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DOOM MAGNETIC!!! - CHAPTER ELEVEN:
THE VOIDOIDS
William Pauley III
Mystery solved.
Turns out the city hadn’t vanished after all, it was just misplaced. Hundreds of thousands of folks were all hangin’ out just a mile or so away, down by the coast, and call me psychic, but I had a gut feelin’ they weren’t there to soak up the sun.
Followin’ around those two drunken idiots didn’t do us no good. Turns out there weren’t no bullies waitin’ for us around the corner, lurkin’ in the shadows, itchin’ to pummel our brains out onto the street like I was thinkin’ there probably would be. Shit, there wasn’t really a single soul that paid us even a penny of attention. I was wrong about all of it. I guess this leadership thing takes a little practice, but hell, at least we were safe. Well, for the time being, anyway.
The Japanese man’s voice continued to boom on the loudspeaker, spittin’ words out at the crowd. Everybody just stood in silence, listenin’ to whatever it was he was sayin’. I tried to make some sense of the language, listenin’ for any words that maybe I might recognize, but got nothin’. Hell, if it ain’t American, I don’t know what the fuck it is. It’s all pig shit and hog’s water to me.
“Psst, hey Maundin,” I heard Lady call to me. I looked around for her, but she was nowhere t’be found. “Hey, up here!”
I looked up and Lady was hangin’ from the bottom of an iron fire escape, attached to the side of an old apartment building. “You seein’ anything?” I asked.
She shook her head. “You’re never gonna believe this. Come up here and see for yourself.”
I jumped up and grabbed ahold of the bottom rung of the fire escape ladder and pulled myself up to where she was. That’s when I saw it. Qoser’s evil bastard plan was unfolding right in front of my eyes. Just as soon as my vision adjusted and I was finally able to make out what it was that one-eyed son of a bitch was up to, the last image flickered on the purple television and the screen went to static. The entire crowd was watchin’, standin’ there starin’ at the TV on stage with vacant eyes and watery mouths.
“He’s made…zombies,” I muttered, and my jaw dropped almost to my beltline.
“No, not zombies,” Lady said. “Voidoids. He’s just made an entire army of Voidoids.”
“Voidoids?” I asked.
“He blanked their minds and filled it with Stardust knowledge. But he didn’t follow the rules, so instead of gaining power, they’ve all just become…drones.”
As I looked out into the crowd, I noticed one-by-one each was changin’. I couldn’t quite explain it. Their skin faded to a light blue, the color of TV static, and whatever color hair they once had, it was now bleached a brilliant white. Even their eyes seemed strange to me now, like they’d been inverted, like the negative of a photograph. The whites were now black and their irises were all the same electric blue as their skin.
A cold shiver ran down my spine.
Qoser barked into the microphone again, in that same Japanese mumbo-jumbo he was speakin’ earlier, only this time he seemed a little angrier. I squinted my eyes and tried to make out what it was he was doin’ all the way out there in the distance.
He was pointin’—pointin’ and shoutin’—at us.
I tried to warn Lady, but she was too busy starin’ down the Voidoids, worryin’ they was gonna mess up her boots. She wasn’t payin’ me no mind.
Next thing I heard was Qoser shoutin’, “Korosu,” into the microphone. His voice was all distorted and full of fuzz, almost to the point t’where it was unrecognizable as an actual word. Now, I’m no expert, but if I had to guess, I’d guess the word ‘Korosu’ means ‘cut those bastards down and rip ‘em apart limb from limb,’ cause that’s exactly what those goddamn TV zombies tried to do next.
They started with Lady. Crooked, boney fingers and warm, wet palms wrapped around her shiny red boots. She was able to kick the first few away, stubbin’ fingers and breakin’ bones left and right, but once they finally got ahold of her, they just wouldn’t let go for nothin’. There were at least twenty of them, inchin’ their way up her thighs. I reached out my hand and tried t’pull her closer to me.
“Here, hun,” I shouted. “Grab ahold! I’ll getcha!”
Lady couldn’t break her stare away from the Voidoids.
“I…I can’t do it,” she shouted. “As soon as I let go of this railing, they’ll have me.”
I looked out at the sea of Voidoids and a chill burned right through me, seein’ the thousands of TV static eyes starin’ back at me through the darkness. It was then I realized that there was no gettin’ away from ‘em, that I was responsible for all this, and that I was the only person in the entire goddamn universe that would even be willin’ to take on the challenge of bringin’ them all down. Without me to stop it, the entirety of Planet Japan would become one big TV zombie nation.
It had to stop where it began, and it had to be me to stop it.
I held my breath and hopped down, smack dab in the middle of the herd. Their wet bodies immediately slammed into mine. Their hands wrapped around my mouth, pullin’ at my lips, and fingers poked and picked at my teeth.
I looked back at Lady. She was still fightin’ em. Makin’ progress too, as she almost got herself pulled all the way back up t’the top of the fire escape, but just as I’d spotted her there, one of the Voidoids managed to leap up on her back and pull her down again.
I tried to push against the crowd with my forearms, just to try and get a little breathin’ room, but it was impossible. There was just too many of ‘em. When I pushed against ‘em, my arms absorbed into their bodies, as if I was pushin’ into a wet sponge. Cupfuls of warm water would gush out of them, leaking over my arms, but no matter how hard I pushed back, they never got any farther away.
Then I remembered Banta. I remembered what he’d taught me.
I closed my eyes and tried my best to clear my mind of my surroundings. If I was gonna live through this and get back the purple television, then I was gonna have t’put my learnin’ to the test.
In an instant, my body disappeared completely. Seconds passed, then a hand suddenly reappeared and ripped out a throat, then disappeared again. Then another hand and another throat, and another hand and a heart, and a stomach, and a spleen. I began to tear apart the crowd, one-by-one. Water rushed out of every wound, and in no time, the shore was flooded up to my ankles with ripped skin and murky water.
“Maundin, help!” I heard Lady scream. I turned back just in time to see her get swallowed up by the crowd. I sprinted over, rippin’ the hearts from every Voidoid who crossed my path, squeezin’ ‘em in my hand till they burst like little water balloons.
When I finally made it over to her, I should’ve noticed right away I’d had walked straight into a trap, but I guess my mind was somewhere else. She was lyin’ down on the sand bound by black electrical tape. It was wrapped around her mouth, feet, and arms. Blood leaked from tiny holes in her arms and legs. I bent down to get a better look at her, but before I even got to my knees, a sharp pain entered my chest—then another in my arm, and two in the leg and face. I’d been impaled by coaxial cables, shot out from the wrists of the Voidoids, like goddamn electric spider-men. The copper cores of the cables dug deep into my skin and began to electrocute me. I immediately fell to the sand, screamin’.
I’d never screamed the way I screamed then. It was a scream that came from deep within. The vibrato shot from my lungs like a bullet. Like many bullets. Literally. At the very moment the scream left my throat, the entire pack of Voidoids done lost their heads. The tops of their heads all blew off in unison, as if the entire fight leading up to this was just a firework show and now it was time for the grand finale.
Water shot up into the air twenty feet, gushin’ from their neck-holes. Their bodies fell to the sand, bursting on impact. The entire beach was swallowed up by the sea.
A wave rushed over my body. I pulled the cables out from my wounds, stood up, and looked out into the sea. The stage was still above water, and Qoser was still there, clutchin’ the television in his arms. It was as if he could sense it was all comin’ to an end. That I was comin’ for what rightfully belonged to me and there wasn’t nothin’ in all of hell or heaven that was gonna stop me.
That’s when I started swimmin’.
Paid subscribers! The next chapter of this story will be posted on July 18th! Stay tuned for Swallowed by Static.
The Voidoids
© William Pauley III, 2011
All rights reserved.
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