Chapter Twenty-Eight

“Who has the worst job in this stinking shit hole?”

“We do, Bobby.”

“Who’s broken their backs the most out of all the sorry assholes here?”

“We have, Bobby.”

“You bet your ass. And now we’re cleaning up this shit.”

Bobby Owen and Ricky Fagan were scrubbing the edges of a giant sewer pipe. One so big they could stand in it. Rust corroded what used to be solid, dependable steel. The stench was raw; even when the blood and guts were mostly cleaned up, it continued to reek. Dead carcass and chunks of meat had dried into the pipe along with shards of bone. This pipe was the outlet for the staff’s kitchen and butchering rooms where blood and mess gargled down drains. The drainage circulated through here and many other tubes into the vampires’ rooms, where they could lap up the crimson from the tubes hanging from their rooms’ ceilings. The problem today: there was a clog, and the vampires were waiting for their fix.

“The suck-heads can bite me—and they would, Ricky. They would bite it right off.”

“Yeah, man, yeah,” Ricky agreed. He was bucktoothed and one eye was significantly smaller than the other. His comb-over was ruined, each strand similar to twisted train tracks because he slathered so much gel into it. “Bite your ass, man. Bite it right off. And they wouldn’t be sorry. No apologies, Bobby. Not even a breath of an apology.”

Bobby coughed on the fumes of the bleach chloride mixture they were power-spraying down the tubes. Water would rush through the channels and rinse them clean, and then more blood would be shot through the tubes and directed to its rightful homes. For now, the chemicals were so thick, they had to put on their breathing masks—nothing more than a cheap paper face mask—and keep on working, though Ricky didn’t like his mask on. He claimed it kept him from completing his job to the fullest since the mask caused his glasses to fog up each time he breathed in and out. Ricky was also ten IQ points above retardation.

Between stretches of scrubbing the floors and power-spraying, they peered into other tunnels and outlets for blockages. They’d found a variety of obstructions in the past: boots, dog tags, body bags, wallets, purses, rain slickers, wristwatches, wigs, rugs, a blue dildo once (and Ricky wanted to keep it, but Bobby slapped him behind the head and told him the only thing he could do with a dildo was stick it up his ass) and lots and lots of human bones.

The tube they currently investigated had nothing inside it.

“What would you do, Ricky, if something reached out and bit you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe you’d get a day off.”

Ricky’s voice jumped with excitement. “Well, in that case, I welcome being bit.”

Bobby rolled his eyes. “The doc would stitch you up and send you back to work. You’d have to be literally chopped in half before they’d allow you to enjoy bed rest of any kind. I hear they have cable, even the nudie channels, in the hospital ward.”

“Wow, really?”

“Yeah, but if you lost your jerking-off hand, you’d be up shit creek.”

“I could learn to use my left hand, or I could pay some lady to do it for me. Yeah, I could.”

“Then why not have sex with her?”

“But what about when I wanted to masturbate?”

“Jesus Christ, Ricky, you’re truly a fuck-up, a real throwback—”

Ricky forced his right hand into the next tube barely the size of his forearm. The drain coughed and spat out a wad of foamy water.

Bobby turned his head at the tube. “Hey, what’s in there?”

“I almost got it. Just a sec.”

What was brewing in that pipe? Bobby wondered. The way that water foamed and sizzled, it was active—reactive.

“Get your hand out of there right now, Ricky!”

“Don’t worry, Bobby, this isn’t my jerking-off hand.”

“You stupid asshole, think about what you’re doing.”

“I’m fine, wait—”

The gurgling increased into a boiling. Ricky jerked his hand back, and he slipped backward. Sprawled out on the ground, he was kicking and screaming. “AHGOD! AHGOD! AHGOD!”

His arm was missing up to the elbow. Bobby reached for his walkie, but it was too late. The clear, viscous matter lodged in the tube shot out at Ricky, enveloping him. Faces began to form in the substance, and then bones erected themselves out of nothing, forming a sternum and a rib cage and then so much more random anatomical architecture. Instantly the liquid changed, and Ricky was buried beneath a dozen active corpses. Their flesh was as putrid as it was gangrenous and dripping nasty.

Bobby stumbled backward to avoid them, but the pipes ahead of him oozed the same mysterious liquid from every pipe. Soon, the undead enemies blocked every possible escape route.

He was flensed of meat in minutes.