by K Helms
Drew stood up walked over to her and bent over at the waist to shake her proffered hand. “C’mon,” he said, helping her to her feet. “I’ve got some clean clothes that might fit you and I have running water in the restroom so you can get cleaned up.”
She smiled. “Any food?” she asked sheepishly. “I’m starving.”
Drew laughed. “Yeah, I’ve got plenty. That is as long as you like canned tuna or condensed soup.”
“It’s my favorite.” she said as she stood up straight.
From somewhere behind her in the empty confines of the factory she heard someone scream for help. She jerked her head around and her eyes scanned the darkened distance. Her eyes were large. “What...” her question was cut off as Drew slammed the handle of the 9mm onto the back of her skull and she crumpled to the floor unconscious.
He leaned down, checked her pulse and found that it was strong and steady. He walked over to a set of shelves and grabbed some industrial zip ties, carried them to her and bound her wrists behind her back and then bound her ankles together. He easily lifted her from the floor. He carried her down the aisles of twenty foot shelves and stopped in front of a large walk-in freezer. He unlocked it and gently laid her inside. He looked to the right as he straightened up and saw that the black woman had somehow managed to spit out her gag. He walked toward her as she swore at him. She was bound at the wrists and ankles as well, but her wrists were also bound to a rail built into the inside of the freezer. “Silly girl,” Finley commented with a smile and his ever present thousand-yard stare.
“Go to hell!” screamed Shere Howard with an expression of undiluted disgust.
Drew backhanded her across the face, but his expression was kind, even demure. Then he yanked the gag back into place and cinched it up even tighter than before.
“You first,” he said then stuck a thumb out and motioned over his shoulder. “Annie, here, will soon be replacing you.” Finley lowered his face toward hers, his eyes mere inches from hers. “I only saved you from the zombies because I want to kill you. Then after I kill you, when your body is nice and cold and stiff, then I’m going to do you so hard; you have no idea how hard.” He shivered like a dog shedding water as he thought about the rapture he would languish in, and a grin stretched over his greasy face.
He straightened up, his back popping, and drug Annie to the railing and bound her beside the black Marine. He reached into his pocket and fished out a box cutter and cut the t shirt and jeans off of Annie. He took her boots off and peeled off her sweaty socks, leaving her bound and exposed like Shere had been for the past two weeks. He saw that Annie had a purple playboy bunny tattoo on her hip. “Jackpot, Shere, looks like your replacement might have been a stripper,” Finley said then added happily, “Yeah, you’re going to be dead by tomorrow.”
Chapter 32 - See No Evil
Hito Takahashi watched from the building across the street. He had been watching Finley for three days; waiting for an opportune moment to take him out. As always, it wasn’t anything personal, he just didn’t like people. He thought it was pretty selfless of the man to aid the young lady, even though she had been young and pretty. He wondered if Finley would have been as dedicated to a rescue attempt if the girl had been fat and ugly or old; he doubted it.
Hito had not seen anyone else enter or leave the building in the past three days and thought that it was safe to say that he was most likely alone, still, it paid to be cautious.
Hito never just jumped into a situation. He was far from stupid, no matter what his wife or parents had thought. He fished out the binoculars from his pack and scanned the factory. He noticed the security cameras; some were static while others probed right to left and back again. They needed juice to operate them, so he figured there must be back up generators. The cameras would have to be taken out. From his vantage point he could probably take out three of the cameras, but the front entrance that the slightly portly man and woman had escaped to would be too secure to get a good shot without the possibility of giving away his position. He needed to look for an alternative. He set the binoculars down and stuck the butt of the sniper rifle into his shoulder. He peered through the scope and rested the crosshairs on the first camera. He eliminated it and followed suit with the next two. Three rounds were enough to draw the dead to his position, so it was time to move. In the meantime, he gathered his gear and headed back into the shadows of the building.
His plan was to check the perimeter of the factory and take out any remaining cameras from different positions; that was first, second, the library; you could learn a lot at the local library, especially maps of the city. He needed to know the best escape routes. The city water and sewage departments would be next. Every building in town was connected to the sewers, not to mention that the sewers were a relatively safe place from zombies. There might be one or two strays down there, but one or two of the dead would pose no great threat as long as they didn’t catch you unaware. Hito had found that, for some reason, churches and the sewers were places that people thought of as safe havens and he hoped fortune would smile on him; a few extra kills would be a bonus.
He made his way out the entrance of the building and found that the pack of zombies that had chased the man and woman into the factory had turned their attention toward the sound of his rifle shots. Not a big surprise, he thought. Even with the pack and rifle he easily outran them, leaving them to scream for others. He ran for a few blocks outdistancing them, but there seemed to be zombies crawling out from every building, every street and every alley. He decided that after this hit he would find a new town to hunt his game.
Hito had once thought that the dead would eventually decompose and rot away to nothing, but he had been wrong. These corpses were as fresh as the moment they had been turned. It didn’t make sense, but then again, the idea of the dead reanimating and eating human flesh didn’t exactly make a whole lot of sense either.
He ran into the wide open doors of a Sears building that had been gutted by a fire. It still smelled charred and he could make out the acrid smell of burnt wires. By his calculations he should be on the rear side of the factory. He found the stairs and ran up to the third floor. The door was shut. He turned the knob and eased the door open, the hinges squalling. As he entered the room he closed the door behind him and immediately grabbed one of his 9mms from its shoulder holster and was glad that it was, as a troop of the undead trudged from the shadows screaming for others. He saw that one still wore a name tag. ‘Hello, my name is Chris’; his white dress shirt wasn’t so white anymore. Hito wished he could leave these poor miscreants to roam, the more of them meant less of the living, but it wasn’t in the cards. He leveled the 9mm at the one in the lead and blew the top of his skull off, instantly the dead man fell over backward, like a felled tree. Hito never wavered as he dispatched the remaining four zombies in similar manner.
Over the past months he had become a machine in his art. He couldn’t count the murals he had painted with his rifle or 9mm’s. He had a certain abstract quality to his art, and his favorite medium was always red.
He stepped over the corpses and checked the rest of the floor making sure that he was alone. He found a window that faced the back of the factory and fished out his binoculars again. From this vantage point he could see another five cameras. Two of which still panned the area.
He nodded, not aware that he was doing so. He sighted the crosshairs over the cameras and eliminated them as well.
Hito knew he couldn’t stay here; he had remained in this area for too long as it was. He would go to the library, then to the sewer department and hole up there tonight.
Tomorrow he would plot his routes carefully and revisit the factory. He had two marks inside and he didn’t want to lose them.
Drew Finley had had his share of visitors. Hell, he had the skulls and skins to prove it. In his own private quarters the preserved hides of at least forty-six of his victims lined the walls like macabre tapestries. Most had beat on the doors in search
of refuge, food, water, even companionship. He had met others outside, while searching for provisions, and had lured them here with the promise of protection and shelter. He had eagerly given them all they sought. Again, his management skills had come in useful. He knew how to tell people exactly what they wanted to hear. He had done this countless times when the factory was up and running, but eventually, they all had to be what they were meant to be; decorations.
This newest visitor, not the girl, Annie, no, not her; the one that had shot out his cameras, he was different. The man had been thorough, but he had missed one of the cameras. Finley had seen him, a dark figure in the shadows. The man had worn a long overcoat, dark, probably black, though he couldn’t be sure because the monitor was monochrome. The sneaky little bugger had a mass of dark hair, and thought that he resembled a character from one of those late night anime cartoons.
A frown had etched itself onto Finley’s brow, a more honest representation of his true nature. He was angry. Not because of the cameras, sure that had been a blow to the security of his castle, but because he would have to postpone his union with Shere. He had no desire of being balls deep in any of her orifices only to have that moment be ruined by some vagabond that wanted to besiege his castle. No, that would not do; Shere would have to wait, which meant that he would have to wait.
Finley stood up from his cushioned, leather desk chair and began walking the interior perimeter of the factory. He had to make sure that there were no weak points.
He had his own booby traps and alarms set on every entrance and loading dock door, he even had spare weapons if needed, even though he had not needed anything like that up until now.
He wasn’t sure exactly how long he had been at the factory, but knew that it had been over ten years, both before and after the zombies. Not once had he had to contend with one like this stranger. Sure there had been aggressors, but they were mainly an unimaginative lot. This one, though, he was smart, but just how smart was he?
Finley knew one thing for certain. The dark man would not take away his girls. They were his; he had worked for those bitches, especially Annie…Annie the girl with that giant rack of top shelf silicone. He didn’t know for sure, if she had been a stripper, but she had the looks of one. Skin had been her business, of that he was sure, and, as luck would have it, it was his as well.
Chapter 33 – Fewer in the Sewer
Hito had done exactly as he had planned. He had gone to the library, then to the Department of Water and Sewer. As expected, he had found the blue prints, layouts and maps that he needed and before he slept that night he had mapped his route underground.
Morning had come and his stomach was jittery with anticipation. He had given the man from the factory a thorough study as he had watched the fat man help the girl. He had been a fairly large man, maybe six foot and had been that sloppy fat that white collar types tended to be. He guessed the man to weigh in the neighborhood of two hundred and thirty, maybe two hundred and forty. It had looked like a bizarre lifeguard movie as the fat man ran. Bitch tits, they were called. Man boobs jiggling up and down beneath his sweaty, white, short-sleeve shirt. Still, Hito was not unaware that bigger people were naturally stronger than those that shared his slighter build. Hito was undoubtedly in better shape, could do pulls ups for days and crunches in bunches, but brute strength was not in his repertoire.
Hito had a spelunker’s LED lantern strapped across his forehead in preparation of the complete darkness of the underground. He eased himself into a manhole, sliding the heavy, steel cover back into place and climbed down the ladder into the darkness of the labyrinth below. He jogged at a moderate pace through the sewers; his footfalls rarely splashing. Luckily it hadn’t rained in over two weeks and judging from the clouds, it wouldn’t be raining any time soon. That was good; he didn’t have any desire to be swept up in a flash flood of rain and old sewage. But this little jog wasn’t that bad, it actually didn’t smell all that bad either. No one had been flushing down human waste for quite some time, and actually, it smelled worse in the streets above from the rot of corpses, both human and animal. He smiled, thinking that the sewers seemed like a vacation.
He turned a corner and found two city workers lumbering through the labyrinth. Their clothes were in rags, but the plastic reflective orange safety vests were largely intact. Fortunately they had their backs to him. Stealth was important so he unsheathed his machete. It was well worn from being sharpened many times. Hito honed the edge of it anytime he was forced to chop down one of these walking meat suits. This was one of those times and they stood in the way of his business at hand. He crept slowly, silently up behind them and raised the long blade over his shoulder. With a powerful swing he lopped off the head of the zombie on his right. The head hit a puddle of water with a heavy splash and rolled in front of his comrade’s feet. The one still shuffling forward moaned in what seemed to Hito as a questioning tone. He easily dispatched the other with another well-placed chop through the side of the zombie’s neck. This time the head didn’t come all the way off, but hung from the side with skin and gristle, and it stood there swaying until it finally tilted over to its right, the zombie careened into the other headless body and toppled like a spare in bowling. Hito wiped the gore from his blade on one of their safety vests and re-sheathed it. He fished inside the pocket of his overcoat and pulled out the map to the sewers. According to the diagram, the drainage grate beneath the factory should be just ahead, with one more straight stretch, then a left at the next ‘Y’. He refolded the map and returned it to his pocket. He pulled out one of his 9mms and flipped off the safety before he continued.
As he made the final left he saw light shining through the grate and peeked up to check if he could see any movement. He didn’t see any shadows shifting.
He fished in another pocket and pulled out a large dental mirror and stuck it between his teeth as he climbed the rusty ladder to the grate, careful to be silent.
He fished the mirror through the grate and examined the room above him.
It was a storage room with crates and boxes lining three of the walls. He saw a door on one wall, but it looked like a typical interior door. There was a lock on it, but all he had to do was turn the lock from the inside of the room to get out. The room was empty, but he listened just the same.
Finley’s short hairs were raised just thinking about tall, dark and sneaky. He walked back to the freezer to where the girls were bound. Though cool in there, the condensers were shot so it couldn’t freeze, but it made a secure jail cell. He pulled up the steel latch of the insulated, aluminum door and swung it open. Both his girls were wide eyed and very aware. He eyed Annie appreciatively and could hardly wait until her body was cold and stiff, then ultimately cold and pliable, as it was with the process of rigor mortis.
He shook his head trying to dislodge the lustful images from his brain. He had a plan for the would-be looter or hero, whatever he was; he was going to be dead and Finley thought that the Asian man would make a fine rug for his office.
He walked over to where the girls were bound by the wrists to the bar on the wall. He removed both of their cloth gags and smiled genially at them. “You might hear someone else in here pretty soon, if you do, please, feel free to scream to your heart’s content.”
“Why…why are you doing this?” asked Annie, her eyes red and filled with tears.
“Because he’s a freak that can only get it up for a dead girl,” shot Shere. Drew smiled at her and backhanded her, leaving a red welt on her dark brown cheek. She didn’t cry out, instead she locked her eyes defiantly on his. "He's had me tied to this rail for weeks and has never had the nuts to get it up," she told Annie then turned back to Finley, but still speaking to Annie "I think he might have a thing for little boys."
He nodded, a sneer stretching across his lips. “Don’t worry, Love, I'll be all yours soon enough.” He reached behind his back and slowly withdrew a fillet knife and waved it slowly back and forth before her face. Light flashed
across its stainless steel blade. He lightly placed the index finger of his opposite hand at the base of her throat and traced it down between her breasts and stopped at her navel. “This will open you to me and then I will be able to see the real you. I’ll feel your warmth, your wetness, all of your soft feminine side.” He closed his eyes, smiled again, this time with a light, almost inaudible sigh. He straightened his back with a groan and looked back at Annie. He would save her until he couldn’t take it anymore. That anticipation made it all the more worthwhile.
That dreamy expression of his gave way to one that said, Oh yeah, I almost forgot. “I don’t think you ladies have met Amanda,” he said, and studied their expressions. “No?” he asked. “Well, where are my manners?” he asked with a laugh.
He walked across the room to where another door was closed with a padlock. He fished in his front pants pocket and pulled out a ring of keys. He thumbed through them and with a pleased look, he grasped the padlock with the hand that still held the fillet knife and opened the door. They could hear groans coming from the darkness, then Drew flicked a light switch that flooded the room with white, he stepped aside so they could see.
Inside the room was the fresh corpse of a woman. Her skin was a grayish varicolored brown, her eyes covered in what appeared to be cataracts. She had no arms or legs and as she snapped at him they saw that the female zombie had no teeth. He spun around to face them, his arms out to the sides, and a huge smile on his face.
“Tahdah!” he said, as if he was hosting a surprise party and in some insane way, he was.
Upon seeing this Shere remembered Hermie the Dentist presenting the Abominable Snowman in that old Rudolph Christmas special, but this version wasn’t quite as cute.