The Cola Wars – Bisexual Defenders
You can read this story on its own, but you can also read the rest of the Cola Wars stories here.
While the boys in uniform were abroad fighting the good fight, somebody had to stay home and screw the caps on bottles. A bayonet to the gut is good, but it’s not for everybody; folks still have to cook the bacon. The endless tide of war and terror may continue to turn, but the grass never stops growing.
Soldier boy can’t cut the grass. Soldier boy’s putting a hot one between the eyes of the red bastards on the other side of the trench. Henrietta cuts the grass now. And she’s better at it than her husband is at murder.
And this Wednesday, as with all Wednesdays, she was cutting the grass around the Concord, Connecticut Coney Cola factory. It was hard work, but some-wom-one had to do it. The noxious, sugar-tinged fumes poured out from the mighty stacks spilled out onto the manicured lawn. The blades of grass were drenched in sweetness, becoming candied. The clippings were collected and sold in little boxes not unlike those for candied cigarettes (made, of course, from a similar process happening erstwhile at the Magical Marlboro Manufactury). They were tied with a red bow, and sold in the health food aisle. She and her fellow gardeners were paid by the sack. At the end of each day, landscapers would bring their trimmings to the local foreman and receive a day’s wages for the confectionary they’d accrued. Landscaping contracts were won at the Coney Cola factory via vicious bidding war. Ravenous, hyper-competitive laborers locked horns in fierce competition for who was willing to be paid the least.
This Wednesday was October 1st, the dawn of the sixth month of the bloody and horrible Cola Wars that everybody hated. Brother was, indeed, pitted against brother and Henrietta was already spending the two hay pennies and hefty sack of exposure she would earn outta the day’s crop.
She had arrived at the crack of dawn. A landscaper’s greatest foe is the Sun, the roiling ball of flame that makes even fucking an uncomfortable, sweaty activity barely worth the nut. As that horrid celestial body rose, the workers rolled in for their shifts of mixing cola, screwing on bottle caps, and falling off poorly maintained railings into boiling vats, never to be spoken of again. This was Henrietta’s favorite time of the day because it meant the arrival of Shannon. The two were thick as thieves. They would take their lunch at the same time. Shannon would always split her Coney Cola-provided complimentary nothing. They went to movies together. They’d take turns forking over the nickel. They’d rollick through the cartoon and the newsreel, then leave as the feature presentation played and the Marx Brothers started their racket. They’d get three of their cents refunded, enough to pay for dinner at the diner across the street.
If it isn’t obvious, there was a spark between them. An unspoken something. The secret that could never be known even as they tore into each other’s bodies behind closed doors.
Their affair began when Henrietta approached Shannon’s mouth with her own. Then meeting, the two mouths stayed together, only breaking occasionally for air. There were many wet sounds. It was beautiful. One could generally argue against this sort of marital infidelity but it was the firm belief of both women that their husbands, away at war as they were, would not want them to be bored.
Now Shannon waved at Henrietta. She waved back. And soon they were making out in the back of Shannon’s car. This all happened before Shannon’s assigned shift at the Coney plant, which is truly admirable from a perspective of romance. Necking before 9 is the ultimate sign of attraction and should be respected by you and by the locker neighbors out there most closely affected by the first period tonsil shuffle. The make out session was broken by a “We can’t keep doing this forever.”
Henrietta was shocked. She liked to think she was a good kisser and wouldn’t hear to the contrary.
“Come on, don’t say that,” she said. “I’m just not as riled up for grief as you are.”
“No, hon,” Shannon kissed Henrietta again. “You’re misunderstandin’.” Henrietta felt the nature of her misunderstanding was Shannon being very unclear. “We can’t keep making out in this car. I have to work and eventually one of us is going to boop the horn and attract some unwanted attention.” Shannon slid on a work shirt. Henrietta laughed and pointed to the breast, where a sewn on, grass stained name tag said “Henrietta.” There was another joyous moment of clothes removal, an adorable exchange of garments, and the grim turn of events wherein shirts had to be redonned and clocks had to be punched.
Departing the car and reentering the no PDA zone, Shannon said, “My lunch break’s at the usual time. And I think we’ve found a private place to… dine.”
Henrietta followed Shannon’s finger to the bell tower rising high up above the center of the Coney Cola factory compound. It was fifty feet above the next highest structure. It had a clear view of the gorgeous sugar colored landscape. It was secluded. It was romantic. It was perfect.
With that perfection on the day’s agenda came the endless three hour wait. Every blade of grass cut was another blade of grass that wasn’t making out with Shannon. Every bottle cap screwed on was not nearly as satisfying as screwing Henrietta. Time was a horrid trudge. When boinking is on the horizon, the road can never get there fast enough.
When the Sun was at its height, Henrietta slunk onto the factory floor. Her brow was smeared with grass stains and sugar smears, which she would have known if she had used the bathroom she claimed to the fellas at the front door was her current motivation. The floor was a whole letter grade hotter than the air outside. Giant machines spat out cutting edge implements of ending an enemy’s life and, in alternating patterns, ice cold bottles of Coney Cola. The other women of the factory floor paid her no mind. They were busy building guns to keep their husbands alive.
Shannon greeted her with an, “I found some weeds on the roof. Can you help me with those?” Bisexual readers will know that this is code for sex.
They sidled over to the stairs at the back of the factory. Shannon went through the door first, Henrietta waiting a suspicion-reducing five seconds before following behind. They dipped through a dense fog of smoke breaks and scaled the tower, each step getting them closer to nookie. Though the Coney Cola factory itself was built from “good” “old” “fashioned” steel and stone, these stairs were unpainted wood. The bell tower was the least maintained of the factory’s many upward shunts, most of which billowed noxious smoke. The bell tower was only really used during the annual Fourth of July celebration, where fireworks would be hurled from its crow’s nest. This is in celebration of the founding of Coney Cola on that day in 1777 and nothing else.
“Look around you, Henri,” Shannon said when they reached the top. “You can see everything from up here. Y’know, through all the sugar smog.” Shannon set down her picnic basket (read: stolen milk crate). She sidled up to Henrietta and grabbed her hand, raising it and pointing exactly where Shannon wanted her to look. A guided finger tour of the landscape. “Down there’s the old mill, now run entirely by women. Then there’s the Concord Cardinal minor league field. All women roster. And the school house… Well, the teachers were always women, but now the principals are, too.”
“I feel terrible,” Henrietta said.
“Why is that?”
“It’s… I’m having trouble putting it into words,” said Henrietta. “And I’m surprised and ashamed at how I’m feeling.”
“It’s okay, Henri. We can talk up here.” Shannon unpacked a couple of swiped bottles of Coney Cream Soda from the crate, and popped them open to share.
“But since our husbands—everyone’s husbands… went off, I mean, things have been good. Haven’t they? All the work is getting done, and faster than ever. And… And now I have you.” Henrietta took a drink. “And I can’t lose that. And there’s this part of me that doesn’t want the men to come home, that wants this to stay the way it is. But I can’t think like that. It’s not right to think like that, because if I say that my husband doesn’t come home. That means Danny is dead, and…”
Shannon walked silently across the bell tower and brought Henrietta into her arms.
“I think I ruined our picnic,” said Henrietta.
“Only a little.” Shannon pecked her on the forehead. She was still coated in grass stains and sugar mist, and tasted that way, too. But Shannon looked past her beloved. There were hulking shapes rolling up the drive to the factory. “I think our lunch is going to have to wait. Get down!”
Henrietta hit the deck as a convoy of Poppy Cola blue transports cleared the fence surrounding the plant. Dozens of soldiers poured out the sides of the trucks. They made a beeline for the gates. The glint of their rifles caught Henrietta’s frightened eyes.
Shannon reached out on instinct, taking Henrietta under one arm and grabbing a rope with the other. She pulled down hard. The bell chimed loud. It echoed across the courtyard. Everyone could hear this bell for miles, even over the din of the factory floor. The workers below would have at least a tiny warning as to what was coming. The spotlight was now on Shannon.
A Poppy Cola commando with a pitch-black goatee aimed up at Shannon and fired.
She cried out in pain. Her voice filled Henrietta’s ears. A hot wash of blood and bubbling cola warmed her side as Henrietta pulled Shannon down to the deck.
“Oh shit, Hen,” Shannon wheezed. “I didn’t realize how much that would hurt.” She squeezed at her wound but couldn’t grip through the pain. Henrietta clamped down hard on Shannon’s shoulder, blood trickling through her fingers, as the cola-tipped round in her lover’s shoulder leaked toxic effervescence into her system. “Crate… In the crate. Patch it up.”
Not wanting to leave Shannon vulnerable for a second longer, Henrietta scrambled over to the wooden crate. A familiar glint shone from within. Henrietta left that problem for later and dug. She grabbed a last resort, a failsafe, a doomsday clock, a full ass measure…
“Fizzy Pop Rocks…*” Henrietta said. She crawled back to Shannon’s side for what could be the last time. “Are you sure?”
“It’s the only way, babe.”
*A Brief History of Fizzy Pop Rocks as Battlefield Medicine: It was not long into the endless concourse of the Cola Wars that Poppy Cola cracked the code of turning its carbonated beverages into implements of destruction. The introduction of chemical warfare into the equation remolded the very nature of the conflict. Terrains changed, tactics were modified, and the arms race began. The initial use came as a close-range acid attack. Quickly followed a game of one-upsmanship that would push war forward into a territory from which it could not return, that would change the physical landscape of war through careful chemical destruction. Acid splashes begat “wet grenades,” begat cola-tipped rounds, begat The Boil (a destructive, corrosive swamp of a weapon that turns the surrounding area into a white-hot quicksand whose effects on the human form are too gruesome to relay here). Put into less emphasis were the advancements of battlefield medicine, which were always far slower to catch up to modern advancements than the arms division. Rudimentary salves and bandages simply would not cut it against such a corrosive foe. Cola weapons eat through the standard medical implements only slightly slower than they might devour the human body. A bandage is useless to stop up a wound if the body is dissolving from within. The use of pop rocks as a coagulant was discovered by accident by Bartholomew Castro. While working as a nurse’s aide in a French military hospital, Castro had been enjoying a midafternoon snack when he stumbled over a broom handle and sent a box tumbling through the air and into an open surgery. Though Castro was terminated for his negligence, he will forever be remembered in the annuls of military and medical history for chemical contributions.
Now, the first cracks of gunfire sounded from below. The factory was under siege.
Henrietta slid over to Shannon’s side. Her hand was trembling as their eyes met. Shannon gave her one quick nod, and slid her hand into Henrietta’s. Fizzy Pop Rocks in hand, Henrietta placed her hand over her lover’s mouth, shut her eyes, and poured.
Shannon writhed in pain as her wound filled with broiling bubbles. Henrietta clamped down hard over her mouth, stifling as much of her mournful cries as she could. The hot fizzes and pops seeped beneath Shannon’s skin. Fizzy Pop Rocks ate cola and nerve endings with equal vigor. Shannon kicked the brick ledge of the bell tower, sending sharp needles and pangs up her leg.
Henrietta grabbed her love tighter. A firm embrace might not cease Shannon’s pain but perhaps it would at least remind her that someone would still be with her when it had subsided.
One minute felt like sixty. Then it was over. Shannon’s harsh, shuddered breaths ebbed to rhythmic ones. She was still in a tremendous amount of pain, but it was the kind you could smile through.
“We can’t stay up here,” Henrietta said.
“Well, we definitely can’t go down there.”
Henrietta risked a glance at the ground below. The Poppy Cola troop transports were scattered across the lot. Their violent cargo unloaded, some vehicles were making their way around to the factory backside. Thereabouts was the employee parking lot. The vehicles parked themselves catawampus to block every possible inch of escape. The air was crackling with the sounds of gunfire. It was impossible to ascertain who was firing on who, or which side was landing hits. The shots from below echoed up the narrow passage of stairs and into the belltower.
“They might not find us up here for a while,” said Henrietta. “Definitely longer than it would take to find us down there.”
“This tower is defensible. It’s also inescapable.” Shannon, still prone, struggled toward the picnic basket. Henrietta knew what she was going for. She put up a hand to stop her patient. The basket was opened and Henrietta pulled out a rifle and a box of cola-tipped shells.
“How kinky were you thinking for this particular lunch break?” said Henrietta. She tried her best to show off a wry smile.
Shannon shrugged. “I just grabbed what I could. This came out right next to two ice cold pops,” she said. Henrietta turned the ruby red rifle over in her hands.
“I don’t want to use this.”
“And I don’t want to die.” Shannon looked up at Henrietta with her emerald green eyes. Just a few short hours ago they were looking at her with playful lust. Now they were asking her without question to defend them.
Keeping low, Henrietta moved over to the wall. She peaked up over the ledge. There were only two Poppy soldiers left outside the Coney Cola factory. One was shamefully munching away at the day’s haul of sugar grass that had taken all morning to gather. The other had his hand flagged over his eyes to block out the midday sun. Scanning the perimeter, he stopped, pulled out a pair of binoculars, and aimed them directly at the head of hair quickly dipping below the ledge of the belltower.
Henrietta had never used a firearm on another person before. Days spent at the firing range had given her a decent shot at close range, but never on anything moving. Never on anything that bleeds. The faceless black figures on hanging white targets at the local shooting gallery provided, she imagined, a poor facsimile to actually shooting a man. But Shannon was depending on her. It was likely that everyone in the factory was depending on her. And, at the end of it all, she was going to get paid for her sugar grass.
The lookout lowered his binoculars. He turned to spit the location of our heroes to his gluttonous partner, but was caught in the windpipe by a sailing cola round.
“Whoa!” Shannon jolted back at the sudden sound of gunfire.
Henrietta was agog at her one in a million shot. The lookout grasped his throat, the lot of good that did. His knees buckled and he fell like a sack of potatoes. The sickening thump of a dying sack of potatoes that probably had a family. They likely loved their sack of potatoes, faults and all. When you go to the store, you don’t always get the perfect sack of potatoes. But as long as the imperfections aren’t destructive, you work with the sack of potatoes you’re given, not the sack of potatoes you want. You’re going to use them, and them to you in turn. All you can do is guide and care for your sack of potatoes as best you can in the time you’re given. Your sack of potatoes might not turn out exactly as you envisioned, but that’s the life you both bought into, together.
The hungry lookout didn’t go down with a single shot. Henrietta’s first volley clipped a nearby hedgerow. The second went clear through the grip of the black trash bag from which he had been gobbling her bonus pay. His wrist was shattered by the third and final shot as it went up to protect his fleeing head. His major artery spewed hot blood as acid cola dashed across his face.
He collapsed like a falling sack of flour. Clever readers will fill in for themselves the devastating details of the life of a sack of flour taken before its time.
As usual, the time to examine the moral ambiguity of one’s actions will be done by Future Self. Poor, poor Future Self.
“Hen, they’re coming up from below.” Shannon jerked her head toward the open staircase. The machinery down below was stopped. This allowed the more human noises in the Coney Cola factory to shine out clear. The yells and struggles of workers down below doing everything in their power not to get shot. Two bodies among them were the soon-to-be-shot Poppy Cola soldiers making their way up the belltower. Helplessly far from the high ground, they were put down by a few well-placed shots from Henrietta.
“You’re doing so good, honey,” Shannon said. “You can do it. I’m right here with you.”
This is the way it continued well into the night and clear through to the next morning. Henrietta, in a triumphant fit of adrenaline, would kill someone in defense of her life and her love. Shannon would give her an endless font of support.
“I’m so proud of you, Henri,” said Shannon after a soldier was shot running for his truck.
“You got this!” she said when the torchbearer never made it to the very flammable employee parking lot.
“Honey, you’re the best,” she said when Henrietta made a perfect shot down the tower. The entrance door slammed shut, and the fallen soldier slumped against it.
“I think that might be the last of them,” she said when the echo of gunfire had dissipated from the early evening air. “I don’t hear anything. We might just be able to waltz out the front door.” Shannon pulled herself up the wall. “Hopefully.”
“We may not like what we find.”
“Henri, we don’t have any food left up here. And you’re almost out of shots. So in the interest of not dying in a belltower, I would like to get down now. Maybe there’s an onslaught waiting down there for us, and we make a mad grab for as many shells and colas as we can find. Or maybe we walk right out the front door to raucous applause. But we don’t get to move on until we find out.”
Henrietta kissed Shannon on the forehead, scooped her arm under her pits, and heaved. They were exhausted, malnourished, blue balled. And they were about to walk boldfaced into the unknown.
“Hey, let me help you with that,” said a smiling blue-collar man as he summited the bell tower. “Whoo, that’s a long way up. Probably a long way down, too.” The blue-collar man lifted the hatch door open for them.
“Who are you?” Henrietta stood as tall as she could with another weight to support. “What’s going on down there? Are the soldiers still there?”
“Only former soldiers down there, ma’am.” The blue-collar man gestured at the open exit. “Lot of us just came home. Whole factory’s back full of manpower. You ladies can stop worrying about all of this man-ual labor. Go on home to your husbands now.”
Further protestations and questions from the duo full on the all-dismissing ears of the blue-collar man.
Henrietta descended slowly. She made sure to cradle Shannon as gently as she could while still trying to put some distance between them and the smiling blue-collar man. When they reached the bottom of the stairs, the slain Poppy Cola soldier that had blocked the exit was gone, and all trace had been swept away like he had never existed. The two stepped out onto the factory floor. The vats were fired up. The belts were spinning. A factory full of men was hard at work as if the factory had not been under siege for an entire afternoon.
The wailing machines of the Coney Cola factory spat out delicious cola and devious firearms well into the night.
On the way out to Shannon’s car, Henrietta saw the new gardener turning in her bag of sugar grass to the foreman. He got $57 for his efforts, the best payout of Henrietta’s career.
Chekhov's Gunman 