Kelly Meding - Another Kind of Dead

Something shuffled out of sight, ahead of the turn into the next stretch of corridor. I slunk back around the last corner I’d passed, behind the sprawl of bodies, pressing close to the inner wall. I crouched and palmed my last weapon. Switched it to my right hand, angled so the blade rested on the underside of my wrist, and shifted my weight to my strong ankle. Ready to pounce. The sound drew closer, then stopped near the bodies.

The footsteps were softer, predator-like. Over the stench of blood, I couldn’t catch a scent of the thing approaching to determine if it was human, hound, or other. I held my breath, adrenaline taking over. Attack first and ask questions later.

Survive.

Air shifted. A shadow fell. I twisted upward and lunged, knocking the body hard against the wall with my left hand across his chest and my blade against his Adam’s apple. Something cold pressed hard against my own neck, just barely slicing skin.

Wide navy-blue eyes stared at me, round with disbelief and shock. My heart jackhammered. I gasped.

“Stone?”

I stepped back, my hands dropping. My neck stung from the new cut. I’d come within a millimeter of slicing Bastian’s throat. A small part of me wished I had, the traitorous bastard. He was staring at me like he thought I still might.

“Surprise,” I said. “Your pal Thackery didn’t get the best of me after all. Disappointed?”

Something like fear flashed across Bastian’s face. “Is he dead?”

I wanted to slap him for being so stupid. “No, asshole, who the fuck do you think is responsible for all this?” I waved my hand sideways, toward the sprawled bodies nearby. “Thackery set off his pet projects to tear us apart. And, gee, I wonder how he knew they were here?”

He didn’t actually say anything, but he did lose every drop of color in his face. I took a step forward, knife up. He either forgot he had his own weapon, or I was menacing enough to cow him, because he didn’t protest. He actually shrank back.

“This is your fault, you—”

“Get down!” he shouted, eyes going wide.

I ducked low, and a bulky form sailed over me. It hit the bloody mess of bodies and skidded into the far wall. Bastian was already moving. I leapt up and pivoted in time to see him pull a GLOCK from a hidden back holster and unload four rounds into the flailing hound’s back. It flung itself sideways at him, roaring its anger, and sent Bastian careening into the opposite wall. He hit with a nauseating crunch and crumpled to the floor.

My temper spiked. I scooped up Bastian’s dropped knife and, one knife in each fist, whistled at the snarling beast. “Hey, ugly, come and get me!”

With a snarl and a sound eerily close to disdainful laughter, it charged. I raced down the corridor away from Bastian’s body, keenly aware of the hound gaining even with its multiple wounds. My ankle was still unsteady. I had one chance at this. The hound howled, and the hairs on my neck stood up straight. Hot breath puffed ripe and too damned close.

As the next corner approached, I measured my steps. I let my wounded ankle slide beneath me and twisted my body so that I ended up on my back. Every bone and joint vibrated. The hound didn’t have time to adjust its path for my roadblock and chose to leap over me. Perfect. I slashed up with both knives, and the hound’s own momentum ripped its abdomen open from ribs to nuts. Sour, suffocating blood rained down. It crashed to the floor as I rolled sideways to avoid being crushed.

Stop, drop, and roll isn’t just for fighting fires anymore .

I wiped my hands and knives on the hound’s fur-covered legs, fighting my gag reflex the entire time. I don’t know why their blood reeks so badly. Just another of life’s unanswerable questions.

The corridor behind me was silent. “Bastian?” My voice bounced and pinged. No one answered. I yelled again, louder.

I backtracked. The four bodies were still there, Bastian included. I checked for a pulse and found it weak, thready. Blood soaked his white-blond hair scarlet, oozing from a head wound I couldn’t see. Shit. I didn’t have time to wait for help, and some awful corner of my heart didn’t really care if the asshole lived or died. My compromise: I cut off a section of his shirt and pressed it against the head wound.

I followed the length of the track past the obstacle course exit I’d come through not ten minutes ago, and beyond. I found another ladder up to the high track. Two small smears of fresh blood marked the rungs at eye level. Someone had come this way recently.

A female scream, muffled and distant, broke the silence. I sheathed one knife, clenched the other in my teeth, and ascended the ladder. A few sprints down the upper track and I shoved through an emergency exit door. It was a different corridor from before. Half the lights were out, bathing it in shadows. There were a handful of doors, spaced pretty far apart.

The scream came again, somewhere down the hall. I ran. The corridor ended abruptly at a T junction. The left branch led to a heavy metal door, reinforced glass, and streaming sunlight. To the right were more doors. Before I could pick a direction, the door nearest me was flung open by a sailing body.

Greg hit the opposite wall with a pained grunt and slumped to the floor. His left thigh was bleeding heavily, as was his right bicep. He struggled to stand and slipped on his own blood. I took two steps forward. Something else flew through the open door and hit the wall above Greg with a disgusting splat, then fell to the floor like a sack of wet laundry. It was a human arm.

I palmed my second knife.

“Careful,” Greg said.

The plaque next to the door said Weight Room. Another dismembered limb joined the arm—calf and foot.

A horrible thought assaulted me: what if that was Milo’s foot? He was there somewhere, fighting. And while we weren’t exactly best buds, we were still friends. I hadn’t had real friends since Jesse and Ash died.

Rage and adrenaline drove me through the door. I ducked another flying body part, then tucked and rolled to the right. I came up with knives ready. The room was large, full of dozens of weight machines, benches, racks of free weights, and other equipment I barely remembered using once. In the corner nearest the door, something was huddled over the remains of a body.

Something was all I had. If someone took a gremlin, stuck a hose up its ass, and filled it full of chicken fat until it resembled an obese version of itself, it would look a lot like the thing in the corner—if you added extra fangs and clawed arms long enough to scrape the floor if it tried to stand straight. The fucking thing ripped the other arm off its victim, licked the gore at the shoulder socket, then tossed it out the door.

If I lived to be a hundred years old, that image would still be haunting me on the day I died.

It didn’t seem to see me. I saw enough of the victim’s torso to know it was female. My tiny flare of relief in knowing my sort-of-friend hadn’t become an entrée was squelched by the fact that someone had. Someone who was being picked apart by E.T.’s evil spawn.

The layers of fat and skin would make my small knives ineffective. Spawn’s claws tore flesh like a hot knife through butter, and its arms were strong enough to rend bone from tendon. I didn’t stand a chance up close. I sheathed the knives and crept to the wall where a dozen metal bars were bracketed to a wooden frame, just waiting for someone to attach weights to the ends.

I selected a thick bar and tested it. It should work. I choked my hands around the center like I would a baseball bat, drew it high over my right shoulder, and eyed my target. The rest of the first leg flew out the door. The puddle of blood around Spawn was so wide I’d never be able to avoid it. Just had to watch my footing and hope I didn’t splat into the puddle.