The Devil Squid Apocalypse Read online

  “It’s democracy,” Khaki Guy says stiffly.

  “Not if some of us are shut out,” Lang growls.

  If Cameron was here, you’re sure he’d have a thing or two to say. But Cameron’s not here—because he already had a thing or two to say. You’re too old, too tired, your back fucking hurts, and nothing Khaki Guy can do to you is worse than standing here and watching him reshuffle the same old deck while a shooting pain keeps spiking your right heel. “Vote all you want,” you say, and turn to go.

  Lang does a little bunny hop of sheer, boiling rage and completes the thought in a way you definitely weren’t bending toward with a shout of: “Yeah! We don’t recognize your authority!” He punctuates it by pumping his fist in the air.

  But you? You keep walking, Lang gets caught in your wake. He always sticks with the band, and thank God because it lets you and Darnel keep him in one piece when he starts writing checks with his mouth that the rest of him can’t cash.

  Khaki Guy shouts behind you: “There will be consequences if you interfere!”

  You flip the bird over your shoulder. You’re never too old to do that.

  ~

  They’re hiding out together behind one of the little plastic lean-tos that the aliens dropped down a couple days into the mining operation. Marcy rolls a joint with the same kind of care a priest would handle the fingerbone of a saint.

  “And here, I figured you’d run out of MJ before I ran out of T,” Lang remarks.

  Marcy laughs. “This rations a little easier.” She used to smoke daily. She doesn’t have to. The grinding pain in her back and hip is the old frenemy that overstays its welcome. “You gonna be okay?”

  Lang shrugs. “Depression, anxiety, weight loss, and headaches.”

  “Other than the headaches, sounds like an average day,” Darnel remarks.

  “Headaches are just gonna magnify the suck when I’m in the shed.” Lang means the machinist shed, banging around with his makeshift tools. It’s him and this girl that Marcy’s pretty sure he’s fucking on the sly, and good for them both if that keeps them going.

  “I’ll ask around. People got to be hoarding painkillers,” Darnel says.

  “What’d you want to talk about, Marcy?” Lang asks after the silence stretches and Marcy keeps rolling that joint between her fingers.

  “If we want to take the bastards down, we’ve got to do it ourselves.” Marcy does her work and doesn’t complain, watching all the while. She knows that Khaki Guy and his friends have their eyes on her and doesn’t care. She was sneaking around regulations in the public education system before most of them were out of diapers.

  “Best way to do anything,” Lang answers promptly.

  “I wanted you both to see something.” Marcy points finger in the general direction of the Jellyfucker Palace. The blackened metal projections of the ship—because it’s the ship, not really a palace, but you have to have a sense of humor these days if you want to survive—overshadow the little shack and the whole camp, but the action is going to happen low to the ground.

  Lang and Darnel exchange a look and shrug, then lean out. They peer toward the palace, to see the hollow of a door open midway up the ship’s edifice. Then the biggest Jellyfucker of them all squidges out, shining greasily in the sunlight. As one, the overseer Jellyfuckers turn and move toward it, leaving their gun platforms behind to keep the humans in line.

  “Inspection time?” Darnel asks.

  “Maybe,” Marcy agrees. “It’s every day, at this time.” All the electronics are dead except for Frank’s treasured ham radio set, but she engineered a pretty accurate hourglass for herself with some nice sugar sand from part of the mine pit. “I’m thinking—”

  “They drag someone out every day?” Lang asks.

  “What?” Marcy tucks the joint into an empty cigarette box, slides off her wobbly crate and inserts herself in the height lineup between Lang and Darnel.

  It sure does look like the Jellyfuckers are dragging one of their own to the front. It’s definitely not their normal weirdly smooth style of movement when the Jellyfucker in the middle gets tossed to the ground. It whips its tentacles frantically around.

  She fishes around in her pockets until she comes out with the makeshift spyglass she rigged from lenses out of eyeglasses that people didn’t need any more because they were dead. It gives her a decent if slightly wavy close-up on the action. Lang makes a grab for it and she slaps his hand away.

  The big Jellyfucker on the balcony raises a tentacle that’s got some kind of bracelet wrap on it. Gestures again. All the other Jellyfuckers back away from the one on the ground, forming a ring around it.

  And then the Jellyfucker explodes in a shower of goo. Like Cameron exploded.

  “What the fuck,” Darnel says, more like a prayer than a statement.

  “Fuck me,” Lang whispers. This time, Marcy doesn’t resist when he takes the spyglass to get an eyeful of the distant, oily sheen of Jellyfucker guts splattered all over the ground.

  Marcy makes herself breathe slowly. She sees a plan forming, a path to strike at the heart of Jellyfucker Central. “This is it.”

  “What?” Darnel and Lang chorus.

  “We’re going to get the band back together,” Marcy says. “We’re going to play one final fucking blowout show… for the Jellyfuckers.”

  She looks at the boys, urging them to understand or at least believe. She knows they’re being watched. She doesn’t want to lay the whole plan out.

  “We’ve got no instruments,” Lang says.

  “We’ve got someone on the inside at the machine shop.” And she’ll have a few design specifications for Lang, she decides. As soon as she gets a sample of all the goop that the Jellyfuckers have just walked away from.

  Darnel suddenly grins. “And we’ve got someone who can figure out the linguistic cues to get these Jellyfuckers to pay attention to us. To get them to let us inside.”

  Marcy grabs their hands and squeezes. “It’ll take time. But we—”

  “So much for being the hardest working person in the camp,” a familiar, extremely annoying voice drawls behind them. They all turn around to see Marcy’s nemesis: Khaki Guy. Somehow, he looks even cleaner than he did at the bullshit election meeting. Maybe cuddling up to Jellyfuckers comes with a bleaching effect.

  “Smoke break,” Marcy says. She doesn’t believe in letting people think they’ve rattled her.

  “We have a quota if we want to keep our privileges,” Khaki Guy says. “Get back to work.” A drone platform floats up behind him.

  Privileges negotiated by the benevolent Khaki Guy: eleven-hour work days under the gun instead of twelve. No one in this goddamn camp seems to remember the word collaborator while they’re enjoying their flavorless lunch protein bricks.

  Marcy sees Lang clench one hand into a fist. She glances at Darnel, and in a moment of non-telepathy they silently agree that running is the smart thing to do. They each grab one of Lang’s arms and drag him away, back toward the mine pit.

  ~

  You work your fingers to the bone for three goddamn months, and it feels like three decades between the constant, grinding pain and the Jellyfuckers and Khaki Guy always breathing down your neck. But this is where it gets you: the dark, oval chamber deep inside the Jellyfucker Palace, with El Jellyfucker Grande sitting on what has to be its version of a throne, burbling at you. You can feel Lang practically vibrating with the urge to run or barf or both at the same time, even as he clutches his buckets and sticks right behind you. Darnel’s quiet, but Darnel’s been doing his dead man walking impression for the last twenty-four hours since he managed to convince the Jellyfuckers to bring them in for a concert “celebrating” the total subjugation of the earth, using a lot of flattery and weird bodily contortions.

  Fuck, you’re tired. You’re tired, and every muscle in your back is screaming, and there’s a shooting pain down your left leg, and you really wish Cameron was here for this so you could punch him in his stupid, watc
hed-too-many-white-savior-action-movies face and then hug him.

  But that comes later.

  Shooting pain aside, you bend down to do one of those low, twisty bows Darnel taught you. Because it’s going to help you to get this close, so close that the stench of ammonia like a thousand cat-piss-soaked rugs makes your eyes water. But that stench is also important, and you knew it the moment you snuck onto the killing field three months ago and put samples of dead Jellyfucker into a mason jar. That stench spells chemistry to you.

  “Get on with it,” the head Jellyfucker says, sounding like it’s talking through a throat gargling phlegm.

  You glance at the Jellyfucker guards. “You are very gracious to share the glory of this victory ballad with your servants!”

  This is the moment that matters most, the answer to if you’ve read everything right, learned the best approach. You’ve noticed, how the big Jellyfucker only shows up when it’s way above all the others, acting like it’s untouchable.

  The big Jellyfucker makes a horrible screeching noise. It lashes its tentacles around, and the guards exit. The door shuts behind them and it’s just you humans, a single gun platform, and the big Jellyfucker. You keep your sag of relief purely internal. The big Jellyfucker screeches again and says, “Proceed before I am bored.”

  So you give it a decent little recital, some Moody Blues and Simon & Garfunkel and a few of your favorites from the Stones—the Jellyfuckers had responded best to oldies. Lang drums on one bucket while sitting on the other, and it sounds surprisingly good. Darnel’s even less of a singer than you, but at least he remembers the words and that’s all you can ask for in these circumstances. Weirdly, it’s actually nice to get a little music in, though you can’t lose yourself, can’t think back to that oven-like garage with Papá tapping his foot or the stage with Devil Squid melding into some greater angel that can sing and play three instruments at once, not when you’re smelling cat piss and sweatsocks instead of oil and dust. You finish up with Sympathy for the Devil—and you glance back at Darnel and Lang, but as usual, no one gets your fucking jokes—and then do another, even lower bow that makes your left foot cramp with the pain.

  “This is not what I was told it would be,” the Jellyfucker screeches. It waves a tentacle and one of the doors opens… to reveal Khaki Guy. (He’s got a name, Darnel’s told you several times, and you just don’t give a shit. He’s always Khaki Guy with his smug Khaki Guy smile.)

  Khaki Guy crosses his arms. “They’re just trying to get close to you so they can cause trouble.”

  You cannot fucking believe it—except that you can. Especially with Khaki Guy looking down his nose at you. You can practically hear him thinking, I’m doing the right thing, this will keep us safe.

  You make yourself shrug. “Don’t know what he thinks I’m going to do with a guitar other than play it.” This guitar that Lang built, which sounds shockingly good despite the primitive circumstances… and all of the modifications you had him add. You just have to hope no one can hear your stomach cramping. And that you can still pull this off, somehow. Because otherwise, you’re dead. All of you are dead, and the last thing you’re going to see is some flatfish in pleated khaki pants.

  There’s a soft hum behind you: the gun platform. The hair on the back of your neck stands on end. You can hear Lang’s teeth chattering.

  “The guitar isn’t what I’m worried about,” Khaki Guy says. “With your permission, Supreme Battle Commander?”

  The Jellyfucker waves a tentacle languidly in response. And then you stand still as Khaki Guy pats you down, even checking your pants cuffs. Ignore the guitar, you whisper in your head. Ignore it.

  He starts reaching for the guitar. You look him square in the eye and say loudly, “Oh, I get it. You just want it for yourself. We made this for the Supreme Battle Commander as a gift, and you just try to take everything.”

  “Yeah,” Lang says, voice squeaking slightly. “Landon always tries to steal the good shit for himself. Takes credit for everything.”

  Khaki Guy’s eyes narrow. He reaches out to grab the guitar and you tighten your grip. You think about headbutting him. But then the Jellyfucker screeches, and you’ve never thought such a horrible sound could be beautiful. “It is my trophy. Do not touch it.”

  “But—” Khaki Guy starts.

  “Shut the fuck up, Landon,” Lang hisses.

  “Now,” the Jellyfucker demands. It’s impossible to read any kind of human emotion from its tone. Not that it sounding overtly smug would make things easier or harder; it’d just piss you off, and you’re already as pissed off as you’ve ever been in your life, continuously.

  You shoulder Landon out of the way and come close, still crouched over, closer still, until the Jellyfucker reaches out for the guitar you hold outstretched. Then you reverse your grip on the neck, hit the button that Lang swore would work and you’ve tested a hundred times—it’s about 95%, but what can you do—and the acid you’ve been cooking up for weeks in salvaged glass jars and plastic tubing sprays out all over the Jellyfucker. It screams and steams and falls over writhing. You’d been hoping for an explosion, but it’s never that simple, even if the Jellyfucker seems to be immobilized for the moment. And maybe the lack of explosion is for the best, considering you’re standing right next to it.

  “Watch out!” Darnel shouts. You hear the hum of the gun platforms and hit the ground as a spray of fire whirs over your head.

  “What did you do?” Landon screams. He lunges at you, and Lang lunges at him, and there’s a sound like a bag of wet cement being dropped on concrete, and Landon staggers back. Lang gives him another shove, right into the gun platform. The guns cycle up, but it doesn’t fire—maybe Khaki Guy is in deep enough that the platforms don’t automatically shoot at him. That’s fine, he makes a great shield.

  You drag yourself up to your feet, leaning on the guitar, and hit the second button, the one Lang came up with and you said sure to because you can laugh at his jokes at least. An ax blade springs out of the body of the guitar with a definitive, metallic WHUNK.

  “Darnel!” You toss the guitar to him. He catches it, like he’s been practicing this move all his life, and swings the ax baseball-bat-style into the gun platform, sheering off barrels and burying the blade deep in the metal. Darnel swings the ax again, screaming with the effort, and the platform rains down onto the floor as parts. He turns toward you, eyes going wide, and shouts: “No! Don’t let it touch anything!”

  You turn to see that yes, even though the Jellyfucker is writhing on the floor and gurgling in a way that sounds pleasantly like it’s about to fucking die, it is trying to reach for its throne.

  “Marcy!” You have one second to react before Darnel tosses the ax back to you. You catch it, one foot skidding in acid and oozing fluids, fumble, and get a firm grip just before the blade can bury itself in your shin. No time for relief. You turn, too much adrenalin coursing through you to really feel the way your back is grinding, and bring the ax down straight through the Jellyfucker’s head.

  Flesh flies. Clear, stinking blood spurts. And the Jellyfucker keeps moving, tentacles lashing everywhere, too coordinated to be just death throes. So you keep chopping. Sticky fluid sprays you. Chunks of floppy meat fly everywhere. Severed, twitching tentacles roll across the floor. And the Jellyfucker gives before your rapidly numbing hands and aching back do. It stops twitching.

  Then there’s just the quiet plop, plop, plop of Jellyfucker blood dripping from the throne onto the floor. Lang staggers away from the worst of the mess and retches.

  “Darnel,” you snap. He’s the most important one here. Without him, what you’ve done is just a gesture.

  Darnel scrambles over the mess, his overly-worn combat boot soles squeaking on the goop. Then Khaki Guy shoves him aside. Darnel’s arms windmill as almost falls. “What the hell did you do?” Khaki Guy screams into your face.

  You stare at him. You thought it would be pretty fucking obvious.

  “No, no, no…
you’ve ruined everything!” Khaki Guy looks wildly round. “They’re going to blame all of us. You stupid bitch, you killed us all!” Like a counterpoint, there’s loud banging on first one door, then another. And another. They’re locked, maybe. You have no faith in them holding.

  For a minute, you think Khaki Guy is going to try to hit you, which would be unbelievably stupid on his part, considering you’re still holding an ax that drips with alien gore, and then he rushes to sit in the big Jellyfucker’s throne. “I’ll open the doors,” he mutters. “I’ll tell them you did it, and let them punish you, and—”

  “Don’t you fucking—” Lang shouts hoarsely.

  “Don’t—” Darnel starts as well, though he looks more scared than angry.

  Khaki Guy stabs a finger down at a random pressure plate. And then he explodes. Just FWOOM, there one moment and crimson mist the next.

  There’s silence, except for the dripping of even more blood, now layered with human red. You wipe your eyes to clear away this new coating. Amazingly, Lang seems too stunned to throw up again. “Now, Darnel,” you say. You can worry about having Khaki Guy’s guts in your hair later, when there aren’t Jellyfuckers trying to kick in the doors.

  “Are you kidding?” Darnel says. “You saw what happened!”

  “Don’t touch it yet. But look at it. Hurry!”

  Darnel skids forward and catches himself on the throne, half-climbs onto it, and looks over the panel, lips moving as he sounds things out. “Okay, okay, I think—I got this.”

  “Do you got this, or do you think you got this?” you shout at Darnel. You’re shouting not because you’re angry, but because it’s the only way he can hear you over the slamming sound of tentacles against the doors. You don’t have time for this.

  “I got it! But you saw what happened to him.”

  Fine. You’ll do it yourself. You’ve had a good life. “Then show me.”

  “Wait!” Lang shouts. “It might be some—some like bio-lock thing!” His voice is raw, frantic. “Try using one of the pieces!”

  You glance back to see Lang, a little vomit on his shirt, scoop up one of the flaccid tentacle bits and toss it to Darnel, who catches it. He glances at you, gives you this smile that seems to say, it’s been good, and then slaps it down on the pressure plate.