In one final glance ahead, Reynold sees hundreds of Wasp Women swarming around a giant nest burrowed in the side of a mountain.
As the poison begins to blur his vision, the constant hum grows louder.
NINE
MEAT PETE
Reynold awakens several days later with a terrible pain in his gut. Three giant mucus-filled larvae are digging at the small hole in his abdomen, each trying desperately to be the first into the womb. Reynold stands and calmly plucks the parasites from his skin. He squeezes each of them until their flesh stretches like a water balloon and pops open. A clear substance similar to uncooked egg whites squirts violently out from between his fingers.
The venom still flows throughout his bloodstream. He is not able to make any sudden movements. It’s as if he is operating in slow motion.
He studies his surroundings. It appears they have been imprisoned in one of the hexagonal cells of the giant nest he had seen earlier. Everything is dark, but visible. The only light source comes from the small cell opening about thirty feet above. The wound on his arm has scabbed over and doesn’t hurt nearly as bad as it had days before, but he realizes this is probably due to some numbing effect caused by the venom.
Divey is lying on the floor beside him. Still breathing, but his body is noticeably larger. More of the strange purple skin is exposed. The outer layer is stretched across his new flesh in thin strips, resembling a spider’s web. Reynold runs his hands over his brother’s bloated body. He is cold. Dead man cold. But breathing. Divey is very much alive. But what is this that he is turning into?
Reynold notices several shriveled larvae resting on Divey’s stomach. The larvae appear to have been dead for several days. Reynold presses firmly against Divey’s abdomen—it is as hard as oak. Their teeth must not have been strong enough to penetrate this new skin. He balls his fist and knocks. Solid. But he is breathing. He is breathing. He is still alive.
Reynold suddenly becomes very nauseated. He hunches over and vomits on the floor. When he wipes his mouth with his shirt he notices the meat slabs have been removed from his body—and Divey’s, too. The slabs have been thrown randomly throughout the cell. Most are on the floor, some are stuck to walls and other places. One bloody steak rests perfectly like a widow’s peak on the crown of a human skull, still attached to its spinal cord. Reynold stares at the hollow sockets of the skull for several minutes in a daze. Then, as quickly as his body allows, he begins to gather the rest of the meat and pile it next to the skull. He sets the spinal cord up on its end and carefully stacks the meat around it until it is sturdy enough to stand on its own. He then rips the meat into thin strips and begins to construct a face.
Once the skull is completely covered, he decides to name it. Meat Pete.
“There you are, Petey boy. All finished!” Reynold says with a short laugh.
Meat Pete opens his mouth and exhales loudly. “Hhhhaaaaa, fuck! It’s great to be back!” He looks around the cell. “What the fuck is going on with your bro?” he asks, and before Reynold can answer, Pete looks back at him and asks, “Do you have my ciggies?”
“The Wasp Women, they took everything. Trust me, if I had them, then I’d be facking lit up.”
“Yeah, you know, I was gonna warn you ’bout killing that huge ass beast-thing. I had a feeling that the bitch was no damsel-in-distress. She was fucking hunting! Any fuck could have seen that, but no, not you . . . you bloody fuck-tard.”
“What the fack did you just call me?”
“I said that if it were your brother out there that day instead of you, then the two of youse wouldn’t even be in this mess. Hell, not only that, but Divey should be in fucking Terratown right now, stuffing his pockets full of cash, but no . . . you fucked that up for him too!”
“Shut your goddamn mouth, Pete! I swear to fack I’ll kick your bloody teeth in!”
“Look, man . . . you know it, I know it—the only reason that Divey isn’t lugging your comatose ass around the desert is because he felt obligated to fucking do right by you because youse two are brothers. That’s all. And furthermore, if he was thinking what was best for the team, what was best for him, then no doubt it’d be your fucking meat pile here, not mine, pal—”
“SHUT THE FACK UP!!!” Reynold kicks Pete’s skull and sends it flying through the air. He kicks and stomps on the pile of meat until the room looks similar to how it had when he first woke.
He lies on the floor, curled in the fetal position, and begins to cry.
Ten minutes later, Reynold begins reconstructing Pete.
TEN
WAKEY, WAKEY
Reynold walks his coin across the backside of his hand, shifting his fingers in such a way that it flips in a perfect fluid-motion along the crevices between his knuckles. It’s a trick he learned from Master Otto, a door-to-door salesman/magician who visited his house when he was very young. He had begged his parents to purchase the magician’s three-part Betamax series, which they quickly did, most likely just to rid the man from their home. The videos promised “Three hours of lies and illusions!” and the cover was littered with phrases such as, “Deceive your friends and family!” and “Get everything you want from anyone you want! Never work again!” The tapes were more about mastering pick-pocketing and lock-picking than magic. However, tricks such as the Knuckle Coin Walk were taught under sections titled, “What To Do With It Once You’ve Got It.”
Master Otto was not a very good magician at all.
Reynold places the coin on the backside of Pete’s raw hand. The coin slowly slides off the wet meat and dances across the floor. The trick is only mildly difficult. Pete clearly isn’t even trying.
A large shadow appears overhead. A Wasp Woman flutters down into the cell and lands next to Divey’s body. She scoops the dead larvae in her palms and pulls it close to her chest. She looks sad, as if they were her own children.
Reynold takes cover behind Pete.
“What the hell, man? Are you serious? You’re hiding from this buzzy biyatch?!” Pete asks.
“Shut the fack up, Pete! She’s going to hear you.” Reynold whispers. The Wasp Woman raises her head.
“You know, Rey, she’s actually kinda cute! You think she has a friend, huh?” Pete laughs like a dehydrated weasel. “And jeezus, man, just look. At. That. Ass!”
The Wasp Woman buzzes loudly and rushes toward them in flight. Reynold quickly grabs Pete with both hands and holds him up as a shield. She clutches them both tightly with all four appendages and repeatedly thrusts her stinger into Pete.
“Ha ha! Yeah baby! Give it to papa!” Pete screams with excitement.
The woman flitters her wings and lifts them up out of the cell. They go twirling through the air, tearing into the atmosphere like an angry missile. The rapid flickering of environment causes Reynold to become nauseous again. He closes his eye to keep from vomiting.
She loosens her grip. Reynold falls to the ground, his breath escapes him. Slabs of Pete rain down and scatter across the platform where they’ve been dropped. Reynold sits up and gasps for air. There is a terrible ringing in his ears. As his breath returns, he takes a look around. To his horror, he discovers his ears are not ringing . . . he is surrounded by the swarm.
The buzzing becomes so angry and brutal that Reynold has to cup his ears to keep his drums from bursting. More Wasp Women gather and the drone becomes even louder. The crowd of women all direct their attention toward a large black behemoth as it struggles to wriggle free from one of the nest cells.
Reynold’s heart races.
The behemoth squirms free and, with one giant leap, lands on the platform next to Reynold and Pete. The wings on its back are too tiny and weak to lift its gigantic body. The weight of the beast seems to boom-rattle the entire planet.
Its flesh is black with tiny flecks of red and yellow spotted throughout. Its head is set much lower than its shoulders and its neck extends out from its chest. Its arms are like two giant serrated fillet knives with points at the ends ins
tead of hands. Drool runs from its mouth in steady strings. The rest of its head is covered entirely with eyeballs.
The beast arches back and takes a deep breath. Veins expand and protrude through its rubber insect skin as it tightens its muscles. The beast leans over them and shrieks like a banshee into their faces.
Reynold, with his hands still cupped over his ears, stares at the abomination standing in front of him in horror.
“Fack . . .” he manages to mutter under his breath.
The behemoth raises its razor arms into the air, threatening to turn them into bloody pin cushions.
All at once, everything bursts. The Wasp Women, the behemoth—everything, everyone—is dead . . . except for Reynold. The nest, the mountain, and even Reynold himself, are now covered in the bright lime green of insect blood. Rivers of it pour down the mountain in long rushing streams and pool in the valley below.
Reynold looks around for an answer, some sort of explanation for this strange occurrence. Divey. He is standing in the distance behind him. His hand is resting on an NES controller installed in his left forearm. A cheat code. Divey had entered a cheat code and destroyed the enemies!
But, no, this isn’t Divey. It is something different. He raises his hands to his face and removes the skin, Divey’s skin, away from his skull like a hood. The face underneath is terrifying. Its head is bald and tiny, much too small for its massive body. One eye squints while the other remains wide and pupil-less. It has no nose and its teeth hang from its face like bony razor blade icicles.
His name is Vandenboom, a TV demon from Tokyo, but Reynold knows nothing of this. He stares at this strange new being in terrifying wonder. What has this monster done with Divey? Is it Divey? What does he want from us?
Without a word, Vandenboom turns his head and walks down a dirt path leading down the mountain.
Reynold feels as if his heart has stopped. He quickly regains composure, gathers up the slabs of Pete, and follows the purple monster down the trail.
He must find his brother.
ELEVEN
THE ROBOCOCKS
The bastard disappears.
Reynold follows his footsteps down a worn trail spiraling down the mountain. The footprints are lazy, stretching across the dirt in thin, erratic lines, as if he is too weak to carry his own weight.
The trail winds and ends at the mouth of a colossal scrap heap stretching as far as his eye can see. Mega-mountains of metal jut out from the dusty earth like industrial stalagmites, silhouetted by the light of the sun. He hears a shuffling in the distance. He carefully tiptoes through the valleys to avoid being seen.
Vandenboom is ripping the guts out of an old Chevy Nova, wiping parts clean and examining each of them individually before either tossing them away or piling them on the dirt at his feet.
Reynold slips inside the backseat of a baby blue Cadillac, tossing the slabs of Pete down onto the floorboards. He watches Vandenboom dig carefully through the scraps. Toss, toss, toss, keep, toss. He is preparing to build something.
Vandenboom digs deep into one of the scrap heaps, removing a big piece of sheet-metal. Large blue and green birds scuttle out from behind it, ten . . . twenty . . . thirty. They rush out in the same manner as angry ants once their hill has been terrorized by the sole of a boot. Robococks.
These giant cybernetic peacocks surround Vandenboom. They waddle and shimmy, darting their necks out as if their heads are small daggers in the world’s most bizarre knife-fight. When their beaks open they dry heave and terror-screech so loudly it reverberates throughout the cab of the blue Caddy.
A smile forms in the corner of Vandenboom’s mouth. He taps a few buttons on the NES controller in his forearm. He raises his right hand high into the air. The robococks bob their heads left and right, hissing and coughing, readying their attack. Vandenboom’s fingers twist around one another, his palm folds over until his bones crack and shift. His arm extends and out through his fist rips a terrible metal point, peeling back his skin like a banana and revealing itself as a large spinning drill.
The robococks seem unaffected by this sight and continue their threatening stalk. One of them lurches toward Vandenboom. He grabs the bird’s head in his remaining fist and crushes it violently. Its body falls limply to the ground. Immediately the rest of the flock attacks him, pecking at Divey’s loose hanging skin, ripping it from Vandenboom’s body and tossing it to the dirt.
Reynold slowly opens the door of the Caddy, making sure not to direct any attention to himself. He drops to the ground and crawls closer to the cloud of dust surrounding the chaotic fight. Death-screeches echo throughout the junkyard as Vandenboom rips apart the birds one by one. Just as Reynold reaches the pile of Divey’s skin, Vandenboom drills a hole straight through the body of a robocock and sparks and blood and flesh and feathers all rain down onto him from above. Reynold cups his hand over his mouth to keep from screaming out loud, grabs the skin pile, and sprints back to the Caddy, frantically jumping again into the backseat.
Vandenboom crams the head of one of the robococks into the beak of another and then squeezes. Its brains blow out the top of its skull like a cork from a champagne bottle. The brains get caught in the throat of the other, causing it to suffocate and eventually collapse. Some of the robococks shoot electricity from their mechanical eyeballs, but fail to inflict any pain registering higher than that of static electricity shock. He stabs them three at a time with his forearm drill, turning them into meaty metal kabobs. As the drill spins, bits of meat and feathers flurry into the air, splatter-painting the landscape with their lifeblood. He slings the corpses off his arm to join the others at his feet. Thirty dead at his hand and he hardly took a step. He tosses the carcasses in a single pile and returns to digging through the scraps, not missing a beat.
It’s quiet now.
Reynold lies down in the backseat and holds his brother’s remains above him.
“Fack man, we had a good run.” He rolls up the skin and folds his arms across his chest, snuggling with it. “Yeah man, great run.”
TWELVE
SWALLOWED BY NIGHT
Light from the campfire traces the outline of Vandenboom’s body. He scoops up one of the robocock corpses and digs his fingers deep beneath the skin, pulling out the feathers and machine parts, leaving only the meat and bone. He hovers the remains over the fire for a few minutes, barely browning the outside skin before tearing into the flesh with his fingers, slurping the warm raw meat into his mouth piece by piece.
Reynold’s stomach begins to growl as he watches Vandenboom from a distance. The glitter from the gore he shovels into his mouth causes saliva to form at the corners of Reynold’s lips. A mean hunger strangles his innards. His organs, as if they themselves had developed lungs and mouths of their own, begin to moan and croak with such ferocity that Reynold lies down on the floorboard in fear it might attract the attention of Vandenboom.
Several minutes pass.
“Hey Rey, I think he’s . . . yeah, he’s definitely going to sleep,” whispers Pete from the front seat. “Haha! Now get out there and fetch us some dinner, man. I’m fucking starving!”
“What do you mean you’re facking starving? How is that even possible?” asks Reynold.
“What do you mean? I’m alive, ain’t I?”
“Well, that’s debatable.”
“I’ll show you how alive I am by shoving my foot up your ass!”
Reynold looks down at Pete’s feet. They’re not there. He’s a facking pile of meat. But instead of arguing any further, he nods his head and agrees to go fetch dinner.
He moves slowly, carefully maneuvering through the separated heaps of vehicle parts, until finally reaching the pile of poultry. He pierces one of their fat bodies with a stick, removes all the machine parts and wiring—slowly, carefully, quietly—and begins to roast it over the open campfire.
The orange light from the fire licks the darkness and quickly fades. The fire is dying. In a few moments they’ll all be swallowed b
y night.
“Come closer . . .” a weakened voice whispers. Reynold jumps nervously at the sound and stumbles backwards over the poultry pile, hitting his head on the metal bumper of the Chevy Nova. The voice is coming from Vandenboom, but it isn’t his voice.
“Shhh! You’ll wake him!” the voice cries. “Rey, it’s me, Divey. I may not have long, so just keep your trap shut and your ears open.”
Reynold nods and rolls his eye in a daze. He is losing consciousness. Tiny sparks begin to pollute his vision.
“Vandenboom is planning to meet up with others like him. Four others. He calls them his ‘Damned Dirt Devils’.”
Reynold nods and rests his head on the sand.
“They are dangerous, you have to stay out of their way. You got me, Rey? I’m not worth it. If you pursue them, then you will die. Got me? Rey?”
The Brothers Crunk Page 3
