D.O.A. Extreme Horror Anthology (23 page)

“Kr-Kris...I can’t...can’t! Can’t hold it anymore!”

“It’s okay, go ahead, just don’t stop, don’t stop”

He didn’t. She felt the hot, tight, rubbing, stretching, burning feeling between her legs turn into a hot, wet, slippery feeling, spurt by spurt as Adam groaned beneath her. And that was okay. That was good. It soothed the burning and he kept thrusting and she could feel the pressure in her belly, in her womb, building and coiling, bigger and tighter than it had ever been before. Bigger than she’d ever imagined it could be until it finally burst and she screamed out into Adam’s mouth. 

***

“Kris...Kris, wake up.”

Kristen blinked and opened her eyes into darkness. Adam was shaking her shoulder. Somehow she’d fallen asleep. Her hip joints ached, her vagina felt like someone had shoved a log up it, bark and all, and her panties were damp and uncomfortable. Never mind the fact that there was something prowling out in the dark.   

“What time is it?” She asked.

“It’s two o’ clock. We’ve been asleep for hours,” he said. “I think I should go check it out.”

She stared at him—not that he could see it, or that she could actually see him. It was too dark for that.

“No, you shouldn’t.”

“I’ve been awake for longer than you have,” Adam insisted. “It’s been quiet the whole time.”

“So what?” She retorted. “Don’t you know how this story ends? You go out there, you never come back, and when the cops show up tomorrow, they tell me to come out without looking back because your body is hanging over the door!”

“The police? We don’t know if anybody’s coming!”

“This isn’t Gilligan’s Island,” She snapped back. “It’s a High School dance! When they notice nobody came home, they’ll send some help! If they run into trouble, they’ll send some armed help. How does you getting killed before they do that help?”

A long moment of silence. When Adam’s voice came out of the darkness again, it was conciliatory. “It doesn’t, you’re right,” he said. “But it really has been quiet for a long time. I think it...they...whatever was out there...is gone. We could get out, get to somewhere our phones work—”

She was about to interrupt him, argue some more, say those things weren’t worth his life when all they had to do was wait, but the next thing he said brought her up short.

“—see if anybody’s still alive out there. What if there is someone out there that we can help? Or someone who might live if we called for help right away, but might die if we wait for people to figure out they need to
send
help? I don’t think I could live with myself.”

Kristen wanted to say, ‘
You might not live at all
,’ but she didn’t. She was thinking about Randy. He’d been seven different kinds of asshole, but he didn’t deserve whatever had happened to him out there. Did she want any more screams for help haunting her dreams for the rest of her life? She didn’t think so.

“Me neither,” she admitted. “Okay, fine. But I’m going, too.”

Adam opened the door, slowly, but it still creaked and scraped. Kristen winced at the sound. With the music pounding out in the gym earlier, the door’s noises had been nothing. Now, the Lost Hallway had been turned into a silent echo chamber, and any noise could bring attention from whatever was responsible for the screams.

She squinted against the light, and she could tell that Adam was doing much the same as he raised a hand to shade his eyes. It said something about how long they’d been locked in the darkness of the Make-Out Room, and how nearly total that darkness had been, that even the dim, flickering, damaged fluorescents of the hallway hurt their eyes. 

At the same time she was struggling to regain her vision, she was also fighting a desperate battle with her stomach, one that she only won because she was terrified that puking would make too much noise. The hallway smelled of raw meat, shit, and most of all, the coppery scent of blood. It was everywhere. The floors, the walls, and even the ceiling were painted with dripping crimson. Was it possible that this had all come from Randy? Did a single body even hold this much blood? Heck, it was impossible to tell if the random chunks of meat and bone strewn about the hallway had come from one body or several. 

Even as her eyes recovered, Kristen was looking up and down the hallway, scanning to see if she should jump back into The Make-Out Room and drag her stupidly brave lover back in by the hair. 

Adam was directing his attention upward to the gym, while Kristen was looking to the back end of the Lost Hallway.

What she saw terrified her. It wasn’t the gore—although that was plenty bad enough. No, whatever had come through here had scratched and cracked the bare concrete floors and gouged the cinderblock walls. But even that wasn’t the worst of it. 

The double doors were standing open. And beyond them lay a deep black that made the Make-Out Room look like a sunroom at noonday.  

“Come on,” Adam said. “I don’t see anything coming. This could be our chance.”

Kristen didn’t want to. Didn’t want to step out into the hall, away from the shelter of the Make-Out Room...in front of those doors. But Adam was right, and he’d been right in the room too. If it was just about them, they could sit on the couch and wait. But if there were people still alive out in the gym, they had to try.

Adam went first, she followed. They moved like escaped convicts in a movie, hugging the wall. It was only twenty feet or so to the junction to the gym, but to Kristen it seemed like her senses suffered a new assault with each step.

Blood and viscera coated the walls with a red spackle and their shoes squelched and stuck with each step.

Blue-white flashes came from around the corner. Were live wires sparking?

And the smell...growing stronger the closer they got...human death mixed with something else. Something dry and sharp and...alien. 

“Adam, I don’t think—”

“Shh,” he said, putting a finger to his lips as they reached the corner. “I’ll go first.”

He was being the Macho Man again, and that was bad. He wasn’t paying as much attention, wasn’t getting the same warnings she was. She had to—

Too late. While she’d been thinking, he’d taken a quick, careful peek around the corner. Now he turned back to her and bent for a quick peck on the lips.

“I’ll be right back. Promise.”  

“Adam!”

But he was already gone. She could hear his footsteps beyond the corner. One step. Two. Three. Silence. 

Then she heard those same three steps coming back toward her.
Sprinting
.

“Run!” he shrieked as he came flying around the corner. “Ruuunnn!”

She did and recognized the tap-tick-scrabbling-scratches.Something was coming.

It was only twenty feet down the hall to the Make-Out Room. Five running strides and a dive, and Kristen was in. 

Adam tried to make the same dive, but something hit him, knocking him down. He screamed once in shock, then he began to scream in terror.

Kristen spun to see him, scrabbling desperately at the blood-slicked floor as something dragged him away. She caught only the barest glimpse of chitinous plates and a spike-pointed limb in the flickering light before focusing all of her attention on Adam. If she looked, she wouldn’t be able to go on.

She grabbed Adam’s hands and was promptly dragged forward herself. Whatever it was, it was impossibly strong. Her feet slipped out from under her slamming her ass hard against the concrete floor. Ignoring the pain, she braced her feet against the doorframe.

Adam’s screams rose to high, sexless shrieks of animal agony and fear. And still Kristen focused on his face, not daring to look at her opponent for even a second.

Then—impossible, but she felt it—she started to gain ground. Adam’s screams rose even higher, and she could understand why, it felt like every ligament in her arms and shoulders was about to tear loose, but still she held on. 

And then Adam was free, in the Make-Out Room, falling in on top of her, and with the last of her strength, the end of her conscious thought, she kicked the door closed, and the last sound she heard before she fell down into darkness was the satisfying sound of the lock clicking into place.

***

The rescue workers finished cutting around the doorknob—big job, too, damn thing was a big metal fire door. Otherwise, it probably would have just been smashed in during the attack like the one on the coach’s office—and pushed the door open. 

“Hello?” One of them called as they played their flashlights around the room. “Anybody here?”

Then they froze.

They’d known there was someone in the room. They wouldn’t have cut the door open if they hadn’t; they never would have thought to look for survivors in an out-of-the-way storeroom so close to the source of the attack if they hadn’t heard someone talking in here. But why, more than one of them had asked as they were cutting the door open, wouldn’t those survivors let them in or at least respond to them? 

Now they understood. 

There was a survivor, all right. A girl. And she was definitely talking. But they could see why she wasn’t responding to them.

She was right in the middle of an animated conversation with a boy who’d been bitten in half.

“Miss?” the workers tried again.

“Oh, hello,” she said, finally noticing them. “Are we glad to see you. Come on, Adam,” she said, nudging the half-boy in front of her. “They’re here. We’re getting out.” Ignoring his utter lack of reaction, she got to her feet and brushed the dirt off the seat of her pants with bloody hands.

“Could one of you guys take me to the pharmacy? I need to get some Plan B!”

Sickened

Tonia Brown

Pressing his face against the cool porcelain, Clemet wondered what had his stomach so upset. He supposed he might have eaten too much of the widow Baxter’s pecan pie from the night before, but he never had a problem with eating in the past, excessive or otherwise. Besides, it was a very good pie, all gooey and sweet, which was why he had two slices. Thinking about the pie got his stomach rolling again, triggering his gag reflex, which sent him into another bout of puking.

After six or seven heaves he flushed the acidic yellow mess, lest it prompt him to vomit yet again. Not that there was anything left to vomit. The remnants of his only meal in the last twenty-four hours was long gone. A chunky, throaty mess of greasy fried chicken, biscuits, mashed potatoes, gravy, and at last the pecan pie, easily dispatched in his all day session of knee-bound toilet hugging. The physical act of vomiting was especially harsh on Clemet, being he was the kind of man who’d thrown up maybe twice in his life.

This being the second time.

He leaned against the bathroom cabinet, head back, praying for the moment to pass. “Dear God in heaven. I don’t know if it’s the flu or what, but please let it pass. I don’t know what I done, or what I said to deserve this, but please just let me get better.”

As if defying his request, or perhaps even to mock it, his stomach rolled, contracting in sputtering lurches, until Clemet was face first in the bowl again. Heave after heave, he pondered if this was indeed some form of punishment. It felt like God Himself had Clemet by the gut, squashing his intestines bottom up, like a tube of toothpaste, aiming to squeeze the sin right out of his mouth.

Sickness was just an outer show of inner sin, at least that’s what momma used to say. According to her, every ache, pain, sneeze and sniffle Clemet suffered growing up was his own fault for being a bad boy. Yet when it came her time to be sick, it was just part of God’s plan. Still, here he was on his knees, so maybe he did have something to hide. Sin knew all secrets, Clemet was well aware of that. Dealing with sin, after all, was his bread and butter. It paid his bills, put clothes on his back and food on his table.

That was to say when he wasn’t eating his meal off someone’s casket.  

Clemet closed his eyes, taking mental stock of his offenses as he emptied his stomach. He settled on a few possible culprits, singling out a particularly nasty one. Looking to the ceiling, he said, “If this is about that movie I bought on the internet, the one with all them nekkid girls in it, I’m sore-fully sorry. I’ll send it back or throw it away or whatever you want me to do.” He paused to belch a belly full of acrid stench. “Please just make it stop.”

Clemet belched once more then, miracles of miracles, his stomach fell still. With his head over the bowl, Clemet mumbled his thanks and praises. He flushed then leaned against the cabinet again, waiting a few minutes to see if it was safe to leave the sanctity of the bathroom. One calm minute passed, then two. Five full non-vomiting minutes later Clemet dared to stagger to his bedroom.

The few feet between the rooms stretched into miles. Clemet hobbled, one unsteady footstep at a time, all while he hugged his thin frame, praying for the cease fire to last long enough for him to get some sleep. Not bothering with the sheets, or his clothes, he collapsed on his bed with a heartfelt sigh of gratitude. Praising God once more for good measure, Clemet fell into a troubled sleep.

He didn’t last an hour.

Nor did he make it to the toilet this time.

Clemet always hated his momma’s sense of formality. Doilies on the chairs, runners on the carpets and placemats on the table had always been a special set of splinters under Clemet’s skin. Yet after momma passed on, and he had eaten her sins away like a good son should, he found himself bound to her memory, deciding to leave things just as she had. For once, he was glad he did. Otherwise he would have never had a wastepaper basket beside his bed. He could almost hear his dead momma wailing in disgust as he hugged the bucket to his spastic body, filling it with a substance far flung from its intended purpose. Throwing up in the plastic bin was one thing, but the thought of having to clean that mess off the carpet later, well that was a whole different pile of puke.

Only when Clemet got a look at the inside of the bucket, it wasn’t a pile of puke staring back at him. The crisp, white container was filled with a slimy, black mess. Clemet narrowed his eyes at the pool of black, wondering what on earth the widow Baxter put in that darned pie, when a trace of red caught his eye. It was the shape of a single fingerprint, on the rim of the plastic, from the hand that Clemet had just wiped his own mouth with. He held his hand up to his face, and sure enough, a thin sheen of dark crimson coated the inside of his palm. Clemet pulled on the corner of his well-tucked sheet to daub his mouth.