by Paul Bishop
My song started and I did my thing. The prosthetic came off and I clung to the pole while I churned my back muscles to make some kind of movement while I balanced on one leg. The music never played so loudly that we couldn’t hear whatever else went on in the club so we all heard Jacqui change her tone of voice.
“Hey,” she said. “Watch it, pal.” The schoolgirl had grown up fast.
I saw Cruz come out from behind the bar like he’d simply waited to be sprung from a trap. He had his trusty baseball bat in hand and switched from bartender to bouncer in an instant as he strode across the floor toward the stranger. I watched it all from my perch high on stage.
The man stood and spilled Jacqui off his lap but caught her in one arm and hauled her up with him. With his other hand, he drew a mean-looking knife—the kind my daddy used to skin deer when I was a kid. I moved my body in slow, rolling waves while I watched the scene in front of me with utter disbelief.
The stranger ran his blade up from Jacqui’s elbow to her shoulder and carved off a slice of flesh like a fresh deer steak. Cruz couldn’t move fast enough.
She screamed the way I thought a person should scream if they’d actually been filleted.
The bartender reached them and swung the bat. His opponent raised his knife hand for protection and stuck the strip of flesh in his mouth to hold with his teeth and instantly, we all knew what he was. The bat came down, the edge of the knife stuck in it, and the man’s huge arm held it in place while he grinned past the dangling strip of flesh. Cruz froze for a second as if he couldn’t quite believe the guy could stop his swing in mid-flight. His adversary clenched the fist of his bloody hand and punched him in the gut.
Mesmerized, I continued to dance, chained to the music and the strange dream I seemed to be having.
Sammy lumbered across the floor, which was a bad idea. I heard Rowena scream from backstage. The two bikers stood and looked pissed but made no move to rescue Cruz or Jacqui.
The stranger ripped the knife out of the bat and swung it backhanded into the woman. It struck her chest and she froze. He spun his wrist, jerked his arm down, and pulled. A hole opened in her chest like he’d pressed a magic lock and revealed a hidden panel. The man took his already bloody hand and punched her in the wound. Through it all, he bit down on the piece of her arm and clung to it like a wolverine.
We didn’t need any more proof that he was a cannibal. The question we had was how many more were there nearby.
Cruz had fallen but pushed to his knees and swung the bat. It caught the stranger in his kneecaps and the man went down. As he fell, his hand ripped out of the woman’s chest with a sound I heard over the Guns N Roses tune. In his fist, he held Jacqui’s heart.
Something about witnessing the violence made my stumps ache with the phantom pains of long-lost limbs.
The bartender stood and began to pound the man with the bat. Over and over, he brought his weapon down like he tried to hit a hundred home runs back to back. No one moved to stop him.
We all watched the bikers suspiciously, and they stared at us in return. Gigi and Rowena cowered in the door to the dressing room, clinging to each other, their bare breasts touching.
Charlie remained glued to his seat and Sammy stood halfway across the floor, panting and sweating.
The bartender finally stopped, his task complete. He looked from the pulverized mess of a man at his feet to the dead stripper with a hole for a heart beside him, then turned to the room.
“There’s gonna be more,” he said.
4
I was no help at all when it came to barricading a door.
Everyone else jumped in to move the old broken-down jukebox, three tables, and six chairs, along with a few cases of the bathtub hooch, against the front door. I helped where I could but mostly stood around on my crutches and listened to everyone call questions to anyone who might step up with an answer. Cruz became our de facto expert on all things cannibal.
“What do you mean, there’s gonna be more, man?” one of the bikers asked.
“They never come alone,” he replied as he lifted a table over his head to carry it toward the barricade. “He must have been a scout for a larger group.”
“Looking at us like we were on a menu,” Sammy muttered and panted for breath.
Rowena and Gigi stayed close and huddled together like they needed the body heat any time Cruz or Sammy didn’t bark orders at them to move this or that.
We learned the names of the two bikers. Elon, the shorter of the two with jet-black, slicked-back hair, spoke with a thick southern accent. Chris sported a dense mustache that curved down around his lip and touched the edge of his chin on either side. I felt sure Charlie regarded that mustache with rare jealousy. The rest of his face was stubbly but in a less deliberate way.
The whole room acted suspicious of them at first. I know I did. But they chipped in to build the barrier and, in some ways, seemed the most afraid of any of us.
Charlie was mostly dumbfounded into silence and minimum movement. Cruz gave him small tasks and he took his time with them.
Everyone stepped away from the front doors and no one felt confident. If there were four or five in the cannibal group outside, we might stand a chance. If there were more than that, I’d have bet we’d have to fight—and would probably lose.
“Maybe they won’t come,” Rowena said.
“Yeah,” Gigi added. “Maybe you’re wrong, Cruz.”
“I hope so,” he replied quietly.
“You know what I think?” Elon said. “I think we locked ourselves in our own graves, man.” Chris nodded, along with his partner. “I don’t want to be in here, man. Get me on my bike and let’s get out of here.”
“Hold on a minute,” Sammy said and tried to act like the voice of authority. “We can’t take the barricade down yet. Let’s wait a while and see if anything happens. If no one is here in an hour, you can go.”
“Yo, you can’t make me stay, fat man.” Elon stood tall but didn’t make any move toward Sammy. I finally realized after all that time that my tits were still out. I crutched over to the dressing room and pulled my shirt on.
“We need to let them know they’re not welcome,” Cruz said as I hobbled back into the room.
“How?” Sammy asked.
“We need to send a message.”
Looks were exchanged, mostly between the men. The opinions of three damaged stripper girls didn’t seem to amount to much.
“Toss him out front,” I said. Seven pairs of eyes turned toward me. “Leave him outside as a sign. They’ll know we stopped him, and they’ll know it isn’t safe here for them.” I really hoped I wouldn’t have to relive my run-in with the cannibals on my way there. Even thinking about it pushed my heart rate up. The two dead bodies in my peripheral vision reminded me of the cannibal I beat to death. I wondered what Cruz would say if he knew I’d done what he did, only using a fake leg instead of a bat.
“That’s not a bad idea, girl,” Sammy responded thoughtfully.
“Put his head on a pike,” Elon said.
“Hell yeah,” added Chris.
An odd expression slid over Cruz’s face. “It’s not bad at all,” he said. “Boys, help me get this pole down.”
“What for?” demanded Sammy.
“Like we said, to send a message.”
Cruz, Elon, and Chris all climbed on the stage. They looked almost funny up there where us girls usually did our grinding and shook our gimps. Charlie made no move to help and neither did Sammy. I wandered over to where Rowena and Gigi clung together and added my good arm to their tangle of limbs.
The three men pulled on the brass pole that had rubbed silver in several areas from years of use. They counted a one-two-three and pushed, then pulled until the pole came loose and tore free from the ceiling first before it could be yanked out of the floor. I’d have thought it would take more than that to tear it out. Luckily, I could never do any of the upside-down slide moves Jacqui had made famous. It was very
likely I might have brought the pole down on myself.
Sammy and Charlie watched with questions in their eyes, but they didn’t voice them.
“Okay, we gonna need everyone’s help now,” Cruz said. He meant the men. When none of us girls made a move to jump in, no one seemed to care.
At the bartender’s instruction, the five men gathered around the dead body of the cannibal. Charlie had to step over Jacqui’s corpse. I could see him defiantly not looking down, but he still seemed a little queasy.
Everyone in the room got the gist of Cruz’s plan a moment before he laid it out.
“Okay, you two lift him up a little,” he said to Sammy and Charlie. “You get his pants down,” he said to Elon. “And we’re gonna ram this pole right up his damn ass and set him out front like a welcome mat for our friends.”
Sammy went pale. “You gotta be freaking kidding.”
“I’m not. It beats the hell out of flinging him out front like a drunk getting bounced, don’t it?”
“I don’t know, Cruz.”
He leveled a stern gaze at his boss and held the pole by two hands in front of his chest. “Well, I do know, Sammy. I know these bastards. I know what they’re capable of.”
“How the hell do you know so much?” Elon asked. “Maybe you’re one of them. Maybe that’s why you trapped us in here—so you could eat us one by one.” He and Chris backed away a step and the stripper pole in the man’s hands looked more like a tarnished brass sword.
Cruz turned his intense gaze on them. “They took my wife,” he said. “The bastards ripped her out of the car I was driving after they caught us on the highway out of town. They came up alongside us, smashed the window, and took her.” The club fell silent and everyone focused on him and his story. “I stopped the car and got out to fight, to get her back. They let…” He swallowed hard, fighting tears. “They let her drag on the cement for a while. By the time I got there, they had her between two cars, an arm and a leg each in a different window. They were gnawing on her like she was ground meat at a drive-in diner. She didn’t even scream since she’d been knocked out cold when they hauled her out of the car.”
“Lucky,” Sammy said quietly, but we could all hear him.
Cruz turned toward Sammy, his story not finished. “They ate her. Chewed her to pieces. And for dessert? They ate my daughter—went into the back seat and took her. I’d gotten out of the car. I left her behind.”
“You were trying to save your wife, Cruz,” his boss said.
“It doesn’t matter. I left my girl to those animals. I served her up to them on a plate.”
Tears ran down his cheeks, although he didn’t make a sound. He tightened his two-fisted grip on the stripper pole. “So you better be damn sure I’m gonna shove this pole right up this jackoff’s ass. If any of them bastards wants to cross that line and come in here, I’ll be waiting for them.”
Elon and Chris didn’t say a word. Sammy and Charlie lifted the dead man at the shoulders and held him in position. His pants went down and the bartender stood behind him with Chris at the back end of the pole.
Cruz counted three and the girls all looked away. Sounds like snapping twigs and a wet dog falling down the stairs filled the room. I almost wanted the Guns N Roses back.
It turned out ramming a pole up the guy’s ass was the easy part. Turning him around and carrying the body with the extra weight wasn’t so easy. We cleared a section of the barricade so one of the double doors was exposed and Cruz, Chris, and Elon walked the dead man on a stick outside.
I couldn’t help myself and thought of the vendor and his dead dog. It almost seemed perfectly normal to wonder how many skewers he could get out of a human body and if anyone buying his food would notice the new flavor of meat.
We all stood at the doors and watched. Gaps in the stacks of chairs and tables made it easy to see through the glass. The boys worked fast but getting the pole to stand wasn’t easy. They leaned into it and raised the corpsesicle up like the flag on Iwo Jima.
The animal whoops and war cries started. They were close.
“Get back in here,” I shouted. I knew the sounds. They sent a chill even through my missing parts. The plate in my head itched the way it did when I got nervous.
I saw movement in the darkness outside.
“What was that?” Rowena asked.
Elon and Chris released the pole and turned toward the door.
“Wait,” Cruz said. The pole began tipping and he held it up alone, but gravity was not on his side. “Help me.”
Elon and Chris paused, torn in their decision to seek shelter or help him. He set his feet wide and gravel scraped under him as the weight of the pole gained the upper hand.
We could hear footsteps and animal growls from the shadows. A torch came alight with three shapes beneath it.
Elon and Chris flanked Cruz and shoved the pole upright again. They leaned the dark omen against the building, took a second to make sure it would stand without their hands on it, and turned and ran for the door.
Sammy lumbered up beside me. “Here!” he said and tossed something out the door.
The figures moved fast and the cannibals’ teeth flashed in the torchlight. They held dangling chains, pipes, and knives in their hands.
Cruz caught the object Sammy threw—the baseball bat. Without missing a stride, he spun in a circle and brought the bat around in a wide arc to clip the extended arm of an approaching cannibal and hurl his attacker’s improvised weapon to the ground.
Elon and Chris leapt through the open door, the bartender on their heels. We were ready. The five of us on the inside moved the temporary wall of junk to cover the doorway and block the invaders. They banged on the doors and glass shattered. We all leaned against the barricade to give it any additional support we could.
I saw the flimsy structure and us inside as one unit—a mismatched pile of half-broken junk but when put together, we stood for something. We all saw through the gaps as the band converged in the front parking lot. I counted twelve when more torches were lit. A few tried the doors for a while, but it was clear we wouldn’t budge. The long blade of a machete poked through in exploration. We all dodged, and the girls screamed.
Cruz swung his bat at the weapon. A hunk of wood sliced off the end of the bat, but the blade retreated. After a few harrowing minutes of having their full attention, the assault died down but the monsters didn’t leave.
I turned my eyes to a gap between a chair and the jukebox. Gigi stood beside me and looked through the same hole. The gang of flesh-eaters had already taken our warning sign down. They had the body open and a feast on their dead comrade ensued. The crackle of the torch fires wafted through the broken glass doors, as did the animal sounds of raw meat torn from bone.
None of us could look away from the horror.
5
“Damn,” Elon said. “Why do they do it?”
No one had an answer. Twenty minutes had gone by and the sounds of eating faded away. The dull glow of torch fires seeped in through our makeshift barrier. They were out there waiting.
Charlie offered a theory. “They’re taking control.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Sammy demanded.
“The whole world has gone to shit, right?” He had no argument from any of us. “I think they wanted to get out ahead of the inhumanity rather than see it slowly drained from them. Maybe they had some kind of trauma or maybe they saw it coming. I think they’d rather be the first rats off the ship than wait around while the rest of us wither away to dust.”
“I’d think there are far better ways to do it than to start eating people,” Elon said.
“Ain’t nobody been through more trauma than me,” Cruz said, “and you don’t see me turning into no flesh-eater.”
“How long are they gonna be out there?” Rowena asked.
“Until we come out,” Elon said.
“No way,” Sammy countered. “They’ll get bored or hungry and they’ll move on. Y
ou’ll see. They’ll move on real soon and things will get back to normal.”
“How about a dance, girls?” Charlie said. “Take our minds off things?”
“Are you serious, Charlie?” Gigi said. He cowered into silence.
I sat on the edge of the stage, my crutches beside me along with my leg. I turned the leg over with my stump arm. Dried blood clung to the seams where the straps met the top of the thigh.
My half-leg pointed straight out with no knee to bend over the edge. The end of the stump looked good, for what it was. Real doctors had done the work. A clean fold of skin had been artfully stitched into a patch of smooth, rounded flesh, which almost made it look intentional.
The rounded ball of my stump itched and felt phantom pains and sensations where the leg used to be.
“Did you ever think about it?” Chris asked. Cruz and Elon shot him a look.
“Thought about what? the bartender asked.
“Y’know, eatin’ people.”
“Hell, no.”
“What the hell is wrong with you, man?” Elon muttered.
“I’m not sayin’ I did.” Chris stood and held his palms out to let us know he was harmless. “Right after, though, when things fell, I got awful damn hungry.”
“I’d never,” Sammy said.
I thought of the man with the cart. “Maybe you ate some and you don’t know you did.”
All eyes went to me. I shouldn’t have said anything.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Cruz asked.
“Nothing. Forget it.”
“Do you think I wouldn’t notice if I ate a person?” Gigi said.
“All I’m saying is you don’t always know what it is you’re getting out there.”
That was the reality. You didn’t know anything, except that you were getting screwed. The feeling inside Moon Sammy’s was odd to me. Under siege by cannibals, half-naked with the smell of a former coworker beginning to ripen the place, and still—I’d never felt safer.
