INCOMING CONTACT: Wow, reader types. You guys… I love you with all my organs, guys. Except the pancreas; he's a douchebag. Anyways, thanks for reading this, it means EVERYTHING TO ME that the words I write go to your eyes and then your brain. So thanks a billion. Also, totally huge thanks to my reviewers! Keep on kickin' ass, those who write me things. And those who don't. Just kick a large amount of asses, 'kay? KICK THEM. DO IT FOR ME.
Pickles woke up from a sort of catatonic sleep (it wasn't really sleep, but he wasn't paying attention to anything, so it was almost like sleep) with a strange tingling feeling in his butt. The guys usually couldn't feel anything anymore, as dying had left them mostly numb, but sometimes stuff got through. And this was a weird one.
He crawled out of bed and without thinking, started to scratch at his butt. He was mildly surprised when he ended up scratching in the big missing chunk that the bite had left and he remembered exactly what had happened, but he didn't really start screaming until he held up his hand and saw the maggots that had decided it was a good idea to move onto his fingers.
Murderface left his room and started making the trek to the living room, hoping to run into a Klokateer or two on the way. He was hungry and wanted breakfast. Who cared about them, anyway? They were used to dying. Besides, they were supposed to be working for Dethklok, and being breakfast was a job, right? Sure it was. It was as good a job as any.
He thought he heard something, and looked around, but he didn't see anything, so he kept walking. Then suddenly Pickles burst out of his room, screaming, pushing Murderface out of the way. "Dude! Outta the way! I got worms in my butt!" he yelled as he ran.
Murderface blinked, opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it, shut it, and kept on walking.
"Pickles got worms?" Nathan said. "Pickles, stay out of the hot tub." Nathan himself was in there, laptop floating in front of him. He'd been looking up porn, but had found himself staring at the ladies' heads instead of their naughty bits. So he had an idea and now instead he was looking at pictures of brains. He liked the ones that were still in people's heads the best; they looked a lot tastier than the ones that were just dead meat. "Huh," he said. "Food porn."
Skwisgaar was at the other side of the hot tub, as always playing his guitar, trying not to think about being hungry. He was doing a pretty good job of that, he thought, congratulating himself. "I ams a gods, so I can nots eats peoples if I wants. I just eats them because I do wants to," he said, mostly to himself.
Toki was playing DDR, and was in a rather good mood, despite being hungry. It wasn't as bad as it was the other day, and he'd really had a lot to eat last time, so he was still holding up pretty well. "Don'ts gets your worms alls over everythings," he said, not turning around at all. "Worms. Is that like whats a dogs gets?"
"Nah, maggots, I think. They're kinda like worms. Crawly things. Y'know," Pickles said.
"Yeah, they get on dead thingsh," Murderface said. "They like to eat 'em. Thingsh like ush. They turn into fliesh. I think." He kicked at the arcade game he was playing. "Shtupid cheating game," he muttered. "I should jusht go back to playing Wheelchair Bound. I'm good at that one."
Charles walked in holding a Tupperware container.
"Hey, Charles," Nathan said, barely taking his eyes off the laptop screen.
"Hey, don't worry, guys, anyway, I got the worms off," Pickles said.
"Worms?" Charles said, raising an eyebrow. "Uh… should I even ask?"
"I had worms in my butt but I got 'em off," Pickles said by way of explanation.
"What'd you do, flush 'em?" Nathan asked.
"Uh… nah, I ate 'em," Pickles said, shrugging, not as embarrassed as he could have been. "They were alive and I was hungry."
"Huh," Nathan said. "How'd they taste?"
"Not too bad, actually," Pickles said.
"Shouldn't you be keeping your, uh, bites clean?" Charles said, looking around the living room, his face calm despite being a bit disgusted by Pickles's admission. "So things like that don't happen?"
"Hey, mine'sh not full of maggotsh," Murderface said, gesturing to his bandage-wrapped leg. In fact, there was a lot more bandage coverage than wound. Nothing was getting under there.
"Neithers ams mine," Skwisgaar said. A clean bandage covered his wound.
"Mines ams goods too!" Toki said, pausing his game and walking over to everybody else to show them. "It's gots a real cool cat, looks!" He grinned and held out his arm proudly. His wound was indeed covered by two Hello Kitty bandages.
"I don't need to cover it," Nathan said, grinning, his teeth also visible through the hole in his cheek. "It's more brutal if I don't." He poked his tongue through it. "Plus I can do that. It's pretty cool." He looked back at the laptop. "Oh man, that's a juicy one," he said, staring at the brain on the screen. "I'd eat that."
"Aw, screw you, douchebags," Pickles said.
"Um, right. Well, the researchers have apparently finished your food substitute," Charles said, holding out the Tupperware.
Nathan looked up. "Took 'em fucking long enough," he said. He climbed out of the hot tub and took the container from Charles. He opened it up and peered inside. What was in there was some unidentifiable substance that seemed to wiggle a bit. It didn't resemble human flesh at all. "Uh… looks nasty," he said. He sniffed at it. "Smells kinda like shit. You sure this is what they want us to eat?" he said, looking up at Charles.
"It's what they gave me," Charles said.
"Okay," Nathan said. "Guess we'll try it." Everybody gathered around the bowl and grabbed a handful of the flesh substitute. The reaction was far from positive, as was evident by their disgusted faces.
"Okay, what the fuck is this shit?" Nathan said, glaring.
"This ams dildos!" Skwisgaar said, spitting out a giant wad of the stuff onto the floor.
"We can't eat this," Pickles said. "I don't even know what this is. What the hell is it? Tastes like shit."
"Well, they told me it's cloned human flesh," Charles said.
"I don'ts wants to eats this," Toki said, looking at the bowl sadly. "It's not goods. I hates it." He groaned. "And now I'm more hungrys."
"This shucks!" Murderface said. "I jusht want to eat shomething!" He was definitely going to have to eat a Klokateer now.
"Okay, fine. I'll fire the scientists and get new ones. But right now you guys need make sure you're ready for the show tomorrow," Charles said. "And make sure you can control yourselves. We don't need another… incident."
"We'll be fine," Nathan said. "We can handle this. Right, guys?"
"Yeah! We cans handsles this, sure," Toki said.
Charles wasn't so sure, but there wasn't much else he could do.
Practice went rather well, Charles thought, except for a slight incident where Murderface ripped a Klokateer's face off. They had to take a break there for him to finish eating, and then everybody else started complaining that they wanted food, and refused to continue without. So he'd had to find some Klokateers who'd volunteer to be food for the guys. He found some, so the disruption wasn't as bad as it could have been. Crisis narrowly averted.
Charles wasn't sure if their show was going to be a disaster or not. For a very short time he had half a mind to cancel it, but he quickly decided against it. If they played tomorrow, there would be a really big chance of something violent and terrible happening. However, if they cancelled, the aftermath would be even worse. After all, deaths happened at shows all the time. The fans knew what they were getting into. Cancelling would cause a huge backlash, and even more deaths. Not to mention a huge loss of money.
No matter what, they had to go through with this one. And they had to be at their best. No matter how many people died. Although, this time, they were going to have to make sure everyone who died stayed dead. That wasn't a problem before; they'd been eating enough of their victims to make it so they didn't get up and kill.
But this was going to be a lot bigger than a press conference. With the wild fans all over the place, trying to climb on stage, trying to get backstage, trying to get as close to the band as possible, and of course, groupies… well, there was a chance that the zombie thing was going to be spread, and spread quickly. And that would cause a bureaucratic nightmare.
At least they could still play. That was really the most important part. It wasn't that they were technically walking masses of rotted flesh that would eat anything living at the drop of a hat. It wasn't that they caused a giant scene the other day. If they couldn't play, it would be the worst that could happen. And despite the deadness causing deficiencies in other areas requiring coordination, their playing wasn't a problem.
At least there was that. As for how the show was going to turn out… well, that would have to wait until tomorrow.
