Super Bugs

Glenn Michael Beckmann was rallying his people in Meridian Hill Park: ""We are the Hunter-Gatherer Society. We have existed from the beginning and will exist to the end. Nobody can stop our right to hunt and gather!" The men cheered. (Women were not allowed to cheer because their high-pitched voices would distort the manliness of the cheering, so the two women there clapped.) Beckmann had been riding high ever since he pulled off the top-secret meeting with their president, Sarah Palin, after her visit to Mount Vernon and before her visit to the National Archives. "Stand tall!" Beckman screamed, and the men cheered again, and the women clapped. "Today we answer the call of a brother in distress." Beckmann pointed to a skinny man with orange hair, a goatee, and overalls. "Milton has alerted us to an evil, foreign invader terrorizing this neighborhood." Beckmann signaled to Holly Gonightly (undercover reporter) to start passing out the weapons. "This is how we will kill the enemy!" The men said nothing, silently examining the sponge mops in perplexity. "MILLIPEDES!" screamed Beckmann, and Milton cheered. Beckmann looked around at the men, who seemed a bit disappointed. "We will hunt them down where they sleep and beat them to death--every last one of them!" The men mustered a little bit of cheering at the word "death", but still looked a bit dejected. "Then we will hunt down the pugs and the chihuahuas and the toy boxers and the miniature poodles!" The men cheered wildly, harboring a deep hatred of the little yappy dogs who were taking over Dupont, Logan, and now Meridian Hill. Gonightly turned to the other woman to see her reaction, but she was looking at the ground. (She had been hoping they would hunt pigeons today.)

A couples miles to the south, Portuguese water dog Bo was also hunting millipedes. "Go, Bo, go!" hollered the twin pre-schoolers, Ferguson and Regina, who were carrying sponge mops to beat the millipedes to death each time Bo discovered one of their secret lairs. The Secret Service followed from a distance, unwilling to let Bo go completely nuts but fascinated at his ability to ferret out the sleeping creatures who, when they came out at night, were capable of giving Sasha, Malia, President Obama, and even the toughest Secret Service officers a massive case of the creeps. (Some were saying that the President of Yemen had been driven out by a stash of millipedes secreted into his bed chamber by revolutionaries.) "Ha, take that!" shouted Regina, as she beat a couple of millipedes to death, then watched their severed limbs continue to twitch electrically. "You're dead, sucker!" echoed Ferguson, as he pinned one against the wall with his sponge mop. Now Bo was tearing through the yellow room and knocking over chairs, but he found nothing and headed towards the West Wing as the Secret Service agents scrambled to straighten up after him. Then Bo paused in the hallway, gave a few sniffs, and proceeded to dig his claws into the carpeting to tear it up. The twins squealed in delight at the sight of a hundred millipedes, and began whacking them to death as Bo barked triumphantly.

"Fergie! Reggie!"

The twins froze at the sound of their mother's voice, and the Secret Service agents looked up in embarrassment at the White House butler, Clio. "Ummm--"

"You ripped up the RUG?!"

"Look, Mommy!" said Ferguson, pointing to a writhing mass of half-dead millipedes, and his mother shivered.

"Why don't we let the men handle it," said Clio, taking the sponge mops from her children and handing them to the agents. "It's THEIR job to keep us safe."

Bo whimpered as the twins were hustled briskly back to the East Wing, knowing that there were many, many things the agents could not keep them safe from.

A couple miles away, Henry Samuelson (who had been up half the night hunting down millipedes) yawned and thumbed through his papers as he waited for the Heurich Society Chairman to move to the next item on the agenda. "Project Cinderella," the Chairman said at last, and Samuelson perked up. "We have unconfirmed reports that she is responsible for forcing the President of Yemen out." Samuelson smiled but said nothing. "She's a loose cannon!" shouted the Chairman, pounding his fist on the table, which resulted in a couple of donuts flying out of their box. "We did not authorize that," the Chairman said in a quieter but more menacing tone, looking straight at Samuelson.

"Angela knows what she's doing," said Samuelson with a smirk.

"Well, maybe WE should also know what she's doing!" said the Chairman.

"She knocked out a dozen military officers in Egypt last week, then slipped into Yemen for two days, and now she's back in Egypt," said Samuelson.

"Tell us something we don't already know!" said the Chairman.

"What do you want me to tell you?" asked Samuelson. "She's a force of nature, she's a killing machine, she moves like the wind--she's everything she was trained to be!"

"Except obedient!" said the Chairman.

"She is making snap decisions in life-or-death conditions, navigating the most hostile situations imaginable, and doing it as a woman surrounded by men who hate women! The Egyptians call her 'she whose gaze must be avoided'! And in Yemen--"

"And you think Yemen or Egypt will be more pro-woman now?" snarled the Chairman.

"Arab countries are growing weaker by the day! Isn't that what we want? We can't control the oil unless they're weak."

Then the speakerphone crackled, indicating that Condoleezza Rice was weighing in from California, and Samuelson rolled his eyes preemptively. "There's a difference between weak and feckless, gentlemen." (You're just jealous, thought Samuelson, who actually had no idea that Angela de la Paz had brought the young but powerful demon Eeteesbsse to the Middle East to do her bidding.)

A mile north, Charles Wu also had Middle East oil on his mind as he entered the Mi Tierra Market and sat down next to the Condor underneath the Unity Park peace statue and bit into a pupusa. He put down his newspaper for a minute, took another bite, then picked up his newspaper again with the report glued under the fold. "I'm not totally sure that it IS going to rain," said Wu quietly a few minutes later.

"Yes," said a Salvadoran sitting on the other side of Wu. (The Salvadoran was neither certain of what Wu had said nor of whom Wu had said it to, but did not want to be impolite.)

"It's true we've had a lot of rain warnings this week without a whole lot of rain," said the Condor before taking another bite of his chalupa.

"She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah," Wu sang softly. (This prompted the Salvadoran to get up and walk over to a different bench.)

"Yeah, man," said the Condor.

Wu finished his pupusa leisurely, then said, "the pupusa is still four dollars. What about the chalupa?"

"It's definitely going up," said the Condor. "Next week we might want to switch to tacos."

"Alright, next week I'm buying!" said Wu; then he got up abruptly to leave because he knew the Condor had gotten really paranoid the last few weeks. (Wu was also eager to talk to Hillary Clinton about Project R.O.D.H.A.M. and the possibility that Angela de la Paz would defect.)

A couple miles to the west, Bridezilla was doing another wedding dress fitting. "These tacos are delicious!" her fiance called out tantalizingly from the other side of the room divider, hoping this would be the magic aroma after he had already failed to tempt her with Thai, Italian, French, or Chinese food earlier in the week. Jay knew the dressmaker was taking in the dress again because the e:coli epidemic in Germany had frightened Bridezilla so much that she was refusing to eat anything but brown rice mixed with Ensure and microwaved on high for three minutes. "I ate this yesterday, too!" Jay called out, which was a lie, but he was desperate to get her eating again. (It didn't matter: Bridezilla was convinced that Jay had super immunities from growing up in India, and that her immune system was sheltered and frail.) The dressmaker secretly tucked in three inches of elastic in the back of the dress waist because she simply could not fit Bridezilla in for any more fittings--this dress would have to be prepared to rise or fall on its own. "I love you!" added Jay, who added that habitually when he didn't know what else to say, but his fiance remained silent, overcome with nausea at the smell of the chile peppers.

On the other side of the river, Millie was tearing up the rug in the downstairs hallway of the Arlington group home for the mentally challenged until she found the hidden lair of sleeping millipedes. "Oh, you're good!" said Larry, cheering her on, but Melinda had to stifle her gag reflex as the big brown dog started cheerfully slurping them up.

Brother Divine of the International Peace Movement was impressed. "The dog is a hog on the ant log of shame! She slew and chew and strew the evil enemy! The fallen are callin', but the good is understood!" (This made Melinda feel better, and she smiled at Freddy.)

The three walked off to find some breath mints for Millie, and Cedric quietly crept into the hallway on his hands and knees. The damage is done. Millie had chewed through the last remaining cable he had secretly linking him to the Secret Government Command Center. What am I going to do?

Out in the river, Ardua of the Potomac laughed at the postcard Eeteesbsse had sent her from Yemen, picked up another hundred pounds of millipedes from the river bank and crammed them into the sewer system.

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Next week: Bridezilla's wedding!