B-Movie War (19 page)

Chapter Thirty-One

The elevator door opened. Vic clutched the .22 ready to throw back the trigger. His eagerness turned into a question mark. The elevator was empty. The walls were made of cushy pink velvet pillows.

“Hmmmm,”
Vic grumbled. “Interesting.”

Greg walked with Jimmy into the elevator. “Come on, we're wasting time. Once we get down there, you'll meet Knob Rogers.”

Vic stayed to the side of Greg and watched him hit the only button on the wall beside the emergency stop button. After the doors shut, the speakers in the ceiling played a woman moaning on the way to a good orgasm.

Jimmy eyed them both sheepishly.

Vic couldn't help but laugh. “Kind of awkward, huh, fellas?”

Greg laughed too. “Knob Rogers's the dirtiest man of them all. If you cut off his hands, he'd find a way to whack off using the stumps.”

The elevator was going down farther than one floor. Vic snapped back into guarded mode. “Hey, where are we going?”

“It's a few floors down. It's a secret access. Rich people rent out fallout shelters below here. When there wasn't any nuclear attacks back when they built them, they hired Knob Rogers to rent them out for high-end escort services. He also likes to shoot some of his flicks down here too. People pay to be on the sidelines of his fuck films. It gets their juices going. I don't care what people say. People like to watch people bang.”

The elevator dinged.

Then the doors opened.

The first section Greg ushered them through was a passage of lavish looking rooms. Expensive beds with plush bedding. Big screen TVs. Mini-bars in every room. Cabinets of sex toys. Movie posters graced the walls in expensive frames, most of it smut ranging from the 70s to the present, a few sticking in Vic's mind:
Mr. Peter's Adventure in Skin Land
and
Debbie Does Dallas
.

Jimmy was entranced by the naked female flesh displayed on the walls.

“Get your tongue back in your mouth,” Vic said to Jimmy. “I want to know why we're down here, and those other people are busting their asses up there? I'm not here to get the grand tour. I want answers.”

Greg waved them onward. “You'll get them. We're almost there.”

The sex rooms ended, and they walked through another door to a small kitchen. The place had room service. Beyond that were shelves stocked with beer, wine and hard liquors.

“It's down the way. Almost there.”

They ended up going down two floors of stairs, and then they entered a large foyer. A theatre concession set-up faced them, featuring two popcorn machines and candy behind glass displays. The place had dimmed lighting. Nobody was working. Behind the stand was the entrance into the only theatre. The sound of work echoed from within. The banging hammers, mostly. Vic entered to see two dozen people gutting the seating arrangements. The seats were cleared, leaving torn up dark red carpet and loose screws and nails. The theatre's screen was blank at the head of the room.

“Who is this guy?” Vic asked. “He's got places to bop hookers and a nice theatre to watch movies.”

Greg said, “Knob Rogers also makes low budget movies. His company does just about anything. The fuck films are his bread and butter. He watches everything before he releases it on the screen to make sure it's up to his standard, since he produces the movies.”

Jimmy couldn't hold the chest any longer, so he and Greg set it down. “So what do we do here?”

The people working added haste to their action. Their arrival meant time was short to finalize their plans. From behind them, another set of people carried in what looked like big briefcases. Vic counted twenty of them. He gasped when he caught the last man entering the room, a man in his sixties with white hair styled in a ponytail, sizeable beer gut, with blue flesh. The man was dead.

That had to be Knob Rogers.

Greg introduced the corpse to the both of them. “This is Knob Rogers.”

“Wait, how did you die?” Vic had to know.

Knob's voice was without affectation, his vocal cords stiff. He pointed at the swollen purple rash ring around his neck. “I woke up in someone's backyard hanging by the neck on a clothesline with five other dead people beside me. Then I come back to life, but I'm dead, you see, and a bunch of corpses direct me back to my building, and here we are. We've all been waiting for you and that chest.”

Vic asked, “So what's in the chest? I'm dying to know.”

Knob Rogers pointed at it. “Only one way to find out. Shall we open it and get this show on the road?”

Chapter Thirty-Two

Knob Rogers couldn't shape any real expression on his face, though the way his hands moved over the wooden chest would indicate excitement. The blued hands unclipped the metal locks. Vic eyed the chest as if it could explode and kill them all. Jimmy stared, his body bent to retreat having the same thought as his counterpart. Greg, their tour guide, had left them with Knob to finish other errands about the building. Greg said they were in good hands with “Knob”. Greg's statement would be proven or disproven in the coming moments.

“Open it already,” Vic insisted. “I deserve to see what's so goddamn important.”

Jimmy stayed pensive. “I agree.”

Knob lifted the top of the chest. The hinge squealed. What was revealed stumped Vic and Jimmy, but Knob said against their doubts, “Ah, there it is. There. She. Is. The answer to our problems.”

Vic couldn't strip the anger from his voice. “You kidding me? Bags of blood. I could've found blood anywhere outside. I carried blood all this way. Risked my ass for this bullshit? For blood?”

“That can't be it,” Jimmy said it like a sad child. “My dad insisted we get this thing to here. And this is what was inside?”

“Oh, there's more, boys. Give me a chance to impress.” Knob removed the twenty-four packs of blood and revealed what was beneath them. Film reels. “This is the real deal. The money shot. What's paying all of our bills today so we can do it all over again next week.”

Jimmy scowled, and Vic wanted to punch Knob Rogers for being so goofy about something that was deadly serious.

“I don't understand,” Vic said. “Explain to me how
this
is going to save people's lives.”

Vic inspected the film reels. “Film reels and blood packs. It doesn't look like anything to me.”

“That's where you're wrong, buddy. You let me handle this. You, my friend, handle protecting everybody else in this building. They're scared right now, Vic. It's up to you and your sidekick to whip everybody into shape. Turn the pansies into powerhouses.”

“Is that why I'm really here?”

“You delivered what we needed. Oh, and I'm going to need your help.” Knob dug into his pocket and handed him a single key. “The key used to be the lock to my personal porno collection in my office upstairs. The harder stuff, but not so hard I'd get thrown into prison, you catch my drift? Since blood doesn't run in my veins and my dick doesn't work, I've got no use for it. Use the key to break open the blood packets and pour the blood over the reels of film.”

“You want me to what?” Vic snarled. “You're crazy, man.”

Jimmy removed a pocket knife from his belt and started to cut up the blood packets and spray the blood onto the reels. “It's okay, Vic. Whatever he says, I'll do it. I'm honoring my father's wishes.”

“I want to honor his wishes, too, he was a good man. I'm questioning Door Knob over here.”

“It's Knob Rogers. Asshole.”

“Whatever. You're a sleaze. You'd stick it in an electrical outlet if people would pay to see it on film.”

“Oh, so you've never looked at porn? Okay, okay, so you're one of those moralists who keep it in their pants.”

“Not at all. I'm just not obsessed with porn. I'd rather have the real thing.”

“I think you're wrong. Porn's art.”

“Fuck this,” Vic sighed. “Forget it. I'll help you, Jimmy. This guy can go to hell.”

Jimmy cut a line across the top of the blood packs, then Vic sprayed them onto the reels.

“So what does this do, Knob Rogers, or can I call you Knob?”

“Knob's fine, jerk off.” The corpse's eyes stayed on Vic. He was serious for a moment. “The dead have created a new way to possess reels of film much faster. It's why their attacks are so widespread this time. This new process to possess reels is called “Blood-O-Vision”. You soak the blood of the dead in the reels, string them together to make a film, and play them through a projector, and they come to life. The trick on our end, Vic, the blood we have belongs to those who are good through and through. They wish the living no harm. They'll come back to do whatever they can to protect the living. If you're expecting a dissertation on why this is happening, you're not getting one. Some things that happen in this life, and the afterlife, are mysterious as they are impossible to dumb down.”

Knob closed the chest. They were done soaking the reels. “So let's carry this bad boy into the theatre so we can start playing the reels. Whatever's protecting this building, it won't last much longer.”

Vic had to know. “So what's on those reels?”

Knob's lip twitched. He tried to smile. “Oh, you'll be finding out. Follow me to the theatre.”

Vic and Jimmy stood among the crowd of two dozen people who had gutted the inside of the theatre. Greg was working in tandem with Knob Rogers, loading up the row of film projectors set up before they had arrived in the room. Vic counted twenty-three projectors. Extension cords spread out everywhere. Several gas powered generators were on standby, though for now, they were plugged into a wall outlet.

“He's going to load bloody reels into the projectors,” Vic whispered to himself. “What's the world come to?”

Knob's bloody hands loaded up projectors with oozing reels. Jimmy reached into the chest and walked to a projector on a push cart and loaded it up with a bleeding reel as well. Others helped the two, while others were hesitant to touch blood. After they were finished, Knob demanded everybody's attention. His voice was garbled worse than it had been, the muscles of his throat weakening from the effects of death.

“The moment we turn on these reels, the dead's defenses protecting this building from harm will vanish. They'll be protecting us through the reels instead. We've come a long way. I'm sorry to say it'll be a miracle if we win this battle, but it's a battle we have no choice but to fight.”

Vic couldn't believe he was hearing a motivational speech from a dead porn director.

“We roll these reels, and whatever comes out of them, they fight what's outside. We need to buy as much time as we can with these reels running. The longer they run, the more villains get killed. Simple as that. We can't let the monsters get down here. More people in other cities and across the world are about to do what we're doing. This is the world's last stand. We're fighting fire with fire…so to speak. Movies against movies.”

“Then I'm going up to help them up there,” Vic insisted. “Give me a gun, give me something. I'm not sitting down here with my thumb up my ass as other people are doing the real fighting.”

“You can't leave,” Greg said. “We've rigged traps everywhere. No way out. It's all to buy time for the reels to run.”

“So there's no way up there?”

“You have an important job down here,” Knob insisted. “The reels must keep rolling. It's our only way to beat them. If the bad guys get down here, somebody has to protect the theatre. If and when the power goes out, somebody has to start up the gas powered generators. Somebody has to fend them off as long as possible.”

“Then what? We fight, but how do we win?”

Knob's corpse face had no expression. “We win by holding on as long as we can.”

Vic's face was cut by a snarl. “What kind of an answer is that? I've trusted random dead people, mysterious forces and even glowing arrows. I've survived all of that only to get more vague bullshit.”

“It's not vague bullshit,” Knob argued. “If we want the dead to rest in peace, if you want the living to survive, then you're going to trust in what I'm telling you.”

Greg walked up to them, re-directing the conversation. “We have a small stock of weapons. Arm yourself before we start up the films, Vic. Be ready. That's all you need to know.”

Greg unloaded the wooden crates stacked up against one wall by smacking the edges with a crowbar until they broke into pieces. Artillery was dispersed. AK-47s. M-16s. M-60s. 9mms. MAC-10s. Single shot rifles tipped with bayonets. Axes. K-bar knives. Brass knuckles. Body armor. By the time the collection was doled out, Vic had an AK-47 strapped to his back and a pair of brass knuckles on each fist. Jimmy had a MAC-10 and clutched onto it with a sheepish expression on his face. The young man was terrified.

Vic did what he could to embolden his friend. “You look like a badass. It's starting to come natural to you, Jimmy.” He looked out at the crowd of people, about thirty strong. Vic pointed out the woman in her twenties with dyed black hair and tattoos going up and down her arms in sleeves. “That chick's been eying you all night, buddy. After this shit goes down, I'd go down on her.”

The talk startled Jimmy. “What?”

If Jimmy wasn't nervous before, he was now.

“Seriously, I'd put the Rug Doctor up to that shit. Clean that carpet, right? Really get her going. You get new privileges when you win the war. We're going to win, you know that, right? I have my doubts in the assholes running the show, but I have no doubts in us. We've made it this far. There's no reason why we can't survive the whole thing.”

Jimmy's face softened. He searched the crowd for the chick. She was standing next to another woman of a similar age.

“Was she really looking at me?”

“Hell yeah. And look, she's got a hot friend. They'll have to share you. They'll take turns sitting on your face.”

“Vic, stop it. You're being a creep.”

“I'm just putting it out there,” Vic said. “You're going to watch my back. I'm going to watch yours. Then after the dust settles, you're going to rearrange that pussy. You're not dying a virgin. Not on my watch.”

“How'd you know I was a virgin?”

“A wild guess.”

Knob and Greg flagged everybody's attention again. Knob said, “I'm starting up the reels. Say what you need to say to each other. Understand you may or may not survive. Then I want half of you to stay in here inside the theatre with the running reels, and the other half of you I want positioned outside the theatre. Anything comes out of those halls toward the theatres, you shoot to kill. Don't let any of them get into the theatre.”

“Here goes,” Vic said to Jimmy. “We watch each other's backs. Nobody dies. Deal?”

He extended his hand to Jimmy.

Jimmy accepted it. “Deal.”

Vic smiled to himself. He caught Jimmy eyeballing the pair of girls.

The room stood in silence as one-by-one, the reel projectors were turned on. The images intersected, hitting the theatre screen one on top of the other. It was hard to distinguish what they were viewing, but after a few minutes, Vic soon finally understood why they had dragged the chest all this way.