Go!
Jennifer crawled over to the coffee table and grabbed for her keys and then made her way to the front door.
The coast is clear! Go!
She ran out the door to the station wagon without any trouble. When she got into the driver’s seat, she realized that she had forgotten the shotgun.
Don’t worry about it! Just get to the church!
Jennifer fired up the engine, pulled out of the driveway and left.
After she was gone a small man walked out in front of her house. His skin was gray, his eyes were black, and his head was huge. He ran down the road toward Washington Avenue, and then headed south toward the farms. For some reason there was a tremor of apprehension dwindling inside of him.
* * * * *
Teddy Anderson found himself awake in bed, covered with sweat. His sheets were stained with urine –a problem he had always had since childhood. It was strange enough that he suddenly awoke, but it all had seemed so goddamn real. Even the monster growling from above them as they advanced through the house. And that sphere. That goddamn shiny sphere in the ground. There wasn’t a mark on the damn thing.
He glanced up at the clock. Two in the morning. Anderson swung his legs out from the bed and walked over to the window, not minding that he was wearing nothing but his underwear –a pair of Hanes “tighty whiteys.” It was dark and no one could possibly see him out there, and if they did who cares? A fat man in his underwear, hardy fuckin har har. They’d just pull their blinds down and forget about it the same way a man forgets a woman’s face after they’ve done the nasty. It didn’t matter. No one would look.
What had happened, though? Anderson retraced his memory. He remembered waking up that morning, taking a shower and brushing his teeth. He remembered putting on the uniform and badge, going to work and then being called out to the Van Lou place. He even remembered the address -189 Washington Avenue. Donahue was there right next to him when someone screamed from inside the home. They drew their glocks and the rest was hard to fathom. Blood on the floor, four dead children, a goddamn monster and a supposed spaceship. Then there was the search party. Then Mr. Van Lou had gone missing. Then there were FBI agents. Then Donahue ordered him to patrol the city and make sure everyone remained indoors.
He woke up.
And here was, staring at the moon in his tighty fuckin whiteys. What the hell had happened? Had it all really been a dream? Teddy walked to the bathroom and took a quick piss, and then returned to bed. He didn’t have to wake up for another three hours. He worked the early shift. Six to three, six days a week. Sunday was football day. That was his day off. He’d stay home and watch his Raiders play. Most of the time they weren’t on television in Kansas, but that didn’t matter. He’d follow them on internet radio.
But today was…what was today? He looked up to the wall where his calendar normally hung, but it wasn’t there. Instead there was something else –written in what looked like blood. Anderson approached it with his eye brows burrowed down toward his unusually large nose. It was blood. It was goddamn blood. And it spelled out something that he hadn’t heard in at least thirty years. FAT TEDDY. It was sloppily done. Whoever did it had been in a hurry. The A was awkwardly crooked, and the T was crossed diagonally.
“Fat Teddy,” he whispered. “Who the fuck done this?”
“Well, look at the shit stains on you, pal!” The familiar voice of someone he hated screeched from the bedroom’s doorway.
There he stood, just as he was in high school. Jason Willhelm. He had long brown hair draped over the sides of his face. There was a faded black T-shirt on underneath his blue jean jacket. His jeans were ripped to shreds. And his teeth were yellow as snot (they always had been).
“Jason, what the hell?”
“Shocked Teddy? I am too. Look at those shit stains!” He motioned to Ted’s underwear, which was stained yellowish brown just below his crotch. And of course the front was slightly yellow from the bed wetting incident.
“Fat Teddy, Fat Teddy, Fat Shit Stain Teddy.”
“How the hell did you get here?”
“Does it matter, Shit Stain? I’m here. And you’re in a world of fucking hurt.”
“I’m a cop, goddamnit. You try anything, you’ll get twenty to life, asshole!” Anderson felt like an old teacher when he realized he was shaking his fist at him the way his mother had done back in the day.
“Phew! What smells so fucking bad? You shit yourself, man!” Jason began laughing again as he pointed at his stained underwear. “Don’t you think you should change those?” He began to cough mockingly as if the stench was bad enough to choke a man to death.
Anderson couldn’t say anything. He didn’t know what to say. Here was this asshole that had shown up out of nowhere. It was like a dream. Was he real? Was any of this real? Maybe he had fallen asleep in the police car. Maybe all of the stuff with the alien and space ship was true after all. Maybe none of this was-
“Fat Teddy.”
“Shut up.”
“Shit Stain Teddy.”
“Shut up!”
“Fat Teddy, Shit Stain Teddy, Fat Teddy, Shit Stain Teddy.”
“Shut the fuck up!”
And he was awake in his police car again. Only he was inside of Van Lou’s Grocery. Glass was on the floor and isles in front of him had overturned, spilling canned goods onto the floor. There was even an alarm going off behind him. It sounded like a fire bell, but was undoubtedly the cheap security Andy Van Lou had installed.
He had driven through the store.
Anderson looked back behind him and saw where the front glass sliding doors used to sit. Now they were shattered. He looked down at the hood of his car. The front of it was smashed and bent upward from a collision. It had all happened. He had fallen asleep behind the goddamn wheel. Donahue was going to fire him for this.
Unless he could pull it off as being attacked by that god awful monster. Maybe he could. Anderson started the car and pulled back into reverse, accidentally nudging a magazine stand that had somehow survived the initial crash and sent magazines flying onto the floor. He backed over everything and found himself back into the parking lot.
“I’m safe,” he panted.
But how would he explain this to Alan? I saw a little green man, he thought. I saw him and figured I better check it out. Then he attacked me. Damn thing chased me down Washington and I ended up running into the grocery store. It was believable, right? They had both heard the damn thing roar or scream or whatever the hell it was doing. It was capable of destruction –destruction like this.
He sighed. It was crap.
But then he heard it once again.
Fat Teddy.
He looked over his shoulder and found nothing but darkness behind the car. But he could still hear the voice. Was it inside of him?
Fat Teddy, bet wetty, shit in his pants.
“I’m hearing shit,” he muttered. “That’s all.”
Fat Teddy, bet wetty, shit in his pants.
“Shut up!”
“Fat Teddy, bet wetty, shit in his pants.”
He looked out his cracked windshield. Jason stood in front of the car, smiling. But something was wrong. His skin was gray and his eyes were red and blood stained his white T-shirt.
Anderson had seen him throughout town from time to time, but they had mostly ignored each other’s stare. For thirty years it had been like that. Jason Willhelm, as far as he knew, worked in Wichita at the aircraft plant and drove from Brownsville every day. Hell of a waste of gas money, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that he stood in front of the car, staring at him, smiling.
“Jason, what are you doing? I have to ask you to get back inside. The town is under quarantine.” Anderson cracked his door open, unsure of whether or not he wanted to set foot outside.
“Quarantine? Fat Teddy, out here is where the fun is. Why don’t you mosey on out here and arrest me if you think you’re man enough. Or is pissing yourself at night and shitting in y
our pants as manly as you’re gonna get?”
Ted’s hand slipped down toward his holster.
“Gonna shoot me, Teddy?” Jason took a step forward.
“Get down on your knees! Don’t come any closer!”
“Shit Stain, I’m not tryin to hurt yah. I just want to help you out, make you feel better about yourself.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Anderson stepped out of the car and firmly placed his hand on the handle of his glock.
“Join me, Fat Teddy. I’m all powerful.”
“Something’s not right with you. You been on drugs?”
Jason laughed. “No sir, but you’re starting to piss me off, Shit Stain. Why don’t you get on your knees and make this a little easier on all of us. You’ll be strong as hell, Shit Stain. And I’ll give you everything you’ve ever wanted.”
“You’re fucking stoned,” Anderson raised the glock at him. “You’re under arrest.”
Jason laughed mockingly and put his wrists together as if he made to turn himself in. “You betta get me. I done bad.”
“On the ground!” Anderson demanded.
“I was gonna make this easy on you, Shit Stain. But goddamnit you just don’t get it.”
“What?”
Jason hissed as he took a few steps toward Anderson. Without saying anything else Anderson squeezed the trigger, clumsily missing his target by a half foot with each shot. Then Jason charged and knocked him over. He felt as if he had been hit by a freight train, but he didn’t have time to think about that pain. Another pain was beginning. He looked down at his stomach and saw that his insides were showing.
He screamed as Jason ate his flesh. Others soon joined like vultures picking at a carcass. But this man was still alive as they ate him. And he felt every bite and every scratch. He even felt it when they ripped out his liver, his spleen, his stomach, even his bladder. And his screams echoed until they were finally silenced from blood loss. And they continued to feed on him until nothing but his skeleton remained.
15
All of the air left his lungs when he hit the ground. Then Lisa landed on top of him. Every bone inside of him rattled as she hit. When Lisa pulled herself up, she gaped at his left hand. Two of his fingers were pointing the wrong way. Then Justin screamed from the house above them.
“Justin?” Lisa shouted at the window.
Russ held his breath and tried to hold steady, but couldn’t. The pain was too much. He shrieked as loud as he could until his vocal chords began to hurt.
Lisa knelt down beside him and shouted for Justin again. There was no reply.
“We gotta go,” Lisa said. She pulled Russ up by his arm. He stood there for a moment, doubled over and holding his left hand against his stomach. The pain felt like it was spreading up his arm and into his shoulder, and he quickly realized that his entire body hurt, not just his fingers (although they were by far the worst). The window had been a fifteen foot drop, and having someone land on top of him made it worse. He ran a hand under his nose and sighed when it came back with blood.
“You okay?” Lisa asked.
“You didn’t need to do that,” Russ said, panting. Then he felt remorse as he saw her stare at the ground like a scolded child. “I’ll live though.”
Lisa screamed seemingly out of nowhere.
Justin Maddox’s head flew out the window and narrowly missed her. She almost fainted when it hit the grass. It was gray, drained of all blood, and the skin looked rubbery, almost fake. She placed her hands on her knees and took a few deep breaths. One of the creatures above them howled.
“Let’s go,” Russ said, pointing down the street to an overturned Hummer. There were others parked behind it. “There might be people that can help us.”
Lisa stayed to a slow pace, helping Russ walk while they moved down the street. By the time they reached the overturned vehicle, they were standing ankle deep in blood, and body parts were lying throughout the street. Lisa held her nose to keep out the stink, but the images still plagued her. A finger floated by them as Russ leaned against a tire to rest his body for a moment.
“Jesus,” he muttered.
“I don’t want to see this,” Lisa hugged him and buried her eyes in his shoulder. Regardless of everything around her, she was still safe, and she knew it. He was going to lead her to safety, and then they would be happy and all of this would be over.
Russ coughed, almost threw up, but didn’t. “There are two more Humvees over there. Maybe we can get out of here.”
Lisa briefly lifted her head and looked down the street over his shoulder. She saw them, but there was something else too. It looked like a man standing in the middle of the road, but he wasn’t quite right. The head was abnormally large, and it was very, very short –probably four feet.
“Look,” she pointed. It stood there for a moment, silently, just gazing at them. The eyes were large, black and egg shaped. They took up three fourths of its head. “Looks like one of those alien guys.”
“No way,” Russ took a step backward. He was carefully cradling his injured hand under his arm.
“That’s what’s causing all this?” Lisa asked.
He answered her after a full minute’s pause, “I think so.”
The creature took a few wobbly steps toward them and stopped. It was still a four house distance away from them. Lisa wrapped her arm around Russ’s shoulder.
Russ could feel something from it as he stared it in the eye. He didn’t know what it was for sure. Was the thing afraid? For some reason he could feel its thoughts. It was uncertain of something. Why?
“I think we should get in the Humvee,” Lisa whispered.
He nodded. They walked slowly toward the nearest vehicle, keeping a close eye on the alien. When it saw them moving, it sprinted off to the south, toward the woods. Russ had never seen anything so short move that fast. It was afraid for some reason. He could feel it.
“Why couldn’t I have landed on top?” Russ muttered to himself. He felt a jolt of pain from his fingers. To his surprise the door to the vehicle wasn’t locked, and also to his surprise there were keys in the ignition. “I think you’re going to have to drive.”
Lisa nodded at him. He walked around and got in the passenger side as Lisa started the engine. She paused for a moment.
“What are we waiting for?” Russ asked.
“They left the keys in the ignition.”
“So?”
“What if they come back?”
“They’re probably dead, Lisa.”
She stared down at the steering wheel for a moment. Russ thought that she might have been going into a hallucination. He tapped her on the shoulder and she responsively turned to him.
“Where do we go?” she asked.
“Highway 54, then to Wichita. I need a doctor.”
Lisa turned on the headlights and put the vehicle in gear.
* * * * *
Lt. Brown fired his desert eagle into the air as he ran after the Hummer. The people inside didn’t seem to notice him at first, and he thought that they were going to run off and leave him. However, they came to a stop about twenty feet down the road. He jogged up to the driver side and attempted to open the back door. It was locked.
“Hello?” he knocked on the window. The windows were too dark to see inside.
The electronic locks clicked. Lt. Brown opened the door and climbed in. There was a teenage girl in the driver seat and a guy that looked to be a little bit older opposite her. He was holding his left hand against his chest and quivering.
“There’s more way back there. A few of them were chasing me, but I was able to take care of them.” He replaced the empty magazine in his mp5. “Name’s Evan Brown. Lieutenant Evan Brown.” He offered his hand to the silent front seat. The guy ignored him. The girl shook his hand.
“What’s wrong with him?” Lt. Brown asked.
“Well, I think–” she began.
“Some of my fingers are broken.”
“L
et me see,” Brown said.
He held out his hand.
“They aren’t broken. Just dislocated,” said Brown. “Hold on. This is going to hurt.”
Russ held his breath.
Snap.
“Arghhhhhhhhhh!”
Crack!
“Damnit! Ahh!”
He pulled back his hand and began to massage it. To his surprise the fingers were back to normal and the pain had mostly gone away.
“Better?” Lisa asked.
“Yeah,” he answered and then turned to Brown. “What is happening out there?”
“I’m not really at liberty to tell you that,” he paused, “but seeing the current conditions, it really doesn’t matter anymore. Those things running around used to be people.”
“We’ve already figured that part out,” Lisa said.
“When they bite someone, that person will change into one of them. Sometimes they go further than just a bite though. I’ve seen them rip people to pieces and shove organs down their throat,” he paused. Russ thought he was about to cry. “This is awful.”
“Are we safe sitting here?” Lisa asked.
Brown peered through the windshield and saw the overturned Hummer just ahead. Dead bodies littered the street around it.
“Jesus,” he muttered.
“Are we?”
“I don’t know. I think we will be for a little while. These things have bullet proof glass, armored sides, and just about anything else you can think of.”
“Didn’t stop ‘em from turning over that one,” Lisa muttered.
The back door opened. Brown took a step out onto the pavement.
“Where are you going?” Lisa shouted.
“There might be someone alive in there.”
“Who?”
“My bosses.”
Brown pulled his mp5 to eye level and slowly paced toward the overturned vehicle. Lisa clutched the steering wheel in fright.
“Relax,” Russ whispered. “He can help us.”
“There are more of those things out there,” she said.
“He can obviously handle it. He’s trained for this crap. I bet he’s fought these things a thousand times over,” he lied. The look in the man’s eye when he first jumped in the vehicle said otherwise, and once he started talking about people being ripped to pieces his eyes had become watery.
Super Zombies from Outer-Space Page 9
