D.O.A. Extreme Horror Anthology (8 page)

With a quite sensible fear of the plague, the men replaced and resealed their masks.

Throttling the boat down, Ash watched while Terry, then Will, used the wires to straddle up the side of the hulk. They climbed with an efficiency he found quite intimidating; the drugs in his system making him feel unsteady on his feet as he himself deboarded the boat to begin climbing the freighter’s side.

Dark, filth encrusted metal, first wet and slippery then dry and flaky, scraped against his feet as he ascended. His muscles strained and he kept his eyes closed as he climbed between rows of sinister, black-eyed portholes. Soon his scrambling climb was almost complete. He tumbled over the guardrails and finally set foot upon the deck of the plague ship.

Faceless heads greeted him, his companions’ glass-buttoned eyes staring down as he absorbed his new surroundings.

The deck was massive, dark and rusty and a hundred feet long from bow to stern. Before the bow stood the pilothouse. Dark windowed and topped with twisted aerials, it stood sentinel to the sea but not to the three human violators.

“Wow,” Ash murmured.

Side by side against the starboard towered two huge cranes. Looming up from the deck like a pair of giant, skeletal arms, their paintwork lay chipped, their wire tendons hanging limp and exposed.

Ash expected the deck to be littered with corpses. His anxious and hesitant movements were quite apparent as he straightened himself up.

Terry spoke first. “Still tripping?”

“I’m wondering where all the bodies are,” Ash replied.

“They pushed them all into the hold.” Will said. “I saw it on the Discovery Channel.”

Will set off towards the pilothouse, closely followed by Terry. Crossing the deck after them, Ash warily examined the cranes before continuing to question Will.

“What about security locks?” he asked, closing in behind them.

“Do your research instead of popping pills,” came Will’s sour reply. “The poor bastards were all too weak to fight or even walk when they stuffed them into these things. They’ll all be rotted up down below.”

Will’s deadpan delivery filled Ash with a cold revulsion. Even though he’d been preparing himself for the sight, the thought of actually witnessing the charnel sight below did not sit well with him.

Following Will towards the pilothouse, they climbed and crossed two enormous hatchways. Each spanned the width of the ship from starboard to portside. As far as Ash knew, their rusted lids concealed a very grisly cargo.

“What kinda stuff did this thing actually hold?” Terry asked as he entered the shadows beneath the pilothouse.

“Before the corpses?” Will replied, his tone filled with sarcasm. “Look at the size of this thing. Probably trains and bits of oil platforms, jack-ups and the like.”

Before it became a haven for the plague
, Ash thought grimly.

Within the shadows, the door to the pilothouse lay open to a deeper, far more sordid darkness.

Will disappeared inside, followed by Terry a moment later. Ash tilted his head, scowling up at the sky beyond the jagged roof of the pilothouse. The stars warped and wavered, blinking down at him with sparkling glee. He swore and entered the ship.

Silence and darkness surrounded Ash. The sensation was only momentary for a second later a bright beam of light appeared to push the darkness back towards the room’s shadowy corners.

A tall figure loomed before Ash. Slick and shiny, its brown face lay featureless except for a pair of round, glassy eyes. Momentarily taken aback, the fear quickly dissipated when he realized the apparition was merely Terry.

Terry wandered around the room. Will followed, his chest-mounted lamp beaming like a lighthouse beacon.

“Put your lamp on Ash,” Will ordered. Ash reciprocated.

Fully illuminated, the room now appeared both bleak and abandoned. A rectangular space of stained white walls, it lay devoid of anything but filth and stagnant pools of water. Three pairs of ladders lined the far wall.

“Down,” Will said. Turning, he headed towards the ladders.

A few splashing steps had Ash by Terry’s side.

“Take a look at the floor man,” Terry said. Ash did so and noticed that within the grimy pools lay a multitude of square indents lined with gaping bolt holes; evidence that machinery and consoles had been removed.

“Seems someone got here before us.” Terry said, forcing a chuckle.

“All that stuff was taken years ago.” Will replied. “Now get a move on.” Already descending, he was halfway down the hole beneath the ladder.

Terry was quick behind him, the sounds of his feet joining the clangs already reverberating through the desolate room.

Not much to look at
, Ash thought, following suit toward the ladders. He knew with grim certainty that his statement would not remain true for long.

The ladder felt cold and greasy to the touch. The rungs, bolted onto rusty plates, creaked and complained as they descended into the hulk.

The ladder terminated at another bleak room, leaving them facing a lone, rusted ladder. Another creaky descent and the three found themselves on a wide platform devoid of handrails. Below lay a gaping blackness their lamps refused to penetrate.

Three ladders stood at the platform’s edge. Ash headed towards them knowing that he was finally going to witness the horror making him sweat and shiver beneath the pigskin suit. They each took a ladder.

Ash’s lamplight shone bright against the dull metal rungs. He gripped them so tight that his fingers ached. The thought of falling into whatever waited beneath was an awful one to consider, and the creaking ladder did little to dispel his fears.

His feet touched something that wasn’t floor.

“Jeez!” Terry said.

Ash looked down with trepidation.

Cushioning his steps lay a substance, the upper membrane of which crunched away as his feet sank in. The final rung of the ladder waited somewhere beneath the congealed mass.

“Shit,” Will said.

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” Terry shuddered.

Their lights revealed a sight both ugly and macabre. Stretching from bulkhead to bulkhead was a mass, a thick layer, of what could only be the congealed forms of hundreds of plague victims.

“Disgusting,” Ash muttered. 

Brown and red and even hairy in places, lay the ugly outlines of faces and buttocks, chests and limbs. Ash didn’t dare look into the hole he made in the stuff after stepping off the ladder. Throughout his life, the plague had been nothing more than a macabre fairytale. It was hard to believe that he was actually standing ankle deep in its legendary aftermath.

Will pushed forward. Turning to Ash, he said, “Yeah, fucking disgusting if you ask me.” He removed a long metal tube from his backpack, the end of which was flattened like an adder’s head. It was a metal detector, and his companions’ backpacks each bore one of the same, as well as folding shovels and rolls of plastic sacks in which to store the stolen booty.

“But,” he continued. “We have a job to do and we need to stick to it.” He waved the device at them. “There’s another hold behind us so I’m gonna get to work.”

Will turned and walked away.

As Will trudged off, Terry said, “Good hunting.”

Will waved his arm and continued into the darkness, leaving Terry and Ash alone in the sea of molted remains.

“He’s got balls of steel,” Terry muttered. Then, “Pretty sick isn’t it, all this disease just inches away from us. Ash? Hey Ash, do you hear me?”

Ash stood silent and motionless, looking down at the horror with watery eyes.

The mass of solidified death reminded him of a time, years ago, when he’d found a patch of magic mushrooms. Mistakenly trying to dry them in a jar set atop a gas fire, they’d congealed and festered into a filthy mush, coating the bottom of the jar. The ship’s hold looked much like the bottom of that jar.

Terry, growing frustrated with Ash’s pill induced state, removed his detector and began to search. Although Ash didn’t know it, he was experiencing more than just memories.

“Munchrooms,” Ash whispered. In the darkness beyond his lamp, a horde of bright purple, stick thin mushrooms appeared.

Wavering unsteadily, they twisted and bobbed, floating towards him.

Ash grinned at the fluorescent shapes.

They drew closer and paused a few feet before him. In a sudden rush of movement, the neon shapes pulled together as one, forming themselves into the shape of a high-browed, sharp-chinned face.

The face smiled. Ash smiled back.

***

Ten minutes of groping through the filth revealed nothing to Will’s metal detector; and wading through the sticky, crunching remains had taken its toll on him.

He was disgusted, not so much by the misshapen floor of death but rather at the fact that not a single corpse held anything close to valuable. Since nothing could compel him to search by hand, Will’s thoughts consisted of leaving the hold, thus abandoning the mission as futile.

He shook his head and flicked the switch on the detector’s handle. Its hum disappeared, replaced by the dripping sound he’d first heard upon entering the hold.

Adding a sigh to the dripping echoes, Will turned and began kicking his way through the filth back towards the bulkhead door.  Raising his head, Will gasped at what he saw on the door. A fleshy mass now covered his only means of escape.

Somehow, while he was been scanning through the dead, an obscene growth had germinated and sprouted to smother the door in its ugliness.

Filled with disgust, he approached the object while tucking the metal detector into his backpack.

Removing a knife from his belt, he asked, “Where the fuck did you come from?”

The mutation bore no mouth to answer.

Up close, the object resembled a huge, bloated chicken’s wing. It hung between the doorframe looking raw in places and rank in others. A greasy looking tendril attached the end of the ‘leg’ to the top of the frame.

Raising the knife, he experienced a brief revulsion over touching the thing. Fighting it, he pressed the blade against unclean flesh. About to hack into the growth, a sudden movement sent him staggering back.

It was alive.

Pulsing madly, its mottled surface twitched as if something within was attempting to break free.

Will had little choice. Grim curiosity compelled him to discover what lived and festered within the corpulent mass.

He forced the knife deep into the bulk, eliciting a shuddering spasm. The flesh split, sounding slick and loud as he drew the blade down.

The incision left was inches deep, and yellow and porous at the edges. Within, something sticky and pale lay exposed. The blade was three quarters of the way down when the thing inside jerked, flopping free of its own accord

Stumbling back, Will steadied himself with difficulty. Limp hands sent his knife tumbling to the floor. The newly freed form, trailing chunks of yellow gristle, joined it on the floor of corpses.

Bile rose in Will’s throat. He ripped off his mask as he struggled to choke it back. A second later the rank stench around him brought Will to his knees. Still, the awful smell wasn’t nearly as awful as the aberration lying before him.

Fetal and unmoving, emaciated and shrunken to an impossible degree, the creature was still recognizable as Terry. Terry, but tiny and pale, hairless and shiny-slick with afterbirth.

Knee deep in filth, Will still found the opportunity to be horrified. Having left Terry only fifteen minutes earlier, he simply couldn’t fathom how his friend had been mutilated and deformed to such an impossible degree.

He leaned over, tentatively touching Terry’s tiny knee.The action was followed by an instantaneous reaction: Terry coughing then shuddering to life. Yellow liquid poured out from his mouth and nostrils. Eyelids popping open, he stared up at Will with glazed, rheumy orbs.

“Terry?” The small word seemed to fill the fetid air.

With a scraping, liquid sound, Terry cleared his throat. “Hell here,” he said, his words filled with sinister glee. This was followed by a fit of retching cackles.

Will didn’t hear him. One moment he was crouched horrified, the next, a pair of huge, scaly black hands were lifting his body up through the air.

Confusion by his sudden weightlessness and the sight of Terry’s receding form, Will darted headlong towards the ceiling. He felt neither the snap of his neck or the crushing impact as his skull caved in; the monstrous hands had already crushed him senseless.

***

 “Are you the King of the munchrooms?”

The florescent face smiled at Ash’s question, new purple lines rippling into life in the form of vivid cheek dimples.

“Some call me that, and others, The King in Neon,” it replied. “But to most,” and at this, the smile grew wider, “I am the King of the Dead.”

Minutes earlier, unbeknownst to the mesmerized Ash, the floor had sprouted a score of misshapen tentacles, engulfing and dragging Terry away without a sound.

Ash wobbled. The strange apparition’s presence filled him with confused giddiness.

“Go to your knees,” the voice said, “You’ll feel better.”

Ash obeyed.

The face, sneering, continued as Ash sank into the slippery gore. “You’ll feel better without the mask on, son. Remove it.”

Nodding numbly, Ash again complied. Pulling the seals open he removed the mask, staring back towards the King’s leering eyes.“Doesn’t that feel better?”

Nodding despite the stench, Ash smiled, slivers of drool pouring from his lips.

“You look hungry, son.” The voice said. “Pick yourself an apple. They’re all around you.”

Ash looked down. Seeing nothing but unsightly shapes, he shook his head.

“Do it, NOW!”

The angry tone made him flinch. Reaching down, he fumbled through the muck until he caught hold of something small and round. It took a few seconds of effort before the child’s skull came loose from its spine. The eye sockets were empty but the head lay sticky with corrupt flesh. Pressing it to his mouth, Ash bit down. Beneath the wispy hair and flesh, the skull crumbled.

He tasted salt and rank mushrooms.