Monsters
By Karen Singer
Chapter 39 – The Chicken Dance – Part 2 of 2
It was about five in the morning when Carol and Brandy entered Geovelli’s office building. They were dressed as normal everyday women. Nothing to raise any alarms or concerns. Once through the door, they separated. They already had an idea where the guards would most likely be. Carol headed one direction while Brandy headed another.
Carol spotted one of the guards and headed for him. “Excuse me,” she said as she walked up with a smile on her face.
The guard smiled back. “What can I do for you?”
Carol’s foot lashed out and caught him in the head, knocking him out. She went looking for some of the other guards.
Brandy came across two of the guards together. Seeing them together immediately brought back her fears of men again. But the fear only made her angry. She walked right up to them as if she were going to talk to them, but she never said a word. Her body seemed to launch into motion as she tapped into her anger and both guards were down and out in moments.
In the next five minutes, four other guards on the first floor fell to Brandy and Carol. Carol pulled out a small radio. “All clear.”
A truck and a van pulled up outside of Geovelli’s building. Men swarmed from the van and quickly opened the back doors of the truck and put the loading ramp in place. While they were doing that, other men put up small temporary fences leading from the truck ramp to the doors. Two of the men began herding the entire flock of “chickens” down the ramp, through the passageway created for them, and into the office building. The chickens acted like…chickens. They made scared clucking noises and flapped their wings, but they went. Once through the doors, the “chickens” were simply allowed to wander where they wanted…which was everywhere.
While the chickens were being loaded into the building, other men were setting up video cameras inside the lower floor of the building.
Carol and Brandy got off the elevator at the floor where Geovelli had his office. It took them ten minutes to quickly search the top floor and eliminate any of the guards. Carol pulled out the radio again. “Ready for the shipment,” she said.
Downstairs, two of the Wu agents herded two of the chickens into an elevator. The chickens clucked nervously during the ride up, but of course, they weren’t capable of giving any kind of trouble. Five minutes later, the two chickens had been put into Geovelli’s inner office, and all the humans were on their way back downstairs. By the time they got outside, the truck and temporary fencing were gone. In moments, it was like they had never been there – from the outside at least.
Brandy and Carol were driven to one of the hotels where Janice and Susan waited. Monitors had already been set up and they were all watching the screens.
“I still think we should have let them go somewhere more public,” Janice complained. “Maybe outside one of the big attractions.”
“Mom, we discussed this,” Carol said. “We need to make sure he keeps all his men together.”
“I know,” Janice complained. “I still would have liked to see the reaction from all the people.”
“While it would be interesting,” Susan replied, trying to placate her, “it would be far better that as few people as possible know about what you did to those men. Besides, keeping it as quiet as possible would probably help keep you in business later.”
Janice thought about it for a moment, then sighed. “I guess you’re right. Still, it would be fun.”
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It was the waking guards that discovered them first. “What the hell?” seemed to be the confused reaction of every one of them. There were naked men walking around all over the downstairs part of the building, but they were walking in a squatting position with their arms bent up to their armpits and flapping them like wings. And they were making clucking noises like chickens. In fact, they seemed to be acting just like chickens. All of them! The guards simply didn’t know what to do with them, especially since it seemed like none of them understood or even cared when someone spoke or hollered at them. They all just kept walking around, flapping their wings, and seemed to be searching the floor for something.
While one guard called the police, another phoned one of Romo Geovelli’s men. He explained what had happened and what had gone on, then he went out to try and figure out how many of these strange creatures were wandering around the building. They were spread out everywhere, and controlling them was proving to be impossible.
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“What?” Romo said, trying to clear the sleep from his head.
“We’ve got something weird happening downtown in the building,” Billy told him again. “There’s a bunch of naked men walking around…but evidently they’re not walking but squatting…or something. And the guard said they’re all acting like…chickens…maybe. Or something like that.”
“Chickens?” Romo shook his sleep filled head. “This isn’t making sense.”
“I know,” Billy replied. “It’s just what I heard from the guard. He said two women were in the building this morning and knocked out every guard on the floor. When they came to, all these…weird men were wandering around the entire lower floor.”
“Two women?” Things started to connect in Romo’s head. “Damn! I thought they were out of the way for good. And you said two women, not just one?”
“That’s what the guard said.”
“Shit!” Romo cursed. “Get my car. I want to see – immediately!”
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In the hotel room, everyone was laughing and having a good time watching the guards as they tried to figure out what to do about all of Janice’s “chickens.” The chickens certainly weren’t interested in doing anything the guards wanted them to do, and mostly flapped their wings and tried to get away from them. And when the police showed up a short while later, things got even funnier as they couldn’t control them either. There were chickens, guards, and police running everywhere downstairs, and nobody knew what to do about it. It was obvious to everyone watching that nobody knew what to make of the men Janice had worked on.
And then on one of the monitors they saw a large black limousine pull up outside the entrance where more police cars seemed to be congregating by the moment. They all watched as Romo Geovelli got out and rushed into the building. One of the inside cameras caught the look of surprise on his face as he saw one of the creatures being chased by a policeman across the lobby of the building. And then he turned his head and saw two other policemen chasing two other creatures.
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Romo simply didn’t know what to make of it. He stood there with his mouth open and watched it all. He watched as one of the policemen handcuffed one of the creatures, but the…thing…just started clucking noisily and angrily and still tried to flap it’s wings like a chicken. And even in the handcuffs, it was obvious that the creature had no idea in the world who the policeman was or what he wanted him to do. As if the…thing…couldn’t understand human concepts at all. Just like….
Things started dropping in place for him. Just like what he had seen that woman do. Janice Stokley. The mother of Death! He had suspected that Death and Retribution had been the ones who knocked out all the guards earlier. Now he was certain of it. Now they had somehow arranged to show him a little more of Janice’s handiwork. He had no doubt about it, this was a message from her to him. She was after him!
After seeing in the past what she had done to someone he had paid her to work on, turned him into a bug of some sort, he had been afraid of her. What she could do wasn’t just uncanny, it was frightening. Over the years, he’d had his people occasionally check on the man. He still seemed to act like he was a bug and nothing else. No progress back toward humanity at all. And now he was witnessing more of her work, this time, aimed directly at him.
“Boss!” Billy said as he continued to look around. “Let’s get you out of here. Up to your office.”
“Yeah,” Romo agreed. Together, they hurried to the elevator. “It’s the Stokley woman,” Romo said as soon as the elevator was closed.
As Romo’s right hand man, Billy had been there in the past to see what the Stokley woman was capable of doing. “You’re sure?” Billy asked. “I wondered, but there were so many of them.”
“I’m sure,” Romo replied. “What other explanation is there?”
“Not a clue,” Billy said. “But why?”
“I think someone is sending me a message. They must have found out I hired the mercenaries and now this is their reply. I’m guessing that some of those men belonged to Colonel Houghton.”
“All his men that simply disappeared?”
“Yes. Now at least we know what happened to them.”
“I’ll call him,” Billy said. “He’s going to be angrier after he hears than he is already.”
“Good! Maybe he can do his job better! The only thing that’s out of place in this is that they dumped those men here in my building. Wu Enterprises protects its clients. At least they’re supposed to. And Janice Stokley works for them. So if they stick to what they claim, they shouldn’t be trying to come after me to kill me.”
“So maybe it’s just a message. Back off,” Billy suggested.
“That’s what I’m guessing.”
“Are you going to do it?”
“Romo thought about it for a moment. I don’t know. Probably not. We’ve come too far towards getting total control of the city. All of it, even damn Besinski’s slice, is all almost within our grasp. Once we have it all, we’ll be too powerful for anyone, even those damn Chinese people to come after us.”
Two minutes later, they entered Romo’s secretary’s office, then went through into his private office. But the first thing they saw was two more of those strange men, and one of them seemed to have a sign of some sort hung around his neck. Billy had to fight a bit with the…creature…to get the sign off so they could read it.
“It’s a message…to you,” Billy said as he glanced at it briefly. He passed it over to Romo.
Romo Geovelli. As you know Wu Enterprises goes out of it’s way to protect our clients. All of our clients. Unfortunately, some of the men you’ve been attacking are our clients. In view of that, we have decided to drop you from our client list. Since you have been a good client in the past, we will honor our agreement and not kill you. But we are coming after you!
The message was signed with a large fancy W.
“What are you going to do?” Billy asked.
“They said they’re not going to kill me,” Romo said with a smile. “All they’re doing is dropping me as a client.”
“But these…whatever they are? That’s got to mean something.”
“Yes,” Romo said. “That’s the one thing that worries me more than anything else. They won’t kill me, but they’re showing me what they can do.” He made a decision quickly. “Call Houghton. Get him and all his men here in the building. If they’re coming after me, I want all the protection I can get. Between Houghton’s small army and all our men, even those Chinese Wu agents won’t stand a chance. Especially not here on our turf. And get rid of those…whatever they are!”
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Downstairs, the police weren’t sure what to do. They tried to get the creatures into police vans and cars, but the creatures not only didn’t want to go, they didn’t seem to be able to unbend their legs. It was by far the weirdest thing any of them had ever seen. In the end, they called in a small truck and pushed them one by one up the loading ramp, before hauling all of them, including the two that had somehow found their way to another floor, to an insane asylum.
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