by Alan Spencer
The dead were like a moat surrounding the entire island. She couldn’t run in the direction Todd had chosen. He blasted shots from his boat, but soon he was tipped over. She watched him struggle to shore, but the mud sucked him down, and the dead rose up in his place.
She was alone, nobody to follow but herself. Then a hand touched her shoulder. She reacted instantly. That! Her revolver shot off the left side of the vampire’s head, and it landed on the stone walkway, twitching and spraying out its wound.
Trying to figure out her next move, she watched profiles and shadows play on the walls of the dining area, the various monsters scouting the terrain.
They would spot her any moment.
“Run here!”
The door was partly open under the red cross sign. She raced ahead, urged on by another shot at life. Cynthia dodged flying debris, broken bottles, bricks, concrete shards, even sharpened bones. Laughter circulated from on high and below, grating and degrading.
Cynthia finished the sprint, and Addey was behind the door to greet her.
The door was thrown closed the moment she entered.
The dying Brenner was stirred by the echo of an announcement over the intercom: “This is Brenner…”
Richard looked down at the man who he thought had perished seconds ago. His flesh was nearly see-through and so pale. Richard listened to the announcement in shock. “But that’s a lie. You’re right here. There isn’t an armory in the strip club.”
In a weak creak of a voice, “They must’ve breached the communication room. The monsters are baiting the trap.”
Then something sharp bit Richard in the back. It sucked on his skin, raising it well above the bone, like a hickey from a razor. “What the fuck was that?”
He turned and caught sight of a lamprey sucker sneaking back into Brenner’s body through the notches of his rib cage. His back was bleeding from a circular wound. It continued to sting.
Brenner said weakly, “There is an armory in my office. Push back my bookshelf. There’s a secret compartment behind it. Fight. Stay alive as long as you can and take as many of those things with you as possible.”
“But you said there was a way to fight them.” He shook the man. “Tell me! Tell me before you fucking die. I must know. You son of a bitch, speak up. Spit it out!”
Brenner’s eyes rolled into the back of his head. He went stiff. His stare was glassy and empty.
The man was dead.
Forget it.
He never thought he’d see the day Brenner would die like this, a victim to the monsters.
He attempted to make communication on the naval radio. “If you can hear me, I’m killing as many of those things as possible. Hey, I might just kill every single one. Your plan will fucking fail. And if I don’t succeed, let’s pray the citizens of our great country can put up a fight.” They’re trained for combat—yeah, right! Fat asses versus the living dead, I can’t see it panning out too nicely. They’ll take shelter in the McDonald’s and wait for everything to blow over. “Fuck it. I’m punching out on your time clock for good. I’m going monster hunting!”
Chapter Forty-Five
Addey kept her eyes glued to the peephole slot. She’d been standing vigil there since Dr. Kasum stopped the bleeding in her face and bandaged it. The others weren’t brave enough to peer outside the med unit, but she had to know what was happening. Whatever attack the monsters had planned for them in the med wing, they were reserving it for later. For now, they were conducting other business. The monsters returned to the facility, scavenging through rooms and undertaking a final search for survivors.
“They know we’re not going anywhere,” Cynthia whispered. “They’re just biding their time.”
Dr. Ted Kasum approached them, his lab coat sodden with old blood, his wrists still powdered from wearing rubber gloves. “They had a plan all along. You watched the zombies rise from the ocean. This was inevitable. We thought we had conquered them, but they were really conquering us.”
Herman plopped down on a chair, being weak. Bandages over his neck and shoulders were spotted with blood from moving around so much. “We almost escaped the medical wing, but then they surrounded us. I was lucky to survive. But now, I could care less about the philosophy in their heads. The ideology adds up to the same end result. They devour us. What matters is, can we kill them?”
Grace Mooney remained in the corner, downgrading her presence by staying quiet. Addey kept her distance from the cruel woman. She wondered if Grace knew Angela, her sister, had been executed on the third floor.
She could hear the dead shuffle in the back of the room, the ones locked up. She recalled that the doctor was possibly feeding living people to the things in the back storeroom.
Their shuffling didn’t only bother her; it also troubled Cynthia. “What the hell are the noises? You keeping monsters back there, Doctor?”
Dr. Kasum had known the question was coming. “Yes; there are two zombies and three vampires. I’ve been testing them. That’s another reason why this island exists. Harry Truman and every president after him wanted these things mastered. Cured. Controlled. My directives from Brenner changed every other week. One week, save them, the next, let them become beasts. I’ve done my best to appease them, and so have my colleagues.”
“It hasn’t been good enough,” Cynthia accused him. “We’re all going to die. A fleet of bombers will incinerate us any second. Nobody’s in harm’s way except us.”
“How can you be so sure they’ll firebomb this place?” Dr. Kasum challenged her. “It’s been over fifty years. No, America isn’t the only country invested in this place. Every country is birthing these monsters. It’s snuck into our DNA. I’ve been hijacked to this island to try and figure out how to chase it out of our lineage. I’m convinced it’s impossible.”
“A good bullet to the head fixes everything,” Addey said, shaping a gun’s nozzle with her pointer finger. “That’s where we’re at now. Self-defense or die. How many weapons do we have?”
They piled their weapons on a clean bed. Grace helmed a Winchester shotgun. Cynthia a .28 pistol. Dr. Kasum was armed with the same pistol. Herman and Addey were unarmed.
The stock was pitiful.
Addey remembered the monsters that owned new abilities. “They’re not just blood- and flesh-eaters anymore. One of them mimicked Richard Cortez. Then it changed into a werewolf. They’re smarter. Harder to kill.”
“What are you saying?” Cynthia asked. “Do you think one of us is a monster?”
She hadn’t thought that, but it was a legitimate concern. How could they know who was human and who was a beast?
Dr. Kasum stepped in to address that concern. “My staff has seen the transformations in them already.”
“And you didn’t say anything.” Grace hadn’t spoken for a time. “They caught us by surprise. Why not warn us?”
“And have a panic?” Dr. Kasum disagreed. “Work would’ve stopped on the island. We wanted to subdue the monsters as long as we could. We didn’t know they’d revolt like this, and so soon. They can’t change forms for long. Maybe five minutes—ten maximum. There are no monsters in our midst.”
“What else do we know about the monsters?” Addey continued the discussion about saving their asses. “Some of them can change forms from zombie to vampire, vampire to wolf, and so on. They had to die three times to finally perish.”
Grace added, “One sucked the blood right through my friend’s flesh. Then it sucked out the organs, the bones, everything, and without touching him either. I was close to my friend when he died. I felt a pressure pull at my skin. A suction. I dodged the damn thing and ran as fast as I could.”
“They’re liquid too,” Herman commented. “This goop trickled down from the ceiling and landed on two of the patients in the beds beside mine. This goop then changed into zombies. Jesus Christ, they can assume any form.”
“It won’t be safe in here for very long,” Addey decided aloud. “How do we fight back?”
Dr. Kasum’s face jerked at the thought. “I say we sneak out of here and take one of their boats. I’d take my chances on the high seas versus this island.”
“That’s guaranteed death.” Grace hated the idea. “What if we get lost? What if the tide breaks the ship? Then we’re really fucked. Besides, they’re everywhere out there. How can all of us be inconspicuous and steal a boat?”
“Maybe they don’t care about us,” Addey suggested. “We lie low. Be quiet. Perhaps they’ll take to the water without us.”
“Probably not,” Dr. Kasum disagreed. “They want our bodies.”
“Maybe a barricade will help,” Cynthia said. “This is the only door. If they can’t get in, they can’t eat us. I say barricade it.”
The group was inspired to work, stacking hospital beds and medical supply shelves and heaping them into a decent barricade. Addey scanned the room for anything else she could use, and she didn’t locate anything. She plopped onto the floor, exhausted. Herman sat next to her. The others were seated across the room, contemplating their own fates.
“We always wanted off this island,” Herman said. “I guess our work is finished here. Let’s retire.”
She hugged Herman. She thought about what she’d left behind. Her parents would be mourning Deke’s death. And they were mourning hers too. What did they put in her grave? Another’s body, she thought. Her job, her aspirations for college, none of it had panned out. This was what her life had built up to, and this is how it would end.
Herman stroked her head, trying to soothe her. “I know what you’re thinking, sweetie. Your life is over. There’s nothing left. You still have something worth crying over. That has to count for something. But now we have to worry about everybody else out there too. We can’t let the monsters leave. More innocent people will die. First, everybody in the United States, and then from there, everyone. Our families. Our loved ones.”
“I know, I know,” Addey said, “but we’ve got nothing to fight them with. There’s a thousand of them out there.”
“We have to try. I can’t stand by and let those fucking things leave without taking as many with me as possible.”
Cynthia disagreed with their mentalities. “It’s big talk. We’re outnumbered. We’ll all die without changing a damn thing.”
Grace was the only one not sitting down. She kept staring at the back door, nervous every time one of the monsters disturbed the door.
“They can’t get out,” Dr. Kasum reassured her. “It’s reinforced steel. Tight as a bank vault.”
The din outside grew. Addey rushed the barricade. She was able to reach the door and look through the peephole. Her jaw clenched, in awe of what was heaped in the courtyard. Hundreds of defiled bodies were stacked like cordwood on the stone steps.
“What do you see?” Herman asked.
Addey confessed, “They’re stacking up dead bodies in the courtyard.”
Monsters filtered from every entranceway and exit. They were standing proud, organized, and occupying every inch of space outside the medical unit. Looks like we’re not running to a boat after all.
And then it was an all-out feast. Zombies delved into opened stomach cavities, sloshing their faces against the wetness of guts. Wolves snapped through open sternums and rib cages and spread the delectable pieces for further selection. Vampires relished the hearts, squeezing the ventricles and reaping thick spurts of rich blood into their mouths and onto their pallid bodies. The courteous nature of their attack was quickly squelched when the line-up buffet turned into chaos. Zombies pushed and shoved for entrails, several tugging at intestines and yanking on them until the tug-of-war ended in a visceral snapping. Vampires lapped up blood from innards like soup. The wolf packs slashed at each other as they battled to rip limbs from corpses. The only way they liked to eat was from fresh dismemberments. The blood was so plenteous it spilled through the courtyard in a thickening stream and crossed the threshold of the medical unit’s front door.
Addey backed up from the door. “My God.”
“That’s us next,” Cynthia warned everyone. “We’ll be on the chopping block. We’ll be unrecognizable.”
“Stop it,” Herman demanded, the last comment taking him over the edge. “Now we either decide how to live or we decide how to die. I’m not putting up with this complaining bullshit. You want to die, then I’ll throw you out there myself. If you want to fight, then stand beside me.”
Addey was shocked at Herman’s words, but they were effective. Cynthia kept her comments to herself. She walked up to Dr. Kasum in the back of the room. The doctor stood outside the room that harbored the zombies.
“What is it?”
Dr. Kasum shushed her. She waited another moment as Dr. Kasum pressed his ear against the door and listened. “I can’t hear them anymore. They’re not shuffling or banging on the door. It’s like they’re gone.”
“Is there a way out of that room, maybe an exit we didn’t know about?”
“No, not that I know of.”
“That doesn’t do us any good.”
The crackle of static. The room went quiet.
It was Cynthia’s walkie going off.
Chapter Forty-Six
Richard searched through channel after channel of carved-up concrete. The effort proved fruitless until after twenty minutes of stalking shadows. An exit popped up that spit him back into the living quarters. It was the same access Addey had escaped through when she’d discovered these strange chambers. What he walked into was the aftermath of chaos. Every door in the living quarters was smashed to pieces or wide open, the inhabitants fled or forced out. Blood slathered the floor, their bodies dragged, their resistance limited to smudges and streaks of red.
He kept quiet, knowing the monsters could be near. Listening hard, he heard the constant emanation of burping, licking, gnashing teeth, chewing, vomiting, bleeding, cracking of bones and the merciless rendering of tissue and fat, as if he was listening to amplified mastication.
Everybody in the facility had been dispatched.
He had to reach the elevator double quick and rush to Brenner’s office on the third floor to remain unseen. He stuck to his resolve to murder as many of them as he could before they finally decided to leave the island.
He peeked out the window of a ransacked room, curious as to their activities beyond eating. They were gathered in the courtyard dining area. Bodies were splayed butchered, gutted, bleeding, mashed and turned inside out. They were currently feasting on the remains.
That’ll keep them busy for maybe an hour.
Richard eyed the boats near the shoreline. They really were going to ford the seas and attempt to reach land on the other side. And if that happened, he thought, kiss humanity good-bye.
He raced east to the elevator, flanking the battle-strewn hall. He lucked out. The elevator was wide open. Stepping in, he shut the elevator and prayed those outside didn’t hear the turning of cables.
Shooting up two floors, the elevator doors came open. He aimed the twelve-gauge he’d taken from Brenner in front of him, fearing who he’d encounter.
“Okay,” he whispered, checking every angle around him for aggressors. “Just keep moving.”
The third floor, the vampire quarters—every door was wide open, but nobody was home. Blood squished under his feet, the carpet sodden. He eyed the break room and how the tiles were dyed a death-rust orange.
We should’ve seen this coming a long time ago, he thought.
He crept on. Brenner’s office was located down a hall south of him. Making the journey safely, he unlocked the door with Brenner’s card key he’d swiped off his corpse. He entered the room. He prayed the armory wasn’t another shotgun and nothing more. How much could the man be hoarding? Maybe a few handguns and knives maximum, if that. Reserving his speculations, the first thing he noted was the desk strewn with random papers, opened file folders and a pager acting as a paperweight on top of an especially heaping pile of paperwork.
; Richard moved straight for the payout, ignoring the clutter, and shuffled past the office. He pushed the only bookshelf inward, one stocked with encyclopedias, war memoirs, and notebooks of the island’s policies and charts of who’d come onto the island, what jobs they’d done, and for how long. They were dated all the way back to 1949.
He pushed forward, doing his best to complete a two-person job. The shelf opened enough that he could slip through, though barely, the rotator device in the floor rusted and stubborn.
A motion-sensor light flickered on.
“Oh Jesus!”
He backed up, crashing into the wall. Blood covered the floor and the walls in random sprays. Torture devices occupied the room: tongue pliers, nail shears, hammers, rubber ball gags and an assortment of scalpels and knives. This was Brenner’s interrogation room. The corpses were missing, probably sent down the chute for the level twos to enjoy.
“How many have you killed in this room, Brenner?”
He noted the door to the left of him. He opened it, and again, motion sensors were activated and lit the way. The urge to smile couldn’t be subdued. “Where—the—hell—did—he—get—all—of—this—shit?”
Two M-60s with belt ammunition were closest to him. He pictured himself as Rambo among the monsters, cutting them down with bullet spray.
Taking mental stock of the weapons, he continued to scan the room: tear gas canisters and shooter, two M-16s, a Browning .32 caliber sniper rifle, one Uzi, two flash grenades, four incendiary grenades, a captain’s sword and a bulging military pack, its contents unknown.
On the table of grenades, he picked up a bottle of whiskey. He enjoyed a slug and rotated his neck, popping bone. He drank again, emboldened by the weapons, but turned a coward by the prospect of fighting them alone.
Take as many as you can with you.
On the rack holding the two M-16s, there was also a walkie-talkie device. Taking it, he spoke into it, turning it to channel one. “This is Richard Cortez, assistant director of the complex. If you need help, please answer me. Is anyone out there alive?”