The Devils Harvest: The End of All Flesh. (27 page)

“Time I should now be leaving,” he said, turning to walk out the door.

I was a little confused. Where would he go to leave the body? I was about to ask when he continued to speak.

“Next came Jacob and his twelve sons. About Joseph, who was sold into slavery by his brothers. A long boring story of how he became Pharaoh’s right hand man. Nothing really interesting. If you want to know more about that, go see
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Coat
by Andrew Lloyd Webber. I hear good reviews.

“Then the story of Moses, adopted by an Egyptian princess, and so on and so forth. The ten plagues and all that crap. I will talk a little on these thing when I return, giving the true stories, not the glossy cover stories that appear in His book.”

He continued to walk towards the door.

“Where are you going?” I asked, generally interested. Normally he left the dead body for me to dispose of.

“Now you don’t want a smelly corpse on the floor while your trying to sleep, do you? I will dispose of it somewhere.” He then turned popping the smoking cigarette back in his mouth, shutting the door behind him.

I was shocked that he had actually though of me for a change. Little did I realize he hadn’t. What happened next was testament to that fact. Or what happened could simply have been an over sight on his part. But having come to know him, I don’t think so. I think it was part of his twisted sense of humour.

Soon I would be once again struggling to stay alive.

The Fiery Predator

I
don’t think he arranged it on purpose, but once again I found myself fighting for my life. And now looking back, I think it was all part of his larger plan.

The fucking Sadist.

It took me a good few hours to finally fall into some semblance of sleep. Nightmares were now commonplace. I pictured myself stalking up and down the hotel corridors, sniffing at different doors, trying to locate warm bodies inside.

I ran along on hands and feet, returning to my quadrupedal style, stopping every now and then to check another door. My black and white vision even being able to pick up traces of heat residue left by unsuspecting people. My prey.

I found no one this night, being overly weary because of the strange environment and unusual smells. Not the sweet smelling outdoors, but the pungent smell of cleaning chemicals that stung my sensitive nostrils.

Suddenly I was startled from my sleep, a loud pulsating alarm running through my body.

I sat bolt upright, my mind was all groggy from sleep. I rubbed my eyes, while trying to understand what was happening – what was that blaring noise?

It was the fire alarm.

Fuck!

I could just picture him, having crawled somewhere to leave the body, and as he left the empty cocoon the cigarette would tumble from his mouth, slowly burning on the corpses clothing, feeding on the material, smouldering, then starting to consume the bodies fat until it became an inferno. How many times had he left the body with the cigarette just hanging in the mouth at my home?

I couldn’t believe how stupid he was. Or simply wicked, knowing I would have to flee once again. Was it some kind of game to him? You always hear stories about the gods playing with mankind like they are simply pawns from a complicated chess set. Was that all I had become, a pawn?

The alarm rang loud and clear, making my ears throb painfully. I quickly grabbed my bag from the closet and swung it onto my back, leaving the wet underwear in the bathroom. I already had my clothes on, having fallen asleep on top of the sheets after he left. I always felt exhausted after being in his company.

I stood in front of the door, resting the palm of my hand against the wooden surface. If a fire were on the other side the door would be hot. It was cold. I opened it slowly, inch by inch. If a fire was blazing down the end of the corridor, I didn’t want to swing the door open and give it a rush of oxygen with which to feed it. Like most I had seen enough films about fires to know a little about its behaviour. The 1991 movie,
Backdraft
was now my survival guide.

I could now hear people running up and down the outside hallway. Hopefully away from the fire.

I headed for the exit.

A young man and woman ran past me in the opposite direction, oblivious to my presences. They were both only dressed for sleep, her in a pink frilly nightgown and him in just blue pyjama bottoms. Neither had shoes on. A new born baby bounced in the father’s grasp as he held the child tight to his bare chest. The baby cried from the noise the alarm was making.

They shot past me like a stampede. I flattened myself against the wallpaper. I tried to shout at them over the blaring alarm that the exit was the other way. Both ignored me as they sped past, heading for a large fire door at the end of the hallway.

I turned to head towards the lobby where I knew there was an exit. I didn’t know if the door the couple was running towards headed outside, or to the stairs that led to the upper floors. No exit sign hung above the thick fire door, so I presumed not.

Suddenly I was thrown to the gaudy carpet. A great gust of superheated air rushed over me along the passageway. It was like opening the oven at home to check on the food cooking inside and the heated air rushing out, attempting to remove your eyebrows. Amplify that a hundredfold.

I turned my head towards the end of the corridor, just in time to glimpse the couple and their baby become engulfed in an angry fireball that swept over them and continued up the walls, running like a living entity across the ceiling. I could no longer see the family.

As I have already mentioned, I had seen countless movies where fires roared around a house or particular building. In the films the sound effects were loud and eerie, sounding like the fire was alive, growling and muttering.

I lay on the carpet halfway down the corridor with the fire engulfing the ceiling behind me, and ripping the doors from the rooms, then engulfing the rooms in one violent movement. I swear I could hear unearthly sounds, like the fire was indeed a living entity, searching, consuming all in its path. It roared and growled, and sounded like it was muttering, unearthly words carried on the flickering flames. Guttural utterances, sounding like some forgotten ancient language. I found myself wondering what language demons – fallen angels – speak? Obviously not English. Maybe I was hearing it now?

The heat was almost unbearable. I could imagine the young couple having been completely incinerated by the initial blast, like a churning furnace, with them disappearing like dry kindling.

I tried to stand, but the heat forced me back to the floor. Electrical fittings popped and crackled under the onslaught. Wallpaper went up in quick flashes of hissing flames. The carpet started to steam. Paint started to drip around me, even though the flames were still a good way up the other end of the hallway. The dripping paint looked like raining fire. I could imaging Fire and Sulphur raining down on the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Time to get my ass outta here.

I scuttled along on my hands and knees, reminding me of my quadruped movements in my black and white dreams. Now though I wasn’t moving with liquid grace, but rather stumbling along like a cripple tipped from a wheelchair.

The heat was blasting the back of my neck, and the eerie roaring sounds behind me sped me on, as I fumbled my way along the ugly patterned carpet.

A door swung open on my left, a mans face pushed out, then disappearing back into the room. The fire now had another source of oxygen with which to make it grow. Flames reached out like long searching fingers, crawling along the ceiling, searching for the source of its food. Then in one bright orange flash the ceiling above me became an inferno. Crackling ceiling joints and popping light bulbs echoed above. The heat was almost unbearable, seemingly sucking the air from my lungs. The flames shot into the room on my left like a red tidal wave, having been created by a ferocious monsoon.

With the fleeting energy I had left I forced myself to keep moving.

Suddenly it was there in front of me. Smoke! Black billowing clouds of toxic lung filling death. It rolled across the ceiling like tempest storm clouds, sped up by camera trickery.

I stood as high as I dared, head leaning forward, almost bent double, using my off balance to fling myself towards the exit. I raced for the door before I needed to gulp for more air. My lungs were already burning. I cursed all those years I smoked.

Behind, I could hear the screaming echoing out from an open door, but it died away as quickly as it started. Suddenly a figure lunged from a room.

It was hard to tell if it was male or female, because it was engulfed in flames, hair, clothes, and skin, everything, like a fiery demon rising from the great hall of Pandemonium itself. No noise issued from the inflamed person, as it shot past down the hallway, smacking hard against the fire door, before falling down dead, body still twitching as the flames ate away at the fat. The corpse lay spitting, crackling and hissing, like a pork chop that has just been tossed on the barbeque. The Korowai and Melanesian tribes from New Guinea call the human the
Long Pig
, because of its supposedly similar taste.

I continued to run, the image of the inflamed person giving me strength.

I reached the doorway and jumped over the burning remains, which was laying face down, arms forward, as if trying to get that little bit further. The fingers were all black and twisted, reminding me of the first man in the black suit, after he had reached into the fire to light a cigarette.

I now stood in the entrance lobby, gulping fresh air.

The fire roared behind me, as if upset at losing its prey, not content with the bodies it had already consumed. Like a gluttonous predator it surged forward.

The fire door was not able to swing back into place because of the charred corpse. The fire was following, and now had a way to keep feeding.

People were running about. Even though the doors stood wide open, some were running back into the building, either after family members and loved ones, and some, possibly, even for possessions.

I screamed at them, shouting that the fire was just down the corridor right behind me, but no one listened. I could hardly hear myself, with the loud fire alarm screeching. Shock made people act in unusual ways. Common sense and rationality gone, panic stripping them from the mind.

It was crazy, the door was right there!

There was nothing else I could do, time for me to get out.

An older chubby man ran past, dressed in only white boxer shorts, clutching a black briefcase to his grey-haired chest. He barged past, hitting my shoulder and spinning me around. I fell at the same time, landing on my back, knocking the air from my lungs.

Then the smoke started pouring out the hallway, first filling the ceiling – boiling and churning. A blanket of the thinner smoke started to descend, like a roller-blind being pulled down. All happening in seconds, and I had the perfect view from laying on my back.

A long fluorescent light fitting dropped, shattering on the floor to my left. Then several others, as if being dropped like a surgical strike. Powdered glass blossomed into the air.

I was still flat on my back. Everything was happening so fast. It was maybe not even a minute since the alarm started. It seemed like hours.

Then something behind the deck exploded, possibly a fire extinguisher. An expanding cloud rocketed out. The desk disintegrated. The man who had knocked me to the ground was stood beside it. He was blown out the front glass doors. I was rolled to my right side, allowing me a front row seat, as he was shredded by the thick plate glass and wood. Strangely, his briefcase now sat on the ground where the door should have been, as if someone had just gently placed it down.

Sound was now muffled, with a hollow ringing inside my head, caused by blunt trauma to my ears.

I forced myself to stand, while holding my breath, and ran out the shattered door. I kept running, getting a least thirty meters between me and the building. The air outside was cool, with a light drizzle falling. It was a beautiful spectacle. The cold rain was a blessing against my face.

The flames now churned into the lobby, looking for more objects to consume. In one sudden surge the fire engulfed the reception area. The explosion behind the desk was small compared to what happened next. A fireball expanded out the front entrance. What was left of the large ornate glass and wooden doors exploded outwards. Thick plumes of greasy black smoke was now pouring out the remains of the large scorched, smouldering doorway.

My back was to the building when the large explosion erupted. Something flew past my leg, the wind whipping at my clothing. A briefcase imbedded in the door of an Audi TT in front of me, the whole car rocked to one side, before righting itself – its alarm now adding to the cacophony of noise. My hearing was still ringing and muffled, the alarm sounded distant and tinny.

I turned and stood looking back at the hotel. Flames licked out all the windows, down one side, where I had been. Black billowing smoke poured out the burning window frames. Bright red embers floated on the heated winds caused by the flames. Only a few windows were still intact, the fire doors having held the flames back for now. People stood behind the glass, their screams lost in the noise of the roaring flames and alarm bells.

One person on the top floor threw a chair through the window, in hope of getting out to safety. But with the window now broken the flames raced into his room. He disappeared behind a fireball of angry red flames and pungent black smoke, which was now pouring out his shattered window like a large fiery fist, announcing to the spectators that it had captured its victim.