Charlie Huston - My Dead Body

Man, that thing I killed was full of blood.

Wait.

Warm wet.

How many hours ago did I kill that thing? Yeah. No. I put my hand down. Smell my hand. Vyrus. No. Doesn’t look good for Chubby’s little girl’s boyfriend.

My hand closes on the flashlight.

Fucking finally.

I turn it on. See my hand covered in blood and something green, streaks of pink running through it. See the thing I killed, close up this time. Only. Except wait. It looks more like an inside-out lobster mashed with a porcupine. Wait.

Look over my shoulder at the beams coming from the hole. Reorient myself to the basement. Flash the beam of my own light to the opposite wall. And there’s the thing I killed.

Cold.

Beam on the thing in front of me.

Warm.

Scuttle back on my heels.

Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle.

Look down. Floor is covered in shell casings.

What are all those black lumps?

Raise the beam, run it over the far end of the basement near the door, pile of bodies, some in black coveralls and body armor, some in police uniforms, coveralls, tracksuits, blood in runnels, a mass under the pile, still twitching, looks like a ball of flesh whips.

I can see those doors I felt in the dark a few hours back. They go farther than I thought. A row of them. Six, seven maybe. Half of them open. The basement takes a turn, there could be more doors around the bend. It’s quiet, but I can smell that mystery stink, Vyrus gone wrong, slipping from each of those doors.

They quiet because there’s no uninfected blood for them to smell?

Fed and sleeping?

Dead?

I’d like to get that lucky. Once in my life, I’d like to get that lucky. But I’m not counting on it.

I stand, take a few steps toward the hole and something takes me from behind, wraps around my throat, pinning my arms, covering my eyes, my mouth. I’m dragged backward, picturing tentacles, flesh whips, some other madness from Amanda’s lab, the Vyrus stretched to a perverse conclusion.

– Quiet, Pitt.

A hand is taken from my eyes.

Not in the grips of a mutated land squid, simply pinned by another trio of enforcers.

Predo, his suit clinging to him where it’s been soaked in blood, a crust of something yellow-gray dried along his jawline, a crosshatch of wounds closing on his forehead.

He puts his mouth close to my ear.

– They will hear you.

I nod.

The hand is taken from my mouth.

I look around.

Predo, a couple of his commandos, another two dozen or so enforcers in various costumes, all jammed into the dead end of the basement, backs against the wall that faces another row of doors. Six. Three are open. Bits and pieces of enforcers are scattered and smeared about. Something that I hope is dead, skin the texture of third-degree burns, underside coated in limp cilia, a row of tiny limbs jutting from its back, lying outside one of the open doors.

From inside one of the open cells comes the sound of flesh ripping, bone breaking, tendons snapping, a giant chicken being dismembered. Grate of teeth on bone.

Predo opens and closes his hands and one of the enforcers gives him a snubbed assault rifle.

He puts his mouth to my ear again.

– She opened the doors when we were driven down here. It appears that not all of the bolts withdrew. It could be malfunction.

I hold up a finger.

– It’s not. She’s fucking with you.

He nods.

– My thought. Yes.

He points at the corner that leads to the central basement, the rest of the cells, the hole, the door.

– Power junction. Cut the lines before she can open any more.

I’m looking at that corner, right in the angle of it, up where the wall meets the ceiling, a tiny dot of red light.

Predo points at the open door that doesn’t have a dead monster in front of it, or a live one beyond it eating enforcer corpses.

– Not all of them are dangerous. Immobile, it seems.

I tap his ear, he puts it close.

– Or not awake yet.

He shows me the assault rifle.

– Do you still want one of these, Pitt?

I nod.

He nods.

The hands release me and he gives me the gun.

– Mind where you point it.

I point it down the basement to the corner.

– How many down there?

He shakes his head.

– In the midst of chaos, I am afraid I did not bother to count. Three. Perhaps.

I point at the open cells across from us.

– Plus one dining and one sleeping.

– It appears.

A cramp grabs me, shakes my innards back and forth, let’s go.

Predo whispers.

– Are you unwell?

– Starving. But I’ll live.

He smiles.

– I’d not have taken you for an optimist, Pitt.

– We have to get out of here.

He nods.

– That would seem wise. Have you any ideas?

I point down.

– Sewer.

A Klaxon sounds and several of the enforcers jerk their triggers, sending a volley of ricochets off the walls. A few of them scream without being struck by bullets. There’s the sudden thunk of a heavy bolt being sucked back by an electromagnet.

One of the closed doors swings open.

Piercing scream, like two voices in one throat, and a low beast, fat and fast, out of the open cell, head prickled with spines, runs into the heart of a fusillade, rams into an enforcer, impales her in twenty places, back into the dark cell, trailing screams.

And fingers ease from triggers, bathed in the relief that it wasn’t them.

I haven’t moved. My mouth is still at Predo’s ear.

He pulls back, blinks, puts his mouth to my ear.

– The sewer. Yes. That had occurred to us. Until we had to retreat to this dead end.

I look up at the tiny red light.

Little girl, punching buttons. Feeding time at her zoo.

I ball my good hand into a fist, show it to Predo.

– Group up, guns out, start moving, shoot the hell out of everything and get down the hole.

Predo looks at his sweating, big-eyed mass of the formerly most dangerous men and women on the planet.

– Yes, I suppose a few might get out. Those at the middle. More if we had cover fire.

I point down again.

– Terry and Lydia and a few dozen partisans and Bulls.

He draws his brows close.

– Pitt?

I shrug.

– Am I supposed to not be trying to betray and kill you at this point?

– Yes. No. Of course. Terry and Lydia and a few poorly armed, ill-equipped rebels. A shame that cannon fodder is not what the occasion demands.

– Hurley’s down there.

His eyebrows go up.

– Yes. That might turn the tide.

His eyebrows drop again.

– Now you simply need to crawl to that drain and tell them to pop up here, lay down some cover fire, and not kill us as we come around the corner.

I make the fist again, show it to him.

– All or nothing.

He thinks.

I point at the cells that are still issuing chewing noises.

– Monsters, Predo. Real monsters.

He nods.

– How silly of me not to notice.

He frowns, nods again, circles a finger in the air to draw the eyes of his people. A few sharp hand gestures later and we’re balled up like a porcupine, guns facing out, tight. Two ranks deep on each side. Front rank squatting and scuttling, second rank on their feet, hunched. Give Predo credit, he’s not at the middle. We’re both frontline, far end, where the mass will round the corner first.

Into the teeth of battle.

Or maybe the teeth of the worm.

Predo holds a hand in the air, counts down one finger at a time. Must be nice, being able to do that kind of thing with both hands.

First finger and I’m thinking about when I came to after I was infected. Terry trying to explain things to me. How I was checking the angles of the room, looking to see where I could dodge past this psycho. He never used the words Vampyre or monster. I did. A joke. So you’re telling me I’m a vampire? Yeah? Fucking cool, man. Monster. Fucking cool. Looking for something to hit him with. He offered me a suck off a loose pint he had. Thought it was Karo Syrup and red food dye. Trying to humor him. But once I had that suck, I knew it was no sick joke. Cool, I thought, I really am a fucking monster.