So guess what?
It turns out an intrepid Fontenot investigative reporter managed to dig up an advanced copy of Jason Elam's forthcoming novel, Monday Night Jihad.
Considering the literary significance, we've decided to publish some excerpts.
Don't worry. It won't give away the plot.
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(p.7)
As
usual, all the players came to his house for a barbecue on Saturday
afternoon. Joseph Lame was the quiet leader of this team, not the
headstrong loud-mouth D-lineman guaranteeing victories, not the brash
young quarterback with the rocket arm. For the public, and for the
media, the usual players could be the leaders. And that was just fine
by Lame. But to lead the soul of a team? To show them what it meant to
be a champion?
That job was for the place-kicker.
(p.34)
Lame was on his way into the facility when he saw Scrapples, the team janitor, hanging his head over by the dumpster.
“What gives, Scrap-Man?” Lame said, angling over toward the 490-pound man.
“Hey, Joseph,” said Scrapples. “So nice to see a friendly face. Some of the guys were giving me a hard time in there before.” Lame could see that Scrapples had been crying. He looked a little roughed up, too. “These guys came around the corner when I was polishing the trophies and the knocked me real good. They said janitors weren’t an important part of the overall workforce and that they were easily replaceable. They pushed me around some more and said that we were kinda in the background, you know? Like anyone could do what we do? And that we weren’t tough, too? And that we weren’t really ‘workers’ at all, just guys who happened to find themselves in the middle of something? And that we weren’t really part of the organization, even? And that our presence was sort of required but no one wanted us around? They pretty much told me that janitors are by far the least important members of the organization.”
Lame, fighting off waves of boiling, incandescent rage, put his hand on Scrapple’s shoulder. “What guys?” he said, gritting his teeth. “Just tell me their goddamned names.”
(p.42)
The
score of the big Monday Night game was 39-0 just before halftime. Coach
Shanana approached Lame during the TV timeout, on the sideline.
“Mr. Lame,” Coach said. “Can you spare a quick second?"
“Pretty busy here, Coach,” Lame said. He was stretching out The Leg
for the big kickoff. The 13 field goals had been cakewalk—he’d done the
last four with his eyes closed. On top of that, he’d already put his
first 12 kickoffs through the back of the endzone, and he wasn’t going
to let the streak get broken just because their bobble-brained jokester
of a coach wanted to say something to him.
“Wanted to run a few questions by you,” Coach said tentatively. “About—about the run game we might use in the second half?”
“Show me,” Lame said.
Coach handed Lame the playbook and started pointing out a few plays.
Lame didn’t even pretend to listen to Coach’s interpretations. Instead
he flipped to the back of the book and drew up nine new plays.
“Look at how the zones all work together, Coach,” Lame explained for
the millionth time. “The O-linemen can’t miss the cuts. That’s your problem.”
“Oh boy,” said Coach. “Wow.”
“There,” Lame said. “Do you understand them now?”
“Sort of,” Coach said. “I’ll look at them at halftime. You’ll be there to help me?”
But Lame wasn’t paying attention anymore. His attention was on the field, and 80,000 other sets of eyes were pointed that way, too. They all watched as a lone, mysterious, robed man sprinted down the sideline. But this wasn’t a player, at least not from any team Lame had ever heard of. And he wasn’t holding a football. He was holding a football-shaped bomb.
“Get down!” Lame shouted. “That man is an Islamic extremist!”
(p.67)
When Lame woke up he was buried beneath 10,000 pounds of rubble, rock,
steel and concrete. He was calm. He got his bearings. His shoulder pads
and his helmet had taken the brunt of the weight.
Slowly, methodically, he used the power of his legs to move aside the wreckage.
When he finally climbed out of his pit, he brushed himself, then
looked around. What he saw broke his heart. A huge section of the
legendary, age-old, meaningful Sprint/Chase-Manhattan/NASDAQ/Arby’s
Stadium had been blow out by the explosion.
Lame started
running across the field, toward the bodies of all the fans who lay
strewn near ground zero. Most people didn't know it, but he had 4.2
speed.
As he ran, he raised his fist in the air and yelled, “You bastards!”
(p. 229)
Lame
and Soderlund had finally made their way down to the visitor’s locker
room entrance, just where Scrapples had told them they’d find the
mastermind, Muhammad, and his second-in-command, Muhammad. Soderlund,
hothead that he is, went right to the door and made to pull it open.
Lame grabbed his hand. “Wait,” he said.
“What?” Soderlund said. “I’m all juiced up, man.”
“Don’t you hear that?” Lame said.
Soderlund cocked his head and listened. Lame had heard it the moment they’d gotten near the door.
“What is that?” Soderlund said. “Is it crying?”
“It’s a rape room, Soderlund,” Lame said. “Those Islamic extremists are raping our cheerleaders in there.” He nodded. “Because that’s what Islamic extremists do.”
“But we’re not gonna let them—”
“Hell no we’re not!” yelled Lame. He used The Leg to kick in the door. It flew off of its hinges and decapitated the first Islamic extremist right there, on the spot.
(p. 343)
Coach lay beside the body of Muhammad. Lame could see that his arms and legs were broken, and his face was broken too, but he was still moving. He couldn’t say the same for Muhammad. Both sets of cleats were still lodged in his head.
“Hey coach,” Lame said. “Good thing we switched the inch-longs, huh?”
“Lame!” gasped Coach. “The bomb! There it is!”
Lame turned and saw the bomb. The red countdown indicated it would
explode in exactly 17 seconds. It was enough time, but just.
Lame grabbed onto Muhammad’s lifeless body and dragged the corpse across the room. 13 seconds. Then he went and got the bomb and set it down beside Muhammad’s head. 9 seconds. He propped the bomb at the right angle—C4 out—and then used Muhammad’s skull and broken neck and face to brace it in the proper position. 5 seconds. He took four steps back, then two left, and looked up at the hole in the far wall that he knew led down into a bomb-proof chamber. 3 seconds. He visualized. 2 seconds. He made the kick.
He knew, from the moment it left his foot, that he had scored. Big time.
(p. 485)
Lame held the microphone high in the air so the crowd’s cheers could be picked up. He wanted them to know that they had been the real reason he’d been able to kick Muhammad—the other Muhammad, who had popped up at the last minute after everyone thought everything was okay—so hard in the testicles that he died. Lame paced around the body and stomped on it one more time. Into the mic he said, “Islamic extremists tried to kill you all tonight for fun. You didn’t let it happen.”
The crowd went wild. He could even see a woman who was missing an arm and instead had only a bleeding stump screaming out in joy.
“I don’t believe in Islamic extremism,” Lame said. “And neither should you!”
He dropped the mic and walked off.
Later, when Lame was sitting on the back of the ambulance, Princilla, the head cheerleader, came by.
“Thanks for saving us from being raped by those Islamic extremists,” she said. “Thank God you killed them all before they could try anything.”
“It’s not a problem,” Lame said. "I do anything if it's a good thing."
“Lame?” asked Princilla. “You wanna go out some time? I mean I could thank you. With ass-fucking.”
“Thanks but not thanks,” Lame said. “I’m married, and that means something.” He took her by the shoulders. “That’s what Islamic extremists could never understand. Do you hear me? You should respect that, too.”
“I do,” said Princilla. “I’ve learned now that I do. What have you learned, Lame?”
“What have I learned?” he asked. “It’s simple. I learned that football’s just like life. It’s full of Islamic extremists, and usually those guys deserve to die. A lot.”
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