B-Movie Attack

by Alan Spencer

  “What floor does she work on?” Nelson asked, a deer-in-the-headlights look on his face. “I know you’ve told me before. I just want to get away from those creatures out there. Each and every one of them.”

  “The fourth floor,” Billy said. “But I don’t think we should take the elevator. The power could go out and I don’t want to be trapped in there.”

  The main hall was empty. No bodies or blood. Billy figured anybody who could get out booked it the moment the monsters arrived.

  The elevator dinged beside the fire exit.

  Billy stood, waiting.

  “What’s coming down?”

  “Maybe it’s somebody else like us.”

  The elevator opened, and it was empty. They each released a sigh of relief. Billy heard his cell phone beep. Someone had left a voice mail message. He checked it; it was Jessica. He listened and returned the call. It was answered on the first ring.

  “Jessica, are you okay?”

  “Yes,” she said, overjoyed to hear his voice. “Are you in the building?”

  “We barely made it.”

  “Who’s with you?”

  “Nelson. Now tell me where you are exactly.”

  “I’m on the third floor in Dr. Schuler’s office. He’s a dentist. But be careful, there’s an intestine guy out there.”

  “An intestine guy?”

  “I know it sounds insane.”

  “Like a giant hooker or people with flytrap heads?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Never mind, we’re on our way up. Be safe up there. I love you.”

  Nelson normally would’ve chided him for saying “I love you,” but he was too busy eyeing the five flytrap heads staring at them through the window with hungry eyes. Billy took the lead up the stairwell. The stink of recent death, like a metallic fog, carried to them. With each step, the stench increased. Billy worried about Jessica; she was at the center of it all. When they reached the second-floor landing, blood dribbled down the steps.

  Billy glanced at Nelson. Nelson nodded and said, “Yeah, I know. That's some rough shit.” They couldn’t avoid walking through the blood, so they trudged on in the red drizzle. What they couldn’t ignore was the heap of corpses at the bend of the third floor. Their bodies were punctured and gouged. Something had been driven through their bodies. The looks on the corpses’ faces proved they saw it coming too.

  Nelson grimaced when he stepped on someone’s hand with a squish. “I’m so sorry, man. What a terrible way to go.”

  “It could’ve been us,” Billy lamented. “And we’re not out of this yet.”

  They entered the third floor. The first door to the left was Dr. Schuler’s office. Billy tried to open the frosted-glass door, but it was blocked from behind. “Jessica, are you in there?”

  “Be quiet,” she warned. “I’ll let you in.”

  After the sound of chairs scuffing the tiles, the door was opened wide enough for them to slip through. Billy hugged Jessica close to him, so tight she asked him to ease up. “I just have to know you’re really okay. I’ve seen too many people die today.”

  “Me too,” Jessica said with tears welling in her eyes. “I’m so lucky you’re here. I love you.”

  Billy kissed her again and again. “I love you too. We’re going to make it through this. You won’t believe what we’ve seen.”

  “Is it more unbelievable than attacking intestines?”

  “I'm not sure.”

  Nelson went to work rebuilding the barricade. Billy joined him. When they were satisfied it would hold up to an intruder, they sat on the only remaining couch. Nelson closed his eyes, resting. Jessica searched for something to bandage Billy’s head.

  “What do we do now?” Nelson asked. “They’re out there, we’re in here, and that dome is blocking anybody from leaving the city. They have us cornered.”

  “Has anybody tried calling the police?”

  Jessica said from the other room, “I called 9-1-1. I only got a machine. It’s a message saying to stay in shelter. They’re not taking calls.”

  “Figures,” Nelson said disdainfully. “When we really need them, where are they? Unavailable.”

  “Can you blame them?” Billy defended the police since his dad used to be a cop. “They could be dead for all we know. This isn't a normal crime spree.”

  Jessica was disheartened. “You think all of them could be dead? Every single cop?”

  Billy didn’t want to scare Jessica. He was scaring himself with the facts. “I can’t say. We’re cut off from everybody. It's impossible to know for sure.”

  “You’re a meter man,” Nelson joked. “You should know what to do in these situations.”

  “Yeah,” Billy shot back, “I’ll write the culprits a ticket. That’ll show them. Fifty-dollar fines for all of them. Maybe an impounding of their vehicle as a cherry on the top.”

  Jessica returned with hydrogen peroxide and dabbed at Billy's head wound. “That’s a nasty cut. How did you get it?”

  “A huge woman lifted up the subway car we were riding and smashed it to the ground,” Nelson said nonchalantly. “And Billy-boy cut himself on some glass.”

  Jessica applied a torn piece of gauze and taped it to the side of Billy’s head. “A huge woman? Like the one I saw out there earlier?”

  Billy decided to get the facts out and forget logic. “A woman seven stories tall attacked us in the elevated train.”

  Nelson added, "And she might be from a movie.”

  Jessica’s face tensed. She was on the verge of an angry fit. Billy petted her back. “Now wait, none of that is for certain.”

  “You’re right,” Nelson admitted. “It just looked a lot like the woman from the movie: the clothes, the size, the stomping around like Godzilla.”

  “Enough of that talk,” Jessica demanded. “First, you say the suicide bomber from yesterday was from a movie, and now you’re insisting the woman you’re talking about is from a movie too. I think Billy was onto something real. It’s terrorists.”

  Nelson guffawed, “Listen to yourself! Brains eating other people's brains were attacking us on the streets. A man was touching people and the blood exploded from their bodies and then they were filled up with embalming fluid. A man dressed as a priest was using a mega magnet to pull the skeletons out of bodies. We could get shot through the fucking glass window the same way. These aren't things any human being, never mind terrorists, could do.”

  Jessica bunched up against Billy, clinging onto him for comfort. “Tell me this isn’t real, Billy. There’s a plausible explanation. Something real. Not monsters from movies. Tell me there’s a way to end this.”

  He was at a loss. “How can anybody except God explain why this is happening? Who could know? Maybe the Internet.”

  “You’re right,” Jessica agreed. “That’s a great suggestion.”

  “I was kidding.”

  Nelson chimed in. “No, you’re right, man. I’m sure someone’s written something about all this. Maybe there are reports on YouTube.”

  “Where’s a computer?” Billy asked. “The one in here is smashed.”

  “In my office upstairs,” Jessica said. “We have to go back up there. I know it’s dangerous, but we have to try.”

  Billy caressed her hand. “Me and my big mouth. No, you’re right. We just have to be careful. We have to try anything to survive.”

  “Wait.” Jessica rushed out of the room. She returned with a container of liquid Novocain. “Here it is. Now let’s go.”

  Billy eyed the container.

  Jessica smiled. “Don’t ask.”

  Billy and Nelson began clearing the barricade, and afterward, they approached the fourth floor bracing themselves for the Intestinator or anybody else to attack.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Heart of Chicago Mercy Hospital was in chaos. The emergency rooms overflowed with patients while doctors were leaving their jobs to tend to their families. Random shattering of windows and cries resounded in the a
ir. Earthquake tremors shook the foundation every now and again. Dr. Hill decided he couldn't help anybody anymore.

  He had other matters to attend to.

  You have to move if you’re going to get this done. This is the perfect time.

  Dr. Hill was a seasoned veteran who worked in the hospital’s morgue for nearly seventeen years. He tagged victims, charted their cause of death and corresponded with the couriers from funeral homes. He saw Jane and John Does. Highway wrecks. Street pizzas, as he liked to call them. Bodies in pieces and unrecognizable from damage. In those cases, Dr. Hill took it upon himself to pilfer certain pieces of the body: an arm here, a leg there, a liver, a heart, anything he wanted. He sold the parts to science research firms like LabTech and BioFuture. If the corpses were fresh enough, he could sell the organs for a decent buck.

  Temptation had its way with him. The morgue wing was surrounded by corpses in body bags, stretchers haphazardly strewn and shoved into each other. The line of corpses on stretchers continued into the far hall outside of his working area. Hundreds had died tonight and still counting. The most common deaths he’d seen were torn throats, stomped midsections, bodies riddled with strange holes and bags bulging with flesh and organs without bones.

  But one corpse, the one on the gurney in front of him, was the strangest of all. Fluids leaked from the eyes, nose, mouth and ears. A woman stared back up at him, her dying moment of agony etched on her face. The bag leaked the chemical-smelling substance, dripping onto the tiles. Other bags were dripping the same contents. It had to be embalming fluid, he decided.

  The three morgue attendants had high-tailed it home after the radio began to broadcast messages to stay home and lock your doors. The city was trapped within a dome, he understood. Murderers and looters rampaged the streets.

  He didn’t care about them.

  This is my meal ticket. I’m not going to get this many bodies in one shot ever again unless I kill them myself.

  The woman below him was useless. The organs were ruined by the chemicals.

  Four foam coolers were heaped with ice at his feet. He’d already taken three fresh arms, four livers, one heart and a set of legs. He used a bone saw to complete the extractions. He zipped and unzipped through the hall of body bags to locate the next good specimen.

  “I admire what you’re doing,” a gurgling, bubbling voice called out from behind him. “I really do.”

  The chemical tang blew across his back. It wafted up to his nostrils, and his eyes watered from it. “You mind your own goddamn business—”

  The man was dressed in a lab coat similar to the one he was wearing. His eyes sagged an inch to show the meaty purple tissue beneath. His gums were purple and raw. His tongue white. With every word he spoke, he coughed out fluids.

  “Stay the hell back,” Dr. Hill said. He removed a Desert Eagle pistol from his side holster. He kept it on him ever since the chaos outside broke out. “I’ll shoot you, man, whoever you are.”

  The corpse raised his hands and smiled, clear fluids dribbling from his lips. “I’m only admiring you. I, too, have tried my hand in the body brokering business. I sold them all. Hearts, kidneys, arms, legs, heads…”

  “You’re not going to report me?” Dr. Hill was confounded that he was talking to a walking corpse spilling embalming fluid. He sharpened his words. “Then you want a cut, is that it? You blackmailing bastard.”

  “No, no, no,” the man replied. “I believe the dead don’t deserve their organs. Remove them all. Cut ‘em out, I say. The dead don’t care. What gives them the right to deny one’s life when a dying person can benefit their internal organs? The dead are hypocrites. Selfish. I’m a proponent of stealing. It’s the only way to complete the dark side of the business.”

  Dr. Hill kept the gun ready.

  If he moves, I’ll pop him one in the face. That’ll show him for grinning at me like a maniac.

  “Then what do you want?”

  The corpse extended his hand. “I only want to shake your hand.”

  Dr. Hill hesitated. “Then you’ll leave me alone?”

  “I’ll leave you to it. You’re hard at work. Up to your ears in work.”

  Dr. Hill switched the gun to his left hand and put out the other to shake. “Careful, man, I know how to use this.”

  “Just shake my hand, and I’ll be on my way.”

  Dr. Hill shook the man's hand.

  “Someone needs to crack a window,” Nelson whispered as they hiked up to the fourth floor. “It’s burning hot in here.”

  Billy clutched his chest. With each inhalation, his lungs ached. The air was useless. “It’s that dome above the city. Our air supply is diminishing.”

  He removed his button-up shirt. Beneath it was a white t-shirt with the Superman emblem on the chest.

  “What’s with the shirt?” Nelson chided him. “Fly us to safety, Clark Kent.”

  Jessica kissed Billy’s cheek. “He might as well be Superman. I feel safe with him here. Don’t you, Nelson?”

  “Not safe like the real Superman would make me feel safe.” Nelson unbuttoned his shirt. He still wore the same Xbox T-shirt from yesterday. “On second thought, Billy’s probably a better protector than me. While the world’s entering apocalypse mode, I’d be playing Halo.”

  “Or watching movies and eating beef jerky,” Billy corrected. “Or looking up porn.”

  Jessica smiled for the first time today. Billy knew he would marry this woman, and what was happening in the city wouldn’t stop him.

  “None of us are dying,” Billy said with whatever confidence he could manage. “Nobody.”

  “I like what you’re saying,” Nelson said, “but according to the giant bitch outside, those people with brains with teeth, and that crazy preacher with the magnet that pulls bones out of bodies, I say it means little.” He patted Billy’s back. “No offense. You mean well.”

  “None taken. And I do mean well.”

  “A preacher with a magnet that can draw bones out of bodies,” Jessica repeated. Then she frowned. “And what else he said, it’s really out there? I mean, I saw the woman, but the people with the brains with teeth? I also caught something flying in the air. Wings in the dark. Red eyes.”

  “Nelson is still convinced that giant woman is from a movie.”

  “The woman is dressed the same as in the film. But you were thinking Death Reject was real just yesterday, Billy. Why are you pinning this on me?”

  “Quiet,” she snipped. “You’ll give us away. The Intestinator is around here somewhere.”

  Nelson whispered. “That’s sounds like a movie too. Why are you calling him that?”

  “That’s what he called himself. Now shut up. My office is up those stairs.”

  Jessica stayed close behind Billy. She clutched a broken leg of a chair from the dentist’s office and the jar of Novocain. Nelson also held the leg of a chair. Billy clutched a sterling silver letter opener.

  They entered the fourth floor. Everything was silent. No survivors, Billy supposed. The door wasn’t covered in blood.

  That’s a positive, he thought.

  He wondered if anybody in the entire building was still alive.

  Unlikely.

  The carpeted foyer was similar to the dentist’s office. A grouping of chairs and a coffee table full of magazines faced them. A sign in gold letters on the wall read “Crouch and Meadows”.

  “Crouch and Fell,” Billy joked.

  Jessica nudged him. “Now isn’t the time, Superman.”

  “I’ve had a lot of lucky things happen to me when I’ve worn anything Superman related,” Billy said in a hushed voice. “I got my first blow job wearing Superman underwear—no offense, Jessica. I passed my driver’s test in Superman socks. I asked you out the day I received the Superman tattoo on my shoulder blade, and…”

  “Okay, I get the point,” Jessica insisted. “It’s wonderful you’re wearing a Superman T-shirt right now.”

  Nelson agreed. “Ditto.”

&
nbsp; Jessica stepped back in repulsion at the sight of a corpse on the ground. She covered her mouth and hid her face in Billy’s chest. “Steve. It was, it was,” she stammered, “the Intestinator who did this.”

  Billy hugged her. He too had trouble looking at the corpse. The well-dressed man’s head had been wrenched from the neck. Blood had soaked into the carpet in puddles. The face was hideous and etched in pain; veins thick as earthworms crossed his features. “Yes, look away. Nobody deserves to go out like that.”

  “And it’s unrealistic,” Nelson said, kneeling down by the body, undeterred by the gore. “What could possibly remove his head like that? It’d take a machine. And look at his neck. It wasn’t cut by a knife. The skin is jagged, like it ripped.”

  “No shit,” Jessica shot back. Her face turned a light shade of red. Anger and absolute horror marked her face. “I watched him die. The man’s—the man’s fucking guts snapped Steve’s head from his neck! I told you already.”

  “Sorry,” Nelson said. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m just trying to understand this. There’s a dome over the city, for one. Then there’s murderers out there—no bullshit—who aren’t human. Far from it. Where did they come from? Why are they in Chicago, of all places? And why do they want us dead so much?”

  An extended grunt came from the opposite room.

  “That’s him!” Jessica wailed. “He’s been waiting for us.”

  Billy caught a shadow on the carpet three doors away. He eyed the straightaway hall and the glass wall at the end. “Nelson,” he whispered, “help me grab that table.”

  A double-bass voice vibrated against the walls and shook the letters of Crouch and Meadows from the wall. “MY GUTS ARE JUDGE, JURY AND EXECUTIONER.”

  Jessica shouted, “You’re a murderer. You ripped Steve’s head off!”

  The Intestinator stepped from the room, ignoring Jessica’s words. A barrel for a torso was bleeding, swelling and pulsating at his belly button. The navel puckered as if breathing. Billy failed to register anything else about the man and jumped to action.