The Space Whiskey Death Chronicles

by Vitka, William

  Jack stumbled. His arms, legs and face were covered in blood from multiple cuts. He was tripping over the bodies of innocent people who’d been slaughtered by the aliens-turned-gods.

  He snapped his revolver open and rammed fresh rounds home.

  Allah/God/IHVH/Jehovah/Yahweh smiled an insane grin.

  Jesus (hippy-looking as ever) and the Holy Spirit (a transparent form clad in white robes) appeared behind God.

  “What the dick,” Jack said.

  Things were not going according to plan. Or smoothly. Or in any direction that might have been ‘good.’

  At first, most of the clone bodies had crumpled under Jack’s boots.

  The minor deities hadn’t been much of a problem. Hell, the angel aliens hadn’t necessitated much more than a swift kick or bullet before being sucked up by a Cthulittle. Powerful though the Litostians were, they weren’treallygods.

  After each belly was filled, the squids returned to the containment grid to deposit. Stomp. Squid. Suck. Flash, they were gone. Flash, they were back. Empty and ready for more.

  But as Jack moved up the god-chain, things got more harried. Ego made the aliens more determined. They believed themselves harder to kill, so they were. They deluded themselves into near-immortality.

  The Babylonian zombie-sized death deity, Nergal, was the first to put up a serious fight. Since he was a part of a religion that had once fought with Christianity and Judaism for supremacy, he had more bite than those who’d set themselves up as minor demons or demigods. He proved this by tearing a chunk of flesh out of Jack’s arm.

  Jack’s Colt responded by barking bullets into Nergal’s face.

  Gripping his arm and bleeding, Jack raised his eyebrows at Caleb, who looked unsure.

  It got worse from there. And even Jack’s gift couldn’t keep up with the fight.

  Caleb fell to the ground.

  Ares had caught him off guard and sliced the Achilles tendon above his right foot. Caleb screamed. He dropped his hammer.

  The god of war, Hades, Hera and an escaped Zeus pinned him like Gulliver.

  Zeus held Poseidon’s trident under Caleb’s jaw, pushing the three-fold spear into Caleb’s soft flesh, drawing blood. Ares had an obscene grip on Caleb’s eyelids and yanked them in different directions while spitting into Caleb’s whites. Hades and Hera were literally puncturing each of Caleb’s testicles with mad glee.

  “Any last words?” Zeus asked.

  “Yeah,” Caleb said. “Hera’s your fuckin sister, you pervert.”

  Zeus began to ram the trident further.

  Blood poured from the wounds in Caleb’s neck like a leaky faucet.

  Then there was a whisper of air.

  The pointed pressure on Caleb’s throat ceased and where Zeus’ head had been was nothing but a smoking neck.

  “That’s right,” Griffin hollered, “nothing says negation like a negatively-charged round from a rail gun.” He aimed his weapon at Ares, fired, and removed the little god’s torso. “Manipulated electromagnetism wins.”

  “Gee, I’m so glad you finally decided to show up,” Caleb said as he snatched Hades and Hera off his balls and ground them into jelly with his hands. “Gonna prove you aren’t the cocksucker Jack and I think you are?”

  Squids flashed in to suck up the Litostian mess around them.

  “I never said I wouldn’t help,” Griffin said. “I just wanted to find my gun first. And, hey, I’m the cavalry – arriving at the last minute to save the day.”

  Caleb cocked an eyebrow at his supervisor. He checked his neck for blood flow and his crotch for damage.

  They both turned to see Jack flying through the air. He managed to scream, “Fuckin cockbitch dongshit” before landing in a pile of liquid and remains with a grunt and a thud. He righted himself, admired Griffin’s gun, and said, “They’re like the Transformers or Captain Planet or something … hi, Griffin.”

  Griffin flapped his wings in acknowledgement. “The alien who conned humanity into thinking he was, not just a god, but theoneGod…”

  “Yeah, I’m aware,” Caleb said. “Plus he’s got his better halves with him.” Viktor clambered up Caleb’s legs and perched on his shoulders.

  “But you got him in Jersey,” Jack said, standing.

  “I caught him while he was fuckin. It was mostly luck. And he is not currently fuckin.”

  Allah/God/IHVH/Jehovah/Yahweh marched across the market battlefield.

  Jack lit a cigarette. “This is all an ego thing, right?”

  “Right,” Caleb said.

  “He’s just another asshole alien who wanted to prop himself up so that could get at more brain juice. He’s not any different from the others. He’s only acting this strong because he thinks he’s this strong.”

  “Well, there’s Jesus and the Holy Spirit, but yeah.”

  “Jesus is just a fuckin’ zombie and I bet Griffin can bust the Holy Ghost with the right shot but, God–” Jack paused. “We need to take him down a peg. Use that Engine in your head. Outsmart him.”

  “Make him flinch,” Caleb whispered as he hefted his hammer. “I’ll get God. You guys–”

  “Way ahead of you,” Griffin said, leveling the rail gun, flanking the Holy Spirit.

  Jack went right, flipping Jesus off.

  Caleb tilted his head down, eyeing God predatorily. Viktor did not chirp, but clung and buried his face into his human’s neck. Caleb winked at the Judeo-Christian-Muslim menace. “That hooker was really something, man. Maybe it’s a step up from raping the peasant Mary, but shit, is a buck-tooth whore from Hoboken the best you can do nowadays?”

  And still, God grinned.

  But Caleb’s eyes did not waver.

  Griffin tried to start the fight with some witty banter, couldn’t think of anything and gave up.

  He fired a shot at the alien’s head instead.

  The Ghost dodged it. Jumped with a kind of windy, acrobatic grace. It not only evaded Griffin’s attack, but pirouetted over his head, mocking him.

  All Griffin could think was,I am so glad we’re exterminating your race.

  Feeling the breeze the Litostian created, Griffin flapped his powerful wings and created a gust all his own – one that threw the Spirit off and caused it to careen and tumble through the remainder of its trick.

  Griffin charged the Ghost as it fell. He threw his weapon to the side and used his beaks as his ancestors had, sensing, more than seeing, where the demigod’s path would lead it. Griffin snapped his beaks. His leftmost head missed, piercing only the ghostly trail of its robe.

  But his right head found its target. He brought his beak to a brutal, slicing close on the Spirit’s leg. Litostian clone bone crunched, and it wailed. Not giving the thing a chance to recover, he jerked his heads back and caught it wholly. Small arms pawed and tore at his right head while a leg kicked at his left. He twisted his heads in opposite directions, splitting what was once the Holy Spirit, but now just a mess.

  “Enough of that pedestrian teasing,” Caleb said as God approached, posturing, puffing his chest (Caleb had to take a moment to fully appreciate how large the clone was). “You don’t even make sense. As God, I mean. You’re what? A cranky, tantrum-prone baby who wants to spank people if they spank themselves? You couldn’t even enforce the arbitrary laws you had your followers establish. You wanted to literally put limitations on thought – even unconscious thought, things human beings have no control over because control is by definition conscious. If I dream of my neighbor’s ass, it is a subconscious want, butsubconscious coveting expressed in dreamsis something I couldn’t control if I wanted to. Were you too stupid to know us? Know how our minds work? Some all-knowing creator!”

  God’s smile faltered.

  And Caleb grinned.

  Jack and Jesus circled each other.

  Jack looked into Jesus’ eyes. Smirked at the crucified lord’s hippy hair and scruffy beard. He was unimpressed. He fired a slug at Christ’s left and forced the messiah right, putting
the carpenter where Jack wanted him.

  Jack drove a fist into Jesus’ nose. Snapped it like celery. He put the Colt to Christ’s chest and put a .45 round through him, pushing the bastard backwards.

  Jesus bounced back and kicked Jack in the chest, sending him reeling.

  “Fuckin ninja shit,” Jack muttered as his revolver skittered free of his hands.

  Christ was on top of him. Straddling him. Driving fist after holy fist into Jack’s face.

  Blood poured from Jack’s brow into his eyes. Bones in his jaw fractured as the messiah pummeled him. He used his left arm and fist to block the blows as best he could while searching with the other for where the Colt might have fallen.

  Jesus leaned back. He brought his hands together in a mockery of prayer, and as he drew them apart, Jack saw the nails. Iron nails seven or more inches long..

  A cloned body did not put a halt to the Litostian shapeshifting trait.

  Jesus drove the nails into Jack’s pistol-searching palms.

  Jack screamed.

  Jesus smiled at Jack’s pain. As he withdrew his bloody instruments, his eyes caught Jack’s.

  In a moment of Caleb-like brilliance probably never to be repeated, Jack said, “Forgive me, messiah, Lord Jesus, who sits at the right hand of the Father, for I know not what I do. I repent. I beg your forgiveness.” Jack smiled. He eyes welled with tears.

  The sudden prayer threw Jesus off for only a split second, but that was enough for Jack.

  He snatched the lengths of iron that protruded from Christ’s palms as though they were handles. He smirked, using all of his strength to twist the nails up. Up so that the pointed ends were now facing Jesus. The Litostian tried to retract them, but Jack would not let go.

  Muscles in his arms tearing, Jack plunged the metal into Jesus’s eyes.

  Christ howled and fell back, pierced by his own weapons.

  Jack rolled to his knees and punched the nails in further, forcing them through the skull of the Nazarene carpenter’s head.

  The Litostian lay still as the squids set upon him.

  Jack lit a victory cigarette.

  “Why did you ever think that humansneededyou, anyway?” Caleb said. “We don’t. You don’t explain anything. You’re a copout. Consider the awe-inspiring alternatives: That there’s a megaverse from which our universe budded off. Evolution. The way molecules arranged themselves to form sentient life over billions of years! The weakest ideas that science postulates in jestare more impressive than you. What teachers and students write with chalk on a blackboard, even when they’re totally hilariously fuckin wrong, is more interesting. Hell, you had to travel to a shitty backwater planet just to find anyone dumb enough to let you hang around.

  “You are an unimportant,small god.”

  That did it.

  God charged Caleb, throwing his hands out and screaming.

  Jehovah’s bald head glistened with sweat. His ugly yellow teeth gnashed. His enormous beard – now filthy with saliva and blood and gore – flapped over his shoulder.

  Viktor purred in Caleb’s ear, and Caleb realized that the little squid was better than any other weapon he could have possibly armed himself with.

  As God careened madly toward him, Caleb stood his ground.

  He sidestepped only at the last second.

  And as he did so, grabbed Viktor with one palm.

  The Cthulittle threw out its tentacles.

  When the moment was just right, the Litostian’s strike passing within millimeters, Caleb planted Viktor on Jehovah’s skull.

  The squid squirmed, wrapping itself around God’s head, twisting through the dirty deity’s beard, worming appendages into eye sockets and nostrils. Snarls and shouts were cut off.

  God fell forward, writhing, trying to hit Viktor.

  Caleb stepped forward and stood on the weakened alien’s arms, pinning it down.

  Viktor began to change color, absorbing.

  The efforts of God relaxed. Submitting.

  Caleb knelt down, petting his squid.

  “Good boy.”

  “They’re repulsively cute when they play,” Jack said as he wrapped gauze around his wrecked arms. “I mean that, too. It’s weird to watch them snuggle and play fight after what just happened – and their part in it.”

  Caleb said nothing.

  They were down near the containment grid, where the Cthulittle holding area was. The dozens of squids they’d used for their murderous purposes were nipping at each other in one big pen. They wrapped tentacles around each other. They chirped. Mewled and barked as they tussled and ran.

  Viktor didn’t partake in the merriment. He instead paced the floor between Caleb and Jack’s boots, as if protecting his humans from the potentially cuter eyes of another creature.

  More likely, Caleb and Jack thought, Viktor was justbeingwith them. A partner.

  Caleb reached down and scratched Viktor.

  “What do we do now?” Caleb asked.

  “About …”

  “About Griffin. About The Collective. About ourselves. I’m going to have a hard time with the mirror in the morning. We acted as the most brutal kind of Pinkerton back there. Labor killers. The Collectors wanted a fair shake and rebelled, stupidly but understandably. They reactivated – or whatever – the Litostians out of desperation. And we, us, re-imprisoned the Litostians. One oppressed race sought by another for vengeance. Griffin already wants us to go after the union leader.”

  Jack tied his gauze off. “Here’s whatIthink: Throwing the leadership of The Collective before some kind of war crimes tribunal would be great. Make them answer for what they’ve done to the Collectors. But that isn’t going to happen.”

  “So we–”

  “Wait,” Jack said, not quite interrupting. “We wait.”

  Caleb knelt and pet Viktor.

  Viktor purred.

  One of his goddamn arms fell off.

  This happened maybe three minutes into our conversation. We were sitting on the couch in my apartment. Mystery Science Theater 3000 was on. Mike and the bots skewered ‘Laserblast.’ I had a beer in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and my laptop on, well, my lap.

  He asked how the new book was going. I explained how I created an insane race of ancient monsters. Monsters that could actually hear the vibrations of the super strings in string theory. They could hear the cosmic ‘music of the universe,’ so to speak. There was one, hibernating under Brooklyn, and others who’d gone mad and fled the Earth. Now, the insane were coming back to take over. And two brothers were trying to stop the extinction of the human race.

  I was going on and on and on about this exciting new world of mine. About how it was all part of the same universe, connected to my other stories, and then –

  Plop.

  One of his arms fell right the hell off.

  He didn’t seem to care much, but I did.

  “You gonna pick that up?” I asked.

  “I will. I’m comfortable where I am at the moment.”

  “Dude, the cats might eat it. Or try to. Plus, y’know, their hair is gonna stick to it and everything’s just going to get more gross than it is already.”

  He looked at me with his one remaining eye. Clicked the teeth sitting inside his lipless jaw together. Grabbed the arm. His arm. He got up and walked to the door.

  I felt a little bad and started to apologize. “I wasn’t trying to …”

  He whirled around. Pointed the fingers of his no-longer-attached arm at me, and said, “You need to remember something: This shit is at least partly your fault. You’re the writer, after all.”

  With that, he kicked one of my cats and stormed out.

  Who knew what the neighbors thought.

  The undead bastard was from my first novel, Infected. It concerns a parasite that gets unleashed after a politician skullfucks a whore and turns people into flesh-hungry monsters. I called this zombie dude ‘Schneer,’ after the aforementioned head-raping pol, Schneer.

  I gu
ess he was still annoyed about the whole ordeal.

  When my girl came home, I was deep in thought and beer.

  Every monster I wrote onto the page became real. Usually they visited. And most of the time they talked to me. All of them had the same message: Don’t stop.

  I didn’t consider myself a writer, really. Not in the huddled-against-a-typewriter way or even the I-must-unleash-my-creativity way. I didn’t make stories up so much as author biographies.

  We had a deal, me and the creepy-crawlies. I penned their stories and they became my friends slash protectors. The thing is, they really liked being written about. They liked the fact that a human was spreading the idea of their existence around. Plus, the arrangement was, in all seriousness, better than being eaten or otherwise murderified.

  We would never hurt you.

  My girl, Ariela, accepted the situation. But she didn’t care for it. Mostly because of the way the creatures treated the cats – which could be defined as ‘bad.’

  And also because they were horrific nightmare machines.

  Which is understandable.

  And it was always unfortunate when they interrupted dinner.

  We were eating mashed potatoes and steak. For my own dumb horror hack reasons, I enjoyed watching the way the blood pooled around the meat. The way the mashed potatoes seemed to suck it up a bit. It turned them pink.

  I leaned over the small, crappy – we couldn’t afford more – dinner table and kissed Ariela. She kissed me back and smiled. A perfect woman. Beautiful, smart and tolerant.

  “How’re the stories coming?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “It’d be easier if I didn’t have to deal with guests on a regular basis.”

  She nodded and put her hand on mine. Which was exactly what I wanted her to do.

  As if triggered by a moment of pleasant solitude, a voice squawked in my head.

  You haven’t written anything about me today.

  It was the monster under Brooklyn. Three. I exchanged dialog with him in my head. Don’t ask me how that worked. I had no idea.