Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set (66 page)

And then her teeth met, and he fell away from her.

Moni spat his cock on the floor as he sprayed blood like fire hose. While he knelt down with his hands between his legs, wailing and trying to stop the hemorrhaging, Moni undid the other buckles holding her to the rack, pulled out the hefty metal bar used as a crank, and hit the son of a bitch hard enough on the back of the head to see brains come out the split.

They sort of looked like grits.

Wiping off her mouth and spitting several times, Moni got her shit together. She was free. For the moment she was safe. Now she needed to get the hell out of there.

Moni left the torture chamber, metal bar still in hand, and found herself in some sort of mine shaft. The floor was dirt. The walls braced with logs. Lights were bare bulbs, hanging from old rafters.

She spat again, hurrying down the tunnel, stopping when she heard talking.

“You, Jebediah Butler, are are are a jerktapus. That’s a jerk multiplied by eight.”

It sounded like Dr. Belgium. Moni snuck up to an open door, saw the doc was bound to a table. Some guy was standing next to him with a mallet. The mallet guy was covered, head to toe, with blood, but he didn’t seem injured at all.

Another fake ass ghost.

The bloody guy hit Frank with the mallet, right on his arm, which was all twisted and swollen up to twice its normal size.

That son of a…

Moni rushed up to him, angry and pumped, and brained the bastard with the metal bar. He went down, and she kept hitting him, over and over.

“Looks like you invited the wrong goddamn dominatrix to your little party, bitch!”

His head was harder to crack open than the Luther Kite wannabe, but she kept at it until she got the desired results.

“Moni!” Frank said, smiling at her. “Your mouth is bleeding.”

“I bit a guy’s dick off.”

“Great! That’s great!”

She undid Frank’s straps, wincing when she saw his arm. “Jesus, Doc. Doesn’t that hurt?”

“I’m medicated,” he slurred. “Tell me something… how hard is it to buy heroin?”

“It’s all about who you know.”

“Great great great!”

“Is that what you’re on? Heroin?”

“Yes. I believe it’s your stash. It’s awesome.”

He’d be singing a different tune when withdrawal kicked in, but Moni saw no reason to bring that up.

“I have to go and save Sara,” Belgium said. “Want to come with?”

“Sure.”

Frank picked up the mallet in his good hand, and then they were back to prowling the tunnels.

“Doc?” she asked.

“Yes yes yes?”

“We’re not going to get our million bucks each, are we?”

“It’s not looking too promising, Moni.”

Moni frowned. The dozen or so lacerations on her body hurt like crazy, but the fact that she’d been played for a fool felt even worse.

“Doc?”

“Yes?”

“When we find everybody, let’s burn this fucking place to the ground.”

Josh

Fran had been on edge since they landed in Charlotte. While he and Duncan had slept most of the trip, his wife had trouble relaxing on planes. A twenty-two hour flight in coach was stressful enough to make even Gandhi want to shoot someone.

But unlike Gandhi, Fran already had done so. A perimeter guard, when they’d driven up to the Butler House gate, had drawn his sidearm and fired at them as they drove up. No warning. No provocation. While Josh was driving the rental van, Fran had used her night scope to put a tight grouping of three into the guard’s chest from thirty meters.

Josh had expected an unwelcome reception, but nothing so blatant and aggressive. It only confirmed what he and Fran had suspected when they’d received the invitation; Butler House was a front for something very bad.

They pulled up to the house and parked in front, the element of surprise gone. Fran and Josh wore full body armor with chest trauma plates, and tactical ballistic helmets, as did Duncan. Woof had on a custom-made bulletproof dog sweater, which boasted a small saddle for Mathison. The capuchin didn’t like to wear body armor because it restricted his movement, but he did don a plastic army helmet that belonged to an old GI Joe action figure, simply because he didn’t like his family all dressing up without him.

“You got the wheel, son,” Josh told Duncan, climbing out of the driver seat and holding the door open for him. “If we come out in a hurry with wounded, can you handle it?”

“Yeah, Dad.”

Josh still beamed with pride every time his adopted son called him
Dad
.

“Keep the windows open. Listen to your surroundings.” He placed a loaded 9mm on the seat next to him, and turned on Duncan’s walkie-talkie. “Radio silence unless an emergency, but send two clicks every five minutes as the
all clear
signal.”

Fran leaned into the driver side window and kissed her son on the helmet. “Aim for the center mass, Duncan. Shoot to kill. This isn’t an exercise. It’s the real deal.”

“I know, Mom.”

“Love you. We’ll be back soon.”

“Love you, too.”

Josh did another check of his gear, then slung the AR-15 over his shoulder. He covered his wife as she rushed the front doors to Butler House and positioned herself on the right side of them. Then she covered him as he came up and took the left. Woof, with Mathison riding on his back like a jockey, heeled next to Josh.

Fran made the hand signal for “Ready?”

In a way, Josh had been ready for this moment since they’d survived the massacre at Safe Haven and had been forced to move out of the lower forty-eight. They’d been waiting, and training, for the day the bad guys finally came calling. After the phony FBI agents had shown up with their obvious bullshit invitation, the VanCamps had called a family meeting and voted. They could do nothing at all and wait for further developments. Or they could alert the media and spill everything, waiting for the inevitable repercussions. Or they could take the offensive.

In a unanimous vote, they decided to come to Butler House. If, as they suspected, another rogue military experiment was in progress, there would be innocent people in danger. Safe Haven had been a training exercise for psychotic killers, and Butler House smelled similar. The guard shooting at them when they arrived confirmed Josh’s suspicion.

Bad shit was going down.

And the only way for bad shit to triumph was for good people to do nothing.

The VanCamps weren’t the
do nothing
type. And Josh knew Duncan and Fran were just as sick of hiding from the past as he was. For years, they’d been waiting for the other shoe to drop. To end what a top secret, imminently evil branch of the military had begun.

So there they were, taking the fight to the enemy, ready to finish this once and for all.

Josh nodded to his wife, and they moved into position to open the front doors to Butler House.

But the front doors opened for them.

Weapons at the ready, fingers on their triggers, Josh and Fran covered the two people who had been trying to leave. One, a man missing his right hand, who had bloody tears in his filthy clothing and a gash on his neck. The other, a woman with artificial legs. They shared the same terrified expression.

“Don’t move!” Fran barked.

They both froze, but the guy looked like he was about to try something.

“We’re the good guys,” Josh said, quickly trying to diffuse the situation. He had a feeling these people were victims, not the enemy.

“How do we know?” the man asked.

“We have a monkey and a dog,” Josh said. “Woof, speak.”

Woof barked and wagged his tail. Mathison waved.

“I was attacked by a monkey,” the man said. “Under a bed.”

“Not this monkey,” Josh replied. “We just showed up. Right, Mathison?”

Mathison nodded, then crossed his heart.

There were a few seconds of uncertainty. Josh decided, if he had to act, he’d try to use non-lethal force.

Then the woman with the prosthetics said, “I’m Deb. This is my husband Mal.” Her voice was raspy.

“You both got those invitations?” Fran asked.

Deb nodded.

“I’m Fran, and my husband Josh. Our son Duncan is in the car. We were invited, too.”

The tension seemed to dissipate. Josh sensed that like was recognizing like. Deb and Mal had that look Josh knew all too well. That
I survived something awful
look.

“Things went bad,” Mal said. “You have no idea what kind of hell is going on here.”

“Actually,” Fran said. “We do. And we’re ready for it. How many people inside?”

“Two are dead,” Mal told them. “One of us and one of them. Inside is a cop named Tom, a dancer named Moni, a psychic named Aabir, a biologist named Frank, a woman named Sara, and a ghost hunter named Pang.”

Deb shook her head. “Pang is possessed.”

“Possessed?” Josh asked.

“His eyes turned black and he freaked out.”

“Chemical agent?”

“Spirits,” Mal said. “There are at least five. A slave with four arms. A bleeding guy. A guy in a lab coat. A guy in a gas mask. And a guy with an eye patch and a whip. They’re ghosts or demons or something. Guns don’t work on them.”

Josh let that go for the moment. He’d seen some crazy shit himself and would never automatically reject the unusual. “Anyone else inside?”

Mal nodded. “Two doctors, Forenzi and Madison. Don’t know what side they’re on. And some guards in gray suits. At least four.”

“Some people may be down in the tunnels under the house,” Deb said. “It’s a maze down there.”

“Woof can find them once he gets their scent,” Fran said. “We couldn’t find any blueprints of the house online, so we don’t know the layout. We could use a tour, but if you two want to wait in the van with our son, we understand.”

Deb and Mal exchanged a look.

“Cops would take at least an hour to get here,” Deb said to her husband. “If we could even convince them to come.”

“I’m in if you are. I’m done with running.”

“Me too.”

“We’ll do it,” Mal said. “But we want lights and weapons.”

“Can you handle a firearm?” Josh asked.

“Guns don’t work on these things. What else you got?”

He gave Mal his tactical flashlight and his asp; a steep baton that extended when you snapped your wrist out. Fran did the same with Deb, and also gave her a can of pepper spray.

“Lead the way,” Josh said.

He sensed their reluctance to go back inside, but they did, which Josh admired.

“First guy died here.” Mal pointed to the large amount of blood on the floor.

Fran crouched down, picked up something. “Rubber bug. Looks like a roach.”

“Rubber?” Mal asked.

Fran leaned forward and found something else. Something shiny. She held it up. “Bullet casing. You said guns don’t work?”

“The cop emptied his gun into the one with the four arms. Thing didn’t even flinch.”

Josh unclipped his spare Maglite and played the beam along the floor, following it up the wall. He walked over, running his fingernail along it, then holding his hand to his nose.

“Wax. Could the cop be in on this? Using wax bullets instead of real ones?”

“You mean he’s been bullshitting us?” Mal asked. “He seemed legit, but I don’t know for sure. We just met him.”

“What’s that?” Fran asked, sweeping her light over to the chairs in the center of the great room.

Mal made a face. “That’s Wellington. Hon, don’t look.”

Mal put his arm around Deb, turning her away, while Josh and Fran went to investigate.

It was pretty awful.

“Looks like our hunch was right,” Fran said.

Josh nodded. They’d both seen similar things in Safe Haven.

“We were too late for this one,” he said. “Hopefully we won’t be too late for the others.”

Josh looked around the rest of the room. They’d spent several hours reading about Butler House, and Josh had prepared as much as possible. But now that he was inside, he couldn’t get over how creepy it felt. If ghosts really did exist, this is where they’d hang out.

His radio clicked twice—Duncan’s all clear signal. Woof got on the scent of something and then stood stock-still, growling low in his throat.

Everyone shined their lights—

—on a black man with four arms, dragging a machete.

“That’s who killed Wellington!” Mal said, stepping in front of Deb and raising his asp.

“Freeze!” Fran ordered, raising her weapon.

The four-armed man kept advancing, heading for Deb and Mal.

Josh fired a warning shot, putting three rounds into the floor in front of the man’s feet.

The supposed ghost stopped, dropped his machete, and then fell to one knee, pulling out a pistol from the back of his ratty pants.

Fran and Josh let loose. Their AR-15 rifles were loaded with 5.56 NATO cartridges and fired as quickly as they could pull the trigger.

The target took ten shots in the chest and didn’t drop. Josh adjusted for the head shot, but Fran beat him to it, taking off the back of the ghost’s head, dropping it where it stood.

“I guess bullets work,” Mal said.

Josh approached first, sensing his wife flanking him. He kicked away the enemy’s dropped weapon—a Colt 1911—and knelt next to him.

No pulse, obviously, but definitely made of flesh and blood and not ectoplasm. He touched one of the extra arms and it pulled off without too much effort.

Fake. Rubber and latex, glued on with spirit gum.

But he wasn’t wearing body armor. The fact that he took ten hits and didn’t go down scared the shit out of Josh. It was familiar, in a very bad way.

“He might have been enhanced somehow,” Josh told Fran.

“Red-Ops?” He heard fear in his wife’s voice.

“I don’t know.” Josh frowned, and his stomach clenched like a fist. “But if there are others, they’re going to be damn hard to kill.”

Sara

Sara stopped screaming.

The pain was beyond anything she could have ever imagined. Sara hadn’t looked, but she guessed her little finger had been chewed down to the bone. It was so intense, so unremitting, that it almost drowned out every other thought in her head.