Zombies versus Aliens versus Vampires versus Dinosaurs

by Jeff Abugov

  “It’s like, everywhere else on Earth, everyone’s freaking out. Riots, civil wars, human killing human. It’s like the stress that we might attack is doing almost as much damage as attacking—we got it from an old Twilight Zone episode. By the time we start in Afro-Eurasia, humans will have done like half our work for us. Plus, by then, we’ll have already annihilated the biggest and the baddest so the Afro-Eurasians will be all demoralized and everything, so totally easier to kill.”

  On she went. She explained how Peyton had turned out not to be the doofus they expected and the measures being taken to get rid of him, she complained about her underlings who resented her meteoric rise, she described with sordid specificity her carnal encounter with the nine-foot insect Commander, and she explained why the Dweller Vessel, with its wormhole technology, took so long to reach Earth.

  “The larger the mass going through the wormhole, and the greater the temporal or spatial distance of the jump, the harder the jump is to accurately calculate. It’s like, a pitcher on the mound can throw a hundred miles an hour with pinpoint accuracy. An outfielder at the wall can throw to the plate pretty hard too but not with the same degree or consistency of accuracy because we’ve increased the distance—although Barry Bonds got pretty close most of the time—actually, a ton of the time he nailed it—you just could never know f’sure in advance. But if we increase the distance and the mass, give Barry like an eighty-pound boulder to hold over his head and make him throw to the plate, who knows where the thing will land, right? This is a really bad analogy but you wouldn’t understand the math.

  “So sending individuals back and forth from tons of light-years away was easy as pie—we’d rarely be more than a bunch of kilometers off, if that—but something as humongous as our vessel? It’s loony bird. So every three months we’d jump it a mere point-two-five light-years, which is the equivalent of traveling at lightspeed, which even Earth people know is impossible. Yet we were. But we weren’t. But we were. But we weren’t. You know what I mean, right?”

  On and on she’d go, and Julius could only wonder which was the greater torture—the wooden stakes and silver crosses, or her incessant babbling.

  And when all but one of the categories on her list was crossed off, she sat on the stool beside him, took his hand and smiled sweetly. “How we feeling, sunshine?”

  “Couldn’t be better,” groaned the vampire. “How are you?”

  “You’re so hot,” she giggled as she kissed him on the forehead. “So, listen. You’re probably wondering why we haven’t done any sun experiments yet.”

  “Never crossed my mind.”

  “’Kay, every time you say something adorable, I’m going to kiss you,” she said as she kissed his forehead once more. “So, anyway, we’re going to fiddle around with the intensities on the window filter to see how much sunlight you can actually handle—you know, find your breaking point and all that. But in case we go overboard—’cause, you know, stuff happens—I wanted to make sure we got everything else tested first. Makes sense, right? So, ’kay, g’luck.”

  She kissed him again, then coughed an order. The insect at the holographic keyboard tapped on some of the keys, and the room became a little brighter. Julius’s body went rigid. Sweat flooded from his pores, and he panted heavily. The holograms of his heart and lungs swelled, the one of his brain pulsated rapidly.

  “That’s one notch up,” said Mary. “Let’s see what happens if we go two.”

  She coughed another order. The room went brighter still, and Julius screamed in mortal agony. The holograms of his heart and lungs swelled beyond the physically possible, the one of his brain contracted by a third, pockets of flame ignited on his chest, arms, legs and genitals, and he could barely gasp for air.

  “Nice,” smiled Mary. “One more up and you’re dead f’sure, right? Two more, f’sure-f’sure. No way you could handle that, right? Wanna see?” She coughed a new order. The alien at the keyboard tapped on some keys, and the room dimmed back to its original level of brightness. Julius panted, his torture session ended, for now.

  “I was just teasing, sunshine, I’m not going to kill you. Duh. I love you. You made me fall in love with you, remember? Besides, without you to study, I’d lose my whole department. No, I’m going to keep you around for a long, long time.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  BOOM!

  Without warning, the WTLV television station exploded into giant flames, the sickly black smoke made even more ominous against the backdrop of the early evening sun. Soldiers raced out of the Omni Hotel and onto the street to witness the devastation firsthand, and it was clear that there could be no survivors.

  “Get hoses!” shouted the Captain-with-the-scar. “There’s a firehouse three blocks east! Let’s go! Move it!”

  “What happened?” asked Harve as he sprinted onto the scene.

  “The damn bugs took out HQ,” the Captain explained. “Everyone who was inside is dead. The Canadian. The Majors. Colonel Williams. And the President!”

  “Oh Jesus,” gasped Frank. “Then who’s in charge?”

  “I am,” answered the Captain with what Harve thought may have been a flicker of a smile. “Until we find someone who outranks me, I am.”

  The ground shook violently as a giant wormhole opened back down in Southpoint only blocks from where Peyton had left his troops, exactly as he had predicted. Alien swarms sprinted into strategic positions, opening fire on the move. Major Shaughnessy had no choice but to return fire, and the new battle had begun.

  “Get me a walkie!” the Captain shouted. “Now!”

  It was only a matter of moments until he was talking with Major Shaughnessy but their conversation only served to exacerbate the chaos. The Major, his soldiers and his untrained trainees were heavily outnumbered and hunkered down in the midst of ambush, and he had no sense of a big picture or how to proceed. But when the Captain ordered him to fall back to base to regroup and strategize, the Major shouted back that the Captain had no authority to give a superior officer any orders at all. Add to that the roaring barrage of gunfire, the weak walkie-talkie connection, and the fact that the two men never liked each other in the first place, it seemed that the aliens’ plan to render havoc was working to a tee.

  “Every bleedin’ order till now has been to hold position whether I crackle crackle crackle!” the Major’s voice boomed over the walkie. “I can’t bloody well reverse that on a crackle crackle junior officer! Now get me the crackle crackle . . .”

  “Oh my God!” shouted Frank. “No one’s in charge! We’re all on our own!”

  Frank may have been the first to verbalize his anxiety, but he certainly wasn’t the last, and an even deeper panic swept through the human ranks.

  “No one else is here, Major!” the Captain-with-the-scar shouted into the walkie. “Do you read me? Everyone is dead! You must fall back! If you won’t take my order, take my suggestion. Please, fall back, sir!”

  “Bollocks! Crackle! Where is the Colonel? Where’s the bleedin’ President?!”

  “They’re dead!” yelled the Captain. “Do you hear me?! Everyone is dead! The other majors are dead! The Colonel is dead! The President is dead!!!”

  “The President’s not dead,” said Peyton as he jogged out of the hotel toward the Captain, buckling up the belt on his pants. “He was just taking a dump.”

  He grabbed the walkie from the Captain and roared into it. “This is President Willis. Hold position as before! Help is on the way!” He tossed the walkie back to the Captain then turned to one junior officer after another. “You, take fifty troops and double back around. You, get your squad in position on Salisbury Road. You . . .”

  Despite the dire situation, waves of calm permeated among the troops for their leader had returned. Within seconds, soldiers were brandishing weapons and sprinting to battle.

  Harve awaited his orders as he noticed Johnny approaching from the hotel. “Where have you been?” he asked suspiciously.

  “In the bar with
everyone else,” the Californian answered innocently.

  “Before that. I was looking for you all day. Came to your quarters around four, banged hard on the door, no one answered.”

  “I must’ve been in the shower.”

  “Was anyone with you?”

  “No, but believe me, I tried.”

  “And you!” Peyton bellowed to Johnny. “Get your team in the air! Now!”

  Harve had to think fast. Johnny was responsible for the explosion, of course he was. He had set it up while he was missing earlier that day—Harve had virtually predicted it, and the Captain had called the theory strong. There was still no hard evidence, but this was war, and to let this guy run amuck would only cost more lives. Getting him out of action and figuring out the rest later was the only safe course.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. President, but he can’t do that,” Harve said as he spun Johnny around and proceeded to handcuff him. “John Kester, you’re under arrest. Mr. President, he’s the one who blew up HQ. He is our alien spy.”

  “What?!” shouted Johnny.

  “You son of a bitch!” Peyton shouted, then delivered a sharp right cross to the handcuffed pilot’s jaw, sending him falling to the ground, unconscious.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Scores of new casualties were raced into the lobby of the St. Vincent Medical Center—some from the battle that had just began anew, others who had had the misfortune of being in the vicinity of the exploding television station.

  The cacophony of war boomed and echoed everywhere, making the quarantined zombies crazy with seduction. Over and over they bounced into the glass walls, causing one new crack after another, howling uncontrollably.

  Lance, oblivious to the zombie threat, worked alone in the large, dingy, ninth-story records storage room putting the final touches on what would become the new command central. He had realized the prior morning, right after he had seen his first surveillance system sabotaged, that if a new HQ would be needed it would be needed fast—but he had never expected it to be this fast. His fear had been that the bugs would try to cut their electricity—he was still surprised that they had missed something so elementary—so he chose the hospital as the new locale because of its plethora of backup generators, the bleak, windowless storage facility being the only room not currently filled with wounded soldiers.

  He supposed that it hadn’t occurred to any of the doctors and nurses that old hard copies of medical records, X-rays and the like were redundant in this day and age of digitized data—and he certainly wasn’t going to tell them because he needed the space. With official authorization from Colonel Williams, he recruited four civilian trainees to help him pilfer flat-screen TVs from an abandoned Best Buy and hang them on the storage-room wall while he designed a whole new surveillance system from scratch. Then, to create the necessary space for the military brass, he ordered his recruits to help remove the many file cabinets and boxes, and dump them in the parking lot outside. Even if he was wrong, he thought, even if the X-rays and such had yet to be digitized and the sunlight destroyed them all, it was a small price to pay for the preservation of the species.

  *****

  Denison lay on a gurney against the wall in the hospital lobby, the staff being far too busy caring for the wounded to properly tend to the deceased. Laurel stood by his side with her two hands clutched around his, unsuccessfully trying to hold back her tears as she delivered her lifelong companion’s eulogy to no one at all.

  “The Marines will give you your due, old friend,” she said softly. “But you were so much more than they could ever have known—a loyal servant and brave warrior of the Society; a stalwart and fearless protector of a species unaware of your heroic deeds. And in the end, you led the monsters to battle, shook their hands in mutual victory, and they called you ‘friend.’ It is the stuff upon which legend is forged, and the Society will remember and honor you till the end of days.”

  With a sniffle, she removed her silver crucifix from her neck and placed it in his shirt pocket. She buttoned it closed, patted him on his chest, and wiped the tears from her eyes with the back of her wrist.

  CRASH!

  The glass walls of the quarantine area shattered, the curtains fell to the ground, and two hundred zombies staggered into the lobby toward the front door and the clamor of battle. Doctors, nurses and orderlies screamed in terror, which only served to draw the zombies’ attention. The undead tore into them with rotted teeth and blackened fingernails, and it was only seconds until they seemed to be everywhere, unknowingly cutting off all means of human escape. On instinct, Laurel brandished the wooden stakes from her belt and assumed a fighting stance.

  “Psssst!” she heard a voice. “Shhh, no!” whispered Lance who was crouched down only a few yards away behind a dolly stacked with metal file cabinets. He darted to the former First Lady, grabbed her by the arm and led her back to his hiding spot only to find zombies now blocking their way. Without hesitation, he spotted a small nook in the wall, pressed Laurel and himself against it, then put his index finger to his lips to encourage her silence.

  The zombies killed, ate and devoured everything that made even the slightest noise as they made their way out of the hospital toward the seductively loud battlefield. The unconscious wounded went unnoticed, but the barely conscious who moaned in pain were devoured along with the screaming staff.

  Lance and Laurel stood pressed against the nook in the wall, completely visible but utterly silent and motionless, barely even willing to breath, as three zombies brushed right past them, their cold, dead breathe filling the slayer’s nostrils.

  When the last of the zombies left the hospital, Lance took one of the wooden stakes from Laurel’s hand and moved toward the nearest zombie victim.

  “How did you know to do that?” Laurel asked.

  “I’m a total geek,” Lance said proudly as he plunged the stake through the zombie’s skull. “I love zombies.” Then he moved to the next victim to do the same.

  “Zombies?” asked Laurel.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  “Zombies?” asked Peyton from his new director’s seat in the new HQ, aka old records storage room. “Zombies?! Zombies?!!! Well, of course there are zombies! Why wouldn’t there be zombies? But are they good zombies or bad zombies?”

  “Um, neither, sir,” Lance answered timidly. “They’re just zombies. But you should probably tell the men to stop shooting and, uh, moving.”

  “And why would I do that?”

  “Peyton, listen to the boy,” pleaded Laurel. “What I am to vampires, he is to zombies.”

  “I just like the movies and TV shows,” Lance confessed with a shrug.

  “Well, we’ve got to do something,” Peyton acknowledged.

  *****

  Major Shaughnessy was aghast when the President’s new directive reached him. He had followed his Commander’s initial order to a tee, leading his men forward into tactical positions along and inside the various buildings to hold the enemy in place, stalling the bugs until the V reinforcements could arrive, dusk being less than an hour away.

  “Stand down, Major!” the President’s voice had boomed through his earpiece.

  “Again, sir?!” the Major had asked in bewilderment. “Please repeat!”

  “Lower your weapons!” the President reiterated. “Wherever you are, stop moving and don’t make a sound!”

  “But sir –”

  “Shhhh!”

  Orders are orders, the Major told himself as he passed down the word. It made no sense to him until he saw what could only be described as a few hundred drunkards staggering to battle. The aliens shifted their focus and blasted into the drunkards’ chests as they had been trained. Perfectly round one-inch voids ripped through the drunkards’ hearts, but they just kept staggering forward, passing the silent humans, desperate to gorge on the source of the blasts. (Unlike the force of a bullet, the white beams that whizzed through them had no dynamic effect at all.)

  How many mythical creatures do these
humans have? the Alien Commander wondered. And how the hell did his researchers and spies miss them all?

  Even at close range, the ferocious alien weapons proved inconsequential. The zombies converged upon the front line of the enemy soldiers three, four at a time, their rotted teeth tearing through the chitin scales of the aliens’ heads, thoraxes and abdomens. But cannibalistic zombies thrive on human (not insect) flesh, so the moment a bug stopped blasting its weapon, stopped coughing out in pain and misery to lay silent on the ground, the zombies would lose interest and move onto the next closest soldier that was dumb enough to keep shooting.

  The Alien Commander was confounded. The creatures were slow, weak, and he had them grossly outnumbered—but nothing seemed to stop them. He coughed out orders for the swarms to reposition themselves, to fire from different angles. He coughed an order to open communications with Mary, his resident expert on all things mythical, and quite a tasty tidbit to boot. But what he didn’t do, the only thing he should have done, was to order his troops to cease-fire. And the zombies kept coming.

  “Not too shabby,” Peyton smiled as the stolen TV sets showed two hundred zombies devouring ten thousand aliens who simply didn’t know how to kill them.

  With everyone in the room gleefully consumed with the on-screen action, Rog wheeled himself inside to get his Captain’s signature on a security authorization related to Johnny’s arrest. The Private stopped cold when he saw the zombies on the screens, and he knew that he had screwed up big-time—but he was too embarrassed to say anything just yet. So he remained in his wheelchair in the back and watched the imminent victory like everyone else.

  The Alien Commander was at a complete loss. He could clearly see that his quantum weapons were of no use, so he coughed out new orders for his troops to engage in hand-to-hand combat, but his soldiers still didn’t know where to strike. They jabbed their rifle butts into the zombies’ chests, backs, even legs, or they attempted to physically overpower the weak creatures, allowing the zombies close enough to bite or scratch them to death.