The Mulligan Planet 2 (The Mulligan Planet Trilogy)

by Zachariah Dracoulis

  I decided that then and there is exactly why I wouldn’t fight Harry. Sure, I’m a vampire, but if he had a sword to me?

  I’d be proper buggered.

  Harry stepped back and let his opponent get to his feet, causing Warren to flop onto the ground face-first. Harry took off his blood soaked trench coat and tossed it to the floor before rolling up the grey sleeves on his, what I’m going to assume was new, long-sleeve shirt and turned to face the charging Kiwi.

  Heh, that sound’s much cuter than it was.

  Back to it.

  As the bloke reached him, Harry stepped to the side and left one leg out, tripping him up. The lump of a man spat out chunks of grass and dirt as he stood up. Harry seemed to be done with the game. That, or he was more tired than he looked.

  The attacker took a swing and Harry caught it, shifting barely with what must have been a crap-ton of force, lifted it and brought his fist up into the socket point under the muscly arm causing an unhealthy cracking sound and a pop.

  That seemed to be the only sound he could make, he looked like he was howling in pain but no sound was coming out.

  By that point Harry’s victim had started to collapse, just barely being able to stay on his feet. Harry decided to help him along with the delayed fall. He pulled the tearing man to his knees and let the useless arm go before stomping on the exposed calve. The guy did manage to make a noise, a growling cry that ripped its way out of him.

  Apparently Harry wasn’t done though, he grabbed the other arm while his defeated opponent continued to cry and wobble, lifted it high above his shoulder and, with his foot planted firmly in between his shoulder-blades, pulled and twisted, causing another pop and a re-ignition of pained screams. He let the arm go and pushed the howling mess into the dirt with his foot.

  Eventually the bandit stopped screaming and groaning, instead he’d started to try and regulate his breathing, but each of his heaving exhales kicked up another small amount of dust and each inhale brought it into his waiting mouth.

  “I wonder if he’s ready to apologise?” Harry asked his waiting and disturbed audience. “Let’s find out.” He knelt down and grabbed a handful of the bandit’s hair and lifted his head up, “Got anything you want to say?”

  Muffled and choked words were the only response, followed by a few coughs, sending the mouthful of dirt he had stored onto the grass. Harry shook him by his hair a few times, “Spit it ou-”

  “Fuck you…”

  “Hm?”

  “I said fuck yo-” Harry let go of the hair and proceeded to stomp hard on the back of the bandit’s head three times. Even I was thrown by the crunching and squelching, unlike the others though, I kept watching, my opportunity to intervene well and truly passed.

  Harry, having finished with his stress relief, took a few steps back from the still twitching corpse and wiped his foot off on the grass like he’d done nothing but stepped in dog droppings.

  After assuring himself that his foot was clean he looked straight at Kate and Wolf, who’d, at some point, started to move toward him, and shrugged with a faux-smile, “Survival of the fittest. Right?”

  One is None

  Six long hours had passed since Neysor got trapped under the building and in that time he’d forgone the concept of pain and felt only anger. Tunnelling his way out from under the rubble was arduous, even for him with his powerful and seemingly undefeatable body, but he was finally making some headway.

  The orange of early morning sunlight poured through cracks in the rubble and Neysor could just barely feel a steady breeze licking his face. That small exposure to escape gave him a new vitality and, with one massive push, he threw the last five hundred kilogram block of concrete high into the air and revealed his freedom.

  His clothes had been either destroyed by the explosion or torn off during his ascent, but he didn’t care. He kicked aside the final few bits of broken glass and rubble from his legs as he pulled himself to the top of the pile where he stood proudly.

  Sunlight gleamed off of his pale grey skin as, for a brief moment, he forgot why he’d been so angry.

  Then he saw several pieces of glass and metal jutting out of naked body and immediately became more frustrated as he picked them out. He looked as if he’d hugged a cactus made of broken glass and hand sharpened metal.

  Felt like it as well.

  After several minutes of ensuring that he was entirely free of debris the almost completely healed alien commander started his long walk. During his travel he came across several of the foul mutations that had been drawn to the sound of the battle. He dispatched them with relative ease but was starting to feel concern build up within him as the groups became larger and more purposeful, like something was guiding them to him.

  The thought alone was enough to make the brave warrior shudder, or perhaps it was merely the rain that beaded on his bare skin accompanied with steady breezes.

  Finding clothes or getting to his beloved and soldiers first? That question was becoming more and more urgent as he came to the realisation that he was lost in the concrete jungle with hungry eyes piercing his soul.

  He rounded yet another unfamiliar corner and saw someone he only partially recognised standing a few buildings away. It had clearly been there for quite some time, staring at the corner, waiting for its prey to come after ever so carefully guiding it to him with his lesser monsters. Though it was only when it twitched did Neysor understand what he was looking at, “You…” The creature who’d interrupted his destruction of John Prince bared its teeth and charged, but Neysor wouldn’t be thrown around again.

  He darted toward the charging monster and tore off its arm as they shot past each other. The two ground to a halt and turned to face each other. Neysor discarded the arm while the creature watched curiously.

  The Commander felt accomplished. Briefly.

  What was once an amazing soldier looked at the stump where his arm had been and then back at Neysor with an evil smile before convulsing for a moment and practically shot out a fresh arm. Neysor couldn’t help but gasp as the powerful creature shook its body loose, twitching the whole time.

  It saw an opportunity and took it, launching at the distracted naked commander with a blood-curdling howl, and knocking him clean off his feet. With each hit the creature managed to get on Neysor it became more and more clear that it wasn’t interested in eating him or infecting him.

  It wanted to hurt him.

  Neysor went to get a punch in, but the creature tossed him across the street and into a building, breaking a few bones and causing some rather intense internal bleeding. There was a full five seconds before Neysor fell out of the concrete imprint that he’d made with his body and fell to the pavement.

  The creature, apparently lost to its base urges, shambled over to the alien who was struggling to stand with the sole intention of eating his flesh. Neysor felt helpless, his arms barely able to even lift himself as it grabbed him and prepared to take a bite.

  A brilliant green light grazing past its partially exposed lower back stopped it from enjoying its broken meal. It yowled into the early morning air, spotted a woman wearing a brown lab coat who’d somehow fired the weapon at him despite her apparent inability to even hold it properly.

  With a snarl he cast the bite-free Neysor at her and started its escape, but not before she got another shot off, melting the creature’s leg clean off. It did nothing to stop it from hobbling away though, as she went to helping her nude superior.

  “Neysor! Are you ok sir?” She asked as she dropped to her knees and let the gun clatter to the ground.

  “Yes Lai, I’m fine.” Neysor’s bones started to click back together and he could feel his organs healing, “What are you doing out here? I thought I told everyone to stay where they were.”

  She nodded shyly, “Yes sir... it was just… Shenim sir…”

  Panic took over Neysor’s mind, “Is she alright?” he asked fretfully.

  “Yes! Yes! She’s alright! She’s just
… the child… its growing.”

  Split

  After Harry’s little episode he hadn’t helped our situation at all when he grabbed the body by the legs, dragged it to the helicopter and then dumped it there.

  Tensions weren’t exactly at an all-time low. “What are we going to do John?” Kate asked as quietly as she could.

  Truth is I didn’t know, and I really wished that people stopped expecting me to. But I couldn’t say that, I had to maintain the illusion of control for as long as I possibly could, “We’ll get moving, get as far from the city as we can, then we’ll talk to him.”

  “We can’t! Do you see how uncomfortable he’s made everyone? You need to do something about this.”

  I shook my head, “No, I really don’t. Most of the people here, including me, are only alive right now because of him.” Harry had returned to cleaning himself and his sword off after switching his shirt out with the bandit’s.

  Kate tugged on me and got me to face her, “Do you think any of them care about that right now? They need to see that this kind of stuff doesn’t go unpunished.” I got what she was getting at, wasn’t going to stand for it though.

  “We aren’t going to talk about that, you hear me? Now trot on over to the rest of them and tell them we roll in five.” I said with the condescending tone of a disapproving C.O., “That’s an order love.”

  That last point is what drove it home, it was almost automatic the way she turned around and marched off. I let out a sigh of relief as the conflict vanished from the table and I was able to go and talk to my friend.

  “Har,” I called out to get his attention as I reached him near the chopper’s wreck, “you alright?” I asked while he sat cross-legged and ran his old shirt over his blade, soaking up every bit of blood.

  He laughed without looking at me, “Funny. Am I alright? Good one.”

  “I’m serious, what happened back there? I’ve never seen you that angry before.”

  He’d finished the cleaning and had started to simply admire the blade, “Really? In all of your, what, month and a half with me? Don’t assume that you know me. How’s that saying go again? When you assume you make a dickhead of yourself?” His voice was dry and cold.

  “Look mate, I’m trying to help yo-” he stopped me with the tip of his blade to my throat.

  “Stop. Just stop John. I don’t need your help, and I definitely don’t need your pity.” The darkness in his voice had only grown, like something inside of him was waking up.

  Something that I really didn’t like.

  “Right then. Well, why don’t you just be done with it then? Let’s see how well I do without a head, maybe it’ll be a fair fight.” It felt dangerous playing with that particular flame, especially seeing as the first few millimetres of the blade had already slid into my soft neck, “Or, you know, we could not do that?” Every single word I got out moved the metal around, increasing my already potentially chancy wound.

  Curse my need to be a witty twat.

  Or not. Seeing as my wit was probably the only thing that got him to withdraw his blade, with a smile no less, “Fine, you wanna talk feelings? Let’s talk. I used to do… stuff. Before I was into the whole gaming scene I was more in to the… IRLFPS genre.”

  Took me a second to pick apart the acronym, “Wait… What?” I asked as I took a seat next to him on the partially wet grass, “Aren’t you like twelve?”

  He chuckled, “Yeah, and a half.” The chuckle turned into a sigh and he started picking at the grass around his feet.

  I didn’t want to glaze over that with a joke though, no matter how uncomfortable it was, I needed to know who I was working with, “Seriously though, I’ve been living under the assumption that you’re in your early twenties, and that math doesn’t exactly work for a soldier.” I said, trying to sound as least condescending as I could.

  “I know, believe me, I know. I’m a bit… different. Not like you! Just kind of… different. You know, like Marky over there.” He said, gesturing over to the group of figures that were making their way toward us.

  “Yea- Wait… How do you know about Mark?”

  He stumbled for a second before finding his lingual feet, “We talked about it when you and Steve went up after the ship.” He said, clearly hiding something.

  I wanted to ask but the others in our small community had reached us, Wolf with Mark over his shoulder, and Clara with Harry’s trench-coat and the duffel. She tossed them both to him and then turned to me, “What are we doing now?”

  Harry helped me to my feet after getting to his own and then started to get ready, pulling his signature coat on to start, “I think we stick with the plan, head south. John?”

  I nodded, “Agreed, we move until the afternoon, after that we can take a break.” The majority of the faces that were looking at me seemed pretty accepting of the idea.

  Warren shook his head and wobbled a bit, Harry had hit him harder than I thought, “Can I talk to you in private for a second?”

  “Sure…” I said as he started walking away from the rest of the group and I followed.

  We got about fifty metres from the group and I got to thinking about just how nice the park would’ve been before everything had happened. It was overgrown and less than nice. It was sad that the day that I became able to enjoy a day at the park was the same day that the world became overrun.

  “What is it Warren?”

  He looked over to Harry, who was assuring our primary group that he was fine, “Him. You. Kate. Wolf. The lot of you. We can’t go with you guys John.”

  “Why?” I asked without thinking.

  He turned his attention back to me, “He killed a dozen of us last night, and another one less than ten minutes ago. You broke down the barriers to our camp and resulted in the deaths of over half of us. It’s obvious, isn’t it? There’s you people, then there’s us.”

  I felt like he was trying to soften the blow of something that I really didn’t care about, “Oh… Right…”

  “Look. We’re going to stay here, myself and the others from S’ camp, and you’re more than welcome to stay if you come back this way, but we can’t travel with you. Not anymore.” It was like he was asking my permission.

  I tried to nod as solemnly as I could, “I understand. Don’t worry, we’ll get out of your hair and be on our way.”

  “I… I appreciate your understanding.” He said, clearly shocked that I wasn’t upset with the loss of the gaggle.

  Perhaps I should have fought a bit harder to keep a community, but that idea seemed exhausting and not really worth the dreadful talking that would be a part of it.

  Can you honestly tell me that you think keeping a group of primarily inept and traumatised men and women was a good idea?

  I mean, I’m not exactly known for my caring attitude or therapeutic characteristics.

  After a few awkward seconds of silence he ran off, undoubtedly to tell his flock the good news of the scary vampire not kidnapping their women-folk and forcing the men to fight.

  I took a moment to think on it, were we really that bad?

  Were we really so violent and impulse driven that we scared people off? If so, I was really glad that they hadn’t been exposed to pre-late nineties me. No amount of safe spaces or therapy could’ve made them better after that.

  As I was walking back to the group Gabe ran up to me stopping me with his visibly burnt palms with his gloves off, “Did he tell you?”

  I nodded and went to keep walking, “Yep, he’s gonna stick around here while the rest of us move out. I really think that it’s best for everyone involved.”

  He grabbed me by the arm as I went to walk around him, I could feel his leathery skin through the thin fabric that was my shirt, “John. I’m staying too.”

  “What!?” I shouted as I turned back to face him in shock, “What the Hell do you mean ‘I’m staying’?”

  “I thought I could handle it John, I really did. Being with them again, being a part of this group.
But with Kate and Wolf? I just can’t.” He sounded like he’d tried to re-enter a friend group with his ex in it, not like a man who was currently living amongst the living dead. Pathetic if you ask me. “Besides, who’s gonna look for Greg if not me?” He said jokingly.

  Trying to lighten the mood, are we? No thank you.

  I went to say something angry or bitter, but then I accepted it. Normally not a trait I’d associate with myself, but I did, people split up and I’d grown so attached to the idea that I had my team back that I’d forgotten that none of these people were the same anymore.

  Some of them wouldn’t be able to work together anymore, some couldn’t stand the others anymore, Hell, some of them probably wanted to kill each other now. It was the social equivalent of high school but with an apocalyptic theme. Degrading it to that seemed unfair though, so instead all I said, despite my sociological epiphany, was “Ok.”

  You never do get out of high school, even if you never went, remember that and you’ll lead a… less disappointing life.

  I didn’t wait for more conversation because I was pretty damn positive that if I did I’d say something I’d regret. As good of a friend that he was I did have a rather vast vocabulary and I can get quite creative if pushed.

  Gabe didn’t try to stop me though, he let me stride over to my tiny team of five and went to join Warren who’d called over his new community of which he was the uncontested mayor/president/lord and saviour of.

  My core group looked around confusedly while everyone else dispersed, “Come on guys, we’re movin’ out.” I said disappointedly.

  Wolf looked between Gabe and myself a few times before adjusting Mark on his shoulders and giving me a knowing nod. Without saying a word he led the others away from the chopper’s carcass and toward the crashed bus on the other side of the park.