- A man is determined to stay alive alone on a deserted island no matter what the cost; A teen's family road trip includes a visit to the gravest show on earth.
- In the first segment, a doctor and drug smuggler stranded on a desert atoll discovers that he'll do anything to survive. In the second segment, a teenaged girl named Blake visits the "Circus of the Dead" with her family and discovers that the acts are all-too-real.—Gislef
- The Creep enters his vault and inks the art for his two tales of horror.
Survivor Type
A survivor, Richard Pine, lies sits a near-deserted atoll, writes in his journal, and stares up at a jet passing high overhead. An emergency kit from the cruise ship and a dead gull lie nearby. He sniffs heroin off of a knife blade to kill the pain from his left foot, which is injured. Richard amputates it with a needle and threat from the kit, and screams in agony.
Richard writes down the story of his childhood in Manhattan. His father died when he was 46, and Richard got into college on a sports scholarship. He became quarterback, wrapped and soaked his hands because he always wanted to be a surgeon. Richard hired someone to beat up the football bully, Howie, that ragged on him. He ran gambling pools in college to raise money, and got into pushing when he started as a resident. It started with selling prescription pads and samples of doctors' signatures, to dealers on the street.
On the third day on the island, Richard salvages what he can that has washed up from the crash. A woman's corpse has also washed up, and the gulls peck at it. Richard cripples it with a thrown rock, then breaks its neck with his bare hands and eats it raw since he hasn't had anything to eat and there's no driftwood for a fire.
On Day 4, Richard keeps the corpse, that he's named "Gloria" on the atoll because her corpse attracts the gulls. He continues writing his life story about how the Feds came after him after they arrested one of the dealers and he gave up Richard's name. Richard gave up a few people to the Feds.
Richard manages to kill another gull, and paces off the circumference of the atoll. He notes that he also has $350,000 of heroin with him, because he was smuggling it in when the jet he was on crashed. Richard continues writing about how he went to see an old football teammate to buy his medical degree.
A jet passes high overhead, not seeing the "Help" message that Richard has spelled out in rocks, or hearing Richard's yells for help. Richard twists his ankle in the rocks while trying to get the jet's attention, screams in pain, and falls down next to Gloria. He wakes up face-to-face with the rotting corpse.
Richard continues to write about how he flew to Thailand, as a "tourist", to pick up the heroin. He then booked passage on a cruise ship to San Francisco, and Ronnie arranged to pick up the bag of heroin was to throw over the side before the ship docked. But then the ship sank.
Richard binds his injured left ankle and spells out "Help" in the sand with rocks. He "talks" to Gloria, and wonders if there'll be another plane. Richard figures that he'll have to amputate before gangrene spreads from the injury. He decides to amputate his foot, using the heroin as painkiller. If Richard waits any longer, he'll faint from shock and hunger in the middle of the operation, and bleed to death.
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After cutting off his foot and surviving, Richard is tormented by the itch of the incision. He figures that he's been stoned from the heroin he's been taking since the amputation, and it suppresses hunger so he's barely aware of it. Richard figures that he has to eat, and lies on the sand as another jet passes overhead, unseeing.
That night, Richard imagines a succulent meal. He then hallucinates Gloria as a beautiful ghost, telling him that he needs to eat and she's better than nothing. The next day, Richard manages to kill another gull with a rock. He brings the gull down, but it swims off into the ocean. The storm has washed Gloria away, and that night Richard amputates his other foot. Through the "operation", he drooled helplessly. Richard imagines eating roast beef as he eats his severed foot.
The next morning, Richard stares at his footprints in the sand and finds a plant to eat. On Day 18, Richard notices that the storm has washed away his Help sign and he didn't notice. He remakes the sign and pours iodine from the emergency kit on his hands to protect them. Richard takes his right leg off at the knee, and hallucinates the smell of roasting pork as he cooks his severed limb over a fire.
Eventually Richard cuts off his left leg at the knee and cooks it, figuring he'll be as good as new with artificial legs. The next day, he works out how to cut off his upper left leg without cutting the femoral artery. Richard looks at the reflection of his face in the water, and sees nothing but a skin-covered skull with a rotting nose. As he pulls himself across the sand by his elbows, Richard imagines his father berating him. Eventually, Richard eats the fingers of his left hand, mumbling about "lady fingers".
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Twittering from the Circus of the Dead
As her family drives back from their aborted vacation in Colorado, Blake twitters about how bored she is, and how she and her mother are arguing constantly. Blake's mother doesn't think much of the Internet, and how people go online to avoid death and hide from life. Blake is not impressed by her mother's "wisdom".
Blake tweets about throwing up on her brother Eric's head as their father takes the car through a hairpin turn. She talks about how Eric is gross but she loves him, and the car arrives in the Utah desert. Blake convinces Eric to wears a skirt at a diner they stop at, and complains about how her mother made her feels like shit.
Dad takes a detour, and then says that he wants to take a break and pulls over onto a side road with a "Circus" sign. The "Circus of the Dead" is seemingly abandoned, except for a smelly ticket taker. The usher is wearing a hazmat suit, and escorts them into the tent, and says that he's wearing the suit so he won't get b bitten.
Inside, the circus smells and Blake complains on her Twitter feed that it's claustrophobic. The spotlight comes on, revealing a Ringmistress. There are zombies in clown costumes, and they chase the Ringmistress who is on stilts. She says she's been a prisoner of the circus for six weeks, and has only survive because she learned the stilts fast. The Ringmistress walks right up to the wall and begs someone in the audience to pull her up and rescue her. Everyone in the audience figures that it's an act, and the Ringmistress runs off before the zombies catch up to her.
The hazmat suited ushers put a zombie aerialist into a cannon and fire it out in pieces into the audience. Blake reports that there's still a zombie foot near them, and Tweets about how realistic it is. Dad has a zombie lip in his hair.
The ushers push out a cage with a lion inside. They open the cage and the zombies go in, and it kills one zombie. The ushers send more zombies in and they tear the lion apart and eat the organs. Dad assures Blake that the cage has a fake bottom, and Blake is reassured.
The Ringmistress asks for a volunteer, and Eric quickly leaves. Meanwhile, the ushers jam a torch into one zombie's throat, calling it a fire swallower, and the ushers watch as the zombie runs around and burns, and finally collapses. They spray the charred corpse with a fire extinguisher, and Ringmistress comes out weaving. Blake figures that something is wrong with her ankle.
Ringmistress says that they have a volunteer "sacrifice", and he will be the "lucky one". The ushers wheel Eric out, cuffed to a big wooden wheel. The ushers haul out a zombie and stake it to the dirt near a box of hatchets. It throws a hatchet into the audience and someone screams. The audience figures the "victim" is a plot.
The ushers spin the wheel, and the zombies throws several hatchets. The last one lands in Eric's neck, and Dad figures that it's a trick and Eric will come out later as a zombie. The ushers promise that Eric will come out later, but Mom tells Dad to check on Eric. Dad finally goes, while Blake figures Eric volunteered to be close to the "Goth hot" Ringmistress.
Ringmistress says that if she goes off-script, they won't let her out of the ring but she doesn't care. She figures that since she twisted her ankle, it's her last night. Ringmistress says that her real name is Gayle Ross and was going to marry Craig. She's sorry for the audience, and says that the ushers dispose of the audience's cars outside and 12,000 people vanish on the road every year.
The zombies come out, including an undead and still fresh Eric. He pulls down Ringmistress down from her stilts, and the zombies eat her body. The zombies then make a "human pyramid" up the restraining wall, and Eric climbs into the audience and attacks one of them. Blake is impressed by how good he is at being a zombie.
The lights go out, and audience members scream and run around. Blake and Mom remain silent, and Blake tweets out their last known location. The teenager realizes that almost everyone is dead, and most of the audience were corpses roped to the seats. The screaming stops and the zombies drag the bodies into piles to eat them. Blake tweets that she loves her mother and never meant the bad things she said about her.
Dad--now a zombie--finds Blake and Mom. Mom calls to him, and he kills the two women. Blake drops her phone, and soon the Dad Zombie sends out a tweet pretending to be Blake. He says that Blake is the new Ringmistress, and will introduce the acts while dangling above a pit of zombies. Dad Zombie promises that the Circus of the Dead will tour the country, and people should visit their Facebook page to see when the Circus will be near them.
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The Creep reads the tweet and laughs.
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