Krokodil Tears

On Monsters' Row, they were going wild. Voorhees had wrenched his door off, and was being held down by a dozen officers. Rex Tendenter hung naked from his bars like a monkey, chattering like a mad creature. Staig, Mizzi, McClean and Brosnan were howling like beasts. Etchison was laughing uncontrollably, plucking his eyelashes out one by one. Myers just stared at the walls of his cell, unperturbed by it all.

Voorhees got a cattleprod away from one of the officers, and shoved it through a uniformed chest. Hector Childress clapped as the blood sprayed, and called for more. Tendenter leaped to the floor. His bars had been bloodied. He licked the fast-drying red greedily, smearing his face. Colonel Reynard Pershing Fraylman lay on his military-perfect bunk, his tongue lolling, his face blackening. He had been struck dead early in the riot, brought down by a burst blood vessel. Norman Bates shouted in a womanish, high-pitched voice.

Voorhees had killed five of the guards, by now. Tear gas cannisters exploded and Staig swallowed his tongue, choking quickly to death. Three hefty officers in transpex riot gear jogged through the door, and levelled their guns. Rubber bullets bounced off Voorhees' broad chest, and spanged against the bars.

"Don't freak around," shouted a sergeant who was trying to hold his arm onto his shoulder, "kill the motherfreaker..."

Norman Bates cringed at the bad language.

The riot bulls levelled semi-automatics, and filled Voorhees's chest. The hulking moron kept stumbling onwards.

"Come on guys," shouted the sergeant, "plug the fat..." He was cut off by the next burst. Ricochet bullets slammed into him, and he relaxed, his arm slipping into his lap. Three other officers died in that volley, and Voorhees kept walking.

The riot bulls put ScumStoppers through Jason Voorhees's eyes, and the back of his bald head exploded.

"What a mess," said Norman. "This will never wash out, you know, never. This dress is ruined!"

They were still screaming. Tendenter dipped his fingers in Voorhees's spilled blood and brains, and raised the chunks to his eager lips.

"Freak," said Officer Kerr, "it's time we settled these bastards' hash once and for all."

He shot Tendenter between the eyes, and the Bachelor Boy slumped, still smiling, in his cell.

Childress realized what was happening, and ran to the back of his cell, hiding behind his bunk. Officers shoved their rifles through the bars and shot the chainsaw murderer through his bedding.

"Who's got the keys?" asked Kerr.

"No one."

"We do it through the bars then," said Kerr. "Sandall, you take Myers with the burpgun.
He's the worst of them."

Sandall shoved his weapon through the bars, and looked into the empty eyes of the Haddonfield Horror.

Even without a mask, his face was a blank. He flipped the safety catch, but the murderer moved too fast for him, and he found himself hugged to the iron. His head wouldn't fit through the gap, but Myers pulled it into the cell anyway, leaving ears, hair and chunks of flesh on the metal.

"Myers has got a gun. Take him."

The sirens stopped, and more officers arrived. Myers tossed the gun into the corridor, and sat down again.

"What's going on here?" asked Deputy Warden Crighton.

"The monst... the inmates attempted escape, sir."

"There'll be a full enquiry, Kerr."

"Yes, sir."

Crighton looked down Monsters' Row, at the corpses jumbled against the walls.

"Freak, what a mess! This is worse than the Tasmanian Devil's leftovers."

Rex Tendenter was buried in the asylum grounds while an overwhelmingly female crowd of over 300 piled lavish floral tributes against the walls of the institution. The widow of Officer Lyndon Sandall, who had been one of five mourners at his modest funeral a week earlier, threw a petrol bomb into the crowd. Sixteen died, forty-one sustained serious burns, and Clara Sandall moved into Sunnydales' Low Security Wing.

The home had kept Dr Proctor's "confinement area" empty for him, just in case he was ever recaptured. Nobody really wanted him back.

Meanwhile, Jason Voorhees's body disappeared from the morgue.

- Pages 251-253, Krokodil Tears by Jack Yeovil.

Yeovil is the hard-drinkin' alter ego of the superbly hirsute Kim Newman, and Krokodil Tears was part of an insanely entertaining series of books Newman apparently wrote in a matter of weeks, sometime in the very early nineties. Hitting all the right pop culture and post apocalyptic buttons, they remain my favourite trash novels ever, even if the saga never got the ending it deserved. Krokodil Tears isn't even the best, with the adventures of Colonel Elvis Aaron Presley (retired) in Comeback Tour taking the cake, but this scene, with a bunch of fictional psychopaths losing it as, elsewhere, vast eldritch gods battle on multiple planes of existence is the funniest bit in the entire series.

That bit where Myers throws out the gun and sit back down still makes me laugh.