“Okay,” Guy gave us a strong glance. “Let’s get the fuck outta here!”
He took off running away from the tanks, away from the open conflict. I clutched Shannon’s hand again and we started in the same direction, but then we stopped when Guy halted abruptly, holding his hands to his chest. He turned and I saw what had terminated his progress. A dark red stain on his black vest. His body armor had been penetrated, and he went down with his eyes wide open, fixed on me. I could almost hear him telling me to run. I wanted to run. But that proved impossible. Right then I noticed the deafening sounds of combat had dwindled considerably. Shannon almost melted into me as we both watched the most terrifying scene unfold around us. My heart came up in my throat at the recognition of what was happening. The chaotic battle was coming to a brutal and merciless end. A peppering of gunfire and the screams of the last of the rebels shattered the otherwise still air. Air now stagnant with death’s stench.
And at every turn, wherever we looked for an escape, a wild-eyed monster, formerly a regular human being, stared us down. Demon zombies, as Guy called them. A perfect description. They were everywhere. In front of us. Behind us. To the left and to the right. All closing in one menacing step at a time. All with the single focus of capturing us. The encroaching horde got to Guy, and a feeding frenzy broke out. Snapping limbs and tearing flesh. A dozen ravaging beasts tore him apart, gnawing into his muscle, fighting over the pieces.
Shannon held me even tighter. She didn’t cry out or beg or doing anything to betray her strong-willed nature. I got my own strength from her at that moment, and took comfort in the fact that we would be together at the end.
“I love you, Eddy,” she whispered in my ear as the first pairs of hands reached us, ripping us from each other’s grasps. I felt teeth on my wrist, and knew the greedy demonic freaks wanted to eat me alive, or at least a part of me, reserving the bulk of my carcass for their masters, the freezers.
“Shannon!” I had the chance for one last message before the zombies smothered me completely. “I love you!”
17.
“STOP!”
The command echoed like thunder. So strong, so decisive that it made the subhuman monsters freeze in their shoes. Everybody quit doing what they were doing, and all eyes turned to the tallest point on the pier, a storage tower. At that height, I had a hard time seeing facial features, though I didn’t need to. Brenton’s miniature form cut an unmistakable contrast against the platform where he stood. He commanded an authority over his soldiers in a way that would have made Hitler envious, and pointed an imposing finger at me and Shannon.
“Bring them to me!”
We were carried back into the one place I didn’t want to see again in my life—the warehouse. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to convey in words just how horrific it was in there. The floor was a mile wide and two miles long, I swear. And covering nearly every square inch was row upon row of jilting, jolting, growling and howling freezers. Most of them were the standup models, side-by-side doors. White mainly, but there were a lot of black ones too. Some stainless steel. Some even had wood paneling. They all shivered at the meals that were being fed to them by the ever-diligent feeders. An orgy of feasting was taking place, with hundreds of servants shoveling entrails and arms and torsos and thighs and feet and whatever other parts of human bodies they could shovel into the greedy mouths.
As our captors escorted us past this ghoulish sight, I looked up and saw Brenton, fifty stories off the ground. Then, without a sound, he flung himself over the rail and climbed down the scaffold with more agility and speed than a spider monkey. I had that same bad feeling in the pit of my stomach as before, when I watched him making all those abnormal movements with such unnatural swiftness. I was seeing something that didn’t fit in with my innate sense of the laws of physics, and it disturbed me immeasurably.
And as before, just like that, Brenton stood beside me and Shannon, not even winded a little from the impossible feat he’d just performed.
“Mommy, why did you leave me?” he cocked his head at her. The phalanx of freezers groaned as the grim spectacle continued behind him. “Just when we were starting to have so much fun!”
Brenton then turned toward me and I swear flames burst from his eyes. In the time it took for me to gasp for breath, he was on top of me.
“It’s so nice to see you, Daddy,” he punctuated his statement with a kick to my ribs. So hard, so swift, it felt like someone hit me with a baseball bat. “Look, Daddy,” he gestured with his arm, a broad sweep along the warehouse, at the massive inventory of refrigerator/freezers. “Look what I’ve done. Aren’t you proud of me, Daddy? Well, maybe not!” he kicked me again, this time even harder. Shannon threw herself at us, begging for Brenton to stop, and he did, for a split second. Long enough to flash a disappointed frown and snap his sights at several of his followers, the demon zombies. They worked as an efficient unit, snatching Shannon up and holding her still. I glanced at my watch. Two minutes had elapsed. Three left. Brenton looked at me and smiled.
“I’ll deal with you later, Mommy. First there’s something I want Daddy to see!” again, emphasizing his last word, he hit me, but this time it was with a closed fist. A tiny, hard as nails fist that had me seeing stars. I also saw something else. Something I thought was just a hallucination, a byproduct of the blow to the head I’d just received from my own son. That’s what I wanted to believe. The reality was far, far scarier.
Brenton’s face lit up when he saw that I’d noticed the freezer behind him, and what was emerging from inside. The doors were wide open, both sides of the unit, and where shelves and drawers were supposed to be was a yawning chasm, edged with ripped flesh and quivering severed body parts. The usual. But there was something else. Something not so usual. A figure. Human-looking, but not human. Great, hulking shoulders and an angular head with clearly-defined, curved horns.
“We’ve been doing good,” Brenton said. “First it was Great Gramma, then Gramma, you, and now me, Daddy. We’ve been feeding the freezers real good. Now our friends in the far below are almost ready to come out and play with us. Wouldn’t that be fun, Daddy? Wouldn’t you like to play with them?”
The dark being inside the freezer grew larger and larger as Brenton spoke. The freezer shook and rattled harder and faster than I’d seen one do yet, and that was saying something. I’d seen those things go crazy, and this one was off the hook.
Another glimpse at my watch told me another minute had passed. Now only two were left, and it didn’t seem I was any closer to getting my family out of this. The clock ticked away, and every second brought that detestable thing to the surface. Facial features became discernible. Deep ridges in the brow. Scars on the cheeks and neck. Narrow eyes burning with power, with hatred, with hunger. Massive muscles on a massive frame.
Brenton watched the demon’s ascension along with everyone else, and cackled with fiendish delight.
“We’re gonna have so much fun, Daddy! So much fun!”
The terrible sound and rumbling in the ground reached a crescendo. I got to my knees and held my ears. Even the servants had to shield their faces from the flotsam in the air, and from the sight of their god as it stepped onto the warehouse floor. At that instant, as the horrid, scaled and horned beast placed his clawed hoof on solid ground, the turbulent wind, the deafening howl, the quaking beneath our feet ceased. The creature let its sights sweep across the assembled throng of servants, the massive collection of freezers, the carnage taking place in the effort to feed all the hungry hellholes, and threw up its mammoth arms, belting out a victorious wail.
The servants joined in on the evil jubilation, vocalizing their subservience. Then the giant beast cast a serious glare at its minions and they got quiet and dropped to their knees, paying respect. Paying homage. Worshiping.
I looked at my watch again. The seconds were burning fast. I can tell you that somehow I was okay with it. If the bombs Guy had planted took us all out right then and there, I was oka
y. At least the curse would be stopped. The demon invasion of the planet would be nipped in the bud. It broke my heart that Shannon and Brenton had to be sacrificed along with me. But, in that moment, I accepted our fate. We would be martyrs. We would be heroes. I was resigning myself to my and my family’s deaths, certain the suffering, the struggle, the heartache would all be over soon. I even sent out a little prayer, pleading that I’d meet Shannon and Brenton again someday, somewhere in some other life. Only a few seconds to go, and those were my thoughts.
Then, just before the zeros flashed on my watch, another miraculous thing happened, something that made the difference between me perishing that day on Terminal 4 and surviving to tell this tale. Becker, the kid who wanted to be a priest, must have been hiding the whole time, because he came out of nowhere to stand next to me, a copy of the New Testament in his hands.
“And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, ‘Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come!’”
Becker’s words seemed like daggers to the brooding beast. It hissed and howled and flailed its elbows as if trying to fend off a volley of arrows. Becker kept reading scripture, loudly and forcefully, and the demon kept backing away.
“No!” Brenton screamed at Becker. “What are you doing! Stop!”
But Becker wouldn’t stop.
“Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you!”
The gargantuan demon retreated into the freezer as Brenton dove at Becker with murderous intent. That’s when an explosion shook the warehouse. Brenton fell to his face. I seized the opportunity and snatched him up. He kicked and scratched and fought like crazy, but I managed to keep hold of him. Shannon succeeded in getting free and made it to us, and then another bomb detonated, then another. We found ourselves running, Shannon and I carrying Brenton, Becker right behind us.
One explosion after the other propelled us out of the warehouse, straight for the pier, where two ships were docked, awaiting their demonic cargo. A cargo that would never come. I felt the heat at my back, heard the frantic wails of the damned in a chaotic panic, felt my own life on the edge of oblivion with every step. We ran and ran and ran to the sea wall. Not a moment’s hesitation. It was a long drop to the Willamette below. But that drop was our salvation, with the flames from the sudden fires licking at our hair, tickling our clothes.
We splashed down to hear and feel the biggest explosion yet, and a fireball spread out over the pier just above us. The seawall protected us from the blast. In the water a few feet away, Becker broke the surface, greedily taking in a breath. Next to me I saw Shannon, her face wrought with worry. In my arms Brenton was motionless. Then Shannon kissed his cheek, and he coughed up a mouthful of water and looked at her, then at me, then at her again.
“Mommy?” he said. His innocent voice was back to normal. The sweetest sound I’d ever heard. “Mommy? Are those bad people gone now?”
Shannon laughed and cried at the same time.
“Yes, baby. I think so.”
18.
It’s hard to believe things have actually started to get back to normal. It’s only been few short weeks since the nightmare. I’ve written about the tenacity, the resolve of the human spirit. Well, that resolve has been on full display here in the Pacific Northwest, and I have to say it has rekindled my belief in mankind.
Churches are jam-packed every night. Local restaurants are open again, along with the stores and the gas stations. Survivors have been coming out of the woodwork. Slowly, people are emerging from the fog. Help has been pouring in from all over the country, all over the world, really. Rescue and recovery teams. Out-of-town replacements for the police and the fire departments, who seem to have been hit the hardest. And every Red Cross station is packed with good Samaritans eager to donate blood. Doctors and mental health professionals and builders and volunteers have flooded the region, and they’re still here, a lot of them. Rebuilding. Repairing. Healing.
The most amazing part for me was just how forgiving everyone seems to be. After so much destruction. After so much death. Thousands died. Thousands. Yet our family hasn’t been singled out or blamed or otherwise made to feel unwanted or unwelcomed. That’s why we decided to stay. Shannon said it best when she made it clear she wouldn’t allow that insidious evil to run us out of our home. She’s so strong. I’ve always gotten my strength from her.
I can honestly say I never thought I’d be sitting at my own dinner table again, looking at my son’s smiling face, watching my loving girlfriend toil away in the kitchen. After all that I’d gone through in my life, starting when I was fourteen and all the way up until now. Hundreds of deaths did I see with my own eyes, and thousands more were perpetrated around me, swirling like a cloud of destruction everywhere I went for so, so long. And when that whirlwind of devastation swept up my family, well, I thought the life I knew was over, my family destroyed, my reason for living gone. So that day in our dining room represented a huge victory. Together again at last. Thank God.
It was a day of celebration. The day we got our son back from the state hospital. Four weeks of observation and examination and analysis proved to the doctors and psychologists what we already knew. Brenton was a normal, well-adjusted boy. A little disarmed by all the recent activity, but other than that, he was fine. Not the evil genius mastermind who could organize and pull off the diabolical events that took place. The suspects must have all died in the explosion, they said, and Brenton was just being used as a human shield, only to be saved by his devoted and brave parents.
That was the official story. There were whispers, rumblings, rumors about what really went down, but the mass media did its job, whitewashing the truth, ridiculing those who tried to speak out as kooks, and casting it as a series of isolated incidents instead of the mass murder that it was.
I didn’t care much about all that. All I cared about was what was right in front of me. My family. My home. My future.
And my dinner.
“Mmm,” I sniffed the air, exaggerating so Brenton would see. He giggled and mimicked me, savoring the sweet smell of Shannon’s cooking.
“What’s for dinner, Mommy?”
She waltzed in from the kitchen, wearing a big smile and carrying a crème colored casserole dish.
“Tofu parmigiana made with soy milk and vegan cheese and panko bread crumbs,” she placed the pot on the table. “Oh, and sweet potato pie for dessert.”
Instantly, both Brenton and I shed our festive moods and stared at each other.
“Tofu? For dinner?” I asked for the both of us.
Shannon just shook her head. Indignant as the day is long.
“This family is now and forever will be vegan. No more meat. Not as long as I’m alive to have a say about it.”
Epilogue
I just had a dream. A horrible, horrible dream. I saw a ship fifty miles off the Oregon coast, headed south, and motoring along at a pretty good clip. I don’t know how, but something told me it was going to Long Beach, California. After that, it would cross the Pacific, en route to some of the most populated areas of Asia. On the freighter’s deck, stacked four, five, six high, was container after container after container. The very same large metal crates I’d seen back at that Terminal 4 warehouse. And, somehow, I knew what was inside those containers—freezers.
The images just came to me in my sleep, and it shocked me awake. I’m swimming in my own sweat. What a horrifying dream! At least I think it was a dream. God, please, let it be a dream.
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Freezer: The Complete Horror Series Page 22