Chapter Twenty-Nine

Brenner exited the secret tunnel after it had been excavated by ten of his best men, each armed with pump-action .22 shotguns and M-16s straight from the PAM facility armory. Whatever beast or beasts lurked within wouldn’t escape in the meantime, he decided. Workers had utilized jackhammers and pickaxes to break through the concrete walls. The effort was hours long, but the steel and concrete boundaries would take time to breach. But for now, his favorite part of his job was minutes from occurring.

Stocking the arena.

He entered the warehouse at the end of the boarding dock. Ralph Hines, a portly man with a bad comb-over and a dyed black beard, stepped up to him. Under the shelter of the warehouse, only thin windows of sunlight filtered through, everything else draped in shadow. Ralph was in charge of the holding cells for living human cargo. The cells were empty now, the humans standing in the warehouse for Brenner’s inspection. The first row wore orange prison fatigues. They were death row and life-term prisoners, their faces grim and ghostly pale with fear.

“You could hear the smallest fart, it’s so quiet,” Ralph joked to Brenner. “Ugliest sons of bitches I’ve ever seen, especially when they’re scared. They have no fuckin’ clue what they’re in for.”

“It’s the best way to do these things,” Brenner said. “Vampires prefer true terror. Scientists at the Pentagon say adrenaline and fear do something to the blood. They change the composition of the blood. A friend of mine named Ruden once told me that. Fear turns the blood a degree warmer. It’s all it takes. It drives the vampires wild. Turns them on.”

Ralph scratched his mustache. “Turns me on to see these prison women, the ones that aren’t dykes. I could show them a few things. I bet they’d be willing. Hungry for it, even. I’d make their blood a degree warmer.”

Brenner abhorred the talk of sex. There were things beyond pleasurable that had nothing to do with sex. “Keep it in your pants. That’s what the strip club’s for.”

“These stupid fucks,” Ralph continued talking himself up. “I bet they’re sorry now for breaking the law. They’ll start crying any minute.”

The prisoners were actively perusing the warehouse with their eyes, many staring at the open door behind them and the expansive ocean. Brenner walked closer to the prisoners. Among the crowd, guards were armed and ready to fire their weapons if anybody touched him.

Ralph reached out and cupped a woman’s ass through her uniform. The woman was dazed. She was a heroin addict suffering from withdrawal.

“She jumped when I goosed her! She kept her mouth shut. She knows what’s good for her.”

“Hey, Mel,” Ralph yelled to the guard across from him. “They’ll do anything for us. Now’s your chance to enjoy it. Do what you want, man.”

“Yeah,” Mel said. “Before they’re meat, they’ll fucking dance on your pole. Up and down, baby. Squat and fuck.”

The words startled the prisoners.

Brenner shouted at the group at large, “Shut your mouths!” Pissed his help wasn’t keeping a higher quality standard, he growled, “Mel, you walk your ass over here right now.”

Mel knew what was coming as he trudged over to Brenner, his head lowered. Then Brenner whispered to Mel, “You know they’re supposed to be kept out of the loop. You give us away. You run your mouth too much. They won’t comply with our instructions if you say too much too soon.”

Mel spit out an apology. “S-sorry, I’m so sorry. It won’t happen again. Don’t throw me in with those things, please.”

Brenner seized Mel’s neck and dug his nails into the skin. Mel winced, but he kept his eyes on his superior. “I won’t throw you to the things—alive!” He unholstered his sidearm and blasted Mel in the temple with his .45, a powerful jolt that left the man sprawled out and hemorrhaging blood from the empty crater in his left temporal lobe.

“Consider this a warning to you, Ralph.”

Ralph looked on, stark white. “Y-yes sir.”

The radio crackled at his holster. “Ready for the first shipment.”

Brenner replied, “ETA five minutes.”

He addressed the prisoners. “Our little secret has been revealed. Consider yourselves lucky. Such luck surely won’t happen again. We harbor the world’s most dangerous predators and creatures. Know this, you’re about to be ushered into an arena to fight these things.” This was where the lies started again. “You’ll be battling them. Fighting to the death. You survive, you’re free. Your criminal records will be expunged. Murder with brute and unrelenting force is my best advice. That is all.”

The guards ushered them at gunpoint out of the warehouse. They strolled down a concrete walkway and into an alcove, like the entrance of an NFL locker room, that led onto the playing field. Down the long-spanning tunnel, cameras were angled to capture activity every five yards. The sticky, aged blood on the floor and walls had the convicts reeling in terror. Pleading voices and tears were mixed into the overall protests.

“This is unconstitutional!”

“Take me back to Pelican Bay!”

“Strap me to the goddamn electric chair!”

“I’m innocent—and you can take that to your fucking grave!”

“What conspiracy bullshit is this?”

And finally, “What the hell is behind that gate?”

Brenner lunged out of the tunnel, falling back in retreat, as the workers subdued the crowd who tried to escape. As guns blasted, the workers fighting back the prisoners, the retreat was a success. Outside the hallway, Brenner typed the secret code into the panel on the wall—a code that changed on a daily basis—to unlock the gate between the prisoners and the arena. He typed in another code that shot out tear gas from the ceiling vents. He closed and locked the Plexiglas door that kept the gas inside. The noxious fog obscured what the prisoners were doing, but they would soon have no choice but to enter the arena.

Watching the fog gather, he heard Ralph approach him, and he had to duck, Ralph taking a swing. Bent over, Brenner threw up a fist into Ralph’s midsection and grabbed his neck and kneed him in the nose. The dry snap, he’d broken Ralph’s nose and shattered four of his front teeth. Ralph crumbled to the ground, sobbing, bleeding, spitting teeth, his eyes glaring up at Brenner in rage.

His words were slush, “You killed Mel! You’re crazy! You’re not like the rest of us, man. I haven’t seen you eat or drink or visit the strip club or anything while I’ve been here. What the hell is wrong with you? Does pink not get you off? When I talk about sex, you don’t. It’s like you don’t like women. You’re not one of us. I want to know who the fuck you really are.”

Brenner pointed at the workers who had narrowly escaped being trapped in the arena. “Prepare the next shipment. They won’t last ten minutes in that arena. Leave me and Ralph alone.”

Ralph trembled now, though he refused to give up his retaliation. “How much longer would it be until you shot me in the head? Everybody’s expendable on the island. Yeah, you’re crazier than shit, but without your gun, you’re nothing. I’m sick of your shit. If you’re going to kill me, then do it. I’d rather die fighting than die like Mel.”

Brenner broke out in a sweat, hearing this. His pores opened, expelling droplets of sweat, bile and toxins from his body—mostly used-up blood platelets and white and red blood cells. He was coated in a varnish-colored substance. It dripped down Brenner’s body and instantly vaporized at the sun’s touch.

Ralph’s eyes twitched, not sure what to make of the man’s transformation. “W-what in hell are you? Jesus Christ, Brenner…you’re not human.”

The femoral artery lifted from Brenner’s neck. It was thick as an elevator cable now, and it whipped out of his skin and lashed Ralph between the eyes. The connection split his skull in two. The lamprey sucker at the end of the artery attached to the man’s jugular and drained Ralph of every ounce of fluid in fifteen seconds. The desiccated corpse struck the ground and kicked up dust. Letting the blood settle into his body, Brenner picked up the corpse and tossed him over the dock and into the ocean.

He stood proud, looking at the dead bones strike the water. “It’s not pink that gets me off. It’s red.”

 

 

The warehouse contained only the necessary guards this time around as Brenner scrutinized the next round of human victims to go into the arena. They had been picked from insane asylums across the country. Each of them wore straitjackets, each bound together like a chain gang. Twenty total in this batch. He knew little about them, though he glanced at some of their invoices. The most interesting person was Tim “Smothers”—a nickname for a man who smothered his victims in pillows, water, blood and sometimes human fat. Vampire James Sorelli was always begging for more challenging game in the arena, and that’s why Brenner selected men like Tim “Smothers” to do battle. Even during this time when he believed there was an uprising coming, there were normal operations to manage, and he continued to perform his job with the utmost efficiency.

“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!”