East of West, Issue #19 – “The Dead Wood”

* Part 4 of 14 of the The Apocalypse: Year Two storyline *

Welcome to Ghostliness & Nerfherders Presents: East of West, Issue #19 – “The Dead Wood”! An issue-long Viagra commercial is ahead of us. In the previous installment, Orion and his pet Hell Demon approach Babylon and Balloon in a verdant meadow (or as Babylon sees it, a desolate wasteland with trees out of the Doom computer game). Babylon sees a friendly man with a large cuddly gerbil. Babylon and the Hell Demon get along famously. Alone, Balloon and Orion discuss Babylon’s path to becoming the Great Beast. Frankly, it should be Babylon’s decision. Thanks, Mom and Dad.

Death and Xiaolian exchange their final pleasantries. Death gives her a locket that allows her to speak to him through it, although it doesn’t work both ways. So it’s essentially useless for her.

The Endless Nation exchanged a ton of their intelligence for the House of Mao’s alliance and cooperation. I’m looking forward to that backfiring.

East of West, Issue #19 [May, 2015]
Written by: Jonathan Hickman
“The Dead Wood”

Look at the cover, man. Death is dying! That’s some crazy stuff. No holds barred, anything does. You’re gonna see some serious shit, Marty! But that’s probably not Death. I can’t tell who it is. Tom Cruise.

Babylon clutches his tummy. He’s hungry! It’s an odd feeling, these hunger pangs. They royally suck. How can anyone live like this? He’d rather commit all sorts of suicide.

Balloon tells him to eat, but he doesn’t wanna. All his life he ate through a stinkin’ tube. If he eats like a normal person now, there will be no going back! …sigh, oh well. Bring it on. Hamburger and fries, please. And a Shamrock Shake! … … … … well, get one anyway!

No! No time! Balloon knocks Babylon over behind a fallen tree. “Shhhh! I’m installing stealth protocols into your prefrontal cortex,” Balloon informs his little charge urgently. BOOP! “Upload complete.”

Well hot damn! You can still do stuff to him. Upload a burger and fries, you dumb orb.

But no, this is important. Babylon’s food is currently climbing a tree. Go get it son, it looks delicious!

Yum! Go get it. Looks like it would be good with ketchup!

Boo. That looks gross, but it’ll have to do. Orb will get a fire going so they can cook that sucker.

…

“You’re not going to get it for me?” Babylon asks meekly.
“I’m sorry, Babylon. Not today. Improvise.”

And indeed he does. Like a real Boy Scout. He grabs a stick and starts sharpening it all pointy like. He’s gonna spear him a weird little angry demon imp. Let’s watch…

Balloon cheers his buddy on. WOOP WOOP! He’s got this in the bag.

It’s a squirrel. Babylon can’t see that, but he nonetheless doesn’t want to hurt it. That sounds mean. And while Balloon reminds him that he has, indeed, hurt things before, Babylon has his reasons. “That’s different. The Horseman was going to hurt me.” Plus, he sucked and had it coming.

Yeah, fair enough. But this is dinner. You gotta eat, right? Ain’t no Funyuns and Little Debbies in the woods! At this point the orb shoots the squirrel with a laser and decapitates it profusely. You love to see it.

“Consume it all. Eat the root.”

“All of these are tests. All of this is change.”

We’ll see.

Babylon and Balloon are enjoying a decadent meal of spit-roasted squirrel. I’m quite jealous, since I had to settle for spit-roasted rat for my own meal today. Thanks, Obama.

“Remember this, Babylon… part of living well is eating well.”
“Weird thing for you to say, Balloon… but something’s different about you, isn’t there? You’ve been acting strange since we ran into the prophet with the awesome gerbil thingy.”
“If you think the entirety of our association is a game– and it isn’t –the rules of said contrivance have changed. You understand what I am, right?”

Meh. A talking balloon. Also a watcher. Also a teacher. Also a friend. Did he hit the nail on the head?

I was thinkin’ a Jon Hamm type. OR, ooooh, Jim Parsons!

Ok, so that stuff is true! Things are different now, though. There’s no more really molding or guidance or anything of the sort. Now Babylon chooses his own path. These are standing orders from Warden Orion.

Cool?

The next morning, after a long, uncomfortable-as-shit slumber atop a thick tree branch, Babylon is awakened by urgent nudging from his frowning balloon. “We have to go.”

But WHY? This place is great. So many delicious squirrels!

It’s because it’s possible that they’re being followed and watched. It’s due to an unknown failure on Balloon’s part, and this information piques Babylon’s… paranoia. “Might be time for you to come clean, Balloon. Failed at what? Spit it out.”

Here you go; catch that spit, sonny. Orion seems to have tampered with Balloon’s programming package. Ergo, he is now being forced to push Babylon into very real, life-threatening situations. It’s all about priority. So, you hear that unsettling rustling and cracking in the bushes over there? Get a move on.

“I’m going to regret asking…” Babylon says tentatively, “But what’s the prioritized area I’m studying now?”

MURDER! It’s murder! Your priority is murder! Any way you want it, that’s the way you need it! Stabbing! Gunning! Choking! Drowning! Hitting with your car, a Kia Soul perhaps! Be creative.

Also, run! Run, boy! They’re gaining on us! Who “they” are, who knows. But, damnit, run from them anyway. And Babylon runs, intrigued about the prospect of murder. Keith Morrison over here getting a little moist in the loins over murdery murder. Only murders in the building.

Here’s the rub: Babylon was supposed to kill that squirrel himself, and he failed. That just won’t do. It won’t do at all. Work on it.

Teach things, learn things, make up your mind you lousy talking balloon.

While Balloon is schooling this whippersnapper on choices and options and successes and failures, the “they” who are gaining on them appear to be little four-legged demogorgons. And there are a bunch of them.

Here’s Balloon’s lesson today: Man kills to eat. That’s the first type of murder that one needs to learn, but that’s low-stakes stuff. Here’s the next step: Man kills to survive. That’s the second type of murder. That’s higher-stakes. I wonder which step is “Man kills for fun”. A good step. A respectable step. This is what the demogorgons are here for, getting killed by you for your health and safety. And hey, at least you’re not hungry anymore. That’ll help the not being too sluggish part of the whole ordeal.

Don’t worry, though. Balloon will allow Babylon some time to get his bearings and plan his attack by hoisting him in the air about a dozen feet off the ground. “Nasty looking bunch you sicced on us, Balloon…” Babylon says with a touch of reverence, “but here’s a question: Basic evolutionary biology would suggest that [TOM’S NOTE: BOOOORRRRRING].” His question, in a nutshell, is about why these demogorgon beasts have tentacle-y tentacles when it doesn’t make much sense for land animals to still have tentacles after 700 trillion years of evolution.

Nice one, Balloon. You just bought yourself about twelve seconds.

Afraid that Babylon is starting to catch onto the whole alternate reality thing that Balloon is forcing him to see, you see, he fabricates a dire stuck-in-a-tree situation. And, oh god, oh me oh my, the string starts to rip in the branch. Babylon starts freaking out, because the tether will break and he’s going to land in a pile of demogorgons and he’s going to have to put his murderin’ pants on.

The tether rips. The child falls.

“Oh no. How did that happen? I’m so dumb. How come all these awful things keep happening to good people? God is dead,” wails the Balloon rather unconvincingly, throwing in some Nietzsche when appropriate to add a little panache. Then Babylon falls on his big white face.

No time to think now, is there? The kid brandishes his makeshift pointy stick. Balloon gets himself stuck in a branch on purpose, moaning effusively about the hopelessness of everything. “So it’s just me, the stick, and these monsters… any advice?” Babylon asks, flailing for a modicum of help from his loser sidekick.

“Yes. It’s a spear,” Balloon smiles, “And they have a soft underbelly.”

Excellent! The kid goes feral and starts hacking and slashing. Absolutely fucking nuts, here. “There’s hope for you yet, young man,” comments the ever-omniscient Orb as Babylon tears these creatures up like crêpe paper.

Once Babylon is done being a little sociopath, WE THE READING AUDIENCE get to see what he really butchered: a bunch of wild warthogs. At least seven of them. “You did that on purpose, didn’t you?” he says to Orby Balloon, on to him and his antics.

I’ll show YOU Son of Death! Prepare to be deathed, son!

“It is possible that the proportions of the situation were manufactured,” Babylon’s best buddy in the whole, wide, terrible world, “It’s even possible that I released synthesized pheromones into the air – whipping the beasts into a frenzy. It’s possible that I would do all kinds of things contrary to my new programming to help you become who you’re supposed to be.”

So much for free will and surviving untethered in the real world, I suppose. “Some people call that unconditional love, Babylon.”

Well, that’s kind of screwed up. Lesson learned, though. These warthogs were going to kill the child, and instead the child killed them. That’s called survival, and it’s one step closer toward the inevitable rampant murdering. “Like riding a bike,” the Tutor of Life says.

“Hear that?” Babylon perks up again, on edge, “There’s something still moving out there.”
Balloon shoots him a look of completely feigned surprise. “Oh! And do you know what it is?”

Step One, killing to eat. Done. Step Two, killing to survive. Donezo. Step Three? We all remember Step Three, right? And if you thought “Profit” then I’m rolling my fucking eyes at you. How original. Get a real sense of humor.

Step Three is also killing for survival, but this time it’s a preemptive strike. Gotta kill the ones who will someday kill you. Gotta learn how to anticipate that. There might be some that will try to kill you decades from now! Put some polonium in their Cheerios today. That’s called politics, my friend. “Hrmpt! Seems a bit presumptuous to me,” Babylon reacts with disdain. Hrmpt indeed. How the hell is supposed to know who’s gonna kill him. It could be literally anybody!

…oh.

“We hold the world and its flawed herd in contempt. Which is why we want to destroy it and build something better… but when you treat the mob with contempt, you can’t be surprised when they become your enemy. And once someone is your enemy there’s no going back. They are going to hate you forever.”