B-Movie War (12 page)

The burst of firelight lit up even more monsters in the greater distance. Silverback gorillas with foamy mouths and fists pounding their chests appeared. Floating severed heads with metal teeth and robotic eyes. A tall logger in a flannel shirt had a great axe in his powerful grip. The enemy took a swing like he was splitting a log in half: “SPLIT YOU IN TWO!” Grizzly bears stomped forth, slashing their razor claws against the ground and reaping sparks. Masked killers with various garden implements paraded in-and-out of Vic's vision. Vic caught one of them with a potato sack over his head and a garden trowel in each hand. What looked like a baby bird with fuzzy hair the size of a skyscraper pecked the ground and caused an earthquake's concussion. Vic was puzzled, then horrified when he noticed real people buried neck-deep in the ground. As the concussions continued, the victims buried were uprooted. The bird pecked the ground, then picking up the surfaced victims, the bird ate the poor people like worms.

Jimmy was in a trance. He kept reading off the movies without offering solutions to kill them. “He buried his victims only to feed the only thing he still loved…his giant bird…”

Beetles with thick black amour the size of Volkswagens crawled on top of the hanger ports that were still structurally sound. The sound of insect legs skittering made Vic sick to his stomach. Tarantulas as big as jet liners covered skyscrapers in the greater distance back in the city, spider-webs connecting in-between buildings so smaller spiders could crawl to and fro with killing ease.

Barry unleashed blast after blast from his shotgun. He went dry and ended up firing single shots from his revolvers, any gun the man could find, but the shots were mute against the cavalcade of warring monsters.

Vic shouted at Barry, “Your son's losing it!”

“And I'm about to lose it too!” Barry chucked his last grenade and made a throng of swimsuit beach bums with cleavers go up into burning chunks. “Fuck this shit!”

Behind them was a volleyball net made of long intestines. Sizing up the enemies and their depleted weapons, Barry raised his voice. “We're out of time. We can't fight them. FALL BACK! RETREAT!”

“…beach babes murdered and buried in the sand come back from the dead to eviscerate those who walk the beach at night…By Axe, Cleaver, Hook—You Take Your Pick. Give me an ‘A'. Give me an ‘X'. Give me an ‘E'! That spells AXE!”

Vic shook Jimmy by the arms but couldn't snap the young man out of his head.

By then it was too late.

Vic and Jimmy dragged the crate towards the office.

They retreated inside.

The monsters were right behind them.

Chapter Nineteen

Outside, it sounded like war. Screams pierced the air as did boisterous chants, their tones promising bloody dismemberment. Fists pounded against the office. The living shadows outside grumbled and began shaking the walls. The box the three of them were trapped in would succumb to their efforts in no time, Vic thought. They were pinned down. Vic joined Barry in the effort of throwing the desk and a barricade of file cabinets against the main door to buy them more time. They were unarmed. Jimmy had just snapped out of his trance and realized the trouble they were in. Barry's face kept changing from angry to horrified. The man could see the end of life. Vic somehow clutched onto the notion of fighting. If the “good” dead had worked so hard to get them to this point, he couldn't give up so easily. They had to deliver that chest somewhere. If the plane didn't arrive, he could find another way to their destination. Wherever, New Jersey. Vic would fucking get there.

Vic had to show them he was serious about surviving. He grabbed the fire extinguisher off the wall. He clutched it like a bludgeon. Barry noticed him and grabbed a stool kept out of the barricade pile and held it up if to bash over something's head. Jimmy couldn't find anything, so he tightened his fists and made a mean face.

He was mimicking Vic.

Vic appreciated the impersonation.

“When you punch, Jimmy, don't fully extend your arm. Keep it bent slightly so you don't hurt yourself. Keep your eye on what you're punching. Don't flinch. Don't hold back. When you unleash those guns, you better make sure you hit your target, because if your enemy doesn't go down the first time, your chances of winning the fight will be compromised—”

His words were cut off by an explosion of broken wall paneling and concrete shards. Seconds later, a gaping hole appeared at the back of the office. They hit the floor.

Dizzy and rendered confused for a moment, Vic was slow to get back to his feet. He helped up father and son. The side of Barry's head was bleeding; he'd been cut by sharp shrapnel, though it didn't appear to be fatal. Jimmy's face was dumbfounded by what glowed ahead. The wall around the jagged hole was the color of the coils on a hot plate. Molten hot red. Vic felt the heat coming off the wall.

Then the hole coughed up a breeze of fetid of air. Death, decay and dirt, as if they were breathing in the contents of an old coffin. The sound of a moving train powering through a tunnel echoed from a distance. Then it sounded like storm winds pounding against a tin roof. The cries of agony. Old spirits bemoaning their existence. Then there was garbled, hysterical laughter coming from the hole in the wall. “
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!
”

The hole sounded like a blocked pipe being cleared, followed up by a great gust of air so powerful it could hurl objects for many miles. He thought rain of some kind was coming in at them.

Vic was wrong.

Maggots pelted them by the hundreds of thousands.

“The opening into Hell shall release the most vile creatures ever to stalk the earth,” Jimmy managed to spit out before a wad of maggots smacked him in the face. “
Gaaaaaaaaaah!
”

Ahead of them, the barricade over the front door was weakening. The front wall was soon to collapse. Maggots kept spewing from the hole. The wall was blinding hot, blurring Vic's vision. Vic collapsed onto his knees, curled up into a ball and shielded himself from the hundreds of tiny mouths that tried to eat his skin and bore into his body. He kept shaking them off, but they kept coming in staggering amounts. He couldn't see Barry or Jimmy. They were engulfed in white. Everything was white.

The back wall of the office collapsed as the monsters pounded their way toward them.

The front wall also collapsed. From both ends, they were being attacked.

“Get up, Vic, get up! They're here!”

Barry forced Vic up to his feet by the arms.

“Grab the chest. Move. They're right behind us.”

Vic absorbed the scene. A man suited in military garb with a scary looking gas mask on was spraying the area ahead of them with a blow torch. Piles of maggots were burning and writhing on the floor, turning into blackened rice. The front of the office wall had come down. Huddles of villains were ready to storm the office but were held back by the blow torch. The blow torch guy pointed out the back way. Vic picked up the chest with Barry's help, and they fled the burning office with Jimmy right behind them.

A large military vehicle with a canvas tarp covering the back harbored more military men. Barry called out to them, thrilled to be saved by who Vic assumed were friends. Barry gave high fives to each of them as they spilled out of the vehicle. “Snake! Dig! Knuckles! Dirty Poncho! Skate! Pipe! Red Rocket! Pint Size! GO KICK SOME FUCKING ASS!”

The military man with a snake embroidered on his army issue uniform came at them with AK-47s and plenty of ammo. Snake said in a gargled glass and sandpaper voice, “Put your pussies away, boys, and whip out your dicks. It's time to put these evil sons-of-bitches to sleep.”

Barry, Vic and Jimmy stood around the chest protecting it. The rest of the military men went about their work of defending them. Another man in a gas mask was on skates, zipping to and fro slapping wads of plastic explosives to walls. They blinked with red lights, waiting to be engaged. An M-60 was prattling in the near distance, turning a group of young faced female vampires with barely any clothes on into smithereens. A group of tribal cannibals erupted into vapor as one of the military men unloaded a red-painted rocket launcher at them.
Sssssssssssssssonk!

Human bodies with the gnarled heads of bats were decapitated by the soldier on skates who now helmed two long swords and sliced their heads off in precise killing arcs. Another rocket blasted, and
Ssssssssssssssssonk!
The giant bird who'd pecked to death people half-buried in the ground went up into splatter. Pieces of movie villains writhed on the ground as more rockets split the night air and turned them into piles of death. Minutes passed before the villains were each dispatched. Skate flipped on a switch and the C-4 bombs erupted, a way to double check what was down stayed down.

Vic was relieved until he turned around. Barry was held from behind by a dark trench coated figure with black goggles. A knife sliced across his throat. The villain's voice seethed with thick spittle and flesh-crawling evil, “
Sliiiiiiit!
”

The Slitter Killer was shot from three different guns in the head until his neck was a crude stump with a partial mandible and scorched tongue remaining. The villain collapsed, as did Barry. He gargled and chocked, blood staining his chest and spilling out his throat every time he tried to breathe. Jimmy cradled his father as Barry drew closer and closer to death. Barry's eyes wouldn't leave Vic's. They seemed to say, “Watch out for my son. Finish what we started.”

When Barry finally died, the solider named Snake said, “The area's clear. We just got a signal that a plane is on its way. We have to move out. I'm so sorry about Barry. We were buddies in Vietnam. We thought that was all the action we'd ever see, but we were way wrong. There's other people to save out there. Please understand. We have to move on.”

Vic nodded. “Yes, go. Thank you for what you did for us.”

“I know about your mission. I wish you the best of luck. We're in a global state of war.”

“Save who you can,” Vic said under his breath. “And I'll do my best to kill every last motherfucking one of them.”

It was hard to believe Barry was dead after all they'd been through. Barry didn't fear death, Vic thought. He only wanted to make sure Vic understood his dying wishes.

Execute Plan B.

Deliver the chest to New Jersey.

The group of soldiers regrouped in their vehicle and drove back toward the city to save somebody else's day. The hanger was a circle of fire. The area stank of scorched bodies and burning blood. The area was quiet beyond the crackling of fire. Screams blowing in the wind from afar. City buildings leveled. Flying monsters soaring in the air. Zombies banging against buildings to gain entry. Victims hacked to pieces. Death everywhere.

Vic eyed the volleyball net across the way made of intestines.

This was a living horror movie.

Jimmy's words pulled him from his dark observations. He was stone cold serious. The death of his father put him in a new mindset. “It's up to us to save the world. I know that now. It's why my father died without fear. My father knew we'd find a way to keep on fighting. I'm sorry I lost it earlier. If I would've kept my head on straight,” weeping, “my father might not be dead.”

“It's not your fault he died. That I know for certain.” Vic wasn't the emotional type, but he was touched by Jimmy's tears. “My family was killed today. My daughters. My ex-wife. The movies killed them all.”

Jimmy stole a breath between sobs. “It's a horrible feeling.”

“Your father was a good man,” Vic said, trying to embolden Jimmy in his moment of weakness. “He loved you. He treated you like you mattered. Like he was happy to have you around. My father was a drunk. He beat my mother. He beat me. He was a cop obsessed with his job. I think he loved his job just because he got to hurt people. He enjoyed people's pain. Maybe it got his mind off of his own pain. Who knows? My father's father was also a cop and an alcoholic. My grandpa probably beat my dad as much as my dad beat me me. But one day, his rough interrogation tactics and tendency to hit perps before they reached the station cost him his job. The problem, my dad needed that in his life, to beat up bad guys. Without it, he quickly went crazy. Real crazy.

“My dad got really tanked a week after losing his job. He looks me up after years of not seeing me. He takes me out in a stroll in a stolen cop car, and he blabbers on about how life sucks, his family sucks, and then he takes me to a hotel room. Why, I have no idea. Then he pulls out a gun. He doesn't play games. He asks me if I want to be put out of my misery with him. I say nothing, I'm so scared. I'm afraid he'll shoot me no matter what I say, so I say nothing. After a while, he keeps talking about the world's darkness, and how he can't live through it anymore, and he puts the gun to his own head and pulls the trigger. Like that. He's dead. Gone.”

It was obvious Jimmy didn't know what to say to his story, so Vic kept talking. “It's like this, Jimmy. Most people want to believe they'll do the right thing in every situation, but life isn't like that. You do what you can, and what happens happens. You blaming yourself for your dad's death isn't right. You did fight. You were right by his side until the end. Your father,” he kept his voice steady; he didn't want to cry in front of him. “Your father died knowing you loved him. That's the greatest thing he could have. When my father died, he hated me. What I'm saying is you did what you could under these incredible circumstances. Your father doesn't blame you. I don't blame you. We did the best we could. Your father wanted us to bring the chest to New Jersey, so we'll do that. Let's make him proud.”

Before anything else could be said, there was a buzzing of an engine.

A Cessna plane was coming in for a landing.