by Jack Flacco
“Do you see that alien down there?” Grayson jerked a dazed Ranger, their faces an inch apart. “It decided to double-cross me. No one double-crosses me. That’s why I’ve resolved to prevent that from ever happening again. I’m going to toss you off this building. I’ll watch you fall until you smash into that sidewalk, turning your insides into a bag of liquid waste. Then I’m going after the kids. One by one, I’m going to toss them off this building, too.”
A lucid mind came over Ranger and he could finally see straight. He could see the general’s hands on him, the snarling rat face, and the demented eyes. For the first time, he realized he should have gotten rid of him back at the camp, but he’s never killed anyone before. He didn’t have a problem with killing the undead. They weren’t human. They didn’t have a soul. The general had a soul. As evil and as reprehensible as it was, it still belonged to a human, and being human had rights.
For Matty, who had her gun pointed at General Grayson the whole time, she also never killed anyone. She had killed her fill of zombies, but never human. She wasn’t about to let the general kill Ranger either. Before he could do that, she’d stop the general first. Ranger would not die. Not today.
From the corner of Grayson’s eye, a shadow sped to his face with such ferocity that he thought one of the kids had sneaked up on him. In truth, Ranger’s fist collided with the general’s face. Grayson toppled over and crashed on his back with his shoulders hitting the roof. Ranger darted to his feet. The general soon followed.
They stared at each other like two scorpions in a jar, equally matched, equally able to inflict the worst damage to each other.
While Ranger and Grayson shifted back and forth, wondering how to take each other on, the door to the roof crashed open and one of the undead sprung from the opening. Matty quickly aimed her Colt at the thing and unleashed a volley to speak her mind. The shot slammed into the zombie’s head, splashing green all over the doorway. Randy and Jon sprinted to the doorway, pushed the body back into the stairwell and flung the door with their shoulders, pinning it shut. Yet, with all their pushing and shoving, more of the undead pounded on it. Matty screamed, “We’ve got to keep this door closed.”
“What do you think we’re doing, playing tennis?” Jon’s face turned nasty. “Get something to lock this!”
* * *
Colonel Hendricks turned his back on David, bent to the console and began to type the second transmission code on the screen. As he typed and as Billy held the door screaming, “I need help. I can’t hold it much longer,” the ship he had transmitted the SOS appeared from the dark clouds. It flashed its lights and postured itself in front of the control tower. It had managed to trace the point of origin of the transmission. It stood face to face with the colonel on the other side of the glass windows.
Hendricks breathed a cool mouthful of air and continued to type the second message that would confirm the retreat order. If it didn’t work for this ship, he thought, it would work for the others. The message embedded into the transmission would hop from ship to ship, sending out a distressed retreat code to all of them. The colonel would have to finish his coding first.
By this time, David breathed his last, giving up his spirit. Billy’s face had turned to a puddle as he attempted to push the door closed with his shoulders, as another group of zombies pounded at the door. The ship on the other hand, sat there and a small flap under its belly erupted revealing a slender white tube aimed directly at the colonel. Hendricks tried typing as fast as he could but stumbled a few times, slowing him to finish coding the second transmission.
The hail started again, this time worse than before, slamming golf ball-sized ice chunks on the ship. This caused the ship to retreat from the tower, almost as if God himself had placed a wall of hail as protection against the control tower. Next, lightening cracked above the ship, pressing the alien craft to drop further away from the tower. The final act of nature came in the form of churning black clouds Kansas had seen much too often in its history. The funnel cloud shot to the tarmac between the ship and the control tower.
If any a divine hand existed, the time had arrived for it to reveal itself in full glory.
Debris collected and smashed into the spacecraft, yet it left the helicopter unharmed. Hendricks pressed the button to send the second transmission to the ship. He didn’t know if it would work until he’d receive an automated response as confirmation. In the meantime, he sprinted to help Billy, hopping the desks to slam the door shut with his shoulder.
“Is David dead?” Billy asked.
“Yes, he’s dead.”
“Are we going to die?”
Colonel Hendricks didn’t answer the question right away but stared at the console where he had plugged the second transmission. If the message worked, he’d receive an acknowledgement and the transmission would travel to all the other ships throughout the globe, calling for a retreat. No matter what, Hendricks could see the whole thing play out in his head. The cities had become relics of a time gone by and the only way he could possibly fathom a true escape from the airport was to hop into the helicopter with Billy and take off, away from the explosion of the spacecraft. The thing he didn’t know was how long it would take the ship to explode. The other factor weighing on his mind had to do with the twister that had appeared out of nowhere. Who could say the funnel wouldn’t go after them as they fled the scene in the helicopter. Even more so, who could say another one of those tornadoes wouldn’t appear from the sky and destroy the helicopter?
“You didn’t answer my question. Are we going to die?”
“I don’t know.”
The colonel’s answer hadn’t come as quickly as Billy would have hoped. He knew better to know when things had reached the end. They had the undead screaming and pounding at the door behind them. They had the aliens threatening to blast them into the next world, and Billy didn’t know if Hendricks’ second code would work. If it did, they still wouldn’t have the ability to save themselves since, once the twister got out of the way, the ship would blast them and disable the retreat command. Everything had stacked up against them.
Not all was lost, though. The prompt on the console blinked. The ship acknowledged the retreat code.
Alien ships throughout the world began their ascent. In Paris, the craft that had cast a shadow over the city disappeared into the sky. Same for London, Lisbon and Rome. Melbourne, Tokyo and Beijing came next. The ships slowly propelled high into the clouds, leaving the cities desolate and empty from the conversion process. No one rejoiced. No one clapped, jumped, ran into the streets or sang a song. The survivors had yet to realize they had freedom from the atrocities of the aliens. The zombies hadn’t gone away, neither had the remnant of aliens stationed throughout the world.
In the control tower room, as the pounding and banging and screaming persisted from the other side of the door that Billy and Hendricks held at bay, Billy stared out the window to the tornado pushing the ship back from its spot, then glanced at the console, then at Hendricks. He thought for a moment, then said, “Leave.”
Colonel Hendricks swung his head to gaze at Billy’s profile.
“I said, leave. Type in the final code and I’ll press the button to send it. Take the helicopter and leave.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Yes, you are. I saw you eyeing that thing and if you go now, you’ll have a chance to save yourself before we both die. That ship isn’t going anywhere. It has found us and it will kill us. If you don’t leave now, we’re both dead. Where’s the justice in that. You have a chance now. Do it. Run. I’ll press the key and you’ll be long gone. Now, go.”
Hendricks’ stare drifted to his boots. He couldn’t leave him. He had left David to die on the floor, but he reasoned there was no way he could have saved David. “It’s no time to be a hero, kid.”
“I’m not trying to be a hero. You can still help the others. I’ll do my part. You do yours.”
The colonel looked at him wondering
what compelled the boy to want to sacrifice himself. He said, “I’m proud to have served with you, Billy. During this time that I’ve known you, you became an outstanding member of my team. The Resistance leaders would have also been proud of you.”
“I don’t need the sentiments. Get out of here, colonel.” Billy said, pressing his back firmly on the door, ignoring eye contact with Hendricks.
“Are you going to be okay with the door?”
“Don’t worry about me. I got this.”
“On three.”
One. Two. Three.
Hendricks ran, hopped the desk of terminals nearest the door and dashed to the console where it waited patiently for his next command. The horde slammed into the door inching it forward, knocking the breath from Billy’s lungs. He leaned on it with all his weight hoping the colonel would finish quickly what he had started. The tornado kept the saucer away from the control tower as if possessed by an invisible entity.
Typing in the final portion of code, Hendricks checked the command, and turned to Billy. He gave him a slight nod. That was all Billy needed to know his life meant something other than being zombie meat or an alien experiment with the undead. The prompt waited for him to do his thing.
When Hendricks left the room, Billy stood with his back to the door, pressing as hard as he could. Beads of sweat trickled from his forehead, as he didn’t know how much longer he could hold his position. The other part of the equation had him thinking of how he’d survive hopping the table with the consoles, avoiding David and the zombie’s dead bodies, pressing the key to execute the final command, and waiting to ensure the tornado held its position long enough to hear the helicopter take off. Of course, to top it off, he’d have to dodge the undead pouring into the control room before the ship exploded, taking him and the horde with it.
Hendricks crashed through the door of the building leading outside to the tarmac. He scampered to the helicopter where he jumped aboard and started the engine. The blades flung through the air in a drastic assault on the wind. The twister that had kept the alien ship occupied with ferocious winds, tossed and churned. It carried debris, blasting toward the ship. At one point, a car had flown into the spacecraft’s lights, but it’d crashed without making a dent. The distraction was his only opportunity to leave. He took it.
Billy heard the helicopter’s blades whirring in spite of the tornado’s vicious roar. He thought now would be a good a time as any to press that button, but fear gripped him knowing what it would mean. It would be the end of his life. He wouldn’t have a chance against a room full of zombies. If only he had thought to make a run for the helicopter after pressing the button. It didn’t work that way, though. He wouldn’t have time.
The helicopter took off and left the tarmac. By the time the tornado evaporated into the sky, the ship had missed it altogether. A moment later, the ship slowly drifted closer to the control tower with the tube pointed directly at the windows of the room.
Seeing the ship getting closer by the second, Billy shook his head. He wasn’t ready to die. He had so much he hadn’t done. A girlfriend. A family. A child. He wanted to visit Coney Island and eat the cotton candy there. Explore the San Diego Zoo and watch the monkeys tease each other. Travel to Disney World and meet Mickey. He would miss so much by not being alive. He scoffed at the idea realizing the world was all a nightmare. The reality dictated that he ought to take his life by dying in an explosion, succumbing to grave stalkers or falling by the hands of aliens too stupid to know it would be years before anyone would ever find anything left of them.
The door behind Billy nudged forward a few inches before a hand reached in and grabbed him by the throat. In spite of his veins popping from his neck and his face turning blue, Billy knew what he had to do. He dug for his gun buried between his belly and his belt. With all his weight, he eased forward until the zombie’s head appeared through the crack in the doorway. With what little strength he had left, he raised his gun to the creature’s face. In between fainting and trying to pry the cold, dead fingers from his neck, Billy pulled the trigger. The monster’s brains blew through the back of its head and its hand instantly became limp.
As the ship’s tube began to light a deep purple hue, Billy bolted from the door, scampered under the table of consoles and hopped over David and his killer’s bodies. The door behind him crashed against the wall and the undead, with outstretched arms, piled into the room. The whiff of David’s spilled blood drew the crowd to shake. They crashed through the table, knocked it over and crawled toward the boy.
Billy glanced at the horde behind him, then looked at the light ahead. He knew he either would become one of the undead or die with dignity as a human.
He pressed the key to the console.
The self-destruct code screamed through the wire into the rain-filled air, hitting the ship’s compromised navigation system and the transmission bounced to all the other ships rising into the upper atmosphere.
The commander inside the ship pounded his fist on his chair’s armrest and in that instant, the vessel’s main reactor chamber collapsed.
The explosion released a white light from its center, tearing through whatever stood in its path, disintegrating alien beasts into shadows. Had any of the aliens thought they’d survive, they were wrong. Through the center of the main core, a mushroom cloud spawned, slamming into the tarmac. The force broke through the asphalt embedding a crater under the ship. A shock wave careened across the grey surface destroying airport security vehicles, turning them into crumpled soda cans. Airplanes exploded, throwing debris across the surface of the tarmac, tossing wings, engines and wheels against plane hangars.
Billy saw it coming and at the moment when the undead was about to put their hands on him, the sound wave sliced through the control tower glass severing everything in the room, including Billy and the horde. From the cloud, a fireball appeared as if first hidden by the cloud, then revealed itself as the all-consuming element that nothing could stop. The flames swallowed all in its path. It curled from the core reactor and ate through the remaining aliens on the ship, including the commander. The ship exploded, starting from the center and working its way outward to the edges. Breaking in half, the ship’s weight sent it crashing several hundred feet to the tarmac below where it landed in the crater and burst into pieces.
The fire raced through the alleys of the airport and into the surrounding streets, devouring everything in its wake.
Nothing in the control tower survived. Every chunk of concrete, every single brick and beam became a twisted mound of molten waste. The zombie horde that had given Billy a hard time had melted into nothingness. Even the undead caught in closed offices couldn’t escape the impact from the ship’s blast.
The remnant of the spacecraft collapsed inside the tarmac’s trench, dug by the core’s explosion. The airport had all but disappeared in a fiery field.
As the ship collapsed and went the way of evil in the world, the self-destruct order hit the other ships that had begun their ascent into space. One ship after another exploded in the upper atmosphere where a collection of shrapnel and debris rained upon the earth from where they had departed.
All the ships had disappeared, thereby ending the horror aliens had committed against humanity.
Chapter 37
An unbearable pounding continued from the other side of the Epic Center roof’s door. Matty scanned the area, searching for something, anything, to fling under the door in order to stop the coming pack. Whatever Ranger had unleashed in the stairwell did not prevent the undead from wanting to get to the kids. The boys acted as wedges, keeping the crowd at bay while holding the door handle. Jon stuck his foot at the base of the door so that every jolt from behind him would jam it further.
With the kids busy with their problem, Ranger had his own situation to deal with. After their initial encounter, he now knew General Grayson would not leave the roof without a fight. The time for monologues had passed and Ranger wanted to get it finished so he co
uld whisk everyone off the skyscraper’s roof safely. He didn’t know how he would do that, but past dead ends had never stopped him from achieving success.
The agonizing moans from the horde that had surrounded the building began to float to the top. As the streets filled with more of the undead, the crowd poured into the skyscraper from all sides. They dragged through the corridors, climbed the stairs, lifted their nostrils and detected human in the air. The explosion Ranger had set off may have slowed the first group of zombies, but what followed, no one could have imagined. Hundreds of them took to the steps, pushing forward until the source of the scent revealed itself.
In the midst of the howls and cries, General Grayson threw the first punch, a right cross that missed Ranger’s face by an inch. Ranger countered right and caught the general on the chin. Another right cross slammed into Grayson’s face. Before Ranger could claim an early victory, though, he lifted his arms to cover his face at his opponent’s oncoming left hook. Not fast enough, it struck him on the side of the head. Without trouble, he remained on his feet, unshaken. A sinister grin pranced on the general’s face as he delivered a demolishing inside shot aimed directly into Ranger’s gut. It’d pushed the undead killer’s head down while he braced his stomach in pain. A blistering uppercut followed and tore Ranger from his feet, throwing his head back and to the ground. The knockout provided Ranger an opportunity to catch his breath.
While General Grayson stood over him, cracking his knuckles, Matty’s face sunk, unable to find anything to jam the door.
“What about your knife?” Randy pointed to the weapon’s handle visible in its sheath.
She studied her knife strapped around her leg, then she gazed at the edge of door where Jon had his foot jammed. Her little brother stared at her, nodding his head. It made sense. Without further delay, she hid her gun and pulled the knife as she ran to the door. Slamming into it, she said. “Okay, so this is what I’m going to do. Jon, when I tell you, pull your foot away. You’ll have to be fast because if we don’t time it right—”