Undead L.A. 2 (19 page)

“GET THESE FUCKING CRACK WHORES OFF OF ME!!!”

David and Evan watched in horror, able to see what Benjamin couldn't. The simple fact of the matter was that the women climbing all over Benjamin weren't human anymore. These weren't junkies doing bizarre things on a bath salt high. Briana's entire chest had been chewed open down to the white of her bones. Samantha had streaks of oily filth bleeding from her eyes and mouth. She'd bitten through most of her lower lip in her savage hunger.

“Jesus fucking Christ, bro,” David exclaimed. “What's wrong with them?”

“I don't want to find out,” Evan said grimly.

“BLOODY HELL! DON'T JUST STAND THERE! DO SOMETHING!” Benjamin wailed in pain afraid to lift his head. Samantha looked up at David and Evan, and let out a primal roar that sent chills down their spines. David stepped back quickly, tripping over an apple box and landing hard on his ass.

“Son of a bitch!” he roared.

“Fuck it,” Benjamin screamed. “I'll do it myself!”

The angry agent shoved Samantha back as hard as he could. Her arms flailed wildly as she stumbled back, tripping over the toilet and crashing into the wall. Benjamin turned and punched Brianna as hard as he could in the stomach, but it had little effect. Scrambling to his feet he began to back slowly out of the room.
 

“You're fucking finished in this business,” Benjamin bellowed. “Do you hear me? That goes for both of you! And I'm pressing charges! A stint in prison is what you both need to get clean. Fucking animals!”

He wheeled around to David and Evan, anger blazing in his eyes.

“And if either of you repeats a word of this,” Benjamin began, but he never got the chance to finish. Brianna and Samantha lunged at him in unison, tackling him around the knees. Benjamin slipped on the blood-slick floor and went down again. The girls climbed over him like ravenous hyenas, biting and tearing at his face and chest. A high-pitched cry like air escaping from a stretched balloon filled the air. David felt queasy as he watched in horror as the girls feasted on their former agent. The last thing he saw was Samantha bite through Benjamin's trousers and tear off his genitals. David could no longer hold back. He doubled over and hurled so hard his legs cramped.

Evan, on the other hand, saw an opportunity to contain the problem and wasted no time taking it. He shot forward with the grace of a jungle cat, leaning in to the bathroom and pulling the door shut again by the handle. He held it in place while David scrambled back up to his feet.

“Hurry. Get something to secure this,” Evan shouted as something thumped hard on the other side of the door. “Some rope or a stinger. I don't give a shit. Just do it fast! We all gotta get out of here before this shit spreads.”

“I think we're too late,” David said. The lighting guys had opened up the side of the studio to move in prefabricated sets for the next shot. David could see clear out into the parking lot where an army of ragged looking creatures in tattered human clothing was latching on teeth first to any living thing that moved. They were trapped. It would only be a matter of minutes at most before they reached him.

“Shit! What the fuck are we gonna do?”

David walked over to the prop cart near video village and stared down at the guns they'd been using on the show. There were several automatics, but they had all been modified to “solid plug” so that the barrels of each were blocked off. Gunpowder flashes were easy enough to add later in editing and no one wanted any mistakes on set with live rounds of ammo. They'd compensated for the lack of bullets by using zirc hits to create a ricochet special effect spark against a steel door. Even if David had the bullets to go with the guns he'd be unable to get them to fire. The firing mechanism had been removed from most of them as an extra precaution.
 

There is only one working gun on this set
, David thought.
St. Thomas's pistol.

He picked up the handgun Stephen had used earlier in the shoot to kill a rival drug dealer that crossed him. They'd filled the blanks to half load, but he'd warned Stephen not to mess around anyway. A half load blank could still tear through a phone book at point blank range. Digging through the ammo David quickly realized he only had three shots left and that he'd have to get far closer than he planned on ever being to one of these things in order to kill it. He scooped the blanks up anyway, his fingers fumbling as he stuffed them deep into the pockets of his designer True Religion jeans.

“On the count of three we run to the scissor lift,” David yelled, waving the gun towards set. They'd opted to use construction lifts for several shots instead of setting up the crane, purely to save time. Once activated they could reach as high up as nineteen or twenty feet which would be well clear of the monsters below. They would simply have to wait it out until help arrived.

“Got it,” Evan shouted back.

“One, two, three!”
 

Evan let go of the door and charged with David through set, climbing onto the scissor lift. The wretched undead were already starting to push their way into the building. The sounds of screaming could be heard echoing off the studio walls. David turned the key and began raising the lift without noticing a cable was still attached. It looped underneath a heavy light pointed onto set, pulling it down as they rose up and out of harm's way. A loud crash rang out as the light fell through the paper scrim covering the window, and the barn door fell off rattling on the ground.
 

“What's that smell?”

“You mean the raw sewage smell?” Evan asked. “I think it's coming from them, to be honest.”

“No, man,” David said, turning to look out over set. “It smells like something is burning.”

“It's probably just the plastic gel that was on the light,” Evan replied.

“There,” David said, pointing onto set where the light had fallen over. There were flames running across the carpet and climbing up the side of the wall of the police station. Dark black smoke began to waft up towards them. Just then a loud thud shook the scissor lift, nearly causing David to topple out of the metal cage and over the side. A terrifying roar brought them both to full attention. David and Evan peered down to see the transformed versions of their cast and crew, along with dozens of formerly homeless people, ringing the lift trying to knock it over.

“That ain't good,” Evan said sourly.

“Russ!” David shouted. “Where is everyone? Jessa! Stephen!”

“I think we're on our own now,” Evan gulped.

“Got any ideas?” David asked.

“I'm fresh out,” Evan replied, a sick look enveloping his features as he stared down at the monsters below.

The lift shook again. Several of the zombies threw their bodies against the base trying to knock down fresh victims to feed on. David peered out at the parking lot through the open studio doors. Hundreds more of the fiends were swarming across the asphalt, making their way in and towards the last two living people on set.

Not for long, he thought as he lifted the prop gun up and put it to Evan's temple. Evan held his hands up in fear. Beads of sweat poured down his temple.
 

“What are you doing, boss man?”

“It's the only way not to become one of them.”

“Hold on a minute now.” Evan's face was ghostly pale. His lips trembled in fear.
 

“We don't have a minute,” David said, shaking his head. “I'm sorry.”

He pulled the trigger before Evan could reply. Chunks of blood, skull, skin, and brains flew loose, raining down on the horde of monsters below and driving them into a frenzy. The scissor lift shook violently as the monsters threw their bodies once more against it, wailing in anticipation of their next hot-blooded meal. David was reloading the gun when a blow knocked him loose, throwing him face first into a pile of terrible teeth.
 

Not for long.

The last thing he heard was the sound of his skull cracking as he hit the concrete studio floor face first. After that it was all blessed darkness.

***
 

Samantha didn't know what she was doing anymore. She wandered aimlessly through the streets, driven only by hunger. The sound of wailing sirens in the distance grew further and further away. She looked up to see the JW Marriott above her. A vague memory of once being there flickered through the remnants of her mind, but it was impossible to hold on to. She didn't know who she was anymore, but that didn't matter. All that mattered was the hunger now. It was all she could feel. There was no pain other than hunger. Hunger was her god. She yearned to worship again at its alter, to dig her teeth into warm living flesh and taste the hot blood spurting into her mouth, reviving her, taking away all of her pain for just one moment.
 

A thin woman with stringy hair stumbled into her path and stopped. Samantha sniffed the air in confusion. She looked like food, but something about her didn't smell right.
 

“I'm not even fit to feed the dead,” the woman yelled, tilting her head back to the night sky. “I'm ready now. There is nothing left for me in this world anymore.”

Samantha watched as the woman walked off towards the hotel lobby, her stomach growling with a fresh wave of hunger pains. The world belonged to her kind now. The world belonged to the awful bottomless hunger.

***

The Hollywood Sign was a landmark and American cultural icon located in Los Angeles, California.
 

Originally reading HOLLYWOODLAND and used to advertise the name of a new housing development, the sign sat high up on Mount Lee, in the Hollywood Hills area of the Santa Monica Mountains, overlooking Hollywood itself.
 

Erected in 1923 the white capital letters were each 45-feet-tall and ran 350 feet in length.
 

It was protected by a security system to deter vandalism and promoted by The Trust For Public Land, a nonprofit organization, while its site and the surrounding land were part of Griffith Park.

Visitors looking from the ground up witnessed that the contours of the hills gave the sign a wavy appearance, yet when observed at a comparable altitude, the letters appeared to be nearly level.

The sign made frequent appearances in popular culture, particularly in establishing shots for films and television programs set in or around Hollywood. Signs of similar style, but spelling different words, were frequently seen as parodies of the iconic sign abounded.

***

THE CHOSEN ONES

They huddled together in the corner of the luxury apartment like cornered rats. The double windows of the second story rental property looked out into a courtyard swarming with animated corpses, all sporting fresh signs of injury. Chad saw bare arms with torn, bloody skin hanging off them in peels, many with faces to match. He saw demonic-looking creatures that barely resembled humans, most with thick blood pouring from their unblinking eyes, many foaming at the mouth, black bile drooling from the remains of their chewed lips and dribbling over their designer dresses or blood soaked T-shirts. Some had deep gashes in their abdomens allowing their guts to protrude in blood-slicked piles from their fatal wounds. Some had teeth lacerations on their scalps and foreheads, tears in the flesh just below the tufts of hair that only hours before had neatly and stylishly covered their skulls. In Chad’s estimation, a fair number were already missing body parts. Hobbling anxiously along on limbs deformed by an unseen calamity that left white bone shards sticking out through shredded denim jeans or through the sallow, loose skin of their mangled arms, they looked more like desperate addicts under the spell of some dangerous new designer street drug that blocked all the pain while driving them to new heights of insanity.

And the way they moan
, Chad thought.
It's like it gives you a chill all the way to the bottom of your soul to hear just one of them, much less the full chorus it sets off in the others. Even those with their throats torn open can make that terrible sound, like the song you imagine a sad demon might sing in the darkest pit of the deepest hell after having its blackened little heart broken for the first time.

The majority of the monsters lurking outside had their throats and necks torn to bits. That didn't come as much of a surprise considering he'd suspected that zombies would go for the easiest and most rewarding targets of their victims first, like a kid eating his brownie sundae before his steamed broccoli. It was the constant moaning that threw him off more than anything—well, that and the ocular stigmata. He'd thought for sure they'd catch a break by heading up to the second floor, since zombies couldn't figure out elevators and lacked the coordination to use stairs as far as he knew. What he hadn't counted on was the parking garage ramp leading right to their hiding spot in apartment 213. The front door to the unit had been left ajar by whoever vacated it last. They'd rushed in without thinking and locked the door behind them, praying they were alone. A quick inspection of the impressive luxury apartment revealed they were. Since it was in the crook of the building's L-shape configuration, it featured an almost panoramic view of the cursed courtyard. Chad shook his head in disbelief as he took in the nightmarish view of the end of the world. More than anything he was amazed by how quickly it had happened. He'd expected the extinction event to take months. Instead, it seemed like the world he knew was transformed in a matter of just minutes.

That's something I hadn't counted on,
he thought bitterly. But I should have.
Why didn't I at least take a weapon with me?
 

They'd locked the door before the bulk of biters wandering in from the car park had a chance to get close to them, but they'd been spotted for sure. Watching the way the monsters below sniffed at the air, Chad knew it wouldn't be long before a mob of undead maniacs began trying to force their way in to feast on their hot flesh. The unit was sparsely furnished, but Chad found a hammer and nails in the supply closet. Working as a team they'd managed to bust up the furniture and use it to barricade the only point of entry accessible: the front door. When they first started the pounding, there had been just a couple of frustrated zombies on the other side. By the time they were finished, it sounded like an angry mob of shoppers getting ready to stampede employees at a Walmart Black Friday sale.
“You think there's any chance they might just get tired and give up?” Skylar asked.