Rabid Heart

by Jeremy Wagner

  “Careful. We don’t want you gettin’ all messed up now.” Patty stepped off the stairs. She stood in front of Rhonda and pushed the .45 into Rhonda’s belly. “We got plans for you still.”

  Randy followed Patty and stood next to her. He leered at Rhonda. “We’ll mess ya’ up later when we’re done with ya’.”

  Rhonda exhaled. She hated them. Leaning against the wall, she saw everything better thanks to the mysterious glow. Where did it come from? She looked to her right and saw it then, light from a room at the end of a short utility passage.

  The little couple moved Rhonda along and they all entered the room. The illumination came from a large kerosene lantern placed amongst rusty tools and knives on top of a rusted metal worktable centered inside. The concrete floor was strewn with yellowish, gristle-knotted human bones, and it suddenly occurred to her that human remains could draw fucking rats; and rats meant Necro-Rabies.

  Patty pushed Rhonda toward the messy worktable. New dread filled her and for a second she wished she was back with her dad at Camp Deadnut. She wished she was with Brad and wondered what predicament he might be in.

  Worry about that later.

  She noted stacks of moldy cardboard boxes piled on several decrepit skids along every wall. A set of rusty lockers and a dirty twin bed with a stained pillow and a navy blanket in one corner. Worst of all, against a far wall, two Cujos hissed and lashed out from behind a floor-to-ceiling chain-link pen, the door secured with a large padlock.

  Rhonda observed the emaciated Cujos. On her left stood a semi-decomposed adult male dressed in a dirty and crumbly polo shirt and shorts get-up. Beside the undead dude stood a young, Cujo-fied woman, naked and in a state of inert rot, smeared with red and black, like a mixture of blood and grease. The Cujo-fied pair hissed and showed large, blackish-yellow teeth poking out of black and receded gumlines.

  “Our putrid pets.” Patty withdrew the gun from Rhonda’s back and walked to the worktable. She tucked the gun into her waistband at the back of her pants and grabbed a piece of metal pipe from the tabletop. At this, the Cujos hissed louder, rattling their cage with agitation. Patty strolled over and stopped inches from the chain-link. “We keep ’em around for fun. Feed ’em fresh meat sometimes, once we’re done with our share. Get back ya’ nasty fuckers!”

  Patty cursed and swatted undead fingers with her pipe, but the Cujos didn’t withdraw their hands, just clutched and shook their cage non-stop. Rhonda worried as they became more and more pissed off. Their hisses rose and abundant amounts of Cujo drool trickled from their mouths. Patty jabbed her pipe through the fence and nailed the female Cujo in her pronounced ribcage. The blow tore a cruel hole in bad flesh.

  “Hey! Roy likes that one.” Randy’s falsetto voice rose. He walked to Patty.

  Patty turned from the pen and raised her pipe at Randy. “I don’t give a shit what Roy likes. Roy’ll fuck anything, and ’round here, anything is nothing and nothing ’round here lasts long. He’ll find another one.”

  “Your buddy rapes that Cujo girl?” Rhonda looked at the rabid corpse behind the fence, then cast a disgusted expression at the little people.

  The pint-sized pair shrugged and returned to the middle of the room, on the other side of the worktable. They glared at Rhonda, their crabapple faces visible just above the tabletop, their compressed features filled with malevolence, beady eyes flickering in lantern light.

  “Any port in a storm, Roy says.” Randy flashed his tiny teeth. “You’re in our world. Learn it, live it, love it.”

  “Yeah, our buddy fucks girls. Dead or alive. Eats ’em, too. So what? We all do.” Patty banged her steel pipe on the table.

  It wasn’t such a surprise that Roy or anyone in this miserable land would fuck the dead, motionless or animated. Rhonda knew such things happened outside of Fort Rocky. She thought of Brad and how anyone would view him as an object to be defiled.

  He’s my true love. Not a plaything...

  Rhonda put her thoughts away as Randy suddenly stopped and raised a hand. She watched his face bunch into a scowl, like he smelled noxious gas. He turned to Patty and his high-pitched voice rose like a siren. “Where’re the fucking kids?”

  “Settle down, dumbshit.” Patty tossed her pipe and it landed on the tabletop with a clang. She pushed past Randy and duck-walked toward the twin bed in a corner of the room.

  Patty squatted, breaking wind like a pack of firecrackers. Rhonda didn’t think the room could smell any worse.

  “Come out here ya’ little shits.” Patty shouted into darkness beneath the bed.

  A moment passed and nothing happened. Everything beneath the small bed remained quiet and unstirred. Then, Rhonda watched a sudden flashlight beam cut through blackness under the bed. This beam first spotlighted Patty before turning and tilting upward to point at Randy and Rhonda.

  A child’s cautious voice spoke from beneath the bed. “You got another bad person with you. We don’t wanna get hurt.”

  “You’re gonna get hurt if you don’t get your asses out from under there.” Patty stood and kicked the metal bed frame. “We didn’t bring no Cujo with us. Now get outta there!”

  Rhonda watched two kids, around nine to 11 years old, crawl out. A boy with light blonde hair, in dirty jeans and a soiled white T-shirt, clutching a long and large black Maglite. The other kid, a girl with long blonde hair, wore filthy overalls and a dirty top beneath. They both looked at Patty and Randy before their gaze shifted to Rhonda. She saw terror on their dirt-blotched faces.

  Rhonda presented a large, kind smile. She raised her taped wrists and wiggled her fingers at the kids. She hoped they saw her like them: innocent and kidnapped.

  The boy paused on his hands and knees with his gaze on Rhonda. His eyes opened wide.

  Rhonda cleared her throat and tried to make her voice sound cheerful and non-threatening. “Hi guys. Don’t worry about me. I’m no monster. Not like these guys.”

  “Shut your slut-hole. Next time you open your yap, you’re lickin’ me.” Patty frowned and spat at Rhonda. She turned to the boy, then reached and pulled the boy to his feet by his hair. He appeared a good inch or two taller than Patty. She snarled in his face and slapped him with her free hand. “I told you and your sister, there ain’t no place to hide.”

  “We’ll eat ya’ ’n throw your scraps to the Fleshfucks. Maybe jes’ feed you to ’em. Ha!” Randy chimed in and pointed at the Cujo pen.

  The girl gripped her brother’s arm and buried her face into his shoulder. It broke Rhonda’s heart. These poor kids, the lives they must lead. It reminded Rhonda of Hansel and Gretel, except instead of falling prey to a cannibal witch in a forest, they were held hostage by a pair of psycho-sexual, flesh-hungry deviant halflings.

  Rhonda observed the boy, who stood rigid while his sister snuggled into his arm. Rhonda noted Patty’s fresh handprint, printed in dirt on the boy’s cheek. It looked like it stung. Yet the boy didn’t offer any tears. Instead, Rhonda observed, he glared at Patty with hate in his eyes, his chest puffing in steady breaths and his bottom lip out.

  “You eyeballin’ me, boy?” Patty pulled the .45 out from her waistband and raised it to his face. “Awwww... ya’ look so mad. Too bad. That slap wasn’t the first or last, boy.”

  The boy’s shaky words came out fast. “Go to hell.”

  Randy’s mouth dropped open while Rhonda watched, surprised by the kid’s courage.

  “Tough guy? Really?” Patty spoke in her tiny and sinister voice. “You ain’t no tough guy. You ain’t nothin’ but a little shit with a smart mouth.” With an uneasy, one-handed grip, Patty shoved the gun barrel hard into the boy’s chest and pushed him backward with it, grabbing his sister and yanking her away with her free hand. “How about I throw your sister in the slave pen with the Cujos? Maybe that’ll teach ya’ to stand down.”

  “Nooo! Tyler, help me!” The girl wriggled and screamed while Patty dragged her to the Cujo pen.

  Rhonda already held an ocean of undiluted ang
er and disgust at these horrible little fucks. She was ready to jump in to help the girl at any cost, her bound hands be damned. But before she could leap into action, the boy set new events in motion on his own.

  Despite her tape-bound arms and sore eyes and shadowy lantern light, Rhonda was bent on kicking her tiny captors to death. But the boy, Tyler, beat her to the proverbial kick.

  As Patty dragged the young girl toward the Cujo pen, Rhonda watched in surprise as Tyler ran past Randy and the worktable, and came up behind Patty with his arms raised high and the large Maglite clutched in his hands. Exerting savage speed and force, he walloped Patty’s red-haired dome with the flashlight.

  Patty screeched in pain as her scalp and burgundy locks parted in a wide gash. A vibrant spray of blood followed the blow as Maglite metal met cranial bone.

  I bet that fucking smarts.

  Tyler clubbed Patty again and Patty screamed, releasing the girl as she stumbled from the blow and reached for her split head. She also dropped the .45 to the floor where it spun underneath the table.

  Randy released an outraged bellow, took a step forward next to Rhonda, and then froze. He looked confused and scared.

  “You’re not the boss of us! You’re not the boss of us! You... hobbit... bitch!” Tyler chased Patty and pinned her. He stood over her and beat her again with the Maglite.

  Rhonda couldn’t imagine what horrors Tyler and his sister had been through, but just one hour down here was hell. She was surprised the kid hadn’t snapped and beat his captors silly before today. No matter, payback had arrived.

  Rhonda turned to Randy. His shrieks cut off when he saw her liberated .45 automatic spinning under the table. Randy flicked his gaze to Rhonda’s eyes, and she found desperation and uncertainty in his beady little orbs. He scowled and bared his mule teeth at her.

  “Don’t do it.”

  Rhonda gave Randy a clear order, but unsurprisingly, the little creep didn’t heed her. He squealed and dove toward the worktable, attempting to get his small mitts on the sidearm. Rhonda kicked her foot out and the toe of her boot caught Randy under the chin and slammed his head hard into the table’s underside, forcing Randy and the heavy table to flip together, scattering junk across the floor, lost among human remains.

  “Whoops.” Rhonda watched the dislodged lantern smash as she went for her .45. Kerosene spread and burned over the floor. Unbound flames flickered and popped, adding an eerie and sinister glow to the chamber of horrors.

  Randy landed on his back. He rolled and staggered to his feet, holding his head and jaw. Blood poured from his small mouth and Rhonda watched him try to speak. He bellowed forth words carried on a spray of red. “I it nigh uuung!”

  Fucker must’ve bit his tongue. Perhaps, she hoped, it was severed in two.

  Tyler continued his Maglite assault on Patty’s back as she wailed for mercy. Beyond Tyler and Patty, Rhonda spied Tyler’s terrified young sister. The girl hid in a corner, crouching with her face pressed into a wall. The Cujos were going nuts in their slave pen, perhaps frenzied by the bloody action before them.

  Rhonda went for her .45 and caught Randy’s movement. She faced him as kerosene flames grew larger. She watched Randy spit out a large blob of stringy blood that reflected the flickering firelight. He bared crimson-smeared mule teeth at her before snatching a large knife from the detritus of the bone-littered floor. He shrieked and waved a dirty and pitted blade at Rhonda as he charged. Desperate. He again dove for Rhonda’s unsecured sidearm. This break, and Randy’s awkward gait, gave Rhonda time to move. She stepped to her .45 and dipped with ease and rose again with her sidearm gripped in her bound hands like a fishing stork with a powerful, high-caliber frog.

  Randy belly-flopped in front of Rhonda and landed hard on his ample gut, expelling a painful, bloody bark. Having missed his chance to get the gun, he wailed and swiped at Rhonda with his knife, but caught only the toes of her combat boots with the blade tip.

  Rhonda aimed at his head, but he twisted and she ended up blowing a large hole through Randy’s right shoulder. He released the knife and roared in a high-pitched, caterwaul of misery. Remarkable, how such a small man could make such noise.

  Rhonda kicked Randy’s knife away and sought the kids.

  Gotta get them out of this hellhole.

  Heavy kerosene smoke had begun filling the room as the flames licked and ignited the molding cardboard boxes and skids along the walls.

  “Tyler! Stop! Grab your sister.” Rhonda pushed her voice above the little people’s screams. Tyler didn’t seem to hear her, so she kicked Patty out of the way and faced him.

  “We’re gettin’ the fuck outta this place. Get your sister and head upstairs. Use your flashlight.”

  Tyler looked confused for a moment, and then snapped to attention and nodded. He appeared winded, no doubt from the beat-down he’d dished out. He clutched his Maglite like a war club and stood down as Patty bled and crawled to her collaborator, who remained face down on the floor moaning in agony.

  Rhonda glanced at the girl balled in the corner of the psychotic realm. Tyler ran to her and pulled her to her feet. “C’mon, Ellen. We’re running away.”

  Tyler led Ellen toward the stairs and Rhonda watched the kids until they disappeared into the small and dark corridor and staircase beyond. Fire crackled and something moved behind her. She spun and thrust her taped wrists out with her .45 pointed straight ahead.

  Patty and Randy stood, albeit unsteadily, in front of the Cujo pen, their tiny forms flashing yellow and red in firelight. Their pet Cujos hissed behind them and attacked their enclosure with mindless fury. Patty had reclaimed her pipe and Randy his knife. Their eyes sparkled in faces twisted by hate.

  “You ain’t gettin’ away with this.” Patty’s voice was rife with absolute anger and pain. She waved her pipe. “You dumb bitch.”

  “Oooo ucknn cunnn!” Randy strained words through his crimson mouth. The bullet-hole in the front of his right shoulder bubbled with blood.

  On Randy’s last and unintelligible word, he and Patty threw their respective weapons at Rhonda. Patty’s pipe missed Rhonda’s head by inches, but Randy’s rusty knife found a final destination in Rhonda’s right leg above the knee. The blade cut clean through her camo pants and flesh with ease. It thwacked inside her, every sharp and filthy inch penetrating deep in her muscle.

  “Fuuuuck!” Rhonda’s leg failed her, and she fired as she fell to the floor. She landed hard on her right knee. A sudden warm and sharp pain flamed between her kneecap and crotch.

  Rhonda’s sudden loss of balance had knocked her aim off and she missed the stunted sadists. Despite being an expert markswoman back at Camp Deadnut, firing at moving targets with bound wrists while falling with a knife in her leg was a whole new dilemma.

  Patty and Randy scattered, but Rhonda saw a different opportunity. Blinking away pain, and with precise aim, she fired a round into the padlock on the Cujo pen. The lock exploded into fragments.

  Patty and Randy whipped their heads around to the Cujo pen with new expressions of alarm on their sour apple faces. The captive Cujos shook their pen and Rhonda watched the undead cellmates pause in their rage. They turned their attention to their cage door, which slowly opened on its own with a loud metallic squeak.

  Some type of comprehension sparked in their deceased gray matter and Rhonda watched their bile-colored eyes widen as their cell door opened... and they found their captors within biting distance.

  “I’m outta here!” Patty power-waddled to escape.

  “Fuuuuuugggghhh!” Randy’s terrified bellow filled the burning horror chamber. He limped behind Patty and followed her toward nearby freedom.

  “No fucking way.” Rhonda forced all her weight onto her left leg; as Patty moved in range, Rhonda side-kicked the little beast with her wounded right leg. Despite the knife blade sticking out of her agonized leg, Rhonda nailed Patty’s throat as hard as she could with her combat boot. “Who’s the fucking DUMB BITCH now?”

 
; Patty’s broken body slammed into Randy, and both tumbled back into the fiery room to rest at the freed Cujos’ feet.

  Rhonda turned and limped toward the stairs as quickly as her wounded leg would carry her. She didn’t look back, ignoring the horrible noises coming from behind her.

  Go. Almost there.

  Halfway up the staircase, a flashlight beam hit her face. She raised a hand and shielded her eyes. Tyler’s voice yelled to her. “C’mon lady. Get up here!”

  I’m fucking trying. Rhonda willed herself to move faster. With taped wrists and a wounded leg, she ascended stairs the hard way.

  Rhonda finally made it and the kids grabbed her arms and pulled her into the hotel kitchen. On the floor, she rolled on her back and looked toward the Maintenance door. It stood wide open, vomiting clouds of black smoke into the kitchen.

  “Shut and lock that door! Hurry!” Rhonda tried to stand, but her bad leg betrayed her.

  Tyler slammed the door shut. Standing on the chair near the door, he secured the padlock with a loud click and slid the deadbolt home.

  Rhonda’s leg hurt but she didn’t care. She smiled in the dark kitchen. “You kids got a lotta guts. Way more than those little monsters down there.”

  “I hate them.” Ellen looked at her feet.

  The sound of young Ellen’s voice shocked Rhonda more than her knife wound. She reached a hand out to a shadowy form and touched the girl. “Hey, I hate ’em, too. Don’t worry, those teeny monsters now have big monsters to straighten them out.”

  Tyler stepped near. In semi-darkness, right outside his Maglite beam, Rhonda could see the shape of a large butcher knife in his hand. “Put your hands and arms up.”

  Rhonda, on her back, raised her achy, shaky arms, still clutching the .45. Tyler slid a blade between her wrists to cut the tape and helped unwind it off Rhonda’s forearms. Her hands felt weird. The sensation of her free arms made her shudder. “Thanks.”

  “Let’s get out of this place. Please?” Tyler aimed a long beam of light across the kitchen to a doorway across the room.

  “Sounds great to me.” Rhonda inhaled deeply and stood on her strong left leg. Holstering her sidearm, she grabbed both kids’ hands.