They paid no mind to the light. They went up to those glass cases as if they’d sniffed out what was in there and yanked the doors right off their hinges, shattering them on the floor. You could hear the glass crunching under their feet. Quietly, they began examining what was in all those jars, tossing most aside violently, crashing them against the walls. The stink of pickled flesh and formaldehyde was horrible. It filled the room as more jars were broken open.
But then they found the human specimens.
Lids were unscrewed carefully and white, puckered things removed. The zombies began eating them, chewing on rubbery organs and appendages like they were pickled eggs. The naked man shattered the vessel with the two-headed baby in it, that white and grotesque thing. He picked it up and gnawed on it. The girl had a bleached human heart she was working on and the other guy had what might have been a liver. The room was filled with tearing and slurping and chewing sounds.
“Holy Christ in hell,” Harry said under his breath.
Chrissy was biting down on her lip so she wouldn’t cry out or vomit, maybe both. Even hardassed old Jacky Kripp was as white as what was in those jars. He had the knife in his hand and he was shaking. And then, at the worst possible moment, Lisa shook and blinked her eyes. She was coming out of her fugue and a look of utter disgust spread over her features. Harry clamped a hand over her mouth and she stared at him with wide, frightened eyes.
But maybe there was something in his look, because she settled down right away.
There was nothing the four of them could do.
Nothing but sit there and listen to that grisly feeding as the things went through the cases, chomping and sucking embalmed meat from old bone.
Chrissy was terrified and sickened, of course, but right then something else came over her, displacing all else. She felt something cold building around them, something primal and diseased and absolutely malefic.
Then a little red rubber ball bounced around the end of the counter, right past Jacky’s shoes.
You could almost hear him think: What in the fuck?
But he didn’t have to wonder for long as a blurry shape darted around the edge of the counter and of all things it was a clown. A clown. A clown in an orange-and-yellow checked suit that was stained with filth and dried blood, moss-green pom-poms down the front, an electric blue jester hat on its head replete with tinkling bells. Its face was white and bloated, eyes the color of mucus glistening from black diamonds.
“Hey, kids!” it said. “Grimshanks here! Want to see a trick? A real funny trick?”
Jacky made a sort of screaming sound and then the clown launched itself at him, its yellow teeth sinking into his face and scraping against the skull below, peeling his face right off with a meaty rending sound. Jacky Kripp was a hardass around the prison block, a real terror, but he didn’t stand a chance against that thing that took him. It peeled his face off and then took hold of his bloody head and smashed it against the counter until what was in his skull slopped over the floor.
That was it.
Jacky Kripp died that quick.
“Wasn’t that a silly, silly lark, kids?” the clown said, those huge yellow teeth of his stained red, clots of meat dropping from his mouth as he spoke. “But don’t worry! There’s more, there’s always more!”
Lisa shrieked when Grimshanks took Jacky and she hadn’t stopped since, just gasping and screaming and sobbing and finally just becoming completely incoherent at the unreasoning fear of it all. If she’d been in shock before, now she was simply insane.
The clown took a bite of Jacky’s throat, grinned, and spit the bloody meat right in Lisa’s face, which shut her up for maybe two or three seconds. But then her mouth fell open and a sort of “Guh-guh-guh” sound came out.
Harry pulled Lisa away from Grimshanks and Chrissy took hold of her and they tried to make it around the side of the counter. And while they did that, Harry just snapped, went livid with rage at it all. Just like he was out in the yard again, he went into attack mode. He picked up the knife Jacky had dropped and went right at the clown with it. He slashed him across the eyes, the nose, then slit open his cheek right down to the throat. Then he sank the knife right in that monster’s throat.
Grimshanks roared like some caged animal, part pain and part surprise and all fury. He roared right in Harry’s face with a blast of hot, almost searing, decay that came out in a steaming mist. Harry fell over backward.
“Well, that wasn’t very fucking nice!” the clown moaned. “Look what you did to my makeup! Oh, I’ll take special pains with you, Harry Teal.”
Harry tried to get up, but whatever that horror had exhaled into his face had almost the same effect as some narcotic gas. It was primarily methane and other gases of ripe putrefaction and getting a hot blast of it in the face had made him giddy and breathless, sluggish and slow.
The clown crawled right over Jacky’s body, its orange-and-yellow suit picking up a few new bloodstains at the knee. It towered over Harry, smelling of morgues and embalming fluid, fresh blood and fresher meat. He’d gotten it good with his knife. Those yellow, viscid eyes that looked like nothing if not oozing balls of fish spawn, had been slit right open, a dull greenish slime like the blood of grasshoppers had run from them and stained the clown’s cheeks. Its nose was laid open to red gristle and part of its cheek hung open in a flap. A black sap spilled from Grimshank’s contorted grin, hanging from his chin in glistening streamers.
Harry just laid there, dizzy, hoping the girls had gotten away because there was no way in hell he was going to. He raised his head up an inch or two, swooning, fell back down again.
Grimshanks crawled over him until he was straddling him, his legs scissored over Harry’s hips. Harry could feel something stiff and swollen rising against the clown’s thigh and he realized that it had to be the thing’s cock. It was getting excited. It was actually turned on by all this. Sure, this was all bad, but the idea of that was maybe just a little bit worse.
The clown grinned down at him, those sharp yellow teeth sliding out like rapiers, bits of meat stuck in- between them. A black tongue that was bifurcated like that of a snake came out and licked the teeth. And those eyes that had been slit clean open were whole again. That green jelly on its cheeks had dried to a film. “Pretty neat trick, eh, Harry? And you thought little old me couldn’t see! Ha! Shows you what a cheap fucking jailbird you are!” Grimshanks said, sucking up that black sap hanging from his mouth like a kid sucking up snot. Its nose was still flayed open as was its cheek and you could plainly see the maggots at work in there. “Now, Harry, let’s play a game! Remember when you were doing time? Remember when you’d hear some guy screaming in the night because he was getting raped? Remember that? Huh? Huh? Do ya? Do ya? Well, you know what? That’s what we’re going to do! We’re going to play prison rape! You wouldn’t mind if I rammed my dick up yer bunghole while I tore out yer throat, would ya? Would ya? Would ya, huh?”
Harry felt his mind clear.
Felt an absolute, almost elemental repulsion settle into him at the idea of it all. And he externalized it the way he generally did out in the prison bullpen: he balled his fist and hit that clown with everything he had which was considerable. Grimshanks’ head flopped to the side enough where you could see that livid, knotted scar from the rope he’d hanged himself with. He lost balance and Harry tossed him aside.
The clown screamed.
Harry scrambled over the top of the counter and the first thing he saw was Lisa and Chrissy. They were just standing there. Chrissy had a shard of glass in her hand. They had not run away, probably were too shocked to do so or maybe it was those zombies up front by the door, sitting around in all that broken glass and eating what was in the jars.
Harry pushed the girls towards the door and then Grimshanks darted up from behind the counter. “No fair! No fair!” he said. “And don’t think you’re leaving until my show is over!”
They almost made the door.
But Grimshanks had other ideas. He detached one of his oversized pulpy hands at the wrist, yanking on it until it separated from the wrist, each gray filament and rubbery cord stretching and finally snapping with popping bubbles of grayish goo. Then he tossed it at them. It struck the door and fell dead at their feet, but it had the desired effect: they stopped.
Harry held the girls behind him, not knowing whether to protect them from the carrion-eaters to one side or that pustulent, fleshy hand that was even now beginning to flop and wiggle its fingers.
“You don’t mind if I let my fingers do the walking, do you, Harry?” Grimshanks said, laying on top of the counter now, legs crossed, studying his stump with amusement. “I think I’ll finger your girlfriends a bit…you girls
