Tentacle Death Trip (11 page)

They sped down a
street and found themselves sandwiched between storefronts decorated with
entrails and others covered with spikes painted deep red. Chain-link fences
covered the sidewalk, twisted into spirals. Mutilated children’s toys hung from
quivering wires.

“Are you going to
kill that man?” Paulo said.

“Lord Bing Bong?
No, we’re not going to kill him.”

“Why
not?”

Samson took his
eyes off the road and looked at the boy. “What do you mean, ‘why not’? You want
me to kill him?”

Paulo shook his
head. “I don’t know.”

“If someone tries
to hurt us, I’ll do whatever it takes to keep us safe but that doesn’t mean I’m
just going to hunt someone down just because Silver wants me to.”

Paulo started to
say something but was interrupted by Samson.
“
Shhhh
.”

Someone was following
them.

Three women on
motorcycles were coming up fast. They were topless, the pale skin on their
heavy breasts vibrating with the rumbling of their engines. Black boots covered
their legs up to the knees and were met with dirty, denim shorts. Each of the
three women had the same hair style: a multicolored bird’s nest that spread out
in all directions like a sombrero. One of them had a vacuum strapped to her
back, the hose extending out like a third arm in front of her.

This was bad news.
Samson knew there a multitude of motorcycle gangs roaming the country but from
the look of their hair, these three women had come all the way from Canada.
Were they taking orders from Silver or were they following Lord Bing Bong?

That wasn’t the
only thing to worry about. Samson could see now that there were people
occupying the broken down tenement buildings and collapsed stores he was
driving past. Mostly he saw the yellow eyes, unblinking and bright. He had no
doubt they had weapons pointed towards the street.

As the roar of the
motorcycles grew louder, the topless women got closer, holding crossbows.

“Stay down, kid,”
Samson said. That’s when shots were fired out of one of the buildings. A rusted
mailbox exploded ten feet in front of their car but Samson managed to avoid
damage. The motorcycle women surrounded the car and Samson then realized he had
taken the wrong road. Up ahead there was a gigantic stone wall covered in neon
lights.

They were driving
into a trap.

CHAPTER
SIXTEEN

Yowzah
! This is crazy!

Sorry, race
fans but we had to say adios to that sweetheart Gabby Peppermint. I’d like to
say she went out peacefully but… as you
saw,
she went
out in a blaze of entrails! But, hey, no one said it was going to be easy.

And our other
lady racer, Mama Hell, just crashed into a building in the Zone of Dead Roads.
Little does she know that building is also the headquarters of Lord Bing Bong
himself and I imagine he won’t be too pleased.

*

I.

Six Months Ago

Mama walked into
the abandoned mega-church and had a seat in front of the stage. She stared at
the banner that hung from the ceiling:
God Wants You to Be Rich
.

“Dear Lord,” she
said. “Please allow me to prosper and be rich just like all of your flock….”

The door behind
her opened and in walked an older man who resembled many of the preachers Mama
had used to watch on television. He wore a white suit and had hair that looked
too styled to be on a man of his age.

“Excuse me,” he
said. “Are you the one they call Mama Hell?”

Mama glared at
him, aggravated that he had interrupted her private time with her savior. “Who
are you?”

“I’m sorry
but….are you Mama Hell?”

“Yes I am,” she
said. “Now what do you want?”

“My name is
Enzo
and I represent Mr. Silver. You are familiar with him,
right?”

Mama nodded.

“Well, he’s organizing
a major race and he needs all the….god-fearing people he can get,”
Enzo
said and the proceeded to explain the details of the
race. Mama listened to him while also trying to decide whether God would have
wanted her to be doing so.

After
Enzo
was finished, Mama said, “I’ll have to pray about it.”

“And how long will
that take?”

“As
long as it has to!”
Mama slammed her first done on the chair next to
her. She stared into the man’s eyes, forcing him to turn around and walk to the
door. Before he opened it, he spoke.

“I’ll await your
answer.”

As she sat alone
in what she thought was the presence of the Lord, Mama Hell contemplated
entering the race. There was something strange about it, no doubt, but maybe it
was her chance to prosper just as God had wanted her to.

She walked outside
to see if she could catch up with the man named
Enzo
and was shocked to see him defecating in the parking lot. “Pagan,” she said,
knowing a Christian wouldn’t dare do a thing like that.

When
Enzo
saw her, he didn’t stop shitting. He just said, “Make
a decision?”

Mama Hell nodded.
“I’m in.”

Enzo
wiped his ass with his handkerchief. “Excellent! Mr.
Silver will be pleased.”

She watched as he
got into his white car and drove away, leaving her to catch a whiff of his shit
along with the dusty, wasteland wind.

II.

That
bastard.

Mama Hell would
have given anything to get her hands on
Drac
. She
would have given up any chance on winning the race if she could just get one
good shot at him. But she knew that was unlikely. Her minivan was lodged inside
the front of the school and was completely totaled. She wasn’t going to be able
to drive out of there.

It was over.

But what the hell
was she going to do? She knew the stories about Lord Bing Bong and the
Zoners
. She knew they were murderous drug fiends, a gang of
homicidal black magicians who sacrificed the
Yuggs
for their infernal purposes. Mama Hell hated those pagan assholes. Even after a
world war, they had betrayed God whereas she had never lost her faith. God was
simply testing humanity and those
Zoners
had failed
miserably.

The driver’s side
door was heavily damaged but after a few kicks, Mama Hell got it open and
stepped into the foyer of the school. It brought back memories not of her own
school days but of the time she had spent protesting the local school system
because of their insisting on teaching the theory of evolution.

She grabbed her
gun and got out of the car. She was surprised to see the foyer was empty. She
had assumed there were
Zoners
all over the place,
ready to pounce on outsiders. Regardless, she needed to find a safe way out of
there. The whole place was giving her satanic vibes.

Hanging from the
ceiling were flickering fluorescent lights and on the walls were detailed
portraits drawn in brown, yellow, and red ink. Mama Hell glanced at the names
under the pictures but didn’t recognize any of them:
Sir
Josef
Polver
,
Xnoybis
IV,
Simon
Revair
.

Several vending
machines had been tipped over and gutted. Flowers were now growing from inside
them. A glass case that used to house athletic trophies was now filled with
statues in the shape of obese women. They were made of wax, leaves, granite,
and bone. Mama Hell resisted the urge to smash those examples of pornographic
idolatry.

Mama Hell walked a
few feet down a long hallway filled with lockers, debris, and shoes. The door
at the other end of the hall opened slowly with a creak. Out walked a tall,
bearded man with a scythe.

There were two
ways she could deal with this. She knew she should try to run back outside but
Zoners
were probably coming around to check out the crash.
Another option was facing the bearded man.

She closed her
eyes and said, “Dear God, if you cannot deliver me out of the presence of the
ungodly, please grant me the power to die a righteous death. Amen.”

Then she raised
her gun and fired down the hallway.

III.

Drac
knew where Lord Bing Bong lived. Much of his day was
spent in the former high school watching
Under Siege 2
and experimenting
with ancient texts. Bing Bong would do this all while defecating into a copper
bowl for he was an accomplished
spatilomancer
. He had
told
Drac
he never made any sort of decision before
consulting his “bowl of brown dreams” and writing down the results in his
journal.

Drac
was thirsty. The gasoline at the station didn’t
satisfy him or his car. He needed more. His body craved it. His soul craved it.

Mama Hell’s car
hadn’t satisfied him. He knew Lord Bing Bong kept a gas reserve in his building
and luckily he was close. Mama Hell had crashed into it and all he had to do
was find a way inside and drain the reserves. Then he’d kill Bing Bong.

He figured the
easiest way was getting in the same way Mama Hell did. He’d crash right into
one of the entrances and drive through the hallways like a runaway train. He’d
been in there before and was slightly familiar with the layout. The element of
surprise was cliché, yes, but still to his advantage.

An explosion in
front of his car sent
Drac
swerving to the left. He
nearly crashed into the brick wall of the school as something else exploded
right behind him. From the corner of his eye he saw figures on the roof of the
school.
Zoners
.

He stepped on the
gas and sped toward the side entrance of the school, his tentacles reaching out
to puncture the building before the car did. In an explosion of brick and
glass,
Drac
drove into the school. A few
Zoners
had been standing in front of the entrance but were
quickly crushed by the car.

“Serves
you right!”
Drac
said, watching as the arm of
one
Zoner
flew up into the air and fall into a broken
water fountain.

It took
Drac
all of ten seconds to stumble upon the tall, bearded
man who was holding a scythe and running wildly away from him. What the hell
was going on?

That’s when he saw
Mama Hell down the hall shooting her gun with her mouth opened wide, her
clothes torn and burnt. The man with the scythe was getting close to her and
Drac
was slightly tempted to take the man down simply so he
could finish off Mama himself.

Instead, he just
watched.

IV.

“You
godless piece of shit!”
Mama Hell screamed. She started shooting until
the act itself became as naturally as breathing. But the
Zoner
with the scythe was still coming towards her. She didn’t hear the roar of
Drac’s
engine until she saw the car swinging around the
corner down the hall.

She wasn’t too
happy about that. Now she had two assholes to deal with.

Then she was out
of bullets. The scythe-
Zoner
grunted as her
approached. A hellish burp escaped from his mouth. He licked his lips and
spoke, “Lord doesn’t wish to speak to you, bitch.”

Mama Hell’s eyes
turned into hateful slits. Though her gun was now useless, she did have other
weapons in the car. If she could only run back and get one…..

She started to
run, cursing the bearded bastard while doing so. But he followed her, waving
his weapon in front of him, slashing at Mama Hell. She had reached her car and
was grabbing for the door when she felt a sharp pain in her back.

The scythe had
caught her, ripping skin off. But luckily for Mama Hell, it wasn’t her skin.

The tattooed vest
of flesh she wore saved her life. The
Zoner
thought
he had her, thought she was wounded when he saw that pancake of skin fall off.
It gave Mama Hell just enough time to jump into the driver’s side of the car
and grab her razor-sharp turtle shell which she quickly whirled at the
Zoner
.

It hit him in the
neck.

He dropped the
scythe, his hands reaching up to try to plug the hole that was gushing copious
amounts of blood onto his chest and feet. For a second, it looked as if he was
draped in a red robe.

Mama Hell laughed
loudly. She walked over to the bleeding man and kicked him in the crotch and
took his scythe.

The man died
holding his neck and groin.

Mama Hell picked
up her skin vest and wrapped it around herself. She laughed as she walked away
with the dead man’s weapon. That’s when she heard the roar of
Drac
Dunwich’s
car. He was coming
right towards her.

V.

Drac
didn’t expect Mama Hell to survive the fight with the
Zoner
. Yes, she had a gun but those
Zoners
were impervious to pain when they were high on their
Yugg
drug. He revved his engine to get ready to speed down the hall to run over the
Zoner
but then he saw Mama Hell turn the corner holding the
scythe. Shit, the bitch survived.

Oh well. He had no
qualms about running her down. She was a thorn in his side and a despicable
example of a human being. He was going to take great pleasure in making her
road kill.

He put the car in
gear and sped down the hallway. There was no way that woman was going to be
able to move out of the way that fast. He stared her down as he went straight
for her.

Mama Hell must
have just given up. There was no other explanation for her not even attempting
to move out of the way as the car pummeled her into the cinderblock.
Drac
stepped on the brake fast enough not to total his car.
Mama Hell, on the other hand, was totaled. She was cut in half by the car, the
bottom part of her dropping down to the ground.

The top half of
her was on the hood of
Drac’s
car. She was still
conscious and still holding the scythe. Her mouth was foaming.

“Godless freak!”
she said. The red tattoos on her skin-vest were moving now, swirling into
shapes: a devil, a dwarf, a deck of cards, a sun, a question mark, a bungalow,
an obelisk, a spiral, a winged creature.

The scythe stabbed
into the windshield, causing a slight fracture.
Drac
grabbed his gun, stuck his hand out the window, and fired at Mama’s head. It
exploded like a godly sunburst.

“Freak?”
Drac
said. “I’m not a freak.”