Among the Living (24 page)

They sit like this for minutes while the blood continues to run out of the wound. Alice weeps over the girl. She hugs her close as the girl goes from sobbing in weak shakes to quivering all over. It feels like she has a terrible fever. It gets so bad, just a few minutes later, that Alice wonders if she is an epileptic. Then the girl’s body clenches tight, a brief respite before she starts shaking again.

“I forgot to get your name,” Alice says in a whisper as tears pour down her cheek.

There is no answer.

* * *

The parking lot at Queary Park has one other car in it. A beat-up Chevy Astro that has seen better days. It is red but looks like someone tried to spray paint half of it black. No one has walked through the park, although she did see someone poking around in the bushes at the edge of the tree line to the west.

Alice sits in her car and looks at the shrubbery near the parking lot, the leaves swaying in the mild breeze. It’s late, night will be here soon, but she is too scared to leave the neighborhood. Since she pulled up here and put the girl on the picnic table, she has heard screams, cries for help, and more than a few gunshots. But the noises have been in the distance. Far away from her and her fragile state of mind. She still has the gun in one hand, and she has stared at the barrel more than a few times.

She pulls into the park just as the sun is setting. There is no one to shut the gate, so she picks up the girl from the side of the car and carries her to the closest table. The girl shakes the entire time as if cold, and Alice wants to drop her right then and there. It can’t be true, what they are saying, what the girl said about being bitten, it can’t be! At the same time, she has to make sure. She has to know!

Dark now, night has arrived, and the girl is sitting up on the table. Her legs shifted first, then her hands, then her arms. Alice turns on her headlights and then her high beams. The girl’s eyes are blood red. She opens her mouth, and a horrible cry pours past her lips.

A tear slides down Alice’s cheeks as she puts the car in reverse and backs out of the park.

They are halfway through their set, and the place is insane. The floor is moving with the music, heads are thrashing up and down; a respectable mosh pit has opened up where body after body throws itself into the fray. People collide, fly away and are back in a few seconds. When they finish a song, Grinder jumps on one of his PA amps at the front of the stage and stands like a god before his flock.

“Come on, you mother fuckers! I can’t fucking hear you!” And “Do you want some more? ‘Cause I want to see some pain!” And “Don’t make me come down there and show you pussies how it’s done.” And he will do just that if he has to. He will stage dive right off this rinky-dink rise and land in a mass of people.

They eat it up, and he eats up the attention. Each song is short, but each is a brutal assault on the senses. The tension, the rhythm, the pace never lets up. They just finished their ninth song of the night, but Grinder loves the crowd, so he decides to do something special.

“Let’s go waaaay back and play some shit from the EP!”

This isn’t on the set list, but he glances at Sid, who has a goofy grin on his face like this is what they were made for. He steps up to the mike and bellows, “Fuck yeah!” Grinder looks at the person with whom he grew up and wishes things could be different, wishes they could bridge the distance that has grown between them. That look on Sid’s face, the glee as they are about to crank through one of the first songs they ever wrote together. This is the way Grinder will always remember him.

The band knows all the songs. They have practiced them countless times, but this one is old and rarely added to the set list. Still, the band members look at each other, and Pounder beats out a double bass line to get the place rallied up.

“This is fucking BLOOD BATH!” and the opening chords erupt like a bat out of hell, crushing the audience like a fresh assault.

There is a commotion in the back as Grinder steps up on his mic stand and starts grunting the lyrics. One of the security guards wades into the crowd from the back, and he flails around as if in pain. Then the strobe flashes as the chorus kicks in, and it looks like he is attacking people. Another figure crashes into the back of the crowd. The kids adjust, sucking the combatants into their fold.

More thrashing, and the guard is down and being pounded to the ground by a rush of fans. Other guards wade into the crowd, pushing and shoving as they try to reach their comrade. Sid looks at the crowd, then at Grinder. Grinder looks back at him, then gives him the horns. Fuck yeah, man, rock and roll.

The big man is up, but he attacks one of the other security guards, a much smaller man with the same black shirt on. Did he just bite him? No fucking way did that just happen! No way. The venue is dark; he probably just imagined it.

The crowd seems to be losing steam as the fighting goes on. Now there is another person down, and is that blood? The band slows and stops playing; soon only the drummer is pounding on his kit until he realizes everyone else has stopped. There is a scream from the back row, then more pushing.

“I’m about to come down there and sort that shit out!” he yells into the microphone. His voice bounces around the venue without the instruments to back him up, and close to six hundred heads are looking at him, but he doesn’t feel like a rock star anymore. He feels like a normal guy in front of a bunch of strangers.

A scream from the back of the room saves him from embarrassment. A fresh fight breaks out as the big bruiser who started the shit in the first place comes to his feet and shrugs off two sweat-covered guys in black Corpse for a Day shirts. He is covered in blood, so much that Grinder wants to know how he is still standing. The lights are coming up, and it is apparent that the song they just performed is over. In fact, the whole set is done. Maybe it is a joke, some kind of prank the audience decided to throw. If that is the case, Grinder IS going to start kicking some ass.

A second security guard, the skinny one, is on his feet as well, and he starts attacking the kids around him. Meanwhile, the giant guy has a girl in both hands. She looks young, nineteen at the most. She is tiny and grabs for a boy in black next to her. But the security guard doesn’t seem to care as he tears her away and then picks her up, both hands gripping her upper arms, and brings her to his mouth. She fights him, hitting his face and chest to no effect. The brute pulls her close and bites into her forehead.

“WHAT THE FUCK?” Grinder screams, but his mouth is far enough from the microphone that the sound isn’t very loud over the din of the fans, whose screams have turned from cries of adulation for the band to shrieks of terror. The guard’s hand slips off one shoulder to slide along her arm and then grasp her neck. She fights like crazy, arms thrashing, flailing against the big guy. The boyfriend punches him, pulling at his arm and hitting him in the neck, face and chest as hard as he can.

The guard shrugs off the blows, raises the girl higher and tears out her throat with his teeth. Then he starts eating her from the neck down, and the crowd goes insane. There is suddenly a mass of people trying to get out or at least away from the crazy guy who is ripping chunks out of a woman as if she were a prime rib. He chews and swallows, then, as if realizing what he is doing, drops her on the floor. Several others have risen and are now attacking the crowd. It’s a free for all as fans and security guards alike go to town biting and chewing, all while bathed in blood. The stampede reaches the stage, and the band is forgotten as they are pushed out of the way.

Grinder remains rooted in place. He stares at the carnage, at the mayhem, at the blood and bile. He wants to turn away, but he can’t; he can’t pull his eyes off the horrible spectacle. A sweat-drenched man in full leathers bowls past him as he tries to find the backstage area. The rest of the band joins the exodus, hauling ass for anywhere but here. Eric may have a felony on his record, so he doesn’t want to talk to the cops. The others are clean and clearly not living up to their full potential if the fans can be chased off this quickly. Maybe they need to add some shock to their shows—but in a more controlled way.

“What the fuck are you doing, man?” Sid steps in front of him, breaking his view of the carnage.

“Dude, what I just saw, I don’t know how to describe it.”

“I know, man; we need to get the hell out of here. Yeah it’s fucking horrible, but we need to haul ass.”

“No, Sid, this is beautiful. This is what we have been searching for. If we can capture half the horror, the passion of what we just saw, in a record, just fucking think about what we could accomplish,” Grinder yells over the din of the screams.

“Grind- ... Duane, Duane! Look at me! You’re in shock!”

Another scream as a concertgoer falls. Then, to his disbelief, the girl he saw get partially eaten comes to her feet and makes straight for the stage. There is a hole in the crowd now, as though they have opened up just for her. She is howling, but there is barely a voice, only a wheeze as she makes her way toward them through an ocean of bodies that are trying to clear out of the place.

Sid still has his back to the spectacle as others rise off the ground. The place now has a new smell over the old taint of piss, booze, and stale cigarette smoke. It has a fresh odor to add to its past, the smell of death.

The girl takes the stage by slowly crawling onto it. Grinder watches in fascination as she comes to her feet behind Sid. All he has to do is say something, pull him out of the way, push him aside, grab him and tug him to the backstage area. But he doesn’t. He watches in complete rapt and morbid fascination as the girl grabs Sid around the neck, jumps onto his back and sinks her mouth into his sweaty hair. She pulls hard with her arms, and Sid’s face becomes a mask of terror, then one of pain as she rips off his ear.

She pulls back, and he spins out of control, unsure what to do. He reaches for her, but she darts in and takes another chunk. He backpedals, eyes pleading with Grinder until he crashes into the drum kit. Then she is on top of him, and her mouth tears at his neck. Why the neck? Grinder wants to yell at her. You’re no fucking vampire.

“Sorry, Sid my man, my brother. I’m going to miss you. Don’t attack me when you come back, buddy, okay? I need to get a new album written, and you are going to be the star.” On some level, Grinder realizes how crazy he sounds. He knows that if he ever breathes a word of this to anyone, they will lock his ass up for a good long time in a place where they give you lots of medication and ask you about your feelings.

Sid thrashes around, trying to grab his neck as blood spurts out like an overblown horror movie effect, and the sight finally snaps Grinder out of his reverie. Grinder steps up and kicks the girl in the head as hard as he can. Her head snaps back as his giant boot connects, but he doesn’t strike in rage, not in anger. He doesn’t blame her; he just wants to get away and not end up like old Sid. The kick is a beauty that makes the girl’s head pop to the side and then snap. She falls over in a heap on top of Sid.

Grinder looks at his friend one more time. Sid stares at him, clutching his neck as blood runs out in gouts. He presses his other hand there, but the stuff doesn’t stop pouring out. Grinder doesn’t touch him. He steps around the blood slowly, carefully, and then walks calmly to the back of the stage.

One glance back tells him that the place is in complete chaos. There are bodies everywhere and people on top of others feeding as if they are in some bad zombie flick, but Grinder couldn’t care less. He has seen the face of death, and he is ready to move on to the next phase of his life.

* * *

The backstage area is a mess. People have run over everything, tracking blood and viscera with them. There are screams from the main area, but Grinder walks with the confidence of a man in charge of his destiny. A man who has a newfound respect for life, or the dead. Yeah, that’s it. He now sees the beauty that is inherent in death, and he is pleased.

Eric is grabbing gear, tucking things under one arm. He has a bottle of Jack in his other hand. He chugs back a huge double shot worth of fire and then grimaces as he appears to be holding down the contents of his stomach.

“Jesus fuck, what the hell is going on out there?”

“No Jesus in the house. That is pure evil out there. They got Sid. He’s gone.”

Eric drops everything under his arm but holds onto the bottle. He stares at Grinder as if slapped.

“There was nothing I could do, truly.”

“Oh jeez, man. Fuck, that’s crazy. Are you sure?”

“Oh yeah, I’m sure. This chick jumped on him and tore out his throat, and then she chewed a half dozen times and swallowed.”

“You saw it? Why didn’t you help?”

“I did help. I killed the girl, planted my boot in the corner of her head. She went down like a sack of potatoes.”

“No way, man, no way. It’s just the shock talking. Let’s get back to the tour bus and get the fuck out of here, man. I don’t want no shit with the cops, you know? Just watch, Sid will turn up in a minute and we can leave.”

Eric tosses back another shot of Jack and runs down the hallway. Grinder follows at a sedate pace. What’s the hurry? He has become some sort of evil angel, and he will soon bring the word of the dead to the faithful.