Tentacle Death Trip (5 page)

Mama rushed at
Jane Mary. She sat on her and punched her in the face, knocking her out. With
the turtle shell, she started to dig into the girl’s skin. She turned her over
and continued. When she was done, she had stripped the road whore of her
tattooed skin.

The pain brought
Jane Mary to consciousness and she started to scream. Mama put her foot down on
her neck and put pressure on it. Then she let go. The road whore wasn’t going
to die that easily. She was going to know the wrath of Mama.

She was going to
know the wrath of Mama Hell.

CHAPTER
SEVEN

Yowzah
! What an amazing race! Mama Hell wasted no
time in trying to get Junko out of the running. With her handy buzz saw she
really did a number on his Honda but she failed in eliminating him. But we can
be sure Junko won’t take that lying down.

Let’s not
neglect old Samson and
Drac
. They’re making their way
through the Gears. There seems to be a lot of tension there. I hope it’s not
sexual tension,
haha
!
Just kidding,
folks.
Yowzah
!

*

Samson was
slightly ahead of
Drac
now, swerving slightly back
and forth to prevent him from passing. From behind him there was bizarre
gunfire that sounded like the ringing of gongs.

He sped up and
looked in his rearview.
Drac
was standing up in his
convertible, the car seemingly steering itself. Samson thought it looked
humorous, the big guy standing up with his bare chest dripping with sweat, his
spiked shoulder pads and glass skull glistening in the sun. His
mohawk
was immobile as if not made
of real hair.
Drac
was holding up a white gun that
looked like it was made of bone.

Samson wasn’t
worried about the gunfire but he wondered what else
Drac
had planned. He thought about post-war vehicles and how they were equipped with
all sorts of weaponry. Will the world ever recover? Will people ever be willing
to give up their razor chains, spinning saws, chainsaw hood ornaments, or
trunks full of machine guns?

Drac
was still shooting but not doing much damage. Then
Samson noticed something weird coming from the bottom of
Drac’s
car. Were those…..

Tentacles?

“Holy
shit.”
Dark green tendrils were moving out from under
Drac’s
convertible and slowly snaking their way towards
Samson’s car.

Samson pushed a
button between the seats and a cloud of white foam shot out of the trunk of his
car and covered
Drac
.

Samson took the
opportunity to push his car to the limit and get as far ahead as possible. He
looked behind him and saw
Drac
go off the side of the
road into a field. He was relieved.

Then he saw the
motorcycles.

They didn’t look
like any he’d ever seen before. The motorcycles were made of random machine
parts, bleached bone, chains, melted plastic, and spikes. Each held a gear bug,
deformed and frothing at the mouth with spittle and motor oil. If the rumors
were true, they had only one purpose. It was to kill people, use their bones as
tools, and employ their flesh in occult-mechanical rituals.

Samson was
surprised they were able to keep up since the motorcycles looked like they were
about to fall apart. One of them pulled up alongside him, giving Samson the
opportunity to see a gear bug up close. Dressed in rags, the gear bug looked
like a homeless robot. Sprockets, wires, bulbs, and mechanical junk were strewn
together with deformed flesh. His eyes were two dull copper pieces. He opened a
mouth full of black plastic.

Samson saw a spike
extend from the cycle’s wheel. The gear bug was going to try to impale him.
“Fuck you,” Samson said. He hit the brakes, moved to the right, and bumped the
cycle’s back tire. It flipped over, flew over Samson’s car, and exploded when
it hit the ground.

The other gear bug
was coming up fast on Samson’s left side. This one was uglier than the first. He
looked like a bundle of wires with a steel pumpkin for a head. A large bone
spear appeared from beneath his overcoat. The gear bug pulled it back and
shoved it towards Samson’s window, cracking it. He pulled it back again.

Samson swerved to
the right and then back to the left, bumping the gear bug off his motorcycle.
The spear went flying through the air nearly hitting Samson’s windshield.

“Holy shit,” he
said, speeding away from the wreckage and keeping an eye on the rearview. He
was expecting
Drac
to appear any second. That foam
wasn’t going to stop him forever.

CHAPTER
EIGHT

Let’s hear it
for the gear bugs, huh? Those clever little buggers really gave Samson a run
for his money.
Yowzah
!

And
Drac
Dunwich
.
Wow! How a man could drive a car standing up in his car is beyond me but
somehow the man does it. No wonder why he’s a legend! But I bet he didn’t
expect that foam spray from Samson. Oh well! Now old
Drac
is in the depths of gear bug territory. This
ain’t
gonna
be pretty, folks!
Yowzah
!

*

I.

Drac
Dunwich
sat back down in his
seat, threw his gun down on the floor of the car, and let out a string of
expletives in a high, squeaky voice.

What the hell was
all that foam? That was a dirty trick.
Drac
would
have respected Samson more if he had at least shot back or tried something more
aggressive. It was doubly frustrating because
Drac
was very close to getting his tentacles close enough to siphon Samson’s gas.
Once those things attached it was nearly impossible for a car to get away
without losing its gas tank in the process.

Now
Drac
was driving nearly blind in a field, wiping the foam
out of his eyes and trying to not hit a tree or clump of unidentifiable metal
junk.

Then he hit a
wall.

Drac
found himself in an old barn. It looked like it was a
machine shop except the walls were covered in rotting human body parts instead
of tools. Most people would have found it a revolting place but it didn’t faze
Drac
. The gear bugs liked to keep busy. He knew it wasn’t
about gore or sadism. It was about survival and their particular belief in old
magic rituals. They were practically falling apart because of the radiation and
forced to find ways to compensate. Who was he to judge?

Drac
stepped out of his car and surveyed the damage. Other
than being covered in ridiculous foam, the vehicle was okay. The tentacles
slithered around his feet.

He patted the
hood. “I know you’re hungry,”
Drac
said. “But you’ll
just have to wait. That Samson is a tricky one. It’ll be satisfying to taste
him…..”

The tentacles
retracted back under the car.

Then footsteps
echoed behind him, then all around. Within seconds there were a dozen gear bugs
surrounding him, some hanging off the rafters. Their metal teeth chattered.

Drac’s
voice squeaked.
“You little
bastards!
Do what you came to do, already!”

The little
bastards listened. They all were on him at once, swinging their metal and flesh
weapons.

But as soon as
they were on him, they were off.

The tentacle hoses
shot out from under the car, knocked the gear bugs over, and started to attack.
One tentacle wrapped around a gear bug, squeezing him until his body burst,
covering
Drac
in metallic gore.

Another tentacle
went straight through the torso of an ugly hunchback with a fleshy gas tank for
a head. Soon all the gear bugs were left dismembered on the barn floor.
Drac
stood by, nodding his head and rubbing his glass
skull.

“You little
bastards should have stayed away.
Wasn’t going to bother
you.”

He felt a little
regret at the massacre but knew it had been inevitable. The gear bugs weren’t
the smartest bunch and would attack without provocation. But at least the
tentacles got some exercise. Something on the other side of the barn attracted
his eye. On a shelf was a pile of vile-looking texts. They were books made of
scalps, sheet
metal,
and rusted gears. The words were
written in greasy black blood and most were in a language
Drac
didn’t recognize. He picked up the largest book in the pile. The words
Eidolik
Podalik
were scrawled on the front in spidery letters.
Drac
flipped through and quickly glanced at vulgar diagrams of biomechanical
incantations: human bodies acted as conduits for infernal fuel. Pornographic
pictures of gear bugs were drawn in the margins.
Drac
threw the book down.

“Now we get
going,” he said, wiping some foam from under his chin. “Now we get going and
win this race.”

II.

One Year Ago

Drac
sat at his father’s ornate wooden table, sipping
gasoline.

He thought about
his father who had been dead for 3 years. The man had been bed-ridden for 7 years
after being paralyzed from a roadside bomb while stationed in Afghanistan
as a United States Marine. He had managed to get back to the states just before
the nukes hit.

Drac
had thought it would be humorous if it wasn’t so
tragic. For years his father had talked about the nuclear weapons the United
States had stockpiled and how they could end
humanity in a one blinding flash. Then he’d ramble on about how several Asian
countries had biological weapons that would jumpstart a new evolution, a
grotesque one full of blasphemous species out of some forbidden abyss of
science.

Drac
had always just nodded. He never believed a war would
ever get to that point. Sure they may be some political posturing and some
small battles but another world war? He hadn’t believed it.

But then it had
happened and
Drac
was a believer. For all of his
father’s faults, the man had been right about world affairs.

Drac
finished his drink and looked out the window. The
scavengers were out there again. They seemed to come in waves, old scholars
looking for his father’s books. Ten years after the world went to
shit,
some people still looked for knowledge in the printed
word.
Drac
understood most people might find that
absurd but he understood all too well.

He tapped his
glass skull. The sound of the gasoline sloshing around was comforting.

There was a sound
of a car outside. He saw a limousine pull up and a man in a white suit walked
out, chatted with the old scavengers for a minute, and approached the house.
Drac
grabbed his gun and went to the door.

“Who the hell are
you and what do you want?” he said, pulling the door open and shoving the gun
in the guy’s face.

“My name is
Enzo
. I represent Mr. Silver.”

Drac
squinted. He had raced in some of Silver’s races
before but never had any personal contact with him. He said, “So?”

“So…Mr. Silver has
come to respect your racing prowess and would like to invite you to participate
in a special race for him.”

Drac
put the gun down.
“Oh yeah?”

“Yes. Now, may I
come in to discuss the details?”

“Okay,”
Drac
said, letting the man in.

They sat in the
living room and discussed the details: where the race would start, the main
rules of the race, and the prizes. Finally
Enzo
stood
up and walked towards the door. “I thank you for your time, Mr.
Dunwich
and I will tell Mr. Silver the good news. This is
gonna
be one hell of a race, my friend.
Yowzah
!”

“Give my regards
to your boss.”

“I will,”
Enzo
said. He opened the door and then stopped.
“Oh, one more thing.
Mr. Silver had heard of your father’s
extensive collection of rare tomes. He wanted me to ask you if you had a
certain item.”

“Oh?”

“Do you have the
Abgrund
Abschaum
?”

“The…..
Abrund
Abschaum
…
..?
”

“Yes.”

Drac
turned to look at the bookshelf in the living room
knowing full well the rare books weren’t kept there. They were stored in the
downstairs bunker. “I don’t remember seeing that one…..”

“Oh, that’s a
shame.”

“But if I find it,
I’ll let you know.”

“On behalf of Mr.
Silver I’d appreciate that very much.”

Drac
nodded and shut the door behind
Enzo
.
Visions of starry engines pulsated through his glass skull.

He was ready for
the race.

CHAPTER
NINE

Yowzah
!
Yowzah
!
Yowzah
!

What a race,
folks! Did you see
Drac
and his car swat all those
gear bugs? I bet those little shits weren’t expecting that when they woke up
this morning. In fact, I was watching some of the footage from the set-up of
the race and I recall seeing some of those gear bugs doing something mighty
strange in that barn…something with oil can puppets and colored candles. Weird
shit!

And now the
racers are making their way into
Hoghead
Heaven.
Let’s all say a prayer for them….They’re
gonna
need
it!

*

I.

Samson looked at
the sign that read HOGHEAD HEAVEN and thought about Jesus.

He’d never been a
religious guy even before the nukes. It wasn’t that he was against having a
belief system but he always found the idea of faith daunting. Believing in shit
you couldn’t see was scary. Before the war, Samson had only believed in people,
in their actions and their words. You could keep track of those things. They
could be measured, evaluated, proven. It was simple because there was no faith
involved. Faith was for the foolish.

Driving into
Hoghead
Heaven made him think of people who still held on
to their beliefs even after the world was practically devastated. Of course,
all the destruction and chaos transformed the religions and often made them
unrecognizable. There were hundreds of new religious sects, every one weirder
than the next. Shaven-head Jews that worshipped pig gods. Christians who
believed in a pantheon of serial murderers all supposedly related to the Lord
Jesus Christ. Buddha-obsessed vegans who venerated (and copulated with) mutated
menageries.
   

Hoghead
Heaven was the home of a Christian cult led by
Hoghead
Slim. There were a lot of strange stories about
them, stories involving fungi-fueled visions, mephitic maniacs, and dozens of
missing children.

In Samson’s
rearview there was no sign of
Drac
but he did see
Junko and Mama Hell come out of a side street. Junko’s Honda looked busted up
but the little thing was still zooming alongside the minivan.

There was gunfire
as Mama Hell stuck her hand out her window to fire shots at Junko who kept
swerving to avoid them.

Then Gabby came
zooming up beside Samson.

“Jesus Christ,” he
said. That girl came out of nowhere.

She honked her
horn and when Samson looked over at her, he saw Gabby holding her cell phone up
to her ear while she steered with her right elbow. Her left hand was busy
giving Samson the finger.

“Bitch,” he said.
There was no time to deal with that brat. Samson maneuvered away from her,
moving fast down the street that was gradually becoming more urban than the
zone he had driven out of. He sped by dilapidated buildings separated by grassy
trash-filled lots. Telephone poles had been broken and reconstructed into
abstract shapes. Unintelligible messages were spray painted on building walls
and filthy windows. The street ahead was littered with supermarket carts so
Samson slowed down and maneuvered around them.

Then he saw the
boy.

The kid couldn’t
have been more than ten years old. He was running down the sidewalk when he
fell in front of an abandoned bicycle shop. Samson slowed down while Gabby
zoomed up past him in direction of the kid.

“Holy shit,” Samson
said. That bitch was going to run the kid over. He pulled on a lever under the
dashboard and a metal tube jutted out from the hood of his car. A grappling
hook shot out of it and dug right into
Gabby’s
trunk.
Samson yanked on the lever and the rope pulled the hook just a bit so
Gabby’s
car skidded just enough so she missed the kid. With
a push of a button, Samson released the rope from his car and let Gabby skid
out and crash into a mailbox.

Samson drove up
onto the sidewalk just past the boy. He opened the passenger’s side door. “Get
in!” he yelled.

In his rearview he
could see Junko and Mama Hell coming up fast. Seconds after the kid jumped into
Samson’s car, Junko’s car crashed into the bicycle shop. Mama Hell’s van
skidded off into a ditch in front of a tattoo parlor.

“You’re lucky,
kid,” Samson said, putting his car in gear and speeding away.

The boy nodded and
rubbed his eyes.

“Are you okay? You
hurt?”

The boy touched
his elbows. “I’m still awake.”

“Yeah.
This isn’t a dream. You okay?” Samson said. “What’s your name?”

“Paulo.”

“Samson.” He put
his hand out and the boy shook it weakly and reluctantly.

There was a few
minutes of silence until Paulo said, “The Christians were going to eat me.”

Samson said, “What?”

“
Hoghead
Slim and his Christians.
They were going to
cook me, they said.”

“That’s who you
were running away from?”

Paulo nodded.

“Jesus Christ,
kid,” Samson said. “Do you have parents?” He immediately regretted asking that
question.

Paulo shook his head.
“No.”

“Sorry. I didn’t
mean to….”

The boy shrugged.

Samson stared
straight ahead, not wanting to see if Paulo was crying or not. Then he saw
them.

The
Christians.

They were lined up
outside of a building dressed like they were going to a wedding except they
were armed with semi-automatic machines guns and makeshift blade weapons.
Samson thought about what Paulo had told him about those people trying to eat
him. He thought about the tradition of symbolically eating the flesh and
drinking the blood of Christ and how these new Christians have been taking that
literally. “Close your eyes, Paulo.” Samson couldn’t resist. He sped up,
swerved, and drove through the crowd of cannibals.

A few of them flew
onto the hood and over the roof while some went under the tires, their bones
crunching along with their weapons. Samson turned on the windshield wipers to
clean off the blood.

In his rearview he
saw Gabby following, running over the remaining Christians.

“Hold on, kid,”
Samson said. “We’re getting out of here.”

II.

Seven Years Ago

Samson nudged his
wife. “Look at him sleeping. He’s so cute.”

His wife Carol
turned her head and saw their son Jack in the backseat, snoring softly. She
smiled. “Adorable.”

“When we stop, I’m
going to work on the car with him. He had some ideas.”

Carol said, “I’m
not sure I want him helping you, you know, make weapons. You want our little
boy doing that kind of stuff?”

“Look around you,
hon.
The
world’s changed. Everyone has weapons on
their cars now.”

“Not everyone,”
Carol said, looking out the window at the barren wasteland of what used to be
eastern Pennsylvania. “Some
people have set up peaceful colonies, you know. They only have weapons for
emergencies. You have a gun. Isn’t that enough?”

“What the hell do you
think I need it for? We’re not hunting, for Christ’s
sake,
we need them to protect ourselves.”

“Still, I don’t
think I want Jack doing it with you.”

“The kid’s smart.
He likes to be creative and think of things to help his dad. Is that so wrong?”

“Don’t make this
about his helping you. This is all about macho shit and you know it.”

“Whatever, Carol,
I’m letting the kid do whatever he wants to do. When he wakes up, you ask him
if he either wants to help me arm the car or help you think of names for your peaceful
little colony.”

“Real
cute, Sam.
Real cute,” Carol said. She looked at him and shook her head.
Their arguments usually ended like that, with his being a wise ass and with her
staring at him disapprovingly. It was a good thing Jack was asleep. She hated
when her son was witness to the fighting.

“Mommy, where are
we?” Jack said from the back seat. He sat up and rubbed his eyes.

“Go back to sleep,
sweetie,” Carol said.

“No, I want to
help Dad with the car.”

“Just go to sleep,
Jack.” Carol gave her husband a look that told him he’d better not undermine
her. He didn’t take the hint.

 
“It’s okay. You can help, bud,” Samson said.
He drove a few more miles until he came to a clearing and then he parked the
car.

Carol sat on a
tree stump reading a moldy issue of
Good Housekeeping
while father and
son worked on the car.

“Hey Dad, I had
this idea.”

“Oh
yeah?”

“I thought about
like if someone’s following
us
and we don’t know who
they are and we want to get away maybe we can have something spray out of the
back of the car.”

“Like what?”

“What about….,”
Jack said. “What about that stuff that comes out of fire extinguishers? Like
foam or something?”

“Hmm…..You might
be on to something, buddy.” Samson smiled and patted his son on the shoulder.
“We’ll see what we can do. We’ll have to look around for some supplies the next
time we get to a town.”

They got back on
the road without having done any major work on the car. Samson thought about
how he’d work on Jack’s idea for a foam sprayer. While he was drawing the blueprints
in his head, he heard the roar of motorcycles behind his car.

“Shit,” he said.

“Bikers,” Carol
said.
“Coming up fast, Sam.”

“It’ll be
alright.” Samson didn’t know if he believed that himself. Most of the bikers on
the road were just other people trying to survive. Others, however, just wanted
to harass and steal. He had a gut feeling the bikers behind him were of that
kind.

There were five of
them all. They were wearing torn black leather clothing with patches of
advertising pinned to it: Party City,
Western Union, American Cyanamid, Cricket Hill,
Ohaus
,
Krauser’s
,
Baby
Phat
.

The leading biker
wore a helmet spray-painted to look like a tomato. On the front of it were the
words TOMATO JOE in thick, black letters. The rest of the bikers wore no
helmets to cover their long, curly hair. Their bikes were painted red with
blotches of black. Each one of the men had a bullwhip wrapped around their
necks.

Tomato Joe pulled
up on Samson’s side and lifted the visor on his helmet. “Pull over,” he
shouted.

“No thanks,”
Samson said, shaking his head.

Tomato Joe flipped
his visor down and sped in front of the car with the other bikers following and
circling the car like a merry-go-round.

Jack was staring
at the gang, partly scared but also a little bit excited at the action.

“Get down, dude,”
Samson said. “Don’t look at ‘
em
.”

“Oh come on, dad.”

“Do it!”

“Okay, okay,” Jack
said, lying down on the floor of the backseat.

Carol whispered.
“What are you going to do?”

“Keep going until
we hit somewhere that’s populated.”

“What if that’s
not for another fifty miles?
Then what?”

“I don’t know,
Carol. What do you want me to do? Stop and make friends?”

“Maybe they’re not
dangerous, Sam.”

“You want to take
that chance?”

“What if we just
give them some of our supplies?”

Samson laughed.
“And then what? They’re going to thank us? You think they’ll be satisfied with
a couple of cans of green beans? Be serious, Carol.”

“I
am
being
serious.”

Samson said, “You
want me to pull over? I’ll pull over. Okay?” He slowed the car and motioned to
the bikers that he was going to stop.
“You happy?”

The gang hung back
and let Samson bring the car over to the side of the road in front of a sign
for MILLIE’S BBQ:
Meet our Finger
Lickin
’
Bar-B-Cuties!

“Just stay calm
and don’t offer them a thing, okay? Don’t say anything at all,” Samson said.
“Jack, stay down just in case. Put that blanket over you.” He got out and
walked to the back of the car where the bikers were pulling up.

Tomato Joe was the
only one who didn’t get off his bike. Instead, he pulled the visor up and
stared at Samson. The other men stood in front of their bikes with their arms
folded.

“What’s up, guys?”
Samson said. “You need help?”

The bikers
laughed.

Tomato Joe said,
“Nah, but I figure
you
do.”

Samson tensed up.
“How so?”

“Looks like you
have a lot of baggage. We might help by taking that woman off your hands,”
Tomato Joe said.
“Maybe the car, too.
It looks to me
like you’re a man who has too much. You don’t want to be greedy, do you? You
look like a charitable guy.”

“I’m fine the way
I am,” Samson said. He looked into Tomato Joe’s eyes, hoping to show him just
the right amount of bravado without things tipping over into a challenge. “You
don’t have to do this. If you want some shit I can probably give you a few cans
of food or some water or something….”

One of the other
bikers stomped his foot. “What the fuck did Tomato Joe just say? Did he say he
wanted food or water,
dipshit
? Huh?”

Tomato Joe looked
back at the angry biker and said, “Calm down,
Bowsman
.
You catch more flies with vinegar than with…..what’s the word?”

“Honey,” Samson
said.

“Wow, looks like
we have a bright boy.
You a bright boy?

“No.”