Threnody (Book 1) (11 page)

A strident snarl followed by the horrific gnashing of teeth erupted from directly behind him.  The surge of adrenaline that assaulted his body threatened to cause his heart to explode as he whirled around, simultaneously trying to liberate the pistol from his waistband.  Less than two feet away from him was a former young lady with no obvious signs of injury.  Her cloudy eyes, gnashing mandible, and the ferocious intensity of her wild, flailing movements left no doubt she was infected, and made her look more like a starving, feral animal than anything previously human.  She snarled and snapped at him with brutal voracity, but much to the Reams’ relief, she remained securely belted into the driver’s seat of her eternally parked car.  As the adrenaline surge coursing through his veins ebbed and receded, he felt a slight pity for the abomination before him, oblivious to the simple restraint so cruelly preventing her union with the meal right in front of her.  Having seen no visible sign of bites or injuries, Reams wondered how the woman had become infected.  The implications were far too frightening to consider.

Without turning his back on the monster, Reams opened the driver’s side door and eased into the truck.

* * *

John heard the sickening wet thud of a corpulent, bloody hand contacting the glass pane in front of him.  His eyes concurrently registered the fact that the huge, bloated hand was attached to an abdominous thing that had once been a man weighing at least three hundred pounds.  Its shirt was torn open and now managed to cling to its precarious position by a lone button at the neck, making it look like a cape on some obese superhero
.
  Waves of skin flowing upon rivers of adipose combined with the unfaltering effect of gravity, giving the appearance of a flesh waterfall cascading down off the mountain of a man.  John briefly wondered if the thing before him suffered the same pained, lumbering waddle the former man undoubtedly possessed in life, and if there was even any noticeable difference in his gait, pre- and post-mortem.

Upon recognizing the live prey on the other side of the glass, the obese monster pulled back its plump, mangled lips revealing broken, discolored teeth that reminded John of those of a meth addict.  The repulsed look filling John’s eyes intensified as he watched dark, viscous drivel stretch lazily from the thing’s gaping maw to the decaying wattle dangling just below its innumerable chins.  The languid sound emanating from the monster’s fetid mouth came out as a strained, guttural groan, as though all the air from its last dying breath was being mercilessly compressed – forced out by the heft of its chest wall like the bellows of a concertina in the gargantuan hands of a giant.

John stood frozen with indecision and disgust as he gazed at the morbidly obese atrocity.  Having heard no noise and seen no movement inside the hangar, he was not prepared for such an encounter.  Quickly scanning the area, he realized the only way out the back of the hangar was a door located about ten feet behind the fat man-mountain.  Steeling his nerves, John quietly muttered, “You either deal with him or he’ll deal with you – it’s that simple.”

John shined his light around the small room that was largely obscured by the imposing fat man.  He was relieved when he saw no other danger lurking in the room but also concerned by the suboptimal view he was afforded.  He stood eye-to-eye with the thing, separated only by a plate of reinforced glass.  The door leading into the room was about six feet to his left.  John could see a nearly full water cooler, a long folding table, and a couple small metal chairs between the thing and the door.  At that moment, John heard a crack that he swore was gunfire followed by what sounded like a train horn, though the pulses from the horn seemed stationary and far too short and rhythmic to be actually coming from a train.

With no time to dwell on the new noise, John backed away from the window, keeping his eyes locked on those of the monster to ensure it didn’t lose interest. The massive creature stood with its frosted eyes fixed on the spot where John disappeared into the darkness.  Remaining obscured in the shadows, he slowly crept to the left toward the door, careful to avoid drawing the thing’s attention.  When he was immediately opposite the door he crouched down and inched forward out of the shadows.  The adipose thing on the other side of the glass did not notice John’s slow, deliberate movements as he reached for the doorknob. With sweat beading on his brow, he cautiously turned the knob until it made the telltale click indicating the deadlatch had disengaged.  Echoing through the immense structure, the noise was like a firecracker in John’s ears.  On the other side of the door John heard the unmistakable sound of chair legs sliding on the floor.  Assuming the monstrosity had shifted his attention toward the sound of the doorknob, John stood from his half-crouched position and pummeled through the door like a battering ram.

The fat thing let out a stertorous gurgle as it lumbered forward.  John – being both uninfected and about half of his pursuer’s weight – was already halfway around the folding table.  Seeing this, the huge man made an awkward attempt to redirect his movement toward John’s new position.  Even before the infection this would have likely proven an impossible feat for the morbidly obese man, and combined with the unavoidable effects of gravity, his hulking body listed dangerously to the right.  He teetered in a futile effort to maintain balance before crashing down hard onto the table.  The impact caused the table legs on one side to buckle, forcing the folding table into the wall and pinning John’s thighs in the process.  The searing pain John felt in his legs was almost unbearable, and he was certain his femurs were shattered.  He doubted he would be able gain enough leverage to extricate his legs from behind the table with the monster’s full weight pressed against it.  As he watched the fat thing’s hopeless efforts to get back to his feet, he didn’t see how it would be possible for the creature to get upright again. Even amid the pain taunting him with threats of unconsciousness, he could not help but picture Jabba the Hut lying there on the ground. 
De wanna wanga? Nay Jabba no babba.

John struggled feverishly against the table, trying desperately to free his legs as he felt the unmistakable sensation of someone grabbing his ankle. He wondered how Reams had known he needed help. 
He was supposed to stay in the truck and wait for me.
Looking down, his confusion was instantly erased as he stared into the single dead eye of a creature even more horrific than the fat bastard.  Its ensanguined face snarled and contorted as it pulled its upper body along the floor toward him.  The intestines that spilled from the severed thing were swollen to the size of liverwurst, leaving a colubrine trail that led back to its lower body about ten feet away.  The previously unnoticed cupric odor of the blood coating the floor – combined with that of the engorged, desiccating viscera – assaulted John’s senses, adding nearly uncontrollable nausea to the milieu of unpleasant sensations he was struggling to control.  As the half-man inched closer, it managed to improve its grasp on John’s ankle with its right hand.  Startled by the strength of its grip, he watched in stunned horror as the thing pulled itself forward with more speed than John thought possible.

Without pause, the creature used the forward momentum to bring its bared teeth toward John’s entrapped leg.  Seconds before it sank its shattered teeth into his leg, John became aware of the weight in his left hand.  He swung the crowbar down toward the monster’s head, making contact with its jaw just inside its open mouth.  There was a sickening crack as the force fractured its mandible right below the joint on each side.  The half-man tried in vain to claim the meal it had worked so hard for, but it no longer possessed any control over its lower jaw.  Disgusted, John watched as it tried to gnaw at his leg in much the same way an edentulous person would try in vain to eat a crisp apple.  As its viscid tongue worked furiously
to gain purchase on his leg, the feculent odor of its breath combined with the metallic smell of blood.  The cumulative effect proved too much for John to handle, and he heaved the bile from his stomach. Wiping the bitter residue from his mouth, he turned painfully and, with his right hand, brought the claw hammer down onto the thing’s head with a resonant thump.  He felt the grip around his ankle go slack as the groping tongue briefly stiffened against his leg before going limp.  With that last sensation, John leaned forward and vomited once more.

* * *

Sliding the key into the ignition, Reams was relieved when the truck engine turned over and roared to life effortlessly.  “I love Toyota,” he exclaimed as he shifted the truck into gear.  With the power out, he intended to simply smash through the wooden arm of the parking lot gate.  As he snaked through the small lot toward the gate he saw the pristine, red late model Mazda RX-7 that had been the pride and joy of Manuel, a guy who worked in the other maintenance shop at the airport.  Reams thought of all the times Manuel boasted to him about the car, before his face darkened considerably with the images of the last time he saw Manuel.  The vile images of a still recognizable Manuel pursuing and attacking the fleeing family on the opposite side of the airport caused Reams to shudder involuntarily.  Though the man had ultimately been able to protect his family and dispatch the monster Manuel had become, he suffered several scratch and bite wounds in the process.  What followed was unthinkable, and Reams shuddered again as he fought to avoid recounting those events. 

With steady pressure on the truck’s accelerator, Reams picked up speed as he raced toward the gate at the mouth of the parking lot.  A loud, splintering crash followed as the nearly 2-ton vehicle exploded through the gate, sending wood splinters flying in all directions.  The tires screeched as Reams violently jerked the steering wheel to the left, barely missing a planter containing a moderate sized Bradford Pear tree.  He slammed the brakes in an effort to regain control of the truck as it careened dangerously close to a taxicab waiting to collect arriving passengers who would never come.  The taxi driver sat motionless in the driver’s seat, head back as if sleeping while he waited. Reams knew, however, that the man was not likely sleeping.

Recoiling off the steering wheel, Reams raised his head and noticed he had captured the complete attention of the small horde congregated just outside hangar four.  The mass of infected shifted toward him for the second time, and he cursed yet another unanticipated turn of events. 
Some of them are probably close enough to intercept John coming out of the hangar!
The sense of panic blossoming within him dissipated slightly when he caught sight of the shiny red RX-7 in his rearview mirror.  Reams recalled Manuel’s giddy excitement as he described his most recent modification to his baby—an air horn procured from a locomotive that he hooked to his car alarm.  Manuel mounted an air compressor and tank to power the thing, and he swore it could be heard for miles.  At the time Reams could have cared less about the latest obsessive addition to the already excessive car, but now as he stared back at her sorrowfully, he thought it might just save his ass.

Glancing around partly to gauge the distance of the slow, shambling horde and partly to ensure Manuel wasn’t back from the truly dead to witness what he was about to do, he drew the pistol and racked the slide to chamber a round.  Leaning out the window, he took aim at the impossibly clean windshield of the Mazda and, for the briefest moment before he pulled the trigger, he felt a tinge of guilt as if he were about to shoot Manuel’s family dog.  The combined pop of the gun blast and the windshield shattering seemed almost silent compared to the unbelievably loud bleating of the train horn that immediately followed.  Startled by the intensity of the sound, Reams threw the truck into drive and peeled off toward the rear of the hangar.  He was relieved to see the trajectory of the horde shift toward the call of the injured sports car.  They did not even seem to notice the departure of the truck that originally captured their attention.  As Reams pulled up behind hangar four, the two short, staccato beeps of his woefully underpowered truck horn were lost beneath the ear-splitting bellowing of the train horn.

* * *

With no small amount of effort, John managed to use the crowbar as a fulcrum to shift the weight of the struggling fat man slightly.  It proved to be just enough to allow him to move the table thereby freeing his legs.  His bruised quadriceps protested every movement, and he nearly fell as he staggered away from the ungodly scene.  As John neared the door, being mindful to avoid ensnarement by the tripwire maze of innards strewn across the floor, the fat man let out another guttural grunt that sounded nearly identical to a pig’s snort.  Exhausted and hurting, John fell into the door jam and turned to cast another weary glance at the abomination on the floor.  Its fat extremities wriggled and writhed amid the mound of flesh that effectively pinned them to the ground.  For the briefest of moments, John thought he could see pleading in its eyes, not necessarily pleading
for
him, but rather pleading for his help.  He wondered if the fat currently imprisoning the thing would eventually atrophy—withering away and affording the obese monster the luxury of bipedal locomotion once again. Or was it doomed to spend the rest of its days, however many that may be, pinned to the floor by its own bulk?

Leaving with no expectation of returning, John realized his rhetorical question was one that would remain unanswered.  Without another thought, he turned, opened the door, and limped out into the night air.

The two wayward survivors pulled away from the hell they had endured at the airport, both collectively and individually, and headed north on U.S. 19 toward John’s house.  Their course would take them near the bridge where Reams’ brother Cedric was when they last spoke.  John and Reams briefly recapped the events of their respective experiences during the escape before falling silent.  Both men glossed over many of the details, neither willing to relive the horrible events themselves nor to force the other man to do so.