“Welcome, Major Connors. Do you have any water, food, or medicine you can share? We’re in great need here,” says Ewing.
Connors is about to offer up some of the supplies when Dr. Shaw sidles up next to him. “I would strongly advise you not to do what you are about to do.”
“What the…?” Connors can’t believe the man who hid behind a tree, while two children and a woman were being attacked, is giving him advice, “And just what is it you think I’m about to do, doctor?” He whispers out of the corner of his mouth so no one else can overhear.
Shaw isn’t as subtle and speaks too loudly “We need every ounce of our food and water. We still have to get to Fort Worth, and if –” His comments cause a ripple upset to course through the group of survivors.
“–These people are desperate,” Connors interrupts, “Have you ever seen what desperate people will do for food and water? And you might want to look around. You’re fenced in with them. And if you care to take another look, Shaw, you might notice that they have snipers on the rooftops.”
Before Connors can repair the damage, Shaw has done, a throng of hysterical, emaciated people rush forward and grab them.
“If you don’t share with us then we’ll have to take everything,” says Ewing, rubbing his hands together. “Take them to the church!”
They’re taken to an old two-story building. The address is posted in large, black numbers above the entrance: 2424 Swiss Avenue. They are forced through the double front doors and find themselves in a room with a curved staircase. They’re wrangled, not unlike cattle, into a large, half-moon-shaped room. The second-floor balcony hangs suspended above them. A beautiful gothic chandelier hangs in the center of a tin-tiled ceiling. A stunning stained-glass window graced with the image of a woman is built into the wall. Light from the outside cascades through the glass lighting a podium which lies on its side. They’re in a church, and though the building is just a quarter of a century old, it smells of mildew, and of age, and of death.
One might believe, if they try hard enough, that the voices of ghosts can be heard singing. The apparitions of lost souls can be seen swirling and dancing, in time, to haunting melodies long forgotten.
Now, this holy place has become a sanctuary for the living dead; men and women, who are among the last survivors of an, almost complete, extinction event. And what these men and women have in store for them becomes crystal clear. A large area has been set up off the side of this large room, with no other purpose than the slaughter and preparation of meat. A makeshift slaughterhouse. Cannibals have decided their fate, and there seems to be no way out.
A small section of the wall has been knocked out, and a stovepipe snakes through it, to vent smoke outside. In the corner, near the women’s restroom, there’s a barbeque pit. A long stainless steel, food preparation table is adorned with butcher knives, small hand axes, fillet knives, and other odds and ends. From various points on the balcony railing hang half a dozen or more ropes and affixed to the end of each one are large, angry hooks, used for hanging human cuts of meat.
A man is moving from one end of the table to arrange his butcher’s tools, just so, for ease use. He’s an opposing giant. At one time he could have been a bodybuilder or a wrestler, but now fat has replaced the muscle which has disappeared, but not so of his strength. He steps heavily, his feet thudding as he walks, his fat jiggling. He lifts Hollander with one hand, by his neck. He’s able to do it so easily. Connors shouts at the man, pleading with him not to take the private, but to take him instead.
Hollander gasps for air, trying in desperation to pry the strong hands away, but the man maintains a grip like an iron collar around his throat. His face is turning a dusky shade of blue. Hollander swings his fists at the man, but the only blows he lands are ineffective.
The giant is the chef, dabbling in the underappreciated, and peculiar culinary art of cannibalism. He draws his club-like fist back and jack-hammers it into the sergeant’s face, multiple times. Hollander’s limp form sags, clinging to consciousness, but the fight has been taken out of him. The giant takes him to the wall where he secures leather straps across his chest and forehead. The man touches the edge of a sharpened knife to the sergeant’s throat., gliding it across, and a torrent of bright red blood blossoms from the carotid and cascades down the body of the dying soldier.
Dr. Valentine screams.
Connors curses the giant and threatens to kill him.
Shaw’s puking on his own shoes.
A filthy, scabies-ridden woman enters the room. “What? What is yew doing, son? Shit and fire! You know what Ewing told yew. The men taste gamey until you cut off their balls and let ‘em sit a spell. The testos-ter-oner’ whatever the hell makes ‘em taste rank. You’re s’posed to start with that woman first, dummy.”
Merna, overhearing the conversation, realizes she’s escaped death purely by accident. She was supposed to be in the sergeant’s place. Nausea slams into her guts like a fist. She clenches fighting the overpowering sensation of needing to empty her guts from both ends. She wretches, her taste buds register the sour taste of bile as it enters her mouth, hot and foamy. She spits it out onto the blood-encrusted carpet.
The woman’s inspecting the sergeant’s body and says, “Still, son, it’s a choice piece o’meat, and I’m starvin’. Now do the woman too, that’ll be enough to last us for some while. We’ll hang her in the smokehouse for a few days. She’ll taste goo-ood. I’ll go’and fetch Josiah. He can take the others to the holding-pen until we’re ready to process the rest of ’em.”
The woman’s heading toward the double doors so she can get “Josiah,” when an earth-shattering crash as the Flying Fish explodes through the front doors, sending her rag-dolling and sliding headlong across the floor and into a wall. She is unmistakably dead; her cranium caved in on one side, her eye popped out and yo-yoing on the end of the torturous optic nerve.
Rose bounces in the driver’s seat, barely able to control the ambulance. She can only see each time her head bounces high enough to clear the dashboard. The vehicle slides to a halt. “Dr. Valentine get in! Hurry, hurry.”
The giant, surprised by the sound of splintering wood and iron hinges being ripped from solid door casings, galumphs to where the disturbance is coming. Finding the woman dead, he howls in anguish. His face grows beet-red and he clenches his teeth together so forcefully that the cartridge grinds and pops. He spots Rose behind the wheel. He reaches around to his back pocket where he keeps a cleaver, determined to make her pay, in the most horrendous ways he can imagine, for the death of his mother. He yanks the cleaver from his pocket, and charges towards Rose. But, before he can reach her, he crashes to the ground. Connors has kicked his feet from beneath him. The major, seeing that the man is down grabs a meat hook from a nearby wall, reaches around the giant and pulls back, driving it deep into his eye and into his brain. The giant slumps to the floor, a dying gasp, and bloody spittle drools from his mouth.
The other cannibals, caring nothing about the giant or mother, run to the church. The thought of the only fresh meat they’ve had in weeks escaping is foremost on their minds.
Connors has no intention of leaving the sergeant’s body behind. He orders the doctors to get to safety before turning back to retrieve Hollander. There’s an uproar at the front of the building where the doors used to hang. The cannibals can’t get through, the ambulance is acting as a barricade. They are prying and pulling at the doors, but they are locked tight. They’re calling inside; shouts, cries, pleas, and curses. They are calling the names of the giant and his mother.