Beautiful Death (Bella Morté Trilogy Book 1) (3 page)

She would never again taste the sweetness of cherries.

The horde came after her as if they were escapees from the mental ward for the criminally insane. Ripped clothes hung off their bruised and bloody bodies. Some even had jagged slashes in their flesh, but one thing they all had in common; they were coming at Grace.

She screamed as they pulled her to the ground, struggling, trying her best to fight them off, but it was useless. There were too many. “Dani, help!”

They didn’t waste time, tearing her clothes off like plucking feathers off a chicken. Once her shirt was gone, one of the men punched his hand through her stomach. He grabbed handfuls of her intestines, shoving them into his mouth, chewing greedily. The others played tug-of-war, ripping her limbs from her body, bathing in the blood.

Dani couldn’t get to her in time because the mob attacked her too. Screaming, she swung the bat, trying to make a path. “Get off her!” Knocking a few on the head, sent them out of her way, crashing to the ground, but it was too late for G-ma. She had joined Alice in the blood pool. She screamed. “Noooooooo!”

That was when rage took a hold, making her a deadly weapon. Her intent was to kill. She beat them, not just to get out of her way. She wanted them to suffer. Many crashed to the ground, but she was outnumbered. Her fate was about to be the same. In between swings, she looked around for an escape route.

The police station was the closest, most inviting. After all, how much safer can one get than a police station? Keeping the bat in her hand, she turned and ran. Her feet moved, but she didn’t need to look behind her to know they were chasing her. They were hot on her heels, with their grunts and groans whispering in her ear that she was next.

Dead bodies littered the ground and she didn’t have the luxury of being traumatized or distraught by it. That was where all the owners of the cars went! Resentment fueled her, keeping her running, swinging when anyone lunged. A brief glance was all it took to see most of the figures had received the same treatment as her family though some of them were missing heads. It was a dream. It had to be! However, she knew deep down it wasn’t. It was real, and she had to keep moving to stay alive.

The throng was close when she reached the building. She didn’t have time to open the door. The swarm hit her from behind, sending her flying headfirst into the concrete barrier, knocking her unconscious.

Two

Drip, drip, drip…

The incessant plopping was like a leaky faucet, steadily dripping into a pan of water, but it finally managed waking her. How long was she knocked out? Without moving, she opened her eyes, looking around. Just that act alone felt as if her head was going to explode. She could feel the goose sized egg on the front of her head, throbbing out her heartbeat like a drum solo. It was painful and annoying but kept her alert.

When her vision cleared, and her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, she was lying behind a big overturned desk in a pool of blood. The
plopping
came from an enormous crimson stain on the ceiling. Cringing, she moved her head as another drop splashed on her face. The smell was distinctive; booze, ass, and death. On the air was a musky coppery taste: blood. The nasty flavor stuck in her mouth like when she accidentally grabbed a diet drink.

Once she was able to stand, she closed her eyes tightly to the pain in her head, looking around with shocked wide eyes. At one time, this was a very busy police station in Walkersville, Maryland. She wasn’t sure what it was anymore. The desks were overturned, papers and files strewn about like paper towels, sopping up the flood from
The Ten Commandments
after Moses turned the water to blood. Mutilated body parts were scattered within the puddles. It was obvious there was a massacre, but how did
she
survive? The last thing she remembered was getting up-close and personal with a concrete wall.

Death is without prejudice. Uniformed cops, pimps, bikers, gang members, and prostitutes all had one thing in common. Most of them were so mutilated it was hard to decipher who was from which group. Hearing a sound, her head snapped to the right. Across the room was a police officer. She almost called out to him with some sarcastic quip about the end of the world. Almost. Common sense, which is lacking in most people, struck her with a lightning bolt and she winced at the severity of it.

It looked as if he was leaning over, helping one of his own, but it was dark and hard to see. The one on the floor was groaning and writhing in obvious pain. The moon shined through the window, striking a point in the room and she could see he was losing blood. Where fresh blood met stale, it reminded her of the joining of two bodies of water: one blue, the other green.

She needed to protect herself. On the floor and on each of the cops, there was a holster with a gun. However, she picked up a nightstick. It wasn’t her bat, but it would do the job better than a gun, which she didn’t have the first notion how to use. She planned to teach herself, but for now, she needed something she could operate.

Water is the loudest surface in the world. The plops, splashes, and swirls making the slowest of journeys sound so loud, like the refrigerator after midnight. This crimson ocean was no different. It was thicker than regular water, but it still made the same sounds. A few times, she had to pause as the cop turned his head, listening. She forgot to breathe as she kept her eyes glued to him as she approached his backside. She gingerly stepped into the wetness, cautiously moving over body parts, trying not to think of how real they were. Special effects had nothing to the real thing.

Once close enough, she saw what he was doing. He wasn’t helping his partner. He used him as an all you can eat buffet. Reaching into his stomach, he pulled out plump, red, stringy intestines. Shoving them into his mouth, chewing greedily as if he hadn’t eaten in days. A gorilla was quieter, huffing and puffing, pounding on his chest in a rage. His slurping was like her family during spaghetti night as each one tried to out-slurp the others.

She knew what needed to be done, and did so without thinking because if she waited, she would never have the courage to do it. Raising the stick in the air, she brought it down upside the back of his head and leaped on him. She didn’t give him time to fight back or she wouldn’t make it out alive. She hammered down on his head with violent, quick thrusts, repeatedly striking him. The sounds echoed, he tried to stop her, but she didn’t stop until his skull caved in and looked like a vat of smashed tomatoes.

Cringing, she dropped the weapon, staggering away from the bloody scene. There was blood splattered, pieces of his brain hanging out of the strands of her hair. She could see them. It was on her face, hands, in her hair and on her clothes. Her hands were covered in pulpy parts of… well… she didn’t want to know what
that
was. Her first thought was a manual car wash to take a shower.

Staggering away from the scene, she fell against the wall. Pressed against it for support, she lifted her hand to touch that tender egg. It hurt. She felt the bump and dried blood that scabbed over like a Band-Aid, but not before streaking down her face like war paint.

Looking around at the bloody devastation, she felt her stomach rumble. Turning, she puked, gagging, and sputtering; coughing as she spit. Though it wasn’t soon enough for her, eventually there wasn’t anything left but dry heaves racking her body into deep spasms. It left a horrible taste in her mouth. Hell, the aftertaste of diet drinks was better than this.

Moving away from that mess to another wall, she slid down it to rest on her heels, spitting, trying to purge herself of that horrid taste. Closing her eyes, the tears lightly cascaded down her face. In her mind, she saw the faces of her mother and grandmother, pulled apart, eaten. What the hell was going on around there? They were all she had for family and now they were gone. She was on her own.

After a few minutes, she wiped away the tears, leaving more streaks across her face before pushing up the wall. She had to do something. She didn’t know what but knew where to start. Wiping her mouth, she glanced around on the floor. It didn’t take long to locate her bat. There were plenty of guns; she was in a police station, but she didn’t know how to arm one. However, she did know how to swing that bat. Gripping it tightly in her hand, she slowly made her way through the police station.

It was the same in each of the rooms. She did a quick search, whispering for anyone to answer her, as well as looking for something to drink. There was a vending machine in the front lobby and it was in the direction she headed. Each search provided the same grizzly scene: dead people and body parts littered within the crimson river.

Once at the vending machine, she had to think of how to get the damn soda out. There wasn’t any electricity so it wasn’t as if she could put money in. Looking around, she found some metal pipe that apparently one of the dead had in his death grip. When she finally managed to pry it loose, she went back to the machine and forcibly opened it. It took a good thirty minutes, but she wasn’t going away empty-handed. When the door finally swung open, she noticed the machine was full. Taking out a Coke, she cringed. She was a Mountain Dew girl, but beggars couldn’t be fussy.

Taking a drink, it wasn’t long before she puked that up too. The taste was back again. This time, instead of swallowing the Coke, figuring something must be wrong with it, she merely gargled, spitting out the nasty flavor. It worked. Setting the can down, she continued her search through the precinct, looking for anyone who might have survived.

She felt a shooting pain in her arm and spun around quickly, ready to hit someone. It felt like someone stabbed her with a hot fire poker. Not seeing anyone there, she reached her hand around to touch the area. Cringing, pulling her hand away, she noticed some kind of thick pus-like mucus dripping from her fingers like green slime. Gagging, she wiped it off on the wall, watching it run like paint, before brushing her hands off on her jeans. Dirty, bloody, what was a little more to add to the mix?

“Well, that’s just fuckin’ disgustin’.” Groaning, she continued her search. She took three steps before freezing in her tracks. An odd sound clattered on the opposite side of the room, which echoed around her, disguising the exact location. Her thought was there might be more of them, whatever they were, looming around in the police station. The bat rose instinctively as she turned, eyes searching desperately for the source. It was still dark, and she didn’t want to reveal her position. “Hello?” There was nothing but silence. “Say somethin’ or I’m gonna knock your fuckin’ head off!”

“Ouch, don’t do that. I already have a pounding headache,” the male voice said, groggily. He was sitting in a cell on the bench, rubbing his head.

Relief! It flooded over her like a powerful wave, with enough force to knock you down, during high tide. “Oh, thank God someone else made it! I thought I was all alone.” Putting the bat down on top of the desk, she ran over to the cell. Gripping the bars, she shook them, trying to force them open. “It’s locked.”

“Imagine that. I knew there was a reason I was
still
in here.”

“Don’t be such a dick! I’m tryin’ to rescue you!”

“
Trying
is the operative word there.” Before she could comment, he put up his hands defensively. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I’ve had a rough day.”

She watched him for a second, before nodding. “Yeah, well join the fuckin’ club. Where are the keys, smartass?”

“My guess would be in the desk…
genius
.”

After glaring, she turned, racing back to the desk. Pulling out the drawer, she shoved her hand inside, moving it from one side to the other. Staples, stapler remover, pens, paperclips, rubber bands, pennies, and then she wrapped her fingers around a ring of keys. “Holy shit. I think I found the mother lode!” Grabbing them, she rushed back over. She tried them one by one.

“Hurry.”

“I’m tryin’. Don’t rush me.”

“Sorry. I’m anxious to get out of here.”

It had taken five tries before the lock clicked. Pulling open the door, she smiled. “Dude, I don’t know what ya did, but consider this your breakout.”

“That’s not something you hear every day.”

“Yeah, I know the feelin’. It’s a first for me too. Don’t worry though. I killed the warden… I think.” Shaking her head, she entered the cell. Standing over him, she helped him stand. “Can ya walk?”

Slowly, he pulled himself up, using her for a clutch. “I think so. I just got knocked out.”

“Come on. We have to get outta here.”

He winced, dragging a hand through his hair. “Thanks for not leaving me locked in here.”

Standing at the bars, she looked around. “I guess we’re in the same boat.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I woke up here too an’ I would hate it if someone just left me locked in a cell to die.”

He stood much taller as six-foot-four towered over her five-foot-seven, before turning, smiling softly at her. “Yeah, but the difference is,” the smile was gone, taking on a darker, evil expression; glaring at her. “I’m not bitten.”

There wasn’t time to think, much less react. He hit her so hard; her legs flew out, sending her flying through the cell and into the concrete wall, bouncing off to hit the floor. He quickly exited, pulling the door closed, backing away, watching her.