by Bryan Smith
“How the fuck can that be?”
“Incomprehensibly advanced alien technology. Think of each fiction-derived world as a computer program. The foundation for each is a bit of basic code identical from one reality to the next. But from that code, endless permutations are possible.”
Greg thought of the bizarre theater workers he had encountered upon entering the fake cineplex. “Man, I fucking knew aliens had something to do with this shit. But why in fuck would these goddamn aliens share their supertechnology with you?”
Ominous smiled. “They are somewhat inscrutable, but here is my perception. They have long observed us, fascinated by the sluglike progress of our own advances. Some among them noted my own work along these lines was becoming more advanced than that of my peers. That it showed potential to eventually move beyond the realm of theory. They wanted to see what I could do with a bit of help.”
Greg stared at Ominous for long moments without saying a word. How dearly he wished to wipe the smug expression from the madman’s face.
“You’re an asshole, Ominous.”
“Geniuses throughout history have ever been labeled such. It bothers me not at all.”
“But you’re toying with the lives of innocent people.”
Ominous shrugged. “Insignificant innocent people.”
The remark made Greg fume. Lashon was one of those so-called “insignificant” people. You bastard. You fucking bastard son of a whore. “Can you bring them back? The ones still alive?”
“Of course.”
Greg waited a beat before saying, “Will you?”
A cryptic shrug. “That depends.”
“On what?”
“On you, Mr. Nelson.”
Greg’s brow creased. “But—”
Ominous pulled open a drawer from his desk and extracted an object that made Greg’s eyes go wide with alarm. He cringed and gripped the arms of his chair. Ominous slid the drawer shut and placed the object on his desk. It was a handgun. A large-caliber revolver. From another drawer, he produced a bottle of expensive whiskey. Maker’s Mark. He set the bottle next to the weapon. The demented scientist smiled again. “I propose a game.”
Greg relaxed only a little. “A…game? What kind of game?”
Ominous snapped his fingers. “O’Dell! Glasses!”
Greg sensed movement somewhere behind him and in a moment heard a rattle of glassware. The little green man moved into view and went up on his tiptoes to place two rocks glasses on the desk.
Then he left them again.
Ominous looked right at Greg as he poured whiskey into the glasses. “The rules are simple, Mr. Nelson. If you win, the surviving members of tonight’s audience—including those currently locked in limbo—will be returned to your world. You will be free to depart this place and live out your lives.”
“And if I lose?”
“If you lose, the girl in whom you showed such interest will remain where she is, where she will likely die. As will you, Mr. Nelson. Because what I’m proposing, you see, is a friendly game of Russian Roulette.”
Greg eyed the big revolver atop Ominous’s desk.
And reached for a glass of whiskey. He tossed the booze back in one go and set the glass down again. “How can you possibly bring them back if you lose? You’ll be dead.”
“There’s a code. O’Dell knows it. And he knows how to input it. It’s my final fail-safe. If I lose, he will do what is necessary to fulfill my end of the bargain.”
“Fuck me. O’Dell is real?”
Ominous laughed. “As real as you or I. Only his current appearance is illusory.”
Greg thought it over a moment more before saying, “I don’t get why you would do this. Why risk everything on a deadly game of fucking chance?”
“Because I can. Because the possibility of losing, regardless of how slight, makes me tingle pleasantly in my nether regions.”
Gross.
“And maybe because I know I cannot lose. I am become God, remember?”
“If you can’t lose, then where’s my incentive to play along with this insanity?”
Ominous shrugged and spread his hands. “Because maybe I’m wrong. Probably not, but one must allow for the possibility. And because what other choice do you have? You quite literally have no other hope of rescuing the lovely young woman you so admire.”
Greg stewed on it for some moments, trying to perceive any way things might possibly work out in his favor. All the while, he remained all too aware he might be squandering the last few remaining moments of Lashon’s life.
Ominous poured another inch of whiskey into the empty glass and pushed it toward him. “What do you say, Mr. Nelson?”
Greg again downed the whiskey and gestured for Ominous to pour him some more.
Then he summoned a fatalistic smile.
“Fuck it. Let’s play.”
Ominous laughed and nodded approvingly–then he picked up the revolver and put it in his mouth.
Part Three
The Man Behind the Curtain Presents…THE FINAL CHAPTER!!!
What he needed to summon here was a force of will beyond anything he had ever managed in his life. The effort needed would necessarily be monumental, the kind of thing only the most desperate people would ever attempt. Badly wounded soldiers on a bloody battlefield would know this kind of desperation. He and the young woman he had saved once before were locked in an apparently hopeless fight for survival. The enemy had the upper hand and was clearly not inclined to display any degree of mercy.
It’s all down to me, John thought. And it doesn’t matter how much it fucking hurts, I’ve got to do this.
The only surviving members of the psycho family were down there in the cellar with the girl. He could hear them screaming at her and occasionally laughing in a wild way that chilled him to the bone. They sounded like patients whacked out on powerful drugs. He looked at the blood smeared all over the table and thought about what had been done to his hands and face. His nostrils twitched again at the acrid odor of burnt meat. The source of that horrible smell was his own flesh, the missing parts of him they had cooked.
His fucking fingers.
He had six left.
Maybe just enough. Maybe.
The girl had shown up with her gun before they could take the rest. Before they could finish him off. She had made a valiant effort. It took guts to do what she had done. Amazing guts. But it hadn’t been enough and now she was about to die. She could have taken the easy way out, could have fled from this place while they were all still preoccupied with torturing him, but she had tried to help instead.
He was a worthless, cowardly fucking murderer and deserved to die.
She did not.
And helping her might not quite qualify as an act of redemption—there could be no real redemption in light of what he had done—but it was maybe as close as he could hope to come. John stared at the flat heads of the nails that had been hammered flush against the backs of his hands.
They had left him alone up here in order to tend to the girl.
He was obviously no longer considered any kind of threat.
Well, let’s just see about that, you fucking assholes.
He tensed the muscles in his arms and mutilated hands and tried hard not to scream as he tried to pull his hands from the table.
There were many panicked shouts and sounds of people banging into things as Brix and the others barged their way through the bar’s dark back room. The bearded man named Ben had been a bartender here and was trying to direct them to the right place. His guidance was helping, but it was impossible to avoid so many invisible obstructions. Brix screeched in frustration as she knocked over a case of beer bottles that shattered on the concrete floor and instantly filled the tight space with an intensely hoppy aroma. Broken glass crunched beneath the soles of her boots and she nearly slipped in the spreading pool of beer, but a strong hand closed around her arm before she could take a spill.
A voice right in her ear. �
�I got ya.”
Jason.
There was no time to thank him. The zombies had followed them into the back room and someone bringing up the rear—she thought probably it was the tattooed man named Cade—started screaming in agony. Though she couldn’t see anything, it was too easy to imagine what was happening, thanks to the countless living dead movies she had seen. They were tearing him apart, just like in a Romero flick, pulling out his intestines and pushing them into their slavering mouths. Devouring as much of his warm flesh as they could ingest. But there were too many zombies and one man wouldn’t be enough of a meal for them all.
Brix pulled free of Jason’s grip and pushed ahead, one hand clutching the gun and the other held in front of her to feel for the wall she knew had to be there. After a few more tense moments of groping, she found it and began to pat its surface in search of the door. There were more shouts from Ben as more things were knocked over in the dark and more bottles shattered on the floor.
The zombies weren’t just getting closer, they were almost upon them. And Ben was too panicked now to be of any further help. Brix kept her hand on the wall as she moved carefully but quickly to the right. She could hear Jason slapping his hands against the wall as he tried in the other direction. Ben was screaming now. It was impossible to tell whether this was purely from fright or if the zombies had caught up to him. Either way, there was nothing to be done about it.
Being effectively blind pissed Brix off. She preferred to fight, not grope around helplessly this way. And now her frustration was reaching a crescendo. She had bumped up against shelving of some type. She had reached the end of the wall without finding the door. And Ben’s screaming was louder than ever. A cloud of despair hung heavy about her, waiting to engulf her.
Jason let out a jubilant shout. “Found it!”
There was a faint screech of metal and then the back door was standing open a dozen feet to her left. Jason’s bare-chested form stood silhouetted in a rectangle of fortuitously clear moonlight. Brix had probably been right by the damn door when she had opted to go this way.
Ben was on his hands and knees in the middle of the floor. His hands were bloody from clutching blindly at broken glass. A slender female zombie in the tattered remains of a little black dress was right behind him, reaching for him. Brix shot the dead bitch in the head and rushed forward to help Ben to his feet. Then they followed Jason through the door out to the rear of the building.
There were more zombies outside. Many more than she had seen in the area prior to entering the bar. Of course it would be that way. Moaning, staggering living dead converged on them from both sides of the building.
The three of them exchanged jittery glances.
Brix could see they were all thinking the same thing—what now?
She focused on Ben. “You work here, right? Where can we go?”
The bartender had his eyes on the approaching front line of zombies and could only whimper in response.
Brix slugged him in the shoulder. Hard. “Ben! Where can we go?”
“Dunno. But…” he indicated the crowd of zombies approaching from the left side of the building, “…my car’s parked over yonder. We’d have to get past those things somehow.”
“You’ve got your keys?”
“Yep.”
“Then let’s do this.” A quick glance at Jason. “I’ll shoot as many as I can till I run out of ammo. We’ll fight our way through the rest. Punch them. Kick them. Knock them on their fucking zombie asses. Whatever it takes.”
Ben’s face was grim. “We’re about to die.”
Jason nodded. “Maybe. But we’ll go down swinging.”
No more time to talk. The zombies were too close.
Brix brushed past Jason.
Raised the gun.
And started shooting. Reanimated corpses dropped like slow-motion bowling pins. Then the gun was empty and they were in the thick of a battle to the death.
The Phantom slammed through the rear gate and shot across a fenced-in area behind a wing of the mansion. Monroe glimpsed tennis courts flashing by to his right and the dim shape of what might have been a swimming pool somewhere beyond. The area they were passing through now was a courtyard, with a beautiful garden in its center and some marble benches ringing it. A piece of the double-sided gate had come off its hinges in the crash and now rode atop the Phantom’s hood.
Melissa seemed unfazed by the violence of their entry into the courtyard. Of course. The only thing on her mind was getting to Victor, the vampire who had sired her. Which made Monroe think of Lilith. If she had told him the truth, he had been her sireling. He had no reason to doubt it was true. She had told the truth about everything else. Yet he had felt nothing for her like the overriding loyalty Melissa apparently felt for Victor. There had to be more to whatever was driving Melissa than just the blood connection to the vamp who had turned her.
“Um…are you in love with Victor?”
The question startled Melissa. She lost control of the Phantom for a moment as her head whipped toward him. There was another long and loud screech of rending metal as the side of the Phantom scraped one of the marble benches ringing the garden. She stomped on the brake, bringing the ravaged car to a squealing halt in the middle of the courtyard. The piece of the gate slid off the Phantom’s hood and hit the courtyard’s cobbled surface with a metallic rattle.
Melissa’s eyes were narrow, dangerous-looking slits. “What made you say that?”
Monroe wanted to run and hide. It didn’t matter where, just so long as he got away from those predatory eyes. “It was just a guess. I didn’t mean to, you know…offend you or anything. If I did—”
“Shut up.”
“Right. Shutting up now.”
She continued glaring at him in that unnervingly fierce way for a few more moments. Then her expression softened. “I do love him.”
“Look, we don’t need to talk about it. I was wrong to bring it up. Really.”
“I love him and want to be his bride.”
Jesus. Why did I have to say anything? Me and my stupid mouth. She’s just gonna go on and on about her fucking heartbreak or whatever while the whole goddamn world is falling down around us.
Other sounds penetrated now that the car was no longer in motion. There was a faint popping noise he initially thought was firecrackers. But that made no sense and an instant later he realized he was actually hearing distant gunfire. A recognition that did nothing to soothe his jangling nerves. He also heard a loud whoop-whoop-whoop he soon identified as the rotors of a helicopter. He leaned forward a bit and glanced upward through the badly splintered windshield. He caught a glimpse of the spinning rotors just over the edge of the mansion’s roof.
Melissa touched his arm. “Your friend Kira. She took what’s rightfully mine.”
Monroe looked at her, frowning. “I think Victor’s the one who did the goddamn taking. You wanna be mad at anyone, be mad at him.” His frown deepened. “You’re not gonna hurt her…are you?”
“Depends. There may be a way we can both have what we want.”
“How?”
She told him what she had in mind.
Monroe nodded. “Let’s do it.”
Ominous smiled in a grotesque way around the barrel of the revolver stuck in his mouth. With his garish makeup and corona of wild white hair, he looked like a crazy suicidal clown. He was still smiling as he applied pressure to the trigger and the revolver’s cylinder began to turn. Greg watched with a kind of morbid hope as it rotated. He would love nothing more than to see an abrupt end to this terrible game of cruel fate.
He sat on the edge of his seat and watched the gun’s hammer snap backward and then forward. But all that happened was a flat click as the hammer failed to land on the live round that would have sent the mad doctor’s brains exploding out the back of his head.
Ominous chuckled as he removed the gun from his mouth and pushed it across the desk toward Greg. He then poured more Maker’s Mark into Greg’
s empty glass. “I imagine you’d like another brace of alcohol prior to taking your turn. Just think. It could be the last drink of your life. You’ll want to savor it.”
Greg snatched up the gun.
Opened his mouth wide to receive the barrel’s length.
And squeezed the trigger.
He only became aware of how hard his heart was thumping when the hammer made that flat click again. He let out a relieved breath as he carefully removed the gun from his mouth.
Ominous clapped his hands together three times, in a slow, mocking way. “Bravo, Mr. Nelson. Have to say I approve. That took balls the size of Mars. I shouldn’t be surprised. It took gloriously massive balls to come back for the girl. I was watching you on another feed, you know, as you were standing outside the theater. Most men in your position, having made good their escape, would have fled immediately. I’d bet my balls on it. People in general are more inclined to save themselves rather than attempt an act of almost certainly futile heroism.”
Greg grunted. “I guess I’m not most people. And you have a really weird balls fixation.”
“I was touched inappropriately as a child.”
Why am I not surprised?
Greg glanced at the weapon still clutched in his hands. A crazy idea occurred to him. A notion so compelling he nearly acted on it. The gun held a single live round. He could aim the gun at the crazy man and simply squeeze the trigger repeatedly until it fired.
Ominous laughed heartily. “You could not be more transparent, Greg. May I call you Greg? I feel as if two men engaged in a game in which the stakes are life and death should be on a first name basis.”
Greg shrugged. “Knock yourself out, Ominous.”
“Excellent. And you may call me Eerie.”
Greg arched an eyebrow. “Eerie?”
“My full name is Doctor Eerie von Ominous.”
No. No, it isn’t, you fucking fruitcake. I don’t know what your actual given name is and I don’t give a damn.
“I’ll just keep calling you Ominous, if you don’t mind.”