by Drew Stepek
The collar. The fucking death collar. Just like the collars that The Cloth used to get King Cobra and I to do their bidding.
“Adstringo gutter?” I whispered, unsure.
The busted blood vessel in its eye started to surge muck all over the place. It closed its eyes and smiled as the force of the explosives contained in its neck mushroomed its head all over the room. I turned my head so I didn’t get any Sunshine or PCP in my mouth. It collapsed, fell to its knees and then tumbled forward. The top of its body was opened up like a cavern filled with the few bones and organs that were left inside.
I jumped off the bed, snatched the handle of the sword and looked down the hallway. Twenty or so former gang members rolled over each other, up and down the walls. They slobbered blood onto the destroyed floorboards that splintered at their hands and feet. Body parts shot out behind them as the force of their hunt spun up a hurricane of carnage.
I dug the tip of the sword into the floor and took off toward the center of anarchy. The sword tore into the wood until I got a few feet away from them. I pulled it in to my side and bored it into the head of the monster at the front. All of the others jumped toward me and just as I felt the teeth of a former RTL chick dig into my shoulder, I screamed the magic words again.
“Adstringo gutter!”
Teeth, eyeballs, skull fragments, bones, tissue… it all filled the hallway like confetti at a parade.
“Adstringo gutter!” I continued to yell.
One of the beasts, most likely subdued with a faulty collar, hobbled away from me, whimpering like an abused puppy toward the stairs.
“Run away, motherfucker!” I shouted after him.
Without sparing another second, I started kicking the doors open down the hall. “Paulina?” I yelled as I ran circles through every room on the second floor, checking bathrooms, closets and under beds. “Paulina? Where are you?”
Gunfire rang out in the backyard from the pool area.
“Mister Eldritch! Help me!” Paulina shrieked. It was coming from outside.
I grabbed tight onto the sword and beelined it back to the master bedroom. Without hesitating, I jumped through the window. I closed my eyes as I made contact with the glassy pool below.
As I sank to the bottom, I saw several other bodies enter the water. I sprung off the pool bottom and tried to thrust myself to the surface. The sword fell from my grip as one of the zombies grabbed onto my torso. It snapped at my face and his mouth filled with water. The other dug its teeth into my thigh and dragged me back to the floor of the pool.
I opened my mouth and yelled, “Adstringo gutter,” but the sound was muted by the water and air bubbles. I grabbed onto the ears of the dog trying to bite my nose off and started slamming my forehead into its face. The decay of its face broke off and was whisked into my nose, causing me to cough and suck a bunch of water into my nose and lungs. He pushed himself away from me and drifted toward the top. I began pummeling the second one rapidly on top of his head, cracking his skull open. Skin from his entire body liquefied and filled the water. Like his friend, he drifted away from me but not before he tore a piece of my thigh off.
“Mister Eldritch!” Paulina screeched again from outside the pool.
I pushed myself toward her cries. I couldn’t let her die. I couldn’t let her be killed by the world that I brought her to.
When I reached the stairs, I hugged the chrome bar and lifted myself out of the pool. As I gasped for air, I crumbled onto the leg that water monster had taken a patch out of. I looked back at the sword that glistened at the bottom of the pool then looked around the backyard.
Rodderick and Perry stood near an outdoor bar. Rodderick had his hands around Paulina’s throat. Surrounding him were The Cloth, the Minutemen and what was left of the zombie pack.
“Okay. Okay.” Rodderick laughed. “I’ll give you the girl.” He shoved her away. Paulina looked at me and then at the unexpected guests.
I stumbled on to the deck, trying to cover my wound and waved my hand toward my chest. “Come here, Paulina.”
“Are we done now?” Rodderick continued to laugh. “Is this shit done, you ungrateful fucking peasants?”
Linnwood stepped away from him again.
“Where are you going, pussy?” Rodderick shot twice, bringing him to the ground. Perry crawled to a tree and cowered, guarding his face with his hands.
Paulina looked over to The Cloth and the Minutemen who stood behind a thinned-out pack of beasties.
“Adstringo gutter!” I shouted across the pool. Horror came over all the human faces in the horde as they covered their bodies to avoid being bombarded by flying napalm that was their slaves’ heads.
“That’s right, assholes. I know your password. The Cloth used me, too. I returned the favor by burning down one of you research centers.”
Paulina, terrified, ran to me and hugged my leg. I patted her bald head and pushed her face-first into my leg.
Rodderick started clapping. “Good job, idiots, you just got beat by a homeless drug addict. Why do I even pay you?”
One of The Cloth members brushed face and gunk off of his vestment. “Stephan. We are going to need you to come with us.”
Paulina shivered at my side and wept.
“Come with you?” Rodderick snickered. “Come with you? Where? To the building that I pay for? I fucking own you. You watch. I’m going to go inside, make a phone call and then you can march—” he pointed at Paulina, “—that bald, little fucking mutant up to my room so I can shove my dick in her mouth and then chew on her eyes. That way, I don’t have to hear or see her cry anymore.”
I pushed my hands on either side of her head to cover her ears.
As Rodderick started to laugh uncontrollably, Steel talons enveloped his head as a black mass rose up behind him.
“Incorrect.” Eldritch pulled the razors back, opening Rodderick’s face in eight different slices.
Rodderick tried to turn around but his skull pushed through segmented skin flaps like a blooming flower.
The army across the deck from me raised their guns.
“Oh, God!” Rodderick wheezed as his entire body flared into seizures. Shocked by the cold wind blowing under his skin onto bare bone, he tried to reach up to put his face back together. “My face!”
Before he got the chance to touch the boyish looks that sold millions of movie tickets, Eldritch wrapped his arms around Rodderick’s torso and then snapped his hands ablaze. A mix of both of their hair caught fire almost immediately. Rodderick tried to shake from side to side and drag Eldritch to the pool to dowse the growing hellfire that was the both of them.
“Eldritch, no!” I begged.
Paulina struggled to get out of my grip. I held on to her tightly. “Mister Eldritch!” she screamed. Her mouth was muffled by my jeans that covered her mouth. I felt tears rolling from her face onto the exposed parts of my legs, all the way down into my boots.
Eldritch stood tall as both of them were quickly clothed in fire.
“Fire!” one of The Minutemen yelled.
Then, without another word from Eldritch or Rodderick, the firing squad filled them with holes.
As they both fell like a towering inferno, I closed my eyes and continued to restrain Paulina. “Mister Eldritch!” she shouted into my leg. She stopped struggling and started bawling.
For over a minute, I refused to open my eyes. The smell of burnt hair and flesh mixed with the overpowering fumes of chlorine and pool chemicals.
Several guns cocked and magazines were refreshed in front of me.
“Give us the girl,” one of them commanded.
Knowing that it was what Eldritch would have wanted, I let her go.
“He said give us the girl,” another repeated.
I opened my eyes and looked down to see Paulina’s reddened and soaked eyes staring up at me. Snot covered her face from her nose being pressed tightly against my leg.
“You need to go with them, Little One,” I said, echoing
Eldritch.
I looked over to The Cloth and Minutemen soldiers. They all had their guns raised and pointed at my head.
“I don’ wanna to go with them,” she whined. “He tol’ me, Uncle RJ. He tol’ me that you were my sister’s friend.” She tugged at the bottom of what was left of my High as Fuck shirt. “Mister Eldritch told me that you tried to bring her home to me.”
I coughed a little, trying to conceal my quivering lip. The smoke from Eldritch and Rodderick swirled around the trees as the flames started to engulf a chaise lounge and then two pool chairs. I bent down so I could be at the same level as her. “He lied to you,” I confessed. “Uncle RJ isn’t your uncle.”
She pushed me back onto my butt. “I don’ wanna to go with them.”
I rocked myself back up and lifted my arms to surrender. “Uncle RJ is a very bad man.”
One of the Minutemen steadied his gun on me and then picked her up from behind and threw her over his shoulder. She kicked her legs and beat her fists against the soldier’s bulletproof vest. “I don’ wanna go! I don’ wanna go.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
I dropped my head and prepared to finally die when Linnwood Perry’s screaming drowned out Paulina’s.
“Don’t put that collar on me,” he sniveled. “I’m not one of your bitches.”
As I too felt one of the collars lock around my neck and then the force of clubs and rifle stocks pounding me into the pool deck, I heard him cry out one last time. “Get up and fight, RJ! I didn’t know that the girl had cancer. I was doing it for us.”
When I didn’t respond, he simply said, “You fucking junkie piece of shit.”
“Are they cleaning it up all day again?” a voice said.
“Yeah, just be sure your loud mouth doesn’t say anything. The Rangers locked down all of West Hills two days ago. All the neighbors heard the guns and called 911,” another voice responded. “They’re pissed that they can’t get back to their houses.”
Two fucking days.
“The press is still lined up at the main entrance,” the first voice returned.
“What were they told?”
“The only thing they were told is that a body was found at the actor’s house.”
“How are we going to get all those bodies out of there?”
“Good thing we brought those vans with us.”
I felt my head and face, which were covered in bumps. I still had the collar around my neck. I was under a blanket in the back seat of an SUV. But for some reason, I was still alive.
“That little girl doesn’t realize it but she just hit the lottery.”
“Yeah, if she sticks to the story, we’ll all make some money.”
“That’s why that piece of shit is still alive back there.”
“How much do you think Rodderick is worth?”
“They said on the news when he OD’d the other week that he was worth like two hundred mil.”
“No shit? My kids love those movies. The first thing I’m gonna do when I get home is rip those posters of him off the walls in their bedrooms.”
“They’ll rip them off the walls themselves. I’m sure the fact he was a kid killer and child molester will make your girls never want to see a vampire movie again.”
I sat up in the seat and knocked my head into the barrel of a rifle.
“Stay down, motherfucker,” one of them yelled.
Sunlight shined through little holes in the blanket. I did as I was told.
“Did you know he was doing that shit? The kid stuff?”
“Fuck no. Do you think I would work for him? I have two little girls of my own.”
“I hear you. Hey, pull up over there.”
The truck pulled to the side of the road.
“Watch him.”
The driver’s side door opened and then closed. Then the back door next to me opened.
“Get out,” the driver said. “Don’t be stupid.”
I didn’t move, unsure if they were taking me out to assassinate me or not.
He shoved his gun into my chest. “I said get out.”
I lifted myself up, making sure that I remained covered by the blanket.
“Come help me, I’ve got him.”
The passenger got out of the truck too and opened the door behind his seat. He pressed his gun into the back of my head. “I’ll come in behind him as he gets out,” he said.
As I was pulled by my shoulders out of the backseat, my head started spinning.
“Can you believe this guy can even get up?”
“No shit. We beat the piss out of him.”
“I’m talking about the tranqs we’ve pounded him with every time he’s twitched since the fight. I’ve beat these monsters for hours and they don’t stay down.”
“It has something to do with them metabolizing drugs or having no blood in their bodies or something.”
The passenger used his rifle to push me out of the truck.
My feet hit the gravel and my legs buckled. The driver caught me through the blanket and held me up. “You gotta do better than that, Mack,” he laughed.
I steadied myself as the passenger exited the truck, closed the door behind us and took my left arm. The driver grabbed my right.
“Where are we going?” I finally asked.
“Don’t talk,” the driver insisted.
“Pretty crazy couple of days, huh?”
“‘Keep Austin Weird’.”
“No shit. ‘Keep Austin Weird’.”
We walked through some grass and sand and then down a hill. I tried to keep pace with them but then gave up and let them drag me. Even though I didn’t really feel like I deserved to live and was expecting my send off at any second, I didn’t want to run to death.
“How about those priest assholes?”
“Oh, they were okay. Saved our asses.”
“Not really. Our vampires saved our asses.”
The driver nudged me in the ribs. “This one sure wrecked those freaks, huh?”
“Where did you learn that?” the passenger asked as he nudged me too.
I understood the question but didn’t respond.
“Maybe he was an altar boy.”
“Adstringo gutter!” the driver shouted.
I stopped and my body froze up. I let out a breath and waited for the collar to tighten and detonate my head.
“Psyche!” The passenger laughed and flicked me on the neck. “Good thing we had the older collars. The last thing we want is his head all over the place.”
They both broke into hysterics as they pulled me to resume our journey. We continued to walk straight when we reached the bottom of the hill. Sweat started beading up all over my face. The thin blanket was no match for the sun.
“You got the phone?”
“Yeah, I got it right here.”
“Couldn’t we just kill him after?”
“Why fucking bother? We’re getting paid to do what the girl wants. Besides, he’s just another druggie vampire being dumped across the border.” He slapped me on the head. “Say hi to all of your friends.”
“I guess you’re right. I just hate the fact that I gotta go look for a job again.”
“Back to security for me.”
“Yeah, I’m gonna take some time off. I’m done with this.”
The driver tightened his grip on my arm. “There it is. Up there.”
“Finally. I feel like we’ve been coming out here all morning.”
“Would you rather be back at Rodderick’s house cleaning up that mess?”
“No, sir.”
The foul smell of sewage intensified all around us and the driver pushed me to the ground. My forehead knocked into the side of a piece of metal and my knees plunged into a shallow stream of water.
A gun banged into the back of my head. “Crawl forward,” the passenger said.
I stayed under the blanket but felt the sun’s power soften as things became dark as I scurried forward into a cylinder.
I rolled over and sat on my ass.
“Lift up the blanket.”
The wet blanket slipped off me and balled up in my lap. I tried to adjust my eyes to the sunlight to see my captors but they were nothing more than blurry figures in cowboy hats.
“Take this,” the driver said as he handed me a phone.
I grabbed the phone with one hand as I rubbed my eyes, trying again to get a look at them.
“What’s this for?” I asked.
“Unlock it.”
I brought the phone under my chin and looked down. Then, with my thumb, I unlocked it.
“Call that first number when we’re gone. It’s your lucky fucking day, scumbag.”
I looked at the screen. The Texas number was proceeded by two zeros and all the language on the screen was in Spanish.
The driver shoved his gun into the tunnel. “Do you understand?”
I looked up and shielded my eyes from the dripping water. “No.”
“The little girl saved you.”
The passenger swatted the driver. “Let’s go.”
They both turned around and I watched as they jogged back up the hill.
“Who was the big guy, anyway?” one of them asked.
“Some priest’s kid,” the other laughed.
After several minutes, I heard the SUV start and I pressed the call button under the number. After two rings, the phone answered but no one spoke.
“Hello?” I finally said.
“Who is this?” a man’s voice on the other end asked.
“This is RJ. RJ Reynolds.”
“Are you alive?”
“Yes.”
“Did the men leave you?”
“Yes.”
“Are they going to come back?”
“I don’t think so.”
I heard some shuffling on the other end and what sounded like a little girl whispering. She said, “You know I only like the white gummy bears.”
No one spoke for a bit.
“I’m alive, Paulina!” I yelled. “Do what they say.”
A familiar voice softly shushed the girl.
I waited a beat and let the sound of the other voice register.