by Alan Spencer
He walked up to the wave frequency radio and spoke. “Whoever’s listening: you wanted a war? Well, then, you’ve got one. None of your monsters will make it off the island.” He sweated rapidly, doused in his own anticipation for new blood to be reaped.
Brenner walked up each tier of the stairs and strategized the best way to alert the upstairs level of the coming attack.
And that’s when the monsters throughout the chambers awoke from their sleep.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The roots of the tree cried in protest with each strike. The wolves swiped and dug their claws, rendering the seasoned tree into worthless bits. After minutes, the tree teetered, wanting to tip over to one side. Richard wrapped his arms and legs around the trunk, desperate not to fall. He couldn’t hold on and hope for the best. The pillar was going timber any second. Fighting the inevitable, he crawled up higher, and that’s when he spotted the duct opening in the ceiling.
He was only a few feet underneath it.
Thank God.
Four screws prevented him from climbing into the ceiling and escaping. The majority of the ceiling was a movie screen projecting moonlight and dark sky. The grate was invisible from the wolves’ vantage point.
Don’t look down.
He used his fingers to unscrew the top left-hand screw. Lucky for him, they were loose. It came undone effortlessly, as did the next two, but the last one was painted over and stuck.
Shit.
Don’t look down!
He caught sight of three wolves jumping onto the tree and crawling up. Thirty seconds, if not less, he had remaining before he’d be mauled. The tree was jolted again, the concussion carrying up to him and resonating into his unsteady hands.
Five more wolves hopped on.
Richard gave up removing the final screw, trying to tear the gate back like the lid of a tin can. He bent the metal back, creating an opening large enough for him to crawl inside. The wolves were biting, clacking and snapping their maws to reach him, so dangerously close. Wiggling into the opening, he battled to force the metal back into place and create another barrier between them, but it wouldn’t move.
He struggled deeper into the shaft and prayed they didn’t come after him.
But they didn’t arrive.
The noises of attack ceased.
He waited.
Silence.
They were playing games with him.
Five minutes passed, and then he heard the pack race in the opposite direction. He maneuvered so he could peek through the opening. He caught them skulking toward the arena entrance. They waited at the gate, stirred by and fixated on something. He couldn’t tell what, but they were eager.
He couldn’t wait to find out why they hovered at the exit. It wasn’t feeding time yet, so why the interest?
Forget it. You have to locate a way off this island and quick.
He navigated his way down the duct system, crawling for ten minutes, scuffing up his elbows and knees in the process. Forcing himself to keep on moving, his body suddenly dipped downward, nothing beneath him but empty air. He lost control of himself, tipping forward and free falling. Plunging into the darkness, he crashed through a barrier as solid as wood, careening into a new section of the facility. When he recovered from the rough touchdown, he lay in a dark corridor.
Richard wasn’t alone.
Chapter Forty
Todd was poised to shoulder ram the door, and Cynthia and Jessica aimed their guns to intercept a charge from within the vampire’s room. Behind them, Addey clutched her knife to throw. Groups across the hall had already smashed open doors, the assault running its course throughout the third floor.
“On three!” Todd yelled at them. “One. Two. THREE!”
The door easily burst from its hinges. They barged into the living room. The carpet, the furniture, the amenities were each of the same rich caliber as James Sorelli’s. The open bar’s mirror reflected the dismay and puzzlement on their faces.
Nobody was home.
Addey inspected the kitchen, and Jessica and Cynthia ransacked the bedrooms. Todd checked the bathroom. After minutes of searching, they regrouped.
“There’s nobody here,” Todd spat. “It’s like they packed up and left.”
Addey walked behind the bar. The vent in the corner was closed. She pushed against the steel surface, and there was no way to gain access from their side. It was blocked from within.
Todd was behind her, sensing her realization. “They’re getting ready for something. They’re all in hiding.”
Jessica eyed Addey, the woman suddenly deflated. “Then it looks like we’ve got a fight on our hands, and soon.”
Cynthia was unable to speak for a moment. “W-we can’t fight them. We’d be nothing against them.”
Todd tried to combat the breakdown of morale. “Now wait. If they’re hiding, that buys us time. We should gather everybody in the facility. The greater the numbers, the better off we are, right? Let’s say we meet in the cafeteria. How about it?”
“Fine,” Jessica agreed. “Then let’s find out what everybody else is up to, and we’ll go from there.”
They left the room. The hallways were congested with confused workers. They too had entered empty rooms. The chatter level had risen, worried faces uniting with fearful conversation. Addey too was scared. The pit of her stomach twisted with the anticipation of an attack. The boning knife in her hand was insignificant. There was nowhere to run. She could retreat, but the monsters would sniff her out in due time.
Richard was still missing. Dead, she had to assume. Brenner was also in the facility somewhere. What was he doing about the monster threat? And Herman was in the medical wing recouping. The way things were playing out, she wouldn’t have an opportunity for a visit, though it pained her to think that way.
Todd and Jessica were shouting above the hallway’s din at her. “Let’s check the second floor. Let’s see what the level-one zombies are up to. They might help us.”
“Don’t be naïve!” Addey’s warning exploded from her throat. “You can’t recruit those dead assholes. Herman’s in the medical wing because of the level ones. They can’t be trusted. Both of us were attacked in a storeroom by them. They revealed to me that they crave human flesh. It’s been an act all the time. They hate people food. They’re goddamn liars.”
Todd’s eyes sharpened. “Then that’s all the more reason to break into their rooms.”
He rushed to the elevator. Jessica had stolen Angela Mooney’s key card, and they swiped it on the register. The console button flashed from red to green. “Level two it is,” Jessica whooped, trying to psyche herself up. “We don’t have much choice, Addey. Think about it. We have to secure an escape before this shit boils over.” She called out to everyone else, “Who wants to go back home? I’m not working another fucking second in this infernal hellhole!”
Rampant cheers were unleashed. Addey kept silent, knowing she was dead on paper. Who else would be after her if she trod on American soil again? Government spies, the military, the FBI, immigration services—the list would never end. She didn’t want to die, but she also didn’t want to run from the government the rest of her days. There was no happy medium between safety and escape. All she could do was follow along with the crowd.
In seconds, the elevator filled up, Addey being the last to enter. Everybody watched the lit-up buttons change. After the short trip down, the doors opened. The walls and carpet were of the same fancy accommodations for the level-one zombies, but the workers were missing. Nobody collected laundry or was poised to perform room service. There was no visible blood either. The excitement and energy were sucked from the moment.
“What do you think, Addey?” Jessica asked her. “Safe or unsafe?”
“Always unsafe.”
Cynthia crept between them. “It’s so quiet. Nobody’s here. What the hell is going on?”
Todd took the initiative and kicked three times until room 211 caved in around the lock mechanis
m and popped open. He swept the living room, bypassing the floral-print couches and plasma-screen television. The place was abandoned. The others combed the rest of the rooms for signs of the level-one zombies.
Addey couldn’t unglue her eyes from the industrial-size refrigerator, the giant steel contraption. It was three times the width of the average appliance, a juggernaut.
“You shouldn’t be concerned with that.” A shift manager from upstairs, his name tag reading Marvin, warned them. He was five feet tall, wide around the belly, his hair three different waves of natural color: white, gray and black swirled together. “Leave it be.”
Addey turned her head at him. “What’s in there? I’m tired of playing along with your stupid rules.”
Marvin reached out to shove her from the kitchen, but Todd roundhouse-kicked him in the gut. He skidded backward and lost his balance, and through the pain, he managed to say, “Listen. Brenner is around here somewhere. He’ll take care of this. This place has thrived and functioned because of his efforts since day one. This is meant for our protection.”
Todd tugged on his hair, testing the roots. “Then where the hell is the reliable bastard?”
Marvin spat a combo of spittle and blood onto the floor. “I don’t know. But I believe in him. I really do.”
“He’s not on our side.” Jessica was incensed at the ridiculous man. “The bastard’s playing us. He hasn’t spoken on the intercoms. He’s probably set sail on a boat and is way the fuck away from here by now.”
Cynthia shook her head. “Wait. Listen to the walls. I hear movement.”
Addey pressed her ear against the wall. The foundation was shifting. The scratching and dragging of objects against concrete resounded, as did the continual sloshing of water.
“We still have time,” Addey decided aloud. “What are the rest of the rooms like on this floor? Anybody left alive?”
A series of startled words and abrupt screams delivered her to the east side of the corridor. The calamity resulted from an incident inside the break room. She slowed her steps outside the door. The burgundy carpet was soaked through with crimson, the floor a bleeding wound. Nobody dared to enter, so Addey did so alone. She couldn’t touch the walls for support, for they too were slathered in red. The ceiling dripped and pattered, every inch of the room sodden.
She cast aside her repugnance and sloshed through blood to further investigate. Edges of rib bones, femurs, metatarsals, fragments of skulls and sternums littered the strange concourse. The remains were picked clean, the rest either eaten or carted to a hideaway. The vending machines that spat out organs were ripped from the floor and beaten in, the fronts torn open and the contents stolen. The wine, hard alcohol and beer storage was untouched.
Meat was all they wanted.
“Over here, Addey.”
Jessica had snuck into the room. An air vent had been removed from the wall. Bloody trails and footprints surrounded the tiles outside the homemade exit. Jessica said, “Here’s their escape hatch.”
Addey put it together. “They slaughtered everybody on the floor and then shoved on like it was nothing.”
“But why didn’t they go after us on the third floor?”
She already knew the answer. “That’s because I wounded James Sorelli. He fled, and I’m sure that’s why everybody else did too. We were onto them. They had no choice but to regroup. We had the edge over them.” Feeling her courage deflate to a degree, she added, “But not for long.”
Addey glanced behind her shoulder. A crowd formed at the outer edge of the spreading blood.
Jessica smiled at her. “We’re the only ones with balls around here.”
Todd called out from the hall, waving them back into the hallway. “This is the best plan I can come up with. If anybody has a better idea, speak up. I need a group to wake up everybody in the living quarters. The gym, the movie theaters, the courtyard, you name it—look everywhere and bring the people here. We will regroup in the cafeteria. I’m sure the sublevel people have either escaped or died by now. There’s no time to be afraid. This isn’t war. This is survival. Now go!”
Nobody moved. Todd doubled the insistency of his words, rehashing his previous commands, “The back half, you guys wake the residents. The other half, stay in the cafeteria and start throwing out ideas about how we’re going to save our fucking asses! Damn it, now GO!”
The panic was infectious. Everybody split up, the elevator filling up and going down to the first floor with raucous mobs. Addey and Jessica waited their turn. Six loads of people later, they traveled down to the ground floor and began the process of collecting everybody that was still alive in the facility and ushering them into the cafeteria.
Chapter Forty-One
Brenner was yanked from the stairway and lifted up by two hands. Flung up and over, he struck the concrete surface between two boats of rough wooden planks and scrap material. He crawled forward to recover his twelve-gauge and his bearings, but the gun was kicked across the room by a taloned foot. The werewolf snarled at him, flecking heat, snot and creamy foam onto his face. He watched in horror as its teeth extended eight inches, so sleek and jagged and capable of inflicting deadly damage. The wolf challenged him, posing on all fours and hissing out its nostrils, its back and legs arched, ready to pummel him.
You thought I’d be an easy victim.
I don’t die so easy!
An artery shot through his wrist, the thick line poking the wolf underneath the neck and draining him instantly of four gallons of blood. The warmth, the power, the nourishment pouring into Brenner's body lent him confidence as it did strength.
“Shraaaaaaaack!”
The wolf gripped the cord, unable to snap it or break the flow of stolen blood. It fumbled to save its life, and after a minute, it tipped sideways in defeat.
He watched the top of the stairs for any more monsters to come his way. The profiles of long lines of them, hundreds upon hundreds, filed from every passage and chamber in unison.
Brenner was startled when the wolf’s body shifted. Through its back, the skin stretched, bubbled up, the sheath turning thinner and thinner as hair was shed to reveal a bald section. Tighter and tighter the flesh became until it popped, splitting down the middle in ribbons. Tearing from within, hands grappled through barriers of muscle tissue. Then a body formed. Then a blood-slick vampire burst from the wolf’s dead shell. Before Brenner could deduce what had transpired, the vampire was charging at him. He dove for his twelve-gauge, and spinning on the ground, he aimed without a chance to fully know his accuracy. He pulled back a shot, blasting the vampire in the chest. Its feet left the ground, and it emitted a high-pitched squeal. The line of green lighting up both eyes was snuffed out in seconds.
You’re going to have to do better than this to kill me.
“Raaaaaaaaah!”
The bleeding vampire shed its skin—or Brenner thought it was shedding its skin. The skin went through a speedy cycle of rotting, regressing into blackened and fungus-infested flesh. The spilling blood turned to gel. Its arteries had hardened. The bones became brittle, but the body was alive, roaring and once again working to its feet to attack him.
Brenner was face-to-face with a level-two zombie.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!”
He didn’t want to suck the blood from the decaying man, so he utilized the twelve-gauge to plug another bullet into its head. The head was so rotted and weak the bullet clipped half its head off.
Brenner was puzzled by his attacker and what forms it’d taken. He waited for it to rise up again, to retrograde into another villain, but the head kept oozing black, putrid blood and creepy crawlies, the contents of a can of cranberry sauce infested by vermin. Deciding not to take any risks, he stamped the body as if putting out a camp fire. He wasn’t satisfied until the mess was unrecognizable. Caramel and green slime filtered through the broken orifices.
His attacker had changed from wolf to vampire to zombie in less than a five-minute period. This dead
creature is only the beginning. What other tricks are up their sleeves?
The monsters above him had to have heard the twelve-gauge blasts. Nobody had come to investigate. They were too caught up in reaching the first floor, and maybe a few gunshots meant nothing to them, he believed.
Something else was in the room with him. He swept the chamber with his eyes. Modified boats. Concrete walls. Barren stairs. The section of water was still.
“Where are you, huh? Face me!”
His body was ready to suck the blood of his adversary. The lamprey suckers poked their heads out of his arms and shoulders. Their circular mouths gaped wide, begging to be satiated.
A trail of varnish-colored muck, the same he’d seen in a section of the corridor previously, trailed up the stairs, workings its way up higher and higher. That’s when the door suddenly slammed shut. He was left in darkness.
The slop and glom of moving slime resounded louder, as if the consistency were growing thicker and increasing still. “What are you? Are you too scared to fight me in the light? Huh, is that it? I’ll kill you anyway. Every one of you!”
The room wasn’t cold anymore, but humid and warm. He sweated in the rising heat. Something was stealing the air in the room. He raced for the stairs. In the dark, each step was a daring hypothesis. The retreat did no good when from above he was pelted and enshrouded in a mucous fluid. Liquid fingers seized his ankles and legs. The ice-cold fingertips crawled up his legs. He was frozen in place. His lamprey arteries were trapped beneath the flesh, beneath the layer of heavy fluids covering him. His head down to his chest was layered in the goop. The layers continued to take hold, firming up, becoming solid like putty. He couldn’t speak or cry out, his lips being sealed shut.
And that’s when the liquid changed. It was instantaneous. Warm flesh, beating hearts, circulatory systems delivering vital fluids, then mouths, widening eyes, gripping hands, arching feet and clawing arms were born. Each body separated from the mass and became an individual. The rank odor of the dead, the brittle and coarse hair of the werewolves and the smooth skin of the vampires—the room was dominated by the abominations.
