B-Movie Attack (35 page)

“Burn,” he kept chanting. “Burn! BURN!”

Fire spread along the carpet. Billy fed the orange current until the bottle was dry. By then, the walls were dancing with firelight. The place would be canvassed in flames in no time, he thought.
 

He walked down the stairs at a stagger pace. The beating he’d taken over the past hours had caught up with him. He was bleeding from his legs and shoulders in sizeable bite wounds. His ribs pained him the most, as did the loss of Jessica and Nelson. He imagined Jessica swallowed up by the betta creature. Nelson axed into pieces by Catholic schoolgirls from hell. The permanent outcome weighed him down once he crossed the threshold and stood in the street alone. There was nowhere to go, everywhere devastated, Chicago turned into the aftermath of a war zone.
 

The bone dome was missing, he noticed. Sunlight touched down upon him. He imagined God telling him to “hang in there”, but at this moment, he couldn’t accept signs from God. Too much horror had occurred to believe in anything holy.
 

The thumping of chopper blades resounded overhead. The National Guard had arrived. Ambulances and squad car sirens wailed in the near proximity.
 

“You’re too late,” he muttered. “Way too late.”

Billy sat on the curb and watched the apartment building spew flames from the fourth floor. It wasn’t long before an ambulance crew and police car stopped to provide medical care for him. The evening’s losses didn’t leave his mind well after he arrived at the nearest functioning hospital.
 

Chapter Forty

Billy was driven for treatment right outside of Chicago. He arrived at St. John’s Mercy Hospital amid few survivors. Fifty people total had survived the horror; the rest of the city was one big catalog of casualities. He only knew this because a detective had woken him from a morphine-induced sleep—something the doctors provided for his bodily trauma—while talking to the nurse in the room. The drugs didn't prevent the truth from sinking in, for Billy. Jessica had died. Nelson had died. And they didn’t perish peacefully.
 

Detective Bruce Johnston was the man standing above his bed, a tight-end-sized man with a connecting beard and an expression of “I needed coffee two hours ago“ pasted on his tired face. “How are you feeling, Billy?”

“Like absolute shit. My best friend is dead. My girlfriend is dead. My father is dead. Everybody I know is dead.” He took a moment before he asked, “Oh, and how about you?”

The detective replaced his pad of paper into his pocket. “Look, I’m sorry. You’re not ready to talk to me. I understand.”

The detective was visibly frustrated, but Billy didn’t care. He was in the hospital for barely a day after he’d witnessed hell on earth, and he was already being questioned.
 

The detective almost exited the room, when he returned. “As an apology, you should see this.”

The detective parted the curtain separating him from the other patient.
 

And there she was.
 

“Jessica!”

The detective turned to leave them alone when Billy called out to him, “Hey, give us a few minutes. I’ll answer any questions you have, sir!”

Billy nearly ripped the I.V. from his arm launching over to her bed and hugging her with the vise grips of life. He kissed her face, took in her smell, and kept stealing glances at her and touching her arms and face to double-check she was real. “Y-you’re alive. But I saw you…I saw you eaten.”

Jessica’s face went pale. “I was in the belly of that thing…and, I had to…I had to eat—”

“Let’s not talk about it right now, okay? We’re alive. Thank God, we’re alive.”

He sat on the edge of her bed. Jessica smiled at him, but tears were pouring from her eyes. “Did Nelson…?”

Billy lowered his head. “No. But he saved my life. He saved a lot of peoples’ lives. If we would’ve died, those monsters would’ve moved on and killed even more people outside of Chicago.”

Jessica clasped his hand in hers. “What do we tell the police?”

Billy shrugged. “I have no idea. If we tell them the truth, they’d think we’re crazy, and if we lie, they won’t believe us either. I say we tell them what we saw and be honest.”

“That monsters did this?” Jessica shook her head. “I’m not so sure.”

“Remember that website. They have pictures of the bone dome. Pictures of the monsters too.”

“The government will cover it up,” Jessica insisted. “Nobody wants to believe in monsters. I’ve heard there were only fifty survivors. Those are enough people to easily silence.”

The door flew open. Detective Johnston re-entered. “There are enough people to easily silence, you’re right. What you saw was real, okay? I’m not Big Brother, guys. I’m only doing my job. I’m here to let you know what happened is classified. You’re under court order to keep silent what you witnessed. We don’t have a clue what caused those awful creatures to come to life. Our jobs right now are to treat you and keep this situation from the general public. Let me say measures are being taken to figure out the truth behind the events.”

“Have you been listening to our conversation?” Billy challenged him.
 

“It gets things done,” Detective Johnston said dryly. “I've been doing this since the events in Anderson Mills. And I still haven't found the answers. Maybe never will.”

He handed them two slips of paper. It was a Contract of Silence. Billy eyed the paper and the detective in disbelief. “I didn’t know these kind of contracts existed. Fine, I’ll sign if it’ll get you out of the way faster.”

“Very good. That's what I like to hear.”

Jessica signed first, and then Billy.
 

“This is for your own good,” the detective explained. “The media has no clue what went down. Nobody must know the truth about Chicago. We’ll be watching you two from a distance. Just keep this to yourself. It’s better that way. Enough harm has already been done, let’s not make it worse…and you’re right ma’am, people don’t want to believe in monsters. It’s been that way for a
very
long time. We're working on explaining what happened in Chicago. It's going to be a bitch, but we'll handle it like we did Anderson Mills. The people will believe the lies we tell them.” One side of his lips curved up in a smile. “You'll be hearing from me every now and again. I wish you a good recovery.”

The detective exited the room.

Jessica turned to Billy. “What do we do now?”

“Recuperate.”

“And what else, smart guy?”

“We get married.”

Jessica rolled her eyes. “Yes, of course, but seriously, we can’t talk to anybody about this. This, this is a mammoth story that begs to be told.”

“I destroyed the reels, honey,” Billy said, shushing her. “This is better left unknown to anybody. Nobody would try and dig up the truth and repeat what happened. The monsters won’t come back; this is for the best. Andy told me that was the ghosts’ final way into the world. I’ve closed it off. It’s that simple. So let’s focus on realistic goals. Marriage. Eating ice cream. We need something pleasant besides this classified bullshit experience. I don’t know how we’re ever going to move on from this, but we will. Thank God you're alive.”

Jessica gave him a big smile. “There is one thing I do know.”

“And what is that?”

“We’re not watching scary movies ever again!”

Epilogue

Plan B was real.
 

Three to five business days after the terror ended in Chicago, Jules Baxter, a sixty-year-old man who was seventy pounds overweight with skin the color of nicotine, finally realized the truth. Odyssey Cinema was a financial failure. The fresh tarred lot was empty on a Monday morning, the four-theatre cineplex like a ghost town, just as it was on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Two months after opening, he couldn’t make a single bank payment, never mind complete the payroll, though the three kids on his staff didn’t care. They were in it for the same reasons he was. They loved the movies he loved. His leap of faith in the customers had resulted in a hard landing, Jules realized. Nobody cared for his taste in films. And he was near half a million in debt because of it.

Face it, nobody likes horror movies anymore.

“I should’ve opened closer to Halloween,” Jules muttered, stepping out of his rusted cobalt-blue Impala toward the movie house.
I should’ve expanded…maybe played old classics as well as horror movies. Every day of the week could’ve had a theme. Bogart day. Abbott and Costello day. Hitchcock day. Newman day. Cruise day.

Fuck that.

I only want horror movies.

Fuck the bank. Fuck the people that didn’t come.
 

Fuck everything.

Odyssey Cinema was a simple, square, eraser-red brick building. Glass front. Inside, lime-green seventies tiles decorated the walls. The floors were painted black, though there were cracks and pocks in the flooring. The theatres themselves had an ugly orange carpeting on the walls and orange seats to match. It was the closet to 42
^nd
Street anybody could come in this day and age, though this was in a suburb of New Jersey. Nobody greeted him inside; the lights were off. The place exuded the ambiance of foreclosure. He decided to flip on the front room lights for old time’s sake. Monday’s noon bill was a double feature: Lucio Fulci’s
Zombi 2
and Herschell Gordon Lewis’s
The Gore Gore Girls
.
 

I should’ve had scantily clad models dressed up as zombies. I would’ve called them…

“Nah,” Jules sighed. He rubbed his balding head. “I’m sure someone would’ve protested that. Surely somebody would get something jammed up their asses about it.”

He turned on the concession lights. The popcorn machine, the candy displays, all of it begged for customers.
 

I don’t have the corporate power. Advertising for one, and I don’t have the newest Disney movie to put butts into the seats.

Two weeks was what the banker had given him to decide on foreclosure or bankruptcy. He told his staff to stay home today. There’d be no business rush. Nobody actually. He counted the torn ticket stubs. Twelve people had come last Friday, and that was for George Romero’s
Dawn of the Dead
.
 

Jules wandered to his office, a tiny closet at the end of the concession stand. When he entered, there was mail spread across his desk in a thick pile. Bank envelopes. Junk mailers. And a large, heavy box.
 

He checked for the return address, and there was none. His address was lettered in scraggly, blood-red writing. Jules picked the package up and lifted it. It had weight.
 

“
Hmmm
. This is interesting.”

Without thinking, he tore the top strip off of the package. He worked through the bubble wrap, which was covered in a reddish-brown crusted substance. His fingers were sticky working out what hid at the bottom. He first retrieved a note, literally a scrap of paper roughly torn. More blood-red writing, what looked to be someone’s finger nail putting the scrawl to paper:

This will put butts in the seats.

Play this at your next showing.
 

I promise delightful results.

Jules turned his head at the note. No signature. A complete stranger had sent him this package. They cared about his business, apparently.

“It’s worth a look,” he said without amusement. “It’s worth a gander.”

He retrieved a reel. It was small. Not very long by the thickness of the roll. He studied a strip in the light. Jules smiled.
 

It was a trailer reel.

“Wow. That’s—wow.
Morgue Vampire Tramps Find Temptation at the Funeral Home
. And look, there’s so many more trailers! God, this takes me back.”

Jules doted on the trailer reel.

It was decided.
 

He'd be playing this first thing at his next showing.
 

About the Author

Alan Spencer spends an inordinate amount of time watching horror movies, writing film reviews for Cinesploitation, columns for Morpheus Tales magazine, and editing his upcoming novels.
B-Movie Attack
is his second novel from Samhain Publishing, the first being
B-Movie Reels
.
 
Keep your eyes peeled for his next release in 2013 called
Psycho Therapy
.
 
E-mail him at
[email protected]
or visit his blog at
horroralan.blogspot.com
.

Look for these titles by Alan Spencer

Now Available:

B-Movie Reels

Coming Soon:

Psycho Therapy

Off of the screen and out for blood!

B-Movie Reels

© 2012 Alan Spencer

Andy Ryerson, a film school graduate, has been hired to write commentary on two dozen cheap, b-horror movies. It seems harmless enough, and he might even enjoy it. But the people in the town around him won’t enjoy it at all when one by one, the films he watches come to life. Andy chose the wrong projector to screen his movies. This one is out for blood.
 
While Andy grumbles about low budgets and poor production values, a hungry butcher, a plague of rotting zombies, demonic vampires, a mallet-toting killer, flesh-eating locusts, and many other terrors descend on the unsuspecting innocent. By the time he realizes what he’s done, the town is teeming with evil, and it’s up to Andy and the few survivors left to stop the celluloid horror he’s unleashed.