The Apocalypse and Satan's Glory Hole! (1) (30 page)

But the toy probably saved his life. He lowers the thing, points it at the demon, then hits the red button and lifts his hand into the air. The demon looks terrified as it flies straight up. Chuzz slaps his hand forward, which sends the demon flying with a scream.

“Good show, bub!” Stretch hollers. “Now let’s get in the goddamn truck and blow this town.”

“Howdy neighbor!” the man with the machine gun calls out just before the first demon leaps onto his roof, smashes through part of it and then falls on the guy.

“Come on, Phil!” Chuzz calls over his shoulder.

Phil bounds into the truck and settles near the door, big monkey eyes glued to the army, which is less than a hundred feet away. A thousand
leering faces groan for their blood. They stagger like a bunch of drunks, spewing vomit and blood. They are the dead, and they have come for Chuzz.

Which is why Chuzz is getting the fuck out of Dodge with his one-armed monkey, a toy stuck to his back and few cheesy shreds of his sanity intact.

A couple of creatures detach from the army and slither rapidly across the ground. Their torsos are vaguely human-shaped, but they have many human legs and arms that shift and relocate. They have demonoid heads, squat fat things with many green eyes that swivel on long stalks.

Chuzz picks one up with the microphone and tosses it away, but others are close behind.

“Fuck fighting them, pick up the truck and get us out of here!”

Just like the house! He triggers the silver button and lifts the toy up in the air. The ice cream truck flies up, sending Chuzz and Phil sprawling across the floor. A large freezer spills out a rainbow of colorful melted goo that splatters all over the truck.

Chuzz picks himself up and stares straight into the eyes of one of the towering demons. Its face is a nightmare landscape, a bizarre pincushion jabbed full with human bodies. Some of the appendages—legs, arms, heads--move as it walks. The heads scream in pain, and it freaks Chuzz right the hell out. He triggers the microphone toy again and thrusts it in the direction opposite the army from Hell.

The truck shoots forward. Chuzz and Phil hang on for dear life as it moves like a jet. Chuzz backs off the stick and glances behind. The army is far in the distance. He stands up and closes the door. Stretch Bangstrom’s head leers around his neck with a razor-sharp grin.

“I knew you had it in you!” the toy leers.

Nathan P. Chuzzle stares at the remains of his town. He sucks in air, then leans over and plants his hands on his knees. He feels like he is going to puke.

Phil picks that moment to punch Chuzz in the ass.

“Fucking Phil!”

The Daily Gab Gets Refuckulated

Myron Bottomfeeder wakes to distant screams that sound as if they are clawing at the concrete walls around him. He’s been dozing on a cot in the basement boiler room of the Marvin J. Fartseinheimer Building, which happens to house the bustling offices of “America’s Number One Gossip Magazine,”
 
The Daily Gab. Myron doesn’t always sleep on his the cot in the boiler room. After all, he is the editor of The Daily Gab, and he has as much money as one sleazy grease bag can handle, but he worked late last night.

Myron had spent hours and hours trying to unearth some printable dirt on any celeb he could find, but the only thing on the Internet, before it crashed permanently, was news about the end of the world. Myron couldn’t give two shakes of his dick about the end of the world. All he cares about are Hollywood starlets who flash their beavers on the red carpet or supposedly straight Hollywood heartthrobs who blow producers backstage at award shows. Myron doesn’t want to hear about demons and the walking dead. He wants to hear who is fucking whom and who is getting fat. He is a sad little man who only wakes up every morning because each day is a fresh day to fuck someone over.

Nothing makes Myron feel better than ruining someone else’s day.

When his Internet connection finally went the way of the Duke, he glanced out his window and looked down the fourteen stories to the streets of Reno. People ran screaming back and forth across the streets. Parked cars and trucks clogged every intersection. He sighed to himself, deciding against fighting the ridiculous traffic to make it home. If he doesn’t make it home by one in the morning, Mildred will call her boyfriend and he’ll come bang her out. Myron didn’t feel like walking in on that again. Catching them in sweaty embraces with their stupid fuck-faces never got any less awkward.

So, Myron turned from the window, flicked off his office lights, and took the elevator to the basement where his semi-comfortable cot awaited
him.

He pulls the heavy metal door to the boiler room closed nice and quiet behind him so no one will hear him. As much as he loves casting the bright light of social shame on people, he despises anyone knowing anything about him. The thought of a lowly janitor seeing him leaving a boiler room instead of walking in the front door nearly gives him a panic attack. He slinks through the heavy double doors that lead to the stairwell and climbs the stairs two at a time all the way to the fourteenth floor of the Marvin J. Fartseinheimer Building. He ignores the screams and sounds of chaos on the other floors.

Myron listens at the crack between the doors and hears only the normal sounds of the busy Daily Gab offices. Keyboards clacking, the buzz of many voices speaking at once, and the near constant ringing of the Gab Lines.
 
He smiles wide at the thought of how wonderful it is that he works with people who care more about The Daily Gab and all that they accomplish. It is clearly more important than some stupid little end of the world.

He pushes the doors open and walks through, whistling his favorite Journey song, oblivious to the winged demons flapping around the lobby screaming into cell phones. One of them spots him and flaps down right in front of him. Myron steps back as the green imp lands softly in his path. It closes its cell phone and stares at Myron with burning purple eyes. “Who the
fuck are
you?”

Myron huffs and shakes his head at the little demon. “I’m Myron Bottomfeeder, editor of The Daily Gab, and who the fuck are you?”
 

As Myron finishes his sentence, a series of bright lights and popping sounds fills the lobby around him. He holds up his hands in a vain attempt to shield his eyes. Between the floating purple blobs of his degenerating vision, he sees what looks like a bouquet of eyeballs balanced on one foot hopping around him. When the demon speaks again, Myron is completely blinded. “Well, Myron Bottomfeeder, the boss wants to meet ya!”

The small green demon grabs Myron by the hand and leads his stumbling blind ass toward his office. Once inside the glass doors of The Daily Gab offices, Myron can tell something is wrong. The voices are all strange and gravelly, and they are screaming and cursing into the phones as they answer them. “Whoa,”
 
the little green demon says, jerking Myron back a step. Something huge passes in front of Myron’s sightless face with enough force to make his hair break dance on his forehead before shattering through the window.

Myron’s vision clears up seconds before the demon drags him into his office. A corpse is splayed on the break room table. The body has been ripped wide open, and its intestines dangle in floppy strands to the floor. A red demon and two green demons stand around the corpse drinking coffee
out of his co-workers’ mugs and reaching into the body cavity in front of them for snacks. He turns from the sight, fighting back vomit. Myron glances to his office door and instead of ‘Myron T. Bottomfeeder, Editor’
 
it reads, ‘Azzehemadheadzqueerz, Editor.’
 
He can hold back the vomit no longer, and he pukes down the front of his favorite suit as he is rushed into his former office.

A giant bull-faced demon towers over his desk, tendrils extending from between two massive horns on the back of his head. Thick stringy snot dangles from his snout to the cluttered desk below him. The demon huffs and covers Myron’s small green escort in thick yellow snot before turning to Myron and saying, “Now that is the rowdy kinda’
 
attitude we like around here at The Daily Cunt! Who the
fuck are
you?”

Myron opens his mouth to answer, but the small snot-covered demon at his side reaches over and smacks him in the nuts. Myron gags and bends over with both hands on his aching balls. The little green demon flaps his wings, flinging snot all over Myron and the office. “This is Myron. The ex-editor. He slept in the basement. He also puked when he saw Zahgerdazfer, Bertyurtesta, and Elliot enjoying Zahgerdazfer’s birthday stripper.”

The bull-faced demon smiles at Myron and tells him, “Well, Myron the ex-editor, I am Azzehemadheadzqueerz. I am the newly appointed editor of the newly renamed Daily Cunt. Trust me, the pleasure is all mine. Sit down!”
 

Myron’s knees buckle, and he sits in the intentionally uncomfortable chair opposite the desk that was so recently his. A smile spreads across Azzehemadheadzqueerz’s bullish face, and one of the tendrils from between his horns brings a colossal cigar to his grin. The demon puffs at the stogie; the ash burns, and thick blue smoke rolls from his snout.

“I might as well start,”
 
Azzehemadheadzqueerz says, “by telling you that you’ve done a decent job at the helm of The Daily Gab.”
 

The smile dissolves, and the demon continues, “But as Bob Dylan once told everyone, ‘The Times They Are a-Changin’.”
 

Confused, Myron asks, “What?”

Azzehemadheadzqueerz sighs and tells the former editor, “Well, as fine a job as you used to do running The Daily Gab, you have really been off your game since the rising of the Dark Lord. When he expected you to be telling the masses about him and his glorious cock-swinging return, you were publishing stories about how celebrities were coping with the end of the world.”
 

 
“The Dark Lord? My boss?”
 
Myron shakes his head at Azzehemadheadzqueerz and tells the large demon, “This is my paper, and I publish what I want, when I want!”
 

Azzehemadheadzqueerz laughs, a sound like wheels squealing, before
telling Myron, “Wrong, wrong, and wrong. Don’t get me wrong, we are still going to use a few of your ideas in The Daily Cunt.”

Myron interrupts, “You can’t go calling a newspaper The Daily Cunt. No one will buy it.”

“Oh, they aren’t paying for it anymore, ex-editor. No, the Dark Lord feels that news is more important than money. EVERYONE will read The Daily Cunt if they know what’s good for them.”
 

Still shaking his head, Myron says, “But The Daily Cunt?”

“Look, little man, we tried other names first.”
 
Azzehemadheazqueerz sounds a bit defensive.

The small green demon pipes up, “I wanted to call it The Daily Gash.”

“That fits,”
 
Myron says.

“ENOUGH,”
 
Azzehemadheadzqueerz yells, rattling the glass walls.
He takes a second pull of the cigar,
then
tosses a fresh issue of The Daily Cunt into Myron’s lap.

Myron looks the demon in his beady red eyes before folding the paper open and reading half-aloud from the front page. “The Dark Lord, Lucifer, is proud to bring to you The Daily Cunt. Gone are the times where you should be worrying about who is fucking whom and who is getting fat. The end is upon you, and soon YOU will perish. Demons that will rape your soul, your sanity, and even your asshole have been loosed upon this soiled earth. The dead have risen, and they claw and bite the living into their ranks. You should be hiding. You should be praying. Allow us to be the paper that keeps you updated when everyone else is hanging from the streetlamps wrapped in barbed wire.”
 

Myron looks up from the paper. “So what does this mean for me?”

Azzehemadheadzqueerz’s tendril ashes the cigar on the desk, and the demon nods his horned head at the paper. “Keep reading.”

“We will feature constantly updated celebrity deaths!”
 

“Ha!”
 
Myron laughs, “Impossible; it would take up the whole paper!”