The Apocalypse and Satan's Glory Hole! (1) (27 page)

“What do you know, Sinclair?”

“Got a couple of emissaries to see you.”

“Emi-who? I’m fucking busy right now, buddy. Can they come back when the world ain’t going to shit?”

“Sir. They say they know why the world is going to shit. They have come to negotiate.”

“Monkey balls. Well who are they?”

“Sir. These guys are unusual. They appear to be demons like the ones we have seen on TV. One is named Quixotol and the other is named Mark.”

“Why the hell is one of them named Mark? If I were a demon I’d
have a cool name like Assmurder or some shit.”

Sinclair sticks his head back out into the hallway and whispers something. Then he is yanked out of the doorframe, and the door slams behind him. There is a loud crash from the hallway, followed by a few seconds of silence, during which the president of the United States takes a long pull from his beer.

“I hope he’s all right. He’s a good man, that Sinclair is.” He punctuates his sentence with a lusty belch.

“Excuse you!” Bera looks shocked.

“Relax, baby. It’s the end of the world. I can burp and git away with it.”

She rolls her eyes and takes the joint back. She puts it to her lips and is about to take another hit when the door slams open again. A pair of figures walks into the room. They glow bright orange and red and drip fire with every step. One is taller than the other and walks on cloven feet. The other has a face where its ass should be and walks on four legs. Each leg ends in a pair of sharp knives, so he has to pull his digits out of everything he steps on.

The hooved demon has a body like a cow’s, complete with udders and nips that look like big swinging black dildos. He has a long beak about the size of a banana.

The president starts the Lord’s Prayer. With one hand, he wields the Bible like a weapon. With the other, he clutches his beer.

“Prez here?” Banana-beak asks. The sound of his speech is nearly indistinguishable from the sound of burping.

The two demons stare around the round room like they are taking in the old architecture.
The pictures, paintings that are a hundred years old.
Massive
desk,
chairs and couches. The president looks around as well, takes in the place that has been his home for the last six years. He gets up and dusts off his suit, then calmly takes a seat at the desk.

“That’s me. Now who in the blue blaze fuck are you two losers?”

The hooved fellow looks down at his companion, who in turn spins his ass-head upward to exchange a wounded look with his tall friend.

“Just cuz we’re demons don’t mean we don’t got no feelings.”

“Oh … eh, I apologize then. I didn’t think …” The president trails off as the demons burst into laughter.

“We’re just fucking with ya, cuz.”

A half dozen secret service men pour into the room with weapons drawn. Three have large-caliber handguns; the others carry assault rifles. They all have do-not-fuck-with-me attitudes plastered to their faces behind dark sunglasses. It’s a good thing they are wearing the shades, too, given the drug they take every morning. It makes the men fast and trigger-happy. It also makes them see weird things. The drug is like a combination of
speed and a psychotrope, and it is just about the bee’s knees as far as the president is concerned. He tried some once and thought the prime minister of Kazakhstan was half lion and half poodle. His eyes didn’t stop twitching the whole time.

“Take ‘em down, boys!” the president calls. He waves his hand forward as if leading a charge himself,
then
dives behind his desk.

Gunfire echoes around the room followed by screams. Something sails past the desk and hits the window. Thomas S. Phimpham drops his Bible and hits the joint. He manages to hold the smoke in until the gunfire dies down, but he has to let it out before the screaming stops.
Because it goes on and on.

He pokes his head out from under the desk and exhales a long cloud of white. The room is dim, but it could be because he is stoned out of his mind. Blood drips from every surface, as though someone took a water cannon and filled it with crimson goo. A piece of someone detaches from the ceiling and splats on the desk, throwing bits of gore over the president’s face. He shakes his head and ducks back down. Bera doesn’t even stir.

“Come out come out wherever you are,” one of the bastard demons calls. He has an accent that would be right at home in New York.

“I am the president of …“

“Shit!” The second demon cuts him off.

He dares another peek, this time coming face to face with a red kneecap covered with gigantic blisters. They undulate and moan, and the president can make out the features of a goat complete with horns pressing from the inside of each one.

“Lovely, ain’t dey? I’m from sixth circle, you know, the old down below, and I got me some hangers-on. I let ‘em stay for the ride.” The thing speaks in Cockney English and puffs at a dangling cigar.

“Uh.”

“So look, you give us the launch codes and we will leave you in peace. Sound good, big guy?” the four-legged demon asks. His swinging dildo teats clank and clatter against one another.

“What in the Jim Parson’s fuck are you planning to do with the launch codes?”

“Son, look here. The Apocalypse is upon us, and we need to get those codes and guard them. Keep them safe. We need to make sure that no one else gets them and shoots missiles every which way. No one wants to die in a nuclear war. No one. Am I right here, Chuckles?”

“Right, mate, you should listen to me partner ‘ere. He’s just full o’ good sense.”

The two demons maintain perfectly serene looks on their nightmarish faces. Maybe it’s the pot talking, but their calm expressions might almost
inspire confidence … if the damn things didn’t smell like a sewer explosion.

“Well hell, son, if you’re going to protect them, I don’t see what the harm is,” the president’s drug-addled mouth says, much to his surprise. Sure it seems slightly insane, but strange times being upon him and all, Tommy finds himself reaching into his pocket and extracting the codes. He hands over the plastic envelope marked Top Secret.

“Now don’t do nothing stupid with ‘em, hear me?”

“Sure thing. We’ll guard ‘em with our very lives.”

The two demons glance at each other. The taller one breaks into a grin filled with broken teeth the shade of piss. Then one massive hand grabs the president and hauls him out from under the desk. The other demon rotates a knife-tipped appendage and grabs the first lady, dragging her out by her ankle. She squeals in anger and lashes out with her other foot.

“What are you doing?”

The demons ignore the cries of protest. The president is tossed into the air and caught by his ankles so he dangles upside down staring into his wife’s face.

“Sword
fight
?” the taller demon chuckles.

Thomas S. Phimpham, the president of the United States of America, is brought up in an en garde position and then smashed into his wife at high speed. The last thing he sees is her face howling in fear while flopping black dildos shift and twirl on the body of the demon that holds her. Then he crashes into her face for one final kiss that results in an explosion of light and a complete absence of thought.

Zombie with Soul

By the time Pestilence and his horde of diseased Army dead and Cockbug-risen hippy corpses hit Reno, the demons have thrown the town into total chaos. Cars and trucks of all sizes and sorts litter the freeway. Pestilence leads his gang from atop his steed with General O’Coddle staggering right behind. They wind through the maze of abandoned automobiles, passing under two overpasses. After the second, the sounds of screams echo off the tall casinos and the dead start staggering more slowly, distracted and hungry.

Pestilence is beginning to sober up.

“Those fucking demons had better not start bogarting the dope in this town,”
 
Pestilence growls at the general. The dead officer nods and moans hoarsely.

“Did you score that last shit in Reno?”
 
Pestilence asks as the first pangs of need wrack his slender frame.

General O’Coddle stares at him with his dead eyes, both slightly withered from their time in the sun. He shakes his head back and forth.

“Shit,”
 
Pestilence spits.

They trudge on in silence to a third overpass. After passing under it, the town fully encircles them, with tall buildings that rise in all directions toward the sky. Screams and howls of pain distract the zombies, and Pestilence hears the shuffling of their feet moving off from all sides. He turns and looks out from under his hood. His horde is deserting him; stumbling off in search of flesh to feast on.

“Whoa,”
 
Pestilence tells his steed while giving the reins a pull. The horse ignores him, so he tugs harder and yells louder. “Whoa, fucker! Whoa or you’ll be glue!”

The horse stops so abruptly that Pestilence rocks forward and falls off his steed onto the freeway. He lands face first with a sick crunch-thud, but he rolls to his feet and jabs the general in his the chest an instant later.

“Do your thing and call those fuckers back! They are my zombie
horde, and they are fucking leaving!”

General O’Coddle turns from Pestilence to the dead soldiers and hippies staggering toward the screams. He puffs out his chest and moans loudly. He huffs and growls, “Rrrraggggerrrrrrrrr! Bbbbbeeerrreeegggrrrrr!”
 

None of the deserting zombies slows its pace. He turns and looks blankly at the sweating Pestilence. Maggots wiggle out of General O’Coddle’s ears and land on his broad shoulders. The zombie shrugs, and the maggots tumble to the pavement, twisting and writhing as they fall.
 

“Whatever,”
 
Pestilence grumbles.
“If Death hears anything about this, he’ll be pissed. Fuck him anyway; he ain’t here.”

General O’Coddle tilts his head like a dog trying to understand what his master is saying. Pestilence smiles his rotted grin at the general and then reaches up and cups one long-fingered hand on the dead man’s barrel chest. Pestilence mutters something, and a glowing light fills his hand. General O’Coddle’s shriveled eyes roll in their sockets as Pestilence pulls his glowing fist away.

“Hot shit!”
 
Pestilence yells, and he slams his fist back into General O’Coddle’s chest. With a loud crack, the light sinks back through the general’s sternum. The dead man stiffens and swells instantly. His shriveled eyes reinflate like helium balloons. Thick black blood drips from his nose and ears like waves. Tiny white maggots surf to the ground. The general’s gray skin squeaks and pops as it stretches around the sudden violent bloating. Pestilence stumbles back a few steps and covers his nose with his cloaked arm.

General O’Coddle’s body stops swelling, and his dead eyes dart around in their puffy sockets. His chin quivers like he is trying to talk or scream, but his throat is too swollen to open his mouth more than a fraction of an inch. The stiff and swollen corpse twitches and lets out a fart; extensive, deafening, and extremely malodorous. The longer the shit-splattering fart goes, the more General O’Coddle deflates until he returns to his barrel-chested norm.

“What in the red-headed gypsy queefing fuck was that?”
 
General O’Coddle growls. Dark clots of congealed blood fly from his mouth and catch in his white handlebar mustache.

Pestilence smiles at him and says, “It was your
soul,
you half-rotten bastard. We don’t have time to argue or discuss ethics and shit. Get those dead fuckers back in line and tell me where to find some-fucking-thing to get me high!”

General O’Coddle’s gray lips curl into a crooked smile, and he salutes Pestilence before turning on the balls of his feet to the deserting zombie soldiers behind him.

“Atten-shun!”
 
growls the dead general.

A few of the military zombies stop and turn, but most keep moving. Pestilence’s legs buckle, and he falls to his knees in the middle of the highway. He curses at the ground for scratching his legs,
then
he turns and scoffs at the general.