Zombies versus Aliens versus Vampires versus Dinosaurs

by Jeff Abugov

  “It was a delicate détente we had. I didn’t want to go to prison, and they didn’t want the story out. So they let me do whatever I wanted, and it really sucked.

  “Oh, and one more little kicker. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time was Four-Star General Peyton Horace Willis.

  “And today he gave the order to cut me open because someone didn’t like me.

  “So, ‘coward’? Yeah, maybe you’re right. Maybe I should have just gone to prison and forced the story public in the first place. But the real coward, as I see it, is the United States Army, and I will not serve these bullies one day longer.”

  “This bigger than you,” Harve wheezed. “Bigger than army. This . . . about . . . mankind extinct.”

  “Well, maybe mankind deserves to go extinct. Ever consider that? We’re paranoid, petty, judgmental, greedy, and just plain mean to each other.”

  “No. We love . . . and help . . . and pray.”

  Johnny found it interesting that at no point did Harve defend the military, but only clung to a resolute faith in the fundamental goodness of man. It was inspiring. Or stupid.

  “You’re a good man, Harve. A terrible detective and a religious nut, but a good man.” Then he stood up and snapped a salute. “But I’m out.”

  *****

  None of the parked cars or jeeps on the abandoned night streets had keys in the ignition, and the searing pain in Johnny’s gut was making it too hard for him to keep searching. He stared at the helicopter, his helicopter, as he debated the morality of stealing the Army’s only helicopter.

  “What the hell,” he finally said. “No one else can fly it anyway.”

  He crawled inside, fired up the engine, then flew off into the night as far from the battle as he could, saying good-bye to mankind, going AWOL for the last time.

  At least, that was his intention.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Julius strolled along the Times Square of the alien vessel with the confident air of a distinguished gentleman in jeans and a jean jacket. Given the many aliens in human skin, no one gave him a second thought. He had no trouble understanding the snippets of conversations all around him, knew he could communicate if need be, but he also knew that it was risky for he had yet to perfect the phlegmy, wet sounds of the alien tongue—didn’t quite have the larynx for it, according to Mary.

  He wasn’t exactly sure for what he searched. A way out? A way to defeat the bugs? Both? Or was it merely an intellectual’s curiosity about the enigma that was the alien vessel?

  He looked through the glass window of a storefront that had all the appearance of a garment-industry sweatshop. Hard-working aliens “sewed” flawless human-skin costumes then put them on racks that were wheeled to the back.

  The next storefront had more of an upscale feel to it, the neon sign above showing alien symbols that loosely translated to “Rosetta Stone Language School.” Rows upon rows of bugs in headphones sat at small cubicles, staring at images on small screens as they repeated the sentences that only they heard.

  “The mother bakes a pie for her children,” said one.

  “Le garcon mange un pomme de terre,” said another.

  “他们去公园,” said a third.

  A well-kept man in his sixties came out of the building, and smiled at Julius. The “man” wore an expensive three-piece suit and a top hat, and coughed a friendly phlegmy greeting. “Good day, fine Dweller. Do you study here as I do?”

  Julius knew that any coughed reply could give him away, but it would be too suspicious to say nothing at all.

  “Ah ah ah,” he cautioned in his redneck drawl, commensurate with his jeans and jean jacket. “English only, pardner. That’s the rules they done gave me.”

  The “man” smiled and tipped his hat. “Quite right, dear sir,” he answered with an upper-class British accent. “The Queen’s only indeed. Dreadful sorry.”

  “Don’t sweat it, buddy. Ya take care now.”

  And then he moved on.

  The next storefront into which he peered showed the aliens’ new sun-gun attachments being mass-produced on a giant assembly line at a staggering speed. Only because of his vampire eyes was he able to ascertain what in fact was being manufactured—to a human, it would have been merely a blur.

  The machines spit the finished weapons into large crates on conveyor belts that carried them out the back of the shop. Julius’s curiosity was piqued. He made sure that no one was paying attention to him—and as he was in a replica of New York City, there was not much risk of that. He transformed to mist, flew under the shop’s doorway, then hid between two of the crates on the belt and went for a ride.

  The alley behind the shop seemed to be one giant conveyor belt stretching for miles. Julius could see that the belt was heading toward an opening at the base of the World Trade Center (which in this world had never been destroyed), the higher portion of the North Tower protruding up, through and beyond the fake sky ceiling.

  The tower interior was more akin to Grand Central Station, albeit for elevators. The conveyor belt on which Julius rode attached itself to a mini-belt inside one of the elevators, click-clack-click-clack, then left him and the crates—along with several racks of human skins—to go for a vertical ride.

  The elevator shot up fast and smooth. The panel beside the door showed that he was thirty levels from the top with seventy levels beneath, each level signified by a number and the Earth cities it represented—“Los Angeles-Tangiers-Jerusalem,” “Moscow-Montreal-Shanghai,” “New Orleans-Santiago-Macau,” and the like. He could not make out the words for the level to which he was being sent.

  The doors opened, and Julius was aghast once more. It was another “elevator central station” but infinitely larger. Unlike the prior station, it made no attempt to mask the fact that it was part of a massive space vessel. The floor, girders and ten-foot ceiling were of a faded gray metal, and there was neither a wall nor end in sight. Miles of conveyor belts interconnected and merged like a giant highway system, whizzing their cargo in every possible direction toward their elevator destination.

  The elevators themselves abounded in predetermined spots like gates in an airport, their alloy casing shooting up through the ceilings and down through the floors at vertical and diagonal angles of all stripes. Alien signage marked the general location to which each section of elevators traveled, such as “rural,” “island,” or “wasteland.” The section from which Julius had come was labeled “metropolis.”

  Tens of thousands of aliens flooded through the port, entering or exiting one elevator to transfer to another (since there seemed to be no actual exit), walking or riding motorized carts to their respective sections, or waiting patiently in queues at their gates. Julius could only wonder if this was the central hub of the vessel or if there were dozens more like it. There was no way to know for certain.

  The crates between which he hid finally arrived at their predetermined section, labeled “military.” After just a few quick conveyor belt transfers, click-clack-click-clack, he and his crates were carried to the back of a giant freight elevator, roughly the size of an Olympic swimming pool. One by one, new crates of sun-guns from God-knows-where were automatically loaded into the space. Only once filled to capacity did the doors close, and the elevator begin its downward plunge.

  Julius’s gut leapt to his throat as he felt the intense speed—more like a vertical Japanese bullet train or a Six Flags ride than any elevator he had ever experienced on Earth. He could see from the panel that the beastly machine would descend over one thousand levels without a stop before it could open its doors one level at a time.

  At long last, the beast slowed down and opened its doors on level ninety-nine (from the bottom.) A new conveyor belt attached to the one inside, the front eight crates were automatically carried out, and Julius perched up to get a better look.

  Hundreds of thousands of alien soldiers were in the midst of military drills. He could not see what lay beyond some of the grassy
hills, and he wondered if their numbers were even greater than that. The blue sky and yellow sun were once again but painted ceilings, and an officer’s booming voice coughed orders over a crackling loudspeaker.

  It was the other side of the wormhole that he had seen on Earth, the grassy meadow from which the aliens had come and gone. Or so he thought.

  The elevator made further drops on levels sixty-four, forty-five, twenty-five and six, before it unloaded the last of its cargo on level four—and each level was identical. Julius rode the conveyor belt out of the elevator along with his crates, then dropped down to the grass to watch the soldiers, hovering as mist unnoticed.

  Assuming that the parts of the meadow that he couldn’t see were just like the part that he could, and assuming that the hundred levels at which the elevator hadn’t stopped were identical to those at which it had, Julius calculated over three billion combat-ready soldiers; and that didn’t account for the possibility that there could be other sections of the vessel just like this one, nor the possibility that there could be millions of other soldiers scattered elsewhere throughout the ship.

  The truth that Peyton had chosen to ignore days ago was indisputable. There were just too many alien soldiers for the beings of the Earth to ever defeat!

  But the vampire couldn’t readily accept this fact either—no one wants to accept the death of all they’ve ever known and loved, the end of their world. Perhaps the assumptions that he had made were wrong, he told himself. They had to be!

  As crackly orders continued to boom over the loudspeaker, Julius-as-mist slithered through the blades of grass, hoping to discover that the as-of-yet unobserved parts of level four were barracks or hospitals or storage facilities—anything but soldiers! It could alter his calculations considerably.

  “Officer Cough-Cough, to the Bridge,” coughed the loudspeaker. “Officer Cough-Cough, report to the Bridge.”

  One of the senior drill instructors quickly ordered the swarms under his command to report to another instructor, then jogged toward one of the elevators.

  Bridge? Julius wondered. That could be interesting.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  “If I stuck around they’d just pin something else on me,” Johnny muttered his rationalization as he flew the stolen Bell 407 northward. “I could kill every damn bug single-handedly and they’d probably try to bust me for murder.”

  He wasn’t sure where he was going—he hadn’t thought it out that far—he only knew that there was no army left to look for him, and his new concern had to be surviving an alien victory. They can’t kill every human, he thought. There’ll have to be a few stragglers they miss, surviving in the middle of nowhere, living off the land and staying out of the bugs’ way. He saw no reason he couldn’t be one of them.

  Then he happened to glance down below.

  “What the hell?” he said to no one.

  *****

  “C’mon, stupid zombies,” said a bored Patrick as he led twenty-four thousand zombies down the country highway on a girl’s bike. “Gotta keep up, stupid zombies.”

  “Blah blah blah stupid zombies,” said an even more bored Rhiannon.

  They weren’t afraid. The zombies were a safe distance behind and too slow to catch them as long as they kept moving. But they were so tired.

  “This way,” Patrick said as they peddled up the ramp to the I-95.

  They were close to the mouth of the interstate when the zombies behind began their ascent so turning back was no longer an option. And that was when they saw roughly forty thousand new zombies in front of them, staggering right at them!

  “Holy poop!” Rhiannon shouted. “Where the heck did they come from?!”

  *****

  The yuppie man and woman in the BMW convertible who had promised to bring help to zombie-Joey and his parents in the totaled Silverado on the lonely country road back in Chapter Fifteen had tried their best to keep their word.

  Their first mistake was continuing on their original course east instead of turning back toward Heartsoot Creek, which was just a few minutes to the west. It was during that time that the man lost consciousness as the zombie virus (which he had received when zombie-Joey bit him) began to gestate. The woman assumed it was an aspect of the “weird” feeling of which he had complained, blasted her alternative-rock mix and kept her eyes on the road.

  It wasn’t necessarily her fault that she drove over a broken beer bottle and got a flat tire. There was still no cell-phone reception to call Triple-A so she attempted to awaken the man, but he was out cold—it was her first sign that the “weird” feeling may have been more severe than either had given credit.

  She had never changed a tire before so she had to figure it out from scratch. It took her more than two hours to complete the task by which point the dozing man’s metamorphosis had begun to take form. The grease-stained woman jumped into the car and floored it. In not too long, she saw a rundown motel on the outskirts of Happenstance, Georgia, population forty thousand, and that was when the man’s dead eyes popped open, and he jammed his rotted teeth into her arm. She let go of the wheel to fight him off, but he kept chewing. The BMW, being an automobile of fine alignment, continued on course until it plowed into one of the motel rooms.

  The innkeeper, his wife and teenage son ran out of the office to help. The wife and son sped to the unconscious woman while the innkeeper tended to the man. He unbuckled the seatbelt whereupon the zombie tore into his flesh. The son sprinted across to help his Dad, yanked the zombie over the convertible door and onto the ground, and the zombie began to gorge upon him. The wife bolted into the office, then back out blasting her rifle into the air, but it only lured the zombie toward her. She shot into him at point-blank range as he approached her, and then he ate her.

  It wasn’t until nightfall that the woman, the innkeeper, his wife and son had completed their gestation, then joined the zombie-man who had been staggering aimlessly by himself all afternoon. The five zombies staggered aimlessly together for hours more, then somehow found their way into town. You can figure out the rest.

  *****

  Patrick and Rhiannon saw no way out. The forty thousand Happenstance zombies were in front of them, the twenty-four thousand Heartsoot Creek zombies were staggering up behind, and they were too high up the ramp to jump off safely. It wasn’t death that they were afraid of but injury, for certainly the zombies would follow them down to the road below and devour them.

  “I don’t wanna become one of ’em,” Rhiannon wept. “Kill me.”

  “I can’t kill you,” the terrified boy answered.

  “Then you want me to kill you?”

  Patrick looked around to realize the girl was right. Better to be dead than one of them. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll each kill ourselves. Together. On three. Ready?”

  Rhiannon nodded then tearfully pressed her pistol against her head. “You’re a good egg, Patrick.”

  “You too, Rhiannon,” he sniffled as he did the same. “One,” he said.

  “Two,” she said.

  They cocked their triggers.

  Wait!” he shouted when he heard the strange noise.

  They both turned toward it, and they couldn’t believe what they saw. It was a helicopter! Flying low and fast along the I-95, just a bit above ground level, barreling through the Happenstance zombies like a steak knife through Velveeta. Scores of undead were bulldozed over the freeway girders to the road below, and even more were crushed to oblivion as the chopper made its way to the side of the ramp where it hovered just a few feet from the kids, and the man inside yelled, “Get in!”

  The children looked at each other and nodded, jumped off their bikes and leapt toward the machine. Patrick made it easily through the open space behind the pilot, but Rhiannon was only able to latch onto the skid. She clung for dear life as her body swung desperately in midair, the zombies on the ground below salivating as they awaited her fall, the zombies on the ramp staggering toward her only to tumble off the interstate becaus
e they were too dim to know to jump.

  “Help!” she cried.

  The pilot jammed the cyclic between his knees and reached out toward her. He screamed in anguish as one of the nineteen stitches on his belly ripped open but it didn’t stop him from grabbing the little girl by the wrist and yanking her inside.

  The great bird floated up and away from the whining zombies with ease, at which point Johnny looked over his shoulder to address the children.

  “Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to take rides from strangers?”

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Harve had only enough consciousness to feel his life slipping away. He hung on as best he could, fighting with all his will to keep death at bay, although he didn’t know why. Habit, maybe.

  He felt the ceiling and walls around him start to move. No, he realized—he was the one who was moving. They were taking him somewhere? Where? Why? But he didn’t have the strength to ask out loud.

  He found himself in a very large space with many empty unmade beds. It was the quarantine area where the zombie soldiers had gestated but he couldn’t have known that. He felt the gurney stop moving, and then he saw the dark vampire slide a stool by his side to sit down.

  “There has been too much death,” she began. “Too much sorrow, too much loss. You saved my life, and I can give yours back to you. Do you understand?”

  He tried to answer but he was too weak.