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* * * * *

I woke up in Hell. Darkness and pain, time standing still. No wailing, though. I was sure Hell would have wailing.

A creak, a floorboard. And then a FLUMPH sound, like a lit gas grill.

I blacked out.

I came back. How much time had passed? I smelled smoke, was sure I was in Hell this time. Or was I dreaming?

All this Hell talk got you freaked out-

I forced my eyes open, my nose filled with an acidic itch. I was disappointed to find Hell had a cheap tiled ceiling, some browned with water damage. My chest hurt. Stung. I was shocked to find I still had an arm and could move it. I felt a wet patch right in the middle of my shirt, winced with the pain. I was cold all over, and vaguely realized I was in shock. I thought of Frank Wambaugh.

Frank worked on the Worthington Munitions production line in Plano, Texas for eleven years. The company manufactures over 100 types of cartridges for hunting, sport shooting and law enforcement. A couple of years ago Frank was manning his station as a third-line Inspector, the last step in a meticulous quality control process. Defective bullets at Worthington are measured in parts per billion, thanks to that three-tiered inspection system and to the fear of legal liability should one of their cartridges explode in a policeman’s face.

Nonetheless, there was a bad bullet among the half a million .38 caliber rounds produced that day at Worthington, thanks to a fly that crawled inside one of the casings as it passed from the machine that added its pinch of propellant. The defective fly bullet was the only one that day to pass by both of the first two inspection stations unnoticed. Frank would have spotted it, but at the exact moment the possible defect error displayed on his screen, Frank was distracted by a man behind him.

Or so he thought. He turned, and saw no one.

When he satisfied himself that he had imagined the spoken “hey” that, upon reflection, he heard more in his head than his ears, he returned to his work and was none the wiser. The defective round thus passed unnoticed, was packaged, sold through a Law Enforcement catalog eight months later and finally distributed to Detective Lawrence “Morgan Freeman” Appleton six months after that.

A year later he loaded said cartridge into his revolver and fired it into my chest. The projectile had only a fraction of the normal propellant and thus less than one tenth of its usual impact force. The bullet had punched through my skin, scratched the thick bone over my heart and bounced off.

I opened my eyes, didn’t remember blacking out again. So tired. Waiting for the flames now. I raised my head and saw the couch was a bonfire, black smoke rolling up to the ceiling. Fire licked the paneling and it bubbled and blackened under its touch. The carpet below the couch was saturated with high octane. The moment a spark fell it would...

I was moving, just like that, crawling on hands and knees. Damn, smoke filling in so fast now, like breathing wads of hot cigarette butts. Gotta get to the door, gotta get to the door. Can’t see shit. I saw something that looked like a door, reached out, touched smooth metal. Refrigerator.

I had crawled in the exact wrong direction. I turned, crawled. Felt along the wall. Carpet on fire now. Shit, hot as hell in here. I crawled. Crawled and crawled. Ah, here’s the door. Thank God. I reached out.

Refrigerator again.

My skin burned, pulled tight on my skull. The place was an oven, a blast furnace. Is that my hair burning? I squinted around. The living room was an orange blur behind me. Could I even make it through there now? I felt this weird twitching in my chest and realized I was coughing. I lowered my head to the linoleum, few inches of fresh air down there. So tired. I closed my eyes.

Darkness. Heat. A low sound. Wailing?

From outside. Getting louder. A car coming. A dog barking.

Get back. Get back!

Who said that?

A thunderous, terrible sound. Glass shattering, metal screaming, wood snapping. The kitchen was exploding around me. I was flung backward and suddenly a blast of fresh air washed over my body.

I was looking at the grill of a car, my car, the Hyundai “H” symbol a foot from my face.

The car reversed itself and wrenched free of the wreckage that had been the kitchen’s west wall. There was now a rupture, frayed with tufts of pink insulation and shredded aluminum siding. I flung myself out of the hole, fell onto the cool grass outside. I coughed, coughed, coughed, passed out.

I woke up what felt like hours later but it could have only been minutes. The trailer was a fireball behind me. I heard a bark.

David? You alive?

That voice again, from nowhere. I struggled to my feet, saw my car sitting about twenty feet away, saw that Molly the Dog was sitting behind the wheel. I stared at this for a good solid minute.

“Okay,” I said, “I know for a fact you didn’t drive my car just now.”

The dog didn’t answer. I opened the driver’s door, shoved the dog over and sat behind the wheel. Molly barked. I said, “Shut up.” The dog barked a second time and I realized with mild, exhausted amusement that with a little attention I could understand it.

“Woof!”

Meat!

I noticed the bratwurst still on the dash, spoiling rapidly under the windshield sun.

“Woof! Woof!” She said.

Meat! Tube meat! I heard.

What a fucking day. My eyes were on fire, watering down my cheeks. Frankly, I didn’t give a shit what this dog had to say. I grabbed the bratwurst and sat it on the seat next to her. She sniffed it, barked. I heard my name in the bark. I turned and her big brown eyes were looking right into mine.

“Woof!”

David!

“Woof! Woof!”

You understand me? This is John.

I was vaguely aware that on another day this might seem strange, but I rolled with it and in mild annoyance said “uh... hello.”

“Woof!”

We’re in big fuckin’ trouble, Dave.

“No shit, fluffy. How did you work the pedals?”

“Woof!”

You can hear me so I guess you took the Soy Sauce. Why? Didn’t I tell you not to? And what happened to your face?

“Your second question answers your first. So. What up, dog?”

She stared at me for several seconds before replying, “Rrrrruff!”

Here’s what I know. There are three people still alive from last night other than me. Big Jim Slade, Jennifer Lopez and Fred Chu. I don’t know a whole lot else because my own body ain’t workin’ so well. I know we’re all together and we’re on the move and once we get where we’re goin’, something bad, bad, bad is gonna happen.

I was impressed by the animal’s ability to work so much meaning into that one, harsh sound and wondered if dogs ever got this verbose with each other under normal circumstances.

“Wait, wait, wait. Why are you a dog again?”

“Arrr-oof!”

(Sneeze)

Justin White, or the thing that used to be Justin, he’s got me. Me and everybody else. He stole a vehicle. When I’m in my body I can’t see nothin’ but I can hear. It’s somethin’ big enough to hold everybody, some kind of truck. Dave, you gotta find it.

“It’s an ambulance. See? I know some things, too. The cop told me he stole an ambulance from the hospital. So there are actually four still alive from last night, if you count Justin.”

“Woo-“

No, no, no. I said there were three that were alive and I meant it. Justin White ain’t alive. He’s a walking... hive or whatever. There’s nothin’ left of Justin inside him. Look, I’m just a disembodied soul inside a talking dog, but I think that black stuff, the Soy Sauce, is like a microscope. Think of the first time somebody peered into one of those things and saw millions, billions of these freak-ass wiggling creatures, viruses and bacteria and all that. I bet they wanted to throw the thing across the room, never look into it again. To them it was like lookin’ into another world, but the worst part was they knew what they were seein’ was our world, that these nasty little things had always been there, on our skin and in our beds and on our silverware. That’s all it is, Dave. You and I are j ust now seein’ what was always there. But because we can see it, we gotta deal with it. Nobody else can.

“-oof.”

“What am I supposed to-“

“Woof!”

Bitch!

This threw me, and I stared in dull confusion for a moment before I noticed the dog was looking past me. I turned and saw a little brown and white beagle tied up next to one of the trailers.

“Woof! Woof!”

Bitch! Bitch!

The beagle was a female, I guessed.

“John?”

“Woof!”

Sorry, Dave. My grandpa used to tell me, toward the end when he was going crazy, that talking through a dog ain’t like talking through a sausage. Molly is in here with me and I gotta compete for the barker. I feel a flea!

Molly scratched behind her ear with a rear paw.

“Where is Justin, or this Justin Thing, taking everybody?”

I already knew the answer to that one as soon as the question left my mouth. I said it along with the dog’s barked response:

“Las Vegas.”

“So what’s in Las Vegas?”

Not ‘what,’ but ‘who’ and ‘when.’ I know but I don’t know. You know that feeling?

“I do now.”

“Woof! Arrrrr-oof!! Grrrr...”

Look, whatever these things are that the Jamaican, summoned, I guess, I think they want the same thing everything else wants, the same thing any virus or plant or fish or Canadian wants. To make more of themselves. They’ve got a host but they’re looking to expand. In a couple days, Justin will hatch just like the Jamaican did. I’m not sure what’s gonna come out of him but anybody in the vicinity when that happens will become a spawning pod thing. Dave, the last world these things showed up in was saturated within 100 days. Don’t ask me how I know that, neither, because I don’t know.

I suddenly had a picture of John’s comatose body bursting open and millions of little white rods swarming out.

“John, when the Jamaican hatched were you, eh, in the vicinity?”

“Woof! Woof! Woof! Grrrr-oof!”

No.

“Woof.”

We all got away in time.

“Woof.”

I think.

“Rrrr...uff.”

I like meat.

“I got another question. Everybody who took the Soy Sauce is dead or comatose. Except me. Why? Is it because I’m so cool?”

“Grr....Woof! Ruff...”

My theory is that your small penis saved you. Or, you could say it’s because you got a little taste of it before getting a full dose, so you were able to adjust a little. And then you took it orally, as it were, instead of injecting it. Those are perfectly good theories if you want to cling to them. It’ll be time to lick my crotch soon!

“But that’s not what you think.”

“Wuff.” (Sneeze)

You should have figured out by now, Dave. You don’t choose the Soy Sauce. The Soy Sauce chooses you. If it can’t use you, it kills you. But from what I hear, it plays with you first. Meat! Meatmeatmeat!

Molly started wolfing the bratwurst off the seat, downed it in two bites.

“Fine. So, I should call the cops and let them know the ambulance is on the way to Vegas, right? Then go home and go to bed?”

Molly barked.

“John?”

“Woof!”

Dave, I don’t know how much longer I can- CAT! CAT! CAT! CAT!!!

Molly was up in the seat, jamming her head out the half-open passenger window.

“John...”

“WOOF! WOOF! WOOF! WOOF! WOOF! WOOFWOOFWOOFWOOF!!!”

Cat!! Cat! Cat!!! Cat!!! CAT!! CAT!!!! CAAAATTT!!!

A filthy gray cat zipped across the trailer park, across the front of the car and off into the distance. Molly pulled her head inside and tromped over to the driver’s side window, stomping on my crotch and shouting “CAT!!!” the whole way. It took ten minutes to get the dog calmed down, at which point she promptly curled up and went to sleep in the passenger seat.

“John?”

The dog farted. I got nothing else out of her the rest of the night.

Chapter 5 – Riding with Shitload

I drove home and threw my shitty, bloody pants and shirt in the trash. I showered, paranoid the whole time, thinking I was hearing opening doors and floor creaks and murderous things bumping around outside the shower curtain. It had been that kind of a day. I dressed and put on bandaids and loaded Molly into the car. I drove to a convenience store and bought a road atlas. Back in my car I unfolded it in my lap and drew out the path to Las Vegas with an ink pen. Was I actually doing this?

I knew I would need cash, for gas and to replace the several vital parts of the Hyundai’s drivetrain that would likely shatter over the course of the long drive. I had nothing in the bank. This seemed to be a rather major problem but within a few seconds of watching the sun set in the convenience store’s parking lot, a plan popped into my head, fully formed and alien. I had learned to accept such things in the last few hours. This wasn’t Dave thinking. This was Soy Sauce thinking.

I drove downtown, scanned the alleys until I saw a rail-thin Mexican kid standing by a dumpster wearing a St. Louis Rams jacket. The kid wearing the jacket, not the dumpster. I calmly stepped out of my Hyundai, smiled broadly at him. I had never met him before, wasn’t quite sure what I was doing. I heard myself say to him, “Yo! Mikey said you got a package for me, Creech!”

The man squinted at me, didn’t move.

“Who the fuck are you?”

I smiled again. “I’m the fluffy-ass white boy who the cops never pull over. Name is ‘Face.’ Mikey told me to tell you Phats gave the okay. Motor’s in the hospital, his Appendix blew up on him, everything’s fucked up. Now we gonna do this thing or we gonna stand here smellin’ this garbage box all night?”

He continued to study me, said, “I been waitin’ here fifteen minutes.”

“My directions were shit, man. You know how many dumpsters there are in this town?”

“What happened to your face?”

I made a dismissive wave with my hand, said, “Hazard of the job. I bought one of those 44-ounce Mountain Dews at 7-11 and missed my mouth with the straw.”

The corner of his mouth twitched ever so slightly, then he fished around inside his jacket, pulled out a stuffed envelope, kept it concealed. He stepped up and gave me a hug, slipping the envelope to me in one smooth, practiced motion.

He said, “Tell Mikey I’ll send Motor somethin’ in the hospital. Some titty magazines or some shit. Alright?”

“No, man. Smuggle in a bag of Taco Bell, you wanna make the man heal happy. That hospital food, I think it's shit they cut outta other patients’ stomachs.”

“Heh. True. You a sick bastard, but it true anyway.”

He let go and walked off. I made my way back to my car.

I sat down inside, let out the breath I had been holding. I had no idea what any of that was, only knew that a certain combination of words said to a certain man would get me an envelope. I pulled the envelope out, opened it, saw it was stuffed full of hundred-dollar bills. I counted six thousand dollars.

Okay. Got cash now. Without thinking, I drove to the Merry Nation Bar and Grill six blocks away, went to the parking lot and looked around without a real idea of what I was looking for.

I went right to a cobalt-blue Dodge Ram pickup that I had never seen in my life. I found it unlocked, reached in, felt around under the seat with my hand. I pulled out a satin-finish steel automatic handgun, fully loaded.

God bless America.

I stuck it in the back of my pants, felt strangely comforted by its gouge into the small of my back as I sat back down in the Hyundai. I started the car, then turned and looked squarely at Molly, still curled up on the passenger seat, legs jutting over the side, tail touching the floorboard. Evening had set in now. One of the longest, most retarded days of my life.

“Well? What now? It’s gotta be 1,500 miles to Vegas...”

1,669.

“...and it’ll take two days to drive there. Will it be obvious where to go, what to do once I arrive? Got any answers for me, dog?”

Molly stretched in the confined space, got awkwardly to her feet. She reached out with her snout and pressed her nose against the power button on the radio. It crackled to life, nothing but static.

She nuzzled the tuner knob, couldn’t get it to turn, then began licking it. Eventually she reached out with one paw and swatted at it, getting it to go half a turn before the knob snapped off and rolled to a stop in the floorboard. She stared down at the detached knob for a long moment, then started barking at it. I picked it up, replaced it back on its nub on the radio and said, “Tell you what. I’ll tune it and you bark when you want me to stop. Okay?”

Molly said nothing and I began tuning the radio across the AM frequency landscape, feeling like a jackass. We landed on a filtered telephone voice, a call-in radio show. She barked once.

I left it there and drove. On the radio was Larry King, doing a bit with psychic Sylvia Brown, who was selling a book. He went to break and came back with another guy, a talk-to-your-dead-relatives-for-a-fee guy I had never heard of named Dr. Albert Marconi.

Dr. Marconi was also selling a book—surprise surprise—and was liberally taking shots at Sylvia Brown, questioning her methods. I suddenly had a picture of two competing Three Card Monty players on opposite street corners, barking at passers-by. “Yo, that boy’s game is fixed. You want to win big, you come to my table, playa!”

I was beginning to wonder whether they would say something relevant or if Molly just liked Larry King, when Dr. Marconi said that his colleague was recklessly dealing with the spiritual plane and that there were evil factions there to be aware of, things that could manifest themselves in “any number of unimaginable ways.”

That sounded relevant. I turned it up, listened as he took calls from people wanting to talk to dead relatives, people who thought they were living under curses, people who thought their homes were haunted. One lady claimed her TV satellite dish was getting signals from the future, state-run newscasts with helicopter shots of refugees crowded behind barbed wire fences in run-down football stadiums, the anchor gushing praise for “the Wise Leader, who is seeing us through these troubled times.”

Finally at the end of the show Larry asked the doctor where he could be seen next and he said he was doing a massive conference for the next three nights, at the Luxor Hotel.

In Las Vegas.

Well, that sealed it. I was going. I drove back home as fast as I could. I pushed through my front door, through to my bedroom, found my old brown leather duffel bag. I ducked into my bathroom, collected my toothbrush and a comb and contact lens fluid and that sort of thing, then went across the hall to my bedroom and tossed the armload of stuff into the bag. I piled in some clothes and flung myself down the hall and then stopped cold. My bag fell from my hand with soft thud.

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Copyright © 2008 David Wong and Jason Pargin - All rights reserved. No part of this book or website may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the express written consent of the author and publisher. This online book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidence.