Red Scare (The Postmodern Adventures of Kill Team One Book 3)

by Mike Leon

  “Fuck!” Adler screams as he is drawn backwards toward the barn door. He gives the vehicle more gas, but the wheels only spin in place, ripping grass out by the roots and flinging it back in the barn. The ATV drifts violently from side-to-side as the tires scream for traction. “He’s too strong!”

  “It’s not heavy enough!” Gavin shouts. He leaps onto the back of the ATV with Adler in a desperate bid to weigh the vehicle down. It seems to stay in place for a moment, but the Ghoul strains harder and the vehicle resumes moving toward him. They don’t just need more weight. They need more horsepower.

  Lily looks to the other ATV, and then to Jenny. Someone will have to turn on the shredder if Lily is driving the other four-wheeler. “Jenny, I need you to stay here and push the-”

  Jenny squeals like a stuck pig and dashes from her hiding place behind the shredder screaming “We’re all gonna die! We’re gonna die!” She zips past Lily and the Ghoul, running wildly through the barn. She trips over the vacillating rope in her frantic flight and goes head-first under the rear of the ATV as the monster hauls it backwards. Lily shouts a pointless warning and then cringes as the frenzied rear tires meet Jenny’s face and grind into it, sending blood and tissue into the air with Jenny’s screams. The rest of the vehicle pins her body down, and mops it across the floor as it slides back and forth.

  “Jenny!” Gavin screams as he bounces up and down on top of her rag doll body.

  Lily pulls a pitchfork down from the wall and jabs it at the Ghoul’s armored body repeatedly and from a distance. He takes a hand off the rope to try and swat at the farm implement and a few feet of slack slips from his other arm. The ATV lurches forward, leaving Jenny’s mangled body on the dirt floor between it and the monster. Her face is a raw red smear of fibers and slime. “Gavin!” Lily shouts. “Get the other four-wheeler!”

  “Hunger! I HUNGER!” the Ghoul bellows. Gavin leaps off the side of the ATV and runs for the rear of the barn, beyond the shredder and most of the other tools, where the other vehicle remains parked in the corner. Lily savagely attempts to spear the Ghoul in the unarmored face with the pitchfork, but he grasps the wooden stick and rips the tool from her hands with little effort.

  The Ghoul turns the pitchfork around and plunges it at Lily. She shrieks and jerks aside as the rusty tongs zip through her trailing hair. She dives around the corner of the shredder where he can’t stab at her anymore and then stumbles over to the wall for another weapon. Nothing is long enough to avoid his reach except for the scythe, and Lily has no idea what she would do with that goofy looking thing, so she plucks a hand sickle from the wall and throws it at the monster, who slaps at the incoming blade like it is a buzzing insect. Then she throws a spade, then a serrated knife. The Ghoul slaps at the incoming distractions with the pitchfork as the ATV pulls him off balance. “ANGRY!” he roars, as he reels backward with the huge fork in hand like a hoplite spear and drives it at the ATV and its frantic driver.

  Adler yelps as the pitchfork impales him from behind, pushing him forward and throwing his head back. The Ghoul lifts him from the ATV, hoisting him high over Lily’s head like a proud trophy. Blood rains down from Adler’s back as the Ghoul proclaims “Kebab meat!”

  The monster is rocked off its feet as Gavin rams the other ATV into the back of the unoccupied one. “Grrraaaaaaaghhrrrr!” the monster growls as he tumbles back into the side of the metal shredder with a loud thud. Gavin drives his vehicle forward, forcing the other ATV away from the Ghoul, its stationary wheels scraping the floor as it inches away.

  “I can’t push them both!” Gavin shouts over the squeaking wheels and grumbling engine. Lily runs for the other ATV, but the Ghoul slams Adler’s body down on the floor at her feet, tripping her and sending her flailing into the floor. The monster lifts the pitchfork high in the air and hammers Adler’s body down on top of her as she crawls away. Her back buckles and her lungs burn as she is flattened against the floor. She slithers forward on her belly, struggling to escape the reach of the monster’s inventive corpse hammer as it slams down on her again.

  Groaning and grunting, she crawls to the ATV and pulls herself up onto the seat. As she is too far to hit now, the Ghoul switches to smacking Gavin behind her. His first broad sweeping swing knocks Gavin reeling and almost pushes him off the four-runner. “Go!” he yells.

  Lily looks to her feet for a gas pedal but doesn’t see one. “I don’t know how!” Vehicles she does not know how to drive seem to have become a recurring and aggravating motif tonight.

  “The lever!” Gavin slaps his right grip and squeezes the lever underneath it with his thumb, bumping the vehicles together and whipping Lily’s head back. The Ghoul roars and stabs wildly at Gavin with the pitchfork through Adler’s body, smacking the flailing corpse repeatedly against the back of the ATV and cutting Gavin’s elbow and shoulder as he shields himself with his arm. “Fuck!” The fork’s sharp tongs stab into one of the rear tires and the big rubber wheel melts like a stick of butter.

  Lily presses the throttle lever and the vehicle under her lurches forward unimpeded, rolling out into the grass outside the barn. Gavin follows only inches behind, until the rope draws tight and pulls Lily to stop. He crashes into the back of the other ATV, pushing it forward. The sudden stop sends Lily rocking forward and then the following impact sends Lily rocking backward. It is like the teacup ride from Hell and her spine wants off.

  The ATVs do their job. With both of them pulling the line, they drag the grumbling monster to the shredder and up the side of the machine, then yank him down into the bin where he disappears from sight, pulled against the corkscrew shafts waiting to mulch him. Lily hops off the ATV at the end of the rope and runs for the shredder. The ATVs buck and skip from the monster’s struggles, but they make no significant trek backward.

  “You’re hog food, fucker!” Lily says as she punches the start button. The shredder engine grinds to a start and the big green box rumbles as the shafts begin to spin and the monster inside pounds on the walls. A raging roar comes from the open top of the bin and a jet of red slime and bone chips sprays from the bottom of the shredder like steak and wine vomit. There is something else in it, something that should not be. Lily just stares at the puddle until Gavin comes over to say something she can’t hear over the clamorous shredder. He pushes the stop button and the machine powers down.

  “We need to get help,” Gavin repeats.

  “What is that?” Lily says, pointing at the red Ghoul chum smeared on the floor beneath the shredder. At a glance it is just what it should be, a bunch of guts, but there is something else in the mix, tiny strands that squirm and wriggle. Gavin stoops to look closer as Lily cringes.

  “Worms?” he says. “I don’t know. They must have been on the floor.”

  “No,” Lily says. “They were in him. He was full of worms.”

  “That’s really gross, but we need to do something about Jenny. She’s still alive.”

  Lily follows him over to the spot halfway between the four-wheelers and the shredder where Jenny still lies on the old dirt floor. Jenny Brunswick looks a lot like the Frank Langella version of Skeletor from 1987’s Masters of the Universe. Her nose is a hollow hole in her face and her top lip has been peeled away to expose her bloody broken teeth. Bubbles of slimy red mucus expand from her mouth with a gross slurping sound. Her left arm is obviously broken below the elbow and her clothes are smeared black, burnt and torn.

  “She doesn’t look good,” Lily says.

  “We need to get her help now,” Gavin says. “Maybe if I can get Trevor’s phone.”

  “He has a gun, dude. And he’s fucking horrible.”

  “We don’t know that. Maybe the thing killed him when it was in the house.”

  “We would have heard gunshots…”

  “Not for sure. And maybe I can make a deal with him or something. I don’t know. I need to know if Karen is alive.”

  “We should just get on the four-runners and go. Maybe we’ll find another house a
nd we can call 911.”

  “Those quads aren’t going anywhere,” Gavin says as he rubs his bleeding arm. “Back tires on that one are shredded. And the other one’s leaking pretty bad.”

  Lily walks around to the ATV in front and confirms that it is pouring gasoline into the grass at an alarming rate. Three holes in the top of the vehicle are telltale signs of what happened. The Ghoul’s pitchfork went all the way through the gas tank when he speared Adler.

  “We need to start walking then,” Lily says.

  “Damn it!” Gavin punches the wooden barn wall, his lips curling in anger. “I should have listened to Adler! This was a dumb idea, and now they’re both…They’re both... Well, maybe we can still save Jenny. I don’t know. But she needs someone here fast, and we can’t move her. I have to try to call someone.”

  “Alright, we’ll check out the house.”

  “Will you stay here? Stay with Jenny? In case… I just don’t think she should be alone.”

  Lily nods. “Okay. Just don’t take too long.”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  INT. BRUNSWICK RANCH - NIGHT

  Gavin crosses the back yard from the barn toward the ranch with a sort of hurried impunity now that the Ghoul has been ground to red and brown slop. He hops up the stairs to the back deck and finds acrid black smoke pouring out from the shattered kitchen door. The thick cloud makes it difficult to see inside, and the smell as he steps beyond the door is wretched enough that he gags. The kitchen stinks like burning hot garbage and he has to pinch his nose to stop himself from outright barfing on the floor.

  He waves his way through the billowing and obscuring stench to the oven, which is jammed shut by a panhandle stuffed through a rail on the front face of the appliance, and the handle used to open the oven door. Gavin yanks the pan from its place and throws it on the floor with a loud clank. He turns off the oven and opens the door to a wave of uncomfortable heat and blackened smoke assaulting his face. He attempts with futility to wave it away as he peers inside and sees Carter’s wide-mouthed cadaver stuffed in the cramped little space and charred to a flakey crisp. Gavin turns away and shuts the oven door.

  He turns his back on the oven, already wishing he could forget what he saw inside. He walks away and pushes through the swinging door to the large den where he knows another of his friends’ mutilated bodies lies just behind the thin blue and white patterned curtain next to the front door and the sofa pressed up against it. He doesn’t want to see that again either. He finds Karen right where they left her, lying on the bright green felt of the pool table at the rear of the room, wrapped in the sheepskin blanket Lily used to cover her. He rushes to the table and jabs his fingers against her shoulder while calling her name.

  “Karen? Karen?” Gavin says. Karen does not respond in any meaningful way, but she is still warm, and pressing his ear to her mouth, Gavin can feel the soft rustle of her breath against his skin. He grips her by her arms and tries to jostle her awake. “Karen, wake up.”

  A loud thump on the hardwood alerts Gavin to the presence of Trevor just as the narcissistic little leech hops down from the bottom step on his way from the second floor. His face is still a purple mass and he still holds the shiny nickel revolver he had when he took them all hostage earlier. He raises the gun to keep Gavin at bay.

  “Stay over there,” Trevor says. “Don’t come near me.”

  “Jenny needs help,” Gavin says. “We need an ambulance or a doctor. She’s going to die if you don’t call someone.”

  “The others? The goth slut and our urban friend?”

  Gavin almost answers without a second thought, but Trevor’s unstable nature gives him pause. That lunatic doesn’t need to know if Lily Hoffman is going for help. He might try to stop her. “It killed them. I put the fucking thing in the metal shredder, but Jenny’s hurt bad and she’s not gonna make it without help fast.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  “It doesn’t have to be. You have a phone that works. You can get somebody here.”

  “No. The shame is that it didn’t finish you all off. It would have made all of this so much cleaner.”

  “Trevor, whatever happened before, we can work around it. We can make a deal. Nobody needs to know what you did.”

  BAM! The revolver jerks and spits fire. It feels like a truck hitting Gavin in the chest. He tumbles backwards against the pool table and rolls the other direction, as if that will do any good. BAM! BAM! The gun echoes through the den with the sensation of stabbing spikes impaling him. Blood sprays across the pool table surface, soaking into the felt and beginning to fade from red to dark green. Gavin reaches for Karen’s bare foot, exposed from the blanket. He wishes he had done everything differently. He wishes he had been better to her. He wishes he wasn’t leaving her here with that maniac.

  “Karen…” Gavin rasps. “I’m sorry.”

  INT. BRUNSWICK BARN - NIGHT

  Lily sits with her back to the still form of Jenny Brunswick. She feels a tinge of peculiar guilt for not facing the mutilated cheerleader as she remains by her side, but the poor girl is just so hard to look at now. Every now and then, Lily says Jenny’s name and waits for some kind of response, but she doesn’t know what to expect. Jenny’s mouth is mostly destroyed and dribbling goo. Lily wonders how much of that is her fault.

  If she hadn’t gone to the video store basement to make that stupid movie, maybe none of this would have happened. Maybe it just would have happened to somebody else. The Ghoul never stopped eating. She didn’t make it that way.

  Lily walks back to the shredder to look at the thing’s ground up remains. They’ve grown still now. The little worms that were wiggling in the mess have ceased to move, and without the movement it is hard to pick them out from the rest of the red slop. She can no longer spot them well enough to count them, but she thought before that there were hundreds or even thousands.

  POP! Lily hears a loud crack, possibly a gunshot inside the house, but she isn’t sure. POP! POP! Two more identical noises confirm her suspicions shortly after. This is not good news at all.

  Suddenly, she hears something else behind her—a rustling, then a loud slap against hard steel. Lily turns and her eyes are drawn to the movement of a hulking black gauntlet, its banana sized fingers wrapped around the lip of the shredder bin. Lily holds back a scream. It can’t be. They shredded that fucking thing to pieces! Its guts are painting the dirt floor at her boot heels!

  “Meeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat,” the monster hisses in a ragged, half-hearted rasp from inside the bin. “Hungerrrrrrrrr.” The fingers tighten around the edge of the bin, quaking with determination, and the Ghoul’s huge black shoulders come up out of the shredder, propelled by its bulging arm. The remains that flop out of the shredder and thump down on the floor are hardly half the full monster. Its legs are gone, and one arm hangs in a tattered mess of goopy red fringe from the elbow. It trails a long strand of intestines from the gaping hole where its waist once was and it leaves a kidney in the dirt as it pulls itself along the floor with its one functional hand. The red smear it leaves in its wake writhes like it is alive.

  Lily cowers in terror, as the monster is now between her and the door, between her and the broken four-runners, between her and Jenny… She thinks it hasn’t seen her yet. It is too focused on its trek from the shredder.

  “Meeeeeeeeeat,” it whispers as it slowly closes in on Jenny’s prone form. Lily thinks to grab something and try to stop it. There are plenty of bladed weapons still hanging in the shed, and the pitchfork embedded in Adler’s body on the floor… But would that have any effect? The fucking thing has been torn in half and it’s still moving.

  “Wh—who?” calls a withering and feeble voice. It is Jenny Brunswick, sprawled on the floor as the monster grasps at her feet. She speaks with a croaking lisp through ruined teeth and gobs of mucus and blood. “Can’t thee… Can’t—”

  Then there is only the screaming as the monster pulls her close and bites into her abdomen. Lily
backs away, too late to do anything for Jenny but listen to those horrible cries. Lily wishes she had a gun, not to shoot with futility at the Ghoul, but to end Jenny’s suffering faster. The shrieking does not end until Jenny has been wide open like a stuffed turkey for some time, and the cannibal abomination is well on his way to hollowing out her body, cramming the former contents into his snapping jaws.

  VIVA LA REVOLUCIÓN

  “I know you’ve come to kill me. Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man.” - the last words of Ernesto Che Guevara

  EXT. LGC MANAGEMENT PROPERTIES - DAY

  The grass is still wet with morning dew where Dmitry Fedosov paces in circles far from the main farmhouse. Beside him, the big yellow backhoe Velour flagrantly admitted they use to bury bodies is parked near a fresh patch of bare soil. Dmitry feels queasy thinking about all the bones he is standing on as he waits for his cell phone to connect with Wintergreen.

  “Where are you?” Wintergreen says after two rings. He sounds like he is running on all cylinders.

  “LGC Management Properties,” Dmitry says, trying to keep his voice down but still be heard over the wind. “I don’t have much time. Volchenko is here, Max—right now, in the basement, with Velour, AND a dozen women in cages, AND the mysterious one man army you said doesn’t exist.”

  “Fuck. Right now?”

  “How many tactical people do you have?”

  “Two teams. We’re at the safe house but there’s nobody here!”

  “You need more people. Lots more.”

  “What? What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Volchenko has practically an army now. They’re mercenaries I think. Things got really weird last night, Max. There’s a lot more going on than I knew. But you need more people.”

  “Shit. It’s gonna take time.”

  “I don’t know how long they’re gonna be here.”