But over here, hundreds of SunVerge employees crowd around a mountain of sticky plastic bags, each person removing one from the pile with all the enthusiasm of handling roadkill.
While they distribute the ammo, I’m out of sight, crouched inside a sand dune crater, unearthing the bag I’d planted there earlier this morning. When it’s finally exhumed, I sneak a quick peek at its contents.
Three large beefsteak tomatoes.
Stuffed with rocks.
Am I being petty? Sure, but it’s the perfect crime. Kenneth Morgan is going to have one of these babies punch a hole in that cheesy grin of his. While the chaos is in full swing, nobody will be able to trace a loaded tomato back to me, and it’s not as if they’ll be able to dust the skin for prints. He gets a few cracked teeth or a bloody nose, and I get some anonymous revenge for screwing me out of a pay grade.
How’s that for thinking outside the box?
I drop the tomatoes in my pockets and head down to join the group. Someone who I vaguely recognize from accounting hands me a bag dripping with red juice, and I quickly add my secret payload. Their size and shape should make them easy to find when I need to use one.
When everyone has a supply of squashed fruit, Kenneth jogs back to the microphone with his own bag of tomatoes in hand. “All right, I think we’re good,” he says. “In a few hours, the tide will wipe this beach clean, but the memories will last us a lifetime. And remember, our Tomatina is going to last for ten minutes.”
He lifts the stopwatch dangling around his neck and taps a few buttons. “Ready? Set? Go!”
I lob a handful of mashed pulp into the crowd, setting off a chain reaction of fleshy tomatoes that sail through the air like a volley of arrows before splattering across the employees. The juice leaves its mark upon impact, dyeing scores of yellow SunVerge t-shirts with bright red wounds, trickling down shocked faces and staining patches of sand.
Within seconds, the entire group is caught up in the hysteria. They’re spreading out across the beach, screaming, tossing food like an out-of-control children’s party. Some of them are taking cover behind picnic tables and overturned beach chairs. Others are firing wildly at whoever happens to be close by.
But most of them are no different from me. They’re out to settle office grudges, one tomato at a time.
People are teaming up, signing unspoken contracts to single out mutually despised co-workers. That guy who always drinks the last cup of coffee but never puts on a fresh pot, he’s getting pummelled from at least four different angles. Little Miss Always Steals Your New Pen, she’s drenched in red slop.
Deep down, most of us would take retribution for the simplest things. All we need is the right opportunity.
I weave throughout the fray in search of Kenneth, flinging the occasional tomato to keep from standing out. It probably doesn’t matter at this point, though. Nobody is concerned about what I’m doing. They’re all too busy enjoying their little slice of warfare.
That’s when I notice Philip, the tech geek, standing by himself near the tide line, with one hand cupped above his brow to block out the glare. He’s looking at something, or someone, so intently that he doesn’t notice me duck behind a trash barrel to get a better view of the object in his other hand. It’s a fresh beefsteak tomato, like the three I have stashed in my bag, but it’s bulging with tiny pinpoints of silver that gleam against the sunlight.
A rush of panic tenses my muscles. Philip is carrying loaded tomatoes too. How did he find out about La Tomatina before today? Has he been spying on me, digging through my work computer’s internet history?
From behind me, a tomato flies overhead, severing me from my thoughts. It hits Philip directly in the face with an explosion of pulp, and he staggers back a few steps towards the water.
He scowls and removes his glasses, searching for a yellow patch of shirt to wipe them clean. As he holds them up to inspect his work, another tomato soars through the air and strikes him right between the eyes.
Philip screams and clutches his face as a deep red liquid trickles out from between his fingers. He lowers his trembling hands and screams again, only now I understand why. His face is a mixture of blood, tomato juice, and thin shards of metal that look like broken razor blades. Some of the larger pieces have punctured his eyelids, and now Philip’s every blink drives them deeper inside his eyes, slicing through layer after layer of sensitive tissue until his irises turn to gobs of blue jelly.
I whirl around and search for his attacker, but it could be anybody. Hundreds of people are running back and forth, firing chunks of red, drowning out his cries with their own excited cheers.
Philip staggers toward the crowd, waving his arms and shouting for help, but that just makes him an easier target, and I watch him get pelted mercilessly before he disappears. Inside our ten minutes of company-sanctioned pandemonium, his blood is no different than their tomato juice. No one is going to notice until this is over.
A tomato thumps against the trash barrel, and I dive towards the sand like a soldier in a foxhole. The person responsible fires another one that lands nearby, and I look up to see my boss, no more than twenty feet away, covered in pulp and laughing hysterically. He throws one more that pegs me in the shoulder, then vanishes back into the swarm.
“Son of a bitch,” I mutter, scrambling to my feet and across the beach in pursuit. I try to single him out of the crowd, but it’s impossible. We’re no more than three minutes into La Tomatina and already everyone looks the same. Red-drenched shirts and shorts. Faces caked with red gore.
Life, dyed red.
After taking a few more hits, I distance myself from the mob and make my way towards the stage, taking shelter beside a stack of ice chests. Kenneth will have to pass alongside me in order to call off the game, and that’s when I’ll strike.
Don’t get me wrong, I feel terrible for Philip, but I’m not stupid. Getting involved could mean shooting to the top of some lunatic’s hit-list, which is exactly what I don’t need. Whoever Philip managed to piss off that bad is his problem now, not mine.
Besides, I’ve got my own payback to focus on.
It isn’t long before someone else is headed this way, but even though he’s stained like the rest, I can tell it isn’t Kenneth. This person is at least twice his size, with a sagging gut that’s slapping rhythmically against his cargo shorts.
It’s Tommy Hayes, our chef extraordinaire, and he’s pawing at his throat, wheezing, struggling to breathe, as a deeper shade of red oozes down his SunVerge shirt. He staggers toward the row of barbeques no more than fifty feet away, pulling whole beefsteak tomatoes from his bag and scattering them on the sand like landmines.
He manages to drop over a dozen of them before he trips over a folding chair and stumbles headlong into a massive drum-grill. His hand hooks the lid and yanks it forward, sending an avalanche of glowing charcoal onto the ground. He claws at the air for a moment, then collapses on top of the pile, howling as the briquettes hiss against his exposed skin.
Tommy rolls onto his back and thrashes wildly, accidentally kicking the stand of the next grill in line. It lurches forward and the lid flies back, pouring another landslide of charcoal onto his massive gut. A cloud of smoke and white ash envelops his body, turning his cries for help into a breathless gasp. He’s being cooked alive on both sides, only this time he doesn’t have the energy to get away. When the ash finally settles, the air is sizzling with the sound of burning fat.