The Brothers Crunk (3 page)

“
Shit!” Reynold says as he spits tiny chunks of his Pete and bean burrito out from between his teeth. “Shit, shit, shit . . .”

He climbs to his feet and hops into the driver’s seat. Vomiting has actually made him feel much better, more sober. As he turns the key in the ignition, he feels a new confidence in his ability to drive the rest of the way to Terratown.

Everything is going to be all right.

FOUR

TAKING THE HEAT

Divey wakes the next day covered with sweat. The heat inside the van is tremendous. The engine is making a strange churning and knocking sound and smoke is billowing out from underneath the hood. Reynold is asleep at the wheel.

“
Fack, Rey!”

He quickly opens the back doors of the van and looks out. They are in the middle of a dry golden desert. Devil’s Country.

He jumps out of the van to find that it has been buried deep in the sand, engine-first. The tail end is angled more toward the sky than it is even with the horizon. He pulls Reynold out through the window and onto the hot desert sand, immediately waking him from his slumber.

“
What the fack, bro?” Reynold yells, feeling excruciating pain in his left arm. He looks down and sees his blistered flesh in the pattern of the stovetop coil. “Jeezus, Divey, what the fack did you do to me arm?!”

“
Oh, shut your goddamn mouth, Rey. Last night, you got bloody wasted off your arse, cooked your arm and then wrecked our van . . . OUR HOME . . . out here in god-the-fack-knows desert!”

“
No, that can’t be right. That doesn’t sound like me,” Reynold mutters, examining his wound.

“
Well, how else can you facking explain it then? Huh? Please, I’d love to hear your interpretation of the events.”

Reynold begins squeezing his arm at the elbow. “Look, Divey, I’d love to chat and all, but I’ve got a facking skull-squeezer of a migraine and me arm seems to be burnt really facking badly. I think we may need to ring an ambulance.”

Divey looks around in disbelief. “An ambulance? Ring an ambulance? Reynold, look the fack around you! We’re in the facking wastelands! Ambulances don’t come out to these parts! Don’t be such a twit.”

“
How do you know? Have you ever asked them?”

“
You can’t be serious! Where the fack would you tell them to come to? Besides, there aren’t any payphones in the desert, so how are you going to make that call—REGARDLESS of the fact that they wouldn’t come out here anyway?”

“
You know, Divey, you should be trying to help me, rather than standing ’ere scolding me. I’m a facking injured person!” Reynold blows on his scorched flesh.

“
No, what I should be doing is walloping you for getting our arses stranded out here in the desert! THAT’S what I should be doing!”

“
Okay, okay . . . so I facked up! I apologize! Jeezus, why can’t we just get past this?”

Divey grips the sides of his skull in his hands and brings them down slowly over his face, exhaling. “Nevermind, Rey . . . nevermind. No use in crying over it now.” He looks up at the blazing sun. “It must be about noon. Get in the back of the van and tie a slab of meat around your arm. That should make the pain a little more bearable, plus it will protect it from the sun.”

“
Good thinking, Div. Thanks,” Reynold says as he hops in the back of the van.

“
While you’re at it, go ahead and tie on all the meat you can to your body. We’ll have to walk from here. We need to try and take as much as possible. I’ll do the same.”

Reynold peeks his head out of the van and says, “What would I do without you, Div?” smiles, and then dips back into the van.

“
You’d probably be dead, you facking twit,” Divey mutters under his breath, in the most lovingly brotherly way possible.

FIVE

THE DISTANCE TO IT

The burrito brothers are making their way across the desert with no real destination in mind, just any sign of civilization. The land they are trekking across is long, wide, flat, and dusty. They can see for miles in any direction. There is nothing. Even their van, which they had left two hours before, seems to have been swallowed by the horizon.

Droplets of blood drip off the meat, run down along their skin in streams, and splatter below—leaving a long trail of blood spiders behind to dry and die in the sand. The meat is slowly cooking on their backs, causing them to salivate slightly, which is helpful in rationing their liquids. Two Cherry Coke Big Gulps are duct taped to the sides of each of their heads with a long straw [actually several regular-sized straws attached to one another] leading into their mouths.

Reynold peels back the slab of meat covering the wound on his forearm. The pain is still tremendous, but has eased up a bit. His skin looks like burnt mozzarella cheese. He presses the meat back down against his arm firmly.

“
Hey, uh, Divey . . . look, I want to apologize . . . for everything. I’ve been a facking dick, man. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gotten that drunk. I shouldn’t have driven, either. And I for damn sure shouldn’t have cooked my arm,” Reynold says, out of breath.

Divey laughs. “Yeah, you facked up big time, bro, but hell . . . it happens. At least we’re still alive.” Divey stops walking, tilts his head back, and tries to catch his breath. “Let’s take a breather, hey Rey?”

“
I’ve been waiting for you to say that for an hour now.” They toss their supply packs down on the sand and sit down on them, breathing heavily.

A flicker of light catches Reynold’s eye just as the coin had in the parking lot the night before.

“
What the fack is that, Div . . . you see it?”

Divey turns around and the glare nearly blinds him. But instead of shielding his eyes, he opens them wider. Instead of his pupils contracting, they dilate. A surge of energy radiates throughout his entire body. He stands.

“
We should check it out ’ere in a bit. Might be something useful, you think?” Reynold asks, still slightly out of breath.

Divey doesn’t respond. Instead, he begins to sprint toward the object.

“
What the . . . HEY! DIVEY! WHAT THE FACK, MAN?!” Reynold snatches up the two packs. “Wait up! Christ, man! SHIT!”

SIX

ELECTROSUPERCOMA

Divey runs for two miles before finally reaching the object. It is a body. Some sort of metal skeleton—well, part of one at least. The torso has been separated from the legs and the legs are nowhere in sight.

He kneels in the sand before the corpse and hovers his palms over it. The heat radiating off its body immediately coats his palms with sweat.

Never before has he seen anything quite as magnificent or complex. The machine looks exactly like a human skeleton, but more advanced. Instead of fragile bones, there are thick steel rods and solid ball joints, hydraulic pumps instead of muscle, and copper wire veins.

“
Every day we perfect God’s design. Every day is stranger than the last,” he mutters.

Divey rips the duct tape from his forehead, loosens the Big Gulps, and pours the Cherry Coke over the corpse. It hisses like an angry snake and then
Pop! Crack! Pop!
The drastic temperature change causes the metal to snap and burst open. The ribcage blooms like some rare desert rose, exposing its electrical innards. Divey’s eyes are drawn to a glowing orb located in the center of its chest. The orb is made of glass and smoke swirls about inside of it in such a perfectly fluidic motion that it appears as if it could actually be milk.

He reaches down to touch the orb. Upon contact, every muscle in his body contracts. The orb twitches and loosens itself from its nest, rolls up Divey’s arm, and continues to travel up his body until finally roosting deep inside his mouth.

His muscles go limp. He falls unconscious to the sand.

● ● ●

Reynold, nearing complete exhaustion, gets a sudden second wind once he sees Divey’s body disappear behind a massive cloud of smoke. He throws down all the supplies and begins sprinting toward him.

“
Holy shit, man! Divey! Divey!” For the first time, he realizes voices do not echo in the desert. There is nothing for the sound waves to bounce off of.

As he approaches the steaming robo-corpse, he is able to make out the faint silhouette of his brother’s body lying flat on the sand.

“
Divey, you okay, bro?” Reynold chokes on the smoke and worries about why Divey isn’t.
Has he stopped breathing? Was he . . .? Could he be . . .?

He grabs both of Divey’s arms and pulls him away from the corpse and out of the smoke cloud. He kneels down beside him, puts an ear to his face, and listens for breathing sounds. He is still breathing, still alive. The feeling of panic drains from Reynold at this discovery. He collapses beside his brother from fatigue and then he too slips into unconsciousness.

SEVEN

THE RED RAIN

Everything’s white. Same place, same desert, only white. Divey’s body is still lying beside me, but he too is white. A facking mannequin resting in a sea of salt. White. Everything. White.

And then there is me—in color.

And then there is the rain—in red.

And then there is IT. IT is purple. But once IT has finished, IT too will be red.

IT is waiting.

EIGHT

THE CONSTANT HUM

When Reynold awakens it is daylight again, but he only knows this because of the bright orange glow caused by the sunlight as it shines through his eyelid. He cannot open his one good eye. It is glued shut.

He frantically spreads his eyelid apart with his fingers, peeling away red-colored crust hardened like a scab over his left eye. His vision returns, but not fully. It’s as if he is looking through a fogged window. Objects are now only shadowy masses with little detail. The moisture in his eye has become thick like gelatin. A red substance oozes from the corner of his eye. He wipes it away with the back of his forearm.

“
Fack, Divey. Wake up! Something’s wrong with me eye.” Divey doesn’t answer. Reynold looks down at the dark figure lying beside him. He is not moving. He shakes him. “Div . . . hey, I facking need you, man. Wake up!” His chest heaves in and out as he breathes, but does not respond to Reynold’s calls.