“Okay, tacos. Hey, it even says ‘beef.’ Lucky I took my antibiotics this morning.”
“I’m sure the food will be good to go. Can’t be food poisoning the future leaders of the People’s Republic.”
“This is bullshit,” hissed the girl in the “Class of ‘34” sweatshirt. A young, Hispanic blue shirt man stood at her table, his notepad out, his face blank.
“I know what I want and I want it!” she said. “Are you stupid? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
The blue shirt mumbled an apology, but ’34 girl was having none of it.
“You better stop disrespecting me or I’ll fucking tell your boss to throw you the fuck out of here.”
“I didn’t…”
“You think he’s going to listen to you or to me?”
“I’ll check in the back and see if they have it,” the blue shirt said, remarkably evenly.
“You better,” the girl said. The server left and she turned to her friends. “After all we do for them, they treat us like shit.”
“You ought to complain and get him fired,” another told her. “Otherwise, they’ll think they can do whatever they want.”
Turnbull was casually covering the side of his face with his palm, seeming to shrink into the chair. Attention to his general area was always unwelcome, and everyone had been looking over at the ruckus – mostly with approval for the student putting the uppity worker in his place.
“I hate it here,” Junior said.
“Not long now. We get her tonight, we rendezvous with the hard drive, and we head home. Easy.”
“Easy,” Junior replied, but uncertainly.
The blue shirt returned, but he came to Turnbull and Junior’s table instead, notepad out.
“Can I take your order…” he began, but he was cut off.
“Hey shithead, what are you doing with them? What the fuck is wrong with you?” It was ’34.
Turnbull saw it in the man’s face, the culmination, the breaking point, and he braced himself for whatever bad was going to happen, because something bad was certainly going to happen and it was utterly out of Turnbull’s control.
The blue shirt turned to face the student’s table; ’34 leaned back, smiling at her success with her petty humiliations. The blue shirt, for his part, said nothing. He simply reached onto the table beside one of ‘34’s comrades, grabbed a table knife, and leapt at his tormentor.
‘34’s expression changed in a fraction of a second from smug satisfaction to sheer terror as the blue shirt screamed “Fucking whore!” and brought the dull knife down over and over again, plunging it shallowly into her shoulder, then her chest, then her face.
Her tablemates scattered; she shrieked. The knife was going in, but it was dull and there was more blood than actual damage outside of the rent across her right cheek. Yet the blue shirt was continuing to try and gut her there and then.
One of the males with her tried to pull off the berserk server, but another blue shirt came up from the side holding a drink tray and swung it with all his might like a scythe across the student’s face, smashing his nose and spattering blood over the table. He went down to the floor, and the server continued to pound his prone, frantic victim with the edge of the tray.
Across the room, the rest of the patrons were stunned. And the other blue shirts were inspired. One server dumped a sizzling plate of fajitas into the décolletage and lap of the blonde companion of an older man in an expensive suit. Another brought a beer bottle down on the head of a bewildered Asian student; foam and blood flowed down his face. A blue shirted woman attacked another diner’s face with her bare hands, clawing at her victim’s eyes.
Turnbull was on his feet now, glancing over to Junior to see what his situation was. Junior was reaching for his weapon – Turnbull shook his head “No” and motioned toward the exit. A plate flew toward them and shattered on their table.
“Oh, awesome,” muttered Turnbull, trying to spot a safe path out, but everyone was now on their feet, fighting, screaming, and/or panicking.
’34 had somehow escaped her chair and started running, but she plowed directly into Turnbull and bounced back, shaken and bloody, staring at him, her eyes imploring. The blue shirt was right behind her, coming at them both, his throat open to a punch. Turnbull made a quick decision and roughly pushed the girl back into the blue shirt’s arms. She screamed again as the worker descended on her in a silvery blur of knife thrusts.
“Let’s go,” he said to the stunned Junior.
They moved, Turnbull in the lead, pushing or throwing out of the way anyone in their path. Halfway to the exit, which was choked with terrified patrons trying to escape, a wide-eyed blue shirt wielding a chair blocked their way. At his feet was the crumpled body of the student he had just smashed over the head.
Turnbull shook his head “No,” but the blue shirt only saw another well-dressed elite tormentor. He charged, the chair held high. Turnbull pivoted left, grabbing the man’s forearms, using his weight to throw him down to the floor. A heel kick to the sternum kept the worker down for good. Junior hopped over the wounded man and followed Turnbull into the chaos.
The front door was a no-go – it was jammed and besides, a pair of busboys was beating on the clump of escapees with potted artificial trees that they wielded like maces. On one of the waiting benches, slumped over to his left, was the three-piece suited restaurant manager; someone had shoved a fork through his right eye.
“Kitchen!” Turnbull said, turning against the flow. He pushed through the surging crowd, almost as if he were doing the breast stroke. One panicked man grabbed his left arm; Turnbull pounded his nose flat with his right fist and kept moving. The swinging doors to the kitchen were just ahead.
Junior turned in time to see at least two black uniformed PBI men with AKs out through the front window. Inside the restaurant, the blue shirt who started it all stood up over ‘34’s inert body, panting, covered with blood. The PBI men opened fire on automatic, tearing him up, his body twitching and jerking as it was pushed backwards and to the ground. But several others, some patrons, some workers, caught rounds in the background and dropped too. Then a blur of blue shirts hit the two PBI men from the flank and they disappeared from view.
Turnbull burst through the swinging double doors and was confronted with a blue shirt cook packing an oversized meat cleaver. It flashed as the man swung it, but Turnbull dodged and the blade planted deep into one of the doors. The cook pulled on it, his arm taut and therefore vulnerable when Turnbull smashed down on the locked elbow with his full weight. The cook howled as blood spurted from his compound fracture.
A second cook approached, now with a long knife in his right hand and a skillet in his left. Turnbull drew his Glock in a smooth motion, aiming directly at the man’s face.
“I am fucking tired of this shit,” he shouted, moving forward, gun up. “Get the fuck out of my way or I will fucking end you. Three! Two!”
The cook complied, the blade and pan clanging on the floor as he turned and ran.
“The PBI is out front. They’re shooting, but people are fighting them,” Junior reported. “Is this the revolution? Is this it?”
“I don’t know if this is it, but it sure looks like what I think it would look like,” Turnbull answered. He bolted through the storage racks toward a door with an exit sign. Pushing it open, he carefully surveyed the rear alley. Nothing to see, but plenty of shots to be heard from around front. They put their Glocks away.
“Let’s go,” he said, running outside, followed by Junior.
They headed down the alley to the end, where it opened onto Gayley, one of Westwood Village’s main arteries. The bucolic town of that morning was gone, replaced by a battlefield full of running, screaming people. Across the way, a blue shirted gardener was hitting a middle-aged man, wearing a half-way unbuttoned white shirt and several gold chains, over the head with a hoe.