Cheap Thrills (6 Thrilling reads)

by Luis Samways

  ‘True,’ admits Mitch as he finally unlocks his stare off Ray and sits down on the floor next to Abigail and Tristan.

  ‘I can go if you want,’ says Ray

  ‘No, stay here. We need all the people we can get. Safety in numbers and all,’ says David

  Mitch looks up at David and nods

  ‘I’m sorry about my use of language… Ray is it? That’s my daddy coming out of me. He was a no good racists and unfortunately I sometimes forget that I too have my own mind,’ says Mitch

  ‘Okay,’ is all that Ray could muster. How else could you respond to someone who two minutes ago sounded like he wanted to lynch you?

  ‘Okay,’ Echoes David as he keeps an eye on both Ray and Mitch.

  Twenty One

  Donner Hayes is walking the halls of the hospital feeling overwhelmed at what she is seeing. Everywhere she looks is another visual footnote of the chaos that’s surrounding the downtown hospital. She’s been on shift now for what seems like an eternity. The hustle and bustle of the hospital hasn’t let up since she has come on shift. She looks around the halls wandering about aimlessly, trying to figure out how she is going to rectify the problem at hand.

  The problem she is facing is severe, her colleagues and herself do not know what to do. They recently got an emergency fax from the department of health warning them of a potential lethal pathogen that’s making its rounds across New York. At first she didn’t believe it. Not another terrorist attack, surly it can’t be happening again, but then she caught the news on the TV when she went for her dinner break. CNN were reporting on a virus that could be making its way around the US, a virus that is making people self-combust. Donner has been present in a lot of scary situations. She was a medical officer in the army but decided she was a better fit for a role in a civilian hospital. She knows the extents at which some men are willing to go to inflict harm on their enemy. It’s no secret, the US has enemies, and those enemies will do what they please to make sure the “Western threat” is dealt with accordingly. She wanted to escape the hardships of the warzone but she feels as if she has stumbled onto a new battlefield.

  Some of the staff are sceptical on the reports of a so called chemical pathogen that’s making people combust into thin air, but Donner has a feeling it may ring true considering the evidence she has seen so far. During her shift she has come across people complaining of certain symptoms that match up to the news reports and rumours that are circulating. That’s why she finds herself outside the room of the first patient she came across displaying these symptoms. At first she dismissed them as psychosis brought on by heavy cannabis usage, but now she sees it in a different light.

  Mr Adams is lying down on his hospital bed covered in sweat. She can see the signs of life in him escape through every pour in his body. The last time she saw him, he was complaining about a red blinking light in his wrist. The thing is he looked more than healthy before. A young handsome man that looked fresh if not a bit under the weather. She didn’t believe him because of how he looked, upbeat and roaring to go, if not a bit slow and slurry with his speech. He had complained about feeling like an old man, feeling as if the youth of his twenty five years were wasting away and being replaced with a shell of a feeble being.

  She enters the room in which Mr Adams is resting in. She approaches him cautiously; he seems as if he is asleep. The closer she gets to his bed the warmer she feels. She can feel an overwhelming sense of body heat coming from him. The room feels like a furnace and Mr Adam’s is the source of it. Cold patches in the air hit Donner as she feels the mixture of humidity and coldness swirl together. It’s a strange feeling, one she has never felt before. You could almost call it unworldly.

  She reaches for the clipboard at the end of Mr Adams’s bed. She reads it and is shocked at what she sees.

  “High temperature and frail physique. No signs of flue or pathogens in blood work. Diagnosis is N/A” it reads

  Mr Adams coughs as she snaps back to reality. He sees her at his bedside and smiles.

  ‘Hey doc, you came back,’ he says as he tries to sound chirpy.

  The sound of his voice nearly brings a tear to Donner’s eye. A man with so much potential is dying in front of her, and no one at the hospital knows why.

  ‘Hey Mr Adams,’ she says as she moves from the bottom of the bed to his side.

  ‘Please call me Scott,’ he says

  ‘How you feeling Scott?’

  ‘I’ve felt better, I’m sorry about before doc, it’s just I don’t want to die’

  The tears in her eyes are running down her cheek.

  ‘You won’t die Scott, I can help you…We can help you’

  ‘They said I could die…They said my body temperature is too high. I could die of a stroke they said. They tried to cool me down, and gave me antibiotics, but it looks like I’m about to punch my ticket,’ says Scott as he starts to cough violently.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ She says impatiently, as if she was asking herself, trying to find answers.

  ‘I don’t know, but whatever happens I’m sure I won’t be the only one to die’

  She feels confused. Mr Adam’s looks as if he has come to terms with his death, even though most men his age would be crying their eyes out, proclaiming they haven’t lived or loved yet. Donner knows that she would feel that way too, she’s too young to die, that makes him even more so. She remains silent as she looks at the fading man on the bed.

  Suddenly she hears a commotion outside of the room. She can’t see what’s happening but she can hear screams, and then a loud explosion, followed by a chorus of pops and explosions, each matching each other with an everlasting hissing sound. Scott grabs her arm tightly and opens his eyes to reveal an orange tinge on his eye whites. It catches her off guard and she screams.

  ‘Don’t be afraid doc, everything will be over in a matter of minutes,’ Scott says as he seems to change slightly.

  His face grows darker as the aura of his eyes starts to brighten the room. Donner fears for her life as he holds her, his finger nails clasping deep into her forearm, drawing blood. He pulls her closer and raises his free arm. She sees his finger nails straighten as he makes a claw and digs his nails deep into her wrist. A spray of blood is seen as he quickly rips at her wrist and let’s go. A flashing in her wrist begins. She tries to free herself. Scott lets her go, still in a trance like state of mind, still with bright orange eyes, still smiling a sadistic smile.

  Donner looks at her arm and sees a fast healed scar appear where Scott had dug his nails into. Just under that, the blinking light glows red as it pulsates violently in rhythm with her beating heart.

  ‘What did you do to me?’ she screams in terror

  Scott growls a roaring cry that only a beast could make.

  ‘Now you’re one of us,’ he roars as he lies back down and closes his eyes.

  Slowly but surely the orange glow that surrounded his body earlier on fades away. The sound of screaming and explosions continue outside the room as Donner stands still in shock, she looks down at her arm at the beacon of light that was penetrated into her seconds before.

  Twenty Two

  The group of men with rifles make their way down Fifth Avenue. They open fire on the yellow cabs downtown on 48th. A sea of pedestrians scramble for cover behind the stationary vehicles. The attack is quick and the attackers are vicious. Each one of them donning gas masks and heavy LMG’s. Each one of them covered in body armour. It’s something that resembles a Sci-Fi movie. The group of around twenty men appear to be immortal, invincible and unflinching as they open fire on the people of New York.

  Its minutes before the sound of sirens can be heard, but by then the shops of 48th street are riddled with bullets, and the traffic is halted. A few hundred people lie dead on the floor as the armed men casually walk down the street, firing bullets into the corpses of the downed victims. They stop a few yards down the street aiming their guns at the intersection in front of them. Behind them is a mass of
smoke and debris as lifeless corpses huddle the ground next to the stationary famous New York yellow cabs. They stand there and wait, not a word is spoken between the armed men. The condensation on their masks is evident as they breathe in and out in a rush of adrenaline. The sirens grow nearer and nearer with every single passing second until a few dozen police cars are seen in the distance. One of the men at the front raises his hand in a fist. He turns around to his men and nods his head. They all kneel on the ground in a rehearsed manor as if they have been planning this meticulously. They lock and load, swapping magazines in the few seconds they have. What seems like an eternity passes but in reality is just enough time for the oncoming police cars to reach 48th street.

  The men remain in formation as the man’s fist turns into an open handed gesture. Within a few seconds the men open fire. The bullets ride up the police cruisers like a wisp of wind, sucking the air out of the engines. A clunking sound of metal is heard as a barrage of bullets penetrates each car. The oncoming police cars swerve and crash. Some crash into each other, others crash into the expensive shop windows, imploding the storefronts with an echoing smash. The men stop firing after twenty odd seconds. The police cars in front of them remain motionless as each one of them house dead police officers. The man at the front of the group turns around to his men and nods his head.

  ‘Mission accomplished,’ he says underneath his face mask.

  Twenty Three

  Ray had fallen asleep on the floor. It had felt like days that he had been underground, but in reality he was only there for less than twelve hours so far. The smell of the sewage had made him nauseas so he thought that getting some sleep would be advisable. After around ten minutes of sleep he is awoken to the sound of distant gunfire. In New York he’s used to hearing some occasional gunfire but on this occasion the gunfire seemed prolonged. It didn’t sound like handguns going off, it sounded like a machine gun, maybe even two or three machine guns. It worried him thinking about such things. Could it be that the world above was ripping its self apart? Could people be looting already? He wondered when the army would be coming. They always seem to show up in the movies when something happens. When Godzilla took over Manhattan, they were there. He just hoped that they would be there real soon. Rescue him and the survivors. Defeat the beacons or whatever they are. He was preoccupying himself with worry after worry when he heard something close by. He opened his eyes to be met with the end of a knife pointed directly at his right eye, inches above it. He tried to focus and when he did he saw who was holding it.

  ‘Uh oh, look who’s woken up,’ says Mitch as he brandishes the knife above Ray’s eye.

  Ray swallows hard as he tries to remain calm.

  ‘Now listen here boy, you got something I want,’ he says, still holding the knife above Ray’s eye.

  ‘What?’ asks Ray while trying to not sound scared.

  ‘I want you gone, that’s what I want’

  ‘But…You said you were okay with me…’ says Ray

  Mitch extends his finger and puts it on Ray’s lips

  ‘Shut your mouth boy, you’ll wake David. No, I want you gone, I don’t want you around my girls, and I certainly don’t want you around me, you hear me boy?’

  Ray nods his head, there’s not much he can do with a knife pointing at his eye, one wrong move and he could be blind in a blink of it.

  ‘Now, I want you to pack your shit and fuck off, or I’m going to have to put you down’

  ‘Okay, okay, just don’t do anything rash,’ says Ray, trying to keep his voice down.

  Ray hears something and so does Mitch; before Mitch could fully turn around he is hit in the back of the head with a large swing of a fist. Mitch’s body hits the floor hard, half of him dangles on top of Ray, but Ray pushes Mitch off and shuffles up to his feet. He sees David look at him with welcoming eyes.

  ‘You okay Ray?’ asks David

  Ray just nods his head, dust falls off as he does so.

  ‘You sure?’

  Ray nods once again

  ‘Look man, I would just kick his ass out of here but he has those two girls, I just can’t kick two girls out and risk them blowing up on the surface,’ David says as he looks at the two girls sleep across from them

  ‘I understand, I’m going for a walk, I need to clear my head,’ says Ray

  ‘Don’t go disappearing on us, we need you…I need you. We need to stick together, I’ll take care of Mitch, I’m sure I can teach him a lesson in manners,’

  Ray nods his head and grabs his stuff.

  ‘Why you taking your bags?’

  ‘I’m not leaving my stuff here for that asshole to trash when he wakes up’

  ‘Leave them with me, I’ll look after them’

  ‘Nah, you’re alright. Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere, just need to clear my head,’ Ray says as he walks down the sewer. The light from the oil drum fades as he escapes into the darkness.

  Twenty Four

  ‘Any news from 48th street?’ Asks Mr Conway

  Mrs Harriet brushes her hair to the side and smiles.

  ‘Yeah, they got the job done. The estimated death toll is three hundred. They got some serious gunfire in,’ says Mrs Harriet

  ‘Any kids?’

  ‘No, fortunately all the kids were in school so just adults’

  ‘Good, I may be a revolutionary but even I don’t agree with killing kids. They should not have to suffer for the mistakes of their parents’

  ‘I agree,’ says Mrs Harriet

  Mr Conway gets up from his seat and stretches his arms. His bulk is evident from a good few feet away. The sheer sight of the man invokes fear into everyone, including Mrs Harriet.

  He walks over to Mrs Harriet and spins the chair she is on around, to face him. He starts to stroke her face in a menacing way.

  ‘You did good Mrs Harriet, real good,’ he says

  She blushes, trying to hide the uncertainty she feels.

  ‘I appreciate your support sir’

  ‘Now about that disciplinary action…’ he says, still caressing her.

  ‘I thought you said there would be no action taken against me?’

  ‘Well, a lashing is what I consider disciplinary action, what I have planned for you is a lot more enjoyable and whole lot less painful, you could even say you would enjoy it’

  Mrs Harriet closes her eyes and composes herself, trying to fight off the urge to break this man’s fingers. She can’t fight back, she needs to pucker up and knuckle down. The country is depending on her.

  ‘As you wish,’ she says while undoing her blouse.

  Twenty Five

  DeShaun is sipping on another hot cup of coffee, this time in his own office. He’s working some files on his computer when a man comes bursting through the door. He’s a tall man, slender build, wearing an officer’s uniform. He salutes DeShaun and stands at attention. All this is making DeShaun feel uneasy, he doesn’t like being saluted, he isn’t in the army after all, but the army people salute all government officials, for it is the government these men and women fight for.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ DeShaun asks as he sips on his coffee some more

  The officer looks at him and shakes his head, trying to excrete some words out of his own mouth.

  ‘There has been an attack on 48th street, Manhattan sir’

  ‘What sort of an attack? Planes?’

  ‘No sir, a group of armed men dressed in body armour opened fire and killed two hundred and eighty seven people, including thirty two police officers’

  DeShaun gets up from his seat, feeling woozy at the sound of the news he is receiving.

  ‘You’re kidding me?...What about the combusting people? Why are parts of New York untouched by this virus?’

  ‘I don’t know sir, but reports are coming in that after the attack, the Manhattan area is now experiencing the same viral symptoms that Brooklyn is experiencing’

  ‘So these armed men could be linked with this virus?’
/>   ‘It looks that way sir, there’s one more thing,’ says the officer

  ‘What?’

  ‘The Mayor is missing’

  Twenty Six

  Ray has been walking through the sewer system now for an hour. He’s walked past the ladder he climbed down yesterday and now finds himself exploring the depths of the sewer. Its dark and cold down there, a feeling that he has grown accustom to since all this has gone down. He feels as if his life is near its end. A life that maybe he didn’t live to its fullest. He hasn’t always been happy; hell he has never been happy. He was all too consumed with the mundane details of life to enjoy the true great things in it. His work had been his hobby. His money had been his love. He never had a serious relationship. Many women would run for the hills after realising what type of man he is. A man that consumes himself with work ethic and drive. A man who doesn’t really see a women for more than a night’s work, and a lifetime’s burden. He nearly found the right girl back a few years ago, it turned into more than a one night thing but unfortunately his work got in the way again.

  Now he finds himself wondering those same things, is his survival getting in the way of what is really happening? Should he be concentrating on the mysteries of this strange time he is living in? That’s why he brought his laptop down with him in the first place. Maybe it’s time he starts to make something of himself. He gathers that there are many capable people up above that could be doing the same thing he is doing. Wondering what is causing this. He’s sure that there are people who are being assigned jobs in finding out what is happening up there. He can be pretty sure that the government its self is trying to figure out who is behind all this, surly it’s their jobs to find out why people are self-combusting everywhere, and why flashing lights are causing these combustions.

  Maybe it’s the government who is behind this. Maybe that’s why he heard gunshots earlier on, maybe the National Guard did show up, but they decided to finish off what they couldn’t finish with the beacons alone. Either way, Ray finds himself lost in more conspiracies. He’s used to thinking the worst, but for the first time in his life he finds himself living in the worst, living in every thinker’s worst nightmare. A world where power has overtaken and technology is obviously at fault. How else can he be safe underground? How else can these beacons not touch him under a hundred feet of concrete? It must be satellites, or a virus that hasn’t made its way underground, but surly if it was a virus then him and the people who were once up top, but now find themselves underground would have spread the viral pathogen around by now.