There is a beat-up vehicle right next to her. Looks like a luxury car crossed with a military-grade Hummer. She crawls to it, breath rattling in her chest as she pulls herself through the sand. A head rolls past her. It looks like what would happen if Medusa puked up a porcupine.
The door to the vehicle is open, and she tugs herself into it. She sprawls across the two seats because it hurts too much to sit up. There is crap all over the beat-up vehicle, and it smells like men. She hates it, but she would rather be here than on the ground with the demons.
She spots a small box on the dash and recognizes it from an article she once read in one of Marcel’s magazines. She reaches for it with her good hand, picks it up and brings it to eye level.
“Well fuck me sideways,” she mutters.
The device is a T46A close trigger for a tactical nuke. Somewhere nearby there has to be a big fucker of an explosive.
“Hey, bitch, miss me?” Satan leans over and stares into the turret with one very large, very malevolent eye.
She sighs and looks at the trigger.
Leon holds his battleaxe at shoulder level like a samurai baseball-bat-sword as he approaches the crashed ice cream truck. He takes wide cautious steps around it and makes note of several sets of demon feet sticking out from under the frame of the strange vehicle. Leon decides that if the passengers are killing demons, they must be all right. He reaches up and knocks on the door, on which a flier for The Daily Cunt has plastered itself. It reads “EVEN THE END IS FUCKED!”
Leon nods and knocks a little harder.
Goatboy hits the hanging doorknob to see who is there, or so Chuzz presumes.
“Idiot! Fucking clueless moron, what are you doing? Don’t let anyone in!”
But there is a man standing there whom Nathan P. Chuzzle knows very well. At the end of the world, his one true friend is right there just like he said he would be. He’d hug the bastard if it weren’t so gay.
“Leon?” he says in wonder.
“Cockbang foursome,” says Leon.
Chuzz stares and stares, and after a moment Leon slaps him hard.
“Douche breath death fuck stick.”
“That’s it. We are getting the mother skunk fuck out of here!” Chuzz screams and rushes toward the front of the little truck. “I’m sick of trying to stop the Apocalypse. Satan wants my ass, and I very much like my ass right where it is!”
He trips over Goatboy. “Mind your feet, you peacock!”
Falls into Phil who curses in monkey at the man. “Fucking Phil!”
“Ass tickle farmyard fetish fuck,” mutters Leon.
Chuzz hits the seat with his gut and almost flips face first into the stupid steering wheel. Then he points the stupid microphone at the stupid horizon and practically throws the stupid thing at the window as he hits the stupid button.
The truck rockets toward the sky. Chuzz grabs the seatbelt and holds on for dear life as they are transported many miles away from the battle.
“Looky here. Just looky what I see. Are you ready to get in my ass now? No, that’s too good for you. I’m going to take you apart one piece at a time and then make your head a cock ring for my new growths. I’m going to have five this time. FIVE!” Satan howls with glee.
Edwina is not at all ready to be torn apart. She studies the remote and wonders where in the hell the nuke is. Well, no sense in waiting around to find out.
“Hey dickless,” she calls. “Here is what you can do with your new dicks if they ever grow back.”
She flips him the bird, drops her hand to the remote and triggers it. Everything goes very very white.
Death and Jesus stagger to the car. It was crushed from the impact, flat to the ground on four tires that will never hold air again. The passenger-side door flew off when they struck the ground. The hood is popped and crumpled in the center, and the trunk is wide open. Steam still pours out from under the hood. The car will never start again.
But they jump in anyway, Jesus in the front with his hand over the half of the steering wheel that is still attached to the car. Death in the back where the long seat is tented up in the middle. He picks the side with the fewest springs poking out of it and lays the scythe across his lap.
Princess Sally grabs hold of either side of the door with massive claws that puncture the metal. Giant wings flap at the air as the car rises and swoops away from the battle.
“Hold on, boys, we are getting out of town!” the demon caws.
“Damn big battle going on down there.” Death looks over the side.
War is rallying the troops and leading a fresh charge. His army runs into a shit wall of Hell as demons crash into them. Men are picked up and tossed aside, tanks are crushed to tin cans and helicopters are flung out of the sky. It looks like a full rout.
“War, what is he good for?” Jesus chuckles.
The car is carried eastward, away from Vegas, or what is left of it thanks to a growing mushroom cloud. Princess Sally has huge wings, and they are moved along at a pretty fast clip.
“I wonder if the stereo still works?” Death hits the button and it rumbles to life.
Growling fills the air, and double bass drums assault their hearing.
“What the hell kind of music is this?” he wonders aloud.
“They call it death metal. Personally I think it sounds like shit. I’ll take Liberace any day,” Princess Sally croaks.
“Death metal. That has a catchy ring to it, eh J-man?”
Jesus snores in answer. Death leans over the back of the seat and stares down at the son of God, who is passed out in the front seat.
A blinding flash of light ignites the world behind them.
“Fucking fly!” Death yells.
“Don’t gotta tell me twice.” Sally surges forward at breakneck speed. Death flattens back in his seat and hits his head on something. He reaches back and pulls out a bottle that sloshes. It’s vodka, one of Jesus’s, but he doubts the man will care.
He pops the top and drinks it down by the mouthful. If the world is going to Hell, he is determined to sleep through it.
“Screw you, world.”
“Yeah, what he said. Save me some of that, eh?”
“Your beak isn’t getting anywhere near this bottle.”
“Jerk.”
Death smiles as the alcohol takes him to oblivion.
THE NEXT DAY
Welcome to the Beginning
The Apocalypse came. The Apocalypse left. The world was supposed to be remade, set free, started over. The sinners were supposed to be left to rot in a world under the thrall of the Antichrist. He would torture them, burn them and make a place for his father to live for eternity.
None of that happened.
The seals are still in place, the Antichrist is dead, and Satan is blasted into billions of dickless molecules. All in a day’s work, or so Nathan P. Chuzzle reckons. Nothing went the way it was supposed to, at least according to his kindergarten-level understanding of the Bible.
The Betty Blue Balls Burlesque club is rocking tonight. At least the music and booze are. Chuzz is sitting in a round booth with his best friend Leon, Phil, who is staring at the ceiling thanks to a fresh hit of H, and Goatboy, passing a bottle of Don Julio tequila back and forth. Goatboy has not shut up since they sat down. He just told a joke about a pedophile priest.