The Labour Day Massacre

The Labour Day Massacre 

Jesse Zimmerman

          Sally Owens thought that the younger woman’s dark eyes were beautiful, her delicate features accentuated by the black headscarf that enclosed her face.  She must have been a new employee.

        “Go ahead,” she said politely to the person just behind her, pulling away her gaze, not wanting to be served by her. “Another one?” she thought as she approached the other cashier whose hair wasn’t covered. “When are they putting up the Halal sign here?”

        On this day of all days too, this day when Sally was ready to finally take a stand.  Her years of attending Middle-East protest events, photographing radical activists and posting on her blog were great, but she, along with many others, came to the conclusion that further action was needed.  Back then the government was at least on their side; now no one was.  She sighed as she took her seat at the far corner.  There was someone else at the count ordering now, a large man in jeans with a white jacket with coffee stains on the sleeves.  His receding hairline stretching back and ending in a ponytail looked all too familiar to Sally.  She was here to meet him.  After taking his coffee he glanced around and found her, waving with his free hand.  Around his neck was the usual mid 90’s film camera.  He had never bothered to update.  Sally had gone digital the year she started blogging.      
“Walter, did you see the girl in the hijab?” she asked in a borderline whisper as he sat down with her.

He nodded as he pulled up the tab on his coffee cup lid and blew on the escaping steam. “Does her husband know she has a job?  If they hire another I’m not coming back here.”

Sally knew there was a high likelihood that neither of them would be coming back. “It’s almost eight,” she said.

Walter nodded, sighing as he lifted himself from the chair he had just struggled to sit in and led her out the door to his parked car.  When Walter had finally brought his body down on his seat inside he grabbed a bag of fast food off the passenger seat and threw it into the back.  Sally squeezed her wiry body in as Walter adjusted his seat, bringing it backwards to make way for his massive upper body.

“Car’s too small,” he wheezed.  He gripped the steering wheel tightly, wincing as a sharp pain accompanied by anger shot through him.

“What’s this meeting about anyway?  All he asked was to see me and then you called,” Sally asked, noticing his discomfort.

Walter pressed down on the gas pedal, taking the car out of the parking lot. “I’m not sure,” he said, the pain starting to fade. “All I got was a message from GhostCat telling me the time and place.”

“Have you met him before?” she asked.

Walter shook his head. “Nope, only been reading his blog lately.  Idiot socialists argued with us for a while, but GhostCat deletes their comments.”

“Did you read his last one?”

Walter nodded, turning off the main road into a quiet side street. “He’s right over here,” he said, pointing to an old red-bricked house at the end of the lane.  As he turned into the driveway he felt another flash of pain rise up from his back, causing him to squeeze the sides of the wheel again.
“You’re sure you’re feeling up for this tonight?” Sally asked, opening her door.

Walter shut his eyes, feeling sweat run down his forehead, barely managing a nod. “I won’t have the chance to be ready again,” he huffed, sliding out the driver door.  The cool air of the evening chilled his clammy skin, the pain receding again.  He breathed heavily as he opened his eyes, standing in the shadow of the two-story house.  The place was nice, far nicer than anything Walter could afford.

“This is where GhostCat lives, eh?” he said, making his way to the front door.  Sally said nothing, opting to snap a picture with her little camera instead.  Walter wondered if she would blog it.  If this meeting was about what he had expected it would be, then she definitely wouldn’t be posting it.  He knew what he would decide if the question was asked.  After GhostCat’s latest blog he was determined to take action.  Walter felt a slight tingling sensation on his hand as he knocked on the front door.  A large blonde man opened it.  He was younger than the two of them, nearly six feet tall and well-muscled from what the black sweatshirt he wore showed.

“GhostCat?” Sally asked.

“No,” he answered, giving out a hand to Walter first. “I’m Leo.”

“Leonides?” Walter asked, noting the man’s tight grasp.  Walter knew of him.  He had a blog himself for a short while.  The image of a mighty ancient Greek Hoplite graced the banner of his site, the end of the warrior’s spear impaling a brown skinned opponent while images of crusaders on horseback filled up the sidebar.

“Come on in,” the former blogger said, opening the door and standing aside for them. “I just got here.  GhostCat’s in the basement.  We’re about to start.”

“Good,” said Sally as she stepped inside.  The front hallway was spacious and warm, pleasant paintings of tall ships lining one wall all the way down to a flight of stairs. “What are we meeting him for?”

“He contacted me, asking if I was ready to make a real stand against the enemy,” Walter said, stepping inside after her.

Leo shut the front door behind them. “You guys saw the pictures, the latest he posted?”
“With the parachutes?” Walter asked as they made their way to the stairs.

“Yeah, GhostCat took them just a week ago,” explained Leo as the three of them moved down the steps. “That’s when he decided to contact us.  I think he’s planning something big.  I told him I’ve been ready for a year now.  I’ve been north of the city.  I set up a training field and have been going at it for months; running marathons and target practice.  Since we’ve been run by a Leftist coalition government it seems some serious action is called for.  There is no news that isn’t the mainstream cultural Marxist crap anymore.”

The stairs led to a dingy basement, the walls dull grey with stains of brown mold on them.  To the right of the stairs was an open room with a large table in the center of it with three chairs.  At the far left of the room was a metallic door covered in rust.

“GhostCat was here a minute ago,” Leo said.

“That’s where you’ve been the past year?” Walter asked, stepping over to the table and pulling out a chair. “Up in the country training?”

Leo nodded, taking a seat on his left.  Sally stayed near the stairs, looking about the room apprehensively, unsure of what to make of the situation.

“I wish I could be blogging and doing all the stuff you’ve been doing,” Leo went on. “Things have gotten even worse in this country since I’ve been up north.  GhostCat showed me these pictures before he published them.”

Walter sighed, thinking back to the day before when he had first seen these photographs published on GhostCat’s blog.  The first photo was dark, just a night sky with a tiny light object in the middle.  The second one showed someone dressed completely in black, his face covered with a ski mask, attached to a parachute some thirty feet above the ground.  The third picture showed someone that Walter knew, Daniel Reiss, an anarchist activist that he had been keeping tabs on the past three years since the Occupy movement days.  Reiss was a rival of his, constantly approaching Walter as he took photos of protests and outing him as an apparent informant to the other demonstrators.  He hated that kid.

“Daniel Reiss, do you know him?” he asked Leo.

“Uh—yes, he’s that lefty nut at all the protests.  He wrote a lot of lies about me when I ran for office out in the east end.  That was him in the photo?”

Walter nodded, feeling shrill aching in his chest at the thought of him. “He was at the bottom, waiting for the Jihadist to land.”  Ghostcat’s photographs showed more Islamic militants landing on Canadian soil while Reiss and other Leftist Canadians waited at the ground to receive them.

“When I saw those pictures I knew it was time,” Leo declared.

“I knew too,” agreed Walter.

The rusted door on the other end of the room opened.  Sally slowly moved towards the table as a thin man wearing black pants and a dark blue sweater stepped out from behind the door.  She had never seen GhostCat’s picture on his blogs, but she knew it was him.  He was slightly younger than she was, maybe in his early forties, with slightly graying hair.  The tiny round glasses on his face gave him the appearance of a great mind, or at least Sally thought so.  It put her at ease.  She took a seat on the other side of Walter.

“Greetings everyone,” the man said. “I am GhostCat.  Here tonight we have Leo Brears, Walter Reynolds and Sally Owens, three of the sharpest commentators we have on the steady erosion of Canadian values and the coming imposition of Sharia Law.”

Walter smiled; pleased to know he was thought of so highly by someone whom he admired himself.

“Thank you,” Leo said. “As we know the new Marxist coalition in Parliament is debating the rolling back of anti-terror laws.  I wanted to do anything to make a stand against this appeasement of terror.”

“Well first, thank you for coming here,” GhostCat responded, placing a thin black laptop on the desk. “I messaged each of you to ask if you were willing to take a stand and you each said yes.  My next question is: how far you are willing to go to make this stand?”

Leo stood up. “I’m willing to go to my death if needed!” he declared. “After seeing your photos I’ve seen enough.  This has to stop now.  We have a duty as Canadians, as harbingers of Western values, to protect what’s ours before it’s too late!”

GhostCat smiled. “Glad to hear it.  How about you two?”

Walter shrugged. “What are we doing to make this stand?”

“This is more than a counter-protest, a media blitz, or a letter-writing campaign,” said GhostCat.  He opened up his laptop and clicked on a key, prompting an image to appear on the screen as he turned it around to face them.  It was an overheard map, a main street downtown that all three of the guests recognized. “As you know in two days it’s Labour Day.  There will be a large student contingent marching down this street at two o’clock.  Recent divestment motions have been passed by numerous student unions and so it’s the youth who we’ll target.  The future of this country depends on them and if they are ready to roll down the carpet for mass immigration and Islamicization then they need to be taught a lesson.  This attack will inspire others to take up arms and force a long-term revolution of cultural values. The fear of being slaughtered will keep them in line, the consequences of their unpatriotic actions.”

“Excellent,” Leo said, looking at the map. “Where do we come in?”

“Here,” said GhostCat, suddenly reaching below the table.  He pulled out two small boxes, sliding them in front of Walter and Leo. “Sally, you will make a distraction, claim that someone is harassing you and get the attention of as many marshals and police as possible.”

Sally nodded.  Years ago she would have never wanted to take part in any act of violence, especially against young students, yet the years of examining the far left-wing student movements had made her hate them, each day fearing more for the future they would create in her country.
“So I am the distraction for something?” she asked.

GhostCat nodded. “Open up the boxes,” he then said to the two men.

Walter opened his, gasping at its contents.  Inside there were three grenades.

“You’ll find garbage cans here,” GhostCat told him, pointing to a long cement island running down the middle of the street on the map. “There will be a mass of people moving down on either side.  As Sally distracts you’ll pull the pins at once and drop them in the nearest can.  Make sure you have a path between people to get as far away as possible.”

Walter pictured himself running onto the far sidewalk as flames and debris shot up behind him.  The thought of radical leftists strewn about the street in the aftermath, especially Daniel Reiss, brought a smile to his face. “I’ll do it,” he said. “Someone has to stand up to them, the leftists, feminists, Islamists, all those haters of freedom.”

“Me too,” echoed Sally, her mind made up.  If it took violence to save her country from Islamism, then so be it.  It would save lives in the long-run as far as she was concerned.
“Finally that leads to myself and Leo,” GhostCat went on. “Open the box.”

Leo smiled as he did so, taking in the two pistols that lay in front of him. “You shouldn’t have,” he said, picking one up and looking it over.

“Be inconspicuous,” GhostCat warned. “I will be there as well with the other pistol.  Once you hear the explosions shoot at short range.  We use small arms so we can dispose of them.  Get as many radicals as you can, then dump the weapon and flee.”

Leo nodded. “In two days then?”

“Yes,” GhostCat replied. “We meet tomorrow to finalize plans, same time.  Is everyone ready for this?”

The three of them stood up at once, all voicing their commitment.  GhostCat smiled and then led them in a quick prayer before leading them upstairs.  When they reached the top he told them to go ahead out the front door.  Once outside the three of them were greeted by a blinding light.  Walter raised his hands, dropping the box; throbbing pain erupting all over his body at once.  Sally just shrieked.

Leo shaded his face. “What is this?” he demanded.

“Freeze!  Drop the gun!” a booming man’s voice shouted from behind the light.

Leo cursed loudly, realizing what was happening.  Without a thought he raised his pistol at the light and pulled the trigger.

“Not a real gun,” GhostCat said with a laugh, coming out the door behind them. “Not real grenades either. In fact, I’m not a real blogger.”

Two police officers came out in front of the light, their guns still in their holster. “You’re under arrest under anti-terror laws,” yelled the first one. “Get on the ground now, all of you!”