by Jack Flacco
Ranger rose to his feet, picked up his shotgun and to his surprise, he thought as brainless as they were, one of the zombies had retrieved the tank and carried it up the stairs to the landing where he originally had thrown it. The zombie chewed on it with the intent to eat it.
Sprinting quickly up the next flight, Ranger leaned over the rail and shot at the extinguisher in the zombie’s hand. He missed. Still pushing forward while the zombie with the tank moved forward, he shot at the tank again, and again he missed. At the same time, he managed to hit a few other zombies, so he didn’t feel he wasted shells.
Ranger stopped one more time. This time, he leaned over, but took a moment to breathe. When he was ready, he pulled the trigger and the tank exploded into a massive cloud, shooting shrapnel through zombie heads and bodies. Ranger didn’t stick around to finish watching the show. He knew the explosion would have clobbered everything in the stairwell.
Moments later, Ranger burst from the door to the roof and fell on his back with Matty and Jon in his arms safe and sound. A large cloud blew past them from the stairwell, but it didn’t prevent Ranger from slamming the door with his foot, making sure if anything had survived, it’d stay inside the building and not on the roof.
When General Grayson spotted them, he dragged Randy from the edge of the building and used him as a shield against errant gunfire. Then he pulled his service weapon and blasted at Ranger and the kids, but he couldn’t get a clear shot because they had hid behind a large air conditioning unit. It didn’t seem to bother Jon and Matty, since they had their attention somewhere else.
“Wow.” Jon said at the most inopportune moment. Shots flew and he had the silver belly of the alien ship on his mind. He couldn’t keep his eyes from lighting up as he gazed at what should have been the sky. He repeated. “Wow.”
“Jon,” Matty said, “Now’s not the time to admire something that can kill us.”
“Your sister’s right.” Ranger let go of them, “I have bigger problems to deal with.”
Another shot flew past them but not a one would hit them.
“I thought by now Colonel Hendricks would have called the ship away.” Jon said.
“Didn’t we talk about this?” Ranger said. “That’s the last time I trust a military guy.”
The kids and Ranger held tight behind the air conditioning unit, which provided ample cover for them. Ranger thought, eventually the general would run out of bullets. He didn’t know when, and he didn’t want to find out the hard way either.
* * *
Hendricks, David and Billy climbed the stairs and burst through the door to the control tower’s command center. Again, with no lights to illuminate their way other than the large windows facing the runway, the consoles rested in a dark state.
“What do we do now? There’s no power anywhere.” Billy asked.
“Spread out. There has to be a switch to a hard line somewhere. We might get lucky and get this place back online with auxiliary power.” Hendricks pointed to the dead consoles.
The consoles sat in two rows, one row facing the windows and the other facing the door from where they came. Whoever had worked there had left in a hurry since the chairs in the room sat toppled over one another.
Through the windows overlooking the tarmac, Hendricks spotted a helicopter sitting idle next to the base of the tower. He had an idea. Barring problems with the weather, he thought he could use the helicopter for their escape. A silly idea at best, but it would mean not worrying about the military trying to prevent them from leaving the state through the roads.
It didn’t take long for Billy to find the auxiliary power switch on one of the walls inside a metal box. When he flicked it, everything rebooted. Lights turned on, computer fans whirred, and the consoles lit from the power surging through the equipment’s metal veins.
“Good job, Billy.” Hendricks said.
“What’s next?” David asked.
“We’ll need a console with the prompt. Once we get that, we’re in.”
As the computers rebooted, Billy asked, “What if this doesn’t work?”
“This has to work. We’ve taken great care to perfect this plan. Lots of testing in the field. Do you know how tough it was for our kid to breach alien security, download standard transmissions and decipher their language? We had to setup transmission nets on buildings to pick up aliens talking with one another via their communications line. And even then, we tested the transmissions by sending fake hellos to the ship from below where we knew a heavy alien presence existed.” The colonel sunk his hand in his pocket and pulled out a USB stick. “This has to work.”
After a few minutes, one of the consoles blinked several times and presented the operating system’s logo. It then blinked some more and sat there ready for input. Hendricks rolled a chair to the computer and inserted the USB stick into the machine’s port. Several seconds later, a message on the screen said it was set for use.
Hendricks clicked a few times, typed and clicked some more until the familiar black command box appeared. He typed several other commands in the box on the screen and the prompt flashed, waiting. One more keystroke and he would get the whole thing started. He paused.
“What’s the matter?” David asked, staring at the flashing prompt.
“Nothing.” Hendricks nonchalantly traced the keys with his index finger, rubbing away the dust from the pads. “Just wondering, if this doesn’t work we’ll have no other chance to defeat the alien bastards.”
“But you said it would work!” Billy’s face turned serious, not impressed with the colonel’s attempt at humor.
“All right, all right.”
The boys held their breath, staring at the screen.
“Get ready for the ride of your life.” Colonel Hendricks pressed the button on the keyboard to execute the final command.
The USB stick lit green, flashing several times. Its fake SOS traveled from the computer’s wires all the way through the building’s network lines, crawled the base of the roof of the control tower, raced toward the antennae and scattered in the wind. It then flew across Wichita to the top of the Epic Center where the saucer sat dormant for all to see.
Inside the craft, the panels glowed in dark rooms as the transmission hit its receiver. Two of the dozen aliens, who monitored the battle below between the wild-armed capsule creatures and the zombies, noticed the incoming message. Their attention drifted from their screens. They stared at the message with wide eyes and restless arms. One of the alien bastards, at least that was what Colonel Hendricks called them, tapped the panel to see if the message would go away. Perhaps the instruments had made a mistake. Perhaps, the signal came from one of their detachments from the scene of the fight. The message did not lie.
The pale creatures conferred with one another until one of them turned to a third alien sitting in a chair surveying the battle from his throne. With a bowed head, one of them approached its master who sat in command of the great ship. The leader waited on his ensign for the report. The ensign kept its head low and squawked its observations to the commander in charge of the floating fortress.
The commander rose to his feet, stepped from his chair and marched to the panel. When he saw the message, he tapped the panel, as if twice was a charm. He understood the transmission. It said leave the vicinity and return home. The transmission would only come in the event their fellow aliens had lost possession of the planet and needed to save the rest of their species.
In a series of gurgles and squeaks, the commander waved his hand at the panel and smacked his fist into his hand then pointed with one finger beyond the panel’s controls and display systems.
A message from the ship darted from its transmitter through the air, flying past several alien fighters, screaming through a flock of birds, cutting into the rain and slamming into Beech Factory Airport’s control tower antennae, running along the length of the tower, through the roof, across the network wires and into the console’s computer where Hendricks waited.
>
“What does F07D5C17 mean?” Billy asked, watching the screen as the code flashed at the prompt.
As soon as he had finished saying that, the door to the room blasted open, smashing against the wall. One of the undead had survived the melee at the hands of the colonel and the boys, and leaped from the doorway on to the consoles behind them.
“I thought you had locked the door!” Hendricks shot to his feet while the chair under him flew across the room.
“I did,” David fumbled with his gun and dropped it.
Billy didn’t let the monster frighten him. He pulled his gun and shot the zombie, but missed the head and caught the shoulder instead. A huge gush of green flowed from the wound as the undead trounced David. Billy shot it again, this time hitting it in the neck. Not the kill shot he expected, but the impact loosened David from its clutches. David’s freedom didn’t last long, though. Before Hendricks had finally wrestled the gun from Billy’s hand and blown the zombie’s brains all over the floor behind it, the fiend had sunk its rotting teeth into David’s neck, ripping it apart.
“Billy, get the door!” Hendricks pointed. “Push a chair under it.”
At that point, Hendricks had a decision to make, wrestle the zombie’s dead body from David and help him, in the process losing a window of opportunity to end the alien invasion or punch in the acknowledgement code and let David bleed to death. He stood there watching the life pour from David’s neck to the floor. To add to his problems, the door he thought Billy had under control, pushed open with hands flailing through the crack, attempting to grab a hold of the boy.
Colonel Hendricks didn’t have a choice. If the window of opportunity to deliver the worm to the alien vessels closed, humanity would die never to create families, children and a thriving society again.
The aliens would win.
Chapter 36
“It’s over, general.” Ranger shouted. “The only way out of here is through me. Let Randy go.”
“Not a chance,” General Grayson said.
“C’mon, general. You can walk out of here a free man.”
“You’re not really going to let him go.” Jon whispered.
Ranger ducked, “Of course not. But he doesn’t know that.”
“Shoot him in the head, Ranger!” Randy shouted sporting a death wish.
Grayson pointed his gun at Randy’s temple and said, “You are mistaken, Ranger. I have all the chips in this poker game. Look around you. In a few minutes, I’ll have a ship to pick me up, and you and your team will die at the hands of the undead. What do you think of that?”
“Oh, my God,” Matty said, “The guy’s monologuing.”
“I was just about to say the same thing.” Jon said.
“What are we going to do, Ranger?”
Perhaps Ranger didn’t have to do anything after all. The spacecraft began to whir, then slowly spun, shifting from its spot in the sky. General Grayson and Emissary Rodan raised their heads and wondered the same thing, “Why is the ship leaving?” It picked up speed and moved further and further away from hovering over the skyscraper. Following it were the alien fighter crafts that had earlier detached from the ship to clear the streets of the zombie hordes. They returned to once again become nodules shining brightly under the ship’s belly. Had Hendricks finally pulled through for the team? Had he sent the transmission as he had promised?
“Where is the ship going, emissary?” The general asked, still holding the gun on Randy.
Emissary Rodan attempted to contact the craft, but it didn’t respond. It had other plans and Rodan had no part in them.
“Answer my question, emissary. Where is the ship going?”
“I do not know. It should have sent a transport for the boy and it seems to be ignoring my communications. I believe it is leaving. I believe—”
A shot cracked through the air and pierced Emissary Rodan’s neck. All four of his hands grasped at the wound as he staggered on the roof. For a moment, his eyes turned pale. Another shot broke the silence and ripped through his skull. As quickly as it had happened, Emissary Rodan fell from the edge of the building, flew through the air and slammed on the sidewalk below. General Grayson had had enough of the alien infestation. His gun continued to smolder when he yelled. “I have a deal for you, Ranger.”
“Don’t believe him.” Jon whispered, “If he had his way, he’d kill us all.”
From behind the air conditioner, Ranger asked, “What’s the deal, Grayson?”
“I don’t have all day and my patience is running thin. Drop your weapons, come out and I won’t blow a hole through your boy’s head here. You have ten seconds to decide.”
Matty’s hand went over her eyes as pleasant memories of her and Randy filled her brain—sitting on a rock talking about music, waking up next to him with his arm wrapped around her shoulder, and the kiss she had given him. It all seemed so long ago. She couldn’t lose him. He was the closest thing she ever had as a friend. Ranger had to think of something. He couldn’t let Randy die. She said, “What are you going to do, Ranger? If you go out there, the general’s going to kill Randy anyway. Please don’t let anything happen to Randy.”
Ranger tucked his chin into his chest and stared at the surface of the roof as he crouched thinking what to do. Seconds seemed like an eternity as the different scenarios played through his mind. If they surrendered their weapons, Grayson would kill them all. If they stood and fought, the general would kill Randy and take his chances blowing away Ranger and the kids. If they did nothing and hoped the general would leave, then they wouldn’t know how long the standoff would last. Ranger had another idea.
“Stay here.” He whispered to the kids. “Matty, if anything should happen to me, don’t let the general get away.” He couldn’t ask Matty to kill the general, that wouldn’t be right. He hoped she’d know what to do on her own.
“Where are you going?” Matty asked.
Ranger didn’t offer her a response.
“What are you going to do?” Jon asked, grabbing on the sleeve of his jacket.
“I don’t know yet.”
“Your time’s up.” Grayson said.
Ranger rose from behind the air conditioner with his hands in the air, palms facing outward, knife strapped to his leg and his shotgun in his hand.
“Toss your weapon.”
Ranger threw the shotgun but kept the knife, “Why don’t we settle this, here and now? Let the boy go.”
“No. Where are the other two?”
“C’mon, general, let Randy go. What are you goin’ to do? Your army’s dead, once this day’s over the aliens will be dead, too, and there will be nowhere on earth where you can run and hide. The Resistance will put a bounty on your head.” Ranger stepped forward in plain sight. “I’m willin’ to make you a deal. If you come with me, I’ll ask the Resistance to go easy on you. I’ll make sure you get a fair trial. You won’t hang. Just let Randy go.”
Everything Ranger said made sense. If the general released Randy, he’d hope for a fair trial. The general knew that he wouldn’t live a day once the Resistance got a hold of him, and if he escaped, who would say he’d survive on his own in a street filled with zombies? Ammo only lasts so long. The offer was tempting. Grayson asked, “What guarantee do I have everything you’ve said is true?”
“By this time tomorrow, all the aliens will have left our planet, the Resistance will have taken over the cities, and the army will be running for their lives. There won’t be anywhere for you to go. You’ll be a man on the run for the rest of your life.”
Grayson glanced at the edge of the building, remembering what had happened to Emissary Rodan. Perhaps taking a leap off the building didn’t sound like a bad idea after all.
“What’dya say, general?”
Grayson threw the gun on the roof and released Randy. The teen rubbed his neck to relieve the tension the general’s grip had caused. After a few seconds, Randy turned around, stared at Grayson, and without so much as a word, hit him in the fa
ce. No one was more surprised than Matty who rose from behind the air conditioning unit with Jon by her side.
Randy didn’t waste a moment. His gaze met hers and he ran into her waiting arms, hugging, and not letting go. Thoughts streamed through his mind, as he couldn’t have imagined a world without Matty in his life. He turned his head and whispered in her ear, but the words were indecipherable. Whatever he said had caused her to hug him even more.
“Glad you see it my way, general.” Ranger said, putting his arms down expecting Grayson to surrender quietly.
General Grayson had something else in mind. He walked toward Ranger with his arms still stretched to the sky. About two feet from Ranger, the general said, “I know the Resistance will want to see me hang.”
“Like I said, I’ll make sure you get a fair trial.”
“I was thinking about that. No matter what you and I do today, we’re all going to die anyway. You can guarantee my safety for only so long before the undead come after and kill us all. What’s left? Nothing will survive. Nothing you say or do today will matter. Eventually, this world will not be ours ever again.” General Grayson scratched his chin. “So, this is what I’m thinking.”
Before Ranger had seen it coming, the general threw a punch at his face dropping him on the spot. Randy and the others gawked at the general while Matty raised her gun at him searching for a clear shot. Stunned by the sucker punch, Ranger tried to shake the confusion by rolling on his side to catch his breath. Grayson didn’t give him any time to rest. He kicked Ranger in the face, causing him to smack the back of his head on the roof’s surface. The general followed up his pummeling by picking the zombie slayer from the lapels, and dragging him to the edge of the building.