"Adorn tree, prease," he said.
"Beg pardon?" Arnold said, blinking.
"Tree. You make rike you adorn with ranterns, okay?"
"I think he wants us to pretend we're putting the bulbs on, Arnold. That's what he meant by lanterns."
"But the dang things already decorated," Arnold hissed through a set-toothed smile. He didn't want to have a fight with his wife in front of thirty million moviegoers.
"Then let's pretend," Helen Ziffel said tightly. "This is a major movie, for goodness' sake. Try to go along, for once in your life."
Arnold and Helen got on either side of their Christmas tree and each removed a bulb. Helen took a silver one and Arnold took a red one.
"How's this?" Arnold asked, and he fumbled the tiny hook back onto the tree.
The leader barked something unintelligible and the ornament exploded in Arnold's surprised face. His wife screamed. The tree shivered manically, ornaments popping like flashbulbs, limbs snapping like brush.
Arnold Ziffel saw the raw ruin that had been his upraised hand and felt the sledgehammer blows of automatic-weapons fire punctuate his trembling body. He joined his wife on the floor. The new light fixture he had bought for the den shattered within its Santa Claus wrapping under the impact of his 195-pound weight. His surviving hand fell onto his wife's cheek, and even though he couldn't feel it, Arnold knew she was dead. The gunfire stopped.
Arnold Ziffel lifted his face shakily and tried to see into the blinding lights. Just before he died, he wondered why, if this were just a movie, the bullets had been real. And why, if, as he had suddenly suspected, they had finally come for him, were they filming it?
Mayor Basil Cloves wanted to know if this was in the script when the uniformed Japanese barged into his office and dragged him out of his executive chair.
He was still asking it five minutes later when they forced his head into the V of the curb in front of city hall and rolled a tank up onto the sidewalk. The left front track stopped just inches from his head.
Third A. D. Harachi Seiko demanded, "One rast time, I ask for your surrender. Do you agree?"
Cloves hesitated. "Is this in the script?" he asked again. Seiko barked an order in Japanese. The tank inched closer. Cloves felt the coldness of the curb against his face. A kneeling Japanese kept his face pressed to the gritty street. Another one squatted harpy-like on his legs. A third pinioned his arms behind his back.
"Tell me what you want me to do!" Cloves said in an agitated voice. "If the script calls for it, I'll surrender."
"Choice is yours," Seiko said flatly. "You surrender and terr citizens to ray down arms. Or you die."
Basil Cloves cringed from the spittle spraying from the Japanese's screaming mouth. Through the triangular frame of the arm of the soldier who had his head, he could see a video camera aimed at his own face. Maybe he should play the brave public servant.
Behind the video camera a man was walking down the street, looking dazed and crying in a voice choked with disbelief, "But this is America. This is America!"
He was quickly surrounded and bayoneted in the stomach.
It occurred to Mayor Basil Cloves that perhaps this wasn't a movie after all. That the explosions he kept hearing were not special effects. That the sporadic gunfire was not harmless.
Basil Cloves in that moment realized what he had done. And he made his decision.
"I'll never surrender," he said quietly.
The next sound he heard was a guttural order, then the clanking of the tank. The man holding his head down turned his face to the dirt-caked track, which gleamed at its wear points. The track inched forward.
"You change mind?" Third A. D. Seiko demanded.
"Never!" Mayor Cloves spat. He knew they could not run him down. Not with four men holding him down. They'd be run over too.
Yet the track continued gnashing toward him.
The man at his head suddenly released his hair. He stepped back. Cloves lifted his head. But that was all he could lift. The others kept his arms and legs down.
Then the track bit into the mayor of Yuma's nose. He screamed, but the sound was swallowed by the shattering of his teeth and the pulverizing of his facial bones.
Mayor Basil Cloves never heard the pulpy crack that caused yellowish brain curd to erupt from the fissures of his broken skull.
Third A. D. Harachi Seiko ordered the tank to back up so the cameraman could come in for a close-up of the mayor's head. Then the tank rolled forward again. It went back and forth until the mayor's head was nothing more than a meaty stain.
Linda Best was only dimly aware that there was a film being shot in Yuma. It was the day before Christmas vacation and that meant there was a lot of homework to collect and tests to give to her third-grade class in the Ronald Reagan Elementary School.
So when the Asian soldier entered the class as she was passing out a grammar test, the last thing that Linda Best thought of was a movie.
She saw the AK-47 in the Asian soldier's hands and all she could think of was the incident in California, where a maniac in fatigues and carrying an automatic weapon had killed or maimed nearly thirty children.
She cried "No!" and flung the papers in his face. The man flinched. Linda Best leapt at the man in the desert camouflage fatigues before he could recover. Her hands clawed for the gun. She never felt the sharp edge of the bayonet as it sliced one grasping hand. The other got the barrel. Linda pulled. The Asian man fought back. He was small. Linda was not. They struggled as the children began ducking under the desks.
"Give me that thing!" she sobbed rackingly.
The man grunted inarticulately. Somewhere, through a rushing in her ears, Linda heard commotion elsewhere in the corridors of the school. A popping like firecrackers. She was barely aware of it. All her thoughts, all her strength, were focused on the sweating face that grimaced only inches in front of her.
Linda Best knew she couldn't hope to overpower him by sheer strength. Surprise had carried her this far. Out of the corner of her eyes she saw some of the children crawl out the open door. Good children, she thought. Run, run. Get help.
Then she felt the strength begin to leave one arm. No, not now, not yet. She moaned silently. Lord give me strength. And she saw why. The blood had practically painted her bare forearm. She had been unwittingly clutching a bayonet.
Linda released the rifle. The Japanese scrambled to bring the weapon to bear. In that instant, Linda Best kicked him in the crotch. The Japanese doubled over. His weapon fell into Linda's waiting arms.
Linda Best had never held a rifle in her life. She had never fired a shot. She had never struck a blow in anger. She never wanted to.
But on that day in December, with the children scrambling between her legs to safety, she found the strength to place the muzzle of the unfamiliar weapon to the face of the man who had had the temerity to enter her classroom with murderous intent, and gave him the contents of its clip in one pull of the trigger.
"Everyone, hurry," Linda called, looking away from the result of her courage. "Follow me!"
The children came, some of them. Others huddled and cried. Swiftly, gently, Linda Best went among them, prying fingers from desk legs. She pushed them to the safety of the door, admonishing them not to look at the man who lay with agitated limbs across the doorway.
She carried the last two in her arms. They were crying for their mothers.
It was too much to hope that in their panic the children would all reach the fire exits. Linda stumbled out into the corridor hoping for best, fearing the worst. She did not expect the sight that awaited her.
The corridor swarmed with students. And among them were armed soldiers, men with hard foreign faces and merciless weapons. A fellow teacher bumped into Linda. It was Miss Head, who had the fifth grade.