by Alan Spencer
“You have to know something more than that. Tell me what you know if I’m supposed to do what you tell me? What do our efforts add up to?”
The line of people clutching guns eyed Knob with increased interest.
“Similar buildings, or outposts, have been set-up like ours. They’re playing reels in the lowest most part of buildings like we are and fighting them off. It’s our best strategy. This is our last chance at survival. I’m looking for a sign for what it means too. This is the right thing to do, Vic. Please believe me.”
Vic ground his teeth.
He could only stand there and wait for his turn to fight.
That moment would come sooner than anyone in the sub-level realized.
Penny was right outside the door she had just exited moments ago. The room continued to burn, the smoke and flames slowly spreading deeper into the building. Attacks were widespread throughout all the rooms and floors. Did she just hear a drill? The sound of porcelain crunching? Boiling water? Rattling chains? Insects chirping? The continuous sounds of a tomb’s door creaking open? The constant sound of a blade being sharpened against a stone?
No time to think, a man dressed as a greens keeper swung a weed whacker with razor blades attached to the plastic twine. Penny dropped her box of bullets and shot him in the chest. He was thrown down the hall, dropping his insane weapon.
Breaking through the ceiling, a creature reached down to try and grab her. It was an ant the size of a human that reached out with its black feelers. She shot it directly in its oval head, the damage unleashing a milky-yellow ooze. Penny dodged the hot torrent of head guts.
Up ahead, the shadows moved as if they were alive. In the shape of hands, the shadows snatched her rifle and broke it into four pieces and threw the remains aside.
The black danced around her, so she backtracked. The shadows only went so far. The burning flames kept it at bay, it seemed. The light kept her safe. The greens keeper was up again with a hole in his chest. He revved up the weed whacker and was coming for her once again.
The shadows stayed in place. Trapping her.
Any moment, one enemy or the other would kill her.
Beyond the theatre entrance, there was one hallway outlet and an elevator. The elevator remained unused, but the hallway and the channels beyond that roared with activity. Traps went off. Guns popped. Trap doors opened. Whooshes of flames burst repeatedly. Strange explosions, like short-lived firecrackers went off. The hallway that was in eyeshot came alive. Pendulums swung back and forth laced with blades as thick as mirrors.
Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh, swoosh, swoosh, swoosh.
Vic kept his eyes focused. His guts were tight. His muscles clenched. How the monsters reached the sub-level so fast was a mystery.
The battle upstairs continued to rage.
The air harbored a heavy stench of dead flesh. The air was also cold, almost Arctic, and it was blasting from an unnatural, or supernatural, source. Whistles echoing through pipes. Whispers told from dark depths. Screams delivered in wild animal pitch. They all filled the sub-level:
“The agonies of the dead, the agonies of the agonies of the dead, the agonies of the dead, the agonies of the dead, the agonies of the dead…”
Knob called out over the roar, “They’re coming. The spirits of the dead are here. Guard the theatre. Whatever you do, don’t let them near the reels!”
Vic turned to Jimmy. The kid had tears in his eyes. Jimmy dropped his gun to the ground and started walking out into the open space.
“Jimmy, what the hell are you doing?”
Then Vic couldn’t believe his eyes. Jimmy suddenly didn’t matter anymore. The war didn’t matter either. Vic also had tears in his eyes. Now he too was lowering his weapon and following a vision.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The shadows were alive and owned the ability to kill, but they didn’t like the firelight, Penny realized. The greens keeper had no obvious weakness, considering the gaping hole in its chest caused by her gun. Penny had an idea. She kicked at the burning wall next to her and removed a wooden plank. She picked up the non-burning end and swung the hot end at the darkness. She marched through the dark, warding off the deadly shadows. Before she could take on the greens keeper, the nozzle of a shotgun lowered from the ceiling and went off, the greens keeper’s head popping like an oatmeal filled balloon.
Thank God for that trap!
Penny was a streak, dodging, moving, ducking and staying cautious to her surroundings with only a burning plank as a weapon. Behind her was completely on fire. No turning back. Room by room, she witnessed attacks delivered by impossible villains. An Indian with a wild feather headdress, brown loincloth and moccasins was scalping a victim with a hatchet. The Indian charged after Penny next. Pushing herself onward down the narrow hall, a man popped out of another room and pumped the Indian full of M-16 fire. The gunner slipped back into another room, fighting his own battles. Many of the walls were chock full of bullet holes, broken up or reduced to see-through tatters.
A doctor was on the ground standing over six corpses set in a circle. He had cut open their midsections and had stacked their organs into a tall pile. He clutched a heart in each hand. “Damn it, which heart goes to who? I always forget. These mass surgeries always confuse me. Oh well, I’m a medical technician. My educated guess should suffice.”
SNAP!
Penny tumbled onto all fours. A lock of her hair was cut off by an unknown object. Turning around, she caught a backwoodsman dressed in pelts clutching onto a bear trap attached to a long chain. His grimy sneer told her he viewed her as flesh to be taken, perhaps to be worn or sold among other trappers.
Taking another step, the floor opened up and the enemy fell forward, sliding down to another recess. There was a loud drum, then a screech from the trapper. Something had chopped him up.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzt!
The sound of a power drill nearby. A sharp pain radiated at her shoulder. A drill bit poked out from Penny’s right shoulder. She felt hot blood trail down her arm. The pain was a throbbing jolt of electricity. Turning, she saw a man with a tool belt, red shirt and jeans. The fingers on his right hand weren’t fingers.
They were spinning drill bits!
“I’ve come to fix your wiring, lady. I promise to wipe off my feet before coming into your house. So let’s open you up and have a good look-see!”
She was stabbed again through the bicep, the flesh coming away like wet yarn.
Penny had no way to defend herself. Bleeding from two wounds, trapped in the clutches of the Mr. Fix-It killer, she could only challenge herself to come up with something to survive, or else die very soon.
There stood Sarah and Fiona, Vic’s children, out in the open. Just outside the theatre, the two girls were watching him with blank expressions. His ex-wife was posed behind the two girls, caressing them lovingly on the shoulders. Vic called out to them, “Get behind me! It’s not safe out there! They’re on their way right now!” When they didn’t move or respond after repeatedly calling out to them, Vic charged after them. That’s when the ground wasn’t solid anymore. Dirt and grass was under his feet. Headstones and darkness replaced the outside of the theatre. He could see the other people in the room in his peripheral, but only his wife and children mattered.
“I’ll protect you. Come with me.”
His wife’s face bent into evil. “Nothing can save us from the agonies of the grave. We’re dead. You didn’t save us. You let us die, Vic-tor!”
The earth collapsed beneath his wife and children. Dead hands pulled them down, the hands bursting forth from the ground. The three were sucked down into a grave.
“You’re not dead! I can still save you!”
Vic dove into the hole after them.
Held by the throat by one of the workman’s hands, the other tipped with spinning drill bits, Penny knew her final moment was
near. Behind the workman, a spider the size of a compact car smashed through a wall and chewed the face of a screaming woman who pulled the pin on a grenade. That part of the hallway collapsed. A collection of falling rafters tumbled down, then a wall of dust colored by plumes of blood obscured the final moments of that battle.
The doctor Penny saw moments ago was holding a severed head in his hand and was observing the smooth neck wound. “It seems to me you’re suffering from a sore throat…”
Both her ears whizzed with a tunnel effect. Penny’s vision was reduced to a melting of colors. Her skull filled up with painful pinpricks. No air. She was suffocating. Soon she would die. Nothing she could do to save herself. Penny’s limbs felt like she was swimming in wet concrete. Worse, it felt like parts of her were already dead. Penny threw her arm up in one last attempt to fight and gave a shrill scream before the workman had his way with her.
Vic landed on top of his wife in the hole, but she was now the dusty husk of a corpse. Her body was scarecrow-like, rigid and gray fleshed in the long term stages of death. Sarah and Fiona were in the same condition. Vic shrieked in horror.
The children taunted him: “Daddy’s dead next! Daddy’s dead next! Daddy’s dead! Daddy’s soooooooo dead!”
“Don’t say that. No!” The life went out of Vic when the truth set in. This wasn’t his wife. These weren’t his kids. Or if they were, they were manipulated by death. Consumed with hatred for the living. The darkness of the afterlife had its way with them.
Sarah and Fiona leaped on top of him, biting into his arms, chewing into the meat of his forearms, lapping up the blood, moaning in delight by the taste. Hands from the dirt walls burst through, each fully decayed. They were holding him in place. Vic couldn’t escape his cannibalistic children or his insane dead wife.
Dropped to the floor on all fours, Penny was confused as to why she was released. And why the back of her left hand felt like she had broken a few bones. But most importantly, why was the workman howling in agony?
Then she looked up.
The drills from his fingers were cutting through both his eyes. Brains, blood and tissue were flung at high speeds. She had punched the man’s drill fingers into his own face!
Penny screamed at him, “Fuck you, that’s what you get!”
The wall next to her was broken up from a previous battle. She could view outside through the thick clouds of fog. War planes were dropping bombs, while other planes were machine gunning the monsters and creatures that lurked outside on foot. A giant octopus the size of a skyscraper reached up with its tendril hands to latch onto a plane and crush it. A mixed collection of creatures that resembled Bigfoot, silverback gorillas and sea creatures with morbid fish heads were trying to pound their way into the building, fording through the legion of green army tanks. Red eyes flew around up in the sky among moth creatures and reptilian dinosaurs in flight. Across the street, a man dressed in a black cape was turning a knob on a large box and out one side of the box came shambling corpses that had stitches going up and down their bodies. They had button eyes. Their movements were stiff, as if they were taxidermy people. Hundreds of them were scattered about attacking people. Murdering them.
A preacher was clutching his Bible and shouting, “The time for the damned to condemn the living is at hand!”
Lightening streaked the sky, blowing up a man about to toss a grenade at the preacher.
Women dressed in sexy lingerie paraded about with their mouths open six inches wide and six inches tall. They simply put their mouths on top of people’s heads and enveloped them. They would pull back, and that person’s head would be gone down to the neck. Stumped. Penny heard someone scream, “SUCK HEADS! Watch out!”
An anaconda punched up through the street from the sewer. The anaconda kept its mouth open, while chewing, chomping and eating anything and anyone it could snag.
A metal cable ran from one end of the fog to the other. Corpses were hung by the neck, flapping in the wind like drying laundry.
The sky burned like a cigarette cherry. Sounds of agony played out in the sky like an unending soundtrack. Smells crossed her nose. Burning bodies. Rich soil. Embalming fluid. Moth balls and perfume. Smells someone who was dead would smell.
Penny was entranced by the scene for so long, she didn’t see the next thing coming at her. Something wet wrapped around her throat. Looking ahead, it extended for an entire hallway. Ten more people were caught on the line, each gripped by their throats. The rope was actually made of intestines. The intestines were coming from a shirtless burly man’s navel. The enemy stood at the end of the hallway.
The Intestinator was pulling them forward to certain death one-by-one!
Vic’s AK-47 blasted and barked, breaking corpse hands from their wrists. Dust and bone spread like heavy powder. When one hand fell dead, another would replace it. Hundreds of hands worked to achieve Vic’s demise. Apologies formed in his mind. Sorrow for his dead family. Regrets for the mistakes he’d made in his life. Then the intense pain cast out every dooming thought from his mind.
Both his forearms had teeth marks. His children were beginning to break skin and reach meat. Their faces danced with maggots. This couldn’t be them. Bodies didn’t rot that fast. Corpses didn’t eat the living. Corpses didn’t live.
The gun was wrenched from his hands.
No choice now. Vic shaped his hands into fists. Cocking his elbow back, shaking the girls off his arms, he unleashed the hardest punch he could muster while being held down by numerous corpse hands. His fists were a freight train through their skulls. Porcelain shatters. Worms for brains spattered high. He shook teeth and mandible pieces and black blood from his fists. The girls and his wife tumbled onto the dirt ground with a massive hole in each of their faces.
Coming alive, Vic ripped the dead hands off of his throat.
“The agonies of the dead, the agonies of the dead, the agonies of the dead, the agonies of the dead…”
He grew sick of hearing the chanting and shouted over them, “The perseverance of the living! The perseverance of the living! The perseverance of the living!”
Vic crawled up the wall, determined to protect the theatre.
When he reached the top of the grave, a hand extended to help him up. It grabbed him by the arm and freed him out of the deep hole. He was back in the sub-level of the building. The theatre. The people were spread out, fighting their own personal demons, including Jimmy, who was suspended nine feet in the air by an invisible force.
The swinging pendulum hallway was overrun with dead corpses, insect creatures and alien beings he couldn’t identify. Few monsters survived; piles of hacked up limbs formed in a hill at the mouth of the hallway. The reels inside the theatre were still running. The plan was still working.
Knob was the one to help him out of the grave. He was a crawling torso. His legs were missing. A blood trail was painted from where he crawled from and where the enemy presently stood.
Knob was frantic, shouting, “It’s up to you, Vic! Keep up this fight as long as you can. We can’t give up. Guard the theatre. Don’t let them destroy the reels!”
Knob’s face melted into caramel bullets. The rest of him deflated and boiled until all that was left was a puddle of black.
A voice from across the room spoke. “It looks like it’s just you and me, Victor.”
The horror villain called him by his name. He was a lumberjack looking man with an axe large enough to cut through the largest of trees.
The Splitter.
He recognized that voice.
It was his father’s.
Chapter Thirty-Five
The intestine was thick as an electrical cable and dripped with a clear KY jelly fluid. Penny couldn’t pry it loose from her neck. The harder she tried, the tighter the visceral noose became. The ceiling cracked, and she could see chainsaw heads cut through the wood. The room to her left,
a dentist held a pair of pinch clamps to someone’s mouth and was removing teeth: “All rotten! You haven’t been flossing!”
An old lady limped toward Penny with a cleaver in her hand. Her eyes were closed, as if asleep. She was chewing on a wad of raw pink meat. She snored between bites. The cleaver hand raised itself up high. Penny kicked the woman in the chest and sent her reeling backward. When the woman snapped open her eyes, she cried out, “What’s in my mouth? Oh God, what’s in my mouth?”
Penny was getting dizzy again, fighting the urge to pass out, to allow her weak body to rest and give up the battle. That was until she caught the man who was the first in line among those trapped by the intestines. The intestines wrapped around his throat and tightened. The guts popped the guy’s head off. A generous arterial spurt deflected off of the ceiling.
Digging her nails into the intestine, it was too wet, too slippery, to do any damage. Penny had no leverage. No air to breathe. She was spinning in place, losing her senses, and her eyes seemed to be playing tricks on her, but deep down, she knew what she was seeing was real. She was going to be decapitated by a motherfucking intestine.
To the left of Penny, a naked woman pressed her chest against a victim’s face. Both tits were hideous mouths. Women in red spattered wedding dresses fired shotguns. Aliens in moon suits were humping victims; the moment they inserted their probes, the person lit up as if a giant light bulb burned inside of them. Arteries and veins would bulge from their faces and they’d die, and then the aliens would dismount only to find another person to mount.
You have to fight back!
Wake up!
Don’t drift on me.
Another head POPPED. The head hit the ground, and what looked like the spiky balls from a gumdrop tree rolled on the ground and ate the flesh and brains from it. Seconds later, the bared skull struck the wall, and a demon fist punched through the wood to steal that too.
Another POP.
