The Incorrigible Mr. Zeppo's Reign Of Terror (V)
Part 1 / Chapter 1 / Scene 4
Establishing shot- Fly over of The Pentagon in Langley, Virginia.
[Text in the lower left corner of the screen reads- "The Pentagon, Langley Virginia"][Music: a spoof mash-up in the style of Mission Impossible, James Bond, Jason Bourne series]
Zooming into and through various hallways and layers of the maze-like building, until we arrive at imposing double doors of
the Office of Director of National Security Investigations. A brief pause, and then we zoom in through the doors, rejoining the conversation where we left off in the last scene.
Atmosphere in the room is tense.
The silence only broken by the almost inappropriately soft and silky sounds made by Mack's blouse against her bare skin as she settles into one of the low slung executive lounge chairs across from everyone else.
Mack: So... what's it going to be folks? Are you in? Or are you in? Or am I going to have to kill you all?
The tension in the room thickened palpably, but no one uttered a sound. All eyes were locked on Mack as if she were Botticelli's Newly Transfigured Venus herself, freshly descended among them out of the heavens and had just stood there before them nude and asked them where the nearest Gun Store was.
The men did not blink.
Mack stared them all down with the cool calculating gaze of Medusa stalking her prey.The mixed art metaphor, may frustrate some readers, but I assure you- it is more than apropos for the living tableau these people were literally living through.
Mack: First this video turned up online out of China- [insert debrief adaptation of the Man saved from certain death by superhuman time traveler video on youtube here]
Jerk: That was proven a hoax, some technerds from a Chinese movie studio...
Mack: Nope. Sorry- but that was how we buried the story to purge it from the news cycles.We hit a wall and could not disprove or verify anything.Then Target Terrorist Leader "was taken".
Dir: I still do not see a connection here... [the confusion on his face seemed only half genuine, he was playing it up for some reason]
Mack: You will... [her curiosity however fervent, did not show on her face]
Dir: He... wasn't.... actually... there?
Jerk: Was it a double? I always knew it was a body double!
Mack: Yes, it was one of his own, the last one, his best and oldest.
Dir: So... You telling me our guy, the guy we almost caught twice and threw back by mistake a third time... he, what? He is also Targeted Terrorist Leader 3 ???
Mack: No. [Long Pause] I'm telling you... [the moment she had feared the most for nearly a year was suddenly HERE, it was suddenly NOW... and she wasn't quite sure how she felt about it at all] I am telling you that he... that this character, this Mr. Zeppo... he got to the targets first. Made them both disappear.
Right then. That night, the black bag team was there, feet from both of them- TTL3 and his body double, in their sights.
Next thing you know- absolutely totally gone. Both of them. [she pauses and pulls down the rest of her drink and gets up to go to the bar for another]
YOU ARE READING
zero hour
Action"Set in an experimental sci-fi comic book action adventure literary world-building project universe of multi-book series nested within other book series, 'The Zeppoverse' may be a bit disorienting to navigate at first... but you kind get used to it...
