"A miracle we have everything and everybody," Bob said.
"Act of God," Miles winked at Vega.
"That just happened," Vega said. "That chopper… this is civilian airspace. What the hell's going on?"
Tremors shook the building's core and dropped more dust and ash into their eyes.
"We have to move," Bob said. "The whole thing could collapse at any second."
They listened closely for any indication that there might be survivors trapped in the shadows and with the exception of breaking glass, there was nothing.
Bob tapped at his headset repeatedly and crouched down against the wall so he could adjust his signal.
"Lost the phone, too," Bob mumbled. "Can't get a signal on the headset. Let's move to the street. Anything that moves is potentially a target. Shoot to kill."
"You take responsibility…" Miles began.
"It's on me," Bob tapped his chest. "Let's move out."
They stood from their position and moved slowly down the stairwell. The remaining power flickered until it died completely, leaving them shrouded in darkness. Vega was thankful the fire alarm wasn't working in the building; the less noise interference, the better.
The eerie silence gave Vega the feeling she was walking into a humid, airless tomb. Her sense of smell was overwhelmed by the blood-smell of an abattoir, where hundreds of people had died gruesome deaths. While she had her own experience with urban, building-to-building combat, her adventures had always been in close quarters, where the smell was prevalent in a confined space upon which the sun beat down mercilessly at all hours of the day. She had the impression that the Renaissance Center, though she couldn't see much of it, was an expansive, open place that would have been air conditioned and ventilated. This could mean only one thing.
They were surrounded by death, and they couldn’t see it.
Miles and Bob must have been thinking the same thing. They moved slowly, taking measured steps while scanning every square inch with their flashlight-mounted weapons. Vega could feel herself breathing; she could hear the steel, wood, and glass struggle against one another on the upper floors where the helicopter crashed. It was only a matter of time before the rest of the building suffered. They had minutes remaining to them, at best.
"Contact," Bob whispered."Almost fucking bumped right into her."
They trained their weapons on a woman who was hunched over an unconscious man. The woman slowly rose to her feet.
"Ma'am, are you hurt?" Miles asked.
The woman didn’t seem to hear him. Without answering his inquiry, she slowly stepped toward him.
"Stay where you are," Miles said. "We're here to help, but please stay where you are."
She might have been a middle-aged housewife or an independent entrepreneur. Strands of stringy, wet hair clung to her face while her jaw worked around a morsel of food that was between her teeth. Blood oozed juicily over her lips and down the length of her chin, dripping onto her white blouse. Her left shoulder hung awkwardly, and Bob's flashlight revealed stark-white bone up to her elbow.
The woman should have been dead.
"Jesus," Miles took a step back. "You're hurt pretty bad, and you're in shock. Let us help you. Don't take another step. Stay where you are."
"Don't have time for this," Vega licked her salty upper lip. She was anxious and wanted to move out. Something was wrong with the woman. They had to get the hell out of that building.
With slow feet that scraped against the floor, the woman reached for Miles to give him a thankful hug.
"It's okay," Miles swallowed and lowered his weapon.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Bob shouted at him. "Get your shit together! Lady, back off!"
It was too late. Miles reached his own arms around her in the welcoming embrace you often saw on television commercials, or recruitment pamphlets of the soldier rescuing a refugee from some war-torn country.
Vega wasn't sure if she was shouting, or if it was Bob. When the woman leaned in to kiss Miles, the wide mouth full of teeth that stretched over his face dropped a bloody chunk of meat; it slipped into her blouse. Miles screamed as her teeth ripped away a layer of flesh from his cheek. His knee bent backward as the woman pressed her entire body's weight upon him. The side of his face became a faucet which spewed blood at full pressure, while the woman's mouth was full of his face.
Bob pushed her off Miles. "Get back!" he shoved Miles to his knees, and Vega immediately grabbed his hand and pulled him across the floor. Bob fired a shotgun shell right into the woman's midsection; the blast, in close proximity, caused her to leave her feet.
Vega already had a strip of gauze attached to Miles's face to staunch the bleeding.
"It burns!" he shouted. "Bitch bit me! FUCK!"
"Crybaby," Vega cradled his head on her lap.
Bob pumped the shotgun and ejected the empty shell, letting it clatter to the floor and roll near Miles's feet. The woman with a mouthful of Miles sat up, chewing, and looked at Bob without the slightest hint of hatred or surprise. She struggled to stand up again without a single grunt or complaint of pain.
"No way," Vega swallowed the lump in her throat.
The Marriott trembled again, and Bob shot the woman a second time. Her torso jerked backward at an impossible angle, but she recovered and remained upright, still chewing. With twitching hands and twisted fingers, her head tilted weakly to her bloody shoulder, while she lurched forward and nearly collapsed onto her face; the contents of the black hole that was now her stomach spilled in front of her, sliding in a tangled mess of liquids and ropy intestine.
When Bob pumped the Benelli and blew her head off in a spray of bone and brain, the rest of the body slumped forward and lay there in its own gore.
"How did that taste?" Bob shouted at the corpse. "You want dessert? Get back up!"
In response to Bob's challenge, the man who already lay on the floor sat up slightly and reached for Bob's boot. The old veteran withdrew his foot, pumped his shotgun, and splattered the guy's skull across the floor. Blood and gray brain chunks stuck to Bob's pants.
Vega wasn't about to challenge Bob's decision. As far as she was concerned, they were in hostile territory.
Shoot to kill.
There was no time to ask questions or determine cause. There was no time to think or fear. She knew how to survive, and so did her teammates. They were against the entire world, now. It was this mentality, the idea that no hope or help could arrive, which allowed them to successfully complete mission after mission.
"Stop squirming," she lifted Miles to his feet. "It's a damn improvement. Now your face looks like an Arby's menu."
Miles emitted a low, savage growl. "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh… those people were dead. They were both dead." He removed his hand from his bloody face and rummaged around in his pockets.
Vega could clearly see the cloud of white powder he slapped onto to his maimed face. He voraciously rubbed his finger across his lips and gums.
"Hold still," Vega said through gnashed teeth. "We need to get a field dressing on your wound."
She worked quickly while Bob continued to track the darkness with his gun. The entire structure seemed to be moving around them, as if they were inside a building that lived and breathed. Vega was uneasy, and couldn't help but constantly glance around, looking over her shoulders repeatedly.
"I can see the first floor from here," Bob said. "I can't tell… what I'm looking at."
A bandage was haphazardly applied to Miles's bleeding face. His blood covered her shaking hands. She'd never reacted like this before, and she knew it was because she wasn't in control.
"Headshots," Miles said. "Just like in the movies."
Bob turned back to him. "Yeah. Headshots work. Makes me wonder how many more…"
"I wanted to get a face-lift anyways," Miles said. "Fuck! It burns!"
Bob knelt beside him, assuming the tone of authority and command. "We're right in the middle of hostile territory. Can you get to your feet, soldier?"
"I hope we don't need a dictionary to know what the hell that was," Miles said, his tongue tracing the length of his upper lip, back and forth, back and forth. "We can't deny what that was. You want me to say it, boss? You want me to tell you what kind of shit you dropped us into?"
"Answer my question! Can you get to your feet?"
"We're just three people! Can't see shit! What the hell is this, boss? What're we supposed to do now?"
Bob slapped him across the face. "Get your shit together. We need to move out and get you to the barricades. If you want to live, you get on those boots of yours and walk, goddammit, before I fuck up the other side of your face! Do you hear me?"
"I'm still here," Miles seemed to calm down, and his uncovered eye flickered to Vega. "We're just teammates. Here to do a job. Going to die anyway, like you said, boss. Ain't got nothing better to do. Canceled my dinner plans with some broad who can speak a thousand languages. Fuck it, what good is a face, anyway? Just need a dick and a rifle. Hooo rah!"
Vega and Bob lifted him to his feet. .
Within the depths of the Renaissance Center's massive, powerless hotel, glass shattered. The smell of a gunfight, of burning paper mixed with chalk, cordite and sweat, stained the oxygen which Vega greedily sucked into her lungs.
"We need to get to the street," Bob said as if it was nothing more than a statement of fact. "We could be attacked again, so we can't assume anyone's a friend unless they communicate. We protect our own asses, and we stick close."
"They were already dead," Mile said. "They were already fucking dead! They were
dead
!"
"And if there's more, they can hear you!" Bob said. "They heard me waste those other two. But if they're dead, they shouldn't be able to hear anything, or smell, or breathe…"
"Bob…" Vega wasn't sure what she thought, or felt. Nothing made any sense.
"Let's move," Bob kept his cool.
They walked down another flight of stairs; Miles cursed several times as if the rest of his face threatened to fall off. They were all thinking the same thing, but it seemed too ridiculous, and yet, it was happening around them. They wanted to deny what they saw, but they were trained to prevail without thinking, relying on their battle-instincts. Their bodies responded ahead of their minds.
This was how they survived under fire.
They were right above the lobby, and Bob stopped them. "This is… I know… he told me..."
"What?" Vega asked. "What is it?"
"I know it doesn't make sense," Bob said, "but they really are dead. I don't want to believe it, but we have to assume… we just have to kick some ass. Look down there." He pointed to the lobby below them.
Clustered near the gift shops, hundreds of people bumped into one another, attempting to climb the steps toward the soldiers, already attracted to the noise from their brief confrontation. The flashlights moved over soldiers in their fatigues, some of them with weapons still clutched tightly in their fists. Some of them slipped on spots of blood.
"Hullo there, motherfuckers!" Bob shouted.
"This shit's for real," Vega performed the sign of the cross.
In the back of her mind, the mission disappeared. For the first time in her life, she felt helpless, because she didn't know who, or what, her enemy was.
Miles, with one hand pressed against his face, snarled and lifted his M16.
"They sure as shit don't seem friendly," Vega said. "We can't take any chances. It's like… everyone who died… became one of them. Just like in the movies."
The stairwell that led upward was choked with hundreds of clustered shapes that all turned to the soldiers as one, their purpose defined.
Miles whispered, "Boss… Vega's right on this one. We aren't walking out of here without a fight."
They waited for Bob to decide while they swept their guns over the crowd. Vega was tempted to lean on her trigger. What was Bob's problem? They didn't have a choice. The entire lobby was crawling with hostiles, and she had no desire to end up like them.
Her sense of fatalism was gone, and for once, Vega felt mortal.
Bob rubbed his beard and nodded his head. "They're already dead, aren't they? We should make 'em deader. Fuck it. Light 'em up!"
MINA
Detroit's latest asylum, Eloise Fields, was partly named after another historic asylum that was a part of the city's history.
Mina had been one of its first occupants since it opened, and she was relatively pleased with her treatment there. When the fire alarm sounded and several of the cell doors were opened electronically from the master control console, Mina stood in her room for a long time, unsure what to do.
Was this another ruse, some kind of test the doctors thought valuable to unraveling her fragile mind? Where were all the security guards? Why would the doors suddenly open?
Lately, everyone on the staff made fun of her. They looked at her as if they knew a secret and wanted her to know they were complicit. One of the orderlies, Jake Wells, let it slip because he often confided in her.
One evening, Jake simply asked, "You know the Artist, Jim? He keeps telling people to send you a message. He says he wants you to know he's thinking of you. Says it all begins and ends with you, whatever that means."
Now, the hospital staff wanted to tease her with freedom. It was better inside, anyway. She'd been out there, and as a runaway orphan, institutions suited her better. The smell of bleach and antiseptics was comforting.
The sudden shrieks from other people in the hospital accompanied the sound of the fire alarm.
Mina ran her hand through her long, tangled red hair. She stepped lightly into the corridor as the alarm howled. Her white shirt and pants hung loosely over her shriveled, pale body. They tried to feed her no matter how many times she tried to explain that the same nourishment regular people needed could do nothing for her.
Her stomach growled while she watched several inmates rush past her. Some of them leapt into the air with glee, while others carefully checked the corners, confident there would be some surprise the doctors had in store for them.
Either way, she was quite pleased with her opportunity to feed.
It was the only way to make the nightmares stop. She'd suffered for so long—even when they fed her raw meat, it wasn't enough. Whenever she closed her eyes, she was a witness to the horror inflicted upon mankind by those monstrous movie creatures.
The living dead.
Her fragmented consciousness suffered at the hands of those gaping, putrescent caricatures of undead flesh. She would feel each finger digging into her skin; every horrifying sensation imaginable that could be suffered at the hands of corpuscular cannibals was hers to endure. Even when Mina's death at their hands should have been enough to shove her back into reality, she was forced to watch and feel her limbs being ripped from her body and enjoyed as morsels within the hungry jaws of the dead.
"Stop! Please! You're hurting…"
Mina walked past a cell in which another inmate was successfully bashing on another. Blood sprayed the walls as the victim's protests abated. She couldn't see the weapon, though she was familiar with the killer.
Out in the real world, they called him the Artist.
With one hand planted against the wall, Jim Traverse gasped, his head against his shoulder and his mouth split with a toothy smile. He nodded at her. Jake Wells always said that Jim looked like a statue of Chevy Chase, with dark hair that was combed over his forehead and distant eyes that never seemed to be looking at anything.
"Hey there," he said without any emotion. "Hang around for a minute. I'm going to turn his face inside-out. I think it will look pretty. If you like butterflies or unicorns, you might want to stay and check this out."
Mina shrugged. "It's time for my medication."
Jim nodded. "Sure. Okay. I'll finish up here, and I'll come find you."
What if the rumors were true? What if he wanted to decorate his walls with pieces of her skin? He'd once given her a lecture about the disappointment of experiencing and touching human organs.
Mina quickly shuffled away from the scene. As much as she respected Jim, she dreaded being anywhere near him. Her own needs, while primal, were a natural inclination. She always had remorse for her actions, while Jim wallowed in blood and pain.
She made her way through the chaos as patients shoved past her. While some of them were surely rapists, Mina's reputation alone forced escapees to cast wary glances in her direction rather than stop and consider what they could do to her. They knew Mina.
She was the woman who wanted to eat them.
Many inmates remained in their cells, whimpering in corners, afraid of the imminent change. They cowered when Mina walked past their rooms, afraid to step back out into the world which rejected them.
The orderlies seemed to have fled the scene. She approached the pill counter, where they might still be able to give her some sleeping medication so she could return to her room and enjoy peaceful, dreamless sleep. Her room was the safest place for her to be; without her medication, she would become victimized by the cannibal corpses when she closed her eyes. She would feel their teeth scrape against her skin, and she would see the little strips of her flesh swinging over their chins. If she took a strong enough dosage, she could sleep without the nightmares, otherwise, there was only one way to stop them.
A frantic inmate had stepped behind the pill counter and was throwing bottles against the wall. He would leap and howl after each bottle cracked and spilled its contents on the floor, carpeting the tile floor in a rainbow of pills. Mina stared for a moment, unsure what to do.
She backed off and slowly meandered down the hallway. It was hopeless.
Where were the orderlies?
Over the ear-splitting alarm, random screams and shouts added to the disorder. Everyone who rushed past her planted themselves against the walls as if touching her would unleash the plague. Her growling stomach reminded her that she had a chance now to eat, although she didn't want to hurt anybody. Was there anyone who wouldn’t mind if she took a bite out of them? She tried to remember if there were any masochists who would be willing to sacrifice their bodies, so she could keep the bad dreams at bay.
Screams and shouts followed her into the reception area. The white tile floor was slick with crimson, and dead orderlies lay battered and mutilated beneath the powerful glare of the bright lights.
"Ms. Neely!"
Mina turned sharply to find the only orderly she trusted still alive. She breathed a sigh of relief.
Jake Wells held a black truncheon in his fists that shone wetly along its length. He breathed heavily and eyed Mina with cautious brown eyes. He grabbed her wrists and pulled her aside.
"You alright, ma'am?"
Mina nodded slowly. "I think so. Your afro looks nice today, Jake."
Jake flashed a wide, youthful smile. It was a pleasantry she exchanged with him whenever he was on duty.
"Good to know everything's all right with the world," the young African American college student straightened his shoulders and wiped sweat from his brow. "Ms. Neely, I got to get you to a safe place. All the news reports are crazy. Nothing makes sense…"
Mina's quiet voice was barely audible above the sound of the alarm. "I just wanted to get my pills so I can go back to sleep."
"You can't stay here," Jake shook his head quickly. "Whatever's going on outside came in here. I don't know… I can't even call home because my damn phone don't have a signal! We just need to get out the hell out of here. Damn it! I can't even think straight."
His eyes were wet from tears. He was a sensitive young man, and Mina knew what he was thinking about.
"Your girlfriend," Mina gently touched his cheek with her hand. "You should go to her. Leave me here."
"I can't… I can't do that. It ain't right. You've done so much for me, and I just can't leave you here. Jim's roaming around, and the streets ain't safe, either." He clutched his cell phone in a tight, angry fist as if it betrayed him. "I had internet for a whole damn minute, and then it all went to shit. This sick-looking dude just walked in here… "
She had several questions she could ask, but she remained calm. Jake's vulnerability was enticing. If she pretended to lean in and kiss him, she could bite his face.
Not for the first time, she wondered what he might taste like.
"I can't leave," she said. "I'm going to hurt people."
"I got a car," he said as if he just remembered. "I can get us out of here, but the freeways won't be any good. We can try. We
have
to try."
"Jake… you're a nice young man."
He grabbed her hand and led her out in the chaos. Jake's head seemed to be on a swivel; he constantly glanced in every direction.
In the parking lot, hell itself spilled through the fabric of space and imagination.
Budding flowers of flame blossomed against the dark evening sky, while police and paramedic sirens flashed red and blue lights while screaming past the asylum without stopping. Screams and gunfire added to the surreal scene. Inmates and orderlies wrestled with each other in the parking lot. Cars smoked their tires and squealed away.
Whatever was happening wasn't exclusive to the asylum. The outbreak of violence had contaminated the entire city.
Jake squeezed her hand. "We gotta go…”
Mina wanted to ask where, but she already knew where she should go. She was free, after all. She could find the man who said he loved her.
Detective Patrick Griggs. He used to fuck her relentlessly to prove his adoration for her. He turned her into a movie star, until he left everything to chance.
He was out there, in the city's battlefield. So many hours had been spent thinking about him, thinking about the moment she surrendered to her deadly hunger and heard the horrible voice from beyond. She always wondered if she would see Patrick again. She could only hope he never watched the video, as she had warned him.
Just as she remembered the video, she inhaled deeply and wondered if what she was witnessing might be because Patrick had watched it. But no. She had to believe it wasn't real; she had to believe the voice she heard that night was nothing more than a figment of her damaged imagination.
Jake suddenly crumpled to the concrete. He placed a hand against the back of his knee and looked up at the face of a famous killer.
With dark, wet eyes that swallowed the light of the flames, Jim Traverse, the Artist, stood over the wounded Jake. The murderer gripped Jake's truncheon, pointing it at the cement while his arms rested at his sides. He tilted his head and seemed to observe Jake with curiosity. His cold, expressionless face seemed a well-drawn likeness of a man rather than an actual person; without a single wrinkle or mark on his smooth, hairless cheeks, the perspiration on his forehead beneath a thin crop of dark hair combed over his scalp made him seem a plastic doll amid a carnival of terror.
Jake looked up at Traverse, his hand in front of his face. "Shit, man! You don't have to do this! I won't tell anybody you left! Don't do nothing, just leave!"
With his perfectly composed voice, Traverse said, "They always say that, don't they?" He chuckled to himself. "You won't tell nobody, right? Because I don't have to do this. But why would I want to leave when my intention is to maim?"
"No!" Jake screamed. "My girlfriend's pregnant…"
Traverse knelt upon Jake's chest and held the club against his throat. While the orderly choked and kicked his legs wildly, Traverse's dark eyes met Mina's. Jake continued to die while the killer spoke calmly to her.
"His desperation is quite inspiring. You must really feel the breath of a dying man on your face to appreciate the beauty in human life. I've missed this."
When Jake's body finally trembled and his legs lay upon the concrete, his bowels evacuated. The Artist tilted his head and rubbed his jaw thoughtfully while looking upon the face of the murdered young man.
"I apologize," Traverse slowly rose from the corpse. "I forgot you require live victims. I think he's still quite tasty. Here, have a taste. I'd like to see the blood dribble from your lips. I want to see you satisfied."
He ripped open Jake's shirt so she could easily nibble away at his exposed body.
Mina blinked. The thought certainly crossed her mind; she would have had to eat Jake at some point or another.
While the entire world seemed to burn around them, the slender, ghastly woman stood still as the killer approached.
"It's a beautiful evening, I think," he said. "You, of all people, appreciate my creativity. I've always wanted an audience, dear Mina. I think now... with our rather unique situation, I might be finally able to compose my masterpiece. It would be an honor to share it with you. Tonight, I'm going to kill a lot of people."
A long time ago, Detective Griggs told her that whenever she actually spoke, she seemed to be speaking as if her face was against a pane of glass. Her words were always distant and unfocused. When she looked at dead Jake Wells, she felt the need to point to the corpse and speak.
"I thought he would taste like blueberries, although I don’t like blueberries…"
Traverse held her cold, sweaty hand. His waxy face cracked with a smirk. "You will feast as you've never feasted before. You and I will write a poem with words crafted out of fleshless human bones. It's going to be a good time."