'Lose him?' the demon shouted back. 'I'll be lucky if I can keep us on the road!'
'Just do your best!'
I started rifling through my pockets, searching among the magic items Shrike had brought me, hoping that there was something I might be able to use to at least slow Carnage down. Devona did the same, and while we searched, Carnage unleashed another burst of gunfire.
Devona and I ducked as the rear window shattered. Lazlo's cab screamed in pain and swerved violently to the left, right into the path of oncoming traffic. I caught a momentary glimpse of a large semi truck with a grinning green goblin face on the cab coming straight at us. I thought the truck was going to slam into us and deprive Carnage of his bounty, but Lazlo managed to yank the cab's steering wheel to the right in time to avoid colliding with the truck and the goblin face seemed to laugh at us as the huge vehicle roared past.
I noticed the cab was slowing down and the engine began to make unsettling sputtering noises. I assumed some of that last burst of gunfire had done more to the cab than simply break some glass and I wasn't sure how much longer Lazlo's vehicle would be able to keep going before it would be forced to pull over. Not long, I guessed.
Devona and I were still searching among our paltry supply of weaponry but in the back of my mind I was already considering giving myself up. Carnage wouldn't hurt me. He needed me more or less intact in order to collect the bounty on me. But when the possessed Caddy was on a mission it wasn't particular about who got hurt in the crossfire, hence his name. If this kept up there was an excellent chance that Devona and Lazlo would end up seriously injured, maybe even dead, and I wasn't about to let that happen simply to save my own slowly rotting hide.
I was about to tell Lazlo to pull over when Devona held up what appeared to be a ball made of woven black twigs.
'Got it!' she said, grinning.
It was one of the items I'd passed on when we'd looked through them in Westerna's, primarily because I hadn't recognized it and didn't know what it did. But before I could ask Devona what she had she turned around and chucked the object out the now open back window. The ebon twigball flew through the air toward Carnage's windshield. The ball looked solid enough, but when it hit the glass it flattened like liquid and expanded to cover the entire windshield. It then seemed to sink into the glass as if the Caddy was absorbing the black substance and then it was gone and the windshield was clear once more.
The effect was instantaneous. The machine gun's barrel drooped and Carnage began to slow down, swaying gently from side to side.
'What was that?' I asked.
Devona was still grinning. 'Caligari's Sleep. It's a common spell used by Bloodborn who either haven't developed their hypnotic abilities or are simply too lazy to use them. The spell makes its victim sleepy and open to suggestion.'
'Kind of like a daterape drug,' I said. 'Classy.' Still, I couldn't argue with the effect it was having on Carnage. The car didn't have a flesh-and-blood body, but the spell must've been designed to affect a victim's psyche regardless of what form that psyche resided in, because it was clearly working. But the question was for how long.
Despite its name, Caligari's Sleep didn't render Carnage unconscious, just really, really sleepy. The deadly vehicle might not have been shooting at us anymore but neither had it broken off its pursuit. Carnage's glowing red headlights had dimmed and the vehicle was moving more slowly and swerving back and forth, but it was still managing to keep up with us. It didn't help that Lazlo's cab wasn't moving very fast at that moment either. Vehicles began passing us, drivers honking angrily and making obscene gestures as they flashed by. Several made mystic passes with their hands as if trying to lay a curse on us for pissing them off. They needn't have bothered. Given the way things had been going for me lately, I figured I'd already exceeded my bad luck quota for the next several decades at least.
Right then I wished that Shrike had brought me a bazooka instead of a. 45 and I was amusing myself by imagining firing one at Carnage through the open back window when Lazlo said, 'Great, that's all we need!'
Devona and I looked forward to see what he was talking about. Before us in the middle of the street was a massive misshapen being that resembled a small mountain formed entirely of flesh. Hundreds of legs – some human, most not – stuck out from its bottom to support its weight and provide locomotion, while the rest of the creature's surface was covered with other body parts: hands, arms, chests, abdomens, genitals, buttocks and worst of all, heads. Gazes blank, mouths gaping wide, tongues lolling, drool streaming past their lips. This was one of the strangest creatures in Nekropolis and probably the single most annoying one.
The Conglomeration.
No one knows where it came from, what it wants, or for that matter, exactly what the damned thing is. What it does is wander randomly through the city, absorbing anyone unlucky enough or stupid enough not to get out of its way in time. Mostly, the Darklords tolerate the Conglomeration's presence since in many ways it's like evolution in action, absorbing both the slow of foot and slow of mind. But whenever it gets too large – and it certainly appeared to be on the verge of that now – the physicians at the Fever House are alerted and they dispatch a specially designed ambulance to capture the Conglomeration and bring it to the facility where they begin the painstaking and laborious process of separating the people that had been absorbed. The story goes that when the doctors finally finish there's never anything left over that's wholly and completely the Conglomeration. It's like the creature doesn't exist in and of itself. But a few days later, it – or a replacement – is back on the street, absorbing bodies again.
'Can you go around it?' Devona asked.
'Yeah,' Lazlo said. 'It's not that big yet, but it's blocking enough of the road to cause a real slowdown.' He glanced up at the rearview. 'I'm afraid it'll give Carnage a chance to catch up to us.'
'Which would be bad,' I said. 'Especially when it manages to shake off Caligari's Sleep.' Something I feared would happen sooner rather than later.
A thought occurred to me then. Carnage wasn't alive in the strictest sense of the word, but then concepts like life and death are more than a little fuzzy in Nekropolis. Carnage had a soul and could think and act independently. In many ways, the vehicle wasn't all that different from me. I was kind of alive, wasn't I? And I didn't want to get absorbed by the Conglomeration. And hadn't Devona told me that the recipients of Caligari's Sleep were highly suggestible?
I didn't waste anymore time thinking about it, primarily because we didn't have anymore time. The traffic ahead of us had slowed considerably and it would only be a few moments more before Carnage, sleepy though he was, caught up to us.
I turned around in my seat and leaned out the open back window. Before Devona could ask me what I was doing, I shouted, 'Hey, Carnage! Don't tell anyone, but I'm hiding inside the Conglomeration!'
The crimson glow within the possessed Caddy's headlights had almost gone out by then but now it flared back to full blazing strength. The vehicle's engine roared and Carnage surged past us, swerving around slower- moving cars as it aimed straight for the Conglomeration. Carnage's hood mounted machine gun raised into firing position and began blasting the Conglomeration with rounds of ammo. At first the gigantic fleshy mass of body parts didn't seem to notice it was under attack, but then the eyes of all its heads came into focus and turned to look at the vehicle firing upon it. Faces contorted in anger and cries of rage issued from all its mouths. Undeterred Carnage continued forward, gun blazing away. Alarmed motorists in the immediate vicinity began trying to pull their vehicles out of the line of fire and if they found their way blocked by other cars and trucks they simply bailed out and ran for it. Lazlo lifted his foot off the gas and allowed his cab to slow down, which turned out to be an extremely wise move when a furious Conglomeration threw itself forward and fell down on top of Carnage.
The impact was tremendous, bouncing Devona and I out of our seats and fissuring the street with cracks. Bits of the Azure Slime oozed forth through the cracks as if curious to see what was going on above it, but a second later the Slime retreated, most likely having decided to leave the Conglomeration alone, perhaps as a courtesy from one absorbing monster to another.
Lazlo had slammed on the brakes when the Conglomeration fell and now we – along with dozens of other drivers and sidewalk gawkers along both sides of Sybarite Street – watched and waited to see what would happen next.
At first the Conglomeration just lay there in the street and I had the horrible feeling that any second we'd see
