The tall, bald man ran at them. He was brandishing an oar of all things and Tayler stared, horrified, as he began bringing it down over their heads. He was screaming and beating them one by one. The dark haired girl joined him, swinging her own unlikely weapon - a long metal camera tripod. The shorter man put the girl he was carrying down against the wall and looked at Tayler.
“Watch her!” he commanded then ran to join the others, pulling a wrench from a tool belt. Tayler stood, frozen for the moment at the spectacle of brutal murder displayed in front of her. She watched the three of them beat the small crowd of burn victims. Blood, brains and burnt flesh exploded like ripe charred melons, spraying the walls with gore.
When they were done and turned to her, she backed away, raising the axe. She would be damned if she let them do the same to her.
The girl laying against the wall stirred and the first man ran to her.
“Ravyn are you okay?” he asked.
“I just put a screwdriver through my girlfriend’s head...how would you be?” the girl against the wall groaned, holding her head.
The tall man reached for Tayler who drew back bringing the axe all the way up.
“No! It is OK!” said the dark haired girl. “What’s your name?”
“Tayler,” she said, backing up one more step.
“Tayler. Hello. My name is Laura. This is my man here. His name is Richard.” The tall man nodded to her in greeting then Laura beaconed to the others. “That is Dan and Ravyn. I know how all this looks, but you don’t know what has been happening.”
Another explosion tore loose the door from the apartment they had come from then another and a third.
“Explain later!” Tayler yelled through the mask, grabbing Laura and turning her. Dan helped Ravyn to her feet and they ran. Tayler glanced at Ravyn who ran beside her, blood pouring from the place her ear had recently been.
They turned the corner and came to a skidding halt. The far end of the hallway leading to the fire escape was filled with more of them. They shrieked and groaned at Tayler and her companions. There were so many that the hallway was choked with them. Some were burned while others seemed mostly whole except for bite-sized chunks missing from arms, legs and faces. One was stumbling forward with a trail of intestines streaming out from her belly. A burnt one stepped on it and it pulled the rest out. The guts landed, with an audible splash, on the dirty, carpeted floor.
Tayler had seen all manner of carnage, but this horror was so unexpected, so unnatural that she could not stop herself. She tore the mask off and vomited. Hands grabbed her, pulling her up. It was Dan.
“There is no time. We have to go now!” he spoke urgently and yanked Tayler up. The mask lay forgotten where it fell.
They ran down the middle corridor, hoping to skirt the large group and come up undetected behind them so they could reach the fire escape. Half way down the corridor another crowd turned the corner. They turned and saw the first group, led by Mrs. intestines, had reached the hallway and were following them. There was nowhere go. They were trapped.
****
MJ did not make it far in the car. The streets were packed with panicked people and all around her were the sounds of chaos. Burglar alarms and fire alarms and sirens blared in a cacophony of breaking store windows, screams and gunfire. People looted stores and some seemed to be setting fires. Others were fighting each other. Groups of armed kids, men in suits, hookers and cops, all clustered together, moved in tandem through crowds that seemed to attack without any provocation. The world around her and the city she loved and called home had gone completely and utterly insane. She screamed as she saw a huge dump truck tear through a crowd, scattering people and running several of them over.
People abandoned their cars, running with children in their arms and colliding into each other. A man charged her, wielding what appeared to be a mannequin’s leg. MJ raised the Python and shot him in the face. The leg bounced off her arm came to rest atop her car. A cop ran at her and she dropped the Python to the ground and raised her hands in surrender, suddenly aware that she had just shot someone in public on the streets of New York. The cop ran right past her, not even looking in her direction. She stood for a moment watching him go. Somehow, this was the worst thing of all. She shot someone and he didn’t even take notice. This was the final affirmation. Everything was coming undone.
In a state of shock, she whispered. Without even thinking, the only thing that came to her mind. She had read her Yeats and a single line came to her lips. “The center does not hold...things fall apart...”
****
Tayler brought the axe down again and again. Wood splintered and the door to the maintenance tunnel finally gave. The hallway was exploding with a deep stench of death and smoke. They had made their way down on both sides, blocking the hall from wall to wall and blotting out the emergency lights on each side. Tayler herded the others through and then pulled what was left of the door closed. The shrieking people bottlenecked in it and she brought the axe down on them. On either side of her, Dan and Richard were doing the same.
“You are killing people!” her brain screamed, but something in Tayler assured her this was not so. These people, missing arms or parts of their faces or charred beyond recognition, could not possibly still be alive. She remembered a movie that had come and gone last fall. War of the Zombies it had been called. She and MJ had been like two teenagers in the back row of the Grindhouse Theater. Once the popcorn was consumed, they had turned to each other. Alone in the back row they tested their boldness, stripping off everything and quietly, but hungrily, devouring each other as zombies rampaged over a Caribbean island. These things were something like the zombies in that movie. Mindless, hungry and murderous, yet far more terrifying than the low-budget film had been able to produce... and the looks on their faces...no actor could hope to achieve that. Now, as she brought the axe down onto the head of a woman reaching for her with only a stump left for an arm, she allowed herself to believe that these people were already dead and she was merely putting them to rest.
Slain bodies choked the doorway, holding the rest back, at least for the time being, as Tayler and the others ran down the narrow maintenance hall. It was only wide enough for them to run single file. They ducked under pipes and valve wheels, leapt over vents and ducts, finally turning right and coming to a dead end. Shrieks filled the hallway. The dead had made it inside and were coming. Tayler looked at a small grille near the floor. It would be a tight squeeze, but they could use the crawlspace.
She pried at the grille with the axe. It groaned, but would not give. The shrieks were growing louder.
“Let me through!” Dan said and squeezed past. The hall was so narrow it took several moments. He dove down and pulled a long screwdriver from his tool belt.
“Make it fast!” Ravyn said, looking over her shoulder. The smell of decay pushed ahead and the sterile hallway filled with the reek. Dan worked furiously as Richard stood with the oar out in front of him guarding the others. There was no room to swing it, but he thought he could at least hold them back when they came.
“I love you,” Laura whispered up to him.
“And I you, wife,” he said not looking down, but full of emotion.
The grille was almost off when they turned the corner. Richard drove the oar forward, knocking the first two back. He pushed it against the crowd, which grew heavier. They grasped at it and bit at it. Teeth marks scoured the oar’s bloody surface. The grille came off and Dan shuffled into it followed by Ravyn.
“Come on!” Tayler yelled.
“GO!” Richard thundered in response.
Tayler stood another moment, appraising the narrowness of the hall and finally dove down to the grille. She had to lay on her back, slide inside and then stand and climb. She tucked the axe into the neck of the jacket like a sword and began shimmying up towards the rest. It was not a 90-degree incline, but it was fairly close. The others were just above her.
“Laura, go!” Richard
yelled, straining against the crowd that filled the hallway. He looked at her and tears streamed down her cheeks. His eyes and expression softened, but he said nothing. Those eyes implored. She gave him a painful smile then dove for the open shaft. Richard watched her go over his shoulder, saw her feet disappear up into the shaft and then counted to ten. He shoved hard one last time and the dropped the oar and ran, diving for the shaft. He slid inside, his head colliding with the shaft wall then scrambled for his feet. Hands grabbed at his legs and pain blazed as they landed on top of them and began biting and tearing. Laura looked down in time to see him pulled out of the shaft. She looked up at Tayler and something passed between them.
Laura slid back down the shaft and crawled out. She heard the sounds of furious fighting, followed shortly after by screams. They crawled up and up and up through the narrow, steep crawlspace.
Tayler fought back the anxiety. Memories of being trapped under the stairs in the fire and the feeling of being buried alive, the claustrophobia that came from PTSS, or at least what she believed to be such and had fought with every fire since. She remembered the words of her father. One of the things he had said that did stick.
“There is no shame in being afraid,” he had said when she was seven years old and the pains of puberty had yet to shadow their relationship. “No shame in being afraid. Shame only comes when you let that fear stop you.”
Tayler fought that fear now and let it pass through her mind like smoke through a grate. She would not let her fear stop her. MJ's face filled her mind, MJ’s lips pressing against hers, MJ’s tongue caressing hers. The fullness of her lips, the tender mouth that gave her so much pleasure and those eyes that seemed to wrap warm hands around her heart. In these thoughts she found a little more courage and strength. The feeling of being buried inside this massive tomb of concrete and fire momentarily wavered and she continued up and up until, finally, they broke through to the roof.
Dan and Ravyn were already out. Ravyn was sitting against a jutting vent pipe holding her head in her hands. Dan raised the wrench for a moment then ran to help Tayler out. She shooed him away and leaped out. Smoke floated out behind her and, within its deep scent, the unpleasant smell of burning flesh pervaded. Their pursuers would not be coming for them that way.
Dan peered down into the darkness from which they had emerged then turned to Tayler.
“What happened?” he asked.
Tayler only looked at him and he nodded.
“Can you tell me what happened to you?” she asked him back.
Dan put a hand to his face and stroked the stubble there. He looked tired. “Do we have time for such?” he asked.
Tayler walked to the edge and looked down. The building was a blaze far below, but it did not appear to be either weakening or listing. The fire would gut this building, but it was far from collapsing, at least for the time being. She cocked her head for a moment, hearing far away sounds of sirens and what sounded like gunshots and explosions. Things were going bad. Very bad.
“Yes,” she said at last. “I think time may be all we do have left.”
****
Dan sat next to Ravyn who appeared to have gone to sleep. Tears were coursing down her face even with her eyes closed. They had been celebrating that night. Dan and his friend Toby, Ravyn and her girlfriend whom everyone had nicknamed Harry, Richard, Laura and their friends Joanna and Heath. They were celebrating Ravyn and “Harry’s” new relationship. Ravyn had only come out two months before. Harry was not her first girlfriend, but the first she had been public about. Her friends, proud of her and happy for her had thrown her a party. They had been watching a football game and listening to metal over it, splitting a case of beer when the knock on the door had come.
One of their neighbors claimed that some crazed folk had broken into their home. Rather than trying to steal anything however, they had attacked them. The wife had been bitten on both the neck and arm. The daughter on her calf. They had fought off the intruders as best they could and fled.
Dan looked up at Tayler. “They had knocked on several doors, but apparently we were the only ones decent enough to let them in... Fucking good for us...” He looked at Ravyn. Her head rolled onto his shoulder and he put a supporting arm around her. “They were not there longer than half an hour when the wife and daughter both collapsed, almost at the same time. Heath ran to one. Ravyn and Harry ran to the other. Joanna tried to dial emergency... I saw Harry try to begin CPR. She had her mouth on the wife’s mouth when she lurched up and...”
Dan looked down, straining to hold back tears. Tayler saw he was a tough guy. This story though was hard and it would have no happy ending.
“Ravyn had tried to dislodge the wife from Harry. She let go and grabbed Ravyn. Bit her ear clean off her head. The husband was screaming. Everyone was screaming. Heath was bitten by the daughter half a second later. Everything that happened after that is just a blur. Our friends died. Ravyn came close and now there are only the two of...”
Dan’s words were cut off as Ravyn’s head suddenly snapped up and lunged at his shoulder. Dan screamed and swung around, punching her three times in rapid succession. Ravyn’s head knocked back taking a large piece of Dan’s shoulder with it. He rolled away and stood up, clutching his shoulder. Blood poured out between his fingers and began spreading over his clothes. Ravyn stood and looked at them. Tayler saw her eyes. They had changed and she was chewing on the piece of flesh she had taken. Those eyes regarded them both then she shrieked and lunged at them.
Tayler swung the axe and Ravyn’s head flew up and over the edge of the building turning over and over till it disappeared.
Dan sat on the edge looking over, his lips drawn tight. He looked at Tayler and they both understood.
“Go,” he said at last. “Get away from me before I...” he sighed. “Before I try to hurt you.
“I can...” Tayler began, but Dan raised his hand.
“No,” he said looking out over the city skyline. “This is my life. I will take every second of it I can, to my dying breath. If I feel like I am changing somehow, then I will take one last step. Out and over and feel the wind on my face. Go, Tayler. Thank you for trying to save us.”
Tayler wanted to raise her hand, to put it on Dan’s shoulder, to try to help him, carry him down to safety. He looked at her and she noticed the color of his eyes were paler.
“Go,” he said, calmly and turned away. Staring into the bright lights of New York City. Tayler turned and ran towards the fire escape.
****
MJ could see the building now and her heart sank. Even from several blocks down she could tell that if Tayler was really in there, her dear lover had little to no chance of getting out. So many buildings were on fire that MJ could not be sure which one her lover would be fighting. Though her heart told her it was the one ahead. Even if Tayler did make it out, what then? She would join MJ in the chaos. Everything was erupting, burning and crashing around her. She could not tell the screams of pain from the screams of murder.
Someone broke from a roaring crowd and ran at her. Its arms flailing and its body jerking in mad darts even as it closed the distance. The face was one of utter madness. Spittle flew from its mouth and she noticed to her horror that half the face was missing. She raised the Python and fired. Nobody could miss at this range. It flew backward and landed on the ground with a huge hole in its chest.
MJ began to turn when the thing got up again. She put her hand to her mouth, sure she would vomit then fight or flight took over and MJ ran towards the burning building. Determined to make it through the chaos between her and Tayler.
A hand closed over her ankle and she went down, gun flying from her hand. She rolled over, saw a battered face moving toward her leg and screamed.
****
Tayler reached the side of the building and looked over the fire escape just in time to see the crowds of burnt things come piling up towards her like a swarm of dark ants. They raised a horrific cheer of the damned and she r
an backwards away from the edge. They came spilling over it. Smoking and blackened. Their skins splitting as they moved towards her, revealing pink oozing flesh beneath.
Tayler screamed and brought the axe down on the head of the first one. She swung it and beheaded a second. A third reached and she took its arm off, but they kept coming in a crowd. She turned and tried to run. One grabbed her fire jacket and yanked her backward. Tayler dropped the axe, grabbed at the front of the jacket and tore it off, momentarily thinking how funny it would be to see a large “S” on the front of the uniform shirt she wore underneath, she bent, grabbed the axe and ran.
She reached the other side and looked across. There was no fire escape on this side. There was however another section of the building. About two stories down, but a good ten yards away. Between it and her, the cursed architect had made a space that fell all the way to the pavement below. In the night and smoke, it looked like a chasm straight to Hell.
Tayler looked back and saw that the roof was full of them now. Hundreds of them. She closed her eyes for just a moment and gathered herself then she flung the axe down and over to the section of roof below.
She ran as far back towards them as she dared and stopped. From the crowd approaching her, a few of the fast moving ones tore loose and sprinted toward her. She snarled and spun on her heels, bolting for the side of the building. She did not know if she could make it, but she would rather fall than be ripped to pieces. They ran snarling on her heels, gaining on her. Then she leaped up on the edge and thrust herself over the side, pushing with all her strength and speed.
Tayler flew through the air, out and over the chasm. The fast running creatures followed, heedless of the drop. She landed hard on the other side, ducking and rolling as she went to absorb the force. The others fell waving and growling into the architectural crevasse. In her mind’s eye she saw them shatter on the pavement far below.
Bloody Sexy Anthology Page 2
