B-Movie War

by Alan Spencer

  Knob Rogers couldn’t shape any real expression on his face, though the way his hands moved over the wooden chest would indicate excitement. The blued hands unclipped the metal locks. Vic eyed the chest as if it could explode and kill them all. Jimmy stared, his body bent to retreat having the same thought as his counterpart. Greg, their tour guide, had left them with Knob to finish other errands about the building. Greg said they were in good hands with “Knob”. Greg’s statement would be proven or disproven in the coming moments.

  “Open it already,” Vic insisted. “I deserve to see what’s so goddamn important.”

  Jimmy stayed pensive. “I agree.”

  Knob lifted the top of the chest. The hinge squealed. What was revealed stumped Vic and Jimmy, but Knob said against their doubts, “Ah, there it is. There. She. Is. The answer to our problems.”

  Vic couldn’t strip the anger from his voice. “You kidding me? Bags of blood. I could’ve found blood anywhere outside. I carried blood all this way. Risked my ass for this bullshit? For blood?”

  “That can’t be it,” Jimmy said it like a sad child. “My dad insisted we get this thing to here. And this is what was inside?”

  “Oh, there’s more, boys. Give me a chance to impress.” Knob removed the twenty-four packs of blood and revealed what was beneath them. Film reels. “This is the real deal. The money shot. What’s paying all of our bills today so we can do it all over again next week.”

  Jimmy scowled, and Vic wanted to punch Knob Rogers for being so goofy about something that was deadly serious.

  “I don’t understand,” Vic said. “Explain to me how this is going to save people’s lives.”

  Vic inspected the film reels. “Film reels and blood packs. It doesn’t look like anything to me.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, buddy. You let me handle this. You, my friend, handle protecting everybody else in this building. They’re scared right now, Vic. It’s up to you and your sidekick to whip everybody into shape. Turn the pansies into powerhouses.”

  “Is that why I’m really here?”

  “You delivered what we needed. Oh, and I’m going to need your help.” Knob dug into his pocket and handed him a single key. “The key used to be the lock to my personal porno collection in my office upstairs. The harder stuff, but not so hard I’d get thrown into prison, you catch my drift? Since blood doesn’t run in my veins and my dick doesn’t work, I’ve got no use for it. Use the key to break open the blood packets and pour the blood over the reels of film.”

  “You want me to what?” Vic snarled. “You’re crazy, man.”

  Jimmy removed a pocket knife from his belt and started to cut up the blood packets and spray the blood onto the reels. “It’s okay, Vic. Whatever he says, I’ll do it. I’m honoring my father’s wishes.”

  “I want to honor his wishes, too, he was a good man. I’m questioning Door Knob over here.”

  “It’s Knob Rogers. Asshole.”

  “Whatever. You’re a sleaze. You’d stick it in an electrical outlet if people would pay to see it on film.”

  “Oh, so you’ve never looked at porn? Okay, okay, so you’re one of those moralists who keep it in their pants.”

  “Not at all. I’m just not obsessed with porn. I’d rather have the real thing.”

  “I think you’re wrong. Porn’s art.”

  “Fuck this,” Vic sighed. “Forget it. I’ll help you, Jimmy. This guy can go to hell.”

  Jimmy cut a line across the top of the blood packs, then Vic sprayed them onto the reels.

  “So what does this do, Knob Rogers, or can I call you Knob?”

  “Knob’s fine, jerk off.” The corpse’s eyes stayed on Vic. He was serious for a moment. “The dead have created a new way to possess reels of film much faster. It’s why their attacks are so widespread this time. This new process to possess reels is called “Blood-O-Vision”. You soak the blood of the dead in the reels, string them together to make a film, and play them through a projector, and they come to life. The trick on our end, Vic, the blood we have belongs to those who are good through and through. They wish the living no harm. They’ll come back to do whatever they can to protect the living. If you’re expecting a dissertation on why this is happening, you’re not getting one. Some things that happen in this life, and the afterlife, are mysterious as they are impossible to dumb down.”

  Knob closed the chest. They were done soaking the reels. “So let’s carry this bad boy into the theatre so we can start playing the reels. Whatever’s protecting this building, it won’t last much longer.”

  Vic had to know. “So what’s on those reels?”

  Knob’s lip twitched. He tried to smile. “Oh, you’ll be finding out. Follow me to the theatre.”

  Vic and Jimmy stood among the crowd of two dozen people who had gutted the inside of the theatre. Greg was working in tandem with Knob Rogers, loading up the row of film projectors set up before they had arrived in the room. Vic counted twenty-three projectors. Extension cords spread out everywhere. Several gas powered generators were on standby, though for now, they were plugged into a wall outlet.

  “He’s going to load bloody reels into the projectors,” Vic whispered to himself. “What’s the world come to?”

  Knob’s bloody hands loaded up projectors with oozing reels. Jimmy reached into the chest and walked to a projector on a push cart and loaded it up with a bleeding reel as well. Others helped the two, while others were hesitant to touch blood. After they were finished, Knob demanded everybody’s attention. His voice was garbled worse than it had been, the muscles of his throat weakening from the effects of death.

  “The moment we turn on these reels, the dead’s defenses protecting this building from harm will vanish. They’ll be protecting us through the reels instead. We’ve come a long way. I’m sorry to say it’ll be a miracle if we win this battle, but it’s a battle we have no choice but to fight.”

  Vic couldn’t believe he was hearing a motivational speech from a dead porn director.

  “We roll these reels, and whatever comes out of them, they fight what’s outside. We need to buy as much time as we can with these reels running. The longer they run, the more villains get killed. Simple as that. We can’t let the monsters get down here. More people in other cities and across the world are about to do what we’re doing. This is the world’s last stand. We’re fighting fire with fire…so to speak. Movies against movies.”

  “Then I’m going up to help them up there,” Vic insisted. “Give me a gun, give me something. I’m not sitting down here with my thumb up my ass as other people are doing the real fighting.”

  “You can’t leave,” Greg said. “We’ve rigged traps everywhere. No way out. It’s all to buy time for the reels to run.”

  “So there’s no way up there?”

  “You have an important job down here,” Knob insisted. “The reels must keep rolling. It’s our only way to beat them. If the bad guys get down here, somebody has to protect the theatre. If and when the power goes out, somebody has to start up the gas powered generators. Somebody has to fend them off as long as possible.”

  “Then what? We fight, but how do we win?”

  Knob’s corpse face had no expression. “We win by holding on as long as we can.”

  Vic’s face was cut by a snarl. “What kind of an answer is that? I’ve trusted random dead people, mysterious forces and even glowing arrows. I’ve survived all of that only to get more vague bullshit.”

  “It’s not vague bullshit,” Knob argued. “If we want the dead to rest in peace, if you want the living to survive, then you’re going to trust in what I’m telling you.”

  Greg walked up to them, re-directing the conversation. “We have a small stock of weapons. Arm yourself before we start up the films, Vic. Be ready. That’s all you need to know.”

  Greg unloaded the wooden crates stack
ed up against one wall by smacking the edges with a crowbar until they broke into pieces. Artillery was dispersed. AK-47s. M-16s. M-60s. 9mms. MAC-10s. Single shot rifles tipped with bayonets. Axes. K-bar knives. Brass knuckles. Body armor. By the time the collection was doled out, Vic had an AK-47 strapped to his back and a pair of brass knuckles on each fist. Jimmy had a MAC-10 and clutched onto it with a sheepish expression on his face. The young man was terrified.

  Vic did what he could to embolden his friend. “You look like a badass. It’s starting to come natural to you, Jimmy.” He looked out at the crowd of people, about thirty strong. Vic pointed out the woman in her twenties with dyed black hair and tattoos going up and down her arms in sleeves. “That chick’s been eying you all night, buddy. After this shit goes down, I’d go down on her.”

  The talk startled Jimmy. “What?”

  If Jimmy wasn’t nervous before, he was now.

  “Seriously, I’d put the Rug Doctor up to that shit. Clean that carpet, right? Really get her going. You get new privileges when you win the war. We’re going to win, you know that, right? I have my doubts in the assholes running the show, but I have no doubts in us. We’ve made it this far. There’s no reason why we can’t survive the whole thing.”

  Jimmy’s face softened. He searched the crowd for the chick. She was standing next to another woman of a similar age.

  “Was she really looking at me?”

  “Hell yeah. And look, she’s got a hot friend. They’ll have to share you. They’ll take turns sitting on your face.”

  “Vic, stop it. You’re being a creep.”

  “I’m just putting it out there,” Vic said. “You’re going to watch my back. I’m going to watch yours. Then after the dust settles, you’re going to rearrange that pussy. You’re not dying a virgin. Not on my watch.”

  “How’d you know I was a virgin?”

  “A wild guess.”

  Knob and Greg flagged everybody’s attention again. Knob said, “I’m starting up the reels. Say what you need to say to each other. Understand you may or may not survive. Then I want half of you to stay in here inside the theatre with the running reels, and the other half of you I want positioned outside the theatre. Anything comes out of those halls toward the theatres, you shoot to kill. Don’t let any of them get into the theatre.”

  “Here goes,” Vic said to Jimmy. “We watch each other’s backs. Nobody dies. Deal?”

  He extended his hand to Jimmy.

  Jimmy accepted it. “Deal.”

  Vic smiled to himself. He caught Jimmy eyeballing the pair of girls.

  The room stood in silence as one-by-one, the reel projectors were turned on. The images intersected, hitting the theatre screen one on top of the other. It was hard to distinguish what they were viewing, but after a few minutes, Vic soon finally understood why they had dragged the chest all this way.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The upstairs floors were orderly and efficient. Penny focused on the task given her. She was directed to a large conference room. The tables and chairs were emptied out. The windows were boarded up except for the two centers ones that were left shattered and exposed. The plan, Penny would stand with another woman in the room, each of them armed with a 20 gauge rifle. They would open fire on anything that stuck its head inside the room. Boxes of ammunitions stood on a table, alongside six flash grenades in case things got too hairy, too fast. The people in charge told them they were minutes from being attacked. There was too much commotion and too many people scattering about to really question anything.

  The woman Penny stood in the room with was name Sheila Brinkley. She was in her late forties and spoke with a chain smoker’s gruff. Sheila opened up to her as they waited for action.

  “The last two days have been pure hell. I watched my kids be eaten by rats. My husband was shoved into a giant oven and cooked alive by a fucked up chef. I ran from the house, and I kept running. People everywhere were dying. The police weren’t there to help us. The military couldn’t do shit. Please, tell me about something that doesn’t involve death.”

  Penny was put on the spot. The woman had tears in her eyes. Penny had to make whatever she said good. “I left my good-for-nothing boyfriend right before this shit happened. I didn’t even have time to find a decent man.”

  “My husband was a good man,” Sheila said. “Even treated me like a queen. He did everything for me and the kids. That’s a good man. He takes care of you. All men think what women want is so complicated. It’s not. Take care of us, that’s what we want. Treat us like we’re better than we actually are.”

  “Mine didn’t take care of me at all,” Penny said. “His name was Chad. He’d rather stuff his face with hotdogs than pay any attention to me. He couldn’t keep a job either. Mooch asshole.”

  Sheila changed gears. “Do you think the dead really hate us? It’s what everybody keeps talking about. The spirits of the dead are doing this. But do they really hate us? What did we ever do to make them despise us?”

  “Not all of them hate us. Our loved ones don’t hate us.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. The dead persist in misery. They survive in the darkest of places, re-living only pain, terror and loneliness. It’s not fair how the dead stay dead and the living keep on living. Did you ever wonder if your ex-boyfriend was ever depressed? Maybe he ate food to alleviate his sadness. Maybe he had his reasons. Reasons you never cared to figure out, you stupid fucking bitch!”

  Sheila’s face was suddenly like boiling hot wax. Rivulets of flesh melted down her face. Between the notches of boiling, popping fats and tissues, snarled a skeleton.

  “You were so selfish, Penny. Didn’t you ever wonder why I was miserable? You never asked. You only criticized!”

  “Chad!” She screamed in horror. “It can’t be you!”

  “My body writhes in hell, Penny! The dead fucking hate you! I can’t end the pain. But I can inflict my agonies upon you! Oh, how it alleviates my pain to inflict misery on the living. You shall join me very soon! And I will only continue to inflict this pain upon you tenfold, you bitch!”

  Thousands of whispers, screams, taunts and bellows were layered over thousands of other voices, each chanting and berating Penny. “The agonies of the dead, the agonies of the dead, the agonies of the dead, the agonies of the dead, the agonies of the dead, the agonies of the dead, the agonies of the dead…”

  Sheila’s body detonated, spraying something wet that was projected at many miles an hour. Slapped so hard by the rush of hair, Penny struck the wall. Covered in bloody body pieces, she cringed and screamed, only to learn the wall behind her was moving. The walls became a mass of mealworms, earthworms, night crawlers and maggots. Feeling wet slithering bodies and teeth try and tear into her skin, she threw herself against the floor. The wood was being eaten through, the fibers being crunched and reduced to hollow planks. Off the wall now, the creepy things were flooding towards her, the effect a nasty mudslide.

  They were closing in to devour her.

  That was the moment the sound of explosions reverberated outside the building.

  The war was starting up again.

  Vic watched in fascination. He was captivated by the projections on the theatre’s screen. The film was grainy stock footage. War planes belonging to WWI and WWII flew overhead dropping bombs from up high. Soldiers were unloading rifles, machines guns and flame throwers. Military jets and bombers were shown testing out their equipment. Twenty-three projectors were playing at once. Once they played for five minutes, Knob and Greg organized the groups of people.

  “We’ve officially declared war,” Knob announced. “They’ll be kicking down our door any moment now.”

  Vic and Jimmy followed Knob outside the theatre. They stood in position, their guns aimed at the elevator shaft and the hallway, the only two ways into the secret sub-level.

  They heard muffled exp
losions ring out from outside the building and from upstairs.

  Their time to fight would be soon.

  Worms were writhing from the ceiling, dangling like soft hooks. One-by-one, they rained down on her. Each time one would land on her body, Penny would wildly brush it off. She had little time to fight back. The nasty creatures were gathering in numbers on the floor and crawling towards her en masse. Getting up, forcing in a breath of courage, she stomped on what came her way. She reached out to the table lined with flash grenades. Pulling the pin, she closed her eyes and threw it onto the floor.

  PHOOOP!

  One wall was bright with spreading flames. The worms smelled like grease turning black in a hot frying pan. Cooking them, she threw down another flash grenade, and another, and another, until the door out of the room was clear to use. She snatched a 20 gauge and box of bullets and fled.

  Penny thought she was fleeing to safety.

  She was very wrong.

  The hallway was just as dangerous.

  Vic grew tense listening to what was happening above them. Rapid gunfire, people dying in agony, victims fighting to their last breaths, and the sound of shrieking demons, grating laughter, all of it told him he was needed upstairs. He considered running to the elevator, but Knob, who was beside him, told him it was locked.

  “And don’t think about going down that hallway. Traps are rigged. You’ll get yourself killed.”

  “I can’t listening to them die up there. They need my help.”

  “We need you down here,” Knob argued. “If these reels are stopped, there will be even more monsters in here than we can take on. We just have to hold for as long as we can. That’s the battle plan.”

  “But what will that do, holding on?”

  “It’s what the dead on our side want. I know, because I’m dead. I don’t know why exactly, okay? Maybe if we knew exactly why, nobody would want to pitch in on the effort. They would run from here and never look back. And that’d be guaranteed death for everyone. Not a single person would be alive in this world after this war. Everyone would be dead, and that’s what our enemy wants.”