by Aaron Crash
But behind him, Raziel let out a squawk, kind of an odd sound from a cat, but there it was. Behind him.
No, he wasn’t going to kill Trina. Never. He was going to trust the cat instead and hope for the best. Because he was a warrior, inside and out, and as Ling said, very skilled and enthusiastic.
Instead of jamming the wooden spike through her heart and ending Trina’s life, Blaze ducked, dropped the stake, and ran for the cat, who was still making a fuss at the very end of the corridor. A little light was coming through a frosted window there.
Trina was right behind him, coming for his blood.
His foot hit something slick and he went down on his knee. He swiped a finger through the fluid on the floor and sniffed it. Blood, without a doubt. It seemed the Gorebacks hadn’t butchered and bled out all of their victims.
Raziel went quiet. Blaze grabbed a body, still warm. It was some thin guy by the feel of him, still in his clothes. The gunny lifted the corpse and threw it to Trina. “I found you snacks, Trina. Drink up. And then we need to bust out of here and get to those Gorebacks. Can you dig it?”
“Blooooddddddd!” Trina howled. In the darkness came the horrendous sounds of slurping, sucking, belching, burping, and gnashing as she drained the blood from the corpse.
Blaze grimaced. “Trina, I’m right here. That’s so gross. Have some manners, will ya?”
“More! More!” Trina grunted.
Blaze threw another warm body at her, this one heavier and in a dress, but definitely dead. More of the sounds of Trina’s horrific feast echoed through the refrigerated hold. At one point in the gurgling and smacking of her lips, she gagged on something but still managed to make extra-nubby-rubby-tummy sounds of pure pleasure.
“Come on, Trina, this is going to be hard for me to forget once you’re, um, Human again. This is gonna haunt me.”
Trina was wheezing and licking her lips, maybe even sucking the blood off her fingers. “More! More!”
Blaze found another body and threw it to her. “Oh, this is fucking awful. But I guess it’s better than killing you.”
He winced at more of the sounds of Trina guzzling blood, lapping it up the way Arlo used to attack a twelve-pack of Barf Baby Malt Liquor. He heard her gulping down the gore.
Finally, the vampire sighed. “Okay, maybe just one more. I’ll, um, control myself this time.”
Blaze tossed another body to her. It was pretty clear where she was since he’d been listening to her drain bodies in a terribly unflattering and disgusting manner.
This time, there were the simple noises of her drinking down swallow after swallow of cooling blood.
Finally, the lights flickered on.
“You wanna see the bodies now, Blazer Boy?” Calhoun’s voice exploded over loudspeakers. “Smelling them ain’t as much fun as seeing them, now am I right?”
The bodies that Trina had been devouring lay in a pile around the door. The Gorebacks must’ve run out of time, so they hadn’t been processed like the others. Lucky for him. Thank you, Raziel.
Trina was crouched down the aisle between the hooked bodies swinging around them. Gore soaked her skin and her hair, every inch of her. She stood up and smiled shyly at him. Even though she was a bloodstained mess, he could see the freckles on her skin and the red of her hair. “Sorry. I kinda lost it. I feel so much better now. Thanks for not staking me. I guess our game doesn’t really help things.”
“Um, yeah, I couldn’t do it. It was Raziel that saved the day.” Blaze had to swallow down the bile in his throat. The cat was nowhere to be seen. Again. Well, Trina had confirmed his suspicions. Good ol’ Raziel wasn’t just your average space kitten. Nope, she was something supernatural but not tied to Onyx energy. How did that work?
He didn’t know, but first things first. “Trina, can you open the door so we can get out of this icebox? We have less than an hour before this planet goes kaboom.”
“I can’t. I’ve been trying, but it’s sealed shut. To keep it cold in here, no doubt.”
Blaze called out. “Hey, Calhoun! You gonna come in here and eat my ass, or you just gonna keep trying to scare me?”
“Aww, Blazer Boy,” came the response, “I’s gonna let you freeze to death like your little ginger-headed girlfriend. You find her body? She dead, yeah? Kinda weird, talking to a corpse, ain’t it?”
“Not as weird as eating one,” Blaze muttered.
So they didn’t know Trina was a vampire. Pattie Cakes, for whatever reason, hadn’t told them.
A shadow moved by the frost-covered window of the door. On the other side was the main bridge. Blaze went over and used a hand to wipe away the crystals. There was Calhoun Goreback, squinting at him, smiling, and flicking his multicolored hair back behind his shoulders. The guy used his middle finger to touch the minus sign painted on his stupid pinche mime face.
The gunny felt his lips pull back from his teeth in a snarl. “Yeah, Trina’s dead. Broke my heart but I’ll get over it. When I put my fist through your face.”
“Oh, tough talk. Ya should be nicer to me. I doctored you up, gave you some of the good drugs, and repaired the damage after I hooked ya like a catfish in mud. I’s gonna open the door, Blazer Boy, but you better behave. I’s warning you now.”
The door slid open.
Trina rolled away under the bodies. Maybe she was thinking to sneak attack them at the last minute as a vampire. They needed that element of surprise.
Blaze swiveled and went through the opening, fists first. He drove a punch into Calhoun’s smirking mime face. The feel of the nose cracking and the hot blood flecking his freezing knuckles felt good.
When the clown went down, Blaze kicked him in the side, cracking ribs without a doubt. He then slid down the steps, going for Granny. She was tied to a wooden chair in the middle of the central command center of the ship at the very front of the freighter. She was still gagged, her dress pulled up to reveal her long, shapely legs, but ropes covered most everything. They had hogtied her.
A central staircase led from the freezer doors to control seats and blinking dials and flashing monitors. But this wasn’t just the bridge of the ship, it was also the chapel.
An altar had been set up for Borzor the Harlequin, the clown god these psychotic cannibals worshipped. This effigy of Borzor was a big inflatable doll, a stuffed clown with a dumb grin wide enough to eat an elephant head above a misshapen body stuffed into a white flower-buttoned onesie like the one Auntie Lips wore.
A big round red nose dominated his face above a fanged mouth. Triangles of rusty red curly hair stuck out from either side of the clown’s face. But that hair wasn’t dyed with normal chemicals—the cannibal clan had painted the plastic hair with blood. Human blood. Now that he looked at the larger-than-life clown doll’s nose and lips, he realized they must’ve used blood on them too.
Then he smelled the stink of rotting meat. It was coming from inside the inflatable clown, and Blaze knew, without a doubt, they’d stuffed the clown god with Human entrails. The onesie was slick with death grease and mold.
Candles, electric chainsaws, and pieces of people surrounded the clown.
A dark-skinned guy with dreadlocks dusted white and face painted pale with little arching eyebrows and red lips sat at the main controls of the driver’s seat. He was left of Granny and the clown god. The dreadlock guy had to be Speeder Bob, their pilot, and the only Goreback Blaze hadn’t seen.
Sitting next to him, licking the guy’s earlobe, was Pattie Cakes, still in her red panties, but she’d thrown on a men’s dress shirt and then unbuttoned half of the buttons to reveal a lacey black bra. And her very effective cleavage.
Mama Mayhem sat at another seat, hitting controls with her right hand. That was the normal hand. The left hand had several feet of fingernails wrapping around her arm. Her waist-length, thinning, greasy hair hung in her face, blocking out the smeared clown makeup trying to cover up the canyons, valleys, crags, and craters of her wizened, repulsive face.
A
big entryway to his right was open. Through it, Dilly Donny, Uncle Upchuck, and Auntie Lips were pushing carts full of unprocessed bodies down to other cargo doors in the freezer freighter.
Blaze was going to snatch up Granny, chair, ropes, and all, and get the hell out of there. He could come back for Trina. She was still in the long freezer compartment, hiding under bodies.
Blaze got to Granny but found himself thrown onto the floor as electricity, from somewhere inside him, sent spikes of energy through his nerves, jamming his heart to a stop for a second, and dimming his vision.
He let out a yell, tried to fight it to get to his feet, but he couldn’t. Another blast of electricity crippled him.
Mama Mayhem cackled. Pattie Cakes tittered. Speeder Bob guffawed. Calhoun walked down the steps, slowly, his cowboy boots slamming down on the steel. “I’s warned you, Blazer Boy. I says for you to come on easy, but you didn’t listen. When we had you open, we put a little zapper in your chest to keep you docile. Dilly wanted us to put it up yer butt, but then Dilly is what the experts call anally oriented.”
Pattie Cakes turned and spread her legs and filed her nails. “I heard his last therapist say he has scatological impulses, which I think is just gross. Hit him again, Calhoun. He’s giving me the evil eye, and I’s can’t tolerate our dinner looking at me so.”
Blaze gritted his teeth as Calhoun hit the remote control in his hand, and yeah, the electrical blasts were coming from his chest. The electricity shook him until he was convulsing on the floor in his spacesuit under the inflated grinning clown god Borzor the Harlequin.
A little blip registered on his display, and he saw that Cali was outside the hangar, and she was running toward them.
He only hoped she’d arrive in time. If the werewolf didn’t, Trina needed to act, or he was royally screwed.
For the time being, he flopped in a seizure on the floor like a catfish on the shore. Only this catfish had teeth and help on the way. A werewolf and a vampire, yeah, evil, but help nonetheless. Cali might eat him first, but Trina would side with him. While she’d glutted herself on the bodies he’d thrown her, well, there was always room for dessert.
The Gorebacks had no idea how close to death they all were.
TWENTY-ONE_
╠═╦╬╧╪
Calhoun grabbed Blaze by his hair. “Almost ready to leave, Blazer Boy, but we figured we’d start cutting you up and have us a little steak tartar like the Frenchies do back on Earth.” The bodybuilder mime guy stank of body odor, blood, and the smoky sweet odor of barbecue sauce.
Blaze laughed. “Let me guess. You’ll eat me raw so I can watch and get all disgusted and scared. Ha, please. How about you let me go, I’ll take Granny, and you guys can live another few days. Then I’ll come back and kill you all. What are you going to do with all that meat anyway?”
Calhoun slammed the gunny’s face into the floor. “Oh, Mr. C called us over, said we could have as much meat as we wanted, but he said he might need some help with y’all. Was real nice to us and real reverent to Borzor.”
Speeder Bob, Mama Mayhem, and even Pattie Cakes chanted maniacally, “Borzor loves us, Borzor does. Borzor feeds us. Borzor was!”
Blood filled Blaze’s mouth, and after being impaled, shocked, and having his head bashed in, he wasn’t feeling too hot. But yeah, he had to keep these psychos talking. “So Borzor approves of your cannibalism a hundred percent?”
Calhoun sat back on his haunches. “Naw, Borzor isn’t about cannibalism. We do that ’cause space is cold and empty and we gots to eat. But the chaos, Blazer Boy, the chaos and happiness at the heart of the universe likes us eating people ’cause it’s awful and funny and we can laugh at it even as the flesh fills our tummies. Like all the dumb sex we have. Like the fun times and drinking and stupid shit we do. It’s all Borzor chaos.”
The other clown putas on the bridge chanted out more madness. “Borzor hates us. Borzor scuzz! Borzor lusts us. Borzor buzz!”
Now they were just spouting out nonsense.
“So how come Uncle Upchuck and Auntie Lips are alive when I sent them to Borzor to lust after or whatever? And how did you capture Trina?” Blaze asked. He wasn’t hopeful he’d get any answers that made sense.
Calhoun, however, flexed his chest muscles and smiled. “Oh, Trina Girl, she got confused about who was a friend and who was an enemy. She flagged us down, thinking we could help her get away from the walking dead. Ha. Stupid bitch.”
Blaze doubted Trina’s stupidity. She’d known it was the Gorebacks. She had wanted to get captured to get to Granny. The Gorebacks had been too fast for her, and that was the problem: it was so easy to underestimate the clown-worshipping psychotic cannibals.
Calhoun laughed like a loony. “We zapped her but good and threw her in the freezer to deal with later. Had a shit ton of work to do, packing up our ship, getting our meat ready, and getting off this death planet. Goddamn, the whole place is going to explode at midnight. Mr. C, though, says it might be sooner. Wouldn’t it be funny, now, for us to come here for the motherload of all meat and get killed by them suns exploding?”
“Borzor would love that,” Blaze said.
Calhoun reached over, shoved a finger up Blaze’s nose, and wiggled it around. “Now yer getting it! Borzor would love that! It’d be so fuckin’ funny!”
Blaze threw his head to the side to get the guy’s finger out of his nose. “What about Uncle and Auntie?”
Calhoun sighed. “Oh, Mr. C don’t care about a little decapitation among friends. He’s an archduke of hell, the lord of death and the master of haunts. We asked and Mr. C fixed ’em. Ha, don’t expect he’d do the same fer you, not when you wanna close the Onyx Gate and make the universe a far, far less interesting place. Borzor loves hisself that kind of chaos.”
Mama Mayhem got up from her seat, grabbed the smallest chainsaw from the Borzor altar, and set the chains spinning from the electric motor. Wasn’t just a chainsaw—little fusion teeth ignited and spun around and around. They had fusion chainsaws. Kinda cool.
The old woman shrieked, “Now, Baby Cal, we better get started. We gonna cut off his legs and eat ’em up, right? You wanted his thighs, and I say we get the meat there. Then this ol’ space marine won’t be able to do much to us, missing his legs. Pattie Cakes didn’t want fer us to cut off his junk as she is interested in inspecting it. Once we remove his legs.”
Blaze laughed. “Pattie Cakes wants a piece of me? So I got that going for me. Finally, nombre de Dios, some good news!”
All of the clown-worshipping psychopaths grunted out laughter.
“But Pattie Cakes,” Blaze continued, “you’ll like me a lot more if I have my legs. I can guarantee you a good time.”
Pattie Cakes tittered, “Oh, Blazer Boy, I get all the good lovin’ I can handle from my brothers!”
“Ew.” Blaze grimaced. Under his breath, he muttered, “Cali, Trina, I wish you’d get here before the ew kills me.”
Mama Mayhem came forward with the fusion chainsaw in her unsteady arm, wavering and shaking. “Now, you hold still, Blazer Boy, while I take yer legs. You won’t bleed out as the fusion cauterizes the wound, as you well know. Thankee kindly for the hydrogen shells. Them’s hard to get and our saws do have a powerful hunger.”
Blaze went for Calhoun, went to escape, but again he was zapped back to the floor. Calhoun got his own fusion chainsaw and got the glowing yellow teeth spinning. Damn, but that would be good against vampires or most Onyx monsters, though it was pretty clear Blaze was going to feel them first.
He’d miss his legs. They’d had a lot of good times together.
Pattie Cakes continued to caterwaul laughter. The engines of the freighter fired, getting ready to blast off.
Dilly Donny rushed in, his long green hair even more greasy from his sweaty work. His coveralls were rusted and stiff from gore, and blood covered the hair on his chest, arms, and back. His makeup was smeared. “We’s got a problem. Dilly Donny does declare we’s got a problem
bad.”
Auntie Lips wailed from outside.
Uncle Upchuck hurled himself through the open hatch and onto the bridge. His matted purple wig shook. “Auntie Lips got et. Y’all won’t believe it, but that redhaired bitch is a vampire. She’s eating up poor Lips!” He turned and ran back out into the hangar. Goddamn guy didn’t know what he was doing.
Pattie Cakes continued to file her nails. “Oh, yeah, nows I remember that. I’s forgot to tell y’all. Don’t much matter none. If we get ate up by her, we get to go to Borzor. Iffin we eat her up first, I reckon vampire meat might have a little tang we all might enjoy.”
Blaze used their shock to his advantage. He seized Calhoun by his hair, bashed the psycho’s face into the floor, and then knocked the remote control connected to the zapper in Blaze’s chest to the floor.
Mama Mayhem slammed the fusion chainsaw into Blaze’s armor, but the nanotech slowed the spinning teeth long enough for the gunny to drive a fist into the old cannibal’s stomach, knocking the wind out of her. The chainsaw slipped out of her grip and hit the floor, throwing sparks before shutting off.
Calhoun went for the remote control, but Blaze knocked it away. Both men leapt to their feet. Both went for the altar to get another chainsaw, throwing elbows, growling, pushing, and shoving.
Calhoun won the race and got a beast of a chainsaw with a three-foot-long guide bar and inch-long fusion emitters. The psycho triggered the beast and tried to saw Blaze’s head off. The gunny ducked, plucked off a smaller handheld unit, then retreated to pick Mama Mayhem’s dropped saw off the floor. With a fusion chainsaw in each hand, the guide bars twelve inches long each, he waded in to do battle.
The chainsaws spat sparks as they clashed, Calhoun howling laughter while he sweated his pinche mime makeup off his face. Calhoun whirled his saw over his head and brought it down to rip Blaze in half. Blaze used his left saw to deflect the blow and jabbed his right saw at the clown’s bare chest.
He would’ve ended the chainsaw battle right then if Mama Mayhem hadn’t leapt onto Blaze’s back, her teeth digging into his neck, drawing blood and making him miss.
