by Alan Spencer
“When do we get to drink the blood?”
Lenora stretched her vocal cords to speak over them. "It’s simply blood of hundreds mixed together that’s created this concoction. It’s nothing more than that. Ruden learned it can entice humans into bending our will, but if you give them too much, it turns them into us. We have pockets in our throats, sacs, that collect the blood of everyone we drink. It ferments there, and we cough it up into people's mouths to turn them. It's the mixing of many blood sources and letting it coalesce that makes it what it is. That's Ruden's secret. Three years for that!"
“This is my proposition.” She moved across the room, seizing Caleb’s hair and wrenching it back in a violent display of power. “We string these humans out and collect blood like we have in this town. We’ll eventually have enough, we can addict enough people into becoming our slaves, that we can regulate blood, restrict blood, so that we remain in power. We'll become the government, the decision makers. We’ll stay strong, and they’ll remain weak. We can control who gets to drink how much, and who doesn’t. Our decisions will be the way of the world. Blood will flow in every direction, and we’ll be in charge of the source. Imagine gasoline and crude oil being replaced by a more dominant commodity—BLOOD!
“Our hope for the future, our hope in Ruden, all of it has wasted time. They infected women just to have orgies with them instead of staying focused on their research. They failed us, so I say we grow powerful beyond our wildest dreams and collect a blood supply that will last forever. We already destroyed one town, how about an entire city—an entire nation!”
Words were blasted in vehemence, directed at Ruden:
“He betrayed us.”
“So many died for this disappointment.”
“This offense!”
“This is our blood!”
“Tyrant!”
“Butcher!”
“How dare you waste our time with this bullshit?”
“My parents suffered and died for your cause, Ruden.”
“He fornicated, and we died!”
“May he rot in hell!”
One of the bloodthirsty started up the apple presses, and Ruden’s head was diced up into jets of blood, skull, and flying gray matter. Lenora watched his cranial remains be smashed when the steel sheets came together. She then whispered to herself, “It looks like they prefer my solution over yours, Ruden.”
44
Caleb couldn’t voice his terror with the duct tape sealing his lips. The woman who brought him here walked up to him and warned him, “If you stay and don’t try and escape, I’ll let you become a full-time donor, and I'll spare your life. Think about it as you watch us celebrate!”
She turned back to the crowd. “Let’s enjoy our hard work!”
He was bogged down with fever. He was hysterical, living it down through chattering teeth and uncontrollable shakes. His mind raced to compose itself, but all he could do was force his wobbling legs to keep holding him up straight.
When they’re not watching, you have to get out of these ropes.
They’ll murder you—maybe not today or tomorrow, but eventually, they’ll bleed you dead.
No, they’ll kill themselves.
Just wait.
I pray to God I understood what Hector was saying to me.
He watched in pure horror as Lenora removed her clothes. The unveiling did nothing to entice him, yet there were men who stepped up to romance her body in seconds. Holding out on sex, Lenora retreated to the pit of blood. She dived in headfirst and didn’t come up for minutes, and when she did, her body was covered in crimson gel. Others followed, frolicking and splashing and dunking their lovers into the crimson bath. The orgy broke out instantly.
Turning into a macabre watcher, he was repulsed at how their sex organs were doubled in size and modified. Penises were between fifteen to twenty inches, while the female womb was a cave worthy of such a lengthy edifice. Breasts swelled with fat, growing to pleasure the men who cupped and bit at them. The flesh that housed all their bodies were stretched to the point of breaking—and many did, the flesh simply slipping from their limbs and sloughing to the floor like peeled back rib meat cooked succulent from the bone. Arteries and vessels bulged and spat blood, every mouth and tongue satiating themselves on the freed up red.
Yes, yes, keep doing what you’re doing. Hector was right— Hector was right!
The orgy took on a new level of disturbing action. He gawked at his panoramic view of twenty pairs of male and female couples sucking blood from the random dead appendages strewn about the floor, each blue and green and tinged by death. Caleb coughed, nearly choking with the duct tape over his lips; he wouldn’t be able to withstand the show much longer without vomiting.
Jerking his wrists to try and escape, he discovered a nail jutted out from the post he was bound to. He worked the rope up and down the pole, compelled—yet angry he didn’t notice it sooner—and slowly, he worked his wrists free. He tore the duct tape off his face and did his best to decide an escape plan from there. He couldn’t walk forward or backwards without disturbing a couple, trio, or shocking cluster fuck. Lenora promised he’d become one of them in the end, a donor.
I’d rather slit my wrists than help them.
This was the moment he questioned his sanity. The tension streamlining through him was the only thing that made sense.
These people will never let you live. You’re blood to them. You won't live through the night if you don’t get out of here now.
Knowing this to be true, and seeing them in the deepest throws of their passion, he lunged towards the open mill doors. He stomped on dead bodies and kicked heads to complete the track. He finished five obstacles of screwing bodies before both his ankles were seized, and he was dropped to the ground.
“He doesn’t like what he sees.”
“Perhaps it turns him on, and he’s afraid of what he might do.”
“A timid boy,” a girl laughed with blood oozing from her lips, her globe eyes studying him with lascivious intent. “He needs to be shown a good time.”
“Could he become one of us?”
“God knows there’s enough blood!”
“The bastard deserves a taste of bl—!”
The words were cut short when an arrow pierced through the man’s eye.
Two more tore into the man and woman that clutched his legs, their necks taking the damage, the arrow stuck through the trachea and out the back of the neck. “Gaaaaack!” “Argggggggh!”
Caleb gawked ahead in shock, looking up through the apple nursery at his savior.
One woman.
45
Dale forced Annie away from the parade of sexualized flesh before the celebration took on seedier proportions. The bodies bathing, and splashing, and gorging on the blood nearly provoked him to participate, as it did her, but the lance of bitter hatred crawling up his back and exploding into his brainstem extinguished the attraction.
“The fucking ingrates are drinking all the blood!” He spat out his animosity, watching them feast. “Look at them defiling our work. There won’t be any blood left for us.”
Annie picked up a shovel, ready to bludgeon them all. “We dug those holes, killed our friends and family, and they hardly did a fucking thing. I’ll bash in their skulls. I’ll take back the blood in their stomachs by drinking it from their veins and then we’ll be even.”
“I enjoy the sound of that, but that’s not what we planned.”
“Things have changed.” She clutched onto his shirt, imploring him to understand. “They have to die. The blood will be gone in no time, just look at them!"
“All we have to do is mix the blood of hundreds, that’s all Ruden did.” He held her close to him, subduing her emotions. “I shouldn't be getting so worked up. This blood will last a lifetime for only two people."
“But it's wasting away." She was right, the blood level in the hole had lowered six inches.
“They’re glutting themselves. We don’t hav
e time to kill them one at a time.”
He kissed her cheek again, producing a lighter from his pocket. “It won’t require killing them one at a time...”
He had retained an aspect of his values through his transformation. Dale believed it would’ve been easy to bed many girls like Ruden had, but the sight inside the barn was disturbing, even for him. The skinless bodies bleeding and throbbing in ecstasy sickened him the most. He winced, while watching Lenora in the pit, her flesh shrugged off from her body by raging muscle tissue bubbling up from her limbs. She was no longer a woman or a person, but a mound of stacking sinew. There was no compass to find her breasts, sex, or even her face.
Many others suffered similar symptoms. Bodies split open, gushing blood and draining innards at high pressures. The clink and snap of dismantling bones marked the collapse of bodies into puddles of death, but their meltdown wasn’t good enough. They would suffer, he was determined, and he would be the one to inflict it.
They’re killing themselves, and they don’t realize it.
He bounded over to the conveyor belt, skirting through couples and stamping through leftovers of rank bodies. The device itself was painted in human splatter. He traced his hands underneath the line to locate the box of pipe bombs by wiping the top of the box clean and shoving aside the guts Annie had placed over them earlier.
He recalled his son’s delinquent record. Bruce had been suspended from school for a year as a junior high student for lighting a pipe bomb in the bathroom. It caused thousands of dollars in damage, the explosion shattering four toilet stalls. That day a police officer delivered Bruce from school to their front door, and the cop made Bruce turn his room inside out, even the closet, under the bed, the dresser drawers, and the loose floorboard where he kept his plethora of nudie magazines. The last place searched was his closet, and in a box, Bruce had crafted dozens of pipe bombs. The kid kept crafting the bombs years after that brush with the law, and Dale kept confiscating new weapons, though his son never did anything to harm anyone and eventually grew out of his dark phase.
For the first time ever, he was grateful for Bruce's handiwork as he worked out a fuse tied in with many other fuses from the box and lit it: Sssssssssssssssssst!
Time dwindling fast, the main entrance was blocked by lovers and blood drinkers, so he chose a direct route. He shoulder-rammed through the far wall, the wood bursting to pieces upon his body's force. Outside, he rolled onto the grass and kept moving towards the wishing well, where he'd told Annie to seek refuge.
Any moment the bombs would explode.
46
Shannon couldn't throw the grenades until Caleb was clear of harm, so she kept using the crossbow. She called out to him, urging her friend to hurry; he was crawling on all fours to escape the cider mill. “Caleb, run to me!”
She prayed her aim was good enough to save him.
Shuck! Shuck! Shuck!
Arrows bored through necks and gouged eyes, the punctures audible. Their cries of agony were matched with warnings of death; they loomed toward her in packs, and Shannon knew she’d gone about this the wrong way. They’d reach her in moments, and there was nothing she could do to stop them. The weapons had given her a false sense of safety, as they had done to Chippie.
She fired more arrows anyway. An arrow caught one in the heart, and the woman immediately folded over, twitching, and twisting, and dying before she could remove it. Another pierced into a monster's collarbone with a wicked plume of crimson ejecting upwards in a thick spray, the red catching in his eyes and blinding him.
Caleb crawled from their grips and tore through dirt and straw and rotten apples to reach her. He shouted at ear-tearing decibels: “You must run—LEAVE ME!"
She cleared the distance between them, ignoring his demands. Four more arrows she hurled into the crowd, and it did nothing to halt them. The crowd encroached them side-by-side as if a living wall. Shannon clung onto Caleb, helping him up, and they turned the other direction to sprint in retreat.
Six yards they completed when an unexpected blast resounded. The WHUP-BLAM-WHUP-BLAM-WHUP-BLAM hoisted them into the air. A surge of heat beat their backs and seared skin. The caustic WHOOSH gave them a three foot lift up off the ground. Fire, smoke, and wooden debris pounded them as ear-piercing whistles shrilled like fired bottle rockets. Falling helplessly, they inevitably crashed back down hard. They both blacked out before the real demonstration of violence occurred.
47
Lenora associated the sudden change in her body to that of drinking too much alcohol. When it happened, it kept getting worse, and the regression didn’t relent. Her body was expanding. Muscles writhed and increased. Bones snapped at the pressure. Her lungs were impacted so much by the metamorphosis that she couldn't breathe.
She gasped in wet burps, “Gack! Huugh! Huugh!”
Buried under her own human tissue that continuously kept folding, building, growing, clustering, suffocating, and expanding, she was ultimately paralyzed. Her new lovers were shocked at her change, and they lingered away from her, repulsed and fearing it could be them next.
Nearby, a woman’s body combusted. Globules of flesh and bone showered those surrounding her in wet sheets. The group in the reservoir with her were hulking huge, their shapes shifting, and pulsating, and growing too much and too fast for their bodies to handle. Their faces bubbled up and bled from burst capillaries. Arteries and veins spit red at high pressures, their eyes bulging and nearly shoved out of their sockets by their impacted brains.
Lost in her condition, she somehow caught Dale reaching for something under the conveyor belt. He flicked a lighter, reaching into a box with a steady flame.
She tried to call out a warning to stop him, but only compressed air and wordless jargon emitted from her throat. He clutched a fuse of a homemade bomb and touched the lighter’s flame to it.
Ruden wasn’t keeping track of that bastard and now look what he’s doing!
She watched in astonishment as Dale plunged through the wall to the other side, safe from harm. Before she could think of anything to prevent the damage, it was much too late.
WHUP-BAM!
The conveyor belt was enshrouded by a great plume of orange fire and acrid sulfur smoke. The belt itself was ejected from the ground, the blades removed and turning into spinning shrapnel. The whizzing edges of the cutting blades sliced a racing man’s head in twain. The woman hanging upside from the ceiling's rafters was severed at the ankles. The damage caused her to collapse head-first into the ground. Others were split mid-torso, spilling guts and hurling forth gallons like a blood bomb gone off. The blades were fired so hard, they bored right through the victim like a bullet and staking other hapless victims behind them. Those that were close enough to escape were consumed by the branching arcs of fire, roasting instantly. Many continued to explode from the mysterious metamorphosis; deaths marked by the discord of breaking skin and crunching bones. Screams rattled across the air, each cut short from instant death.
Lenora was the last to die, her body staked against the pit’s wall by eight blades. She was on the verge of burning to death when every vessel of her body detonated, and Lenora perished in a room-wide ball of gore.
48
You must warn them not to drink the blood. I gorged on it, unknowing of what it would cause. My limbs burst from me. The body can only take so much of the advanced blood before it becomes too rich and powerful to consume. You must warn them; it’s murder otherwise. That bastard Ruden wants the blood all to himself. He knows about the dangers of drinking too much of this blood. He used that secret against me. He’ll kill each of them; he’ll watch them die so he can collect their blood afterwards. You must tell them what this blood can do before it's too late!
Caleb’s ears whirred and ached, his head a clenched fist. He woke, spit from a short dream, a re-living of Hector’s final words down in the bunker. He’d landed on his side in a puddle of mud, every inch of him sore and throbbing from being lifted up in the air and dumped
back down.
Through the branching arms of the apple trees, he watched dawn’s sun rid the night. The steady crackle of burning embers carried on in the background. He rested his back against the earth out-of-breath, and he noticed Shannon sprawled out near the edge of the apple nursery. He crawled to her side and stroked her cheek with the back side of his hand.
“Shannon. Are you alive? Please tell me you're alive!"
She cracked her eyes open, albeit slightly. He cradled her, overjoyed that she had survived. He double checked her eyes and traced his hands up and down her arms and face for protruding veins.
She was absent of deformation.
He tried to get her to stand up, but she was too weak to get back to her feet. “I just need to rest a second. My ankle, I think I twisted it."
Caleb recalled the hot ball of smoke shooting him into the air before striking down back to the earth. What caused the explosion, he questioned, the scene before him connecting itself slowly. The cider mill was a blackened shell that had toppled. The fire had eaten at the building for hours and was dying down. The crisp skeletons were strewn on the cider mill’s floor with phalange hands extended to beg for the mercy of sweet death. But the numbers didn’t match what he’d witnessed before. Many were missing.
Oh God, no.
The apple trees closed in on him, hiding the potential dangers that lurked about him. He got up and scavenged through them for survivors, and found no one. The wind whistled through the trees, telling him he was alone. No animals or wildlife stirred.
He’d never sleep another minute without locking his door or keeping a firearm within reaching distance if a single one of them was out there alive. The blood-stained faces, the contorted and disproportioned bodies, and the penetrating, huge eyes would forever paint his dreams in vivid nightmares.
He returned to Shannon, and she hadn’t moved. He lowered to his knees. “Let’s get out of here. We can find a phone and call for help later when we're actually safe.”
