by Alan Spencer
Don’t tell me someone’s already stolen the blood.
It would make sense. Talon marks clawed up the door and the padlock. Refrigerators with glass doors were raided, many of the blood samples stolen. Ted knew the vampires were the culprits, but they were so erratic in their seizure, they left many samples behind. He collected the remaining blood packs, many covered in sticky blood.
Apparently somebody couldn’t wait to indulge.
He rushed in and out, in and out, with arms heaped in blood packs. Ted split them open with his keys and poured them into the raw meat stew. After the red gravy covered every inch of meat, he dumped in the liquid weed killer. Ted returned to the blood bank to double check if he’d left any blood behind. He was stopped in the waiting room by the dead receptionist. She was barely audible, every word a cough of blood out her open esophagus.
“Wait…until…midnight…I know…uuu-whup…what you are…trying… graaack—graaag-graaag-gruuughaaaack—to do.”
“Why wait until midnight?”
He couldn't believe he was asking the corpse a question. Tonight had been one guilt trip after the next, and a confusing and unbelievable trip at that. He wasn’t prepared to let a corpse tell him what to do unless he understood why.
“Answer me! Why wait until midnight?”
Doris, according to her name tag, didn’t move to reply. Her face was motionless. Dead.
“I’m sorry, Doris. You deserve respect. Nobody deserves to die like this.”
“Thank you,” the corpse finally replied, making him recoil in fright, and she laughed. “Sorry, I had to do that. The monsters, you see, the ones from many of your films, are striking soon at Navy Pier. Many survivors are holed up there. The monsters are waiting until midnight to stage a mass assault. That’s your chance to destroy the projector. Andy Ryerson wanted me to tell you this.”
“Andy Ryerson—my God!”
Doris’s face melted in wax globules to reveal the white skeleton beneath. The rest of her oozed from her sleeves and skirt until the bones crumbled down, the skull striking the carpet and rolling underneath the desk.
Ted stared at the human mess on the floor until he snapped out of the moment. The monsters would attack Navy Pier. What if I can’t destroy the projector?
He parted the front blinds of the window and kept his eye on his apartment two blocks south of him. His room light was on. The profile of four vampires and the flicker of the projector reels assured him reaching his apartment wouldn’t be an easy task.
“Looks like I have no choice but to listen to you, Doris.”
Ted checked his watch.
Fifteen minutes to midnight.
Chapter Thirty
Sheriff Roger Elliot approached old man Red’s farm. The cows that used to be in his pasture were absent, as were the goats and the chickens that used to be in their coop. This was now a farm only by appearance, not function. The sheriff was called to the farm to address the screams heard around the property. Six people had disappeared in his town, and a town like Cold Creek being so close-knit, six disappearances had the residents locking their doors at five o’clock and keeping their kids off the streets.
The squeak of a wheel barrow alerted him. “Who’s out there?”
Nobody replied. He continued toward the noise. Sheriff Elliot hopped the wooden fence to the other side. He avoided cow patties, but this time, it wasn’t a cow patty he almost stepped in.
It was a human liver.
“Holy Mother of Tits and Ass,” Sheriff Elliot gasped, accidentally spitting out his entire wad of chaw instead of the juice. He bent down and clutched the liver in his hands. “This isn’t cow shit. No, it's not cow shit at all.”
The wheel barrow squeaked again. He drew his revolver. “Come out, Red. I need to speak with you. Show yourself.”
The command failed to bring Red out of his hiding place. Sheriff Elliot kept moving through the pasture. Pieces of flesh on the ground, blood-stained straw and grass, and a stomach and length of intestine increased his pace. It was at that moment he finally called for back-up.
“Betsy, I need Darrel and Piper here quick. I have an emergency situation at Red's farm.”
He jumped the other end of the fence and slopped through the pig pen, which was empty of pigs. Mud and feces were kicked up in his face, but the fear of what was happening on Red’s property kept him moving.
He called out again. Desperation cracked his voice. “Damn it, Red, let’s talk. Why are you hiding from me?”
He came upon a man standing beside the red and white barn. The blue and white checkered flannel shirt, the straw hat, the black boots… He was certain it was Red standing there.
“Red, you old bastard, you got wax in your ears or something?”
The man didn’t turn around.
“Red, talk to me. This is police business. Take this visit seriously, would ya?”
He was feet from the man. Without warning, the man whipped around. It was Red, but his eyes were large black orbs, like those of a mosquito. Everything else was human, except those horrible eyes. When Red opened his mouth, four rows of shark-like teeth filled his maw.
“Gorrack!” The voice projected like a tinny-sounding record with crackles and pops.
Sheriff Elliot lost hold of his gun when three tines from a pitchfork pierced his chest.
“Gorrack!”
The weapon was dislodged, and he landed onto the ground. Red’s wife, Gertrude, helped Red carry him to the shed. Sheriff Elliot gasped and burped and choked on blood, in the preliminary stages of death. “No…no…help me please!”
It had been six people missing earlier, but now it would be many more, the sheriff realized. Instead of hay bales, bales of human corpses were rolled up together, cooking in the July sun. He was added to a half-formed bale and tied up with chicken wire.
When a shovel struck his skull, the last thing he heard from Red’s alien mouth was: “Gorrack!”
Georgia was convinced Flesh Farmers Harvest the Living (aka Gorrack!) had played long enough. It was fifteen minutes until midnight. They wouldn’t have much time before the attack on Navy Pier began. So many warm necks awaited them. Blood flowing in veins, hearts churning out the red delicacy. She salivated at the thought.
Anne, her auburn hair slathered with so much blood it dyed the strands a bright crimson, hugged her from behind. “What’s next? Which movie? We've already played Beta and Skinpreys.”
Georgia curled Anne’s hair with her finger. “I have one final film before midnight. I need numbers. The flesh farmers will help, but this will put us to where we need to be. Everyone in the city must die. I’m not stepping out of here until we’ve accomplished that.”
Anne glanced out the curtain to the city. “Ted’s out there, you know that?”
“I’ll take care of him,” Georgia said flatly. “He’s weak. He can’t win. Me against him, I will slaughter him. We’ll drink blood straight from his heart after you’re through with Navy Pier.”
“It sounds delicious.” Anne was intoxicated by the mention of sharing blood from Georgia’s lips. “You and me naked under Ted’s running blood, it would be beautiful.”
Georgia kissed her with a wet, sucking sound. “Finish Chicago, my dear, and we can continue this orgy. Start flying out, my darlings. I’ll protect the projectors. I will play the final film for tonight.”
Anne kissed her one last time. “You heard her. Bleed the rest of the city.”
The three leapt out of the window and changed from human to reptile in seconds. Their wings sprouted and flapped on to their destination. Georgia was alone, and she did the only thing she could with the final ten minutes before those on Navy Pier would be executed and Ted would arrive to attempt to kill her.
She changed out reels and played Preggers.
Mid-Point Medical Center’s OB floor was silent at midnight, including the creeping Hymengorat. The strange thing was five feet tall. It was comprised of black amphibious flesh, a concave face, hydroceph
alic head shaped like two cantaloupes, lobster eyes and two separate slits for mouths. Every feature was coated in a clear jelly. Its limbs were slender and fifteen feet long, the knee bones and elbows shaped at the edges like triangular daggers sharpened to kill. The Hymengorat crept its way past the empty waiting room and the nurse’s station. With its grasshopper-like arm—one of eight—it reached for the door to room 321 and opened it. Through the darkness, the monster shot up onto the bed. The end of one leg was sharpened into a needle. The tip of it injected a tranquilizer into Mrs. Adam’s neck. She was instantly paralyzed and unconscious. Another leg reached up through the sheets and between her legs and injected its seed, a grenade-shaped egg shiny with primordial ooze.
The pregnant woman’s eyes opened. They blazed red, like twin light bulbs. Her head lit up. Then the belly also lit up as if a bright red bulb glowed from within. Inside the belly, the shape of an insect taking control of what was now the human mother took form. The actual baby within the womb was expelled onto the sheets. The Hymengorat wrapped the child in a blanket and discarded it in the trash.
The monster tick-tick-ticked a strange language: “Merap-merop-merap-merop.”
The mother-to-be rose to her feet in mechanical and forced motion. The demon child controlled the woman from inside her belly, and with each shift, every thought, and every action, the little beast slowly plotted the deaths of many.
The naked woman followed behind the Hymengorat to infect and enslave the rest of the expecting mothers on the OB floor.
The Hymengorat issued one final hiss before exiting Mrs. Adam's room, “Preggers.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Nelson was relieved they were well on their way to their destination. Four more blocks and they’d arrive at Ted Fuller's apartment building. Whatever was causing the horror films to come to life, they would snuff it dead, Dr. Aorta promised. He continued to collect himself from the close call with the five hundred-foot hooker in mid-air. Riding in the Boxer with a movie character was also an amazing experience. He wanted to ask for an autograph, but it was a character, not a human being, he kept reminding himself. Plus he didn't have a piece of paper and a pen.
The CB radio beside the control panel went off with a sharp crackle. “This is Fred Holland, Chicago Chief of Police. If anybody is left alive out there, please report to Navy Pier. You’ll have food, clothing, shelter, and most of all, safety.”
Another person stole the microphone and said fast, “This isn’t about safety, this is about fighting! Get your asses down here now. We’re about to be attacked. They’re on the horizon. Those monsters will kill us all unless you help us make a stand. Those of you who want to protect your families and loved ones, put your efforts into the battle and get your asses down here.”
“It sounds like most of the city is already down there,” Nelson said. “The monsters finally found them.”
“Yes, the monsters did find them.”
“What do you mean?”
Dr. Aorta shot him a sideways grin. “I can’t help you, Nelson.”
“But we’re blocks away from stopping them. What do you mean you can’t help me? We destroy the projector like you said. This’ll end. Nobody else will get hurt. Why turn back now?”
“That wasn’t a part of the battle plan. We tricked Andy, and we tricked you. I don’t care to save anybody! Chicago be damned!”
Nelson attempted to wrench the doctor from the wheel and reclaim the Boxer. Dr. Aorta drilled him in the jaw and another fist hammered the top of his head.
He was knocked unconscious.
“Andy Ryerson thought he could stop us,” Dr. Aorta laughed. “But he was wrong.” He kicked Nelson in the ribs. “I’m joining my fellow spirits on the killing floor, and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it, boy.”
The Boxer fishtailed and then drove in the direction of Navy Pier.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The remaining survivors of Chicago wasted no time arming themselves. The police were left with a few rifles, shotguns, and service revolvers. Three blocks south of Navy Pier, Kolar’s Hardware harbored the majority of their arsenal. Billy chose a sledgehammer as his weapon. Many others chose hammers, electric drills, saw blades and nails driven into wooden planks, and from a section of Chicago under construction, one carried a concrete saw, and another, a construction worker, was at the helm of a wrecking crane. Others began stuffing rags down wrecked cars’ gas tanks and stood vigil with a lighter to use the vehicles as bombs. A group had ransacked Rick’s Sporting Goods in the nearby strip mall, many carrying wooden and aluminum baseball bats. A luckier few were armed with bows and arrows, hunting rifles, and other small arms. Five minutes were left, and many continued to scramble for protection, or a place to hide, or weapons.
“You should hide in the mall,” Billy pleaded with Jessica. “It’s not safe out here.”
“If you’re going to fight, so am I.”
“Damn it, I don’t want anything happening to you.”
Jessica seized a hold of him. “I fought off the Intestinator by myself. And besides, if you guys die out here, I’m no safer in Mitchell’s Donut Shop than I am out here with you.”
Billy clung onto her, giving in to the fact this was a helpless situation. In moments, the monsters would be upon them, and his masculinity and his love for Jessica would mean absolutely shit in the face of unstoppable evil. His only trump card was Andy Ryerson.
He said the dead would protect them.
Three minutes and thirty-two seconds to midnight. It’s about time you do something, Andy.
Jessica kissed him, and then she slipped a ring on his finger. “I stole these from Helman Jewelers in the mall. Will you marry me?”
“That’s my girl,” he laughed, taken aback by the fact she’d stolen two rings. “I can’t believe you did this.”
He wore the white gold band. Simple. The way he said he wanted it. When she handed him her ring, he nearly barreled over. Eighteen-karat diamond ring, gold band. The price tag on it proudly boasted eight grand. He slipped the ring on her finger. “I love you, yes, of course I’ll marry you.”
“Then let’s kill some fucking monsters,” Jessica declared, kissing him one last time. She removed a Colt Python from her jeans pocket. “I found this in the jewelry store too.”
“Mother of God.”
Billy eyed the streets beyond the barricade. Shadows played in the distance, though they couldn’t be seen clearly. They had two minutes and counting to midnight.
“This might be our last moment together,” Jessica admitted. “If we don’t die now, our air supply will dwindle to nothing eventually.”
“It’s a shit situation,” Billy agreed. “But if we don’t kill them now, they’ll kill others. And they won’t have any idea what’s hitting them like we do.”
“They’re almost here!” a citizen screamed. Many started lighting the rags jutting out from the junked cars along the blockade. “The monsters are everywhere!”
Billy’s gut twisted.
Jessica let go of his hand in horror.
“I love you, honey,” he said, knowing she wouldn't respond again. “Stay near me, okay? I’m not letting anything happen to you.”
Jessica didn’t reply. Kurt Vonnegut could’ve prewritten a speech for him to instill comfort in Jessica, and it would still fail in this situation, he thought.
Bail me out, Andy.
Save our asses.
Billy had no idea it would be a long wait before Andy could help him.
The flytrap heads were the first creatures to be seen, and there was row after row of them, hundreds of them coming. The living were vastly outnumbered, and there were so many monsters left to show themselves.
“Here we go,” he whispered. “He comes hell.”
Billy braced himself for battle.
Dennis Brauman boarded up the windows of his house after the police stopped answering their phones and the random screams of riots and terror became rampant. He kept Helen, his
wife, locked up in the basement. She was content with her bottle of raspberry-flavored vodka, wave radio that hadn’t worked for the past six hours, King James Bible, and a hundred-bottle supply of water and enough canned goods to survive three months. The radio air waves played noise, but it was the sound of a patient flat-lining: eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. He couldn’t shake the notion of how familiar that was to him. He'd heard it or seen it before, but from where? from what?
Outside the window between the notches of broken table—Helen’s cherished oak coffee table six generations old, good solid wood—he caught shapes moving in the sky bearing the harsh red glow of eyes and jagged outstretched wings. The House of the Holy Resurrection Church across the street had been burned to the ground hours ago. He put five hundred thousand dollars investment into that church. Everything he worked for was for the bettering of humanity. He'd dedicated his life to upholding the decency of public morals.
Today, everybody had a new reason to fear God. And that’s why he didn’t want to sit in the basement with Helen. He’d done bad things in his lifetime, and any second, whatever demons, or redeemers, or angels serving God's word would come tearing through that door and reveal him for who he really was, and he didn’t want Helen present for that.
It might not happen. You don’t know what’s out there. Whatever it is, you're still a good man, Dennis. You’ve worked for the Private Film Coalition of Public Morals. You were a good father. You saved Becky from that pornographer/so-called horror film maker. You’re a good citizen to your community.
Dennis moved back to the kitchen to find a shot of courage from a bottle of whiskey and ended up discovering that the piano bench covering the kitchen window had been removed. Whoever had breached the barrier had been quiet about it. He caught trails of blood on the windowsill and the shape of footprints.
