Twitch tried to pull himself together. For him, this was a common desire but rare accomplishment. He counted to ten. He was alive! Now he needed to get out of this mess. He reached deep into his psyche and gathered every bit of rationality to…

I GOT A WEDGIE FROM A BEAR AND WAS ATTACKED BY RUSSIANS!

Nope! That wouldn’t do. He forced himself to bury all that fear and horror deep down into a locked box where he could unpack it at a more opportune time. Knowing Twitch, that would probably mean a public meltdown accompanied by screaming. He was, after all, a professional comic colorist.

So, what was important? There was the fact that his underwear had been pulled halfway to his shoulder blades. Was that important? Nah. As a full-fledged nerd he was no stranger to wedgies. Perhaps he would someday look back on this moment in pride? Hadn’t the recipient of history’s first interspecies turbo wedgie earned a genuine nerd war story?

If that wasn’t important, what about the neon green goo that had exploded from the Slurpee machine? It was everywhere. Icy bits of sugar water invaded his nose, his ears, his ass. It was between his toes and his left nostril was frozen shut. Yeah. That was it. The important thing was to climb out of this pile of goo and get warm. In fact, it seemed like a good idea to get in his vehicle and drive to another time zone. Yes! Run! That was the really important thing!

He stood a bit too fast, slipped in the ice, barrel rolled through a bloody pile of crushed Dorito bags, and wound up face down in a pile of three dead soldiers. It was at that precise moment that Twitch’s mind finally managed to register that he was in the middle of a murder scene. He screamed like a little girl. Who can blame him? The last few minutes had racked up a body count well beyond the shootout at the OK Corral and it had happened, above, behind, around, over, and through him. He shrieked louder at the thought of Billy’s confident stride and his little group of mayhem peddlers. A K-cup enthusiast with an attack bear was at large!

“Hey!” It was the sole remaining Extreme Greeter; Mike. It was a shallow, breathy voice. As if a hefty strong man was speaking after a terrible experience. A racist bear had licked his faced and groped him in ways that would embarrass the TSA. Twitch wasn’t the only one who’d been through the wringer.

“Yeah?” Twitch chirped.

“Let’s just forget this whole thing eh?” The Extreme Greeter was slowly gathering his strength and positioning himself to stand. “I mean, that bear… what the hell smells like that? Do all bears smell like a dumpster that’s been stored in a jock strap? I just don’t have it in me to kill you.”

“Wah?” Twitch was standing unsteadily. The last sentence seemed rather important.

“Look man, too much death here. And bears.” The greeter stood, tall and proud. He was beginning to regain his bearing. He nodded. “Definitely too much bear for one day.” He surveyed the wreckage. He was the sole survivor. Unbidden, his mind dredged up a long-forgotten song from 1982. He started humming. He was at peace. There had been enough killing. He was going to retire. Perhaps it was time to become a gardener? He wasn’t sure where that idea came from. He imagined the wizened elders of all those cool kung fu movies. Yes. It was time to do that thing. Plant a koi pond, drink some tea, or write a haiku. There once was a man from….

“OK.” Twitch agreed. He was on board with the whole not killing anyone else plan. Also, the soldier had that look that was sometimes referred to as a thousand-yard stare. It was creepy.

“Yeah.” The Greeter smiled, basking in his revere. He was going to turn over a new leaf. Become a peaceful man. Possibly he’d take up some deep and meaningful but ultimately baffling hobby; like raking gravel into patterns or folding paper. He was still humming his new theme song. He was going to gather his shit, walk out of this mess, catch a ride on the helo, and submit his resignation. He pictured explaining it to the Smoking Man. “I quit, effective the minute a bear licked my face.”

“Just hand me that thing…” He waved at the magazine at Twitch’s feet. It wouldn’t do to ride home empty. There’s no shame in a bear attack but dumping a full mag and leaving it behind would count for thirty bucks off his last paycheck. And it was lame.

“This?” Twitch picked it up. He held it gingerly, with the odd hoplophobic thumb and one finger motions common to people who know only that guns are dangerous and nothing about their mechanics.

The Greeter grinned at him. It made him smile to watch fools handle a mag like it was a venomous snake. As if it wasn’t inert. Like it might explode. Twitch gingerly handed it over.

The greeter grabbed it with a meaty hand and in a smooth practiced motion shoved it in his rifle. He racked the bolt as delicately as a man hammering a tent stake with a rock. The round chambered perfectly, despite the coating of green icy goo. He smiled. Yeah. It was time to be peaceful.

“It’s a new day.” Grinned the greeter. Smiling benevolently.

“Your revolver isn’t damaged then?” Twitch’s voice had switched to that snooty graduate student whine common to coffer pourers who insist on being called baristas and other people who match smug confidence with a total lack of accomplishment.

The Greeter winced. Then, he let it go. “My rifle is fine. The magazine seated just as it should.” Water off a duck’s back. A leaf on the breeze.

“You mean ‘the clip seated’.” Twitch corrected him; incorrectly.

The Greeter’s eyes went wide. Ducks and leaves? Koi and rakes? Forget it! This nitwit had to die. He drew his K-Bar and lurched forward.

Twitch was no stranger to people wanting to kill him and moved quickly. He cleared the doorframe a half inch before the Greeter would’ve been on him. The greeter was momentarily stunned to come face to face with the Ghostbuster’s car. Who drives a fictional car?

It was just enough hesitation for Twitch to leap in, slam the idling car’s old transmission into reverse, and stomp on the gas. Tires squealed and he was gone.

The Greeter didn’t make chase. He calmed and sheathed the knife. Leaf, wind, koi, peace… he walked back into the wreckage. Maybe it was time for a snack. By the time Twitch had brought the ponderous car on the highway and more or less pointed somewhere safe, the Greeter was tearing into a Slim Jim and slurping a Yohoo. Everything was going to be OK.

“What did he say?!?” The Smoking Man fumed.

The Analyst and the Smoking Man were watching a real-time feed directly from Chigger’s cell phone to their secret base in {REDACTED}. The analyst had clandestine access to every cell phone in America, a fact which should surprise exactly no one.

“So, you’re pissed he thinks he’s Batman? Or that he’s gone rogue?”

“Oh, that?” The Smoking Man straightened his tie. “That happens all the time. We lose a few Extreme Greeters to the siren song of superhero vigilantism every year. It’s an occupational hazard. We have ways of dealing with them.”

“So, what’s the problem?” The Analyst, as usual, was pondering two concepts at once, the problem at hand (a breach of OPSEC) and the new revelation that there were apparently protocols and people already in place for hunting the occasional Batman. Wheels within wheels. He continued. “If necessary, I can brick that redneck’s phone, but doing so might arouse suspicion. We’d best not do it lightly.”

“It’s what he said he was chasing.”

“The phrase which must never be uttered?” The analyst frowned.

The Smoking Man cringed as if the thought alone was  physically painful. “Yes!”

“You’re telling me that chasing a fellow named Achmed, who is from Pakistan, and has a sketchy background, and turned up on our radar screen as a possible terrorist, and as far as our intel can tell is at least nominally of the religion of…”

“Religion of peace!” The Smoking Man interrupted.

The analyst sighed, Muggles were confusing. He had, at his fingertips, more technology than had ever been assembled in human history (though he now had suspicions of a higher echelon of Batman hunters). Even accounting for an appropriate amount of humility, he was one of the smartest people in the NSA. Even so, he was often baffled by some of things the Smoking Man did.

He turned his chair towards the Smoking Man and looked him directly in the eye, which is a lot like staring at a cobra. “We’ve got a destroyed convenience store filled with dead bodies, there’s a helicopter doing God knows what, there’s a person who is linked to squirrel based terrorism and who may be a practicing…”

“Religion of peace!” The Smoking Man insisted.

The Analyst kept talking. “… I’ll skip that for now. Who is being chased by Batman. There’s a Ghostbuster out there. And a couple of gun toting yahoos with a pet bear that probably raped Mike…” He paused, taking a deep breath and trying to put that thought out of his mind. “…so if you want me to put this whole thing down an electronic memory hole I’m going to need the parameters for that operation.” He spoke earnestly as he knew the Smoking Man hated direct questions, but it had to be done. “What the hell is wrong with the phrase…”

“Don’t say it!” The Smoking Man insisted.

Then he shrugged and began to explain.

“We already know that mind control emanates from bullshit. We already know the bullshit resides deep in the human mind. We spent a great deal of time cramming as much crap into every American as possible. One subsection of the appendix of Directive 27B/6 establishes the parameters of certain bullshit we want planted in the human mind. Therefore, there are lists of certain phrases which we must always utter and other phrases which we must never utter.”

“And this list is…” The Analyst prodded for details.

“Classified.” The Smoking Man said with finality.

“But…” The Analyst stopped himself mid-sentence. He was perhaps the best man in the planet at detecting bullshit but even he was hopeless against it. How does a person sift data with only half of the equation?

“Use your head,” the Smoking Man encouraged, “think of some of the more recent bullshit. We’ve been working hard to plant many forms. They’re obvious to a man of your talents if you look.”

“Okay, I’ll play your guessing game.” The Analyst grinned, knowing things that no one else knew was the whole reason he held this job. It was the motivation to work with a man who made Darth Vader seem cuddly. His intellect was of the sort that he would gladly work for Satan himself provided it came with amusing challenges; here at the NSA he worked daily with a complex and half seen national mind puzzle. He loved it.

“So, if a fellow named Mohammed blows up busload of puppies while screaming allah akbar we’re supposed to pretend we don’t have the slightest hint of his motivation?” He scratched his chin; very clever. “Could be Lithuanian, might be workplace violence, possibly a disgruntled Canadian hockey fan?”

“Absolute, perfect, bullshit.” The Smoking Man grinned.

“And the religion of peace couldn’t be Buddhists?” The Analyst was getting into the groove.

“Of course not. When you hear that phrase, you don’t think of Quakers, Buddhists, hippies with flowers, or anything else do you?” The Smoking Man smiled proudly. “You can’t imagine how much effort we put into planting that bullshit in everyone’s brain; it’s in your brain too.”

The Analyst floundered, picking up these two pieces of floating bullshit was easy because he had been pointed in the right direction. Now the pressure was on.

Dredging deep, the analyst wracked his ample mental horsepower. Then it hit him… Holy shit.

“The youth of one of the most technologically advanced nations on planet earth…” He began. “…have access to every TV show, video game, movie, book, and graphic novel in creation. They’ve got Red Bull, Facebook, Adderall, and internet porn.” He paused for a moment, sounding the dimensions of the vast universe of bullshit and its implications. “Yet every male from age 9 to 12 is carrying one thing in their pocket.”

“A pocket knife, a harmonica, bus fare, a condom?” The Smoking Man playfully tried to nudge him off track.

“A fidget spinner!” The Analyst announced, suddenly seeing it so clearly now. 

“Excellent deduction!” The Smoking Man nodded. “A pointless rotating mass that does absolutely nothing. An object upon which they willingly expend time, money, and adulation… for no reason whatsoever. Exceptionally effective bullshit don’t you think?”

The Analyst felt flush with discovery, a nearly orgasmic height of smug superiority. “What’s wrong with them?” He chuckled. 

“Feels pretty good to identify bullshit doesn’t it?” The Smoking Man leered, then he sorted through his highly classified mental circuitry to drive the point home. “Now here’s the punchline…”

The Analyst leaned forward.

The Smoking Man uttered two words: “Duncan Imperial.”

The Analyst smiled at the memory. “Yeah, I had one back in the day. Mine was purple, best yo-yo I ever had. I also had a butterfly but that didn’t balance as well. I could do tricks, ‘walk the dog’, ‘around the world’. I…” He stopped. Shocked.

“A pointless rotating mass upon which young men expend their energies.” The Smoking Man chuckled. “Feel superior now?”

“The Smother’s Brothers?” The Analyst shuddered at the deep sorrow of knowing a youthful pleasure had been a managed process, a keyhole built into a mind so young it wasn’t yet susceptible to mini-skirts.

“The Smothers Brothers were some of our best agents. They were brilliant.”

“Bullshit in the past. Bullshit in the present.” The Analyst muttered.

“And bullshit in the future.” The Smoking Man completed the thought. “I prefer to think of it as paying it forward.”

“To facilitate nefarious schemes we haven’t yet dreamed and which will be implemented by those who may not yet be born.” The Analyst was in awe.

“Money in the bank.” The Smoking Man, nodded. “So now you see the importance of…”

“That redneck’s phone is toast!” The Analyst interrupted. “And I see he’s already uploading to YouTube. Not on my watch!”

“Do what you must.”

“I’m going to divert flights in the Eastern Seaboard, DDOS the Stock Exchange.” The Analyst was hammering on his keyboard, the Smoking Man’s presence all but forgotten. “Gotta’ cover our tracks. Diversion. YouTube going down for a few minutes won’t even make the papers.”

Satisfied the best man possible was intent on closing the loop, the Smoking Man stepped quietly out of the room. He had a few hours left in the day and was thinking of fomenting a revolution that would topple the government of Estonia. He had many irons in the fire.

Chigger stepped out of the brush to get a better view of the helicopter. It was rocketing skyward at a crazed tilted angle suitable for an ICBM but all wrong for a helicopter. Years of redneck shenanigans had taught Chigger that anything that went skyward like that would return to earth in a spectacular manner. (Chigger still had parts of a dishwasher embedded in the roof of his trailer. Lesson learned.)

Unfortunately, his attention was split between the crazy helicopter and a robed freak doing some kind of hippie sprint down the middle of the road. Gripping his phone and envisioning YouTube millions, he couldn’t decide whether to record the gravity defying helicopter or the wingnut jogger.

Achmed, for his part, wasn’t going to stop running… ever. Death, fully equipped, highly motivated, and giggling like a schoolgirl, was on his tail. When the lanky redneck with a cell phone in one hand and a shotgun in another appeared in his path Achmed didn’t even break stride. He did, however, try to communicate.

“Getthehelloutoftheway!”

Chigger frowned. Just his luck to encounter a hippie who spoke a weird foreign language. To Chigger the thick Pakistani accent was no more intelligible than pops and clicks coming from an African bushman.

“Speak English!” Chigger shouted.

“IamspeakingEnglishyoustupidredneck!”

Chigger shook his head. What was becoming of the world when a man couldn’t video a mysterious black helicopter in peace without some dude from Foreignplaceistan hassling him? He drew a breath to demand English in a louder voice, but it was too late.

Thud! Chigger went down as Achmed steamrolled him. 

Chigger was skinny as a rail but as tough as only a redneck poacher can be. He came back up with a grunt and leveled the shotgun at Achmed’s fleeing back with one hand while still holding the phone in the other. His forehead had an Adidas tread firmly imprinted between his furrowed brows. It was time to patriotically shoot someone!

Achmed glanced over his shoulder, “Beawarethereisasoldiercomingthisway!”

Chigger grunted. Random foreign warblings weren’t going to deter him. He tucked his shotgun into the crook of his shoulder preparing to do the kind of one handed shotgun wizardry that made him a god among a close-knit fellowship of highly armed but generally unwise friends. He steadied his phone to get the best video. A saner man would consider it unwise to record the activity of shooting someone in the back; but Chigger was not known for pondering the likely outcome of his ideas. He lived by the creed “hold my beer and watch this”. This is why Chigger, a man with a net worth about the same as a used ATV, became a rock star while telling stories in a bar. Chigger’s stories were always amazing; even more so because they were invariably based on something he’d really and truly done.

“STOP!” A voice commanded.

Chigger stopped. “Fuckin game wardens.” He grumbled.

He turned, expecting to find his eternal nemesis, a Smokey bear uniformed nitwit from the city carrying a Game Warden badge. Chigger seemed to attract them.

Instead it was a soldier. He was dressed entirely in black and huffing and puffing under a full tactical loadout that belonged more on a beast of burden than a human being. (Extreme Greeters prided themselves on carrying enough ammo to inflict at least twice the damage any rational person would deem necessary.) Chigger dropped the muzzle of his shotgun towards the pavement lest he wind up “accidentally” shot.

“Why?” Chigger complained. He was disappointed. Achmed had disappeared around the bend, the helicopter was probably in low Earth orbit, and he hadn’t gotten to shoot anything at all. What a bummer!

“Because he’s…” The greeter paused, unable to break free of his conditioning.

“He’s what? Running from assholes who fly around in unmarked black helicopters? Afraid of illegal domestic para-military SWAT teams? Yah! I know all about you jackoffs. I read Zero Hedge.” Chigger challenged. He was still holding his cell phone, recording every moment.

The greeter grimaced; it’s not easy to break free of deeply embedded conditioning. Finally, after a difficult internal struggle, a beautific fixed smile came over the greeter’s face.

Chigger stepped back. He was just crazy enough himself to know precisely what a person looks like when they’re about to cross an internal Rubicon. Captain Tacti-cool here was 10 pounds of crazy packed into a 5-pound bag and Chigger felt it in his bones. A man who’d wrestled an alligator while naked and covered in Cheetoes had met his match. He was truly afraid.

“He’s an Islamic terrorist!” The greeter beamed, proud of his accomplishment. “There, I said it!”

“A skinny hippie in a bathrobe is a terrorist because you shot up his convenience store?” Chigger might have been afraid but he had history with law enforcement. From Chigger’s point of view the purpose of law enforcement was to annoy him personally and nothing else. A lifetime of acting on his viewpoint had been a self-fulfilling prophesy, but he held firm to his internal code of ethics. He refused to accept the authority of anyone who would interfere with his God-given right to kill geese at midnight anywhere he wanted. After all, he was a free man!

The Greeter was completely unaware of Chigger’s internal logic. He was too pleased with himself for overcoming two barriers in close succession. The most recent involving vocabulary and that coming on the heels of becoming a dark vigilante at odds with society as a whole. He repeated it just to savor the moment. “Yes! He’s an Islamic terrorist! Also, I’m Batman!” The greeter enthused.

“Suuure.” Chigger was unimpressed. He’d seen this sort of problem before. The unholy coupling of a job as a tactical mall ninja and an overfunded weightlifting meathead was fertile ground to grow the kind of man who thinks he’s a flying bat. He tried to save the man from himself. “Where is your cape? I don’t see a rocket car. I think you’re just a nutcase with a budget. Let’s forget the whole thing and go shoot wildlife.” He coaxed.

(It should be noted that this is one of the few times in his life when Chigger was the voice of reason and it was actually caught on video. Statistically speaking this was like catching the Loch Ness monster and Sasquatch playing chess.) 

Unfortunately, Chigger wasn’t used to the role as “sane person in an argument”. He was totally ineffective as the voice of reason.

“I’m Batman and I’m chasing an Islamic terrorist.” The Greeter beamed. “And when I catch him I’m going to greet the living hell out of him.”

Chigger knew he’d been out crazied. “Well okay then,” he stepped aside, “have at it.”

The man was gone in a flash. Despite being heavily laden he was a strong runner. Chigger pondered the odds. Would the terrified foreigner or the tacticool nutjob win the race? Regardless it would happen out of range of Chigger’s camera. He shrugged and walked towards the store, still recording every step. He now had a video that included a hippie from Foreignplaceistan and a Tactical Jackass. His YouTube site (maintained on his behalf by his buddy Whacker) would get a lot more hits this week. He hoped it would go viral.

The stoic college dropout that entered the convenience store had been overconfident. The warrior that exited was unstoppable.

Treachery had been unmasked and defeated. Powerful forces had come down from the sky only to be dispatched and mocked. A vomiting slurpee machine, an unemployable comic book colorist, thousands of rounds of spent brass, a tacticool monkey, and a sodden copy of Genetically Improbable Sluts lay spent and discarded on the floor. The building was nearly destroyed.

Emerging from that man made, neon lit hell, the destroyed former glory of the Church of Awesome, Billy stood tall. Flanked by his freshly deprogrammed best friend and a reeking racist bear, Billy alone was meant to be the leader. All that would ensue, would come at his order.

“I have seen battle”, he announced to the universe, “and I have kicked everyone’s ass!”

With a certainty of purpose that would make Marcus Aurelius blush at the unconstrained hubris, Billy commanded:

“Squirrels! In the car. Now.”

In a flash of fur and tail, the two squirrels dove past Billy, swished over Doogie, and huddled on the car’s dash. All their careful mind-work seemed weak and ineffectual when exposed to the full fury of the NSA and Ghostbusters. In Billy they’d awakened something new and unpredictable. Doogie had warned them. There was male and there was man. They’d ignored his warnings and what had seemed like a gawky male college student was now a God.

Folding an ego that had grown two feet in the last hour into his seat, Billy grasped the wheel. His wheel. His car. His fate. He’d played patsy for those damn rodents for too long.

He gave a wild eyed cackle. Addressing the cowering and battered creatures on the dash he chortled. “Welcome aboard ladies.”

(The squirrels bristled at the implied misogyny; which had absolutely no impact on the leering Billy. Perhaps this was his intent?)

He reached for his car stereo, ejected the CD and winged it out the window. A modern remastered version of Abba’s Greatest Hits took flight and lodged in a tree. Billy, who’d been the best of them at avoiding the siren song of electronic gadgetry, produced a cheap MP3 player he’d left, unused, in the ash tray. His eyes glinted in the LCD’s light as he scrolled. He made his selection, jammed a crude patch cable into the stereo’s aux jack, and started the car.

Then he floored it.

“A modern day warrior
Mean, mean stride
Today’s Tom Sawyer
Mean, mean pride… Blap Blap Ba BLAM!!!!!”

With the single power chord, the squirrels knew all hope was lost. Canadian libertarian arena rock flooded the vehicle and there was no going back. Merciless cymbal crashes and thick layers of sound pulsed into serial crescendos as the Subaru tore out of the parking lot at speeds that would have been unsafe had they been halved.

“Gentlemen!” Billy shouted over the cacophonous din. “You have comported yourself well. Our enemies hang their heads in shame!” Bart and Doogie grinned involuntarily at the compliment. “Join me now… in celebration!”

Then Billy let loose with a deep throaty wolf howl of the sort that could give Bela Lagosi nightmares. It was as if he wanted every predator of every forest to know a new sheriff was in town. Surprising himself, Doogie joined in. Soon Bart added his own repertoire of barks and growls. All this was heaped over the mountain of rock and rebellious lyrics blasting from the Subaru’s overtaxed stereo.

Disco never had a chance.

The squirrels held tight to each other and shook. Testosterone was afoot and no lilting harmonious Swedish girl band was going to stop this juggernaut. They’d be lucky to live out the day!

Billie wasn’t done. After he’d howled himself out, he announced, as if it were fact and not open for discussion (because it wasn’t), that things were going to be different.

“I’m in charge now.” He beamed.

“We had a deal and I’ll abide it, because that’s what men do.” At this Doogie, swept up in the moment, let out another howl… and Bart joined in. Billy, smiling, magnanimously let them finish. Then he continued.

“No more sneaking around. The NSA is onto us.”

“And the Ghostbusters!” Doogie added, well aware the squirrels were vague on the concept of fiction.

“And the Ghostbusters too.” Billie rolled with it. “So now we go to Portland my way. We will not sneak in like weaklings. We will kick in their front door and show those hippies who’s boss!”

The squirrels were miserable. They’d no idea Portland was a walled city! As if that wasn’t bad enough the newly turbo charged Billy was about to lay siege to it.