Mushroompalooza

114.

It was just twenty people mindless standing in the street. They wouldn't react to Gilbert or Clarissa. Flashlights, loud noises, and bad smells also had no effect. Gilbert wanted to poke one in the hand with a knife but Clarissa felt that was going too far. There didn't seem to be anything else wrong with them, they just seemed like a herd of cows mindlessly standing there.

"Is there a nearby town or something?" Gilbert didn't want to help, but knew that if he said to keep driving Clarissa would give him shit and he was just about done with all of that.

"Riversberg? I've never heard of this town, apparently they have a pizza festival going on." At least they had cell coverage for Clarissa to look up what was nearby.

"And you want us to go there to see if more people are all whatever these people are."

"Its just down the road and like over a bridge..."

"God, god damn it." Gilbert just wanted to go home, face the music with regards to running into the mountain monsters group and then take a long bath, but no he had to be out in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, running into some kind of pizza zombies.

Riverberg was barely a city, it was a two lane barely maintained road with some signs announcing you were in Riverberg, and presumably one announcing you were leaving it. Total population according to the welcome sign was 78 people. Including the group that Gilbert had met on the road it seemed the rest of the town was in town standing around just as dead headed. There were signs up for the pizza festival, and some pizza still out on tables uneaten, but if Gilbert had to take a guess something was wrong with the pizza from how people were acting now.

"You think its everyone?" Clarissa's question made Gilbert roll his eyes, of course it was everyone, if it wasn't everyone someone would have called someone by now.

"Well at least I don't see any children, so that'll make this less tragic when everyone is pretty much dead."

"They aren't dead they just are like poisoned."

"Right you can come back from being completely whatever these people are."

"Gilbert!"

"I'm just being honest, seen a lot of people end up something like this, very few of them ever come back from it." Clarissa decided to ignore Gilbert and instead checked out the pizzas. They looked like all different kinds of topping aside from mushrooms, every pizza had mushrooms.

"Its the mushrooms!" They both said it at the same time.

"On the pizza's Gilbert every pizza had mushrooms!"

"There are large sentient mushrooms coming this way Clarissa I'm pretty sure they are to blame for this." Clarissa almost wanted to laugh if not for the human sized mushrooms coming their way.

"What do we do Gilbert?"

"Well obviously don't eat them, but before we make any rash decisions lets at least try and talk to them, this could all be a big misunderstanding." Clarissa didn't like trying to talk to sentient mushroom that can turn you into some kind of Zombie, but Gilbert was the expert, and so she went along with it.

Shameful Pasts

113.

"I can't believe you know the Mountain Monsters crew, Doris is going to be so happy." Gilbert sighed, Clarissa had been continuously sticking the knife in him over having any kind of connection to those hillbillies. She even had a signed picture addressed to Doris.

"I just want to forget everything that happened up there ok, just you can leave me out of it."

"Oh come on Gilbert they were nice guys! I didn't even know they studied Shakespeare That's so crazy! And they loved you! You like showed them the proper way to take care of that Gillawomp, I mean you have to admit that trap was pretty cool with the swinging logs and impaling spikes." Gilbert sighed again.

"They are charlatans! They make our job look like something idiots in camo and drinking moonshine can do! They get people hurt when they too go looking for bigfoots, or whatever the god damn hell they claim they are looking for! It's insulting!"

"Do people really get hurt looking for bigfoots?"

"All the damn time, most of the shows know where to go to avoid the actual creatures, they are just tv bullshit, but general people don't, they'll go deep in a forest no one should be deep in and get snatched up, sometimes the bigfoot just scare them send them on their way, sometimes though they don't, and it just spirals from there, entire communities of people have been lost."

"You're joking."

"I wish I was joking, shows like mountain monsters are as dangerous as those house flipping shows." Clarissa frowned.

"What's wrong with house flipping shows?"

"We have four hours till we get home, do you really want to hear me rant the whole time?"

"Yes very much yes, its either this or talk radio and we're firmly in the crazy spectrum for that, so please Gilbert enlighten me about house flipping shows."

"Ok first off..."

****

"And that's the last time I watched one of those shows, after all the work I'd done for them, that was how they portrayed me."

"So that's why you hate those shows."

"Well that and they drive up the prices of regular houses with false advertising about how easy it is to flip your house, but mostly how they dealt with me."

"Ok I think I get... GILBERT STOP!" It was mostly dark on the road, but Clarissa could clearly see a group of people standing in the road, just standing there. Gilbert slammed on the brakes and stopped short of the group, it was twenty people all looking dazed and confused standing in the road.

"Yes this is normal just twenty people standing in the middle of the road at night."

"Zombies?" Gilbert looked at the group who didn't seem phased from having almost been killed by his van.

"Don't look like zombies, maybe there is some phish concert and these folks wandered away from it."

"Gilbert!"

"What are the phish not a thing anymore?" Clarrisa sighed, and reached into the back for her bow.

"We need to at least see what's going on."

"Sure not being paid for it and its the middle of the night, what's the worst that can happen?"

Worst Day of the Worst Year Of My Life

112.

"At least the sun is coming up." Gilbert was trying to be positive, but he could tell from the ragged breathing and cursing Clarissa had been making since they left the ruins of the cabin his positivity was going unappreciated.

"Right so we can freeze in direct sunlight, this day gets better."

"Not every day is palm trees and warm weather."

"So far none of them have been Gilbert." Gilbert shook his head, but he understood Clarissa's frustration. He was kind of surprised on how far the Gillawomp had managed to wander off, he figured with as much rat poison in its stomach it would barely make it away from the cabins, but it had been miles of snow since there and no sign of stopping.

"I promise you we'll run across it soon enough." Clarissa started to doubt that as they seemed to get deeper and deeper into Alaska with no sign of stopping. Gilbert had stopped for a moment and Clarissa didn't notice and ran right into him.

"Why did you stop do you see it?"

"No I heard something."

"I hear plenty of things Gilbert, mostly just the wind blowing and my own breathing."

"No I swear to god I heard a yahoo."

"A yahoo?"

"Like the kind an idiot redneck makes in a fictional movie."

"Can you get auditory hallucinations because of the cold Gilbert?" Gilbert turned around to tell Clarissa its not very nice to make fun of him when they both heard a "yahoo!" and the sound of some kind of ATV.

"No, oh god no god damn it no." Gilbert knew what that sound meant.

"What? I heard it too! Means some people are here we can get out of this hell!"

"No its you don't know these idiots we're in for..." Just as Gilbert was talking two all terrain vehicles appeared, one full of camera people, the other full of overweight dudes in camoflage with ridiculous beards. Gilbert cursed, the god damn Mountain Monsters crew was here.

"GILBERT DUNKLEY!" One of the crew hopped down from their ATV before waving it on to the rest of the crew.

"You know these guys? You never told Doris that." Gilbert shook his head, his greatest bit of shame was knowing anyone from the mountain monster's show, even accidentally.

"Because mistakes were made in the past, mistakes were made."

"They got a Gillawomp Gilbert! God damn didn't even know those things were real, caught in one of Bill's dumb ass traps sure as day." Gilbert just wanted to disappear into the snow, to pretend he wasn't there.

"Yeah it came after us first, be careful its full of rat poison."

"Right right, they'll probably cook it or whatever these guys do, so you need like a ride back to civilization or something? You both look real cold, my name's Travis by the way." Travis held his hand out to Clarissa who shook it with authority.

"Sure do Travis its mighty cold out here." Gilbert couldn't even say no even as much as he wanted to.

"You must be his new assistant, Gilbert helped us out once in West Virginia, the boys got themselves into a real pickle, we were just making up some bullshit when..." Travis had called another atv over and Clarissa was glad for the company. Gilbert on the other hand wished he could be somewhere else, anywhere else.

Think of the Environment

111.

The building was on fire, this seemed sub optimal while fighting the Gillawomp. The creature didn't seem bothered by the fire, or Gilbert and Clarissa's attempt to harm it with their weapons. The cold was also starting to creep into the ruins of the cabin and Gilbert and Clarissa had taken their jackets off and were now trapped away from them.

"Freeze, burn, or get eaten these seem like shitty options Gilbert." Clarissa had joined Gilbert on his side of the cabin, they were facing off against the Gillawomp as it tried to figure out a way to get them from where they'd hunkered down in the kitchen.

"We aren't going to do any of those things, I just have to think of something, check in those cabinets for me."

"For what silverware?"

"Rat poison, places like this usually have an issue with rats, they'll have some."

"I don't think I'll find any... son of a bitch found some!" In literally the first cabinet Clarissa opened there was a box of "Rat begone".

"Cheap and deadly, just the thing, you see you'd think this wouldn't be very good against rats, its actually the opposite, its really awful for pretty much anything companies just dont..."

"Gilbert."

"Right, dip your arrows in one of those poison packs and nail that su... SHIT!" Gilbert had been distracted giving instructions to Clarissa and hadn't noticed the Gillawomp's tongue had snaked under the floor. It had him by the foot dragging him towards its open mouth. Gilbert tried to get a shot off with his rifle, but the creature swung him against a wall and the rifle dropped frustratingly far away.

"GILLAWOMP THIS ASSHOLE!!!!" Clarissa let loose arrow after arrow into the creatures mouth. At first it didn't seem phased by them, but as she fired more rat poison coated arrows down its throat the creature noticeably sagged and let Gilbert go. Wounded, but not dead, it left the cabin, Clarissa could hear a noise that sounded like a wounded whine as it disappeared into the night.

"Gillawomp this?" Gilbert had gotten his rifle and their winter clothing, he handed Clarissa her coat.

"Sounded good in my head." Gilbert chuckled.

"Well we better get after that."

"What why? Its hurt it probably won't come back."

"And if it dies in a local fish spawn with all that rat poison inside of it the environmental damage would be unconscionable."

"And if it leads us into a trap?"

"Well bring the rat poison." Clarissa sighed, but tried to contain the remaining rat poison as best she could, before following Gilbert in pursuing the wounded creature.

Can't Move, but Can Hate

110.

Three hours had passed with the Gillawomp not moving, nor Clarissa or Gilbert. Three painful stupidly long hours in Clarissa's viewpoint. Gilbert was trying to see more of the Gillawomp, Clarissa was trying to believe she hadn't been stuck in a broken down cabin in the middle of winter trapped by some kind of snow lizard. Neither one was very successful.

"Could burn it I guess Lizards hate fire usually." Gilbert was running down the list of things he knew to kill things.

"Unless its a fire lizard"

"A fire lizard in the snow? That doesn't makes sense."

"Yes that of all things is what doesn't make sense here Gilbert." Gilbert scowled at Clarissa.

"You knew when you took this job some weird shit would be a thing, but still fire lizards in the snow is insane. Still if we had poison we could deal with it being immune to fire, which I don't think that it is, hence why its still out there and not in here."

"Why didn't we bring poison?"

"Because I figured it was wolves and killing wolves with poison is morally wrong."

"I'll make sure to remember that when this eats us."

"Well next time you can carry the poison through the arctic tundra and then complain to me 'why are we carrying poison to kill a wendigo they don't respond to poison'." Clarissa was about to ask what does kill a wendigo when the roof collapsed in. The gillawomp tired of them both just talking chose to say hello. It had broken in the roof, its body still hanging over the side of the house where they'd seen it. The skin when visible was a dark red. It reached out with its tongue towards Gilbert. He dodged away from it and went for the rifle he'd assumed he'd need to kill some wolves. The Gillawomp was between Clarissa and where she'd put her bow on the other side of the now destroyed cabin.

"Light it on fire with your bow!" Gilbert called out, he took a couple shots from his rifle, but they didn't seem to phase the Gillawomp which was trying to angle its tongue and clawed hands to get into the cabin.

"Bow's across from the creature."

"Well get ready to run for it." Gilbert jumped into center of the room, he fired several shots from the rifle trying to get the Gillawomp's attention. It turned to face him and Clarissa ran to grab her bows and arrows. She used the fire to set a couple of them on fire and fired them into the creature, where they stuck and did nothing. She was about to fire another one when the creature belched a gout of flame at Gilbert.

"I told you! I told you it could be a fire creature!"

"Congratulations Clarissa now we get to die to something that is improbable, happy!?"

"Yes kind of."