This story is technically part two. I think it can be read on its own, but you can scope out the first part in a previous email.
Who: Poppy International Strike Squad
Where: The North Pole
What: Assassinate Santa Claus
Why: As the face of the Coney Cola corporation, removing Santa Claus from the picture would (in theory) destabilize the entire operation
When: Right now
How: Read on…
There has been much speculation as to what happens when Santa Claus dies. He’s never done it before. Perhaps even he doesn’t know. If sitcoms are to be believed, his wife has certainly fantasized about it a lot.
Of course, there are prevailing theories. One is that if Santa dies, he simply dies. No more presents, but the world keeps spinning as it always has. This theory has been largely dismissed as boring and is usually subsumed within any one of a hundred more interesting visions for the Death of Claus. The most fanciful and expansive theories paint Jolly Old Saint Nick as the lynchpin of either the world of magic or the very idea of cold.
In one case, Santa’s demise ceases the existence of magic. Then would crumble all the uses of magic in our time. Rabbits would no longer be pulled out of hats. Airplanes would fall out of the sky. We would cease being able to clack two sticks and yarn together and end up with a scarf.
In the other, his passing would melt the polar caps. The world would slowly flood and never again would there be a White Christmas. This second theory is, of course, nonsense. Santa won’t melt the polar caps. Billionaires will.
The answer to this age-old question is what the Poppy International Strike Squad would soon find out.
9-year-old Casey Riggs hopped along in the footprints of his adult teammates, using the path they cut to move through a snowfall as tall as he. Riggs came up just to the ribs on most of his associates. Their heads poked up above the trench they carved through the snowy expanse at the top of the world. Casey saw nothing but the backside of Miles Brown and the big open sky. Being at the back of the pack had its advantages. He was not facing the worst of the harsh winter winds. But he was getting very tired of the view of a fireman from behind.
That fireman was Miles Brown. Technically, ex-fireman. Technically also, ex-arsonist. Still technically ex-husband to his sister, Bobbi, but that’s such a long story and you probably wouldn’t be interested in that. Miles’ life and identity had been so in flux for as long as he could remember, it was hard to keep his bearings. To either side, he just got a blank expanse of white. In front of him he stared at the back of his sister/ex-wife’s head.* All directions were similarly demoralizing.
*I don’t yet know how much of this story is going to be about a guy pining for his sister and for that I apologize.
Bobbi Brown (no relation) was by far the fittest member of P.I.S.S. and because of that she brought up the middle. A legend in women’s soccer (aka soccer), her body had been drilled into statuesque shape by the world’s game, the sport of the people, le grande goalkeeping, the best way to get your kids out of the house on a Saturday morning. In this way she could pull along the stragglers behind and push on the adventurers ahead. She would carry this mission on her rock-solid calves.
Ex-cop Mac Fishman demanded to take second because he wanted to be important but didn’t want to lug around all the heavy equipment. He currently sported a mustache merkin. His upper lip had been without its furry friend for too long and he was desperate to get back to The Way Things Were. Like any good self-appointed securities officer on an elite hit squad, Mac was currently searching the area for exits. This being the arctic, their available escape routes were a blank expanse of snow of every direction.
Angela Horchatta, being a mother of twins with a full-time corporate job, was multitasking to a staggering degree and getting no credit from anyone. She was driving away snow with a heat blower strapped around her like a papoose. She was repairing Casey’s glove that he’d ripped on the landing helicopter. She was cutting up orange slices for a tasty treat the next time they made camp. And still P.I.S.S. demanded more, more, more!
So in this way and in this order, the tight-knit group of killers set their sights on Santa’s workshop.
Miles said, “We need to reach the Gumdrop Forest by sundown or we won’t have a camp warm enough to survive the night.” They had landed that morning and it had been a full day of covering ground. The chopper had dropped them off as far away as it could while still making their survival on the right side of likely. They’d eaten “on the road” as Angela had phrased it, only pulling over to pee when absolutely necessary. When asked why he didn’t pee before they left the Gingerbread House, Casey had responded that he “didn’t have to go then.”
“I’m working on it,” Angela said. She swept the heat blower through another layer of ice and snow while packing Casey’s lunch for tomorrow and stepping on a LEGO. “If anyone else would like a turn with this thing, Mama could use a break.” There were no volunteers.
A few more hours put them at the Gumdrop Forest just ahead of sundown but still not satisfactory for the men in the group who did very little to help.
The Gumdrop Forest was only partially constructed of gumdrops, which Angela marked as false advertising that would “definitely come up” on her anonymous Yelp review. The eponymous gumdrops mostly took the place of rocks. It was a good deal short of spectacular. They mostly functioned as regular rocks, but with a sprinkling of sugar. Nothing to write home about. The trees were candy canes with peppermint bark. Yes, yes, very clever. There was very little fauna, and what there was seemed to mostly consistent of very normal fauna but fatter from their largely sugar diet. Obese squirrels fell from trees. They struggled to climb back up, the lards. Casey had expected something out of his favorite film, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, and had been found wanting.
They found a nice clearing to make camp. Mac and Miles argued about the order of operations for the team tent. Miles was insistent that one nails in the stakes before raising the poles, whereas Mac was insistent that Miles was a maniacal sisterfucker. This was one of the rare arguments where everyone was right.
P.I.S.S. cooked up five meal tablets in boiling water until they somehow became filet mignon. The bedrolls were unfurled and everyone wrapped themselves in them. They gathered around the fire because everyone else was doing it and no one wanted to be “that guy.” They ate their fancy MREs mostly in silence. Mac wandered off to find a bathroom. With the narc gone, Bobbi spoke up.
“Are we just not going to talk about Ace?” Her teammates looked harder at their food than ever before. If you didn’t read “Cola Wars – The Cover of Night” and don’t know who Ace Jackson is, Bobbi is about to explain it. “He was our teammate for years. America’s #1 Most Rented Action Star. The Bobbi Brown of the straight-to-DVD market. He was with us through everything. We broke into Archibald Waddle’s house together. We got our barrels to the head of the CEO of Coney Cola. Claus stopped us but we were moments away from ending this war. Then we go into hiding and he never comes out. And we’re not even going to talk about it?” Somewhere in the middle of this, Bobbi had stood up. It hadn’t made the impression she had hoped for, but it was too late to stop. “We all know he’s dead. And I’m betting it wasn’t the opposition that did it.”
Casey stared into his filet like it was a portal to a place where this conversation wasn’t happening. Miles was torn between whether to support his corporate country or his sister/lover.
Angela said, “We know.” She looked up from stoking the fire while also building a diorama for Casey’s science fair project. “But what do you want us to do about it? We took an oath to protect Poppy Cola and its citizens.”
“Well our country didn’t take an oath to protect us.”
Bobbi dropped her blanket and filet mignon. “I’m gonna go make sure Mac didn’t fall in.”
She followed Mac’s jackbooted footsteps away from the clearing to a spring of hot molasses where Mac had, in fact, fallen in and was drowning.
“Shit.” Bobbi reached out for Mac, but his arms were trapped in the horrible blackness below. He could only struggle as his neck vanished beneath the surface. It was boiling hot to the touch. Bobbi couldn’t hope to pull Mac out without serious injury or getting herself pulled in. If she ran back to P.I.S.S., Mac would have lungs full of molasses by the time she returned. They both understood this without saying a word.
Still, Bobbi made a grab for Mac’s head. An incredible amount of pressure was holding him in. She tugged at his face but came back with almost nothing.
She sat down by the spring’s edge and looked as another of her closest friends would be lost forever. Bobbi fed her friend a bit of donut from her pocket. At the end of your life, stereotypes just don’t matter anymore.
“What happened, buddy?”
“I was…” By now Mac was almost sunk. He spit out some molasses as it crept into his mouth. He tilted his head back to have a few more seconds. “I was taking a leak in here. And I looked down at the ripples… I couldn’t believe it. I saw… I saw my first Christmas. Mom was there. Mom 2, too. We were so… together.” And Mac vanished forever.
Bobbi walked back through the falling, sugar-crusted snow to the P.I.S.S. camp. She planted her feet. In time, they were all looking up at her as she clutched Mac’s mustache merkin in her hand. She threw it on the flames and retired to the sack. Miles followed her and attempted to comfort her with the warm cradle of his body but Bobbi only scooted away.
The next morning, they packed up camp and moved toward the sunrise. Santa’s workshop was on the other side of a crest of snowy hills. Another day’s walk would put them in his doorway.
Casey was with Angela at the front of the pack. He cleared debris out of her way. This gave her a clear path with the heat machine. Surrogate Mama’s Little Helper.
You see, Casey had lost two surrogate fathers and his marriage in a very short span of time and needed some simple tasks to distract himself from thinking too hard about what happens when people die.
He asked the question anyway.
“Well,” Angela said, the word that begins all answers to questions like this, “nobody really knows. A lot of us have our ideas. I believe in some kind of God. I want my kids to as well.” Casey moved a big rock out of her way. “It doesn’t matter which one. I don’t really care. I just know that if I didn’t believe in there being something after all this, I would never get out of bed again.”
Casey coughed. “Do you think we’ll go down below for the bad stuff we’ve done?”
“I don’t care so much about that. Heaven, Hell… Just as long as we go somewhere.” Angela could see the look in Casey’s eyes and her brain ran through several different versions of damage control before settling on, “I’m sure you and me will be together.”
This was the closest Casey would come to feeling good all day.
Behind them, Miles and Bobbi were locked in stony silence. Miles was waiting for Bobbi to say something. Bobbi was hoping Miles wouldn’t say anything at all.
“Sorry about Mac,” said Miles.
“Be sorry for yourself, too,” Bobbi said. “He was both of our teammate. This shouldn’t just be on me and the kid.”
Miles was thrown. “Mac and I never really got along. I’m just trying to help you.”
“The lesbian revolutionary and the by-the-books cop were never best friends, either.” At this point, Angela and Casey were playing a counting game so as to not listen to these two unless it was absolutely necessary. “But he was our teammate. And now what is he?”
“Dead?”
Miles was very lucky to not have his ass stamped in that very second.
A few hours later, P.I.S.S. crested the top of the hill. The golden rays of morning cast a dazzling shine on a pure white bed of snow. A scene so perfectly serene and only a handful of people through the whole course of history had seen anything like it. It was terrible.
Down in the valley below was Santa’s workshop. At the back of the compound was a tidy little cottage. Before that was a massive workshop. There was constant motion and the loud whir of production. Raw materials came in one side, finished toys came out the other.* Before even that and to the left were a massive set of stables. To the right, a Christmas tree farm. Either the farm or the stables would take one right to the workshop. They were both equally bad options. The obvious solution would be…
*These toys were, of course, nondescript wooden horses, toy soldiers, and sewn up dollies because even Santa Claus hates getting sued.
“We split up.” Bobbi adjusted her binoculars. Miles immediately called Dibs. “I guess Miles and I will head through the stables. Ang and Casey, take to the trees.” They divided their food, aid, and ammunition. On the way down the mountain, the party spilt up. And it would never be reunited again.
Miles & Bobbi Brown primed their weapons for the first time on this mission. They both carried one (1) Poppy Semi-Automatic (PSA)—6.5 pounds, a bandolier of cola-point munitions rounds that explode on impact—10 pounds, one (1) leg-holstered sidearm with one (1) clip of cola-point rounds—6 pounds, one (1) “Go To Heaven Free” explosive device intended only for last stands, and two (2) “Cola Boil” grenades that explode with a murky brown sludge that dissolve whatever it touches—8 total pounds. They carried light, just what they would need to survive. They left a knapsack of food on the ridge. If their mission was successful, they could just raid Santa’s pantry. If they were unsuccessful, they wouldn’t really be eating ever again.
They waited for nightfall, where they were least likely to stand out like colored blotches on the pure white landscape. The Browns slid down the crested hill to the backdoor of the stables quick as they came. Peering through the slats in the wooden door, Bobbi saw nothing. She kicked the right door open quick* and they shuffled in.
*There is, of course, the common misconception that opening a door slowly makes it open more silently. Those that have opened doors in their lives know this to be complete poppycock. They make that loud creeeeeeak sound when you open them slowly. Your body’s instincts say to open it slowly but they’re always quieter in a controlled, speedy push. I feel like I’m always having to explain myself here, even though the results speak for themselves. I am going to SHOUT from the ROOFTOPS that if you want to BREAK INTO MY APARTMENT AND KILL ME that you should open the door FAST so as to not alert me to your murderous ends!
As the cliché goes, things were quiet. Too quiet. There was nary a security guard or sexy stable boy to be found. Just the asynchronous, rhythmic breathing of a stable of sleeping reindeer. It was pitch black. The Browns dared not shine a light for fear of awaking one of these huge sleigh beasts.
Miles did, however, open his big mouth. “I feel like you’ve been avoiding me.”
“We’re partnered up on a suicide mission. During which I will need you to shut up so we don’t wake these big things and they don’t gore us to death.” Bobbi crept close to one wall of pens. She listened at each one to check for a reindeer inside. Four for four. “Just keep it together for a little while.”
“But what if we don’t have a little while?”
“Then when you die, you can tell God that you’re still mad about it.”
“Oh, come on!” Miles’ cry echoed through the barn. If the rhythmic breathing of reindeers in sleep continued, Bobbi couldn’t hear it through all the blood pounding in her ears.
“How
dare
you?” Bobbi wasn’t going to stop the mission to turn on Miles, but lucky enough he and the back door were in the same direction. It would be inefficient not to turn on him. In a harsh whisper she said, “We are in the most dangerous, high pressure situation of our lives and you dare make all of this about you and whatever you’re going through right now? I’m trying to make sure no more of us get killed doing this. What are you doing to help that?”
“I’m a man, Bob,” said Miles. “I have needs.”
“’Needs?’” Bobbi kept moving forward. She walked right past Miles. He turned to face her as she kept doing her job. “We all got needs. Last night I jacked off in a snowstorm.” Bobbi checked the periphery of the doorway. “Get back to me when you’re that desperate.”
“I am that desperate, Bob.” Miles’ eyes teared up in the coldest, dumbest place to do a thing like that. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m so tired of this.” Bobbi read this as his being tired of covert ops missions under the cover of night in inhospitable conditions, understandably not guessing that her blood brother was in love with her.
“Me, too, Miles.” Miles perked up. “Sick of the lies.” Miles’ eyes got wide. “Poppy is a cruel corporate country to work for. It was sick of them to put us in hiding that long together.” Miles’ whole life was dashed before his eyes.
You see, this last sentence, “Miles’ whole life was dashed before his eyes,” was a play on words. For, yes, Miles’ ideations at finally convincing his lesbian sister to “just give him a chance,” as impossible as they always were, were indeed trampled in that moment. So, too, was Miles trampled by Dasher the reindeer. The big brute (in this instance meaning Dasher) had been startled awake by an impotent man’s cry of anguish and was none too happy that there were smells he didn’t recognize creeping in his barn. Being the top-billed reindeer of the gang always made Dasher very protective of his coworkers. He bore the heavy responsibility on his antlers. And now he, having barreled over the big brute (in this instance meaning Miles), bore his heavy antlers into the intruder, hoisting the writhing body up as a warning to any other quieter intruders that might still be lurking.
Bobbi gazed on in horror as the huge beast tossed her brother’s corpse aside like it was nothing. She took a second to let it all in, grabbed a Cola Boil grenade from her holster, pulled the pin, threw it at her brother’s killer, and ran like hell.
Across the way, Angela and Casey slipped their way through the field labeled the “XMAS Tree Farm.” The impression Angela got from looking at the sign was the X was used for expediency rather than messiah erasure so nobody reading should lose their head. Though there appeared to be no one around, the duo still played it safe. They kept to the shadows. You can’t be too careful. At the North Pole, one never knows if an innocent candy cane is going to become a deadly weapon.
“Shh,” Angela hushed. Casey hadn’t done anything.
Row by row, they made their way to the far side of the arboretum. They stayed hidden behind a large spruce as a snowmobile roared by but, like, an old-fashioned kind of wooden one.
“It’s a straight shot to the workshop,” Angela said. She peered through the pine to the warm glow of their target. “If we slip in the back, it’d be as simple as disguising you as an elf. Or maybe finding two giant presents to hide in. It’s just like back in Viet—”
“—Shh.” Casey pressed a finger to his lips and turned to face Angela. “Do you hear that?”
The din of the pole had risen as they crossed compound. What started as the hum of machinery and elfery hard at work had grown. It was too loud now to focus clearly. The relaxing wash of sound had grown erratic. Clangs, bops, bangs, zaps, biffs, and krakathooms! Then the buddabuddabudda of gunfire. And the sinister tinkle of sleigh bells. Someone was giving Santa’s staff hell, and if they didn’t get in there it likely wouldn’t be for long. Casey ran headlong through the backdoor of the workshop. Angela hustled close behind.
She followed Casey up a set of stairs to a balcony overlooking the main work area. He was jogging just out of reach. Angela wanted to venture no deeper into the workshop than necessary and certainly not at this clip, but kids have a habit of taking your plans and clogging the toilet with them. The factory floor was being ripped apart by activity. The duo on the catwalk was dodging the debris. A falling rafter cut the pathway in two. Angela stopped just short of being crushed, watching on as Casey kept apace clear on the other side.
“Casey!” she cried. “Stay safe. I’m coming.”
Angela put her shoulder to the fallen log. Even with the incredible muscles gifted by motherhood, the beam barely budged. She was trapped. Casey was on his own.
Below, Bobbi fought for their lives. She knocked off a battalion of elves single-handedly. She ripped down an antler from one of the mounted reindeer on the wall. She whipped it round like a bladed fan, slicing the nose from one elf, then turning her body to put a deep cut through the neck of another. She buried it in the skull of the floor foreman when he came to save his men. She grabbed a nondescript wooden train. Bobbi wound it round her like a flail. She took out another comer. The last of the elves made a mad dash for her with a toy knife, but Bobbi whipped it round its legs like a bolo. It was an unheralded spectacle. Her finest performance.
She only stopped when there came a familiar “Ho ho ho.”
Bobbi pulled a combat knife from her side and spun to see the target standing there, rosy cheeked, belly full of jelly… Undeniably, this was Santa Claus, the man they’d come here to kill.
“Well, you must have been mighty naughty to make it this far. All the good little boys and girls freeze on the mountain.” Santa stepped over one of his fallen subordinates as he took his first steps toward Bobbi. “Such a waste. You would have made a fine elf.”
“I would never be one of your slaves.”
“Ho ho ho, like the military gives you so much free will,” Santa said. He shook his head. “You still have so much to learn. And not much life left to learn it.”
Bobbi shifted the knife in her hand, reemphasizing it. “I’ve got you dead to rights, Claus.” A dull wheeze exited Santa’s mouth.
“I tried to laugh there, but nothing came out. It’s just not funny.” The twinkle in Santa’s eye pointed to the catwalk, where Mrs. Claus had Angela half-shoved in a sack. “If your friend goes in that magic bag, she’s not coming out. So why don’t you put down the knife and we can end this peaceably?”
“You’ll let us go?”
“Ho ho NO,” Santa shook his head. It made the sound of sleigh bells. A light dusting of snow fell from his crown. “You’re going to stay here in Santa’s workshop and make nondescript trains and dollies and nutcrackers until you’ve paid for the damage you’ve done. Should be a short thousand or so Christmases.” Santa pulled from his pocket a green elf’s cap, with Bobbi’s name embroidered on the brim.
“How did you have that ready?”
“My dear, nobody sneaks up on Santa Claus. Human action is predetermined. When you’re born, you’re placed on either the naughty list or the nice list and that’s where you stay. It’s out of your hands.”
Angela was now but a head sticking out of a bag.
“Let her go.”
“Let your convictions go, dear.”
Bobbi wiped some elf blood from her eye. It was not the reason she was tearing up. “I just want to go home.”
“Ho ho home. You are ‘home.’ You’re home for the next thousand years.” Bobbi locked eyes with Angela, who was struggling against the might of Mrs. Claus.
“Bobbi,” said Angela through gritted teeth, “I would really like to see my kids again.” Bobbi gulped, swallowing her last bit of pride. “Please.” Bobbi cast her eyes up to look for Heaven and found only Casey. She had planned on coming to Jesus for the first time, but this little boy pulling the tab on a Go To Heaven Free explosive device was the closest she’d ever feel to religious. He nodded. The GTHF device is a mission ender for everyone within a quarter mile, and it was currently falling from above.
If you’d like you can picture the following massive, black out, megaton, workshop-decimating, party-killing explosion in slow motion, set to your own favorite version of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.”
When the blast was done, there was barely anything left.
Most walls had crumbled. The rest were aflame. The toys in Santa’s workshop had become projectile weapons unto themselves. Nothing remained of Mrs. Claus but a bonnet spinning in the wind. If the magic bag still existed, it had been blown clear to the other side of the North Pole. Casey was a shadow burned to a chunk of debris. Bobbi opened her eyes. She was staring up at a cloudless sky. It felt like her lungs were on fire. Her body definitely was. She tried for a deep breath but every part of her hurt. Her arctic gear was burning away and the North Pole becoming far too inhospitable.
From next to her came the jingle of sleigh bells. And the sputtered breathing of a man coughing up blood. It was hard to tell where Santa’s clothes ended and his bodily fluids began. The easiest way to determine the two was that he was only wearing the clothes intentionally.
“I suppose,” Santa huffed, “you win.”
Santa clutched Bobbi’s combat knife. It was sticking out of his chest. Claus disappeared in a cloud of twinkling fairy lights.
And Bobbi was overcome.
Uncontrollably, she began to shake. Her body was attacking her. She felt she was about to vomit but it wasn’t bile that was charging up through her. It was magic. As if a fountain of power had turned on inside her. She reached for the ground beside her but it was now far below as Bobbi began to float. Her body was expanding. Was she becoming a balloon? Was this one last trick by Claus? Her face itched something terrible. She scratched and found a face covered in bristly white hairs.
Bobbi reached for her sidearm, hoping she could flush this all away before it stuck. But it was too late. Where once she carried a leg-holstered sidearm with cola-point rounds she found only an ice cold glass bottle of Coney Cola.
The new Santa Claus fell gently back to the Earth. They were home. And Christmas was a short six months away. It sneaks up on yah.
They would have to rebuild. There was still so much work to do.
Support these stories on Patreon.
Check out our new show Advanced Community Studies, about Community!