Kris saw how Black Iron Mountain thrust its fist into reality and controlled the world. But that was wrong. Black Iron Mountain convinced the world to control itself.
“ ‘Fifty states of gore,’ ” JD sang to himself. “ ‘Between Troglodyte and the door / Bound by what we swore / On this sea of horror / It always offers more.’ ”
Kris watched another billboard go past featuring another celebrity she didn’t know hawking another product she didn’t want: Hannibal Green for Wine Shooters, Samantha Kay for Diet Now, Karl Charles for Kentucky’s Own. More summer blockbusters, more digitally sculpted girls showing pixel-polished flesh. Rappers, athletes, actresses, stock photo celebrities sporting clip art beauty. Dead echoes in an empty room.
And all the time, the Hundred Handed Eye kept searching.
“…body count of four people dead and one critically injured. We have to ask ourselves: where does this end?”
“…the ugliest stalking incident in the history of rock and roll…”
“…witnesses and family members are being interviewed and police in eleven states are determined not to let…”
JD smoked pot constantly. Whenever he stole a car he rolled a joint. At first, he smoked them while driving, but then Kris insisted he at least park when he smoked.
“You can’t drive fucked up,” Kris said.
“Without my meds, I need it to level me,” he said, eyes streaming. “I’m fine.”
“Let me drive,” Kris said.
“You don’t have a license,” JD said. “If I get stopped we have a chance, if you get stopped, it’s game over.”
Then he imitated Bill Paxton in Aliens, saying, “Game over, man,” for ten minutes.
Every day he became more erratic and Kris got more and more anxious as the start date for Hellstock ’19 approached and they couldn’t get any closer to Vegas. They spiraled around the city, unable to approach it directly, kept away by detours, and police checkpoints, and highway closures, no matter which route they tried.
They drove through the night, occasionally napping in mall parking lots. JD shoplifted frozen burritos from supermarkets and let them thaw on the dashboard. He abandoned his boom box in a landscaper’s pickup truck outside Garden City, Kansas, and scanned the radio, hopping from station to station, listening to the same wire-service stories about the Great Hunt thirty times a day as the Hundred Handed Eye searched for them. Its gaze was a hundred million spotlights, sweeping the seas of blood for signs of their passing.
Billboards of Terry’s blind face, streaked with rivers of black gore, loomed up ahead, over them, and disappeared behind them. All around them cars swirled and swarmed, pushing west to worship their God. Black Honda Accords with Gothic Ks on their rear windshields, guys driving Ford Tauruses with their windows down, long hair fluttering in the wind, the occasional Chevy Econoline full of girls in black lipstick. Each one heading for the end of the world.
Three days until showtime, they found themselves stuck in New Mexico.
“What if we go south and come at Vegas from the west?” Kris asked, looking at the road atlas.
“Maybe we should be looping up into South Dakota,” JD said, ignoring her. “Wounded Knee might be a blind spot in the Hundred Handed Eye.”
“That’s hundreds of miles back the way we came,” Kris said.
JD sang the chorus from “Sailing the Seas of Blood”: “Sailing the seas of blood / Riding a gory flood / From sea to dark red sea / Gettysburg to Wounded Knee.”
“It’s five hundred miles due north,” Kris said, losing her cool. “Do you know how long that’ll take?”
“Maybe Gettysburg is the answer,” JD mused to himself.
“Jesus Christ!” Kris said. “That’s a thousand miles back to Pennsylvania. We have to keep heading towards Vegas.”
JD erupted in a fury, pounding on the steering wheel, thrashing his head from side to side, screaming at the top of his lungs, punching the ceiling.
“I don’t know what to do anymore!” he yelled.
Kris looked around at the cars approaching them from behind, about to pass them, and panicked.
“Stop,” she shouted. “You need to stop!”
He kept screaming, banging his head back and forth so hard his Manowar bandana flew off into the back seat. Instantly, he calmed, breathing hard. The cars passed them smoothly in the other lane. Kris gave it a minute before she leaned over the back seat and picked up his bandana. It was incredibly heavy. Silver metal strips were stapled to the inside. Immediately, she knew what they were.
“You’ve got a tin foil hat,” she said, heart sinking.
He snatched it out of her hands.
“Hold the wheel!” he snapped, tying it around his head. “This is lead foil! Tin foil is for paranoid lunatics. My head is not a baked potato.”
His anger melted into a stoned giggling fit.
“Baked potato!” he wheezed.
Kris finally realized this wasn’t going to work.
“Pull into this rest stop,” she said.
CARSON DALY: I saw the lineup for Hellstock ’19 and I think people are going to be amped, they’re going to be excited.
ROB ANTHONY: We hope so.
CARSON DALY: Why don’t you tell us a little bit about this, because as a huge fan of Koffin, I couldn’t be more stoked.
ROB ANTHONY: Terry will play his entire discography starting with the most recent album and ending with the earliest. In a way, it’s a journey back through time beginning with Insect Narthex, then Necrosex, and finally Witch Slave, and he may even go earlier than that, back to his Dürt Würk days. As you know, the original bass player and the drummer for Dürt Würk will be at the shows. So who knows?
CARSON DALY: Any chance he’ll play Troglodyte?
ROB ANTHONY: No, despite the mythology around Troglodyte, it’s not a very good album. Terry would rather leave fans with memories of his actual good work.
—97.1 KAMP, “Carson Daly Mornings”
September 4, 2019
D didn’t say anything, just followed the curve of the right-hand lane off the highway and into the rest area hardscape: a black asphalt parking lot with a grass clearing on the right. In the middle of the clearing was a small brick amenities building with toilets and vending machines. On the southern end were three concrete picnic tables rooted beneath some scrubby pines. There were two parked cars, and all the other spaces were empty. JD parked near the picnic tables, at least thirty empty parking spaces away from the bathrooms. He handed Kris a packet of Kleenex.
“I have to go, too,” he said, not mentioning his temper tantrum. He pointed toward a utility shed next to the picnic tables. “You go over there and I’ll use the bushes.”
A maroon minivan glided in behind them and rolled down to the far end of the lot. Kris put one hand on the door handle and faced forward while she spoke.
“When I get back,” Kris said, “we need to reassess.”
“What?” JD said. “You’re not making any sense.”
“I think I’ll do better on my own,” Kris said.
“But,” he said, the car rocking as he turned to face her, “I swore Odin’s Oath. I’m not ditching you when we’re so close.”
Kris opened her door and put one foot on the asphalt.
“That’s the thing,” she said. “We’re not close. I think I have to do this part without you.”
Before JD could say anything else, Kris leaned into him. His hair stunk like a wild animal and was stiff with dried sweat. She gave him a one-armed hug.
“You’re a good guy, JD,” she said. “You got me this far, but I can make it from here. Go home. Take care of your mom.”
She got out and slammed the door. JD gaped at her through the passenger side window as she waved goodbye. He scrabbled for his door handle, but Kris knocked on the hood. He l
ooked up. She shook her head. His hairy face got hard and he looked down at his lap, then leaned forward and turned the ignition. Hot air blew on Kris from the front grille as JD slammed the car into reverse and rolled backward. Kris lifted her hand again. JD didn’t wave back. He just drove away, burning a little rubber to show he was pissed off.
Kris watched him go, then turned and walked to the bathroom. She felt relieved, and eager to get moving. She didn’t know how she’d get to Las Vegas, she didn’t know how she’d stay free, but JD had taught her to stay in the blind spots, slip through the cracks, exist in the margins, trust her instincts. She’d keep her ears open for signs. It’d be easier without him around.
Kris pushed into the cool green bathroom and her eyes instantly adjusted from daylight to the artificial fluorescents. She picked the farthest stall, latched the door, and lowered herself to the seat. Her thighs were covered in faded yellow bruises, her knuckles were scraped raw, her right shoulder was stiff. Her body ached like something had been kicking her from the inside. Her ass was sore from sitting.
She took her time, trying to postpone making a decision about what came next. Being in the bathroom felt like a break from the world. From out of nowhere, the urge for a cigarette hit her. She hadn’t had one in years, not since her touring days, but right now, on the road again by herself, it sounded exactly right.
She finished up, ran some water over her hands, wiped them on her velour sweatpants, and walked outside. A couple more cars had pulled into the parking lot, and a handful of people roamed the dry grass, stretching their legs. In front of Kris, a girl in a long black skirt and black T-shirt was hunched over her phone, blocking the concrete walkway, thumbing away at a message, a cigarette jammed in the corner of her mouth. Kris could taste the sharp smoke. She followed her instincts.
“Excuse me?” Kris said. The girl looked up. Her black lipstick coated the filter. “Can I bum one of those?”
The girl stared at her, mouth tight, eyes squinted. Kris tried again.
“Just one?” she asked. The girl kept staring, eyes scrunched up like she had a headache. “You know what? Never mind. I shouldn’t smoke anyways.”
Kris turned to go but the sidewalk was blocked by a young guy, heavyset with a cursive neck tattoo, filming her on his phone, his attention totally focused on its tiny screen. Kris put her head down and walked off the concrete sidewalk, across the crunchy brown grass, headed for the far end of the parking lot, wanting to disappear. She’d get into the woods and strike off alongside the highway toward Vegas, keeping parallel to the road as much as she could. There were too many people here.
Ahead of her, standing between the hoods of two parked Hondas, a man and a woman in matching olive hiking shorts and Patagonia fleeces had their phones out, held landscape, tracking her as she passed. Kris stopped and gave them a hard stare but they didn’t waver, and that’s when she realized that more cars were pulling into the parking lot: a black SUV with Florida plates, a red Volvo with tinted windows, a white Volkswagen Jetta. The lot was filling up.
Kris started walking faster, and the couple came toward her, phones out. One quick look over her shoulder showed three people in matching UCLA sweatshirts behind the girl in the black skirt, all of them with their phones out, all of them following Kris. She sped up. Behind her, their footsteps got faster.
An electric shock ran through Kris’s left shoulder. The girl in the black skirt had shoved her. Kris stopped, turned, and saw a wall of people behind the girl, all of them bearing down on her, all of their phones out, all of them staring at her tiny image on their screens, fitting her into their phones, capturing her in their hands.
In the back of the crowd, stragglers ran to catch up while directly in front of Kris, the girl in the black skirt stood with her phone jammed in Kris’s face.
“You dirty slut,” the girl spat, hatred in her voice.
The crowd closed in around Kris, making a circle with her at its center. A thicket of arms, each holding a phone, shooting her chest, her crotch, her stomach, her eyes, getting her from every angle. They crowded in, a wall of blank faces staring at her digital image. Kris couldn’t breathe. Some were older, middle-aged, and there was even a grandmother with puffy white hair who reminded her of her mom, holding her phone out, standing next to an older gentleman in a black POW/MIA baseball cap. They talked to each other about her, their voices dripping with rage.
“…stalking Terry Hunt…”
“…whore…”
“…sleazebag…”
“…fucking lynch her…”
The Hundred Handed Eye had found her.
Far back, outside the circle, Kris saw people asking each other what was going on.
“Help me!” she shouted, trying to get their attention.
They heard her, but instead of coming to her rescue they pulled out their phones and shot the crowd, curious to see what would happen next. In the middle of this crowd, Kris stood alone.
Then the music started. A white van by the toilets had its side doors open, and Kris heard the unmistakable industrial howl of the intro, and then Koffin’s “Stand Strong” began to play.
The crowd reached for Kris and she stepped back, bumping into hands holding phones. She spun around, but they were everywhere. Fear turned her guts to water. She wanted another chance. A do-over. She didn’t want to die here. She felt so stupid. She’d walked right into Black Iron Mountain’s arms.
WHOOOOOOOOOONK!
A car horn, loud and sustained, cut through Koffin’s anthem, and Kris looked past the reaching arms and saw JD’s car screech to a halt on the other side of the line of parked cars. He leaned across the center console and shoved open the passenger side door.
“Odin’s Oath!” he shouted.
Kris’s heart leapt.
She pushed forward toward him, but they shoved her back, keeping her trapped. The crowd flowed and reshaped, more of them between her and the cars, blocking JD from view with their black T-shirts, and pink button-ups, and baggy camo shorts, and their beards and their ponytails. Behind Kris, away from the parking lot, the crowd thinned and she took her chance. She elbowed the POW/MIA-capped man in the gut and he lost his footing and stumbled. Kris stepped past him, through the break, and made an end run around the crowd, going deeper into the grassy area, away from the parking lot. The crowd flowed fast, spreading out in a line, pressing her back, putting themselves between her and JD’s car.
JD reversed to keep up with Kris as she ran deeper into the field, his passenger-side door open. She heard him shout something but it was lost over their voices:
“…bitch…”
“…slut…”
“…dyke…”
Kris broke into a run, triggering the entire herd. They came for her in force, flowing over the field, moving fast. She ran, full out, sprinting for the utility shed. If she could make it past them and then cut between the parked cars and get to the other side, she’d meet JD’s reversing car and get in, or jump on the trunk, or cling to the hood.
An inarticulate roar went up as Kris passed the leading edge of the crowd and zagged to the right, stepped onto the sidewalk. The mob was at least eighty people strong now, strung out across the rest area. They were too close, arms reached for her, fingers strained, but then a Chinese girl in jean shorts dropped her phone and bent down and the yoga couple behind her and the heavyset guy with the beard fell over her, creating a human logjam, and Kris gave a final burst of speed and slipped between an electric-blue minivan and a red Volvo station wagon inches ahead of a huge guy with a neck beard. His outstretched fingers brushed her right shoulder, and then Kris was free.
The crowd screamed with rage. Women sustained high notes, while men bellowed lower ones. Their pursuit slowed as they filtered between the parked cars and Kris’s heart gave a joyous flex when she saw nothing but empty asphalt between herself and JD’s car, gears whining, pas
senger door open. She closed the gap and caught the doorframe, swinging both feet inside, dropping her butt onto the seat.
“Go!” she shouted.
A fourteen-year-old kid with a gray hoodie and an activity strap on the back of his glasses got between the open door and the car, his legs pumping furiously. Kris let the forward motion of the car help her slam the door and it bounced off his shoulder and the kid went down, eating street in a tumble of arms and legs.
“Until Valhalla!” JD yelled, shooting Kris a victorious grin.
Latecomers who hadn’t reached the main body of the crowd poured onto the asphalt in front of them, flying out from between the parked cars, some of them stopping with their phones outstretched while others ran at the car. A young black guy in baggy white basketball shorts and a goatee was the first to get in front of them, and the front bumper clipped his legs out from under him, sending him pinwheeling up the hood, smacking into the windshield, which cracked into a silver star.
JD jammed on the brakes and the kid unwound back down the hood and hit the pavement hard. JD tried to steer around him, but it was too late. The fastest members of the crowd were on them. A middle-aged man in a suit stepped onto the bumper, then the hood, and bounced the car with his feet. Hands slapped Kris’s window. People crawled onto the trunk. All Kris could see through the windows were hands, screaming mouths, black rectangles with glass lenses recording it all. The sound of drumming filled the car.
“Go!” Kris screamed, terrified.
JD revved the engine but kept his foot on the brake as more and more people poured in front of them. The car began to rock on its shocks as the screaming crowd pushed it from side to side.
“We have to go!” Kris yelled.
“I can’t!” JD yelled back, his voice choked. Kris looked over. JD was on the verge of tears, his eyes wild, nostrils flaring. “They’re people!”
His bandana had slipped off his head and lay on the center console, leaving his hair to hang in his eyes. He gripped the steering wheel so hard it bent. They were trapped.
We Sold Our Souls Page 17