Fat Whack Read online

Carina laughed and wiped away a tear of her own. “Ok, deal. And I believe you. By the way, what happened to your sewing machine?”

  Ninja #7 sat quietly at the table, a piece of pizza lying untouched in front of her. She was beautiful, in her thirties, and her eyes betrayed a deep well of emotion that she tried to keep hidden.

  “We know Ninja #5’s real name now,” Drew said with a mouthful of pizza. “Is it okay if we know your real name, too?”

  “My name is Kumiko,” she answered.

  “That’s a beautiful name,” Alda said. “How did you get involved in all of this?”

  Kumiko glanced at Ninja #5. He gave her a nod of approval.

  “Ninja #5 . . . excuse me, Steven, is my father.”

  She reached across the table and grabbed her father’s hand for a moment before quickly letting it go. Carina thought to herself that the two of them acted like they might have had a falling out in the past, but it also looked like they might be trying to make up for lost time together. The thought made her smile. There wasn’t anything she wouldn’t give to make up for lost time with her dad.

  Drew was the life of the party. The majority of the laughter in the place was born from the stories he told. His stories were that of a normal life, and they were refreshing to hear for a group that had been through so much tragedy. There were no Anteaters, no prison blimps, and no Fat Masters. Just normal, everyday, embarrassing stories about toilets overflowing and prom dates going bad. It was a great way to forget about the troubles behind and those possibly ahead. Drew didn’t know exactly where he fit into all of this, but he did know that there was something special about this group of people, and he was glad to be a part of it.

  In a world where ninjas were outlawed, a few still chose to help from the shadows, and the world was healthier because of it. Not because they fought against fat, but because they fought against the evil hiding behind it. Fat Whack will always be there, and Master Chap’s words will always inspire.

  “Do you wanna be a Fat Whacker?”

  Not A Ninja Note

  I’ve never been camping before, but I know that campfires are involved. If there is a campfire, then you have to have campfire food. Roasting marshmallows and weenies on a sharpened stick is something I just have to do. I also wanna try that trick where you wrap potatoes in tin foil and bake them by burying them in the hot coals. Most of all, I want to make s’mores. Graham crackers, chocolate, and marshmallow, all packed into one glorious combination. I have made s’mores at home using a candle to melt the chocolate. They tasted great, but I bet they are even better when you are actually eating them around a campfire. That’s why I’m so excited, because I’m gonna get my chance to do just that. I recently made two new friends. They invited me to a dojo for a free karate lesson. I didn’t want to go, but for some reason I did, and then they invited me to go camping with them. I’m sure it’s because they want to convince me to join the dojo. It looks like they could use a few more paying customers. I don’t really want to keep training in martial arts; it’s embarrassing. I can’t even do the stretches at the beginning of the class. But Master Takanashi does seem pretty cool, and I could really use some friends. So I’ve decided to go a few more times at least. Plus, they say the place is haunted, so that’s cool. This is the first journal entry I’ve done in forever that wasn’t solely about food. That’s probably a good thing. I’m ready for a change. This weekend should be fun.

  Excerpt from Steven’s personal journal: April 15, 1955

  Making A Mountain Out Of An Anthill

  From the inside of an airplane high up in the sky, people on the ground tend to look like ants. When you’re buried neck deep in sand in the middle of a South American desert, ants tend to look as big as people. To Isaiah Idaho, the army of ant people marching his way looked fake. They reminded him of the ant from Honey I Shrunk The Kids, except these ants were not the PG family-friendly kind. They were the R-rated—gonna eat his ass and shit him out all over the desert—kind.

  Isaiah’s black flesh burned as he had already been bitten multiple times. His lips and cheeks were swollen. His earlobes throbbed with pain.

  “Somebody help me!” He screamed at the top of his lungs. “Help me!”

  Calling out for a savior was pointless. The sand stretched out for miles in every direction. He could plainly see that there was no one there to rescue him. He tried to move his body. He tried to at least wiggle a toe. This, too, was pointless. The thugs that had buried him here had done a top-notch job. Sand and dirt were packed tightly around his every muscle.

  There was a pinch on his upper lip. That was ant bite number eighty-one if he had been counting correctly. For some reason, he briefly wondered if that was what it felt like to get your lip pierced. He stopped the wondering when ant bite number eight-two happened. The pain was becoming unbearable. He was desperate for relief. Out of that desperation, Isaiah did something insane. He stuck his tongue out like a frog might do and lassoed the nearest insect into his mouth. His teeth chomped down on the tiny creature time and time again. He swallowed.

  “I bite back!” Isaiah yelled at the remaining ants. He used his chin to squish an ant into paste and then quickly used his tongue to lasso another ant into his cavernous mouth.

  “I’m gonna kill as many of you ant assholes as I can before you kill me!” He growled with bug guts between his teeth. “I won’t go down without a fight!”

  Like it was answering the challenge, another ant crawled within striking distance—and was obliterated. If ants dreamed, the survivors of this ordeal would have nightmares of a cave of teeth biting their bodies into oblivion.

  In the distance, the orange sun began to set, and darkness started to cover the scene. The darkness caused the red blinking light floating a few feet to Isaiah’s left to stand out. He had forgotten that the cartel boss that had him buried here had also set up a camcorder before he left in order to film his death. The man planned to eventually return to obtain it so he could watch his daughter’s murderer be killed, and then he’d rewind the tape and watch it again.

  Isaiah looked straight into the camera and yelled, “I swear I’ll find a way to come back and kill you!” At least, that’s what he tried to yell. The words came out more like, “I swee uu wee fu to cccuuu bu ku goo.” His lips and tongue were so swollen he had lost the ability to form actual words. He continued staring at the blinking light. As it blinked, he blinked—until an ant bit his left eye and it became swollen shut. He continued blinking his right eye. Blink, blink, blink—until he blinked no more. His bald, black head was completely covered with black ants. Death grinned at him from the inside of his eyelids. This is not how he imagined his life would end.

  A million ants cried out in agony all at once. They fell off of Isaiah and onto the sand like suicide jumpers. Now clear of ants, his exposed face flesh burned. It was painful, but it also kind of felt good—like the way Coca-Cola can burn your tongue. He forced his right eye open just a bit. Ant carcasses littered the surrounding sands. They glowed like neon glow sticks. The sand in his immediate vicinity was faintly glowing as well. A thin layer of some kind of greenish ooze covered the ground and dripped from Isaiah’s head. The green stuff was also leaking out of a burst open canister a few feet to Isaiah’s right. The ooze disappeared into the sand, and as it did, it drug the ant bodies down with it. In disbelief, Isaiah looked up and saw a tiny plane flying away into the setting sun. His vision then returned to the open canister. He could make out one word printed on its side. It was a label that read “Imunotech.”

  “You alive down there?” an unfamiliar voice asked from behind Isaiah’s head. Isaiah tried to turn around to see if someone was truly there. The voice sounded real, but it could have just been his imagination trying to trick him into thinking he was saved.

  “Hey, you still breathing?” The voice asked.

  “Let me see you,” Isaiah answered. “I don’
t believe that you’re real.”

  An old man sitting on top of a brown horse came into view. The man was wearing overalls with no shirt under them and a hat made out of wicker. His skin was dark and full of wrinkles.

  “I’m real enough, and so is my horse.” The man said. He patted the horse lovingly.

  “I’m saved!” Isaiah yelled, and a tear fell from his one barley functional eye.

  “My Lord!” The man cried out. He got off of his horse and took a good look at Isaiah “What on God’s earth happened to you?”

  “It’s a long story,” Isaiah said, knowing full well that it wasn’t. The story was as follows: He’s a bad guy. He had murdered another bad guy’s daughter. Now he was here. End of story.

  “I guess it don’t matter how you got here,” the man told him. “It’s the law of this land; help people when they need helping. At least, it used to be the law around these parts. It’s still a law to me. It’s a good thing for you those planes fly by and dump their toxic waste out here in the middle of nowhere. Those ants would have ate you alive. I’ve found other buried people out here before that weren’t as lucky as you. They ended up just skulls in the sand. Desert flowers I hate stumbling across. I’m happy to find one of ya still alive. Still, no telling what kinda scars that green stuffs gonna leave on you.”

  “As long as I live, I can live with the scars,” Isaiah said.

  “Well, that’s true enough,” the man responded. He pulled a shovel out of a pack that was attached to his horse’s saddle. “You gotta name stranger? My name is...”

  Isaiah passed out.

  ***

  Isaiah awoke in a small bed in a dark room. He sat up and yawned. Then he swung his feet over the edge of the bed and let them touch the floor. He jerked them back up abruptly.

  “It’s freaking cold!” he said to himself.

  After wrapping a blanket around his shoulders, he hopped off of the bed and quickly tip-toed on the freezing floorboards over to the window. It was the dead of night. A full moon was floating in the sky. Outside, he could hear desert animals howling at the glowing orb. Inside, he heard a noise behind him.

  “I’m glad to see you’re awake.”

  Isaiah crossed the room in two powerful steps. His hand was around the old man’s throat before the blanket that had been around his shoulders hit the floor.

  “I saved you,” the man quickly coughed out. “This...is...my h, h, home.” Speaking was difficult with fingers around his throat.

  Isaiah briefly softened his grip, and then let go of his savior’s neck.

  “I’m...sorry,” he told the man.

  “You’re lightning quick for a guy who just went through a near-death experience,” the man said as he rubbed at his throat. “You feeling okay?”

  Isaiah stood up as straight as he could. He flexed his muscles like a bodybuilder. Looking down at his own body, he was confused. Was he always this ripped?

  “I can’t explain it,” Isaiah said. “I feel better than ever! I mean, I’ve always been strong, but I feel like I could fight a lion and win right now. I feel like I could face anything.”

  “Speaking of faces,” the man said delicately, “you haven’t looked at yours yet, have you?”

  He walked over to a mirror on the wall. Using the palm of his hand, he rubbed away a thick layer of grime and motioned for Isaiah to approach. Isaiah did not move. He clinched his fists tight. Trying to break the tension in the room, the man continued to fill the air with words.

  “Certain companies pay the cartels around here a lot of money to allow them to dump their chemical waste in the desert. It’s deplorable, but it saved your life. Looks like whatever was in that stuff might have given you a little boost in strength, too.”

  “How did you find me?” Isaiah asked.

  “Well, whenever I hear a plane engine, I grab my gun and get on my horse and try to ride after it and shoot at the suckers. They fly low enough to stay off the radars. It’s also low enough so that I can get a couple good shots in now and then. It’s not enough to stop them, but I can usually steer them clear of my property.”

  “You got guts, old man,” Isaiah said.

  “Or I’m just dumb with not much to lose.” The man shook his head and chuckled at himself, and then he got serious.

  “Mister, I’m glad you’re feeling good. It’s a miracle after what you went through. However, you need to look in the mirror. Brace yourself, it ain’t pretty—no offense.”

  Isaiah gazed in the direction of the mirror, but he did not look into it. He closed his eyes tight and lifted his hands up to his face. He felt along its surface like a blind person learning the intimate details of a loved one. The destruction was immediately apparent. There were divots and craters, bumps and masses, but most of all, he could feel the wet sticky moisture of puss and blood. One of the lumps made a loud popping noise after he touched it. Isaiah could feel the release of pressure from that part of his face. It felt as if a volcano-sized pimple had popped. A lava flow of red and yellow discharge leaked off of his chin and landed on the floor. The old man handed Isaiah a bloodied towel.

  “I’ve been trying to stop the secretions with pressure and gauzes. I ran out of gauze a while ago.”

  “I told you,” Isaiah responded, “I can live with the scars. Whatever my face looks like, it doesn’t matter. I don’t need to see it.”

  “I can respect that,” the man said. “You can always look at it later. So…you want any coffee?”

  Isaiah smiled. “Lead the way.”

  The kitchen was just as small—if not smaller—than the bedroom. The entire house was made out of wood, and Isaiah imagined that termites must be abundant within the walls. Termites, he could live with. The men stood in the kitchen and sipped at their cups of black coffee. Isaiah was happy to be alive, and this man he was with—he actually liked him. Kindness usually annoyed him—a hitman had no use for it—but for some reason, this man’s kindness was intoxicating. It probably had something to do with the fact that he owed him for saving his life, but it wasn’t just that. The way the man talked, the way he took care of him, he reminded him of—someone, but who? Isaiah was wondering about this while starring at an ornate cross hanging on the wall just above the man’s head.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t grab the camcorder.”

  “What?” Isaiah asked.

  “The video camera that was set up there,” the man explained. “I was gonna grab it, but after I got you up on my horse, it just slipped my mind.”

  Isaiah’s muscles went rigid. He had forgotten about the camera—the camera that had not only recorded his almost demise but had also recorded his rescue and his rescuer.

  “How long has it been since you saved me?” Isaiah asked in a concerned tone.

  “Well, it’s almost morning now, so, quite a few hours I would say,” the man answered.

  “How far away are we from where you found me?”

  “Five miles, tops. Why do you ask?”

  Isaiah ran and looked out the window. He could see his reflection in the glass, but he chose to look through it and out into the desert. The sun was rising, and within the light it created, he could now see some familiar vehicles approaching. One of the vehicles was very familiar; he had been locked in its trunk less than twenty-four hours ago. He turned away from the window and looked at his new friend with pity.

  “How many horses do you have?”

  “Just old Artan,” the man answered. “I think he likes you. Didn’t give me no problems when I shoved you up on his back. You like to ride?”

  “Shit!” Isaiah yelled.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Look out your window,” Isaiah told the man.

  He walked over to his window and pressed his forehead against the glass. He squinted his eyes and asked, “Who are they?”

  “They are the
people who buried me in the desert and left me to die,” Isaiah answered.

  “Yeah, that’s what I figured,” the man said. “What are we gonna do?”

  “Keep watching,” Isaiah told him. “Let me know how close they’re getting. And don’t worry. I have a plan.”

  The man pressed his forehead against the window even harder—so hard that the glass almost cracked. He stared into the distance.

  “I count eleven vehicles,” he said. “No telling how many men are in them.”

  “Okay. Keep looking.” Isaiah commanded. “How far out do you think they are?”

  “Well, I’m guessing they are about five...”

  The sound of quickly splitting flesh and escaping body fluid filled both men’s ears. The old man stared at his reflection in the window. He watched in confusion as blood poured out of his neck and landed on the window sill. He also watched in confusion as a deeply mutilated face came into view, standing right behind him. The reflection of the monster almost frowned before it said, “I truly am sorry, but this death is quicker than what they would do to you. Thank you for saving me, and I’ll take care of the horse.” The monster’s reflection disappeared, and the old man was left by himself, watching himself die.

  Isaiah jumped onto a dead man’s horse and rode away as fast as the horse would take him.

  “Ya! Let’s go, Artan!” he yelled as he kicked the horse’s sides. The horse sped up, taking him farther and farther away from the death that chased after him. It briefly occurred to him that he knew the horse’s name, but he had never bothered to learn the man’s name. He thought about that fact for just a moment, but then he decided it didn’t really matter. He rode until the sun was once again high in the sky. He would return one day to kill the cartel boss for what he had done to him. He would make sure it was slow and painful. Until then, a hitman with a new face like his needed a new name—a new identity. He didn’t know what to call himself just yet, but he did know this ordeal had taught him one thing—he loved the taste of ants.