by Dave Brockie
A beat-up pick-up truck has skidded off the road and come to rest in a ditch clogged with corpses. I gingerly step through them until I come to the cab, where I bend to the rear-view mirror to examine my new features.
The face, pleasant, the eyes, twinkling with mirth despite the hells on which they have gazed. The mouth cracks into a familiar smile, a crooked and wry grin which had rewarded many of my ravings. I am younger than he had been, but there was no mistaking the face of my mentor.
I wear the features of a man named Cheng-Tzu.
I walk through the world I have saved and try to feel my place within it. Can there be happiness for me in this world, or what is left of it?
Passing through the ruins of Newark and Jersey City I see few signs of life. Maybe that is a good thing.
Soon I leave the blighted area behind and begin moving through the meadowlands and the forests beyond. New Jersey is actually a beautiful state once you get away from the turnpike. It has a bad reputation that it doesn’t really deserve. I had heard there was a creature that lives out here, a horse-headed, bat-winged thing with blue skin that they had actually named a hockey team after. I wondered if the beast had fought for my father or against him, or had chosen to just hide throughout the whole bloody business. The one thing I don’t consider was that the creature never existed.
The days I spend in the woods, keeping out of sight, and observing the humans from a distance. The destruction visited upon the planet in those last few moments of my Father’s reign is truly mind staggering. An earthquake of unprecedented magnitude had shaken the entire planet, leveling or damaging virtually every structure on the face of the world. Between the war and the quake, over three-quarters of the planet’s population had met their doom in the space of a few months, and most of them had died on that last day. The world is covered in unburied corpses and the ruins are filled with those who have been buried alive. Everywhere that I go, I see humans working together to deal with the dead to save those that still live beneath the rubble. In the ruins of a shopping mall I observe a group of humans working frantically to free a trapped child. Disasters of great magnitude often bring together the human race for limited periods of time, and inevitably they settle back into their hateful ways as soon as the short-term consequences of the tragedy are dealt with.
I still retain my super-normal powers. My senses are all still intensely acute, my strength still boundless. Cheng has taught me to control my lust for brain-juice, and for the time being I have no desire to feed upon my brethren. But my stomach calls for something, so I enter the ruins of a deserted small town. Gaining entrance to a convenience store through its shattered front window, I help myself to some food. I load up on canned goods and snack foods. Fashioning myself a makeshift pack out of some pieces of cloth, I shoulder my goods and make my way out of the desolate hamlet, munching on a candy bar and considering my future. I head east down the main road. I had begun to formulate a plan concerning the disposition of my fate, and its implementation required the sea.
Suddenly I hear a buzz behind me—the sound of a car traveling down the road I am on. Turning, I wait until I see the vehicle crest the hill behind me. It is a police car, and its driver spots me immediately. Cutting on his lights, he speeds in my direction.
The cop pulls over next to me in a cloud of dust and flying gravel. The officer, a middle-aged and portly man with a broad face and a multitude of chins, exits the car quickly and crosses around the hood, assailing me with a confused jumble of words and gesticulations.
“Hello! Well hello there! It’s good to see someone. Everybody, well everybody that was left alive, and there weren’t too many of ‘em, well they went up to Emory, up to the armory. The armory at Emory, funny, huh? That’s where most people who made it are going, meeting up there to try to find their loved ones or what not. They’ve got power up there, and food and what have you. Not much point in staying here. But I stayed, in case people came around, looking for family or what have you.” He smiles and nods his head like a happy puppy seeking approval.
I stare at him in bewilderment. He grabs my hand and pumps it vigorously.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t even introduce myself. My name is Bill, Bill Grainger. I’m the sheriff here, or what’s left of here. God, it’s good to see somebody. I was just leaving myself. And you are—?”
“My name is Cheng . . . Cheng Tzu. I come from up north. I am making my way to the sea.”
“The sea, huh? That’s where a lot of those things came from.” A visible shudder passes through his frame. He removes a flask from his pocket and quickly swills. It seems to calm him.
“Well, they’re gone now. Now we can start over. Well, hop in.” Noting my uncomprehending stare, he continues.
“I’m heading that way, at least until the turnpike. I’ll give you a lift.”
A couple-hundred miles later I take leave of my new friend, along with some of his clothing, baggy yet functional. It had been an enjoyable and informative ride, and I hadn’t even killed him.
Since the destruction of New York, it seemed that a kind of spontaneous peace had broken out across the entire planet. All the warring factions had declared an immediate and unconditional peace treaty. Everywhere we went we saw the humans working together to heal the damage wrought by the LoiGoi’s war. The human race had been driven to the edge of the abyss, taken a good look, and turned the car around, motoring like mad towards the paradise that now, for the first time, seemed within their reach.
Maybe it had worked. I could only hope that with the removal of my Father, his cohorts, and their hellish manipulations, the curse of war, an idea alien to this world, had been lifted from the Earth. That maybe it had been “the war to end all wars.” The Whargoul, discovering the humanity that had been hidden from him, had erased the greatest plague. Now the humans had a chance. There was only one thing left to do to insure that the gift kept giving.
Finding a job that suited my needs was easy. The considerable energy of the people was being poured into the rebuilding of their world. I found employment on a barge which delivered cement to various ports on the east coast. My immense strength and quick wit made me a popular member of the crew, so popular that the captain gave me a cabin onboard. I enjoyed the company of my crewmates and the feeling of the sea beneath me. I had never spent much time on boats but they had always made me smile, when I looked at them chugging or sailing along above the glassy depths from whence I’d come. The depths that were calling me back.
I would sit on the deck for hours, staring into the water, lost within myself. When storms would come, I would stay topside, grasping the rail and howling as the rain and wind would lash my body. At these times I felt more alone than I had ever felt in my entire life. At my birth I had not known any better. I was the Whargoul, the killing machine, reveling in my filthy existence. As I had grown older and learned more about my kin, I had felt that I was part of a vast and complex conspiracy, and this had given me a familial feeling of belonging. Later, I would know love, and would love with a passion reserved for the gods. And through it all I would have friends, friends that unfortunately I would either murder or indirectly cause their deaths. Now with my victory, I had lost all these things. There was no longer any sense of purpose in my life.
Then, there was the fact that I was unsure how long I could control myself. I had no idea if my homicidal rages would return or not. I had to do something, but still I tarried, enjoying the spray of the sea and the heave of the deep, the stars shining brightly and the gulls greeting us at the many ports we visited. The Earth was beautiful, and would be beautiful for eternity. I took a deep satisfaction in that I had helped to restore it to its natural state, a state of peace, perfect peace.
There was just a couple of things left to do. I began to write, to record the details of my life in an anonymous black book very similar to the one that Kepler had spent so much time scribbling madly in. The memories of my manic friend always made me smile, and the details of his death b
rought me great pain. It was a particularly hard passage to write about, but it went in there, as did every other sordid and violent detail of my life. As I wrote I was frequently appalled at my actions. There could be no redemption for me. My crimes had simply been too great. But at least I had tried, and I took a small measure of comfort in that. And when my book was done, I made my last move.
One calm night upon the Atlantic I go into my cabin and get my gun. The sheriff had given it to me with instructions to throw it into the sea once I got there. The entire planet was in the midst of a colossal unilateral disarmament. The guns, tanks, and bombs were to be melted. The steel was to be used to build a vast hydration plant in the Sahara Desert, which was to be turned into a vast garden to attack the hunger problem that had plagued the African continent for so long. The only thing the humans couldn’t figure out was why it had taken them this many years to do something that was so obviously to the benefit of the species. If they only had known.
I go to the bridge where I know the captain is awake, drinking coffee and staring at the sea. Upon my entering the room, he turns to me with a smile. A smile that turns to a look of shocked disbelief when he sees the gun in my hand, a gun pointed at his face.
“Cheng, what the hell?”
“Shut up. Don’t talk, or I’ll blow your fucking head off.”
Others on the bridge scramble back and voice their incredulous protest. I silence them with a menacing gesture towards their beloved captain.
“All of you, shut the fuck up. Don’t fuck with me or his brains go everywhere. Do exactly as I say and nobody dies. OK?”
They nod as one. With the new and placid attitude of the human race, I know that they won’t be a problem.
“Cheng,” says the captain. “You don’t need to do this. Put the gun down and we—”
“Shut up !” I scream, buffeting him with a verbal blow that blows his hair up around his head. I feel my hatred, my frustration boiling up out of me, and I struggle to control it. I might have banished my Father from the planet, but I could never banish him from within myself.
“You don’t know,” I say through gritted teeth. “You don’t know anything about me.”
I turn to the first mate. “You! Set a new course, due east. Full speed. Do it!”
The course will take us to the middle of the Atlantic, into the deepest waters that this part of the world can offer. It will suit my needs perfectly.
First, I disable the radio and collect all of the cell phones. Then I take the captain down onto the deck and order the crew to form up in front of us. Instructing the first mate, I have him tie a length of stout rope around the captain’s neck and then hand me the loose end. Then I have the crew break into the cargo hold and bring up a whole bunch of dry cement, which they begin mixing in large tubs. It takes many hours. These guys aren’t masons. Through it all I stand stock still, though I let them bring the Captain a chair. I ignore all the questions, and then finally have him gagged. There is no point in talking now. Too much has happened, too many have died. It is time to make an end of it.
Halfway through the next day I’m encased in a massive blob of curing cement. As per my instructions, only my head and forearms protrude from the mass—one arm holding the gun and one holding the rope. A large iron hook has been set into the cement, and I have the crew attach a cable from the massive winch. I instruct the captain to sit atop the rude construction, reassuring him again that he will be unharmed. Then I am hoisted into the air, swinging crazily above first the deck and then the foaming sea. I wait until the pendulum has ceased its motion, and we hang poised above oblivion. Myself, in my self-made tomb, and the captain sitting atop it. In truth I don’t know if this will be the end of the Whargoul. But I can’t stay here. A world without war is no place for me.
“If you want to know why I do this, look in my cabin,” I scream at the crew lining the rail of the ship, pleading with me not to do this thing that they can not understand. “There is a book there, and the story within it is mine. Let it be a warning to those that would rather forget. Enjoy what has been given to you, and remember me.”
There is a timeless moment, as I breath in the surface world for what I pray will be the last time. The shifting sea, the swirling clouds draping the face of the moon, it is almost enough to tempt me from my watery grave. Then the red-rimmed atrocity of my life sweeps across the sky like a cloud of angry bats. I have to go.
“Now release the cable, or I’ll blow his fucking head off!”
The cable flies loose. The ball drops towards the surface of the water. I suck in my last breath of the surface world, while releasing the captain. The ball crashes into the depths, taking me to a place where I can never hurt anyone again.
It was done.
The ball hurtles through the depths and finally crashes into the murk at the bottom of the ocean after several minutes. The encasement doesn’t crack open as I had feared it might. I was not as deep as I would have liked, but I was deep enough. Deep enough for me to be banished for eternity.
The days passed like mud in my watery tomb. There wasn’t much to do. I notice a prodigious amount of life down here and I had no doubt they would soon get interested in me. Bizarre phosphorescent fishes floated by, looking curiously like my Father. Then a horrible thought struck me.
What if being banished from this planet was what my Father had wanted the whole time? What if I had been skillfully manipulated into helping him achieve his goal, escaping the planet that was his prison just as surely as this blob of cement was mine? What if in freeing the Earth from the curse of war, I had doomed the universe to an eternity of suffering? Could it be that I was not the redeemer, but the scapegoat, the Judas, the fool who had cursed all creation?
One will think of these things while imprisoned on the bottom of the sea. It was a depressing notion. But now I had more pressing matters than ruminating on my hopefully imaginary failures.
Crabs were eating my face.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dave Brockie is an artist, writer, and musician hailing from the crumbling southern splendor of Richmond, Virginia. For 25 years he has been best known to the world as Oderus Urungus, bellicose lead singer of the shock metal band GWAR, and lesser known as one of the founders and main artists of Slave Pit Inc., GWAR’s legendary underground production company. Here he has been the spearhead for many of the groups side projects, such as the X-Cops and Death Piggy, and has created many of images and costumes used in the 25+ year run of Slave Pit madness. This is his first novel.
www.ODERUS.com
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