Tentacle Death Trip (15 page)

Drac
felt a crack and saw a flash. He brought his hand to
the back of his glass skull and felt a small gash. Then he fell into a
laughing, black abyss.

V.

Samson heard
Drac
hit the ground. Another hulking thug similar to Cop
stood behind him holding a club with small spikes protruding out of it. This
guy was identical to Cop except on his chest was written the word
SLAVE
.

Silver spoke
again, this time his voice sounding less amused and more intense. He took a few
steps off the stage and stood close to Samson.

“You’re going to
get into your car and you’re going to race across the bridge to the city……..to
Jack.”

Samson trembled
with adrenalin. There was so much anger it actually calmed him, covered his
body and mind with a blanket of focused intensity. Everything had led to this,
his one chance of finding Jack. Tomato Joe had mentioned Silver and how he
bought people. But could that scumbag biker be trusted? Was Silver just playing
with him? He had to find out.

Samson stood
watching Cop and Slave putting
Drac
into his car.
They pushed it up onto the bridge. Then they turned around and stared at
Samson, their milky eyes glowing.

“Fine,” Samson
said. “I’ll race.” He got into his car.

Silver smiled
widely, his voice becoming cheerful again. “Okay then. Let’s get this show on
the road….”

He was interrupted
by the roar of the crowd and for a minute, Mr. Silver thought it was simply
because of the announcement but then he heard shouts by the finish line.

“Oh my god!” someone yelled. “It’s Gabby!”

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

Didja
hear that, folks?
Gabby’s
back!

Yowzah
!

*

Mr. Silver smiled as Gabby clawed her way out of the huge
hunk of
Yugg
meat he had awarded
Drac
.

It had been such an ingenious plan to resurrect that crazy
bitch and put in the meat. The look on
Drac’s
face
was priceless, that look of shock and awe.

Gabby crawled out of the gooey cube of flesh. Her limbs
were twisted like misshapen tree roots, her nude body covered in dark green
moss and gaping holes that oozed black
goo
. She
pulled her hammer out from between her legs and her cell phone from her ass
cheeks. One hand held the phone to her ear while the other waved the hammer in
the air. She ran over to the crowd and started to make quick work of the
spectators.

“Cha-cha-cha-cha-cha-cha-cha-cha-chat!” she muttered
through broken lips into the cell phone while using her pink hammer to attack
the crowd indiscriminately. Young women were beaten to a pulp, their breasts
crushed, ripped off, and thrown into the air. The skulls of children were
bashed in until brains flew into the air like wet popcorn. Several men had the
pleasure of the pink hammer slamming into their scrotum, popping their
testicles into oblivion.

Silver nodded in approval, loving the spectacle of it all.
He looked at Samson who was staring at his hands as they gripped the steering
wheel. Silver scoffed. Some people just didn’t appreciate good entertainment.

After a few dozen people were slaughtered, he turned to his
enforces. “Okay, you can get that
cunt
out of here
now,” he said to Cop and Slave. The two hulking thugs ran over to the audience.

Just as they got to her, Gabby ran down the stands,
tripping over several spectators who did nothing but watch the bloody
entertainment. The two hulks stomped through the crowd, following Gabby and
finally getting a hold of her at the bottom of the bleachers.

Cop grabbed
Gabby’s
shoulders,
his fingers digging into the gaping holes. Slave grabbed her waist and squeezed
hard. The top half of
Gabby’s
body fell to the ground
and pulled from Cop’s grip. It started to crawl away while the bottom half
kicked at Slave
.

“Gabby! Gabby! Gabby!” the crowd cheered and dozens of
people pushed Cop and Slave aside. They started stomping both pieces of Gabby
into mossy pulp.

CHAPTER
TWENTY TWO

Well, gang, you
saw it for yourself. Not only did you get a hell of a race but you were witness
to
Gabby’s
violent return and her second violent
demise. Two deaths for that sweet little bitch! Wow!

And not only
that…but we have a second race ahead of us! Sure,
Drac
had to be, uh, persuaded but he’s been strapped into his car and the engine’s
revved up. He’ll be waking up any second. And look at Samson
there,
I haven’t seen him so intense since the race started. This is going to be one
hell of a show!

*

I.

Drac
woke up with his hands gripping the steering wheel.
What the hell happened? He remembered looking up at Silver and then….

Pain pierced the
back of his glass skull. Yeah, he remembered. Someone must have sucker punched
him.

He looked through
the windshield at
R’lyeh
and shuddered.

Streams of
memories flooded through his mind.
Intricately drawn blueprints in a rotting book
.
Words of an unknown language carved into
stone.
Ancient machines pumping gasoline into his body.
An
atrous
sky falling.
A cascade of tentacles.

Millions of tentacles.

He felt a sinister familiarity. Hadn’t his father
mentioned a city like this once? Didn’t he say a man couldn’t gaze upon it
without going insane?

Drac
was no stranger to the preternatural but the very
sight of the city made his bowels ache in fearful anticipation. This was no
ordinary city of ancient times. This was no quaint Atlantis or beautifully
obscure
Carcosa
. This was a city that was carved from
horror itself, a pulsating totem to an ultra-terrestrial civilization.

From outside he
heard Silver’s voicing blaring, “Get ready, drivers!”

In the rearview
mirror he saw the boardwalk, the audience standing on their seats, and Silver’s
face on a giant video screen.
Drac
went to put his
car in reverse but then felt a rumbling.

The part of the
bridge behind him was collapsing into the water.

Silver’s voice
sounded again. “You better get going, gentlemen. The bridge is taking part in
the race, too!”

Drac
quickly looked over at Samson whose car was right next
to him. The two men’s eyes met for a split second, silently acknowledging that
they both had to get the hell out of there.

They sped off down
the bridge.

II.

As he drove down
the green bridge alongside
Drac
, Samson looked into
his rearview mirror and saw the bridge collapsing behind him in a cloud of
emerald dust as green rubble fell into the sea. There was nowhere to go but
forward, no turning back from the race into this mysterious city.

The bridge seemed
to go on forever and the city of
R’lyeh
didn’t seem to get any closer. Samson looked at
Drac
,
expecting to see some guns drawn or some other threat but was surprised to see
the glass-
skulled
racer looking straight ahead as if
in a trance. Maybe the guy had made the same decision as Samson. He was simply
going to go forward with the expectation of violent, bizarre death. There was
no other outcome. Silver had made sure of it. How foolish they both were to
expect any different.

There were no
happy endings.

But
what about Jack?

Had Silver bought
him? Was Tomato Joe just one of Silver’s tools for domination? Maybe he went
around stealing kids for his own amusement, for entertainment.

Samson knew he was
a fool to believe Silver was going to give him the opportunity to find out the
truth about Jack. That wasn’t the type of game Silver played. But maybe, just
maybe…..

Any hope was good
hope.

He looked into the
sky above
R’lyeh
and wanted so much to see Jack’s
face up in the clouds, some evidence the boy was in some sort of heaven. The
city seemed to rise up higher and block his view of the clouds. Samson could
see now that Silver had placed some of his troops on the walls of the city.
This was surprising since it didn’t appear to be an easy task getting anyone up
on top of those bizarre and misshapen walls. The troops were dressed in bright
yellow armor constructed mostly out of pre-war police uniforms and whatever
material Silver had hoarded. Demonic masks covered the faces of every soldier,
reminding Samson of golden gargoyles.

It would have been
great if he could have slowed down and gotten behind
Drac
,
letting the guy take the risk of being first within the city. But because the
bridge was collapsing behind them, Samson couldn’t do it. They had to go in
together.

They were a
quarter mile away from the city when Samson saw the dark crimson light at the
entrance, glowing in between two monstrous sigils engraved on the wall. The
light opened like an incarnadine anus, expanding until the wall was replaced by
an orifice large enough for the two cars to get through.

As they approached
it, Samson thought about driving off the bridge and into the water. Maybe he
could swim somewhere safe, forget about the goddamn race. He could start a new
life somewhere, find an uncontaminated beach, and just live.

Or maybe he could
just drown himself, finally give himself up to fate, to death, to whatever
unknown is waiting out there.

But what if Silver
wasn’t lying? What if the truth about Jack was somewhere in the city?

Side by side with
Drac
, Samson entered the city of
R’lyeh
, a thick, reddish darkness
enveloping them. They were sucked into the crimson light.

III.

Drac
wasn’t surprised Samson had chosen not to attack.
Sure, it was a race to the death but since the events on the shore, it was
clear that Samson and
Drac
were, as strange as it
sounded, in it together.
Drac
knew the two of them
would probably not survive.

When they entered
the city,
Drac
took his foot off the gas pedal and
coasted his way inside. He hadn’t expected there to be such darkness. It was as
if there was a roof over their heads where there wasn’t one.
Drac
looked to the sky but there were just inky shadows,
like jellied smoke.

He engaged his
car’s tentacles to act as feelers but they weren’t working. Had Silver messed
with his car when
Drac
was asleep?

The headlights of
the cars didn’t do much to disperse the blackness so both
Drac
and Samson coasted slowly, now realizing that anything could be waiting for
them. Where were they supposed to go?

Drac
didn’t know.

So he just kept
driving into the black.

IV.

There were roads now.
Samson hadn’t really expected there to be considering the city was supposed to
be an ancient one built before mankind even had use for them. But
Drac
and he drove down a street that ran between massive
insectoid
skyscrapers.

The road itself
was made of smooth, glistening obsidian and the buildings were rocking back and
forth, squirming and quivering like monolithic tongues. Gaping holes in the
buildings puffed out clouds of yellow mist that spread out like sinister
parachutes.

As if made of
clay, the buildings started transform into bizarre shapes, hanging over the
road like sinister tree branches. Samson sped as fast as he could, worried the
buildings might just drop right down on him, crushing him beneath their ungodly
weight.

Drac
was right behind him, swerving now as if dodging
invisible obstacles.

A rush of sound
erupted from Samson’s right and he grabbed his ear in pain. A hole in one of
the buildings had erupted with tiny flying things, things too small for Samson
to identify but he could hear them biting at his car, scraping the paint off.

Some of the things
crashed into his windshield and he put his face close to the glass. They were
tiny
octopoid
creatures with wings. Their tentacles
frantically kicked at the glass.

Some of the
creatures flew in through the back of his car where the back window used to be.
One flew around Samson’s head and landed on his nose, sticking its tentacles in
his nostrils, intertwining with his nose hairs.

“Goddamn!” he
swatted at the thing, crushing it against his skin, its body popping into a
gooey stain. He sent his fists around the car, grabbing some of the creatures
and squeezing until they burst. Soon the remainder of them left the way they
came and went back to attacking the front of the car.

Samson turned on
the windshield wipers and slaughtered dozens of them.

There was an
explosion behind him that rocked his car. In the rearview he saw a fireball
growing behind
Drac’s
car.

“Shit,” he said,
as he drove on, wanting to avoid being caught in the fire or being rammed by
Drac
. Up ahead there was a cathedral-like building that
looked like it had been constructed out of glass, machine parts, and
elephantine intestines.

The machine parts
were like nothing Samson had ever seen: misshapen gear-like things turned at
obscure angles, twisting into shapes and forming new spires of the cathedral.
Black holes formed and disappeared on the brick walls while green metal spears
jutted out and were quickly sucked back like serpent’s tongues.

A figure cloaked
in a yellow robe stood in front of the cathedral. Samson turned just in time,
barely missing the figure but glimpsing the thing’s face. It looked like the
underside of a horseshoe crab with glistening segmented appendages that wiggled
obscenely.

Drac
was right behind him as Samson sped down another
street, this one with buildings made entirely of red crystal. He could see
there were things encased within the crystal, like insects in amber. But these
weren’t insects.

They looked
humanoid except they had red and white tentacles instead of heads. As Samson
drove by, each of these things started to move through the crystal. He grabbed
his gun but realized it’d probably be useless against so many of those things.

Drac
pulled up along side him, his arm out the window,
shooting at the tentacle-head things that were now crawling out of their homes
and leaping onto the street like angry gorillas. Samson drove straight into
one, flipping it over the car. He looked into the rearview and saw it splatter
on the road.

He brought his gun
up and shot out the window at some of the things. They jumped onto his car.
Samson swerved back and forth, successfully rocking them off but not before one
reached into the car and started to strangle him.

“Jesus Christ!” he
said, pistol-whipping the slimy hands of the creature. Its tentacle reached
into the car and slithered between Samson’s legs. It caressed his crotch and
then shot down to his feet, pushing down the brake pedal.

The car skidded
but Samson turned the wheel to the right, whipping the creature off the car and
into the path of
Drac
who ran into it, decorating the
street with gore.

Samson lost some
headway but he stepped on the gas and followed
Drac
down the road, shooting at the creatures who dared to get near the car.

At the end of the
street there was another cathedral, this one a gigantic mass of sludge and
vegetation. Samson saw there was nowhere to go but into the building. Its huge
sigil-covered doors opened and he followed
Drac
into
the darkness of the chthonic temple.

V.

The
sound of chattering teeth.

That’s all Samson
heard. The roar of his engine was no match for the noise of something that
waited in the darkness. Next to him he could make out the faint interior light
of
Drac’s
car which illuminated the guy’s glass
skull, making it appear as if it floated there in the car separate from its
body.

Up ahead there was
a flash of
viridescent
light. Samson slowed down and
swerved to the left, knowing he might very well end up in some hole or trap.
Instead, he ran something over, something that crunched under his tires.
Something slammed into the right side of his car. It was
Drac
who was trying to avoid the same green flash.

“Watch
yourself
,” Samson said, pretending for a moment that the
other driver could hear him.

The green flash grew
into a door, a gaping hole that led them into a chamber of what looked like it
was constructed out of lizard skin. In the chamber there was a seemingly
infinite number of floating spheres. Samson and
Drac
drove straight into them.

The spheres
bombarded the two cars, cracking glass and splattering unearthly
goo
. It was like driving in a rainstorm if the raindrops
were huge and glowing, quivering into different forms. The spheres turned into
things Samson could not comprehend, could never describe.

Ahead of him the
cascade of sphere-things pulled apart like a curtain, putting a hole in the
lizard-skin room and Samson found himself driving straight into a courtyard
full of………

VI.

Flowers.

It was a shocking
juxtaposition, driving from a spooky spherical abyss to a courtyard of light
and flowers.
Drac
kept trying to get his tentacles to
work and finally they listened to him, coming out from underneath his car like
reluctant kittens.
Drac
tried getting them to feel
things out in front of him but it was no use. After a few seconds, they
drooped. It was as if the city itself was sucking the energy from the tendrils,
making them nothing but flaccid appendages.