THE DAMNED Read online

  “The fuck are you?” Scott said, his wide eyes scanning the dreary landscape to either side of him.

  “You gotta get outa here. We gotta get outa here.”

  “Jesus Christ, what’s happening to me?”

  “C’mon, buddy. They’ll be back, and a hell of a lot more of ‘em.”

  “Who? Who’ll be back?”

  “Whoever heard that goddamn thunder-stick of yours.”

  Flames crackled and popped, sizzling in the background as they licked their way up the naked woman’s torso and face. Scott nodded at the fire. “What about her? We can’t just leave her like that.”

  “What’re you, kidding me?”

  The distant clattering of trashcans crashing to the sidewalk swiveled Scott’s head toward the noise.

  “Run!” the midget called out, and Scott chased him across the street, into an alley that lay between two houses. In the darkness at the corner of a house, the midget on one knee, Scott crouching behind him, they watched five men emerge from the side of a building a ways up the street. Two carried baseball bats with long nails hammered through their thick ends; another carried a machete. Like their fallen counterparts, the two carrying bats were huge, well over six feet tall. Scott stroked his shotgun for a little high-powered reassurance as three of them broke off from the others and made their way down to the fire, whose light revealed pistols jammed into the back of two of their waistbands, just like the one he’d just killed. The two left behind carried shotguns.

  The man bearing the machete looked at what was left of his headless compatriot, walked over and put a foot in the back of another, nudged him and said, “Goddamnit.” He had on a pair of black leather pants. A sleeveless black leather motorcycle jacket draped his thin shoulders. His long black hair lay flat against his head. He turned and Scott saw The Devil’s Own emblem adorning his back, the pistol grip protruding from his waistband. His eyes swept from house to house, settling on the slice of darkness hiding Scott for a brief moment before kneeling to relieve the headless corpse of its sidearm, scooping it up and jamming it side by side with his own weapon.

  “Man, look at this shit, Dub,” the larger of the two said. “Somebody sure fucked them up.”

  The other huffed out a laugh. “Blew ‘em the fuck apart is what they did.”

  Dub, the apparent leader, nodded at the woman. “Look at that. Goddamnit. Turn her ass over.”

  The other two lay down their bats. Manning opposite ends of the spit, they tugged and twisted and a fresh wave of juices sizzled, popping as they sluiced over the fire. Dub grabbed a handful of blackened breast, sliced off a nipple and tossed it into his mouth. “Mmm,” he said, crunching it between his teeth as he sawed the entire breast away. The steaming hunk of meat looked like a piece of barbequed pork as he tossed it to his counterpart, who snatched it out of the air like a rabid dog, crammed it in his mouth and said, “Tasty!”

  “I want her lips!”

  “Fuck you,” Dub said. “Grab her goddamn feet.”

  “Am I dead?” Scott whispered. “Are we in Hell?”

  “Well on our way if you don’t shut up,” the midget whispered back.

  Dub walked down a few feet, swung his machete until blade met wire and her feet came free. He did the same at the opposite end and the two behemoths shuffled sideways with the burned and blackened corpse.

  “We should do something.”

  “Like what, shoot ‘em? That’s what they want. They want you to give your position away so they can come get your ass. No telling how many of those cocksuckers are fanned out along these houses.”

  “Who are they?”

  The midget shushed him.

  “Who are you?”

  Shushed him again.

  Dub turned and led the grisly procession back up the street. Moments later they joined their companions, and all five disappeared into the murky grey landscape from whence they had come.

  “Whew!” The midget sat back against the side of the house, sighed and smiled.

  “The fuck is wrong with your teeth?” Scott asked him—they were filed down to fine sharp points, like something out of a cheesy horror flick, or a nightmare, one Scott was not entirely sure he wasn’t having. “Am I even awake here?”

  The midget laughed. “I’m Warren the Rat Boy. I come from a long line of sideshow performers—notice I didn’t say freaks. I’ve worked the Carny circuit most of my life, finally made my way up to the Big Top a couple of years before the shit hit the fan.”

  “What do you mean, the shit hit the—”

  “What happened to your head?”

  “Somebody shot me.”

  Warren snickered. “What? When?”

  “I’m… not sure.”

  “Because I’m sensing you really don’t understand what’s going on here.”

  “Oh yeah? Why’s that, because I keep asking you WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE?”

  “Keep your voice down, dumbass. Those big bastards could be anywhere.” Warren paused for a moment, then, “Look, what’s the last thing you remember?”

  Scott sat down, relaxed and crossed his legs. He laid the shotgun beside him, took a deep breath and let it out. “Just… pulling up to a red light. Somebody tapped on my window… a gun was there and it went off. I woke up a little while ago down the street in that rehabilitation center.”

  “That means you’ve been out seven weeks.”

  “What?”

  “About the same time that crazy fucker came on the TeeVee—radio too, I’ve been told.”

  Crazy fucker.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Seven weeks ago some crazy bastard broke through the airwaves: television, radio, even the movie theatre screens winked out into a staticky buncha noise, and a voice came outa that jumbled mess proclaiming the end of the world. Black clouds will gather, he said.”

  Scott gasped.

  Black clouds will gather.

  “The sun will leave the sky!”

  The sun will leave the sky.

  “He was right about that shit; fucking sun ain’t shone around here for seven goddamn weeks. Look at that smoky grey shit up there.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, it’s the middle of the friggin’ day. Bet you thought it was night, didn’t you? I would too if I didn’t know better.” Warren laughed. “Fire will pour from the Heavens and—”

  “The damned shall walk the earth. I remember now. I was chasing some prick down the expressway and the radio cut off, and some… I thought I’d jumped stations and some crazy preacher was spouting off a bunch of bullshit. Next thing I know the gun’s in my face and… a swirling mass of black clouds raced across the sky and the gun went off.”

  “You don’t know the half of it, pal. I was onstage, dead in the middle of a performance, and half the audience vanished, just up and disappeared like some kinda crazy Twilight Zone episode. The rest of ‘em started going at each other like a pack of jackals, beatin’ and tearin’ and rippin’ the shit outa each other. The roof of the tent caught fire and I got the hell outa there. The sky was fallin’, just like the man said. Great balls of fire falling outa the sky as far as the eye could see, cities burning, forests set ablaze until not a tree was left un-scorched. The Rapture came on a Friday afternoon but the Bible was wrong, wasn’t no seven years of prosperity following it, just Hell on earth, seven weeks and counting, until all that’s left are bands of brutes and nightmarish creatures slithering about the landscape.”

  Warren snapped his fingers. “Just like that, the lights winked out and the sun went away, and damn near half the world went with it. All the decent folks, anyway. I ain’t run across a straight-shootin’ son of a bitch since it happened. Just a buncha evil doing bastards. Like that preachin’ cocksucker said: the damned are walkin’ the earth and it’s dog eat dog, and you’d better watch your nuts or one of those big behemoth motherfuckers’ll be gnawin’ on ‘em. God knows they ate everything else they could get their mitts on.”

  �
��God Almighty,” Scott said. “This can’t be happening.”

  Warren laughed. “Pinch yourself… what’d you say your name was?”

  “Scott.”

  “Pinch yourself, Scott, and pray to God you can’t feel it.”

  And Scott did. He pinched his forearm hard, but it wasn’t pain that brought the tears streaming from his eyes. “Jesus, where’s my wife?”

  Warren shrugged. “Gone to Heaven if she was righteous, I’d guess. On a spit if she wasn’t, or being fucked to death by those pricks—if she looked halfway decent. They ain’t got the highest of standards, you know.” He got to his feet, and Scott, placing a hand on his stomach, said, “Jesus, I’m hungry.”

  “Got some rusty old cans of Spam at my place. Better than dirt, I guess.”

  “Spam?”

  “Ain’t no meat. When the sky fell, the power winked out. The meat went fast—those big bastards seen to that. Next thing you know they’re runnin’ around barbequing people; men, women, don’t make no difference to them. They’ll eat anything.”

  “What about cows, chickens… farm animals, for chrissakes?”

  Warren laughed and shook his head. “You just don’t get it, do you, Scotty? When the Rapture, or whatever the hell it was, hit, everything good in the world went away: plants, animals, dogs and cats and all the nice neighbors you used to have—hell, there aren’t even leaves on the trees anymore, just one big nightmare of a world with a passel of scary sons of bitches dying to get their hands on each other.”

  Scott wiped a band of sweat from his grimy forehead. His stomach rumbled and Warren chuckled. “C’mon,” he said. “Let’s see if one of those pricks you gunned down has the same size feet you do. Then we’ll go eat some frigging Spam. My shit’s stashed a couple of blocks from here.”

  Scott uncrossed his legs, and leaned forward on hands and knees. He pushed up and the walking stick pounded his temple, sending a blinding flash of pain hammering through his skull as he toppled face forward onto the dirt.

  He struggled to a knee and Warren laughed.

  The cane bounced off Scott’s shoulder and he screamed. He scrambled to his feet and lurched away, his head cradled in his hands. The shotgun lay on the ground but Scott didn’t try for it; all he could think about was getting away from that paralyzing jolt crashing between his ears. The cane whooshed through the heavy grey air and the silver handle found Scott’s kneecap; he hit the dirt and Warren mounted him like a child-sized jockey. A fistful of hair in one hand, feet gouging the prone man’s sides, he ripped the bandage from Scott’s head. Eyes wide and wild and pointed teeth as sharp as razors, he called out, “Dog eat dog, baby!”

  Chapter Two

  It was damned embarrassing, being man-handled by a pintsized circus performer, but Scott, weak from hunger, and from the blinding pain inflicted by Warren’s walking stick, could do nothing to stop the little creep from riding his back like some kind of demonic cherub come from the depths of Hell to claim him. He tried to push up when the guy cried out and grabbed his wound, but the pain forced him flat onto his belly, eyes closed against what surely would come next. But nothing happened, other than a startled, “What the hell?” from Warren and a simultaneous whupping sound, much like the sound of his grandmother’s broom bouncing off the old threadbare throw rugs she used to hang over the clothesline in her backyard. Whatever had made the noise sent the midget sliding off his back and onto the ground.

  Scott turned to see a raven-haired woman towering above him. She wore a light pink halter-top with sequined Playboy-bunny-ears embroidered across its front, cut off just at midriff, the garment so tight it looked as if she had been poured into it. Equally tight cut-off jeans and white Reebok sneakers rounded out her wardrobe. A knapsack hung from her right shoulder. Strapped in place beneath the other shoulder was a leather holster, firmly snuggling the nine millimeter hardware that went with it. She had the trim, muscular legs of a long distance runner. The well-defined contours running along her arms put Scott in mind of the female lead from the old Terminator 2 movie. Long, straight hair cascaded down and across her full breasts, framing a face that might well have graced the cover of fashion magazines at some point in time, if not for the wide jagged scar running down her cheek—Scott couldn’t help wondering how she had acquired it. Fire burned in her brilliant blue eyes as she looked down at Warren The Rat Boy, the Carny hustler who was obviously was as twisted as Dub and his pack of flesh eating Neanderthal pals.

  “What the hell?” Warren said again, although it was quite apparent from the leering smile decorating his face that he knew exactly why he was staring up at the wrong end of a shotgun.

  “Don’t move a muscle,” she said, and to Scott, “You okay?”

  “Not by a long shot,” Scott said. Grimacing, he rolled over and got to his knees, looked at Warren, and said, “The fuck is wrong with you?”

  Warren shrugged. He opened his mouth to answer but nothing came out. He glanced up at the woman, who said, “Look at me wrong—flinch and I’ll turn you into dog food.” The shotgun in one hand, she reached the other out to Scott; he grabbed it and she pulled him to his feet. “I saw everything, what you did for that poor woman, the way you cut loose on those freaky bastards, saw it all from the shadows back there. When that piece of shit started in on you, well, I couldn’t just stand by and watch.”

  “Well, thanks for that. Don’t know that I did her much good, but, Jesus; those guys…” Scott stared out at the fire, and for a brief moment saw the burned and bloated corpse sizzling over it. The flames, which had died down considerably since the goon-squad’s departure, cast an eerie glow on the carnage he’d created. He could feel his stomach twisting into a greasy knot, and even though he was hungry as hell, he couldn’t imagine putting food into it. Something else he couldn’t imagine: going back and slipping the shoes off a dead man. Something he was going to have to do if he didn’t want his feet chewed up by rocks and glass and the rough concrete hiding beneath the grey ash.

  “Anyway,” she said. “I’m Lila.”

  “Scott.”

  “What’s your story, Scott? What’re you doing out here barefoot, and what happened to your head?”

  “I had an accident.”

  “Accident, huh?”

  “Tell you the truth; I don’t really know what happened. I woke up a little while ago in a rehab center full of dead people, came out of the place and saw some freaky looking thing squirming down the sidewalk like a human slug. Then I happened across this mess.”

  “Well,” Lila said, nodding at the fire, “let’s go over there and see if we can’t find you some shoes.”

  Scott sighed, and Lila said, “What about him?”

  “Who, the slime-ball who just attacked me for no reason whatsoever?” Scott looked on in disgust at the midget—the snick-snack of the weapon snapped his head back to Lila, who put a foot on Warren’s chest and forced him flat onto his back.

  “Open your mouth.”

  Warren said, “What?”, and Scott said, “What’re you doing?”

  Lila pushed the barrel into Warren’s face and he grabbed it. He tried moving it away but she forced it against his tightly drawn lips. “Open. Your. Mouth.”

  “Look,” Scott said.

  Warren, his small hands trembling against the cold steel shotgun barrel, said, “Please.”

  “What do you think he was about to do when I booted him off your ass?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t either, but it sure as hell wasn’t anything good.” Lila slid the barrel past Warren’s jagged teeth, and the dwarf began to gag, hands still gripping the barrel as she said, “We let him go, we’ll live to regret it.”

  “Don’t,” said Scott. He’d seen enough bloodshed in the last hour to last him a lifetime—the last thing he wanted was to watch Warren’s head explode in a hail of blood and brain and pieces of skull. No matter what he’d done. “Please, you can’t. It’d be cold blooded murder.”

  “About a
s cold blooded as what he was going to do to you.” Lila wiggled the barrel and Warren grunted. “Huh, little man?”

  “Food,” Warren stammered around the barrel. “I’ve got a… food stash… and supplies.”

  “Probably some pals to ambush us when we get there too, huh?”

  “Nuh uh.”

  “Like I said, we let him go he’ll pull some kind of shit. Let him go he might come back and kill the both of us.” Lila, who had wrapped her finger around the trigger, said, “Sorry, little man.”

  Lila pulled the trigger and Scott shouted, “NO!”, gasping as the hammer fell onto an empty chamber and a piss stain bloomed across the front of Warren’s pants.

  “So much for that,” said Lila. She lifted the shotgun and Warren let out a long sigh. Then she pulled her foot away from the midget’s chest, stepping back as Warren sat up, gasping for air. “We’re going to get him some shoes. Then we’re all going to see what kind of supplies you’ve got stashed. Oh, and if you try anything stupid—” Lila slapped the pistol nestled beneath her armpit. “—this one’s fully loaded.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Warren said as he got to his feet, brushing dirt off the back of his pants leg.

  “Try something and you’ll find out.”

  Lila handed the shotgun to Scott—what good it would do them now, he didn’t know, but he took it just the same. No telling what they might run into out here: empty pawn shops, abandoned police cars. Maybe there would be some shells back at the house of death Scott had woken in earlier in the day. Maybe they’d find a box of them under the corpse he’d stumbled over on his way out of the place.

  If he could force himself to go back there.

  They crossed the street to the fire pit, Warren in front, Scott and Lila side by side behind him. The fire was almost out now, and Scott could see things scattered amongst the dying embers: here a charred foot, there a blackened piece of skull, fragments of bones bleached ash-white by the fires; some pieces scorched black. Next to the smoldering pit lay the discarded bats, beside a guy with half a head—the first lunatic Scott had blasted, a gory mass of shredded brain plastered against the jagged remnants of his skull. Smoke rose from one of his booted feet, which lay across a pile of glowing embers. Warren stopped beside the guy, got down on hands and knees and started rifling through his pockets. Moments later he stood back up, empty handed.