by Andrew Post
Zilch trudges over, the mud trying to suck his shoes off. “Let’s get some ice on that, huh?”
She glares at his face, at his new hole. “How about we get a bandage on that?”
Blood dribbling down the bridge of nose as he bends over, Zilch fetches Ben’s waterlogged take-out bag bobbing in the loose mud. Holding up the crumbling paper bag to the setting sun, he lights up the restaurant’s logo from behind the printing: FRENCHY’S.
With a bag of frozen pizza bagels on her hand, Galavance sits on the floor with her back against the wall, watching Zilch through the open bathroom door. There’s a quiet wet pop and a clatter of metal as he yanks the six-inch harpoon out of his head and drops it into the sink. He leans into the mirror, dabbing at his bleeding eye with the collar of his shirt.
“Stupid redneck. Kind of glad he got squashed.”
“So I guess we know what Jolby was doing with all those parts now,” Galavance says, shifting the pizza bagels around since some of them are softening. “And where he’s been all this time. He probably keeps to the shallow parts of the swamp and just lives in that thing.”
Zilch leans into the mirror again, so close that his forehead nearly touches the glass. His black suit coat is soggy with swamp water, and his pants are clinging to his legs like they’re painted on.
“I don’t know if you saw the look on Jolby’s face when he got a whiff of that bag of takeout,” he says, “but there’s no doubt in my mind anymore that stale Frenchy’s is like catnip to him.”
There was a moment in which Galavance, as crazy as it might have seemed, had interpreted Jolby’s return in a positive light. After all, he’d come back and saved her, hadn’t he? Maybe that was the little bit of the real Jolby still alive, fighting for control inside his frog body, trying to right his wrong and make amends for all the terrible things he’s put her through. But with Zilch’s words, she realizes how stupid that idea was: Jolby wasn’t being a man of action after all—Beefy Ben and his friends were all killed because of territorial squabbling over food and not her. He hadn’t been coming to her rescue.
Zilch emerges from the bathroom, toweling his hands, his right eye socket packed with a wad of red toilet paper that grotesquely stretches his eyelid. When he blinks, it looks like a grotesque little mouth trying, and failing, to chew an oversized marshmallow.
“We need fresh bait,” Galavance says. “And unless we wanna drive to Raleigh, where the next-nearest Frenchy’s location is …”
“We still have to deal with your regional manager, you know. She’s not going to stop.”
“I know, but think about it: Frenchy’s would be the last place she’d expect to find us. She’s probably on her way here. So if we go there, now …”
Staring at the far wall of the living room, Zilch’s expression shifts from ready, perhaps even bravely resolute—to worried. Galavance spins on the bucket she’s using for a seat to see what’s got him concerned. The blue tarps covering the windows light up for a moment, then darken, and they can hear an engine rumbling outside, sounding poorly tuned and overworked.
“Too late,” Zilch says.
As Zilch fights to load the harpoon gun again, Galavance moves to the window, peeling the tarp aside to take a peek.
A black sedan crawls past, taking its time.
“We have lights on,” Zilch says, posting up next to Galavance at the window, peeking out with her. “She knows we’re here.”
“What’s the plan?”
“You’re asking me? She’s your boss.”
“Should we go out and talk?” She notices Zilch opening the beer cooler. “What are you doing?”
Zilch flops the two bagged parasites onto the seat of a lawn chair and undoes the knots in their bags. The two creatures splay and dangle from their thin plastic containers, drooling through the nylon strips of the lawn chairs and to the floor. One of them twitches a tentacle, making Galavance jump back.
“They’re not dead?”
“Invertebrates can take a serious licking,” Zilch says. “With no bones to break, they can go nighty-night and then patch themselves up pretty quick. Don’t think I picked that up from working this job—I took a field trip to the aquarium in third grade.” Zilch screws up his face as he pulls the knot of bloody toilet paper from his eye socket. “They had a whole thing about jellyfish and it’s about all I remember from it. Weird how random shit like that suddenly comes in handy years later, huh?”
He squeezes the bloody wad over one half-dead parasite and as a few drops of blood land among the tangles of wet, waxy tentacles, the thing begins thrashing. Dripping more onto the second elicits the same reaction. Before either can slither away though, Zilch packs them both back into the bags and ties up the knots again, holding them by their handles as the bags bulge and threaten to rip.
“What’s she up to out there?” he says.
Galavance peeks outside and watches as the car stops on the street. The engine dies, the headlights go dark. Patty doesn’t get out. With the streetlight shining in through the back of the car, Galavance can see Patty’s wrestling to get something on, like she’s pulling a bag over her own head.
“There she goes, getting in her Ewok get-up again,” Zilch whispers. “Keep an eye on her. She has a way of vanishing in that thing. I’m gonna go out through the garage and see if we can’t negotiate.”
“She has a gun, Saelig.”
“Funny thing about getting shot already today,” Zilch says, holding the garage door’s knob, “is that the second time probably won’t be much more than an annoyance.” He holds up the bagged parasites squirming in his hand. “Meet bargaining chip number one and bargaining chip number two.”
“No. She’ll just use them to make more, won’t she? No way.”
“I won’t actually let her have them. Do I look that stupid? She needs them and she’ll probably do anything for them. She’s hunted these things a while, according to what you said. I’m running out of time, and even if she is a huge piece of shit, she can still be useful. If she knows how the things spread, then she’ll know the value of these disgusting critters. If she wants to retain her standing at Frenchy’s, she’ll have to produce results. I’ve catered big-wig corporate events, I’ve picked up a few things. Results are paramount. Synergy’s important, too, whatever that is.”
“All right,” Galavance says. “I just hope you know what you’re doing.” She peeks outside again. The car’s door opens and Patty steps out, rifle cradled in her hands, giving a quick scan to her surroundings. Swinging the door closed behind her with a knee-high swamp-traversing boot, the dome light behind her fades off—and she vanishes. Not even the streetlight helps. She’s just gone, like a cheap movie effect, poof.
Galavance has a moment of panic, thinking Patty might’ve done a ninja-leap up through an upstairs window, silent, already in the house. She kills the work lights, throwing 1330 Whispering Pines Lane into complete darkness. Tripping over something, she bends over and finds a length of copper piping—already bent into a seven. Gripping it like a weapon, her back to the wall, she watches every tarp-covered window in the room around her for shadows, trying to force her breathing into some kind of a regular rate. Her finger hurts. Her back hurts. Her legs hurt. She’s seen too many gross things today. It’s been a bad weekend altogether.
I do not want to die here, in this unfinished, drowned new development neighborhood.
She starts to say something to Zilch but turning back where he’d just been standing, she sees the door to the garage pull shut behind him.
Galavance once heard that when someone is about to die, it isn’t always their life that passes before their eyes. Sometimes, depending on the person, they think about everything they regret. It’s not exactly a sunny thought, but it made sense to her when she first heard it. And not just regret for things they’d themselves done or failed to do, themselves, but regret for the things they’d allowed others to do to them.
But now, in the heat of the moment, Galava
nce realizes she doesn’t want to sit around and spend her last potential moments alive regretting all the shit she let Jolby do to her. She wants to forgive Jolby. Badly. She doesn’t want to take her anger with her. But she finds she can’t let it go, not until she knows the truth, hears from him what he’d done. She can’t live without getting that closure. Can’t die without it, actually, she thinks morbidly. But what if she never gets it? What if Patty does a combat roll into the house, pops up, and fires a bullet into her head? Galavance wonders if that’s how ghosts are made.
She hears Zilch clear his throat outside. “Excuse me, miss, but you’re trespassing.”
Patty—closer to the house than Galavance expected, nearly at the front door by the sound of it—gasps. “Oh. I’m sorry, I, uh … I work for wildlife control, we’ve had reports of—”
“I know what’s out here,” Zilch says. Through the tarps covering the windows, Galavance hears the soft twang of a harpoon pistol readying. “Unless you’re willing to impart some helpful tips for luring were-amphibians, I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
“Were-amphibians? That’s very clever.”
“Thanks. So, cough up any helpful tips you have or take it on the arches, Patty.”
“How do you know my name?”
“That isn’t important.”
There’s a pause in the conversation.
“Where’s Galavance?” Patty says.
“That isn’t important either.”
“You’re the one she was talking about, aren’t you? Who are you?”
“Jim Rockford.”
Patty snorts. “All right, smartass, cut the shit. Who are you with? The Clown? The King? The Freckle-Faced Cooz? The Bell?”
“Let’s say the third one.”
“The Pigtailed Tyrant, huh? Dave Thomas is dead, and your company died with him. No wonder you’re out here. You’re itching for a hit, same as us. Have you figured out how to separate the fish taste?”
“Ohhh, I get it now; you mean Wendy’s.” Zilch, says, dropping his authoritative basso profundo. “Dave Thomas died? Man. When did that happen?”
There are a few squishes of boots in the mud, which is likely Patty turning with her rifle to face Zilch, Galavance assumes. “Who are you really working for?”
“The third one, like I said. Wendy’s. Love that dead-eyed redhead. Square burgers and that fucking chili. Man, I could take a bath in that stuff.”
“If you were actually employed by Wendy’s, you’d have known about your company’s founder’s death. I’ve called your bluff, mister. I’d like the truth, please.”
“Okay, fine. I don’t work for Wendy’s,” Zilch says. “You got me. And since it seems it bears repeating, I’ll say it nice and slow: if you are not going to help, please reinsert your person within your automobile and take your ass on down the road. Understand?”
“What is that you’re brandishing?”
“It’s a harpoon gun.”
“Get much luck with that?” Patty scoffs.
“It works well enough. See my lack of a left eye?”
“Proving you shot yourself with your own weapon hardly speaks of its qualities. Or yours. This is a Remington thirty-ought-six, sir. I’ve harvested nearly eight thousand pounds worth of meat, for my company, for its patrons, using this rifle. How many have you bagged?”
“I’m a slow starter.”
“So, none.”
“Look, lady. Can you help us bring him close? We just want to talk with him.”
“At this point, Jolby Dawes isn’t a him anymore. It’s an it. Permanent transformation only takes three weeks. And judging by all this carnage around, I assume he’s getting quite testy—his animal side taking over.”
“Fine, you’ve made it clear you’re not interested in helping. Then piss off. This one is mine.”
“Who do you work for?”
“Goddamn, are you deaf? We’re not going through that again. Leave. Go. Vamoose. Don’t let the door hit ya where the good lord—”
“I could just shoot you,” Patty says. “And Miss Petersen, too, wherever she’s hiding. After I do that, nabbing this last known Lizard Man would be mine and mine alone. It’s still young, it’s glands are probably quivering, they’re so full of the worm seed.”
“God, do you have to phrase it that way? Wait—he’s the last one?”
“There’ve been no other reports. I thought you would’ve known this. We need him, even more so now that we know how to get the aftertaste out of it now.”
“Monster meat. Monster meat that carries parasites that in some cases turns people who eat it into one of them. But I’m assuming you’re counting on that.”
“Unless the former Jolby Dawes seeds, the rest of the raw meat will have to be undercooked for the next generation of parasites to blossom.”
“Again, is phrasing everything the most disgusting way possible some kind of corporate branding, or do you come up with those labels?”
“I came up with them. And everything would’ve been fine, if we undercooked a meal now and again to let a few newborns pop up here and there, but because Food Safety likes to kick the little guy when they’re down, they’ve been cracking down on us with an almost fascist enthusiasm. We’ve had to, unfortunately, during the meat’s processing, cook all that good potential out. Which just leaves us with fish-smelling gamey junk meat. I need this last one alive, he still has his glands full of—”
“Do not say that word again. Listen, what if I could give you two—count ’em, two!—of Jolby’s offspring? They’re a little beat up, but still as squirmy as the day they were born from two strapping young men.”
“You’ve obtained some of his seedlings?”
“If we have to call them that, yes.”
Galavance listens as Zilch’s oversized shoes clop on the driveway. She hears the rustle of plastic bags.
“May I touch them?” Patty says, sounding awestruck.
Galavance hears a little slap. “Look with your eyes,” Zilch says.
“How?” Patty says. “From where? They’re in beautiful shape, so young!”
“One was planted in Jolby’s best friend, either before or after he killed him,” Zilch began.
“Yes,” Patty cut in, “they do that sometimes, to give the little darling a warm place to grow if the host puts up a fuss during impregnation. And from whom did this second darling gush forth into this beautiful world?”
“Me,” Zilch says.
“You’re lying. You managed to extract a seedling from yourself and survive?”
“I’m very talented,” Zilch says. “Now I’ve showed you these two bouncing baby boys. Tell us how to bring Jolby in so we can talk to him, and you can have these to do with as you will.”
“You’re handing me a fortune, you’re aware of that, right? From these two, I’ll be able to keep Frenchy’s in stock with sausage for decades, given enough time to breed them and place them with hosts. I hate to tell stories out of school, but we have a tank ready back at Headquarters waiting and ready so there won’t be any more need to do this whole safari routine in these detestable backwoods towns.”
“Not so fast, don’t get grabby,” Zilch says. “You scratch my back first.”
“You may have survived giving birth to a seedling,” Patty says, “but I doubt a rifle bullet fired into your heart at point blank range is something you could walk off.”
“Try me.”
“Give me the seedlings or I’ll shoot you.”
“Lady, I spent a good six and a half seconds coming up with this plan. Don’t ruin it by getting greedy. Take these ugly fuckers, tell me how to bring Jolby to dry land, and we’ll call it a day.”
“Put the seedlings on the ground—gently—and back away slowly. I said put the seedlings on the ground!”
Galavance has heard enough. She tears open the plywood plank being used as a front door and emerges out onto the porch. Patty, in her ridiculous Swamp Thing getup, stands in the muddy front yard. The moonlig
ht lights the three of them, and Galavance suddenly feels unprepared, realizing she’s the only one who isn’t armed.
Zilch seems disappointed that Galavance has shown herself, giving away the element of surprise, and takes a better aim at Patty in case she makes any sudden moves. Patty holds her rifle in her arms, ready to fire from the hip at Zilch.
“Miss Petersen, I’d like to extend you an offer,” Patty says, her eyes still locked on Zilch. “Immediate push to corporate. You’ll have an office of your own, relocation to New Orleans effective ASAP. We’ll get you away from this swampy crossroads, and the pay is good. Very good. All you have to do is tell this gentleman here to leave the professionals to their work.”
Galavance plugs an extension cord into the work light. The front yard is suddenly flooded in buzzing light, making both Patty and Zilch squint.
“She isn’t interested,” Zilch shouts at Patty. “She’s done being a drone for a shitty restaurant chain. She—”
“Patty,” Galavance says, “I don’t think I’m Frenchy’s family material. Please tell me how to help Jolby. If you don’t want to help him, that’s fine, but I’ll have to ask you to leave. This is my boyfriend’s property and while he’s not here, that makes it mine.”
“Don’t be silly, girl.” Patty peels off her ghillie suit mask. “This is your job you’re talking about. You’ve been entrusted with some mighty big company secrets. And we take care of those who have made it to the inner circle of trust. Very good care.”
“Consider this my resignation. Tell me how to help my boyfriend.”
Patty shakes her head, looks at Zilch. “Misguided young people. Think they’re going to rule the world with their fucking blogs and tweets and all that bullshit. What have you given your life for, Mister Whoever-You-Are? Huh? Anything?”
“I give it often, doing this shit,” Zilch says. He raises the harpoon gun. “Now you can leave or I’ll shoot you. And trust me, these little suckers hurt.”
Keeping her aim square on Zilch, Patty clicks off the safety.
“Stop. I’ve only got one eye but it works,” Zilch says. “Be smart.”
