Free The Brothers Crunk by William Pauley III Page A

trigger.
     
    A cue-ball forms and fires fast into the night sky. Krebb follows it with his eye, but loses sight of it after only a second.
     
    The cue-ball crashes through Dethbryte’s skull with such force that it shatters the bone and splits her face completely in half. Blood, bone, brain, and saliva gush out of her face like a geyser, raining down fast on Tokyo. She screams like a warthog that just ate a trough full of broken glass and disappears into the depths below.
     
    Reynold can hardly keep his eyelid open. It gets heavier the more blood he loses. Krebb throws down his KREBBOOM and helps Vega, who is still struggling to remove the blade from his shoulder. Gluum helps T-Dakk wrap his wound with a piece of cloth.
     
    Reynold kneels on the floor, his hands slowly slip from his ankles as he becomes too weak to apply pressure. His blood pools around him. Bright white flashes like a strobe light in his eye. White. Sky. White. Sky. White. Dethbryte. White.
     
    Dethbryte is again standing tall beside THE BLITZ. Her split face is now nothing but a hole surrounded by blood and gore—completely unrecognizable. Out from the hole, her esophagus, gurgles a string of indecipherable speech. She pounds her fists down against the building, causing the floor to collapse from the vibration.
     
    White. Sky. White. Sky. White.
     
    Vega throws one of his katanas like a dart. The blade splits the air and buries itself in the neck flesh just under Dethbryte’s chin, severing the Power Glove cord. Dethbryte’s body shudders and implodes, much the same as Vandenboom’s body. She takes one final breath before her body splatters on the city street below.
     
    White. Sky. White. White. White.
     

 
     
     
     

 
    TWENTY-THREE
    THE RED RAIN
     
     
    Purple is gone now, as quickly as he came. The people, we stand in the red, red rain. The blood of the wicked is blood all the same. Together we stand in the red, red rain. Together we stand in the red, red rain. Together we stand in the red, red rain . . .
     

 
     

 
     
    TWENTY-FOUR
    ONWARD
     
     
    Reynold saddles up and strings a fishing rod, dangling a strip of Pete’s meat in front of his ostrich. The rig works masterfully. If he wants the ostrich to turn, he simply moves the fishing rod in any direction he wants to go. Sure, it’s simple, but he imagines Divey would have been proud.
     
    He digs into his pocket and removes a small orb. Milky-white smoke swirls inside it; a spirit trapped in glass.
     
    Before they had parted ways, Krebb removed the orb from Vandenboom’s chest and placed it in Reynold’s palm. He said to him, ‘The body may be gone, but the soul is eternal.’ Krebb’s words will forever be stitched into his brain. The soul is eternal. Eternal.
     
    Reynold looks out across the great expanse of the desert before him. His future will be determined by this one choice: East or West. His future, his destiny, his fate.
     
    HIS FATE.
     
    East or West.
     
    He fumbles through his pockets and pulls out his lucky coin. Heads it’s East, tails it’s West. He rubs the coin between his palms and kisses it for luck, before resting the coin flat on top of his fist. He flicks his thumb and the coin goes flipping through the air. The sunlight glitters off it, nearly blinding him, as the coin comes hurdling back down. It slaps against his palm and bounces off onto the hot sand below.
     
    “ Gripes!” he shouts as he hops down off his ostrich. His bandaged foot gets caught up in the stirrups and he loses his balance, tripping and falling face-first into the sand. The small glass orb wriggles loose from his grasp and rolls away, leaving behind a faint trail in the sand. Reynold picks up the coin and scrambles to his feet, frantically searching for the orb.
     
    “ Where the fack . . .?” he mumbles to himself, following the faint snake-like trail with his eye. The trail ends with no orb in sight, but standing directly above, perky and almost smiling, is the