Coin-Operated Machines (23 page)

UNDER ATTACK

"
Graaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
!"  James's howled, then his screeches abruptly ended.  Hannah's terrified, blood-curdling peals of terror followed Brock to the ground as he was pelted by sheets of blood.  An arm, a leg, a head, a torso, every appendage from James's body smacked into Brock.  The man's extremities were spring-ejected from James's body, the stumps made of sprung steel coils.  Out James's back, a black box was ejected. The top opened up like a wall safe and coins jangled free onto the floor.  The money was drawn up the stairs, sailing in the air and then fired right through the ceiling. 

"Brock
! Watch out, watch out, watch out!" Hannah kept warning him, her body bent against the far end of the wall terrified.  "Don't let the coins hit you!"

Brock w
as replaying James's dismantling again in his mind.  He realized whatever had grabbed him from behind had caused the screw to shift the wrong way.  The mechanical system in James's body reacted accordingly and dismantled the man. 

What was worse was who had tossed him to the ground. 

Angel.

Her eyes were catatonic and empty of thought
and function.  The way she moved was like a living puppet.  She was compelled by another master. 

"Why are you d
oing this?"  Hannah demanded Angel.  She helped Brock to his feet as they both cowered to the opposite end of the room away from the enemy.  "Stay away from us."

Before Hannah could completely
guide him to the door in the hallway, Brock reclaimed the power drill.  "Angel, it's us.  Don't you remember me?  I'm your brother."
Brock pointed at her hair, hands, and clothes in horror.  Black oil stained them.  The colors of death had seeped into her skin.  It stained her lips and eyes.  "It's like Chuck said earlier. The dead were controlling him, and now they're controlling Angel."

They backed into the other door in the basement that didn't lead upstairs
.  Brock urged Hannah inside and then threw it shut.  Brock locked it behind him.  "I have to remove the box out of your back."

"
But you saw what happened to James."

"Yes,
I know, but it only failed because I was disturbed.  The screws can't be jostled as they're coming out.  You said you've seen Chuck at work, and that's what happened when he screws up.  The people's body parts fall to pieces."

"But yo
u don't know what you're doing.  How do you know any of that is right?"

Before
Brock could argue his point, out from Hannah's shoulder blade shot out a dime.  It fired straight out across the room, nearly hitting Brock dead on.  It burst through the ceiling, suddenly heading to its own destination. 

The p
ain staggered Hannah to the floor.  Brock bent down and lifted up her shirt.  "We don't have a choice.  We have to get this box out of you, or those coins are coming out of you like bullets."

Hannah griped in pain, mincing curses
under her breath.  "Fucking do it then."

Brock traced his hands along her shoulder blade and located the bolt.  Gearing up to remove it, the door was split by a golden axe from the other side.
  The axe head gleamed momentarily before it was jerked back and disappeared back to the other side.  Hannah wouldn't stay still, so Brock whispered to her, "I love you.  You have to stay calm.  I'm not leaving you here.  I will get you out of here alive.  Just hang on."

The words lightened her distress,
though Hannah was still shivering in fear.  Anticipation had its way with her body.  She exploded in a fit of curses when a quarter shot out of the sole of her shoe, the coin levitating, then spinning from side-to-side, before it fired up into the ceiling. 

Brock pinned his free h
and on her back, centering Hannah.  He began to work, doing his best to block out his lover's screams.   Splitting skin and scraping bone, the first bolt was edging upwards. 

The axe struck again, claiming a narrow triangle of wood from the door that was
slowly turning into cheap cardstock against the force of the tool. 

Blood spilling down her back, the bolt came loose and tinged against the floor, rolling into the
heaping pile of corpse pieces spread all across the room. 

Brock located the other bolt. 

Three more strikes, the axe broke a square-panel.  Brock could see Angel's vacant face at work in his peripheral vision.  Both her hands were raising the axe to plunder the door into smithereens. 

"
Braaaaaaaaaaaawck!
"  Angel howled when a quarter shot out of her forearm and her hamstring simultaneously.  "Hurry before another coin shoots out of me!"

Hannah
was squirming, abating her pain so much so that Brock was having difficulty keeping the drill bit straight. 

"You can't fidget
.  I know it hurts.  You have to hold still."

"You
don't know shit.  You don't have this box inside of you!  You're not bleeding!"

"Okay, I don't know shit.  Fair enough. 
Now stay still
."

The axe struck again.  T
he door frame was almost half gone.  One more swing, and Angel could reach around and open the door from the other side. 

Brock repeated himself, shouting above his lungs, "I don't know shit, but you're staying still or you'll end up like
James!"

P
ressing down hard on her back, Brock began removing the screw.  Inches up from the bone, the axe shattered another long sliver of the door.  Angel's hand reached through it, twisting the doorknob.  Angel jerked the door open.  Brock kept at work, staying still, staying calm, and unshaken.  Angel was standing above him now, raising the axe up high.  Moments from taking the swing, Brock almost had the bolt free.  He couldn't keep his eyes off Hannah's back if he was going to finish this.  Any moment, Angel would be bringing down the axe over his head.

Throwing aside the
final screw that came loose, Brock dropped the drill and kicked out his legs, tripping up Angel who fell backwards. She lost the axe, and Brock suddenly had an idea.  Reclaiming the power drill, he spun Angel onto her back and pressed his knees up against her back. 

"Hannah, help me
hold her down!  Hannah, are you okay?  Say something."

Hannah
didn't respond.  Her body remained on the floor unmoving.  He couldn't check on Hannah until he was finished with Angel.  His sister could pick up that axe again and take a killing swing if he didn't do this first.

"Hannah, wake up!  Are you alive?  Please be alive!"

Lifting up Angel's shirt, Brock tested for the screw on her shoulder blade and drove the drill head into her back.  Knees anchoring her down, his one arm pinning her still, he went to work, praying under his breath that Hannah was okay and that this too would work on his sister. 

"Hannah, please answer me!"

Legs cramping, his arms losing their strength, and terrified Hannah didn't survive the crude surgery, that she died because of his mistake, that she died like James did, he tried his best to finish Angel as fast as he could. 

A lamp in the corner shattered. 

Angel bled from her deltoid.  A long slender opening like a gummy fish mouth bled. 

The coins are coming out of her too.

Hurry!

Brock
was cut on the side of the neck by a flying dime, the equivalent of shaving at twenty-five miles an hour.  Brock stiffened, his face shrinking in pain as he began working out the second screw. 

"Hannah, I love you," he said, afraid she was dying and he wasn't saying anything to her. 
Brock had no choice but to save Angel, or else the coins firing out of her would not only kill her but kill him too.  "If you're awake, answer me."

Nothing. 
Lifting up the screw, the last jerk of the power drill, the bolt came free.  Brock was thrown backwards into the wall from what burst out of Angel. 

NOT ANYWHERE CLOSE TO SAFE

Black blood burst everywhere.  It covered him and the dead bodies littering the floor.  All of the liquid was spewing out of Angel's back.  After the tide was finished, Angel was left a pale, flaccid thing bunched up in the corner of the room.  Hannah had her face to the ground and remained non-reactive.  Before Brock could process the events, the room began sizzling and stinking of burning hair and flesh.  The deep down decay of the oldest corpses in history.  The end result was a room filled up with yellow fog.  The dead corpses in the room began to dissolve, and in the end, they turned into the same black mephitic mess he had witnessed during this whole ordeal.  The walls began to corrode, the wood giving to the black's heat. 

Brock
lifted Hannah to her feet.  She was roused awake.  "
Uhhhhhhhh
."

"We have to get moving.  C
an you walk?"

Hannah clutch
ed her head.  "Y-eah, I think so."

Angel had a long pink scar going down her back in the shape of a box.  His plan had worked.  The box itself, made of steel, had been cast across the room, purged from her body. 

Hannah
double-timed it once she caught the black oil oozing up the walls, eating through them, and still devouring the dead bodies into red, purple, and yellow paste.  Overhead, chunks of the ceiling came down, bringing with them sizzling pieces of wood and paneling. 

"Get out of here
! I'm carrying Angel.  Don't turn back, Hannah.  I want you out of here!"

Brock
urged Hannah towards the hall where she had to overstep Chuck Durnham's corpse.  She turned back to Brock, not wanting to leave him behind. 

Brock
shouted, "Just go! I'm right behind you."

He
shot towards the other side of the room, dodging puddles of boiling, frothy black.  Brock scooped up Angel, carrying her over his shoulder like a fireman would a victim in distress.  Hoisting her up, he muttered, "You were always a dainty little thing,
and thank God you are!
"

Half the room was missing,
it being a boiling pot of death.  Brock weaved and shuffled, nervous at how the ceiling kept creaking and breaking randomly.  Wallpaper was eaten through, the room so boiling hot.  It stank of infernal death, what kept clinging to him and filling every breath he struggled to take in.  The dead spoke, but one dead voice carried over the rest, and it was James's. 

"
Run/get out!/Escape before it's too late!
"

Other dead voices
overpowered James's words.  "
You'll escape and find yourself facing a worse death/a far worse fate/you will die a horrible merciless end/boiling to death will sound like nothing when you face the end when it does come!
"

Lunging through the door and
staggering into the hallway, his back and knees aching, Brock swore he wouldn't do a lick of physical work ever again in his life if he survived this terrible ordeal.  Rushing towards the stairs, he was stopped by a perilous, yet belittled voice.  It was Chuck, turning up his head ever so slightly and saying one last thing before dying, "
The big event's going to happen very soon/very soon/the big show is about to begin
."

Brock charged up the steps.  He was
determined not to end up as Chuck.  He could hear the axe man be broken down by the boiling oil sledge that engulfed him.

The
stairs collapsed one at a time.  Each one he stepped on broke moments after he treaded across it.  Brock blew out a grateful breath of air when he saw Hannah stand in the doorway upstairs.  She was holding the way out open.  Hannah reached out to pull him through, and he collapsed onto the front yard, unable to lug Angel's body an inch further. 

Brock
took in the words of the angry dead playing in the sky. 

Hannah helped him carry Angel as far away from the house as possible.  They both held an arm over Angel's shoulders, carrying her like a wounded solider.  Without speaking, they looked behind them as they moved and caught the house's roof collapse.  Every window shattered one-by-one.  The walls came next, then the very foundation was swallowed whole by the black oil that burned so hot they could feel its intensity against their backs. 

Working back towards the woods
, they kept on moving.  Brock said, "Chuck said one last thing before I escaped the house.  He said the big event is happening soon.  Whatever that means, I don't want to be around for it."

Ange
l coughed and whinnied in pain.  She was struck by a wicked jolt of agony.  She slipped from their grips, landing on all fours, and stared up at them in terror.  "Whu-what's happened?  Why am I here?  Why are you here?" 

"
Listen, Angel, I removed the mechanical device inside of you, and don't ask how.  There's no time.  You don't need coins in you to live anymore."

Hannah helped her up to h
er feet, and they began running as fast as they could.

"Where are we
going?"  Angel managed to speak out-of-breath.  "What's going to happen now."

Brock did his best to de
scribe the situation, everything Chuck explained to them as he was dying.  Then he said, "We're getting the fuck out of this town."

Angel
pointed up the road. "Up ahead in the road, it's not too far!  The bridge out of Blue Hill isn't far at all."

They were about to run when they noticed what was happening around them
. 

The
woods began to move.