A scientist drenched in liquid rust burst into the debriefing room. “We have an emergency,” she said.
Commander Pink excused himself and followed her into the hall, where they engaged in a heated, whispered conversation. Franz made out part of their discussion. It went like this:
Commander Pink: I don’t believe this. Our drills sensed a full core during the last excavation.
Rust: The previous readings contained an error.
Commander Pink: Our machines are never wrong.
Rust: We have a full crew down there now. The reserves are gone. The core is empty.
Commander Pink: Who could steal so much blood? Is there anything left? A drop? We can run DNA scans.
Rust: I’m afraid there isn’t anything left.
Commander Pink returned to the room. “You had a question?” he said, sounding irritated.
“Where is everyone?” Franz asked.
“You mean the survivors?”
“Yes, the vampires who are still alive.”
“The entrance to the upper ground has been locked, so at this point, one-hundred percent of civilization is underground. We’re holding everyone in cells, identical to the cell you were pardoned from, until we can revise our list of survivors and find out how many were lost in the misguided flight into new darkness.”
Franz bowed his head as Commander Pink wrapped up the briefing.
So not only were the remaining vampires trapped underground. They were being held prisoner until a scientist who had appointed himself commander led them into a hopeless sea battle. Their blood supply had gone missing as well. Perhaps it would be best if Cthulhu destroyed all of them now.
Franz and Lola were reunited briefly before he departed on the path-clearing suicide mission. They stood in a control room, the center of the scientists’ current operations. Computers and other machines lined every wall. Graphs, calculations, code sequences, and streaming footage of the outside world illuminated the faces of the vampires. The overload of pixilated images and streaming data bytes made Franz dizzy. He felt like he was trapped in the belly of a great, cube-shaped whale.
“Any luck finding them?” he asked, resting his chin against Lola’s forehead and closing his eyes to forget the flashing nightmare surrounding him.
“Come home soon,” Lola said, ignoring his inquiry about her family.
Home.
“I’m going to be a captain.”
Lola kissed him on the cheek. “I’m so proud of you.”
“When I return, maybe Commander Pink will give us permission to build a little cottage down here,” Franz said, wondering what his odds of survival were. He’d always dreamed of going out to sea, so there was a little excitement mixed up in all the dread and fear. He was going to be the captain of a battleship, like the sea wolves of olden days. If only his father could see him now.
“I would like that,” Lola said, her voice unsteady.
Fighting back dizziness, Franz opened his eyes.
An isolated tear rolled down Lola’s cheek. Franz licked it away and nuzzled his face into hers.
“To the stairwell!” Commander Pink shouted.
Franz kissed Lola, then hurried off with the three other path clearers, leaving Lola alone with the scientists in the control room. He turned back one last time and watched her shift uneasily on her baby legs. He missed her already.
“I mean, what the hell is fondue anyway?” This he overheard one of the vampire path clearers ask another as they ascended the stairs. The one who asked this was the one who wanted to know about treasure. “You remember the sauce I brought to Wally’s birthday?” the other replied, making it clear that these vampires had some prior acquaintance.
Franz glanced at Bruno. The buff vampire caught his glance and moved closer to Franz. “These guys are total losers. They’re going to be worthless out here,” Bruno whispered. “We’d better stick together.”
This solicitation of camaraderie took Franz by surprise. He’d always suspected that Bruno hated him.
“I always meant to tell you,” Bruno continued, “I really admire what you and what’s-her-face have going.”
“You mean Lola, my wife.”
“Yeah, right. You’re like, all traditional and shit. I may be on the cutting edge of cool myself, but I respect anyone who embraces old stuff. You never know what old stuff will become hip again. Shit, man, like what if you were cool one day.”
“Yeah, what if.” Franz realized that being told he had “cool potential” was probably the biggest compliment Bruno paid anyone, aside from deeming them legitimately cool, although hipsters like Bruno were incapable of openly admitting that anyone else was legitimately cool, because their own coolness would suffer. Regardless, an orange-skinned, bulldog-faced, muscle-bound douche was a good friend to have on a mission like this. Franz’s mutant arm would also prove helpful.
“Dude, check out your arm. You got some mad flex going on. I didn’t know you lifted. That’s pretty rad,” Bruno said, squeezing Franz’s mutant arm.
Franz ignored the compliment. Bruno whipped out an Ice Chatter and tapped at the keys with the desperation of a lover who has not received an expected text message. Franz wondered who Bruno was trying to reach as they exited through the heavy brass doors to the outside world.
The scientists locked the doors behind them. Reluctantly, Bruno tucked away his Ice Chatter. The four of them stood together, uncomfortable in their scuba suits, at the base of the Bat Cave.
Franz turned to meet the hideous world with his own eyes. The sight was more horrific than it appeared through the periscope. Mountains of mutilated teenage vampires rose up and converged with the black sky, which broiled with the insidious flutter of winged, skull-faced moon beasts.
“Get back!” Bruno shouted.
He elbowed Franz out of the way as a fish-faced ghoul lunged for them. The ghoul had been previously wounded. Gnarled ropes of intestine dragged behind it, unfurling from a slit in its belly that opened wider with every step, creating the illusion that the wound was breathing.
Bruno punched the fish ghoul in the face. His fist sank into its rubbery flesh and bounced back, as if he’d punched a trampoline. The fish ghoul snarled and lunged. A claw raked Bruno across the face. He tried to turn away, but the ghoul’s intestines came alive and spun around him, binding Bruno in a tight embrace.
Franz got to his feet and looked around. Hordes of ghouls were shambling near. The other two vampires cowered together, whimpering. Tremors passed through Franz’s mutant arm.
As the fish ghoul lowered its foul green jaws to Bruno’s skull, Franz clutched the ghoul’s head and squeezed. The ghoul hissed. Its fishy eyes bulged, bursting red. Its eyes exploded. The ghoulish head popped and showered Bruno in slime and skull bits. Franz had crushed the fucker, but he had no time to celebrate, for a wave of ghouls attacked at once.
The first ghoul to lash out looked everything like the werewolves of myth and legend, excepting the lobster claws sprouting from its hairy chest. Franz swung his mutant arm like a bat and broke off both claws in one swing. The wolf ghoul burst into flames.
Bruno butted heads with an eight-legged spider ghoul. He seemed to be holding his own, so Franz turned his attention to the horde of waddling squidbirds fanning out to surround them. The squidbirds had penguin bodies that tapered off into obsidian-dark squid heads. Between beaks as hard as stone, they flashed razor teeth sharper than a vampire’s. Franz recalled reading of such ghouls in some mythological text of the Order of the Old Ones, but their proper eldritch name eluded him. So he called them squidbirds.
A squidbird bumbled up to the cowering vampires, latched its tentacles around one of them, and chomped down on his nose. The vampire screamed. By the time Franz punched the squidbird to death, the squidbird had already pecked out both of the vampire’s eyes. He held his hands up to the holes in his face. Blood fountained out and covered his palms. His fondue-making friend whipped out an Ice Chatter and took a photo, then looked at F
ranz. “How are we supposed to get in touch with the scientists if they didn’t give us their number?”
A squidbird bit into the skull of the vampire before Franz could respond.
Franz’s mutant arm took control of his body. By the time it was all over, the squidbirds and the cowards were dead. Only Franz and Bruno remained. Bruno proffered a high-five and Franz reciprocated.
“Way to kick some ass,” Bruno said.
Franz nodded. He scanned the pulsing, gelatinous snowscape surrounding them. Nothing moved. For the moment, the ghoul attack had abated. He bent over and picked up the bloody Ice Chatter. “How do you suppose the scientists want us to keep in touch?”
“Dial 9-9-9.”
Franz nodded and slid the Ice Chatter into a zippered pouch sewn into the breast of his scuba suit.
“Think we scared off the ghouls?” Bruno asked.
“The whole world is a monster. I don’t think it’s scared of us. It’s just thinking, planning another attack.”
“Fuckin’ A, you called it,” Bruno said, pointing to the sky.
The penis hydra towered above them.
It had grown more heads since Franz spied it through the periscope. The hydra reared back two mushroom-shaped heads in preparation for a semen storm. Instinctually, out of self-preservation, Franz raised his mutant arm above his head to shield himself from the impending wave of flesh-melting semen.
To his surprise and horror, his mutant arm detached from his body and flew through the air in the direction of the penis hydra. His mutant arm took his original arm, his good and natural vampire arm, with it.
“Whoa bro, your arm,” Bruno said.
The penis hydra stamped its feet disgruntledly and focused all of its many heads on the flying arm. Such fixed attention did not prevent the arm from punching the penis hydra in the face, knocking out one bulbous head at a time.
The hydra collapsed, but the mutant arm was not finished yet. The arm burrowed into the tip of the center head.
Franz looked longingly after his vanished arm.
The penis hydra exploded. Crumbs of white birthday cake, not flesh-eating sperm, rained down. By the time the cake settled, Franz and Bruno were covered head to toe in birthday cake.
“That is the coolest thing I have ever seen,” Bruno said.
Franz licked vanilla frosting off his lips. Birthday cake, not monsters, coated everything in all directions, paving the path they had walked and leading to the distant sea.
Beyond the cake, a ghoul took sight of them and charged in their direction. The moment it set foot (or tentacle) upon the birthday cake, the ghoul exploded.
Bruno whistled his approval.
Franz took out the Ice Chatter and dialed 9-9-9.
“Yes?” The call was taken almost instantly. He recognized the voice as that of Barthelme or Barthelme.
“We cleared the path. Follow the birthday cake down to the sea.”
“Right, we’re on it. Is there anything else?”
“Will you give your Ice Chatter to Lola?”
“By anything else, I intend to know details of your crew. Have you acquired vital information? Is anyone injured?”
“Two dead, two in perfect health.” He glanced at his armless shoulder. “Almost perfect health.”
There was silence on the other end as Barthelme or Barthelme put a hand over the speaker. Franz felt anxious. What did the scientist not want him to hear? But when he came back on the line, he merely said, “We’ve tracked your current location. Remain at those coordinates and we’ll have our battleships out shortly. I’m turning the Ice Chatter over to Lola now. Goodbye.”
The line went dead.
Franz was tempted to call back, but resisted. He would try to find a moment to call or text Lola from the battleship.
Bruno was typing into his Ice Chatter again, that same desperate expression on his face.
“Is everything okay?” Franz asked.
“Yeah,” Bruno put the Ice Chatter away and smiled, “I was just texting the Arm Emporium. If we’re going to battle, I want an explosive arm too.”
They laughed together. Franz thought that maybe Bruno was okay after all. He could tell by the worried look in Bruno’s eyes that something was troubling him deeply. Someone he cared for was probably missing. How long would it take to sort out the dead and the missing from those still living?
He inhaled deeply of the birthday air. For all the devastation he’d faced since awaking to Lion Man’s death, this moment, surrounded by a birthday cake wonderland, was not such a bad start to a one-armed life. He hoped Lola wouldn’t mind. Losing a limb certainly offset one’s symmetry, although with her legs missing and his arm gone, they remained a perfect two-piece puzzle.
Cthulhu yawned and stretched his tentacles as he awoke from a most refreshing nap. He felt a newfound sense of confidence and purpose, and thankfully, no longer sick from the most disappointing hamburger.
He descended from his ship of stars, only to discover that a layer of fluffy white cake had blanketed the world.
Was it his birthday already?
Or had he, in dreams, manifested what he needed to destroy the vampires.
Birthday cake, not hamburgers.
“Happy Birthday, old chap,” Cthulhu said to himself, and set the sky on fire, incidentally burning his ship of stars to a crisp.
He could wish for a new one if he wanted, or anything else.
The universe was his candle to wish upon.
What did Cthulhu wish for when he blew out the flaming sky?
That’s a secret we’ll never know.
Burn Girl ate her strawberry milkshake with a spoon. Cyrus drank his chocolate milkshake with a straw.
They sat in a clam booth near the back. Cyrus was exhausted from their walk. He looked around the diner, a renovated coral reef bustling with sea life.
“Where I come from, they teach us that the seas are dead. They claim nothing lives here anymore.”
“The ocean folk prefer keeping to themselves.”
“Is this where the old gods live?”
“Yeah, they’re all here somewhere. If we’d gone to the other diner, the ruined one, we may have seen some of them. They don’t come to this diner. It’s where the commoners go.”
“Commoners?”
“You know, fish and seals and lobsters and stuff. The gods had their own diner. Until Cthulhu destroyed it. Do you want to try my strawberry milkshake?”
Burn Girl slid her glass forward.
Cyrus hesitated.
“I’m not going to set you on fire or anything. I don’t burn that way.”
“Well, duh. We’ve already held hands.”
“Then what’s wrong? This place makes the second best strawberry milkshake in the whole wide sea. Well, I suppose it’s now the best.”
Cyrus hated to admit when he didn’t know something. Openly confessing his own inexperience or unawareness, even concerning a thing he cared nothing for, made him blush. That he was beginning to have feelings for Burn Girl made this even more difficult. But after nearly getting killed by Kayla and Isaac for failing to express his concerns to them, Cyrus was ready to be more open and honest with those around him. So he took a deep breath and confessed, “I’ve never heard of a strawberry milkshake. I don’t know what it is.”
“Oh, of course. I suppose vampires don’t grow strawberries.”
“Can I try?”
Burn Girl smiled. “Please do.”
Cyrus lifted a spoonful of strawberry milkshake to his lips. It had the same texture and consistency as his chocolate milkshake, but tasted much sweeter. The flavor reminded him of the times when he was a little vampire and his father surprised him by going out and buying a box of Cyrus’ favorite blood muffins before anyone in the house awoke. Not that strawberry milkshakes tasted like those blood muffins. No. Strawberry milkshakes tasted like those mornings when you woke up and smelled a surprise waiting for you, secretly harvested while you slept by someone who loved you.<
br />
Cyrus took another bite, but this one tasted all scaly and rotten, like a salted dead thing. His face puckered up as he forced himself to swallow the nastiness in his mouth without retching. Where had the magical mornings gone?
“I should have warned you about the fishy parts. You’re probably unfamiliar with the taste of fish. That must be quite a shock,” Burn Girl said. “Strawberries don’t naturally grow underwater, or in arctic climates, but some of the elder gods, starting with Azathoth I think, loved them. They’d tried them on other planets. You know how gods go where they are summoned. Most of them exploit these trips for a little personal vacation time of their own. So Azathoth, at least I think it was Azathoth who first brought tales of strawberries, got the idea to bring back a strawberry plant and modify them, using the dark arts, to grow in these cold seas. And would you believe it, the plan worked.
“The only downside is how the success came about. Azathoth had to splice into the strawberry plant a link from the genetic code of a calcifer, the warmest jellyfish in the ocean. The calcifer genes enabled the strawberry plants to not freeze. Within the span of a few decades, a strawberry craze took hold. All the elder gods wanted was strawberry this or strawberry that. And they planted them everywhere. In coral reefs and clams, seaweed beds and once inside the belly of a whale. The downside of these strawberries is that they taste a little fishy. Most gods don’t mind because they subsist primarily on sushi diets anyway.
“Personally, I’m not a fan of fishy things. Lucky for me, I know the secret of picking the sweet parts out of strawberry milkshakes and leaving the gross parts behind.”
“How do you do it?”
“Alchemy. Anyway, I thought vampires were supposed to feed only on blood. Are you special?”
Cthulhu Comes to the Vampire Kingdom Page 8
