The Place They Are Safe

by Alan Spencer

  Dr. Albert worked faster, as if he knew what was going to transpire. He seized a chair and smashed it through the only window in the room. "You're going to have to jump, Mark."

  "You're crazy! That's a three story fall."

  Dr. Albert's face darkened. "The dead bodies out there will cushion your fall." He shook his fist at the ceiling. "I bet you didn't realize you'd be helping us, you bastard. Hah! He won't die because of something you did, you asshole. You won't be killing him if I have something to say about it."

  Mark pointed at Patricia who was now sitting up in bed. She was holding her throat and making choking and gagging noises. Both eyes bulged, the pressure in her skull causing them to jut out centimeters from the sockets intermittently. The whites of her eyes were gel. Clear fluids streamed down as tears. Her hands clasped her throat tighter, stemming a reaction, as her face grew purple and blue with suffocation.

  "It'll happen soon." Dr. Albert peered outside through the shattered window down at the parking lot. "Shit, they're climbing up the wall. The corpses are coming."

  "You said what's climbing up the walls?" Panicked, Mark joined him at the window's edge. Chopped up pieces of the decayed human chopping block was edging up the wall, each working their way into the building.

  They were after Mark.

  "I was a fool to do this." Dr. Albert berated himself, poised nervously between Patricia's bed and the window. "They'll be in here any moment. It's no use. Whoever's taken over will kill us all. They control everything. I was a fool to think this would work. I just had to tell you that you, Mark, are the only one that could save us."

  "I'm not dead yet," Mark corrected. He rushed to the door and tried it, but it wouldn't open. "Locked!"

  Dr. Albert rammed his shoulder into the door. The wood acted as stone. Impenetrable. "We really are trapped."

  Mark had a dozen questions burning on the tip of his tongue, and before he could utter a syllable, Patricia belched. Her mouth was wide open. Her throat was issuing air. A staggered vomiting sound, "Eww-up, Eww-up, Eww-up, Eww-up..."

  "What's happening to her?"

  Dr. Albert raised an eyebrow at the question. Before he could say anything, he was yanked back towards the window. A hand severed up to the wrist tried to sneak into the room. The doctor removed a scalpel from his pocket and slashed at it.

  "You've got to get out of here, Mark. I can come back to life if this works out in the end, but you, Mark, you cannot! If you die, it's permanent. You haven't committed."

  Purple veins snaked up Patricia's arms, bulging from her neck, and every muscle in her body was tensed and threatening to break the through the surface of her flesh.

  "Everything that's happened is so morbid, so disgusting," Dr. Albert shouted, gouging out the eyes of a naked woman who was only a torso and one arm. Mark recognized the corpse as a teenager who'd died in a car accident involving hill-jumping when he was a sophomore in high school. "The dead are coming back to life. It's people we once knew. This lunatic knows how to fuck with our minds."

  They noticed Patricia.

  They watched in horror as their peril became evident.

  "He's playing our fears against us." Dr. Albert said right before it happened. "This is controlled chaos. Perfected destruction."

  Patricia head was tilted back, her upper body standing up straight and rigid from the bed. Every inch of her flesh pulsated. She was on the verge of bursting, there was so much tension constricting throughout her entirety. Every artery and vein ripped through her neck at once with a hermetic explosion. Her eyes exploded out her head, the sockets still attached, the two orbs firing forward, and then falling down to her checks. Then her head fired from her neck, a great ball of blood erupting from the stump. A high pressure fire hydrant, red sprayed and filled the room, spattering, spitting, and deflecting off the walls. The red tide began to get higher. Inches tall, then to their shins, then building up to their knees.

  "Why isn't the blood leaking through the crack of the door?" Mark shouted at Dr. Albert who eyed Patricia's flaccid body drop onto the floor, splashing in blood. "This is illogical!"

  "It's been illogical for years!" Dr. Albert sloshed back towards the window and eyed the drop. "God in heaven, the parts are laying about like they're waiting for us to jump. Like they want to catch us and kill us."

  "I'm not giving up that easily."

  Mark tried to kick through the walls.

  They were as solid.

  No way this is happening.

  Dodging strewn pieces of small and large intestine, what had ruptured from Patricia's body, he attempted to batter the door again.

  Filling faster, he was hip-deep in the red.

  Dr. Albert was poised at the window, his white lab coat tinged with crimson. The most dreadful expression haunting his face was equaled by his terrible words.

  "Good things never last forever. The better they are, the worse it gets when everything's finally taken away from you. Because that's what happened, Mr. Tripdick. Someone's taking our blessings away from us."

  Then the doctor leaped out the window.

  Mark worked his way to the window in time to catch Dr. Albert land in a pile of human pieces that shifted and converged to bury the doctor. His shouts of horror escalated as he was bashed to death, and then going unconscious, the man sank in the gangrene and putrid flesh, and vanished. The pieces that covered the streets, the parking lot, and anywhere in the vicinity of the property waited for Mark to leap down next.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  It's just like the doctor said.

  It's all illogical.

  Whoever's doing this can make whatever they wish happen. But how?

  Mark was chest deep in red. He yelped when Patricia's ragged pulpy head bobbed next to his own head. He paddled to the other side of the room, trying to find something to grapple onto. He chose the cabinet to hold himself in place. Patricia's corpse kept oozing and gushing red.

  Flooding so fast, Mark was pushed up against the ceiling. Sucked down into the dark ruby waters, a pressure was pulling him down with the power of an undertow. Swirling and spinning as if he were being sucked down a drain. The windows in the room shattered in unison. The blood was firing out the broken windows. Turned upside down a flailing helpless thing, he too was shot through the window, descending down three stories, and pitched to an unknown fate.

  * * *

  Reeling from the events and not understanding what had happened during his fall, for he'd closed his eyes as he fell helplessly, he slowly pieced together the events that had saved his life. He was spit out by the tidal wave of blood, and falling fast, his body had somehow landed on top of Patricia's hospital bed, thus breaking his fall, though he was suffering from whiplash and his neck was killing him.

  Mark was up and running, slinging blood as he pumped his arm and legs. He kicked through tidbits of the human body and those pieces that tried to impede his path. His landing was a lucky one. Damn lucky. Where he landed was near the edge of where the body pile ended. Mark sprinted thirteen yards and escaped the thrashing, warring limbs, the heads, and arms, and faces he could've recognized if it weren't for their advanced decay and wilting features.

  Mark raced into a street that had the appearance of town square, though it was mostly empty brick buildings. He rushed into a side alley and tried the first door that was available to him. Swinging the door closed and locking it behind him, he unleashed a sigh of relief. The sharp smell of shaving cream and freshly cut hair greeted him. He couldn't hide, because his body kept dripping blood. He was soaked from head to foot. Threads of sticky red kept flowing down his face. Mark was standing in a dark place. The perimeters of the room were vaguely defined by the thin light escaping through the crack of a door. He distinguished a coat hanger in an open closet. A refrigerator. A table. A water cooler.

  Nothing in the room oppressed him.

  Creeping towards the edge of light at the door, Mark touched the doorknob to turn it when a voice spoke to him. One that r
eminded him of Gibbs without the lilt of drunkenness. One of age, and experience, and maturity, and reasonable terror.

  "I wouldn't open that door. Not if you want to talk with me first. If you open that door and see what I'm doing, you're going to be horrified. It's not me doing it. Know that. It's not me. I can't control myself. I have no control."

  Mark did his best to stay calm. "What will I see you doing behind this door?"

  The question didn't startle the man behind the door.

  Something kept slapping the floor. Something heavy. Something wet.

  Thack.

  Five second pause.

  Thack.

  Then the sound of dental floss threading between teeth, and then, Thack.

  "I can't stop doing it, you understand me? But it is what it is. It can all be repaired, Mark, if you find who's doing this, and you kill them."

  "Don't listen to Ron," another voice interrupted. This one sounded pleasured. "Yes, Mr. Sexton, keep going. Don't you stop; don't you ever stop. You're almost finished, Mr. Sexton. Almoooooooooooooost!"

  It was Ronald Sexton, the barber, who was scared and trying to reason with Mark through the door. He didn't know who the other speaker was.

  Ronald, "You must find the building. The warehouse. He's in there. The monster responsible for this chaos. He's moved into that building. You have to look for it and somehow stay alive in the process."

  "What building?"

  "Don't stop. Deeper, Mr. Sexton. Get in really close. That's what you do best."

  Ronald kept begging Mark to heed him. "Get out of here, Mark." Thack! "Look for the large building." Thack! "It used to be near the woods, but he's moved everything." Thack! "Find it before you get yourself killed." Thack! Thack! "Now go." Thack! "Go now!"

  Then Ronald wasn't talking in panic. He was talking in his smooth way, like a barber happy at his job."There you go, sir. Now I'll clean off your chair, and could you bring in the next customer, please?"

  "Absolutely, Ronald. You give the best shave in town. The closest shave in human history."

  Realizing the sounds Mark heard were skin being shaved off and slapping the ground, Mark rushed back into the alley in retreat. Before heading into the street, he looked both ways, and found that the road led to nowhere. It went on and on. He wasn't sure what direction to go, where to look for the warehouse, and what warehouse? First Dr. Albert told him to find the person who was doing this and kill them, and now he was supposed to be searching for a large building. He was running up and down streets in the hopes of finding something, anything, that made sense.

  Mark forgot he was in danger every step of the way.

  He paid for that mistake.

  Mark was standing across from a six foot tall, linebacker sized body. Its body was turned inside out, the muscle tissue gleaming and bumpy with cables of arteries and veins that were doubled that of a normal human's size, as if the body had upgraded itself to survive. Lungs swelled, inhaling and exhaling. Two black marble eyes were embedded in its purple muscle tissue face, regarding Mark. Its visible heart churned and pumped harder. It unleashed fury into the sky in an uncouth shriek and bounded after him.

  It was the same creature that smashed in Jackson's head.

  Aimee Scott's aborted child.

  Picking up his step, the pound of the creatures steps continued after him, the sledgehammers of wet flesh quick in pursuit. Sensing the abomination creeping in, the sounds of it wheezing, the grunt and gasp, and the boils of animosity growing ever so closer, the fight in Mark's body was beginning to leave him. He had little energy left. The moment it reached him, Mark knew the monster would have its way with him.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Warmth spattered Mark's body, as did soft flesh, crunchy bones, and pudding-like fat. Covering The screech of tires and the impact of metal registered in Mark's ears. The squad car screeched its brakes, and Mark turned in time to catch the abortion fall from its lifted up position as it had rolled over the hood, smudged the windshield in pink ooze, and tumbled over the backside with a liquid splat. The patrol car was quick to back up and run over the body again. Then the car went into drive, reverse, drive, reverse, until the monster's death spasms concluded. The body was road kill with sick tread marks.

  The driver's side window rolled down. Sheriff Hildenbrandt motioned for him to run into the passenger side. "Hurry up before something else comes out of the woodwork!"

  Mark didn't waste a second obeying the sheriff.

  After minutes of speeding at eighty miles an hour down the road surrounded by endless woods, what reaffirmed the fact something had its way with Meadow Woods' blueprint of geography, Mark asked the sheriff after gaining his breath, "Do you know where the hell we're going?"

  "We're going back to the station." The sheriff's eyes were glued to the road. "It's where I'm taking everybody that's alive. That hasn't been overtaken by what's been happening, rather."

  "Overtaken?"

  "You haven't seen it? People aren't acting themselves. You just came out of Ronald Sexton's barbershop, didn't you? He's been shaving people's faces off, and they like it. They like it, you hear me?"

  "Yes, I hear you." Mark decided to jump right into the problem. "Tell me where there's a warehouse. I have reason to believe our killer's there. The one who's causing everything."

  "Who told you that? Ronald Sexton?"

  "Yeah, he did."

  "That's what I thought. You can't trust anyone. You have to be very careful. When you deal with an angel, you never know if it's good for you in the long term. We didn't know what kind of an angel it was, or if it was an angel at all. The son-of-a-bitch gave us our lives back, and a lot of other wonderful things, and whatever the deal was, it's been broken. That angel's the one to blame."

  Mark pictured the wounded, milky pale man floating in his own blood in the woods. "The angel's dead. I saw it in the woods. That angel told me someone else has taken over the town. They're in control. It's someone else. It's not the angel."

  "For someone who trusted Ronald Sexton, I'm not believing a single word. You're misinformed. You're confused. You've barely been here a few days."

  The sheriff was determined his truth was the right truth.

  Mark stayed quiet, while eying the rolling woods outside the window. It wasn't long before they reached their police station.

  "Here we are," the sheriff announced, closing in on the modest police station. "You're familiar with the inside."

  "Wait. Why are we here? We need to find that place I was telling you about. To find the person who killed the angel."

  "How do I know you didn't kill the angel?" Once the man parked and turned off the car, the sheriff aimed his .28 pistol at him. "You seem to know so much. Why are you covered in so much blood? It's because you've been slaughtering us, haven't you? Everything was fine until you arrived. Cassie and Peyton should never had brought you here."

  The sheriff motioned with the pistol for Mark to step out of the vehicle. "Into the station you go. Or do I have to shoot you? I wouldn't mind it. I might take pleasure from it, actually."

  Mark raised his hands and stepped out of the vehicle. "I could tell you why I'm covered in blood, but you wouldn't believe me."

  "Your time to talk is up." The sheriff opened the door and let Mark enter ahead of him. "Walk straight to the holding cells. You turn to face me or try and talk me up, I shoot you between the shoulder blades, and I'll hit you in the heart."

  Taking the man seriously, Mark obeyed. The holding cells were stuffed full of people who'd been shot in the chest.

  Between the shoulder blades, I'll hit you in the heart.

  Corpses were lumped on the floors. At least twenty dead.

  Then a face peered up at him through the bodies. The only person alive. Mascara streamed down her cheeks. An expression of empty mourning haunted her face.

  Cassie.

  Hoping he'd be placed in the same cell as her, that hope was in vain. Mark was placed into another cell with eight d
ead bodies, one of which caught his attention.

  Peyton. He was dead, shot through the chest.

  Once inside the cell, the sheriff locked Mark in. "Speak a word, I shoot you. Each of them questioned me. I'll round up everybody in town, and I'll find the person doing this. It's my job. Not your job. Not anybody else's. My job." Sighing under his breath, "It's my punishment to protect you people, and I'll do as I see fit."

  The sheriff reloaded his .28 and ran back outside. When the sound of his patrol car rolling back onto the road faded, Mark was finally able to speak with Cassie.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  The problem, Cassie didn't want to speak to him. She talked, but Mark couldn't hold a conversation with her. She cradled herself, sitting in the corner of the cell so as to get as far from the pile of gunned down bodies as possible. Her eyes didn't blink. She talked without any need for Mark to chime in. He was simply another person to unload her mind on. He listened anyway, trying to pick through what she shared. She was suffering from shock. She gave off the impression of a battered woman. Abused and expecting more abuse, and terrified because of it. It was awhile before Mark pieced together what she'd been through, and why she was so far gone in her own head.

  "I was fine...thinking this way...it was so easy...easy to believe everything was okay...it was okay...then he came back for me...he's been watching me...growing angrier at me...he has every right to be mad at me...I cheated...I was happy...he never wanted me to be happy...he came back...I forgot how strong he was...(she touched her arms, as if someone has grabbed hold of her, and she touched the numerous blue-black bruises)..."

  "You're talking about Duke. Duke's dead, Cassie."

  Then he shushed himself. Cassie paused, turned her head to the side, and she eyed the area to the left of him, as if she couldn't see Mark. She thought she was alone, entrenched in her own mind. He was correct in his thinking, because she quickly returned to herself, and repeated the same things she'd just said moments ago.