David Wong - John Dies at the End

Shitload said, “His name is Korrok the Slavemaster from the eighth plane, also known in some realms as Baa’aaa’aaa’aab and in others as the Lord Zanthk All-Bzzki’l Shadd’uuul’l L’luuu’ddahs L’ikzzb-lla Khtnaz.”

The guards and the door lady all turned their attention to him, not sure if this was part of the show but sensing something was about to go way, way wrong.

I stepped up to the door and ran my hand along my side, felt the long, rigid shotgun hidden behind my overcoat. I was about to tell Door Lady that we were in the midst of an emergency that only rock and roll could solve and thus had to be let in at once.

“GUN!”

It was the guard to my left. I looked down, realized six inches of shotgun barrel was exposed where my coat had folded back.

Quickly, I whipped it out and pointed it at his face, freezing him in mid-lunge.

John said, “It’s not a gun! It’s part of our act!” at the exact same moment I said, “I’m a cop! I’m undercover!”

Then, over the loudspeaker:

“AGGGHHH!! MY BALLS!!!”

I spun and saw Dr. Marconi fall to the floor, grabbing his punched groin.

Shitload loomed over him.

Gasps rippled across the audience.

I sprinted into the ballroom. Guards muscled past me, rushing the stage.

Shitload punched the first guard in the groin so hard it flung his body back five feet. The other retreated.

I raised the shotgun, leveling it at Shitload.

“FREEZE!” I shouted, for some reason. A lady screamed at the sight of the gun. Shitload turned his back to us and leaned forward. His pants split. A fleshy, puckering protrusion formed and pushed its way through the slit, looking like the end of a flesh trumpet.

FOONT!!

With a bassy thump and a smell like burnt sulfur, Shitload farted himself far into the air.

The crowd went wild, chairs clanging down all around us. I tracked Shitload with the barrel of the shotgun as he climbed a hazy contrail of shimmery methane. He landed atop the giant ice angel. Shitload crouched on one wing, raised his arms in a “touchdown” motion and said something at the top of his voice that was probably very profound and ominous but was drowned out by the absolute bedlam in the crowd below.

I fired. Shitload exploded.

Hey! That was easy!

An eruption of blood and hamburger stained the wings of the angel red and pink. I felt a momentary euphoria of victory, ready to be carried off on shoulders. I should have known better.

Out of Justin’s guts poured, not the white buzzing worms, but a shower of black specks that could have been coffee beans. They bounced and flecked off the wings of the angel and plinked into the water below.

I edged up to the pool with the shotgun. Dark shapes started writhing and splashing below the surface.

Oh shit.

A soft hand landed on my shoulder and I turned to see the sharp, brown eyes of Albert Marconi.

“Son, I think we need to get the people out of here.”

Big Jim was behind him, still toting the keyboard. Marconi said, patiently, “Don’t you think? We haven’t much time.”

I turned, ran, fired the shotgun into the air and shouted, “Bomb! There’s a bomb in the fountain! Everybody run for your lives! Please don’t not panic!”

The words were completely lost in the stampede caused by my shotgun blast. I bumped into John in the crowd.

“Where’s the bomb?”

“There’s no bomb, there’s something in the-”

“Guys!”

It was Jen. She was yelling and pointing at the fountain. I turned just as one of the seven-legged wig monsters flung itself out of the pool, in a spray of water.

The beast landed on the carpet on its little baby-like hands, looked around, meowed, then disappeared. In a blink it was clinging to the back of an elderly black woman, scorpion tail buried down into the base of her spine.

Another of the little black beasts emerged. Another. Then three more. They crawled, leapt, clamped themselves onto victims. A fat guy went flailing past me with one of the things on his chest; a bearded man was trying to shake one off his leg.

One of the wig monsters ran and jumped at Jim. He swatted it like a baseball with his Elton John keyboard, then bashed the heavy Casio in half over its prone body in a spray of white and black keys.

Jen was on the other side of the fountain, kicking one of the beasts to death. I ran toward her, blew a wig monster in half, worked the pump and realized I had no more shots. I flung the gun at another one of the monsters, missed, hit an elderly man in a wheelchair instead, toppling him over.

I was kicking through the sea of blue chairs, closing on Jen. Two of the wig beasts were bearing down on me. No, three. One of them crouched and launched itself at me-

THONK

The beast was batted away by a folding chair, wielded by John.

He screamed “YEAH!” in a dead-on impersonation of pro wrestler “Macho Man” Randy Savage, grasping the folded chair by two legs. He swung again and flattened another of the beasts, screaming, “Have a seat , bitch!”

There were at least a hundred of the wig monsters bouncing around the ballroom now. Victims littered the floor by the dozen.

I flinched at the sound of a sharp gunshot, spun to see a middle-aged lady holding a little chrome pistol. She shot one of the things, killed it, took shots at another, missed. The beasts ganged up on her, three stinging her simultaneously. I heard someone shout, “Becky!” from behind me. A tall guy with a heavy brown beard pushed through the chairs. “BECKY! HONEEEEY!”

He punted two of the creatures off his wife with several furious kicks, then John ran in and chaired the last one off, screaming, “You’ve been sentenced to get the chair , motherfucker!”

The man helped his wife to her feet and said to me, “Those things! They’re blocking the exits!”

I spun around, saw black clumps surrounding the doors we came in.

“Shit!”

The woman looked dazed. The man asked her if she was okay. She nodded, then calmly reached over with her left arm and tore the right arm out of its socket. It made a slimy sucking sound, like tearing the leg off a Thanksgiving turkey. There was no blood. The wound was instantly sealed by a thin, black layer of the soy sauce.

She calmly walked back toward the fountain, casually carrying her arm like an umbrella. Her husband stood in dumbfounded silence. I heard John land two more blows with the chair.

Another bite victim lay nearby, a young man writhing as if in a seizure. Eventually his legs kicked themselves free from the rest of his body. The limbs thumped along the floor on their own like two giant polyester snakes with shoes for heads. Right behind them was a loose head stuck to a single arm, furiously biting and clawing the carpet.

I felt like we might not be in control of this situation any longer.

I heard a scream that I had come to recognize as Jennifer’s. She was on her knees with Fred’s switchblade, surrounded by five dead wig monsters all bearing ragged stab wounds. I sprinted that way.

I heard a metallic thump from behind me and heard John yell, “You wants the committee, asshole, then you best meet with the chair !” I pulled Jen to her feet.

Around us, the disembodied human limbs were piling up, forming a circle around the fountain, fusing themselves to each other like Satan’s LEGO set. A wet, pink disembodied spine slithered past us like a snake.

Dr. Marconi jogging toward us, shouting some instruction I couldn’t hear in the pandemonium. All around us the wig monsters were closing in, their dark shapes rolling in toward the fountain like oil down a drain.

One of them jumped onto Jen’s back. I flung myself at it, grabbed it in a bear hug and ripped it off her. One of its little fists came around and started punching me in the face.