by Jeff Abugov
With the ruckus of blazing rifles gone, it was now merely the sounds of alien grunting that attracted the zombies’ attention. Zombie-Sanchez found herself drawn to a particularly loud one and staggered toward him, but the bug rammed his weapon hard into her belly before she could get close. The zombie flew backward through the air to land on an alien flatbed, whereupon an electronic metallic net slithered toward her and wrapped itself around her legs. When she tried to stagger up to her feet, she tripped off the vehicle and fell back down to the concrete road.
She struggled to free herself, but the net merely wrapped itself tighter around her, as if of its own volition. She rolled on the ground as she fought it, inadvertently rolling under a parked Toyota Prius, and the net magnetically latched onto the hybrid’s underbelly to hold her in place. She struggled more, causing the net to grow ever tighter, elevating her off the ground and pressing her against the car’s bottom. Struggled still more, and the net wrapped itself across her face and mouth, and she began to chew on it. And there she would remain for some time, suspended in midair under a Japanese car, gnawing on metal, out of sight and forgotten.
“Bad eat,” she would have said of the metal if she had had words. “Me want good eat. Good eat, me. No bad eat, me. Good eat, me.”
Meanwhile, the onslaught continued. Mary had proven of little use to her Commander, claiming she believed the creatures were called “zombies” but that was all she knew because she had never studied them the way she had vampires. The Commander told her to appoint someone to learn about them fast and for her to get back to him. She was thrilled as the department she headed continued to expand.
Of course, it was only a matter of time till one of the alien soldiers happened to bash his rifle butt into a zombie’s head to crack its skull and end it, and then barely any time at all for the rest of the bugs to follow suit. One by one, the stupid things went down, and it was clear to anyone watching that it wouldn’t be long until all of the undead would be dead-dead, the forgotten zombie-Sanchez excluded.
“Dammit,” Peyton muttered disappointedly from the windowless HQ. “If I only had a few thousand more of those things.”
“Um, well, actually, sir,” Rog stammered nervously. “You kinda do.”
“I do?” Peyton asked.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Patrick took his last bite of the last bit of the beef jerky that he and Rhiannon had shared. Their food was all gone now, and he was afraid. What good was being safe from the zombies if they were just going to starve to death anyway?
The phone rang, which both kids found quite strange. Patrick hoped it wasn’t someone requesting police service because he clearly couldn’t provide it, and he had long since given up expecting any help from the outside world.
“Heartsoot Creek sheriff’s office,” he answered.
“Please hold for the President of the United States,” came Rog’s voice.
“Okay,” Patrick said then turned to Rhiannon. “It’s that jerk from before who wouldn’t help us. Says I should hold for the President of the United States.”
“Put it on speaker! Put it on speaker!” Rhiannon said as she raced to the desk.
Patrick complied when a new voice began. “This is President Peyton Willis,” said the General from the old hospital storage room, also on speakerphone.
“Bull!” shouted Rhiannon.
“Shhh!” Patrick whispered, recognizing the voice because he had done nothing but watch the news since they got trapped there. “It’s him.”
“Congratulations on your promotion, Mr. President,” he said to the phone.
“Thank you, son. Now, to whom am I speaking?”
“Patrick Hutchins, sir. I’m twelve years old from Heartsoot Creek, Georgia.”
“And Rhiannon Montadel of same. I’m the brains of the operation.”
“Nice to meet you both. Now, I understand you kids are having a bit of trouble down there.”
“Yes sir! The whole town’s gone zombie!”
Lance did some quick Internet research and announced, “Heartsoot Creek, Georgia, population twenty-four thousand.”
“Outstanding,” Peyton replied then turned back to the phone. “So, kids, you think you can find your way to bring all your zombies down to me in Jacksonville?”
“Peyton!” gasped Laurel. “You can’t put them in this! They’re children!”
“American children,” the great man answered. “With twenty-four thousand zombies at their disposal. So why risk the lives of our living when we can just as easily risk the lives of our dead?”
“We can do this, ma’am,” Patrick insisted. “We want to do it, Mr. President.”
“You bet we do!” Rhiannon piped in. “We’ll win this war for ya!”
“I know you will, kids,” Peyton said. “So let’s figure out how.”
*****
Outside the sheriff’s building, thousands of zombies milled about, staggering this way and that, having no memory of how they ended up in this particular location but lacking the wherewithal to wonder about it.
A liquor bottle with a flaming rag in its top soared through the air to land on the hood of a Dodge pickup parked across the street. Bottle and truck exploded with a deafening boom as a second bottle blew up a 1967 Chevy Impala parked behind it. The zombies staggered away from the sheriff’s building toward the explosions, several allowing themselves to be burned to a crisp in the process.
The kids stood on the roof about to light new bottles when Patrick stopped cold. “That’s enough. We can get out now. Let’s save the other bottles just in case.”
“Good thinkin’,” the little girl answered with a smile.
“Let’s roll,” the boy smiled back.
*****
The sun was setting in the West as Patrick and Rhiannon, freed from their imprisonment in the sheriff’s office, sat upon their bicycles half a mile up the road from the zombie hordes that circled the burning cars. They had their backpacks on their backs, their rifles strapped to the side of their bikes, and two pistols each holstered to their sides.
“Ready?” Patrick asked.
“You betcha,” Rhiannon responded.
“Hey stupid!!!!” Patrick shouted at the zombies as loud as he could.
With the explosion over, Patrick’s voice was significantly louder than the sizzling of the fire so the zombies turned toward him.
“Bet you can’t catch us, you freaks!” shouted Rhiannon.
“Dumb dead idiots!” yelled Patrick.
“Smelly rotting poop-heads!” yelled Rhiannon.
The zombies mindlessly, ominously staggered toward the children. The kids pushed down hard on their pedals and began to bike away.
“Slow down,” said Rhiannon. “We don’t want ’em to lose us.”
And thus began their long, treacherous journey.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
The sun had set, its rays were gone, and the darkness of night prevailed. Africa walked onto the terrace of her penthouse suite wearing only the bathrobe that the luxury hotel provided its VIP patrons. She walked as close to the edge as she could, her midriff a mere inch from the handrail. She gazed out upon the dark splendor of the Jacksonville skyline, the lights of the abandoned city unlit, the town illuminated only by the flame of human guns and the white beams of alien rifles.
Like a whip, she thrust out her arms and her robe fell to the ground.
“Come to me, my children!” she shouted into the night.
Her naked body glistened in the moonlight, every curve and contour of her body perfectly proportioned, the visual definition of feminine beauty, strength and sexuality.
The black sky was suddenly rendered even blacker as scores of bats emerged from all corners of the world. They perched upon her outstretched arms, her head, her shoulders. They lay at her feet, hovered around her impeccable frame. Only once they were settled and all was still did she continue.
“Fill me with knowledge, my children, my teachers!” she cried out. �
��Fill me with the wisdom of leaders and secondaries past! Fill me with their souls and their hearts and their minds! Fill me with your love, my children, my teachers.”
The bats frantically flapped their wings, brushing against her as they clicked and screeched. A wave of euphoria swept over the exquisite vampire as she felt the very essence of Prague, her cherished love and lover, miraculously come to life within her heart, her mind, her loins. She felt the great vampires of time immemorial enter her soul through her every orifice. She felt wiser, stronger, kinder and happier than she had ever felt before.
But she did not feel Julius.
It meant that he was still out there somewhere. If not, she would have felt him too. And if he had remained in the physical realm thus far, he would continue to remain, and he would soon escape his captors—she somehow knew this with certainty.
And that meant that she was only to be the acting queen, and only until the true king returned. It would be a temporary post, and that was a role that she was willing to fill.
The only question that remained was had she waited too long to assume her rightful position?
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Where were the vampires? Harve wondered.
With the alien spy in custody, his detective duties fulfilled, and no pilot left to fly the humans’ sole remaining helicopter, he had been sent back to join the ground forces to hold the bugs in place until dusk when V-Company could come out of hiding. His new squad of ten—which included his trusted sidekick Frank—were holed up in an apartment building, taunting the alien soldiers into engagement while doing everything they could to keep them at bay. They had arrived on the scene equipped with gas masks so the bugs’ tear bombs proved inconsequential, and Harve had ordered two of his men to each of the five building entrances—front door, two side doors, back door and garage—so despite the enemy’s vastly superior numbers, they were unable to break through the bottleneck that the doors provided. But their ammo was running low, and the human forces were all-in with no runners left to bring additional bullets. And with the sun having set almost twenty minutes prior, Harve could only wonder—where the heck was V-Company?
He wasn’t the only one wondering this, of course, but he was the only one who had increasingly growing feelings for one of them, and the only one struggling to keep these demonic passions from his mind.
But no one was more fraught with worry than Peyton. Laurel had briefed him on Africa’s reluctance to assume command, the uncertainty of whether she’d continue the truce if she did, and the pending vampire clash if she didn’t.
He was running out of options. He knew it was crazy to put too much stock on the Georgia zombies arriving in time, if at all. The best of his civilian trainees were still not close to combat-ready, and he felt like a heel for having already put a thousand of them in harm’s way.
Then it happened!
A soaring gray mist blanketed the dark sky of night, and colonies of shrieking bats cast black specs upon the gray. Still a mile from the action, the vampires’ mere appearance altered the course of the battle as the lion’s share of alien soldiers moved away from the buildings and repositioned themselves along the roads in preparation of the flying onslaught, leaving behind only the bare minimum of swarms to keep the human soldiers out of it.
“They’re here!” shouted the now-jubilant Corporal Frank Hatteras, echoing the gleeful cries of his comrades. “V-Company is here!”
Africa-as-mist soared miles above the others of her kind, unseen by the bugs, with only her new lieutenants Plato and Trung Nhi by her side. Her plan was for the vampires below to attack the first line of enemy soldiers only so as to keep their leaders in the rear calm, to keep the leaders from wheeling themselves back into their sunny meadow, and then to pounce upon them and suck them dead.
In the control room, Peyton and Laurel breathed a heavy sigh of relief.
“You did well,” the President said to the former First Lady.
“We got lucky,” replied the slayer.
But in the next few seconds, something began to feel off to the former General. The bugs had positioned themselves all along the streets, had dropped to their knees using one of their lower arms to balance themselves while they aimed their weapons upward, calmly awaiting the vampires to fly into range.
He had seen them adopt this stance before, but why now? After yesterday’s devastating victory, the bugs should be running from the invincible Vs for dear life. So why weren’t they?
“Something’s wrong,” he said with a dire tone. “Go tight on their weapon.”
Lance did some fast tapping on his laptop as one of the screens zoomed in on an alien rifle. It looked different than it had the previous day, modified with some kind of long alloy tube welded to its barrel like a scope. But it wasn’t a scope!
“GET THEM THE HELL OUT OF THERE!!!” Peyton screamed.
But it was too late. With the vampires in range, the bugs pressed the buttons to activate the modification. A low, bassy hum permeated throughout Southpoint. A soft yellow light shined out from the alloy tubing—simulated sunshine—and the front lines of the flying vampire mist instantly burned to a crisp!
“Se recipite!” Africa shouted down from miles above. “Se recipite!!!!”
She and her two lieutenants were high enough to reverse course and fly back to safety, but the formation of the mists below them was too tight for the Vs to get out quickly. They skidded to an aerial halt only to be bumped forward by their brethren behind them; they flew upward only to be blocked by those above, all while the bugs had a field day showering the vampires with deadly warm sunshine.
“We’re doomed!” shouted Frank as panic spread among the humans.
But Harve remained focused, and saw an opportunity.
“Major Shaughnessy!” he shouted into his wrist-mike. “The bugs are so consumed with the Vs they left the back of our building unguarded. There’s a five-story structure across the road. We can take the rooftop! The high ground!”
“Aye, soldier!” the Major shouted back. “Take it!”
“Everyone! On me! Now!” Harve shouted to his men.
His squad sprinted to him but before he could tell them his new plan, he noticed two new swarms approach the building that he had intended to capture.
“They heard us,” he gasped in dismay. “They must have our frequency. They’ve been monitoring every transmission we’ve made!”
“Oh God,” Frank wailed. “How much worse can this get?!”
“Actually, wait a sec. This could be a blessing in disguise,” Harve responded, then began to write on a small piece of paper. “This could be better than taking that rooftop. We can make those bugs think whatever we want them to think, and then we do the opposite. Frank, you’ve got to get this note to the Major.”
“How? The bugs own the street.”
“It’s dangerous, yeah. Crazy maybe. But what choice do we have? And after all our years serving together, there’s one thing I know—if anyone can do this, it’s you. The whole war may depend on it. You gotta do this for me, buddy.”
Frank took a deep breath, touched by the plea of friendship. “All right, Harve. Whatever you need.”
He snatched the note and tore out of the building at full speed. The bugs in front of the building were so startled by the recklessness that it took them a moment to brandish their weapons, by which time Harve and his men shot them dead.
With the bulk of the aliens focused on the vampires, Frank combined stealth and speed as he tried to make his way to the Major five blocks away. He hid, he sprinted, he ducked, he rolled, he zigged, he zagged. He burst unnoticed into a Macy’s one block north from where he had left Harve, ran like Usain Bolt through the women’s shoe section to exit the other side, when he found himself face-to-face with two alien soldiers!
“Holy smoke!” shouted Harve who had been watching it all with his squad.
For a brief second nothing happened for the two bugs were as stunned as Frank. The Corporal then
tore off in the opposite direction. The aliens raised their rifles and fired.
And they missed.
Although only a few feet away, they missed!
It was a doggone miracle, thought Harve. Or was it? The aliens never miss, especially not at such close range. It took the Lieutenant but a moment to put two and two together, and a furious rage swept over him as it all started to make sense.
“You lying sack of dirt!!!!” he shouted as he burst out of the building and onto the street, blasting his M16 into the head and back of his former best friend.
Frank howled as he fell to the ground, the imperceptible seams of his human skin tearing open from the gunfire, the costume slipping off his insect frame like loose pants as he took his last breath of the natural Earth air.
But Harve never got to see any of it because the two bugs blasted voids into his chest, and he too was down.
FRANK
The real Frank Hatteras never knew his parents, or any living relative for that matter, and he had no friends. He had spent the bulk of his early years shuttled from one abusive foster parent to another, one cold orphanage to the next, lonely school after lonely school. At fourteen he began to experiment with drugs—by sixteen it was no longer an experiment. No one ever knew if the overdose from which he died was an addict’s carelessness or a purposeful suicide but it didn’t matter to the Vessel Dwellers. The boy was perfect.
He had grown up in “the system” so there was a giant paper trail to validate his human existence, and the fact that no one cared about him made it easy for someone to slip into his life and build it anew. So perfect was he that had he not died by overdose, the Dwellers would have killed him anyway just to make the switch.