B-Movie Reels

by Alan Spencer

  “You close your eyes, you fucking bitch!”

  Ba-boom!

  The woman’s head burst as if detonated by C-4. The image kept flashing of the woman’s mouth gaping wide to bite one moment and then evaporating into pink mist the next.

  The hand on his shoulder snapped him from the haunting repetition. “Andy, did she hurt you?”

  Ned was bent over beside him with a smoking rifle. He was out of breath, recovering from a fresh sprint. “We have to move, Andy. There’s people in straight-jackets and,” his voice trailed off, “an angry mob of armed individuals.” Reluctantly he added, “And, and dangerous old people.”

  The sheriff arrived next, and he looked down at the woman’s headless body. It jerked in place as random spurts of blood coughed from the stump. He sneered, but his eyes twinkled with pleasure watching it. “Good riddance, bitch. I think there’s one more left.”

  “Yeah, and it got Mary-Sue. I think she’s dead. I don’t know how we can save her. Blood dripped from the sky. She, she can’t be alive, can she?”

  The sheriff eyed the ground caked in blood. “I’m sorry, Andy. There isn’t time to find her, alive or dead. We have to reach the house. It’s the only way.”

  “Why the house? You know something. Tell me, damn it.”

  “I’ll explain when this is over,” Ned said, exasperated and equally frustrated. He helped Andy up from the ground. “I don’t want you dying. Enough people have already died tonight.”

  Andy was shoved from one extreme to the other. The metamorphosing creature hovering above the creek, Mary-Sue’s capture and probable death, and then Ned and the sheriff coming out of the dark to save him. Still, he clutched a single thought. Run.

  A flaming beer bottle smashed at the back of his legs, but the Molotov cocktail failed to explode. Racing on, Andy widened his stride and followed the two through the choked trees. He tripped over vines and brambles, the crunch of leaves louder than his breath or the heartbeat that double-drummed in his ears. Bullets clipped the bark off trees nearby, and knives and axes were hurled in their direction, clipping and stabbing tree trunks in alarming succession. One of the knives grazed his shoulder with a schick!

  “Fuck.”

  The rumble of the mob behind him dominated the woods and steadily escalated. Andy turned to see who was pursuing them. Gnarled faces glowed with hatred, many of the pursuers in straight jackets and wielding power drills, chainsaws—many of them just now revving them up—scythes, Molotov cocktails, axes, machetes, rifles, nail guns, power sanders, hand-held saws and other weapons he couldn’t identify. The straight-jacketed people were mixed in with older people dressed in hospital gowns, and they too were diabolically armed.

  “Why hasn’t anyone come to save us?” Andy shouted over them. “How come nobody’s here?”

  “Everyone’s dead,” Sheriff O’Malley barked. “And there’s no way to reach anyone outside of Anderson Mills.”

  “I have a car at the house,” Andy shouted. “We can get out of here, maybe warn others and get help.”

  Ned said, “We can’t leave until we do something at the house. There’s no choice in this, Andy.” Ned pointed to the left. “We should split up. They’ll follow us if we stick together, but if we separate and rendezvous at the house, we’ll have them scattered. They don’t know the way to the house like we do.”

  “I don’t know these woods,” Andy shouted in dismay. “What about me?”

  Ned told him, “Go straight. You’ll get to the house soon. We’ll meet you there, right, Sheriff?”

  “Yes, but fucking hurry.”

  “If we don’t make it somehow, get into the house and destroy the film projector. Don’t ask me why, boy, just do it. You understand me?”

  Andy swallowed back his questions. “I—I understand.”

  The sheriff and Ned disappeared to the left and right so fast that he had no chance to change his mind. The crowd dispersed, but he could tell some of them were still at his heels. He picked up speed when a hatchet went thack into the tree beside him. He was growing tired, and his second wind didn’t arrive. He clutched his sides and took in double breaths like the hurdle coach in high school advised him.

  He couldn’t keep moving. Ned’s and the sheriff's retreats were unfaltering. Perhaps they’d seen more atrocities than him tonight and dug deeper for the energy. Regardless, his body worked against him. He couldn’t plant one foot before the other for much longer.

  He thought of his options: quit running and be slaughtered, perhaps be carried away like Mary-Sue in the air, or keep moving to the house. But what would happen when he got there? The crowd would follow him and attack him there too.

  He had to confuse them. Ned’s tactic merely thinned them out. And Ned’s request to destroy the film projector was curious. Andy had thought the things he’d seen tonight had to do with the movies, and now he was beginning to believe it.

  But why destroy the projector?

  Andy’s pace faltered again. He couldn’t force his legs to move any faster. He leaned against an oak tree, worn out, and when he looked up the three, he noticed several footholds. He started to climb in a frantic last ditch effort for survival. He finally reached the highest point and held still. He shut his eyes and waited, catching his breath. The rustle of a search clamored all around him. The voices were grunts, not actual words. The group milled about without cohesion. And it was strange how they didn’t speak to each other or interact.

  Up high, he hugged the largest tree limb and prayed he wouldn’t fall. He assumed they couldn’t see him because they didn’t raise alarm or throw weapons at him. He hoped it was true. He opened his eyes and kept them trained ahead. The house was in sight, merely up the hill. It was hidden by darkness, the shadows so deep even the dilapidated condition was lessened. He caught the flicker and movement of light from inside the living room.

  Someone was already in the house.

  He had to get inside, Andy vowed.

  Suddenly, the sound of Mary-Sue’s screams echoed throughout the sky. She was still alive. Alive, but suffering tortures beyond human reason. The blood that landed on him earlier was sticky on his chest and shoulders. So many people had died, and here he was on the brink of being murdered himself.

  All he had to do was reach the house and follow Ned’s instructions.

  Destroy the film projector.

  He collected a silent breath. The mob’s voices had dispersed and were growing faint. He eyed the house one more time and checked to be sure the horde was gone before climbing back down.

  3

  Sheriff O’Malley evaded the attackers in the woods with no problem. He was at the perimeter of the house already, but he hadn’t stepped out into the yard yet. He kept his eye out for Ned or Andy. How long he’d wait, he wasn’t sure. Perhaps ten minutes, he decided, and then he’d break into the house and destroy the projector himself. The bodies that spoke on the dock, he was convinced James was the source. The sheriff was a man of deduction and logic, but this wasn’t a petty crime or a simple felony. This was the mass slaughter of a small town and the assailants weren’t even human beings.

  He wasn’t up for this kind of action. He felt the agony of a pair of broken ribs and a cheek wound that itched and burned whenever the breeze kissed it.

  The sheriff listened and vaguely heard in the background the mob that pursued him earlier. They were scattered about the woods determined to find them.

  He craved a cigarette or a shot of whiskey. If Tabitha was still alive, he’d love a round in the sack, but the thought only left him guilty and lonely. She was gone forever. It hadn’t really sunk in until now. Everyone in Anderson Mills was dead, according to Ned, who seemed to have his head together despite the terrible events tonight.

  “Where are you guys?” he muttered, tapping the ground with his foot impatiently. He checked his watch. “You have five minutes before I leave you behind.”

  He clutched the Mossburg pump-action shotgun and kept his breathing soft.
He assumed that since he hadn’t heard any screams or howls of pain that nobody else had been killed. Whether that was a fair assumption or not, the question of waiting continued to gnaw at him.

  He lifted his head up.

  Caught.

  “Shraaaaaaaagh!”

  “Damn it.”

  The shadow flew low overhead, and before he could react, he was tackled and pummeled to the ground. He scrambled to fight back, and sent his fist blindly ahead of him. It connected with a clammy face already slathered in blood.

  “Mary-Sue,” he gasped in horror.

  The skin around her throat was visible to the red and purple muscle tissue beneath. The jugular vein was torn and dangling. Her eyes were wide open, dead. He shoved aside Mary-Sue’s corpse and waited for the vampire to return. Too late. Hands picked him up by the collar, and the ground disappeared from his feet in an instant. He was turned upside down and carried into the night.

  Chapter Sixteen

  1

  The corpse stationed at the projector listened to the din from outside and didn’t flinch. The next film the zombie chose was Termite Invasion, and this time, the undead figure played only the first reel:

  Scientist Luke Mason, biochemist, locked his office door. He was packing his things into many boxes in a hurry. “Fuckin’ Dean thinks I’m using school funds to promote my own research. I’ll show them what I’ve been doing with their money.”

  Luke opened a Styrofoam box and emptied it into the duct system. “These termites were bred to end the burning of forests. Why burn and pollute when you can unleash these guys to eat up the land without pollution? It’s environmentally sound. Damn them for cutting my research—damn them all! Now I have no retirement. They’re even taking my pension.”

  The sound of scraping and beating wings echoed with a metallic twang. Dr. Mason smiled and waited, rubbing his hands together. “It’ll take them hours to spread out, but only minutes to tear into anything made of wood.”

  Dr. Mason furrowed his brow when the din became louder in his office. “What are they doing?”

  Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!

  He lunged for the door when a black cloud exited the duct. They swarmed around his body in a badly animated haze. He clawed the air and then curled into a ball, horrified at the turn of events. The camera cut to the poster of a dissected termite and then the taped-up boxes around the room. Blood spattered the walls, and then Dr. Mason struck the floor. The camera panned up close to his face, the skin missing and revealing bone clotted with gristly meat.

  And then the black haze disappeared back into the duct system.

  Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!

  Satisfied with the reel, the zombie removed it to play another film: Soul Escape.

  Jake Ackerman exited the cabin near Copperhead Lake. A woman’s body dangled in his arms, the axe he wedged into her sternum still dripping with blood. He moved in a fast walk up the trail to a parking lot where his heavy-duty truck waited. Miore bodies were heaped in the bed; five so far. They were all from the Davies family.

  He stared at the young woman’s face. “Jennifer Davies…I’m so sorry. None of this was your fault. Your mother and father were into witchcraft. They’d bred children for the sole purpose of resurrecting dead spirits and giving them your bodies. It’s the Davies curse. You were born with ghosts in your souls, and they want to escape. If your soul escapes, it’s really the ghost that escapes, not you. It’s better you’re killed now. You won’t commit the atrocities these ghosts want to commit.”

  “It’s too late!” Jennifer’s face came alive, and she spat a mouthful of blood into his face. “It was too late when we were born, you fool! You can’t stop us!”

  Jake staggered from the truck, wiping the blood from his face.

  Jennifer dislodged the axe in her sternum and threw it inside the truck. “You can’t stop the dead, you asshole!”

  “Do you realize what you’ll do? There won’t be any line between life and death. You can’t do this. Please, see the reasoning of my words.”

  “It’s beautiful—” Jennifer laughed, “—to be immortal. Fuck the reasoning of your words.”

  Blood spilled from her eyes, nose, mouth, and then a straight line split open down the entirety of her body, as if the flesh were unzipping itself. She screamed in blood-curdling agony as the flesh ripped, and her skeleton shrugged it off. The camera flinched back to Jake, who stared in disgust, cringing with tears welling in his eyes. The camera returned to Jennifer, but this time she was a blood red human skeleton bobbing on strings visible on the screen.

  “You have no flesh or blood. Think about it. Why live again if you can’t have a real body? You’re just bones. What do you get from taking this girl’s body?”

  “I can rebuild myself again.” The camera closed in on the jaw clicking together to make words. “And I think I’ll start with you. I like your muscle tissue, maybe the skin on your face. I’ll take anything I want, you idiot!”

  Jake sprinted into the woods in horror.

  Then the camera cut to the bodies in the trunk.

  2

  The intake of breath was a stabbing jolt in his lungs and chest, yet Ned managed to convince his body to keep running. He was clearing a good distance from his attackers. He prayed Andy and the sheriff reached the house safely. They were the last ones that could end this horror.

  Numerous trees burned behind him. The flames lit up the night. Somebody would notice the wildfires eventually. The smoke in the air, the billowing black clouds, the distress in Anderson Mills would all be obvious. The din of slobbering voices and blood-thirsty cries forced him to retreat.

  The house became visible. He skirted into the backyard. The shadow of the gazebo surrounded by the wide garden was promising; nobody was there. He sprinted low into the gazebo and lowered to his knees. He eyed the woods behind him, double checking the perimeter. The flicker of torches and the snarling faces were missing. He’d either completely lost them or they were hiding in the woods.

  He surveyed the backyard and didn’t locate Andy or Sheriff O’Malley, but he caught the flicker of white light inside the house through the open slats of the boarded up window. Who the hell boarded up the windows?

  The .22 rifle encouraged him. He could blow through the added security. But whose added security was it? This wouldn’t be a hit-and-run operation as he’d planned. He decided not to wait for the others. The time to destroy the projector and the house was now.

  He maneuvered out of the gazebo and was startled by an approaching figure. The man was dressed in a black suit tattered at the shoulders and stained with soil. The face was bluish-gray, and the eye sockets weren’t intact. The eyes were dark squares in the face of bone. Worms writhed from its open sinus cavity. The teeth clicked against each other, and it extended its hand out to him. It was from another movie, he knew for certain.

  He opened fire on the dead man, blasting the creature’s face away and sending bone fragments onto the gazebo. Two more corpses climbed over the short wall and tackled him after the body dropped to the ground. The .22 rifle was wrenched out of his grip by a set of dead bony hands. Ned grabbed the two zombies by their necks, one hand for each, and tightening, tensing with all his strength, squeezed right through tissue that spread apart like wax. One of them stuck their fingers in his mouth, and the phalange caught on his tongue, tasting of mold.

  The other choked him back, the grip startlingly tight. Ned gasped for breath, feeling weaker. He thrashed his legs and tried to kick them off, but the creatures were unaffected by the blows. Ned’s only defense was to squeeze harder at both their necks. He used his fingernails to grind against their muscles, digging, gnashing, ripping and tearing through the soft tissue, and working so hard, he snapped their necks from the shoulders, completely tearing his way through. Both heads struck the ground and bounced into the garden.

  He collected his weapon and breath. He studied the area for other corpses. One stood guard at the back door.

 
; Ned took careful aim, fired, and struck the corpse mid-torso. It broke in two with a rise of dust. Even after falling, the corpse’s upper half struggled to reach the door again. This time, Ned charged the body and stamped on its head. The first blow shattered it into pieces, the skull breaking like a pot fresh from the kiln.

  He banged the butt of the rifle against the door, but it was secured from inside. Furious, he kicked and drove his shoulder to batter it down, but the efforts were useless.

  Then neon green painted the sky.

  “SHIT!”

  Ned watched the horde close in; hundreds of blinking specks—demented and spastic locusts—lowered to ground-level. In seconds, they’d be upon him. The buzz was deafening, so overwhelming he couldn’t think.

  The door couldn’t be opened, and there was nowhere else to hide.

  He waited for their attack.

  3

  Andy climbed down the tree and sprinted to the house. The creatures were nowhere to be found, but they could be heard bustling about in the woods in every odd direction. On the way to the house, two gunshots resounded from ahead. Hearing the shots, he was mad at Ned and the sheriff for not offering him a weapon.

  He closed in on the house after a quarter of a mile of running. He stopped in the front yard, deciding where to go. The wash of white light inside the living room slowed him down. He caught a shadow moving in the room and a face peered out at him between two slats of boards.

  He heard the sound of breaking of glass, then the weeping willow behind him whooshed into blue flames.

  He tripped in his haste to dodge the fire.

  Chainsaws by the dozens whirred behind him, and a collection of murderers set upon him. The firelight crudely carved the menacing faces, each staring him down with the intention of dismemberment.

  He raced to the front steps.

  He tried the door. Locked. Barricaded. The straight jackets entered the yard, moments from reaching him. He scrambled to the opposite side of the house. A series of hatchets and axes—even the blade of an electric saw—missed him and struck the house. Gunshots shattered windows but missed him.