Protect All Monsters Read online

  “Let’s move,” Brenner instructed the men. Fifteen minutes had passed, and he knew the first phase of feeding the vampires was coming to a close. “The prisoners are surely dead by now. They’re ready for more challenging game.”

  The chain gang was guided back to the arena entrance. He opened the Plexiglas to allow the tear gas to dissipate. The gate between the vampires and the arena was already shut, locking the monsters in. Brenner summoned another team to come in and place weapons throughout the hallway: scythes, sledgehammers, knives, aluminum bats, pinch clamps, pitchforks, saw blades, nails and random blunt objects. The government broke the bank at the hardware store for this event, he thought.

  Brenner stared at the hallway, observing the new blood slathering the floors and walls in wicked arterial spatters. Pleased that the first batch was indeed murdered, he yelled down the corridor, addressing the vampires. “Give a few more minutes for the fog to thin out, then I’ll send you more worthy opponents!”

  Chapter Thirty

  James Sorelli hid in the waters of a four-foot-deep pond. He was waiting for the next kill. The arena was his hunting ground. Blood boiled in his prey, he sensed, their bodies heated by fear and rising pulses, circulatory systems and hearts churning to vital excesses. Alexia crawled into the water with him and urged him up to the surface. She was crimson-eyed, skin white as chalk, her veins not yet raised to the surface, but they were starting to thicken. She hadn’t fed in days. She claimed it sweetened the kill that way. She was skin and bones, her once flowing raven hair now split ends and faded gray. Alexia was his sister, she too born with what eventually flourished into full-out vampirism.

  “The convicts are already dead,” she complained. “They make it a few yards, put up a weak fight, but the booby hatchers are better. And they’re armed.”

  “Wonderful,” he said, licking his lips. “I love a good fight.”

  The arena was dimly lit. A few fluorescent lights blinked on and off in dank corners to ban complete darkness. The walls were bare concrete covered in layers of orange, rust and black, layers and layers of sprayed blood. The arena was like a city block, and they were on the outskirts. Fake trees mimicked the mouth of the woods in a solid line. The grass and pond ended yards north of them and a road channeled up to mock alleyways. The arena was a labyrinth of abandoned apartment buildings and storefronts—all of it only a story and a half tall, but it left nooks for their game to hide.

  Alexia grinned, reading his mind. “You still want that bitch’s blood, don’t you? The one who found the secret chamber. She’s caused all kinds of problems.”

  “I know, and that’s what makes me want to tear her throat out and squeeze the juices out of her heart like the rest of them.”

  “There isn’t time to worry about her. We stock up on blood, wait for the last batch to be born, and we turn this place inside out until everybody’s dead.”

  “We can’t attack tonight, but the boats are ready. There’s a buzz traveling throughout the complex. People have learned about the secret tunnels. They’re concerned. Afraid. That’s what we want. They won’t know what hit ’em. Nobody will, not even the PSA. It’s enhanced our chances of survival. You’ll see.”

  Two straitjackets entered their proximity. One carried a pitchfork, the other a machete. They were fearful, perplexed and pleased all at once. Happy to be free, he supposed, but terrified of where they’d been released.

  James pointed at the burly, six-foot-tall man. “I’ll take the beefcake.”

  Alexia rolled her eyes. “Yeah, and I’ll take the smaller one. Bastard.”

  He leaped into the trees, crawling like a spider monkey, ignoring his sister’s chiding. Alexia ducked and rolled into a ditch five yards out. He watched Alexia wait for the two people to cross her path, staying hidden. Waiting for the right moment, she jerked to action, seizing the woman’s legs and dragged her down into the ditch. The man took off running upon seeing this, his sagging belly and three-hundred-pound frame slowing him down. He ducked between two trees and clutched his machete. His eyes were wild and crying.

  James leaped to the next tree over, being two trunks away from towering above the kill. A snap and crack and cut-off scream reverberated from the ditch, Alexia wrapping up her victim’s demise. James would wallow in the man’s blood in moments, but it was the woman in the hall he really wanted to devour. She had caused their plan to be hastened. She had every vampire worried, and the element of surprise was removed to a degree. He could smell her in the salty breezes in the air. He craved the woman’s blood. Her suffering. Her death.

  James cleared the next tree and the next. The man hunkered down even lower, his hands covering his head, knowing something was after him.

  He waited.

  Not yet.

  The man’s pulse tripled.

  James licked his lips. Salivating. A drop came off his mouth and smacked the back of the man’s neck like a wet bullet.

  “Uhh—aaaaaaaah!” The man was jolted.

  He descended the tree and drove both feet into the man’s shoulder blades. Forced down, the man was driven onto his machete.

  James licked the red from the blade jutting out from the shoulder blades. Then he seized the man’s head and jerked it from the neck until the muscle tissue parted and the head was uprooted like a weed. Lapping up the spurting delights, his tongue delved into the red current until he was fully sated.

  Alexia walked toward him clutching a head connected to a dangling spine. She was slathered in war paint, her body renourished, the skin ivory white, the veins plump and vital. Her hair was ink black, so shiny and so beautiful.

  She met him under the trees. Alexia peeked at the corpse. “Looks like he killed himself for you.” She turned her shoulder blades so he could view her wounds. Her back bled from a six-inch laceration. “You had it easy.”

  “It’s all in the way you hunt them.”

  She flipped him off, the finger dripping. James licked it, and she slapped his face. “You asshole.”

  He disheveled her hair. “I’m sure the rest of the loonies are slaughtered by now. Let’s check on the last batch of our young and see if they’ve awakened.”

  They rushed out of the woods and up into the street, where they snuck into the nearest alley and entered a rusted-out door. Inside the building, a lamb cowered in the corner, terrified.

  “If only we had time,” Alexia commiserated. “It’s so innocent, so scared.”

  And that’s when another vampire stole the lamb, bundling it up by its legs and then racing away. They could hear the clicks and slurps of mastication gradually fade as the creature escaped their view.

  Moving on, they stepped into another alleyway and into a building that resembled a hollowed-out laundry mat. Inside, the vestiges of past kills welcomed them. Three skeletal bodies were chained to a pillar upside down, picked clean. On a bed of springs in the corner, a body was caught up in the coils and also wrapped in barbed wire, literally mummified in jagged steel. The girl trapped in pain, who wasn’t older than seventeen, whimpered, “Please…kill me.”

  Alexia shifted to fulfill the request, but he seized her arm. “No time.”

  “Fuck you. I’m still hungry!”

  She fought off his hold and delved through the barbs and coils. She balled up the flesh over the girl’s trachea and peeled it back in ropey strands. She slurped up the blood and swallowed the ball of flesh whole. The girl was choking, gargling, thrashing, bending within the nest of rusted coils. Then, after minutes, she flopped dead, her eyes staying open with a grateful gleam.

  “I did her a favor.” She licked a morsel of skin from her upper lip. “She was suffering.”

  “How merciful and sweet of you.”

  They stepped into a room of empty washing machines. The first stride inside, they heard the grumble. An engine kicked on: whum-grum, whum-grum, whum-grum, whum-grum. In Pavlovian reaction, they foamed at the mouth. Their backs arched. Their arms clenched, ready to throttle a throat. Then IV-size
tubes uncoiled from the ceiling in two corners. Alexia was the first to stick the end of one into her mouth, James a close second. Blood funneled down the tubes, spitting out from an endless source.

  James could distinguish the types of blood that splashed upon his tongue: sheep, goat, shark, bear, two-year-dead human, six-year-dead human, virgin, menstrual (and how they collected that, he had no clue), male, female, and blood mixed with gunpowder and traces of steel. He drank a liter’s worth and couldn’t take any more. Alexia couldn’t stop, sucking so hard she gasped for breath once she had no choice but to breathe.

  The blood came down once every two hours. The complex was obsessed with keeping them satisfied. They did a justly good job, but it didn’t compare to hunted blood—earned blood. There were cities of people, nations of necks to bleed, and they were trapped here. For them, it was frustrating beyond belief.

  They cut through another alley, leaving the laundry mat behind, and this time coming upon a hollowed-out bar, the inside beer taps long since emptied, the shelves ransacked and destroyed, the rooms excavated. They navigated into the back storage room, where the tiles were empty of things to eat. A desiccated corpse was in the fetal position under a pair of sinks, his skin melded into the floor by rot.

  Alexia opened a walk-in fridge adjacent to the body. The compartment was empty, but James had created a hole in the floor. A passage. It had taken leftover pickaxes and steel implements to render the hole through the concrete. The hole was a direct route into the chamber of their private operation.

  “Let’s check on our young,” James said, climbing into the dank hole first. “Maybe they’re already awake. I can’t wait to see them.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Richard had assigned two underlings to monitor the tunnel excavation, their names being Henry Dalley and Marcus Kulson. The two had been instructed to radio him or Brenner if any activity occurred. Richard was too busy to oversee jackhammering and walls breaking apart because he had to take stock of the sublevel inventory. The giant refrigerator in the kitchen was much like the ones on the ocean cruise liner, heaped with an array of items. The sight of dead humans vacuum packed and sealed in plastic, their eyes closed, arms crossed mummy-style, was commonplace. He tallied the number of barrel drums of blood and drums of human appendages separated by category: arms, legs, heads, genitals, animal carcasses and human organs.

  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 be
come 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.