broom, clawed their way free. They appeared hungry and eager and mean.
The girl was transfixed.
Andy tried to scream, but a hand clamped around his throat.
“Fucking Tarzan puta!” Batista growled as he climbed on top of Andy. He clamped his other hand around Andy’s throat and began to throttle him. “Who the hell do you think you are to try and stop me?” Blood foamed at the corners of Batista’s mouth.
Andy struggled to break free, but no matter his newfound Tarzan desires, he couldn’t remove the other man’s iron grip from around his neck. He felt his vision dimming as the other cursed him.
The hand suddenly relaxed. Light went out of Batista’s eyes. Abruptly his chest blossomed a long thin stinger. Andy watched unable to move as a golf ball-sized egg pushed down the length of the stinger and squirted free of the end. It landed on his chest, then rolled to the ground.
Andy screamed and heaved Batista backwards until they both fell, crushing the baby wasp to the ground with their combined weights.
Looking toward the girl, Andy felt his universe implode. Something bestial came over him.
He barely remembered breaking off the stinger from Batista’s chest and rushing over to the other baby wasp that had its own stinger deep inside Jane.
He barely remembered stabbing the giant insect with its brother’s stinger until it fell dead beside the girl.
He barely remembered taking her into his arms and heading away from the Rift, what was left of his battalion, and the miserable mess that Batista had left.
All he knew was that when he came to, he was carrying her, it was daylight, and he was past exhaustion.
***
The desert was nothing like he imagined. There were no sand dunes. No camels. No pyramids. Nothing to show the timeless mythic quality of the deserts he’d seen on television and the movies growing up. Nothing at all like he’d imagined from reading The Lion Man.
Just as Tarzan had been bringing a jungle cure for malaria to Jane in the famous desert Tarzan book, so was Andy taking his Jane to find a cure for the thing gestating inside of her. Somewhere in the distance over the border was a hospital. He hoped it was close, because her stomach had already begun to extend. He only prayed that he wouldn’t be too late.
She whimpered as he stumbled, then caught himself.
He grunted and thumped his chest with his free hand. “Me Tarzan. You Jane,” he said.
Then he adjusted her weight against his back. He felt something move in her stomach. She whimpered. He had Batista’s knife. If need be, he’d use it. He thought about giving a Tarzan yell, but he hadn’t the strength. He just trudged on.
***
Story Notes: Tarzan Doesn’t Live here was inspired by the monster movies of the 1950s. I remember movies with giant rabbits, giant ants, giant dragonflies, there were too many to count. Then when I went outside, safely ensconced within the tall trees of the Cherokee National Forest in Eastern Tennessee, I’d pretend I was being attacked by these creatures, running and ducking and somersaulting through the leaves like my life depended on it. It’s also a story about Tarzan. Not the idea of an actor playing Tarzan, but the ideals which Tarzan really represents, Edgar Rice Burrough’s Tarzan who preferred to strip off the thin veneer of civilization and return to the simplicity of nature. What better synecdoche for how perilously close we are to being thrust back into a dark age, where holes are ripped in the earth and monsters surge forth?
NOW SHOWING ON SCREEN 2
22 Stains in
the Jesus Pool
Starring Suki as a lonely Party Girl
and Bob as the rich Sugar Daddy
“Stains is what happens when gravity meets opportunity meets religion meets the need to be redeemed for ones sins. This is smart and deadly.”
–Mexican Reaper Daily
In Quadraphonic Stereo
Suki dropped her cigarette into the wineglass and walked to the railing. She stared down at the kidney-shaped pool, wondering why someone had painted a picture of the Last Supper upon the pool's bottom. Even from her thirteenth floor balcony, the countenance of Jesus resonated with such an invitation to join that she was almost transfixed, the wide blue eyes imploring her to dive into a downward heaven.
"Come on, Suki. I was just kidding."
She ignored Bob's sonorous whine and leaned farther over the rail enough to make out several amorphous blotches on the bottom of the pool that marred the painting. Judas' entire face had been masked by a particularly dark