This Dying World (Book 2): Abandon All Hope Read online

  With as often as I had them since the end of the world I was starting to believe that it was very likely that no other food was left on this rotting planet but rows and rows of pork and beans. I mean come on, no canned ravioli or dried packs of ramen could be found? No, everywhere I went someone seemed to be able to find that nasty red and white can of pork and goddamn beans!

  Oh, Lexi would be having a field day with this one. Hey Dan, you got kidnapped and mentally tortured for months. What would you like for you last meal? I know! Pork and beans!

  Anyway…I downed my pills first, figuring I better have the best tasting part of the meal before diving into the filler slop. I washed the bitter taste down with a big gulp of water, yet a lingering nastiness continued to tickle my tongue for a few minutes afterward.

  I never really thought about it, but I started to wonder how long it would take before various medicines started to reach their shelf life. Any medication that needed refrigeration was probably already gone, but even dry pills had an expiration date.

  I held my nose and downed the beans as fast as I could, pushing past the burning in my mouth as each little lava ball did its very best to burn the roof of my mouth.

  “You like beans that much?” Jeff asked, sitting on his cot with Tanya at his side.

  “I used to like them,” I said. “But I think I’ve eaten a truckload of these things since the world shit the bed. Can’t stand the taste of them anymore.”

  “You scarf ‘em down like you can’t get enough,” Tanya said.

  “I eat them fast so I don’t have to taste them,” I answered. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she answered coolly. “Thank you for what you did. But from now on please think before you speak. Every time you shoot your mouth off, you’re playing with our lives. Not yours.”

  “You’re right,” I admitted, swirling the syrupy remains around in the bowl with my spoon.

  “Damn right she is,” Jeff snapped. “You almost got her killed this morning.”

  “I know,” I answered without lifting my eyes from the bowl. For some reason the soupy mix captivated me as I watched the shiny metal spoon cut trails through the thick brown liquid.

  “That’s all you can say?!” he roared. “You know?”

  “No,” I said, a sudden feeling of anxiety gripping my chest. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say, but I’m sorry.”

  “You—”

  “Jeff,” Tanya interrupted. “Just let it go. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  I set my bowl on the table and leaned back in my cot, trying to let my pounding heart calm. I felt warm, despite the cold fear creeping up my legs and settling in my chest. The lights appeared to brighten as the most minute imperfections of the ceiling paint suddenly came into full detail.

  The shadows cast on the ceiling started to move, ebbing and flowing until the ceiling appeared as if it was breathing. Veins of color appeared on the paint, circulating around the ceiling’s imperfections like blood through a vascular system.

  I sat up, the sudden movement setting the world spinning. Tanya and Jeff stared at me, their cell suddenly appearing impossibly far away. Their eyes on me filled me with intense paranoia and set my skin crawling.

  “Stop looking at me!” I shouted, my voice like thunder echoing back from all directions.

  “Dan?” Tanya called, her voice like a shriek in my head.

  My hands shot up to my ears, passing my vision in slow motion as they went. Thousands of small shadows of my arm passed by my sight, as if I watched the appendage move through the high speed flashing of a strobe light.

  “Shut up,” I exhaled, my lungs unable to fill with enough oxygen to satisfy my thundering heart.

  “Ah,” the Professor said, slapping his hands together as he strolled into the room. “I see the lysergic acid diethylamide had enough time to gestate. How do you like it so far?”

  “What?!” I exhaled sharply.

  “LSD, my boy,” he smiled. “Tell me you know of LSD? Perhaps you referred to it as acid in your youth.”

  “You drugged me?!” I spat, curling up into a ball as my gut wrenching terror grew exponentially.

  “Are you surprised?” he replied, his menacing voice became all encompassing.

  “Stop!” I shouted again.

  “Oh, my dear Mr. Foster,” he grinned from behind undulating steel bars. “This will not end, not tonight. The dose you have ingested will last far into tomorrow morning. You did not think I would allow your sharp tongue this morning to go unpunished, did you?”

  “I’m sorry!”

  “You will be,” he said menacingly. “Rayna, be a dear and bring in Daniel’s entertainment.”

  He stood back, his footsteps like a parade of tap dancers in my hallucinating brain. Stepping toward the other end of my cell, he waved his hand and beckoned Rayna forward.

  The swish of uncovered feet dragging on the concrete filled the room. The intense smell of rot slammed into my nostrils, the vile odor sending my weakened stomach into near fits. The redhead teen appeared, leading an undead man by the arm.

  “Will!” Tanya screamed, covering her mouth with both hands.

  Rayna shot me a cocky grin as she lead the thing closer to my prison. Gone was the snarl and gnashing teeth of a creature close to food, instead taking on the visage of a drunk on a bender following the lead of a sober friend.

  It turned its gaze toward me, milky white eyes appearing like tiny beams of light piercing through a misty veil. The flesh on its shaven head peeled away, blisters erupting on its scalp and sending thick pus trickling down the side of its mottled cheek. White froth erupted from its lips, flowing down its blood soaked goatee and onto the soiled and tattered remains of a Cubs jersey. A metal ring clasped around its neck was attached to a chain trailing away until it looped around the girl’s arm.

  “Keep it away!” I shouted, scooting back across the cot until my back was flat with the wall. My heart was racing so fast that it felt ready to hop out and run circles in the room.

  “You should do better that that, Daniel,” Professor sneered. “Will can definitely reach you there.”

  Rayna led the walking corpse into my cell, wrapping one end of the chain on the bars and locking it into place with a heavy padlock.

  “Have fun dearie,” she said, patting the monster on its chest as she turned her attention to me. “Try not to mess your trousers!”

  The chain loops dropped from her arm with a loud crash that overwhelmed my hypersensitive hearing. I pushed my hands tighter to my head until the thought of my skull splitting in two filled my mind’s eye. The sudden terror of the irrational idea forced me to pull my hands away.

  The slam of the cell door rocked my mind, the torture of all my senses overrode my mind until all I could feel was intense animalistic fear. I vaguely remember the red headed bitch giving me the finger as she walked past my cell.

  The Will monster shuffled its feet as it walked along the bars, it’s undead eyes locked on a single bar. It reached up, pulling Tanya’s dried up finger from where it had been taped months before. It chomped down on the digit with a crunch, the bone crackling as it was ground between the thing’s teeth.

  “I’ll be watching, Daniel,” Professor hissed. “You will have eyes on you all night. Your every move will be recorded. I will be watching every terror filled moment, every ear piercing scream. It’s getting dark…and since I have the benefit of a generator—”

  Spot lights clicked on from the hallway, filling my cell with blinding lights so intense that they blocked out everything that was not in my cell. The illusion completed the sanity tearing horror. I was alone with the monster in the cell moving closer to me, the chain dragging along the floor like a steel snake readying itself to strike.

  LSD flowed through my body, inducing an indescribable level of fear. I couldn’t tell what was real, and what was hallucination. My head swam as sweat poured from every pore in my skin.

  I leapt from
my cot, fleeing to the furthest corner of my cage. I stuffed myself into the crevice between the toilet and the wall, curling myself into a near fetal position. The hungering zombie followed, crashing into the privacy curtain that once surrounded the commode. Teeth clacked together with sharp snaps as its face pushed through the cheap plastic curtain.

  The chain caught, stopping the creature before it could fall on me. Outstretched arms swiped the air, nails close enough to my face that I could feel the cold radiating from the creature’s dead flesh. I flattened myself against the wall, the drug pumping through my veins making me feel every swipe as if the filthy claws ripped into my cheek.

  I wanted to push out, to grab the creature by the neck and slam its head into the concrete. But I was frozen with all-consuming dread. A hiss spewed from between its teeth, noxious breath caressing my cheek. Wet taps slapped away in my ears as thick foam fell to the concrete in thick globules.

  My drug addled mind made me see its snapping mouth grow, its teeth sharpen until they looked more like rows of shark’s teeth. Phantom bites erupted across my skin, invisible teeth tearing flesh from my arms and legs. I wanted to swat them away, but any move I made would put me in its reach.

  It growled and strained, desperate to reach the trembling meat cowering in the corner. The metal ring dug into the loose flesh on its neck, ripping skin away and exposing thick cords of muscle across its throat. Vertebrae popped as it struggled against the iron collar, its arms flailing as it’s broken and jagged talons flew inches from my face.

  “Goodnight, Mr., Foster,” Professor’s voice wormed from the darkness beyond the spotlights. “Pleasant dreams.”

  “No!” I screamed. “Don’t leave it here! Get it out! Get…it…out!”

  Chapter 39

  A globule of red trickled down my fingers, the shafts of morning sun glinting from the wetness tracing a path across my knuckles. The drop built speed as it flowed down the back of my hand, sneaking down my pinky until it met the long dirty nail. The small globe of blood fell from my hand, rounding into a near perfect crimson sphere until it landed with a tiny splash into the thickening pool massed at my feet.

  My eyes tracked the edge of the thickening clotted blood, weaving around the floor until it traced back to the source. Crushed skull and torn flesh sat in a pile of putrid meat, pulverized to an unidentifiable mash just above Will’s shoulders. Brackish green sludge still bubbled up through the pulpy tissue, the odor of ammonia hanging thick in the cell.

  Hints of LSD still flowed through my veins, evidenced by the sudden onset of panic and irrational fear. Occasionally my mind would suddenly register movement of the body. The first few times it happened I jumped from where I sat and slammed my feet down onto the hamburger that was its head. Once the fear passed, I would return to the toilet to sit and stare at the carnage I had wrought.

  I felt the stares of my neighbors as if they were weights on my shoulders. They had witnessed a person that I did not know I could be. Once the drug had worn off enough for my fear to ebb and my rage to take over, I tore the Will thing apart. With a heavy booted kick to the chest, I sent it flying away from me. I jumped on its back, pinning its arms with my knees and slammed its head into the floor until the scalp ripped open and the bone beneath splintered. I reached into its skull and with my bare hands tore the brain from its skull, mashing it between my fingers until it was nothing but dissolving slime.

  But I didn’t stop. I continued to dismantle it, pulling its eyes from its head, ripping its jaw from its face, and jumping on its skull until nothing was left but decaying meat and long shards of jagged pointed bone.

  The two stood against the bars, watching with horror as I decimated the corpse of their dead friend. When I sat down to rest, they backed away until they were again sitting on Jeff’s cot. Watching me from afar, neither saying a word.

  The clack of dress shoes carried from down the hall. The footsteps were slow and dramatic, as if he used his steps to ratchet up the tension in our cells. I glanced up as he appeared in front of my bars.

  His trademark smile had vanished, replaced by a serious and stern glare. His light tan suit and brown tie were perfectly pressed with polished glasses shining in the morning light. Even his shoes were spotless, the sunlight reflecting upwards from the waxed and polished black surface.

  “You gave me a wonderful show, Mr. Foster. I do not bother with recording very many of my projects, but yours was worth saving.”

  “What was it for?” I asked as exhaustion, both physical and mental took hold.

  “To learn from you of course,” he replied. “I had a great deal of trouble discovering what it was you feared. Most wear their emotions openly, and I can read them like a children’s novel. But you were different. Try as I might, the things that kept you up at night eluded me.”

  “I hate spiders,” I said lazily.

  “No, nothing as simple as that, Mr. Foster. You, like most humans have many fears, but I wanted to find that one special thing that dug deep into your heart and turned your blood to ice. The thing you may not even be aware of yourself.”

  “I see,” I said coolly.

  “You do not fear me, of that I am certain, nor do you truly fear death. In some ways I believe you would welcome it with as often as you tempt it. You fear losing people, but that is all too common. You especially fear being the root cause of another’s suffering. But again, there was something hidden much deeper inside your mind. William here helped me find it.”

  This should be good, I thought with a mental eye roll.

  “Last night, you pushed through your primal terror long before your hallucinations should have allowed. In fact, you are still feeling the effects, are you not? Of course you are. I can see your pupils from this distance, you are still very much under its effect.”

  “I’m not afraid anymore if that’s what you’re asking,” I said. “If anything, I’m just hungry.”

  “I’m sure you are,” he said. “But I am not finished yet. You attacked this poor creature with a wild ferocity. Yes, we have all killed these things, but the way you dispatched this member of the undead was more than just a simple kill. You reveled in it, you enjoyed it.”

  “Those things killed my wife,” I said in a monotone voice. “They killed almost everyone I’ve cared about. They all need to die.”

  “Oh, but Daniel, this was so much more than a simple vendetta against the undead. I watched your face while you killed it. I saw your eyes when you pulled its brains from its head. You were smiling, Daniel. You were practically laughing. You didn’t just like it. You needed it. Killing fulfilled you and gave you purpose.”

  “Stop,” I demanded. “I don’t want to talk anymore.”

  “No,” Professor replied forcefully. “We don’t stop, not now. I finally know what it is you try to keep suppressed deep in the dark recesses of your mind. After you killed, you admired your work. You only looked away when you saw Jeffery and Tanya’s reactions. They saw you…the real you, and you felt shame for it. And that’s when I knew what it is that terrifies you. Mister. Daniel. Foster. You fear your capacity to become a monster. You fear…becoming me.”

  “No!” I snapped. “I am not a murdering psychopath!”

  “Not yet,” he said, his demon smile returning. “You have simply not been properly motivated yet, and I will motivate you. I told you when you first arrived that I will break you. I broke you when I forced you to choose who lived and who died. I broke you again last night, but my work will not be complete until I finally help you become the thing that you fear the most.”

  He leaned against the bars, his forehead coming to rest on the steel as his eyelids slowly slipped over his eyes. He breathed in deeply, a satisfying hiss escaping his lips as he exhaled slowly, rocking his head back and forth using the bar as a pivot.

  “Abby would be proud,” he whispered.

  “Don’t say her name again,” I hissed.

  “Your chicken will be served for lunch,” he said, completel
y ignoring my anger.

  He righted himself, running his fingers through his well-trimmed gray hair. “I will not join you, I used far more electricity than I had intended last night. I will be too busy coordinating efforts to refill our empty tanks. You understand, fuel shortages and all these days. Until we meet again, my friend.” With a halfhearted wave he turned to walked away.

  “The chicken,” I said before he could disappear. “I don’t care who brings it. I want Larry to clean up after me.”

  “And why is that?” Professor asked, half turning to face me again.

  “Because he’s a dick,” I said. “I want to see him clean up my messes, like he does yours.”

  “Hmm, an interesting, idea,” Professor pondered. “I suppose he has been lacking in humility. Yes, I think that’s a wonderful idea. Consider it done. It will be quite entertaining to see the man humbled for once.”

  “Good,” I smiled.

  “Very entertaining,” he smiled mischievously before vanishing.

  I stood from my stainless steel throne and made my way to the sink, feeling the eyes of my neighbors on me as I traversed the room. I washed the blood and gore from my hands, the cool water rushing through my fingers soothed the scar on the back of my hand that I had rubbed raw that morning.

  I dipped my head into the sink, letting the water flow over my head. Thick tendrils of red mingled with the cool water as various bodily fluids were cleansed from my unkempt hair. I stayed under the flow, watching the blood volume slow to fine thin lines of red, swirling in the stainless steel sink before getting swallowed up by the open drain.

  As the last of the blood washed away from my head, I shut off the water and sat up, still leaning over the drain as I watched the small streams of water from my hair slow to a trickle, and then single drops. I tried to push the man’s words from my mind. I wanted to ignore what he had said, and pretend that he was simply playing another of his psychotic games. I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but I could not escape from the one undeniable truth.

  Professor was right.