She swatted rats away and stabbed wildly. She had no time for cleaning the blade. Not now. The floor had become a living blanket once again.
She heard herself cursing, and that wasn’t a good sign.
Her arm moved up and down quickly––again and again and again. Rats screeched. Blood splashed. Little limbs were severed from the bodies. Guts flew everywhere. A severed head rolled across the floor with a string of gore clumped against it. At one point she looked at her blade and found three rats, all flattened and wedged together like a rodent-kebab. She wiped them away in a single motion and killed the next in line. Sometimes she stabbed dead rodents just to keep up the momentum. And when it looked like she was running out of victims, she crawled forward. Crawling and stabbing, crawling and stabbing––that’s what she was doing now, crawling through the cave, stabbing everything that moved.
She found herself at the juncture and she decided to turn right, leaving the trail of bloody rat-corpses in her wake. There were lots of rodents in front of her; lots behind her too. The further she crawled, the more rats she found. Her weapon hand never stopped moving; it never stopped killing. At one point two rats crawled onto her back and she screamed, not in pain or in fear but in battle.
She felt like a gladiator, fighting an incessant multitude of enemies.
It was becoming obvious to Stephenie that it would take a long time for the rats to overpower her completely. She was losing blood by the thimbleful, not the gallon. It was maddening and terrifying, frustrating and painful, but so far the rats were not a single-minded army, hell-bent on bringing her down; they were individuals, reacting to the smell of blood and the excitement of their brethren. They didn’t attack in waves. They attacked often, but at random, biting, scratching and clawing, lost in terror as much as anything else.
Stephenie killed indiscriminately, without mercy or hesitation. In time she was bleeding from her arms and legs, her chest and stomach, her face and hands, her feet and neck. She was bleeding everywhere.
She sat upon her sticky knees and pounded the rats with both fists. Sure, she only had one knife, but she didn’t care. She was beyond caring.
This was a war she didn’t plan on losing.
She forged ahead, grinning and killing. Right, left. Right, left. Blood splashed and guts spewed. She could feel them on her skin and taste them on her tongue. The air stank of rodent. She slapped a rat from her hair with an open hand. One crawled inside her shirt and she crammed it against her body and pinched its neck with her fingers.
“Oh God!” She roared, with a voice that came from deep inside her belly.
For a moment she considered giving up but she didn’t; the butchery continued. Her battle went on for fifteen minutes or more. She wasn’t thinking about the carnage she unleashed. She didn’t have time to think; she only had time to act.
Crawling over the bodies of the dead and dying, she edged her way through obscurity, out of the light and into the darkness. She felt them twitching and nipping at her knees as she trampled them. Now she was killing blindly, stabbing her way along the trail.
The rats had to come from somewhere, right?
Of course they did. And with that morsel of logic swirling inside her mind, she continued on, lost in the art of conflict.
The vermin lessened in volume, until the war seemed manageable. She pushed on, crawling through the darkness and the gloom and further into the regions of the unknown.
After a few minutes she saw something new.
It shimmered.
She moved towards it, no longer lost in battle but in something that seemed a lot like hope. And when she placed a hand upon what she now recognized as a door, it opened with ease. Light spilled into her face, bright and alluring. There were no rats in this new place. The air tasted clean and pure.
CHAPTER SEVEN:
Twisted Veracity
1
Stephenie shuffled through the tiny door, spun herself on her knees and looked into the cave. She wasn’t surprised to find a dozen rats scurrying around in front of her face, but she was surprised to find none of them willing to step into the light. One came close, but then it fled in the opposite direction with its tail high and its head low.
She closed the door, blocking the rodents from view. Their twitching noses and black bubble eyes were gone now, and Stephenie felt comforted by the sound of the latch clicking shut. A moment later she was sitting on the floor with her legs extended, the butter knife gone, her arms at her sides and her back against the door. She was practically shocked by her abrupt change of scenery, but for the first time in a while the shock seemed like a good thing.
The new surrounding was pleasant and sterile. The ceiling was high, the lights were bright and the air tasted clean. If she had to guess where she ended up, she’d say she was in a change room in a fitness center. Bally and Goodlife came to mind. Of course, she didn’t really think she was in a place like that, but that’s where the room seemed to belong.
There were benches attached to two of the four walls, which had that ‘painted concrete block’ look, made famous in public places everywhere. Three showers sat together in a corner, each with its own little cubicle. Two toilets sat inside two separate stalls. Both stall doors were open. The stalls were clean and empty. There were no windows in the room, only a single door. The door was big and normal looking. There was a sink area and a shelf loaded with clean towels. Sitting next to the shelf was a small table, and on that table a slim vase had a single fresh-cut flower propped inside. She didn’t know too much about flowers, but to her, this one looked like a bellflower. It was purple and blue with oddly shaped petals. Sitting next to the flower in the vase, a glass bowl was filled with an assortment of chocolates wrapped in foil. They looked delicious, yes they did. But delicious or not, Stephenie wasn’t brave enough or hungry enough to plop one into her mouth and find out for sure.
Stephenie said, “Huh.” And that seemed about right.
Huh indeed, she thought.
She looked across the room; then she looked across the room again. Dare she say it: she felt safer than she had for a while.
Her eyes shifted from the chocolates to the showers to the only thing concerning her: the door on the far side of the room.
What if it opened?
Looking at the door with a touch more scrutiny, she noticed a bolt lock attached to the wood, just above the doorknob. All she had to do was make her way across the room, slide the bolt over and she’d be secure. But what about the little door she had come through? Was it safe? Was it secure?
She thought, Yes, perhaps it is.
Enhancing her personal safety was worth a moment’s discomfort, so she forced herself to her feet before her body grew lethargic.
She limped slowly. She was bleeding from many places, too many to make health assessments with any amount of accuracy. For the time being, this was okay. It wasn’t time for assessments; it was time to create security.
With her hand on the lock she considered opening the door. She was curious to see what was on the other side. In the end, she didn’t do it. She’d seen enough and needed a moment’s peace. With little effort the bolt slid into place. Now she was safe and secure. Or so she hoped.
With a grunt and a whimper she made her way to the nearest bench and plunked herself down. The wild and nasty scent of the rodents was strong. It came from her clothing, hair and skin. It was inside her pores too.
Disgusted by her own stench, she pulled her wife-beater shirt over her head and dropped it on the bench in a wrinkled ball. It looked like a rag. The idea of wearing it again was disgusting. It stank. Everything she had stank. And the shirt wasn’t white. Not now. Now it was black, brown and red.
Stephenie wasn’t wearing a bra. If she had been, she’d have taken that off too.
Looking at her belly, chest and arms, she counted more than twenty separate rat bites. Some were just little nips. Some were gouges. If she had to guess, she’d say she’d been bitten over seventy times.
Two minutes passed.
Stephenie lifted herself to her feet, releasing a groan.
She made her way to the shower, turned both faucets on and held her shirt beneath the running water. Her plan was to wash it and put it back on, nothing more. But after a few seconds she accepted the fact that she needed water as much as the shirt did. Maybe more. Yes, she needed to find Carrie, she really did. But she was bleeding and dirty, covered in rat bites and rat shit. She couldn’t go on this way; she needed five minutes to clean her wounds before they became infected.
The shirt slipped from her fingers. It fell to the tiled floor beneath the stream.
Stephenie made her way to the nearest bench and sat down like a woman in great pain, which she was. She removed her shoes. She removed her pants and her underwear next. Lastly, she removed the shredded cloth that was wrapped around her wounded ankle. It felt heavy, sticky and wet. She tossed it on the floor and assessed the damage.
The injury was considerable.
Her ankle was bloated and swollen in ways she didn’t know was possible. It had turned black and red and the oval abrasion was oozing white colored puss. The skin was pushed into strange bulges. There was dirt on top of dirt. To say it didn’t look good was like saying Tiger Woods knew how to play golf. And when she ran her finger along the soft lumpy flesh that was shielding her bones, her skin felt numb.
She stood up, pulled the elastics from her hair and dropped them on the bench. She approached the shower, placed a hand on the faucet, and adjusted the water’s temperature. She stood beneath the flow.
The water felt good, maybe even great.
For the next seven minutes she justified her actions with ease. After all, her wounds needed to be cleaned, especially the one in her foot. She didn’t want seventy-plus infections; it was bad enough she might have rabies.
Images of Hal crawling on his wormy hands, and dragging his guts behind him like a dead octopus, threatened to dominate Stephenie’s thinking. She didn’t allow it. This was her time and she planned on taking it, for good or bad, right or wrong. And if Hal opened that little door and came creeping in like a human snail, so be it. She couldn’t control the monsters, only her own actions.
The water fell, washing the filth from her body.
And when she was finished cleaning herself she lifted the shirt from the floor beneath her feet and rinsed it out as much as possible. After that, justifying her actions became a harder sell. Adequately clean wounds and a rinsed out shirt meant it was time to move on, time to find Carrie. Of this there was no denying.
She turned the water off, squeezed the liquid from her shirt and stepped out of the shower. She picked a towel from the shelf and dried her body. The towel became marked with little spots of red. After she rang out her shirt a couple more times she pulled it over her skin. It was still wet but it was in better shape than before; it didn’t make her want to be sick.
She slipped into her underwear and pants. The pants were beyond dirty; wearing them over her clean skin felt counterproductive, but washing them and wearing them wet wasn’t something she wanted to do. She put on her shoes, wincing in pain. She lifted her hair elastics from the bench, rinsed them off and tied her hair into a ponytail. She looked at the bowl of chocolates, thinking they might be okay.
She lifted one, unwrapped it, smelled it and tasted it.
The chocolate was fine; she was almost positive. It was just a chocolate, right? She placed it in her mouth and the taste was wonderful. The moment she swallowed it down there was a knock on the door, followed by a distant scream.
She wondered if eating the chocolate was a bad idea.
Perhaps it was.
2
To say that Stephenie ran towards the door, unlocked it, and threw it open would be a lie. What she did was stand there with chocolate in her teeth and her mouth agape, looking at the door like she had never seen one before. The scream she heard was an adult scream, not one from a child. Whether the voice was male or female, she did not know.
Seconds rolled by; they felt slower than most.
She made her way towards the door. When she arrived she hesitated, placed her ear against the wood and listened.
Nothing.
She wondered what to do but her choices were simple. Either she opened the door now or she’d wait a while, and then open the door. Entering the tunnel of rats was a third option, she supposed, but it wasn’t really worth considering.
After the better part of a minute slipped past she tapped her finger on the wood and said, “Hello?”
There was no response.
“Is anybody there?”
She waited another half minute before she unlocked the latch and put her hand on the doorknob, thinking about that classic scene in the movie Psycho: the shower scene. She wondered if she was about to enjoy her own personal version of something similar.
Her eyes closed and she inhaled a deep breath.
“I can do this,” she whispered. She turned her wrist and opened the door slowly, peeking through the crack.
Norman Bates was not there. Neither was Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, Hannibal Lector, or Chucky the killer doll. Instead, there was a hallway running left and right. It was long, bright and painted white; it seemed to go on for a considerable distance no matter which way she looked. There was nothing hanging off the walls or cluttering up the floor. No carpets; no chairs. There were a bunch of doors, but nothing else as far as she could tell.
She looked left. On the far end of the hallway, there seemed to be a juncture. The path may have turned left or right; it was hard to say from the place she was standing.
She looked right. Same deal.
There was nobody in the hallway. The person that knocked was gone. The person that screamed was gone too; perhaps they stepped through one of the doors.
Stephenie reflected.
As a child, little Stephenie Paige––with her big dimples, hearty laugh, and her bright sparkling eyes––had played a fair amount of baseball. She was good at it; might have been the best on the team. One of her favorite aspects of the sport was stealing a base. Children tend to be lousy throwers and questionable catchers but the art of running is something they can manage. So when it came to stealing second or third, Stephenie was more successful than most because she knew that whoever was holding the ball would probably throw it at the wrong angle and whoever was catching the ball would likely miss. While playing baseball Stephenie spent a fair amount of time standing between two bases, willing to leave the security of one place, eager to arrive at another, worried tragedy would strike between the two.
She felt the same way now.
Stephenie was willing to leave her sanctuary, eager to find Carrie, and worried that tragedy would strike before she did. She stumbled upon a little slice of heaven. Everything else was a big serving of hell. Leaving the room felt risky and dangerous, so the idea of moving on made her feel nauseous.
But she had to go; same reason as always: Carrie.
As Stephenie stepped away from the room the door closed behind her. She checked to see if it would open. The answer was yes. She wasn’t locked out.
She turned right and made her way down the hall, limping worse now than before. This wasn’t because she was in poorer condition, but because she had time to limp properly. Zombies weren’t chasing her and that changed everything.
She came to a door on the left side of the hallway. Like the walls, the door was painted white. It had a knob but no window. She put her hand on the knob and tried to open it. The door wouldn’t open.
She moved on.
After a few more feet she came to a door on the right side of the hallway. It looked the same as the last one. She put her hand upon the knob and tried her luck again.
The door wouldn’t open.
Not wanting to lose track of the door she had come from, Stephenie turned back. Upon arriving at the original door, which she considered a gateway to her sanctuary, Stephenie stuck
her hand into her pocket and pulled out her one-and-only stick of gum. She unwrapped it and chewed it and threw the wrapper on the floor. When she thought the gum was soft enough, she bit it into two separate pieces. She put one half on the door at eye level, marking it like a Hansel and Gretel breadcrumb. The other half she left in her mouth; she liked the taste.
Stephenie continued on, walking beneath the florescent lights (always florescent, the contractors in these parts loved florescent). She walked along the concrete-block walls until she came to something attached to one of the blocks.
It was a photograph of Carrie, held in place by a line of scotch tape.
At first Stephenie thought the photo had been snagged from the photo album in the car. It wasn’t. The photo was new, one she had never seen before. It showed Carrie sitting on a chair in a big empty room. She looked sad. She looked frightened. Her knees were together, her bottom lip was out and both of her hands were wrapped in a white towel. The towel had a dark spot.
The spot was red; it looked a lot like blood.
3
Stephenie stood there for a while before she released a breath she didn’t know she was holding. She felt pain in her hands and when she finally pulled her eyes away from the image, she discovered that her fingernails were biting into her palms. She felt like asking a bunch of questions to the empty hallway, questions like: what’s going on? And––who’s responsible for this? But there wasn’t any point. She was in hell. That’s what was going on. She was in hell and her daughter was too.
Stephenie pulled the photograph from the wall. After looking at it for a few more seconds, she slid it into her back pocket and continued her journey.
She came across three more doors. They were all locked. After that, she came across four more. They were locked too.
Into Hell Page 14
