B-Movie Attack

by Alan Spencer

  All Jessica could think was how humid it was inside the beast. The walls resembled the inside of her mouth and the walls of her cheeks: soft, pink, bumpy textured and fleshy. The ceiling was the same porous texture and a deep purple color. Somehow, light had filtered into what she would’ve expected to be a dark cave, though the light was unnatural—like a large spotlight’s illumination. She landed into a forced somersault onto her back in a puddle. The puddle was above room temperature, and as it set into her skin, it began to burn. She yelped and backpedaled to a dry surface.

  “That’s only a taste of what’s coming our way.”

  She wasn’t alone. Twenty people at each side of her were hunched down pressed up against the wall. Their backs bobbed up and down as did their heads. A sucking and spitting noise repeated. She turned away in repulsion. “What's going on in here? What are you people doing?”

  The man who spoke earlier wore a white lab coat and bore the resemblance of a young Christopher Lee. “Survival, my dear, is what’s happening here. We have exactly fifty-five minutes to escape the beast.”

  “And what in hell is this beast we’re inside of exactly?”

  The person she assumed was a scientist, his breast pocket read Dr. Misery. That can’t be a real name.

  Then the obvious occurred to her: this was a character from a movie. The beast that swallowed her up was from a movie. Am I the only one in here who’s real?

  “The beast,” Dr. Misery began, “is an experiment of mine. I wanted to grow beta fish into larger fish, perhaps so large it could feed many. You see, I developed them to survive in salt water and humid regions so they could prosper in third world countries…”

  But something went horribly wrong…

  “But something went horribly wrong…”

  “Enough of this crazy shit. How do we get out of here?”

  Dr. Misery pointed at each of the victims on their haunches. “We have fifty minutes before that wall of tissue comes down and bathes us in acid for digestion. Then, we’re nothing but digestible material.” He smirked. “The beta fish can be defeated from within, and I’ll tell you how.”

  The sucking sounds continued. The victims’ breathing was muffled and labored. The echo of mastication was off-putting in this scenario.

  “Then what do we do?”

  Dr. Misery guided her by both arms and propped her in front of the fleshy wall. The spongy material dripped with a thick white mucous fluid. The doctor's voice bent when he said, “We have to eat our way out of the creature…”

  Vrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrm!

  Ted had worked himself into a standing position, the wall his crutch, as he walked down the apartment’s back stairs to the bottom floor. He limped his way inside the building when the roar of a chainsaw resounded through another room. He kept edging toward the last room in the hall despite what he knew was coming for him.

  It’s always the last room.

  Thack! Clap! Thack! Clap! Thack! Clap! Thack!

  Three rooms from his destination, the blade of the chainsaw cut through a door. The door was battered down by several steel-sounding collisions. The door flew open. That’s when a fleet of tools was sent his direction: hammers, wrenches, chainsaw, nail gun, table saw, power sander, all of it was hurled his way. They moved and were propelled as if ghosts were holding them in their hands, he thought. Any moment, they could be used on him. Ted had directed and watched enough horror movies to know his time was limited.

  He lucked out, opening an unlocked door and shielding himself behind the barrier. Splinters and dust shot at his body, the whir and whine of power tools deafening.

  The tools could tear him into pieces and send him directly into death. But he had reached his destination. He expected a hammer to clack against his head or a nail to pierce his chest. The tools simply faltered to the floor with a collective metallic crash.

  “Stop, Ted!”

  Georgia stood as a woman in the hallway. Naked. Unashamed. Her face begging. Eyes alight with shock that he’d survived this long, that he was this close to ending their reign of terror.

  “Why should I stop? You’ve murdered and turned this city into a tomb. I want nothing to do with you anymore. After this, I hope my movies fall into obscurity forever. I can’t be the source of any more death.”

  “You can have all the women you want,” she said, teasing her tongue between her lips. “Look, Teddy Bear.”

  A warden entered the hall. She was dressed in a black uniform. Ted watched in awe as she undressed down to nothing. Blonde and buxom, curvy and sexual along every inch of her naked flesh, he simply shook his head at the show. Another battalion of walking sex pots, the slasher girls entered via the opposite rooms of the hallway dressed in skirts and stockings, flashing their tits and hiking their dresses up for an extra-special peek of their virginal beauty. Their murderous feminism ended and was replaced with promises of sexual freedom.

  “We’re yours,” Georgia promised, tracing her hands along the bodies of the slasher girls. “I promise none of us will ever hurt you if you promise not to bring harm upon us. It’s that easy, Teddy. Are you on our side, or theirs? The living will become the dead. They’ll be just like us, and finally, we can live as equals, Teddy. We can never be completely human again. We can't lead fulfilling lives like the living and breathing masses can. They don’t appreciate life. They don’t know regret, loss and death itself. The dead can only live as vague profiles of their former selves—as you can see, we’re creatures. But we’re enjoying our new bodies, our new homes. In fact, it’ll be a damn shame when every living person is dead. The fun will be over. We’ve had an enjoyable time killing everybody. Or maybe we could kill you in smaller doses. Let society recoup their losses. You people are always bringing new life into the world. Babies are born every day. So much flesh to create…and desecrate.”

  “If you’re a bunch of ghosts, you’ve truly lost your sanity,” Ted said. “You’re simply a bunch of killing machines without any tangible goal. Even if you had one to begin with, you’ve lost it. The movie characters are taking you over. Their motives, their ambitions, their characteristics have become your own. Georgia, you didn’t used to be a lesbian. In fact, you only wanted men—I remember one of your co-actresses tried to make out with you, and you rejected her. All of you are lost in the movie characters. It’s turned you into psychotics. You can’t return to being human beings the way you were before death ever again. And you can’t keep killing everyone. It’s not up to you when it’s someone’s time to go or not. I’m here to end this…I’m sending you back to where you came from forever.”

  Georgia shouted, “You haven’t won! There’s a plan B. You can’t stop us forever!”

  “Enjoy your plan B in hell.”

  The nail gun lifted from the floor. Seven shots spat out the nozzle. He was pierced through the chest, the seventh shot splitting his heart in half.

  By then, he had already opened the breaker box and cut the power.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Billy clutched the trashcan lid. He waited. And waited. He opened one eye. Then the other. He was alone on the street. Nelson’s body was splayed on the pavement in six different pieces. He averted his eyes and scrambled from the scene in horror. He was halfway up the street when he recalled the purpose of coming here.

  Destroy the projector and the reels.

  He sprinted to the apartment building. Andy had told him that the projector was on the fourth floor. Rushing inside, he observed open rooms on the way up, blood on every wall, the residents murdered.

  He kept moving.

  Running up to the fourth floor, he located the room. Corpses were stacked at every corner, gore smeared on the walls. The stench was horrid. He scavenged the room for something to burn the entire building down with. He had to be creative and located a bottle of bourbon and a book of matches. Reels were littered on the floor, titles ranging from Squid Man Versus The Living Dead, Dracula Lives in Saint Anne’s Dormitory, Wolfman Defeats the United S
tates Army, Hacksaw Cheerleaders Kill, and many more. He smashed the three projectors into one pile, beating them into pieces before dousing them in bourbon and setting them afire.

  “Burn,” he kept chanting. “Burn! BURN!”

  Fire spread along the carpet. Billy fed the orange current until the bottle was dry. By then, the walls were dancing with firelight. The place would be canvassed in flames in no time, he thought.

  He walked down the stairs at a stagger pace. The beating he’d taken over the past hours had caught up with him. He was bleeding from his legs and shoulders in sizeable bite wounds. His ribs pained him the most, as did the loss of Jessica and Nelson. He imagined Jessica swallowed up by the betta creature. Nelson axed into pieces by Catholic schoolgirls from hell. The permanent outcome weighed him down once he crossed the threshold and stood in the street alone. There was nowhere to go, everywhere devastated, Chicago turned into the aftermath of a war zone.

  The bone dome was missing, he noticed. Sunlight touched down upon him. He imagined God telling him to “hang in there”, but at this moment, he couldn’t accept signs from God. Too much horror had occurred to believe in anything holy.

  The thumping of chopper blades resounded overhead. The National Guard had arrived. Ambulances and squad car sirens wailed in the near proximity.

  “You’re too late,” he muttered. “Way too late.”

  Billy sat on the curb and watched the apartment building spew flames from the fourth floor. It wasn’t long before an ambulance crew and police car stopped to provide medical care for him. The evening’s losses didn’t leave his mind well after he arrived at the nearest functioning hospital.

  Chapter Forty

  Billy was driven for treatment right outside of Chicago. He arrived at St. John’s Mercy Hospital amid few survivors. Fifty people total had survived the horror; the rest of the city was one big catalog of casualities. He only knew this because a detective had woken him from a morphine-induced sleep—something the doctors provided for his bodily trauma—while talking to the nurse in the room. The drugs didn't prevent the truth from sinking in, for Billy. Jessica had died. Nelson had died. And they didn’t perish peacefully.

  Detective Bruce Johnston was the man standing above his bed, a tight-end-sized man with a connecting beard and an expression of “I needed coffee two hours ago“ pasted on his tired face. “How are you feeling, Billy?”

  “Like absolute shit. My best friend is dead. My girlfriend is dead. My father is dead. Everybody I know is dead.” He took a moment before he asked, “Oh, and how about you?”

  The detective replaced his pad of paper into his pocket. “Look, I’m sorry. You’re not ready to talk to me. I understand.”

  The detective was visibly frustrated, but Billy didn’t care. He was in the hospital for barely a day after he’d witnessed hell on earth, and he was already being questioned.

  The detective almost exited the room, when he returned. “As an apology, you should see this.”

  The detective parted the curtain separating him from the other patient.

  And there she was.

  “Jessica!”

  The detective turned to leave them alone when Billy called out to him, “Hey, give us a few minutes. I’ll answer any questions you have, sir!”

  Billy nearly ripped the I.V. from his arm launching over to her bed and hugging her with the vise grips of life. He kissed her face, took in her smell, and kept stealing glances at her and touching her arms and face to double-check she was real. “Y-you’re alive. But I saw you…I saw you eaten.”

  Jessica’s face went pale. “I was in the belly of that thing…and, I had to…I had to eat—”

  “Let’s not talk about it right now, okay? We’re alive. Thank God, we’re alive.”

  He sat on the edge of her bed. Jessica smiled at him, but tears were pouring from her eyes. “Did Nelson…?”

  Billy lowered his head. “No. But he saved my life. He saved a lot of peoples’ lives. If we would’ve died, those monsters would’ve moved on and killed even more people outside of Chicago.”

  Jessica clasped his hand in hers. “What do we tell the police?”

  Billy shrugged. “I have no idea. If we tell them the truth, they’d think we’re crazy, and if we lie, they won’t believe us either. I say we tell them what we saw and be honest.”

  “That monsters did this?” Jessica shook her head. “I’m not so sure.”

  “Remember that website. They have pictures of the bone dome. Pictures of the monsters too.”

  “The government will cover it up,” Jessica insisted. “Nobody wants to believe in monsters. I’ve heard there were only fifty survivors. Those are enough people to easily silence.”

  The door flew open. Detective Johnston re-entered. “There are enough people to easily silence, you’re right. What you saw was real, okay? I’m not Big Brother, guys. I’m only doing my job. I’m here to let you know what happened is classified. You’re under court order to keep silent what you witnessed. We don’t have a clue what caused those awful creatures to come to life. Our jobs right now are to treat you and keep this situation from the general public. Let me say measures are being taken to figure out the truth behind the events.”

  “Have you been listening to our conversation?” Billy challenged him.

  “It gets things done,” Detective Johnston said dryly. “I've been doing this since the events in Anderson Mills. And I still haven't found the answers. Maybe never will.”

  He handed them two slips of paper. It was a Contract of Silence. Billy eyed the paper and the detective in disbelief. “I didn’t know these kind of contracts existed. Fine, I’ll sign if it’ll get you out of the way faster.”

  “Very good. That's what I like to hear.”

  Jessica signed first, and then Billy.

  “This is for your own good,” the detective explained. “The media has no clue what went down. Nobody must know the truth about Chicago. We’ll be watching you two from a distance. Just keep this to yourself. It’s better that way. Enough harm has already been done, let’s not make it worse…and you’re right ma’am, people don’t want to believe in monsters. It’s been that way for a very long time. We're working on explaining what happened in Chicago. It's going to be a bitch, but we'll handle it like we did Anderson Mills. The people will believe the lies we tell them.” One side of his lips curved up in a smile. “You'll be hearing from me every now and again. I wish you a good recovery.”

  The detective exited the room.

  Jessica turned to Billy. “What do we do now?”

  “Recuperate.”

  “And what else, smart guy?”

  “We get married.”

  Jessica rolled her eyes. “Yes, of course, but seriously, we can’t talk to anybody about this. This, this is a mammoth story that begs to be told.”

  “I destroyed the reels, honey,” Billy said, shushing her. “This is better left unknown to anybody. Nobody would try and dig up the truth and repeat what happened. The monsters won’t come back; this is for the best. Andy told me that was the ghosts’ final way into the world. I’ve closed it off. It’s that simple. So let’s focus on realistic goals. Marriage. Eating ice cream. We need something pleasant besides this classified bullshit experience. I don’t know how we’re ever going to move on from this, but we will. Thank God you're alive.”

  Jessica gave him a big smile. “There is one thing I do know.”

  “And what is that?”

  “We’re not watching scary movies ever again!”

  Epilogue

  Plan B was real.

  Three to five business days after the terror ended in Chicago, Jules Baxter, a sixty-year-old man who was seventy pounds overweight with skin the color of nicotine, finally realized the truth. Odyssey Cinema was a financial failure. The fresh tarred lot was empty on a Monday morning, the four-theatre cineplex like a ghost town, just as it was on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Two months after opening, he couldn’t make a single bank payment, n
ever mind complete the payroll, though the three kids on his staff didn’t care. They were in it for the same reasons he was. They loved the movies he loved. His leap of faith in the customers had resulted in a hard landing, Jules realized. Nobody cared for his taste in films. And he was near half a million in debt because of it.

  Face it, nobody likes horror movies anymore.

  “I should’ve opened closer to Halloween,” Jules muttered, stepping out of his rusted cobalt-blue Impala toward the movie house. I should’ve expanded…maybe played old classics as well as horror movies. Every day of the week could’ve had a theme. Bogart day. Abbott and Costello day. Hitchcock day. Newman day. Cruise day.

  Fuck that.

  I only want horror movies.

  Fuck the bank. Fuck the people that didn’t come.

  Fuck everything.

  Odyssey Cinema was a simple, square, eraser-red brick building. Glass front. Inside, lime-green seventies tiles decorated the walls. The floors were painted black, though there were cracks and pocks in the flooring. The theatres themselves had an ugly orange carpeting on the walls and orange seats to match. It was the closet to 42nd Street anybody could come in this day and age, though this was in a suburb of New Jersey. Nobody greeted him inside; the lights were off. The place exuded the ambiance of foreclosure. He decided to flip on the front room lights for old time’s sake. Monday’s noon bill was a double feature: Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2 and Herschell Gordon Lewis’s The Gore Gore Girls.

  I should’ve had scantily clad models dressed up as zombies. I would’ve called them…

  “Nah,” Jules sighed. He rubbed his balding head. “I’m sure someone would’ve protested that. Surely somebody would get something jammed up their asses about it.”

  He turned on the concession lights. The popcorn machine, the candy displays, all of it begged for customers.

  I don’t have the corporate power. Advertising for one, and I don’t have the newest Disney movie to put butts into the seats.