We find an empty spot in the street and take the opportunity to merge. We plunge into the ocean of people, surrounded by Crazies zombie-walking in circles, all trapped inside of their minds — their own little terrors.
The driving is slow.
Vodka travels with caution. I’m not sure if he’s afraid of the Crazies or just too bored/lazy to use force. The street people soon crowd us into small sections of off-street. Then it gets too thick to make through at all. The Gremlin comes to a snarling halt and I shiver-cough.
A boy without hands crosses and Vod decides to drift from consciousness. He flows outside of reality into his go-away place.
I tell Vodka, “Just run through them. Force ‘em out of the way.”
The Gremlin finds its fashion through without hurting anyone, not terribly at least, just toughguy shovings. A woman spits on the car for touching her. The spit might be blood or vomit. Vodka frowns at her. She glances at me as she spits again, a dead stare, almost a doll-face looking at me. Her eyes don’t seem to be inside of the sockets anymore — I see two yellow eyeholes screaming at me. Her face wrinkles in and around and dissolves. A good many Crazies give me the same horror-melting look, all soggy with yellow gleams. Paranoia washes over me. The sick rain seeps into my skull. Some of the devils punch and kick the car. Bleed-slashing claws attack and splatter against the metal. The autocar drips blood.
Vodka doesn’t seem to care. He continues to drive as if the traffic is normal.
A small tribe of microwave ants crawl on my arms — not certain whether they’re real or just a rolling vision. It’s getting unbearable to be alive without my God’s Eyes. Can’t escape the uneasiness. Maybe I’ll get them back after the storm. Hopefully, praying…
I’ll be praying for a real death otherwise.
“This is going to take forever,” I tell Vodka.
“I told you,” he says.
Vodka’s voice is too foreignto me; he sounds like another person completely. I can’t tell whether he’s still himself or somebody new. Maybe this is the real Vodka, Gin’s brother, the way he was before he started pretending. Maybe his soul is so far out of him that he doesn’t care to pretend. He says, “Oh, well,” more than occasionally.
“I’m going through them,” he says. “I’m sick of waiting.”
At least he is sick of something.
“Finally,” I say.
“What do you mean, finally ?”
“You’ve been driving like a scared old lady.”
“I didn’t want to hurt anyone.”
“Who cares about hurting them? Go ahead and kill them, nobody dies anymore.”
The car hits its power chords, Vodka’s foot full on the gas. The engine fart-rumbles and we go faster, beating our way through the Crazies that scatter in an ant-frenzy.
Only one person goes under the wheels, lifting the car upward on my side, and I feel a little pain for that person, but it soon passes. It’s more important to get to Satan Burger right now. Much more important than worrying about millions of crazy street people that can’t be killed. If people could die, the population problem would be easily solved.
Speed builds. We’re still moving slow but at least we feel like we’re driving now instead of slim-rolling. The crowd seems cautious of us up ahead. They bowl out of the way easily enough, gleam-yellow eyes on all of them as we go. The population seems smaller too. And for litter in the gutter, we have human corpses too soulless to ever get up again.
I don’t notice — because of my rolling vision — what race of people we have gotten into until I see them coming out of the sewers and shadow-corners.
The dark ones.
All pale features, mostly naked, more reptilian than I heard — tough skin, lizard-sharp faces, snake eyes — we see a male stamper to our car. Evil white eyes. I can tell it’s a male because he has long pale hair and is veiny with muscles.
My eyes skip a beat.
And then I see that we’ve been thrown into a reel-violent situation, flee-flying out of the scene. Vodka jammed the gas, maybe out of fear, as the dark male approached us. We just crushed his ribs underneath the Gremlin wheels.
And the lightning Gremlin breaks some legs underneath the wheels, curling through Crazies, and a few dark ones are chasing after us — two females and one male. Looking back: a thrash-tatter of movement ripping through the crowd. Our vehicle is the wind. It splits open the air and through the street people…
The crowd is thicker up ahead. The Gremlin accelerates, hoping… Vodka gnashes his teeth, squeezes his eyes, locks his joints. I watch the dark ones fall further and further behind us…
The car beats into the ruff ahead, popping. Some of it over the hood and knocking some of the Gremlin’s life out of it. But we don’t stop… and then we do stop. The Crazies’ faces shriek at our lack of motion…
And the dark ones catch up to us. The females, with their hook-blade claws, rip into street people who are too close to the car. They frighten into balls and some of them run away, clearing a path for us to fly-flee again.
But the dark ones come too quickly, one female gets onto the roof, straddling the Gremlin. Another female pop-breaks my window and tears into my shoulder, worming its claw-fingers deep-deep into me.
I don’t seem to feel any of the pain.
Then her face appears to me, as her other arm grabs my neck. She pauses, stare-growling. Fang-like teeth and snake-like eyes. And I just stare at her… she’s actually a beautiful creature — maybe it’s because I’m drunk-crazy from the rain, but she is extremely attractive to me right now. Her slender white body, chiseled breasts. Her eyes are black pools, trancing me. She tears at my shoulder, howling at me like I’m her food.
She reaches her head inside, my body shock-shaking at the pain I do not feel, opening her mouth to expose sharp snake teeth to my neck. She lures my body closer. My head penetrates the window, my skin is opened by the glass shards, cutting folds of meat from me. Vodka screams in a faraway place…
My head emerges into the outside whirl… ruffling around me… her face wrinkles lewdly. A naked feeling seeps into me, like the passion of being born; this must be the passion of death as well. Orally defeated by a beautiful snake woman. And the dark female screeches, leans closer to chew my neck apart. But stops biting…
She gushes out her BIG goo-tongue, pressing against my chest, long-long and thick but like a human’s, and tough. It gorges into my shirt, probing, tasting the blood that streams there. It’s large enough to drench-hug most of my torso, and it caresses my neck and face, a pepper-melon flavor that drools into my nose and taste. My hand begins to polish one of her breasts. They’re rubbery but nice — a nipple harder than a human’s could get. She is powerful and strong, not a soft little girl like my blue woman.
She grips harder into me, clawing upward under my skin. I don’t feel the pain; her nails soothe instead of worry. She bites my chin to the bone. Then the tongue slides over the wound, tasting, healing it. She loosens her grip and slithers her giant tongue into my mouth. She pulls my jaw far out of lock and forces it down my throat, painfully shoving it in and out. Fucking it.
I awake a few minutes later, detached from the dark female.
Vodka is covered in red and whine-driving uncontrollably over curbs and street people — they come in flashes as we go through, skiing in a forest. They had cut him, the dark male and female, from his neck to his stomach, jugular open and sheeting him. His eyes are fading in and out, but he won’t die. A large hole is in his stomach, and his insides mumble-screech and bubble. My body seems fine, though bloody and molested. I look around at what’s going on with chaos-eyes.