Black Leather Required Read online

  Only this thing was more aesthetic.

  Rather than getting used to the idea of wiping his ass with a stump, Mikey inverted the jawbone-club in his grasp as the teeth of the living, big-daddy version of the same sort of jaws tried to mesh.

  The pointed end of the jawbone chocked solid and deep into the thick folds beneath the monster's tongue. It slithered in unexpected pain but made absolutely no sound. No growl, no roar, just the fetidness of blast-furnace breath in Mikey's face.

  "It is good," Edict said. "So far."

  Mikey tried to backpedal as the creature chomped vigorously, its teeth blocked a foot apart each time. Blackish blood began to pump from the concave ditches of its upper and lower jaws as Mikey's own lifesaving jawbone imbedded ever-deeper. Mikey had accidentally done the same thing to himself, once, when a toothpick misbehaved inside his mouth.

  It would punch the spear through the top of its own nose, if that was what it took to savor the taste of Mikey-steak.

  Unchewed, Mikey was nonetheless trapped. By the phosphorescence in the tunnel, he could see that his jacket sleeve had been punctured and pinned by one of the large upfront incisors. Mutant 'gator blood soaked down his arm, seeking to corrupt him, or perhaps pre-tenderize him.

  Using the snagged sleeve as leverage, Mikey rolled out of his coat with a clumsy slosh just as his impromptu mouth-block splintered apart.

  Mikey backed away. Not far enough. His backbone met unyielding concrete and he was the only thing in the monster's sightline. With a weighty swish of its tail, it propelled itself closer for the kill, its otherworldly eyes glowering with something akin to fulfillment. All Mikey could see was those jaws, working, crunching up the broken bone like so many cubes of ice. Then the mouth opened again. For the last time.

  "Not so good," Tapshoes muttered.

  My people, Mikey thought. My ass. They were about to discover just how gooshy their mistaken messiah was.

  Having no other course and no backstop, Mikey reached out, grabbed the monster's tongue, yanked, and shoved his other arm straight down the gagging, grasping gullet awaiting him.

  The result was unusual. Mikey watched his own swallowed coat briefly resurface as the albino gator's own esophagus tried mightily to vomit. Mikey braced himself for a spray of ribboned tweed and hydrochloric stomach goo. . .

  . . .which never came.

  Then something genuinely astonishing happened.

  The coat slid back down into digestion. The mouth reopened. The throng emitted assorted oohs and aahs. Mikey's own mouth unhinged, dropping open at the unique thing he saw.

  The bright spots of pink sunk in the pupils of the eyes that had filled Mikey's existence flared, then ebbed, the way a light bulb burns brighter before it burns out. The pink snuffed out and the eyes clouded with smoky red as the delicate capillaries there began to overload and burst.

  The monster with Mikey's arm down its throat was in definite distress.

  The taste buds on the tongue ruptured, voiding clear fluid. Blood began to drip down the tree-trunk teeth, which rocked in gums that could no longer bear their weight, and one by one disengaged and dropped out.

  Sewer rats took it on the lam double-quick as the creature tried valiantly for a final roll, a death jolt, but only managed to tread water, feebly. The encrusted off-white armor plating of its hide was issuing blood from every root of every scale, every join and juncture of its bulletproof dermis sundering loose, and leaking. Blood candy-striped it as it fought the cataclysm inside its own body.

  Its shotgun nostrils liberated a spray of blood before Mikey could get his disbelieving mouth shut. Mikey screamed and slam-dunked himself below the surface, feeling the oily discharge cling to his face.

  Wasn't this where he'd started? Underwater, with no room to breathe?

  Logic is a curious process, especially within the exploded timeframe of imminent death. Mikey saw his trip to the Cherub's headquarters replay. Lived again through Cobbler's glass head blowing apart. And remembered, at last the capsule given to him by the weird old geezer running the Cherub's elevator.

  So, them there is what we in our trade call as 'terminators. . .'

  Mikey had put the capsule in his pocket. And Gator-Zilla had eaten his jacket. Somehow the gel cap had not dissolved in the sewer, and Mikey recalled the weird feel of it when the old man had first handed it to him. He had been too busy pondering its terminative function to notice that it was not a gel cap at all, but glass. It was designed not to dissolve. You were supposed to bite it.

  As in "biting the big one."

  Mikey resurfaced, his arm still sunk to the elbow inside the Big Moby Eater, now spasming and sinking and freeing itself of the last of its blood. And the natives were sore perturbed.

  Edict, Tapshoes and the others stood there like wax statues, unable to encompass what they had just witnessed. Egg took one forlorn glance at Mikey, then went on one knee to throw up, in the manner of one observing the proper courtly decorum. Then she frantically began to wail and paw between her legs, as though fearful the same miracle would befall her.

  The orts and nuggets of the Cherub that had just come out of her stomach steamed, then sank. Even the rats wouldn't bother with them.

  The mind bees awoke, suggesting to Mikey that it might be a very good idea to leave with utmost haste as soon as he could get his arm unmired from the lips of the Big Moby Eater. The late.

  Enough of the old Mikey still existed for him to make a game try of the weasel routine: "Er guys? I have no idea how this happened, really, I, uhh–"

  "We dared the despair of hope!" declared Edict, so loudly that Mikey mistook it for Tapshoes' basso. "It is written that the Big Moby Eater partake of the Comer." He pointed grimly to the blown-out corpse of the albino gator, forming tiny clusters of bubbles as it displaced water, going down for the last time. "The Comer must now become feast."

  "What kind of stupid rule is that?!" Mikey extracted his arm. Big Moby's nose disappeared beneath the black water. "You guys have already eaten enough for a regiment!" He mocked Edict: "It is written. . .so, where is it written, huh? Show me!"

  "Kill him," said Edict. "And eat him."

  Tapshoes hesitated. "No 490 burgers, no–?"

  "Do it, you moron, or you've got the wrath of God right up your hineyhole."

  There was nothing quite so pure as religious understanding. Tapshoes handed Edict a lit torch. Petroleum smoke plumed forth as the torch was used to ignite others. Within seconds the tunnel was a low-budget, glowing Hades–Joe Dante, rather than Durante Alighieri.

  Mikey mourned all the hardware that had been just strewn around at the Cherub's. All those pretty unfired guns.

  Back to the mulch, the mind bees suggested gently. Mikey appropriated a deep breath and crash-dived just as his turncoat disciples ganged into the water to claim him. He collided immediately with the semi-buoyant, twitchless carcass of the Big Moby Eater. It was easy to feel his way around to the underbelly, which was completely sundered–split from the knave to the chaps, as some poet might opine.

  Become god, whispered the mind bees. Assume his pleasing shape. Whatever the black capsule had contained was as efficient as a nitroglycerin enema. It had left Mikey plenty of room to venture the one place he had just battled to avoid–inside the albino gator, where its stomach used to be. It was like donning a chainmail overcoat, skinning in through organic jelly. Mikey forced his upper body into the cavity, and round he could see (dimly) and breathe (sort of) through the monster's mouth, still partially doorstopped open by a lingering fragment of the embedded jawbone club.

  Mikey had never been a monster before. Now he could see pissed-off villagers, waving their firebrands, lusting to destroy him. Alternate perspectives have their little advantages. They stormed around him, cautious not to jostle the body of their fallen icon. He heard their voices dopplering away as they pursued the most obvious course of flight.

  Mikey kicked his feet, modestly, and propelled Big Moby in the opposite direction.


  All options weighed, being inside this creature was warmer than being inside Egg. Comfortable, almost. Mikey's eyelids drooped. Easy to go to sleep in here, he thought. Miss out on everything. So tired.

  Stay in the gator...

  The lifeless body of the Big Moby Eater kept him afloat, and breathing, as Mikey drifted.

  "You got the coffee?"

  "Yeah. Here."

  "This doesn't count. If it's in Styrofoam, it's not coffee."

  "Bite me. Then give it back."

  "No way. You got that cream stuff?"

  "You gonna complain about that, too?"

  "I hate this shit. They can't even call it cream, legally. Look–it's got two rows of ingredients all around the rim of the seal, then at the end it says artificial flavoring and coloring added. Know what that means? It means that when they mixed all these chemicals together, it came out the color of diseased dogshit and tasted about the same, so they had to bleach it and pump in some more chemicals to make it taste like fake dairy. 'Coffee whitener.' Jesus. I might as well put paint in here; that's what it is."

  "You want this shit or don't you?"

  "Gimme two."

  At first Mikey thought the two ambient voices were those of Edict and Tapshoes, faking him out of hiding with a bogus real-world conversation. He startled awake, then opened his eyes and looked out through the nose of his biological submarine.

  Worklights. Air hoses. Two dudes in orange coveralls. Helmets of yellow plastic. The end product of a chain of caste that had begun with Ed Norton on The Honeymooners. About thirty yards ahead. Mikey could see them but they didn't have a clue. Yet.

  Mikey gulped a breath and shucked backward out of the carcass. He had been installed long enough for his upper torso to settle in the ravaged tissue and organs, like glue seating well. After a bit of auto-wrestling, he came free with a moist Velcro noise and Big Moby, un-aerated by this living parasite, took on water and sank in silence. Mikey felt a twinge of regret, like a U-boat captain scuttling his own abandoned ship.

  The splashing and splattering of Mikey's climb onto the service rim of the tunnel succeeded in belaying the history-making conversation of the two guys in orange. One of them said what the fuck? and his partner, not so predictably, said:

  "Want me to shoot him?"

  The mind bees sizzled to life, full force, going nyaah, nyaah and chiding him that Roach and Ratso had found him, had known where he was all along, it was all just a game with Mikey as the dunce, time to wave bye-bye to the bad old world, you imbecile.

  "Don't shoot me," Mikey said boldly. Maybe it would work.

  "Hey, it talks."

  "You fellows wouldn't happen to know the way out of this sewer, would you?"

  The taller one rolled his eyes. "No, stupid, we live here."

  The other one said, "Christ, guy, you look like you've been shit on by the whole universe."

  "Aw, god, don't start going cosmic on me now, Alex."

  "Blow me." Alex jerked a thumb past his shoulder. "Ladder's right over there. Follow the air hose."

  "Thanks." Mikey shambled past them. They both made faces at the stench.

  Alex's partner said, "Take a shower, huh? We got standards down here."

  "Are you lost?" said Alex.

  Mikey stopped, turned briefly. "Yeah. I'm better now."

  Then, as the two men continued to crack jokes about the sorry state of this interloping son of a bitch, Mikey found the way out, and ascended back into the world of hurt.

  Author's Note:

  This story is only the second in a series of cataclysms destined to befall poor Mikey, aka Scoop. The first (referenced in the text here) was "Scoop Bites the Dust," which can be thrilled to in another collection, Look Out He's Got A Knife. The creation of Scoop is mostly Joe Lansdale's fault–I wrote the first story for Joe's crime anthology, Dark at Heart, then substituted a serial killer story called "Action." But Scoop isn't done, yet; oh no. I think the next one is called "Scoop Sucks the Troposphere."

  Kamikaze Butterflies

  "That story. It's a crock." Arenas was being contrary. "It sucks."

  "That story is still the reason you and I are here, asshole," Satch spat back. Literally spat: Flakes of beef spread and cracker spattered Arenas' combat vest. He was bare-chested beneath, muscular, sweaty.

  Two hours till noon, and already it had become hot enough to sizzle the brain within its crock pot of skull, with boiling cerebrospinal juice for basting. Masterson's temper kicked from simmer to pan-blacken; he was in no bloody mood. "Shut the fuck up, you, lameass, and you, limpdick, or I shoot me some boxcar craps with your teeth." The threat was pro forma; not much soul backed it up. It was too hot.

  Arenas shifted back into his camp-complainer mode: "This ain't a military op, Sarge, so you don't really have any–"

  "That's why it's not an order, buttplug."

  The bitching never hung long in the suffocating humidity. They were all dedicated, irrevocably committed; just coarse, battle-tempered and badass nasty enough to believe they were right, the sort of surety that had, in other times, redivided the grid of the world map and changed the names of continents. The land itself endured. Only the nomenclature altered, according to the whims of the mighty or the subversion of the cunning. That was reassuring to Masterson, who in another war in another time had actually held the rank of sergeant. The only permanent thing was impermanence. Hold onto that.

  Their plan was to change everything, but the land would always be the same.

  The story suggested that if you hopped into a time machine, cruised backward, and meddled with the macramé of past events, you could disrupt in utero the world you had left. You could terminate a family line eons before its ancestors evolved to sentience. The seed of entire races and cultures could be ground dead like a cigarette butt; whole civilizations could be erased down to their skeletons and the bones mortared to timeless dust, all before the primordial amoebae of said civilizations struggled for their first food. History could easily be stabbed in the back, since it only marched forward, eyes front.

  The squad that had designated itself Omega Team was counting on that story being right.

  They quickly discovered that Heraclitus had been (or would have been, yuk, yuk) right, too: Time was a river. And if you paddled against the current, all the way back to the mouth of the waterway, and pulled your boat and supplies onto the shore, both you and the devices you carried would work just peachy, despite the paradox that neither would exist for millions of years. You could then murder every living thing in sight, napalm to soot cells that, in a mere burp of passing time for the planet, would eventually become you. Yet you would not, as the operatic cliché went, die before you were born.

  You could get killed in back-time. Absolutely. But conventionally, and not thanks to a mean twist of plot.

  McCullough had gotten killed, conventionally, just this morning, and his messy death was what had Arenas bummed. Boyo was damned near catatonic. Masterson noted that the men had reverted to calling him Sarge. It was something permanent, a reliable fallback in the jungle heat of what had been a one-sided war, until this morning.

  Boyo squatted near the coffee fire, his blond rag-cut starch-stiff with dry blood. Half of McCullough had dropped and splattered him, and three hours later he was still rigid and staring, eyes too wide and blinking too frequently. The few words he had spoken concerned McCullough. He wondered aloud whether the fluids of his partner's tissue, which now soaked his cami fatigues, contained microorganisms that were still alive. Germs that might someday evolve into a new McCullough.

  They were all going to die on this mission. They knew it and it was no strain. McCullough, however, had been the run's first casualty, and the way in which he had bitten the big one was spectacular.

  Rather, Masterson thought morbidly, it was the way the big one had bitten McCullough . . .

  There were all sorts of special surprises they had not anticipated, despite primo recon. Like a Tyrannosaurus Rex coming
at them from out of the trees, for example.

  They had been hacking their own trail, staggered at three-yard intervals, Satch walking point. Just past dawn they spooked a herd of swan-necked Maiasaurs and massacred the hindmost. Franco and Arenas and Bull potshot the lumbering reptiles–"blowing their tires" was the expression Bull had coined for shooting out a large dinosaur's leg with an RPG. Blow the tire and the whole beast crumpled, then Boyo laid down a mist of fifty-fifty from his incendiary tanks, then Mendoza touched off the fireworks with a grenade after they'd all retreated. The smell was awful.

  Twenty klicks to the south the jungle was busy consuming itself by conflagration. That had been a happy accident, yesterday, courtesy of one of Mendoza's half-smoked Lucky's. The flames had engulfed an entire valley, feeding on the wind and defoliating hundreds of acres and barbecuing numberless animals. Including, Franco hoped, a lot of those football-sized roaches he'd seen the first day in back-time, one of which had scuttled over him while he dozed. It weighed at least fifteen pounds and he'd shot it to gruel with his monster .457 pistol. These sci-fi mutant bugs were virtually the only back-time life that could be killed with bullets. The bulk of Omega Team's ordnance was tagged for the big guys. Smokey Mendoza's riff with the cigarette had not cost them a round, and Sarge had been impressed.

  Big reptiles could make the creepiest sounds when they died.

  They sortied from brush to tropical thickets, where it was close and odious. The canopy of fronds meshed to block the sun and steam them slowly in their togs. Bull and Satch managed to pick off several gliding, errant pterodactyls as they wafted from perch to perch on the sopping updraft of plant decay. Small arms fire sent them veering into trees and cartwheeling earthward to snap their airy bonework amid death-tangles of vines and creepers. Watching a creature with a twenty-two foot wingspan fold up and crash off-course was pretty comical. They had all the tensile strength of spun sugar. One that Arenas gunned down hit the turf right in front of Boyo, who stomped its head flat and, laughing, made mud of its greasy brains.