“Well, we’d like to keep it just a rumor Lieutenant, if you catch my drift.”
Brown nodded while running a hand through his short, red hair. “I understand, sir.”
Johnson stood up from the stool and pulled down a projection screen from the wall. “Well, they chose you because you were the best, son. They wanted to see what you were made of and see if you were good enough for the PMD.” He picked up a remote and turned on the projector just above Lt. Brown’s head. The screen lit up. “They felt that you could lead a group of elite boys in this mission. It’s a pretty small one too, so it shouldn’t be too nasty.” Johnson pushed a button on the remote and the projector clicked. A picture of an alien showed up on the screen. It had a big, gray head, with two large, egg shaped eyes and no nose. The classic image of an alien on one of those hokey documentaries. It was lying on a metal table.
“Jesus,” Brown whispered.
“Jesus and the Father above had no part in the making of these little bastards. These guys are about as friendly as a rabid dog, son. Lucky for you, you only have to deal with one of them. Little bastard is in the woods somewhere.”
“Shouldn’t be too hard.”
Johnson smiled. “You have any painful memories?”
“Why?”
“Do you?”
“Doesn’t everybody?”
“Yes they do,” Johnson walked around to the other side of the screen. “These guys have the power to read your mind, and not only that, they can plug some pretty nasty hallucinations and dreams in your head.”
“Shouldn’t the men be in here hearing this?” Brown said.
“Hawking is telling them all they need to know.” He turned back to the projector and clicked a button on the remote. The slide switched to a pile of dead soldiers in what looked like a small village somewhere. There was a straw hut burning in the background.
“This was in Africa, location undisclosed. The hallucinations drove the men mad and they turned on each other. The whole village was burned to the ground.”
Brown massaged the sides of his head.
“Calm down there my friend. There is only one out there tonight, and their hallucinations and dreams can only target one person at a time. So if one guy is getting a vision, no one else will be. That’s about the only positive thing when dealing with these bastards. I’ve been fighting them for ten years, and I’m still kickin’ it. You got nothing to worry about.”
Brown’s eyes dropped to the ground for a moment. He had never met any of the men he was about to command. What if one of them spaced out and starting shooting everyone? The more he listened to Johnson’s little presentation the more afraid he became. But usually at the end of the speech they showed some way to deal with everything, right? Maybe there was an easy way.
Johnson switched slides again. This one was of a woman, her hair matted with blood and her eye balls red. There was a bullet hole in the center of her forehead, small and precise.
“That woman is a walking virus,” Johnson said, pacing across the floor. “These little alien bastards implant something –we don’t know what– into people. Scientists are still trying to come up with some reason as to why this happens –it has something to do with what’s in their blood.”
“What do these people do?”
“Hold on sparky. I’m getting to that,” he flipped slides. There was a man this time, lying on his stomach with a massive bite mark just under his shoulder blade. “They bite, and whoever they bite will either become a full meal and have all of their flesh ripped off their bones, or they will become one of them. This guy was fortunate at the time to receive a bite and nothing more.”
"So they're like zombies?" Brown asked.
"Not exactly." Johnson paused for a moment to grab a bottle of water from a small fridge. He offered Lt. Brown a drink, but he refused.
“What makes them decide to bite you or just eat you?”
“We don’t know for sure. There have been some speculations, which are probably pretty damn accurate, that they remember things from their life. If they hated you then you’re going to be ripped to pieces. If they liked you or you were a loved one they’d just bite you so you’d become one of them.”
“So they’re intelligent?”
“Yeah. Probably as much as you or me. These things can talk too. They can even generate images and hallucinations just like our little alien friend.”
“I don’t know if I’m cut out for this, sir.”
Johnson laughed and paced the floor in a circle. “You’ll be fine. There’s only one little alien bastard out there, and there are possibly two of those other things –one male and one female. They are all in the wooded area, so all you have to do is shoot them in the head and they’ll fall quicker than a fat man on stilts, got me?”
He nodded. “What about civilians?”
“There are no civilians out here. The housing ends about a mile or two before the wooded area, and anyone poking out there after seeing the military presence probably has it coming anyway.” Johnson smiled.
“What if they pull the hallucination stuff, sir?”
“I’m sure they will, son. They’ll try to pry at you and pick out the memories that bother you most. They might even make it into a little bizarre scene or something. Bastards are sick. But there are twelve of you, and three of them. Maybe less, we don’t know. A woman is missing and we are sure she has probably turned into one, and there is a man, her husband, that went astray this afternoon. Now, if you’re ready. I think Hawking has readied your boys out there.”
Brown nodded, but his eyes never left the ground.
* * * * *
The streets were empty other than plastic grocery bags drifting across the asphalt as the breeze took them. All of the buildings were dark, and the night was silent. Crickets were chirping and even a few possums may have been out roaming the streets, waiting to become road kill. But that night it wouldn’t come. Only the police cars were on the road.
After driving by Van Lou Grocery, Donahue headed south on Washington Avenue toward the town’s housing areas. No one was on the street in any other part of town and if there was going to be danger that’s where it would be. The spacecraft had crashed down by the farming area, and it was just a little ways south of most of the homes. The FBI pretty much had that area on lockdown. When Donahue left there was a group of soldiers standing around with assault rifles.
He picked up the hand radio and tried unsuccessfully to speak into it. Alan laughed at himself and put it back down. The night was going to be a slow one. Most of the time the guys on night shift would tell jokes over the radio just to make the time go faster. In a small town there wasn’t much to do even for a cop at night, but that was a good thing of course. When there was something it usually meant someone was getting hurt or property was being damaged. A silent night was a good night.
The image of those children flashed in front of his eyes, and it was held there for a full minute. Donahue tried to close his eyes, but he just couldn’t. It was like some unnatural force was forcing him to look at them. There were four, lying side by side. Their faces were up, but their bodies were belly down.
A cat leapt out in front of the police car, and Donahue nearly jumped out of his seat when he hit the brakes. He put the car in park for a moment and let it idle.
“Jesus, this can’t be happening.” He rolled down his window and a nice breeze wafted into his car.
He looked over at the home to his left. There was a small green car parked in front of a rusted out RV. Two windows had been broken out of the car, and a collection of glass on the cement sparkled in the moonlight below it.
May as well take a look, he thought.
Donahue stepped out of the car and paced over to the scene. There wasn’t much to look at. His flashlight glared over the glass on the ground and in the car. There was still a little glass in the driver’s seat. Whoever did it was long gone and would probably never be found.
“Mr. Donahue!” an
angry child’s voice spat from behind him.
He turned and shined the flash light at the kid. Alan immediately dropped to his knees, ignoring the glass on the concrete, which dug into his legs. The girl was one of the dead children. He remembered her specifically from the image that had been permanently saved into his brain like a file on a computer. The child was facing him, but her body was not. Her face was the color of burnt paper, and her pupils were a shimmering orange.
Donahue shook his head and stared at the ground.
“You let me die!” she shouted.
“No!”
“You could have stopped it! You could have stopped it!”
He swallowed hard and closed his eyes. The kid was right. He hesitated at the stairs and even at the door while the alien had his business with them. Anderson was in on it too. They could have stopped it, and they didn’t.
“I was afraid!” he whimpered.
“You let me die, Donahue.”
“I’m sorry!”
Her face was now barely visible through the blur of tears. Donahue put his hand on his pistol, wondering if he could shoot her. Something was wrong. She shouldn’t have been walking around like that. But he didn’t think he could shoot a kid. He didn’t know if it was–
“Why don’t you go get the medicine so your dick won’t be limp?” The image transformed into his wife. She was standing in front of him with her hands placed firmly on her hips.
“What?” he whimpered.
“I want you to fuck me!” she shouted.
Donahue shook his head. This isn’t happening. I don’t know how I know that, but this isn’t happening.
He grabbed his pistol and pulled it out of the holster.
“You going to shoot me honey?” she gaped at him. “You’re going to shoot me after all these years we’ve been through? All I want is sex. A real man could give me that, but you’re just a piece of crap with an erectile dysfunction!”
“Go away,” Donahue cried. He pointed his gun at her.
She laughed. Donahue followed her eyes to something behind him. It was a woman. He had seen her before, but couldn’t remember the name. She was wearing a red bandanna over her gray hair and she had a remarkable body, but her skin was weathered and gray –even black in some spots. She was smiling, and her black teeth were dripping with saliva.
He jumped to his feet and pulled the pistol on her. “Don’t move!”
She laughed. “You should join us Donahue.”
“Who are you?”
“Mrs. Kelly. I live down the street from here.”
Donahue squeezed the trigger to the maximum point it would go without firing.
“What are you doing out here?”
“Finding others to join me.”
“Join you with what?”
She laughed. Out of the corner of his eye he could see another woman running down the street. She was followed by three or four other people. All of them looked like they had been dead for weeks, but it didn’t stop them from walking around.
Mrs. Kelly laughed. “On second thought I don’t think we want you to join us,” she said.
The other woman arrived with three others. They all stood facing him.
“Who are you?” he asked the other woman.
“I’m Nelda Allen. I live in that house.” She pointed up to the house. Her face and skin were the same as Mrs. Kelly’s –colored gray with black, disgusting spots.
“We want your flesh Mr. Donahue,” Mrs. Kelly hissed.
Donahue immediately fired his gun for the first time in his career. The woman dropped back and hissed with each shot. He emptied the full clip, and on the final shot to the torso she fell to the ground as a pool of blood flooded on her chest. The others approached him and began to hiss.
Donahue shook his head, “Stop!” He left his other clips in the car. Rookie mistake from being too comfortable with the low crime rates. Mrs. Kelly sat up and smiled at him with blood streaming from her lips.
“Eat him!” she shouted.
He ran to the car, slid over the hood, and jumped in. Then he pushed the lock button once inside. There were five of them. Mrs. Kelly, Nelda, and three others. Three stood in front of the car, and two on the side. They rocked the car back and forth.
“God help me,” he muttered.
Donahue cranked the engine, then floored it. Two of the three in front of him ran off to the side, while Nelda, who was in the middle flew up onto the hood face first and into the windshield. When her head landed, blood exploded onto the window as part of the glass shattered upon impact.
“Get off!” Alan screamed.
The old woman reached her bloody arms over the dash board and pulled herself up.
“You’re not going anywhere, Mr. Donahue.”
He grabbed for his knight stick and hit her as hard as he could in the face. She cringed and fell back, but she still had her bloody gray hands on the dash to keep herself from falling. Donahue looked in his rearview mirror and saw them running after him. They were running fast. One of them was inches from grabbing onto the back of the car. The speedometer showed sixty.
I don’t believe this shit, he thought. Nelda had pulled herself almost all the way into the car and he began to hit her some more with the baton. Each hit sent speckles of blood into the air.
If I can make it to the farms where the FBI is I’ll be ok, he thought as he turned on the sirens. He felt something hit the trunk and jump up onto the roof of his car. He slammed on his breaks and the old lady flew off the hood and rolled onto the cement at least thirty feet into the distance. Another came off the roof and landed next to her. He heard two –maybe three climb on to the back of his car. He didn’t care to look. Donahue peeled out and ran over the two in front of him. This time both of them went down and under the tires. The car jumped and he almost lost control, but recovered quickly. He looked in the rearview mirror and saw two of them hugging the back of the car.
He sped up to about ninety, and they showed no signs of letting go. One of them was screaming obscenities, but that was it. Donahue grabbed for the glove box and pulled out another clip for his glock. He loaded it quickly and kept one hand on the wheel and one on the gun. He turned and took careful aim for the head. The first shot formed a perfect circle in the window and little cracks sprang out from it like streams from a lake. He took another shot. This one landed in Mrs. Kelly’s neck and sent her flying off the back. The other screamed in a horrid half female, half male tone. Donahue took careful aim again and fired. This one hit the torso and it fell off the car.
Donahue took a deep breath. They were gone, and he was almost to the FBI station. He had to let them know what was going on in the housing area. This thing had spread a lot further than the woods.
* * * * *
Lisa stepped out of the shower and dried herself. So much had happened all at once. Her mother was gone, the hallucination of blood and vomit, Russ, the quarantine, no phones, no television, and no radio. She tried to believe that she would see Russ again, and hoped that he would prevent the evil that was about to take place. Then there was Justin, sitting in the living room probably crying all over the sofa. His mother was undoubtedly dead, and Lisa couldn’t imagine what was going through his marijuana fogged brain.
Lisa wrapped the towel around her body and walked across the balcony toward her room. She dripped water across the floor but didn’t care. Justin had given her a brief glimpse and smiled, knowing she had nothing on under the towel. Lisa rolled her eyes.
How can he be joking about that when he knows his parents are dead? Lisa couldn’t fathom the thought.
A few moments later she came out of her room wearing tight black jeans and a plain black shirt that ended just above her belly button. THE STONES was tattooed just above her waistline on her back in black ink. It seemed pathetic, but she hoped Russ would be by later.
This shirt and jeans combo would make my mom proud, she thought.
The room was silent when she walked down the s
tairs. Justin was still there. He took a quick peek at Lisa’s ass, and she saw him do it but opted not to say anything.
“So you don’t mind me staying here tonight?” he asked.
Lisa thought about it for a moment. Having him stay the night would have brought the possibility of waking up and finding him on top of her.
“If you don’t mind sleeping on the couch.”
“I don’t mind. That’s a nasty tattoo you got by the way.”
“Oh, go to–”
A knock came from the back door in the kitchen. Justin looked toward it, but made no effort to get up. Lisa ran anxiously, hoping that it was either her mother or–
“Russ?” She opened the door and he quickly jumped inside. His face was red and his arms were quivering. Despite that, Lisa felt safe again. The unexplainable aura surrounded him.
“My mom’s gone,” he said.
“What happened?”
“When I got back the house was empty, and there was blood on the kitchen floor.” He was panting as he spoke. “And I saw…” Russ wanted to tell her about the hallucination but couldn’t bring himself to do it.
“And what?” She placed her hand on his shoulder.
“Nothing.”
“Come in and sit down. My mom is missing too, and Justin is in there.”
“Maddox?”
“Yeah, douche bag, I know, but his parents are gone. He has nowhere else to go.”
“Do you know where your mother might be?” Russ asked.
“I was going to look in her bedroom, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it,” her voice trembled.
She’s gone. You’re mother is dead.
Lisa shook her head at the thought and lead Russ into the living room. Justin sat on the couch staring mindlessly out the window.
“Nice tattoo,” Russ said.
Lisa turned around and gave him a brief smile. She was safe now. The feeling had taken full effect. He was there to protect her from whatever the hell was happening outside. As long as she was near him nothing would happen.
Super Zombies from Outer-Space Page 6