Busted Flush

So I didn’t want to get married, he thought, still able to work up anger at the nature of the Angel’s grievance. Was that so bad? Why ruin a good thing? Hell, it was a great thing. He stopped at the door to the “Spaceman’s Room.” There was a thumping sound inside. “Pendergast,” he called out, “you still in there?” Why take a chance at messing it up? Who cares what a priest or judge says? “Pendergast? You all right?”

Muttering to himself, Ray pushed open the restroom door. Even he was stunned by the sight of blood everywhere, splattered on the floor, geysered onto the ceiling, still running down the metal divider that had once separated the stall from the rest of the room and was now torn from its wall brackets and crumpled as if it had been struck by a giant fist.

Pendergast himself was crammed into the urinal, sitting in it as if it were an uncomfortably small throne. At least what was left of him was. He was covered with blood and missing chunks of his neck, chest, abdomen, and his entire right arm. Sharky, standing in a pool of blood that had drained from Pendergast’s body, was gnawing on it. Pendergast’s eyes were glazed and only mildly annoyed. In a flash of horrified insight Ray realized that the BICC director never knew what had hit him.

“Yum, yum,” Sharky crooned as he ripped meat off Pendergast’s flabby arm and wolfed it down. “Nice and fat, yum, nice and fat. Sweet meat.”

They stared at each other for a long, long moment. Sharky’s predator eyes gleamed with sudden glee. “Yum,” he said, “more meat,” and he dropped Pendergast’s arm and leapt at Ray.

Ray slammed the door in the creature’s face, but Sharky came right through it, smashing it and tearing it off its hinges. Ray automatically ducked the flying fragments, but he couldn’t avoid Sharky’s grasp. He’s missing his right hand, Ray had time to think. It looked like it had been removed by a dull knife or determined teeth. And then Sharky engulfed him.

He hit Ray like a sumo wrestler and bore him down. Ray twisted. He almost pulled free from Sharky’s one-handed grasp, then the cannibal fastened on with his immense jaws. Ray screamed with pain. Sharky gnawed where Ray’s neck met his shoulder. He might have had him for good if he hadn’t torn off a chunk of flesh and bolted it down, quickly making a face and saying, “Ugh, stringy!”

Ray screamed again, in anger this time. “You fucking son of a bitch freak!”

He felt muscles rip and blood spatter. He hoped Sharky hadn’t hit the jugular, or he was a dead man. He swung a fist, but only skinned his knuckles on Sharky’s tough, pebbly hide. Without wasting a moment he jammed his knee up between Sharky’s legs, and Sharky’s eyes crossed at the sudden impact and he blew a fetid stream of breath on Ray’s face, splattering him with a mist of his own blood and spatters of his own flesh.

Sharky rolled off, grabbing his crotch and panting too hard to moan. Ray staggered to his feet, clamping his right hand to his neck. It was instantaneously drenched with blood. “Good thing he has gonads,” Ray muttered, moving in on the groaning Sharky.

Ray heard the sound of feet on gravel, approaching fast. Very fast. He turned to see a blur descend upon him, then something bit deep into the back of his right leg at the knee. Tendons severed, and he fell. The blur braked to a stop in a flurry of dust and pebbles. Looking at him and smiling was a lean, tallish man wearing a dirty, sweat-soaked BICC jumpsuit. The torn-off sleeves exposed lithely muscled, crudely tattooed arms. He had cold, hard eyes, and close-cropped hair, and was carrying an open clasp knife with a bloody eight-inch blade.

“Racist,” Ray muttered to himself. He tried to get up, but his leg wouldn’t work.

“Best stay down, boy,” the Racist said, “I cut you good. Hamstrung you like a deer.”

Sharky lurched to his feet. “Gonna eat your head, little man. Gonna snap it off your neck and suck the meat off your skull.”

He opened his maw. It looked big enough to do the job. Ray lurched upright, his weight on his left leg, ready to do something, anything, so he wouldn’t die on his back in the parking lot of the Interplanetary House of Pancakes outside of goddamn Alamogordo, New Mexico.

From between the parked cars Moon flew by, growling. She hurled herself at Sharky, taking him low in the legs, cutting them out from under him. He went down in the dust again, Moon snapping at his hand and head like a wild beast. He windmilled his arms furiously and one caught Moon like a club across her ribs, hurling her to lie panting at Ray’s feet. She was up instantaneously in a guard position before him.

“Well, what we got here?” the Racist drawled as Sharky shook his head and mumblingly dragged himself to his feet again. “A cunt and a nigger. You government boys sure are getting pussified, hiding behind women and mud-men.”