Bang!
“Why are they like that?” Mellie’s whispered plea quivered in the air as she did her best to hold back her fear, ignoring the dull banging behind them. The pets didn’t respond to her question, obviously, yet mysteriously continued to stand and stare wide-eyed at the fearfully gawking humans.
“I don’t know,” Brandon responded, did a quick assessment and decided it wasn’t an immediate threat compared to the banging behind them, before walking over to the desk and taking off his hoodie, revealing a white shirt underneath.
Bang!
“What are you doing?” She hissed as he separated from the group, her eyes widening in shock as he ignored the glowing eyes and moved one of the cats out of his way so he could lay out the sweater, flipping it inside out as he did so. The cat didn’t respond, resuming standing and staring at him as soon as he set it down.
Bang!
“Clearing my head,” Brandon explained vaguely as he ripped the lining on the inside of the hoodie and pulled out a couple of small plastic bags he had smuggled in, which contained some paper, matches, and most importantly the dried leaves of his favorite plant. He began rolling a blunt, brought it to his mouth, and pulled out one of the matches striking it off the desk to ignite a small flare before bringing it to the calming medicine he needed so badly. There. That was better.
Bang!
Ally asked not quite believing her eyes, “Is that weed?”
“You cannot possibly be serious right now!?” Apollo exclaimed, and indeed all of them stared in shock at the casualness of Brandon as he resealed the plastic bags and stuck them into his pockets with a shrug.
Bang!
“Figure we need to stay calm right now. Best thing I could do to help,” Brandon explained himself.
“How,” Apollo began, “is getting high going to help right now?”
“Buzz off.”
Bang!
“Are you serious? My hands are broken, there is some sort of… maniac… outside,” Apollo didn’t want to admit the impossibility of the decapitated corpse chasing them, so he settled on that word. Better that than admitting they had a monster after them, “And all these animals are glowing! And you thought what? Now’s the time to get high?”
Bang!
Brandon sucked deeply on the blunt, burning away the end quickly before pulling it out and speaking. “I thought,” he paused for emphasis after mimicking Apollo’s words, “that right now I need to calm down while we come up with a plan.” He turned back to the cameras and stared at them intensely. They must be putting on one hell of a show for their captors.
Bang!
“We’re all going to die,” cried Mellie, sagging to the ground and falling on her knees while holding herself. She was shaking like a leaf in the wind, desperately clinging to not tumble down to the ground at the closure of autumn.
“Shut up,” Brandon replied coarsely.
“Don’t tell me to shut up!”
Bang!
She screamed in response to the last racket, “Make it stop!”
Ally bent over beside her and started stroking her shoulder in a one-armed embrace while she tried to reassure her that everything was going to be okay, “Don’t worry. He won’t figure out how to get past the door. We’re safe in here.”
Bang!
“You don’t know that!”
“We’re going to be fine. He can’t reach us. Besides, we won’t all die.”
“What do you mean?”
“The headless hog farmer always leaves one survivor, doesn’t he?” The rhetorical question caused Mellie’s head to jerk up in surprise as her eyes popped out in shock at what Ally had said.
Apollo said what they were all thinking, “What in your right mind made you think that was reassuring!?”
Ally’s face contorted in instant regret as she realized what she had said and struggled to explain, “I wasn’t… I was just saying-.”
Apollo continued, his frustration giving way to bear the full weight of his fury, born of pain and fear, “No! You were saying that only one of us could survive! Are you trying to pit us against each other? Why would you say something so stupid!?”
“I-it’s fine,” stammered Mellie, “Stop arguing, we need to figure this out together.”
“And you!” Apollo redirected his anger with unbridled rage, “Pull yourself together!”
Brandon snapped to attention, and as he stood up alert in realization he ordered, “Shut up.”
“I will not shut up! She’s being-.”
“Shh! Shut up!” Brandon hissed, bringing one finger to his lips commandingly. All three stared at him in confusion and alarm. Brandon cocked his head to listen, and pointed out to the others, “The banging stopped.”
They all had no time to react as suddenly the night light shattered and glinting hazards rained down upon the cats and dogs standing on the couches, who immediately jumped away noiselessly to dodge. With a terrible thud a body landed on the center of the floor, and with a sickening snap two femurs snapped as the hog farmer landed as a crumpled mess in the center of the room.
“To the garage!” Brandon cried out and the four turned and started running to the door, but there stood a great Mastiff, growling and bristling in front of it. They all stared at the thing, not immediately realizing that the thing was bloated, and was slowly getting bigger. When Brandon did process it, all he could mutter was, “What the-,” as suddenly bone broke through the skin on the snout of dog’s face and ribs pierced outside of its stomach.
They watched in horror as bones snapped and cracked, skin tore and mended, and the Mastiff’s glowing blue eyes’ irises expanded even as they seemed to shrink until beady black abysses stared them down from the transformed creature. Before them now stood a swine, with a pair of glistening, foam-covered tusks. Its growl twisted into a high pitch, and the thing squealed aggressively as it stamped at the ground, warning them away from the door.
Wet crackling and squelching erupted throughout the air as yowls and hisses, barks and growls spread like a cacophony through the room as the dismembered figure in the center grabbed one misshapen leg and with a horrendous snap forced it back in place before standing up and straightening the other in similar fashion. The bristling fury of animals morphing in the room was replaced by the squealing and oinking of pigs, as snouts began snuffling and bodies shuffling. “Barricade in the bedrooms!” Brandon cried, before running around the room with Ally in front of him while Apollo and Mellie went for the other bedroom. Ally went to switch directions to join the other two, but Brandon tackled her just in time into the doorway as the hog farmer slammed into the wall where she was going to be.This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
Brandon picked her up quickly and said, “The beds! Quick, they’re made of metal!” He grabbed them and started heaving as Ally got on the other side and they pulled it up, so it was standing on end before they slid the bed, metal screeching on tile, towards the doorway even as a couple small pigs slipped inside, having been originally cats. Brandon felt relief as the bed started to go in place, they were going to make it!
Too little. Too late. All in vain. An arm reached out behind the closing crack and a single barbed finger penetrated right into Ally’s skull as it lunged through and tossed her into the back wall. “Ally!” He called out, but he didn’t have time to think about anything but himself as the bed was kicked in and he was thrown back as the mattress broke free from the frame causing him to roll across the ground. How could he expect something that upheaved a car to be stopped by a metal bed frame and mattress? He was getting sloppy in his panic.
He looked up at their assailant as Ally groaned on the ground, not noticing one of the pigs scuttling excitedly at him until it got hold of his ear. He screamed as he jolted back up to his feet while pulling the creature from the side of his face before tossing the small piglet at the hog farmer.
The un-barbed hand reached out to catch it by the throat, and the poor creature squealed out as he squeezed, drawing life out of it with a disgusting crunch before it squelched and cracked back into the shape of a cat, now dead and limp. It dropped the corpse to the ground and took a step forward, crushing the skull underfoot, spilling blood and gore, as he made for his killing approach on his victims.
Brandon looked down to Ally, who was now sitting up against the wall breathing heavily, blood pouring from one eye with an eyelid shut, strangely concaved inwards. Her eye must have been destroyed, and she was probably going into shock, or so he figured. In reality, she was merely coming to terms with her death.
It was an odd feeling. On the one hand she knew that she was supposed to be afraid. She was supposed to dread it, yet all she felt instead was a strange sense of acceptance mixed with relief. Life had become so tiresome, and here was death marching towards her now. Sure, it would hurt, how could having your head eaten alive not? But then it wouldn’t. She would never hurt again. She wouldn’t ever feel like her efforts were in vain again. She wouldn’t ever let her mother down when she brought back bad grades. Her mother would finally be able to move on, live a better life where she wasn’t dragged down by her or her now deceased deadbeat father. It was going to be okay.
Brandon’s mind was in an entirely different headspace as his mind struggled through the calming fog of marijuana. The blood of the cat on the ground had become so vibrant from the induced high, and he felt the sharpness of the barbed wire as they tore and sundered the air, even as he felt his body not responding quite how he needed it to. Run. Run. Run! RUN!
Brandon breathed in, intaking oxygen as he reminded himself that panicking was going to do nothing. Ally was a mess on the ground, but she was still conscious, his motor control skills were inhibited, yes, but his senses were hair trigger sensitive. He took a quick glance around the room and a grey grate near the ceiling caught his eyes, vibrantly contrasting from the white of the wall. It wasn’t small either, big enough that someone could crawl through. In that case all he needed to find was a way to incapacitate the farmer long enough to get out. The doorway wasn’t an option, too many hogs with the larger ones that were once dogs now blocking it as they competed for entry.
The hog farmer had never run in all this. He seemed to have hair trigger reflexes, but otherwise slow paced. This meant that they could outrun him if need be. In that case as long as Brandon stayed outside his range, there was a chance he could slow him down enough to buy time. There were two nightstands, a mattress on the ground, it was his move, and he was on the clock.
Brandon grabbed the first of the nightstands and lobbed it with one arm as he scooped up the second, aiming for the torso of the headless monster. As he wanted, its fist lashed out to smash the metal stand to the side, but it had preoccupied it enough that he was able to launch the second stand at the legs of the lumbering murderer, knocking him to the ground. He fell onto the mattress, but only his torso. Still, that was enough. Brandon grabbed the end before the monster recovered and shoved it all the way into the doorway even as more pigs poured in stampeding and crushing the hog farmer underneath.
He turned around, dashed to Ally, grabbed her by the elbow pulling her up, and shouted, “Into the vent! Now!” She nodded and followed, even as the hog farmer stood up causing a couple pigs to tumble over, allowing Brandon to free his hands to pull at the grate. It gave out immediately. Perfect. He hoisted Ally up and she crawled up before turning around, preparing to grab Brandon’s hands in order to help him climb to freedom.
Times up.
Brandon’s hands slipped from her, and he desperately got a hold of her sweatpants’ leg as he was pulled back by his foot by the headless assailant, who had caught up to them with swine swarming around on the ground in anticipation of their wicked and twisted meal.
Ally managed to catch the brim of the vent preventing herself from falling out, even as Brandon desperately held on and screamed out, “Help me!” Ally looked into his eyes, inadvertently opening her bad eyelid revealing the bloodied crater underneath, and something so much more.
Panic. Horror. Twisting gut and burning pain in the leg. All these things flashed through Brandon’s subconscious, but he was focused on one terrible fact. One thing that made him realize how truly doomed he was. That is, as he looked into Ally’s bad eye, he saw a familiar glow. “Please,” he begged, but he knew the answer already. How did Ally know they were in Hazelwood? How did she know Lamb had brought the monster? The conclusion for Brandon was obvious. She was responsible somehow.
Ally looked beyond Brandon and saw the barbed wire of the hand digging into his leg. There was no escaping that terrible grip, and Brandon at the same time was about to pull her out with him to her death. She had moments earlier come to terms with it, but at the same time that didn’t mean she still couldn’t fight to see her mother one more time. Tell her that she loved her one last time.
Crunch! Ally smashed Brandon’s nose with her foot as she tried to shake free from him, and blood spurted from his nostrils as his nose collapsed under the pressure, yet he still didn’t let go. “Please…” he begged, his speech slurring from damage, and his plea falling on deaf ears.
Crunch! His grip loosened for a second, and tears streamed down his face after the second blow landed as Ally gave a few inches under the pull before managing to prevent herself from being torn from out of the vent. “I don’t want to die!” His voice croaked and was nasally, coming out as nothing more than a pitiable whine.
Crunch! He finally released her and fell back towards the monster, allowing Ally to scramble into vent and crawl out the other side, into the bedroom next door, kicking out the vent and causing Mellie to scream and Apollo to jump.
For Brandon however, the true horror had only just begun as the hog farmer held him up by the leg and dangled his head towards the floor for his sadistic swine to feed. His screams were quickly snuffed out as the numerous snouts prodded him and teeth tore into his bone and flesh, tearing his head apart. His body jerked and twisted, before finally growing still. The hog farmer dropped him to the ground, letting him fall in an undignified pile upon the ground. Hidden cameras in the bedroom focused on the monster as from where the spine had been several jolts of electric blue danced into the air, weaving, and spreading like spider webbing into the air to form into a greyish matter, wrinkled and pulsing before too optic nerves emerged from the mass and stretched out. Like buds growing and then blossoming in grotesque fashion, two eyeballs formed and began sweeping the room, taking their bearings of the room they now found themselves. At the same time the hog farmer’s stance changed, where before it had been slightly hunched and lumbered tensely, it now had a more graceful and controlled presence.
The headless hog farmer of Hazelwood was no longer so headless. He now had a brain and eyes, with nerves spreading to where they would be able to control sinew and bone if there had been anything there to control. It created a disturbing image of disgust and revolt.
In the monitoring station Randolph with his scientists stared with fascinated horror at the transformation. They hadn’t been able to get a good view of Ally while she was in the vents, but Randolph could imagine the face of desperation that led to her kicking her fellow survivor, condemning him to his fate while saving her from hers.
The lead scientist broke the silence, struggling to maintain a veneer of professionalism to hide her own disgust at what she had witnessed, and failing, “Subject…” She cleared her throat, regaining composure, “Subject Omega has manifested to stage two.”
“Understood,” Randolph was careful to hide the satisfaction from his voice, even if things were going as planned, he needed to respect the death of the first of the test samples, “Is the recovery team in position?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. As soon as Subject Omega has reached stage four, we’re going to capture him.”
“What if he attempts stage five?”
“Then we run interference. We need to capture him as he is so that we can properly study and understand his phenomena.”
“Yes, sir.”