June 27, 2014. Friday.
For George, lying on the ground and staring at the same point with little action and no one to keep him company proved to be too difficult. He thought he was a patient man with strong endurance, but waking up after a half days sleep under the sun, with everything hurting and burning from head to toes, his mouth dry, he had to reevaluate himself.
It was long after midday when he headed back toward the motel. The journey through the fields and woods were not made easier by his mistake to forget a bottle of water when going on the mission. Chasing hallucinating vultures away and making the last twenty meters on all fours he was happy to return alive.
The supply of water in Terrible Motel was limited to twenty liters per day per room and he let it all out into his mouth, on top of his head, on the red hands experiencing the greatest joy of his life.
Recovered and happy George got back to the room, wrote everything he learned on sticky papers and put them on the wall. He had seen detectives do it in movies and thought that it would be a cool idea to copy them. He then went to the local internet cafe, printed all articles about Alfonso's success and nailed them to the wall around the small forest of sticky papers. Walking from the bathroom to the door, he stared at the wall and thought. And when he had thought enough, he froze to stare at the belt lying on the bed, the one given to him as a gift by the king of Kakamaqua. He ran to a press kiosk to buy a bundle of local newspapers afterward.
Sitting on the squeaking bed, he looked through the press, taking an interest in only a few pages of every paper. He would pick a marker, draw a circle on a newspaper, take out the whole page and put it in the pile beside him. When he was done, he grabbed the pile and picked an old rotary phone. It was scratched and worn, had an almost naked wire connecting the handset to the housing. From the looks of it, it should not have worked, but it did.
This was the fifth call he made.
"Hello, Extreme Pizza listening, what would you like to order?" answered a lady speaking like an automaton. Giving a feeling as if she had said this sentence for the hundredth time today.
"I'm calling to apply for the job offer of a pizza boy." George looked at the advertisement in his hand. It had a picture of a rusty moped with eight rocket launchers attached to both sides of its rear.
"Can you drive?"
"Yes. Well, I can drive a car."
"Then you're hired. Get your butt here. I've got a million orders waiting for delivery and my driver is hospitalized. I will pay you double if you get here in twenty minutes," said the lady and put down the phone.
What the hell? thought George. He grabbed his wallet and rushed out, not to miss the perfect opportunity to earn a little bit of money and the tools needed for his part of the mission.
It took him a while to get to the location of the pizza shop, which was located on what appeared to be as world's end. At the most distant point of Crossroad that barely made it to the map, stood a lone building at the edge of a cliff twenty meters, beneath which ran a river from hell, its waves smashing violently against sharp stones sticking out of the water. A part of the building extended out and bent under the cliff, giving an impression that the restaurant was built here for a reason.
There were many motorcycles and high-speed cars parked by the shop. Words 'EXTREME PIZZA joint' were blinking in epilepsy inducing red above its entrance.
George entered the restaurant and inspected its wondrous interior. There was a man eating a pizza one meter in diameter, his two friends encouraging him not to give up. Another person with a cowboy's hat was riding a mechanical bull while shoving pizza slices that were given to him by a staff member. Whenever the rider would start to choke, the helper would pad his back or make the Heimlich maneuver, so the client could ride on and keep enjoying the pizza. A man with eyes covered by black cloth threw knives to an old geezer tied to a wall chewing what probably was pizza. Each knife was barely missing the client's vital parts, making him gulp after each throw.
The part of the building that bent under the cliff was filled with people sitting in horizontal positions, looking down. Belts held their feet and backs attached to sliding poles, which when asked would return the client to safety. They ate pizza while staring at the abyss. Nothing but a few tiny belts separated them from the fall. George trembled only from watching at the brave fools.
"People who love thrills and danger come to try out a different way of eating, Here we combine the extreme way of life with pizza and the result is fabulous. Isn't it?" said the same female voice George had spoken to on the phone from behind. "We serve everything here in front of death's eyes."
George turned around to find an elderly lady with a grim face and a giant scar on her left eye. Her hair tied into a tight tail lay on her chest. There was an aura of spookiness around her. She gave the vibe of a person from another world, a person that had seen things, terrible things. George felt that the lady had stories to share, but he was damn sure he would not want to hear them.
The lady led George behind the bar and towards the kitchen explaining things, "As you might have noticed we are very peculiar with the details. The soul of extremity lives in this place, starting from the choke boys and going through all the chain to me. Your task will..."
When they entered the kitchen and George's eyes saw the things taking place inside, lady's words dimmed away.
Instead of knives all cooks used long blades, double-edged swords, and thick steel sticks. Throwing different ingredients into the air, they sliced it into pieces in a blink of an eye. Two giants violently mangled dough then gave it to a girl who bashed it with a stick using such fast and swift movements that the tool in her hand appeared to be a natural extension of her arm. Had George not known it was the kitchen, he could have easily mistaken it with a ninja academy.
"...you will need to reach any point of Crossroad in less than ten minutes. Only after a full day of service you are going to receive your badge and be accepted." Seeing George yawn, the lady said, "Enough of these boring talks, I bet you are anxious to try out the ride."
"The ride?"
"Yeah, we don't pay much, but every pizza boy gets to drive the monster we put on the advertisement. Many had tried to ride it, many have met their doom."
"What doom?"
"The hospital or the crazy house."
She led George to the doorway, put a shiny key, swimming glasses and an earphone into his hand.
'Your bike is in the garage, I will open it up. I'd suggest you do some warm up exercises before jumping on it."
George needed a disguise for the upcoming operation: a uniform of a pizza boy, a ride with pizza shop signs and some pizza. Being no thief, he found employment as the easiest way of getting it all. Sure, using employer's equipment for personal reasons was still a minor violation, but he was ready to pay for the consequences. The whole idea seemed to be much easier before coming to this place.
One day, he thought, how tough can it be to work as a pizza boy for one day? Hospital, crazy house, whatever. I bet the spooky lady is giggling back at the bar and thinking of more crazy stories. He glanced through the window. She wasn't.
While George searched for the garage around the house, he heard a sound of cracking ground. A few meters in front of the entrance, a metal door slipped open to reveal an inclined platform leading underground. As he walked down, the lights lit up above his head and continued doing so for many steps ahead. He came into the garage. It was a three on four meters room with many dusty shelves and different items, such as torn apart parachutes, climbing equipment, exploded gas-tanks.
In the center, stood a two-wheeled monster. It had been a moped once before someone put eight propulsion engines on its sides and a convex red shield on its front. 'Extreme Pizza' was written on its side.
As he inserted the key and turned it, the moped roared. The echo rebounded against the walls and came crashing down on George's ears. To get out of the noisy nightmare, he turned on the gas and found himself standing outside in a dust cloud. He felt an overpowering excitement in his chest as if thousands of butterflies had just fluttered beneath his skin and made his chest all warm and tingling. It was an awesome and addictive feeling.
A voice in his pocket coming from the radio said, "We have at least a hundred orders waiting, come and pick some up." George stepped off the moped and went for the entrance, but there was something off with his balance. He was struggling to keep it; slowly he felt his head getting dizzy. Disoriented, knowing nothing else what to do, feeling that he wants to, he bent and let his breakfast and dinner out. A piece of sausage, and of potato and everything else that was in his stomach before the moment of cleansing, lay in a messy pile on the dusty ground. The loud voice on the radio pushed him forward, "Move! It ain't gonna deliver itself."
He fell into the restaurant, was given two large pizzas and kicked out. "You're going to be late. I uploaded the coordinates of the delivery points to the computer on your bike."
"Ok, I'm going." George rushed to the moped and after putting pizzas in a trunk jumped on the saddle.
He looked here and there and to the side, but the computer was nowhere to be found. There was no screen, no buttons, nothing. The voice on the radio went on talking, ordering him to move, he could almost feel saliva of manager's mouth dripping out of the ear piece. "Move, move, move!" it shouted.
Then, a mechanical cold voice coming from a speaker hidden inside the bike spoke, "I am the computer, listen to me, ten kilometers forward, then turn to the right."
With its engines ignited, the moped shot forward. It sped through many obstacles carrying booming sound with it, making all cars drive to the side-way in fear, long after George had long passed them through the road center line. Butterflies danced in his chest and made him giggle.
Two minutes went by and the mechanical voice spoke once again, "I am the computer, listen to me, turn to the right. In three... two... one..."
As George activated the breaks and turned to the right, a gust of wind blew dust and sent trash rolling away down the road.
"I am the computer, listen to me; turn to the left in two... one... I am the computer, listen to me; turn to the right in two... one... I am the computer, listen to me, turn to the right in one..." The moped kept on talking.
"Here you go," George gave two pizzas to a girl standing on a street, her hair messed up by the wind.
"I am the..." said the computer and George drove for the next house on the list. He had this idea when traveling at the sound breaking speed that if he hit a wall, he would pass it through without a scratch, but he did not dare to try it.
------
"Well done, well done. You did a great job." The lady gave him her serious eye and a bundle of cash. "Just always remember to take money for every pizza."
"Oh, sorry," George apologized sincerely.
"No problem, no problem. I'm just happy we have delivered all the orders and you are still walking and well. There is one more left on your way home." She put her hand on George's shoulder. "You know, it takes either the bravest man or the greatest idiot to drive the thing. I don't know which one you are, but I'm thankful for what you've done today."
George did not expect such kind words from the lady. He was about to go to the happy place in his head, but a slap to the face brought him back.
"Don't just stand here as if you were kissed. Go!"
He picked a pack of pizzas, put them into the trunk and drove off to the horizon into tomorrow, where Alfonso and his goons waited to be taken care of.