I rushed into the kitchen past the front counter. There I was met by four or five teens, looking at me with the strangest faces. They seemed not there, and when I yelled at them to get the fuck out, they only glanced up slowly, still working, slathering sauce, pitching peperoni, manning the ovens, slicing up pies and putting them onto trays or in boxes. The entire operation seemed like clockwork, and nothing was going to stop the workers, like drones, from completing their tasks.
I didn’t have time to worry about them. Sounds of struggle. Things crashing. Monroe’s desperate groans. A mortal combat was being waged somewhere in the far reaches of the restaurant, and my feet took me on a frantic mission to help. The going got narrow past the kitchen, a tiny corridor with stacked boxes and large cans of tomato paste, mushrooms, pineapples and olives on either side. The stockroom, but more like a stock hallway, leading to a left turn, then a right, then another left. Finally the passage opened up to an area of shelves. That’s where I found Monroe.
He had a gash on his face and another on his head. He looked dead, but I couldn’t tell, and I didn’t have the chance to find out. As I came up on the detective, I noticed several other things. For one, the place was a sopping mess. Blood everywhere. On the walls. On the floor and inch thick. I was wading in the stuff, and it made my guts turn inside out. But what made me even sicker was the sight of a plastic tub on a stainless steel counter next to a meat grinder. Inside the tub, spilling over the sides, was this…meat. Whatever it was, it wiggled and squirmed as if hundreds of tiny worms were inside. I noticed there were several of these tubs, all filled to the hilt, all labeled: Pizza Sausage.
I have no words to describe the terrible ideas that ran through my head at that moment. What was this kid doing? I can tell you this, I didn’t have time to stand around and conjecture for long, because, as I was scanning the so-called sausage, my eye caught movement, and when I turned I saw the door to a large walk-in freezer click closed, and right away knew where Neil had gone. I knew I needed something to help me against this dangerous adversary, so I took the gun out of Monroe’s hand and gathered up my determination for one last stand.
I was going to do it, finally and conclusively. Kill Neil like I should have done at the very beginning, when the tainted meat had first turned him into a blind, raging killer. With a deep breath, I pulled the latch, and swung open the door, and what I saw paled in comparison to anything I’d witnessed inside Gramma’s freezer. Instead of a hole plunging down into the unseen depths, this was a tunnel, never-ending and crammed with hanging corpses, skinned and bled and hooked like sides of beef. But I could tell they were human by the sizes and shapes. The tunnel went on and on, and so did the bodies, all swinging and creaking and dripping. My instant feeling was revulsion, and I had the overwhelming desire to turn and run. I was about to, when two hands, powerful and quick, pushed me in.
I fell on my face, and in an instant found myself almost inside the freezer, surrounded by dead meat, but not so dead. Hands, legs, feet, even heads with hungry mouths and teeth sharper than nails dug into me, pulling me in. I fought so hard, but my strength was nothing compared to the animated corpses. I was able to turn and face the door, which was closing. That’s when I saw Neil, peering in and smiling with this cruel smile.
“This is what you get,” he said. “Your punishment for destroying the first freezer.”
I lifted my hand and pointed the gun, but his reflexes were quicker than a cat’s, and he slapped the revolver away so hard it bounced off the floor and across the room. Then he pushed and pushed and pushed. I felt a hundred hands and fingers and toes, curled up around my shirt, my pants, snagging on anything they could grasp. Neil’s eyes were two flaming embers. His cackles only served to further his metamorphosis from a normal, pimply-faced, horny teenager to the biggest menace in the state of Oregon, quite possibly in the world.
I scratched. I clawed. I did anything and everything in my power to keep a foothold on solid ground. I felt the tug of the dismembered appendages, and also felt the doorframe, which I wedged my elbow against as my lower half was dragged inside. My feet started burning, and I felt a terrible sensation, like countless little mouths, nibbling and gnawing at me, tearing away the fabric in my jeans, sinking into my flesh. My screams were met by laughter. Neil’s laughter. I was on the floor, with my elbow stopping me from going in completely, and pleaded with him for mercy.
“Did you give your freezer mercy? You have no idea what you’ve done! No idea. It’s a good thing we’re…resourceful,” he tapped on the wall of the great walk-in freezer. “With this, we’ll start over. A pretty good step up, if we don’t say so ourselves,” then he set his fiery sights on me again. “I guess we should thank you. But…NO!” and he shoved me with his foot. I felt my elbow-hold slipping away. This was it. It was over for me. Finally. After all this, it’s a teenage kid who gets me. My heart ached for my Shannon and my Brenton. Would they be safe from this terrible curse? Would Neil somehow get them too? It was killing me to be killed by this kid, but he had me, and I was sinking into his web. One more push, and I knew he’d dislodge my only hold on safety. One more push of his powerful foot. And he did it. Only he didn’t. Just as he started to, a Pop! jolted him forward, and a small red stain on his white apron became bigger and bigger. He dabbed his own blood and looked at it, looked at me, then toppled into the freezer. Instantly, all the hands and feet and legs and arms that had me in their clutches let go and seized Neil. To my great surprise, and great fortune, the minions of Hell didn’t care where their food came from, even if it meant the death of their servant.
Monroe, hobbling, held his head with one hand while pointing his gun with the other. He saw my predicament and helped me to my feet. Then he saw inside the freezer and his face lost all color. The howling. The moaning. The fluctuating sea of limbs tearing Neil apart. It took only a few seconds for the masses to fully dismember the kid, and after they did, the hungry focus once again returned to me and the Detective. An army of fingers inched along on the floor, leaving a trail of red slime as they crawled over the threshold and into the stockroom. Monroe cried in terror. I wasted not another second and slammed the freezer door on them, squishing several like slugs.
Monroe’s wide eyes traveled to the counter, to the tubs labeled Pizza Sausage. Like the severed fingers, the soppy meat had a life of its own, quivering and bubbling.
“What is this shit!” he wouldn’t look away from the living mystery meat.
“I told you. This freezer is cursed,” I searched for something, anything that could help me. Tons of pipes and hoses ran along the walls and ceiling. There was a meat grinder, and lots of restaurant supplies. “This thing needs to be destroyed. Now!”
“First thing we need to do is get the people out of this building…come on!”
Monroe led me, basically on one foot, back toward the kitchen. I figured we’d get everyone out, then Monroe could get someone in there, a demolition team or something, to destroy that freezer. Blow it to kingdom come. But when we got to the kitchen, those thoughts became a distant memory. As soon as we rounded the corner and made it to the food prep area, I knew we were in trouble. I guess when a knife comes flying at you, somehow you just know these things.
“What’s wrong with these people!” Monroe shielded his face with his elbow when an employee flung a pizza pan at him. I could tell he wanted to exercise some restraint, but a pizza cutter came flying next. He bent and evaded the blade and shot the attacker in the chest. As the kid fell, I looked in his eyes, puzzled by what was happening. Then it hit me when I saw the plastic tubs. One on a prep counter. Another next to the ovens. Neil’s special sausage.
“They ate that meat,” I pointed, but didn’t need to. Monroe saw the tubs, saw the gurgling, crawling sausage, then turned and shot the next kitchen worker, this one about to attack me with a large iron pipe. I saw it coming and ducked out of the way just as the kid dropped. I hated to see these kids die, but by the looks of them, I noticed something differe
nt, something I hadn’t really noticed before. They had the same distant and evil look my gramma had. Same with my mom. But they also had something else. Almost like they were…zombies.
I couldn’t dwell on it long. A commotion in the dining area had both me and Monroe rushing out front. There, we both encountered a scene of total mayhem. The idea of zombies hit home hard when I allowed myself to take in the reality right in front of us. Like I said before, Pep R Onni’s was a big place, and on this day it had quite a brisk business going. Not record capacity, though it was close. A hundred people easy, and they were all either killing or being killed.
People literally eating other people, pouncing on their backs, tearing at their necks and throats and even feet with their teeth. The screams of terror mixed with moans of agony were too much to bear, but I knew instinctively I had to try and help those who weren’t fiery-eyed with the desire for blood. Some of the possessed had already taken down their prey, and were either gnawing on the twitching corpses or dragging them toward the back, where the freezer, deep in the recesses of the restaurant, growled as loud as a jumbo jet.
I didn’t have to search or think about the cause of such madness. The evidence was all around me. Tables, many overturned, with half eaten pizza pies. Some with peperoni, some with olives, and some with that revolting and now obviously tainted sausage. It was everywhere. Not on every pizza, which explained why some people were perfectly normal, aside from their panicked states. People were running to the exit, but that was getting clogged by the stampede.
Monroe acted fast, shooting a guy in the head just before he took a fatal bite out of a woman’s carotid artery. Another shot and he downed another possessed freak, mouth frothing red, a dead, malevolent stare on his face. The detective fired until the gun was out of bullets, and then he threw it at a teenage girl with pigtails and the look of death in her eyes. It hit her square in the temple, knocking her cold. We’d managed to take out three of them, plus the ones in the kitchen, but that was barely a dent. There were still too many of them to contain, and, though the exit began to clear, people were still in danger of being taken into the back where the demonic freezer awaited.
Monroe grabbed the hand of a crying little girl and then pushed two more people who were clearly not a part of the homicidal crew.
“Come on! Let’s go!”
“Wait!” I dug in my heels despite the carnage, despite the mindless killers closing in. “I have to end this.”
“What the hell are you going to do?”
My mind raced as I looked around, not one clue as to how to destroy the monstrosity that was causing all of this. I just knew this was all my fault, and whether I liked it or not, it was up to me. My mind wandered on these thoughts as my eyes wandered along the ceiling, following a small line down a wall, then into the kitchen where it went to the ovens, then back down that hall to the possessed freezer itself. That was my eureka moment. I knew that line from my own cooking experience. It was a gas line.
“I have an idea,” I said. “Take these people out!”
Monroe looked at me funny, but I didn’t give him the chance to object. Like a rabbit, I ran into the kitchen, yelling and taunting the bloodsuckers and getting them to follow me instead of Monroe. I found where the gas line was connected to the ovens and disconnected one of the couplings. Then I turned up the gas on the oven that was still connected. I had to be quick. The heathens were right on my back. One of them grabbed me and tossed me to the floor like a stick. I thought they were all going to stomp me to death, but realized, luckily, I was right in front of the narrow hallway which led to the back…to the freezer.
Stumbling to my feet, I sprinted down the corridor, flinging down stacks of giant cans and buckets of sauce and anything I could reach to slow down my pursuers. A left and a right and another left and I was confronted by a horrendous sight. The sausage was bouncing like jumping beans. The freezer door was banging open and closed. A hurricane was blowing and an earsplitting howl reverberated in the tiny space. I had to clutch anything I could to avoid being vacuumed into the freezer, its gaping door groaning with hunger, yawning with evil.
The servants from Hell began to flood the room, and I knew action was needed. My last act on this planet, I thought. The gas lines ran along the ceiling, and I jumped up and stood on the counter, yanking on one with all my weight. Finally, I pulled it free and ruptured it enough so I could smell the rotten eggs.
That’s when one of the possessed goons took my ankle and pulled me to the floor. My head hit the ground hard and I almost went out. I knew what was happening, though. No doubt in my mind. He wanted to put me in the freezer, and almost got there. Somehow I kicked free, maybe it was because he thought I was out cold, I don’t know. I was lucky, though, when I ran away from the approaching horde, and huddled in the furthest corner, expecting to be torn apart limb from limb. Lucky, I say, because I saw something that filled me with hope. On the far side of that little stockroom, behind the freezer was a door. An exit.
Spilling out to the pavement, I had three killers at my feet. It took all I had to push that door closed. Right outside against the building, I found a big metal dumpster and slid it in front of the door. Good thing that huge hunk of metal was there for two reasons. First, it helped to trap those robotic murderers inside, and, second, it provided an exceptional shield when the real shit hit the fan.
My eardrums popped when the gas exploded. People told me later it created a fireball over two hundred feet high. I didn’t see that. All I saw was dust and dirt and silt, and heard the biggest detonation I’d ever heard in my life. Felt it too. The shock sent me and that dumpster rolling several feet. When it was over, and when the last of the debris had landed back on earth, I stood and surveyed the damage. Pep R Onni’s had been leveled. Nothing left of the restaurant but mangled wood and twisted metal. And nothing left of the possessed freezer but terrible memories.
15.
I found Monroe, or I should say Monroe found me, and I was relieved to learn he got so many people out before the place went up. We saved a lot of lives that day. It’s my belief we may have even saved the world. That restaurant was kid central in Beaverton, and sooner or later, who knew how many people would have come in, ate the sausage pizza, and turned into raging man-eaters? And who knew, if new freezers could be spawned, how many more hungry Hell mouths would have popped up, all of them demanding flesh? The very thought made me shiver.
The place was now swarming with emergency vehicles. Monroe wanted the EMTs to take a look at me, but they had a lot of other work to do. It was nothing, anyway. Just a few scratches.
“You’re the one they should be looking at,” I gestured at the lump on his head. Then I told him I had to go home and check on Brenton and Shannon. It was eating me up inside not knowing what had happened to them. My attempts at calling Shannon only got her voicemail, and that was making me nervous. Monroe had me promise to get myself checked out by a doctor, and was even more vehement about me coming into the station to leave a statement about the whole ordeal. I agreed, on both counts, and took off on foot.
Our street was only three blocks away, and, sprinting the whole distance, I covered the ground in no time. Gasping for breath, I hurried up the front walk and noticed something wrong right away. It was quiet. Too quiet.
The front door was unlocked, so I burst right in.
“Shannon!” was my first word, and I barely got it out before I saw the sight that would transform my life forever. All the things in my past, every single terrible thing that had happened to me, add them all up and you still wouldn’t come up with a terror more complete, more cutting to the bone than this. How should I describe it? The place was a mess. Overturned coffee table. Recliner on its side. Throw carpets upside down and bunched up along the moldings. Lamps broken, knocked this way and that. And worst of all—blood. Spatters on the walls. Pools on the floor. Streaks along the hallway. What really made my heart sink to my bowels was how low the streaks were, down at my knee
level, the perfect height for a five year old kid.
My instant reaction had me barreling into the kitchen, hating what I knew I was about to find. My subconscious took me away for one brief moment, to a time and place when none of this had happened, when the hellish events surrounding my life were but a silly dream, and me and Shannon and Brenton were a normal, happy family. But that was the fantasy. My reality was much different. That fact was verified when I took one step into the nightmarish place which used to be my kitchen. Now it was a den of demons, I knew by the chunks of human flesh scattered on the floor.
My own blood ran cold when I noticed a body under the dining table, skewed and awkward and covered in red. No mistaking my Shannon—lifeless. At the very moment I saw her, I jumped at the sound coming from our refrigerator. It wasn’t a great model. Came with the house. It had made strange sounds before, but not like this. These noises were familiar, nauseatingly, the exact same as the ones that had come from Gramma’s freezer. I knew right then what had happened, and when Brenton stepped from behind the pantry door, my worst fears came to fruition.
Freezer: The Complete Horror Series Page 15