by Alan Spencer
Her eyes bulged near the size of baseballs when she stepped up to the conveyor belt: the dripping blades, the tangled messes of flesh, the shards of bone, the mats of hair and scalp stuck on steel, and the random organs scattered about the floor in a medley of ripe gore. She bent down underneath the conveyor and claimed a heart that was severed in half. She sopped the muscle in her clenched hand, and an artery sprayed its fill into her mouth, her tongue extending five inches to catch every drop.
“You’ve done so much." She spoke with ruby dribbling down her chin and crawling between her cleavage. “What’s next, Ruden? Is this how we’re going to turn everyone onto the blood? Whatever you're up to, it's amazing. Truly amazing."
“Yes, it’s amazing, but it’s not everything. The blood I spit in the sheriff’s mouth, some of it’s from the barrel. He’ll do as I say for another taste,” he pointed at Dale, “like this one will. The blood I coughed up is the blood we drank last night, Lenora. The blood in that stock tank will soon be ready for consumption, but there’s one final preparation before it's exactly how I want it, but we need more bodies first." He shouted at screeching levels, “Lots of bodies!”
Lenora’s attention shifted to the gaping hole near the back of the mill. She looked down into it and was offended at what she observed. “Who’s that girl on the bottom sleeping?”
“It’s another one of my thralls. But she’s not here to sleep!”
The beast leaped into the hole as if off of a high dive, and in seconds, he crawled out with Annie draped over his shoulder. He slapped her across the face, and Annie unleashed a fierce cry as she tumbled down on all fours. She curled into a protective shell, refusing to move or combat her aggressor.
Dale was quick to prevent further violence. “The hole’s complete. We await further instruction.”
“Damn right,” he snarled. His hands were bent as claws ready to dash Annie’s body into pieces. “The hole’s not complete. It has to be sealed at the walls with concrete. You two dared to drink from the barrel, and you’ve committed treason against me, and you’ll be stronger now—and that’ll cost you. I leave it up to you two to have that hole layered in concrete. It’s your job now, and yours alone.”
Lenora studied the hole curiously. “What will sealing it up with concrete do?”
A car horn honked before he could answer, and a Mazda truck pulled into the cider mill. The back cab was draped over by a tarp, and it bulged. Dale recognized Jenny Patrick, the evening manager of the Sunshine Motel, at the helm. Her body was drenched through and through with blood. She wasn’t monstrous, but Dale could see she was craving blood.
“I brought you bodies as you instructed.”
Ruden was pleased, locking arms with Lenora. “Very good, let’s see them.”
Lenora, slipping from Ruden’s hold, beat the woman to the task. She untied the knots with twitching fingers and impatient grunts. By the time Ruden joined in to help, Lenora had removed the veil over the corpses. Dale didn’t recognize many of them. They were travelers by the looks of them. There were nine bodies total, each splayed casket-style. The heads weren’t removed, but their necks were crudely broken.
The monster woman picked up a three-hundred pound man by shoving her fingers through his eyeballs and lifting the slab of meat off the truck and then dragging the corpse like luggage to the conveyor belt.
“Turn on the machine, Dale,” Ruden demanded. “Give Lenora the pleasure.”
He powered the conveyor, striking the auxiliary button. The machine kicked on, the blades spinning and slashing and awaiting soft bodies.
“Push him down the conveyor,” Ruden rejoiced, throwing his hands up in the air. “Split him WIDE open!”
Lenora slammed the large body onto the blades, pitting him. She removed her fingers from his sockets with such force it split his head open down the middle. Ten seconds of blade-spinning action later, the man was spliced into too many pieces to count, and it reminded Dale of a human apple turned into sauce.
The she-beast yawped as the corpse was smashed between the two gigantic sheets of metal with the crick and shatter of bones. “I want to do another! Again!"
Ruden joined her in the next session of bloodletting, and while the monsters were busy, Dale turned his attention back to Jenny Patrick who was hunched into herself. Her mouth was open a slit expecting Ruden to offer her the special blood at any moment. Flesh was embedded under her fingernails, and she licked the morsels free.
Seeing her acting so monstrously, he wondered who else would be turned into blood drinkers, murderers, and criminal revolutionaries.
And you’re one of them. You can’t deny it. The blood is too magnificent for anyone to decline. Murder isn’t too high of a price to pay, is it?
He didn’t ask for his life to change, but now that it had, he refused to allow them control. In the end, he’d wrench the man’s head from his body like he did to his family and drink every ounce from his core. The bastard turned him into a monster, so then he’d act like a monster.
The two were finished grinding down the corpses, and now that their game was over, Ruden addressed Jenny. “Bring more bodies and be careful not to be caught. Take them quietly, you understand? You do a good job, you will be rewarded.”
Jenny's labored breathing was her only response. She rushed out of the cider mill, sourly disappointed she wasn't fed, yet compelled to do as she was told.
Between the doors, Sheriff Graham lumbered into the cider mill. He was confused, rubbing his eyes as if waking from a deep chemical-induced sleep. “I see blood everywhere, it’s on everything. What the hell is happening to me?"
The sheriff eyed the dead bodies, but the instinct to draw his weapon wasn't there. Defeated by what he couldn't overcome, the sheriff approached Ruden like a beggar. “I want more of what you gave me. Please, I need it. I can't stop thinking about it. Just, just give it to me, and I'll do anything you want me to do.”
Ruden seized his neck, gaining the man's complete attention. “This blood is earned only by hard work. You’re the sheriff of Smithville, correct?” He waited for an answer, and the sheriff nodded in reply. “We need as much blood as we can take. Time is short before too many catch on, people we can’t control. The blood has to be ready before that happens. Slaughter your police force, Sheriff, and bring their bodies to me.”
The sheriff rubbed at his bruised throat. "Anything for you. Consider it done."
The sheriff raced from the cider mill, reticent to fulfill his task.
Annie hadn’t moved from her spot on the floor, staying in place like a beaten rag. Her cheek bled, the welt from Ruden's blow an open wound. Dale leaned down next to her to cradle her in his arms. “It’s okay. They still need us. We’re safe for now.”
“Go to work,” Ruden demanded, overhearing Dale’s comments. “I want concrete, and I don’t care how you get it. I want you back here in a couple of hours.”
He didn’t worry about the task.
He knew exactly how to fulfill the monster's request.
22
Dale steered the white ’82 Chevy Van, what his son used to drive—a loner heap of junk—out of Smithville. Annie sat next to him, keeping to herself. They both had deformed overnight after the massive ingestion of the barrel blood, and it took Dale peering into the rearview mirror to affirm the alteration. His eyes were bulbous and enlarged like a mosquito’s under a magnifying glass. The orbs could view a mile up the road. He could predict the amount of traffic on the highway from the back roads. His flesh was also laced with course and fat veins, each thread a shifting organism. His body was ripped with unnaturally hard muscles, his heart and lungs controlled by an advanced cardiovascular system.
Annie played with the ends of her mattered hair and chewed her nails to abate the hunger. “Where are we going? How will we get concrete?—never mind concrete that’s ready to pour.”
“Do you ever leave town?” He was snappy in his hungry condition. “There’s a construction company named "Johnson
& Heeder" a few miles out of Smithville. They build houses, pour foundations, and do in-home repairs. I’m sure we can steal a dump truck with concrete ready to pour.” He was smiling at the prospect of blood. “And maybe take a few more bodies while we’re at it.”
Annie licked her lips. “I can’t wait.”
Her eager face demurred into fear. “What do you think about that bitch, Lenora? I don’t like her. The way she slaughtered those bodies on the conveyor, the chick’s mad."
“I’m sure there’s more like her. Ruden keeps mentioning the blood will attract others. They’ll be in Smithville soon. This town won’t last long.” He pounded the steering wheel, injecting something positive in the moment. “We’re lucky, can’t you see? We’ll live through this, and when they least expect it, we’ll crush them. That blood of Ruden’s will be ours.”
“Will we be as strong as they are?”
“I can’t say, but we'll fight them no matter what, right?"
"Together."
"Together." He smiled at her. "Don't you feel better already?"
She didn't reply.
He drove five miles north and took the Lackman Road exit. “We have to follow their rules until we know how they truly function. They’re like vampires, but better. How could someone form such a craving? Did someone just decide one day, 'Hey, why not drink a bunch of blood?' How did it begin, I mean historically?”
She kept sucking the ends of her hair to extract the blood embedded in the tangles. She didn’t care for the historic analysis. “The past doesn’t matter to me. Only blood.”
“Keep yourself together." He was worried she was too pensive and off-the-handle to survive. “You’ll never make it being this desperate."
His vision cut through the overpass and the trees to the lonely mobile home surrounded by ten 4x4 Ram trucks. Off to the side were three dump trucks and then a yard of lumber, fencing, shingles, and other supplies to build houses. Dale picked out five men on the sight including one in the mobile home’s office. The dump truck, the one he wanted to steal, was being tended to by two men.
He sped up, peeling out and taking a left at the stop sign. The road was barren of other businesses. Johnson & Heeder was isolated. Knowing this, he powered through the fence entrance. Then he braked hard, halting outside the mobile home's office. Edwin Martinez gawked at them from his concrete truck, oblivious to who they were and why they'd entered in such an action-packed fashion.
Edwin was six feet tall and three hundreds pounds of power. He challenged the truck, but at Dale’s approach, he backed down, frightened by his menacing face.
His retreat was really a retrieval. Edwin raced to a pile of 2x4’s stacked against the mobile home and raised one in the air. “You stay the hell away from me, whatever the fuck you are!”
He ignored his warning and ran full speed—ramming speed—and speared him in the chest with his shoulder. The connection snapped the bones along Edwin’s left ribcage: crrrrrick! He lifted Edwin up in the air and slammed him up against the mobile home. He landed onto the ground with a twisted neck and an arm turned backwards, the palm up to the sky instead of against the ground. He shuttered and moaned, and after ten seconds, he finally died of cranial trauma.
I don’t realize my own strength.
I nearly broke him in half.
The idea that he was stronger than a twenty-eight year old construction worker impressed him. He noted Annie who had kicked through the mobile home’s front door. Inside, the screams: “No—no—naaaaaawwgh!”
Foreman Alan Cooper was hurled through the door. He crashed on top of a Chevy pick-up, his back smashing in the windshield, his throat gaping from a wild slash over his larynx. Greg Bassman and Crystal Weaver closed in on Dale from behind, both the same rotund build as his previous victim.
Crystal barked, “Murdering son-of-a-bitch!”
“Let’s show this bastard a few things,” Greg grunted at them. “I’ve been waiting for a good fight!”
Greg swung a shovel at Dale’s face. He ducked, and doubling forward in anger, he delivered an upper cut to the man’s jaw. Mandible, teeth, and ribbons of flesh were undone, the force of the blow destroying the lower half of his face. The man’s tongue hung like a thirsty dog’s and with no mouth to enclose it. The man’s eyes rolled about in shock as he coughed up red. “Ugh...uhhh...oh Gawd—oh Gawd!”
Crystal retreated, but Annie ended the escape attempt by tripping her, a blow to the back of the knees. Wasting no time, she located a nearby jack hammer, and she pounded it into Crystal’s midsection, breaking sternum, exposing guts, and forcing her to puke up blood.
Meanwhile, Brice Lewis dug into the glove compartment of his utility truck for a weapon. He opened fire on them with a Ruger pistol. Annie took cover, but Dale received a bullet to the deltoid. There was a good prick and sting, though Dale laughed at the unsubstantial pain. He tore a rivulet of his shirt off and created a rough tourniquet to staunch the bleeding.
“It’s your blood that should be spilling! Soon, I’LL BE TASTING YOURS!”
He dived and rolled, performing a summersault to reach Brice’s vehicle without further harm. Dale slammed the car’s door into Brice's body repeatedly. The door was unhinged from the car, Dale breaking it, and the last connection of the door split Brice’s head in two halves. The corpse tipped backwards, dead on the road.
He looked deeper into the warehouse, assured nobody was left to oppose them on the premises.
“Move it,” he instructed Annie, sensing outsiders might catch on to the crime scene. “Lug the bodies into the back of the truck and cover them with the tarp. You drive the truck, and I’ll take the concrete rig.”
Annie had pried open the two halves of Brice Goodwin’s head with both hands, clutching the victim’s nose like a handle. Her face was slathered in blood and gooey flesh as her nose and mouth probed the openings of the man’s face, sucking out the sweet nectar. “Mmmm! Ohhh! Unnngggh!”
He seized her by the hair and forced her back from the remains. “I’m thirsty too, but you don’t see me giving in. Now do as I tell you. Let’s pick up the bodies. March.”
Together, they collected the bodies and concealed them within the tarp over the truck bed. Annie snuck in licks to open wounds, her eyes watching Dale like a dog over a hambone—a light snarl embedded in her expression.
He didn’t bother to clean up the blood, remembering that Sheriff Graham was one of them now, and soon enough, the rest of Smithville’s law enforcement team would be on board, or dead. Jenny Patrick was procuring more blood in town. Everyone in this small town, he thought, would either drink the blood or become the blood.
23
Sheriff Graham failed to divert his focus from blood; it was worse than any built up hunger or cigarette or coffee withdrawal. He couldn’t watch his arms for too long, or else he’d see through the skin to the veins and circulatory system. The stray terrier on the side of the road raised its head at him as he sped by, and he could see the inner workings of the canine.
“Gads!”
He had forgotten where he was driving to, but he soon recalled, thinking back to Ruden’s demands. This wasn’t a choice, the craving built up inside him making that determination for him. He was ordered to collect the deputies and criminals locked up and kill them. Their bodies would be dragged through the apple conveyor belt and liquefied. He couldn’t wait to bare witness.
-You’re coming around, yes.
He immediately knew who’d broken the boundaries of his thoughts, causing him to stiffen in his seat and almost veer off the road.
“You—what do you want with me now? I’m obeying you.”
Beads of sweat broke out on his skin. He was run-down and needing a pick-me-up that couldn’t be provided by any other source than bloody murder.
You understand allegiance faster than Dale or Annie. Good for you. You’d miss out on the sweetness otherwise. You’ll swim in it and fuck as many women as you want if you obey me.
The warm blood R
uden spat into his mouth was pure. Real. It was everything he wanted and everything he’d ever need.
Everyone will be bloodthirsty, and those who aren’t will be devoured.
Which are you, Sheriff? The thirsty or the devoured?
He continued driving, and after a time, the presence in his mind waned.
The creature already knew his answer.
Police headquarters was stationed two blocks from the post office in town. The sheriff parked in an empty spot out front, keeping his head low and checking each side of the street before ducking into the station. The sheriff failed to mask the mutations, though in the early stages, he looked sickly more than anything, and he panicked when Katie Turner at the other end of a glass window gawked at him in concern.
“Jesus Christ, you look like you've got the plague."
Officer Luke McCullough, a man four years on the force, looked him over and the color drained from his face. In that drawn out moment during the morbid staring contest, Luke’s skin parted, and the sheriff studied the veins pumping and racing and harboring what he craved. He acted without decision, reaching up with digging fingers, now mutating to talons, and scraped the flesh from Luke’s face. He shoved Luke’s face to his mouth to bite down, sucking the delectable red spilling from the open wounds of his cheeks. “Arrrrrrrrrrrgh!”
Katie screamed, raising the .38 revolver strapped to her holster, “LET HIM GO, DAMN IT!”