It's the Apocalypse, Dave. Try to Have Fun. Read online

  “Yeah, sure,” said Gabby. “To the woods, Jerry. We know. But first we’ve got to figure out how to get past that thing.” She pointed towards the entrance of the courtyard.

  After a moment of silence, Tony asked, “Any ideas?”

  “Whatever we do, we need to do it fast,” said Otis. “If the sun’s the only thing keeping these things from making a meal of us, then I sure as hell don’t want to be around when it gets dark. We need to get out of here with enough time to make it to the woods, or the mountains, or wherever.”

  “What about mirrors?” asked Tony, and we all looked at him in uncertainty. “If we had some big mirrors we could, you know, reflect the sun into the entrance. Don’t look at me like I’m an idiot. I’m trying to brainstorm here.”

  “Where are we going to get mirrors?” asked Gabby.

  “From the apartment,” said Tony.

  “The apartment with the walls full of octopus-Terramed-things? Who’s going to volunteer to run in there and rip a mirror off the wall? You?” asked Gabby, mocking her brother’s bad idea.

  “It’s better than standing around here waiting for those things to get hungry and come eat us,” said Tony.

  “Yeah, you should try it. Go ahead, run on in. Maybe if they eat your fat ass they’ll fill up and the rest of us can make a run for it,” said Gabby, escalating the sibling rivalry.

  “Do you have a better idea?” asked Tony.

  “Yes,” said Gabby. “I don’t even have an idea, and it’s still better than yours.”

  Otis was sick of hearing them bicker. “Would you two stop it? For fuck’s sake.” He looked up to heaven and asked, “What’d I do wrong, huh? Why’d you stick me in Little Mexico with these fools? Did I piss you off or what? Is it because I don’t go to church no more? I’m sorry, Big G. Get me out of Little Mexico and I’ll make it up to you, I swear. Don’t let me die here, of all places, in beaner town.”

  “Otis, go right ahead and run for the border,” said Tony. “We won’t stop you.”

  “Here’s an idea,” I said, fed up with all of them. “How about all of you shut up and help me figure out how to get out of this mess.”

  “Oh, watch out,” said Tony, chiding me. “The white dude thinks he’s in charge. He’s going to want to build a wall or something.”

  “Ain’t that the truth!” Otis high-fived Tony as they laughed.

  I should’ve responded by decrying their attempt to turn our situation into a sociopolitical analogy. I could’ve explained how our predicament inside Little Mexico was an opportunity to shun the stereotypes that plagued modern culture, and prove that mankind was better off working together rather than drawing distinctions between two otherwise relatable parties with common goals. That’s what I should’ve done, but instead I said, “Fuck you guys.”

  “I can ask Jason to come get us,” said Gabby.

  “How do you plan to do that?” asked Tony.

  “He’s been texting me. He wanted to make sure I was okay. If I asked him to come here, he’d do it.”

  “I thought we didn’t want to risk using our phones,” I said.

  “It’s better than waiting around for you to do anything,” said Gabby. “And we were using our phones a minute ago without a problem. Maybe those things stopped appearing. Besides, we don’t even know if that’s really what’s causing it.” She took out her phone and turned it on.

  “Aren’t the two of you broken up?” I asked.

  “He wants to get back together. He still loves me. He’d come running if I asked him to.”

  Gabby’s phone chimed as it turned back on. I snatched it away from her.

  “Hey! Give it back.”

  “I’ll text him,” I said.

  She was furious, and slapped at me while demanding her phone back.

  “Stop it,” I said as I waited for the phone to finish booting up. “I’ll text him.”

  Tony held his sister back. “Quit fighting. He’s trying to protect you and the baby.”

  Her anger cooled when she realized I wasn’t just being a jerk. If using technology somehow opened a person up to a Terramed infection, then I sure as hell wasn’t going to stand there and watch a mother and her unborn baby fall victim.

  Jerry came over to me, his metal rod crackling with energy. He pointed the wand directly at the phone in my hands, and then made circles above my head before walking around me like he was a hippie cleansing the area with sage. I had a roommate who used to do that all the time. She called it ‘smudging’, and our apartment would stink like a tire fire afterward.

  I found the texts that Jason and Gabby had been passing back and forth. Curiosity (or, let’s be honest, jealousy) got the better of me, and I read through the most recent ones.

  Jason: Babe u ok?

  Jason: Pls answr

  Jason: U ok?

  I’m a stickler for using correct grammar when texting. The sight of ignorantly abbreviated words and lack of punctuation are like nails on a chalkboard in my brain. I already didn’t like this guy, and now I was learning to hate him.

  Gabby: With Mimi and Jer. Holy shit. It’s nuts.

  Jason: U and babe good?

  Did he mean ‘baby’? Was that a misspelling, or did he refer to the baby as ‘babe’ often? Was that a term of endearment between them? Why was I obsessing about this?

  Gabby: We’re good. U?

  Jason: Im cumin over.

  Oh for fuck’s sake. Really? ‘Cumin’? What an idiot. And why didn’t his phone autocorrect his atrocious grammar and stick an apostrophe between ‘I’ and ‘M’? My best guess was that he made the error so frequently that his phone just gave up trying to fix it.

  Gabby: No. Stay home. B safe.

  Jason: done b lik that. Lemme cum.

  Gabby: I’ll call you ltr. B safe.

  Jason: k fine. Luv u.

  That was, thankfully, the last text. I got some childish pleasure out of the fact that Gabby didn’t respond to him in kind.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Gabby.

  “Nothing, I’m just waiting for the phone to finish starting up,” I lied.

  I quickly typed out a text, but then erased it and rewrote it in an attempt to make it sound more genuine, as if he might’ve been able to guess it wasn’t Gabby typing. I’m not sure why I thought that would matter. Even though it killed me to use abbreviations and bad grammar, I forced myself.

  Gabby: Need ur help. Come 2 Lil Mex. Bring lots o big mirrors. Trapped in courtyard. Honk when u get here.

  “Okay,” I said to the others when finished. “I sent him a text asking for help.”

  Gabby asked me to read her what I’d written, and while I was in the process, Jason replied.

  Jason: omw

  I quickly texted him back.

  Gabby: Turn your phone off. Trust me. Do it. Turn it back on after you get here and honk, and I’ll text you.

  I relayed our texts to the others, and then turned off Gabby’s phone.

  “Now what?” asked Otis.

  “Now we wait for a rescue,” I said.

  It seemed like the Terrameds took my statement as a challenge. I could hear them moving through the walls, as if trying to constrict around us. Plaster cracked, and a few pieces of a nearby wall fell into a flowerbed.

  “Did you see that?” asked Otis, pointing out the obvious.

  Tony and Mimi both cursed. Jerry held his wand out in front of him with both hands as if preparing to slay a dragon. Gabby came over to me and held out her hand. For a moment, I thought she wanted me to hold it.

  “My phone,” she said with her palm up, flicking her fingers to signal that she wanted what was hers.

  I handed the phone back and said, “Leave it off.”

  Otis picked up a small stone and threw it at the wall where the plaster had broken free, to the west, near Tony’s apartment. He yelled, “Come on out and get us, you slimy pieces of…”

  Tony grabbed his shoulder and asked, “What’re you doing, man? Don’t piss them o
ff.”

  Otis had indeed angered them. We heard a calamitous shaking, and a window shattered as the stucco wall began to fall away, revealing slithering shapes inside. For a brief moment I saw a glimpse of the pink organ that we suspected was a brain.

  None of us expected Otis’s reaction. He turned to face Tony, scowled, and then stole the katana. He headed for the wall where the Terramed’s were hiding.

  “No, stop!” I tried to grab him, but he wormed out of my grip and went to challenge the monster in the wall.

  “Come on, motherfucker. Let’s see what you got. Let’s see.”

  The wall shuddered, and some plaster fell away, revealing even more slithering shapes snaking around within. Past the inch of stucco, and the wire mesh, was the gap where insulation should’ve been. It was in that gap that we could see the creatures moving around.

  We yelled at Otis to return, but he was determined to fight back against the monsters that’d trapped us. He stabbed the wall near where the brain had been, easily piercing the stucco and sending six inches of the blade inside. The monster squealed, and the entire façade began to rumble. I could see the tentacles within sliding back and forth, and they were suddenly slick with black blood. More plaster began to fall away as gelatinous shapes ballooned within. We heard a series of quick ‘pops’, and then a gush of brown fluid spilled out. It was as if the wall was filled to bursting with the goo. The sword started to wobble, and then shake violently as the tentacle it was stuck in tried to rip free.

  There was a loud snap of metal that preceded the katana falling free. Six inches of its blade had broken, and was still stuck in the wall as the hilt hit the ground. Otis retrieved the broken sword before returning to us.

  The sun’s position allowed it to shine directly on the crumbling façade. It was almost as if the Terrameds had purposefully exposed parts of themselves to the sunlight, although I couldn’t fathom the reason.

  Tony was shouting angry reprimands at Otis for what he’d done, but I ignored them and watched how the creature responded to the assault. The fluid that oozed from the breaks in the wall was thick, gelatinous, and filled with the tiny, red worms that I’d seen at the gas station. The fluid was spreading, but it wasn’t just sliding down the wall like I expected. It was moving across whatever surface it touched in every direction it could. The worms were pushing at the edges, searching for space to move, and spreading the mucus, like slugs leaving a trail of slime behind them.

  “Guys,” I said as I stared, transfixed by what was happening.

  Tony and Otis continued their bickering, ignoring the way the noose around our necks was growing tighter. The goo was spreading, covering the walls, doors, and windows of the apartments. The exposed holes in the stucco were quickly filled. It wasn’t just happening where Otis had stuck the sword. The majority of the western wall shuddered as the creatures within exploded their pus-filled sacs.

  The brown liquid dripped from the top of the entryways to the north and south, creating growing pools that would eventually build and block our only way out. These monsters were building a prison to hold us in. I felt like a fly caught in a web, helplessly stranded as the spider cocoons me.

  “Guys, shut up and look,” I pointed to one of the entrances.

  A tentacle broke through the top of the entrance where the fluid was leaking. The appendage pushed downward. Another appeared beside it, and then another. The tentacles grew slowly, forcing their way down through the fluid like the teeth of a closing mouth. The gelatinous goo flowed along the length of the tentacles as we watched in disbelief.

  “What’s it doing?” asked Gabby.

  I looked at the other entrance of the courtyard and saw the same thing happening there.

  “It’s barring us in,” said Otis.

  “What?” asked Tony.

  “He’s right. Look,” I said as I peeled off a piece of the hardened gel that was still on my skin. I squeezed the solidified gelatin between my fingers to show how durable it was. “Once that stuff dries, we won’t have a way out of here. They’re trapping us in.”

  “How long until it dries?” asked Gabby.

  “It hasn’t been long since it got on me.”

  “How long do you think it’s going to take for Jason to get here?” asked Otis.

  “He lives about fifteen minutes away,” said Gabby.

  “On a good day, with no traffic,” said Tony. “And without an army of squid monsters trying to eat everyone. Who knows how long it’ll take him to get here. By the time he does, we’ll be trapped.”

  I picked up a rock and said, “Let’s try and stop it.” I flung the rock at one of the entrances, but it flew harmlessly between two of the tentacles.

  “Ball one,” said Otis as he found his own rock to throw. His aim was far better than mine. His rock found its target in the center of a tentacle, but it bounced away without even causing the creature to flinch. It took a glob of fluid off with it, but the worms quickly returned to patch the hole.

  “That’s not going to work,” said Gabby.

  “If you’ve got a better idea, let’s hear it,” said Tony as he started hurling stones as well.

  “All right,” said Gabby as she looked around. “Let’s tear down the playground and try to use the slide or the swings to push at the tentacles. That’ll work better than throwing rocks.”

  “How are we going to get close to it?” I asked.

  “We don’t have to,” said Gabby. “We can take the swings down and tie one end to a brick or something. Then we can throw it at the tentacle, and pull it back.”

  “That’s actually a pretty good idea,” said Otis.

  “I know it’s a good idea,” said Gabby as she headed to the playground. “Now hurry up and help me.”

  “How are we going to pull the swings down?” asked Otis, and I thought of the tools in the back of Tony’s truck. They were useless out there, of course, but it amused me that we’d found ourselves in a quandary that required the tools we’d previously been holding.

  “I don’t know,” said Gabby. “Let’s figure it out.”

  I took a step to follow, but noticed the ground vibrating beneath me. It felt like I’d stepped on a ringing cell phone, and I reacted by quickly moving aside and glancing down. I couldn’t see anything on the ground that would cause the odd vibration, which terrified me because it meant there was something underneath.

  “Guys,” I said loud enough to get everyone’s attention. “I think they’re under…”

  I didn’t get the chance to finish before the Terrameds attacked. It was as if they knew their subterfuge had been detected, and decided to strike to maintain their initiative.

  The sprinkler heads installed at the edges of the courtyard sprung up from their posts. The black, plastic caps flew into the air, followed immediately by thin, barbed tentacles. Each sprinkler head had a single tentacle sprouting from it, snapping at the air around it in an attempt to reach us.

  Everyone screamed out in terrified shock, and retreated further into the courtyard, as far from the edges as possible. It was as if the walls were closing in on us. The Terrameds were shrinking our safe area. Up until that point I’d assumed these creatures were acting on instinct, like animals hunting prey. Despite how they’d trapped us inside of Little Mexico, I still only accredited them a level of intelligence similar to that of wolves.

  It was in that moment, as I watched Tony push his grandmother’s wheelchair towards the park, that I realized we’d been outwitted. We were being herded into place. We were going exactly where the Terrameds wanted.

  “They’re in the pipes,” I said, but not in time to stop what was about to happen.

  Those sprinkler heads weren’t just on the periphery of the courtyard. When I’d felt the vibration, it was from one of the tentacles snaking its way through a pipe directly beneath us.

  I saw a sprinkler head shoot up from the ground beneath Mimi’s wheelchair. A tentacle pierced the bottom of the chair, rose up between Mimi’s l
egs, and then tried to wrap around her throat. She caught it with both hands, and the tentacle whipped around in her grip as she screamed out a slew of curses.

  It looked like Mimi had pulled out a long, flaccid…

  I should pause here to apologize in advance for being crude, but let’s be honest, if you haven’t realized that I’m not terribly concerned about being polite then you haven’t been paying attention.

  It looked like Mimi had pulled out a long, flaccid penis from between her legs and was wrestling with it in her wheelchair. She flung it back and forth as it tried to stab at her face with its barbed tip. Tony was trying to pull the chair away from the creature, but it wasn’t doing any good.

  “Dave,” said Otis from the playground where he was standing with Jerry. Gabby was near him, holding onto Beaver’s harness. I looked over at them in time to see Otis toss the sword to me.

  I’d love to say that I snatched the sword out of the air like Arthur grabbing Excalibur, but that’d be a lie. I dodged to the side and let the broken sword hit the ground before daring to pick it up. I’d already had one limb sliced open, the last thing I needed was to lose a finger by trying to pretend like I had any semblance of dexterity.

  “Somebody do something,” said Mimi as she strangled the tentacle.

  I dropped to my knees beside her chair, grabbed the tentacle near the top of the broken sprinkler head, and then awkwardly chopped at it. I sawed at the rubbery skin, and black blood spewed out over the blade.

  Mimi had wrapped the tentacle around her fists like a mountain climber hanging onto a rope for dear life, and she pulled it hard enough to cause the last bit of skin to rip free near my cut. She pulled the severed appendage up through the hole in her seat and tossed the still writhing tentacle to the grass behind me. She looked down at me in front of her wheelchair with a mix of concern and appreciation. I expected her to say, ‘Thank you,’ but instead she yelled, “Move your ass!”

  I scrambled to my feet as Tony hoisted his grandmother, chair and all, into his arms and ran to the sand preceding the playground equipment. For a brief moment he displayed a heroic level of strength as he carried his grandmother to safety, but the minute his feet hit the sand he took a tumble. He twisted his ankle, fell forward, and dumped his grandmother to the ground just like I had earlier.

  I heard her curse about all of our clumsiness as Gabby and Otis came down to help her up. I got to Tony and helped him to his feet. The two of us were quite the pair now, with my right foot sliced up and his left ankle twisted. I thought we could support one another, but that didn’t end up working out like I expected. We both hopped through the sand to the safety of the playground as the tentacles searched the grass for more victims.

  “Look at them,” said Otis as I climbed up onto the platform where he was standing. We were on a middle platform, beside a crane device meant to scoop up sand from below, and Otis was pointing over a plastic divider at the tentacles in the grass. “They’re burning.”

  “What?” I asked in disbelief as I looked out at the tentacles in the grass. I was expecting to see the slimy appendages bursting into flames and turning to ash like a vampire in a Hammer film, but instead the tentacles were twisting and retreating back into the pipes. Their sensitive skin had turned pinkish and was blistering. Some of them managed to disappear back into the sprinkler system, but a few of them that were in direct sunlight didn’t make it back before the sun cooked them. They were quickly losing strength, like a worm dying on a hot sidewalk.

  The Terrameds’ thinner, barbed tentacles didn’t explode with sacs of pus when damaged the way the larger tentacles did. I felt like a biologist studying an unknown species, taking notes on its abilities. Now if only I could discover a way to counteract the stench from the goo these things emitted.

  I looked at the side of the apartment complex where Otis had stuck the sword. I could still see tentacles writhing around within the walls, and the worms spreading the gelatinous fluid over the holes.

  “It’s a hive,” I said.

  “A what?” asked Otis.

  “They’re building a hive. They’re going to let that gel harden on the walls, and then they’ll be safe in there.”

  “All right, so?”

  “Well, what’s a hive for?” I asked.

  Otis shrugged and said, “I don’t know. To make babies in.”

  That hadn’t occurred to me. “Yeah, all right, sure. But what else?”

  “I don’t know man.” Otis was getting frustrated with me. “Just say what you’re thinking.”

  “They’re going to sleep in it. And if these things can’t stand the sunlight, then they must be nocturnal. So they need to build something that they can sleep in during the day. Right?”

  “I guess so. Get to the point.”

  Tony and Gabby were paying attention now as well. If they were desperate enough to listen to one of my ideas, then I knew we were in trouble. I started forming a plan while explaining it at the same time, which is never a good idea. “What if we burn down that side of the complex?” I pointed in the direction of Mimi’s apartment.

  “What the hell for?” asked Gabby. “That slime they make is fire retardant. Remember?”

  “Yeah, I know. But they can’t have an endless supply of it. And if they use it for building nests, or hives, or whatever, then they aren’t going to want to waste it.”

  “How do you know they don’t have an endless supply of it?” asked Gabby. “You’re not a Terramed expert. Who the hell knows what those things can do?”

  “I might not be an expert,” I said as I scanned the trap we were stuck in. “But I’m a fast learner.”

  8 – The Affectionately Named Cum Dumpster