Leeder’s Doll Limb Bouquet Co.
by Varden M. Frias
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3 |
part 2
With that, Sterling ambled towards the exit with a carefree lilt to his step. Murmurs stirring in the warehouse soon turned to shouts of protest that echoed off the concrete slab walls and sheet metal rafters. Sterling reached the exit and stopped to whisper to the guard. In the next moment, a group of workers rushed over to the exit on the other side of the warehouse, closer to Warren.
Grok pursued the runaways. From its chest, a seam split open the metal and out sprouted mechanisms to grip the ankles of the runners until they slammed against the concrete floor. Grok reeled them closer, the workers dragging their nails on the concrete. The metallic tentacles sprouting from him burst out with syringes and needles that plunged into the workers’ bodies.
They all fell still and melted into a puddle of gelatinous flesh. The bones fizzed in the pink and red goo until they liquified into sticky, clotted puddles.
The warehouse burst into a panic. Warren’s adrenaline spiked, urging him towards the exit where everyone else seemed to flee. He stumbled to a stop as Grok burst in front of a handful of workers and plunged the needles into their necks. He turned heel and dashed for a place to find cover and rushed into a tool closet.
Screams and shouts erupted from the other side of the closet door. He peeked through the wooden slats and watched as the giant metal bird dove for new victims and plunged syringes into them. A few long minutes dragged on as Grok’s tentacles scooped up the mass that was once Warren’s many colleagues and formed new bodies.
The new bodies assumed the most basic of human forms with no mouths, noses, or ears. Their eyes glowed a dull, pale green and appeared like floating lights as they trudged back to their stations and resumed work as though nothing had happened.
Warren didn’t chance coming out of the closet. Instead, he waited for the break whistle to come out and, when it did, everyone trudged towards the break room. He stepped out of the closet and merged into the shuffling workers who paid him no mind. Everyone’s eyes appeared fogged over with a milky cataract. He looked around, searching, then bumped into something tall and rigid. He turned to find Al’s green eyes glittering down at him.
“What the hell is going on?” she whispered.
He shook his head. “It’s not safe to talk here, let’s go someplace else.”
He gestured for a tool shed in the back of the break room and the two got inside, shutting the door behind them. Unlike the closet, the shed’s ample space provided a roomy haven.
“We need to get out of here right now,” Al spoke through her clenched teeth.
Warren shook his head. “We can wait till the end of the shift.”
Al’s green eyes locked on his and a small ripple of despair cast its first drop into the waters of his subconscious. “I don’t think the shift’s ever gonna end, Warren.”
He nodded in understanding and looked at the tools around him. Most of them were power tools that the construction workers used to tear apart and break down sheets of plastic that they then melted down into metal models to use for the doll limbs. He grabbed a sledgehammer and she stopped him.
“Take something small so you can hide it.” She grabbed a small hammer and pointed to the miniature hand-held buzz saws, one of which could easily fit into the pocket of his cargo jeans. Grok’s shriek summoning them back to work startled them.
“We need to find a mouse hole to get out of here. That damn bird’s fast,” Warren said and grabbed one of the buzz saws, slipping the safety cover over its spiked wheel, before stuffing it into his pocket. Al nodded.
The two of them walked out of the tool shed and fell into place alongside their zombified workers. They assumed position side by side once they reached the conveyer belt and pretended to work. As Warren worked, his fingers pruned from handling the doll limbs for so long. As he reached down to don his gloves, Grok’s giant form loomed over from behind the belt.
Warren’s heart pounded as he slowly slipped his gloves back on while the red gaze of the arcane metal bird stared him down. After the gloves slipped on, Grok resumed pacing around the warehouse, casting furtive glances with its many eyes falling on everyone in turn.
Warren kept working until Grok was out of earshot, then whispered to Al. “There’s a little flap in the men’s room that goes outside. Junkies use it to blow the Devil’s lettuce smoke out on break,” Warren whispered but
The moment that Al requested him to speak louder, Dave’s snarling roar made him stop.
Dave stood on top of a pile of crates, leaning on the chute that dumped the doll limbs onto the belt. His spiny teeth formed a crossbite and his skin’s greasy layer of sweat reflected off his bald, disfigured head. His eyes glowed back at Warren, lifeless and animalistic.
Warren sighed and he and Al turned back to their tasks. “It’s close by,” he continued.
“You mean the gump dump by the exit?”
“That’s the one. On the count of three we run as fast as we can into the gump dump and then through the flap. Ready?”
“Let’s do it.”
“One. Two. Three.”
They broke for a run towards the gump dump, hurtling over the top of the conveyor belt when Grok landed in front of them with a loud shriek emanating from its greasy jaws. Warren glanced to the creature’s arched back where a pair of metal wings that he had not noticed before pulled into the sleek curve of its back.
Warren fumbled through his pocket for his buzz saw, flicked off the safety shield, pushed the serrated blade out, and switched it on. The saw’s wailing echoed across the warehouse, causing the undead workers to pause their tasks and watch. He raised the saw over his head and rushed headlong for the metallic bird, aiming for its thick, gleaming neck. Just as he closed in, Grok took a wide swipe at Warren and plunged its talons into his side.
He groaned and buckled to his knees. Al rushed in and swung her hammer against the bird’s arm that held Warren captive. Instead of striking the metal, the hammer sunk and melded into the bird’s muscular forearm.
Warren froze and so did Al. A familiar voice broke the silence, followed by a pair of what could only be dress shoes clopping on the concrete. Sterling ambled up to Grok and stood next to it. He stared Warren down with a blank expression, his dead, cold eyes the color of expired beef. He spoke with an amicable tone in stark contrast to his frigid demeanor. “What’s going on?”
Dave answered in a garbled language of gibberish and slurs which Sterling seemed to understand.
“Are we having any problems here, Grok?” Sterling said. Grok clucked and gurgled but nothing more. Warren held still, waiting for admonishment.
“Seems like you’ve put your team in trouble,” Sterling pointed to the workers on Warren’s line who up until that point kept to themselves due to their zombified state. He watched as they exuded tireless effort over their mindless tasks.
Before Warren could say anything, Grok stepped towards the workers and stopped right behind them. They continued to work, too immersed in their sole purpose to be aware of the giant behind them. Grok’s skin undulated, rippling into the liquescent consistency of mercury and from his skin surfaced the buzz saw’s round blade.
The blade grew spiny metal tendrils from the hub of the serrated edges and used the tendrils to pull itself out of Grok’s flesh and project itself into the back of the nearest worker.
Warren startled, feeling for his pocket when there was none, then turned to Al to grab the hammer from her belt loop. Al charged towards Grok with the hammer.
“No, wait, he absorbs it!” Warren said, but a second buzz saw blade tendril launched itself towards her and landed on her shin. The buzz saw blade spun and drove into her leg.
Several more buzz saw creatures attacked the rest of the oblivious line workers, their blades cutting through the Leed’s company insignia on the back of their jumpsuits before searing flesh and bone. Warren froze as the wailing of his maimed team members echoed all around the warehouse, but the inhuman shrieks his old colleagues turned his stomach. Only Al’s screams resembled the noise a human in agony made. He dashed into action, rushing for Al to attend to her shin when a voice from the line workers cried out.
“Warren, help!”
He flinched back to the line workers, unable to deny his penchant for human compassion and found one of the buzz saw creatures sawing away at Dave’s spine. Dave’s human voice groaned in agony from behind his spiny crossbite as blood, bits of bone, and shredded organs sprayed out of his back.
Warren was locked in place between Al’s screams and Dave’s agonized wailing along with the other people on the line joining in the grotesque chorus. Grok left them in their pain and walked back to Sterling’s side like a proud attack dog awaiting further instructions.
Sterling spoke in the same unwavering amiable tone as before. “I’ll ask again, Warren. Will there be any problems?”
Warren shook his head but kept his fists clenched. “No problems.”
Sterling’s smile revealed a row of reptilian needle teeth and a forked tongue before he turned on his heel and disappeared into the office doors. Dave’s snarling gibberish returned as he growled from atop his perch on the doll limb chute in what Warren assumed meant “Back to work!”
The foreman yelled, and the line workers resumed their stations, sluggish and pained. They winced and groaned as they sorted items from the conveyor belt and tossed them aside.
Warren rushed back to Al who groaned, cupping her hands over her shriveled shin.
“Did it hit bone?” Warren spoke quick, holding down his urge to panic. Al grit her teeth and shook her head. Just as Warren moved to tend the wound, a snarl erupted next to him. Dave appeared naked on his hands and knees, foam dripping from the loose bottom hinge of his crossbite. He snapped and gurgled at Warren who lurched for the hammer by Al’s boot and swung to strike Dave, but he glanced into Dave’s milky eyes and fell into the pit of sorrow wallowing in him.
The mutated Dave used that precious second to strike with its spindly claws that matched its spiny maw. He hit Warren’s face. Blood flung and Warren screamed as he jerked backwards to escape the monster’s deadly reach. From behind Warren, Al’s hammer flew and the claw scraped the top of Dave’s head. The creature rushed to nurse the wound, wailing as blood leaked down from the incision.
Warren scrambled to his feet, grabbed Al’s hand to hoist her to her wobbling feet, and guided them to the gump dump.
* * *
A loud banging noise erupted on the other side of the warehouse, starling both him and the giant metallic bird, which pounded into defensive position and then flew up into the warehouse rafters, scuttling, metal claws clicking on metal rafters, as the creature made his way over to the warehouse’s other end.
Warren dared to set down his work and follow the bird’s trajectory over to where Al was. She had two large metallic tools in his hands banging on one of the cabinets to get the bird’s attention. He stood, stunned before she unleashed a blow torch and a butane lighter and let loose a phoenix wing of fire right in the bird’s grill.
Grok shrieked, but it was not the normal call he cried to alert people of their break. It was a sound of fear that shriveled his metal ego for a solid moment that Al used to weaken him and burn the outer layer of his flesh. Metal globs dripped and collected on the floor into mercurial pools.
The metal bird shrieked in horror and pain as it flailed around, trying to get the flames off of itself. Al got closer, the flames on the butane rose higher, and in that moment, the people in the warehouse all scattered, cigarette lighters in the hands of some and liquor canteens from the hands of those who used to imbibe on the job.
A team of three workers set about to flood Grok with a flame produced from a long spit of liquor over a Bic lighter. Warren rushed over with his lighter and into the malaise of the fighting crowd who with all their might set to burn the bird down. As the bird shriveled into a pile of shimmering black muck, the warehouse erupted into thunderous applause and whoops of victory.
Warren found Al and they shared an embrace. “How’d you come up with that?” he asked her as they pulled apart.
She shrugged, “He was distracted by you, it was the perfect time to get the deadly weapon. Glad I was right!”
Then, there was a guttural roar emanating from below their feet, so loud that the vibrations felt like the rumble of an earthquake. Everyone gradually fell silent as the new sound took hold over the crowd. Then, Sterling appeared from behind the smoke puffing up from Grok’s ashes.
He wore a wide smile, showing off razor sharp teeth that were stained pink in the front. Warren and Al both glanced at each other then to Sterling. The pause was drawn out long, but Warren felt the tension so hard in the room that he could barely breathe. Sterling finally spoke.
“It’s never a surprise when the ungrateful become emboldened by a usurper.”
Someone in the back yelled, “Hey, let us go home!”
Sterling closed his eyes and shook his head as if admonishing a toddler with the utmost patience. “No. You’ve proven already you can’t do the simplest of tasks during the most crucial part of the year. Busy season is upon us, but you refuse to acknowledge our clients who need our hard work so much.”
Warren glanced around and saw that Al still had the hammer nestled into the crook of her trouser loop near her thigh. He bent down, grabbed it, and flung it out, aiming it for Sterling’s head. The hammer soared over everyone’s head in a sleek arc and eventually slammed into Sterling’s head, the crook sunk into the skin. Blood sprayed from the incision and within seconds flooded like rain down his face.
Despite the wound, Sterling made no attempt to remove the curved horn of the hammer from his head, only smiled enough so his lips curled and tightened his cheeks. His teeth grew, lengthening down and widening his mouth like a shark. Everyone held their breath as his skin melted off his face and revealed stony flesh and sunken, dead eyes.
Warren’s stomach turned as the new Sterling’s fangy maw opened wide, the jaw cracking like a snake’s, and the neck extended, carrying Sterling’s head over the crowd in search of Warren. Centipede arms sprouted from the neck and lengthened to that of an ordinary human arm and sprouted, reaching out to grab people by their hair and tossing them out of the way as the new monstrosity formerly known as Sterling made its way towards Warren.
Al threw her butane torch over to Warren who caught it and stumbled back, overcome with terror, only narrowly managing to remember that he wielded a butane torch which he turned on to let loose a string of fire into the Sterling monster’s face. The fire roiled in the beast’s face and the beast itself recoiled, sounding off an echoing shriek across the warehouse.
The crowd scattered, horrified by Sterling’s outrage, and spread in all directions like roaches in the light. A burly worker slammed into Warren, sending him down to the floor, and stepping over his chest in the process. A sharp pain snapped in his chest where the worker’s boot crushed cartilage, rendering him immobile.
Copyright © 2022 by Varden M Frias
