Tentacle Death Trip (7 page)

Gabby rolled the
window down and grabbed her pistol. It was a Desert Eagle she had taken from
that asshole named Eastman she fucked and killed back in the Western
Wastelands. She remembered he had said he was from Europe
which explained his funny accent and the fact that he was as hairy as a fucking
sasquatch
.

She stuck the
pistol out the window and fired three quick shots at Samson’s car.

Samson swerved to
the right. That gave Gabby the perfect opportunity to pull up alongside him on
the left. She lowered the passenger’s side window and pointed the pistol at
Samson.

“Oh shit.” It took
only a split second for Gabby to realize she wasn’t going to get the shot off.
Instead, the barrel of Samson’s gun was aimed at her. A flash from it brought
pain to
Gabby’s
shoulder. She went off the road and
crashed into a house.

CHAPTER
ELEVEN

Yowzah
! Sorry all you Junko fans. It looks like
our little cutie is fodder for the peacock now. Remember, folks, we never said
it was going to be pretty! At least it gave something for the Christians to
eat.

What about Mama
Hell? Or better yet, where in the blazes in our glass-
skulled
sweetheart
Drac
? He’s got to be around here
somewhere….

*

I.

Drac
hauled ass out of the Gears and into
Hoghead
Heaven.

He knew about the
religious fanatics who populated the area and if he had to kill a few of the
Christians, he was fine with that. There was no way he was going to lose any
sleep over a few dead Jesus freaks. Their superstitions were crude and
primitive, like the games of mentally-challenged children.

As he drove
through the city,
Drac
saw corpses, fire, and debris.
It looked like some shit had already gone down. The race was starting to get
interesting. He reached a barricade made of street signs and old plywood.
Driving straight through it was an option but there was no use in damaging his
car any more than necessary.
Drac
made a quick right
and then a left onto a side street. All the buildings on that road were painted
blue and decorated with wings made of bones.

“Don’t come out
here, people,” he said.

As if taunting
him, a dozen Christians ran out of buildings on both sides of the street. They
were about two blocks ahead but
Drac
could see they
were holding weapons.

“You should have
stayed inside, people. Now I’m going to have to destroy you all,”
Drac
said, speeding up and sending his tentacles out from
under the car. It would be nice to let them grab a Christian or two, shake them
up, and squeeze them like fragile bags of blood. He stepped on the gas and
pushed the button for his convertible top to go up. There was no need for the
blood of Christians to ruin the upholstery.

As he approached
them, they were chanting, “
Vanus
Christus
!
Vanus
Christus
!”

The Christians
walked in front of his car as it smashed into them. Bones broke and clothing
ripped from the force of it. The car’s tentacles grabbed a fiery young man and twirled
him about, squeezing and squeezing until the man’s abdomen popped open.

“Thirsty, this
makes me thirsty,”
Drac
said. He grabbed a tube from
the dashboard and sucked down some gasoline, filling his glass skull. “Fill me
up, fill me up.”

The tentacles were
dragging a few more Christians behind the car. Their screams created a harmony
with the roar of the engine. It was music to
Drac’s
ears. He looked in the rearview and saw something large looming on the horizon.
It wasn’t more Christians. In fact, it didn’t even look human.

II.

“Oh,
for goodness sakes!”
Mama Hell said as she finally got her car out of
the ditch. She drove around
Hoghead
Heaven,
navigating around the corpses. She passed the barricade and turned right,
taking the same route as Junko.

As she drove down
the road with blue houses, Mama
saw
something that
made her slam on the brakes. “What in the hell………?”

Her van slid
across the road and hit a curb. She was now able to get a good view of the
monstrosity. It was four stories tall, a grotesque giant made of trash, bones,
books, and wire, possessing a giant penis made out of a telephone pole.

A
monster.

Then she saw the
ropes.

It wasn’t a
living, breathing monster. It was a giant marionette.

A
fucking
puppet
.

“You got to be
kidding me!” she said, putting her van in reverse. The giant moved closer to
her, its legs stomping on the street with a loud clang. She looked on the roofs
of the buildings and saw the Christians operating it, pulling various wires in
unison to make the thing move. The Christians were screaming something so Mama
rolled down her windows as she turned her car around.

“
Scrutumi
Goliath!” the Christians yelled, as they pulled on
their ropes to make the gigantic abomination walk down the street. Its penis
wobbled slowly.

Mama Hell’s van
was facing the opposite way now and when she stepped on the gas, the car would
not move. “What the hell?” she said, stepping on it again. She looked in her
rearview mirror and saw chained hooks holding her car in place. The chains were
attached to a telephone pole where a group of Christians were holding torches.

“
Scrutumi
!” they yelled and threw the torches at her car.
The marionette behind them marched faster to Mama Hell. She stepped on the gas
but it didn’t do any good. It took only seconds for the monster to be on her
car, its pole-penis lying on the roof.

“Damn you!” Mama
screamed, sending the car in reverse. She knocked into its foot and it leaned
over, its penis falling down in front of her with a thundering phallic boom.

She could see now
that the wood penis was carved with glyphs, horrible and perverse drawings that
reminded Mama Hell of that one summer she volunteered at a homeless shelter. It
disgusted her.

The minivan hauled
ass out of there, speeding away from the Christians and their Goliath. When she
was halfway down the street, she heard an explosion. In the rearview mirror she
saw the tip of the giant penis spurt a cloud of dust, paper, and rocks. The
minivan’s back window shattered as the ejaculation reached her car. Crumpled
pages of pulp novels fell into the car along with blue rocks.

“Freaks!” she
screamed, ducking down in her seat and swerving to avoid another one of
Goliath’s load.

CHAPTER
TWELVE

Wham, Bam,
thank you, Mama Hell!

The little lady
found herself on the receiving end of old Goliath’s romance.
Yowzah
!
And so what about the other
racers?
They’re entering a new zone! You know that that
means,
don’t you? More fun! More mayhem! But more
importantly….more death!!

Yes, it isn’t
called Hell’s Fish Market for nothing! Luckily, however, if the racers get to
that zone, they reach the one and only gas station on the route. There they may
gas up, rest, and plan their next move. For those who just joined us, the
drivers are not allowed to attack each other when they’re at the gas station.
It’s neutral territory and if anyone disobeys that rule, well, they’ll be
decapitated on sight by our resident enforcer Mr. Block.

Let’s hope the
local citizens of the Fish Market aren’t too angry about being woken up from
their slumber. They can get pretty grumpy if they have to leave their water
coffins too early.

I.

The route from
Hoghead
Heaven to Hell’s Fish Market curved considerably,
bringing the racers near the coast. Once in the heart of the zone, the only
route that allowed driving was right alongside the ocean. Everything else was
blocked off by spikes, barbed wire, concrete blocks, and other obstacles placed
there by the inhabitants. Going east was not an option.

Samson sped down
the road, the beach to the left of him and wreckage to the right. He wanted to
get to the gas station as soon as possible.

He turned to Paulo
who was looking out the window. “Hey kid.”

“Yeah?”
Paulo said, not taking his eyes off the ocean.

“Did you live in
Hoghead
Heaven?”

Paulo’s chin
dropped to his chest while he shook his head.

“Okay.”

There were a few
more minutes of silence and then Samson said, “You know, I had a family once.
But…..”

Paulo said, “They
died in the war?”

“No,” he said. “I
was lucky enough to be one of the people who had their family intact after all
that shit happened. How about you? I know you don’t really want to, you know,
talk about it but I mean, it’s good to do that, talk about it. It might make
you feel better about things.”

Paulo shook his
head.

“Okay,” Samson
said. “But I think it’s nice that even after the war, your parents had you and
took care of you and if it wasn’t for those goddamn Christians…..”

“What happened to
your family?” Paulo said.

“They…well, I had
a son…but he’s……probably dead.”

“That’s sad.”

“I guess deep down
I think he’s alive, though. My wife, she left me after my son was taken. You
know I really thought after the war, after all that shit, the nukes and
everything, that I’d be okay because I had my family. We
were
doing okay despite everything around us. Because of my job I
knew a lot of people all over the country and we had some friends we could
connect with if we needed help. I think we were some of the lucky ones.”

“What was the war
like?”

“I only know from
TV. I wasn’t in the war or near any of the bomb sites. But even then it was
hell. We first heard about a foreign city getting bombed and then one that was
a little bit closer to the USA
and then closer and closer.
Then a city inside our country
and then closer and closer again.
I think the whole country was shocked
we were even hit at all let alone with nukes. It was crazy.
People
freaking out all over.
Some looted, some went to church,
some
went around killing people. Some people just sat back
and figured it’d all go back to normal, you know? They thought the president
would fix everything. But you know where the president was? He was dying of
some plague or something from a biological weapon.”

“Sounds scary,”
Paulo said.

“Yeah.”

“Where are you
going to get food?”

“There should be
some stuff at the gas station. But if we win the race, we’ll get a lot. That’s
one of the prizes.
Food and gasoline….and a place to stay.”

Paulo frowned.
“Someone’s just going give that to you if you win?”

“Yeah,” Samson
said. “At least that’s what the plan is. You never know what someone’s going to
end up doing.”

“We’re going to
the gas station now?”

“Yeah.”

“What kind of food
is going to be there?
Seafood?
Fish
and stuff?”
He pointed to the ocean.

Samson laughed.
“You don’t want to eat the seafood around here, kid. It’s all radioactive. The
people who live her are all screwed up from it. They don’t even sleep in real
beds. They sleep in bathtubs filled with ocean water.”

“But then where do
they get the food?”

“I think they
brought the food from somewhere else… or at least I hope so,” Samson said. He
looked in the rearview mirror. “Oh shit.”

It was
Drac
Dunwich
.

“Shit, he’s fast.”
Samson felt like slowing down and getting behind him to mess the guy up but
knew that was too much of a risk. Instead, he kept the guy in his sights and
waited for
Drac’s
move.

A loud pop shook
him.

“What was that?”
Paulo said.

“It’s a goddamn
tire.” Samson felt the car flutter and swerve to the right. He navigated around
a few potholes, pulling into a small alcove made of barbed wire and large
concrete chunks. Luckily,
Drac
sped past him,
tentacles waving obscenely to Samson as the car passed.

“Shit,” Samson
said, grabbing his gun and getting out of the car.

“Wait!” Paulo
said, opening his door.

“Stay here.
Remember what I said, okay?”

Paulo nodded and
got back into his seat.

Samson surveyed
the damage. Yes, one of the front tires was flat but he did not have a spare
tire. There was supposed to be shit like that at the gas station but how the
hell was he going to get there?

There was a noise
coming from the beach across the street: coughing and the rattle of shells.
Samson cocked his weapon and stared in the direction of the sea.

A tall, shirtless
man was walking across the beach holding a net full of crabs, some alive but
some extremely dead and rotted. Samson thought the man looked harmless, even a
little bit friendly. When they made eye contact, the man smiled and waved with
his one free hand.

“How’s it going?”
the man said, looking both ways and crossing the street over to Samson and his
car.

“Okay,” Samson
said, his weapon still prepared for a possible confrontation. As the man got
closer, Samson could see the crabs caught in the net looked horribly deformed.
One resembled a human infant with a dark yellow shell.

The man said.
“You in the race?”

“Yeah.”

“No need for the
gun,” the man said. He turned completely around to show he hid no weapon. “I
ain’t
armed.”

“Doesn’t
mean you’re not dangerous.”

“Good point.” The
man smiled. “I’m Lee.” He dropped the crab net and sat down on the ground,
putting his palms on the ground. “See? I’ll just sit here like this. Then we
can talk. I can help with the tire if you want.”

“Why so helpful?
Not that I don’t appreciate it or anything but it’s not something I’m used to.”
Samson thought the guy might be working for Mr. Silver, put there to help or
hinder the drivers. Or he could have just been a lone psycho who was itching to
mess with anyone.

“Man, I’m just a
guy who lives off the sea and likes to walk on the beach, do my thing. I don’t
mean any harm to anyone even the mean ones, you know, the ones who have lived
here their whole lives, the ugly ones, know what I’m saying?”

Samson said, “So
you don’t live here? In the Fish Market, I mean.”

“Nope.
I just go up and down the coast. Do what I can to get by,” Lee said. “I know
where there’re some tires. The people here, well, they don’t have need of tires
and cars and things like that. You want help?”

Samson took a
quick look in the car and saw Paulo staring at him. It was risky having a
stranger assist him with the car but it might be their only hope in getting
fixed in time. One of Mr. Silver’s guys might come around eventually but that
could take hours. If he kept the gun ready at all times, letting this guy Lee
help might not be a bad idea.

He said, “Sure,
that’d be great. Thanks.”

“May I stand up?”

“Yeah.”

Lee stood up and
walked back to the beach. “Be right back,” he said over his shoulder. Samson
kept his gun ready.

A minute later Lee
came back, rolling a tire beside him and smiling widely. “Here it is. Hope it
fits.”

“Thanks,” Samson
said. “What do I owe you?”

Lee laughed.
“Nothing.”

“You gave me a
tire. I assumed it was a trade.”

“No trade. I just
found the tire on the beach. Not my tire. I’ll even put it on for you if you
want. You’re in a race, right? Take some time to relax.”

“Why the hell are
you being so nice? What the hell is your angle, Lee?”

“No angle, man. I
told you, I just like to get by. I like to go through my days without any
conflicts, any problems. I found out a long time ago the best way to do that is
to just be nice.”

“You’re going to
end up getting killed one of these days, you know that?”

Lee smiled. “Yeah,
I know it.”

Samson let Lee
change the tire all the while keeping his gun hand relaxed and ready just in
case. As soon as the new tire was on the car, Paulo opened his door slowly and
walked out. He stared at Lee.

“How are you,
sport?” Lee said.

“Fine.”
Paulo walked over to Samson.

Lee said, “So what’s
your story?
This your
dad?”

Samson
interrupted. “No, I’m not. I found the kid in
Hoghead
Heaven. The Christians were chasing him.”

“Those goddamn
Christians always killing kids and pregnant women. Shit, those are some crazy
people.”

“They do that a lot?”

“Yeah.
You don’t know that part? They want to cleanse the earth or something and so
they think people shouldn’t populate the earth anymore or whatever. If they see
a pregnant woman, they kill her. They don’t care. Shit, they worry about humans
killing the earth but they kill kids, man. They eat people and all that. Won’t
eat a crab or anything but they’ll chop up a person and cook them right up.”
Lee saw Paulo was getting upset. “Sorry, sport. I shouldn’t be talking about
this stuff.”

Paulo looked down,
wiped tears, and then said, “Are you part of the race?”

“Me? No. Thank god
for that.”

Samson said,
“What’d you hear about it?”

“All I know, man,
is that this is supposed to be the race to end all races. Death, destruction,
and all that shit.”

Samson said,
“Thanks again, Lee.”

“No problem. Oh,
take some crabs, too. Not the best tasting but they’re good in a pinch.” He
handed Samson one of the more normal looking crabs in the net. “Just cook it
real good and it’ll be fine.”

Though Samson had
no intention of eating the animal, he took it anyway as to not appear rude. Out
of the corner of his eye he could see Paulo look at the crab in confusion.

The men shook
hands and Samson got into the car with Paulo and they drove away, watching Lee
wave to them in the rearview.

“We’re not going
to eat those crabs, are we?” Paulo said.

Samson laughed.

As they drove
away, the man named Lee watched their car, giggling to himself.

II.

Seven Years Ago

Tomato Joe
laughed.

He drove away on
his motorcycle and laughed as Samson’s son was on the back of his bike. The boy
was nothing now but a piece of merchandise.

Samson was on the
ground next to the car, crying hysterically. He had failed as a father. Yes, he
had fought when the bikers had grabbed Jack. He had even landed a good shot
right on
Bowsman’s
jaw. But he was outnumbered. They
pummeled him with fists, feet, and whips. They even urinated on him.

Carol also tried
to prevent Jack’s abduction but she was slapped to the ground and raped by
Tomato Joe’s men. She was left bruised and violated while Samson was held down
by
Bowsman
and forced to watch.

Once the bikers
left, Samson was able to look Carol in the eyes though he didn’t really want
to. Seeing the way she was staring at him, Samson knew she was full of hate and
wishing they had taken
him
instead of Jack.

He said, “I’m
sorry.”

Carol face’s
exploded into a grotesque rage. Samson had never seen her so ugly. Her words
bombarded his ears but he couldn’t wrap his head around what she was saying. It
was the culmination of everything she had ever disliked about her husband and
the father of her only child. It was a mother’s wrath from a damaged mind.

After the barrage
of curses, Carol picked up a large rock and slammed it down on Samson’s head,
knocking him out. When he awoke, the car was gone and so was his wife.