by Robert Ryan
He cast a quick glance at Johnny. She showed no signs of life.
Quinn had gotten to his feet. He couldn’t tend to Johnny until he dealt with Markov. He made a move for the stake. Markov stopped him with the pistol in one hand and the flamethrower in the other. “Move.”
He backed Quinn to the rear wall until they stood on either side of Max’s suspended head. Markov set the flamethrower down and ripped one of the fetters from a corner of Max’s mouth. The head fell a few feet until the chain of the other fetter became taut. The head jiggled and bobbed, finally coming to rest with its sightless eyes looking at the floor. While Markov stared remorselessly at the remains of his son, Quinn slapped the pistol from his hand and bolted.
Markov touched a button on the remote attached to his hip and the cell door slammed shut. He calmly retrieved the pistol.
“You cannot escape,” he said as he walked toward Quinn, “and I have no more time for your misguided heroics. Move.”
Again he herded Quinn to the back wall. He kept the pistol trained on him while he pulled a key from his pocket. He unlocked the fetter hanging from the wall, snapped it shut around Quinn’s wrist, and went to check on Johnny.
He lifted an eyelid, felt her pulse. “She’s alive.”
He carried her to the back wall and laid her down. He ripped Max’s head from the other shackle and unceremoniously dropped it to the floor. It landed with a squishy sound on the soft ragged tissue of the neck. Max’s milky dead eyes gave baleful witness to the further desecration of his rude grave.
Johnny began to stir. Markov scooped her up and chained her to the wall. She sagged when he let her go, but the pressure on her wrist quickly brought her to attention.
Markov picked up the impalement stake and faced his prisoners. “I and my army cannot be defeated. Now, If you’ll excuse me, I have a movie to finish. For you two, this is a wrap.”
He took a deliberate step to Quinn and raised an eyebrow to give him the Lugosi stare. “When we first met, you said you didn’t believe in monsters. So I shall leave you with Van Helsing’s famous line from his closing curtain speech:
‘Remember: There are such things.’”
CHAPTER 65
Markov slammed the cell door shut and quickly disappeared into the darkness.
Johnny held up her shackled wrist and whispered to Quinn, “I have spare keys for this and the cell door in the bag, but we can’t get to them.”
“Not necessarily.” Quinn reached into his hidden zipper pocket and brought out the multitool. He flipped the six-inch blade up from its slot and showed it to her. “Hacksaw. Very sharp.”
He inserted the blade into the shackle’s loop and began sawing with machinelike speed. A few minutes later he was free.
“The keys are in the small compartment on the side of the bag,” Johnny said.
He got the keys and removed the shackle from his wrist, then freed Johnny. “We’ve got to figure out a new plan,” he said. “We can’t go hand-to-hand with him. He’s got the pistol. And the stake.”
“And ‘reinforcements,’” Johnny added. Her brow furrowed as she tried to think of a solution. She held up a finger. “Wait a minute.”
She pulled her master control unit from the bag, scrolling until she found what she wanted. Filling the screen was the corridor that ran in front of her apartment. She held it out for Quinn to see.
“What?” he said.
“The spear gun. It’s still there where I left it. We can get that and charge into the studio through the door inside my apartment. I can harpoon him before he knows what hit him.”
“If you don’t miss, that should do it.”
“I’ve had plenty of practice with all these things. I won’t miss. Once I take care of Markov, I’ll get the pistol off him.”
“We’ll still have the others to deal with,” Quinn said.
“Without their ruler they’ll be confused, but it won’t stop them from going after what they need to live—fresh blood. Which means us.”
“There’s a box of extra bullets in the bag,” Quinn said. “I’ll take the flamethrower and the halberd.”
“Even if the bullets don’t kill them, it’s got to slow them down.”
“While you’re pumping them with lead I’ll be slashing and burning.”
“Then we start the hellfire,” Johnny said. “The End. The. Fucking. End. Roll credits.”
Quinn went to get the halberd and flamethrower. Johnny met him just inside the gate with the canvas bag. She set it down and started pulling out wolfbane and garlic. “Put this on you wherever you can. Hopefully it will keep his reinforcements off us.”
They stuffed the banes into pockets, waistbands, socks. “We’re going to need some light,” Johnny said, “and you’re going to need both hands free.” She reached into a separate compartment and pulled out a light with an elastic headband attached. “I always keep these handy. I use them for my dives in the lagoon, but also whenever I’m outside at night.”
Quinn snugged the headlamp into position, then unlocked and opened the gate. They took a moment to assess the conditions before entering the battlefield.
About fifty yards from where they stood, a dim glow from the light inside the Garden spilled into the main chamber. Between where they stood and that glow, all was darkness.
“This is the moment of truth, Johnny.”
She made one small grim nod. “Be ready for absolutely anything. We’ve got to get through the Garden and up the stairs to my apartment.”
Quinn rested the halberd on a shoulder and picked up the bag. “I’ve got this,” he said. “You take the flamethrower.”
He aimed the beam of the headlamp into the eerily silent gloom. They followed the ten-foot shaft of light into darkness where every step might bring them face to face with death—or something worse. About halfway to the Garden, Quinn stopped suddenly and held out an arm to restrain Johnny. He pointed to something straight ahead. At the farthest reach of his light, two red dots were slowly coming toward them. Their eerie reflective glow left no doubt what they were.
Nocturnal eyes reflecting the light.
Quinn moved the light around to see if there were others.
Two more eyes glowed a short distance behind the first two. Escapees from the Garden were coming toward them.
“Start the flamethrower,” Quinn said. “You take the second one.”
He held out the halberd to use the pike that rose above the battle-ax like a spear. Johnny adjusted the flame to its maximum five-foot range.
The undead sensed danger and stopped just beyond the range of the weapons. The light showed demonic blood hunger melting into confusion.
“Now,” Quinn said.
He charged and thrust the pike into something no longer human. Blood spurted from its chest as it fell to the ground. The other one turned to run but had only taken a step before Johnny set it on fire. Agonized moans filled the chamber as it collapsed to the floor in a flaming heap.
“We have to keep moving,” Quinn said. “Let’s close the gate so nothing else can get out. Then we can see what we’re up against in the Garden.”
They looked to make sure these two were dead.
All that remained of the one Johnny had torched was a smoldering charred carcass. Quinn shone the light on the other.
Its eyes were open. They shifted toward the light.
“God damn you!” Quinn plunged the pike into the same hole in the chest, furiously agitating it around as though trying to scrape away any last vestiges of life. He yanked it out and raised it again, ready to do the same thing to the eyes.
Johnny grabbed his wrist. “Wait. Look.” The eyes slowly closed. “It’s done. We need to get going.”
Almost hyperventilating, Quinn aimed the light straight ahead and they went on.
A moment later they shut the gate to the Garden from the inside. “It’s time to round up the herd,” Johnny said.
Quinn held her gaze for a few seconds, continuing to marve
l at her transformation from cringing servant to fierce warrior.
They crossed to the final short set of stairs that would take them down to the Garden. Light from the gas torches that dotted the walls of the vast subterranean chamber was enough for Quinn to turn off his headlamp. He handed it to Johnny and she put it back in the bag.
The horror unfolding in Markov’s crypt for the undead kept them momentarily riveted to their spot. Strobelike flashes from the lightning storm outside added sinister animation to the nightmare scene in the pit below.
Some of the undead had risen and were moving about the Garden. One was bent over a coffin. From this distance it was impossible to tell if it was giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to one of its undead brethren, or draining the last drops of blood from a weaker inmate. A few that had not gotten strong enough to walk wriggled along the floor, like Poe’s conqueror worms, searching for whatever sustenance they could find in the scraps of dead flesh that might have fallen between or under the coffins.
Three had gathered at Lady Elinore’s empty tomb in the center of the necropolis and were looking around in apparent confusion. The image struck Quinn as worker bees just emerged from their hive, wondering where their queen had gone. Isolated thoughts floating in his brain suddenly coalesced in a flash of understanding.
Whatever cameras Markov had down here would be recording this macabre scene. He had said he wanted to make the ultimate horror film, to “out-Tod Tod.” Browning’s climactic scene in Freaks—the freaks stalking and slithering through the storm for revenge—had sent many moviegoers fleeing from the theater. The real-life scene unfolding below made Browning’s look like quaint horror movie hokum.
“We need to start the hellfire now,” Quinn said. “Before any of these things have a chance to get out of here and join forces with Markov.”
Johnny started the the flamethrower. “We can go down the center aisle. The coffins are wood. I won’t have to torch them all. They’re close enough together that all I have to do is get some of the ones along the aisle started. They’ll spread it to the rest.”
“We’ve got to get to the aisle on the other side of Elinore’s tomb that will take us to your apartment. I don’t think those loyal subjects hovering around it are going to just stand there and let that happen.”
“Then you slash and I burn,” Johnny said.
Quinn looked along the aisle and made a quick calculation. “There are about a dozen coffins on each side of the aisle. Even if you only light a few, they could take too long to catch fire. We could use some kindling.”
“The clothing on the corpses will be my kindling,” Johnny said.
Quinn dismissed the thought of people being burned alive with a curt nod. The sympathy he’d originally felt toward them as innocent victims had been smothered by seeing what they’d become. They were no longer human. They were mutant abominations that needed to be exterminated.
His brain was so permeated with lines from movies that even the worst situations could bring one to mind. As he watched the hideous mockery of life shambling and wriggling about, the Monster’s famous line from Bride of Frankenstein popped into his head:
“We belong dead.”
Quinn gripped the halberd. “While you’re starting the fire I’ll be watching for anything coming after us. Hopefully the wolfbane and garlic we have on us will keep them away, but—if not I’ll be doing some Grim Reaping.”
Johnny reached for the bag but Quinn shook his head. “I’ll carry this. You need both hands for the flamethrower.”
“If these things come at us, you’re going to need both hands too.”
Quinn picked up the bag. “I’ll put this down when I have to.”
Movement in the Garden got their attention. Two more of the undead were struggling to get out of their coffins.
“You ready?” Quinn said.
Johnny made one quick nod.
They descended the stairs and plunged into the Garden of Evil.
CHAPTER 66
They entered the nearest of the four aisles that converged on Lady Elinore’s tomb. “Torch the ones with their eyes open first,” Quinn said.
Johnny ignited the flamethrower. She went to the first body with its eyes open—a thick-chested man wearing the camouflage of a hunter.
Before she could squeeze the trigger, his hand shot up and grabbed the barrel of the flamethrower. The fierce tug of war lasted only a few seconds before he wrested it from her hands. Apparently able to use only one arm, he struggled to turn it around so he could use it on Johnny. She snatched it back just as Quinn came up with the halberd.
Johnny thrust the flame a few inches from the thing’s face. A bottomless howl of pain erupted as the fire caught and quickly spread. She spoke loudly to be heard over the final groans of a long-postponed death.
“Kindling,” she said. “I’ll have to be more careful.”
Quinn retrieved the canvas bag and they went to the next pair of open eyes. No hands came up as Johnny shot fire into the coffin. Shuddering moans mingled with the crackling of the flame as the undead corpse writhed in agony. Johnny showed no emotion and moved on to the next. Quinn walked beside her, continually scanning the Garden. They were about twenty-five yards from Lady Elinore’s tomb when he saw movement ahead.
Her minions had left the bier and were shambling toward them. The first had just entered the aisle. The other two were close behind.
Quinn turned to get Johnny’s attention. She had just started the fourth fire. The three she’d set earlier were spreading. The howls from the burning undead grew louder. One sprang up in its coffin. Encased in fire, it groped about wildly before falling back out of sight. As the hungry flames continued to devour coffins, more of the undead caught fire. Their agonized wails were merging into a rising crescendo of death.
All three of Elinore’s undead minions had entered the aisle. Twenty yards ahead and coming toward them. “Get ready,” Quinn said. Ten yards away, they began slowing down. “The wolfbane and garlic we have on us must be having an effect.”
“Maybe,” Johnny said. “Whatever it is, let’s hit them while they’re confused.”
They charged.
Johnny set the first one on fire. Screaming, it staggered through the coffins, knocking several over as it frantically tried to brush off the flames. Quinn stormed toward the next one. It held out its hand to protect itself, but Quinn knocked the hand aside with the halberd’s blade and plunged the pike into the thing’s heart. Surprise flitted across a face that was more bone than flesh. A hollow gasp escaped the lipless mouth when Quinn yanked the pike back out, but the thing made no further outcry as it fell to the floor.
The last one started backing away. Johnny passed Quinn to go after it. Before she got there a hand shot out from a coffin and grabbed her shirt.
Quinn came up beside her and brought the battle-ax down, severing the hand at the wrist. Still it held on. He stabbed it with the pike. It released its grip and fell to the floor, still clutching. “Look at that,” he said, pointing to the blood and dust spilling out from the wrist.
“I’ve seen it before,” Johnny said. “It’s the natural forces of life and death fighting it out. Parts of them decompose, parts of them don’t.” She blasted the hand with fire until it lay still.
The last of the undead continued its retreat, weaving its way back among the coffins.
“Looks like he doesn’t want to play anymore.” Quinn picked up the bag and they entered the clearing, stopping to see if anything else was moving to intercept them before they could get to the continuation of the aisle on the other side.
Johnny reduced the flame to conserve fuel, then pointed to an area about twenty yards to the right. “Look.” Two of the undead were clambering out of their coffins.
Quinn nodded. “There’s another one over here.” To the left, several rows from where they stood, one had just gotten out of its coffin and was looking around in a daze, as though it hadn’t gained full control of its faculties. “We�
��ve got to get to those stairs before any of these things can pull themselves together.”
They crossed the clearing and entered the aisle that would take them to Johnny’s staircase, slowing only long enough for her to torch two more whose eyes were open. Ten yards from the end of the aisle, something darted out from under one of the coffins to block their path.
A half-corpse, gone from the waist down, began wriggling toward them.
Quinn was upending the halberd to stab the squirming thing with the pike when it suddenly reared up and launched itself, clamping both hands onto his neck. He dropped the halberd to pull them off but their grip was too strong. Johnny started to use the flamethrower but she couldn’t without burning Quinn. She set it aside and grabbed the atrocity by the waist, pulling with all her might.
Still it held on.
Quinn saw what she was doing and tried to help by pushing on the thing’s shoulders while she pulled.
The hands held fast.
Johnny’s fierce tugging ripped the torso from the arms at the shoulders. She stumbled backwards and fell. The torso landed on top of her, stumps wriggling as though trying to wrap arms that were no longer there around her. She shoved the undead freak aside and scrambled to her feet.
The arms that had been ripped off hung down in front of Quinn as the hands still held on. Blood and dust trickled from the ragged ends of the severed limbs. No longer connected to their life-giving source, the hands finally released their grip and the arms fell to the floor.
Johnny had retrieved the flamethrower and was aiming it at the torso.
“Wait.” Quinn pointed to the legless, armless remnant of a human being. The last spark in the eyes went out and a milky curtain came down. “Save the fuel.”
The two that had been rising from their coffins had just entered the aisle behind them. The one that had seemed dazed was focused now, weaving his way through the coffins to join the others. Quinn picked up the bag and halberd. “Let’s go.”
They moved quickly across the final clearing. Between them and the stairs was the mound of wolfbane. “Markov must have put this here to keep these things from getting up the stairs and disrupting his work,” Johnny said. She swung the flamethrower around. “If we set it on fire, the pungent smoke will make it even more effective.”