by Alan Spencer
“Bitch is hungry,” Herman whispered. In a singsong voice, he added, “Shove the in-cre-di-ble e-di-ble egg up your ass, lady.”
A dead man with a tree-bark-colored face introduced himself as William. He posed a question, “Do you ever ask yourself who is more discriminated against, the Mexican or African American walking corpse?”
Herman was quite taken by the question. “In this case, who’s serving who, William? There’s your answer, pal.”
“Not so fast,” the patron insisted. “Who still owns a heartbeat? Then we’ll compare skin tones.”
Addey served William two servings of eggs. “Your philosophy on life—er, I mean death—or whatever—is very interesting.”
“If everyone were dead,” William finally posed to them before moving on to the pancake lady, “then we’d finally be equals. Everyone would have the same problems. If everyone had the same problems, then we’d be equals.”
After a half hour, the line thinned out. They were only busy with people coming back for seconds and thirds.
“They eat so voraciously. Why are they so hungry?”
Herman explained, “They don’t gain weight anymore. Their system has no true need for sustenance. Eating was a cherished activity when they were still alive. It’s mental.”
“Do people eat in heaven?”
He laughed at the question. “They eat the good shit probably, not this institutionalized dreck. The cryogenic treatments make them feel like they’ve been hibernating too.” He scooped a stack of waffles on a plate and added a dollop of whipped cream and powdered sugar. “Would you like blueberries or strawberries, Hank?”
She was about to scoop eggs for the next patron when she caught Deke’s reflection in the steel covering of the pot.
He mouthed the words, Trust no one. They’ve been planning—
His reflection flickered and vanished after only two seconds. She gasped, but was stopped because the patron had also noticed Deke’s face. He was a taller man at six feet tall, perhaps in his thirties before he’d died. He wore a Sixers jersey that exposed his yellow skin and the stitching that started at one shoulder, crossed his clavicle, and ended at the other shoulder.
“Ghosts,” he stated, not taking any stance on them. “Whoever just talked to you, they’re weak. I wonder what your ghost has been doing to be so depleted.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “I wouldn’t know. First time I saw any ghost.”
“They’re always with us,” the patron said, “telling us things.”
“Who was that?” Herman had seen Deke as well. “What did he say?”
“That’s my brother. He was trying to warn me. He said not to trust anybody, and they’re planning…and that’s it.”
“Who’s planning what?”
She wasn’t sure if it was worth riling up Herman. He didn’t know about the secret chamber she’d discovered or the threat of the island being destroyed by a government missile. “I can’t say. Deke couldn’t finish what he was saying.”
The server at the other side of her, a man whose name tag read Anton, turned to her, saying something random. “Look at these walking bags of pus. Their bowels don’t work. Did you know that?”
Herman shook his fist at Anton. “Quiet down. You got in trouble for not keeping your mouth shut not too long ago.” He pointed at Anton’s wrist, the scar tissue in the shape of teeth indentions that carried from his thumb, across the inner palm, and to his index finger. “They don’t like it when you talk shit about them.”
“I’m not talking shit. They can’t poop. They have to shove a plastic tube up their assholes and suction their organs clean. What a life, huh? Life after death isn’t as glamorous as it once sounded.”
She reserved a response.
“They can have sex,” Anton continued. “They get a shot in the dick, and it grows. It gets puffy or something. Amazing what science can do. If only they can cure dying in the first place.”
Herman rolled his eyes. “Yeah, if only. Now would you shut up?”
They continued serving the dead. Anton finally quieted down. Breakfast ended a half hour later. The crew disassembled the line. The plans for the next meal were soon underway.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Who has the worst job in this stinking shit hole?”
“We do, Bobby.”
“Who’s broken their backs the most out of all the sorry assholes here?”
“We have, Bobby.”
“You bet your ass. And now we’re cleaning up this shit.”
Bobby Owen and Ricky Fagan were scrubbing the edges of a giant sewer pipe. One so big they could stand in it. Rust corroded what used to be solid, dependable steel. The stench was raw; even when the blood and guts were mostly cleaned up, it continued to reek. Dead carcass and chunks of meat had dried into the pipe along with shards of bone. This pipe was the outlet for the staff’s kitchen and butchering rooms where blood and mess gargled down drains. The drainage circulated through here and many other tubes into the vampires’ rooms, where they could lap up the crimson from the tubes hanging from their rooms’ ceilings. The problem today: there was a clog, and the vampires were waiting for their fix.
“The suck-heads can bite me—and they would, Ricky. They would bite it right off.”
“Yeah, man, yeah,” Ricky agreed. He was bucktoothed and one eye was significantly smaller than the other. His comb-over was ruined, each strand similar to twisted train tracks because he slathered so much gel into it. “Bite your ass, man. Bite it right off. And they wouldn’t be sorry. No apologies, Bobby. Not even a breath of an apology.”
Bobby coughed on the fumes of the bleach chloride mixture they were power-spraying down the tubes. Water would rush through the channels and rinse them clean, and then more blood would be shot through the tubes and directed to its rightful homes. For now, the chemicals were so thick, they had to put on their breathing masks—nothing more than a cheap paper face mask—and keep on working, though Ricky didn’t like his mask on. He claimed it kept him from completing his job to the fullest since the mask caused his glasses to fog up each time he breathed in and out. Ricky was also ten IQ points above retardation.
Between stretches of scrubbing the floors and power-spraying, they peered into other tunnels and outlets for blockages. They’d found a variety of obstructions in the past: boots, dog tags, body bags, wallets, purses, rain slickers, wristwatches, wigs, rugs, a blue dildo once (and Ricky wanted to keep it, but Bobby slapped him behind the head and told him the only thing he could do with a dildo was stick it up his ass) and lots and lots of human bones.
The tube they currently investigated had nothing inside it.
“What would you do, Ricky, if something reached out and bit you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe you’d get a day off.”
Ricky’s voice jumped with excitement. “Well, in that case, I welcome being bit.”
Bobby rolled his eyes. “The doc would stitch you up and send you back to work. You’d have to be literally chopped in half before they’d allow you to enjoy bed rest of any kind. I hear they have cable, even the nudie channels, in the hospital ward.”
“Wow, really?”
“Yeah, but if you lost your jerking-off hand, you’d be up shit creek.”
“I could learn to use my left hand, or I could pay some lady to do it for me. Yeah, I could.”
“Then why not have sex with her?”
“But what about when I wanted to masturbate?”
“Jesus Christ, Ricky, you’re truly a fuck-up, a real throwback—”
Ricky forced his right hand into the next tube barely the size of his forearm. The drain coughed and spat out a wad of foamy water.
Bobby turned his head at the tube. “Hey, what’s in there?”
“I almost got it. Just a sec.”
What was brewing in that pipe? Bobby wondered. The way that water foamed and sizzled, it was active—reactive.
“Get your hand out of
there right now, Ricky!”
“Don’t worry, Bobby, this isn’t my jerking-off hand.”
“You stupid asshole, think about what you’re doing.”
“I’m fine, wait—”
The gurgling increased into a boiling. Ricky jerked his hand back, and he slipped backward. Sprawled out on the ground, he was kicking and screaming. “AHGOD! AHGOD! AHGOD!”
His arm was missing up to the elbow. Bobby reached for his walkie, but it was too late. The clear, viscous matter lodged in the tube shot out at Ricky, enveloping him. Faces began to form in the substance, and then bones erected themselves out of nothing, forming a sternum and a rib cage and then so much more random anatomical architecture. Instantly the liquid changed, and Ricky was buried beneath a dozen active corpses. Their flesh was as putrid as it was gangrenous and dripping nasty.
Bobby stumbled backward to avoid them, but the pipes ahead of him oozed the same mysterious liquid from every pipe. Soon, the undead enemies blocked every possible escape route.
He was flensed of meat in minutes.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Brenner exited the secret tunnel after it had been excavated by ten of his best men, each armed with pump-action .22 shotguns and M-16s straight from the PAM facility armory. Whatever beast or beasts lurked within wouldn’t escape in the meantime, he decided. Workers had utilized jackhammers and pickaxes to break through the concrete walls. The effort was hours long, but the steel and concrete boundaries would take time to breach. But for now, his favorite part of his job was minutes from occurring.
Stocking the arena.
He entered the warehouse at the end of the boarding dock. Ralph Hines, a portly man with a bad comb-over and a dyed black beard, stepped up to him. Under the shelter of the warehouse, only thin windows of sunlight filtered through, everything else draped in shadow. Ralph was in charge of the holding cells for living human cargo. The cells were empty now, the humans standing in the warehouse for Brenner’s inspection. The first row wore orange prison fatigues. They were death row and life-term prisoners, their faces grim and ghostly pale with fear.
“You could hear the smallest fart, it’s so quiet,” Ralph joked to Brenner. “Ugliest sons of bitches I’ve ever seen, especially when they’re scared. They have no fuckin’ clue what they’re in for.”
“It’s the best way to do these things,” Brenner said. “Vampires prefer true terror. Scientists at the Pentagon say adrenaline and fear do something to the blood. They change the composition of the blood. A friend of mine named Ruden once told me that. Fear turns the blood a degree warmer. It’s all it takes. It drives the vampires wild. Turns them on.”
Ralph scratched his mustache. “Turns me on to see these prison women, the ones that aren’t dykes. I could show them a few things. I bet they’d be willing. Hungry for it, even. I’d make their blood a degree warmer.”
Brenner abhorred the talk of sex. There were things beyond pleasurable that had nothing to do with sex. “Keep it in your pants. That’s what the strip club’s for.”
“These stupid fucks,” Ralph continued talking himself up. “I bet they’re sorry now for breaking the law. They’ll start crying any minute.”
The prisoners were actively perusing the warehouse with their eyes, many staring at the open door behind them and the expansive ocean. Brenner walked closer to the prisoners. Among the crowd, guards were armed and ready to fire their weapons if anybody touched him.
Ralph reached out and cupped a woman’s ass through her uniform. The woman was dazed. She was a heroin addict suffering from withdrawal.
“She jumped when I goosed her! She kept her mouth shut. She knows what’s good for her.”
“Hey, Mel,” Ralph yelled to the guard across from him. “They’ll do anything for us. Now’s your chance to enjoy it. Do what you want, man.”
“Yeah,” Mel said. “Before they’re meat, they’ll fucking dance on your pole. Up and down, baby. Squat and fuck.”
The words startled the prisoners.
Brenner shouted at the group at large, “Shut your mouths!” Pissed his help wasn’t keeping a higher quality standard, he growled, “Mel, you walk your ass over here right now.”
Mel knew what was coming as he trudged over to Brenner, his head lowered. Then Brenner whispered to Mel, “You know they’re supposed to be kept out of the loop. You give us away. You run your mouth too much. They won’t comply with our instructions if you say too much too soon.”
Mel spit out an apology. “S-sorry, I’m so sorry. It won’t happen again. Don’t throw me in with those things, please.”
Brenner seized Mel’s neck and dug his nails into the skin. Mel winced, but he kept his eyes on his superior. “I won’t throw you to the things—alive!” He unholstered his sidearm and blasted Mel in the temple with his .45, a powerful jolt that left the man sprawled out and hemorrhaging blood from the empty crater in his left temporal lobe.
“Consider this a warning to you, Ralph.”
Ralph looked on, stark white. “Y-yes sir.”
The radio crackled at his holster. “Ready for the first shipment.”
Brenner replied, “ETA five minutes.”
He addressed the prisoners. “Our little secret has been revealed. Consider yourselves lucky. Such luck surely won’t happen again. We harbor the world’s most dangerous predators and creatures. Know this, you’re about to be ushered into an arena to fight these things.” This was where the lies started again. “You’ll be battling them. Fighting to the death. You survive, you’re free. Your criminal records will be expunged. Murder with brute and unrelenting force is my best advice. That is all.”
The guards ushered them at gunpoint out of the warehouse. They strolled down a concrete walkway and into an alcove, like the entrance of an NFL locker room, that led onto the playing field. Down the long-spanning tunnel, cameras were angled to capture activity every five yards. The sticky, aged blood on the floor and walls had the convicts reeling in terror. Pleading voices and tears were mixed into the overall protests.
“This is unconstitutional!”
“Take me back to Pelican Bay!”
“Strap me to the goddamn electric chair!”
“I’m innocent—and you can take that to your fucking grave!”
“What conspiracy bullshit is this?”
And finally, “What the hell is behind that gate?”
Brenner lunged out of the tunnel, falling back in retreat, as the workers subdued the crowd who tried to escape. As guns blasted, the workers fighting back the prisoners, the retreat was a success. Outside the hallway, Brenner typed the secret code into the panel on the wall—a code that changed on a daily basis—to unlock the gate between the prisoners and the arena. He typed in another code that shot out tear gas from the ceiling vents. He closed and locked the Plexiglas door that kept the gas inside. The noxious fog obscured what the prisoners were doing, but they would soon have no choice but to enter the arena.
Watching the fog gather, he heard Ralph approach him, and he had to duck, Ralph taking a swing. Bent over, Brenner threw up a fist into Ralph’s midsection and grabbed his neck and kneed him in the nose. The dry snap, he’d broken Ralph’s nose and shattered four of his front teeth. Ralph crumbled to the ground, sobbing, bleeding, spitting teeth, his eyes glaring up at Brenner in rage.
His words were slush, “You killed Mel! You’re crazy! You’re not like the rest of us, man. I haven’t seen you eat or drink or visit the strip club or anything while I’ve been here. What the hell is wrong with you? Does pink not get you off? When I talk about sex, you don’t. It’s like you don’t like women. You’re not one of us. I want to know who the fuck you really are.”
Brenner pointed at the workers who had narrowly escaped being trapped in the arena. “Prepare the next shipment. They won’t last ten minutes in that arena. Leave me and Ralph alone.”
Ralph trembled now, though he refused to give up his retaliation. “How much longer would it be until you shot me in the head
? Everybody’s expendable on the island. Yeah, you’re crazier than shit, but without your gun, you’re nothing. I’m sick of your shit. If you’re going to kill me, then do it. I’d rather die fighting than die like Mel.”
Brenner broke out in a sweat, hearing this. His pores opened, expelling droplets of sweat, bile and toxins from his body—mostly used-up blood platelets and white and red blood cells. He was coated in a varnish-colored substance. It dripped down Brenner’s body and instantly vaporized at the sun’s touch.
Ralph’s eyes twitched, not sure what to make of the man’s transformation. “W-what in hell are you? Jesus Christ, Brenner…you’re not human.”
The femoral artery lifted from Brenner’s neck. It was thick as an elevator cable now, and it whipped out of his skin and lashed Ralph between the eyes. The connection split his skull in two. The lamprey sucker at the end of the artery attached to the man’s jugular and drained Ralph of every ounce of fluid in fifteen seconds. The desiccated corpse struck the ground and kicked up dust. Letting the blood settle into his body, Brenner picked up the corpse and tossed him over the dock and into the ocean.
He stood proud, looking at the dead bones strike the water. “It’s not pink that gets me off. It’s red.”
The warehouse contained only the necessary guards this time around as Brenner scrutinized the next round of human victims to go into the arena. They had been picked from insane asylums across the country. Each of them wore straitjackets, each bound together like a chain gang. Twenty total in this batch. He knew little about them, though he glanced at some of their invoices. The most interesting person was Tim “Smothers”—a nickname for a man who smothered his victims in pillows, water, blood and sometimes human fat. Vampire James Sorelli was always begging for more challenging game in the arena, and that’s why Brenner selected men like Tim “Smothers” to do battle. Even during this time when he believed there was an uprising coming, there were normal operations to manage, and he continued to perform his job with the utmost efficiency.
