Authors: Ernie Lindsey
Lewis goes, “I say dick. He was
laying the pipe for what, almost two years, sis? Informational purposes only,
was it?”
“Yep. Dick it is. This is what you
get for using me you bas—”
The sound of glass shattering
shatters the intensity of the room and all five of us jerk our heads toward the
back hallway. I’m expecting a pack of Board Agents to come flying in, saving
me from my impending death, saving Forklift’s crotch from impending gunfire.
As if things couldn’t get even
more
complicated, The Minotaur steps tentatively around the corner, into the dining
room. Hands held high, palms facing us, like he’s on the wrong end of a
stick-up. Someone is behind him, but I can’t see who.
I think we’re all in shock.
Lewis, Clark, and Fireball
simultaneously move back a few feet. Fireball doesn’t know where to aim,
swinging her gun wildly from us to The Minotaur, us to The Minotaur. Forklift
and I both duck behind a table, expecting an errant bullet to come hurtling our
way.
The Minotaur says, “Keep calm.
Nobody move. Put the gun down. Please.”
And then...Bingo. Not a big badass
Board Agent, but rather an R11-1
chica
that Rescinded her R3 status.
What in the almighty fuck is going
on?
She steps around to his side, and
she, too, has a handgun. And it’s pointed at The Minotaur’s ribs.
Bingo? With a gun?
I know she’s had a bad year, but she
wouldn’t be reckless enough to buy a gun off RollerNinja, would she?
Only Board Agents are allowed to
carry guns.
The world explodes.
It can’t be. It just can’t be.
Bingo’s not a Board Agent.
Is she? Has she captured The
Minotaur? Why would she be here? She knew what our plans were. Is she trying
to take down The Minotaur and Lewis & Clark, all at the same time?
Has she been undercover too?
I feel like a scuba diver that’s run
out of air a hundred feet below the surface.
This is so unexpected, nobody knows
what to do.
She still hasn’t spoken.
Lewis & Clark are
thunderstruck. Fireball is in perpetual panic mode, swinging the gun wildly
back and forth. I’m waiting and waiting and waiting.
Fireball swings the gun our way and
we duck behind the table again. Forklift says, “What’s she doing here, Chris?”
What? He doesn’t know?
I answer in a rushed whisper.
“She’s not here with you?”
“Why would she be here with me?”
“She’s not your Plan B?”
“What?”
“A Board Agent, man. Is she a Board
Agent?”
“No!”
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
I can breathe again. But that
doesn’t explain what she’s doing here.
Answers will have to come later,
because the next time Fireball swings the gun our way, Bingo straightens her
arm, pulls the trigger. An ear-piercing
crack
fills the dining room and
Fireball falls to the floor, lifeless, with blood trickling from the hole in
her forehead.
Lewis & Clark both react to the
shot then go for Fireball’s gun at their feet.
Forklift is up and moving before I
have a chance to realize what’s happening. He takes two steps and then goes
rocketman at Lewis & Clark.
His flying body hits them full force
and they all three go head over heels across the floor, knocking a table down,
knocking chairs aside.
Next, The Minotaur is in motion,
joining the fray. Punches and kicks and howls and shrieks are flying everywhere.
Bingo stands in place. Gun at her
side. She’s shaking.
Should I go to her? Should I go
help Forklift and The Minotaur?
I watch and I wait, too indecisive
to do anything.
Forklift shouts my name. Shouts,
“Help!”
I move, run, propel myself across the
room toward them.
Clark is wrestling with Forklift and
as I approach, I plant my left foot, swing my right leg back and drive my foot
forward, landing a perfectly placed field goal shot dead center in the side of
his head, and he’s instantly out. Forklift pulls a pair of handcuffs from
somewhere, like they appeared from within that magical pocket inside his gi.
Click-click
and Clark is contained.
Lewis has The Minotaur pinned down,
throwing punches. Forklift pivots with a roundhouse kick, the soul of his boot
rocking the hacker’s head to the side, and then we’re on him like piranhas. It
doesn’t take much to get him face down and immobile after I get my knee across
the back of his neck. Forklift pulls another pair of cuffs from a different
pocket, clamps them tight around his wrist.
And that’s it. We’ve captured the
Holy Grailmen of the Hacker Kingdom.
Forklift isn’t done. He grabs The
Minotaur underneath the shoulders, jerks him up to his feet and says through
exhausted, heavy breathing, “I don’t know why you’re here, but you need to be
gone.” He reaches into his pocket and produces a set of keys, thrusts them
into The Minotaur’s hand. “Two blocks down from the Howey Street bus stop.
Green car. She’s called Machine. Be nice to her. Now go!”
The Minotaur doesn’t ask questions
or give any kind of reply. He runs.
Around the corner, down the
hallway. Gone.
The next sounds we hear are sirens,
and they’re real this time.
Forklift is the first one to
approach Bingo, cautiously. “Put the gun down, Ellen,” he says. “Put it down
or give it to me.”
She snaps out of whatever place she
was in, hands the gun to Forklift.
With a flurry of fancy finger-work,
he ejects a round from the chamber, pops the clip loose, and shoves it into his
pocket. “When they ask, and believe me, they will a thousand times, I fired
the weapon. Understood?”
She nods.
“Where did you get this?”
“It was The Minotaur’s.”
“No, it’s not. It’s mine.
Understood?”
She nods.
He moves away from her, pats me on
the shoulder as he passes. Goes to check his clamp job on Lewis & Clark.
I walk up to Bingo, wrap my arms
around her, squeeze tight and ask, “My god, what’re you doing here?”
“It’s a long story.”
“By the sound of those sirens, you
have about sixty seconds.”
“I haven’t been completely honest
with you. Again.”
“No shit. I thought you were a
Board Agent.”
“You know better.”
“I thought I did. Really, what the
hell are you doing here?”
“You remember me telling you that I
was in The Blue Sioux with Andy and he told me about The Minotaur?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And do you remember The Minotaur
saying last night that he paid someone to bring him Butter Tea Brownies?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I bought fifty of them tonight.”
“I thought that was you. And you
were his delivery person? Why?”
“Self-destructive, remember? Trips
into Urine Town.”
“But you were in his apartment last
night with us.”
“That was tough to hide, and may
have been why he let us in so easily. I was hoping you didn’t notice the look
he gave me.”
“Good Lord. Is that it? Any more
lies?”
“Last lie. Forever. Promise.”
“Why’d you bring him here?”
“Bribed him for backup. Wanted to
save you a trip into Urine Town. He had a laptop with him so we could do
whatever you needed to do in a safer place. We were sitting there waiting and
when we saw those two guys and your girl-crush going in, we knew you were in
trouble.”
Those two guys. Right, she was long
gone before Stream and Honker showed up to wait tables.
I turn around and pull her with me,
facing the two handcuffed hackers on the floor. I point to them and say,
“Those two gonzos right there?”
“Yeah?”
I walk her over to them, give one,
then the other a tap with my foot. “Here’s the short version. You just helped
us take down Lewis and Clark.”
“You’re not serious.”
“Absolute truth. Fireball was
Lewis’s sister. And that man right there,” I say, directing her toward
Forklift, who is busy cleaning Bingo’s prints off the gun, “is a Super Board
Agent named Sam.”
He looks up, smiles. Waves
innocently.
She says, “No way.”
“Very much way.”
“I was wondering what happened to
his teeth.”
“Crazy, huh? I’ll tell you the rest
later.”
The sirens are right outside. I
hear car doors slamming and the sound of heavy footsteps.
They’re coming.
“You guys are okay,” Forklift reminds
us. “Deep breaths. Let me take care of this.”
I look over at Fireball, dead on the
floor, eyes locked open, blood pooling around her head like somebody spilled a
bowl of Wishful Thinking’s Pomegranate Liver Soup. “That was such a good
shot.”
Bingo shrugs and says, “Yeah, well,
I was eliminating the competition.”
And as Board Agents swarm around the
building, shouting through megaphones, smashing windows, climbing inside with
guns drawn, I reach down, take Bingo’s hand and say, “Positive gold, my lady.
Positive gold.”
-gone shogun-
(or,
the end
)
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
You made it! Thanks so much for
reading GOING SHOGUN. I hope you had as much fun riding along with the kooky
cast of characters as I did creating the adventure.
A couple of things to point out:
It’s not an exaggeration when I say it took me nine (nine!) years to write GOING
SHOGUN. Through fits and starts, and entire years where I didn’t touch it
because life got in the way, the story would not allow me to leave it alone.
Forklift
wouldn’t allow me to leave it alone. In fact, I think I enjoyed working with
him more than any other character I’ve ever created.
Secondly, as an author, I find it
interesting to learn where the genesis of stories came from. If you’re curious
as well...the entire novel was born from two places. In 2003, some bored
cubicle-dwellers in my office at the time actually concocted Butter Tea
Brownies. (I’m sure at least one brave soul performed a taste test.) That
same day, a friend mentioned that his seat number at a gaming convention was
“R11.” I have no idea what sparked the concept of a divisive caste system
based on that statement, but I’m glad it did.
Somehow, these two random bits of
information gelled (not unlike the contents of Butter Tea Brownies) into
everything you just read. Neat, huh? (Or weird, or...
whatever
, Mr.
Author.)
I take great pride in my work and
had a number of readers and a professional proofreader go over GOING SHOGUN
before it was published, but the occasional
oops
does occur. Aside from
Forklift’s odd jabberwocky, if you happen to catch anything and would like to
point it out, please feel free to let me know at
[email protected]
.
Or, if you’d just like to send me a comment, you’re more than welcome. You can
also visit my website at
http://www.ErnieLindsey.com
to sign up for my newsletter, check
out some poorly drawn cartoons that are certain to elicit an eye-roll or two,
and learn more about me and my other works. (I’d like to invite you to check
out
SARA’S GAME
, my
flagship novel and former Kindle Daily Deal that reached #2 in the Top 100
bestsellers of the Kindle store in February, 2013.)
Lastly, if you enjoyed GOING SHOGUN
and would like to support the author, nothing is more effective than
word-of-mouth. Please give some thought to posting a review and sharing with
your friends and other readers on your social networks.
Thank you!
Ernie
Lindsey, April 2013
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