Zombies versus Aliens versus Vampires versus Dinosaurs Page 8

  “Excuse me,” asked the young man. “We’re a little lost. Could you help us?”

  “Of course,” said the lobbyist, relieved that they wouldn’t have to dole out any cash. “Where are you trying to get to?”

  “Hell!” the young woman shouted with a smile as she hissed and revealed her fangs! The young man followed suit, and the two vampires pounced.

  From out of nowhere, Laurel leapt in front of the demons, wooden stakes in hand, and thrust. But in the time it took her to yank her stakes out of their vanquished hearts, three new vampires appeared behind her. She whipped around to face them only to sense five more approaching from the back.

  It was a trap, and she had walked right into it.

  They formed a circle around her as she quickly sized them up. In a flash, she dove headfirst to the ground and cartwheeled straight at one of them. With her hands on the ground, she wrapped her legs around him, backflipped away and flung him across the circle into three of the others.

  She sprung back to her feet as two more charged her from opposite directions, their dastardly fangs unfurled. She jumped straight up into the air, causing them to bash into each other and fall to the ground, then she landed with one foot upon each of their chests, driving the wooden heels of her stilettos into each of their hearts.

  Then five more vampires appeared. Then six more after that.

  This time they charged as a unit.

  She leapt into a spread-eagle position and took out four at once—two with a wooden stake each, two with a designer heel each—but it wasn’t enough. The others grabbed her before she could recoil.

  Lacking the strength to free herself from their powerful hold, she used their own leverage against them, causing them all to tip over and land in the water of the Reflecting Pool with a mighty splash.

  She killed two more as they fell, and two more while underwater, but more kept coming. Ten more, twenty more, thirty.

  Laurel fought valiantly as the battle stretched from one end of the Reflecting Pool to the other, but ultimately there were just too many for her. By the time she reached the far side of the pool, fifty of the fiends had her pinned down while Prague and Africa held her face in the water, drowning her.

  Trap indeed.

  Maybe I was destined to end like this, she thought as she clung to the last drop of air in her lungs. She would be with Michael soon.

  She could see the Washington Monument—blurry from her underwater point of view—and then what appeared to be a man standing by the foot of the pool.

  “Let her breathe,” she thought she heard him say.

  Prague and Africa yanked Laurel’s head out of the water by her hair. So deep was her gasp for air that she barely felt the pain.

  But when she saw the man’s face, she couldn’t comprehend how this could be the one who saved her. For it was the one vampire she hated most of all, and the only one that she truly feared.

  “Hello, slayer,” the vampire said with a wry smile.

  “Well, well, well. If it isn’t my old friend Julius,” she said casually, refusing to let any of them see how terrified she actually was. “At last we meet.”

  “The pleasure is all mine,” Julius answered.

  “So you finally caught me. And it only took what? A hundred of you? A hundred monsters to beat up a girl—you must be so proud.”

  “You’re probably wondering why we haven’t killed you by now.”

  “We want to, you know,” hissed Prague.

  “Dying to,” hissed Africa with a cold smile.

  “I’m here to offer a truce,” Julius explained.

  “You’re what to offer a what?”

  “Temporary, of course.”

  “What are you talking about, monster?”

  “You can’t beat the aliens, Laurel. They’re stronger than you humans and smarter than you too. I know this because they’re stronger and smarter than us.”

  “And why do you care so much about human survival all of a sudden?”

  Julius took but a moment to answer. “Because the aliens are messing with our food source, and we can’t have that!”

  Laurel stared at him. It was a good answer for him—utterly selfish and pure evil, hence the only answer she could possibly believe. But how could she believe him at all?

  “So what do you want from me?” she asked.

  “You must arrange a meeting between the new President and myself. Explain what we are, and vouch for us.”

  “And how do I know this isn’t one of your little monster tricks?”

  “Because we’re going to let you go, stupid,” he told her. “You slayers have been a thorn in our side for eons. Every atom in our bones cries out for us to kill you. But instead,” then he turned to Prague. “Let her go.”

  “Are you certain?” Prague asked, hoping he would change his mind.

  “I don’t speak otherwise.”

  Prague turned to Africa and the others. They removed their hands from Laurel and backed away, disappointed all.

  But Laurel refused to get up, refused to be in debt to her arch-nemesis.

  “And what if I don’t do your bidding, monster?”

  “Then both our kinds will be no more, slayer,” answered the vampire.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The streets of the sleepy rural town of Heartsoot Creek were littered with mutilated zombies staggering aimlessly about or feeding on the screaming living, soon to be zombies themselves. Marcus, Jeb, Joey, Adeline, Joey’s parents and the well-meaning religious couple may have been the first to spread the virus but that gave them no special privilege—they had to find their own prey just like the rest.

  Twelve-year-old Patrick Hutchins sat under the kitchen table with his father’s hunting rifle perched between his trembling knees, a long-corded telephone receiver clutched in his sweaty hands. The only boy of the prior night’s graveyard adventure who had not come into contact with alien blood, he had no idea what had happened to his neighbors, or why he was among the few that had been spared. All he knew was that after waking up late and playing hours of Grand Theft Auto—which he wasn’t really supposed to do but his parents were off at work—he looked out his bedroom window to see the zombie hordes gorging on those he once knew, and he had no desire to be eaten himself. So he sat under the kitchen table and frantically dialed, impatiently waiting for someone on the other side to answer.

  “Heartsoot Creek sheriff’s office,” said Deputy Louise Trent at last.

  “Please! Send help!” he shouted. “Everyone’s turned into zombies!”

  “Patrick Hutchins, is that you?” asked the Deputy. “Does your mama know you’re making this call? Do you know how much trouble you could get into for –”

  The downside of living in a town where everyone knows everyone.

  He heard the front door creak open—the door his mom kept slightly ajar in the summer for added ventilation. Why hadn’t he locked it? he wondered. Stupid!

  He dropped the phone and, with rifle in hand, snuck to the side of the swinging door that led to the living room. As carefully as he could, he pushed it open less than an inch to peak through it.

  Oh thank goodness, he thought. It’s Dad!

  “Daddy!” he shouted as he flung the rifle onto his back and raced toward his father. “What is going –”

  He stopped cold the moment he saw it. Dad had been zombified!

  “Oh no! They got you!”

  The zombie moved toward the boy slowly. Patrick backed away, terrified.

  “No, Daddy, don’t,” he pleaded. “Please. Just remember, I’m your son. Just remember a little bit. Why can’t you remember me?!”

  But Mr. Hutchins had no ability to remember the life he had once possessed. Patrick was no longer a son to him, just food. He continued to stagger forward as Patrick continued to back away when he hit the wall on the other side of the stairs. He was pinned. There was nowhere to run, and the zombie kept moving at him.

  He whipped the rifle off his shoulder and
pointed it at his father, praying to God Almighty that he wouldn’t have to use it.

  “Daddy! Please, don’t! I’ll shoot! I will!”

  But Daddy didn’t stop, couldn’t stop. He walked straight at the boy until the barrel of the rifle jammed into his chest.

  “Stop!” Patrick wailed.

  The zombie flailed his arms trying to grab hold of Patrick.

  Patrick fired!

  The zombie’s chest blew wide open as he sailed back across the living room, crashing onto the stairs with a thud.

  Patrick dropped to the ground and sobbed.

  Outside on the street, the zombies heard the gunshot. They instinctively turned toward its source, staggered toward the house and through the door that zombie-Mr. Hutchins had left wide open.

  The boy saw them in an instant. Fired! They flew back, but others kept coming in their place. Fired again. Same deal.

  He had to run while he still had the chance, he realized. He bolted up the stairs, leaping over his father’s corpse when Mr. Hutchins suddenly opened his dead eyes and grasped for his son. The shock of the thing’s cold hands against his jeans caused Patrick to lose his balance and fall, his knee jamming smack down into his father’s now brittle skull, crushing it to mere shards.

  With the other zombies clamoring and climbing over Mr. Hutchins to nab the boy, now inches within their grasp, Patrick leapt over the bannister and back down to the first floor, then sprinted back into the kitchen and out the back door.

  Where there were still more zombies!

  He could see his bicycle lying on the grass just a few yards away—if he could get to it, he could ride to safety. As the zombies from inside the house were filing out after him, he realized that he had no choice but to be brave. He ran straight toward his bike, hence straight toward two of them, then faked a move and ran around them. Easy, as it turned out. He did the same with the next two, then deked out three more. It was just like playing touch football—well, life-or-death touch football.

  They were slow, he realized. Slow and stupid. That discovery could be the only thing that would save him, he told himself.

  There were only two zombies remaining that stood between him and his bike, but they were too close to it for him to grab it. He stopped a few feet before them, waiting for them to come to him, drawing them near.

  “Come on,” he said to them. “Come get me. C’mon.”

  But the others were approaching him from behind. This better work!

  At last, the zombies in front began to stagger toward him. A quick deke and he was around them, yanking his bike up by its handlebars, jumping on it as he ran.

  Terrifying, he thought, but not so difficult. He turned back to check the distance he was putting between himself and his predators, unaware that he was about to ride straight into the clutches of another zombie right in front of him!

  He saw the thing at the last second! He swerved aside just as the zombie grasped at him, its decrepit hand instead finding its way in between the bike’s spokes, severing it from its skeleton arm.

  Another lesson learned, thought the boy.

  *****

  He had been pedaling for close to an hour but he still did not feel safe. Although the zombies were far behind him on the lonely country road, they were still following in their slow, relentless pursuit.

  Patrick knew that he had to get to the sheriff’s office. Even if they didn’t believe him at first, it would only be a matter of time till they saw what was going on, and at least he’d have law enforcement to protect him during the wait.

  But what he saw next shocked him to his very core. The wood bridge over Keller’s Ravine, the bridge that had always been there, the bridge that he had been counting on, was half-gone. It was as if someone had taken an axe or a bomb or something to purposely destroy any access from one side to the other.

  He pedaled to the edge of what remained, got off his bike and studied it. It was at least ten feet to the other side over a twenty-foot drop to a rocky gorge below.

  And the zombies behind him were coming, still coming.

  He considered riding off-road and into the brush, but then he heard noises emanating from it. Maybe they were people who could help him, maybe harmless animals. But as he probed further—no, they were more zombies coming at him from the side.

  He looked down into the ravine again. It was crazy to do what he was about to do, but it was even crazier to do nothing and let the zombies get him. He had to try. God help him please, he had to try.

  He walked his bike back away from the ravine, then began running with it toward the drop. He jumped on the bike in full motion and pedaled as hard and as fast as he could, harder and faster than he ever had before. A mere half inch before the drop, he jerked up the handlebar in a desperate attempt to alter his trajectory and put gravity on his side.

  Then he was in the air. Sailing upward over the gorge with his eyes closed, then downward again.

  He opened his eyes just in time to see that he wasn’t going to make it! He could see it. Just a few feet short!

  At the last second, he pushed his feet down hard upon his pedals and lunged himself up over the handlebars, flipping over them and landing on his back on the ground on the other side of the drop.

  He could hear his bicycle crashing on the rocks below, splintering into a million pieces. Could’ve been me, he thought.

  He lay on the ground, panting. He smiled as he realized just how lucky he had been.

  Then from out of nowhere, the business end of a sawed-off shotgun was shoved against his nose. A seven-year-old, blonde-haired, blue-eyed pixie of a girl wearing tattered denim overalls and messy streaks of mud on her face angrily held her cute little finger against the trigger.

  “Who the poop are you?!” she yelled at him.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  He was just one of fifty managers in the United States who had been charged with the top secret mission of converting private airplanes into bombers, and at this moment he could not have been more proud to have been given the assignment.

  He gazed out over the rail to watch his workers below tearing out seats and cutting holes in their crafts’ fuselages, constructing ordinance bays in their place, and loading payloads into the newly retrofitted mechanisms. It was all going swimmingly.

  It seemed that his whole life had led to this moment. His service in the Air Force, his experience as an intelligence officer and consequent vetting for the high security clearance he would require for this task, and his long tenure at Boeing. He wondered how many of his old friends were currently managing factories like this one across the country, around the world for that matter. It was of no consequence though. They only needed one of them on the inside, and each factory would have at least ten. He already recognized a few of the workers on the assembly line from the large space vessel on which he had been born.

  He had originally hoped to be chosen as one of the moles assigned to the destruction of the Earth’s military facilities because that task was an absolute, this one merely a fail-safe. He was crushed when he had learned that he hadn’t made the cut, but the Commander explained that this assignment was just as crucial to the cause and had a ninety-six percent probability of coming to fruition.

  “The Earth people will absolutely try to convert their peacetime aircraft into weapons because it’s the smart thing to do,” he had told the hundreds who had been assigned the same task that magnificent morning so long ago when they had been wormholed to Earth. “It’s the only thing they can do. It’s what I would do. If they don’t think of it, they’re even dumber than I thought, and this enterprise will take even less time than planned.”

  As usual, the Commander was right. He was always right.

  The manager knew that he would die in glory—it had been the Commander’s promise, and the Commander never lied.

  Songs would be written about him. His descendants would be showered with wealth and honors. And he himself would live forever as One-with-All-Matter.

/>   He looked at his watch. It was almost time.

  He caught the eye of one of his old vessel compatriots. They smiled a subtle, bittersweet smile to one another. It was time. Mission accomplished.

  Songs would be written about them.

  Three, two, one . . .

  The manager flipped a switch.

  And at that precise moment across the nation, all across the planet, factories just like this one ignited into giant balls of fire, ultimately reduced to mere piles of ash and scrap metal.

  No human aircraft was to be converted into weapons, and mankind would have no aerial support in the coming battle. The Alien Commander had decided that long ago.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Upon hearing the news, Peyton was utterly silent—so silent that it concerned some of the others. Had the man cracked? Was he thinking about drinking again?

  He sat at the head of a conference table in the boardroom on the mezzanine of Northbank’s luxurious Omni Hotel, surrounded by a bevy of political aids and his newly handpicked commanders. They silently waited for him to speak, but he merely rubbed his chin pensively and stared at the three-dimensional map of the city that had been set up across the room.

  He had chosen to wage his final stand in Jacksonville in the northernmost part of the state in order to buy himself some days to organize his new army while still keeping the enemy landlocked with seas on both sides, and also to drum up a strategy to defeat them. But with the bugs expected to enter the city the following morning, and lacking any kind of Air Force, he still had no ideas.

  “We have other factories ready to gear up, Mr. President,” said the Chief of Staff. “We can still have the bombers you wanted. Just give the word and we’re a go.”

  “No,” was all Peyton said in reply as he continued to rub his chin.

  “It’d only put us a few days behind schedule, sir,” added Colonel Williams.

  “This was all top secret, right?” Peyton asked rhetorically.