DEAD BANGKOK

A Novel of Thailand

J.D. VILLINES

BEACHFRONT PRESS

Los Angeles, California

© 2011, J.D. Villlines

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Contact: beachfrontpress@yahoo.com

Table of Contents

Prologue

Part I

Part II

Prologue

Ours is a long, slow suicide. Life metered out in milligrams and bullets. Parasites and hosts. An ecosystem of the absurd.  Marbleized veins ran up his legs into a spider web of blue on his stomach. The veins stretched out across his chest and back, viewed through the sheen of translucent skin. Onchocerca volvulus parasites multiplied inside of him. His body, a host to competing parasitic colonies.  He examined his eyes in the mirror. He could see them swimming in his ocular fluid. There was only one know cure: To sterilize the parasites so they couldn't reproduce. This meant he would only have to wait ten years before they left his body.

He looked down at his leg. He could see the bump where the Guinea worm was emerging. It had crippled him as it worked its way out. When the blister formed, he took a bath and watched as it popped, to release the hundred or so thousand larvae into the water. Now the female was emerging. It would take several weeks for the noodle shaped parasite to fully work its way out. He tied a string around what he presumed to be its head, and the other end to a chopstick. Over the coming weeks, Esmeralda would roll the worm around the stick until it had fully emerged. He planned on giving it as a gift to someone. He had already saved the bathwater with the larvae in it; bottling it nicely inside some Evian. He snapped new safety caps on them, and placed them in his fridge, which by now had become his own bio-weapons lab.

Esmeralda tucked his genitals between his thighs and looked in the mirror. He needed breasts to pull the look off. He donned his wig and applied his makeup. The Adam's apple would have to go too. All in, he was looking at about twenty grand to complete his transformation. For now, this would have to work. Esmeralda danced around the room to the nauseating girlie pop music that he thought a woman would dance to. He affected femininity with all the grace of a showgirl with an inner ear infection. It was nearly hopeless.

Esmeralda's text message sounded.

Ekamai bus station — 21:00

He looked in the mirror again. He was doing its bidding. The ever-evolving parasites in his brain were controlling his behavior now. From now on, there could be no sin. No culpability. No existential self to fret over. For now he did as the parasite ordered him to.

The .45 and shotgun were under the bed.  He loaded them with frangible rounds. The ones that, for lack of a better word, exploded inside of the victim. Douse the corpses with gasoline, he was told, and remove the hands and head for good measure. Forensic teams can be so thorough these days.

Esmeralda took his estrogen pills, and changed back into those other clothes. The unnatural and manly ones that made him feel so outside of himself. His computer played footage of the Juba sniper in Baghdad. It was a greatest hits compilation. Juba was a myth. An urban legend. The footage of American soldiers dropping like flies to Juba's bullets was simply the work of many snipers. All of it packaged and sold to the Arab world as the new Vasily Zaytsev. Esmeralda admired the fear that Juba created, and it was his legend that left Esmeralda inspired. Esmeralda had failed in all of his attempts at joining the military. He got as far as MEPS and when he was asked to pick a job, he told the man behind the desk that he wanted to work where they kept the alien bodies. The ones he saw on TV. The ones they kept in an underground bunker or lab. We don't have any alien bodies the man replied. Esmeralda looked into the man's eyes. He could see them swimming in his ocular fluid as well. He knew they would soon be inside of everyone.

This job called for a reversible jacket, and quick-change disguise kit that had been left for him in a dead drop.  Esmeralda opened the large manila envelope and looked inside. It was a bad toupee. The inside of which was lined with solenoids. They had redesigned the machine to be a covert model. It was now hidden inside a hairpiece that looked like a bad comb over. It would induce a form of temporal lobe epilepsy that let him communicate with the parasites in his brain. Its only side effects were visions of Hell. They had chosen him out of all of the test subjects because he was the only one that could wear the machine for an extended length of time. It had driven the other candidates insane after only a few minutes of use. Esmeralda adjusted the toupee in the mirror.  He always thought of himself as more of a blonde. Someone famous like a Paris Hilton impersonator.  Someday, he swore that he would pay her a visit and scalp her, and make a wig out of her actual hair.  Then he would set fire to her little rat dog, and laugh while it ran around in circles

Esmeralda's apartment was in Khlong Toey section of Bangkok. It was a one-room workers hovel. Its residents, worn down by the entropy of life, moved through its hallways like apparitions. These were the taxi drivers and bargirls. The Ka Yai or Thai mafia footmen guarded its halls against police raids. When Bangkok gave up on you, this is where you landed. The room he rented had a history. The previous occupant had murdered his wife in the bathroom. The landlady told him this because she was sick of the Thai tenants finding out, and then leaving as soon as they heard the Phii crying late at night. Esmeralda didn't mind the ghosts. He had his own entourage from the other side that gazed at him from the foot of his bed each evening — starring at him with their blackened eyeballs and bloated heads, with that why me? expression on their faces.

Esmeralda turned off the CD player and geared up for the job. He left the lingerie on just to feel more confident. He walked outside into the furnace blast of the Bangkok sun and looked around. The toupee was already doing its job. He could see the parasites swimming under the skin of passers bye. The toupee tinged the world to an orchid red, and then he began to see them. It was another one of the side effects, he was told. The temporal lobe epilepsy brought with it a rain of shadows, and visions of what some may even call god.

He was already sweating from the jacket and duffel bag full of guns. A shotgun was a bad choice for this gig. He wanted something small and inconspicuous — something feminine like Laura Croft would use.  For Esmeralda, Thailand had lost its charm. All of the exotic foods, floral smells, and opium den mystique of the Orient was gone. It was replaced by the clamor of two stroke motors, and air reeking of diesel smoke and fish sauce. It was just another place on the map where he would draw people's blood. From Sierra Leone, to Chechnya, Esmeralda had plied his trade and made money from it. He brought back parasitic souvenirs from four continents and cultivated them within his body. Much of his life was mere bits of fragmented memories. His thoughts turned to the Chinese Guoanbu officer who sculpted children's toys out of Semtex. While making small talk, Esmeralda told him about Bohumil Sole, the scientist who invented Semtex, and later strapped some to his body and blew himself up at a bathhouse in the Czech Republic. The irony escaped him, but the Guoanbu officer gave Esmeralda a Semtex panda bear as a souvenir. It was made from a batch that was free of the ethylene glycol dinitrate detection taggant. He told Esmeralda that the panda had a shelf life of twenty years. He also told him that it was enough Semtex to blow up a commercial airliner.

Esmeralda hailed a taxi and hit the ever-present Bangkok traffic within minutes. He looked at his watch. Plenty of time. Little of which he spent reflecting on his past. He gazed out the window of the Taxi, as it passed a large group of political protesters. They were taking the stupid route now; decking themselves out in Che Guevara shirts and Chinese red star hats. That's going to help their cause, he thought. Just get labeled commies while you're at it, and the Americans will want to see you crushed for sure. He understood the plight of the hapless farmers though. The entire infrastructure in Thailand was going into making Bangkok the next Hong Kong, while the farmers still lived in shacks. The poor daughters of Isaan went to work in factories or sold their bodies at the bars. It was social Darwinism, just like every other developing country he had been to. The anger on both sides this time was something they couldn't restrain. They too were carriers. It was inside all of them. In a short time, the eggs would hatch, and then everybody would be as one.

He had the Taxi pull up at a gas station.  He limped as the pain of the emerging Guinea worm shot a jolt through his thigh. He went inside and bought ten gallons of gasoline. He knew from experience that it takes five gallons or more to incinerate a body. It still might not be enough if the mark had bodyguards. Whoever ordered this vendetta was unknown. Esmeralda got all of his gigs through a handler. It kept everybody compartmentalized and safe. Never letting the left hand know what the right hand is doing.

As the taxi drove on, Esmeralda put his hand out the window and let the wind flow through his fingers. It felt as though he was running them through a beautiful woman's dirty hair. The hair of a bargirl that chain-smokes. He watched the world through its orchid tinted lens, and sat back and enjoyed the show. Creatures from some dark and cold part of the universe, with no need for eyes, appeared in the reflections of store windows. They reached out for him as the taxi went by, seemingly desperate for his company, or the warmth of his flesh. He saw past acquaintances in life, and the souls of all those he had killed. His boyhood cat Mr. Noodles sat on top of a car licking his paws. It purred at him as he went by, and filled him with the memory of what was perhaps the only creature he ever loved.

The taxi pulled up to Ekamai bus station.  Esmeralda stumbled out with the gas cans and duffel bag, and waved away the various men offering to be his Sherpa.

His text message sounded again.

Walk South 2 blocks. Foods stall on corner. Order Kai Giao. Wait.

Esmeralda approached the food stall. The vendor was a hardened, dark skinned Isaan man. He saw Esmeralda coming and stood opened mouthed, and in disbelief at the spectacle before him. Esmeralda didn't have to say a word. The food vendor handed him an envelope and told him to sit down.

By now, the sun was directly overhead. It was tian wan as they say in Thai. The sweat dripped down off of Esmeralda's nose, and carried with it the residue of the makeup he had applied earlier. He opened the envelope, and pulled out a picture. It wasn't some corporate CEO, or head of state. It was a forty something Farang, along with a beautiful blonde woman. He stared at the picture; enchanted by the woman's features. The delicate curve of her chin, the tiny nose, and perfect spacing of the eyes. It all fell into Pythagoras's Golden Ratio of 0.618. The ratio of perfection in art and nature. The Greek Parthenon had it. Roses had it.  Now this girl in the photo. She was close enough in appearance to the celebrity he had always admired. Esmeralda couldn't imagine why anyone would want something so rare and lovely wiped out of existence. He thought about cutting off her face and taking it to a doctor for a transplant. He had read about a woman in the news who underwent the world's first facial transplant and it was successful. Perhaps he could cut off her face and put it on ice before he burned her body. Then her could look in the mirror, and for once, see the Golden Ratio in his own reflection.

**********

Esmeralda sat at the edge of the Chao Phraya River, gazing across the water as the sun went down. The bodies were in the trunk. The news reports would later mention a running gun battle, and then an explosion at the convention center. Ostensibly, it was a medical conference.  The woman whose face he wanted to wear, put up a fight. He could see them swimming in her eyes as well. Esmeralda would escort them to meet Yama, the lord of the dead. According to Buddhist scripture, it takes four hours and forty minutes for the soul to reach Yama. Wherein Yama would place all of your sins and merit on a scale. He would then determine your rebirth, or which Hell realm you deserved to be tortured in. The monks recommend not cremating a body before that time has elapsed. There was enough Semtex in the room to incinerate them all. Poor Yama would just have to wait.  

He breathed in everything around him. He was drowning in things he could not see. Esmeralda had been born behind a caul — The amnionic sac which clung to a newborns face at birth. The superstition surrounding it was that a caulbearer would be a great man or leader, or as he hoped; a famous blonde celebrity. There were more and more of them now. Business men and street food vendors. Taxi drivers and massage girls. Pretty soon, all of them would have it. They would emerge from their cysts and begin with their plans. This job was not bereft of meaning, for the flood would soon come and nothing would hold them back, and then nature would begin the winnowing.

The Chao Phraya River winds into the ocean like a tract of intestine. It is rivaled in filth only by the Hudson and the Ganges. Half of Bangkok's murder weapons are given their final resting place on its floor. Esmeralda chose a place on the Rama VII Bridge and looked around. He pulled out the flaying knife and unwrapped it from the newspaper he kept it in. Blood caked the newspaper a dark brown in the moonlight. It fell from his hands, and tumbled towards the water like a lost child returning home. The river welcomed it without ceremony. He thought of following it down there, and getting tangled in the hair of the Phii Phrai; the demon ghost of the water that dragged so many Thai people to their deaths. She emitted a light that attracted people into her depths, only to be pulled under to serve as her slaves. His corpse would lay submerged until the gases inside of his body caused it to float. He imagined his corpse, picked free of his lips and eyeballs, floating downstream and out into the ocean, until the waves carried his rotted tongue into the lap of some freshly oiled sunbather on a distant beach.

The worms had their own tactics. Their methodology of warfare was not the destruction of the other side. It was to make the other side do their bidding. To make the other side into their bitch. Shadows, demons, or whatever you choose to call them, remain unseen, yet they are all around us. Their eggs have already infected us. The invasion force is already here. They lay dormant within the brain of every creature on the planet. Their goal was not to kill, but to enslave.  Esmeralda, the king of parasites. He would be their messiah. He brokered their deals and arranged their coup. He had convinced me of their power. The parasites had evolved. They had intelligence, along with a message to the world. They would begin the next stage of evolution, and our world would become theirs.

The toupee left Esmeralda experiencing Jamais Vu. Ordinary objects would seem alien to him. To look at his own hand or reflection filled him with dread. The self was an illusion, and the parasites were eating away what was left of his identity. Eventually, he knew, they would strip him of everything. Such an enviable side effect the Buddhists would hold dear. First you see the beyond. Then you lose your mind. Esmeralda didn't know the final stage yet. He assumed it was nothing nice.

Part I

The bus ride from Sisaket to Bangkok was eight hours long. I had been scolded by the driver for using the buses toilet, and for spraying the inside of the rest room with a dysenteric jet of shit. My girlfriend Nok came to my defense, saying that I was a fat and stupid farang, and that I couldn't read the sign in Thai that read "Out of Order".

The noise on the bus left me unable to sleep. Karaoke superstars tormented me with a maddening form of Thai polka.  Other passengers wore surgical masks, presumably to keep something out. Babies cried up and down the aisle, as it seemed that every grandma onboard was armed with a toddler. The old women with apathetic eyes, nor energy for parenting, let the children wail without consolation. They were simply over it. The parents were most likely working in Bangkok—leaving grandma to look after their progeny.  

At the rest stop, it was quiet. There were not many travelers this time of night. Nok and I bought rancid gai ping, or chicken on a stick, that was cold and fatty. I bought several bags of curry, basil, and shrimp flavored potato chips while Nok gave me the eye.

"Why you buy so many kanom? Chip make you fat more," she said.

"Because I'm hungry."

"I buy you chicken already. You eat too much."

"That chicken sucked. I don't want to get Salmonella."

"Arai na?" she asked, meaning what in Thai.

"Nothing. Mai mii arai."

My usual sentence structure when talking to Nok was inspired by Tarzan, and various cave man movies. It was a mix of English, Thai, and the dialect of the countryside known as Isaan.

"What you say before?"

I sigh deeply, knowing that this may take a while.

"Salmonella."

"What that?"

I revert back to Tarzan mode.

"Something you eat make you sick. Bad thing in food no good."

"No! Chicken okay. I eat many time. No get sick."

"I already sick. Me sick already. I think from chicken we eat before."

I open my fanny pack and pop some Imodium. I have often been told that fanny packs are gay, but it's where I keep my passport and other essentials. I wash the Imodium down with a bottle of honey-lemon green tea, which was another small pleasure of Thailand. Nok's facial expressions ranged from mercurial infant to happy monkey. The one she was showing now said — what the fuck am I doing with this guy?

The door to the bus opened, signaling us that the driver wanted to leave. These stops, apparently, were for him and not the passengers. As I passed the driver, I could tell he was tweaking. It was not uncommon for the long haul drivers to smoke ice, or pop yaa baa. The driver confirmed my suspicions when he peeled out of the rest stop and hauled ass along the highway towards Kreungthep.

It had been three months since we were last in Bangkok together. My job as an English teacher had dried up, which left me unable afford our apartment. The decision was made to move back to Nok's home in the countryside while I called around for work. It had been three months of swatting mosquitoes, shitting in a hole, cooking on a dirt floor, and waking up at five AM to the squawk of roosters. I missed my ghetto apartment in Hwai Kwang. I missed my ladyboy neighbors who cranked every Broadway musical known to man. I missed the cries of battered wives, and the howls of feral dogs. In the countryside, I was rotting from the inside. The only thing I could compare it to was being marooned on an island of poorly made shacks, surrounded by an ocean of water buffalo shit.

The news reports were coming in then about another clash with Cambodian troops. The soldiers on both sides adorned their bodies with sak yant tattoos, and carried amulets for protection against the other side's black magic. Nok's home had a bomb shelter in the backyard made from cement and sand bags. At night we could hear the 105-millimeter rounds exploding in the distance. They gradually got closer as the artillery was being walked up. The decision was made to leave again. Her family would stay with relatives farther inland. Nok and I would head back to Bangkok, with the expectation that I would find a job to support everyone with. No pressure whatsoever.

The karaoke torture continued all the way to Mochit bus station in Bangkok. I chatted briefly with a couple of Mormon missionaries. They stopped talking to me when I asked them if they were going to work for the CIA when they were done. Apparently the alphabet agencies liked to recruit Mormons because they were square, and had experience living overseas. I lived overseas for years, but nobody approached me to be a spook, which made me feel slighted.

The Mochit terminal was huge. Hundreds of people lay strewn around like corpses on the floor as they waited for their departures. Nok led me through the cluster fuck of travelers out to the taxi stand.

She spat out a machine gun riff in the Isaan dialect and the driver agreed to take us where she asked. Inside the taxi, Nok showed me a modicum of affection. She put her legs across mine and used me as a foot stool. This, it seemed, was the gist of our relationship.  The motion of the taxi made her fall asleep within minutes. I looked at the brown skin on her legs and the delicate curve of her cheeks. The gods balanced out her beauty by giving her one of the crankiest dispositions known to man.

I looked out the window as the cab made its way to the Bang Kapi area of Bangkok. Various cars that passed by had stuffed animals hanging from the rear bumper. I had asked Nok about this phenomenon before and she told me it was to prevent ghosts from causing traffic accidents. She informed me that the accidents were not caused by people driving recklessly, but by the angry spirits of those who died a premature death. I hardly ever saw a child with a toy or stuffed animal in Bangkok. The former went as offerings to the ghosts that bar girls prayed to, and the later as a talisman for bad drivers.

Our cab passed through several police checkpoints. This was how the cops busted yaa baa dealers. Most of the drugs that moved through the city were transported via scooter or by people in taxis. The nightly news constantly ran stories of shootouts with the police.  In a country where trafficking could get you the death penalty, many of the drug dealers opted for taking their chances with a pistol instead of a judge.  At the third checkpoint, the cops finally stopped our car.

I willed Nok to wake up with the power of my mind — to no avail. The kind, and fair officer was asking to see my luggage. Sure, no problem. The taxi driver popped the trunk and the officer opened my suitcase. Nearly all of the taxis in Bangkok were Toyota Corollas, which ran on natural gas. Half of the trunk space was taken up by a large fuel tank, leaving very little room for a suitcase, let alone moving a body. I often wondered how I would dispose of Nok's remains after I killed her during one of our fights. Our future together seemed written in the stars.

The officer found no illicit drugs in my bag. However, I was just as nervous that he may find some that magically appeared, and required the payment of a on the spot fine. I was low on cash and was worried I wouldn't have enough to pay a fine if one was imposed.

The officer handed me back my passport and I was free to go. Several military Humvees rolled by with gunners manning the fifty cal on top. This was not an uncommon sight. There were always protests with the different colored shirt people. Often times, shit just popped off and the whole city would be under martial law. The Thai Army used America's hand-me-downs. Troops could be seen driving in Vietnam-era M-60 tanks, and carrying M-79 grenade launchers. They were guns I recognized from playing too many video games.

It had been a ten-hour journey by the time we reached our hotel off of Lad Prao 150. I liked this neighborhood because it had fewer foreigners than the touristy areas. The only farangs I saw were the ones who trained at the local Muay Thai gym. I had trained there before when I was younger and had delusions of being a pro fighter. Injury after injury led me to the conclusion that I was better off just being fat and letting people kick my ass.

I had come to Thailand because I could no longer afford to live in Los Angeles. New geography changed nothing in my life. I followed me wherever I ran to. Back home, I was even more of a fuck up. I had bad credit, and a studio apartment. I shopped for food and just about everything else at the 99 cent store. My fatness could be attributed to a diet of Taco Bell dollar burritos, and gas station hot dogs. All of that changed when I first came to Thailand. I could eat like a king for a few dollars a day. I had an apartment with cable and internet for less than two hundred bucks a month. Like so many men, I fell in love with the beauty of Thai women. Even the poorest have their hierarchy, and to Nok, I was slightly less of a deadbeat than my Thai male counterparts. Nothing beat going out with a beautiful girl with low standards. Nok grew up in a shack on stilts near the Cambodian border. It was a primitive existence bordering on post-apocalyptic survival. The way mankind lived for thousands of years before we became a bunch of spoiled pussies with steel appliances and granite counter tops.  Living with her in the countryside reminded me of how soft I had truly become.

We checked into the hotel and hauled our own stuff up to the room. There were no bellhops in the 300 Baht per night dives we slept in. Our only vice would be hot water and air conditioning. If the hotel had a Western toilet, we felt like we had won the lottery.

We took hot showers to remove the grime of traveling cross country. I had to wash myself three times just to get the stench off of me. I lay in bed for the first time in months — in Sisaket, we slept on the floor. I watched as Nok walked around the room naked. She reminded me of the '70s film star Laura Gemser. Emmanuelle in Bangkok was a movie that deeply affected my childhood psyche. I must have carried her image in my subconscious mind for years until I met Nok at the restaurant where she worked. Now she strolled around the room; secure in her beauty. We had been together for two years now, and I never got tired of looking at her.

Nok climbed into bed with me. She put her arms around me; to give me what I thought was a hug. Instead, she was simply looking for the TV remote under my pillow. Nok flipped the channels on the tube and I cringed at what I knew was coming. It would be another three hours of Thai soap operas or variety shows. Sometimes it was just enough to make me want to put a gun in my mouth.

I starred at the ceiling and watched a jing jok lizard sullenly munching on an insect.

"Honey, what that?" Nok asked.

"What's what?"

"Doo tii wii!" she commanded.

I sat up and looked at the television.  The screen showed a riot taking place near Siam Paragon mall. There were lines of police with riot shields forming a phalanx. I didn't see any masses of red or yellow shirts indicating a political rally.

"I dunno babe."

The voice of the reporter sounded frantic.

"Lady she say every people go crazy."

"Cool, maybe the worlds coming to an end."

I lay my head back down on the pillow. My lizard friend was gone now.

"Oi! Lady she say maybe people they take too much yaa baa."

"Yaa baa's a helluva drug," I sighed.

Nok's attention span was that of a fly.  She changed the channel to the familiar sounds of crying women with cheating husbands. I turned my head to see Nok with her eyes fixed on the TV. I reached out to stroke her skin, but my affection was rebuffed. The honeymoon phase was officially over. I fell asleep thinking of how I would dispose of her body.

**********

I awoke to the peaceful sound of Nok breathing. Gone were the annoyances of my home country. I used to fantasize about shooting the leaf blower guy who spent two hours a day in my apartment complex deliberately trying to piss me off. I had wanted to kill many people in Los Angeles, for no particular reason other than that they irritated me. L.A. brought out the worst in people. It brought out the worst in me. All big cities had this effect. From Chicago to San Francisco, I felt the walls closing in. I even tried moving to Hawaii, but the feeling of being trapped on a rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean made me leave after three weeks.

I never grew tired of Bangkok. I knew people who flew directly to Phuket and avoided the City of Angels like a plague. In Bangkok, you were limited only by your imagination and your wallet. Anything was possible here. If getting dressed up in lingerie and choked to death by ladyboys was your thing, then you were in good company.

I walked to the balcony to smoke a cigarette. I chose L&M's because they were cheap, and had a delightful picture of a dying cancer patient on the package to serve as a warning. I opened the curtains and the cigarette fell from my lips. In the distance I could see plumes of smoke coming from the area I saw on the news. Siam Paragon was where the wealthy shopped for Louis Vitton and other accoutrements of douchebaggery. I had lived here during the violent street protests before.  Life went on in the city beyond the immediate area of chaos. I looked down at the street below. Traffic was backed up even on the side soi's. Part of me hoped for a zombie outbreak. I knew exactly where I would go if that happened. I had day dreamed the apocalypse so many times. I pictured myself looting a pharmacy and taking all of the painkillers, and antibiotics. In the aftermath of whatever shit storm engulfed the world, I would be able to barter my sack of drugs for anything I needed. I longed for nature to start over.  That was the allure of everything from the Christians who prayed for the rapture, to the man who joined the French Foreign Legion. It was the opportunity to be born again; to be forgiven the mistakes of your current life, and allow you to remake yourself and your history. A swarm of flesh eating corpses would be just what this city needed. For society to begin again and let nature choose its new leaders.

I turned on the news and every channel was full of the coverage. People were going ape shit. The area surrounding Siam Paragon was pure bedlam. A news cameraman caught an image of a Humvee gunner turning his .50 cal on his fellow soldiers and wasting them. Two M-60 tanks aimed their guns at each other, and blew each other to shit. Cops were no longer in a phalanx. They were beating the fuck out of, and shooting other cops, or just about anyone else that happened to be around them.  It appeared to be a wave of mass insanity — exactly what I pictured the end of the world to look like.

I changed the channel. The other news station was showing footage of a group of toddlers at the zoo. They were biting each other — digging their teeth down to the bone. The parents got in on the deal and picked up their children to use them as weapons against other parents.  The footage ended with the cameraman swinging his camera at one of the parents' heads — knocking out an eyeball, before being tackled to the ground himself. The camera fell at an angle showing tigers in a cage. They seemed aloof and unaffected by whatever was going on. I reasoned because the tigers at the Thai zoos were fucked up on tranquilizers.

I nudged Nok to wake up. She opened her eyes slowly and scrunched up her face. It was like watching the hatching of a sea turtle.

"Nok, something's happening. I need you to translate."

I turned up the volume on the TV. Nok sat up, but held her head down, listening.

"Why you wake me up? Stupid fat farang! TV only say that people fighting! People always fighting in Thailand. You wake me up again and I going to cut off your gluay kaeng!"

Nok flopped back down on the bed and was asleep immediately.

My blood was starting to boil. Everything I had done for this little shit, and this is how she treats me? I took several deep breaths, but my heart and mind were racing like I was hopped up on a mixture of meth and schizophrenia. I heard a voice in my head saying do it.

My mind was flooded with thoughts on how to kill her. My hands reached out for her throat, but it was replaced by another thought urging me to stab her in the eyes and cut out her tongue. I stood up and spun around in circles looking for anything sharp. I saw the images on the television, and then saw myself in the mirror. I was acting the same as the people on TV. My hands shook as I dived for my suitcase. I ripped through my medicine bag and retrieved the bottle of Xanax I carried. I chewed an entire two-milligram bar and let is dissolve sublingually. Just for good measure, I crushed another Xannie bar and snorted it.

I sat down on the floor and listened. I could hear my own heartbeat in my ears. Veins protruded from my face and throbbed in my temples. It felt as though explosions were happening behind my eyes. I looked up at Nok. The violent impulses were subsiding as the Xanax calmed me down. In the rooms next door, I could hear banging against the walls, followed by screaming from both men and women. A foot kicked at my door… and again… louder now, as though a SWAT team was trying to enter. There was a scream and a scuffle outside my door. I heard the twang of metal hitting bone, and then footsteps running down the hall accompanied by the maniacal laughter of the insane or possessed.

I looked back up at the TV. One of the news anchors was sticking a pen into the neck of her co-host. Then the screen went blank.

Whatever it was — it was airborne. My mind raced to cover the possibilities: Terrorist attack, tampering of the water supply, alien toxic mould, demonic possession, mass hysteria, or a virus topped my list.

I turned my head. Nok was kicking in her sleep as though locked in a nightmare. I grabbed a couple of Xanax and approached her quietly. I'd have to do this quick. If she woke up and started fighting, I knew I could overpower her, but she might get lucky and take out an eye.

My plan was to sit on her and shove the pills down her throat. My mind flashed back to the times I tried to wrestle with my Rottweiler to make her take her vitamins — followed by her spitting them out or trying to bite me. I was thinking clearly. Normally two Xanax bars would knock me on my ass. Now it seemed as though they were merely counteracting the violent impulses. In one quick move, I shoved the pills in her mouth and gave her a quick donkey punch to the kidneys to make her swallow them.

Nok jumped up and ran to the bathroom.

I apologized for hurting her. I told her that I loved her, and then explained what I saw on the news. I gave her my theories about what may have been the cause, but gave up when the Tarzan vocabulary prohibited me from explaining demonic possession, or terrorist attacks.

"Give me my clothes," she said meekly through the door.

I gathered up her stuff, and handed it to her when she cracked the door. I had no desire to force it open and yell at her. The Xannie did what it was designed for: To make someone not give a shit.

I spent the better part of an hour trying to coax Nok out of the bathroom. In the distance, I heard the din of gunshots and car crashes, screams and the sounds of dying. I tried to bait her out with the promise of papaya salad. When that didn't work, I pledged the purchase of a gold bracelet. When she finally came out, she was skittish. Her boyfriend before me was an Aussie who used to beat her. I remembered our pillow talk one night when she sheepishly asked me if I would ever do the same. I promised her I wouldn't, that I never raised my hand to a woman. Now, her defenses were up. I had to do damage control and figure out what had happened.

I went to the door and listened.  Everything was quiet. I worked up the balls to open the door and look out into the hallway. There was no body lying on the floor, but there was a huge amount of blood and arterial spray on the walls. I was actually relieved to see the blood, lest I had imagined the entire episode and was losing my mind. Nok peeked over my shoulder and let out a gasp. I closed the door again and locked it with the chain. I propped one of the chairs up against the door for good measure.

The balcony was the only other exit to the room. I walked over to it and looked outside. The fires still burned, and blood covered the streets and cars. The coppery stench rose up in the heat of the day and I could smell it three floors up. Nok turned on the TV again. The channels only played the Thai national anthem, signifying that the station was off the air.

I opened the mini bar and grabbed a beer.  How long had we slept? This much carnage could not have unfolded overnight.  Nok tried her cel phone and called her mom. After a long delay she finally answered. Nok was speaking too fast for me to understand any of it. Nok had tears in her eyes. I could hear her mother screaming into the phone with rage. Nok threw the phone on the ground and collapsed into my arms.

"Is your mom okay?" I asked her, already knowing the answer.

Nok could barely get the words out.

"I ask how my sister is and my little cousin. My mom she say she kill them already when they sleeping and she say she want me to come home so she can kill me too."

**********

We had enough food in the mini bar to last a couple of days. We were both too afraid to leave the room. Even if we did, we didn't know where to go. I had to assume that the violence was city-wide, perhaps even the whole country since it affected Nok's village. I counted out my Xanax. I had thirty two doses left out of a prescription for sixty. I told my doctor that I was afraid of flying. The truth was I was a pill head. I could lay in bed all day on a mixture of bliss and apathy, simply letting the chemicals cradle my brain and sooth my soul. Xannie had a short half-life. If this thing was still spreading, then Nok and I would need to take three or four doses a day. I had no idea why a benzodiazepine would work against this thing, but it did, and that's all I cared about.

"We can't stay here," I said to Nok.

Nok starred at the wall and didn't answer.

"Nok, do you want to stay here while I go downstairs?"

Nothing.

"I'm gonna go check out the lobby and see if this thing is over with, okay?"

Nok nodded.

I opened the door to the room and stepped quietly out into the hall. I looked both ways and it was all clear except for the blood. I walked towards the stairway and past the other rooms. Their doors were wide open and blood covered everything. No bodies could be seen.  The walls of the hallway were adorned with cheap paintings of naked Asian women in some river bathing scene. Blood spatter freckled the painting, transforming the work to a depiction of Cambodia's' killing fields. I looked down the staircase and listened. Nothing but the slow drip of yet more blood as it fell from the railings. My heart pounded in my throat as I made my way down several flights to the lobby.

It was the same scene as everywhere else in the hotel. Blood covered the walls and floor from arterial spray. I believed, perhaps being delusional, that years of watching Forensic Files, and reading true crime novels qualified me on the subject. These were kill shots.  Whoever did the slashing was going for the throat or vital organs. The old adage about killing came to mind: Stop the breathing, start the bleeding, and induce shock. The thought made me wonder if that was common knowledge, or if I was just a psychopath.

I looked through the double glass doors out onto the street. A small person, possibly a kid, darted passed the entrance in a full sprint. A few beats later, another kid, holding a machete ran after him. I glued myself to the side of the doorway and inched my way out onto the street. I looked to my right and saw the kids a block away. The first kid who ran by now had a rifle in his hand. An Army Humvee was next to the child, from where he must have picked up an abandoned weapon. The kid with the rifle leveled it at the other boy and fired. Puffs of pink mist erupted from the machete boy's body as he fell to the ground. The boy with the gun looked down the street and spotted me, and took off running again.

That was another good sign. If everybody was killing each other, then this boy should have killed me too.  The fact that he didn't meant that not everyone was affected. I looked up. Even the trees had blood high up in the branches. I assumed that the birds took part in the slaughter as well. I saw the Humvee where the boy had taken the gun from and decided to try my luck. I sprinted towards it and paused as I approached the machete boy lying in the street. There was a small entrance wound in the front, and a larger one in the back. I stepped over him and looked inside the Humvee. I found a hand grenade but no guns.

I pocketed the hand grenade and turned back towards the hotel. The body of the machete boy appeared to be sleeping.  Other than the bullet hole in his chest, he seemed to be in a state of catatonia, but not dead. His eyes were open, and I looked into them for any sign of life. I saw something move in the whites of his eyes. It was small like a worm or a leech. I saw movement under the boy's skin as though something was crawling beneath the surface. I didn't hang around to find out what.

I went back to the hotel and knocked on the door. Nok didn't answer,

"It's me. Open the door honey."

Nothing. I knocked again.

"Babe, open up."

I felt my stomach turning and my legs got weak as my mind prepared for the worst. I stepped back to kick the door in when Nok finally opened up.

"Why you leave me?"

I pushed her back inside the room and closed the door.

"What you have in your pocket?" she asked.

I pulled out the grenade and showed her.

"What you see outside?"

"Lots of blood but only a few bodies."

"Maybe they go to hospital?"

"I don't think so."

"So what we do?"

"I don't know."

I sat on the bed and thought about our dilemma. I didn't know what was out on the streets beyond this area. I didn't want to take any chances until we had some kind of plan. I got up and walked back to the door.

"Where you go? Don't leave me again."

"I'm just going to get us some food. I'll be back in a few minutes."

I shut the door on Nok, just as she was beginning to complain. I walked into each of the rooms on our floor and opened the mini bars. I took a couple of pillow cases and filled them full of chocolate bars, potato chips, water and beer, then went back to the room and locked the door.

**********

I was low on cigarettes and considered going outside to find a shop I could loot. I smoked the last of my pack on the balcony and looked down to the street. A lone man, dressed in a suit and tie, was staggering between the cars. I could tell he was a farang, maybe a Latino, and he appeared to be in his mid twenties. He carried with him a large, hard-shelled suitcase, and seemed as though he was drunk. He looked up at me before I could duck back into the room. He stopped walking and starred at me.

"Hey buddy, you got a cigarette?" I yelled down to him.

The man looked

around, and then looked back up to me.

"What the fuck is going on here man?" he yelled back. He was American.

"Some crazy shit. You got any smokes?"

The man patted his suit pocket and pulled out a pack. He opened them and looked inside.

"Yeah man, I got like… five left. I got a carton in my bag. You need one?"

"That would be tits," I yelled back.

"Huh?"

"Tits!"

"Oh… yeah," he said. It seemed as though his brain was a few seconds behind.

The man looked down the street, up at the sky, down to his feet, and over his shoulder, then back at me. "Well… you coming down to get em?"

"Can you just like, leave them on top of one of the cars or something?"

The man looked at the car next to him.  His head wobbled. Definitely drunk.

"Quit being a pussy and come down. I ain't gonna bite," he yelled. He did seem rather non-threatening.

"Okay, bro, I'll be down in a sec."

The man nodded, and gave me the thumbs up. He looked to his left and let out a yelp. "Oh fuck! Open the door! Don't come down!"

The man tried braking into a sprint and then fell on his face. He popped back up, lifted the suitcase over his head and hauled ass to the hotel entrance. I looked at Nok.

"Hide in the bathroom!" I told her.

"Arai na?"

"Go in bathroom. Bpai hong naam!" I said and bolted out the door. I jumped stairs three at a time and made it down to the lobby.

The man was banging on the double glass doors frantically.

"Open the fucking door!" he screamed.

I raced up to the door and undid the latch. He jumped inside the lobby, spun around and helped me close the doors.

"We gotta go, where's your room?"

"On the first floor. Room two twenty three," I said. There was no way I was letting him up on the third floor with Nok. If this was the end of the world, then Nok would be in demand to re-populate the Earth. That; or a slave to mutant biker gangs. It had only been the apocalypse for three weeks, and I wasn't sure if survivors were in raping mode yet.

The man bounded up the stairs to the first floor and took off down the hall. I waited in the lobby, hiding behind a paper cut out of a Thai Airways stewardess making a wai with her hands. I wanted to see what the man saw. If it was a group of killers on a rampage, or a seven year old kid with a chainsaw, I wanted to know what I was up against.

I waited… nothing came.

I ran up the stairs after the dude.  Halfway down the hall, I checked myself for a weapon. I only had the grenade and a pen in my pocket. I palmed the pen prison-shank style and went into room 223.

The dude was there. He had his suitcase open on the bed. Inside it was brick after brick of white, powdery substances wrapped in plastic. The dude cut open a bag and buried his nose in it Scarface style.

"Shit, is that coke?" I asked.

The man snorted in a small mountain, then collapsed on the floor.

"Chi-naaaa… "

I was impressed. I had never seen so much heroin in one place before. It was like walking around with a death sentence in your bag.

"Where'd you get that?" I asked him, not thinking.

The dude sat on the floor. All of his facial muscles were relaxed, and his eyelids made him look like a tired dog.

"Airport bro. I was getting ready to go through customs when it went down."

"How did you get out?"

"Probably did the same as you. You locked yourself inside right? I hid in a bathroom, and listened while people were screaming outside. I saw people getting torn apart and stomping their baby's heads. It was as war zone, only there were no sides. Everybody killed everybody."

I took more of his image in. Prison tattoos peeked out from under the sleeves of his suit. His head was shaved but growing out now and he rocked a pencil thin mustache and soul patch.

"Why weren't you affected?"

The dude spoke slowly, "I don't know man, I was pretty fucked up on Valium and booze to calm me down when I went through customs. I saw a few other people at the airport that weren't affected either. They just got butchered and eaten by those that went nuts."

"Where you heading to?"

"I was trying to make in to Pattaya. I heard that all of Walking Street is being defended. The survivors turned every beer bar and gogo club into a mini fortress. Kind of like in that movie with the chick with the big titties. There are a shit load of British and American Marines and Sailors on shore leave, and they are just repelling mass assaults of the afflicted." 

I put my hand out. "I'm Joel."

"They call me Vato," he said, shaking my hand.

"You have a plan to get to Pattaya?"

"Did it look like I had a Plan when you saw me? I stole a Taxi, and then a Tuk Tuk. I would have taken a scooter if I didn't have this big ass suitcase with me. There are cars everywhere with the keys still inside. Transportation isn't a problem as long as you don't mind running into a horde."

"What did you see outside when you came running in?"

"You didn't see them yet?"

"See what?"

"Hang on," Vato stuck his face back into the pile of heroin. He must have done enough to kill Nikki Sixx. "The monkey's… you didn't see the monkey's yet?"

"What monkeys?"

"Damn, homie, you been living in this room with no TV? You haven't been outside yet? Check it out, the monkeys… let's see, how do I put it? The monkeys are dead, but they ain't really dead.

"You've seen them?"

"Yeah man, they're fucking psychotic.  They just swing off the trees and power lines and rip your face off. I saw a dude with a gun trying to shoot one. He missed every shot. They're fast as fuck, and they don't stop for shit."

Vato debriefed me on the state of affairs in Thailand. It has been a total media blackout. No Internet, no cel phones, no television or radio. He told me after a person was attacked, they went into a deep sleep but didn't die. When they woke up again, they turned into cannibalistic psychopaths.  They became the afflicted. The ones that I saw on the news. The ones in my hotel. I was almost one myself before I popped the Xanax. This led me to my theory that I shared with Vato.

"This thing must already be inside of us.  You and I right now are carriers. The only thing holding it at bay is the drugs we are on."

"Yeah, no shit," he said.

"This thing can also be transmitted through a bite right?"

"As far as I can tell, yes."

"Who were the ones at the airport that didn't become afflicted?"

"I saw people in the airport bars putting up a fight."

"Right. They were drinking, I was on Xannie, and you were on a bunch of different shit. You see?"

Vato looked at me like I was retarded. As if this great epiphany was not totally apparent. "Yeah man, I know already.  The only ones who didn't go nuts were the ones getting fucked up. That's why Pattaya held out; because there are so many drunks in that town. There are probably pockets of survivors in Patpong, Nana, Soi Cowboy, and every other part of this country where people get hammered."

"So why go all the way to Pattaya? Why not just go to Soi Cowboy or Nana Plaza? There's sure to be drunks there," I said.

"I'm not going to Pattaya for the drunks.  I gotta deliver this fucking bag of China or I'm dead. I gotta give it back to the Ka Yai since I couldn't get it on a plane.  I talked to one of them before the phones went dead. He said bring it to Pattaya."

The Ka Yai was the Thai mafia. The name meant "Big Leg." As scary as they were, I thought Vato's logic was flawed.

"What's the point? You'll probably die just trying to get there. They'll probably die soon too. I think you just inherited a big ass bag of China for free man."

Vato nodded his head as he pondered this.

"Yeah man. I think you're right.  Extenuating circumstances huh?"

"I think end of the world qualifies, yes."

"Alright man, sounds good. High Five!"  He high fived me.

"Porno handshake," I said, extending a bent elbow to him.

"Porno handshake?"

"You bump elbows. Like, because you got dirty hands after making a porno, get it?"

Vato extended an elbow to me and we bumped.

"I like that one. Gotta remember that.  Porno handshake. Porno handshake. Porno handshake. Yeah. I like it," he muttered slowly. It was creepy.

We sat in an uncomfortable silence for a long minute, and then I remembered Nok upstairs.

"Shit. I'll be back. Just chill here," I said

"Where you going, homie?"

"I forgot something upstairs."

"I'll go with you man," Vato said, and started to get up.

"No no no. It's cool man. I'll be right back."

"You got a girl upstairs don't you? No wonder you didn't leave the hotel for three weeks. Bring her down bro, and we'll party. I ain't no booty bandit. Don't worry, homie."

I thought about the pen in my pocket. I thought about sticking him in the neck. This was one of my normal violent thoughts. Nothing to signal I was being afflicted.

"Just wait here and I'll be back."

Vato plunged his face back into the pile of heroin. I could almost hear his liver crying. I went upstairs to check on Nok. The door to the room was open and she wasn't in the bathroom. I called out her name. Nothing. I looked down the hallway and ran into each room yelling her name. Still nothing. I looked out the windows and didn't see her. I ran back to our room and went to the balcony.

"Fuck!" I shouted. Bed sheets were tied to the railing, prison escape style. I wondered how far she could have gone.  Then I thought about the monkeys.

I ran back down to where Vato was. "She's gone, we gotta go look for her."

I threw Vato an empty backpack. "Put the China in there. You can't lug that suitcase around. Let's go man."

Vato didn't move. Maybe he thought I was trying to alpha male him. He was an ex-con, and not used to being bossed around.

"Homie, sabai sabai. You ain't gonna find her. Either the afflicted got her or the monkeys ate her."

***********

The city was nearly empty. I saw flashes in my peripheral vision of figures darting between buildings, and I could feel a presence with us, stalking us from behind the abandoned cars. Everything that made Bangkok vibrant was gone. The remnants of once busy markets sat forlorn in the baking sun. We wandered among the detritus of food stalls, and bootleg DVD vendors, whose wares still lay as picking for the ghosts of tourists, and as a toilet for the birds who still waged war above. We found a shop with gardener supplies, and helped ourselves to a couple of machetes. We walked in an expanding circle around the hotel. I left notes on the windshields of cars, and tuk tuks, telling Nok to wait for us back at the room and hang a sheet from the balcony if she was there.

As we came around the hotel on our third lap, I saw a figure that I couldn't be sure of. I rubbed my eyes in disbelief and then focused on the image again. It was a man. He was wearing a pink dress and carrying an axe over his right shoulder. In his left hand he carried a large cooler. Vato and I ducked into the doorway of a pharmacy and whispered to each other. I peered out from behind the wall and tried to spy the man again. The dress he wore was covered in blood and the soft tissue of a recent kill. He would walk a few paces and then turn around and look up at the trees. Then he would scan the ground as if searching for something. He resumed walking in our direction. The man in the dress was on our side of the street. There was no way we could hide in this doorway, and no way we could walk back out on the street without him seeing us. Vato and I decided on an ambush.

We held up our machetes in our best Conan poses, and prepared ourselves to look threatening. I heard the slow shuffle of tired footsteps about ten yards from our position in the doorway. It was a decent enfilade to ambush from. A few yards away the man stopped walking.  Vato looked at me, as if what to do.

"Are you two sailors lonely?" The man called out to us, "Cause' I just might be the last woman on Earth if you boys wanna party."

Vato and I just looked at each other.  Vato mouthed the words what the fuck?

"Come on out boys. Don't make mama come get you," the man said again. His voice sounded like Demi Moore.

Vato and I seemingly grew balls at the same time. We jumped out from the doorway with our machetes raised. I think I even made a feeble war cry. The man was unimpressed. I don't even think he blinked. He stood with the aloof air of a condescending French waiter.

He giggled.

"Wassup bro?" Vato said.

"Have you boys seen my dog? He's a little white puff ball," the man asked

His whole image: The dress covered in gore, the axe over his shoulder, and on his head, was arguably the worst toupee I had ever seen — Something along the lines of Donald Trump's hair. Vato and I didn't respond.

"His name is Sparkles. Have you seen him?" the man said again.

"Sorry man, no," said Vato.

"You can relax with those big swords of yours. I won't eat you."

Vato and I lowered our machetes.

"Where you coming from?" I asked the man.

"Just been doing some silly stuff. You boys want to help me find my dog Sparkles?"

"Can't. I'm looking for my wife," I told him.

"Maybe we can look together. What does she look like?"

"Tall blonde with big boobies," I told him.

Vato shot me a look.

"Big ones like mine?" the man asked.

He didn't have big boobies.

"We gotta go. Good luck finding your dog," Vato said.

"You're just going to leave a lady all by herself in this town, with the afflicted, and the monkeys running around?"

"How come you didn't become afflicted?  What drugs were you doing?" I asked.

"Drugs? What drugs?"

I thought about another angle. Those that hadn't gone mad had been doing drugs or getting hammered. Perhaps there was another segment of society that was immune to its effects — those that were already insane.

"Never mind," I told him.

"You boys hear about Pattaya?"

Vato and I nodded.

"You boys heading there?'

We nodded again.

"Can a lady tag along? There's strength in numbers. I'm pretty good with this thing as you can see by my dress," The man said, and lifted the weight of the axe in his hand as though it was a feather. Vato and I both tightened the grips on our machetes in response.

"What's your name?" Vato asked.

"I'm Esmeralda."

"I'm Vato, this is Joel."

A scream cut into our obligatory introductions. It echoed down the street and was followed by another. I had heard Nok cry a million times over everything from stubbing her toe, to the death of a relative. I had never heard her scream, but I assumed this one was hers.

"That's her, I know it," I said, and took off running. I expected Vato and Esmeralda to be my back up. They weren't. I looked over my shoulder as I ran, and they stood motionless, watching my suicidal act of heroism. I ran towards the screams and could tell it was coming towards me. Through the maze of abandoned cars and dumped scooters, I jumped the obstacles and pulled the hand grenade from my pocket. I had thrown a total of four grenades in my life—all of them in Cambodia, for five dollars apiece. The nervous Cambodian held my hand through the process of pulling the pin, and chucking it into a pond to prevent the fragmentation from killing us both. I was wasted at the time, and now I couldn't remember the cook off time for the grenade.

I rounded a corner, and the screaming stopped. I saw Nok in the middle of the street. She was down on her knees, placing her head to the ground in respect to the Buddha. I panned my gaze up.  A horde of afflicted were fighting with a troupe of monkeys. The monkey attacks were savage. They jumped on top of the afflicted's heads and began tearing at their eyeballs. The afflicted, in turn, would grab one off of its head and rip out its throat with its teeth. Nok was bleeding, and her arms were covered in bite marks. I knelt beside her and touched her back gently.

"Baby, we gotta go," I whispered, but she didn't respond. I wrapped my arm around her torso and lifted her up. She was a spinner.  No more than ninety pounds. It made me grateful I wasn't a chubby chaser.

The afflicted that weren't fighting with the monkeys turned their attention to us. I threw Nok over my shoulder, and pulled the pin on the grenade. I let it fly from my hand no more than a second after I pulled it. It missed completely, and landed behind the horde by about ten yards. I turned, and ran as I could with a ninety-pound Thai girl over my shoulder. 

I rounded the corner onto the street with Vato and the tranny when the grenade went off. It caught the gas tank of a nearby car and sent a ball of flame up like a geyser. Esmeralda began traipsing towards me. Vato stood back and evaluated the risks of getting involved in my plight.  I looked over my shoulder and the afflicted were swarming on us. I picked up the pace as Esmeralda came running past me. I spun on my heels to see him raise his axe and bring it down on one of the afflicted's head. Its skull split open down the middle, all the way to the shoulders, leaving the head and neck in two separate halves. 

"Go grab that tuk tuk over there," Esmeralda said. He wasn't panicking. "Hurry, these things are stinky."

Vato beat me to the tuk tuk and revved it up. I was expecting him to leave us there, but, to his credit, he waited. Nok was sniffling as I held her on my shoulder and put her in the back seat. I put a leg up on the tuk tuk, still thinking that Vato might take off with my girl to go and re-populate the world.

Esmeralda was in a blood frenzy. He swung his axe as the afflicted closed in around him. The ground below him quickly grew littered with corpses. I gathered he had done this before.

"Hurry the fuck up!" Vato yelled.

Esmeralda swung the axe one last time, and then he jogged over to us.

"Now I'm all sweaty," he said.

"Drive!" I said.

The tuk tuk had three wheels and motorcycle handles, along with the gear shift of an automobile. Not easy to drive unless you did it for a living. Vato worked the clutch, and ground the gears till the metal shrieked. "Fucking piece of shit," he cursed. The tuk tuk finally lurched forward in spurts as Vato figured out the shifting. He hit the gas and the tuk tuk sped away with the whine of its two stroke motor. It belched out a plume of smoke, like a blood trail for sharks to follow.

We drove on the sidewalks, and in between the abandoned cars that clogged the streets. I rubbed Nok's head where she was bleeding and looked at the bite marks on her arms.

"From the monkeys?"

She turned her head towards me. Her expression was vacant. Something moved in the whites of her eyes. "How you know about that?"

"The guy driving is named Vato. He told me about them."

"Yes. Many monkey bite me," she said.

"How did you get away from them?"

"Monkey start fighting with people you see come. Oi, what happening?"

I had no answer, and she saw it on my face. We both left it at that. I looked to Esmeralda who was sitting in front of me.

"Nice work back there. Where should we go?"

Esmeralda held his hand out the side of the tuk tuk and let the wind hold it aloft. The front of his bad Donald Trump toupee lifted in the draft of the open vehicle.

"We need to get on the elevated toll way and head towards Pattaya," He said, and then leaned forward and spoke to Vato. I couldn't hear what they said through the din of the engine whine. Vato said something back to Esmeralda, and then Esmeralda turned to me.

"Vato knows how to get there. We need to make a detour first."

I simply wanted to get out of Bangkok. To a beach preferably. If there were any boats still there, I would jack one and get Nok and me someplace safe. I ran through different scenarios in my head. I pictured the full moon party goers on Koh Phi Phi getting monumentally fucked up on ecstasy, and fighting to remain as the last bastion of hippie life on the island. I envisioned gangs of armed ladyboys holding the line on Walking Street, killing the afflicted in between hits from their ice pipes, then going off to service the American and British sailors that were in town. No apocalypse scenario was complete without armed gangs of bandits, raiding the countryside on motorcycles. Since this was Thailand, I substituted badass looking motorcycles with Hello Kitty scooters, and motorized rice plows.

I looked back at Esmeralda, "Where's our detour?"

"We have to go to Siriraj hospital.  Across the Chao Phraya River."

"For?"

"I'm getting a surgical procedure done."

I tilted my head a little, "Now?"

"Not now. I just need to pick up a surgeon that works there. I know where he is hiding out."

Siriraj hospital was in the other direction. This was a pointless detour and Esmeralda was obviously insane.

"I don't think that's a good idea."

Esmeralda's voice boomed as though it was being broadcast from the demon god Rahu's lungs. "We are going to Siriraj hospital or I will peel your face off and chop up your little brown monkey of a girlfriend!"

I held up my machete and cocked it back to take a swing. There was absolutely no possibility of such a maneuver happening in the back of a speeding tuk tuk. Esmeralda's demeanor calmed down, and his voice normalized to that of a gruff shemale phone sex operator.

"I'm sorry. I should explain myself," Esmeralda opened the cooler he carried, and pulled out what appeared to be a piece of meat wrapped in plastic. He reached inside and removed the item.  Esmeralda turned away, and held the object over his face and made adjustments.  When he turned around again, he was wearing the flayed, rotting face of a female. The image was comical and not even remotely terrifying, despite its Texas Chainsaw Massacre overtones.

"Who am I?" Esmeralda asked.

I chortled, "Tyra Banks."

The skin of the face was white.

"No. Guess again."

"Sally Struthers."

"No."

"Kim Kardashian."

"Close."

"Squeaky Frome."

"No! Get it right! It's fucking obvious!" Esmeralda bellowed.

I liked Esmeralda better in between psychotic episodes. "Paris Hilton?"

He was ecstatic, "Yes! Of course it's Paris Hilton."

I contemplated jumping off the tuk tuk with Nok, and taking our chances with the monkeys and afflicted hordes.

"It's… beautiful," I said.

"You bet your ass it's beautiful. I saw her on the beach about two weeks ago. She had her little dog with her. So cute. Then I remembered there was a doctor here in Thailand that did facial transplants, so I asked if I could borrow hers."

My balls shrank up into a protective posture inside my stomach.

"And what'd she say?" I asked nervously, realizing he was serious.

"She denied being Paris Hilton. She gave me some bullshit about being a celebrity look alike that was doing a show. She said there were tons of celebrity impersonator's here in town for some convention. I mean, can you believe I actually met Paris Hilton?"

I nodded again, "It seems you took a souvenir as well. Maybe it wasn't really her?"

Esmeralda's eyes changed again. I was starting to recognize the look that preceded one of her outbursts of psychosis.

"On second thought, you're probably right. Wow. You met the Paris Hilton. How 'bout that?"

"Goddamn fucking right I did. Now, I'm going to be Paris Hilton. Did you know she gets like a million dollars to go to a nightclub and have pictures taken of her?"

I nodded.

"She's the most beautiful and talented woman in the world. Now I'll get to go to movie premieres, and fancy parties, and sleep with all kinds of sophisticated men, and I'll have all kinds of pretty dresses, and be famous, and… "

I thought this speech sounded familiar.  It was from Of Mice and Men, when Lenny gets all excited about the rabbits. 

I looked up to Vato as he maneuvered through the wrecked landscape of Kreungthep. He was taking this all in, and was looking back over his shoulder. He called back to Esmeralda, "Hey, we gotta stop for gas okay? Or we can just change to another tuk tuk. I think I see one up ahead."

Esmeralda scanned the area through her rotting Paris Hilton mask. "Over there! That hotel has a nice one in front of it." She pointed to a four star hotel, with a tuk tuk parked out front. It looked brand new.

Vato pulled up to it and shut off the engine. He jumped out of ours, and ran up to the new one, "It doesn't have any keys."

"Go inside the hotel and look for them.  We'll wait out here," Esmeralda told him.

"I ain't going in there. You go."

"Go inside you greasy wetback before I cut your fucking balls off!" Esmeralda snapped.

"Jai yen yen. Calm down Miss Hilton," I said, patting her shoulder. "You wait here, and Nok and I will go inside to help him."

I nudged Nok to get out of the tuk tuk.

"Monkey girl stays here with me," Esmeralda said. She had the look again, boiling up like a cauldron of insanity in her eyes.

"You're not keeping my wife as a hostage."

"You think I'm stupid? You don't think I know you are planning to run out the back exit of the hotel and go your own way?"

"No Miss Hilton," I shook my head.

"Monkey girl stays here."

"You don't need to keep calling her that, you know? It's kinda rude."

Esmeralda grabbed one of Nok's arms and raised it up. "You see those bite marks? Do you know what happens to someone who gets bit by one of those monkeys?"

I gulped. I didn't have time to process the bite marks after being chased by a corpse spewing vajayjay monster, and watching a psychotic shemale with a bad toupee cutting the heads off of the undead while wearing the rotting face of a celebrity impersonator.

"Well, do you?"

"No. I don't"

"Neither do I, but the doctor I'm going to see can tend to her wounds and give her a shot or something," Esmeralda said.  It made sense.

I looked at Nok. Her normally brown skin was turning a sickly shade of carnival ride green. She hung her head low, as if she was being pulled inexorably into the long slow suck of sleep. The sun above hovered at an eternal noon, baking everything below into a tropic of death.

"Hurry boys," he said

Inside the hotel lobby, Vato and I came up with a plan. First, we had to snort a few lines of China, and then we would see if the hotel bar had any booze left. We lucked out. Vato came back with his arms full of Johnny Walker. We found the last remaining hotel staff member, frozen and catatonic behind the hotel bar. She was stunningly beautiful according to the Thai standards of white skin and high cheekbones. 

"That's kind of high end for Molotov's don't you think?" I said, pointing to the Johnny Walker.

"Nothing but the best for Miss Hilton.  Wow, that hotel receptionist is hot. Did you see her?"

"Yeah , I saw her."

"You think maybe I can put her in the tuk tuk with us? She'd be so grateful if we found a cure for her."

"She also may wake up and try to eat you," I said.

We found a bunch of pillowcases in a linen closet and cut them into strips with our machetes. We stuffed them down into the neck of the bottles and wet them with the alcohol.

"Do you have a lighter?" Vato asked me.

I patted my pockets. There was one in my cigarette pack.

"Yeah, I've got one. Who's gonna throw em?"

"You man."

"No way. I had an epic fail with the grenade earlier. You throw."

"Fine. Gimme the lighter."

I handed Vato the lighter. "What's the plan again?"

"The plan is to get the psychotic fuck away from the tuk tuk so we don't barbeque your girlfriend."

"Ah."

"You ready?" Vato asked.

"Hang on," I did one last line of China, and then for some reason, checked my nose in the mirror, "Let's do it."

Vato followed me to the hotel doors, but stayed inside the lobby. I took a deep breath and walked out into the oppressive sun. They were still there. Esmeralda was holding a pair of severed breasts up to his chest and checking himself out in the tuk tuk's rearview mirror. He had a taken off the Donald Trump toupee, and traded it for a long, blonde wig. I didn't want to know what else he had in that cooler.

"Excuse me, Miss Hilton!" I called out.

Esmeralda put the breasts back in the cooler and turned towards me.

"There's a bunch of hot movie stars inside the hotel hiding out. I told them that I had Paris Hilton's body double outside, and they asked if you wanted to come join them. I think they want to get it on with you."

"Eww. That sounds gross. I'm a classy lady. Classy ladies like Paris Hilton don't go to parties like that. Did you get the keys?"

Esmeralda got out of the tuk tuk, and wiped off the brains and other bits of flesh that were hanging from his dress.  "How do I look?"

"Beautiful."

Esmeralda left his axe by the tuk tuk.  There was no need for violence in the life of a superstar. Esmeralda walked away from the tuk tuk and adjusted the Paris Hilton impersonator mask. Vato must have gauged that Esmeralda was far enough away from Nok, because he burst out of the double doors of the hotel and threw a lit bottle of Johnny Walker at him. He had better aim than me. The bottle struck Esmeralda squarely in the forehead and broke upon impact. The flames engulfed Esmeralda's hair and quickly spread to his flimsy dress. Esmeralda screamed in his raspy shemale voice until he inhaled the flame, and the fire burned his alveoli. He coughed and gurgled while the fire consumed him. His lungs sputtered, trying to find any trace of oxygen.

"Let's go!" I yelled to Vato.

Vato jumped into the driver's seat of the new tuk tuk and pulled out the keys from his pocket. Sneaky fucker. I went over and grabbed Nok. Her body was limp as I carried her back to the new tuk tuk. I put her in the back seat, as Esmeralda did her death dance in the flames.

"We're in. Let's go!"

Vato had the hang of it now. He put the tuk tuk in gear and revved away smoothly from the hotel. I looked over my shoulder. Esmeralda was fully engulfed in flames.  He was staggering towards the hotel lobby, and then collapsed. I gave Nok a hug, and saw Esmeralda's cooler on the seat. I reached over and flung it out of the tuk tuk. The Donald Trump toupee was wedged into the seat. I pried it loose and examined it. The entire inside of it was made of wiring and computer chips. There were small solenoids around its circumference. "What the fuck is this?" I asked Vato.

He was in another place. Vato's whole vibe was that of a homie on a stroll through a bucolic landscape of poppies and coca leaves. "Huh?" he said.

"This fucking Donald Trump hair hat thing that the freak was wearing, it's full of wires and shit."

"Maybe it's from the loony bin. It's supposed to electro shock his ass or something."

"I don't know. Should I toss it?"

"Up to you bro. Unless you wanna wear it."

I chuckled. I think I was suffering from stress disorder. Or PTSD, only it wasn't the 'post' part yet. "Yeah man, how do I look?" I said, as I put the toupee on my head.

It started in the left side of my brain.  A seizure of sorts. The electric numb spread around my brain until my head no longer felt attached to my body. Then I saw them.  

They darted out from behind buildings in my peripheral vision. I saw them in the reflections of shop windows as we sped by. They were coming through the glass of parked cars. Arms and heads crawling out. Black eyeballs and lolling tongues. There were too many different types to describe them as a collective species. One looked like a spider with the skin of a man, replete with veins and a human face. Another was a beautiful woman's head, connected to a body made entirely of entrails.  Excrement dripped from the corners of her mouth as she smiled. As I passed her by, she opened her mouth and vomited out a jet of half masticated frogs. The tuk tuk sped along, as the day turned to night in a matter of seconds. There were shadows falling from the sky. They fell to the ground, and took the form of another creature. I saw one fall into a birds nest, and then emerge as a winged human. All of it swirling inside a nebulous cloud of filth and evil.

The only word that came to mind was demons.

I was screaming when Vato pulled the toupee off my head. He had stopped the tuk tuk at the foot of the toll way to Pattaya. The first thing I saw was the abandoned tollbooth. Its inside was covered in blood. I shut my eyes against the sun. It was no longer nighttime. The images from the other world I had seen remained with me. I understood it all without an explanation. There was absolute knowledge there, along with infinite horror. It was a place in which I could be showed anything I wanted to see. Only, I would have to be prepared to see everything.

"You okay, homie?" Vato asked. "Man, you were tripping balls."

"What-the-fuck-was-that?" I said. My brain felt like it was hemorrhaging.

"You fell asleep, and then woke up screaming. I think you need to do a line."

It sounded like a good idea. "Yeah, hit me with it."

Vato reached into his pocket and pulled out a small baggie of China with a cut straw sticking out like a juice box.  "Here bro," he said, handing it to me.

I took the baggie and jammed the straw up my nose, inhaling enough to kill Keith Richards. I sat back as the opiate spread its warmth through my body.

Nok moaned. I looked over at her. Her condition was getting worse by the hour. I was half expecting her to breathe one last breath and then awaken as one of the undead. I expressed my concerns to Vato, and he told me I saw too many movies. Nothing was known until it actually happened. This was Thailand though, and the ghosts played by a whole set of different rules entirely. The frog vomit lady I saw was a Phii Krasue.  It was widely known as the most feared ghost in Thailand. It fed on newborns, and when it couldn't find any, it would consume shit and frogs. The Thai's made incredibly dumb movies about her, and featured her in commercials. One of the creatures I saw while wearing the toupee was a mummified baby with gold leaf on his head. The images must have been coming from my subconscious mind because Nok and I had visited the temple of Mae Nak a few months before. The mummified baby was kept in a glass case in the courtyard of the temple. People came and offered toys to him and put money through a slit in his coffin. His face was covered in gold leaf, and he was revered because when the baby died, his body hardly decomposed.

"Throw that rat's nest away," Vato said.

I held the toupee in my hand and examined it again.  A tag on one of the solenoids read: Hencho en Mexico.

I couldn't throw it away. Something about its power. I felt like I should be skulking around Middle Earth with it.

"Hey, check it out," Vato said, as he picked up a nightclub flyer off of the ground. "There's a punk band playing in Pattaya called Diarrhea Bukakke. They look Japanese."

I looked at the flyer. They did appear to be Japanese. "You like punk music?"

"Yeah man, old school punk like The Germs, and Minor Threat. How bout you?"

This reminded me of those moments in high school where your clique of friends was determined by your mutual taste in music. The guy could be a total shit heel, but at least he listened to The Clash. "Yeah man.  I grew up in Hermosa Beach. There was a big punk scene back in the day."

"For reals? I'm from East Los bro.  You're a Cali boy too?"

"Yep. Born and raised."

"So why didn't you say so in the first place?"

"Didn't think it mattered. Besides, I come here to get away from other American's."

"I feel you. I first came to Bangkok and saw all these fine ass ladies, who weren't all stuck up and I was like damn, I gotta move here. Youknowwhatimsayin?"

Vato and I reminisced about the finer points of California life. Besides riding unicorns, and watching yoga instructors mediate on Venice Beach, we recalled California's more resplendent features like its borderline psychotic drivers — who were often armed, and it's beautiful, yet self involved women, who wouldn't talk to you unless you were a millionaire. Then there was the endless parade of delusional and talentless fuckwads that came from all corners of the globe to be movie stars.  Most ended up as waiters. Some ended up as crack whores. The very few, got a gig in a porno or rap video, barely making enough for a bus ticket back home.

"How you feeling now? You done freaking out?" Vato asked me.

I was feeling better and I said so. Nok was looking pretty bad. I thought of dumping her on the side of the road. If it wasn't for her looks, I would have left her a long time ago. Then again, she was capable of tolerating me for more than five consecutive minutes.  Something no other woman could do. I would keep her with me until we got to a doctor. If the prognosis was bad, then I wouldn't feel guilty about leaving her to the monkeys.

"We gotta try and get my girl to a doctor. There's gotta be something like a hospital that's not crawling with the afflicted."

"I know of a place near Pattaya called Banglamung hospital. I was there a few years ago after I got into a fight on the beach," Vato said, rolling up his sleeve to show a scar from stitches.

"Doctors have probably run off though.  Maybe nobody raided the pharmacy yet. We can just give her a cocktail of different shit and see what works. That's all doctors do anyhow. They're a bunch of quacks."

I agreed. As we got ready to leave, a sleeper reanimated in the back of a minivan. It started flipping out as it tried to figure out how to exit the vehicle and eat us. Vato grabbed an old newspaper laying on the ground and walked up to the minivan. He opened its gas tank while the sleeper clawed at the glass and made its retarded death faces.

"Man this bitch looks hungry, yo. Check it out, she's like only seven years old."

Vato took the newspaper and stuffed it down into the gas tank. He pulled out the lighter I gave him and lit the paper. Vato stood in front of the window and waved goodbye to the sleeper before sprinting back over to me.

"We should really go check out that band in Pattaya huh?" he said

I glanced over Vato's shoulder at the sleeper in the minivan. She was indeed, only seven years old or so. She had a shirt on that was one of my favorites in Thailand. It was one of the many knockoffs of super hero shirts. This one had a man in tights swinging down from a building. Only his outfit was green, and his name was Spaderman. I wanted to ask the now convulsing and rabid little girl if she ever saw the movie in the theatre, or only on a bootleg DVD camcorder job. My questions would go unanswered, as the gas tank caught fire and then the whole minivan exploded in a whoosh. The girls head flew up into the air, spinning end over end, with jaw moving and eyes rolling around. It landed on the street a few yards away. Its eyes fixed on us as if there was still the possibility of taking a bite.

We got back in the tuk tuk and entered the elevated toll road to Pattaya. It was the same as the streets in the city; mile after mile of abandoned cars with no passengers inside, or sleepers who had yet to awaken. In the panic that swept the city, people tried to escape.  The hoods and insides of the cars were covered with blood; documenting their owners last moments of a violent death. Blood spatter painted the road at regular intervals, transforming the land into an abstract Hellscape.

We drove for about thirty minutes, while I studied the toupee. Every moment I held it, filled me with a temptation to put it back on. There was a world right in front of us that we could not see.  With the toupee on my head, I could know everything about the universe. All of life's mysteries and riddles would be answered. All I had to do was put it back on and see the show.

The desire to see what lies beyond overwhelmed me, and I began to raise it to my head. Vato spotted me in the rearview mirror, reached around and snatched the toupee from my hands. He flung it out of the tuk tuk and revved the engine as we raced between cars.

"What the fuck man?" I said.

"Homie, you're acting like fucking Golem with that thing. Give it up. We got more important shit to worry about. You wanna end up like Esmeralda back there?'

He was right. I shook my head.

"So get your head on straight and watch out for the afflicted. There's bound to be some on this road at some point."

"I'm cool man. No worries. Can you hand me the baggie again?"

Vato handed me the baggie with the straw and told me to keep it. We drove on with the sound of the tuk tuks's engine buzzing like a cloud of mosquitoes. Pattaya was two hours away from Bangkok. I had only been there twice, and had both a great time and a miserable one.  Pattaya was an adult Disneyland where many men went to die, or at least go out with a bang. Its image was of a Sodom by the sea. A place where old white guys shagged young Thai girls. In recent years, the crowd had changed. Now it was just as common to see young hipsters. The bullshit in the city grew exponentially with its wealth. Jet Ski scam artists fleeced tourists for pre-existing damage. Clip joints overcharged, and women bled punters for their life savings. Left with nothing, many of the men jumped from the city's high rises, turning "balcony diving" into a national sport. I couldn't think of a better place to live at the end of the world.

"Rigor mortis Death Queef." Vato said to me over his shoulder as he drove. It took me a few moments to process it.

"Say what?"

Vato held up the flyer from the bar he showed me earlier.

"They're opening up for Diarrhea Bukakke."

"Yeah? They Japanese too?'

Vato's eyes darted to the flyer again in between zig zagging around road debris.

"I dunno. I think they might be a ladyboy punk band. Fucking Japanese are freaks man. You ever watch Japanese porn?"

I had, of course. "Yeah, who hasn't?"

"They're into all that rape, and scat porn man. Fucking deviants. The Japanese girls all cry like wounded puppies in those movies too.  I have to watch them on mute."

Vato had determined that he should at least make an effort to locate the Ka Yai mobsters and try to return the bag full of China. Albeit, a few ounces lighter now.  It would be an act of good faith. If they were dead or missing, then he would be free to bury his face in it daily, or sell it, barter it, even throw it on the floor and make snow angels in it.

"You ever see the series Groped by Gorbechev?" he said

"Is that on the BBC?"

"It's a Russian porn series. I don't really know the premise of it, but the cats that shoot it live down in Pattaya now.  They've got this huge ass mansion in town with ten foot walls, gates, security and shit. I'll bet you anything that they are riding this thing out in style."

The Russian expat community was getting huge over the years. They tended to treat Thailand the way American's treated Mexico. It didn't endear them to the locals very much.

"They've got a whole smut series with a Soviet theme. Some shit like Licked by Lenin, Bolshevik Butt Buddies, KGBJ's and what not. It's pretty cheesy stuff but I'll bet their pad is stockpiled with dope and fine ass ladies."

"You thinking about joining them?"

Vato shrugged, "I'm just sayin."

Pattaya was an entire city of gogo bars, massage parlors, and brothels. It had Malls, movie theatres, and Western restaurants to cater to the punters. Attempts had been made over the years to make it a 'Family Place'. I could never wrap my head around that one, nor understand why families would want to drag their brood down Walking Street. Look son, next to that Roman style orgy venue is a statue of Buddha, and another one of Ganesh. You see son, Thai bargirls are very devout. They often pray to not only the Buddha, but to the spirits of dead children called Phii Dek, which is the ghost of a dead child whose mother probably killed him. If the gods or ghosts bring a customer to the bargirl, then she has to make an offering.  That's what those toys and fruits in front of the statue are for. One out of four girls here has HIV, and they continue to work even though they might infect a customer.  Well son that completes today's multi-cultural learning experience. When you are old enough, you can go to the bars and catch herpes too.

The tuk tuk sped down the tollway while Vato and I tried to fill the moments of silence by getting to know each other better. We spoke of the world back home as if it was an idealized snowy Swiss village. The truth was we hated it, and that is how we ended up here. We were both convinced that America would become a third world country someday, and that places like Thailand, Brazil, and even parts of genocide ridden Africa would eventually rise up to claim their place in the sun. Our talk went from politics to porno movies, and where to get the best hummers in Pattaya.

Vato confided in me that he was on the run. There was an Interpol warrant out for one Ramón Rodriguez. He didn't look like a Ramón. He didn't seem much concerned about the warrant either. He had surrendered to apathy about the situation, and planned to make money as long as he could to stay ahead of the authorities. Life on the lam had never been glamorous. There was no beach with margarita in hand. Only a life of disposable cel phones, and pre-paid credit cards. A life spent avoiding pen registers, and nervous waits in customs lines. The life of a blank. It was the wet dream of so many hustlers, robbers, and grifters. How many had planned the perfect score, only to be handcuffed on a Phuket beach while screaming to the high heavens that they had the wrong man?

Vato was a walking database on foreign intelligence agencies and their exploits. He loved talking about the cyanide in the toothpaste method, or the ricin pellet injected under the skin trick. Vato insisted that the true artists in the genre were the Mossad.  Assassinations to them were a form of creative expression. He claimed to have worked with, supplied dope to, and been trained by some of the world's finest alphabet agencies He would often point to people passing on the street and label them: DST, MI6, CIA, and whatever the KGB was calling itself these days. He changed hotels weekly, sometimes nightly. He went low-tech, and practiced the old school tradecraft on which the various groups had become lazy with the advances in electronic spying.  

Vato had a marketable skill. He was incredibly good at tolerating bullshit. It was equal parts talent and art. A skill that was needed in his line of work. The gods have their pincushions.  They needed them. They ferret them out of the rest of the population through endless ordeals. They looked for a sap that lives a joyless fucking existence, and then they go from there — heaping it on. Seeing how far they can push the blade in until you cry. They throw you down a well just to see if you dive in or cling to the walls as you fall. Either way, you go down to the bottom.

Vato had, like so many other men in Thailand, found redemption in the arms of a woman. He waxed on about her for the better part of twenty minutes, until he pulled out a picture from his wallet and showed her to me. It looked like someone had hit her in the face with a shovel, and then tried to cover the wreckage with blue eye shadow, and garish lipstick. Vato and Shovel Face, I thought. There should be a constellation named after them. The beast and the harlot were as old of a match as time itself.

"Pretty girl," I told him.

We passed car after car full of sleepers and afflicted. Several of them had managed to escape the confines of their vehicle and were staggering down the road. Before they knew we were there, we were already gone. We were in survival mode, not on a military search and destroy mission. Avoiding them was good enough. I saw one afflicted lady that reminded me of Nok. She wore a Hello Kitty shirt, and walked along, dragging her intestines on the ground behind her. We were effectively in a war zone, and an overwhelming sense of freedom overtook me.  There would be no more bills to pay. No more job to show up to. A man's worth would be measured by how well he could swing a machete, and by whatever he could manage to loot.

Now, Nok's carnival ride green skin was turning blue. I wondered if I could love her as a corpse. If she turned into one of the afflicted that roamed the city, I would like to follow her around at a distance just to study her daily life. I may even find a survivor or two and feed them to her. My role as a good provider would extend even beyond death. Part of me longed to see her chasing someone down the street in a blood frenzy, tackling the hapless retard who crossed her path. I would cheer her on saying shit like "You go girl!" or "Oh no she di-dn't!"

"We've got trouble," Vato said to me. Ahead, on the toll road was a minivan with a fat woman on the roof. Surrounding it was what seemed to be a group of children, or possibly midgets. Vato pulled the tuk tuk over and turned off the engine. "We're almost out of gas anyway man. This could be bad."

The minivan was about a hundred yards down the road. I looked at the endless line of cars around us.  Some of the bodies were gone. Others had Sleepers in them. A few of the cars had occupants that had already awakened and become afflicted. Apparently they were too stupid to figure out how the door handle worked on their cars, so they simply licked the windows, and starred at us.

"What do you think man?" I asked Vato.

He lit a cigarette and took a snort from another baggie in his pocket. "Only one way there. This road eventually ends up on ground level. It's elevated like this for just a little bit more.  I don't' see any tuk tuks ahead, do you?"

I looked down the length of the highway. It was all bumper to bumper traffic with cars and minivans. "No, man. Do you wanna see what's going on up ahead?  That fat lady might need some help."

"Not really. I didn't get this far by helping people."

"You helped me, and you're helping me now," I said

We stared at each other for a minute, then grabbed our machetes and walked towards the minivan. We crouched low behind the abandoned cars as we got closer to the scene. A woman on the wrong side of fifty was standing on top of a mauve colored minivan.  Surrounding her were around a dozen kids who had already become afflicted. Judging by their height, I guessed them to be no more than seven years old. Since this was Thailand, that probably meant ten. The kids seemed to be sobbing. It was the mournful cry that children let out when they went to bed without supper.  The woman seemed exhausted. She held a book in one hand and clutched onto a necklace with the other. She mumbled to herself in what was obviously a prayer.

"They're just kids. You think we can take em without getting bit?" Vato asked me.

"Fuck if I know. I'm not exactly keen on chopping up children."

"They're not children.  They're afflicted."

"Same same but different?"

Vato nodded, "Exactly."

I paused and felt my heart racing. I felt constipated. I needed stool softeners to offset the bowel paralyzing effects of doing so many opiates. My face must have shown it.

"What's the matter?" Vato asked me

"My hearts racing," I told him, "I should go back to the tuk tuk and get my Xanax."

"Nah, try this… Bear down like you're taking a shit. Grunt really hard for ten seconds. It lowers your heart rate. Trust me. I do it when I pass through customs if I'm nervous."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah man, I'll do it with you ok? Ready? Let's go."

Vato started grunting like he was pinching out a huge loaf. His face turned red, and veins began popping out of his temples. He motioned with his hand for me to hurry up and join him, if there was such a hand sign. I grunted a little and felt light headed. I tried it again and held it. I could feel my face becoming flush, and pressure building up in my eyeballs. Vato nodded and gave me the thumbs up. Before I could stop it from coming, a huge, rock hard turd shot out of my ass.

"Fuck!" I shouted.

"What's up bro? Did it work?'

"Yeah it fucking worked. I shit my pants."

"Dumbass, you're supposed to bear down, not actually shit yourself."

"You didn't say that."

"It's a vagal maneuver. I thought it was obvious."

I was wearing boxers. I could feel the turd starting to move. It was now directly under my balls.  "Fuck!" I shouted again, as I put down my machete and reached into the front of my pants. I fished around until I had my hand on it, when Vato backhanded me lightly on the shoulder.

"Um, hey dude," Vato said softly.

"Fuck! What?"

"Look up."

I still had my hand down the front of my pants holding onto the turd when I looked up. The group of afflicted children was standing on the opposite side of the cars — glaring at us. I could see they were wearing nametags in the shapes of hearts cut from construction paper. One named Fon, was staring at me. Half of her face was missing from bite wounds. Her lips were gone, exposing her teeth which were covered in blood, which I assumed, meant she had already claimed a victim of her own. I made a decision to continue with my turd extraction. It was part of some deeply imbedded desire to not be found dead with crap in my pants. The same desire back home led me into an agreement with a buddy that if one of us died, the other would have to go to our respective apartments and throw away all of the deceased guys porn collection before his mom could find it.

Vato jumped up and looked around. We were along the guardrail. On one side there were cars and afflicted children, and on the other side, a thirty-foot fall. He took off sprinting in the direction of Pattaya. He got about twenty feet and then stopped and turned around. He began jogging back again at a leisurely pace.  The afflicted children followed him with their eyes.

"Forgot your bag?" I asked him

"Yep."

"So what do we do?"

The bumper-to-bumper traffic created a continual barrier as far as the eye could see. Thus far, none of the afflicted had attempted to climb over the vehicles that separated us. I didn't want to be around when they figured out how.

"Hey lady!" Vato yelled to the woman on top of the minivan.

She was still mumbling with her eyes closed.

"What a retard," I said.

Vato chuckled, and looked at me. I was holding the turd in my right hand.

"Throw that at her. Get her attention," he said

I looked past the faces of the afflicted children to the woman. I held out my left arm as a sighting mechanism and let it fly. The afflicted children followed the flight of the turd with their heads. Their demeanor was that of a lazy cat that had just seen a ball roll by. My turd hit her in the face, and she let out a yelp. It bounced off of her cheek and tumbled down her chest, where it picked up height from her boobs like a ski lift and then settled on top of the book in her hand. My aim was improving.

"Nice shot," Vato said to me. He held his hand up for a high five.

I left him hanging on the high five as my attention was fixed on the afflicted children. Several of them were no longer visible.

"Where's the chick with her lips bit off?" I asked Vato.

"Who?"

"Fon, the chick, I mean the little girl with half her fucking face missing."

"Beats me," Vato said.

We both looked down. A tiny arm was poking out from under the car and reaching for Vato's foot. I raised my Machete and brought it down on the arm — severing it at the elbow.  There was no arterial spray like I expected. Rather it was a viscous substance that oozed out of her arm. The child it was attached to didn't seem to mind, as it continued to crawl out from under the car. To our right and left more afflicted children were emerging from below the other vehicles.

I jumped up on top of the car and one of the afflicted children reached out to snatch one of my ankles now that I was within reach. I needed to get to higher ground, so I ran down the length of the parked cars and hopped from one vehicle to the next. I could hear Vato behind me as he jumped onto the hood of a car I just ran across. I didn't see any minivans on our side of the road for a ways up. I looked behind me and saw the horde of afflicted children staggering towards us. I jumped down into the road and then hopped over the other row of cars. Vato was a beat behind me and almost went over the side of the elevated road when he jumped.

"What now fuckhead?" Vato said.

"I don't wanna leave Nok.  I'm gonna run back to the fat lady."

"Bro, we should—"

I was already sprinting.

"Wait up, homie," I heard Vato say.

I made it back to the mauve minivan. The woman hadn't moved. She was still mumbling to herself with her eyes closed. I hopped up on top of the hood and then clamored up to the top of the van. This was one of the jumbo style passenger vans seen throughout Thailand. The ones that sat eight people, but were often crammed with double that. I stood next to the fat woman and looked down at her book. It was in fact, a bible. It still had my turd on top of it.

Vato jumped up onto the hood and then climbed up with us. The horde of afflicted children was coming back again. They moved slow, and labored. The ones who had crawled beneath the cars were now returning to join the others. I saw Fon again. I had cut off her arm and for some reason felt sorry for her. That pity was gone the moment I saw the blood around her mouth.

"Good job, ace," Vato said.

I looked back at the fat woman again, and shook her shoulder. She whined a little but continued in her prayers. She had gigantic tits, which were held up by an industrial strength 1950's style bra.

"Hey!" I shouted at her.

No response. She wore a floral patterned shirt that flared at the bottom, in an apparent attempt to hide her sizable gut, which was almost as big as her boobs. A subtle, yet ostentatious crucifix hung between them. Her flabby grandma arms jiggled in syncopation with her fear tremors.

I looked at her bible and then a thought entered my head. It was, quite possibly, the worst idea I had all day.

"Dude, help me take her shirt off," I told Vato.

"Say what?"

"I want to take her bra and use it as a sling shot."

Vato chuckled. When he laughed, he sounded like a stoner.

"Seriously homes?"

"Yeah man, rapido."

I stepped around the fat woman and lifted up the back of her shirt. She had granny panties on that were pulled up over her midsection — cleverly disguising the rolls of fat, which smelled like bad cheese.

"Goddamn this mama is thick," Vato said.

"Don't molest her; just help me lift her shirt up."

"I gotta get rid of her bible first."

Vato pulled at the woman's bible, and the turd fell unceremoniously to the ground. Her grip was tight on it and she wouldn't let go. Vato tried prying her fingers off, when the woman raised her right hand and punched Vato in the jaw. She had a lot of center mass. If she would have put her hips into it, I'm sure she would have knocked him out.

"Rape!" She screamed.

I backed away from her and she turned to me, bible raised. She began beating me with the good book. I blocked most of her shots with my arms, but one got through and smacked me in the nose. My eyes began tearing up almost immediately.

"Grab her man!" I yelled to Vato.

He paused, and then snaked his arms through hers and wrapped her up in a full nelson. The woman easily sidestepped and got her legs behind Vato's. I could see the what the fuck? expression on his face as she bent down, snatched his leg up, and reverse body slammed him into the roof of the van.

"Fat bitch is a pro wrestler. Get her off of me!" Vato cried.

"Miss. Calm down okay?  Nobody's trying to rape you."

Her face changed from fear to rage. "What the fuck are you cocksuckers trying to do to me? Perverts!  I'll kill you like my ex-husband!"

"We just need your bra ma'am. I saw your bible, and I thought of David and Goliath. I wanted to use it as a sling to kill the afflicted."

"Fucking punks! I'll tear your balls off and shove 'em up your ass!"

The woman had taken Vato's back, and was applying a rear naked choke. His face began turning red. "Do something," he coughed.

I raised my machete over her head. "Ma'am, please! Let him go, or you'll force me to kill you. I just need your bra."

"Cocksucker mother fuckers!" she screamed. White spittle was shooting out of her mouth as she yelled. She had her forearm around Vato's trachea. It was a more painful choke than having your carotid artery squeezed. Vato made gurgling sounds as his eyes rolled back into his head.

I closed my eyes and brought the machete down RUF guerilla style.  I felt the metal hit her skull and then slide down the side of her head. The woman shrieked. When I opened my eyes, I could see I had sliced off her left ear. The woman let go of Vato and stood up. She held her left hand to her ear, and raised the other one in a fist.

"Stay back. I'm warning you," I told her.

The woman lunged at me in an apparent attempt at a double leg take down. She is a wrestler, I thought. I accidentally brought the machete upwards to her face to fend her off. The machete bit into her chin and then continued on — cutting off her lips. She screamed again. Blood ran down her flowery shirt and soaked her undulating belly.

"Don't kill her!" Vato shouted.

I was terrified. The damage had been done. I was about to become a murderer. I had sliced off her ear and her lips. She wouldn't be able to continue on like this. There was no medical care nearby, and I couldn't imagine her riding to Pattaya with us to find a doctor. It was best to put her out of her misery. The woman fell to her knees and covered her mouth with her hands. The human body triaged pain, and I gathered from this that the wound to her mouth hurt more than her ear. I stood over her and raised my machete.  The woman coughed on the blood running down her throat and looked up at me. I saw something then in the whites of her eyes. Something swimming.

The old woman began to laugh, "All you faggots are going to die!" she said. Blood gargled in the back of her throat as she continued to spit out a sting of obscenities.  The things swimming in her eyes looked like worms, and they darted back and forth as though searching for a way out. The woman continued to laugh maniacally, as the things in her eyes moved faster. I could see them crawling under the skin of her face towards her severed ear. They emerged from the ear cavity a moment later and turned what I believed to be their heads, in different direction.

Vato got back to his feet and retrieved his machete. He maneuvered around the woman and stood next to me. I glanced down at the road. All of the afflicted children were motionless. Their eyes transfixed on the old lady. I could see the same worms in the eyes of the child nearest to me.

"What is it?" Vato asked.

"How in the fuck should I know?"

"Is it a worm?"

"Looks like one."

The woman's head began to convulse and her eyes rolled back. I saw more movement under the skin on her face. This time, they were moving in all directions. Boils began forming on her head as the worms tried to push their way out. Her hair moved as the ones under her scalp also searched for an exit. I looked down at the afflicted children and they too were convulsing; their bodies writhing in full body spasms. Like a thousand infected hemorrhoids exploding at once, the worms shot out from the boils on the woman's head. They stood up in the air about two feet, and thrashed around violently. To an extent, she resembled a fat Gorgon.  

I looked back at the afflicted children. The worms inside all of them began boiling up as they convulsed. Then, as if in sync, the worms exploded from their heads in the same manner as the woman's. The afflicted children fell to the ground. Vato and I starred slack jawed and watched as the worms detached themselves from their hosts and scurried off underneath the cars. My gaze returned to the woman. Her face was contorted in pain. The worms that emerged from her scalp had spiked barbs along their bodies, and they were covered with bits of the woman's brain. I looked into her eyes and could see that she was dead already. Her body fell back onto the roof of the van, and the worms detached themselves from her head. They slithered over the side of the van and disappeared from sight.

There was no sound except for our own adrenaline-fueled breathing. Not even a call from a bird, nor the rustling of the wind. It seemed as though the whole world had died and left nothing in its will.

"Wow. That was fucking metal," I said

Vato looked at me, "You still want her bra?"

We looked around us at the scene. Dead children and a fat woman with holes in their heads from parasites. I'm not very smart, but this was fairly obvious.

"She was some kind of a trap," I said. "They were waiting for someone to come along and help the fat lady, and either the kids would get us or the fat lady would."

"Yeah man. They're probably all interconnected and shit. She's like the controller, and those worms took off when the main host died."

We knew it was parasites.  The only thing keeping them from taking over our minds was the drugs.

"I'm such a dumbass," I said.

"Sup man?"

"We've been getting fucked up this whole time, and Nok hasn't. If we've all got the parasites inside of us already, then we just need to give more drugs to Nok."

"Maybe, but she got bit by a monkey. They might have something else in them like monkey AIDS," Vato said.

"If she lives long enough to die from monkey AIDS, I'd be happy. I may as well just give her an overdose and send her off with a smile on her face."

I jogged back to where we left Nok. She was asleep in the back of the tuk tuk. I tried to wake her by yelling, shaking, and some light slapping. Nothing would work. I asked Vato for his baggie and went to work tying to rub some on her gums.

"There's other ways to get that inside of her you know?" Vato said.

"You got a syringe?"

Vato looked through his bag. "I have a box of them. I busted into a medical center and took some necessities before I ran into you. You need any steroids?"  

"No thanks. Why would you take steroids when there's so much other shit to take?" I asked him

Vato looked at me like I was a total newb. "I was told to meet the Ka Yai in Pattaya. Its gonna be full of Jarheads, Navy squids, and about a thousand horny old men. I took what I thought I could barter. Mainly Viagra and steroids.  Those Jarheads especially will want some roids."

"Whatever. Can you show me how to do this? I've never shot someone up before?"

Vato used an old aluminum can that he found instead of a spoon, and the stuffing out of a kids toy from one of the cars in lieu of cotton.  I tied up her arm with my belt and slapped her arm to get a vein. Vato handed me the syringe. I took it from him and did my best not to fuck it up. I released the belt and the effect was almost immediate. 

Nok's face came back to life little by little.

"Give her some more man," Vato said.

"She's gonna overdose."

"Have you overdosed yet?  You've done more than enough to kill an elephant. This shit is just leveling us out."

"You're right. Fix me up another," I told him.

We gave Nok three more shots, until she finally opened her eyes and yawned. She seemed quite refreshed.

"Oi. Where we go?" she asked.

I stroked her hair and kissed her nose. My world was far more interesting with her alive in it.

"We go to Pattaya. Pattaya not very far more," I said.

"Bro, you talk to her like she's a fob," Vato said.

"It helps her understand."

"What fob mean?" Nok asked.

"It mean you fresh off the boat," I told her.

"What boat?" she asked, "I don't take boat."

"See what you started?" I told Vato.

"Where the crazy guy who dress like pooying?" Nok asked.

"He's dead. We burned him with fire."

Nok stood up and stretched her legs. She looked down the road full of parked and abandoned cars. "Oi, have big big rot tit," she said.

"Huh?" said Vato.

"She just said there's a lot of traffic. She mixes her Thai and English."

"We go walking, na?" Nok said.

"Let's go man," I said to Vato.

"Let me grab my shit. I guess we can find another ride up ahead."

We walked past the scene with the fat woman, and decided to take a look in the van. We found some bottled water and bags of chips. Many of the cars were stocked with supplies.  There was simply no place to go in the gridlock. The tuk tuk we had was nice and new, but when it ran out of gas we opted to treat them like disposable lighters. In hind sight it was incredibly dumb. Siphoning off gas would have been a much better idea, but we didn't have a hose or a gas can and we were simply too lazy to look. Now we had walked a mile and still no more tuk tuks.

"Let's turn back and get the tuk tuk. I don't see anymore up ahead. We just need to get some gas," I said.

"Yes. It very hot. You go get. I wait here," Nok said.

"There's probably one down the road a little. Just gotta keep walking," Vato added.

I jumped up on one of the parked cars and scanned the line. There weren't any. I turned around and looked in the direction that we came. I thought I saw something again, moving just out of the corner of my eye. Whenever I turned to see it directly, it was gone.

"You're right. I'm getting a bad vibe. Like there's something following us. Let's keep going," I said.

Nok bitched and moaned, moaned and bitched, but that was common for her, especially when it was hot.  She grew up here, and still never adjusted to the heat.

We slouched along under the oppressive sun, passing cars with sleepers and afflicted inside. Vato amused himself by stuffing newspaper inside the gas tanks and setting them on fire.  The only time I saw him stop was when we passed a car with an afflicted infant inside. There were two car seats, which meant the family wasn't Thai, for Thai's had no problem strapping a newborn onto the gas tank of a motorcycle and then racing through traffic. Such a thing as car seats could only be a safety precaution that a farang would care about. One of the car seats was empty and covered in blood. The afflicted infant that survived had apparently eaten his sibling. Vato was enthralled as he looked through the car window at the baby.

"How's that even possible?  The kids like ten months old. He probably hardly has any teeth," Vato said.

"I don't know man. Why don't you stick your hand through the window and find out," I told him.

Vato had his face up to the glass and on the other side, the baby did too. "Cute little guy," he said.  Vato then opened the gas tank and stuffed newspaper in.

I cackled. Something about the gallows humor of it all. Surrounded by death and horror, it was common for people to make fun of corpses, the way soldiers did in war. Every time I was presented with something awful to contemplate, I ended up cracking up.

"You're gonna tell the baby he's cute, and then set him on fire? That's so monumentally fucked up. Why don't you at least club him in the head and give him a less painful death?" I said.

"Listen, douche. In case you didn't notice, hitting them in the head doesn't totally work. Remember those worms that popped out of the fat lady when you hit her? You gotta burn them and destroy the whole creature. This isn't a fucking zombie movie."

I turned my head away. Nok was a devout Buddhist and she prayed for the soul of every dead body we were faced with. Vato burning the baby seemed to disturb her more.

"Baby going to become Phii Dek," she said.

"I know." Just pray to Buddha for him and maybe he be okay," I told her.

"What the fuck's a Phii Dek?" Vato asked.

"Nothing to worry about.  Just a ghost baby that will probably haunt you the rest of your life," I said.

Vato lit the newspaper anyway, and we walked down the road. About thirty seconds later, the gas tank caught and it exploded. More cars around it caught fire, and when I turned I could see the smoke rising from the twenty or so cars that Vato had already burned. Long black columns of smoke wafted into the air. We may have just as well taken out an ad telling people where we are.

"We should probably cool it with the car burning man. You're letting the afflicted know our location," I said to Vato.

"You might have told me twenty cars ago."

"It just occurred to me."

We walked another 30 minutes and the road started to slope down where it met ground level again.  The traffic was still gridlocked. Everybody, it seemed, had the same idea to leave town. Bangkok's normal traffic was epic. Putting to shame anything I had ever bitched about in Los Angeles. During a crisis; the roads in Thailand turned into a parking lot.

"Get ready to be happy gang. I think I see something up ahead with three wheels," I said.

"Where all the tuk tuk go?" Nok asked.

"The tuk tuks and the scooters are the only things that could navigate this gridlock. They're probably gone," I told her.

"Arai na?"

I was forgetting to put it in her language. "Too many car. Car too big to go. Tuk tuk and motorcycle very small. They can go more. Kao jai mai?" I said

She nodded, "Yes I understand."

We walked down the highway ramp to the very bottom.   Vato spotted the three wheeled rickshaw and ran up to it. I could see him jumping up and down. As I got closer, I realized that it wasn't happiness, but rage.

"Its pedal powered man.  Goddamnit," he said.

"Wow. Really? That blows," was all I could say.

"Fuck it. Let's just take it until we find something else."

Vato seemed to be losing it. I didn't want to break his heart, but something needed to be said.

"It has flat tires man," I told him.

Vato looked down and began to sob. He started crying for his mother in Spanish.

"Jai yen yen. It okay. We find another one, na?" Nok said to him.

Vato pulled out the baggie from his pocket and started doing monster lines of H.

"Why there nobody here?" Nok asked

I looked around. It was indeed, a wasteland.

"Probably because all of the afflicted have gone to Pattaya. They're probably drawn to more urban areas," I said.

"Arai na?"

I slapped my forehead.   This got old after a while. "Many people go to city. No people here because nothing for them to eat. The dead people want to eat more people so they walk that way," I added, pointing towards Pattaya. Nok seemed satisfied with my explanation.

"Listen man, I'm sorry this turned into such a cluster fuck. Just think off all that sweet Thai booty that you'll get once we're in Pattaya," I said.

Nok punched my shoulder.   She understood that at least.

"Honey, we can take rice plow. One over there," Nok said.

I looked over to my right.  I had seen it before, but had simply ruled it out because I had no idea how it worked.

"Can you drive it?" I asked her.

"Yes, can."

"Sweet. You see man, it's all good now," I told Vato.

Nok handled the plow amazingly well. Growing up on her farm near Cambodia imbued in her a skill set that most survivalists would admire. She could start a fire with sticks, spot fruit in the trees from far away, and if I wanted a coconut, she would just kick off her flip-flops and climb a tree like a monkey. She was the girl you would want to be stranded on an island with.

This plow was basically an engine on top of extremely raked out front forks. The only thing I could compare it to was a Mad Max style custom chopper, mated with a third world tractor. We sat in the back while Nok rode on its horse and carriage style bench seat. She steered the motorcycle style handlebars and got the thing off road. This beast was designed to pull through rice fields. It easily handled the ground off the highway.

"Where I go?" Nok yelled back to me over the noise of the engine.

"Just keep going straight.  Dtrong bpai."

We drove for the better part of an hour until the outskirts of the Pattaya conurbation came into view.  Death settled over the landscape like a shroud. There were random afflicted wandering the streets. Nok would drive up next to one and Vato and I would hack with our machetes. I practiced different strokes until I had it right. I would swing the heavy Thai machete and catch the afflicted at the base of the skull, and the head would come off clean. By the tenth one, my hands were starting to become blistered. This was what I imagined ancient chariot warfare to be like, which gave me a totally bitchin' idea.

"Yo. Do you know what a scythed chariot was?" I asked Vato.

"Maybe. Refresh my memory," he said.

"The ancient Persians used them. It's just a chariot with blades attached to the wheels. You drive through a crowd and it cuts their legs off."

"So?"

"So… That would be fucking metal right? We could turn this rice plow into an apocalypse death machine.  You know, deck it out with chainsaws, and spikes all over it. Some killer fuckin blades on the wheels and then we could just roll through the city. It would be badass," I said.

Vato looked at me the way a psychiatrist does to a patient who just told him that he can talk to Kenny Rogers on his microwave.

"Yeah, that's great and everything. Sounds like quite a project," Vato said.

"Lets do it man!" I said.  I was apparently way too excited.

Vato spoke slowly and deliberately, "You know that guy at the party who does way too much coke, and starts coming up with all kinds of great ideas of shit to do, but really just sits there and does more coke?"

"Yeah?"

"You're becoming that guy."

The afflicted were becoming more frequent. When we would hit one, the worms inside their heads would begin exploding out of giant boils. We saw sleepers as well. The afflicted left the sleepers alone. They only attacked people who…

"I'm confused," I told Vato. "Check it out, we've all got these parasites in us right?'

"Uh huh."

"And the rage that takes over when you're not on drugs makes you attack someone else?"

"Right. I guess."

"Then that person becomes a sleeper and they awaken as one of the afflicted, right?"

"You're very observant, yes," Vato said.

"Then the afflicted attack someone else and they become a sleeper and so on."

"Who cares man? What's your point?"

"My point is… hang on… shit, I forgot what I was going to say."

Nok drove the rice plow, and we hacked at a few more afflicted. Up ahead, I could see the hotels that lined Beach Road. To the right was the ocean. There were more and more afflicted walking around. In the distance I could hear gunshots.

"Fuck yeah man! High five," Vato said.

I high-fived him.

"Once more with feeling bro. That was lame."

I smacked the shit out of his hand. It was hard enough to make us both wince.

"Check it out. I remember now," I said.

"Who cares man? We are fucking here bro," Vato patted Nok on the shoulder. "Good driving babe," he said.

"These parasites are evolving. I think they may even be mating when they make contact with another person." I said. I was talking fast, trying to get my point across.

"Whatever man," Vato said.  "I am gonna lock myself in a room for a month with an eight ball of cocaine, a case of whiskey, and about nine or ten Thai girls."

"Look man, this is important. I had tapeworm last year. It freaked me the fuck out to know I had a parasite living in me. All this Thai street food I eat, not to mention the shit I eat out in the countryside, it's literally laden with parasites. I went to the pharmacy and they gave me Albendazole. It killed the worm, but it made me want to read a bunch of stuff about it—"

"You're really a killjoy aren't you man? I don't want to hear about your butt worms."

"Dickhole, listen to me for a second. I read that there are parasites that start off as one creature in the human body, and then evolve as they pass from organ to organ or from host to host. Some parasites can communicate with others, letting the others know that this is a good host to live in. These parasites are in the brain, and they are blocked by heavy drug use… get it?"

"Yes, I get it. That's brilliant. I think you should win the Nobel Prize for that insight," Vato said. He really could genuinely not give a shit. I gave up.

We got to the northernmost part of Beach Road. There was a barricade across the street made of piles of tires and sharpened sticks. It seemed to have been overrun judging by the amount of blood on the ground.

"Honey, where we go now?" Nok said, as she stopped the rice plow.

"Looks like we're going the rest of the way by foot," I said

"Arai na?"

"We walk now."

The Sun was beginning to set over the ocean. Pattaya Beach was a cesspool by Thai standards. It looked nice in the travel brochures but the reality was far more wretched. Freelance hookers plied their trade along the beach at night, leaving used condoms, cigarette butts, and the occasional syringe, which waited like traps for your feet in the sand. We saw too many afflicted along the road, so we decided to walk along the beach. In a worst case scenario, we could swim out into the ocean if we got swarmed by the horde. There were too many of them for us to take on with a couple of machetes.

We spotted a couple of Jet Ski's on the sand. One still had a key inside of it. It was built for two, but Nok was small and in the Thai tradition of cramming four people, a baby, and possibly a pet monkey on a scooter, we pulled the Jet Ski out into the water and go on board.

The staccato of gunfire could be heard in the distance. I drove the Jet Ski parallel to the beach about a hundred yards off the coast. As we neared the entrance to walking street, I could see a massive horde of afflicted in front of a fortified position.  Whoever thought up the barricade obviously had some military training. The barricade itself was improvised out of large tour busses and huge piles of tires that formed watch towers. There were sentries on top of the towers, and there was a machine gun squad on top of each of the buses. The horde itself was in the thousands.

I heard the zip of a gunshot go past my ears. Someone had us in their sights. I wasn't sure if it was a warning shot or if it was meant to be deadly. I pulled the throttle on the Jet Ski, and we hauled ass further south and further out into the ocean. We passed the entrance to Walking Street and we were now parallel with the seaside bars and restaurants that lined the coast. Most of the bars along the coast had an outdoor section where one could sit and look over a rail at the fish that gathered to feed on scraps of food. I could clearly see that the open railings had been boarded up or covered with even more tires. In the world of field expedient improvised barriers, tires were the new black.

Another gunshot rang out at us. I could tell the shooter was in front of us because of the sonic boom that the round made when it went past my head. Or so said the movies I had seen.  Whoever was taking aim at us obviously had a high-powered scope. I raised my hands up in the universal sign of please don't fucking shoot me.

"What's up with these douchebags man?" Vato said.

"I have no idea. Don't these retards know that the afflicted can't drive motorized personal watercraft?" I said.

"Honey, look. There another boat come," said Nok. She was sandwiched between Vato and me. Vato was wearing the backpack full of drugs. He kept freaking out that it would fall off into the ocean.

A speedboat appeared from the South, coming from the direction of Jomtien. I felt resigned to my fate at this point. As the boat drew nearer, I could hear something being called out to us from a bullhorn. It was a Russian accent.

"Maybe it's those Groped by Gorbechev guys," Vato said.

The boat pulled to within fifty yards. There were four guys on board who looked like Chechen rebels.  They were all decked out in camouflage and ski masks, and were sporting Kalishnakovs's. I chuckled, as did Vato. Normally, guys like this would probably intimidate me, but I think we were way beyond giving a shit. 

One of the more rotund Chechen rebels held the bullhorn and shouted into it for us to follow him. Their boat turned around and headed towards the seaside end of Walking Street.

"Take off or follow him?" I asked of my passengers.

"Just go man. Get it over with. They probably just want to make sure we aren't infected," Vato said.

"What do you think baby?" I asked Nok

"Arai gordai," she said

"Huh?" said Vato

"She says it's up to me."

I pulled back on the throttle and followed the boat to the end of walking street. There was a makeshift dock with a dozen or so more guys dressed like the Chechen's. One of them pulled off his ski mask and revealed the weather beaten and bearded face of a man from the Caucasus Mountains. Thailand, in recent years had become a haven for everyone from Somali pirates, to FARC guerillas, Nigerian scam artists, and the Russian mob. This was the world's new Casablanca. They were vomited out of Russian gulags and the darkest African torture rooms. Mercenaries, liars, thieves, spies, and smugglers, all desired Thailand's beaches as their own personal retirement locale.

A Russian, vodka eyed and brutish looking, stepped forward. 

"Ah, everything A-okay. You comes to my city and you must checks out with doctor. He say everything A-okay and you can do's some business here. My name Val, and who's is yours?"

"I'm Joel, and this is Nok and Vato," I said.

"Pleasures is mine. Won't you please disembarks from the watercrafts?" Val said.

We got off the Jet Ski and it was immediately sat upon by one of the Chechen's. The rest of them began smoking ice and passed around the pipe.

"Thank you for bringing backs my watercraft's.  Somebody takes it before and they get's eaten by these dead worm head's," Val said. He seemed affable enough.

"Now I takes you to doctor and he looks you over.  That A-okay with you guy's?" Val asked.

I nodded.

We followed Val to a storefront Thai massage place. It had been turned into an impromptu medical center. Men from the front lines, which I gathered was, only a few blocks north of us, were being treated for their wounds.

"I gathers you guys did many copious amounts of drugs ifs you guys alives this long. Only peoples who's seems survives this epidemic are ones who's getting gratuitously fucked up. I am correct in these presumptions?" Val said. His accent was thick, but nonetheless awesome. I tried to duplicate it so he could understand us better.

"Val, Thank you for lettings us into these last bastion of civilization in these worlds full of worm heads. Yes, you are correct in these presumptions you haves of us. We were indeed getting gratuitously fucked up. My wife Nok has bites on her arms from these monkey creatures. If your doctor can tends to her wounds, we would gladly pays you in copious amounts of drugs," I said.

Vato gave me a look that said both shut the fuck up, and I'm going to kill you later.

"You's guys have copious drugs?" Val asked.

"Not's copious Val. I misspoke," I said, nervously backtracking, and then pulled out the baggie of H that Vato gave me.  It had at least three or four grams left in it.

"Where's you gets these?" Val asked.

I stammered. My usual capacity for making up on the spot bullshit was failing me. Vato came to the rescue as the super Mexican.

"We're here to see the big boss named Chang, and I know you ain't him. So why don't you quit fucking around Val, and take us to him?" Vato said. He was throwing it down.

"How's you knows Chang?" Val asked.

"I'm his courier. He's expecting me, and I know he doesn't like to be kept waiting."

Val looked Vato up and down. Vato had rolled up his shirtsleeves to reveal some of his prison ink. A large Virgin De Guadalupe tattoo adorned his forearm. The rest were spider webs and chicks with big titties wearing sombreros. The Virgin herself would have been proud.

Val pulled out his radio and spoke Russian to someone. They went back and forth as Val gripped his AK-47 a little tighter. After several minutes, Val slung the AK over his shoulder and motioned us to follow him.

"Guy is some low level thug and he's trying to shake down the new fish. It's prison rules dawg, you can't be a bitch with these mofo's," Vato said. He was being extra gangsta'.

We were led outside, and down the road to a small side street known as a soi. The bar business was alive and well. Beer bars were crammed full of American Marine's and sailors. They were easily spotted for their boisterous behavior and cranking of speed metal. It was a complete sausage party. The British were much more subdued by comparison. One bar full of Brits was playing The Spice Girls.

"That's seriously gay," Vato said.

The Russians tended to stay to themselves. The bars they frequented blasted Russian folk music, and disco beats from the '70s. We passed a bar catering to African's, a few of which were sitting at the outside tables and cutting up lines of cocaine mixed with gunpowder called brown brown.

"I'm expecting the Star Wars cantina song to start playing any minute now," I said to Vato.

We were taken to a bar with smoked glass windows. More guards of the Chechen variety stood as sentries outside. They patted us down and then demanded to look inside of Vato's bag.  He was having none of it, even when they pointed their guns at him. One of the guards called inside on his radio and exchanged some words in Russian. Static sounded on the guard's radio and then they stepped aside to let us in.

"Haves a good times," one of the Chechen's said.

"Spasibo," I replied, meaning thank you in Russian. This elicited a Russian bear style pat on the back, which popped a few of my vertebrae out of alignment.

The inside of the club was opium den chic. It was decorated with brocade curtains, velvet couches, and a contingent of heavily tranquilized leopards that were chained to a wall. Half naked women gyrated to a mesmerizing ambient trance soundtrack, while partygoers sitting in booths smoked, shot, or snorted every drug on the DEA no-no list.

"So which one is Genghis Khan?" I asked Vato.

I scanned the crowd, half-expecting my eyes to meet a man on a throne being hand fed grapes by slave girls and fanned by servants. The man Vato pointed out to me was not nearly as impressive.

"That's him," Vato said.

He pointed to a morbidly obese Thai man sitting in a booth. The man was ensconced in thick gold chains and probably had half a pound of gold rings on his fingers. He wore a wife beater, and judging by his large, womanly nipples poking through—he was kind of chilly. 

"Jabba the Hut over there?" I asked.

"What's with you and the Star Wars references?"

"You don't like Star Wars?"

"No, I'm not twelve."

"So, I guess you have to give up your bag of China huh?"

Vato's face expressed utter dejection, "Yeah man, this is the cost of admission to Pattaya though. I'll be happy with just keeping my life. Can you back me up if something goes wrong?"

I looked around the room, and did a quick count of men armed with guns. I stopped when I got past twenty. "Yeah, sure, I got your back mang. Let's go talk to this fat fuck."

"Seriously man, don't make fun of his weight. He's kind of sensitive."

"He's sensitive with a name like Chang, and he's wearing a wife beater with his man boobs hanging out?" I said. Chang means Elephant in Thai. I suppose it could be referring to his memory, or possibly his schlong though.

"Just be cool and let me do the talking," Vato said, and then looked over my shoulder. "What's wrong with your girl bro?"

"Huh?"

"Turn around and check out Nok. She's trippin out, homie."

I turned around and looked at Nok. She was standing behind a lady in a booth and picking through the woman's hair.  Every time she would touch the woman, the woman would slap her hands away. Nok would go right back to doing it again, even after being rebuffed. The woman was Russian, and if not for being extremely fucked up, I'm sure a cat fight would have erupted. I walked over to Nok quickly and pulled her away.

"Babe, what are you doing?" I asked her.

"Oi, I very hungry and I see bug in lady hair and I want to eat," she said.

"Homie, let's do this," Vato called out to me.

"Nok, Just sit down okay? I'll find you some food in a few minutes."

"Okay," she said meekly.

I walked over to Vato again, "Do you have any more of that H in the baggie? I think Nok needs another hit."

Vato dug in his pocket and gave me the baggie. It had about only a few grams left in it. "Hurry up man," he said.

I went back over to Nok and handed it to her. "Honey, if you start feeling bad again, just take some more of this okay?"

She nodded and then put her head down on the table. I hoped she would sleep through whatever happened next. I went back over to Vato, and dusted off his shirt in an attempt to make him presentable.

"You ready to meet your maker?"

"Let's just get this over with," he said

Chang's opulent fatness took up the better part of the booth. He was flanked on either side by an extremely beautiful Tiffany showgirl. They were dolled up in pageant wear, replete with tiara's and evening gowns. If you saw them on the street you would never know they were born male.

Vato walked up to the booth and handed his backpack to one of the Tiffany showgirls. Chang was talking on his cel phone to someone in Thai. I talked to Vato out of the corner of my mouth, trying to do my best ventriloquist impersonation.

"Dude, the cel phones are working again," I said.

"Shut up man. Worry about it later."

"Cel phones man, cel phones."

"I know.  I fucking heard you the first time. Shut up."

Chang hung up his phone and began stirring a drink with one of his extremely long pinky fingernails. It looked like he had a recent manicure. So did the Tiffany girls for that matter.

"So tell me, Ramon, how was your trip to Antwerp?" Chang said to Vato.

"It went well, sir. The Mossad said that the bagels are covered in cheese, but they are out of lox."

"No lox? Really? Are you sure they didn't just give all the lox to the Burmese?"

"I don't believe so, sir, but it's always a possibility. The Burmese have started up their own bagel factory and are making their own cheese. They need lox to complete the sandwich."

"Yes they do. Yes they do. Tell me Ramon, how is our old friend Canada? Is she still a whore?"

"Yes, sir. Very much so, sir. Canada has been taken into the FBI witness protection program. We believe that Canada has been spotted somewhere in Nebraska, and is possibly with our old friend Sri Lanka," Vato said. I could tell his voice was starting to shake.

"I knew that whore would go to the American's. Did the Mossad mention anything about a bagel factory operation in Laos?" Chang said.

"Sir, I can give you a full debrief in written form if you like."

Chang pulled his fingernail out of the drink and placed a drop of alcohol on his tongue. It seemed reptilian. "No, you will debrief me now."

Vato, AKA Ramon, searched for the right words within the lexicon of crime speak.   "The Mossad said to wait for your order, and that if you keep nagging the waitress, she may spit in your food."

"They said that did they?"

Vato gulped, "Yes, sir."

"Very well then. How did the operation go at the airport? Did you get the package?"

"It's in the bag, sir."

"All of it?"

Vato stammered, "Well, it may be a little short. I had to use some myself in order to get it back to you."

"I commend your efforts to bring this to me. I have many more errands I need you to run." Chang said. He then reached below the table and pulled out a small gold bar. He tossed it to Vato. "This should complete your compensation. That will be the desired currency from now on. That and what you brought for me today."

Vato weighed the bar in his hand. "Thank you, sir."

"Enjoy your stay in Pattaya. I have a hotel room for you. It has all of the amenities you will like. A person will come to see you tonight and give you the details of your next job. You may leave now. Val will take you to where you will stay." Chang said. He finished his drink, and reached over and put his hand in the lap of one of the Tiffany girls. We took that as our cue that the meeting was adjourned.

"Like butter baby," I said to Vato.

"Shut up. We'll talk outside."

"What in the fuck was all that about with the cream cheese and the Mossad?"

"Seriously homes, you're getting under my skin—what the Hell is your girl doing?" he said.

I looked over at Nok. She was accosting the same woman again by picking through her hair and eating imaginary insects.  "She thinks she's a monkey," I said.

"Let's just get her out of here before we blow the mood," Vato said.

"I concur."

I led Nok out the front door as discreetly as possible, and turned to Vato to ask him another question. He saw it coming a mile away and shook his head. "Later. Not now," he said.

Vato told Val to take us to the hotel that Chang had for us.

"Yes, you guys going to be A-okay, Chang say he going to puts you up in most majestic hotels in Pattaya. Very elegant places you will be staying. Come with me," said Val.

We were taken to a rickshaw that was being pulled by a man dressed in a conservative 1960's-style white shirt and skinny black tie. He looked like a Mormon.

"These your driver," said Val. "He takes you to hotels. You goings to be A-okay."

"Thanks Val," said Vato. "Do you know if there are any girls available at the hotel?"

"Yes but many have worms in pussies. Worms crawls up your dicks and eats your brains. I stays away if I weres you."

Val made an elaborate gesticulation with his hands that supposedly pantomimed the act of intercourse, followed by a worm crawling up a man's penis, and then working its way through the body, to its final resting place in the brain. The quasi-performance art sketch culminated with Val having a seizure and then worms exploding out of his eyeballs. When he was finished, he pulled back the charging handle on his AK and walked away.

PART II

Our rickshaw started to travel down Walking Street to our hotel. There was a whip inside the rickshaw when we sat down.  I assumed it was to use on our Mormon coolie. As tempting as it was, I decided to refrain.

"You can whip me if you like," said the Mormon coolie. "Its how I repent to Jesus for having sinned with my penis."

"Isn't that more of an Opus Dei thing?" I asked him.

"It's my thing," he said. "I must do a penis penance."

"Fuck it, just whip him already." Vato said.

"You sure buddy? You won't hold it against me?" I asked the coolie.

"Please do it, sir."

"Well, since you said please."

I swung the whip over my head and brought it down on the Mormon coolies back. I didn't have the technique down, so the whip fell limply across his body.

"You have to create a snap through the wrist dude, so it will travel down the length of the whip," Vato said.

I dropped the whip to the floor of the rickshaw, "Sorry man, I'm tired. We'll have to give you a penis penance tomorrow."

"Thank you, sir, I must find away to make amends for my transgressions."

"Yo, homie, what drugs were you doing when the shit jumped off?" Vato said.

"You mean when the Angels came?" The coolie said.

"I thought they were parasites," I said

"No, no, no. Not parasites. They are messengers of the Lord. That's why this happened only in Thailand. This is a place of wickedness and debauchery. The Lord is smiting all the sinners."

"Really? Last time I checked, the only people still alive were the ones getting fucked up on drugs and banging everything in sight," Vato said.

"That is because you are the Devil's children. The Lord took the good ones to Heaven with him, and left the sinners to live here in the absence of his divine love. The fire of Hell is simply the light of God as experienced by those that reject him."

"Wow, you're really a buzz kill aren't you man?" I said.

"He's probably a Chester," Vato said.

"What is a Chester, sir?" asked the coolie.

"You know, a booty bandit. You like little kids don't you?"

"No, sir. My sins are far more wicked.  My sins have banned me from Heaven forever."

The coolie walked the Rickshaw up to the front of a hotel and stopped.

"Here you are. The Angkor Golden Boner.  Enjoy your stay, sir," he said.

We got out of the rickshaw and stood in front of the hotel. The Angkor Golden Boner was a short time love hotel. I wasn't sure if the owners were Thai or Cambodian. Could have even been a Brit with a sense of humor. I had seen this hotel before when it was named something else. Then I remembered what it was famous for. An ex-pat from the States was discovered to have chained over a dozen women to the walls in his room. He had removed their teeth and tortured them for months. He tried to make them conceive his children. When they didn't get pregnant, he would cut up one of the girls and force-feed the pureed remains to the others. He raped and tortured them daily until one of the girls broke free and ran for help.  The man fled the country and was never caught. Less than three months later, a Thai horror movie came out depicting the events.

"Damn dawg, this place is a dump," Vato said.

"It's from that movie about the dude who chained up all those chicks and put them in a blender," I said.

"Arai na?" Nok said. She was starting to look sick again. I couldn't tell her about the history of the hotel. As superstitious as she was, I knew she would never stay here.

"Nothing babe. How you feel?"

"Oi, have big big buat hua," she said.

"Okay, let's go upstairs and I'll get you something for your headache. Then you can lay down okay?"

She nodded passively. I'd spent twelve hours on a bus ride with her before and she didn't say a word the whole time.  It was one of the things I liked about her. When she was quiet for long periods, it didn't mean something was wrong, it just meant she knew when to leave a brother alone.

"I just hope I'm not sleeping in a puddle of cum. This place looks gnarly," Vato said.

We checked into the hotel, and I was amused to learn that the concierge actually wanted to photocopy our passports.  The guy behind the counter probably hadn't been paid for a month or more, but still held out hope that things would return to normal and feared that the big boss would yell at him for not doing his job—even at the end of the world.

They gave us one room with a double bed.

"Maybe they think we're having a three way," Vato said.

"Just hope they have hot showers," I said.

"There should be a nice surprise in the room for us. There is every time Chang puts me up in a hotel."

"He always puts you up in a shit hole like this?" I said.

"He prefers the term safe house, I think."

The elevators didn't work so we had to walk up six floors to our room. In Cambodia, rents were cheaper on the lower levels because of this very reason. This made the Angkor name of the hotel a little more relevant.

The interior of the room was mind-boggling, even by love hotel standards. Heart shaped beds and bathtub.  Love swing over the bed. Mirrors absolutely everywhere. I caught a flash of something moving in the corner of my eye again when I saw my reflection. The creatures from when I wore the toupee were all around us. I would only have to adjust my eyes to see them.

Vato began looking around the room for something. He opened up all the drawers and finally found it in an antique Chinese armoire.

"That armoire is a little out of place don't you think?" I said.

"Not really man. You can pick up antiques in Asia for next to nothing. The people all think that the ghosts of whoever owned it before are still drawn to their furniture and shit. Having this in a Thai persons house is almost as bad as summoning a demon."

"So what's inside?"

"Check it out, yo," Vato said, and he pulled out an antique opium tray with all of the original equipment. It had an oil lamp, long needles to spin the opium, and a beautiful pipe with a doorknob shaped bowl that I figured would be worth a shit load on EBay.

We each took a hot shower and I put Nok to bed after giving her some H. Vato and I sat on the floor while he fired up the oil lamp. In a porcelain urn, was a golf ball sized chunk of opium. I could smell its floral aroma from a few feet away.

Vato placed opium pellet in the pipe, and held it over the lamp.

"When I was young and living in Cali, I parked my car in the garage and was about to turn it off and go inside the house. I was sitting in the car and listening to a radio show. The car exhaust started filling the garage and I began to feel drowsy. I knew what was happening to my body, and I knew if I left the engine on that I would go to sleep and never wake up. I wasn't depressed. I didn't hate my life. I don't know what it was but something just made me want to leave the engine on and see what happened. I started to get a headache and feel nauseous. My eyelids grew heavy and I started to close them. The headlights were on in the car, and the windows were fogging up. I saw something through the windshield.  A shape of some kind. It was a human form standing in front of my car. The lights were on but I couldn't see who it was through the car exhaust and the fog on the windows.  The shape started to move side to side, as if it was gently dancing and rolling its hips. Then the shape stretched out a pair of long, slender arms and placed them on the hood. It moved gracefully like a woman, and began climbing up onto the front of my car. I still couldn't see it clearly. It was as if it was made of shadow. It crawled towards the windshield and placed its hands on the glass. I was almost out by now. My eyes were closing and my mind was completely clouded by the fumes. I opened them one last time and saw a face staring at me through the glass. It was a woman. Her face was beautiful with a subtle hint of malice. She had big, cat like eyes, and full lips. She smiled at me. Her teeth were perfect and white. She opened her mouth, and her head began to convulse. Her head came through the windshield. It didn't break through, dawg — it came through. Her mouth widened and I was looking down into a cave. What I saw down there… "

Vato took a long pull from the opium pipe. He held the smoke in his lungs and exhaled a blue plume of vapor.

"What I saw down there could only be described as a perfect mixture of paradise and some kind of Hell realm. I saw beautiful, white sand beaches with crystal clear water, and piles of burning bodies. I saw myself on a bed, boning a group of beautiful women.  Our twisted bodies and limbs morphed into something out of a fucking Bosh painting. It was though I was standing in front of a door. I had the choice to enter or not. Nothing was being forced upon me. I was seeing another world. My next life. Or maybe the possibilities within this life. Then I felt hands pulling me out of my car. I woke up in a hospital. The rest is… well, I'm here right? After I got out of the hospital, I knew my purpose.  I had to see the world. I never stopped to reflect on who that woman was in the garage that night. Maybe it was an angel, or a demon. Who the fuck knows? Whatever she was, she showed me the possibilities in this lifetime."

Vato let the opium pipe fall from his hand.

"Everything I've seen so far; things I can never tell anyone about, have led me to one conclusion — that there are no gods… just a world like ours, only full of spirits. They have their leaders too. Some are elected. Some appointed. Some who took power by force. They have a beginning as well — an evolution. They evolved the same way we did.  They wage war, and have their criminals and madmen. In their world, they call no one God. It's the same as in prison, dawg. There are shot callers and bitches… and guess what? Now they're here."

There was a knock at the door.

"Can you get that, homes?" Vato said. The urban gangster slang was obviously part of his act, or his cover. I didn't know what to believe, but somehow, I trusted him. I opened the door to the room and one of the Chechen's was there. He handed me a manila envelope and left without saying a word.

"I suppose this is for you," I said, and held it out to Vato.

"You open it, dawg. Whatever happens, you're in this with me now. I'll cut you in on whatever I get paid, which is usually a lot," he said.

I opened up the envelope, half-expecting it to explode, or at the very least, for Anthrax powder to spill out. What I saw made me shout—"Holy titty fucking Christ!"

"What is it, dawg?"

I held up the pictures inside. One was a telephoto lens shot of a man dressed like a woman carrying an Igloo cooler.  The other photo was a close up of a terrible looking hairpiece.

**********

"His name is Yuri, it says. He's former CIA, and now he's working freelance for private intelligence contractors," I said, reading the dossier that accompanied the photos.

"Who the fuck would hire that freak?" Vato said, "He's a walking basket case."

"Apparently he's really good at his job.  Maybe good help is hard to find these days."

"What else does it say about him?"

"Not a lot. Apparently, he's been watching the watchers, because he's been spying on your boss's whole operation," I said.

"Dressed in drag and walking around with severed body parts in an Igloo cooler?"

"Yep, that's what it looks like."

"So what the fuck do they want us for?  He's dead ain't he?"

"I guess not. It says we are to retrieve the KH-32 reconnaissance hairpiece."

"The Donald Trump toupee?"

"I told you I was seeing shit when I wore it. It nearly drove me nuts. I'm still seeing shit out of the corner of my eyes.  It's like a bad trip."

"K-what's it called?"

I checked the dossier again, "KH-32 reconnaissance hairpiece."

"A recon hairpiece?"

"Dude, read it yourself," I said, and handed Vato the dossier.

Vato scanned the paper and looked at the photos. That what the fuck? Look I had come to know was back again.  "So, you think he was following us? He couldn't have just met us on the street by accident. Nothing is that random."

"I have no fucking idea man. You're the one with the Mossad contacts and what not."

Vato re-read the dossier several times.  He chortled, "It says they want us to retrieve the Donald Trump recon hair hat thingy. Do you remember where we were when I threw it out of the tuk tuk?"

I shrugged.

"Fuck. We had it in our hands," Vato said.

"What happens if you don't take the gig?" 

"Banishment, or maybe something not so nice."

A note slid under the door. There were several other things that happened in the room that coincided with our conversation. When I bitched about there being no toilet paper, the front desk guy appeared with several rolls. We didn't say it aloud, but we knew the room was bugged.

"What's the note say?" Vato asked.

"There's three tickets for Diarrhea Bukakke tonight at the front gate. Wherever that is."

"Probably by the entrance to Walking Street. Where we saw those buses and towers made from tires. That's all it says?"

"No, we've gotta go meet Chang again at his bar about an hour before. Show starts at ten, so we gotta be there by nine," I said.

"What time is it now?"

"I don't have a watch. Do you?"

"If I did, I wouldn't have asked you."

The room phone rang. I looked at Vato.  He wasn't getting up off the floor anytime soon it seemed.

"Hello?" I said into the phone.

"Yes, hello, sir. Now it five in the nighttime. You want I wake you at eight in the nighttime?" said the voice of the front desk guy.

I scanned the room. With all of the love contraptions, and tacky decorations, a bug could be planted anywhere.

"That will be fine. Thank you."

"Will there be anything else you may need, sir?"

"You need anything dude?" I asked Vato.

"Yeah, I want a girl from the hotel bar to come up here."

"What about the worm's man?"

"Sorry sir, only lady we have is lady who make milk with her boob," the front desk dude said.

"Guy says they only have a girl who is lactating," I relayed.

"Well, like the old saying goes; when life gives you a lactating woman, sometimes you gotta make cheese. I'll take her."  Vato said.

"What? You gonna bang her in here?" I said.

"No, man. I'm gonna take bath in one of those goofy looking tubs, and have her give me a soapy."

"Sorry sir, water in tub don't work," the front desk guy said.

"Tub doesn't work dude," I said.

"Send her up anyway."

"You should sleep man. We've only got three hours before we gotta wake up again," I told Vato.

"You go lay down with Nok. I'll crash on the floor with cheese tits. This homie needs love too you know."

"Okay, send her up," I told the front desk dude.

I lay down next to Nok, and put my arm around her waist. Her skin felt warm, and her hair smelled like cheap shampoo. Her breath was labored, and her face was scrunched up in scowl of pain. I looked at the bite marks on her arm. The suppurating wounds didn't seem to be healing at all. Small black bumps appeared under the skin around the bite, and as I looked closer, I saw one of them move. I held my head back from her and looked at her body. The shadows and figures were just out of my peripheral vision again. I could see one small childlike apparition at the foot of the bed playing peek-a-boo with me. I ignored it and focused my gaze upon Nok again. Whatever residual otherworldly vision the KH-32 recon hairpiece had imbued me with; I could now see details in this world that I could never see before. I looked at Nok's back and I could now see through her clothes and under her skin. I could see her heart beating and her blood flowing through her veins. Then I saw them crawling through her body. They appeared as black lines, or as a cancerous mass on an x-ray. They wound themselves around her spine and up into her head. I saw a nest of them at the base of her skull, curling themselves around her brain stem. More of them burrowed through her fat and muscles. Others even appeared to be fighting or mating, I couldn't tell which. My gaze went down to her stomach. I could see something in her abdomen. Something smaller even that the worms. It had arms and legs, hands and feet, and the unmistakable outline of a human head. The worms were not around it yet. The fetus floated in embryonic fluid, sleeping and waiting for its chance to be born.

I couldn't process what I was seeing. The exhaustion of the day's events, coupled with the drugs, and the little shit ghost that was still fucking with me at the foot of the bed made it hard to think. When I saw the shadow appear again by my feet, I kicked it in the face. The room shook briefly, and the air got colder. I felt the hair stand up on the back of my neck and felt an icy wind being blown behind my ear.

"Fuck off!" I yelled at it.

"Sup man? You okay?" Vato asked.

"Just dandy."

There was a knock at the door.

"That's probably cheese tits. You get it," I said.

Vato pushed the opium tray to the corner of the room and went to the door.

"What's up mama? Oh, goddamn those titties are huge. Dude, you gotta see this chick," Vato said.

His voice sounded like either he was underwater or I was. That was when I fell asleep. Which was also when the nightmares began

**********

I was falling off the edge of a cliff, down to ocean waves breaking on rocks. As my arms flailed I saw flashes of all of my previous incarnations. Most people when they talk about their past life regressions tend to think they were someone special like Napoleon, or a Roman emperor. Not me. At least not in this dream or nightmare.  I saw how truly insignificant I was in every one of my lifetimes. I saw myself as a cave man, living in the forest and being eaten alive by insects. My body was ravaged by disease and my teeth were rotting and painful. Life was short, life was shitty, and thankfully it was soon over. In another flash, I saw myself as a guy with an extremely ugly nose, who committed suicide over a woman. In yet another, I was a terrible poet, who was the laughing stock of an entire nation and era — yep, committed suicide by hanging. It got to the point as I was falling and watching my lives and deaths that I got to thinking — do I ever not fucking kill myself in one of these things? Just as that thought was entering my head, and as the waves and rocks were just about to make me go splat, I saw myself being held up on the shoulders of many people, and being lauded as a hero. Women threw themselves at my feet and asked me to autograph their tits.  Others simply promised me their undying love. I had no idea what it was that I was famous for, but it made me smile in my sleep — and just like every other time in my life that I had a good dream, something totally fucked up happened and woke me up.

It was the sounds of choking. I thought maybe I was strangling Nok in her sleep, but my hands were cupping her breasts like a human bra, and not her throat. It was coming from the floor. I sat up and saw Vato with his head buried in cheese tits' crotch with what appeared to be a giant squid coming out of her pussy. It had its tentacles locked around his face, and she was holding his head down with her hands. It appeared as though she was trying to swallow him with her vajayjay.

"Yo, what the fuck?" was all I could think of to say.

I jumped out of bed and tripped over a power cord that wasn't there before (which I knew was from the Phii Dek paying me back for kicking it in the face). I fell on the floor and a light bulb unscrewed itself from an overhead lamp, landed on my head, and exploded into shards. I stood up and tried to hop over to Vato, and stepped in the glass shards which cut the shit out of my feet.

"Okay, I'm fucking sorry already.  Sheesh," I apologized to the Phii Dek for kicking it in the face. I also asked it to help me extract Vato's head from the vajayjay monster, and if the ghost child complied, I promised to buy him a toy.

"Mmmmmffffff," Vato said.

I reached down to lift Vato's feet up and pull him away from cheese tits. She had the look of the possessed in her eyes. I panned down to her gargantuan rack. Vato wasn't lying — her titties were huge. Cheese tits let go of Vato's head and squeezed her breasts. A double barrel shotgun blast of rancid milk shot out of her nipples and pinned me against the wall. There seemed to be no end to the stream of milky puss.  She raised a titty and aimed it at my mouth. It had the force of a pressure washer or a fire hose. My mouth filled with one stream of titty milk while the other kept my torso pinned to the wall. I could hear Vato struggling for air above my own sounds of gurgling. I spoke to the Phii Dek with my mind. "Okay, I'll buy you two toys," I said.

"No, I want five ," was his counter offer

"How about three?" I haggled

"Four," the Phii Dek said.

"Okay, four."

We agreed, and then he added, "if you forget to buy them for me, I will never ever stop fucking with you."

"Deal."

The antique Chinese armoire started rocking back and forth, until it fell over violently and landed on cheese tits' head. Her spray of milk stopped and I vomited out what seemed to be a gallon of the stuff. Cheese tits was pinned under the armoire, but still alive. Her arms flailed and she tried to lift the armoire off of her head. I reached down and snatched up Vato's' legs. As I pulled, cheese tits' pelvis made a cracking sound and her hips dislocated. It was like watching a Burmese python un-hinge its own jaw so it could swallow a much larger prey.

I yanked on Vato's legs as hard as I could but he wouldn't budge. I then felt an unseen hand grab his legs and pull with an amazing amount of force. Vato's head popping out of cheese tits' vajayjay sounded like the opening of a champagne bottle.

What followed could only be described as the biggest Queef of all time.

"You okay, dude?" I asked Vato. He seemed stunned, and rightly so.

"That was really awful. I mean just really, really awful man," he said, spitting little bits of residue out of his mouth.

Cheese tits was struggling under the weight of the armoire, and she began firing random blasts of milk around the room in the vain hope of hitting one of us.

"Hang on dude," Vato said. He then jumped up on top of the armoire and started stomping it with his feet. "Yo, help me out, homie," he said.

I hopped up on top of the armoire with him and we began jumping up and down together until we heard a squishy crunchy sound and the level of the armoire was suddenly lower.

"Hey mang, is Nok okay? She's not a sleeper is she? Cuz that girl is out cold."

I felt an icy hand on my leg, and then a chilled breeze. I could see the Phii Dek run across the room with that awkward little kid gait that children have. It leapt up onto the bed with Nok and cuddled up next to her. It then turned its head towards me and starred through my soul. Its eyes were both loving and vengeful. It had been betrayed already by its previous mother who had drowned him in a toilet. He patted Nok on the belly and smiled. "Mamma, mamma," he said.

I was kind of fuzzy on the whole issue of when exactly does a fetus become imbued with a soul. Up until I wore the toupee, I had never believed in anything. I didn't know if these were really ghosts, or hallucinations, or the worms messing with my mind. The way the Phii Dek looked at me, I knew he was claiming ownership of Nok's pregnancy. Either that or he was hijacking it.

"What did you say before about gods just being creatures from another world?"

Vato stepped off of the armoire and began packing up the opium kit in his bag.

"I dunno man. Whatever I said before — forget I said it."

"You said something about them waging wars, and being shot callers and bitches."

"I said that?"

"Yeah man. Please elaborate."

"What time is it? Don't we gotta go to that punk show?" Vato said.

The phone rang.

"Guess that's our wake up call," I said.

Vato walked over and answered the phone.  "It's dead," he said.

From my vantage point on top of the armoire I could see the phone cord. It wasn't plugged in. Out of the corners of my eyes, I could see them all around me. They appeared just for a second and were gone. I closed my eyes and opened them again. This time the shadows were closer. I was afraid to blink or they might appear right on top of me.  Out of the corner of my eye I could see the walls of the room. They were totally moldy and dilapidated. When I looked in front of me I saw the tacky accoutrements of the love hotel. My eyes were starting to water from not blinking, so I held them open with my fingers.

"Dude, wake up Nok.  We gotta get the fuck out of here," I said.

Vato looked up at me and chuckled.  "What's with your eyes, homie?"

"Hurry, I'm serious," I said.

I stepped down off of the armoire and tripped, when I reached out to catch my balance, I saw them. Even worse, I saw everything.

The room had changed. I looked down at the floor and there were pools of blood and piles of excrement. I looked to my right and I saw ten women chained to the wall. They were filthy and terror stricken. In their eyes was not the fear of death, but the fear of not dying.  Their eyes held the fear of what would happen to them next. I could hear the sounds of an axe dropping, and then the sounds of a knife cutting. It was the sounds of a butcher shop, or a slaughterhouse. I turned my head and I saw him. It was the farang who was never caught. He was placing the arm of a captive woman in an old style meat grinder. He had done all of this in front of the others to see. The chained women were forced to watch each other being raped. They then suffered through the screams of those that were murdered, and then dismembered. The farang then took the ground up meat of the dead woman and placed it in dog food bowls. He forced the chained women to eat from the bowls while he violated them in ways I can't describe.

This was that room. Once I had awakened to the truth of it, it no longer had the illusion of a remodeling job. I saw underneath the heart shaped tubs to the place where the killer slept. He had arranged the severed body parts from different victims and formed them into some kind of idealized vision of the perfect woman in his mind. There was a beautiful woman's head, the torso of another with full breasts, and the legs and arms of others. I looked up at the women chained to the walls and they knew that I could see them. This was even more terrifying than the vision itself. For when the women knew I could see them, their eyes went wild with desperation for me to help. That desperation turned to rage; a rage that filled the room and made the foundation of the hotel shake.

"She won't wake up man," Vato said.

"Pick her up please," I said.

"She's your girl bro. You carry her."

The floor was moving and I had trouble walking the distance to the bed. My vision was reversed now. Instead of seeing the shadow world out of the corner of my eyes, it was now the real world that I could only see peripherally.

I put my hands out in front of me and felt the empty space like a person feeling their way around in the dark. "I could really use your help man," I said.

Vato threw his backpack on and then heaved Nok up onto his shoulder. He then led me by the hand out of the room like a fireman rescuing people from a burning building. In the hallway, apparitions walked by. The hotel pulsated like the beat of a heart blackened by disease.  I could see into the other rooms of the hotel as Vato led us downstairs. Every room I peered into was a view into the desperate and lonely lives of those that occupied them.  This short time hotel had created endless misery. So many of the souls that wandered its halls and slept in its beds would never leave.  Even if this place was burned to the ground, the vortex of pain that it occupied in time and space would live on forever and there wasn't anything I could do but watch.

Vato got us to the ground floor and out onto the street. He transferred Nok to my arms, and we all sat down in front of the hotel. This place of evil would later become a tourist Mecca. Our fascination with predators and killers is hardwired into our DNA. To understand the thing that can kill you or eat you, and turn your life into a nightmare is a gruesome necessity of life. I could tell that every one of the women chained to the wall had been thinking about that new purse they wanted, or they were preoccupied with unimportant bullshit. They never noticed the shadow looming in the corners. They never heard the footsteps behind them in the dark. Then one day they woke up bleeding from the head, and chained to a wall. Now my eyes were opened and I could see everything I wanted to. Nothing would ever sneak up on me in life again.

"So you wanna go and catch that show?" Vato said

"Oi. Where we go?" Nok said, as she woke up.

"We have to go see that guy named Chang again," I said.

I saw the Phii Dek hiding behind a light post. He was trying to start the peek-a-boo game again. That and he was telling me he wanted his toys — now.

"I have to find a place that sells kids toys. Like, right away. There's gotta be a market in this town right?" I said.

"Where's our rickshaw guy?" Vato said.

I looked up and down the street and didn't see him. "Let's just walk," I said.

Nok whined, "Oi, you say you going to give me food before. Now I don't eat for a long time."

"Okay baby, we'll get you some food. Just hang on. We have to walk and maybe we will see something along the way," I said, and thought to myself — this is what it's going to be like to be a parent; trying to get something done but having it take forever because you have to stop for ice cream breaks, and keep everyone happy. Now I simply needed to find a toy, no-make that four toys for a ghost baby and papaya salad for a worm infested pregnant lady.

"There's the rickshaw guy," Vato said pointing down the street.

The Mormon coolie was pulling a load full of ladyboys along with their customers. Unlike us, the customers were having a field day whipping the shit out of him. He yelped in what sounded like a mixture of pain and ecstasy.

"Why are there so many ladyboys in this town?" Vato asked, "They're like pigeons."

"Yeah, I'll bet you every one of those guys is gonna get eaten by a ladyboy ass monster tonight," I said.

In fact, I knew it. I could see one of the ladyboys had a large amount of barbed worms in her balls, and another had row after row of shark-like teeth lining her anus. Since they weren't going crazy, that meant they were all on drugs. The drugs simply masked the symptoms. Whatever these parasites were, they were causing the whole human body to evolve into a monster.

The rickshaw pulled up to our hotel and the ladyboys and their customers climbed out. The customers were all heavily armed with TAR-21 assault rifles. It was the standard infantry rifle for the Thai army after they phased out the M16. These guys had high and tight haircuts, and judging by their accents, I figured they were Marines.

"Move it fuck stick," one of them said to me as he passed. He was the guy paired up with shark teeth anus girl.

So much for giving him a warning , I thought.

We climbed into the rickshaw and told the Mormon coolie to take us back to Chang's bar. I also told him to stop if he saw any papaya salad or kids toys for sale. The back of the Mormon coolie's shirt was ripped open and blood ran down his body from the whiplashes. I couldn't see any traces of the worms within his body. As far as I could tell, he was in perfect health.

As we rode, I looked over at Nok and I jumped a little. The Phii Dek was lying in her lap and suckling from one of her nipples. He took his mouth off of her breast for a second and winked at me. "Mamma," he said, and then gave me a thumbs up.

I made a mental note to buy him really cheap toys with sharp edges and lots of lead paint in them.

The Mormon coolie sounded rather morose when he spoke. He told us that he went about the Sisyphean task of carting hookers around all night with their customers, and as of yet, he hadn't been given a really spectacular penis penance.

"There is a woman selling children's toys up ahead. Would you like me to stop?" the Mormon coolie asked.

I looked down at the Phii Dek in Nok's lap. He was glaring at me, and he flashed me a smile full of piranha teeth.  He opened his mouth nice and wide and acted like he was going to bite the end of Nok's breast off.

"Yes, stop please," I said.

"Oi, why we stop? I'm hungry!" Nok said.

"Oi, because we have to buy a bunch of freaking toys for the ghost baby in your lap who is about to bite your titty off," I said.

"Arai na?" she said.

"Never mind, just hang on a second."

I hopped out of the rickshaw and walked up to the table where an old lady with no teeth who smelled like urine was selling kids toys.

"Hurry homes," Vato called out to me. I flipped him off over my shoulder without looking at him.

"Okay, what do you want you little fucker?" I said to the Phii Dek with my mind.

The Phii Dek looked over the assortment of toys laid out on the table. It was predominately full of small cars and big plastic trucks. There was also an assortment of counterfeit Yu Gi Oh! cards, and incredibly annoying plastic ray guns. The Phii Dek pointed at a pink horse with a flowing blonde mane, a knock off Barbie doll, a Dora hairbrush, and a Justin Timberlake coloring book with crayons.

"Wow, that's super gay ." I said to him with my mind.

"They are not for me," the Phii Dek said. "They are for a friend of mine. She is a little girl who die same as me. She have nobody to buy her toys."

"You don't want anything for yourself?" I asked him

"No, because we say you buy me four toys, and I just want you to buy for my friend," he said, adding, "nobody love her and I am her only friend."

"Oh my god that's so sad ," I thought. "This could be on an episode of Oprah, and millions of viewers would sob into their vagi-wipes."  I was about to buy a few for himself as well since he was a generous soul, but then I realized that this was Thailand, and even the ghosts were scam artists.

"Okay, well, tough shit then. A deal's a deal," I told him.

I paid the urine lady with no teeth and she put the toys in a plastic grocery bag. I stood there and held out my arm with the bag for the Phii Dek to take it.

"I'm dead, you idiot ," he said. "Put them over there on the ground so I can play with my friend."

"I don't fucking know dude. You don't seem to have a hard time knocking furniture over, but you can't carry a plastic bag? What's up with that?" I said.

That takes a lot of energy. It makes me weak. I only do it so we can have toys.

I walked over to the spot that the Phii Dek had indicated and put the bag of toys down.

"No, you fucking dipshit. Take them out of the bag and arrange them on the ground. We are dead, you retard ," the Phii Dek said.

"That's a nice mouth on you for a little kid. Where'd you learn to talk that way?"

"I use the words from within your mind. These are your words. I can speak to someone in any language. Your mind is full of filth and obscenity," he said.

He was right, and there was no sense in arguing with him. I took the toys out of the plastic bag and placed them on the ground. I even took the crayons out of the box and opened up the coloring book to a picture of Justin Timberlake thrusting his pelvis in the air. From behind a food vendor's cart, came a little girl no more than four years old.  She was adorable in every sense. Like dolphins dipped in sunshine and wrapped in rainbows. She was shy and didn't seem to want to come near me. The Phii Dek took her by the hand and told her to sit down.

"Okay, have fun kids ," I said.

Both of the ghost children put their palms together in a respectful wai and bowed to me.

"If you need my help again, just call," said the Phii Dek.

"Yeah? You got a phone?"

"No, just close your eyes and quiet your mind. Try to make everything sabai sabai. Then say out loud; I'm a fucking retard and I need a Thai ghost child to help me out because I am such an incompetent fuckwad. Say that three times and I will come and help you."

I wondered if there were any back alley abortion clinics in this town. If not, I might just have to throw Nok down a flight of stairs. There was no way I was going to be this kids dad. I now no longer blamed his mom for drowning him in the toilet. "Of course," I said. "How many toys do you want next time?"

"Depends on the task. I think the next one might be rather large."

"What makes you say that?"

The Phii Dek looked at the little girl and they both giggled. When they laughed, their eyes changed to something ancient and sinister. I got the sensation that these were beings over a thousand years old, and that they were simply disguising themselves as children for the novelty of it.

"When the burned man comes looking for you tonight, don't run from him. He alone can save you all. We will both be there for you in your hour of need," he said.

"Why would you help me? What burned man?  Esmeralda the freak?"

The two ghost babies let out that malevolent giggle again. The Phii Dek pointed to Nok in the Rickshaw. "Mamma," he said, and then the two of them disappeared.

I walked back to the rickshaw and got inside. I thought about something and then got back out. I stood in front of the Mormon coolie and smiled.

"For your sins, my son," I said and kicked him squarely in the nuts.

The Mormon coolie began barfing on the street, and I got back in the rickshaw. I picked up the whip and began flogging the shit out of him.

"Thank you sir," the coolie said.

"Hurry up we're late," I barked.

"Bro, you okay? You seem a little high strung," Vato said.

I didn't say anything and just starred ahead as the rickshaw began to move. The street was lit up like a third world Las Vegas. Walking Street at the end of the world was nothing less than bedlam. On a normal night when it wasn't the apocalypse, Walking Street was a seedy but fun whorehouse of a city within a city. I knew men who never left the protective magical circle that they had drawn around their barstools. Well, they may have walked a few yards to go get food, and another few yards to go sleep, maybe even visit an ATM, but for the most part they got off a plane in Bangkok, took a taxi to Pattaya, and slept, ate, and fucked within a very small bubble.  That guy was now the lord of odious vices. The Darwinism of the clean and sober had left the junkies and drunks as the inheritors of the world. I could see into the bodies of those walking around with their assault rifles and I knew which ones had worms and which ones were just recently infected. I saw one man whose entire internal organ structure had been changed. The only thing that remained his own was his heart, and a gland under his armpit.

At the rate that the worms were evolving and the rate at which these men were consuming booze and drugs, I knew it was only a matter of time until the convergence of two forces hit at once. Either the drugs would run out and everyone would become afflicted, or the monster growing inside of them would take over, and whatever was left that cared about staying human would be gone.

Guitar feedback, played through giant amplifiers, filled the air. It was followed by screaming in Thai that sounded like someone was getting a gender reassignment surgery without anesthetic. The crowd was screaming and people started shooting automatic weapons in the air.  Everyone was armed to the teeth. Even the odd street food vendor we passed had a machete within easy reach. The stage was at the entrance to Walking Street.  Behind the stage was the rear of the castle-like fortress made from tires and abandoned busses. A thump thump thump sound began as the double bass drum from band on stage fired up.

"That must be the opening act," Vato said.

The stage lights went on to reveal a group of absolutely hideous and unpassable ladyboys. The lead singer was about six feet four inches tall, and had an Adams apple the size of a hand grenade. She wore a leather dominatrix getup with fuck-me boots, and had a handgun strapped to her thigh. She "sang" through a pitch shifter, and generally acted like a composite of every bad NYC underground punk rock singer from the 80's. Before the first song had ended, she had pissed into the audience, shit on the stage, and cut her arms with a razor. When the worms popped out of her wounds, she either ate them or hurled them into the audience.

"Yeah, whatever. GG Allin did that ages ago," I said.

The first song didn't really end, but melded into a cover of Los Angeles by X. We arrived at the front of Chang's bar and the Mormon Coolie let us out. Val was outside and greeted us.

"Welcomes back. You enjoys your stays at hotels?" he said.

"Marvelous. Is Chang inside?" Vato said.

"Yes yes. Enter please." Val said, and opened up the door for us. I could hear the crowd explode into cheer from whatever was happening on stage. I looked up and saw the lead singer doing things to a dead body. I turned my head away before I had yet one more image burned into my memory that I didn't want.

The inside of the club looked like Caligula's birthday party. The Praetorian Guard was replaced by Chechen rebels, and instead of a woman playing a cithara, there was a sad Chinese crooner singing mournful renditions of ABBA hits. We walked in as he was slowly churning out the lyrics to Dancing Queen with all the enthusiasm of a leaking faucet.

On the dance floor was a live sex show.  It featured people who had already undergone most of the transformation that the worms caused. Rib cages opened up, and the ribs themselves became skeletal arms which pulled the lover on top until something within sucked out its juices.  One man sat naked and terrified in a chair while a group of monstrous looking katoey's stood around him and bukakkied on his face. Instead of semen, the katoey's shot out black worms, which proceeded to devour the man's head. He screamed in pain as they burrowed into his eyes and crawled up his nose.

It turned out that the man in the chair had failed on one of Chang's errands. A Chechen told me this as I stood starring slack jawed at the show. This was the petty caprice of every despot that had suddenly awakened to his power. Everyone from Tiberius to Uday Hussein had fallen under its spell. Chang's penchant for horror mixed with sexuality would have made Vlad the Impaler blush.

Chang saw us from across the room and motioned for us to come over. I turned to look for Nok but she was gone. I searched the room for her, and spotted her at the buffet table stuffing her face.

"Just leave her," Vato said, "She only seems happy when she's sleeping or eating."

"Yep, she's Just like every other Thai girl. What do you think Chang is gonna ask us to do? You don't think he's gonna send us out to look for the toupee do you?" I said.

"I think I've got an idea. Just play along." Vato said, and then crossed the room to Chang's table.

I followed behind and tried to avoid the dance floor which was now covered in worms from the bukakke chair incident. At Chang's table were two farang men with suits. 

"Happy birthday sir," Vato said as he approached the table.

"Yes, it's my birthday. Did you bring me my present?" Chang said.

"What present sir?" Vato asked.

"Didn't you get the photos I sent you?'

"With all due respect sir, that was only a few hours ago. I thought that this meeting was regarding how we were to go about getting it."

"So you failed me then did you?" Chang said.

Vato looked at me. I took that as my cue to say something.

"Mister Chang, I think I know where the items you are looking for are. In fact, we know the person you are looking for. Give us time and we can find both," I said.

"Who are you, if I may ask?" one of the suit men said.

"I'm… Barry," I said.

"Barry, would you like to see something important? Something that may even save the world?" he said.

I shrugged.  

The two men in suits spoke into Chang's ears. They then nudged the Tiffany show girls out of the booth.

"Okay, we show them. Then we come back for my birthday party. Cake going to be very sexy," Chang said, and pointed to a back door that we were supposed to go through.

As we walked to the back door, the sad Chinese crooner was starting a slow, melancholy version of Wake Me Up Before You Go Go, by Wham! Vato went in through the door first, and let out a giant "God-dayam dawg." I followed, and while less excited than Vato, I did let a few expletives fly.

The room behind the bar had stacks of gold bars, giant sacks of white powder, bag after bag of weed, and weapons of every kind piled as high as the ceiling. Several of the guards inside the room were using a hundred pound sack marked COCAINE in big block letters as a table on which they did lines of even more cocaine.

"Willy fucking Wonka, yo," Vato said.

Chang and the guys in suits followed us in and closed the door.

"Do you know what this is Barry?" suit guy number two asked.

"Uh, yeah," I said.

"How would you describe what you are seeing?"

"It's a big ass room full of drugs… and gold… and weapons," I said, stating the obvious

"You're wrong on all three counts Barry," the suit guy said. He spoke like he was narrating a late night infomercial.  "On count number one, you stated that you saw drugs. Where you see drugs, I see medicine. On count number two, you are also erroneous. For where you see gold, I see operational funding. On count number three however, you are only half wrong. These are not weapons per se in the sense that they are used to kill; rather these are tools for the implementation of law and order. So you see Barry, it's a simple matter of paradigm shift. Wouldn't you agree?"

I looked around the room. I could tell that the guards snorting blow off of the table made from blow, were only about two days away from having their esophagus detach itself from their necks and strangle their comrades while they slept. I could also tell that Chang'swollen girl nipples that poked through his wife beater were about to start poking out even more. For, behind a giant stack of gold bricks I saw the Phii Dek and his little girl pal. They were playing their usual game with me, and as soon as I saw them, the temperature in the room got cold.

"Yeah, same same but different," I said.  I didn't see any difference, or care for that matter.

"I beg to differ Barry," the suit guy said. "It's not the same, and it is quite, quite different."

The other suit guy chimed in, "When were you last in contact with the KH-32 reconnaissance hairpiece?"

"We saw it this afternoon. It was being worn by that guy you are looking for, only he called himself Esmeralda and not Yuri," I said.

"You were in contact with Yuri?"

Vato knew these people better than I did.  I didn't know what I should or shouldn't say. I let him do the talking.

"Yeah, we saw him up in Bangkok. He was a survivor and he was wearing that thing you guys are looking for," Vato said.

The men in the suits looked nonplused.  "You mean he was wearing it on his head and walking around the city with it?" number two asked.

"Yep."

"How would you describe his demeanor?"

"Demeanor… Hmmm," Vato turned to me, "Barry, how would you describe Esmeralda?"

I let them have it. The whole episode. Everything from him wearing the Paris Hilton impersonator's face, to his final demise at the hands of Johnny Walker. The Suits however, only wanted to know about the toupee.

"Where is the KH-32 reconnaissance hairpiece now?"

"It's on the tollway between Pattaya and Bangkok," Vato chimed in. "Homie here, I mean Barry, was wearing it and freaking out so I threw it out of the tuk tuk we were in. I didn't think it was important. My bad."

Suit guy number one walked up to me and shined a small flashlight in my eyes. He asked me to follow his finger with my eyes, to stand on one leg, and other shit, in what amounted to a field sobriety test.

"How long were you wearing it?" he said.  His face looked solemn.

"Maybe a half an hour or so," I said. "It felt like only a few minutes."

"Did you see anything when you wore it?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

I didn't know how to answer him. "I don't remember. It felt like a dream."

"A dream or a nightmare?"

"A bit of both I guess. Maybe more of a nightmare."

The suit guy nodded to the other one, "It's a working model."

"Tell me Barry, have you been having any visions since you wore it? Any residual hallucinations?"

Residual hallucinations? I didn't want to tell him that the Phii Dek was playing with the little girl on top of a crate marked explosives behind him.

"I have been… seeing things, yes."

"Would you indulge us Barry and describe what you are seeing?"

I pointed behind him at the Phii Dek and the little girl playing on the explosives crate. "Well, right behind you there is the ghost of a little Thai boy whose mother drowned him in the toilet. He is playing with a girl around four years old who died in a similar manner.  They have been following me around for the last hour or so. Right now he is flipping me off and making a slow jerking off motion with his right hand and mouthing the words you- are- such- a- fucking- retard."

Which is exactly what he was doing.

Suit man number one walked me through a few different scenarios that could be considered my future possibilities in life. One of them involved me going back to the location where the toupee was and bringing it back while they held Nok as a hostage. Another scenario involved Vato, Nok, and I becoming the next act for the bukakke worm chair show.  If the first option seemed daunting, the suit man reassured me by saying that there was a Soviet era Mi-24 Hind helicopter parked nearby that would be my transportation; so I wouldn't have to battle through the afflicted hordes again.

"We had it flown in from Vietnam. It has fifty-seven millimeter rocket pods and a twelve point seven millimeter Gatling gun that will give you maximum reassurance in these trying times," he said, doing his infomercial voice again.

I thought this would be my Wizard of Oz moment; where I am given all of the answers to my endless questions. I expected this guy to explain it all. Why the outbreak happened. Why the toupee was making me see into another dimension. Why the worms were causing us to evolve into monsters, and why consuming ridiculous amounts of drugs seemed to block its effects. I asked him all of these questions, and he either replied "That's classified" or "Our people are still working on that." He did concede to one of my questions about the toupee; primarily because that was what he was after. Maybe he felt if I understood, that I would appreciate its importance, and be less of a douchebag.

"Are you familiar with remote viewing?" he said.

"Yeah, a little."

"Do you know its history?"

"Not really."

"Well, for a period of time the United States and the Soviet Union were conducting research into the paranormal. They enlisted psychics to predict certain events. They also employed these people to find missile silos, and other targets using remote viewing.  This project had mixed results and was finally closed. People involved in that project helped to create the KH-32 reconnaissance hairpiece," he said.

We starred at each other in silence for a while. I remembered that old line about he who speaks first — loses, and tried not to ask any more questions. Then I saw the Phii Dek standing on top of the man's head and pantomiming the act of hanging himself from a noose and then doing The River Dance in his death throes. I broke the silence first.

"So why the fuck am I seeing ghosts?"

"We are not certain. It seems to be a side effect of the hairpiece. It works by stimulating the right amygdala of your brain and inducing a state of temporal lobe epilepsy. This is what some researchers believe has caused people throughout history to have religious visions — visions of Heaven, visions of Hell, or in your case; visions of ghosts."

"So you developed this thing to do remote viewing on whomever, and the side effect is that I am having hallucinations?" I said.

"I can't answer any more of your questions at this time. If you retrieve the hairpiece, then I will try to answer more."

Then it was the other suit guy's turn apparently, because he lit me up for what seemed like an hour. He asked the same questions repeatedly, and never seemed satisfied with my answers. Chang got bored and left to go watch his birthday party debauchery and the Phii Dek asked me in my mind if I wanted the suit guys to suddenly choke to death on their own tongues.

"Can we just wrap this up please?" I said.

"Did Yuri say anything to you specifically about where he was going?"

"He said he was going to Siriraj hospital to get a face transplant, and then he said he was coming to Pattaya."

Both of the suit guys were alarmed, perhaps even scared. "Are you sure he is dead?" number two asked.

"I didn't check his pulse or anything, but he collapsed in a ball of fire, which made him look pretty dead to me," I said.

The suit guys had a little conversation between themselves. I heard them talking about contingency plans, and about an operation or something like that… I wasn't really paying attention because the Phii Dek was now in the process of tapping on the skin of one of the Chechens.  He could see the worms swimming under the surface of the man's skin, and tapped on it the way a kid would on a restaurant aquarium. One of the Chechen's radio squawked and he ran out of the room. Shortly thereafter I heard gunfire.

It was just a few shots at first, and then it grew steady. It then erupted into a full on firefight.

"Wait here," one of the suit guys said.

Both of the suit guys and the rest of the Chechens ran out into the club. The music was still playing and I could see through the door that Chang hadn't even left his seat yet. I saw Nok sitting in a booth with a huge platter of food in front of her. I turned to Vato and told him to grab a shit load of guns and whatever else he could carry — which might not have been the best way to phrase that to him. I ran out into the club and realized that the firefight was coming from out on the street. I grabbed Nok by the arm and despite her protests; I managed to pull her into the back room with Vato.

"There's gotta be a way out of here," I said as I locked the door behind me.

We looked around and there were no other exits.

"What should we take?" I asked Vato.

"Whatever you want, homie. I'm good dawg," Vato said as he patted his backpack which seemed to be on the verge of busting open.

"What'd you get?"

"Oh, about a thousand hits of ecstasy, some blow, some China, a few gold bars — which are really really heavy, and some hand grenades."

"How about something more practical?" I said, and handed him a TAR-21 from one of the crates.

"It still has packing grease on it. I don't even know how to work this thing homes," he said.

The room was full of weapons. Everything from GPMGs to RPG-7s. I only knew what most of them were from playing first person shooters. I was never in the military. I had no idea how to feed a belt of ammo into a machine gun, or how to clean the grease off of the TAR-21.  In frustration, I just wiped it off on my pants.

There were crates of ammunition, and spare magazines but I didn't know what kind of bullets each gun took. I didn't want to risk having one jam or blow up in my hands. The only guns I had ever fired were a handgun and a shotgun. I fired a couple of RPG's in Cambodia at a range, but I was drunk and couldn't remember how they worked. The Cambodian guy had charged me $30 per rocket, and said it would be $300 to blow up a cow. I vaguely remembered that there were two parts to the rocket. There was some kind of green or blue colored fuse or booster, and the other part was the warhead. I looked around the room for them and finally found a few crates full. This room was an Idaho survivalist's wet dream, but I didn't know how to work any of it.  In Texas; I would be executed for being so inept.

Vato apparently had more male role models in his formative years, or he had spent time in the underworld while working for Chang. The RPG-7, he told me, was designed to be used by a complete cretin. Pulling the trigger simply detonated the booster charge, which was screwed into the rocket's motor. It was-G-forces that set in motion a series of detonations that culminated in the warhead exploding upon impact. He learned this from a former Taliban, who also showed him how to alter the rocket to make it an airburst round. The Taliban told Vato he had used this method to fire on coalition helicopters in Afghanistan. The cost for one of the most amazing and simple killing machines in the world was only $3,000, and here we were; foregoing firepower so we could stuff our bags and pockets full of dope.

I handed Nok a 9mm Beretta which looked ridiculous in her tiny brown hands. She put it down and sat on one of the ammo crates.

"What's wrong babe?" I asked her

"I eating my food and you make me stop and—"

And blah blah blah. I ignored her and turned to Vato, "So what's the plan?"

Vato laid out a couple of huge lines of blow, inhaled one and then offered me the rolled up dollar bill he was using.  I waved it away. I wanted clarity, even if just for a few moments. Worms or no worms, I decided I wanted to spend my final hours or minutes with no chemicals in my system.

"You'll become one of them you know?" Vato said.

"I know. If that happens — shoot Nok."

There was a banging on the door. Then a voice. It was rougher than the last time I heard it. "Any of you sailors want to show a lady a good time?"

Vato was either shaking out of fear or from too much coke. It might have been a mixture of both. He looked around the room for a weapon. There was too much to choose from so he opted for a mop propped up against the wall. I hastily screwed the booster charge into the base of the RPG warhead and slid it into the tube.

"You can't use that in here, dumbass.  You'll kill us all," Vato said.

He was right. I put the RPG down and picked up the Beretta.

"Is that you Miss Hilton?" I said.

"Yes it is boys."

I looked at Vato. "Your call, man."

"He's gonna kill us, I know it."

"Don't make me take the door off with the cute little Semtex panda I have in my purse. Open the door boys. I want to show you my new look." Esmeralda said.

We waited in silence for what seemed like forever. It was Esmeralda who broke the ice. "You want a cure for what's inside of you? How about for the baby growing inside of monkey girl?"

"What do you want from us?" Vato said.

Esmeralda just giggled, "I just want to show you my new face."

The Phii Dek appeared in front of the door and reached up for the lock. He flashed me the same diabolical smile he did before. In his face, I could see something bubbling up. It was a collage of every psychopath and deviant he had been in his previous lives. The mother who drowned him was doing the world a favor. He would keep coming back again and attain a new incarnation, until he achieved whatever purpose there was for his soul. Now that doorway was Nok. He would help us live, only so he could have life also. That was the deal he offered.

"This is your only way out, fuckwad," the Phii Dek said. I nodded to him in agreement.

The Phii Dek unlocked the door, and opened it. I could see out into the club where Chang sat at his booth. His beloved Tiffany showgirl's were with him. All of their eyes had been removed from their heads; leaving empty red sockets. A few of the Chechens slowly felt their way around on the dance floor; like some sightless fish from the bottom of the ocean. When they turned to face me, I could see that their eyes were missing as well. Esmeralda stepped into the doorway. I was starring at her feet in an attempt to avoid eye contact.

"Hello boys," he said. "How do you like the new me?"

I raised my eyes and took in the image.  Esmeralda had changed his dress, and was now wearing a traditional Thai dancer ensemble. The skin on his legs and arms was covered in third degree burns.  Before my eyes could reach his face, I heard Vato gasp, and then say "Beautiful Miss Hilton, looking good."

I looked up at Esmeralda and spoke before a micro expression of disgust crossed my face.  "Oh my God, can I have your autograph Miss Hilton?"

The fire had melted the Paris Hilton impersonator mask onto her face. Bits of fat, and puss bubbled up from where the mask had melded into his skin. I could smell the infection already starting to grow; as bacteria multiplied by the millions in the Petri dish like climate. I tried, somewhat awkwardly, to change the subject.

"What happened to everybody's eyes, Miss Hilton?" I said.

Esmeralda turned and looked into the club, and then turned back to us, "Oh, them? They don't need eyes anymore."

"Why you do that to them?" Nok said. I was surprised to hear her speak up.

"Because, my dear, the universe is not infinite. It has an edge, and what lies beyond it requires no eyes to see."

Vato and I both looked at Nok, then back at Esmeralda. "Yeah, I don't think she's going to quite get that," I said.

"Arai na?" Nok said.

"Nothing baby. This bitch is fucking nuts," I said.

Esmeralda's second set of lips were hanging loose as he spoke. "Where's the toupee, boys?"

My insult didn't seem to register.

"It's on the tollway between here and Bangkok," Vato said.

"Take me to it."

"Why do you want it so bad? What the fuck is that thing?" I asked

"Did you wear it?"

"Yeah. For a little bit."

"And what did you see?"

"All kinds of freaky shit. Like the little ghost of a Thai boy who is looking up under you dress as we speak, and pinching his nostrils closed because he says your ass is stinky," I said.

Esmeralda looked down between her legs and waved to the Phii Dek. "He's cute. Is that his little girlfriend over there?" Esmeralda said, as she pointed to the ghost girl in the corner of the room.

"You can see them?"

"Of course I can, and in answer to your question, the toupee allows you see everything that once remained hidden. Once you have worn it; your sight shall never be the same. You too, will no longer need eyes," Esmeralda said, and held up a blood covered soup spoon. "Shall I remove them for you?"

"Get the fuck away from me," I said, and raised the RPG at her… I mean him. This seemed to make Esmeralda giddy. He held the spoon underneath his own eyeball instead.

"Did you know that your soul is a quantum computer? Or that your thoughts are physical? Our brain waves float along the Earth's magnetic field until they meet something that has the same frequency.  The toupee mimic's the field of that which you are trying to observe, so that you are now on the same wavelength. Not just with one thing, but with everything."

"Yeah, well, I don't really understand any of that. Like I said, if you want the toupee, it's on the tollway," I said.

Esmeralda stepped back from the doorway.  "Would you boys come with me please? There's something special I would like to show you."

"Like what?" I said

"It's outside. Don't worry; I think you will like it."

I turned to Vato, "You wanna go?"

"Fuck no. He's acting all creepy and shit."

"He always acts creepy."

"Why don't we just shoot him? We've got a shit ton of guns in here."

"Because he walked past all the Chechen's who were armed to the teeth, and managed to gouge out their eyeballs with a soup spoon. I don't even know if he's human," I said.

Vato and I looked at each other. He put down the mop, and heaved the backpack full of drugs on. He leaned in and whispered to me. "If you get a clear shot, waste her with the RPG. Shoot it at her — I mean at his feet so it detonates. If you shoot him with it, the rocket will either pass through his body or just get stuck in there."

I picked up the RPG and Vato showed me where the safety catch was. I was thinking of leaving Nok in the room and locking the door, and then I saw the Phii Dek standing behind her with his hands around her boobs. I picked up the 9mm and gave it to her again.

"Honey, if something bad happens; kill yourself okay?" I said. It was the only advice I could think of. I could see the worms moving in her eyes, and there was what I thought to be a large vein running through her forehead, until I saw it crawl up and burrow underneath her scalp. She seemed out of it again.

"I'm waiting boys. Don't make mamma come get you."

"Hang on Miss Hilton," I said, and then to Vato, "This is the end, I know it."

"It's all good, homie. It's been fun man," Vato said, and extended a bent elbow to me.

"Porno handshake?"

"Yep, porno handshake," he said.

The two of us bumped elbows, and walked out into the club. Nok was behind me with the Phii Dek and his little girlfriend holding her hands. I looked around the club… Chang and the Tiffany girls were sitting in their booth with their eyes missing but they weren't dead. They moved their heads as if they were following an object flying in the air. When I turned my head I could see part of it in my peripheral vision. As far as I could tell, it looked like a dude riding a giant dildo with wings.

"What in the fuck is that?" I said.

Esmeralda and the Phii Dek could both see what I did.

"That's not a flying dildo, you retard," the Phii Dek said. "It is a ghost called a Phii Kra Hung."

"Oh, I thought that was a cock with wings and a dude was riding on it."

"Who you talking to, homie?" Vato said.

"Nobody."

"It is the spirit of a man who practiced black magic but did not follow its rules," the Phii Dek said, "and that's not a dildo — it's a pestle, and those aren't wings — they are rice threshers. Holy shit, I can't believe my future father is such a colossal fucktard."

I turned to the Phii Dek, "You know, if and when you are ever born, I honestly hope your mother drowns you in the toilet again. I may even help."

The Phii Dek started to cry. It was a banshees' howl that pierced through my body, and shot through every corner of my skull.

"I'm sorry ," I said to him. The Phii Dek ran out through the front door of the club and onto the street. His little girlfriend trotted along behind. Before she left, she turned to us and waved.

"Sit down in one of the booth's please," Esmeralda said.

Vato, Nok, and I took a seat in the only booth that didn't have a person sitting in it with his eyes scooped out. I saw the morose Chinese crooner cowering in a corner with the ping-pong ball girl.  They still had their eyes, and from what I could tell; they weren't infected either.

"Do you have any paper and a pen?" Esmeralda asked.

I felt my pockets. I still had the pen from earlier this morning. "I've got a pen, but no paper."

Esmeralda looked on the floor. There was a bound stack of green Chinese takeout menus from a place called Chow Hai.  Esmeralda picked up the stack of menus and giggled. When she did, the lips from the Paris Hilton impersonator mask jiggled and dripped puss. "Chow Hai means smelly cunt in Cantonese."

"You speak Cantonese?" Vato said.

"I just know the phrase chow hai."

I thought about this for a moment. "Wait, so the only phrase you know in Cantonese just happens to be the name of a restaurant on a menu, which happens to be lying at your feet at the exact moment that you need paper?"

"Apparently so." Esmeralda said.

I looked around the room. There was Chang the Chinese gangster sitting with two Tiffany showgirls; who starred (with no eyes) at a ghost that looked like a flying dildo. A sightless Chechen rebel felt his way around the room; looking for something to kill himself with. The depressed Chinese crooner still cowered in the corner with the torn up looking Thai woman whose job entailed shooting ping pong balls from her vagina at a high velocity. Outside, I could hear the screeching of a thousand undead monkeys and the screams of those they tore apart, along with the gunshots of hundreds of afflicted soldiers who were fighting for the right to live out a few more days of hedonism before the parasites inside their bodies transformed them into monsters.

"This isn't happening," I said.

Esmeralda smiled through his pus filled lips, "What's not happening?"

"All of it. None of this is happening."

"And what makes you say that?" Esmeralda said.

"It's too fucking random. The menu. The parasites. Your face. The ghosts. It's all too random to be happening at once. Weird shit happens, yes, but not all at the same time. It's not normal."

Vato looked around the room as well. He nodded in agreement, "Yeah, it's like a collective hallucination from these parasites in our heads. The afflicted are just paranoid schizophrenic psychopaths or something."

We sat in silence for a long moment. Vato and I looked at each other and we both spoke at the same time. "Drugs," we said.

"You boys do drugs? Drugs are bad for you, don't you know that?" Esmeralda said with his obscene giggle.

I thought back to when we met Esmeralda.  He hadn't done any drugs. Who else didn't? The Mormon coolie, I thought.   The CIA hires all of those Mormon's to be spies. He had to be one of them.  Who else? The Chinese crooner and the ping pong ball lady; they had to be one of them too. My mind raced to trace the steps we had taken to get here. I tried to think of everything that happened before Nok and I got to the Hotel.

"Think about it," I said, "Thailand has the death penalty for drugs. A few years back, there were all of these extra judicial killings of drug dealers. This is Thailand's way of getting rid of their drug problem. They put all of the offenders in an isolated city like Pattaya and just let everybody kill each other."

Vato was starting to cry, "I knew it!  Those fuckers!"

Esmeralda sat down in the booth next to Vato and put his hand on Vato's knee.

"Calm down boys. Shhhhhh. There, there now," Esmeralda said. "I'm going to tell you a story Joel, and you are going to write it down. When we are finished, you shall see."

**********

I wrote the history of the end of the world in the margins of Chow Hai Chinese food take-out menus. For my own ending, I would try and find stationary far more formal. I was to be Esmeralda's biographer. Every celebrity needs one, and Esmeralda would be no different. He insisted that there was no conspiracy to eradicate drug users. Not yet anyway. The parasites were pirates, sailing on the littoral waters of neurons and synapses. They had been with us since the very beginning. They slept and ate; knowing only what was food and what was not. Now they had awakened and only the very few could see them. The toupee was built for a different purpose, he said. The same way Viagra was developed for heart patients, but the side effect was that it gave people boners.

"It was developed for remote viewing of military targets. The people who wore it claimed they had looked through other dimensions before the objective came into view. For many, they traveled through Hell, or saw the ghosts that walk within our own world. Even when they took off the toupee, they still had the visions. Needless to say, most of them went insane. The non-believers, and scientists who developed it, attributed their visions to temporal lobe hallucinations. The test subjects were medicated, institutionalized, or involuntarily disappeared. Then we made contact with something that had been here all along. It was first contact with an alien intelligence, and it was already inside our bodies. It wasn't long before the Army wanted it as a weapon."

"And you were one of the test subjects?" I said.

The sightless Chechen, who was feeling his way around, finally found an AK. He placed the barrel under his chin and pulled the trigger. A mass of black worms shot out of the hole in his head.  There was little blood or brains.

"Did you see that?" Vato said

"Yeah, case in point. Why would that retard kill himself if the worms desired life?" I said

"Because men are expendable. One man can impregnate a hundred women. If there are too many men, a population will die off. The parasites need females to live," Esmeralda said.

The gunfire outside the club was growing closer. I could hear shouting in several languages as the troops outside seemed to be making a last stand by the door.

"How in the fuck did you get in here anyway?" Vato asked.

Esmeralda smiled through his extra face, "I had help," he said, and left it at that.

Esmeralda's story began in Prison. The one with the dark sobriquet of The Bangkok Hilton. His words were cryptic by design. I tried to avoid looking at his burned and disfigured face with its extra set of flapping lips. Mainly because the drugs were wearing off. As he spoke, his voice normalized. Gone was the affectation of femininity. His voice was now almost self-conscious. As if he had become aware of how hideous he truly looked.

"Matter and spirit are the same," he said. "They differ only in their stage of evolution. First there is spirit, and then there is matter, Then spirit rises again as the matter dies.  It is no different than particles and waves. No different than water and ice.  They are one thing in two forms. The shadows exist in the dark matter of the universe. They are in the void between thoughts. They exist in your reflection, as well as your shadows and dreams. The can see us. They wait only for us to see them."

"Yeah, once again, that's over my head," I said.

"Don't you understand yet? We can see them now, and they know that we can see them. There is no longer a need for them to hide."

"So why were you in Jail then?" I said.

"I don't know. I woke up one day in prison. Whole chapters of my life were gone. I didn't know how I got there, or what I was in for. I asked no questions from the guards, as I was trying to figure out who put me in there, and who was being paid to watch me."

Esmeralda ordered me to write, and so I did. The gunshots outside were starting to die out. Either because they were running out of ammo or the soldiers were being eaten. I suggested opening the door and bringing the troops ammo, but Esmeralda would have none of it. I picked up my pen and began to write in between the descriptions of Peking duck, and sexy chicken surprise. I listened to Esmeralda's story while my mind tried to figure a way out.

Esmeralda awoke in prison to the sounds of crying. It was a female voice, disconnected and full of static.  Esmeralda stood up and stepped over several men with elaborate Khmer tattoos know as Sak Yant. They were the insurance policy of the Thai underworld. The bulletproof vests of the supernatural. They never seemed to keep them out of jail though.

Esmeralda neared the toilet and saw a figure slumped over. A trail of blood and shit led up to a mess of long hair. It was a woman's head, with her face stuck deep down into the toilet. He listened as the head moved side to side making slurping sounds. It was licking the shit off of the sides of the bowl.

"Excuse me, Miss?" Esmeralda said.

The head stopped moving, and a low growl emitted from its lungs. The figure shot up and did an about face.  It had the features of a beautiful woman. Albeit, one who had smoked crack for many years. She was speaking to him. It was a metallic voice, scratchy, and full of static, as though he was hearing her through an old radio. Her image seemed projected on the background of the toilet. Not an apparition, but a projection from an old 8-millimeter film.

The beautiful crack-head face hovered. Brighter now, revealing the blue veins running through her cheeks.  The crow's feet around her eyes gave her some age, and black gums flashed when she smiled. She tilted her head back as she emitted a laugh. A disconnected laugh being broadcast from another time. The projection moved towards him.  Her night gown opened to reveal a body made up of internal organs. She had no arms or legs; only the mechanical churning of her heart beating and lungs expanding. Shit was dripping from the edges of her mouth. Her guts did their job — processing food and leaving deposits of feces on the floor behind her.

Esmeralda stood motionless.  He felt no fear. Only a vague sense of acceptance. To be devoured by a Phii Krasue would be a suitable ending to his life. A brief image of what his epitaph would say entered his mind and then was gone.

Esmeralda closed his eyes and waited for the end yet again. He had been denied this moment so many times before. He could smell the shit on her mouth, and feel her breath on his face as she grew closer. There was no sound, only the heaviness of her presence.  Her tongue entered his mouth, drinking in his saliva. He choked as the tongue made its way past his tonsils and entered the long tunnel to his stomach.  Esmeralda brought up a shank from his waistband and drove it into her face.  Her jaw melted away as the blade cut its way through. He swung again and severed the tongue, which fell to the floor. A radio static scream came from somewhere deep inside of her. Esmeralda followed up with a few more blows, plunging the shank into the yellow orbs through which the Phii Krasue saw the world.

The 8-millimeter image flickered — grainier now. He saw a house appear in her visage. It was an old, colonial French offering. The Phii Krasue turned and moved towards the opened doors. The world around Esmeralda was now that of another era. Esmeralda followed the Phii as she made her way inside. This wasn't a home; it was a headquarters. Americans in spectacles and crisp, short-sleeved shirts loitered about. They were academic types, consultants to a war in progress. The Phii Krasue led Esmeralda up a magnificent staircase. Men in Army formal wear accompanied by more of the academics descended the stairs but did not notice them. They spoke of matters of logistics. They spoke the unmistakable lexicon of war

She led him down a hallway to a bedroom. The door opened, and for a time he wasn't sure what he was witnessing. It was not a scene of homicide. It was a scene of slaughter. A group of women brandishing machetes were going about the business of dissecting a younger woman who was lying helpless on the floor. The young woman's story became known to Esmeralda without explanation. Rather, the Phii Krasue played a movie for him on the nebulous air that surrounded her. The young woman's screams serving as the soundtrack for the horrors of his soul. The women with the machetes knew what the young woman truly was. They had come to kill the demon that had taken the lives of their children. Five women in one village was no accident. Esmeralda saw the 8 millimeter film of their late night meetings. The group determined the guilt of the one woman who held all of the demons traits. It was the young woman who lived alone, and could be heard by passers bye, coughing and moaning in pain. The woman was known to dine on frogs. She could be seen at night with a light affixed to her head, catching them and then snapping their necks.

The woman who limped with pain, who coughed incessantly, and walked sleepless at night fueled by a diet of frogs, and excrement, had all the symptoms of being a Phii Krasue. To kill her, they had to catch her in her human form, as she returned to the village after feeding on the blood of newborns.

The group of women approached the stilted home where the Phii Krasue lived. Machetes in hand, they waited in the shadows under her home.  They held bottles of Jujube juice—the only weakness of the ghost. They would strike while she was in human form. The only other option was to destroy her body while the head was detached and wandering through the night. If the head returned home and couldn't find its body, it would die. None of the women were brave enough to venture out while the Krasue was hunting.

The beautiful woman never returned. Perhaps she knew of the conspiracy and moved on to another village.  Time went on, and rumors came of more newborn deaths from distant villages.  Then came the news that the Phii Krasue had met a farang, and was living in a large home in Bangkok. Didn't the farang know he was in love with a demon?  This farang who was chosen for his intelligence, and expertise in Southeast Asia. He and his organization could plan bombing raids in Laos, but he could not see the evil inside of the woman he loved.

Esmeralda saw the images on fast forward: The group of women boarding a train, one applying for a job at the French mansion, opening the door at night for the others who hid their machetes in sarongs. The group walking silently up the staircase while the young woman slept, and then to this scene — the one of the slaughter.

This was not a case of mistaken identity, or local superstition. They had the right woman, and they did what was necessary to protect their children.

As the group stabbed and hacked at the young woman with their machetes, the young woman reached up and pulled one of her assailants down. She locked her mouth onto her killer's, and rammed her tongue down her throat. The Phii Krasue in human form filled the woman's mouth with a jet of saliva, before her head dropped to the floor — mouth open, and laughing. The saliva was a curse that all Phii Krasue gave to their killers. It would cause the woman she infected to carry on her legacy as another ghost, who would roam the countryside in search of more shit and babies to devour.

This was the Phii in front of Esmeralda now. The one who became infected by spiritual parasites. A tear welled up in Esmeralda's eye when he realized the gift the ghost was passing on to him. It was the fact that all Phii Krasue were women.

They only transferred their spirit to another woman. She had kissed Esmeralda, and recognized him for his true gender. She saw the woman inside of him and was unconcerned with what was between his legs. If the spirits knew what Esmeralda was, then surely the path he had chosen was correct.

The Phii turned to Esmeralda, and the image of the French colonial home faded away. They were back again in the cell in Bangkwang, surrounded by snoring malefactors, who were oblivious with the events around them. Esmeralda quietly thanked the ghost, who turned and moved back towards the toilet. Esmeralda followed her and watched as she buried her face in hole again—taking in one last meal before she moved on. The static, old radio voice spoke, beckoning him to join her. She would show him how to feed, and how to move through this world. Esmeralda knelt beside the Phii, as her image faded away like the last frame of film in a projector. He was left alone with the sounds of the Jing Jok, making their music of kissing sounds to their paramours in the dark.

Esmeralda placed his hands on the sides of the toilet and looked down. This was a Thai style toilet. A hole in the ground covered with the shit spray of a hundred dysenteric prisoners.  He lowered his head and breathed in the odor. It was something he would need to get accustomed to if this was his new calling in life. Esmeralda extended his tongue and began licking the shit-encrusted sides of the bowl.

A hand grabbed the back of his shirt and pulled hard.

"What the fuck are you doing?" It was a fellow prisoner's voice. He was a Brit who had been locked up for smuggling drugs.

Esmeralda starred down into the brown mess of expelled tapeworms, and began to sob. He remembered flashes of hospital rooms and IV tubes, needles and two-way mirrors, men with clipboards making notations of the experiments at hand. Esmeralda's mind filled with a flood of images that left him unable to speak. He saw stacks of papers and area studies. He saw interrogations and tortures labeled as "Interviews". Esmeralda saw himself in African shanty towns, Brazilian favelas, and Central Asian mountain passes. From what time, or what conflict was anyone's guess. Images of guns… men wearing ski masks and brandishing knives… checkpoints and customs lines… packages taped to his body… he saw bodies turned upside down, and flayed alive by men who were professionals in the art of pain. He remembered one of them. 

"I remember now," Esmeralda said, "Hang on a second."

Esmeralda put his head in his hands and was quiet. The troops outside were banging on the front door, and begging to be let back in.

"Maybe we help those people, na?" Nok said.

Esmeralda remained motionless. Puss dripped from his face, and onto the table, forming a small pool, that for some reason reminded me of the shape of Alaska. Vato and I looked at each other.  He stood up and began walking towards the door.

Esmeralda turned his faces to the Chinese crooner, "Excuse me, do you know Girl from Ipanema?"

The crooner nodded.

"Would you please sing it for me?"

The crooner seemed frozen. The banging on the door was getting more desperate, and Vato was cursing that the lock was jammed.

"Hello? Could you sing it for me please?" Esmeralda asked nicely.

The crooner nodded again and stood up. He was shaking as he walked over to the karaoke machine and looked for the song.  The ping pong ball girl remained in the corner. She had her eyes closed and appeared to be mumbling some kind of prayer.

"You remember what?" I said.

The Chinese crooner found the song and hit play. Upon hearing the music start, Esmeralda stood up and backed away from the table. He held his arms out to his sides and lowered his head melodramatically. For a moment, I thought he was about to Vogue.

The Chinese crooner began in his mournful voice, "Tall and tan and young and lovely, the girl from Ipanema goes walking, and when she passes, each one she passes goes — ahhh… ."

Esmeralda brought his hands to the center of his chest and covered his heart. The puss was flowing down from his face in a steady stream like a faucet, and the Paris Hilton impersonator mask appeared to be slipping off. I looked down at the puddle of puss that was forming on the floor. It took a moment to register, so I had to do a double take, for it seemed as though Esmeralda no longer had any feet.

Esmeralda ripped open his dress, as the Paris Hilton mask finally slid from his face. He no longer had a body. From the neck down to the floor, Esmeralda was made only of entrails. A diseased looking heart pumped with the fury of a Meth addict in the center mass of intestines. I looked up at Esmeralda's face. It had transformed into that of a beautiful blonde celebrity. A woman full of guile and seduction and a taste for newborns. The Phii Dek appeared behind Esmeralda and started laughing.

"Thanks, you little fucker," I said to the Phii Dek.

"What do you care? Esmeralda Krasue only wants what I do. It's what we all want," the Phii Dek said.

The Esmeralda Krasue opened her mouth.  She had vampire-like fangs and a sharp proboscis for a tongue. She wagged the proboscis at me and let out a loud hiss.

"What the fuck do you want?" I said.

The Phii Dek stood next to the Esmeralda Krasue. He raised his hand and pointed at Nok, "Mamma," he said.

The front door opened with a bang, and Vato came running back into the room. He stopped in his tracks as he saw the Esmeralda Krasue. Right behind him were about a half dozen Chechens who were bleeding and in near hysterics. One of them yelled something to another in Russian, which I gathered to mean "close the fucking door!" The sad Chinese crooner stopped singing and made a break for it out the front door before it closed, while The Girl from Ipanema played on in the background.

The Esmeralda Krasue faced the Chechens and her disembodied head floated towards them. The Chechens could see her too, for they seemed fairly freaked out. The Esmeralda Krasue stuck out her proboscis and plunged it into the neck of one of the Chechens. Vato ran over to our table and grabbed his bag of drugs.

"Priorities dude," he said to me.

I took Nok by the arm and stood up from the table. We ran to the back room with the weapons but the door shut before we could get in. I turned and looked at the Phii Dek, "Open it you little shit," I said.

"After," the Phii Dek said.

"After what?"

"After we take that out of her ," he said, pointing to Nok's belly.

The Phii Dek was standing in the middle of the room. The Esmeralda Krasue was drinking blood from the necks of the Chechens, which traveled through her intestines and left giant piles of excrement on the floor below her. Vato had apparently developed a thing for mops, because he grabbed another one and hit the Esmeralda Krasue across the jaw. The Esmeralda Krasue then opened her mouth and vomited out a jet of shit onto Vato's face. Something about it made me snicker.

"I want life, and Esmeralda wants the placenta. After I am born, we will both have what we desire," the Phii Dek said.

Nok and I backed up into the corner with the ping pong ball lady. She was still cowering and mumbling her prayers.  Vato ducked another jet of excrement and ran over to us. I looked around. The RPG was over by the booth. So was the 9mm.

"You have a gun?" I asked Vato, who was wiping shit from his eyes.

"Just some grenades in my bag."

"Well pull them the fuck out and frag this skank," I said.

Vato opened his bag and started rummaging through it, "Sorry homes, they're on the bottom."

The few remaining Chechens were spraying the Esmeralda Krasue with automatic gunfire. The bullets passed through her body of entrails and hit the wall above us. I ducked down next to the ping pong ball lady and smelled something stinky.

"Got em dude," Vato said, as he pulled out grenade after grenade.

That was when I had what was arguably the second worst idea I had all day.

"Nok, can you translate for me?" I said.

"Arai na?" she said.

"Tell ping-pong ball lady to do something for me," I said, and held up a grenade.

Nok tapped the ping-pong ball lady on the shoulder and spoke to her in the Isaan dialect. The woman opened her eyes and looked around terrified. She seemed to comprehend what we were saying because she opened her legs and lifted her skirt.

"What are you doing dude?" Vato said.

"Getting us out of here," I said, as I pulled the pin on the grenade. I held the handle down and looked the ping-pong ball lady in the eyes. She nodded at me as though she understood what was wanted.

I released the handle on the grenade and put it inside the ping-pong ball lady's well-worn and muscular vagina. "Frag out!" I shouted.

The ping-pong ball lady used a mixture of muscle contractions and vaginal flatulence to expel the grenade with tremendous force. The sound of her beaver burp filled the room as the grenade sailed home.

The Phii Dek and the Esmeralda Krasue looked at me for the split second before the explosion happened. Since I was raised on a steady diet of action movie one-liners I regretted not having something witty to say. The grenade landed in the mass of entrails underneath Esmeralda's neck, and lodged just beneath her heart. There was a one second delay before it exploded. I used that time to hide behind Nok.

The grenade erupted in a fireball, which engulfed the Esmeralda Krasue and everything else within a 15-meter radius.  That included us. It was over in an instant. My eardrums felt as though they were busted. I didn't feel heat from the blast, nor any shrapnel piercing through my body. I only felt the warm splatter of blood coming from the ping-pong ball lady's neck as her arteries sprayed my face. The room was on fire and full of smoke. When I opened my eyes, I saw the Phii Dek and his little girlfriend standing in front of us with their arms outstretched. They had prevented the shrapnel from killing us. The ping-pong ball lady was not so lucky.

It took a few minutes to get our equilibrium back and shake off the cobwebs from our brains. The Phii Dek and his little girlfriend got down on the floor and snuggled up under Nok's arms.  Nok could see them as well, and she stroked their hair in a loving manner.

"I thought you wanted to kill us," I said to the Phii Dek.

"No, you needed to rid the world of evil.  I knew only you could do it," the Phii Dek said.

"Yo, homie, lets go grab one of those Jet Ski's and get out of here," Vato said.

"How? The streets are crawling with those things out there," I said.

"We are safe now, there will be nothing to fear," said the Phii Dek.

"What happened to Esmeralda?"

"She went to another place. This was not her world. She was born into the wrong one, and now she can go be happy," the Phii Dek said. He was starting to sound like Nok.

"Listen, its quiet outside, I think it's time to go," Vato said.

We stood up and walked through the wreckage of the nightclub. There was no part of Esmeralda to be seen. Body parts from the Chechens lay strew around the room at odd places. A hand sat in a flower pot with its middle finger up, and a pair of lips landed perfectly around the neck of a beer bottle. Vato opened the door, which led out onto Walking Street. There were bodies everywhere. I could see no traces of the worms left in them.

"It doesn't look like they are infected," I said.

"You killed the main host. Now all of them will leave the bodies."

We proceeded down Walking Street towards where we left the Jet Ski.  There were survivors coming out. They emerged from hiding like insects after the rain. Nok held the hands of the Phii Dek and his little girlfriend as they trotted along next to her.

"We need to find the toupee," I said to Vato.

"What in the fuck for?" he said.

"Because it's dangerous. That apocalypse hair hat will destroy the world if the wrong person gets a hold of it. I get the feeling that the two suit dudes are going to try and find it."

"It's over man. I'm going home," Vato said.

I stopped walking and Vato continued on.  I looked at Nok and asked her if she wanted to go with me. She said she would, and for that reason I told her not to. I told her to go home to her moms' house and that everything would be fine.

"Excuse me, sir, do you need a ride?" said a voice from behind. I turned and saw the Mormon coolie, who now had a tuk tuk instead of a rickshaw. He looked as though he was completely unscathed.

"Yeah, take her home," I said.

"And where is home?"

"Sisaket. It's a long drive. Consider it part of your penis penance," I said.

"Very well then."

I didn't hug Nok because I felt that would be saying good bye. I handed her some money and told her I would call her soon. Then I turned and started walking north.

"Where are you going, sir?" the coolie called out.

"North towards Bangkok."

"Hop in, sir, it's on the way."

Might as well, I thought. I got into the tuk tuk with Nok and the ghost children and we headed out. The barricade to Walking Street had been trampled by the thousands of afflicted that had stormed the gates. We drove through the debris and hit the main road. I looked to my left towards the beach and could see a figure out on the ocean. It was Vato and his giant bag of drugs for a passenger. He raised his arm in what appeared to be a thumbs up. We drove parallel to each other until the road split away and he faded from sight.

"What happened to crazy lady?" Nok asked.

It seemed too complicated to explain in my Tarzan Thai but I gave it a try. "Lady who turn into Phii Krasue and have ugly hair thing on her head was same lady who number one big boss worm. Ugly hair thing on lady head make so she can talk to worm, and I think Army make the ugly hair thing to do something else, but it make people go crazy and see Phii. She the number one worm lady and when she die, all the worm die too," I said, adding, "Kao jai mai?"

Nok nodded out of courtesy, "Ka, kao jai," she said, even though she had absolutely no idea what I was talking about.

I saw a cat emerge from under a car. It was the first animal I had seen in some time. I told the Mormon coolie to stop the tuk tuk, and I walked back to where I saw it. The cat came up to me and rubbed himself on my leg. I starred out into the world and still saw so many — the rise and fall of shadows to and from this world.  Anyone that has chosen this life will hear their call, and will be confused and misled by them since birth. I see them now, and know how much more work there is for me to do.

I picked up the cat, and it purred softly in my arms. The cat blinked at me with that smug look that means they trust you, and if there is anything in the feline emotional cosmos that equates with love, then the cat offered me that also. Together we watched the shadows fall to Earth, and by the way the cats' eyes moved, I knew he could see them too.

We drove north for quite some time. I saw people who had previously been sleepers or afflicted, stumbling around like they had the worst hangover of their lives. One man was already starting to cook food for a group of people at roadside stand. It wouldn't be long before the markets opened up, and the delicious fragrance of diesel smoke choked the air. There would be the smell of lemongrass and fish sauce, and the warm smiles of the Thai people, and the wind would carry with it everything that I loved.