The Mulligan Planet

by Zachariah Dracoulis

adjusted my brief descent. Smashing the zed into the cold metal roof the broken elevator, the crack and blood spray of the even more dead creature was equal parts disgusting and satisfying. The satisfaction subdued by another zed tumbling through the hole.

  “Get us out of here! Where’s the door?” I sent the flailing zed back up with an uppercut while quickly surveying the ground.

  Harry’s finger took up my field of vision as he pointed at a relatively untouched piece of steel, “There! The top is near Steve’s feet, pry it open!”

  More were falling through now, I pulled my baseball bat from the duffel on Harry’s back and tossed it to Marcus as Harry dropped the shotgun and produced his sword, “Keep them off Steven, no guns, we need the least sound possible.”

  We fought the horde while more and more tore through the hole down the shaft, peppering us with small bits of concrete and other debris as they made the hole wider. Harry caught one with his blade through its chest, causing him to tumble backwards, the biting beast stopped by Marcus swinging hard against the back of its head, causing its head to bust open and paint Harry’s beard in red.

  Bodies were starting to pile up after the ten seconds we’d been in there and I was starting to worry about the space we were fighting in when finally a loud bell started to go off.

  I spun to see Steve had pulled the doors apart wide enough for us to fit through, “Well that’s not good, everyone through!” Steven was the first to slide through the small gap, I pulled the duffel off of Harry and tossed it through as soon as Marcus climbed out. The undead were falling down the shaft five at a time but Harry continued to stay beside me, fighting them off. “Get through Har, I’ve got this!”

  Harry’s blade carved through another down its mid-section. “Like Hell you do!”

  I caught one and threw it straight back at another, “Same time!”

  Harry sheathed his weapon and we both dove for the gap, Harry clawing his way out first with me in tow. He fell out onto the floor and I had just reached the gap when a heavy object fell on my legs, a heavy, breathing object.

  I shot my hands out of the gap toward my friends, “Pull!” Marcus and Steve got a hold of my arms and had started pulling while I kicked wildly as hands started to grasp my legs. “Hurry up and get me – woah!”

  A nose touched my calve right as I got pulled out of the gory pit, “Shut the doors!” We started pushing on the doors but kept slipping, it needed handles.

  “Handles!” I punched the elevator door, leaving a deep dent, “Try pushing there Harry!” The bells draining out the sound of my voice but he somehow heard me and pushed. I put another dent in the other door and started pushing, a head had made its way out, snarling and salivating, its eyes boring into mine with hunger.

  “Push!” A communal grunt sounded as we all let out the final strength of two vampires and two humans on the doors. Sliding the grinding metal and crushing the zed’s head as well as the accursed bell.

  I turned to face the barren hallway behind us, “Empty, they must still all be on the second floor, let’s get out of here before they find their way down. We can head to our safe-house up in Alderley.”

  The growling and metallic sound of zeds pouring down into the elevator shaft behind me was almost comical, almost. Marcus’ blood-soaked hand grabbed my shoulder, “Alderley? Up near the military base?”

  Marcus and Steven both looked at me with genuine concern, “Yeah… We haven’t got to it yet, it’s been pretty swamped, why?”

  I’d started walking while they followed, Harry carrying the duffel, “There’s a group of bandits who have holed up there, at first we thought it was you and the team, but then we saw that they were gathering fuel, they recently moved to a park on that river in Alderley.”

  I kept walking, still feeling our current home was pretty safe, “How do you even know they’re bandits, they could just be trying to get ready for an escape.”

  We turned left, the smashed glass doors greeting us to the torrential rain, “Because once they took the fuel and the guns they started taking women and executing everyone else that didn’t fall in line.”

  I stopped, “Yeah… ok, there’s bandits. But why haven’t we heard or seen them before? You guys are the first people we’ve seen in days, and gunshots are loud.”

  Marcus pointed outside, “This rain, the storms, the roaring dead, they’d all contribute to silencing the screams and shots from down the street, let alone a few blocks away.”

  A distant roar sent shivers up my spine, “We can’t stay here, look, they haven’t found us yet, we’ll get to the safe-house and hide out for the night, then we can try to find somewhere else to move and try to find the others. Have you had any luck in tracking them?”

  Marcus showed his displeasure with this plan through his frown, “No, not really, last I saw they’d given up on the airfield evac and had started going north, that’s when the signal cut, no more tracing, no more communication.”

  I wiped some blood off my forehead, “You lost communication when the giant ship showed up right?”

  Those good old gears clicking away in my head, “Yes, it’s got some kind of jammer on board.”

  I walked to the door and cupped some of the rain in my hands and splashed it onto my face, “Then let’s get rid of the jammer then.”

  I got laughs in response but when I turned with my smile it silenced, “Wait… you’re serious. John, there’s no way you could get near that thing unless you’ve got wings that I don’t know about-”

  I pointed out through the door, “The airport, judging by how fast the infection spread I doubt they had time to get to a plane, there’d be at least one left.”

  Steven and Harry were seemingly bored by all this and had wandered off to clean the weapons, “Even so, I’ve been watching that thing for days, the only thing that came out was that gas on day one, I don’t even know if there’s an opening. But let’s say there is, how do you plan to board that thing at twenty thousand feet while flying a plane?”

  I shrugged, “I make an opening, parachute in, same basic principle as that last mission.”

  Mark rubbed his bandaged forehead that brought a pained look to his face, “No it isn’t John, you know that, how the Hell are you expecting us to just guess our way through an alien aircraft?”

  I shook my head lightly, “I don’t expect us to.”

  His brow furrowed in confusion for a moment and then shot up, “No! No way John, I’m not letting you do that.”

  The others quickly looked over to us then returned to their quiet conversation, “Ok, well, what’s your suggestion? Everyone gets onto a jumbo packed with explosives and risks their lives?”

  He had moved his hand to his beard and was gently stroking it. I swear, rubbing a beard makes genies of epiphanies come out. “I’ve got it!” He grabbed my shoulder and pulled me outside. “There!”

  His hand launched upward and I followed its path, he was pointing at the ship, “Yes, giant spaceship, I’m aware of its existence.”

  Marcus shook his head, “No, look at the rear end,” I peered through the rain, there was a massive turbine facing downward, blowing clouds clear from view, “Hit that! No trying to go through the ship in the middle of the air, bring it down to us.”

  The plan was solid, definitely had merit, although standing in the soaking rain was getting to me, a feeling that was shown to be mutual as Marcus dragged me back into the relatively dry building where I began to shake off, “That thing is massive though, won’t it cause massive amounts of damage?”

  He chuckled a bit, “Look around us John, I think it’s done a fair bit already, it comes down and we can find the team, or at least start to try.”

  I shook my hair out of my eyes, “It’s going to take at least a few days to get ready, we’ll need something that makes a nice big bang, a lot of somethings.”

  Steven and Harry were walking over to us now, apparently our subject matter was no longer boring to them
after the mention of explosives, “This is what you want to do?”

  Marcus was quite obviously very proud of his idea and the fact that the idea involved me not dying, “You tell the guys the plan. Oh, and Marcus, I think it’s time you showed me to those bandits with all the fuel, we’ll need to liberate it.”

  News of Hope

  Shenim and Neysor broke apart from their long kiss in the doctor’s white room. Tears had come to rest on both of their cheeks as they smiled and sobbed in their happiness.

  “Is she sure Neysor? There isn’t a mistake of some kind?” This was the first time in hundreds of years that anyone from the Gralari race had fallen pregnant without medical fertilisation. It was a miracle that Shenim even had the ability to bear a child naturally, let alone a boy.

  Neysor had confronted the doctor about this anomaly and demanded the proof which she had gladly given. Every test known to the Gralari had been used and they all pointed to the same conclusion. “Yes my love, we are to have a boy.”

  Shenim screamed with joy which Neysor quickly silenced with a hand over her beaming smile, shushing her with an equally ecstatic smile, “Quiet my darling, we mustn’t alert everyone to this news just now.”

  He removed his hand slowly from her face which, though still very clearly happy, was frowning, “Please Neysor, you are a war hero and the commander of this magnificent ship. I am sure that everyone aboard this ship will be happy for us.