"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING DOWN THERE?" Brad bellows down the stairs. "And what the hell do you want with that stupid old watch?"
From the depths of Dan's basement, comes Troll's voice. He says, "I'm looking for spiders. I've got a plan, y'see."
Brad scratches his head. Not arriving at anything resembling a reasonable conclusion, he decides that it would behoove him to make further inquiries. "Huh?" he asks.
Troll appears at the bottom of the stairs, he is dusty and dirty and his shirt is torn. He points at the antique glow-in-the-dark wristwatch he has on his arm.
"Watch." he says, pointing at the offending chronometer.
Brad crosses his arms in front of him and says, "Very good. Care to try for the big money?"
"Old watch," Troll continues.
Brad stands and waits.
"Old glowing watch," says Troll. "Old enough that the hands are probably painted with uranium."
Brad is confused. "So what? What the fuck are you getting at?"
"So wouldn't you much rather be in a superhero movie instead of a slasher flick?"
"WHAT?"
Troll grins and wanders back into the labyrinth.
Brad stands at the top of the stairs, for a moment, with the kind of look on his face that says, "Shoot it, quick, before it grows!" Finally, he says unto the darkness, "You know, I really hope you're next. I really do." He slams the door shut and stumps off thru the kitchen toward Livingroom North. He stops at the doorway and takes in the scene.
BLuR, Dan, and Lori are working feverishly on what can only be described as an electronic nightmare. The Robotron game, Dan's computer, Chow's computer, the AST, most of Brad's stereo, and the Zenith entertainment center from out on the porch, have been mashed together into a terrifying hodgepodge of wires, solder, and scavenged circuitboards. The rest of the room is littered with olive-drab packing crates with the words "Property of USACERL -- Experimental" stenciled on them.
Brad says, "Is it ready?"
BLuR closes the front panel of the arcade game, and says, "We're in bid-ness. Let's get this bitch powered up."
The three of them swarm over the hardware, flipping switches and closing circuits. There is a brief flurry of panic as Troll's old Radio Shack Junior Scientist Electronics Kit catches fire, but it is soon extinguished.
The mass of hardware begins to hum, then to rumble, and finally it settles into an ominous high-pitched whine.
From her place on the couch beside the air conditioner, Catherine observes, "Ooh! It didn't blow up! NOW I'm impressed."
The Robotron screen slowly comes to life, but instead of the traditional playing field, it shows a crude representation of Dan's house and the immediate environs. The monitor from Dan's computer lights up next, showing the floor plan of the house, with little moving figures representing the inhabitants. The AST starts scrolling page after page of information about ammunition supplies, targeting data, and probable damage assessments. The ancient zenith lurches into life. The antique picture tube hazily shows that scene from "Aliens" where they're welding the doors shut, in preparation for a siege. Hicks pounds the door and says, "Well, that should do it!" Ripley doesn't seem convinced.
"COOL!" says BLuR. "Let's see if it works!" He grabs the joystick on the Robotron and starts moving crosshairs around the neighborhood. Before anyone can stop him, he locks onto one of the car-like objects parked out on the street. He triggers something. There is a huge *WHOOSH* from somewhere above the living room. The house is rocked by the force of a sudden detonation. On the screen, the car-icon breaks into dozens of flying pixels and goes away. "BABY!" says BLuR.
The Zenith seems to have switched from "Aliens" to "Die Hard". Theo exults, "And the quarterback is TOAST!"
"CUT IT OUT!" says Lori. "Save the ammo!"
BLuR tries valiantly to act contrite, but he is grinning too hard to pull it off. "Dude! How many points did I get?" he asks.
"Ah, negative 40, it seems." Dan answers.
"WHAT? What bullshit is that? I wasted that motherfucker!"
Brad is looking out the little window in the front door. He says, "Yeah, but it was your car, pud!"
BLuR faints.
From the couch, Catherine asks, "Now what do we do?"
"We sit. We wait for the movie to end," says Brad. He moves over and sits on the back of the couch in LivRoomSouth. He begins counting on his fingers. "OK, One, the house is secured." He glances around at the sheets of quarter-inch steel bolted over all the windows for confirmation. "Two, all the turrets are in place, and the early warning system is operational."
"And on automatic." Dan says, flipping a few switches.
"Right, so this guy, whoever he is, is going to have one hell of a time getting to us." Brad continues.
There is suddenly a loud crash from the basement. Brad puts his face in his hands and says, "And soon, SpiderTroll will come and rescue us." He sighs.
"Spider-Who?" asks Lori.
"Never mind."
"The important part is that we are now safe from the slasher," says Dan. "He'll have to get through our state-of-the- . . ." He glances at the morass surrounding the Robotron. He lamely continues, "Well, our state-of-the-weird-art defenses before he can do anything to us!"
Catherine says, "Now, wait a minute! What are we always calling the slasher a 'he'? "
Dan says, "You know, you're quite right. The slasher could be female. After all, a women could be every bit as cruel and vindictive as a man."
"COULD BE?!" Brad demands. "Whaddayamean, COULD BE?"
Lori punches Brad in the forehead, knocking him backwards onto the couch. She says, "That'll be enough of THAT conversation."
From the other side of the couch, Brad yells, "You SEE? You SEE? PROOF POSITIVE!"
Lori starts beating him with a chair.
With a bored sigh, Catherine gets up and heads down to the basement, intending to use the hot tub.
Brad begins howling, "Help! Help! I'm being oppressed!" Lori gives up.
From the basement, there are sounds of a commotion. Troll loudly declares "WHADDAYA MEAN IT'S A DUMB IDEA? OW! CUT IT OUT! HEY!" A moment later, he appears in the kitchen, looking aggrieved. The door to the basement slams loudly shut.
"I don't suppose any of you has a bat-beacon I can borrow, do you?" Troll asks.
BLuR admits that he probably does, and they proceed up the frozen avalanche of his stairs, on a foolhardy mission to search his room for it.
The rest of the group settles in. Lori and Dan commence a long, involved, and totally pointless argument about whether or not slasher-flick badguys could be equated with supervillains. Brad gives up on this line of thought almost at once, and goes into the kitchen, to try and find something to munch.
Suddenly this pleasant pastoral scene is shattered by the warning klaxons! Sirens and Whistles go off at ear-shattering levels! Lights flash! People shit! BLuR and Troll plunge down the stairs in a heap! Robby the Robot screams, "DANGER! DANGER!" The main porch battery lets go a salvo of anti-tank rounds, with a redundantly deafening roar!
Dan dashes to the Robotron, trying to figure out what's going on. From his spot on the floor, Troll yells, "Is it him?! Is it him?!
"I dunno!" Dan yells back. "There are so many explosions and stuff on the screen, I can't figure out what it's shooting at!"
Brad bursts into the room, wielding his sawed-off hockey stick, looking for someone to act as the puck.
"Wait! I can see something at ground zero!" Dan says, peering intently at the screen. "It's a box-shaped icon, of some kind!"
"What's it look like?" Brad demands, moving up to look over Dan's shoulder.
"Um, it's reddish and sort of bluish in places, and it's kinda . . . oops."
The guns fall silent. The alarms shut off. Everybody clusters, fearfully, around the Robotron game.
There, on the screen, is a small representation of a Domino's Pizza box, with a big red X superimposed on it.
Brad goes over to the door, and peers through the window. After a moment, he says, "Sorry, Greg."
There is a general moment of silence.
Then Troll says, "Do you think we can salvage the pizza? I sure am hungry."
"Me too," says BLuR.
Brad opens the door. He quickly slams it shut, as alarms start going off again. "SHUT THAT FUCKING THING OFF!" he shrieks.
Dan puts the defenses of standby. Everybody goes out to observe the remains of TheDewan.
Back in the now-deserted living room, the Robotron begins to beep, quietly. From outside, Troll says, "Do you think this is a piece of sausage, or a piece of Greg?"
On the roof, a large Badguy Detector Dish locks on target and begins to track a dark shape moving through the backyard.
Beads of sweat roll down the sides of the Robotron game in LivRoomNorth. It prints on the screen, "Guys? Hello? Hey! You shut off the system! HEY! BADGUY! DANGER! LOOK OUT!"
The part of the screen not covered by hysterical warnings, shows a small, cloaked figure moving up to the back door.
Dan's monitor logs an unauthorized use of the back door. The dark figure pops up on the floor plan and rapidly moves to the door to the kitchen. The command line starts flashing messages like, "Anti-personnel mines DISARMED! Point-defense rockets DISARMED! Well, SHIT! What am I supposed to do about this? Why the fuck are we here, if they're just gonna shut us off when the fun starts? This sucks!"
The AST has apparently suffered a complete nervous breakdown. It's playing =hop.
The Zenith switches to Star Wars. Han says, "I've got a BAD feeling about this."
From outside, Brad says, "Look, I may not know for sure what was SUPPOSED to be on this pizza, but I'm positive that THAT ain't it!"
On Dan's monitor, the ominously dark figure moves into the kitchen. After clawing through the refrigerator for a moment, it moves toward the entrance to LivNorth.
Outside, the sorting and sifting is almost complete. The remains have been divided up into three piles; the Gregbits pile, the pizzabits pile, and the undetermined-stuff- which-may-yet-be-classified-as-pizzabits- depending-on-how-hungry-we-get-later pile. Troll, Dan, Brad, Lori, and BLuR stand around the Gregbits pile, with heads bowed.
Suddenly, the quiet is broken by a siren mounted on the roof of the house. Dan says, "HOLY SHIT! DON'T MOVE!"
Not moving, Troll asks, "Why not? What's going on?"
"That's the DEFCON-3 alert! The system is live! It'll target the first person to move!"
"I thought you shut that fucking thing off!" Brad demands.
"We did!" BLuR says. "Someone must have turned it back on again!"
"What? But who. . . Catherine?" Troll speculates.
"YO! Catherine!" bellows Brad. "Cut that shit out! It's not funny!"
"QUIET!" yells Troll. "Listen!"
The group falls silent.
"Hey! The soundtrack has changed again!" Dan says.
"Shut up! Let's figure out what it is!" says Troll.
"Sounds like . . . 'Jaws'." Lori says.
Troll turns his head to look at her in disbelief. He stops suddenly, as the chaingun mounted on the porch swivels to cover him.
"That's stupid." says Brad. "We don't have an ocean, a beach, or Roy Scheider."
"Wait," says Troll. "Beach, water, ocean, water, water, . . . HOT TUB!"
The music swells suddenly! From the basement, there comes a short, gurgled scream, and then silence. The soundtrack returns to its previous taste in gory music.
"OH, SHIT! HE'S INSIDE! HE GOT CATHERINE!" BLuR screams.
"FUCK THAT!" Brad interjects. "He's got control of the defenses!"
The rocket launcher on the roof turns to cover Brad. A little red dot appears on his forehead.
There is a long, tense moment.
Really long, and really really tense.
You wouldn't believe the tension.
Eventually, Troll says quietly, "Now what?"
Dan replies, "I'm open to suggestions."
"OK, there's a way out," says Lori. "We designed the system to take out a single slasher, so we set it up to concentrate on a single target at a time."
"I don't like the way this sounds," says Troll.
She continues, "So if one of us were to suddenly run around, the rest of us could probably get away."
Troll says, "Now, when you say 'run around', you really MEAN 'run around and get blown away like a bug on a windshield', right?"
"Um, yeah. More or less."
"Neat. Your idea, you go first."
"Forget it."
BLuR says, "I nominate Brad."
"I second the nomination," says Lori.
"Oh yeah? Why don't you come on over here and make me?" Brad suggests.
No one takes him up on it, tho.