Death Metal

by Mark All

  He elbowed his way to a group of three punks fighting each other and shoved one punk into the other two.

  “I’m gonna skin you like a deer!”

  He backhanded the knife across the throat of the nearest man and turned on the others.

  * * * *

  “Jesus, it’s a fucking bloodbath!” Mike screamed.

  His eyes watering from the smoke, a singed smell in his nostrils, David shouted, “Come on!” at the drummer, Alan, and Nancy. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

  “Back door!” Alan said, hacking.

  David nodded. “Right! Go, take Nancy!”

  They staggered through the black clouds roiling around them and across the stage, skirting the areas that were on fire, Mike in the lead. He reached the set of stairs at the rear of the stage and started down, missing his footing on the first step in the smoke and nearly falling, but righting himself at the last moment. Alan went next, pulling Nancy after him, who was coughing her head off. David took her arm and braced her from behind.

  David took a last look around before starting his own descent. What in God’s name had they done? How could music cause all this? He felt he was sleepwalking in some implausible alternate reality. Welcome to Hell on Earth. The ceiling was ablaze now, reinforcing the evening’s theme of eternal fire, and the flames had spread to the bars on both balconies. Higher, people fought their way up the steep stairs toward the roof, where yet another bar overlooked the city, providing a breathtaking view, though no safety from the carnage or flames. As he watched, two men in a death embrace tumbled over the rail of the top balcony to land on the ground floor bar, rebound separately onto a pile of broken chairs, and lie still. Blood and fire were everywhere; the fighting was intensifying.

  “David!” Nancy tugged at his pants leg from below. He tore himself from the incredible scene and followed them down.

  “Out the back!” Alan called, already spinning Nancy around and dragging her after him to follow Mike, halfway down the back hall to the Fire Exit to the alley behind the theater.

  David felt like he moved through water, or reality slowed down around him. The music incongruously blared, blending with screaming and shouting, the noise of burning wood and curtains, and things breaking—glass, tables, bones.

  Mike had reached the back door but had not gone through.

  “What’s the problem?” Nancy screeched.

  Mike threw himself at the door, and again. It was open, but only an inch, and shuddered in its frame when he hit it.

  “It’s chained from the outside!”

  They all turned back to the ongoing riot in the main room behind them. They would have to make it through that gauntlet of insanity to get out.

  * * * *

  Jessica had crawled behind the bar, dragging Sharon Stevens after her to escape the fusillade, but the gunfire had moved elsewhere, now sounding random and casual. She checked the club manager a second time and realized that the woman was dead.

  She crouched there for a moment, nearly petrified with fear. She could probably make it back out the front doors and into the street, but she had to reach David, to tell him they must destroy the music, or at least to see him again, make sure he was all right. She hoped he was not completely under the thrall of the music.

  Trembling, she slowly raised herself until she could see over the bar. The carnage raged full-on in the room. People weren’t clustered up at the doors anymore, because so many had either gotten out, were fighting, or lay dead or dying on the floor.

  She spotted David and felt a rush of elation. He was with the rest of the band, at the back of the room, looking this way.

  “DAVID!”

  He couldn’t hear her over the din. She was about to leave the relative safety of her position and make a run for it when a burning body fell from one of the balconies above and crashed into the bar, sending broken glass and beer spraying. Jessica screamed and ducked, finding herself face to face with the dead club manager on the floor. Nearly whooping from breathlessness, she pushed herself up and ran out from behind the bar and toward the melee in the center of the room.

  * * * *

  Barry Hoffman was royally pissed. He stood inside the doors to the theater, his .38 Police Special revolver at his side, screaming.

  “You fucked up my show! You stopped the concert!”

  He picked a nearby woman at random, pointed the gun in her direction, and pulled the trigger, grimacing wryly as his shot tore into her arm and sent her spinning.

  One twit out of his way. The music still boomed from the burning public address system, but it was missing some parts, and he couldn’t hear it well over all this fucking noise. He started forward into the crowd, shooting people as he went, as best he could see through the thickening smoke.

  The combatants, nearly as crazed as he, scattered before him, the slow ones going down in sprays of blood, the faster ones bizarrely continuing to assault each other as they moved away and out of the line of fire.

  Barry soon emptied his gun. A full jacket pocket of rounds still jangled at his side; he reached in, grabbed a handful, and started reloading. Movement in front of him caught his eye and he looked up as he snapped the cylinder into place, gave it a whirl.

  A man with a Glock stood before him, scowling.

  “Nice gun, asshole,” Barry said.

  The man dodged a flailing arm that nearly hit him in the face and shouted back, “You’re a goddamn socialist!”

  As Barry brought his revolver up and fired, so did the crazed-looking freak with the automatic. Barry’s first shot went wide, then the other man shot him five times in rapid succession, but Barry’s trigger finger twitched in a spasm as he died on his feet, and his pistol fired, taking off the left half of the man’s head.

  * * * *

  “Let’s go!” David said, starting into the fray.

  “Are you insane?” Nancy called after him.

  He risked a glance back. “No choice! Fire spreads fast. If we wait any longer, we won’t make it out.” He looked around. The two-story high drapes on the walls were sheets of flame and the downstairs bar was on fire now. “We might not anyway. Come on!”

  When he turned to face the main room again, a woman was in his face, screeching at him.

  “Start playing again! Play my song!”

  “What?” He only registered the huge knife in her hand as she slashed out at him, drawing the blade across his arm.

  David kicked out at her and scrambled away, screaming in agony. He looked down to see a gash in his shirtsleeve and a wound in the exposed skin below, blood rapidly welling in it.

  The woman came at him again and he dodged and backed up, but she followed.

  “I said, start playing! I want to hear my song! I NEED it!”

  She swung the knife again, barely missing his midriff as he bent backward.

  “Are you fucking crazy?” What kind of question was that, he thought, of course she's crazy. They all were, and David verged on joining them.

  From out of nowhere, Nancy tackled the woman, knocking her off balance. Nancy teetered and almost fell herself, but Alan snatched her arm and pulled her back. The woman lunged at her. Not thinking, only terrified for Nancy, David let go of his bleeding arm, leaned back, and kicked the knife wielder with all his might. He felt her ribs break and she went down.

  “Run!” Mike said.

  Reeling, David clutched his arm and moved toward the front of the room again, trying to outflank two clusters of bloody rioters. The fight moved his way, separating him from Mike, Alan, and Nancy. He looked frantically for them, but could not see them in the smoke spreading through the crowd. He started back the way he’d come, but then heard his name being called from up ahead.

  * * * *

  “David!”

  Jessica caught another glimpse of him, weaving through the insanity, and altered her course to intercept him. She had to change direction again as someone punched her, missing her face but pounding the hell out of her shoulder
. She slithered away from grasping hands, elbowing her attacker as she passed, then tripped over a broken chair and went down to a floor wet with what, she didn’t want to think about. She began to cough, hacking on the thick smoke.

  Through her tears, she could make out that the stage was a raging bonfire, the walls were aflame, and fire had spread to the downstairs bar and many of the tables scattered around the floor. She saw bodies on fire, a couple still in slow, futile motion.

  A woman in biker boots appeared in her vision and kicked her hard in the side. Jessica rolled away but the chick followed, kicking her again and hollering unintelligibly at her.

  Jessica looked up to see a man in a suit pull the woman off her and throw her like a rag doll, sending her tumbling over a pair of bodies. With a smile, he reached down and offered her his hand. “Help you up, Miss?”

  “Thank you,” she stammered, taking his hand and assisting him in hauling her to her feet.

  “Bob,” the man said. “Bob Finster. Manager, First Bank of Athens.”

  Under the circumstances, there was something odd and wrong about this pleasant introduction. Jessica noticed that the front of his expensive suit was spattered with blood.

  “You look scared,” he said. His smile looked kind of funny, like a Jack Nicholson smile. “I like my women scared.”

  The man’s eyes glittered as he brought his other hand from behind his back to reveal a huge, jagged hunting knife. Both the blade and handle dripped blood.

  Whimpering, Jessica backed away, no longer caring if evil overtook the world. She just didn’t want to die, at least not by being hacked to pieces.

  He advanced on her, jabbing the knife at her teasingly, still smiling.

  Her back slammed into something and she realized she’d come up against the wall. She was out of places to run or the strength or the will to do so. She cringed against the wall.

  David Fairburn lumbered into view behind the man and before she fully realized what was happening, he took the knifeman by the throat, yelled hoarsely, and swung him by his head, the body twisting round with a cracking sound audible over the music, screaming, and crackling flames. The guitarist let the banker drop, staring at what he’d done in evident disbelief.

  He looked back to Jessica and she sprang into his arms.

  “David!” she cried into his shoulder.

  “Jessica!”

  Gentle but firm hands took her by the shoulders and pulled her away. She wanted to cling to him, but they guided her along the wall, toward the door.

  “Come on, baby, let’s get you out of here,” Nancy Dillehay said to her.

  “Let’s get us all the hell out of here,” her husband said as he showed up with Mike. David hurried to her other side and led her toward the front of the theater.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Saturday night

  The action had clustered in the middle of the room, with a few fights along the periphery. A trickle of survivors shambled for the door, but the path was mostly clear now. Following Alan and Mike, David and Nancy maneuvered the shocked Jessica to the door and pushed through the stragglers and out into the hot, humid night, where the air seemed fresh, clean, and nearly cool in comparison to the hell of the burning theater behind them. They stood just outside the doorway for a moment to catch their breaths.

  A cry came from above and David looked up to see a man falling toward them from the roof, limbs thrashing. With a guttural croak, he shoved Jessica and Nancy to the side. The body hit the sidewalk with a sickening sound and spattered blood on them, the sidewalk, and two dazed gawkers.

  Tamping down a regurgitation reflex, David hustled the two women down the sidewalk to the right, toward Alan and Mike. “Move! Now!”

  A quick glance at the top of the building showed flames towering from the rooftop bar and figures silhouetted in a grotesque and violent dance. With an inarticulate grunt of horror and revulsion, David returned his attention to the job at hand. They had to get the hell out of there, away from the epicenter of the violence.

  Pungent smoke wafted above the street at head height and he crouched to get under it, still coughing. At the corner, vehicles piled up around a three-car wreck, engines gunning, horns blasting. Police sirens filled the air.

  “My car’s at Mike’s store,” Alan shouted.

  “Come on!” David led the way through the obstacle course of vehicles in the intersection, around the pileup, angling to the sidewalk on the other side of the street. They had to plough through a knot of onlookers who aggressively shoved them back, then they were free and running past the First Bank of Athens and down the block. The parking lot for the building occupied by the health food market and Mike’s music store was overflowing with cars, as usual for a Saturday night, but mercifully empty of people. They juddered to a stop, gasping and looking around like nervous deer.

  “Vince killed your bass player,” Jessica said. “I went to get him to sign the release and found him. Vince attacked me with an axe, but I got away.” She blinked away tears. “And my friend Charlene is…dead.”

  The image of John high above the stage in the lighting truss came back to David. If Vince had come back from the dead, could John have also? Had he returned to fight the music he’d been unable to stop in life? That idea was too much to process now, and couldn’t help them anyway.

  “What happened to your friend?”

  Jessica told him, and he felt as if he had a knife in his gut, twisting, tangling, and slicing. The world spun around him.

  “My fault,” he said wobbling on his feet. “All my fault.” He slumped against a car, sickened to his soul, his eyes downcast to avoid everyone’s gaze, especially Jessica’s.

  “So,” Mike said quietly, “where did this new music really come from?”

  They stared at David in incredulity and horror as he related the whole story as briefly as he could. By the time he was done, everyone was looking away from him, isolating him in a heavy silence.

  David brushed tears from his eyes. “What have I done? What in God’s name have I done?”

  Jessica came to him, took his hand. “What the music made you do,” she said. “We each had our role to play, and it got what it wanted from each of us.”

  He looked into her eyes and saw forgiveness, affection, maybe understanding. He didn’t understand. “I never questioned that I was dealing with a dead man. Why did I buy into Vince’s plan so easily?”

  “Because,” Mike said, looking at him sternly, but without blame in his expression, “you were afraid to trust your own talent, your own gifts. Afraid you weren’t good enough by yourself. Vince took advantage of that.”

  David fidgeted, feeling the discomfort that came with the recognition of a truth he’d avoided. Mike had told him over and over again that his songs were as good as Vince’s and encouraged him to write more material, but David’s doubts had crippled him. If he was so great, why hadn’t he made it by his age?

  Because our type of music just isn’t ever going to be popular, that's why, he thought.

  “You’re right,” he said. “I briefly questioned my sanity, but not Vince’s reality or the purpose of his music. Still, how could I have been blind to it?”

  “Hypnosis,” Alan said. “Some supernatural mind control shit. I felt it when he spoke on the stage just now. He had a kind of power over you.”

  “Like the power of the song over the Loopers,” Jessica said. “Over all of us, to one degree or another.”

  The scope of that one song’s effect was staggering. What would happen if the entire album were released?

  What if…

  “Oh my God.” David went cold all over. “He’s going to upload Oblivion to the web.”

  Nancy blinked. “If he was going to do that, why didn’t he do it already? He could have done it as soon as you finished the mastering.”

  Jessica dropped David’s hand and stepped forward. “Because he wanted Sage’s promotion machine to sell it to every corner of the globe. If he’d done i
t earlier, people would’ve caught on before much damage was done. I was compelled to play my part, too. So was Ben. At John’s, Vince told me the music didn’t affect us like it does the Loopers because we needed to be able to play our parts in getting the music out.”

  “It affected us, all right,” Mike said. “Just in a different way. It compelled us but left us capable of doing what he wanted, while it drove everyone else insane.”

  “Homicidally insane,” Alan noted.

  “Now he doesn’t need the record label’s publicity anymore,” Jessica said. “Everybody from here to Zimbabwe has access to ‘Fire It Up,’ and knows there’s an album to go with it.”

  David’s mind reeled at the thought of the violence in the theater spreading throughout the world.

  “There’s something else,” Jessica added, her tone urgent. “How I got away from Vince. I know this will sound crazy—but not any crazier than any of the rest of this. When I found John Emory’s body, and Vince confronted me…” She hesitated. “John spoke to me.”

  David blinked. “John spoke to you.”

  Jessica nodded. “He raised his head, opened his mouth; but I only heard the words in my mind. I’m positive Vince didn’t see or hear him talking to me.”

  “I saw John above the stage,” David said. “When a light fell and nearly killed me. I think he did it.”

  “Holy shit,” Nancy said. “To stop the concert. He wanted to prevent us from playing the show.”

  “That’s what it had to be,” David said. He turned back to Jessica. “What did John tell you?”

  ”He told me to call Ben and tell him to cancel the contract. As soon as I did, Vince started to fade, become thin, like a ghost. Then he just disappeared. I know that phone call is what got rid of him.”

  David was almost but not quite following her. “What are you saying?”

  “I think I changed the future of the music with that call,” Jessica said. “It became less certain, less real. It weakened his power. It’s like he became less likely to exist on…our plane of reality.”