Read Surfing the Gnarl for Free Online

spun. They were more scared of their parents than of the mibracc.
    Their screams across the golf course were terrible to hear. Four sets of screams, then nothing but the muttering of the mibracc and the scraping of metal against soil.
    When dawn broke, the remaining six kids were flaked out around a mound of empty beer cans. Geli and Tonel were asleep. Pinka had chewed a lot of marijuana gum and was jabbering to Tyler, who was delicately jabbing at his music machine’s controls, mixing the sounds in with Pinka’s words. Gretchen and Jack were just sitting there staring toward the clubhouse, fearful of what they’d see.
    As the mist cleared, they were able to pick out the figures of the five mibracc, busy at the eighteenth green, right by the terrace. They had shovels; they’d carved the green down into a cupped depression. Like a satellite dish. The surface of the dish gleamed, something slick was all over it—smeel. There was a slim projecting twist of smeel at the dish’s center. The green had become an antenna beaming signals into who knew what unknown dimensions.
    On the terrace the large barbeque grill was already fired up, greasy smoke pouring from its little tin chimney. Next to it was a sturdy table piled with bloody meat. And standing there working the grill was—Danny.
    â€œLet’s go,” said Jack. “I have to get out of this town.”
    He shook Tonel and Geli awake. There was a moth resting on Tonel’s cheek, another moth with a human head. Before flapping off, it smiled at Jack and said something in an encouraging tone—though it was too faint to understand.
    â€œI been dreaming about heaven,” said Tonel, rubbing his hands against his eyes. “What up, dog?”
    Jack pointed toward the clubhouse and now all the kids saw what Danny was doing.
    Geli, Pinka, and Tyler decided to stay out at hole six, but Jack, Gretchen, and Tonel worked their way closer to the clubhouse, taking cover in the patches of rough. Maybe they could still fix things. And Jack couldn’t get it out of his mind that he still might catch his bus.
    He was seeing more and more of the moths with human heads. Their wings shed the brown-gray moth dust and turned white in the rays of the rising sun. They were little angels.
    A cracked trumpet note sounded from the heavens, then another and another. “Look,” said Gretchen pointing up. “It’s all true.”
    â€œGod help us,” said Tonel, gazing at the gathering UFOs.
    A silver torus landed by the clubhouse, homing right in on the eighteenth green. Some creatures got out, things more or less like large praying mantises—with long, jointed legs, curving abdomens, bulging compound eyes,and mouths that were cruel triangular beaks. A dozen of them. They headed straight for the barbeque wagon.
    Stacked on the table beside the barbeque wagon were the headless butchered corpses of Lulu Anders, Louie Levy, Lucy Candler, and Rick Stazanik, ready to be cooked. The aliens—or devils—crossed the terrace, their large bodies rocking from side to side, their green abdomens wobbling. Danny swung up the barbeque wagon’s curved door. There in the double-hog barbeque grill were the bodies of Les and Ragland, already well crisped.
    Sweating and grinning, Danny wielded a cleaver and a three-tined fork, cutting loose some tender barbeque for the giant mantises. The monsters bit into the meat, their jaws snipping out neat triangles.
    Danny’s eyes were damned, tormented, mad. He was wearing something strange on his head, not a chef’s hat, no, it was floppy and bloody and hairy and with big ears— it was poor Les Trucklee’s scalp. Danny was a Pig Chef.
    Over by the parking lot, early-bird golfers and barbeque breakfasters were starting to arrive. One by one the mibracc beat them to death with golf clubs and dragged them to the barbeque wagon’s side. Even with the oily smoke and the smell of fresh