B-Movie War (8 page)

Chapter Fourteen

Vic's daring leap out of the police headquarters window was only a one-story drop. He tripped over a set of bushes and landed against the sidewalk. Vic backtracked to grab his shotgun, then he ducked behind the nearest parked car, where he overlooked the parking lot. Of the fifty patrol cars out there, each one was either being driven out of the lot or being scouted by officers who were dead ringers for the crazed lunatic who'd shot at him in the conference roomIt wasn't a resemblance. The man was a carbon copy.

This is fucked
fucked fucked!

He prayed he had enough bullets to save himself. The best option was to get as far the hell away from here as possible, so Vic hurried to the east side of the building and cut loose across an open field of grass. A schoolyard was just ahead, and in the playground, a group of children were evenly distributed between swing sets, jungle gyms and a tire swing. They were so pale and had red demon eyes that glowed like a car's taillights. The children opened their maws and revealed a circular mouth much like a lamprey's. Their teeth grinded together, clicking and clacking between ropey jets of drool. They were covered in gray fish scales. A jagged dorsal fin cut up through their backs, the tip as sharp as a razorblade. In the far background, Vic glimpsed the impossible. The school building was suddenly missing, replaced by a mound of yellow sand and the glimmer of an ocean. Along the beach, a volleyball court was bloodied by random human appendages savagely eaten. He caught bikini and surf shorts attached to ravaged torsos and legs.

Before Vic attempted to apply any logic to the scene, the group of fish children rushed him. The ocean roared to life. A surge of water was coughed up from the ocean, the massive wave sweeping them up and hurling the deadly kid-fish toward Vic.

The shotgun seemed to go off by itself. Plugging several rounds in their direction, and hitting nothing, Vic barely dodged the massive wave. Twisting and turning between two alleyways, he was somehow back on a city block, having raced between a Payday Loans and a Taco Bell. There was nowhere else to go except straight ahead. A Greyhound bus had its door open. The driver saw him run for his life. It was a man in his fifties waving him on, shouting, “Hurry. You can outrun them. They're right behind you! Faster, man, faster!”

Vic felt like his feet weren't touching the ground anymore. He could smell the salty sea at his back and hear those infernal teeth click and clack. The fish were ravenous. They were still coming after him. They'd tear him to pieces like miniature sharks. The waters were closing in. The fish would have their meal. Vic dove over the curb and into the bus and prayed he had moved fast enough to save himself.

The Greyhound bus screeched its tires and avoided the great ocean wave that battered the used car lot across the street, lifting up cheap cars and bringing them back down with the smashing of windshields and the crunching of steel. What Vic didn't see in front of the bus was the three numbers.

666.

Vic entered the public transport. He was out-of-breath and bent over holding a metal pole to right himself. The pole was actually a collection of human spines! The walls of the cab were human flesh and muscle tissue stretched tight. Veins and arteries pumped blood to an unknown life form. Subtle emanations of agony played out on the air as if coming from the stereo speakers. Those sitting in the seats were victims of grisly murder. Across their foreheads were cuts forming the numbers in red: 666. Many had slit throats. Others were eviscerated, then strangled by the viscera, which still clung to their necks like heavy necklaces. The floor trickled with a constant stream of blood. Where it started and where it ended couldn't be known from his standpoint. The bus driver had bright red skin and wore a dark blue bus driver's uniform. His goat horns pierced through the hat, the projections two feet tall and still curling.

The driver introduced himself by saying, “You've climbed aboard the
666 Bullet Straight to Hell
. The toll I charge is flesh, blood, or souls. Before you tell me your form of payment, allow me introduce you to some of our passengers. You've got The Straight Razor Slicer.” This killer was a stern faced barber in an undershirt and black pants clutching a straight razor in each hand. “He's a cut above the competition! And look over there, you've got The Mallet Killer.” The white guy had an afro and looked like he belonged in a traveling carnie show. He clutched a mallet with a huge head. It was stained in blood and hunks of brains. “You've got Thriller Driller over here. The guy screws his girls before he screws them with his other drill, if you catch my drift. And over there is The Garbage Man. He takes the trash off the streets by any means necessary, and let me tell you, it's a full-time job. Then you've got The Clothesline Killer who is currently enjoying the view of Humbly's night life out of his window. Then you've got Maggot Molly. She's a real handful. Take my word on that.”

Maggot Molly looked like a female Danny Devito. She wore a cheap wig of long black hair. She wore thick rubber gloves, rubber boots and a yellow raincoat. Black soil covered her body and face.

The devil's face wasn't just made up red, Vic noticed. The flesh looked like leather. His lips were raw meat. The eyes were burning coals in the sockets. Scorched flesh exuded off of him. The emanations of human suffering grew louder. The trickling stream of blood splashed up onto the seats and between the feet of the various murdered passengers on board.

Vic stood there, horror-stuck. Satan eyed him up and down as if looking for something and not finding it. “So how do you wish to pay for the ride, pal? This isn't a charity. You can pay in blood, flesh, or souls? So whatcha got, pal? I ain't got all day. This bullet's got a schedule to keep. Hell's a finely tuned machine. Once the blood stops flowing, this rig will break down. And when it breaks down, the fun's over.”

The coals in Satan's eyes brightened. “What say you, pal? Blood, flesh, or souls?”

Vic couldn't cough up the words. He couldn't even open his mouth. As if every muscle in his body had atrophied. Seconds passed like hours, and then Satan gave a scowl and his nostrils spat human smoke, as if inside his skull was a furnace that was burning human beings. In a voice that could shake mountains, Satan fumed, “NO ONE RIDES FOR FREE ON MY RIG!”

The lights in the bus flickered like strobes. The blood at his feet boiled. The killers (some he didn't even know about) were standing up straight, a row of six facing six. Then they turned to Vic, power drills, straight razor blades, axes, chisels, ice picks, chainsaws and machetes all gleaming in Vic's name.

Satan cheered them on, “We've got another hold out. He's all yours!”

They advanced at once. Vic couldn't fight them. He was outnumbered. He had a shotgun that had an unknown number of shells left. Put this against the fact this couldn't be happening.

He still had to fight back, or he'd be dead.

Vic pressed the barrel of the shotgun right against Satan's head and fired. The demon face smiled at him in delight as his head erupted in a burst piñata of insects, centipedes, millipedes, tarantulas, scorpions and maggots.

The killers were still incoming. He had to move fast. Vic tried the lever to open the door, but it was made of brittle bone and shattered when he touched it. Vic drove the butt of the shotgun against the window. It wouldn't crack or break.

Left with no other choice, Vic shoved aside the headless demon body and took helm of the vehicle. If he wasn't getting off of this bus the old fashioned way, he'd have to open it up like a tin can!

He pressed down the gas until it hit the floor. The surge of speed sent most of the killers backwards, splashing into the running streams of blood. Going even faster now, Vic realized he was headed straight into the side of a brick building five stories tall. Refusing to go into the crash nose-first, he jerked the wheel to the side, throwing everybody from right to left. The bus screeching into a wild fish-tail motion, and it crashed at seventy-five miles an hour.

Chapter Fifteen

Blood was running down Vic's throat. He was assaulted by the awful taste of iron in his mouth. Vic woke sprawled out on the street covered in blood from head to toe. Streams of red continued to trickle out of the bus that had broken in half. The unending stream kept soaking him until he crawled away in repulsion.

The bus had hit the side of an apartment complex. Screams repeated from within the building. The murderers were out and about enjoying themselves. Knowing people were in danger, Vic rushed to the payphone and dialed the police. He waited for the dial tone when the receiver leaked caramel thick blood through the holes in high-pressure sprays.

“Fuck!”

He darted out of the booth, cursing the fresh blood going down the side of his face. It was that moment he realized every section of Humbly, West Virginia, was being attacked. Agony and screams echoed from everywhere. They were matched with mad animal shrieks, guns going off like fireworks and the bustle of war as if everyone were forced to fight what had come to life. Between two apartment buildings, he noticed several clotheslines, and how a staggering number of people hung from them, the lines wrapped around their throats. The victims were kicking out their legs and clutching at their throats for another chance at sweet air.

Vic was torn from the moment by a woman who was hunched over the corpse of another woman in a waitress uniform. The woman over the corpse was Maggot Molly. The haggard woman with a sinister smile plastered on her ugly face. She opened a toolbox and was sorting through various sharp implements. She selected something that looked like a cheese grater, but it fit around her fist like a glove. With alarming force, she shoved the grater up into the woman's abdomen and into her guts. Maggot Molly said under her breath, “
Sweet, sweet suffeeeeeeeering
.”

Maggot Molly gave him a quick glance, enjoying the fact someone else was observing her sick work. “You know what I most like about cutting into a dead body? I know they can feel it in hell. And there's not a thing they can do about it.”

Maggot Molly stood up straight. The grater around her fist was covered in tangles of pink pulped meat. “After I kill you, Victor Greaves, you too will suffer in hell.”

He didn't have his shotgun anymore. He was defenseless.

God damn, son, you've got a mean swing, kiddo. Way to bust his face. No one's going to pick on your ever again, Vic.

Words his father said to him when he punched out the fifth grade class bully, Drew Ransom. Every punch, from then on, Vic channeled everything he had through his fists.

This situation would be no different.

He would give this sick bitch a punch to remember.

Vic gave her no warning. He lunged. Cocking back his right fist like a catapult about to launch its load, he sprung his muscles back, then clenched his fist, knowing he was building force, gathering concentration. He hammered her face with the fist freight train. So hard the blow, he felt her nose and jaw break. The woman let out a “
Eeeeeaaaaaaaagh!
” and was thrown backward, doing three spins before hitting the street.

“Do yourself a favor and don't get back up, bitch.”

The cheese grater glove clanged down the street and fell into the gutter. Strange dirty hands reached out and seized it. Mad slurping noises echoed in the sewers soon after.

It sounded like something was supping the pieces of meat from the grater.

Vic ran past Maggot Molly, deciding he better find a place to hide or a car to jack. The killers would leave that apartment building soon, and they would be after him next. His fists wouldn't be enough to protect himself.

Racing down the block of low-rent businesses, he discovered a truck with its passenger side door open. It was parked at an expired meter. He ducked into the vehicle and gasped at the woman's corpse at the wheel. Her shirt had been torn as if cut by scissors. Her bra was snipped to reveal plump and pert breasts. The normally pleasurable sight was demurred by the small deep box cut into her sternum. With a knife, 25 cents was drawn into her skin above the box. On her forehead, “EXPIRED” was written in smeared blood.

Don't tell me a psycho meter maid did this.

The keys were still in the ignition. He was about to nudge the corpse out of the vehicle when the corpse woman came to life, arching up in her seat. She paid no attention to the damage inflicted on her body. The woman in her late twenties gave Vic a smile and started up the car.

“Close your door, Vic. We're going for a ride. It's going to get bumpy.”

The car sped forward. Vic's door closed by itself. He was about to jump out when the woman did her best to calm him down. And why a corpse would be trying to calm him down, he had no idea!

“This time the dead's plans against the living are much more elaborate than the last two times. They're trying to wipe out the human race for good. We need your help, Vic. Some of us in eternity wish humanity well. Take me for example. But there are others who wish the living to join the dead. The dead are jealous of the living and wish them nothing but pain for leaving them to languish in eternity. These dead people are warped from eons of being locked in their hatred. They want the living to suffer, and suffer they shall.”

Vic tried the door lever again and again with no luck. It wouldn't budge. He gawked as the woman in the street, dressed in a tight meter maid's uniform, dug a flensing knife into a fat man's chest and drew in “25 cents” on his chest. Shortly after inflicting the wounds, she shoved coins into his mouth and laughted hysterically.

“What the fuck is going on around here?”
Why am I talking to this dead bitch?

“I can't fully explain everything, Vic. You'll have to hang in there. I'm taking you to where it's safe. You'll meet someone who can better explain to you what's happening out there. I won't be around much longer. My soul can only occupy this body for a short period of time. We're not at full strength yet.”

The tangles of the dead driver's curly black hair began to slither off from her scalp. Her flesh was looking more and more putty-like by the second. Around her cheeks, her flesh bubbled. The flesh of her fingers were dripping down like globs of tapioca pudding.

“Then where are you taking me? What the fuck is going on? I, I can't make sense of anything. This is in-sanity!”

“He'll explain it to you when you get there.”

“Who will? He
who
?”

A group of women dressed as geishas welding samurai swords kicked in a Thai restaurant's front window and attacked the people hiding inside.

Vic kept shaking his head in serious denial of everything.

“The dead wish us ill will,” the corpse said as she kept melting. “Their plans will exceed their previous attempts to annihilate society by far. They will win if you don't get your head together and stop asking questions until he talks to you.”

“Who?”

The flesh on her face slithered onto the steering wheel. It stayed stuck there like a wet mask.

“Je-sus lady, your face.”

The skeletal face said, “No time to worry about my face, Vic. Brace yourself.”

A preacher in black attire busted out of the front entrance of a church. He was being chased by a massive grizzly bear. Before they hooked a left in the street, Vic caught the preacher's head being torn off into the bear's maw.

“This is crazy! Why are all these random things happening—and don't say a bunch of vague shit about the dead hating the living!”

The woman wanted to speak, but her tongue came undone, landing in the seat between her legs. The car was driving faster now. They jumped a curb, smashing through a tall-standing perimeter fence that hugged a nondescript three-story tall building. Racing through the parking lot of vehicles, it seemed like the melting corpse was closing in on its destination. The corpse pointed with a dripping finger at Vic's seat belt. It took a second for him to realize what the corpse was conveying. He slung the belt on and covered his head up with his arms. They were headed right into the main entrance of the unknown building. Vic closed his eyes and prayed he'd make it alive through yet another wreck.

Vic pictured his body turning into a crash test dummy as his body was thrown into the windshield. His limbs would pop off, and he'd be dead instantly. Instead, the wooden doors burst from their hinges, letting them inside. The vehicle jerked to a halt, the goopy corpse looking like a flesh pudding pop melting in the sun.

The passenger door came open. Hands had Vic by the feet. Hands had him by the legs. Ceiling lights were bright as he was dragged forward deeper into the building. Vic was in too much of a tailspin to understand what was overtaking him.

Phlegm-choked throats spoke in dead drones: “Almost there.” “Don't panic.” “You're safe here.” “You're where you're supposed to be, Victor.”

Victor? Nobody called him Victor anymore. Vic managed to get a look at the four carrying him. They were walking hunched over with a weak gait. It took every ounce of strength in their bodies to lug him along.

“Who…
who are you people
?”

One of their heads turned to face him.

That's when he howled, his sanity be damned. The old woman's face was writhing with maggots. Clumps of them came off with her cheeks in curdled cheese hunks, leaving bare bones exposed. She said this as if her throat was made of mud, “The entrance to hell opened and maggots ate my body.”

Oh, so that's what happened. And you're carrying me where? Your intentions must be good and all if you're telling me how you died and NOT how you're fucking alive!

Vic thrashed in the maggot-covered corpses' grips. He trusted nobody. His senses were betraying him. His adrenaline and fear trigger were the only true indicators he was alive and not dead and trapped in some wild hell where killers and monsters roamed everywhere.

He was carried into a strange hallway. It smelled of bleach. The floors were buffed. The walls were nothing special, white blurs that passed him by, with only the large steel door like a bank vault's to steal his attention up ahead.

Before Vic could put anything else together, the limbs of those who carried him disconnected with the uncouth slide of bone against bone. Then rest of their bodies were melting fast in a caramel mudslide.

The corpse woman and the three other corpses had fallen onto the ground. Each of their bodies were melting, their flesh and insides plopping into a sludge stew onto the tiles. He was free. Vic forced his body up from the ground. Standing there covered in blood and mess, he gasped in shock when one of the steel vault doors came open. There was a series of vault doors going down another hallway. The man behind the door held his arms up to signify ‘I'm unarmed. And I'm your friend.'

The guy was in his mid-thirties, a hundred pounds overweight with the stocky build of a computer geek, add acne, add thick glasses, add an unkempt course beard that belonged on his pubes and not his face, and add a constant smile that gave him the permanent label of “smart ass”. He wore an “Atari” T-shirt and jeans that needed to be washed last week. He introduced himself as Jimmy Nelson.

Vic didn't shake Jimmy's hand. He asked questions instead. “Who are you?—I mean besides your name. I was dragged her by dead people, and and I rode a bus with Satan and some other dangerous motherfuckers, so you better—”

“That's from that one movie.” Jimmy thought hard, putting two fingers to his lips as if tasting an intricate wine. “Oh, it's from
Satan Drives the Bus.
I remember that one. Very obscure. Satan drives old serial killers away from purgatory back to the living world. That's when they get revenge against those who wronged them. It's a cheap device, but it's entertaining. Great vintage cheesy fli—
gaaak!
”

Vic's gigantic hand swallowed up Jimmy's neck. Up close, Jimmy smelled of body odor and barbeque pork rinds. What was wrong with this jackass? And how did the punk know his name?

“The way you're talking, you're one of them out there, maybe. Give me a reason not to squeeze your head off.”

His words sandblasted away Jimmy's delighted expression. Jimmy was a fraction of a second from losing his bladder, but he cut a fart that could remove paint from a fence instead.

Vic's anger subsided into disgust. “I hope you just didn't shit your pants. Look, I'm going to let up on my hold on your neck, and then you wow me. Give me a reason to back off, or like I said, I give your neck THE SQUEEZE.”

Jimmy was shivering in his skin. The kid cut yet another fart, and Vic couldn't live that one down. “Jesus Christ, guy, you stick a cabbage up your ass? You're not a monster. You're worse, dude. You need to take a shit.”

Jimmy's cheeks reddened. “I'm just nervous.”

“It doesn't mean I can trust you. So how can I trust you?”

“Those corpses brought you here for a reason. Vic, I have something to show you. I'll explain everything, but it starts in this vault. If you don't trust me,” he removed an Uzi behind his back, “you keep this trained on me.”

“Wow, where the hell you get a piece like that?” Vic swiped it, clutching it in both hands. “I could've used this hours ago.”

Jimmy worked his way back into the vault. Once Vic entered, Jimmy closed the door and locked it. “Better safe than sorry. I know what's out there, man. I've seen thousands of horror movies. It's all happening for real. The movies really are coming to life.”

The room was full of steel plated slots on the walls. Each required a key to open. Thousands of slots total occupied the room, Vic guessed.

Vic asked, “So these vaults are full of these slots? What are they holding?”

“Movie reels. They're preserved and kept from damage. This room carries everything, from the classics to the crap.”