Grasshopper Jungle (39 page)

Earl Elgin Sr. let loose a burst of rifle fire that shattered nearly every window on my house, as well as one on the driver's side of Robby's old Ford Explorer—which had really taken a beating since the attack by Hungry Jack the night before.

“Holy shit!” I said.

Boxers, T-shirts, and Styrofoam containers of dehydrated ramen noodles flew everywhere.

Ingrid, who was not particularly startled by the gunfire, was shitting in the front yard when it happened.

That was exactly when Earl Elgin Sr. told us to put our hands up and surrender, because he and his boy were going to become some kind of national heroes for capturing the invading Rat Boys from Mars.

“Shoot them in the balls, Dad,” EJ Elgin urged.

“Uh,” Robby said.

Both of us had our hands raised in the intergalactic gesture of
Please do not shoot us in the balls
.

“Earl Elgin, you shot my goddamned house!” I said.

Earl Elgin Sr. looked confused.

Earl Elgin Sr. said, “What the fuck did you creatures do with the Szerba boy?”

Robby Brees and I did not get killed that day by Earl Elgin Sr. and his one-balled son, EJ.

But it took some dramatic pleading from me to stop Earl Elgin Sr. from shooting me and allow me to take my head off so I might show him who was actually inside the clinging and form-fitting Rat Boy from Mars jumpsuit.

“Thank you, Saint Kazimierz,” I said.

I felt like the virgin saint was looking out for me and Robby.

There was no other way I could explain
not
being shot in the balls.

We left Earl and EJ to their hurried departure preparations and got into Robby's battered Ford Explorer.

And Robby said, “Holy shit, Austin,” as we drove away from my house and headed toward the Del Vista Arms.

What could I do?

I ASKED MYSELF THIS:

What could I do?

Just one week earlier, everything was perfect. Everything was Iowa blue plaid. Robby and I skated in Grasshopper Jungle. Shann Collins made me very horny. There were no books mentioning Catholics or masturbation available in the library at Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy. Ollie Jungfrau dreamed of internet porn and Saturday morning donuts with me and Johnny McKeon.

All of that equaled
normal
.

Then Grant Wallace and the Hoover Boys beat the shit out of Robby Brees and me. They threw our shoes up on the roof at Grasshopper Jungle because they said we were queers from Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy, and after that, the whole world went to shit.

So, what could I do?

Robby played
Let It Bleed
.

Although it had been made more than forty years before, it seemed like every song on that Rolling Stones album was precisely about Robby and me, or Unstoppable Soldiers, Ealing, Iowa, and McKeon Industries.

Robby sang, “
We all need someone we can feed on. And if you want it, you can feed on me
 . . .”

“Uh,” I said.

We smoked cigarettes.

Ingrid sighed and yawned in the backseat.

And at the exact moment we pulled up to Robby Brees's apartment, the cook from the destroyed
Pancake House
, Louis, whose real name was Ah Wong Sing, happened to be hiding inside a cinder-block cubicle where dumpsters were stored at the Del Vista Arms.

Louis's clothes were ripped. He was missing one shoe and his shirt hung open. Dried blood stippled his torn cook's trousers. But he was very, very happy to see us.

He also did not glow red when I looked at him through the eyes of my grimacing lemur mask.

But Louis was so psychologically worn from what he had seen and been through that he did not even seem startled by the Rat Boy from Mars with the fully automatic AR15-A3 Tactical Carbine replica paintball gun.

“Good morning, Louis,” I said.

I waved my open hand in the intergalactic Rat Boy from Mars gesture of
This is the end of the world, but I am politely greeting you anyway
.

“Um,” Robby said.

Robby Brees was not wearing his grimacing lemur mask. “It's just us, Louis. Me, and Austin from the secondhand store. You know? Austin Szerba? The dynamo kid?”

Robby Brees held up a lit cigarette in the intergalactic gesture of
We are the skater kids who smoke in the alley, and shit like that.

Louis had not slept in two days. He was spent. He'd had sexual intercourse with Robby Brees's mother three times in the previous twenty-four hours. After he ran away from the carnage at the Kelsey Creek Bridge, Louis came back to the Del Vista Arms, thinking he would find safety and Connie Brees.

Instead, Louis found the Unstoppable Soldier called Hungry Jack.

The end of the world was one week old, and people everywhere were finding out about it. And the Battle of Ealing began that morning at the Del Vista Arms Luxury Apartments.

Here is what happened:

Hungry Jack was confused, and Louis was a very motivated runner when being chased by Unstoppable Soldiers. Hungry Jack had been huddling beneath the aluminum roof that covered a row of cars at the Del Vista Arms when Louis ran through the parking lot.

Unstoppable Soldiers are like cats in that they are stimulated by movement. They are also like walleyes in that they only want to do two things. The two things walleyes and Unstoppable Soldiers want to do is fuck and eat.

Unstoppable Soldiers are not as intelligent as either cats or fish.

So when Louis managed to slip inside the dumpster corral, Hungry Jack looked around for a while and then forgot what he had been looking for.

Unfortunately for Robby and me, Hungry Jack became stimulated by the movement of a Rat Boy from Mars in a tight blue-and-white jumpsuit. The Unstoppable Soldier that had hatched out from Hungry Jack's body in a cornfield outside of Waterloo while Robby and I stood in horrified amazement and watched it happen became very aroused by the motion around Robby Brees's Ford Explorer.

Hungry Jack flitted down to the lot from the rooftop of the car park.

I saw him first.

Through the lenses on my grimacing lemur mask, a brilliant flash of red caused me to momentarily consider that I had indeed ignited the flammable, carcinogenic, messed-up-sperm-causing mask with my Benson & Hedges cigarette.

Hungry Jack looked like a ball of flame as he flew down from the awning above the car park.

“Holy shit,” I said. “These things really
do
work.”

I was impressed by the technology of the grimacing lemur mask.

Unfortunately, I should have been more impressed by the speed with which Hungry Jack closed the distance between us.

It was also impressive how Hungry Jack picked me up by my head. Until that moment, I had never in my life been picked up by my head. I did find myself marveling for an instant at how well the grimacing lemur mask protected my skull from the piercing barbs of the studded spikes all along Hungry Jack's tri-segmented pincers.

But it was only an instant.

Then I screamed.

And while I was screaming, Hungry Jack unhinged his bear-trap mandibles in order to crush my Rat Boy skull. I looked over at Robby, thinking my beautiful friend, a person I loved very much but had also inflicted a great deal of pain upon, was going to be the last image burned into the screens of my dying eyes.

Robby Brees stood there, looking more cool and superhero-ish than any Lutheran boy from Iowa ever did, calmly smoking a cigarette while his eyes, which were the color of robin egg Cadbury chocolate Easter treats, focused directly on the monster that was just about to eat my head.

Robby raised his paintball gun and let go a burst of three rounds that splattered into Hungry Jack's mouth and compound eyes.

Pop! Pop! Pop!

The paintballs gushed.

The Unstoppable Soldier received a faceful of the blood of his God.

Fortunately, this caused Hungry Jack to release his vise clamp on my head. I hit the ground, and Hungry Jack reeled away from the concussion of the blast.

“Shit! Shit! Shit! Holy shit!” was all I could say.

Excrementum Sanctum.

And while Unstoppable Soldiers' exoskeletons are as impenetrable as the hull on an aircraft carrier, the blood of their God rusts every rivet in their construction, and sinks them on the spot.

“Glad we didn't have to use my sperm,” Robby said.

“Uh,” I said, dazed, on my hands and knees in the parking lot at the Del Vista Arms. “Thank you, Saint Kazimierz. And thank you, Robby Brees.”

Louis, whose real name was Ah Wong Sing, cowered in the doorway to the dumpster corral.

Hungry Jack hissed and gurgled.

The Unstoppable Soldier looked confused, if such an expression could manifest itself on the face of a six-foot-tall beast that looked like a praying mantis. Hungry Jack's left arm fell off first. The right arm disjointed and plunked down onto the ground seconds later. The tooth-spiked claw arms rattled around on the pavement of the parking lot, spastically opening and closing, opening and closing, as they scraped along the ground with no coherent mission.

Where the claw arms had detached from Hungry Jack's thorax, a gooey stream of slick yellow fluid burbled like twin pots of boiling unstoppable cornmeal mush. Then Hungry Jack's chin lowered and his head rolled away from his body, landing on the ground between the two flailing arms.

What was left of Hungry Jack scampered away on four gangly legs, which soon became three, then two, and the entire Unstoppable Soldier collapsed in puddles of oily mush.

Robby Brees saved my life.

Being a historian naturally has its dangers, but this is my job.

I tell the truth.

AT THE CONCLUSION
of the First Battle of Ealing, which took place in a parking lot at the Del Vista Arms Luxury Apartments, the Unstoppable Soldier that had once been growing inside a homeless man named Hungry Jack lay in a soupy yellow mess of jumbled bug parts.

At that moment, there were only three Unstoppable Soldiers remaining on the surface of the planet called Earth. They were Tyler Jacobson, Travis Pope, and Travis Pope's wife, Eileen, who had filled Duane Coventry's house on Onondaga Street with a jellied, pulsating black goo of fertilized eggs.

Robby Brees and I, the two Rat Boys from Mars who were the only people capable of saving the planet called Earth, had no way of calculating how many other Unstoppable Soldiers there were, and no way of knowing where to look for them.

So Robby put on his grimacing lemur mask and the two of us entered the hallway of the Del Vista Arms Luxury Apartments. Ingrid, my silent golden retriever, and Louis, the equally silent cook from the most certainly closed-down
Pancake House
, cautiously followed.

We were there to save Robbie's mom, Connie Brees.

“Aaah!” screamed Eunice Mayhew when Robby Brees and I entered the hallway of the Del Vista Arms.

Eunice Mayhew was the manager of the Del Vista Arms. At the exact moment Robby and I stepped through the entrance that led in from the parking lot, Eunice Mayhew was posting two more Pay or Quit notices on locked doors to silent apartments.

Eunice Mayhew did not glow red.

Eunice Mayhew was fifty-three years old. She had a figure like an upended pickle barrel, and was just about the same height. Her hair was the color of cigarette ash, and her skin had a similar hue to the gritty waterline around Robby Brees's bathtub, where I'd showered after spending the night with Robby earlier that week. I know that you would not eat either one of those things: cigarette ash or the ring inside Robby Brees's bathtub.

I also do not believe an Unstoppable Soldier would eat Eunice Mayhew.

“Aaah!” Eunice Mayhew screamed again. She threw her hands up, in what I suppose was the intergalactic gesture of
I surrender to the conquering Rat Boys from Mars
.

If somewhere there existed entire planets of Eunice Mayhews, Robby Brees and I could rule the cosmos.

Eunice Mayhew is also a very solid Iowa name.

A name like Eunice Mayhew says
Sperm met egg in Iowa, and zygote grew up to become a bingo-playing, quilting square-dancer with a body like an upended pickle barrel
.

At the exact moment Eunice Mayhew screamed and two Rat Boys from Mars occupied the hallway at the Del Vista Arms, Shann Collins was lying down on her bed inside the Eden Project silo.

Shann was scared, and she was crying, too.

Wendy and Johnny McKeon assumed their daughter was crying because Shann was scared about the monsters, and worried about her friends who had gone out hunting the beasts.

It was not exactly why Shann Collins was crying.

Earlier, Shann and Johnny had crawled up to the surface in order to use their cell phones.

There was no more cellular service at all in Ealing, Iowa.

Shann and Johnny saw the forest-like columns of smoke that ringed the horizon.

They had gone back inside Eden, and Shann slipped into her bedroom, where she lay down on her bed and cried.

The night before, Shann Collins and I had sexual intercourse on the floor of the Eden bowling alley while I stared at a pair of shoes that had belonged to Wanda Mae Rutkowski.

The healthy Polish sperm I deposited inside Shann Collins's vagina found its way to a receptive egg.

Shann Collins was already pregnant, and she did not know anything about it.

The New Universe began in Eden one week after the end of the world began in Ealing.

Eden Five needed us, and Shann Collins and I were Adam and Eve to every New Human.

I had Unstoppable Sperm.

Dr. Grady McKeon would have been very pleased.

As Shann Collins, who was pregnant with a strong Polish boy who was going to be named Arek Andrzej Szczerba, cried on her bed, a volcano called Huacamochtli in Guatemala exploded in a massive eruption that blacked out the sun.