#For all the shadow shall proclaim will be in a paper safety contained.

[this-is-a-nice-show]

It does kill me a little bit that the character who claims not to read picked a 100% human name, but the character who owns a bookshop and works in customer service didn't.

[richardkickler]

Richard Kichler: 1

Richard Kichler: 1

Richard shifted his bag onto his lap from the bench seat of his Buick. He made a quick inventory of its contents. He was liable to get ornery if he was deprived of his smokes and dented, green coffee thermos. With his morning ritual complete, he opened the door and stepped into the rays of sunlight streaming through the fog that hug immobile in the chill dawn. With a small, satisfied smirk about his lot in life he walked from the street to a pair of steel storm doors set into the sidewalk. Crouching down he grabbed the handle of the left door and wrenched it with all his might. When the entrance to the descending stairs was open he massaged his lower back. He couldn’t help but notice that opening these doors was getting harder and harder each year; He wasn’t a spring chicken anymore.

Closing the blast door once he was safely down bellow, Richard was bathed in cool subterranean darkness. Reaching to his right he grasped the handle of a breaker lever. Richard smiled a bit more to himself comforted that it was right where it always was. Some things are absolute, can always be depended upon to be there. With a mighty kachunmk, light flooded into the tunnels from bare bulbs strung from the ceiling every few feet. Further inside the complex unseen generators whirred to life. Down the main corridor that led to the supply depot he couldn't help but notice a large spider web fracture in the concrete at the halfway point across from a large locker labeled," CONTAINMENT." I guess I know what I'm doing today after I have my coffee. Never a dull day. 

Grabbing his smokes and coffee from his bag he walked over to a rail just beyond the reinforced blast doors leading into the depot. He lit a smoke as he rested his forearms on the barrier. Accidently singing his cupped palm with the lighter, he dropped it into the pit below. He counted four Mississippies before it hit the unseen floor. It wasn't the first of last time he dropped his trusty Zippo into the warehouse. The Cold War designers of this place hadn't built this bomb shelter with clumsy civil servants in mind.  Clasping his red in his teeth Richard climbed down the ladder beside him. Back in the late 80's he had taken great pride in how fast he could mantle the rungs but with age came an untaxing pace. He didn't have anywhere to be so why should he rush? On the floor besides vapor wrapped, wooden crates he found his lighter. It had a new dent but was otherwise unharmed. Puffing his smoke Richard poured some coffee into the lid of the thermos. Sipping his mud, he read the stencilled labels of the GI crates: Canned peaches, .45 caliber ammunition, MREs, spare Browning barrels,. toilet paper. The Ruskies had never dropped the rocked but still all this Vietnam era crap was down here; Not that Richard would complain about never being turned into a shadow by a white hot flash of atomic hellfire.

Grabbing a crowbar from atop one of the crates, Richard pried open the nearest crate of peaches. He put one of the aluminum cylinders in his bag then returned up topside. Placing his bag on a chair, he went to a pile of bags of cement that he kept along the wall for the frequent repairs the tunnels required. It went into a wheelbarrow and then over to the only hose in the upper veranda of the depot. Shovel in hand he sidled over to where he had seen the cracked section of wall, chain smoking all the way while thinking of last nights game. That new kid on the team really had an arm like a fucking cannon. Back at the fracture, Richard gently laid down the wheelbarrow. Mixing the concrete slurry slowly with his shovel he allowed himself to drift into thought. He couldn’t help but think of how wonderful dinner with the family had been last night. For once he and his Phillie weren’t at each other's throats, Saddie had remembered to add egg to her meatloaf, and Bobbi had made varsity quarterback. Life was downright wonderful. Somewhere in the deep background a low, familiar  rumble cut overtook the white noise of the hummer generators. Richard sighed and walked the wheelbarrow a safe distance away mumbling,”I guess it’s that time,” in a monotone to himself. Lifting the latch to the containment locker Richard spot checked his gear. It was always best to be thorough. Lighting another cigarette while placing a spare behind his ear, he put on a fluorescent yellow safety vest with, “Mendota DNR,” emblazoned on the back. He yearned for the days when he had worn the vest with pride out in the vast forests of the region. Sometimes he missed daylight and the pure, blue sky but he knew that somebody had to provide while Sadie was on the mend. When the cracked wall exploded out as a massive drill blasted through it , Richard knew there was no more time for daydreaming. 

Slipping on his holstered .45 and the tank to his flamethrower over his vest he began to count. He knew it would be thirty Mississippis until the first wave. As the drill withdrew Richard reached into the cabinet with practiced measure. He pulled the pin from a M34 white phosphorus grenade and lobbed it into the gap in the wall with disinterested familiarity. Third time this week.. Why does it always have to be on my shift on the day I planned my weekly hike with my boys? The grenade went off with a flash and a wave of dry heat that he could feel from down the hallway. For the dusty hole in the wall pained screams issued as the sweet, sickly smell of flash fried flesh wafted over to Richard. Pointing the 12-ga Remmington riot gun that had been hanging next to the M34 fired a warning round at the gap he yelled, “Go home and you critters won’t get hurt,” in the same monotone he had used when belaboring that he had to patch the cracked wall. To emphasize his point, he squeezed the trigger sending flechet flying into the dust. Now there was evermore vliod curdling screeching. This was worse though. The white phosphorus had been fatal. At this distance the flechet would only flesh wound. The sound of frenzied footsteps stampedee towards him. Making sure his shots were leveled below three feet Richard discharged his shotgun five times before pausing to reload. “Go home, Laurence. Return to your subterranean kingdom. Stop being such a dick.”

As the smoke cleared Richard could see that they had really gone all  out this time. A huge cavern had been constructed just outside of the tunnel complex walls before they had driven the drill tank through the wall. On the ground mole men unlucky enough to not been granted immediate death writhed in agony. The ones that had succumbed to the flame were little more than charred husks. The ones who had absorbed his boomstick's wrath bled into the two foot capes customary for a mole man legionnaire. The thin aluminum breast plates that their armorershad crafted were no match for Richard's thunder. Their gnarled fingers grasped at the voids of missing flesh on their bare bellies. Gnashing their teeth as they bled out, Richard couldn’t help but be sorry for them even though he knew that if he let the mole men go again his supervision was going to have his ass. He’d already been written up twice for not wearing his safety vest while operating in a municipal capacity so he wasn’t going to take any second chances,

The cavern that had been blown in the wall ended in a tunnel that turned 90 degrees before leading to unseen depths. From around that corner there was the squawk of a bullhorn. Over its hissing white noise a trill, tiny voice proclaimed, “I am Laurence biggest of my people, first of my name. Tremble Richard Kichler, last of your name, my eternal foe! I shall grind you down man titan that stands at least six feet tall! Once we slay you we shall reign for a thousand years on the surface world! Hear me and shake knowing that you face the largest of my kind. Today is the day that my justice is prosecuted! Leave now and you may yet see your wife’s puny front teeth again.”

Always a showman, Laurence. You’d think a mole man could just be content with running an underground kingdom that stretched a cubic mile but for some people nothing is ever good enough. Richard figured it had to be a size thing; Phillie called it a Napoleon Complex after he came back from his first semester at college.  As the biggest, he had to fight something bigger to prove his regal, godhead status. To Laurence, king of the mole men, if Richard, guardian of what they had dubbed the Exoworld, could be disposed of, the conquest of surface was assured by right of manifest destiny. In truth, Richard had seen more manpower devoted to booms in the racoon population. Fifteen Mississipies until the mutants. 

Lighting up another smoke he walked with confidence and grabbed another tool from the cupboard. The mole men of Laurence’s dynasty had been attacking every few days since the late 80’s but still they hadn’t learned to look for claymores. Richard set one up at the mouth of the 90 degree bend and at the breach point across from the cabinet. After years of doing this he had started to pity them. Their tiny brains and poor eyesight meant that the average mole man could neither see nor remember that after their first wave Richard placed out the two minimum claymores, as per city council dictates, everytime they attacked. “Hey Laurence, first of your name, I left out claymores. The steel ball bearings will shred your men. Go home, sir.” Richard had been allowed to use more colorful language when conversing with Laurence in the past but ever since the city had passed an ordinance that had made mole men an endangered species he had been barred from adding insult to injury. Big government, small town. If I had  my way I’d just smoke that four foot tall rat. Knowing that they wouldn’t turn around Richard went back out into the tunnel to wait in relative safety from any wayward ricochet. He couldn’t dwell too long on the head of the snake as his oblivious minions had wandered into the tripwire. There was a blast followed by the sound of gallons of paint being whipped at wall in one pulpy wave. “Hey, Laurence?”

The white noise piped up again. “What surface man? Do you wish to surrender?”

“No, sir, I’d just like to say that there is another one. Your men will get blasted again if you don’t go back to your palace.”

Enraged Laurence shouted back with a high pitched squawk, “Do not lie, titan, you do not possess any more tiny earthquakes! Do you think I am a coward or a fool? I am far too massive for your mind games to work on me, you wretch!”

“Laurence, you are only half a foot taller than the other mole men.” There was a pressure drop and more pulp as the second line of defense was triggered. “I told you. I know that the mutants are next and that you’ve gotta get rid of them but you know it's the flamethrower next.”

“What does a titan know of the size of a mortal? I, the hugest paragon of my noble blood to ever exist, do not need your opinion! May your Exoworld god forgive me for what I have to do to you next! I will build a shrine to my bigness with you bones, Richard!”

“You look like a walking armpit.” Richard really wished that the mole men hadn’t learned how to pirate cable onto a tube tv one of their wrinkled expeditionary teams had recovered on trash day over on Lawndale Street. Every since they had taught themselves English from reruns of Alf and The Andy Griffith Show and ever since then been able to read the name tag that the city made him wear. He shook his head. They definitely had the ability to get to the surface with their aluminum tipped drill tanks. Laying Richard low had somehow been worked into Laurence’s mole man dogma to the point that he refused to go to the surface without walking over a fallen titan’s carcass. Unfortunately for them, along with forgetting about claymores they forgot about jellied gasoline.

When Richard heard the jangle of aluminum chains he knew the mutants were coming. He sparked his trusty Zippo and placed it to the pre-ignition chamber. The nozzle of his flamethrower sprang to life as he made a mental note that he had to pickup milk on the way home. Stepping over mangled mole men, Richard firmly planted himself in the breach. The moment he head slapping footsteps he let fly the kiss of dragon's breath. Up until recently he'd have to cull the mutants with a Browning. It'd always been a hassle to set up and take down with an extra kicker of the murder it did on his back. Ever since Elon Musk started selling them, the city council deemed bringing this masterpiece of American steel out of storage. From the other side it might appear as though the gates of Hell had opened wide but atop the carnage it only looked like a longer Wednesday than Richard had planned for. The dancing wall of flame reflected off the faux brass nametag pinned to the front pocket of his shirt.