by Eirik Gumeny
“I know we were more-or-less created to deal with crap like this,” said William H. Taft XLII, rolling up his shirtsleeves and eyeing the mythical beasts destroying his home, “but holy shit.”
“I’m kind of with you on this one, Billy,” said Queen Victoria XXX, pulling a tooth from the shoulder of her leather bolero jacket.
“That’s never a good sign,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII, brushing lizard-dog guts from his tweed trousers.
“Is that a banshee?” asked Martin Van Buren XCIX from where he was sitting on the ground, pointing toward an elderly Irish woman floating in the sky.
“Motherfucker,” said the mayor-king.
“Somebody kill her before she opens her mouth,” ordered the patchwork clone, looking around for a weapon.
“Benedict Cumberbatch, Charlie,” replied the queen, throwing him an axe. “Misogynist much?”
“What? No, I –”
The thirtieth clone of the last Hanoverian monarch smiled at the seventeenth facsimile of the twenty-first American president.
“OK, I know you’re messing with me, but now I feel bad,” he said.
“I love killing banshees,” squealed Boudica IX. “I’m on it!” The redheaded clone, her left arm hanging uselessly at her side, grabbed a spike-laden spine from the chupacabra slurry covering the boulevard and ran off toward the banshee.
“You know we have guns, right?” Martin Van Buren XCIX called after her.
The four remaining clones watched the wounded, miniskirted redhead skipping through a sea of chupacabra guts and around the corner. She appeared to be singing to herself.
“She must be amazing in bed,” said Queen Victoria XXX.
“You have no idea,” replied William H. Taft XLII.
Suddenly a mothman – a humanoid cryptid with moth wings and a red-eyed, buggy face – came flying in from a side street, swooping low over the boulevard and howling unintelligibly. Martin Van Buren XCIX pulled his revolver from his shoulder holster, fired a single shot into the mothman’s head, and dropped the creature to the street where it crumpled into gooey dust, because mothmen are terrible, stupid, pointless fucking monsters.
“Anyone got dibs on the cyclops?” asked the black man, holstering his gun and nodding toward the enormous one-eyed man-beast hefting a car over his head farther down the street.
“All yours, buddy,” replied William H. Taft XLII. He looked up toward the giant, undulating pile of snot pounding on the upper floors of a hotel. “I’m going after the booger bug.”
“I don’t think we have the firepower to take down –” Chester A. Arthur XVII abruptly stopped talking and started screaming as a chimpanzee-like boraro hidden away in a nearby palm tree – its backwards feet clamped to the tree limb, its massive wang being held with both hands – had begun pissing acid on him. The president turned and hurled his axe at the forest nymph, cleaving its head in twain.
“Them,” he snarled, parts of his face melting off. “I’m killing them.”
From the trees, the remaining boraro began murmuring in fear. Then they began raining acid piss down on everyone.
“Oh, that is disgusting,” said Queen Victoria XXX, backing up and lifting the bottom of her dress out of the way of the splashing urine.
SPLORCH.
“Speaking of disgusting ...” Martin Van Buren XCIX, jogging backwards towards the cyclops, pointed past the boraro toward a pair of approaching butter monsters.
SPLORCH.
“Fucking great,” began Chester A. Arthur XVII, trying to hold his face together. “Marty, forget the cyclops, you and –”
“No,” barked Queen Victoria XXX, putting her hand on her boyfriend’s chest and staring at the squelching dairy beasts bearing down on them. “Those assholes are mine.” She turned to William H. Taft XLII. “Where’s the nearest bakery?”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Hi-Diddly-Ho, Neighborino!
Jorge Reyes, sitting on his couch and watching the news, called to his wife, Erin McCafferty.
“Hey, honey, you need to see this.”
“What’s going on?”
She walked in from the kitchen, tea cup in hand, and looked at the television.
“Is that ... Vicky? And Charlie?”
The television was, indeed, broadcasting their neighbors. Queen Victoria XXX was perched on the shoulder of a towering Amish butter monster, repeatedly stabbing the two-story dairy terror with loaf after loaf of freshly-baked bread, being tossed to her by a baker baking with breathtaking abandon, while, in the background, Chester A. Arthur XVII – his melted face wrapped in a souvenir scarf, his eyes barely visible through a gap in the wool – was hacking a pack of fleeing boraro into little pieces.
“Remind me never to piss them off,” said Jorge.
“Do you think we should get their mail? We should probably get their mail.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
There Really Aren’t Worse Ways to Go
Martin Van Buren XCIX and William H. Taft XLII, having successfully slain the cyclops and a handful of orcs and a roving pack of saber-toothed smilodons they had not previously known about, sat on the steps outside the burning New Hampshire, New Hampshire casino, bloodied and bruised, catching their breath and cannibalizing their shirts for bandages, planning their next move. That was when Martin Van Buren XCIX noticed a large bison prowling along the otherwise empty boulevard, all of the action having moved to other parts of the city.
“Great,” he said, with several years’ worth of exasperation. “The zoo must have been damaged. That’s the last thing we need, wild animals running around with all the crazy monsters.”
“Technically, the saber-toothed tigers were wild animals and crazy monsters,” replied the mayor-king, cinching his linen shirtsleeve around his trunk-like thigh.
“Well, as long as it’s not –”
The creature locked eyes with the black man, then brayed and charged at the sitting presidents.
“Benedict Cumberbatch.” Wearily, the ninety-ninth clone of the eighth president of the United States of America stood up on the stairs of the casino. “I’ll get this one,” he said, grabbing a bright red shawl from the nearby corpse of a tourist. “I was a professional bullfighter for a while.”
As the cloned politician crossed the vast street and approached the approaching creature, something odd struck William H. Taft XLII about the animal’s appearance.
“Marty! No!” shouted the clone suddenly, hefting himself from the steps. “That’s not one of ours!”
But it was too late.
Before Martin Van Buren XCIX could even spread open the shawl, the creature bellowed and spun around, firing a steaming, acidic shit straight through the president’s chest at four hundred miles per hour.
The bison-looking creature, was, in fact, not a bison at all, but instead a bonnacon, a mythical beast built like a buffalo, only with a more equine face and, perhaps most importantly – and in this situation most certainly – weaponized feces. But the replicated politician did not know this, and that lack of knowledge regarding ancient Macedonian legends and Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia proved to be the cloned president’s doom.
“Marty!”
Martin Van Buren XCIX fell to his knees, a sizzling, poop-encrusted hole where the majority of his torso should have been. He managed one confused look down at his chest before the life left him and he toppled forward onto the street like the statue of a deposed dictator.
“I’m sorry, Billy,” said Queen Victoria XXX through a mouthful of well-buttered French bread, walking down the stairs and putting a hand on the hefty man’s shoulder. “That was a shitty way to go.”
“Shut up, Vicky.”
The cloned monarch, hearing the anger and sadness in William H. Taft XLII’s voice and realizing the poor timing and terribleness of her pun, for the first time in her life obliged him. She watched the president, trembling with rage and grief, begin walking toward his friend’s body.
Then: “So ... ar
e you gonna tell Charlie? Or should I?” she called out from the stairs. “‘cause he’s probably not going to take this very well either. They had a ... thing, you knew that right? And I’m not so good with the feelings.” She raised an eyebrow, began muttering to herself. “Then again, he is on a lot of painkillers ... and I could certainly use the emotional maturity points ... I mean, technically, if I tell him it counts, even if he doesn’t remember it.” The queen paused. “Why am I talking so much?” She looked at the bread in her hands. “Was there something in that butter monster?” She sniffed the bread, which, admittedly, didn’t tell her anything. “There was something in that butter monster,” she mumbled. “Who puts drugs in a butter monster?! And why are they the ‘give you energy’ kind and not the fun kind?”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
A Horse With No Name
A short while later – after driving back to the lair of Dr. Gonzalez to bury her, and then driving back again to the lair of Dr. Arahami to bury the two Navajo gods after Thor came down with a bad case of sympathy – the foursome of the god, the girl, the cyborg, and the squirrel rested inside the luxury tank, cranking the air conditioning and hoping Chester A. Arthur XVII had replaced the battery recently. Thor lay across the frontmost of the backseats, Timmy comatose and breathing weakly on his chest. Catrina was leaning her head against the driver’s side window, staring out across the desert absentmindedly. Mark sat in the passenger seat fiddling with the GPS.
“There’s got to be a hospital or a vet or something out here,” he mumbled.
ZZ Top’s “Sharp Dressed Man” suddenly burst through the car.
“Huh? Oh, sorry,” said Catrina, roused from her daydream, “that’s me.” Slowly, she looked around, then pulled her cell phone from the back pocket of her jeans.
“Hello?”
There was a pause as the person on the other end of the phone spoke.
“OK, sure. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”
She ended the call and slid the phone back into her pants.
“That was Billy. They need us in Las Vegas.”
“That’s a city. Please tell me they have an actual, useful medical professional,” said Mark. “Or at least more medical supplies than that box of Band-Aids I found in the trunk.”
“They do,” she replied. “Charlie’s apparently using most of them.”
“The supplies or the professionals?” asked Thor.
“Both.” Catrina turned the key and the engine roared to life.
The thunder god sat up, cradling Timmy in his arm and shaking his scraggly blonde head. “Why is he the one in charge if he’s the one that’s always getting maimed?”
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Ready to Form Voltron; Activate Interlocks
Amen-Ra pulled his rental SUV into the rest stop, Vulcan’s busted-ass trailer rattling to a halt behind it.
“That is the last time I eat gas station sushi, man,” said Vulcan, leaping from the passenger seat and speed-walking toward the propped-open door of the men’s bathroom. “I won’t be long,” he called back, “this does not want to wait to get out.”
“I could have lived without that information,” replied Ra. He popped the hood of the SUV, stepped from the vehicle, and, locking the hood open with one hand, flipped open the lid of the deconstitution matrix[xxxvii] with the other.
“Why are you eating gas station sushi anyway?” he mumbled, emptying a nearby trash can into the fuel matrix. “You have an entire kitchen in the trailer you are making me tow. A trailer you have not once used ...”
Meanwhile, a few parking spots over, a tall, svelte woman in cowboy boots and a utility vest was standing in front of her rusting sedan, holding up the hood as smoke and steam poured out. She leaned over to get a better look – like, all the friggin’ way – her magnificent dumper stretching her khakis tight and pointed directly at the SUV. Catherine the Great LXIX, after a good long moment and some blinking, hopped out of the SUV and headed over toward the woman.
“Something wrong with your car?” asked the cloned empress.
“I think so,” replied the dark-haired woman. “I don’t know what, though. I’m not exactly the best with cars.”
“Let me take a look.”
“Thanks.”
The woman stepped to the side, still holding the hood, and the Rubenesque replica of the late Russian ruler, waving away smoke, bent over to inspect the damage. She saw asphalt.
“You seem to be missing an engine,” the Horsepower! CEO explained coolly, “along with almost everything else that’s supposed to be in there.” Then, scrunching her brow, she said to herself: “What the hell is smoking?”
“I thought I heard a clunk.”
“Just the one?”
The woman sighed heavily. “Is it bad?”
“It can be fixed,” said Catherine the Great LXIX, slamming the perforated hood shut, “if you have an entire other car sitting around here somewhere.”
“Yeah, I ... uh, I don’t.”
“No, I figured that. It was ...” She shook her head. “Nevermind.”
The woman in the boots sat dejectedly on the hood of the car and crossed her arms across her chest.
“I don’t drive much. I only rented this stupid hunk of crap after my cruise submarine got diverted to Quebec instead of Atlanta.”
“Atlanta?” repeated the replicated Russian, raising an eyebrow. “You trying to kill Walt Sidney too?”
“What? Yeah. Kind of. How ...? Why, are you ...?”
“All of us are,” she replied, indicating the sun-god standing in front of the SUV and the Roman god in the men’s room. “We all run energy companies in Western Eurasica.[xxxviii] Sidney tried to forcefully take us all over six months ago, during the blackout? Because we weren’t really affected and were basically making more money off of it. Anyway, obviously, we didn’t let him. We sent back his goons in pieces, if at all. That apparently didn’t sit to well with Sidney, though, and so he sent just a fucking shitload of his higher-end hired assholes to firebomb our companies off the face of the Earth. Took out most of the companies still running on the continent, actually. It was a fucking disaster. Basically blacked out all of Eurasica again. A lot of people died.”
“So ... you’re going to avenge all those innocents?”
“What? No. Why would we do that? We’re just going to fuck up Sidney the way he fucked up us.”
“Oh,” said the woman. Then: “That’s an awful lot of information to just give out like that.”
“Well, I’ve been cooped up in that car for a while now,” said Catherine the Great LXIX, sizing up the skinny woman, “and, if we’re being honest, I don’t think it’ll be that hard to take you down if it turns out you are on Sidney’s payroll.”
“I’m not,” explained the woman slowly, looking down and shaking her dark head. “Trust me. My ... my girlfriend died a while back ... due to a design flaw in one of the Sidneyland rollercoasters. Apparently there was also a maximum height that no one felt compelled to tell us about. Her family and I ... we took the Walt Sidney Company to court, but he’s been dicking us around for years.” The woman looked at Catherine the Great LXIX, a thousand years of hardship and anger crossing her porcelain face. “I figured it was time to bring the matter to him directly.”
“So, what I’m hearing is you don’t like being dicked around?”
“What? No, of course not,” said the obviously confused woman. “Who does?”
“Not me,” answered the cloned empress, a gleam in her eye. “Look, come with me then. Ra over there went with the premium package for some reason. There’s tons of room in that thing. And a mini-fridge.”
“Wait? Ra? The Egyptian god?”
“Yeah. You know him?”
“Only in passing. I didn’t realize ...” The woman stood up, taller than she had seemed before, and extended her hand. “Artemis Agroterê,” she said, “Greek Goddess of –”
“– the hunt and the wild and the moon,” said Catherine t
he Great LXIX. “Yeah. I’m ... I’m a fan.”
“Oh, well, thanks.”
“Yeah,” replied the clearly starstruck CEO. She shook her head. “Look, just hurry up and get your crap,” said the clone. “Vulcan’s too stoned to hold up a conversation for more than a minute and Ra is just terrible company.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Sinus Infection
The nuclear jetpacks cranked to eleven and their safety valves snapped off, William H. Taft XLII aimed the atomic backpacks at the heart of the booger bug tea-bagging the giant M&M’s mascot atop the chocolate store and let go. The jetpacks swerved and twisted through the air, before lodging themselves inside the snot monster. The president waited with bated breath. He waited some more, this time with regular breath. He got ready to wait some more, this time while hyperventilating, maybe, just to spice things up.
Then the booger bug exploded.
A ring of atomic energy burst from the creature’s chest, circumcising several nearby buildings, and raining gobs of radioactive mucus down on everything else within three miles.
“Han motherhumpin’ Solo,” said William H. Taft XLII, wiping the disgusting from what was left of his suit. “This was ... this was a terrible idea.” He began waddling away. “I think it’s in my pants.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Every Breath You Take ...
Having successfully stolen a car and headed west, Satan, Persephone, and Steve Careers set up shop in a filthy warehouse passing itself off as a coffeehouse on the island of Chicago.
“Hey, boss,” said Steve Careers from the reclaimed park bench he was sitting on. “I’ve got eyes on them again. The cyborg and the hamster are heading towards Las Vegas. There’s a big blonde dude and an Asian lady with them.” The tech-savvy demon studied the screens before him. “Not entirely sure what they’re up to; Vegas is in a world of shit. Literally, actually. There’s a herd of bonnacons tearing up the city.”
