He followed the bug as it bee-lined against traffic at nearly one-hundred miles per hour. Danny didn’t realize those little piece of shit cars got up so fast.
He was losing blood. He felt the blood puddle reach the bottoms of his pants. It soaked his shins and low-hanging knees. All to the nightmare hymn of Holy Diver.
When the blood filled the cab up to his neck, Danny undid his seatbelt. With his left hand, he fumbled around for the window knob-a-majig, then remembered it was broken. He returned his left hand to the wheel and racked his brain for ways to avoid drowning in his own blood.
The blood rose to his chin, his mouth, his eyes. He squinted through red now. The black VW looked like a real insect.
All Danny could think was, I must squash it. Squash that bug.
He slumped down in his chair until his right stump pressed against the gas pedal, accelerating his father’s truck above one-hundred miles per hour. He crept up on the bug and soon flattened the car into a dark pancake.
He let out a scream and lost the last of his breath. In a final desperate attempt to get free of the truck, Danny flailed his arms at the chainsaw on the floorboard. The chainsaw buzzed his arms from his torso and propelled his hands out the side windows in opposite directions. They stuck there, like the truck had arms.
Danny no longer had control of the truck and couldn’t reach the brake pedal. He glanced in the rearview mirror.
Holy diver!
The flattened Beetle had ballooned into a real six-legged insect and it followed him.
The chainsaw floated through the truck’s blood-filled cab. It sat in the passenger seat. The chainsaw leaned over and turned up the volume on the stereo. Holy Diver blared through the crimson flood. You’ve been down so long in the midnight sea….
The glass-and-tin insect scuttled down the highway on rubber legs. They were still heading into oncoming traffic and cars in the carpool lane had to swerve to avoid them.
Unable to steer, Danny stared at the chainsaw and said, in muffled underwater screams, “What do we do?”
A steel grin split open on the blade. The chainsaw stuck out a tongue that resembled a squid tentacle. “We crash,” the chainsaw said. The smile disappeared as the chainsaw leapt across the seat.
Danny ducked. The chainsaw narrowly missed giving him a fast lane lobotomy and sheared off his left ear. For a few photo-still seconds, the ear floated in front of Danny’s face like a hairy seahorse.
The chainsaw broke into a smile again. It flapped that awful tongue and laughed and foamed yellow bubbles from the steely mouth. The truck rolled end over end.
As the insect-car scuttled by, its driver—a private detective type in a tweed suit, true Eurotrash—flipped Danny off and yelled, “Volkswagens for life, motherfucker!”
Danny choked down gallons of his own blood, but the blood rushed out at an incredible rate, and soon he died.
Chapter Nine
“Wake up, kid.”
The chainsaw prodded Danny’s side as they pulled into Heavy Metal High’s parking lot.
The dead werewolf opened his eyes. Somehow he’d ended up in the passenger seat. The chainsaw must have driven from the scene of the accident all the way to the school.
Danny’s eyelids felt heavy. He wanted to sleep but knew it was a bad idea. Without arms, he couldn’t feel for a heart-beat or a pulse. How the hell did he survive his own death?
“What’s going on?” he asked the chainsaw.
The chainsaw killed the engine. It slammed its blade against the steering wheel again and again, setting off the horn. Danny leaned back and stared out the window at his severed right arm.
“What’s going on?”
“You’re dead, kid,” the chainsaw said.
“Can we turn the radio on?” Danny said, missing Ronnie Dio’s voice. He kept gazing out the window at his severed arm.
“You’ve got a game to play.”
“How can I open the door without my arms?”
“You’ll die if you open these doors.”
“I’m already dead.” Danny sulked in his seat. “How can I play in tonight’s game?”
The chainsaw sighed. “This is your new body, kid. Get used to it.”
“But there’s no way I can throw a football without any arms!”
“This is your body. You’re in control.”
“How do you know? Who are you?” Danny wasn’t sure if he should trust this chainsaw. After all, it had cut off all his limbs and caused him to wreck his dad’s truck. But isn’t that what he wanted?
“That’s not important now,” the chainsaw said, gesturing toward the cars parked around them. “Check it out.”
Barbetta and the rest of the cheer squad had approached the truck. They stood in a semicircle, clapping their hands and screaming while jumping up and down.
“Awesome accident, Danny!”
Danny gasped. It didn’t make any sense at all. Just this morning, Moose had died in an accident. How could a loser lycanthrope like himself possibly survive death? The last metalhead to pull off that stunt was Goyle Flex back in ‘68, after he threw the most legendary touchdown pass in Heavy Metal High’s history, the Batball, in which the football transformed into a bat and bit the heads off of five Old Time Country Vampires. It was still the greatest massacre in school history.
Since that game, Heavy Metal and Old Time competed in every league championship, but mass slaughters were now strictly forbidden before the fourth quarter.
Danny gulped. He might have died, but that didn’t mean the Country Vampires couldn’t massacre his ass with their bloodsucking hillbilly powers. At seventeen, sitting in his father’s wrecked truck, which was filled like a fish tank with his own blood, he wondered how his life could possibly get any worse. Then he saw the beautiful, skeleton-faced Barbetta. She made him feel even more like a furry slab of wasted meat.
“Let’s hit the locker room, kid,” the chainsaw said, turning on the truck and returning Ronnie James Dio’s arch-angelic yowls to the cab. “Game time’s in one hour and you’re still learning to control this new body. Now raise some horns for the girlies.”
Danny shrugged. “But I don’t know how,” he said, then watched, mystified, as his arms, attached to the sides of the car like extended, flesh-covered rearview mirrors, raised their hands into fists that balled up to form the classic devil horns. The cheerleaders returned the gesture.
Chapter Ten
Coach Doom McCray slapped Danny’s tailgate as the dead werewolf stalled outside the hall to the locker room, trying to figure out some way that he could fit his new truck body inside. “Looks like you had yourself a fine accident, Danny,” Doom McCray said. “You might never blossom into a Moose, but I’m glad to see it’s not all hopeless for a late-blooming fuckup like yourself. C’mon, go get suited up.”Upon entering the stadium grounds, the chainsaw had gone silent, leaving Danny to maneuver his auto body without assistance. Now he didn’t know what to do. He peered out the back window and grinned sheepishly at the head coach. “Coach Doom, I don’t know if I can fit through this hallway.”
Doom pulled at the corners of his handlebar mustache.
“It does appear that you’ve beefed up, put on some serious muscle. Not juicing, are you?”
“No, sir. My accident did this to me.”
“Good to hear. I always believed quarterbacks bred purely on accidents were the best leaders.”
“I-I hope I don’t let the team down, sir,” Danny stammered.
For a second time, Coach Doom slapped Danny’s tailgate. “Remember, if we lose, there’s no one to blame but you.”