"Have a seat right there." One man pointed, while several others shuffled around him to secure the rest of the apartment, or hotel room, or whatever Phil was in.

Somebody shouted 'clear' from the bedroom, and somebody else did the same from the kitchen nook, and lastly the bathroom.

"We thought you were going to make a run for it." The suit hovering over Phil said. "You said you wanted one last night on the town. I guess you weren't lying. If you had gone on the run, you wouldn't have been stupid enough to rent this room with your personal ID card."

"Huh?" Phil asked, his voice sounding garbled and a million miles away. It was the drugs he'd taken the night before. They were still affecting his brain. "No, no, no. You've got the wrong guy. I'm not Manny."

"I've never heard that one before." The suit chuckled, snapping his fingers for another suit to approach. "That's why we brought this guy. This will make it all official. Run a complete bio-scan, will you, Fred?"

"Affirmative." Fred said, in a hollow, robotic voice. "Subject, stand and remove all of your clothing, please."

When Phil didn't comply fast enough, two suits brought him to his feet and stripped him. The robot used several sensors, some obvious, some invisible, to detail the entirety of Phil's body.

"I'm not Manny." Phil persisted.

"Right, right, you're fucking Santa Claus. Do me a favor, will you? Keep talking. Tell us all about how you're not Manny Gutierrez."

Whatever Phil had taken the night before, it was enough to prevent him from bringing up a lot of who he was. He did say what he remembered, about living with four other guys, where a blue ceiling was in the living room, and a yellow one was in the bath.

"He's really out of it." One suit commented.

The suit in charge turned to the analytical Fred. "Why don't you give me your results as you go along?"

"Affirmative." Fred nodded. "Height and weight are within probability range. Facial structure is an eighty percent match, but this can be explained by a lack of recent pictures showing a clear facial image of this subject. Eyes match. Fingerprints match. Voice and body temp are both within range. Body hair and semen comparisons are unavailable. A scar on the lower left ribcage is missing."

"Cosmetic surgery on the scar." Another suit said. "This guy can afford it. They can do such a good job nowadays you would never know a scar was once there."

"How about blood samples? Do we have any on file for Mr. Manny here?"

"Yes." Fred said. "Samples were taken after the subject was previously detained on a minor narcotics charge."

"So we get a new blood sample and confirm." The other suit shrugged.

The head suit considered it. "We get saliva, blood, hair and semen. That way our butts are covered a hundred percent."

"Here's your semen." A suit on the opposite side of the bed pointed.

The man in charge strode over and looked. Two used condoms were lying on the floor, on top of a fast food container half-full of chili fries.

"Tag 'em and bag 'em." The head suit nodded. "At least we won't have to wait around for this guy to jerk off for us."

"I'll collect the hair." Another man said, picking off a few stray hairs from Phil's shoulder and dropping them into a tiny plastic pouch. "Geeze, this guy is shedding all over the place. Fred, can you grab some saliva?"

The robot that looked like a government agent asked Phil to open his mouth. It turned to the head suit. "Saliva is contaminated."

"How?" The stern head man frowned and went to stand before Phil again. "Open wide, Manny."

"I'm not Manny." Phil reiterated, in a droning, garbled voice.

"I said open up." The suit demanded.

Phil relented. The head suit showed a disgusted face and stepped aside. Another suit came in for a look.

"I'll write it down on the report." The other man said. "Traces of semen or a similar substance are visible in the subject's mouth. We can have him wash his mouth out, but we'll probably have to come back tomorrow if we want a clean sample."

"Provided he doesn't suck some other guy off again." The head suit grimaced. "Let's just go with what we have. The Golden State guys should have been here already. You hear me, Manny? No more joyriding around town. You are hereby ordered by the state of California to remain on these premises until the GSRG people get here."

Phil was feeling so drained he simply nodded and sat down.

Phil woke up late in the afternoon, with his neck sore from having slept in a bad position. The first thing he did was open the front door, discovering two suits standing just outside. The men stopped chatting and stared at him, as if Phil might try running down the hall to get away from there. Since Phil didn't feel like running, or like doing anything at all really, he simply waved and shut the door.

He felt nauseated and hot, so his next move was to head into the kitchen for a cold drink. Lucky for him, as three beers were still sitting in the mini-fridge. After popping one open and glugging down about a third of it, Phil went to find the remote control for the big screen and turned it on. He sat there for a good fifteen minutes before it sunk into his head that he didn't belong there. This prompted him to head back to the door.

"Hey, there's no food in here." Phil told the suits.

"Order out." A suit told him.

"I don't have any money." Phil recalled.

"Right. Your ID card is still good. Tell you what, why don't you order something for the three of us?"

"I seriously don't have any money." Phil repeated.

"Hey, now," The suit gave him an impatient look. "I hope you're not trying to make up some story about us stealing your wallet."

Phil glanced down at his body. He was standing there in his boxers, but just as with so much else that was going on, a lot of that still wasn't registering fully in his head. "I have no idea where my pants are."

"They are in the bedroom, on the floor, at the side of the bed." The suit detailed. "Your wallet isn't in your pants. It is sitting on the nightstand along with your condom wrappers, unless you flushed it down the toilet or something."

"Do not try to say we stole your wallet." The second suit warned.

With his chin, the first suit motioned Phil back into the apartment. "Go in there and take a look."

"All right, I will."

Phil was still nodding as he crossed the short living room expanse. When he realized what he was doing, he thought, there's something strange, me nodding like a bobble-head would, and so he stopped. He saw the wallet; it was made of shiny flexi-gold and it didn't belong to him. Phil's wallet was made of plain, old, worn nylon. When he opened the very expensive wallet up, he found an ID card with the face portion marred.

"This isn't mine, it belongs to Manny." Phil mumbled, before he dropped the wallet on the bed and headed for the bathroom.

After scratching his balls and having a long piss, Phil went to wash his hands in the sink and for the first time saw his reflection in the small mirror above it.

"Holy shit." Phil said. "That's not me."

Oh, it was his body all right, but the rest of him was different. His hair was dyed in a softer brown.

"Wait, wait." He vaguely recalled. "The bot with the huge titties did that. She said, oh, you handsome man, you'd look so much better if I cut your hair and styled it this certain way. Why don't you sit down and let me give you a trim? Yeah, that's what she said all right." He glanced around. "But it wasn't here. She cut my hair somewhere else, and she dyed it."

That much Phil could explain, but not the rest of it. His eyes were a different color.

"Contacts." He said. "Somebody put contacts in my fucking eyes."

Phil went back into the bedroom to retrieve the wallet, and he studied it while he examined his reflection.

"That son of a bitch Manafort." Phil realized. "He's three years older than I am, but he's five pounds lighter and ten times uglier. He cut my hair and dyed it the color of his hair, or his stupid bot did, anyway. He changed the color of my eyes, and now what? Now I look exactly like that son of a bitch!"

Phil closely scrutinized the ID card. It wasn't supposed to have a marred picture image. That was a felony charge for tampering with government identification.

"I guess Mr. Manny doesn't give a shit about that felony, since he made me look so much like him I could pass for his fucking twin now! All right." Phil nodded. "I'm getting back at you right now, Manny, my friend. How you liking this, huh? I'm about to order an extra large fucking pizza, and I'm paying for it with your ID card! Eat that!"

As Phil left the bathroom and traversed the bedroom, he looked longingly at that extra wide, extra soft bed that was so much better than a bathtub lined over with a sleeping bag. "And I'm sleeping on your bed, too!"

The three of them were still eating their pizza, with extra pepperoni and extra, extra cheese, when a small entourage arrived. The first person through the door held one of the best video recorders on the market, and so did the last person to arrive. The two people who entered the hotel room between them, Phil recognized instantly, even if they weren't wearing their usual television costumes.

The woman was Scandinavian and beautiful with her short red hair and clear green eyes. She was shorter than Phil expected, but she still had the famous bust that men's mouths drooled over upon seeing her in the usual black costume, with a generous amount of cleavage showing. That would be the Queen of the Dead, Hellatia, modeled after Hela, the Viking goddess of the underworld, except at the moment she wore an unremarkable blouse and cotton pants.

Next to her stood a tall, blonde, long-limbed and somber man with the face of a warrior. He had an old scar across the left side of his face and dressed casual with a long-sleeved button shirt and regular jeans. When he was dressed up, he was known as the Draugar King, a Norse demon, invented for television really, who in the lore revived the dead so they could attack the living.

Phil knew who these people were, and he shuddered. He knew why Manny Gutierrez had so convincingly traded places with him.

"Is this the mark?" Hellatia casually motioned at Phil. "You people had better be sure this time. We already had two impostors pretending to be him up in Ventura. We were halfway through an interview with one asshole when the results came back showing a negative match."

"We do not want our time wasted again." The Draugar King emphasized.

"That wasn't our fault." One of the suits replied. "It was your network that decided to record an interview without getting the official verification first. It won't happen this time because we had several confirmations from our forensic bot when we first came in contact with this man. We are positive he is Manafort Gutierrez."

"He'd better be." Hellatia glanced at Phil, before she gave the suits a threatening glare. "I'm calling my make-up people. They're waiting in the garage as we speak."

"Go ahead and call them." The suit told her.

While the pretend Norse goddess took care of this, her tall companion eyed what was left of the pizza. Phil knew what was coming, so he said nothing as the tall man reached out to snag a slice.

Hellatia gave Phil and his boxers the up and down. "Can we get more clothes on this guy? There's something peeking out the side here that our audience won't appreciate."

Phil wished he could have enjoyed the performance that came later.

The make-up and costume people had set a smoke machine by the hotel room's front door. The door burst open, and in strode the Draugar King as if he were emerging from a grim fog. Dressed in animal skins and showing off a lot of lean muscle and several runic tattoos, not to mention long, disheveled blonde locks, the man pointed an accusing finger at Phil. "You, Manny Gutierrez, you have been chosen! Are you ready for the after-life?"

Phil would have cringed if the make-up people hadn't coached him on how to stand and give off a swagger. He was wearing Manny's enhanced shades, white fluffy boa and other flamboyant duds. All Phil had to do was keep his mouth shut and nod his head, and even he could carry that off pretty good.

He'd figured something out while he'd watched the people setting the scene up. The real Manny, or more probably his curvy bot, had hypnotized him into nearly forgetting he was Phil. He knew it was hypnotism because he'd seen a hypnotist do stuff like that to an entire class while in college. Every time Phil tried to say his name, his mouth would get caught up in a knot and he'd be unable to speak. He no longer remembered his surname, the names of his parents, his address, his phone number, or a million other things. The only things that he still had in his memory were the blue and yellow ceilings from the apartment, and the fact that he had an old chum living in San Diego. Whoever had blanked him out had worked him over pretty good except for that.

"Come in, my queen." The Draugar King announced.

In entered Hellatia, wearing a long, red wig and a black dress that was haunting and wispy, except for the open front that showed off her ample and enticing cleavage. Phil still hadn't gotten over how the beautiful woman with the piercing eyes had spotted his balls earlier.

"You cannot elude your destiny, Manny Gutierrez." Hellatia, thanks to the smoke machine, appeared to glide toward Phil.

"We will always find our quarry." The Draugar King followed close behind her.

"Sit." She commanded, and Phil sat, on the fancy couch and with a celebrity soon on either side. "We have been searching for you for three days now. Where have you been?"

Phil had been cued with an answer. "Preparing."

"For what?"

"For the chase."

The King deadpanned into the nearest video camera. "The GSRG has run its latest lottery. Manny Gutierrez has been randomly chosen as the next Dead Man in the Golden State Running Game. Manny has participated in the pool of candidates for over two years now, earning a thousand dollars a day in potential winnings, the same as hundreds of other hopeful candidates have done. The difference is that Manny is now the active Dead Man. The longer he can avoid death, the more chance he has of turning his potential earnings into real, hard cash."

"You have nearly seven hundred and fifty thousand credits in potential money." Hellatia informed him. "And you've been the big spender, haven't you? You've splurged into your future earnings and purchased a lot of high end merchandise, including a robot companion and a mansion on Billionaire's Beach in Malibu."

Actually, Phil had no idea of what Manny's spending was like. The man's sex bot, vid-phone and antique vehicle were all gone.

"You knew this day would come." The King nodded. "You knew your name would eventually be chosen by the lottery commission after being part of it for so long, and you are ready now that it has come. All of those people that invested in you are expecting for you to win, and to win big."

"How many days will you pledge to stay alive?" Hellatia asked.

Phil was torn as to what to say next. There was a chance that the suits would figure out he wasn't Manny, and it would all be over and forgotten quickly. There was also the possibility that Phil would really become the Dead Man, and that was a pretty bad scenario for him to be in. It was called the Golden State Running Game, officially, but it was also known as Dead Man's Lottery. The audience watching the live broadcast at home would expect for him to ask certain questions, and he did. "What are my options at this point?"

"You have no options." The King laughed darkly.

"Not among the living, but among the dead he does." Hellatia countered. "You, Manny Gutierrez, can take the easy way out. You can spin the wheel and gain a reward of between one and ten percent of your potential earnings."

One percent was $7,500, while ten percent was $75,000. That would have been good money for him if he were still Phil. If he had to remain as Manny, however, who knew how much debt that overspending asshole had accumulated? Besides, the rumor was that the easy way out was rigged on the lower end. Phil should have taken that route, except he would still have no money in the bank, and he would still be working at a dead end job with no pot of gold at the end of his rainbow. By trading places with Phil, Manny had in effect given a down and out guy the chance to reach the stars, if only he could live long enough to claim the prize.

"What is my other option?" Phil inquired.

"You can enter my underworld of the dead." Hellatia answered. "You will become a ghost in my world. You will walk among humanity, visible but at the same time invisible. People will see you, but very few will dare to speak to you. Those who are willing to help you will be your true friends if you survive this challenge, but there will be many more who pretend to help, only to give your location away the moment your back is turned."

"What are the rewards, if I become a ghost?"

Hellatia gave him an approving, and dare he say an interested, look. "The rewards are great, the longer you exist in my domain. Become a ghost for ten days, and I will give you five thousand credits per day. Become a ghost for twenty days, and you will receive seventy-five hundred credits per day. Or be my ghost for thirty days, at ten thousand credits per day."

Phil considered his life. He didn't have much to live for really, except to maybe take care of his parents, whoever and wherever they were, when they got too old to watch over their selves. He didn't have a girlfriend or any kids that he knew of, unless by some crazy miracle he won this challenge and false paternity suits inevitably popped up. Maybe he still had Manny's drugs or hypnotism in his system, as he felt no fear at the idea that his life could suddenly be over as early as the next day.

"You said I had earnings of seventy-fifty, right, seventy-fifty thousand credits?" Phil asked. "Let's make it seventy-five days. That's what I want. I want to be a ghost for seventy-five days. At ten thousand per day, that comes out to three-quarters of a million credits if I make it."

"My, my, my." Hellatia told him. "Nobody goes over a month anymore, because every one that tried ended up dead. This might be a good time for you to call a loved one and ask them for advice."

Phil would have loved to do that, except he didn't know anybody's phone number. Even if his parents were watching the show, they probably wouldn't recognize him in Manny's clothes, and with Manny's looks. "I don't need a lifeline. That's my decision. Seventy-five days."

"Oh, where is my Wheel of Chance?" Hellatia asked.

Phil took a deep breath, as a background person brought the device over. It was shaped like a wheel, and it spun around in digital colors, but the results were readable in a centered display. If anything could scare Phil about this lottery, it was that fucking wheel. People were coming after him soon, to turn him from a pretend Dead Man into a real one. If he had a bad spin on the wheel, he might end up with seventy-five hired guns on his ass, one for every day of the challenge.

"Spin the wheel." Hellatia whispered to Phil, as the two camera people focused their devices closer. "How many Draugar will come after you?"

Phil didn't understand how to spin it, until the beautiful redhead showed him. He simply waved his hand in a circle, close before the wheel, allowing its sensors to pick up his gesture. The wheel's bright colors went round and round. It was a good result; only one Draugar, really a selected assassin, would come after him at a time.

"Again, but this time for how the rewards will be split." The hostess encouraged him.

This time, Phil felt he got a bad spin. If he were killed, and most likely he would be, his killer would get the full amount of seven-fifty thousand, even if he were killed on the very first day. That meant that whoever was coming after him would come with their guns blazing for the big prize.

"In a world of chaos and order, which do you choose, Manny Gutierrez?" Hellatia wondered. "Chaos or order?"

That was a tough choice for Phil to make. An ordered challenge was stable from start to finish. He would always know how many days had passed, and how many remained, who his nemesis was and how much he stood to gain if he made it to the end. In a chaotic challenge, things might suddenly change. His assassin might get a false lead and go in a contrary direction, or Phil could gain a second assassin after him, instead of only one at a time. In contrast to taking the easy way out, choosing chaos was considered to favor the runner or the Dead Man more than the assassin or Draugar. In chaos, there was even the chance that his days of being chased would be dramatically reduced.

"Chaos." Phil resolved. "I choose chaos."

"I will call into my pit of demons," The Draugar King announced. "And draw my first Draugar out of it. You will know his name in twenty-four hours. Kill him, or he will kill you. Are you ready to begin the challenge, Manny?"

"Yeah, I want to do this." Phil nodded. "I'm ready."

The King set a gold bracelet and collar on the anxious Phil, both covered in Nordic runes of good fortune. They would track him in his travels until the chase was over. The items were very difficult to remove. They would give away Phil's location once a day at noon, to give his chasers an idea of where he was. The collar had a small, powerful camera on it that would stream live video of his whereabouts twenty-four hours a day, so it would be very important for him to avoid any obvious landmarks. Any person chasing him would have the same items that worked the same way as Phil's, so he had an exact location once a day, and video on a 'puter to help him see any landmarks his chaser was moving by. If the prey and predator got within one mile of each other, they would both know precisely where the other person was. Confrontations were simple. One person died and the other lived. The chase would continue for seventy-five days.

The King of the dead recited an ancient poem of good luck. The Queen gave Phil the Kiss of Death to begin the challenge. In twenty-four hours, Phil would find out the identity of the person who was coming to kill him.

"I'm one step closer to the edge, and I'm about to break!" - Linkin Park

Phil had a nice, relaxing sleep on the most comfortable bed he'd ever slept on. He felt feverish, as if whatever he'd been drugged with was battling against his body. Water, Phil decided, he needed water to help him wash that shit out. It couldn't be California's fluoride-laced water, either, that they'd been using for decades now to pacify the public. That's the shit Phil had been drinking because he couldn't afford anything better. After searching the hotel room for any clues about Manny Gutierrez, and finding none, Phil left the room and took the elevator down to the lobby.

Very few people knew where he, the new Dead Man, was, because the lottery people had kept his location secret. Only those who had seen Hellatia and the Draugar King make the quick transition from a limousine into the hotel lobby, and right after into the elevator, could hazard the guess that the Dead Man was among them. Without any suits around him, and wearing the thick and noticeable bracelet and collar that designated him as the Dead Man, Phil stepped out into lobby.

Suddenly, everyone in existence knew who he was. People hurriedly took their phones out and started recording him. A few stood defiantly still, while others backed away in fear that violence would erupt right away. A handful actually ran away from Phil, as if he were a terrorist with a band of explosives strapped around his chest.

Fascinated, Phil stepped up to the front desk, intending on settling his room bill. He held out his ID card and gave up his room key.

The young woman at the desk leaned her head back, away from him, as if he smelled toxic. "No charge for the Dead Man."

Phil chuckled as he put his wallet away. "How about a bottled water for the road?"

Instead of calling an assistant to bring one, the clerk actually abandoned the front desk and ran off to get it herself. Phil turned around and leaned against the desk, having a look at the lobby. Half the people he'd seen had already left. The rest were recording him with their phones. Like an ass, Phil grinned and waved at them.

The desk clerk, apparently, was too spooked to return. Instead, a Hispanic maid, just as nervous, crept up to the front desk with his water. She was an older woman with black eyes. Phil could have demanded her car keys, if he really wanted to. He would have to start taking things from people soon, he knew, just to stay alive.

"Thank you." He nodded, dismissing her. After unscrewing the top and taking a drink, Phil considered his next move. It would have to be a good move, or else it was curtains for him.

After turning his bottle over a few times, he noticed the Nestle label on it. That irritated him, as he knew a little about that company's business practices. He also saw how so many people were still pointing their phones at him.

"Nestle is a piece of shit company." Phil blared out. "They come into places like northern California and other countries. They buy natural water aquifers and build giant bottling plants next to them. Then, they take the natural water and put it into bottles like this one, and they sell those bottles to the people. Nestle doesn't care if the free natural water runs out, as long as they keep getting their almighty profits. Nestle doesn't care if the people have nothing to drink." He pondered over that for a moment, before he added. "Hash-tag Dump Nestle."

Phil had half his bottle left. As he walked toward the hotel's front doors, he held the bottle up high and let its contents gurgle out onto the plush carpet. The camera set into his collar would record everything he did. It was all going out on a live stream, but there was a chance that the lottery people would censor what he'd said. Those selfish corporate goons would not be able to censor what the public was recording on their phones.

"I need some wheels." Phil muttered, as he strode out of the hotel. "Preferably some fast wheels!"

Word was spreading fast about who he was. Half the public was hurrying away from him, while the other half was split, like back in the lobby, with some daring to approach but most only recording him from a safe distance. When Phil saw a couple of bodies in matching uniforms scatter, he looked in that direction and became aware of the valet stand. That might be a good place to nab a car, he decided.

Phil grumbled when he discovered the guests' car keys were locked up in a box. As he wondered how he would go about prying it open, a valet pulled up in a Mercedes and returned the vehicle to a frightened guest. It was a black kid who looked to be in his late teens, certainly not over twenty. The public was already warning the kid to stay away from the valet stand, because that's where the Dead Man was.

"Hey, come here!" Phil barked at him. "I need you to open this box for me!"

"Are you really the Dead Man?" The kid asked.

"What's your name, kid?"

"James, I mean, Jim. Why do you want the key box open?"

"Why do you think? I need a fucking car before some asshole assassin comes hunting for me! What's the fastest car you got on the lot?"

Jim watched him, probably thinking it was a good time for him to bolt. When Phil kicked the key box and jarred it, Jim relented.

"Here, let me do it." The kid said. "Can you drive stick?"

"No."

Jim swung the box door open. "The fastest car we have is a Nissan Sportster, but it's stick shift. Past that, it's a fucking weekday, man. All we've got is a few luxury sedans and a bunch of corporate turkeys in rental cars."

"I just need wheels, kid." Phil said. "Choose a good set of keys for me and let's go. I have to keep moving!"

Jim snatched out a set of keys. "I've got an Infiniti Quantum. It's brand new and the asshole that drives it doesn't tip. I'll get it for you."

As the kid ran off, Phil thought, good, that way he wouldn't have to walk up and down the hotel's parking structure looking for the damned car. It really was a sweet ride, Phil decided, when he saw the silver sedan with polished wheels pulling up. Phil scurried over to the driver's side, but when he pulled the door open, it didn't look like Jim wanted to get out.

"You're going to need a driver." Jim stated. "Where do you want to go first?"

"All right," Phil nodded. "I could use a driver."

After Phil jumped into the passenger seat, Jim revved the engine and peeled out. Phil looked out the back window. All those people who were recording him on their phones weren't fast enough to jump into cars and follow him, but they had definitely gotten his license plates.

"First thing is breakfast." Phil said.

"I thought you were a Mexican." Jim replied. "What kind of white man is named Manny Gutierrez?"

"No shit. My first name is Manafort."

"What?"

"I'm not kidding. Fucking Manafort. Talk about having angry parents, huh?"

"I'm taking you to a fast food place. Is that cool with you?"

"Yeah, yeah." Phil nodded. "I need a quick in and out. I can eat in the car while I think of what I should do next. All you have to do is keep driving. What do you know about the Dead Man's Lottery?"

Jim laughed. "I watch it on TV all the time. Didn't the lottery people tell you the rules? You read all the rules when you first got into it, didn't you?"

"Listen..." Phil started up, about to reveal who he really was, as vague as that might be. He reconsidered doing that, since he was hoping to claim some of the winnings if he could. "Look, my head's been spinning out of control ever since I found out I was the new Dead Man. I don't remember how everything goes anymore. What can I do and what can't I do?"

Jim grinned at him. "Dead Men can do anything they want, except do bodily harm to other people. That's why everybody is running away from you. If you catch them, you can take their money, their clothes, anything! They can't do a damned thing to stop you. Like this car we're in. The jackass who owns it will file a claim with the lottery, and the lottery will buy him a new car. This car will be auctioned off as having been stolen by the Dead Man. If you get killed in this car, or if you live longer than other Dead Men or do something big, the value of this car goes up like crazy."

"Can people hurt me?"

"You mean the public? Naw, they can't hurt you. If anybody tries to hurt you, the lottery people will harass them afterwards because it will screw up the chase. That's part of the incentive of being a Dead Man. You can go anywhere and do anything to get away from the Draugar chasing you. That's the only person who can hurt you; the assassin."

"And I've got the entire state of California to hide in." Phil finished off.

"I hope you know what you're doing." Jim said. "A lot of the people in the pool are professionals."

"Professional what?"

"Cops, man. LEOs: law enforcement officers, security guards and even a few bounty hunters. Those guys will pop you in a second if they catch you slipping."

"Fuck." Phil mumbled.

"Do you know what you're doing?" Jim asked, as several fast food places came into view up ahead. "You want an omelet for breakfast or a burger?"

The first Draugar's name was Koji Takawa. He was a manic Japanese lawyer in his mid-fifties, from a failing San Francisco law firm that was desperate for cash. The man was presented as some kind of oriental warrior, holding a Katana that Samurai used as far back as the 17th Century, according to the official clip from the lottery. Takawa made a few yells and yowls, before attempting to slice a watermelon in half with his sword. He failed, maiming the melon and causing it to fall over on the cement slab of, apparently, the man's back yard. The Draugar King picked up the wounded melon and returned it to its improvised pedestal. On the second attempt, Takawa managed to cut it in half.

"This I will do to the Rock Star, when I find him!"

Takawa was the Samurai, while Phil was the Rock Star. Phil should have been happy to find out who his first assassin was, and especially to know that Takawa was way the hell up in San Fran while he was in Los, but he wasn't. You could rightly say that Phil was having an extra shitty day. About the only thing that had gone right was breakfast, and that was it.

Earlier, he had Jim the valet drive him in the stolen Infiniti to an Apple computer store. He loaded up on half a dozen hand-held 'puters and one super expensive desktop.

"Jim, I want you to take the car back to your hotel." Phil had instructed the young black man. "The lottery says I can make trades with the people that help me. You take that big computer and you keep your mouth shut for twenty-four hours. Verbal deals with Dead Men are binding. It's in the rules, right?"

"Everybody in the computer store saw you." Jim reminded him. "It's not like you can keep it a secret! What are you going to do?"

"All right, just keep your mouth shut for as long as it takes you to drive back. Hey, drop me off right there, in that little shopping center."

"You sure?"

"No, but do it anyway!"

They were in a crummy part of Los Angeles at the time, the sort of place that had a lot of graffiti on the walls and a lot of trash on the streets. Phil jumped out of the car and landed wrong, spraining his ankle and rolling onto the sidewalk. As the valet kept going, Phil loped into the shopping center's parking lot. The first thing he saw was a Hispanic woman twice his size loading groceries into her mini-van.

"Give me your keys, now!" Phil demanded.

Apparently, that woman did not know the rules for the lottery. She began wrestling with Phil over the control of the keys. The next thing he knew, and she was bashing his head with grocery bags, and that was drawing public attention. Phil gave up, and in his disgrace hobbled over to the public transit stop to wait for the next bus.

"Aw, hell no!" The bus driver exploded, upon spotting Phil and his distinctive collar getting on his bus.

The driver tried to shut the door on Phil, wedging the hapless man halfway through, until he mustered enough strength to finally squeeze inside. At that point, the driver threw open the doors and made a general announcement.

"Dear Man boarding! If you value your ass, get the hell off this bus!"

After a mass exodus that left only a handful of thrill seekers behind, the driver unclasped his safety belt and made to bolt right along with the rest of them.

"I need you to drive this bus!" Phil ordered.

"I'm not driving you anywhere!" The driver stalked off.

Phil reached into his large plastic bag and showed him a brand new Apple hand 'puter. "How about now? We make a deal, you drive and I give you this!"

"That's an eight hundred dollar phone." The driver estimated.

"No, no, it's not the phone. This is the 'puter version. This costs twelve hundred bucks, man!"

"Where do you want me to drive?"

"Just do your regular fucking stops and don't call anyone! I need some time to think!"

Once the bus started moving again, Phil had another idea. "You know what? Don't charge anybody from now on. I'll make them a deal. They can ride free as long as they don't tell anyone I was here."

Yeah, that wasn't Phil's best moment. Everyone on the bus, and everyone that got into the bus, wanted to inform the entire planet of their proximity to the Dead Man. A couple of people even came to get selfies with him, and to show him how they were live-streaming the bus ride on the Internet. He had to get off the bus!

"Hey, driver, you got any weapons on you?"

"Just some pepper spray."

"Let me have it. I need it!"

"I'll trade you my spray for another phone."

Up ahead, Phil saw the street leading under a couple of wide highway bridges, and a lot of homeless shelters set up underneath it. "Just stop right here. Let me get off."

Luckily, that part of town was even worse than where they'd just left. Nobody was on Phil's heels as he hopped off and hurried under the bridges.

Phil didn't even want to think about the rest of that morning. He found a bum that was about his size, an old war vet, and he traded off his Rock Star wardrobe, yeah, that was laughable, for a dingy green jacket, and a smelly shirt and pants. The only thing he kept were his pimp shoes, because the bum's footwear didn't fit. That bum was a tough negotiator; tough enough that Phil's enhanced shades and the last of his synth weed were soon gone from his possession.

Phil stalked between the highway and a few backyard fences until he found a house with no dog guarding it. After climbing over, he found a shady spot under a back awning and curled up to take a much-needed nap. It was the stress, he figured. If that fucking crazy samurai didn't kill him, the stress would.

Maybe an hour, maybe a little more, he slept, before he heard a small window sliding open. When Phil looked up, he saw an old black woman's face peering out at him. He assumed she was standing in her kitchen.

"You get on out of here, before I call the police." She warned.

"All right, I'll go." Phil stood up. "I don't want any trouble."

"You trying to steal something?"

"No, no, not at all." He glanced around the tidy yard, not seeing much that was even worth stealing. "Some people were chasing me. I jumped your fence to get away from them."

"Don't you bring no trouble to my house!"

"I won't, I promise! Hey, do me a favor, will you? Let me stay here five more minutes. I just have to make a couple of calls. I'm calling for somebody to come and get me, okay? I'll do it really quick."

As the old woman kept watch, Phil brought out another of his Apple 'puters. The clerk at the store said they were all fully charged and would activate the moment he got them registered. The problem was that as soon as he did that, the government would be able to track him. If Crazy Takawa figured out the feature that would allow him to ping the phone, he could get a fix on Phil right away. In the short time he had, he skimmed over the paperwork that came with the 'puter, trying to get the ins and outs of registering it.

"Hey, lady," He held the phone up so his observer could see it. "You like this phone? It's an expensive model. This phone costs twelve hundred credits."

"I don't use them fancy phones."

"What do you use?"

"My regular phone."

"You got kids? Maybe one of your kids could use it. You know how kids like to play with gadgets, right?"

The woman considered this from her safe place in the window. "Maybe my son Jerome might like it. How much you want for it?"

"I'll give it to you free, but I have to talk to Jerome first. Why don't you give him a call so I can talk to him? Here, I'll put the box the phone came in right next to your back door, and then I'll walk clear across the yard so you won't think I'm trying to break in. You tell Jerome what model phone it is, and you tell him it costs twelve hundred, and then you let me talk to him. How about it?"

For a few seconds, Phil didn't think the woman was going to do it. Even when he went to the farthest corner of the yard, it still took her a good while to open up her door and poke her head outside. It was because she was elderly, Phil realized, and could only move around with the help of a walker. You know, one of those walkers old people put tennis balls on the ends of?

Once she'd picked up the 'puter box, she decided it was too much hassle to head back in. She sat on an old wooden chair, painted peeling white, and punched in numbers on the cordless phone she'd brought out with her. For the next few minutes, Phil listened to the woman speaking with her son, until she held the cordless out in his direction.

"Hello?" He asked, once he had the phone up to his head.

"Who is this?"

Phil had imagined a young man being her son. That was a bad guess on his part, as the old woman looked to be in her sixties. Whoever he was speaking to must have been over forty years old. "How badly do you want my 'puter?"

"If you really have it, I want it. Is it working or not? How much you want?"

"Do you follow the Dead Man's Lottery?"

"Yeah, I'm keeping up with it."

"You know the rules, right? If a Dead Man gives you something, you get to keep it. I will activate this 'puter with your name on it, but we have to negotiate a deal first."

"What kind of deal?"

"I get to use the 'puter for a couple of hours after it is activated. I need to get some information from it first. It's simple stuff anybody can find on the Internet, but I can't do it because I don't have access to a computer right now. That's why I took the 'puters in the first place. That's one condition. The second condition is that you don't say a word about where I am for the next twenty-four hours. How about it? Do we have a deal?"

The voice on the other end stayed quiet.

"Look, I don't know you, but I have to trust you because I don't have any other choice! I need an answer from you right now, or else I'm jumping the back fence here and I'll find somebody else to make a deal with!"

"Are you the Dead Man?"

"What do you think?"

"I think that the Dead Man was spotted on a bus right near where my momma lives, just a little while ago. All right, it's a deal. I'm not that far from the house. I can be there in twenty minutes."

"Would you mind stopping at a fast food place before you get here?"

Jerome was a big, sturdy black man with short, fuzzy hair and a goatee, both in pepper gray. His arms were big enough that he could probably pummel Phil with only one of them. Once he went and checked Phil's stash, he motioned for Phil to go inside the house. Right away, he turned on the television and found the lottery channel. The screen showed a view of the living room, and their words were echoing out of the TV speakers.

"Sit right there in front of the TV." Jerome pointed. "Where is the rest of your stuff?"

"This is all I have." Phil showed the bag of stolen 'puters.

"That's bullshit." Jerome replied. "Dead Men always have weapons on them, and survival gear and shit like that. Where is the rest of your stuff?"

Phil could not reveal that he wasn't really Manny Gutierrez. "Look, I took off from Ventura and I tried to hide here in Los Angeles. When the authorities found me, I didn't have anything except for my wallet. I don't even have my phone!"

"You must be the stupidest Dead Man ever."

"Yeah, maybe I am." Phil sulked. "But I don't want to be stupid any more, okay? I'm trying to make better decisions."

"You don't even have a weapon." Jerome scoffed. "And that fucking Samurai Jack is already on a plane heading over here."

"He is?"

"Sure. Haven't you been watching the live feed? Do you even know when the collar is going to give away your exact location?"

"This afternoon."

"You aren't going to make it, dumb ass. You have to know exactly what time your enemy finds out where you are, and you have to know exactly where your enemy is right then. That's how you fucking stay ahead in the chase!" He went over and grabbed a bag he'd come in with, tossing it over by Phil's side. "Enjoy your last hamburger, asshole."

For a few moments, Phil was swept up in anguish. He felt like telling Jerome that he'd been set up, but if he did, he risked being disqualified and then his chance at big money would be over. "Okay, so obviously I didn't think this through. Can you help me here? What would you do if you were in my shoes?"

Jerome looked him over. "You know, I thought about taking a chance like that, a couple of years ago when I got divorced. My ex-wife took everything I had, and I had to come back here and live with my momma. I had it all planned out in my head about what I was going to do and where I was going to go if I became the Dead Man. I even went to the liquor store to register and buy my ticket, but at the last moment, I chickened out. If something happened to me, there would be nobody left to watch over my momma."

Before Phil and also on the TV screen, Jerome was seen pacing back and forth.

"Tell me how your plan went." Phil insisted.

"First off, I have three or four homies with relatives that live in different parts of the state." The big man admitted. "If I was the Dead Man, I would have visited them one by one and given them a signal. That signal would have started up a program, right. A homie would have a bus ticket, a duffel bag with an extra change of clothing and some spending money in it. Do you have a network like that?"

"No. I don't have shit."

"There are ways to beat the surveillance systems in the collar. You can keep your head down while you're walking and stare at your shoes all day. You can have a homie walk in front of you with a big ass sign to hide your view. You can travel at night, or if you move by day, you can lay down on the back seat of a car and look at the floor. Yeah, every once in a while you do have to look around to see where you are, and that might give away your position to the Draugar, but you have to make it as hard as possible for the Draugar to find you. How come you don't have any survival gear?"

"I didn't plan far enough ahead." Phil shrugged.

Jerome considered this. "How come you don't have a communication device?"

"I lost it."

"You don't have a network, survival gear, a phone or a weapon. How come you haven't activated one of those 'puters with your name and password? You could be using your 'puter right now and toss it away as soon as your location gets announced thanks to the tracker in your collar."

Somewhere out there, Manny Gutierrez was watching, Phil sensed, and laughing at him. "I took a lot of drugs, right after I found out I was the Dead Man. They were synth weed blends. I think they fucked my head up. I can't remember a lot of things."

"What can't you remember?"

"I can't remember anything!" Phil burst out. "I can't remember where I live! All I have is the address on my ID card, but I don't remember what my house looks like! I don't know my birthday or my ID number, so I always have to look it up when I need it. I don't remember where my bank accounts are, what my online passwords were, or even where the hell I parked my car!"

"You done lost your memory." Jerome's quiet mother said, from her seat across the living room. "Drugs will do that to you, young man."

"Maybe you should file a grievance." Jerome suggested. "Maybe you can get checked out by a doctor. The lottery commission might postpone the chase until your memories come back."

Phil shook his head. "No, I have to go through with this."

"Even if you don't know who you are?"

This time, Phil nodded.

"Let me see your ID card." Jerome said. Once he held it, he looked over the details on it. "Manafort K. Gutierrez. What does the K stand for?"

"I don't remember."

"You don't remember your middle name?"

"No, I don't."

"What's your address?"

Phil shrugged. "All I know is that it is in Ventura County."

Jerome tossed the card back. Next, he went to stand before the seated Phil. Jerome pulled at the ends of the young man's green jacket to cover up the collar. The device began beeping in a high pitch until Jerome refolded the jacket in its normal position.

"I tried that already." Phil admitted. "When I first got the jacket. It doesn't only make that hideous noise, but it vibrates against my neck. It's uncomfortable. The stupid collar has to be visible at all times. Besides, if I take either the collar or the bracelet off, the chase is forfeit."

"You ready for a haircut? I got trimmers."

"Yeah, sure. Better than nothing."

Jerome cut Phil's hair so short it was almost bald. "First chance you get, you go into a store and get a couple of pairs of shades and a couple hats. Always switch things up. And get running shoes, too, because you're going to need them. Every chase I've seen on TV has people running around."

While Phil activated the new 'puter in Jerome's name, they watched an interview with Samurai Takawa. The man looked determined to kill him.

"People can help you, but they can't be your bodyguards." Jerome said, later. "If you and Samurai Jack square off, it will be you and him and nobody else. The last man standing wins the jackpot."

Phil spent his time looking up everything he could on Manny Gutierrez and Koji Takawa. Through a credit report, Phil knew that Gutierrez was a big spender, that he had a sizable amount of debt, and after doing a street search, he found out what the man's house looked like. The man lived with his brother and his brother's wife. Manny had a couple of misdemeanors for drug possession and public intoxication, but that was his extent of trouble with the law. He was, Phil noted, a logo and website designer for several small companies, including a company that sold very expensive artificial companions, a.k.a. sex bots.

Samurai Takawa was also a big spender. That man had purchased a two-story business building in San Fran and converted it into four apartments. At first, things were going well for him. Later, he decided to kick his tenants out and to move his relatives in. That didn't sit well with city officials, who felt the tenants were ousted unfairly. The reason Takawa was losing money was because the tenants were gone and not paying rent, and the city refused to allow the relatives to move in. He couldn't even sell the property until the dispute was settled. Critics accused him of being a slumlord. So much bad publicity resulted in his law firm losing a good percentage of its local business. The lawyer and businessman Takawa had thus accumulated a lot more debt than the carefree and splendid Gutierrez.

Phil almost felt sorry for Takawa's situation. That feeling lasted only until Phil's location was revealed to the Asian man on the plane. Takawa now knew that Phil was hiding in Jerome's house, and again, he began boasting of how he was going to cut the Dead Man in half with his authentic Katana sword.

"Here's your new phone, man." Phil told Jerome. "I guess I'd better get going."

The big man was shaking his head at the TV screen. "That Takawa guy is a clown. You might think about stringing him along for a while."

"What do you mean?"

"He looks like an alcoholic, and he's high strung and all that." Jerome detailed. "If you keep a steady head on you, you might have him chase you until he runs out of breath, then you can go back and finish him off. But don't do that right away. Make him chase you for a few days, until the fans start saying the chase is taking too long. If you kill Takawa too fast, the next assassin will be chosen, and that guy might be a hundred times worse than this clown."

"So I should do my best to keep Takawa alive, when he's trying to kill me?"

"That's called strategy, son. The next assassin might be a fucking Navy Seal."

Phil's face soured.

"Good luck, young man." Jerome's mother waved, when Phil started for the front door. "God be with you."

On second thought, Phil changed course and decided to sneak out the back. He wanted to be far away from that house when Takawa's plane landed, and that was only about half an hour from then.

"You got my number?" Jerome asked.

"Yeah, I do." Phil nodded.

"You bring me a nice car to drive next time, and I might just leave my keys in the ignition of my hooptie. That's the kind of connections you need to get, the kind of connections that will keep you alive."

Phil waved. Like a thief he had snuck onto the property, and like a thief he was sneaking out of it.

After ten days of being on the run, and nine days of eluding Takawa, the public was thirsty for blood. Most chases lasted only four or five days, but that was because a tough guy Dead Man was eager to prove how tough he was against a tough guy Draugar. Phil wasn't like that; he wasn't confrontational at all. He was a runner, a weasel, and the fans of the Running Game soon caught on. That's what they were calling him now, after his moniker of Rock Star had lost its potency. He was the Weasel, and he was fully resolved to not get caught. To not get killed by a sword-wielding nut-job.

Maybe having slept in a bathtub had something to do with it, and knowing that at any given month, he could have been fired from his old job, whatever that was, and ended up on the street. Phil had entertained the thought of being homeless many times before, while Takawa had slept on a comfy bed in the loft of his expensive renovated building. Phil had eaten tiny portions during the lean times, and nothing at all when he'd run out of food, while Takawa was racking up credit debt at fine restaurants, symphonies and even opera performances.

The name of the game was to keep moving. Every day, his location was given away to Takawa and the entire world. Because the lottery liked to shake things up, his location was revealed one hour earlier every day, until it reached the optimal, according to them, time of eight o'clock in the morning. The moment Phil's position was made known, he hopped on a random bus and went to the opposite end of Los Angeles. Takawa became predictable in that he always went to where Phil was spotted last, instead of guessing at where Phil was going next.

Phil did something else different than most Dead Men. He didn't grab valuables from the public at random, or walk into expensive jewelry stores and fill his pockets. He didn't look into a mirror and brag about what he was going to do to the Draugar chasing him around town. A lot of Dead Men were selfish and greedy; that's why they had gotten into the lottery in the first place. Phil was a mouse in a game of lions, using back alleys and empty fields, instead of having showdowns at public sporting events like previous chased men, and one or two women, had done before him.

In fact, Phil became a poor man's philanthropist. From his vague memories, he knew, or at least he felt he knew, what it was like not to have food in the fridge or enough money to pay the bills. The public in general hated the selfish Dead Men, and was quick to reveal their location to their hunters. In Phil's case, he made not enemies of the people, but supporters.

After jumping on a transit bus headed in a random direction, Phil would keep his head down, staring at his shoes, which luckily he'd upgraded into a good pair of running shoes (and had gained his first sponsor because of it). Every other stop, Phil would dare a peek outside, until he saw a mall or shopping center. He had to do this right, and fast. Phil would jump off the bus and run into the closest food store. If it were a supermarket, as an example, he would snatch a basket and run up and down the aisles gathering a handful of essential items. Once near the cash registers, Phil would choose a random person waiting in line and pull away their full shopping cart.

"Give me a ride and a good meal, and you won't have to pay for this!"

That's how it went. People were strapped for cash all over the place, and by helping them out, and also helping himself, Phil was fast becoming a modern day Robin Hood. It didn't always work out. He would come across people who blatantly wanted to take advantage of him.

"Yo, yo, let's go rob a bank!" One of two black men pressured Phil, when they spotted him getting off somebody's car. "We can get money, bruh!"

"I don't need money." Phil said, hurrying away.

The two men followed him, trying to coerce him through peer pressure, but their tactics soon escalated into intimidation and aggression.

"All you gotta do is walk into a bank and take the fucking money!" One of the thugs threatened. "That's all you gotta do!"

The black men pushed him to the street. They were going to pummel him or stomp on his head, while they were shouting his location out so that Samurai Takawa could get his ass in fourth gear and come find him.

That was the first time the public came to his rescue. It was early in the morning, but the people came out in droves. Employees from the nearby shops spilled out, workers left the bus stops to hurry over, and even cars stopped in the street and ejected their drivers. The black men didn't take it so well at being surrounded. When they pulled handguns out of their waistbands, the people started a stampede away from them. It was another lucky stroke that two cop cars were watching the near-riot. A gunfight started up between them and the black gangsters, and during that battle, a burly white guy threw Phil into his back seat and drove off.

Another time, on the eleventh day of Phil's exile from the regular world, a woman who was jealous of him began following him around and screaming out where they were. This time, it was midday and he was already having a hard time shaking off Takawa. The woman followed him into a grocery store, where Phil took an empty shopping cart and filled it up with boxes of ice cream.

"We're in the fucking Ralph's on Whittier." The woman ranted. "Come and get him, Samurai Jack! He's right fucking here!"

In the usual way, Phil also took a random cart, leading it and its shopper outside to the parking lot. When they reached the driver's vehicle, the woman began rattling off the license plates.

"It's a red Prius! He's going to get into a red Prius!"

Phil abandoned the shopper and his little car, pushing the cart full of ice cream into the street. By that time, he'd attracted a good number of people. To these curious bystanders, he handed out box after box of free ice cream.

"Take it!" Phil shouted. "Pass it out before it melts! All you have to do is keep this crazy bitch away from me!"

The crowd did hold the loud woman back, before a couple of teenagers ran over to show Phil their vid-phones. Phil's collar had been buzzing, meaning that Takawa was very close, and now he saw just how close. The murderous Japanese man was only two blocks behind him. Phil ran into a residential neighborhood to get away from the mob.

An old, beat up white truck screeched to a halt at the intersection. The driver, a hairy Hispanic man, peered over at the out of breath Phil. "Jump in the back, man! Just lie down and don't look out until I stop!"

Phil didn't like that he had to continually put his life into the hands of strangers, but he really had no choice. All he had to use against Takawa was a new, small can of pepper spray he'd taken from a drug store. He ran to the side of the truck and flopped over into its bed, landing on old beer cans and a couple of five-gallon buckets stained with some kind of gray construction material. The truck started rolling, and soon after, the buzzing on Phil's collar stopped.

That's how Phil had spent the next three days, riding around in the back of a pick-up, jumping out of dark garages and doing his eating and sleeping in dark rooms. It gave him time to think, to come up with new strategies, and most importantly, to have a peaceful night's sleep.

The people he came in contact with every day, they were good people, but the people online, they wanted to witness the gory murders that the Dead Man's Lottery was known for. On the morning of the fifteenth day, Phil decided he would give them what they wanted, or at least to give off that impression.

Phil's morning started off with him lying on the back of that same white pick-up, with three hairy Hispanics sitting in the cab. This time, they took him to a Ford new car dealership. The plan was simple. Phil's Hispanic benefactors chose whatever trucks they liked, Dead Man Phil would obtain the keys, and one by one, the men would get into their new trucks and drive away. The Ford guys were happy because their little dealership was being promoted all over the planet for nearly two hours, and plus, the Cali lottery would recompense them for the loss of their inventory. Phil took control of the beater that was left behind.

"Listen up, people!" He called out, for the benefit of the listening audience. "I'm in the mood for an action movie today. How about it? Who wants to watch a movie with me? If I push the doors open and let everyone in, nobody can stop me! If I order the staff to give my buddies and me free popcorn and drinks, nobody can stop that either! Now, what movie should I watch?"

Phil pulled over. He'd activated one of his last two Apple 'puters the night before, but because of his plan for that particular day, he hadn't given it away yet. As he paused by the side of the road, he saw the responses the public was making on his official Dead Man's web-chat.

"Whoa, whoa!" Phil noticed one of the movie titles. "Cyborg Seven? That's a fucking Disney flick. I'm not watching that!"

Why not, his followers inquired.

"Yeah, why don't you people do some research on Disney?" Phil railed. "Check out Disney's subliminal sex images embedded into the movies your children are watching! Disney, the gayest place on Earth! Personally, I don't have a problem with gay people, but I do have a problem with gay people promoting pedophile sex with little kids! You didn't know that, did you, that Disney hires known or professed pedophiles to direct your favorite movies. You ever notice how half of Hollywood always comes out to defend the pedo directors? Disney celebrities do the same fucking thing! Hash-tag Dump Disney, Hash-tag Dump Disney, CIA and Project Monarch! Hash-tag Dump Pedo Hollywood! Disney is not your fucking friend!"

Phil took a couple of minutes to search through his phone. "Sorry about the rant. Okay, check this out. I've got a Metro-Plex movie theater about a mile away from me. I'll give you the directions in just a second. The deal is this: you get to watch a free movie if you wear a red hat, sunglasses and a black hoodie. Who's down for some free popcorn?"

Phil knew that Samurai Jack would show up. He planned on it, actually. He thought Takawa would walk in and gape his wild face at all the Dead Man clones inside the dark movie theater. Dozens, if not hundreds, of young people would catch his dumbfounded face with their phones and broadcast it all over the Net. Phil figured the guy would throw a tantrum and break a couple of things, before he stomped off and waited for his next opportunity to kill him. Unfortunately for Phil, and for several others, it did not pan out that way.

Takawa shoved his way through the front doors, looking at the many Dead Men wannabes, male and female, loitering in the lobby. The excited youths were using their phones to try to pinpoint the actual Dead Man, but Phil had crouched down in front of a couple of sympathizers by then so nobody could see his collar. People were laughing and playing around with each other, and chasing each other when they thought they found the right guy.

Takawa was not impressed. "Manny Gutierrez, where the hell are you?"

"I'm Manny Gutierrez." A bearded fan called out.

"No, I am!" A black kid said.

"My good sir, I am the real Manny Gutierrez." Another teen revealed. "And you, sir, are a prick!"

Maybe it was the laughs that pushed Takawa over the brink. Maybe it was the way he had been searching for his victim futilely for well over two weeks by then. Repeatedly, the frazzled Asian had complained to the Internet about how much he hated Los Angeles, and how he was eager to get back home. Standing there in the lobby of the movie theater, dressed in his samurai garb, Takawa held his head with both hands and screamed like a madman. A moment later, he'd pulled his Katana out of its sheath, and he started hacking at the people taunting him who were the nearest to his blade.

Phil had severely underestimated how his pursuer would react. He'd never been in a situation of mass panic before, where people were screaming and pushing at each other to get away from the threat. He'd never seen people cut up like that, and their blood spurting out of their wounds.

"Stop it! Stop it!" Phil screamed. "Stop hurting everybody! I'm right here!"

Phil's collar was buzzing, and so was Takawa's. The Japanese man heard his yelling and turned his head. For a second, the hunter and the hunted identified one another.

Takawa ran at him, but he didn't get very far. He'd been unstable from the start, so much that LAPD had sent officers to keep an eye on him and his exotic sword. When the out of control maniac began hacking at bystanders, the cops pulled their guns. Phil heard, actually heard a bullet buzz by his head, since he was dumb enough to be in the line of fire. He didn't get hit, but Takawa took full clips from the fast-fingered officers.

Mortally wounded, Takawa sprawled out only a few feet before Phil. As the Dead Man watched, the cops yelled. One of them kicked the sword away, closer to where Phil stood. Phil thought about picking the sword up and holding it over his head like some kind of hero, but the cops would probably riddle him with bullets like they'd already done to his attacker.

Three, no, four young people were lying on the carpet, bleeding and screaming. Phil inched away from the grim scene, and then he ran.

"Hey, hey, hold it right there!" A cop screamed at him.

"You can't stop the Dead Man!" Phil blurted back. It was the first thing that popped into his head. "Nobody had can stop the Dead Man!"

What he'd said to that cop; that had been an accident. The fans took his words and later put them on tee shirts. You Can't Stop The Dead Man!

He ran further into the building, into a showing room that had a movie in progress, but no people left in it. He used the emergency exit to get away.

Phil's idea of going into the movie theater, that was an accident, too. He didn't plan any of that out, not really. The analysts that examined the video footage later had another opinion. They were calling Phil a genius for how he manipulated Takawa into madness.

The lottery people had their litigation to take care of, regarding the unlucky victims who'd been hurt by Samurai Jack. The public that watched the lottery, on the other hand, scored it one victory for the Dead Man, and zero for the Draugar. People were betting big that the next Draugar would finish off the now infamous Manny Gutierrez, while a small few had the courage to bet for him. A percentage of the wagers, according to the lottery rules, would be given to the ultimate victor.

Phil would be filthy rich, in addition to his potential earnings, if he by some miracle managed to make it all the way to the end. He still had sixty days to go.

Phil spent the next few days watching documentaries on how bounty hunters caught their bounties. On a borrowed vid-phone, he discovered a well-known hunter from right there in Los Angeles. After giving that man a call, ensuring he wouldn't run off before Phil made it to his office, Phil ghosted a taxi. The bounty hunter's nickname was the Coyote.

After their introduction, Coyote motioned for Phil to take a seat. The man's hard-ass girlfriend, Fury, who was also a bounty hunter, roved around the entire room, recording the conversation on a 'puter, while a second camera stood stationary in the corner.

Coyote consulted his laptop, which was set to monitor the traffic on his website while the discussion was taking place. "Whew! I've never seen hits like this before. Half the state must be watching us right now!"

"And the other half is watching the lottery live feed." Fury commented.

"Right, right, darling." Coyote nodded. "Well, Mr. Gutierrez, thank you for the spike in viewers. What can I do for you?"

Phil sat there, casually for once, wearing a vitamin drink tee shirt from a sponsor, blue jeans and running shoes. "I want to know what successful fugitives from the law do to evade capture. Whatever you can tell me without giving away any trade secrets."

"All right." Coyote nodded. He was a grandstander, but Phil didn't care. What he needed most right now was information. "First of all, being a 'successful' fugitive, as you said, depends on who you are and where you are. Successful can mean a lot of things. It can mean a person keeps away from law enforcement for a couple of weeks, for a couple of months, or for years. Even if a fugitive avoids capture for years, they may not really be successful. They would still have to keep an eye over their shoulder, they would not be able to easily contact loved ones, and they would not be able to use their true identity."

"Okay, I get it." Phil nodded.

"In your case, where you have somebody out gunning for you, and where the pursuit is being broadcast all over the world, my best advice is to leave the country."

"I can't do that. It's against the lottery rules."

"Yes it is." Coyote agreed. "We have to go back to the idea of what being successful means. To me, being successful is staying alive. By remaining in the state of California, you are reducing your chances for survival by a large margin."

"Okay, for me, success means staying alive, in California, for the next sixty days."

"In that case, you can use the system to your advantage." Coyote mused. "The cat is chasing the mouse. Who is smarter, the cat or the mouse? If the cat is smarter, it will stay near the food, because the mouse will always get hungry and return to the food."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning that where most fugitives make their biggest mistakes is when they try to visit or contact loved ones. That's where the LEOs usually nab them."

"I don't have that problem." Phil shrugged.

"Why not? Don't you love anybody? Doesn't anybody love you?"

"I can't remember any of that. I took some bad drugs, or maybe somebody gave them to me, but it made me forget everything. I don't know who my parents are, where I live, where I used to work, nothing. It's almost like..." Phil was careful in how he worded his next statement. "Like I'm a blank person."

"I've been keeping updated on the chase." Coyote mentioned. "You've been doing a lot of research into your family's house in Ventura County. In Fresno, right? I could not understand why you just didn't pick up a phone and call them directly. I thought maybe you'd set up some kind of secret code by doing it that way."

"I don't remember my family." Phil admitted. "When I did that research, I looked up their pictures on social sites and all of that. None of it rang any bells. I figured that if I made it to the end of the chase, I could have my head examined afterward."

"Are you saying the state of California may have brainwashed you?"

"No, not the state. I want to be clear on that. The state did not do this to me. I know I left Ventura in a hurry, because I wanted to have one last night of freedom before I was officially named the new Dead Man. I drank a ton of booze and smoked a lot of weed. During that time when I was out of it, somebody may have given me something that would affect my memory. I don't know who that person was, or why they did it, or if they even knew I would be the Dead Man."

"You know, that's something else that's been bugging me." Coyote scratched his fat neck. "Most guys who enter the Running Game know what they're getting into. They have their contacts and safe-houses ready, and they carry a gun and extra money around. You never had any of that, did you? It's almost like you're learning all of this on the fly. Let me get this straight. You had yourself a wild party, and during that time, you forgot your past and you were robbed of any supplies you had, because I know you had to have something to fall back on."

"I was robbed." Phil divulged. "All I had on me when the Regulatory Commission guys showed up was my wallet. I know I had a vid-phone, so that was gone. Everything in my head got flushed down the toilet, so to speak. I lost my phone, my car, my past and my..."

Phil clammed up. He almost let the cat out of the bag that time!

Coyote caught the near gaff. "You lost your what?"

The girlfriend, Fury, leaned over, taking a really good look at Phil's face. "You got your ID card on you?"

"Yeah, but I don't even know how much money I have in the bank." Phil chuckled. "I tried to call the company to find out, but they kept asking me for details I don't remember anymore."

"Do me a favor, hon." Fury said. "Put your ID card right there on the table, where my man can see it." Once it was out, she noticed, "You scratched out your face. That's a felony."

"I know."

"Then why did you do it?"

"I don't remember doing it." Phil shook his head.

Coyote glanced at his girlfriend, who told him, "Hon, give me just a second, will you?"

She'd been recording on her 'puter, but went to the side of the room to do something else. When Fury was ready, she went to Coyote's side, but she was very careful to keep what she had on her 'puter screen from being recorded by Phil's collar, or by the second camera set up in the corner of the room.

Coyote looked at Phil's face, at his marred ID card, and on what he saw on the 'puter. He did this twice, and then a third time. Finally, he showed a big, fat grin. "I can't get over how different you look with all those hairstyles."

They'd seen something, Phil realized. They'd seen something that a casual observer might miss. He even suspected what Fury had on her 'puter screen. It could have been the mug-shot taken of a younger Manny Gutierrez when he'd been booked on the minor drug charge. Phil figured not just anybody had access to that picture.

"Once this is all over," Phil spoke up, hoping Coyote and his girl were picking up his hidden meaning. "I may hire you to help me regain my memories. I would consider keeping you on retainer, but like I said, I don't remember how much money I have in the bank. I might be broke, for all I know."

"I've got some software that can find out right now." Coyote said.

He turned to the side, opening a drawer and rifling past several folders until he found the one he wanted. From that folder, he pulled out one of several identical copies and set it on his desk.

"This is an authorization form. It allows me to deduct money automatically from a client's ID bank account. I do this all the time, by the way, to make sure a client has the money they say they have. If for some reason they don't make their payments on time, legally we can withdraw the money ourselves. Well, unless they clean out the account and skip town, in which case we have to track 'em. We're making a verbal contract right now, between you and me. You, Manny Gutierrez, are authorizing me to access your ID card for the purposes of finding out how much money you have in your account. I am not taking anything out at this time, but I may keep this information on hand for, what, for the next sixty days or so, in the case you do require my services in the near future. Do you agree to this verbal agreement, with these cameras serving as evidence?"

"Yeah, sure." Phil nodded.

"Sign right here." Coyote slid the paper over, along with a nice silver pen.

Phil took the pen, only to become confused over whether he wrote with his left or right hand. The pen didn't feel comfortable in either. Even worse, he found he could not even visualize what his signature looked like. "Sorry, but I can't sign my name anymore."

"Not a problem." Coyote told him. "We have already recorded your testimony where you cannot remember details about your life. We have your ID card here, clearly showing it is you, and we have two cameras plus the two of us as witnesses. If you are unable to produce your signature in writing, it is acceptable in a court of law for you to make your mark in the form of an X. Go ahead and write down an X for me, Manny."

Phil actually struggled with the pen in his right hand. He couldn't even make two straight lines! Both Coyote and Fury saw how tough it was for him.

"Why don't you make a second X, this time with your left hand?" The bounty hunter suggested. "Just put it right next to the first one."

Both letters were very ugly.

Coyote motioned to his girlfriend. "Babe, why don't you fill in the details on the form, the names and dates and all that other bullshit. I'll boot up my 'puter and see about this young man's bank account."

"Fine." The mean woman growled. "You do all the fun stuff."

Coyote ignored her and addressed Phil instead. "You ever have a girlfriend like mine?"

"No. Actually, she scares me. A lot."

"Some advice: don't get one like her. She'll punch you in the face if you forget to lower the toilet seat."

It sounded like a joke, and maybe if Phil were watching a TV show he would have laughed. When Fury glowered at him to see if he did laugh, Phil shrank further into his chair.

"Ten thousand, six hundred and forty-three credits." Coyote announced a couple of minutes later. He'd rattled it off his screen, but now that he'd said it, he saw two devices recording him and thought maybe that hadn't been such a good idea. "I should not have said that out loud. Sorry, kid. Here, I'll write it down for you so you won't forget."

"That's a lot of money." Phil considered. "I didn't think I had so much."

Coyote snapped his fingers. "You know, there are a couple of things I can do while you're here. How much cash do you have on you?"

"Twenty bucks."

"If it's okay with you, I can lend you a hundred out of our petty cash, and withdraw that same amount from your account. I don't want to give you too much money, if you know what I mean."

"Yeah, that's fine. The fucking Samurai Jack was finding out where I was using my ID card anyway."

"I would also like to add an expense of around fifteen to twenty dollars."

"What's that, your handling fee?" Phil frowned. "Jesus, you're expensive!"

This time, it was Fury who started laughing.

"No, Manny, this isn't a handling fee." Coyote explained. "It would be nice to have a set of headphones around."

"Headphones? Why would I need headphones?"

Oddly enough, Coyote tilted his head and scratched at the side of his neck. Phil got the hint right away. If he were wearing headphones, Coyote could speak into a linked device and the sensors on Phil's collar would not catch his voice.

"Good idea, about the headphones." Phil nodded.

"Is there anything else I can help you with?" Coyote asked.

"If I need you, how much are you going to charge me?"

"My usual fee is four hundred bucks an hour." Coyote replied, but he held his hand up when it looked like Phil was getting ready to squawk again. "Keep your shirt on, kid. Working with a Dead Man is going to bring me a huge amount of exposure. I mean a million dollars worth of advertising just for being associated with you."

"You want me to hand out flyers or something?"

The man smiled. "No, here at Coyote's Bounty Hunting And Private Investigations, we have merch!"

The second Draugar was named David Tavares. Phil was ready to go at eight o'clock sharp, when his location was announced on the Internet. Tavares was supposed to be announced at the same time, and he was, but all of a sudden some kind of dispute came up where the would-be killer didn't leave his home right away. From what Phil could gather on the news feed, Tavares worked in a lumber mill, was reasonably fit and played paint-ball with his buddies in the woods. Thank goodness he wasn't an army guy or something. Finally, the lottery channel announced that Tavares would be catching a plane at noon and landing at LAX at a quarter past one.

Phil was free for most of the morning. He had a chance to visit the four victims of Samurai Jack at the hospital, cheering them up with expensive gifts and posing with them in pictures. He also found out what it was like to be hounded by the media.

Afterwards, nearing one p.m., he dropped in with the bounty hunters and picked up their 'merch.' Phil had to admit, those people did have good senses of humor. Coyote had stuffed a backpack full of personalized clothing and vid-phones. The phones were already registered, to random people in the bounty hunters' sphere of influence, and would be hard to track. The shirts were in black, blue or red, with bold lettering and slogans such as 'Don't Mess With The Fury, Cuz She Messes Back!' showing a cartoon of the tough chick, and 'When You Hear The Howl, Run, Bitch, Run!' featuring Coyote's howling image. On the back were the name of the outfit, their address and phone number. Phil was to use the clothing as long as he cared to, and would switch the phones every other day. He'd simply drop them into pre-addressed mailing envelopes, also stuffed into the pack, and later Coyote would auction them off and split the profits with him. The only permanent item Phil was to keep on his person at all times were the ear-buds, to allow Coyote to talk to him without being heard by the spy gear in his collar.

At half past one, Phil's phone buzzed.

"The eagle has landed." Coyote's voice was heard through the buds. "You know the deal, kid. What direction are you heading?"

Phil pressed 2 to indicate south.

"All right, I got that. That's close to Jerome's house. You going to stay there for the rest of the day?"

"Maybe." Phil guessed. "People are coming up to me because of your shirt. I may have to ditch it and wear something else."

"Not a problem. Drop an envelope in a mailbox and let the postal service take care of the rest. I will have safe-houses for you to spend the night in, for every direction you might head off to."

"That's good." Phil nodded. The trick was for him to spend the day in one area and to leave before nightfall. He would only be able to sleep when Tavares did.

"I've got three car companies wanting for you to drive their cars around." Coyote went on. "My gut feeling is that I don't trust them. They're too easy to track. It's better if you snag a random car right off the lot. Anyway, if you want to chance it, I'll send you the address to a drop location."

"It sounds too risky."

"No problem. Tavares is still screwing around at the airport. I'm telling you, he doesn't look happy to be here. I found this spy manual online. You might have a look at it when you get the chance. That's it for now. I'll call you when the eagle hits the street."

Phil found a skate park to hang out in. It was in a bad neighborhood, but he didn't think he'd be staying there for long. He checked the news, and yeah, that Tavares guy did look nervous. He also checked the link to Coyote's spy manual.

It turned out to be an official military document on Psychological Operations. Phil read about how undercover agents could infiltrate groups of dissenters, and how to cause confusion and suspicion within their ranks. He learned how to make covert drops, a tactic Coyote was already using, and how to plant evidence and intimidate others. The parts Phil had intended to read were on how he could psych out the new Draugar, but as he read what military operatives actually did in foreign countries, and probably also in Phil's country, he decided to read the manual out loud so the entire Internet could have a record of it. Every so often, he would pause and speak out on what he thought were psy-ops that had taken place in the United States.

"Hash-tag Remember Waco. Hash-tag Remember Ruby Ridge. Hash-tag Remember Lavoy Finicum. I get a lot of stupid trolls on my web-chats. Answer me this, you stupid trolls. How come we can find the black boxes from crashed airplanes, that are supposedly indestructible, on the tops of mountains and in the bottom of the ocean, but we could not find the four black boxes from the planes of 9/11? Hash-tag 9/11 Inside Job."

The teenagers at the skate park knew who he was. They came over to bug him when an ice cream van rolled by, so the Dead Man could get freebies for them. The driver was so scared he left the van and hurried off on foot. He probably expected gunfire to erupt at any moment, despite that the Draugar was still miles and miles away. Phil had to climb into the van to get the ice cream for himself.

A second group of Hispanics on skateboards came sauntering by later.

"Dead Man, how 'bout you get us some new boards?" One of them pressured him.

"Haven't you heard?" Phil kidded. "Half the Internet is saying I'm a white supremacist. They're saying I'm a conspiracy theorist. They're saying nobody should be giving me props like they have been, because I'm racist."

"What do you care about what people think?" The same thug asked. "You're the Dead Man, not them. You can do anything you want. All they can do is bitch about it."

"Yeah," A second punk joked. "You gave me a racist ice cream a little while ago."

"All right, I'll get you a new skateboard." Phil nodded, grabbing his pack. "I don't know where a board shop is."

As it turned out, they found one only a couple of blocks away. The clerk didn't like the look of the group of thugs striding in together, but his demeanor did a one-eighty when he saw the Dead Man coming in behind them.

"I haven't sold anything today!" The clerk started wiggling around excitedly. "What do you guys want, a board for each of you? How about a shirt? How about some of those cool Bermuda shorts?"

"You hear that?" The leader among the teenage thugs told Phil. "Those people on the Internet, they're stupid. When they snap their fingers, nothing happens. When you snap yours, you're like god around here."

Phil nodded back, barely comprehending how much power he could wield. He would have to consider that later. For the time being, he did things the way the lottery wanted him to. Everything he took from the store and gave away to the hoodlums, he held up before his collar. He showed the item and its price tag. The clerk was taking a separate accounting, for when he submitted a claim to the reimbursement people.

"How about some grub?" The thug asked.

"Grub?"

"Yeah, food. You want to get some food for us?"

"Okay, as long as the cooks don't run off and I have to make it myself."

The young punks thought this was hilarious. They led him to a taco shop, where the cashier knew them and took their order. Several of the workers came out to look at Phil, as if he were an alien from outer space. Nobody complained. Nobody called him names like they did online.

Later, the thugs took Phil through their neighborhood. Phil walked by apartment complexes with graffiti on their walls, and through dirty alleys full of cars missing a lot of parts. By nightfall, Phil was getting worried about finding a safe house. That's when he ended up in somebody's back yard, with a high wooden fence around it.

Music was playing. People were dancing and drinking. That was fine, but some of the older youths were menacing with their shaved heads and their tats on their necks and beside their eyes. They came to look Phil over, and suddenly they were all smiles with him, patting him on the back, passing him beer to drink and posing for pictures.

"I can't drink." Phil refused the beer. "I may have to take off if the Draugar shows up."

"You mean that pussy _norteno_?" One of the older of the young men said. He was probably in his early twenties. "Let that pussy show his face here! This is South Los!"

"Come on down, niggah!" Another thug said, motioning to another guy who was streaming live. "We got something for you!"

Phil did not expect all these thugs to start pulling guns out of their waistbands and waving them in the air. He counted three, four, five of them. He wondered if they were loaded. He wondered why the cops allowed this to happen.

"Get your ass back on the plane, niggah!" A gangster pointed his gun directly at the active vid-phone. "Or you'll be going home in a box!"

The young men had a lot of hate for northern California, Phil saw. He'd never known that both sides, they called them NorCal and SoCal, were mortal enemies. Now that he did know, he still didn't understand why. What the hell kind of beef did somebody from Sacramento or San Francisco have with another guy from Compton or Whittier?

The next time a beer came his way, Phil took it.

When Phil woke up the next morning, he was lying in a bed with a gangster chick next to him. She looked like a human spider, with her puffed up hair, her dark make-up that was smeared all over now, and ugly black tats in random places. Phil figured she was sleeping with him for some potential reward later, but as his drunken memories came back, he remembered that she'd never asked him for anything. He'd danced with a few other girls the previous night, but once he danced with this one, it became a point for her to keep the others away from him.

He heard his phone buzzing. It was sitting on a dresser, next to a can of beer.

"Yeah?" Phil answered.

"It is eight-oh-five and you haven't checked in yet." Coyote replied. "I just wanted to make sure you were still alive. I think you passed out at around two in the morning, after making out with some wild child. All I've been seeing on video is a Mexican blanket, part of a chick's arm and some brown hair that had too much hair spray on it."

Phil turned around, letting his collar camera view the girl more fully.

"You'd better make sure she's over eighteen." Coyote kidded. "Sixteen will get you twenty!"

"Yeah, I'll ask her when she wakes up." Phil nodded, glancing around the small room. "Shit, I don't even know where I am."

"I do. You're near the college downtown. Those guys you were with last night, they're from Eighteenth Street. Be careful around them."

"No shit. How's our paint-ball guy doing?"

Coyote laughed. "He's scared shitless. They're calling him the Weekend Warrior now, and I don't mean that in a good way. That man is absolutely terrified of setting foot in South Los Angeles. All you have to do is have one of those homeboys from last night look at the camera every couple of hours, and I can almost guarantee Mr. Tavares will not come your way."

"You think so? How about if I ask this chick to bare her fangs?"

"She might do the trick."

"Let me ask you." Phil wondered. "Your girlfriend is a mean-looking woman. What's that like to have a girlfriend like that?"

"It takes a special kind of guy to handle a woman like my Fury. Personally, I like her because she's such a challenge to be around. She keeps me on my toes. I can forget about cheating on her, because she is the type that will cut off my balls if she catches me!"

It had been a while since Phil had a girlfriend. He remembered the last one. One time, she'd started jumping up and down and screaming her head off because a cricket had accidentally landed in her hair. "Did I sleep with her?"

"I doubt it. You were both drunk off your butts last night. I saw you walking into that room and making out with her. After ten minutes or so, you both lay down on the bed and the snoring started up a little while later. That's when I zoned out. I can check the video if you want me to."

"Don't worry about it. What's the Weekend Warrior doing?"

"Believe it or not, he's making a list of sporting goods stores he wants to go to, before he heads out on the hunt. He owns a nice gun. It's an antique Desert Eagle forty-five. I know he gets decent marks at the shooting range, out in Oroville or Vacaville or wherever he lives at. Shooting at a target with your buddies around is a whole other thing than going hunting, and I doubt very much that this man goes hunting. I mean in shoot to kill scenarios. I'm about to drop an exclusive on the Internet, once he decides he wants to go looking for you. It might just make him change his mind about being here."

"Oh, yeah? You got some good dirt on him?"

"Why don't you put on your headphones?"

It took Phil a few minutes to find his backpack, as it was way out in the living room. An old woman was sitting there knitting. She didn't say a word as Phil walked by her. "Okay, I'm ready."

"I have video I pulled off the Internet." Coyote confided to him. "It shows Tavares playing paint-ball with his buddies. Guess who he's playing against? That guy paid a buck-fifty an hour to play paint-ball against a team of girls wearing bikinis. And guess what? His team fucking lost!"

"Damn, that is pretty bad." Phil chuckled.

"That's all I got. I'll release the video on my website the moment he gets serious. Hey, do me a favor. Try not to get so drunk next time. I know you were at a party and half the people there were armed, but the next guy to come along might not be such a pushover."

Phil hated thinking that there would be a next guy. After he got off the phone, he went and shook the scary gangster chick awake. "Hey, let's go grab some breakfast."

She sat up and managed to look even more disheveled than when she'd been lying down. Her puffed up hair was a mess.

"What's your name, anyway?" Phil asked.

"Luz, short for Lucinda." She croaked. "Harpies Gang."

"Yeah, Harpies Gang. I think you told me that. Where can we grab a bite to eat, and where can we hang out for a few hours."

"We can go to Long Beach. I've got cousins there."

"Are they big guys with lots of tats?"

"Yeah, most of them."

"How many cousins do you have, fifty? Let's round them up. We can have a beach party or something."

"Sure. They'll get a kick out of hanging out with the Dead Man. I have to take a shower first. Don't say nothing to my grandmother, okay? She'll freak if you tell her who you are."

"Are you over eighteen?"

Luz rolled her eyes, before she walked off.

Phil figured he should ask the grandmother how old she was. That's when he realized that he remembered a former girlfriend, the one that had jumped when she'd seen the cricket. Maybe his memories were starting to come back. He kept trying to recall more of his past, with no success, until Luz came back and it was his turn to hop in the shower.

The Weekend Warrior lasted all of four days. He never got within ten miles of Phil. He didn't even tell the lottery people he was leaving; he simply got on a bus and went home. After him came the Road Warrior. This was a biker from Imperial County that spat when he spoke about Tavares.

"That guy was a pussy." The Road Warrior huffed. "I'll go anywhere at any time and put a bullet into this guy's brain. I don't give a shit who is standing next to him."

The biker's big mistake wasn't that he was in a biker gang, but that he decided it would be a good idea to wear his biker gang's colors while he was on his mission. It took that man a quarter of a day to ride from Imperial County into Los Angeles County, but after that, it only took him a couple of hours to get into a squabble with bikers from another gang. The Road Warrior managed to shoot one of his attackers, but not before another one plunged a knife into his scruffy neck.

Between Draugars, Phil got a day off. He was studying all sorts of subjects, from concealment to subterfuge to street fighting. Everybody wanted to show him something, for the publicity or in exchange for expensive gifts, which Phil was happy to give them.

He was also learning a lot from the bounty hunters. Coyote sub-contracted another investigator to keep tabs on the house of Manny Gutierrez. The private eye had tried to speak with the Gutierrez family, but they were tight-lipped and refused to talk.

"You don't look like the man in Manny's mug shot." Coyote said, while Phil had his ear-buds on. "Not to a trained eye like mine. I didn't believe your story at first, about how some drugs erased your memory, and how you were coincidentally robbed right before you were made the new Dead Man. After the way the Gutierrez family acted, I'm seeing things from your side of the fence. Is there anything you're not telling me?"

"There might be." Phil said. "But it's all bits and pieces."

"Nothing solid?"

"No."

"I'm not charging you for this, but you do understand that I will charge you later. It will be a significant expense on your part."

"Yes, I understand that. I have to make it to the end before I can even dream of paying you. I hope you understand that, too."

"I like solving puzzles." Coyote replied. "And you are a puzzle. Just like my girl Fury is. Isn't that right, Fury?"

"Suck my ass." The woman's voice was heard in the background.

Phil laughed.

"One of these days, you're going to hear her yelling at me." Coyote sound wistful. "Man, you should hear her going at it. Nobody can out-bitch my Fury. How is it going with that little firecracker of yours? Are you getting serious with her?"

"I don't know. She asked me to get some jewelry for her."

"And you don't want to? You give free shit to everybody else!"

"I know, but I was hoping it would be different with her." Phil lamented. "I want her to like me for who I am, and not because I can grab anything off a shelf and just give it to her. I don't want her to like me because I could be worth three-quarters of a million credits, if I even live that long."

"You're worth a lot more than that, kid. Trust me. Every day that passes by, more people are putting down wagers. You've got new people registering with the lottery just to have a crack at you. The lottery is making a killing on you, because of how long this chase is going to be compared to most. Their merchandise sales are going through the roof, especially if they hype the Draugars right. They're already making buku bucks off you because so many people like you. You're like the everyman that everybody wishes they could be for a day, and you'll be doing it for two and a half months. What? Hey, Fury is asking me if I'm getting a hard-on. Yeah, babe, I am getting a hard-on. You have the Midas touch, kid. You know, about the only thing people don't like is when you go off about conspiracies. The sponsors hate when you do that."

"It's the truth. I'm not going to stop saying the truth, no matter what. Thanks to this lottery, I actually have a voice in this world. I may never get this chance again."

"Do what you want, kid. I'm only saying you could make more money if you didn't piss off the people that put commercials in the middle of the live stream."

"I make money off the commercials?"

"Yeah, it's part of the lottery deal. All that shit is explained up front in the fine print. Of course, if you're story checks out, and you aren't who we all think you are, then you probably missed the fine print, right?"

"I don't know. Why don't you become my manager? There is so much shit I don't know than you can help me with."

"He wants me to become his manager." Coyote told his girlfriend, before he came back to Phil. "Let me think about that. I'd want twelve or fifteen percent of everything, and I mean everything. And you'd have to tone down your accusations so we can max our profits. Before I do anything, I want to run a few tests on you. I'm going to do this as secretly as I can, because I don't want anybody getting wind of what I'm up to. Come into my office at eight tomorrow, since nobody is chasing you down currently."

"Okay. I'll be there."

"Hey, kid. You've got fifty-eight days left."

"Live like there's no tomorrow." - The Offspring

The next Draugar was the toughest one so far. He was a retired Gunnery Sergeant from the Marine Corps named Peter Marsh. His supporters called him Gunny Marsh, while the detractors called him the Green Marshmallow. Marsh lived in Carlsbad, just over an hour's drive from Los Angeles. Lottery officials interviewed the man while he cleaned and oiled his AR-15 rifle.

"I'm here to do a job, and I'll get the job done." Marsh told lottery hostess Hellatia. "All this hysteria this young man is causing by spouting his conspiracy lies, all that shit is going to stop."

"Do you have any comment on that statement, that what you're saying are quote, conspiracy lies, unquote?" Reporter Rudy Lukowski asked. He was from the independent and often controversial news agency We Are Change.

"I have a lot to say about that." Phil replied.

They were walking along the beach at Santa Monica Pier, with a small throng of people following them. Phil had agreed to have Rudy spend an entire day with him, recording the chase.

"Where should I start? I don't mean any disrespect to the American military, but I am saying that at times the United States starts wars for bullshit reasons. We should be fighting wars because somebody is trying to invade our lands, instead of attacking countries poorer than ours to take away their valuable resources. You know what I'm talking about. You cover this kind of stuff all the time."

"And I get censored, persecuted and arrested because of it." Rudy smirked. "The last time I tried to cover a Bilderberg meeting, they didn't even let me out of the airport. Let me say that I fully support the American military, as long as they take action for legitimate reasons. For example, I do not want U.S. Marines, such as our Gunny Marsh, guarding poppy fields in Afghanistan. Do you know that opium production in that country has increased by seventy-five percent since the U.S. military took over? That makes them the biggest drug producers in the entire world, bigger than the drug cartels in Colombia and Mexico. I also do not support creating False Flag operations, such as fake chemical attacks in Syria, just so the United States can invade Syria on behalf of Israel."

"Israel is a good place to start." Phil decided. "Marsh is pro-Israel, isn't he?"

"Yes, he did state that during the interview. It's funny, but he kept talking as if he was still a Marine out on deployment. He's been retired for going on six years now."

"I noticed that, too." Phil nodded. "He's all gung-ho about a service he no longer works for. He probably thinks I'm a communist."

"Anarchist." Rudy corrected. "He thinks you're trying to destabilize the entire country by causing division."

"That's bullshit! I'm a libertarian, not an anarchist. I don't think the government should always be watching over my shoulder like it's my mother. I want a small federal presence and more power going to the states, and the people that live in them. Hold on, my phone is buzzing." It was Coyote with an update. "Dude, Marsh is driving here right now. He's about ten minutes away."

"Let's get going!" Rudy exclaimed.

They left the crowd behind and jumped into a waiting car. The driver, another reporter from that same news agency, was tasked with keeping the car in motion for several hours, until the occupants would jump into another vehicle and do the same process all over again with a new driver. Phil's biggest concern was that that car would be spotted, but it was a common model. Past that, all he had to do was lie back in the rear seat so his collar would not catch any passing landmarks.

"You were saying about Israel?" Rudy prodded.

"Right. I'm talking about the Zionist Jews here. It was the Zionist Jews and their sympathizers in the United States that got us into World War I and II. There is a good argument on what would have happened if the Germans had won either war, but that's not what I want to focus on because it's only speculation. I want to talk about how Lawrence of Arabia, an Englishman by the way, tricked the Arabs into World War I against the Turks. The Arabs were promised independence and sovereignty for their help."

"But they didn't get it." Rudy nodded.

"No, they got punked. At the same time, a British prime minister named Arthur Balfour wrote a document promising Palestine to the Jews as their official homeland. This became known as the Balfour Declaration of 1917. This is the reason why so many Arab countries hate Israel, especially Palestine and Iran. Palestine was an Arab land and has been for a very long time, and all of a sudden England is giving a portion of their land away and the Jews are moving in."

"Palestine goes back a long time." Rudy said. "In the Bible, those people were called the Philistines."

"As for World War II, you can see the deception from several different angles. There is a good speech by Benjamin Freedman, who was Jewish, but who decided to expose how the rich American Zionists set up a propaganda campaign against Germany that eventually led to the United States being influenced into the war. There is debatable evidence that Auschwitz and other concentrations camps did not commit as many evil atrocities as the historians want us to believe. The Nuremberg Trials were a farce with the goal of emasculating Germany, and the number of six million Jews murdered in gas chambers is an outright lie. Nobody ever found lampshades made of human skin or trap doors that opened up so gassed Jews could fall into train cars waiting below. The Zionists were touting their magic number of six million persecuted Jews before even World War I. You can still find the old news clippings online if you care to look for them. The Red Cross does not report a significant drop in the Jewish population during the years before, during or after World War II. The actual number might be more like one-point-two or one-point-five million murdered Jews. I'm not saying that atrocities did not happen in World War II, but I am saying that they were greatly exaggerated in favor of the Jews."

"Catholics and Polish people were also persecuted by Germany." Rudy added. "And in significant numbers. But you don't hear anything about them. All you hear is about the Jewish Holocaust, as if that were the only holocaust that ever happened in the history of the world. What about the Bolshevik Holocaust, where wealthy American families such as the Rockefellers and the Harrimans funded the Bolsheviks? These were members of the notorious secret society Skull And Bones. How is it that these corrupt families will fund both sides of wars and revolutions, and then exert their influence in whoever is left standing once the bloodshed is over? How is it that these rich families will forget their country and nation and ally themselves with the global banking families like the Zionist Rothschilds? When are people going to wake up to the fact that their national leaders have sold them out?"

"All I can say is, does Israel have a major street named Rothschild Boulevard?" Phil revealed. "And what is the official state religion of Israel? Let's talk about the times when Israel attacked U.S. interests and tried to blame Egypt, in the hopes of starting up World War III. That would be the bombing at the Olympic Hotel, and the unprovoked attack on the U.S.S. Liberty, and..."

Phil avoided Gunny Marsh by choosing his destinations randomly, but several of these were narrow escapes. Marsh could hit half a dozen safe houses in a single night, forcing Phil to stay awake and keep on the move. He had to jump into the back cab of a truck and trailer once, and another time, after Marsh got a positive ID on him, two bullets struck the rear quarter panel of a car Phil was escaping in.

It was clear that Marsh was getting inside help. Too many times, he just happened to show up at the right place, but missing his target by only a few minutes. Coyote gave the lottery commission his suspicions. According to the arrangement they had with the city of Los Angeles, LAPD could monitor armed Dead Men and Draugars traveling through their city, but they could not tip off either side. They were caught, when transcripts from inter-agency dispatches were read. The police department claimed city officials made them do it, while the city said they were innocent.

"What a dilemma we have here." Hellatia said icily, when she produced evidence of the collusion to kill their Dead Man. "What a dilemma. We only have one city blacklisted from the Running Game, and that is San Jose, for doing the very same thing Los Angeles was just caught doing. How far does this rabbit hole go, boys and girls? Does it go as far as Gunny Marsh? Is there a plot, dare I say it, a conspiracy where Marsh is complicit with the policemen leaking information to him? How juicy! Somebody had better get their house in order, because I feel a lawsuit is in the works! And I mean a hundred million credit lawsuit!"

The lottery litigators went as far as the front steps of the county courthouse, before lawyers representing the city of Los Angeles intercepted them. The city lawyers wanted to make a deal. The lottery people said no, we will expose you the same way we exposed San Jose. The lottery will take a big hit in revenues if any wrongdoing is covered up. The public, the lottery people argued, had the right to know if the integrity of the lottery was still intact.

After eight days of being chased by Marsh, the chase was temporarily suspended. The following day, Marsh was expulsed from being the Draugar. The lottery people set up a podium for Phil to give a prepared statement.

"Gunny Marsh did not start off being in collusion with the city of Los Angeles." Phil read to the crowd of news reporters. "Shortly after arriving in L.A., police officers were assigned to monitor Marsh's movements. This is the normal case when an armed lottery participant enters a city. Police officers are supposed to shadow participants so that incidents such as what happened with Samurai Jack do not occur. Officers have not been tailing me because all I have to defend myself is this." Phil held up his puny can of pepper spray, prompting a few chuckles.

"It must be very clear that the Golden State Running Game chose Gunny Marsh in its usual manner, with no corruption whatsoever in its selection process." Phil went on. "Upon arrival, Marsh was briefed and two officers were assigned to him. The first couple of days of the chase were normal. On the third day, however, officers from LAPD began giving confidential information to Gunny Marsh. This is how Marsh knew where I was and where I was heading to next. This is what the city of Los Angeles does not want you to know about their surveillance methods. This is what they are trying to hide by avoiding it revealed in open court. The lottery board thinks it is in the best interests for this to be revealed to the public, in order to maintain the lottery's integrity and honesty.

"The LAPD uses advanced technology to scan digital, open air communications. It is called Viper II, as in Roman numeral two. I will now give a brief description of how this technology works. The equipment pretends to be a relay station or hub for Wifi. If a police van containing this equipment is parked on a street, it can catch all Wifi messages coming from every house on that block. The equipment filters the signals, so they can isolate a certain address from the rest. The equipment does not stop the messages from going through, but it does duplicate them, like a middleman having his own copy of an invoice going from his boss to another company. This is how they found out where my safe houses were, and they passed the locations over to Gunny Marsh. Marsh accepted the information, and that is when he became complicit with the lottery tampering. The city of Los Angeles will settle this case out of court for the amount of fifty million credits, payable directly to the lottery."

Lottery officials were on hand, with the lean and strong Draugar King taking the podium next. "Gunny Marsh is gone, sent back to his barrow where he can contemplate his bad decisions, and where he has forfeited all investments made into our lottery. This includes the deed to his house, which he put up as a wager, so I suppose Gunny will have to find a new barrow to crawl into. The Dead Man's lottery can be very generous, as you all know, but we take these transgressions very seriously. Nobody cheats the Draugar King and gets away with it!"

Sultry and serpent-like, the beautiful Hellatia sidled up to her co-host. "Our world is in turmoil! However shall we right this sinking ship? I know, we could give Gunny Marsh's house over to our little Weasel. That would be a just dessert, wouldn't it? Or we could give it over to a charity. What do you think? What about our poor Weasel? We think he deserves a day off, after being harassed by those who are sworn to protect and serve the rest of us."

"All these cops had to do was watch one guy." The Draugar King cut in. "They had one job, one job only, and they botched that up big time by telling Gunny where to point his weapon!"

Hellatia smiled brightly. "We have some polls for you! We want to give away the Gunny's house, because he was such a bad, bad man, trying to discredit us like he did. Tell us who should get that house: our Weasel, the L.A. police chief, one of the people who has helped the Weasel in the past, or maybe even me! Send us your ideas so we can fill out the poll, and get to voting! How many days should we run this poll, my king?"

"Five days, my queen."

"And after being pressured this way by L.A.'s men in black, how many days should the Weasel have off? How many, my king?"

"Between one and five days." The Draugar King nodded decisively. "That should give our Weasel enough time to recuperate before I send a new Draugar after him!"

"And how long should we run this second poll?"

The King rubbed his chin, with its blonde stubble on it. "Twenty-four hours. Of course, if the public only votes to give the Weasel a single day off, he'd better be ready to go by this time tomorrow!"

The spectacle of a news conference went on, but Phil largely ignored the rest of it. He was happy because he'd avoided having a direct confrontation with the worst assassin he had to deal with so far. He was on Day Thirty, already a day off, and looking forward to another one, worry-free this time.

As far as the tally went, it was Weasel - Four, Draugars - Zero.

Day Thirty-Three:

Phil got three days off, barely, because most people wanted the chase to continue right away. According to the polls, sixty percent wanted to see him dead, while thirty-five percent were hoping he'd make it to the end. The last five percent didn't care who lived or died, as long as they got an exciting finish. The survey wasn't done scientifically, by the way, as dozens of online trolls used multiple user names to cast negative numbers.

This was his second day off of the three, and he spent part of the morning sitting in the front seat of Coyote's clearly marked Bounty Hunter sedan. It was a rare occasion for Phil to be able to look out the windows at his leisure. They were taking a short ride into Fresno in Ventura County, to visit the home of Manny Gutierrez.

"They say the average chase lasts around nine or ten days, but that's not accurate." Coyote said. "It has to be broken down between the smart Dead Men and the dummies. The dummies, they only last a couple of days. What's their average, honey?"

The scary but also appealing Fury was sitting in the back seat. "Three and a half days, rounded off. Remember that one idiot that actually went to the airport to confront his Draugar? He only lasted about fourteen hours."

"Why wasn't that a good idea?" Phil wondered.

"Because he started firing inside the airport with a million innocent people around." Coyote explained. "If you endanger the public like that, the cops will definitely take a guy down. The Draugar only had enough time to clear the runway steps and hide behind the baggage carts, and he still got all the money. How about the smart guys, honey, how long do they last?"

"On average, twelve to fourteen days."

"You see?" Coyote glanced over, before he returned his eyes to the road. "Most chases are over and done with in less than two weeks. You get your rare instances where the Dead Man and the Draugar are evenly matched, and those battles get stretched out up to a month. You've been on the run now, for what, over thirty days? What's the longest chase ever, babe?"

"Forty-three days."

"Most of the good chases, those are your basic stand-offs, your duels to the death." Coyote said. "That's what gets the highest ratings. The Dead Man holes up somewhere and he dares the Draugar to come and get him. They both have their bug-out bags ready, their weapons loaded, and they go to war. You're doing it all different in that you keep running, which is bad for the ratings, but you're giving shit away left and right so that Joe Public wants to protect you. The turkeys online are drooling for blood, but the people out there on the street, they'll take a new car, keep their mouths shut about your location, and gladly put you in for the night. You're taking things in an extreme direction compared to so many other guys who do the same old, same old routine."

"That's good, right?" Phil asked.

"You're still alive, so I'd have to say yeah." Coyote nodded.

"Tell him about our problems." Fury said.

"What problems?" Phil wondered.

"We have two big ones." Coyote answered. "First off, thanks to Gunny Marsh all of our safe houses are now compromised. Any jerk keeping track can print out a list of some ninety percent of the locations. A smart guy, or a smart computer, can make good guesses about the other ten percent, once they catch the pattern we were using. We cannot assume the last few houses will remain secure."

"Great, I'll be living in cars and under bridges from now on." Phil grumbled. "What's the other issue we have?"

"The lottery people are getting complaints about our secret conversations." The driver replied. "If Gunny Marsh was getting leaked info, they trolls are saying, then you must be getting it, too. These trolls are pretty stupid, because they haven't taken the time to read the official rules. A Dead Man is not the same as a Draugar. A Dead Man can get advice from the public. I don't know if you've seen a lot of these chases, but there have been times when it was bad advice given deliberately to lead the Dead Man to his doom. The critics are also mad because I'm making a ton of money off my merch."

"Plus we've been giving you advice for a couple of weeks now." Fury added.

"Right, right." Coyote nodded. "The lottery doesn't like when a Dead Man keeps getting assistance from the same source. However, if this chase goes through to its bitter end, it will be the longest chase in history. Honey, you remember that cop from, where was it?"

"Palm Springs."

"Right, Palm Springs." Coyote said. "This happened a few years back. A cop from Palm Springs was named Dead Man. He had his network all set up with the entire police force out there. That included in the city of Palm Springs and other places. It included current cops, former cops and their relatives. The Dead Man cop was in contact with his network from Day One. Two Draugars chased him at the same time, and he offed them both. That chase lasted only ten days, which is nothing compared to yours, kid. There were no gripes about this cop being protected by the same ring of people for the entire duration, but there are gripes now about how we're working together with you."

"He got a good payday." Fury said.

"Yeah, he did." Coyote seconded. "Something like twenty-seven, twenty-eight million. That was back when the state was still taxing the winnings, so he walked away with fifteen million after he gave five million to his cohorts and the rest to the IRS."

"Twenty million, after taxes?" Phil whistled. "I'm close to one million, right?"

Coyote chuckled.

"What? Am I missing something?"

"Yes, you are. New people are registering into the lottery and making investments for future earnings, people that have been in it for a while are increasing their stakes, and huge wagers are being made over the outcome. A percentage of that is going back to you. On top of all that, the lottery is making a killing off this particular chase, because it isn't a duel but something different that the public hasn't seen before."

"You do know why people invested in the lottery are increasing their stakes." Fury asked. "That way they can have a higher chance of being selected as the next Draugar."

"No, I didn't know that." Phil said.

"Do you even know the rules?" She questioned.

"No, not really. I've been doing everything I can just to keep one step ahead of all these assassins that are chasing me."

"You are so lost." Fury said.

Phil looked over his shoulder, observing the tough woman shaking her head. He turned back to the driver. "What does she mean by that?"

"Most guys that buy into the lottery are either desperate or greedy, or sometimes both." Coyote revealed. "They don't care if they're the Dead Man or the Draugar. Take your Samurai Jack, for example. That guy put his building up as collateral. He had a couple of cars, a few expensive collectibles like that sword he used, and very little actual money in the bank. Everything he owned that had any value to it he signed over to the lottery. Now that he's permanently out of the picture, his assets will be liquidated and added to the pool, minus ten percent that the lottery gets to keep."

"That building with the four apartments in it," Fury cut in. "That is a million dollar building. The lottery will clean it up and put it up for auction."

"In general, the Draugar comes in with a pool of money, and so does the Dead Man." Coyote took over again. "Both pools are added together and are awarded to the last man standing."

"That's not showing up in my stats." Phil said.

"It won't, not until the collateral property is sold. Usually, the lottery will wait until the chase is over before they start wheeling and dealing. What you can do is look up all these eliminated Draugars and what their collateral assets were. These assets have a projected value and not an actual value, so take that into consideration. That Weekend Warrior from up north, he screwed up big time by chickening out like that. Once you're in the chase, you can't back out. That forfeits the property he put up. I'm sure he'll bitch and moan about it, but the lottery can and will legally take his house."

"He got lucky because he didn't put up anything besides his house." Fury informed Phil. "That just goes to show how the selection system really is random and fair, like the ads say it is. You've got people who are investing many times more into the lottery, but the person who was selected, our Weekend Warrior, only put his one house up. His house is only worth a couple hundred thousand credits. Gunny Marsh, on the other hand, he has a pretty nice house in a very expensive section of Carlsbad. That won't fetch an entire million, but it will be close. He fucked himself out of his house by cheating."

"It's against the rules!" Coyote chimed in, chuckling. "He really did fuck himself, just like the dumb shit from NorCal did. Now, what you did, kid, is something different. You didn't put up so much real property to get in. You took the gambler's option into the system."

"I don't remember that." Phil admitted.

"It's only the most important decision you've made in your entire life, so I can see how you let that slip your mind. Here's how that goes. A couple of years ago, you signed up as a potential Dead Man. You made an initial investment, or if you didn't, you have a sponsor that did it for you..."

"Or several sponsors, if you have friends with deep pockets." Fury interjected.

"Right." Coyote said. "There are times when the sponsors want to be anonymous. That's what's happening in your case. A sponsor, or several of them, made an initial investment in your name. Your job is simple. You wait around until you get selected, and you greatly increase your chances of being selected by hanging on for over two years. When you are selected, you enter the chase as a Dead Man and you survive any and all attempts on your life. You win, you collect the winnings, and you disburse them to all those nice people who believed in you at the start."

Fury leaned forward in her seat, her head near to Phil's shoulder. "Somebody is expecting you to win. They expect you to pay them back."

"I have no idea who those people are." Phil shook his head.

"Well, they know who you are." Coyote said. "In lottery terms, you were only worth a few thousand credits, up until you were officially announced as the Dead Man. After that, your anonymous buddies upped the ante and that's how you ended up at nearly seven-fifty grand. If you lose or die, the sponsors will lose their money. Not too many Dead Men have sponsors like that, willing to pony up so much money on a guy with very little actual worth. Sharpshooters or gifted athletes get that kind of attention, but not relatively low level grunts like you."

"But you can borrow against that money as long as your investors allow you to." Fury spoke next. "That's how you were able to live so high on the hog for the last couple of years. You went to the clubs, you had yourself a little harem of prostitutes, and you drove a tricked out Honda Pulse. Basically, you've been taking money from your private sponsors and spending it however you want, and they've been letting you do it. They must think you're really good to let you do that."

"He is really good." Coyote nodded again. "Good enough to stay alive for over thirty days already, when most chases are over in half that time. Let's hope that lucky streak continues for another month and a half."

Phil became absorbed with his thoughts for at time, until he heard Fury telling her man to make the last couple of turns. The bounty hunter's car, which was really a late model police car converted over, pulled into a dirt lane with old houses on one side, and a broad dirt field on the other. The house had a chain link fence around it, and a large, leafy tree with branches hanging over the short stretch of dirt driveway.

The house looked cozy, painted in fudge brown with white accents on the door and windows. It was made of clapboard and showed its age. The yard was littered with a few buckets, an old children's plastic pool and a couple of bicycles.

Coyote pointed to the two vehicles parked in line under the tree. "That truck belongs to your brother Brody. The Honda parked in front of it, that you can barely see from here, that's your car. Is any of this ringing any bells for you?"

"No, nothing." Phil answered.

"Well, let's go say hello to your family."

Phil and Fury were facing the house when they got out, while Coyote had to come around the front of his vehicle. A Hispanic man with dark hair and a mustache was standing in the yard, staring at them. He wore a gray wife-beater and old jeans.

"Hello." Coyote waved. "Broderick Gutierrez? How you doing? We just dropped by for a visit. I'm sure you're happy to see your brother here."

"We don't want to talk to him." The man replied. "Leave, right now."

"What kind of guy doesn't want to see his own brother?" Coyote threw his arms up. "You've been watching the Running Game, haven't you?"

"I said leave right now!" Broderick shouted.

"After we drove all the way out here, you don't want to say hi?"

Phil watched his supposed brother reach behind his back and pull a handgun out. The next thing he knew, Fury was dragging him toward the trunk of the car and shots were sounding off. For a second, Phil felt his body flying through the air, after Fury threw him aside like a rag doll. Both Coyote and the woman had come armed, and in no time they were hiding behind the car and returning fire.

After scrambling over on his stomach, Phil found he could see into the yard from below the trunk of the car. He saw Broderick squeeze off a couple more shots, before he turned to run toward the house. The bounty hunters fired at his retreating form, knocking the fleeing man over. It wasn't over yet. The two front windows burst open as more people inside started shooting at them.

"I'm hit!" Coyote called out. "I got one in the shoulder!"

"Can you still shoot?" Fury kept blasting into the house.

"Yeah, but I can't do two things at once. Manny, call 911!"

With seemingly superhuman strength, Fury dragged Phil away from the rear of the car and over to side facing away from the house. After she released him, he was able to place the call and sputter out what was happening. In the meantime, Coyote and Fury were still shooting.

"You need a tourniquet!" Fury said. "I'll get my kit from the trunk!"

"The bullet just grazed me." Coyote told her. "It hurts like a bitch, though. Hey, Manny, it looks like your family isn't too happy to see you!"

Phil was scared. He kept hearing guns going off and shots hitting the other side of the car. Fury ran by him once, popping the trunk, then a second time when she retrieved the first aid kit they had back there. When she came by a third time, she looked at Phil cowering down there by the back tire. "We need to show you how to use a gun!"

Coyote must have been superhuman, too. The valiant man kept up the barrage of bullets while his girlfriend applied a tourniquet. After that, all Phil heard was gunfire, pauses from the guns being reloaded, and more gunfire.

It seemed like forever before the first police cars showed up. Two of them came in at once, soon followed by a steady stream of them. The pair of bounty hunters and Phil were moved out of the way while the shootout continued.

"That's it. That's the last fucking straw." Coyote decided, as the EMTs tended to his wound, which luckily was only superficial. "When we get back to my office, we are telling the world you are not Manafort Gutierrez!"

"What the hell do you mean he isn't Manafort Gutierrez?" The gorgeous Hellatia blasted Coyote. "The regulatory commission sent agents out to verify his identity! I watched the video of the bot taking the samples!"

"They got the wrong guy." Coyote replied. He winced because he was used to moving his arm around when he spoke, and now he had a stupid sling keeping it in place.

"That's impossible!"

This was going out live, Phil knew. The Draugar King was there, the two video guys were roving around, and the make-up lady was hanging out at the back of the room. Phil was sitting there in front of the bounty hunter's desk, the center of attention as usual.

Oh, there was another new person in the room. Her name was Cheryl something or other. Coyote had mentioned her name several times while they'd been driving back to Los Angeles. Fury told Cheryl to meet them at the office. It turns out that Cheryl was a registered nurse who could take medical samples from a patient. It turns out that Cheryl was also Fury's girlfriend on the side, for whenever, quote, 'Coyote did not satisfy her.' When Phil found his mind wandering, it was because he was trying to picture how a hard chick like Fury could get it on with an apparently soft chick like Cheryl, and also whether Coyote participated in the adventures and made it a threesome.

"It is not impossible, and I can prove it." Coyote said. "I have been looking at that video myself. If you give me a second, I'll project it on the wall with my 'puter's movie app. Can you give me a second?"

"You're not supposed to have that video." The Draugar King said. "It is official lottery property."

"Well, I got a hold of it anyway." Coyote shrugged. He moved his laptop around on his desk until he had a good image on the wall. It showed a first person point of view, with three agents standing in front. All four men were standing in an elevator. "Kid, pipe up if you recognize any of these guys."

"Only the bot." Phil recalled, as the video started playing. "His name was Fred. I don't remember the names of anybody else."

All four suits exited the elevator, where a fifth suit told them the subject was still in his room. Numbering at five, they went to a specific door and started pounding on it.

"Keep in mind," Coyote reminded them all. "That they traced Manny through his vid-phone."

"We already know that." Hellatia coolly replied.

"Oh yeah, smarty?" Coyote teased. "When you see that vid-phone on the screen, let me know about it, because I've watched this video fifty times and I haven't seen it. That vid-phone disappeared before the agents got there."

"Maybe those men kept it for evidence?" The Draugar King wondered. "Manny had just run away from Fresno."

"No go." Coyote shook his head. "That would be the first time in lottery history that the regulatory guys take possession of a runner's personal belongings. They don't do that, at all, ever."

The King shrugged.

When the door didn't open, the suits used an electronic de-scrambler to nullify the door lock. They burst into the living room just as Phil came out of the bedroom.

Impatiently, Hellatia huffed. "We've seen all this before! Samples are taken and the results confirmed that this is Manny Gutierrez!"

"No, it confirms that the samples belong to Manny." Coyote corrected, pointing at Phil. "But the samples do not come from this man standing here."

Hellatia exaggerated looking confused. She glanced over at her King. "What am I missing here?"

"Watch and learn, sweetheart." Coyote nodded. He slowed the playing speed of the video and paused it at the relevant spots. "They're supposed to collect fresh samples, right? Look at the semen sample. It came from a used condom lying on the side of the bed. It did not come from my client's penis."

"Wait." The King brought his big hand up. "I watched the video from the hotel's camera, facing directly into that hallway. In that entire night, I only saw two people go into that hotel room: Manny Gutierrez and a prostitute."

"What prostitute?" Phil asked. "Was she good looking at least?"

"We'll get to that in a minute." Coyote waved him off. "For now, can we agree that the semen sample did not come, pardon the pun, from my client's penis?"

The King got the dirty joke and chuckled. The Queen only looked around baffled, and this caused Fury to begin sniggering as well. Phil's face reddened because he knew what was coming next.

"Moving on, let's talk about the hair samples." Coyote very carefully played the video. "Here, let me do that again in case you missed it. This man here is standing up, right? Notice how hair is actually falling away from his head. One of the suits even mentions that this man looks like he's shedding hair. You will notice that the guy with the tweezers plucks stray hair from this man's shoulder, and not living hair from his head."

"What are you saying, that somebody planted hair on him?" The King asked. "Just like somebody planted a used condom at the side of the bed?"

"Now we come to the sticky part, no pun intended." Coyote went on. "This man opens his mouth, and whoa, Nelly, it's full of semen! Now, how in the hell did this man suck another man off, if only two people, one man and one woman, went inside the hotel room? And don't you dare say he held that crap in his mouth all night long!"

Hellatia grimaced. "Need I remind you that this is going out live?"

"Maybe the prostitute was transgender?" The King guessed.

"Maybe. I don't know." Coyote shrugged. "What I do know is this. The saliva sample was skipped. On the report it is listed as being skipped due to contamination. When the two of you watched this video, when did you see anybody take a blood sample?"

"I know they took one." The King replied. "Didn't they?"

"You assumed they did because it was in the report. I didn't alter this video. You can see for yourself that no blood sample was taken. I'm not pointing any fingers... but... How do you have a blood sample when no blood sample was taken? You tell me. Bottom line: the identity of this man was confirmed through a used condom and loose hairs that did not come from his actual body."

"Wait, I remember now!" The King said. "The blood sample was taken in Fresno, before Manny took off. The suits completed their full bio-scan there. It was while they were waiting for Hellatia and I to show up that Manny fled. We were both mad because when we got there, he was already gone!"

"He went from Ventura County to Los Angeles." Coyote nodded. "He found a guy who looked like him, and he drugged that poor guy up so he wouldn't remember who he was. And he still doesn't." He pointed at Phil. "This man is not Manny Gutierrez."

"I think maybe I was hypnotized." Phil admitted.

"Even better." Coyote said. "It just happens that Cheryl here is a licensed hypnotist. I was already wanting to hypnotize this man, before I went out there to Fresno and his family, allegedly, started taking shots at me. Before we get to that, I have two more bits of video I want to show. Let me set up the first one."

Phil watched the projection. It showed a short black woman leading him down the hallway and into the motel room. He nearly jumped out of his seat. "That's the bot!"

"What bot?" Coyote asked.

"The sex bot! That's the sex bot that was riding with... Wait. She was riding with... I can't remember anymore!"

"He has been hypnotized." Cheryl spoke up. "That's a common reaction when a person is told to forget something. I noticed the same thing when I saw the video of him trying to sign his own name."

"Thank you, Cheryl." Coyote said. "Kid, what can you tell me about this sex bot? Apparently, you were not told to forget about her like you were told to forget about Manny. If this is a sex bot, she may be the person that hypnotized you."

"Her name was... Tanya or Terry, I think. She was hot, and I mean really hot! I think she wanted to be in a sex sandwich, with me on top and..."

"That's enough." Coyote halted him. "I don't need all the gruesome details. I just wanted to establish that you knew this person."

"It was a bot. I am one hundred percent sure she was a bot."

"How can you be so sure it wasn't a real woman?"

"She cut my hair really fast, plus her voice was weird."

"Oh, when did she cut your hair?"

"Right before she dyed it."

"And when did she dye your hair?"

Phil looked perplexed as he stared at the video. "Well, it was in that hotel room, wasn't it?"

"No, your hair was like that when you went into the hotel room." The King said.

"I didn't know anything about a bot until right now." Coyote revealed. "But you see how all the pieces are falling together, don't you? One last piece of video."

This time, it showed an old car pulling over on the street, as there was no parking available next to the curb. Three people were sitting in the front seat. Two of them got out, the black woman and Manny, while the driver maneuvered away.

"This video didn't come from the hotel." Coyote said. "I got it from an office building across the street. I believe the real Manny Gutierrez was behind the wheel. Do you remember this car at all?"

"No." Phil said.

"It looks like we've got all of the pieces." Coyote said. "Let's put them together to see the big picture. Cheryl, would you hypnotize our young man so we can find out who he really is?"

"My name is Philip Decker." Phil said, from the back seat of Coyote's car.

"No shit." The bounty hunter chuckled. He wasn't in the driver's seat this time, thanks to his arm being in a sling. "Tell me the story again. I want to make sure you haven't forgotten it already."

"All right, I will." Phil glanced out the window. They were cruising through the bad neighborhoods of South Los again. "I was craving some weed that night, I mean really craving it. Manny and his bot drove by. I didn't want to go with them at first, but they talked me into it. Did I mention that Tammy was really hot?"

"Only like a hundred times, kid. Go on."

"They rented two rooms. One was in a cheap motel, and the second was in that high-rise they found me in. At the first place, Tammy hypnotized me and gave me a complete makeover to create a near-perfect clone of Manny. While I was dozing there and letting the hair dye dry up, Manny and Tammy went to the second room and set things up. They made an appearance in the lobby, and they spent about an hour in the hotel room. When they left, they came and got me. This time, Manny stayed in the car while his bot took me up to the room. He took off, while she slept with me. In the morning, Manny called his bot and told her the suits were tracking his phone. She finished planting the evidence, which, bleah, included putting Manny's semen in my mouth, and she took anything away that might reveal I was Philip Decker or Manny Gutierrez, except for the wallet with the scratched up ID picture."

"Yeah, that was some nasty business with the semen." Coyote nodded. "Tammy takes off, the suits show up, and you're standing there with no memories because you were hypnotized not to remember anything."

"Manny stayed close." Phil calculated. "Maybe he figured that if I killed a Draugar, he could come in quickly and finish me off, and then he could take my place and keep the winnings. I don't think he liked that I chose to go seventy-five days. I think he expected more like ten or fifteen. He did not like that I became such a good runner, a Weasel, and that I kept getting away from the Draugars."

"We know this because of the members of his family who tried to blow our heads off." Coyote nodded.

"If you find the bot, you find all the answers, and you'll probably find Manny, too."

"I'm not looking for them, not with a busted wing." Coyote said. "If Manny were smart, he'd be in Mexico already. A bot like that costs money, and I mean big money. A simple programmer like Manny can't afford a bot like that, but if he had one, he sure as hell could tell it what to do."

Fury was at the wheel. "Manny did have some rich sponsors. Too bad the lottery people won't release their identities while they're investigating. I bet one of them lent Manny that bot because he.."

"Or she." Coyote cut in.

"Because he or she figured they could make a fast buck in the lottery." Fury finished off. "They sponsored him for two years, and suddenly sank a fortune into him right after he became Dead Man. It makes me wonder if those same benefactors aren't sponsoring other people right now."

"You know what I think?" Phil mused. "I think Manny planned to kill me right after I became Dead Man. If he did that, he and his bot would have a huge advantage over any Draugar coming after them."

"Bingo!" Coyote clapped his hands. "That's it right there! A programmer could enable a bot like that to fight and use weapons much better than a human can! That bot can outthink us, outrun us and outmaneuver us in a fucking heartbeat! Then she can go back to acting like a scared kitty while Manny picked up the gun and made like an action hero. You have solved the puzzle, kid! Congratulations!"

"Why didn't Manny get close enough to kill him?" Fury wondered.

"Probably for the same reason that the Weekend Warrior shit his pants." Coyote assumed. "Phil comes from a relatively safe part of town, unlike South Los where we are now. Manny had to wait until Phil was confirmed in his place, and he had to wait until a Draugar was sent after him. When Phil ran into the worst parts of this city, it made it that much more dangerous for Manny to be around. He would have to murder Phil, drag his body into a corner, change clothes and hide the body somewhere..."

"Yeah, let's not speculate on that too much." Phil looked queasy.

"We're here." Fury announced.

Phil looked out the window. It was the right house. "Coyote, can you tell me again what it's like to have a girlfriend like Fury?"

"Kid, I wouldn't trade her away for the entire world."

That made Phil feel warm and fuzzy inside, as he exited the car and jogged over to the house. He'd called ahead of time, and in the window, he could see that human spider staring out at him, with her puffed up hair, her thick eyeliner and her dark lipstick.

Phil peeked in through the screen at the door. "I know you're in there. I can see you at the window!"

Luz stood on the other side. "I didn't think I'd see you again, after that crazy Marshmallow guy started chasing you around."

"Well, I'm here. Did you find another boyfriend already?"

"No, not yet. I'm still looking for Mr. Right."

"I rented a hall." Phil revealed. "All the people that helped me out are going to be there, including your cousins."

"You didn't tell me that when you called."

"That's because I wanted to show up in front of you. Do you want to go? Look, I want you to have this."

It was his lottery bracelet that had tracked him all over the place. The lottery people let him keep it as a souvenir.

"If you don't like it, I'll buy you something else." He shrugged.

"No, it's fine. I know it's important for you. I like it."

"Do you want to open the door so you can hold it?"

"All right." She said, finally stepping outside with him. "I didn't think you were coming back, that's all."

"I didn't finish the entire chase." Phil shrugged. "The lottery people disqualified me because I was an impostor. I wasn't given any money."

"Oh, I don't care about that. I just kind of like having you around."

"I like having you around, too. Come with me to my party, okay? I want you to be there."

"All right, let me tell my grandmother that I'm going out."

Shortly, the two were striding away from the house and over to the car waiting for them. Phil reached out to clasp her forearm, stopping her.

"I lied about something. The lottery people did pay me. They rounded off my chase to thirty days even, with a bonus of ten thousand credits per day. I have to pay ten percent to this jerk..." He motioned toward the car.

"I can hear what you're saying, kid." Coyote laughed.

"And I'll be getting more, a lot more, once a whole bunch of stuff gets sold off." Phil concluded. "I want to be your boyfriend, until one of your cousins beats me up and I can't come around here anymore."

Luz giggled. She reached out for his hand, and together they went into the bounty hunter's car. The car rolled down the street.

"I just have to know one thing." Phil started, glad to be alive and free once again, and with a fortune coming his way after having struggled so long. "You're over eighteen, right?"

Luz began laughing.

"Come on, I need to know these things!" Phil demanded, as the vehicle turned a corner and drove off toward a brighter future. "Are you going to tell me or not?"

#####

### Story Starters

Okay, you may have heard of these goofs that think their story idea, which is only one or two sentences long, is destined to become a Hollywood blockbuster or a New York Times bestseller. These are the goofs that jump up and down crying out, so and so author stole my idea! First off, if their idea was so incredibly awesome, why aren't they sitting down and writing their screenplay or novel? I have come across too many non-writers who think creative writing appears like magic, and the cash flow will always follow like a magnet, or a flood. That's not the way it works, folks. There is a lot of hard work and research, and a lot of time sacrificed from other things, like a social life, that go into producing a finished written work. After that, there is a further obstacle in marketing the work and hoping the public will one day discover it.

I have, right now, 280 pages worth of story ideas that are sitting around doing nothing except gathering digital dust. I'm going to present some of these ideas in this magazine, because if I can't get to them, maybe they can inspire you to write something. If you do, I'll put your story here in my magazine. As a further incentive, if you find anything in my magazines that inspires you into writing a story, do it. That's how writing works: you read something, you see something, and you write something as a result. See my Contribute section for how you can get your writing to me.

Here is the Story Starter for this issue. Can you do anything with it?

This month's Story Starter has inspired me to write the short story Earth Fairy, found right after the original story idea.

#####

### Left Alive

09.18.00 - In the midst of an intergalactic war, a small band of crusading avengers picks up the salvageable leftovers in the wake of an alien attack. Before they could finish off a small colonist settlement, the aliens withdrew to meet their enemy elsewhere, intending on returning to finish the job later. The handful of scavenger ships lands on the planet, unaware that an Electromagnetic Pulse device has been activated, resulting in their ship being unable to leave the planet. The scavengers must team up with the surviving colonists, and when the World Federation is unable to provide aid, together they must battle the returning squadron.

10.16.10 - instead of scavengers, maybe use a group of rescuers, or aid workers, or maybe these are working in conjunction with the scavengers

02.26.12 - This story fragment is much closer to RITA than some of the other ones. The EMP scenario is definitely going to be worked in eventually, possibly after Non (that stands for RITA 0 - Non-Retrieval, which I ended up back-engineering and adding into RITA 4), and will be a big part of RITA. I have another space salvage story somewhere, but that one requires the use of spacecraft, and not Pulse transports. Possibly will work on this after my other top priority stories.

01.28.19 - <Groans> To start off with, after I finished my last novel, Savage Lands 7, back in late December, I've been spinning into a mad vortex of Writer's Block. I have begun writing FIVE new novels or short story collections, but after a short time I lose my train of thought and end up setting the projects aside. The two longest projects are at 16 and 22% completion. For that reason, I'm diving into my Story Starters. The flow may or may not come back right away; sometimes that's just the way it goes until the inspiration finally strikes. I think writing a couple of short stories of around 5 to 10 pages each will help put me back on track. We will see... Oh, and the EMP idea was integrated into the Roaches In The Attic 4 novel, where aliens shut down Earth before they invaded and wiped us out.

I've read these old notes once, and I'll be reading them a second time, before I take a ten-minute break and see what I can come up with.

#####

Earth Fairy

PART 1

Keith was there, on the ground, on the day that all hell broke loose in Venezuela. He shouldn't have been there, as only the diplomats from the United States were allowed to stay, safe and sound, purportedly, in his country's embassy. He should have been back in Los Angeles, watching the dramatic events play out on a screen, instead of being in the thick of it, up to his eyeballs in bullets and dead bodies.

"That last plane..." He regretted. "I should have been on it."

Or maybe not, he thought, as a few independent news outlets were reporting that the plane had been downed before it had even gotten out of the Caribbean. It was so difficult to tell what was really going on, as the Venezuelan government was severely restricting Internet access inside the country. All non-controlled news information was coming through on radio stations broadcasting from neighboring Colombia. Everything within Venezuela was effectively state-run or shut down.

Mobs of people were running down the street, most with their faces covered, some holding Molotov cocktails or rocks to throw at the GNB (Bolivarian National Guard) forces. The GNB, they weren't screwing around. They were firing live rounds now, and had been for the past two days. Keith had seen how devastating those rounds had been at least a dozen times now, as he passed over and took still images of the bodies. Some of the dead were only teenagers.

"What the hell am I doing here?" Keith asked himself.

He already knew the answer to that. He was an independent reporter who'd built up a modest Internet following, enough of an audience that donations to his channel had allowed him to travel to Valenzuela, where he could report on events firsthand. With a Hispanic father and an Anglo mother, Keith and his light skin didn't look totally out of place in the crowd, and plus, thanks to his insistent father he could speak the language fluently. Except for Brazil, it seemed that everybody in Latin America spoke Spanish. Thank the European Conquistadors for that, Keith mused, just don't thank them out loud, as the Bolivarian states were as vehemently anti-imperialism as the United States and other Western nations were for it.

He'd gotten into Venezuela okay, taking the long route through Colombia and sneaking across the western border where all the gasoline smugglers were found. His first stop was Maracaibo, where he interviewed unemployed technicians who should have been working out on the offshore oil refineries, except very few of the refineries were still in operation. He also interviewed struggling fishermen who complained that all the fish were dying thanks to leaks in the underwater pipelines, and schoolteachers who'd been threatened by police not to protest over their abominably low wages.

Afterwards, Keith had gone on to Caracas, where the action was really brewing. He met the legendary Luke Rudowsky from We Are Change, even spending the night with him in a hotel room, where they compared notes on what they'd seen.

"I'm hearing rumors that the US is about to invade this country." He'd been told. "If I were you, I'd get out before it's too late. This place is going to erupt!"

Luke had gone, while Keith had stayed. He'd given Luke a copy of his recordings, since he couldn't broadcast them himself thanks to the Internet being cut off. Luke had even promised to plug his channel. Keith had emulated himself after that man, in a way, ever since he'd found out who Luke was during the Occupy Movement of several years ago He hoped the man was as trustworthy as he seemed, as Keith's footage was bound to go viral once it hit the independent news sites.

There were so many angles to consider, including at least half a dozen False Flag operations Keith had uncovered, all of them orchestrated by the United States in its effort to topple Venezuela's harsh dictator Orudam Salocin. Western commandos had crept into Venezuela several times, attempting to blow up the country's power plants so it would be left with no electricity.

A suspicious car bombing had taken place in Colombia just a few weeks before, near a garrison and resulting in the deaths of several young soldiers. Colombia's President Duke hadn't taken long to pin the blame on Venezuelan terrorists.

The US implemented new sanctions on Venezuelan oil exports and many nations, including Brazil and Colombia, pressured Salocin to step down by criticizing his regime in public.

When that didn't work, several dark-skinned soldiers from Venezuela appeared on TV, saying they refused to fight for Salocin, and that other military personnel should also refuse. Except that had also been a farce, as the soldiers were not from Venezuela. They were from Peru, and didn't even wear the genuine uniforms of the FANB (Bolivarian National Armed Forces).

In Florida, the US had created a challenger to the Venezuelan Presidency, a man named Doguay. He'd come into Venezuela to stir up several weeks of protests, all to no avail. Salocin was still in power, still in control of the government and the armed forces. Doguay was holed up in the American embassy, with a fat, twenty million dollar check allotted to him by US President Donald. Meanwhile, the police or military had killed at least thirty-five Venezuelan protesters. Nearly nine hundred protesters had been arrested, beaten and tortured, including over seventy teenagers as young as fourteen and twelve.

Just the day before, Doguay was assassinated. It was unknown if Salocin was behind the murder, as the dictator knew a US invasion was imminent. More likely, Doguay had gone the way of many False Flag patsies, eliminated as a means to and end, in this case to allow the US to blame Salocin in order to let loose with their cannons. Same thing with that last plane full of the families of US diplomats; Salocin couldn't be that stupid to down it, or maybe he was. There was footage of him talking to birds, and telling the public that he'd gone into the future and foreseen his victory over the greedy imperialists. Maybe Salocin was as insane as many Venezuelans said he was.

Luke had been lucky enough to get out in time. Keith had stayed because he could lose his self in the mob thanks to his appearance, but now he was rethinking his great idea.

After hearing soldiers shouting down the street, Keith thought it best to leave his hiding place. He was in the nook of a large gray building, behind an outcrop of wall and a large planter with a skinny runt of a tree in it. In better days, the small cafe on the first level would serve coffee and pastries, and patrons would sit around small tables with shady parasols to fend off the equatorial sun. On days of mass revolution, however, the scene was part of a war zone. He wasn't the only person hiding there, as only a couple of planters away were a few young men with bandanas across their faces and packs on their backs. They were protesters, Keith knew, anti-government protesters. Just as Keith made to leave, he saw a soldier in green fatigues point a rifle at him.

"Press!" He called out. "Mexican press!"

That was a calculated lie. Keith risked getting shot if he said he was from the US, or even from the rival nation of Colombia. He patted his shoulder, turning to the side so the soldier could see the back of his vest. It had the word PRESS emblazoned on it in large black letters. That wasn't even his vest; the We Are Change guy had given it to him right before they parted ways.

"Mexican press!" Keith repeated.

It was a good gamble. Mexico had been a mediator between the US and Venezuela, before the talks had broken down and the threats started getting worse.

"Do you have your passport?" The soldier demanded, still pointing his gun.

"Yes." Keith made to pull it out of his pocket.

The soldier didn't care to see it, apparently. "Go this way. Stay behind the army line or your life could be in danger."

"Okay." Keith nodded, keeping his hands up and visible in front of his chest. He had his phone recording live, just in case.

When the soldier motioned for Keith to hurry, he trotted off. As he left, more soldiers arrived. They went after the cowering protesters. Keith looked over his shoulder, seeing the soldiers beating the young men. If he tried to record that, the soldiers might take his phone away, so he went from a trot to a run. The next intersection was buzzing with police in black riot gear and armored vehicles.

"Mexican press!" Keith announced his person. "I was pushed back by the protesters! Where is a safe place for reporters?"

The police pointed and said two blocks. He hurried that way, fearing he was in somebody's crosshairs the entire time. After half a block, Keith stopped to catch his breath, and to give his heart a moment to slow down. Looking around, he saw that the protest march had been scattered by the police and their ugly tear gas and rubber bullets. Maybe it was only the soldiers who were shooting live rounds. Keith didn't want to stay there long enough to find out. If the military and the police had overrun downtown Caracas, the people must have gone back into their neighborhoods. Keith deliberated over which way to go, when he saw her.

It was a woman, but unlike any woman he'd ever seen. She stood at about five feet tall, with dark, native Venezuelan skin and black hair down to her shoulders. The hair was done up in an unusual way, difficult for him to describe other than it looked both organized and wild at the same time. Arranged, loose feathers in a bird's nest, mingled with twigs and spots of other colors. She wasn't particularly pretty; that wasn't the most striking thing about her. She looked nude, not showing her private parts as if she wore some sort of body stocking in the same color as her flesh. Her eyes caught and held his, before she turned in determination, as if quietly urging for him to follow.

He did follow her, and he was astonished. She was as nude from behind as in front, but she had wings that went from her shoulder down her arms, ending halfway between her elbows and wrists. The wings were more like a moth's than a butterfly's, with brown streaks and a glaring false round eye on each side. Except for the wings and the body stocking, the woman appeared nude.

"Hello?" Keith called out.

She didn't listen. She only walked, and Keith walked behind her. He grew a strange fear of her, as if she didn't belong there, as if he couldn't possibly be seeing that woman striding down those violent streets. As if she might be from another world.

Where she went, no police or soldiers were seen, as if she knew they would not be there. Keith heard shots from the street he'd just left behind, but he didn't increase his speed, not when this unusual woman with wings was leading him somewhere else.

PART 2

Two streets, three they traversed, before she made a curious motion with her arm, as if she were spinning a small plate with it. Keith dared to close the distance, halting when he saw the dead body. It was a young man with a pool of blood around his head. Keith tried to keep his balance, his emotions neutral as reporters were taught to, but the hatred he had for Salocin surfaced anyway. Who was that man who killed so many innocents so blatantly? Sometimes, he felt the US shouldn't butt into Latin American countries, as their main reason for doing it was pillaging resources. At the same time, if the people of Venezuela were unable to remove a tyrant like Salocin, then somebody else had to step in and do something. Young men like this one, a mere teenager that should have been in high school, should not have to die at the orders of brutal men like Salocin. Westerners were too insulated sometimes, refusing to believe that atrocities like this were still being committed in the world. He took pictures to prove it.

When he finished, he saw that the winged woman had walked off by about half a block. She was turning to the side, showing a lean profile and slightly jutting breasts and hips. The moment she had Keith's eyes, she turned and walked again, the same as before. He followed her from a distance.

The next scene revealed to Keith what a grenade does when it detonates into a crowd of people. Much of it was too grisly to look at, so he only took pictures of the shredded, bloody protest signs. A few blocks later, he came upon a lifeless, abandoned policeman. The man's visor was lying next to him. Keith took pictures of the man's open eyes, in their final, sentient moments having gazed into the heavens. He continued to follow the strange woman, visiting more scenes of carnage: old people protesting some now forgotten cause, who hadn't moved fast enough to avoid live fire, men who died holding Venezuelan flags one final time, women with ball-caps protecting them against the sun, burned out or still burning vehicles.... So much violence, Keith understood, and the fight for the leadership of the country had only begun.

With sirens and shooting startling Keith, from the next block over, he hoped the strange winged woman had a better destination to head to next. When he looked for her, he discovered she was gone. He ran as fast as he could to get away from the sounds of violence, reaching the foothills of a poorer neighborhood. The gunfire seemed to follow him. Keith heard motorcycles also, wondering if they were for or against the dictator, wondering if they were sympathetic to reporters trying to get the word out about what was happening there.

Keith ran, halting suddenly when he saw several motorcycles rounding a corner. They spotted him. His reaction was to back up against the nearest wall, an orange wall from some unknown business, and hold his hands up. The motorcycles revved their engines and came to him, surrounding him in an arc.

"Mexican press!" Keith called out.

One of the riders pointed a handgun at him. Keith thought his life was over. It was fun while it lasted, he sighed. At least he wasn't leaving a grieving wife behind, or any kids. Instead of shooting him, however, the rider waved the gun, motioning for Keith to mount another motorcycle. He felt he had no choice. Keith went and sat behind another man, crowding them together, wondering how close he should get without provoking any angry reaction.

Rifle fire was heard from a few blocks away. Most of the motorcyclists went toward the gunfire. The motorcycle Keith was on, and one other, went in another direction, deeper into the poor neighborhood. After a couple of turns into the ascending streets, he was completely lost. A foreigner in a strange land, wondering how long he had left to live.

The houses were crammed in so tight there was no room spared for alleys. Keith imagined a fire starting up, consuming half the city because the fire trucks would never get close enough to stop it. The motorcycles jumped the curb, revving through a corridor between two rows of buildings. The path was so narrow he could have touched both walls if he'd stretched out his arms.

The motorcycles came to a sudden halt, with the gunman shouting for Keith to get off and walk into a nearby house. When he didn't comply fast enough, the driver of the motorcycle he was on set the kickstand and forced him off. Keith was dragged into the house, not fearful because he was still mesmerized by the image of the winged woman, but again comprehending that he might not make it out of that place alive.

After shoving open the door, the driver pushed Keith in. The driver shouted at the men inside, before leaving and slamming the door shut. Moments later, the sounds of the motorcycles driving away were heard.

Three men were inside that small house, a house that shared common walls with the homes to either side. One of the men was fidgety, staring out past the curtains. The other two were sitting on a couch smoking cigarettes. They looked like evil men, all of them.

"Turn him around." One of the seated men demanded.

The one at the window came over, shoving Keith into the wall. They saw the back of his vest with the word PRESS printed on it. Keith understood that they wanted his vest because it would enable one of them to move around more openly.

"Take the vest off!" The closest man ordered.

"No, all of it." The seated man called out. "The shirt, the pants and the shoes."

The closest man started yanking on Keith's clothes. He snatched the phone out of his hand.

"Wait, wait!" Keith held his hands up. "You can't take the phone. I have pictures on it that the world needs to see!"

Exercising an extreme caution, he gingerly took his phone back and cycled through his last few pictures. Guessing that the seated man was in charge, Keith slowly walked over and showed him a few of them. "If you take my phone away, nobody will ever know what happened here."

The man saw the pictures. He didn't look particularly moved, but he did relent and let Keith keep most of his belongings. They only took his vest and press credentials, and emptied out his wallet. With a gun, the third man motioned for Keith to sit down on the same couch they were on.

They ignored him, wondering how they could use the credentials and vest for their benefit. They hardly looked at him, much less spoke to him, as they made their black plans. Keith expected to die again, until out of the corner of his eye, he saw the winged woman standing near the door. The other men couldn't see her, and neither could he if he looked directly at her, but she was consistently in his peripheral. Just by being there, the woman was telling Keith that things would be all right in the end.

Keith lay back on the couch, his right thigh touching the thigh of the armed man sitting next to him. It almost felt as if they couldn't see him either, as if he didn't exist in this dimension. After the shock and fear began to subside, and with the rush of adrenaline over, Keith realized he was exhausted. He leaned his head back on a hard wooden edge with very little cushion on it. In no time at all, his eyes were blinking shut.

When Keith opened his eyes, it was dark out. The man at the window was gone, or maybe he'd traded places with one of the seated men, he couldn't tell. At any rate, two men were still sitting next to him on the couch, with a feeble, wavering light provided by a candle in a glass holder with the image of a saint. The two men weren't talking or snoring. Keith wondered if they were stoned.

The door swung open, revealing the shadow of the winged woman. Keith couldn't see her face, but he felt her eyes bearing down on him. In her silent scrutiny, she seemed to beckon for him to leave. With care, Keith pulled away from the man sitting next to him, as their shoulders and legs were touching. Keith made it halfway to the door.

"Where are you going?" One of the seated men asked.

"I have to pee." He replied.

There was no reply, so Keith simply walked out, leaving the door open. The winged woman was gone. Keith felt as if he'd entered a surreal place like the Twilight Zone. It scared him enough that he ran down that narrow divide between houses, hoping he could catch up to reality somehow.

He was farther up in the hills of Caracas than he'd first expected. From the heights, he could see that many of the buildings downtown were burning. The familiar rotation of a helicopter's blades was heard far away. There were no sirens, but Keith knew the soldiers and policemen hadn't had their fill of killing yet. Keith found a cobblestone street with a steep decline, in his haste slipping and smashing bone into hard stone. A car sped through the intersection, only a handful of meters away.

Keith pulled himself up by using a parked truck as leverage. Both of his knees were throbbing, but he had no one to blame but he for having run down the dark street. He felt a soft patting on his back, coming close to panic as he imagined that one of the gunmen had come up behind him. When he reached out for his lower back, he found his phone, hanging from its lanyard. After having dropped and broken a couple of previous phones, he'd taken to securing the device that way. Keith couldn't remember having put the phone on the lanyard earlier, but he must have because there it was.

"No, I didn't have the lanyard today." He dug through his memories. "Because I was using the earbuds with the microphone to speak into. I wouldn't have brought the lanyard out because it always gets tangled up with the earbud wire."

Since his vest was gone, he couldn't reach into his pockets to verify if he still had his earbuds on him. That same feeling of surrealism returned. To avoid thinking about it, he started walking toward downtown, where most of the violence was happening.

The winged woman walked directly into the war zone. She passed through a tight cordon of policemen wearing riot helmets, using the bright headlights from their armored vehicles to light up the street. The protesters were out there, one street away, shouting out curses and throwing rocks, while the policemen answered that violence with the reports from their rifles.

The winged woman walked through the line of men, and Keith, afraid and unsure, followed in her wake. Policemen looked in his direction, not able to fully focus on him, looking behind Keith more than directly at him. A few did stop and gawk, but these made no move to halt him. Keith wondered what they saw when they looked at him. Perhaps they saw the appearance of a fellow policeman, or perhaps they saw nothing.

The winged woman paused to stretch her arms out. Her two wings were no longer small sails on the backs of her arms, but wide and full and stretching out from the center of her back. Keith could still see her womanly form, but the ends of her wings were huge, starting from her neck and all the way down to her calves. They were still in varying shades and shapes of brown, cracked lines, gathered pools of darker colors. The two false eyes were huge, larger than a human head. Before she was more woman, now she was more moth.

Her wings fluttered and she flew up into the sky, becoming lost in the obscurity only a few meters from the street. Keith had raised his head to see her go. When he lowered his eyes, he saw a group of soldiers exiting a government building with their rifles drawn. The soldiers couldn't see Keith, but the tall man they were escorting him could.

There he was, Orudam Salocin, over six feet tall with his thick black hair and fat mustache, his fleshy jowls and his thick barrel of a stomach. He wore a maroon shirt with pockets at the waist in the _guayabera_ style. The powerful man looked harried, less self-assured than in his last few public appearances.

Salocin saw Keith. He was alarmed enough to dispatch two soldiers. The men ran, scanning the street for him, seeing past Keith and into the line of policemen. Salocin screamed at them, telling them exactly where Keith was and what he was wearing, but still the soldiers were looking somewhere else.

Nobody could see him, Keith understood, except for Salocin. And here before him, stood the mad tyrant that refused to bow to the will of his people, to the pressure from the United Nations and the sanctions from the US. Here was the man who ordered an untold number of murders and tortures, who rallied his supporters into frenzy while he enjoyed his grip of power from behind a thick wall of police protection.

Keith thought to take the scared man's picture, with his brave bodyguards around him, reassured that it would be on the front page of a hundred newspapers and every major news network, the moment he got that picture online. When he raised his phone, he discovered it wasn't at the end of the lanyard. Instead, the lanyard was tied around the guard of a handgun. It was a handgun the thug in the house had threatened him with, just a short time ago.

Keith knew how to aim and fire a weapon. As he did this, he felt a flutter over his head. He looked up in time to see the nude woman with her giant brown wings floating across the black sky, just a few feet above his head and illuminated by headlights. The soldiers and policemen didn't see her, but Salocin did. His eyes and mouth gaped as she flew over his head, making her way back to wherever it was she'd come from.

#####

Non-Fiction Section

I do a lot of research on a lot of different subjects, including history, mythology, metaphysics, politics and science. Much of my research coincides with whatever fiction project I'm currently working on, but sometimes I'll break away from the pattern and head off in some other direction at random. I will study both mainstream and alternative sources, in the form of non-fiction books, documentaries, lectures and discussions, in trying to come up with a good basis to form my opinions on, or a good foundation for whatever concept I'm trying to incorporate into my stories. Often, I will write articles based on my research and state my sources, so that readers can see how I came to my conclusions.

I also enjoy going through a lot of entertainment media of many types, including written fiction, movies, cosplay, comic books, music, you name it. I do this for my creative writing to set the mood, if you will, or to see points of view on what others have done in certain genres, such as military science fiction, medieval costuming, zombies or whatever other subject I'm delving into.

As a result, I end up with a tremendous amount of notes that I can reference later, or media reviews that I can sort through if I want to stimulate my brain with science fiction, horror or any other particular genre. Many of these articles and reviews will also be found on either my writer's blog or my conspiracy blog. (Links to both are found at the end of this magazine.) Since a lot of this information comes from online sources and Youtube videos, I recommend looking up any referenced articles or videos that interest you for additional resources and links. In general, my research and Truther posts will be found on the conspiracy blog, while all writing related stuff will be on the writer's blog.

#####

### Articles

#####

### A Glossary To Speaking Forsooth

Introduction

In General

Glossary

Coins

Oaths

Sources

#####

Introduction

Every so often, especially when writing humorous or witty short stories, I will have my characters banter back and forth in colloquial dialects or specialized slang, such as that used by the military. Speaking Forsooth falls into this category. After browsing the Internet, and more specifically Youtube, for a quick and easy intermediate level glossary, and after failing to find one that was longer than the ten or fifteen most popular words, I have decided to create a glossary of my own. The result is this fairly comprehensive compilation, put together from various informed sources and sites that offered PDF copies I could download and browse through at my leisure. Sources are credited at the end.

#####

In General

Speaking Forsooth is also known as speaking Post-Chaucerian, Elizabethan or Shakespearian English. The best example of Forsooth can be found by reading through the King James Version of the Bible. This dialect of English was spoken between 1558 and 1603 CE in England, during a time when people stretched out their sentences and said more words to color their speech than what we use in today's shorter, more practical conversations. In other words, the English language was more artistic then, especially in plays and poetry.

Pronunciation was different as well, as shown in the following examples:

Head - spoken as Haid

Bread - Braid

Dead - Daid

Mercy - Maircy

In poetry, a lot of contractions were used to maintain iambic parameter:

Even - E'en

Ever - E'er

Never - Ne'er

It Was - Twas

For the purposes of this guide, however, I will stick to the most widely used words and terms. That should be enough to give your story characters something to chew on, if used sporadically. Be careful not to include too much vernacular as to overwhelm the casual reader.

#####

Glossary

Words In Forsooth - are followed by their modern equivalents.

A

A-pieces - in pieces, to make into pieces, such as tearing an overdue bill

Acatharsy - pus filled bandage, can be used as an insult

Ado - commotion, trouble

Adieu - farewell

Afore - before, in front of

Agone - ago

Ague - cold or fever

Ajax - privy, outhouse, can be used as insult against smelly person

Alack! Alas! Down Upon It! - Darn! (can also express sorrow)

Alarum - a call to arms for an attack, similar to alarm

Ale-knight - habitual drunkard

Allottery - a share or potion granted, inheritance

Amain - with full force toward, or full spread toward

Amorous - pertaining to love, fond of, in love

An - if

Anon - soon, at once, immediately, also 'I'm coming!'

Annoyous - annoying, irritating, vexing

Antic, Antick - bizarre, crazy, odd, fantastic

Anywhen - at any time

Apace - quickly

Aroint - stand off, begone, away (an order)

Arras - a tapestry

Art - skill, such as in medicine, painting, design, etc.

Artificial - pertaining to artistic skills, cunning and skillful in deceit

Astonied - astonished

Astrologaster - false or fake astrologer

Aught - anything

Avaunt - exclamation of contempt or abhorrence, meant to drive one away

Axwaddle - lazy person

Ay, Aye - yes (pronounced 'eye')

B

Baconbrains - fat head

Backfriend - false friend

Bade - asked, commanded (I bid, he bade)

Bandy - give and take, to fight

Bane - cause of death, 'his bane was liquor'

Bardlet, Bardling - bad or false poet

Bare-Bone - lean person

Base, Baseness - low, lowly born, animal-like, petty

Bastard - someone born out of wedlock

Baubling - trifling, no account

Baudstrot - one with a sexy walk

Bawcock - fine lusty fellow

Bawd - low person, pimp or prostitute

Bawdy - obscene, sexual, low class

Beauteous - beautiful

Bedlam - madhouse, madness

Bedswerver - adulterer, adulteress

Beef-Witted - brainless as an ox

Beetle-Headed - stupid

Befall - happen, turn out in the end, become of

Befortune - happen to

Beggary -meanness

Beguile - to charm or deceive with charm

Belswager - swaggering bully, a pimp

Bemadding - maddening

Bereft - deprived, robbed

Beshrew Me - shame on me, curse me

Beslubber - smear, daub

Bespeak - to speak to, address

Betimes - very early in the morning, quickly, soon

Betray - to give away (his face betrayed his thoughts)

Betrothed - engaged, fiancée

Betumbled - disordered

Blowen - wench

Blowze - beggar's wench

Blubbered - swollen by weeping

Blushet - shy maiden

Bodes - foreshadows, an indicator of

Boggard, Bogshop, Boggish - privy, toilet, see Ajax

Bonoroba - showy wench, wanton (literally 'good robe')

Bosom - heart

Brace - a pair

Brache - female dog, 'you son of a...'

Breast - chest, heart

By And By - immediately, directly

By My Faith! Marry! - Wow! (exclamation), see also Marry

C

Candlewasher - fool, one who wastes candles by reading at night without gain

Caper - leap or frisk about

Carouse - to party, have a good time, make merry, revel

Carriwithet - a bad pun

Catharan - puritan who constantly boasts of his purity

Certes - for sure, definitely

Chapman - itinerant peddler, carinie, boothie

Chatmate - close friend

Choler - wrath

Clew - rope

Clodpate - blockhead

Clumperton - silly fellow, fool, clown

Come hither - come here

Commend Me To - give my regards to

Constable - local law official

Cony - rabbit, also a woman's private parts

Cony Catcher - con artist

Corse - corpse

Counsel - advice

Countenance - face, facial expression

Cousin - close friend, any relative

Cozener - cheater, con artist

Crack Halter - rogue or gallows bird, one who will crack the halter by which he is hanged, also Crack Rope

Crown - head

Cuckold - noun: a man whose wife cheated on him, verb: when a woman cheats, she cuckolds her husband

Cupshot, also Cupshotten - drunk, 'in his cups'

Cutpurse - thief, pickpocket

D

Daft - stupid

Decree - order

Discourses - speaks

Dispatch - kill

Divers / Diverse - various

Dote On - to love dearly, sometimes to the point of spoiling a person

Doth - does

Doxy - wench, mistress

Drayer - cart driver

Drossel - slut

Drumble - inert, sluggish fellow

Dry - insipid, dull

E

E'en - even, evening

Enmity - hate, enemy

Enow - enough

Ere, also E're - before

F

Fain - gladly, willingly (also forced or obliged)

Fair - pale, light-colored, attractive

Fare thee well - goodbye

Feign - pretend, to put on an emotion

Fie, Fie On It - darn it, to heck with it

Flag Fallen - unemployed, usually an actor

Flibbertigibbet - woman prone to gossip, or frivolous

Foe - enemy

Fool - term of endearment or pity

Forbear - stop, leave alone

Forsooth - truthfully

Forswear - to lie or cheat, renounce, deny

Fortnight - two weeks, fourteen nights

Fray - fight

G

Gaffer - old man, grandfather

Gammer, old woman, grandmother

Gage - challenge (such as throwing down a gauntlet)

Gentle - noun: honorable person, noble-born

Giglot - wanton woman, or unusually destitute man

Gixy - lively lass, or wench

Glass - mirror

Gned - miserly

Go To! - get out of here, screw you (exclamation)

Goatish - lustful, lascivious

God Save Thee, God Keep Thee - goodbye (farewell)

Good Day, Good Morrow, Well Met, How Now, God Give You A Good Day - hello (greeting, salutation)

Good-faced - pretty, handsome

Gor-bellied - fat paunch

Gossip - good friend

Grammercy - thank you

Great-bellied - very pregnant

Grief-shot - stricken with sorrow

Grimalkin - cat

Gripe - grasp painfully

Groom - male servant

Grounding - uncultured person

Growtnoll - blockhead

Gruntle - snout of a pig, or a person's face, disrespectfully

Guile - charm in order to deceive, trickiness

Gull - dupe, fool

H

Had As Lief - I would rather

Hag-seed - hag's offspring

Halloo - shout, holler

Hap, Good Hap - good luck, good fortune

Haply - perhaps, by chance

Harbinger - foreshadowing, precursor

Hark, Hark Now - listen

Harlot - rogue, rascal, knave (male or female)

Haskard - man of low degree

Haste - hurry

Haviour - behavior, manner

Headbourough - parish constable

Hearken - listen, seek

Heavy - sad, depressed

Hedge-born - of low birth

Hedge-priest - illiterate priest, contemptuous

Heigh-ho - joyful exclamation

Helding - useless man

Hence - place: away from here, time: after this

Here-approach - arrival

Hie - go quickly, hurry (an order)

Hindermate - spouse who is a hindrance

His Due - what is coming to him

History - tale, story

Hither - here

Hitherto - so far, out to here

Ho! - call to attention, usually by an authority

Hodge-pudding - made from many things

Holar - fornicator

Honest - truthful, loyal, trustworthy, faithful in marriage

Humour - mood, frame of mind (he's in good humor, bad humor)

Hurly-burly - commotion, tumult

I

I shall see thee anon - goodbye

Idle-headed - silly, crazy

Impiteous - pitiless

Indrenched - immersed, drowned

Infectious - diseased

Infirmity - illness, disease

Iron-witted - harsh, unfeeling

Issue - offspring, children, outcome, product

It Is Meet, It Is Not Meet - it is proper, it is not proper or expected

It Will Serve - it will do, it is good enough

Iwis - truly, certainly

J

Jack-an-apes - ape-ish person

Jakes - privy, toilet

Jarvel - rascal

Jest - joke, prank

Justice - judge

K

Kayleigh - (noun) party

Kicksy wicky - wife, lower class slang

Killcow - swashbuckler, person who thinks he's important

Kin, Kinsman - relative, family member

Knave - scoundrel, jerk (toward a young male), lowly male servant

Knavery - fooling around, roguish trickery (what knaves would do), foolish ornamentation

Knotty-pated - thick-headed

L

Laborsome - laborious, elaborate

Lading - cargo

Lag-end - latter part

Land-damn - berate sharply

Lavendar - washerwoman

Lean-witted - poor in intellect

Leaping House - brothel

Leechcraft - the art of healing

Lenten - scanty, meager

Lest - unless, otherwise, in case of

Liege, My Liege - king, master, lord

Lightskirt - woman of easy virtue

Like To (go, die, etc.) - likely to go, die, etc.

Likeness - resemblance

Look To - watch, keep an eye on, take care of

Love - romantic, family, friendship or loyalty

M

Maiden, Maid - young girl, specifically a virgin

Maidenhead - virginity (to protect one's virginity)

Make-peace - a peace maker

Malapert - rude, impudent

Malmsey - a strong sweet wine

Many Thanks, I Thank Thee - thank you

Mark - pay attention

Marry - indeed, literally 'by Mary' or 'by the Virgin Mary'

Mayhap - maybe or could be

Meet - proper, fitting

Meetly - fairly good

Melancholy - depressed

Mercer - dealer in textiles

Mercy, I Cry You Mercy - excuse me

Mere, Merely - absolute, completely

Merry - happy, festive, pleasant, funny

Meschant - wicked, wretched, a wretch, a villain

Methinks - I think

Milky - timid, weak

Minimus - tiny or insignificant creature

Mirth - fun, merriment

Mislike - dislike, aversion

Monger - peddler, dealer

Moonling - simpleton

Mountebank - itinerant quack

Mousehunt - woman chaser, a wolf

Mumblecrust - toothless person, beggar

Mumble-news - tale bearer, gossip

Mystery - secret, craft, skill

N

Narrow-prying - closely watching

Nary - not a single one

Naught, also Nought - nothing

Naughty - wicked, worthless

Nay - no

Neighbored - closely associated

Ne'r - never

New - recently, lately

Nonpariel - a beauty

O

Office - job, responsibility

Oft - often

Onion-eyed - tearful, weepy

Ope - open

Ort - scrap of food

Otherwhere - elsewhere

Out, Out Upon - exclamation of frustration

Outbrag - exceed in virtue

Outbrave - surpass in valor, bravery

Outfacing - bold, swaggering

Outsleep - sleep past a time

Outsport - revel more than another

Owe - own

P

Parnel - priest's mistress, wanton woman

Partlet - hen, a woman

Past-proportion - beyond measure

Patch - fool, dolt

Pate - head, especially the top

Pathetical - pathetic, moving

Peagoos - simpleton, ninny

Pennyworth - small amount

Perchance, also Belike - maybe, possibly

Perdition - hell, by the fire of hell

Perdy - indeed, for sure

Perforce - by necessity or force

Pernicious - harmful, deceitful

Physic - medicine, cure

Piepowder - itinerant or traveling peddler

Pigeon-livered - meek, gentle

Pillicock - man's private parts

Pissing-while - a very short time

Pitchy - very dark

Pizzle - penis of an animal, 'thou bull's pizzle!'

Plague - curse

Ploughman - farmer

Plumpy - plump

Poesy - poetry, a poem

Popinjay - one who dresses gaudy, flashy, a fop

Prate - babble, chatter

Prating - babbling, talking too much

Pray - please, 'pray pardon,' beg

Presently - soon

Princox - saucy, pert boy

Prithee, I Pray Thee, If It Please Thee - please, I ask you

Prove, also Prive - test, show to be true

Privy - toilet, water closet, see also Ajax, to be informed

Punk - prostitute, harlot

Purse - man's small bag for coins, a person's finances

Q

Quaffing - drinking alcohol in a chugging fashion

Quick - living, alive

Quicken - make alive, make lively

R

Ragman - devil

Recreant - coward, traitor

Resolve - plan

Rogue - dishonest rascal

Roister - revel wildly

Rude - not eloquent

Rudesby, also Rudesbay - rude, insolent person

S

Sack - white wine, probably cheap

Scold - noisy, arguing person

Score - twenty (four score and seven equals 87)

Scurvy - wretched

Several - separate, distinct

Shamefaced - ashamed

Shrew - mean, scolding woman, ill-tempered

Shrive, Shrift - religious confession

Shun That - ignore

Simpkin - simpleton

Sirrah - man, sir, boy, used when addressing someone under you in authority, also 'oh, man!'

Sith - since

Slug-A-Bed - lazy, sleepy

Small beer - inferior beer, persons or matters of no importance

Smellfeast - parasite, mooched

Smite - strike, hit

Smith - metalworker

Sodiares - armed men in any group

Soft! - exclamation of surprise, 'wait a minute!'

Solemnity - peacefulness, respectability

Solemnities - ritual celebrations (more formal than fun)

Somewhen - at an indefinite time

Sooth - truth

Soother - flatterer, yes-man

Sovereign - leader who answers to nobody

Sovereignty - independence, leader's control, a person's control over him / herself

Spado - eunuch

Spintry - male, homosexual prostitute

Starve lackey - miserly pretentious gallant

Steal, Steal Away - sneak out quickly, to hide

Steward - someone who fulfills an office which is rightfully the office of someone else who cannot do the job him / herself, such as an uncle overseeing the realm for an underage king

Sue - to make an appeal (the appeal is a suit)

Suitor - a man hoping to marry a certain woman

Swag - big, blustering man

T

Tapster - keeper of an ale house

Tarry - wait

Tassel - noble gentleman

Thick-eared - unwilling to listen

Thence - from there, from then on

Thine - yours

Thither - over there

Thou , Thee, Ye - you (informal, casual)

Thy - your

Tidings - news

To The Purpose - on topic, constructively, toward a goal

Tod - fox, crafty person

Tosspot - drunkard, alcoholic

Treble - triple

Trencherman - hearty eater

Trittle trattle - idle talk, gossip

Troth - truth, truly, also By Troth, By My Troth - truthfully (or a vow)

Tut - hmphf

Twain - two

Twigger - prolific breeder, lascivious person

U

Undone - ruined

Uglisome - ugly

Uttermost - farthest

V

Verily - truthfully, truly, indeed

Virtue - can refer to a woman's virginity

Visage - face, appearance

W

Want - need, lack, to be without

Wanton - childish, playful, undisciplined, sexually unrestrained (especially women)

Wench - girl, young serving woman

Well met - hello

Whence - where, from where

Wherefore - why (NOT 'where'), to what end

Whereto - to which

Whither - where, to where, to whatever place

Whoreson - son of a whore, also used against objects (Whoreson cup!)

Will - desire

Worthy - valuable person

Withal - in addition, all together, with

Woe - sadness, misery

Wont - used to, likely to

Woo - date, flirt with, seduce, win over

Wot - to know, learn, be told

Would That, I Would - if only, I wish

Wretch - miserable despicable person

Wrought - provided

Y

Yaud - old, worn out mare, strumpet

Yaudson - son of a whore

Yea - yes

Yon, Yonder - over there

You - formal, for strangers

Your Part - your opinion, point of view, your sake

Z

Zounds, 'Swounds - I swear (literally 'by His wounds')

#####

Coins

Farthing - coin worth 1/4th of a penny

Ob - ha'penny, half penny

Penny

Tuppence - 2 pennies

Thruppence - 3 pennies

Groat - coin worth 4 pennies

Tester - coin worth 6 pennies

Shilling - coin worth 12 pennies

Stone - unit of 14 lbs of weight

#####

Oaths

Blue-Bottle Rogue, Filthy Famished Correctioner, Starved Bloodhound - used against constables

Boil, Plague Sore, Embossed Carbuncle - for anyone in general

By (Roman god) - used by men

By My Beard / Sword / Honor / Tools (such as hammer and tongs) - used by men

By My Chastity / Modesty / Maidenhead - used by women

Globe Of Sin Filled Continents - used against fat men (I love this one!)

God's Death, God's Teeth, God's Wounds, God's (anatomy part) - used by men

Lyingst Knave In Christendom - general usage

Whoreson Cullionly Barbermonger - general usage

#####

Sources

A Brief Guide To Elizabethan English

Elizabethan English And Shakespearean Vocabulary

Elizabethan Language Lexicon by Pamela Duncan

Elizabethan Language Terms by Read Write Think dot org

See also:

Shakespeare's Language by Raymond Hickey

#####

### A Brief Look At Israel,

A Terrorist Nation

"I know the slander of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan." - the biggest 'anti-Semite' of all, Jesus, Revelation 2:9, NIV

"Soviet Communism will succeed in its attempt to conquer the world in direct proportion to the support which America gives Zionism." - Benjamin Freedman, 1947

"I am, of course, a Zionist, and have been ever since the Balfour Declaration." - Winston Churchill, 1956

Introduction

Examples Of Terrorism

Conclusion

Sources

#####

Introduction

One of my favorite science fiction writers is Philip K. Dick, who is best known for writing novels that led to movies such as Total Recall and my all-time favorite sci-fi flick Blade Runner. In many ways, I feel that Dick was quirky and under-appreciated as a writer, and enigmatic as a man, but he was also well ahead of his time by writing about devices such as video phones and attack drones, and the advent of artificial intelligence as far back as the 1950s. As a person with metaphysical leanings, the VALIS (Vast Artificial Living Intelligence System) books especially fascinated me, where Dick contemplates humans contacted psychically by alien intelligences from space. In the 1970s, Dick, and also clairvoyant Dolores Cannon in the 1980s, already had gleanings into the Hologram Universe and Quantum / Mandela Effect that are highly evident in our world today. I will get more into Dick and his writing at a later date.

As a writing exercise, I thought to obtain as much of Dick's writing as I could, read through it at a slow pace, to see what it might inspire me to write about. I have recently read Dick's The Man In The High Castle, and I also watched the Amazon Prime series by the same name, finding them both very entertaining and thought provoking. With these examples in mind, I started a new sci-fi short story. Dick's concept was based on a future where Germany and Japan were victorious in World War II, and the United States was defeated and occupied. My story premise is somewhat similar. It is set in the near future of the United States and Mexico, where Zionist Israel has taken over the Five Eyes Police / Surveillance States of the US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

In many ways, we are already there. Several countries shun or even reprimand criticism of Holy Israel and independent scrutiny of the Jewish Holocaust. Fake News, Hollywood and many other mainstream venues are largely owned and run by Jews. The Rothschild banking family runs the US Federal Reserve, and through proxies every central bank in every nation on this planet, with the two glaring exceptions of Iran and North Korea. Social media giants such as Facebook and Google / Youtube are also either owned by Jews or Marxist Socialists, and rely on sources such as the Jewish Anti-Defamation League to decide what is genuine news and what is not. Every serious candidate for the presidency of the United States has to court the favor of the richest Jews in this country while campaigning, and sitting president Adon Trump even converted to Judaism shortly before he took office. Does anyone remember how our 'patriotic' US Congress gave Prime Minister Netanyahu 23 standing ovations while in session? * If that doesn't tell you who runs this country... Move along, citizen, nothing to see here.

For the purposes of my short story, by studying the terrorism that Israel has done in the past, and I mean verifiable terrorism, I thought I could extrapolate what they might do in the future. It is for that reason that I have jotted down the worst and most blatant cases, and organized them into the following article.

* Ben Norton of Mondoweiss calculated this disgusting example of treason by the US Congress towards a foreign dignitary, in his article _Over one quarter of Netanyahu's speech to Congress consisted of applause and standing ovations_. Netanyahu stood before Congress for 40.5 minutes. The parasitic leeches in Congress interrupted his speech 39 times with applause, including 23 standing ovations, amounting to 27% of Netanyahu's address time. In another article, Gatekeeper Jon Stewart called the ovations the 'longest blowjob a Jewish man has ever received.'

#####

Examples Of Terrorism

I didn't want to go back too far, but all right, here we go. In the Christian Bible, Jesus didn't like the rich and powerful Jews of his time very much. He called them murderers, vipers, liars and children of the Devil. Jewish apologists will say that the Romans crucified Jesus because 'they feared that his followers wanted him to become king.' (Religions Of The World: Judaism - Atkinson) You can believe that version of history if you'd like, or you can go with the Bible version, in which Jewish chief priests and elders, with High Priest Caiaphas at their head, plotted through, dare I say it, a CONSPIRACY, to have Jesus arrested and murdered. (Matthew 26:3,4)

The point I'm trying to make is that in the Old World Order, under Rome, high-ranking Jews did whatever it took to maintain their grip on power. Similarly, in today's New World Order society, with the support of the Western Five Eyes Surveillance States, modern Zionist Jews are willing to do anything, up to and including fomenting World Wars, to keep their world domination agenda moving forward. The uninformed sheeple, including many trusting Christians, will say that Israel becoming a nation again in 1967 was a heaven-sent miracle of god, but no, that's not the truth. Israel became a nation because of political deception, as attested to in the Balfour Declaration. It went something like this:

In the early 1900s, Lord Rothschild had the notion for his Zionist Jews to take over the Middle East (later known as the Greater Israel Project). That's why he founded the League Of Nations, and its successor the United Nations. At the time, there weren't that many Jews living in Palestine, but there were many Jews living all over the world. How would Lord Rothschild get them all together so they could have a larger political voice and bigger clout? This became a multi-step and multi-year plan. The first part required the establishment of a Jewish homeland in the Middle East. That was taken care of on November 2nd, 1917, when Arthur Balfour, a British foreign secretary, sent a letter to Rothschild. Granted, the agreement is vague, or better said veiled, in that Britain would allow Rothschild to establish Israel, and in exchange, Rothschild and other Zionists would influence the United States into entering World War I.

Part 2 of the plan was insanely insidious. The influential Illuminati family, the Astors, manipulated several lucrative and clandestine deals through their puppet group Institute for Pacific Relations, including the opium trade with Red China, laying the groundwork for the attack on Pearl Harbor, and most importantly for this article, laying the groundwork that led to the rise of Hitler in Germany. What did Hitler do, but cause tens of thousands of Jews to flee Europe and head to Israel? And what did the United Nations do shortly after World War II? On November 19th, 1947, the UN partitioned Palestine into three parts: one for the Jews, one for the Palestinians, and the last part for Jerusalem to become an international zone. How interesting that Adon Trump, a longtime shill for Israel, in 2018 declared Jerusalem as the site for a new US embassy, instead of the Israeli capital of Tel Aviv. The international cities are Washington DC, London and the Vatican, and if the Zionists have their way, it will soon include Jerusalem.

In case you missed the dots, ZIONISTS MANIPULATED TWO WORLD WARS TO FURTHER AN ISRAEL-CENTRIC AGENDA. Read the Balfour Declaration, listen to Benjamin Freedman's revealing speech found on Youtube, and dig into the truth about the Jewish Holocaust and how the 'magic' number of six million persecuted Jews was proclaimed well ahead of Nazi Germany in Zionist-supportive newspapers dating back to the early 1900s. That's how Israel was first recognized as a nation, not by god, unless that 'god' happens to have the surname of Rothschild. How many people died in those World Wars, so that the Rothschilds could create the terrorist nation of Israel? How many more have died since then as other nations, primarily among them the United States, take it upon themselves to fight Israel's incessant wars in the Middle East?

Yeah, yeah, I'm picking on the Jews because I'm an anti-Semite and all that. Not all of them are bad, right? Wait, what is the official state religion of Israel? That would be Zionism. Oh, and do they have a street called Rothschild Boulevard. Well, yes, they do. And they haven't really been terrorizing the rest of the world like I'm saying, have they? Let's take a look...

1890s Russia - Wealthy New Yorker Jacob Schiff and the Rothschilds conspired to have hundreds of Jews murdered in Russia. This caused many Jews to flee to the United States and also brought about the bloody Bolshevik Revolution and later the communist Soviet Union.

World War II - Zionist Jews helped Hitler come into power. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed, causing many to flee to Israel.

Post World War II - After British soldiers liberated a portion of Palestine, the Zionists violently turned against them. Terrorist groups such as Irgun, led by Menachem Begin, carried out acts of terror against the British. Begin would later become Prime Minister of Israel and receive the Nobel Peace Prize. How fitting, don't you think?

July 22, 1946, Israel - At least 15 Irgun terrorists enter the King David Hotel with 225 kilograms of explosives. The hotel houses the headquarters for British forces and the Secretariat of Palestine. A gunfight ensues before the explosives are placed. When the explosives are detonated 91 people are killed, including 15 innocent Jews. Begin, the Nobel Peace Prize guy, is the mastermind behind the attack.

1950s Iraq - Israeli terrorists caused the deaths of many Iraqi Jews and put the blame on Iraqi Arabs. 119,000 of 125,000 Iraqi Jews fled to Israel.

1954 Egypt - In Operation Susannah, Israeli Mossad agents blow up a US facility and other targets in Cairo and Alexandria, Egypt. This was a large False Flag operation meant to start war between the US and Egypt. Thank God that the Mossad scumbags were caught and later confessed. This became known as the Lavon Affair after its mastermind, Pinhas Lavon, who was Israel's Defense Minister at the time. Lavon resigned soon after. Israel claimed the event was an 'anti-Semite hoax.' For 51 years, the terrorist state of Israel denied involvement in this terrorist act, until 2005 when President Katsav held a ceremony honoring the surviving agents.

" _[Our goal is] to break the West's confidence in the existing [Egyptian] regime . . . The actions should cause arrests, demonstrations, and expressions of revenge. The Israeli origin should be totally covered while attention should be shifted to any other possible factor. The purpose is to prevent economic and military aid from the West to Egypt."_ \- alleged orders from Lavon to Mossad operatives

June 8, 1967, Israel - Unmarked Israeli jet fighters and torpedo boats attack the USS Liberty in open, international waters. Machine gunners fired on lifeboats to ensure there would be no survivors. 34 American servicemen are killed, 171 are injured. If this False Flag had been successful, it would have started a war between Egypt and the United States. US President Johnson and Defense Secretary McNamara order the official inquiry to conclude the attack was accidental, thus covering up Israeli's involvement. This was not an accident because the Israelis attacked in UNMARKED jets and vessels.

1980s Libya - US President Ronald Reagan bombs Libya, killing 30 people including the daughter of Libyan President Moammar Qaddhafi. Reagan attacked Libya as retaliation for the previous bombing of a German nightclub and to stop future terrorist attacks. A radio transmitter in Tripoli, Libya, gave US intelligence false information that led directly to the Qaddhafi bombing. Later, Mossad defector Victor Ostrovski discloses the Mossad planted the transmitter and broadcast false reports.

October 10, 2001 - Only a month after the 9/11 event, Israelis using Pakistani IDs attempt to blow up the Mexican Congress. They are caught with handguns, grenades, explosives and detonators. If successful, this attack would have been blamed on radical Muslims.

America's only ally in the Middle East, Israel, has been responsible for more acts of terror, sabotage, and murder of American citizens than the Muslims ever were. By her duplicity, she has put Americans in more danger than they have ever known or will know. She has bombed hotels, American government buildings, deliberately allowed hundreds of US Marines to be killed in their barracks in Lebanon, assaulted a US intelligence gathering ship, the USS Liberty (for the purposes of blaming the Arabs and thus drawing America into her war against them), stole and then sold America's most sensitive nuclear weapons technology to her enemies, (Russia and China) and by all indicators most certainly was involved in the 9/11 attacks.

_Whether it was the testimony given by the Israeli pilots who bombed and machine gunned the USS Liberty (killing 34 American sailors and wounding almost 200 more) or whether it was the Israeli intelligence officers who were arrested on 9/11 (while videotaping the destruction and cheering for a job well done) so much evidence exists which leaves no doubt as to who America's real enemy is, and yet short of one individual's conviction and prison sentence, Jonathon Pollard, nothing has been done with Israel with respect to justice or the interests of America's security. By contrast, year after year she is rewarded with more and more money and even more in terms of immunity and insulation from public scrutiny._ \- Quote from Through The Eyes Of A Muslim

#####

Conclusion

You might have noticed that I left out a few big ones. That's because they are too far out from the scope of my short story. Among them are the JFK assassination; there are many angles for why this happened, but two of the most glaring are: JFK wanted to issue gold-backed currency, thereby eliminating the Rothschild Federal Reserve, and JFK also wanted to send inspectors into Israel to see if they were producing nuclear weapons. Another one I skipped over is the monumental False Flag of 9/11, which gave the United States the excuse to go bulldoze the Middle East in the name of Israel. Also, during the entire Barry Soetoro presidency, we had a running tour of Crisis Actors going all over the United States falsifying mass shooter events in order to take guns away from Americans, and now that Trump is in charge we're seeing illegal surveillance, online censorship and Fake News attacks on Free Speech and conservatives hitting an all-time high.

Oh, and let's not forget to mention what is happening in Venezuela, where the US is orchestrating a coup through covert attacks on that country's electrical power grid, False Flag bombings in Colombia, and fake soldiers in Peru pretending to be from Venezuela saying how much they hate Maduro (who is a true bad guy, by the way), all done to facilitate Jewish control of Venezuela's petroleum and the fourth largest gold mine in the world. How do I know the Jews are behind the coup? Because in October of 2018, the Rothschild Bank of England stole 500 million dollars' worth of gold bullion from Venezuela, that's why, and because Jewish investors had their petroleum rights in the oil producer PDVSA annulled after Venezuela figured out how badly they were getting screwed. (In early 2019, the Bank of England refused to give Maduro 1.2 billion dollars' worth of funds. Undoubtedly, Maduro would have used this money to fund terrorism or migrant caravans against the West, and not to feed or medicate his destitute population, so I am glad he didn't get his hands on it.)

You ever wonder why we can't have peace in the world, and why countries keep pushing and shoving until war breaks out and countless lives are lost? Could it have something to do with the Zionists that have been running the show ever since the Battle of Waterloo, when the Rothschilds first took over the Bank of England? Historically, the Jesuits have counseled countries into alliances and wars, and the Jesuits answer not to the god of the Bible, but to the Pope. And who does Pope Francis, a Jesuit General, answer to? Well, as of late he's been promoting multiculturalism and open borders, just like the George Soros-funded Marxist Socialists have. Coincidence? I think not. I wonder if there is a video online showing the Pope kissing the hands of a Rothschild and a Rockefeller? You know, I think there is. Funny, isn't it, how everybody kisses the Pope's hand, and how that means he's at god-level compared to us regular humans. Yet there he is, kissing the hand of the Enlightened Ones, the Illuminati.

I don't know about you, but if we really want the world to become a better place, I think it's time we stopped giving Zionist Israel a free pass to commit terrorism.

#####

Sources

(Article Name and Website)

A Historical Look At Israeli False Flag Operations - Ascertain The Truth

Cover-Up Alleged In Probe Of USS Liberty - What Really Happened

Israel's Use Of False Flags In Global Terrorism - American Free Press

Lavon Affair, USS Liberty Incident - Wikipedia

The Lavon Affair: Is History Repeating Itself? - What Really Happened

(PDF Articles and Books)

150,000 Jews In Hitler's Army - Rigg

Antichrist Conspiracy - Hendrie

Bloodlines Of The Illuminati - Springmeier

The Palestine Plot - Jensen

#####

### Media Reviews

Books

Spock Must Die by James Blish (1969) My Rating: 2 Stars

This novel is number 1 in the Star Trek (The Original Series) collection published by Bantam Books. It is the first original novel featuring characters from the iconic TV show. Previous novels released by Bantam were book adaptations based on TV episodes.

The short and skinny: For some reason, the Enterprise is way behind enemy lines when the Klingons start beef with Starfleet Command and the Federation. Scotty has the genius idea of transporting Spock across the universe to warn planet Organia. Problem! When Scotty attempts to bring Spock back, two Spocks arrive.

Sometimes the TOS shows can get a little dry, with a lot of talk and very little action. This 70 page novella is no exception to that rule. We have Spock 1 debating Spock 2 over which of them is the real Spock. We also have Captain Kirk discussing the same situation with Doctor McCoy and others. In the meantime, we have short action scenes where the Enterprise must either engage or flee from the Klingons, and another action bit at the end when they reach planet Organia. If you're into intellectualism and philosophy, with some hard science mixed in and about 10 pages of action, this might work for you. As reading entertainment, and also as inspiration for the current sci-fi project I'm working on, this didn't do much for me. Sorry, Trekkies!

Stone 588 by Gerald Browne (1986) My Rating: 1 Star

According to the critic reviews in the first couple of pages, this paperback novel is described as Sizzling, Mesmerizing and Dazzling. Also used were the words Spine-Tingling, Brutal and Heart-Stopping. This was my part-time reading material to break up my current project theme of sci-fi. I got through all 434 pages of it, and as far as I can tell, the old ticker is still ticking, so let's cross the Heart-Stopping bit off the list.

The premise of this book is only okay; a precious stone has miraculous and mysterious healing powers that are never fully explained. It's just magic! Once word starts to get around, a few people in a tight circle get greedy and start killing each other off. The Brutal portion, I suppose, is that three supporting characters meet their end. In the meantime, the primary protagonist couple sits around mostly, runs around a couple of times, sits around again, then the action unfolds around them and they don't really save the day but there is a somewhat happy ending.

This book was a weak read for me. Why? I don't really like reading about filthy rich people and how everything they eat, wear, buy and drive is opulent and extravagant. This happens every other page in the novel. Let me open up a random page... In 126-127, main character Springer walks into a bank for the wealthy. He's wearing his silk Dunhill tie, fills out something called a Signature card, and voila, the bank employee tells him he can open up an account of up to fifteen million dollars. Quote:

' _For some reason, in this place and the way Mr. Leeds said it, it didn't sound like so much.'_

Springer goes on to help himself to two foil-wrapped, chocolate-covered mint wafers from a sterling footed dish. Fifteen million dollars? That's throw away money!

According to one of the cover blurbs, this book was on the New York Times Bestseller list for two months. There is, or was in the 80s at least, a market for this kind of story. Personally, it doesn't work for me.

I'll tell you what else doesn't work. Springer is a diamond seller. His girlfriend Audrey sets up store mannequins. Each of them makes a tremendous amount of money, and they wear expensive clothes, drive luxury cars and eat at fine restaurants. Audrey does have a quirk in that she knows how to shoot a handgun, an expensive 454 caliber something or other, but otherwise the couple is very inactive and to a large degree boring.

However, the couple breaks out of character twice, both times in perilous, high rise situations, in ways not established by the author and even contradictory to how the two characters usually act and react. Somehow, this ritzy couple can jump across rooftops and scale nine story buildings, and blow up walls in a diamond heist against a rival dealer, and later on, hired professional gunmen chase them around the edge of a cathedral roof. (Not the top, but the edge!) The gunmen are outsmarted and outrun, not having the good aim to even wound one of the slower, frightened protagonists. And in the climactic scene, two rogue CIA agents want to kill them, but the couple talks them out of that, and the couple also talks them into believing the miracle stone is really worthless.

It could happen, right, in a plausible world where the rules get a little bent? No, not it can't. Not in any kind of plausible world that makes sense. Suspension of belief can only go so far before things become ridiculous. I dare say there aren't too many diamond merchants who can scale buildings on a whim, with high maintenance girlfriends who position mannequins in store windows for mega-bucks, and who can shoot it out with ex-military types on the edge of a ten story roof. My lowest rating is 1 Star, and this novel has earned it well.

Waiter, check please. I won't be drinking that Bollinger Tradition RD 1973 wine from page 191 after all. I seem to have quite suddenly lost my appetite.

Documentaries

No documentaries reviewed this time.

Movies

Star Trek - Horizon (2016) starring Paul Lang

Directed by: Tommy Kraft

Starring: Paul Lang, Mark Bowers, Ryan Webbers

Genre: science fiction

Storyline: The good guys take on a Romulan military defector who should, but does not, tell them about a secret weapon the Romulans are working on.

Run time: 1 hour, 43 minutes

Rating: 3 out of 5 on my scorecard

This is a Star Trek fan film created by TK2 Films. Currently, I am working on a sci-fi project inspired in part by Star Trek, The Original Series. I know there are several fan films and fan episodes on Youtube, so I went and found one of them. I try to give indie and amateur productions a little more leeway when it comes to my ratings, as opposed to the big budget, CGI pop garbage usually seen on the big screen. However, when I rate this movie at 3 Stars, it is only barely making that grade.

Think about this. A Romulan military defector comes over to the Coalition, right, and she's supposed to know all these secrets about what the enemies are up to. Only, she doesn't know a whole lot, it turns out. What a fucking great idea to make this woman the main navigator on a starship that is on par with the Enterprise! I can't get past that part. That's like putting a Chinese general as Vice President behind the WWE Cheetoh we have in office right now. That's like giving the guy who is bonking your wife the keys to your car. Past that, we have a bad guy from the future, a good chick from even farther away in the future, and a planet-busting weapon from the past that is hidden away in the core of a distant planet. Got all that? It sounds complicated, but it's not. It's just dumb.

There are a few good scenes in this movie, IF you are a Star Trek fan. Action fans won't see much action, romance fans won't see much actual romance, and sci-fi fans won't see anything past a lot of CGI screen splashes. The characters are pretty bland. However, if you're a fanboy or fangirl, you might see the few traces of brilliance. I did like Captain Hawke's character, and also his First Officer Commander Gates. Oh, the Captain's full name is Harrison Hawke. Good going there, scriptwriters! Lieutenant T'mar (Callie Bussell) was largely unconvincing as the defector, eager to start killing Romulans despite that she is one. Everybody else in the main cast is made of cheese.

The only cutie in the movie was Comm Officer Ensign Sutherland (Ashley Croft). I'm not saying she acted any less cheesy than the rest, or that she was allowed a whole lot of dynamic range, but she was a breath of fresh air compared to all of the stoic, stiff-necks standing around her.

Several of the action and CGI scenes were Major Fails. Too many white people were on the starship Discovery, compared to most any other Trekkie film that understands the need for showing minorities in important positions. The movie didn't have a whole lot of emotional depth, but then again, that's what we've come to expect from Trekkie films in general. The romance between the Captain and the future chick had no real sizzle to it. Now that I'm reminded of that, people who die at the start of a movie should stay dead, right? Anyway, this movie falls into the C- / D+ range. Non-Trekkies probably can't stand it, like my 20 year-old son who watched with me. Trekkies will rate this as fair, like I did, to outstanding, like some of the critics on Youtube did.

Watch the movie at this link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l94v4YOqxOc

More info on TK2 Films"

http://www.startrekhorizon.com/

#####

### I Want Contributors!

ADVERTISERS: If you have artwork, a book, a movie or some other product you'd like to promote, send me an e-mail and let's see if it fits in with the e-zine. I would love to promote material from amateur or independent producers. It's a straight deal at this point; I will post your ad, and you can help me promote the e-zine. I don't think I'll get a sudden flood of advertisers, but if I do, this barter idea might evolve into something more complex. For now, free is the key word!

GENERAL PUBLIC: Readers, I am looking for submissions from you! You can send in your short stories (up to 10 \- 15 pages or around 6,000 words), sample chapters, digital artwork, media reviews, commentary, author interviews, general feedback and articles on writing. These can be in a variety of topics, including history, mythology, the paranormal, the metaphysical, political corruption, advances in science, LARPing, whatever, as long as it has some kind of non-mainstream strangeness to it. How about some poetry? Fiction can range from MEDIUM to HIGH controversy, or about from PG to R ratings, because I don't like pop culture fluff or vicarious cat stories. Bleah! I take cats apart here, sew them up and make little Frankenstein Kitties out of them.

This e-zine is a FREE publication with no outside advertising. As such, I can only reward contributors with exposure and a free digital copy. On the plus side, you have a new venue that you can pass around while promoting your work. Anything that comes along my way will be considered Creative Commons 'copy and share' material, and everything submitted will remain the property of the creator.

Send your submissions to:

raymondtowers777 @ yahoo dot com

#####

### About The Publisher / Author

Greetings, reader. My pen name is Raymond Towers. Primarily, I write darker fiction in the fantasy, horror and science fiction genres, but I do dabble about in other genres as well depending on my whims. I like to think that I have a unique perspective on the world and life in general, and I tend to shake things up to break people out of their doldrums. If you want to read something 'safe,' then I'm probably not the author for you. My favorite authors are in a wide range, from Asimov, Clarke and Farmer, to King, Lovecraft and Poe, to Burroughs, Tolkien and Twain. All the big names, as that is the level I aspire to reach. I especially enjoy combining aspects you won't normally see together in fiction, and on taking the next step and reaching for the farthest, blackest edge of the abyss. The place where most other authors leave off, that is the place where I get started. The question is; are you ready for that?

#####

If you've enjoyed reading this magazine, please consider posting a review or leaving a comment. I encourage constructive criticism and feedback submitted with positive intentions. For more details on my books and writing, I've listed my websites below. Thank you for your support, and if you enjoyed the content, be sure to pass this magazine along to others!

Send me an e-mail at:

RaymondTowers777@yahoo.com

My main author website at Raymond Towers Dot Com:

http://www.raymondtowers.com/

My author page on Smashwords:

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/raymondtowers

My writer's blog on Wordpress:

https://raymondmtowers.wordpress.com

My research blog on hidden truth and conspiracies, Verum Et Inventa:

https://verumetinventa.wordpress.com/

