B-Movie Reels

by Alan Spencer

  The six piled into the garage, and now they blocked the garage door opener hanging on the wall. Out of escape routes, he rushed to his work table and removed the hammer, clutching it, ready to use. “Stay away from me! I have the right to defend myself, and I will. Back away now!”

  Fear strained his voice, and he wondered if they could tell. There was no use in pleading with a corpse—and that’s what they were, he couldn’t deny it. Peeled back lips revealed chattering teeth, their way of chewing without a working tongue. Their smell was thick with a fecund odor worse than the rotten cow carcass he once helped Eddie Stolburg clear from the road.

  “Not another step, you hear me?”

  They didn’t hear him.

  Their slow advances continued.

  No more warnings. He threw the hammer at his nearest attacker and it thacked against his head with a clap. The skin peeled back to reveal the skull above its eye, but the dead man didn’t break stride and neither did the other five. He reached for another weapon, but he tripped backward onto the wooden altar in his haste. The six moved above him and paused to study him, deciding what to do with him.

  One of them carried an extension cord and plugged it into the wall’s adapter. The whir of the power saw inspired a mewl. “God no!”

  The others anchored him down by his extremities. They were weak, and he almost slipped from their grips, but it was already too late. The corpse drove the spinning blade split-center into his face. Richard watched flecks of his own blood color their faces before he died.

  The zombies didn’t eat his body. Instead, they gathered hammers and nails and other supplies and skulked back into the woods.

  2

  Walter Smalls shook free the last droplets of urine from his bladder and zipped his pants back up. He’d relieved himself on the same milky quartz slab of rock behind the mechanic’s garage for ten years. He’d worn it down in size and changed the rock’s surface from triangular obtrusions to perfectly flat. It was a bored mechanic’s pet project.

  Every man needs his hobbies.

  He washed his hands in the bathroom sink. The toilet itself worked fine, but it was nice to catch a fresh breath of air during the workday. The adjacent wall was occupied by a poster of a double-D blonde woman splayed across red silk sheets inserting a dildo between her legs. “Brenda,” he said to the picture, “we could’ve made it work. I would’ve gone to Los Angeles with you, but you always wanted me to fix your car for free along with your dingbat friends’ pieces of junk, and that doesn’t fly with me. Not if you don’t hug and kiss me first, baby.”

  Walter was ready to close down the shop; it was eight-thirty, and the only business he received was four people wanting gas—everyone from town, no tourists. He spat out his wad of Red Indian tobacco into the trash and entered his office. Inside the cap of a jar, he’d marinated another batch of chew in rum. He chomped with fervor, and the alcohol burned his tongue. He was a town staple, he realized: the auto mechanic who didn’t drink on the job, but instead chewed on the job. Anyone could smell it on him, but he didn’t care. Maybe in his middle age years he would’ve been concerned what people thought about him, but now he was the only competition in town. He was invincible.

  The area floors had already been swept and his supplies put away, not that he’d used them. Give it a few weeks, and then the vacationers will show up and give you wads of cash. He turned off half of the lights and kept the other half on for security purposes. He reached to close the garage when somebody materialized from the road. The shadows hid him until he stepped under a street lamp. It was a strange fellow. The man wore tan bellbottoms and a white undershirt. His arms were flexed at his sides, the man lean muscled and holding something behind his back.

  “Hey there,” Walter greeted him. “Did you have car trouble down the way? I can help you. How far did your rig break down from here?”

  The man uttered words, but it was undistinguishable and spoken at a whisper’s level.

  “What was that, friend? You’ll have to speak up.”

  The figure cocked his head up as if he’d just seen him. His body jerked and his pace quickened. Whatever he concealed behind his back slowed him down. Walter gasped at the man’s mean expression; he was incensed to the point he glowed with sweat.

  Fearing an attack, Walter closed the garage door and locked it. Then he scrambled to the phone and dialed the police. As he finished his call, he considered the man outside, and how he was armed, but Walter had yet to catch a glimpse of the object.

  He stayed hidden in his office, listening. When he stuck his head out the door to check if the man had left, he caught the face in the garage door’s window. It was a younger man’s face, but the contortions were drawn hard, turning him into something inhuman. Callous.

  The man howled two words, but they were garbled and spoken by a constricted throat, so full of rage.

  Then the window shattered.

  “What do you want, for God’s sake? I’ll give you anything you want. Just let me leave, and the shop is yours. Okay, young man? I promise. Anything you say. Anything you want.”

  The next window shattered, and this time an arm reached through the frame and unlocked the garage door. It lifted up with a metallic groan, and the young man stood adjacent to his office. His left arm was bleeding and pattering the ground in red drops beading from his fingertips. What was propped in his other arm horrified him.

  An impossibly large mallet.

  Walter didn’t move from behind the office door.

  The words grated from the man’s throat, menacing as ever, “MY NAME IS MALLET!”

  Walter swiped the crowbar next to the door and came out to meet up with the intruder. “You get the hell out of here, you understand? I’ve called the police. That’s enough of your shenanigans. You probably have enough time to get away if you leave now.”

  The man turned his head to the side confused. Walter had seen the younger crowd breeze through town to go camping blitzed on crystal meth and cocaine, and the stranger’s eyes were lost in a similar fashion. The man’s face tensed up again and the blood rush to his head darkened the hue of his skin.

  “You can’t fire me—and my name isn’t David, it’s Mallet!”

  “What in the Queen’s tits are you talking about?”

  The man charged fast. Walter didn’t know what to do, so he tossed the crowbar at him like a spear. It pounded his mouth, a straight shot.

  Krunk!

  The man’s head shot back, and he spat out two teeth and his nose bubbled blood from both nostrils. Those eyes, demon like, leered at him as he raised the mallet with both hands. A bear’s growl unloosed from his throat. And then without being able to react, Walter was struck in the chest.

  WHOMP!

  He was hurled backward into the wall, the breath knocked from him, his sternum radiating a molten burning, feeling as if every bone in his ribcage had been shattered. His ribs shrank around his lungs in a painful embrace, absorbing the impact. He couldn’t focus on the damage now with the intruder above him and the mallet about to be brought down on him again.

  “DON’T DO IT—!”

  Walter raised his arms to shield himself, but it did nothing to prevent the crushing blow.

  3

  Damn it, Vic, you said she’d be here at nine-thirty sharp. For thirty bucks, I’m fucked—and not in the way I wanted, either.

  Ralph Henning sat on the tree stump in front of the empty cabin. It belonged to Trisha Sterling, Vic Sterling’s older sister. She was out of town on a business trip, and she wouldn’t return for three weeks. Trisha sold term life insurance and scored a healthy living at it. Vic was a freeloader who worked part-time as a bartender and sold women on the side—namely two women: Jill Ackerly and Betsy Court. Ralph worked at the same bar as Vic, Barleycorn’s Pub on the border of Anderson Mills and Lawrence, Kansas. Jill and Betsy were cashiers at the Burger Bop down the street from the establishment, and Vic explained to him on every payday that the two women were hard-up
for cash.

  If anyone ever wonders how broke-ass people afford drugs, the answer is in the woods where I’m fucking sitting on a tree stump waiting for some action.

  He rummaged through the foam cooler at his feet and retrieved a can of Busch beer.

  “Vic promised me I’d be seeing Betsy a half hour ago,” he muttered, bitter that he kept getting a hard-on every five minutes. “I’m glad I don’t pay up front. Vic would’ve stiffed me for sure.”

  He pictured Betsy edging up the dirt driveway in her beat-up Impala with a blanket in the backseat. Whenever he had sex with either Jill or Betsy, it was always near Trisha’s house in the woods, except during the winter when they fucked inside the cabin. Betsy was the more attractive of the two. She dyed her hair a different color every other week: auburn red, bleached-blond, and then sometimes she’d add blue or pink highlights. Both women were of the gothic variety. Their normal garb was crinoline skirts, netted black tops that showed through to their bra—and he pictured the indention at their nipples where they had them pierced through with metal bars—studded leather belts, fishnets, high-heeled boots or steel-toed depending on the girls’ moods, black leather pants and their assortment of T-shirts of black metal bands: Dark Funeral, Ancient, God Dethroned, At The Gates, Poison Black and many others. Something about their pale make-up and black lipstick turned him on, or was it the fishnets and black skirts? They didn’t talk to him much during the encounters. It was straight to business, and Ralph was fine with that.

  He pinched his beer gut. “Maybe if I lost weight, I could get laid without paying for it.”

  The idea of paying for it turned him on, though. He’d slept with a girl in high school named Kathy Ingram. They dated for a month, and she already claimed to love him even though it was a ploy to get into his pants. The sex was nervous and quick, and Kathy was obviously not satisfied, but when he graduated high school and earned his liquor license, he met Vic and was introduced to a new pleasure. The money meant he’d be laid guaranteed, no dating bullshit or courtship. And then the idea they were hard up for drugs and cash. He was enlivened by the two girls needing something from him. It gave him a hard-on again just thinking about it.

  He finished his fifth beer and opened another one, slurping the fizz from the tab. Betsy was supposed to meet him at nine-thirty, and it was five past ten now. He considered leaving when he experienced another hard-on. He stroked it through his pants to subdue the beast. “Soon, captain, soon.”

  The tip of the oaks and silver maples wavered at the next burst of wind. The rustle of tree limbs reminded him he was alone on a Tuesday evening.

  Damn you, Vic.

  He checked his pocket for a condom, and satisfied after feeling the square bulge, he stood up and yawped at the night, and drunk, he pounded his chest like a great ape. “GRAR! I am Thor, God of paid sex.”

  A pair of lights cut through the woods where the tree branches served as a dome over the road. The car stopped two blocks north of him. “Okay, maybe the bitch’s car stalled. I guess I’m supposed to help her. Maybe she’ll give me a freebie.”

  Doubt it.

  He hurried up the road, weaving from the empty-stomached beer buzz. Ralph preferred to have sex on an empty stomach.

  Betsy’s car was parked on the side of the road, and he yelled out to her, “You should’ve turned on your hazard lights.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with my car.” Her voice echoed not from her car but from the woods. “Come here, Ralph. Look and tell me what you think. It’s weird. I don’t know how to explain it.”

  He arrived at the car at a quickening pace and watched the moving neon green dots hover throughout the woods in wonderment. The specks of light the size of marbles crawled up trees, rummaged through leaves, and flew and spun through the air in dizzying flights. He couldn’t avert his eyes from the spectacle even though it gave him a headache. The obnoxious chirping drummed against the night sky, unending.

  “What the hell is it?” Betsy’s mouth was partially open. “I was driving, and then they appeared out of nowhere. It’s like someone just turned on a light, and there they were.”

  He smelled marijuana on her. She’d been smoking a roach. Now he’d have to taste the shit when they made out, and he hated pot. She also flavored her mouth with cigarettes or whiskey whenever they went on their arranged dates. Perhaps it was her way of displaying her animosity toward him since she didn’t like him. She wouldn’t give him the time of day otherwise if it weren’t for the money, not even after serving her a free drink at Barleycorn’s Pub.

  But the bitch can’t keep her hands off of you when she’s craving some coke.

  He gazed at her black skirt and the section of her thighs where the sheer pantyhose ended. She wore a Jack-Off Jill T-shirt tonight. “Come on, let’s get to the house. Who cares about them? They’re loud bugs. Big deal.”

  “Hold up, Ralph. You can keep your chubby in your shorts for another minute, Jesus Christ. This is strange. Have you ever seen anything glow like that? It’s like every bug in the woods are glow-in-the-dark. Look, there’s hundreds of them. I’ve lived here all my life, and not once has this happened.”

  It was a strange sight, Ralph admitted after a time. The woods were pulsing neon green light. Every movement of the bugs—not just bugs, they were locusts, he decided—was emphasized in the stark night background. He could see their wings propel them and their bodies turn in dizzying rotations.

  “So what now? Are you going to take a picture of it?”

  “Fuck you. I think it’s cool.”

  Hurry up and let’s go to Trisha’s, I haven’t got all night. Enjoy nature after I bang the shit out of you.

  She watched him pace in the corner of her eye and decided to walk back to her vehicle with him. “I’ll give you a ride to the house. I guess it’s late.” Half meaning it, she added, “I apologize.”

  As they got in the car, she kept her eyes trained on the woods and the bright bugs. He watched their reflection against her pale make-up and blue eye-liner and black lipstick. She’d also dyed her hair blond, and he considered her a gothic Marilyn Monroe. The blood rushed to his cock thinking that, and he couldn’t wait until the short ride to the cabin was over.

  Before he could picture undressing her, Betsy screamed, reaching octaves ear-tearing and heart-fluttering. He too was alarmed the moment the green glow seemed to jump from the woods at once in thousands of tiny specks and pouncing onto the car.

  Tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink…

  The gathering was a neon net that ripped the hood from the car, then flung it into the air. The hood touched down twelve yards behind them, flapping as if a broken wing.

  Betsy was seized by panic, shouting as her head kept whipping back and forth, trying to anticipate the next attack. “What the fuck was that? What in the hell, what in the hell, what in the hell!”

  He gawked at the bustling locusts that crowded every inch of the car, nudging the vehicle, their tiny feet clicking against the metal, their din a sharing of thoughts in their insect speech. The metal kept giving, and it sounded like a steady pounding of hail as the car crunched and gave under the pressure.

  Guessing their motives, he shouted in horror, “They’re going to break the windows!”

  The scratch of glass, a razor’s edge against a chalkboard, accelerated to a painful screech. Every inch around them pulsed green, enveloping them in an insane light show. Hundreds upon hundreds of them ate the paint from the car, flecks of it flying like metallic confetti. The bumper was suddenly torn from the front end and every tire burst, giving out loud pops. The car sank to the ground, hunkered down.

  Betsy demanded in a high-pitched squeal, “What do you want me to do? They’re going to kill us—whatever the fuck they are!”

  He reached out to start the car. When he turned the key, there was no response. The engine had been destroyed by the bugs shortly after the hood had been ripped off, he realized. It would be stupid to face the lo
custs without a shelter, he reasoned, so he stayed in the car. But what would they do if and when the windows shattered? Betsy’s continual screams shot to pieces any logical thinking.

  The windows shattered at the same time, and the locusts swarmed in, the pulsing, neon green flooding inside the car.

  Their war chant was deafening, Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!

  They tore the console and ate up the leather interior, chewing with voracious appetite. The gnashing of insect wings caused his ears to bleed, and he could feel the warmth flood down his neck. The windshield forked into cracks and then quickly exploded. The touch of hundreds of small legs raced up and down his body. It was seconds before he was bleeding from numerous centimeter-long wounds, stinging like paper cuts. He struggled to open the door, unable to get a grip, and so deep in shock he failed to realize his fingers were bare phalanges.

  Reeling from the rapid blood loss, Ralph turned in time to see Betsy’s steel-toed boots flail at empty air as she was hoisted through the window and into the woods, hovering high up in the sky as pieces of her rained down in liquid form. Her shrieks softened as more of her disappeared, engulfed in neon green and flowing blood.

  Before her body vanished, Ralph’s body was completely picked clean of skin.

  Chapter Eight

  1

  “What do you mean your father’s missing?” Andy stared into Mary-Sue’s concerned face. She clung to both sides of his shirt, as if doing so was evidence of her truthfulness. “Okay, let’s start from the beginning. When’s the last time you saw him?”

  Her soft eyes searched through the darkened woods as if her father was coming up over the hill, so hopeful. But then her face lost its hold and went slack, on the verge of another emotional breakdown. He stroked her auburn hair without realizing it, the impulse to comfort her cued instinct. “Come inside and sit down, okay? Tell me all about what’s going on. I’m sure it’s not something we can’t fix.”

  He recalled Jimmy’s car parked behind a set of trees half a block down from his house. Andy did his best not to jump to conclusions despite Mary-Sue’s crying. He guided her to the leather chair, and she plopped down with her knees cradled up to her body. She eyed the bottle of McCormick’s whiskey, and he handed it to her.