Page 43 of Creepy
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Like before when theStayers captured me, I woke in a cage in front of the Bentley Hotel.Four wire walls surrounded me.They weren’t medieval or anything.The branding read Industrial Enclosures.However, there were honest to God Tiki torches lining the streets.The savages lurked around me holding torches of their own if they weren’t holding a bottled beer.Picking myself up off the ground had been a mistake.I’d forgotten what had put me here, about the blow to my head.As soon as I raised it, the world spun.Mimicking the worst headache, pain radiated deep in my skull.Still, I’d already started.Continuing, I made it to my knees and saw they’d left my clothes on this time.I was still in the leatherware, spiked bra, boots, and all.All but my rifle.
Using the cage, I climbed, dragging myself up to stand.Rowan greeted me.Like before in Creepy, I recognized him, but he wasn’t alright.Rowan’s gait was off, too, like his upper half hung off a thread.His head swung to one side.His shoulders drooped forward.He resembled a marionette puppet with no master.He slurred his words so bad I couldn’t understand anything but the name, “Dillon.”
Fuck.This wasn’t the Rowan I’d known, the young, fit, and handsome baseball star who’d gone on to LSU.It was as if he were a zombie but not rotting away.He was a mindless drone.
Goddamn it.The puppet did have a master.Dillon knew all along.He knew about my stalker, about the flowers being left on my porch.Did he put Rowan in Creepy to watch me?Did Dillon order this kidnapping?
Gazing up at the huge hotel with its one lit window, I gulped.Dillon was up on the third floor.He knew I hated that floor that was said to be haunted by its builder.The fact Dillon holed up in the very hotel that had been our planned wedding venue hadn’t been lost on me.Although, if there was anywhere in Alexandria that would double as a palace for the end of the world, this one-hundred-year-old hotel would do.
I asked about Dillon, but Rowan gurgled out an answer, spitting on me in the process.
As I cleaned my face and then my hands on my pants, a man stepped beside Rowan.
“Is she ready?”It was Karl, Dillon’s bodyguard, who sometimes accompanied him on his weekly visits to Creepy.
“Ready for what,” I asked as the cage opened, and Karl took me by the hair.“The audacity,” I started, wanting to threaten Karl, warn him that Dillon wouldn’t like me being treated this way.But instead, him yanking the hair on my otherwise aching head rendered me mute.Although I was sure I would be taken to Dillon straight away, my confidence faded as we headed instead for a pickup truck.In one motion, Kyle hauled me into the back of it with him.
“Where are we going?”I asked as we drove away from the hotel.
Karl laughed low but didn’t answer me.His grip on me grew tighter when I struggled.As a result, I stopped fighting so I could see.We appeared to head farther into the city.It was hard to tell because the surrounding buildings blocked out any natural light from the stars and the nearly full moon.But soon we came upon more torches lining the streets and the moon itself lined up perfectly between the buildings.The truck stopped at a gate, rocking us forward.Karl’s hold on me intensified as result, so I couldn’t escape.As another man got out of the passenger side, he towed me out of the truck bed.
Why was I being put in a bigger cage?
Fencing lined the street that ran between the rows of buildings.Alexandria didn’t have skyscrapers, but it boasted plenty of historic and picturesque mid-rise structures.I knew them well enough.I’d been downtown Alexandria many times for parades and festivals.Sometimes the sidewalks were so crowded, we’d watch from up in the open, multi-level parking garages on either side of the road.I could see flashes of fire there now.In the moonlight, a multitude of faces became visible, like people lined them waiting for a parade.
What were they watching?
As Karl shoved me toward the gate, I saw that the whole stretch of the boulevard that laid before me, at least a couple of blocks of it, was fenced off.As one Stayer unlocked the bar that held the gate secure, Karl continued to drive his fingers right between my shoulder blades, inching me forward.Evidently, they were planning on putting me in there.Panicked, I used the momentum of Karl’s shove to whirl around so I could run off.The bodyguard caught me in his burly, hairy arms.My face smashed into his bulletproof vest.My ankle screamed below.There was no way I’d be running anywhere.
“Oh no, Creepy.You’re not getting away this time.”His hand became a vice around my upper arm.
Synchronized, one man opened the gate a hair, wide enough for little ole me, and Karl tossed me through.I stumbled but didn’t fall, a miracle.Amazingly, at my feet lay my rifle from earlier.I rushed to retrieve it as they locked me in.I pointed my semi-automatic straight at Karl’s head.
“Let me go, Karl.Dillon...”I invoked my ex’s name.
“No can-do.These here are Dillon’s orders.”
“I’ll kill you.”I readied the gun.
“I wouldn’t waste your bullets, sweetheart.How many rounds do you have in that magazine?Thirty-five?”
Maybe.I didn’t answer as Karl called on the radio.“Send in a dozen.”
“A dozen what,” I asked as the crowd howled overhead.Slowly, I turned to see what all the fuss was about.At the end of the street, another gate opened, a truck backed in and dumped a pile of limp bodies.Suddenly, it dawned on me.They were releasing zombies into this gigantic cage with me.In the distance, I watched their sluggish, grotesque rise as the truck drove out of the enclosure and the far gate closed.
Dead bodies breakdanced their way up from the heap on the ground.A memory of watching a Thriller Parade on this very spot one Halloween danced through my head as if my mind tried to cope through humor.These zombies looked nothing like Michael Jackson’s dancers.Yes, the rotting flesh on real zombies almost turned me vegan for good.I laughed out loud, sounding like I’d gone mad.However, survival mode was quickly kicking in.I stopped laughing.
Was Dillon having me killed?
Adrenaline soared through me, but I couldn’t do much more than be utterly terrified, on alert.Clutching my gun, I held extremely still.Holding my breath, I watched them like a hawk.The monsters hadn’t noticed me.The street was lit, so they’d be slower, easier to kill.Light, even artificial ones weakened zombies.I used to marvel at the supernatural fact that felt so commonplace now.Briefly, I cursed Dillon again.Sure, they were slower, and I had a weapon.If I killed all the zombies, would they release me?
