Chemical Gardens Page 5

  I laugh nervously. “Well, you know, as much as we’d like to be the house band tonight, we really don’t have time. You see, we’re supposed to be in San Francisco in just a few hours and—”

  “Where?” Bob interrupts.

  “San Francisco.”

  “Where’s that?”

  I hesitate. Is he kidding? “Umm…California.”

  “Never heard of it. Now, why don’t you just quit yanking my chain and get up there and play us some music?”

  Frowning, I say, “You’ve never heard of California?”

  “Can’t say that I have. And if I’ve never heard of it, it doesn’t exist. So, why don’t you just mosey on up there and show us what you got? And, for your sake, it better be good. My customers get pretty crabby when it comes to bad music.”

  I look around at the freaks who are all glaring at us and do indeed look quite crabby. “But, you don’t understand—”

  “This is bullshit,” Dose yells. “Let’s just get the fuck out of here.” He begins to drift away and then anyone in the bar who wasn’t already standing up rises from their chairs. Those who were previously standing all take a step towards us.

  “Uh oh,” I say.

  Dose stops in his tracks—if you can call them tracks—and just hovers in place. Apparently a bar full of angry people from nightmares and foreign galaxies is enough to give even him pause.

  From under the table, Whey squeaks, “Maybe we should just play for them, guys.”

  I look Bob in the eye on his cheek. “How long will we have to play?”

  He shrugs. “Until I’m satisfied. Your boy there did a bad thing.”

  I bite back the urge to cuss at him. “Listen, we can’t play all night. We really have someplace to be.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about that if I were you.”

  “Why not?” I ask suspiciously.

  “Because I’m sure you guys probably suck and if you do, the crowd is most likely going to tear out your intestines and wear them as a belt.”

  No one says anything for a few heartbeats and then Whey’s voice drifts up from under the table again. “Does he mean that literally?”

  I scan the faces of the people around us and say, “Yep. He means that literally.”

  “Jesus!” Whey says.

  “Fuck,” Dose says. “Let’s get this over with.”

  It takes a little coaxing to get Whey out from under the table and the jazz band takes this time to clear themselves from the stage.

  We quickly decide that, since Dose can’t play bass for obvious reasons, he’ll sing lead and Pawn will take over the bass duties. Whey and I will do our usual thing, drums and guitar respectively.

  Taking the stage with more trepidation than we’ve ever had before, we take our positions, me with Nemesister strapped on and plugged in, the others borrowing the jazz bands instruments.

  Dose clears his throat into the mic and says, “Yeah, so, we’re called Green is the Enemy.”

  Someone from the bar yells, “Why?”

  “’Cause it’s a fucking cool name!” Dose shouts with annoyance. The stranger begins to boo and I quickly step up beside Dose and snarl, “Because CASH KILLS!”

  I hammer the opening chords of our song “Cash Kills,” hoping the band will follow suit. I have to riff around a second time but then they get it and we’re jamming like it’s any other gig.

  The bar patrons stare at us slack-jawed for the first half of the song. The second half, they start booing, hissing and yelling insults and although this is far from the first time we’ve been hated, this time I’m actually worried about it.

  But, we’re troopers. We get through the first song without having the stage rushed by an angry mob and so, plunge diligently into a second one called “Pull the Trigger and the Nightmare Ends.”

  They don’t like this one any better. I guess punk isn’t their cup of tea.

  A few people start wailing beer bottles at us, but we dodge them with the expertise of veteran punkers. Dose begins lacing the regular lyrics with outbursts of “Hey, fuck off!” and “Try again, fuck-face!”

  Pawn slaps the bass, her face a neutral stone mask, but when I dare a quick glance behind me, I see fear in Whey’s eyes, tears streaming down his cheeks. He’s pounding the skins like there’s no tomorrow, blasting beats like a pro, but simultaneously crying like a scared child.

  Good grief.

  A lot of the drunkards rise to their feet, faces pinched with hatred, and slowly advance toward the stage. More bottles fly, along with a few cans and one heavy beer stein that clips me just below the knee. Hurts like the dickens too. For a moment, I forget our circumstance, and find the perpetrator and scream, “That was just plain rude…you…you PIGFACE!”

  Because the stein-thrower does indeed have the face of a pig, the insult obviously hits a nerve. The pig-face snarls and shoves aside anyone in his way, lunging at me with teeth bared. I stop playing and brandish the guitar like a particularly large and cumbersome club, waiting for pig-face to be within batting distance.

  His battle cry enlivens the rest of the crowd and then they are all charging forward, roaring, spitting, clawing. They can smell our blood and it appeals to them. Now they want a taste.

  “Oops,” I mutter, swinging Nemesister at Pig-Man’s head, hoping she doesn’t get too badly damaged.

  Everything becomes spinning violent chaos, each of us doing our best to avoid being killed and just as I’m thinking, this is how we’re gonna die someone is shouting louder than all the rest, demanding attention.

  Abruptly, everyone freezes, including me, and we all turn our attention to Picasso-Man. He’s standing on the bar and pointing a remote at the large television up in the corner. “Look!” he yells. “It’s them!”

  Sure enough, on the TV is a photograph of Green is the Enemy, though not an old promo shot as would have been my first guess. Instead, it’s a photograph of how we all look now—a photograph that was never taken but there it is just the same. In it, we’re performing on a stage. This stage.

  Pawn and I exchange a glance. While it seems possible that someone could have taken our picture without us noticing it, it seems unlikely that the same picture could be being displayed only moments later on a news broadcast.

  The photograph disappears from the TV screen and is replaced by an extreme close-up of a demon’s face.

  Wanda’s demon face.

  She points at the camera with a gnarled black claw. “I’m coming for you,” she croaks with a crooked smile, revealing sharp gray fangs. “I’m coming for all of you. And for the rest of you genital warts in that bar, leave them alone! They’re mine! If any of you cockroaches lay so much as a finger on them, I will crush you like the insects you are! Do you hear me? Green is the Enemy is mine!”

  The demon turns away and speaks to someone off camera. “How was that?” she asks calmly and then we’re looking at a rather disheveled looking anchor man who stares at his monitor as if it’s possessed.

  “You heard her!” Picasso-Man shouts, muting the TV. “Leave them alone!” He looks over the top of his patron’s heads at us, the band. “I don’t know what you did to piss off that demon, but I want you all out of here now!”

  We don’t move, just stare at him in a state of bafflement.

  “Go on,” he yells. “Get out of here before you get us all killed!”

  Before us on the floor, the previously angry mob parts like the Red Sea, giving us a clear path out of the bar.

  A second later, our trance is broken and as one, we bolt for the door, leaving a shocked and silent crowd of freaks in our wake.

  21

  The sewer sludge takes us away from that bizarre populated area and I’m mostly grateful for that.

  “We’re lucky Wanda didn’t put a bounty on our heads,” Pawn says. “It would have made her job easier, don’t you think?”

  “I’ve always wanted to be on a ‘Wanted’ poster,” Dose says from his place at the front of our little parade. “
Wanted: Dead or Alive. How fucking cool would that be?”

  “She wants to get us herself,” I say. “Get the guitar back and squish us between her fingers like little spiders.”

  “Is she really going to kill us?” Whey asks worriedly. His eyes are scanning the darkness above us, ears pricked for the slightest sound of swooping demon wings.

  “If she catches us before we can get to the Metal Priestess,” I say. “Yeah, chances are she’s gonna kill us.”

  Whey makes a whimpering sound but says nothing.

  We soldier on in silence for a good half hour or so, traveling through dark woods as we had before. The path is clear though, and beside it flows the ever-present stream of sewer sludge.

  This time the forest is shallow and it doesn’t take us long to emerge on the far side of it where there is a field of pale-yellow grass. The center of the field is cordoned by what appears to be a chicken-wire fence, about twenty feet high. The fence stretches from right to left, disappearing from sight in both directions.

  “That’s a long fucking fence,” Dose observes.

  “It is,” I say, but I’m not looking at the length of the fence. I’m looking at what’s on the other side of it.

  “It’s a garden,” Whey says.

  I nod. “A vegetable garden.”

  We stare in awe at what is no ordinary vegetable garden. Beyond the fence stand tomato plants that rise a good thirty feet into the air, dripping ripe tomatoes the size of basketballs.

  Cucumber plants crawl along the floor of the garden, the cucumbers themselves longer than my guitar and twice the width of its body.

  “Do you think this is where we’re supposed to find that Priestess chick?” Dose asks no one in particular.

  Pawn walks right up to the fence, lacing her fingers through the wire. “I don’t think so.”

  “What makes you say that?” I ask, joining her at the fence.

  “Well, for one thing, you were told to get to the Chemical Gardens. Nothing about this seems chemical to me.”

  “Are you nuts?” Dose says from behind us. “What else besides chemicals could make veggies that huge?”

  Pawn eyes the tomatoes but still looks doubtful and I’m inclined to agree with her. I say, “Why wouldn’t Chad have just said the big vegetable garden if that’s what he meant?”

  “Fuck if I know,” Dose says.

  Whey comes up, pointing at the ground. “Guess we have to go through it anyway.”

  We all look down to where he’s pointing and see that the sewer sludge slips beneath the fence and winds its way around several of the tomato stalks before disappearing from sight. Then, in unison, we all look up to the top of the fence.

  “I’m afraid of heights,” Whey whines. “There’s no way I can climb that.”

  For some reason, this causes me to chuckle, gesturing left and right. “You can always go around it.”

  Dose laughs and slides through the fence, his body breaking into dozens of vapor squares before forming back into a man-shape on the other side.

  Pawn and I immediately begin climbing. Although, I’m also somewhat afraid of heights, I know better than to say anything about it. I’ve found that giving voice to your fears only makes them stronger and more real. Best just to keep your mouth shut and keep those things to yourself.

  Halfway up the fence however, it’s not the height that has me nervous so much as the flimsiness of the chicken wire. I begin to have my doubts that it will actually hold my weight as it bends in my hands and under my feet.

  Again, I shove these uneasy thoughts aside and just keep myself moving.

  Down on the ground, Whey is still complaining. “This sucks! I bet there’s a gate somewhere. There has to be a gate somewhere!”

  “Get your ass moving, Whey,” Dose tells him. “Stop being such a candy-ass. I’d like to have my body back before Christmas.”

  Pawn has already topped the fence and is climbing down the other side. Apparently, synthetic people are quite agile in addition to all their other advantages.

  The wire begins cutting into my fingers and blood drips down my wrist, falling to the ground to glisten wetly in the pale-yellow grass. I clench my jaw and continue to climb with grim determination.

  When I reach the top, I pause to look out over the garden, which seems to roll on without end. But of course, no garden goes on forever. I’m simply not high enough to see the far side of it.

  This reminds me that, high enough to see the far side or not, I’m plenty high enough for my own comfort. I swing one leg over the top of the fence, an awkward feat under any circumstance, but made even more difficult by the addition of a guitar on my back. Somehow, though, I manage to flip myself around and seconds later, I begin the climb back down.

  Below me, Whey still paces the ground, his face pale with panic. “Come on, Whey,” I call, trying to sound encouraging. “Withering Skin Records, remember?”

  “We’ll just leave your sorry ass here,” Dose adds, not making even a mild attempt to sound encouraging. “Drummers are a dime a dozen, you know.”

  Suddenly Whey lets out a long wail, like that of a soldier certain he is going to die but plunging into battle just the same. He leaps at the fence and scuttles up, boobies bouncing, lightning-quick, flips over the top and then down again, screaming the entire time. He hits the ground before I do and only then does his battle-cry end. He stands there, looking dazed for a moment, before bending over and puking.

  “Man,” Dose tells him. “You’re a fucking freak.”

  A minute later, I’m on the ground, patting Whey’s shoulder and trying to console him. “That was great. You scaled that fence like a champ.”

  Dose sniffs loudly and asks, “What’s up with you, Ro? Since when did you become all touchy-feely?”

  I shoot him a dirty look and Whey starts weeping again.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Dose groans and moves off into the garden. “Fuck all y’all.”

  “We’d better get going,” Pawn says, peering into the garden after Dose. She taps her wrist as if pointing to a watch, but she isn’t wearing one. For as long as I’ve known her, Pawn has never worn a watch.

  “Holy fuck!” Dose yells from out of sight, making the rest of us jump.

  Without thinking, Pawn and I rush towards the sound of his voice, shoving aside huge tomato plant leaves and leaping over jumbo cucumbers.

  We haven’t traveled more than twenty feet down a garden row when Pawn abruptly stops, causing me to bump into her back. Over her shoulder, I see the gas vapors of Dose about a dozen paces in front of us, one shimmering arm pointing. I turn my head to see what Pawn has already seen: a brown rabbit the size of a Saint Bernard.

  The rabbit stares back at us, whiskers twitching, long ears flat against its head. Apparently, it had been enjoying a nice meal of veggies when Dose happened upon it. Before it lies a half eaten cucumber, still on the vine.

  “Look at the size of that fucker,” Dose whispers, his voice full of awe.

  I can’t help but smile, the thing is so adorable with its pink nose and dark questioning eyes. “You could almost ride it.”

  There is a rustle behind me and then I feel a hand on my back, but I don’t bother looking around. The sound of the startled gasp is enough to let me know that Whey has caught up.

  Pawn, speaking softly, says, “I guess it stands to reason that the animals around here would be larger than normal, given the fact that the vegetables are.”

  The rabbit watches us with interest, without any visible sign of fear, and doesn’t even flinch at the sound of our voices.

  “It’s like Land of the Giants,” Dose says.

  “Or…” Pawn trails off, considering something carefully.

  Still grinning, unable to tear my gaze away from this amazing sight, I say, “Or what?”

  “What if this isn’t like Land of the Giants at all?” Pawn ventures. “What if that’s a normal sized rabbit and this is a normal sized vegetable garden?”

  N
ow my smile slips a notch and I look at her. “You think we shrunk?”

  She shrugs. “Is it so impossible a notion? Look at everything that’s happened.”

  I have to admit she has a point.

  Moving past me, Whey slowly approaches the rabbit. He gets within a few feet of it before hunkering down and holding out his hand, the way you would do with a strange dog. “I had rabbits as a kid,” he whispers. “Always loved them. They can be more affectionate than kittens.”

  The rabbit snarls, lips skinned back to reveal tiger fangs, and rises up to its hind quarters, slashing out at Whey with retractable needle-claws.

  Whey squeals and falls back on his haunches, the claws slicing the air just inches from his nose. I yelp, stumbling backwards and hear another snarl behind me. Whirling around, I see another huge rabbit approaching, hopping along the garden row, shiny eyes glinting malevolently.

  “Holy Toledo,” I say. Trickles of white foam drip from the rabbit’s mouth and Pawn, seeing what I’m seeing, says what I’m thinking: “Rabid rabbits!”

  “Holy Toledo” I repeat, much louder. “RUN!”

  Pawn rushes over to help Whey scramble to his feet and then the three of us are hauling ass through the garden, past tomato plants two stories tall, leaping over cucumbers the size of downed spruces.

  Rabbits bigger than Volkswagens bound out from behind tomato stalks, maybe ten in all, jaws snapping, eager to take a bite out of us. We reverse direction uncountable times, getting more lost by the second.

  “Everything is getting bigger!” I scream.

  “Or we’re getting smaller,” Pawn yells, her voice surprisingly calm.

  A brown rabbit hops into our path and the three of us skid to a stop. “Behind us too,” Whey pants.

  I look and see that we are surrounded by the enormous carnivorous bunnies. “Our goose is cooked!” I yell, immediately frowning at myself, wondering for the first time why I’ve lost my ability to swear. “We have to climb!”

  The others obviously think this is a good idea and lunge themselves at the nearest tomato plants, scrambling up them like four-limbed aphids. I grab my own stalk, climbing as fast as I can, which proves to be somewhat challenging with Nemesister strapped to my back. The guitar neck keeps catching on leaves and bumping into tomatoes larger than most watermelons.