Bleed On Me (7 page)

“Holy shit!”

He ran around the car, found Spade lying on the ground, broken glass sprinkled all around him.

“Spade…Spade, wake up.
Wake up!
” Chris fell to his knees, slapped the man’s face. He looked up at the approaching boulder, gasped, then jumped back to his feet. Once again, his instincts told him to leave Spade there and drive the fuck away. But he found himself flinging the passenger door open, reaching down and grabbing Spade by his armpits.

A loud crash erupted, and Chris swung his eyes toward it to see the demon boulder rolling over parked cars, smashing against the side’s of buildings. As it grew nearer, he heard the roars and growls of the demons, along with maddening laughter and giggling.

Chris bent at the knees, straightened his back, and lifted. His wounds came alive with agony then, and he couldn’t stop the scream that blew from his stomach, but he clenched his teeth and fought through it, got Spade high enough off the ground to waddle to the car and dump him in.

He slammed the door, but Spade’s foot was still dangling out, and the door flung back out, the foot flinching to life.

“Aw…fuck!” Spade whimpered and pulled his foot in, clutched at his ankle with shaking hands.

Chris slammed the door again, glad to see Spade awake and himself again, but there wasn’t any time to do anything but run. Todd’s laughter was audible over the destruction of the ball, and the demons’ eyes lit the entire street with bloody luminescence.

Chris’s hands shook as he tried to swing the driver’s door open. Sprinting toward him down the street, following the wrecking ball, were hundreds of others. Former people, all shapes and sizes and ages. Where their flesh had been torn open or split or chewed on, new appendages, tentacles, claws, mouths sprouted forth.

Spade’s scream from inside the car snapped Chris out of his trance as he watched them storm toward him, and he swung the door open and hopped in. The keys still dangled from the ignition and the car still idled, and Chris threw the car into Drive, slammed his foot to the floor.

He checked the rearview mirror, saw the demons right on their tail. Todd’s legs moved like he was on a treadmill, and he pointed a clawed finger toward the beamer as it picked up speed.

“What the fuck is goin’ on? What…what the fuck is that?” Spade had his body turned around in the passenger seat as he watched through the broken rear windshield. The roars and cackling of the beasts grew louder by the second. “Faster, man! Faster! They comin’ up on us quick!”

“I’m fucking trying!” He swung the car with a sharp right turn on a random street, but the demon ball turned with him, closing in fast.

“Here they come!
Ah shit!
” Spade quickly buckled his seatbelt, squeezed his eyes shut, braced his hands on the dash.

In the next instant, the car was hit from behind, and the creatures howled with excitement, reached out and scraped talons and teeth across the car metal. The rear of the car dipped, throwing the front end into the air before slamming back down. Spade screamed as Chris grunted and barely missed slamming into a parked car.

“Fucking do something!”

“You can’t stop us!” Todd’s voice, coated with a demonic gruffness. “We’ll tear you to pieces, and I’ll drag your soul back to hell with me!”

Boom!

The tires squealed as they were shoved forward. Chris’s hands pulsed and fresh blood ran down his arms. A face appeared in the driver’s window, unhinged its mouth to reveal the rows and rows of teeth, the eyes making Chris squint as he reached out with his bleeding palm.

Blood drops rained from his wound as the wind hit it, sprinkling the creature’s head. It hissed as the blood sizzled over its face, then fell away from the window and rolled away behind them.

The demon ball hit again, and both men screamed. Blood rushed in throbbing gushes from Chris’s hands now, and though the pain was present, Chris was glad to see it.

Spade’s right. I am special. And it’s up to me to stop these motherfuckers.

“Take the wheel,” Chris said as he ripped the soaking bandages away from his hands.

“What?”

“Take the fucking wheel, man. Hurry!” Chris swung the car into another sharp turn, getting closer and closer to his mother’s house, his real home.

The boulder followed, but they gained some ground. Not much, but enough for Chris to open the sunroof and for Spade to clamber over the middle console and take the wheel.

The car swerved as they exchanged positions.

“Holy fuck! What the hell you gonna do, man?” Spade’s voice had taken on a higher pitch, and his tongue darted out every other second to lick his lips.

Chris stood on the middle console, raised his torso through the sunroof and faced the approaching horde. His body barely fit, and as his torn shoulder and side scraped against the sunroof’s glass and metal, he winced, but didn’t slow. The padding on his torso wedged him tight, and he faced the demons, squinted against the neon of their eyes.

Todd screamed with laughter, was on all fours running atop the mound of monsters.

Chris raised both hands to either side of him, let the blood pumping from his hands spray the hell pursuing him. The wind whipped his hair and clothing, flung the blood onto the demons like sea mist.

The demons on foot squealed, shrieked, hit the concrete and rolled away. Todd growled and hissed, but his sounds were quickly dwarfed and smothered by the screaming of the others.

The giant ball exploded into bodies, the creatures flying off in all directions, slamming into cars and storefronts, breaking glass, denting metal, and chipping brick.

Chris saw Todd plummet into the center of the crumbling mound, but then couldn’t make him out as the flailing bodies rushed over the street like water from a giant popped water balloon.

“Holy shit!” Spade whooped and cackled, slapped the steering wheel with his mangled hand then cried out and cradled it in his lap.

When the car started to slow, Chris pounded the roof of the car. “No, don’t slow down. Keep going!” He watched as most of the demons got back up, dazed, but not defeated. This shit wasn’t over yet. “Turn left at the next light!”

Just knowing they were heading to his mother’s filled him with a tingling sensation and twisted his stomach. He’d spent most of his life there, used to love it there. But then Todd showed up and ruined everything. After his mother died, he promised himself he’d never go back there.

But now, it was the only place he could think to go. And he would make his final stand.

***

When they pulled up to the house, Chris finally let his body slide back through the sunroof and into the passenger seat. It seemed that the demons had slowed, possibly second guessing their plan after the shower of blood.

His hand wounds throbbed, blood still steadily pumping, but he didn’t feel woozy or dizzy from the blood-loss. In fact, he felt focused, pumped-up, had never felt so brave in all his life. He actually wanted those fucking things to come looking for him, wanted them to give chase. It was up to him to stop them, he knew that now, and if he didn’t, the world would suffer. Hell would rise.

“Damn, this is your crib?” Spade whistled as the headlights of the beamer showed the extensive lawn and driveway, the massive two story house at the end of it with the second story wooden balcony extending forward like the bill of a baseball cap.

“It’s my mother’s. Or was anyway.” Chris squeezed his fists and remembered playing in the front yard while his mother did her work inside. It was Todd that had convinced her to start doing all her shoots at her home, to save money he said. And Chris would do everything he could to keep his mind off of it, though he knew what was going on within those walls. When the male actors would leave, some of them would try and talk to him, try to be overly nice as if they were feeling guilty for fucking his mother while he played with his Ninja Turtles in the front yard. But he would ignore them, couldn’t look them in the face. He even threw a Shredder action figure at one guy, split the skin of his forehead open.

But he never blamed his mother. Before Todd had convinced her to do her work at home, to turn the upstairs into a studio, Chris never saw evidence of her profession.
It’s all Todd’s fault
, he told himself.
He ruined my life.

“What the fuck you doin’ livin’ in them low income ass apartments when you got a place like this for?”

“It’s…complicated. My mom…she died. And I just didn’t feel right being here anymore. Wanted to go somewhere I could be alone, somewhere my asshole stepfather wouldn’t show up all the time.”

Spade clicked his tongue, nodded. “So that peckerwood that’s chasin’ us, that’s who you talkin’ about?”

Chris nodded.

“He rich or somethin’? Rollin’ around in a beamer, livin’ in this big ass crib. He make movies or some shit? A lawyer?”

Chris sighed. “I really don’t feel like talking right now. Remember those fucking demons chasing us? I’m sorry if I’m not in a Q and A kind of mood.”

Spade chuckled, nodded. “You right. What we do now?”

“Just park the car close to the house. We need to get inside, get ready.” Chris’s hands began a steady throb again, spilling blood over the floorboard and seat. “They’re coming, getting closer.”

Spade looked over his shoulder, frowned, threw the car in park and got out. Chris followed, letting the blood flow freely, doing nothing to slow it.

They jogged toward the front door together, Spade with a slight limp, rubbing the area on his shoulder where the tentacle had emerged from. The cloth of his shirt was torn up, covered in black and red.

“I saw things. When that shit started to take over me? My head filled up with some shit I can’t even describe.” He snickered nervously. “Shit I ain’t seen in my worst nightmares. Fuck, man, I don’t think I’ll ever sleep right again.”

Chris pulled the spare key out of the ceramic turtle, same place it had always been. He unlocked the door, then paused, turned and faced Spade. “And how do you feel now?”

“I feel…weird. Kinda like I’m hungover or somethin’. But I’m straight. Whatever evil shit was up inside of me, it’s gone now. You killed it. But my shoulder? My hand?” He shook his head and bared his teeth. “Hurt like a motherfucker. My gums too.”

Chris reached out with his bleeding hand, grabbed Spade’s shoulder. The man winced, but nothing happened: no sizzling or growling. “All right, let’s get inside.” He looked back toward the car. “Wait, grab your guns. You’re gonna need them.”

“My guns? What the fuck they gonna do? It’s your blood that gets them motherfuckers, not no bullets.”

“Just trust me, okay? And hurry…they’re almost here.”

As Spade jogged back toward the car, Chris wiped blood over the door and frame of the house, then ran to the windows and did the same. He knew he didn’t have time to hit every door and window in the place-the creatures were too close-but he did the best he could. His palms beat like they each had their own heart, and the blood never stopped.

Spade returned holding a pistol in each hand, his pockets stuffed with bullets. “Now what?”

“Follow me.”

The second they walked into the house, the smell hit Chris and he staggered a bit: his mother’s perfume. Spade took slow steps, spun as he went, taking in the expansive domicile. He tittered, rubbed the back of his head.

“This some straight up Scarface shit right here, dawg. For real.”

“Yeah…but there’s no time for a tour. We have to…” Chris stared up at the staircase, remembering his mom walking up those stairs over and over and over again. Her studio took up the entire second floor. She always wore a pink robe when she went up there, and Chris remembered fighting back tears on more than one occasion as she ascended, Todd locking arms with her, her male co-star chuckling and following them. It wasn’t until he was well into his twenties that it stopped bothering him so much, though now that he stood there, he didn’t think he’d ever really been okay with it.

“Oh, shit. Looks like your stepdaddy got a thing for ol’ Tanya Dicksuckinlips Taylor. She was in the first porno I ever seen, man. I slapped my shit silly just-”

“She was my mother. This is her house, and she’s dead now. Don’t go off on all the sorrys and the I-didn’t-knows, all right? Heard it all before. We got other shit to worry about.”

Spade smiled, then straightened his mouth, nodded. “True. So what’s the plan, man? You lead, I follow.”

“We gotta go upstairs. And we have to do it now, those things-”

The click-clack came from the front door, which Chris had left open by mistake. Once he’d entered the home, drowning in memories, all else was forgotten, and as he stared at the centipede woman scuttling over the front porch, his stomach dropped, but he squeezed his hands into bleeding fists and faced her.

“We’re heeee-yer.” She tittered as she weaved into the home, nipple antennae waving, crab legs clicking as they tapped over the floor, carrying her through the door. Her eyes shone bright and a sharp smile stretched impossibly wide.

But as she passed over the threshold, the only thing that came through was a mutilated corpse covered in blood and gaping wounds. The woman’s body splashed onto the ground, motionless, a pool of blood forming around her.

The spinal crab legs were left behind, along with her teeth and antennae.

They can’t come through the front door.

“What the fuck happened?” Spade said.

“I spread blood over the doorframe. The windows too, but there’s a lot more I couldn’t get to.” The shrieks and roars of the others sliced through the air, but they stood on the front lawn, in the driveway, unwilling to get any closer after witnessing the woman’s fate. “There’s no time. They won’t hold off forever.”

“What the fuck we gonna do now?”

“Upstairs. Let’s go!”

Chris took one more look out the front door. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them out there. All looking for him, coming to claim his soul.

Chris took the stairs two at a time, Spade limping up behind him, and they headed for the balcony.