He didn’t follow, instead rising to stand and face him from the opposite side.
“What the fuck is your problem?” he hissed, rubbing the back of his head vigorously, feeling the ache traveling into his neck. He heaved deep breaths, his heart pounding a mile a minute, while the other man just stared blankly over at him. The man lowered his head, looking through his brows, drool spilling out of his mouth again. He made his teeth clack, biting over and over again. The pupils of his eyes had gone blacker, his eyes looking even deader.
On the right, two people appeared outside the window, walking the path in the shade. He darted to the glass and pounded on it. They wouldn’t see him if it was one-way but they would sure hear him if he pounded hard enough. “Hey! Hey!” he boomed, balled fists striking over and over, throwing a look over his shoulder and seeing the masseuse lurch toward him again. “Hey!” he shouted one more time and one of the figures, a man in a Hawaiian shirt, turned to look. In the second before the masseuse was on him again he could see the man on the path had the same black look as the one in the room with him.
“Oh my God, no,” he whispered as the masseuse got a hold of him, teeth clicking, seeking to sink into his upper arm. He punched him right in the mouth, his fist mashing his lips against his teeth and making a wet popping sound. The masseuse’s head snapped back, but he was undeterred. Christian punched him again, this time right in the nose, and two more times until black blood shot out of his nostrils and down his lips. It was enough to get the man’s hands off him and now he was able to back away. There was enough space to make a run for the door but the masseuse was bent over and vulnerable so he shot forward and kicked him hard, his shinbone catching him right at the point of his chin and knocking him backward.
The masseuse collapsed face down on the floor in the space between the table and the wall, just at the mouth of the open door. He struggled to get up, hands opening and closing, legs working up and down; black blood streamed out of his mouth and onto the tile. From this position he could see that the guy had shit himself, a big brown wet stripe up the ass seam of his white pants.
“Jesus, fuck,” he exclaimed, already moving, instinct putting him into action, his mind knowing what had to be done before it could even be articulated into thought. On the opposite side of the table now, he reefed it away from the masseuse still writhing on the floor, then when he had good distance, he upended it, lifting at the table top and driving forward, sending it crashing on top of the man on the floor. It landed on him with a huge sound, the masseuse making no exclamation of injury though it was a perfect strike, the heavy table scissoring down on his outstretched arms and ankles.
So he climbed up on the table, adding his extra ample weight, balancing on it and forcing it up and down, looking to subdue this man, though at this point if he killed him he wouldn’t be forlorn. Adrenalin raced through his veins and his focus was clear and sharp and desperate. In a gap between the table and the wall, he saw the tousled blond hair on the back of the guy’s head. With his hands gripping the table top, he supported his weight, got a foot down that narrow space and began striking his heel on the back of Steve’s head trying to bang his face off the floor, wanting to knock him out. His head made hollow sounds against the stone tile and his face must have been getting damaged but he just wouldn’t go out.
“Fuck,” he said, striking him two more times, perfect hits, then giving up, seeing the guy’s hands still opening and closing in claws.
The way was clear to escape the room, and his mind told him to abandon this fruitless effort trying to overcome his opponent—just get out! He got his feet on the edge of the table top and grabbed the door lever to steady himself, then jumped through the gap and into a vestibule just outside of the massage room. As he turned, seeking to close the door, his eyes met the gaze of the man on the floor, face streaming blood, nose obviously broken, still pinned under the table, arms outstretched, hands uselessly seeking to take hold of him again.
“Fuck you, man,” he whispered; tough words but there was a frightened whine in his pinched voice.
He closed the door, wishing there was a way to lock it—mostly wishing his clothing wasn’t still in there. His iPhone, his wallet, his ID, his credit cards; when the police showed up, how would he prove he wasn’t the maniac? The receptionist would vouch for him, he supposed, but how was he going to approach her without any clothing?
6
Troy
It was on the way out the window that they first heard the sound of alarm. Not a scream of fear—it was a man issuing a boisterous, wary, warding off. A man shouting, “No, hey, whoa, no …”
Brit was already stuck headfirst out the narrow opening, the glass tilted up, the hinge of the window along the top of the frame. She was bent at the waist, ass and legs still in the bathroom. The garbage can had been upended—Brit taking the bag out and tying it off first, saying the busboy was a nice guy and was dating a friend of her cousin—and he stood on it, legs braced, helping her out by steadying her knees (and also enjoying a point blank view at the creamy skin of her thighs).
“What was that?” he asked her, pausing, holding the narrow backs of her knees.
“I don’t know,” she said, her voice tense despite being muffled. Now her weight had passed the tipping point, and he held her calves then ankles as she slid out of the window and onto a closed dumpster she’d scouted in the alley before heading out.
He passed his flip-flops through to her while she watched with concern down the alley toward the street, and he hefted himself up into the opening, worked his elbows out, then see-sawed his hips through until he fell forward on his hands next to her. She pulled one of his ankles and he tumbled out, semi-gracefully, landing at her feet on the black vinyl lid to the dumpster. It was hot on his knees and he got himself to stand next to her quickly. Now they were both standing on the dumpster, cautiously looking down the alley and out to the narrow street. On the right side, a white picket fence ran, separating The Rebellion’s alley from a short gravel driveway alongside the one-story clapboard home next door.
“What’s going on?” he asked her.
“I have no idea,” she said, eyes still glued to the street. At the front of The Rebellion there was a covered patio, protected by the overhang of the Victorian building’s second floor balcony, and on a sunny day like this in the summer he figured the place should be packed. But he could see two tables and they were empty, and it looked as though a plastic beer pitcher tumbled off a table and splashed its contents across the concrete alley.
He started, “Do you think—”
A woman ran across their view, left to right, headed uphill; her gait was distinctly panicked.
They looked to each other at the same time and both their expressions showed restrained dismay. A tightness took hold of his belly, a dread, a sense of impending; a feeling he would get before an important game, only this one more pronounced, more dire.
Brit pushed her long dark hair back from her face and unwound a rubber bracelet she wore, doubled it up and tied her hair off in a ponytail. “You see those bikes?”
“Yeah,” he said. Between the dumpster and the road there were four bicycles on kickstands.
“The turquoise cruiser is mine.”
“One with the white basket?”
“Yeah,” she said, and now she shook her hands out like she was wracked with tension. Both of them seemed afraid to get down off the dumpster, and Brit acknowledged it, saying, “You ever play that game when you were a kid, like, you were on the bed, but if you stepped down on the carpet it was lava, and—”
“Or sharks,” he said. “Me and my brother said there were sharks, and you had to run and jump up on a chair or the couch …”
Brit laughed, said, “Sharks? Yeah, that’s scary, too, if—”
The man’s shouting resumed. “Off, hey, shit … off!”
Someone appeared on the other side of the street, looking to get away from whatever occurred out front of The Rebellion b
ut still compelled to watch; skipping, side-stepping, but their wan, horrified face turned to see what would happen.
There was a thump, the sound of a fist hitting a face, and then a middle-aged man in a striped Polo shirt staggered into their view and tumbled backward, falling and hitting his head on the street. He looked confused, helpless, arms and legs moving uselessly as he seemed to want to turn over and get up. His skin was a sick ochre.
Nails dug into Troy’s arm, and he literally jumped. Looked down, saw that Brit had grabbed hold of him. He put a hand over hers.
Now the spectacle came into view. The man that hollered struggled with two other men. The vocal one, the victim, was older, sporting a white goatee and a baseball hat that had been knocked sideways. On his back, there was a dark-skinned man in a white short-sleeved dress shirt, Pakistani, Indian maybe. He had one arm around the other guy’s neck. The third man, maybe in his twenties, jean shorts and a back pack, had hold of the one with the goatee’s forearm, trying to pull him down. They danced around in a circle now, the Pakistani guys legs kicking out behind as they went.
Then he bit him hard on the space between his shoulder and neck.
And the man that hollered now bellowed. A loud, bullhorn sound of pain, like some sort of big game animal.
Brit dug her nails deeply into his arm. “What the fuck …?” she hissed.
The Pakistani man shook his head like a dog and they heard him growl. Blood ran down the older man’s shirt. The spectator lingering macabrely across the street turned tail and ran.
The guy with the backpack was able to get the older man off balance while his other arm thrashed at the man on his back as he sunk his teeth into him. All three of them fell clumsily off the sidewalk and onto the sunny street. A spritz of blood shot straight up, twinkling in the sunlight and now the old man screamed. Hearing that sound of pain, seeing him victimized like that, outnumbered, chased that dread away and riled him up with anger.
“Stay here,” he said to Brit, and he took her hand away from where she clutched him.
“What?” she said, regarding him now. “You’re not going down there …”
7
Christian
With both his hands cupped between his legs, hiding his manhood, he crept along the short corridor outside his massage room’s vestibule. At the corner, he paused, inched himself close and took a peek around the wall.
Behind him, the corridor where he stood led to two separate small massage rooms, the one he occupied still held his strange attacker, probably removing himself from under the table and looking to find him. This corridor he met ran perpendicular; to the left there would be more massage rooms, to the right would be the reception desk. The place seemed abnormally quiet. The same Asian music, pan flutes and trickling water, played in speakers in the halls, but underneath it there was no other noise. Nine-thirty in the morning in the summer in the height of this island’s tourist season should see this place fully booked. Yet, there were no sounds of activity, no masseuses and clients moving in and out of doors, no sounds of conversation from behind the walls. He struggled to fathom what was happening. It seemed obvious but his rational mind fought the unreality. The masseuse’s cold hand, his mottled skin, sallow complexion … fuck, those dead eyes. Old Man Tom who looked like he just about died at the Diner yesterday in the most bloody way, the depleted wait staff at dinner, the receptionist telling him that the therapists weren’t showing up … all signs of a sudden outbreak, a sickening that struck the island, tourists and residents alike. Legionnaire’s disease, food poisoning, a flu; these would all be sensible, however he’d just fought for his life with a man intent on sinking his teeth into him in a mindless cannibalism. The cold skin, the dead eyes, the self-defecation …
He shook the thought away—dwelling on the unreal would freeze him to the spot and right now all he could think of were his family members, spread out across this island, the very real potential of their encountering a man like the masseuse or maybe even more frightening. He peeked around the corner again, saw no one, looked down between his legs, saw his hands covering his genitals. His knuckles showed blood, and his heart raced with a new panic. Skinned knuckles could be an entry point for the masseuse’s blood to enter his body and whatever virulent invader he had could take him over, turn him to a mindless flesh-eater if that was even possible, or shit, the masseuse’s blood somehow finding its way up his pee-hole. He whisked his hands away, crouched down and examined them, saw no signs of tearing on his own hands, the small amount of blood there not his own. He wiped his hands back and forth on the painted wall, leaving streaks of rusty red along the pale eggshell latex.
A thumping sound came from behind, the masseuse maybe, finally able to free himself from underneath the table—it was do or die. Fists balled up, jaw clenched, he rose, worked his way around the corner, shoulder pressed against the wall, ready to pivot and hide his nakedness should some unsuspecting person appear at the end of the hall—all this was in his imagination, the horror he manifested in his mind just a fearful fabrication; of course!—a flu, a flu hit the island, and the masseuse had it, and maybe a psychosis or a brain tumor …
“Come on, come on,” he whispered to himself, gathering courage, creeping along in bare feet, coming near the end of the corridor where it would open to the reception lounge. He paused again, short of the opening, closed his eyes, concentrated on his out-of-control breathing, took a few deep breaths. Around the corner the receptionist would be sitting unaware of what had just transpired in the massage room, he would get her attention, tell her to call the authorities, she would get him a towel and he would cover himself, then when it was all over and the authorities carted his attacker off to jail, a hospital or the nearest sanitarium he would have a triple Glen Livet and pen perhaps the most vitriolic Yelp review ever submitted. Or his lawyer—yes, that’s what he would do; call Benny and by Monday he would own this fucking place. Now he was smiling, and on the surface at least he would be able to function … just don’t think about Amanda right now, don’t think about the kids … Oh God, the kids …
Shoulder pressed to the opposite wall now he inched to the edge. Ahead he saw the small waiting lounge, the sunlight streaming in from the doors to the courtyard and casting shadows across the finely decorated room with its wicker furniture, glass tables and potted plants. A quick peek to the left showed the reception desk empty. He stood another long moment, back pressed, darted another look. Still empty, noticing this time that a stack of towels on the table behind reception had been knocked, and they lay scattered on the floor next to the desk at the foot of a hanging curtain that divided a supply room from the lounge. Back again, pressed to the wall, looking up at the ceiling; sure now he heard the sounds—faint wet smacking, coming from behind the curtain.
Silent steps took him around the corner and to the edge of the reception desk where he stooped and snatched up a generous white towel that he clutched between his legs while he stared at the curtain; imagined what lay beyond. Everything in him told him not to look, but that rational part of him wasn’t ready to let go of reality just yet; it told him, check, look behind the curtain, it can’t be what you fear … it’s a dog or a cat or something, eating wet food, licking cream from a bowl, for God’s sake it’s not what you’re picturing.
But it was, and it was far worse than he’d anticipated.
One hand up and parting the curtain, he’d made a gap he could peer through. The young receptionist who’d greeted him politely, perplexed by the failure of the staff to show up today—a pretty girl with glossy chestnut hair, in her mid-twenties, a whole awesome life ahead of her—lay on the floor, her head and shoulders upright, propped up against the bottom shelf of a tall unit stocked with lotions and towels and cleaning products and oils …
Her eyes were open, dead and unseeing, her mouth hanging agape. On either side of her were the two figures he’d seen passing by his window while he’d defended himself from the ravenous masseuse. An elderly man of stocky
build, wearing a Hawaiian shirt, the one who’d turned at his thumping and shown him his dead eyes, and opposite, an elderly woman, perhaps his spouse, white permed hair and a short sleeve blouse that had been a brilliant blue before being stained by the young girl’s blood. The two of them had cornered her, trapped her in this supply room. They’d taken her down somehow and now they’d opened her up. Her shirt lifted above her breasts, still cupped by a pretty pink bra, her stomach had been torn open by their fingers, her viscera pulled to hang out the ragged hole they’d torn. With two hands, the old woman feasted, shoving hanging entrails into her blood-slick mouth; the man pulled out her intestines, yanking them like he was starting a lawnmower.
Christian’s breath came in ragged chugs and he couldn’t help a mournful sob. His bladder released, and he peed into the towel.
The man, hearing his sob, or perhaps smelling the urine, turned his vicious face to regard him over his shoulder, those dead eyes, those unseeing eyes somehow seeing him. The man wore dirty glasses, knocked askew on his face, his white beard soaked with blood, his teeth gleaming through a crimson spate; he gnashed at Christian who backed away from the curtain, taking two aimless steps until he bumped into the reception desk—then he was fleeing full tilt, his mind wild and outrageous, his horror inestimable; he bolted through the lobby, colliding with the masseuse who’d stumbled in from the corridor …
The Walker Family Vacation (Episode 1) Page 3