CHAPTER SIX

-2D-

Living in Kong is a lot like living in a horror film. I mean, we've got zombies prowling around outside 24/7, demons in the toilets, Russel's creepy taxidermy projects, brains in the fridge (Don't ask me who eats them. I have no idea, but it seems like they're always fresh), possession, Noodle's Miyazaki films, a portal to hell down in the bunker, Murdoc…and that's just the stuff I remember. I know those things all sound scary, but none of them are too upsetting once you get used to them. (Except maybe Murdoc when he gets into one of his moods. But that's a whole different story.)

I wish I could say that all the practice I'd got living in Kong was enough to prepare me for when things went from creepy to completely out of control. I wish I could tell you that I rolled to my feet with a stunning battle cry after I fell out of the Geep and single-handedly fended off the crowd of monsters around me. Or maybe that I went down fighting in a blaze of glory. Or that I at least died with dignity. I didn't do any of those things, though.

At first I was so dizzy from the fall that all I could do was lie there on the ground. In fact, I think I must have blacked out for a couple of seconds, because the first thing I remember after I hit the ground was having this massive headache. Big waves of hurt that throbbed all through the left side of my head like a heartbeat.

For a couple of seconds, all I wanted to do was take a triple dose of my painkillers and go hole up in bed until it went away. Then I realized that my face hurt, too, and that there was something hot and sticky and wet pasting my cheek against the ground. (I actually remember thinking, Huh…never had a headache bad enough to make my face bleed. That's new.) And that's when I heard a roaring noise; something important—The Geep?

I laid there for about two more seconds trying to remember what, exactly, about the Geep was so important through the unrelenting pounding in my head. Then it all clicked together—(OH MY GOD THE GEEP!)—and I realized with that pukey, gut-twisting sort of horror you feel when you're at the top of a roller coaster on a stomach full of alcohol and greasy carnival food that the roaring was getting farther away.

I had to get up. Even with my head still spinning from the fall, I knew I had to get up; had to at least try to get away before those things started eating my brains. I could hear them coming—shuffling sounds of dragging limbs, skin crackling like old leather, and an overpowering smell of rot that was so awful I felt tears behind my squeezed-shut eyes—but my body wouldn't move. No matter how nicely I asked my legs to kindly get me the hell out of there, they only response I could get out of them was a twitchy, tickling feeling. It was like my muscles were laughing at me, saying, "Sorry, mate, you're on your own for this one."

I was on my own because Murdoc and Noodle and Russel weren't coming back to help. Of course they weren't coming back. I was the guy who gets killed off before the opening credits are even finished just to show how scary the monsters are. The hapless victim. The sacrificial lamb. The dupe. Except, I wasn't.

I'm not sure how long I laid there before I figured out I wasn't about to die. It seems like it was a long time, but time has a funny way of moving a lot slower when you're waiting to die. After a while, though, I realized that I was way past due for being torn to shreds, even if time was moving in slow motion.

I took my time deciding whether or not I should open my eyes and see why that was. On the one hand, looking at just one of those things was enough to turn me into a scared little puddle of shivering jelly, so I wasn't sure I would be able to handle it if I were to open my eyes to see ten or fifteen of them staring back at me. On the other hand, I was a teensy bit curious.

When I finally did crack an eye open, my whole body went limp and a couple of noises that sounded like a mix of sobbing and coughing bubbled up from my chest. There were no horrifying, brutalized creatures hovering over me. Whether they'd gone off after the Geep or whether they'd just disappeared, the car park was empty.

Slowly, I rolled onto my back and stared up at the dirty concrete ceiling. The left half of my face hurt where I'd sandpapered it against the ground. My head still hurt, too. I reached up and brushed a couple of blood-and-sweat-soaked strands of hair out of my face. My hands were shaking. I covered my face with them and mumbled, "Shit."

Even though I was alive at the moment (and as an added bonus, had all of my limbs, too), I knew that I was a walking zombie magnet with my face all smeared with blood. With zombies outside and apparently inside, too, that was a Very Bad Thing. Very Bad as in I was basically a dead man walking. Or, Even Worse Thing: a soon-to-be undead man walking. In fact, I was pretty sure that the only way I was getting out of there alive and in one piece would be if Murdoc, Russel, and Noodle suddenly decided to turn around and come get me out of there in the Geep. From the way they'd gone speeding off earlier, I kind of didn't think that was going to happen.

Bunch of rotters, I thought. I should call them up and…and…. "Wait," I whispered. Calling them isn't a bad idea…and even if they won't come back I might be able to ring a taxi! Now where did I leave my cell phone?

The last place I remembered using it was in my room. I frowned. My room is in the basement. Usually, that doesn't bother me. But everybody knows it's a bad idea to go down in the basement with the lights out and a pack of disturbing monsters puttering around doing God knows what. It's one of the golden rules of surviving horror movies—right up there with "don't investigate that funny noise outside" and "never get naked." Still, I figured I'd already broken enough survival rules by that point that breaking one more probably wasn't going to make much of a difference.

Luckily, it didn't. Not much of the light from Murdoc's Winnebago made it down to my room, but it was enough for me to see that the room was empty. No twisted monsters waiting to tear me apart. That was a Good Thing. After poking around for a while, I realized that there was no cell phone, either. That was a Not So Good Thing. I did find a flashlight lying in all the dust bunnies, dirty socks, and empty pill bottles under my bed—another Good Thing. A beam of steady, yellow light come on when I flipped the switch—an Even Better Thing.

I was feeling quite pleased with myself for finding something useful as I turned to head back up the stairs—and almost tripped over a little boy about half my height. I wasn't sure whether to classify that as a Good or Bad Thing. He looked like a regular scruffy little kid with a smudge of dirt on his cheek and big, dark eyes that made him seem about as threatening as Bambi. All those pointed to Not Bad Thing. But there was also the troublesome fact that he seemed to be glowing. That sort of pointed me more towards the Not Necessarily Bad But Definitely Not Good And Kind Of A Little Creepy, Too category.

"Er…hello," I said. "What are you doing in here?"

He just stared back at me without saying anything.

I smiled and knelt down so I was at his eye level to show him I didn't mean any harm and would he please not do anything more alarming than that creepy glowing trick? From that angle, I was able to see a ring of nasty, purply-black bruises around his neck. That was enough to wipe the smile off my face.

Something Noodle had said floated through my head at the sight of those marks. "He is younger than I am, and he looks like a normal boy. I do not know his name; I think that he cannot speak. That is why I call him— "Taro-kun," I muttered. "You're Taro-kun, aren't you?"

The kid didn't nod, but he didn't shake his head, either. He just kept staring at me like he was waiting for me to say something interesting.

I decided to go for broke and said, "I'm looking for my cell phone. Do you know where it is?"

That seemed to do the trick. The kid's face lit up with a big grin. (Not a creepy grin—that would have been Bad. This was a normal little kid grin—Good.) Then he turned around and started up the stairs to the car park. I scrambled to my feet and hurried after him. Even though I was moving as fast as I could, he was already out in the car park waiting next to the door that led back to the dark ground floor corridor by the time I made it to the top of the stairs.

"That way?" I squeaked. I didn't know where all the awful twitchy creatures had disappeared to, but as long as the car park was clear I really wasn't too keen on wandering through Kong and meeting up with them again. "Are you sure?"

Taro-kun just stared back at me, waiting.

"All right," I sighed and opened the door. Taro-kun slipped into the dark corridor without looking back.

I hesitated for a second. Then I remembered that I still had the flashlight so I'd be able to see where I was going, and if worse came to worst I could always use it to defend myself. (The thought that a flashlight was a pretty pathetic weapon did cross my mind, but you've got to admit that it was better than, say, a pillow or a feather duster.)

As it turned out, I didn't need the flashlight after all. The glow coming off Taro-kun was plenty bright enough for me to see by—so bright it almost hurt to look at him. I didn't have any trouble following him down the corridor, where he stopped in front of the lift and turned around to stare at me some more. I took that as his way of telling me to call the lift.

When the doors opened, I was surprised to see him walk inside like a normal person. Maybe it was the glowing, but I'd been thinking he'd go floating up through the ceiling and wait for me to reach the first floor. I was glad he didn't. My weird shit quota was already more than filled for that day, and I wasn't sure I was in any condition to handle any more.

The glow coming off Taro-kun toned down to the point that I could almost pretend he was a normal kid once we were standing inside the lift. Part of me wanted to ask him if he'd done that himself or if it just an automatic reaction to the flickering backup lights. Instead I said, "So why don't you talk? Does it have something to do with those marks on your neck?"

He shivered and stared hard at the ground. His face had that puckered look to it that kids get right before they start to cry. He didn't look at me again for the rest of the ride to the first floor. I felt bad for asking.

When the lift doors opened again, he started down the dark corridor in full-on glow mode again. We walked down to the end of the corridor. He stopped in front of the door that led to the kitchen. I pushed it open. We went inside.

With the sun glaring in through the windows, the kitchen was a lot brighter than the corridor had been. I got caught up in the doorway, blinking against the sizzling assault on my poor, vulnerable eyeballs. By the time my eyes got used to the light, Taro-kun was already standing by the counter at the far end of the room, giving me his "Look-how-adorable-I-am" little kid grin. And there was my cell phone, sitting on the counter right where I'd left it during our break from Murdoc's marathon recording session of doom the day before.

I smiled. "Hey, thanks!"

I was about halfway across the room when I felt the cold. For a couple of seconds I was so sure that it was one of the weird, zombie-like things that were after me that all I could do was stand there frozen in place thinking, Oh God, oh God! They're going to rip me open and lap up my intestines like a big pile of Stu-pot flavored spaghetti! You probably don't need me to tell you I was relieved when it turned out to be coming from the walk-in freezer instead.

That was a bit of a head-scratcher. The freezer was mostly Russel's territory. He was the one who had insisted we get it installed, and he would throw a fit if any of us didn't get the door closed properly after going inside. (Something to do with "preserving the integrity" of his taxidermy projects or something like that.) But now here it was hanging wide open.

I shook my head. Russel's going to be completely pissed off, I thought, and started forward to close the door. I made it about three steps before something shoved me from behind, sending me into a wobbly, try-not-to-fall-on-your-face dance that worked until I danced right into the open freezer.

The second my staggering feet hit the icy floor, I took a nosedive and ended up scrabbling around on the ground. I heard somebody yelling at me—a man's voice demanding to know what I was doing there and calling me so many nasty names I wasn't even sure what half of them meant. Somehow, I managed to turn around to face the door with my hands and feet sliding out from under me.

There was a big, blockish-looking man standing there. I barely had time to register the fact that he was the one yelling at me, the fact that Taro-kun was standing behind him with his face twisted into a shocked and slightly terrified expression, the fact that OH MY GOD THE MAN WAS CLOSING THE DOOR before the heavy, reinforced steel door clanged shut in my face.

"H-hey," I coughed. Tripping, slipping, sliding, I went over to the door and gave it a kick. "Hey! Let me out of here! You can't just…you can't…."

I wasn't really sure what to say after "you can't." I settled with giving the door another kick instead.

Didn't Noodle say Taro-kun was the only male? Who was that? I wondered. Then I shivered and hugged my arms up over my chest. It was cold enough in there to freeze the snot in your nose and all I had on was a pair of jeans and an old, cotton tee-shirt. I knew that it would be a Bad Thing if I didn't get out of there quickly.

I felt around on the door for any sort of emergency release. All I felt was a smooth layer of frost-dusted stainless steel. "No," I whispered. "No, no, no, no, no…."

The door was useless. I started feeling along the wall around the door. Nothing.

"Oh, come on," I groaned. I can't freeze to death in a walk-in freezer! What would they put in the obituaries? Gorillaz vocalist dies of own stupidity? I frowned at that thought. Murdoc WOULD write that.

Starting to feel a little desperate, I started feeling above and below all the shelves, behind the paper-wrapped packages of meat, up on the ceiling. I'd almost made it all the way to the back of the freezer when I tripped over something that was lying on the ground. I went down hard, slamming my already aching head against the wall and landed sprawled out all over whatever it was I had tripped over. Judging by how big it was, I guessed it to be one of Russel's taxidermy projects.

"Ugh, owwww," I groaned. The thing I'd landed on was hard—frozen solid—and lumpy. Some of the pointier bits were jabbing into my stomach. It hurt. The knock to my head hadn't done my thrown-from-a-speeding-Geep-induced headache any favors, either. I wanted my pain pills, but the tin I always kept with me wasn't in my pocket. I didn't know whether it had fallen out down in the car park or whether I'd lost it when I was pushed into the freezer. I laid there shivering with Russel's taxidermy stuff poking me and my head throbbing and feeling all around very sorry for myself for a while.

Eventually, I got tired of the pieces of frozen dead animal jamming up against my stomach and decided to get up. (After all, it was just as easy to feel sorry for myself without being half-impaled, and probably a lot more comfortable, too.) My hand hit something hard, metal, and cylindrical as I worked to untangle myself from the stuff on the floor—the flashlight I'd brought with me from my room. I grabbed onto it the same way Russel grabs for the last piece of fried chicken: fast and desperate.

The flashlight had light. Light was Good. Light would make it a hell of a lot easier to find wherever that emergency latch pull or release lever was hiding. Yes, light was Very Good.

OK, I thought as I rolled off the lumpy pile of frozen meat. I can call for help once I'm out of here. I fumbled around for the power switch on the flashlight with fingers that were about at nimble as frozen fish sticks. After I do that, maybe I can figure out what that guy who attack me was—CLICK. I flipped the switch and my brain froze in mid-thought.

With the help of the flashlight, I could see that the pile of frozen taxidermy pieces I'd fallen on wasn't actually a pile of frozen taxidermy pieces at all. Instead of Russel's usual mix of perfectly preserved fuzzy, scaly, leathery, furry animal limbs, I saw hairless, bony arms and legs covered with gray-bleached skin and twisted around into mind-bending, impossible positions. I saw a hand with all its nails off. A long, brown-black slash mark that stretched from the right shoulder all the way down to the left hip. From what was left of the hair on its head, I could tell that it used to have blonde hair, that fake, white-blonde you only get from bleaching. And it had a face. That was the worst thing of all—the thing had an actual face. There were brownish smears of dried blood around its mouth and under its nose, but I could see staring, brown eyes, a snubbed nose, an eyebrow ring. It was the eyebrow ring that snapped me back to myself.

Bad Thing! my brain screamed. Very, Very Bad Thing! Run, run, run, run, run, run, RUN! I tried to stand up, slipped, landed on my bum and brushed up against the thing's frozen skin. I screamed and rolled away kicking at it to keep it from touching me again.

I managed to get to my hands and knees and half-crawled, half-dragged myself back to the door. The fact that the thing wasn't making any move to come after me did nothing me make me feel any better. My brain was short-circuiting with fear because the thing was there and I'd touched it and OH HOLY SHIT I'D BEEN LAYING ON TOP OF IT!

I was sucking in the sharp, lung-slicing frozen air in little hyperventilating gasps as I threw myself against the door over and over, begging and screaming, "LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT! PLEASE—SOMEBODY PLEASE GET ME OUT OF HERE!"

-Noodle-

Anger is a powerful drug. Give in to it and you are rewarded with a terrible rush of strength, and things like fear and pain disappear. You are left free to do and say things you would never do or say when you are yourself because things like restraint and social rules do not exist in the grip of a blind rage. Even so, people who allow themselves to be consumed by anger are not strong. The anger controls them, driving them to do terrible things, and once it wears off all they are left with is something broken, miserable, empty.

I was so angry with Murdoc I was seeing red. My chest felt tight, as though it was packed with heavy steam and I felt feverish. The painful scene ran through my head every time I closed my eyes: the writhing horde of monstrosities closing in on 2D, who was lying motionless—helpless—on the ground; the unapologetic set of Murdoc's jaw as he accelerated; his barking order to keep me in my seat, preventing me from doing anything to help....

I wanted to break something. I wanted to kick and punch and jab at the punching bag that hung in my room back in Kong until it split open. When we checked into a room in a tiny, mostly abandoned motel off the side of the highway, I still wanted to scream, wanted to break all the windows in the room, wanted to tear apart all the sheets.

I knew I was in no condition to discuss what had happened. The moment we walked into our motel room, I hurried to the bathroom and locked the door behind me before Russel or Murdoc could say anything to me. Sitting on the edge of the bathtub, I reached over and turned the hot water tap as far as it would go. The water was so hot that the room immediately began to fill with steam despite the efforts of the loud ventilation fan that roared on the ceiling.

I shut the water off when the tub was filled to near overflowing, but didn't get in. Instead, I stayed where I was on the edge with my back pressed up against the wet tile and my damp clothes hanging heavy against my body. My hands jumped into their familiar playing position—left hand up to finger the chords, right hand poised to strike the strings—but with no guitar to strum out my anger they moved up to cover my face instead.

I sat like that without moving for a very long time. At times, my body shook as I sat there, and I poured out a sigh that released a bit of the tightness in my chest. Little by little, I began to relax.

The bathwater had been cold for a long time when there was a knock on the door and Murdoc's voice said, "Noodle, I know you're angry with us, but you need to come out of there because Russel's bladder is going to burst if he can't have a piss."

I took my hands away from my face and was surprised to find that it was wet. I wanted to blame it on the steam, but the sweat had dried to a sticky film too long ago for me to pretend that it was anything besides what it was. How long was I crying? I wondered. When did I start?

Murdoc's voice came through the door again, more urgent than before: "Noodle! Did you hear me?"

I slid off of my perch on the edge of the bathtub, reached into the cold water and pulled up the plug. The water burbled loudly as I crossed the room and opened the door to find both Murdoc and Russel waiting for me. The both looked as though they wanted to talk with me. I kept my eyes on the ground as I pushed past Murdoc, but Russel put one of his arms out to stop me.

"Noodle, we—"

Smiling pleasantly up at him, I cut him off with, "The bathroom is open, Russel. Go ahead."

He sighed and exchanged a look with Murdoc, but moved aside to let me pass. I went out into the sleeping area of the suite and sat down on the foot of the bed that was situated farthest away from the bathroom. The television was on, but I could still hear Murdoc and Russel talking to each other in agitated whispers. I found the remote and edged the volume up until it was loud enough to drown out even the faintest hiss of their voices.

A few moments later, I heard the bathroom door close. Form the corner of my eye, I saw Murdoc sit down on the bed beside the one I was occupying. I didn't have to turn around to know he was looking at me; his eyes on my back were as sharp as a pair of gleaming Samurai Swords. I kept my attention focused on the television screen in front of me. A news program was on. The heavily made-up female newscaster was reporting about a serial killer who was still at large. I stared at her lipstick-smudged teeth as she said, "Although police investigators have few new leads in the case of the Essex Scalper, evidence collected from various crime scenes suggests that he is a white male in his middle thirties standing approximately six feet tall and weighing close to 170 pounds. Police have released this sketch of what they believe this man may look like and urge anybody with information that may lead to an arrest to ring their hotline number at the bottom of the screen."

I stared at the sketch and the phone number without seeing either of them. A few seconds later, Russel emerged from the bathroom, crossed the room, and stopped directly in front of the television, blocking it from view. I picked up the remote control, snapped off the TV, and took a deep breath. Murdoc and Russel both looked at me, waiting. Finally, I said, "We have to go back."

"Sorry, love. Not happening," said Murdoc.

"2D needs our help. We have to go back."

Russel sighed. "Look, I want to help D as much as you do, but we can't just go running back there without some kind of a plan."

"The plan is that we save 2D." I knew it was a ridiculously childish response, even as I said it, but I did not care. I found their apparent willingness to abandon their friend and fellow band mate much worse.

"I hate to break it to you, but at this point I doubt there's much of 2D left to save anyway," Murdoc said.

I turned on him with my hands balled into tight fists. "How can you say that?"

"What, am I the only one who saw how many of those things were after him? Don't tell me either of you think the poor bastard stood a snowball's chance in hell. But hey—better him than us, right?"

I shook my head. I had heard enough. Russel was stepping forward to say something, but I didn't care to hear it. I rolled off the bed and pushed past him on my way to the door.

Russel raised his eyebrows and asked, "Where are you going?"

"I am going back."

Murdoc snorted. "Well that's fine and dandy, but I'm not setting foot on Kong's grounds until I've got myself a couple of high-grade AK47's and some extra-potent alcohol in me."

"You do not have to come."

I was already reaching for the doorknob when he said, "And how are you planning to get back without the Geep? We're quite a ways from Kong, if you hadn't noticed."

"I can walk."

A smothering silence followed this reply, so heavy that I could feel it pressing close against my face, choking me. I could not breathe. I had to get out. I snatched at the door, yanking it open, and was halfway outside when Russel said, "Noodle, wait."

I turned around to find him looking down at the ground like a chastened little boy. He shuffled his feet before taking his gaze off the ground to look at me. Then he sighed and said, "I'll drive us back. Toss me the keys, Muds."

"Hmph. Like hell."

"What? Why not? What the hell is your problem?"

Murdoc folded his arms over his chest. "My problem is that last I checked, you don't have an international driver's license, and I'm buggered if I'm going to have my drummer thrown in jail when I've got an album to record."

Russel's face twisted into a scowl and his voice took on a dangerous edge as he said, "Murdoc—"

"Ah, ah, ah, Russ, you didn't let me finish," Murdoc interrupted. "I was going to say that I would drive. You know, just to make sure that you don't get your fat arse thrown into prison."

Despite my efforts to keep my face a stern mask, I felt the corners of my mouth pull into a ghost of a smile as Murdoc came to join us at the door. For the first time in a long time, I was at peace. It felt right that we were returning—all three of us, together. I no longer had a reason to fear that I had lost my mind because I knew that what I had been seeing was real. More importantly, I knew that what was real could be fought.

Please be all right, 2D. We are coming.

Author's Notes:

Wow, two updates in the same month. I'm on a roll! A big thank you to all of the awesome people who are adding this story to favorites and alert lists, and writing great reviews—you guys make my day!

Next chapter: Into the Fire