Category: Short Stories

Shorter-form fiction

Short Story: Caretaker

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

He sauntered through the airport terminal in a silk suit. Pristine cuts of tailored, black perfectly accented pressed, white beneath. The polished gloss at his feet matched the mirrored sunglasses wrapped beneath his widow’s peak. Everything about him said high-powered businessman, higher than the countless others around him. For all the cross-traffic and insanity of the terminals knew, he was preparing to board a private jet bound for some exotic destination.

He drew more ire from men than admiration from women, however contained either were in their fleeting glances. Looks enveloped the formal-wear and chrome, attache case in his right hand. Were anyone astute enough to notice, they might have had their suspicions aroused by its finger-print locks. It was difficult to tell, but close-up views of his smart-watch revealed itself for the digital tether to the case and its contents. Were he to separate the two by more than a few feet, every acronym agency in the country would be alerted. In turn, so would the President. From him, every other country in the world would learn the case had been separated from the watch.

But no-one in the airport knew that. Nor did they know the case’s contents. Not even the security guard that approached when he refused a scan. The suit remained as calm as the man inside it, ruffled to produce a bi-fold wallet. It laid atop the x-ray machine, open to “C.I.A.” large enough for only the guard to see it.

The wallet and case were promptly returned. The suit, the case, and their bearer were ushered through without delay. The ire of both men and women rippled outward across the small pond of humans gathered. It was greatest from those forced to remove their shoes, or submit to groping in the name of freedom. It, and they, thinned toward nothing the further he found himself from the check-point.

He boarded his plane as any man might and secured himself in a seat beside a window. No-one aboard was any the wiser. The classified courier and his package were unremarkable. He’d removed his sunglasses and settled against his seat. He didn’t even bother to glanced around. He sensed the half-dozen or plain-clothes agents scattered among the usual passengers as if they glowed. Even he wouldn’t have known of them were it not for the brief-glimpses of faces from Langley or its various satellite offices.

Who could suspect a dozen, field-trained CIA operatives were embedded on a random flight from Chicago to Vegas? Moreover, who would suspect an innocuous courier and an unremarkable brief-case carrying a zero-point energy bomb?

The device inside didn’t even work. Not as intended. And it couldn’t explode. Rather, it powered up, reached critical output, then shut down. In the process, it emitted such a lethal dose of radiation anyone in a twenty mile radius would be flash-cooked from inside-out. They’d learned that in Honduras even before he’d been sent to retrieve the damned thing.

What was more, the bomb could be reused. As long as it remained operational, it would work. With miniaturized, super-conductive components encased in steel and platinum, the only barrier to indefinite operation was the compressed helium it needed replenished every so often.

Getting the bomb had nothing short of a war. Field agents were killed and injured. Caretaker himself had a close call. No-one got away unscathed. Either physically, or emotionally, they were all a little less than they’d been.

Op-lead, call-signed Immortal, breached a rear-door of the massive, abandoned chemical factory in with strike-team Alpha. The armed guards patrolling the interior were taken by surprise in their cat-walk positions. Pinpoint-accurate triplets of gunfire barked, splattered blood across surfaces or sparked off metallic railings. Any attempting to flee were suppressed or killed. Most were dead before the last were entrenched behind the upper-floor’s control-room.

Gunfire was exchanged from corners and the control room’s wide, now-shattered window. Half of Immortal’s team were down before Bravo-lead, Locomotive, could flank as planned. The remainders of the two teams sandwiched the upper-level’s forces, moving in and up to brute force their way to the upper-hand. The upper-levels went quiet moments beneath scents of death and expended gunpowder.

Blood had painted the walls and floors with abstracts and Pollockian drip-strokes. They would soon dry, blending with rusted metal and cracked paint of a long-neglected building. For now, the surface sections were eerily still.

Below, Caretaker was moving along the lower levels with Charlie team. Old cement shifted to peeling, lead-lined walls. The latter were newer, narrower, clearly added after the factories construction. Portuguese and Cyrillic listed directions on the walls, lent credence to the facility’s suspected origins. Windowed halls gave views into massive chambers below. The chambers were mostly empty beyond the reinforced glass, save one at the end of a hall.

Inside, a dozen men and women were cloaked in radiation-proof hazmat gear, oblivious to the strike team hunkered down and watching them at a containment vessel. They began to transfer a phone-sized device into a lead-lined case. For no reason could Caretaker or Charlie allow it to leave the country– indeed, the facility, in anyone’s hands but theirs.

Caretaker led his team to a T-junction beyond the windowed room, followed a stairwell left, down, to the lowest edge of the cube-like rooms they’d passed. Guards stationed every twenty feet fell to quick aim. Caretaker remained on-point, hurrying the team along a short corridor, alcove-to-alcove, headed for the containment room.

Gunfire created a rhythm of punctual bursts from the half of Charlie-team covering the rear-flank. Surplus Soviet gear roared over the high-yapps of the latest, mil-spec SMGs.

The hack on the key-card access was quick; a minor splice of some wires. The three-foot thick containment chamber opened. A Geiger-counter clicked green, allowed the free-half of Charlie-strike to move in on hazmat-suited scientists that immediately surrendered at their ingress. They were ordered to the ground while the package was retrieved. It was placed inside the attache-case.

Since then, Caretaker had been attached to it. From Brazil, to Chicago, and now on to Vegas.

He wasn’t able to sleep the whole flight. He’d never been able to. Planes terrified him. Maybe he’d jumped out of one too many during Ranger school. He bided his time in the most unremarkable way of a book of crosswords. It kept his hands and his mind alternatively occupied when one or the other got ahead or away from him.

Caretaker exited Vegas to an long car-ride in a black, unmarked SUV. It ended at the Groom-Lake facility– colloquially known as Area-51. He had to admit some part of him was all the more eager to take the job for the idea of seeing the fabled base. His job was only concluded after he handed the brief-case and tether-band to an Air-Force General. The shoulders stars spoke less of his importance than the severity of his stiffness. Beside him, the black-suited Groom-Lake CIA liaison and a former director of Langley, escorted the General from the hallway where the exchange was made.

It was almost surreal, what Caretaker saw of the fabled Area-51. It was as normal as any office building, as boring as any administrative floor. The thought accompanied him all the way back to the airport and along his departure for Langley to debrief. Like him, that curious office-look was a facade masking countless depths of Man’s most unimaginable achievements, angelically miraculous or insurmountably devilish.

For Caretaker’s part, he knew at least one evil now resided there. Whatever the intent to its storage, for good or ill, it was out of the hands of known-madmen. Caretaker found solace in his faith that those whom held it might find a way to use it for good, or not at all. In any case, he’d done his part. He relaxed against his window seat and re-opened his crossword book. A lingering thought drifted away with the first of his writing; a wonder if known madmen remained in possession of the bomb.

Short Story: Sample One-Nine-Nine

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

One of the rats stood on its hind legs. It sniffed at air flowing into its plexiglass cage. The rest lounged about in a heap, doing their best to keep warm in the chilly lab. These weren’t ordinary rats, or even extraordinary rats. They were utterly average. Genetically neutral. Their genes had been selectively bred to ensure as average a life-span and health as possible. They were kept free of mutations, but their genome diverse enough to keep from diminution. Lives depended on the strict adherence and upholding of these principles.

That was the requirement for laboratory rats in the modern age. Complete and total perfection in the realm of being average. They were simultaneously boring, dull as dishwater, and some of the most important and intriguing creatures ever born or bred. Their species and lineage had achieved perfected average with such regularity, that in a roundabout way, they were extraordinary.

Each rat was hand-fed at birth, their mother sequestered elsewhere to ensure both the purity of her health and the survival of all of her young. Each rat was as valuable as the next or last, and each one bred for a lone purpose: to save lives.

While there were, on average, roughly a few hundred rats in the lab’s various cages, all came from the same, few mothers. Those females were treated as near to royalty as their circumstances and handlers could allow for. They were fed well. Expertly cared for. Immaculately healthy. Even pampered in ways.

None of that had helped to deter the misconception that a million animals were being horribly mistreated in labs world-wide, of course. People honestly believed dogs, cats, monkeys– even horses, were being kept in tiny cages to be experimented on like the lower class of a dystopian future. The economics of such things were clearly against them. Holding onto a few hundred, larger animals required housing them, feeding them, and caring for them. All of that was cost-prohibitive when modern labs cost a million dollars to turn on the lights each morning.

Logic, too, was against them. An already-sick animal could not become infected with something needing a cure tested on it. Though various animals were used for differing reasons– pigs, for example, whose cardiovascular systems largely mirrored humans’– it was rare to find anything outside the common lab rat. In effect, the humble rat had more than made up for its supposed role in the plague. It had become humanity’s savior. Their unsung heroes. Certainly, it led a more distinguished life than the average human it served. If it weren’t for the common lab rat, and its benign genetics, few modern humans would ever receive vaccines or antibiotics.

No one knew this better than Gene Henley, head of the viral contagion lab at Vira-Lin Genetics. The place was on the leading edge of genetic engineering and viral vaccination research. Their billion dollar labs were just the tip of an iceberg involving a mission statement about “saving Humanity,” and a bottom line fat enough to try if it cared to. Several millions of dollars in salaried researchers staffed their various complexes worldwide. Each was the top of their field, or as near to the top as possible. Gene Henley was merely one of them.

Henley wasn’t so naive as to believe he’d ever save Humanity. At most, he figured he’d save enough of it to fatten V-L-G’s bottom-line without risking its dissolution. In truth, as much as he was head of his viral lab, the accountants dictated his research more often than not. He didn’t particularly like it, but his salary, bonuses, and benefits were better than living off intern or assistant scraps and choosing between meals or rent.

Corporate research was the wave of the future, for better or worse. The very least Henley could do was cash in on it. Maybe, if he was lucky, he’d even make a break through. Maybe it would garner him recognition, renown before reaching an age where it was impossible.

Only time would tell– that was, if the next few minutes of his morning weren’t about to go horribly, horribly, wrong.

The little rat looked up at him had all the same trademarks of its species; red eyes. Pink hands. Ultra-white fur. The longing to be part of something beyond its small enclosure– okay, Gene imagined that one. Otherwise, it was an ideal candidate for testing contagion 18-199, commonly known as weaponized rabies. In simplest terms, Henley needed to infect the rat with it, then test a possible vaccine. Rabies was one thing they’d only recently been able to augment effectively. Weaponized rabies then, allowed for dispersal of the virus on large targets via aerosolized, missile-dispersal systems. Chaos would ensue within the “target zone” rendering it unmanageable by even the most powerful forms of governance.

So, maybe Gene had been a little optimistic on the “saving” part of humanity, but it wasn’t like the stuff was likely to get used. At least, he hoped it wouldn’t. In order for Vira-Lin to do anything with it, they needed both the virus and the vaccine. Otherwise entities– corporate, governmental, or otherwise– would string the board of directors up if they survived the apocalyptic nightmare it might pose. Besides, if V-L-G couldn’t vaccinate their own people and hold others hostage with the vaccine, there was no point in making the stuff.

Henley reached into the cage and fished out the lone rat with his thick, chemical gloves. He made his way to “the Box,” a thick, plexiglass, air-tight case for animal containment with gloved armholes for working with the contagion to be injected.

He set the rat in its housing to one side of the Box, then fished out a batch of 199. The few compiled possible vaccinations came with it, pulled from a LN2 freezer nearby. A quick rifling through a drawer for a set of syringes, and he slid the tools into the airlock opposite the rat. He straddled his stool, slid his arms into the sealed gloves fitted before it, and began. With an extension of his arm, he released the rat into the Box, then slid the samples and syringes from the airlock into its inner chamber.

Perhaps if he’d known what was to come next, he’d have better prepared himself. Perhaps even, he wouldn’t have gone into work that day. Alas, if there were fates, they’d surely already sown his future upon a golden thread. If only he’d known, he might have done something to avoid the next few minutes, or at least to make them go smoother.

The apprehensive rat sat at the edge of its enclosure, as if sensing its perverse destiny. Gene sighed. Normally the rats were curious, inquisitive. They seemed to need to know what was happening all over the Box. This rat was the opposite. It knew exactly what was happening. It wanted none of it. It was all the more evident after Gene readied a syringe and grabbed for the rat.

It squeaked, struggled, sank its teeth into the thick gloves. Gene shook his head, apologized, and moved the rat toward its injection. Its jaw released, and its body began to slip and struggle against the slick rubber gloves shielding Gene’s hands and arms. He readied to jab the needle in. The rat slipped. His hands went with it. The syringe sank through layers of rubber into his skin. Before he could stop it, the auto-injector flooded him with 199.

Alarms began screaming. Codes went off on a PA. “Code yellow, containment breach,” they said with a synthesized voice. Before he knew it, the door behind him burst open. A team of men in riot gear rushed in. Gene’s head swam. Rabid fury coursed through him. A tranquilizer gun rose. His arms tore free of the Box, gloves still attached. Two, gaping holes. Now, one with a rat scampering through it. He whipped ’round, growling like a rabid animal. A rabid human. The alarms screamed, echoed in his head. Reality went black. He felt himself lunge. It was the last thought he had.

The incident was recorded, the lab decontaminated, and Gene put in isolation until a cure might be found. Or rather, so he could be used as a test vector. Unfortunately, without him working the lab, things weren’t looking promising.

Scouring the lab for decontamination, revealed only a lone rat was missing. According to security footage of Gene’s botched experiment, this was the same rat that had caused his accidental injection. After reviewing the footage, the lab team deduced the rat would not have been contaminated. It’s lack of contact with the injector, or sample 199, was only the surface reason. In truth, the researchers under Gene had concluded one simple fact; the rat had wanted to escape. Given what it had done to do so, finding and euthanizing it seemed an unfair reward. Such determination, cleverness, and lust for life deserved better. At last report, it remains at-large.

Short Story: Diesel Harper

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

The game had come. It was the day. The big one. College scouts. Screaming Crowds. Cheerleaders bouncing in rhythm. Gravity making fools of their breasts and perverted lechers of everyone watching. The stands were awash in red and white, streaming and waving as if pouring from Niagra. Within it, the floating detritus of signs held aloft praised players or urged the team on. Beneath the lights, late September mist glowed like evening sweat on players’ brows. Iridescent. Without time

The Reds versus the Knights, this was it; bigger than state, bigger than the Superbowl. This was what every high-school player dreamed of. But no player dreamed bigger than Devin “Diesel” Harper though. Life hinged on his moment. Not just for him, but for his whole family. Growing up in Podunk, Indiana was never going to be easy, especially for a black kid on welfare. Unlike some of the people he knew of living off government money– and he was certain race wasn’t a factor– he and his family were there rightfully, no matter how much they’d tried not to be.

Devin’s father was a truck driver doing long hauls along the interstates. The crossroads of America had taken his legs when his rig overturned outside Chicago one, snowy night. Paralyzed from the waist down, and with a wife confined to a wheel-chair from progressive M-S, there wasn’t much the elder Harper could do but swallow his pride and admit disability. The food stamps and welfare came a little later, when the M-S progressed further and medical bills racked up.

Devin thrived. Despite the pressures of life and school. He’d seen enough people fall victim to their own vises or those of a system attempting to lure them deeper into poverty. He’d so far managed to avoid them himself, graced as he was with a keen-sight and the nimble skills that had made him a star Running Back. There wasn’t a thing Devin couldn’t do if he put his mind to it. Enough people had told him as much. Football was the one thing he could use to pull his family up from the muck. So, he went at it with all cylinders firing.

The grid-iron was slick. The turf glistened. Minute pools formed in the tamps from cleats. The scoreboards showed the teams were neck and neck. 4th and nine. A single play would determine whether Diesel’s team won outright, or whether they’d pummel and hammer their way to victory in overtime. There was no other option.

Diesel was face-to-face with a wall of meat. He’d been there once before. He’d nicknamed the guy “Meat” in his head. Meat looked more like he belonged in a Mr. Universe competition than a high-school. So much mass would slow him down though. Diesel’d earned his nickname because he was a runaway truck. No-one could catch once he took off. If he got the ball, it was all over. He readied himself, planned his moves. Meat grunted steam into the air like a bull. A mix saliva and adrenaline over day-old spaghetti and fresh B-O hinted itself at Diesel’s nostrils.

Diesel heard the snap. His body worked. He juked right. Meat was too heavy. He lunged. Diesel weaved left, through a gap between defenders. He was half-way up the field when he turned back. The pigskin spiraled at him like a sidewinder missile. He leapt, snatched, clutched, tucked, and hit the ground with a roll. His elbows went down, but Meat hit him hard enough to knock the ball loose in his hands. He clutched it tighter to his body, allowed the impact to dissipate through him. He came to a stop less than ten from goal. The whistle blew. Moments remained.

It was now or never. He knew the play, saw his opening. Meat was back. He was going to go for it. 1st and goal. No other choice. Diesel wasn’t a secret weapon. He was the weapon. The only one. Unstoppable. Unbeatable. This was for Mom. Dad. Everyone. It was for the Scouts, eyeing him from around the field. Most of all, it was for himself. To pull himself out of the muck, his family with him– that was plan.

The snap came. Meat lunged. Diesel juked, weaved. Meat roared. Goal was a step away. He landed across it. His leg hit, the ball cradled against his belly. Meat hit too; a cruunnch tore away reality. He felt his elbows hit mud; the rumble of the crowd in the stands. They’d won. The team had won. The Scouts knew it was him. Before he could fully appreciate it himself, he was out. Unconscious from pain, and with a sight he somehow knew; he’d never play again.

Beneath his unconscious eyes, dreams began. They weren’t dreams as he knew them though. His dreams always involved football, cheer-leaders, in all the was a normal high-school boy might dream of such things But these dreams were different. They felt different. Most importantly, he knew they were different.

He was older, college-aged, getting recruited to the NFL. Contract signings and payday checks in the millions led to all-night parties. Mounds of drugs. Boozing. Fast, easy women. He saw Mom and Dad on holidays. They were worse off than ever, but lavished with ludicrous gifts. It pained his heart.

But the dreams did not yield. He got older, heavier, wealthier. Mom and Dad sank deeper. Their hopes sank with them. More holidays passed. He no longer lavished them. The entirety of the dreams shifted as if all at once: he was suddenly broke, selling cars, doing drugs, weeping in a rat-infested, hole-in-the-wall motel. Whatever had led him there, fame and fortune were part of it– or had been. They were certainly no longer present.

He felt it in his chest, the answer. He’d seen and heard of it through-out his life; players that went pro, formed habits too big for their money to keep up, and fell hard. He never thought he’d become one. Maybe he wouldn’t have. He wasn’t sure. No-one could know the future, after all. Let alone see it, right? He was even less sure about that.

In the end, all he knew was the undeniable feeling of relief he had on awaking in the hospital, his leg in a cast, and his body flooded with the mellow armor of painkillers. It allowed him to mull things over: he saw the path of life laid out before him while the dreams were still fresh. A nudge here. A push there. That was all it would take to set things right. Football or not, Devin’s grades were just right, and his mindset newly re-centered to still avoid tragedy. If he picked up his slack here, the career-killing injury might not turn out so bad.

Over the next few days, people showed up to congratulate him on his victory. He’d taken himself out of school to normalize himself to the pain pills he was forced to take. On a welfare living, it was tough enough to make food. Meds would be short. He felt it better to get as much healing in as possible while he still had them.

The third day of his self-imposed therapy, a girl from his geometry class appeared. She was advanced for her age, a Sophomore taking Senior classes. She’d offered to bring his homework over. They lived only a few buildings apart, had often waved or said hello between home and school. As any timid girl might, when insisted to by his mother, she lingered near his door to give him his homework. Devin wallowed in his latest dose of introspection and healing and almost missed her. When they finally said hello, she revealed her name was Amber. He thanked her.

She stuck around long enough to feel awkward before turning away. Devin stopped her, “Amber?” She turned back inquisitively. “I could use some company. And i-if you don’t mind… some help with the homework. Math’s not… my strong suit. Football is. or was.”

Imagine that, him— superstar Diesel Harper– stammering at her. Amber giggled desperately, but caught herself to keep him from feeling mocked. On the contrary, he seemed to understand things were usually the other way around. In fact, it was also the other way around.

“Ar-are you sure? I mean, if you really wa–”

“Yes. Please, stay.” Devin scooted over for her to sit. He reached for his backpack, determined to see his nightmarish dreams buffered by as much effort as humanly possible.

She sat with a shy smile. Devin smiled back, then rifled through his pack for his geometry book. They launched into work with as double the vigor Devin had used to launch himself across the goal time and again.

“You know,” Devin said during one of their breaks. “I had this dream about the future. More of a nightmare really. Now, it’s almost funny how scared I was.”

Amber’s eyes gleamed with intrigue. “What was it about?”

“Football… and math.”

They both laughed.

Short Story: One Last Job

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

Tropical sun met azure blue and granulated beige along the island coast. It was one of the Caribbean islands, but he was no longer sure which. All that mattered was his presence there, beach-bumming beneath a frosty glass of something more fruity and liquored than an uptown gay bar on pride-day.

He’d been lost a week now, and figured civilization was due to rear its ugly head again. That was how vacations had always been, no matter where they were taken. Why would retirement be any different? A few days in a paradise, or a shit hole, depending on his mood at booking, then back to the grindstone of life, love, and the pursuit of flabbiness… or however that old adage went.

Americans, he’d never understood them. Being born one should’ve helped, but he was more a man of the world these days, without country, than anything specific really. Government work had a way of doing that. All the while, missing the irony.

He raised the drink to his lips and basked in the warm, tropical sun that gleamed across tanned limbs. He’d been sunburned the first few days he’d been on the island. It had since faded into the milieu of a tan, like so many bygone memories. Like them, he was glad to see it go. To take on the near-bronze of the islanders was to shed the moniker of main-lander and obscure himself all the more.

He’d never be an islander himself, but so few were these days. He didn’t mind. Didn’t have enough of the flexibility to his spine anymore anyhow. He’d just take on one of the million other adjectives expats like him got. What his would be, he wasn’t sure yet. It would come in time. That was just fine by him.

He settled back against the chaise lounge-chair, fruity drink resting on its arm. Left hand wrapped around it and cooled from slick condensation, it felt real, tangible. Not like the twenty years of government work, nor the bulk spent at a desk writing, re-writing, or redacting information in reports.

Sure, he’d taken in the sights, but mostly state-side and never long– and always during work hours. On those rare excursions, he’d do the job, do it well, then return for the paper-work. He’d only ever seen the world on his own time and dime. The other agents were on Uncle Sam’s. Not him. “The drag of a quiet life,” he’d always joked.

Now he had all the time in the world and all the dimes he’d ever need.

A shadow fell over his closed eyes. Some pompous bastard hoped to steal his sunlight. A near-silent rustle of polyester depressed his lungs in a sigh. There was only one type of creature around that had the gall to steal a man’s sun and don polyester rags on paradise’s beach; a US government worker. As far as he knew, he was the only one around. They’d found him for another, damned-fool reason.

“I’m retired. Go away.”

The shadow over his eyes remained in place, but he sensed its squirming. Great, a twitchy suit. They couldn’t even send a vet to bug me. He cleared his throat with an audible sternness, but the creature before him began to speak anyhow.

“Agent Frank Marshall?” A man’s voice asked.

“I said “go away.”

“Sir, I’m here to inform you your expertise is required state-side.”

“Go. A. Way.”

“Sir, I’ve been authorized to take you in, with force if necessary,” the kid said.

Marshall chewed on the corner of his mouth, pulled away his sunglasses and sat upright to view the kid in all his passive aggressive, be-ragged glory. “Listen when I say, boy, that you couldn’t if you tried. That being said, I’m comfortable where I am, and I’m not moving from this seat unless I have to piss. The resort staff will even bring me another drink if I wish.”

“Sir, I’m authorized to inform you that you have one more chance to comply before you are forced along.”

“Good luck, kid,” Marshall said, sinking back and slipping on his sunglasses to sip his drink.

The kid’s wrist flicked. Something bit Marshall’s neck. A moment later he was squinting against blurry eyes at a pink-feathered dart. The capsule in its center was an auto-injector, tip red from a lone drop of blood.

Probably one of Monty’s. Bastard.

He cast an upward look at the kid, “Damn.”

He went limp against the chair, fruity drink spilled off the arm of it. He woke to the obvious sounds of a dual-engine plane infecting his foggy head. He shook off the last of the drug, and blinked through semi-darkness to grasp his surroundings. The private jet took shape. It dissolved into bright light flooding his vision.

He blinked away water, rubbing a throbbing temple, “Could’a warned me first.”

The kid moved to sit before him. “Agent Marshall, I’m here to brief you.”

He rubbed his eyes “No shit.” He held a file-folder toward Marshall. “Just give me the cliff-notes, kid. I don’t care about your book report.”

The kid cleared his throat, clearly unhappy with his diminutive title. “You’re to enter the Royal Oakton Arms Hotel in Oakton, Ohio. There, you will retrieve a key for a fifth-floor room. Inside, you will find your equipment. You will then proceed to the roof to await the arrival of a certain, political figure, who will be taking residence in a hotel across the street. You must be ready to complete your mission as soon as your target arrives or–”

He rolled his eyes, “The agency will disavow, blah, blah, blah. Just give me the name, kid. This isn’t my first rodeo.”

Instead of speaking it, the kid opened the file-folder to the first page. Paper-clipped to a dossier and itinerary was a photo of a political figure. A big one. One with few rivals, in fact. The guy had made a name for himself in the media as a windbag. He had a big head and less bright ideas than a dead-light bulb. The former was good for Marshall, easier target. The latter was bad for everyone, making the former more important.

Still, Marshall winced at the image, surveyed the kid for any deception mistake. He found none. The kid was more stone-faced than he’d have thought him possible. Something in the kid’s face said this outcome was obvious to all involved. Straight up through the chain of command the little pissant clung to, decisions and agreements had been made: this one needed to be dealt with.

Marshall cleared his throat, resigned to his do his duty. “Alright. Fine.”

“One last job until retirement, sir. The agency has agreed never to contact you again provided you complete this mission,” he stated officially, unblinking.

My ass.

“Why would they want to?” Marshall said. The kid looked as if about to speak. He put his hand out, “That was rhetorical, kid. No-one’s gonna’ wanna’ touch this with a thirty foot cattle-prod. But I expect compensation, and a one way ticket back to my island.”

The kid nodded. The briefing ended; Marshall’s last, if Uncle Sam kept his promise. Of course, that was never a certainty in this day and age. Come to think of it, that was the reason the problem existed at all. The reason he was ever needed. Uncle Sam and promises were never quite what they seemed.

When the plane finally landed, the taxi took him to Oakton. Evidently, boredom remained a constant despite most believing it had been eradicated. When he found himself standing in his room, bag of gear on the bed, he remembered his first time offing someone for good ol’ Uncle Sam. That guy’d been a windbag too. But all of ‘em were. Difference was, the agency didn’t like the anti-war and peace talk he was spewing. This one was just a pain in the ass for all involved.

Marshall sneaked his way to the roof. Although the more he thought of it, the less he felt he had to. Hell, he’d probably be a national hero this time tomorrow. He arrived top-side, unpacked his gear, checked the wind, the time, and adjusted his scope to wait.

A few, short hours later, he found himself once more on a beach with a fruity drink. This one was even more colorful than the last, and sweeter. He liked it. The rest of the world was still reeling, or perhaps rejoicing was the better word. But Marshall didn’t think about it once, he merely deflated into his chair, doing his best to become as liquid as his drink. Maybe he’d get up, sooner or later, take a piss in the ocean. Or maybe he’d drift off, dreaming about the few melon-popping sessions between ungodly bouts of paper-work. So long as he remained island-bound, he couldn’t have cared less.