Baja Be Thy Blast

Baja Be Thy Blast

The light at dawn from the inside of a Taco Bell is something far too few have had the privilege of experiencing. Quite similar to the fashion in which, say, the stained glass windows of Cathedral of Barcelona catch each ray of glorious refracted sunlight and shower it down on the congregation, the way red-tinted sunlight bleeds through the fingerprint-scarred windows staring out into the parking lot can really only fill you with a sense of hope for the future. After all, if you're anywhere near a Taco Bell at dawn, customer or employee, all your dreams probably came true. The Teenager, who wears an employee hat and shirt, is about to sit at his little cushioned booth to begrudgingly take his thirty minutes. He would rather be in the back, tending to The Creature, but his bones ache and his muscles burn with the fire of minimum wage employment.

Immediately, a rock smashes through both the idyllic scene and the window. It’s happening. The shift leader screams orders at the employees and The Teenager scrambles over the counter to take his position. The Manager starts handing out weaponry; assault rifles, shotguns, rocket launchers, anything they have. The Teenager cradles the Civil War musket he was given and mumbles a prayer to the Lord above. His back to the counter, The Teenager’s ears shudder under the deafening noise of a mob forming outside the establishment. It's got to be over six hundred people strong this time.

The deafening sound of a bullhorn cuts through the chaos.

“Give us the Baja Blast creature! We want the Baja Blast creature! We thirst! We thirst for its milk!” The man’s tongue wildly flicks around his parched lips. He must be their leader.

From behind the counter The Manager answers the challenge with a bullhorn of his own, his gaunt face that of a man ready to die for his restaurant chain.

“Baja Blast is an exclusive Taco Bell beverage! We made the creature, and we retain the exclusive right to milk it! You may drink your fill, but such a right is available only to paying customers at store sanctioned hours!”

The response is more of a collective shriek of agony than anything coherent.

“Thirst! Thirst! Thirst!”

As the murderous flock begins to chant, dark clouds form above the acclaimed eatery. Rain pounds on the roof and slashes at the windows. As if he were a vegetable being lightly misted at the grocery store, beads of sweat roll down The Teenager’s face. The Green Thirst worsens every day and the hordes only grow in size and animalistic abandon. The Teenager sees scarred, shirtless forms rushing towards the front door. Behind them is a massive wood battering ram, glittering in the rain. The doors, even locked with chains, won’t hold for long.

The Manager stands on top of a table and addresses his workers.

“Warriors of the morning shift, show them you have no fear, for the Taco Bell tolls, and it tolls for them!” His words are met with spirited yells from behind the counter. Atop the establishment, two employees, muscles straining with exertion, each smash a giant sledge hammer against the brass Taco Bell.

Gong! It sounds just like the commercials.

The resonance pierces the air. It seems as though the very earth stands still for a moment. Powerful vibrations roll over everyone and intertwine with the essence of the very restaurant around them. The Teenager feels the energy travel up and down his body, rejuvenating his soul. His skin feels alive in a way it never has before. It prickles with an eldritch intensity, not unlike the feeling of taking ecstasy alone in the back of a minivan. The sensation travels up through his legs, his abdomen, his shaking arms, his palms, his tingling fingers. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath in. This Taco Bell is but a shining city on a hill, and should be defended as such. The Teenager breathes out and the world comes back into focus.

Gong!

Lightning cackles outside and the battering ram continues its relentless hammering at the front door. Outside, the Taco Bell flag is struck down from the flagpole and set on fire to the thunderous applause of the mob. . Shit is getting real, but so is The Manager.

“In ages past, I may have motioned to forgive them, for they know not what they do. But," The Manager grimly shakes his head "we made an oath, etched into the annals of the world wide web. Our Taco Bell mission statement declares, the words on tacobell.com, blazing on polarized liquid crystal for the world to see, that we have an obligation to serve every customer to the best of our ability, and when that customer gets in line for their own destruction, what can we do”—a flash of lightning illuminates the side of his face—“but serve them.” He raises his fist into the air.

“BAJA BE THY BLAST SOLDIERS!”

The Teenager, with the rest of the crew, thumps the butt of his gun on the floor in response. Some would wonder if all this is worth $7.25 an hour, others know that true honor comes from the willingness to lay down your life in the name of your fast food chain. The battering ram swings back and the log finds its mark for the last time. With the bloodcurdling wail of bending metal, the doors give way. The gates of Hell are open.

The first wave of Thirsters explode through the front doors, guttural wails upon their lips. Their minds are filled with only three constantly oscillating images: death, despoilment, and the sweet sacchariferous succulence of Taco Bell’s Baja Blast dripping down their faces.

Gong!

They’re met with a blast, but with far less baja than they hoped. Focus fire from the counter stops the assault in its tracks. The tables, booths, and walls of the Taco Bell are painted red in an instant. To The Teenager’s right, the janitor sighs. He had only just finished cleaning off the blood from last week. Before The Teenager can offer condolences, the second wave is already upon them. Again, the forces of thirst are held at bay by little more than gritted teeth, gunpowder, and the power of friendship. As more of those who thirst stream through the breach, the situation becomes ever more desperate. In momentary glimpses through the smoke, The Teenager sees the horde inching closer and closer to the counter, clambering over the bodies of their fallen. The Bell continues to toll, intermingling with the discordant euphony of gunfire and screaming. More crash against the defenders in much the same way as a wave crashes against rocks, if one lived in a world where water was actually people who violently thirsted for baja blast and rocks were Taco Bell employees.

But even the shoreline cannot hold against the sea forever. The parched crusade finally reaches its destination. Thirsters vault over the counter and the battle devolves into a bloody melee between customer and employee. In the eye of the storm, The Teenager sees the leader of the Thirsters point at The Manager as he pulls a medieval greatsword, shining in the viscera of his last victim, out of its scabbard on his back. With his other hand, he tears off the sleeves of his shirt, revealing massive, sexy even, biceps rippling with veins. Creating the concomitant cacophony that comes with the sound of metal on shitty tile, his sword menacingly scrapes the floor as he charges towards the cash register with violent intentions. Fear being a foreign concept to The Manager, he reaches under the counter and practiced hands return with an ancient katana, dripping with flame, clasped between them.

Of the 171,476 English words currently recognized by the Oxford English Dictionary, only two could ever adequately describe the unfolding scene in the restaurant. Those two words are “totally” and “badass”.

The voice of the thirster leader bellows above the chaos. “I'll have a Taco Bell Breakfast Box, with a side”—he twirls the massive weapon in his hand before pointing it at his adversary—“of you.”

Needless to say, The Manager’s face is a painting of unequivocal serenity.

“Years of training since birth in the Taco Dojo stripped me of all my humanity, leaving nothing behind but mastery of the blade and excellent customer assistance skills, and I can only hope you’ll find our services”—he performs a flawless corkscrew backflip over the counter and lands with his fist in the ground, cracking the tile beneath it—“highly satisfactory.” They both dart forward, and the next moment is a shower of sparks as their yearning blades lock, and a long-awaited allemande between blades begins in earnest.

The completely hog-wild scene is interrupted when The Teenager is tackled over the counter by a screaming assailant lathered in grease and on fire. The man pins The Teenager to the ground and begins choking him and slamming the back of his head into the wet ground. Fingers soaked in burning grease wrap ever tighter around the adolescent’s throat and he can only wonder if the end is truly nigh.

With a fool’s hope, The Teenager pitifully glances to his left in hopes of a savior. A tableau of carnage rampages all around him. Standing on top of the counter, a coworker empties the contents of the deep fryer at random into the wild melee. The cook wields two cast-iron frying pans and a will of the steel and fully utilizes home field advantage in his now-overrun kitchen. He deftly judo-flips a thirster into the gaping mouth of the industrial oven, hardly different than how one flips a tortilla. Ducking under the grasp of another, he grabs the hair of yet a different adversary and pins his caterwauling face into the searing flames of the stove. Elsewhere, The Teenager thinks he can see a wild velociraptor tearing into the poor janitor, but at this point he’s losing consciousness and can hardly tell reality from the illusions that come with oxygen deprivation.

But for all the staff’s heroics, the most important battle is lost. The Teenager’s eyes lock with the bleeding manager’s as they both lie on the floor. The thirster leader triumphantly places his foot atop the crumpled form of The Manager. His entire left side is nothing but a bloody gaping ruin.

The leader gloats as he stands above his dying prey. “We now own the means of baja production, you fucking idiot. With the creature in our possession, the rivers will run green with the holy blast.” –he gestures at the sanguinary destruction raging around him– “And then red. Red with the blood of you and your ilk.”

The Manager mumbles something.

The Teenager feels the darkness clouding the edges of his vision creeping in.

“What?” asks the gleeful warlord.

“Live…”

The smile drops from his face. “Live what?”

“¡Live Más!”

With his final words, The Manager unhooks the pin from a grenade and turns his face east, towards the beautiful rising sun. Glorious martyrdom is his at last. A hint of a smile tugs at the bleeding corners of his mouth as the world turns a deadly shade of orange. The shockwave shatters every window in the building and sends employee and customer alike flying to the edges of the building. This incendiary crescendo to a symphony of baja-based violence echoes out into the sky for eternity.

After a few minutes, The Teenager regains consciousness and takes stock of the scene around him. A massive smoking crater lies in the center of the fast food restaurant. The man who was choking him is facedown, motionless, and shrapnel-shredded on the ground. The rest of the Thirsters are either in a similar state or fleeing the scene. In other words, the morning shift is finally over. The rest of the crew begins to stir and a few of them start clocking out of the system. They’ve already put in overtime. The thirster leader’s legless body lies squirming in the corner of the building. His once sexy arms are outstretched, embracing the sky. His lips move silently and recite the words he heard whispered in his fateful dream the night before.

“We are born of the baja, made men by the blast, undone by the baja; Fear the baja. Fear the blast." Those eyes touched by insanity finally close, nevermore to open.

The Teenager decides to check on the creature, after all, that's what this whole thing was about anyway. He can’t believe that all of this fuss is about the old girl. Sure, in focus groups for marketing Baja Blast, some participants complained of entering a temporary trance and “becoming one with the unending scream of a thousand dying stars”, but they still gave glowing reviews for the zesty lemon-lime flavor, which was really the most important thing in consideration. When you really think about it, the fast food industry is a cut-throat place and you can't look a gift unidentified creature in the mouth if you want to keep up with the competition.

The Teenager walks into the storage room, and there she is, good as new. The lovecraftian abomination turns one of its crooked weeping heads to look at him.

“Я̶̨̡̡͔͎̻̺͙̘͙͋ ̷̡̡͉̣̗̲͇͑͂̿͝н̶̝̳̪̤͕̬̱̥̬̟̮̓͝а̷̰͒̍͜͠х̶̢͚̠͙͎̺͚͕̱̣̏̌͒̓о̵̺̝͇̦̮̰͓͒̈͆̏̓͘̕ж̷̨̘̥̚ӱ̶̡̜̼̟̯̖́̈́̊͑ ̷̫̜̗͈̰͎̻̼̲̣̦̈́̿͐̒̀̑̈͆̓̚͝ͅэ̶̢̛̛̜̲͇͍̲̫͖̣̭̋̃́̾͆͗͒͘͝͝ͅт̴̧͒̉̅͒͂̾͑̑̿͒̚у̶͇̱̗͉̤̼̌̎͌̑̏͒̃̃ ̶̧̱͙̬̩͎̂͗͛̀̏ͅс̷̡̝̩̠͚̒̓͊̊̈́̓̾̚͝м̵̝̥͙͍̱̯͗̂̎̂̈́̋̇͗̚͘ͅе̸̛̳̳͉̊̂̈́̀͘͝͝р̶̛͖̫̭͎͕̠͔͌̇̿т̵̧͖̤̼̜̤̮̳̐̓͜н̸͈̖͎͖͕̯͇̗͍͕̰͊͘у̵̡̠̫̞̳̻̱̠̥̮̍̔̄̋̃ю̷͇̼̠͎͈̪̗͖̅̽̓͑̑̂̊̔͠ ̷̡̛̞͈͎̖͉͇̤̺͕̄̓́̆͋͊ф̷͉̹̿͆̇͘о̶͖̬̲̮̱̲̘́͒͠р̵̼̯̻͔͊͂̈́͊̊̔̾͑̓͒̕ͅм̶̡͕͎̮̥̟͖̞́̓̊̏̾̍̅̈́͘у̸̺̩̦̪̟̙̤͂̔̚͜ ̶̨̛̖̣͙̫̼͈̅͐̾̒̾̾̀͝о̴̧̢̥̯̙͎̝͇̩̒̀̀̊г̶̢̖̽͗̐̂͂̏̅̚͠р̸̛̟͚̬͓͈̗̞̖̜̲̪̐̃̂̂̂̊͘̚͜а̶̛͔̽͂̇͑̍̐̈́̉̄̚͝н̴̨̡̢̝̬̠̳̦̠͖̣̊̊̂͑̎̅ѝ̴̖͎̼̜̜͙͉̝͙̭̞̾͑̀͘͝͝ͅч̴̨̢̰̬̭̮̹̪̘̺͑̒̓͆͒̓̂͒̈̽̂͘и̸̝̟͓̯͚̤̻͒̆̅͒̋͘в̵̘̫̺̫̱͈̥͈̟͓̫̟̊̒̈̿͛̆̀̈́̓̈́̏͝а̸̡̛̳̼̣͔͙͑̋̓̒͘͝͝ͅю̴̲̮͈̪̓̐̇̀̆̿̍͜щ̶̛̪̹̯̬̦̘͎͉͈̤̏̄̆́̈́͛̓̈́̇͘ͅѐ̶̛͇͈̯͌̈́͛͗̐͛͑̑̀̃й̴͓͔͈͎̞̺͔̍̈́͆̃͆̎̀̿͑͠},it says, not unlike a

mooing cow.

The Teenager lets out a light chuckle. “Me too buddy. Me too.”

And they all lived happily ever after!