Tentacle Death Trip (9 page)

The bathroom
consisted of one dirty sink and a dirtier toilet. Gas station bathrooms were
never clean to begin with but this one was disgusting. Its floor wasn’t visible
beneath the feces, hair, papers, and other unidentifiable debris. “Don’t touch
anything,” Samson said. “Just unzip, piss, and we’ll get out of here. Don’t
even touch the sink to wash your hands, okay?”

Paulo nodded and
walked to the toilet. While he urinated, Samson looked outside to make sure no
one was coming up to take them from surprise. When he heard the boy was done,
he glanced back inside. Paulo was staring at the mirror.

“Look,” he said.

“What?” Samson
said. His eyes went to the glass where he saw the words written in grease:

That is not dead which can eternal lie,

And with strange engines even death may drive.

“What’s that
mean?” Paulo said.

“I don’t know.
Let’s go.” Samson grabbed Paulo but the shirt and walked him out of the
restroom. As they went back to the car, he saw
Drac
standing by his own car, staring at the two of them, his gasoline-filled skull
reflecting sunlight, spreading bars of bright light in all directions so much
so that Samson thought he might have been on fire.

No such luck.

It was time to get
rolling. Samson got Paulo in the car and started his engine. The sound put him
at ease. Despite the bad memories associated with it, being on the road provided
Samson with a way out of his head, out of those terrible memories. However, he
sensed there might be more horrible things to come even if, by some chance, he
did end up winning the race.

The circumstances
reminded Samson of a dream he’d had several weeks prior. It wasn’t odd to have
strange, violent dreams after the war. Some said the nuclear fallout and
biological contaminants affected the brain in ways no one quite understood. But
the dream he had felt different than any others.

He stood under a waterfall.
Someone was with him and at first he thought it was Carol and then Jack but
then he realized it was neither. The force of the water kept him paralyzed for
what seemed like hours until something slithered up his leg and wrapped around
his waist. An intense heat filled his bowels and the person next to him
whispered in his ear.

“We’re here for
a reason. We were here from the beginning.”

The waterfall
faded away and Samson found himself standing in a parking lot surrounded by gas
pumps. The person was still next to him but every time Samson turned to look at
them, they scooted into his shadowy, peripheral vision. All at once the pumps
started to rumble and then shoot off into the air. From underneath the earth
came a deluge of yellow sludge and again Samson found himself paralyzed.

The yellow sludge
had gotten closer and closer until finally Samson woke up.

“We’re here for
a reason. We were here from the beginning.”

CHAPTER
FOURTEEN

Yowzah
! The drivers have refueled and now it’s
off into the Zone of Dead Roads.

For those who
missed it, Mr. Silver himself has given our contestants another challenge: kill
Lord Bing Bong and earn a bonus! Let’s see if our racers will take advantage of
it.
For the sake of pure unadulterated entertainment….
I sure hope so!

I.

One Year Ago

Gabby loved
racing.

But what she loved
even more than racing was winning. She believed whole-heartedly that she
deserved to win each and every race she entered and she mostly did.

It had been three
nights straight, though, that she had been having those dreams.

Bad
dreams.

At first she was
floating high above the earth, slowly and peacefully, as other unknown
celestial bodies came into view. But then her body would drop to the earth,
into the deep blue of the sea. She would start to swim, moving through the
water like a great white shark, swerving left and right to find her prey.

Instinctively she
knew she was a predator, knew that she was hunting for the perfect and most
delectable prey.

But something
would grab her body. It happened every time, in every dream, every night. It
happened the same way. At first she thought he body got caught in seaweed but
the slimy ropes were moving. She realized they weren’t ropes. They were
tentacles. It had begun with maybe four or five but quickly multiplied into
ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred, until her whole body was covered in them. The
suckers glued to her flesh, pulsating with furious hunger.

Then there came a
sharp pain between her legs.

And that’s when
she would awake…sweaty, scared, and bleeding from the crotch.

After an hour of
being awake, Gabby would forget about the dream and continue on her mission of
being the best racer around. She was detailing her car when someone tapped her
on the shoulder.

It scared the shit
out of Gabby and she grabbed her gun and pointed it at the person behind her.
When she saw who it was, she put the weapon down.

“
Enzo
,” she said.

“At
your service, young lady.”

“So is Mr. Silver
letting me in the race or what?”

Enzo
put his finger to his chin and cocked his head. “Well…..”

Gabby grabbed the
man’s collar. “I want in, dickhead.”

“I’m just fooling
with you, sweetie. Of course you’re in. Mr. Silver would be happy to have you.”

“Good.”

Enzo
explained to Gabby the details of the race but she
only half-listened. Instead, she was thinking about how many people she’d get
to kill on the road.

Once
Enzo
left, Gabby felt extremely tired despite it being only
three in the afternoon. She got into her car, leaned the seat back, and fell
asleep.

Then she had
another dream.

This time,
however, it did not stop after the pain struck in between her legs. The dream
went on as the tentacles squeezed and the suckers held on, vibrating until
finally she was ripped into pieces.

Then she woke up.

She was relieved
it was only a dream. It didn’t matter what had happened there in her sleep.
Dreams were just fantasies of the mind.

Dreams never came
true.

II.

Once the horn
sounded,
Drac
sped out of the gas station and onto
the road, taking a small turn off to the right off the main highway. When he
got a half mile ahead, he saw what looked like a speed bump on the road. But it
couldn’t have been a speed bump.

It was moving.

As he was driving
up on it,
Drac
saw it was a parade of crabs of all
shapes, sizes, and colors. He could hear the clicking of their claws over his
engine. The sensation beneath his tires brought his mind back to the race. He
looked in his rearview and saw that little bitch Gabby coming up fast. “You
want to pass me? Go ahead and pass me,” he said, slowing down.

Gabby didn’t waste
any time and sped up alongside the passenger’s side of
Drac’s
car, shooting her gun wildly.

Drac
slowed down, moved to the right, and rammed
Gabby’s
car while his tentacles slid underneath to puncture
her gas tank.

The bitch swerved
over and yelled, “Fucking freak!”

Five seconds later
she was skidding off the road, her car’s gas tank quickly being siphoned while
another tentacle was forcing itself into the engine.
Drac
decided he wasn’t going to waste any time getting that bitch out of the race
even if it meant not being able to take a shot at Lord Bing Bong.

Gabby’s
vehicle spun three-hundred and sixty degrees, her
car torn apart by
Drac’s
tentacles. She was screaming
bloody murder as she realized it was over for her unless she got another car.

Drac’s
car.

She jumped out of
the driver’s side, guns blazing and screaming like a goddamn banshee. Her
blonde hair was flapping angrily in the wind. Gabby wasn’t aiming her guns but
she came pretty close to hitting
Drac
.

“You got balls,
bitch,”
Drac
said, retracting the tentacles but
finding they were stuck in the wreckage of
Gabby’s
car. He’d have to handle her the old-fashioned way. No big deal. He had no
qualms about fighting a woman face to face. Besides, he didn’t really consider
that bitch wasn’t much of a woman at all. She was just a typical delusional
head case of the post-apocalyptic world.

III.

Who the hell did
that glass-
skulled
freak think he was?

Gabby had been
talking to her friend on the phone when that piece of shit sent his tentacles
under her car. “I’ll have to call you back,” she said, putting the phone down
and holding on as her car spun around.

When she realized
her car was totaled, she stormed out of the car and started shooting like a
crazed gunslinger. She didn’t have the patience to stand there and aim at the
motherfucker. It was just:
blam-blam-blam
.

Gabby thought
about the dozens of people she killed in the last ten years and each one had
been more satisfying than the last but snuffing out this freak would be the
best kill ever.

IV.

Drac
got out of the car and stood with his gun at his side,
looking at the crazed woman in front of him. He wondered if he made any
impression on her whatsoever with his glass skull full of gasoline, spiked
shoulder pads, and inhumanly bulging muscles. Image was important in the
wasteland. First impressions were what either struck fear into someone’s mind
or made them think of you as an easy target.

As he was about to
unleash his firepower, he saw his car’s tentacles pull out of
Gabby’s
car. It took only a few seconds for them to find
their target.

One tentacle
wrapped around
Gabby’s
upper body and lifted her off
the ground while another found its way in between her legs. A third entered her
mouth. Her eyes bulged and so did her stomach. The bitchy look was still on her
face and
Drac
figured it was probably something she
couldn’t get rid off even in death.

Drac
could never get used to that sound. It was something
between the crinkling of paper and the slapping sounds of sex. Though they were
his tentacles and were under his control, this time they didn’t seem to be
following his directions.
Drac
would have never sent
one of the tendrils in between her legs though there he was staring at one of
them inching its way up there slowly for maximum pain. Finally it pulled out
and showered the ground with
Gabby’s
insides. Her
remains landed in toxic moss.

Drac
got back in the car and revved his engine. He thought
it sounded like that dead bitch’s screams.

V.

“Where are we
going?” Paulo asked.

“
Gonna
see a friend of mine,” Samson said. “He might be able
to take care of you.” Though he thought about killing Lord Bing Bong, he knew
it would smart to visit his friend Cobra Canfield first and drop the kid off.
The guy had been living in the Zone of Dead Roads for as long as Samson could
remember and he was the only one he trusted. Also, he had a constant supply of
weaponry.

“Who?”
the boy said.

“Just
a friend.”

“I don’t want to
stay with him. I want to stay with you.”

“It’s not under
discussion, kid. I can’t take you along.”

The car veered off
to the right in a cloud of dust. Two miles later they were navigating around
boulders painted deep red.

“We’re almost
there,” Samson said, looking carefully at the boulders until he saw the one he
was looking for. There was a tiny flash of blue light. He pulled the car around
the back of that boulder and turned the car off. “Here we are.”

Samson got out of
the car and motioned to Paulo to follow but saw the boy was reluctant to get
out in the middle of nowhere. It was understandable so Samson put his arm
around the boy’s shoulder and told him it was going to be okay.

A small door
opened out of the boulder revealing a tall black man with a Fu-Manchu mustache
wearing a purple t-shirt with the word WRENCH scrawled in black across the
front. The man said, “Well holy shit, if it isn’t the man himself.
Jesus
Christ, good to see you, Samson.”

“Cobra.”
The two men hugged briefly and then Cobra extended his hand for Paulo to shake.

“How you doing,
little man?”

“Good, sir.”

Cobra laughed. “No
need to call me sir.
Makes me feel old.”
He looked at
Samson. “Saw you guys coming from a mile away. Was
gonna
take a shot at you just for fun, you know, keep you on your toes.”

“Then I would’ve
had to kick your ass.”

“Or at least you’d
try,” Cobra said, laughing. “Is this a friendly visit or you need something?
And who’s this little man?”

“This is Paulo.
Found him during the race….”

Cobra interrupted.
“Race?
Jesus Christ, Samson, you doing that shit?”

“Yeah, yeah, I
know. I don’t need you to talk me out of it.”

“Well, I won’t. I
assume it’s too late anyway.”

“I came by to see
if you could do me a favor.”

“Sure
thing.”

“It’s kind of a
big one.”

Cobra cocked his eyebrow.
“Spill it, Samson.”

“I need you to
take care of the kid.”

Cobra rolled his
eyes. “Come on, man. You seriously
gonna
ask me for a
favor like that? This
ain’t
no
place for a kid.” He looked at Paulo. “It’s not anything against you, little
man. Just take a look around and you see what I’m saying.”

Samson said,
“Look, you have connections and I’m sure you can find someone to take care of
him, some nice family or something. Just watch him until the end of the race
and if I….survive, I’ll come back and get him. Okay?”

“Shit, man,” Cobra
said. He put his hands on his hips and shook his head. “Jesus Christ. Okay,
fine.”

“Thanks. Now for
my second favor. You have any weapons? Specifically blow gun refills.”

Cobra shook his
head. “You’re pushing you luck, brother.” He laughed and motioned for them to
follow him. “Let’s go inside and talk.” He led them through the door in the
boulder, up a staircase to a small loft. There was a table set up with an old
teapot and various dried meats, some brown and others dark green. Cobra
motioned around the room. “This here’s one of the rocks I go to when I just
want to, you know, relax.”

“We can’t stay
long.”

“If
you want your stuff….sit down.”

The three of them
had a seat while Cobra poured them some hot meat-water. Then he opened up a
cabinet in the wall and took out crates of weapons. “I’m low on new weapons.
Haven’t had my guy
come by in quite a while. I do have your
blow gun darts and some bullets, though.”

Samson took the
supplies and said, “What do you know about the race?”

“Shit, man, what
do
you
know about the race? I know you’ve raced before but that was for,
what, food and gasoline?
Canadian dollars?
What the
hell is Silver offering the winner?”

“A
job.
Food, gasoline, supplies.”

“A
job?
Working for him? Christ, Samson, you
gotta
be smarter than that.”

“What the hell
else do I have better to do?”

“There’s something
else, isn’t there?”

Samson shook his
head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

 
“And what about the kid?
How’d he get wrapped up in this?”

“Saved
his life during the race so I took him along.”

Cobra sighed. “And
now you’re on your way to win this race?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, good luck
to you even if you
are
a stupid son
of a bitch.”

Samson chuckled.
“Hey, another thing.
Silver wants the racers to kill a guy
named Lord Bing Bong. You know him?”

Cobra said, “Shit,
man, you serious?”

“Yeah,
why?”

“That dude is
bat-shit crazy, man.
Dangerous, too.
Silver probably
figures most of you
ain’t
gonna
survive trying to bring Bing Bong down.”