by Wol-vriey
Valhalla forced an image of Jude into Rattackus’s mind, along with the knowledge that the man riding the white stallion was its hated enemy.
CHAPTER 22
Rattackus faced Jude across bloodstained grass. Either dead or fled, the EVB Ranch cowboys were nowhere in sight.
Jude spurred his horse and sped toward Rattackus.
“Are you sure this sort of direct attack is wise?” Nell asked. This close to the humongous rat, she questioned the wisdom of her accompanying Jude. It now seemed wiser to have agreed to watch their fight from safety.
“I need to find out how powerful this monster is,” Jude replied.
Once in pistol range of the creature, he reined in his horse. The stallion reared up, hooves kicking the air.
Only by gripping Jude’s waist with all her strength did Nell keep from being sent flying backward.
Jude emptied the white pistol’s full cylinder at Rattackus.
They retreated a short distance and watched.
Five shark skeletons sprouted out of the rat god’s left forelimb, the sixth out of its left flank. Because the creature was so huge, however, the effect that the embedded bones in its flesh had was similar to that of sticking a penknife in a human arm — painful, but with little actual damage done.
Rattackus ripped the skeletons out of its limb. It tossed them out of sight over the house.
“We’ll need something MUCH more powerful to kill it,” Nell said. “Even using up every dead cowboy finger we can find won’t do more than slow it down.”
Jude smiled as he noticed that Rattackus was now hobbling, favoring its pierced limb.
“I have something MUCH more powerful to hit it with,” he said. “But first I need to slow it down more.”
Jude reloaded his gun with fingers.
They rode hard at Rattackus again.
The creature reared up again, awaiting them.
***
“This should slow you down a little,” Edison said, firing the wooden rifle.
***
Jude spurred his horse faster at Rattackus. Then, almost in range of the monster, he felt a hard impact to his left knee followed by a sharp sting. He yowled and looked down.
He winced on seeing the porcupine embedded in his knee.
He looked beyond Rattackus, quickly scanning the ranch house to see who had his gun. Edison waved back at him from an upstairs window.
Jude spat in anger. He shook his fist at Edison. Too bad the white revolver wouldn’t shoot that far.
He reached down and broke the porcupine’s neck to stop its squealing.
The offensive whine silenced, Jude returned his attention to his monstrous opponent. The momentary distraction of his attending to his porcupine wound however proved crucial.
“Watch out!” Nell screamed.
Jude, instinctively firing at Rattackus once he’d turned to face it again, saw the danger too late to avoid it.
Jude noted that all six finger-bullets had scored hits on Rattackus’s slimy belly.
The rat god squealed its horrendous pain and lashed out in a defensive reflex.
Jude watched the huge paw sail closer and closer to him, its horny nails slicing the air like monster scythes. He swerved the horse to avoid the impending contact, and then ducked as the tips of Rattackus’s flailing nails cleared the white stallion’s head.
He didn’t duck far enough.
The rat god’s index claw ploughed a furrow through Jude’s head, deep as a farmer preparing a field for sowing crops.
Jude’s brains were ripped out of his head.
Nell had ducked lower than Jude. She hung so far over the horse’s side that she was looking through its legs.
She looked up. Jude’s brains were smeared on the rising rat-paw like semen on a whore’s tongue. She vomited at the obscene sight.
Jude’s eyes went dead. With his body jerking spasmodically, his horse skewed away from the huge rat, and charged toward the ranch house.
Rattackus licked Jude’s brains off its paw.
Nell hauled herself back into her pillion position. Then she stood up on the running horse. Holding Jude’s shoulders tight, she urinated into his shattered skull. Her pee was thick — an amber flow like she had a heavy fever.
Damn, she thought, I’m becoming dehydrated.
Jude’s brain immediately reformed as a transparent yellow mass. His skull knit together over it. He took a moment to get his bearings, then wheeled his horse around and headed away from Rattackus.
“Damn I’m getting tired of this nonsense,” he told Nell as they rode away. “I stink like a urinal.”
“Just be thankful I’m riding along with you,” she retorted. “I like the way you smell.”
Jude didn’t reply. He rode to a point two hundred meters from Rattackus and halted the horse. He helped Nell down.
“Time for our alternative approach,” he said. “Consider that last attack our appetizer. It should keep big monster rat over there preoccupied long enough for me to get our entrée ready for it.”
Nell looked at Rattackus and saw what he meant. The rat god sat on its haunches, licking its wounded forelimb and pondering the problem of how to remove the shark skeletons embedded in its belly without flooding itself with pain.
Nell was very amused by the sight of Ike Dallas flattened like a pancake under the creature’s ass.
CHAPTER 23
Jude pushed his horse’s tail aside. While simultaneously pressing hard on its last left rib, he furiously wound up its anal crank.
The most obvious result of Jude’s cranking was that the horse got an erection.
“What are you doing?”
Jude didn’t slow the circular motion. “You’ll see shortly.”
Rattackus growled in pain as it ripped a shark out of its belly. Its anger and pain rippled in waves to the nearby hills and back again.
Nell stole a nervous glance at it. She turned back to Jude. “I hope you’re right about this, Jude,” she said.
He saw she was looking embarrassed. “What’s the matter?”
She pointed to her crotch. “I’m all out of pee. I can’t fix you up again if you’re wrong.”
He nodded. “I also hope I’m not wrong.”
Jude stopped winding up the horse.
Nell glanced between the horse’s rear legs. The white stallion’s erection throbbed angrily. Nell decided she’d hate to be the first mare the horse encountered now. It would likely ride her to death.
Jude had meanwhile walked around to the white stallion’s head.
Nell watched him twisting its ears for a few moments. Then she heard a click inside the horse’s head.
Gripping the horse’s mane and pulling in opposite directions, Jude split the horse’s neck open.
Rotating it on a bone hinge in its lower half, Jude swung the horse’s head downward till it hung facing rear.
“This sure is one weird horse,” Nell said. “I’ve never seen a horse you could open up before.”
Rattackus screamed again. Nell looked over at it again. “That’s the second skeleton ripped out,” she told Jude. “Four to go.”
“We’re on schedule.” He released a catch inside the horse’s neck. With another click, a pitted metal tube slid up out of the horse’s neck.”
“That looks like a cannon muzzle,” Nell said.
“It is. Now all we need is ammo.” He latched the cannon securely into place between the horse’s shoulders. The horse’s dangling head neighed nervously at its erection.
Jude fed the horse’s head an oatmeal cake. He patted its flanks to calm it.
Nell pointed to the neck-cannon. “What does it fire?”
“Legs.”
“Legs?”
“Human legs.”
Rattackus screamed twice in quick succession then, preventing Nell’s confused question. Instead she said, “It just ripped out two skeletons at once. Only two left.”
“We’ve a bit of a problem,” Jude said. “No l
egs to fire.”
Nell stared at him incredulously. “A bit of a problem. You fucking call that a bit of a problem?”
Rattackus screamed again. They both looked at the monster. Black goo poured out of the holes in its belly where it had torn the embedded fish bones out of its flesh. The gashes looked like vaginas with semen slurping out of them after copious ejaculation.
Rattackus stared back at them. Rage glittered in its beady black eyes. Nell shuddered. The creature’s eyes were horizontal wells from which evil dripped.
“Only one more to go,” Nell said. “How many legs do we need?”
“One,” Jude said. “But it’s eaten all the cowboys and their horses.”
He noticed she was staring pointedly at him. “What?”
“Your legs. Take one of them off.”
Jude looked over to where Rattackus sat. The creature was bracing itself for the final pain of removing the last shark skeleton. This one was embedded deep in its groin, just above its Ike Dallas genitals.
“Take one of your new legs off,” Nell insisted. “I’ll fit you with another later.”
“How do I do that?”
She pulled her knife out of her girdle. “Don’t worry. I’ll do it for you.”
Without waiting to see if he agreed or not, she sliced Jude’s left trouser open at the hip and began sawing through the urine-flesh forming his left hip joint.
Despite forming a stronger bond than normal flesh, the pee-meat was easy to cut. Jude let her do it. He steeled himself against the pain. His thoughts were resolute.
Desperate moments demand desperate measures, he thought grimly.
CHAPTER 24
Your daughter’s cutting off his leg dear,” Edison said. “Strangest thing I’ve ever seen.”
The combat field lay at a slight angle to the ranch house. Edison and Valhalla had an oblique view of the combatants. Rattackus’s front parts were, however, hidden from them.
Valhalla stared at the surreal sight of Jude’s horse with the cannon in its head and its head swinging between its legs watching its erection. Rattackus clearly had the upper hand in this scenario.
But still — she was filled with unease.
This was the disaster she’d seen occurring in the semen. But its nature remained as vague to her now as when the never-born — the testicle children — had shown her their transcribed version of the future.
Valhalla knew something was about to go wrong. She had no idea what it was.
“We must leave here, Edison,” she said worriedly.
He looked at her in surprise. “Leave? But we’ve won. Once Rattackus attacks them — it’s over.”
“We haven’t won, Edison. I saw this in the summoning. Something will go wrong.”
“I don’t see what possibly can go wrong, Val,” Edison retorted with considerable warmth. Look — now that she’s sliced his leg off, she’s stuffing it into the weird tube in the horse’s neck.”
Valhalla glared at her daughter forcing Jude’s leg into his horse’s neck-cannon. Nell was having trouble getting the foot in past the ankle.
“Not a day goes by that I don’t regret giving birth to her,” she growled. She pulled on Edison’s arm. “Let’s go! I mean it, we’re in danger!”
Edison shrugged her off. “Go yourself if you’re frightened, darling. Wait downstairs for me. The view is excellent from here. Absolutely ringside.” He was surprised by the terror in Valhalla’s eyes. “Go on, Val. I’ll be fine. You honestly don’t think I’ll flee the house with triumph so imminent, do you?”
Valhalla gave it one last try. “Edison, I know you think I’m being overly superstitious, but this is serious, you’re in — ”
Edison chortled with mirth. “Nonsense dear. Now I’m certain you’re just trying to scare me.”
A momentary warning flickered through Edison’s mind — Valhalla’s predictions did have that invariable trick of coming true. What if...
He shrugged off his worries. What could possibly go wrong? Nothing, he could see, except if the divine rodent turned on them. But he knew from experience that Valhalla was able to control Rattackus.
Across from them, Nell, after a hurried discussion with Jude, stopped forcing his foot into the horse’s open neck. She left it hanging out of the cannon, sole facing toward the rat god.
Then she walked back over to Jude, and she and he began arguing over something.
Watching her daughter’s heated argument with Jude, Valhalla suddenly felt ill. An overwhelming sense of urgency filled her. Her every psychic nerve screamed at her to flee.
Rattackus screamed loudly then. The sound hardened Valhalla’s resolve to reach the safety of somewhere else. Anywhere else.
“Edison,” she said calmly. “We really must go —”
His condescending smile infuriated her. “Edison, this is no time to be pigheaded.”
Edison gave her a tight, controlled smile. “I intend watching this duel to the finish, dear. I’ll meet you downstairs in five minutes. Rattackus must have dealt with this fool by then.” He tapped the wood rifle meaningfully. “And if it hasn’t, I’ll see how our Jude holds up to an overdose of his own medicine.”
Valhalla gave up trying to convince her husband. She quickly packed up her summoning disc, and then fled both the bedroom and the house.
CHAPTER 25
Nell looked at Jude. “Okay it’s loaded, where’s the trigger?”
Jude pointed to the horse’s erection. “Yank back on that.”
Nell looked at the horse’s penis. Its glans now dribbled mucoid pre-cum.
She looked back at Jude and shook her head. “Oh no, not me. It’s your horse.”
“True, it is my horse,” Jude replied, “but handling erections is your professional area of expertise.”
“Human erections.”
“A prick’s a prick, and you’re a prostitute.”
Nell looked at him coolly, “Are you insinuating that I do bestiality, you son-of-a — “
“Nothing like that,” he interrupted smoothly. “Handling penises is against my principles. It’s why I’ve never used this weapon before.”
Nell goggled at him. “Never?”
He nodded.
“Never? And you’re gambling our lives on it?”
Jude sighed. “The woman who gave it to me assured me on her life that it would work.” He smiled. “Darling, I suggest you yank that penis right now.”
Jude’s self-assured smile infuriated Nell. “What the hell?”
“Nell dearest, I’m looking at the rat monster over your shoulder, while you’re looking angrily at me. Pull the fucking penis back.”
“No, I will fuc —”
Rattackus screamed, louder than it had before. Nell felt a fear so primal at the sound that she almost pooped herself.
“Last set of shark bones out of it,” Jude said coolly. “Certain death is now headed our way.”
Nell turned. It was true. Rattackus was now back on all four limbs and bounding toward them. Its mouth gaped open, its horrible gleaming eyes reflected its clear intent of eating the two humans and their horse.
“It’s very stupid, endlessly coming back for more,” Jude said. “What if I simply give it another dose of fish bones?”
Rattackus was now close enough for Nell to see down its throat. And it was fast closing the intervening distance.
She looked back at Jude.
He shook his head. “I assure you — I would rather die than handle that horse’s member.”
Nell decided ‘what the hell?’ She wasn’t about to die just because Jude was scared of being thought of as queer. She grabbed the horse’s penis and yanked it back.
The immediate result was anti-climactic after the emotive build up. With a soft ‘pop,’ Jude’s leg ejected from the horse-neck cannon and sailed through the air at the approaching rat god.
Rattackus seemed unstoppable. The projectile speeding toward it appeared pathetically inadequate to halt its murderous intent.
Jude’s leg hit Rattackus flush in the chest. There was a moment of silence — as when angels walk through a room — then Rattackus began screaming.
It screamed so loud that both Jude and Nell covered their ears.
Huge bones were forcing their bloody way out of the rat god’s body. Bones the size of a ship’s framework.
Rattackus lurched right and left desperately as the strange skeleton inside its body punctured a multitude of pathways out of its flesh, ripping it apart.
It turned and ran toward the ranch house. Half way there it stopped running. By now, two row of bones dwarfing even its own immensity for humongousness projected from its sides. Viscid black blood streamed down its body, bubbling in tar-like pools wherever it plopped on the ground.
“It’s almost dead,” Jude said, hopping in front of his horse for an uninterrupted view. “Just one more thing.”
The ‘thing’ occurred.
Rattackus’s head exploded and twenty feet of vertebral bone ejected from it. Topping this spinal column was a fish-like head.
The biggest head either Jude or Nell had ever seen in their lives.
CHAPTER 26
Edison Bennett stared in disbelief at the monster head that had just erupted from Rattackus’s head.
He was a vet, so he only had to see the festering blowhole on top of the rotting skull and its baleen-grimace of a mouth to recognize it as a blue whale’s head.
Edison momentarily forgot that the whale’s appearance was the culmination of a life and death struggle with himself as the star prize. He wondered how what he was witnessing was even possible.
Then Edison noted that Rattackus’s body — impaled by whale ribs and deceased — was tottering.
For a seemingly endless moment, the rat god’s headless form stood outlined against the afternoon sky, supported on a tripod of its rear legs and the whale’s tail skeleton. Then the sea dweller’s tail bones separated under the burden they were never designed to bear and Rattackus toppled over.