Visions from the Ferrous Jungle

Rain drops dangle off the thorn bite of barbwire running along the chain link fence. I stop and look through it, seeing at once both the parking lot and a row of houses silhouetted against the sunless morning. I breathe in the mist and exhale, through the meshed fence, a silent dream. The cars sitting in the lot begin to shake at first, but then on closer inspection it is clear that they are in fact twitching. Their doors fall off all at once, and we hear the monstrous scream of these automobiles sprouting long spikes from it's chasis that extend, bend, hit the floor and lift the car up. The engines begin grinding and it is the sound of a wasps drowning in lava. The headlights flare up, illuminating the mist in arcs of a sickly yellow. They begin crawling now on their new found legs, their steps echo like a hundred hammers falling. A hive of giant metallic insects have just hatched from the eggs of what were once SUVs, town cars, pick up trucks and old model muscle cars. They are awake now. Awake and hungry, their radio antennas search the air for suitable nourishment.

They begin barking with revs of their engines and bursts of horn. The SUVs and Pick Up trucks quickly establish alpah dominance over the smaller vehicles, climbing over and crushing some of the more compact models. Their legs piercing through the roof of the shell of a VW Bug and there is a sustained blare of the horn as it begins convulsing, losing it's legging and finally collapsing back to the ground. The larger vehicles swarm over it, they pop their hoods and from underneath the engine block I can see hose tendrils crawl out of it like a corrugated tongue, as it slides into the dead VWs engine in the rear. There is the sound of slurping and soon the husk of the VW is covered with tendrils as the Alpha Insect Cars suck it dry. The smaller cars are scurrying around the perimeter of the lot now. They begin feeling each other with their antennae, an now many of them have begin to crawl on top of each other, spraying other cars with streams of oil. Quickly a sense of order has been established: While the larger cars eat the smaller ones, the smaller ones are swarming on top of each other in a mating frenzy. The front of a beaten up old navy blue Dodge Charger gets up on it's hindlegs and mounts a sexy red BMW, from the chasis of the Charger a large rust colored spike emerges. The other cars are scurrying around the BMW, that has lowered it's six insect legs in a sign of submission. There is the screach of a drill breaching metal. Have you ever heard a BMW 325ci Convertible scream with orgasm while a 2005 Dodge Charger SRT8 sprays anti-freeze across it's shuddering love victim? Meanwhile hungry SUVs circle the Charger slowly, corrugated tendrils flicking the air with a blind hunger.

Now the earth begins to tremble. The insect cars stop their savage dance of fuck and feast, their antennas begins twitching, a dozen car radios flare into an alarm cacphony of AM talk shows, classic rock stations and top 20 hits. Everything around me starts rumbling and I sink my fingers through the chainlink fence in a desperate attempt at keeping my balance. The insect cars are climbing over each other in an escape stampede. There as an explosion in the center of the lot. I only manage to duck at the last second as fragments of shattered pavement rain down on me. There is a clap of thunder, but long and continous, until I realise it is actually a roar.

Coiling out of the earth through a tunnel emerges a giagantic ferrous Serpent, it's body made of segments of CSX train cars, it's head an amalgamation of a steam engine head with two bulldozers strapped to it's grill acting as jaws. It rises up three or four storys, swaying it's monstrous head. There is a train whistle that blows and the serpent strikes down suddenly, snatching up a brown Chevrolet. The Chevy is screaming with radio speakers blaring Lil'John and a horn tapping out S.O.S. The serpent flings the Chevy into the air and as it plummets back to the earth, snatches it in mid descent with one large, and yes I admit, impossible swallow.


Suddenly all around me I can hear a rustling in the foliage behind me. I turn cautiously expecting to see some pissed of Camaro or Firebird, but instead see them. Finally other humans! Emerging around me, peeling themselves out of the shadows and crawling out from behind the bushes and stink rose patches. It's a hunting pack. Twelve adults and a mob of feral children. The adults wear scavenged body armor: Hockey masks, umpire chest plates, STOP sign shields, welding helmets and chunks of Car flesh. The feral children have their faces painted up slashes of motor oil. They carry chains with large metal hooks or rusty rebar spears twice their height. The adults, under their armor, wear mechanics overalls and carry the most damaging of their tribes weapons. Portable welding torches, Jaws of life, Sledgehammers and three feet long pipe wrenches. The mightiest of the warriors wear snatched car medallions around their necks, proud symbols of past victorys. If they see me, they pay me no mind, talking to each other with caveman grunts soaked in southern accents. They crouch in the cold mud and wait for the Serpent to finish it's feeding.

I stare into the eyes of a little feral girl, no older than five or six but with an old ladies face. Suddenly her entire society flashes before me in a bolt of intuition and telepathic post-transtemporal feedback that hits me with a migraine so bad, the blood practically pours out of my nose. I look back at the Serpent who is slowly descending back into the tunnel it has emerged from, spare tires and passenger seats falling like crumbs from it's teeth. This is how they survive. They live off the meat of the serpent and use the rest of it's body to build their proto-society. The fence i'm looking through is in fact the outter epidermal layer that the serpent has shed a few days ago. I realize now that the human tribes have learned to harvest these chain linked husks and have built entire bridges, tunnels, fortifications and huts out of the discarded skin of these iron beasts. There is a black oily meat that grows like fungus inside the cargo train segments of the body. The black fungi has made this a strong and powerful race but it ages them horribly. Decrepit immortals, crippled gods and idiot angels all! I debate staying here any longer than I already have. The little girl with the old womans face is sniffing me now and that's when I decide to leave.

I close my eyes.
I breathe in the dream and exhale the rain.

I'm back and standing in front of the Inman Park/Reynolds town parking lot. The cars are motionless, the train docile and the humans around me sleepwalk across the lot, lost in their headphones or cellphones. I shrug the vision off and head off to work, eager to rejoin the human race.


"Not Your Father's Barbecue!"
Survival Research Laboratories