by Casey Lane
It was a hellish scene of unhinged madness. From all directions, we were bombarded with bloodcurdling cries of pain, shouts begging for help, and insanely howling moans. Throughout the cocktail bar, the rest of the white shirts had turned into enraged, homicidal animals. Bloody foam leaked from their mouths as they staggered from person to person, clawed hands swinging and clenched jaws ripping. A few people dodged the lurching crazies, escaping to run around with only minor bites or deep scratches. Others weren’t so fortunate, and the tortuous sights and sounds of people suffering while they were mauled were unbearably gruesome. It was insane, and the insanity never let up.
Apparently stunned in place like me for the first few seconds, Bubba and Medusa reacted. They jumped out into the jammed aisle to make a path for Rod and the blonde. His hands were full hustling the shrieking, bucking beauty the final few feet to the relative safety of our table. At first, the blonde had been twisting coyly in Rod’s arms to get away to join her friend, as if it was all a game. When she heard Miss Perky’s screams and saw the ensuing carnage she’d gone ballistic with terror.
Rod released the young blonde. With a shriek, she turned and jumped straight on me, locking her legs around my waist, and throwing her arms around my neck in a strangling grip. I went staggering across the aisle under the impetus of her unexpected attack. My right high heel snapped off.
For a shocked moment, I thought she was a violent crazy, too, and I put my gun against her head. It was her prayers being screamed in my ear that saved her from getting shot, that, and my experience with my gun. As we tumbled against the leather banquette, I quickly, unconsciously removed my finger off the trigger. We fell to the floor between two evacuated cocktail tables.
Rod knelt down long enough to pull the hysterical blonde off me. “Mary, listen to me! Protect the women and get them out of the bar! Here!”
Reflexively, I caught the room key card he tossed me with my right hand while I kicked at the crying blonde to keep her away. “Wait, you protect your damn women…”
Rod didn’t wait. He disappeared back into the mass of screaming confusion to go help the Asian girl. Bubba and Medusa lumbered in front of him, elbowing aside anyone in their path and crashing through tables and stools.
The black man’s furious bellow shook the beams, “Gonna kill that motherfucka eatin’ Betsy!”
Sitting next to the sobbing blonde under the flimsy shelter provided by the small tables, I cursed all men and their hero complexes. I should admire Rod for attempting to save Miss Perky, but I didn’t. The tiny girl was most likely already dead. Getting your throat ripped out did that to a person. I also thought he was incredibly stupid not to take me and my gun.
Accepting I was on my own, I threw the key card aside and held the gun in a two-handed grip, finger on the trigger again. One round chambered, the 9 mm was loaded with the single magazine I brought that held fifteen rounds of Federal 115 grain JHP.
There had been at least fourteen white shirts in the parking garage. I was a good shot under controlled circumstances, but this was pandemonium. I was no sharpshooter that could run around the bar and miraculously kill all of them with my sixteen rounds. I would help anybody I could along the way, but my ammo would be used to shoot my way out before I was some cannibal’s dinner.
I cursed Rod again, but looked back across the aisle for the two bickering women from their table. Gigi and Catalina weren’t there. Nor could I see them anywhere in the screaming bedlam around me.
I wanted nothing more than to run after the big men, but not following immediately in their wake of brute strength against this mob meant I now had to carefully choose my timing or risk getting crushed or eaten.
Irrationally more scared of James Franco’s double, I briefly considered running with the fleeing crowd towards the back of the bar and escaping into the adjoining ballroom. But a rising wave of high-pitched screaming came from that direction. Over the pained screams were a lot more of the inhuman howls and shrieks of the crazy predators gone freaking rabid on us.
My hands started uncontrollably shaking like I had palsy.
A school of terrified fish, the mass of people trying to escape kept ebbing and flowing, forward and backwards. If they ran towards the cocktail bar exit to get to the corridor beyond, they had to pass five or six of the crazies tearing every person from limb to limb up front. If they ran back into the bar’s interior, the terrorized sounds I heard meant more of the crazies waited to make a meal of them near the back entrance.
Either way was bad, but by my count, there were more of the howling killers behind me. The decision was easy. Scared or not, the cocktail bar entrance was the lesser of two evils, plus the men were up there somewhere. It meant going upstream against the crowds, but staying still was tantamount to committing suicide. At the rate people were going down, I was convinced that within minutes nowhere would be safe in the bar.
A cluster of brave people fought forward along the bar aisle to counterattack the white shirts over there. They valiantly tried to get them off the people being brutally ripped apart. From what I could see, the crazies possessed almost supernatural strength. No blows, punches, or kicks seemed to deter them from their violent compulsion to tear into anyone they could get at with their teeth and nails.
The businessman wearing the red tie smashed a barstool repeatedly over a crazy’s head. The howling man continued furiously shredding the naked back of a screaming, begging woman. I had no shot from this far away, not with all the people. I turned my head, gagging, but not before I saw the businessman knocked off his feet and pulled under. A few fortunate ones attempting to help were thrown clear and ran off, holding their bloody wounds.
I was witnessing a massacre.
More scared than I’ve ever been in my life, it took every ounce of courage I possessed to move again. Once I forced my frozen body to obey and rose up into a crouch, I was more in control again. I kicked off my shoes. Needing to be able to run, I reached behind me. Silently screaming for strength, I grabbed the short back slit and ripped my tight dress up the back seam.
The blonde was still curled into a tight ball, rocking and crying. I yearned to make it a duet, but told her I had a gun and was leaving. I said she could come with me if she’d shut up and promised not to jump on me again.
She sat up quickly. “Don’t leave me! Please don’t leave me! Please!”
Oval face red and blotchy, perfectly straight nose streaming snot, and crystalline blue eyes swollen slits from bawling; I was still right on about the beauty part.
“Jesus, chill! I just said you could come with me. I’m Acadia.” I kept an eye on the people rushing by us. None of them looked down. I was waiting for another opening so we wouldn’t get trampled. “Are you ready to get out of here? I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to hit a different bar. The men are animals here.”
So sue me; I get dark when scared out of my gourd.
She only stared and whispered, “I’m Bambi.”
“No shit?” I kept tracking the area cautiously while pulling my purse strap over my head to carry it snugly across my body. Keeping low to the floor under the tables, I was relieved none of the crazies had noticed us yet. They might not, as long as there were easy pickings running everywhere to keep them occupied. I blinked away that terribly true thought. Extending a hand, I pulled the blonde up next to me. “You like the name Bambi?”
“My real name’s Barbara,” she mumbled, gazing out at the slaughterhouse around us. A couple feet away, a woman lay dead on the floor. Her face and throat were a mangled mess. It was one of many terrible sights.
The blonde started to hyperventilate and got that wild look again. I couldn’t afford her freaking out on me again or she’d get us killed.
“Barbara!” I said her name quietly but firmly, as if she was a child, and also because I refused to call a grown woman Bambi. “Hold on to the top of my dress in back. That’s right,” I encouraged when she obediently clenched a handful of fabric. Her shaking f
ingers were cold on my skin. “Now don’t let go and don’t say a word. Look down, admire the damn red polish on my toes, and follow my feet. I walk, you walk. I run, you run. I stop, you stop. Got it?”
She whimpered, but nodded and immediately put her head down. I waited for an opening, trying to block out the shouts and pitiful cries for help all around us.
One of the attackers had worked his way down the bar aisle and was directly opposite across the room. I didn’t want to see, but I couldn’t take my eyes off him hovering over a girl flung across the top of the bar. It was Michelle, the bartender. I hoped she had just died because he was greedily sucking at the ugly gash in her neck and lapping up the blood pumping out.
“What’s wrong with these people?” I cried it aloud, but my furious voice was lost in the uproar.
Swallowing repeatedly to not vomit, I took a few steadying breaths. “Okay, Barbara. Here we go.”
The narrower aisle on our side had cleared for a second. Barbara and I climbed over fallen stools and skirted around tables, moving ahead in a sideways crouch while hugging our backs to the leather banquette to avoid the pushing, running people.
Not much more than a minute or two had passed since Rod left us, but now a mass of writhing people were fighting near the entrance. I caught a fleeting impression of a tall man with gold hair out of the corner of my eye; long enough to know Rod was still standing.
I was so busy trying to see what was happening up in front that I didn’t notice the feet sticking out from behind the last overturned table in the aisle. Unable to catch my balance, I sprawled on top of a man lying on the floor. I dragged Barbara partially down with me. Somehow, she stifled her scream.
It was a miracle, but I hadn’t dropped my gun. Automatically apologizing, I hurriedly pulled back with my right hand braced on the man’s shoulder. I let out a strangled shriek at seeing he was ripped wide open from his throat to groin. Bloody innards were hanging out. Looking down, I was coated with gunk from my chest on down.
Impossibly, his eyes opened after my unintended shriek. A few inches from mine, the sclera of both eyes were completely bloodshot while the pupils were so dilated; black was the only color showing. Those awful eyes glared furiously and his jaw began to clench and unclench.
My mind was going bat-shit crazy because I knew for certain the man was a customer, not one of the white shirts. I had checked him out as a possible “date,” but now he was acting like one of the crazies. Barbara had been good up until this point, but she screamed shrilly when the man stretched his mouth wide and lunged to take a chunk out of my face.
I forgave her because the boom of my gun blowing a hole through his head deafened me even more than her screeching in my ear.
Barbara snapped out of it when I shouted for her to hurry up and help pull me up off the dead man. We were both doing the palsy quiver now. I couldn’t hear over the ringing in my ears and I wanted to faint from terror. I longed to wipe off the gore I felt on my cheek and sliding sluggishly down my cleavage, but I didn’t dare take a hand off the gun now gripped tightly in both my shaking hands. Anxiously, I searched for any signs the crazies had noticed us over here against the wall.
The roiling mass of hysterically screaming people fighting showed no awareness of us or the gunshot. They were shifting away from the entrance area and over towards the bar. In desperation to get away from the crazies at the blocked entrance, around twenty panicking men and women had started slipping and sliding down the bar aisle.
After a quick look, I averted my eyes from the line of dead bodies strewn two or three deep across the floor to the bar. From here to there, mostly unrecognizable human body parts were lying haphazardly in black pools of lumpy blood like they were toys discarded by monster children after enjoying their play date from your worst nightmare.
There was no way I’d be able to avoid therapy and massive amounts of medication if I survived this night of socializing.
Most of the crazies lurched after the fleeing group. They were howling while indiscriminately biting and slashing anyone they could reach.
We were a few feet from the doorway that would allow us to escape the Firelake Cocktail Bar and Charnel House. The area in front of the bar’s entrance was suddenly emptied of almost everyone. There was a clear path to follow out of the bar. Starting forward, I hesitated. Should I run over and help those people by the bar? I’d have to wade in and put my gun against the crazy’s heads to avoid shooting a normal person in the mass hysteria taking place.
“Ah, man!” Feeling guilty for thinking so coldly, I still decided it was hopeless and I wouldn’t accomplish much beyond my own death.
The people struggling to get away by the bar came to a dead stop. Cries of agonizing pain began erupting from the front of that pack. They’d been forced by the momentum of the others pushing at their backs smack into the white shirts now coming up from the rear of the bar. The rabid killers had the customers in a pincer movement. They were tearing into them from both ends.
Barbara’s hand pulled frantically on my dress, wrenching my gaze away from the horrific murders happening across the entire bar behind us. “Look!”
She was pointing forward out the entrance, smiling excitedly through her tears. It was Rod, Bubba, and Medusa. They were swinging what appeared to be steel poles and beating the living shit out of James Franco’s doppelganger outside the bar in the funky, red chair area.
The one crazy still between us and escape was near the glass wall dividing the bar and restaurant, off to the side of the exit. He was bent over two gutted bodies, dipping one hand into each, and then bringing his hands to his mouth. The monster’s hands made terrible, wet sucking sounds with each dip.
“Ah, no way!” I was moaning at this latest insanity, even as Barbara and I dashed for freedom. She didn’t falter; but ran unchecked past the feasting crazy. I stopped long enough to shoot the sick fuck in the back. He jerked, but didn’t fall over.
“Oh my,” I croaked out when he slowly turned his head my way. Red, enraged eyes and a jaw clenched the same as all the others; he started snapping the air similar to a dog at an annoying fly.
Throbbing with fear, the top of my head felt like it was about to explode. I took a steadying breath and sighted down the barrel. The next shot didn’t miss and I blew the crazy’s brains onto the glass behind him. After just a quick glance, I knew there was nothing to be done for the poor people on the floor. I couldn’t even tell that they’d once been human, there was so much blood and they were so torn up.
Nerves tingling, I swiftly twirled to scan behind me and then tried not to pass out from what I saw.
Bodies that should be dead for too many gruesome reasons to list now looked like fucked up jumping beans, twitching and jerking on the floor. Hands were curling into claws while jaws clenched and snapped. I couldn’t hear above the ringing in my ears from the gunshot, but I still sensed they were also moaning that terrible keening sound.
I backed up and ran out the front doorway. Barbara waited several yards beyond the door, wringing her hands and watching for me. The wide smile breaking across her face when I emerged from the cocktail bar was almost as dazzling as the relieved grin Rod shot me when he looked over and met my eyes.
“Yeah, I’m safe, no thanks to you,” I thought nastily, right as he got smacked in the head by the short back swing of Bubba’s steel pole. Eyes rolling up, Rod collapsed across a tomato-red wing chair.
Chapter Five
“To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice.” -Confucius
I breathed in deep gulps outside the bar. My stomach hurt. In the aftermath of my first battle, I had to accept something about myself that I’d always despised in others. I was a pragmatic person.
Could I be called worse for not saving more people? How does a person determine if they were a coward--were there rules for such things?
In their own battle zone, Bubba and Medusa continued whaling away on James Franco’s evil twin, not realizing their
buddy Ram had been knocked out behind them. The white shirt was on his stomach, a bloody, caved-in wreck.
Bubba’s broad, freckled face was spotted with blood, his harsh grin garish when he brandished his steel pole over his head and gave out a final war cry. “Yeah, and take that, you stinkin’, bitin’ son of a bitch!”
He and Medusa whooped and jumped up in the air to bump heaving chests.
“Oh, no!” Barbara screamed. I raised the gun and looked frantically around for a crazy, but the area was clear. Sinking to her knees, the blonde burst into uncontrollably sobs again. “It’s Betsy!”
I saw Miss Perky lying unceremoniously on the white carpet by a small red chair. Her head was twisted around on her hacked up neck and facing almost backwards. Her staring brown eyes were wide open and bulging, as if still experiencing the pain. We’d seen some bad stuff, all slamming down on us in just a few minutes, but this was beyond bad. She appeared so fragile and terrified. I covered my face with the crook of my arm and paced away, determined not to lose my shit.
My quick pacing brought me past the escalators. I lowered my arm, peering over the ledge to the lobby below. I wish I hadn’t. There were several people lying in puddles of blood on the floor near the bottom of the escalators. They must have jumped over the glass partition to escape the bar. I couldn’t tell if the fall killed them, or the man shuffling around down there in a security uniform soaked in crimson. Most of his throat was missing and he was doing an imitation of a bobble head. Maybe that explained the release of James Franco’s double from custody.
Straight across from where I stood, and over the open lobby, I could see through a wide expanse of glass into the East Ballroom’s anteroom area. People were being attacked and running around like chickens with their heads cut off.