The Apocalypse and Satan's Glory Hole! (1) (33 page)

Howls of pain as the thing crumples under withering fire. Another blast from the sniper rifle cracks against something solid. The creature pauses in mid-thrash as if realizing it is late for some crucial event. It looks around and renews its efforts to stand. More bullets smack into flesh as it collapses again.

“I think we got it!” Marcel calls out.

Edwina moves with a cautious step. She slaps yet another magazine in her smoking gun. This bastard will need to be well cleaned and oiled tonight. She will too after all the excitement.

They are about fifteen feet away when she sees movement out of the corner of her eye and turns the gun in that direction. Her finger is right over the trigger, ready to loose yet another stream of bullets. But the thing she sees is no threat. It’s a little animal standing between two buildings.

As the other women march on the dead demon, Edwina takes a detour. She doesn’t want a pet. She is thinking about dinner.

A rope trails on the ground between the animal’s legs. As Edwina draws closer, she coos and whispers to the animal so as not to startle it and cause it to bolt. It’s a little guy.
Four hairy legs, not very long.
The body of the beast only comes up to her waist.

It has hooves, and they shuffle in the dust as it turns around. She almost blows its head off when she gets a good look.

“Don’t shoot!” the perfectly formed male face says.

“What the fuck!” Every fiber in her body wants to execute this little abortion right now, but her shock-numbed brain does not command her fingers to squeeze the trigger.

“Know, right?” Not only is the little fucker talking, but he has a heavy British accent. He shifts his hooves and stares at her. His eyes are blue, and she swears she can make out the faint outline of a mustache and goatee.
A goat with a goatee.
What next?

He looks ... scared, for lack of a better word.

“You can’t be.”

“Tell me about it.”

“What are you?” Her body trembles, but she can’t help but reach out and run her hand over the goat’s head.

“Feels nice. Anyway, I was minding my own business, see, when these boys decided have a go at me. Know what I mean? They pulled me into a shack and tied me up. Well one ‘ad ‘is pants down and was about to
shove it in. ‘Course I’m a goat then. Didn’t know what the wanker was up to. I was glad to ‘ave the little bit of green they left.”

“What?”

“Green. They enticed me with some goodies.” He looks over his shoulder at a pile of what might be grass. It’s too sodden with blood for Edwina to tell.

“So this one, ‘e is right behind me and I look back over my shoulder.” He mimes the movement then snaps his head back around, terror etched on his face. “And like I said, ‘e ‘as ‘is rod out, and I don’t want to think about what ‘e is about to do with it. The other boys, they all got their ‘ands down their pants. Wankers. Well I wanted to fuck off right out of there, but they ‘ad me tied good and tight. Then the ground started shakin’ a good bit. I ‘ave four legs, so it’s not so hard to stay on them. Not them, and they had their jolly sticks out. Simple matter of balance and all, mind you.

“The one behind me fell, so I kicked him in the face. Then the world went bright red. Like I was seeing everything covered in blood. The roof flew off and a big dragon thing swept in. Wings big as a jet, know what I‘m sayin’? ‘E picked up one of the tosspots in ‘is mouth. Left in a hurry, that one did.

“Then this red rain starts pouring out of the sky. Bloody blood it is. Bloody ‘ell, I said. But I said that bit in goat. No one understood me. Shut it, says one. But he said that bit in human, so I didn’t understand.”

Edwina contemplates killing the thing. A whole clip should do.

“Red’s pourin’ from the sky. It’s on everything, roof bein’ missin’. ‘Cause of the dragon and all. When it touches me, well the one wanker was still near me and I was mad as a loon. I face-butted ‘im and, when I ran out I ‘ad is face.
Bloody ‘ell.
Then I ‘id ‘ere and you lovies showed. So, got any green?”

Edwina chambers a round.

An explosion rocks the ground. She pokes her head around the corner. The demon is on its feet again, swinging its massive head back and forth. Marcel rips round after round at it. She fires so fast it sounds like an automatic.

Darla ducks as the head whips around to smack her. She is lifted into the air and tossed a couple of feet. She is a big girl, but she looks unprepared for the attack and hits the ground like a sack of potatoes.

One scream of anguish from her girl, and Edwina is on the run.

All she can see is Darla lying on the ground in a heap. She runs for her lover, oblivious to the danger of the beast. The demon tosses women aside like they are sticks. He picks up a blonde and crunches his massive teeth into her torso then shakes his head, worrying her body as she screams in pain. Blood flies everywhere before her body breaks apart. Torso and arms fall in a heap. Legs go down the monster’s throat.

Marcel dashes in like some action movie star, quick and steady on her feet despite her six-inch stilettos. The thing squeals like a six year old dosed up on helium and snaps at her. She tosses a frag grenade at its feet and rolls away. The explosion throws up a geyser of earth and shit, putting a momentary stop to the snapping.

Edwina dashes in shooting. She takes a flying leap sideways and manages to get quite a few into the bastard’s eyes. But it just shakes its giant floppy head, more goo flying out of elephant-sized ears.

“DOWN!” someone yells from behind, and Edwina drops like a rock.
A pair of RPGs shoot
overhead, followed by two more. She rolls over and gets a glimpse of the girls. At least six of them are loading everything they can carry and firing at will.

The monster rears back and whips its head forward on a neck that stretches like an accordion. Dagger-sized teeth snap over Marcel’s torso and lift her in the air. She screams, not in pain but in anger. This is the scream that Edwina remembers from a few nights ago when she tortured the Sons of Satan’s Redeeming Cock to death.

Marcel doesn’t go down without a fight. As she is lifted into the air, she grabs a wire on each side of her leather jacket. Pins pop like metal popcorn as every grenade she has left is primed. Blood erupts from her body and flies out of her mouth but she gets out one last “FUCK YOU” before the frags go off.

Edwina throws herself over Darla and holds on for dear life. The explosions come fast and furious, ripping at the air. The smell of cordite, already strong, becomes overpowering. Pieces of metal fly in every direction; smaller ones pierce Edwina’s skin across her ass and back and one thigh. She screams as the pain rips over her body like she is on fire.

She may have blacked out for a little bit, maybe a few seconds, but the darkness subsides and she comes back to reality. She tries to roll over, but the pain from her wounds makes her scream again. Her voice is raw and she wonders how long she has been screaming.

She reaches out with one hand, but no one is there to comfort her. The red thing stumbles toward them again, limping, one leg dragging behind its neck. Its head is at an odd angle, and its jaw hangs limp. It looks dazed. One eye hangs from the socket by a long piece of yellow goop.

Darla doesn’t move. Edwina grabs her arm and tugs, but she is too tired to try to lift her fallen lover. Every nerve is frazzled, and her brain runs in slow motion.

“Get up, Darla. Get up, Darla. Get up, Darla. GET THE FUCK UP!”

The beast shuffles close, and half of its damaged jaw snaps shut. In a few seconds it is going to scoop up Edwina and Darla and that will be that. Not exactly an auspicious end.
Not exactly noble.
She thought they would have years and years of mayhem ahead of them. She did not imagine she
would end up as kitty food for a demon.

The thing snuffles close, long snout dripping yellow fluid that smells of shit, death and piss. She doesn’t want to die in that monster’s mouth.
So long cruel world, at least I got to piss in the face of adversity and knee my ex-husband in the balls.

As though her mind has reverted to childhood in the face of her impending end, Edwina hears the ridiculous sound of tinkling kiddie music. It peals over and over, a familiar melody that almost makes her long for the carefree days of her youth. It is the sound of an ice cream truck, and it is getting closer.

A shape blots out the sun and then slams into the demon’s head. Edwina sees the face of a man … Wait, is it two men? Is she seeing things? She could swear she just caught a glimpse of a pair of Siamese twins hanging out the back of a flying ice cream truck.

The truck circles around, and indeed there is a man leaning out of the open back door, one hand clutching a large round toy and the other holding on for dear life. Another hand reaches from under his arm and spins the toy’s face. Piss-yellow light slices out and cuts the demon in half like the mother fucker of all butter knives through the world’s most disgusting hunk of butter.

Saved by a man, well isn’t that just
fuck
all.

The demon’s head flops right next to Edwina with a thunderous thud. She gasps for breath and watches in awe as the truck settles to the ground with a ferocious clank. It doesn’t land so much as come to a screeching stop on the front two wheels. The back two strike the ground, and the guy falls backwards into the truck.

A scream of pain or anger.
A shape tumbles out the back and rolls into a neat somersault before coming to unsteady feet. The thing is brown and covered in hair. She gasps, thinking another demon is about to finish her off. But her double take reveals the thing to be a monkey. The beast has only one arm, which he is currently using to dig in his ass. It is definitely a he; the creature has
a swinging block and tackle that piss
her off. Just like the rest of her day. Pissed and getting worse.

The guy in the back of the truck follows the monkey by getting to his feet and promptly falling out of the truck. He lands face first, and for a split second Edwina thinks she sees a small head sticking out from between his shoulder blades again.
A smart little grin on the thing’s face.
But a grin gleaming with razor-sharp teeth.

“Fucking Phil!” the man screams as he staggers to his feet and then slips in demon guts.

Not just saved by a man but saved by a clumsy one with a little guy strapped to his back and a one-armed monkey for a companion. Can this day get any fucking worse?

A pair of shaggy hooved feet approach
. They trot in a circle around her, and the face of the strange British fellow comes into view. It sticks out its tongue and licks her across one cheek.

“‘Sall right, love, Goatboy is here.”

“A talking goat?” The man who fell out of the truck stands up and stares.

“Your fucking problem, mate? You got a toy strapped to your back. And you came in a flying car.”

“Good point.”

My Friend Can Only Mumble on Account of the Ball Gag

Leon follows Bud out of the sex shop and into the chaos of the busy street with his backpack over one shoulder and the angel’s bloodstained battleaxe over the other. Cars and trucks are blocking traffic, some empty of passengers, some with passengers empty of entrails. Most of the stalled vehicles have bloody handprints smeared down the sides and flattened tires.
 
Bud and Leon round the corner to the parking lot, where Bud’s pickup awaits, and they stop cold in their tracks. A giant demon with an enormous pot belly and tiny twitchy wings has peeled back the roof of Bud’s truck cab, and is in the midst of filling it with foul-smelling demon shit. The windshield is shattered and spread around the truck.

Bud stomps the ground and yells at the disgusting beast, “What the fuck!?! You’re shitting in my truck!”

The demon peers at Bud with beady eyes sunk in a face that looks much too small for its oversized cranium. “So fucking what?”

“So … fuck … what …”
 
Bud walks in a half-circle around his trunk in awe of the shitting demon and the inhumanly malodorous excrement splattering the inside of his cab. He uses one hand to hold his straggly gray hair out of his face and levels the M-16 at the demon with the other. “Go shit somewhere else. My favorite Hendrix CD was in there, you stinking son of a bitch!”