by Alan Spencer
“Grandma, put down the axe! Dear God put down the axe!”
“Those aren’t Dung Beetles. Those are Flesh Beetles!”
“Inspector, did you see this on the ground? Those keys are the keys of a communist.”
“That sweater’s not made of yarn!”
“The Foggy Bog Killer’s victims were never found because the bastard had Doberman dogs eat the evidence.”
“You realize you just drank the blood of Christ? You’re not ordained to drink the blood of Christ. Everybody run! The anti-Christ is rising!”
“You smell that? It smells like a toilet?”
“Don’t breathe it in! Whatever you do, don’t you dare breathe it in!”
Jules froze when he observed the inside of a room close to the staircase. A rhinoceros beetle the size of a refrigerator chomped down on an old man’s head as his body jittered in spasms. Before Jules could stifle his shock, the beetle was towering over him. Its feelers were extended to clutch his body. The sharp projection of a horn on its head was bent to puncture Jules.
“Stand back you ugly motherfucker!”
Ba-BOOM!
The rhinoceros beetle lifted off the ground and was sent hurtling back into the room it came from in a burst of yellow bug guts and chunks of plated exoskeleton.
“Get up before it gets back up. They don’t always die after one shot.”
Jules was grabbed by the arm and dragged two rooms over. When the door closed, the person who saved him pushed over a bookshelf to barricade the door. The guy was in his thirties. He had a goatee, greasy brown hair styled back in a ponytail, and thick-rimmed glasses. He wore a beige sweater and corduroy pants. He looked like a hipster dressing a decade younger than his actual age. His face was flushed pink with fear. The guy had seen the same horrors as Jules.
Covered in bug guts, the stranger handed Jules a towel. “Clean off.”
Jules eyed the guy and said, “Thanks for saving my ass back there.”
“Shhhh.”
The guy listened for minutes then sighed in relief. “I think that flesh beetle is dead. I never liked that movie anyway. The ending sucked.”
“Wait. So you understand what’s going on out there?”
The guy re-loaded his high-powered rifle. Jules thought it looked like a deer hunting rifle of some sort, though out in the hallway, it sounded like a war cannon. “I used to dream this would happen. I love horror movies. That’s why I directed them. I’ve made a handful of micro-budget flicks. Ever heard of Satan Clause? You know, instead of Santa Clause. Or what about Deadly Dildos? The dildos are like guns. When the woman comes close to orgasm, the dildo shoots a bullet.”
Jules remembered Deadly Dildos. He played it once at a midnight showing. He lost money on the showing. “Yeah. I featured it at my theatre.”
“And I respected you for showing it, Mr. Baxter. Nobody else would show it. They said the title was too offensive. Too extreme. Everybody’s so ready to be offended these days.”
“I can’t remember your name, I’m sorry.”
“Max Alabaster.”
Max Alabaster.
“I’m supposed to find you,” Jules said. “Look, dead people have been helping me survive out there. They told me to find you.”
“I’ve seen dead people too,” Max said. “My neighbors, I’d hear them be killed by God knows what. Then they’d come back to life. They’ve scared off whatever knocked on my door up to this point. And you can only imagine what’s knocked on my door. My roommate nearly had his throat slit to the point it cut off his head. James wrote on the wall to wait for you, for a man named Jules Baxter. That’s you, huh? James wrote that you’d take me out of here. Is it just me, or does some of this shit seem orchestrated?”
“I can’t say, Max. I don’t know why this is happening, but it’s happening. And I’m sorry about your roommate.”
Max said this deadly serious. “My roommate later on melted on his bed. It looks like someone melted chocolate on it. It’s nasty. It’s like we’re living in a horror movie. The rules and logic also apply. It’s all so fucked up.”
Jules said only what he knew. “The dead are angry with the living, and they’ve found a way to use reels of film against us. That’s what I understand.”
Max pointed at the wall. “Whoa, look over there.”
On the wall, a set of words glowed:
TAKE MAX’S MOST CHERISHED REELS TO THE ELEVATOR.
“My collectibles?” Max was angry. “I got them on the black market. They cost me more than what film school cost me. I’m not listening to stupid words on a stupid wall. This is bullshit.”
“Listen to them,” Jules insisted. “We might save lives.” He seized Max’s shirt by the collar and pushed him into the wall. “People are dead. My niece is dead, my wife came back to life only to become an evil spirit, and pretty soon, everything and everybody will be rendered into ashes and puddles of blood. Who cares about collectibles? Who cares about anything when you’re not breathing anymore? Nothing matters when you’re dead.”
Max’s eyes were wild. He almost dropped the rifle in his hand, but Jules kept it from hitting the floor. “Get your head out of your ass and give me those reels. You want to save the world, you’re going to have to help me. No stalling. And I can tell you’re a horror movie fan. A part of you is in awe of what’s around you. I fell for the same gag. I’m a fan boy, but now’s not the time. Remember, these things can kill you. I don’t know how many people are still alive out there. Forget everything I just said and keep it simple. The reels, give them to me. We’re taking them to the elevator.”
“Okay, Mr. Baxter, anything you say. You came from outside, didn’t you? What’s it like out there? I’m not claiming to know what to do, but I’m going to trust that you do.”
Max walked to his bedroom. Posters for movies covered the walls, though Jules didn’t want to eye a single one of them, refusing. His mind had already been subjected to unreal horror to last a hundred lifetimes. Max opened up his closet and dug out a Rubbermaid box full of reels in steel cases.
“What are those movies?”
“There’s all kinds, like vintage, gore, sleaze, action…you name it.”
Jules wondered why he was supposed to bring these anywhere. What good would it do? “This makes no sense. None of it does. I must be going crazy to believe in this nonsense.”
Max gave him a sympathetic expression. “You’ve survived this long. It must mean something. The dead are on your side…the ones who don’t hate the living, at least. That’s what I’ve gathered after my roommate died and came back to save me. I looked out the kitchen window earlier, and I didn’t see the city anymore. It was replaced with miles and miles of headstones and empty fields. The longer I looked, the harder it got to peel my eyes away from it. Then before I knew it, I was on all fours coughing up black soil full of worms. I still can’t get the taste of dirt out of my mouth. I tried to wash it out with whiskey. I capped off the bottle. It didn’t help my nerves. I’m still shaking. Whatever’s happening, it’s beyond this world. That means throw logic out the fucking window.”
Whatever this was, Jules thought, it was a war between the living and the dead.
“My uncle, or rather, my deceased uncle, told me we need to go the elevator in this building. He said I’d know what floor to get off on. I’ve been thinking about what he said, and it make sense. You ever seen the movie Elevator to Hell?”
Max’s upper lip trembled. “I, um, no, I haven’t. I don’t think I want to be involved with anything that might take me to hell. I’m just being honest here.”
“You go with me, or you don’t, but I’m taking those reels to the elevator. So are you going or not? No time to think too long on it.”
The color drained from Max’s face.
Max wouldn’t give Jules an answer.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Jules decided to leave Max Alabaster in his apartment if the young man wouldn’t help him. Time was burning. People were dying. Jules picked up the Rubbermaid case of reels. It was heavy, but he managed to heft it. The moment Jules lifted them up, things started smashing through the floorboards. Clawed reptilian hands reached up to grip their ankles.
“Shit!” Max blasted his rifle, missing the dinosaur hands reaching for their ankles. “Where did they come from?”
“You want an honest answer? You’re not getting one. We’re outta here. Cover me. We’re making a dash for the elevator.”
“They know we’re here. They’ll be out there waiting for us, and, and I’m out of ammo.”
The container was already getting heavy in his hands. Jules had to think fast. What could they do to extend their life spans long enough to reach the elevator?
Jules spat out an idea as he caught the green raptor’s face poke out from the hole in the floor. He kicked it in the face and raced out of the bedroom back into the living room. Along each of the walls, the wallpaper was moving. Slithering.
“Worms!” Max cried. “Worms everywhere!”
The walls were moving spaghetti, worms eating through the wood to get to them. The floorboards kept splitting and breaking as more creepy crawlies closed in.
“Think like a horror movie, Max. You make them, right? For God’s sake, think! How do we save ourselves?”
The independent filmmaker thought fast. He reached for the two liquor bottles on the coffee table, smashed them and used a cigarette lighter to set flame to the puddles. Fires spread, burning the carpet. Arcs of orange danced about the living room. The walls continued to slither with slimy worms, but the dinosaurs backed off long enough for them to form a plan.
Max opened a closet nearby and howled in terror as one after the other, severed heads kept falling free like bowling balls from the top shelf. Heads eventually filled the living room. Max tripped and kicked through them, clutching a broom in each hand.
“I know that’s happened before in some horror movie!” Max cursed the heads, horrified and pissed off at the same time. “Listen up. I’m setting fire to these brooms.” He dipped the straw fiber heads into the burning carpet. They caught aflame immediately. “Most monsters or bad guys die in movies by being set on fire, or from being blown up, and since we don’t have any explosives, fire it is. I’ve got your back. Hurry before the worms get us.”
Jules set the reels down, removed the barricade, picked up the reels and kicked open the door with his hands full. The second the rickety door shot off the hinges, a shower of maggots sprayed them both from all ends of the room.
BROOOOOOOOOOOOOONG!
He was confused by the synthesizer note of discord. Max was waving the burning brooms in front of Jules, warding off the maggots that faltered as the flames ate into their tiny white bodies.
“The elevator’s just down the hall,” Max shouted. “Go!”
Jules knew they were in for an attack no matter what they did. The building reacted to their progress. Worms chewed threw wood at every wall, even the ceilings, spitting sod and splinters. Every door in every room that wasn’t closed suddenly shot open. People melting with wicks sticking out of their skulls with flesh waxberries dripping down their faces reached out to strangle them. The two of them ran past the small group of melting people only to duck and dodge three spinning cleavers.
“My cuts are the finest!”
From within another room, a pig faced butcher stood beside a meat grinder as pink straws of human meat spilled out the spout. He was feeding dead body after dead body into the device.
“Jorg!” Max screeched, recognizing the movie villain. “You can’t eat me! Fuck you!”
Another huge rhinoceros beetle approached, and Jules rammed it in its thorax with the Rubbermaid container and sent it reeling backward on its legs. Max touched the burning broom to it and set it aflame. Stuffed teddy bears and chubby faced plastic baby dolls each held little knives in their hands. They were incoming.
Picking up their pace, new enemies materialized. A woman in a maternity gown screamed as a horned demon baby tore its way from her stomach to attack. Max threw the broom like a spear, the broom stick going through the red demon’s belly and pinning it to the wall.
Two children were playing hopscotch, singing, “Death is forever, death is forever, give us your body forever…”
They were only feet away from the elevator. All they had to do was sprint.
And dodge the screaming raptor who guarded it.
Max reacted first to the threat of the raptor. He threw aside his burning broom, plunged his hands into the wormy walls, and threw a handful of the worms into the raptor’s face. Blinding the creature, they ran around the dinosaur. When the elevator opened on its own and they fell in, they finally processed the damage they had taken. They weren’t unscathed. Jules’s belly gleamed with red slashes. He dropped the bin of reels to hold in his guts. Max was choking in wet bubbly gasps. His throat was torn out. The guy was already dead. His eyes were vacant as his shredded throat continued to bleed out.
The elevator door closed in time to avoid the raptor’s next move.
Bleeding, in agony but forcing himself to get the reels to where they needed to be, Jules eyed the console. This wasn’t a normal console. He was in a movie and anticipated the glowing red buttons. He had to press the right button. The right floor. This was the elevator from the movie Elevator to Hell. He showed this film at The Odyssey Theatre forever ago. He remembered the characters getting on had to pick the right button or else suffer what a different enemy on each floor had in store for them.
One button was the way to safety.
The others, not so much.
Bleeding out from the gashes large enough he caught the gleam of his intestines, Jules did his best not to black out. If he blacked out, he would black out forever.
The elevator hummed, the buttons lighting up then darkening, lighting up then darkening. He had to pick a floor. There were twenty buttons.
Think like the movie.
He struggled to remember Elevator to Hell and how the protagonist survived. The whole movie took place in an elevator, though there were breaks in between as they walked onto a new floor where various horrors awaited them. The point of the movie was to find the first floor where they could make their exit to safety.
He would bleed out before that happened.
Coughing up blood, falling to his knees, Jules pushed his palm against one of the elevator buttons. The direction of the elevator went up. Soon, the elevator opened, showing a science laboratory. People were kept in giant glass jars. The people banged on the walls, demanding Jules to help them escape. An old scientist who looked like a Nazi was accompanied by a hunchback ghoul and a woman with robotic legs. The scientist pressed a button, and the glass traps turned into blenders, reducing the people into pureed matter.
Jules hit another button, horrified at what he saw.
Wrong floor.
He hit another button.
Max was dead on the ground, a puddle of blood spreading across the floor and leaking out the edges of the elevator.
Seeing the blood, something occurred to him.
One hand over his guts, he used the other to pry open the rubber tote. Digging out the reels, he read the titles. Lots of sleaze and porn, and then he caught sight of a movie he recognized.
Bitch Fist.
He opened the reel case, dug out the reel, spread out the film strip and dipped it in the blood.
I have nothing to lose.
The elevator shot open without him expecting it. An axe barely missed his legs. “SPLIT YOU IN TWO!”
He shut the elevator before the lumberjack enemy could swing again.
Opening up yet another reel and dipping it in the blood, he knew this wasn’t a horror movie.
&nb
sp; Diving Dynamo.
Forcing open another film called Action Reaction, spreading the strips of film over the blood, he was suddenly seeing double. Every process in his body was weakening. Turning numb. He struggled to grip another reel as the tips of his fingers had zero feeling, except bone chilling cold.
He was closing in on death.
The elevator opened again. A group of children in Catholic school uniforms were playing dolls with dead human beings. Giggling, the group of boys and girls kept switching limbs with who Jules assumed were supposed to be their dead parents. Arms, legs, hair pieces and busts were mismatched among male and female owners. The parents’ faces were over-made up, pale white with pink circles at the cheeks.
The sickening sight of children playing with body parts sent him over the edge. Jules peeled open another reel case and dropped a reel marked Grenade and another called M.U.T.T.S. before he couldn’t do anything more. Before Jules closed his eyes, Max had come back to life. Max’s bodily movements were stiff with rigor mortis. Talking through a severed neck, his words were bubbles, “You have to put your guts on them, Mr. Baxter.”
The corpse’s hand reached through the serrated folds of Jules’s belly and yanked out his intestines coil-by-coil until they splattered the top of the strips of film. The life went out of Jules as each yard of viscera exited his body. He fell over the top of the tote of reels, knocking them all on top of the pile of blood and gore, mixing titles like The Justifier, Peacemaker, Julie Justice, B.L.A.S.T. and Edge of the Blade.
Jules was dead.
Right before he died, he reached up and hit one more elevator button.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Penny was standing in darkness with the stranger who led her into the building just after battling the arm from the sky. Her knees were still in pain from jumping and landing from one building top to the next as that giant hand came slashing and reaching for her. She was unarmed after the flashlight had broken to pieces. Whoever was in this dark nook with her, they weren’t saying much.