Free Range Protocol- Tales of the Tschaaa Infestation

by Marshall Miller

  Thus, every day a beefy Darryl showed up, made sure no one was stealing from him and that all the nasty human and otherwise fluids were cleaned up. Seattle Police Department Vice Squad all knew him, so the only people who used to get picky with him was the Health Department. They hated sticky floors and a locker room smell of dirty gym socks. Thus, Darryl went through a can of air freshener almost daily. Seven days a week, even Sundays, he was open. He also owned stock in Jiffy Mop.

  With the day man AWOL, Darryl was there at 6:00am to let Jimmy go home. The young and slender black college student did not look like someone who would want to spend time in a porn shop. But he told Darryl he needed the money, and the clientele helped him with his Psychology studies. “Perfect for field studies,” he had told Darryl.

  “How ya doing, young man,"Darryl greeted the college student.

  “Fine, Boss. Now that you are here. Doug’s trashed again.”

  “You talked to him also?” The shop owner asked. Jimmy snorted before he answered.

  “He stopped by. I think he’s on meth again, all agitated.”

  Darryl shook his head. Why the guy couldn’t stay sober was beyond him.

  “I hired him when he was on smack. At least the worst thing heroin does to him is he would nod off. I’m usually around in the daytime to wake him up. Meth makes him too aggressive towards the customers.” He looked at his other employee.

  “Know anybody who needs a job, Jimmy?”

  “I’ll check around, Boss, Right now, I need a shower before I go to class. See you tonight, I guess.”

  “Yeah. A double shift for me again. Ask your friends about a job.”

  “Will do, Boss. Gotta go.” Jimmy took off on his ten speed bike he kept locked in the shop.

  Darryl sighed. He had been covering the gap between 4:00pm until Jimmy came in at 8:00pm for he could not remember how long. Good employees were hard to find. That helped cost him his second marriage a year ago. Now, child support for four kids, two exes, and another house to an ex-wife told him he never would be out of this business. Of course, this store’s merchandise was just part of his job. This First Avenue establishment was one of the last Mafia-owned pornography shops on the West Coast. Darryl thought maybe one of the remaining outlets in the entire United States. The once proud Italian/Sicilian Mafia was a shadow of itself. The weakness of the organization helped to keep Darryl in business as he was one of the last “drop spots” for the “family”. Selling smut was a cover, and paid the utility bills. The building was owned by a proxy. So, in additional to laundering a bit of currency through a cash business (can’t let your wife see that credit charge), there were other items. The money from illegal card games, loan sharking, and some sports betting on the ‘big’ days like the Super Bowl, in addition to whenever the few Wiseguys needed a place to drop something, no matter what it was, it all came through this place. Darryl locked it all up in an oversized hidden safe in the back. None of his employees knew about the fake paneling which concealed the Fort Knox brand vault. Darryl had been playing this role for some twenty years.

  Darryl turned on the small flat screen TV suspended above a sign that proclaimed Catfight/Bondage DVDs. He had a DVD player connected to it and another television if he wanted to show some new film. This morning, he wanted the news. It was nearing 6:30am, west coast time.

  Breaking News flashed across the screen as it lit into life. Darryl adjusted the sound volume and stepped closer.

  “The verified reports are that meteorites have struck downtown Atlanta and the surrounding area. All emergency units and first responders in the state of Georgia have been activated.” The talking head was clearly agitated. Darryl frowned as he watched. Meteors from space? What the hell was going on?

  “This just in,” the talking head continued. “There are now reports of meteorite strikes across the United States and Canada. We are also trying to verify reports of these… space rocks are hitting locations in Europe and Asia. This is becoming a disaster…”

  There was a rumbling sound permeating the entire shop. As the shop’s merchandise began to vibrate on the shelves and metal display racks, Darryl swore and stepped to the front door. As he opened it, there was a flash, explosion, and shockwave from the South. Darryl scrambled back into his shop as garbage and debris were blown by his shop front window. The television flickered, then stayed on as a small automatic emergency generator he had installed years ago to help support the vault security kicked in.

  As Darryl stood, frozen near the door, he heard the talking head on the boob tube exclaim “It’s reported that the Smith Tower in Seattle, Washington, was just struck by a large meteorite. The upper floors are collapsing onto the downtown streets. Please everyone in the area, stay under cover. Do not go to…”

  Darryl stopped listening. This could not be happening. The Smith Tower was just a few blocks south. He was fifty years old. He should be relaxing in his old age.

  Jimmy, covered in dust and dirt, burst through the front door.

  “It’s hell out there! The top of the Smith Tower is gone. It’s all over the street. And I just saw what I think was a meteor flash by, heading across the Sound.”

  Jimmy’s words finally woke Darryl to action.

  “You want to stay here, Jimmy? At least until we know for sure what’s going on.”

  “No!” Jimmy replied. “I need to find my girl, Eve.”

  “You sure…”

  “I’ll bring her back here if I can. It might be safer.”

  Darryl nodded, then answered.

  “You’re both welcome. Be careful.”

  Jimmy nodded, then was back out the door.

  Darryl locked and bolted the door. He then strode to the back storage room. Glancing around out of habit to ensure no one was looking, Darryl next swung the concealing wood panel away from the vault door. He spun the combination lock dial, then with practiced ease worked the combination. Darryl had the heavy door open in record time. He flicked the small interior light on and examined the interior. There was a couple of bank bags filled with cash, some ledger books, and a long hardwood gun case. Darryl grabbed the gun case, then shut and secured the door. One of the “Wise Guys” had asked him to hold onto the high-end over-under twelve gauge shotgun for him. He never asked why Darryl just stored it. He took the gun case to the front counter and opened it up. The twelve gauge, ornate gold inlay design and all, had a small cloth bag containing a handful of shells tied to the stock. Darryl took two shells, broke open the action of the gun, and loaded it. He placed it and the case behind the counter.

  Darryl realized he did not know why he needed to get and load the shotgun. It just felt- right. He reached under the front counter and pulled out his Luger. A guy who owed him a gambling debt years ago had given the pistol to him as payment. Darryl had never been arrested for anything serious, other than a few misdemeanors in his misspent youth back East. Thus, he could legally possess firearms, which was another reason his employers liked him.

  The guy who gave him the pistol had said it was a collector's item. Darryl had checked, and it was pretty rare, being an early Swiss military pistol in thirty caliber Luger, not the standard nine millimeters. He test fired it late one night in the alley behind the street shops, killed a beer bottle, then put it away. Darryl cleaned it at times when he was alone in the shop, so it was there if ever needed. So far, he had been lucky.

  Darryl ignored the blathering people on the boob tube, as he knew they had no real information. The Mafia employee had good instincts, knew it was best he stayed put. There was no one waiting for him at his downtown apartment, not even a cat. He had a case of bottled water in the back, with some chips and snacks. In his small desk at the end of the front counter, he had a fifth of scotch. Darryl would shut down the generator in a few minutes if the power did not come back on. There was limited fuel in its tanks.

  He stuck his Lugar under his loose fitting shirt, laid the twelve gauge on the floor out of sight. He went to his desk, fumbled in on
e of the drawers and found an old transistor radio. He turned it on and found there was still some juice in the batteries. Once he had a news station with someone ranting about what was happening, he went and shut off the generator. He never knew when he would be able to refuel the tank. Despite the dust and soot from the Smith Tower hit, there was still enough ambient light from the Sun shining through his front display window to illuminate to his store a bit. He poured himself a double shot of scotch from the bottle in his desk into a plastic cup he had and drank it down. He knew it was going to be a long day.

  The long day turned into three long weeks. The radio’s batteries lasted long enough for Darryl to hear that all the space rocks were not some natural disaster. Instead, there were launched at Earth from a brand new enemy. Of course, the fact that there appeared these six-wheeled overgrown ATVs with metal tentacles emphasized the fact this was not Kansas anymore, Toto. Then the oversized metal men thought to be robots at first but later seen as a form of cyborg appeared. They took out anyone who messed with the wheeled robots. These soon named robocops operated large circular shaped spacecraft which looked suspiciously like some starships from a well-known film series. These Falcons were joined by the Deltas (named after their shape) fighters which liked to blow holes in tall buildings. Darryl turned on the generator just once when he opened the safe and removed the bags of cash. He had a sneaking suspicion that any power used would attract the wheeled harvesters, the new given name of the six-wheeled robots. For they grabbed screaming humans and dragged them away. Someone soon discovered those humans taken were slaughtered for meat.

  Rumbling and eruptions from Mount Rainier and Mount Saint Helens did not help. Before the radio shut down, Darryl heard that the Hanford Nuclear Storage area had gone critical and exploded. The three events were mitigated due to the prevailing easterly winds. Darryl knew that it would still be harder to survive in Seattle.

  Darryl quietly checked his water supply. He had filled the sinks in the two restrooms with water from his hot water tank, then turned it off and disconnected it from the outside line. He had read somewhere that when the public plumbing system went offline, backflow pressure could rob your tank of its water. The former Mafia worker did not want to die of thirst. Nor was he in any hurry to wander outside and get harvested while looking for supplies.

  The porn shop operator sat down quietly in the near dark of the store. He had learned some patience during his three years in the Army. His former employers liked to have their employees use military service to learn some specialized skills. Such as, how to use weapons to kill people who interfered with ‘business.’ Darryl had also been instructed in how to make an expedient field stove, a solar still to get water back from his piss, and explosives from household products. Darryl chuckled how after more than twenty years, that stuff suddenly became important.

  Jimmy never came back. Darryl figured he was dead, a piece of meat in some Alien’s larder. As for druggee Doug, he chuckled when he thought how nasty that piece of meat would be for the aliens. So Darryl played numerous hands of solitaire, looked at some of the old porno magazines on the discount table, and recounted the money in the bank bags. He had some two hundred fifty thousand dollars in currency. Darryl thought the bills might now be useful as toilet paper or kleenex, nothing more. There were no open shopping malls to buy expensive items even if he could go out without getting eaten. However, old habits die hard, so he kept the money for his employers.

  Darryl's stomach grumbled. His breakfast had been a stale cracker he found in the desk with an antacid tablet for dessert. That reminded him that he would have to go out and locate some food soon, whether he wanted to or not. This forced diet helped his waistline, but not his alertness or strength. He started another hand of solitaire to take his mind off of his stomach.

  “Come on, Ole Sol,” he said to himself. “I’ll beat you this time.”

  Even inside the shop, he heard the shot. The police and military were long gone so Darryl knew the firearm discharge was probably not by anyone he would want to meet. He moved towards the shop front door, with his Lugar in hand. Slowly Darryl peeked through the covering window blinds. He saw nothing moving outside.

  Two bodies suddenly slid into the shop's entranceway, bumping his front door. He automatically stepped back from his perch, pointed his pistol in the direction of the interlopers. They began to whisper to each other.

  “Honey, keep quiet. They’ll hear.” The voice was an adult woman.

  “It’s the puppy, Mom. He’s scared!” The speaker was a young girl.

  Darryl stood frozen. Two people. Alive. At his doorstep. Were they being chased by aliens?

  He heard a loud shout which echoed down the empty streets. That sounded like a man’s voice to him. The former mafioso quickly put two and two together. Men are chasing women and children, shooting at them. Not good in his book.

  Darryl unbolted and opened the shop door so quickly that the mother and daughter pressed up against the door stumbled into the shop and almost fell. He saw they were both Gingers.

  “On the floor,” ordered Darryl. “If you want to live.”

  The mother saw the pistol and glanced out the door. A quick calculation and she was pulling her daughter to the floor behind a rack of DVDs.

  “ And keep the puppy quiet.” The woman nodded at the whispered order.

  Darryl shut and tried to bolt the door as quietly as possible. He then crouched down to listen. In about a minute he heard the rough voices of three males. They were arguing much too loudly in Darryl’s estimation.

  “That was a lousy shot, Bud.”

  “Shut up, Frank. They're hiding around somewhere.”

  “Look over here. Footprints in the dust and dirt.” That comment was from an unnamed third male.

  “What ya got. Sy?”

  Darryl heard scruffled footsteps. He made sure he was in the dusty shadows of the shop as the men approached. Then someone pounded on the door.

  “Hey, lady. We know you went in there. Can’t hide your footprints.” The man known as Bud seemed to be in charge. Bud pounded on the door again.

  “Look it. We won’t hurt you. Scouts Honor.” Bud’s comment elicited muffled laughter from Sy and Frank.

  Darryl knew how to handle punk assholes. And that was who these three seemed to be. He stood up and put his free hand on the bolt.

  “What do I get for opening this door?” he said in a loud voice. He heard one man curse in surprise. Darryl slowly began to turn the bolt lock.

  “We could shoot you,” opined Frank, which elicited a muffled “shut up” from Bud.

  “My stupid friend meant was we can share, be friends. Not a lot of us humans left here with all those harvester robs around.”

  Using the conversation to cover the sound of the well-oiled door bolt being opened, Darryl next moved his free left hand to the door handle.

  “That’s it? No added goods, like maybe some weed? Smack?” Darryl had his hand on the handle and thumb on the release latch.

  “Hey, buddy, I thought we…“

  In a smooth motion, Darryl yanked open the door before Bud could finish his comment. He shot the scrawny bearded malcontent between the eyes. Bud had a silver and gold plated .45 Automatic in his hand, only half raised. The man toppled over backward as the adult merchandise shop manager shot the man known as Frank in his gun hand. The cheap .38 caliber revolver clattered to the street as Frank screamed in pain. Darryl shot past his head at the dirty blond hair Sy. The bullet took off the man’s right ear. Sy yelped, grabbed the side of his head where his ear had been, and took off running south down First Avenue. Frank followed him, howling like a banshee.

  Darryl knew the shots and screams would draw the wheeled harvesters. He grabbed Bud’s .45 off the sidewalk, then stepped over the body to retrieve Frank’s dropped revolver. He jammed the two handguns in his Docker pants pockets. Darryl then grabbed dead Bud and moved the body out into the street. He started to go through the deceased pockets when he
heard a familiar electric motor sound. In a flash, Darryl was back into his shop, shut and locked the door. He crouched and peaked out through the blinds. The hand holding the Lugar began to shake.

  A six-wheeled harvester whirled into view. As Darryl had surmised, the alien robot was attracted by the gunshots and screams. It stopped by dead Bud, examined the body with a metal tentacle which zipped out from some hidden compartment in the robot’s body. Its oversized basketball shaped dome ‘head,’ a combination of exceptionally bright and hot spotlight and some visual sensors for sighting blinded prey (meaning Humans), turned towards the shop front door. Darryl crouched down below the front windows and prayed. He shivered as he heard the scrape of the metal tentacle as it examined the door. The Mafia employee did not know if his bullets would have any effect on the metal monstrosity, but he would not be eaten without a fight.

  Then it was over. The harvester used its tentacle to grab the recently dead Bud and zipped north on First Avenue. A couple of minutes later, the puppy gave out a little whimper.

  “Hush him, Angie,” whispered her mother.

  “He’s just hungry, Mom.”

  Darryl looked at the two females. He had not expected to have two visitors in his shop. Three counting the puppy. For the first time, he noticed the packs on their backs.

  “You have food?” He asked.

  “You gonna take it?” Angie asked defiantly.

  “Angie!” Her mother scolded. “ He just saved us.” She looked at Darryl.

  “Sorry about my daughter, she’s just…”

  “Scared. And rightly so,"Darryl said. “But do you have food? I’m about all out.”

  The two ladies began to empty their packs, and the puppy started to whimper. Darryl saw a box from Angie’s backpack was powdered milk. He stuck his hand out.