The Brothers Crunk

Published by Grindhouse Press POB 292644 Dayton, OH 45429 www.grindhousepress.com The Brothers Crunk Grindhouse Press #004 ISBN-13: 978-0-9826281-7-1 ISBN-10: 098262817X Copyright © 2010 by William Pauley III. All rights reserved. This book is a work of fiction. Cover art and design copyright © 2010 by Brandon Duncan www.corporatedemon.com Interior artwork copyright © 2010 by Megan Hansen

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author or publisher.

Also by William Pauley III

Demolition Ya-Ya (forthcoming) Doom Magnetic! If You Don’t Sleep, You Don’t Dream Mr. Malin and the Night

This book is dedicated to Gordan K. Smith

The author would also like to thank Mingua Beef Jerky and Cherry Coke. Without them, this book never would have been possible.

THE BROTHERS CRUNK An 8-Bit Fack-it-All Adventure in 2D

ONE SOMEWHERE IN THE DESERT . . .

The taste of electricity hangs in the air. A thick blanket of darkness rolls over the hot desert sky. The sand begins to cool in an instant—cracks and sizzles. Steam puffs out of the ground in giant belches. A faint hum resonates in the distance. The sound of a television being turned on. The TV is bright purple with yellow dials and is half-buried in the sand. Slowly, an image appears on the screen. It is the image of a large, powerfully built creature with long white fangs hanging like daggers from the lower half of his face. One of his eyes is squinting. The other is wide, irisless, and wrapped loosely with a thousand thin black rings, spinning around his eye in an entrancing manner, as if to hypnotize. In a strange and distorted voice, he begins to cackle and scream. “HEH-H-H-GAH GAH GAHH! D-D-DEVIL’S OF-F-F T-THE D-D-D-DIRT, BB-B-B-BECOMMEE OONNEE-E W-WITH M-M-MEE!” the beast on the television cries—his voice sounding like a squirrel’s with throat cancer. “V-V-VANDENBOOM!” The television speakers crackle and fuzz as the audio trim exceeds its limit. The feed suddenly cuts to black. The desert is again swallowed by darkness. Ten feet away, half-buried beneath the cool desert sand, the eyes of a mutilated cyborg carcass begin to glow a sinister red.

TWO BOOM CLICK CLICK

Divey Crunk wriggles his fingers through a spaghetti mess of wires, examining each of them closely before tossing them back into the chaos. His goggles are dark and fogged from the perspiration pouring down his forehead. He wipes the backhand of his glove along his hairline and again digs into the knot-ball of wires. “Damnit, Divey, this is taking too long! I’m out, man! I’m facking out!” says a tall man with a thick Cockney accent. “Shut your goddamn mouth, Reynold, and watch the door! I’m telling you, it won’t take but a minute to solder. I just have to find the right facking wire first. If I have to . . .” His words trail off into indecipherable mumbles. Reynold walks to the back door of the van, peeks out the window, and anxiously bobs up and down, as if holding back a river of piss. “Do you mind? You’re breaking my facking concentration!” “I can’t help it. This sneaking around business always gets me heart a thumping.” Reynold tries to calm his nerves. He holds his breath. Unconsciously, he begins to swing his hips, doing his piss dance again. Divey slams his toolbox against the metal floor of the van and clutches his skull with both hands. The vein in the middle of his forehead is throbbing in anger. “You know, I think I’m going to get a bit of fresh air. Yeah, that’s what I need. It’s getting a tad bit stuffy in ’ere.” Divey doesn’t move. “Yeah . . . so, ah, well . . . I guess I’ll just beat on the side of the van if I see him coming, yeah?” Divey grumbles. Reynold nods and hops out of the van. The concrete is wet and glistening like a blanket of diamonds underneath the ginger glow of the streetlamp. The van sits in an otherwise empty parking lot, outside a minor league baseball stadium. The air is clean, fresh, as it always is after a good rain. He takes a deep breath and wipes his finger along the edge of the side glass window. The yellow paint of the van is beginning to chip away, revealing the original egg shell white underneath. The words, ‘BRACKFAS BURRITOS ¥99’ are written in giant red lettering across the side panels and doors. A flitter of light reflecting off a small metal object lying on the ground catches the corner of his eye. He walks over to it and picks it up. It is a small round coin with Japanese lettering on either side. “Ha, fancy that . . . a 500 yen piece! I guess it’s me lucky day.” Reynold bites the coin and buries it in his front pocket. “Whatchu got there?” a man’s voice asks from the darkness—deep and gravelly. Pete. Reynold’s nerves jump.

“Ah, heya there, Pete . . . I just found me a bloody 500 yen piece, just lying ’ere on the pavement. Imagine that, huh?” There is a nervous quiver in his voice. He slowly backs toward the van. Pete steps out of the shadows, revealing three hundred and fortynine pounds of pure American meat tightly tucked into a pair of black sweatpants and a red Members Only jacket—no shirt. “Heh, yeah, imagine that . . .” Pete lights up a fag. “Go get your brother, we’ll have one last smoke together.” Reynold nods his head and jumps in the back of the van. “Christ, Divey, put that shit away! Pete’s outside!” “Just in time, too . . .” Divey tosses a screwdriver in his toolbox. He turns around quickly and aims an orange plastic gun directly at a remote sensor installed in Reynold’s right eye socket. The gun he is holding is a 1984 model Nintendo Zapper. “Have you lost your facking mind?!” Reynold says, cupping his hands over the sensor. “Relax, the gun is rigged to go off on the third pull of the trigger. All we have to do is get Pete to go last.” “And you’re sure you fixed the generator too, right?” “Of course I fixed the generator, what kind of dumb-arse bloke do you take me for?” Divey takes off his gloves, pulls a wooden pipe out of his front shirt pocket, and smiles. “Let’s smoke, brother.” Divey stuffs the plastic gun into the waistband of his jeans and hops out onto the pavement. “Hey there, Pete . . . no luck I see,” Divey says as he lights his pipe. “No . . . no luck.” Pete takes a long draw from his fag and exhales for what seems like an entire minute. Reynold hops out of the van, his cigarette already lit. “Well, you know what that means . . .” Divey removes the light gun from his beltline. “We zap for it.” “You know, I was thinking, we could always wait until the next town to do this. I mean, shit, we still have a couple days worth of rations. We may not have to do this at all.” “That’s what you said in the last town. And the town before that. Things gotta change ’ere, Petey boy. We’ve gotta stay ahead of the game. Right now, we’re eating up all of our profit—literally. We’re supposed to sell our burritos, not eat them. And now with the shortage of meat, well . . . one of us just has to go.” Divey pulls a long black cord from the bottom of the gun and plugs it into an electric generator sitting on the pavement behind the van. “This is the only fair way to choose which one of us has to make that sacrifice.” “Okay, boss. You’re right.” Pete bites his upper lip. “But, if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to go first.” He takes one final draw from his cigarette before stomping it out with his boot. Reynold’s mouth drops open. His cigarette burns a hole in his shirt as it falls to the ground. “Wait, why should he get to be the one who chooses?” says Reynold, batting the ashes off his shirt. “Yeah, you know, I think I want to be the one who goes first.” He smiles smugly at Pete and puts another cigarette up to his lips, lighting the wrong end by mistake and inhaling a lungful of torched filter. He hunches over and begins to cough. “Shit, that was me last ciggy.”

“Well, I’ll tell ya what, princess,” Pete says with a smirk, “why don’t you take out that shiny lil’ 500 yen piece you got in your pocket and let’s have us a good old-fashioned coin toss. Winner goes first, loser last, and boss here will go second. How’s about it?” Reynold looks over at Divey, but Divey shies his eyes away and says, “Sounds like a plan, Pete, but Reynold gets to call it. Fair?” “Fair,” Pete replies. “Rey, coin please?” Reynold digs into his pocket and hands the coin over to Divey. “You sure about this?” he whispers. “It doesn’t matter what I think, brother, it’s up to fate. All of this is by chance, isn’t it? Whether or not you win this facking coin toss, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve lost the game. The gun could still go off on any of us at any moment.” Divey winks. Reynold takes a deep breath and nods, trusting that his brother knows what he is doing. Divey places the coin on top of his fist. “Call it in the air.” He flips the coin. “Heads.” The coin flickers under the streetlight and lands in Divey’s palm. He balls his fist around it. An unpleasant stench fills the air—it smells like burnt tire rubber. “For fack’s sake, tell us what it is!” yells Reynold. “Wait a second, what the hell is that smell?” says Divey. The generator begins to crackle and smoke. “Shit, Rey, you set the generator down in a facking rain puddle!” yells Divey. “Well, where else was I supposed to have put it? Everywhere is a facking rain puddle!” “Well now the generator isn’t going to work properly, you dolt!” Pete’s eyes narrow like two coin-slots. “Are you both fucking putting me on? That generator has been broken for ages. You know that. That’s the whole reason why we’re using the fucking thing, because it’s impossible to know when it will fire!” Reynold and Divey exchange ‘oh shit’ glances. Pete is getting suspicious. Oh shit, indeed. “Wait a second, you two fucks are trying to set me up! The zapper’s been rigged and that’s why you don’t want me to go first, right?!” Reynold and Divey stare ahead blankly and slowly shake their heads ‘no’. “Right,” Pete says. “Give me the gun.” Divey hands the gun over to Pete, buttfirst. “Fuck it. We’re still doing this. But I’m going to go first.” Pete holds the gun up to the remote sensor installed in his in his left temple. “You guys have t’wake up pretty early in the morning to outsm—” Pete pulls the trigger. His skull explodes and brain sludge erupts from the crater, spraying along the side wall of the van. His body falls limply to the ground. “Holy shit! I thought you said the gun wouldn’t go off until the third pull of the trigger!” Reynold yells. “Fack, but yeah, that was when I thought the generator was working right! Shit! I wasn’t expecting that!” Reynold holds his hands over his mouth, shaking, and takes a deep breath. After a

moment of silence, he says, “Shit. Why did it have to be Pete, Divey? Why not either of us?” “I told you before, he’s bigger than the two of us put together. The business could run nearly three times as long from the meat off of his bones than it would from either of ours.” “You know what I mean . . .” “Oh shit, you’re not going to get emotional on me, are you, Rey?” “I just want to know. Why Pete? I mean, fack, we rigged the zapper to go off on him, it didn’t work out the way we planned, but the bloody thing still went off on him. It’s not just that the odds were stacked against him, no, he really had no facking chance.” “Fate.” Reynold wipes the sweat from his upper lip. “You know, I never believed any of that shit before today, but I think you’re right, brother. Fate. Damn.” Reynold bends down and removes a pack of fags from Pete’s jacket pocket. He puts one up to his lips and lights it. “Do you think we have the power to change our fate?” Divey unfolds his palm. The coin is facing heads up. “No, brother, we don’t.” He places the coin in Reynold’s hands. “But what if this is just some sort of lucky coin? What if it has nothing to do with fate . . . only luck?” “You’re asking questions that I can’t answer, Rey.” Divey puts on a pair of canary yellow kitchen gloves. Reynold holds the coin up to the light. The Japanese writing shimmers in a way he hasn’t noticed before—as if it possesses some sort of magic. He presses the coin up to his lips. “Hey, once you’re done snogging with that coin, you think you could give me a hand ’ere?” Divey begins hacking Pete’s limbs off with an axe, tossing the bloody hunks of meat into the back of the van. Reynold stuffs the coin into his pocket and ties a surgical mask around the bottom half of his face. “I’ll get the trash bags.”

THREE PINK DEATH XXX

Reynold fingers through a case of loose cassette tapes, plucks one from a litter—a white one labeled, ‘Z. STARDUST’—and pops it into the tape deck located in the back of the van. The deck pops and whirrs. The sound of a bluesy rock guitar shreds through the air as “The Jean Genie” boom-rattles through the speakers and causes the pots and pans hanging above the stove to hum along with the drumbeat. Divey sits up front, driving. Destination: Terratown. He doesn’t hear the music his brain is a clogged pipe of thought and steam. Thoughts of survival. Thoughts of Pete. Thoughts of flesh, blood, and bone. Thoughts of remorse. Thoughts of surviving in this god-forsaken post-apocalyptic world of Japan in this year of our Emperor 209 [E209]. If the van could travel at the speed of thought, they would have arrived in Terratown hours ago. Reynold tosses a few strips of Pete’s meat onto a sizzling skillet. His mouth salivates as the aroma fills his nostrils. It’s been over a month since either of them has had anything other than refried beans in their stomachs. He opens the cabinet door hanging above the freezer on the other side of the van. He moves aside a few bottles of soap and cleaning agents and removes a clear bottle full of light pink liquid out from behind. The label is hot pink and shiny metallic. It reads “PINK DEATH XXX”. Reynold twists the cap off and takes a swig. It burns like the fires of fack all the way down to his empty, churning stomach. Reynold makes his way up to the front of the van. “Hey, Div—You want me to fire you up one of these Pete and bean burritos? It smells facking delish.” “Naw, I’m not feeling too hungry just yet. Thanks though.” Divey looks at Reynold, eyeing the bottle of PINK DEATH XXX in his hand. “Shit, Rey, I don’t mind you drinking and all, but fack man, don’t get wasted! We’ve got to be in Terratown by morning, or else we aren’t gonna catch the morning traffic. You know how many goddamn brackfas burritos we can sell in a big city like Terratown?” Reynold stares blankly and shrugs his shoulders. “Shit-tons, that’s how many. So, really, don’t get facking drunk, man. I’m counting on you to take the reins here in a few hours. I didn’t get much sleep the last few days. I need to try and get some rest.” “Relax, Div . . . I’m only celebrating. I promise I won’t overdo it. Scout’s honor.” “You were never a scout.” “Yeah, but I tried to be, remember? Goddamn childhood asthma.” The stench of scorched meat makes its way to the front of the van. “Shit! My burrito!” Reynold cries and jumps into the back.

Divey grabs the bottle of PINK DEATH XXX lying in the passenger seat, removes the cap, and takes a whiff. “Christ, Rey, what the fack are you drinking?” he mutters to himself. ●●● The night begins to play with Divey’s eyes. It is raining, for one, the glassy reflections dancing across the road make it almost invisible. And more recently, shadow animals have been darting out in front of the van, causing him to jerk the wheel and nearly skid off the road. Divey decides to draw the line at hallucinations. It is probably best that Reynold begins his shift so he can get a few winks of rest. He pulls the van over to the side of the road and climbs into the back to find Reynold asleep, facedown on the stove. His left forearm is resting on a glowing orange heating coil. He apparently does not realize this, as he seems to be resting comfortably. “Christ, Rey, get up!” Divey shouts. “Your arm, it’s facking cooking!” Reynold jerks into consciousness and quickly grabs the metal spatula hanging above the stove. “Oh, no you don’t, wanker! Get your own facking arm to snack on . . .” Reynold shoves the spatula underneath his arm and wriggles it around vigorously, trying to separate his flesh from the burner. “I’ve been waiting for this TOO LONG, Divey . . . TOO FACKING LONG! I’m starving . . . too long . . .” Reynold slips back into unconsciousness, his arm falls limply at his side, the spatula still held tight in his fist. “Christ’s sake, Rey, I told you not to get obliterated! How are we supposed to make it to Terratown now? Shit! You really facked this up for us, man.” “Don’t get your facking panties in a wad. Shit. I can still drive.” Reynold’s eye involuntarily begins to roll back in its socket. “Reynold, you just tried to eat your facking arm. There is no way in hell I’m going to let you drive us anywhere.” “I don’t need your goddamn permission, Divey. You’re not me mum. Are you, Divey? Are you?” Divey exhales audibly. “No, you’re not me facking mum. That’s the facking answer . . . when it comes down to it . . . wanker. Yeah, you . . . you are the wanker, Divey. I’m calling YOU a wanker.” “Rey, I’m not in the mood for this. I’m spent, man. I need some rest. Do whatever the fack you want to do. I don’t care. But remember, if you wreck this facking van, then we’re finished. This is all we’ve got, man. Don’t fack this up.” Divey tosses a pillow on the floor of the van and grabs a blanket from the cabinet. “I’m going to sleep.” Divey tosses the keys to him. ●●● In an attempt to sober himself up, Reynold hops out of the van and takes a deep breath of cool fresh air. He begins to shift his body weight, alternating between the left and right foot, and throwing punches in the air like Rocky in training. He bounces up and

down to better his circulation and then does three jumping jacks before falling to his knees and vomiting violently all over the pavement. “Shit!” Reynold says as he spits tiny chunks of his Pete and bean burrito out from between his teeth. “Shit, shit, shit . . .” He climbs to his feet and hops into the driver’s seat. Vomiting has actually made him feel much better, more sober. As he turns the key in the ignition, he feels a new confidence in his ability to drive the rest of the way to Terratown. Everything is going to be all right.

FOUR TAKING THE HEAT

Divey wakes the next day covered with sweat. The heat inside the van is tremendous. The engine is making a strange churning and knocking sound and smoke is billowing out from underneath the hood. Reynold is asleep at the wheel. “Fack, Rey!” He quickly opens the back doors of the van and looks out. They are in the middle of a dry golden desert. Devil’s Country. He jumps out of the van to find that it has been buried deep in the sand, enginefirst. The tail end is angled more toward the sky than it is even with the horizon. He pulls Reynold out through the window and onto the hot desert sand, immediately waking him from his slumber. “What the fack, bro?” Reynold yells, feeling excruciating pain in his left arm. He looks down and sees his blistered flesh in the pattern of the stovetop coil. “Jeezus, Divey, what the fack did you do to me arm?!” “Oh, shut your goddamn mouth, Rey. Last night, you got bloody wasted off your arse, cooked your arm and then wrecked our van . . . OUR HOME . . . out here in godthe-fack-knows desert!” “No, that can’t be right. That doesn’t sound like me,” Reynold mutters, examining his wound. “Well, how else can you facking explain it then? Huh? Please, I’d love to hear your interpretation of the events.” Reynold begins squeezing his arm at the elbow. “Look, Divey, I’d love to chat and all, but I’ve got a facking skull-squeezer of a migraine and me arm seems to be burnt really facking badly. I think we may need to ring an ambulance.” Divey looks around in disbelief. “An ambulance? Ring an ambulance? Reynold, look the fack around you! We’re in the facking wastelands! Ambulances don’t come out to these parts! Don’t be such a twit.” “How do you know? Have you ever asked them?” “You can’t be serious! Where the fack would you tell them to come to? Besides, there aren’t any payphones in the desert, so how are you going to make that call— REGARDLESS of the fact that they wouldn’t come out here anyway?” “You know, Divey, you should be trying to help me, rather than standing ’ere scolding me. I’m a facking injured person!” Reynold blows on his scorched flesh. “No, what I should be doing is walloping you for getting our arses stranded out here in the desert! THAT’S what I should be doing!” “Okay, okay . . . so I facked up! I apologize! Jeezus, why can’t we just get past

this?” Divey grips the sides of his skull in his hands and brings them down slowly over his face, exhaling. “Nevermind, Rey . . . nevermind. No use in crying over it now.” He looks up at the blazing sun. “It must be about noon. Get in the back of the van and tie a slab of meat around your arm. That should make the pain a little more bearable, plus it will protect it from the sun.” “Good thinking, Div. Thanks,” Reynold says as he hops in the back of the van. “While you’re at it, go ahead and tie on all the meat you can to your body. We’ll have to walk from here. We need to try and take as much as possible. I’ll do the same.” Reynold peeks his head out of the van and says, “What would I do without you, Div?” smiles, and then dips back into the van. “You’d probably be dead, you facking twit,” Divey mutters under his breath, in the most lovingly brotherly way possible.

FIVE THE DISTANCE TO IT

The burrito brothers are making their way across the desert with no real destination in mind, just any sign of civilization. The land they are trekking across is long, wide, flat, and dusty. They can see for miles in any direction. There is nothing. Even their van, which they had left two hours before, seems to have been swallowed by the horizon. Droplets of blood drip off the meat, run down along their skin in streams, and splatter below—leaving a long trail of blood spiders behind to dry and die in the sand. The meat is slowly cooking on their backs, causing them to salivate slightly, which is helpful in rationing their liquids. Two Cherry Coke Big Gulps are duct taped to the sides of each of their heads with a long straw [actually several regular-sized straws attached to one another] leading into their mouths. Reynold peels back the slab of meat covering the wound on his forearm. The pain is still tremendous, but has eased up a bit. His skin looks like burnt mozzarella cheese. He presses the meat back down against his arm firmly. “Hey, uh, Divey . . . look, I want to apologize . . . for everything. I’ve been a facking dick, man. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gotten that drunk. I shouldn’t have driven, either. And I for damn sure shouldn’t have cooked my arm,” Reynold says, out of breath. Divey laughs. “Yeah, you facked up big time, bro, but hell . . . it happens. At least we’re still alive.” Divey stops walking, tilts his head back, and tries to catch his breath. “Let’s take a breather, hey Rey?” “I’ve been waiting for you to say that for an hour now.” They toss their supply packs down on the sand and sit down on them, breathing heavily. A flicker of light catches Reynold’s eye just as the coin had in the parking lot the night before. “What the fack is that, Div . . . you see it?” Divey turns around and the glare nearly blinds him. But instead of shielding his eyes, he opens them wider. Instead of his pupils contracting, they dilate. A surge of energy radiates throughout his entire body. He stands. “We should check it out ’ere in a bit. Might be something useful, you think?” Reynold asks, still slightly out of breath. Divey doesn’t respond. Instead, he begins to sprint toward the object. “What the . . . HEY! DIVEY! WHAT THE FACK, MAN?!” Reynold snatches up the two packs. “Wait up! Christ, man! SHIT!”

SIX ELECTROSUPERCOMA

Divey runs for two miles before finally reaching the object. It is a body. Some sort of metal skeleton—well, part of one at least. The torso has been separated from the legs and the legs are nowhere in sight. He kneels in the sand before the corpse and hovers his palms over it. The heat radiating off its body immediately coats his palms with sweat. Never before has he seen anything quite as magnificent or complex. The machine looks exactly like a human skeleton, but more advanced. Instead of fragile bones, there are thick steel rods and solid ball joints, hydraulic pumps instead of muscle, and copper wire veins. “Every day we perfect God’s design. Every day is stranger than the last,” he mutters. Divey rips the duct tape from his forehead, loosens the Big Gulps, and pours the Cherry Coke over the corpse. It hisses like an angry snake and then Pop! Crack! Pop! The drastic temperature change causes the metal to snap and burst open. The ribcage blooms like some rare desert rose, exposing its electrical innards. Divey’s eyes are drawn to a glowing orb located in the center of its chest. The orb is made of glass and smoke swirls about inside of it in such a perfectly fluidic motion that it appears as if it could actually be milk. He reaches down to touch the orb. Upon contact, every muscle in his body contracts. The orb twitches and loosens itself from its nest, rolls up Divey’s arm, and continues to travel up his body until finally roosting deep inside his mouth. His muscles go limp. He falls unconscious to the sand. ●●● Reynold, nearing complete exhaustion, gets a sudden second wind once he sees Divey’s body disappear behind a massive cloud of smoke. He throws down all the supplies and begins sprinting toward him. “Holy shit, man! Divey! Divey!” For the first time, he realizes voices do not echo in the desert. There is nothing for the sound waves to bounce off of. As he approaches the steaming robo-corpse, he is able to make out the faint silhouette of his brother’s body lying flat on the sand. “Divey, you okay, bro?” Reynold chokes on the smoke and worries about why Divey isn’t. Has he stopped breathing? Was he . . .? Could he be . . .? He grabs both of Divey’s arms and pulls him away from the corpse and out of the

smoke cloud. He kneels down beside him, puts an ear to his face, and listens for breathing sounds. He is still breathing, still alive. The feeling of panic drains from Reynold at this discovery. He collapses beside his brother from fatigue and then he too slips into unconsciousness.

SEVEN THE RED RAIN

Everything’s white. Same place, same desert, only white. Divey’s body is still lying beside me, but he too is white. A facking mannequin resting in a sea of salt. White. Everything. White. And then there is me—in color. And then there is the rain—in red. And then there is IT. IT is purple. But once IT has finished, IT too will be red. IT is waiting.

EIGHT THE CONSTANT HUM

When Reynold awakens it is daylight again, but he only knows this because of the bright orange glow caused by the sunlight as it shines through his eyelid. He cannot open his one good eye. It is glued shut. He frantically spreads his eyelid apart with his fingers, peeling away red-colored crust hardened like a scab over his left eye. His vision returns, but not fully. It’s as if he is looking through a fogged window. Objects are now only shadowy masses with little detail. The moisture in his eye has become thick like gelatin. A red substance oozes from the corner of his eye. He wipes it away with the back of his forearm. “Fack, Divey. Wake up! Something’s wrong with me eye.” Divey doesn’t answer. Reynold looks down at the dark figure lying beside him. He is not moving. He shakes him. “Div . . . hey, I facking need you, man. Wake up!” His chest heaves in and out as he breathes, but does not respond to Reynold’s calls. There is a constant hum buzzing in his ear, faint, but still distracting. He looks around for its source, seeing nothing. The sun is just starting to rise. He decides to get a move on and get as much land traveled as he possibly can before the temperature becomes too unbearable. He removes a bed sheet from his pack and rolls Divey over onto it. He grabs the end of the sheet, dragging his brother and their supplies across the desert. ●●● As the day grows older, Reynold’s eyesight nearly returns to normal. He still notices the gelatin feeling in his eye and the leaking red fluid, but everything looks so much clearer than before. He’s not exactly sure how far he’s traveled, but he knows that he has been walking for several hours. The sun is directly overhead. It is the hottest time of the day. Reynold decides to stop and rest. He pulls the sheet out from Divey’s pack and builds a little makeshift tent to keep direct sunlight off them for a couple of hours. He removes the lid to one of his Big Gulps and takes a swig. He kneels down beside Divey and tries to open his mouth, but it seems to be clamped shut. The muscles of his jaw are contracted and rock hard. He squeezes his cheeks, his lips part, but his teeth are still fastened together as if his mandible has been welded to his skull. He pours the Cherry Coke into his mouth. Most of it runs down the sides of his cheeks, but some of it leaks through the crevices between his teeth and into his mouth. Reynold replaces the lid and sets the cup down next to his pack.

He notices something peculiar about Divey’s face—his skin looks tighter. The lines in his face have disappeared. He examines him further, noticing an inexplicable gash from the top of his left arm down to his wrist. The gash is not bleeding, instead it is exposing a layer beneath—an odd rubbery purple layer. Someone shouting in the distance interrupts his examination. A female voice. Reynold stands, cups his hands like a visor over his eye, and looks for the source of the scream. He sees a large feral creature about ten feet tall chasing a woman dressed headto-toe in yellow and black spandex. She is much faster than the creature, but whenever she gets a good lead, she stops, removes a stone from a satchel tied around her waist and heaves it at its head. But all that does is make the thing run even faster toward her. Reynold unfastens the Nintendo Super Scope strapped to his pack. He digs inside the pocket and fishes out a wireless jack and plugs it directly into the port located on the left side of his neck. He hoists the Super Scope onto his shoulders and places the sight over his eye. He follows the beast for nearly a full minute, timing the shot precisely. He squeezes the trigger. He hits the sensor directly—first shot. The beast explodes as though microwaved, showering the sand with meat soup. “Fack yeah! I still got it!” Rey mutters to himself, lowering the Scope. The woman stops and looks around, confused, before finally spotting him. She points and yells something, but Reynold can’t quite make it out. He lifts the scope back up to his eye to get a better look. He notices she is not wearing a jumpsuit at all. She is naked. Her skin is bright yellow with thick black stripes stretched across her torso. Her eyes are like a giant insect’s. A Wasp Woman. The Super Scope is swiftly kicked out of his hands. Reynold looks back just in time to see the sole of another Wasp Woman whizzing toward his face. He falls over into the hot sand. The woman wraps her arms and legs around him and pulls him close to her body, ripping the wireless Scope sensor out of his neck port. She spreads her wings and lifts him off of the ground. A swarm of Wasp Women gather up Divey and the supplies. It takes five of them to lift Divey off the ground and even then they still seem to be struggling. He feels a tiny pinch in his lower back as the Wasp Woman penetrates him with her stinger. She pushes it in so fast and with so much force that it pierces clear through his abdomen. The venom numbs him instantly. In one final glance ahead, Reynold sees hundreds of Wasp Women swarming around a giant nest burrowed in the side of a mountain. As the poison begins to blur his vision, the constant hum grows louder.

NINE MEAT PETE

Reynold awakens several days later with a terrible pain in his gut. Three giant mucus-filled larvae are digging at the small hole in his abdomen, each trying desperately to be the first into the womb. Reynold stands and calmly plucks the parasites from his skin. He squeezes each of them until their flesh stretches like a water balloon and pops open. A clear substance similar to uncooked egg whites squirts violently out from between his fingers. The venom still flows throughout his bloodstream. He is not able to make any sudden movements. It’s as if he is operating in slow motion. He studies his surroundings. It appears they have been imprisoned in one of the hexagonal cells of the giant nest he had seen earlier. Everything is dark, but visible. The only light source comes from the small cell opening about thirty feet above. The wound on his arm has scabbed over and doesn’t hurt nearly as bad as it had days before, but he realizes this is probably due to some numbing effect caused by the venom. Divey is lying on the floor beside him. Still breathing, but his body is noticeably larger. More of the strange purple skin is exposed. The outer layer is stretched across his new flesh in thin strips, resembling a spider’s web. Reynold runs his hands over his brother’s bloated body. He is cold. Dead man cold. But breathing. Divey is very much alive. But what is this that he is turning into? Reynold notices several shriveled larvae resting on Divey’s stomach. The larvae appear to have been dead for several days. Reynold presses firmly against Divey’s abdomen—it is as hard as oak. Their teeth must not have been strong enough to penetrate this new skin. He balls his fist and knocks. Solid. But he is breathing. He is breathing. He is still alive. Reynold suddenly becomes very nauseated. He hunches over and vomits on the floor. When he wipes his mouth with his shirt he notices the meat slabs have been removed from his body—and Divey’s, too. The slabs have been thrown randomly throughout the cell. Most are on the floor, some are stuck to walls and other places. One bloody steak rests perfectly like a widow’s peak on the crown of a human skull, still attached to its spinal cord. Reynold stares at the hollow sockets of the skull for several minutes in a daze. Then, as quickly as his body allows, he begins to gather the rest of the meat and pile it next to the skull. He sets the spinal cord up on its end and carefully stacks the meat around it until it is sturdy enough to stand on its own. He then rips the meat into thin strips and begins to construct a face. Once the skull is completely covered, he decides to name it. Meat Pete. “There you are, Petey boy. All finished!” Reynold says with a short laugh.

Meat Pete opens his mouth and exhales loudly. “Hhhhaaaaa, fuck! It’s great to be back!” He looks around the cell. “What the fuck is going on with your bro?” he asks, and before Reynold can answer, Pete looks back at him and asks, “Do you have my ciggies?” “The Wasp Women, they took everything. Trust me, if I had them, then I’d be facking lit up.” “Yeah, you know, I was gonna warn you ’bout killing that huge ass beast-thing. I had a feeling that the bitch was no damsel-in-distress. She was fucking hunting! Any fuck could have seen that, but no, not you . . . you bloody fuck-tard.” “What the fack did you just call me?” “I said that if it were your brother out there that day instead of you, then the two of youse wouldn’t even be in this mess. Hell, not only that, but Divey should be in fucking Terratown right now, stuffing his pockets full of cash, but no . . . you fucked that up for him too!” “Shut your goddamn mouth, Pete! I swear to fack I’ll kick your bloody teeth in!” “Look, man . . . you know it, I know it—the only reason that Divey isn’t lugging your comatose ass around the desert is because he felt obligated to fucking do right by you because youse two are brothers. That’s all. And furthermore, if he was thinking what was best for the team, what was best for him, then no doubt it’d be your fucking meat pile here, not mine, pal—” “SHUT THE FACK UP!!!” Reynold kicks Pete’s skull and sends it flying through the air. He kicks and stomps on the pile of meat until the room looks similar to how it had when he first woke. He lies on the floor, curled in the fetal position, and begins to cry. Ten minutes later, Reynold begins reconstructing Pete.

TEN WAKEY, WAKEY

Reynold walks his coin across the backside of his hand, shifting his fingers in such a way that it flips in a perfect fluid-motion along the crevices between his knuckles. It’s a trick he learned from Master Otto, a door-to-door salesman/magician who visited his house when he was very young. He had begged his parents to purchase the magician’s three-part Betamax series, which they quickly did, most likely just to rid the man from their home. The videos promised “Three hours of lies and illusions!” and the cover was littered with phrases such as, “Deceive your friends and family!” and “Get everything you want from anyone you want! Never work again!” The tapes were more about mastering pick-pocketing and lock-picking than magic. However, tricks such as the Knuckle Coin Walk were taught under sections titled, “What To Do With It Once You’ve Got It.” Master Otto was not a very good magician at all. Reynold places the coin on the backside of Pete’s raw hand. The coin slowly slides off the wet meat and dances across the floor. The trick is only mildly difficult. Pete clearly isn’t even trying. A large shadow appears overhead. A Wasp Woman flutters down into the cell and lands next to Divey’s body. She scoops the dead larvae in her palms and pulls it close to her chest. She looks sad, as if they were her own children. Reynold takes cover behind Pete. “What the hell, man? Are you serious? You’re hiding from this buzzy biyatch?!” Pete asks. “Shut the fack up, Pete! She’s going to hear you.” Reynold whispers. The Wasp Woman raises her head. “You know, Rey, she’s actually kinda cute! You think she has a friend, huh?” Pete laughs like a dehydrated weasel. “And jeezus, man, just look. At. That. Ass!” The Wasp Woman buzzes loudly and rushes toward them in flight. Reynold quickly grabs Pete with both hands and holds him up as a shield. She clutches them both tightly with all four appendages and repeatedly thrusts her stinger into Pete. “Ha ha! Yeah baby! Give it to papa!” Pete screams with excitement. The woman flitters her wings and lifts them up out of the cell. They go twirling through the air, tearing into the atmosphere like an angry missile. The rapid flickering of environment causes Reynold to become nauseous again. He closes his eye to keep from vomiting. She loosens her grip. Reynold falls to the ground, his breath escapes him. Slabs of Pete rain down and scatter across the platform where they’ve been dropped. Reynold

sits up and gasps for air. There is a terrible ringing in his ears. As his breath returns, he takes a look around. To his horror, he discovers his ears are not ringing . . . he is surrounded by the swarm. The buzzing becomes so angry and brutal that Reynold has to cup his ears to keep his drums from bursting. More Wasp Women gather and the drone becomes even louder. The crowd of women all direct their attention toward a large black behemoth as it struggles to wriggle free from one of the nest cells. Reynold’s heart races. The behemoth squirms free and, with one giant leap, lands on the platform next to Reynold and Pete. The wings on its back are too tiny and weak to lift its gigantic body. The weight of the beast seems to boom-rattle the entire planet. Its flesh is black with tiny flecks of red and yellow spotted throughout. Its head is set much lower than its shoulders and its neck extends out from its chest. Its arms are like two giant serrated fillet knives with points at the ends instead of hands. Drool runs from its mouth in steady strings. The rest of its head is covered entirely with eyeballs. The beast arches back and takes a deep breath. Veins expand and protrude through its rubber insect skin as it tightens its muscles. The beast leans over them and shrieks like a banshee into their faces. Reynold, with his hands still cupped over his ears, stares at the abomination standing in front of him in horror. “Fack . . .” he manages to mutter under his breath. The behemoth raises its razor arms into the air, threatening to turn them into bloody pin cushions. All at once, everything bursts. The Wasp Women, the behemoth—everything, everyone—is dead . . . except for Reynold. The nest, the mountain, and even Reynold himself, are now covered in the bright lime green of insect blood. Rivers of it pour down the mountain in long rushing streams and pool in the valley below. Reynold looks around for an answer, some sort of explanation for this strange occurrence. Divey. He is standing in the distance behind him. His hand is resting on an NES controller installed in his left forearm. A cheat code. Divey had entered a cheat code and destroyed the enemies! But, no, this isn’t Divey. It is something different. He raises his hands to his face and removes the skin, Divey’s skin, away from his skull like a hood. The face underneath is terrifying. Its head is bald and tiny, much too small for its massive body. One eye squints while the other remains wide and pupil-less. It has no nose and its teeth hang from its face like bony razor blade icicles. His name is Vandenboom, a TV demon from Tokyo, but Reynold knows nothing of this. He stares at this strange new being in terrifying wonder. What has this monster done with Divey? Is it Divey? What does he want from us? Without a word, Vandenboom turns his head and walks down a dirt path leading down the mountain. Reynold feels as if his heart has stopped. He quickly regains composure, gathers up the slabs of Pete, and follows the purple monster down the trail. He must find his brother.

ELEVEN THE ROBOCOCKS

The bastard disappears. Reynold follows his footsteps down a worn trail spiraling down the mountain. The footprints are lazy, stretching across the dirt in thin, erratic lines, as if he is too weak to carry his own weight. The trail winds and ends at the mouth of a colossal scrap heap stretching as far as his eye can see. Mega-mountains of metal jut out from the dusty earth like industrial stalagmites, silhouetted by the light of the sun. He hears a shuffling in the distance. He carefully tiptoes through the valleys to avoid being seen. Vandenboom is ripping the guts out of an old Chevy Nova, wiping parts clean and examining each of them individually before either tossing them away or piling them on the dirt at his feet. Reynold slips inside the backseat of a baby blue Cadillac, tossing the slabs of Pete down onto the floorboards. He watches Vandenboom dig carefully through the scraps. Toss, toss, toss, keep, toss. He is preparing to build something. Vandenboom digs deep into one of the scrap heaps, removing a big piece of sheet-metal. Large blue and green birds scuttle out from behind it, ten . . . twenty . . . thirty. They rush out in the same manner as angry ants once their hill has been terrorized by the sole of a boot. Robococks. These giant cybernetic peacocks surround Vandenboom. They waddle and shimmy, darting their necks out as if their heads are small daggers in the world’s most bizarre knife-fight. When their beaks open they dry heave and terror-screech so loudly it reverberates throughout the cab of the blue Caddy. A smile forms in the corner of Vandenboom’s mouth. He taps a few buttons on the NES controller in his forearm. He raises his right hand high into the air. The robococks bob their heads left and right, hissing and coughing, readying their attack. Vandenboom’s fingers twist around one another, his palm folds over until his bones crack and shift. His arm extends and out through his fist rips a terrible metal point, peeling back his skin like a banana and revealing itself as a large spinning drill. The robococks seem unaffected by this sight and continue their threatening stalk. One of them lurches toward Vandenboom. He grabs the bird’s head in his remaining fist and crushes it violently. Its body falls limply to the ground. Immediately the rest of the flock attacks him, pecking at Divey’s loose hanging skin, ripping it from Vandenboom’s body and tossing it to the dirt. Reynold slowly opens the door of the Caddy, making sure not to direct any attention to himself. He drops to the ground and crawls closer to the cloud of dust

surrounding the chaotic fight. Death-screeches echo throughout the junkyard as Vandenboom rips apart the birds one by one. Just as Reynold reaches the pile of Divey’s skin, Vandenboom drills a hole straight through the body of a robocock and sparks and blood and flesh and feathers all rain down onto him from above. Reynold cups his hand over his mouth to keep from screaming out loud, grabs the skin pile, and sprints back to the Caddy, frantically jumping again into the backseat. Vandenboom crams the head of one of the robococks into the beak of another and then squeezes. Its brains blow out the top of its skull like a cork from a champagne bottle. The brains get caught in the throat of the other, causing it to suffocate and eventually collapse. Some of the robococks shoot electricity from their mechanical eyeballs, but fail to inflict any pain registering higher than that of static electricity shock. He stabs them three at a time with his forearm drill, turning them into meaty metal kabobs. As the drill spins, bits of meat and feathers flurry into the air, splatter-painting the landscape with their lifeblood. He slings the corpses off his arm to join the others at his feet. Thirty dead at his hand and he hardly took a step. He tosses the carcasses in a single pile and returns to digging through the scraps, not missing a beat. It’s quiet now. Reynold lies down in the backseat and holds his brother’s remains above him. “Fack man, we had a good run.” He rolls up the skin and folds his arms across his chest, snuggling with it. “Yeah man, great run.”

TWELVE SWALLOWED BY NIGHT

Light from the campfire traces the outline of Vandenboom’s body. He scoops up one of the robocock corpses and digs his fingers deep beneath the skin, pulling out the feathers and machine parts, leaving only the meat and bone. He hovers the remains over the fire for a few minutes, barely browning the outside skin before tearing into the flesh with his fingers, slurping the warm raw meat into his mouth piece by piece. Reynold’s stomach begins to growl as he watches Vandenboom from a distance. The glitter from the gore he shovels into his mouth causes saliva to form at the corners of Reynold’s lips. A mean hunger strangles his innards. His organs, as if they themselves had developed lungs and mouths of their own, begin to moan and croak with such ferocity that Reynold lies down on the floorboard in fear it might attract the attention of Vandenboom. Several minutes pass. “Hey Rey, I think he’s . . . yeah, he’s definitely going to sleep,” whispers Pete from the front seat. “Haha! Now get out there and fetch us some dinner, man. I’m fucking starving!” “What do you mean you’re facking starving? How is that even possible?” asks Reynold. “What do you mean? I’m alive, ain’t I?” “Well, that’s debatable.” “I’ll show you how alive I am by shoving my foot up your ass!” Reynold looks down at Pete’s feet. They’re not there. He’s a facking pile of meat. But instead of arguing any further, he nods his head and agrees to go fetch dinner. He moves slowly, carefully maneuvering through the separated heaps of vehicle parts, until finally reaching the pile of poultry. He pierces one of their fat bodies with a stick, removes all the machine parts and wiring—slowly, carefully, quietly—and begins to roast it over the open campfire. The orange light from the fire licks the darkness and quickly fades. The fire is dying. In a few moments they’ll all be swallowed by night. “Come closer . . .” a weakened voice whispers. Reynold jumps nervously at the sound and stumbles backwards over the poultry pile, hitting his head on the metal bumper of the Chevy Nova. The voice is coming from Vandenboom, but it isn’t his voice. “Shhh! You’ll wake him!” the voice cries. “Rey, it’s me, Divey. I may not have long, so just keep your trap shut and your ears open.” Reynold nods and rolls his eye in a daze. He is losing consciousness. Tiny sparks begin to pollute his vision.

“Vandenboom is planning to meet up with others like him. Four others. He calls them his ‘Damned Dirt Devils’.” Reynold nods and rests his head on the sand. “They are dangerous, you have to stay out of their way. You got me, Rey? I’m not worth it. If you pursue them, then you will die. Got me? Rey?” Reynold nods his head, closing his eye. “Yeah, I got you,” he says just above a whisper. “Don’t worry about me, Rey. You just keep walking. I’ll find my way back to you.” “G’night, Div . . .” Reynold whimpers, slipping into unconsciousness. “Bye, Rey.” The night gulps.

THIRTEEN THE RED RAIN

IT is standing over me, breathing down my neck. There is evil in ITs eyes, but it’s not for me. The red rain splashes against and runs down ITs purple skin in tiny streams. It’s almost beautiful. The chime of a bell tower echoes in the distance. The illuminated clock on the outside of the tower is clearly visible, even through the rain. A quarter till midnight. IT sees the clock. There is worry in ITs eyes, but it’s not over me. There is a white glow coming out from ITs chest. Out from the glow comes a voice. Go. Now. Run. IT turns away from me. Go. Now. Run. IT goes. It runs. Go. But somehow I can still . . . Now. . . .hear ITs voice. Run.

FOURTEEN THE GRAVE OF THE ELDER

Vandenboom sits in the middle of the desert, waiting. The quad-bike resting beneath him rumbles and growls, eliminating the silence the desert usually keeps. Spiked in the sand before him are four shovels. The sand beside the shovels is stained with a splash of red paint. It marks a grave. The grave of an ancient Edokko elder. There is a faint thunder in the distance. Vandenboom turns the key in the ignition and kills the motor. They’re here. ●●● Reynold awakens, not knowing how much time has passed since his fall. All he knows is that it is now daylight and Vandenboom is gone. In fact, the piles of car parts are gone as well. He jumps to his feet, staggering backwards. The blow to the head still has him a little off-kilter. Pete still sits in the front seat of the blue Caddy. His meat is now a darkened brown from the heat. He smells delicious. Reynold makes his way over to the Caddy. “It’s ’bout fucking time, man! Purple took off hours ago!” Pete screams. Reynold examines Pete. He’s a bit crispy. “What’s that shit on your face there?” Reynold touches his face. Red crust has hardened around his eye. He wipes it clean from his face. “Vandenboom,” Reynold says. “What?” “Purple’s name is Vandenboom. How long have I been out?” Reynold tears a bit of jerky from Pete’s lower half. “Excuse me? What the fuck do you think you’re doing? I need that!” “Petey Boy, I’m facking starved!” Reynold pops the chunk into his mouth. “Oh god, Pete, you taste awful.” “Yeah, yeah. Well, you’ve been out for a few days. I can’t be exact. I’ve lost count.” “A few days?! Really? No wonder I feel like shit.” “What the hell happened to you anyway?” “It spoke to me, Pete! Only it wasn’t Vandenboom that spoke to me, it was Divey.” “Divey? Ha, you’ve lost it, kid! Divey’s a goner. You saw what that bastich did to him. He ripped him apart!”

“I swear it, Pete, it was Divey. No mistaking it.” Reynold rips off another chunk of Pete’s meat. “Last one, I promise.” “Did you hear him before or after you whacked your skull?” “Both.” “. . .” “Don’t you at least want to know what he told me?” “Oh, do tell . . .” Pete sighs. “He told me to go home. That the road ahead was too dangerous. He said that he could take care of himself.” “Great! Then let’s be on our way.” “But I know how to save him.” “Oh, you can’t save yourself.” “No, really, I know. It’s in ’ere.” Reynold points to his chest. “Divey is in that thing’s . . . chestal area.” “Chestal area?” “You know, right in the middle of everythin’. All we have to do is rip him out.” “And how do you know this?” “It was in a dream.” “Rey, let’s go home.” “Fack that, I’m gonna go rescue my brother.” “Look man, you’ve been out in the sun too long. You’re stressed. You just lost a loved one. You’re dehydrated, hungry, weak, and not to mention, you just fucking bumped your head and recently came out of a short coma. You physically aren’t able to handle taking that thing down!” “I feel fine, Pete, really.” “Fine? Really, you’re fine? You’re talking to a fucking pile of meat!” “I’m leaving. You don’t have to come with me.” Pete looks around. “What else am I supposed to do? Rot in this piece of shit car, alone? Fuck man, I guess I don’t really have a choice.” “Well, come on then. We need to find transportation.” Reynold scoops Pete up in his arms. ●●● The dust kicks up and hides all traces of the sun as the Damned Dirt Devils ride in. VEGA Vega has green skin and a yellow X painted over his left eye. He is tall and slender—great for getting into those hard to reach places. He is a skilled swordsman as well as a mixed martial artist. He drives a yellow dragster with the engine exposed and loves Granny Smith apples.

KREBB The red-skinned Krebb stands about six feet tall and nearly just as wide. He has a receding hairline and his mane grows like fire all around his face, except for his chin, which is totally hairless. He likes to smoke thick cigars and finger his weapon of choice, the KREBBOOM—a large gun that resembles a vegetable blender and requires no ammo. Simply load any object into the chamber and, with the pull of the trigger, the object is cloned and sent hurling through the target’s skull at a bone-shattering speed. His ride is an old police car from the 1930s with a souped up engine and flames painted across the front and side panels. Justice will be served.

GLUUM Gluum is an arachnid in a humanoid body. She has long white hair, black skin, and her hands sparkle like the night sky. She literally has the universe in her hands. She rides a shiny chrome bike with metal wheels and lets her fingers do most of the talking.

T-DAKK T-Dakk suffers from a rare disorder that has rendered his legs useless. But what he lacks in physical ability, he makes up with mental strength. T-Dakk is head of weapons command. He has engineered, constructed, and perfected over thirty-eight different weapons, including the KREBBOOM. T-Dakk rides around in a heavy duty murderball wheelchair and drives an old Japanese-style van that has been modified to accommodate his every need.

Vandenboom and his Damned Dirt Devils leave their rides and crowd around the grave of the ancient elder. The Damned Dirt Devils drop to their knees and bow before the grave. Vandenboom hoists the shovels out of the dirt and tosses them to the ground. “Dig.”

FIFTEEN DOOM MAGNETIC

“You just have to trust me!” Reynold yells at Pete. “This is the only way we’re going to get out of here in time!” “The shit I do for you, kid,” Pete sighs. A tightly tied black fishing net is wrapped around him. “It’ll be fine. I’ll be over here waiting, just be still and quiet, okay?” “Okay, okay. Go already.” Reynold runs back behind one of the scrap heaps and picks out a thin strip of paper from the rubbish. He places it between his thumbs, cups his hands together, and blows through it. A high-pitched squawk emanates and echoes through the heap. After a few calls, he is finally successful. An ostrich pokes its head out from behind one of the junk stacks, catching a whiff of its dinner. It eyes Pete carefully for several moments, before advancing. Once it becomes brave enough to step out, Reynold sneaks up behind it and rings the metal rim he’d removed from the fishing net around its head and neck. He leaps up onto its back, snatching up Pete in the process. The ostrich rears back and squawks with fury. “Ha! We did it!” Reynold yells. He smacks the bird’s arse and leads it to follow the deep tire tracks imprinted in the sand. “Divey, here we come, brother!” ●●● “I hit something boss!” Krebb yells from down deep in the grave. He thrusts the shovel beneath the casket and pries it loose from the earth’s grasp. The Damned Dirt Devils haul the coffin out of the grave and drop it on the hot sand. Krebb takes his shovel and cracks into the wooden top. He tosses the shovel aside and begins to pry back the wooden slats, snapping them off in pieces until the casket is completely open. They all cover their noses and mouths as the stench of decay pollutes the air around them. The body inside is headless and draped in a blood-stained kimono. Buried along with it are two items, a large wooden staff and a cracked cue-ball. Krebb picks up the cue-ball. “Holy shit, boss! It’s his fucking eye!” he yells, showing it to the others. “Ha, to think that I’m holding Master Qoser’s cue-ball eye in my hands!” The others want to hold it too, but Krebb refuses to share. “Out of my way . . .” Vandenboom orders, pushing Krebb aside. He picks up a shovel and hoists it high above his head—the blade end shimmers in the sunlight. He brings the blade down with such force that it severs Qoser’s right arm just below the

elbow. He picks up the arm. Its skin has the texture of a raisin. A smile forms at the corner of his mouth. “Ready to go home, Devils?!” he shouts. The Devils throw their fists into the air and cheer. Vandenboom spreads his legs and crouches into the same position he had always seen Qoser in, just before he would tear into the Doom Magnetic. The Doom Magnetic is a void in time and space that allows one to travel anywhere, any place in an instant. Vandenboom bends the fingers down and straightens the pinky finger out, again, just as Qoser had always done. “Brace yourselves,” he warns, howling as he slowly rips into the Doom Magnetic. But to his surprise, nothing happens. He tries it again . . . and again. Still nothing. “FUCK!” He hurls the arm into the air. He jumps down on Qoser’s corpse, grabs it by the collar of his kimono, and begins shouting, cursing at it. “Uh, boss?” T-Dakk says. “WHAT?!” Vandenboom shouts, dropping Qoser back down into his casket. “Check it out . . .” T-Dakk points. About twenty feet in the distance floats Qoser’s hand. They all run out to examine this oddity. The pinky is missing completely. It has pierced through the Doom Magnetic and is now stuck in the air like a dart in a dartboard. Vandenboom grabs the floating forearm and pulls it down. In an instant, the Doom Magnetic tears open and a powerful vacuum begins to suck in everything in sight. “Hurry, we have to get through before it closes!” Vandenboom shouts. The Devils hop in their vehicles. Krebb tosses Qoser’s cue-ball eye into his glove compartment. They fire their ignitions and, one by one, drive into the Doom Magnetic. ●●● “What the fack is that, man?” Reynold yells, pointing at the large black hole in the distance. “Fuck if I know, but look, there’s your boy and it looks like he’s about to drive through the goddamn thing!” Pete shouts. They watch as Vandenboom and the Damned Dirt Devils drive into the void. After a few seconds, the void begins to shrink. “Shit man, I think it’s closing! We have to go faster!” Reynold begins kicking at the sides of the ostrich, pulling at its feathers, anything he can think of to get the bird sprinting. It works. They dive into the void, which closes around them at the waist. On the other side there are bright lights, wet streets, and tall buildings. A city. A big city. Reynold grabs the only thing within his reach, the pole of a streetlamp, and heaves. Him, Pete, and the ostrich all slop out of the void and tumble to the wet street below. They know exactly where they are. They’re in the biggest city on the entire Planet Japan.

SIXTEEN TOKYO!

Jools Dethbryte sits on the top floor of THE BLITZ, a 178-story building towering over Tokyo. She admires the beauty of the city from above. However, she is not really ‘sitting’, per se—more like lying on a large circular bed. And she is not really a ‘she’ either, more like an it. She doesn’t have any sex organs. Not a one. She doesn’t even have legs, just one short, fat tongue of skin extending out from her waist. She is a space slug—or an Edokkolug, to be exact. She prefers to be called a she, even though her voice is clearly masculine. “So sorry to bother you,” a small Japanese man says, as he speed-walks into the room, “but have you been watching the news?” Ironically, the man speaks quite effeminately. “No, I haven’t, blah. I’ve been admiring the view. You know that’s what I like to do after my scrubbing, blah!” Dethbryte croaks, slow and low. “Why?” “Ah, ah, ah. Just see for yourself!” The man picks up the remote for the television and aims it at the wall. The wall hums and suddenly an image appears across it. “—happened around three o’clock this morning in downtown Tokyo. Eyewitness reports state that eight figures passed through the Doom Magnetic before it closed. Five of them have been identified as Doon Vandenboom and his Damned Dirt Devils—yes, you are hearing me right—Doon Vandenboom and his Damned Dirt Devils seem to have returned to Tokyo. The other three have yet to be identified,” says the news anchorman. A series of cell phone pictures flash on the screen showing Vandenboom and his crew blazing down the streets in their vehicles. At the bottom of the screen, a red banner reads: ‘BREAKING NEWS: VANDENBOOM RETURNS! DOOM MAGNETIC ALIVE AND WELL!’ Dethbryte narrows her eyes, but doesn’t shy them away from the television screen. “This can’t be! Krumm, how the fuck can this be, blah?!” “Well, it appears as if your television prison wasn’t enough to hold him, my dear,” Krumm says, smirking. “Oh, don’t try and pin all of this on me, blah! You liked the television idea, too!” “Yes, but you used such a fucking ancient television! I was the one who suggested we use one of the newer models, but noooo, you didn’t want to fork over the cash! You get what you pay for, cheapskate. I hope you’re happy.” “How many times do we have to go through this, blah? The newer models are too thin! We wouldn’t have been able to cram him inside, even if we stuck a broomstick in his ass!” “What? How does a broomstick in his ass help anything?”

“You know what I mean, blah.” “No, I don’t know what you mean. Shoving a stick up his ass does what exactly?” “It helps with the cramming.” “What is it that you are cramming? I mean, we zapped his spirit into a TV using lightning rods!” “It’s a figure of speech. Look, you know what I mean, blah. Fucking shut it!” Krumm purses his lips out and rocks his hips angrily before turning his back to her, again focusing his attention on the television screen. “He was all like big and purple and *bleep*. I mean, he still looks the same. Big teeth and *bleep*. Scary as hell,” an eye-witness reports. “And what about the others, the ones that came after the Damned Dirt Devils? Any idea of who they might be?” the reporter asks. Pictures of Reynold, Pete, and the ostrich scroll across the screen. “I don’t *bleep* know, man, but one of ’em was a *bleep*-ing pile of meat . . .” “Pause it, blah. Hurry!” Dethbryte orders. Krumm closes his eyes, annoyed at the request, but obeying regardless. He holds the remote up and presses the pause button. The screen freezes on the picture of Reynold, Pete, and the ostrich. “Bring them to me!” Dethbryte commands. “Them? Really? Why?” Krumm asks. Dethbryte’s eyes immediately change colors—the left bright red and the right a deep purple. “I said bring them to me or I’ll be cramming a broomstick up your ass!” she screams, pink saliva spraying in all directions. “Okay, okay, boss. Calm your noodle!” Krumm says, tossing the remote onto the bed. “I’ll send out the boys.” Krumm leaves the room. Dethbryte’s eyes return to the same yellowish color they were before. She turns back to face the window. The beautiful city she had admired only moments ago suddenly looks dirty. She reaches out her stubby arms and yanks on the drawstring. The blinds snap shut.

SEVENTEEN FRIENDS IN LOW PLACES

The clouds hang like giant pink cherries in the purple night sky. Reynold is saddled up on his ostrich, admiring the beauty of the sky from the bowels of the city; it is the only place they could run to where the questions, the lights, the cameras wouldn’t follow. The bowels are even worse than the barrio. The streets aren’t paved, the buildings are collapsing or collapsed, and the ground is half-covered in the city’s waste due to poor plumbing and the fact that no plumber would ever consider taking a job in the area. The people here are dangerous. There are no streetlamps. If someone were to run into trouble out here, the last thing they’d want to do is see it coming. That’s much worse. Seeing and smelling a place like this makes the cherry night sky that much more beautiful. “Hey, Rey, how long you planning on hanging around here, man? The rats here are the size of bloodhounds and they’re all giving me the ol’ salacious eye.” Pete hangs in the fish net, dangling off the ostrich, wary of the darkness. “Just until we come up with a plan to catch up with Vandenboom,” Reynold answers. “Vandenboom, eh?” a serpenty voice calls from somewhere in the dark. A small Japanese man, draped in dirty rags and covered with filth, steps out of the darkness and into the moonlight. “You the folks on the television tonight, yes?” The ostrich jumps back at the sight of him. Reynold reaches his hand behind his back as if reaching for a weapon, even though he is unarmed. “Back off, old man!” yells Reynold. “Heh heh, do your worst.” Reynold tenses up the muscles in his arm, as if clinching his ‘weapon’ makes the threat any more believable. “Why are you looking for Vandenboom?” the old man asks. “Depends on who is asking.” “I am asking.” “But who are you?” “Who are you?” Reynold rolls his eye. “He’s got my brother.” “Kidnap? It’s not like Vandenboom to kidnap.” “No not kidn— Wait! You know Vandenboom?” Reynold steps down off the ostrich. “Oh yes, there are not many in Tokyo who do not. Ever since the explosion . . .” “Explosion? What explosion?”

“The old Blitzkrieg factory. Him and his Damned Dirt Devils leveled it. Since then it has been swallowed up by earth. But that was decades ago. After Dethbryte found out about the explosion—” “Dethbryte?” Reynold interrupts. “She is the head of Blitzkrieg Industries. One bad mamma-jamma. If she’s pissed, then everyone in the range of one hundred miles knows it. Blitzkrieg manufactures war puppets, monsters. You see, Vandenboom blew up Blitzkrieg for personal reasons. Because they manufactured him . . . him and his Damned Dirt Devils. They made hundreds of these war puppets, but something went wrong with this batch— something that made them become self-aware. They instantly rebelled against Dethbryte and Blitzkrieg resulting in a battle that lasted for many years, ending with the destruction of the Blitzkrieg building. Dethbryte soon had her revenge, though. Just a few hours after the explosion, she captured Vandenboom and his Damned Dirt Devils, stripped their lifeforce from their bodies, and sent them off to God-knows-where trapped in little television sets.” “Well, now it makes sense why he didn’t bother with killin’ us, eh, Petey?” Reynold says. The old man looks around to see who Reynold is talking to, slightly confused. “So, do you have any idea where we might be able to catch Vandenboom then?” Reynold asks the old man. “Well, if he still has bad blood with Dethbryte, I’d say he’s headed toward THE BLITZ—the new Blitzkrieg building.” “And where is that exactly?” “You can’t miss it. It’s the tallest building in all of Tokyo. You can see it from anywhere.” Reynold eyes the skyline and quickly spots it. “Well, I’m truly grateful, sir. And I don’t mean to be rude, but we’ve really got to get a move on if we’re gonna catch up to ’em.” The old man bows and holds out his palm. Reynold is a bit confused by this. Finally, the old man clears his throat and rotates his thumb against the underside of his fingers. “Oh, I guess you’re lookin’ for some sort of payment, eh? Well, I’m fresh out of cash at the moment . . .” Reynold says, reaching into the fishing net, “but I can pay you in meat.” “What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Reynold!” Pete yells. Reynold digs until he finds a moderately-sized slab of Pete that isn’t too dried out. “Hey, fuck you, man! Your brother wouldn’t have treated me this way!” “Whose idea do you think it was to chop you up in the first place, eh?” Reynold yells back at him. Pete gets quiet. “Divey, that’s who! I didn’t want anything to do with it, but I didn’t really have a choice, now did I?” Pete remains quiet. “Now, mention my brother one more facking time, Pete! I dare you!” The old man is frightened by the sight of Reynold yelling at a fishing net full of meat. He takes the slab, bows graciously, and then runs like hell down the street, away from them.

“You know, Pete, I’m beginning to think that I’m the only one who can hear you speak.” “Well, if you’re wondering whether I’m real or not, then know that hell yes I am!” Pete yells. “Furthermore, we can’t go running off to catch Purple just yet. We have to get armed first.” “Right. Good thinking. But how are we supposed to do that?” “I know some guys. I used to deliver out here years ago, just before I met up with you and Div. They’re not far from here, actually, just a few streets down. It won’t take us no time at all.” “Well, it’s about facking time Lady Luck gave us a little peek at her goodies, ain’t it, Petey Boy?!” “Yeah,” Pete sighs. “Something like that.”

EIGHTEEN BEFORE THE STORM

Krebb pushes the pedal to the metal. The speedometer reads 98 as he runs down a locked chain-link fence blocking the entrance to a concrete parking structure. The others follow closely behind him, tires screeching at every turn. They soon reach the top, open to the cherry night sky, but none of them take the time to notice the beauty of it. T-Dakk lowers the lift from his door and wheels his way to the back of the van. He lifts a panel, located just above the left brake light, and types in a code on the keypad. The side panels of the van release and lift up above the van like a DeLorean, revealing an arsenal of weapons inside. Vandenboom removes Qoser’s arm from the quiver wrapped around his back and places it inside the van. He replaces it with a crossbow and arrows. Vega arms himself with two katanas and Krebb fingers his KREBBOOM. Gluum doesn’t even bother to hop off her bike; her weapons are her nebula fingers. T-Dakk grabs his laptop case and a bottle of water—breaking and entering always makes him a little thirsty. “Are we ready, then?” T-Dakk asks. The Devils nod and walk back to their vehicles. The cacophony of all five engines roaring sounds like some wild devilish storm pounding its wicked drum over the city. “Straight in, boss?” Krebb yells over the thunder. Vandenboom nods. “Straight in.” Krebb smiles and gives a two-fingered salute. The Devils stomp on their gas pedals, launching them off the parking structure, into the air, and crashing into the plate glass windows of THE BLITZ.

NINETEEN A FRIEND INDEED

Reynold bangs his fist three times on the swollen wooden door. The wood is so damp little beads of moisture seep out and dribble down the face of the door. “You sure any one is even ’ere, Pete? The place looks facking condemned,” Reynold asks. “It actually looks better than I remembered.” The slow and heavy clop of army-issued steel-toed boots echoes out through the doorway. The door opens. A brutish man with squinty eyes, a large nose, and a severe case of acne stands in the doorway before them. Reynold furrows his brow, as if he is solving some difficult mathematical equation inside his head. The man just stands there staring, not saying a word. Reynold clears his throat. “I’m a friend . . . of Pete’s,” he says with a stiff jaw. “So?” the man says, smacking his lips. “I don’t know no Pete.” His voice pierces through the night air like a harpoon. “He said he used to make deliveries for you.” The man begins to shut the door in his face, but stops. “Pete? You mean Fat Pete?” Reynold’s eye lights up. “Yes, exactly! Fat Pete! He said that you would be able to help us.” “Help ‘us’? You and your bird?” Reynold shakes his head, “No, me and Pete.” He holds up the fish net containing his friend. He smiles. “What the f—” The man grabs Reynold by his collar and yanks him into the house. “So, what is this? Some sort of shakedown or something? Some kind of fucking threat?” The man still has hold of his collar and yells at him so closely that if one of the boils on his face were to pop, Reynold would catch most of the buckshot. Reynold tries several times to open his eye, but fear won’t allow him to look the man in the face. “I have no facking idea what you’re talking about! We just need some firepower, that’s all. We came here to ask for your help.” The man loosens his grasp on his collar. “You say that’s Fat Pete in your bag there, eh?” Reynold nods his head. “How the fuck did he end up like that?” Reynold furrows his brow and chews on his bottom lip, struggling to come up with an answer that doesn’t make him seem completely psychotic. “Um . . . shit happens?” he says, as if it were a question rather than an answer. The man bursts into laughter. “Shit happens, eh?! Okay, okay . . .” Reynold laughs along, nervously. The man wipes a tear from his eye, spins, and quickly delivers a roundhouse kick to Reynold’s face. Reynold loses his balance and topples backwards into

a recliner, which then flips over onto the floor. “What the hell, man!” Reynold yells. “What the fack are you doing?” “I’ll tell you what I’m doing . . .” the man says, popping the top off an orange plastic medicine container. “I’m just getting started. That’s what I’m doing.” He puts the bottle up to his lips and throws his head back. He chews a mouthful of tiny pink pills and tosses the container aside. The powder turns to paste in his mouth, sticking to the enamel of his teeth, before he finally swallows it down. Reynold scrambles to his feet, but is soon pinned against the floor by the boil-faced man. The man fastens Reynold to the recliner with a roll of duct tape, stands, and then begins to stagger around. The meds are rapidly taking hold. “Y-you f-fucking . . . j-just w-wait h-here,” the man barely manages to say before leaving the room in a drunken stupor. “Pete! Hey, Pete—what the fack is going on, man?” Reynold yells. “I thought this bloke was a friend of yours?” “Friend? Now what ever gave you that impression?” Pete says from across the room. “Brenner? Naw, man—he’s definitely no friend. I said I used to make deliveries for him. Which I did—well, once, anyway. The bastich nearly stabbed out my eye with a goddamn ink pen!” Reynold’s eye opens as wide as a ping pong ball. “Then why the fack did we even come here in the first place?! Are you insane?!” Pete sighs. “Fuck man, are you really that daft? I fucking set you up! I mean, think about it. Why in the hell would I help you find your fucking brother?! The two of you murdered and hacked up my ass just to keep your shitty business going! I wish I was able to have had this done sooner, but do you know how hard it is for someone in my condition to set someone up? REALLY FUCKING HARD!” Pete laughs. “Shits like you and Divey always get what’s coming to you. It’s just the way of the world.” Reynold tries his best to position his head in a way where he can see Pete. “This ain’t the end, Pete!” he yells. “Whenever I get out of ’ere, and I will get out of ’ere, I’m going to facking slow roast your ass out under the hot desert sun! Fack brackfas burritos! Divey and I will be selling facking brackfas jerky!” “Breakfast jerky? There is no such thing as breakfast jerky!” “And that’s precisely why it’s such a brilliant facking idea! We’ll make millions of yen . . . a day!” “You’ll make nothing.” “Millions.” “No, you’ll make nothing, Rey, and I’ll tell you why—any goddamn minute now Brenner is gonna come in through that doorway and cut so many assholes in you that you’re not gonna know which way to sit!” “Shit, Pete, the guy barely made it out of the room. I don’t see him coming back any time soon. As soon as I figure a way out of this chair, I’ll be on my merry facking way.” There is a shuffling in the hallway. “Don’t be so cool, boy, here he comes now!” Pete says, laughing. Brenner throws his body against the door frame, barely able to support his own body weight. He is dragging behind him three weapons—a SEGA Light Phaser, a

Nintendo Game Handler, and a voice-activated Nintendo LaserScope. The cords are twisted and knotted together in his fist. He vomits violently. Once he is finished, he spits and mutters, “You ready, dead boy?” He spits again and fumbles through the cords, finding a plug-in for one of the weapons and plugging it into the port in his neck. He slowly reaches down, trying not to lose his balance, to pick up the LaserScope. He fits the LaserScope on his head, over his ears. It wears like a pair of futuristic headphones. Once he balances himself, his hands stretching out on either side, he moves the microphone to his mouth and yells, “Fire!” Nothing happens. “Fire, goddamnit!” Brenner yells. Wrong cord. He unplugs the controller from his neck port and tries another. Once it is in place, he yells again, “Fire!” Still nothing. “Shit!” Brenner leans over and squeezes the Game Handler in his fist. The room violently tilts to the right—the furniture, Brenner, Reynold, and Pete all tumble with it. The Game Handler is more commonly used for flying aircrafts more stealthily. The simple motion of bending the wrist makes it much easier for the pilot to maneuver the plane through rough air conditions, but it can also be used to slant the terrain. As Brenner struggles to his feet, he accidentally flicks his wrist and again the room tilts—this time to the left. Reynold and the recliner he is taped to slam hard against the brick wall, causing the back of the chair to break off. Reynold is now loose enough to wriggle through the tape. Before any further damage is done, Brenner rips the cord out from his neck and the room becomes level again. He falls to the floor, maddeningly fingering through the knots, looking for the right cable. Once he finds it, he slaps it into his neck port and yells, “Fire!” The scope, located over his right eye, fires, but doesn’t hit Reynold. It doesn’t even come close. He pulls himself to his feet yelling, “Fire! Fire! Fire!” The LaserScope fires each time, blowing holes in the wooden floor and the walls. Debris rains down over the room. Reynold finally wriggles free from the chair and runs like hell for the front door. Brenner’s shots are getting closer. Reynold grabs the poker from the fireplace and flings it at Brenner’s head. It connects. The LaserScope is pushed back a few inches from the poker throw, now aiming at the ceiling directly above Brenner. Brenner’s nose begins to gush blood. “Fire!” he commands. The LaserScope obeys. The ceiling caves in from the blast, crushing Brenner to death. Reynold collapses onto the floor, trying to catch his breath. “Okay, so . . . now we’re even,” Pete says, breaking the silence. Reynold’s eye opens wide and he hops to his feet. “Now we’re even? Now we’re even?!” “I can see that you’re upset . . .” Reynold grabs the fish net between his fingers and slams it up against the wall. “SHUT . . . THE . . . FACK . . . UP!” he yells, beating Pete’s meat with every word. Pete is finally quiet. Reynold drops to his knees and takes a few deep breaths before finally pulling himself to his feet. He walks over to Brenner’s buried body and

grabs the Light Phaser lying on the floor. He untangles the cord, wraps it around his arm, and plugs it into his neck port. He grabs Pete on the way out the door. Outside the door he is greeted by three men in bright red and black uniforms. Their skin is inside out, with blood seeping out through a circuit of blue vessels. Their uniforms stick to their bodies as if they forgot to dry off after they showered. There is a black car in the street with a flashing red light on top. The doors read ‘Blitzkrieg Bowsers’. All three men speak in unison, “Is this your ostrich, sir?”

TWENTY GOING UP

Jools Dethbryte frantically types in a numeric code on a dial-pad located in a secret location against her back wall. The dial-pad beeps and the keys glow green, releasing the lock on a secret vault door camouflaged perfectly behind a large mirror. Dethbryte pulls back the mirror revealing a small rectangle-shaped cavity inside the wall. She reaches inside and removes its contents: a glossy bright pink hat box. She sets the box on top of her bed, just as the lights click off. She is in total darkness now—but only for a few seconds. The safety lights flicker on and the alarm sounds. BLAARP, BLAARP, BLAARP, BLAARP, BLAARP! The alarm blares like a trained seal honking a bicycle horn with metronome-like timing—except as if it were amplified through the speakers in a baseball stadium. The faint sound of static hums from a walkie-talkie sitting on the desk in the corner of the room. Click. “Security has been breached! I repeat—security has been breached! Lady Dethbryte, we are sending up our men to help you evacuate the building immediately. Please remain calm. We will have the situation under control soon. Over.” Click. Dethbryte lifts the lid off the hat box, seemingly not too worried about the security breach. She pulls out a black velvet bag from inside. Click. “Lady Dethbryte, do you copy? Over.” Click. She reaches into the black velvet bag and pulls out a grey and black rubber glove—a Nintendo Power Glove. She puts it on over her right hand. The glove fits snug against her slimy skin. Click. “Lady Dethbryte?” Click. She plugs the cable into the port located on the fat roll underneath her chin. She inhales deeply, feeling the power of the glove surging throughout her body. She slithers over to the desk and grabs the walkie-talkie. Click. “Don’t worry about me, blah. I can take care of myself.” Click. She tosses the walkie-talkie back on the desk and slithers over to the window, waiting. ●●● With the alarms sounding and the safety lights flashing, Vandenboom and his Damned Dirt Devils abandon their vehicles and ready their weapons. Krebb opens his glove box and removes Qoser’s cue-ball eye. He kisses it for luck and stuffs it into a small leather sack attached to his belt. No matter how lightly they step, the broken glass underneath their feet immediately gives away their positions. Luckily there isn’t anyone within earshot that can

hear it. They spot an elevator at the end of the hall and quickly run over to it. Vega hits the call button, but the elevators have been disabled. Krebb and Gluum check the steel doors leading to the stairway, but they are locked as well. “I could hack into the system and override the alarm, but I’d have to find a port or a direct connection somehow,” T-Dakk says. “I think I can manage that,” says Vega, surveying the drop-ceiling. He reaches up and pushes aside one of the ceiling planks, revealing a series of wires stretching across. “Oh, definitely.” Vega jumps and pulls himself up past the drop-ceiling. He removes a small blade from his belt and begins to slice through the wires, pulling and loosening them from their ties. He manages enough slack so they reach T-Dakk on the floor below. T-Dakk studies the wires, tossing aside the ones he doesn’t need and bundling up the ones he does. He strips the protective plastic from the wires about two inches back. He then twists them together along with the exposed wire of a hacking tool connected to his laptop. As Vega prepares to hop back down to the floor, a sliver of light catches his peripherals. It appears to be coming from the top of the elevator cab. He pulls himself across the ceiling, his back to the floor, using the wires as an electric rope. The space between the ceiling and the ceiling planks is about a foot, a tight squeeze even for Vega, but he manages to make it over to the elevator shaft in no time at all. The sliver of light is actually a small door, an escape hatch for emergencies; the light from inside of the elevator illuminates the edges. Vega peeks through the cracks. Five men are inside. Blitzkrieg Bowsers. Two of them are sitting on the floor of the elevator, one of them is standing, talking on a walkietalkie, and the other two are messing around with the button panel, trying to get the elevator running again. Vega twists his head and pops his neck. He smiles. He’s been waiting for this moment for what feels like centuries. He pulls open the hatch and drops down on them. The two sitting on the floor immediately jump to their feet in surprise. The man standing drops his walkie-talkie and halfway delivers a roundhouse kick, but Vega throws out his leg and counters the attack. He then sweeps the man’s other leg out from under him, causing him to fall hard to the floor. Two other men throw punches. Vega steps back, just out of range, and grabs their bloody, veiny heads and bashes them together. Their heads collide like two blood-soaked sponges, spraying blood on the walls and ceiling of the cab. The two men by the controls break open the panel and pull out the wires by the handful. They take turns lurching out, trying to strangle Vega with the wires. Vega chops one of them in the throat with the blade of his hand and flips him over his shoulder onto the torso of the other man. They both fall to the floor. Soon they are all back on their feet again, eager to start round two—but Vega doesn’t have time for round two. He ducks, pulls out both katanas from the holsters on his back, and rises again, holding out the blades and twirling like a helicopter— decapitating all five in a single motion. Blood sprays from their neck-holes and covers the cab completely. Ding. The bell from the elevator sounds as the doors spring open. Vega returns

his katanas to their holsters and smiles at the Devils, completely covered in blood. “Red suits you,” Krebb says, nodding in approval. Vandenboom, Krebb, and Gluum help Vega remove the bodies from the elevator, while T-Dakk works on repairing the severed wires of the control panel. “Ready,” T-Dakk calls. The Devils all pile into the elevator. T-Dakk presses the button for the 178th floor. The button illuminates, the bell sounds, and the doors close. “Going up!”

TWENTY-ONE DEVILS MAY CARE

Krumm kicks open the door to Dethbryte’s office and walks in with a ghoulish smile spread across his face. “Well . . . I got ’em!” he says. “You got the Damned Dirt Devils?! And so quickly, blah!” Dethbryte shouts with glee. “Oooh, well . . . no, not them. But I do have something special for you!” Krumm says, rocking his hips and twirling around like a high school cheerleader. The three Bowsers enter the room, dragging behind them Reynold, Pete, and the ostrich. Reynold instantly becomes ill at the sight of Dethbryte. “Who the fuck are they, blah?” she asks. Krumm’s smiling lips melt into an annoyed frown. “These are the . . . travelers . . . that you requested. Remember?” “Travelers? What the gizit, blah?! You’re getting too old for this job! Turn them loose and go get those damned Devils . . .” “You stupid shit! These are the ones who traveled through the Doom Magnetic! The ones who were following Vandenboom! You asked us to go get them . . . so, here they are . . .” Krumm throws his arms up in the air in a big dramatic production, and walks out the door. “I’m done with this shit!” “Ahh, now I remember, blah . . .” mumbles Dethbryte. “Kill them!” “No! You can’t!” Reynold shouts. Dethbryte ignores him. Click. “Anybody have any fucking clue as to where the Dirt Devils are?!” she shouts into the walkie-talkie. The three Bowsers, standing in the same room across from her, rush to grab their walkie-talkies. Click. “Negative. We do not have a clear visual at the moment,” they say in unison. Dethbryte, enraged by their ignorance, begins to twitch and shiver. Her eyes bulge and pulse along with the beating of her heart. Electricity builds and storms out from her eyes in a mighty bolt, missing the Bowsers and igniting the wall behind them. Reynold tries to duck, but the Bowsers keep a tight grasp on him. Ding. The bell of the elevator sounds down the hall. The sound instantly brings Dethbryte out of anger. She takes a deep breath and tries to clear her mind. She needs to think quickly, clearly. She may only have one shot at this. ↑↑↓↓←→←→BABA She enters the cheat code on her Power Glove controller so quickly her fingers become transparent. A tiny smile cracks in the corner of her mouth as she proudly presses

the last button. She gets it on the first try. Just then, the door busts open. Vandenboom and his Damned Dirt Devils stand still in the doorway, eyeing Dethbryte from the shadows in the hallway. The Bowsers loosen their grasp on Reynold, Pete, and the Ostrich, and charge at the Devils. “You can’t be here!” the three Bowsers say together. “This is a private meeting!” “Now calm your bones, boys! We’re only here to lend a hand!” Krebb says, sticking his fist in the chamber of the KREBBOOM and pulling the trigger. The KREBBOOM makes an exact copy of his fist and launches the clone through the air, hitting all three Bowsers with one shot. Dethbryte’s skin begins to tingle, as if tiny sparks of electricity are exploding like fireworks throughout her fat, wormy body. “Ha, you’re too late, Vandenboom! It’s already begun, blah!” The Devils watch as her bones begin to shift and dislocate. Her arms and tail twitch and expand rapidly. Pink saliva bubbles from her mouth like an unholy percolator, occasionally spurting and spraying long thick streams of mucus across the room. Her body grows wider, larger, taller—becoming so enormous that she quickly fills the entire room, pinning and suffocating Reynold and company against the wall. The ceiling finally gives way and topples 178 stories down to the busy city street below. Once the ceiling breaks loose, the pressure on Reynold and the Devils eases and they are able to catch their breaths again. Dethbryte grows larger and larger, until she is as tall as THE BLITZ itself. She throws her hands in the air and howls a deep, guttural roar. The wind from her breath nearly causes Reynold to fall to his death, but Vandenboom quickly grabs hold of his arm, saving him from doom. Reynold looks up at Vandenboom in awe, surprised at his savior. “Divey?” Reynold asks, hoping Vandenboom’s skin will suddenly split and peel back, revealing his brother underneath, perfectly intact. But that doesn’t happen. Instead, Vandenboom slings Reynold toward the remaining wall at the back of the room and motions for him to get down. “Get under the desk. You’ll be safe there,” Vandenboom says. Reynold nods his head, grabs the ostrich, and kneels down under the desk. His heart is pounding so hard in his chest that it actually makes him physically uncomfortable. He looks out from the side of the desk and sees Vandenboom walking away. “Hey!” he shouts. Vandenboom turns around. A knot forms in Reynold’s throat. “Thank you.” Vandenboom nods, turns back around and begins hammering buttons on the controller inside his forearm. Reynold’s eye wells up with tears as he crawls back under the desk. This is the first time Reynold truly feels as if he is never going to see his brother again. He wraps his arms around the ostrich and sobs. Vandenboom huddles with the rest of the Devils. “Remember, we must stick to the plan. No matter what happens, Dethbryte must go down.” “You got it, boss,” Krebb says, looking around the room for objects to load into the chamber of his weapon. “We’ve been through the depths of hell and back again. Our cards have been dealt in a fixed game . . .” Vandenboom says, “but tonight, we’re the ones dealing. Give her hell, Devils!” The Devils cheer and raise their weapons high in the air. Dethbryte screeches and

whips her tongue around the building; her eyes light up like a tropical storm. Vandenboom lifts his forearm and taps in the rest of the cheat code. His body instantly begins to tingle with electricity. His bones pop, shift, and extend, contorting his body into an even more grotesque and giant creature than he already is. The strength he feels is tremendous.

TWENTY-TWO TOKYO CITY LIGHTS

The pink cherry clouds are beginning to turn a much deeper red. They hang against the black light canopy of sky making Tokyo look like hell on earth. Giant mutant versions of Vandenboom and Dethbryte stand facing one another, waiting for the other to make the first move, like some old-timey western duel. Dethbryte’s tongue whips at her sides in a motion so soft and delicate it’s almost hypnotic. Her eyes are a kaleidoscope of colors—each one fading into the next. She holds out her arms in front of her body and wiggles her fingers, as if typing on an invisible typewriter. She whips her tongue from left to right, licking her sides faster and faster. Pink saliva paints the city. Vandenboom stands calm. Even as her saliva pelts his face, he doesn’t flinch. He watches closely as she sways, the way she moves, looking for any signs of aggression or strike. Then it happens. Dethbryte whips her tongue at Vandenboom, lashing wickedly at his chest. He catches her tongue in his fist and begins wrapping it around his forearm. He uses his other hand to remove the crossbow from his back harness and fires three arrows simultaneously right into the center of her flabby bread basket. She howls and rips the arrows from her stomach. Vandenboom’s fingers twist and his skin splits apart, revealing the steel drill hidden beneath. Dethbryte’s tongue gets caught between the grooves and wraps around the drill so tightly it ceases to spin and whines loudly. Black smoke rolls off the hot metal. He jerks back on his arm. The purple muscle of her tongue splits partly and blood sprays out of her severed veins like water hoses. Dethbryte scrambles to save her tongue, clawing desperately at his face and chest. Vandenboom shoves his fist into her mouth and grabs her tongue by the root. He jerks his drill-arm back again and severs the tongue completely. “Yyyoo boosaarr!!” she yelps, wrapping both of her slimy hands around Vandenboom’s fist, trying to loosen his grasp on what is left of her tongue. He pulls her close, so that they are looking at each other eye to eye. “Blitzkrieg Industries has single-handedly destroyed the planet. Lives have been wasted and forgotten. Innocent lives!” Vandenboom yells. “You created us to be nothing more than killing machines—and that’s exactly what we are. I can’t sympathize for what I am about to do to you. It’s not in my blood. This all ends now!” “Yyyooo rrriiiggghhh . . .” Dethbryte mumbles, “hhiissss ennnnss noooww, bblllaaaahhhh!” Electricity bolts out from her eye sockets, firing one-hundred million volts directly into Vandenboom’s head. His muscles contract and tremor as the electricity

rides throughout his system. The skin on his face begins to bubble, liquefy, and drip off his skull like melted butter. “Nooo!” yells Krebb, as he watches the mayhem from inside THE BLITZ. He jams his fingers down into the chamber of his KREBBOOM and pulls the trigger. Thousands of short, stubby fingers go hurdling through the air, pelting her in the face, but doing nothing more than annoying her. Dethbryte grabs Vandenboom’s wrist and digs her fingernails into his forearm, ripping the NES controller completely out of his body. The veins in his face and neck swell and his head begins to tremor violently. His long dagger teeth flip outward and sink quickly back into his face, causing his forehead to cave in and his body to suck up into his neck. Reynold stares in disbelief as Vandenboom—his brother, Divey—implodes and shrinks back to normal size. His body seems to hover for a second, momentarily lost in space, before gravity drags him down to the ground like a hungry beast. Reynold runs out of hiding, grabbing everything in sight—staplers, lamps, paperweights—and throws them at Dethbryte. Tears glaze over his eye, blinding him. He collapses to his knees and sulks. His journey is over. He has failed his brother. The Devils launch a full attack on Dethbryte. Gluum holds out her hands in front of her and closes her eyes. From each of her fingertips shoots black webs, looking like an extension of her fingers themselves. The webs sling through the air, gripping and sticking to Dethbryte’s fat belly like tar. Inside the blackness of the webs swirl tiny nebulas, stars, and galaxies. They swirl together so rapidly that tiny black holes form and begin to suck in all that surrounds them. Dethbryte feels an uncomfortable sensation in her gut, as if her innards are slowly being sucked out of her body through a plastic straw. She digs her fingernails along her belly flesh, ripping away the super sticky black web, which then attaches itself to her fingers. Gluum continues to fire her black webs at her, even though she knows Dethbryte is far too massive for them to really have any other effect than to simply keep her distracted. Krebb loads everything he can get his hands on into the chamber of his KREBBOOM, but nothing really seems to be too affective. “I need something . . .” he mumbles to anyone who cares to listen. “Something metal . . .” Vega unsheathes his katanas, the first things he thinks of, and offers them to Krebb. Krebb shoves the tip of the blade into his KREBBOOM and pulls the trigger. Hundreds of little three inch razors rip into the atmosphere, slicing deep into Dethbryte’s side. She shrieks in pain, trying to bat away some of the shots with her hands. She moves closer to the building behind her and rips a giant satellite dish from its rooftop, using it as a shield. The razors deflect off the dish and come hurdling back toward the Devils. Gluum shoots streams of black web, trying to catch the blades, but most of them slip through. Vega’s shoulder and T-Dakk’s foot, which luckily doesn’t have any feeling, each take a hit. Reynold’s left leg is also injured as one of the blades slices through the tendon just above his heel. “Shit!” Reynold yelps. He wraps both of his hands around his ankle, applying pressure. Blood spurts out from between his fingers in substantial gushes. Krebb removes Vega’s katana and tosses it aside. He frantically searches for something else to fire. Suddenly he remembers the item he had stuffed into his leather sack, just after they had broken into the building—Qoser’s cue-ball eye. Originally he had

brought it more as a good luck charm, but with its weight, it may be exactly what he needs. Krebb loads the cue-ball into the chamber. He wipes the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand and cracks his knuckles. “Let’s hope I don’t scratch,” Krebb mutters to himself, taking aim. Dethbryte sways back and forth so quickly it is hard to get a clear shot in. Tiny lightning bolts fly out of her eyes and what’s left of her tongue begins to flick in and out of her mouth rapidly, like a snake. She’s readying her attack. Sweat beads up on his forehead, collecting and streaming down into his eyes. He does not flinch. He pulls the trigger. A cue-ball forms and fires fast into the night sky. Krebb follows it with his eye, but loses sight of it after only a second. The cue-ball crashes through Dethbryte’s skull with such force that it shatters the bone and splits her face completely in half. Blood, bone, brain, and saliva gush out of her face like a geyser, raining down fast on Tokyo. She screams like a warthog that just ate a trough full of broken glass and disappears into the depths below. Reynold can hardly keep his eyelid open. It gets heavier the more blood he loses. Krebb throws down his KREBBOOM and helps Vega, who is still struggling to remove the blade from his shoulder. Gluum helps T-Dakk wrap his wound with a piece of cloth. Reynold kneels on the floor, his hands slowly slip from his ankles as he becomes too weak to apply pressure. His blood pools around him. Bright white flashes like a strobe light in his eye. White. Sky. White. Sky. White. Dethbryte. White. Dethbryte is again standing tall beside THE BLITZ. Her split face is now nothing but a hole surrounded by blood and gore—completely unrecognizable. Out from the hole, her esophagus, gurgles a string of indecipherable speech. She pounds her fists down against the building, causing the floor to collapse from the vibration. White. Sky. White. Sky. White. Vega throws one of his katanas like a dart. The blade splits the air and buries itself in the neck flesh just under Dethbryte’s chin, severing the Power Glove cord. Dethbryte’s body shudders and implodes, much the same as Vandenboom’s body. She takes one final breath before her body splatters on the city street below. White. Sky. White. White. White.

TWENTY-THREE THE RED RAIN

Purple is gone now, as quickly as he came. The people, we stand in the red, red rain. The blood of the wicked is blood all the same. Together we stand in the red, red rain. Together we stand in the red, red rain. Together we stand in the red, red rain . . .

TWENTY-FOUR ONWARD

Reynold saddles up and strings a fishing rod, dangling a strip of Pete’s meat in front of his ostrich. The rig works masterfully. If he wants the ostrich to turn, he simply moves the fishing rod in any direction he wants to go. Sure, it’s simple, but he imagines Divey would have been proud. He digs into his pocket and removes a small orb. Milky-white smoke swirls inside it; a spirit trapped in glass. Before they had parted ways, Krebb removed the orb from Vandenboom’s chest and placed it in Reynold’s palm. He said to him, ‘The body may be gone, but the soul is eternal.’ Krebb’s words will forever be stitched into his brain. The soul is eternal. Eternal. Reynold looks out across the great expanse of the desert before him. His future will be determined by this one choice: East or West. His future, his destiny, his fate. HIS FATE. East or West. He fumbles through his pockets and pulls out his lucky coin. Heads it’s East, tails it’s West. He rubs the coin between his palms and kisses it for luck, before resting the coin flat on top of his fist. He flicks his thumb and the coin goes flipping through the air. The sunlight glitters off it, nearly blinding him, as the coin comes hurdling back down. It slaps against his palm and bounces off onto the hot sand below. “Gripes!” he shouts as he hops down off his ostrich. His bandaged foot gets caught up in the stirrups and he loses his balance, tripping and falling face-first into the sand. The small glass orb wriggles loose from his grasp and rolls away, leaving behind a faint trail in the sand. Reynold picks up the coin and scrambles to his feet, frantically searching for the orb. “Where the fack . . .?” he mumbles to himself, following the faint snake-like trail with his eye. The trail ends with no orb in sight, but standing directly above, perky and almost smiling, is the ostrich. He gulps and Reynold can see the bulge in his throat traveling south as he swallows the orb whole. “Goddamn it! Tell me this isn’t happening!” he yells, grabbing the bird’s long neck and choking him with both hands. “Fack—” the bird manages to say while gasping for air. Reynold loosens his grip. “Did you just curse at me?!”

“You were choking me! What else was I supposed to do? I don’t have any facking arms!” yells the ostrich. Reynold gasps and stumbles backwards, falling onto the sand. “My god . . . Divey?” “Who else would it be, you turd? Ziggy facking Stardust?” Reynold’s eye nearly bulges from its socket. “Oh my god, Divey! It’s really you!” He jumps up and runs over to his brother, taking his breath with the squeeze of a giant bear hug. “Alright, alright . . .” Divey says. He’s just as happy to be reunited with his brother, but was never much on all that touchy-feely stuff. “So, where do we go from ’ere?” “Shit . . . anywhere, Div . . .” Reynold says, wiping the tears away from his eye, “we don’t have nowheres in particular to go.” “It’s not about that, Rey, it’s about fate. Where is fate taking us? Where do we go from ’ere?” Reynold unfolds his hand. The coin is resting on his palm tails-side up. “We go West.” Divey bobs his head and smiles from behind his beak. “West it is then, brother!” Reynold smiles and climbs up on the saddle on Divey’s back. “One thing, though—could you stop waving that bag of meat in front of my face and feed me already! I’m facking half-starved ’ere!” Reynold laughs and pulls out a dried slice of meat for each of them. “Oh, that reminds me, Div . . . I came up with this facking brilliant idea while you were away.” “Oh yeah, what’s that?” “How’s about instead of brackfas burritos, we sell brackfas jerky? It’s easier to manage and best of all, we wouldn’t have any competition.” Divey thinks for a second and nods his head. “Yeah, Rey . . . that really could work!” The sun begins to duck down behind the horizon, painting the sky a brilliant shade of hot pink, just before total darkness. Where one day ends, another begins. ●●● The Damned Dirt Devils huddle around a mound of freshly dug earth, silently paying their respects to their fallen leader. They stand there in the hot desert for hours, saying nothing, just staring their sad, lonely eyes at the grave. Only when the sun begins to set, do they walk away, each in their own separate directions. Krebb is the last to leave. He picks up a bucket of paint and marks the grave with a splash of purple. He raises two fingers up to his brow, salutes his leader one final time before walking away. He doesn’t know where he is going. None of them do. It is the first time any of them have truly been free. ●●●

Ten feet away, half buried beneath the cool desert sand, the eyes of a mutilated cyborg carcass begin to glow a sinister red.

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William Pauley III has spent the majority of his life looking for his car keys. When he isn’t wandering around mindlessly, he usually writes . . . mindlessly. He writes for a local newspaper and is the author of the books Doom Magnetic!, Demolition Ya-Ya, Mr. Malin and the Night, and If You Don’t Sleep, You Don’t Dream. He can be found walking the hills of Kentucky. If found, please return him to his wife and two children. No reward.

He would like to thank you for reading his book.

For all things III, visit: www.breaksaidsilence.com

Megan Hansen was born and raised in California. She has been working as an illustrator since 2008 and has worked on both adult and children’s books. To see more of her work, or buy her creations visit her at: http://www.etsy.com/shop/meganhansenshop