Thirteen Specimens (34 page)

     Another concussion slaps me to the ground. In falling across Grover I snuff the rest of his flames and the blast has extinguished most of my own like a giant blowing out a candle but my head has hit the ground hard further breaking open the egg. The red cap on the tumor on my tumor and the diaper too have burned or been blown away. With yolk streaming from the shattered egg I roll onto my back to see the methane tank has not exploded like a space shuttle it is rising rising like a rocket into the sky trailing flames from its severed base. The remnants of the shack collapse carbonized into the burning weeds like the scaffold against a rocket’s side.

     The tanks rises rises into the air higher and higher. Still
it does not explode even as it ascends so high that I can no longer make out the metal tank just its comet trail of white glaring fire. The fire lifts into the blue blue heavens where it hangs stationary until the blue of the sky swallows it from view but I know there will be a new star in space tonight.

     Though the tank did not detonate the fire is spreading across the ground into the woods. I am sorry for the animals of the forest especially when I hear their ear-splitting chorus of high-pitched screams but then I realize what I’m hearing is the fungus giant as it catches fire each burnt strand as it is severed from the rest of the web becomes a cross section a tiny screaming mouth all shrieking in unison as they blacken shrivel die. The green scum on the stream becomes a ribbon of autumn colors. The plastic coyote starts to drip and melt like a green-dyed ice sculpture. I am running again I don’t recall getting to my feet but Grover and I leave black snowflakes of ash wafting in our wake.

     A roaring sound a tortured dinosaur I turn my head and see a train is barreling backwards down the tracks on fire another metal comet and it only spreads more of the flame across the outer grounds of the Odyllic property as it dwindles in the direction of town. There is so much flame now everywhere around us but we’re safe on the newly paved road though its edges melt into running tar we are running through a tunnel of flame knowing that the flame storm will reach the buildings alongside the tracks further ahead and sparks will be borne aloft and rain on the roofs of more warehouses and plant structures. One factory complex building after another will ignite like a string of firecrackers.

     We hear the silvery-gray car explode behind us the access road isn’t so safe after all is being consumed swallowed up the blaze sucking away all the oxygen in the
air but we have reached the start of the road by now and see that the tufts of weeds growing through cracks in the wide parking lot are bright flares the wooden garage door of the brick warehouse is burning. I hope there is a man another man floating in fluid in the little conference building right now even though it is still day because I want him to boil in it like a lobster.

     I run and run down Mill Street with Grover in my arms until ahead I see our little house with its porch the locusts of sparks the plague of fire haven’t spread this far they won’t reach these residential houses. As I pass them I see people standing in open doorways and I want to yell “Fire! Fire!” to warn them and to cause them to cheer but they can already see it for themselves and also I find I can not emit anything more than a crackling gurgle from my charred throat. So I run on and on until I stumble almost tripping up the steps of 6 Mill Street. And then Grover and I are inside.

     We are back home.

     Grover is blackened, but his plastic eyes still glow white in his face he is still smiling. My clothes are burnt away or melded with my skin resembling the bark of scorched trees. I stagger and lurch into my bathroom to look in the mirror resting Grover down on the toilet cover first.

     In the silvered glass I study my face and the tumor that gapes broken open. I stare at that deep wide fissure. I stare down into its black well depths both frightening and inviting. Silvery pus oozes out of it and trickles of hot blood from lesser cracks. I dip my finger into one of the dribbles of blood. I have to write the words carefully. I am looking in a mirror after all and I don’t want to write the words backwards.

     Satisfied I reach both my hands to the lips of the wound and urge them further apart tears filling my good eye from
the pain blurring my cyclops vision I pry the opening wider wider until I can slide one of my crusty black hands inside to the depth of my wrist burrow within slipping between wet slick things like the organs in a dissected woman’s belly. Something slithers against my hand. Something feebly takes hold of one of my fingers. I find the source of the squirming movement inside my head and start to drag it out I begin to scream to scream the squirming thing is pulled out of the stretched hole in my tumor elastic connective strands of silvery mucus break and now it is the slippery object coated in slime wriggling in both my hands that begins to scream and scream. But these are good screams screams of new life. Gradually we both stop screaming.

     I clutch the brain no it is an infant to my chest. Its flesh is as pink and healthy as mine is blackened and cracked. Cradling the baby in one arm I turn and lift Grover into my other arm. “Here,” I say to Logan choked with emotion. “I kept him for you...”

     Outside I hear one booming detonation after another as though planes are dropping bombs. I hear the sound of felled tree crashing as each cell phone tower topples the screech of their metal like thousands of remembered trapped phone voices of lovers and haters promises and pleas released at once let go like painful memories. I feel the wooden floor quake beneath my feet when the giant God-cock smokestack the tallest structure in town collapses under itself in a deluge of bricks. I want to collapse too but I lean my hip against the edge of the sink to keep myself up I must not sink down I must hear the apocalypse. I hear sirens that approach too late to stop the purging elemental forces flames as pure as the air of heaven.

     Logan Grover and I stand in the bright white heaven
of my bathroom in a single embrace. I grin at us in the cool celestial fountain of the medicine cabinet mirror and there I read again the words painted backwards in my own blood above the opening in my head the words that read: DOOR 7.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jeffrey Thomas
is an American author of weird fiction, the creator of the acclaimed milieu Punktown. Books in the Punktown universe include the short story collections PUNKTOWN, VOICES FROM PUNKTOWN, PUNKTOWN: SHADES OF GREY (with his brother, Scott Thomas), and GHOSTS OF PUNKTOWN. Novels in that setting include DEADSTOCK, BLUE WAR, MONSTROCITY, HEALTH AGENT, EVERYBODY SCREAM!, and RED CELLS. Thomas's other short story collections include WORSHIP THE NIGHT, THIRTEEN SPECIMENS, NOCTURNAL EMISSIONS, DOOMSDAYS, TERROR INCOGNITA, UNHOLY DIMENSIONS, AAAIIIEEE!!!, HONEY IS SWEETER THAN BLOOD, and ENCOUNTERS WITH ENOCH COFFIN (with W. H. Pugmire). His other novels include LETTERS FROM HADES, THE FALL OF HADES, BEAUTIFUL HELL, BONELAND, BEYOND THE DOOR, THOUGHT FORMS, SUBJECT 11, LOST IN DARKNESS, THE SEA OF FLESH AND ASH (with his brother, Scott Thomas), BLOOD SOCIETY, and A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET: THE DREAM DEALERS. Thomas lives in Massachusetts.