by J. I. Greco
“Stop the war?” Rudy takes the glasses off, shoving them back in their boot sheath, and rubs his temples with his palms. “Stop the war… right. Yeah… I get it. We stop the war, Lock’s market goes away, and she stops working on jets. Or at least slows down. Buys us some time to try to convince her to abandon her research.”
“What? Like Lock would ever listen to me? Anyway, stopping the war won’t stop the future, and jets are the future. If it isn’t Lock, it’ll be somebody who figures it out. No, we stop the war because it’s the right thing to do.”
“Because you started the war in the first place?”
“I would say that’s open to historical interpretation,” Trip says, dashing his cig out in the ashtray. “But no, I was more thinking that it’s only right that if anybody’s going to profit from the war, it should be me. Definitely not Lock. Screw her and her patronizing code tester offer.”
“So you want to stop the war to spite Lock?”
“And cut off her profit line.”
“Of course.”
“Cut her off, and at the same time, make a little profit for ourselves.”
I’m almost afraid to ask… how are we going to make a profit off of stopping the war?”
“A little thing called diplomacy, brother.” Trip’s left eyebrow twitches and the dashboard lighter pops in. “Something I’m so good at, and something so desperately needed in these troubled times, that I am certain I can ask any price, and there will be suckers aplenty to gladly pay it.”
“You are truly a monster.”
Trip grabs the lighter when it pops and lights a fresh cig. “Also open to historical interpretation,” he says, twitching again to hit the gas.
Chapter Fifteen
“All right, just park your vehicle and join the line there,” the tall, green-skinned Cthulist guard says, bending down to address Trip through the Wound’s open window as the car slows to a stop in front of the enclave’s main gate. The Cthulist guard points the tip of his spear-scythe at the dozens of refugees lined up at a door, just to the side of the gate, set into the hulking wall of interwoven ivy and tree branches surrounding the sacred village. “Once you’re inside, change in to the provided robe and you’ll be a Cthulist before you know it.”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s great, but we don’t want to convert,” Trip says, twitching to put the Wound into idle. “We’re here to see your major-domo.”
The guard’s face tentacles quiver, taken aback. “You wish an audience with the reverent Mugatham’mmmrrrrr?”
“Yep.” Trip slides a nic-caff-and-lizard-urine pill out of his Bugs Bunny PEZ and onto his tongue. “A pow-wow, yeah.”
“The reverent Mugatham’mmmrrrrr does not have audiences with just anyone,” the guard says. He looks back at the line of cars, trucks, and horse-drawn wagons clogging the road behind the Wound. “Many supplicants come to him, but most are turned away, for he is busy waging the Holy War. Unless he is expecting you. Is he expecting you?”
“I’m no supplicant. And I’m always expected. By everyone.” Trip slips the PEZ away into his inner tux chest pocket. “Name’s Trip.”
The guard grunts, then yells over his shoulder into the shack behind him. “Jivllrrrle’remmm, is there a ‘Trip’ on the list?”
“There is no ‘Trip’ on the list, Dure’relementrrrrmmm,” comes the answer out of the open shack window.
Dure’relementrrrrmmm shows a mouthful of pointed teeth to Trip. “You are not on the list.”
“What do you mean I’m not on the list?” Trip asks. “This is some exclusionary bullshit, I’ll tell you what. It’s because I don’t have tentacles, isn’t it?”
“If you became one of us, you would need no permission to enter the sacred village,” Dure’relementrrrrmmm says. “It would be your rightful home, as all of the sacred villages would be, and you could come and go as you please. There are other benefits to conversion, as well, not the least of which is assuring yourself a place on one of the Five Comets of Nirvana that will arrive after we cleanse the world of the human-folk and usher in the Old Age Reborn with our mass sacrificial suicide. Can I sign you up for conversion? There are still a few slots open before lunch.”
“Thanks but no. I’m good.” Trip thumbs over at Rudy, huddled knee-to-chest in the passenger seat, a glistening sheen of sweat on his forehead, a thousand-yard stare to his eyes. “You can check the list for Rudy, though.”
“That is Rudy?” Dure’relementrrrrmmm asks, peering into the car. “He does not look well.”
“That coming from a guy with tentacles growing out of his ears and fish-breath,” Trip says, waving the air in front of his nose. “Just hold the judgment and check the list, will you?”
Dure’relementrrrrmmm grunts and calls into the shack again. “Jivllrrrle’remmm, is there a ‘Rudy’ on the list?”
“There is no ‘Rudy’ on the list, Dure’relementrrrrmmm.”
“He is not on the list, either,” Dure’relementrrrrmmm says to Trip. “Now, please, if you’re not interested in conversion, pull over, turn around, and drive away. You are holding up the line and the convert applicants. We have a quota to meet.”
“Hold on, hold on,” Trip says, raising a hand in protest. “Me and Mugatham’mmmrrrrr’s kid Brad go way back. Just get on the horn or the vine or whatever it is you guys use to talk to each other and mention my name to Brad. You’ll see.”
“It is a genetically-engineered internal organ, modified from what was once our spleen, to act as a conduit for short-wave radio transmissions over which we send coded signals, generated by another genetically-engineered internal organ, what was once our appendix.”
“What are you talking about?” Trip asks.
“What we use to communicate over long distances. You seemed curious. I was just elaborating.”
“I may have seemed curious, but trust me, that was purely tangential.” Trip points at the Cthulist’s stomach. “So can you get on this spleen network of yours and call Brad?”
“I could… but I will not.” Dure’relementrrrrmmm says. “High Holy General Bradulithuni’mmmrrrrr is much too busy in the field leading the Holy Army of Ultimate Conversion against the treacherous and ungodly forces of the Chinese Occupation to be bothered by the likes of me.”
“All right, how about spleening up Mugatham’mmmrrrrr himself? If he knew we are out here, he’d invite us in.” Trip turns to smile at Rudy. “I’m sure he’s forgotten that whole me hitting on his wife thing, right?”
Rudy lets out a low moan.
“I will not bother the reverent Mugatham’mmmrrrrr about this. You are not on the list. There is nothing I can do.” Dure’relementrrrrmmm says, laying a hand over his spleen. “Now turn around and drive away, human, or do I need to have you and your car thrown away?”
A rustle off to the left gets Trip’s attention. A section of the wall of leaves and branches shakes, parting like a curtain to let a massive tree, with roots writhing like tentacles, glide out towards the Dodge. It slows to a stop, looming over the hood.
“Hold up, hold up,” Trip says, nodding a hello at the tree. “Tell you what. You let us in, I’ll give you what we got in back.”
“What is in the back?” Dure’relementrrrrmmm asks.
Trip’s eyebrow twitches and the Wound’s trunk pops open with a sharp click. “Beer. The Wasteland’s finest. Straight from Shunk. Twenty gallons of it.”
Rudy suddenly becomes animated, lifting his head to glare at Trip. “We had beer in the car this whole time and you didn’t tell me?”
Trip smirks at him. “What, I didn’t mention it?”
“You bastard,” Rudy says, and sinks back down into his knee-hugging, rocking-back-and-forth, sweat-drenched moaning.
“What do you say?” Trip asks Dure’relementrrrrmmm, turning away from Rudy with a cold shrug. “You and your fellow grunts tie one on tonight courtesy of yours truly, and in return you open the gate for us. Everybody’s happy.”
“We are Cthulists,” Dur
e’relementrrrrmmm says. “We do not pollute our bodies with swill.”
“Had to ask,” Trip says, lighting a cig. “Tell you what, take it anyway. Use it for fuel, dump it out, I don’t care. Just dead weight, really.”
Rudy lets out a deep, sad moan.
Dure’relementrrrrmmm squints into the car at Rudy. “Are you sure he’s all right?”
“Yeah, he’s just being a big baby, can’t deal with a little—” Trip cuts himself off sharply, seeing the concern in Dure’relementrrrrmmm’s deep-set eyes. “Oh, no, he’s like dying. Could pass on to the next life any minute. Probably nothing can save him except advanced bio-medical hoodoo, and you know how rare that is.” Trip pats Rudy on the shoulder. “Sorry, buddy.”
“But we do advanced bio-medical hoodoo here!” Dure’relementrrrrmmm announces.
“Really?” Trip asks with a sardonic grin. “Wow, that’s a lucky coincidence. You hear that, Rudy? You’re going to live! Live, I say! Oh, but wait. We’re not on the list. That is just tragic. So close. And with all those kids at home depending on you. Well, too bad. You want thrown unceremoniously in the first ditch we come across, or you want to go the full cremated on a funeral pyre and then we toss your ashes into the first ditch we come across?”
“How about neither?” Rudy asks.
“I’m not driving around with your piss-smelling corpse rotting away in the passenger seat.”
“Why is my corpse gonna smell like piss?”
“I’m gonna piss on it, obviously.”
“Wait,” Dure’relementrrrrmmm says. “This tragedy may be avoidable.”
“Do tell,” Trip says, tapping ashes out the window. And over Dure’relementrrrrmmm’s woven boots.
Dure’relementrrrrmmm sneers at the cig as he calls back over his shoulder into the guard shack. “Jivllrrrle’remmm, is there not an exception to the entry rules for medical emergencies?”
“There is an exception for medical emergencies, Dure’relementrrrrmmm.”
“You see,” Dure’relementrrrrmmm says. “We can let you in.”
“That’s fantastic,” Trip says flatly.
“To seek medical assistance at the Hoodoo center, only,” Dure’relementrrrrmmm says.
“Of course, of course.” Trip holds his hand out to the Cthulists, his pinky extended. “We’ll drive straight there. Pinky promise.”
Dure’relementrrrrmmm hooks his boneless pinky with Trip’s. “Take care, and my best wishes for your speedy recovery.”
“Thanks.” Trip takes his hand back, rubbing his pinky off on Rudy’s jeans. “Now, let’s get that gate open. Got a dying man here.”
“Jivllrrrle’remmm, open the gate!” Dure’relementrrrrmmm calls, and the gate behind the tree guardian rolls up.
The tree guardian steps to one side, and Trip twitches the Wound into drive, waving at Dure’relementrrrrmmm as he has the car start toward the gate. “Sucker,” he says under his breath.
“You know, sometimes you can be a real asshole, but I knew, at the end of the day, deep down, you care,” Rudy says as the Wound eases through the open gate into a paradise of lush greenery. “I may not be dying, but I admit, I could maybe use some medical attention about now. Nice to know I can count on you, brother.”
“Yep, count on me.”
“We’re not really going to the hospital, are we?”
“What do you think?”
“But you made a pinky promise.”
“With a tentacle. Ewww. Doesn’t count.”
Chapter Sixteen
“What are you doing?” one of two Cthulist guards asks, lowering his triple-bladed scythe to block access to the curtain of broad green and purple leaves separating the receiving area and King-Chief Mugatham’mmmrrrrr’s council chamber, high atop the tallest tree cluster in the city-state.
“Just trying to get a peek in,” Trip says, gently pushing the scythe up and out of his way to peer through a gap in the leaves. The council chamber beyond the curtain is quiet, and empty. Shafts of light appear and vanish, the sun shining through the ceiling, a domed canopy of interwoven tree branches blowing gently in the wind. The floor of the chamber is carpeted in grass, a wide circle of it in the center an inch shorter than the rest, delineating a conference area.
Trip reaches up to part the curtain.
The second guard’s hand shoots out, wrapping around Trip’s wrist. “Please stand back, human.”
“We’ve been standing back for two hours,” Trip says, shrugging out of the guard’s grasp. He rubs his wrist. “Now, we stand forward.”
Rudy, dabbing sweat from his pallid forehead with a handkerchief, steps up next to Trip. “Yeah, forward,” he says, going up on tiptoes to find a crack the look through.
The first guard lets out a hissing grunt. “This is highly irregular.”
“I know,” Trip says, lighting a cigarette, “but like I told you, the guy at the front gate said it’d be okay.”
“There he is,” Rudy announces.
Trip throws back the curtain before the guards can stop him. “Hey, Mugatham’mmmrrrrr, it’s me, your old pal Trip!” he calls out at the tall, muscular Cthulist in ornate robes entering the chamber through another curtained archway in the back, flanked by smaller Cthulists in less ornate robes.
“And Rudy!” Rudy shouts out, waving. “Remember me? You came to my wedding?”
Across the chamber, Mugatham’mmmrrrrr looks up. He dismisses his counselors and lopes gracefully across the chamber.
“I will not tell you again, human,” the first guard says, slipping in front of Rudy, his scythe between them at the ready. “Stand back.”
“Forgive the intrusion, my king,” the second guard says, grabbing Trip by both shoulders and standing at attention as Mugatham’mmmrrrrr approaches. “Rest assured, I will teach these humans respect.”
“Rudy? Is that you?” Mugatham’mmmrrrrr asks, squinting. The Chief-King takes a pair of half-moon glasses from a robe pocket and places them near his chin, where they are grabbed by a half-dozen of his facial tentacles. The tentacles fit the glasses over his nose, holding them in place while he studies the Rudy. “Yes, yes, of course I remember you!” The tentacles lower the glasses and he takes them in his hand, putting them away in his robe. “How good to see you. How are your darling broodlings, and that lovely wife of yours?”
“They’re all good,” Rudy says, proudly. “Bernice is a militia leader now.”
“Oh, how excellent! Do tell her hello for me. And give those kids a big hug from their old uncle Mugatham’mmmrrrrr.”
“Will do,” Rudy says.
“Umm, hello, still being manhandled here,” Trip says, struggling to get out of the guard’s iron grip on his shoulders.
“Trip,” the King-Chief says with narrowed eyes.
“Mugatham’mmmrrrrr,” Trip says with a sardonic smirk.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve showing your face here.”
“This is the fake out bit where you hug me and all is forgiven, right?”
“No, this is where I have you dragged to the prison pit of Gigontua.”
“Is it a five-star prison pit?” Trip asks. “Because I only do five-star prison pits.”
“Make sure he gets the Presidential suite,” Mugatham’mmmrrrrr says to the guard.
“That’s better. Wait… that’s just a cell with extra-large snakes or something in it, isn’t it?”
“Spiders,” the guard holding Trip says, his boneless fingers clamping sharply into his shoulders. “Extra extra-large.”
“Oh, come on,” Trip says.
“You hit on my wife,” Mugatham’mmmrrrrr says.
“I hit on a lot of women. Frankly, instead of being offended, I’d think you’d be flattered. And proud. Of her. She didn’t hit back.”
“She didn’t hit back then, no,” Mugatham’mmmrrrrr says. “But it got her thinking. About our future. As a couple. She made me do date nights. You believe that? Date nights. No one enjoys painting pottery. And then she started dr
opping big hints that I maybe shouldn’t have so many mistresses.”
“Oh.”
“Yes, oh. It got so bad I had to send her away on holiday with her mother. And then out of solidarity every single one of my mistresses quit.”
“Wait, what?” Trip asks. “You had paid mistresses?”
Mugatham’mmmrrrrr asks, “You don’t pay your mistresses?”
“No mistresses at the present… but when I do get one, it’s not going to be a paid position.”
“But if you don’t pay them, how do you get them to sleep with you?”
“Oh, man, Mugatham’mmmrrrrr, buddy, that’s so sad,” Rudy says.
“But you’re king,” Trip says. “Isn’t that like an automatic panty-dropper? Like, gratis automatic?”
“I am done with this conversation,” Mugatham’mmmrrrrr says, abruptly waving at the guard. “Take him away.”
“Mugatham’mmmrrrrr, please,” Rudy protests as the guard shifts his hold on Trip to under his arms and easily lifts him a few inches off the grass-covered floor. “He’s an asshole, but we did come here with good intentions.”
“Yeah,” Trip says, twisting and turning in the guard’s grasp, his fleet flailing as he’s carried towards an open-platform elevator. “Awesomely good intentions!”
“What good intentions could you possibly have?” Mugatham’mmmrrrrr asks. “You intend to hit on my daughter?”
Trip’s eyebrow goes up. “You have a daughter?”
“Focus, Trip,” Rudy says. His nose wriggles as he catches the scent of fruit and pastries from somewhere back in the council chamber. “Is that a snack table?” he asks, wandering off to investigate.
“Right!” Trip yells, the guard dragging him stepping on the elevator. “We’re here to stop the war. Gotta admit—that’s a pretty good intention, right? Honorable. Noble, even.”
“Hold,” Mugatham’mmmrrrrr commands the guard. “Why would I want to stop the war?”
“Because it’s going to lead to the end of the world.”
“But I want the end of the world,” Mugatham’mmmrrrrr says. “So the Formless Ones can return and walk over their rightful land.”
