They hoisted the skinheads out of the trunk. Legs tied tightly together with rope; more coils secured arms against their sides. Serge pulled one by the feet and dragged him across a lush lawn. “We’re heading down to St. Augustine next. Well, you won’t. Sorry, those are the rules. But get this: It’s St. Augustine grass I’m dragging you over! What a coincidence! America’s oldest continuous city and name of the grass. I’m getting dizzy. St. Augustine is my favorite lawn, reeks of childhood. But it need lots of watering, which means these homeowners were more likely to have an automatic sprinkler system that is essential for converting my accidental discovery a decade ago into practical, everyday use. There’s the timer on the side of the house. I reset it to twenty minutes before opening the trunk. And that’s the pump and main PVC line aesthetically hidden in those bushes … Stay put. Just be a sec …” He left them in the middle of the yard and ran back toward the car.
Coleman swayed with a beer and smiled down at the captives. “You guys really bald?”
Serge quickly returned from the Javelin, got on his knees and began emptying shopping bags. “I love Home Depot! Especially the locations open twenty-four hours, when I need them most …” He ambitiously went to the task, starting at their toes and meticulously working his way up with the recent purchases. “Don’t look so bored. Almost done …”
Serge finally stood and pulled a small, threaded adapter from his pocket. “Excuse me again …”
Another quick trip, this time to the sprinkler pump, and he was back, gleefully clapping his hands. “The show’s about to start!” He picked up the camcorder and aimed it at the side of the house. “That PVC junction has a tie-in for auxiliary manual-watering flow, which I utilized with my adapter. More specifically a Y-adapter. Splits into two additional lines, one for each of you. The adapter has a little plastic lever on the front. Right now it’s in the middle, which means both your lines will get water. But push the lever to either side, and the ball valve in the adapter will cut flow to one line and provides extra pressure to the other.”
They stared in confusion. So did Coleman.
“Still no idea?” said Serge. “One lives, one dies-you make the call!” He panned the camcorder down to ashen faces. “I should have my own reality show.”
“But Serge,” said Coleman. “How can a sprinkler system kill?”
“Easier than you’d think.” Serge lowered his eyes toward the contestants. “You’re a couple of worms, so we’re going to have a worm race. If one of you can get to the valve …”-he checked his watch- “… in the next five minutes, and switch it with your nose, you live and your pal dies. If both of you get there at the same time, I guess you’ll be smashing your faces together in a desperate bid for survival.” Serge zoomed in with the camcorder. “If this doesn’t get a million hits on YouTube, we’re lost as a people.”
The skinheads desperately thrashed across the grass, but progress was less than modest.
“Forgot to mention,” Serge called after them. “You’re on an advanced strain of St. Augustine called Floratam. Fun fact: got its name when cross-bred in 1972 by a joint research project from the University of Florida and Texas A&M. Get it? Floratam. Genetically engineered it to be extra chinch-bug resistant, in case you’re planning on sodding anytime soon.”
“Serge,” said Coleman. “I don’t think they care about chinch bugs.”
“They should. Fuck up your yard something fierce.”
“I doubt they’re going to make it to the lever.”
“Oh, they’ll make it to the lever all right,” said Serge. “Just won’t do them any good.”
“Why not?”
“I removed the ball valve from the adapter. No way to cut the flow.”
“Then why’d you tell them they had a chance?”
“Because some types are prone to panic when faced with certain doom.” He fiddled with the camera’s focus. “I like to give the people hope.”
“Still don’t understand how … whatever it is you’ve done here is going to work.”
“Neither will the authorities after I’ve removed my yard-care products of death.”
“I thought you liked to get credit for your projects.”
“I do.”
“But that won’t happen if they can’t figure it out.”
“They’ll eventually figure it out.”
“How?”
Serge pressed an eye to the viewfinder. “Stay tuned for shocking footage at eleven!”
NEXT DAY
The conference room was cavernous and perfectly square, half the size of a football field, far too large for the current Function, making its lack of attendance seem even more so. Exhibitors tended merchandise at folding tables along the walls. The middle of the room was no-man’s-land, an expanse of high-durability carpet that remained empty except for the occasional customer cutting diagonally across for the exit. Droning ducts in the twenty-foot ceiling over-pumped air at a perky sixty-eight degrees.
