“You think I look okay with all these marks on my body?”
“Yeah. Fine.”
“Really?”
“No.”
They both tap their feet to the ZZ Top song that thumps out of the speakers.
“They said I had to wear them, you know, to remember.”
“It’s because they are shit at keeping records, so they used you as the file. I think it’s wrong, but what the hell do I know? I’m just the son of God.”
“That’s gotta be some pressure there, eh?”
“Oh fuck yeah. And the worst part is I need to get laid. Like bad. Really laid.”
“We’re in Vegas. There’s a whorehouse on every corner. Tell you what. After our little chat with the red guy, let’s find one and have some fun.”
“Sure. Why not?” Jesus slurs.
“Can you do that? You know, do a woman?”
“Sure. I have the equipment. I should have done it a long time ago, but I never got up the nerve.”
“God wouldn’t let you?”
“Nah, more a matter of timing. They didn’t leave me alone much when I was out spreading the word. Pretty much had one of those uptight jagoffs with me all the time. If it wasn’t Peter, it was Paul. I still think some of my apostles had the hots for each other.”
Death chokes on a mouthful of booze. After coughing a few times, he sits up and looks at the huge chasm. The wind crackles over the edge of the cliff. It carries the screams of those falling into it. The valley does that, makes the sounds carry. Like a bunch of banshees. Death is familiar with that sound. Way too familiar.
“How are we going to get down there?”
The men stagger out of the car. Jesus slings an arm around Death so he doesn’t fall on his face. He grips his Slurpee cup of Vodka and Red Bull in his other hand, and it sloshes everywhere as he walks. The guy has put away at least two fifths of the stuff. Death can’t keep up; he has never had booze before. But he does like it. Likes it a lot. Why didn’t he try this a long time ago?
Tumbleweeds and sand are the order of the day, and it is hot as hell out here. Death shifts his hoodie and then unzips it to let some air in. His old ratty shirt is soaked with sweat, and he would give just about anything for a cool shower right about now. That and a cup of ice. Something cold and wet to suck on.
The sun has a red haze over it, probably owing to the Apocalypse and all, but the desert is so desiccated the redoubled glare doesn’t even faze it. It does look a bit like Mars now, though. While the guardrail has fallen off in a few places, the highway stretching along the giant pit is mostly intact. Death goes to the edge and lifts his robe. He pees into the abyss far below. Jesus takes up station next to him and does the same.
“Look at us, a couple of swinging dicks!”
“I still don’t see how we are going to get down there.” Death leans forward and stares down into oblivion.
“We could jump.” Jesus grins.
“Wouldn’t we die? War got killed, so I figure we are all vulnerable.” Death wavers back and forth on that free pass issue.
“Nah. I can’t die. Last time I tried, I came back.” Jesus sputters into laughter then falls on his ass in a puff of dust and sand. A little dark gray scorpion darts out from the shade of a rock and then hauls ass away from the two madmen.
“I’m Death. So can I die?”
“Nah. That would be ridiculous. Hey … I have an idea.”
Death leans over to help the son of God get up. When he is back on his feet, he puts a hand on Death’s shoulder and leans over to whisper in his ear. Death leans back when he is done and stares at his loony traveling companion. Then he looks at the car and breaks out into fits of laughter.
The Road Runner spins a rooster tail of sand into the air as the car spins in a half-donut. Death cranks the stereo to an ear-splitting volume. Back in Black by AC/DC screams from the speakers, making his head rattle and threatening to mash his brain. The road roars past them as they get the old car up to eighty, ninety and then a hundred miles an hour. The giant engine thrums through the floorboards like they are sitting right on top of it.
The line of people being shoved into Satan’s ass comes into view so fast they go from look at those specks in the distance status to holy shit, they’re right in front of us in a split second.
“You be Thelma. I’ll be Louise next time.”
“Screw you, pal, I’m Thelma and you’re Louise!” Jesus laughs over the pounding music.
They’ve accumulated a decent pile of dirt by the side of the road. They are a good hundred yards away from the demons when Death cranks the wheel hard to the left. The car slides and threatens to spin out, but he pumps the brakes until he regains control. Faces rush past as the car accelerates under the force of his foot pressed all the fucking way to the floorboard.
When they hit the makeshift ramp, Jesus raises his hands into the air and yells as loud as he can, “I bless all of you, mutha’ fuckas,” gives the exploding demons and people the middle finger and then throws up as the car is propelled over the abyss and immediately starts to fall.
“The power of Christ compels you!” Death howls with glee. Then his smile turns upside down as the car’s nose falls forward and he gets his first glimpse of the giant red ass sticking out of the desert.
One Minute and Horse Chow the Next
Pestilence pushes his horse and his horde harder than he ever imagined. Normally riding on his steed makes him queasy, but with Jerome’s bathtub acid coursing through his diseased veins, Pestilence is in heaven. He feels at one with his horse and imagines himself as a centaur galloping toward Leon, with his sweet acid-addled brain, through the desert. As luck would have it for Pestilence and his horde, the Nevada desert is littered with hidden meth labs. They will be full of survivors for the zombie soldiers to feed upon.
Pestilence grinds his teeth and scans the horizon. Far in the distance, he sees the two massive red ass cheeks he knows from centuries of pasting his pale thin lips to them. A large section of highway is hanging above the cheeks, and little dots drop from it into the valley of ass. Pestilence jumps when General O’Coddle runs up alongside him.
“I didn’t know dead guys could run as fast as a centaur.”
“What the pale junkie fuck are you talking about? I just wanted to tell you there is a giant shit monster following us.”
Pestilence shakes his head. Is he sitting on his horse or is he half horse?
“Huh?” asks the dreaded Horseman as his eyes cross and uncross and drool drips down his chin.
General O’Coddle reaches over with one meaty gray hand and grabs the reins to Pestilence’s steed. He tugs it to a halt, and Pestilence slumps forward as the horde stops. A huge cloud of dust rolls forward and engulfs them. Pestilence winces and blinks grains of sand out of his eyes. It burns, and the acid in his system makes his vision a rainbow of strange colors. General O’Coddle stares at him with his shriveled unblinking eyes despite the vicious sand cloud.
O’Coddle turns and points behind them. The horde of zombies step to either side so Pestilence has a long, clear line of sight. Not quite a mile away is a large dark sloppy shape slouching toward them. Pestilence squints, but his eyes refuse to focus. He shakes his head and pulls his hood down over his face.
“Shit,” Pestilence murmurs, “is that Famine?”
General O’Coddle stars dumbly at his hooded junkie master and something rolls in his undead brain. A dusty memory bounces, and the dead officer blurts out, “The big girl from the desert?”
“It is?” Pestilence asks.
“No, I don’t think so,” O’Coddle says. His dead withered eyes focus more easily than Pestilence’s drugged living ones. “It’s a big shit monster.” The general nods. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure.”
O’Coddle looks back to Pestilence and asks, “Is that big girl single?”
Pestilence pulls his hood off in a flash and stares at the talking zombie with wild eyes.
“Are you fucking kidding
me?”
“What?”
“She is a fat, abrasive, disgusting, rude …” he trails off and stares at the general incredulously. “Fucking gross, man!”
“I’d do her,” General O’Coddle shrugs. “Do you know where she is?”
Pestilence scoffs, “No, and thank fuck for that.”
Even as he says the words, a vision flashes brilliant and clear over the harsh barren desert. He sees dark rock walls lit by unseen flames that send trembling shadows across them. Famine walks around a corner, bleeding and sweating with her robe in thick shreds. Pestilence opens his eyes so wide the dry desert air burns them, but still he sees her. Holy shit, he really sees her.
Famine staggers, looking cautiously from side to side. She waddles with a limp, and her terribly thick make up runs down her cheeks to circle her beady eyes like a raccoon’s mask. She winces in pain and leans one hand on the nearest wall. It groans at her weight, and she pulls her hand away slowly. Then she slams her fist into it, sending a crack from the dirt floor to the high cavernous ceiling. She growls and turns from the wall, resuming her pained waddle with vigor.
“Horsey,” she calls in a high whiney voice. “Horsey, come here. Right NOW, Horsey!”
She leans forward and puts her hands on her knees to catch her breath. She seems unaware of the soft clop-clop of her emaciated steed until it sinks its teeth into her big ass. She screams in pain and spins to face the horse. Famine opens her mouth to yell, but the apocalyptic steed snaps forward and tears her floppy throat out in one quick bite. She stumbles backward, gurgling incoherent curse words as she dies. The skinny horse nuzzles up to her ample bosom like a loving pet before tearing one tit half off. It chews Famine’s flesh, strings of connective tissue still hanging from her wounds.
Pestilence snaps back to reality. “She’s dead,” he tells the general. “Let’s find this Leon cat, and we’ll find you some other fat girl.”
“What do you got against fat people?”
“Nothing, as long as they aren’t her. God is fat. Super fat,” Pestilence chuckles.
Borne on the desert wind, a copy of The Daily Cunt flies through the air and slaps hard across the general’s solid gray face. Pestilence grabs it and opens it up. He pages to the centerfold, which happens to be a big aerial map of Satan’s exposed ass and head.
“Put on your shit kickers, O’Fondle; it’s time to kick some shit!”
Chaos Reigns!
“Howdy fellas!” the squat demon yells before battering into them. The two guards have M-16s at the ready when the massive creature comes down the ramp. It lumbers and stumbles, shrugs aside gunfire from above and then bursts into view. The other demon is smaller, but he holds a giant claw that looks like it came from a fifty-foot lobster. The thing reaches out and snaps one of the guards in half, leaving body parts splattered all over the floor. The last thing the man says is “ARFULGARGUL!!!!”
The second guard, Foley Shanktwan, does the one only thing he can think to do. He turns and pounds on the door. He screams for help, but the giant metal portal doesn’t slide open. It is made of several feet of solid metal and can withstand a nuclear explosion. It can also withstand Foley’s frantic pounding.
Guard duty? Guard duty! That’s what he screamed at his supervisor just before they dressed him in a uniform and gave him a gun. He is a scientist, not a fighter. He understands quantum physics and chaos theory, but he barely knows how to slide the thingy back on top of the gun that puts the metal thingy in the tube so another metal thingy can slam against a firing cap and project a round metal thingy at high enough speed to become subsonic in a split second. He could probably write the formula for the force of the recoil against the dampening effects of the rifle. He could go on about the accelerating bullet that leaves a barrel at high speed.
But he can’t explain the things coming down the hallway.
“Mate. Mate. We don’t want to hurt ya. See me and sunny Jim here just need a way in. We don’t mean to cause no harm.”
Foley scratches at the door in fear, expecting the claw to snap shut at any second. He slips on his fellow ‘guard’s’ guts and almost falls. He looks down in fear only to see a twitching hand, and his little scientist mind can’t help but wonder how long until the synapses in the dead guy’s head stop firing.
“Buddy! Look at us, buddy!” the demon croaks behind him.
“Yeah look at him, not at the guy next to you. He was gonna shoot at me, and there was no call for that mate. No call at fookin’ all.”
Foley turns in a half circle and looks the two up and down. They are walking nightmares that can’t exist. They can’t! Not even the top genetic engineers could design these sick things on a trillion-dollar grant.
“Please …” He trembles and almost faints at the sight. The two are dripping fire and sparks that sizzle and splatter on the hard metal surface of the floor. The smell of brimstone, has to be brimstone (What the hell else could that acrid scent be?), makes him want to gag.
“Right. See we just need to get in and have a little chat with the folks on the other side. Right civil one at that. We just need to make sure those nukes never get launched. Never.”
“Never,” the second demon echoes in his scraggly voice.
“Can I go then?” Foley asks in a trembling voice.
“Yep. Soon as we get in. So get us in and we are all good. Square, you and us. You walk right on up that ramp and embrace the new world.”
“You can’t get in. The door is shut from the other side.”
The two demons look back and forth. Then the smaller one drops the claw and walks toward Foley, who wants to cower behind something. But the only thing to hide behind is a big pile of nothing. Nowhere to even cower, what a way to die. Once upon a time Foley was the pride of the Pentagon. He was going places. He has an unlimited budget as long as he worked on larger and more powerful bombs. He had one of his babies right here, just about finished. Ready to move into an ICBM casing.
Years of research went into it, and when he was done he had the mother fucker of all explosions at his hand. It could take out a pair of cities with a single blast. New York wouldn’t stand a chance. The weapon was never supposed to see use, it was merely a deterrent. Enough leaked information to ensure that the right parties knew the US of fucking A had it.
“You gonna help us get in?”
“I can’t. I hope you understand. I’m just a scientist. I don’t know anything except how to work the computers. I just do research, that’s all!” His voice rises to a shrill scream as he begs to be heard.
“OK. We do things the hard way. Move over here so you don’t get hurt.”
“You aren’t going to kill me?” Foley looks on in disbelief.
“You are no threat to us, my friend. No threat at all.”
“Wow. You guys are cool. I thought for sure you were gonna do me in.” he says, walking forward. The demon steps aside and gestures. He could run up the passageway and maybe get away, but they would probably cut him down before he got twenty feet.
The demon shifts its back feet up and over its body so they act like hands as the beast stands up. It takes a chunk of metal out of one of the gaping holes in its side that look like big pus-covered vaginas. Or, as his ex-wife used to say, vajayjays. Not that hers got much use in their marriage.
The thing glistens in the dull light and gleams with whatever juice covers it. Makes the room reek of formaldehyde and acid. Foley puts his hand over his mouth and tries not to vomit.
“Watch this. It’s a pretty clever trick.”
The demon tosses the object at the giant metal door. It sticks and then melts in a circle over the surface. It shifts as it spreads outward, forming a pentagram with the image of a demon holding up its middle finger stretched between the points.
“Abraca-fucking-dabra” the big demon says.
The door sizzles where the shape sits. A river of molten metal pours out from the edges of the shape and onto the floor. The demon takes a step back and wait
s patiently. After a half minute, the giant pentagram has burned itself all the way through the door. A giant upside-down star remains in the eighteen inches of steel.
Gunfire blasts through the door and splatters against the demon’s skin.
“Fuckers!” he screams and dashes inside. He slithers through the hole in the door, and screams echo from the other side. A head sails through the pentagram and bounces off Foley’s chest. He stares down at it dumbly, then kicks it away. The features of John Slith, the asshole who made him stay outside with a gun, stare up at him.
“All clear!” the demon calls.
“Come on, we got some stuff you can help us with,” the other demon snorts.
“That is a fine idea!” Foley follows him into the nightmare.
Half an hour later, he cackles at a computer screen as he enters the codes he was handed by the skinny demon. Then he looks down, shocked, to see a burning hand push through his chest from behind. It reaches up and clutches his heart, and Foley bursts into flame.
Agent Fred Gallstone walks up the broken and bent section of freeway hanging above Satan’s spread ass cheeks. People stagger before and behind him as demons give the slower ones a poke with their pitchforks. Agent Gallstone sees fear in those humans near him, but he is content. Men and women are crying and begging for their lives at the edge of the road. The demons laugh and push them over the edge. He hugs his heavy silver briefcase to his chest the way a child hugs a teddy bear. More people drop into Satan’s steaming stink-hole, and the line moves forward. He won’t beg and he won’t cry when it’s his turn; he’ll just plug his nose and jump.
Everyone is dead. His president. His team. His lover. All dead.
Revenge will be his. He pats the briefcase, moves up the concrete folds and leans toward the long drop.
The Apocalypse and Satan's Glory Hole! Page 27