Charles Ramon Peterson – Part 2

“Her head!” Boady yelled. The two guards fired as accurately as they could into the most vulnerable part of an Adumbrae, its brain. The arm that came out of Christa’s mouth thrashed ferociously in the air, blocking most of the bullets from connecting with the head; it was way sturdier than mere human flesh and didn’t seem affected by the gunfire.

Unable to find any success, Johnson lowered his aim targeted Christa’s torso, but she stood firm even as her body shook from the bullets. “Dammit, dammit!”

Ramon backed away from the fight, unable to make up his mind whether to help or run away. But what could he do here? He tried to call the BID emergency hotline which should be open even if there was a signal lock, but even that didn’t work.

“Johnson, we have to hit the head!”

“But that hand—"

“Side!” Boady roared. He ran perpendicularly to the right of the monster while pointing Johnson to the left. His partner, moving with impressive speed, got out of the front desk counter and flanked the Adumbrae on the other side. “Fire! Let’s kill it Johnson!”

Both of them peppered it with bullets. The goo-covered arm couldn’t keep up blocking the bullets coming from two angles even with its insane speed, and the two guards were able to get some good hits in. It wasn’t blood that came spurting out of Christa’s wounds, but that same ominous black goo she vomited.

“Reload,” Boady said and Johnson followed suit. Both of them raised their guns in unison, but held their fire as Christa tittered and then fell to the floor on her back. The mysterious arm blackened with the goo twitched for a couple of tense seconds, and stopped moving.

“Oh, man…Christa,” Johnson said, lowering his smoking gun.

“Wha—what do we do?” Ramon said. “I can’t contact the police or the BID.” He pointed at the glass doors. “And there’s something blocking the entrance!”

Boady wasn’t listening. He was trying to contact someone on his radio. “Adam? Come in. You there? We have an emergency. Adam!” Only static was the reply.

Johnson, on the other hand, knelt beside Christa’s body, mumbling her name repeatedly.

“Boady, the door—”

“Fritz? Dickens?” he yelled into his radio. “Johnson, the security room...the boys at parking. They’re not respon—” He turned his head and found his sobbing partner caressing the face of their deceased co-worker turned monster. “Get away from her!”

The hand growing out of Christa’s mouth came back to life and swiped at Johnson’s head. “Aaargh!” he yelled clutching his face. A chunk of the flesh on his cheek was in the black hand’s grasp. Johnson stood up but tripped in his haste, falling smack right back on the floor. He kicked the body of Christa away as the black hand reached for him, and crawled away as fast as possible given his massive size.

“No!” Boady yelled. He fired a couple of shots at Christa’s body that was lying motionless, but stopped when the black hand started dragging it across the floor as it chased Johnson. He’d risk hitting his partner if he continued shooting.

“Help me!” Johnson said. He looked back to try and shoot it, but the black hand took this as an opportunity to catch up to him, grabbing his leg. He screamed in pain, drowning the stomach-turning crunch of his bones. The hand squeezed his leg like it was a tube of toothpaste. Bones burst out of his skin as blood and flesh erupted in the air like confetti. “Help! Aaaa!” He shot wildly at everything.

Boady charged at Ramon, tackling him to the ground. “Keep your head down!”

Ramon obeyed and laid himself as flat as possible with his hands covering his head. Boady was on top of him, attempting to shield him.

Am I going to die?

Memories of his family, especially his mother who passed away a few years ago, swam in his head, filling his heart with determination to survive no matter what it took. He had plenty left to do in this world. The face of Erind centered in his mind. “No, no, no,” he repeated to himself. “I’m not going to die here.”

“Johnson, fucking stop that! Don’t kill us!” After a few seconds, they heard the clicking of an empty gun over Johnson’s screams for help. Boady stood up and raised his gun again.

Ramon had other plans.

Gathering strength that wouldn’t be possible without the adrenaline pumping through his veins, he grabbed the nearest potted palm tree that was bigger and heavier than him, and rushed to Christa and Johnson while carrying it above his head, screaming like a madman. “Take this Adumbrae!” he yelled as he slammed the huge pot on Christa.

Her head exploded like a squeezed grape, painting the floor with more of the black goo. The hand let go of Johnson’s leg, and Boady was already there to pull his partner away from harm.

Ramon jumped over Christa’s corpse to get to the side of the two guards and helped in dragging the injured Johnson. As they reached the front desk, Ramon collapsed on the floor, his arms and legs shivering from the intense physical exertion. He was fit and worked out in his free time at the cobbled together backyard gym of his uncle, but he was sure he wouldn’t be able to lift that potted palm tree if this was a different situation.

Boady peered over the counter, his gun held close to his chest. “It’s not moving,” he whispered.

“Where do we go now?” Ramon replied, heavily breathing. “What do we do?”

“Just leave me…here,” Johnson said. Sweat covered his face and he was beginning to pale. His words were hard to understand, slurring and airy because his left cheek was partially gone.

Ramon could see some of Johnson's teeth peeking through the gaps of shredded flesh. He held his breath and closed his eyes as he felt that he was about to puke.

“I’m not…I can’t walk…anymore.”

“I’m not going to leave you,” Boady said.

“Hey…Boady…listen up, Boady.” He pulled his partner down. “I’m bleeding and in pain…and there may be more of those things here.”

“You can’t know that for sure.”

“Adam and Fritz responding? The others…something bad must’ve happened to them.”

“We’re going to get you out!” Boady grabbed Ramon. “You’ll help me, right? My boy, Ramon, tell Johnson we’re going to get him out.”

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“Ye—yes. Yes, we will,” Ramon replied, but he wasn’t too sure of that. He couldn’t feel his arms and legs. His strength spent in that moment of reckless courage. His heart was pounding so hard in his chest that he wouldn’t be surprised if it jumped out of his mouth. “But the entrance is blocked,” he said. “How can we get out?”

“What are you talking about?” Boady said, poking his head over the counter again to check the glass doors, only know realizing just how weird everything was. “What the…what's going on?”

Johnson pushed his partner’s back. “Go…by the pool…or the kitchen…just go.”

“You’re coming with us.”

“It’s not going to work…you carrying me. Go…just go…”

Ding!

It was one of the elevators from the right wing of the building. “A resident?” Boady stood up and pointed his gun at Christa’s body. “I have to protect them.” The person who alighted the elevator walked out of the corridor at the right side of the lobby and came into view.

The man wearing the uniform of cleaning personnel was pulling a large cart full of cleaning equipment with a mop bucket attached to it at the end. Short and thin and walking with a slight hunch, he was probably in his late fifties and aging didn’t do him justice. Ramon vaguely remembered this man when he delivered Erind’s order. A woman was hounding him with complaints. She was really loud and caused a scene which was why it stuck to his memory.

“The new janitor?” Ramon said. He hadn’t seen this man before that incident even though he knew, at least by face, most of the people working in this building. Was this the temp Johnson mentioned?

“Yes, he is,” Boady confirmed.

“Boady,” Johnson croaked, reaching for his partner. “Get that man…and all of you…escape.”

The janitor stared curiously at the large potted plant on top of Christa’s corpse and approached it. He didn’t have any reaction besides mild interest.

“You!” Boady waved at him. “Uh…I forgot his name.” He walked out from behind the counter. “Get away from that body.”

“What happened here?” the janitor said. “Did you kill her?”

“It’s not what it looks like,” Boady said. “She’s an Adumbrae!”

“Adumbrae? No, no, you’re wrong.”

“You don’t have to believe us, but you need to come with us for your own safety.”

The janitor simply stared at him.

“Come here! We don’t know if that thing’s really dead.”

“It’s dead alright. My child is dead.”

“Huh?”

The janitor clapped. “Bravo for managing to kill one of my children.”

“Children?” Boady aimed his gun at the man. “The fuck are you?”

“Wha…what’s happenin’…” Johnson feebly said.

Ramon also understood the whole situation with that one word. And the smell! That foul smell from when he delivered Erind’s order was here again. Their situation was going from bad to worse. His survival instincts kicked in. “Johnson, where are your bullets?” Unfortunately, the injured guard was drifting in and out of consciousness and couldn't answer. He patted down the injured man and found a clip inside his vest. The gun! Where was it?

“Don’t move you bastard,” Boady ordered the janitor, “or I’ll put a fucking bullet in your head!” It was obvious by now that this man wasn’t who he was supposed to be. The janitor, or whoever he actually was, didn’t listen to him, moving to the back of the blue cart. “Stop that—Ramon? Get back here, boy!”

He also didn’t listen to Boady, diving for Johnson’s gun that he dropped as they pulled him. Then he rushed back to Boady’s side, reloading the gun as he ran, recalling what his uncle taught him several times when he hid inside their house from a rival gang. He took his position beside Boady just as the janitor fished for something in his large yellow mop bucket. “What do we do?”

“You know how to use that?”

“Let’s just say, I’ve been raised in a bad neighborhood.”

“I’ve got a present for you,” the janitor said. From the bucket, he retrieved a wriggling fat worm or leech of some kind, about the size of a hotdog bun.

Boady’s eyes darted between the unconscious Johnson, Ramon, and the janitor. “Boy, you have to make a run for it. You know the way to the kitchen? It connects to the—”

“I’m not going to leave you here.”

“No! I’m not going to leave Johnson’s dying ass here. You, on the other hand, are going to escape.”

“What’s this?” the janitor said, juggling the thick slug. “You’re not listening to me even when I am so kind as to give you a present?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Boady said. He fired. The shoulder of the man exploded. “Missed.” He fired a couple more shots, but the man evaded with amazing nimbleness and hurled the slug at them. It zipped across the floor in a blur, their eyes barely able to follow it. “What is that?” Boady tried to line a shot, but the slug zigzagged with extreme speed that you wouldn’t expect from its appearance. It was clear where it was headed.

Ramon tucked the gun in his pants, grabbed one of Johnson’s arms and tried to pull him away, but he could barely move him. Boady tried stomping his foot on the slug, but it swerved. The slug jumped to Johnson’s nearly severed leg, burrowing into his exposed flesh. The unconscious guard woke up from the pain and started screaming again.

“Johnson!” Ramon helplessly called. “What do I do?”

“Find it,” Boady said. He got something from inside his vest. A large swiss knife. He flicked the blade out.

Ramon nodded. He tore Johnson’s pants with his fingers and patted his flesh, looking for the invasive slug. “Here!” he said, feeling a bump in his inner thigh that shouldn’t be there. He tried to cup it with his hands, putting pressure to hold it in its place somewhere deep in Johnson’s flesh.

“I’m sorry, Johnson,” Boady said, plunging the blade into the large lump. Foul smelling black goo spurted out of the wound. His partner screamed and flailed his limbs in a frenzy. Ramon threw his body over Johnson to keep him still as Boady added a few more stabs for good measure.

“Is it dead?”

“I don’t know.”

Ramon looked past Boady at what the janitor was doing. “Look out!”

Boady turned just as a slug flew towards his face. It went inside his mouth before he could react. “Urrgkkk” He coughed violently but the slug didn’t come it. “Ugh…ukk…run.”

“What did you do to him?!” Ramon raised his gun at the janitor who was looking at them with an amused expression even though the right side of his clothes were soaked in blood from his wounded shoulder. He had another slug in his hand.

Boady pushed him. “Ramon…urghh…kawkk. Run.” A tentacle poked out of his nose. “Run…please.”

He nodded once and fled to the left wing of the building. Past the elevators was a huge restaurant that opened up to the garden surrounding an Olympic-sized pool. He could go there and try to scale the back wall to escape. Boady mentioned that there was also a way in the kitchen. A back entrance of some sort? Maybe the restaurant connected to the kitchen too.

However, he stopped in front of the row of elevator doors instead of continuing on to the restaurant. He pressed the ‘up’ button while wondering if he had gone mad. He’d only trap himself if he went up.

But there was someone up there who would surely be trapped if he didn’t come to save her.

Erind Hartwell.

Ramon pointed his gun at the corner going to the lobby while waiting for one of the elevators to come down. “Come down, come down quick.” A gunshot cracked in the air and he crouched low. Was that Boady? Did he manage to kill the janitor? But Boady would be calling for him if everything was safe.

A door dinged open.

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and decided that going for Erind was the right choice. He hurried to the elevator door and bumped into the chest of a large person inside. He fell on his on butt.

“What the…” he said, massaging his nose. In front of him was a massive man whose upper body, including his entire head, was wrapped in bandages. He wore a heavily worn-down trench coat and beach shorts. He looked down and saw that the legs of the man were also wrapped in bandages. With his instincts screaming ‘danger’ at him, he shot the man in the head after a second of indecisiveness.

A black point appeared on the man’s forehead. The bandages around the bullet hole reddened with blood. Unfortunately, the man didn’t care about the hole in his brain. “Well, well, well,” he said, catching Ramon’s gun-wielding arm. “What do we have here?”

He closed his eyes. Erind…I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.