THE EVIL DEAD: THE SERIES Episode Two: "Bad To The Bone"
London, England. 11:53 p.m. A few nights ago.
Belinda Macreary's footsteps echoed through the halls of the darkened museum.
She didn't mind the noise; in fact, on many nights, it was something of a relief to her. If she could hear her own footsteps so clearly, she reasoned, it followed reason that she'd be able to hear any serial killer, deranged lunatic, or miscellaneous creep that might try to sneak up on her.
Granted, it wasn't the soundest of theories, but the long, late hours she kept at the museum often led to such trains of thought.
Belinda was a lovely young woman, though she didn't tend to think so. She wasn't glamourous by any means; in fact, she tended in dress and demeanor toward the frumpy side. She was in her early 30s, with a roundish face, hazel eyes and short blonde hair, the roots of which were darker.... not because she dyed her hair, that's just how it was, but she could rarely convince anyone of that fact. Her figure wasn't going to get her on Page Three of the tabloids, but she could turn a few heads on the rare occasions she put on a swimsuit.
She adjusted her Lennon glasses as she glanced down the dark corridors. The exhibit halls were visible to her left, and she could make out the silhouettes of stuffed and mounted animals. She shuddered, remembering a horror movie where a woman was in a darkened museum when such animals came to life and chased her--- Belinda wished fervently that she had never rented that particular video, and moved on down the hallways toward a lit doorway.
"How are we doing, Professor Farquahar?" she asked, loud enough to be heard but not loud enough to startle, before walking into the room. She wanted to make her presence known, lest she scare the old man. And considering how incredibly old Professor Farquahar was, she didn't want to do anything that might cause a heart attack.
Farquahar glanced up briefly, and smiled at her. "Ah, Miss Macreary, I was wondering where you'd gone off to."
He was a friendly-looking bald man with abundant liver spots and a hawkish nose. Belinda thought he must be in his 80s, but was too polite to ask.
He stood... well, hunched, more accurately, considering his posture... over a table, on which bone fragments were layed out. Assembled, they would form a human skeleton, more or less. But they were splintered into many, many pieces.
"Sorry, Professor," Belinda said. "I had to call my sister before it was too late."
"Quite all right, quite all right," Farquahar said absently. "But I do wish you'd take a look in that microscope over there." He pointed a bony finger in the appropriate direction, but continued examining part of the jawbone of the shattered skeleton.
Belinda complied. "It's some sort of powder," she said as she looked into the microscope lens.
"GUN powder, to be precise," the Professor said.
Belinda pulled her head back instinctively, as if afraid it might blow up. She flicked off the microscope light.
"And I found it on the skeletal fragments," the Professor continued.
Belinda said nothing, waiting for him to explain the significance.
"This skeleton," he said, "the one from the ruins at Kandar."
She nodded knowingly, which seemed appropriate, despite the fact that she was faking the 'knowingly' part.
Professor Farquahar smiled. "Let me clarify, Miss Macreary. This fellow here," -- he waved a hand over the skeleton -- "was blown up. With gunpowder."
"Must've smarted," Belinda said, not wanting to sound like a smart-aleck.
"But you see, the Castle of Kandar was abandoned decades before Berthold Schwarz even invented gunpowder. So the question is, how did it do in this poor chap?"
"Maybe he was an earlier inventor, but blew up before anyone found out?" Belinda suggested.
The Professor considered this, nodding slowly. "Perhaps, perhaps."
"Do you think you'll be able to assemble the skeleton?" Belinda asked.
"With enough epoxy, anything is possible," The Professor pronounced importantly. "But first I have more tests to run."
"It's getting rather late, sir," Belinda said. "Shouldn't you be heading home?"
"Phah. I'll sleep when I've learned everything I want to." The Professor looked up. "But a young lady like yourself, surely you have somewhere better to be than here. At a club, perhaps, chatting up some nice bloke."
Belinda blushed. "Not my style, really. Anyhow, the curator put me in charge of the Kandarian exhibit, and it's a tremendous responsibility. Is there anything I can do for you?"
The Professor yelped and dropped the jawbone fragment.
"Are you hurt?" Belinda asked.
The Professor sucked on the tip of his finger. "Sliced my finger open on the sharp edges of the fragment, I'm afraid. Would you be a dear and fetch some bandages?"
"Certainly, Professor," Belinda said as she darted out of the lab and into an office across the hall.
The Professor looked at the cut on his finger --- nothing much, really, not very far removed from a paper cut -- and sucked on the wound as blood trickled from it.
On the table, he failed to notice that the droplets of blood that were left on the jawbone from his cut had begun to bubble. And sizzle.
Belinda rummaged through the curator's office until she found the first aid kit. It looked positively ancient; Belinda wasn't sure if the aspirin in it was even good any more, but she figured there would be little hazard in using an old bandage. For good measure, she also took the bottle of medicinal alcohol.
"Now, this may sting a little," she said as she walked into the lab.
Belinda's eyes widened.
She dropped the bandage. And the alcohol bottle.
The skeleton was sitting up on the table, completely assembled, with the fracture lines still visible in its yellowish-brown bones. One of its arms was raised, the fist protruding into Professor Farquahar's chest. The Professor let out a moan of indescribable agony.
The skeleton's head turned, despite the fact it had no neck muscles with which to make such a maneuver. Its hollow eye sockets fell on Belinda, seeming to register her despite the lack of eyes. And, despite the lack of vocal chords, it hissed "Hello, gorgeous..."
______________________________________________
Interlude: Detroit, Michigan.
Ashley J. Williams examined himself in the full-length mirrors in the home furnishings department of S-Mart.
He was a ruggedly handsome man, with a prominent chin --- an ex-girlfriend had once described it as "Super-heroic" --- steely eyes and dark, short-cropped hair. He also had a mechanical replacement where his right hand should be. It was made of grey steel, resembling the glove from a suit of armor.
It was a souvenir from his first encounter with the Evil Dead, the mystic creatures that dwelled in the shadows and feasted on mortal souls. His hand had been possessed, and in true Biblical fashion, he had cut it off when it offended him. Unfortunately, that hadn't stopped its rampage. If a hand can be said to be on a rampage. His troubles started when he and his girlfriend Linda had gone to a cabin in the woods, where they found the Necronomicon Ex Mortis... "book of the dead", he understood the title to translate as. An ancient tome of Sumerian funeral incantations, with demon resurrection passages thrown in for good measure.
The demons the book unleashed killed Linda, and picked off others who came to the cabin as well. And Ash would have fallen victim to them as well, if it weren't for his steely determination, unending perseverence, and no small measure of dumb luck. He had wound up thrown back in time to old England, where he fought an army of the dead to save the Necronomicon from falling into their hands. It was there that he made the robotic hand. A wizard had helped Ash return to modern times, though some of the deadites followed him.
For a time after his return, Ash had become a virtual weirdness magnet. He was attacked by demons and creatures of the night. But then it stopped. The attacks stopped. The hauntings, the taunting voices in the night, everything... just stopped.
In the years since then, all had been quiet. "Too quiet", as they might say in a cheeseball horror movie. Life had become comfortable if unremarkable. Ash worked diligently, rising in the ranks at S-Mart and finally getting a job as assistant manager of the fancy new Super S-Mart Deluxe Home Center in the suburbs of Detroit.
His days were filled stocking shelves and keeping an eye out for sales at the competitors, and occasionally engaging in office politics with fellow Assistant Manager Teddy Rammer. No more demons, vampires or ghosts came after him. Maybe it was because he had defeated them all. Or maybe they were just scared of him.
Whatever the case, Ash hadn't seen so much as an ornery leprechaun in the past four years, and he was getting used to not having to look over his shoulder every time he walked into the woods.
Ash still maintained a slight degree of paranoia -- it was safer than the alternative -- and whenever he passed a mirror would watch to make sure his image didn't come to life and attack him, as his image had been known to do under Deadite influence before.
But that was in the past. And now, the Deadites and their evil mischief was finally over with. And Ashley J. Williams could look in mirrors once again without fear of attack.
______________________________________________
Back to London, England.
Constable Vijay Khan paced down the streets of the city, keeping an eye out for trouble. Perhaps he had seen one too many old movies, but he had always envisioned fog-filled, empty, darkened streets, and the constable's boots clattering on the cobblestones. In reality, even this late at night there were people out, and loud music blaring from passing cars. There wasn't even any fog to speak of tonight.
Still, it was late enough to be relatively peaceful. Vijay was lost in his thoughts, contemplating which Rolling Stones CD he would add to his collection on his next trip to the record shoppe, when he heard a woman's scream.
He ran in that direction, which led toward the history museum.
A woman ran out the front door, eyes wide with panic. Vijay could not see anything chasing her. Alarms sounded from the museum doors.
"Are you alright, miss?" Vijay asked as the woman stumbled up to him.
"T--thing," the woman, Belinda Macreary, stammered.
"Thing?"
"In the museum," the woman cried. "It... .it killed the professor..."
Vijay looked past her to the museum. There was a long, mournful scream from inside.
"Wait here," Vijay said, racing through the doors.
"Don't," Belinda said hoarsely, but the constable had already gone inside.
In the front lobby of the museum he saw two bodies. Vijay gripped his nightstick and stepped closer, shining his flashlight on them.
One was an obese man in janitorial clothes, his chest cavity torn open.
The other... was a blood-stained skeleton.
Vijay looked around quickly, nervously as he stood over the two bodies. What, he wondered, could have skinned one man and torn the other open? He aimed his flashlight into the shadows of the museum's lobby, but saw no sign of the 'Thing' the woman claimed to have seen.
"Nice eyes," came a voice from beneath him.
Vijay looked down, said eyes widening with shock.
The skeleton was looking up at him and... somehow... seemed to be smiling.
"Mind if I take 'em?" the skeleton asked, its bony arm shooting out in his direction.
Outside the museum, Belinda Macreary covered her head and sobbed as she heard the screams of the constable.
Within a matter of minutes, two police cars pulled up in front of the museum.
Belinda looked up, dazed, at their flashing lights.
Four constables ran to the building. One, a woman in her early 40s, stopped at Belinda to make sure she was alright. The others peered into the lobby.
"What's going on?" the 40ish woman asked.
"It... it's killing everyone," Belinda whimpered.
"She's in shock," one of the other constables, a handsome man with dark brown hair and a thick mustache, said.
"I see two bodies," another constable, a barrel-chested black man with greying hair, said, shining his flashlight into the lobby. "They... oh, Jesus, they look mangled."
The fourth constable, a woman in her late 20s with harsh features, scowled. "Well, let's get in there and find the maniac responsible."
"Present and accounted for," came a voice from inside the museum.
The constables turned back to the doorway... where the bloody skeleton swung down at them, from its perch above the doors. Its arms grabbed hold of the black constable and pulled him harshly into the lobby, where he fell to floor and slid a dozen yards.
The creature was not just skeleton any longer. Muscles had been pulled across its bones, even if they didn't stay perfectly in place. The creature sloshed as it moved, its face a reddened skull with Vijay Singh's dark grey eyes staring out of the sockets.
The younger of the female constables started to reach for her weapon, and the skeleton-creature responded with a flick of the wrist that cut her throat open. She gurgled as she fell back.
The creature stared at the mustachioed constable. "You, I'll spare," it said. "Til later."
The constable responded with his nightstick, which the skeleton deftly avoided. Its elbow came down hard on the back of the man's head, and he slumped.
The 40ish constable pulled Belinda along as they ran to the police cars.
"What the bloody hell is that thing?" the constable asked.
Belinda shook her head, not able to think of an answer, rational or otherwise.
The constable radioed for backup, then went to the trunk of the car to retrieve a shotgun.
She looked at the walkway leading up to the museum, and considered going back. But something --- instinct, self-preservation, cowardice, whatever --- told her not to.
Inside the museum, the skeleton tore the unconscious black constable's body open. There was a sudden glow to the body, and the same light surrounded the skeleton itself. Sinewy muscles flowed from the constable's flesh, wrapping themselves around the bones of the skeleton. The bodies of Vijay and the female constable lay nearby, already shredded for what parts the creature could retrieve from them. It had internal organs now, and the muscles from the black constable's body helped to keep them in place.
The creature could be selective, harvesting the best from each body. All it needed were the raw materials, which it could then mold into the necessary shapes.
When it was through with this constable, it moved over to the mustachioed one, now the only intact person in the museum. The old scientist and the obese janitor had served no use for parts, but these law enforcers were a fit, athletic bunch. The creature stood over the last constable and smiled.
Out at the car, the remaining constable looked up, shotgun ready, as she saw someone step out of the building.
It was the mustachioed constable... and he was naked.
"Kirk?" she asked uncertainly, lowering her shotgun.
The constable staggered in her direction.
"What happened, Kirk?" the female constable asked, moving to help her comrade.
Up close, something was obviously wrong. His skin seemed to hang on, as if it didn't fit quite right.
From behind, where she could not see, the torn skin connected together gradually. Then, the skin began to tighten around the skeletal structure of the being, melting from the face of constable Kirk Tullian to that of Ashley J. Williams.
The female constable was speechless. She started to raise the shotgun, but the creature's hand shot out to grab its barrel as she raised it.
It pulled the weapon from her hand and used it to club the woman, knocking her for a sideways spin.
The creature stretched its neck from one side to the other, getting the kinks out, and grinned in the car door at Belinda.
"Hey... honey... going... my... way?" he asked, each word sounding less like the voicebox of Kirk Tullian and more like that of Ashley Williams.
It reached out and pulled the front door open.
Belinda tried to open the back doors of the car, but this being a police car she was not able to. She huddled in one corner of the back seat as the creature slid into the driver's seat and examined the steering column.
"Nifty," he said. "The grey matter I took from the meat back there tells me how to drive this thing."
"Who ARE you?" she asked.
The creature smiled. "The name's Bad Ash, sister," he said, raising the shotgun, "and this time around, I'M the guy with the gun."
As the sirens of police cars responding to the distress call wailed in the distance, Bad Ash pulled the vehicle into gear and sped off into the night with his unwilling passenger.
To Be Continued....
London, England. 11:53 p.m. A few nights ago.
Belinda Macreary's footsteps echoed through the halls of the darkened museum.
She didn't mind the noise; in fact, on many nights, it was something of a relief to her. If she could hear her own footsteps so clearly, she reasoned, it followed reason that she'd be able to hear any serial killer, deranged lunatic, or miscellaneous creep that might try to sneak up on her.
Granted, it wasn't the soundest of theories, but the long, late hours she kept at the museum often led to such trains of thought.
Belinda was a lovely young woman, though she didn't tend to think so. She wasn't glamourous by any means; in fact, she tended in dress and demeanor toward the frumpy side. She was in her early 30s, with a roundish face, hazel eyes and short blonde hair, the roots of which were darker.... not because she dyed her hair, that's just how it was, but she could rarely convince anyone of that fact. Her figure wasn't going to get her on Page Three of the tabloids, but she could turn a few heads on the rare occasions she put on a swimsuit.
She adjusted her Lennon glasses as she glanced down the dark corridors. The exhibit halls were visible to her left, and she could make out the silhouettes of stuffed and mounted animals. She shuddered, remembering a horror movie where a woman was in a darkened museum when such animals came to life and chased her--- Belinda wished fervently that she had never rented that particular video, and moved on down the hallways toward a lit doorway.
"How are we doing, Professor Farquahar?" she asked, loud enough to be heard but not loud enough to startle, before walking into the room. She wanted to make her presence known, lest she scare the old man. And considering how incredibly old Professor Farquahar was, she didn't want to do anything that might cause a heart attack.
Farquahar glanced up briefly, and smiled at her. "Ah, Miss Macreary, I was wondering where you'd gone off to."
He was a friendly-looking bald man with abundant liver spots and a hawkish nose. Belinda thought he must be in his 80s, but was too polite to ask.
He stood... well, hunched, more accurately, considering his posture... over a table, on which bone fragments were layed out. Assembled, they would form a human skeleton, more or less. But they were splintered into many, many pieces.
"Sorry, Professor," Belinda said. "I had to call my sister before it was too late."
"Quite all right, quite all right," Farquahar said absently. "But I do wish you'd take a look in that microscope over there." He pointed a bony finger in the appropriate direction, but continued examining part of the jawbone of the shattered skeleton.
Belinda complied. "It's some sort of powder," she said as she looked into the microscope lens.
"GUN powder, to be precise," the Professor said.
Belinda pulled her head back instinctively, as if afraid it might blow up. She flicked off the microscope light.
"And I found it on the skeletal fragments," the Professor continued.
Belinda said nothing, waiting for him to explain the significance.
"This skeleton," he said, "the one from the ruins at Kandar."
She nodded knowingly, which seemed appropriate, despite the fact that she was faking the 'knowingly' part.
Professor Farquahar smiled. "Let me clarify, Miss Macreary. This fellow here," -- he waved a hand over the skeleton -- "was blown up. With gunpowder."
"Must've smarted," Belinda said, not wanting to sound like a smart-aleck.
"But you see, the Castle of Kandar was abandoned decades before Berthold Schwarz even invented gunpowder. So the question is, how did it do in this poor chap?"
"Maybe he was an earlier inventor, but blew up before anyone found out?" Belinda suggested.
The Professor considered this, nodding slowly. "Perhaps, perhaps."
"Do you think you'll be able to assemble the skeleton?" Belinda asked.
"With enough epoxy, anything is possible," The Professor pronounced importantly. "But first I have more tests to run."
"It's getting rather late, sir," Belinda said. "Shouldn't you be heading home?"
"Phah. I'll sleep when I've learned everything I want to." The Professor looked up. "But a young lady like yourself, surely you have somewhere better to be than here. At a club, perhaps, chatting up some nice bloke."
Belinda blushed. "Not my style, really. Anyhow, the curator put me in charge of the Kandarian exhibit, and it's a tremendous responsibility. Is there anything I can do for you?"
The Professor yelped and dropped the jawbone fragment.
"Are you hurt?" Belinda asked.
The Professor sucked on the tip of his finger. "Sliced my finger open on the sharp edges of the fragment, I'm afraid. Would you be a dear and fetch some bandages?"
"Certainly, Professor," Belinda said as she darted out of the lab and into an office across the hall.
The Professor looked at the cut on his finger --- nothing much, really, not very far removed from a paper cut -- and sucked on the wound as blood trickled from it.
On the table, he failed to notice that the droplets of blood that were left on the jawbone from his cut had begun to bubble. And sizzle.
Belinda rummaged through the curator's office until she found the first aid kit. It looked positively ancient; Belinda wasn't sure if the aspirin in it was even good any more, but she figured there would be little hazard in using an old bandage. For good measure, she also took the bottle of medicinal alcohol.
"Now, this may sting a little," she said as she walked into the lab.
Belinda's eyes widened.
She dropped the bandage. And the alcohol bottle.
The skeleton was sitting up on the table, completely assembled, with the fracture lines still visible in its yellowish-brown bones. One of its arms was raised, the fist protruding into Professor Farquahar's chest. The Professor let out a moan of indescribable agony.
The skeleton's head turned, despite the fact it had no neck muscles with which to make such a maneuver. Its hollow eye sockets fell on Belinda, seeming to register her despite the lack of eyes. And, despite the lack of vocal chords, it hissed "Hello, gorgeous..."
______________________________________________
Interlude: Detroit, Michigan.
Ashley J. Williams examined himself in the full-length mirrors in the home furnishings department of S-Mart.
He was a ruggedly handsome man, with a prominent chin --- an ex-girlfriend had once described it as "Super-heroic" --- steely eyes and dark, short-cropped hair. He also had a mechanical replacement where his right hand should be. It was made of grey steel, resembling the glove from a suit of armor.
It was a souvenir from his first encounter with the Evil Dead, the mystic creatures that dwelled in the shadows and feasted on mortal souls. His hand had been possessed, and in true Biblical fashion, he had cut it off when it offended him. Unfortunately, that hadn't stopped its rampage. If a hand can be said to be on a rampage. His troubles started when he and his girlfriend Linda had gone to a cabin in the woods, where they found the Necronomicon Ex Mortis... "book of the dead", he understood the title to translate as. An ancient tome of Sumerian funeral incantations, with demon resurrection passages thrown in for good measure.
The demons the book unleashed killed Linda, and picked off others who came to the cabin as well. And Ash would have fallen victim to them as well, if it weren't for his steely determination, unending perseverence, and no small measure of dumb luck. He had wound up thrown back in time to old England, where he fought an army of the dead to save the Necronomicon from falling into their hands. It was there that he made the robotic hand. A wizard had helped Ash return to modern times, though some of the deadites followed him.
For a time after his return, Ash had become a virtual weirdness magnet. He was attacked by demons and creatures of the night. But then it stopped. The attacks stopped. The hauntings, the taunting voices in the night, everything... just stopped.
In the years since then, all had been quiet. "Too quiet", as they might say in a cheeseball horror movie. Life had become comfortable if unremarkable. Ash worked diligently, rising in the ranks at S-Mart and finally getting a job as assistant manager of the fancy new Super S-Mart Deluxe Home Center in the suburbs of Detroit.
His days were filled stocking shelves and keeping an eye out for sales at the competitors, and occasionally engaging in office politics with fellow Assistant Manager Teddy Rammer. No more demons, vampires or ghosts came after him. Maybe it was because he had defeated them all. Or maybe they were just scared of him.
Whatever the case, Ash hadn't seen so much as an ornery leprechaun in the past four years, and he was getting used to not having to look over his shoulder every time he walked into the woods.
Ash still maintained a slight degree of paranoia -- it was safer than the alternative -- and whenever he passed a mirror would watch to make sure his image didn't come to life and attack him, as his image had been known to do under Deadite influence before.
But that was in the past. And now, the Deadites and their evil mischief was finally over with. And Ashley J. Williams could look in mirrors once again without fear of attack.
______________________________________________
Back to London, England.
Constable Vijay Khan paced down the streets of the city, keeping an eye out for trouble. Perhaps he had seen one too many old movies, but he had always envisioned fog-filled, empty, darkened streets, and the constable's boots clattering on the cobblestones. In reality, even this late at night there were people out, and loud music blaring from passing cars. There wasn't even any fog to speak of tonight.
Still, it was late enough to be relatively peaceful. Vijay was lost in his thoughts, contemplating which Rolling Stones CD he would add to his collection on his next trip to the record shoppe, when he heard a woman's scream.
He ran in that direction, which led toward the history museum.
A woman ran out the front door, eyes wide with panic. Vijay could not see anything chasing her. Alarms sounded from the museum doors.
"Are you alright, miss?" Vijay asked as the woman stumbled up to him.
"T--thing," the woman, Belinda Macreary, stammered.
"Thing?"
"In the museum," the woman cried. "It... .it killed the professor..."
Vijay looked past her to the museum. There was a long, mournful scream from inside.
"Wait here," Vijay said, racing through the doors.
"Don't," Belinda said hoarsely, but the constable had already gone inside.
In the front lobby of the museum he saw two bodies. Vijay gripped his nightstick and stepped closer, shining his flashlight on them.
One was an obese man in janitorial clothes, his chest cavity torn open.
The other... was a blood-stained skeleton.
Vijay looked around quickly, nervously as he stood over the two bodies. What, he wondered, could have skinned one man and torn the other open? He aimed his flashlight into the shadows of the museum's lobby, but saw no sign of the 'Thing' the woman claimed to have seen.
"Nice eyes," came a voice from beneath him.
Vijay looked down, said eyes widening with shock.
The skeleton was looking up at him and... somehow... seemed to be smiling.
"Mind if I take 'em?" the skeleton asked, its bony arm shooting out in his direction.
Outside the museum, Belinda Macreary covered her head and sobbed as she heard the screams of the constable.
Within a matter of minutes, two police cars pulled up in front of the museum.
Belinda looked up, dazed, at their flashing lights.
Four constables ran to the building. One, a woman in her early 40s, stopped at Belinda to make sure she was alright. The others peered into the lobby.
"What's going on?" the 40ish woman asked.
"It... it's killing everyone," Belinda whimpered.
"She's in shock," one of the other constables, a handsome man with dark brown hair and a thick mustache, said.
"I see two bodies," another constable, a barrel-chested black man with greying hair, said, shining his flashlight into the lobby. "They... oh, Jesus, they look mangled."
The fourth constable, a woman in her late 20s with harsh features, scowled. "Well, let's get in there and find the maniac responsible."
"Present and accounted for," came a voice from inside the museum.
The constables turned back to the doorway... where the bloody skeleton swung down at them, from its perch above the doors. Its arms grabbed hold of the black constable and pulled him harshly into the lobby, where he fell to floor and slid a dozen yards.
The creature was not just skeleton any longer. Muscles had been pulled across its bones, even if they didn't stay perfectly in place. The creature sloshed as it moved, its face a reddened skull with Vijay Singh's dark grey eyes staring out of the sockets.
The younger of the female constables started to reach for her weapon, and the skeleton-creature responded with a flick of the wrist that cut her throat open. She gurgled as she fell back.
The creature stared at the mustachioed constable. "You, I'll spare," it said. "Til later."
The constable responded with his nightstick, which the skeleton deftly avoided. Its elbow came down hard on the back of the man's head, and he slumped.
The 40ish constable pulled Belinda along as they ran to the police cars.
"What the bloody hell is that thing?" the constable asked.
Belinda shook her head, not able to think of an answer, rational or otherwise.
The constable radioed for backup, then went to the trunk of the car to retrieve a shotgun.
She looked at the walkway leading up to the museum, and considered going back. But something --- instinct, self-preservation, cowardice, whatever --- told her not to.
Inside the museum, the skeleton tore the unconscious black constable's body open. There was a sudden glow to the body, and the same light surrounded the skeleton itself. Sinewy muscles flowed from the constable's flesh, wrapping themselves around the bones of the skeleton. The bodies of Vijay and the female constable lay nearby, already shredded for what parts the creature could retrieve from them. It had internal organs now, and the muscles from the black constable's body helped to keep them in place.
The creature could be selective, harvesting the best from each body. All it needed were the raw materials, which it could then mold into the necessary shapes.
When it was through with this constable, it moved over to the mustachioed one, now the only intact person in the museum. The old scientist and the obese janitor had served no use for parts, but these law enforcers were a fit, athletic bunch. The creature stood over the last constable and smiled.
Out at the car, the remaining constable looked up, shotgun ready, as she saw someone step out of the building.
It was the mustachioed constable... and he was naked.
"Kirk?" she asked uncertainly, lowering her shotgun.
The constable staggered in her direction.
"What happened, Kirk?" the female constable asked, moving to help her comrade.
Up close, something was obviously wrong. His skin seemed to hang on, as if it didn't fit quite right.
From behind, where she could not see, the torn skin connected together gradually. Then, the skin began to tighten around the skeletal structure of the being, melting from the face of constable Kirk Tullian to that of Ashley J. Williams.
The female constable was speechless. She started to raise the shotgun, but the creature's hand shot out to grab its barrel as she raised it.
It pulled the weapon from her hand and used it to club the woman, knocking her for a sideways spin.
The creature stretched its neck from one side to the other, getting the kinks out, and grinned in the car door at Belinda.
"Hey... honey... going... my... way?" he asked, each word sounding less like the voicebox of Kirk Tullian and more like that of Ashley Williams.
It reached out and pulled the front door open.
Belinda tried to open the back doors of the car, but this being a police car she was not able to. She huddled in one corner of the back seat as the creature slid into the driver's seat and examined the steering column.
"Nifty," he said. "The grey matter I took from the meat back there tells me how to drive this thing."
"Who ARE you?" she asked.
The creature smiled. "The name's Bad Ash, sister," he said, raising the shotgun, "and this time around, I'M the guy with the gun."
As the sirens of police cars responding to the distress call wailed in the distance, Bad Ash pulled the vehicle into gear and sped off into the night with his unwilling passenger.
To Be Continued....