Chapter Twenty-Three

Mandy Wilson loved nights like these. She had the easiest job in the complex. She tended the vegetable garden at the south end. Mandy had only laid eyes on the zombies, wolves and vampires through the pictures they showed her in a file folder. She was twenty-nine, but she felt like a seventeen-year-old enjoying her first paycheck, because the money in her hands right now was money to burn. Three hundred dollars. It could afford her a shopping spree at the apparel stores.

Forty-five minutes after her shift concluded, she showered away the scent of sea salt and rich soil off of her body. Clean, she wore a red skirt and a black V-neck top. She didn’t have a boyfriend, but with her new clothes, she was sure somebody would offer her a free drink or a boogie on the dance floor. Brandy, her next-door neighbor in the living quarters, explained she had to be loose and fun to make friends; otherwise the island could be a very lonely place.

And Brandy sleeps with about anybody—male or female—to pass the time. I’m not that outgoing. I’d rather buy a new pair of shoes than deal with immature little boys who think their hard-ons are gold.

Mandy completed the walk to the shopping district. The flashing lights from the dance floor eased the tension from the workday, reminding her she could have a social life, even in this situation. But shopping was her excursion tonight. She threw herself into the first department store and rushed the wall of dresses, active wear, nightgowns and underwear, and she came upon an orange sheath dress. She loved the bright, vibrant color. There was also a violet tunic and matching bra and panties to the right of her. Enticed, she removed the selections from the rack and headed to the fitting rooms.

She closed the door and hung the clothes on the rack, then faced the mirror. And that’s when the shape of a faded face—as if underwater and mostly in darkness—beckoned her. It mouthed, Leave now—you must leave!

She didn’t hear the words. She was too focused on the face, drawn to it and frightened. And she recognized it. It was her deceased mother, Angie. She had died five years ago of a failed liver transplant.

“Mom!” She pressed her hands against the glass, trying to find her way through. “What do you want? I miss you so much. Please, Mom. Talk to me.” Mandy cried out, pounding the mirror, desperate to touch her mother. “I need you. You have no idea what I’ve been through!”

The image of Angie faded until the mirror was as it should be again.

She hadn’t removed her hands from the glass, and with her weight against it, the mirror flipped around like a secret door. The forward motion took Mandy. Reeling from one event to the next, she tumbled to the other side on all fours. Darkness greeted her. The ground was solid concrete, the walls smooth like the walls in the fitting room. Getting up, she completed three steps before she touched the wall. The recess was narrow. Humid. Stinking of wet fur.

She pounded on the wall. “Can anybody hear me? I’M TRAPPED!”

Hrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Mandy shut her mouth and kept her breath as low as possible.

The deep grumble emanated from yards north of her.

She pressed her body against the wall and remained still. In the coming moments she heard a wet plop and the tearing of a sheet, and felt a warm wind blow across her body. A horrid stench, something noxious and dead, crossed her next. The reek was more humid and stagnant than the corridor itself. Another wet plop and rigid tear, this time more vicious and violent. She imagined duct tape being yanked from a surface many successions over, and this time, the noises were followed by a wolfish shriek. The series of noises occurred again and again, with the addition of the sound of lungs struggling to breathe.

Then more new sounds.

The clink of bones. Ligaments cracking at their joints of flexion. Breaking. Growing. Cracking. Bleeding. Then the reek of fresh shit. The tearing of skin over and over. It was all a constant.

Mandy was frozen, refusing to accept what was happening yards in front of her.

This is a trap.

That means somebody knows you’re in here.

She dug her nails into the wall without realizing it, she was so on edge. There was one thing she could think to do, and that was to scream for help. “I’m behind the wall. For God’s sake, somebody hear me. SAVE ME!”

There was no apparent reaction from anywhere.

Nothing moved.

Then words eked out of a raw throat. “You haven’t seen monsters before, huh, Mandy?”

She couldn’t respond.

Biting words taunted her next. “No, you’re a gardener. You’ve been safe and sound the whole time.” A laugh, a humph, and then it warned her darkly. “Not for much longer.”

An overheard light flipped on, the source a single lightbulb. Behind her, a distant outline of a man ran out of her line of vision and darted back into the shadows. The sight ahead of her caused her to slide down the wall in sheer horror.

“No,” she muttered, her body suffering panic-induced spasms. “No, it can’t be. It can’t be.”

Mandy’s legs were lead-heavy. She struggled to move, to clear more distance between her and the things ahead of her. How did these things come to exist? They removed her every previous understanding of what lived on the island.

“Stay away,” she threatened, though it was with a pitiful voice. “I don’t want to harm you.”

“But we wish to harm you.” The words were derived from a deviant’s throat. “Lots of harm.”

Edging itself into the light, a werewolf was hunched on all fours, its leathery skin bulging and rippling with muscles. Its back legs were ready to pounce, its hackles rose sharp as quills, and its meaty lips held back teeth razor sharp and dripping with yellowish slobber. Then she caught them in the shadows, the vampires on the floor, their hands posed to crawl, their black eyes ogling her with green lines through the orbs. Three zombies were also standing vigil in the background, awaiting a command, ready to be unleashed upon her. Their blackened flesh was shiny with fat seeping to the surface, the deep gulfs for eye sockets focused on her with every shred of existence on the line.

Still taking them in, she caught the strangest and most threatening sight: the vampire that was curled up on the floor. He was the one who had spoken the threats previously, and staring at him, she watched the show as his back split open completely down the spine and spit out a creature. It flopped out between the shoulder blades as if being birthed. It shoved aside muscle tissue and sinew to live, to escape. The creature was a werewolf the size of a five-year-old child and covered in blood and amniotic fluids. It shook spastically, waking up.

Before she could run, the birthed creature took action, charging after her. She only gained four steps before she was tackled from behind and feasted upon by the numerous and unseen creatures in the recess.