by Alan Spencer
He clutched the blade of the paper cutter, ready for anyone’s approach.
Hayden sprinted up the block, needing a better view of the newcomers. He hid behind an oak tree. He was half a block from the line of gunners. The dead beings were pummeled with bullets, their bodies dancing and jigging. Flesh and blood were spitting out the exit wounds, but it didn’t hold them back.
A man oversaw the shooting gallery, the only person not firing a weapon. His head was shaved, and like the others, there was no decoration on their uniform, just a black fatigue and a bulletproof vest.
“Only headshots,” the man shouted through his gas mask, the words muffled but audible. “It'll break their skulls in two. It won't kill them. Only slow them down. They’re approaching fast, keep firing! Try and avoid killing too many. They're expensive and worth more than your life."
They were protecting an investment. The firing squad was here for him, Hayden understood. The cops finally discovered more of his bodies, and they wanted answers. He’d have to teach them a lesson, so they’d stay out of the perimeter. There were ten of them, he counted, and Hayden had many places to hide and assault them from.
Inspired by the idea of human dismantling, Hayden crawled underneath a burned up car for an even closer view, knowing he was in danger if he stayed out in the open for too long in one spot.
One of the gunners cried out, releasing a series of gut-wrenching howls. Hayden pinpointed the victim. It was one of the team with a knife handle jutting out hilt-deep in his eye. A dead being had launched it from a quarter of a block’s distance. The man plummeted to the ground, dead after five more vocal spasms.
The row of gunners were growing nervous, their confident gait diminishing into caution. Canisters of tear gas were shot into the crowd, obscuring the air with a thick smog. Hayden’s eyes became bleary, his throat rejecting the tainted air.
“BREAK UP, AND WE’LL MEET BACK HERE IN FIFTEEN MINUTES. SCAVENGE FOR THE BASTARD! WE NEED HAYDEN ALIVE."
The smog kept Hayden's stride a guess. He wasn’t sure where he stumbled, his eyes watering and blind. He took shelter in the nearest building. Hayden tripped over a shelf of canned items, falling onto a waxen floor.
He was inside of a grocery store.
Hayden got up to his feet. He passed the freezer section and burst through a set of double doors. Hayden was met by a blast of frigid air. It was dark everywhere, but his eyes finally adjusted after a time. A door to his left led into a meat locker. It was empty, except for jangling hooks hanging from the ceiling. He tried another door across from the meat locker, and entered a room with meat slicers, a chest-high meat grinder, and beyond that room, a glass display case designed to showcase meat to customers.
“I should’ve found this place a long time ago,” Hayden whispered, astonished at the tool selection on the wall. “Now I can grind these bastards down to the finest grain of meat."
A shuffle at the head of the store drew him to duck behind the counter.
“I think I know where he's at,” an exasperated voice announced into a walkie. “I’ll find the sick fuck. I'm on it."
Hayden hid in the meat locker. Crouched behind a stack of crates, he stared at the frost-covered door and waited for it to open. The man’s steps outside came closer, a hurried shuffle that slowed. The rays of a flashlight cased the area like a miniature searchlight.
Come on in.
The handle turned.
The door squeaked open.
Yes, yes, just walk on in.
The solider wrinkled his face at the hooks. The man didn’t understand he was in a meat locker. The light’s beam roamed up and down the room, and it would soon cross Hayden's hiding spot. Hayden didn’t give the man the chance to locate him.
Hayden clutched a hook and shoved it in the man’s direction. It swung forward on a chain, rattling with increasing momentum, smacking him in the face with a bone breaking THACK! The man folded onto the ground sputtering blood from a mouth of broken teeth.
My precious lamb. Let me reduce you to veil.
Hayden picked him by under his arms and dragged him into the butcher’s display area. He stripped the man of his black garb from top to bottom. The last item he peeled off was the man's boots and socks.
The man was bright white on the floor, curled up, pathetic and naked. He kept shuttering in pain, half the bones in his face shattered. The cleaver Hayden selected from the butcher’s block could easily sever through bone. Leaning down, becoming the killing shadow, Hayden hacked the blade in sharp swinging motions. The body moaned with each strike, with every muscle and bone giving with each new slice.
Hayden removed the arm from the shoulder socket and dropped the appendage into the grinder. The spout spat out lines of meat the size of straws. Fresh ground chuck. He sampled a handful, the meat melting on his tongue.
Next, Hayden chose a smaller knife, one designed to flense meat from bones in fine strokes. Hayden sawed the flesh from the man’s face and carved down to his neck and continued around the chest, then to the navel. He circled back up to the face again. It was difficult to peel the layer of skin without breaking it, but he managed to remove the skin from his face and midsection. Hayden stripped off his old flesh and tossed it across the room. He dressed himself in the new skin.
He clutched the cleaver in one hand, and the skinning blade in the other.
Richard spoke to him.
Fear is the key, Hayden. It conquers people’s ability to fight back against you. Scare them, and you will win.
Hayden picked up the remains of the solider and lugged him into the meat locker. Hayden would have time to work the rest of the meat from his body later, but for now, he had other obligations. There were nine more like the dead bastard outside.
Before he left the room, he eyed the M-16 that had fallen onto the ground.
Not painful enough. I don’t like it.
Hayden walked to the front meat display counter to check the man’s clothing for anymore weapons. He located a grenade and tucked it into his pocket. Trying to decide what else to do, Hayden spotted a fire exit and opened it, swiftly exiting the grocery store. The din of the beings filtered throughout the sky. Their lust for death had been re-anointed. They were everywhere, echoing from on high and low. Hayden was convinced his side was winning.
Pleased by the idea of winning, he raised the cleaver to reflect the starlight.
It was time to hunt.
Gunpoint
Cindy and Boyd watched the truck-load of persons at work. Boyd speculated on where the truck could’ve come from and decided the first place was deeper in the military base. “I wonder how well guarded the rest of the military base is? The entrance I came in from was an iron door, but this other place could be a base of operations.”
“What do we do next then?”
“FREEZE!”
Boyd cocked his head at the command. One of the men from outside aimed an M-16 at them. They studied the gunner, and he stared back behind a gas mask, anonymous. The faint scent of tear gas exuded from outside.
“Hands in the air. Boyd Broman, up against the wall!”
Cindy was frozen, her eyes drawn to Boyd for an answer. He didn’t have one. He was too hurt to attack, making hand-to-hand combat out of the question. He’d easily be taken down, and with a machine gun at his back, the choices were limited. Boyd had no option but to face the wall.
“Hands at your back!”
Cindy pleaded with the stranger. “We’re only trying to make it out." In tears, "What do you want with us?”
“Hayden’s no longer in your custody, and we need him. That means you two are useless. Your purpose here is over.”
“Does that mean I can leave?” Boyd asked, trying to appeal to his humanity. “Am I going back to prison, or are you shooting me in the back of the head?”
The gunner's silence answered that question.
“You can’t do this to us,” Cindy begged. “W-we didn’t do anything to you. You’re shoving people in h
ere and murdering them. Why are you keeping these things alive?”
Boyd was facing the wall when it happened. He missed the short-lived battle. The man with the M-16 was struck down to his knees, then the gun was kicked from his hands.
“Take your gas mask off, asshole.”
It was Dr. Glover. He had lost his lab coat, and he was bleeding from both forearms and his chest. His flame thrower was secure at his back, the nozzle aimed at the fallen man.
The man did as he was told looking down the nozzle of the flame thrower. Once the mask was off, a man in his forties stared back at them.
“Bastards think because you’re Uncle Sam’s boys, you can knock people around without an explanation?—is that it? Just how you locked me up here for over ten years and forgot I had a life?—a family! You never cared. The government doesn’t have the right to do this to innocent people, even to guilty people!”
Cindy's face lit up with joy. “You’re alive.”
“You almost lost me," Dr. Glover said, "but they couldn’t kill me. I have to see my wife again, but first, let’s have a conversation with this asshole.”
“I’m not saying anything to you. You’ll have to kill me.”
Dr. Glover shot out a ball of fire at the man’s legs. His shoes crackled with orange heat. Forced to kick and flail to put them out, he was convinced, “Okay—okay! Shit! What do you want to know?”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Dale Edwards. I was in the marines for twenty-five years. I'm too old for combat, but I’m not too old to aid in terrorist situations, and in this case, government research.”
Dr. Glover was pleased his scare tactic worked. “What were your orders, Edwards?”
“We were supposed to find Boyd Broman and apprehend Hayden Grubaugh, but they didn’t warn us about what was in here. Commander Stapleton briefed us outside the facility, said a group of criminals were inside trying to wreck the training base and the research facilities.”
Dr. Glover asked a harder question. “Were you sent here to kill Boyd Broman?”
Edwards swallowed hard and looked back and forth from Boyd to the doctor. “Yes, shoot to kill—especially anyone in the way of apprehending Hayden.”
“So you knew that Hayden wasn’t really dead?”
“Yes, and I know a little bit about this place,” Edwards admitted. “It's for research mostly, and it used to be a training base, but it’s been closed for years. Off-limits. I jumped at the chance to see what went on in here, but now—”
“—you want the hell out, right?”
Edwards was about to continue, and then the gun blasts sounded. The man was shot in the head, the back end spattering the wall in chunky gobs. Boyd was driven to his knees and another operative bounded into the hall way. Dr. Glover showered him with the flame thrower, and the figure was instantly enveloped in fire. The man unleashed a blood-curdling scream, howling, throwing his body forward, trying to dodge the flames that had already enveloped him. The M-16 released a burst of ammunition. The walls were filled with holes, and Cindy caught one in the gut.
“NO!” Boyd cried out. He picked up Edwards’ M-16 and shot the man dead. “This can’t be happening!”
Cindy was on the floor, bleeding above her navel. Her hands hovered around the red circle, her face a frown. Panicked tears leaked down her eyes.
“Hold on, Cindy—you hold on.”
“I can’t get up, Boyd. It hurts so much.”
Dr. Glover canvassed the hallways for anymore opposition. “We can’t stop the bleeding, and the bullet will have to be removed. We have nothing to perform the job.”
“Shut up, there has to be a way. Come on, think about it. What can we do? I’m not giving up on her. You can go to hell with that talk!”
They didn’t have a moment to respond to Cindy’s wounds. Bodies crashed into the post office and flooded the hall. Cindy had crawled into the storage room and closed the door. The lock turned before Boyd could stop her.
Boyd pounded the door. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Leave me, you can’t go on with me. I can’t walk, Boyd. Don’t die on my account.”
“Please, don’t do this. Cindy!”
Dr. Glover attempted to counter the incoming dead. The flame thrower coughed out nothing. Empty.
“Shit, it’s out of fuel!”
“See, you have to run,” Cindy reiterated. “You don’t have a choice. Escape, promise me that, Boyd. Take your wife and kids, and go to Mexico. Tell someone about this place that can do something about it. Destroy this trap; destroy everything."
Tears welled in Boyd's eyes. “I can’t leave you.”
The figures closed in, and Dr. Glover retreated. “She’s right. It can’t be helped. I have the key card, and we’ll get out of here. This place will be destroyed.”
“I can't go with you." Cindy's voice was fading. “I’m too hurt to walk, or even be carried. You must go. You must! I’m sorry. You’re my friend, and as a friend, I’m telling you to run.”
The dead aimed to corral Boyd. He literally had no choice but to run or be ravaged by them.
“I’ll come back for you. Keep pressure on the wound. I’m not giving up on you!"
He left it at that. There was no choice, and he hated it. Boyd located the book exit and ran like hell.
Meeting up with Dr. Glover outside, the doctor showed him the way to escape.
Reduced to Pieces
Hayden wandered into the street convinced the band of armed men had dispersed. They were looking for him, and from what Boyd had explained, they would take him alive. You couldn’t interrogate a corpse, Hayden reasoned, planning on dying if he was forced to leave this place.
A huddle of the dead beings surrounded the middle of the street. Hayden stood among them. He watched scalpels and knives sever the skin from the chest down to the belly button of one of the fallen soldiers. The long intestines were uncoiled and stolen, slithering between many grasps before a winner came of it. The limbs were then wrenched from the dead body with the awkward pop and dislocation of bones. The torso was pried open from so many angles, only two sections of vertebrae and broken sternum bones remained. Finished with the body, the dead group spread into alleyways, underneath cars, and in gutter crawlspaces to utilize their take.
Reams of gunfire attracted his eyes to the bowling alley. The orange flickers revealed two men in black suits back-to-back as they shot up their attackers. A pair of the dead loomed near the two gunners. They each clutched a coil of barbed wire between them. They drew the barbs taught between each other. The horde of bodies parted to allow the wire carriers through. One of the men’s M-16 went dry, and soon after, the other gunner came up empty too. The men each clutched the knife they unsheathed from their belts. Their faces were glued in dismay; they knew their final moment approached, and that they would suffer greatly.
The wire-carriers closed in on the victims. Together, the dead looped the barbed weapon around the men’s midsections multiple times. The men were unable to maneuver an inch without slicing or cutting themselves deeper. Their faces gushed blood in horizontal slashes, their arms and midsections leaking red in a heavy fervent. The two bodies were wrapped up so tight in the wire, they were ripped into a dozen pieces. The remains were scattered, assorted, and account for in thirty seconds.
The military vehicle at the end of the street had been disassembled. A slumped over body remained in the driver’s seat with both of his legs missing. A set of gnarled hands reached out to drag the rest of the corpse onto the street. Another body was impaled through the chest onto a street pole. Four corpses were playing tug of war with the arms and legs.
Hayden considered returning to the grocery store to tend to the body in the meat locker, when he caught a flicker of movement behind the bowling alley. It was Boyd and another person that was a stranger to him. Hayden clutched onto his cleaver and skinning blade and ran along the side wall of the bowling alley. The two were moving out of town center and closin
g in on a bricked station. They had good cover; none of the dead beings had spotted them.
But not for long.
The dead group shifted their focus.
Heads turned up at the two runners when they briefly darted into their line of vision. The stares soon turned into a mass exodus up the street. Hayden clutched the bulge in his side pocket, the grenade. The idea of lobbing it at Broman sent pleasant images across his mental screen. But it wasn’t good enough. He craved torture. Boyd would be alive for weeks on end, while Hayden removed toes, fingers, genitals, and ate them before his horrified eyes. So Hayden put the grenade away.
Hayden kept watching the two men.
What the man with Boyd did halted Hayden in his tracks.
Boyd struggled to keep up with the doctor's fast movements. Cindy was locked in a closet at the post office. She was going to let herself die. Boyd would never be satisfied with the outcome, no matter what reasons for their hasty departure.
“This place is locked down,” Dr. Glover said to Boyd. "Beyond the barrier gate, there are more gates and clearance checked areas. I have the key card, but they won’t let us just walk out. No way in hell."
“Then how do we escape?”
Dr. Glover rested against the police station wall. They’d been running awhile without a break. Boyd peered down at town center, noticing the dead walk in their direction. “Shit. They see us.”
“I know. We have to draw them through the gates. We must let them out. It’s our only cover. Those things will be one huge distraction, and then we escape. Don't you see we can't just walk out of here on our own?"
“But what if they escape and reach innocent people?—you can’t!”
"Those guards will take care of it," Dr. Glover barked. "They are trained professionals. Besides, we have no choice, Boyd! Think about it."
A plan had been brewing in the doctor’s mind, Boyd finally understood. Yes, Boyd wanted to escape, but he couldn’t justify the consequences.