This one’s for Danny Lore, who pitched the idea for this Cola Wars story. Go buy their comic, Queen of Bad Dreams!
This was previously posted on other sites in July 2019.
When fired at the appropriate velocity, a soda can renders a more devastating impact than a mortar shell. It was long theorized that the destruction of the Calderon Automotive plant was implemented through the precise application of C4 explosive and perfect timing. In truth, it was a jaw dropping blast executed through the power of cola. Fantasize all you want about the long, cold barrel of a gun, the raw power of an automatic weapon fired to its full capacity, a firearm’s caliber climbing higher and higher—they all pale in comparison next to the ammunition kids can get for $1.25 out of their nearest vending machine.
Poppy Cola knew this; thus the creation of the Poppy International Strike Squad. Originally, the squad was a proposal laughed off at a quarterly shareholders meeting by the now infamous James “Jumper” Johnson that saw his expulsion from both the company and the fiftieth floor of its office building. Then a devastating bit of corporate espionage from Coney Cola in the days that followed saw the CEO of Poppy Cola leaving flowers on the grave of the remaining pieces of the man whose wild idea had posthumously saved the soda giant.
P.I.S.S. has since become known as the finest fighting force that doesn’t exist.
Allegedly (and off the record) this squad of six incredible killers was plucked from all walks of life. A police officer, a firefighter, a national soccer champion, a mother of two, a D-list action movie star, and a junior martial arts champion. Supposedly, their body count is about to tick over into the triple digits. Their goal is to kill as many men on missions as Coney Cola has by being consumed.
According to legend, P.I.S.S. has been laying low for the last six months of conflict. Not that there weren’t folks that needed killing. Plenty of folks act in a way that begs for death. But the heat was dialed up on the squad after a Christmas Eve stunt that would have put them in the history books. They were inches away from Coney Cola President and Commander in Chief Archibald Waddle. Their barrels were nearly up to his temples while he slept in his marriage bed until a midnight intervention by Coney Cola’s greatest weapon scattered the team and put them all at the top of Waddle’s Most Wanted list.
The team had barely escaped with their lives. Their contingency plan was already in place. Bug out bags, fake passports, whole new surrogate families were already at the ready in case of emergency. As of Christmas Day, Previous Year, the members of P.I.S.S. no longer existed. Only the evocation of the One Last Job protocol could get them back in the game. They wallowed in mundane obscurity for six months.
And on June 25th, Current Year, the message went out on all channels.
P.I.S.S. was back, baby.
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Officer Mac Fishman had been living the last six months as mild mannered salesman Mac Fishwoman. He traded in his P.D. blues for the standard issue blue vest of Great Buy Electronics. He’d clocked out one night from a life of international assassination and clocked in next morning for the early shift at Great Buy to welcome anyone looking to buy a stereo system before work.
It wasn’t hard trading in his one-bedroom apartment in D.C. with the big brown stain on the murphy bed for a one-bedroom apartment in Madison, Wisconsin with an eerily similar big brown stain on its murphy bed. The hardest part was losing the mustache to comply with Great Buy’s strict code of appearance. He shaved it Christmas Day. It came off in one piece like a furry Band-Aid.
Mac was locked in a heated discussion about sales floor etiquette with his shift manager Marcus the 22-year-old hair care skeptic when the call came in.
“You can’t speak to customers like they owe you something,” Marcus said. “You owe them something. You owe them—it’s your duty to offer them the great deals we have on LCD TVs.” Mac was eyeballin’ a suspicious character on the other side of the floor. She was either pregnant, or had the perfect stashin’ orb for ill-gotten gadgets. “It’s like I always tell yah, Fishwoman. Sales is all about the Three D’s.” Marcus was always mentioning the Three D’s but never once explained what they were. “It all comes back to the Three D’s. Can you tell me about the Three D’s?”
“Yeah, boss, the, uh, the Three D’s…”
It was then that Mac’s work pager made a sound that neither of them knew it could make. The high-pitched wail of a technological banshee. It rang out sharp, permanently cutting away the upper registers of Mac & Marcus’ hearing. A bank of TV screens shattered. The overhead light bulbs blew out. The shopper’s glass stashin’ orb cracked, raining down a wave of stolen batteries.
When the pulse stopped, Mac checked his pager. Two words: “We’re Back.”
A second heart-stopping pulse rang out bringing with it the address for Mac’s rendezvous point, stopping Marcus’ heart. A damn shame, Mac didn’t think.
Mac was once a loose cannon rookie cop so close to the edge someone better grab him before he fell off. Then he was the big gun of the best covert ops team that never existed. Then he was the lowest ranked employee at a chain supply store that almost exclusively employed teenage cogs in the great narcotics clockwork. Now he was on his way back to the job he was born to do and he stepped over a wannabe shoplifter with shards of her stashin’ orb sticking out of her stomach on the way out.
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Dale Horchatta spent more time with his kids than his wife did. Angie was always gone on these long business trips. He’d always taken care of the twins while she was gone. She often burned the midnight oil at her demanding job at the corporate office of Bullseye Marketplace, and was always going away on these extended trips that she said she “couldn’t discuss.” Dale had always chalked this up to the incredible secrecy of Bullseye Marketplace and in this way (and several others) Dale was indeed Boo Boo The Fool.
One night, Dale was looking after Freddy and Eddie while Angie was away when another woman came home and assumed his wife’s place.
She looked similar enough to Angie. Red hair, profound undereye bags, hand carpal tunneled into the shape of a wine glass. From a distance and to many of the more senile members of their regular church congregation, she would pass. But this woman was not Angie.
Nevertheless, she waltzed in through the front door with two bags of groceries (baguettes, of course, sticking out the top) and greeted Dale, “Hello, husband. Sorry I’m late.” She pecked him on the cheek and moved about the kitchen. Dale was frozen. The Other Woman patted their son on the head. “Oh, lend a hand, will ya? You never help me put away the groceries.”
Dale could barely move, much less properly rinse and store the grapes. This woman was moving around the kitchen like she owned the place.* But she knew nothing. Everything was going in the wrong place. The cereal was getting mixed in with the rice, the bread box was being completely ignored, and leafy greens were not being put in the crisper drawer and would end up, when all was said and done, decidedly uncrisp.
*Decidedly she did not, as she was not now, nor had ever been, Dale’s bookie.
“Come on, ya lazy bones,” She continued. “We all have to do our part.”
“Hey,” Dale said. If he was going to pipe up, this was the time. “You keep acting like you’re my wife. But you’re not my wife.” The woman handed him a stalk of leafy greens to put away but he rebuked them. “Where is Angie?”
“Honey,” said the imposter, “you know I get jealous when you talk about other women. Why don’t you just help me make dinner and stop fantasizing about your secretary or whoever this ‘Angie’ is.” Dale was reaching the limit of his tepid demeanor. He had never been so insulted. He didn’t know what was happening to him by the light of his locally made kitchen gas lights so he came up with a term for it: lamped. He was being lamped.
“I know the number for the police,” he said. “And I’m going to call them unless you bring back my wife.” He opened his wallet to the photos and shoved it in the woman’s face like a police badge. She looked at it and smiled.
“This is a very funny joke, hon. I admire your commitment.”
Dale looked at the photos he had carried in his front pocket all day. There where he knew in his soul he would see pictures of Angie were only pictures of this woman who had taken her place. Glamour shots, vacation photos of the two of them lovingly holding each other in exotic locales, pictures taken in the hospital at the birth of their children.
Dale couldn’t breathe.
Had he been wrong? Was this the woman he loved? He was losing touch with what was real and what was deviant. He was being lamped. But he could no longer discern by who.
That night, he and the imposter who might be the love of his life made dinner, put the kids to bed, and settled in for a movie they’d set aside all week to share together as the New Year’s ball dropped one time zone away. Six months later, Angie would resurface as she was called back in for active duty. But Dale would never see her again and would live out the rest of his life with a woman he would forever be too embarrassed to ask her name.
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Nine-year-old martial arts champion Casey Riggs sat across the breakfast table from his fully-grown wife. He perused through the financial section of the latest Beetle Bailey. He learned about the latest housing crisis for the Family Circus. He read about the ongoing battle for rights in the Arbuckle household in Garfield. He read the funnies is what I’m saying.
Nancy passed him a cantaloupe half filled with cottage cheese.
“Case,” she said, “I feel us growing apart. It’s like we don’t have anything in common.” She took a sip from her morning coffee and he had a drink of Coney Cola Breakfast Juice.*
*For his own safety Casey Riggs was advised by Poppy Cola command to not be seen anywhere near official PC products to prevent a possible revelation of his identity. For the last six months, Casey had consumed no Poppy Cola, nor its affiliated clear soda Fizz, the orange flavored Juicay, Big Thurst energy drinks, a single vending machine, or the Eat ‘Em franchise of restaurants that proudly serve Poppy drinks with all of their fast food concoctions.
“Nance,” said Casey, adjusting his booster seat. “That’s not true. We’re not growing apart.” He ate a bite of toast Nancy had cut the crusts off of for him. “To say we’re growing apart means we used to be close. And we both know that’s not true.” Casey closed his paper, shimmied down off his high chair, grabbed his tiny briefcase, and trotted out the front door.
Nancy was left at the kitchen table eating cantaloupe and cottage cheese for two.
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D-list action star Ace Jackson had just finished 3rd in an Ace Jackson lookalike contest. It was held in the back of a small sushi restaurant that for some reason had a stage in the back. His consolation prize was a $5 gift certificate to the building they were already in. They had to clear out to make room for the improv team coming in next.
Ace Jackson would not leave this room alive.
That was not because he hadn’t read the rules thoroughly and 3rd Prize was actually a bullet to the head. Nothing like that. Ace Jackson had been a movie “star” for a number of years and was practiced at reading contracts to the letter. No, Ace was a product of simpler time. He hadn’t counted on Endless Ocean Sushi posting a picture of the event on social media for the whole world (and the muscled enforcers of the Poppy Cola Corporation) to see.
It was not long at all before two very burly representatives of Poppy Cola’s interests swung the door open, plowed past the maître d, pushed through the tables that stood in the way of the clearest path, left a tip in the jar, kicked open the doors to the stage, spotted Ace Jackson in the crowd (he was the one who looked third most like himself), chased him on to the bathroom, threw a leg through the door to stop it from slamming, pushed their way in, grabbed Ace from a stall, wrapped their hands around his neck, choked the very life from his body until his face went red and his limbs went limp, dropped him where they stood, walked back out through the stage, punched the Camptown Racists as they asked the audience for a suggestion, left another tip in the jar, and drove back to the office to punch out using the official software to avoid a lengthy conversation with their boss the next day that no one involved wanted to have. The body of Ace Jackson was later discovered by the member of the Camptown Racists who had just done an extended Bill Clinton impression on stage decades too late.
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On a street corner in Baltimore, Maryland, there’s a Circuit Shack that’s somehow still in business. This morning its metal gate was raised and the front door opened. Its break room was commandeered for a meeting of upmost international importance and the very hungry employees of Circuit Shack #8764 were advised by management to “die mad about it.” Very quickly after opening, an ex-cop, a mother of two, a martial arts champion, and a Very Important Man made their way to the break room without even clocking out first.
Outside, a beat-up old van pulled up. It was brown all over, but on the left side it was less brown where a half-finished cover-up job left the previous owner’s unicorn rock & roll mural only partially covered in brown.
It was driven by Millie & Bobby Brown. They were the president and vice president of the Shady Oaks Homeowners Society. They had a tire swing in their back yard. They had one of those little cars kids move with their feet as an investment for future offspring. They had been married for an indeterminate amount of time. And that was all annulled the second they pulled into the Circuit Shack parking lot. They reverted to their original forms as Miles & Bobbi Brown, a brother and sister duo who were inseparable from birth. They no longer had to pretend to be in deep sexual love with each other. Bobbi’s five months-along pregnancy vanished as quickly as it had cum.
Bobbi “Millie” Brown threw away her six-month-old life as a mother-to-be/volunteer pharmacist to return to her life as a lesbian soccer star. She was the poster child for women’s soccer or, as I like to call it, soccer. She broke ground. Bobbi set records for “first this” and “first that” in almost everything she did. When she graced the cover of Full Color Sports Magazine, she was declared the First Female Soccer Athlete, First Lesbian, Person Most Resembling Actor Laura Dern, Woman Who Happened To Be The Best At Crossworld Puzzles, Person Who Happened To Be The Best At Crossworld Puzzles (different awards), and First Asian Woman…’s Friend.
Miles “Bobby” Brown had been a loyal firefighter of several decades before going into this strange brand of witness protection. He was commended in the traditional way for a firefighter, by being given bigger pants than the other folks. They would look on his large, powerful pants and bemoan the small nature of their own pants. His tremendous, ballooning trousers were the envy of the firehouse and were worn with pride until one day they were unhitched, fell to the floor with a ground shaking landing, and were never hitched up again.
In a strange twist of fate, Miles’ reassignment had him acting as an arsonist. He hated taking on the role of his former foe. Though there was some carnal joy in burning things to the ground, you could see in his soot-covered face that his heart wasn’t in it. Witnesses looked on in pity at this sad burning man. They knew he meant no harm in razing these homes to the ground and thus no police were called.
Miles and Bobbi walked their way through the Circuit Shack and sat down at the break room table. Tacit nods were exchanged with Mac, Casey, & Angie. Not a word was spoken of the last six months. The room quietly acknowledged Ace’s absence without saying a word. The Very Important Man stepped to the front of the room. All eyes fell on Him.
“Our next target,” said the Very Important Man, “is worth bringing you all back into the game. It’s the biggest and most dangerous target ever to be in our crosshairs. This is the lynchpin, folks. If we pull this off, Coney Cola’s whole operation crumbles. If we fail, it might very well doom us all. We get one shot. And we cannot miss. This,” the Very Important Man stepped back, opened up his folder, and pulled out a blown up photograph, “is our target.”
And on the break room cork board, the Very Important Man tacked a big fat fucking picture of Santa Claus. Game on.
Continued in Part II because this ran really goddamn long…