by J. Thorn
I pulled back on the length of wood, wanting to use it again and was caught unprepared when he grabbed it and yanked towards him, pulling me with it. I barely recovered in time to avoid his clumsy attempt to wrap me up in a bear hug and backed away in shock. He stood there, gently swaying, with at least a foot of the stake buried in his guts and there was no indication that he felt any pain from a wound that should have put him down permanently. He started to turn to face me and I grabbed the wood and wrenched it out of his guts before he could get another grip on it.
I stepped to the side, raised the stake over my head and using both hands drove the sharp point directly into his blood red right eye. If I had hoped that I could take him out with a thrust to the head I was disappointed. The taper on the end was too shallow and while it pierced his eye it was stopped from reaching his brain by the eye socket. I felt the hard stop in my arms and quickly pulled away, stepped back and swung for the bleachers. The wood snapped again when it hit the side of his head, leaving me with about a four foot club with a nasty 10 inch splinter as thick as my thumb protruding from the end.
He was slowed down, but not stopped. Quickly lunging forward I buried the splinter in his left eye, my forward progress stopping when it hit the inside of the back of his skull. Pulling the club out of his head I spun towards the swamp as he hit the ground with a wet, meaty thump.
The woman was still standing in place, but she had stopped sobbing, apparently too terrified to even cry. The two men that had pursued her through the swamp were no more than 10 feet behind her and the remaining parking lot guy was about 15 feet in front of her. She was in water to mid-thigh and I could now tell that she wasn’t completely naked. She was wearing what looked like a gold sequined G-String, and nothing else. Stripper flashed through my mind, but she could just as easily have been dressed that way in the privacy of her own home and had to run for her life. See how my mind works?
I had a moment to evaluate the situation. When she had gone quiet her pursuers had stopped in place. More evidence for my theory that the blood red eyes indicated blindness, and they could only track us by sound. What I didn’t know was how long they would stand still waiting for a sound before they started flailing about looking for their prey.
Up on my toes I circled around behind parking lot guy, holding an index finger to my lips to tell the woman to stay quiet. In position behind him, club held in my right hand like a spear ready to be thrown, I hissed loud enough for him to hear but hopefully not the guys in the swamp. He immediately snapped his head around and let out the start of a gurgling snarl. He never finished the turn or the sound because I buried the splinter in his eye the second I had a target. He dropped, snapping off most of the splinter in his head as he went down on the asphalt.
“Run to me now!” I hissed at the woman, frantically making the universal ‘come here’ wave, and bouncing up and down on the balls of my feet.
She threw a look over her shoulder and then seemed to gather her strength for a final surge through the thigh deep water. Pulling ahead of her pursuers she gained speed as she reached water that was below her knees, high stepping the last few yards onto the grass and sprinting to me.
The woman was exceptionally pretty, even soaking wet and streaked with muck from the swamp, but I didn’t have time to admire her. I expected her to run and stop beside or behind me, not throw herself against me and wrap her arms around my neck. She looked to be in excellent physical condition and was tall for a woman, nearly as tall as me despite being barefoot, so the unexpected impact of her body nearly knocked me off my feet.
She was breathing like a locomotive, shaking like a leaf and doing her best to squeeze me in half but wasn’t making a sound. The men in the swamp weren’t so quiet. When she had surged forward and made a lot of noise splashing through the water they had also started forward, snapping their jaws and snarling their wet, gurgling snarl. I was getting a much better look at them now, both of them with the red eyes and blood dripping from ears and noses.
The guy on the left looked like a college student. Hair too long to have a real job, silver stud glinting in his right eyebrow, made all the more noticeable by the contrast to the red eyes. The other one was a Georgia State Trooper. Amazingly his Smokey Bear hat was still in place and his weapon was still holstered yet he gave no indication he was even aware he was armed as he approached us.
I still had a four foot wooden club in my hand, but didn’t like my odds against these two. I wrapped my arms around the woman’s waist, pressed my mouth to her ear and mumbled so only she could hear, “They hunt by sound. I’m going to move us. Don’t make any noise. Quiet!”
I lifted her free of the ground and slowly began stepping sideways towards the open parking lot. By this time they had reached the edge of the asphalt and both stumbled with the footing change then came to a stop. I had moved us maybe a dozen feet out of line with their advance and when they stopped I froze. They stood in place, swaying slightly, heads tilted back and swiveling side to side. I could hear them sniffing the air and it scared me even more than I already was. Hiding from something hunting you by sound was difficult, but manageable. Sound and smell? Exponentially more difficult. There was no breeze to worry about upwind or downwind, but that could change at any moment, blowing our scent directly to them.
Normally I would have enjoyed holding a G-String clad woman tight against me, but let me tell you this was anything but erotic. She was absolutely silent, but still shaking. Whether cold from being in the water or out of sheer terror, at least she had calmed her breathing. Unfortunately, she still had me in a stranglehold and if our hunters charged us we were goners. Carefully wrapping my right arm around her waist, I slowly exerted pressure to the side, peeling her off of me. She resisted at first, and then relaxed enough for me to guide her to a position beside and slightly behind that would allow me freedom of movement. My hand still resting on the small of her back as she moved, I started to step back with her and managed to kick what was probably the only empty beer can in the parking lot.
The can clattered across the pavement loud enough to, no pun intended, raise the dead. Both heads instantly snapped toward us and they charged, arms extended forward and wide to sweep in any prey that they might have run past. I pushed her hard towards the larger open parking area and side slipped the Trooper’s grasp, his fingers brushing my sleeve.
His snarl rose an octave and he whirled in my direction, the college student turning towards the snarl. I stepped in and rammed the now blunted stake into the bridge of the Trooper’s nose with all my weight behind the blow. I might as well have been striking a tree for all the good it did. His head rocked back from the force but he didn’t even notice the nasty gash that opened on his face and the blood pouring down from his broken nose. He just kept snarling and advancing.
Back pedaling, trying to get room to fight, I tripped over my own feet and crashed to the ground. The stake slipped out of my hand and clattered across the pavement. For a moment they paused, heads tracking the direction of the clatter, but somehow they knew their prey was still right in front of them and they started forward again, looming over me. I was scrambling backwards like a crab on its back when the woman started yelling.
“Hey, assholes! Over here! Come get me if you’re man enough. Come on you fuckers. I’m right here!” I risked a glance in her direction. She was screaming at the top of her lungs and jumping up and down, waving her arms.
They stopped their advance on me and I froze, holding my breath. I knew she was trying to distract them, and the courage she was showing was incredible. Their heads turned toward her, but they didn’t move.
“Come on you dickless cocksuckers! I’m right here!” She screamed even louder, and they finally turned away from me and started a slow rush in her direction.
Looking for my club I spotted it farther away than I thought it could have gone, but also spotted a nicely rounded rock about the size of a small cantaloupe laying at the edge of the parking lot. Quietly scr
ambling to my feet I scooped the rock up in both hands and charged the cop with it raised over my head. He heard my approach and turned in time for me to cave in the front of his skull. He crumpled to the ground at my feet without a sound.
The college student was still moving toward the woman’s screams, and she was getting pretty creative in her names for him. Ripping the Trooper’s pistol out of his belt holster I rushed the college student. The weapon was a standard police issue Glock 9 mm, and I quickly made sure a round was chambered. Coming up beside the last attacker I put the pistol’s muzzle against the side of his head and pulled the trigger, blowing blood and brains across the parking lot. He dropped as silently as the Trooper had.
Breathing hard I stood still and stared at the man I’d just killed. Was he a man, or had I killed some kind of zombie thingy? The little voice in my head was moments away from a hysterical giggle when I contemplated the idea of zombies, but I pushed it down. I stepped back to the Trooper and took the duty belt off the body, strapping it around my waist and holstering the Glock. The belt had two magazine pouches, both with fully loaded spare mags, a pair of hand cuffs strapped on to it at the small of my back, and various rings and hooks that I had no idea what they were for. At the moment all I cared about was the weapon and extra ammunition.
“Thank you,” the woman had come over to me while I was robbing the dead. “You saved my life.” She stood in front of me wearing next to nothing, covered in filth, yet didn’t appear to be the least bit self-conscious.
“I think we’re even. That was pretty brave to draw them away like that.”
She looked away then back at me, “It was as much self-preservation as anything. They’ve been chasing me for over two hours. I couldn’t have survived much longer without your help. You’re the first normal person I’ve seen.”
I was shocked to hear that. “Where were you? What happened?”
“I dance at a club not too far from here, but you can probably guess that from looking at me,” she made a ‘look at this’ gesture with her hands in front of her nearly nude body. “I was on stage when all hell broke loose.”
4
Rachel Miles reached behind her back and undid the clasp that held up her gold sequined bikini top, slid it over her shoulders and as it dropped to the stage used her upper arms to press her breasts together to the hoots and howls of the crowd. She was a third of the way through her second song, on stage at the Toy Box gentleman’s club north of Atlanta. New York had been nuked hours ago, but the fat pig of a boss that owned the club refused to close early and had threatened to fire her if she didn’t go on stage. The bar was half full of hard core drinkers, but Rachel couldn’t see any of them because of the bright lights focused on her performance.
Ashley Box was her stage name, and while she certainly had the looks and personality to make money in strip clubs, she detested the job. But where else was she going to make five hundred dollars a night without having to spread her legs? It paid the bills, her college tuition, and left plenty more for her to drive a decent car and maintain a small but nice apartment in a good area of Atlanta. One more year of med school and she’d be able to quit. She’d have her MD without the crushing mountain of student loans that most of her class mates were accumulating.
Rachel was staring into the lights, bent over to show her assets to the crowd when the first sounds of a disturbance reached her over the pounding music. Accustomed to bar fights, and confident the bouncers, Rick and Jeff, both former Georgia offensive linemen, would make quick work of any troublemakers she ignored the sounds and kept swaying her hips in time to the music. The six inch stiletto heels she was wearing were killing her feet tonight and she couldn’t wait to finish this set. She only had one more, then could head home and get some studying done before collapsing into bed.
The song ended and the stage lights dimmed, allowing Rachel a view of the disturbance by the door that was growing in volume. She was shocked to see Sandy, a small blonde that danced in the club and supplemented her income giving blow jobs in the parking lot, hanging on to Jeff’s thick neck and biting him. What the hell was going on? Rick, the other bouncer, grabbed her by the hair and ripped her off Jeff’s back, flinging her against the wall. He turned to his friend who had collapsed onto the floor and appeared to be going in to convulsions and didn’t notice that Sandy bounced off the wall and got back to her feet like nothing had happened.
Her eyes were blood red, visible even from across the room, and her mouth, neck and chest were slick with Jeff’s blood. With a wet, gurgling snarl she leapt onto Rick’s back as he bent over his injured friend, locked her arms around him and sank her teeth into his over developed neck muscles. Rick howled in pain, lurched to his feet and reached over his head to grab the much smaller woman. He tore her loose, lifted her in the air upside down and drove her headfirst into the floor where she collapsed and didn’t move again. Rachel clearly heard the snap when Sandy’s neck broke.
“Crazy fucking bitch!” Rick roared, staring down at the body.
Rachel felt like she was in a waking nightmare, and things got worse when Jeff rose to his feet behind Rick. His eyes were the same blood red as Sandy’s had been and he let loose with the same snarl she had made. Rick whirled when he heard the snarl and tried to raise a hand to fend off the charging attack from Jeff, but it was too late. They both crashed to the floor sending tables, chairs and a few customers scattering like leaves. Jeff clamped on to Rick’s throat with his teeth and snarling the whole time started ripping flesh, finally tearing the carotid artery and getting soaked in a jet of bright red arterial blood.
Rachel stood frozen in horror, her mind unable to comprehend what her eyes were seeing. She remained frozen in place until a hand reached out from the edge of the stage and grabbed her left ankle, savagely pulling her leg out from under her. She fell on her ass in the middle of the stage, her ankle held in a painful vice like grip. Lying on her back she raised her head and started to scream, but the scream died in her throat when she saw her attacker was another of the dancers named Lisa.
Lisa’s eyes were the same blood red color, but only the whites, and her face was smeared with blood. She leapt over the chairs and the brass rail at the edge of the stage, snarling deep in her chest and pulling on Rachel’s leg. Rachel tried to scoot away but the grip on her ankle was too strong and she only succeeded in allowing Lisa to pull her closer. Rachel started kicking with her free leg, feeling the solid blows connecting but having no effect on the grip on her ankle. Lisa pulled further up onto the stage, her upper body now pinning Rachel’s left leg and her grip shifted to Rachel’s thigh.
Now Rachel started to scream for help and pulled her right leg up and kicked in a stomping motion, once, twice then a third time and suddenly the grip went slack and Lisa stopped moving. Rachel kept screaming for a few moments then dared to look and had to turn her head to the side and vomit on the stage. Her stomp kicks while wearing stiletto heels had gashed open Lisa’s face to the bone in two long, ragged tears. The third kick had buried the entire six inch spiked heel directly into Lisa’s left eye, and the shoe was stuck in the dead girl’s skull.
Rachel reached down and unbuckled the shoe, slipping her foot out and using it to push the body off her left leg. She abandoned the other shoe as well, standing up and surveying the bar. There were only a few customers left that didn’t have blood red eyes and they were now far outnumbered by the gang that was led by Jeff the bouncer. As she watched two of the customers went down screaming under the weight of Jeff and two dancers.
She started to back towards the stage exit when Carl, the bartender, leapt over the bar with a shotgun in his hands. Rachel’s first impulse was to run to him for protection, but she stopped and watched as he fired two deafening blasts into the body of a man charging him with a snarl. The shotgun blasts shredded clothing and flesh and knocked the man to the ground, but moments later he was back on his feet. Rachel turned and fled the stage, hearing three more blasts from Carl’s shotgun.<
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Rachel raced through the dressing area, elbowing a shorter girl aside that leapt at her as she passed, then hit the emergency fire door at full stride and burst into the back parking lot. She was barefoot and wearing only a G-String, but had never been so happy to be outside.
The fire door opened into the back parking lot and Rachel took a moment to get her bearings and was flooded with relief when she saw a Georgia Highway Patrol cruiser with blue lights flashing screech to a stop in the parking lot. She started running towards the cop who was getting out of his car with a nightstick in hand. Neither of them saw the two young men with long hair, dressed in jeans and polo shirts come out of the dark behind a pickup truck until they were already on the Trooper. He had time to swing the night stick once, making a solid connection with one of the men’s upper leg, but the blow had no effect and they swarmed him and carried him to the ground. Both of them started biting and clawing but he was able to fight them off and move to the far side of the cruiser where he stood swaying and shaking.
Rachel ran around the perimeter of the parking lot, keeping vehicles between her and the two young men. She reached the cop and grabbed his arm, feeling safer despite having watched him be attacked. The Trooper turned his head and looked at her, sweat pouring off his face. He had bite marks on his forearms and hands and deep fingernail scratches on his face. He opened his mouth to say something but all that came out was a gurgle. A moan followed and the pain reflected in his eyes must have been agonizing and he started to crumple to his knees, only Rachel’s support keeping him upright.
The two young men were circling the front of the cruiser and Rachel tugged the Trooper’s arm, leading him around the back of the car, intent on keeping it between them and their attackers. They kept circling, gurgling and snarling, red eyes glowing from the huge neon sign mounted to the roof of the strip club. On their second circuit of the cruiser the Trooper stopped cold and Rachel lost her grip on his arm as she kept going a couple of steps. She turned and gasped to see blood dripping from his ears and nose. As she watched, his eyes widened and seemed to bulge forward out of his head as if under great pressure, then first one then the other turned completely red.
