“A clone m-made by aliens,” Stanley shouted out his window in a helpful voice. “The aliens, they l-look like footstools.”
Dempsey moved closer, his ever-present crossbow trained on Aletia’s heart. “Whatever. Point is, they don’t exactly qualify as people, now do they? I think we can safely put them in the ‘not people’ category. And last time I checked, the Society was in the business of killing not-people.”
“Dempsey, we don’t have time for this,” Aletia complained. “Let us in. I swear, they won’t hurt anyone. More than that, they can help us save everyone.”
Dempsey shook his head. “I don’t think so. I mean, if I thought you were Aletia, I’d maybe give it some thought. But,” he said, turning to Jonah. “Some zombie nipped her, and the werewolf there shoved a knife into her skull, right?”
Jonah looked conflicted. “Yeah, that’s right,” he said. “So what are you?”
Aletia pushed a tired hand through her hair. “I’m me. It’s not a long story, but I’d rather tell it inside. It’s freezing out here.”
“Tough,” Dempsey said. “Talk.”
Aletia haltingly started to explain what she remembered. As she spoke, Dallas, Lois, Herb, and Stanley slowed exited the truck and clumped up around her. As promised, it was a short story. When she finished, Dempsey looked at Jonah.
“Whadaya think, big guy? You think our Aletia was rescued by the werewolf that stabbed her in the head, and reincarnated by some geek’s clone with an alien alarm clock?”
Jonah turned his palms up and shrugged. “I don’t know, Dempsey. We’ve seen weirder shit.”
“Yeah, but this shit still stinks.”
Aletia growled. “Okay, fine. My papa was bit by a werewolf and ate my mom. I cut his head off with a gas-powered hedge trimmer. In the fight, he bit my boyfriend, so I killed him with the hedge trimmer, too. Colton found me, brought me in, and I’ve been hunting ever since. I met these people last fall when we came to investigate reports of a vampire. Yes, we fought. Yes, they killed Randall and Colton. But it’s not what I thought. They aren’t what I thought they were. If you’d just give them a chance, you’d understand.”
Taking a few bold steps forward, she stared directly at Dempsey. “And no matter what you think about all of that, the scrawny one really does have a way to save everyone. All the people in town. Actually make them human again. I’m proof of that. But they can’t do it alone. They need our help. We have to work together.”
Dempsey laughed a mirthless laugh. “You know as well as I do there ain’t no cure for zombies except a bullet in the brainpan. Hell, even the place this started at didn’t have a way to cure them. They torched the whole building, killed everyone inside.”
“He’s talking about that p-place in Colorado, isn’t he,” Stanley said. “Prime talked about that place.”
Lois, Herb, and Dallas all started to ask questions at once until Aletia shushed them.
“We discovered the source,” she said in a low voice. “This started in some secret government research facility in Colorado. I guess it was contained, but there weren’t any survivors.”
Except a horse fly, Stanley thought.
Dallas huffed. “No good government sons of bitches. If we get out of this, I’m never paying taxes again.”
“Trouble is, Trappersville is a lot harder to deal with,” Aletia continued. “Most of the zombies seem to be staying together, but there are always strays. We’ve just been waiting for more a few more hunters to get here so we can go on the offensive.”
“And kill everyone,” Lois said. “Wow. And people say we’re the monsters.”
“Give me a break,” Aletia sighed. “I’m trying, aren’t I?” She returned her attention to Dempsey. “What can I do to convince you that I’m telling the truth?”
Dempsey smiled a wicked smile. “Maybe we just need to kill you again and see this amazing alien alarm clock in action, huh?”
Aletia said something, and Dempsey said something, and Lois yelled something, and Jonah yelled something back. Dallas put his fists up, and guns that had momentarily relaxed were pointed at them again. In the midst of it all, Stanley realized Dempsey was right. Only one thing would prove they were telling the truth.
“Herb. Hey, Herby!” he said. When he had the vampire’s attention, he looked him steadily in the eyes. “Take this, find an outlet. Maybe, I d-dunno. Maybe by one of them nice cots Ronnie’s got for rent inside. Set the alarm, and I’ll see you in a b-bit.”
Before the vampire could react, Stanley slapped the alarm clock in his hand and took off at a run toward Dempsey. As he’d hoped, the hunter was ready. The crossbow raised up, a twang split the air. There was the briefest moment of bright pain and then all went dark.
Chapter 25
He was right back where he’d started: Alone and hungry and more than a little confused.
No, not alone. Stanley saw a body stir and heard a gurgling moan. It was Laura. The stripper looked like an over-tenderized hunk of steak. Her face was mottled with dark purple and blue bruises. One eye refused to open, and her jaw had been dislocated. As she pushed herself awkwardly to her feet, he saw that the fingers of one hand had been crushed, and her other arm dangled uselessly. The rest of her body looked just as battered. Something had gashed her bare stomach. One stubborn stiletto heel still clung to a foot, but the heel itself had snapped off long ago. The other foot looked like it had been run over by a lawn mower.
Stanley stumbled forward, arms outstretched and pulled Laura into a stiff embrace.
“Hiiiiiii,” he moaned.
“Hiiiiiii,” she moaned back.
Taking her mangled hand in his own, he led her past the carved up and crushed bodies of their friends and through the still-open front door. Outside, a few undead still meandered aimlessly among the remains of the fallen. As Stanley and Laura shuffled past, the stragglers turned and followed. The once-mighty group of friends had been splintered, but was slowly reforming.
Chapter 26
Stanley’s alarm clock was a thing of beauty. A reliable wonder of plastic and circuitry with a blue liquid crystal display. “It’s time,” it buzzed. “It’s that time that you indicated was important. I’m so glad I was able to help wake you at this very important time.”
Stanley sat up and pressed the snooze bar. He was a little disoriented, a condition that wasn’t helped by being suddenly tackled.
“You’re back!” Herb yelled. “See? He’s back! We told you it worked.”
Trying to disentangle himself from the vampire’s embrace, Stanley managed to ask who was back, and why the heck was Herb in his bedroom. But he wasn’t in his bedroom. Beneath him, a small folding cot strained under the combined weight of the two men. A little wall-mounted shelf held a lamp and familiar alarm clock, and a luggage rack was buried under a pile of winter coats. Besides that, the compact room didn’t have any furniture, much less space for it.
Guess that’s why everyone is standing so close, he reasoned. Herb, Dallas, Lois, and even Aletia – wherever the heck she’d come from – were practically shoulder-to-shoulder.
“You’re back, buddy,” he heard Dallas say. “And let me be the first to tell you that what you did was incredibly stupid. Like, picking up chicks at the V.D. clinic stupid.”
Stanley tried to figure out just what the heck was going on. There were memories, but they bumped and collided against one another and refused to line up. He was standing in a bright pool of light. He remembered that much.
“Did I g-get abducted by aliens again?” he asked.
No one answered him. Instead, they all piled up against the small room’s only door and started to pound on it. Cries of, ‘It worked,’ and, ‘Let us out,’ were answered by a muffled, ‘Calm the hell down and step back.’ The group obliged as best they could, bunching up near the end of the room opposite the door.
A crack of light formed and widened. The door swung open and revealed the largest man Stanley had ever seen. He instantly thought of
Kevin, his Sasquatch friend, and with that thought, a floodgate opened up and a wave of memories poured into his conscious mind.
“Whoah,” he exclaimed. “D-Dallas, you were right. That was st-stupid of me.”
“But effective,” Jonah replied. “You’ve proven your point. The little clock works, so it stands to reason that you really did save Aletia. But,” he added, looking at Dallas. “Would you be so keen to make nice if Aletia wasn’t hot? Would you have saved Randall if you could’ve? Or Colton?”
Aletia put a hand on Dallas’s chest and answered instead. “He tried, Jonah. I didn’t want to believe it, but they really didn’t want to hurt anyone. They just want to live their lives.”
Jonah frowned. “Goes against everything the Society stands for, teaming up with you. What do you think, Dempsey? The clock worked.”
The smaller-than-Jonah but no less intimidating man leaned in.
“One test doesn’t prove a theory,” he grumbled. “I say we kill ‘em all and try again.”
Jonah turned a grim smile on his companion. “Or we could kill you. Would that test meet your exacting standards?”
Rather than responding to Jonah, Dempsey leveled a hard stare at Stanley. “Works on anyone? You’re sure? One hundred percent sure?”
Stanley bobbed his head.
“And when that one wolfs out,” Dempsey continued, pointing at Dallas, “he’s not gonna go wild and try to kill the rest of us?”
“Scout’s honor,” Dallas said while Stanley shook his head.
Dempsey moved in front of Herb. He pushed up a sleeve and held his bare arm out.
“Thirsty?”
“Yes,” Herb replied tiredly. “But you’re not my type.”
“Who is?” Dempsey asked.
“Her,” Herb said, hooking a thumb at Lois. “Look, I know what you’re getting at, but I really don’t like biting other people so much. It’s a lot harder than you’d think, and honestly, it’s kind-of a rotten thing to do to someone. I’m good with my girl or blood from a blood bank.”
The hunter moved fast. One second, he was holding his arm out in front of the vampire. The next, he had Lois in a choke hold with a knife pressed up against her neck. Dallas bunched up his shoulders and Herb bared his fangs with a hiss, but neither one moved.
“I’ll say it one more time,” Lois said. “We really, truly, honestly, with cherries and fun little sprinkles on top, don’t want to fight with you.”
The hunter released Lois and turned back to Jonah.
“Let’s call it a win-win,” he decided. “I’m going to kill a bunch of zombies. If the little geek can bring everyone back to life, yippee. If not, I still get to kill a bunch of zombies, plus these freaks if they do anything I don’t like.”
With that, Jonah stepped aside and swept an arm out. The group spilled into a narrow hallway that led past a number of small rent-by-the-hour cots and made their way back to the attached diner. Everyone settled in around a table to make a plan, Sconnies on one side, Society hunters on the other, and a thick slab of tension in between.
“So,” Aletia finally asked. “How do we do this?”
The plan took shape. It wasn’t fancy. It wasn’t clever. It was straightforward and clean. Lure the zombies in, trap them, kill them all, and then clone them. Luring would be easy. Aletia would send out hunters to act as bait and lead the zombies to a designated point. Once they had as many of the undead as possible in one large group, they’d start leading them to the trap.
To everyone’s surprise, Dallas volunteered Deloris.
“What?” he asked. “You want to make sure they get back here, right? Ain’t nothing can stop my girl. Besides, I won’t be able to drive her. Full moon,” he explained in response to their confused looks. “So while your hunters lead them back, I’ll work the edges of the horde and make sure no zombies wander off.”
“No,” Aletia objected. “It’s too dangerous. What if you get bit?”
“No biggy,” Dempsey said, earning darks look from around the table.
Dallas surprised the group again by agreeing with Dempsey. “He’s right. When I’m wolfed out, I’m damn hard to kill. I heal super-fast. So one, I won’t get bit, and two, if I get bit, I’ll heal, not die, right?”
Despite the surly hunter’s remark, none of the Society had any experience with werewolves getting bitten by a zombie. It was doubly hard to know what would happen since the zombie virus was man-made and not supernatural. But Dallas’s logic seemed reasonable, which was especially surprising considering its source. Aletia laced her fingers in his and gave a worried nod. With that, the matter was settled.
“I have an idea for the trap,” Jonah said. “We take some of those semis we’ve got circling the place and move them out to the main road. We’ll make a wedge, lure the zombies in, and bottleneck them. There aren’t many of us, but we’ll all head up on top of the trailers with every gun we have. They’ll be undead fish in a barrel. We just need to make sure they don’t break free.”
Lois raised a hand. “I think I can help with that,” she said. When Jonah asked how, she leaned over and rubbed her fingers on the diner’s worn linoleum floor. Sitting back up, she brought her fingers up to her lips, whispered some strange words, and started to weave her hands in an intricate pattern.
“Hell no!” Dempsey yelled. “No spells!”
He reached for his crossbow, but Aletia grabbed his arm.
“A little trust goes a long ways,” she advised.
Dempsey pulled his arm free and Dallas shifted his weight, but both men stopped when Lois looked up at Jonah and said, “Come here, big boy.”
The man was standing across the table from Lois. When Lois made her request, his eyes widened in embarrassment. He looked quickly around the table and then asked, “Why?”
Lois smiled. “Come here and I’ll tell you,” she said playfully.
Jonah took one last look around, shrugged, and stepped forward. At least, he tried to. The leg he intended to move was stuck firmly to the floor. The unexpected development almost cost him his balance, and he waved his arms in wide circles to reclaim it.
“Impressive,” he said with a smile. “Ill-advised, though. Let’s all agree that surprises are hereby banned to prevent someone’s untimely demise.”
Lois grinned back. “Agreed. Now, about that spell…”
After releasing Jonah, the group reviewed the plan and went about making preparations. A short time later, Aletia called them all back to the diner.
“All set?” she asked the small group that was about to risk their lives to save the world. When everyone nodded, she held a hand out. One after another, everyone placed their hand in the center of the circle. When the last palm touched the pile, Aletia smiled a tight smile.
“Hear me,” she said quietly. “We are the light that keeps shadows at bay. When darkness gathers, we must not fade. Bright, we burn to light the way and never let our brethren stray. Warriors are we with shining blades. When darkness gathers, we will not fade.”
The hands separated, and everyone moved to fulfill their part of the plan. Two pairs of hunters took off, intent on making a wide sweep around the sprawling town. Their goal would be to draw as many zombies as possible back toward the main highway that led to Ronnie’s. The first pair puttered off in an old Ford Escort. The second pair roared off in Deloris, with Dallas yelling after them that if anything happened to his truck, a giant horde of zombies would be the least of their concerns. Aletia started double-checking the clips of a large pile of guns, Jonah and Dempsey readied themselves for the task of moving the semi’s into position, Lois stretched her fingers and flipped through her spell books, and Herb practiced his vampirey equivalent of Kung Fu.
That just left Stanley.
“What the heck am I supposed t-to do?” he asked. “Everyone’s d-doing so much stuff. This whole mess is my fault. I n-need to help.”
Lois looked up from the book she’d been studying, and Herb’s shining eyes turned his way. Dal
las abandoned his task of helping Jonah and Dempsey figure out which keys went with which trucks and rejoined his friends.
“You have the most important job of all,” Lois said seriously, Herb nodding in agreement.
When Stanley continued to look glum, Dallas slapped his friend on the back. “Clone patrol, little buddy. Once we get ‘em into the trap, we’ll be bringing back body bits. All our neighbors. All our friends. It’s up to you, Stanley. You’re gonna run your little wonder clock and bring them back to life. You’re going to save the entire town.”
A slow smile broke across Stanley’s face. “G-gosh, Dallas. That’ll make me the Hero of Trappersville, don’t ya think?”
Dallas stammered about people getting too big for their britches, and Lois and Herb shared a laugh. The moment of good humor didn’t last long, though. Aletia joined their circle and announced that Jonah and Dempsey were going to start moving trucks, and that the moon was about to rise.
“Time to see if we can make this work,” she said. “Because if it doesn’t, we’re probably all going to die.”
Chapter 27
Food! thought Stanley. Finally. I’m hungry.
There were two meals. A middle-aged couple had screeched up in an old Ford hatchback, honked and flashed their headlights, and then started to idle away. Stanley and Laura turned, and the rest of their friends followed, shuffling across the snowy asphalt in pursuit of the slowly receding taillights. Every so often, the car’s passenger would lean out of the window, point at her head, and yell things like, “Tasty!” or “Fresh from the noggin!”
Why can’t they just stop, then? Stanley grumbled. Being teased like that was infuriating.
“Aaaaallll. Mmmooooosst,” Laura moaned, her dislocated jaw turning the words into mush.
“Yaaaaahhhhh,” Stanley agreed, giving her crushed fingers a gentle squeeze.
It was a little strange, the car rolling slowly in front of them. They never got closer, but the car never pulled away either. Strange, but not enough to distract him from the important part. Food was so close, only a few yards away. He just needed a little stroke of luck. A flat tire. A busted radiator. A broken axle. Just one little mishap and he’d be able to feast.
Undead Cheesehead (Monsters in the Midwest Book 3) Page 19
