by Alan Spencer
Walking on, he kept his guard up as if expecting one of the bloody figures to burst through the door and attack him at any moment.
Slam!
He whipped around.
The entrance had closed from a burst of wind.
His heart drummed and threatened to break the cage walls of his sternum. His stomach lurched, and his throat muscle constricted to hold back his lunch.
You found a Goddamn story. I hope you’re happy. You could’ve kept on the interstate and gone north to Gardner, Kansas, and avoided this shit.
Knowing he couldn’t change what had transpired, he tried to stay optimistic. What if there wasn’t anybody in the rooms? What if he climbed out of the wishing well undetected?
But it didn't take long for his thoughts to conspire against him. How was he going to make it anywhere on foot safely? Who was he to call if the police were dead? He assumed Chippie’s warnings were correct, but he’d forgotten that Chippie had mentioned they were dicing up bodies at the cider mill.
I’m in the middle of their killing ground.
He decided there wasn’t anything else to do but search the premises, even if it was to locate a telephone, a weapon, or another way out.
There could be an outlet that leads far out of this place. You might be in the right place after all.
Curiosity begged him: what was the purpose of keeping rooms underground through a door incorporated into a wishing well? He considered the possibility of someone building a fallout shelter. Ever since the Enola Gay dropped “Little Boy” on Hiroshima and the Russians promised their version of a nuclear holocaust, people in well-populated areas were driven by their fear to “duck and cover,” he supposed. The reality of this chamber wasn’t so far-fetched. It wasn’t unlikely that a man like Mr. Birchum, a man from the old school, would dredge up a well and build such a place. But why four rooms? Why the hallway? And why the bloodstained floors? This underground hideaway wasn’t the pet project of a middleclass yokel who feared the bombs were about to be dropped on him.
Open one of the doors.
How else will you know?
Caleb dropped his tote bag. He wanted both hands available to fight if he needed them, though he severely questioned his hand-to-hand combat abilities.
He called out, meekly, “Is anybody inside?”
You dumb ass. Give yourself away, why don't you?
He waited out his mistake, regretting asking such a stupid question.
The storm raged anew outside, though muffled from being underground. He stood in front of the first door, the one closest to him, and he opened it with arms held up into fists ready to thwart another’s violence.
The room was cast in cavern deep darkness. He traced his hand on the wall and hit the switch. A tink and rattle from the ceiling and nothing happened. Seconds dragging by, the lights finally kicked on and blinded him temporarily. After determining he was safe and nothing was coming after him in the shadows, he toured the room...
33
Caleb wanted to see what Chippie kept in his basement, and now Shannon had the opportunity. They had successfully scouted through the woods, crossing through Rush Creek and its current that threatened to trip them up, and then they sprinted through an open field to avoid the threat that surrounded the cider mill. When they finally reached the house, Chippie padlocked the door and raced underground with Shannon following right behind him. The sight in the basement was reassuring for a moment for her, but the implication that soon followed hit her just as fast.
The man had maintained an armory that scaled an entire wall. Weapons by the dozens hung on nails and homemade wooden shelves.
He introduced the weapons with the fervor of a parent announcing his children's accomplishments. “This is an M3 Greaser Gun; it was used in World War II. It was cheaper to mass produce than the Thompson machine gun. It has a box magazine, 203 millimeter barrel length, and it can shoot four-hundred rounds a minute. And this is a volley gun." He pointed at the large cannon device in the corner on two wheels. “It's loaded with grapeshot. You know what grapeshot is, honey? It's glass shards, gunpowder, buckshot, broken pottery—you get creative, we can throw some other sharp things in that mix too.”
She gawked at the cannon and the pit in her stomach grew deeper. “How did you get these weapons?”
He was too caught up in his explanations that he didn’t bother to humor her question. He clutched two Uzi-esque guns instead. “These are MAC-10’s. Magazine fed. Optional firing switch from manual to auto. Then I have the Steyr TMP, and it's as good as an M-16. Beside that piece is the AR-15. This bad boy fires 800 rounds a minute. Oh yes, then there’s the 6.5 Grendel, the .300 Whisper, and the .50 Beowulf!”
She insisted louder this time, “How did you come upon these weapons?”
He finally made eye contact with her. “Friends in the military have their hook-ups, and they pass their connections onto me. Don't worry about how I got the supply. I suggest you arm yourself instead of interrogating me. Pick a weapon."
She eyed the crossbow on the wall, the only non-bullet spitting device. “What is that one?”
“Interesting choice,” he complemented her, his stern front instantly letting up. “It’s a Manchurian crossbow. You simply place the bolt and fire. It's quick and effective, if you don’t like guns.”
Shannon stared at the boxes heaped with grenades and knives within several glass displays. He really did have more guns than an army surplus store.
He cradled an M-79 with a 40 millimeter grenade launcher, making his choice. "Yes, this will get the job done."
She wasn’t comfortable with the idea of combat. Tosha’s attempt on her life convinced her running away and letting those better qualified to handle the terror was the best option. But Chippie conveyed that wasn’t an choice. There was nobody left to dispatch their enemies. Smithville was slaughtered, and they were the only ones left. She had to accept that Caleb was dead; he said he was visiting the cider mill, and he’d walked into a deadly situation that was impossible to survive.
She asked one more time, “Are you sure we can’t run?”
He dismissed her. “You can do whatever you want. I’m not running from anything. I waited years hoping something would happen on our turf. We’d show any invaders shrapnel up their assholes. If every household was stocked with this many weapons like me, we’d be the safest country in the world. If we could shed our conservative skins, the terrorists would fear Americans—not just soldiers, but normal everyday people, like you and me.”
He motioned for her to move up the stairs, seeing the doubt and fear spread on her face. “You’re scared. You’ll only bog me down. I can’t risk it. You question me as a leader, and I question you as a solider.”
“I’m not a solider! We’re in trouble, Chippie. Tosha tried to kill me, and we’ve been friends my entire life. What’s killed everyone isn’t human, and what’s changed them is even worse. How do you know they’ll die by your weapons?”
“The bear trap worked on Tosha. You rammed your brother with your car. They’re not unstoppable.”
“I’d still rather go to another town for help.”
"They’re watching from everywhere. We were lucky to make it back to the house without being caught. I went over this with you; I thought we were in agreement to take these things on. There's no outside help, and by the time there is, it'll be too late for us. We take action ourselves not because we want to but because we have to."
“I’m thinking rationally now that I’ve had a chance to ingest this madness. We'd be nothing up against a big group of them."
“Then I take it you want to leave.” He reached out to grab her arm, but she backed off before he could, thwarting him. “Doubts get you killed in combat. Cowards get you killed in combat. You’d be dead in seconds, and you wouldn’t take a single one down with you. I don't need you. You get the hell out of my house, you useless bitch."
She was horrified. “What a chivalrous guy. A woman needs help, and you'
re willing to throw her back out there into guaranteed death. I always knew something was wrong with you, but this, this proves everybody's suspicions. You really are crazy."
He cradled his M-79, drawing comfort from his weapon. “I never cared what people thought of me. And another fact, chivalry only comes with pussy—and I haven’t been fucked in quite some time, not for free at least.”
“Uggh.” She wanted to flee the dirty old man's house, but she was torn. It wouldn’t be safe on her own, but she wasn’t safe with Chippie either. “You’re a big help in a predicament like this. Men are perverts even when their ass is on the line. You’re a fucking monster."
He checked the clip in the gun, and satisfied it was loaded, he slammed it back in with his open palm. “And you’re a fucking whore.”
The rattle of feet pattering across the roof silenced them. The front door went whomp against the floor, jarring them both. Chippie skulked about, his thoughts already racing for ideas on how to flank the enemy.
A series of windows were shattered next, the glass grinded into the floorboards as the trespassers crossed through rooms and thresholds. Creaks and groans issued in every room upstairs. Furniture and compartments were rooted through and quickly left behind for new territory to scout.
Chippie urged her into the back corner of the room. Next, he rolled the volley gun forward. The cannon's barrels were aimed towards the stairs. Hurrying, he poured gun power into the barrels with steady hands from a cylinder black box next, tapping the bottom to get every last grain out.
She pressed her body against the wall to further herself from the volley gun and the reality of what was at hand. Her body was clenched, her teeth chattering. She couldn’t move, fearing the second when the monsters invaded the basement she wouldn't be able to react.
She whispered to Chippie, still clinging onto the faintest hopes he would protect her. “They’re coming.”
“It's me they have to fear! We’re down here, ingrates! It’s time to meet your maker. Uncle Sam’s foot is about to be wedged up your communist asses.”
“Quiet,” she shushed. “They’ll hear us. They did hear us!”
“I’ll blow them to Jupiter!” He laughed with maniacal glee as he poised himself behind the volley gun ready to fire it. “They can’t fuck with me, sweet tits.”
Footsteps one after the other barreled down the stairs. She gasped at the man closest to them. His face was a disturbing medley of expressions, his mouth drawn thin in a psychotic smile. The eyes ready to burst forth from their sockets, how they ogled her.
“Come to us,” the creature implored them, the words seething from his lips with murderous energy. “You won’t die if you volunteer yourself to us. Become one of us. You'll experiences such pleasures, and wouldn't you prefer that over death? The choice is easy, so let this be easy for us all."
Chippie pointed to the shelf a pace from her position. “Put on the gas mask now.”
“What?”
“Do it! You want to escape, then obey my orders.”
She summoned the courage to move, though her body panged with the threat of drawing attention to herself. She slipped the gas mask over her head with quaking hands, the inside stinking of stale cigarettes and bad breath.
Chippie asked the intruder, “Why are you doing this to everyone?”
The man leveled with them. “Wait until you try the blood, then ask me. Why don’t you come out and have a taste with us? Call it a peace offering.”
He was insulted. “Forget it. Who's left alive in Smithville? Who haven't you killed?”
The man continued to promote the blood. “Quit this pointless showdown. Our friends are at the cider mill. Enjoy what we’ve been blessed to indulge. I guarantee bliss on your tongues.”
“You’re hideous.” Chippie crouched lower behind the volley gun. “Since when did you not want to be human anymore?”
“You’ll learn why soon." The man's orbital tissue flexed. “Now come with us.”
“Forget it!” He pushed Shannon further behind him, warning her, “DUCK, HANDS OVER YOUR HEAD!"
He lit a fuse with a lighter. Each crackle and fizzle tightened Shannon’s spine. The fuse burned forever, maybe ten seconds, what amounted to an eternity in the face of death. The group charged forth together leaping off the staircase, some doing a Superman jump to breach the distance between them, while others crouched low and crawled to flank them from their sides. They kicked through the shelves and glass displays to accost them.
Before they closed in, an earthquake tremor rocked the foundation: KABOOOOOM!
Weapons were disturbed from their shelves and clanged onto the concrete floor in high count unison. Upstairs, dishes crashed from the quake, the concrete foundation itself shattered and lowering the house in sections, splitting wood and ruining walls and entryways. Smoke permeated thick enough to blacken the air, obscuring everything in a dark haze. She had covered her ears, yet they still rang with a piercing locust's shrill.
Each of the intruders was missing in the smog. As she moved forward, trying to decipher the way out between balls of smoke and cordite powder, she spotted blood spatters on the walls thrown at high velocities. Half torsos and pulped bodies were the brutal aftermath of the cannon's blast. The bits of glass and shrapnel had literally shot through them.
Chippie slipped on a gas mask over his face, and he urged her to move on. He clutched his M-79 and charged up the stairs. She clumsily picked up the Manchurian crossbow and dodged stepping on the remains of five bodies. Struggling to catch up to him, her body was weak, and she couldn’t see further than two paces in front of her, but she knew Chippie had forded ahead of her up the stairs and out of the house once the machine gun prattled outside.
Brack-brack-brack-brack-brack!
She hiked up the staircase once she could trace the outline of it through the lifting smoke. Sneaking into the kitchen, she peered out the window to find Chippie hard at work. He was unleashing reams of gunfire, blowing off noses, hands from wrists, and caving in midsections with hundreds of bullets. The man issued caterwauls of pleasure as new streams of automatic gunfire were hurled into the enemies who swarmed him. The enemy's initial onslaught had been thwarted, but the next group of mongrel-faced villains challenged him moments later, and Chippie was quickly overwhelmed.
Skittering steps across the roof echoed down to her. Dust coughed out from the open fireplace. Another one was coming down after her. Loud thumps against the wooden floors from the hallway and bedrooms limited Shannon’s escape routes. She charged through the backdoor, and lucky, nobody waited for her out there. It was best to hide, she decided, but where? The woods were packed with traps, many of which could be hidden so well she couldn’t enter without risking her life.
Berating laughter, whoops and cries of victory, the front of the house was dominated by the blood hungry fiends. Only seconds remained before she would be discovered and inevitably killed.
I can’t fucking go anywhere.
Quick—hide!
She raced across the yard and climbed into the large garbage compactor of scrap steel. She was quick, crawling underneath the dinged up hood of a car. Fence and barbed wire and car parts occupied the space inside, and she’d cut her ankles and left arm on the barbs. She silenced the pain by biting her fist. She curled into a ball so tight she couldn’t be spotted by the casual observer.
Minutes passed, moment after exaggerated moment, and nobody peered into the compactor. She grasped the crossbow and prayed she didn’t have to use it.
Meanwhile, Chippie’s gunfire didn’t cease.
34
The smoke from the volley gun poured forth from the windows, turning the house into a living and breathing thing. Chippie raced out onto the killing field, pumping the grenade launcher attached to the M-79 and engaged in battle.
Ssssssssssssssssonk!
A truck in the distance blew up in a neon orange burst, the shrapnel smashing and hammering into the group surrounding it, swarming each victim
in combustible death. Their bodies slammed and crashed into the ground, and those remaining alive, dug and clawed and slashed to remove the flaming steel impaling them. Balls and streamers of fire carved brilliant arcs through the billowing screen of soot and smoke, and the car gave one last great explosion before burning on low.
Serves the bastards right for breaking into my property.
“Graaaaaaaah!” He was double-kicked in the lower back as if by a raging donkey's blow. Chippie buckled forward, thrown, his back warring with unfathomable conflagrations. The M-79 was lost, far out of arm's reach. A cold, pale hand clasped his neck, and his face was driven into a deep puddle of mud. Suffocating and gargling in murky water for breath, he clawed at patches of grass and lifted up tufts to find a way out of the hole and back up to air. He grew dizzy as his body reacted to the lack of oxygen; his lungs were shrinking and his arteries painfully constricted. Running out of time, Chippie reached into his leather holder and unsheathed his boning knife. He drove it into his attacker’s side, and pay dirt! The attacker let up his hold and issued a low, “Huuuug.”
He lifted himself up to his feet and sucked in many alleviating breaths. He poised to fight hand-to-hand style. Josh Hanover, a teenager who used to bag groceries at the local convenience store, removed the knife from his ribcage with a high-pitched wince. He wasn’t mutated like some of the others, he thought, believing him to be a fresh recruit.
The young man warned him, “You can’t stop us. There are more of us than you."
“The blood’s stealing your sense, boy.” He extended both hands to grapple the kid, waving with two fingers to come on. “I’ll never be like you!”
From behind, Chippie was seized by the neck and hoisted in the air by one strong hulking arm. The man was powerful beyond the others, it seemed. Bloodshot eyes glowered at him, removing the fight in Chippie instantaneously. Veins split his skin along the circumference of his body with each muscle that tasked to hold him up. Gaping wide mouth, it spat its hot words at him, “If you won’t be one of us, then I’ll see you in hell!”