by Alan Spencer
Teams of cannibals were feasting on the remains of both dead workers and fallen dinosaurs. The sound of reptile and cannibal feasting sickened his stomach, not in disgust, but in shame.
Damn them all!
This wasn't a battle.
This was a slaughter.
One man had caused this mess. The son-of-a-bitch who dug underneath the fence and drew the dinosaurs and cannibals to the base. One man had deconstructed a well-oiled machine in less than a few hours. Hangman swore he would find that bastard, and show him the meaning of agony. First, Hangman had to do the work of many men by himself.
Hangman stood up proudly on the decimated battlefield.
He removed the silk scarf around his mouth and tossed it aside.
Now it's killing time.
The New Front
"He's one of them! Kill him!"
Pierce was tackled by dozens of people. When he hit the ground, he was kicked and beaten by the angry group. Pierce was gripped by pain. He tried to beg them to stop, but he couldn't say a word. He was drowning in a sea of violence. Pierce could see his aggressors; many of them were mutated. Pierce noticed a woman with hands at her breasts. Another man had bone daggers sticking out of the tips of his fingers. Most of them had melted flesh that had hardened into bizarre expressions. They were waxberry candle people.
Everybody wasn't mutated. The others were women adorned in tatters for clothing. They were dirty, downtrodden, and angry as hell. Pierce tried again to identify himself not as the opposition. He wanted to tell them that he had to steal a worker's clothes so he could get into the base undetected. Pierce tried to say all of this, and only got out the words, "I'm looking for Susan Branch!"
A bold, authoritative voice shouted over the rage of the crowd. "Everybody stop! Hold on! I know him! He's on our side."
The beating didn't stop.
"I said he's on our side! Stop what you're doing, and listen to me!"
No good.
The crowd was incensed to the point of craving violence.
Something reached around his midsection and coiled its middle multiple times. Pierce was lifted up over the crowd's head. Everybody stopped and gasped. Pierce dangled over their heads well out of reach of their fists.
"It's you!" Pierce heard a woman's voice speak. "I thought you were dead! Put him down, Dad. It's Pierce Range. He's on our side."
Pierce couldn't believe what was holding him up in the air.
Lee Branch's intestines!
Pierce was placed back on the stairway. The mob backed off, and Lee Branch approached him. Lee was barely recognizable. The man wore white plastic pants, and the rest of him was that melted waxberry texture. A section of pink intestine stuck out of his belly button. Pierce wasn't sure what to say to the man in this strange situation. Lucky for Pierce, Susan stepped between them to end the awkward moment.
Susan explained to her father how she happened to run into Pierce in Florida, and how he helped them get to the island. Pierce felt the pain of the bullet where it entered and exited his body. Pierce apologized for not being able to save Susan from being captured. He apologized for everything.
Lee was understanding. "Nothing could've prepared anybody for what's on this island, and I lost good men on this mission. I should've done my homework before coming here. Globo Corps tricked us, but now's the time we rise up against them. We're re-taking this island. It's going to be easy."
"Easy, huh? How so?" Pierce scoffed. "They have so many men out there. There's only so many of us. We don't stand a chance."
"You said it, Pierce," Lee said. "They have so many men out there. Listen to them suffer. The dinosaurs and cannibals are taking down their numbers. When the battle calms down, we bust out of here, and kill the rest of them. They've tortured and mutated us. It's time they pay for that. The Green Project isn't over, this is only the beginning. We are the new front!"
The captives, the mutated, and a few of the island's workers who'd flipped sides, vocalized their approval. They cheered, and spoke words of encouragement.
The moment was broken up by the sound of a wall shattering. That's exactly what it was, Pierce deduced. Things were battering against the building with startling force. It sounded like wrecking balls pummeling through concrete.
Everybody's moment of rebellion suddenly downgraded into cowardice. Lee sensed the change in the crowd too. "Everybody topside. We can't stay at the bottom level. It sounds like the dinosaurs have cleaned up Globo Corps's goons. Up the stairs, come on!"
Pierce followed the tide of the fast moving crowd. Parts of the building were caving in; the structure was weakening as more powerful blows threatened to decimate the base. Up one flight of stairs, they reached the top floor in a hurry.
Once they were on the main floor, everybody was running towards the foyer with the mounted heads on the wall. The only problem, there was no more foyer! Hordes of dinosaurs were bashing their bodies and skulls to destroy everything. They hallway was exposed at both angles to the open air.
Pierce searched for Susan and Lee. He wanted to help bring them to safety, but Lee was missing. Susan was grabbed from behind by a two-headed goon. Pierce heard a part of what the goon was saying as he dragged Susan out into the night.
"Mindy, it's me. It's Joey. I love you. I'll keep you safe. I'll..."
Everybody from the basement level scattered. Pierce realized he stood alone in the hallway. Things were happening so fast that Pierce's senses couldn't keep up. What did compute were the dozen raptors coming in at him from one end of the hallway. At the other end, a giant T-Rex head peeked into the hallway, and targeted Pierce. The T-Rex raged, sending up its monstrous reptile call for death. It pummeled through what was left of the wall, and bashed through it easily.
Pierce had no place to go.
He would be dead in seconds.
Mad Doctor
Dr. Prater wasn't dead. His specimens had failed to murder him in his office. Far from it. They improved him. He was more alive now than he ever was in that healthy body. He studied disease, and was obsessed with mutations all of his life. Show him tumors that bled every color of pus. All the colors of the puss wheel! Bring on the cancer. Show him the human body and its sickness. Dr. Prater wanted to experience it all, firsthand.
The doctor was a pillar of walking, dripping, seeping, oozing malady. The disease machine was ready to inject everything with his sickness so he could dissect it, study it, even fornicate with it. His brain swelled with polyps and nasty disgusting cancers unknown to previous science. Dr. Prater was a living Petri dish.
One thing kept repeating in his mind.
Joey's second head.
He wanted that head on a slab. Dr. Prater wanted to grow hundreds of the heads. He would make each head talk to him. Joey's body was a head machine, and Dr. Prater wanted that machine to produce.
Dr. Prater would have his fucking heads.
All he had to do was find Joey.
Dr. Prater stalked the outside of the base. He had seen the group rise up from the basement, and run right into the killing field. Joey would be out there somewhere.
I will have Joey's head.
A million heads for me!
A triceratops charged at Dr. Prater, and he held out both hands. His hands folded down at the wrists as if on a hinge. This exposed the veins inside his arms. The veins sprayed sizzling hot green sickness; the high-pressure spurts covered fifteen yards. The triceratops's face instantly melted. Boils and tumors rose up along its body, and grew so big they popped. The pops were like grenades. All that was left of the beast was a boiling green puddle.
More dinosaurs were after him. Raptors from the left, another T-Rex right in front of him, and a pterodactyl was lowering to scoop him up and feast upon him.
The T-Rex got him first. Lowering its head, the T-Rex swallowed Dr. Prater whole. Down the powerful throat, Dr. Prater's body secreted acid from every pore. The throat dissolved all around him. The T-Rex couldn't breathe. Dying, it tumbled forward, a
nd choked on the acid rushing down its throat. When the T-Rex hit the earth, Dr. Prater fell free from the hole in the dinosaur's throat.
Recovering himself, Dr. Prater plucked a tumor from his belly, and pitched it at the cannibal warrior wanting to attack him. It stuck to the cannibal's face, and ate into his features. The tumor turned into two, and two metamorphosed into eight, and eight into fifty, and fifty into hundreds. Thirty seconds later, the cannibal's entire body was being eaten alive by tumors with teeth.
Nothing could hurt the mad doctor.
Dr. Prater plucked boils, growths, and bodily anomalies from his anatomy, and used them as defense.
He kept searching for Joey, and that precious head.
After dispatching a brontosaurus by raking his nails across its reptilian body and injecting a turbo form of the black plague into its body, Dr. Prater caught sight of Joey.
Joey was firing a machine gun, and protecting a screaming woman from a group of hungry cannibals.
I will have your head, Joey.
Thousands of heads for me!
But first, that woman with Joey must die.
It Takes Guts
Lee was searching for Susan. He lost his daughter in the crowd. Where had she gone? He prayed nothing had killed her. And who was that son-of-a-bitch who kept calling Susan his wife? The madman was delusional—and he had two heads!
Lee had little time to think it over. He scanned the war zone for Susan, while his intestines fought back against the enemies surrounding him. A goon was soaring on a jet pack up high. The goon aimed his machine guns at Lee, but Lee didn't give him a chance. His intestine snaked out of his belly, reached up fifty feet, and ripped off the bastard's left leg. The leg stump gushed blood, and down went the gunner.
Lee dodged a swinging stone axe. A cannibal drenched in blood was coming at him with rage and hunger playing on his face. Lee's intestine punched a hole through the cannibal's belly, and like a bullet, the cannibal's insides fired out his backside.
Surrounded by threats, Lee ripped off a pterodactyl's head, strangled another cannibal, wrapped his guts around an abandoned Jeep, and hurled it at a group of charging brontosauruses.
These actions bought him time. It wouldn't do him any good if Susan was already dead. How could he go on with the blood of his daughter on his hands? He had pushed her into the extreme environmentalist gig at an early age. He was responsible for her safety, and her death would be on him.
Everything went out the window in two seconds.
Lee's sworn enemy appeared between flaming piles of wrecked vehicles and burning bodies. The man who had injected chemicals into his body and got off on the mutations that turned Lee's body into flesh cheese. There stood the orchestrator of everything evil on this island. Hangman noticed Lee from across the battlefield. Hangman indicated with a finger to bring it on.
I won't stop fighting until one of us is dead.
Lee snarled, unleashed a battle cry, and charged at the bastard.
Only One Way Out
Pierce knew his chances at surviving were dwindling the longer he stood in place like an idiot. He searched for an outlet to run. Every broken down wall revealed dinosaurs lurking. He wasn't safe in any direction he chose; this was the end of his life. Maybe he should've taken that walk into the ocean. The cold kiss of water was better than the hot breath of a raptor plunging its mouth into his neck, and eating him alive.
You never were going to take that walk into the ocean. You would've become one of those bums who beg change, and drink themselves to death. You were going to die a sad death. At least you're here fighting for something. Stand tall.
Pierce searched for any other means of survival. There it was, shining like a beacon. Under a pile of broken bricks, Pierce made out the shape of a jet pack. He strapped the device on. It was very heavy, and he struggled to lug it over his shoulders. The dinosaurs were headed right for him. He hurried for the sake of his life.
Pierce pressed a red button. The engine started right up. He was off the ground, and headed straight up with increasing speed. Raptors leapt up, and missed his feet by mere inches. Flying higher, he traveled through the hole in the ceilings, and was outside in the open air. He had a perfect view of the battlefield. What he saw was active devastation. Piles of torn up bodies, dinosaur and human, were scattered between piles of burning wreckage. Whatever battle happened, it didn't last long. Both sides were equally equipped for the kill.
Pierce started taking aim, and picking off what enemies he could. He tried to save who he could from incoming cannibals and dinosaurs. Then Pierce spotted Susan, and she was in serious trouble. He only had seconds left to save Susan before something terrible happened to her. Pierce came up with a plan, and did his best to follow through with it.
The Nasty Doctor
Susan couldn’t could slip the hold of the man who kept telling her she was his wife. She remembered Joey from when Hangman gave her a tour of the base. The second head's eye stayed glue to Susan, while Joey was focusing on the man in heavily soiled medical scrubs covered in neon greens, yellows, reds, and browns. The doctor was a walking boil factory. Active sores, lesions, and tumors throbbed and oozed.
"I want that head!" Dr. Prater demanded. "Give me your head, and I'll let you live, Joey."
Joey was pissed. "You're not touching me ever again. Stay back, and I'll let you live."
Susan screamed when Dr. Prater raised up both hands. The hands themselves fell down, and stayed attached to the arms like they were on a flesh hinge. Out came spurting green and black juices, and Joey had to throw Susan aside to avoid the flying acid. The acid landed on the dead corpse of a cannibal, and that corpse instantly evaporated.
Susan was free, but she had nowhere to go. She hid underneath the blackened shell of a jeep, and watched the fight unfold between Joey and Dr. Prater.
* * *
Dr. Prater licked the pus dribbling from his polyp-fleshed lips. He dug into his belt and lifted the surgical cleaver. He craved Joey's second head. Just thinking about the cleaver sawing through the meat of the neck caused tumors and cancers to be born along his body, and throb in pure anticipation. The doctor imagined slicing off the head, and another one immediately growing in its place, and slicing that one, and another growing, slicing, and another, slicing, and another, slicing, and another, and another...
Joey stood there, unsure of his next move. Mindy was safe under the jeep for the moment. No harm would come to his wife as long as he had a pulse. What to do with Dr. Prater bogged him down. The doctor clutched onto a cleaver, while Joey was unarmed. Could he overpower the doctor with only sheer force?
He didn't have a chance to make any attempt.
Dr. Prater was fast. He closed in the distance between them. Joey could only follow the fast moving glint of the blade as it arced, and swished through the air. The cleaver was lodged into Joey's chest. Joey fell to his knees; the pain was paralyzing.
He could only look into Dr. Prater's eyes. Those bulbous psychotic orbs beheld only one thing. Joey's second head.
"It's mine! MINE! MINE! MINE!"
Joey wept. He wouldn't escape the island with his wife. His life story ended here on his knees bleeding out.
Joey's second head spoke to him.
I thought we could survive this island. Sorry, kid. That woman wasn't your wife, Joey. I'm sorry I lied to you. You needed to believe in something if we were going to escape together.
Who was I kidding? There's no life for a man with two heads in the real world.
I'm so sorry I lied to you, Joey.
There's only one thing I can do to make it up to you.
Something changed in Joey's eyes; he couldn't see what was happening around him anymore. Mindy sprang into his mind's eye. The silk negligee she wore on their honeymoon. The first time they slept together in their father's truck. The way Joey loved it when she cupped his ass with her hands when they slept together every night. Only sweet memories of the woman he loved played out as the spurts o
f blood left his body, and he died...
Dr. Prater removed the cleaver. He could hear bone and meat shift within Joey's body upon the extraction. Dr. Prater clutched the red dripping cleaver, and raised it up high to hack through that beautiful head.
"My head, at last!"
The doctor was thrown from revelation to terror.
"Whaaaaaaaaaaat?"
Joey's hands grabbed Dr. Prater's body, and drew him in close. The second head opened it maw, and chomped down on the doctor's neck. What spurted from the doctor's torn jugular burned right through Joey and the head's body.
Dr. Prater fell backwards, choking on the rainbow colors spewing from his neck.
The last thing the doctor computed was a T-Rex crushing him under its foot.
Hungry for Her Flesh
Susan watched the doctor and Joey kill each other. She wasn't sure how she felt about the shocking show of death, nor was she given the time. Arms were reaching for her under the jeep. The jeep itself was being jostled; somebody was trying to turn over the jeep. The cannibals cheered, desiring her warm flesh. She had no way to protect herself. They would reach for her, and strip her of everything worth eating.
Susan dodged bloodied hands clutching at her limbs. They would drag her out and devour her alive. She knew she couldn't keep this up much longer, there was just too many of them.
"Leave me alone! Why are you doing this? I've done nothing to you!"
Susan was out of options besides screaming, when her hand touched a Beretta handgun. She opened fire at the hands reaching for her face. Those bodies quickly backed up in retreat. This was her chance, Susan thought. She crawled out from under the jeep, and sprinted.