Chapter Nineteen
A siren screams across the ceiling.
I bury my head in my corner of the room and do my damnedest to ignore its piercing cry, but the tone escalates to pitches that resemble hammers against steel drums. Fogged by exhaustion, I assure myself this must be an error of some type. This screaming must be an error.
The screaming never stops. I stand and stumble over to the viewing window, cupping my ears. I’m ready to fart on the glass or whatever else it takes to convince them to shut off the siren.
No sentries stare in from their quarters. A red light flashes on a white panel bolted above the door leading in and out of the guardroom. Above and below the panel, a luminescent engraving spells F-I-R-E. “Wake up,” I yell, unable to hear myself. “Wake up.”
But Otto has already stirred from restless sleep and Frannie 2 has poked her head out of Frannie’s mouth. They did not have to flatten against the viewing window to see F-I-R-E. They saw it from far away. My vision always makes a fool of me.
“We need to get out of here,” I shout. I sense they are shouting the same thing.
I scurry to Otto’s corner and unwrap the filthy yellow bandages from his head, seeing why the White Angel forbid us from removing them. Gangrene has spread beneath the rubber mask grafted to his face. The screaming dies a little.
“It must be an air raid,” I yell.
He shakes his head to disagree, kind of sad and sickening to look at. The siren dies a little more.
“This is our shot to escape!” I say. I drop some egg-farts.
“Frannie,” Frannie mumbles, “can you blast your toilet toad through these walls?”
Frannie 2 shrugs. “I can give it a try.”
“Give it a shot.”
Frannie 2 crawls all the way out of Frannie’s mouth. She sits on her knees, lowers her elbows to the ground for leverage, and raises her ass so that her back arches at a perfect forty five degree angle. “Count down for me,” she says, drooling green saliva.
“Three,” I say.
“Two,” Otto says.
“One,” Frannie says.
Frannie 2 yelps and blasts the toad toward the door. The toad leaves nothing more than a four-legged dent. It falls to the floor and twitches. Frannie 2 picks it up and reloads it in her ass.
“Wait,” Otto says. He leaves his corner and crawls to the door. He reaches his right front leg through the toad-shaped hole and latches onto the outer door handle. “Locked,” he says.
Frannie coughs up a goblin ass. “Stop coughing up asses,” I say. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
“I can’t help it,” she says. She kicks the ass. It sails across the cell and splats KABOOM! against the door, blowing it to smithereens.
Otto hisses. One of his front legs twitches in the rubble. He shakes all over and takes off. The rest of us cheer and jet after him, out of the cell.
The alarm blurs the corners of my vision as the four of us run through the red-flashing hall, searching for any indication of an exit. Otto is swifter than the rest of us. He runs in spirals… floor to right wall to ceiling to left wall, leaping and bounding from one surface to another, distancing himself from us slowpokes. “Otto,” I say. I can hardly hear myself call his name. I hope his arachnid senses pick up on it. Frannie 2 lags behind. So small and frail, I want to wait for her, but I never fooled myself. I lack the desire to save others. Otto vanishes around a corner to our right.
At the corner, I pause and see that Frannie 2 is having another fit. Frannie holds her down as she foams at the mouth. Behind them, an ass goblin who must have stayed behind opens a door and morphs into Shit Slaughter mode.
I run around the bend, but Otto has left us all behind. Dread pulses through all the pieces of my heart. I turn back.
Frannie hasn’t noticed the ass goblin yet. He jiggles his ass behind her, gloating over this easy, unassuming kill. Then he catches sight of me. The goblin points a claw and steps past Frannie and her sister. She never saw the ass goblin coming. At least the goblin doesn’t lay a finger on her. It’s me he wants. I’m the kid with the pink wings.
I crack my knuckles, pocket my eyes, and transform into Shit Slaughter mode. The only fights I was ever in were against Otto, so a battle against a separate entity is entirely new to me, but after all they’ve done to us, I’m more than ready to butt heads with a goblin. I refrain from hooting. War cries are a waste of energy if the foe can’t hear them.
The ass goblin squares off, fists raised. I wriggle my left claws and make a sudden swipe. The goblin ducks and my hand catches in his crown of teeth. Four fingers on my left hand are ground into dog meat. The pain and sudden blood loss throws my perceptions even more off kilter. The red sirens flutter from black to green and the walls begin to bleed.
I shake it off in time to dodge a wild roundabout punch for my ass. I flap my wings and rise above the ass goblin, dumping a crap on him. He shakes a fist at me, so I flap backwards for a second fly-by shitting. He flaps his tiny wings but quickly realizes that his are no match for my pink furies.
The ass goblin’s eyes flash over to the Frannies, where Frannie 2 still convulses. This seizure might kill her even if the ass goblin doesn’t tear them both apart. I fart as he lumbers toward them. He’s outwitted me. I fly after the ass goblin. Three feet away, I twist my body and pile drive my butt onto his. The goblin’s ass splats like a swollen pimple.
Now to help Frannie and Seizure Girl. My head flips inside-in. Leaving S.S. mode relieves me of an oceanic pressure. Shit Slaughter is a wreck on the nerves. I take my eyes out of my pocket and pop them in place. Frannie nods at me and tucks her twin into her mouth. She runs a lot slower that way, and considering how long the sirens have been blaring, anything might await us outside. This could be the end of Auschwitz.
Back at the bend in the hallway, I notice a silky strand that Otto started. So he never intended to ditch us for good. He may have even gone ahead because he believes his chances of fending off ass goblins or securing the cavern housing Dead Kid Hill are better if he goes alone.
We run down another hallway, following the web strand.
This one ends in a fork, but the strand ends and there’s no way of knowing for sure which way leads out of here. Frannie points at the wall between the two passages. A ladder is welded to the wall. I nod. She grabs for the highest rung she can reach and pulls herself up. I follow, uneasy about being on a ladder with all the weight in my lower half, but remember that the ladder is designed for ass goblins. I curl my eye stems upward, gluing my sight on Frannie’s skeletal legs to prevent myself from looking down.
The ladder takes us to a field one hundred yards behind the mess hall.
Gunfire and goblin hoots clatter in Auschwitz Square.
I squint at the hazy, swirling desert beyond the field. There are outposts out there, miles away. If we ran for it, they would pick us off. “We’ve got to get to the bicycle factory,” I say. I hope the underground cavern actually leads out of Auschwitz.
The Frannies nod. They know the drill.
Frannie 2 takes my hand and we hurry to the mess hall, sliding along the back of the building and around the corner.
Two apple-shaped spaceships have landed on the apple platter. The ships’ stems folds back and ass dolls storm out, swastika-shaped guns jammed in their rectums.