Protect All Monsters (22 page)

His aide today was Grace Mooney. She was as professional as she was honest with her concerns. “We’ve been increasingly dipping into our reserves, and the number of guests haven’t changed.”

He couldn’t explain in full detail to Grace why this might be happening in fear of a bad reaction. Grace had heard about the secret tunnel. Word was spreading fast, the building concern right behind it serving as a double shot of hype. Someone was either stealing the stock or their guests were eating double their normal intake.

“It’s something to look into,” was all he could say.

She was frustrated and needed answers. “I’ve worked with you for several years now. Should I be concerned? Just level with me. I heard you’ve been having people snoop around and investigate an uprising. I’ve also heard the island project might be terminated.”

He sidestepped the questions, “Everything’s fine, Grace.”

She shoved him between two semithawed dead female bodies on hooks. “Don’t you dare lie to me!”

She was in tears, her jaw locked. “I’m your friend, so tell me the truth. I won’t blab it to everyone and raise a panic. I just want to know when it’s my time to die.”

He leaned against a shelf of pickled fingers and eyeballs and tried to figure out what to tell her. “The people I can trust keep dying. If Brenner knew what I knew, he’d want me dead. Yes, the head of the PSA wanted me to investigate an uprising effort on the island. He also warned me the island project was on its way to being shut down. When and how, I can’t say. Communication has been terminated despite my best efforts to contact them. They’ve put this all on my shoulders.”

Grace reached over and held his hands, comforting him. “How do you think they’ll terminate the project?”

The future seemed like such an impossibility. “It’s doesn’t matter how. We’re dead in the name of secrecy. They’ve let us serve their purpose. They’ll murder us for our troubles as a thank you.”

She absorbed the truth. “I guess that’s America’s track record. We burn bridges and wonder why other countries hate us so much.”

“I’ve worked hard for them since I was a teenager, and now I’m in my thirties. I haven’t dated anyone, really. I’ll never be married. Have kids. Hold down a normal job. Every time I close my eyes at night to sleep, I always see a dead body, another murder victim.” He kicked the shelf and knocked over a jar of pickled human livers, “
Or this fucking stock of human organs
!”

She shared in his experience. “They enlisted me after my term for the army was up. I’ve been here almost fifteen years. I’ve had best friends—good friends—all die on this island. No one is protected. Brenner treats us like we’re expendable, but you have to side with the right people, even if it means taking a risk.”

He eyed her carefully, sensing what she was getting at. “Who are you siding with?”

She removed her .28 pistol and aimed it at his head. “Forgive me, Richard, but Brenner knows all about you. He’s pissed you’ve sided with the PSA over him. The island won’t be destroyed, Brenner’s assured me. He promised me we’d escape, and I’d be safe regardless of the outcome. Brenner said once the secret tunnels have been explored, the PSA would change their minds and keep the island. The PSA like to make idle threats—Cold War syndrome, right? Keep us on our toes, and we’ll be good little workers.”

He kept his hands at his chest and pleaded to her. “Brenner’s murdered the people who’ve sided with him before. Does that mean anything to you? You can’t trust him. If I’m expendable, then you can be liquidated just as easily. Think about what you’re doing, please. This isn’t like the other times the PSA have scared us into submission. The monsters have never acted like this before. My gut is telling me James Sorelli is up to something. We thought we had the monsters satisfied, but they’re more ravenous than ever. Staff incidents have tripled. You said so yourself, our stock has been used up faster. It’s inevitable an uprising will occur.”

“Brenner isn’t afraid, and yet you’re terrified,” Grace replied coldly. “It’s a matter of personal safety. He can protect me. I’m not so sure you can.”

“You know who Addey Ruanova is, don’t you?”

“Yeah, the crazy bitch who escaped the dead pit. And Brenner knows about her and Cynthia Wells and Todd Lamberson and the handful of losers you’ve gathered to investigate the monsters. They’ll be dealt with accordingly. Brenner considers it treason what you’ve accomplished.”

“I’m trying to save lives! Brenner would sacrifice anybody if it meant maintaining the island. This is his life. He won’t give up the island. He doesn’t have an escape plan for anybody.”

He then argued one of his bigger points. “When Addey escaped, she stumbled upon the secret access. Two vampires, one we suspect was James Sorelli, were hiding in the corridor. There were rooms in the corridor as well, and she found a room of vampires, werewolves and the dead all hooked up to IV tubes together. What it means, Brenner doesn’t know. I don’t know. This uprising isn’t as simple as we think. They’ve been working on something, and that’s just the beginning. Fifty years is a long time to conspire.”

Grace was unmoved. “Yes, it is, and that’s why I have to be on the right side to survive. Brenner can fight to the death, but you, Richard, are too much of a humanitarian. You comfort the new recruits on the way here, and you sympathize with them. They’re our livestock, not people. They’re soldiers, workers, warm bodies, prisoners on a chain gang, but they’re not people. As long as I’m not one of them, I could give a shit about what happens to any of the other scumbags here.”

“You’ve become just like him.” He lost hope in reasoning with Grace. “Brenner has impressed you with his ideology. Well, I’m not like you or him. People are people, and they have rights. You do whatever the fuck you’re going to do to me, Grace. You’re not a friend of mine. You’re nothing.”

She flipped the gun around and struck the butt end against his skull. “I’m not going to execute you—”

Stunned, he faltered onto his knees and soon received another blow to the back of his head.

This one rendered him unconscious.

“—I’m going to feed you to the wolves.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

Good news visited Brenner twice in the same hour. Grace Mooney had detained Richard Cortez and delivered him to the wolf enclosure.
That’s one hell of a rude awakening, huh, Richie?
The bastard had kept secrets from him, secrets that not only threatened the future of the island, but his future too. The island was his salvation, and his secrets could be his own here. The blood was his to steal, the organs for him to devour, and nobody had a clue what kind of a monster he really was. But the PSA had known what he was since birth, and that’s why he was here.

The other bit of good news: the tunnel wall had been leveled, and a new corridor was discovered. He was summoned by Henry Dalley to return. They’d found compartments and suspicious rooms, but no vampires. He cut through the living quarters and the wall Addey Ruanova had escaped through and entered the access. It was blocked by upraised tables so nobody could view their work, though he removed them with ease. Everybody knew what they’d come upon. He couldn’t hide the truth any longer. Talk of an uprising was rampant throughout the facility.

He edged down the roughly chiseled corridor, the steps awkward and uneven. Studio lights had been propped to illuminate the way, blaring their harsh beams. Addey’s dried blood trail served as a guide. The dust was settling, the air thick with white mortar. The crew waited with protective masks dangling at their necks, many smoking a cigarette or drinking a beer as they enjoyed a break. Hard work merited such pleasures, Brenner believed.
You give somebody what they want, and they’ll do just about anything you tell them to do.

Henry Dalley, a stout man in his fifties who oddly looked like the Monopoly cartoon character, and Marcus Kulson, a five-foot-tall African American wearing a Chicago Bulls jersey, both approached him.

Henry briefed him. “The wall came down. We’ve cleared out the debris. What you have here is another hallway. The rooms are a concern. They too have been recently emptied.”

Brenner was astonished by the length of the hall. It was roughly carved, the rock walls and ceiling a makeshift cave. Blood spattered the floor and the walls, a mix of dried and fresh. The rooms were the size of modest bedrooms. Some were like cubbyholes. Each was cleared of belongings.

“They left in a hurry, sir,” Marcus reported. “Every room has been evacuated.”

“I can smell them.” Brenner was repulsed at the stench of abandonment. “But there’s something new I’ve never experienced before. So strange. I can’t place the tang in the air.”

Henry and Marcus shared a concerned look and kept silent.

Brenner pointed at the iron door at the end of the hall. “Has anybody opened that yet?”

The two cohorts argued, and then Henry said, “We’ll have to dynamite that sucker. It’s too strong to kick down.”

“Is that such a good idea? Consider the structural integrity.”

“It’s safe. Just use the right amount of dynamite, and you’ve got yourself an opened door.”

Brenner pointed to the living quarters wing. “Clear everybody out of here. Only necessary personnel can stay.”

Whup-chink!

He gawked at the ceiling, his attention stolen by the odd metallic sound. “What the hell was that?”

A steel wall slammed down where they’d excavated through, and it pinned three workers down by their torsos. They wiggled and writhed, coughing up blood.

“We’re trapped!” Henry shouted, losing himself to panic. “We walked right into it!”

Zip! Zip! Zip!

Three saw blades shot from the ceiling, fired by an unknown device. One split Henry down the middle. He landed in two halves, twitching, sputtering, and unable to form words once his jaw, tongue, and lips were separated. The other two blades whizzed through Marcus’s neck and uprooted his head. Four bounces and the head rested in the corner, draining blood.

Brenner remained still.

The devices firing the saw blades were a one-time occurrence, he deduced, after staying in place for many moments.

“We gave you what you wanted,” he reasoned to whoever could be near and listening in, snarling the words with ice-cold contrition. “It satisfied me, so why couldn’t it satisfy you?”

He was afraid to move. The men pinned under the steel door stopped thrashing. They were dead.

Brenner couldn’t resist.

Three veins ripped out of his arms, thick as chains and as long as the hallway corridor. The ends of his veins opened as jagged-toothed maws suctioned the blood from the floor with crude slurping noises. Then the snakes invaded eyeballs and emptied the brains and chest cavities of precious blood and proteins.

I’ll need my strength.

His body returning to normal, Brenner studied the corridor again. There were no vents or grates to slip through. The rooms offered nothing but four walls. Air would be used up quickly.

Nobody’s here to see you as you are.

He checked the door that divided him from their lair. The veins ripped out of his forearms, each encased in sinewy pink material and bundles of arteries. The macabre lock pick slipped into the keyhole. The mechanism jangled, and moments later, after a series of meticulous movements of his veins, it unlocked.

He dared to ford the next corridor.

The traps had only begun.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Addey toiled to set up the dinner buffet line in time. Tables had been cleaned and new stations created. A fire pit had been erected outside. Herman was assigned the task of stacking the wood and piecing together the grill. Wood-roasted pizzas were on the menu alongside buffalo wings, fried potato skins, barbecue ribs and T-bone steaks. The food was on the table for display when a scream disturbed everything. A woman had fallen; her leg had snapped at the knee. The foot was pointed backward. Her cheek had come undone, the triangle-shaped flap revealing slick muscle tissue beneath.

“Help me, please—please!” The woman was hysterical. She began clawing out her curly white hair and taking chunks of the scalp with it. The skin peeled like an orange. “Take me to the med wing now!”

Addey ran to help her. “H-how can I help you? What can I do?”

“PICK—ME—UP!”

Hands bared of skin extended out to her. “I don’t want everybody to see me like this.”

The woman was practically melting, yanking, tearing and removing every sinew and bolt of skin from her body, as if she just now realized she was a living corpse. The woman wanted nothing to do with the cloak of flesh now that it had expired.

Addey did what she could, wrapping the woman in a blue tablecloth and picking her up. She looked up and down the outside dining area and spotted a white sign with a red cross.

The med wing!

“I’ll get you fixed up,” she promised, trying to steady her voice but failing. “Stay calm. Stay still. I’ll take care of you.”

She raced through the recreational area, lugging the heavy load. The attempt failed as the woman kept shrieking and mutilating herself. The dead stopped playing volleyball, crocheting or lazing in lawn chairs to observe Addey darting across the resort area. They stared with a mix of reverence and fear. That could be them any day now, many of them thought.