by Alan Spencer
“You can’t do this, doctor, and you know it. Let's come up with another plan."
“Another plan? Hell! We're out of time. And think, really think. Stapleton won't let those things escape this property. Nobody's leaving if we don't do something crazy. WE need to get the fuck out of here. I have to see my family before I grow too old to remember them. You too, Boyd."
The pressure of the situation forced Boyd to make a hasty decision. He aimed his M-16 at the doctor, but Dr. Glover was a step ahead of him. The tip of the flame thrower banged against the temple of his eye. Boyd lost his vision. He soon collapsed, feeling everything supporting him go limp. Then he was unconscious.
“It ends my way," Dr. Glover declared. "I’m leading them through the gates."
Hayden Swoops In
Hayden quickened his stride, sensing a problem. Boyd was on the ground unmoving. The man with the flame thrower was waving his hands for the dead to come on after him, shouting, “FOLLOW ME! I’M RIGHT HERE! COME AFTER ME! I’LL LET YOU OUT! I HAVE THE GODDAMN KEY! FOLLOW ME!"
The dead were about to close in on Boyd’s body, but Hayden couldn’t let them kill the man. He wouldn’t suffer unconscious. And if Boyd did wake, yes, he would die in agony, but it would be fast—too fast. And the bastard charging towards the barrier wall was trying to lead the dead out the perimeter.
Hayden finally recognized the stranger as the man from the hospital. He couldn’t let the man herd the dead from the facility. They were his barrier, his protection, his way of life, and it was all about to be snatched away.
Now was the time to use the grenade.
He pulled the pin.
Hayden tossed it, the oblong shape disappearing in the night sky. The grenade burst before it hit the ground. It was only yards out from the man’s position. The man bent awkwardly forward, then he struck the ground.
The man didn’t get up.
Dead.
Hayden rushed to Boyd’s fallen body and lifted him into his arms.
The cannibal retreated back into town center.
Hayden's Special Time
Boyd woke against a cold surface. A slab of metal. His hands were bound with cloth, and so were his ankles. He couldn’t move. Hayden was hunched over a table arranging knives. Boyd’s eyes froze on the corpse sprawled out on a table nearby. The legs were removed and splayed on a table beside the body. A man’s severed head, shaved of hair, had been propped inside a glass butcher's display. The sight curled his stomach.
He was in a grocery store, though the aisles were all empty. He didn’t hear the dead beings move outside in the streets. The time between Dr. Glover’s attack and arriving here had to have been short. Wherever the corpses were, they were busy with other things for the moment.
Hayden was studious in his work. He had also had changed his appearance. Flesh hung from his back in a cape, and his head was encapsulated in skin with two holes crudely carved for eyes. His mouth and nose were open to the air. Hayden was a strange beast of flesh. His bare skin was dyed brown with dried blood. His hands were caked in red, the fingers dripping with crimson. Hayden’s lips shifted, pleased Boyd had awakened.
“So here we are, Broman.”
Boyd didn’t know how to reply. He eyed the implements on the table. What was worse, he wondered, to be ripped of limbs, or to experience prolonged torture? Prolonged torture in itself was enough to consider suicide, but prolonged torture from Hayden belonged in a different category of death wishes.
“You see that pot at the end of the table?” Hayden pointed at a stew pot. “It’s catching blood from the guy I slaughtered earlier. I might turn it into a soup. I’m not sure what else I’ll find in this damn grocery store, because most of the shelves are bare. And the signs are dated. I guess the produce truck hasn't roll into this place for quite some time. But oh well; this place belongs to all of us now."
“Us?” Body had to think about what crazy cannibal had just said. "You’re not one of them, Hayden. You might’ve dressed yourself up to blend in, but you’re still human. You’re a living cannibal. Those dead people have an excuse to do what they do. You don’t.”
Hayden clicked his tongue. “This civil servant—soldier boy, whatever you want to call him—tried to attack me earlier.” He pointed at the legless body splayed on the table. “I was defending myself, and since nobody’s sending me rations in this place, I have a right to take whatever means necessary to survive. I’ve eaten from rotten bodies for long enough. It’s about time I enjoyed fresh meat.”
The longer Hayden talked, the more time Boyd had to locate a way to escape.
“You lead no one but a bunch of decaying bodies. You're nowhere closer to being in charge of them. You’ve merely survived. That's nothing special."
“This place is special,” Hayden argued, hammering the cleaver into the corpse's torso, channeling his anger and culinary zest into the strike. Hayden dug his hands inside the broken up chest cavity, parting back broken sternum bones, and after tugging and ripping for moments, he wrenched out the heart. “They send you to capture me, and when you do, they bring in more people to kill you and to take me. Why would anyone go through all the trouble of sending men to their possible doom if there wasn’t something special here?”
Hayden didn’t lose focus on the body he cleaved. The solider was now down to an emptied torso, the rest of the mess scattered on the floor in wet piles. Done chopping, Hayden collected the bones from the floor and tossed them into a garbage bin.
“You saw the helicopters swoop overhead to put out that hospital fire," Hayden said. "Those things are very important. Very deadly too. I’d like to imagine what would happen if they escaped.”
“Everyone would be dead.” Boyd tried to loosen the bounds over his limbs, but there was no slack. “Dr. Glover wanted to let them out. He considered it our only way of escaping the grounds, but it’s not worth the consequences. He could be sending those murderers out there among the innocent, including his family, and my family too. The public would be nothing against them."
Hayden threw back his head and laughed, guffawing. “Then it’s a good thing I threw a grenade at the bastard. He’s probably in pieces. I don’t want this place to be vacated. This is the happiest I’ve been ever. I want things to stay as they are."
The table used as a chopping block was cleared, except for pools of blood. Hayden sprayed it down with an overhead hose. Hayden traced his finger down a knife set on the counter and removed the smallest one.
“A simple kitchen knife will do for tonight.”
Thoughts of torture gleamed in Hayden’s eyes, and in the darkness, the man’s eyes were liquid black. His smile was animated by strange contortions. Insanity was smiling at Boyd. Hayden would extend the process of Boyd's death for days, maybe weeks. It would be useless to call out for help. Dr. Glover and Cindy were the two people who survived for so long, and now they were both dead. Everything they’d planned to do to save themselves had turned against them, and it was all because of Hayden.
“Your toes and feet will go first,” Hayden whispered to himself. "Then, you can’t run from me. Next, I’ll sever your testicles and cauterize them. I'll do it with a hot frying pan; that’s the best I can do here. I know, I know, I know, Richard. I'll make sure he stays restrained. I'm ready to do this right. I've thought about this so long, Richard. We've both had good ideas on how to dispose of Broman."
Hayden held Boyd’s foot down and removed the shoe, twisting it off. Boyd resisted, but then the man jammed the knife into his ankle like a tent stake into the ground. Lances of pain sprang up his leg. Boyd unleashed a call of torment. There was nothing else he could do to channel the agony.
“VOICE YOUR PAIN!” Hayden removed the shoe and sock from his right foot. “I LOVE IT!”
Boyd’s breathing doubled. The blood in his veins was stocked with lances and sharp barbs. The cannibal would have his way with him, and there was nothing he could do about it. The criminal would survive in the proper environment, and th
is was the lunatic’s niche.
Hayden ripped the knife out of his ankle, a gurgle of blood spilling from the entry point. “This is what I’ve waited so long to do to you. I’ll find Cindy’s body next. I know she’s locked up in that post office. If I can’t have her alive, I’ll pleasure myself with her corpse. I have so much time. Nobody can evict me from this place. It’s too hard to steal me back into custody among a pack of bloodthirsty killers. You failed, and so did that group of mercenaries.”
The knife’s blade circled around his big toe. Hayden's grin branched out into an evil thing. The cannibal touched the tip of knife on Boyd's big toe, resting the point for a moment.
“This one goes first.”
Hayden raised the knife to slice, and Boyd closed his eyes.
Close Call
Hayden folded to the floor, going unconscious. Cindy dropped the wooden plank. She was hunched forward and on her last moments of life. She worked at Boyd’s restraints, her hands bloody. Once Boyd was free, she collapsed onto a metal chair, spent. Cindy leaned her head back, and her breathing labored and fluid-choked.
“Those things left the post office in a hurry. I heard a loud explosion, and I wondered what had happened. It took me awhile to walk here, but I caught Hayden carrying you inside, and I came after you.”
“Thank God,” Boyd said, kneeling beside her. He put his hand under her chin, lovingly. “That was brave of you.”
“What happened to Dr. Glover?”
“Hayden said he killed him. Dr. Glover wanted to release those things out the front gates. It's too late now, either way. The key card is lost. Maybe later we can look for it.”
A wave of weakness crippled Cindy, limiting her awareness. “I’m not going to make it, Boyd. I’ve gone as far as my body will take me."
“I’ll go out for supplies. I’m sure there are parts of the hospital that weren’t burned down. You have to give me a chance. You’re all that’s left."
“You have to leave this place,” Cindy said, her voice losing strength. “You’ve survived this long, and you can’t let it be for nothing. I don’t have a husband, or a family of my own to go home to, but you do. You do."
The bullets wound in her side bled more, or Boyd had finally noticed how severe the damage was. Cindy shuttered in pain, doing her best to speak to him in her last moments.
“I’m glad you saved me, Boyd. I would’ve gone crazy in the library alone. Maybe I’d be alive, but I wouldn’t be happy. I’ve done something good for someone else, and that's how I'm leaving this world..."
Cindy closed her eyes, and in two long minutes, she expelled her final breath.
Boyd couldn’t leave the room. Where would he go? Outside, the dead clamored for more destruction, and inside, Cindy’s body was a reminder of his failure. He couldn’t think. He carried Cindy’s body to the meat locker, deciding to hide her from the scavenging dead.
After returning from the meat locker, a voice projected from the aisles and caused him to freeze and look.
“Your job is finished here, Broman."
There were two men standing near Boyd. One kept a gas mask over his face, and trained an M-16 at him. The other removed his gas mask and stared Boyd down. This man was pudgier around the midsection and only five feet tall. His bald head showed through to brown liver spots. His thick silver mane of a beard disguised the bottom half of his face. Boyd couldn’t read his intentions, but the man’s eyes were cunning, and evil.
The voice sounded familiar.
“You’re the one who’s been calling me. Commander Stapleton, right?”
The Commander nodded. "You did well, Broman, especially considering the boys out there had military training, and they’re all dead.”
Boyd eyed the kitchen for a weapon, but the closest was a knife and that was on the floor slathered in blood. “Did they know what they were up against?”
“They're only body shields,” Stapleton laughed, blithely removing a cigar from his front pocket and lighting it. “They were a distraction for us to sneak inside undetected. Causalities for the sake of the project are perfectly feasible. We can write them off as KIA in the Middle East. We’re good at making up shit. In war time, any law or legislation we want to enact, Americans lap it up like warm breast milk. We could re-write The Constitution if we chose, and hey, maybe one day we will. Why not?"
“What does all that bullshit matter?” Boyd challenged. “Aren’t you here for Hayden anyway?"
“Of course we are, but he has nothing to do with a criminal investigation. Nobody found body parts of his victims. I made that up. I told you I’m good at making shit up. This is purely to protect the Green’s End Project. He was eating our subjects and burning the rest. He was supposed to be used as their supplies, not vice versa.”
“What are those corpses really? If you’re going to kill me, at least answer that question.”
Stapleton arched his bushy white eyebrows in delight. “Nice try stalling, Broman." He turned to his partner. “You can shoot at will, Gregson. I don't have to tell you anything, Mr. Broman."
Boyd registered the threat before it was born. He lunged across the kitchen and retreated into the meat freezer. Bullets sprayed in his wake. Boyd forced the door shut and blocked it with crates until they were stacked high.
The bullets pierced the steel until an entire clip had been emptied. He waited, breathing hard, shocked by the cold. Cindy’s dead body was crouched in the corner, her blood icy across her midsection. Her eyes were closed. The flesh was so pale, and so deathly.
Boyd waited for the door to be kicked in, or more machine gun fire. Any second, his death would be finalized.
“They’re coming,” Stapleton announced out loud with a hearty cheer. “They heard the gunshots. You’ll feed them, Boyd. You’ll keep them alive. You’re doing your country a great service by offering up your ass to those things. Uncle Sam thanks you! Oh, and thanks for incapacitating Hayden. It saves us time and effort. Well, that's about all we need from you."
The two men left, and soon, Boyd heard the dead's clatter from every exit and entrance of the grocery store. They smelled blood, and they sensed the body parts on the ground outside the freezer. Boyd could hear them dismantle the bones and fashioned them for their use. The auditory sounds were jarring.
They were beating their hands against the freezer door. Boyd pressed his back against the boxes to enforce the barricade. The corpses bashed with all their insane strength. More and more numbers joined in on the effort. He wasn't sure how much longer he could keep this up.
Boyd closed his eyes knowing there was nothing else he could do but wait to die.
Execution
“Jesus, this guy stinks,” the driver complained. "He took a bath in flesh, and shit, and God knows what else. I can see why Commander Stapleton passed this creep off on us. I'm going to throw up if I have to keep taking whiffs of this guy."
“He’ll be dead soon,” another said. "At least he can’t harm the things inside the facility any longer. He's cost us millions."
Hayden blocked out their conversation. He trained his eyes on the back window of the military Jeep. The sun rose in the background. Dawn’s light was shining bright. A set of barbed gates parted, and the Jeep cleared the exit. Barracks surrounded the outside of the gate, as did towers manned with armed gunners. The vehicle parked after a short drive, braking hard. Hayden was then carried out by under the arms. They had him secured in handcuffs.
Thrown down onto his knees, Hayden was kicked hard in the back.
“Like that, asshole? You sick fucker. You're finished, man. Dead."
The two stepped in front of Hayden, dressed in dark green—like the other men in the facility. They were both younger, mid to late twenties, with smug expressions playing on their faces.
One of them barked, “Stay on your knees, and turn away from us.”
Hayden did as he was told after facing the muzzle of a machine gun. He couldn’t fight back. He had no access to a weapon. They’d
taken him from his home, and now he was about to be shot in the back of the head.
One last concern made Hayden talk. “Aren’t I supposed to be interrogated first?”
“Nope. All that shit was made up to convince Broman to pursue you. You’re killing too many of them inside, and they wanted it to stop. And Broman’s dead by now, but you’re privileged—not that you deserve it. A bullet is merciful compared to being pried to pieces alive. We could have left you to those things, but the boss wanted to make sure we got the job done right. We couldn't chance you magically escaping, or eating your way to safety."
Hayden kept his eyes on the woods, and the way the branches were set ablaze by the sun. A soft breeze blew across him. He sucked in a breath of air, relishing it. It would be his last, he thought.
I guess this is it, Richard.
Hayden anticipated the trigger's pull.
Dr. Glover's Last Stand
Dr. Glover’s legs were torn to ribbons. A piece of burning hot shrapnel was lodged into his back. Half his body was covered in second degree burns. His flesh was on fire with the pain. Hunks of his flesh were coming undone with every stride closer he made it to the secret gate. Reaching his goal, he unlocked the gate with the key card, and shut it closed behind him. Now, there was one more thing to do. He shouted for the dead to meet up with him, piercing the night air, screeching, and goading them on with what was left in his lungs.
Within minutes, the arms of hundreds of the dead reached through the grates for him. The doctor turned away from the horde, and every step down the stairs towards the final gate, he bled more and more, his life spattering and leaking upon the walkway. He couldn’t stop his death. He’d spent too much time in this living hell, and now, he was terminating the project, in his own way.
