by Jacob Rayne
Janet pulled the weapon loose, freeing a tidal wave of scarlet, and shoved the man forward. He stumbled, giving Billy chance to get free. Janet grabbed him and ran out of the gates.
For a long time it seemed like no one had heard the barman’s scream, but just as Paul began to hope that he and Sam were going to be ok, he heard footsteps approaching. The barman drew in a deep breath, ready to scream again, but Paul moved forward and put his hand over his mouth.
‘Ssh,’ he hissed. ‘You’re going to give away our hiding place.’
The barman’s eyes were the only white in a mask of blood. They were wide and looked like they were ready to pop out of his skull.
A grunt from the bar made Paul start. Then he heard someone moving across the room towards them.
Paul waited until the person was almost upon them, then he stood up and swung the hockey stick. The heavy blow had a devastating effect on the young girl’s face, smashing her cheekbone in and reducing most of her teeth to dust. She fell facedown, groaning and moving weakly.
Paul’s euphoria soon evaporated when he saw that she was pale and pasty, and didn’t wear a psychotic grin.
‘Shit, I’m so sorry,’ Paul said. ‘I thought…’
‘I was coming to see how Carlos was doing,’ the girl said, her face contorted with pain.
‘Is Carlos the man behind the bar?’
‘Yes. They got him by the reception. We managed to escape. I hid him here while I went to get some medical supplies.’ She let out a cry of pain that grew in volume and intensity when she saw a grinning man appear in the entrance to the bar.
The machete he held looked lethally sharp and glistened with fresh blood.
It seemed the crazy people were still a hazard even outside the grounds of the hotel. A few bodies were littered across the hotel’s well-manicured lawns, although the sick bastards responsible weren’t around.
Billy and Janet moved carefully, still using the cover of the shadows where possible. Paranoia paid in the current climate.
They saw their first lunatic on the edge of the gardens. He was hunched over the body of a small animal, licking blood off his hands. The sight of him made both of them squirm. Billy moved into a bush and Janet followed.
The crazy looked over, obviously hearing the sound of their movements, and stood up from the animal carcass. A necklace of human fingers hung around his neck. He moved awkwardly, dragging his left leg behind him. Janet gasped when she saw the white of a bone gleaming through the bloody mass of his thigh.
‘We can outrun him,’ Billy said.
Just then, a large group of grinning maniacs moved into their eye line.
The man with the machete moved very fast, considering his immense bulk.
Just the sight of him made Paul’s bowels churn.
He doubted he could do much against such a powerful enemy, but, as the strongest member of his party, he had to try. The kid was too young, Carlos was at death’s door, and the girl he had himself put out of commission. His hands shook around the hockey stick.
The man ran in, ducking Paul’s wild blow. Paul’s swing took him full-circle and left him off-balance. The man shoved him hard in the small of the back, sending him lurching forward into the bar.
When Paul recovered, he thought himself lucky that the man hadn’t seemed interested in hurting him. He saw why when he looked behind him. The man was advancing on the girl, a huge erection bulging from the front of his trousers. Drool ran from both corners of his mouth as he knelt down between the girl’s legs.
Paul’s cowardly side told him to run, the girl was nothing to do with him, he’d be risking his life for a total stranger. But then he thought that he’d helped the boy and helped Billy and lived (so far) to tell the tale. The thought gave him strength and courage.
The girl was frozen in horror as the man’s hands ran over her body.
Paul moved forward slowly, the hockey stick raised, ready to strike. The floorboards creaked a little, but the man was too busy undoing his fly to hear. His freed erection dripped fluid onto the girl’s bare stomach. She recoiled, but he held her legs firmly. More drool spilled from his lower lip as his grin widened. He moaned as if already sensing the pleasure the girl was going to give him.
Paul ran in and swung the stick. The blow landed hard on the back of the man’s neck, sending him crashing to the floor next to the girl. The machete landed by his side. The girl cried out in surprise then slammed a fist into the man’s exposed groin.
Paul brayed the hockey stick into the man’s hand as it darted towards the machete handle. He cried out in frustration. The girl whipped the machete out from under his hand and brought it down hard, severing his first two fingers in twin jets of blood.
‘Just leave us,’ the girl instructed Paul. ‘I can handle it from here.’
Paul nodded, seeing the look that the machete-wielding girl was giving the man’s bare nether regions. He called the kid over to him and they left the bar.
Behind them the would-be rapist cried out in pain.
A few seconds later, the girl screamed too.
Paul felt he’d done all he could to help, so he left her to her fate.
Billy and Janet stared in disbelief at the advancing line of psychos. It was like a cruel joke, just when they thought they were free a final, impassable obstacle had been placed in their way.
‘Looks like we’ve got more killing to do,’ Billy grimaced.
Janet nodded, shifting the axe in her hand. ‘But we’d best run if we can, there are just too many.’
Billy nodded. Assessing the group, they saw that there were least to the right, near where they’d seen the man with the animal carcass. They ran in that direction, preparing themselves for battle when they met the crazies running towards them.
Billy picked up a stone on his way and hurled it at the advancing tide of insanity. The stone cracked the skull of a grinning middle-aged man, sending him crashing to the floor with blood pouring from the dent on the top of his head.
‘One to us,’ Billy grinned.
Janet swung hard with the hatchet, almost decapitating an old woman with wrinkled leathery skin. The head hung on by the smallest sliver of bone, lolling crazily to one side. The old woman ran a few more steps then collapsed.
A man ran at Billy, thrusting a section of lamppost at his gut. Billy got a good punch in, but the heavy-duty metal pole still landed in his solar plexus, knocking him to his knees. Tears filled his eyes as he desperately tried to catch his breath.
‘Get away,’ he told Janet.
‘There’s no fucking way I’m leaving you here,’ she said.
The man with the pole rushed in again, catching Janet’s leg. Her nerve endings screamed and her control of the limb ceased. It was useless and numb. She hopped on her other leg, trying to get the feeling to return to her mutinous limb.
The grin on the face of the man with the pole widened, as if he was sensing victory.
Behind him, a man with a samurai sword longed to join the fray.
All around them, the crazies advanced, bloodlust and hate in their eyes.
Billy and Janet could see no escape.
FIVE
Paul debated for a while then decided to go back to the bar. His motive was purely self-serving: he reckoned the machete would make a much better weapon than the hockey stick. At least with the machete he had a decent chance of killing someone with the first strike.
He crept round the corner to the bar and looked in. The crazy who had previously wielded the machete lay on the floor, his right arm almost severed from his body. His chest rose and fell slowly, but Paul sensed he was close to death. He had to be, judging by the huge pool of blood spreading from the wound in his arm.
Next to him lay the girl, the machete wedged deep in her gut. Blood was leaking from her and mingling with that of her murderer. She wasn’t breathing.
Paul moved in, keeping one eye on the big man who still seemed to be alive.
He drew level with th
e big man’s body, taking a closer look as he did so. The arm clung to his torso by a slim strand of tendon. The wound made Paul feel sick so he tried not to look at it.
The man’s chest continued to rise and fall, and Paul resolved not to take his attention off him.
He reached the dead girl’s body and grabbed the handle of the machete. His hand slipped off due to the thick layer of blood coating the wood. He cursed and wiped the handle with his shirt then tried again. The blade didn’t budge.
‘Come on,’ he muttered. He put his foot on the girl’s chest and gripped the handle with both hands then exploded up with his legs. The blade shifted but still clung to the body.
Sweat ran down his brow from the effort of his exertions. He bent his legs again and gripped the handle. Stood up hard.
For an agonising second it felt like he was going to pull his arms out of his sockets, then the blade shifted and came free, spattering blood over his face and torso.
He let out a small cry of celebration and tested the weight in his hand. While he stared at the blood-covered blade as if entranced, Sam shouted something.
Dismayed, he looked up and saw the big man rushing across the floor towards him.
He fell, catching the back of his head on the floor. Stars flew across his vision for a split-second then he saw the big man standing over him, the hockey stick held in his good arm. Blood from his damaged arm coursed down his torso.
His grin remained, despite the wound in his arm and the bleeding void where his genitalia had once been.
Paul blinked hard, tried to clear his head. The hockey stick came down hard, feeling like it had gone through his skull and out the other side. The pain was intense and for a few seconds dwarfed even the panic he felt.
He heard the breaking of glass and struggled to see what was going on. The hockey stick came down on his chest, cracking at least one of his ribs. Even breathing was an ordeal now as it felt like a shard of bone had jammed into one of his lungs.
The sound of breaking glass came again and this time broken glass rained down on Paul’s chest.
Blinking away the blood that was obscuring his vision, he saw that the kid was throwing glass bottles at the big man.
The fucker seemed uninterested and unhurt by the flying glass, just utterly focussed on punishing Paul for his error in judgement.
With no particular target in mind, Paul lashed out with the machete. As long as he hit some part of the big man’s body, he’d be happy. To his surprise the big man yelped.
Paul still saw everything through a haze of blood. More broken glass fell on him. The hockey stick came down on his face, knocking his jaw to the side. The nauseating cracking sound that filled his head was second only to the wave of pain that threatened to drown him.
For what he felt was the last time, he lashed out with the machete. Warm blood splashed his hand. The man pitched forward, a semi-comical expression on his face. His head landed on Paul’s gut, further damaging his injured ribs. Paul cried out as the breath was torn from his body in a devastating exhalation.
The big man’s blood was soaking into Paul’s clothes. The feel of it on his legs repulsed him, but he felt too weak to move. He lay under the big man’s body, sobbing.
Back to back, Janet and Billy stood, staring at the advancing group of lunatics, in their final stand. They knew that they were going to die, but vowed to take down as many enemies as possible.
The chef from the hotel complex appeared, huge and blood-soaked, his knife and cleaver slick with gore. His face was like that of a kid on Christmas morning.
‘I think this is it,’ Janet said.
‘Yeah, nice knowing you.’
The man with the section of lamppost grinned. Blood ran down from a cut in his eyebrow.
Suddenly the air was full of rock music and petrol fumes.
Janet and Billy paused and looked to the source of the sound. The crazies did so too.
A camper van was barrelling towards them. A man was leaning out of the van’s side door, a magnum revolver held in his hand. One of the crazies looked away from the speeding van and lunged at Billy.
The bullet tore a hole through the crazy’s chest and sent him flying backwards to land in a crumpled heap.
The van slammed into the group of crazies, scattering them like grinning, blood-smeared bowling skittles. The man with the lamppost fell. The chef’s legs were shattered beneath the impact of the van.
The door came open to reveal the gunman. He wore a leather jacket with a denim waistcoat over the top. A backwards baseball cap was jammed onto his head. His face was a mask of grim determination.
Another man came out of the van, dressed in the same way as the first. He held a thick wooden baseball bat which he wasted no time in swinging at the nearest crazy who went down with a bloody welt in the back of her head.
Billy saw the chef on the floor and ran round the front of the van to get to him. The chef was on his back, his legs twisted out of shape. Shards of bone poked through his skin. He screamed in rage as he saw Billy approaching.
Janet watched the man with the baseball bat smack another crazy into unconsciousness then made her way towards the van where the driver was beckoning her.
Billy grabbed the chef’s knife from the ground. He dropped onto the chef’s chest, pinning him to the floor. Hands clawed at his back and face, but he didn’t notice.
‘An eye for a fucking eye,’ Billy said, raising the knife high and stabbing it into the chef’s bulging left eye. The tip of the knife came out of the back of the chef’s skull. Blood and thick fluid oozed out from around the blade. The chef convulsed beneath Billy.
Hands grabbed at Janet, tearing her clothes as she moved. Their grip released as another gunshot tore through the jumble of her thoughts. Warm blood spattered the back of her head as the crazy fell away from her.
Dragging her numb leg behind her, she hurried towards the van, but tripped. Even in death the lunatic had gotten their revenge. Her head hit the ground and consciousness slipped away from her.
Billy got up from the screaming, twitching chef and ran towards the man with the baseball bat who was now surrounded by a group of the crazies. He put one down with a homerun swing, but immediately another took their place, tackling his legs and knocking him to the floor.
Billy cried out and ran to help him. He stumbled over the body of a dead crazy and tried to make his way forward on hands and knees, but strong arms gripped him around the waist.
‘Forget him, he’s gone,’ the owner of the arms said.
The man dragged Billy backwards, just as the crazy with the lamppost swung it at Billy’s head. The heavy metal pole shattered the left headlight, sending broken glass falling onto Billy’s head. The man pulled him back and bundled him into the van.
The leering teenaged boy nearest the van suddenly let out a frustrated cry and ran at the open door. The van’s driver fired his shotgun, bursting the boy’s head and showering its contents over his companions.
The boy fell forwards to his knees then slumped onto the ground, blood already forming a pool on the dusty earth beneath him.
‘Let’s get outta here,’ the man who’d rescued Billy said.
The man with the baseball bat stood up, crazy people hanging off his limbs and clothing. He looked forlorn, as if he was begging for help.
‘Aren’t you going to help him?’ Billy asked.
‘Can’t, bud. It’d put the rest of us in danger,’ the man with the magnum said.
The man with the bat fell forwards, hitting his head off the van’s bonnet with a sickening crunch. He stood up, a look of pure terror in his eyes. The chef was somehow standing and he lurched forwards. Dark blood and slime poured down his face from his wounded eye as he pulled the knife out of it, but he still smiled. His blade opened the man’s throat, releasing the blood within in a violent arc which showered the van’s windscreen.
The van’s inhabitants watched for a numb second while the man bled out. He slumped forward, his
head again bouncing off the van’s bonnet.
The driver used the wipers to clear the blood, but they just smeared it across the windscreen.
A dent appeared in the side of the van and through the driver’s window they saw the man with the section of lamppost rearing back for another strike. The window shattered as the heavy metal pole came through. The flying blizzard of glass scored marks in the driver’s face, but he had ducked away just in time to avoid being hit by the pole.
Without leaving his crouched position, he revved the van and pulled up the clutch. The van shot forward, bucking as its wheels went over a body.
‘Let’s get the fuck outta here,’ the man who had rescued Billy shouted.
The van mowed down a couple more crazies in its escape from the nightmare scene.
When Paul found the will to move he discovered that fear had sapped his strength. His legs would barely support his weight. The world spun, presumably from the effects of the couple of solid blows to the head he’d taken from the hockey stick. The kid did his best to support him, but Paul still lurched like a drunkard at closing time.
He glanced at the scene in the bar for the final time, taking in the girl’s still form and the body of the man he had himself killed. Tears still streamed down his pale face, but, despite the shock and pain, he felt a sense of pride at surviving the encounter in the bar. The machete in his right hand was his hard-won prize.
He and the boy made their way back towards the entrance where Janet and Billy had fled, but the place was in total disorder.
Dozens of crazies ran around the paved entrance way, all screeching as one. The cacophony of voices made Paul cry out in alarm. They would need to find another way out of the hotel grounds.
Janet came to when she felt hands running up her legs towards her groin. She squirmed and kicked out, fearing that one of the crazies had gotten his hands on her.
‘Janet, it’s ok,’ a familiar voice said.
She looked up to see Billy crouched by her side, his good eye staring into hers.
