The man with the eyepatch takes a step toward Darren.
He thrusts out a bony hand.
“My name’s Mark Shell,” he says. “I’m the leader here.”
“Where...” Darren stammers. “Where is here?”
“Underground.”
Darren continues looking around. They have to be pretty deep under the ground. It doesn’t seem possible. The tent wasn’t more than twenty feet away from the ocean at high tide. If they were this far underground they should be covered in water and wet sand. Buried.
“How?” Darren says. If he can clear away just a little bit of the confusion, he can start making some sense of everything.
“How?” Shell asks, almost mockingly.
“How are we underground? There should be water.”
“Let me introduce Pearl.” Shell motions to the maybe attractive girl to his left. “She’s the queen of a town called Hollow City. Or, she used to be. She’s able to make things happen. She’s a good person to have on our side. Come on,” Shell approaches Darren and throws an arm around him. “You need some food and some rest.”
And he drags him back into the underground lair and he is fed better food than he has had in a very long time.
9.
While eating, Darren can’t help observing the people around him. They are all dressed as Shell is. Even the man who had been dressed like a woman is now wearing the black paramilitary gear. Except they all have one sleeve that extends to the very end of their hands, so it looks like they have one hand and one extra long arm. They all move about rapidly and look very busy. They speak quickly in clipped tones, as though there isn’t any time for lazy conversation.
Darren notices a lot of slags.
Some of them hang on the walls, in various states of evisceration. Some of them move about freely. Some of them are alive and chained throughout the lair. Some of them are tiny. Some of them are as large as he is.
He finishes eating his spaghetti in a can, moves the can aside and leans forward onto the table, resting his head on his arms. It feels nice. He feels safe here, even with all the slags. Maybe it’s all the humans. Maybe it’s all the paramilitary gear.
Shell sits down on the bench across the table from him and raps on the wood.
“Listen here,” he says. “There are some things I should tell you about our operation but first I need to ask you if you mind losing your left arm.”
“Losing my left arm?”
“Yeah. Like having it lopped off.”
“Yes. I would have to say that I am opposed to losing my left arm.”
“Then you can’t be part of us.”
“What? Because I don’t want you to lop off my arm? That’s crazy.”
“Nobody said it wasn’t crazy. Of course it’s crazy. Everything here is crazy. But it’s the way it has to be. Are you in or are you out?”
“Is there a reason why?”
“Are you in or are you out?”
Darren thinks about it. He looks around at all the scurrying personnel. They have all apparently had their left arms lopped off. But something fills out their sweaters. Do they have prostheses? He doesn’t really want to have his arm lopped off—either the right or the left. But what is the alternative? Go back to the surface and let the slags devour him?
“So you would really feed me to the slags if I don’t agree to let you lop off my arm?”
“We’d have no choice.”
Darren shakes his head in wonderment. These seem to be the only people left in the world and they are out of their fucking heads. Great.
“It doesn’t seem very safe.”
“Yes or no?”
“Yes. Okay. You can take my left arm.”
He has no idea why he is agreeing to this but doesn’t really see any alternative. He could try and kill this man with the one sparkling crazy eye sitting across from him, he guesses. He could kill him and then convince everyone he is crazy and they don’t really need to sacrifice their arms. But he doesn’t think that will work either. Leaders can’t be replaced that easily and he doesn’t really think he’s leadership material anyway. Besides, what would be the point? They’d already lost their arms.
“Very good,” Shell says and stands up from the table. “Follow me.”
He follows Shell toward the back of the lair. A few people stop what they are doing to look at Darren. He can’t figure if it’s pity or hunger in their eyes.
“Pearl!” Shell calls. “We need to begin the procedure.”
As Pearl joins Shell, Darren continues to follow them. He is struck with a sense of vertigo. It doesn’t feel like anything in this lair is solid. It’s all wet sand trying to fill in the hole that is the lair. That’s why everyone seems so frenetic. They are working to continuously push back the walls. But what for? Why here? There have to be a million other hiding places. He follows Shell and Pearl through a door but it isn’t really a door at all. More like a waterfall of sand, just enough to occlude what happens behind it.
“There’s absolutely nothing to worry about,” Shell says over his shoulder.
Darren looks around the claustrophobic room they’ve just entered. A flattened mound of sand that makes him immediately think of a hospital bed or a mortuary slab. A sword submerged in a barrel of fire. A slag dangling from a rope in the sandy ceiling. Darren wonders what is keeping the rope in there and thinks he probably has a whole lot to worry about.
10.
Hesitant, Darren stands at the opening of the room.
“Come on,” Shell says. “It’s just an arm. Stop being such a fucking candyass.”
Just an arm, Darren thinks. Then, first noticing it as she withdraws the sword from the barrel, Darren points to Pearl and says, “Why does she still have her left arm?”
“Because she’s the Queen of Town. We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for her.”
“Maybe you wouldn’t be here.”
“Look, we don’t have all day. You wanna do it while the sword is still sterile or you wanna wait until it’s crawling with bacteria?”
Darren looks at the glowing sword.
“We find it works best if you’re lying down.”
Darren slumps his shoulders and approaches the weird sand table. He hops up onto it and lies back, staring at the brown ceiling. Shell tosses him a hank of cloth and says, “Bite down on that.”
Darren thinks taking advice from one who has already lost his left arm is a good idea. He bites down on the musty tasting cloth. Shell grabs his left arm and pulls it out straight. Pearl stands about where Darren’s knees are, raises the sword above her head and brings it down. Darren hears it cutting the air and feels a sharp and savage heat attack his shoulder before blacking out.
1 1.
He comes to, bleary-eyed. After peeling his eyes open and rubbing them with his right fist, he looks over at his left arm. He sees a pus-colored mass, roughly the same size and shape as his arm. There is a bit of pain at his shoulder but it doesn’t hurt nearly as much as he thought it would. Beyond the shoulder, he can’t feel anything. Is this his new arm? Why cut it off if they were just going to replace it with another, inferior arm?
He pokes his new left arm and it twitches. The end of it, where his hand used to be, bends toward him and... snaps at him. There’s an opening there. It looks like a toothed anus.
Fuck! They replaced his arm with a slag!
What the hell kind of nightmare is this?
He screams out with the business end of the slag snapping just a couple inches in front of his face.
“What are you waiting for?” Shell says from the foot of the bed. “You have to show it who’s in control.”
“You cut off my arm and put a fucking slag in its place?!” Darren squeals. He doesn’t like the sound of his voice. He sounds weak and hysterical.
Shell chuckles. “We most certainly did.”
“Are you fucking insane? Why the fuck would you do that?” He’s still squealing.
“Who knows? It was
Pearl’s idea.”
“Yet she’s the only one without a... slag arm.”
“A slarm.”
“That’s fucking precious.”
“It’s good to see you have a bit of your old spirit back.”
The slarm continues trying to chomp at his face. He waits until the anus mouth closes and slams his fist into it.
“There,” Shell says. “See. It’s not all that hard. They can learn. Make something a part of you and, before long, it begins thinking it is.”
Darren slings his legs off the bed and pulls himself into a sitting position. He feels woozy. “There has to be a reason for this.” He says this and realizes he’s thinking out loud. He doesn’t specifically mean the slag flesh-welded to his shoulder. He means everything. There has to be a reason he survived the second attack. There has to be a reason he stayed alive in the beach house. There has to be a reason why he is here now.
“You’ll learn more about it at training,” Shell says, presumably meaning the arm but, at this point, Darren wouldn’t really be surprised if he means everything as well.
“Training?”
“Yes, training. But you’re here pretty late in the game so you’ll have two sessions, at most. But that’s okay. They’re pretty fast learners.”
“What are you training for?”
“The attack, of course. The reverse apocalypse.”
“The reverse apocalypse?”
“Yes. We’re taking the world back from the slags.”
“How do you plan on doing that? There can’t be more than twenty people out there.”
“Twenty well-trained people. And Pearl. You can’t forget Pearl. She’s worth... well, a whole lot more than just one person.”
“Do you worship her or something? I think you should put your faith in more realistic things.”
“I’ve seen exactly what Pearl can do.” Shell moves closer to Darren until their faces are almost touching. “She once hid herself in my eyesocket for hours. She started small. Then she got bigger and had to come out. She filled me up and then emptied me out, sewed up the husk with a piece of my rib and strands of her hair. Then she breathed my soul back into my body. Does that sound like just anyone to you? Have you ever done that?”
This only convinces Darren that Shell is completely insane.
“I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”
“After all, it’s not like we don’t have a plan.”
“And what is this plan?”
“We’re going to Hollow City by way of fugue. Hollow City was one of the safe zones after the first wave. They have the highest concentration of immune anywhere in this area.”
“Isn’t that in Ohio?”
“Yes.”
“And we’re in Maryland. How’s that ‘in the area’?”
“Connected by fugue.”
“Ah. Connected by fugue. Makes perfect sense. That’s good, I guess. Very sound reasoning.”
“Talking to you is like shitting and then playing with it. Training’s in one hour.”
Shell rushes from the room, leaving Darren to sit there and shake his head and wish he had been mercilessly devoured by slags on the shore.
12.
He continues sitting there because he doesn’t know what else to do. He guesses he could go out and mingle with the rest of the people down here but they had all seemed pretty preoccupied and frantic. He knows he doesn’t want to go out there and push sand around for the next hour. Maybe he’s too lazy or maybe he just isn’t a team player. He tells himself it’s because he needs time to adjust to his new arm.
Maybe he nods off but it seems like the hour passes very quickly. When he comes to it’s to the sound of Shell shouting at him from the entranceway.
“Come on! Come on! Come on! You’re gonna be late.”
Darren slides down off the slab and, as he passes Shell, says, “You know, I don’t really have to do anything you tell me to do. I’m here of my own free will.”
Shell jerks his slarm toward the drippy ceiling and says, “You could just as easily be back up there of my own free will. Now move your ass!” And he shakes the end of his slarm in front of Darren’s face where it gnashes its teeth. Shell is very persuasive, Darren thinks. He follows the others into another chamber. Shell and Pearl do not enter.
Entering the chamber, Darren counts the other troops. Eighteen. Eighteen plus himself and Shell and Pearl and they are going to wage war on a town of slags. It doesn’t seem like a very good idea.
In the chamber with them are at least an equal number of slags. He guesses this is the training. They are not full grown slags. These days, full grown slags are probably as large as most houses. These are slightly larger than the ones comprising their slarms.
The other troops look crazed but methodical. They waste no time approaching the slags. Darren stands back and observes for a few seconds. With the left arm being replaced by a slag, he has no immediate desire to lose his right one. He watches a frail woman with a shock of dirty brown hair bare her teeth as she stands two feet in front of a slag. The slag coils up and throws itself at her. She shields herself using her slarm. The slag latches onto it. The woman reaches toward her belt and pulls up a large knife. She begins hacking at the slag hungrily clamped to her arm. Eventually it releases its hold and drops thickly to the floor. The woman crouches over it and her slarm takes over. It whips down and quickly plunges into one of the wounds opened by the knife. After a few seconds, the slag on the floor appears thin and lifeless. The woman turns and goes off to hunt another slag.
Toward the back of the chamber, Darren hears a scream. He turns to see a man down on his back, wildly kicking his legs. A slag has its teeth buried into the man’s side and his slarm is busy feeding at his eye socket. Darren looks down at his slarm and hopes it does not try to betray him. He decides to test it out by coming to the downed man’s aid.
He approaches cautiously, ready to let his slarm clamp onto the slag devouring the man’s side but a burly man to his left knocks his slarm away.
“No.” The man shakes his head as if cautioning him.
“But he’s being devoured.”
“Then so it is. We must divide the strong from the weak.”
“I’m more about safety in numbers,” Darren says and guides his slarm toward the slag. It just hangs there in front, dangling limp and flaccid. Great, he thinks, all the slags in the world and I get the retarded one. He slaps it on the back of the head, nearly throwing it at the slag.
“I can’t let you do this.” The burly man is walking back toward the entrance of the chamber. “Shell! Shell!”
“Motherfucker,” Darren hisses and begins kicking at the slag gnawing on the dead man.
Shell rushes into the chamber and storms over to Darren. He puts a hand on his shoulder and spins him around so he’ll stop kicking the slag. Shell sticks his face in front of Darren’s and flicks him on the forehead.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” Shell barks.
“I was trying to keep this man from getting eaten.”
“Terry said he told you you weren’t supposed to do that.”
“Terry’s a dick.”
“You’re a dick. And you’re training’s over. You come out until everyone finishes and then you’re on clean-up detail.”
Darren wants to argue with him but sees the resulting outcome as too stupid to even consider. He slumps his shoulders and leaves the chambers. He looks to his left and makes fleeting eye contact with Pearl. If she wasn’t filthy she would be pretty striking, he thinks. Sex is so far behind him he doesn’t even think about it. He just puts his head down and wanders around, realizing he doesn’t have anywhere to wander to.
13.
Clean-up isn’t the chore Shell had undoubtedly intended it to be. Darren had cleaned up and eaten countless slags. They had little to no effect on him when they were dead. He uses the shovel and wheelbarrow provided and wheels the remains out into the main chamber. The others are gathered
around a long table and Darren realizes he is probably wheeling out their dinner. He had hoped they had something more exotic to eat down here. He should have known. They’d gotten his hopes up with the canned food. So far this place hasn’t really shown him any perks of living with other people. Darren lets the wheelbarrow rest next to Shell, standing at the head of the table.
Beside Shell is a rusted metal barrel with a grill grate over the top and flames guttering down below. At least they are going to cook the slags before eating them. There is an open spot at the very end of the table. Darren walks down there and sits. No one speaks. They stare reverently toward the head of the table, toward Shell and Pearl. Darren wonders how long everyone has been here. He wonders if they have been brainwashed somehow. Or maybe they’re just desperate. He wonders if Shell and Pearl actually have a plan or if it is just some dream they hold over everyone’s head. If it is a dream. It sounds more like a nightmare to Darren.
Dinner is consumed in silence. Darren’s slag is undercooked. Many people gag while eating the slag meat. Darren takes that to mean they are still moderately human. He wants to ask them if they know they are going to their deaths. Do they realize what the slags have become? Do they really think there are other people out there?
That night he gets to sleep and actually feels a modicum of safety for the first time since the attacks. They sleep in two hour shifts because if they all slept at once they would end up buried.
Slag Attack Page 10