Chapter Thirty-Five

There were candles everywhere, nestled in candleholders placed within any jagged crevice that could hold them. Chuck felt his knees start to give way several times as they were marched down a long and winding tunnel. The Melon Heads held him up most of the way, which wasn’t easy considering his size. Mick had grown silent.

So. this was the end. Murdered by deformed freaks in the bowels of the earth. Chuck wished he could fight, but his body, soul and mind were spent. What was left was grim acceptance.

The tunnel system reeked of human waste, sweat, rancid earth and rotting food. It got worse the further they ventured. Chuck wondered if it was toxic. He started to hope it was; that way the fumes would kill him before the Melon Heads could.

“Hey, Mick.”

His friend was just ahead of him.

“Mick.”

The Melon Heads tightened their hold on him. What was more pain at this point?

“Yeah,” Mick finally replied. He sounded irritated, as if Chuck had derailed his train of thought.

“You remember that championship game when we were on the Tigers?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

Chuck was punched for talking, but he kept on. “We were down by four in the bottom of the ninth and we’d totally given up. You got all mad and started yelling at everyone on the bench, calling us a bunch of losers for quitting. Coach screamed at you, said, ‘Sit the hell down, you misfit!’ Remember that?”

“I do…hungh!” Mick was punched in the gut.

“We won the game. It took a misfit like you to get us to win the game.”

“This isn’t Little League, man.”

Chuck was going to reply, but a hand was clamped over his mouth and nose. For a panicked second, he thought they were going to choke him. He found he could breathe out of one nostril. It stayed that way the rest of the walk.

They eventually came to a chamber filled with musty furniture. The floor was covered in animal pelts. With the warm candlelight, it almost looked comfortable. Chuck and Mick were thrust into padded chairs and ropes were tied around their chests and legs.

Mick cocked his head toward him. “At least we can die sitting comfortably.”

“Speak for yourself. This is killing my arm.” Chuck tried to find a way to alleviate the throbbing agony, to no avail.

Across from them, Mick spotted a pile of bones placed upon what looked like a makeshift altar. Resting atop that pile was a large human skull. The skull had a mane of straw-colored hair that spilled down into the carefully placed collection of bones. The edges of a blackened, shriveled scalp peeked from under the hair, the wig itself affixed to the skull with thick, iron nails.

“I think that’s the head cheese Fennerman told Dredd about,” Mick said to Chuck, motioning with his head toward the bones.

“Doesn’t look like he’s done any leading in a long time.”

“I guess the biggest Melon Head gets the prize.”

A more elaborate chair was dragged from the dark corner of the chamber and set before them. The female leader sat, the bones clicking and clacking. She leaned forward, staring at them, the others around her doing the same.

“Hello, beautiful,” Mick said mockingly. If she didn’t understand the words, she comprehended the tone. He was rewarded with a sharp backhanded smack that spun his head.

The absurdity of the moment triggered a comforting flow of gallows humor in Chuck. “What do we do now? Staring contest? I can tell you, I’m pretty good at it. Just tell me which eye to look at.”

That only seemed to confuse her. He was not smacked for his indiscretion.

“No fair,” Mick said. “He’s being just as much of a douche.”

Mick and Chuck caught one another’s eye and shared a fatalistic smile.

“Any chance you can let us go and call it even?” Chuck asked. One of the Melon Heads kept smacking its lips, turning Chuck’s stomach. He did not want to end up in that mouth.

“I’m not leaving without our friends,” Mick said coldly.

The Melon Head leader stiffened.

“Where…the fuck…are they?” Mick said.

Chuck didn’t want to remind him they were probably in the stomachs of the Melon Heads.

The leader leaned forward as far as she could and sniffed Mick from head to toe. There was something animalistic in the gesture, a wolf taking in its prey. Chuck decided there was no point talking. They were ants trying to communicate with an anteater.

“If you’re going to kill us, just hurry up and do it,” Mick said. “I really don’t give a shit anymore.”

When the leader shot up from her chair, Chuck flinched. She made a strange clicking sound with her teeth and several Melon Heads scurried to the other side of the chamber. They returned carrying two thick wooden poles. Tied to each were Vent and Marnie. They were bloody and bruised, their heads lolling on their shoulders. Dried blood was crusted all over Marnie’s chin and neck.

Both looked very, very dead.

“You motherfuckers!” Mick shouted, fighting against his bindings.

The poles were placed on either side of the leader’s chair, held in place by her deformed subjects. While Mick raged, Chuck stared hard at the chests of his friends. It took an interminable while, but he detected movement.

“They’re alive!” he said. “Mick, they’re alive!”

The leader’s face broke into a lopsided grin, as if she were happy that she had them all in one place.

“Let them go,” Mick seethed.

She tilted her head to him the way a dog does to its owner when it’s told something it can’t understand. Then she plucked a bone that had been sharpened on one end from her armor and used it to pick Vent’s head up, the point close to piercing the soft flesh under his jaw. His head tilted slightly and he groaned. She smacked his cheek hard and his eyes flew open.

“Vent,” Mick said.

Vent’s eyes rolled in their sockets and it took a while for him to find Mick and focus. “They got you, too?” he said despondently.

“Looks like Milbury is going to have to find a new gang of stoners,” Mick said.

“I don’t wanna die.” Fresh tears trailed down Vent’s face.

“I know, buddy. I know.”

Next, the leader grabbed Marnie by the hair and tugged hard enough to wake her up. Marnie’s first words were, “Get the fuck offa me!”

She saw Chuck and Mick and sagged with defeat. “Oh, god.”

Chuck was sure if there was a god, this entire scenario would not be possible.

“We’re sorry, Marnie,” Chuck said. “We tried.”

Her lips trembled but there were no tears.

Now there was only the wait for the inevitable.

Chuck kept expecting the leader to call the cannibal children to finish them off. Instead, there was a heavy silence.

“Do your worst,” Mick said.

The leader stood, grabbed something behind her neck and the armor of bones clattered to the floor. The sight took Chuck’s breath away. Beneath that terrible cloak and beneath a face that barely resembled a human was a perfect body with full, dark-nippled breasts and long legs that belonged on a dancer. Her stomach was fit but not flat, the mound between her legs hairless. Chuck’s brain reeled at the juxtaposition.

She approached Mick, her breasts dangling by his face.

She gestured toward herself. And then at Vent and Marnie.

“What?” Mick said.

She repeated herself with a flurry of gestures. Mick shook his head. “Yeah, you’re naked and they’re tied up. What the fuck do you want me to do?”

He struggled when she grabbed the back of his head and pulled his face into her vast cleavage. He whipped his head back and forth, struggling to break away. Chuck watched in horror as she propped one foot on the arm of Mick’s chair, easing his head slowly downward.

Mick fought wildly to break free.

“Mick, calm down,” Chuck said, not sure if his friend could even hear him.

He was inched closer and closer to her vagina, the reek of it wafting over to Chuck. It hit Mick as well, because he started to gag. She thrust herself into his face. Mick opened his mouth and bit down hard. She hit him with a heavy fist in the side of the head and backed away. She grabbed a bone from her armor on the floor and swiped it across Vent’s throat. A red grin opened up on his flesh. Blood audibly spurted from the opening wound, bathing Mick in his best friend’s hot life force.

“No!” Marnie screamed. Chuck cried out, thrashing in the chair, hoping it would break.

The Melon Head leader let the last gout of blood hit Mick in the face. She rubbed her bitten privates. With another clack of her teeth, two Melon Heads untied him and dragged him away. Mick never made a move against them or tried to utter a sound. He’d been shocked into submission…or a kind of near death.

Chuck and Marnie called after him until the leader and everyone else had left the chamber, leaving them alone with Vent, the patter of his blood hitting the floor drowned out by their sobs.