by David Wong
Amy said, “I’m almost afraid to.”
She opened it and inside was a card that said HAPPY FATHER’S DAY, DAD, in festive text that had been scribbled out with a ballpoint and replaced with BIRTHDAY, AMY SULLIVAN in John’s handwriting.
There was something inside.
A scratch-off lottery ticket.
We all froze.
I said, “No. John … you bought that on the Soy Sauce?”
Amy looked alarmed. “That’s like a form of cheating, right? We … we couldn’t. Could we?”
I said, “Well, the whole thing is a scam. So, what, somebody buys a ticket with a one in a billion chance of winning, not knowing that in reality they had a zero in a billion chance? Seems like a pretty miniscule difference.”
It said across the top in silver letters that the grand prize was ten million dollars.
Amy said, “We’re giving half of it to charity.”
I said, “Fine. We don’t even know if it’s a winner.”
John said, “I’m actually pretty sure it is.”
Amy fished a nickel from her pocket and scratched off three rows of boxes.
We had won.
$250.
John said, “Hey! You can buy Amy that book now! Almost. You can probably talk them down.”
Amy said, “What book?” I had never told her about the signed copy of Hitchhiker’s I’d shopped for. We had decided that my decision to follow through on treatment was my gift to her. Still seemed like she was getting cheated, but whatever.
I said to John, “You could have won us the freaking mega millions jackpot and you got us two hundred and fifty bucks instead?”
Amy said, “One hundred and twenty-five.”
Out of nowhere, John started laughing. I didn’t know what exactly he thought he was laughing at—I still didn’t have a damn job. But then I was laughing, too. Then, so was Amy. Joy and Nicky asked us what was so funny.
Amy said we won the lottery and that this was the best birthday ever. Joy high-fived her and said she had two different homemade pizzas in the oven and I guess we were letting this thing make food for us now. Then Munch and Crystal showed up and it was like the whole previous month had never happened. Then there was a knock on the door and John went to answer it and standing there was the fancy-haired partner of Detective Herm Bowman.
He asked the three of us to come outside. I had assumed Herm would be waiting out here, but the young man had come alone. I closed the door behind me and said, “If you’re here to tell me more kids are missing, I’ll say right now, I don’t think we’re up for it.”
“That’s not it.”
“And I don’t see Detective Bowman…”
“Nah, he says case is closed. Won’t even talk about it.”
“But you’re not ready to drop it. Right?”
“You see what your reality show friend said about all this? The whole bit about a flying monster, snatching kids?”
“Yeah. So? You were there, what did he get wrong?”
“One, I wasn’t there, not really, and what he got wrong are all the parts that make you look guilty as shit.”
“Ah, I see. Herm’s putting ideas in your head. Well, believe what you want. We all live in the reality we choose.”
“What kind of hippy bullshit is that? Look, the case is closed, like I said. So why not just tell me what really happened? From the start, for my own peace of mind. It won’t leave this stoop and even if it did, who’d believe me?”
“The other cops will believe you, they just won’t care. It’s better that way. Ask Herm.”
“So, like I said. What do you have to lose?”
I glanced back at John. “What do you think?”
John shrugged and said, “Fine. You want to hear a story? Well, buckle the fuck up.”
So, we told him the story just as it’s laid out in these pages. I finished with, “And then we all gathered here to celebrate Amy’s birthday and then you showed up and here we are.”
John said, “Uh, we may not have made it clear but Marconi had two spears on the RV.”
I said, “Right, right. He had lots of them. They were all over the place.”
The detective nodded, thoughtfully. “I was eating a donut, not a McMuffin.”
“Yeah, but it seemed too cliché.”
“You know what? I like Marconi’s story better.”
“Me, too, if I’m honest.”
“Mainly because it actually lines up with the known facts in the case, where your impossibly convoluted version seems carefully crafted to be utterly impossible to verify at every goddamned step. What I know is there were twelve missing kids reported. No follow-up from any of the parents, all of whom are in the wind now, including Loretta Knoll. Sightings all over the place of this supposed bat monster…”
“Which,” I said, “is now scattered in tiny chunks across miles of river. Problem solved.”
“And two victims’ statements identifying you as the perp.”
“We’ve been over that.”
“And one witness saying the bat monster is you.”
This brought the conversation to a screeching halt for several brutal seconds. I thought I heard thunder rumble in the distance, but I think it was just a heavy truck passing by.
Amy said, “What? Who?”
“Philip ‘Shitbeard’ Hickenlooper.”
“Ted’s friend? The one who drowned?”
“Who said he drowned? He not only made it out, but says he watched your man here turn into the Batmantis on one occasion and suspects it in another.”
That brought an even longer silence. Someone coughed.
I said, “Well, that’s just ridiculous. Everything was chaos, who knows what he thinks he saw. That’s probably why he has that nickname. He’s so full of shit he, you know, wears it like a beard.”
“Uh-huh. Did I mention he has you on video? Recorded it at the river, with his phone.”
“When it was dark, and rainy. Plus, any asshole can download video editing software, they can add special effects and everything, make it look so real it’d fool an expert. Doesn’t prove shit.”
The detective just eyed me, silently.
I said, “What?”
“Instead of dismissing the idea that such a video could exist, you jumped right to calling it a well-made fake. Didn’t even ask to see it first.”
Amy said, “There is no video, is there?”
“Don’t need one now, do we?”
I said, “Oh, fuck off. Don’t play your cop mind games on me. Even if this ridiculous accusation was somehow true, and I’m not saying it is, but even if it was, then that still wouldn’t implicate me. If anything, the Batmantis was trying to help. If it turned up where kids were being taken, it’s because it was trying to stop it, and failing. If this ridiculous fantasy of yours were true and we took steps to hide its involvement, it would only be because we knew people would get the wrong idea, focus blame in the wrong place when it was clearly this other situation, with the mine and all that. But we didn’t, because your story is rid—”
“Ridiculous, yes. Remember when I said I liked Marconi’s version better? It’s because I’m pretty sure you people made everything up, the larvae and the mine monster—one big convoluted parable about not judging monsters, just to cover for the fact that boy here started werewolfing out and snatching children.”
I laughed. “Ha! Haha! Ha. No.”
John said, “How about this—in our version, the Batmantis is dead and gone, nobody else gets hurt. In Shitbeard’s version, it’s still around—you know, because Dave is standing right here. Well, if the Batmantis strikes again, there you go, you’ll have your answer. So, you see the bastard, feel free to blow it out of the sky. You have our blessing.”
“I will do that. And I sure as hell don’t need your blessing.”
I said, “Again, you’ll believe what you want. But what you believe, it says more about you than me. Is there anything else we can do for you?”
He drove off into the night, his completely dry car rolling through the not-rain. I put my arm around Amy.
“I love you.”
“Love you, too.”
The door opened behind us. “Come in, guys!” spat Nicky. “Your pizza’s getting cold!”
The nozzles of the anti-intruder flamethrowers whooshed to life. She was instantly burned to death.
Amy
That didn’t happen.
An Excerpt from Fear: Hell’s Parasite by Dr. Albert Marconi
And now, a word about the Apocalypse.
The most fascinating aspect of our end-of-the-world obsession is our insistence that whatever cataclysm we have in mind would, in fact, be the end. The reality is that our history could actually be described as a series of apocalypses: a plague here, a famine there, a worldwide war that arrives with both in tow. What occurs in the aftermath of each is instructive.
Consider, for example, the ancient disaster known as the Toba event. It is theorized that approximately seventy-five thousand years ago, a volcanic eruption nearly wiped out Homo sapiens altogether. It is believed that in the aftermath, the worldwide population of early humans may have withered to just a few thousand breeding pairs—enough to fit into a high school gymnasium. Just seventy-five thousand years later, we live in a civilization in which the population has rebounded a million times over and is on the cusp of landing a spacecraft on Mars.
This is the legacy of humanity and I daresay that not enough of us take time to appreciate it. Our apocalyptic fiction depicts a world in which humans revert to the savagery of the jungle the moment our institutions fall, survivors tearing each other to pieces even as they are dying of plague or stalked by the undead. In our real history, we have been in that situation many times—left without government or law enforcement, none of the modern institutions we take for granted. From each of these scenarios what emerged was not savagery, but cooperation. When the pillars of our culture crumble, we rebuild them.
I once joked to a colleague that a true horror film would begin with a world overrun by the zombies, who find themselves having to fend off a sudden outbreak of the living. Imagine these poor groaning shufflers attempting to wage war against faster, healthier creatures capable of organization and strategy, able to build tools that would appear to be nothing short of magic to their simple, moldering brains (imagine their terror at the prospect of a rifle that can deliver invisible death from far over the horizon, let alone an atomic bomb!).
One almost begins to feel sorry for them. This is why, when asked why there is not greater evidence of creatures such as werewolves or vampires (not that I believe in either), I say the answer is obvious: they are too busy hiding from us!
My point is this: mankind is, and always has been, much greater than the sum of its parts. A lone human may appear to be nothing special if observed, say, blearily standing in line at a convenience store at two in the morning, or spitefully ripping a toy from the hands of a middle-aged woman in the chaos of a Black Friday sale. Yet, the combined efforts of these confused and volatile primates result in gleaming cities and majestic flying carriages. They have split the atom and peered across the universe.
In the blink of an eye, they have acquired the powers of gods.
This, I believe, is the fate of humanity: to colonize the stars over the next thousand years, to set down settlements in our solar system and others. Then, many centuries from now, one of our descendants will be strolling along some marvelous domed paradise on some distant planet and will see a drunken youth in offensive clothing, vomiting in an alley outside a pub. The man will look sidelong at the youth in that shameful state, shake his head, and mutter to himself that humanity is a ridiculous, doomed species, incapable of anything worthwhile.
He will believe it, because the true, wonderful, terrible, fearsome power of humanity is otherwise almost too much to comprehend. I recognize that not all of you share my faith, but you must admit that if gods are real and have observed humanity’s evolution from afar, they must shudder at the possibilities.
AFTERWORD
Author here. Let me get serious for a moment.
Some of my fan mail is from readers who do not believe these books are entirely fictional, seeking advice because they themselves see or hear strange things that others cannot. To them, I want to make it clear that I have never encountered the supernatural and do not expect to in this lifetime. The creatures that roam these pages are either from my imagination or from the long tradition of horror tales humans have been telling each other over campfires since before the advent of the written word.
I believe that anyone can “see” a ghost, monster, or “shadow person” under the right circumstances—the brain is an imperfect organ and it misfires from time to time. If, however, you see unnatural things that frighten you or interfere with your life, I would urge you to see a doctor. We know as a matter of scientific fact that the entities that stalk you are almost certainly the result of a treatable condition. Your doctor will not mock you or demand you be restrained and banished to an island of misfits. You will not be their first such patient and, in fact, they’ve probably seen your situation enough that they don’t even find it particularly interesting anymore (about one in twenty adults say they’ve had at least one hallucination, and that’s just the ones who’ll admit it). It’s nothing to be ashamed of—often the greatest difficulty faced by people suffering from mental illness is society’s inexcusable ignorance of the subject.
Other business:
Special thanks to Mack Leighty, my childhood friend who invented the character of John and who, by the way, has an audience of tens of millions of readers thanks to his day job at Cracked.com. You can find many of his hilarious and insightful posts here:
http://www.cracked.com/blog/author/John+Cheese/
This novel, if you didn’t realize it, is actually the third in a series. The first was called John Dies at the End (which was made into a fabulous movie by horror legend Don Coscarelli) and the second was titled This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously Dude, Don’t Touch It. That one was my first New York Times bestseller, a fact that I loudly share with every single stranger I encounter on the street.
Then, there is my most critically acclaimed, yet equally stupid novel Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits. It is a cautionary tale of cybernetically enhanced morons and the smooth-talking team of suits who try to keep them from wrecking the world. I may have written a sequel to that book by the time you read this. I have no way of knowing, your present is my future and for all I know, I was shot to death trying to hold up a liquor store a week before this went to press.
Likewise, I have no idea if there will be another book in the “John and Dave” series. I would assume there will be and that it will presumably contain fewer butt references than this one (I mean, it’s not like I can fit in more) but you’ll just have to stay tuned. If you want to keep up with news of upcoming titles and other noteworthy things in my life, assuming the Internet still exists, I can be found at:
Johndiesattheend.com
or on Facebook at:
www.facebook.com/JohnDiesattheEnd.TheNovel
Or you can read my humorous nonfiction essays at Cracked.com, where I am the executive editor as of the writing of this Afterword:
http://www.cracked.com/members/David+Wong/
Even more special thanks go to my wife, who tolerates all of this. You can probably guess that the type of person who would write a book like this is not terribly easy to live with in person.
—David Wong aka Jason Pargin
January 2017
ALSO BY DAVID WONG
John Dies at the End
This Book Is Full of Spiders
Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DAVID WONG is the pseudonym of Jason Pargin, New York Times bestselling author and executive editor at the hugely popular com
edy site Cracked.com. His first book, John Dies at the End, lives forever as a cult-classic movie directed by Don Coscarelli, and his second, This Book Is Full of Spiders, scares people on a daily basis. His award-winning science fiction novel Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits is now in development as a TV series. You can sign up for email updates here.
Thank you for buying this
St. Martin’s Press ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content,
and info on new releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.
Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup
For email updates on the author, click here.
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Prologue
1. A Child Got Kidnapped by a Demon or Something
2. A Screaming Clown Dick
3. Joy Park
4. A Monster’s Pictures, a Grieving Widow, Sex
5. Amy’s Breakfast with Evil
6. The Rain Continues, and Also John Dies
7. The Battle of John’s Living Room
Book II
8. Attack of the Fuckroaches
9. Another Child Goes Missing
10. A Flashback to Amy’s Traumatic Waffle Experience
11. This Isn’t What it Looks Like, I Swear
12. Diogee Wasn’t a Good Dog
13. Wait, What the Fuck?
14. A Brief History of Invasive Fish Species in the Mississippi River and Their Impact on International Commerce
15. Soy Sauce
16. The Great Dildo Flood
17. Joining Maggie for Breakfast
Book III
18. Once Again, Marconi Selfishly Tries to Steal the Spotlight
19. The Crew Encounter Some Additional Complications
20. The Ass Letter
21. We All Must Learn from Kurt Russell’s Tragic Mistake
22. The Heroes Agree to Help Murder a Dozen Children