Tentacle Death Trip (12 page)

CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN

I.

Samson pressed the
button between the seats and from out of the back of his car came a deluge of
white foam.

The vacuum-woman
riding behind the car was knocked off her motorcycle by the force of the foam.
She hit the ground like a sack of rocks. The vacuum exploded, causing a huge
gaping hole in her back. Organs, ribs, and white foam covered the street.

The other two
women looked back for just a few moments giving Samson a chance to step on the
brakes, letting them pass him. He quickly aimed the blowgun and shot the women
off their bikes, their breasts flapping like overused pin cushions.

With a quick turn
of the steering wheel, Samson avoided the brick wall and brought the car down
an alley to the left only to be confronted with a group of
Zoners
.

They had hoisted a
Yugg
above their heads and were about to skin it
alive.

“Close your eyes,
kid,” Samson said. Paulo slapped his hands over his face.

The car plowed
into the
Zoners
. Several heavy thumps rocked the car.
One of them hung onto the hood, staring into the windshield at Samson. He was a
particularly ugly
Zoner
with a patchy beard and bug
eyes. With one hand he was holding onto the car and with the other he held a
handful of
Yugg
flesh which he held up to the
windshield.

“Is this your
lunch?” he said to Samson. He put it to his face and sniffed flakes of flesh
into his nose. “Once you get used to it…it just clears the sinuses!”

Samson slammed on
the brake and the
Zoner
went flying forward, his
skull hitting the ground and opening like a wet pumpkin.

Paulo uncovered
his eyes and stared out at the corpse. He watched as the asphalt bubbled like a
bowl of black pudding and swallowed the dead
Zoner
.
The road let out a monstrous burp.

Samson put the car
in reverse. “Now you know why it’s called the Zone of Dead Roads.”

II.

Drac
drove down the halls of the school, his tentacles
ripping the lockers off the walls. The element of surprise was out of the
question and now he just wanted the gasoline. Killing Lord Bing Bong was second
on the list of priorities. If the man was willing to let
Drac
drain the reserves, then his life might be spared. After all, they did know
each other. Bing Bong just might let
Drac
have the
gas for old time’s sake. If not, well…

The man would just
have to die.

“Pure road hell
brutality,”
Drac
said over and over to himself,
gripping the steering wheel and letting his anger take control. It was an anger
that forced him to delve into his psyche, his gasoline-laden memories, and pick
through painful scenes.
An image of his body being melted
into another.
His limbs being doused in sludge.
An oil-soaked
trapezohedron
.

A rock hit his
windshield, knocking him back into reality.

He slammed on the
brakes and set the car in reverse, passing a classroom with a small man
standing in the doorway. The man was wearing a football helmet and a navy
uniform that was splattered with neon liquid. His face was covered in a mask of
concentric wrinkles, a whirlpool of age engraved in between intense eyes and a
fat-lipped mouth.

Drac
stopped in front of the man and stuck his head out of the
window. He laughed a high-pitched sound that reverberated down the hallway. The
sight of little Lord Bing Bong was quite humorous.

 
“
Dunwich
, you better
have a good reason for being on my train,” Lord Bing Bong said, his bulbous
lips dripping bright drool.

“Train?”
Drac
realized the man had gotten more insane since
the last time they had met. “No train. But listen. I need gasoline. I assumed
since we had done business before you might be inclined to…”

“ASSUMPTION IS THE
MOTHER OF ALL FUCK UPS!” Lord Bing Bong screamed, getting close to the car and
sticking his head inside.

The two men stared
at each other,
Drac
smiling slyly while Bing Bong
frowned sloppily.

“So are you going
to give me the gasoline or what?”
Drac
tapped on his
temple with his finger. “I don’t like getting this close to empty.”

“You need to get
off my train before I kill you,” Lord Bing Bong said.

Drac
leaned back in the driver’s seat. “You know who I am.
You know who my father was. You and I, we’ve done business.”

“I don’t care
who
your father was.” Lord Bing Bong punched his football helmet with both hands.
“I don’t fucking
care
!”

“Listen, Lord, I
know you have a lot to handle, taking care of all the
Zoners
and dealing with the
Yuggs
and all that but I’m
asking as a favor.”

“A
favor?
In this world of shit you ask for a favor? Let me tell you, since
you are so concerned with who your father was, let me tell you who
my
father was.”

“I’m not concerned
with that.”

“If you want me to
consider a favor, then you will be concerned with that. Understand?”

Drac
shook his head.

“My father, he was
a man of respect, you know that, moved us from Palermo
when I was just a boy. You know what my first lesson was when coming to this
shit country?”

“What?”

“My father took me
to a train yard and locked me in one of the cars, told me I had to think about
how grateful I should be, to be in this new country with new opportunities. I
thought about it alright, I thought about how I wish I was pouring cement in Palermo,
putting my father in that very same cement. Let him suffocate slowly, let his
lungs harden up. That’s what I thought about in there, locked in the train car
for two days with nothing to keep me company except for a fucking comic book I
had in my back pocket.
Spent two days thinking about killing
my father and reading about a fucking cartoon donkey.”

Drac
could see Lord Bing Bong unraveling in front of his
eyes. The wrinkles on his face transformed into obscure sigils and his lips
turned deep red.

The two men stared
at each other.

Finally
Drac
said, “I’m not sure I understand your point.”

“When my father
finally came to get me out, you know what he said? He said that I should be
grateful. That he did me a favor.
A fucking
favor
.
So please pardon me if I’m not partial to that word.”

“I apologize if I
hit a nerve but what if I said I had some books in my trunk, books I’d let you
take a look at for a possible trade.”
Drac
smiled
widely, showing yellow teeth.
“
Rare
books.”

Lord Bing Bong’s
frown lessened and he moved his head out of the car. He put his hands on his
hips. “I don’t know what I’d say. It would depend on what you had. Let me see
and maybe I’ll let you take some gasoline off my train.”

Drac
reached down, pulled a lever, and popped the trunk. He
nodded with his head for Bing Bong to go check it out. “I think you’ll find
something of interest back there. I traded with a
Yugg
for some pretty obscure texts.”

Bing Bong’s face
turned red. “I’ll bet you your goddamn car they’re my books that were stolen by
those ugly abominations. Two weeks ago my copy of the
Abgrund
Abschaum
went missing
.
Books don’t just
get up and walk away.
Then this week someone took the
Yonimani
Yantra
Fragments
…..right from underneath my nose! I bet you it was those fucking
Yuggs
!”

“I assure you, I
do not have any stolen books in my possession,”
Drac
said. He motioned to his trunk. “But feel free to check for yourself.”

Lord Bing Bong
grunted and made his way to the back of the car. He put his hand on the trunk
and lifted it.

A tentacle shot
out and impaled him.

It waved him into
the air while he screamed.
“You stupid fucking bastard!
You think you’re getting out of my train alive now? You think my
Zoners
are going to let you leave?
You
son of a bitch!”

Drac
watched in his rearview as the tentacle flapped the
man around, banging him against the walls so hard the football helmet cracked
into his skull. With brains pouring out of his head, Lord Bing Bong spoke.

“That is not dead
which can eternal lie,” the dying man said. “And with strange engines even
death may drive.”

III.

“Where are we
going?” Paulo said. He was visibly shaken from witnessing the asphalt devour
the
Zoner
.

“To the finishing
line,” Samson said. “Atlantic City.”

“We’re not going
to kill Bing Bong?”

“Nope.”

Samson was driving
fast through the streets of the Zone, marveling at how ominous the buildings
looked now that he had a glimpse of the horrors beneath them.
 
Were the rumors true? There were many stories
about the
Zoners
and their mixing
Yugg
remains in with the tar when they repaved the streets. It was strange to Samson
how they could take something as common as road-paving and turn it into
something morbidly perverse.

There were still
people watching him from inside the buildings and televisions were still playing
the same movie. On the streets there were
Zoners
smoking large cigars made of
Yugg
scalps. The smoke
from them rose slower than normal smoke and twisted into shiny spirals.

Some of the
Zoners
were wearing backpacks and looked like overgrown
college kids whereas others were dressed in filthy, military attire. They were
all armed and all looked preoccupied with something, almost meditative in their
demeanor.

As he drove down
the streets, Samson realized something. No one was trying to attack. He had expected
there to be perhaps some more topless motorcycle women or some zealous
Zoners
on foot who would want to strike but there was
nothing but distracted inhabitants.

“What’s wrong?”
Paulo said, seeing the worry on Samson’s face.

“I don’t know,
kid. I guess I was expecting more, you know, danger, people trying to kill us.
Now everything seems so……”

“Quiet?”

“Yeah, quiet. But
I don’t think that’s a good thing.”

IV.

After draining
Lord Bing Bong’s gasoline reserves,
Drac
drove away,
leaving Lord Bing Bong’s shredded body in the hallway of the “train” and the
football helmet still hanging off one of the tentacles.

As soon as he was
driving the streets,
Drac
noticed something
different. The
Zoners
weren’t attacking, or making a
move to see what had happened at the school. It was as if Bing Bong’s death had
destroyed any motivation they might have had. That was fine by
Drac
. He didn’t need any more trouble.

One thing that
caught his eye and worried him was that the buildings seemed taller than they
had been before. Each one reached into the sky like a finger aching to scratch
it open in the hopes of letting in a deluge of some long-awaited apocalypse.

Drac
shook his head. Why was he always so paranoid? It
might have had something to do with his father. It might have had something to
do with…with what? The memories were there but they weren’t clear, weren’t
enough to let him have any substantial amount of introspection.

But he had to
focus. He had to drive out of the Zone of Dead Roads and get to Atlantic
City. The race had become something he had to win. It
wasn’t that he was necessarily worried about the supplies or even the gasoline
(his tentacles find plenty of that on the road). It was something about that
city that had risen off the coast.

R’lyeh
.

Something about it
was familiar. Had his father talked about it? Was it in one of his books? There
was a sense of ecstatic danger like what a child would feel in front of roller
coaster for the first time.

But there was the
problem of Mr. Silver. There was something wrong with that man. It wasn’t just
his bloodthirsty exploitation of his fellow survivors of the war. There was
more to it than that. That was an unholy confidence in Silver that
Drac
had only seen in one other person: his father.

CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN

I.

Five Years Ago

Long before Samson
was approached by
Enzo
, he had already earned himself
a reputation as one of the fastest drivers in New Jersey
and the surrounding wasteland towns. It had all started as an accident.

After his wife had
taken his car, Samson spent his time walking from town to town, doing small
jobs for colonies of people hoping to begin anew. He mostly helped dig for well
water, harvesting crops which were mostly mutated beyond safe consumption. But
he didn’t mind. He did whatever it took to get his mind off his son Jack.

At one point
Samson decided to venture into the Pennsylvanian Wastelands. There were large
towns there, mostly nuclear slums, radioactive ghettoes, places where the black
market was thriving with anything one would need to replicate pre-war
normality. Samson had heard about a town called
Dogunville
that had been constructed out of cement blocks by a man named
LeRoux
who had spray painted each block with elaborate and
violent scenes.
LeRoux
had told people the scenes
were from movies and comics featuring demonic heroes and tortured villains,
perverse power plays involving fetishistic psychodramas. Childhood trauma was
imprinted upon cement like vivid flashbacks. After
LeRoux
had set up the town, he retreated into a yellow bunker full of canned foods and
DVDs.

Samson heard the
stories and had been tempted to go there, to indulge in the bizarre theater of
Dogunville
so he mustered up the energy and hitched a ride
in an old man’s truck. They road for five hours, luckily dodging a gang of
marauders who were more interested in getting drunk off their newly acquired
bottle of antifreeze to bother with Samson and the old man.

When he was
dropped off at
Dogunville
, Samson gave the old man a
small can of vegetables as payment. The man accepted the trade and gave him one
warning. He said, “Whatever you do, watch out for the guy with the cars.”
Samson nodded and walked into the heart of the town.

The rumors had
been true. The city, every building and every house, was made out of cement
blocks each with a different scene painted on them in bright paint. Samson
thought it was refreshing after the dark, dull, and bland towns that were being
rebuilt in New Jersey.
Dogunville
seemed to be more alive, more in tune with the
human imagination. Still, it was a post-apocalyptic town like any other so he
knew he had to be careful.

The people looked
friendly enough. They appeared dirty and exhausted, probably from trying to
build yet another cement structure. Their tired faces reminded Samson of the
pictures of his great-grandparents taken before they immigrated to America
from Sicily. Life had been
difficult, it had beaten them daily, but they had found a latent pleasure in
the struggle.

Samson walked to
the main square of the town where an ancient man was arranging half-rotten
fruit on a table. It was at that moment, while looking at a few neon-green
pears, that he realized there was no good reason why he had come to
Dogunville
. For him to hitch a ride from a stranger and go
that far simply because he had heard about some bizarre art painted on cement,
well, that just wasn’t like him. But as he looked at the pictures, he felt like
an internal switch had been flipped. It was as if the pictures he saw were
memories.

There weren’t the memories
he wanted. Samson wanted to cherish the memories of his son and the times they
had played games together, had told stories to each other. From a very early
age Jack had always been good storyteller. When he was five, he made up a tale
about cannibalistic dwarves from outer space that came to earth to help the United
States fight in the Vietnam War. Samson had
been amused by the story but, as always, his wife had disapproved of such a
grotesque use of creativity.
 

Gruesome as they
were, those stories were what Samson wanted to remember. It reminded him that
his son had not just been his offspring but a separate person with thoughts,
dreams, and a vivid imagination. Samson cherished that. It made him want to
track down the men who took his son. But where would he have looked? Tomato Joe
and his gang could have been on the West Coast Wasteland for all he knew.

Samson pointed to
the pear and asked the man how much it was.

“
Whatta
ya
got?” the old man
answered.

“Just
a few things.
Looking for anything in particular?”

The old man
grinned. “Oh, I could really use some toys, you know, to entertain the kiddies.
They’re sick of looking at the cement.”

Samson opened his
satchel and looked through his supplies. Aside from dried meat, canned food,
bottles of water, and some magazines, he did have a few toys.

Jack’s
toys.

They had been in
his bag ever since Jack had been taken. Earlier that day, his son had asked him
to carry some of his Matchbox cars and Samson had no problem with that. But now
there they were at the bottom of the satchel all alone with no child to push
them along.

“I don’t have any
toys,” Samson said. “Sorry.”

“Oh?” The man
leaned his head forward and widened his eyes. “Well, that’s too bad for you,
eh? This fruit is
,
how do I put it?
Delicious.
But maybe you’d like something else, something cheaper? I might have
some…….tomatoes.”

Samson could see
something in the man’s face, something that revealed secret and sinister
knowledge. He was about to inquire further but then a hand gripped his shoulder.

“Don’t listen to
the old man. He’s a fucking loon.”

Samson turned
quickly to look at who had touched him. Standing there was a clean-cut young
man, someone who looked like he didn’t quite belong in the town. His hair was
short and looked like it had been washed recently. Bright blue eyes stared out
from a handsome face. The man’s clothing was also unusual: a silver jumpsuit
with a black sun insignia on the right shoulder.

“Hands
off, okay?”
Samson said, moving himself away from both men. The old
vendor muttered a curse but the young man followed him.

“Hey, meant no
harm.
Just trying to help you avoid trouble.
Looked
like you were about to hit him,” the young man said.

Samson kept
walking. “Well, I wasn’t going to.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll
be honest with you. I was hoping we can make a trade.”

“What?” Samson
stopped. He should have known that’s what this was about, a goddamn trade.
Everything was a trade or a gamble or a con.
“A trade for
what?”

“What do you want?
You said it yourself you don’t have any toys. You want some? I got some.
Got a Rubik’s Cube, some board games, some
Boglins
.
I don’t have kids, but well, maybe someday. I might have to build one myself.”
He laughed. “Maybe you want some food, some meat, some magazines,
girls
. Shit, I got a lot.”

“Well, I don’t
have much to trade,” Samson said.

“What? Maybe
you’re not interested in all that, fine. But I got cars, man.
Real cars, not toys.
I saw you didn’t drive here. You had a
hitch a ride from some trucker. So maybe you need a car.”

Samson shook his
head and looked around. The cement paintings were overwhelming. It was just
scene after scene of elaborate violence and inenarrable sex involving obscure
shapes and horrified faces. Train wrecks, flesh pistols, car crashes, marital
discord, and joyful assassinations. He thought he saw some paintings of dwarves
in a jungle…holding guns in front of a spaceship.

“Hey, what’s the
matter?” the young man’s voice broke Samson’s concentration.

“What?”

“You looked messed
up, man. You need something?
You a
Zoner
?
You need drugs or something? I can get you some.”

“No, no drugs,”
Samson said. He blinked a few times, looked over at the cement paintings, but
did not see the dwarves again. “What’s this about a car?”

“I got lots of
cars, man. Lots of them,” he said. “I just need a guy to help me do some work.
Nothing major, just putting together some machines. It’s going to take me a
while if I do it by myself and all these people in town are too preoccupied
with all this cement shit. If they’re not staring at those pictures, they’re
reading old Tom Clancy novels. So I need all the help I can get.
You in?”

Samson thought
about it. The offer wasn’t uncommon. Oftentimes people in towns would hire
outsiders to help them with tasks no one else would assist with. It was usually
back-breaking work rewarded by a rare but near worthless token of payment like
a bag of jewelry, a paperback book, or a can of creamed corn.

“Yeah, guess so.”

“Great.” The young
man brought Samson to a large yard enclosed by large cement slabs. A dilapidated
Victorian house stood in the yard in the midst of a dozen cars, all freshly
waxed and weaponized.

“Wow.”

“Yeah, rebuilt
them all myself.” The young man winked. “Well, maybe with a little help.”

“So all I got to
do is help you with something?”

“Oh yeah, you help
me with something and when we’re done, all you got to do is look at all the
cars,” the young man said, waving his hand at the cars. “Then…..choose.”

It took Samson
close to six hours to help the man with the work which was mind-boggling to
him. Though he followed the man’s directions carefully, he had no clue as to
what the task actually was. There was moving of machine parts, old manuals,
plastic tubing, glass domes of all sizes, metal pipes,
cans
of liquid and unidentifiable junk. Samson felt like he was in a haze. He could
hear the man’s directions and could feel his body follow those directions but
he felt there was another part of him that was simply daydreaming. While
hauling the equipment, Samson’s peripheral vision was clouded by dull light.

Once they were
done, the young man patted Samson on the back and said, “You’ve been a big
help. Thanks.”

Without any
question, Samson walked over to a car that was in the middle of the yard. It
was so appealing, it made Samson feel ashamed for not having noticed it
earlier. It had obviously been custom made but it looked almost biological in
its construction. He said, “That one.”

The young man
laughed. “Well then, I guess our trade is over.” He brought Samson over to the
car and explained the various intricacies of operating that specific vehicle.
There was a lot to take in considering it had been equipped with custom
weapons.

Afterwards, Samson
took the keys and thanked the man. Then he said, “Hey, I never got your name.
I’m Samson.”

The young man
looked up into the sky, his bright blue eyes turning dark and said, “I’m Simon
Revair
.”

II.

While making their
way out of the Zone of Dead Roads, Samson taught Paulo how to use a gun.

The boy learned
quickly and that was a good thing. Samson mentally kicked himself for not doing
it earlier. The race was only going to get tougher and he might need an extra
set of hands even if those hands were young ones wielding a deadly weapon.

“I think you’ve
got it, kid. Now just don’t point the thing at me, okay?” Samson laughed.

“Okay.”

“And don’t
worry,
I don’t think we’re going to be seeing many more of
those
Zoners
. We’re almost to Atlantic
City. We’re going to see a whole different type of
creepy people.”

“Who?”

“Spectators.”

“What’s that
mean?”

“The
audience.
The people who are watching us right now.”
Samson pointed at the cameras attached to obsolete the obsolete telephone poles
along the side of the road. Some were also placed on billboards, buildings, and
trees.

“People
are…..watching us?”

“Yeah, kid. All
this we’ve been doing, it’s entertainment for them.” Samson had briefly told
Paulo about the race before but it looked like the boy didn’t grasp the full
concept of it, that they were involved in a blood sport, a death race. If they
reached Atlantic City and were the
losers of the race, there was a good possibility the audience would tear them
apart simply because they had failed to win. Ironically, if they were the
winners, they might possible be torn apart out from the rabid, bloodthirsty
fanfare. And Mr. Silver would love every second of it.

“Are we winning?”
Paulo said.

“I don’t know.
Maybe.
I just hope we make it there alive.” Samson regretted
saying it as soon as it came out of his mouth. He saw Paulo wince.

“Me, too,” the boy
said, turning to the window.

They drove down
the highway that connected Atlantic City
to the rest of New Jersey. Though
the highway itself wasn’t inhabited, it was home to various mutated animals who
sought haven in the potholes.

On the horizon,
Samson saw Atlantic City,
neon-bright even in the daytime. The buildings were crooked post-nuclear
fingers, a few almost tipping over into its neighbor. They were former casino
hotels, a thing of the pre-war past, and a reminder of carefree vices that had
been indulged in. On the tops of the buildings there were huge yellow flags
waving slowly in the wind. To Samson they looked like huge, heavy slices of
golden flesh.

As they drove
closer,
zig-zagging
around the potholes and scurrying
two-headed rabbits, Samson and Paulo both gasped at the sight of something
coming into their field of vision. Though it was blocked by the casinos, the
object gave off a striking, dark green glow that overshadowed everything around
it.