They kill, p.20
They Kill, page 20
Grace and Randall moved away from Stuart and each other, as if instinctively making room for themselves to fight. Sierra hoped that Karolyn would take advantage of the moment to get the hell out of there, but she didn’t move a muscle.
She’s too scared to move, Sierra thought. She didn’t blame her.
Sierra started to walk forward, intending to go to Karolyn, take the woman’s arm, and pull her away. Hopefully, the others would be too busy facing off against each other to notice what she was doing. But Marc took hold of her arm to stop her, and when she turned to look at him, he shook his head.
“Didn’t you hear them?” he whispered. “They came for you. You can’t get too close to them. Who knows what they’ll do to you?”
She appreciated his concern, but that was the point. They had come for her. It was her fault they were here, and she couldn’t let anything happen to Karolyn because she’d been stupid enough to return here after the Reliant building’s collapse. If she’d known there were others pursuing her besides Jeffrey…she still might’ve come here. She hadn’t been thinking clearly after the destruction of the building, but that was no excuse. Her friend was in danger – and so were Marc, Gloria, and all the students – and it was all because of her. She tried to pull free from Marc, but he tightened his grip on her arm. It seemed he was determined to prevent her from sacrificing herself.
She was about to turn and tell him to let her the fuck go, when Grace scowled at Stuart and said, “Who are you?”
“I’m Stuart. Sierra’s boyfriend.”
Grace laughed, a brittle-boned sound that made Sierra wince.
“You’re the controlling little fuck with all the insecurities? Sierra’s told me all about you. I really shouldn’t do the thieving cunt any favors, but since you are such a douche….”
She gestured to Officer Al. The man aimed his weapon at Stuart and fired.
There was a loud clang and Stuart staggered back, but he didn’t go down. Officer Al frowned and fired again, and he continued firing until his clip was empty. Each bullet struck Stuart, but they all clanged off his body as if it were armored. One of the bullets had hit his cheek and another his neck, blasting away flesh and revealing silver underneath.
“Thanks, Krista,” Stuart said.
Sierra had no idea who he was speaking to, but then he opened his mouth and a cable shot forth. There were sharp prongs on the end, and they buried themselves in Officer Al’s forehead. The man’s eyes rolled white, and he dropped his empty gun as his body began spasming, as if he was having a seizure. His skin blackened, and his body shrank in on itself as a nauseating smell of burning flesh filled the air. And then Officer Al – who now resembled a man-shaped piece of charcoal with empty hollows where the eyes had been – stopped seizing. The cable detached from his forehead and flew back into Stuart’s mouth. And then, as if the cable had been the only thing holding up Officer Al’s corpse, the blackened husk of his body collapsed to the wooden floor, hitting with a soft crunching sound, like a pile of dead fallen leaves.
“That was a neat trick,” Randall said.
Stuart acknowledged the compliment with a nod, but he didn’t take his eyes off Grace. She stared at Officer Al’s remains as if she couldn’t believe what had happened. Then she glared at Stuart.
“You little bastard,” she spat. “I’m going to tear your head off, vomit down your neck, and see if I can make your headless body my new servant. It’ll be fun watching you bump into everything since you won’t be able to see or hear. What do you think about that?”
Before Stuart could answer, the front door burst open and Mandy made her entrance. She looked at Grace, Randall, and Stuart, and her face wrinkled in disgust.
“My god, it’s a fucking freak convention in here,” she said.
Grace frowned, the desiccated skin on her brow cracking in several places.
“You’re that bitch Sierra’s always complaining about, the one that’s got a hang-up about sex.”
Mandy shot Sierra a glance before she answered Grace, her voice almost a purr.
“I may be a bitch, but I’ve recently reconsidered my attitude toward sex.”
Sierra might’ve guessed as much from the woman’s look. Her blouse was unbuttoned so far it was a miracle that her breasts hadn’t spilled out, and her hair was not only down, it was wild and tousled. But more telling was the way she moved, with a leonine ease, a predator completely at home in her own skin and certain of her strength. She exuded a powerful musky scent that began to fill the building like an invisible fog of sexual energy, and when it hit Sierra with its full force, she became instantly wet, and she wondered why she’d never noticed how beautiful Mandy was before this. She wondered what it would be like to kiss her, to run her tongue over those velvet lips….
Mandy’s pheromones affected everyone in the building, with the possible exception of Randall, who didn’t appear to have a nose on his round smiley face. Stuart’s eyes sparked with tiny bolts of electric current, and Grace, despite herself, licked her leathery lips with a lump of dried meat that served as her tongue. Of those standing near the entrance, Karolyn was affected the most. She forgot her fear of the monstrous beings who’d entered her school and sidled up to Mandy with a sly look on her face. She pressed herself against Mandy’s body and kissed her long and deep, fondling one of her large breasts as she did so. In the back, Gloria grabbed a man old enough to be her father and kissed him so hard their teeth clacked together. The man kissed her enthusiastically back, and the other adults began touching each other, tentatively at first, but with increasing urgency. The high-schoolers, whose bodies were already experiencing the turmoil of adolescence, were hit strongest of all. Their skin flushed red, their breathing became heavy, and a couple began salivating so much drool spilled over their chins. Several began kneading their crotches while others turned to the student nearest them and began making out, and a few even dry-humped.
If it kept up like this, the afternoon students – teen and adult alike – would shuck their clothes and start rutting on the floor like animals in heat. And Sierra wasn’t sure she wouldn’t be down there getting it on with them. It had been a long time since she’d had sex, since she’d broken up with Stuart, in fact. She looked at him closely for the first time since he’d come in, and she realized his new cyborg look was actually kind of hot.
Christ, she thought. Mandy’s sex magic is even making Stuart look good to me.
Marc grabbed hold of her shoulders and gave her a hard shake.
“Snap out of it!” he said. “She’s casting some kind of sex spell. I’m halfway hard, and I’ve never been attracted to a woman in my life!”
Sierra still felt drawn to Mandy, but now that she knew the reason for it, she was able to resist her lure. So she’d been changed too. Another person from her life had been refashioned into some kind of distorted version of themselves. Randall had become the ultimate Chuck. Grace was a booze-spewing witch. Stuart had become one with his beloved technology, and Mandy had finally shed her inhibitions and self-loathing to become the apotheosis of sexual obsession. Sierra didn’t know why they’d been chosen to undergo such transformations or what it had to do with her, which surely it did since she was the only connection between the four of them as far as she knew. But she felt confident of one thing: the man in the black suit, the one she’d seen resurrect Jeffrey in last night’s dream, was responsible somehow.
And speaking of Jeffrey….
The door opened for a final time, and Sierra’s brother entered.
“Looks like the gang’s all here,” Marc said.
Jeffrey looked worse than the last time Sierra had seen him. His gray skin was marred with patches of black in places, and it sagged, as if it was having trouble staying attached to his bones. Whatever power the man in the black suit had used to resurrect Jeffrey, it seemed to have its limits when it came to keeping his body fresh. He’d smelled bad in the Reliant office, but now he smelled worse, like a walking sewer, and his stench cut through Mandy’s miasma of sex like a scalpel. Karolyn pulled away from Mandy, a look of horror on her face, as if she couldn’t believe what she’d been doing. The students, both young and old, found their carnal urges deserting them as well, and they moved apart from one another, most looking embarrassed, but a few looked speculatively at the person they’d been kissing and touching, as if hoping they’d found themselves a special friend.
Even in a situation as fucked up at this, some people still let their genitals do their thinking for them, Sierra thought.
Mandy turned to Jeffrey and waved her hand in front of her nose.
“Honey, I don’t know what your problem is, but your body odor is a real mood-killer.”
Jeffrey ignored her, and he did the same to Randall, Stuart, and Grace. If he noticed anything odd about them, he didn’t show it. But considering his current state, maybe they didn’t look very strange to him. He glanced around, and when his gaze fell on Sierra and Marc, his face brightened.
“There you are! I want to tell you how sorry—”
He started walking forward as he said these words, but he hadn’t gotten two steps before Randall interrupted him.
“You’re supposed to be dead, son. Did you forget? Here, let me remind you.” And with a single vicious swipe, he buried his copper dagger in Jeffrey’s chest, all the way to the hilt. No blood emerged from the wound, but a thick clear liquid oozed slowly forth. Jeffrey didn’t cry out in pain. He didn’t so much as blink as the blade slid into his flesh. Randall still gripped the knife, and Jeffrey’s gaze followed his hand to his arm and then his face.
He frowned.
“Mr. Kovach? Is that you?”
Randall – his smiley-face expression unvarying – gave his blade a twist when he withdrew it from Jeffrey’s body. More clear fluid spurted from Jeffrey’s chest onto his shirt, dampening the cloth.
Jeffrey’s frown became a scowl.
“That wasn’t very nice, Mr. Kovach.”
Moving far faster than his decaying body seemed capable of, Jeffrey backhanded Randall across his orb of a face. The blow caused Randall to stagger to the side, and his yellow flesh turned black where Jeffrey’s hand had struck him. The black patch swiftly turned gray and crumbled to dust, leaving behind a fist-sized divot in the right side of Randall’s face.
“That hurt!” Randall shouted.
He swiped his blade toward Jeffrey again, but when Jeffrey tried to block the blow, the knife’s edge sank into his right wrist and lopped the hand off as easily as if Randall had popped the head off a dandelion. The hand blackened on its way to the floor, and when it hit, it exploded in a puff of gray dust.
Clear ichor dripped from Jeffrey’s newly made stump, but the loss of his hand didn’t appear to hurt him. It did, however, make him angry. He started toward Randall, but the smiley-face man jumped back, stuck his free hand in his pants pocket, and brought out a number of Chucks that he then threw in Jeffrey’s face. Sierra expected the pennies to hit and bounce off, but when they struck Jeffrey’s skin, they sank in halfway and remained embedded.
It’s like the edges are sharp, she thought. Chucks as shuriken.
Chucks protruded from Jeffrey’s forehead, cheeks, chin, nose, and several had struck his eyes. Clear goo seeped from the wounds, especially from his eyes, making it look like he was weeping thick, gloppy tears. Jeffrey reached up to pull the Chucks off, but since he only had his left hand now, all he managed to do with the stump of his right was smear more goo onto his face.
Oh Jeffrey, Sierra thought. Your eyes!
Mandy, Stuart, and Grace stood by and watched Randall and Jeffrey fight with varying degrees of interest and amusement. Karolyn stood not far from them, once more paralyzed with fear. Her gaze was fixed on Jeffrey, who was working on removing the Chucks from his damaged eyes. When the others weren’t looking, Grace turned her head toward Karolyn, pursed her lips, and spat a thin stream of brown liquid at Karolyn. The woman’s aim was perfect, and the liquid struck Karolyn’s mouth. Her lips were parted, and most of the brown stuff went right in. Only a few drops got on her face.
Karolyn stiffened and her features went slack. She no longer looked afraid. She looked like she didn’t feel anything. Grace gave no command – at least not a verbal one – but Karolyn walked over to her desk, which also served as the school’s reception area. She grabbed a pair of fabric scissors that she’d been using to cut cloth for a project yesterday, gripped them like a knife, and walked back to the others. Jeffrey and Randall still faced each other, but neither had made another move yet. Stuart and Mandy were still watching them as Karolyn stepped close to Mandy, raised the scissors, and plunged them down into Mandy’s left tit. Mandy screamed and Karolyn – her face absolutely blank – yanked the scissors free in a spray of blood and raised them high once more in preparation for another strike. This time when she brought her hand down, Mandy was ready. She caught Karolyn’s wrist and squeezed. Bones snapped like twigs and the scissors fell from Karolyn’s hands to strike the floor. Despite her injury, Karolyn displayed no reaction. She merely stood there while Mandy, a bloodstain widening on the front of her white blouse, bent down to retrieve the scissors. While she was down there, she swept the scissors up between Karolyn’s legs and buried them in her vagina.
Blood gushed down in a crimson waterfall, and while Karolyn again showed no reaction, this time her body shuddered once as if she experienced a severe shock. Witnessing this terrible act was too much for the students. Their paralysis broke and both high-schoolers and adults began running in a confused mass for the back entrance, shouting and screaming. Marc grabbed hold of Sierra’s arm and pulled her to the side to get her out of the way of the stampede. Sierra barely noticed. She forgot to breathe. All she could do was watch as Mandy – her features twisted into a mask of savage delight – withdrew the scissors and rammed them in again. Karolyn shuddered once more and rocked back and forth, but she remained standing.
“Is that really necessary?” Grace said, her tone making her distaste clear.
“No,” Mandy said. Blood stippled her face, and she grinned as she yanked out the scissors and stabbed Karolyn once more. “But it is a lot of fun.”
Blood – so dark it was almost black – was leaving Karolyn’s body in a torrent now, and her face paled. She remained standing for several more seconds, but when Mandy pulled out the scissors one last time, Karolyn’s legs gave way and she went down. Her feet slid out from under her and she hit the floor hard.
Mandy stood, still gripping the fabric scissors, from which Karolyn’s blood dripped, and she gazed down at the dead woman. Her smile was terrible to behold.
“Note to self: scissors do not make effective dildoes.”
Stuart looked at her with disgust.
“I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with you, lady, but you and the rest of these ugly bastards can fight each other all you want. I’m here for Sierra.”
He moved past the others and started toward Sierra, but before he could get too far, Randall hurled his copper knife. It whistled through the air and struck Stuart between the shoulder blades. There was no blood, but a shower of sparks flew from the wound.
Sierra didn’t know why the blade had penetrated Stuart’s body when Officer Al’s bullets hadn’t. Maybe it was because Randall had attacked him from behind, surprising him. Or maybe Randall’s knife, like Stuart’s body, possessed otherworldly properties too. Whichever the case, Stuart’s face contorted in pain, and he hunched over, teeth gritted, and tried to reach back to remove the knife. He couldn’t quite get hold of it with his fingers, but five miniature silver tentacles emerged from his fingers, wrapped around the blade, and pulled. When the knife was free, the tentacles placed it in his hand. He closed his fingers around the blade and turned to Randall.
“Not cool,” he said.
Stuart held the knife in his open palm. His finger tentacles touched their ends to the blade and the metal began to glow orange then red. The knife melted and Stuart turned his hand over and let the liquid copper splatter to the floor. The handle melted too, but the Chuck on the end came loose, fell, hit the floor, and bounced away like a smiley-faced ping-pong ball.
Gloria and the students were gone now, all of them having successfully escaped through the rear entrance. Only Sierra and Marc remained, and he was saying something in her ear. She was traumatized from witnessing Karolyn’s death, and it took her a moment to understand what he was saying.
“We need to get out of here before we end up like Karolyn,” he said. “Or worse!”
Sierra tried to imagine what could possibly be worse than what had happened to her friend, but she couldn’t come up with anything – which she supposed was just as well, given how awful the reality had been.
She wanted to leave, she really did, but there was one thing she wanted more – to kill the bitch who had murdered Karolyn.
She started forward.
* * *
Sierra didn’t have a specific plan. Her goal was clear: she wanted to hurt Mandy, hurt her bad. But the question was how to do it. All of them – Mandy, Jeffrey, Grace, Stuart, Randall – had been changed, but the last several minutes had shown they could be damaged. Mandy’s injured breast was still bleeding, and Jeffrey’s wounds continued to ooze clear fluid. Occasional sparks issued from the injury in Stuart’s back, and the divot in Randall’s face showed no sign of healing. She needed a weapon, something that could inflict more damage than a pair of scissors and do it quickly, before Mandy or any of the others could attack her. She might’ve made a try for the gun, which lay on the floor close to the blackened corpse of Officer Al, if the man hadn’t fired all of its bullets. She mentally ran through a list of equipment and supplies in the building. Almost everything here was harmless, but she thought of two things that, if used in combination, might work.
