Chapter Forty-One

Brenner was yanked from the stairway and lifted up by two hands. Flung up and over, he struck the concrete surface between two boats of rough wooden planks and scrap material. He crawled forward to recover his twelve-gauge and his bearings, but the gun was kicked across the room by a taloned foot. The werewolf snarled at him, flecking heat, snot and creamy foam onto his face. He watched in horror as its teeth extended eight inches, so sleek and jagged and capable of inflicting deadly damage. The wolf challenged him, posing on all fours and hissing out its nostrils, its back and legs arched, ready to pummel him.

You thought I’d be an easy victim.

I don’t die so easy!

An artery shot through his wrist, the thick line poking the wolf underneath the neck and draining him instantly of four gallons of blood. The warmth, the power, the nourishment pouring into Brenner's body lent him confidence as it did strength.

“Shraaaaaaaack!”

The wolf gripped the cord, unable to snap it or break the flow of stolen blood. It fumbled to save its life, and after a minute, it tipped sideways in defeat.

He watched the top of the stairs for any more monsters to come his way. The profiles of long lines of them, hundreds upon hundreds, filed from every passage and chamber in unison.

Brenner was startled when the wolf’s body shifted. Through its back, the skin stretched, bubbled up, the sheath turning thinner and thinner as hair was shed to reveal a bald section. Tighter and tighter the flesh became until it popped, splitting down the middle in ribbons. Tearing from within, hands grappled through barriers of muscle tissue. Then a body formed. Then a blood-slick vampire burst from the wolf’s dead shell. Before Brenner could deduce what had transpired, the vampire was charging at him. He dove for his twelve-gauge, and spinning on the ground, he aimed without a chance to fully know his accuracy. He pulled back a shot, blasting the vampire in the chest. Its feet left the ground, and it emitted a high-pitched squeal. The line of green lighting up both eyes was snuffed out in seconds.

You’re going to have to do better than this to kill me.

“Raaaaaaaaah!”

The bleeding vampire shed its skin—or Brenner thought it was shedding its skin. The skin went through a speedy cycle of rotting, regressing into blackened and fungus-infested flesh. The spilling blood turned to gel. Its arteries had hardened. The bones became brittle, but the body was alive, roaring and once again working to its feet to attack him.

Brenner was face-to-face with a level-two zombie.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!”

He didn’t want to suck the blood from the decaying man, so he utilized the twelve-gauge to plug another bullet into its head. The head was so rotted and weak the bullet clipped half its head off.

Brenner was puzzled by his attacker and what forms it’d taken. He waited for it to rise up again, to retrograde into another villain, but the head kept oozing black, putrid blood and creepy crawlies, the contents of a can of cranberry sauce infested by vermin. Deciding not to take any risks, he stamped the body as if putting out a camp fire. He wasn’t satisfied until the mess was unrecognizable. Caramel and green slime filtered through the broken orifices.

His attacker had changed from wolf to vampire to zombie in less than a five-minute period. This dead creature is only the beginning. What other tricks are up their sleeves?

The monsters above him had to have heard the twelve-gauge blasts. Nobody had come to investigate. They were too caught up in reaching the first floor, and maybe a few gunshots meant nothing to them, he believed.

Something else was in the room with him. He swept the chamber with his eyes. Modified boats. Concrete walls. Barren stairs. The section of water was still.

“Where are you, huh? Face me!”

His body was ready to suck the blood of his adversary. The lamprey suckers poked their heads out of his arms and shoulders. Their circular mouths gaped wide, begging to be satiated.

A trail of varnish-colored muck, the same he’d seen in a section of the corridor previously, trailed up the stairs, workings its way up higher and higher. That’s when the door suddenly slammed shut. He was left in darkness.

The slop and glom of moving slime resounded louder, as if the consistency were growing thicker and increasing still. “What are you? Are you too scared to fight me in the light? Huh, is that it? I’ll kill you anyway. Every one of you!”

The room wasn’t cold anymore, but humid and warm. He sweated in the rising heat. Something was stealing the air in the room. He raced for the stairs. In the dark, each step was a daring hypothesis. The retreat did no good when from above he was pelted and enshrouded in a mucous fluid. Liquid fingers seized his ankles and legs. The ice-cold fingertips crawled up his legs. He was frozen in place. His lamprey arteries were trapped beneath the flesh, beneath the layer of heavy fluids covering him. His head down to his chest was layered in the goop. The layers continued to take hold, firming up, becoming solid like putty. He couldn’t speak or cry out, his lips being sealed shut.

And that’s when the liquid changed. It was instantaneous. Warm flesh, beating hearts, circulatory systems delivering vital fluids, then mouths, widening eyes, gripping hands, arching feet and clawing arms were born. Each body separated from the mass and became an individual. The rank odor of the dead, the brittle and coarse hair of the werewolves and the smooth skin of the vampires—the room was dominated by the abominations.

He was attacked from every direction. His back was slashed by talons. Neck sucked and supped by hungry mouths. Clacking teeth claimed three digits from his left hand. His feet were kicked out from underneath him. His left eye was stubbed out by a tongue and scooped out by a dagger-nailed finger. His rib cage was crushed by a wolf’s embrace. More wolves peeled the flesh off his pectorals. That’s when they uncovered his monstrous circulatory system, and the lampreys were exposed under the skin.

“Fight these, you bastards!”

Brenner’s eye adjusted to the dark. Many of the lampreys leaped from his body and snaked into eyes, mouths, ears, or crawled beneath the flesh of their bodies. New blood circulated throughout him, but he was too wounded to receive it. The surplus of red squirted and sprayed from his body in spastic cycles.

He couldn’t fight them, nor could he use their blood to rejuvenate him. His neck was dribbling blood, his femoral artery and jugular vein gushing endlessly. His left arm from the elbow down was a chewed-up stump. The flesh on his back was peeled. Half his scalp was shredded by dull, hollow zombie teeth. His legs were minced and gnawed to the bone. Brenner couldn’t move. He was stuck in place by his fighting circulatory system that worked only on instinct.

Brenner regretted the decision he had to make, but he acted on the impulse anyway. He crawled, soon reaching the edge of the water. He dropped himself in. The cold depths stung his wounds. He cried out, his mouth filling with salty water. He clung to the edge of the foundation wall and waited for the monsters to come in after him.