by Alan Spencer
“Jesus Christ,” Cindy gasped. “You have to see this, Boyd.”
Boyd rushed to the freezer. Once he looked, he couldn’t turn his eyes from the shelves. Clear plastic bags were stuffed with human remains. Appendages, organs, filleted and flanked strips of human flesh, and bags of blood were piled high. How many dozens of bodies did these parts belong to?
The thing that struck him the most was the woman’s face in a bag. Her eyes were frozen solid, but her lips quivered—and more so now that she detected them.
“This is how he’s survived for so long,” Boyd said. “He’s eating them, and so far, he’s doing just fine. Hayden probably likes it better in here than in the real world. No police are after him. His pursuers are all on the menu. How many has he killed here? How many of them were those dead things? It doesn't make sense. Wouldn't eating them make him sick? It's dead flesh, for God's sake."
He threw the freezer closed. Boyd had enough. He continued combing the kitchen for Hayden. Surveying every corner and hideaway, the floors were freshly-mopped and a lemon scent downplayed the wretched smell festering deeper in the place.
The kitchen was clear, and stepping into a back hall, Cindy opened a storage room, and they were overwhelmed by what they found. A woman’s naked body was roped in place on top of a table. The skin was tinted blue, and she was covered in lacerations along her abdomen and the insides of her thighs. An orange jumpsuit was waded up in the corner along with a pair of white panties and a bra.
She wasn’t one of them outside.
She wasn't modified.
Her head was shaved, leaving black buds on the scalp. Lacerations turned her breasts inside out. The nipples were removed; the fatty tissues hollowed out. Boyd recognized her, and was surprised she was here and dead on the table.
Her name was Brandy Gwinn. Brandy was considered a knowing accomplice in Hayden’s crimes. Hayden took her from the streets—broke and panhandling for food and drug money—and fed her the flesh. Hayden called it a social experiment. Hayden was quoted, “If they don’t know it’s flesh, will they like it? And when they find out, will they still like it?”
Brandy enjoyed Hayden’s food so much, she did anything to stay with him, including sexual favors and luring new victims to their deaths by soliciting prostitution and performing back alley throat-slashings. Brandy arrived much later in Hayden’s murdering career, and it was at that point the crimes were committed hastily.
Boyd noted the slits on Brandy's wrists. The wounds were gummed up. About a week old. There wasn’t any blood in the room, and whatever happened to her—murder or suicide—it didn’t occur here.
“Her name’s Brandy,” he explained to Cindy. “She was an accomplice in Hayden’s crimes, and who knows how many people she helped that sick bastard kill? Brandy was sentenced to six life terms without parole. I guess she’s like Hayden. She was dumped here for whatever reason.”
“You’re right,” a voice growled.
Boyd whipped around too late. Hayden wrapped his arm around Cindy’s neck. A flank knife was aimed to puncture her throat. The man was different than the last time Boyd had seen him. He’d gained weight. Hayden was at least two-hundred and fifty pounds now. His sandy-colored beard had turned to gray. The beard completely buried his lips and half his throat. Those black eyes, deep in the sockets, were oily glints shifting in shadow pools. His gaze was shifty and cunning.
He aimed the M-16, but as an officer, this had already become a hostage situation. Boyd would have to proceed with negotiations, not gunfire.
Hayden seethed with hatred. “This place is mine, these people are all mine—what the fuck are you doing here, Broman?”
Boyd didn’t have any fancy lies. He couldn’t create them in a situation like this. Nobody could.
Cindy was terrified, and disgusted. Her nose wrinkled, repulsed by the smell of raw meat exuding strong and pungent from Hayden's body.
Boyd did his best to buy time. “Investigators have found more of your bodies. Several in Missouri, in fact. They want to know who else you’ve killed, and where else you put them.”
Boyd distinguished Hayden’s fat lecherous grin through the cover of his patchy beard. “Ah, but you’re one of us now, aren’t you? This cop’s a murderer. Yes, oh yes he is. Did Samuel Tyson rape your wife, or no, did he rape your kids, instead—or both? Why not both, right? If you're going to do it, you might as well go all the way.
"I was watching the news from jail. It’s hard to watch what you want with a room full of tattooed brutes, but they sure watch the news a lot. I have to ask, did you enjoy hearing Samuel's bones breaking under your tires? Could you smell shit? Did Samuel shit himself like a fucking baby? Did you enjoy the smell, Broman? Were you there to hear his final words, or was he killed instantly?
"I hate it when that happens. Missing their dying moment is a sad, sad thing. No pleasure in that at all. That's the best part. The way they look, so desperate, so scared, so overwhelmed, it makes you believe there really is something on the other side of death."
Boyd changed subjects, or else he'd shoot the bastard dead. “Why did you kill Brandy?”
“She came to me for protection, and I gave it to her, but I couldn’t keep her from herself. Brandy drank excessively from the bar and made all kinds of damn noise. They brought her here like they did me in some kind of government vehicle. Why, I have no idea. We’re here, and that’s all we know. We made the best of things, I suppose. We made love, enjoyed free liquor and food, but after awhile, Brandy felt boxed-in. Cabin fever got the best of her. I found her in the lady’s room with her wrists slit. Her corpse was sitting on the toilet.”
Boyd doubted the explanation. “And you felt the need to cut her up, huh? You were going to eat her?”
“Yes, I started to eat her. But I couldn’t work fast enough with those things out there always trying to get in. Pieces of her I managed to save, like the heart and a lot of skin, mostly. The heart is one of the best pieces. It’s the blood-making vessel. The life-giver." A forming smile, "The juiciest.”
Boyd was growing impatient hearing the psycho divulge his innermost feelings. Cindy trembled, and her eyes begged him to take action.
Boyd had to come up with something, and quick. “Did Richard tell you the heart’s the life-giver of the body?”
Hayden’s face turned sour. “Don’t ever talk about Richard. You don’t understand us. Stay back. I’ll open her throat, and the both of us can watch her die. I'll play Samuel tonight. This bitch can be your wife. We can have a reenactment. This time I'll kill her. How fun!"
“No—you won’t do that!”
“Put down the gun.” Hayden pressed the tip of the knife again Cindy’s throat. “I can do anything here. There are no rules. It’s the laws of nature. Every man has the right to everything he wants, and whoever’s the strongest can reach out and take what they wish. I'm the strongest here. Now put your machine gun down.”
Boyd followed the directions and propped the gun against the wall.
“I’m going to take this lovely lady with me, and you won’t follow me.” Hayden lifted the knife from her throat and seized it by the handle to throw at him. “Still a cop even in this place, aren't you? They put you here, so why help them? They’ve left us for dead...with those things.”
Boyd couldn’t refrain from action any longer. Sucking in a breath, he lunged forward, springing at Hayden, tearing Cindy from his grip, and lodging an upper-cut punch into Hayden’s stomach. The psycho belched, shrinking to his haunches about to vomit, gagging against his own throat-bile. Boyd picked up the knife in that moment, and Cindy removed the Glock from her belt and trained it on the cannibal man.
“Keep it aimed on him,” Boyd snapped. “This bastard deserves a lesson, and I'm about to give it to him."
Boyd hoisted Hayden up by the collar and rammed him into the wall. His shoulder broke through the plaster, his head plowing all the way through. Hayden slumped down onto the ground, disoriented. A line of blood streamed f
rom his scalp and split his face. Hayden mewled, talking dreamily and hateful at once, “First, it was from my apartment you chased me out of, and then it was prison, and now you want to take away this restaurant. Where do I go next? I’d love to see what you come up with, Broman. What's your plan now? What are you going to do with me?"
“Enough,” Boyd grunted, swinging his fist into his nose straight-on and inspiring a cringe-inducing crack. “No more talking."
Blood funneled out both of his nostrils in a torrent. Hayden’s eyes were half-open and on the verge of unconsciousness.
“You’re coming with us, and no more resisting. I’m taking you back to where you came from, and I don’t care who is doing this shit, and why. You're our only way out of here.”
Hayden was trying to clean the blood from his face and only smearing it. “So they made a deal with you, whoever owns this place?—a trade? Me, for you.”
“I want you to take a walk out that door to the back of the kitchen,” Boyd commanded, ignoring his questions. “You will follow my directions. I'm taking you out of here."
“Whatever you say,” Hayden groveled, struggling to stand up. “You better keep your eye on me. The lady’s turning me on. Brandy didn’t particularly do much for me in the south department, especially after she died. It was like poking a warm sack when she was alive, and it was like poking wet concrete when she was dead—but you, lady, you’re untried meat.”
“Fuck you,” Cindy growled, driving the handle of her gun into his temple. “I’ll cut it off before you stick it in me."
Every window shattered in the place. Dust rained from the ceiling, as did broken panels. It was like the roof was caving in. The florescent lights were smashed, raining down in a glittery show. Before it went dark, Boyd saw the arms and legs dangling and lowering down from the ceiling.
Hayden had fled into the kitchen.
“He’s getting away!” Cindy shouted. “We have to go after him.”
Boyd stared in awe at the dozens of dead persons stumbling towards them. “We have to reach the back door. Follow me, forget him. Hayden can’t hide forever. We’ll find him later.”
He grabbed the M-16 in the storeroom, and when Boyd rushed back out, many of the dead poured inside to dismantle Brandy’s body. The crack and snapping of dry bones and tearing of sinews forced them out of the room double quick. They ducked into the kitchen, buying time to muster a plan.
A knife dinged against the metal freezer door beside Boyd’s right arm.
Another one of the dead had tried to assassinate him.
“Get down!” Boyd forced Cindy to duck. “The back door’s a straight shot. I’m going to send a line of bullets their way, and you run. Anything approaches you, you shoot them without hesitation.”
Boyd skipped the countdown. “NOW!”
He swung the muzzle of the M-16 from left to right in a fuselage of bullets, mowing them down. Patches of flesh and bursts of blood flung onto the hanging kitchen implements.
Another knife was hurled his way, this time staking into his deltoid. Boyd yanked it free with a spurt of blood.
"Fuck!"
Cindy stood vigil at the back door when she was tackled and dragged outside by decomposed hands. Boyd was half-way to rescue her, hobbling fast, when a woman rained down from the ceiling. A set of wooden rafters crashed down and knocked over a shelf of pots and pans with a deafening clatter-crash. The woman bit into his collarbone, breaking skin and tissue. An abrupt sucking followed the clamp. The corpse was drinking his blood.
Boyd tugged back her red hair and tore it from its roots. The hair slid off easily. The scalp was the texture of seaweed. He drove the woman face-first into the wall. The corpse staggered backwards and went limp onto the floor. Boyd stamped his foot into her blood-caked face again, and again, and again. He knocked her teeth loose, one row coming undone at once, the rest crumbling in brittle pieces. He kept kicking in her face, and soon, the entire face caved in, looking like a brimming bowl of blood.
Cindy’s insistent screams drew him through the door. He caught Cindy scissor-kicking a corpse that was trying to overtake her. Boyd pushed it up against the wall and jammed the tip of the M-16 underneath his chin. Letting loose a burst of bullets, the skull cap exploded, bursting open, the gray matter spitting out in a confetti stream three feet high.
Still, the creature wouldn’t die. It crawled to escape with each limb pulling the body in different directions.
Cindy raised her gun. “What the hell are we doing next? We don’t have Hayden, and we’re stuck out here.”
The restaurant was consumed by moving shadows. They inhabited the entire block. The things would kill them if they didn’t get moving, and fast.
“You're bleeding.” Cindy was horrified at the amount of blood oozing from his collarbone. “Are you able to run?”
Boyd removed the prison smock, his undershirt sodden in red. He wrapped the orange smock around the wound as a tourniquet.
“I have to run. We’ll cut through those woods. We better run before too many of them catch on to us.”
They sprinted down a short hill beyond the road that spit them into an expanse of dense trees. He turned around and watched the dead board up the windows of the restaurant. Hayden was still inside. Were they trying to box him in? There was no way to be sure, and Boyd was growing dizzier.
“What is it? You see something?”
Boyd nodded that he did, pointing at the eating establishment. “They’re boarding up the restaurant from the outside. I didn’t see where Hayden escaped to, bit he might be in there. He’s our only way out.”
“The way out is useless if you get yourself killed. And I watched him, Boyd. He escaped the kitchen. The bastard knew where he was going. He’s not dead.”
“I hope you’re right.”
The darkness obscured the ability to perceive any dangers ahead. “Do you still have your flashlight?”
Cindy frowned. “I lost it in the restaurant.”
Boyd paused for a moment, and it didn’t take long to make his final decision.
“Then let’s keep moving.”
Reverse Attack
Hayden pushed through the tables and booths to the main entrance. Chains and a padlocks rattled from the outside. The double doors wouldn’t budge each time he tried to force them open. The windows were boarded up. The pounding of hammers filled his ears. There was still one window at the west end of the dining area untouched. Hayden heaved a chair through it. The shatter carried above their collective chant, stealing their attention. Hayden sucked in air to collect the wind that was punched out of him. He consoled himself by remembering how he received worse beatings in prison. Maybe the flesh was too good for any living human being to indulge, he thought, but he vowed to fight for it.
He climbed out of the window, bracing himself for what could be outside. The beings congested the streets. Eyes in the gutters became hands, and then the hands advanced into crawling bodies. Doors in abandoned buildings swung open, spilling the dead forth. Most of them arrived from the perimeter of the streets in droves. The bodies were at work sealing up the restaurant.
This was planned. They waited for their chance to drive him out, or were they just playing with him all along? Could they have done this the entire time? They were unpredictable, and Hayden was startled by how little he understood them. If he couldn’t master the dead, he would dominate the woman and Broman, he decided.
He masticated at the idea of eating live and warm flesh again.
Straight from the bone this time, Hayden, Richard’s voice beckoned him, rekindling Hayden's old wanton lust. Roast them on a homemade spit. The organs will marinate themselves inside the thoracic cavity.
Hayden circled to the back of the restaurant after catching Broman and the woman both retreating. They fled into the woods adjacent from the residential housing. He barely caught them disappear between a set of trees. Hayden lunged down the hill in pursuit, splashed across a shallow creek, and slowed to a creep. H
e was yards from the only other living people in the facility.
The woman aroused him. She was untried flesh. All that it required to have her was killing Broman. Hand-to-hand, Hayden would lose, but with a weapon and the element of surprise, the adversary could be slain.
Hayden placed his fingers to his nose, playing into the possibilities of his desires, sniffing the same fingers that had clutched the woman’s neck. It smelled of sweat and skin. No perfumes or soap. Flesh, the way it would be in nature.
The human body is organic. It decomposes very quickly, Hayden. Disposal shouldn’t be a problem. You leave them in a warm and humid place with plenty of air to breathe, and in a week, the flesh will flense itself without effort—like a knife through a stick of butter. The bones are different. You can bury those, but they can be found. It’s easiest to grind them up. This must be done by hand, sliver by sliver.
Hayden stared through the dark slots between the trees and trained his hearing to catch their footsteps. The crunch of leaves and the occasional snap of a twig, it was easy to follow the two. Hayden kept up even when the corpses began to pursue him.
Beth Gaines
Beth Gaines sprinted through a muddy creek. The dead things canvassed the woods again after hours of absence. The dead were interested in killing her again. She’d been inside the perimeter less than a day. She was sleeping in her bunk one night in the Santa Monica Correctional Facility, and the next, she woke in these woods without an explanation. A band-aid with a cotton ball was stuck on her forearm. It was obvious they injected her with a sedative to knock her out.
“Now Beth, they’re considering a prison transfer for you, and you won’t be in a cell this time,” the man who wasn't her parole officer advised her. He was a stranger in a suit without identification. He claimed to be a representative of the state. “You’ve strangled two inmates, stabbed another with a fork through the throat, and you drowned your last victim in the toilet. You’re making this difficult on yourself. We talked about the consequences of your actions. I'm afraid I can't help you beyond this point. That's why I've been hearing talks of sending you to a special place. And you don't want to go there. Believe me."