Authors: Alan Spencer
Billy stared at his gun. It had changed again. This time it was a bazooka.
“You have to save me!” A man charged out of an apartment building, the top half of the building having been removed by a giant swipe of an arm. He didn’t recognize the person shouting for them. Many more men and women flopped out of hiding places, crying in hysteria. “They’re inside me. So many of them. I can feel it crawling inside of me. Taking over. We went swimming in old man Harper’s lake. Sure, there was leeches, but these are different. They're mutated. Harper’s been up to no good. He’s crop dusted with the cheap stuff. I know because my father did the job. It’s no better than agent orange.”
From the man’s eyes, large black leeches slithered and forced the eyes of his sockets. “They’re skinpreys!”
“Skinpreys?” Billy gasped. “RUN LIKE HELL!”
Each of the victims shed the leech creatures from each orifice: one victim kept excreting them from the ears, another vomited a pile of them up, and most of them were boiling under the skin, the creatures eating their way out with their lance-filled mouths and beady blue marble eyes. Hundreds of victims revealed themselves. The sound of thousands of squirming, squishing, enclosing skinpreys sent Billy and Nelson up the street. Martindale Street eventually came into view, and when it did, so did the monsters at their backs.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
It’s so simple.
Why didn’t I think of it before?
Impossible. I’m a walking pile of broken bones.
One last thing to do.
So do it!
Ted had broken his right leg, shattered his arm when he'd landed on the street, and he was certain his hips and pelvis weren’t in good shape either. He’d deflected off a garbage dumpster on the way down. Ted was lucky to be alive, in any shape. He had enough life left in him for one last try. He crawled because he couldn’t walk, through the side door that led into the basement of the apartment building.
One last thing to do.
So simple…
A great wall of enemies charged in at them from all angles. They were surrounded and entrenched in B-movie warfare. Nelson was thrown across the street, tangled in the mean clutches of the schoolgirls. Pitchforks were shoved at Billy. He shot his bazooka in their direction. It made an odd sound, like spackle shot out of a giant tube at impossible speeds. SPLAT! A wad of white steaming goop like melted marshmallow cream landed on the farmers. They sizzled, melted and began crumbling into boiling piles. The substance was sticky, the corpses unable to move once they collapsed onto the street.
“My pies are always the best! ALWAYS FRESH!”
The back of his neck was sliced with a pizza cutter. “Ah Jesus!”
Billy’s weapon changed into a long pole with a fan blade on the end. It buzzed as if it had a motor from within. The blade was spinning, slicing, a gas smell accompanying each chug of the motor.
“GIVE THEM HELL!” Nelson cried. “AHHHHHHHHH!”
Billy saw six axes bear down upon Nelson, each slicing him. The schoolgirls bathed in his blood, rubbing their faces in it, soaking their clothes in the red, and relishing another man’s death.
“NELSON!” He used the spinning blade to his advantage, picturing Jessica and Nelson as they were before death, healthy and happy. “DAMN YOU ALL TO PIECES!”
Billy caught the baker across the face, his charred skeleton splitting in half leaving the lower mandible and a tongue extending like the feelers on a cricket’s head. A flying vampire swooped down: “SHALEEEEEEEEEH!” He dodged the reaching talons and delved the blades into her left leg until it snapped from the body. She screamed, spinning in misdirection, and careened into the street. A wad of intestines wrapped around the blades, the pink coils turning into mist and spray. Then a burning skeletal hand clutched the weapon. Fluids trickled down the pole, and instantly, Billy’s prized weapon was engulfed in flames.
The corpse said, “The dead don’t need their organs after they die… I’ll consider that the moment you perish, Billy.”
Billy stumbled over his own feet. The fleet they had aimed to destroy stood above him, dominating his last moments of life. Skinpreys slithered over his arms and legs, coating them in an inch of slime. Schoolgirls regarded him as filth, sizing him up, swiping and swatting the air with their deadly blades covered in Nelson’s fresh blood. Farmers rolled a bale of human bodies closer to him, Nelson’s tangled in the mix, his eyes and mouth jammed with hay. The baker was half-headed, but managed to stuff peach filling into a corpse’s torso beneath the traffic light. Three winged vampires, even the one-legged vampire, devoured and licked up Nelson’s puddle of blood from the street, the group playfully splashing each other, dragging their blood-colored tongues against each other in ecstasy. More of the awful monsters paraded in the background, so many he couldn’t take them in.
He clutched a trash can lid and shielded himself from the guarantee of a brutal death.
All Jessica could think was how humid it was inside the beast. The walls resembled the inside of her mouth and the walls of her cheeks: soft, pink, bumpy textured and fleshy. The ceiling was the same porous texture and a deep purple color. Somehow, light had filtered into what she would’ve expected to be a dark cave, though the light was unnatural—like a large spotlight’s illumination. She landed into a forced somersault onto her back in a puddle. The puddle was above room temperature, and as it set into her skin, it began to burn. She yelped and backpedaled to a dry surface.
“That’s only a taste of what’s coming our way.”
She wasn’t alone. Twenty people at each side of her were hunched down pressed up against the wall. Their backs bobbed up and down as did their heads. A sucking and spitting noise repeated. She turned away in repulsion. “What's going on in here? What are you people doing?”
The man who spoke earlier wore a white lab coat and bore the resemblance of a young Christopher Lee. “Survival, my dear, is what’s happening here. We have exactly fifty-five minutes to escape the beast.”
“And what in hell is this beast we’re inside of exactly?”
The person she assumed was a scientist, his breast pocket read Dr. Misery.
That can’t be a real name.
Then the obvious occurred to her: this was a character from a movie. The beast that swallowed her up was from a movie.
Am I the only one in here who’s real?
“The beast,” Dr. Misery began, “is an experiment of mine. I wanted to grow beta fish into larger fish, perhaps so large it could feed many. You see, I developed them to survive in salt water and humid regions so they could prosper in third world countries…”
But something went horribly wrong…
“But something went horribly wrong…”
“Enough of this crazy shit. How do we get out of here?”
Dr. Misery pointed at each of the victims on their haunches. “We have fifty minutes before that wall of tissue comes down and bathes us in acid for digestion. Then, we’re nothing but digestible material.” He smirked. “The beta fish can be defeated from within, and I’ll tell you how.”
The sucking sounds continued. The victims’ breathing was muffled and labored. The echo of mastication was off-putting in this scenario.
“Then what do we do?”
Dr. Misery guided her by both arms and propped her in front of the fleshy wall. The spongy material dripped with a thick white mucous fluid. The doctor's voice bent when he said, “
We
have to eat our way out of the creature…
”
Vrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrm!
Ted had worked himself into a standing position, the wall his crutch, as he walked down the apartment’s back stairs to the bottom floor. He limped his way inside the building when the roar of a chainsaw resounded through another room. He kept edging toward the last room in the hall despite what he knew was coming for him.
It’s always the last room.
Thack! Clap! Thack! Clap! Thack! Clap! Thack!
Three rooms from his destination, the blade of the chainsaw cut through a door. The door was battered down by several steel-sounding collisions. The door flew open. That’s when a fleet of tools was sent his direction: hammers, wrenches, chainsaw, nail gun, table saw, power sander, all of it was hurled his way. They moved and were propelled as if ghosts were holding them in their hands, he thought. Any moment, they could be used on him. Ted had directed and watched enough horror movies to know his time was limited.
He lucked out, opening an unlocked door and shielding himself behind the barrier. Splinters and dust shot at his body, the whir and whine of power tools deafening.
The tools could tear him into pieces and send him directly into death. But he had reached his destination. He expected a hammer to clack against his head or a nail to pierce his chest. The tools simply faltered to the floor with a collective metallic crash.
“Stop, Ted!”
Georgia stood as a woman in the hallway. Naked. Unashamed. Her face begging. Eyes alight with shock that he’d survived this long, that he was this close to ending their reign of terror.
“Why should I stop? You’ve murdered and turned this city into a tomb. I want nothing to do with you anymore. After this, I hope my movies fall into obscurity forever. I can’t be the source of any more death.”
“You can have all the women you want,” she said, teasing her tongue between her lips. “Look, Teddy Bear.”
A warden entered the hall. She was dressed in a black uniform. Ted watched in awe as she undressed down to nothing. Blonde and buxom, curvy and sexual along every inch of her naked flesh, he simply shook his head at the show. Another battalion of walking sex pots, the slasher girls entered via the opposite rooms of the hallway dressed in skirts and stockings, flashing their tits and hiking their dresses up for an extra-special peek of their virginal beauty. Their murderous feminism ended and was replaced with promises of sexual freedom.
“We’re yours,” Georgia promised, tracing her hands along the bodies of the slasher girls. “I promise none of us will ever hurt you if you promise not to bring harm upon us. It’s that easy, Teddy. Are you on our side, or theirs? The living will become the dead. They’ll be just like us, and finally, we can live as equals, Teddy. We can never be completely human again. We can't lead fulfilling lives like the living and breathing masses can. They don’t appreciate life. They don’t know regret, loss and death itself. The dead can only live as vague profiles of their former selves—as you can see, we’re creatures. But we’re enjoying our new bodies, our new homes. In fact, it’ll be a damn shame when every living person is dead. The fun will be over. We’ve had an enjoyable time killing everybody. Or maybe we could kill you in smaller doses. Let society recoup their losses. You people are always bringing new life into the world. Babies are born every day. So much flesh to create…and desecrate.”
“If you’re a bunch of ghosts, you’ve truly lost your sanity,” Ted said. “You’re simply a bunch of killing machines without any tangible goal.
Even if you had one to begin with, you’ve lost it. The movie characters are taking you over. Their motives, their ambitions, their characteristics have become your own. Georgia, you didn’t used to be a lesbian. In fact, you only wanted men—I remember one of your co-actresses tried to make out with you, and you rejected her. All of you are lost in the movie characters. It’s turned you into psychotics. You can’t return to being human beings the way you were before death ever again. And you can’t keep killing everyone. It’s not up to you when it’s someone’s time to go or not. I’m here to end this…I’m sending you back to where you came from forever.”
Georgia shouted, “You haven’t won! There’s a plan B. You can’t stop us forever!”
“Enjoy your plan B in hell.”
The nail gun lifted from the floor. Seven shots spat out the nozzle. He was pierced through the chest, the seventh shot splitting his heart in half.
By then, he had already opened the breaker box and cut the power.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Billy clutched the trashcan lid. He waited. And waited. He opened one eye. Then the other. He was alone on the street. Nelson’s body was splayed on the pavement in six different pieces. He averted his eyes and scrambled from the scene in horror. He was halfway up the street when he recalled the purpose of coming here.
Destroy the projector and the reels.
He sprinted to the apartment building. Andy had told him that the projector was on the fourth floor. Rushing inside, he observed open rooms on the way up, blood on every wall, the residents murdered.
He kept moving.
Running up to the
fourth floor, he located the room. Corpses were stacked at every corner, gore smeared on the walls. The stench was horrid. He scavenged the room for something to burn the entire building down with. He had to be creative and located a bottle of bourbon and a book of matches. Reels were littered on the floor, titles ranging from
Squid Man Versus The Living Dead
,
Dracula Lives in Saint Anne’s Dormitory
,
Wolfman Defeats
the United States Army
,
Hacksaw Cheerleaders Kill
, and many more. He smashed the three projectors into one pile, beating them into pieces before dousing them in bourbon and setting them afire.