The Last Metal Critic Pt. 3

Part 3: Subgenre

I’m midway through the morning’s promos and I’ve lit my first Sentry of the day when my door slides open to reveal a guard in full body armor. He squares his feet and drums his fingers on his gun.

“Ms. Parek wants to talk to you,” he says. “Come with me.” When I try and bring my cigarette along for the walk, he shakes his head, so stub it out with a groan. It’s important, I’ve learned since arriving here, to talk back to the guards. Otherwise, they think you’re a pussy. The other day I saw the Indie Drama critic get the wind knocked out of him for flinching.

The administrative wing is more workplace than barracks, with neat white cubicles and offices throughout (holy shit, imagine having separate work and sleeping quarters?). Everyone falls silent and stares as I pass. Because I’ve lived out in the Far-Off or because I’m a metalhead, I’m not sure. The latter feels safer, but it’s probably the former.

The longer we walk, the more I chew my cheek with worry. Is Parek pissed at me for some reason? Is my work not up to snuff? Was the Wharf Rat profile too long? It’s pathetic that I’ve so quickly gone from resenting the Beast’s stranglehold on the world to fearing they’ll no longer put me up for the night, but I also know that people who piss off the Beast usually receive their pink slip in the form of a bullet in the back of the cranium. By the time I get to Parek’s offices, I’m rubbing the lighter in my pocket so hard that I’m worried I’ve worn down the finish.

“Oh good, you’re here!” says Jess Parek when I arrive. Her office is neat and sparsely decorated, though a few items of note stand out—a photo of her posing with Weldon Milano, her CEO; another of her draping a blanket around an elderly Joe Jonas as he gets a Slo-Mo vaccine.

“Well, yeah,” I say. “You summoned me.” The holo-plaque on her desk announcing her as ‘Associate Editor of Entertainment’ flickers as I drop into my seat.

Parek waves off the guard, closes the door, and sits down across from me. Between the shoulders of her jacket and her perfect grin, I’m worried that I might cut myself if I get too close to her.

“That Wharf Rat write-up was quite good,” she said. “How’d you get that exclusive material so far in advance?”

“Those guys are friends of mine, remember?”

She nods knowingly; whether she remembers or not, I can’t tell. I can never read her. “It’s nice that you can help out your friends. We pride sociability here. Anyway, have you ever had any contact with a metal band named Mongreloid? They’re from the Far-Off as well.”

“You realize the Far-Off is a big place,” I tell her, trying to display my contempt just enough without getting myself chemically castrated. “Outside of the various settlements is most of what used to be the world before the Suck. I can’t know everyone there.”

“Well, this band has come on our radar lately, and we’d like you to do an interview with them,” says Parek, lacing her fingers together pointedly. She seems…excited? Driven by this idea? Holy shit, what if Jess is more than a Beast slave? What if she likes music?

“How have they come on your radar but not mine?” I ask. “I’m as tuned into the metal scene as I’ve ever been. Is there an album I can listen to?”

“I believe they’re more of a live act,” she says, handing me a folder. “They mostly play for their own crowd, but still manage to garner hype due to their professional affiliations and their, uh, frontwoman. They’re having a concert tomorrow night at those coordinates, and we’d like you to be there to represent The Beast.”

When I flip open the folder and see a surveillance photo of the band, my mouth goes dry and my stomach backs up against my spine. “They’re Petroglyphs,” I mumble.

She smiles. “And their singer is a Screamer.”

***

“How does that work?” yells Gutierrez, the Beast guard in the passenger seat, over the rumble of the engine.

“I’m not exactly sure,” I call back, gripping the Oh Jesus handle of the military transport vehicle as we go bumping along the damaged road out into the wasteland. “I’ve definitely heard of humans and Screamers living in peace, but never together. The file just says the band found it wandering the wasteland and took it in.”

“Fucking creepy if you ask me,” responds Gutierrez. “I once had to clear out a whole nest of those bastards. They killed one of our squadmates.”

“Ever killed any Petroglyphs?” I ask, my nerves bristling the closer the little black car gets to the red dot on our GPS screen.

“Nah, they’re usually fine,” yells back the driver. “They have a kind of respect for the military. Even Beast military. You fire a warning shot, they back off.”

Our coordinates land us out in the wasteland proper. Piles of trash and debris lie strewn across the bomb-torn asphalt, surrounded by looming monoliths pockmarked with rows of squares that were once buildings.

Sitting among all the squalor is a perfect merch bundle—a vinyl record, two CDs, a shirt and a patch.

Gutierrez gets out and opens my door for me, and I reluctantly step into the dry breeze. According to my briefing, I’m meant to encounter the members of Mongreloid alone, without armed escort. Ostensibly, the merch bundle is meant for me—but I outsmarted enough psychopaths during the Suck to know I’m what it’s meant for.

“That’s an ambush, you realize,” I grumble to Gutierrez. “There’s probably a bear trap under that merch that’ll lop my fucking arm off.”

“Probably,” he says with a shrug. “Sorry, dude. Worst case scenario, we print you a new one back at headquarters.”

As I approach the merch, my throat gets dry and itchy. I keep expecting the sound of steel jaws. The closer I get, though, the more I can make out the band’s handywork, and to be fair, what they’ve left for me looks surprisingly clean and well-designed. There’s a great picture of a biker with a Mohawk speeding off into the sunset on the shirt, and the logo on the record cover shows that it was designed by an actual artist, not just the bassist’s slave boy.

Tentatively, my hand shaking, I reach out and pick up the patch. Its embroidery feels thick and legit in my hand. I’d wear it on a jacket, easily.

That’s when the first pile of trash jumps up and tackles me.

My face hits the ground hard, making my vision flash white. Before I know what’s happening, two other heaps of scrap and filth have leapt onto me and pinned me down, their hands stronger than any I’ve ever felt. The garbage hangs off of them in carefully-attached costumes that make them look shaggy with junk; my eyes water as the smell of them hits me, like unwashed dick in a vomit factory.

“Yo!”

All heads whip up. Gutierrez’s partner waves to us from the van.

“Back alive,” he says, “and whole.”

“We can’t eat any of him?” shouts one in a gruff man’s voice.

“Nossir,” says my escort, sending a wave of relief crashing over me.

“All right,” groans my captor as though he’s been asked to take out the trash. Then they all set on my again, producing a long rusted chain that they use to bind my arms and legs.

***

“He said not to eat any part of me,” I mention.

“Doubt he’ll notice anything missing,” says the Petroglyph, squinting as he aims. “Hold still or this’ll hurt like fuck’s uncle.”

There’s a sharp pain as he jabs the needle in, and I watch as the tube connecting my arm to an old soda bottle on the ground next to where I’m chained spirals crimson with my blood. Before me, the two remaining members of Mongreloid have lost their garbage camouflage; one is a muscular wild-man wearing lots of studded leather, the other with a thick-set woman with short black hair. They sit around a small fire on which they’re burning a plastic milk crate, the only light in the hollowed-out guts of the building husk.

“Let’s see what you got,” says my surgeon, discarding his own trash coat to reveal a wiry speedfreak covered in tattoos. I feel his hands dig into my pockets. “Wallet, we’ll take that. Hydro-chips, nice. Oooh, someone brought Sentries.”

“An offering,” I say.

“How thoughtful.” He holds up my notepad and recorder. “Nah, let’s make it interesting.” He tosses them in the fire to the amused sniggers of his bandmates. I’m about to smirk and laugh along when I see him produce my lighter and hold it up to the light.

“Not that, okay?” The skinny one sneers at me, and I straight-up plead. “You can have my blood and money, but that, the lighter, it’s personal. It’s very important to me. Please.”

The skinny one tosses it to the muscular dude, who inspects the Zippo before tossing it back. Skinny tucks it back in my pocket and slaps me on the chest. “We’ll fill another bottle after this one, and then we’re good.”

“It’s not going to be easy for me to remember your answers if I’m two Coke bottles short,” I tell him.

“That’s good,” says the muscular dude by the fire. “Vital living. Total honesty. Working with what you have. That’s the Petroglyph way. I think we’ve lost that in music—heavy metal especially.” He cracks his neck. “Buncha whiny kids e-mailing each other riffs. Fuckin’ lame.”

“A lot of those dudes are living in the settlements, though,” I say, feeling the rubberiness of bloodloss set in. “Life’s tough for them too.”

“The settlements ain’t out here,” says the big guy. He motions to the skinny guy, who takes the two bottles full of my blood, empties them into a tiny pot full of roots and bone hunks, and sets it to hang over the fire.

***

The interview goes as well as it can when the reporter has a pounding headache and drymouth the whole time. The only thing that keeps me conscious is the knowledge that they might chew off my fingers if I nod off.

But for their disgusting lifestyle, Mongreloid are ready to talk. Chuck, with the muscles, guitar, believes the world was made to be conquered and ridden upon. The skinny drummer, who goes by Tiptoe, is the joker, and even gives me a swig from his flask; the liquor inside makes me cough wildly, but it kills my headache. Janna, the woman, bass, is the heart of the band, though—quiet, observant, ready to back her bandmates up. She’s readier to be protective of whatever Mongreloid is.

Finally, we get onto their singer. “How exactly did you rope a Screamer into the band?”

“Quite literally,” says Chuck. “Once she let us get close enough to her, we threw a rope around her neck. But she calmed down quick, and she took to singing right away.”

“But how’d you get it in front of a mic? What do you do to make it scream? It’s not aware of what she’s doing, is it?” I ask, aware that I’m walking on egg shells. “So it’s kind of a gimmick. I mean, does she seem to enjoy being in the band?”

“Why don’t you ask her?” says Janna. “Christine, say hi.”

She motions beyond the firelight, and the gasp and jump that hits me makes them snicker. The thing sits in the corner, a mass of thin arched limbs that I actually thought was a broken chair at first. Now, I can pick out the big black eyes, and parched lips, the tattered punk shirt draped over its frame. It’s hard to believe this thing used to be a woman; it’s easy to know that whatever it is, it ain’t human. I’ve never seen one this close before.

“Does she…do you speak?” I ask tentatively.

The Screamer stares back blankly. After a moment of silence, Mongreloid bursts into laughter as one. “They can’t talk, you moron,” giggles Tiptoe. “Speech center’s the first thing that goes during the change. She can scream a few words, but she can’t fuckin’ converse with you.”

“Then how does she sing?” I ask.

“A few screamed words s’all we need,” says Chuck. He glances at the window, kills his cup full of blood soup, and slaps Janna on the arm. “Sun’s low. Let’s get set up.”

***

The venue is a huge empty space this building’s basement, probably an auditorium for some sort of school or theater. The band’s set-up is against one wall, a grotesque mass of repurposed speakers and various looted instruments. The minute I see the towering wall of sound through which they play, I put in my earplugs.

The Petroglyphs show up in droves. The filthy, ragged, leather-wrapped hordes smell positively awful, and have infected piercings in places I didn’t think one could drive a needle through. An aura of dirt and infection comes off of them. The guys are all stringy maniacs or hulking monsters, and all the women brandish homemade weapons and rock at least three dreadlocks. They come with feral dogs and cats on leashes and pull makeshift flasks of water and liquor out of their vests. A few of them show up with a tub of clear liquor that they sell cups of for barter—animal teeth, water, the rare egg. A group of them come in eating questionably-pink BBQ. They never touch me. It’s obvious I’ve been given a Mark Of Cain here—off limits, or else.

Finally, once the place is packed, Mongreloid take the stage, and the crowd goes totally apeshit. The actual volume is unbelievable, seeming to blow my lips back; I’m horrified to watch Petroglyph teenagers in the front row without earplugs.

After charging into a few bars of their galloping riff, Christine jumps into the middle of the stage, and everyone loses it a thousand times more. She snatches the microphone from its stand and screams into it. The sound is high-pitched and grating, a horrid soul-gutting shriek that cuts through all other noise in the room. Everyone seems to clench up and gag upon hearing it; even through my plugs, it makes me shudder. Most people have only ever heard it from afar, and have been taught to run from it immediately.

But that said, the music is…it’s fine, I suppose. After the second song, it dawns on me that every song is going to be the same one, a set of reliable chugalug riffage without anything real impressive, once you get past the cannibal bikers and mutated horrors. Though its makers are a total freakshow, the music never gets as crazy as it should. The crowd seems to notice it too—even while some of them keep moving the entire time, after a while they all calm down and relax into it. Towards the end, one or two start talking over the unholy screams. After the last song, everyone claps and whistles like crazy, though.

***

Ninety minutes later, a Petroglyph named Shrug (honestly, that was just his response to the question, “What’s your name?”) drops me off with my Beast escort. He shakes my hand and punches me hard in the sternum before roaring back out into the darkness of the wasteland.

“How was it?” asks Gutierrez as we roll back towards the compound. “Was it scary as Hell?”

Huh. On the one hand, it was fine. Once I got past their image and unique niche, Mongreloid were just decent, a band I wouldn’t turn off at the bar but which I wouldn’t die for. Then again, they also tied me to a wall, drank my blood, befriended a violent monster, and played a two-hour set to gathering of neo-primitive apocalyptic biker murderers. Which is more important?

“It was cool,” I tell him. “They’re totally insane, and the Screamer stole the show. It’s good to know there’s stuff like this going on out there somewhere.”

Gutierrez grins. “Nice,” he says, staring out the window. “Good to know the world’s still off its rocker.”