Splatterpunk Fighting Back

by Bracken MacLeod

  “Hold it there, Zeke.” Jeb’s voice came from behind them. Clearly her benevolent driver was following them down the steps. “We gotta get her hands cuffed.”

  The giant stopped, still holding Anna by the arms like a doll. She was mostly standing on her own, but off-balance thanks to his relentless grip. His arms and hands seemed so very long. Jeb tumbled down the steps and landed beside them, holding a pair of handcuffs. He laid his good hand on his brother’s shoulder.

  “Fucker!” Anna yelled suddenly, kicking at that chubby mutant for all she was worth.

  But it wasn’t much, as she couldn’t get enough leverage to make the kicks count.

  “Whoa, ornery! Pin her down, Zeke. Let me get these cuffs on’er.”

  The big man pulled her close and leaned in on her. Her kicking radius further reduced, Anna folded, her body pinned under Ezekiel’s great weight as Jebediah slapped the handcuffs onto her wrists right in front of her face. His crazed eyes stared into hers and she flinched away.

  “Alrighty now,” Jeb said, patting his brother’s shoulder. He pointed at something ahead of them. “Go hang’er up.”

  Ezekiel kept a tight hold on his captive adding to Anna’s claustrophobic sensation of being contained. Though he had shifted her around, she was no less a prisoner. In fact, her situation was markedly worse now that her hands were cuffed. She hadn’t seen that coming.

  But maybe you should have…

  Yeah, ever since taking the ride on the pick-up, her life had paralleled that of every idiot sacrifice in every low-budget horror flick she’d ever seen, and she’d fallen for it anyway.

  The misshapen brute pushed her ahead of him and his brother, shoving her past the old refrigerators––which were humming like transformers on a high-voltage transmission tower––and into the next room.

  Before her mind could even grasp the full reality of what she was seeing, the scream escaped her throat. And it continued until all of the air had been pushed out of her lungs. Then she fell silent, gasping for air. Her skin had turned ice-cold as the blood seemed to freeze in her veins. The throb in her ears might as well have been a drum on the moon, because it no longer seemed to be made by her own heart.

  There, in the center of the room––harshly lit by fluorescent tubes set in a fixture suspended by chains set into the joists that supported the floor above––was a butcher block the size of a dining room table, and on the block was what remained of a man’s body; naked, headless, limbless, the torso was pried open like a tin can and emptied of all its organs. A massive butcher’s cleaver was embedded in the table top near the remains, its blade smeared with congealed blood. Behind the table a second body hung inverted from a pair of hook-ended chains set into the ceiling. This victim was also beheaded and gutted, but its legs were tangled in the hanging chains, its flaccid arms draped across the cellar floor.

  But where was his head?

  “No. No. No. No!”

  The words grew louder and louder as they burst wetly from Anna’s lips, unbidden. She struggled using new-found strength.

  But it was no good.

  Jeb chuckled behind her.

  Ezekiel picked her up and placed the short length of chain that attached the handcuffs over a large nail that had been driven downward at a forty-five degree angle into the house’s main beam. There she hung by her wrists, the tips of her toes mere inches from the floor.

  “If you were any taller we’d have to have cut your feet off,” Jeb said, offhandedly half-joking––as if she were somehow lucky.

  Anna squirmed, mindlessly kicking and contorting until she was rendered breathless. Her efforts were useless.

  “You fucking assholes!” she screamed, her voice raw.

  Ezekiel ignored her and turned back to the grisly work from which he’d been interrupted––cleaving slabs of pale meat from the corpse on the chopping block. Meanwhile Jeb stood by with a smirk on his face, enjoying the sight of her twisting in her bonds until she was again exhausted by her struggles. And when she stopped kicking, he moved in.

  She recoiled when the redneck leaned closer and spoke softly into the side of her face. His hot, stinking breath seemed to cling to her skin like mustard gas. “You’re pretty hot shit, aren’t you? I could see that right off, when you were standin’ on that road. Better than me.” He slipped his withered hand up under her almost-bikini top and kneaded her breast. “Maybe we could find better use for you than plain hamburger.”

  The touch of that grotesque hand plus her view of the butchering finally brought up bile and she almost spewed. Instead she spit in his face.

  “I’d rather die than fuck you, you dumb, ugly fuck,” she said slowly so he’d get it. She enjoyed seeing him wince as the vomit-flavored saliva slid down his features.

  “Disgusting little bitch! You don’t get to choose. We’re gonna choose for you. Maybe it’ll be both, eh, snobby little twat? Every hole, and some we’ll carve out just for the occasion.”

  “Hey, hey, hey…What the hay’s goin’ on here?” Ezra materialized out of the shadows behind Jeb. The old man looked Anna up and down as she hung by her wrists, twirling gently after Jeb’s grope. “What the hay,” Ezra said again. “Why’s her titty showin’?”

  Jeb opened his mouth. “Un…” he said, before Ezra slapped him solidly on the left side of his face. Then the old man struck his fat son over and over. “You piece of shit. You know if there’s gonna be any gettin’ I’m gettin’ it first. You don’t do nothin’ unless I tell you to. Do you understand me?”

  Jeb didn’t reply, instead he held up his good arm to protect his face from further blows.

  “That’s what I thought,” Ezra said, wearing a smug expression as he turned to face Anna. He reached down and gently tucked her exposed breast back into her top. “I’m sorry about my boy, he don’t have much experience with the ladies. You can see why. I hope he din’t hurt you none.”

  She averted her eyes, unable to look the old man in the face. Fresh tears rolled down her cheeks following well-defined tracks. She imagined her mascara had left black streaks on her cheeks. “Please, let me go,” she begged. It was more a prayer than any sort of plea.

  “Aww… Now you know we cain’t do that. Not now, after you seen everything. Hell, I let you go and next thing I know, that damn Sheriff Harris and his dumbass deputy-dawg son be out here pokin’ around…”

  “I won’t tell anyone. I promise.”

  “You know I cain’t trust no city-slicker chick like you. I got my boys to protect. Much easier to have you just disappear. Another victim of that damn lake. I told you that lake was dangerous. Kind of a shame though…You do sort of remind me of the boy’s mother, back when she was young and smokin’ hot.”

  Anna remembered the woman in the portrait near that old-fashioned telephone. The quadruple amputee.

  “Yessiree, back when we were growin’ up, Sheba was a beautiful woman in shape and spirit. She was a fighter just like you.” Ezra gripped her face in his hand, turning her head to face him––sizing her up like a pig he wanted to take to market. “ ’cept of course she weren’t no Mexican.”

  Jesus, I’m Puerto Rican, not Mexican! And how does he know I’m not Italian or Greek or dark Irish, anyway?

  Thunk!

  Behind Ezra, the cleaver fell again. Ezekiel the butcher paid them no attention as he continued his disgusting chore.

  Ezra dropped her face and stepped back in disgust. “But after the boys came, she didn’t want to fulfill her wifely duties, if you catch my drift. Fought me off so bad I ended up taking her arms. That’s when the boys first got a taste for the good meat. After that she kept tryin’ to run off, so I took her legs. Not long after, she went to live with the good Lord above. Bit off her tongue and drowned in her own blood. I guessed she didn’t care for the taste of herself. Oh well, she was a confused woman. Me, I always been sure of myself, ya know? And I got mouths to feed.”

  He looked in her eyes as if to seek some agreement there, but finding none h
e shrugged and frowned.

  “Now, I’d let my boys breed ya––even though your offspring wouldn’t be purebloods, like the boys––’ceptin’ that you’re a disgusting Mexican whore. Although that’d be okay with the others...”

  The others?

  There were more of them?

  Ezra spat on the floor before adding: “Come on Jeb, you worthless turd. We gotta let Zeke finish up his chores. It’s almost time.”

  The two disgusting creeps left the way they had come, back through the maze of discarded hunter’s clothes and the various tanks and ductwork beneath the house’s main floor, but not before Jeb gave her a wink and a nod giving the impression that he’d be down to visit her again before the night was over. They left Anna hanging by her wrists and the inbred giant hacking apart the dead.

  Thunk!

  Pause.

  Thunk!

  Pause.

  Every time the weirdo brought the cleaver down, Anna flinched. And then the pause left her hanging, expecting the next hack, and then when it came she would flinch again. Imagining the cleaver striking her own flesh. Except...when it finally did, would she still be alive to feel every single sharp blow slicing into her skin, parting it like lard, and then hacking into her bones?

  Her shoulders ached from being twisted at such an unusual angle, while also supporting all her weight. Her hands hurt excruciatingly as the steel cuffs dug into both her skin and deeply into her wrists.

  “Please,” she said to Ezekiel, trying to avert her eyes from the carnage of his night’s work. “Please let me go. I’ll make it worth your while, I promise.” She threw in that part on the spur of the moment, not even sure herself what precisely she was offering.

  The big man didn’t stop cleaving the flesh into usable portions. He didn’t even look at her or grunt to acknowledge her presence.

  “Hey you big dumb fuck!” she shouted.

  He ignored her.

  Or at least that was what she initially thought. Then she realized that he hadn’t heard anything. Jeb and Ezra had always touched the big brute, or pointed at things, to drive him into action.

  Ezekiel was deaf!

  And likely mute as well, seeing as he hadn’t made a sound the entire time.

  As long as she was down here alone with him she might be able to get out of this. At least it gave her a spark of hope.

  She looked up past the cuffs, at the chain hung on the bent spike-sized nail. There was no chance of her bending that spike down so she could slide off the short length of chain that held the bracelets together––it already supported her weight with ease––but...but she might be able to swing back and forth and use her momentum to flip the chain up and over the nail’s head.

  Using every muscle in her lithe body, she started swinging her legs. Thank God for all those years of junior and senior high gymnastics!

  Then: Don’t thank anyone yet...

  Keeping an eye on the oversized butcher-boy, she slowly gained enough velocity to try bouncing the chain off the hooked spike. She pushed up and tried to extend her arms over its large flat head.

  Damn it!

  Close, but not quite enough height.

  She slipped back down, losing some of her speed. Undeterred, she redoubled her efforts.

  What choice did she have? She didn’t want to become hamburger on that old fucker’s table after they were all done with her. If she thought too much about it, she’d just deflate and give up.

  No fuckin’ way.

  Another try, another fail.

  She breathed slowly, trying to gather herself as if sticking this landing would get her the gold medal. In this case, it would probably mean her life...

  On the third try she struck paydirt, swinging the short length of chain up and over the bent spike as if she’d been destined to all along.

  She landed on the floor, hard, like a sack of sharp bones. Not exactly sticking it…The impact knocked the wind right out of her. She gasped, trying to suck in a painful breath. Her joints throbbed sharply. Then she turned and realized that the behemoth, Ezekiel, was staring at her from across the room.

  Oh fuck!

  She was frozen to the spot where she’d landed.

  Ezekiel swung the cleaver heavily, embedding its blade deep into the surface of the butcher’s block. He strode around the table, long legs quickly closing the distance between them.

  Spurred by blind panic, Anna rolled over and sprang to her feet, her chest aching from the fall. She made a break for the stairs.

  Before she could manage a second step, her head was jerked backwards painfully. The butcher had grabbed a handful of her hair and reeled her in like a doomed fish.

  Anna shrieked as Ezekiel forcefully tossed her. She tumbled past the old refrigerators, slamming into the chest freezer. The adrenaline surge sent her brain into action as her eyes settled on the workbench beside her. The gun! But she didn’t have time to make a grab for it. Instead she lurched and went for the closest thing she could use as a weapon––a rusty screwdriver.

  Reacting instinctively––a trapped animal––she turned, thrusting out the screwdriver’s point at her monstrous adversary. Its blade caught the giant’s snarling mouth, digging in and then scraping across Ezekiel’s gums above his teeth before sliding sideways and punching a hole in his cheek from the inside of his mouth.

  Shock filled the big man’s eyes as he reeled back, ripping even more of his cheek as the flat head became a dull knife. He slapped a huge hand over his mouth and cheek as blood poured from both wounds. Turning away from her, he released a bestial scream of pain and surprise. He lingered there, frozen in agony and surprised indecision.

  Making the most of her only chance of survival, Anna jumped up and drove the tip of the screwdriver into the back of Ezekiel’s head, right at the base of his skull, leaving it embedded in his neck up to its handle.

  The giant bellowed. Reaching backward with his huge hands, he tried to remove the tool, but each time he touched the handle it seemed to intensify his agony. He moaned and grunted as he spasmodically contorted, suddenly bucking like a wild mustang. He slammed into one of the refrigerators, nearly knocking it over before falling to his knees. Then he dropped to the floor, twitching as a pool of blood formed beneath him. Squawking like some kind of animal.

  Anna’s heart jackhammered in her chest, threatening to burst out of her ribcage. She’d never hurt anyone before, let alone killed anyone. Now she was a murderer. But it wasn’t her fault, he’d forced her hand.

  She heard footfalls tromping down the stairs. “What the hell is…” Jeb’s muffled voice echoed from the stairwell.

  Oh shit, what am I gonna do now?

  She turned, awkwardly grabbing the bolt-action rifle off the workbench with her bound hands. Desperately she looked it over. She’d never fired a rifle before. She didn’t even know if it was loaded. But it had to be, didn’t it?

  “Oh Jesus-fucking-Christ! Zeke!” Jeb came into view, but he didn’t even glance at her. Instead his eyes had locked on his fallen kin. He stumbled over and squatted beside his brother, whimpering, batting at the body with his mutant hand. Then he pulled the screwdriver from Ezekiel’s neck. It made a slick, wet, grotesque sound. She thought she’d hear that sound for the rest of her life.

  Not that I have much left.

  “Stay away from me,” she said, her voice trembling. “I have a gun.”

  Jeb looked at her, his eyes narrowing with rage. “You fucking cunt!” He slowly rose, brandishing the bloody screwdriver like a switchblade. “You did this.” He stalked toward her.

  “Stay back,” Anna warned.

  The hillbilly grinned. “You don’t even know how to use that, do ya?”

  “Please. Stop.”

  Jeb advanced.

  She pulled the trigger, preparing for the explosion.

  Nothing happened. Nothing! In fact, the trigger didn’t even budge. She squeezed again and again.

  Holy hell! She backed away from the deranged redne
ck, keeping one eye on him and with the other desperately trying to figure out what was wrong with the rifle.

  Jeb cackled. He was closer now. He slapped the barrel of the rifle away playfully, toying with her with the surprisingly strong withered arm. “Whatchu gonna do? You gonna shoot me? You said you were gonna shoot me.”

  They circled the room, Anna stepping gingerly backwards, trying to fend off Jeb with the rifle’s barrel while he stalked her with blood from the screwdriver staining his clenched deformed hand.

  Finally she noticed a tiny lever near the trigger. Fumbling, she flipped it. The old gun immediately discharged.

  Startled, she dropped the rifle.

  It clattered to the basement floor but Anna could barely hear it through the ringing in her ears. Her wrist ached from the recoil. Shocked, she saw the crimson stain spreading in the center of Jeb’s coveralls. The cruel mirth in his eyes a few seconds before was now replaced with stunned disbelief as he stumbled two steps back.

  “You shot me?” he moaned. “You bitch, you shot me!” He wiped his good hand over his chest and held it to his face, scrutinizing the blood as if he couldn’t conceive of it. Suddenly he dropped to his knees, then keeled over onto his side.

  Anna heard a step creak above her.

  She retrieved the rifle, pain spiking through her wrist as she lifted its ungainly weight. In a panic, she dashed into the butchering room to buy enough time to get a grip, physically and intellectually, on the rifle. She regretted the decision immediately as she was greeted by the hunter’s dismembered body laying on the slab and the no longer human husk hanging from the ceiling. She recoiled in terror.

  She heard Ezra calling out.

  “Boys? Who the hell’s shootin’ down there?”

  Quickly she jabbed the rifle barrel up and into the fluorescent tubes hanging over the chopping block, sending a deluge of glass shards raining down onto the block and the horrifying remains. She hoped the darkness would help her disappear for a few precious seconds. Seconds that could mean the difference between life and death if she could figure out how to reload the damned gun.