Coin-Operated Machines (19 page)

ANGEL

Angel had been on the track team in high school.  This was at a private school in Beverly Hills.  She won numerous trophies for the quarter-mile relay, but now that she was in her late forties, de-conditioned by drugs, alcohol, and unemployment, she was nearly vomiting after racing from the hotel after only traveling four blocks.  Brock's presence incited too many conflicting emotions.  The main conflict being that she hadn't changed one bit since the last time they were together in rehab.  Brock had cleaned up and was about to marry his old friend, Hannah.  His life looked pretty damn good.  She, on the other hand, had countless strings of failed, abusive relationships, and a mean cocaine addiction.  Her life looked pretty much like shit.

Angel
forced herself to keep up a jogging stride moving down the road.  She hoped to find a house, a bridge to hide under, or anything other place to stay out-of-sight.  She kept pace up until she was alerted by the car that pulled up to her.  It was a heavy-duty pick-up truck.  She was about to scream for her life when she noticed it was Dean, her boyfriend, behind the wheel.  He too had been delivered into this place of dangerous confusion.  He gave her a kind smile while pulling up next to her.  The man was like her, a washed up Hollywood producer whose drug fix became number one over everything else.  They were both hopeless. 

"Hop in
," Dean invited.  "We're getting out of here right now."

Angel
accepted the offer and stepped up into the truck.  Angel explained to him what happened to her since they were split up. Dean kept quiet.  He drove on, staring out at all corners of the area to ensure their safety. 

"Can you believe Brock's here?"

Dean shook his head.  No, he couldn't believe it. 

"What's wrong
with you?"  The vibe Dean cast was disconcerting.  The life had been taken from him, it seemed.  "Did something happen to you?  Are you hurt?"

Angel
couldn't remember much about the last time they were together beyond going unconscious when the man with the golden axe attacked them while they were looking for their coke hook-up.  The hook-up was a guy named Seth who was supposed to provide them a fun day at the local hotel once they were done with business. "A spa day," or as they liked to call it, "a snow day."  The meet-up never happened.  Seth couldn't be found.

"Nothing happened to me,"
Dean insisted, making a left turn into the road that led into the woods.  The branches cast moving shadows over both of their faces.  "I'm fine.  I'm okay.  I'm scared like you, is all."

Angel kept quiet.  She
knew about Dean's mood swings.  He could be reaching to hug her one moment then swinging his hand to hit her the next.  "I'm glad you're okay, Dean.  Thank God you're here.  I don't know where I'd be without you."

When she st
roked his leg, he stiffened up.  He'd been jerked from deep thought.  "Are you sure you're okay?"

Dean
snapped at her, clutching the wheel white-knuckled.  "How many times do I have to fucking tell you, I'm fine.  I'm a-okay.  So quit asking me.  Shut up."

Angel scooted away from
him towards the car door.  She clutched the handle, wondering if she should bail herself out and start running.  She had no reason to stay with him beyond an easy coke-connection, and she hadn't had the cravings since entering Blue Hills. 

Sensing her change of heart,
Dean apologized. "Listen, I'm a bit weird right now.  It's been hell.  I'm sure it's been hell for you too.  I'm sorry I got angry.  I only want to get out of here."

"Me too," Angel said, though meek
ly.  She still harbored the dreadful feeling something was different about Dean that shouldn't be different.  "Let's just get out of here."

Driving down the wooded road, they were
quiet for a time until Dean spoke up again.  "I've learned a few things about what's happening here."

"Like what?"

Dean cleared his throat.  His eyes were buggy while surveying the woods.  Sometimes he was straight-faced, then he jerked in shock seeing something in the distance she couldn't locate.  "I've been following that man around.  The one who attacked us.  The one with the axe."

"I remember him."

"He does things to make us the way we are."

"
What does he do?"

"He alter
s our bodies.  The dead talk to him and tell him how to do it.  He splits us open when we're not awake.  He gets inside of us, Angel, and modifies us.  He makes it so we need money to survive.  But why do it in the first place?  Who's benefiting from altering us like that?  Nobody," he cackled under his breath, "except for the dead.  They're the ones doing this.  I don't know why because it doesn't matter." Under his breath, "
Only one thing matters
."

Spinning the wheel, the truck
suddenly shot to the side of the road.  Dean slammed the brakes, and without a seatbelt, she struck her nose against the dashboard.  Her head exploded with a nagging and burning sensation. Her eyes clouded up with purple blotches.  She was dizzy and disorientated.  Dean was garbling nonsense under his breath.  He was talking to no one, giving himself instructions aloud, then seizing her by the throat, pushing her up against him, his face twitching with maniacal ambitions. 

"You saw
what that axe man did to those people.  He ripped it right out of their backs and pulled it right out.  I know what's inside the box.  I know what's inside of you, Angel!  I NEED IT!"

Angel came to once she caught the knife shine in his
hand.  What Dean had pulled out from underneath the seat.  He raised it up, the blade aimed downwards to delve into her back. Defending herself, she managed to jiggle the door handle and took a freefall backwards.  Scooping herself up with her hands after hitting the ground, her feet propelled her forward.  She created as much distance from Dean as possible.

Escaping ten yards, she was halted by the cutting howl that erupted from within the truck.  She turned around, intending to achieve a brief glimpse
of her boyfriend.  Seeing him, she was compelled to hurry back to the truck.  Angel was horrified and astounded.  A gulf of blood fired out of the driver's side window as if blasted from a high powered hose.  What confused her was the sound of metal clanging, of coins clashing together, as they pinged against one other. 

Ignoring the blood and its origin,
Angel lunged for the money, stealing a bloody handful in each hand, before the coins gained a life of their own.  Moving, shifting, traveling, they were drawn by an invisible force into the woods.  Further on down the road, copper, nickel, and bronze specks were diminishing flecks of light and refractions.  The money in her hands slipped between the cracks of her fingers, flying up, and then coming back down only to be dragged into the woods and sucked into the distance. 

Angel
remembered the quarter firing out of James's forearm back at the hotel room.  She turned to the car, the side door leaking red from it's bottom crack.  The windows had shattered.  The coins had acted as bullets, and there was Dean's head turned inside out, a blob of pink pulp and skull shards.  Both his eyes had been minced into strings of meat.  She navigated the gory work of what used to be a man and noticed how his chest had also spat out the money from inside of him.  His fingers, bent in tension, were split in half.  His arms were diced and riddled with wounds.  All of him was ruined. 

Angel
backtracked from the truck.  She was shaking her head in denial, unable to breathe, choking on the images that would forever be a cruel stamp in her mind.  Awkwardly putting her feet down, she stumbled and fell to the ground.  She was weak now, literally unable to move.  She tipped onto her side, laying down in the middle of the road, and the sleep she once experienced in the hotel took hold of her once again.

FOOT WORK

Brock asked James, "Are you sure you know where this guy lives?"

They had walked
for what seemed many miles.  Every block showcased another lifeless body who couldn't come up with enough money to stay alive.  Brock was growing leery of the surroundings, a residential area where he caught shifts of movement within houses.  He knew others were alive watching them, sizing them up of worth.  Everybody in this town was a criminal or a thief. 

Murdered victims littered
the roads as well.  Stinking bodies.  Victims with their throats slit, and others with a large hole in their backs the shape of a box.  James would say aloud who they were and what they did for a living as simple condolences. 

"That was Margaret Cha
uffer; she used to play the organ at the Methodist church.  Tim Hanover was the deputy sheriff.  Linda Evanson sold used cars alongside her husband Mike.  That's little Wendy Milford. I only know her because she sold me Girl Scout cookies."

James
bent down next to the next female body up ahead, turning her over and gasping in shock.  "What are you doing here, Nora?"

Nora had received an axe wound
to the face, what opened up her sinus cavity, both her eyes wide as if seeing the blade come down moments before it hit home.  James pet the tangles of her dyed, platinum blonde hair.  "You came here because they tricked you, didn't they?  Why did they do that to you?  Why couldn't they leave you alone?"

Brock lowered down next
to him, but the man was shoved him away.  "Back off.  This is my sister.  She doesn't live here.  She had nothing to do with this.  They," sobbing hard, "
they tricked her into coming here
."

Brock
stood back, letting the man mourn without interruption.  "That's how they brought me here too."

The words
did nothing to console James.  Brock didn't blame James for needing a moment.  Brock averted his attention to the local houses on the block and caught a strange sight.  Many of the trees had the steel square and slot on them.  So did garage doors, windows, doors, and in patches of lawns, stamped into the dirt.  The road had many of them too, and Brock was stumped as to there purpose. 

Things were changing, and he couldn't help but rouse
James from his moment.  "We really should get moving.  I don't like what I'm seeing one bit."

James
kept crying, his head against Nora's chest.  He was trying to soothe himself.  He refused to accept his sister was deceased. 

"I'm sorry,
James, but I don't like what I'm seeing here.  The sooner we get to that man's house and get some answers, the better."

"I can't leave her,"
James whispered, rocking her body in his arms.  "We can't beat this place.  We just can't.  We're up against so much we don't understand."

"What if this continues outside
of Blue Hills?  What if more people keep coming here?  Other loved ones and friends of people will die too. They have my fiancé, and they've taken over my sister.  Who else will they take, James?  Eventually everybody."

"We can't win,"
James said in resignation.  He glared up at him with seething eyes.  "Quit lying to yourself, Brock.  This is something stronger than all of us.  Beyond our help."

"Then I'll die fighting
.  I'll die looking for Hannah.  I don't care."

The wind picked up.  Brock
caught an acrid whiff of burning flesh.  It was real, not the incorporeal matter he'd come upon previously.  Someone had set fire to a body.  He caught a tower of smoke filter up through the woods miles off. 

James
left his sister on the street, suddenly afraid to be near her.  He pointed a shaky finger at her body.  Brock eyed the dead woman many moments before he noticed the square of steel on her neck the size of a rubber eraser with a slit in the center. 

"That wasn't there moments ago,"
James said in a hushed voice.  "I didn't see it happen, and I sure as hell didn't hear it happen.  It just appeared.  No cause.  No reason."

Brock pointed up the road.  "
We need to get moving.  Something's changing, and I don't want to be out in the open when this reaches its full potential."

"You're right,"
James agreed, finding himself again.  He took the first steps up the road.  "The axe man's place isn't too much further.  Maybe half a mile."

It was then t
he words emanated from the sky.  They were projected with a bass resonance that shook everything, including the leaves from the trees.  "
Die fighting/die you will/death is ours to give to you/try and fight us/you will surely writhe in the agonies of hell/so the real game will begin /play our games/for hell has grown tiresome/killing life is what we do now/so die fighting/die in our name/die playing our games.
"

Death tainted the
air.  The burnt flesh fog reeked.  Brock thought of hundreds, perhaps thousands of bodies fouling up the air.  It was like a gas breathing up from the ground.  Pockets of earth exploded in dirt clods and tufts all around the area, spitting out thick plumes of yellowish vapor.  Then up from the holes came the gurgling, boiling, popping black oil. 

Now
, they wouldn't walk to Chuck Durnham's house.

They
would run.

Brock heard James blather directions to the house under shaky breath.  They raced on, turning from one residential road to the next.  They made a turn and were running on a back road.  "
The man...he...lives...off the beaten...path...the house is alone...his father's old property...
"

The drumming of his pulse in his ears couldn't erase the sound of the earth spitting up more gas and
the mushrooming of that black oil that stank of so much death.  Brock sucked in more air because he had to, his lungs sharp with stabbing pains.  His shins, knees, and back delivered the ache of pulled muscles and overworked joints.  He had no choice but to keep going for Hannah's sake.  Brock fought the pain.

The road was clear of any
victims until they found the lone truck parked in the middle of the road with the shape of a person laying in the road ahead of the vehicle.  He noted the congealed blood circle on the road, though it took longer to notice it with the sky growing darker as night was closer to falling.  Glass fragments were mixed in the red.  He was confused by the drags in the blood, as if many tiny fingers had dragged themselves for yards until they faded and disappeared altogether. 

The corpse slumped in the driver's side persuaded him to quit be
ing a crime scene investigator.  Seeing the grizzly damage of the inside out man, Brock moved on in repulsion.  Brock sought the other body on the ground. 

James
had eyed the corpse longer in the car longer than Brock did.  "
Jesus
."

"What do you think it means?"

"I'm not sure, but by his wounds, looking at his face and the outward punctures in his throat and chest, I'd say," James stared at his forearm wrapped in the makeshift bandage, "it's what happened to my arm, but to the hundredth power."

"You're saying coins were sucked out of his body?"

Brock watched James pivot his head through the pane-less window, then he looked up at the truck's ceiling.  Curious about what he was doing, Brock stood beside the man, watching James pick out the coins wedged in the ceiling.  He handed Brock a few quarters and dimes, and what James clutched was absorbed into his skin instantly. 

James
blew a sigh of relief, "You know what that meant?"

"T
he coins sinking into your skin?"

"Yeah," he said, staring at his empty hand stained in red.  "It means I was damn close to being turned off
. I keep forgetting I'm like everybody else."

Brock
pulled some coins off of the ceiling and said, "Why don't you take this too?"

"Hold onto
it.  If I fall asleep, you can use it on me."  James's eyes were doleful.  "There might come a time when falling asleep won't be such a bad thing, you know, if this visit at Chuck's house doesn't go so well."

"Don't say that."  Brock couldn't imagine surviving this on his own
.  "I'm not leaving you behind."

"You say that now, but you're not one of us."

"Hannah could be, and if that's true, then I might as well be in the same predicament because I'm not leaving without her."

Brock decided to stop himself before they go
t into a more heated argument.  He was exhausted from running, and they still had more ground to cover.  He made it about five yards before he learned the body in the road ahead was Angel.  He rushed to her, then lowered to his knees to get a better look at her.  Brock scanned her body for damage and was grateful she was unharmed beyond her condition of forced sleep.  He dug into his pocket for change in his pocket when James stopped him by seizing his wrist. 

"Think about what you're doing."

"I'm saving my sister."

"She trie
d to trap us in the hotel room.  She can't be trusted."

"She's not herself.  Not only is she on drugs, she's terrified."

"If you want to take your sister out of here, you have to let her rest.  I know it sounds strange, but she'll run from you again.  What if we do find a way out, and you can't find her later on?  This is a big town.  Lots of foothills and places to hide.  We could be killed trying to play search party."

Brock's eyes stayed on Angel's down
y white face.  Her pallor seemed to fade by the second.  He paced back and forth, unable to decide what to do.  "Then what do you want me to do, just leave her here?"

James
came to his senses.  "Okay, no, we can't leave her.  I wasn't saying that.  I don't know what I'm saying.  I only left my sister behind because she's obviously dead."

"How far are we from
the axe guy exactly?"

"
Maybe a quarter of a mile."

"Then I'll carry her the rest of the way."

"That's a long ways for you to lug a hundred plus pound body."

"I'm not doing it by myself."

James shook his head.  "Hell no."  He searched the trees, the road, everywhere, trying to produce a better solution.  James saw the answer tipped over between a series of trees.  "It looks like neither of us will have to carry her after all."

"I can't believe I'm doing this."

"Believe i
t." James marched ahead of Brock.  "Hurry it up.  Why am I the one rushing you this time?"

"Because,"
Brock stared down at Angel's body piled into a grocery cart, her arms and legs jutting out the top like a lifeless mannequin, "...because my sister's in a fucking shopping cart, that's why."

Brock pushed her forward
.  He let the argument go.  This was his sister.  He'd seen her this way before, even worse.  It was strange seeing a woman in her early fifties like this as an adult.  She still didn't have her life together. 

You didn't have your life together. 

Before you became a panel talent judge, you were in her predicament.  You could've been in a shopping cart with a pair of idiots pushing you around.

I'll get you out of
this, Angel.  I'll get Hannah out of this too. 

Somehow.

The sky was pitch black.  The woods did nothing but darken the way.  Their only guide was the crunch of loose asphalt under their feet.  The sounds carried by the wind were constants.  Single words were stretched on to be spoken for minutes, matched against hundreds of other words.  They were sweet nothings, divulgences of random details, or statements spoken from scatter-brained madmen.  The words swarmed together, leaving them listening and waiting for something that would happen or wouldn't happen.  

"It's not going to stop, is it?" 
James called out over the throng of voices.  "We were right earlier when we said something's on the horizon.  The words play on the air, but not for this long.  They might not stop this time."

"It's as if they
know we're onto them.  They're trying to scare us."

James
shouted with all his lung capacity, "Well, it's working!  I'm fucking scared!"

Brock kept
peering down at Angel.  He caught slivers of her pale skin in whatever moonlight filtered down to them.  He kept pushing her along, praying this would convince her he cared about her enough that he deserved a second chance to be her brother.  But now it wasn't about Angel, or James, or Hannah, or himself. The man with the golden axe's home lingered nearby.  James pointed the house out and kept his words hushed. 

"I don't know if he's home."

"No lights on."

"Doesn't matter.  I swear that man isn't a human being anymore.  He comes out of nowhere to get you, and w
hen he does, you wake up bloody."