Every Day is Like Doomsday (15 page)

“Wake up, Innya,” said a voice that was far too
cheerful for that time of morning. Not that Innya knew
what time it was but she guessed that since the voice had
woken her out of a deep sleep it was far too early for her.

“Yes, Innya, wake up,” said a voice that was almost
the same as the first voice, except that it issued from the
air somewhere down by her legs.

Inna opened her eyes and immediately scowled to
see The Twins hovering over her bed like giant, grinning
statues erected to the G.O.D. of all things brainless.“How
did you get in my room?” she demanded. She wanted to
sound angry and powerful but she just sounded sleepy,
which made her angrier.

“The Dean let us in,” said one of The Twins.
“What do you want?” she asked and sat up.
“The Dean just announced that today is the day…”

Innya jumped out of bed, grabbed her black skinny
jeans and pulled them up quickly, inadvertently flashing
her pale ass to The Twins, who both gasped in unison.

“What? You act as if you’ve never seen an ass before,”
said Innya with a grin as she sat on the bed to pull on her
black, knee-high combat boots. Shocking them took back
any of the power she might have lost by them waking her
by surprise.

Innya checked herself out in the mirror. The black
tank top she slept in really showed off two of her best
assets and considering it had a built-in bra… “Nope, I’m
good. Let’s go.” She grabbed her heavy black coat off of
the coat hook by the door on her way out.

Dopple was just coming into her dorm building as
they were coming out. Innya almost bumped into him
but danced out of the way just in time to send him stumbling. He nearly dropped the two black messenger bags
he was carrying but cradled them in his arms instead of
protecting himself. Consequently, Dopple landed hard on
the industrial tile on his elbows and knees.

Dopple regained his footing, brushed the dust off
of his black slacks, and said in Innya’s voice, “Bitch.”
“I accept your assessment of my character, nut job,
now let’s get Elliot.” She turned to The Twins, “How long
do we have before we have to be at the bank?”
“We’re not supposed to go to the bank,”said Twin One.
“Nope,”said Twin Two,“We are to meet at the front
gate in half an hour. They’re going to load us onto buses.”
Twin One picked up right where Twin Two left off,
“And only when we get just outside of town will they tell
us which group is assigned to which bank. There were so
many groups this time…”
Twin Two finished, “…That they decided to break
them up into three days because there are only five banks
in town.”
“And we got the first shift?” Innya asked with a
smile, “Excellent.”
“It was unavoidable,” said Twin One, not sharing in
Innya’s pleasure at being among the first to complete the
exercise, or at least not on the surface. “Each group has an
hour from the moment thy step off the bus to finish their
heist and return.”
Innya looked back and forth between The Twins.
Their large, almost perfectly round eyes stared blankly
back at her and she briefly imagined them as fish, surprised by the little plastic castle every time they swam by
it. But then she shook her head. “Can’t just one of you
finish a thought, please?”
“Never tried it,” said Twin One.
“Don’t care to,” said Twin Two.
“Wanna kill myself,” said Innya. Without another
word she turned on her heels and trudged into the snow
towards Elliot’s Dorm.
When they arrived the door was half-open and
Elliot was already pulling on his boots. He looked up
as they entered, smiled shyly at Innya, gave a small head
jerk to the Twins, who waved at him like idiot children,
and completely ignored Dopple. Innya thought his jealousy was cute but at the moment he wasn’t being paid
to be cute. Actually, he wasn’t being paid at all. None of
them were; a situation she hoped to have remedied by
this afternoon.
“You already knew? Who woke you up?”Innya asked.
“Brain came to get Vlad and they left a few minutes
ago,”said Elliot sleepily.“I’m surprised you didn’t run into
them when you came in.”
“Thank G.O.D. for that,” Innya muttered, then
added, “So are you ready for your Villainous debut?”
Elliot shrugged. “As ready as I’ll ever be, I suppose.”
Elliot patted his coat pockets.
“What’s in your pockets?” asked Innya, narrowing
her eyes in suspicion.
“Nothing,” he said far too quickly. Innya knew
instantly that he was lying and if they hadn’t been in such
a hurry she’d have manipulated him into telling her what
he was carrying that he shouldn’t be.
“You have your good luck dead phone on you?” she
asked and Elliot just glared at her. “Fine,” she said, making a note to give him grief about it later, “Let’s go rob
us a bank.”
They took the stairs because the already slow elevator was made even slower by the fact that so many of the
students were leaving at once and so many of them were
too lazy to walk down four flights of stairs. Instead they
packed into the elevator like sardines or like clowns in a
tiny car.
As they made their way towards the entrance of the
VA,Twin One asked Elliot,“What happened to your face?”
“Did Red get you?” asked Twin Two.
Elliot opened his mouth, not exactly sure what to
say, but Innya saved him from having to actually come up
with something by jumping into the conversation. “Elliot
fought Mr. Magnificent last night. If you think Elliot
looks bad you should see Mr. Magnificent.” She added
to the others, “Hurry it up, people!” and surged forward.
Elliot caught up with her and asked softly, “We’re
going to go over the plan again once we get on the bus,
right?”
“Of course,” she said, “I can’t risk you screwing
up. You are going to be playing a vital role in this whole
thing. Still, don’t fuck this up because if you fuck up, we
lose. And then I will fuck you up.”
“Got it,” said Elliot, “And thanks back there.”
Innya nodded and looked over at Elliot as he
attempted to arrange his face into something hard and
emotionless and she recognized the fear in his eyes. Their
plan was solid. It wasn’t likely that things could go badly
but there were Villains involved so it was always possible.
Innya hoped that she and Elliot were at least out of the
building if that happened.
Her thoughts stalled… Her
and
Elliot? Well, she
told herself, a woman is entitled to have emotions. At
the moment they were fixated on the semi-train-wreck
of a human being walking beside her. But the emotions
were valid so she was determined just to ride them out.
Or maybe she should just ride him until they went away.
Or whatever.
Focus, Innya, focus. Robbery. Villainy. Heist. She
put on her game face, which was a lot like her normal face
but with colder eyes.

“You ready for this, noob?” Dopple asked in his
normal, creepy monotone.
Elliot had been disappointed when he entered the
bus to see that other than nicer upholstery and bars on
the windows it was a lot like a tour bus he had taken during a school-sponsored trip to Washington D.C. last year.
He had expected seats crusted with dried blood, prison
guards to keep the Villains in line and padlocked cages in
the back for when the guards weren’t enough.
The seats on the bus were closer quarters than Elliot
would have liked, which meant that he had to sit far too
close to Dopple to be comfortable. As he tried to get situated he noticed Red, Ventriloquist and Sonic climbing
onto the bus.Elliot tried to make himself smaller in his seat
and was grateful when they took seats closer to the front.
Elliot glanced at Innya, who didn’t seem to be paying attention to anything but a packet of papers in front of
her. As they had entered the bus the Sergeant had handed
each team a manila envelope. Inside were barely readable
photocopies of the building schematics for the five banks
involved in this exercise. Since they wouldn’t know which
bank they had been assigned until the midterm began
Innya seemed to be trying to commit all of the building
plans to memory during the short drive into town.
Elliot enjoyed watching her concentrate. She bit her
bottom lip. Tiny wrinkles appeared between her brows as
she scowled at the papers. He felt sorry for the papers; he
knew what it felt like to be the focus of Innya’s scowl. It
wasn’t pleasant.
With a squeak and a hiss the bus slowed to a stop,
interrupting Elliot’s wandering thoughts and bringing
them back into sharp focus. For the time being he was a
Villain. And his homework today: to rob a bank. Crap, he
thought again. I mean ‘shit,’ he corrected himself.
The Sergeant stood up at the front of the bus and
called out, “All right you worthless pieces of garbage. This
is your chance to prove that we are not wasting our time,
our money and our patience on your sorry carcasses.”
The first wave of robbers included Red’s group,
another group of kids Elliot had never seen and a group of
girls led by an angry-looking, dark-haired girl in navy blue
sweatpants named, from what Elliot could gather, Polly.
As Polly passed by Elliot Innya leaned over and whispered into Elliot’s ear, “Make sure you stay away from her.”
“Why?” Elliot asked.
“That’s Polly Marie Smith,” said Twin One.
“P.M.S.” said the other.
Upon seeing what must have been a horrified look on
Elliot’s face, Innya added, “They don’t know if her parents
gave her that name on purpose or if she chose that name
once she started going absolutely ape shit once a month.”
“Well, that’s just really unfortunate,” said Elliot,
watching the back of the linebacker-sized girl exiting
the bus.
“Yes, it’s oh-so-tragic,” said Innya, “Now shut up
and look at these plans. We have to be ready for any contingency.”
As one they all bent over the building plans, not
talking, just staring. Elliot didn’t even know what he
was looking at after a while but it didn’t matter because
it seemed like only a few minutes later that Sergeant
called out, “Elliot, Doppleganger, Innya, Wonder Twins!
National Bank and Trust is your target. Clock starts now!”
Elliot froze. Innya took his arm and hauled him out
of his seat. The group stepped off the bus and without
any discussion among them immediately started running
toward the bank.
Innya carried a backpack that bounced lightly on
her ass as she ran and Elliot concentrated on that instead
of the fact that his chest was burning because he wasn’t
used to the exertion of running, let alone running in the
snow while carrying a duffel bag full of safe-cracking tools.
His bag slapped against his ribs as he ran and he wanted
to stop and adjust it, but he knew if he did Dopple would
overtake him and then tease him about it, probably in his
own voice. So he kept running. He was grateful that he
was wearing his body armor or his ribs would probably
have been much more injured. Maybe Innya would kiss
his bruises after all of this was over. On second thought…
probably not.
Innya led them to the bus stop across the street
from the bank. In the middle of the day, in the snow, the
bus stop was deserted and sheltered from the elements
so they set down their bags and started to unload their
equipment onto the green plastic-coated, metal seats.
“So, Elliot, tell me what you’re going to do,” Innya
said as she handed him a small, cylindrical, metal device
that resembled a ball-point pen. Elliot tucked it into
his coat pocket. The others worked to get what looked
like an old, oversized laptop out of its carrying case. She
didn’t bother to help them so Elliot didn’t offer either. He
wouldn’t have even known what to do anyway and would
probably just end up breaking something.
“Run it again,” barked Innya to get his attention.
Elliot took a deep breath and started. “I’m to go
into the bank first. I’ll use my trusty GPS laser pen to
pinpoint the guards and the safe, though to be honest I
have no idea how that’s going to work.”
“You don’t have to know how it works. You just
have to know that it does. Do you have your GPS pen?”
Dopple asked in the Professor Haróm’s voice, matching
her derisive tone perfectly.
“Yes,” Elliot said icily, “I do have it. Do you have
your computer all set up? And, more importantly, do you
know how to use it? You’re no Brain so you’d better make
sure you know what you’re doing.”
Dopple bristled and his normally non-descript features darkened into a scowl. “For your information…”
“No, for your information,” interrupted Innya, “I
need you both to shut up.”
Elliot looked over to see an irritated Innya and the
grinning Wonder Twins and chided himself on getting
drawn into Dopple’s childish bullshit. “Shit,” he muttered, happy that he had remembered to use a real curse
word this time.
“You guys hate each other and that’s fine. For now
you have to stay focused on the task at hand and plan
your revenge in the back of your mind.”
“Focused and planning,” said Elliot.
“Good. You’re on then. Don’t fuck this up,” she said
and turned to Dopple and his machine where the screen
was just pulling up the GPS map that was connected to
the pen in Elliot’s jacket pocket.
Elliot had expected words of encouragement,
then realized as he crossed the street how stupid it was
to expect such a thing from Innya. She wasn’t a “gentle
encouragement” sort of person.
His hands were sweating. He had never before had
a problem with sweaty palms except when Innya was too
close to him, but he had them now. They were so sweaty
that the first time he gripped the metal door handle his
hand slipped right off.
He imagined Dopple, Innya, and The Twins
across the street laughing at him. His cheeks flamed as
he gripped the handle harder and pulled the door open,
wondering why they had to make bank doors so damn
heavy in the first place.
Then he was inside. And he hesitated. His heart
was pounding so hard he felt sure that everyone in the
place could hear it reverberating off of the cold marble
walls and floor of the bank. And why did banks have to
be so cold and so full of marble anyway? It felt more like
a place to store dead people than a place to store money.
If I ever get the chance to be president, thought Elliot, I
swear I’d pass a law about that and holy crap that guard
just looked at me and he knows and it’s all going to be
over before it even begins and why’d they send me in first
to begin with since I’m kind of a known entity in this
town considering who my dad is, oh holy shit.
Wait. The guard looked away. Maybe it will be okay
after all… Okay so where’s the table with the deposit slips?
Despite the insane melee in his brain Elliot made it
to the counter with the deposit slips. He was fully aware
that he was walking like a man who had recently regained
the use of his legs, or like a man who had lost the ability
to bend his knees, or like a robot. But he made it and that
was all that mattered.
With trembling fingers he plucked a deposit slip
from the holder in the center of the counter and pulled
his GPS pen out of his coat pocket. The plain-looking
gray pen was about the width of a normal ballpoint and
according to Dopple all Elliot would have to do is point
it at a guard and push the button on the top of it as if he
were clicking his pen to open it and the laser would do
the rest. It seemed easy enough but Elliot was not reassured by the ease of his job because he knew that the real
action would happen after he pinpointed the final guard.
Elliot bent over his deposit slip and pretended to
be studying it. In truth his mind was racing, his heart
pumping adrenaline so quickly through his veins that he
couldn’t have comprehended the Reader’s Digest Large
Print Version at the moment, let alone the miniscule
instructions on the stupid triplicate form.
The main guard stood to the left of the front door
with his hands in his pockets. Other than two tellers
behind the counter there were only three other customers:
two middle-aged men and an old lady wearing a heavy
pink coat. Another guard stood near the teller windows.
“Okay,” he told himself, “It’s show time.” He immediately regretted saying the phrase because it felt very
forced and trite, and he was glad that no one in his team
had been around to hear it. He had to remember in the
future to practice sayings out loud before he would need
them, that way he wouldn’t embarrass himself.
He placed his right elbow on the counter and lifted
the pen in his hand as if he was preparing to write something. Keeping his head down but his eyes up, he pointed
the pen at the guard near the teller windows and pressed
the button with his thumb. Immediately a small red dot
appeared on the front of the half-wall right beside the
guard. Elliot kept the button depressed as he moved the
pen just the slightest bit to the left until the dot was hitting the guard square in the chest. And then he released
the button and lowered the pen.
One down, one to go.
Keeping the pen clenched in his right fist, Elliot
turned to the look at large clock that hung above the
front doors, at the same time lining up his pen and taking
a quick shot at the guard. The little red dot of the laser
hit its mark at the guard’s throat and Elliot turned back
around, and smiled, and felt very pleased with himself. A
lot of the anxiety bled out of him. Now all he had to do
was wait for the troops to come storming in. While he
waited he thought he’d just doodle a little on the deposit
slip. Without thinking he clicked the top of the GPS pen
with a flourish, realizing too late that he had just marked
the little old lady in the pink coat as a third guard.
“Oh shit,” he said.
Less than five seconds later Innya, Dopple and The
Twins stormed through the front doors. The Twins incapacitated the two guards in a blur of motion. Elliot knew
from the planning phase of this little venture that each
Twin was equipped with a tiny, gun-shaped device that,
when pressed against the forehead of a person, knocks
him out cold. It was apparently very effective and Elliot
hoped they were right when they had said that there
would be no lasting ill effects for the victims as the little
old lady collapsed. Twin One was standing beside her
crumpled form, a look of horror on its face.
“What the fuck, Elliot?” Innya shouted, “That’s
not a guard!”
Elliot tried to ignore Dopple’s snicker as he rounded
the counter and approached his group. “I know,” he said,
“It was an accident. The pen just went off.”
“Because you pushed the button,
balyan
,” said Innya.
Then to The Twins, who both appeared suddenly beside
Elliot,“You sure those things won’t hurt her? I’m not failing
this assignment because grandma kicks the bucket.”
“She will be fine,” said Twin One.
“Not a problem,” said Twin Two.
“Good,” said Innya. She turned her attention to the
tellers and the remaining customers, put on her most dazzling smile, and strode into the middle of the bank lobby.
“Good morning. As you have probably guessed, this is a
robbery. And as you have probably also guessed, we are Villains, and we are minors, so any actions taken against us
won’t bode well for you. It’s really better if you cooperate.”
“Nice,” whistled Elliot. Innya was totally turning
him on with how assertive she was, how confident she
was. She was a natural. But he couldn’t just stand there and
admire her because Dopple and the Twins were already
moving toward the gap in the teller counter that led to
the vault, and they were all toting their large black bags
and looking very efficient and evil. And Elliot felt like an
idiot standing still and staring at Innya’s ass as she spoke.
“Did you kill them?” asked one of the leftover
customers.
“Of course not. Why would we kill them? We only
kill those who stand in our way. We’re not monsters.”
Innya suddenly pointed at one of the tellers, a boy
who looked as if he were just out of high school, and his
face paled. “You, pretty boy, open up the vault and let my
boys in.”When the kid hesitated for a fraction of a second
Innya added, “Not all of our weapons are as benign as the
one that knocked out your guards and grandma over there.
So think long and hard before you try to be a hero.You saw
how quickly my colleagues move; you would be disarmed
and dead before you ever lifted a finger against us.”
The teller moved towards the closed metal gate that
led to the vaults, the safe deposit boxes, and the viewing
rooms. Elliot didn’t wait to be berated and yelled at in front
of the victims of their heist. He fell into step beside Innya.
“Good job,” he said loud enough for only her to hear.
“It’s not over yet.”
The teller fumbled with the keys a couple of times
but eventually unlocked all three locks and heaved open
the gate.The Twins were through it in a flash and he could
hear them breaking things out of sight. Dopple pushed
the teller through the doorway and steered him off to the
right, towards the main vault door. As Elliot started to
follow them Innya grabbed his arm.