by James, Matt
Monsters. Real. Life. Monsters.
Jill couldn’t believe what she was seeing. If it weren’t for the crimson fluid dripping from his mouth and eye sockets, Jill would’ve stared longer. She didn’t know what to call them—and had no plans on coming up with something. That was a Frank kind of thing to do.
Slowly, she knelt back down next to Carla and held a finger to her lips. Carla didn’t see what she had. Jill could usually control herself pretty well in times of crisis. Carla? Not so much.
Dammit, Frank, why couldn’t you’ve been here?
Jill hated to admit it, but she needed her husband. The way they talked on the phone only a few minutes ago was like nothing she had experienced in months—years even. She couldn’t recall the last time he had called her “Babe.”
She smiled at the pet name.
Feeling the corners of her mouth curl, Jill’s body broke out in goosebumps, picturing Frank’s handsome face. The fun they used to have were some of the best times of her life. She lifted her gun, unsure of what she was going to do next. But as the memory of Frank slapping her ass flashed across her brain, then of him winking at her while he crossed the living room naked after a hot shower, Jill actually started to feel her pulse quicken.
Ummm… She shifted in her squat. Am I falling back in love with him?
The answer to her question was a body being flung through the glass display next to the one she and Carla were hiding behind. It shuttered from the impact but, thankfully, stayed in one piece. Still, both women leaped out from their low stances and bolted across the hall, lucky to miss stepping on any glass shards.
“Jill,” Carla whispered, “look.”
Jill squeaked to a stop and turned, seeing John on the other side of the smashed exhibit. Even in the dim, red light, she could see that he was injured, bleeding from a cut to his chin. It wasn’t anything significant, but nor did she hear the skirmish that had caused it.
Her eyes darted back and forth between the night guard and the still creature.
“Did he do that?” Carla asked, speaking up before Jill could inquire about the same thing.
“I…I think so,” Jill replied, stunned.
She grinned, picturing Frank doing the same thing—but to three of the beasts. Every tender, sex-filled moment they had spent together slammed home, even the tender ones that didn’t include making love. Feeling herself blush, and also feeling a little light-headed, Jill knew she needed to get her newfound lust for Frank under control. Fancying herself a go at her lost husband wasn’t going to help anyone.
Especially me!
The two women stayed put and waited for John to rejoin them, doing the smart thing and staying away from the breakage. The cacophony should’ve brought more of them, advertising their location with ease. However, the only noise they heard in the room was John’s soft footsteps.
“You move like a ninja,” Carla said, eyes like saucers.
Jill crossed her arms. “So, what branch of the military were you in exactly?”
John stopped and eyes her. “Later.” He tilted his chin to the back of the room. “Come on.”
Used to being in control, Jill didn’t like how he was dragging them around the museum. Then again, he knew the ins and outs of the building better than anyone. If she wanted to survive the night, Jill knew she needed to play ball.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“As far away from them as we can get,” he replied, picking up the pace.
The Ross Hall of Meteorites was next, and again, they stop to collect themselves. John went on ahead to check the exit but stayed within earshot of Jill and Carla. While not entirely alone, the two women conversed as if they were.
“What did Frank say?”
Jill shrugged. “He said he was coming for me.”
“Me?” Carla asked.
Jill rolled her eyes. “Me—us—whoever! You knew what I meant.”
Carla grinned. “I know.” She let out a long breath. “Just because we’re being hunted by some Godforsaken hell-beasts doesn’t mean we can’t have fun with one another, right?”
Jill’s eyebrow raised slightly. “You seem to be doing better.”
“I am,” Carla replied, nodding. “I’m feeling better about…all of this.” Jill’s eyes lingered on her. “Okay, maybe not that much better, but still…”
Jill smiled and hugged her cousin. “It’s alright, Carla. I’m scared too.”
“Vinny?” she asked.
“I’m not sure.” They parted their embrace. “I’m not sure what’s going on.”
“Let’s go,” John said, waving them on. “There’s a few of them still out there.” He explained. “I only got two of them back there.”
“Two?” Jill asked. She only saw one of the creatures go down.
He nodded. “Yep. Got one from behind before he knew what got him.”
“What are you,” Carla said, “some kind of Rambo?”
John shook his head. “Marine, well, a retired one anyway.”
And there you have it, Jill thought, finally getting confirmation.
“And now you’re a night guard in a museum?”
He glanced at Jill. “I like history. Plus,” he added, looking away, “it’s quiet.” He shrugged. “Was quiet.”
“What do you think is going on?” Carla asked, doing her best to keep up with the long strides of Jill and John.
“Best as I can tell…I have no idea.”
“Nice answer,” Jill said, laughing a little.
“And what about you?”
Jill put her hands up in surrender. “Easy, tiger. I have no friggin clue.”
John led them into another exhibition, the Hall of Minerals. Having been to the museum a bunch of times over the last few months, Jill knew her way around pretty well, but with the power out, she was all turned around. She knew the Hall of Minerals was in the very back of the first floor. She also knew there was no exit where they were going.
“Where are you taking us?” Jill asked, unsure whether they should be following John anymore.
Had the guy cracked and was he taking them to the rear of the museum to rape and kill them? Spooked, Jill readied her pistol. Then, she slowed her steps a hair but stayed close to their guide.
“I’m bringing you to the Hall of Nothing,” he replied, stopping at the area’s entrance. There was literally nothing in it. And with the state of the room, it seemed to be under construction for the foreseeable future too. “I need you two to hang out here for a second while I have a look around.”
“You’re leaving us?” Carla asked, mortified.
“You can’t do that, John!” Jill hissed, pissed.
John raised both his hands. “I just want to have a look around and see what the damage is.” He cringed at what he was about to say next. “And, no offense, but I can move around a lot quicker without y’all following me.”
Jill wanted to argue, but she couldn’t. She knew he was right.
“Besides,” John added, “you have that.” He pointed at Jill’s gun. “Just sit tight, back in that corner.” He motioned to which one. “There’s an alcove you can hide in. There’s only one way in and out, and you’ll have a great shot from in there.” He looked hard at Jill, giving her a grin. “As long as you can actually use it.”
“Just go,” Jill said, shaking her head, “before I ‘use it’ on you.”
3
John didn’t come back for three hours—nothing did, as it were. After twenty minutes, Jill had already feared the worst. Then, after another twenty, her anxiety was at crescendo-level. Once they hit the sixty-minute mark, Jill was sure John had been killed and was already planning an escape for Carla and herself.
“You want to leave out the front door?” Carla asks, unsure.
Jill knew it wasn’t her best idea ever, but she figured it would be the most chaotic there, and the easiest to slip out and stay unnoticed. They’d be simple to spot if they stayed in the museum and were the only people
moving.
“What about the—the—things?”
“What about them?” Jill asked back. “No eyes,” she waved her hand in front of her face, “remember?
“But don’t animals have really good hearing and sense of smell?”
Jill’s eyebrows knit down. “They aren’t animals, Carla.”
“Still… I just—”
“You want to get out of here, right? Find the guys?” Jill had had enough. If it were up to her cousin, Carla would gladly stay in the Hall of Nothing until she starved to death just as long as she didn’t have to grow a backbone.
Carla’s shoulders dropped, but she sighed and stood. Then, to Jill’s surprise, she pulled a tiny, palm-sized handgun from her own, even-smaller, purse. The bag was so little that Jill couldn’t imagine a pistol fitting in there, yet, there it was.
“Won’t do much damage I’m afraid.”
Jill smiled softly. “Better than nothing.”
A figure stumbles into the view behind them, scaring Carla, but sending Jill into attack mode. She quickly snapped up her gun and laid her finger on the trigger. Thankfully, she had hesitated. If she had pulled the trigger, she would’ve shot John.
“What the hell, man!” Jill shouted, terrified and angry. “I could’ve killed you.”
The closer John got, the more she realized that he’d been injured. Now, instead of having just a cut on his chin, the guard sported a torn shirt sleeve and a bruised left cheek. Both sets of knuckles were bleeding too.
“What happened?”
Stopping against a nearby support post, John explained.
“As soon…as I got close to the Milstein Hall, they spotted me and chased me all over the damn place.” He waved one of his battered hands in front of his face, breathing hard. “All of them are blind too, not just our friend back there.” He stuck a thumb over his shoulder. Jill knew he was talking about the one back in the Hall of Human Origins, the one John had thrown through a glass display.
“How many of them are there?” Carla asked, shrinking back into the smaller Hall of Nothing.
John’s eyes flicked to Jill before he replied to Carla.
Uh, oh.
“There’s a bunch of them.”
“And the people in Milstein Hall?” Jill asked, knowing she probably wasn’t going to like his answer. The hall was one big box with two major exits, one of which was the source of the creatures’ entrance. It would’ve been the perfect place for an ambush.
John shook his head and looked at the floor. “Most are dead.”
“What!” Jill couldn’t believe it. Yes, she figured that portion of the museum patrons had, unfortunately, perished. She’d seen a few, Richard/Dick included, die.
John continued. “I got as far as the hall’s main entrance… There was a river of blood. It seemed to originate from behind the closed doors.”
“That’s when they saw you?” Carla asked, stepping forward again.
John shook his head. “No, I stopped there and then turned around. It’s only after I headed back here that they chased me. I couldn’t go inside the Milstein Hall. I…” His voice caught. Jill could see that he was frightened. “I needed to lose them before I led them back to you.”
“You fought them off?”
John nodded. “I tried.” He flexed his battered hands. “I didn’t intend to, but a couple of the eyeless bastards got too close for comfort.” He blushed. “I may have, uh, wrecked three more displays…”
Jill grinned. “Hulk smash.”
The comment made John laugh. He’d already done so much for Carla and her, it was time for them to do something for him.
“Can you walk?” she asked.
“Legs are fine, yeah.”
Jill held her gun out, grip first, offering it to a man who could obviously handle himself in a fight. He must’ve been good with a pistol too.
Surprisingly, however, John shook his head and gently pushed the weapon back into Jill’s chest. “Keep it. I’ll be okay.”
“You sure?”
“I’ll have to be,” he replied, opening and closing his hands.
“So,” Carla said, “which way?”
“The parking garage,” John said, pushing himself away from the support post. “The corridors around the IMAX theater were mostly empty.”
“Mostly?” Jill asked.
He shrugged. “Like I said, there were a lot of them.”
Not having a better idea, Jill and Carla both fell in line behind the night guard. They took it nice and slow too, backtracking as far as the Grand Gallery and its humongous canoe.
“I locked whatever exits I could get to,” John said, motioning to the one on their right.
“Can’t we leave through there?” Carla asked.
John stopped and turned toward her. “You don’t want to go that way…”
There was a finality in his words. John wouldn’t be talking about what he saw. If the former Marine refused to leave through that door, then Jill needed to trust his judgment. Whatever laid behind it must’ve been worse than their current predicament.
“What could be worse?” she mumbled.
“Huh?” Carla asked.
Jill shook her head. “Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
“Shit,” John said, keeping his voice down. They were just about to turn left and enter the next room, the Hall of Northwest Coast Indians. It was the only room between them and the IMAX theater. That, and, as it turned out, a cluster of disgusting monsters.
Halfway into the hall were a handful of the things. They just stood there, looking at the ceiling, swaying back and forth. Jill was about to question them but quickly understood what was happening.
They’re blind, she thought. They’re listening.
“What about that way?” Carla whispered, pointing back into the Grand Gallery, to the corridor on the other side.
John backpedaled and slunk behind the corner. “Nope. There’s too many of them that way.”
“But if we can’t get out this—”
Jill cut off Carla. “We go upstairs,” she said, getting John moving.
“Why upstairs?” Carla asked, struggling to keep up.
“Because,” John explained, “there are stairwells all over the museum. We can head to the set above the Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda and leave out through the second floor.”
Jill looked at the confused Carla. “The front door.”
In actuality, the museum had several entrances, but the most famous of them all was the one facing Central Park. Just beyond it sat Theodore Roosevelt in all his glory, atop his mighty steed. The façade had been featured in countless TV shows and movies over the years, most notably, Ben Stiller’s “Night at the Museum.”
They took the stairs as slowly and as quietly as they could. The air within the museum was so still you could hear a pin drop down the hall.
“You check up here?” Jill asked, quietly.
“No…” John replied, not liking his own answer. “Didn’t have the time.”
“Great…” Carla said, frowning. Jill agreed with her sentiment, but they needed to push on and get to that exit.
“So,” Carla said,” no parking garage?”
John shook his head. “Can’t chance it now. Gotta take what they give us.”
“Plus,” Jill added, “we can find a car outside. I’d imagine the parking garage is full of wrecks, anyway.”
Both John and Carla silently nodded in agreement.
Twin snarls erupted behind them, sending Jill into motion. She spun but slipped on one of the polished steps as she did. Luckily, her aim stayed down the stairs, and she pulled the trigger of her pistol three times. The sound was deafening, and the result impressive.
She had taken down both of the creatures that had snuck up behind them. One was dead, and the other was writhing on the ground from a gunshot wound to the abdomen.
“Come on!” John growled, pulling both the women up the stairs. “We gotta move!”
And,
so, they did, sprinting at full speed until Jill was officially lost somewhere within the second floor of the museum. It wasn’t until she spotted an elephant, that she got her bearings. They were just outside of the Hall of African Mammals. Stepping out onto the room’s second-story overhang, Jill looked down into the exhibit, immediately leaping back and leveling her gun at the air beyond.
Staying low, Jill and John both crawled over and took a look together. There weren’t many of them, but there were definitely enough of the creatures to explain her reaction. And they looked just like the ones they'd seen downstairs: Standing still as the dead, heads up to the ceiling, swaying back and forth.
One of them had their head facing up toward where they were positioned above the room. It was what had startled Jill. Her shoulders sagged. It’s hard to remember that they can’t actually see anything. She could’ve alerted the creatures to their presence had she been noisier.
Two of them were men, and one, a female. She’s the one that scared the shit out of Jill. The woman was also the first one to hear them and leaped onto the back of one of the massive, stuffed elephants.
They ran like the wind. As they retreated, Jill heard the female call out with a combination of grunts and growls. To her surprise, John headed for the first staircase he could find and began scaling it without conversing with them.
“What are you doing?” Jill asked, unsure, but following him, nonetheless. “Why are we going up again?”
Carla was next to her breathing hard, pumping her arms furiously. She wasn’t in the same shape as Jill was, or John, for that matter. Her cousin stayed thin because of good genes and overpriced, celebrity-endorsed supplements, not because of exercise. Jill had her bloodline and her hard work to thank for her body.
John turned the corner and headed for the fourth floor which shocked Jill, once again. Whatever he was thinking, he wanted nothing to do with the eyeless woman back in the Hall of African Mammals.
Tripping over one another, the three survivalists spilled to the floor, loudly squeaking across it as they did. John pulled Jill to her feet and then helped Carla up as well. They caught their breath just outside of the Wallach Orientation Center.
