The Monster Apocalypse

by Brian Rowe

  “Paul,” he said. “What have you done?”

  Paul breathed through his nose, as black blood spurted out all sides of his neck. He just stared at his father, not with pain or sadness, but with disappointment.

  Brin reached for Paul’s hand, and he reached for hers. Their fingers touched, only briefly.

  “You always were a stupid boy,” Droz said. “But you were my stupid boy.”

  Droz leaned over and kissed his son on the forehead. Then he pressed his lips together, bent backward, and ripped the sword out of Paul’s neck.

  Paul leaned to his left. His eyes rolled to the back of his head. He dropped to the snow, falling to his knees first, then to his right side.

  Then he stopped breathing.

  “No,” Brin said. “No! You bastard! You goddamn bastard!”

  “So stupid. Sacrificed himself… for nothing.” Droz looked at Brin, not with a smile, but with a determination to finish what he started. He wiped the blood from the sword and took a step forward. “He only saved you a few extra seconds. I wish my son would’ve died for a better reason than that—”

  The pounding on the walls put an end to Droz’s ramblings. The sound was loud to the left, then loud again to the right.

  Droz turned his head every which way. “What the hell is that?”

  Brin darted her eyes at the only door. And she watched in surprise, and glee, and total amazement, as it came tumbling down.

  Droz turned around. His jaw dropped in horror. “What! No! What are you doing here?”

  The zombies stumbled their way inside, one after another. It only appeared to be two or three at first, but within a few seconds a gross yellow dozen had already stepped into the giant, open area at the bottom of the mill.

  Droz held up his sword. “Stay back! Stay back, goddammit!”

  Brin still felt ready to pass out—but she managed to stand up, anyway. She had to pay a greeting to a familiar face.

  “It’s you,” Brin said, pointing to the girl at the front of the pack. The only child zombie she could see, the girl pointed right back at her. “You’re the little girl from the RV. The girl who bit Lavender!”

  The girl snarled, revealing a set of sharp yellow teeth. But she wasn’t looking at Brin; she wasn’t paying any attention to Brin.

  She had her focus on Droz.

  “You don’t… you don’t like our flesh,” he said, terror in his voice. “Zombies don’t eat our flesh! We’re dead! We taste like shit!”

  The little girl tilted her head down, and said, in a low, demonic voice, “No, sir. You taste… like victory.”

  The girl glanced at Brin, only for a second. Brin could’ve sworn she saw the little zombie wink at her.

  Then the girl let out a triumphant yell and leaped up into the air, at least ten feet high, across the mounds of snow, and landed on Droz’s chest. She wrapped her arms around his head and latched her teeth down onto his nose. Droz screamed as the little girl ripped his nose clean off his face, chewed on it for a few seconds, then spit it back out.

  “Ugh,” the girl said. “You taste the worst of all!”

  He tried to push her off, his arms flailing wildly, but she was latched onto him like a four-foot-tall leech. She started chewing on his ear.

  Brin’s adrenaline was sky high. She backed away from Droz, from the little girl, from the oncoming bloodshed. She looked to her right and prepared for one or more of the many zombies to head toward her.

  But none did.

  “Come,” the little girl said to the others as she continued chewing away at Droz’s face.

  A second zombie started chewing on his leg, and another grabbed his arm, ripping it clean off from the rest of his body.

  “Nooooooo!” Droz screamed, loud and defeated. “Not fair! It’s not fair!”

  A horde of creatures piled around him from every side and brought him all the way down to the ground. Brin couldn’t look at the gruesome sight any longer. She turned around, toward the door.

  The sound that followed, however, brought her eyes right back to the scene.

  The ground beneath her started to rumble.

  “What…” she started. She backed all the way up against the wall and tried to remain standing. She started tilting to the left, then to the right, like a deadly earthquake was starting to work its terror on Bodie Ghost Town. “Shit, what the hell—”

  The hole in the ground started forming, right behind Droz—the same one he created when she and the others escaped in Ash’s car, and the same one he used to try to dispose of Paul in the Underground. The hole started small, just a few inches wide, and then started expanding.

  “Goddammit,” Droz said. “Get… the hell… off me!”

  Droz sliced through a dozen of the zombies, with his sword, with his one remaining arm, and shook the little girl off, kicking her into the air and sending her straight down into the hole. Where that hole went, Brin still didn’t know—and she had no intention of finding out.

  Droz only had one arm left, but he used it the best he could. He sawed through another five zombies, chopping some into three, and cutting the heads off of others. More zombies trickled in, but he was finally able to destroy each one that designated him his mortal enemy.

  He looked at Brin, his eyes a creepy orange-black. Most of his face had been destroyed. He sliced through three more zombies, then marched slowly toward Brin.

  “You… must… die,” he said.

  The hole grew bigger and bigger. Brin felt the walls surrounding her start to give way. She didn’t know what the area was used for, with its four walls but non ceiling; it was like an outdoor patio, with only one way in and out. It was like she had been dropped in a large trash compactor, with death her only escape.

  She glanced at the exit. Ten zombies or more were blocking it.

  Droz sliced through another one. And another one. He was weakened but didn’t show it. He took another step toward her.

  “You don’t deserve to be Satan. You don’t deserve his power!”

  Brin stared at him and shook her head. She didn’t know what to say. She crept into the back corner.

  The hole now took up half the outdoor area. The zombies kept falling in, one after another.

  Droz approached Brin. He was just feet away. That smile returned to his face, even though his lips had been ripped away and his yellow tongue was nearly severed and dangling at the side of his mouth.

  Brin closed her eyes and waited for the painful impact.

  “Die!” Droz shouted, and he raised the sword up over his head. “Die! Die! Die—”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  A hand from behind removed the sword from the clan leader’s grasp. Droz didn’t even have time to turn around, when the sword pierced through the center of his face.

  Black blood spurted out of his head, and chunks of Droz’s brain matter sprayed against Brin’s chest. She opened her mouth in horror, as she stepped to her right to see Paul, barely alive.

  “Paul,” Brin said.

  He looked at her, only once. “Get out of here.”

  “But what about—”

  “Go to him. Go to the one who loves you.”

  Brin hesitated. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’ve seen it. He loves you. And you love him. Do me this one favor, Brin Skar. Be happy.”

  And with that, Paul pulled his father’s body back toward him, all the way back into the hole.

  “Noooooo!” Brin shouted, as Paul and Droz disappeared from sight. She jumped forward and looked down.

  But then she took two steps back.

  The hole grew wider and wider—and the standard mill started coming down.

  Brin readied herself to fall into the vast, empty hole toward the center of the earth, to a monster’s heaven, to a monstrous hell, to God knows what.

  But Ash grabbed her arm just in time and pulled her toward the door.

  “Oh my God! Brin!”

  “Ash!” she screamed, loud and boistero
us and thankful. She wanted to kiss him but knew there wasn’t time.

  “We have to get out of here! The whole mill is falling apart!”

  Brin looked to her right to see the creaky mill swaying back and forth. Zombies stood at the door, the only way in or out, all clearly confused what to do now that the big bad Droz was gone. At the golf course earlier Brin and Ash had done all they could to avoid their touch, but now they were colliding against them, like the humans and the zombies were the best of friends.

  “Hi,” Ash said, brushing past the creatures to find a way out of the mill. “Sorry, sorry, excuse me, pardon me.” He didn’t let go of Brin’s hand. He kept a tight grip and pulled her out.

  Brin didn’t say a word to the zombies, but she bounced off one of them, an obese female who had part of her face missing. Brin saw the zombie in a blur—but she knew who it had to be.

  “Oh no,” Brin said.

  “Brin, hurry!”

  “Oh God, Ash, I think I just saw Anaya—”

  They re-entered the mill, just in time for the roof to start collapsing. They raced across two large, empty rooms, avoided about fifty more zombies, and made a sharp left at a tiny corridor to find an exit door, wide open.

  Brin glanced back. The hole was growing, just getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

  “Brin! Jump! Goddammit, jump!”

  “OK!”

  Brin and Ash leaped away from the exit door and crashed down against the snowy hill, just as the entire standard mill imploded in on itself and dropped into the widening hole. Zombies screamed and moaned as they all fell back against the mill, down, down, down, into the black, vast nothingness.

  Brin looked up at the awesome sight, marveling at it and worrying about it at the same time. “Holy shit, Ash,” she said. “With Droz gone… I think… the hole’s just going to keep expanding.”

  “What?” Ash said. “Are you kidding me? Then we’re dead! We’re all dead!”

  “Probably! Run!”

  Brin grabbed Ash’s hand, and the two started sprinting down the hill, past the desecrated houses, past the crawling zombies. The hole behind them wasn’t just getting bigger; it was growing to the size of the entire town.

  Brin glanced back only once to see at least ten of Bodie Ghost Town’s famous landmark buildings fall back into the burgeoning hole.

  “Faster, Ash!” Brin shouted. She could outrun him in a heartbeat, but she wasn’t going to lose her tight grip on his hand—she’d lost everyone, literally everyone, and couldn’t bare the thought of losing Ash, too. “Come on, we have to run to the other side of the town!”

  “I don’t know if I can make it,” Ash said, already breathing hard and heavy.

  “You can make it! I know you can—”

  A body collided against hers, just left of the children’s schoolhouse. It was Justin, his face crusty and red, and his arm huddled around a frail body.

  “Justin!” Brin shouted.

  “Brin! You’re alive!” He kept a tight grip on the figure next to him, even though she was barely keeping up. “I’ve got Mom!”

  Brin peered around her brother to see her mother, still white as the snow beneath them, but with an expression on her face that didn’t read spiteful or evil any longer.

  “She’s still a vampire,” Justin said. “She’s still one of them. But she’s lucid again. She recognizes us as her children again, not her mortal enemies!”

  “Mom!” Brin tried to reach out for her. “Mom, are you all right? I’m sorry! I’m so sorry—”

  The schoolhouse crumbled down into the hole, and Ash stumbled, reacting to the loud crash behind him.

  “Ash! Don’t fall!”

  “No, duh,” he said, as Brin jerked him back up to his feet. “I’ve seen enough horror movies to know that falling gets you killed!”

  “We’re about to die, and you’re still talking about movies.”

  “Yep. You wouldn’t expect anything different from me. Would you, Brin?”

  They reached the center of town, and as the hole crept toward them, Brin looked back at it to see it had become at least a mile wide.

  “It’s like The Fog, The Mist,” Ash said. “It’s The Blob, out to get us!”

  “Where do we run to?” Justin shouted, still with a tight grip on Tessa.

  Brin pointed to the top of the hill, to the dirt trail that led back to the paved road. “That way! Hurry!”

  The four of them started sprinting again, and this time nobody looked back. Brin felt the buildings crumbling behind her, each and every sacred monument in Bodie Ghost Town falling into the hole of death.

  “Did anyone else survive?” Justin asked, as they ran past the last of the buildings.

  “No,” Brin said. “Paul, Mr. Barker, Anaya. They’re dead. They’re all dead.”

  The hole took the last of the buildings and kept widening, a demonic force headed straight for the remaining survivors, who were all seconds away from falling back into the large, deadly abyss.

  They climbed up the hill, toward the dirt trail, Justin and Tessa out in front, Brin and Ash right behind them. Brin’s grip on Ash was so tight she felt his warm blood graze her fingertips.

  “Brin,” Ash said, looking down at his feet, seeing the hole expanding toward them. “Brin, we’re not going to make it—”

  “Shut up, Ash! We’re going to make it!”

  “We’re not fast enough.”

  The outer edges of the hole grazed Ash’s feet. He kicked himself forward just in time.

  “Brin, if we don’t make it…”

  “We will!” she shouted. “Stop talking! Keep running!”

  “If we don’t make it, I just wanted you to know…”

  “Ash, don’t! Not now!”

  “I love you…” He started slowing down.

  “Goddammit, Ash! Move!”

  “And not just as a friend… I’m in love with you, Brin…”

  Brin pulled onto him harder. They were ten seconds away from the top of the hill. “Are you really going to say this now?”

  “I just thought… you know… I’d tell you—”

  The hole reached his feet, and Ash started to fall. Brin turned around just in time and grabbed him by his shoulders.

  “Holy shit, holy shit!” Ash screamed

  “Nooooooo!” Brin grabbed his right hand and held onto him tight, but almost fell into the hole herself. She readied herself for the hole to take her, too, but the widening stopped, just inches in front of Brin’s feet.

  “Brin! Oh God, Brin! Don’t let me go!”

  “I won’t!” Brin shouted. “How did…” She turned to her right to see her mom’s arm reaching out, up toward the sky or out toward Bodie Ghost Town, she wasn’t sure. “Mom! You stopped the hole from taking us! You stopped it!”

  “Did I?” she asked, bewildered, before she fainted and slumped down into Justin’s arms.

  “Justin!” Brin shouted. “I need your help! I can’t lift Ash up alone.”

  “Hold on,” he said. “I can’t let Mom go. I have to set her down—”

  “No! There’s no time!” Brin’s grip on Ash’s hand was weakening. She tried to pull him up out of the edge of the abyss, but she didn’t have enough strength. She turned to her left and shouted, for no one in particular, “Somebody, please! Please help me! If anyone can hear me, please!”

  “Brin, it’s OK,” Ash said.

  “No! I won’t let you go. You’re my best friend—”

  “I’ll always love you, Brin...”

  She felt his grip weakening even more. He started to slip away.

  “Ash, no!”

  “It’s OK…”

  “No, please. Goddammit. Goddammit, Ash, I love you! All right? I fucking love you, too—”

  A pair of hands grabbed Ash’s shoulders. Brin’s jaw dropped all the way to the snow, as she turned to her left.

  Anaya shook her head in annoyance. “You two were always perfect for each other, you know that?”

 
“Anaya…” Brin’s eyes grew to the size of lemons. She nearly fainted from the sight of her. “Anaya, you’re alive!”

  “I know,” she said. “As much as you keep trying to kill me, you just can’t stop Anaya Frost. Now help me, Brin! Help me with Ash!”

  “OK, OK!”

  “Ready? One… two…”

  “Three!”

  Brin and Anaya closed their eyes and pulled Ash up, up, up, with all their might, and he landed on top of them with a loud, awkward thud.

  Silence ensued. Then Brin finally said, “This has been a really long day.”

  “That was close,” Ash said, trying to catch his breath. Even though it was freezing out, he wiped sweat away from his forehead. “Thanks, Brin. Thanks, Anaya.”

  “You’re welcome,” Anaya said, and she jumped up to her feet.

  Anaya helped Brin and Ash up, and the trio walked over to Justin and Tessa, who were standing at the top of the hill, in the center of the bumpy dirt road.

  Anaya stopped next to Justin and said, “So happy you made it.” She turned back to Brin. “Mr. Barker?”

  Brin shook her head.

  “Paul?”

  She shook it again.

  “Droz?”

  Brin shook her head a third time, but this time triumphantly.

  All five turned around and looked out at Bodie Ghost Town, now nothing but a large black hole in the center of the universe. The zombies, the vampires—all were decimated, and gone without a trace.

  Tessa rested her head against Justin’s shoulder, and Anaya crossed her arms, taking a deep, satisfied breath.

  “What are we supposed to do now?” Anaya asked.

  Brin nodded at Anaya, then her brother, and her mother. She looked past them to see the sun appearing over a mountain in the distance, near where the paved road began. Civilization, and normal life, was just miles away.

  She smiled at Ash and took his hand in hers.

  Brin sighed, happily. “We go home.”

  Epilogue

  There was a chill in the air.

  Grisly, Nevada, had never seen a winter last this long, and the snow showed no signs of letting up. The blizzards had been infrequent in the beginning of the year, but by March they were blasting through town at least four times a week. Even though it was mid-April, and the warm summer was mere weeks away, the snowfall that chilly Friday night was dumping so hard that most of the Skar estate was covered in a blanket of white.