Chapter Eighteen

Joe Barnes punched out. His shift ended at six thirty in the evening. He’d shoveled enough human death down that silver slide to serve a horde of level-two zombies for ten hours. He was looking at two days off in a row. Walking off the work premises, he decontaminated himself in the high-pressure showers of bleach and a chemical synthetic called Chloride Blue. Taking off his hazmat suit after the hosedown, he showered to remove the body odor. He wasn’t the type to take breaks during his shift. He believed breaks were bullshit. If one paced oneself during the workday, one wouldn’t require a break. Plus, it built up his two hundred-and-forty-pound physique. Fasting and pushing his body to the limit served one ultimate purpose: increasing his virility and stamina between the sheets—or in Joe Barnes’s case, between different booths.

He dressed in a pair of brand-new Levi jeans and a red silk shirt. The envelope under his room door contained three hundred dollars’ pay. Ready to hit the town and spend it, he visited the dance club. In the club, people ground in rhythm to a high-octane techno beat. He didn’t care for dancing, honestly. People dated, courted and flirted, but Joe cut to the chase. He hammered three shots back-to-back of whiskey at the bar. Emboldened by the booze, he exited the scene and headed to the red-curtained storefront prudently named the Red-Light District.

A bouncer named Marv stood vigil at his podium. The man perked up for one of his favorite patrons. “Joey, you’re a machine. You’re already back again.”

He was pleased to be a regular at this kind of establishment. He handed Marv fifty bucks. Marv tucked the wad into his front shirt pocket. “This is for a lap dance, and the rest.”

Marv was pleased with the pay, fifty dollars being a fortune on the island. “I suggest booth fourteen. She’s a new girl. They’re the least run through.” He bent in close, secretive. “No sloppy seconds—well, maybe they’re seconds, but not thirds and fourths. You get me?”

“I could care less.” A condom protected him from the nature of the business. “But I’ll try fourteen out. I’ve always enjoy your recommendations. I hope she’s got some moves. I like it when they teach me new tricks. I hate fake moaners. They might as well shut the fuck up if they’re going to play like that.” In a girl’s tone, “‘Oh yes, oh yes’…oh no, thank you.”

Marv agreed. “All right then, go get her. Show the sheets what you’re made of.”

Joe passed through the red partition and entered X-rated section of the complex. Beyond the heavy stage curtains, he stared down a large room with a raised stage where women gyrated and ground against stripper poles. Six women danced in unison. A Cher song remixed with a techno beat played in the background. The tables were jam-packed with patrons. Women worked the tables for cocktails in lingerie or tight bodices.

Another stage closer to the back harbored women in S&M gear, the women fake-whipping each other. The later shows were more intense. The whipping was real. The staged masochism cost double to get in and watch—a hundred bucks easily. Sex was also staged, including orgies, lesbian scenes and shows where the audience could join in on the action. That was only on Fridays and Saturdays, and that was one hundred and fifty bucks to attend.

But Joe craved one-on-one time, and he didn’t want to watch somebody else having sex, especially another dude. So he continued into the red light district, beyond the extended bar to the narrow hallway tucked behind the stripper stages. The walls were a shag-carpeted hot pink. He imagined this as a Valentine’s themed hotel. At the front, he met a butch woman in her forties. She was well over two hundred pounds, hair styled in a crew cut. She was bored and smoking cigarette after cigarette just to pass the time. Her name was Darcy.

“Joey. What’s your flavor today?”

“Does sex have a flavor?”

“If you’re an old lesbian, you bet your ass it does!”

Darcy tested her headset, asking someone in a different section of the hallway, “Any rooms open in the back?”

Joe already knew what he wanted. “Marv told me room fourteen was good.” He produced a twenty-dollar bill and folded it into quarters, handing it to her. “Was he putting me on?”

Darcy smiled from one side of her lips. She accepted the money. Then she broke out the tour guide oration of pussy vending. “Ah, she’s a newbie. Nineteen. She was actually an actress in porno, but she didn’t pay her taxes, you see. Then her ass got deported here. Not paying your taxes always lands them here, unless they’re too yuppy and don’t have a fucking backbone to stomach this shit. Then you go to jail. Lucky bastards.”

“Marv said she wasn’t run through. He failed to mention she was an ex-porn star. Oh well. I’m sure the plumbing still works. That’s what counts.”

“Tested and proven.”

That’s what Darcy said every time she made a recommendation.

“Room fourteen it is. What’s her name?”

“Real name or acting name?”

Joe groaned. “Okay, porn name.”

“Crystal Knockers.”

“What the hell does that even mean? Are her boobs crystal?”

“Maybe they’re as fragile and beautiful as crystals.”

“Whatever, let me through.”

Joe walked the pink-carpeted hall, entering Cupid’s bachelor pad. The doors were also pink-carpeted, the room numbers displayed within a wooden heart. A sudden surge of heat up his stomach; the alcohol was kicking in. He approached the room, unlocking the door with the key Darcy had given him. Entering, the room was the size of an average bedroom. A bed of red silk sheets faced him with the shape of a woman lying underneath.

She didn’t stir at his approach.

A glass shelf housed whips, dildos, butt plugs, anal beads, leather and BDSM outfits, bodices, condoms, fourteen different flavors of lubricant, domination gear, a hanging net for suspended sex, blow-up dolls—for the guys who wanted to fuck a doll in front of a woman; he’d considered doing it himself sometime—and a variety of other novelties.

He introduced himself. “My name’s Joe. My friends call me Joey.”

The woman wasn’t impressed. She stayed silent.

“I see you want to skip to it. That’s fine with me.”

He removed his button-up shirt. He opened the glass shelf and nabbed a lubricated Trojan condom. “Do you need K-Y?”

No response to his polite question.

This bitch is giving me the silent treatment.

“You tell me if you do, okay?” He was growing impatient. “Why don’t you talk? I’m not going to ask you to have a long-ass conversation with me. I’m just being nice. Warming up things. Like a runner has to stretch before the race, right?”

The silk sheets shifted awkwardly. He tensed up, eying the surface in horror. The sheets stretched out tight, then surged upward as if many hands were clawing and digging into the mattress to reach through it. And with frenzied tearing and ripping sounds, a jet of fluid that resembled hair gel shot upward through serrated folds of the cloth , ripping the grate from the air duct in the ceiling in one shot.

He reeled backward. “Goddamn!”

He raced over to save the woman, but the gel split up into dozens of ropey tendrils and lifted the unconscious rag doll up into the duct, dragging her to the ceiling. Her body was pale, but her face was tomato red, deprived of air. Asphyxiated.

Using his shock as energy, Joe seized her legs to retrieve her, but the gel was slick and powerful and so much stronger than him.

“Let her go!”

He panicked, breathing spasmodically, unable to process this strange creature. There were only supposed to be zombies, vampires, wolves and the occasional ghost on the island, and now this goop!

The woman was sucked into the duct despite his efforts. Taken, her body rattled and banged against the aluminum and was carried to an unknown hideaway. Joe was poised to call for help when a larger wad of gel attached to his body, firing out of the duct hole with a glooooooop. Around his face, it slithered up his nostrils, pried open his lips, crawled between his teeth in fluid fashion, clogged his throat, jammed down into his esophagus and anchored in his internal organs. New branches like arteries spread out inside of him from head to toe, taking grip. He was hoisted up into the grate and dragged through the duct system. Where he finally ended up, the gel became something new, something much more horrific and deadly than the other creatures he’d encountered.

He was long dead before that creature came to life.