Blog Love Omega Glee: The Class War Turns Literal (27 October 2012)

At Yaws, Francine is carrying out two orders of the special of the day (Bull Tongue Bratwurst Salad) when the gunpeople shoot the CEO in the head and he pitches forward into his soup. The restaurant erupts in terror with people screaming and moving, and Francine joins them, dropping her tray, running into the kitchen, and out the backdoor into the alley, where she keeps running and tries dialing 911 on her cell phone. But her fingers are shaking and she can't press the buttons. Finally, she ducks into a shadowy doorway, and, heart pounding like a jackhammer on a particularly troublesome piece of concrete, dials the numbers. Before anyone picks up, she's startled by the sound of a car nearby moving at top speed and drops the phone. She pulls deeper into the doorway and sees a car shoot by, driving down the sidewalk. She waits. People run past. She hears more screaming, then, in the distance, sirens. She picks up her phone. "Hello, is anyone there?" she hears the 911 dispatcher say.

"Yes!" Francine shouts, and relates what little she knows.

The dispatcher tells her to stay where she is, but Francine knows in her gut the shooters are gone. That was probably them in the car that went by on the sidewalk, she thinks. She sticks her head out of the doorway cautiously and scans the scene.

More people running. People screaming. The usual drunks abound, but now they're imitating the people running and screaming. Francine sighs and decides to head back. It would be just like Michael to fire her for not sticking around to get shot. From what she picks up from people blathering about the incident, as she heads back, the gunpeople marched in, dressed in military uniforms and monster masks, brushing past the hostess, went up to Stanley Lovinger, frequent Yaws customer and C.E.O. of Cleaveland Chemicals, who was dining with his wife, spouted off some line about how since he denied people a livelihood, they'd deny him a life, and shot him before he even said anything. The company had just closed down a plant in town and moved manufacturing mostly to China, so perhaps that's what the shooters meant by him denying people a livelihood, Francine realizes. Between this and the CEO at the Healthy Hospital losing some fingers to F.A.T.A.S.S. earlier in the week, it didn't appear to be a good week to run a large organization, Francine thinks. For once, she's thankful to be a peon. "What the hell is going on?" she wonders.

When she gets to Yaws, she finds Manuel climbing out of the dumpster and the kitchen door wide open. Apparently, she wasn't the only one who ran away. She helps Manuel out of the dumpster, and brushes some corn husks off the back of his shirt. He hugs her tightly and doesn't say a word. Together they go inside. The kitchen's empty, but the police are already in the dining room. A few customers remain, if not sobbing, then looking shocked. One elderly white woman has blood, probably not her own, all over her face.

"This is fucked up," Manuel says.

Michael speaks with the police, while some of Francine's coworkers hang about, not knowing what to do. The corpse lies on the floor, blood still pooling. Francine can't believe the amount of blood. How can a person have so much blood inside of him?

After he turns away from the police, Michael sits straight down on the floor and puts his head in his hands. Francine kneels beside him and puts an arm around him, and he collapses against her. She looks up and sees her coworkers all looking at one another. Under the horror, she knows they are thinking the same thing. Everyone is too polite to say it though in front of the new widow.

This can't be good for business.

Blog Love Omega Glee is a novel by Wred Fright about two bloggers who fall in love while the world falls apart, which is being serialized on his blog. To start reading from the beginning or read another installment, please visit Blog Love Omega Glee Central on WredFright.Com. If you like what you've read, or you've read all of Blog Love Omega Glee and want more Fright, then please read his first novel.