What else can possibly be said about Skeeg? I could traipse around this world in whatever sort of immeasurable, suicide-inducing funk I desire and it still wouldn’t matter. Skeeg won’t let me go; it’s not finished with me yet.

It happened on a Sunday.

We had spent a better part of the year tracking the stooges down. Savannah. Bruges. Oslo. Sāo Paolo. Athens. They had scattered like roaches, experts in eviction, not at all hassled by the sudden heat. We were all tired, at each other’s throats, sleeping with at least one finger on our respective peacemakers. Rat-house hotel after rat-house hotel. You never quite get used to the way the taste of water changes as you wander.

Teddy’s a buffoon when he’s in homeostasis, so words can’t describe his antics once he’s guzzled down an afternoon’s worth of cheap bourbon.

The trail had gone cold days before, and we couldn’t blame him for initiating a manual psychological reset. Sitting around for days on end, substituting .45 caliber rounds for poker chips, eating ravioli straight from the can, watching boxing matches from 1983 on mute — for the most part we felt like a gaggle of hopeless chumps waiting for the foreman to call us back to the job.

But there was no foreman. Only Skeeg.

The howling rang out, and we knew immediately what was happening. The booze had transformed his meager brain into a maniacal projectionist hell-bent on flashing the entire filmography of his despicable past across the velvet afternoon sky, and his eyes weren’t much good for seeing anymore. He’d wandered out into the street, waving his pistol around, calling out for someone to help him.

“I pooped my fucking pants! I pooped my pants and it smells like shit! Help! Help!”

At this point, he was beyond help. It goes without saying that we could not jeopardize the operation for his sake. The fourteenth stooge was still out there, and being chased out of town by cops and Texas vigilantes wasn’t exactly how we wanted to wrap up the otherwise eventless week we’d spent in the outskirts of Dallas. Teddy was stuck out there on Summerset Boulevard — his pants filled with a considerable loaf — calling out for his mother. And all we could do was watch and wait to see if he’d fire on a civilian or if the pigs would get to him first and light him up.

Skeeg would decide, as it always would.

In the end, neither would occur. Teddy never got a chance to cement his reputation as the single-most disastrous goon to end up on ______’s payroll. Instead, the concrete beneath his feet gave way after a series of skull-splintering booms, sending him plummeting deep into the fresh crevice below. Jordy claimed the sky got dark too, but he’s not quite the type of guy you’d trust to tend the brauts at the family barbecue while you take a quick leak. So do with that detail what you will.

All I remember is how the blinding Texas sun reflected off of the thing’s blood-splattered chrome forehead as it emerged from the broken earth.

One singular, terrible spike jutted out from just above its yellow eyes, and you bet your ass Teddy was impaled perfectly upon it — his arms and legs flailing about like a frantic insect’s. He was pretty far off — and the leviathan robot just kept getting bigger as it clawed its way up — but the blood and mushed guts spewing from his mouth was nonetheless visible from where we stood. A sick, chunky geyser. All the while, the lot of us watched helplessly, clutching our measly pistols while the cigarettes dangling from our lips smoked themselves down to their butts.

I can’t speak for the other guys, but as the giant robot yanked Teddy from the spike and began to eat him, I began to wonder if the fourteenth stooge was really worth sticking around for and upholding my trademarked sense of honor that had earned me this shit job in the first place.

So with that, I answered my own question and started heading south towards Mexico. Eddy was the only one who didn’t follow me, and I was fine with that. He was born a dead man anyway.

The ground began to crack all around us as we fled.

The scraping of metal and the roars of at least a thousand other mechanical beasts drowned out the pathetic wail of approaching police sirens. As Skeeg had promised long ago — albeit in its veiled and often deceitful way — the robot apocalypse had finally begun.

And who were we? Neither prophets nor oblivious bystanders. Useless scoundrels. Armed and spiritually aloof in a world that was soon to be no more.

TO BE CONTINUED….