Protect All Monsters (14 page)

She didn’t stir at his approach.

A glass shelf housed whips, dildos, butt plugs, anal beads, leather and BDSM outfits, bodices, condoms, fourteen different flavors of lubricant, domination gear, a hanging net for suspended sex, blow-up dolls—for the guys who wanted to fuck a doll in front of a woman; he’d considered doing it himself sometime—and a variety of other novelties.

He introduced himself. “My name’s Joe. My friends call me Joey.”

The woman wasn’t impressed. She stayed silent.

“I see you want to skip to it. That’s fine with me.”

He removed his button-up shirt. He opened the glass shelf and nabbed a lubricated Trojan condom. “Do you need K-Y?”

No response to his polite question.

This bitch is giving me the silent treatment.

“You tell me if you do, okay?” He was growing impatient. “Why don’t you talk? I’m not going to ask you to have a long-ass conversation with me. I’m just being nice. Warming up things. Like a runner has to stretch before the race, right?”

The silk sheets shifted awkwardly. He tensed up, eying the surface in horror. The sheets stretched out tight, then surged upward as if many hands were clawing and digging into the mattress to reach through it. And with frenzied tearing and ripping sounds, a jet of fluid that resembled hair gel shot upward through serrated folds of the cloth , ripping the grate from the air duct in the ceiling in one shot.

He reeled backward. “
Goddamn
!”

He raced over to save the woman, but the gel split up into dozens of ropey tendrils and lifted the unconscious rag doll up into the duct, dragging her to the ceiling. Her body was pale, but her face was tomato red, deprived of air. Asphyxiated.

Using his shock as energy, Joe seized her legs to retrieve her, but the gel was slick and powerful and so much stronger than him.

“Let her go!”

He panicked, breathing spasmodically, unable to process this strange creature. There were only supposed to be zombies, vampires, wolves and the occasional ghost on the island, and now this goop!

The woman was sucked into the duct despite his efforts. Taken, her body rattled and banged against the aluminum and was carried to an unknown hideaway. Joe was poised to call for help when a larger wad of gel attached to his body, firing out of the duct hole with a
glooooooop
. Around his face, it slithered up his nostrils, pried open his lips, crawled between his teeth in fluid fashion, clogged his throat, jammed down into his esophagus and anchored in his internal organs. New branches like arteries spread out inside of him from head to toe, taking grip. He was hoisted up into the grate and dragged through the duct system. Where he finally ended up, the gel became something new, something much more horrific and deadly than the other creatures he’d encountered.

He was long dead before that creature came to life.

Chapter Nineteen

Richard was on a new mission. The island, the communication blackout and Brenner’s seizure of his spies were all shuffled to the bottom of the deck. Douglas Parnell reached the top of his shit list. He faced the scumbag right now in a special section of the PAM Complex he called his private room. Douglas stood against the wall only in his underwear, cowering in place, shivering in the cold, his eyes wide as a frightened child’s, his mouth trembling to conceive words to validate the sparing of his life.

“Don’t bother speaking to me. You’re as good as dead.”

He was three steps from the mouth of the beast. The machine was called the Demolisher. The Demolisher was as long as a semirig and had the appearance of an industrial-size dishwasher. The mouth was curtained off by rubber flaps, and inside lay double-sided saw blades that churned and spun, ready to downgrade any object into pulp. Once cut up, the pieces were hermetically sealed together and sucked into a tube and shot down to the sublevel for the zombies to feast on.

“You know damn well why you’re here. I talked to Addey. She said you offered her drugs for sex. When she turned your sorry ass down, you threw her into the pit. How many poor victims have you done this to? What you’ve done is beyond acceptable.”

Douglas blathered his defense on his knees. “It’s not what you think. Yes, I asked her to have sex with me. I asked. I then offered her drugs. What’s so bad? I didn’t shove her down the slide. She fell. It happens all the time. It was an accident—an accident!”

“That’s not what Addey said. You’re a liar!”

“No—
no, no, no
.” He waved his hands. “Yes, I pressured her to have sex with me. But a lot of these bitches consider it a favor. Addey didn’t, so I panicked. I yelled at her. Big deal, right? Why do you care about her? She’s just another worker with a nice pair. She’s nobody.”

Richard picked up a metal rod, what was used to shove the dead bodies into the blades. He squeezed the cold steel in his hands. He needed Addey. She could hold her own, and he needed an ally as much as a friend in his present circumstances, especially after his spies had gone missing and were probably dead. She was currently in the med wing recuperating. She would recuperate rather nicely, he was reassured by the med staff.

“Nothing pisses me off more than abuse of power. I always knew you were up to some scheming, slimy shit, but I couldn’t prove it. I’ve investigated you. Fourteen women you’ve thrown into the pit. I had witnesses. Testimonies. But Brenner wouldn’t do anything. No; Brenner was protecting you because he didn’t want everybody lashing out at their shift managers. He wanted order against the chaos. But I’m doing this behind his back. This is between you and me.”

The sniveling man closed his eyes. Then he pissed himself, the fluid running down his legs and staining the front of his boxer briefs. “Oh God…please don’t…I’m so sorry.” He wept, putting his hands together to beg. “Okay, okay—I threw her down the slide. That bitch wasn’t afraid of me. I had to show her—to show everybody else I was in charge. I did it, and I admit I was wrong. I was wrong!”

“You just wanted to get your dick wet. And you did many times. I hope it was worth it.”

“Brenner will have your ass for this. You’re abusing your power. You will be the one punished next, you fucking asshole.”

“The way things have been going, I won’t have a job soon anyway. If I die, I die knowing there’s one less asshole raping women. Who knows what else you’ve committed behind closed doors?”

Douglas’s eyes were ice cold. He was sorry he was going to die, but he was lacking in remorse for his wrongdoings. “Then what are you going to do with me? Shove me into the blades?” His lips were trembling. “Why can’t you shoot me instead? It’d be faster.”

“Your punishment must fit the crime. You forced the poor women down the chute to be eaten alive. Fourteen times over. Think about it. A quick bullet to the head doesn’t match the way your tortured those poor girls.”

“Are you going to send me down the chute to be eaten alive? Tell me, you son of a bitch! How are you going to kill me? You’re playing games with me. Chicken-shit bastard. You won’t kill me. You don’t have it in you. You direct people, you run this shit hole, but you don’t put your back into the work. You’re not one of us.”

Douglas was wrong.

He had spent his teenage years on the sublevel and his early twenties catering to vampires on the third floor, preparing entrees created from dead and living human beings. He’d served his time, and he understood the difference between doing your job and murder, even in these special circumstances.

What Douglas had committed was an atrocity.

“No, I
will
kill you.”

Douglas’s grin wriggled. “You won’t do it. You don’t have it in you. Go back to your desk job.”

Without any more pomp and circumstance, he rendered the steel bar over Douglas’s skull. A metallic
konk
and
wong
sound delivered the man into unconsciousness.

He picked his limp body up and dragged him toward the machine.

He whispered, “The zombies will have their meal all the same.”

Chapter Twenty

Addey woke in a sterilized room with white walls, white tables and white beds, and all within a circle of white-curtained rooms. She was soaked in a delirious sweat. Her legs had been washed, the plastic bucket of sudsy water on a pushcart in the corner the evidence. Train tracks of stitches circled her legs like black cobras. She gawked at them, horrified at the damage done to her. It came back to her in a flash: the zombies biting down on her as she waded in fetid blood. But it wasn’t just her legs; her entire body was victim to the cannibals. She couldn’t bear to look at the inflictions too long. She was grateful when a nurse peered in at her patient. She closed the curtain behind her once she noticed Addey was awake.

The nurse was older and dressed in dark blue scrubs. “The doctor is on break. Carpal tunnel pains him awful. He’s been on duty for sixteen years in this place, and he’s seen some gruesome victims. But the living ones, they’re the hardest. Patching them up, making them look decent, it’s not easy.”

Gee, thanks, lady.

“He’s put fifty-six stitches and four staples in your legs and thirty-two stitches in your arms and eighteen in your neck. And let’s not forget your cheek, seventeen in all. You’re going to have bad scarring, but hey, you’re alive. Damn lucky, young lady. I haven’t met a single person who’s survived after falling into the pit. Ever.”

I didn’t fall into the pit. I was thrown.

It wouldn’t do any good to argue. She was too exhausted to put up the effort. Her mouth tasted of cotton. She reached to the side table for a cup of water and drank fervently.

“It’s good you’re thirsty,” the nurse said. “You lost so much blood. We’ve been pumping it into you like crazy.” She reiterated, “You were so close to dying.”

Her body ached, her entirety feeling like a swollen bruise. The bite marks were numb because she was loaded with drugs. So much of the attack had vanished from her memory, but the damage was a firm reminder of who had inflicted the damage. The dead were merciless, empowered by their numbers. Deke was the one who truly saved her. Otherwise, she would’ve been dead.

You’re alive.

The nurse collected the sudsy water and carted it behind the curtain. She turned one more time before leaving. “Oh, and you have a visitor. After he’s gone, we’ll bring you dinner. Afterward, we’ll send you to your room to rest. The stitches will hold. You’ll be put on light duty.”

They’re making me work after this!

Her mental protests ceased when Richard entered the room. He waited for the nurse to leave before walking to the side of her bed. She was happy to see him, but he didn’t wear a happy face. He was concerned, and his thoughts were elsewhere besides her well-being.

“You must tell me what you saw in that corridor you came out of. I’m sorry; there’s no time for pleasantries.”

“You’re not kidding.” She combed her mind for those details. “I only entered one room. There were vampires, zombies and werewolves sleeping. They were sharing IV tubes. At the time, I was being chased by two vampires. A man and a woman, that’s all I can remember. I fought my way through the door, and I ended up in that hallway. Cynthia found me lying there. She saved me.”

Richard’s eyes pained him. He rubbed at them and expelled a weary breath. “The room was empty when we investigated. They cleared it out pretty fast.”

She noticed how he couldn’t remove his gaze from the stitches on her cheeks.

“Yeah, I was bit up pretty good,” she said, not meaning to sound offended. “Douglas threw me down into the pit after I turned him down for sex. He’s a fucking bastard.”

“He’s gone now.” He put his hand on her shoulder and gave it a light squeeze. “I arranged for him to have a taste of his own medicine. This wasn’t the first time Douglas abused his power.”

He whispered in her ear, “You can’t say a word. Somebody could be listening. I need your help, Addey. This place will be turned upside down soon. I’m going to tell you a secret, but you have to keep it quiet. If you tell somebody, I’m dead. Simple as that. My life is in your hands now. I can get you off this island, but you have to help me.

“The island project is being terminated by the government. They’ve run out of funding, and the gradual phase-out plan is being activated. What you stumbled upon is a secret lair. Perhaps one of the vampires caught word of this plan, and they’re acting out—or they’ve been planning this secretive shit and have been waiting for the right opportunity to strike. I’ve lost those who I can trust. I need you, Addey, to be my eyes and ears. If anything’s suspicious—word of mouth or anything—you must report it to me.”

He handed her a pager. “The shift manager can page you, but so can I. I know it’s old fashioned, but cell phones are out of the question, and it’s obvious why. When I page you, I need you to come help me. Tell no one. You handled yourself with courage, and I can trust you to make the smart decision in a compromising situation. Now play things like normal, like everything’s fine. Your job is to keep your eyes and ears open. Be ready to report any strange things, anything that would indicate an uprising of any kind. I will be in contact with you soon.”

She reached out for him, but he was too quick, and she was very weak. He was gone in a flash. The nurse entered the room with dinner, but she wasn’t hungry.