by Ray Wallace
Within a few minutes it was over. Bodies lay everywhere in every imaginable position. Puddles and strange patterns of blood stained the street. There were a number of children among the dead. Looking at them Buck felt nothing. He was numb. Amazingly calm. He took a deep breath. Sighed. He wondered if this was something that might condemn a man to Hell. Or if he was already there.
The crack! of a gunshot sounded. Pain erupted in Buck's right shoulder. The impact of the bullet spun him in a full circle, dropped him to his knees. The gun he held in his right hand fell to the ground. Grunting, he looked in the direction from where the shot had been fired, over toward the jailhouse some thirty feet in front of him. There stood Sheriff Bill Johnson, the front of his white shirt stained black with blood, gun in hand, pointing it at Buck and firing again. This time the bullet took the hat right off of Buck's head.
The pain in his shoulder was a terrible thing. For a moment everything seemed to catch up with him, the heat, the agony of his wound, the trauma of what he'd been through, what he'd done. A feeling of vertigo washed over him. He swooned, nearly fell face first to the blood soaked dirt of the road. Another shot hit the ground right in front of him kicking up a puff of dust.
Not now, Buck, he told himself. Get it together or die...
He shook his head, trying to clear away the dizziness. Sheriff Johnson was walking toward him slowly, dragging his left leg, taking some care not to stumble over the bodies lying in his path. He fired again. The bullet went high and wide, shattered a window behind Buck who lifted his left arm, waited for the swaying and spinning of the world to steady a bit before pulling the trigger of the pistol he still held. The shot hit the old sheriff in the stomach, barely interrupting his slow stagger. Buck fired again. Again. Each shot went a little higher. One to the throat, the other to the face, tearing away a section of cheek, exposing the teeth hidden there. Another wave of dizziness, another shot from Sheriff Johnson, this one grazing Buck's left side just below the ribs. The two men - one living, the other a gross imitation of the living - were now less than a dozen steps apart. It dawned on Buck that he had no idea how many bullets were left in his weapon. His target was so close now that even with the vertigo one more bullet was all he would need. He aimed at the zombie's head, knowing this time his shot would be true, then pulled the trigger, was rewarded with nothing more than the click of an empty chamber. Again he pulled the trigger. Click! The gun the zombie held suddenly steadied, took perfect aim at Buck's face. He stared down that barrel for a moment. It looked big around as a train tunnel, like a portal into the dark and dreary depths of some ancient underworld. So this is how it ends... In desperation he pulled the trigger of his gun one more time. Quite miraculously, it jumped in his hand, the loud retort of its firing echoing off the walls of the buildings lining either side of that damned roadway. Sheriff Johnson stood there for a few seconds, eyes rolling up as if trying to see the hole in his forehead. Then his knees buckled and he fell face down across the unmoving form of an old woman lying on her side, looking for all the world as if she was simply napping.
Buck let the gun fall from his hand then turned his back on that scene of carnage and walked down the street a ways. There was a saloon just where he remembered it. Inside there were two dead bodies. One lay on its back on the floor, an arm and a selection of more vital body parts missing. Another sat in a chair at a table, the top of its head blown off, pistol still gripped in its hand.
Buck walked over to the bar, circled around behind it, poured himself a shot of whiskey. Then he took the bottle and sat at the table opposite the man who'd taken his death into his owns hands. There he sat for a while, occasionally sipping from the bottle. Eventually he slept.
*
When he awoke it was dark outside. Past midnight judging by the position of the moon. He took a few moments to inspect his injuries. The one at his side was barely more than a scratch. The one at his shoulder hurt like hell but was clean. The bullet had passed all the way through. He poured some whiskey into the wound, front and back, nearly passed out from the pain. Then he bound it with strips torn from a cloth which covered one of the saloon tables. Hopefully it wouldn't get infected before Evans had a chance to look at it.
For the next hour he collected firewood. He broke tables and chairs in the saloon, tossed them into a pile in the street. Behind one of the general stores he found a stack of chopped wood and a cask of kerosene. Inside the store he found a box of matches. Before long he'd built a raging bonfire that pushed back the night.
One by one he dragged the bodies over to the flames. About halfway through this grisly work he found Elijah, or what was left of him. He, too, went into the pyre. It was slow, tiring work, especially with only one good arm. But he was strong enough to see the job through and eventually it was done. Afterward he sat in front of the jailhouse, back against the wall, drank some more whiskey and watched the fire, the embers ascending into the clear, star filled sky above. And once more he slept.
The rising sun woke him. His shoulder was stiff. His head ached. The fire had died, was now a smoldering pile of blackened remains. Charred skulls glared at him, skeletal hands reached for him imploringly. Disgusted, he walked out into the street, bent down and grabbed his hat from where it lay. It now had holes big enough for him to put his finger through in the front and back. After approaching his horse still tethered to the hitching post, he grabbed his canteen from the saddlebag, refilled it at the general store where he also helped himself to a small supply of rations. A short while later found him on horseback leaving Saul Valley.
Just outside of that cursed town he stopped and looked to his right toward the top of the long slope that formed the valley's edge. At its peak sat a dozen mounted riders, mere silhouettes in the morning light. He could see the spears at their sides, the feathers about their heads, the one near the middle with the gaudy headdress. They seemed to study him for a time. What they were looking for he could only guess. Eventually they turned and disappeared behind the other side of the rise.
With a gentle "C'mon, boy" Buck nudged his horse into a trot and headed for home.
- THE LATEST CRAZE -
Author's note: There always seems to be some new weight loss fad being advertised on TV. Somehow, it only seems inevitable before it goes to the extreme...
*
Tony stopped dead in his tracks as he approached the low level, beige building. A woman was coming out, moving a bit slowly and unsteadily on her feet. She sat down on the green bench positioned next to some well-manicured hedges off to the side of the wide, cement walkway that led up to the building's main entrance. As he watched, she leaned forward, placed her head between her knees, and started retching. There was no accompanying sound of half-digested food splattering upon the ground. Apparently her stomach was empty.
My God, thought Tony. He had to stop himself from turning around and heading back to the parking lot where his car was waiting. It was too late for that, he told himself. His appointment had been scheduled for weeks - there was quite a waiting list - and he'd already sent in his money, all of it non-refundable. Besides, it's not like they would offer something like this to the public if it wasn't safe. There would be some discomfort, sure, no one was denying that. No one was denying the results, either. And a number of celebrities had already come forth to endorse the procedure. If it was good enough for them...
He got his feet moving again. As he passed the woman she looked up, gave him a half-hearted smile.
"You all right?" asked Tony.
"Never better," she told him.
He tried to picture her a few months from now, the dark circles gone from around her eyes, her hair and eyebrows growing back in. Was she a blonde or a brunette? Maybe a redhead? Whatever the case, she would be quite stunning. So young. So beautiful. And, best of all, so thin.
Giving his stomach a pat - his "Santa Clause stomach" as his ten-year-old niece, Stephanie, liked to call it - he approached the tinted glass door before him. Reaching o
ut, he grabbed the metal handle and pulled, felt the cool, climate controlled air from inside wash over him. Then, with only a glance at the three words stenciled in white upon the door, he entered the building.
Half an hour later, he began his first treatment at the Chemo Diet Center.
- THE NAMELESS -
Author's note: Up until this point in my writing "career" I had written nothing but short stories. The thought of sitting down and working on a novel was a rather daunting one. Because that's how I envisioned it, as "work." Writing short stories was fun. They didn't require all that much time to get from idea to finished product. But a novel, on the other hand... I pictured myself slaving away at the keyboard for months, possibly even years. Then all that damned editing. And what if it wasn't any good? What if no one wanted to publish it? All that work for nothing. So there I was, writing my short stories, sending them out to various publications, getting some of them into print. And then I wrote "The Nameless," a grisly little tale that was to be published in a magazine that went out of business, then an anthology that never saw the light of day, before ending up in an anthology entitled The Blackest Death by Black Death Books. It was at that point that I was informed by the good people at Black Death that if I was to write a novel length version of "The Nameless" they just might be interested in releasing it. And there it was, the inspiration I needed to sit down and slave away at that keyboard until my first novel, inventively entitled The Nameless, was complete. Along the way, I discovered that novel writing was not, in fact, as much work as I had feared it would be, that it was just another process and quite fun in its own way. I enjoyed the process enough that I wrote - and am still working on - several more novels since then. Funny how things work out sometimes... For those of you who have read the much longer version of this story, you may notice a few inconsistencies here. In the novel, Ariella does not meet Nicolae in a club called Sector 7 nor does she sneak away from the Coven to go meet Jake in the way she does here. Instead of changing these details I decided to present this story in its mostly unaltered form including a particular scene involving a human thighbone that did not find its way into the novel. This one's definitely not for the squeamish...
*
He didn't want this. He didn't want any of this. But there it was, lying on the bed, the evidence that it was real, that it was happening whether he wanted it or not. Just looking at the bed made him want to throw up, all the blood and the sight of the naked, dead hooker there, ripped open from pubis to sternum, ribs cracked wide revealing the destruction wreaked upon her internally.
Wreaked by him.
He could still taste her, taste her heart, the last part of her he had eaten, could vividly remember the other things he had chewed up and swallowed - her liver, spleen, kidneys, her large intestine.
Yes, he wanted to throw up.
But he knew he wouldn't, hadn't any of the other times. What he had done was necessary, was now required by his body, by what it was that he had become.
By what that fucking bitch had turned him into.
That's what kept him going, the thought of finding her, doing to her what he had done here tonight. Not to mention a few other, even more unpleasant things he had planned especially for her...
Ariella.
The woman who had taken him to higher highs and lower lows than anyone he had ever known.
The woman he had loved like no other.
"Oh, God, why?" he moaned then tore his eyes away from the bed and what lay there, made his way into the small, ill-lit bathroom so that he could clean up, rinse out his mouth. It was time to move on, find another sleazy motel to stay in where he could await the inevitable return of the hunger, where he could then appease that hunger. And move on again and again, always looking, always asking about her, for he knew that she was still somewhere in the city - he could feel it - and he knew that at some point he would find her.
And when he did...
*
She lay in the dark, naked, legs spread wide, masturbating with a human thighbone, so full of the ecstasy of the kill. All the while she thought of Jake, out there, alone, trying to figure it out, fighting it, fighting it, but always giving in, learning little by little what it meant to be a predator, a murderer, a cannibalistic serial killer.
What it meant to be immortal.
She began to moan as she moved toward climax, brought the bone in and out more rapidly, pictured him tearing open some poor, unsuspecting little whore, burying his face in her organs much as he used to bury it between her legs. God, she used to love that, the way he would use his tongue...
And afterward, he would always tell her how incredible she tasted, how beautiful she was, how she almost made him believe in God because she had to be an angel, that no mere mortal could be as perfect as she was. Then she would go out and screw someone else, and tell him about it, prove to him that she was no angel. She could see at those moments that he hated her, that he could have killed her, but he never did because that hatred was born of a love so fierce that it hurt them both. And that's why she did it, why she would fuck other men - and the occasional woman - because even as that love made her feel like the most special person in the world it also scared her. No one had ever truly cared for her like that before and she just didn't know how to handle it.
She was crying now, thinking of him, of what she had done to him. But even as she wept she came, gripped the bone firmly with both hands, flailed her body about in the darkness and wailed out loud as a tumult of emotions swept through her.
A short while later, she lay there panting, feeling the room's cool air play over her sweat dampened skin. Then a door opened and a figure stood in the rectangle of light, looked in at her, asked, "Is everything all right?" in a Russian accent.
She made no move to cover herself, simply lay there on the bed, staring up at the man shaped silhouette, imagining how she must look to him. Removing the bone from between her legs, she casually tossed it to the floor where it landed next to the ruined corpse there, the thing that had once been a laughing, dreaming, breathing young man, was now nothing more than a broken carcass from which she had torn loose the femur that she had just finished with.
Forcing a smile she said, "Yes, everything's fine. Why don't you close the door, come over here."
Slowly, silently, the figure pulled the door shut and the room was once more claimed by darkness.
*
Jake remembered the change, how it had happened, how Ariella had returned one night after a month long absence saying she was sorry, that she didn't ever want to fight with him again, that she had missed him terribly. He didn't even ask her where she had been, didn't really want to know, had just been so happy to see her. And in the bedroom she had told him how she wanted to be joined with him forever and had pulled out a razor blade, cut her hand and his, pressed the bleeding wounds together. And all the while she had kissed him so fiercely that he hadn't cared, would have done anything for her, let her do anything she wanted to him. Then they had sex, rough violent sex, and when they were finished she said she had to go, to take care of some things, that she would be back later. And she had left him there, sweating, lying on the floor.
Left him to die.
Or to be reborn.
He had fallen asleep where he lay, not bothering to turn off the light, and awoke some time later consumed with sickness, his body racked with pain, his brain burning with fever. All he could do was lie there in a ball, puking and moaning and crying, praying for death.
At some point there were hands on him, caressing him, and he opened his eyes and saw an angel. His angel.
Ariella.
"Please..." he whimpered, or tried to. "Make it stop..."
"Shhhhh..." she said. "You're going to be all right. Everything's going to be all right."
She had a cool, damp cloth, pressed it to his forehead, all the while telling him how good things were going to be, how he wasn't going to die, that he would make it through, how they would live forev
er...
He mercifully slipped from consciousness.
On and on it went, from sleep to waking agony, for an eternity it seemed. But when it was finally over he discovered that it had only been one night, a single night spent in Hell, and here he was, once again, in the land of the living, in his bedroom, the curtains drawn against the morning light, his head in Ariella's lap, her fingers running through his hair.
In the shower she told him things, crazy things, about how he would never grow old or get sick ever again, about how strong he would be when he fully recovered, how quickly any wounds would heal, and how bad the sunlight would hurt him.
Jake had laughed, mind still tinged with delirium, had asked, "What are we then? Fucking vampires?!"
But Ariella hadn't laughed, had said, "No. Not vampires. Close, but not quite. We are something else, need more than mere blood to survive. We are something humans had never deemed fit to name. And I can't say that I blame them."
Jake couldn't help it, laughed again at the absurdity of what she was saying.
Later on, though, he discovered that her words were anything but humorous.
*
Nicolae claimed to be able to divine the future by eating the brains of his victims. He believed the fresher the brain the better. Ariella thought that he was more than a bit delusional but who was she to argue? He was the man in charge. And besides, it did seem as though his predictions were right some of the time. But she chalked them up to mere coincidence and lucky guesses. The one time she had attempted such a foretelling she simply felt as though she had taken some bad acid and her appetite had disappeared for three days. Not an experience she wished to repeat.
