65 Proof (66 page)

“Like Action Comics #1, which had the first appearance of Superman!” Mick the Mick said. “I could buy it with the change in my pocket, and we can sell it for a fortune!”

Come to think of it, he could buy eight copies. Didn’t they go for a million a piece these days?

“I wish I could fly, Mick. Could we go back into time and learn to fly like Superman? Then we could have flown away from those camp counselors before they stuck their…”

“Shh!” Mick the Mick tilted his head to the side, listening to the jungle. “You hear something, Willie?”

“Yeah, Mick. I hear you talkin’ to me. Now I hear me talkin’. Now I’m singing
a sooooong, a haaaaaaaaappy soooooong
.”

Mick the Mick gave Willie a smack in the teeth, then locked his eyes on the treeline. In the distance the canopy rustled and parted, like something really big was walking toward them. Something so big the ground shook with every step.

“You hear that, Mick? Sounds like something really big is coming.”

A deafening roar from the thing in the trees, so horrible Mick the Mick could feel his curlies straighten.

“Think it’s friendly?” Willie asked.

Mick the Mick stared down at his hands, which still held the
Really, Really, Really Old Ones
book. He flipped it open to a random page, forcing himself to concentrate on the words. But, as often happened in stressful situation, or even situations not all that stressful, the words seemed to twist and mash up and go backward and upside-down. Goddamn lesdyxia — shit—
dyslexia.

“Maybe we should run, Mick.”

“Yeah, maybe…wait! No! We can’t run!”

“Why can’t we run, Mick?”

“Remember that episode of
The Simpsons
where Homer went back in time and stepped on a butterfly and then Bart cut off his head with some hedge clippers?”

“That’s two different episodes, Mick. They’re both Treehouse of Horror episodes, but from different years.”

“Look, Willie, the point is, evolution is a really fickle bitch. If we screw up something in the past it can really mess up the future.”

“That sucks. You mean we would get back to our real time but instead of being made of skin and bones we’re made entirely out of fruit? Like some kind of juicy fruit people?”

Another growl, even closer. It sounded like a lion’s roar — if the lion had balls the size of Chryslers.

“I mean really bad stuff, Willie. I gotta read another passage and get us out of here.”

The trees parted, and a shadow began to force itself into view.

“Hey, Mick, if you were made of fruit, would you take a bite of your own arm if you were really super hungry? I think I would. I wonder what I’d taste like?”

Mick the Mick tried to concentrate on reading the page, but his gaze kept flicking up to the trees. The prehistoric landscape lapsed into deadly silence. Then, like some giant monster coming out of the jungle, a giant monster came out of the jungle.

The head appeared first, the size of a sofa — a really big sofa — with teeth the size of daggers crammed into a mouth large enough to tear a refrigerator in half.

“I think I’d take a few bites out of my leg or something, but I’d be afraid because I don’t know if I could stop. Especially if I tasted like strawberries, because I love strawberries, Mick. Why are they called strawberries when they don’t taste like straw? Hey, is that a T-Rex?”

Now Mick the Mick pee-peed more than just a little. The creature before them was a deep green color, blending seamlessly into the undergrowth. Rather than scales, it was adorned with small, prickly hairs that Mick the Mick realized were thin brown feathers. Its huge nostrils flared and it snorted, causing the book’s pages to ripple.

“I really think we should run, Mick.”

Mick the Mick agreed. The Tyrannosaur stepped into the clearing on massive legs and reared up to its full height, over forty feet tall. Mick the Mick knew he couldn’t outrun it. But he didn’t have to. He only had to outrun Willie. He felt bad, but he had no other choice. He had to trick his best friend if he wanted to survive.

“The T-Rex has really bad vision, Willie. If you stay very still, it won’t be able to---Willie, come back!”

Willie had broken for the trees, moving so fast he was a blur. Mick the Mick tore after him, swatting dragonflies out of the way as he ran. Underfoot he trampled on a large brown roach, a three-toed lizard with big dewy eyes and a disproportionately large brain, and a small furry mammal with a face that looked a lot like Sal from
Manny’s Meats
on 23
^rd
street, which gave a disturbingly human-like cry when its little neck snapped.

Behind them, the T-Rex moved with the speed of a giant two-legged cat shaped like a dinosaur, snapping teeth so close to Mick the Mick that they nipped the eighteen trailing hairs of his comb-over. He chanced a look over his shoulder and saw the mouth of the animal open so wide that Mick the Mick could set up a table for four on the creature’s tongue and play Texas Hold ’em, not that he would, because that would be fucking stupid.

Then, just as the death jaws of death were ready to close on Mick the Mick and cause terminal death, the T-Rex skidded to a halt and craned its neck skyward, peering up through the trees.

Mick the Mick continued to sprint, stepping on a family of small furry rodents who looked a lot like the Capporellis up in 5B — so much so that he swore one even said “Fronzo!” when he broke its little furry spine — and then he smacked smack into Willie, who was standing still and staring up.

“Willie! What the hell are you doing? We gotta move!”

“Why, Mick? We’re not being chased anymore.”

Mick looked back and noticed that, indeed, the thunder lizard had abandoned its pursuit, focusing instead on the sky.

“I think it’s looking at the asteroid,” Willie said.

Mick the Mick shot a look upward and stared at the very large flaming object that seemed to take up a quarter of the sky.

“I don’t think it was there a minute ago,” Willie said. “I don’t pay good attention but I think I woulda noticed it, don’t you think?”

“This ain’t good. This ain’t no good at all.”

“Look how big it’s getting, Mick! We should hide behind some trees or something.”

“We gotta get out of here, Willie.” Mick the Mick said, his voice high-pitched and uncomfortably girlish.

“Feel that wind, Mick? It’s hot. I bet that thing is going a hundred miles an hour. Do you feel it?”

“I feel it! I feel it!”

“Do you smell fish, Mick? Hey, look! Those pink flowers that look like —”

Willie screamed. Mick the Mick glanced over and saw his lifelong friend was playing tug of war with one of those toothy prehistoric plants, using a long red rope.

No. Not a red rope. Those were Willie’s intestines.

“Help me, Mick!”

Without thinking, Mick the Mick reached out a hand and grabbed Willie’s duodenum. He squeezed, tight as he could, and Willie farted.

“It hurts, Mick! Being disemboweled hurts!”

A bone-shaking roar, from behind them. The T-Rex had lost interest in the asteroid and was sniffing at the newly spilled blood, his sofa-sized head only a few meters away and getting closer. Mick the Mick could smell its breath, reeking of rotten meat and bad oral hygiene and dooky.

No, the dooky was coming from Willie. Pouring out like brown shaving cream.

Mick the Mick released his friend’s innards and wiped his hand on Willie’s shirt. The pink flower made a
pbbbthh
sound and did the same, without the wiping the hand part.

“I gotta put this stuff back in.” Willie began scooping up guts and twigs and rocks and shoving them into the gaping hole in his belly.

Mick the Mick figured Willie was in shock, or perhaps even stupider than he’d originally surmised. He considered warning Willie about the infection he’d get from filling himself with dirt, but there were other, more pressing, matters at hand.

The asteroid now took up most of the horizon, and the heat from it turned the sweat on Mick the Mick’s body into steam. They needed to get out of here, and fast. If only there was someplace to hide.

Something scurried over Mick the Mick’s foot and he flinched, stomping down. Crushed under his heel was something that looked like a beaver. The animal kind. Another proto-beaver beelined around its dead companion, heading through the underbrush into…

“It’s a hole, Willie! I think it’s a cave!”

Mick the Mick pushed aside a large fern branch and squatted down. The hole led to a diagonalish path, dark and rocky, deep down into the earth.

“
It’s a hole, Willie! I think it’s a cave!”

“You said that, Mick!”

“That’s an echo, Willie! Hole must go down deep.”

Mick the Mick watched as two more lizards, a giant mosquito, and more beaver things poured into the cave, escaping the certain extinction the asteroid promised.

“
That’s an echo, Willie! Hole must go down deep.”

“You’re repeating yourself, Mick!”

“I’m not repeating myself!” Mick yelled.

“Yes you are!”

“No I’m not!”

“
I’m not repeating myself!”

“Yes you are!”

“
No I’m not!”

“You just did!”

“I’m not, Willie!”

“I’m hurt bad, Mick!”

“
I’m not, Willie!”

“I said
I’m
hurt, Mick! Not you!”

Mick the Mick decided not to pursue this line of conversation anymore. Instead, he focused on moving the big outcropping of rock partially obscuring the cave’s entrance. If he could budge it just a foot or two, he could fit into the cave and maybe save himself.

Mick the Mick put his shoulder to the boulder, grunting with effort. Slowly, antagonizingly slowly, it began to move.

“You got your cell phone, Mick? You should maybe call 911 for me. Tell them to bring some stitches.”

Just a little more. A little bit more…

“I think my stomach just fell out. What’s a stomach look like, Mick? This looks like a kidney bean.”

Finally, the rock broke away from the base with a satisfying crack. But rather than rolling to the side, it teetered, and then dropped down over the hole, sealing it like a manhole cover.

Mick the Mick began to cry.

“Do kidneys look like kidney beans, Mick?” Willie made a smacking sound. “Doesn’t taste like beans. Or kidneys. Hey, the T-Rex is back. He doesn’t look distracted no more. You think he took is medication?”

The T-Rex opened its mouth and reared up over Mick the Mick’s head, blotting out the sky. All Mick the Mick could see was teeth and tongue and that big dangly thing that hangs in the back of the throat like a punching bag.

“Read to him, Mick. When Nana reads to me, I go to sleep.”

The book. They needed to escape this time period. Maybe go into the future, to before Nana baked the cake so they could stop her.

Mick the Mick lifted the
Really, Really, Really Old Ones
and squinted at it. His hands shook, and his vision swam, and all the vowels on the page looked exactly the same and the consonants looked like pretzel sticks and the hair still left on his comb-over was starting to singe and the T-Rex’s jaws began to close and another one of those pink flowers leaned in took a big bite out of Little Mick and the Twins but he managed to sputter out:

“
OTKIN ADARAB UTAALK!”

Another near-turd experience and then they were excreted into a room with a television and a couch and a picture window. But the television screen was embedded — or growing out of?—a toadstoollike thing that was in turn growing out of the floor. The couch looked funny, like who’d sit on that? And the picture window looked out on some kind of nightmare jungle.

And then again, maybe not so weird.

No, Mick the Mick thought. Weird. Very weird.

He looked at Willie.

And screamed.

Or at least tried to. What came out was more like a croak.

Because it wasn’t Willie. Not unless Willie had grown four extra eyes — two of them on stalks — and sprouted a fringe of tentacles around where he used to have a neck and shoulders. He now looked like a conical turkey croquette that had been rolled in seasoned breadcrumbs before baking and garnished with live worms after.

The thing made noises that sounded like, “Mick, is that you?” but spoken by a turkey croquette with a mouth full of linguini.

Stranger still, it sounded a little like Willie. Mick the Mick raised a tentacle to scratch his —

Whoa!
Tentacle
?

Well, of course a tentacle. What did he expect?

He looked down and was surprised to see that he was encased in a breadcrumbed, worm-garnished turkey croquette. No, wait, he
was
a turkey croquette.

Why did everything seem wrong, and yet simultaneously at the same time seem not wrong too?

Just then another six-eyed, tentacle-fringed croquette glided into the room. The Willie-sounding croquette said, “Hi, Nana.” His words were much clearer now.

Nana? Was this Willie’s Nana?

Of course it was. Mick the Mick had known her for years.

“There’s an unpleasant man at the door who wants to talk to you. Or else.”

“Or else what?”

A new voice said, “Or else you two get to eat cloacal casseroles, and guess who donates the cloacas?”

Mick the Mick unconsciously crossed his tentacles over his cloaca. In his twenty-four years since budding, Mick the Mick had grown very attached to his cloaca. He’d miss it something awful.

A fourth croquette had entered, followed by the two biggest croquettes Mick the Mick had ever seen. Only these weren’t turkey croquettes, these were chipped-beef croquettes. This was serious.

The new guy sounded like Nate the Nose, but didn’t have a nose. And what was a nose anyway?

“Oh, no,” Willie moaned. “I don’t want to eat Mick’s cloaca.”

“I meant your own, jerk!” the newcomer barked.

“But I have a hernia —”

“Shaddap!”

Mick the Mick recognized him now: Nate the Noodge, pimp, loan shark, and drug dealer. Not the sort you leant your bike to.

Wait … what was a bike?