I grimaced, looking down at my own outfit choice as gifted to me by Nathan and his girls. Barrett laughed again.
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Barrett started.
“And at the end of the world, everyone is a beggar unless you’re Charlie,” Elias finished with a knowing look.
I thought about Elias’s last line for a moment and wondered if that had something to do with why he’d wanted to leave so bad. He’d made out that he’d disagreed with the whole Sins way of life now, but perhaps it was actually more selfish than that. Perhaps it was just as simple as he didn’t want people taking his stuff and telling him what he could and couldn’t have. And if that was the case, my trust for him went from fifty to zero.
I stared warily between Barrett and Elias, wondering how I got myself into these life-and-death situations. Was I like a magnet for them? For bad people and bad places? Because it sure felt like it at times.
“Anyway,” Elias continued, “I figured since it’s already stocked with shit, you could take that one. Keys were inside, so no hot-wiring,” he shrugged.
It made sense. It really did. But knowing that it was full of dead people’s things turned my stomach and I hoped that Nolan agreed that we would take a different one. Besides, it was becoming more and more likely that we would all go our separate ways after here. I didn’t want to spend any more time with either of these men. I didn’t trust them, and if I didn’t trust them then I didn’t want to be around them. Safe house or not.
I noticed, suddenly, that Barrett’s eyes were narrowed on Elias and the atmosphere had changed dramatically, and I took a subconscious step back.
“We could take that RV…” Barrett said to Elias. “And where the fuck do you think you’re going?”
Elias straightened his shoulders, his chin raised and his pointed jaw jutting out slightly as he looked at Barrett and said, “I’m going home.”
Barrett went silent and I decided that there must be a lot of history between these two men. Dark history. History that Barrett hadn’t made anyone privy too.
“There ain’t no home anymore,” Barrett said, his expression serious. “Home from before was already sinking into oblivion, and the home of after…of this shit,” he said, holding his arms out wide, “that place is nothing but dust now.”
Home.
I wondered where they were talking about. What they were talking about. But eventually settled on I didn’t really care enough to ask. After we left here, I wanted to get as far away from both of them as I could get.
Away from Sam, Barrett, Elias, and the whole Sins family.
None of them could be trusted, and at the end of the world, trust was all we had left.
Chapter Two.
Sam
In the back of my subconscious, I felt rather than saw Nolan back away from me. I wasn’t so controlled by my beast that I would have mistaken him for a threat, but I understood the fear and I accepted his sense of self-preservation, especially as…damaged as he currently was. I could smell the dried blood all over him and it was delicious. My desire for carnage, the hunger in my blood, was more powerful than my ability to be offended anyways.
Let him be scared.
Let them all be scared of me.
I didn’t care anymore.
Big fat beastie liar, I thought derisively. It was easy to lie to others, to let pretty, placating words spill from your lips to please people. It wasn’t so easy to feed yourself a pack of falsehoods.
“Let’s get the others.” Nolan spoke quickly as he gave me a wide berth, holding up both of his hands as if I were taking a bank hostage and he was the only officer on scene.
“They might relocate if we waste too much time.” My voice was a low growl.
Feed me. Feed me, Seymour.
Maybe one of these cannibals is called Seymour?
Or would they be the Audrey Two? Eating people who came too close.
Well, I was going to turn the tables on their little shop of horrors. It was their turn to feel the fear of being hunted, of being snacked on, of being gnashed by pearly whites and then swallowed down warm, saliva-coated throats.
God, I was hungry.
So hungry.
When had we eaten last? Was it the soup from Stash that I’d thrown up?
No. Stash and Jackson had been my last meal.
I almost laughed with the memory.
They’d fed the violence inside me, and I’d tasted blood from their veins. They hadn’t filled my belly exactly, but they’d fueled my rapidly blackening soul. If I had complete control of myself, that thought would have given me pause. I would have stopped stalking toward the danger and considered the shaky foundation of my own humanity.
But my beast new better. It wanted to play.
My throat felt dry and scratchy. It needed warm liquid spilling down it to coat the discomfort. To sate the thirst. To slosh around happily in my empty stomach and make me overfilled with that kind of too-full feeling that made you nauseated.
“It’s better to get backup,” Nolan protested, almost reaching for me, almost wrapping fingers around my wrist. A quick flick of my gaze downwards stopped him in his tracks. Or maybe it wasn’t my gaze… maybe it was the way my tongue darted out to lick my lips. I was famished. If Nolan kept pressing me, I might change gears. I might start to see him as something to crave.
“You go get help then,” I whispered darkly, turning away from him, but then turning back again as I handed over my weapon. “Take the gun. I won’t need it.”
He took it quickly, checking the safety and tucking it into his belt since he was already holding a firearm.
I flexed my now free hands, digging my overgrown nails into my palms and feeling a wet, warm seeping pool around my fingertips. I couldn’t help myself… I unclenched my hands and lifted the right one up to my face. I licked my palm slowly, enjoying the sweet metallic flavor of my blood and savoring the aftertaste of salt. It had so many depths.
People didn’t realize.
Blood held memory.
It held feelings.
Within the cells that quickly oxidized in open air, there was a history that belonged to no one else.
I could see, eyes closed as the blood clung to my tongue, how people could become cannibals. I could nearly understand. Nearly forgive them. After all, I was practically one myself.
Rationally, I should have waited for more help, but I’d meant what I’d told Nolan before. I had nothing now. He and Rose would ride off into the sunset. And Barrett was beyond redemption. I might as well die in a bloody blaze of glory against these people who still had bits of human skin stuck between their teeth.
“Sam.” Nolan said my name, but he didn’t continue. He didn’t fight me. He let me begin stalking toward the duo of cannibals. More the better. He was too weak to help me anyway. They were all too weak to help me. I didn’t need their hands, or their guns, or their puttering human hearts.
“Just go get the others,” I mumbled, lost in a sea of red, drowning in a sensation of what was coming. It wasn’t unlike preparing for ballet. The focus. The drive. The need to be something other than what I was. The need to jump and prance and feel powerful.
There was beauty in that strength I’d once had. Dance rushed through my body, carried on tendrils of gossamer thread, delicate yet unbreakable.
I was that now, though the beauty had given way to monstrosity.
Walking slowly, Nolan already gone, I approached the lip-smacking and bone-crunching. I turned the corner, no longer wanting to hide from the arm-eater and the leg-cooker. I forced my anger below the surface. I wanted to enjoy this, not lose control immediately.
I didn’t realize, though, that even when the monster was calm.
She was still…so goddamn hungry.
“Smells good.” I smiled inside when they both startled, coming to their feet, the arm-eater brandishing the human appendage as if it were a baseball bat.
“Hey there, girly,” the leg-cooker said slowly,
his voice a slightly garbled drawl, and took a step forward, then leaning down to pick up a barbeque fork—the long kind, crowned in only two sharp spikes.
My eyes darted to the food in his hand and I hunched my shoulders like I was starving.
“Please,” I begged innocently, knowing that they’d see the color of my eyes soon, and also know that I was anything save for helpless. At least, at the moment, the world was a light shade of rose, not full-blown crimson. Perhaps I could fly under their radar a little while longer. “I’ve lost everything. My husband. My children. Everything. I was trying to see if I could take one of these RVs. My van died up the road. I’m so hungry and that smells so good. Can you spare a little?” I moaned out the last words, and spittle pooled in my mouth as my beast sniffed the air.
The arm-eater’s gaze flicked to the half-consumed arm. “You…want some of this?”
“What is it?” I asked innocently.
He held up the arm, shame marring his features, and I widened my eyes and licked my lips as I nodded.
“She’s just desperate,” the cook grumbled, annoyed now. “Ever eaten human before, girly? It don’t taste like pork from a supermarket. Ain’t no housewife Shake ‘n Bake.”
“It tastes…sweet,” I spoke slowly, the memories of human blood I’d tasted slipping into my mind as if they’d never left. “And it does taste like pork, a little. The fatty bits, the strips that don’t render out on the grill. Oily and rich and melting on the tongue.” I sighed on the last bit. I bet every bit of the human body tasted different.
Were the thighs a balance of white meat and fat? Were the arms tough to chew, full of muscle? Was the brain light and spongey, just waiting to be pureed down into a cracker spread?
It must have been the sigh at the end of my words that made them think I was one of them.
The arm-eater walked forward, tentatively holding out the length of meat as he watched me with narrowed eyes. I wondered, momentarily, why they weren’t trying to eat me too. What made me someone that they would want to share their food with and not make me the actual meal? And then it dawned on me: I was a woman. How long had it been since they’d had a woman?
It was funny, because it wasn’t the human flesh that gave me pause. It was the condition of the person handing it to me. Filthy nails, dirty hands, plaque-coated teeth.
“Thanks.” I took the charred arm, forcing a smile. “It’s been so long since I had a homecooked meal. Always cans and packaged foods and nothing tastes good. Nothing tastes like…like it used to.”
“Ain’t that the damn truth.” The arm-eater nodded, waving me forward to come sit by the fire.
The cook watched me carefully, waiting to see what I’d do with the human appendage. I smiled shyly and lifted the arm to my mouth. And my mouth watered. My tongue seemed to fatten up in anticipation. My stomach growled.
God, I couldn’t help myself.
My lips parted, my teeth closing around the arm just below the wrist. I bit down, sinking into the flame-broiled flesh. I bit harder and harder, until my teeth met the bone. And then I clamped and pulled away hard, like I was yanking meat off of a beef rib.
I groaned, mouth gaping, almost forgetting to chew. The arm-eater laughed, a taint of insanity kissing the boundaries of the sound, and took back the arm. Spittle ran from between my lips, dripping down my chin.
But seconds later.
A flicker in time.
The reality of what I’d just done began to sink in.
I’d willingly eaten a bite of a human person.
It wasn’t like with Jackson. He’d attacked me. He’d wanted to kill me. I had to hurt him. The taste of blood was a happy side effect. And Stash had gotten in the way. He wasn’t helping me. But now… right now… The person who had died and become barbeque was a stranger…a victim. For all I knew, the man—because it was a man’s arm, thick and hairy and large—could have been a good cop, or a preacher, or a loving father.
Not to mention that I preferred my meat rare and undercooked.
Nausea flooded my senses, bile creeping up my throat and carrying with it bits of poorly chewed person.
I turned from the scene—the cannibals with their fire and their filthy bodies and the arm and the leg still roasting on the spit—and I violently vomited exorcist-style. And it wasn’t just the food and the saliva. Copious amounts of dark red sludge, like blood gone bad in a horror film, spewed out of my mouth.
When I was done, I fell to my knees, hands sloshing against the wetness on the gravel that was, thankfully, seeping between the tiny rocks so I didn’t have to look at the full reality of the mess I’d just expelled from my body.
“I hate a woman with a weak stomach,” the leg cook grumbled, and I felt vibrations in the ground as one of the two cannibals stalked toward me. “End of the world got no time for fragile bitches.”
“She acted like she’d eaten it before.” The arm-eater’s voice sounded miserable.
“Ain’t no way she’s like us. Ain’t no way.”
I was still on my hands and knees, feeling weak, my vision normal. The beast inside me was being maddeningly quiet when only a little while ago she’d been raring for action and acting tough in front of Nolan. I wondered briefly if she was pissed at me for feeding her barbequed human.
Feet and legs came into my peripheral view.
And the end of the barbeque fork was swinging back and forth.
I was going to die here.
Because I’d thought I was so fucking tough. That I was invincible.
But at least if I died now…I wouldn’t have to watch Rose leave me.
Being killed with a two-pronged fork would be a lot less painful.
“If ya kill her now, she won’t taste no good later.” Arm-eater to the rescue.
“She gonna cause us trouble if we keep her alive,” the cook argued, weighing options.
“What you always tell me about fresh meat?” Not to the rescue… no. The arm-eater was only concerned with how I’d taste if I’d been dead too long. “She ain’t gonna be no trouble. Lock her up in the freezer.”
At that, I stumbled around, landing on my ass to stare up at them both.
I saw it now, situated behind the smoke of the fire. A large cube-style freezer with a lock. It wasn’t plugged in to anything though.
The thought of a confined space made my monster peek her head up. She didn’t like the idea any more than I did. The world began to go pink cotton candy. Strawberry red wouldn’t be far behind.
I gazed up at them both. The cook was nearest.
His gaze widened, and I knew what he saw.
The bloodshot eyes would darken until they were full crimson. Tiny veins would begin to pulse beneath my skin, branching out from my gaze.
I began to move, rolling to one side so I could jump to my feet.
But then I screamed as sharp pain rocketed through me and what felt like two narrow knives sliced into my back.
“You ain’t going nowhere, girly.” Leg-cooker.
“What is she? What was that?” Arm-eater.
“A new variety.” Leg-cooker sounded like the chef who’d just obtained the world’s priciest truffle.
Blood trickled down my back, and I was caught up in the agony of it. He hadn’t pulled out the fork. He was pushing it harder, as if to try to spear me all the way through.
“Stand up, girly,” leg-cooker ordered.
“Bite me,” I snarled, beginning to feel woozy from blood loss.
“Oh, girly”—he smiled creepily—“I intend to.” With a sharp movement, he finally pulled the fork back out of my body.
I gasped, falling forward and catching myself. My hands, already damaged, drove into the sharp gravel below and sent fresh waves of pain flowing through me.
Now free, my beast raged. I lurched upward to my knees, turning at the waist with fists raised to hit either of them anywhere I could reach. But arm-eater had procured another weapon at some point.
A tire iron.
; Before I could paint the world in flesh and rage, the tire iron cracked sharply against my back, forcing the breath out of my body.
A second impact caught me at the base of the skull.
It was too much to fight through now—the back wound, the beating with the metal rod—and my vision blurred and the woozy feeling intensified.
“Get her feet.” Leg-cooker.
“Let me open the freezer lid first.” Arm-eater.
Rose? Rose, where are you?
Please, god, help me.
In that moment, I didn’t want the beast at my beck and call. I didn’t want to be the monster. I wanted to be human, in need of a friend to rescue me.
I needed Rose.
Chapter Three.
Rose
I was sat on the dusty ground of the RV lot when Nolan came around the side of a smaller-looking RV that had seen better days. His face was turning darker shades of purple and black with every passing hour, and I knew I should just be grateful that he was alive. Yet every time I looked at him or saw him wince when he moved, I just felt angrier and angrier.
Grateful?
I was so completely over being grateful for just being alive. I wanted more than that. I needed more than that. Or my will to survive was going to blow out like a birthday candle in a tempest.
“Rose?” He called my name and I smiled and jumped to my feet, more than happy that my name was the first thing he uttered as he got back. He saw me and seemed to breathe a sigh of relief that I was okay, and I felt myself do the same thing. Yet my relief was short lived.
Involuntarily, my gaze fell behind him, waiting for Sam to appear. I wondered when I would stop doing that. When would I stop searching for my ex best friend and just accept that our friendship was over? When she didn’t appear after a few more moments, I frowned, realizing that something must have gone wrong.
“What’s happened?” I asked at the same time that Barrett’s gaze narrowed in on Nolan, his features darkening.
Barrett pulled out his gun and aimed it at Nolan. “Where’s Sam? And let me tell you, unless you say she’s at a fucking spa retreat getting a mani-pedi, you’re pretty much dead.”
Red Eye | Season 3 | Episode 4 Page 2