by Alan Spencer
She wasn’t sure how to react to her corpse uncle doting over her.
It didn’t get any better when the other corpse got up from the ground and said hello.
Billy asked, “And who are you?”
“I’m Max Alabaster. We’re going to save humanity’s asses, like you said. Get ready. This is it.”
Billy wasn’t bothered by the corpses. “So I guess the dead brought me here in case you two didn’t pan out as back up?”
Max scoffed. “We were killed by dinosaurs? What’s everybody else’s excuse for failing?”
Penny couldn’t speak. Shock was setting in, and it was setting in deep.
It didn’t help when Billy removed his backpack and revealed the severed head.
Then the elevator’s buzzer dinged.
They arrived on the sub-level.
Vic had one last idea to fight back. “Shut the theatre door, Jimmy. Lock it. I can take this suited fucker in a fist fight. I’m getting my strength back.”
Jimmy didn’t respond to his commands.
“Um, Vic…you’ve gotta see this.”
Vic didn’t have a chance. Mr. Ratchet produced a stretch of wire on two wooden handles. The man was so fast, he snuck up behind Vic and wrapped the wire around his throat and started choking him.
Mr. Ratchet laughed, “So sorry, but it looks like you won’t be making it for the second half of this double feature, Mr. Greaves!”
Several things happened simultaneously. Billy cradled the severed head in his arm like a football. Then Billy told Penny to pick up the two Uzis from his backpack and unload them on the monsters waiting right outside of the elevator. Jules and Max picked up the box of bloody reels and hurled them into the crowd.
“Cover me!” Billy shouted, throwing himself out of the elevator and gunning it past the standing villains with the severed head tucked in his arms. “I’m going in!”
Jules and Max kept throwing the reels out into the crowd. The monsters stopped chasing Billy and grabbed the reels, tearing them to shreds, pulling them out of their casing, doing anything to destroy them.
Seeing the hordes of villains, Penny opened fire from two Uzis at once.
What good it would do when the guns ran dry?
Penny didn’t know what else to do but to keep pulling the trigger.
Jimmy watched the elevator open from across the theatre and the man charged out with a severed head tucked under his arm. The stranger moved with stealth as the villains were busy destroying the reels being thrown into the crowd of busy monsters. Each enemy seemed pre-occupied with destroying the strips by eating, shredding and fighting over them like hungry savages. Jimmy wasn’t sure what to make of the scene, but everything stopped when Jimmy caught Vic on his knees as Mr. Ratchet was strangling him. Vic’s face was burning red. So close to complete asphyxiation. The moment Vic fell over dead, Mr. Ratchet eyed Jimmy and started toward him with the same twine poised to strangle him too.
Penny’s hands and arms were covered in gobs of blood. Blood that belonged to her uncle and the stranger named Max Alabaster. Together, she worked in tandem with the two corpses to hurl every reel into the throng of monsters. Minutes later, the reels were all thrown out. Nothing left for them to hold off the monsters, she realized. The Uzis went dry after only a minute without any reloads. The two helpful corpses’ flesh melted and boiled off the bones, leaving Penny alone and defenseless.
The B-movie villains were coming right for her.
Jimmy’s throat was constricted by the twine. Mr. Ratchet was so fast, wrapping the cord around his neck and tugging it back. Unable to breathe, gawking at Vic’s lifeless body on the ground, he knew his time to die was soon.
Then from across the theatre, someone called out, “Hey, Ratchet! The credits are rolling. Your movie’s over you crazy son-of-a-bitch!”
Mr. Ratchet vanished. There one moment, then gone. Even the weapon over Jimmy’s throat vanished. Coughing and sputtering to recover, Jimmy crawled toward Vic on all fours. He kneeled over Vic’s motionless body trying to figure out if he could do anything to save his friend.
What am I supposed to do?
He’s dying. No, he’s dead.
Resuscitate him.
Mouth-to-mouth.
Give him mouth-to-mouth.
Jimmy gave Vic mouth to mouth.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Out of options, Penny tried to close the elevator to save herself from the incoming horde. Hitting the buttons did no good. The buttons were lit one moment, then they went dark the next. Whatever forces brought the two corpses and the reels here had been depleted.
The closest enemy to her was a man in a World War I gas mask, dressed in a brown burlap bag, and aiming a blow torch at the elevator. The enemy was seconds from turning the elevator into a pressure cooker.
Billy Carton chose the nearest movie projector inside the theatre and stood there a moment trying to decide how to mount the severed head of Stan Merle Sheckler onto the device. Stan Merle Sheckler was a washed-up horror movie director who’d unwittingly brought the B-movies back to life in Chicago. Sheckler died that night in Chicago, but when the recent war broke out, it was the corpse of Sheckler who located Billy and literally gave him instructions on how to fight the villains. Then the director cut his own head off with a cleaver and handed Billy his head. Sheckler told Billy to take his severed head to New Jersey, and that the dead would show them the way and protect them, even though his wife didn’t survive in the process.
Billy had come too far to turn back. Before he could stress over what to do with the head, cords of muscle from Sheckler’s neck stump latched onto the nearest projector. The cords strapped Stan’s head onto the machine tight, the action breaking his jaw, cracking his skull, the eyes oozing out the sockets, and the brains fizzing out his ears. The transformation was complete. Both of Stan’s eyes became the lens of the movie projector. Then the head lit up. Burning bright, Stan’s eyes projected movie scenes direct from the master of schlock’s brain.
The click of a flame flower.
The trigger was pulled.
Penny shut her eyes and braced herself for an agonizing death.
Vic opened his eyes with Jimmy’s lips pressed to his mouth. Hot bad breath was being forced into his mouth.
Jimmy withdrew his mouth from Vic’s. “Whoa, you’re not dead.”
“No fucking shit I’m not dead! I only passed out. Didn’t you check my pulse?”
Through the theatre doors, huddles of B-movie villains burst into the room with them. Stranger yet was the reel projector bursting with colors out of every orifice of a severed head. The guy standing in the Superman shirt stood back from the projector and proudly declared, “WE HAVEN’T LOST THE WAR!”
A woman dressed as a geisha in a long red kimono approached the guy in the Superman shirt and shoved over a dozen acupuncture needles into his body. Whatever the needles were made of, it caused the man to double over as his circulatory system burst out his flesh and left the man as a wad of nasty pulp.
They hadn’t lost the war, Vic thought, but they hadn’t won it either.
The B-movie characters were closing in.
Any second, they’d be wasted.
Penny was startled by the new round of gunshots. By the elevator stood a young-faced cowboy in a hat, brown leather chaps and snakeskin boots. The cowboy slung a six shooter in each hand. He had shot up the flame flower gas mask guy, saving Penny from a flame bath.
“They call me Brown Satchel, ma’am. Pleased to be of service. I can’t turn down a face as per’ty as yer’s.”
A woman was right behind the cowboy in a black BDSM outfit. She had long wild black hair and cradled a leather whip in each hand. The whips were covered in steel studs crafted into points. Penny dubbed the chick Sadist Girl. The two characters went to battle with the monsters outside the elevat
or. Penny stayed in the elevator and knelt down for cover. And checked her sanity!
Vic and Jimmy watched as the villains were stalled from entering the theatre any farther. The line of persons blocked them. They materialized out of thin air. Jimmy gawked in wide-eyed fascination, while Vic struggled to wrap his mind around what was happening.
“That’s the last child you’ll eat, Bitch Granny!” Coming down from up high as if performing a high dive at an Olympic swimming pool appeared a hairy man in a blue Speedo. He was doing a cannonball on top of the old woman that was chewing a wad of flesh in her mouth. When the diver landed, the granny’s upper body burst into pieces.
Jimmy rejoiced, “That’s from Diving Dynamo! He’s that swimmer who takes down the drug cartel that does business at the public pool.”
“He’s what?”
Jimmy ignored Vic’s question.
Jimmy was lifted from his previous hopeless outlook. He thought to himself with building excitement: Look at them, they’re here to save us! That’s from the movie Bitch Fist. And look, he’s from Action Reaction. Check out that bad ass over there from Grenade. Oh my God, it’s the old man from Preacher vs. Creature. Fuck yeah, there’s the hero from Bullseye. Oh wow! Now you’re talking. It’s the bad ass from Dirty Poncho. And there’s the tough broads from Shell Shock. Holy fucking shit! No team is complete without the Pom Pom Cheerleaders.
Hero after B-movie hero were spit out onto the killing field.
Jimmy bent down next to Vic, covered his head and listened to the war rage:
“Now it’s your turn to scream.”
“They punch in, but they don’t punch out.”
“Problem—solution!”
“Big Daddy Grenade’s got you covered, pretty baby.”
“This is for every teacher you killed in cold-blooded murder.”
“I don’t bitch slap. I BITCH FIST!”
“Can’t win ’em all—except for this one!”
“Suck on it all the way down.”
“Stay in the cave where you belong!”
“GO TEAM GO!”
“God’s on a break. Dirty Poncho will save you instead.”
“This is for everybody you hung up on a clothesline.”
“Cut and run, baby. Whooooayeeeeeeah!”
“And close the door on your way out.”
“This gate’s FOREVER CLOSED.”
“I now douse this crib in holy water. SATAN BE DAMNED!”
“By the law, by the gun, BYE-BYE.”
“Piss me off, yeah—g’head!”
“You think that’s bad, Stella. Try living with your in-laws for a year!”
“You flicked my Bic for the last time.”
“This is for my wife, my children, my community. You hear me, dog breath?”
“I’m bustin’ your beak for bustin’ my balls.”
“Stare at your tits? STARE AT MINE!”
“You just punched in your one-way ticket to hell.”
“Take two and call me in the morning.”
“You missed your flight, bitch!”
“Point. Shoot. SHIT!”
“Binge and purge. Rinse and spit. Suck it down and die!”
“I’m gonna have to mop and dust pan your ass.”
“Tah tah.”
“Bye now.”
“This golf course has been cleansed.”
“This butcher’s porked his last chop.”
“DIE, Maggot Molly, DIE!”
“MOMMA SAID ROAST YOU!”
“How do you kill a spider? YOU PULL OFF ITS LEGS!”
“Au revoir, PUS HEADS!”
“Swallow this!”
“Taste this!”
“Suck this!”
“Sit on it!”
“When I’m done with you, nobody will ever have to lock their dogs up ever again.”
“There ain’t enough body bags for the job I just pulled.”
“It takes two. Yeah…two.”
“We do this TOGETHER!”
Walls were shredded. Blood spattered high. Vic and Jimmy stood ankle deep in red, the tide ever-rising. Chucks of monsters, melting innards, skulls of impossible creatures, bodies of heroes, men of valor, women of courage, the sea of red kept splashing up against them and lapping the walls. The ceiling broke in sections. Swimming in more red, they were chest deep in it. Vic lost sight of Jimmy. He lost sight of the B-movie heroes kicking ass. Everything had turned to red. Whatever was coming of the battle, it was coming to a head.
And it was impossible to know which side had won.
Penny was pinned to the corner of the elevator as blood sprayed at her. Trapped in place by the raging tide of red, she was drowning in blood. No end of it in sight. Her thrashing limbs grew weaker. She had nothing left inside of her to fight with anymore. Wherever she was going, she feared the dead. Penny feared the afterlife. Feared the agonies of the dead would become her own. Feared her last breath. Feared drowning in the blood of others. She let her body go despite her emotions. The war was over. Penny closed her eyes and let herself die.
Vic was spinning upside down, right side up, and battered multiple times against unknown surfaces. The tide of blood was impossible to fight. The building was like a commercial vessel taking on water. He righted himself against a wall. Ahead of him, he caught the old man in the suit approach him.
Mr. Ratchet.
The gnarled and pissed expression was elevated by the man’s slowly melting skin. Active boils and fizzies for flesh.
“You! YOU!” Mr. Ratchet kept accusing. “You made us lose the war, you son-of-a-bitch! It’s all of your fault! HOW DARE YOU USE THE REELS AGAINST US!”
Mr. Ratchet already had Vic in both hands. Vic was held down under the blood, again struggling for his life. The crushing power of the villain’s grip served to keep Vic under the red.
Where was Jimmy?
Where were all the movie heroes who showed up?
He was on his own, fighting for a precious gasp of air. Going dizzy, growing weaker, Vic started having visions, what he could see play out in the blood.
The military had taken back The Golden Gate Bridge as a hulking sea-creature tumbled into the water, melting from the inside out. The streets of Paris, zombies were crumbling into puddles of black mess until they dissolved completely. Stockholm, Sweden, rats the size of a Winnebago suddenly erupted into pink matter as local citizens played action movies reels against the walls of a police station. In Japan, beetles with human heads and spinning garbage disposal mouths, vanished into thin air as their military kicked in doors and destroyed reels playing the deadly horror movies. In New York City, the werewolf driving the subway car caught on fire, burning to a crisp in five seconds. Then the original conductor re-took the subway car, pumping his fist in victory. Men in leisure suits with elbow pads stalked the castles of Romania with giant vampire stakes and barrels of holy water, slaughtering the den of vampires inside. The red blood flowing down Niagara Falls was replaced by normal water again. The safari tour in Africa was saved from the rabid lions and cannibal zebras when hunters with elephant guns and rocket launchers took care of business. The Meat Wagon, a huge truck made of active meat grinders, suddenly broke down in the streets of Iceland. The townspeople threw Molotov cocktails at the truck until the driver and the vehicle were both put out of commission. The ant attack in Germany came to a halt as each ant dressed in human clothing was mysteriously vaporized. Vic watched in fascination as every part of the world, the B-movie threat was squashed by people playing movie reels.
Vic fought the grip over his neck seeing people survive. The war was nearly over. People would survive. Humanity would continue on. He too could fight on to live another day. Vic rose up and snapped the arm from the body of Mr. Ratchet in one pull. Vic head-butted him, knocking Mr. Ratchet onto his back. He di
ssolved in the blood, until the last thing Vic saw was the man’s red bow tie go up in smoke.
That didn’t end the battle for his life.
The blood level in the room kept rising. A wave struck Vic, throwing him up against the wall, and pulling him under. The waves were like an unforgiving ocean, battering him left and right. So close to losing air, he was suddenly lifted back up to the surface.
“Oh God!”
Half-melted corpses, skeletal hands, dripping-fleshed saviors, were keeping Vic afloat. Corpses of those who died protecting the reels in the theatre congregated around Vic’s body. New corpses would show up right when the corpses helping him completely dissolved.
Floating forward, Vic was being ushered in a specific direction.
“The tide will carry you/the spirits of evil have faltered/the forces of good/the will of the living/our energy outlasted their evil soul energy/the evil has depleted itself/it may be centuries before they return/return they will one day/weakened to the point they will remain in their dark places for now/replenishing their energies/one day they shall return/take our warnings seriously, Victor Greaves/humanity has bought themselves time/must prepare the world for the next time/the living will never be safe/prepare for the next time/Victor Greaves, we leave you to fight the next war.”
When Vic slammed into a wall, fell into a hole and stayed pinned in place, he finally realized he was in an elevator. Blood filled the elevator, pouring in. Jimmy lay on one corner, fighting for his life. He too saw Vic and his face brightened.
The elevator buttons suddenly it up. Vic could barely read them from the blood spraying into the elevator. The buttons were all numbers, but one button read: SAFETY.
Vic punched it. The elevator doors slammed closed. They shot up many floors, the elevator going impossibly fast. The blood was draining from the floor. When the blood was all gone, a woman’s body appeared. She was flaccid on the ground.
Penny Baxter.
Jimmy eyed the woman’s body. “Is she dead?”
Vic leaned down and checked for pulse and breath. He didn’t feel breath. No pulse.
