Blender babies, p.6
Blender Babies, page 6
“No!” Audrey yelled. “Bella! My baby!”
She hurried to the doorway. She landed hard on her knees next to Leigh’s body but she didn’t seem to feel any pain. Through the massive exit wounds on his back, she could see his dissolved, gooey organs jiggling like jelly in his blood. She didn’t think much of it. She rolled him onto his back and stared at his torso.
Bella wasn’t there.
“Where is she?” Audrey whispered.
She looked to her left, down the wheelchair ramp connected to the stoop, upon hearing a gate rolling and rattling. Diego stepped around her. Holding the rifle in one hand, he pointed his gun at the sidewalk to the left while kneeling down to check Leigh’s pulse. The young man was clearly dead but he had to be sure.
As he approached the entrance, Brian asked, “Is that the parking lot’s gate?”
“I think so,” Diego answered.
“Is someone coming in... or out?”
“We have to lock this place down.”
A baby’s cry reverberated through the street. From the stoop, the group watched as Addison—the fifteen-year-old survivor—ran out of the parking lot. She was carrying an infant in her arms. Although she couldn’t see her from afar, Audrey recognized the baby’s cries and the pink blanket wrapped around her body. It was her daughter.
“Bella!” she screamed as she scrambled to her feet.
Diego made a grab for her shoulder but missed her by an inch. Brian managed to grab her arm but she slipped out of his grasp. Audrey reeled down the wheelchair ramp and gave chase. Addison made it to the park across the street. The overgrown grass reached her thighs, thick enough to slow her down. As she reached the park, Audrey sped up into a sprint with wide strides despite the grass.
Fear for her daughter’s safety gave her a dose of superhuman strength.
From behind a tree, a man jumped out and chopped Audrey’s neck with a machete. The blade cut through her muscles, an external jugular vein, and her windpipe. She fell back with the machete sticking out of her neck. Splashes of blood leapt out of her throat. More blood flooded her trachea. Gurgling and crackling noises came out of her mouth as she attempted to call out to her daughter.
Adrenaline couldn’t make a person invincible, though.
Addison ran without looking back. Before she could exit the park, a man jumped up from the grass and grabbed her. Another man lunged at her from behind a neighboring tree. The teenager kicked and swung her free arm at them, but she couldn’t overpower the men. One of them pried the baby out of her arms, then ran off with her.
The other guy grabbed her from behind, one arm around her waist and the other around her neck. He held her in a chokehold while carrying her away. They disappeared in the darkness but the teenager’s sobs continued haunting the park.
“It’s them,” Brian said, stunned.
“Get inside,” Diego demanded.
“We have to... She needs our... Shit, why aren’t you shooting?”
“We don’t know how many of them are out there. We can’t waste our ammunition.”
“Wait, what... what is he doing?”
Audrey’s attacker stood over her. Yellow and red, his jaundiced eyes—scored with veins—appeared to be glowing in the dark. His pupils were alarmingly dilated. His long hair was frizzy but thinning while his beard was thick and wild. Blood and grime stained his hands. Flakes of dried blood caked his long, brittle, yellow fingernails.
On one foot, he wore a Converse sneaker and on the other, a torn black sock with his big toe sticking out of a hole. There were more dark stains on his jeans. His button-up shirt was open down the middle. Most of the buttons were missing. He didn’t wear anything under it, leaving his torso exposed. His abdomen was hollow and his ribs jutted out like a starved dog’s.
This man hadn’t had a nutritious meal in months. The Craze—the hunger for more—kept him going, though. Blender babies fueled him.
The man took a knee on her chest. Then, while gazing into Audrey’s eyes, he lowered his other knee onto the spine of the machete’s blade. She squeezed her eyes shut as the blade sank deeper. It split her esophagus in two, then severed one of her internal jugular veins. Blood shot out of the side of her neck in huge spurts, drenching the overgrown lawn.
She passed out fifteen seconds later but her head continued spinning like a tumbleweed tumbling in place. The man’s knee slipped off the blade and crashed into her upper teeth, chipping three incisors. He grinned as an idea popped into his head. He leaned forward and planted his palms on the ground. Chuckling, he started kneeing her face repeatedly.
Her crushed, bloodied nose resembled a squashed wad of gum on a sidewalk. Two teeth were dislodged from her gums. They spiraled down her throat like pills falling into a sink. She couldn’t swallow them because of the blade buried deep in her neck, though. Her cheekbones and forehead were caved in. Blood came out of her eyes and ears.
A siren wailed in the park. Another blared behind the police station. The noise came from cheap megaphones, loud and scratchy.
The survivors’ eyes widened in perfect unison. Baby-fiends emerged from behind every tree in the park and stood from the lawns. They had been crawling through the grass and hiding behind the trees to avoid detection, waiting for the perfect opportunity to attack. They were frenzied but organized—hungry but tactical.
Audrey’s killer jumped up to his feet. He ripped the machete out of her carved-up neck, a whip of blood flying off the blade.
He pointed the machete at the stoop and shouted, “Charge! Charge! Charge!”
5
THE SIEGE
The baby-fiends—teenaged to middle-aged—dashed towards the police station, growling and laughing and screaming and whooping. Some of them ran on all fours.
Diego fired his rifle at them. In the park, a young woman was shot in the head. Her left eye burst in its socket as the bullet went through it. The round exited through the back of her head along with shards of skull and wormlike bits of brain. She collapsed on the sidewalk across the street. The cop shot at the two men behind her but missed.
He turned his rifle and fired at a man on the street. The bullet hit the baby-fiend’s knee. Every bone, ligament, and tendon was shredded. The bottom half of his leg was barely attached to his body, dangling from strings of pulpy flesh. He fell to the ground and howled. The cop missed his head with a follow-up shot.
Brian saw a horde of raiders running into the parking lot. A few splintered away from the group and ran towards the main entrance. He shot at them. He didn’t hit anyone directly but some of the pellets ricocheted off the sidewalk. The ricochets struck their legs and abdomens. As if they didn’t feel any pain, they kept running.
Brian retreated into the police station. Diego followed him, walking backwards while shooting at their attackers. He closed the doors but they didn’t stay shut due to the damage caused by Leigh’s body.
“Block the entrance!” the cop shouted.
Brian pushed a large filing cabinet in front of one of the doors. It wasn’t big enough to block both. He heard people screaming and running in the police station. A baby-fiend crashed into the filing cabinet. Brian pushed his body up against it to stop it from toppling over. A crazed woman passed through the opening next to him.
As she made a beeline for him, Diego shot her in the neck. The gunshot made her stray off course. She reeled to her right with her hands wrapped around her throat as if she were strangling herself. She crashed into a wall face-first, dropped to her knees, got unsteadily to her feet, then collapsed. Blood accumulated into a puddle under her twitching body.
On his hands and knees to avoid friendly fire, Brian scurried over to the other side of the room. He pushed a sofa up against the side of the filing cabinet. It wasn’t big enough to block most of the other door, but it served as a small hurdle for the raiders. The cop shot a man attempting to vault over the sofa. The guy was hit in the chest, propelling him back. He landed on top of Leigh’s body on the stoop.
Brian ran backwards to Diego’s side. He shot at the doorway twice while the cop reloaded his rifle. There was no one there but he was hoping the gunfire would keep the raiders at bay. He heard glass shattering and wood snapping through the precinct. He knew the baby-fiends were trying to break through the boarded windows. He recoiled upon hearing gunfire inside of the building. He glanced back at the information desk, then at the neighboring doorway. Cesar was gone.
“They’re already inside,” he said.
He flinched again as the shooting resumed in the lobby. Diego had shot another baby-fiend before he could enter the building. The man was shot in the arm. His bicep popped like a balloon filled with blood while a flap of his tricep hung over his elbow. The man bellowed and took cover behind the barricade. Instead of trying to jump over the sofa, the raiders started pushing the filing cabinet forward, using it as a shield.
“Shoot!” Diego ordered.
“It’s too late!” Brian yelled. “We have to evacuate!”
“Don’t just stand there, damn it! Shoot!”
“I have to save my family!”
Brian ran through the doorway. Racing down the hallways, he heard a song of chaos playing all around him—sirens, destruction, gunfire, screaming, weeping. He bumped into another cop outside of the police station’s office area.
“Have you seen my family?” he asked rapidly, spitting words like bullets.
Without answering him, the cop barged into the office. He immediately started shooting at the windows with his rifle.
Brian went to the jail lobby. Some of the survivors had gathered in there. It was noisy and chaotic. One of the survivors was holding a chair overhead, ready to hurl it at the first baby-fiend to step into the room. Another one had torn a handset off a pay phone, the severed armored cord dangling from it.
“Leslie!” Brian shouted as he dashed into the room.
“What’s happening?” a brunette woman asked. “Are they inside? Did they get inside?”
“Leslie! Cameron!”
Hands buried in her hair, Laurie said, “They’re here, aren’t they? They’re really here. I knew this was going to happen. We’re dead. We’re all dead! Christ, help us!”
“Les! Cam!”
The man with a handset grabbed Brian’s arm and said, “Hey man, what the hell’s going on? What are we supposed to do now?”
“Get out! All of you, get out!” Brian yelled. “You have to evacuate. You’re cornering yourselves in here. Go anywhere but the main entrance. Once you’re outside, run like hell and don’t look back. Now, let go of me and let me find my family.”
He jerked his arm free and kept marching forward. The survivors continued firing off questions at him, but he didn’t have any time for them.
“Over here!” Kristen hollered from behind the reception desk.
She was cowering back there with her kids as well as Leslie, Harper, and Cameron. They were all sniveling. Leslie was wearing a backpack. It was loaded with supplies for their baby and for their survival, including reusable diapers, formula, rationed food, and a flashlight. Brian grabbed his family in a bear hug. He felt his blood pressure drop as relief swept through him.
“We have to go,” he said.
Leslie stuttered, “Wha–What about the rest of our stuff?”
“No, no. We don’t have time to pack anything. We don’t even have time to talk about this. It’s over. We have to leave, Leslie, or we...”
‘We’re dead.’ He couldn’t say those words in front of his son or Kristen’s children. Leslie didn’t have to hear the rest of the sentence to get the message, though. She saw the intense fear in his eyes.
“We’re right behind you,” she said.
Brian crouched in front of Cameron and said, “Grab Mom’s pants. Whatever you do, don’t let go. You hear me, little guy? Huh?” Cameron sniffled and nodded as he hooked his little fingers over his mother’s waistband. Brian stood up, looked Kristen in the eye, and in a quiet voice so the kids wouldn’t hear him, he said, “Stay close or you’re on your own. Don’t make me pick between us and you.”
“We–We’ll follow you, Brian,” Kristen said with a tremor in her voice.
Brian lifted his shotgun and put his finger on the trigger, entering a shooting stance. He led his family and Kristen’s through the jail lobby. As they reached the doorway, the door to the garage broke open down the hall in front of them. A shirtless baby-fiend—nicks and scratches across his bald scalp—had tackled the door. He lost his balance as he stumbled into the corridor but he caught himself on the opposite wall. He was armed with a sickle.
The maniac cackled as he ogled the families. His eyes were shining with happiness, excitement, arousal. He looked like he had just won a jackpot.
“Plug your ears!” Brian shouted.
The maniac barreled towards them. At point-blank range, Brian squeezed the trigger. The survivors behind him screamed with the roaring gunfire. The maniac was blown off his feet by the blast. He fell back with a crater on the left side of his chest. He writhed on the floor, fighting for air. Fragments of bone from his ribs and pellets collapsed his lung, pierced his heart, and penetrated his diaphragm.
“Hurry,” Brian said, his ears ringing. “Stay close.”
“My ear hurts,” Cameron whimpered. “Dad, it–it hurts.”
Since he was still holding onto his mother’s waistband, the boy had only blocked one of his ears with his free hand. Harper was bawling, too. Leslie held her close to her chest, trying to smother her cries with her bosom without suffocating her. She used her body to block Cameron’s view of the carnage, too.
“I know, Cam, I know,” Brian said, dread and frustration straining his voice. “You’re okay. You’re fine. Just stay close.”
He led them down the other hallway. They could still hear the cops shooting in the other rooms. They took a right, moving away from the main lobby. Leslie was heartbroken by the bloodcurdling screams from the survivors behind them. More raiders had entered the police station through the garage and they had poured into the jail lobby.
The families hurried down another corridor. Brian stopped at the archway to his right. Hugging the wall, he took a peek around the corner into the staff lounge. He felt his heart drop into the pit of his stomach like a grenade, igniting a bout of paralysis. Tables and chairs were knocked over. Fresh blood streaked the walls and carpet.
Cesar sat on the floor in the corner of the room, a limp arm outstretched in front of him. He drew noisy, irregular breaths, mouth wide open with blood coating his lips. A chef’s knife stuck out of his neck. His other hand was on the handle. He didn’t have the strength to pull it out. There were nine deep stab wounds down the left side of his torso—from his ribs to his hip—three more on his back, and two on his shoulder.
Eva was on the floor in the middle of the room. She was on top of her son, propping herself up on her elbows as if she were planking so she wouldn’t crush him. The toddler was crying under her, kicking and screaming. Three baby-fiends towered over them, all of them armed with machetes. There was a tall man with long hair, matted with dried blood and fecal matter; a short guy with a thick mustache and stubble; and a woman with a shaved head.
“No! No! Please!” Eva was screaming. “Help me! Help!”
“You cut me, you cunt!” the female maniac hissed.
Eva had used a box cutter to slice the woman’s face open from the corner of her mouth to the center of her cheek, leaving her with half a Glasgow smile. The baby-fiends had attempted to abduct her and her son but she put up a fight. Cesar had tried to rescue his family, but he was taken by surprise and stabbed from behind. The man with the long hair had Cesar’s pistol tucked in the back of his waistband.
“We gave ya a chance to come with us,” the female maniac said, circling her like a vulture. “If ya shared with us, we woulda shared with you. We ain’t greedy. And even if we are, we coulda gotten some more babies outta ya. More babies, more chances to share, right? We coulda worked something out. Shit, we coulda replaced that brat for ya while we were at it. This didn’t have to be the end for y’all.”
“Stop it! Get away from us!” Eva shouted.
“Oh, we’ll be on our way soon, ma’am. And we’ll be taking that sweet, juicy baby with us. Gonna give ‘em–”
“Never!”
“–a new home. Right in our bellies. We’re gonna slurp him up. Isn’t that right, boys?”
“That’s right,” the man with the long hair said, grinning.
Eva looked up at them and yelled, “Don’t you fucking–”
The female maniac punted her side with her steel-toed boot, knocking the wind out of her. The other baby-fiends joined in. They kicked and stomped and tread all over her.
Over her grunting and groaning, Eva could hear her bones cracking and crunching. Her broken ribs caused hot pulses of pain to shoot through her body with each breath. Her arm wobbled as a kick dislocated her elbow with a loud pop. She blacked out after a kick to the side of her head. She awoke five seconds later, dizzy and nauseated with her ears ringing. Blood ran down her cheek from a gash on her temple.
She felt her son sliding out from under her. He was a shapeless blot in her blurred vision, but she could still hear his crying over the buzzing in her ears. Although she was scared of crushing him, she wrapped her arms tightly around the boy and let her body fall on top of him. She convinced herself that she was going to die in that room and that it was better for her to suffocate her son and take him with her than to let them take him and turn him into a blender baby.
A punt to the back of her head cut her scalp open. Blood drenched her hair before trickling down to her forehead and the nape of her neck.
During the beating, Brian sidestepped past the archway while aiming his shotgun at the baby-fiends. His family and Kristen’s followed him. Despite his darkening eyesight, Cesar spotted them from the edge of his vision. He raised his arm, hand shaking madly like an impatient patron waving down a waitress at a restaurant. He called out to Brian but only grunts, hiccups, and blood came out of his mouth.
