Tentacle Death Trip (8 page)

CHAPTER
THIRTEEN

Yowzah
! This is exciting, folks! Our racers are
nearing the service station so now it’s time for them to fill their vehicles up
and get a little bit of refreshments and supplies. Boy, do they need it!
Yowzah
!!!

Our man Samson
got a little roadside assistance from
New Jersey
’s
favorite psycho Lee
Basatan
. Isn’t that hilarious?

*

I.

The gas station
was surrounded by bare-chested men in torn denim jeans. They held guns and blades
of various types but all wore the same style of dark aviator sunglasses. Their
muscles flexed uncontrollably and their pores sweated green pus.

Drac’s
car was next to the first pump sucking down the
gasoline with several tentacles while
Drac
himself
was leaning against his vehicle, looking out into the distance to see what had
happened to Samson.

He had been
tempted to mess with the guy on the side of the road but there was something
dishonorable about that. Sure,
Drac
wanted to win the
race. He wanted to win it with every fiber of his freakish being but there was
an aspect of his personality that would not allow him to snuff a guy who’s on
the side of the road fixing a flat tire.

Drac
walked over to another pump, pulled a hose off, and
put the nozzle to his mouth. As he sucked down gasoline, his glass head turned
from transparent to an amber color. He felt stronger, more focused, and more
intent on winning the race.

“Hey,
dumbass
,” said a voice behind him. He turned around and saw
the woman who dressed like a teenage girl and talked into her cell phone like a
crazy person. What was her name? Oh yeah, Gabby.

“What?”
Drac
said.

Gabby laughed.
“What the hell is wrong with your voice? You sound like a little girl.”

“What do you
want?”

“Stop hogging the
gas,
dipshit
.” She started playing with her hair,
putting it into a ponytail, taking it out of the ponytail, putting it back in a
ponytail. “Leave some for the rest of us.”

“You want to start
something, do it on the road. Then you’ll see,”
Drac
said, nodding his head and pointing at the road.

Gabby laughed.
“Yeah, I bet I will, fag.” She walked away towards the main building of the gas
station. Several guards were standing around, eyeing up the racers and smoking
mushroom cigarettes. She walked up to the biggest guard and said, “Hey, you
mind if I…
..?
”

The guard puffed
pinkish smoke into the air and held out the cigarette to Gabby. She took it and
helped herself to a long deep drag. “Thanks.” She gave it back to the man and
walked away.

The drug hit her
like a sloppy fist. Yellow hues shoved a headache into her skull, twisting her
neck around until she was looking out at an obscure angle. Everyone around her
was wearing thin veils over their faces: some yellow, some green, and some red.
Black and bulbous forms appeared in the sky behind red lights that flickered on
the horizon. Gabby took a few steps and no longer felt the dirt below her feet
but rather cold cobblestones.

Squid-like insects
crawled out from in between the stones followed by plump, two-tailed scorpions.
Gabby tried stomping them with her foot but they simply crawled up through her
tennis shoe. The sound of a toilet flushing reverberated through her skull
followed by the sound of a high pitched cough and the slow, sloppy sounds of
bored sex.

“
Eww
, gross!” she said, falling backwards. The guard who had
given her a puff of his cigarette caught her in his burly arms. She saw herself
in the reflection of the man’s aviator glasses. The bottom half of her face was
made of short, pink tentacles.

The man said,
“Good stuff, eh?”

The insects faded
along with the bulbous, black forms in the sky.
Gabby’s
headache disappeared as she coughed up yellow smoke. “What the fuck did you
give me?”

“Just a little bit
of the
tcho
,” he said and then blew a kiss.

“Asshole,” Gabby
said as she watched the man walk away. She wished she could shoot that
motherfucker in the head.

A hand fell on
Gabby’s
shoulder. “Don’t you worry about him,
honey.
”

Mama Hell was
behind her, giving a motherly smile. Gabby soured her face and shook the hand
from her shoulder. “Excuse me?”

“You know men.
They just like playing with a cute girl.”

“Why
don’t you mind your own business, you fat bitch?”

Mama Hell’s smile
disappeared instantly. Her eyes narrowed and her mouth curled. “You want me to ram
my fat fist up your little
cunt
?”

Gabby stared.

Mama Hell smiled.
“I can fondle your womb, honey. Then tear it out and feed it to the freaks.”
She moved her face close to
Gabby’s
. “Don’t tempt
me.”

Gabby walked away,
her eyes wide and her jaw trembling.

Mama Hell laughed
and turned to watch as Samson pulled up to the pumps.

II.

Mama was glad to
be there while that handsome son of a bitch pulled up to the pumps. It allowed
her to take her mind off the race. There wasn’t time to seduce the man.
 
Even if there was, Mama didn’t think she’d be
able to do it without thinking of her late husband and that wasn’t something
she wanted to do.

Mama watched
Samson get out of his car and look around. The guy looked apprehensive, even
skittish. It wasn’t what she expected to see in someone taking part in Silver’s
death race. She made eye contact with him and said, “Hey sailor.”

Samson nodded.

Mama walked over
to the passenger’s side of his car and looked through the window at Paulo.
“Cute boy.
You’re a sweetheart for saving him.”

Samson shrugged.

“Man of few words,
huh?” Mama said. She scrunched up her face in a smile and waved at Paulo who
did not return the gesture.

“What do you
want?” Samson said.

“No reason to get
all bent out of shape, honey.
Just trying to be nice.
All this violent racing, you’d think people would want some nice conversation
to calm their nerves.”

“My nerves are
fine.”

“Wow, you need to
loosen up, sweetie.” Mama tapped the roof of the car and walked away.

Samson shook his
head and went to the pump and started to fill his gas tank. He remembered a
time when you didn’t have to pump your own gas in New
Jersey. You would just sit in your car and let a guy
do it for you.

A high-pitched
voice from across the lot said, “Hey.”

Samson looked over
and saw a glass skull looking out of him from above a gas pump. It was
Drac
.

“Yeah?”

“You drive well.”

“Thanks,” Samson
said. What the hell was the guy trying to do? Lure him into some sort of faux
camaraderie in order to exploit his weaknesses? Not a chance. He cut off eye
contact with
Drac
and then ducked his head into the
car to talk to Paolo.

“You okay, bud?”

Paolo was one of
the crabs, holding onto it like it was a teddy bear. “I guess.”

“
That Mama Hell woman scare
you?”

“A little bit.”

“Well, she scares
me, too,” Samson said. He smiled. “But just a little bit.”

Paolo giggled and
let the crab loose. He crawled over into the driver’s seat and said, “You think
I can steer a little bit later?”

“I like you, kid,
but not that much.” He looked over to see if
Drac
was
still looking at him. He wasn’t. “You want to come with me to get some food,
kid?”

“No, I’ll stay
here.”

“Sure?” Samson
said. The boy nodded. “I’ll be right back.” He walked to the main building
where a few of Silver’s vendors were selling everything from dried horseshoe
crab to shoe-leather moonshine.

The first vendor
Samson reached had a selection of seafood but he never liked the stuff. The
short man who was selling it was wearing a shirt declared him the last of the
“Outlaw Order.”

“What? You don’t
enjoy seafood?” the outlaw said.

“No, I don’t.”
Samson walked over to the next person but the outlaw grabbed hold of his arm.

“I got squid, man.
Ever had squid? I mean good squid not that shit you get at Jap restaurants. I’m
talking Grade-A squid, man, the best. I heard Mr. Silver has it shipped in from
Queensbreath
. That’s in England,
you know, the old country.”

“No thanks,”
Samson said, pulling himself out of the man’s grip which was made of sharp,
dirty nails.

“Suit yourself,
asshole,” the outlaw said. He started muttering to himself.
“Too
good for squid, Blue Christ.”

The next vendor
sold what looked like homemade candy and small jars that were labeled “mixed
fruit juice” but was probably just a mixture of water, tree sap, and just the
tiniest amount of liquid from a real piece of fruit. An unscrupulous vendor
could make fifty bottles of “mixed fruit juice” with one orange and a whole lot
of toxic rain water.

Still, it would be
nice to have something other than water to drink. He had a few bottles of it
left in the car but the absence of flavor was getting to him so he grabbed two
bottles of the “fruit juice” and looked up at the vendor.

This guy was a
tall man covered in red tattoos. Spikes protruded out of the sides of his eyes
as well as his chin.
“Two juices?”

“Yeah.”

“Twenty.”

Samson dug into
his pockets and paid the man. New Jersey
was one of the only places where old pre-war currency was used in addition to
trades.

A high-pitched
voice behind him said, “The juice is terrible.”

Samson turned his
head to find
Drac
Dunwich
standing there grinning at him.

“What do you want
from me?” Samson said, tensing up, his heart fluttering into flight mode. He
didn’t have his gun on him.

“Want?
Nothing.
What do you think I want?”

“Stay away from
me, okay? You want a go at me, fine. Save it for the road.”

Drac’s
smile disappeared and was replaced by a sickly
frown. The gasoline in his glass skull bubbled. “You think? Look at my car.
Pure road hell brutality at its finest.
It’ll beat you.”

Samson couldn’t
believe guy with the glass skull and voice of a girl talking to him like that.
He wanted hit him in the face with the juice jars but instead said, “We’ll
see.”

Drac
said nothing. He just stared while his teeth started
to chatter. Samson expected them to pop out of his mouth at any second but
before they could,
Drac
walked back to his car.

“Jesus Christ,”
Samson said. He was just about ready to continue the race and was just waiting
for the announcement from the loudspeakers that hung from the top of the
service station.

He walked back to
the car, saw his tank was full, and put the hose back. He saw Mama Hell taking
off her sweater, revealed bare skin beneath.

But it wasn’t
her
skin.

Draped over her
shoulders was a shawl of flesh covered in red tattoos and glistening with
sweat. Two holes were cut out of the front to let Mama’s heavy, drooping
breasts out where they hung, their areolas staring sinisterly like the
pancake-sized eyes of an evil squid.

Samson couldn’t
tear his eyes away from her chest as the tattoos on her flesh-vest moved into
obscure and complex shapes, circling around each areola like crimson
whirlpools. A bitchy voice broke his trance.

“
Ew
, gross, put a shirt on!” Gabby yelled at Mama Hell who responded
with a smile and a middle finger. Obviously her fear of the older woman had
subsided.

A loud voice
echoed out from loudspeakers, “
Yowzah
! Racers,
it’s
Enzo
here. Finish your
business and get ready to roll! In ten minutes the race will continue and it’ll
be no holds barred and,
yowzah
, wait a second…..we
have a special announcement from Mr. Silver himself!”

Everyone at the
service station stopped what they were doing and perked their ears.

“Greetings, my
dear drivers, my dead road killers,” Mr. Silver said. “I have some special news
for you
all,
something I hope will make the race much
more exciting. As you know, after you leave the service station you’ll be
heading into the Zone of Dead Roads. As you may
not
know is that the
zone is inhabited by both the
Yuggs
and the
Zoners
. I am giving another contest within the race. You
are to find the leader of the
Zoners
, a man named
Lord Bing Bong, and you are to
kill
him. His people have made it
difficult for the
Yuggs
and I do have a soft spot for
those ugly little things. So there it is. The first to kill Lord Bing Bong gets
a special prize. Now get ready. The race will continue in three minutes.”

Samson felt a tug
on his shirt. It was Paulo.

“What’s a
Yugg
?”

“Not sure. Never
saw one but I think they’re some kind of typical post-nuke freak, a mutant.”

Paulo nodded. “I
have to go to the bathroom,” he said.

“You should’ve
gone earlier, kid. We
gotta
get going.”

“I’ll be quick.”

Samson put his
hand on Paulo’s back and guided him as they followed the signs to the restroom
on the side of the service station. The door was covered in yellowed newspaper
headlines all exclaiming the events leading to the nuclear holocaust of 2015.