God Laughs When You Die Read online

  Maisy snarled and squeezed off another shot. The reinforced walls of the Oval Office rang as the cop killer slug struck the barricade directly behind Tom Hawk. I ducked as it spanged off the brass menorah I was using as a toast rack. Maisy screamed, clutched her throat and dropped to the floor.

  “Maisy!” I screamed. I fell to my knees and scooped her up in my arms. Blood was everywhere. “Goddamit!”

  I’d already lost my parents, most of my friends and my in-laws to the invasion. My wife Lonnie - only three days in her grave - had been torn apart and eaten by something that looked like a giant carnivorous hemorrhoid. I wasn’t about to lose the best piece of tail I’d ever had to boot.

  “Love you, pookie,” Maisy rasped as black blood bubbled up from between her luscious lips. “I’m...I’m...”

  “Shhhh,” I shushed. “You’re gonna be alright.”

  The wound to her throat looked bad, but not mortal. I thought she stood a decent chance if I could get her to one of those emergency trauma centers.

  Then Hawk freed the purple dinosaur.

  The creature leapt up onto my War Table, iron talons gouging white tracks into its imported mahogany goodness. Then it shrieked like one of Satan’s harlots and sprang toward us.

  I hauled my white ass outta there.

  The purple dinosaur landed claws first on Maisy and began to stomp. As my honey pop screamed, the dinosaur bit and tore at her with those terrible flesh-clogged choppers. It gutted her the way I gutted Social Security back in ‘06. That goddamned thing did the Camel Walk all over my little chocolate bunny until there was nothing left but red sludge.

  I snatched up Maisy’s automatic, pointed it at the dinosaur and fired five shots into its purple skull. The monster’s head exploded. Then it fell face first into the mess it had made of my sweet black hoochie mama.

  I spun and leveled the Desert Eagle at the redskin.

  “You ain’t getting’ me, Chief,” I snarled. I had three bullets left and I wasn’t aiming to waste ‘em.

  “I didn’t come for you, dickhead,” Hawk shot back. “I came to turn out the lights. You get to watch.”

  “Oh yeah?” I said. “Watch this, Mahatma.”

  I pulled the trigger three times. Maisy’s gun made the Big Bang Bang and the Indian fell over like a dead redwood. I let out a rebel yell and ran over to kick the corpse.

  Hawk opened his eyes, sat up and spat out the three slugs. Then he grabbed me and dragged me toward the barricaded picture window.

  “Wait!” I said. “Now you just wait one goddamn minute!”

  Hawk rammed my head and shoulders through the thin wooden slats, breaking the window glass. Ice and ash filled up my lungs. It was the first time I’d breathed air outside the Office since the Ebola Wars destroyed Philadelphia. I gagged on a stench reminiscent of rotten eggs, burning flesh and human waste.

  Across the way, the Leader was painting the white dome of the Jefferson Memorial using an emptied-out tour bus filled with human entrails.

  Dairy, I consider myself a tough man, a cowboy: rough and ready for terrorists, civil unrest, Affirmative Action or any other evil that might arise. But when I saw the image the Leader had slathered across the Memorial I felt my courage take off and skip naked across the Rose Garden of my mind.

  The Indian whistled a piercing blast that ruptured my right eardrum and the Leader of the Vox turned toward us. He smiled, his perfect teeth shining like a blaze of lightning, and gave Hawk a “thumbs-up.”

  The Indian didn’t let me savor that vision of Hell for long before he jerked me back inside. Then he punched me in the chest. I felt three ribs crack like wet twigs. While I gasped on the floor of the Oval Office, Hawk made me watch while he took a fire axe to my War Table.

  “No!” I wheezed. I’d scored more tail on that table than Oprah Winfrey’d had hot dinners, but when Hawk was done there wasn’t nothing left but a ten thousand dollar pile of firewood.

  “Time to go, pookie,” he said. “Take off your clothes.”

  The last thing he did was turn out the lights. Then he threw me out of the Oval Office. As I lay there butt naked on the sidewalk with

  the world burning down around me, Hawk grabbed me by the hair, pulled me to my feet and whispered one word into my ear.

  “Run.”

  I ran.

  Now, I sit here, Dairy, hiding inside this

  burnt-out old bus station wearing a dead man’s clothes, while the demons hunt me down. One of ‘em almost got me the other day, a big black bastard of a thing that walked like a man and looked like a killer whale with a mouthful of steel teeth. I had to hide in the sewers to escape the fucker.

  I couldn’t hide down there for long, however. The Dead have taken over the sewers and they have an uncanny knack for tracking warm meat.

  I found the bus station this morning. It was filled with regular dead people - folks slaughtered trying to get out of the city. I could have told them, Dairy. No place is safe. Before the satellites and radio went offline I watched the Vox striding like God’s Justice through every major city on Earth, entire legions of the Damned shuffling in their wake. It’s only a matter of time before they smoke me out.

  The Leader of the Vox has set a bounty on me, you see?

  “The human who brings me the head of the American President will earn power; territories vast and yielding to his every dark desire.”

  See, I’m the reason they’re here, Dairy.

  The Vox were drawn by the anguish my friends and I “inflicted” upon humanity, or so they claim. Now the whole world wants to hack my head off in the worst frigging way.

  I’ve secured myself a spot in the janitor’s closet, all boarded up and locked in tight, but it’s only a temporary solution. Five minutes ago, the corpses in the bus station stood up and started screaming. I can hear them hunting for me even as I write these words.

  But I’ve got a crazy idea.

  I’m thinking if I play it right, maybe somebody with friends in Low places will hook me up. Maybe somebody’ll give me a job. Who knows? If I’m smart, I might just pull off the biggest comeback since Hitler invaded Manhattan. I’ve got the experience. Hell, the Vox already admire my work. And I think I can teach the Leader a thing or two about human suffering.

  The screamers are right outside my closet now, Dairy. They’re ripping down the barricades. It’s showtime.

  I’m ready, you fuckers.

  Bring it on.

  Michael Boatman

  By day, Michael Boatman is also an actor. For six seasons he played "Carter" on the ABC comedy Spin City (for which he was nominated for three NAACP Image Awards for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series). For seven seasons he played 'Stanley' on the HBO series Arli$$. (Four Image Award nominations). Other notable television performances include 'Beckett', in the Vietnam drama China Beach, and 'Attorney Dave Seaver' on NBC's Law and Order and Law and Order S.V.U. He appears in the feature films, Woman Thou Art Loosed, The Glass Shield, The Peacemaker, Hamburger Hill and many others. In 2003, he costarred in the Broadway production of Athol Fugard's drama, Master Harold...and the boys.

  His short stories and novellas appear in Weird Tales (Oct 2007); Lords of Justice (Carnifexpress. 2007); Until Someone Loses An Eye...Tales of Disturbing Humor (Bradford House/Twisted Publishing); BADASS HORROR (Dybbuk Press); Dark Dreams II: Voices From The Other Side, and Dark Dreams III: Whispers in The Night (Kensington Books). He is the author of the horror comedy novel The Revenant Road. (Drollerie Press. 2008). His horror- comedy film, Evil Woman, is scheduled to begin pre-production in Fall of 2007, (Guardian Entertainment).

  He lives in New York with his wife, Myrna and their four children.

 

 

 
-moz-filter: grayscale(100%); -o-filter: grayscale(100%); -ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share