GITJ Post 388: Plan B

“During the early days, the resistant cells that were forming had their successes and failures. Mostly failures.”

- Lakshmi Vallurupalli

“Alright, well…this sucks,” the gray man groaned, running a hand through thinning hair. They’d assembled on this early evening as an emergency meeting of Resistance Cell IL-5. “Does it have to be during dinner time?” he heard his wife’s scolding echoing through his head along with his pitiful response: “S-sorry honey w-w-we’ll make it quick.”

He knew the place still reeked of cat pee, even though Ned hadn’t arrived yet. Buzzcut was here, Moustache was here. And, of course, Anderson, who had basically been living in hi- well, his wife’s family’s basement - on the threadbare couch for some time now. Honestly, he was starting to wear out his welcome.

“Yeah, sorry, it does stink, I really thought it would work,” Anderson lamented. He was standing at the pool table, the center of their makeshift command center. It had been Anderson and Gray Man’s plan to get the lawyers involved. To get their contacts in the court system active. To avoid any unnecessary violence in separating the “primary targets” as Buzzcut liked to call them

“Sounds to me like them suits crashed and burned,” came Buzzcut, the ex-Coast Guard petty officer with more self-satisfaction in his voice than necessary. “Lawyers,” he grumbled, stroking the firearm at his side, “paper pushers, poindexters.” Buzzcut had been frustrated with the whole process. All this time it took to organize the warrants and writs, and now? “Still SUSFU. Big waste. Total burn bags.”

Anderson bit his tongue. All this guy’s military jargon was getting on his nerves. He knew it annoyed the others, too, except Ned. And of course all the grunts. They ate it up.

“Where’s Fineman now? The other two?” the gray man inquired, asking about the attorneys.  He stepped over to the big cork board Buzzcut had stuck to the wall. Their makeshift conspiracy board had a number of photos of the players at FHMA  stuck to it with pushpins. Red thread ran between them, designating and labeling relationships. “Shouldn’t we, like, debrief them?” He shivered, looking up at the image of Mellissa  Monroe, the major player. There was something about her…she just…

“I guess all three of them are home,” Anderson answered, watching the gray man reach out and straighten the picture of the Monroe woman on its thumbtack. “They sound a little freaked out.”

Moustache really hadn’t said much, since he’d arrived.

“Well, we should get them here, debrief them,”  Buzzcut said, acting as if he’d just come up with the idea himself. “But in the meantime we need to plan our next operation.” Stepping over to the conspiracy board, he motioned to the gray man. “Gimme that ink stick.”

The gray man picked up a red marker, handed it to him.

“The way I see it,” Buzzcut began, running a hand across his close-shaven pate, “is we need a new approach.”

Thanks Captain Obvious, the gray man thought, shuddering as Buzzcut began to draw red targets across the faces of the women on the conspiracy board. He’d spent time (maybe too much time, truth be told) curating those photos, carefully selecting them from the girls’ instagram feeds (which he, uh, researched vigorously).

“Wh-what are you thinking?” Anderson asked, unsure if he wanted to know the answer.

“Well, ‘we’re going to need guns, a lot of guns’,” Buzzcut replied, dropping into his action hero voice and - like he tended to do - misquoting one of his favorite old movies. He continued to draw concentric red circles on the faces of the women.

The gray man shuddered. This was all beginning to get very real. Yes, Buzzcut was ex-military (Coast Guard…) as were a bunch of the grunts. The gray man liked his guns - he had a pretty good collection, now - but he’d never actually used one on another person. He didn’t think any of them had. He watched Buzzcut put an extra pushpin into Melissa Monroe’s photo, right at the center of the target he’d drawn.

“‘Okay, this chick is gonna be toast!’” Buzzcut laughed, again murdering yet another movie quote.

The gray man watched Buzzcut as he continued to stare at the photo, somehow managing to ignore her gloriously large breasts and perfect smile as he plotted their next move. “So what’s it going to be? This new plan?”

“I dunno but it’s gonna need a real cool name,” Buzzcut answered, pondering his options. This was it, this was his chance, he thought. He’d always dreamed of a moment like this, preparing to lead a group of his guys into combat. Suddenly he was the leader, and everyone would do what he told them to do. So, yeah, he needed a plan. And a plan name. “We’re going to call it…”

A pause as he turned, putting the cap back on the marker with a dramatic <click>.

“…Plan B.”

===============================================

thx to RiF for editing, proofreading, all that :)