Protect All Monsters (21 page)

Watching the fog gather, he heard Ralph approach him, and he had to duck, Ralph taking a swing. Bent over, Brenner threw up a fist into Ralph’s midsection and grabbed his neck and kneed him in the nose. The dry snap, he’d broken Ralph’s nose and shattered four of his front teeth. Ralph crumbled to the ground, sobbing, bleeding, spitting teeth, his eyes glaring up at Brenner in rage.

His words were slush, “You killed Mel! You’re crazy! You’re not like the rest of us, man. I haven’t seen you eat or drink or visit the strip club or anything while I’ve been here. What the hell is wrong with you? Does pink not get you off? When I talk about sex, you don’t. It’s like you don’t like women. You’re not one of us. I want to know who the fuck you really are.”

Brenner pointed at the workers who had narrowly escaped being trapped in the arena. “Prepare the next shipment. They won’t last ten minutes in that arena. Leave me and Ralph alone.”

Ralph trembled now, though he refused to give up his retaliation. “How much longer would it be until you shot me in the head? Everybody’s expendable on the island. Yeah, you’re crazier than shit, but without your gun, you’re nothing. I’m sick of your shit. If you’re going to kill me, then do it. I’d rather die fighting than die like Mel.”

Brenner broke out in a sweat, hearing this. His pores opened, expelling droplets of sweat, bile and toxins from his body—mostly used-up blood platelets and white and red blood cells. He was coated in a varnish-colored substance. It dripped down Brenner’s body and instantly vaporized at the sun’s touch.

Ralph’s eyes twitched, not sure what to make of the man’s transformation. “W-what in hell are you? Jesus Christ, Brenner…
you’re not human
.”

The femoral artery lifted from Brenner’s neck. It was thick as an elevator cable now, and it whipped out of his skin and lashed Ralph between the eyes. The connection split his skull in two. The lamprey sucker at the end of the artery attached to the man’s jugular and drained Ralph of every ounce of fluid in fifteen seconds. The desiccated corpse struck the ground and kicked up dust. Letting the blood settle into his body, Brenner picked up the corpse and tossed him over the dock and into the ocean.

He stood proud, looking at the dead bones strike the water. “It’s not pink that gets me off.
It’s red
.”

The warehouse contained only the necessary guards this time around as Brenner scrutinized the next round of human victims to go into the arena. They had been picked from insane asylums across the country. Each of them wore straitjackets, each bound together like a chain gang. Twenty total in this batch. He knew little about them, though he glanced at some of their invoices. The most interesting person was Tim “Smothers”—a nickname for a man who smothered his victims in pillows, water, blood and sometimes human fat. Vampire James Sorelli was always begging for more challenging game in the arena, and that’s why Brenner selected men like Tim “Smothers” to do battle. Even during this time when he believed there was an uprising coming, there were normal operations to manage, and he continued to perform his job with the utmost efficiency.

“Let’s move,” Brenner instructed the men. Fifteen minutes had passed, and he knew the first phase of feeding the vampires was coming to a close. “The prisoners are surely dead by now. They’re ready for more challenging game.”

The chain gang was guided back to the arena entrance. He opened the Plexiglas to allow the tear gas to dissipate. The gate between the vampires and the arena was already shut, locking the monsters in. Brenner summoned another team to come in and place weapons throughout the hallway: scythes, sledgehammers, knives, aluminum bats, pinch clamps, pitchforks, saw blades, nails and random blunt objects. The government broke the bank at the hardware store for this event, he thought.

Brenner stared at the hallway, observing the new blood slathering the floors and walls in wicked arterial spatters. Pleased that the first batch was indeed murdered, he yelled down the corridor, addressing the vampires. “Give a few more minutes for the fog to thin out, then I’ll send you more worthy opponents!”

Chapter Thirty

James Sorelli hid in the waters of a four-foot-deep pond. He was waiting for the next kill. The arena was his hunting ground. Blood boiled in his prey, he sensed, their bodies heated by fear and rising pulses, circulatory systems and hearts churning to vital excesses. Alexia crawled into the water with him and urged him up to the surface. She was crimson-eyed, skin white as chalk, her veins not yet raised to the surface, but they were starting to thicken. She hadn’t fed in days. She claimed it sweetened the kill that way. She was skin and bones, her once flowing raven hair now split ends and faded gray. Alexia was his sister, she too born with what eventually flourished into full-out vampirism.

“The convicts are already dead,” she complained. “They make it a few yards, put up a weak fight, but the booby hatchers are better. And they’re armed.”

“Wonderful,” he said, licking his lips. “I love a good fight.”

The arena was dimly lit. A few fluorescent lights blinked on and off in dank corners to ban complete darkness. The walls were bare concrete covered in layers of orange, rust and black, layers and layers of sprayed blood. The arena was like a city block, and they were on the outskirts. Fake trees mimicked the mouth of the woods in a solid line. The grass and pond ended yards north of them and a road channeled up to mock alleyways. The arena was a labyrinth of abandoned apartment buildings and storefronts—all of it only a story and a half tall, but it left nooks for their game to hide.

Alexia grinned, reading his mind. “You still want that bitch’s blood, don’t you? The one who found the secret chamber. She’s caused all kinds of problems.”

“I know, and that’s what makes me want to tear her throat out and squeeze the juices out of her heart like the rest of them.”

“There isn’t time to worry about her. We stock up on blood, wait for the last batch to be born, and we turn this place inside out until everybody’s dead.”

“We can’t attack tonight, but the boats are ready. There’s a buzz traveling throughout the complex. People have learned about the secret tunnels. They’re concerned. Afraid. That’s what we want. They won’t know what hit ’em. Nobody will, not even the PSA. It’s enhanced our chances of survival. You’ll see.”

Two straitjackets entered their proximity. One carried a pitchfork, the other a machete. They were fearful, perplexed and pleased all at once. Happy to be free, he supposed, but terrified of where they’d been released.

James pointed at the burly, six-foot-tall man. “I’ll take the beefcake.”

Alexia rolled her eyes. “Yeah, and I’ll take the smaller one.
Bastard
.”

He leaped into the trees, crawling like a spider monkey, ignoring his sister’s chiding. Alexia ducked and rolled into a ditch five yards out. He watched Alexia wait for the two people to cross her path, staying hidden. Waiting for the right moment, she jerked to action, seizing the woman’s legs and dragged her down into the ditch. The man took off running upon seeing this, his sagging belly and three-hundred-pound frame slowing him down. He ducked between two trees and clutched his machete. His eyes were wild and crying.

James leaped to the next tree over, being two trunks away from towering above the kill. A snap and crack and cut-off scream reverberated from the ditch, Alexia wrapping up her victim’s demise. James would wallow in the man’s blood in moments, but it was the woman in the hall he really wanted to devour. She had caused their plan to be hastened. She had every vampire worried, and the element of surprise was removed to a degree. He could smell her in the salty breezes in the air. He craved the woman’s blood. Her suffering. Her death.

James cleared the next tree and the next. The man hunkered down even lower, his hands covering his head, knowing something was after him.

He waited.

Not yet.

The man’s pulse tripled.

James licked his lips. Salivating. A drop came off his mouth and smacked the back of the man’s neck like a wet bullet.

“
Uhh—aaaaaaaah
!” The man was jolted.

He descended the tree and drove both feet into the man’s shoulder blades. Forced down, the man was driven onto his machete.

James licked the red from the blade jutting out from the shoulder blades. Then he seized the man’s head and jerked it from the neck until the muscle tissue parted and the head was uprooted like a weed. Lapping up the spurting delights, his tongue delved into the red current until he was fully sated.

Alexia walked toward him clutching a head connected to a dangling spine. She was slathered in war paint, her body renourished, the skin ivory white, the veins plump and vital. Her hair was ink black, so shiny and so beautiful.

She met him under the trees. Alexia peeked at the corpse. “Looks like he killed himself for you.” She turned her shoulder blades so he could view her wounds. Her back bled from a six-inch laceration. “You had it easy.”

“It’s all in the way you hunt them.”

She flipped him off, the finger dripping. James licked it, and she slapped his face. “You asshole.”

He disheveled her hair. “I’m sure the rest of the loonies are slaughtered by now. Let’s check on the last batch of our young and see if they’ve awakened.”

They rushed out of the woods and up into the street, where they snuck into the nearest alley and entered a rusted-out door. Inside the building, a lamb cowered in the corner, terrified.

“If only we had time,” Alexia commiserated. “It’s so innocent,
so scared
.”

And that’s when another vampire stole the lamb, bundling it up by its legs and then racing away. They could hear the clicks and slurps of mastication gradually fade as the creature escaped their view.

Moving on, they stepped into another alleyway and into a building that resembled a hollowed-out laundry mat. Inside, the vestiges of past kills welcomed them. Three skeletal bodies were chained to a pillar upside down, picked clean. On a bed of springs in the corner, a body was caught up in the coils and also wrapped in barbed wire, literally mummified in jagged steel. The girl trapped in pain, who wasn’t older than seventeen, whimpered, “Please…
kill me
.”

Alexia shifted to fulfill the request, but he seized her arm. “No time.”

“Fuck you. I’m still hungry!”

She fought off his hold and delved through the barbs and coils. She balled up the flesh over the girl’s trachea and peeled it back in ropey strands. She slurped up the blood and swallowed the ball of flesh whole. The girl was choking, gargling, thrashing, bending within the nest of rusted coils. Then, after minutes, she flopped dead, her eyes staying open with a grateful gleam.

“I did her a favor.” She licked a morsel of skin from her upper lip. “She was suffering.”

“How merciful and sweet of you.”

They stepped into a room of empty washing machines. The first stride inside, they heard the grumble. An engine kicked on:
whum-grum, whum-grum, whum-grum, whum-grum.
In Pavlovian reaction, they foamed at the mouth. Their backs arched. Their arms clenched, ready to throttle a throat. Then IV-size tubes uncoiled from the ceiling in two corners. Alexia was the first to stick the end of one into her mouth, James a close second. Blood funneled down the tubes, spitting out from an endless source.

James could distinguish the types of blood that splashed upon his tongue: sheep, goat, shark, bear, two-year-dead human, six-year-dead human, virgin, menstrual (and how they collected that, he had no clue), male, female, and blood mixed with gunpowder and traces of steel. He drank a liter’s worth and couldn’t take any more. Alexia couldn’t stop, sucking so hard she gasped for breath once she had no choice but to breathe.

The blood came down once every two hours. The complex was obsessed with keeping them satisfied. They did a justly good job, but it didn’t compare to hunted blood—earned blood. There were cities of people, nations of necks to bleed, and they were trapped here. For them, it was frustrating beyond belief.

They cut through another alley, leaving the laundry mat behind, and this time coming upon a hollowed-out bar, the inside beer taps long since emptied, the shelves ransacked and destroyed, the rooms excavated. They navigated into the back storage room, where the tiles were empty of things to eat. A desiccated corpse was in the fetal position under a pair of sinks, his skin melded into the floor by rot.

Alexia opened a walk-in fridge adjacent to the body. The compartment was empty, but James had created a hole in the floor. A passage. It had taken leftover pickaxes and steel implements to render the hole through the concrete. The hole was a direct route into the chamber of their private operation.

“Let’s check on our young,” James said, climbing into the dank hole first. “Maybe they’re already awake. I can’t wait to see them.”

Chapter Thirty-One

Richard had assigned two underlings to monitor the tunnel excavation, their names being Henry Dalley and Marcus Kulson. The two had been instructed to radio him or Brenner if any activity occurred. Richard was too busy to oversee jackhammering and walls breaking apart because he had to take stock of the sublevel inventory. The giant refrigerator in the kitchen was much like the ones on the ocean cruise liner, heaped with an array of items. The sight of dead humans vacuum packed and sealed in plastic, their eyes closed, arms crossed mummy-style, was commonplace. He tallied the number of barrel drums of blood and drums of human appendages separated by category: arms, legs, heads, genitals, animal carcasses and human organs.