David Wong - John Dies at the End

“Creech.”

My soy sauced brain had officially taken off without me. I was operating on autopilot, phrases and words scrolling up into my mind as if fed to me on a teleprompter.

The kid said nothing.

He reached into his jacket…

And pulled out an envelope.

He stepped up and gave me a hug, slipping the envelope to me in one smooth, practiced motion.

As the kid turned away, I slowly let out the breath I had been holding.

I would like to reiterate: what the fuck.

Back in the car, I pulled the envelope out, opened it, saw it was stuffed full of hundred-dollar bills. I had no idea what any of that was, only that speaking those words to that person would get me cash, like a complicated PIN at an ATM machine.

I counted six thousand dollars.

Alrighty.

Without knowing my destination, I drove directly to the Merry Nation Bar and Grill, six blocks away. I went to the parking lot and glanced around, still without any real idea of what I was looking for.

I went right to a cobalt-blue Dodge pickup that I had never seen in my life. I found it unlocked, reached in, felt around under the seat.

I pulled out a satin-finish steel automatic handgun.

Fully loaded.

God bless America.

I stuck the gun in the back of my pants, felt strangely comforted by its gouge into the small of my back as I sat back down in the Hyundai. Evening had set in now, on one of the longest, most retarded days of my life.

I was about to point the car west, then realized I didn’t want to drive for over 1,500 miles-

1,669

– in these shit-stained pants and bloodstained shirt.

I drove home to change, proving that even on the soy sauce, part of me was still a dumbass.

I THREW THEclothes in the trash and showered, paranoid the whole time,

thinking I was hearing opening doors and floor creaks and murderous things bumping around outside the shower curtain. It had been that kind of a day.

I dressed and put on Band-Aids, collected my toothbrush and a comb and contact lens fluid and dumped it into my leather duffel bag.

I flung myself down the hall-

I stopped cold.

My bag fell from my hand with a soft thud.

A teenager stood there. Right in the middle of my living room, a space that had been proudly teenager-free for years.

Braces.

Black Limp Bizkit T-shirt.

I said, “Justin?”

Standing there with a shit-eating grin on its face, the thing that had been Justin opened its mouth and emitted a rumbling sound, like something boiling up from his lungs. After a moment he closed it again.

He gathered himself and said brightly, “Why you frontin’ here? You know what time it is. Stop callin’ me Justin like nothin’s changed, yo.”

I pictured swarms of white worms twitching through his bloodstream and suddenly had to fight the impulse to run away screaming like a toddler.

I took a step back.

Justin took a step forward.

Buying time, I asked, “What should I call you?”

I shifted my feet, felt the nudge of the gun against my lower back. I had never fired a gun before, and certainly never fired one at a man. The thought brought cool sweat to my forehead and a hot, jittery anticipation. Not entirely unpleasant. I had felt it before.

Justin’s mouth opened again, struggling to speak words completely foreign to itself.

“Shitload. Know why? It’s because there’s a shitload of us in here. Now here’s what’s gonna happen-”

The left side of Justin’s scalp disappeared in a spray of pink brain matter. He was thrown backward, my finger squeezing the trigger as fast as it could twitch, the sound shattering the air. Little sprays of blood flicked out from Justin’s chest and thighs and gut, shots landing and backing him across the room.

Jesus, Dave.

I had drawn the gun in a mindless reflex, like slapping at a mosquito bite. I tasted blood where I had bit through my lip. I felt electricity inside, the buzz of the violence, sparks raining down inside my skull as if from a blown fuse.

Too familiar.

Shitload stumbled backward one last time and fell against a wall, but kept his feet.

I pulled the trigger again.

Click.

I squeezed the trigger about twenty more times just to be sure there wasn’t another shot hiding in there somewhere. Shitload righted himself, looked down at his wounds, sighed like a man who has dropped his pie in his lap.

Oh, you’ve got to be shitting me.

I saw now that the white rods were binding up each of his wounds, forming a stitching like the back side of fiberglass. I finally realized I wasn’t fighting this kid, I was fighting those things . The fear was like lead weights in my chest.

He said, “Man, your little nine is useless against-”

His words were cut off when the empty gun I hurled at him smacked off his cheek, knocking him backward once more. He brought a hand to his face.

“Stop that shit! Don’t you know we got the same plan?”

He took a step toward me. I looked across the room. The door. The window. I couldn’t make it to either without going through Shitload.

He said, “We both goin’ to Vegas, right? You all packed up and all.”

My hand at my side, I made a fist.

“Uh, I don’t think so.”

I realized once more that I was about to enter a fight and, again, had learned no fighting skills since the last one. Only this time there was a good chance the fight would end with me feeling the opponent’s teeth ripping out my eyeballs.

“Sure you is.”

He lunged. I threw a flailing punch that missed by a foot.

The Justin monster fired out a low punch, the impact exploding in my groin. I doubled over, struggled to keep my feet.

“The only difference is…”

He advanced and in a blur threw three more punches that each landed solidly on my balls. A heavy sickness bloomed in my gut and I fell back against a chair. I awkwardly kicked at his chest.

He caught the leg and delivered an expert crotch kick that finished me.

“… I’m doin’ the drivin’.”

Justin clasped both of his hands into one fist, raised it high above his head as if in victory and then with all his might brought it down on my groin.

I blacked out.

DARKNESS, BARKING ANDfootsteps. I felt Molly’s wet nose on my forehead, then felt her walking over me. All four paws managed to hit my aching crotch on the way over.

I felt the floor moving against me and realized I was being dragged. I was hefted over a shoulder like a sack of dog food and dropped onto a metal floor. A door clanged shut, a latch clicked into place.

In the haze I felt the presence of others around me, could sense terrified thoughts darting around their minds like flies. I could sense the sauce in them, the soy sauce, I could smell it on their thoughts like alcohol on a wino’s breath.

Vegas.

I had a hallucination, or a vision. It was the road atlas, spread before me, the red highways tangled like arteries across the country. Undisclosed on the right, Las Vegas a red dot on the left, the line of an ink pen scratched along the highways joining the two.

We were going there because he wanted us there. Not this Justin monster, either. Who?

The soy sauce? Again I felt the presence of it in this space. Pulsing. A will of its own. The soy sauce was alive, I knew that.

But beyond it, too, there was someone else. Some thing else. And every dark thing I had run into was working on its behalf.

In my vision, the map rustled. The red spot marking Las Vegas pulsed, as if something was pushing it from behind. Scratching. Like an animal trying to gnaw its way through.

My eyes snapped open.