B-Movie Reels (9 page)

“They’re not bad,” Andy admitted. “I watched
Jorg: the Hungry Butcher
,
Attack of the Sludge
and a few others. They keep me guessing, that’s for sure. Some of it’s pretty gory. I started
The Mallet Killer
, and they show the man’s face being crushed by the mallet. Pretty blunt violence, I’d say.”

“The sixties and seventies were great,” Professor Maxwell reminisced, taking on a tone of nostalgia. “Violence and sex were expected and appreciated. Now every mother and humanitarian whines and the MPAA takes out the good stuff in movies. They don’t make ’em like they used to, Andy. It’s a shame. But now we have DVD’s and companies keep releasing them with the goods put right back in. Thank God for technology and working around those ratings bastards.”

Professor Maxwell returned to the point of the call. “You have about three weeks to finish up. I’m assuming since you haven’t filled up your up-chuck cup yet, you’re still okay. Should I buy you some shock insurance?”

“Not yet,” he laughed at the theater gimmick talk. “Yeah, I’ll be ready in a few weeks. It’s coming along fine. I’m holing up at my uncle’s house. It’s empty, and I’ve got a whole wall to project onto. It works perfect.”

“All right, buddy. Call me if you need anything. Happy viewing! Do a good job.”

The professor hung up.

Andy drove home to finish
The Mallet Killer
.
 

3

Dean Runyen shifted the plastic face mask over his head and finished spraying the cows’ blood down the drain. The slaughtered bodies were moved on down the line for butchering, and he was pressure hosing the room with a water/chlorine mixture. No matter how many times he’d performed the job, he never grew accustomed to the smell of death.
 

His job also entailed shoveling the cow patties outside into the dumpster. Despite the grueling process of slaughter, line master Eddie Stolburg was known for his humanitarian procedures. He ran an independent company with barely ten hands working the place, unlike the two slaughter houses that went through hundreds of cows a day as opposed to their two dozen. Here, the cows were injected with a tranquilizer called Tarazin-B that rendered them unconscious. It cost extra money, but the expense was equaled out over the market; people liked to purchase humanely slaughtered meat. It was a small business, and Eddie explained to his workers that the new generation of consumers preferred the idea of small farm slaughter. The job also paid a good wage and decent benefits.
 

Not bad for a high school dropout
, Dean thought with a grin.
 

It was ten minutes before he could take a smoke break. He hose-cleaned his rubber boots and yellow suit and walked out of the butchering room, a square concrete room with hooks hanging from the ceiling where the dead cows were pushed into the next room and onto a conveyor. Dean entered what they called the flensing line, where meat was stripped from the hide and prime cuts were rendered by practiced butchers. The men who were on the clock right now, Kevin Cook, Sam Kipper, Chris Wrays and Junior Summers, were all missing. Even Eddie Stolburg was absent from the line, and the man hardly stepped foot from the room between punching in and out for the day.
 

The sound of feet tramping against a puddle resounded at the end of the line where Junior was supposed to catch the slices of meat and place them in Styrofoam and shrink-wrap them. “Where the hell is everybody?”

Dean listened and the shuffling stopped.
 

“Hello?—you guys picking your ass at the same time? You have to wash your thumbs when you take it out of your butt hole. It’s state policy.”

A pig’s grunt and squeal startled him.
Wee-wee-weeeeeeh!
 

Now, it was silent except for the clinking of hooks and the intrusive sound of knives severing fat from gristle and bone.
Shhhhick-shhhhick-shhhhick
.
 

He stared at the double doors leading to the front exit. They were both closed. The doors to the cattle pens were also shut along with the break room’s.

Dean hesitated to speak. He stepped to the end of the line, curious but leery at what he’d find. Racks of hanging ribs blocked his view from the source of the pig’s noise. The drag and clink of metal against the concrete floor came next.
Srrrrrrrrrrick!
 

He froze at the jarring noise.
 

A shadow cased the wall and a heavy-set man appeared.
 

“What the hell are you doing back here?” Dean raised his voice. Some of their customers who bought from them direct welcomed themselves to make their own choice cuts even though they weren’t permitted to enter the back premises. “Customers aren’t allowed in here. No exceptions, sir. I’m going to have to ask you to return to the front reception desk right now.”

He challenged the intruder, but then he recoiled after catching what was splayed on the assembly line. The conveyor belt was littered with pieces of his co-workers. Four heads were shrink-wrapped. Livers, spleens, hearts, arms, legs, feet and hands were arranged along the line in uniformity to the largest to smallest pieces. Blood gurgled down the drain between the intruder’s black boots. The stranger wore a white uniform with a black vinyl apron, all of him splattered in red. The man grunted again, a pig in human form. Even his nostrils were raised high and his eyes beady and black. His black hair was slicked back and waxen in the overhead lights.
 

He raised a red-spattered cleaver. “MY CUTS!”

The statement didn’t make sense, but the remains of his co-workers clarified his intentions. Where the man had come from, Dean wasn’t sure. He wasn’t a familiar customer. The intruder looked like a butcher by his dress and the manner in which he wielded the blades. Fearing if he ran, the man would attack him, Dean waited for the butcher to make his move, but the man went about his business unaffected by Dean’s presence.
 

He raised a clever to Marge Bryant, the receptionist, who was stripped naked with a hook wedged between her shoulder blades. Dean had imagined how twenty-eight year old Marge would look naked and in his bed many times before today, but now that she was bleeding from the chest, he was petrified and ashamed for ever picturing her like that.
 

The butcher sawed at Marge’s scalp and peeled back her hair and revealed the slick white bone of her skull. Dean couldn’t stand by and watch, he kept thinking. He gathered the courage to sprint for the door, and turned the knob, but his escape attempt was countered by a
swish-swish-swish-swish
sound that stalked him. A flicker of movement, the glint of metal and capture of light, a cleaver spun and severed his hand from the door handle. His fingers remained clenched on the knob.

Blood spat in large gobs from his wrist.
 

“
Fah-uck!
”

The intruder was now right behind him, and he drove a five-inch boning knife into his collarbone hilt-deep. Dean’s left side tingled numb. Purple blotches formed in his eyes. Dizzy. On the verge of passing out.

Sweat dripped from the man’s pudgy white face, and in Dean’s troubled vision, the man looked like a glistening greasy smear.
 

The butcher shrieked, “MY CUTS!”

Dean’s eyes lolled into the back of his head, but he caught a name embroidered in blue on the man’s breast pocket.

Jorg.

The butcher lifted Dean up to his face, waking him up again. Jorg opened his mouth, and in one jerk-fast motion, he clamped his teeth down upon Dean’s cheek. Dean urinated and screamed, but Jorg squeezed his throat to silence him. The man released his grip, and Dean tumbled backward onto the floor, bleeding from the face and shoulder.
 

Dean couldn’t form the words to beg for his life. He couldn’t move. Jorg towered above him with a meat hook clutched in his right hand. Without mercy, he plunged the hook into Dean’s abdomen, the killing blow.
 

Afterwards, Jorg muttered to himself, “My cuts are the finest cuts
.
”

Chapter Four

1

Sheriff Douglas O’Malley couldn’t believe what he was hearing—or seeing, for that matter—when Doris Hamden handed him the Polaroid photo. Doris crossed her arms and shook her head in frustration, remembering what was in the photo. The frock of her white hair was styled in a bun, and its bluish tint caught the sun.
 

“They were all dead,” she insisted. Her husband, Bruce Hamden, ambled out of the doorway by the use of his cane. He worked out a pair of spectacles from his overalls and eyed the sheriff, but still let his wife do the talking. “There was six of ’em. They trampled my perennials, and my poodle is gone. I haven’t seen Peanut Butter all morning, and he always comes inside to eat. That dog wouldn’t run way. Peanut Butter loves us.”

The sheriff studied the Polaroid and scratched his chin. He opened and closed his eyes questioning the authenticity of the photo even though the Hamdens were in their eighties and harvested grain for thirty years before retiring. Modern computer technology was beyond them.

“Um, what time did they cross your property?”

“Six in the morning,” Bruce replied finally. “I was looking for Peanut Butter when those, those people skulked out of the woods. Who knows where they were really going? Look of troublemakers, that bunch, up to no good at all.”

Doris jumped back into the conversation. “I shouted at them when they cut right through my garden. Like they didn’t even watch where they were going.” She pointed at the heap of squashed watermelon, cucumbers and tomatoes. “Those bastards walked through the barbed fence without muttering a curse. They were dead. I smelled them, the wretched stinking people. Worse than a porch full of rotten jack-o-lanterns. Look at the picture, I got Bruce to snap it before they hid back into the woods.”

The sheriff refocused on the picture and let it sink in. The picture was in focus. The sun didn’t blur the horizon. It was obvious what Bruce had spotted in the woods. It was the only evidence that kept him from dismissing the Hamden’s as senile.
 

Four figures stood in the picture, even though two of them were barely in the photo. They each wore black suits, the clothing dirtied and torn. Their skin was what appalled him. Blackened. Decayed. Earthworms writhed from their cheeks and their mouths, their sockets deflated and caramel colored.
 

“You don’t believe what you see, but it’s there all right,” she said, poking her finger at the picture, trying to cement her argument. “Nobody would trust us if Bruce didn’t take that photo. He blasted a couple rounds from the shotgun in the air, and they didn’t react. They didn’t hurry off or duck. Weirdoes just kept walking the way they were going. They shore didn’t care none about us.”

The sheriff’s head ached. It didn’t make sense. “These men…
are dead
.”

“Thank goodness you agree! You have to find these people. Maybe it’s a prank someone’s pulling. It’s the best I could come up with.”

The shock of the photo wore off, though the sheriff wasn’t accustomed to this stretch of disbelief. The worst crime in Anderson Mills was vandalism at the local baseball stadium or a culprit stealing gas. “I’m taking this picture and calling headquarters. The next time someone crosses your property, don’t take the law into your own hands and bring out your gun. Lock yourself up in your house and call us, okay?”

“It’s not every day you see dead people crossing through your yard.” Doris ignored his suggestion. “Next time they trample through my garden, they’ll be lucky not to be shot for real.”

Jesus Christ,
O’Malley thought.
Find something better to do with your time.

He had a line of suspects in his mind. The dead didn’t walk or escape the grave, even though the figures in the picture looked to be straight from the cemetery. Someone was pulling a prank, as Doris suggested.
 

“Bored hick town,” he muttered under his breath. “Okay, Doris. I’ll have my men on the lookout for these people, but I think you hit the nail on its head by suspecting a bunch of kids did this. I apologize for your flowers. I’ll have the culprits’ parents buy you new ones—better ones, in fact.”

He entered his patrol car and called the report in to dispatch. “I’ve got a group of teenagers parading around town dressed up as dead men—and don’t ask, just report it. Have all patrols on the look out for these idiots.”

2

Wayne Brooks unlocked the doors and entered his business. Anderson Mills Deli Meats didn’t have any customers until the summer’s tourist industry was running full-force. He finished hiring four local teenagers to help him operate the place, the same kids on his roster as last summer and the summer before that. He managed the establishment with his wife, Melanie, for two and a half decades—as long as they’d been married. The chairs in the dining area were stacked on top of the tables with tarps draped over them to block out the dust. The salt and pepper shakers, metal napkin dispensers, plastic cups, forks, spoons and condiments were all in storage.
 

Four days before the grand opening, Wayne reminded himself.
 

The order for turkey, ham, roast beef and fresh vegetables were on their way this Friday. Today, he’d clean the bread oven, the walk-in fridge, and sanitize the bathrooms and the tiles in the dining area. The place wasn’t half as big as Mason’s Market Place, a restaurant that was miles up the road, but he cut the freshest, best-tasting meats in Anderson Mills. He was old enough now, in his mid-fifties, to earn his money during the summer so that he could take the rest of the year off. It wasn’t a dread to return to work, but it was giving up his free time to fish and chug beer at Silver Lake. The prime skin would be showing up soon in bikinis. The idea that those women would cross into his store again motivated him enough to start the day.