by Alan Spencer
Barry proved to be a great driver. The man escaped the war behind them. They were winding through residential streets. He braced himself for anything as activity continued within each of the houses. Homeowners reared their heads out of windows. People stood in their lawns watching the sky curiously. They didn’t know what was coming. An old man standing on his lawn had made a deadly mistake. The tree in his yard was shaking, then suddenly a hundred squirrels leaped from the branches and latched onto him. He was bones cloaked in a robe by the time he hit the ground. Underneath the ground in other homes, lines of grass parted and sank in as people were dragged down and vanished. God only knew what was attacking them, for blood was spewing up from the earth.
A doctor in a lab coat carried a leather medical bag and kneeled over a victim who’d had their arms eaten off to nubs. The doctor was very astute looking. Heavy eyebrows. Silver hair. Thick rimmed glasses. He put two of his fingers to the person’s neck to check for a pulse. Vic couldn’t hear the doctor say: “You’re in so much pain. Wait, wait, now I see the problem. Your heart’s still beating.” The doctor removed a .357 Magnum from his medical bag and unloaded four bullets into their face. “That should take care of your problem right away.”
Ambulances were parked helter skelter in many of the yards with the back doors open. EMTs were hunched over victims and pumping oxygen into bodies via a high gauge needle until parts of the bodies popped from the internal pressure. Others were slicing throats with scalpels. Vic caught an EMT in the back of an ambulance stick hypodermic needle after hypodermic needle into a body until they looked like an acupuncture patient.
Lightening burst across the sky, striking a mother and her three kids as they were hiding underneath a backyard awning. They erupted into sizzling pieces. Close by where the victims were struck by the lightening, a preacher clutched onto a Bible and kept pointing at random people and shouted: “You—SINNER!” Two seconds later, a bolt of lightening would fry their asses.
Barry hurtled through the town at faster speeds as more and more death and devastation continued. Barry spun around a scorpion whose body was the size of a construction crane. Jimmy unloaded a SIG Sauer in its direction until the scorpion backed off, moving on to stab someone else with its walloping stinger.
The last thing Vic watched was a house at the end of the block surrounded by giant grizzly bears with blood-slathered maws. They were pawing through shattered windows and battered down doors to reach those within.
He couldn’t do it anymore.
Vic was done watching people die.
That’s why he was so thankful they bypassed the neighborhood and drove onto the highway. The way was relatively clear at this late hour. The only people they caught was a police officer making someone walk the line. While the drunk did his best to walk in a straight line, the cop removed his pistol, took aim, fired, and Vic watched the guy’s eyes pop out of his head from the twin shots. Barry fired a round from a .357 and caught the police officer at the neck. The cop slumped over the highway median clutching his spurting wound.
Barry shouted, “To protect and serve, my hairy ass!”
Vic’s jaw dropped watching the masses of shambling dead corpses hobble about the neighborhoods chomping on people. Hundreds and hundreds of walking dead were scattered for miles.
This is everything they said it would be.
And they think I can help them save the world?
The deepening dread of incoming death increased as a hive of honey bees buzzed overhead. From a distance, they were a hulking shadow of black, but up close, they were the size of large dogs with flapping wings that sounded like dying pontoon boat motors. They buzzed over the truck about to bare down on them, but one of the bees, flicking dander and blood from its body onto Vic, smelled the gasoline, and the group abruptly moved on. Some of them had screaming humans in their clutches. Vic only imagined what it would be like to be taken to their hive.
Driving on for fifteen minutes, Barry weaving between walking corpses and actual dead bodies on the highway, Vic tried to keep his head together. Ten minutes, and he was able to slow down his pulse, but not the intensity of his paranoia.
He was right to embrace his paranoia.
Burning red cinders hovered far up in the sky. They were burning hot like the tips of struck flares. Melting heat. Leathery wings flapped hard as the lights darted. The body the burning eyes owned were black plated. The flying creature was a naked women with human features like black pubic hair, breasts and wild flowing black hair, add razor sharp teeth to tear flesh asunder.
Vic swatted at the flying vampire creature with his tire iron, but the talon-tipped hand wrenched it from his grip. She tossed it away, pealing the air with her sick laughter. “Oooooooh, you really think you can fight us and win, don’t you? You? You’re nothing against the forces of the dead! When you die, so much will be waiting for you on the other side. You’ll suffer the agonies of a thousand deaths, and still, you’ll live on only to suffer, and suffer, and SUFFER!”
The vampire creature was now a naked woman with creamy white skin, rouge cheeks, beautiful eyes and ruby red lips. The hand around his throat was reptilian. His airway was constricted. It felt like his brains were going to burst out of his skull, the constriction was so powerful. Vic couldn’t move or breathe. His eyes were affixed to hers. They were putting him in a trance, those eyes so lovely, so human and understanding.
But the words weren’t so lovely.
“Pitiful people like you, Vic, have prevented me from my plans before. No matter what you do, the dead will have their way with the living, and you, or anybody like you, will never stop us. You—will—fail—just—like—the—others. Any retaliation will only prolong your life. But your suffering, your flesh, is ours forever and ever! Hours from now, what you see around you will increase ten-fold. Unspeakable horrors will pervade the world. It’s everywhere. The entire globe. Nobody is safe. THE DEAD WILL HAVE THEIR WAY WITH THE LIVING!”
“Vampire whore! Go suck off a zombie!”
The SIG Sauer barked, biting the creature four times in the neck. The vampire was hurled backwards off of the truck bed and slammed head-first into the highway.
She didn’t get back up.
It was Jimmy who shot out the back glass window of the truck to kill the vampire.
Vic remained in shock. Jimmy didn’t say anything. He only pointed in the distant sky.
Hundreds of red specks flew about the sky above the city. Throngs of flying vampires.
Barry shouted, “We’re almost where we need to be. Get ready to move, Vic. This is only the beginning of the fight.”
Vic sucked in a breath and steeled himself.
They kept driving.
Chapter Eighteen
Their destination appeared to be the airplane hanger that was two miles off of the highway. The entrance sign was on fire, as was everything else on the property. The buildings storing various planes were busy with flames. BOOMS and concussions kept repeating as a new slot in the airplane hanger would detonate. The smell of jet fuel cut the air. Vic couldn’t see who was setting the explosions, but he could venture to guess.
The truck braked far enough from the hanger to avoid the flames. Vic leaned down to talk to the two of them through the back window. “What now?”
Jimmy’s eyes kept getting wider as yet another single engine plane burst into orange smithereens. Another set of hopes dashed. Barry’s face was as red as the raging flames. He was pissed off.
Barry snarled. “They want to play it like that, then it’s Plan B.”
Vic’s heart tightened in his chest. “And that would be?”
Barry fished out a cell phone in his vest pocket. Dialing, he waited for a response. “Call the boys. Get us a plane as soon as you can. They’ve burned the rest. THEY KNOW WE’RE HERE.”
Barry hung up the phone and drove to the main office, which was a small
building. Barry parked and headed toward the office. Jimmy and Vic dragged the chest into the office. The main room was the size of a modest bedroom. A desk with a computer, filing cabinets, a vending machine and a bathroom in the back.
Vic was growing nervous. From inside, their view was limited to their surroundings. “What are we doing here exactly?”
“We’re setting up base,” Barry said. “The monsters will be here soon. Without a plane, we can’t get to where we need to go. It’s on the way as we speak, but the boys will be late. This is breaking out everywhere, and soon the situation’s about to blow wide open.”
“The boys? What situation? I’m two steps behind you, man.”
“You fight them when they come, and that’s all you really need to know for now. I don’t have time to draw you a picture. I forgot my crayons at home.”
Vic held back his animosity for the smart ass guy. Maybe Barry was right. They were minutes, maybe seconds, from being under siege. Whatever blew up the planes knew they were coming, and they were sticking around to make sure whatever mission they were on—taking that large chest from The Hall of Records to New Jersey—would fail.
“Follow me to the back room,” Barry said to Vic. “Jimmy, you keep watch. You see the sign of the boys, or the bad guys, you yell.”
Vic followed Barry to a closet. Barry drew his sidearm. “Open it, Vic. There’s something in there we need, but just in case it’s not safe, be ready to fight if something reaches out for you.”
Vic had his gun in one hand and the door knob in the other. He listened for anything non-human. He only heard the sound of flames eating into the nearby hangers. He imagined in a half hour or less, this whole place, including the office they stood in, would be rendered into hot ash.
“Open the door,” Barry whispered. “We haven’t got much time to set up.”
Set up what? Vic felt like he was knowingly entering a trap. The question wasn’t if he was going to die, it was how he was going to die. Vic worked against his hesitation and turned the door knob.
Vic dropped his gun, covered his head in his hands, and he kept getting bonked on the face. “Ahhhh—jeeeeeeeeezus!”
Barry grabbed his arm and forced Vic aside before the next severed head could fall down and hit him. A dozen severed heads lay on the floor.
Barry shook his head. “It helps if you move out of the way, Vic.”
“Oh.”
Barry did his best to nudge aside the random heads with his shoe and picked up the cardboard box inside the closet. More closed cardboard boxes were heaped inside. He followed Barry’s example, and after they were done, they had eight cardboard boxes positioned beside the front door.
Jimmy began sorting through them, propping things up. Vic was confused by the contents: tall standing mirrors, wooden crucifixes, concrete crosses, various light fixtures with different bulbs, from black light to long black bulbs that Vic had no idea what they did, bottled water, ten different leather bound books with gangly faces pressed into the covers, glass jars filled with black earth and random stuff he couldn’t begin to understand.
Together, they set these things outside the office. The fire was burning hotter all around them. Vic was sweating profusely. “So is this stuff supposed to fight the monsters?”
“Just like in the movies,” Jimmy replied. “Kill them the way they died on film, they’ll die the same way here.”
“This is insane,” Vic muttered under his breath. “And seriously fucked.”
Barry kept looking around the hanger, down the air strip, for any signs of “the boys” showing up. “They’re not here yet. We’re going to have to hold them back ourselves.”
Jimmy’s face went hard. “I think the bad guys are almost here. Shit.”
Vic cussed too.
“All right, all right,” Barry said, trying to calm them down. “Don’t let them near that chest. The boys WILL be here. No matter what, we fight, and we don’t stop fighting. You in, son?”
Jimmy nodded. “You know it, Dad.”
“I said are you in, son? Are you ready to open a can? You ready to stick it in their rears?”
“Fuck yeah!”
“Vic, you ready—?”
Another voice cut in, one smooth talking and evil. “I am the lord of darkness. I crave blood. The sweet bounty is in your veins. Look into my eyes. I want to suck your blood. Look into my eyes.”
“Look into my fist!” Vic cocked his hand back and released a punch. The handsome young vampire dressed in a lavender colored suit took a direct hit to the face. Vic felt the vampire’s jaw, nose and mandible shatter under the force of his nuclear knuckle sandwich. The rest of the vampire tumbled down into a tangle of limbs.
Jimmy came to his side, pouring water out of a Mason jar. The water acted as acid, the vampire writhing, screeching, hissing, boiling then turning into a greenish red muck pile on the ground.
Barry shouted, “Hurry up with those tall wooden crosses! Make a circle around us, and keep the circle as wide as possible.”
The three scrambled, setting up crosses in a crude circle around the main office. Down the air strip, a slender man dressed in a black suit and top hot announced like a promoter of a carnie attraction, “THE BLOOD ORGY BEGINS!”
Behind the announcer, a large group of people lurked. Men and women with snake’s heads and forked tongues. Others were leathery demons who had teeth like an alligator’s, snakes slithering on the ground as long as nine feet, and hairy beasts that could’ve passed as Sasquatches roared and pumped their fists in their air in the name of a good bloodbath.
Vic’s body wanted to freeze up, but Barry kept barking orders. “We’re still in this, so stop looking at them like you’re going to piss your pants. Jimmy, plug in the extension cords. Vic, drag the extension cords and start lifting up those light fixtures. Screw the bulbs in to make sure they’re in tight. Jimmy—spread out the holy water! Vic, throw those jars of soil so it’s spread out nice and good. It’s consecrated, blessed on the very grounds of the Vatican.”
Vic couldn’t help but ask, “What the hell is all this shit?”
“We’ve planned this battle for awhile now,” Barry said. “Plan B was meant to be as solid as Plan A. I placed this stuff here a month ago after collecting it. I spent thousands procuring it. It’s going to save our butts, so quit questioning things and go with it. Now keep moving! Nobody is dying here!
“Vic, there’s more monsters on the horizon. You do what Jimmy tells you. He’s got these movies memorized. He’ll know what kills who.”
It was so hot, the fires raging all around them, that Vic wished for a fresh breath of air. Soon, the heat would box them in. Their front against the monsters wouldn’t last long.
Seconds later, Vic was in the heat of battle before registering it. Barry clutched the Benelli shotgun in one hand, but not before launching a grenade at the cluster of orgy monsters. The explosion marked Jimmy’s demands as he pointed to the said villain and offered a viable fighting solution.
“Auto mechanics who squash their victims in car compactors, throw those Hot Wheels cars at them. It’ll remind them of their childhoods. Slow them down a bit.”
Vic sorted through the cardboard boxes, rooting to the bottom beyond the sets of half-melted black candles. He grabbed a shoebox full of Hot Wheels cars and tossed them toward the villains. The group of twenty mechanics with huge wrenches in their hands and blood covering their uniforms stopped to bend down and inspect the toy cars. They were transfixed, caught in a childlike awe.
Barry said, “Jimmy—the cannibals!”
Jimmy mumbled, “New Guinea Cannibal Tribe attacks tourist circuit…the only thing they don’t eat is the ears… The innocent shall suffer the bloody savage terror… A Cannibal Terror-cation.” Instead of saying another tagline, Jimmy shouted at Vic, “Turn on the strobe light. The technology scares them. The cannibals thi
nk they’re angry Gods!”
Savages in loincloths were ready to hurl spears at them when Vic flipped on the strobe lights. The cannibals dispersed in fear.
But more cannibals were on their way!
These cannibals shambled forward, their eyes closed, men and women and children in street clothes. Their mouths were spattered in blood. They chewed on morsels of raw meat, the sound of chomping mixed with snoring. Machetes were welded in their hands. They’d take an occasional swing at the air.
“Cannibal Sleepwalkers…”They Walk, They Eat, They Sleep… They Cannibalize… They don’t know what they’re eating in their dreams… They must be awakened. Vic, the garden hose. Spray them!”
Vic located the garden hose connected to an outside faucet. He turned on the water and hosed the group of sleeping cannibals down. Each screamed in shock as they woke, spitting out the vile meat in their mouths and crying in horror at what they had unknowingly consumed.
The blood orgy monsters were edging closer to their circle. The sound of water hissing through old pipes resounded above them in the sky. The darkness in sections of the sky turned even blacker. The darker shades of black moved like water, then touching down near the fire, the moving shadows shirked from the lights.
“The shadows of hell have escaped…they drape the innocent in darkness…and take them to hell IN PIECES!”
Vic guessed ahead of Jimmy, flipping on more lights and bathing their general vicinity in more illumination. The shadows roared, expelling their disappointment they couldn’t shed their blood just yet.
“Tit Trance… Your jaw will drop and your eyes will pop when these women take off their tops… Don’t you dare look at their breasts…a man’s base desire will cost him the gift of sight and the blessing of sanity… The mirrors, Vic, the mirrors! Pose them around us face out.”