Necromanson (Beta) Chapter 2 (Patreon)

All Henry saw was a thin slice of the man’s head, his submachine gun nestled against his cheek, a smug grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. Henry threw himself to the ground, which in this case was a flight of concrete stairs, madly squeezing off rounds as he fell. The staircase erupted with sound, deafening Henry’s scream as the other guy squeezed his trigger and filled the air with a wave of death.

Henry couldn’t see, hear, or breathe. His body was awash with pain. Am I dead? After a second, he realized he was simply squeezing his eyes shut. Henry opened them and took in a pained gasp, swiveling his neck in a panic to find the killer. Henry came to stand on battered legs, holding the pistol in front of him with nerveless, shaking hands.

Henry carefully stepped over the wire, never taking his eyes off the lower stairs. Small droplets of blood on the bannister greeted his gaze, and a moment later the guy who had tried to kill Henry came into view. He rested against the bannister, gracelessly slumped against the steel tubes.

Henry squatted down close and spotted a trail of gore beneath the man’s right ear, where a bullet from one of them had ricocheted up and into his brain. Henry shuddered, regarding the man for a solemn moment, before he holstered his pistol and grabbed the guy’s gun, slinging the strap over his shoulder.

“So much for not being like die-hard.” Henry said, wiggling his toes. Henry grabbed a caffeinated energy bar from the man’s pocket and snagged an extra magazine from his belt. There were no explosives on the man’s person, not even a flashbang.

“Maybe I played too much call of duty, but I was hoping for at least a grenade.” Henry muttered to himself, knowing that he should be grateful just to be alive, the man had had him dead to rights. Ninety nine times out of a hundred, this would be where Henry bit the dust.

A wave of cold travelled over his scalp as he considered that. Am I sure I didn’t get shot? Plenty of people didn’t know they’d been shot until a while later, buoyed by adreniline. Henry was running his hands over himself, checking for bleeding, when a voice sounded from above him.

“…Came from the fire escape!” came a voice from above him, spurring Henry to start running down the stairs again.

“Shit, shit, shit…” Henry chanted his mantra as he leapt back down the stairs, the sound of pursuit close behind him. This time, he didn’t stop to ambush the pursuers, rushing toward the exit leading to the street. The open, exposed street.

Henry came to a jerking halt in front of the door, nearly slamming into it in his desperate bid to come to a halt. The hairs all over his body raise in goosebumps as his hand came close to the door. If there was one thing he understood better than anything else, it was that being predictable would get you killed.

Henry pushed away from the door leading outside, instead loping down the short hallway leading to the lobby. Henry quietly unlatched the door and went to one knee, his entire body crying out in pain. A startled cry sounded behind him, wailing on and on as the man tried separate steel from flesh. Apparently the guys behind him weren’t as smart as their buddy.

Henry swung the door open, the well-oiled hinged of the new condominium doors giving way without a sound. Ahead of him was the lobby the feng-shui obsessed billionaire had commissioned, a simple fountain with jets of water erupting from a still pool dominating the center of the large room. To Henry’s left was the restrooms, beside the sliding doors leading to freedom.

To his right was the workout room and sauna, and across the way was the pool and shower area. Henry wasn’t a particular fan of the pool, as most of the people who could afford to live here weren’t the kind you wanted to see in a swimsuit. Henry didn’t spend much time in the gym either, something he was currently regretting as he pushed his tired limbs into action.

The marble tiled lobby was empty, not a single person from gunmen or the hospital were in sight. Henry crept forward along the edge of the wall, angling for the bathroom, darting from fanciful stone pillar to decorative stone planter. Still, no sound followed him but the faint moans of the jerk tangled in razor wire on the stairs.

With one more scan of the empty lobby, Henry loped to the bathroom, intending to use the entrance as cover before breaking out toward the front door. As Henry approached the bathroom, a sickening stench wafted to his nose, drawing his eyes toward the innocuous beige entrance illuminated by the soft fluorescent lighting lining the edges of the ceiling.

Henry glanced out toward the street, wanting to run for the entrance, but his left leg took an involuntary step forward, toward the smell of a fresh meat, blood and shit. some unseen force pushed him forward like a strong tailwind, Henry felt as though he could lean backward, and it would hold him up, and drive him forward anyway.

Sweating, Henry crept forward toward the men’s room, where the smell was coming from. As Henry turned the corner into the tiled room, his gaze was met by a corpse, staring straight at him from atop a pile of its kin. Henry’s heart jumped, and his weak legs nearly gave out in fright. A moment later, Henry took a shuddering breath and glanced around the rest of the room.

Everyone was dead, not so much intimately murdered as they had been dispassionately bled like animals. A deep gash was struck across the twenty-odd men and women’s necks before they had been tossed into the center of the room, their blood pooling toward a small grate in the floor. Near the bottom of the pile was a womans hand, the edge of a bloodstained daffy duck scrub visible.

Henry’s vision swam, his stomach did a backflip, and he found himself leaning against the wall. A moment later, he retched, heaving up a mouthful of bile-tainted Nyquil. Henry fell to his knees, spitting the vile mixture on the ground, despite being mere feet away from a toilet stall. Henry’s hands shook as he glanced over at the pile of corpses, a dim memory whispering of similar scenes.

“…where he went, but we’re gonna find him.” Came a distant voice from the lobby that jerked Henry out of his stupor.

“It doesn’t matter, we can’t go running off on wild tangents at this stage. Write him off as a lucky SOB and expect the cops in another five.” Another voice, commanding and stern addressed the first. A soft squeal of static sounded and the voice returned. “Attention, return to the lobby to receive your blessing. You have ninety seconds.”

Henry crept closer to the entrance, listening to the sound of books striking the marble lobby floor as twenty-two men assembled in the lobby. “Where’s Achilles and David?” The stern voiced man demanded.

Henry took a quiet breath, barely able to hear the men over the pounding in his ears, got low, and poked his head around the edge of the restroom entrance. The leader had removed his mask, standing rigidly in front of the assembled men. He had piercing blue eyes behind weather-worn brows, and close cropped hair. He held a sickly old man with drooping eyeslids by the scruff of his neck. The old man’s hospital was light blue, with a white nametag, unreadable from this distance.

“David died on the stairwell, shot in the head, and Achilles tripped on some razor wire in the same place, he can’t walk.” The grunt standing in front of the older commander spoke.

The commander’s brow raised slowly, the rest of his face set in stone. “What are the odds?” he said quietly.

“Sir?” his subordinate asked.

“It’s nothing, Achilles always did have the strangest luck,” the weatherworn commander said, shaking his head. “As you know, the final ingredient, the last thing we need to complete the ritual, is the blood of a truly evil man.” He said, brandishing the old man who hung limply from his grasp.

“We’re going to bleed this pig, and write our names in history as the first men to open The Door!” the commander shouted. “We will be powerful!” the men cheered. “We will live forever!”

The men cheered again, their hands raising in the air. their commander swung his submachine gun up and fired into the tight knot of armed men, dropping the old man to the ground as he switched to his sidearm and finished off a few writhing men. Finally, the noise from gunfire settled, and the commander stood alone, staring down at the still forms of the men he had led to the slaughter.

“I’d be damned if I shared eternity with a bunch of jackasses like that.” he said, bending down to grab the old man by his blue collar, wrenching him to his feet and dragging him toward the fountain, a still pool of water when it was turned off. From his vantage point, Henry could see something wrong with the water.

Henry realized that there was only one bad guy left, without a helmet, facing away from him. The situation could hardly get any better. Henry emerged from the bathroom, creeping forward, the submachine gun trained on the commander, waiting for him to separate from the old man.

As the commander dragged the old man forward, Henry saw a spark of recognition on his face. Henry put his finger up to his lips, hoping the old man wouldn’t give him away until he had a good angle to mow down the bastard. Henry saw a glimmer of something flit across the wrinkled face of the gramps… amusement?

Taken aback, Henry stopped and stared at the old man, the hairs on his neck once again standing up. A moment later the commander dragged the old man into the pool, and Henry’s eyes widened with sudden realization. The pool of the fountain was filled with blood. Henry craned his neck to look back at the bathroom, where only a quarter of the people he had seen herded into the building had died.

Henry had helped design the fountain. He was aware that there was a stupidly complicated design made out of pipe underneath the fountain, and under the right circumstances, run off from the bathroom could flow into those pipes. In fact there were three other places in the building where that was the case.

Another shiver ran down Henry’s neck as he realized that the horrible massacre that had happened today was something that was supposed to happen. It had been arranged. There was some connection between the people who had paid for this building, and those currently filling its pipes with blood, believing it would make some kind of magic happen.

Henry turned back to the scene in front of him, just in time to see the old man standing tall in front of the commander. Henry was much closer to the two of them, and he could barely make out the white name-tag adorning the front of the old man’s open-assed hospital gown.

C. Manson. Henry’s eyes widened in alarm. It can’t be.

Henry recalled overhearing snippet of news that the man serving a life sentence had been sent to the hospital because of a health condition. It couldn’t be.

The unassuming, saggy old man whose name had become synonymous with evil met his gaze and winked. The commander, without preamble, drew his gun and blew a hole through the swastika inked on Manson’s forehead.

The lights in the hotel dimmed for a moment, then brightened, until the bulbs exploded as invisible power pushed inward, toward the center of the room. The commander laughed, looking at the ceiling, closing his eyes as he reveled in the sickly feeling of energy moving across his skin. The pressure in the room built, as though they were rapidly sinking into the ocean.

Henry felt his ears pop painfully as the commander danced with joy. The man started, and his piercing blue gaze settled upon Henry. “The lucky SOB. I suppose I could do worse for company.”

“What the hell is this!” Henry demanded, leveling the gun on him as the room began to hum audibly.

“It’s a spell of immortality. You could shoot me now and it wouldn’t matter, I’ve spilled blood here, and the change has already begun, I can feel it. From what I hear, you’ve spilled blood tonight too, you qualify.” The man said, a grim smile on his lips.

“Ok, psycho, how about you put the gun down before I…” Henry swallowed, it felt as though his blood had turned to syrup and his heart had to shove it forcibly through his veins. “Test your theory?” Henry said, his head bobbing as the strange feeling washed over him. The other man felt it too, spreading his arms and throwing back his head, apparently reveling in the uncomfortable sensation.

“Go ahead, we’ll have a long time to get to know one another afterwards.” The man chuckled, meeting Henry’s gaze. The energy in the room swirled around the two of them, and Henry suddenly felt like more, more than he had ever been. His perspective changed, he felt like everything around him was made of soft cheese, and all he had to do to crumble the faux stone pillars was reach out and Squeeze.

The blue-eyed man laughed with sheer delight, like a teen unwrapping a car shaped Christmas present, eager to test it out on the road. The sensation washed over Henry, once, twice, then it changed.

A pop rang in Henry’s ears, the sickly sensation of something integral to his being detaching, being pulled away. It felt something like the time he had dislocated his arm, but located in his chest, radiating a dull ache to every part of his body. At the same moment, the pool of blood behind the blue-eyed man shifted.

It was a small shift, splashing against the inside of the pool, barely audible, but it caught their attention. The blue-eyed man stopped smiling as the ache inside them grew, doubling and redoubling, staring at the center of the fountain.

“That’s… not right,” he said through gritted teeth. “That’s not how the spell works!” he shouted at the shallow circle of blood that had begun to spin, revealing a supine form beneath the red surface of the liquid. As he spoke, Henry felt the invisible force that had surrounded the two of them funneled away, creating a vortex around the fountain, reflected by the blood that had begun to spray from the lip of the fountain.

The aching grew, and Henry decided he’d had about enough when he saw the gown-covered body twitch. The blue-eyed man turned pale. With shaking hands, he raised his gun, snapping Henry out of his reverie.

“Don’t even-“ Henry started, but the other man smoothly placed the barrel of his pistol at the base of his chin. He met Henry’s gaze.

“I’m not going to let him get my soul,” He said softly, tears rolling from the corner of his eye. “If you’re smart, you’ll do the same.” A blast of light seared Henry’s eyes and ears for a moment, and when he blinked, the blue-eyed man who had orchestrated the massacre was lying on the ground, his glassy eyes staring up at the ceiling from a pool of his own blood.

“Fuck!” Henry shouted, reeling away from the corpse. He crept forward, kneeling down in front of the dead man. Looking more closely, Henry spotted a lump in the chest pocket of his vest. Henry carefully opened it, revealing a leather wallet. Guess he wasn’t planning on getting caught, Henry thought to himself as he flipped it open, his gaze scanning its contents.

Mark Yates, Texas driver’s license, Old military I.D., Costco card. Obviously not rich if he’s got a Costco card. Henry mused. A foot entered Henry’s peripheral vision and Henry’s head snapped up, half-raising his gun. A young, full bearded man with modestly handsome features dressed in a pristine blue hospital gown squatted down beside him.

“Hello brother, are you alright? I saw how you stood up to those guys, you’ve got balls of steel.” Manson said, extending his hand to Henry, ostensibly to shake. Henry’s gaze flickered from the man’s hand, to the nametag bearing his name, then to the now-still pool of blood. Henry’s eyes narrowed, and he tightened his grip on the gun.

Charles Manson saw the change in Henry, and he lunged forward,

The man’s flesh sank inward, peeling his lips away from inhuman, gnashing teeth as he closed the short gap between them. Startled, Henry squeezed the trigger of the submachine gun, and a solid stream of deafening gunfire blew the two of them apart, sending the cult leader sprawling to the ground in tatters.

Henry stood from where he had fallen on his ass, his finger cramped down on the quiescent submachine gun. With a shake, he relaxed his finger, breathing out. As he looked down on the now still man, he was immediately assaulted by doubt, did I really need to do that? was I right about him?

Henry took a step closer, doubt turning into guilt as his gaze ran over the bullet-riddled body. The fuck am I gonna do? Tell the cops I finished off the last patient because he had a scary name? what the hell is going on?

Henry ground his teeth with worry, his hand unconsciously moving to the scar on his scalp. I hear people who wear glasses are less likely to get convicted, Henry thought to himself, his thoughts bordering on panic.

A groan sounded in the silent lobby, and the bullet riddled corpse on the floor began to stir, sending icy chills all the way to Henry’s feet. “Fuck this, I’m out,” Henry said, pulling the strap to the gun off his shoulder and tossing it aside. Henry pulled out his pistol and stepped above Manson’s body, and put two rounds in the back of his head.

“One Mississippi,” Henry started counting, sprinting to the corpse littered men’s room. At five seconds he was in the room, ten seconds later he had pistol whipped through the drywall and snagged his stash. After forty seconds, he emerged from the bathroom as the thing in the lobby was once again regaining its feet, holding a duffle-bag sized PVC pipe by a glued-on handle.

Manson met Henry’s eyes and smirked, “I have risen again to bring-“ his words were cut off as Henry emptied the rest of his magazine into the monster. Only three shots rang out, and the thing didn’t even leave his feet. “You cannot-“ he began, and Henry reached into his holster, releasing the clip and slamming another one home.

Manson stopped speaking, regarded Henry for a moment, then spread his arms wide. “you cannot kill the son of god, this can only end one way, my son.” Henry raised a brow, took careful aim, and shot him in the head.

Manson’s head snapped back and he fell to the ground, blood oozing from a hole in his cheekbone. Henry stepped closer and put another two rounds in his head, before turning and sprinting out the front door, counting the seconds, trying to make it to his car before whatever the fuck was in the lobby got back to its feet again.

When Henry had counted fifteen Mississippi, two police cars, sirens blaring, cut in front and behind him, their tires squealing as they came to a sudden halt, trapping him like a startled buck. The four men inside levelled their guns on him, screaming at him to simultaneously drop the gun, lay down, and put his hands behind his head.

“What?” Henry murmured to himself before he realized what it looked like. A large man running along the street away from the scene of the worst mass murder in American history, carrying a gun, a suspicious package, speckled with blood. The officers kept screaming, and Henry only saw one way of getting out of there un-shot.

Henry slowly put the gun on the sidewalk, depositing the money against the red brick restaurant behind him. The four officers bulled closer, two of them tackling him, wrenching his arms painfully behind him while the other two practically shoved the barrels of their guns up his nose.

The two manhandlers dragged Henry to the car, slamming the side of his head against the door as they shoved him inside, making Henry hiss in pain. One of the gun-pointers took out a little card and began reading Henry his rights.

“…if you cannot afford a lawyer, on will be provided….” The pounding in Henry’s ears washed out the words, and his eyelids grew heavy just as he caught a snippet of words beyond the droning voice. “get a fucking promotion for catching this fucker…” I’m in some deep shit, Henry thought to himself, But at least I’m not trapped with that thing.

“Hey, could we get a move on?” Henry said, Interrupting the man reading him his rights. “I’d like to be moving in the next fifteen seconds.” Before that thing in the lobby spits out the most recent bullets.

An elbow to the face was the officer’s response. “Get comfortable, you son of a bitch,” the officer said, before restarting his Miranda rights. His left eye close from the pain in his brow, Henry looked past the man with the card and saw the officers bagging his gun and money, thoroughly searching the sidewalk for anything else he might have ditched when they surrounded him.

You never think about how slow the system is until you’re trapped in it, like a dinosaur in a tar pit, Henry thought, his eyes on the glass doors of the monolithic building he had called home. From the outside, it looked like a typical fancy condo, twelve stories high, floor to ceiling windows, a couple woefully small bushes outside to calm the nerves of the residents. A beam of light emerged from the double doors of the building, splashing off the concrete entryway and dissipating into the night.

When Henry’s internal Mississippis had reached two minutes, he saw a shadow fall over the doorway, as a figure emerged from the building. Henry lowered himself in the seat, until only the top of his head emerged from the window sill of the car. Manson glanced straight at the policed cars, straight at Henry, who crouched in the darkened cab of the police car, hidden behind the flashing lights.

Henry’s heart hammered, and he stayed perfectly still, keeping his face away from the backsplash of red and blue light. Manson faced the four police-officers, still calling in the arrest, looked right at the car Henry was hiding in, and smiled. Henry’s blood froze for an instant as Manson waved at him before casually walking back through the doors, returning to the lobby.

Less than a minute later, the building was completely surrounded by flashing lights as the police began to swarm around the building in force, filing into the lobby in numbers that nearly clogged the entrance. Finally, the two cops slid into their seats, letting the clamor of the busy crime scene in for just a second before slamming the doors closed behind them.

As they pulled away, Henry saw a crowd of people and flashes of light through the entrance as CSI snapped pictures of everything, cataloging the messy afterbirth of what Henry could only assume was some kind of undead. If there was one thing Henry wanted to do more than anything else, it was get the hell out of town. Glancing at the two men sneaking suspicious glances at him through the rear-view mirror, Henry figured it might take a long time before he could do that.

What the hell, Henry thought to himself. It looks like he lost interest in me for the time being, so I might as well get some sleep. Henry took a deep breath and leaned his head back against the seat, slowly breathing out. In seconds, the world faded away.

Michael Smith reclined against the stairwell, his right leg propped up on the stair, to help slow the flow of blood oozing out of the slipshod bandage around his ankle. He’d taken his black mask off, the damn thing always made it feel like it was hard to breath. His gun rested across his chest in case the cops came for him, which was looking more and more likely.

The mission had been a clusterfuck. There wasn’t supposed to be resistance of any kind, and yet some jackass had been running around setting up Razor wire on the goddamn stairwells. Achilles was his codename in the mercenary company that had been put under the command of Mr. Yates, and the irony of being crippled like this wasn’t lost on him.

“Fuckers ‘ll probably have a good laugh,” Michael said, straining as he shifted his weight, mindful of the painful throbbing of his leg. He knew something important had happened, when the pulsing invisible energy had washed over, around, and through him. The mission had succeeded, right? Then why had no one come to get him?

It didn’t make sense for them to leave him here, slowly bleeding beside the corpse of David. One way or the other someone should have come, either to bring him home, or kill him to keep his mouth shut. Michael pondered that for a moment. If the mission was a success, someone would come get him, if it was a failure, there would have been no surge of strange energy filling his body.

Michael’s brows furrowed. So that meant it was… both? Michael shook his head to clear his thoughts. In any case, he needed to get the hell out of here. He’d left plenty of DNA evidence on the stairwell, but none on the bodies in the four rooms. Micheal reminisced about the pleading women he’d cut, a smile coming to his face. Sometimes he loved his job, and it had been an especially good night up until this stairwell.

Michael took off his vest, shirt, pants, and his left shoe, now completely barefoot. Michael grabbed a stack of hundred dollar bills from his vest pocket, along with a lighter and a plastic bottle of kerosene. Michael neatly stacked all his gear around the damned wire, soaking it all in kerosene, the tangy scent of the fluid washing over him.

Michael tied a sock tight around his ankle, gritting his teeth against the pain, determined not to bleed on anything until he had gotten significant distance between himself and this building. Michael struggled to his feet, hopping and resting his weight against the steel railing. Lighter in hand, Michael turned to face the majority of incriminating evidence against him, when he heard the telltale click of the fire escape door opening from the lobby side.

Probably the fuzz, Michael thought to himself, tossing the lighter on the pile of gear. “Better late than never.” he muttered, turning to hop as far away from the gear as he could before the bullets in his gun started going off.

Michael stopped short. At the bottom of the staircase was a member of his team, looking up at him silently. “It’s about fucking time,” Michael said as the bastard’s shoulders shook with suppressed laughter. “Were you bastards just waiting for me to try to burn and run so I could be the dumbass going back to base in his underwear?”

The man’s shaking intensified, and Michael’s eyes spotted bloody holes scattered across his uniform. The eyes focused on him were milky white. “What the,” Michael said, trying to take a step back. Forgetting his wound for a moment, Michael put weight on his right leg, sending him toppling onto his back.

The black mask covering the things face ripped open, revealing a gaping, tooth-filled maw between the clinging strands of the black cotton. Michael screamed, and tried to crawl backward, running into the searing heat of the fire behind him.

The thing lunged down at him, and Michael instinctively threw his hands in front of him. With a crunch and snip Michael found himself disarmed. Michael watched in horror as the thing shuddered in pleasure, his hands making a visible lump as they travelled down its gullet. The disguise sloughed away, aft if it were rotted leather, revealing the pale thing atop him in its entirety.

A high pitched shriek filled the air, and the monster atop Michael lunged back down, tearing out Michaels throat. The shriek immediately changed to a wet burbling as air bubbled from the bloody hole that was his neck. That was me, Michael thought to himself as the pain faded away, and the world around him went bright.