David Wong - John Dies at the End

I tried to sense the nature of it. Was it good? Evil? Indifferent? With my mind I reached out and-

RUN.

I ran. I had no legs, but I ran, I pushed myself away, willed myself to escape from this thing.

RUN.

I sensed heat. I was pushing myself toward an unimaginable heat but I welcomed it. I would throw myself into a lake of fire to escape that thing in the-

– DARKNESS. REGULAR DARKNESSnow, the familiar back side of my own eyelids. Heat all around me, heat so intense I could barely recognize the sensation.

A low sound. Wailing?

From outside. Getting louder. A car coming. A dog barking.

Get back. Get back!

Who said that?

A thunderous, terrible noise. Glass shattering, metal screaming, wood snapping. The kitchen was exploding around me. I was flung backward and suddenly a blast of fresh air washed over my body.

I was looking at the grille of a car, my car, the Hyundai “H” symbol a foot from my face.

The car reversed itself and wrenched free of the wreckage that had been the kitchen’s west wall. There was now a rupture near the floor, frayed with tufts of pink insulation and shredded aluminum siding. I rolled myself out of the hole, fell hard onto the cool grass outside. I coughed, coughed.

Coughed.

Passed out.

I woke up what felt like hours later.

Or maybe seconds.

The trailer was a fireball behind me. I was too wiped out to appreciate that I had avoided death twice within a few minutes, first by a fraction of an inch then by a few smoke-filled breaths.

I heard a bark.

David? You alive?

That voice again, from nowhere. I struggled to my feet, saw my car sitting about twenty feet away.

Molly the dog was sitting behind the wheel. I stared at this for a good solid minute. She barked, and again I heard words in the sound.

John’s voice.

I didn’t think it could get any stupider than the bratwurst thing, but I suspected I was about to find out otherwise. I climbed into the car, pushing Molly over to the passenger’s seat.

Molly looked at me, with concern. No, not Molly.

John looked back at me, with Molly’s big brown eyes. Molly barked, but I heard:

We’re in big fuckin’ trouble, Dave.

“No shit, fluffy. How did you work the pedals?”

“Woof!”

Listen. There are three people still alive from last night other than me. Big Jim Sullivan, Jennifer Lopez and Fred Chu. I don’t know a whole lot else because my own body ain’t workin’ so well. I know we’re all together and we’re on the move and once we get where we’re goin’, something bad, bad, bad is gonna happen.

“Wait, wait, wait. Why are you a dog again, John?”

“Arrr-oof!”

(Sneeze)

Justin White, or the thing that used to be Justin, he’s got me. My body, I mean. He stole a vehicle. When I’m in my body I can’t see nothin’, but I can hear. It’s somethin’ big enough to hold all of us, some kind of truck. Dave, you gotta find it.

“Is it an ambulance? The cop told me he stole an ambulance from the hospital. So there are actually four still alive from last night, if you count Justin.”

“Woo-”

No, no, no. I said there were three that were alive and I meant it. Justin White ain’t alive. He’s a walking… hive or whatever.

“Those things inside him, what are they?”

“Woof!”

Bitch!

This threw me, and I stared in dull confusion for a moment before I noticed the dog was looking past me. I turned and saw a little brown-and-white beagle tied up next to one of the trailers.

“John?”

“Woof!”

Sorry, Dave. My grandpa used to tell me, toward the end when he was going crazy, that talking through a dog ain’t like talking through a sausage. Molly is in here with me and I gotta compete for the barker.

“Where is Justin, or this Justin Thing, taking everybody?”

I already knew the answer as soon as the question left my mouth. I said it along with the dog’s bark: “Las Vegas.”

“So what’s in Las Vegas?”

“Woof! Arrrrr-oof!! Grrrr…”

You know that Bugs Bunny cartoon, where they spill the ink on the floor and then climb through it as if it was a hole? I think that’s what the soy sauce is like. It’s a hole, it opens you right up. Those worms, and the other shit in Robert’s basement, the sauce let that stuff come into our world, by turning people into holes. And I think if the sauce infects enough people, in one place, it can make one single big-ass hole.

“Shit. Is it worth asking what’s going to come through the hole?”

“Woof.”

I don’t know. But what comes through will have to feed.

I nodded. “Right. And Vegas has all those free buffets.”

Molly closed her eyes in frustration. I had never seen that expression on a dog before.

No. Listen. There’s a guy named Albert Marconi. He does these conferences on the occult, he’s having one there at the Luxor, that’s the big casino shaped like a black pyramid. We’re going to go there.

“Wait. How do you know this?”

Because it’s already happened.

“That doesn’t make any-”

“Woof!”

CAT! CAT! CAT! CAT!!!

Molly was up in the seat, jamming her head out the half-open passenger window.

“John…”

“WOOF! WOOF! WOOF! WOOF! WOOF! WOOFWOOFWOOFWOOF!!!”

Cat!! Cat! Cat!!! Cat!!! CAT!! CAT!!!! CAAAATTT!!!

A filthy gray cat zipped across the trailer park, across the front of the car and off into the distance. Molly pulled her head inside and tromped over to the driver’s-side window, stomping on my crotch and shouting “CAT!!!” the whole way. It took ten minutes to get the dog calmed down, at which point she promptly curled up and went to sleep in the passenger seat.

“John?”

The dog farted. I got nothing else out of her the rest of the night.

I DROVE TOa convenience store and bought a road atlas. Back in my car I unfolded it in my lap and drew out the path to Las Vegas with an ink pen. Was I actually doing this?

I knew I would need cash for gas and to replace the several vital parts of the Hyundai’s drivetrain that would likely shatter over the course of the long drive. I had nothing in the bank. This seemed to be a rather major problem, but within a few seconds of watching the sunset in the convenience store’s parking lot, a plan popped into my head, fully formed and alien. I had learned to accept such things in the last few hours.

This wasn’t Dave thinking.

This was soy sauce thinking.

I drove downtown, scanning the alleys until I saw a rail-thin Mexican kid standing by a Dumpster wearing a St. Louis Rams jacket. The kid was wearing the jacket, not the Dumpster. I calmly stepped out of my Hyundai, smiled broadly at him.

I had never met him before.

I had no idea what I was doing.

Without hesitation, I heard myself say, “Yo. Mikey said you got a package for me.”

What the fuck.

The kid squinted at me, didn’t move. “Who the fuck are you?”

The kid moved slightly, the bottom of his Ram’s jacket sliding up his skeletal frame. The gun sticking out of the kid’s jeans was black and sleek, looking like something that could shoot lasers. The irony that he was able to afford a nicer gun than the Undisclosed Police Department gave Detective Freeman would have amused me if I wasn’t busy picturing the kid pumping six bullets into my forehead with it.

Again, I heard myself speaking. A single word that to me, had no meaning.