A Feast of Flesh: An extremely gory horror novel (Flesh Harvest Book 2)

by Jacob Rayne

  He was no good to his girl in chains, so he lunged forward, hitting the cop in the throat with the blade just as the first syllable rolled from his tongue.

  A jet of blood hit him in the face like a hot shower.

  Before the cop had even hit the deck he was on his way.

  Nice one, he thought. You’re covered in blood, how the hell are you going to stay hidden now?

  72

  Brian was no more than ten feet from the body when a second policeman came round the corner.

  He thought fast. Luckily the knife was tucked away in the waistband of his pants.

  ‘Oh, thank God. I was coming to find someone. I just saw a man stab this officer. I was trying to help, but I forgot most of the first aid training I was given.’

  The cop was a young one, a rookie. He looked concerned, but unsure.

  His walkie talkie blared into life.

  Brian’s skin began to crawl as he heard his description being given out over the radio.

  The cop’s eyes widened. His cosh flew towards Brian’s head before he could react. It bounced off his temple, startling him. His teeth clamped down on his tongue and he tasted blood.

  Brian fell to his knees as a hard downward blow glanced off the crown of his head.

  Brian rushed forward and tackled the cop to the floor. He realised that he didn’t have long, so he jammed the knife into the cop’s stomach and ran.

  His chest heaved as he propped himself against the wall of one of the houses.

  His frantic eyes scanned the house’s exterior before falling upon an open window in what looked like the downstairs toilet. It looked a perfect place to hide while the search for him died down.

  He knocked the latch up with his knife and climbed in, carefully shutting the window after him.

  He heard voices from further inside the house, the blare of a slut and some fucking moron from the latest reality show describing their experience as z-listers.

  The only thing they’d be good for is feeding my girl, he thought with a frown.

  His mind went to her again.

  He hoped she wasn’t dying while he was pissing about trying to find his way back.

  Brian snuck out of the toilet, his ears pricked for sounds of movement from the front room.

  The talentless gobshites were still going on like they were God’s gift to television.

  Brian tried to push down the anger they inspired in him and made his way towards the front door.

  The living room door came open slightly and he ducked back against the wall as a short fat woman waddled out, clutching a grease-stained bowl of nachos.

  She went into the kitchen and started clashing around in there.

  Keeping one eye on her, he snuck round the corner to his left, towards the front door.

  He tried the door, cursed when he found it locked. There were no keys in sight.

  Aware that the girl had been in there a while and would no doubt be out any minute, he shuffled back to the front room.

  He heard sounds of her shoving clothes into the washing machine and took heart. Maybe he would have time to search for the keys.

  The front room was a shithole. Clearly the woman’s domestic skills stretched as far as washing and nothing else.

  He saw the keys on the floor beneath the arm of the settee.

  His triumphant smile disappeared when the door slammed and the woman shouted, ‘Help! There’s someone in my house.’

  73

  Brian ducked down behind the armchair in the corner, frantically trying to figure out his best move.

  Already he heard footsteps running up the street towards the house, heard raised voices. He pulled the door open and ran out into the corridor. A dark silhouette showed in the front door glass. He heard the girl talking to someone in panicked tones.

  Heard, ‘We’ll sort it out for you.’

  He bolted down the corridor towards the back door.

  Frantic, he turned the handle, but it was locked.

  He saw a dark shape looming in the window. Cursed and spun, running into the room at the back of the house. As the front door slammed shut, he heard the cops describing their plan of attack.

  He flung himself headfirst through the window in the utility room.

  The sound of the breaking glass was a veritable cacophony and he cursed his idea even before the agony of the resultant wounds began to make their presence felt.

  One of the cops raced round the corner, hunched low, already prepared to tackle him as he clambered to his feet.

  Brian thought fast and picked up one of the jagged shards of glass. As the cop raced in, too fast to halt his charge, Brian jammed the glass spear into his throat. The resultant blood spray soaked Brian’s chest.

  He was in the next garden before the cop had even bled out. After checking around for cops, he climbed the back fence and took off through the graveyard.

  It wasn’t far now.

  Brian breathed a sigh of relief as he found the church where he’d left the girl.

  As he pushed the door open, he called out to make sure she knew it was him and not some intruder.

  He wasn’t sure if she was still here, but he could smell blood and was sure he could hear low and steady breathing in the far corner.

  ‘Are you still here?’ he called out.

  A hand clapped down on his shoulder, making him jolt.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ he said, unable to help himself.

  She smiled at him.

  ‘I knew it was you,’ she said. ‘So don’t call out. You’ll only draw attention to us.’

  He nodded. ‘I-I’m sorry. I tried to get someone but he escaped. I’m so sorry.’

  She held up a hand. ‘You tried. I’m grateful for that.’

  ‘I’ve got blood on me,’ he said, ‘That’s my consolation prize.’

  ‘I can smell it,’ she said, her mouth salivating.

  Her tongue flicked out, carving a trail through the thick smears of gore on his face. She smiled as she tasted the blood, her eyes fixed on his, gore thick on her lips.

  He couldn’t help but notice that she was still naked.

  Her smile grew as this thought registered.

  She pressed herself against him, smearing the blood across his clothes.

  Her tongue lashed out again, slowly removing the blood around his neck.

  He moaned in pleasure.

  ‘Take me,’ she said, taking his hands and gently placing them on her blood-covered breasts.

  After the first – and no doubt all-time best – sex of Brian’s young life he’d fallen asleep with his lover in his arms.

  Her chest rose and fell, her blood-smeared breasts goose-bumped in the cold night air.

  He was happy here, feeling accepted, needed, loved, not shunned and mocked like he was in the rest of the world.

  Except for the rumbling in his belly, he had everything he had ever craved.

  Some painkillers might be nice too, he thought, gingerly touching the savage bite she’d made in his neck.

  When she’d explained she needed to ingest blood in order to heal he’d been only too willing to offer some of his, but she’d taken the piss a little. In her haste she’d torn loose a section the size of a fist and had sucked his life fluid for a good fifteen minutes.

  By the end he’d felt as weak as a kitten, but he promised himself it would be worth it.

  The sex had confirmed this for him, and he was eager to experience this again soon.

  She’d told him that he would soon begin to change, the virus that was inherent in her blood took a while to take hold but once it did he would leave his past life behind.

  He’d begin to crave blood himself.

  He cared not as long as he got to keep his beautiful new conquest.

  Part 4 – Six months later

  74

  The manhunt for Osmo, Campbell and the missing paramedic had slowly died down.

  They’d all wanted to get stuck into the enemy but knew that it wasn�
��t wise with the police breathing down their necks.

  Plus, they’d needed the time to heal, especially Osmo and his injured leg.

  Osmo was doubly gutted about it, as he knew that the wound he’d inflicted on their enemy would probably have healed by now too.

  ‘Can’t be helped,’ Baz had said, though he himself was dying to get back into the fray and slay some tramps and their vile masters.

  Despite being held prisoner for the past six months, Clive seemed to have finally come round to their way of thinking, having been fed a daily diet of anti-tramp propaganda and regaled with colourful stories from Osmo, Campbell and Baz’s encounters with the original thing in the barn.

  Now it was just a case of finding where the vile things were hiding.

  Then the slaughter could begin in earnest.

  75

  The life that had begun to grow in Carla’s belly after her and Brian’s first shared night of passion had produced a fine litter of offspring.

  As Carla was a twin it apparently ran in the family. She’d had two beautiful baby boys, who Brian was working hard to keep fed.

  Like their mother they had seriously voracious appetites.

  Luckily Carla was able to hunt on occasion.

  She’d fallen pregnant with their second litter too, and, since Carla’s race had a short gestation period, it wouldn’t be long before she was able to go out on the hunt again.

  Brian had grown better at the art of killing, but he was still vastly inferior to his lover.

  Still, he managed to procure meat for them most nights, even if it was a case of bringing home a stray animal or, if no living food could be obtained, raiding the butcher’s bins at the stroke of dawn.

  The first litter were coming on nicely, already a few feet high, despite being only five months old.

  They were bulky too, not sleek in the way their mother was, but still beautiful in their own way.

  Their chests and limbs were heavily muscled and he was already wary of them. Breaking up their nightly fight over who was going to be first to sample the still-bleeding delicacies he brought them was growing harder.

  He feared them, reckoned that since he was still yet to change completely (his fangs had grown in nicely as the thirst had taken proper hold but he was still far from becoming what he longed to be) they would feast on him if their mother wasn’t around to keep them in check.

  This was incentive enough to make sure there was always something fresh on the table.

  He’d often asked Carla if she had felt any contact with her brother (she’d mentioned him a few times) but she said that everything had gone quiet on that side of things.

  She suspected him dead.

  This was not a cause for sorrow.

  Aside from her feelings for her family (and a deep, almost primal love for Dwayne, the man who had raised her) she had no emotions other than the need to feed and provide for her loved ones.

  Life was hard but satisfying.

  76

  ‘Been a few disappearances round here again, mind, Osmo,’ Campbell said, aiming a dirty finger at an area on the map which hung on the wall.

  Osmo had coloured the area in red, to indicate that it was a high danger zone.

  Baz’s web connection had proved to be useful for keeping up to date on the local news, and every day he and Nige had walked into town for fresh supplies and a paper to scour for any reports of disappearances.

  Life was bearable in the garage, certainly they had a good laugh in there with Osmo and Baz’s crude but effective senses of humour.

  Things certainly could have been much worse.

  Campbell found himself grateful he’d been saved from his suicide attempt and, though the memories of his wife’s butchered remains (and the thought of his son enduring a similarly gory fate) still made him wake in a sweating and screaming heap on occasion, he found he was genuinely glad to be alive.

  Osmo nodded, stubbing out a cigarette and letting the final mouthful of smoke out through his nostrils in twin streams that made Campbell think of a raging bull.

  He looked to have aged in the months since they’d been holed up in here, but Osmo, despite the twenty coffin nails he inhaled each day, was working out hard, doing press up after press up, chin up after chin up and working hard on the heavy bag Baz and Nige had bought as a way to keep boredom at bay.

  Campbell still wouldn’t fancy fighting the man, despite his withered appearance and advancing years.

  ‘This seems to be where they are,’ he said, jabbing a finger that was as yellow as the finest korma at the red area on the map. ‘But there has been a lot of activity round here too.’

  His other index finger – this one without a single patch of yellow – jabbed at another area on the map, almost twenty miles away.

  This one too was coloured in red. In a rough five mile radius of each area was an orange zone, then around that, five miles out, was a yellow zone.

  Random patches of yellow marked where seemingly unrelated deaths and disappearances had occurred.

  The two yellow rings didn’t touch, a distance of three or so miles between them.

  Osmo’s brow furrowed. He lit yet another cigarette as he pondered the information before him.

  ‘There’s been another dog reported missing on Mason Street,’ Baz said.

  ‘Mason Street?’ Campbell said.

  ‘Aye, that seems to be where most of this shit is happening in this zone,’ Osmo mouthed, going hands-free on his smoke to stick another pin into the larger of the two red zones.

  ‘Y’know what I think?’ Baz said.

  Osmo turned, his eyebrows raised, smoke coming out of his mouth like a miniature steam train. Enlighten me, that look meant.

  ‘Looks to me like there are two groups,’ Baz said.

  Osmo smacked himself upside the head with his right hand, knocking the cigarette from his lips. He bent quickly and snatched it up. ‘Three second rule,’ he beamed, before shoving it back into his mouth. ‘Of course. How the fuck didn’t I think of that?’

  77

  Dwayne and his brethren were settled in nicely at their new home.

  The surrounding fields gave privacy, the building’s condemned status ensuring a distinct lack of visitors.

  The only problem was that they had to go out on the hunt, a distance of a few miles every time. There were only dog walkers who came round these parts, too disparate to provide a reliable food source.

  Luckily the town nearby was full of beer-swilling morons who didn’t seem to notice their population dwindling before their very eyes.

  His son had fully healed, had grown six more inches and put on what Dwayne reckoned was a good stone and a half of solid muscle, most of which was on his torso. It seemed likely to stand up to all but the most powerful of stake attacks.

  His son knew him, loved him, appreciated him. Dwayne knew that. He thought of his daughter often, and had reluctantly come to consider her slain.

  It was one more thing to take out on the scum who had killed his original master.

  Some of his bearded brethren had asked if they were going to try to find Osmo and his friend.

  Dwayne had smiled, shaken his head. ‘No need. They’ll come to us. And we will tear them to pieces.’

  78

  ‘So how are we gonna play this?’ Nige said. ‘Cos I’m kind of getting sick of sitting round here with my thumb up my arse.’

  ‘Wise man say only fools rush in,’ Osmo sang in an eerily accurate Elvis impression before collapsing in a laughing fit. ‘Only kidding, mate, I’m the most seat of your pants guy there is to know. Ain’t I, Officer Campbell?’

  Campbell grinned. He’d long given up asking to be called Thomas or Tommy, anything other than Officer Campbell, as Osmo was deeply respectful of him and refused to call him anything else. ‘I’ll fucking say.’

  Osmo laughed, whacking his leg with his palm. ‘I reckon we should go for this one first,’ he said. ‘This one seems to have the least going on, jud
ging by the amount of disappearances being reported.’ He jabbed a finger at the smaller of the two red zones on the map.

  ‘What do ya think we should do?’ Baz said. ‘All go charging in together?’

  ‘No, reckon you and Nige should hang back as our backup. You saved our asses nicely back there in the car chase,’ Campbell said.

  ‘Ya took the words outta my mouth,’ Osmo grinned.

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ Nige said. ‘You guys are the experts.’

  ‘That we are, son,’ Osmo beamed.

  ‘What about me?’ Clive said.

  ‘Oh aye, we ain’t forgot about you, sunshine,’ Osmo said. ‘We’re gonna send you in first, as bait.’

  Clive’s face dropped as if he’d just been told he had hours to live. Which, if the stories were to be believed, was pretty close to the truth.

  All of them eyeballed him fiercely, then Osmo caved, giggling away like a schoolgirl. ‘Na, son, you’re as much a part of this group as I am. You’re kind of our spare man. You choose which group you’re in.’

  The others were still laughing.

  ‘I think I’ll stay with Baz and Nige in the backup group.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Osmo smiled. ‘But I hope your aim’s good. Those things move pretty damn fast.’

  ‘I’ve never missed a clay pigeon in years,’ Clive said.

  ‘Well, fuck, son, these things ain’t clay pigeons,’ Osmo frowned. ‘But if you’re a good shot you’re a good shot.’

  Clive smiled at this.

  ‘So, let’s get everything together. Fuck knows what we’re gonna find in there, so grab every goddamn weapon you can get your hands on,’ Osmo said. ‘Get yourselves a piss too, cos last thing you want to be thinking about is where the nearest toilet is. Meet back here in ten minutes with the weapons.’

  79

  The sun was beginning to lose his nightly battle against the darkness when Brian peered out of the doorway of their makeshift home.

  All around him, the smell of blood hung like an invisible curtain. He was so used to it now that it barely registered with him, though had he noticed he would have enjoyed the metallic scent.