Addicted to the Dead

by Shane McKenzie

  “Did I ask your fuckin’ opinion, bitch?” Bloody Hands pointed at her and she lowered her eyes. “Go run a shower for me. Gotta get that fuckin’ meathead’s blood off me.” His angry face softened then, and he sort of giggled. “Then get your ass in the shower and soap up, baby.”

  She nodded, seemed to be avoiding the eyes of the other women who scowled at her from behind. Her body was turned toward the interior of the home, then she stopped, turned back toward Bloody Hands. “You got a taste for me, Brewster? Just a little something?”

  “I got you, girl. Now hurry. My dick’s begging for some of that ass.”

  She smiled, nodded, shoved her way past the other women.

  “What about me, Brewster? Hook it up, man,” one of the women said.

  “Yeah, for real. What about us?” another said.

  Bloody Hands, the guy they were calling Brewster, waved them over. His eyes were half-closed and he reached down, massaged the bulge in his pants. “Come over here, ladies. Let me show you this shit.”

  The women shoved each other to get to the van. Four of them in all, each of them clad in dirty t-shirts and tight panties. Worm thought he remembered liking women at one time, but now they only scared him. He tried to move away from them but the man holding his arm wouldn’t let him.

  Cinderella.

  The thought popped into his head out of nowhere. It didn’t make any sense to Worm, so he ignored it.

  The women took a long look at Worm, ran their hands over his chest and stomach. One woman reached up and ran her fingers through his hair, then pulled her hand away, covered in blood.

  “What the fuck, man. He’s still wet.”

  The men, of course, laughed at this. Worm decided to share glances with the dead woman again, but her head hung, eyes on the ground as she whimpered.

  “Not him, dumb ass,” Brewster said. “He’s too fresh still. This one.” He grabbed the dead woman by the hair, thrust her face toward the other women who looked ready to pounce on her right then.

  Brewster grabbed the dead woman’s dangling hand, tugged on it. Meat and skin snapped, but the man had to give it a few more violent pulls to break it free. He tossed it to the group of women.

  They fought for it, shoving each other, pulling hair, cursing. The short, chubby one grabbed hold of the hand, the fingers twitching like spider’s legs, and ran toward the house. The other women followed, the curses still flowing freely.

  “Dumb fuckin’ bitches.” The man turned toward Worm now, tried looking into his eyes, but Worm turned his head to avoid it.

  What was his name again? Worm just had it in his mind, but it slipped away like a wet bar of soap.

  The man nodded. “Get him to the cellar. I got some fuckin’ to do.”

  “Yo, Brewster. You sure about all this, man?” The man was leaning up against the van, arms crossed. When Brewster shot him a look, he shifted uncomfortably.

  “We’ve been through all this shit already. What, you gonna puss out on me now?”

  “Nah…I mean, I’m just sayin’. This is Ted Fleet’s city, man. Everybody knows that shit. Why are we here? We could be doin’ this anywhere…why here?”

  “Deal with this motherfucker, would y’all? Pussy’s waitin’ on me.” The man who seemed to be in charge spat on the ground before stomping away. Once he reached the door, he turned. “Any of y’all heard from Sky? She shoulda been back a long time ago.”

  The men shook their heads.

  “Well let me know when you do.” And he disappeared into the house.

  Worm was suddenly being shoved from behind. The dead woman was right beside him, the stump where her hand used to be dripping a dark fluid.

  “What? Y’all know I’m right. He’s gonna get us all killed, I’m tellin’ you. I heard that motherfucker Fleet is crazy as hell. And you know who works for that old cocksucker?”

  Worm watched the men circle this man as he was walked across the small yard.

  “Don’t matter, Carl. You know that. Brewster thinks we can do this shit under the radar. Small time, you know? We make enough to get by, get all the meat we want. And you know what? I think we can too. Fuck Ted Fleet. And fuck the motherfuckers working for him.”

  The five men surrounded the guy.

  “Y’all ain’t hearin’ me. You ever heard of Calico? That motherfucker is ruthless, man. I heard some crazy shit about him. We fuck with Fleet, we’re fuckin’ with him.”

  “Stories. All that shit you been hearing ain’t nothing but stories. That punk ass bitch comes sniffing around here for trouble? I’ll give it to him, no question.” This man, tall but skinny, stepped forward and bumped chests with the scared man. “Don’t fight it, all right? Just let us get this shit over with.”

  Just before Worm was shoved into the house, he saw the group of men attack the guy, knocked him to the ground and rained down punches and kicks.

  Inside the house, the group of women sat in a tiny living room, sucking on finger and hand bones. What meat had clung to it only moments before was gone. Two of the women already had their shirts off, rubbed against each other and moaned.

  “Yeah, that’s right,” the man pushing Worm said. “You girls get nice and ready, you hear me? I’ll be back with some hard dick for you.”

  The women seemed pleased by this.

  “Ghannahhhngh,” the dead woman said.

  “You want some dick too, baby?” The man led them into a small bedroom. “I’ll give it to you too. I don’t care how dry your pussy is.” He chuckled at himself, then closed the door behind him.

  He let Worm and the woman go, and they immediately made their way across the room. Worm pressed his body into a corner and the woman followed. He wanted to go for the door, but the group of meat-eating women on the other side of it scared him too bad. The way they sucked on the bones, scraped their teeth across them.

  The man grabbed the edge of the bed and lifted it, fit it into the wall. There was what looked like a trap door there, and before the man bent down and opened it, Worm could already hear the others. They were dead just like him, moaning and crying out.

  “All right, you two. Get on down there.”

  The cries of the dead rushed out of the door the second it was swung open, and the man covered his mouth and nose.

  “Hurry the fuck up, goddamnit.”

  When Worm and the woman still didn’t cooperate with him, he rolled his eyes and rushed toward them with outstretched hands.

  “Get the fuck away from me! Don’t touch me!” Worm tried to say as he faced the corner and pushed his body into it. But only a series of grunts and whispery groans came out.

  The man grabbed the woman by the back of the neck, forced her toward the door on the ground with violent shoves. She clicked her teeth, shot a quick glance at Worm that said, “Don’t let him do this!”

  And then she was gone, flying headfirst into the opening after the man thrust his foot into the middle of her back. She cried from inside, along with the others.

  “Your turn,” the man said.

  Worm tried to run for the door then, the thought of being shoved into the opening far more terrifying than the finger-sucking women in the living room. But his feet refused to move any faster than a hurried walk. The man chuckled as he reached out and seized Worm by the shirt, then tugged him backward.

  No…no, please!

  “Gralghhh…”

  Worm tried to scream but only more grunts came out as he dropped backward into the darkness of the cellar. The man’s smiling face became smaller as he fell, and then the ground was there, slamming into his back and head.

  “You all play nice now.”

  The door was shut and the man’s laughter became muffled.

  Worm stood, turned toward the grunts behind him. He thought the room would be covered with darkness, but he could see. He didn’t think he could see in the dark when he was alive, but he could now.

  The others stared back at him, every one of them as terrified as he was.
/>   ***

  The group of dead men and women grunted and moaned at Worm and the woman he was thrown in with. It was as if they thought the two of them had come to save them. Worm tried to explain to them that he was thrown in by the scary men, just like they had been. That he was no use to them. But of course, he couldn’t say anything. He growled in frustration, slapped the wall. He would have thought the dead would be able to communicate with one another, some kind of ESP or something. Or maybe the constant moans and groans would begin to make sense, like some kind of corpse language. He couldn’t read this group’s eyes like he could the woman’s.

  But no. It was all still just gibberish, and though he realized he could see each one of them in the deep darkness, he couldn’t find any other advantage to being a corpse. Even his night vision was all black and white, a little blurry around the edges. But it helped. He was grateful for it, didn’t know if he could have handled being engulfed in pitch blackness.

  At least I’m not hurting anymore. At least all the pain went away.

  But as Worm circled in place and added his voice to the symphony of moans and cries, he thought he might miss the pain. Feeling nothing until the day his decomposition reduced him to dust seemed worse than a lifetime of pain.

  I won’t get the chance to rot away. They’ll eat me before I can.

  The woman grabbed his hand and held it to her face, scraped her teeth across it as if trying to kiss his fingers. Her eyes said, “We have to get out of here.”

  “How? We’re stuck.”

  “We have to try. I can’t stay here. Please!”

  Worm tried to pull his hand away, but couldn’t escape her grip. After a while, he just let her hold it, figured after she lost one of her own hands, the least he could do was let her hold his. Standing in the middle of the cellar, the other corpses continued to circle them, screaming their displeasure, begging for help. They looked awful, every one of them. One man looked like he could have been down there for years, his flesh almost a black color, oily juice dripping from every orifice. One leg was completely bone, and Worm wasn’t sure how the guy was still walking around. His skull had nearly been scraped clean of any flesh—the one eye he had left vibrated and rotated within the socket. The only sound coming from his mouth was a wet crunching, almost like he was vomiting and chewing on it over and over.

  One woman was missing everything below her belly, and she walked on her hands, dragging the dried-out, blackened stump of her torso along behind her. The others all had parts missing, bone showing. A few even had what appeared to be bite marks, as if the people above had taken bites right off them.

  If the men were using these corpses for meat, it didn’t appear that they had any kind of system going. It was as if they just grabbed the first corpse they could reach from the cellar, hauled them up, and cut away what they needed before tossing them back down.

  Worm turned and took a long look up at the cellar door. He tried to walk toward it, but was held back, couldn’t take another step. The woman still had a hold of his hand, and he gave it as hard a yank as he could, finally slipped his hand free.

  “Why did you do that?” her eyes said.

  “I’m going to go check the door. Maybe we can get out there.”

  She reached out, clicked her teeth, widened her eyes. “Give it back. Give me your hand back.”

  Worm spun away from her and shambled toward the door. The stairs proved difficult, but taking it slow and using his hands to crawl up instead of walking, he reached the top, slapped his palm across the wood. Something metal rattled from the other side and Worm gave it a push, but it didn’t budge.

  “Rahgmanangh…”

  Worm checked over his shoulder at the others, and they all had their attention on him now. He could see the hope in their eyes, and even the ones that didn’t have eyes moved and chattered excitedly.

  Worm used both hands, shoved against the door. Nothing.

  Fuck! “Verghh…”

  But he kept at it. He wanted to tell some of the others to come help him, but it didn’t look like any of them were physically capable of climbing the stairs, and even if they were, they didn’t have the strength to do much good.

  The woman seemed to understand the look he gave the crowd, and she worked her way up the stairs and joined him, then used her hand and stump to shove against the door. Worm pushed with her, and they both groaned as they worked, but still got nowhere.

  Worm could hear muffled voices coming from above, some stomping around. Sounded like a man and woman arguing. Something crashed, a woman screamed. And then there was silence.

  After a while, the woman climbed back down the stairs and joined the others in staring up at Worm as he continued to shove the door, refusing to give up. He braced his back against it, tried to push up with his legs. The door seemed to give some then, but just slightly, not even wide enough for him to fit a finger through.

  Worm wasn’t sure how long he had been working at the door, wasn’t sure how long he’d been in the cellar at all. It could have been minutes, it could have been days. It was impossible to keep track of time no matter how hard he tried. The other corpses had given up hope and went back to spitting gibberish and shambling around the small room. Even the woman seemed to have forgotten about Worm and was holding hands with the corpse with the all-bone leg.

  A small bit of jealousy oozed into him then, and he moved away from the door, down the stairs, and toward the woman.

  She held Bone Leg’s hand, even had her fingers intertwined with his. Bone Leg had her arm stump in his mouth, and he sucked on it like an oversized Fudgesicle. His bone leg twitched and clicked when it hit the floor again and again.

  Worm was just about to grab the woman by the shoulder, spin her around, and force her to take his hand instead.

  But the noises coming from up above them distracted him. Pounding, yelling, cursing. Explosions. Lots and lots of explosions.

  Those are gunshots.

  All of the corpses whined as they listened to the ruckus, all zigzagging this way and that, bumping into each other, into the wall. The woman squealed, then caught sight of Worm standing next to her.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Why are you holding his hand and not mine?”

  “What are all those noises? I’m scared.”

  Worm was about to reach for her hand again when another series of bangs and screams startled him from above. He left the woman behind, ignoring her desperate grunts, and went for the stairs again. It took him a while to climb them, his legs refusing to do what he told them.

  Something crashed on just the other side of the door. A small amount of light razored in through a crack.

  “Well what have we got here?” a voice said from the other side.

  Metal clinked together and there were some scraping sounds, and then the door was slung open.

  The sudden burst of light threw Worm off his feet, and he tumbled backward off the steps, collided with a couple of other corpses. The dead man and woman he knocked over quickly scurried away, leaving Worm there on his back alone. The other corpses had already made their way across the room, as far from the door as possible.

  Worm looked up, the light spilling in adding color to the cellar walls. A man peered down at him, a hideous grin pulling the cheeks of his black skin. Patches of paler, pinker skin were scattered about the forehead and cheeks, and Worm thought he might have known this man at some point. But the guy scared him either way, and Worm rose to his feet and shuffled toward the others to escape the vicious eyes glaring at him from above.

  The door was slammed shut again, and the disturbance from above became more violent. More gunshots, more shrieking. After a while, the screams were so intense, Worm hummed to himself to try and block them out. Whoever that man was, he was a bad man. Worm could remember that much. Even the living were scared of him.

  The doors opened again, but Worm wasn’t near the door this time. He heard some coughing and gagging, and then the door boomed
shut again.

  The corpses all huddled together at the furthest spot against the wall, listening to the ruckus. The screams only seemed to grow in volume and intensity, and then eventually, they just stopped. Worm could still hear scraping sounds, some pounding around, but no more screams.

  They stayed that way in the cellar, pressed up against one another in a tight horde of dead flesh and bone. Worm wondered if the door would open now that the scary man had unlocked it, but he was too terrified to check.

  After a while, the door was flung open once more. There were some gasps, some coughing, and then footsteps. Two men, both wearing suits, walked down the steps, each one of them covering their faces with their arms and squinting.

  “Jesus fuck,” one man said, then reached into his pocket and pulled something out. He clicked it and a bright light ignited, hit Worm in the face like a laser beam. “Look at all of ’em. Shit that smell…some of these fuckers are spoiled, I can tell.”

  “Yep. But we’re taking all of them with us, either way. Let the boss sort it out.”

  The men stepped closer, the flashlight still flinging its brightness at them. The one holding it stopped suddenly, mouth open wide as he glared at Worm.

  “Holy fucking shit. It’s…it’s fucking Worm. You see this?”

  The other man guffawed, hurried across the room until he stood just in front of Worm. He reached out, gripped Worm by the chin, turned his face from side to side. “Well goddamn. Looks fresh too. How you been, Worm my boy? You look like shit.”

  They shared a laugh, then the man with the flashlight turned toward the door and whistled. More men hurried down the stairs, rushed across the cellar, and started grabbing corpses. They hauled them off, one corpse per man, forcing them up the steps and out of the cellar.

  The corpses’ cries bounced off the walls, filled the air like swarms of flies.

  One man had the woman, gripping her arm just above the stump. As she passed, she pleaded with Worm with her eyes. “You can’t let them do this! Help me!”