Crime Rave

by Sezin Koehler

  Just outside the emergency exit the Roswell Institute hybrids listen as the second group of soldiers fail.

  Two more soldiers emerge from behind closed doors. Lisa Wolverton, weregirl, launches herself over the piling mound of dead bodies and lands on his head, snapping his neck with her werepaws. She howls a sound that puts chills in the air.

  Karma Devi and silver-eyed Connie Jones drag bodies and begin stacking them in the hallway, making an obstacle course any other intruders from the fire exit will have to further navigate. They join the rest of the survivors in loose battle formation by the blob’s room.

  Lola Calavera is in stealth mode and spies on the final group of the extraction team out in the hallway.

  “What the fuck are these things, Colonel?” Gustave II growls into his mic. Ripper Ransom is silent as a whore in church, enjoying the carnage. “Colonel Ransom, do you read me? Copy. Orders, sir.” Gustave II’s heart beats with panic.

  Ransom’s voice pipes through, “You have your orders, son of a bitch! Bring all of them to me or don’t expect to live.”

  Gustave II looks at Tiburona, whose teeth are gnashing so hard she’s dripping with her own blood.

  Jason Mars backs away from the group, shaking his head. I lost my dick already to a human freak like these, I’m not sacrificing anything else in The Alamo Redux.

  Trixter the coyote god and Growl the werewolf spring into full-fledged battle modes, screaming as their bones break into formation.

  Only Jekyll stands still, a living statue.

  “Shouldn’t you, like, be hulking out or whatever?” Gustave II shouts at her.

  Jekyll shakes her massive head. “Ripper’s orders. I’m the last resort.”

  “Okay then—and this includes you Jason, you fucking pussy—we’re going in on three. One. Two. Three!”

  Expecting a barrage of violence the team of hybrids are surprised to see the survivors have retreated toward the end of the hallway. The only thing that stands between them is the pile of dead bodies artfully arranged to make it as difficult as possible for the extraction team to do their final extracting.

  Trixter’s ears prick up. “Something’s behind that door.”

  Red Feather’s skin turns to gooseflesh as he stares at Trixter. Could it be? How could it be?

  “Iktomi?”

  Trixter hasn’t been called his true name in decades and his guard drops. Red Feather backs away, down the corridor, out of the sightline of Trixter’s companions. Trixter makes his way towards the detective, the fight leaving him as fast as it arrived.

  The extraction team raises their eyebrows, but are distracted by the group of smirking survivors, who taunt the Roswell Institute soldiers.

  The werewolf Growl’s shackles rise at the sight of the weregirl Trip.

  Jekyll forces her heart to slow, though the sight of Prime Target Chamelia threatens to override her adrenaline levels.

  “What? Scared of a bunch of unarmed girls?” Lola Calavera hoots, her nails in six-inch form in front of her.

  “And a vampire!” Icarus adds.

  Tashi’s mouth drops open. “You guys, that’s the motherfucker who raped me! TWICE!” She points at Jason Mars, who wishes there was a word for the anger and humiliation he feels.

  “Oh you’re going down, bitch,” Karma screams, twirling her scalpels at Jason.

  Growl can’t help but laugh. “You lost your dick to that little thing?” The remaining clones Tranq, Meat, Buffalo Bill, and Glock snicker, pushing Jason Mars to the back. “We’ll save you for your girlfriend for last.”

  “Fuck you, assholes!” Jason Mars begins throwing wild punches that don’t even come close to the clones. Jekyll pushes him against the wall and holds him there.

  “I’m gonna kill you for real this time, you purple-eyed bitch!” Jason’s voice rises an octave and makes his colleagues laugh harder.

  “I fucking dare you, you dickless wonder! What else you want me to take from you this time, motherfucker?” Tashi vibrates with rage and Chamelia holds her back.

  “Not yet, Tashi.”

  Trying to regain control of the situation Gustave II mounts the pile of dead bodies, displaying his authority. “Everyone down on your knees, hands behind your head, and nobody gets hurt!” He shouts, croc mouth spitting hungry foam.

  “Fuck you.” NRG releases a volley of knives so thick the survivors lose sight of the soldiers for a moment.

  Expecting NRG’s opening move, the hybrids have activated the Roswell Institute’s newest shield technology. Her knives bounce to the floor, useless

  “Come and get us, twat muffins!” Karma Devi shrills, a harridan from hell, scalpels waving in front of her.

  The hybrids roar and charge, infuriated by the knowing smiles on the survivors’ faces.

  Red Feather and Trixter, otherwise known as Iktomi, the Lakota god, square off down the hall. A silence has fallen around them as they contemplate each other. Time stands still.

  “What are you doing here?” Red Feather asks in Lakota.

  “I’m trapped in this human body. A spell.” Iktomi replies.

  “But how?”

  “These people have the bad magic.”

  “How long?”

  “Too long.”

  “Can I help you?”

  Iktomi nods, the saddest acquiescence Red Feather has ever seen. “Kill me.” He points to his heart.

  Red Feather feels a tear slide down his face, it takes everything in his heart not to sob. He pulls out a cigarette and leaves the offering. “I am sorry I cannot do more.”

  “You are doing everything.”

  Red Feather raises his gun, but can’t bring himself to pull the trigger. When Atticus closes his eyes to pray Iktomi blesses him with the most grotesque vision of his life. All the things The Institute did to him in captivity, all the things they made him do, all the ways he was forced to betray himself, prisoner in a human body forced to do the evil will of white men. Red Feather opens his eyes, the sob he was holding back comes out in a wheeze, hit with the anguish Iktomi has been living with for all these years. He knows what he must do.

  “Thank you, my son.” Iktomi puts his hands in front of him, palms up, and trains his gaze on Red Feather.

  Red Feather doesn’t blink. He aims for the god’s heart and pulls the trigger.

  The human shell falls to the floor and Iktomi rises out, up and away, like a curl of smoke. He reverts to his spirit shape, grateful to be rid of the Roswell Institute and its spiritual chains.

  Red Feather falls to the ground and weeps in a way he hasn’t since his grandfather died. Time reverts back to normal, and the sounds of fighting fill his ears anew.

  Chamelia has her arms out, breathing steady, the group behind her.

  “What do you think, Tashi? Want some one-on-one time with that asshole before we open this door of whoop-ass on them?”

  Tashi flashes back to when Jason Mars raped her, the rage she felt, every muscle in her body tightening. She wants more than anything to snap his neck with her bare hands, tear at his face with her teeth, she wants to breathe smoke over his dead body.

  The group looks at her expectantly.

  “Fuck it. Let’s just get these guys dead, and the fast way. Open the door.” Tashi lets go of her anger and feels a mountain fall from her thin shoulders. Fighting him is not worth dying, she remembers how strong he is, and how quickly his body regenerates.

  “You’re the boss,” Chamelia says, though everyone knows that’s far from true.

  Lola Calavera reappears, breathless. “Those cabrones are scared fucking shitless. And they don’t even know what we have in there!” She laughs, a borderline hysterical sound from the adrenaline coursing through her body.

  “Our reputations clearly
precede us,” NRG smirks, and flips the bird to the remaining group of hybrids.

  “Fuck YOU, cunts!” Jason Mars yells back, his voice high-pitched and pathetic.

  Chamelia steps forward. “Listen here, Roswell fucktards. We’re going to give you one chance, and one chance alone, to retreat back to the fucking circle of hell where you came from. You want my advice? Get out of here, shit waffles!”

  Tiburona the shark girl has her eyes on Asha, who flies back and forth above the group’s head. Tiburona takes a few steps forward. The croc boy follows, planting himself in front of her. He’s team leader. He goes first, goddammit.

  “You know we can’t do that,” Gustave II says, fear creeping into his two stomachs, wishing he could do otherwise.

  Tiburona clocks the bird girl and makes a sudden lunge when Asha gets to big for her britches and flies in range of the Roswell hybrids, taunting them. Tiburona snaps at Asha’s feet as she screams and squawks, a moment of blind terror when the shark girl grabs her foot and pulls her from mid-air.

  “Asha! Dammit!” Chamelia screams.

  Lola goes back into stealth mode and slashes at the shark girl, her nails not sharp enough to penetrate the woman’s tough hide, but good enough to distract her away from Asha, who flies back to the safety of the group.

  “Sorry, guys!” Asha chirp-trills, breathless, and nursing deep scratches of her own on her left leg.

  Tiburona roars as she fights her invisible assailant, her shark mouth widening so the survivors can see her several rows of teeth. Silver-eyed Connie Jones imagines she can smell blood on the shark girl’s breath. Connie’s not wrong, Icarus the vampire can actually smell it and it makes him hungry again.

  “Lola! Enough!” Chamelia orders, and Lola returns to the group, flushed and with a few wounds of her own marking her chest.

  Secrete still has her hand on the door that barely contains the blob. “Now?” Her voice hysterical.

  “Not yet!” Chamelia shouts.

  “Now?!” Secrete feels a rumbling from behind the door.

  Chamelia shakes her head. “Not yet!”

  “Something’s happening!” The doorknob turns under Secrete hand’s no matter how hard she holds it back. “I can’t hold it anymore!” Secrete pulls her entire weight back against the door and feels the wood begin to buckle.

  KABOOM.

  The blob—since grown into a pink, squid-like creature that occupies the entire room, the center of its belly lined with teeth in a hungry maw—breaks through the door, throwing back the group of survivors who tumble to the ground, scrambling away from the protoplasmic mass.

  The extraction team hybrids, now stopped in their tracks, get the thing’s undivided attention.

  The beast’s tentacles break off in pieces and the first clone to bite it is Buffalo Bill, wailing as the bulbous substance eats through his skin, dissolving anywhere it touches, growing ever bigger in bulging pustules.

  “What IS this?! Get it OFF ME!” Buffalo Bill pulls at the substance, which makes it take even stronger root of his body.

  The rest of the extraction team back up as another section of the blob blocks the hallway, taking up its entire length and still expanding.

  “Colonel Ransom, are you reading this? What the fuck is this thing?” Gustave II says as the team moves back, trying not to make any sudden movements. The gamma torches don’t work but to make the thing angrier.

  The blob lurches and taunts them, launching its tentacles every so often, making the hybrids shout and jump further back. The thing feints and Jekyll isn’t fast enough. It grabs her huge frame by a leg the size of a ten-year pine and thrusts it into the toothed maw. She doesn’t have time for last words before she’s dissolved.

  The blob has become so enormous—as if responding to the poison energy brought by the Roswell Institute—sections of its mass begin bursting through the hospital walls.

  Out in the hallway, another tentacle breaks off and attaches itself to Growl. In moments all that’s left of the werewolf is a puddle of slime.

  Ransom’s reverie is broken while watching the footage and he finally finds his voice. “Retreat, motherfuckers! Retreat!”

  “Copy that!” Gustave II yells back. “Retreat!” Gustave II’s voice is hoarse. “Retreat!”

  But he’s just talking to himself. Jason Mars has already hightailed it up to the waiting spacecraft and the shark girl Tiburona is close behind him.

  Gustave II turns and runs, the devil on his tail and catching up.

  Red Feather feels the floor shake from the walls caving in as the blob continues its ascent after the Roswell Instituters and snaps out of his shock. He and Chamelia herd the survivors down the staff stairwell, not forgetting to collect Una O’Doole from her closet hiding place. Red Feather throws the unconscious girl over his shoulder and hustles down the stairs while the blob chases after the remaining members of the Roswell Institute extraction team who have made it back to their ship on the roof.

  But not without one more passenger: The blob leaps and attaches itself to the spacecraft. It’s still growing and still hungry.

  8:00 PM LAPD Headquarters

  The switchboard lights up with the news of the attack on Spruce-Musa Hospital along with the dozens of LAPD and SWAT casualties. LAPD walls rumble as every cop, detective, SWAT, and bomb squad member is called to duty.

  Closed circuit TV from the hospital roof reveals body-armored individuals and what appears to be a spacecraft out of an Orson Welles film carrying the militants away with what can only be described as The-Blob-come-to-life attached to the craft.

  Video surveillance from the hospital fourth floor reveals a story too bizarre for any of the cops to comprehend, save for a sci-fi double feature. The fight between the survivors and humanoids, and the emerging blob, growing and spreading out into the city.

  Reports come in that the blob—now stadium-sized—moves in a lazy crawl through Beverly Hills and makes its way through West Hollywood.

  Human casualties are at a minimum as the protoplasmic entity moves through the city at a slug’s pace. Oddly enough, the only accounted dead are people with criminal records or suspicion of criminal activity: A pedophile recently released from prison, a wife-beater whose wife refused to press charges, a fraternity brother accused of multiple date rapes, and dozens of others. As if the blob senses criminality, seeking and plucking evildoers from their own homes and the streets.

  Ammonium phosphate worked in the movie, and it’s working here, too. There just hasn’t been enough to put a dent in the thing yet.

  There will be.

  Fire departments from as far as Palm Springs send trucks out as the blob continues to grow and devour each part of LA it touches. Culver City, Hollywood, Inglewood, El Segundo, and Venice Beach are now memories, as the thing moves its way southwest across Los Angeles County, missing the LAPD headquarters by only a few blocks in its apparent push to reach the Pacific Ocean.

  Katie Hernandez, Channel 5 News

  You’ve been on this story since it broke early this morning. You were the first to report on survivors walking away from the wreckage, your vantage point in the station’s ’copter ideal until they shut down the airspace over Los Angeles.

  You couldn’t give two shits about a no fly zone now, as now an even bigger story breaks and you’re gonna be up there to see it. You watch as a pink mass covers the city of your birth, leaving little in its wake but destruction and slime.

  You watch fire truck after fire truck spraying the creature with a chemical that makes parts of it scream and retreat.

  Your ’copter is joined by fire department water dispensers, dropping more of the chemical atop the blob. It’s working. Just not fast enough.

  The blob makes its way west, toward the water.

  You watch as portions trail into the ocean, subme
rging in the choppy nighttime waves. From what you can see by the huge swath of dark Los Angeles—city of lights—the creature has taken out large chunks from Beverly Hills, up to Hollywood, through Downtown LA and back south towards the beaches. A good thirty percent of Los Angeles along the path of the ten freeway has gone black.

  As if the loss of all the young Angelenos in the Crane Mansion Massacre weren’t enough, now this.

  You film. You report.

  Even as you begin coughing up blood from breathing in the fire department chemicals you don’t stop.

  The station feeds your report live across the United States.

  It’ll be days before the rest of the country learns this is not an elaborate War of the Worlds-style hoax, some horrible Hollywood-driven Hallowe’en trick.

  You won’t be there to see it, or get your Pulitzer Prize for journalism. The chemicals you and the crew breathe in prove fatal, and your helicopter crashes into the blob. The creature absorbs you as it makes its way as fast as it can into the ocean.

  8:10 PM The Barona Estate

  Forensic investigators are just about the only law enforcement commodity not currently in use and they file in through the front door in full protective gear and cloth booties. Although, they’d all rather be watching the b-horror movie coming to life on live television as the blob’s trail of slimy terror continues, and not just because of its weird quotient: Their initial reports on the crime scene at Countess Barona’s mansion, or rather, crime scenes, are the worst of the worst.

  As the blob lays LA’s streets bare CSIs begin to uncover the mansion’s secrets. Almost every upstairs room in Barona’s mansion contains the dead and mummified body of a child. Not Lon Chaney kind of mummies, but bodies that have been maintained in a cold, air conditioned environment, preserving the small figures in the last moments of what was clear agony.