CHERYL

CHERYL

Allan Kemp

(Excerpt from “The Black Phoenix”)

The wedding ring clued me in that the victim had been a woman. The left arm still connected to the bloody torso was obviously human. The hand was filthy and the nails were broken so I couldn’t determine the sex. Even the size of the hand didn’t help. This could have been a child. The diamond ring on the third finger let me know that this leftover chunk of meat had once been someone’s wife and perhaps someone’s mother.

Normally, I would have taken the time to bury the remains, but I was running late. I was on the way to my next gig. After last night’s run in with the vampires, I’d planned to catch a few hours of sleep at the home of my friend Melissa, the Witch of Morningside. I’d picked up quite a few cuts and bruises from the vampires and us werecreatures heal quicker during sleep.

Melissa was out and the human girl she was shacking up with didn’t feel safe letting me in. There was a ratty couch on the porch, so I crashed there. I was so wasted I fell into a deep sleep and would probably still be sleeping if Melissa hadn’t come home and woke me up. I have an internal clock that doesn’t come with an alarm, but it told me that I was late, late, late.

I hated this stretch of Piedmont Avenue. There was so much crap in the road to dodge. Every building’s windows were broken. Anything of value had been carried off. If there were humans living inside the buildings, they hid in the shadows like cockroaches. The sound of the Vespa’s motor echoed off the emptiness. Thankfully, the smell of decaying garbage, like a giant bowl of spoiled milk mixed with shit, had finally died off.

Despite the fucked up road, I tried to make up for lost time by pushing the Vespa to its top speed, but then I didn’t see the pothole that bent the sidecar’s tire beyond repair. A donut tire is about the same size and width and there were plenty of dead cars along the size of the road. I was confident that I’d find what I needed in one of the trunks, but there was no telling how long I’d be out there looking.

I turned off the Vespa’s motor and once the puttering died away, I heard animals growling. I sniffed in their direction and smelled rotting meat. I could tell that whatever was dead had been human from the way the stench left a sour taste at the back of my mouth.

Before leaving the scooter, I inspected my DJ equipment wrapped up in the sidecar. If anything major was damaged, I’d have to cancel the show, but the gear was fine.

I followed the smell down a side street to a white building, which once upon a time had been a massage parlor where guys got handjobs from Korean sex slaves. Behind a blue dumpster, I found a pack of feral dogs gnawing on a carcass.

There were two Labradoodles, a Heinz 57, and a Boston terrier who still had his collar and tags. The pack sensed my presence. Their snouts covered in gore, the hungry dogs bared their teeth and snarled warnings that I’d better back off or I might be their next meal.

I ignored their growls and kept coming. The pack rushed toward me and I gave them a small taste of my magic just to let them know that I wasn’t a tourist. My stunner spell sent the pack scurrying away, but they stayed close by and watched me with new respect.

I squatted down and took a closer look at the body. There were puncture wounds in what little skin remained around the neck. There were no bite marks near her hips so my guess was that her legs were ripped off. There were edge-to-edge bites down each side of her torso. The poor woman had been eaten like a hamburger. The jaws of the feral dogs weren’t big enough or strong enough to do this. A werewolf killed this woman. Maybe even two werewolves, but no more or else there wouldn’t have been anything left for scavengers.

Fucking assholes! The werewolves I knew never would have done this. There was a time when any werewolf would have puked at the idea of eating human flesh, like I wanted to spew now. Werewolves didn’t believe humans were that different from themselves and certainly not on the same level as animal prey.

I closed my eyes and concentrated. This part of the city was a shadow zone so I had to sift past a lot of old death to see if there was something more recent. I was hoping the woman’s spirit had moved on. No such luck. I picked up on a fresh spirit in the former massage parlor. I opened my eyes and caught her peeking at me from a broken window. She disappeared the second I stepped toward the building.

I should have left. I didn’t have time to play find the ghost. If I didn’t get to the fort by six, they’d close the gates and refuse to let me in. But even with the deadline hanging over my head, I knew if I didn’t try to help this spirit, it would bug me to no end.

It was a simple case of guilt. I ran out on those Dead Town ghosts before they had a chance to communicate with me, and it was obvious they wanted to. But, I just didn’t want to deal with their creepy asses, and I ran off. I was trying to make up for it by helping this ghost.

I went inside the massage parlor and felt some relief from the hot sun. A battalion of roaches retreated into crevices in the floor and wall. A pile of dirty blankets, a tub that had been used as a toilet, and charred wood inside a stove were evidence that humans had been living here. Flies buzzed over the stove and the pile of empty food cans next to it. The air carried a dozen rancid smells at once, but the predominant scent was the mix of fear and desperation.

“I just want to talk to you,” I called out. “Nobody can hurt you now.”

She continued to hide from me. I tried coaxing her out with conversation.

“Did you know that there used to be a Brazilian steakhouse on this road?” I said. “The kind where you could eat all the steak you wanted. Ten years back, my mom took me there for my sixteenth birthday. I had reached a stage in my life where I was craving meat. Mom was a vegetarian and in a hopeless attempt to delay my natural need to hunt she took me there to celebrate. I don’t know what Mom paid for my meal, but afterwards, she joked that the restaurant lost money on me considering how much I had devoured.”

I waited a few heartbeats. Nothing. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought up a steakhouse to a person who’d been eaten alive. Undaunted, I picked up our one-sided conversation where I’d left off.

“Three years later, the restaurant was gone along with most of Atlanta. Has it already been seven years? I’m curious to hear your thoughts about the invasion. For humans, it had to have been the biggest what the fuck moment in the history of mankind, attacked by an imaginary enemy. At least, the world assumed that vampires, werewolves, witches, and wizards only existed in books and movies. And even if they did exist, certainly nobody expected them to drop bombs on every major city and the armed forces of every industrialized country.”

No response. I was about to say fuck it, let her haunt this sad place, when she appeared a few feet away from me. She was huddled over and her hands were balled into fists at her sides. Despite the tangled hair and deep wells under her staring eyes, I could tell that at one time she had been an attractive woman.

“What’s your name?” I asked. Her lips moved, but I didn’t hear anything, so I asked her again.

“Cheryl,” she said. “My name is Cheryl.”

“Okay, Cheryl. You can call me Mutt. Listen, you need to move on. You got no reason to stay.”

She jerked one arm out and pointed toward the open door. “They dragged me out there and did bad things to me. And when they finished, they started biting and biting.” She was becoming hysterical, which was understandable. However, if she didn’t get out of this frame of mind, her spirit would stay locked here, suffering, forever.

“Listen!” I said slowly. “You died a horrible death, one you didn’t deserve, but it’s over. Begin your journey to the next world. It’s a place with no pain and no fear.”

Cheryl floated to the door and looked about frantically. “I can’t leave. I have to be here when Mark gets back.”

“Mark?” I asked.

“My husband. He went to get more food. I told him we should go up the road to the fort and try to get work inside. But Mark said no way Cheryl. We’re better than the wetbacks that do those shit jobs. He said he’d only be gone a couple of days at most and for me to stay out of sight.”

“How long ago was that?”

Cheryl’s forehead knotted in thought. “I’m not sure. Was it a week? Two weeks? I can’t remember. I used to keep a calendar and it was filled with so much to do every day. I always knew what day it was, but now I can’t keep track and I don’t do anything but hide.”

So, it wasn’t the trauma of being eaten alive that was keeping her locked on earth. She was waiting for her husband to return.

“Here’s the deal,” I said. “If Mark is alive, he won’t be able to see you when he returns. If he’s dead, then he’s already waiting for you on the other side. Either way, if you ever want to see your husband again, you need to move on.”

Cheryl stood in the doorway with her back to me. The sunshine shone through her. She turned to face me. Her features were more relaxed. Her beauty was coming back. She smiled and slowly faded away.

I walked outside into the oppressive heat. I hated the idea of the feral dogs finishing their meal after I left, but like I said, I didn’t have time to bury her. Instead, I pissed around the body to mark it as my territory. Hopefully, that would give the remains time to decompose in peace.

I hurried back to the street and frantically searched car trunks for a donut tire. The first one I found, the rim was red and gritty with rust. I tossed it aside. I had to scrape about an inch of dirt off the next one, but it turned out it wouldn’t fit no matter how much I tried to jerry-rig it. The third decent tire I found wasn’t a perfect fit, but I screwed it on good and tight and was back on the road.

I didn’t dare go too fast and chance fucking up another tire. I traveled at an agonizingly slow speed while constantly glancing up at the sky to check the position of the sun. I really needed this gig. Fort Buckhead paid with better non-perishable goods than anybody else in town and I was running low on everything.

I was sorry that I didn’t get a chance to finish telling Cheryl about the invasion. She might have been surprised to learn that the supernaturals didn’t drop the bombs themselves, at least, not directly. Werewolves possess some magic, but it’s crude and limited, while Ws and vampires have very powerful mind control abilities. They stationed themselves outside military bases and patiently took over the minds of the soldiers. They didn’t need to makes slaves of entire armies, just enough to complete their plan.

On a warm spring Wednesday afternoon, the order was given, and the human drones did the killing for their supernatural masters. Cities were leveled. All means of communication were cut off. Every country’s army, air force, and navy were destroyed. Governments were obliterated. Half of the world’s population was wiped out.

Here in what was at that time the United States of America; the effect was like being hit by a thousand Pearl Harbors and 9-11s all at once. Generals were stymied by the fact that they were under siege by their own soldiers. Rumor has it that the President, Vice President, and key members of Congress were taken to a secret underground military base. I supposed they’re planning some kind of counter attack against us, but the supernaturals aren’t worried about these once powerful men. Nobody was even looking for them.

I had this sinking feeling that I wasn’t going to make it to the fort before they closed the gates. It was around four o’clock. I had roughly two hours before the fort’s gates closed for the day and it can take over an hour to pass security.

I was going to miss this gig, and as a result, Fort Buckhead was never going to hire me again. Goodbye bottles of shampoo and dehydrated noodle soup mix.

After the invasion, the creatures of the night became the dominant species. They no longer had to hide their existence. For the first dark months after the invasion, vampires and werewolves fed on the survivors.

It was the Ws who finally convinced their supernatural brothers to stop gorging themselves. If they kept up this pace, humanity would become extinct. And then whose blood would they drink?

The vampires and werewolves were the classic victims of overconfidence. They were so caught up in their plan to conquer mankind; they hadn’t given any thought to reconstruction. They had broken the world and now they owned it.

With the Ws leading the way, some semblance of government was restored. Feudalism is a form of government. People were informed that as long as they stayed within certain boundaries, they wouldn’t be harmed. Anyone caught outside the lines was fair game. It was an odd concept that took everyone time to get used to. Imagine telling cows that you wouldn’t eat them if they stayed inside a pen, but if they went grazing in an open field, then you’d come and butcher them.

Here in Atlanta, Georgia the boundary was Interstate 285, the highway that forms a loop around the city. Atlanta was once described to me as a city of neighborhoods, each with its own unique personality. That aspect of the city didn’t change, except the neighborhoods became villages. Midtown belonged to the vampires. The West End belonged to the werewolves. Witch and wizard covens were scattered about, but the most prominent was the witches-only coven in Decatur. In the rest of the villages, humans lived in relative safety so long as they stayed on their appointed reservations and paid homage to their conquerors by way of manual labor.

Not all supernaturals used humans as domestic slaves. Some, like myself, worked for a living.

I didn’t wear a watch. Most people didn’t. We counted off the days, but the hours? Forget it. You made appointments for morning, noon, or night. But the folks at Fort Buckhead continued to wear watches. I didn’t really understand why, considering how hard they tried to keep time standing still inside their walls.

Fort Buckhead was the only place in Atlanta where humans continued to rule themselves. I, a supernatural, was busting my ass just so I could do a job for humans. Though I appreciated the irony, it wasn’t getting me to my destination any sooner.