Crisis Event: Black Feast by Greg Shows, Zachary Womack

And the ropes and spatters of blood that covered the floor.
    When Sadie looked closer she saw a huge spray of blood covering a plate glass window. Blood had run down to puddle and dry on the floor next to the wall, as if someone had been gunned down and died right there a few feet from her.
    She peered down the dark hallway and saw bloody drag marks next to the left wall.
    Her stomach clenched. Her hands shook and the barrel of her 9MM jerked and quivered so bad she doubted she could hit anything with it.
    Sadie tucked the pistol into her waistband and pulled her new shotgun out of its holster. She gripped it with both hands and pointed it down the hall. She couldn’t believe she was about to scout an empty building with the full knowledge that someone had been killed here not long ago.
    You better believe it.
    She’d already burned gas and lost time and risked electrocution. If she didn’t find food or useful chemicals she would have wasted the effort—hardly intelligent and measured behavior. At least with the shotgun in her hands if she ran into the owner of those big boots she’d stand a chance.
    Sadie stood in the entryway and listened. Hearing nothing, she walked further inside. On her right was a short hallway that lead to a pair of double wooden doors.  Both doors were closed, but even in the dim light Sadie could see the rising zigzag that symbolized stairs.
    Sadie continued forward. She could see light at the other end of the building, probably another set of doors like the ones she’d come through. Between one end of the building and the other were intersecting halls that led off to classrooms and offices.
    As she moved away from the glass doors, it got harder to see. She waited for her eyes to adjust, then slipped down her respirator and let it rest against her chest.
    Instantly the sour stink of vinegar assaulted her sinuses and she noticed that the dust from outside the building hadn’t penetrated far into its interior. Sadie stepped forward, her head swiveling constantly, her shotgun trembling. She remembered the words of the dead cop.
    “Don’t forget to cock it,” she whispered, and took another quiet step.
    She didn’t have to travel far to find where the bloody drag marks went. Thirty feet down the hall was the first intersection.
    Sadie approached the intersection slowly, staying it the center of the hall so she could use her peripheral vision to look left and right. The hallway to the right was completely dark, but to her left a weak yellow splash of light lay on the floor outside an open door. The light illuminated the drag marks that went straight inside.
    Sadie crept to the edge of the doorway and leaned forward.
    She wished she hadn’t.
    The light was from a single hissing lantern hanging on a rope attached to the ceiling. The lantern was slightly above head height, and it spilled out enough light to show Sadie a sight she would never forget.
    The body that had been dragged down the hallway was a girl, maybe fifteen, and she lay next to a metal table, still clothed but with a face that had been destroyed by a point blank gunshot.
    Lying on her back on the metal table above the dead girl was the partially dismembered body of a young blonde woman. Her head hung upside down from the end of the table, her eyes open and staring but glazed over.
    Above her chin was a long, blood-crusted gash. The woman’s arms and one leg had been cut off and stripped of flesh, and whoever had done the carving had tossed the bones into a pile a few feet away.
    The remaining leg had been carved on, and was a bloody mess. Most of the muscle had been cut away, right down to the bone.
    Beyond the carved-up corpse was another metal table, one side covered with empty Ball jars and jar lids and dozens of unlit candles on one side. At the center of the table were two pots sitting on bricks. One was a gray kitchen pot, the other a pressure cooker.
    Two propane torches lay on their sides, wedged between bricks beneath