OLD GODS DIE HARD (Part 1 of 3)

There’s a saying that goes “Old gods die hard.”

Whoever came up with that knew exactly what they were talking about cos I tried to kill one and it wasn’t easy...

The story of my adventures begins at the point that no one should give a shit about. I was born like every one else is. I grew up, I suppose, maybe like you. Instead of telling you about all that, I’m going to burn right through and start where things got heavy.

It all blew up one time, when I was doing what I guess the military would call “reconnaissance.”

It was at dusk. And I’d been crouching behind some bushes for a few hours, on top of a steep, steep hill, drinking water from glass bottles, going through a bottle every ten minutes. I was looking through the view finder of my photo-camera at the terrain below and at the hills surrounding it. They formed a valley of perfect bowl-like proportions around the center of my attention for this outing: a single, bloody, stone slab, glistening with ugliness.
“Today’s Specials at the Great Diner in the Sky: freshly sacrificed, innocent, virgins” said my instincts.
Getting ready, I crawled up from my perch to my motorcycle up on the hill to get a metal case I’d brought with me. Opened the case and extracted machine gun parts. I assembled it and mounted it in the bushes. I’d brought a copy of the New Yorker cause I wanted to read Anthony Lane wittily tear a new movie to shreds in the films section.
I read that, and waited for action.
The sun was goin’ down, down, down, all day it seemed...and then I could hear the sound of motors roaring in the distance.
Three muscle and sports cars drove over the hill from the north, sped down to the bottom of the “bowl”, skidded, and stopped right in front of the slab. Out from ‘em came a bunch of boys and girls, dressed in little else but feathers, flowers, Nikes, and blood. They were six total. Six worshippers of a new cult on the block (I recognized none of them). Had tattoos on their bodies. I checked it out through the photo-camera lens and shot some pictures of their ink: snakes with wings, swooping and eating the hearts of men, spiders making webs in the clouds, temples...I didn’t recognize any of this...I didn’t know their god. But reader, mark me, I’d know him soon, and I would know him for the rest of my delicious and vile life.
One of the worshippers emerged from a car, clutching a beautiful peroxide-blonde girl by the hair. She was not part of the gang. Her terrified shrieks echoed through the hills and I kind of groaned. I hate when people shriek. I hear that all the time.

It doesn’t take much to understand idiots who get involved with mystic bullshit. These are kids, mostly, with low self esteem who’ve spent too much time, either being bored or abused, and who want to believe in a reeeeaaaaal god, a god who’ll smite and curse the shit out of their enemies, and shower their followers with astral love, all could live the rest of theirs lives on tropical islands in the cheesy vapors of their minds and surf with gorgeous lovers on their shoulders and in their hammocks and be served by hordes of dwarves who make them mango-based drinks. It sounds so good when I say it.

I’d probably get into it myself if I didn’t have a problem with being a deity’s big fat balls-licking bitch.

My stomach was pressed flat to the ground, out of sight, where I took the liberty to look through my camera and zoom in on the group. After a quick assessment I discerned the ringleader. Shirtless skinny dude with a paper crown on his head. Paper crowns are really trendy right now, as they were then, inspired by a guy we all love, Jughead of the Archie comics.

I watched as he yelped commands, telling the guy who held the girl to tie her down to the slab. I heard more shrieking. I put the camera down to take a swig of water, took a second. Upon looking back into the view-finder, I saw that the teenaged worshippers were now assembling around the slab, raising their arms up to the sky, some of the girls chanted, the guys were mumbling and throwing flowers and what looked like rotting peaches on the girl. Daggers were being pulled out of sheathes and the cult was getting ready to spill.

“Let’s get this show on the road!” shouted one of them, eagerly.

I crawled to the rifle and the desert was quiet. All I could hear was some faint rumbling in the sky and the weakening voice of the captive, and the low chanting. I took aim and got the girl in my crosshairs. Sunlight was fading fast and the sky felt overcast. She was looking pretty freaked out, or at least that was my assessment.
By the way, there’s no way on this earth she’s a virgin (I thought).
Maybe the god won’t go for it (I hoped).

Turning gently, I aimed for the head of the skinny ringleader. He was bellowing up at the sky in a language I didn’t understand. It would have been helpful if I could speak it. Could understand which god he his offering this person to. I should learn it later. You know what they say: “The more you know the better it gets.”

I loaded a bullet into the chamber, pressed my eye hard against the scope, breathed deep, and fired. The shot ripped through the air and brains exploded down there, probably onto the girl on the slab because I could hear her totally losing it with panic. One down. The worshippers scattered quickly, and some of them went for their cars, perhaps to get away. Smart. They were doing a good job of keeping their heads. Except for the dude I just shot.
Clever joke.

I reloaded and set the rifle on automatic, shooting at the cars, popping a few tires on most of them. Sending a clear message.
No one’s going nowhere.

When they realized what I’d done, they pulled weapons out of the trunk. I winced and put my eye back to the scope. All the kids were yelling at each other and some of them shot bullets into the hills. They were starting to lose their hipster shirts.

They were trying to figure out where I was.

I pursed my mouth and felt my lipstick keep it tight.
 Loading another bullet into the rifle, I took a breath, and fired again.

A guy’s hand flew off.

A blood-curdled yell howled:
“MY FUCCKKKINNG HHAAANNDD!!!”
I spat into the rocky dirt next to me and reloaded.
Now I readied myself again for another shot. I took aim. I noticed a girl, her long red hair tied with a black bandana, buck naked otherwise. Took a quick sec to check out her breasts. I thought it was a shame that she wasn’t one of the good guys and then my mouth dropped: she was shouldering a bazooka, pointed straight at me. She roared out ferocious like a hell-cat “I SEE HIM! IT’S RROOOOYYY!!”

Shit, I thought.

“RUN FOR YOUR LIFE, BITCH!!” she shrieked.

I stood up and shook my fist and yelled back “I DON’T RUN FROM SKANKS, KITTY CAT. SO GO FUCK YOURSELF!”

Why I took the time to say that, I don’t know. It was a bad idea. I could’ve dodged this, but no. I am violence on the prowl, I am sex on a stick, I am proud, I am dumb. I’m an adult.

A shrill whistling sound pierced my eardrums, and the rocket exploded with thunderous force, sending me flying up and back through the air. Big shards of rifle metal and bottle-glass and New Yorker pages blew up in my face, scraping my skin, and I collided into the boulder I’d docked my bike next to. My head whiplashed against the rock. I crumpled. The sky was spinning now. I felt like I was gonna puke or blackout. I got to my knees and crawled to the motorcycle.
“Urghg...fuck.” I think I had said.

I wiped my forehead with my wristband. I was pretty pissed off but too shagged-out and dizzy to do anything about it. They were cheering. My eyes were focusing a little more now. I could stand up. I scooped up my helmet and sat on the bike, putting the headgear on. I could feel the padding inside absorb the blood from a gash on my forehead.
I kick-start and my bike roared happily.
The gas-tank pumped juice into the beast.
In seconds, it was speeding me down the hill, toward these assholes, as I prepared to swoop down upon them like a humanoid condor of death, to put them through some bad, deserved, brutality.

The hill was steep. And that’s an understatement. If I’d pulled up on the handles, I’d’ve soared. Kept my weight forward and my head out in front of the instrument panel, so as not to be distracted by my speedometers and tachometers going ape-shit. I flipped the visor on my helmet down. They were all getting into the one car I hadn’t shot the tires off of. They’d dragged the girl with them and started the engine. I sped up.

I’m gonna take a break from the story for a second to tell you about my helmet.

It is a true cage of hurt. With this helmet, I can see and hear amazing things. A friend of mine, Paul Pooler-Drake, founder of Pooler-Drake & Co., engineer, sweet guy, helped me design some technology, something he calls VampTec, and he found a way to implement it in my helmet. He was able to do this because I captured a vampire last year, and he sedated it and operated on the thing, surgically. I won’t go into gross details, but he was able to synthesize the vampire’s senses onto a digital device, capturing and emitting brainwaves, and that little gadget processes sounds and images, translating that fancy shizznit to the way a vampire would feel them. Yep. VampTec. Paul got the patent for it and it’s putting Pooler-Drake & Co. on the map. He’s already made a deal with Ray-Ban to design a line of Vamp’ Vision Wayfarers. It will be a hit. My visor and built-in radio can “vamp out”, and I can employ a vampire’s sensory ability. I can see in the dark like it’s no one’s business, I can see how fast a person’s heart is beating, I can hear sounds from far-off, and I can even, though sometimes it gets a little freaky, “hear” the state of a person’s mind. Cool shit, though I don’t use it when I’m not riding because the sensory overload, especially the auditory kind, can give me a headache if I use it too much.
Another cool thing is that I’ve got big gargoyle ears hot-glued on the sides of my helmet and it makes me look like a mescalinated apparition(the ears were a gift from a Halloween party that I hosted with the gang back in the opium den. The party was called “Tripper Treat”. Fun fact.)
All in all, it is a completely fuck-proof piece of gear. Now I’m gonna end this side-note and get back to the action.

So yeah, it seemed, the worshippers were getting away. Girl was still with them, I guess the sacrifice was still “on”. The sun had gone down now and the night had started. VampTec kicked in and through my visor I saw everything glow in the dark.

The night was a beautiful vision of vast desert, vast nightmarish landscape...you felt like if you jumped, maybe you would fly off the face of the earth and go ka-ploofing into the sea of stars up there, in the milky way, into outer-space...so pretty.

Their car was fast, but weighed down. They were headed to the mouth of the bowl, exiting the valley to the open desert. I’d come down the hill and I was quickly getting closer. The bodies of the bad guys radiated light from within the car, I could see them piled up in there and my radio crackled, tuning the amplification of my microphones, so I could listen to them:
“He’s come back!” said a male voice.
“Shoot him!” cried a female voice.
“Give me the .44, I’ll do it!” said another voice. 
Guy shoots at me from the backseat, the glass of the rear windshield shatters. The bullet ricocheted through the night. Storm clouds were rolling over the moon.

I thought I could see a...face. In the clouds.

The guy with the big gun reloaded and shot again. This time, the bullet hit me through my leather jacket, right in my flank, and I howled profanities. Wasn’t too deep a hit considering the caliber. There’d been a cinnamon pop-tart glazed with diamond-hard sugar, three winters stale, in that jacket pocket and it cushioned the blow a little.

Still, it hurt like a bad break-up.

I got my head out of my ass and reached behind me, pulling out a steady handgun from the back pouch. I cocked it, aiming through the piled-up gang, trying to get the driver. I shoot, and it works. The driver’s head hits the dash, hard. With VampTec, the gory splattering of blood looks overwhelmingly dramatic, bright, horrendous. The girl captive inside screams. “Please shut up” I muttered. The nude red-head who’d bazooka’d me earlier grabbed the wheel. She opened the driver’s door and kicked the former driver out of the car. The teenaged corpse rag-dolled and flopped like a skipping stone in our wake.

Suddenly a phantom purr echoed in my ears...I was listening to someone’s thoughts now...

It was the red-head, I think:

“Gotta lose him, gotta kill him, gotta lose him, gotta kill him...Aztec God’s gonna be ripshit if he stops us now!”

“Huh” I thought.

The phantom sound of thoughts crackled cavernously in my head again. Someone in that car thought:

“Steady, man, take your time...”

I got a really bad feeling.

And it wasn’t misplaced. A worshipper had been aiming at me. He fired. The juicy “Thwap” of the bullet hitting my shoulder rang dull in my bones and the impact sent me sprawling to the dirt. My bike flew forward, ramming their car, then skidded out of control.

The car was hauling ass, getting away. At first, it seemed like they were satisfied in there. But then the car started turning.

They were coming back.

I tore my helmet off and wiped lipstick from my mouth with impatience. Running for my motorcycle, I thought of the next move. Storm clouds above...I was sure I’d seen something crawling up there. The weather was changing too quickly.

Something didn’t feel right.
Something didn’t feel fucking right and I was onto whatever it was.

My shoulder and flank ached and I slapped myself in the face to wake up. When I reached the banged-up bike I rummaged through the side-pouch and pulled out a double-barreled telescopic shotgun. Short and stubby to begin with, portable, then long and lethal when you swing the barrel out to full length. Got some shells out of my pocket and pushed them in there, locking them in with a gratifying ka-ching sound.
I want to end this.
I want to go home and warm up a fried chicken and chocolate pudding TV dinner and go to sleep. The sooner I fuck up this little evil fiesta for good, the sooner I can get back to the warmth, the haze, the stoned familiarity and oblivion of the opium den.

Now, furiously, the vehicle was speeding up, coming straight at me. My heart pounded fast and loud, like as if I had a jack-hammer beating a gong in a little tibetan shrine lodged in my chest. Eyes blinked painfully. Staying sharp. I lifted the shotgun, with difficulty and muttered “keep on driving, you cunts, I double dare you...”

And when I thought that if I waited a second longer they’d ram me and crush every organ in my body, I shot the car, full-on, right in the hood. In a spectacularly, blockbustertastic, Michael Bay moment, the automobile flew up and did a full somersault high over my head. After what felt like five hours, it crashed behind me, barrel-rolling choppily at high speed until it slowed down and then...oh...hinging with suspense on it’s two left tires. Finally, the car came to a full stop, reposing on all tires. I punched the air with my fist, walked over to the wreck, and whooped:

“Welcome to California, dirtbags!!”

When I got to the car, I kicked the driver’s door open. The red-head fell out of the car and sand matted her sweating, blood-caked, naked body as she rolled to the dirt. Her eyes rolled in the back of her head and she didn’t even blink, her bandana dangled from her hair.

As I peeked into the wreckage, I saw that all the gang members were knocked out. At least one of them was awake but he was screaming and his arm looked twisted in three different directions. I looked down, and swiftly pressed the barrel of my shotgun to the girl’s throat.

“That was a wild ride, kitty cat. You put me through some rough shit. But now you’re finished”
She laughed and coughed:
“Get out of here, Roy, you filthy drag, get your motorcycle and your ass out of here before he comes...”
“Who. Your ‘Aztec God?’”
“Yeah...heard of him?”
“No. Is he new in town?”
She was trying to talk but had difficulty
“You have no idea...He is so powerful...”
“Whatever he is, you guys are doing a lousy job of being his street team.”
“Don’t shoot me...HE loves me...He’ll fuck you up...”

She’s wasting my time. I pulled my face in close to hers, and through my teeth, I said:

“If he loves you then why is he letting you bleed in the sand like this, or are you just his pathetic one night stand?”

She spat in my face and knocked her forehead into mine.
I can’t stand cheap shit like that!
I decked her with the butt of the gun, whipping her head back. Stood up, pinned her down, jamming my boot into her abdomen. She lurched and I barked:
“I’m done schooling you. Let your prisoner go, if she’s still alive in there, let her go back to her goddamned cheerleading squad or wherever you fetched her and...”
I got cut short by a flash of lightning.
“You’re screeeeeeeewwwwwed, Roy-boy. He’s gonna hurt you...”

Her eyes were full of wildness and blood was trickling out of her mouth and I think she was in shock now.
The guy inside the car with the broken arm whimpered and tried to move the bodies of his friends off of him.
I looked up to see the clouds get thicker and thicker.
I was becoming mesmerized.
The bullet in my shoulder didn’t exist to me anymore, couldn’t feel a thing.
All the hairs on my body stood on end.

The crazed girl got out from under my foot and struggled to get up.

Just as she tried this, a thunderbolt hit her square in the chest. I jumped back in surprise.

A rumbling laughter echoed through the desert and the clouds swirled.

The girl gasped for breath.

A cavernous voice spoke, and it sounded like the mountains themselves were bellowing at us:
“I am Disappointed. I am Hungry. You have all failed to bring me that virgin. And I had been looking forward to it.”

In disbelief, I turned to the red-head.

“Wow! That blonde you guys captured was a virgin??”

“Dont’ judge a book by its cover” she snarled at me.

“Guess not!”

She turned her head to the sky with big eyes, and I followed.

I saw the face of death.

For sure. It was the face of a young man and an old man combined. Wrinkles, war-paint, youth, scars...scales? Snake scales? Behind the clouds, arachnoid legs moved. Wings flapped.
He was made out of every predator of the world.
He was unreal, but he was right there, hanging in the sky, and I had never seen anything comparable. I’d seen ugly things. I’d seen lovely things. I’d seen vampires. I’d seen zombies. I’d seen spiteful hipsters with animal masks, robot masks, ninja masks...electro-deejays with laser guns and their dance-floor killings. I’d seen beautiful, black-lit sunsets that were almost more devastating than a bad guy’s snappy sense of dress and a hangover. I’d seen murderous, cursed mermaids, banished to the sands, who would catch men in the desert and milk the bodily fluids out of them, and I mean ALL of their bodily fluids, blood, piss, even their cum, so hungry they were for any kind of liquid, hungry for water and lucky if they could find it. And I had seen a great bottle of bourbon, once.
But until this moment, I had never seen the Aztec God.

The girl pleaded with this thing of destruction:
“My God, everything was going according to plan...but Roy intervened and messed everything up! He is to blame for spoiling your meal!”

The spider legs in the sky crawled with impatience.
“No excuses. I am starving and I need to feast.”

“Then, if I may be so bold, my Aztec God, take Roy. He has proven it many times, and he has proven it tonight, his blood is full of life.”

“Hmmm. Sounds...scrumptious.”

I wasn’t down with that. I needed to stall this:
“Thanks for the blurb, but if you’re looking for some kind of a virginal youth to eat, then I’m definitely not, uh....virginal.”

The god was thinking it over.
“...You’re not?”

“Yeah, no, definitely not virginal here.”

“Well I am fairly grumpy now.”

“Sorry” I said, almost despite myself.

The girl started to panic:
“Aztec God, he is bluffing!”

“Bitch, you’re unbelievable!! I am totally NOT bluffing!”

“Too late, my faithful cupcake! You botched dinner! The human you were to sacrifice is dead and her flesh is cold already! I will not be satisfied with it. And I am afraid you must take her place. Bye Bye!”

Strings of cloud-covered tendrils shot down.

“NO, PLEASE LISTEN TO ME, I CAN-”

The sky flashed with black-light colors. Spider legs and snake coils grabbed the girl. She screamed for mercy.

“Wait!” I yelled.

But it was too late.

She was yanked up to the low-hanging clouds.

Thus began the sounds of feeding. The god was tearing the girl limb from limb, up in the sky, above the clouds, and eating her like one would eat corn on the cob. I was paralyzed with awe, watching the event silhouetted against the black, voracious clouds. Chunks of flesh and blood rained down, hitting everything, spraying my face, as I heard the deity eat loudly, the sound of giant lips smacking bounced through the mountains across the desert.
In no time, the carcass of the girl, her eyes still in her skull, fell from the sky and thudded on the ground in front of me, some of her ribs breaking on impact. I winced.

The Aztec God burped.

And he said to me:
“Roy...how old are you?”

“Uh. Eighteen. I think.”
“Have you ever felt truly alone?”

What the fuck was this guy about, I wondered.

“Yeah, maybe...maybe not?”


“Well now you have seen me. You have seen a small fragment of my power. And as you face this, you are truly alone. And the next time you get in the way of my minions...mark my words, we will have a...problem.”

Blinking with nervous energy, I was ready to be straight with him:

“We already have a problem.” I said.
“Hmmm. What do you mean?”
“You’re a bad guy. And my thing is that I. Wreck. Bad guys.”

The Aztec God shrieked with laughter. I cupped my ears and watched the stars dim as they seemed to flee the skies surrounding this man-eating deity.
He stopped abruptly. The earth stood still. And he said:
“Soon, so soon, I’ll have a wonderful time snacking on your heart straight out of your chest, but I am going to nap now.”

My telescopic shotgun felt tight in my fist as I tried to keep from trembling.
“Good, uh, because I’ve got other shit to do right now too.” I gave him a big smile and a huge, over-the-top wink, to make sure he could see my painted-on confidence:
“Kill ya later!”

The storm clouds flashed and departed, leaving a trail of bloody mist behind them.

The Aztec God was gone. For the time being.

I sat down slowly and exhaled, disarming my shotgun and pushing the barrel back to pocket-size. The pain in my body returned little-by-little. I looked back at the ruined car, at my bike, totaled. At the bones of the girl, picked clean. The boy in the car with the broken arm moaned, but his moaning grew faint as he slowly lost consciousness.

The black-light sun rose high, giving the rays of the moon unnatural colors, turning the grains of sand to neon specks. It was in this moment that I was, briefly, brought out of the life I lead, out of the deep REM cycles of the American Dream, killing monsters, finding treasure...to the rude and real truth that I am usually in denial of: In my day-to-day business, I can die so easily...
The Aztec God’s words echoed in my brain and he was right.
At that very moment, sitting near the wreck, I felt totally, completely, alone.


TO BE CONTINUED