The Jackson - Part Eight

8

Corey was stuck in the Jackson. The beautiful gilded building on the Golden Row. The place that Corey thought he would find enough money to buy his way out of his problems was threatening to eat him alive. It wasn’t the goldmine he had hoped – it was instead a deathtrap.

Every corner he turned in the sparkling tower was a new nightmare, a new monster. And though the outside of this glorious building was shining and charismatic, the inside was nothing but bars and unbreakable glass and white dull paint. Corey was covered in scratches and viscous blood from creatures he never dreamed could exist. One final gun shot rang out as Corey cut through a slimy tentacle that barred his way and the monster bellowed as he and his companions tripped their way down the rest of the hallway to get to the one person, or rather the one hand, that could be their savior.

“No!” A man’s hoarse voice echoed from a room not far and when Corey and Victoria burst in through a nondescript white door, they found him.

A hefty man with a dark buzz cut had holed up in a type of small surveillance room. There were monitors and blinking lights and Corey had no idea what any of them could be for. One or two dead bodies littered the floor by the door and the man was currently fighting back whatever creature he had been watching. It had broken the thick glass and was putting up a good fight despite its scaled hide being riddled with bullet holes.

Corey stood there in the doorway with Victoria and the Aswang and watched the fight die out of the creature. Corey knew they had to have watched for only seconds but it felt like hours waiting for the monster’s heart to give out. The man had yet to notice that he was being watched.

“So,” growled the Aswang. Corey didn’t need to look at his face to hear the hunger in his voice. “You’re the hero we kept hearing.”

The man couldn’t speak. His mouth attempted to open and close to form words but all that came out were pathetic groans. Corey knew that feeling. It was the same he had when he first saw Victoria and the Aswang, where the tongue is frozen in fear and your brain is trying to plot an escape. This man was in that limbo until his hand raised the gun and pulled the trigger at the Aswang.

Corey flinched at the clicking of the empty gun. He let lose a hard breath. “Jesus! My heart can’t take much more of this shit.”

“Soon we’ll be outside and your heart won’t have to take any more.” The Aswang sped past Corey and took hold of the sputtering guard and bared his teeth.

Victoria followed right behind him. “Don’t!” she screamed. “We might need him alive.”

“What good could he possibly be to us?”

Corey held his bruised side. His breathing was shallow, his heart was racing, and he worried his body would give out at any moment. He knew adrenaline could only get him so far. He needed to get out. Corey made a wheezing sound as he spoke. “We might need him to open the doors. We don’t know if there’s a password or something like that.”

“You think I’ll let you out?” The guard smiled to himself, and winced as the Aswang gripped him tighter. “I can’t do that.”

“I told you,” sneered the Aswang, “useless. They are all useless.”

Victoria leaned closer to the guard, pleading with him, “Please. I have a child to get back to. We have families waiting for us on the other side of those doors.”

Her bloodied hands shook and her lip quivered. Victoria had more to say but sobs overtook her words. Corey pulled her back, tucking her into a hug. “You can’t leave us to die in here. We can get out and that includes you. Don’t you have someone waiting for you?”

The guard’s eyes glazed over telling Corey that he did have family beyond the Jackson and a sliver of jealousy dug under Corey’s skin. Family was the one thing Corey did not have. Hell, he barely had friends. “Help us and we will get you out alive,” he said.

The guard shook his head. “If I open those doors, anything can get out. I can’t let that happen.”

“Can’t you close them again from the outside?” asked Victoria, wiping the tears mingling with blood spatter.

He looked right at her with deadened eyes. “No. It can only be locked again from the inside.”

Corey looked to Victoria. He wasn’t ready to quit but the hope he had was dwindling.

The Aswang wasn’t fazed. “Then we kill you and unleash hell on the city.”

“You can’t!” screamed the guard. He fought against the Aswang but it was no use as his long claws dug into the thin skin around the man’s neck as he tried to speak and Corey could see blood slip down to his collar. “There’s worse things here,” he gargled.

Corey patted the Aswang on the shoulder. “Stop. Let him speak.”

He let the guard take a deep breath but the Aswang’s long fingers didn’t venture far from his flesh.

“What did you say? What’s worse?”

“There are things in here that can’t be loosed. Some of them aren’t even from our dimension and we don’t know what kind of havoc they could wreak. There is a barrier around this building. The scientists made sure that nothing in here could pass beyond any of our boundaries during a lockdown and they did it for a reason.”

“Can we keep it at one location? Only open one door?” asked Victoria. Corey could hear the yearning hope in her voice.

“I don’t know,” the guard answered honestly. “There has never been a lockdown and the monsters have never gotten free of their restraints.”

The Aswang shrieked and grabbed him by the throat again. “If you didn’t restrain us then this never would have happened!”

“This facility has existed since the eighteen hundreds,” the guard said as he dangled from the Aswang’s hand. "I don't know why they take you - I only know I can't let you out."

Corey pleaded this time. “There has to be a way.”

The guard choked out, “I’m sorry.”

Victoria began to cry and the last bit of Corey’s willpower disappeared. Corey looked to the Aswang and said, “Do it.”

The Aswang smiled as he raised the man’s arm to his sharpened jaws.

“Get both of them,” said Corey. “We don’t know which hand we might need.”