Clarise's End-Times III by Mackinley Clevinger, March 13, 2016
There’s a memory I got from the horde, something that, with any luck, should fill in some of the blank spots I have of recent history here in my lovely little city. I figure that if I’m going to either be hurtling to my death or having to hold onto a helicopter’s landing rails for dear life in the foreseeable future, I should take the time to at least try and understand why everything wants to kill me, and perhaps even how things went to shit so quickly. I tap into that little part of my head that’s the horde, and my vision of helicopters and certain death is replaced by… a bunch of rich and well-dressed jerks and their fancy district of town.
He, the first, coughed; a great, hacking, full bodied cough that left his throat and chest hurting like hell. He bent over, hands on his knees as another cough wracked his body, droplets of phlegm and spit scattering over his suit and the sidewalk in front of the hotel he’d been about to enter. The crowd walking along the street ignored him, men and women dressed in similar fashion stepping around the man bent-double without turning their heads or stopping. His throat and chest burned as he took a staggering step towards the entrance to the hotel, one hand pressed against his chest and the other limp by his side as he traversed the fast-moving crowd, desperately searching for relief from his pain.
They disappeared around a corner and entered the bathroom, the man staggering towards a sink to cup his hands beneath the faucet and sip from it. The bellhop stood a small distance away, watching the man drink and seem to calm down. The man bowed his head over the sink, letting the water run out of his hands after his first sip, and planted his hands on the porcelain. The bellhop asked if he was feeling better, worry evident in his brow and hands politely folded in front of himself. He coughed lightly into a gloved hand. The man at the sink nodded his head slightly, eyes shut and head bowed as he tried to come to terms with a growing feeling in his gut.
Behind the bellhop a woman raced into the bathroom, one arm covering her mouth as she collided with the wall and released a great, wracking cough into her elbow. She took a tentative step forward, balance wavering as the bellhop helped her towards a sink besides the other man, still bent over. He asked if she was okay as she cupped her hands and tried to take a drink, a cough bubbling into the water and splashing it all over herself. She coughed into the bend of her arm again, nodding her head in response to the bellhop who backed away from them both, turning to leave the bathroom and check the foyer for anyone else who needed help.
The woman drank the water out of her hands, the cough dying down as she looked at herself in the mirror, eyes widening. Her body shook, upsetting her mass of red curls as her mouth slowly parted in shock. She patted at her vest and dress-pants, trembling hands searching for a phone as one leg gave out beneath her for a moment, nearly sending her tumbling to the ground, an arm darting to grip the porcelain and right herself, cracks splintering out from her grip. Her twitching hands found the phone, the man beside her ramrod still but for his lips speaking silently to himself. She tried to dial a number, but the shaking sent the phone crashing to the ground, screen shattered and battery popping out as she bent over the sink, mouth parted in silent agony.
The skin at the small of her back was a roiling mess, the material of her vest stretched and twisted by the shifting form beneath it. She pushed herself away from the sink, fear overwhelming her as she ran out the bathroom, shoving the bellhop aside from his post in front of the bathroom entrance. The few people in the foyer watched the woman run out of the hotel, body spasming and shaking as she left, her face horrified and revealing immense pain. The bellhop shared a confused look with the hotel’s patrons, uncertain of what course of action to take. He turned towards the bathroom and entered, a well-repeated question stalling on his lips when he found the shattered phone spread across the floor and nothing else within the room.
He stepped forward cautiously, not catching sight of the man who’d been at the sink. He’d been a larger man, middle-aged and well-grayed by the life of the businessman; not as spry as he had once been, and perhaps in need of help. The bellhop stepped past the broken phone towards the stalls arrayed on the back-wall, farthest from the entrance. He placed a hand on the first of doors, about to apply pressure on it and look inside when he heard a quiet footstep, followed by the ‘click’ of a light switch, and was plunged into darkness.
He could hear someone moving in the dark, the faint light let-in by the exit to the foyer insufficient to illuminate the room to any extent. He backed away from the sound of approaching footsteps, heartbeat speeding up and fear crawling up his spine. His back hit the stall-door, making him jump as it swung open and clanged lightly against the wall. He hurried into the stall and shut the door, locking it as he stood as far back from the door as he could. It banged once, a hand slapping against metal, and then the pitch-dark room fell silent but for the bellhop’s breathing.
He patted his pockets for a phone, but knew he wouldn’t find one. He didn’t like how it interrupted the smooth figure of his uniform, he refused to bring one with him. Soft footsteps padded around the line of stalls, not nearly as heavy as the man’s had been when he’d come staggering in. He heard the squeaking of a stall door opening, and the footsteps stopped not a foot away from him, a thin stall-wall all that stood between the two of them. There was silence for a moment, the bellhop holding his breath, mind racing to imagine all manner of horrid things. A hand darted from underneath the stall and grabbed the bellhop’s ankle, pulling him against the stall as he tried to pull himself free from the man’s hold. He only had a moment to acknowledge the feel of something sharp against his leg before it erupted in a ripping pain, wet blood soaking into his sock as the hand and teeth released him.
He threw himself away from the direction of the man, reaching a hand down to feel his wounded leg in disbelief. He felt the warm blood, the pain intense, causing his vision to swim in the absolute dark. He heard a hand slap against metal again, this time accompanied by a wet squeaking sound. The bellboy’s face was a rictus of horror in the dark, heart racing and skin coated in sweat. The bathroom grew silent again but for the sound of his high-pitched breathing, fear alive in every cell of his body. His heart boomed in his ears, pain lancing up his leg alongside a twisted feeling of infection, his veins thickening and growing numb, a sensation that was slowly rising from the numb wound towards his waist. Behind him, through the stall-wall he had backed up against, not two inches away from him, separated only by a thing stretch of metal, a low moan entered the edge of his hearing; growing in volume to chill his blood and send him into a frenzy of fear.
He threw himself against the stall-door, mindless, and shoved it open, staggering out of the stall as he propelled himself towards the distant soft light of the foyer. The moans turned to a screech as the man ran after him, uninhibited by any wound and driven by an insatiable hunger. The bellhop reached the outer edges of the soft light, body burnt out by fear and exertion, limping from a leg that had grown numb, when the man leapt at him and carried him to the ground, biting into the soft flesh of his neck as the bellhop screamed, face down on the floor, an ancient voice of fear that carried and echoed throughout the foyer of the hotel and into the hearts of its inhabitants.
A few young men ran towards the cry for aid, approaching slower once they noticed the bathroom was dark, and entering together. One hit a switch, light shining on the bellhop lying in a pool of blood, holding his ravaged neck, and pointing towards the distant stalls, one decorated with a bloody handprint. The bellhop came to his feet, gasping, urging them towards the stalls to help him, to protect him. He told them he’d been struck with a knife, but the other man had lost it in the struggle, and was hiding in the stall. They approached the stall carefully, arranged in a loose half-circle centered around the bloody stall, fear and excitement thrumming through them at the chance to be the heroes. One man stepped forward, shoulders back and emitting an aura of confidence to the others. He placed a hand on a clean part of the stall-door, and pushed it open, pulse hammering in his veins.
The lights shut off with a quiet ‘click’ mere moments after they recognized that the stall only contained blood, a flurry of violence and cut-off screams marking the end of their lives, and the beginning of something else. Half an hour later, after a hotel clerk and two unaware guests had gone missing, the police arrived, flashlights revealing a scene of carnage and bloody death, one man holding on tenuously at the far end of the room, clutching his side and breathing deeply. The lights were turned on, the paramedics arrived, and after the injured man was taken to a hospital an errant arm tapped the light switch, surprising numerous officers in more ways than one with the sudden revival of nearly a dozen victims of gang-violence.
They swarmed out of the bathroom from there, sweeping up through the floors of the hotel without too much of a fuss being made, and from there slipped out onto the streets, the hunger ignored for as long and as far as they could get before the horde unleashed themselves on the city. At about this time, a pretty young woman dressed quite nicely in casual business attire walks out onto a roof, looking for a pleasant view as brown-hair whips around her face and gets caught in a recent lip piercing, about to curse her own luck as the wind blows a door shut and leaves her quite unhappy with her surroundings for a good long while, going to show that, often, I don’t know just how good I have it, relatively speaking. Ah, crap, the memory’s over; back to a helicopter and certain death.