Hotel of Madness Page 5

  “Well, I don’t see anything wrong with him but a little dehydration.” New life, in a room full of many ailing ones, speaks. And although her inflection portrays concern, a deep well of apathy is noted.

  “See? Fine, just needed water.”

  The friend of the Holder’s mind-eye steals glances at me while her attention is elsewhere. Wonder. Awe. Curiosity. Terror. While the Holder doubts the experience, the power, she felt it. Almost witnessed it with her own eyes. A Seeker is born.

  If only she was to survive what she helped unleash.

  DuRa’g cometh. The black ichor that feeds the gnawing void that is his hunger spreads like cancer across this plane. The veil trembles ever so slightly as reality allows this great undoing. Oh yes, this species shall serve their true purpose very, very soon.

  “Are you sure he is ok?”

  “I’m just a volunteer. You can take your boyfriend to the emergency room if you think something is really wrong.”

  “We’re not—” they both begin before flustering at the last word.

  The new presence walks away. “I know you don’t believe in… what happened. But I think we messed up somehow.”

  The Holder shakes his head. “It was only weed… with something extra in it.”

  “But seizures?”

  “It happens. Bad trips happen. We’re ok. You're ok.”

  “Greg, I think we messed up.”

  “We can call 911 if they're not ok… but it was only weed, Meg.”

  “What if…” the words escape her, the terror swirls in her eyes, remembering the smell of the intoxicant turning into ash and Other “… it worked Greg.”

  “The spell? Come on! You really can’t believe in that?”

  But her mind is insistent, so she stumbles on, “What if curing con plague is not what we—”

  From a distance, screams are heard. The voices are mangled, excited, and apprehensive with terror. The sound of en mass movement, stampeding movement, rumbles the floor and vibrates the bones of my spine.

  “GET HER OFF—” screams a voice from outside.

  “—did…”

  * * *

  I stab the knife into his temple, leaning my weight into him. We slam against the wall with a thud before I reverse my grip to slash violently into the next walking corpse. The narrow hallway is a bonus, but not a great one, as the horde surges past me and around me. Hands and teeth, made strong with eldritch might and sharp by unsated hunger, paw at my flesh and tear at my clothing. I stab, shank, rip and tear, but the effort only slows them, and panic builds in the interlude between space I buy and the wall of rotten flash rushing to fill that void.

  People say time slows down when you're about to die. It doesn’t. Something grabs me and tosses me hard against the floor, busting my lip and cracking a tooth as my noggin bounces unceremoniously. I attempt to scramble to my feet, swinging blindly with the only weapon I have before its jaw buries itself deep into my left shoulder. I scream out in pain, and the zombies chatter excitedly at the sound, so I cover my mouth with my free hand and squeeze. For a second, there is a limbo as it pauses under my touch. I feel the many little monsters of death all screech in shared pain before I consume them whole. The zombie slumps, and another one rushes to take its place. I run.

  I bought time for the girls, and if they're smart, they will have found the stairs. I should do the same, but I’m slower due to blood loss, agony, and exhaustion. They catch up to me, and the first one whips me around to face it before my knife pops underneath its jaw. The un-life flashes as the blade is sated, and I kick him hard into the charging mass. Unfortunately, the bowling ball effect is minimal; the engines behind these abominations are too comfortable manipulating a human nervous system.

  My only hope is that maybe older specimens will get slower over time. But the rate of that degradation isn’t worth contemplating when there's running to do. Following the signs for the emergency exit, I turn right along the hall wall. Please don’t leave your room. Someone leaves their room.

  “GO BACK INSIDE!” I scream with all the power I can muster to convey urgency. But the people inside are pushing the first group forward and into the charging maw of the undead.

  So, I turn to face them, shoving myself between them and their death.

  “RUN!” and don’t take the elevator, I would like to add, but a zombie tackles me before I can convey the message. They're rather fond of doing that. We roll into an adjacent door. It tries to pin me down, so I stab it in the chest and again in the stomach as more creatures pile on. The shark tooth blade hums with the souls of the creatures it’s eaten. I slash and slash, but the dogpile gets heavier. One bites my leg, the pain is potent and blinding, but I kick it in the face with my other foot before it gets another bite. I heave and push and stumble to escape. The husks I leave behind twitch unconsciously; what little remains trying desperately to reanimate.

  Fuck.

  Some of the kids are running, but some headed back inside their room and are unsuccessfully fighting off the zombies that followed them. I try to help them, but the battle carries me away. The surging zombies force my hand, and the only thing to do is run and hate myself for it.

  So I run hard. The zombies follow and while trapping them on the twelfth floor isn’t feasible, maybe I can thin their numbers at the stairs. Or not, the few dozen zombies are growing exponentially, and there's no winning this with just me and a combat knife. But Derek already blocked anyway to call for help. Educated guess he is probably routing all outbound calls to his phone and has rerouted internet traffic to himself. I would be impressed by his ability to blend magic and technology, technomancy if you will, but the guy is an asshole, and worse, he knew a daemonic incursion happened and left it there.

  “Fuck!”

  I stumble into the emergency staircase. Hotel security comes bursting through the door before I get a chance to walk through it. My brain exhausted, I slump down against a wall as they file through. Five guys, all pretty buff and 6’1 and 2ish with varying degrees of serious expressions. They look at me, covered in blood, bite marks, scratch marks, and half-naked from the waist up and pause.

  “I’d run.”

  “What the fuck happened to you?”

  “He’s just a cosplayer,” Security Guy Two says to Security Guy One. The facial expressions of the group go from slight concern to bemusement.

  “No, seriously, just run. Look.” I point down the hallway, having somehow outrun the zombies behind me.

  “Look guys, if you're high, I suggest making your way to the lobby.”

  A woman is heard screaming as she runs into the hallway. When she sees the security guards and hotel staff, she cries for help.

  “Noisy bitch, huh.” Security Guard Five chuckles before the group falls silent.

  As the woman runs, what she was running from quickly cuts the corner. Her pursuer, relatively fast for a zombie, tackles the woman before grabbing her head between its hands and bashing it hard against the floor. In its frenzy, it proceeds to bite into her chest much the way a wild dog would a fallen deer.

  “WHAT THE FUCK!” one security guard shouts as they rush in to separate the pair. I get up, having gotten some physical rest, and proceed down the stairs.

  Madness on Display

  The first thing I learned in life is when to cut my losses. Can’t say I didn’t try; no one left the Gaylord Hotel with the Necromonicon. But at this point, the book’s not worth it. Just going to have to eat one hundred and fifty grand. Fuck.

  But I gotta go, the dead cops, the dead girls in the bathtub, and oh yeah, and pissing off a Hero of the Goddamn Multiverse kinda puts a wet blanket on enjoying Katsucon. And also enthralling my friends to save them from whatever was going on in that bedroom…

  Saved their lives, which wouldn’t be in danger in the first place if they hadn’t stolen from me… but that’s neither here nor there. As soon as I’m out of a Dodge, I can release my grip on their heads, which brings me to the small matter of Gre
g.

  Fuck can’t worry about him. Really can’t. If he's safe, he’s safe, but if he isn’t…

  “ARRG!” I’ll find Greg on the way out. Got enough juice to create some feelers if needed, thanks to some volunteers I found on the way back to the suite. With my friends helping me pack, Sam got the suitcase, and Mike has my tools. The only thing left to do is leave before those things in room 12321 escape.

  “We’re going.” I’m mostly talking to myself now, but to my friends, that's practically a command. They start to shuffle to the door.

  I just need a story for the bosses… I can tell them the truth; the deal never happened, and Arthur Curry sold his finished manuscript to another buyer. Preferably a Russian one; that’ll pull the right heartstrings. As long as I’m not dumb enough to request reimbursement, I can fix some details to take me out of the transaction history and maybe insert a Victor Olssnoff instead.

  Considering he is a private independent contractor with diplomatic immunity, the accusation alone won’t hurt him. But it would make chasing me to the ends of the earth an act of aggression against the United States of America.

  With that out of the way, I can rethink my career. Finding another Necronomicon will be hard. I can always try Daemonology, but that comes with its own risk, mostly untimely deaths and suicides. Rather not go full Seeker just yet. There are other less famous manuscripts, but they’re the more traditional pen and paper sorcerer scribbles, not the Wikipedia of spells the Necronomicon is. I’ll have to spend a lifetime collecting tomes written during a time when superstition was the scientific method, which may or may not work.

  Being self-taught has its limits, and eventually, my number will be called to solve real problems. Or I’ll keep faking it till I eventually become a consultant. However long that will take.

  We make it to the elevator before I hear a scream behind me. Well, several screams. A group of friends, one of whom is wearing a t-rex suit, is running toward us, what I can only describe as extras from the Walking Dead chasing them in a half-jog sprint. The elevator marks the end of the hallway on this floor, so basically, they're going to hit a dead-end fast. One girl trips, and the walkers descend on her while others keep the chase. Her screams for help are muffled under the undead mass. Her friends barely stop or look behind them as they pump their limbs desperately. They’re hoping to make it to the elevator before the zombies reach them. Elevators that could take between ten to thirty minutes to show up and will very likely be crowded to capacity when they do.

  But considering I’ll be trapped with these idiots, I might as well deal with these zombies before they get here. Magic is just the application of power across a medium, and zombies need a brain to function, right? Boil the liquid inside the cranium until the brain matter bursts like an overcooked hotdog. Focus, drain the energy from a few wards, and count the number of zombies. Four, seven, eight, twelve, fourteen, and now say the words to convey the power. Outside and in.

  “BURN” the words of power skip over the idiots and wash over the zombie horde behind them. They stop suddenly, but nothing else happens. Smoke pours from the creatures' ears, but as they stand there, they start to smile.

  “DURA’G.”

  The zombies reply not verbally but directly in my mind. Not a word, but an interpretation of a word. My mind churns the nonsensical images and sensations until only the word remains.

  The group they were chasing slams into the wall behind me. They pound the down button and the elevator doors. They're frantic, desperate, and screaming for help and forgiveness. Yes, one guy pleads for forgiveness, for sins committed and imagined, as he pounds on the glass begging for help.

  “SHUT UP!” my voice quiets the crowd. The compulsion is strong, too strong as they lean against the wall trying to draw breath. The zombies haven’t moved, but their smiles are still there all the same, now bloody as fresh droplets of red ichor slide down their noses.

  I reach for a ward. I'm down to three at full strength, with the others mostly drained, so I open my third eye and peer into what they are. I see their Other but not as a solid mass but a loose collective. Bound together tightly and in large numbers, it’s as if these corpses were invaded by an army of a million ants, their tiny legs and mouthparts forming constructs roughly shaped like a man. Banishment. I focus on the word banishment, as this thing isn’t a greater Daemon but a gathering of small, worthless Lings renting a meat suit. Bottom feeders of the lowest order. Focus on banishment. The ward changes, the inscription bends and flexes to take on new meaning. The effort is taxing but bears fruit.

  I throw the ward like a grenade, watching it stumble through the air before landing in the middle of the pack. When it lands, it explodes in brilliant shades of irradiated light. For a second, the light show is blinding before it recedes to nothing, revealing only two zombies went down for my efforts. Their grins grow wider at almost an unnatural width as their eyes glow softly with otherworldly light.

  “DURA’G, DURA’G.”

  The elevator opened right on time. I stumbled backward and stop myself from tripping over one of these idiots currently struggling to breathe.

  “Hey, are they Walking Dead cosplayers?” says a young man in a Rob Zombie t-shirt.

  “Yes! Yes, they are'' I say with a demented grin, “How about all of you go take some pictures?”

  * * *

  Ok, so I can’t stop a zombie apocalypse. When I make it downstairs, it is pandemonium. Somehow these creatures made their way to the convention floor and are tearing through the crowd like a pack of lions mowing down three-legged antelopes.

  I couldn’t possibly save them all. Even with a thousand sacrifices, I can’t just nuke every undead corpse even if I wanted to.

  Or can I?

  Hypothetically I just need something worth a few thousand souls to be a volunteer… but to do that precisely, I need the Necronomicon. And a human sacrifice. A few human sacrifices.

  Fuck.

  I need time to think, and a safe place to conduct a scry, which is hard to come by considering the hotel is rapidly being overrun with zombies. On the right is the gazebo, which is a serene and elegant place with a hint of Disney fairytale in normal times. During Kastuscon, it is a mosh pit of humanity where the overdressed and underdressed compete for attention and photoshoot space. Right now, it’s a death trap as the crowd there does battle with the walking dead or trample each other trying to run for the exit.

  On my left is the convention proper, with rooms dedicated to panels, concerts, and arcades. The human traffic is immense, and the mob of humanity is currently fending off the living dead with foam swords and hotel chairs. The ones with sense are trying to run, but that doesn’t work too well considering the constant influx of new poor souls riding the escalator and climbing the stairs, utterly oblivious to the chaos above.

  So I run straight ahead through the hallway separating the two dynamically opposed areas and hope to find a shortcut to the downstairs doors leading outside. The zombies have other plans, not that I begrudge them; having spent the first hour or so fighting them on the 12th floor and another 30 minutes bumping them off downstairs, I’ve gained a healthy respect for what they're about.

  I stab one, then pivot to stab another as they run after fleeing con-goers. Not bothering to go for the neck or head this time, my knife hums with enough eldritch energy that even shots to the torso are enough to give them pause. I grab a zombie by the neck as it chases a young man dressed as a Pikachu down the hallway, and I drain its soul before releasing the husk. The guy keeps running only to be tackled by another muncher. I shake my head and keep plowing forward, being careful not to gut the civilians running in every direction.

  One guy runs in the general direction of where I am headed and then disappears behind a corner. Curious, I follow that guy as I stomp and punch my way through the mob, grateful that for some reason, I’m the least appetizing thing on the menu. Eventually, I reach what I suspect is a room marked for the convention’s sick and wounde
d, mostly people dehydrated from alcohol or needing space to come down from illicit drug-fueled adventures. I knock on the door. There is a chorus of voices, but the door cracks open and promptly shuts upon seeing me.

  Smart. I’m covered in blood, most of which probably my own, and naked from the waist up. I knock again, the door opens, and I smile at the girl, volunteer Susan from the name tag, before placing my foot against the door to keep it propped open.

  “Can a zombie do that?” I ask.

  She gasps and lets me in, giving me a wide berth the minute she notices the knife.

  “Look, been through some shit and need time to think.”

  I can tell people want to speak but decide not to, and I can also sense the fear and terror giving way to more fear and terror. Look, I’m not a friendly-looking guy after fighting Lings and Daemons from a place not too dissimilar from hell.

  Suddenly there is a loud banging at the door, and the rag-tag group of five strangers tenses.

  “I’ll get that.” Which I do before Susan or anyone else can object. Not surprisingly, it's a zombie; probably sensing the souls inside this room, it shoves its way into the room before I stab it in the neck. As it lets out a dry croak, I kick it back outside and slam the door.

  “Yo-y-you're bit-tten,” a man approaching his 30s not particularly gracefully points out with a wobbling finger.

  “Yeah, I’ve been bitten, here, here, and oh here.”

  “You're going to turn!” screams a girl who is 5’4, wears glasses, and who I can tell didn’t come here with friends.

  “I see you’ve watched a horror movie. Well, I’m not sick. Most of these injuries are from 45 minutes ago, and also zombies aren’t real.”

  “They’re outside!” another man exclaims, his voice a little on the screechy side. He’s probably fifteen if I had to guess. Friends probably gave him vodka for the first time.

  “Well, yes, but that doesn't mean they’re zombies.”