The surgeon who had been leaning over Diane tried to pull back from the operating table, but something was holding him. He was trying to hit whatever was grabbing him. Ignoring medical protocol, Francis pushed open the door and walked into the room. It was like he had made the transition from reality into a fucked-up corner of existence, where only nightmares and the bogeyman lived.
A male nurse barged past him and through the door. He had sprays of blood down his blue smock. Francis floated up to the table, where Diane lay. He looked down into the space where, up until an hour ago, the prospect of a new life and fresh meaning in their lives had been growing.
Now he saw something which seemed the antithesis of birth. From an incision that had been made, a green-blue baby was poking out, his little infant digits were red gloves flecked with black lumps of congealed blood and tissue. They were holding onto the surgeon’s gown. Tiny eyes, with a black imperfection at their core, looked up at the terrified man, still clutching the scalpel like a biro.
The infant was chewing on thin air. His gums were lined with blood, the previous owner a mystery. Amongst the screaming came a high pitched squeal. Francis looked up to the heart rate monitor and saw the gentle undulating line crash into a straight red line. Numbers at the side flashed zero, expecting urgent corrective action.
“Help them, for God’s sake! Help them,” Francis shouted, trying to shake the surgeon out of his inactivity. The scalpel freefell to the floor and landed with a metallic clatter. The man, eyes wide with terror, pulled off his mask and ran out of the room, smacking his shoulder into the doorframe as he went.
Chapter Forty-Four
“But, you can’t take me, I’m just like you,” the train station cannibal protested as he was dragged unceremoniously from his pen. With a boot on his back, one of the bone savages clasped his hands together and cable-tied them. The plastic teeth rasped, followed by a yelp as it bit into his wrists.
Another padlock was unfastened and cast to the floor with the chain. “Git,” the leader commanded. Russ removed his cap and shoved it through the bars to Nathan. With a nod of understanding, he shuffled out into the dank corridor that ran between the rows of cages.
“Ain’t cha a good little lamb,” the leader said, gesturing to his two accomplices. As they approached, preoccupied with fishing out another cable-tie from a pocket, Russ head-butted the closest one. The half skull covering his face absorbed some of the impact, but split down the middle, leaving the cracked plate hanging off by the string it was held on by.
The assaulted savage clutched his face with his hands, forgetting he was holding the knife, which in turn slashed his cheek. A jet of blood splattered his inbred brother in the face. Russ turned to the one who had just been sprayed and punched him in the gut, just below his bone bodice. He bent over double, the air stolen from his lungs by the blow.
Before Russ could press home the early advantage, a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye manifested itself in a lick of pain in his temple. He turned to see the leader wielding nunchuks made from a pair of clavicles, joined together with tightly wound ligaments and tendon.
Screaming with primal rage, Russ charged the boss, who sidestepped him easily and clubbed him on the head on the follow-through. Russ sank to the floor with an, “Oooofff,” and after a scraping of cheekbone on the concrete, his resistance ended.
“Tie ‘im up you useless fugwits,” the leader ordered. The gut-punched savage hobbled over to Russ and restrained him, adding in a friendly punch to the kidneys for good measure.
“Vese two will do nicely. Ma and Pa would be pleased,” the leader commented. “You two, let’s go.” ‘Url and Vints grabbed hold of the men by the scruff of their collars and dragged them down the straw-covered runway to the rear of the barn. The sound of metal scraping against metal set everyone on edge; a brief pause brought relief, until the process was repeated in reverse.
“I’m scared, Zena. What are they going to do with Russ?” Nathan asked, his eyes heavy with impending tears.
Zena slumped against the side of her cage. “No idea, Nathan. I don’t think we want to know. Cover your ears, okay?”
“Leave ‘im vere.” The leader pointed at Russ, who was released and did the worst caterpillar ever against the floor. He rolled to one side and took in the new room.
It looked like it used to be a large chicken coop, though from the looks of it, hadn’t been used for that purpose in twenty odd years. The roof was lower, covered in the same rusting wavy sheets of iron that covered the containment area they were in previously.
Arranged side by side were four weather-worn troughs. Tracks of drying dark liquid ran from the lip down the concave body to the floor. Russ flung his head around. Part of him wanted to see what else was there, another part wanted to squash his eyes shut and yearn for a return to happier times.
A standing lamp was glaring down onto a large grooved metal table. From underneath, it looked like a shallow paddling pool, dipping in the middle with a three inch wide lip running around the top edge. This was where the cannibal had been dropped, face down. His wide open eyes met Russ as he mouthed one word: “Help.”
One of the savages, the one with the split skull mask, kept watch over Russ. He looked a little crestfallen with the removal of part of his outfit. The other two were busying themselves around the cannibal. The leader passed a length of rope to the other, which had loops at either end, like a figure of eight.
The savage took this and headed off toward the end of the table. “Vere you go, Juhn,” he slobbered. The leader tucked his bone nunchuks into his belt and headed off to a winch, which was positioned down the other end by Rope Man.
The leader, Juhn, pushed the winch closer, locked the feet, and pulled down a length of cable which ended in a hook. He fiddled with something unseen, and then nodded to his brother. He stood back, staring over at Russ and smiling as if he was on the verge of sharing some hilarious secret. “’Url, fire it up,” he grunted, all the while looking at Russ.
A whine of spooling machinery rang out. The cable grew taut and the cannibal flinched and was pulled down from view. As the winch effortlessly worked, the hook appeared in sight again, connected to the looped rope which was firmly affixed to the cannibal’s ankles.
Like the other shark from Jaws—the one mistaken as the killer—he was pulled into the air, where he dangled like a punching bag. When he was a few feet off the metal table, ‘Url killed the winch and the whining and ascension stopped.
Juhn gave Russ a gummy smile. Running his bloated tongue over the remainder of his teeth for effect, he slid out his bone knife from its skin scabbard.
“No, no man! Don’t! I’m like you guys! I eat people! Not him, and the others he came in with! They’re all straighters, they aren’t like us! They don’t get i—” the cannibal begged.
“Shhhhh liddle piggie, it’s okay. You’re not like my bruvvers and me. You’re a townie. Always taking the mick out of us when we go to the pub. Sayin’ ‘ow vick we urr and ‘ow our ma and pa are bruvver and sithter.” Juhn slapped the cannibal’s face gently, leaving bits of shit covered straw stuck to his cheek.
Juhn laughed. “Well, fink Ma and Pa might be, but vat doesn’t matter. We don’t need anyfing from you outsiders.” He turned his back to Russ and ran the knife across the cannibal’s forehead, leaving red furrows.
“Please, pl—”
His words were replaced with strangled gasps and thrashing as Juhn grabbed hold of the cannibal’s head with one hand, pulled it back, and drew the knife across the middle of the throat. Blood bubbles formed along the remarkably clean incision, and a cascade of gore washed over the cannibal’s shocked face and pitter-pattered against the metal table beneath.
The trickle turned into a torrent. The throat opened up like a Pez dispenser and the cannibal’s protestations turned into a gentle warbling. Juhn swung the hanging body round and cut the cable-ties. The arms fell and tickled the surface of the blood pond beneath him.
&n
bsp; Open eyes covered in sticky red liquid gawped at Russ, who felt every fibre of his being clench.
Nathan was in the corner of his cage. Arms pulled his legs up so close to his body that not even a Higgs Boson particle could exist between. A prod on his arm brought him back to the room. “Hey kid.” Nate turned slowly. As he looked into the man’s face he screamed and shot across to the other side of his enclosure.
“Stay away from me, stay away from me!” he shouted.
Grotty fingers ran around a series of scars surrounding his eye socket. “Ha, sorry kid. Sometimes I forget I have this. Mirrors aren’t too popular these days, eh?” he offered. “Where are my manners? Anton. I’m Anton, pleased to meet you.”
Chapter Forty-Five
Francis came to. The smell of sulphur and rancid shit lingered, but only as an after-taste. He rubbed his head and hauled himself to his feet. The murk had a green tinge to it, but Francis knew he had to get out of there. Like now. Who knew what other creatures of the deep had been cast into this pit and were waiting to get out, like extras from the Thriller video.
Patting the ground around him, he came upon his torch. Checking it still worked, he scanned the recesses of the pit again, looking for a point of egress. “Quickest way is up,” he surmised, and ran the beam of light up the breezeblocks he had attempted to climb first time round.
It looked like the people that had built it were no master craftsmen; chunks of mortar had already been pulled out through his first climbing attempt. Using the axe, Francis began to chip away at the surface and form some proper foot- and hand-holds. The grate looked down at him with a forlorn appearance, as if reluctant to lose the one inhabitant that could conjugate verbs.
After several attempts, many of which ended with him being dumped back into the dried slurry with a solid thump, Francis had managed to get to within touching distance of the pit lid. Digging his feet into the loose mortar as deep as he could, one hand held onto a breezeblock while the other pushed the axe up against the lid.
With Herculean effort he managed to displace the grate from its slot and slide it to one side. Using the axe as if he were climbing a glacier, he hooked the head over the edge and hauled himself free from the den of poo, and out into the coolness of a spring evening. The farm smell was still not the most pleasant, but as he panted on the ground, looking up at the tiny pinpricks of light forming in the sky, he allowed himself a small chuckle.
Francis crept along the side of the barn extension. The flapping door was still rocking back and forth at the end. He took off his bag, tied up the end, and set it against the doorframe. He pulled his sleeves up, exposing wiry ginger arm hair, which bristled in the evening air. Cradling the axe loosely in one hand he ducked into the building.
The extension was nothing more than a long corridor. Along the walls hung farm tools in various states of disrepair. Old chest of drawers, clinging onto life with rotten doweling pins and corroded screws, looked back with busted open drawers. They were filled with filth-covered extension cords, cables and wires which their owners didn’t have the heart to throw out, ‘just in case’.
At the end of the corridor there was an old-school gas lamp, its feeble light flickering and gutting over something hanging on the wall. To the side of this, at the end of the clapped out furniture, was a closed door.
Stepping over mouse droppings and discarded shoes, Francis inched his way to the door. The far wall came into view.
A man in the mid stages of decomposition was crucified to the wall with metal marquee stakes, bent over at the end to stop his putrefying body slipping off and bursting like a water balloon on the floor.
He had been stripped to his underpants. Another stake had been hammered through his skull to prevent reanimation. His body was a patchwork of nicks and slashes, though it was a lucky omen to mark it as you passed. Above his corpse hung an old flaking sign;
Beneath that, someone had added the following tagline in blood:
Francis held the axe tighter and pushed the door open with the business end. Peering into the innards, he saw rows and rows of cages.
Chapter Forty-Six
A plughole in the middle of the table carried away the drained blood. ‘Url carried a milk urn, which had collected the fluid, to the side of the room where a number of other receptacles waited.
Juhn pulled a trolley along the floor carrying the tools of his macabre trade. First off he used a meat cleaver to finish hacking through the exsanguination hole in the throat and pulled the head clear of the body.
The three brothers worked like a choreographed dance troupe. No sooner had the head been removed than Vints had picked it up by the hair and took it across to a corner of the barn where a sheet hung down from the rafters. As it was pulled to one side, Russ saw row upon row of sallow grey heads. With little ceremony, Vints stuck the cannibal’s head on a spike and twisted it so it was held firmly in place.
Festering zombie heads welcomed it to the neighbourhood with gnashing of teeth and clicks of dislocated jawbone. Vints smoothed down the cannibal’s sticky hair just as it budded into unlife. Eyes rolled down and looked around at its new home. Seeing the human in front of him, he joined in on the chomping chorus. It sounded like the testing facility at a castanet factory.
Juhn had moved on to a handsaw, and was hacking through the arms and legs like a possessed woodsman. Ochre mixed with sweat ran down his face, giving him orange streaks. As each appendage became separated from the body, ‘Url snatched them up, worked a hook through the palm of the hand or meat of the foot, and set it to one side. He caught Russ staring at him. “Fur the smokeowse,” he grunted, and a trickle of drool ran down his chin at the thought of oak-smoked thigh.
Discarding the saw, with tidbits of meat stuck to its teeth, Juhn picked up the bone knife and sliced down the remainder of the ragged throat to the top of the sternum. Digging his fingers in, he peeled the skin aside and, using a claw hammer, dug out the Manubrium, the chunk of bone which sat at the top. Having removed this, he tore the skin some more and threaded some fishing wire under and around the sternum.
Tying a knot, he ran off a length and tied the free end to the hammer’s head. “I loves vis bit,” he drooled. Juhn rested the hammer on the torso, and moved to the end of the dissection table. His brothers stood either side and held the slab of meat down. Grabbing hold of the hammer and bracing his feet against the table legs, which were embedded within the floor, he pulled back.
Much like filleting a fish, the skin relented and the sternum was pulled free. Each rib popped as it was disconnected from the central column of bone. As Juhn picked the chunk free from the wire, the two brothers each grabbed a flap of skin and yanked their sides open.
Deft fingers picked the ribs out and put them to one side, no doubt to create some new line in the human bone clothing range.
Juhn put the hammer back on the trolley and picked up two buckets. The three of them then fished around inside the limbless body and allocated organs to each bucket. One was marked ‘GUUD’ the other ‘BAAD’.
As utterly repellent as it was, Russ had to admire the efficiency and rhythm that they had shown; a real demonstration of teamwork over individuality. It was only when the buckets were carried off to the milk urns, the stripped carcass flung into a trough, and pairs of eager eyes turned on him, that Russ realised that he was next.
“Balls.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
“How long have you been here, Anton?” Zena asked, fingers pinching the cage mesh.
Anton shuffled. “Sorry, dead leg. You’d think you’d get used to them. A few weeks, I guess. I’ve just been wandering around after the last place I was at. Living day to day. Saw the farm and thought there’d be some food inside. Little did I know that the food was, well, this lot…” He gestured to the other cages.
Zena shuddered. “But how have you stayed alive so long?”
“They give us these scraps of meat. You don’t want to know what it is, and this homemade bread. But i
f you’ve got an image of a nice white bloomer in your head, you’re mistaken. It has the consistency of trifle and tastes like feet.” The thought of it made Anton heave. “Man, the first time…anyway, every few days or so, they come in to get another one of us, take them out back, and you never see them again, well, not anything of them you’d recognise.”
“You mean?”
“Yes, they’re a friendly bunch of inbred cannibals. I’m sorry to sound like a bastard. But your friend? He’s going to die. If he isn’t already. Sorry.” Anton shrugged.
“Hey, Zena, is this party invite-only?”
The man’s voice startled them all. Standing in the walkway was a man with mad auburn hair and matching beard which threatened to engulf his entire face. He was clutching a metal hatchet.
“Francis!” Nathan exclaimed excitedly. “I knew you’d come back for us.”
Francis nodded and walked toward him. His face was a river of anger and relief. He did a mental count. “Where’s Russ?”
Zena pointed to the doors at the end of the jail-block. “They took him. They’re gonna…” Her fragile voice broke off and was replaced by the subjugation of crying.
“Okay, okay. I’ll get him. How many are there?”
Nathan stuck up three fingers. “Though there were five in total outside.”
“Fine, I’ll deal with them. You guys need to get out of here, though. We just need…” A lightbulb moment lit up Francis’ face. “Hey, Nate, you got those paperclips still?” The kid looked at him as if he had just asked him his name in Japanese.
Francis sighed. “The metal faces? You still got them?”
Nathan’s expression changed from general bemusement to acknowledgement, and he thrust his hand into his trouser pocket and after, picking out balls of fluff, he passed the paper clips through the bars to Francis.
Class Four: Those Who Survive Page 28