They Eat Page 2

  The elevator pinged to give me fair warning that it was about to open. I took a huge breath in and swung the plunger hard and low, just like my little league coach taught me during my brief foray into the world of sports.

  But the handle cut through the air at nothing. The force and momentum of my would be blow sent my body swirling in circles chasing after it. It would have been crazy embarrassing had the circumstances been anything but what they were. I laughed into the emptiness of the hallway at the absurdity of it all.

  I’d spent most of my adult life around dying or dead people. Of course it bothered me, but not as much as it did when they started getting back up. To put the icing on the cake, I thought, here I was trying to knock their heads off with a plunger handle.

  I wiped the thick tears from my eyes and stumbled into the elevator.

  The calming sounds of some long haired hippy’s electric flute (or whatever it was) sent me further off the cliff of hilarity when I pressed the “L” button. I dropped the plunger and rested my hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath, but the elevator musician was on a role.

  The elevator dinged again.

  “L”.

  The metal doors rolled open and “they” all looked at me at the same time.

  The fear beneath my skin leapt from my body and ricocheted against the walls of the small elevator. The lobby was a sea of bloody faces and shining white teeth. Their bodies were mangled, bits torn off here and there, but their eyes were hungry, intent. I tried to look past them, check out my odds of making it through the crowd to the double glass doors that marked the building’s entryway, but their numbers were just too thick. They all stood swaying, like they were unsure of the feet beneath them, but hungry enough to take a chance in my direction. The warmth of my bladder ran down my legs just as I caught sight of the two standing closest to the mouth of the open elevator door.

  And it was then that froze my blood in my veins.

  It was Mr. Johnson and Latrice … or what was left of them.

  The last time I saw Latrice she was definitely dead, but there she stood. Her eyes the same milky white as Mr. Johnson’s and her teeth just threatening and pointed. She was the first of them to start toward me, blood pouring from the mangled cave in her chest. Maybe somewhere in her obviously dead brain she held on to how much she hated me.

  I didn’t know and I damn sure didn’t have time to care because she, Mr. Johnson and the rest of the building’s half-eaten, slow moving inhabitants were closing in on me.

  I braced myself for them, closed my eyes and waited for death. From the looks of the snarling crew, it was definitely in my immediate future. From the nurses that hung out in the break room for their entire shift to the bubbly receptionist who I suspected was about to punch out and head home when someone chewed off the back of her head -- everyone was there – all packed into the small lobby like children waiting for the school bell at 3. Some stayed where they were, beating at the front doors, while others crouched down in huddles finishing up their four course feast of janitor innards.

  But most of them were coming toward me.

  I could feel them even behind my eyes closed.

  I waited for them to begin tearing at my flesh with their blood soaked hands.

  But it never came, not this time anyway.

  I peeled open one eye to gauge how close death was and quickly realized I wasn’t going to die anytime soon.

  They walked toward me in a collective lumber. They were determined, but slow as molasses in the winter – all of them except Mr. Johnson.

  While he still moved at a snail’s pace, the stomp and bloody slosh his feet made in comparison to the others made him look like an Olympic sprinter. He was different … lighter on his feet than he was before he ate Latrice, but just as vicious.

  His belly sagged, as low as his thin, wrinkled skin would allow, ending in a round slab of giggling flesh swaying between his legs. If he ate anything or anyone else, it looked like it would snap right off his body.

  There has to be a way out of here.

  I picked up my plunger and stepped out of the elevator, my shoes skidding through the crimson mess on the floor. I scanned the crowd again.

  Mrs. Duffy from room 114 was to my right, her stomach sagging like Mr. Johnson’s but worse. It hung so low that it dragged on the ground, telling me she must have had her fill of one of her neighbors after Mr. Johnson got a hold of her.

  The sound her stomach made sliding across the hard linoleum sent my lunch running back up my esophagus and all over Latrice as she crept closer to me. It spattered in her face and down into her open chest cavity. She didn’t even blink and would have kept making her way to me if I hadn’t swung the plunger handle into the side of her head.

  Latrice stumbled.

  I hit her again.

  She fell to one knee.

  I hit her again and again until she stopped moving.

  My lungs burned from exhaustion. I couldn’t take the air into my body fast enough. I tried to rest my hands on my bent knees, but Mr. Johnson and the rest of the recently departed residents and the employees of Crystal Waters Nursing Home were hungry – and I was next in the buffet line.

  I pulled myself up with all of the strength I had left and sent the plunger handle into the bottom of Mr. Johnson’s chin. It penetrated his skull in a wet, stifled splat, the very tip of it jutting awkwardly out of the top of his head.

  Mr. Johnson fell to the floor in a thud, taking my only weapon with him.

  I grabbed the end sticking out of his chin and pulled, but the plunger wouldn’t move.

  Putting one hand on top of the other, I got a good grip and leaned with all of my weight away from his finally lifeless body. But my time with the plunger came to an end with Mr. Johnson.

  I was up cannibal’s creek and desperately out of options. I exhaled deeply and surrendered to my fate for the second time that night until I heard the sound of broken class tinkling on the floor.

  The banging on the front doors by the massacred mob paid off. The glass cracked and splintered into pieces as they poured over each other through opening. The lobby began to empty, turning the Crystal Waters’ lawn into a vision of what it’d had always been, not what we’d sold these people’s children in the brochure.

  It didn’t take much effort to run around my sluggish pursuers and out the broken front door behind the others.

  And I ran like hell!

  I ducked under their outstretched arms and bobbed and weaved through the limping, stumbling horde until Crystal Waters was at my back.

  The lights inside the building flickered off, then on, then off again just as I hit the street.

  The fluorescent glow from the nursing home usually lit up the entire block. That night it was outdone by the warm hum of a fire consuming the row houses up the street.

  A large van speeding around the corner slowed my step slightly.

  It’s the police! Finally!

  Disappointment pushed the beginnings of relief down my throat when it skidded to a stop next to me and I saw it was a news van. A pretty, young white woman stepped out of the passenger side of the van preoccupied with her hair like the fire burning a few feet away wasn’t happening .

  “Run!” I said as I sprinted past her.

  I looked back as I rounded the corner to leave Crystal Waters for the last time and pressed on. At the rate the people at Crystal Waters moved, it would be a few minutes before the pretty white lady saw them.

  She can’t say I didn’t tell her to run.

  My pace never slowed. Nor did I stop to make sure she heard me. The only thing I could think of was getting home to my babies. So that’s exactly what I did.

  2 Tammy Collins

  The fire burned with its intense orange hum, raining ash and smoldering embers like a hell spawned storm as Tammy got out of the news van.

  She was scared, but she had to.

  It was the moment she’d been dreaming of since she was a little girl watching
Katie Couric on the only TV they had in the house. She had to fight off five brothers, one after another, for control of the buttons on the outdated TV. But it was worth it. She fell in love with Katie the first time she saw her. She had to see her every day after that and she didn’t mind shedding blood to do it.

  It hurt the first time. That fight was one of her most vivid memories.

  She sat on the floor with her legs crossed in front of her on the cheap, green carpet her mother swore would match with the drapes. The Today Show was coming on in exactly 2 minutes and she had to see every second of it.

  The first blow was so unexpected that its force on Tammy’s back slammed her face to the floor. The joints of her crossed legs stretched until they couldn’t anymore and came flying from under her.

  “I told you this was my TV time,” her brother Michael said. He stood over her, triumphant, his shoulders relaxed and head held high.

  The tears fell from her pre-pubescent face as the pain seared her back.

  “Whatchoo gonna do, cry baby? Tell mommy?”

  He bent down so he could get closer to Tammy’s crumpled body. “I’ll kick the shit out of you harder if you do,” he whispered into her ear.

  Tammy turned her head just before he was able to stand up and sunk her teeth into his bottom lip.

  “MOM!” he tried to call out, but Tammy had his lip locked in her jaws.

  She opened her mouth and his lips smacked hard into his teeth with a wet plop.

  “MOM!” he screamed as he ran from the room.

  Tammy pushed herself up, wiped the blood from her mouth and crossed her legs in front of her again, just in time for Katie.

  This went on every day when she stuck her flag in the green carpet in front of the TV. With five brothers, there was one foe for every day of the week.

  It made Tammy proud when they ran away screaming curses and pleas for their mother.

  She got a lot of bumps, bruises and open wounds along the way, but the fighting made her stronger.

  It gave her the strength to pursue journalism in college instead of education like her academic advisor, Mr. Wallins, told her.

  “It’s a much more suitable line of work for a woman of your stature.”

  What he clearly didn’t know about Tammy was her petite frame contradicted more than just her full bottom and large, round bust. He wasn’t privy to how her blue eyes, long blonde hair and perfectly white teeth (one of which had been replaced after a particularly nasty bout with Michael) contradicted her perfect diction and encyclopedia of knowledge of anything that meant anything.

  Simply put, his statement revealed he could never fathom how much it all contradicted her strength.

  “If you would just sign off on my paperwork, I’ll be on my way. You’re not the first man to underestimate me, Mr. Wallins. Ask my brothers.”

  Tammy quickly established herself as a bully, but mostly to people with penises. Her brothers taught her how to hit someone and make it hurt. College taught her how to aim before the strike. Now on her first assignment in the field, she was ready to kick the shit out of everyone who said she couldn’t do it.

  “Does my hair look OK?” she asked Gus, the towering black man behind the camera. They’d been paired together since she started working at WTRE News, the local news station for Trenton, N.J. She was fond of Gus and his easygoing attitude allowed her the rare chance to let her fists fall from her hands. She thought about taking him up on his offers for coffee or breakfast after a long night of riding around the city trying to catch the latest news unfolding. But those were just thoughts and she quickly dismissed them out of concerns of being taken seriously.

  “It looks great. We just need to set up the right shot.”

  Tammy looked behind her at the string of burning row houses on Crystal Waters Drive. There were ten houses total on the dead end street, capped at its end by Crystal Waters Nursing Home. Every house was two stories with two windows on the second floor, one large window on the first floor, small porches and big, red doors. They were shaped and painted like a giant five-year-old made them. She could see that, even now, as the fire licked from the windows of every house. It looked like a large, hungry dragon was trapped inside and to escape was its only priority.

  While most of the homes were long ago made vacant by the real estate boom and the subsequent crash, it was still sad to see the windows that were once filled with families gathered at the dinner table or children wishing the rain would stop, now filled with smoke and flames.

  Tammy followed the thick smoke as it rose from the rooftops and billowed angrily in the wind down the street toward the Crystal Waters Nursing Home. All of the lights were off in the large building, rendering the grounds around the quaint building pitch black.

  “They were already bussed out of here,” she thought, trying to introduce logic to the bizarre irrationality of the scene.

  “Looks like it was some kinda explosion, huh? Can’t be just a fire,” Gus said from behind the camera.

  It was a somber backdrop, but a very real one, and a hell of a story if they could just get it on air, Tammy thought.

  “C’mon, Gus. Hurry up and find your angle so we can shoot this shit and get out of here.”

  “I’m going as fast as I can. Now move to your right a little bit. I want to make sure I get the fire in the background.” Gus followed her with her camera’s lens across the horrific landscape.

  “I’m surprised we made it here before the police,” Tammy said as she fixed the lapel of her blazer. “Is it straight?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I told you you look good,” Gus mumbled as his free hand fussed with the dials around the camera’s elongated lens trying to get the best picture with the added light from the fire.

  “Hurry up …”

  A young woman in a nurse’s uniform ran past Tammy. The unexpected presence of another person besides her and Gus startled her, knocking her WTRE microphone from her hands.

  “Hey! What the fuck, lady!” Tammy screamed after her.

  “Run!” the petite, black nurse called out over her shoulder.

  Gus lowered his camera from his shoulder and looked at Tammy without his lens for the first time since they’d gotten out of the van.

  Fear washed over his face, thick and hard. He wiped the sweat from his forehead hoping it would give him a few seconds for the hot chill to run off him.

  It didn’t.

  “Think she’s serious?”

  “Serious about what, Gus? Do you see anything over there worth running from?” She put her hands in the air, palms up, and shrugged. “We doing this or what?”

  Gus stiffly pulled his camera back on his shoulder, fitting it in the groove created from the years of carrying the heavy piece of equipment.

  “Got it? … I said do you have the shot, Gus!”

  “Yeah, Tammy. I got it.”

  The red light on the top of the camera came on and instantly stiffened Tammy’s body. Her shoulders stood erect on her back, pushing her neck up into a regal pose. It was a posture she’d been practicing since she was a kid. Her bright smile gleamed in the darkness in front of her. The warm light from the fire cast just enough shadow around her to highlight her blonde hair and blue eyes.

  “In 5, 4, 3, 2 …”

  This is Tammy Collins on the scene for WTRE News and we’re here live at a fire that’s engulfed the entire span of Crystal Waters Drive, just steps away from the Crystal Waters Nursing Home. Since we arrived, just minutes ago, the fire has grown in intensity. Police and the fire units still have yet to arrive on the scene, but we’re hearing on our police scanner that they should be here momentarily.

  Tammy lied. The battered scanner the station gave them when they started had long ago died out. But that was for her and Gus to know.

  Gus panned the camera slowly to get footage of the smoke and flames, allowing Tammy to cautiously step back into the frame to “sincerely” continue with the story.

  “We haven’t yet seen anyone injured
or any people for that matter --”

  Tammy’s voice trailed off and her eyes fixed on the space behind Gus.

  She could barely make out the figure coming toward them at first. But as the dark nothingness around them opened up, the figure became more of a man. He lumbered closer, dragging his left leg behind him, heavy and obviously broken.

  “Uh, Gus …”

  “We’re live, Tammy.”

  “Gus, I think we have another story developing.”

  The old, battered man moved in closer. Each step deliberate and determined.

  “Think he’s a survivor?” Gus said turning his camera toward the man.

  “I think we’ve found a witness here on the scene,” Tammy said. Her voice popped back into its on air persona seamlessly as she stepped gracefully into Gus’ new shot.

  “Let’s see if we can get some more information.”

  “Sir! Sir! Do you know what’s going on here?”

  Tammy approached the man and pushed her microphone in his direction.

  The sound of Tammy’s heels clicking across the street could barely be heard over the roaring hum and crackle of the fire. It consumed the roofs of the houses, sending red-hot wood crashing onto the sidewalk.

  The collapse lit the entire street, letting Tammy, Gus, and the people watching the news see the man in his full grotesque splendor. He was scrawny and blatantly elderly. The tattered hospital gown he wore barely clung to his body and slid further down his shoulders with each step. His skin was devoid of the color of life, hanging, missing in random places; like a macabre quilt made of the skin of the dead. Pearl white eyes, gleaming white teeth, and a gnarly chunk missing from the front of his head. If he isn’t dead now, Tammy thought, he’s about to be.

  “Are you OK, sir? Can you tell me what happened here?”

  His long, spindly fingers twitched and jerked about as he reached out for Tammy.

  “Gus, are you getting this?”

  The old man opened his mouth wide and thick lines of saliva began running down his chin and onto his bare chest.

  “Are you OK, sir?”