B-Movie Reels (31 page)

A female hand beckoned to them from behind a tree. She was dressed in bloody tatters. She said, “Follow me. I know a safe place to hide.”

Andy halted in his tracks, shocked. The woman’s hair was magenta, and beneath the shreds of a checkered red and white long-sleeved shirt, her breasts were bare.
 

“Do you recognize her?” Andy whispered to Mary-Sue, stifling the urge to stare at the woman’s chest. “If you don’t, don’t say anything to her. Trust me on this one. This screams she’s from a horror movie.”

Mary-Sue hesitated, her mouth staying open. “I haven’t seen anyone with that bright red hair. Not in years, actually.”

Thought so
, Andy gathered.
 

“Yeah, we’ll follow you. Thank God someone is here to help.”

Mary-Sue nudged his ribs hard. “What the fuck are you doing? Isn’t she dangerous? Did you see her in a movie?”

“No.” He turned back and caught six straight-jacketed forms tracking them. “But I have a feeling she is. It’s safer to keep going straight ahead, though. There are more of those people in straight jackets following us. We have no choice.”

She reluctantly gave up the argument, taking his lead.
 

The woman’s back was also bare, he noticed as they skulked deeper into the woods. The clothing was drenched in blood, yet there weren’t any marks on her back. He studied the small of her back and the patch of jean fabric that was missing that revealed she wasn’t wearing any underwear. This was definitely from one of the movies, though he was clueless as to which one. He didn’t recall any films about straight jacketed murderers, but he hadn’t read all the titles of the reels in the steel bin and hadn’t come anywhere close to watching them all.
 

Their new leader treaded through higher brush. “It’s up ahead.”

“What’s up ahead?”

“Safety.”

“I don’t like this woman,” Mary-Sue whispered. “I think you’re right. She’s going to trap us somehow.”

He pounded the meat-tenderizer against his open palm. “Whatever it is, she’s one woman. What could she do to us? We outnumber her. We handled the two maniacs back there just fine. Keep an eye on her. Be ready for anything. Look for a rock or a stick. I’m not sure what we’re getting into yet.

Mary-Sue agreed and kept quiet.
 

An opening ahead revealed a creek. He assumed that was where she was taking them. The creek marked half the distance to the house. They could run for fifteen or twenty minutes and retreat there if need be. At this point, he wondered if anywhere was safe. The entire town had been under siege and there were new monsters and killers coming out of the woods at every moment.
 

The woman stopped at the creek bed. The water level had risen from the thaw, and it had flooded. But the creek wasn’t just flowing with water. Bodies had been dumped by the dozens, collecting and bobbing up against each other. They were ravaged with wounds inches deep, practically mauled, their necks serrated by numerous teeth markings. All the bodies—many tangled in the tree limbs that had snapped from the freeze earlier—were ghostly white and drained of life.

“This is their dumping ground,” the woman said to them without a prompt. “Sorry I was so quiet earlier, but I saw the people coming out of the woods too. I don’t know what this is all about, but I’m glad someone else is alive besides me.”

“Whose dumping ground?” Andy insisted. “Did you see what did this?”

“They were already dead. Everyone in town was attacked by the locusts and murdered. I was at a friend’s house and stayed underwater in their pool, but my friends and her family couldn’t react before they were attacked. Then these flying creatures began picking them up and transporting them here, just dumping them like it was nothing to them.”

He immediately doubted the woman’s story. Did she go after the flying creatures, and if so, why? There was still the concern about her clothing. Mary-Sue claimed she’d never seen her person before, and that too, worried him.
 

Mary-Sue asked, “Did one of them attack you?”
 

The woman placed her hands on her hips as if uncaring of her nudity and nodded in response. “Yes, those flying creatures chased me for miles. They hurt me, but they didn’t kill me. Fuck them.”

“So you’re from town? That’s at least fifteen miles you’ve run, maybe.”

The woman bit her lip, caught in a lie.
 

“You’re lying to us. Who are you really?”

Andy edged closer to Mary-Sue, forming a two-person front. The way the woman’s expression changed into a ridiculous smirk, something else was clearly about to come their way. The woman bounded toward the creek in retreat, splashing upstream. She tore the remains of her clothes in wild motions and whooped, “
THEY WANT TO KNOW WHO WE ARE
!”

From above them, the shrieks bit into their ears, “
Shraaaaaaaaaggggggh!
”

Andy tilted his head upward in time to catch a winged woman flying down at them. She picked Mary-Sue up by the shoulders and hoisted her into the air.
 

Trapped and helpless, Mary-Sue screamed down, “Andy, run!”

He knew he’d be nothing up against them. The meat tenderizer was useless and so was him standing there doing nothing. Then jets of blood rained down upon him and pelted him hard. They were so high now, distant specks, that he couldn’t tell what horrors befell her, but the outcome would be the same.
 

Mary-Sue was dead.

He averted his eyes back to the woman in the creek. Her body was still human, but her eyes were a brilliant shade of red, glistening like prisms behind a bright light. “It’s just you and me now, Andy.”

With a tear of fabric, wings unfolded from her back and spread out in an amazing span. Her skin changed to black plated scales in seconds. She was now a black demon under the night sky.
 

He dropped the meat tenderizer without knowing it and fell into a retreat. “
Oh Christ
.”

The vampire rose from the water and floated above him, having no problem catching up to him. She landed on top of him as if to make love to him, her blackened skin ice cold against his face.
 

“I like blood from the neck the best,” she hissed. “All these years, I’ve had to bleed the necks of corpses, and it’s nowhere near the same as living blood.
Not even close
.”

He closed his eyes, anticipating a fate similar to Mary-Sue’s. She placed her finger to his lips, their length the size of his face. The voice was a sexual, soft beckon. “Keep your eyes closed…
you have the right idea
.”
 

“You close your eyes, you fucking bitch!”

Ba-boom!

The woman’s head burst as if detonated by C-4. The image kept flashing of the woman’s mouth gaping wide to bite one moment and then evaporating into pink mist the next.
 

The hand on his shoulder snapped him from the haunting repetition. “Andy, did she hurt you?”

Ned was bent over beside him with a smoking rifle. He was out of breath, recovering from a fresh sprint. “We have to move, Andy. There’s people in straight-jackets and,” his voice trailed off, “an angry mob of armed individuals.” Reluctantly he added, “And, and dangerous old people.”

The sheriff arrived next, and he looked down at the woman’s headless body. It jerked in place as random spurts of blood coughed from the stump. He sneered, but his eyes twinkled with pleasure watching it. “Good riddance, bitch. I think there’s one more left.”

“Yeah, and it got Mary-Sue. I think she’s dead. I don’t know how we can save her. Blood dripped from the sky. She, she can’t be alive, can she?”

The sheriff eyed the ground caked in blood. “I’m sorry, Andy. There isn’t time to find her, alive or dead. We have to reach the house. It’s the only way.”

“Why the house? You know something. Tell me, damn it.”

“I’ll explain when this is over,” Ned said, exasperated and equally frustrated. He helped Andy up from the ground. “I don’t want you dying. Enough people have already died tonight.”

Andy was shoved from one extreme to the other. The metamorphosing creature hovering above the creek, Mary-Sue’s capture and probable death, and then Ned and the sheriff coming out of the dark to save him. Still, he clutched a single thought. Run.
 

A flaming beer bottle smashed at the back of his legs, but the Molotov cocktail failed to explode. Racing on, Andy widened his stride and followed the two through the choked trees. He tripped over vines and brambles, the crunch of leaves louder than his breath or the heartbeat that double-drummed in his ears. Bullets clipped the bark off trees nearby, and knives and axes were hurled in their direction, clipping and stabbing tree trunks in alarming succession. One of the knives grazed his shoulder with a
schick
!
 

“
Fuck
.”

The rumble of the mob behind him dominated the woods and steadily escalated. Andy turned to see who was pursuing them. Gnarled faces glowed with hatred, many of the pursuers in straight jackets and wielding power drills, chainsaws—many of them just now revving them up—scythes, Molotov cocktails, axes, machetes, rifles, nail guns, power sanders, hand-held saws and other weapons he couldn’t identify. The straight-jacketed people were mixed in with older people dressed in hospital gowns, and they too were diabolically armed.
 

“Why hasn’t anyone come to save us?” Andy shouted over them. “How come nobody’s here?”

“Everyone’s dead,” Sheriff O’Malley barked. “And there’s no way to reach anyone outside of Anderson Mills.”

“I have a car at the house,” Andy shouted. “We can get out of here, maybe warn others and get help.”

Ned said, “We can’t leave until we do something at the house. There’s no choice in this, Andy.” Ned pointed to the left. “We should split up. They’ll follow us if we stick together, but if we separate and rendezvous at the house, we’ll have them scattered. They don’t know the way to the house like we do.”

“I don’t know these woods,” Andy shouted in dismay. “What about me?”

Ned told him, “Go straight. You’ll get to the house soon. We’ll meet you there, right, Sheriff?”

“Yes, but fucking hurry.”

“If we don’t make it somehow, get into the house and destroy the film projector. Don’t ask me why, boy, just do it. You understand me?”

Andy swallowed back his questions. “I—I understand.”

The sheriff and Ned disappeared to the left and right so fast that he had no chance to change his mind. The crowd dispersed, but he could tell some of them were still at his heels. He picked up speed when a hatchet went
thack
into the tree beside him. He was growing tired, and his second wind didn’t arrive. He clutched his sides and took in double breaths like the hurdle coach in high school advised him.
 

He couldn’t keep moving. Ned’s and the sheriff's retreats were unfaltering. Perhaps they’d seen more atrocities than him tonight and dug deeper for the energy. Regardless, his body worked against him. He couldn’t plant one foot before the other for much longer.
 

He thought of his options: quit running and be slaughtered, perhaps be carried away like Mary-Sue in the air, or keep moving to the house. But what would happen when he got there? The crowd would follow him and attack him there too.
 

He had to confuse them. Ned’s tactic merely thinned them out. And Ned’s request to destroy the film projector was curious. Andy had thought the things he’d seen tonight had to do with the movies, and now he was beginning to believe it.
 

But why destroy the projector?

Andy’s pace faltered again. He couldn’t force his legs to move any faster. He leaned against an oak tree, worn out, and when he looked up the three, he noticed several footholds. He started to climb in a frantic last ditch effort for survival. He finally reached the highest point and held still. He shut his eyes and waited, catching his breath. The rustle of a search clamored all around him. The voices were grunts, not actual words. The group milled about without cohesion. And it was strange how they didn’t speak to each other or interact.
 

Up high, he hugged the largest tree limb and prayed he wouldn’t fall. He assumed they couldn’t see him because they didn’t raise alarm or throw weapons at him. He hoped it was true. He opened his eyes and kept them trained ahead. The house was in sight, merely up the hill. It was hidden by darkness, the shadows so deep even the dilapidated condition was lessened. He caught the flicker and movement of light from inside the living room.

Someone was already in the house.

He had to get inside, Andy vowed.
 

Suddenly, the sound of Mary-Sue’s screams echoed throughout the sky. She was still alive. Alive, but suffering tortures beyond human reason. The blood that landed on him earlier was sticky on his chest and shoulders. So many people had died, and here he was on the brink of being murdered himself.

All he had to do was reach the house and follow Ned’s instructions.
 

Destroy the film projector.