by Jeff Abugov
She was panting hard because the shovel was so heavy for her. The thwack of each strike was so loud that she couldn’t hear the second zombie stagger into the cabin, and with her back to the front door, she couldn’t see it either.
The zombie wobbled straight toward her, salivating over its next feed. She remained unaware as it reached out its skeleton hands to grab hold of her.
BAM!
The zombie flew back and away from the little girl with several bullet holes sprayed across its chest. Patrick stood on the far side of the room holding the smoking shotgun. He smiled at the girl, proud that he saved her.
“You idiot!” she yelled at him.
“What? I just saved your life.”
“First, you only shoot ’em in the head,” she explained as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, then proceeded to bash in the new zombie’s head with the shovel. “Second, you don’t shoot ’em at all.”
“Why not?”
She gestured toward the window. “That’s why not,” she scolded as Patrick looked outside to see dozens more zombies turning toward the cabin and heading their way. “They’s attracted to big noises. Don’t you know anything? Now what do we do?!”
“How the heck would I know?”
“You’re the older one. Come up with something!”
Patrick tried hard to process everything he had learned on this very strange day. She was clearly right about the zombies liking loud noises—he had witnessed that very thing firsthand when he had shot his father and more zombies came into his house, he just hadn’t realized at the time that he himself had been the cause.
He needed to create a loud noise behind the approaching zombies so they’d turn around and go the other way. But how does one do that?
Then he had a wild thought. He had seen it in a bunch of movies, he just wasn’t sure if it was true, if it would work in reality. But with no better options, he raced back to the coffee table and picked up the bottle of moonshine.
“Now? You’re boozing it up now?” Rhiannon asked. “You’re just gonna up ’n quit just like that? Okay, gimme some too.”
“No one’s quitting anything,” Patrick said hurriedly. “I’m trying something.”
He ripped a piece of fabric off the dilapidated sofa and shoved it into the bottle, then grabbed the Zippo lighter off the coffee table and raced back to the broken front door.
“Oh, I see where you’re goin’ with this,” she said. “It’s crazy but it just might work.”
“Let’s hope,” Patrick said as he lit the sofa fabric that hung from inside the bottle. He waited just a moment for the rag to ignite into a good solid flame then flung the bottle over the zombies’ heads where it landed on a rock behind them, igniting in a perfectly loud explosion.
Like a herd, the zombies turned toward the sound of the blast and staggered away from the cabin.
“Sweet,” said Rhiannon as she raised her hand for a high five.
Patrick slapped her hand then embraced the command position worthy of his years. “Okay. You got backpacks? Let’s pack up every liquor bottle your father had and tear up more rags from the couch—this trick might come in handy again. And let’s pack up some rocks and pebbles ’cause those might be enough to fake out one or two if we’re in close range. And let’s get some water in canteens or jars or whatever you got. I’ll hang onto this,” he said as he put the Zippo in his pocket.
“What’s the water for?”
“We might get thirsty,” Patrick answered simply. “Now, you got any bikes?”
*****
Their preparation was complete. Rhiannon sat on her little bicycle in her father’s dilapidated shed next to his dilapidated cabin, her two feet touching the ground by her tippy-tippy-toes. She wore a large backpack overstuffed with supplies, and the shotgun was strapped across her shoulder. Patrick stood next to her on her older sister’s bike, wearing an even larger overstuffed backpack from which the shaft of the big shovel jutted out.
“We got to get to the sheriff’s office,” he explained. “They’re the only ones who can help us, and they’re not going to believe this stuff till they see it. The zombies have probably forgotten about our exploding liquor bottle by now and are just staggering around stupidly again, so they may spot us and try to follow us, but they’re slow, and it won’t be hard for us to keep ahead. You just gotta tell me about any more bridges that you took out or roads that are –”
He stopped short as he noticed a huge smile growing on Rhiannon’s face, along with an occasional flare of little-girl giggles.
“What’s so darn funny?” he asked.
“You’re on a girl’s bike!” she laughed.
Patrick sighed. Really?
But he decided not to engage the child on this point and said, simply, “Ready?”
“Lock ’n load!”
They quietly nudged their front wheels into the shed’s double doors to push them open, then peddled their way out along the dirt road toward the safety of the sheriff’s office.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Miguel slithered unnoticed along the rooftop floor toward the helicopter as Frank zigzagged at full speed out in the open, drawing the aliens’ attention away.
“Catch me if ya can, ya scaly varmints!” he shouted, diving from one safe haven to the next, dodging white beams with what could only have been sheer luck while Harve, Sanchez and Johnny—two of the three of them being crack shots—fired their pistols to provide him with cover. When an alien popped out from behind a chimney top to fire at him, Sanchez leapt up and plugged a bullet between its eyes.
It was their first kill.
“Hooah!” she shouted.
Meanwhile, Miguel’s belly ached and burned as it scraped against the rooftop’s gravel floor. With only yards remaining, he jumped to his feet to sprint the rest of the way, putting all his faith in the notion that he was too close to the explosives for the bugs to risk taking a shot at him.
And he was right! The Yankee Sergeant’s plan was right! By the time the bugs saw him racing to the chopper they were powerless to do a damn thing about it.
But no one could have foreseen that the ground would begin to shake, that a wormhole would appear directly in front of him, that an alien soldier would ascend into our world to replace the one that his sister had killed, and that it would blast a perfectly round one-inch void through the center of Miguel’s heart.
*****
“How many damn bugs are on that damn ship?!” Peyton roared as he and his team watched the devastation on the monitors from inside the WTLV control room.
As bad as things were on the rooftops, the situation on the ground was even worse. Human forces continued to dwindle while the size and strength of the enemy remained a dismal constant. And as the disparity between the two forces grew, the swarms were at last able to get clean shots at the human artillery, blowing them out en masse. Without artillery, the human soldiers could not prevent the alien tanks from mowing down their barricades, leaving those who weren’t crushed no option but to flee for refuge inside the nearest buildings. The few soldiers who had dropped their weapons and raised their arms in surrender were gunned down immediately.
“It’s impossible to answer that accurately, Mr. President,” said Lance as he banged on his laptop. “But judging by the size of the alien vessel relative to the mean size of the alien, there could be upward of ten billion bugs living up there.”
“Billion?” Peyton asked. “With a b? That’s more than our whole damn planet!”
“But if we factor in that three-quarters of our planet is water,” Jean-François piped in, “discount the Antarctic and the North Pole where no one lives, most of Russia and Canada, much of the United States and China –”
“Okay, okay, I get it,” Peyton cut him off. “We don’t live everywhere, but still. You guys said their ship was about the size of Rhode Island.”
“In length and width, yes sir,” Lance explained. “But more than half that in height. They’d
have multiple levels. It would be akin to thousands of Rhode Islands stacked one on top of the other.”
“Jesus Christmas,” Peyton exhaled.
The young Lieutenant, Peyton’s aide since the bunker, burst into the studio with a mild pant. “Mr. President, the First Lady is asking to see you.”
“My wife died three years ago,” snapped the President. “Pancreatic cancer. It was very sad. Thanks for bringing it up.”
“No, sir,” the boy went on. “I meant the former First Lady. President Addison’s wife. She says that you must hear what she has to tell you. She actually said the word ‘must’ like it was in italics.”
“I’m kinda busy here, you know,” Peyton told him, then sighed. “Tell her I’ll get to her as soon as I can.” Then he focused his attention back on the monitors.
The roads were now clear for the enemy to advance, which would be their next logical move—take out your enemy’s high command, force a surrender, and win the war—but they weren’t doing that.
Because the aliens weren’t waging a war—Peyton had known that from the start—they were executing an extermination. They had known Peyton would have to bring all that remained of his fighting force to a single spot to stop them, and they were going to stay right where they were until every last one of them was dead—because once the fighting force was gone, exterminating the civilians would be easy.
Peyton kicked himself for underestimating the depth of his enemy’s spy system, but how could he have ever predicted this wormhole business? He barely understood it now, even though the physicist had explained it to him several times.
“Get me the other world leaders on the phone,” he told a young political aid, the Chief of Staff being back in Washington. “They need to be briefed on this.”
“Right away, Mr. President,” said the staffer. “But, sir, since we’re the only part of the world under attack, wouldn’t this be the time to ask our overseas allies to deploy their troops here to help us?”
“No, son. The bugs’d just start the easy part of their extermination over there. In fact, unless I miss my guess, that’s exactly what they expect us to do—and I am goddamn sick and tired of doing exactly what they expect me to do!”
“Colonel, instruct Major Shaughnessy that the enemy won’t advance as long as he and his men are alive. He’s got to dig in and hold the bugs in place. We need time to come up with a new plan. In other words, his orders are to not die!
“And we’ve got to deal with this spy business, got to ferret the bugger out once and for all. Captain, do any of our soldiers have military-police experience?”
“I’m your head of base security, Mr. President,” answered the Captain-with-the-scar. “I’d be honored to lead the investigation personally.”
Peyton paused for a moment as he sized the man up. “No, I’m going to need you by my side, overseeing the overview. Who else you got?”
“Sir, I’m by far the most qualified.”
“I said who else you got?”
“Let me check, Mr. President.”
*****
“How . . . how is that possible?” asked Harve as he tried to process the impossible events that led to poor Miguel’s death.
Not a one of them could comprehend what they had just seen.
“It . . . it isn’t,” answered a horrified Johnny. “It’s not possible at all.”
As for Sanchez, she simply lost it.
“Hijo de tu chingada madre!” she screamed as she ran out from behind the safety of the air-conditioner condenser in a blind, vengeful rage, blasting her pistol at her brother’s killer, her misses coming dangerously close to piercing the explosive helicopter and ending them all.
“Get back here!” Harve shouted at her.
But she was too far gone to hear him. Her next shot nailed the bug right between the eyes, killing it instantly, but that wasn’t enough for her. She flung herself on top of the corpse, pinned her knees upon its shoulders, and discharged her weapon into the dead insect at close range. She was too close to the chopper for anyone to take a shot at her, so all Harve and the others could do was sit back and watch for what would happen next.
“Por mi hermano!” Sanchez cried out as she fired a bullet into the mouth of her brother’s dead killer. “Por mi mamá!” she screamed as she fired a shot into its heart. “Por mi hermano! Por mi mamá! Por mi hermano!”
Green blood exploded from the bug’s head and thorax with each blast, dousing the girl but not stopping her. When she ran out of bullets, she bashed her pistol into the dead bug’s face. When she saw a swarm charging at her, she yanked the dead bug up from the ground to use him as a shield, then grabbed his insect-rifle and fired their own white beams of void back at them.
She’s good, thought Harve.
The half-crazed Latina took down one bug after another, blindly moving about with no strategy or thought, until she inadvertently found herself far enough from the helicopter that the aliens could once again open fire upon her. White beams of void riddled the body of her insect-shield, but she just kept shooting.
Then Harve had another brainstorm. “Cover me!” he told Johnny.
“Me?”
With all bug eyes now on Sanchez, Harve raced out from behind the condenser and made a beeline for the chopper to try his plan a second time.
He ran faster than he ever had in his life, and it looked like he was going to make it. He was only a step or two away from the helicopter when a wormhole appeared right before him, cutting him off.
But he didn’t stop running. Instead, he blasted his pistol repeatedly into the black void before it was even open. By the time it did, the insect inside was welcomed into our world with a bullet to its throat.
Yet the wormhole itself was still blocking his way, and he had no desire to run into the meadow on the other side. Without breaking stride, he leapt up onto a crate of Uzis and used it as a springboard to hurl himself up and over the terrifying portal, crouched into a roll position while airborne, hit the ground with his head between his legs, and somersaulted straight into the chopper where he grabbed a submachine gun from an open crate and whipped around blasting.
*****
Back at the control room, Peyton and his officers watched it on the monitor.
“He’s military police,” said the Captain-with-the-scar.
“He’ll do,” said Peyton, impressed. “He’ll do just fine.”
*****
“Let’s go!” Harve shouted to his crew. “Come on!”
Johnny and Frank left the protection of their respective hiding spots and raced to the helicopter. As much as Sanchez wanted to keep blasting the enemy to death, her blind fury was waning as it became obvious that for every bug she killed a new one popped up to replace it—and her dead-bug-shield was by now so filled with holes that its time as a useful defense was running out. She slowly backed away toward the helicopter as she continued to fire, just to keep ’em honest. When she was close, she threw her insect-shield to the ground, bashed her boot into its face one last time for good measure, whipped the bug-rifle over her shoulder, then joined her fellow soldiers as they sprinted the final steps toward the chopper.
All the while, Harve blasted his submachine gun at the bugs to keep them from taking a shot at his compatriots while still maintaining a vigilant, panoramic view of his surroundings—anything could still happen, he knew. It was a lesson that had cost Miguel his life.
“Get us outta here, Captain!” he shouted as his soldiers got closer.
“With pleasure!”
They filed into the helicopter as Johnny plopped himself into the pilot’s seat. “Now watch me do something I’m good at,” he said cockily as he fired up the engine in a flurry of motion.
He lifted the bird into a three-foot hover then slowly pushed it toward and over the rooftop edge. As they moved further from the building, the alien swarms came out of hiding and moved into position, preparing to fire the moment they deemed the helicopter sufficiently far away.
“I’d better be, right?” Johnny answered with a twinkle.
“What the hell happened to ‘trust me’?!” yelled Sanchez.
“I got this,” the pilot said cockily. “But you should all probably grab hold of something.” He turned to Sanchez and smiled, “You can grab hold of me.”
She forced a fake smile then latched onto a cargo tie-down, as did Harve and Frank.
Then the aliens fired, and Johnny cut the power!
“Have you gone mental?!”
The helicopter plummeted to the ground as it ducked under the aliens’ blasts. The bugs moved closer to the roof’s edge and pointed their weapons down at the plunging bird when Johnny fired the power back up, yanked on the collective, pointed the bird to the sky and soared up in a diagonal to the left. The aliens missed again. He sideslipped and dove to the right, and they missed once more. White beams of nothingness whizzed all around as Johnny rode the 407 back to the left, another miss, to the right, missed, another plummet, missed, another steep climb, missed, left, right, up, down, all the while riding the machine like a rocket further and further away from the building.
And at long last, the aliens’ white beams began to fall short, disintegrating into transparent vapors before reaching the helicopter.
They had made it!
Harve, Frank and Sanchez took a deep breath as they let go of the tie-downs and let themselves fall back in exhaustion.
“So that didn’t go so well, did it?” said Johnny.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Patrick and Rhiannon sat on their bikes atop a small grassy hillside looking down on Main Street, the coveted sheriff’s office being just on the other side of the road. A herd of zombies a quarter mile back moved toward them, but they were too slow and far away to pose any serious threat, and the spattering of zombies roaming the streets below posed even less, as long as the kids were careful.