House_of_Rice-FanFics-TheHorror11

Chapter 9: Final Showdown...

       I was ready to give up when my flashlight caught something near the other side of the carousel. I
adjusted the brightness on the flashlight beam to get a better look. A body, slumped in a rusted
wheelchair, rested between some horses. The head was nestled against the chest, but I couldn’t make
out the clothes all too well. A nurses uniform. The flashlight beam bounced all over the place as I ran
to the other side of the carousel, weaving between horses to get to the wheelchair as fast as I could. It
took me all of a few second to get there, but that was too long for me. I had to see, had to show meself
that I was dreaming... That this could not possible be who I thought it was. I remembered seeing
wheelchairs a few times, in the alleyways of the town and in the school and hospital. All had been
broken, and all had blood stains around them. This one was stained with red, but I'd need a closer look
to know if it was rust or blood or both. That was hardly a concern. She wasn't moving. I had to see if
she was still alive.... Unfortunatly she saved me the trouble.
         Before I could reach the wheelchair, she raised her head a little, eyes still closed.
I slipped the gun to my side as I slowed to a jog, then stoped entirely when I was a few feet away.
"Alessa..." I said in a low whisper. She didn't reply. Her head was moving a little, eyelids fluttering as
if they were trying to open but couldn't. I really didn't know what to make of this. There was the
possibility that she was just taking a breather before she went on to the rest of the park.....but I didn't
believe it for a second. She wasn't just resting, she looked more like she was asleep. Alessa wouldn't
just fall asleep like that, especially not here in the middle of this amusement park when monsters were
roaming everywhere.
       "Alessa, wake up!" I said. Though I wanted to move closer, there was a certain wrongness
about this that made me want to stay back. Then again, it was my instincts telling me that, and I'd
discovered that my instincts weren't worth crap a lot of the time. I'd barged into rooms he was sure
would be swarming with monsters, and found absolutely nothing. Other times I was sure a room as
safe, only to be greeted with a blare of static from his radio and shuffling moan of monsters as soon as
he opened the door. The bad feeling I was getting would not be ignored, but I was sure I'd feel like an
idiot when Alessa suddenly stood up and asked me why he was just standing there looking at her.
Unfortunately, that didn't happen. Alessa did stand, but she was so wobbly on her feet she had to use
the arms of the wheelchair for support. When I considered going to help her, she had managed to right
herself, thought she was leaning so heavily on her right leg she looked like she might fall over anyway.
When Alessa looked at me, her eyes finally open, My first thought was that she had taken drugs. Her
eyes were blood-shot, so much that her real eye colour wasn't distinguishable. When she took a shaky
step towards me, she was defiantly having trouble keeping her balance. "What the hell...?" I said to
meself. Raising my voice a few notches, he called out, "What's wrong with you?" Alessa stopped, and
cocked her head as if she didn't know where his voice was coming from. Her blood-shot eyes searched
me, but didn't show a hint of recognition. She's was out of it completely. Maybe Alessa hadn't been able
to handle all this horror and distortion of reality. I didn't think she'd be stupid enough to lose herself in
drugs right now, but I really didn't know a thing about her. Maybe she was a drug addict and I hadn't
known it.
        Alessa glared at me emotionlessly for a moment, swaying a little on her shaky legs. Then she
took another step towards me. Sebastian countered by backing up a step. The nurse looked at me
again. One arm lazily dropped to her side. A second later, she drew a gun from under her white apron.
It was then that I noticed her eyes weren't just blood-shot. They were red.
I jumped back a few more steps, almost tipping over one of those carousel horses. Alessa's arm
came up, but whatever had happened to her, she wasn't able to aim well. The gun was lop-sided, and it
barely seemed she was aiming. More like shooting in her sleep. But her aim wasn't destroyed
completely. I ducked behind a horse just in time to hear the sound of a shot fired, and the bullet 'ping'
off the horse instead. "Woah, woah, Alessa, calm down!" I babbled, "It's me, it's Sebastian, Sebastian
Locke!" Two more shots were fired at me. The first went wide and didn't hit anything, but the second
went into the floor next to my foot. I fumbled for my own gun, quickly making sure it was loaded. I
had three clips left which would do me for about a hundred and thirty more shots. "What are you
doing?!" I called out, "I'm not a monster, I'm not going to hurt you, just god, stop shooting at me!" I
yelled the last part as another bullet plunged into the ground an inch from me. That made me decide to
move from my lame hiding spot. Alessa's aim was more accurate every time. I dashed out from behind
the horse, running towards the back of the carousel. I could always jump off and run, but I wouldn't.
This wasn't a monster, this was Alessa! Something had happened to her, and I wasn't going to leave her
here.
       Bullets followed me across the carousel. I wasn't sure how many bullets her gun held, or how
many clips she had left, but my only immediate concern was moving fast enough to avoid those bullets.
I counted five fired so far. Maybe four. I was fairly sure her gun could hold ten bullets. When I had
done a full circle of the carousel, I stopped behind Alessa's wheelchair. To my surprised, Alessa had
barely made it a few metres from where she'd started. The woman really was moving like a zombie. At
the moment, she was in the process of turning around to face me, but doing it agonizingly slow. I
fiddled with my flashlight a moment, widening the beam to get a better view. The back of her shirt
looked bloody and torn. A tumerous lump protruded at the base of her neck, on her spine.
That gave me flashback to the hospital. The doctors and nurses had all been like this, all had a little
parasitic...thing...attached to their spines. The zombie hospital staff tried to attack me until they were
stone-cold dead, going so far as to claw at me when I knocked the knife or other weapon out of their
hands and pumped five bullets into them.
      There was no time for questions. Alessa was possessed, and I was more than likely going to
have to kill her. If only there were a way to get that parasite off... I'd tried it once, back in the hospital
with a doctor I’d put a few bullets in. I’d used its knife to pry it off, but the results had been less than
I’d expected. The second the squirming creature was detached and it died. And so did the doctor. A
gush of blood and fluid had burst out of the back of it’s neck with the parasite, and It had died
thrashing madly on the floor, screaming in agony. That wasn't a death I wanted to inflict on Alessa.
I shot at her a few times, trying to hit her legs or arms rather than anything vital. If I avoid killing her,
maybe I could find a way to get that parasite off. She flinched a little when a bullet went into her side,
but not much. Even when blood began to soak through her shirt, it barely slowed her down. She fixed
her dead eyes on me, moaning like a hungry zombie. She held her hands outstretched as she lurched
forward, towards me. I gripped the rusty wheelchair firmly and ran at her with it. “Have to get her
down, just knock her out or something.” I thought to myself. I collided with Alessa before she could
aim her gun. She was thrown off what little balance she had, teetering a little. So was I when the
carousel suddenly started up. The lurching of the ground as the ride started up threw me enough to
separate Alessa and I. She was knocked down, but I lurched forward and hit my jaw off the metal
handle of the wheelchair. My hands flew to my mouth even as the carousel started gaining velocity. I’d
bitten the side of my mouth when my jaw hit and my chin was cut. For a second I wondered if I’d need
a tetanus shot, as the wheelchair was quite rusted and blood-covered. Tetanus was the least of my
worries. Alessa was getting back on her feet, or lurching, more accurately. The carousel was spinning
faster. I scrambled away before Alessa could fully recover herself. It was harder to keep my balance
now that the ride was moving. I entertained the idea of jumping off the ride, but it was moving faster
every second, far faster than it should. I’d likely end up falling into one of the bottomless pits if I
missed the jump, or breaking a leg if I landed on solid ground. Then I was as good as dead anyway.
      The carousel music blared out, making it even worse for I. It was a sound like a piano that had
half the strings cut and rest damaged or de-tuned completely. There was still an underlying happy
melody in there somewhere, but it was so twisted and corrupted it wasn't close to recognizable.
I turned and ran backwards a few steps to see if Alessa was aiming at me again. She was just lurching
her way towards me, her gun hanging limp at her side. I aimed at her leg again, but my aim showed
how little use I’d made of firearms during my career as a writer. The shot missed completely.
However, it made Alessa raise her gun again and fire an impossibly accurate shot. Accurate for a
zombie, at least. It only missed me by a few inches. She had four bullets left by my count. I had thirty
left til I had to reload. Okay, I could work with that. I dashed to the far side of the carousel, looking for
a good angle to shoot at her from. The new few minutes were a demented game of tag for I, with
Alessa as 'it'. I had to run like an idiot around the carousel, keeping enough distance between us so that
I could dodge her return fire as best I could. For every bullet I fired , she shot one back. If she tagged
me, I was as 'out' as one could be. Eventually, I counted ten bullets fired. I dashed around to get behind
Alessa before she could turn around. Rather than waste my last few shots, I picked a steel pipe I
noticed on the ground, probaly knocked off one of the horses. Guns weren't the only useful weapon
when it came to dealing with these satanic creatures. A solid blow to the head with a steel pipe was
surprisingly effective, even on monsters. I lunged the last few feet towards Alessa, bringing the pipe
across for an impact to the side that would have cracked a few ribs on anyone else. Alessa staggered,
but recovered in a second. She punched me with amazing strength, an impact with my arm that was
sure to leave a bruise. With another swing of my pipe, I landed a hit on the base of her neck, just above
the parasite. That stopped her for a second longer than the last one had, but she kept coming.
"Just...fall...down..." I forced out between swings of my makeshift weapon and attempts to dodge
Alessa's counter-punches. I didn't want to kill her, just get her unconscious. Then I could come back
later with a way to cure her and get that parasite off without killing her like my amature surgery
attempt on the doctor in the hospital.
      It was I who's guard slipped first. I was too slow bringing my pipe back for another swing.
Alessa managed to clock me, punching me clean in the jaw. Having already hit my jaw off the
wheelchair, the dull pain was doubled. Warm blood trickled down my chin from the widened cut. I
swung my pipe blindly to buy myself a second to recover from that punch, missing completely this
time. But Alessa didn't punch me again. She aimed her gun and fired. Pain stabbed into my chest all of
a sudden. I stumbled back until I tripped over a broken carousel horse, landing on my back on the
rust-eaten metal floor. The metal pipe made a hollow gong on the floor as it rolled from my hand. my
attempts not to scream only dummed it down to a moan as I grasped weakly at my jacket. Warm. Wet.
Sticky. And pain like someone stabbing me over and over again. “She used all her bullets!” I thought
frantically, “She didn't shoot me... She couldn't shoot me, she had no god-damn bullets!” Had I counted
wrong? Had there been more than ten to begin with? It didn't matter now. The world spun around out
of the corner of my eye, but the ceiling I was staring at seemed stationary from my position. I raised my
head painfully, my chest screaming pain. She was still there. Alessa stood there staring with dead
zombie eyes. The gun came up. She was going to shoot again. I awkwardly aimed my own gun and
fired. One shot hit her stomach. She didn't flinch. But she didn't fire either. The gun was raised further
until it was at eye level. She looked at it a moment, then threw it to the ground. She advanced on me
again. I stopped trying to stop the bleeding and grabbed my gun with one bloodstained hand. Two loud
shots rang out above the distorted carousel music, but only one hit her. Then the gun clicked empty. I
fumbled to set the second clipin the holster, but couldn't manage the dexterity needed to load my gun
with pain stabbing me and the fact that I was getting dizzier every second. Plus my hands were too
sticky from trying to stop my bleeding. The clips only fell from my clumsy fingers when I tried to load
them. I gave up in the gun and reached into my jacket, searching for anything that could be used as a
weapon. The only thing resembling a weapon was a knife. A kitchen knife I’d grabbed at the hospital
ages ago. “--I'm shot, I'm going to die, GOD this hurts, it hurts…” Throwing was less my thing than
shooting, but the knife actually managed to hit close to its mark and plant itself just below Alessa's
ribs. Her dead eyes widened just a little. She stopped in her tracks, clutching at the weapon firmly
embedded in her. I watched frozen from a moment, almost able to ignore my own pain with the hope
that the knife might have stopped her for a few minutes. I’d killed zombie nurses with less than that,
maybe it would stop Alessa too. It had to... Alessa's fingers clumsily wrapped around the black,
non-descript handle of the knife. Her lips parted slightly. A small grunt rose in her throat as she
roughly yanked the blade out of herself. She was bleeding, but not enough. The knife had done nothing
but give Alessa another weapon. I reached into my bloody jacket, searching for something else,
anything else. I needed a weapon, but found absolutely nothing. Just junk he's picked up along the
way. Whatever I touched was thrown. Some pieces of metal that were in my limited reach, the pipe.
Everything either missed Alessa completely or had no effect, but I no longer care. I tried to reach the
pipe, but it had rolled away. I did get a good look at my hand though. I hadn't known it was quite that
bloody.
       "Cheryl...." I moaned. I was never going to see Cheryl now. Her haunting "Daddy... I love
you..." Replayed in my head. “I'm not going to save her... I'm going to die, Alessa is going to die if
she's not already dead... Damn it, why did she have too turn into one of them, why couldn't I help
her?!” Alessa was on me in a few seconds. Her red eyes burned their image into me. My flashlight still
shone bright in the dark, so I saw her raise the knife over me. One bloody hand made a weak attempt to
grab her wrist, but it only diverted the knife and made it slash my arm instead. Alessa only brought the
knife up again. I tried to deflect it again. There was nothing else I could do. Alessa managed to stab me
twice, but it was getting harder to notice. The pain from the bullet hadn't relented a bit, and it never
became any more tolerable. The stabbing was just more pain being piled up on top of that. Blood was
pooling under me now, staining my clothes, my flashlight, everything. A little had splattered on the
glass over the beam, making a section of the beam distorted. My chin was still bleeding from Alessa's
punch. Blood loss and pain was making me less and less coherent, but I couldn't seem to pass out yet.
I’d been out long before this when I’d been attacked by those demon-imp-child in the alleyway.
Alessa's third stab met something tucked in my jacket. Something I’d missed while I was throwing
things at her. I shoved one hand into my jacket. The pointed edges of the Flaurous were there, but that
wasn't what Alessa had hit. The only thing there besides the Flaurous. I pulled out the bottle of red stuff
I’d picked up in the hospital. The knife had slashed a hole in the plastic container, making the contents
drip over my fingers when I pulled it out.
      When Alessa leaned in too stab me again, I reacted instantly. I crashed the thing into Alessa's
head. The entire contents of blood-hued liquid spilled over her, dribbling in rivets down her hair and
neck. She had managed to nick me with the knife, but I had gotten my newfound weapon all over her.
The result was instantaneous. Alessa jerked back up, thrashing and screaming like she was in more
pain than I. She staggered back a few steps, then collapsed to the ground, still writhing and screaming
at the top of her lungs. I managed to push meself up a little more to watch. She was trying to tear at the
parasite on her neck. If she tore it off it would kill her, just like it had the doctor at the hospital. But I
noticed the parasite writhing as well. It was detaching on its own. I vaguely wondered why, but I was
losing consciousness quickly. The distorted carousel music was blending with her screams, making one
big lump of sound to me. It eventually sounded like she was screaming my name. A sudden shake
brought me back to half-consciousness for a moment. Alessa had her hands on my shoulders. She was
bleeding a little, but whatever damage the parasite had made her resistant to hadn't gotten any worse.
She'd survived. She was still saying my name occasionally, and things I couldn't make out. Her eyes
were back to normal, I noticed. They reminded me of my wife's eyes. The words weren't important.
"......not going to die! Sebastian Please! Cheryl needs you, there's no one else! Sebastian answer me,
don’t you dare close you.... “ Cheryl was the only word I salvaged. Nothing else had any meaning for
me. The pain is unbareable. Now that I have retold the story one last time to myself, I guess there’s
nothing else left for me too do, except die. Thank you too whoever was listening... where ever you may
be. Maybe I’ll see you soon......
      As I cautiously reopened my eyes one last time, but I was suprised to see Cheryl looking me
straight in the eyes. “Daddy, there’s a call for you.” “Am I dreaming..?” “No Daddy, are you sick?”
I quickly checked myself over and there was no blood anywhere, I was so confused. I curiously walked
over to the phone and picked up the reciever, quickly checking my hand for cuts or blood stain. “Uhh...
Hello?” “Hi Sebastian! It’s stanley. Just wanted to ask how the latest book was coming along. Thought
you might want to talk about taking a break for a little bit.”