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Chaos Angel Spanner — Chapter 11: Talk of the Town
Part 5: Crash the Murder Party (Revision 2)
Part 5: Crash the Murder Party (Revision 2)
26 september 2014.
Ollie-Ollie’s property. As Jennifer drives, Marina sits in the passenger seat and navigates them west through Bangor toward the abandoned Dictel warehouse that Oliver Thorwald and his gang of killers use as their illegal hideout. In the back seat: Shira, Leila, and Brandi. The four fighters have already changed out of their school uniforms into proper fighting gear: short shirts, short skirts, and little or no underwear, as Shira recommends.
Parked next to the driveway entrance, the Slasher Hunters’ van awaits them. Brandi, Shira, and Marina get in to join Arisa Saionji, John Peck, Martin Lansky, and Lars Izquierdo. Shira waves at them. “Hi, guys!”
Lansky drives the Hunters down the long pitted driveway to Thorwald’s property, where Marina’s outcast clique, the Shovel Gang, hang out. Connor, Jennifer, and the Shelley twins follow behind them. Shira syncs her phone with Lars’ netbook, then returns it to its pouch strapped to her arm.
Peck’s van and Connor’s car park out of sight from the Shovels’ usual rendezvous point. Marina gets out first, scopes out the place to make sure nobody’s watching them, and goes to the rendezvouz point, where Ron Tremayne and Don Murphy are waiting. An old car from the mid-twentieth century parks there; out come one more boy (the driver) and three more girls, all of them still in their blue school uniforms. Lars points a parabolic mic at the group. From the conversation, the Hunters figure out that the boy’s name is Ray and the girls are Sandi, Lori, and Beth. All of them come from the lowest levels of the school hierarchy. They believe they have no chance to rise above their low station, so they hang around adults from the level above theirs: the unskilled laborers.
Thorwald runs a labor rental business he contracts out to construction and landscaping companies for a hefty fee. When he feels the urge to kill somebody, he uses his shovel as a weapon. Tonight, Marina expects to be the target of his rage. Tonight, Oliver Thorwald will find out he’s the target of the dreaded Slasher Hunters. He does not yet realize that the three people who hate him most are now hunting him.
Finally, Ollie-Ollie’s old pickup truck (also from the mid-twentieth century) pulls into the property’s long driveway. Ray takes the four girls into his car with him; Ron and Don decide to walk the length of the driveway. Once they are out of sight, Shira gives the signal for the girls to go.
Shira, Jennifer, Leila, Brandi, and Arisa tread quietly behind Ron and Don, using the woods and the boys’ own loud chatter as their disguise. At the other end of the driveway is a large dilapidated warehouse that still bears the name and logo of Dictel Corporation, the former owner of the property and of the company town that Bangor once was. When everyone is inside, Shira sneaks in first. She peeks out and nods to signal the boys to follow her.
In the warehouse, the man known to his gang as Ollie-Ollie Oxenfree has built a makeshift home for his men, not much more organized than their equally illegal trailer homes among the dregs of white society on Harstine Island. Johnny-Johnny Johnson and his old trailermate, Louie Louie Pickwick, are men of low ambition, perfectly content with their low station as long as they make money from the murder contracts their Corporate clients want done deniably. Thorwald, by contrast, is a monster of ambition like his late father. But just because he’s Corporate doesn’t mean he has any style at all. He and his gang live and scheme in a slovenly dwelling in an abandoned Bangor warehouse with a small group of high school kids whom he is pleased to dominate. In return, they protect him from the police and refuse to report him whenever he goes out on a killing expedition.
Thorwald is every bit as good-looking and strangely charismatic as Shira remembers, yet he triggers her uncanny-valley reaction hard enough that she feels nauseous. Jennifer notices her shudder from the chill and says sourly, “From what I’ve seen, the best-looking psychopaths are usually the worst.”
“This is your test, final girl,” says Brandi. “Prove yourself well.” Jennifer replies with a wink. Brandi looks at Leila. The Irish girl stares at the man her grandfather is forcing her to marry with cold hatred.
Today, Thorwald is unusually jittery. He paces back and forth, back and forth in front of Johnson and Pickwick. His agitation makes his kids nervous; they’re terrified that he may fly off the handle any second, for any reason or none. They know he feels the hunger, and it can only be satiated through murder. “Wh-what’s wrong, boss?” asks Ray, the clique’ cowardly leader.
“Somebody’s onto us,“ says the agitated killer in an affected Texas Corporate drawl. “They been trackin’ us down, doggin’ our every move, taking our targets away.” He turns suddenly and points at the kids. “One o’ y’all musta been rollin’ on us. One o’ y’all been telling the fuckin’ pigs all our plans.”
He picks up his shovel and turns threateningly to Marina. “You been rollin’ on us, ain’tcha, ya dirty little spic whore! You been fuckin’ rollin’ on us!” He hits her on the side of the head and knocks her down.
Marina whimpers, “No, I didn’t. Please don’t kill me.”
“Fuck you, ya lyin’ whore! I shoulda listened when they warned me about your kind! Die!” He raises the shovel and brings it down to kill Marina.
The shovel stops in mid-air. Thorwald looks in front of him to see what he hit, only to find Shira standing over the cringing Marina. She has just caught his shovel on the way down. He gasps in horror. “Y-you?”
“Long time no see, motherfucker.” Shira front kicks him in the gut and sends him backwards, slamming into the old refrigerator, knocking it open so that several beer bottles fall onto the floor. He keeps his grip on the shovel; he fights to regain his balance till he stands straight again.
Thorwald charges Shira with the blade of the shovel. She disappears behind the door frame. When he barges through, Jennifer breaks a beer bottle on the back of his head; he falls into the coffee table and breaks it. Calmly, Leila picks through the barrel of swords; choosing damage over cutting power, she takes out a wooden katana.
The three boys attack Shira and Jennifer. Shira whips out her loaded Go-Yo and smashes Ron in the chin, Don upside the temple, and Ray on the tailbone; all three go down whimpering and writhing in pain. Sandi tries to knife Marina, but Brandi punches her out with her gloved fist. Lori jumps Brandi; she backs up to smash Lori against the garage door frame; Lori loses her grip and falls off. When Don tries to climb up to his feet, Arisa kicks him in the face with a steel-toed boot, knocking him back down. Ron springs up to tackle Leila; she smashes him in the temple with the bokken, and he falls on his face unconscious. Marina stays in the corner; Beth merely holds her head in her hands and just screams and screams.
Thorwald climbs to his feet, picks up the shovel, and advances slowly on Shira, his face twisted with hatred. “You killed my father, you fuckin’ mudblood bitch.”
Shira looks at the video playing on her phone, then shows it to Thorwald and smiles ironically. “And you kidnapped my girlfriend from the rave and raped her.”
“She was supposed to be my wife!” he shrieks. “You stole her from me!”
She smiles ironically and sings, “Finders keepers, losers weepers.”
Lansky laughs at Thorwald. The killer turns to him and snarls, “What the fuck you gigglin’ about, kike?”
The Israeli grins with wicked triumph. “She didn’t kill your father — I did!”
Shira gasps. “The package—”
“His victims paid for it, and I sent it. When serial killers have enough money to get away with murder, sometimes you have to defy the Law itself to bring them to justice.”
Thorwald screams. Pickwick jumps Lansky; the two wrestle through a solid wood door, shattering it.
Johnson lets out a maniacal war cry and rushes her with the knife. She does a flying somersault and catches his face in the crack of her bare buttocks; he stumbles backwards dropping the knife, his head lands audibly on the concrete, he struggles to pry her off his face, but her butt muscles lock his face so hard he cannot. “Promise you’ll lay off the helpless civilians and go back to the front, and I’ll let you live.” He tries to nod. She smiles.
The knife spins across the floor. Jennifer dives for it; Pickwick jumps her; both get their hands on the knife. Slasher and final girl writhe together in mortal struggle.
Thorwald comes hard down on Shira with his shovel; she catches the blade in her hands before he can plunge it into her heart. He pushes down as hard as he can, putting his whole weight on her, pinning Johnson. “You ain’t goin’ nowhere now, fuckin’ mudblood bitch!” he grimaces.
“Get up, Ollie, or your butt-buddy dies.”
Powered by pure rage, he pushes down on the shovel even harder, straining his muscles to their limit. “Fuck you! You’re gonna die!”
Shira smiles. “I’m completely relaxed, Ollie. You can’t move your shovel. Johnny-Johnny’s smothering down there. If you don’t let up, your comrade’s gonna die.”
Johnson whimpers and flails in panic. Thorwald ignores him; his focus has narrowed to getting his shovel into Shira’s heart. But Shira’s relaxed muscles lock his arms in place and keep her butt clamped hard on Johnson’s face. Soon, Johnson weakens, then goes limp.
“Maybe you should have kept Leila,” Shira says. “You’d have died a lot sooner that way.” She lets go of the shovel and slips out of its way so that it crunches through Johnson’s ribs, cuts his heart in half, and penetrates into the concrete floor. Johnson twitches, gargles his blood, and dies. Just as Thorwald comes out of his berserker trance to discover in horror that he has just killed his friend, someone hits him hard on the head with the wooden sword. He lets go of the shovel, rolls over, and sees Leila bring the bokken down onto his nose, shattering it. She kneecaps him with one blow, then hits his testicles as hard as she can. He clutches his ruined manhood and rolls onto his side, gurgling and whimpering soprano.
Shira flip-kicks onto Pickwick’s kidneys. Convulsing backwards in pain, he yanks the knife out of Jennifer’s hands. He stands up slowly. Somehow, the knife has lodged into his heart. He looks down at the knife, grins wickedly, starts to chuckle evilly.
Jennifer rolls into a sitting position. “Surely you’re not stupid enough to use that thing.”
Louie Louie Pickwick reaches for the knife and plucks it out of his heart.
Shira, appalled, smiles wide-eyed. “Whoops! You’re dead!”
Oblivious to the steady stream of blood spurting out of his perforated chest, Pickwick gleefully chases Shira and Jennifer around and tries to stab them. But he slows down within seconds, bleeds out, and collapses, dead.
The Shovel Clique kids come out of hiding to stare at Shira, Leila, and Jennifer in terror. The Slasher Hunters emerge to look at the damage in awe. Right on cue, the cavalry arrives: Sparks, Kowalczyk, and a small squadron of uniforms.
The police carry Oliver Thorwald out strapped to a stretcher, Johnny-Johnny and Louie Louie in body bags. The Slasher Hunters divide their reward. The Shovel Clique stare dumbly at the bounty hunters who have torn their one adult pillar of support out of their lives. Marina leaves their number and joins Shira and Brandi with the Hunters.
“Where are you going, Marina?” demands Ray.
Contemptuously, Marina replies, “I’m with Shira now. I’m joining Team Bremelo.”
Shira puts her arm around Marina. As the police lead the surviving members of the defeated Shovel Clique away in handcuffs, they stare back at the charismatic victor as she claims her reward and takes their former cliquemate away from them.
“These guys are totally nuts,” Arisa comments. “Don’t they have any sense of self-preservation?”
Jennifer replies, “That would be rational. America’s all about kicking reason to the curb and acting entirely on faith, honor, and racial instinct. If they acted rationally like self-respecting terrorists, they wouldn’t be Men.”
Shira puts her hand on Arisa’s shoulder and looks at her ironically. “Welcome to America.”
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