“If they’re shipping them out,” Kyle gestured at the boxes being unloaded from the ships. “Then why are they taking them off the boats?”
I had no response, though Kyle would get his answer soon. The answer none of us wanted.
I spotted Brenton, standing on an elevated platform overlooking the warehouse floor. He didn’t say a word, but in his mannerisms, I could tell he was giving orders mentally, directing the labor. He nodded. He pointed. He narrowed his eyes, and activity would increase. And what terrifying activity it was.
Brenton nodded at the bus, and that’s when the real terror began. Demonic police dragged us out, and we were held there while the meat was unloaded on rolling carts. There were many other busses. Like us, I saw some people were still alive, and it was when one of these people started to run that I saw an opportunity to escape, so I took it. Becker was smart enough to take advantage of the distraction too. But somehow Kyle missed it. He didn’t even notice us slip away, and before I knew it, Becker and I were hiding behind a massive machine, wedged in tight and watching the gruesome events unfold.
The demon zombies dispatched the living like they were cattle. Maybe even worse, because I’ve seen people who were pretty good to their cows. These guys just took Kyle by his hair and hacked and hacked. I got the feeling it was the first time Becker had seen someone killed like that. I didn’t want to say anything, so I just kind of rubbed his shoulders and he looked at me so sadly. It made me want to cry.
When the killing was done, the feeding began. The division of labor indicated the level of organization Brenton had achieved. I could identify at least three types of workers. There were the killer/feeders. These were the servants who busied themselves with unloading the busses of their freshly slaughtered human flesh, brutally killing the ones who were still alive, then systematically slicing up the bodies and feeding them to the possessed freezers that had been put into place by the second group of workers—the movers. Then there was security. Possessed individuals milling about, looking at everything and everyone with suspicion. They were Brenton’s eyes and ears—and they were everywhere.
With the feeding finished, the next phase of their sinful operation commenced. The most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen took place right before my eyes, and, as you may guess, I’d seen more than my share of bizarre shit. I’ve described how these possessed mouths to Hell behaved when anticipating a meal, and, subsequently, when they were actually eating. Take a hungry dog, but make his barking sound like a volcano and make his greedy chomping and gulping sound more like a tidal wave cresting over a mountain, and you have what these things sounded like. Now imagine a giant warehouse filled with them. The strange part was, at first, only the ones that had been brought in from the moving trucks made noises and shook around like they were over the epicenter of a micro quake. The new units, the ones taken from the ship, were normal. But that would soon change.
I know I keep telling you each new thing I witnessed was the oddest thing I’d seen in my life. I know my story so far has been outlandish and sensational to say the least. I know all this. But it just can’t be helped. To say that what I saw next was the strangest thing most of us would ever see in our lifetimes, in a hundred lifetimes, wouldn’t be an exaggeration. In the center of a massive open area sat so many brand new refrigerator/freezer units it was impossible to count them. Set up around the circumference of the army of appliances were even more fridges, but these weren’t new. They were turned evil, confirmed hellmouths, and were shaking worse and worse, rocking hard on their bases. With each vibration, their doors opened and closed. From the gaps came floods of blood, sinew, bones and other human remains. The foaming red torrent cascaded toward the center of the warehouse, toward the spanking new and, up until now, untainted, untouched Kenmores and Frigidaires and KitchenAids. It oozed and moved like it had a life of its own, this pool of gore and festering blood. I couldn’t keep my eyes away from it. Becker, on the other hand, turned in disgust.
“Oh my Lord,” he moaned, stepping further into the dark and sitting on the floor. “Oh Lord, please no. Please let this terrible, terrible nightmare come to an end.”
But God, it seemed, either wasn’t listening or didn’t care. I must confess I was having a hard time believing in God at that moment, as dozens of possessed freezers became thousands. As the lake of blood and tissue reached the new freezers, until every single unit, silent and still just a few seconds before, was now a raging, violently hungry orifice. And when I surveyed the whole scene, really took it all in, my hope for a solution sank to an all-time low.
“You!” a forceful voice broke me from my dazed fright. In my shock, I couldn’t believe what was happening. Wouldn’t believe it. But there I was, cornered by a small group of demented Hell servants, all with that crazy glint in their stares, as if they could jump me and eat me alive right then and there. One of them grabbed me and threw me hard to the floor while another cocked his pistol and placed the barrel against my temple. I didn’t know where Becker was, and hoped he’d escaped. I had no time for that now and, though I knew I shouldn’t have been, I was shocked at the next face I saw, shoving her way through the thuggish throng.
Shannon.
15.
Shannon. My partner for so many years. My rock. My soul mate. My executioner. She tore me away from the others with a might I never thought could exist in such a feminine physique. She scowled at anyone who got near her, anyone who tried to do me any further harm. I thought for a second she had some sort of breakthrough. Maybe, somehow, she’d been able to do what I’d done and pushed into the forefront of her own mind and, even if for a brief flash, she came out, her true self, and welcomed me by saving me from certain death.
Then an uppercut to my midsection dispelled any such notion. A roar of venomous approval rose from the ranks of the damned. I bent over and wheezed in agony, and she raised her knee and clipped me in the nose, sending me to my back on the gritty concrete. Another ear-shattering thunder told me the rest of the gruesome pack was content with watching Shannon tear me apart. Limb from limb. Bit by bit. I saw the malicious irony in it all. Hell was punishing me dearly for destroying Gramma’s freezer. Killing me wasn’t enough. I saw that now. It became clear Shannon wasn’t trying to kill me. Her kicks and punches, though hard and damaging, were only meant to soften me up, break my will. No. Those unclean spirits, those demons or whatever they were didn’t want to just end my life. They wanted me to witness my fiancé and child lead the world to its bloody end.
On the floor, burning with pain from the beating Shannon was giving me, I looked up and met gazes with Brenton, who watched with the type of childlike glee only reserved for Christmas. Then moving like an Olympic gymnast, he swung from the handrail on his elevated platform, dropping, twirling three times in midair, and landing square on his feet, knees flexed, eyes right on me. In a flash he was in my face, covering a distance of at least fifty yards in a second. It was a freakish sight, and it gave me the worst feeling in the pit of my stomach, watching my five-year-old boy move like that.
“If it isn’t Daddy, running away again!” he shrieked with ironic joy. Then he announced to everyone, all the narrow, thirsty eyes glaring at me. “Daddy, you haven’t been playing fair. And because you haven’t been playing fair…” he then raised his voice and it rattled the rafters. “You get to be the first food for our new hellmouths!”
They had me detained in seconds, and carried me, literally, to the front of the behemoth of a machine I’d been hiding behind. The contraption looked like a paper slicer on steroids. A massive blade on top of another blade. The murderous gang fired it up, and, just to make sure the mechanism worked, tested it on a pretty thick piece of sheet metal. One push of a button, the hydraulics roared and SLAM! the blade came down with such a ferocity it sliced the steel like cheese. It was a terrifying machine. Later I would learn it was called a shear, which was the perfect name for such a devastating device. That sheet metal split apart like nothing, and my neck wa
s next.
The fight should have been taken out of me at that point, but I still pushed for a way out, and my words were the only things I had left. So I tried to reason with Shannon as several crazed killers shoved my head under the blades. Then one of them, a woman in plain clothes with a gruesome gleam in her smile, prepared to press the button and end my pain forever. I was certain this was the end. Before, when I’d faced certain death, I always had some hope, some reason to believe things might get better. Even if I was to die, I’d known the curse wouldn’t persist, that the world wouldn’t be ravaged by demon zombies.
This time it was different.
This time my despair was complete. In the back of my mind, the visions of a planet overrun by this terrible evil pervaded my every thought. I’d failed. The world was doomed. And my son and girlfriend’s souls were damned for eternity.
All my begging. All my pleading with Shannon for reason fell on deaf ears, and I’d actually come to accept the end, waiting for that woman to hit the switch and activate the shear.
But that didn’t happen. Instead, the most miraculous thing. A fraction of a second before the woman pressed the button, Shannon body-slammed her so hard she flew at least ten feet. In that moment I looked into Shannon’s eyes and knew. It was her. She was normal, not a craven, bloodthirsty servant. And she was there to save me. Also in that moment the possessed freaks converged on her, and our moment of salvation turned into a moment of anguish.
Then the second miracle.
An explosion of blinding light and indescribable sound rocked the place. Then another and another, timed so close together they almost sounded like one. They were flash grenades, and the sudden disturbance changed everything. Suddenly, instead of going after Shannon, and instead of holding me down, the servants to the underworld now had another, more pressing situation. Gunfire, rapid and relentless, riddled the aluminum walls, punching holes everywhere, causing mass chaos. In the confusion, I found myself unencumbered. Then I heard a command to get up and run. It was Shannon, and together we found refuge through a small doorway, down a long hall, and in a totally different part of the warehouse. Behind a stack of steel girders we got down, hiding from the screams and the explosions and the shooting.
16.
I wanted so bad to ask Shannon how she’d managed to defeat the inner demons and regain control of herself again. But the sounds of war prevented any sort of conversation. Besides, there was no time. Later she would tell me all about it, about how she did basically the same thing I’d done, which was pretend to eat the tainted meat. But at the time we barely had the occasion for a loving embrace, which she insisted upon. She held me and kissed me and then looked into my eyes so longingly. I knew what she was thinking. Brenton. I wanted to assure her everything would be okay, to tell her we’d find a way to save him. She wasn’t stupid. She knew the chances were slim.
But I wouldn’t give up, and decided if I could find a way to survey the battle, maybe, just maybe I could do something to help, or at least make sure Brenton wasn’t killed.
“Eddy, NO!” Shannon shouted when I found a window. Small and murky, it provided a view of the terminal.
“I can’t just stay here,” I told her. “I have to at least try to save him.”
She lowered her shoulders and gave me that mournful expression again. She wanted our son to be safe as much as I did, maybe even more. What I saw outside didn’t make me feel safe, for Brenton or for our own lives. Total war. Complete chaos. Guy was right. This was worse than a zombie apocalypse. These killers were relentless and brutal and bloodthirsty, yes. But they also had guns. Lots of guns. And they were shooting their guns. Who they were shooting at was a mystery at first. Then I saw someone—a man in green camo up on a scaffold—pop up, crack off a few shots, then duck down again. Then I saw another, this one in a flannel shirt with a bandana over his forehead. Twenty yards from the first, he stood, shot, then got back down quickly. This happened several times, with several different snipers in various locations around the perimeter of the pier. The demonic servants set up fortifications and returned fire. Then one group of them began to filter left, while another group went right, flanking the brave invaders.
As I witnessed the battle outside, I fought an internal battle over my mixed feelings. A part of me beamed over this ragtag team, this civil fighting force. In my own way, I knew I’d helped to spark the resistance from the beginning over the radio. These men were courageous. They were pure of heart. They were the true definition of defenders. Most of them looked older, the same age as Guy. In fact, many of them reminded me of him. Most, if not all, were likely ex-military. None of them wanted this. None of them sought out the famed but illusory glory of combat. But they all seemed still quite fit, agile, and skilled with their weapons. I was proud of this squad of veterans, but at the same time, my thoughts were fixed on Brenton, my boy, who was in the middle of this horrendous fight.
Still, I thanked God for these saviors. I knew Shannon was grateful too, but she didn’t look outside as much as I did. My sights were fixed on the action while my mind swirled with ideas, desperate to work out something, some way, some sequence of events that might spare my child’s life. As we watched, hidden away in our little bunker, we held each other and I heard Shannon mumble a prayer. I prayed too. Prayed that those brave vets who were sacrificing themselves would emerge victorious. Prayed we would get out of this alive. But most of all I prayed for Brenton. If God couldn’t spare him, maybe at least he’d spare his soul.
A lull in the activity caused Shannon to peer out, and the violence started up again, this time even more vigorous than before. The flanking groups of Hell servants succeeded in their surprise attacks, and I saw more than one of the besieging veterans lose his life in a bloody hail of bullets. One after the other, the raiders were hunted down, cornered, destroyed. It didn’t take long for the tangible sense of foreboding to rule once again. The tide had shifted, and it didn’t look good for the good guys.
Then I saw something, or someone, who turned my negativity around a complete one eighty. It was Guy, hunched over and sprinting behind a set of giant blue tanks, loaded down with a backpack and carrying what I could only identify as explosive charges. He ran between the reservoirs, then out of my sight, and my intuition tingled.
“Come on!” I had to shout over the gunfire. Shannon wanted nothing to do with exposing ourselves to danger, so when we ventured outside, I made sure to keep us in the trenches. Natural barriers like shrubs and trees became our best friends, as well as barrels, containers, forklifts, scurrying behind one to the other until we’d made it to the relative safety of the large tanks. Large wasn’t the word for them. They were bigger than ten houses put together, and they stank of chemicals.
Keeping to the periphery of any sort of open area, we spotted Guy. I was sure about my earlier hunch. He had one of his trademark explosives, and, with his back turned, was fitting it on a network of pipes which connected and interlaced among the gigantic metal tanks. I yelled out his name, but the din of battle overrode everything else, so I led Shannon toward him, holding her hand tightly and giving her a little squeeze to tell her everything was going to be all right.
“Don’t move a fucking step further!” Guy twisted and faced us, a sub machine gun aimed right at Shannon. “You fuckers aren’t going to stop me this time!”
“Guy!” I pleaded. “Don’t shoot us, man, please! We’re okay! We’re not possessed!”
He performed a quick but thorough examination of my face, my eyes, and seemed to believe me. But when he regarded Shannon, he regained his aggressive posture.
“I don’t know what’s going on with you, Mitchell. But she’s one of those fuckin’ demon zombies, and I’m gonna blow her fuckin’ brains out!”
“No! Please!” Shannon shielded her face with her hands. Guy hesitated for a moment, softening at her sobs. “I was just trying to protect my son! You’ve got to understand…he’s my SON!”
“Girl, I understand. I und
erstand we’re being overrun by demon zombies. And your son is the king of them all, so please forgive me if you fail to bring a tear to my eye,” then he turned and resumed his work, tightening connections, running wires.
“What are you planning here?” Shannon watched him intently. “How’s this going to help anything?”
“These empty fuel tanks are ticking time bombs. Explosive gasses just swirling around inside of ‘em. All they need is a little trigger to set them off, and this whole place will be leveled.”
Again my mixed feelings kicked in. All at once I was hopeful and a whole lot more than relieved the evil freezer curse, that scourge of death, was coming to a close. At the same time, my thoughts wouldn’t let go of Brenton. Little Brenton. Shannon had the same views, and voiced them loudly. Guy remained resolute. In war, sometimes there has to be casualties, no matter how heartbreaking. He finished with his task, and, after double checking his handiwork, set the timer for five minutes and pressed the start button. Quickly, I put my watch into countdown mode and synchronized it with the detonator. In less than the time it took to microwave a TV dinner, Terminal 4 would be but a memory.
Freezer: The Complete Horror Series Page 21