by Mark Tufo
She screamed and tried to pull away, but he was simply too strong. He allowed her to dig her fingers into the concrete and scoot backward a few inches and then appeared to smile as he dragged her back. The Variant looked like he was toying with her, like he enjoyed the escalation of fear that she was experiencing.
She pulled away once more and as the muscular Variant began to drag her back, the Bone Collector stood up on his rear legs and lumbered up onto the sidewalk. He moved in behind the Variant, and with the woman doctor still shouting into the night, he raised his severed left arm and jammed the exposed bone into the back of the beast’s head.
The woman doctor pulled away and fell onto her back. She stopped fighting and only lay on the concrete with her head atop a damp black ball cap. She stared up at the sky as the Bone Collector gently pulled her off the sidewalk with his right arm. She appeared to be mumbling to herself.
Tossing her over his shoulder, he continued to stare at the ground, and in particular at the soaking wet black ball cap that her head had fallen on. He knew it was familiar, but he wasn’t exactly sure why. The letters meant nothing to him now; however, he had a feeling that they must have at one point. BXF Technologies. He wanted to remember, but for now it would remain a mystery.
Back out into the street, the skies rumbled. He’d heard the familiar sound all too often over the last several weeks. They were coming yet again. They were coming to destroy the city. They were coming to destroy his home.
A pair of jets streaked across the skyline. They disappeared behind the torched buildings of downtown before he was able to see where they had come from. Calling out to his small army of Variants, the Bone Collector pointed his hooked claw toward the Bryant Metro Station.
“GO!”
Before he could get a secured grip on the woman doctor, they were on the move. They’d reach the stairs to the station in just under sixty seconds; however, as the sounds of the jets bled into the silence of night, it was replaced with another familiar sound. The whop-whop-whop of a Blackhawk helicopter boomed from somewhere near the East River.
Fighting to run, he could see ahead as the woman with short hair—the one who fought beside the young Marine in the wheelchair—had gotten free. She had fought with one of the female Variants and was now chasing after another who was carrying the two little girls.
Pointing at her with a long hooked talon, the Bone Collector ordered two of his Variants after her. They moved in quickly and took her to the ground. The woman struggled to get free, but the female Variant she’d been fighting with came out of nowhere and leapt in on top of the others.
Moving toward the commotion, the Bone Collector drew back his injured left arm. Holding tight to the woman doctor over his right shoulder, he was stopped in his tracks as the three Variants released the short-haired woman and skittered over to his side. The other Variants released their human prisoners, moved in around him, and stared up at the building directly ahead. He also released the woman doctor and watched as she walked slowly to the opposite sidewalk.
He knew he’d run into them again; he was just hoping he’d get to his lair first. Out here on the devastated streets of New York City, he and his small army of Variants would suffer from the sheer number of those who stood with Goliath. But he wasn’t intimidated, he’d been waiting for this moment.
As his human prisoners scrambled together and moved away, the first shot was fired. One of his collaborators shot at the opposing Variants, who’d crawled down the face of the building and now stared back at the Bone Collector and his small group of warriors.
A second shot was fired by one of the collaborators as both groups charged forward. Their translucent bodies crashed into one another, a few of the smaller Variants slamming backward into the street and then attempting to rejoin the fight.
The mess of disjointed arm and legs and mouths and snapping jaws became a blur as the Bone Collector lowered his head and drove his hulking body through the middle of the crowd. As he turned to survey the damage, one of his own leapt onto his back.
The female Variant who’d attacked the short-haired woman dug her claws into his armor, only to be pulled off and speared with the bone of his exposed left elbow. He raised her into the air, allowing the others to see, before gripping her right arm and pulling it off. The giant Alpha tossed her body into the street, and as his human prisoners moved out of sight, he spotted his next victim.
Behind the chaos of the two Variant gangs stood the only other creature that matched his size. Actually, Goliath was a head taller and must have outweighed him by at least sixty pounds. The Alpha was bigger, but again slower, and tonight he’d use that disparity to rid the world of his only competition. Once and for all.
From across the street, Goliath locked eyes with the Bone Collector and snarled. He raised his massive arms in the air and then brought them down on the burnt-out minivan to his left, virtually smashing it into the ground.
The Bone Collector let out a howl that shook the street as he started toward his target. Moving through the densely packed crowd, he could hear the Blackhawk now overhead, beginning to descend. And coming out on the other end, he was caught off guard as the larger Alpha dropped his shoulder and rammed into him like a ten-ton wrecking ball.
The two behemoths slammed into the asphalt and rolled onto the sidewalk, crashing into the torched building. Coming to an abrupt stop against the brick façade, the Bone Collector found himself in new territory. He now lay under the bigger Alpha with only his right arm as leverage.
Goliath had him by the throat. He lay on his back with his head propped at an awkward angle against the four-story building. He slipped his blown apart left arm out and punched up toward the massive Alpha. He came away with nothing; the much larger Variant was positioned too far from his torso.
He rolled slightly onto his left side and forced his good arm up through the middle of Goliath’s, attempting to push the mammoth beast away. Again no luck, his one arm was no match for the strength of the more massive creature.
As Goliath continued to clamp down, he could feel his throat closing under the immense pressure. And looking over his aggressor’s right shoulder, he was able to see one of his collaborators firing on the chopper now directly overhead. The scared human was able to strike the hovering Blackhawk with at least six rounds.
Men in military uniforms hung from the opening, and even from this distance, the surprised look they all wore was clearly evident. One of the Marines—the man with metal blades for legs—fired from the open door. And as the Blackhawk began to drop more rapidly, he eliminated the collaborator with one shot to the head.
The Blackhawk was less than three seconds from crashing back to earth as the soldiers aboard began to bail out. One by one, they moved to the door and jumped. The last to make the leap carried a dog in his arms and quickly disappeared in the hail of ash and rain.
His vision was fading quickly under the tightening grip of the larger Alpha. A surge of white hot pain shot through his neck and into the base of his skull. The Bone Collector bucked under the massive Variant and his mind momentarily cleared.
The wet dusty ball cap from 42nd Street belonged to his friend. He couldn’t remember his name, although the man’s big bright smile was tattooed somewhere in the deep reaches of his mind. His friend must have made it off the yacht, although being in the city, he’d surely perished, and it may have even been at the hands of one of his own.
As the vision started to fade, the chopper slammed into the side of the building in an explosion that shook the entire city block. It blew into a thousand different pieces, forcing Goliath into the air and onto his back at the center of 42nd Street.
As the shredded pieces of the Blackhawk’s blades tore into the asphalt all around him, the Bone Collector quickly got to his feet and used his right arm to pull one of the still flaming pieces from the asphalt. He moved in over a dazed Goliath and shoved it through the massive Alpha’s chest, extinguishing the bright orange flames.
/> The beast was gone as fast as he’d come. The Bone Collector leaned over his former adversary and vomited a mouthful of black blood out over the limp body. He’d taken back the city and his home. And as he watched his human prisoners run off toward the destroyed public library with the remaining Marines from the Blackhawk, he looked around and roared into the night.
In unison, more than a hundred Variants began to wail. They watched as their leader was defeated, and although their guttural moans held a twinge of anguish, they absolutely were not grieving. These creatures still outnumbered his own by more than two to one. What they were doing was calling for his head.
The Bone Collector roared back in defiance, and as his small group of human collaborators and Variant warriors gathered around, he started in the direction his prisoners had run.
Lumbering forward, he scanned the streets as the familiar roar of jets once again filled the air. He pushed on and as he reached the front of the crowd, the other gang of Variants rushed in off the sidewalks.
They skittered along the tops of burned out vehicles, in between abandoned delivery trucks, and over shattered newsstands. They were chasing him and his Variants as the Marines from somewhere in the opposite direction fired automatic weapons and launched grenades. 42nd Street was now an outright war zone.
Within fifty yards of the upcoming building and along the left side of the street, he looked toward a set of windows on the fourth floor. Through the intermittent gunfire and the random explosions, his vision crystallized. From his vantage, he could make out two separate faces.
A large man and a boy sat facing the street and watching the mayhem. The defeated eyes of the man glowed in the night behind a dirty ash-covered window. He was hunched over the small boy who had tears running down his face. The man hugged the boy and appeared to be talking to him.
In a brief moment of clarity, he realized what he was looking upon. Dwight had indeed made it off the yacht. He had also somehow managed to save the small boy they’d been traveling with. And for reasons unknown to him, he turned away from the window and pointed his Variants in the opposite direction.
He dipped his scarred head, twisted his massive shoulders, and lumbered toward the New York Public Library. Movement ahead gave him hope that his human prisoners were somewhere in the building. But as he turned to face the set of doors directly ahead, he eyed the bladed Marine behind the barrel of his weapon.
There was an explosion in his mind as he felt the realization crashing in around him. He knew what this was—what was about to happen. He remembered. And even though it was only a flash, it was everything. Who he had been, his friends, his family, every single detail of his former life…all at once. He also had the memory of what brought him to this place. Tumbling off the yacht and waking along the edge of the East River. He saw their faces, each and every one of them. His victims, be they human or Variant, in their final moments.
While neither elated nor angered, he was accepting. There was no emotion, and he had no choice.
Less than a fraction of a second later, a crack echoed through the streets and the bullet racing away from the doorway entered his head. He dropped to his knees, his shoulders slumped forward, his face now caved in, and the back of his skull blown out onto 42nd Street.
Blake Chambers died in the frigid waters of the East River more than a month before. And now, out on the destroyed streets of New York City, the Bone Collector was also gone.
Extinction: Trippin’
by
Mark Tufo
An Extinction Cycle Novella
© Mark Tufo – All rights reserved
Prologue
“Gawd when is this lecture going to be over? Bitch can drone for hours!” Rebecca Kranston flung her head back, her long blond hair draping over the back of her chair. She was seated near the back of the large amphitheater lecture hall in the newly constructed Sanford S. Atwood Chemistry Center.
“Shhh…Becky,” her sorority sister Claren laughed nervously.
“Are you kidding me? I could get out into the aisle and start fapping and Professor Flappy Mouth McFlapperson Springsteen wouldn’t notice. She’d just keeping talking in that boring-ass monotone way that she does. I bet she doesn’t even breathe.”
“Will you be quiet? I’m trying to take notes.” Devon McCourty had turned around to berate the young woman.
“Then maybe you should have sat closer,” Becky shot back, then she sneered at him. “Or are you just looking to see if I’m fapping?” She spread her legs apart and brought her pointer finger to her lips in a seductive manner.
Devon immediately blushed a deep shade of crimson before turning back around.
“I thought you looked a little light in your loafers,” Becky laughed.
Claren was embarrassed and wanted to move as many rows away from the caustic girl as she could. But it was common knowledge on campus that Becky Cranston’s parents had money and she had the looks of a top tier model, two things that made her a powerful ally or a terrible enemy and she preferred the former much more than the latter.
“Come on Claren, let’s just go. I can barely stay awake.”
“We can’t, Becky. You’re close to failing this class and attendance is almost twenty percent of the grade.”
“Fine, wake me when it’s over.” She’d no sooner closed her eyes when the campus alarm rang out. This had just been installed due to the recent glut of campus shootings. “Great,” she stated as she opened one eye. “Another murdering, suicidal asshole with a gun. Why doesn’t he just shove the muzzle up his ass and blow holes in his brain?”
“Let’s go, let’s go!” Professor Springsteen shouted. At thirty-two, she’d been one of the youngest to ever reach tenure at the university. At seventy-two, she was one of the oldest still teaching. She’d lost her love for it nearly two decades ago but truly feared what she would do with the rest of her life if she didn’t keep doing it. Each building had “safe-zones” designated for just such emergencies. The Professor had moved to the far left and was holding open a door to the stairwell that led down into the underground labs. These were initially put in for faculty to work on level-2 pathogens, but parents’ and students’ rights activists had taken a great affront to having potentially lethal viruses being studied right under a lecture hall and until a virtually unattainable degree of safety could be reached, the state of the art facility was collecting dust.
“Screw this. It’s just a drill. Let’s go back to the house and do some shots.” Becky had grabbed Claren’s arm and was pulling her away from the steady flow of students swimming downstream.
“We can’t know that, Becky, and if it is a drill, the Professor will be taking attendance down there.”
“When did you become such a slug, Claren? Don’t worry about it. My parents will buy a wing or something and I’ll graduate just fine.”
“Yeah, but what about me?” Claren asked as Becky pulled her out of the classroom.
They ran out of the hall, through the open atrium, and were standing on the top step of the large stone staircase. Students were running recklessly in every direction.
“Doesn’t look like a drill, Becky,” Claren said nervously.
“Makes it that much more exciting!” Becky was taking the stairs down, two at a time, a reluctant Claren in tow. “I want to see the shooter before the police kill him, but I don’t hear…oh there it is.” The staccato burst of a weapon broke through the screams of frightened students and faculty running for cover. Becky was pulling Claren forward while also looking for the camera app on her phone so she could take video of the man during his last few breaths before the authorities got to him.
“Maybe it will be a head shot! We can watch his brains get splattered all over the pavement and I could have that on my phone forever! Wonder how many likes I could get on Facebook for that! I’ll be an Instagram smash!”
Claren had finally dug her heels in when there was constant gunfire to the side of them and she realized there was more t
han one active shooter. Even Becky had stopped to take notice. “Mr. ‘super geeky lonely with a gun’ has a friend?” Becky asked.
They’d been still for a few seconds when they heard and saw four students off to their left come screaming and running from around the corner of the residential hall not more than fifty yards away. Claren realized just how exposed and vulnerable they were in the middle of the open quad, which led to all points within the six-hundred acre campus.
“This…this isn’t a drill and we’re in danger.” Claren had decided to change who was leading and grabbed Becky’s arm. She was pulling her back to the building they’d moments before evacuated; the sight in front of them stopped the girls short. Five impossibly deformed creatures covered from head to toe in blood had pulled down the slowest of the quad runners. Blood arced high into the air as they tore into him with their claws and teeth. They’d ripped at him so vigorously, body parts were flung into the air. Becky had nearly thrown up when she’d seen what looked suspiciously like a liver fall wetly to the ground. Four had stayed to enjoy their meal, the fifth was looking for desert.
“Come on!” Claren urged Becky who was shutting down from the shock of the sight.
“What are they?” Becky asked as she kept her head turned to the action. Two of the creatures left their mutilated kill and were moving incredibly fast toward a remaining trio of students, one who’d had the misfortune to be barefoot and had stepped on something sharp, slowing him down considerably due to his limping gait.
“Oh, gawd.” Becky reached up to her mouth in a desperate and failed attempt to hold back the bile that poured forth from her stomach. Warm chunks of her half-digested bran muffin flowed through and around her fingers. One of the creatures caught the scent of her vomit and immediately looked over to the two girls.
Claren turned in time to see that the thing had spotted them. Becky had long strings of stomach juice hanging from her mouth and dripping from her hand.