He clung to the back doors and saw the rest of his dress whip around the top half of his body as he applied pressure onto the handle.
“Ngggggg—”
So hard was the application of pressure on the door handle, his right arm snapped in two.
“Gaaahh.”
Iris couldn’t help but take in the brightly-lit man destroying himself in trying to reach safety. She gasped so hard she nearly squealed.
Blink-blink.
After Iris’s first blink, Cind’rella appeared to be nude. After the second, the wedding dress returned to his body. He squealed in terror as his shoulders burst apart and sprouted two, giant angel wings.
“Guh, guh, guh—” Iris spluttered over Annie Lennox’s mention of hallucinating watching angels celebrating.
Freddie screamed and pointed the gun at her head. “What are you doing, lady? It’s weird. Stop making that noise.”
“Bro, can’t we just open the door and kick her out?”
“I think she’s having a seizure, or something.”
Iris grabbed at the passenger door handle for dear life.
Cind’rella’s arms elongated like chewing gum as they clung to the back of the truck. The shoulder wings sprouted like flowers in bloom into the air, producing two gorgeous feathered flaps.
His sides busted apart against the road, a flood of blood splashed against the doors of the truck. The lower-half of his wings fanned out and instantly flapped, causing a hell of a gust of wind blowing at the Bugatti.
“I think I’m gonna be sick,” Toe Tag said. “This can’t be happening.”
Freddie punched the back of the driver’s seat. “Kill it, whatever that thing is. Step on it.”
The front of the Bugatti raced forward. The bumper rammed the back of the truck, causing it to barrel left and right, knocking the contents inside around and around.
Cind’rella yanked on the handle, and focused his pupils at the Bugatti’s windshield.
Now blood-red, his pupils had formed a yellow glow and appeared to double in size.
Iris’s eyes met his as he hung from the door, now silent, and bizarrely serene.
“You,” he growled.
Iris pressed her index finger to her chest, anxious, as if to say, “Who, me?”
“Uh-huh.”
He scrunched his face as he yanked the truck’s handle forward and unbolted the doors.
“I am God,” he roared through his maniacal laughter. “Ha.”
Flap-flap-flap…
His wings elevated his mangled body into the air between the truck and the Bugatti and bolted vertically into the night sky… leaving the two truck doors open and clanging together.
“Daaaaamn,” Toe Tag, Ahmed, and Freddie said in unison.
Iris leaned out of the window, forcibly pushing her face against the rushing wind at the side of the car. Her eyes followed the brilliant white angel flying vertically towards the clouds, and into a hole in the sky.
“Where’d he go?”
Crump-Bumble.
A newly-formed ramp launched the Bugatti into the air - and into the back of the speeding truck.
Ahmed turned around and looked through the back window to see a thoroughly battered black man - and his torn wedding dress - splattered across the road.
“I th-think that answers your question—”
Spatch-Blockk-kk.
A dozen cars in the fast lane obliterated Cind’rella’s mashed corpse, reducing the carcass to little more than roadkill scraps, which acted as impromptu speed bumps for the vehicle behind.
Whump-crunch.
“I think I’m gonna be sick—”
“—Oh shit,” Toe tag screamed. “Bodies! Bodies! Hold onto something.”
“Bodies?” Ahmed asked as he turned around, and saw precisely what Toe Tag meant.
The sheets inside the truck flew out like angry bats, aimed at the Bugatti. Some plummeted into the air, revealing two sliding crates of Prizm in line to tumble out of the back of the truck.
Swerve.
Toe Tag rolled the steering wheel to the right and into the middle lane, just missing the two crates tipping out the back of the truck.
He stepped on the gas and blared the horn over the finishing verse of the Eurythmics track.
Toe Tag yelled at the driver’s side of the truck. “Yo, over here.”
Big Six looked out through the window and flipped him the bird.
“Hey,” Toe Tag mouthed and pointed over his shoulder. “Bodies. They’re falling out.”
“What?” Big Six mouthed back.
“Stop the truck.”
Big Six inspected his side mirror. The advice written on the bottom of the glass about objects being closer than they appear turned out to be true when the first of the frozen corpses crashed against the road, providing an obstacle course for the cars in the same lane a few feet behind.
Whump-bump.
The first body exploded under the tires of the blue car behind. It blared its horn as the Bugatti slowed down.
“What are you doing?” Freddie yelped from the back seat. “They’re all falling out—”
Whump—Crash.
The fourth frozen corpse bounced from the back of the truck and javelined into the blue car’s windshield, spearing the driver in the chest and killing him instantly.
His body slumped over the steering wheel, smashing into the car beside it, allowing the torrent of bodies to drop to the road in a bizarre vehicular vomitorium.
Several cars skidded and careened into each other in an attempt to avoid the resulting carnage.
Blood, twisted metal, and death littered the view in the rearview mirror.
“I dunno what I did in a previous life to deserve this,” Toe Tag said. “This is crazy.”
Toe Tag slowed the Bugatti down a touch to ride alongside the back of the truck.
The Eurythmics track faded out, allowing the DJ to introduce the next track.
The next cold corpse’s head slid to the lip of the truck, only for the doors to bang against it.
Toe Tag shook his head. “Shit, we need to stop him—”
“—An absolute classic there, and now, an absolute belter from 1977, from one of the lesser-known brothers from the Isle of Man…”
Iris recognized the opening track of the next song. Her brow began to produce a flood of sweat.
“Nnnnnn,” she squirmed and immediately slammed her palms to her ears. “Nnnn—”
“—well I’ll be a sonofabitch. She speaks, after all?” Ahmed asked Toe Tag. “That’s more than she’s said all damn night—”
“—It’s Andy Gibb with I Just Want to be Your Everything.”
The opening guitar riff played double-volume through the speakers as Iris screamed her lungs dry.
“Huh?” Toe Tag snapped, barely able to tear his attention away from the truck’s corpse expulsion. “What are you doing now?”
“Aaaaaggghhhhh.”
Gibb sang his first lines just as Iris pushed the passenger door open.
“No, lady,” Freddie yelled at her. “Don’t do it.”
Iris threw her arms up and grabbed at the roof of the Bugatti in a vain attempt to escape the music.
She grabbed the opened door and clung to it for dear life, swinging back and forth, her bare feet perilously close to getting torn away by the speeding road a few inches below.
“It’s the music, man,” Ahmed added in haste. “She flipped out when the music started.”
Quick-thinking, Freddie slammed the gun into his brother’s hands. “Here, take this. I’m gonna get her.”
Toe Tag barked into the rearview mirror and watched Freddie climb into Iris’s vacated seat. “What are you doing?”
“I’m rescuing her, man.”
Ahmed leaned forward and tried to pull his brother back. “Are you out of your mind? Don’t do that—”
WHUMP.
The Bugatti’s bumper slammed against the back of the track, forcing the next frozen
corpse to slam back-first against the windshield.
“Jeez.” Toe Tag spun the steering wheel to the left, pushing the passenger door out with Iris clutching it.
Freddie scrambled to his knees on the seat and extended his right arm. “Lady. Take my hand.”
“Nnnnn—nnn—.”
“—Take my hand, you mad woman.”
Toe Tag spied the commotion taking place beside him, and spun the wheel in the opposite direction, forcing the door to swing towards Freddie.
“Grab her, man.”
“I am, I am—”
The Bugatti veered back into the trailing end of the truck - and into the path of the twentieth corpse to drop through its clanging doors.
Crunch-Bump.
Another body suffered the tires of the car, shifting its occupants around.
Iris screamed as the door swung towards Freddie. She landed directly in his arms.
“Gotcha.”
He reached over her hyperventilating body, pulled the door shut, and kicked the car’s media player system.
The music shut off.
As soon as the sounds vanished they were replaced by the roar of the road traveling underneath them.
Toe Tag breathed a sigh of relief. “Good work, man.”
“Thanks.”
Iris calmed down in a flash now that the music had disappeared. Freddie held onto her, and before he could offer any words of respite, he saw something in the distance through the passenger window.
“Is that… building on fire?”
“Huh?”
Ahmed and Toe Tag turned to their right to see a tower block barbecuing in the night sky.
“Tonight’s just plain strange, I swear.” Ahmed said. “I must be dreamin’ or some shit.”
Freddie pointed at the back of the truck. One of the corpses, that of a young girl, was trapped between the left-hand door and the steel rim above the last tire.
“Not as weird as that.”
“Oh, shit.”
Toe Tag kept the Bugatti’s speed up as all three men - and Iris - watched the dead body shimmy between the door and the lip of the truck.
Ahmed felt like crying. “Awww, mate. That’s just wrong.”
The truck’s door bumped and chewed into the corpse’s chest, breaking it in half.
“That’s no way to go,” Toe Tag muttered.
Freddie turned to him and noticed a giant gash on the side of the man’s head. “You should know, mate.”
“Huh?”
“What happened to your face?”
“Oh, this? I got shot—”
“—It looks pretty nasty. How did you survive being shot in the head—?”
“—And beaten, and set on fire, and stabbed,” Toe Tag revealed, somewhat impressed by his survivalist recap. “Ain’t so much hard to kill as damn near impossible.”
Freddie couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He was about to ask the inevitable, when Toe Tag pulled his shirt up to reveal an array of bullet holes all up his torso and chest.
His right lung hung through the bones of his shattered rib cage. Moving in for a closer inspection, Freddie saw the man’s still-beating heart trying to squelch its way through his chest plate.
“Say that again?”
“I died hours ago,” Toe Tag said. “Ain’t nuthin’ can get in my way now—”
Before Freddie and Ahmed could react, or wonder why Iris wasn’t as stunned as they were, the sound of bone splintering shot across the windshield.
“Huh?”
The young girl’s corpse slunk into the rim of the wheel, and folded around the giant tire. Her limbs broke apart, causing fireworks of sharp ends of bone to stab the tires.
Her cold, dead eyes met with Iris’s. She took a deep breath, knowing what was about to happen next. Her hands folded around the passenger handle above her head, ready for Hell.
The protruding bone shot out of the corpse’s knee and crunched between the road and wheel, splitting the rubber apart and bursting the tire completely.
PUNCH-SPRISSSHHH.
“Oh, shit,” Toe Tag yelled.
The truck barreled left and right, completely out of balance across the main road.
Swerve.
Dozens of pedestrians jumped out of the path of the behemoth trailing across the sidewalk.
“Agghhhhh.”
Everyone in the Bugatti squealed in terror. The truck in front crashed through a streetlight and mowed down several late-night club attendees as they tried to jump out of its path.
They weren’t successful.
Three of them died instantly, tumbling under the tires of the truck. The side mirror smashed across a storefront window before the front of the vehicle pummeled through the brickwork, tearing a strip out of the street.
Bop-bop-crunch.
It rolled over two more pedestrians, ending their lives in a messy fusion of blood and dirt.
Toe Tag waved the remaining pedestrians on the path ahead from behind the steering wheel. “Move, move.”
The truck bolted across the road and into a line of party goers, splattering half of them against the ground and up the wall.
WHAMMMM.
The front of the truck crashed through the entrance to a club called The Place with No Name, trampling over the bouncers, and into the tunnel.
Those in line who’d survived ran away in all directions, screaming for their lives.
The bricks exploded on either side of the vehicle as it crunched its way through the ticket desk and the pink neon tunnel that lead to the dance floor.
The Bugatti zoomed in after it, crashing through purple velvet line ropes and disappearing into the dark, busted throat created in the club’s entrance by the truck…
Chapter XVI
A hanging esophagus vibrated at the end of a wet, pink tongue. Flapping back and forth, it failed to contain the breath rifling from the throat that lay behind.
The tongue extended and slid across a bottom lip.
“Found anything of use, yet?”
Nicholas finished yawning as he leaned back in the driver’s seat and extended his arms.
“For someone who’s trying to find his wife, you seem pretty tired and bored,” Irene said.
“I am tired. I can’t help it if I yawn. It’s involuntary. And I am concerned for her. You found anything we can work with? There’s no point just driving around outside of the main street.”
Irene lowered the phone and lied through her teeth. “No, not yet.” She had found something they could use, but was faced with something of a dilemma.
She returned to the screen and shielded Nicholas’ view of it with her left hand as she re-read the contents. He clocked her preoccupation with something.
Her eyes gave the game away.
She read, and read, and re-read. It was obvious to Nicholas that his sister-in-law had found something worth revealing.
“Let me see,” he said. “What is it? A text?”
“No, wait.”
Irene’s pupils dilated as she cast her eyes over the text.
Lennard Smalley.
Current residence: Chrome Valley. Apartment 706, Tower Three, Freeway Five Estate.
Irene opened the passenger door, stepped out and clutched the phone. “I need some air.”
“Fine. Keep an eye out. You never know, she might just walk past us.”
“I will.”
Whump.
Irene pushed the door shut and read the name over and over again. Lennard Smalley. Lennard Smalley. Lennard Smalley.
She held her breath and burst into tears.
“Lennard fucking Smalley?” she hushed. “What kind of stupid, faggot name is that, anyway?”
Irene looked up at the theater’s marquee - anywhere other than the full name of someone she thought had long since disappeared from her life.
She wiped a tear from her cheek with her sleeve and focused on the black serif text advertising what looked like an amateur wild west show.
“Once Upon A Time in Chrome Valley”
Starring Ricky Gunn as Donovan Goldswain.
She wiped a tear from her cheek with her sleeve and produced a pathetic giggle. The title cheered her up, and for the snappiest of seconds, took her mind off the trauma that had revisited her courtesy of Iris’s email.
“You want a good story, do you?” she said quietly to herself. “Once Upon a Time in Chrome Valley? I got your fucking story right here, you pretenders.”
That name still glowed behind the tempered glass on Iris’s cell phone. Lennard Smalley.
“Why have you come back to the Valley, Lennard Smalley? Didn’t you do enough damage already?”
Irene spoke to the phone as if it was a human being with ears and a conscience, and capable of rational thought.
“You should be burning in Hell, you prick.”
Irene coughed the last of the turmoil in her throat down to the pit of her stomach. Suddenly, she knew how Iris had felt when they met earlier that day.
“Christ, please let this not be true. Please.”
She closed her eyes and hoped she could forget what she’d read. Her arms fell to her sides and, as her soul erupted, her feet turned to marshmallow.
Her mother’s voice banged against her eardrums as her arms turned to stone.
It’s nothing. Your big sister isn’t feeling well, that’s all. Could just be a bug.
Irene’s knee bones turned to oatmeal, or so it felt.
Before she knew it, she slumped against the car and her ass hit the sidewalk, her mind lost in a flood of long-forgotten trauma…
***
“But, Mom?”
Gina tried to avoid the rapid-fire questions her youngest daughter asked, but the damn girl just wouldn’t stop.
“Irene, drop it.”
Just twelve-years-old, little Irene Baskeyfield hopped onto the coffee table and placed her hands on her wrist.
“No.”
In a state of despair, she kicked the magazines on the table in an attempt to demand the one answer she needed to hear from her mother.
“Why is Iris acting all weird? She’s not ill. Was it because of what dad did?”
“How dare you bring your father into this,” Gina said. “How dare you, you little runt.”
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