Protect All Monsters

by Alan Spencer

  He left the pulp body to bleed out. The wounds on his back had already healed, and the blood he’d lost had already been regained through drinking the vile creature’s.

  Brenner listened again as new sounds rang out ahead of him. Which tunnel to follow, he couldn’t decide. The words weren’t coming from the facility this time. They were echoing cavern-deep and below his feet.

  They’ve burrowed below the sublevel.

  Another iron door prevented him from making forward progress. There was no lock on this door.

  That’s where the voices have to be coming from.

  If they don’t know I’m coming, they will soon.

  He stepped backward four yards, bending his arms as if to punch somebody, and he closed his eyes. He held his breath. Flexed every muscle and inch of his body.

  One.

  Every muscle inside him wove through his flesh and out his hands.

  Two.

  Tendrils of muscle tissue crept out of his chest, and shoulders, and back.

  Three!

  The vascular prongs exploded and punched out the steel wall.

  Once the dust settled, he didn’t hesitate to cross the threshold into their lair.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Addey waited in the third floor break room for reassignment. The break room also bore evidence of their work. For the vampires, vending machines dispensed blood according to blood type and temperature. Another machine dispensed human heads, hearts, and choice extremities. Twin-size cots manned one corner for those working double shifts to catch a quick snooze. A bare-bones vending machine, Coke machine, and row of six Mr. Coffees summed up the creature comforts. A table in the center of the room was stocked with empty doughnut trays and fruit. Many of the faces in the room were exhausted beyond complaint, the room stinking of hard labor and black coffee.

  She located an open chair and sat down, not knowing what else to do with herself. It wasn’t much longer before a familiar voice called out to her, “Addey? Hey, it’s Addey.”

  It was Cynthia Wells. Her hair was strewn about her face, disheveled from working so hard. What caught Addey's attention was her black eye, the bruise a contrast against her optimistic expression. She vaguely recognized the man who was directly behind her. He had been on the same boat as she had, coming to the island, the talkative cop named Todd Lamberson. He was militant faced, but soft around the eyes and mouth. A lot of smiles used to come out of that man, she thought, but not anymore.

  Cynthia hugged her close. “I heard what happened to you in that mobile unit. You’ve done nothing but kick everybody’s ass the moment you stepped foot in here.”

  She was too concerned for Richard and Herman to revel in the tough-woman label. Todd observed her fatigue and dug into his pocket and showed her a small plastic baggie with two white pills inside of it. “You look like you’ve been through hell. How about some Nō-Dōz to keep you going?”

  She accepted the pills and swallowed them with a drink of water. “The zombies locked me in a storage unit and tried to eat me alive. These are level-one zombies. And by the way, they enjoy flesh as much as the level twos do.”

  Cynthia and Todd exchanged horrified glances. Then Cynthia said, “I’ve heard that before, but I didn’t believe it. They’re friendly, good people.”

  “Yeah, they’re good people when they’re not trying to eat you. My friend Herman got beat up pretty bad. I don’t know if he’s going to make it. That bitch Grace Mooney escorted me here to work another shift. She wants us all dead.”

  Todd seized her arm. “We have no choice. This is the home stretch.”

  “Home stretch?”

  “Haven’t you heard?” Cynthia asked. “Talks of work stoppages have been cycling all night. It’s rumored Brenner’s trapped in the secret chamber you found. People are saying the monsters are going to rebel soon. Anytime now.”

  “Wait.” Addey was confused. “Where’s Richard?”

  “We haven’t heard from him in several hours,” Todd said. “He’s been found out, like us. There’s been no radio communication. Brenner or Grace did something to him. Alive or not, this place is going to become a war zone.”

  She kept eyeing the coffee, her pick-me-up not arriving yet. Todd shook his head, following her gaze. “Don’t bother. The coffee fucking sucks. You’re better off drinking a Coke.”

  She walked to the machine and hit the button. It spit out a Coke, and she slurped it with vigor. She then studied the faces in the room. They’d been here for years, maybe decades. Why would they care if this place was about to be dismantled? This had become their life. They didn’t have any fight left in them. She thanked God there was enough fight left in her to still throw a few punches.

  The door opened to the break room, and Grace entered with two armed guards. “Okay, we’re working double time tonight. It’s eleven p.m. Dirty sheets are strewn about the floor. Pick them up and then wash them in the machines. The vampires will be crawling from the arena and into their rooms soon. The room service phones will be ringing off the hook. Get to it, people.”

  Grace sauntered to the three of them with a knowing, evil grin. “Figures you three would be chatting. Traitors stay in good company, huh?”

  “I’m not a traitor,” Addey growled. “Aren’t you concerned there might be a rebellion?”

  The woman’s face remained unreadable. “As long as everybody works hard to satisfy their hunger, we’ll be safe.” Grace pointed her gun at them. “Hit the halls and collect the laundry and answer the phone whenever it rings.”

  “Can I have my weapons back?”

  Grace faltered at the question, eyeing Addey with a new contempt.

  Addey huffed. “If I wanted to shoot you, I could’ve grabbed anybody’s gun in the room and done it already. Maybe in another time and place, but for now, I’m not a murderer. Self-defense, though, is a perfectly fine with me. Like I said, you name the time and place, bitch.”

  Grace accepted the invitation. “Some other time, but for now, you’ll get a new set of weapons in the laundry room. I’ll be long gone by then.” Addressing everyone else again, she raised her voice. “All right, move it! No more talking. Get to work.”

  The room, including those sleeping on the cots, rose to action. The workers packed into a room full of industrial washing machines and dryers. The rooms outside were littered with blood-spattered sheets—what the vampires had left out earlier in the day. They stank of raw meat, unnatural sex and death.

  Cynthia was behind Addey. “So now, all we can do is keep our eyes open to any signs of a work stoppage or their rebellion.”

  Addey offered a stale laugh, “Well, I guess that should be easy enough to spot.”

  She was desperate to locate a new set of weapons, but she had no luck. The laundry room was barren of armaments. A back storage room contained an odd assortment of items, including a dozen ice machines stocked with human pieces. She almost guffawed at the sight of oversize buttons with stickers of arms, legs, heads, internal organs, torsos and genitals.

  This is fucked up beyond recognition.

  The place bustled with labor. Many had already collected numerous bundles of sheets, the workers becoming covered in blood in the process. They were nonreactive to the customary mess.

  A manager approached her, a brazen young man—a younger version of Brenner. “You’re new here, I can see. The hallways are still being cleared of laundry. Grab a cart and load it up. Clean off whatever shit’s on them and wash them in bleach. Got it?”

  Yes, deputy dickhead.

  “Yes sir,” she said. “I’m on it.”

  “Good. Then get to it.”

  She was going to ask him for a weapon, but the man rushed off to another group of workers slacking off in another corner.

  Addey channeled her anger into shoving a cart down the hallway. A pair of rubber dishwashing gloves was attached to the cart. She put them on. She hoisted up the first set of sheets. Mixed in was one of the workers’ uniforms. The fabric was
in tatters, soiled through and through with red. She stared at the door. Shadows in the shape of feet stood in the crack of the door, as if sensing her arrival. Addey carefully backed away from the door, leery of meeting the tenant.

  “I see you,” she warned aloud. “You stay the hell away from me. I’ll be the one biting you.”

  The laughter was muffled behind the door. “You can bite me anytime, lady.”

  She moved on, working as fast as she could to collect the other messes. The first five heaps of sheets were soaked in red, but the next room, room 313, the sheets were too heavy. Before she undid the mess and plopped them onto the cart, the scratching of nails traveled down the door.

  “I could smell you from below,” the wispy, needy, hungry, tormenting voice seethed its hatred for her. “Oh, I tasted your blood…licked it from the floor like an animal…you make me become an animal…how about another taste right now?”

  That’s when the human mandible slipped from the sheets and landed into the cart.

  The scratching doubled, the requests turning into menacing commands. “Fear in the blood is potent. The body pumps warmer blood that way. Hotter blood is better blood, so delectable. It’s inside of you right now.”

  She wheeled the cart back to the laundry room in retreat. She searched for somebody in charge, but she couldn’t locate anybody.

  Each word and rasp from the vampire had made her shiver. She didn’t realize she was covered in blood from the soiled sheets. Desperate to locate anybody to help her, she came to a different woman who looked to be a shift manager.

  She beckoned her. “I need a gun, a knife—anything!”

  The woman was older, her hair gray, her face shut-in white from constant work indoors. “I’m afraid we don’t have access to extra weapons on this floor.” The smile failed to withhold a private pleasure. “Grace, my sister, has advised me not to give you anything. But you do have a special request. My, my, you’re popular. Everybody’s talking about you. You’re one tough bitch, apparently. Well, I guess we get to see you in action.”

  She was afraid to find out what that meant, especially from Grace Mooney’s sister. “What do you mean?”

  “The guest in room 313 wants you to deliver him a late-night snack.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Angela Mooney shoved a metal cart in front of Addey, stocked with an empty china plate. Beside the plate, a bucket of ice housed a bottle of merlot. Angela pointed to the vending machines at the back. “Our guest insists on a heart…the blood sauce will be from you. He wants it slathered on the meat in his presence. It gets him off,” rolling her eyes, “it gets them all off watching humans cut themselves.”

  “Were you always crazy, or did something snap while being here?” Her wits and backbone were being tested simultaneously, and she refused to falter at this critical moment. “I’ll do it, but where’s the knife—where’s an instrument to derive the blood?”

  She was rationalizing her own bloodletting, but the idea of crafting a sharp weapon enticed her to bargain.

  But Angela wasn’t to be bargained with. “He has tools in his room. He says he has a specific craving. I guess you disturbed his roost below, and now he’s pissed.”

  “Just leave me to it.” You bitch.

  She veered the cart toward the vending machine. She punched the button for a heart, but a head bounced out instead. It was of an old man whose eyes had been removed. His flesh was icy white. She punched the machine twice, repulsed and infuriated at the machine’s mess-up. “This is so wrong!”

  Two arms and a torso plopped out next, each freezer burned in sections. “How do people live with themselves? This is so vile.”

  A hand touched her back, a soft caress. She turned to a butch woman. She was five feet high and two hundred pounds. Her bleach-blonde hair was styled into a crew cut, and a stud pierced her lip. She wore a red bandanna around her head.

  The woman frowned at the mess on the floor, not saying a word.

  “I’m so sorry.” Addey felt strange apologizing to frozen appendages. “I…pressed the button, and y-you see, the head came out instead of a heart, and then the parts kept falling out.”

  “I’m Jessica Ladd,” the blonde introduced herself, ignoring the weird apology. “I’ve mopped up blood on the sublevel, I’ve hollowed out organs from the torsos of cadavers and slapped them on a cart for the wolves, and I’ve drained blood out of bodies like a mortician so the vamps can guzzle it from tubes hanging from the ceiling. I’ve done just about everything except suck off men in the red-light district.”

  Before Addey could react, Jessica kept speaking, “Tonight, everything’s going down. We’ve planned an uprising of our own. The managerial staff has no idea, so keep your cool. You’re going to room 313, right?” She looked behind her back, not seeing any managers within earshot. “That’s James Sorelli’s pad. He’s not one to tangle with, and if he’s asking you by name, then he’s tasted your blood before. I’m not dying on this island, and neither are you. Watch your back in there.”

  Addey studied the break room. Nobody was listening in, and neither of the Mooney sisters were in the room. “Then what’s the plan?”

  “I can’t say yet,” Jessica whispered. “You hold your own in that vampire’s room for long enough, you’ll know when it’s happening.”

  Addey was honest about her fear of the approaching situation. “I’m afraid I don’t know how I can defend myself against that vampire. I’m unarmed.”

  Jessica offered her a boning knife, housed in a holster on her belt. “I stole this from the kitchen. You know what to do with this. Gut him. Slit his throat. Cut his head off. They can die like anybody, remember that. All of them can die like us.” She looked throughout the room, reading the faces and feeling the odd vibe in the air. “You’ll know when everything’s going down. Be careful. If it’s any interest, you have inspired a lot of people, including me.”

  Without another chance to add anything else, Jessica returned to shoving laundry into a machine and then folding piles of blankets like everything was normal.

  Going back to her duty, Addey scooped up the heart, one of many assorted pieces on the floor, with a gloved hand and plopped it onto the plate. She left the rest of the parts behind, not knowing what the hell to do with them.

  She tucked the boning knife into her waistband. She counted the room doors as she advanced, anxious and fearful to reach room 313. If James Sorelli was rational, she’d be interested in picking his brain. What were his plans tonight? Did he create the island for the sake of tearing it down and escaping years later? She was encouraged by the fact the others were banding together.

  It meant there was a chance of surviving.

  But only a chance.

  She hit room 313 before she could think everything out. The foot-shaped shadows at the crack of the door were missing. The vampire’s bait and trap would be more elaborate this time than the jumping out of the closet. The man had her scent. Her taste was in his mouth, and he craved it. She double-checked for the knife and then hesitantly knocked on the door, spitting out her spiel. “Room service, may I come in?”

  No reply.

  Long moments passed. Finally, she gave in to the urge to speak again.

  “Shall I come in?”

  She turned the knob and cracked open the door. She angled the cart so she could use it as a barrier. Taking it all in, the room was a fine accommodation. She was expecting a slaughterhouse with bodies hanging from the ceiling, dripping blood, and the floors awash in gore. Instead, a wall-size mirror backed a bar with stools and a countertop. It reminded her of an old saloon in a spaghetti western. The carpet was white—an unsafe choice for a vampire—and with numerous telltale stains of prior activities. A coffee table was in the center of a five-piece black leather set.

  Addey stared at the kitchen set nearby. “What the hell does a vampire cook?”

  “The warmer the blood, the better it tastes, and besides, I like normal food too.”

 
James stepped out of the hallway. His entrance wasn’t what she expected. She thought he’d fall from the ceiling or crawl on the floor and creep at her like a rabid animal. Instead, he walked in, wearing a pair of leather pants and a dark blue silk shirt. His flesh was ivory. Near blue. The eyes were the most striking feature on his face. They were murky black except for a straight line of olive green down the middle. The teeth were jagged, but Addey could tell they’d been filed and carved by hand, unnaturally sharp.

  He watched her for a moment. Pondering her. Then he studied the cart. “Let’s see what you’ve brought me.”

  She lifted up the top and revealed the heart platter.

  “It looks a bit dry…it needs color.”

  He poured himself a drink of cognac from a corner station of booze.

  “Why did you have me bring merlot if you’re not going to drink it?”

  “I like to keep adding to my private stock. Sometimes I want something without having to ask for it.”

  Mocking him, “I used to sneak milk and cookies at night when I was a kid, so I can understand.”

  The vampire was amused. “You’ve only been here a short time, and you’ve already managed to ruin a lot of my plans. I would’ve had a few more months to build up my army. In the time I’ve been free to roam this island, we’ve evolved. If you live long enough, you’ll get a glimpse of what I mean. If you live long enough.”

  He tipped his glass at her in cheers. “Fifty years of creation, and tonight, it all will be turned upside down. But you’ve put a crimp in our evolution. You’ve shortchanged my work. And you’ve managed to enrage a lot of my brethren. Locating the secret chamber for one, and then killing all those level-two zombies. And hours ago, you killed a bunch of level ones. They want you dead, and I for one can’t blame them.”

  The vampire slugged back another mouthful of cognac. “And you’ve committed yet another offense against us. You’ve given your coworkers hope. But I suppose that’s in our favor too. Rage, anger, fear, retribution—it all warms up the blood.” He licked his lips, the tongue forked. “It will be one hell of a hunt before we leave this island.”