by Spencer,Alan
"Take the gun," David said. "I'll use the grenades. If your uncle turns out to stab us in the back, I can throw these down, and we can make a run for it. Maybe it'll buy us some time to rethink everything."
"Then where do we run to after that? Yeah, the bad guys will be blind, but so will we."
"I don't know, Kayla. How does a rational thinking human being strategize up against this? Any choice we make, every decision we chose, there's a high chance the outcome will end in our demise."
"Fuck that. We can come up with a better plan."
"I'm telling you there's no good way to go about this."
There time was up.
The timer had ticked down to zero.
The automatic door shot open.
"Demo is waiting out there," Kayla insisted. "He'll help us. Don't worry. Come on."
He didn't like the fact they were meeting up with one of the "famed" killers. Trust wasn't something he was willing to hand over to a man who could jam dynamite into a man's eyes and watch him be blown to pieces.
He had two consolations.
Smoke grenades and a pick axe.
And one other thing.
His fuck you.
"Okay. Let's see if you're uncle is good to his word."
He followed Kayla out of the pod and back out into the arena and prayed Demo wasn't plotting to kill them.
"It's been a real pleasure melting you!"
Luke couldn't process what happened, because he was bent over in agony. His left hand sizzled and burned. Smoke from his cooking flesh made him choke and gag. Blinding tears of pain blurred his vision. Once those tears cleared, he looked at his hand. The top of it was burned through to the bone. He could see the muscles and articulations shift and move. He imagined meaty rubber bands.
He almost fainted.
He vomited instead.
Purged, Luke gathered his bearings and realized he was lucky to have only his hand partially melted. Marlow lay in a pool of bubbling, popping pink stew. Only his two hands and feet were intact and untouched by the acid. The rest of him...just wasn't there anymore.
Mickey Acid stood on the stage ogling the putrid pool that was once a prominent businessman and leading Satanist of the United States. The killer didn't only use jars to toss his acid. He had a giant barrel strapped to his back, and a large black nozzle for a gun that sprayed acid at high pressures. The gun was connected by a tube to the barrel reservoir.
The acid that struck Luke's hand was what had bounced off of his father's body.
He was damn lucky to be alive.
The ugly old man turned his glazed orb eyes towards Luke. That smile on the coot's face said it all. 'I'm going to get off on this. You're next, pal.'
Everything you've worked to accomplish, and this is how it'll end? Your father was a strong, powerful, headstrong man, and this is where it got him? Turned into a puddle of shit.
I can do better, Satan.
I'll demonstrate my value.
Watch what I can do, 'o dark one!
Mickey Acid bared those dark yellow nasty teeth. He licked his slab of a tongue across those buttery veneers, and declared, "It's been a real pleasure melting you!"
Luke didn't think. He acted. He rolled forward, crawled three yards, extended his good hand, clutched his father's gun, and without looking, he unloaded the piece.
Every bullet hit home.
Mickey had a missing crater where his nose and mouth used to be. His face leaked teeth, tongue, and a gob of brains right before he toppled face-first onto the stage.
He threw aside the gun. The sight of it offended him. The gun was too easy. Child's play. Bush league bullshit. Amateur hour.
He could do much better.
This was Satan he was trying to impress. Hell's assassins didn't use firearms to get the job done. They pulverized. They tortured. They devoured. They stalked. They haunted. They did not use guns.
I will impress thee, 'o Satan. My lord, my beacon, my God, my everything.
I give myself unto you.
Until I die, or you see it fit I perish, I will strive to honor thy name.
Luke removed his suit, unbuttoned his shirt, and removed his pants and shoes. He stood naked and proud on the stage. Then he removed Mickey Acid's jeans, slipped them on, strapped on the tank of acid, and stomped into the arena barefoot and armed with an acid gun.
He hadn't forgotten about the other killers.
And he couldn't forget about the one man who had miraculously survived this contest.
David Smith.
He would slaughter them all.
Demo wasn't waiting for them outside. They searched around the safety pod and the general vicinity of the rock walls. There wasn't a soul.
That was another interesting concern. Where had all the killers gone that were waiting for them earlier? David remembered how the legion of murderers were lined up licking their chops for the first shot at them.
Where had they gone?
The screams gave them a clue. This wasn't a single isolated shriek of panic. These were numerous persons pleading, begging, and ultimately dying.
"Wait. I thought we were one of the few left in the game."
David scanned the area. Something had changed. It wasn't quite obvious, at first. The shadows were dark in this part of the arena. But he could see far off, and one of the rock walls had changed. The wall wasn't a cavern's wall anymore. He stared at it, played his eyes on the sight, and grappled with logic over reality.
This was impossible.
But it was right in front of his eyes.
Real as real could get.
He remembered observing the narrow paned windows throughout the arena, and how people were looking in at them. Whatever walls separated the viewers from the players had simply...vanished.
"Come with me. You have to see this."
"Wait, my uncle," Kayla insisted. "He said he'd be here. I'm waiting for him. He has to come."
"Something's happened unexpectedly. He either lied to you, or he got caught trying to help us. In any situation, we can't know. If he's your uncle, and he loves you, he'd want you to use your head. We can't stay in one place.
"That wall is gone. I mean erased like it never existed. I'm looking into a room that could lead to an exit. We have to check it out. I'm not sure about you, but there's people outside of this I love and want to protect from these assholes. Are you coming with me, or not?"
Kayla huffed. She scanned the area with her eyes over and over again. Demo was nowhere to be found.
"Fine. I just wish he was here. It's not right."
"Yeah. It's been wrong the whole fucking time we've been in this game. Come on."
David guided them across the stretch of cavern rocks, pools of blood, and scattered human limbs. They bypassed a square fenced-in area that resembled a basketball court. There were two goal posts. Each one had a severed head stuck on top of the rim.
After the basketball court, they treaded through an area of rich black dirt. He wondered if someone went to the trouble of dumping high nutrient soil into the ground. Coffin shaped holes were dug up. The coffins themselves were left open at the bottom of the graves. Freshly dead corpses lay with their necks broken and their bodies defiled.
Were the bodies dead before being buried alive?
Maybe he didn't want to know the answer to that question.
They rushed across the straightaway of rock walls to where David had spotted the room that wasn't in the arena earlier. They entered what turned out to be a room of high end fancies. There were buckets of chilled champagne. Tables featuring various hors d'oeuvres. The television in the room was blank. There was no current video feeds.
"Where are the people who were watching through the windows? You saw them too, didn't you?"
Kayla nodded. "They must've got the hell out of here. I would too."
Her face was aghast at what she found on a leather couch. She picked up the scrapbook and thumbed through the pictures displayed. The pic
tures were of various victims who had been mutilated and slaughtered. Some of the pictures varied from old Polaroid to printed digital camera photos. The collection spanned for decades. She stopped studying them after seeing the giant cake topped with eight different severed heads.
"Forget about that," David said. "Let's keep searching for an exit."
The only exit was wide open. Blood dripped from the doorknob. David refused to touch it. He nudged the door open with his foot.
The hallway featured some of the most grizzly deaths he'd ever seen. Many of them were melted puddles of half dissolved bones and pink liquid. One older man who resembled the Monopoly man had barbed wire shoved up his ass. The wire somehow trailed out of his mouth. Or was the wire shoved down his throat and coming out of his ass? Such questions of the practicality of mutilation haunted them the longer they stepped through the piled up bodies.
"They deserve it, the fucking lunatics," Kayla kept muttering under her breath. "I hope they suffered."
David agreed. "I'm proof positive they did."
One of the victims was still alive. They had a long slit cut up their torso. The middle aged man's guts were unspooled from his belly and shoved into his mouth. He spat them out to speak.
"They turned on us," he moaned. His lips stuck together with blood. "Satan deemed us unworthy. You won't make it out of here alive. Two and half hours is plenty of time for you to die horribly. I hope I stay alive long enough for them to kill you."
Kayla snarled. "Your hopes are dashed, you son-of-a-bitch."
She unloaded a .357 slug right between his eyes.
"Good work," David said. "I don't think I could've listened to another word from the asshole's mouth. Where to now?"
"One way is as good as the other."
He decided to keep going straight up the hall. They searched viewing rooms that were open to the arena. They made three lefts. The structure was a square. They had searched it twice and didn't locate a way out.
"If you're looking for an exit, you're wasting your time."
They both turned around. There stood Luke Bloom. David needed a moment to recognize him. He was dressed like Mickey Acid. He had a wooden barrel strapped to his back. He clutched onto a black cylinder that resembled a power washer sprayer.
"We got in here, so there has to be a place to leave," David insisted. "You tell us how we escape, and my friend here won't blow your head off."
"The way out won't reveal itself until hell closes. That's about a couple of hours from now. We're sealed up in here nice and cozy in the meantime. Nobody leaves. Nobody disrupts our game. Now there's one thing I want to say before we proceed. It's been a real pleasure melting you!"
The nozzle was aimed to spray them both where they stood. David shoved Kayla aside and hurled his pickaxe at Luke.
Luke turned to dodge the deadly spinning weapon.
He made a deadly mistake. The pickaxe struck the barrel. It bounced off, but split open a sliver of the barrel. Acid leaked from the sides and burbled onto Luke's back.
The psycho's peals of pain followed them as they both fled out of the hallway. From the other end of the corridor, Vlad stood blocking their way. His incredible muscles bulged as he clutched onto his mighty sledgehammer. He aimed the weapon at the two of them.
David urged her left.
"Can't go that way!" Kayla pointed at Chomps. He clamped his spinning drill bit teeth together and filled his mouth with bright orange sparks.
The ceiling panel above them was punched out. The two of them dodged the falling debris. Maggots was going to fall onto them. Maggot Girl was poised to pounce. Her skin wriggled with hungry crawlies ready to devour.
He shoved Kayla into the nearest viewing room. "Move it! Don't look back!"
David pulled the pin out of every smoke grenade he had to buy them time. One by one, the grenades burst open and filled the area with blinding smoke.
"God knows how long that'll hold them back," David said. "You heard Luke. We make it a couple of more hours, we're home free. Hell closes up. We stay on the move, and we might pull this off."
They stopped in front of the tall jungle gym.
Demo was waiting for them.
The lunatic smiled.
David couldn't identify the man's curious grin.
Was there murder on his lips?
That question would be answered very soon.
Luke could hear his skin pop and boil along his back. Agony spread like wildfire down his backside. He unlatched the acid tank and retreated from the hallway. He could barely see through the grenade smoke. He coughed against the gritty thickness of it. He staggered about, and somehow ended up back in the arena. He saw the long body of water and dove right in. He washed the acid off of his wounds. He was overwhelmed by the pain of his flesh being on fire.
I have failed you, 'o Satan.
I refuse to give up.
I will prove myself worthy.
Did you see all those people I killed back there? I was an artist. A fucking sculptor. I melted them all.
Goddamn this hurts!
He was hip-deep in the water. He couldn't see his own reflection in the water. The water itself was a dark black with a slight reddish tinge.
He spotted a corpse.
Lizzy Borden was floating on the surface. She was very much dead. Her head was more than half gone. He only knew it was Lizzy because she was wearing a dark blue silk negligee and thick black netted stockings. She enjoyed wearing sexy clothing during the hunts.
He noticed her famous axe laying discarded on the muddy bank.
Luke's mind flashed with ideas and impulses.
He acted on them.
He dragged Lizzy Borden's corpse out of the water and onto the muddy bank. He stripped her naked and left her corpse to sink into the soft mud. He snaked the stockings up his own legs, and fit into the negligee.
When he picked up Lizzy's axe, the transformation was complete.
Now he was ready to lob off some heads!
This wasn't the same man he encountered at the beginning of the game. The lunatic who shoved two sizzling sticks of dynamite into a victim's eyes. This was an uncle. A man who loved his niece.
Demo hugged Kayla close.
"I never got to spend enough time with you. You were always my favorite niece. I couldn't have kids of my own. You were like a daughter to me."
David wasn't afraid to interrupt the precious moment between them.
"Am I missing something? You kill people. You not only kill them, you obliterate them. You're insane, and insane people don't hug you and share fond memories with their nieces."
"This psycho does," Kayla argued. "He couldn't help it. He was deemed insane by the court system. They tried to help him. The drugs they doped him up with in the asylum caused him to have a heart attack. It's not his fault what he did. He's a victim of the system."
Demo didn't like the way David was talking. He grabbed David by the shirt collar and growled, "You listen up real good, friend. There's three of us here. Those are terrible odds up against their numbers. We've got about ninety minutes before the tiny opening to hell closes up again. Running out the clock isn't exactly an option. I'll be gone when that moment happens. And if you're dead, you go to hell too. You want to go to hell, pal?"
"No, I don't want to go to hell. What kind of question is that?"
"A damn good one. If it wasn't for Kayla, you'd be raw meat splattered on these walls by now. Shut up. Keep your judgments to yourself. Follow my lead. Things are going to get weird soon. I know where the last battle is taking place."
"How do you know that?" Kayla asked.
"Because Motor joined The Event this year. He doesn't always show up. When he does, it's a big deal. There's only one place Motor can do battle."
Jeffrey Dahmer skulked around the bend clutching a meat cleaver in each hand. His head was in meaty pieces from the attack earlier, yet he was still moving about and very much alive. Instead of a belt of ammunition, he had a row of sev
ered hands draped across his chest.
"I'm taking your meat to hell with me, David Smith. You're going to be lean and tasty. The kind that can make stews and soups. Then I'll take your bones, and suck the marrow right out of them. Or should I make a bone marrow soup with them? Oh, the possibilities."
"He's mine," a stronger, deeper, animal bark called out from across the jungle gym. "You can have his brains, fag boy, after I smash them into his head. I see you making a nice fondue out of his guts, and some cute doilies for your dinner table. Whatever you want, cannibal, I don't give a fuck, as long as I get the killing blow."
Vlad practice swung his sledgehammer.
Dahmer snarled at Vlad. "You touch him, I'll jam that sledgehammer right up your ass."
Nearby, Chomps was filing the drill bits in his mouth. "Forget carving you up, cooking you, or any of that bullshit. I'll just eat you raw."
Maggot Girl crawled on all fours. Her flesh was a writhing hive of insects, worms, maggots, and snakes that kept peaking through soft rotten threads of flesh to see what was close by to eat. She was half-rotten, and half fresh flesh.
"I'm almost all new skin. Your skin would complete the process, David Smith. My little friends are great at grafting skin to my bones. They get to eat what I can't use. It's the definition of a symbiotic relationship. Better than any man I've ever dated."
Intestine bikini was playing with her ensemble to show off the dark discs of her nipples and her wild thatch of bloodied pubic hair.
Hardware Harry trudged up towards the scene with a split head. His features were caving into the center. His eyes were sinking into the meat and gristle sink hole. His mouth was in two halves, each half an inch above and below the other. He clutched a chainsaw with a blade almost as long as a car.
He couldn't speak.
He only stalked.
Ted Bundy, Ed Gein, Halloween Man, Aileen Wuornos, and Jack the Ripper were running towards them with a long metal string covered in barbs. They had joined forces. He imagined the team wrapping him up in the sharp barbs and doing God knows what with his body.
Elizabeth Bathory and her legion of blood-drinkers, men and women alike, all caked in blood, were fast and incoming.