by Alan Spencer
"Would you shut up, you...asshole."
"You better start watching that pretty mouth of yours. No one’s here to save you. Boyd’s dead, and we’re all alone.”
Cindy didn't say a word.
Hayden located a row of light switches and flicked them on. They were large dome fixtures, like that of an assembly room at a school gymnasium, and it took moments for them to blink on and bathe the room in purple-white light.
What was uncovered surprised him.
Cindy studied the room with a start.
In the first half of the space, various military vehicles were parked, like Jeeps, Pathfinders, a medical unit, and dozens of Land Rovers. The back was too far to make out. They were mostly hallways and offices.
Hayden moved to the closest Jeep. There were no keys in the ignition. He threw open the glove compartment and checked the back cab. Still, no keys.
“Useless. We can’t do anything with a car without keys. Cindy, can you hotwire a rig like this?”
Cindy shook her head, staying put. “No."
“Looks like this building is secure. It’s a good place for me to start over. I might like this better than the restaurant. You'll be all mine, Cindy. I'll fuck you, then I'll eat a little piece of you. Maybe I'll get you pregnant just so I can eat your the baby. I'll--"
Hayden didn't see it coming.
Cindy came alive. She launched to her feet and charged right at him. Her face was bent in savage fury. She didn't say a word, only growled, and kicked him square in the balls.
Hayden crumbled to the floor, seized by a wave of nauseous pain.
He couldn't move. He curled up on the floor and cupped his swelling genitals.
When he recovered, Cindy had hid somewhere.
A green light flashed from across the room. A mechanic groan followed the grinding of metal cables. Hayden saw the elevator. Cindy was inside. She punched the wall, and the elevator closed.
He was too late.
Damn it.
The "down" arrow was lit. There were three floors to the building, and she was heading to the basement.
You’re not getting far.
Hayden punched the elevator button and waited for his turn. When it opened, he stepped onto the crumbles of dirt spread out on the floor.
That’s strange.
Hayden didn't care.
He craved Cindy's skin.
“I’ll find you, Cindy. You're trapped down there with nowhere to go."
Hayden pushed the button for the basement level.
Phone Call
Boyd picked up the phone. "Yeah."
That douche bag voice replied, "Mr. Broman, it's good to be talking to you."
“How do you know I’m here?” Boyd scanned the room, looking for a camera. “Are you here in the facility? I thought you were on your way to pick up Hayden at the hospital?”
“The corpses surrounded the place. They’re smart. We can’t get in, and besides, Hayden is no longer in there. No loss. He's still alive."
“Dr. Glover might be dead, or do you give a shit?”
“It’s better the good doctor is gone. We can’t pull him out, and never could. He was doing important work. They have to be controlled, but there’s nothing you can do about that, so let’s move on.
"The offer’s still good, if you’re interested. Hayden, in exchange for your freedom.”
Boyd decided to play along. He had no option, really. "Okay, I'll get him. I need some time, but I'll capture the bastard. The deal's still on."
“I’ll check in with you in an hour then. And don't worry, Mr. Broman. I’ll call you.”
“How will you know where I am?”
“We keep an eye on our facility, believe me. Don't worry about how we keep track of you.”
“So this was a military base, or used to be one, right?”
The man disregarded the question. "Hayden is inside the building you are in right now. I’m sure you can apprehend him. Inside the desk, you’ll find a set of keys. It can start one of the vehicles parked outside the office. There’s a dock door that opens and closes like a garage. You drive through the corpses outside and reach the front station, and I’ll have someone pick you up. And then you’re a free man.”
Free to die, is what you mean.
It sounds so easy.
"Okay, I’ll meet you at the station with Hayden."
The commander hung up the phone. "Very good."
Boyd searched the desk as instructed. He discovered a set of keys next to a pack of cigarettes and a plastic lighter. He stowed them all in his back pocket.
A booming voice of pain shook him from the moment. Boyd stormed out of the room and into a larger corridor. Military vehicles occupied the room. So many, he was concerned how long it would take to find a match for the key.
Cindy scrambled into an elevator. Boyd saw what she was running from: Hayden. The elevator closed. Cindy was safe.
This moment was between him and the cannibal.
Boyd crept from bumper to bumper, skulking silently. Hayden waited at the elevator, massaging his groin. Boyd assumed his junk had taken a pounding, and he knew who'd delivered the damage.
The elevator re-opened, and when Hayden entered, Boyd sprang to attack. He drove his knee into his pelvis, taking advantage of what Cindy had already started.
“Thought it was bad enough you were hit in the balls once, huh?”
Hayden’s mouth unhinged. He crumbled to his knees, face clenching, eyes shriveling like prunes. Boyd seized the man’s greasy hair and drove the palm of his hand into his nose. The distinct crack of bone inspired blood. Hayden’s eyes fluttered closed from the impact. He fell unconscious.
Boyd eyed the sprawled out body and nudged Hayden's ribs, double-checking if his assailant was down for good.
“If you’re faking, I’ll stomp out your swollen balls, Hayden.”
The elevator doors opened.
The air in the box smelled of fecundity.
He listened and heard nothing. Whatever was the source of the smell, Cindy was down there alone.
Boyd closed the elevator and hit the button for the basement. When the doors opened again, he couldn't make out anything beyond the threshold. Everything was pitch black. Boyd searched his back pocket for the lighter, and flicked it on. The little flame did little to show the way, except to show the wall beside him and the panel of switches. When he reached out to flick them on, something skirted behind him.
Boyd whipped around to meet what snuck up behind him. A crash to his face knocked him down. His ears rang with razor sharp piercing whistles. He fought through the blinding agony to roll onto his back, arms up, hands fists ready to challenge the attacker.
“Oh God, it’s you!”
Boyd instantly recognized Cindy’s voice.
“Christ, what did you hit me with?”
"A chair. I didn’t expect you here. I thought you were dead. How did you get in here?"
“Let’s say climbing all those trees as a kid paid off.” Boyd smiled despite the constant throb in his skull. “I jumped onto the roof, and there was an access door into the building. I couldn't leave you alone with that son-of-a-bitch."
Cindy helped him to his feet.
She gave him a hug.
“I’m so glad you’re not dead. Thank God for you, Boyd.”
He smiled at her words. “We’re getting out of here soon; I just need to gather my bearings." He pointed at the wall panel. "Let’s turn on the lights and see what’s down here.”
Cindy was startled by the notion.
“We have to know what we’re up against. I'll protect you. We must know what's in here."
Boyd flipped the switches.
The darkness turned to light.
Rows of funeral caskets were piled high by the hundreds. They were strewn in broken, disorganized heaps. They occupied half the room, so numerous.
Boyd stepped further into the corridor. The floor was softened by a thick layer of black soil. Turning his ey
es across everything, Boyd's attention was flagged by the clipboard nailed into the wall. The pages read names and dates that ranged from the early 1980’s to less than five years ago.
Cindy gasped at what was at the back of the room.
Rows of work tables, poked and scarred from use, formed a square. From the aisles between the tables, naked corpses hung with hooks driven between their shoulder blades, the blades themselves suspended from the ceiling rafters.
The corpses were withered husks. Human limbs were scattered about the floor in a sloppy chopping block. Many of the pieces were flaccid and leathery. A plastic tub of human heads rested on top of one of the tables, and in another, a heap of desiccated organs.
Many heads were strapped into vices on the worktables. They were in varying conditions of abuse. Eyes were missing, and many had lobes of their brains removed. The hemispheres were decayed to the point whatever research had been committed was rendered pointless and morbid.
Boyd regretted turning on the lights now.
Cindy cried so hard, she shuttered.
He kept canvassing the room and happened on a metal chute—similar to a laundry chute at a house—on the far left wall. Skeletal bodies were sprawled out by the dozens on the ground, dropped down from on high. Cindy was repelled by the sight and retreated to the elevator.
“I-I-I have to leave this room right now, Boyd! I'm not feeling so good all of the sudden."
Boyd followed after her.
He too felt queasy.
Hayden remained on the elevator floor, unconscious. Deciding it was best to leave, Boyd hit the button for the first floor. The elevator doors closed in response.
Cindy quivered in his arms. “This isn’t right. They stole dead bodies from their graves. Who do they fucking think they are?"
Boyd skipped the morality problem and returned to the challenge of escaping the perimeter.
“We have to work with what we got, Cindy. I have Hayden in my custody. We can finally do something to get the fuck out of here.”
He worked out the keys in his pocket from the office. “This goes to one of the vehicles upstairs. There’s a garage opening, and we’ll drive up to the front station, and they’ll come for Hayden. Whatever happens, we’ll face them, and together, maybe we can escape. I don’t know how, but we have to try something. I might have an idea, but first," he removed the lighter and the pack of cigarettes from his pocket, “care for one?”
“Why not?” She enjoyed a drag. “Ah, that’s good.”
Boyd lit one for himself and relished a pull. "What doesn’t kill you only makes you more pissed off at everybody, right? You should be proud of yourself, Cindy. You kicked Hayden in the balls, didn't you?"
Cindy smiled.
"Well, I kneed him in the groin inside the elevator. Then, I probably broke his nose afterwards."
"Nice. Fucker deserves it. The sicko."
The elevator opened. Boyd moved to the huddle of vehicles. How showed Cindy the big ring of keys. “This might take some time.”
The din from outside continued, the walls resonating and drumming with the impact of determined fists.
Cindy asked, “So what’s really your game plan for escaping?”
He continued trying the keys on the Land Rover. "I got another phone call not too long ago. Back in those offices near the front of the perimeter, the same guy had called me before, the man who said he’d meet us at the front station if we delivered Hayden. I believe someone will be there to take Hayden, but they'll leave us there. Probably kill us.
"I say we negotiate with them. The dead beings are everywhere, so there won’t be time for us to talk much. I say we hide Hayden somewhere, and when they come for him, we make them take us out of the facility first. And we need a way to get to the front of the facility. Those things won't just let us through. There's embalming fluid jugs upstairs. We can stuff rags in them and set the place on fire, maybe blaze a trail between them and us, and hopefully buy as much time as we can.”
“Dr. Glover had the best plan,” Cindy said. "He had the card key, and we could've walked out the front door, no problem."
The loss of Dr. Glover was a bad hit. He was crucial to their escape, and they had barely known him for more than two hours.
“There's nothing we can do about him, unfortunately. I can’t be certain if negotiations will fly, but we can’t let the opportunity slip without trying. Hayden's the key. And with the embalming fluid jugs, if we’re surrounded by those dead people, at least we have a chance at holding up somewhere and staying alive. That's my best plan. Sorry. It's all I got."
“What if we don’t escape anyway? We lose Hayden, and then we're stuck here for sure."
Boyd knew the conflicts of any path they chose. “If that happens, we could find Glover's body, and the key."
He tried other keys on the same vehicle.
Finally, it started up.
A plum of smoke coughed out of the exhaust. “All right, we’ve got a set of wheels.”
Boyd picked up Hayden by the arms and lugged him into the back seat, laying him on his side. There were no cuffs or rope to bind him in place, so he had to leave him be.
Boyd threw the back door shut.
“I almost forgot, shit. Let me run upstairs to get embalming fluid. He rushed to the elevator and grabbed Hayden’s knife that had fallen onto the floor. He offered it to Cindy.
“Hold this, and if he wakes up, point it at him. If he moves to hurt you, stab him.”
Cindy clutched the knife unsure of herself. When she eyed Hayden’s dead skin mask through the back window, her mouth bent in determination.
"If he tries anything, I'll stab his ass."
A Nice Moment
Boyd used the elevator instead of the stairs. He entered the same darkened room as before. Wasting no time, he lifted four jugs of embalming fluid from a well-stocked shelf and placed them inside the elevator. Taking a lab coat to use for scraps, he returned to the elevator and ripped it into six bolts. Boyd returned to the first floor, rushing back to Cindy.
He gave her instructions.
“I want you to open a container, douse one of these pieces of cloth in the fluid, and close the lid with a part of the cloth hanging out. We’ll light the cloth, throw the jug, and when the glass shatters, fire will spread. It's simple. Besides, I don’t remember guns doing much to them except slowing them down. Barely. I’ve shot one of them in the head before, and it did jack shit."
Cindy was overwhelmed by the task at hand. “I want this to be over. Everything’s against us, Boyd. How can we beat them?"
Boyd hugged her. “Our chances aren’t great, I know, but we’re still fighting. That’s all we can do."
“You’re the reason I’m alive." She whispered in his ear. “I know you’re married, but we might not make it. Would you mind...kissing me?”
Boyd ran his hands through her hair, parting the strands that blocked her eyes. Their lips met in that moment. Cindy's body unclenched, broken from a spell. Her hands wrapped around his back. She wouldn’t let him go. They kissed for many moments before they broke it off. Finally.
“You’re a good kisser.”
“Might be my last kiss, right? I did my best."
They moved on, entering the Land Rover. Cindy peered over the backseat at Hayden's body. He was still unconscious.
"Shit, I forgot something."
Boyd stopped the car near the garage door. He forgot someone had to open it.
“I’m going to have to open the garage and run back into the car. Brace yourself, I’ll be fast. Just sit tight. Everything will be fine."
He backed up the car to give him a chance to pick up speed. Boyd imagined he'd be ramming through the dead.
"Okay, I'm opening it!"
Cindy gave him a hesitant thumb's up.
Striking the control panel, Boyd opened the barrier between them and the dead.
Outside
They believed he was unconscious, and Hayden planned to keep it that wa
y.
Boyd leapt into the driver's seat, slamming on the gas. They sped through the garage door opening. Charging forward like a battering ram, the vehicle shattered torsos to a steady musical beat.
THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!
Fragments of faces came and went in blurs of moment as did twisting bodies. Their parts were spring-ejected from their ripe bodies in a cyclone of broken anatomy. Other corpses were thrown over the roof or crunched under the wheels.
Boyd picked up speed, surging faster, separating the vehicle from the wall of bodies.
Hayden waited until they cleared more distance before stealing the knife in Cindy's hand.
Boyd studied the rearview mirror. Many of the dead in their wake were strewn about the ground, their bodies broken, their arms and legs unable to lift themselves back up.
He slowed down, confident he had a moment to think.
“What are you doing?” Cindy cried out. “They'll catch up. Keep going, keep going!"
“Light one of those jugs. There’s at least two gallons of that stuff in each one. It’ll slow them down. It’ll be less of them on our tail later.”
Cindy struggled to flick the lighter. She was nervous with jitters. “They’re starting to get up."
The undamaged bodies were ten yards out. They were an ever expanding group coming in to swallow them up.
Boyd pounded his fist against the steering wheel. “Come on, come on! Light it!”
She lost her grip, and the lighter dropped between her feet. Cindy lowered to retrieve it. She reached to scoop it on the carpet. Once in her grasp, she flicked it once, twice, three times before the flame was produced.