Agent Diaz opened her eyes. Everything was dark. More importantly, everything hurt. A bullet had clipped her shoulder. The wound wasn’t life-threatening, but it was bleeding and it hurt like hell. As she tried to rise from her back, her vision spiraled and she collapsed back to the hard, dry ground. Putting her hand behind her head, she realized she was bleeding from there as well. Even though it was a glancing wound, the impact of the gunshot had knocked her over. She realized she must have split her head open on impact.
“Got to get up, just got to get up. Jesus!” she cried as she crunched herself forward before slumping back down again in pain. Agent Diaz took a dozen quick, deep breaths before trying again. “Chica! Don’t quit on me now, chica!” she hissed to herself, remembering her cruel instructor’s taunts in her border patrol training as she painfully raised herself upright. A few more deep breaths, and she made it to her feet. Using the butt of her shotgun as a crutch to lean on, she grabbed her radio.
“Hank!” she urgently cried. “Hank, can you hear me? Where are you?” She stared pleadingly at her radio, waiting for a reply. “Hank. Please. Are you there?” Getting no reply, she hobbled back toward the south to look for Hank. It took her five minutes to cover the distance before she saw her partner prone on the ground, lying in a dark pool of blood.
“Hank! Hank! Can you hear me, Hank?” she said as she rolled her partner over.
“Not good, Maria,” Agent Martin murmured as he rolled over and looked at the bleeding leg he clasped tightly with both hands. “Please tell me you got that big son of a bitch.”
Maria shouted into her radio, “Base, this is Patrol Seven! Agent down! Repeat, Agent Hank Martin down!”
“Rolling, rolling, rolling. Keep them doggies rolling!” General X-Ray boisterously sang as his team of militia made their way west along the shoulder of the interstate toward the exit to Tornillo and their headquarters. Enormous eighteen-wheelers with air horns blazing barreled past the men motoring down the side of the road, sending up clouds of sand and grit that pelted the militia men like dry hail. “The hounds of hell couldn’t stop us, men! The very demons of Hades couldn’t stand before us! Tonight, we were immortals! Immortals!” the General cried as the convoy of three overloaded ATVs took the exit towards their base. Pulling up to the motor pool/parking lot of the STRAC-BOM headquarters, the General disembarked from his vehicle. “Fall in!” he cried. The weary militia raggedly gathered in formation. “Gentlemen,” the General said soberly as he paced down the line of men, his leather riding crop clasped in both hands at the small of his back. “Tonight we faced the enemy, and the enemy crumbled. Men, our mission was to stop vagrants from pilfering from our great nation. Instead, we pilfered from theirs. These bundles of…Private Tango, what are these bundles?”
“Uh, dope, I think, sir,” the private replied.
“Yes, dope,” he continued. “This is the blood money that fuels the economy of our enemy. While I’d prefer the scalps of twenty filthy transgressors, this is a dandy consolation. Well done, men. You’ve all worked hard,” he said as he paced the line of dirty and exhausted men. “You’ve all acted with bravery above and beyond the call of duty. Although, I was the only one actually wounded on the battlefield,” he said as he rubbed the scuffmark on his helmet. “Nonetheless, you’ll all receive favorable battlefield commendations in my report to the United States National Society of Civilian Militia and Paramilitary Organizations of Liberty. Now, Private Zulu! Please store the confiscated contraband in the headquarters. Rest of the unit, dismissed until Monday night for the Cowboys and Eagles game and Operation Land Shark debrief!” The members of STRAC-BOM, minus Private Zulu, wearily slogged towards their vehicles in the parking lot to return to their families, most of who would be mildly disappointed to see them return, particularly so early on a Sunday morning. “And, Fire Team Bravo,” the General barked, “don’t forget the guacamole!”
Private Zulu, who would have normally been severely pissed off at being singled out for a chore, instead rushed with glee to stash the bundles of drugs in the back closet of the headquarters. Returning to his ATV, he gingerly removed his precious chupacabra corpse wrapped in plastic and duct tape. Checking over his shoulder to make sure all his compatriots were gone, he took his silver tape-wrapped package into the mess hall and stored it in the walk-in deep freeze behind a stack of frozen chipped beef containers. Piling on some packages of frozen corn kernels to conceal its position, he went to boot up the computer in General X-Ray’s office.
“Sweet,” Private Zulu said as he sat in front of the dirty white computer monitor positioned on the metal desk in the General’s office. “Let’s boot this mother up and get paid!” Private Zulu exclaimed as he turned on the computer and listened to the noisy fan spin up as the machine slowly woke up. After a minute, the main screen flickered open. Private Zulu scratched his head as he pondered the dialogue box flashing on the screen that prompted him to enter a password. “STRAC-BOM,” he typed in the password box and hit the “Enter” key. It didn’t work. “Mr. Pibb,” he tried, hoping the General’s favorite drink would be the answer. It wasn’t. “Dang it,” moaned the frustrated Private.
Thinking for a moment, Private Zulu opened the desk’s main drawer. Stuck to the bottom of the drawer’s pencil container was a yellow sticky note with “John Wayne” written on it. Entering it into the dialogue box, he pressed the “Enter” key and held his breath. Suddenly, the dialogue box disappeared and the home screen opened up. It was decorated with a Confederate flag screen saver. Opening the Web browser, Private Zulu pulled up Craigslist. For the next few minutes, he worked to post a listing for “One Perfectly Preserved Chupacabra For Sale - $500” under the Collectibles category. After entering his name and the STRAC-BOM headquarters’ phone number on his listing, he spent the next hour surfing adult websites.
Back in Austin, Avery continued composing…
To: Chief Executive Officer
Radwire Gaming Studios, Ltd.
Dear Sir:
I’m corresponding with you today as a longtime and extremely loyal fan of your first-person shooter series, Zombie Slaughter. The original game was a groundbreaking achievement of blood, gore, violence, and terror. Any time wives of prominent politicians demand an immediate national boycott of your product, you know you’re on to something special. All that said, with your recent release of Zombie Slaughter 5.0, which was awarded several gold medals by prestigious gamer publications, I feel it’s my duty to raise several points of critical concern. First, I was fine with the technical glitches, fairly worthless cheat codes, and occasional lack of reality in earlier versions of the game. Ten years and five releases later, it’s time to get it right. First) Put simply, we need more blood. Zombies are notorious for their soft, moist, decomposing flesh. Direct headshots with large-caliber weapons shouldn’t just splatter; they should EXPLODE! B) Even though he’s been a rather loyal companion over the years, Machinegun Mike in the single-player mode is in desperate need of reprogramming. I swear I sometimes think the zombies are smarter than he is. He never provides adequate covering fire for me, and I spend half my time backtracking to shoot some flesh eating zombie off his back. Not exactly what I’m looking for in a computer-controlled partner when the consequences are kill or be turned into a zombie yourself. 3) Regarding Level Seven, entitled “Insane Amusement Park,” by my count you need to dispatch seventy-two maniac zombie clowns to clear the level. Have your programmers ever actually been to an amusement park? At best, you might see half a dozen clowns, tops. Seventy-two? I’m not buying it. I considered the idea that maybe you were suggesting that the zombies were procreating, but scientists have irrefutably proven that the only thing a zombie cares about is food, namely, human brains. They have no sex drive. Plus, all the zombie clowns are male. Are you suggesting gay zombie sex? That’s really pushing the envelope. Lastly, why so short? I completed version 5.0 in less than six hours. It used to take over twelve hours with earlier releases. Why are you putting all your development dollars into the online multiplayer version? I don’t want to waste my time competing against some twelve-year-old snot-nosed punk in Germany. For a video game priced at fifty-nine dollars, I expect more single-player levels, more blood, a better computer-controlled partner, and fewer homosexual zombie clowns.