by Alan Spencer
He was thrown many yards into the air, hurled like a discus. Chippie careened high up into an oak tree, and caught up among the branches, he began his descent twenty feet down. He was half-dead, having smacked into half a dozen thick limbs on the way down. When he landed on a bed of dead leaves, he triggered one of his hidden land mines.
35
“Farewell!” Ruden erupted into hearty laughter when the man blew up, though he soon turned on the sentiment. “Militant bastard killed ten of us. What a waste of blood."
Dale watched the events unfold: the acrid smoke spewing from the windows and chimney of the house, the automatic gunfire from Chippie's gun, and the explosion of the truck. The ones that entered the house were dead. Flames issued from the basement’s window wells and the rest was consumed by fire. He stood in astonishment. The town was officially theirs, Chippie being the last man to defeat before victory. The bordering counties and cities would experience the transition very soon. After tonight, the end result would be domination.
He licked his lips, craving the taste again. He sweated in fever, a tempestuous heat shooting up and down his veins, every inch of his insides itching for relief. A heart attack sensation drove him to his knees, and he gave in, pressing both fists to his sternum, the sharp pangs jolting up his right forearm and radiating in his chest.
Ruden arrived at his side, bending over him, urging him with a hand placed flat on his back. “Fight it. It’s not what you think, Dale. The pain doesn’t mean death, it means expansion—evolution!”
Through gritted teeth, “’Fuck is it?—aaaagh!”
Every cell of his body was needles latching and digging into him. Most of the agony transpired in his chest, each new thrum of the heart increasing the intensity.
“Your heart is expanding,” Ruden explained. “The blood you consumed from the barrels is having a profound effect on you. I haven’t had much time to understand the changes myself. That would take a lifetime, if not longer, to understand.”
Ruden's voice crept into his mind: That’s another reason why I didn’t wrench your head off when you and that bitch broke into the barrels. You are my guinea pigs.
What Dale endured finally ended. He studied his arms. Veins tangled together in knots from his forearm to between his knuckles and fingers the size of baby garden snakes. He could sense vitality pump afresh with each heartbeat. Soon, he’d be the one who could hurl men across acres of open field. He pictured wrapping his arms around Ruden’s throat and squeezing his head off like the man did to his wife and kids. Annie had to be experiencing the same metamorphosis too.
“Let’s see what happened to our machine gunner.” Ruden guided him across the field to the woods. “It sounded like a giant explosion when he hit.”
Lenora tended to Josh Hanover; she helped him to his feet, and the two of them followed, although at a light pace. Dale slowed his steps after observing the bear traps hanging from the trees. Knives were driven into a log overhead tied to ropes; he was certain there was a tripwire nearby that would trigger the device, and he held his fist up. “Hold back.”
Ruden observed the bear traps and froze too. A smile grew over Lenora’s lips. “There’s only the four of us, right?”
Ruden made eye contact with her, sharing a secret agreement.
Suddenly, Lenora gripped Josh’s neck, and lifting him up over her head, she heaved him into the woods. Upon landing, the boy didn’t want to move, but he’d already set a device off. The log with four knives jutting out the sides overhead was engaged, and it whup-whammed him in the chest and staked him to a tree. A mouthful of blood spewed from his lips, urged out by a crushed chest and sternum.
“Wow!” Ruden raised his fists in the air. “I’ve never seen such a spectacle! Oh, tonight’s going to be a wild party.” He scowled at Dale. “But first, let’s take care of business.”
Dale wasn’t listening to them, but instead, he was scanning the trees. He caught a human arm and a circle of blackened entrails on the ground, finally locating the leftovers of the militant corpse. “Chippie sure didn’t last long for all his war talk.”
“He’s only human,” Ruden half-assed commiserated. “If that’s the harshest opposition we’ll face, then we’re doing very well.”
Lenora’s eyes rested on the remains. “The Chippies will be crawling out of the woodwork with bigger weapons. It's inevitable."
Ruden was bothered by the comment. “Enough of that talk; tonight’s a celebration. We’ve earned it. I’ll finally tell everyone how the special blood is created, and then we'll mass produce it."
Dale perked at the idea and was about to speak up when Ruden raced ahead of them for no apparent reason. He was flustered, suddenly broken from his high and sent into troublesome thoughts. "I'll meet you back at the cider mill. I forgot I have one last item of business; I'll tend to it myself. I'll return very soon, so don't follow me."
Lenora called out to him, but he ignored her, once again telling her to return to the cider mill and wait for him to return.
Dale had no idea what could be on the man's mind until he noted Ruden was taking a path that cut up to the wishing well.
36
Annie overheard the thundering explosions that rocked underfoot at the cider mill. She feared Dale was murdered, the man being the only lifeline and ally she had left. When the man did return, he avoided her, ducking into his house. She pursued him, but then she halted, having an idea. She eyed the steel drums in the corner of the cider mill. They were the two drums leftover from the other night, untouched. Ruden and Lenora were gone. What would they know if she tasted more?
The idea was decided in seconds.
She filed through the butchering assembly line and rolled the drum out the front doors, while everybody else was focused on their own work. Escaping the grounds without alarming them, she continued into the apple nursery hidden behind the trees with her take. Her fingers grew slick with sweat, her processes racing at the prospect of more blood—special blood. She couldn’t contain the hunger. She was so hot, she wanted to tear her clothes off and allow the soft breeze to kiss the heat into submission.
Ka-rum, ka-rum, ka-rum, each heartbeat was a punch to her sternum wall. The sweat leaked in trails now, stinking of body odor and bile so foul. Whatever secretions, toxins, or natural enzymes she expressed, her body was undergoing a metamorphosis.
She didn’t know how to open the drum without a crowbar, so she punched through the lid. Shrrrrrrick! She removed the lid like a tin of sardines. Fingers broke and knuckles cracked, but the electric agony vanished when she dipped her head into the bucket. Gel-thick blood welcomed her, encouraging her to sup and lap and gorge.
She nearly choked to match the urge to devour every ounce. So powerful upon ingestion, she lifted the barrel a cup and consumed it. It streamed down her lips and soaked through her clothes. Full and on the verge of exploding, she plopped onto the soft grass. Her belly was distended in a bowl of blood, her stomach stretched to its limit. She closed her eyes to rest, but in moments, she opened them again in terror.
Her arms quivered, tremors rocking her head and jouncing her entirety and every process she owned. Her legs and arms locked up in unison. Then she was paralyzed—so paralyzed she couldn’t flex her mouth or compel her lungs to scream. Veins thicker than power lines ripped through the flesh and kicked up rivulets of blood, a heavy mist saturating the air. In a great tearing action, the fascia—the glue holding the skin to her muscle tissue—dissolved, the flesh completely ripped from the body like a coat. It flapped through the wind and stuck to a tree with a wet slap. She was bare and bleeding muscle tissue, exposed to the open air as a slick red body.
She couldn’t move or breathe; the shock of the transgression stole a means of a reaction. Minutes of helpless agony, she soon began a new process. Skin fibers were produced at alarming speeds, reforming what she’d lost. The blood turned into a wax film, creating a sheath of makeshift skin. She was healing rapidly. The amazing changes caused her to fade
out of consciousness, but it wouldn’t be long before she awoke once again and craved more of the special blood.
37
The floors were cleaner inside the mysterious room; here, only half the tiles were covered in footprints of blood. Caleb had stepped into living quarters judging by the refrigerator, sink—empty except for a drying tray of various carving knives including a logger’s machete and an assortment of scalpels—and a king sized bed draped in a gold silk coverlet. He dwelled on the steel-welded headboard stocked with various sexual implements: handcuffs, leather whips, ball and gags, leather bodices, masks, studded collars, rope fashioned into a noose, chains, and candles nearly burnt to the wick and melted into the hutch. The hutch was also covered with empty bottles of various wines. Across from the bed were a pile of clothing varying in quality, from Valentino suits to t-shirts, jeans, corduroy and leather pants, button-up shirts, windbreakers, and jean jackets. Boots, tennis shoes, sandals, and high heels were heaped in a box nearby. He couldn't piece together what it meant, and he further evaluated the room by stepping up to a closet door.
When he opened it, a dry air blew past him. The room was vast. Racks of wine occupied the center of the chamber, hundreds of bottles stored here, it seemed. Wooden shelves kept hundreds, if not thousands, of hard liquors. A separate room proved to be a life sized humidor; Cuban, Havana, Trinidad, and Costa Rican cigars were stored at a dry humidity. Another section was dedicated to a mini-library: a complete collection of encyclopedias and medical textbooks and reference manuals. There was also Internet hook-up and four computers, each of their screens blank. The very end of the corridor, a black leather couch and loveseat was set in a semi-circle. A modest-sized television with a satellite connection was kept in the center of the furniture arrangement. On the glass coffee table, bottles of liquor and high ball glasses and wine flutes were the vestiges of either a great party or weeks of drunk lounging.
He was baffled by the room, so he returned to the chambers with the bed and wished to undress one feature he hadn’t yet.
The refrigerator.
This is it.
This will prove everything.
“Do it,” he ordered himself.
He yanked the handle back and braced himself to shut the door again quickly. The sight in the freezer threw him up against the wall behind him. He cried out, seized by the horrific sight he couldn’t burn from his mind. No liquor or drug could heal the wounds that had been inflicted in that moment. Palms against the wall, body locked to protect itself, he absorbed the vision with a dropping jaw.
“Human hearts. Christ.”
Ten plastic bags stuffed full of numerous hearts met his inspection. After taking moments to calm down, his investigative side took over. He rooted through the cardboard boxes below the hearts and peeled open the tops. A woman’s face glowered back at him; her mouth was agape, her tongue frozen to the top of her mouth. Caleb shut it in repulsion, quivering and cursing and shrugging off a fresh set of chills.
These people above you are murderers. Monsters. They’ve dismembered people, and you’re in their lair. Do you need more evidence to believe it?
He stared at the refrigerator, knowing he should flee the scene, climb out of the well, and seek help from another county, but the monsters were in too close of a proximity to do any of those things. The best he could do was to wait out the storm and inspect the other rooms. There had to be an explanation for this underground hideaway. The bed with sex toys, the human icebox, and the blood stuck to the floor, he’d hit upon a place scarier than what “The Weekly Spectacle Digest” sought.
He moved to the room beyond the wine and leisure room. Once there, he flipped the light switch; one of the lights flickered on and hummed, the other blinking and then going out, leaving the room half illuminated. Wooden casks were lined up on sawhorses with steel taps installed in them, sixteen barrels total. The rest of the room was barren except for what hung on the wall. He studied the logger's saw longer than his arm span; its blades were rusty and jagged, the teeth bragging of their ability to dismember. Beside it, a parang and golok blade hung from nails, both powerful enough to cut down vegetation in the thickest of jungles.
The pop of air and a soft moan shot him to the back of the room, and he cowered against the wall. After eyeing the shadows long enough, he distinguished the general impression of a hundred gallon aquarium on a wooden hutch that housed what he believed to be fish at first, but when his vision adjusted better, they turned out to be black leeches. They were thinned out as if they hadn’t been fed for a time.
A moan, and this time, weakened words addressed him: “Come here...whoever you are...please, I won’t hurt you...I-I can’t...just l-look at me.”
He made out a human body dyed in deep crimson. When it opened its eyes, they were brilliant white orbs. The slit for a mouth frowned in anguish, the expression parting blood aside. Then Caleb gasped, elevated to a new level of terror, when he realized the body was only a torso with a head.
“You,” it grumbled, confusion framed on his face. “Who are you?”
He bumped into the aquarium, he was shuffling backwards so fast. The contact knocked the glass terrarium off its hutch, the whole thing shattering at his feet. He yipped, stiffening and freezing up as the leeches spread out between his feet awash in water, twisting and writhing for their lives. He darted for the door, but the creature beckoned him again, begging him to stop. “Wait!—I can help you.”
Caleb paused, knowing upstairs was as dangerous as downstairs. Forced to think things through, he considered hearing out the monster. He also couldn’t deny the natural inclination to unfold the origins of the room. In the face of danger, he wanted picture and evidence, especially if he was going to go public with his findings. But the fear took its toll on him; he quivered in place, moments from losing his bladder or retching on the floor, or both.
The stumps at the victim's pelvis, arms, and legs coagulated over in a film, the body itself surrounded in pool of thickening blood, but rest assured, Caleb thought, the man couldn’t rise from the floor unaided.
When he stayed in the room, the body on the floor spoke again. He steadied his voice, utilizing the last vestiges of his strength to be audible, “Don’t you want to know who I am?”
“Then who are you? I’ll book it out of this hole if you try anything. I’m serious.”
The creature beckoned him, pleading its honesty, “You don’t want Ruden to get his way. His plans hinge on the domination of the human race, and that means trouble for you and me equally—I’m dead, but the rest of my kind, I want them to survive. That was the point of all of this research. We locked ourselves down here to accomplish survival, and look at me!"
Caleb changed the subject, not knowing who Ruden was or what his “plans” were. “This is quite the crash pad. What’s the purpose of it?"
The monster managed to whisper, though he gagged on heavy mucous, “Your questions aren’t so simple to answer.”
“Then what’s all this shit for?—start there.” He pointed at the rows of wooden casks positioned on sawhorse perches. “The casks of blood, the leeches, that refrigerator stocked with human parts, and the bloody tiles, I can only imagine your explanation. Yeah, you're right. My questions aren't so simple to answer, but if you want me to hang around, you better start telling me something."
“Be well advised to listen to me. You’re lucky I’m in the state I am. You could be dead by now, otherwise.”
“So you’re a vampire then.”
He eyes turned colder and his neck craned upwards to face Caleb from his low position. “Vlad the Impaler, as a human being, was the first to succumb to the blood thirst—at least his was the first known case of what I'm afflicted with. He’s the father of our kind for all I’m concerned. Vlad was a war-monger, a crusader who murdered those of Wallachia. Most of them were impaled, their blood oozing down the pikes and left to dry in the sun in the “Forest of the Impaled,” just outside the gates of his castle. Vlad feasted amon
g the butchered remains, and for a reason unknown, he began supping the blood from the bodies and drinking it by the bucket load. He devoured blood from hundreds and thousands of bodies. I believe this is what drove him to become a deviant, and it eventually led to his decapitation by the Turks."
“So it’s not genetic, this craving?"
“Our condition has advanced through the ages, but no, it’s not genetic. You’re not born with it. The only other known cases breaking into the pages of history—and we only suspect this, none of this is documented—is Elizabeth Bathory. She’d slain over six-hundred peasants, nobles, and virgins and bathed in their crimson. Then there was the Pilgrims who settled Jamestown colony who suffered many deaths after their crops failed, and they un-buried their dead, cannibalizing them, supping their blood, and becoming us—until the Indians and their hatchets had a say about that. I suspect there have been more cases, especially during wars where mass quantities of blood were spilled, but the government has strived to keep it from public knowledge.”
“But there isn’t any real proof of these occurrences?”
“Like I said, people were too scared or frightened to document it. Nobody understood the condition until modern science arrived. Until Ruden strived to understand it."
He was entranced by the man’s words. Creatures like this didn’t exist except in the computer animated art completed by the design department at “The Weekly Spectacle Digest.” But this thing on the floor was flesh and blood. Real. He didn’t know if he was supposed to respond or let the man continue to speak. The terrible span of silence forced him to conjure up words. “I still don’t understand what your friend, Ruden, is doing to this town.”