B-Movie War (16 page)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Penny was standing in darkness with the stranger who led her into the building just after battling the arm from the sky. Her knees were still in pain from jumping and landing from one building top to the next as that giant hand came slashing and reaching for her. She was unarmed after the flashlight had broken to pieces. Whoever was in this dark nook with her, they weren't saying much.

She spoke through weak breaths. “Who are you?”

“My name is Chadron Green. I've been working on securing this building for hours, and I heard your screams. I let you in. I saw what was after you, and goddamn, you're one brave woman. It's probably why you made it here alive.”

“Why I made it here?” She couldn't see the man's face in the dark yet. “Hey, how do I know you're not some creep who's got a hard on to kill me?”

He gave a strange laugh. “
Yes
, you were definitely one of the ones sent here.”

“Sent here by who?”

A light bulb flickered on when the man flipped a switch on the wall. Chadron had medium toned skin. He looked to be of Eastern descent, but he spoke perfect English. “Sent here by the dead, of course. All of us were sent here by the dead to fight.”

“So what's this building?”

“They can't hurt us here until our work is done. We must hurry. This is the resistance. We're safe, but only for so long.”

“A fucking building is keeping us safe. How?”

Her attitude delighted the man who seemed geeky and slightly anti-social. As if this building was the apex of his life's work. “This building is rigged with all kinds of defensive tricks and traps. We've got an ace up our sleeves in the war.”

“You're talking a bunch of nonsense. I've just come this close—” she put two fingers together, leaving a hair's distance between the two, “—to having my ass squashed by a giant hand. I need a real explanation, please.”

“No matter what anybody tells you, you won't like it. It won't add up. Logic and reality don't exist for the moment. The best thing you can do is think about what's around you. Does that make sense? Nope. So you have go with it. Pretend we're in a movie. Across the world, they are various outposts where people are doing the same thing we're doing to fight against the dead who wish the living to die. The dead want us to join them in their miseries, but I say fuck that. I'm alive, and I plan to stay that way for the rest of my natural life.”

Penny pictured the arm from the sky again. “No matter what's really out there, how do we stand a chance against it?”

“Like I said, we've got a plan. Come on in, I'll show you around.”

Chadron showed the way after shutting and locking the door she entered with three padlocks. They were walking down a set of wooden stairs, what was a narrow stairwell leading down into the building. When they reached the bottom of the stairs, Chadron put his hand in front of a large control panel installed in the wall. It reminded her of a security system. He punched in two numbers. The wooden stairs went flat, forming into a slide. At the bottom of the stairs, sharpened steel poles came out of the ground to stab whatever had fallen down the slide.

“That's just a taste of our building's defense system. We've been working on it for days on end. We have to be careful not to turn the system on until we're under attack.”

“So this place is full of booby traps?”

Chadron clutched a large remote control that looked strikingly like a DVD player's controller. “Yes, but they'll only be on when I turn them on. Hey, take a look at this.”

Chadron opened one of the rooms. It was designed as a bedroom. Two mannequins laid in bed. Chardon played with his remote and up the mannequins rose up with guns in their hands ready to open fire. Was that a booby trap to confuse monsters and killers?

The situation was only getting stranger. Penny shook her head. “All of this is so unbelievable.”

“We're doing our best with the time and resources we have,” Chadron said. “The operation was put together in a matter of hours and executed in a matter of days. I'm a mechanical engineer. I'm one of dozens here, alongside carpenters, electricians and do-it-yourself types. Everybody's been working tirelessly to turn this building into a kill zone for those fucking horror movie characters. We just have to be careful not to get caught in the crossfire.”

What could she say to all of that?

Nothing.

Chadron continued the orated tour. “Guns are installed in the floor to shoot trespassers. From the walls, razor wire will be spread from side-to-side to slow them down. It'd be like walking into a spider-web covered in razor blades. Pretty sweet, huh?”

“Um, yeah. I guess.”

He showed her how sharp poles shot out of the walls to stab those walking by. Nail guns were inserted into the ceiling to open fire and pierce into skulls. The nail guns themselves were rigged to fire at double the PSI of a normal nail gun. It would shoot right through the top and out the bottom of the body. Fake additions to the building were tacked on, so if the villains walked through a door, the floor would collapse and they'd take a five story drop. Chadron ranted about these trip traps to the point he had to wipe the spittle off his mouth.

Penny was worried more the longer she heard the man's tactics and strategies. He enjoyed the idea of creating killing machines. This wasn't her feeling at all. She would be happy to go back to tearing tickets, serving popcorn and watered down sodas to theatre patrons, even living with her horrible ex-boyfriend, if it meant taking back all the horrible things that had happened to the world. Exhaustion suddenly weighed her down. She hadn't had anything to eat in a long time either. Weakened by her physical condition and her new troubled thoughts about this building, she was short of breath. In the face of the panic attack, Penny fainted.

Penny woke up laid out a towel, sprawled on the ground in a utility closet. The shelves were bare, raided of supplies and tools. The sounds of labor were muffled through the walls. The commotion rang throughout the many floors of whatever building she was in. Sore everywhere, Penny had trouble getting back to her feet. Her knees and ankles had taken the worst of the beating. She pictured herself jumping from one rooftop to the next and disbelieving any of it had ever happened.

Getting up, Penny stood at the door and hesitated to open it. She wasn't ready to face the people and what they were doing. She thought back to when she was duct taped down to that movie theatre chair as horror movies played on the big screen. Whatever was happening, she didn't want to deal with it alone.

Finally leaving the utility closet, she faced between fifteen and twenty people laboring. Some were carrying wooden planks and boards to and from places, while others were sitting in a row loading shotguns and various handguns and machine guns. It was a bullet loading assembly line. People in the corner were sharpening knives on the ends of metal poles to create makeshift bayonets. Others were cutting out the ceilings with circular saws, while others removed wall panels and ceiling panels, likely creating more traps.

Nobody greeted her or consoled her. After standing in place for two minutes, she simply joined in, helping anybody who needed help. She inadvertently signed on for several hours of work. When she reached a stopping point, daylight was bleeding through the windows. The fog was gone, and the city was gone with it. Everything was left in ruins. The shape of buildings, of roads, interstates and homes were reduced to decimated piles. Dead bodies baked in the sun, mutilated or being picked clean by hideous birds that couldn't be real. They were from those fucking movies, she thought. Clotheslines were set out for miles with corpses flapping in the wind like dirty laundry. Various butchers and mean villains carrying cleavers, knives, hatchets and axes were severing parts off bodies, as more yet were cooking them on spits, open pits and barbeque grills the size of mini-vans. Failed military and police blockades were littered among the devastation. Tanks, fighter planes and hundreds of dead solider and police officers were scattered everywhere.

Deciding she was tired of studying the bleak landscape, Penny walked down to the first floor and viewed the front entrance. Machine gun turrets were positioned to blast whatever came out of the doorways. The entrance itself was a battlefield of barbed wire and bear traps. Penny asked several people in passing what this building was, and she received various answers:

“It's a hub for a movie company.”

“Offices for a B-grade film studio.”

“Front for a porno studio.”

“Really low budget films are filmed here. That's why there's so much equipment and wood on hand…we lucked out.”

“Shitty movies straight-to-video are pumped out like crazy. Real piles of shit. I know, because I've seen 'em, but the porn Knob Rogers makes isn't so bad.”

Penny learned more about the re-building/modification of the movie studio headquarters too:

“The light bulbs are ringers. By remote, the glass will break and flames will shoot down at whoever's in the hallway.”

“These walls are moveable. They will pin and crush whatever's in certain rooms.”

“The doorways are motion censored. Guns, short range explosions, whatever weapons we got rigged nearby will go off.”

“Whatever drops in the floor will slide you right down to an equivalent of a wood chipper. Send you out the other side as hamburger.”

“The guys from Handy Hardware really teamed up with the engineers to create some kick ass machines.”

She asked people about escape routes if the plan went to shit. Nobody had answers, and they returned to their work obviously distraught. Penny got the idea there was no escape plan because most of the people wouldn't be coming out of this alive.

Hours of hard labor, and the work finally started to die down. Individuals were carrying around coolers and handing everybody cold sandwiches and drinks. Everybody ate hungrily, including Penny. After people consumed their food, they sat down and fell asleep as a group. Penny, too, caught a short nap, tired again. When she woke up, the sun would be down, and the war would soon continue.

Part Six

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Vic Greaves had dozed off shortly after the Cessna plane left the ground. The corpse pilot said they were going to New Jersey, and this was their chance for a rest. Vic's body forced him to sleep after everything he'd been through. Jimmy was also asleep, slumped up against Vic's arm and snoring lightly. Up so high, they couldn't hear the din of battle across the nation. Whatever was left of the military continued to make a stand against the mysterious forces that were slaughtering the world wholesale-style. When Vic did wake, he wasn't sure how long he'd been asleep, but he wasn't getting anymore rest.

His body kicked right back on.

Jimmy remained asleep.

The pilot pressed a bony finger to his ear. Vic wasn't sure what he was trying to indicate until he noticed the pair of heavy duty headphones hanging from the wall. Vic put them on and could hear the pilot speak to him.

“You awake, Mr. Greaves?”

“How long was I out?”

“It doesn't matter. We've got less than fifteen minutes before we touch down in New Jersey. There's some things you need to understand before we land.”

The skeletal corpse spoke with vocal cords of dead muscle. “The fate of the world is on your shoulders. There are people like you being recruited by the dead to save the world. You're not alone. What we're trying to pull off in New Jersey is being attempted across the world, but without you fulfilling your end of the deal, the resistance may fall apart. The dead will have their wish. Every living person will join them in their afterlife hell.”

Vic was confused by the talk of the afterlife, so he avoided that issue. “Then why me? Why am I being asked to help more than the average person?”

“Your father, Vic. He's killed more people than you or anyone else will ever know during his tenure as a public servant. He's shot perps and buried them in places nobody has yet to find. Fifty people, to what I understand, are out there buried and in pieces. He's joined the war, Vic, and he's not on our side. He's killing innocent people as we speak, and it's voluntary. He's a lunatic. He's addicted to bloodshed. He had evil inside him before his soul ever entered the afterlife.”

“So what does it have to do with me?” Vic clenched his body. He was tired of hearing about his father. The man was a son-of-a-bitch. “I'm not my father.”

“Your father's in New Jersey working with a couple of other ringleaders of the war. One by the name of Mr. Ratchet. He's in charge of everything. They're sniffing out our resistance. Your job is to stop your father and anyone else with him to preserve our efforts.” The pilot wanted to say more to him to build his confidence, but Jimmy woke up.

Niles was done with whatever he had to say.

Vic motioned for Jimmy to wear the ear coverings so they could talk. “How you feeling?”

Jimmy rubbed at his heavy and pink eyes. “Good considering, I guess.”

“You ready for more hell?”

“Like we have any choice.”

Jimmy was bogged down with thoughts about his dead father, Vic could tell. But this wasn't a time to understand complex emotion. A war was going on.

The pilot addressed them both. “We're nearing New Jersey. I'm not sure how we're going to land or how close we'll get to the building you're headed to. You two must arrive there together. Your knowledge of the horror movies, Jimmy, and your fighting skills, Vic, are both vital to the resistance. And that wooden chest must arrive with you. If it doesn't, you two being there doesn't do anything. You might as well kiss humanity's ass goodbye.”

Vic asked, “Can I see what's inside the chest?”

Nile said, “Now's not the time.”

“Why's that?”

“Because we're too close to the city. And the storks are coming.”

Both Vic and Jimmy shouted,
“The storks?”

Every window was smashed in unison as dozens of long, sharp tipped beaks tried to peck their way to the human meat inside.

Vic used the butt end of his AK-47 to batter the orange beak that pecked him twice in the shoulder. Jimmy was wrestling a beak that was clasped in both his hands. He jerked back and ripped the beak off the hideous bird's face. Shouting, “Their beaks come off pretty easy. It's the only way to stop them. You can't fire the gun. You have to do it with your hands, Vic.”

Six beaks were pecking at him through the window, so Vic didn't have time to grab a single one without receiving more lacerations to his body. He swung his fists, punching and imagining his fists as cold steel that didn't feel pain and had the ability to break through concrete. Beaks shattered. The damaged birds shrieked, “
Eeeer-aaaaaack! Eeeer-aaaaaack! Eeeer-aaaaaack!
”

The Cessna was tipping to the side, twirling upside down and then turned nose-down. Vic gasped, seeing the eight birds pecking the dead flesh off their pilot. The birds had eaten the dead man down to meaty bones. Their plane was without a pilot!

“Hold them off, Jimmy! I'm gonna land this plane.”

The storks kept coming in droves. The sound like hail striking sheet metal was deafening as the plane kept taking punctures. Unbuckling himself and pivoting his body so he wasn't pitched forward through the front glass window, Vic used one hand to hold himself in place and the other to batter the storks aside. Freeing the corpse of birds, the corpse suddenly came back to life. Leveling out the plane, Vic was sent upward and struck his head on the ceiling. He blanked out, landing in the passenger seat by the pilot. Dizzy and confused, he could only sit and watch as the pilot tilted the plane to fling off the storks.

Niles shouted, “We're coming in for a landing fast. We're losing fuel. They punctured the gas tank. The landing's going to be rough. Better strap yourself in, pal. You too back there, Jimmy. Brace yourselves, gentlemen!”

Vic was seeing stars. He couldn't move, only stare dumbly, as the pilot's boney hands strapped on Vic's seat belt for him.

The plane tilted to the side. The right wing was pecked off by a fleet of storks. The plane was spinning like a top, then it took a deep nosedive. The reek of jet fuel corroded his nostrils. Vic felt a streak of blood run down his face from the cut on top of his head. His vision was cottony. He couldn't keep his eyes open. He heard the patter of punctured steel as the birds worked on the last wing. Then Vic closed his eyes. He wouldn't open them again until he was encased in ice cold water.