These were the cleanest butchers Jason could
imagined. Petite and cruel with
snow-white smocks, bloodless faces and pale gloves - scrubbing bleached
corpses spread out on gurneys of shining stainless steel.
Rich red blood flowed and beaded like mercury in
neat rivers on the polished marble slab. It skinned, started to congeal and
pulse like veins - arteries that seemed about to explode. The image became
pounding in his head, and he woke up, feeling his eyes popping with agonized
pressure.
A splitting headache, a horrible drug-cocktail
hangover, he opened his sore eyes to a vision of blinding white fuzz. It
spilled into his mind like a rush of nauseating fever and he rose in
dizziness and the reek of his own perspiration.
Jason grabbed the remote and fell back in his
chair. As he hit the button he saw the fuzz vanish from his wall screen,
then the preset programming started functioning and the channels spun and
opened on a scene of floodwaters.
Waves, debris and flotsam rushed toward him and
became memory returning - last night, Halloween, the square, the rowdies,
the blasting music, the wine, the dancing, the laughter, the girl he'd
kidnapped and locked up in the basement before passing out at the TV. She
was blond, voluptuous. Her image rose in his mind with unquenchable thirst,
and like a zombie ordered by his master he rose, went to the kitchen and
swallowed half a bottle of Coke.
His head cleared somewhat as he sat back down and
his eyes went to his gold watch. 3 p.m. - he'd been out for 12 hours solid.
On the screen the floodwaters were still pouring.
The scene pulled at his mind and grew soothing. Then he saw something red
and dark rising in the rushing murk - a corpse - grotesquely swollen, a
snake of black blood drooling from a ghastly face. There were more of them
drifting like hideous whales. Detached arms, legs and torsos tumbled out of
the foam. A woman's hair billowed in the deeper water, revealing a medusa's
visage of worms and staring eyes, and then the scene suddenly switched to
the image of a Reaper swinging his scythe and a deep voice saying - "Stay
tuned for more."
He checked his control and saw that he was tuned
to web TV – halloween.carnage.com. This was the web channel he'd programmed
to play on Halloween. It’d been listed on his e-reader’s ads; the offbeat
video and text channel from a cult created by weird end-of-the-world people.
People that were pissed at corporations, nations, city governments and
others who refused to cooperate in preparing for the end coming at Halloween
this year. They'd set up a world wide video network and web site, vowing to
broadcast explicit footage of any Halloween disaster as a way of informing
the public as well as those who wouldn’t listen.
And wow! What a success! They already had
beautiful footage of the dead in a dam burst in Africa. He couldn't figure
out how a bug in some computer chip could pop a dam. And he really didn't
care how it had happened. He just hoped there would be more because he
needed more - always more carnage - because after all, he was Jason, the
Friday the 13th copycat killer.
A swig of Coke and the screen flickered back to
the Reaper and stage thunder and lightning. "It seems some of our modern
American prisons did not properly test their digital locking systems for
Halloween errors," said the Reaper. "Let's take a look at this exclusive
footage from Maryland and see what this can mean."
Silver flashed as the scythe swung and an image
zoomed in to fill the screen. Some kind of prison, bars, Plexiglas and a
muscled and grinning psychiatric patient wrestling with a guard over a
shotgun. The madman knocked the gun free and managed to slam his opponent
into the wall so hard that blood flew like spittle from his lips. Still, the
guard recovered and stumbled forward, only to find that the man had seized
the gun. The trigger clicked, the camera view spun and a spray of shot,
blood, bone and brains showered the screen. Through the dripping gore Jason
saw a long hall and more armed prisoners running. "Did you check your
locks?" the Reaper said as his face reappeared on the screen? "Here's an
instant replay to remind you of what might happen if you didn't."
"Holy shit!" Jason suddenly said as he flew to
his feet in fluid motion. "I've got one of those digital locking systems on
the cell."
Hurrying to the basement door he stumbled down
the steps and through the cobwebby gloom toward the light of a dim
florescent lamp. He reached the cell and saw his captive crouched on the
cold cement behind the bars. She looked up, her face and hair soaked in
tears. Quickly passing her he went straight to the door and the lock.
It held firm so it appeared he wasn't a victim of
the Reaper’s Halloween bug. He was about to turn away then it occurred to
him that perhaps the bug only set in after the lock was powered down and
powered up again. Reaching over he hit the wall control panel, only to find
that the battery clicked in and the lock didn't power down. Opening the
panel he yanked out the battery and powered down. The lock clicked open, and
he powered up and it clicked closed. He tried it a few times and as he was
finishing the girl suddenly began to wail.
Jason turned and faced her.
"How long are you going to keep me here?" she
said.
Her face was red, her hair matted with dirt.
Jason felt aroused as he stepped up to her and stared, and then he stepped
away from the cell to a row of lockers. "I'm going to keep you here with the
others," he said.
“What others?"
"These others," he said, and then he opened one
of the lockers, revealing a withered skull, moldered body parts, hair and
bones hanging inside.
She began to scream hysterically and he felt torn
between her and web TV. Due to his hangover he decided he'd rather sit
around and watch the latest on the tube.
"Later," he said, ignoring her sobbing as he
walked away.
The Reaper was back on TV with footage of rioters
and arsonists in Los Angeles, where an earthquake had added its weight to
Halloween power grid outages. The dead littered the highways, and what
appeared to be satellite coverage showed foggy images of marauders gunning
people down on the roadsides. Jason stared intently as the camera zoomed in
on a big man impaled on the spikes of an iron fence.
Minutes later a grisly scene of battered bodies
flying from a train wreck sent lovely shivers up Jason's spine. He saw the
big wheels suck up a body and shower stewed tomatoes on a fleeing woman. A
creaking noise from the house made him jump. "Damn, is this good," he
muttered. "It's even scaring me."
"Say, I wonder what's happening in this area?" he
thought. "Maybe I should go outside and see if the social order has broken
down. If so I can get moving with a new scene for my home movie, Friday the
13th episode Jason 1313, The Toronto Massacre." Thinking further he
decided it was a great idea, then he heard another creak and as he rose
something smashed into his head. Blood magma showered in his mind, a second
crunch followed and everything went . . . . . . .
Silver flashed as the scythe swung
and the image of an empty neighbourhood and a
small Toronto house zoomed in to fill the screen. The Reaper grinned
morbidly as the camera view switched to the interior and focused on a
bloodstained corpse slumped in a lounge chair. Its skull was smashed and
brain matter had leaked like vomit over the forehead. A metal hook had bit
through the crown.
"Here's a Halloween error that could happen to
you," the Reaper said. "Another lock failure, only Jason's lock was
Halloween end-of-the-world compliant. He just forgot to put the backup
battery back in and power fluctuations allowed his victim to escape. So
don't forget to power things back up after those tests. Otherwise Halloween
spooks might come early for you and leave you in a bad situation."
