APOCALYCIOUS: Satire of the Dead (31 page)

             
It was a storage room with crates and boxes lining three of the walls. He saw a door on one wall, but it looked like a typical interior door. There was a lock on it, but all he had to do was turn the lock from the inside of the room to get out. The room was empty, but he listened just the same.

             
Finley’s short hairs were raised just thinking about tall, dark and sneaky. He walked back to the freezer to where the girls were bound. Though cool in there, the condensers were shot so it couldn’t freeze, but it made a secure jail cell. He pulled up the steel latch of the insulated, aluminum door and swung it open. Both his girls were wide eyed and very aware. He eyed Annie appreciatively and could hardly wait until her body was cold and stiff, then ultimately cold and pliable, as it was with the process of rigor mortis.

             
He shook his head trying to dislodge the lustful images from his brain. He had a plan for the would-be looter or hero, whatever he was; he was going to be dead and Finley thought that the Asian man would make a fine rug for his office.

             
He walked over to where the girls were bound by the wrists to the bar on the wall. He removed both of their cloth gags and smiled genially at them. “You might hear someone else in here pretty soon, if you do, please, feel free to scream to your heart’s content.”

             
“Why…why are you doing this?” asked Annie, her eyes red and filled with tears.

             
“Because he’s a freak that can only get it up for a dead girl,” shot Shere. Drew smiled at her and backhanded her, leaving a red welt on her dark brown cheek. She didn’t cry out, instead she locked her eyes defiantly on his. "He's had me tied to this rail for weeks and has never had the nuts to get it up," she told Annie then turned back to Finley, but still speaking to Annie "I think he might have a thing for little boys."

             
He nodded, a sneer stretching across his lips. “Don’t worry, Love, I'll be all yours soon enough.” He reached behind his back and slowly withdrew a fillet knife and waved it slowly back and forth before her face. Light flashed across its stainless steel blade. He lightly placed the index finger of his opposite hand at the base of her throat and traced it down between her breasts and stopped at her navel. “This will open you to me and then I will be able to see the real you. I’ll feel your warmth, your wetness, all of your soft feminine side.” He closed his eyes, smiled again, this time with a light, almost inaudible sigh. He straightened his back with a groan and looked back at Annie. He would save her until he couldn’t take it anymore. That anticipation made it all the more worthwhile.

That dreamy expression of his gave way to one that said,
Oh yeah, I almost forgot.  
“I don’t think you ladies have met Amanda,” he said, and studied their expressions. “No?” he asked.  “Well, where are my manners?” he asked with a laugh.

             
He walked across the room to where another door was closed with a padlock. He fished in his front pants pocket and pulled out a ring of keys. He thumbed through them and with a pleased look, he grasped the padlock with the hand that still held the fillet knife and opened the door. They could hear groans coming from the darkness, then Drew flicked a light switch that flooded the room with white, he stepped aside so they could see.

             
Inside the room was the fresh corpse of a woman. Her skin was a grayish varicolored brown, her eyes covered in what appeared to be cataracts. She had no arms or legs and as she snapped at him they saw that the female zombie had no teeth. He spun around to face them, his arms out to the sides, and a huge smile on his face.

“Tahdah!” he said, as if he was hosting a surprise party and in some insane way, he was.

              Upon seeing this Shere remembered Hermie the Dentist presenting the Abominable Snowman in that old Rudolph Christmas special, but this version wasn’t quite as cute.

             
“You're sick,” said Shere.

             
“Feisty. I like that. Are all black girls like that?” he asked, not waiting for a response. It wasn’t their first conversation that had led in this vulgar direction. “Amanda is feisty too.” His smile faded slightly and his tone contained a twinge of regret "She used to be so docile..."

             
Annie threw up all over herself. Drew looked at Annie with an expression of disgust.

Vomit offends this guy, really?
Shere thought in amazement.

             
“I’m going to leave the two of you un-gagged. So feel free to make as much noise as you would like,” he said gleefully, as he shut the door to Amanda’s bedroom. He walked past the bound girls and winked at them. “Someone is coming to try to rescue you from the big bad wolf. If you scream for him maybe he will find you quicker,” he said, then walked briskly from the room leaving the door open behind him. Shere watched his fat jostle beneath his shirt as he jogged away, and then turned to Annie who was spitting the last few bits of gorge from her mouth. Shere knew the fat miscreant was up to something and she didn’t like it, but what choice did she have? She could; scream for help and maybe get rescued, or maybe help the fat necrophiliac kill her would be rescuer, or she could do nothing but roll over and play dead. She shook her head knowing that she had to try.

“Annie. We have to start screaming for help,” Shere said in a calm soothing tone that belied the physical and sexual abuse she had been subjected to the past few weeks. Annie nodded, and without much hesitation began screaming blue murder. Shere couldn’t contain a grim smile. Annie definitely had some pipes, and then she joined in on the blood curdling chorus.

                                                        
Chapter 34 - Banshees

              Hito pushed upward against the cast iron grate. It was heavy, but as he pressed up with his shoulder and pushed with his legs he felt the grate lift and he slid it across the floor. It made more noise than he would have liked and he kept expecting the fat man to burst through the door and blast him with a shotgun, but the shot never came. He hoisted himself up into the room and walked quietly through the store room to the door. He squatted down to his hands and knees to peek through the half-inch gap beneath the door. It was well lit beyond and he neither saw nor heard anything. He eased himself back to his feet turned the knob and slowly swung the door open. Hito grabbed the handles of his matching 9mm’s from their leather holsters and flipped off the safeties. He hunched over as he jogged along the wall, knowing he needed to find a vantage point. He saw a row of metal storage racks and thought that it would have to do for now. As he began to re-holster his side-arms he felt his blood run cold and a shiver rip up his spine as he heard a high pitched scream.

“Heeeeeelllllllp!”  
The voice was then joined by another, screaming almost as loudly.
“We’re in here!”

             
He fished out the papers from his pocket again and scanned the floor plan of the factory. There was a lot of open area in here and he needed to even his odds. He located the utility room on the map then stuffed the papers back into his pocket and withdrew the 9mms again.

             
"It's a trap!"
screamed the first voice. Hito was surprised that the fat man was on to him, but he had never planned on throwing caution to the wind. Hito never took action with overconfidence.

             
Finley kept watch from his office. He had a good view of the main floor from where he was, especially toward the walk-in freezer, where his ladies-in-waiting were screaming for all their worth. Finley knew that Mr. Hero would eventually walk with his swagger into his crosshairs to attempt to rescue the girls. It was perfect. He nodded knowingly as he thought that his associates degree and experience as a boss had always seemed to come in handy.
You just had to understand the common man
, he thought smugly. Finley started to smile when the lights went out inside the plant.

“What the…?” he whispered, and then added, “That little sonuvabitch…” Finley’s expression changed to one of disgust and fear, but not a fear of the mystery hero, more so that he might lose his girls. He pulled back the slide of his automatic, chambering a round and waited in the dark; the perfect dark. He couldn’t see his hand in front of his face; none of the emergency lights had come on. Whoever the dark stranger was had tripped the breakers when he cut the juice to the generator.

             
Hito donned his night vision goggles and filled his fists with the
twins,
as he liked to call his matching Beretta 9mm’s. Now the advantage had shifted. The girls were still screaming, but their voices were becoming ragged and not as loud as they had been. He slowly made his way toward the sound and peered around the corner of the open door. Hito saw them inside the open freezer, bound to a metal rail. Their eyes looked eerie in the green of the NVG’s. There was a door on the other side of the girl’s prison and he could hear moaning coming from within it. There was something dead in there to be sure. Even knowing that this was a trap and couldn’t risk going in and asking the girls where the fat man was; for all he knew Fatman had a set of NVG’s as well. He couldn’t risk it. He backed away and scanned the factory floor. His eyes moved up to an office that sat on a wide catwalk. There crouched the fat man, clutching a pistol in both hands before his face. He wore no night vision and Hito decided that he should dispatch him as quickly as possible before the fat man’s eyes adjusted to the darkness. He wasn’t entirely sure that fat boy was the only one in here that wasn’t a prisoner so he crept toward the metal grated stairs, and when he was within twenty feet Hito raised both 9s and aimed at the fat man. He listened for a moment, and hearing no one else creeping up on him, began firing. The muzzle blast of the 9mms acted like a strobe light inside the darkness nearly blinding Hito with each flash, but he kept firing. He stopped after eight rounds, four from each twin. The fat man lay slumped on his side, blood pouring from his nose and mouth. Hito saw the bullet hole in the man’s temple and a couple others in his right side and neck. Blood poured from the wounds and dripped through the metal grated walk-way, making light pattering sounds as the droplets fell to the concrete floor below.

The fat man was dead
, and with his head leaking its contents from an extremely large exit wound, he would stay dead. Hito walked to the office door crouching low as he did so. He holstered one of the twins, grabbed the door knob and swung it open.

             
The smell was appalling, and Hito was shocked to see that the curtains were made of skin, as were the blankets on the couch and strewn throughout the room was skulls and various other bones;  A femur here, a tibia there; it was a veritable charnel house. In the past months he had witnessed virtually every deviant act known to man, but this was abhorrent. With no laws or officers to enforce them, the survivors of the apocalypse were free to participate in whatever they desired. That was a risk they were free to take, because Hito was free to kill them as recompense. He shut the door as he backed out of the office and started down the stairs to where the girls had gone silent. He stopped himself, knowing that there was a proper order of things. He needed to secure the rest of the plant before he finished the job. The bound women weren’t going anywhere, so he could put them down at his leisure. He would make it mercifully quick, though, as far as he knew they were relatively innocent.

              It took Hito about forty-five minutes to check the rest of the plant to his satisfaction then he went back to the utility room, restarted the generator, reset the main breaker then walked back to the walk-in freezer and entered the room. He got a good look at the two naked prisoners and raised an eyebrow appraisingly at them. Both were extremely attractive but the black girl had obviously taken a few beatings. Some of the bruises were old and fading to yellow, while some still had the fresh color of red that turned her dark skin purple in several places. The white girl had the roundest and largest set of breasts he had ever seen but the streaks of vomit that ran down her breasts and stomach and off the side of her right thigh was not quite as arousing. Hito noticed the blonde woman had a playboy bunny tattoo on her hip. Her body was thin at the waist, with long slender legs. He realized he was staring and forced himself to look away. The black girl's brown skin glistened with perspiration in the warmth of the steel building.  Her hair was cropped short and spiked long at the bangs either by intent or from the humidity, but it suited her well. She had an angular, but very pretty face, almost elfish, and to him she was more beautiful than the blonde even with the bruises. She was slender, but athletic and toned with long, lean muscle. He hunkered down in front of them, the pistols hanging in his hands over his knees.