As she stood rooted in paralysis, her rational mind attempted to quell her fears, reading from the familiar script all terrified souls call upon in times of need: ‘It’s nothing, it’s just the wind. There’s a perfectly good explanation for this.’ Repeating those words with the same tenacity as a drowning swimmer flailing for a rescue buoy, she started down the stairs in the dark.
Kartya’s bare feet sunk into the shag carpet as she crossed the living room to the big picture window on the right, struggling to see in the all-encompassing blackness. Wondering why the moon refused to aid her in her endeavor, cursing the peaks and gables of the house’s roofline, she moved from the window to the front door, whacking her hip on the corner of the heavy, oak desk in her blindness, and switched on the outdoor floodlights.
Slowly, giving the desk a wider berth, she crept to the right, so focused on the grate-free expanse of the window that she didn’t notice the shadow stretched across the ground in front of her.
A hapless civilian had become possessed by the Kandarian Demon and turned into a Deadite … or at least this was the only explanation that occurred to Kartya when she came face-to-face with the diseased-looking monstrosity separated from her by only a half-inch of glass. For one breathless moment, Kartya thought she was dreaming, or perhaps had slipped on the stairs and knocked herself out, and was now subject to some trauma-induced hallucination. Then the demon-thing cocked its head to one side and emitted a guttural chuffing noise, and Kartya knew that somehow, what she was seeing was real.
She may have stood staring into the black pits of the creature’s eyes, a creature who had once been a tall, lanky, human, until Kit returned home from work the next morning, but the spell was broken when the now-inhuman thing’s arm shot out as if from a cannon, smashing through the six-foot tall window pane with no more effort than a man punching his hand through a piece of paper.
Kartya did not think, not in any conscious, deliberate manner. She ran to the stairs on reflex, sprinting up them two at a time, her body knowing where it was taking her, seeing her destination in her mind as clearly as an earlier scene from Evil Dead. Though it defied logic, though an hour ago it had seemed impossible, she had to get to the revolver if she wanted to survive. As she flew down the hall for the bedroom, she had the wherewithal to dart her arm into the bathroom and flip the switch, the overhead fixture just bright enough to allow a half-moon of light to spill into the hallway.
It took all of Kartya’s willpower not to shut and lock the bedroom door behind her, but knowing how easily the thing had infiltrated the ground floor, she knew it would behoove her to leave the door open and see it coming, rather than be ignorant to its diabolical design. She grabbed the gun from the nightstand and slid along the front wall of the bedroom. She molded her hands to fit around the butt in what she hoped was a relaxed position (“Never choke your gun,” the range attendant had told her, “that’s a surefire way to hit everything but your target.”) and crouched by the closet, the thinnest rectangle of hallway visible from her spot on the floor.
The sound of footsteps shuffle-dragging up the stairs after her was interrupted by a second downstairs window imploding, and then, horribly, a third. Kartya wanted to curse. She wanted to scream, or cry, or curl up in the fetal position on the floor. Instead, she pulled the hammer back, prayed for consistency, squinted one eye, and kept perfectly quiet.
The thing made it to the top of the stairs and turned the corner. The hallway was short and Kartya had a clear shot, but forced herself to hold fire. The thing took a long, lumbering step, then another. It was wearing jeans and a plaid flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and as it stepped into the crescent of light filtering out of the bathroom, Kartya saw strange marks on its forearms. The thing moved forward again.
The first shot shocked Kartya with its loudness, and she realized she’d never experienced gunfire firsthand without protective earmuffs. She recovered quickly, as she had to, concentrating on readying a second shot despite the knowledge that the thing hadn’t been halted or even slowed in its pursuit. She’d hit it three inches below the chest, a mark devoid of any major organs. Kartya figured this could be why the creature was still on its feet, but she had a sneaking suspicion that it was not the only thing spurring the demon forward.
Kartya hit the creature again, in the shoulder, and again, clipping its neck, spurts of blood exploding from the torn flesh, and again, another shot to the stomach. Still it stalked toward her, so Kartya took a deep breath and held it, steadying her hands and her gaze, and aimed for its right kneecap. She hit it dead center, and the thing’s leg seemed to fold backward, threatening to topple the creature ass over teakettle, but it would not go down. Before it could fully right itself, she aimed for the left kneecap. Another direct hit, and when the thing’s jeans tore and knee shattered, Kartya thought she saw a substantial fragment of bone go catapulting through the air like a haphazardly thrown Frisbee. Again, the creature stayed on its feet.
Kit had considered the possibility of a break-in serious enough to warrant planting the revolver by her bedside, but not serious enough to provide her with extra bullets. The thing had swayed like a drunken sorority girl in too-high heels, but when it took another step, hesitant, but advancing all the same, Kartya knew she had to enact plan B.
Before she could change her mind, she rushed at the thing with calculated strides, coming to a stop before she reached the end of the damask-patterned runner. She bent before the creature, loath to take her eyes off it for even a moment, and took the corner of the rug up in her fingers. She knew she couldn’t yank the runner hard enough to accomplish her end goal of toppling the creature over the bannister and initiating a free-fall to the ground floor below, but she hoped to knock it off its feet enough to start that process. Luck was on her side, however, and the creature had already begun to fall off balance, so that when she yanked the runner with a throaty grunt, its back was already pressed against the bannister, and the upward movement of the rug functioned to throw the creature’s legs up and over its head in a graceless backflip over the railing.
It fell the distance of fourteen hardwood steps and crashed to the floor below. Flipping on the hall light, Kartya leaned over and peered into the abyss. The thing had already gotten up and was placing one splintered but still-operational leg onto the bottom step.
“You have got be kidding me,” Kartya said out loud, scuttling back from the edge and heading for the guest bedroom.
Kartya had only fired the shotgun on one prior occasion, and even then she’d almost passed on the opportunity, preferring to refine her technique with the handgun. Before she exited the bedroom, she slipped her feet into a pair of red Victoria’s Secret slippers, the left foot embroidered with the word naughty in white stitching, and the right with the word nice. It occurred to her that it would be immeasurably easier to fight Deadites without a full bladder, so she walked to the bathroom to relieve herself, pointing the shotgun at an opening in the bannister rails as she did, counting herself lucky when she heard what sounded like a scuffle amongst the creatures at the bottom of the stairs, delaying their climb. She declined to flush, not sure if the noise would send their zombie-like brains into a frenzy, and stood at the threshold of the passage to the stairs. What would Ash do, she thought? She looked down at her feet.
“Time to put the naughty foot forward,” she said, forcing a half-grin, and stepped her left foot out into the hallway.
Kartya marched down the stairs, beholding the scene below her, and cocked the shotgun. There were three creatures, as she’d guessed from the equal number of shattered windows, and they appeared more akin to Deadites than she’d have thought possible apart from being on the set of Ash vs Evil Dead. They appeared to be undeterred by pain but incapable of reason, and they were unable to begin their onslaught of the second floor because they couldn’t decide amongst the three of them who was going to go up first. Kartya helped them out by blowing the arm off the shorter, stocky man on the left, who looked do
wn to regard the blood and sinew hanging from his shoulder with serene detachment.
The thing to the right of the tall creature had been female in its human form, and Kartya made the mistake of pulling the trigger as she moved down another step, throwing off her aim and catching the she-thing in the upper portion of the skull, blowing off the top half of its scalp and rocking the thing’s head back on its neck. The head snapped back to its original position. Kartya recalled the catchphrase of the popular children’s toy that refused to be bowled over: “Weebles wobble, but they don’t fall down.” With dark amusement, she wondered if anyone had tried to knock a Weeble down with a double-barrel shotgun.
Kartya told herself to focus on this next shot. She aimed for the center of the tall one’s head and in her nervousness whispered to herself, “Boom.”
The shot was absolute in its devastation, the shell forging a hole in the thing’s skull like the point of a pastry-bag digging through a jelly-filled donut. Kartya was ecstatic to see that with its brain dislodged and projected somewhere into her living room, the Deadite-thing was finally incapable of pursuit.
So that’s it, she thought. Although they don’t appear human, they can be killed as such. The Necronomicon proposed three specific ways to release a possessed soul: a live burial, bodily dismemberment, or purification by fire. Thinking that she liked her house, and would rather not burn it to the ground, and that time did not permit the digging of two graves in frozen soil, Kartya re-cocked the shotgun. Wistfully, she pictured Ash’s chainsaw hand. Bodily dismemberment would be a hell of a lot easier with her hero’s weapon of choice than by the excruciatingly slow process of fortuitous shotgun hits, but beggars can’t be choosers.
Oblivious to the flecks of blood and brain matter peppering her body, Kartya closed the distance between her and the two evil things still standing. Needing to make it to the front door, she had to descend the stairs low enough to shoot the creatures sideways, preferably one to the right and one to the left. Getting within arm’s reach of the things was not her idea of a good time, but neither was wasting two barrels of the shotgun into anywhere but their heads.
Kartya had properly determined the direction the things would be propelled in, but she wasn’t lucky enough to replicate the angle of her shot to the taller creature’s head. Though the things were knocked to the floor and out of her path, they were reanimating quicker than she would have liked. Grabbing her car keys from their hook, wishing she had time to find a coat, Kartya fled into the cold night in only her slippers, t-shirt, and sweatpants, the ash-grey shirt darkened in several places with the demon-things’ blood.
Ten steps down the front walkway and the moon made a glorious reappearance, lighting Kartya’s path to the garage and keeping her from tripping on a bizarre pile of items laid out at the base of her driveway. Allowing one second for curious inspection, Kartya stooped and beheld the needles, spoons, and a random Dunkin Donuts cup of what appeared to be coffee-tainted water. Then the water hissed, geysering from the cup in an angry spout, and she reevaluated her first interpretation.
“Crazed junkies or the infected victims of a science experiment gone wrong,” she said as she jogged for the garage. “Either way, no thanks.”
The garage door groaned in protest as Kartya flung it open. She unlocked the Jeep’s doors with a terse beep, praying the noise was not enough to attract the evil things. She surveyed the driveway and as much of the yard as was visible: nothing came for her. Hopping into the car, thinking she could be at the police station in less than five minutes, hoping this was quick enough to bring back reinforcements before the creatures could abandon her place for somewhere else, she threw the car into reverse and prepared to backup. The stout male thing and the lone female one took up the entirety of her rearview mirror.
“I don’t think so,” Kartya said, and flooded the gas. The things disappeared under the Jeep and Kartya flinched as she registered the sounds of splitting flesh and crunching bone. It sounded like someone had thrown a cantaloupe onto pavement from six stories up. Then, there was quiet.
Kartya sat in the driver’s seat, feeling her skin slide over the leather under its coating of gore. She had time for one profound exhalation before a figure blotted out the moonlight streaming through the passenger’s side window. As she regarded the reanimated corpse-woman with horror, the driver’s door opened and Kartya was pulled out of the Jeep by a pair of rough hands inserted under her armpits.
At the last second, before her legs had fully passed the frame of the vehicle, she found purchase and launched herself backward. The thing hit the pavement again with a wet thump, and Kartya managed to disentangle herself from its clutches.
The house was too far so she ran for the garage, hoping to find a pair of gardening shears. Instead, her headlights illuminated a beautiful sight, the most beautiful sight she’d ever seen. She said a silent apology for ever nagging Kit about cleaning out the garage, packed full with junk from previous tenants, and sprinted for the chainsaw.
She flipped the start switch and placed the saw on the dusty floor, gripping the handlebar with her left hand.
“Here goes everything,” she said, and pulled the starter rope like she’d seen her father, Kit, and Ash all do on numerous occasions. The saw popped, but did not start.
“Dammit!” she yelled, as she watched the first of the possessed-things, which after its run-in with her Jeep had lost even a passing resemblance to a living human, approach the mouth of the garage. She jimmied a black lever on one side and tried the starter rope again. The saw came to life with a deafening rumble.
Kartya had been a vegetarian for eight years, so the extent of her experience with chopping flesh was limited. By the time she’d finished a violent vertical dismemberment of the stout man, she was so thoroughly covered in blood that she did not imagine the second creature’s vivisection could be any worse. It was coming for her, the female, and though Kartya almost slipped in the lake of blood that covered the two-car garage from wall-to-wall, she was ready for it.
“I must say, you’re taller than Chuckles over there, so this could take a while,” Kartya told the demon-thing.
Kartya missed the creature’s hellish reply under the unforgiving tremors of the chainsaw.
Headlights announced the approach of a vehicle. Drenched from head to foot with an unfathomable amount of blood, Kartya was not curious as to the identity of the driver until the car passed the entrance to No Bottom Pond Road and started down the driveway. Wiping a film of blood from around her eyes, she was surprised to see Kit’s Volkswagen nearing the carnage.
When the car turned slightly and illuminated the blood-covered specter that was Kartya, Kit threw the car in park and was at her side in seconds.
“What the hell! What the—” his hands grasped her shoulders and he surveyed her wildly, looking for a wound.
“It’s ok, it’s not my blood,” Kartya told him. She gestured behind her where four halves equaled two bodies.
Kit’s jaw dropped. He was incapable of speech.
“I’ll explain everything, but we should probably call the police at some point. I think they either took some sort of recreational drug that turned out to be far from recreational, or were infected with something that turned them into zombies. Or … Deadites.” She said these last words hesitantly, as if despite the very concrete evidence of chaos behind her, Kit would think she’d lost her mind at the mention of the purportedly fictional walking dead.
“Jesus, I can’t believe this. I’m so glad you’re alright. I pulled into the lot at work and said ‘What the hell am I doing?’ The night after the holiday, the night our friends get robbed, I shouldn’t have left you. I should have been here for you. So I called in sick from the parking lot and came home. You should have called me, Kartya. No, you should have called the police right away!”
Moved past the point of revulsion to Kartya’s blood-saturated state, Kit pulled her into a savage embrace. She let him hug her, still a bit shell-shocked, then
stepped back and took it all in.
The gore packed into her Jeep’s tire treads winked in the moonlight. The dismembered bodies glistened in wide pools of blood near the still-purring chainsaw. The pile of syringes and infected water sat in the foreground of the house’s smashed windows. The house itself, a looming skull with its two front teeth knocked out. Her eyes came back to settle on Kit, and she smiled.
“There was no time to call anyone. I didn’t have much in the way of options, didn’t really have time to come up with a plan. I had to rely on myself, I guess, and on my own tenacity. With a little inspiration from a certain groovy guy.” She paused, wiped a smear of blood from under her cheek, and continued:
“But the important thing is that I’m ok. And that you came back for me … now come here and gimme some sugar, baby.”
<<====>>
AUTHOR’S STORY NOTE
What’s not to love about the King of Groovy? A long-time fan of the Evil Dead franchise, a fun evening of binge-watching Starz’s Ash vs Evil Dead last December was interrupted by the chilling news that my good friend’s house had been broken into, and several firearms stolen. On the heels of this unfortunate text message exchange, my now-husband cheerily announced, ‘Alright, time for work,’ and promptly left me to embark on his normal shift … the night shift.
Alone, over-active imagination whirring, I lay in bed and contemplated how I would go about stopping a band of burglars should they choose to break into my place next. The opioid epidemic had long been gaining traction in the New England region I call home, and I theorized that the individuals breaking into homes to steal pawnable items like jewelry and guns were doing so to fund drug habits. Christmas 2015 concluded with a blazing full moon; I have commenced with many a story from a single strange or striking image, and the image of a trio of heroin addicts setting up their next round of shots on the banks of the brackish water inlet across the street from my apartment, illuminated by the hazy moonlight, seemed as good a starting point as any.
Year's Best Hardcore Horror Volume 2 Page 31