The Eighth Plague: A Narrative of Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll

Chapter 10: The Untitled Part

The strummings of Kingston Calypso hummed with reverb over the PA system of the moon spaceport. Men and women of every size, shape, and color were there. Batrachian mounds of marble served fried batter in the food court, and red Beothuks tramped about the moving sidewalks on mighty six-legged horses.

Our heroes wandered about this Boscheian vista, taking in and taking part in the scenery. The Confederate was already balls-deep into a young Treen girl, and Major Collins was halfway finished with a bag of Cheetos when Spade asked "Well, what the hell do we do now?"

"What do you mean?" asked Martie, taking a bite from a sentient plum, savoring its wails and flavor.

"I mean, where do we go next? How do we find the portal to the space station? We've got an entire plane to search!" He answered.

"Entire moon," retorted the Arab, sipping at a gourd of boba tea. At least she assumed that it was boba in the tea. And that it was tea. And that it was a gourd.

"Okay, fine. Maybe not a whole planet. But we don't even have a vehicle! Or clothes!"

Major Collins threw a now-empty Cheeto bag to the floor, "Goddammit!" he yelled. "These things never last!"

The rest of the group stared in dismay at this outburst. Evidently his speech centers had healed, and this was how he had chosen to let them know.

As people began to go about their business again, The Arab said "I might know some people here who we might be able to borrow from."

The people she meant were the Clairs. Once a wealthy family, they had lost everything when the father of the family had been outed as having committed treason against his native country. After a number of setbacks, the Claires now all lived under one roof in an abandoned whalery whose non-load-bearing walls were prone to collapse.

Marc Clair, the middle son of the family, was in what had become a living room since the Clairs had moved into the whalery. They'd even installed electric lamps. Right now he was feeding the family gill-man, a product his father, Theo Clair, had unsuccessfully developed as a response to the brine-chimp craze of the early sixties. It was essentially the same thing, only much larger and it could speak basic phrases like "need food" and "want woman." He had just finished feeding it when he heard a knock at the door.

Upon opening it, he was greeted by the naked Arab, a sometime acquaintance of the family, along with another naked woman, and three naked men, two of whom were old and weirdly deformed.

"Hi, Marc!" she said, blushing, one forearm covering her small breasts.

"Hi. What do you need?" he asked. His tone was a dismissive one. As he and his family had known the girl for some years they had all become well acquainted with her methods of getting people to do things for her. They had pretty much all fucked her at some point.

"We need a vehicle and some clothes." she said, dropping her arm and putting her hands at her hips.

"I'll see what I can do. Don't try anything, though. You've probably got diseases."

He welcomed them into the home, and asked them to sit down in the bean bag chairs while he went upstairs.

Spade decided to check out the place, and headed into the kitchen. Here, he saw Theophilius Clair, the German-Lover. Spade recognized him from a whoo-hoo some years ago at an airport in denver. The two had spent the night drinking the bloody nectar of harvested psychoactive glands that had been procured by a novelist friend of theirs named Anthony something.

"Holy shit! I had no idea she meant the Clairs!" he said, "What the hell happened to you guys?"

Theo was tinkering with a headset. "Oh, lots of things. It's a very complex situation."

"No, it isn't. You just don't want to admit you committed treason," said Jean, his daughter and eldest child, who was reading a hunting magazine and nursing a bottle of cheap moon-booze.

Theo smashed the headset against the table in anger, "I keep telling you! I was framed!"

"There are pictures of you with Hitler!"

"Hey, whatever happened is none of my business!" said Spade, trying to calm down the situation, "But maybe it's for the best! I mean, there's a whole plague happening down on earth right now... "

"Wait, you've just come back from earth?" Theo's eyes widened.

"Well, yeah. I'm helping these guys to do a thing."

"Are you trying to kill us? You're going to infect us all!" Theo shouted, ducking behind a counter.

From the other room, Spade heard a splashing sound.

Running to see what had happened, he saw that the Arab had climbed into the gill-man's tank and was... Well. We don't need to get into the exact configurations of the act.

Suddenly, Marc came down the stair holding several jumpsuits and a set of keys, when he saw the unfolding scene.

"Well, I've got the-- HOLY CATS!"

The only Claire infected that day would be the gill-man. And not with the plague, but something we don't really have a name for which the Arab had picked up from Spade. Whoops!