by Rockow, B.
“I’m so sorry,” Pete said.
“Never apologize kid,” Jones said. “A sorry never swept the floor.”
“A broom does.”
“That’s right kid. Only thing that matters is action.” Jones lit a cigarette. Smoke was comfort. “You two want to know what happened after finding that pile of uniforms, don’t you? Well, there’s this roar. It’s quiet at first, but then I heard it strong. All of a sudden I look down, and the floor, the ceiling, the walls, the bones, everything’s covered in these pudgy white worms.”
“Gross,” Penny said with a wince.
“Let’s just say we booked it,” Jones said. “We get to the head of the tunnel, and I tell Roddy in no uncertain terms that we’d never say a word about what we saw down there ever, to anybody.” Jones finished his beer. “But look at me,” he said defiantly. “I’m drunk, and stupid, and I’m spilling the beans.”
Presently, Jones received another phone call. He looked at his iPhone and the display said “Unknown Caller.”
“Vanessa wants you back,” Penny said.
“Excuse me while I answer this.” Jones left The Small Tavern and walked half a block away before hitting the answer button. “Your antics are tiring, Vanessa,” he said. “Just give it up. Because I’ve given up on all this. So you can cut it all out now. Got it? And this little trick of yours, calling in on a blocked number, is really cute. Reminds me of junior high days.”
The other end of the line was silent. No response. Not even a breath could be heard.
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Jones said. “This is straight out of the high school bitch playbook. My life is gonna be so much simpler without you, Nessa. So much simpler. And guess what? I’m gonna see Emma Jo. I’m gonna see her whenever I want. She’s mine, too. I’m her father. And that baby in your belly? He’s mine, too. Got it? Nothing that you do can keep me from Junior.”
The street was quiet. Oregon’s summer air was warm and serene. Jones looked back at the tavern and noticed a couple drunks stumble in. He waited for a response from Vanessa. But the line was dead quiet. He lit another cigarette.
“God damnit, say something! I’m tired of all this!”
“It’s time for you to listen now.”
“Vanessa? What is going on? Cut the crap.”
“Your pregnant wife and child are poker chips now.” The voice on the other end wasn’t human. Jones pinched himself to make sure that this was all real. “Our organization shall use them as an ante in our game. Just know that you brought this on yourself, Jones. You chose to play this game. And now there’s no turning back.”
Jones felt like a fool. He just dished out his heart and soul to Pete and Penny, and now they were taking advantage of his vulnerability. It was painfully obvious that this was a ruse. “Alright Pete, you’re good. Somehow you dialed me without me knowing. I dunno how you did it, but you’re good.”
“We are good, Jones,” the voice said. “We’re so good that we’ll comfortably raise the stakes. You have ten minutes to get back home and save your family. Tick tock, Jones. Tick tock.”
The line went dead. Jones stuffed his phone in his pocket, and rushed back to The Small Tavern. He burst through the door and found Penny and Pete in light conversation. They both turned to Jones and welcomed him back.
The threat was real, Jones realized. He had to get back home. The Sergeant’s brain went into war mode. “They’re after my family,” he said. He withdrew his concealed Glock 30s .45, and without saying another word, he ran back out to his Jeep.
He hopped in, jabbed the key into the ignition, turned it on, and sped off. Jones cruised right through four red lights, barely swerving enough to avoid collisions.
Thoughts raced through his mind: How many will be there? What do they want? Why are they here?
His blood fiended for nicotine, but there wasn’t time. Seven minutes were already spent. He had eight more, and a mile and a half until home.
Jones was doing ninety five. He sped past a cop who was parked in an abandoned asphalt lot. The cop didn’t catch the blur.
Finally, Jones made it home. He peeled down the street, and turned sharp into his driveway. The Jeep ended up on the front lawn.
Jones hopped out and started for the door. A couple blocks down he saw a black Humvee, sitting quiet in the night, beneath a street lamp’s glow. He turned the door knob, and it was locked. There wasn’t time to knock. Jones backed up ten yards from the house, lowered his head, and sprinted. His body shattered through the living room bay windows.
Shards of glass jutted out of his arms and face, but that didn’t phase him. He shot up from the carpet, and rushed upstairs. Vanessa started screaming at the top of her lungs. Jones burst into the master bedroom, and tackled his wife to the floor.
“Shut the fuck up,” Jones said with his hand cupped over her mouth. “Not another sound.”
Vanessa struggled to get away from Jones. But he was too strong. He was twice as big, and four times as strong.
Jones picked her up from the ground, and threw her on the bed like a rag doll. “We’ve got four minutes to live,” he said. “And I don’t have time to explain. I want you to go grab Emma Jo, and take her up to the attic. Both of you, don’t say a word, don’t even breathe if you can help it.”
Vanessa remained sprawled out on the bed, staring up at her husband in shock.
“Get moving!” Jones shouted. “Go, go, go, go!”
Jones pulled out his .45 and directed Vanessa off the bed and out to Emma Jo’s room. Vanessa started sobbing, but she followed her husband’s orders. She woke up Emma Jo and kept her hushed up. Vanessa stopped crying, and the two crawled up into the attic.
Jones didn’t have much time. Two and a half minutes. He ransacked his nightstand and found a 9mm pistol. He ran downstairs and looked around for a place to hide. He knew he was going to be at a numbers disadvantage, and so he had to rely on the element of surprise. He ran around checking out tables to duck under or couches to hide behind, but nothing seemed right. Finally, he saw it. The kitchen pantry.
He threw open the door and stepped inside. It was one of those walk in pantries that you see in modern suburban homes. It smelled like wheat flour and boxes of pasta.
One minute left. Jones made himself perfectly still. He closed his eyes and flashed back to the day he lost Big Boy in Afghanistan. He saw a lot in combat. A lot of it he couldn’t explain. But nothing was like that day. Those monsters were back now. They took his friend, and now they wanted more.
But why?
Jones didn’t have the luxury knowing why.
He only knew that he had to keep fighting.
Fifteen seconds.
Ten, nine, eight. Jones held his breath. Seven, six, five. He readied his pistol. Four, three, two.
One. Nothing. Only an eerie quiet. Jones kept holding his breath, he couldn’t afford to make a sound. His heart thudded against his ribs. It sounded like war drums.
Another minute passed. And another. Jones was forced to take a breath, and he took two. But that was it. His lungs held every gaseous molecule tight.
And then he heard it. The front door was kicked in. The crash was quick and heavy. Seconds later, Jones could hear three pairs of boots thud into the house.
They stormed through the kitchen, the living room, and the garage. He heard them go out into the backyard. When they came back in, they started speaking in a foreign tongue. Nothing that Jones had ever heard before.
The giants slowed down their search. Their next step was to go upstairs. Just as Jones heard the first boots on the stairs, he jolted out of the pantry.
Two of the giants were half way up the stairs when Jones got there. Their backs were facing him. With equal parts rage and focus, Jones emptied his Glock .45 into their skulls. Worms went flying everywhere.
The giants tumbled down the stairs, and landed at the Sarge’s feet. He kicked one in the skull. More white worms slithered out. Jones crushed them with his boot.
The giant threw Jones over his right shoulder, and lugged him into the living room. The giant released the Sarge’s limp body by the fire place. Jones lost his pistols when he got knocked down. The suddenness and strength of the attack was paralyzing.
Jones slouched on the brick hearth. His body was limp. His limbs felt stupid. He couldn’t do a damn thing about the giant now.
He watched as the monster went up the stairs. The giant’s footsteps were like thunder coming through the ceiling. The monster made its way into every bedroom, down the hall, and rechecked each room again.
The paralysis was wearing off. Jones could touch his thumb to his forefinger. But that was it. He couldn’t stand. He couldn’t rush upstairs and save his family.
It sounded like a horrible thunderstorm upstairs with the giant crashing about. But then it stopped. There was over a minute of pure silence. It was deafening. Jones shut his eyes and concentrated as hard as he could at putting life back into his limbs. But they were dead.
Then the giant let out a guttural roar. Jones heard the monster thud back into the hallway. And then it was all over with. The giant found the attic.
The air was cut by Vanessa’s screams. Emma Jo called out for Jones.
“Papa, papa!”
The giant slung them both over his shoulders, and stomped back downstairs.
Jones strained for every ounce of strength. He had to get to his pistol. He could take out this monster, this fiend, he only had to get to his gun.
But it was hopeless.
The giant made it to the bottom of the stairs, and unceremoniously went straight for the exit. Jones lifted his arm and reached out for his family. Emma Jo did the same, with tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Papa! Papa!” she cried. Emma Jo’s face was contorted with fear. “Papa! Save me!”
Vanessa was knocked out cold.
Those were the last moments with his family. The giant disappeared out the front door.
Jones rolled over onto his belly. He planted his face straight down onto the brick hearth and screamed. The depths of hell opened up in his gut and rolled out through his larynx and lips. Jones vowed to save his family, and kill every single last one of these giant monsters in the world.
Chapter Six
The Twins
“Listen Joru, I don’t care where the bodies come from. Warzones, prisons, kidnappings off the street. It doesn’t matter to me. The fact is, your company is under contract with our organization to deliver another seventy thousand bodies by next week.” Boul paced in a circle in his high rise apartment, which overlooked Manhattan. It was well past sunset, and glowing city bustled below. He wasn’t pleased with this conference call. “We can easily find another company to work with. I have contacts throughout the world, hungry for the chance to provide services to the Orobu.”
“The conflict in Syria can’t last forever,” Joru said. He leaned back in an old leather chair. His Moscow apartment was musty and small, especially for an oligarch of his status. “We’ve got scouts strategically placed on every continent right now, scrounging up bodies any and every which way possible. Give us time, Boul. You know that we have delivered before.”
“We don’t have time for excuses,” Boul said. “We’ve got more than sixty thousand Orobu giants roaming this planet right now. They need a steady, risk free food source. This isn’t the 19th century, Joru. We can’t just be out there in villages slaughtering kids in the night. This is the information age. Our kind must stay underground, silent, unseen. At least for now.”
Joru was getting one of the finest blowjobs of his life from a Bulgarian redhead. He looked down and saw how dedicated and concentrated she was on the task at hand. “Our contacts in Iraq give us hope,” Joru said. “We’re working with various intelligence agencies that say there will be a renewed insurgency, very brutal, in the coming months. They call the group ISIS. They work under the banner of fundamental Islam, but their motivation is strictly financial.”
“There are immediate needs,” Boul said.
“The Los Zetas cartel has reupped with us,” Joru said. He ran his grubby, fat hands through the soft red hair of the Bulgarian. He was lying. The cartel had just promised to resist the gigantes going forward. “They promise a thousand corpses by Friday.”
Boul smiled. His giant tongue slithered out and ran across his dry lips. “My favorite.”
Joru smiled, too. He was glad that he got a positive response from Boul. The Bulgarian’s hard work wasn’t hurting either. “That’s right,” he said. “A thousand peasants, gangsters, migrants. Straight from the sunbaked land of Mexico.”
“I’ve heard there are opportunities in your own country,” Boul said. “Tell me about the conflict in Ukraine.”
“Our special forces are on the ground now,” Joru said. “They’re picking up bodies here and there from the conflict. I’d say we can depend on five to six hundred every month. We can’t escalate the Ukraine situation quite yet. Stability is a necessary function of chaos. Keeping Europe conflict free is essential for our operations. The whole world can’t succumb to this madness.”
Boul was silent for a moment. He took it as an affront that Joru, who held no intrinsic power in his flabby, old body, felt it appropriate to lecture him on the ways of the world. Joru was a soulless profiteer who exploited the suffering of his own race, so that he may rise to the top of his society. He was the last man on earth Boul respected.
“I worry not about humanity’s affairs,” Boul said. “My task is to supply the Orobu race with fresh human bodies. I’ve been in this game long enough to have gone through hundreds, thousands of suppliers. I do not need you, Joru. I use you for a single task. Let that be clear.”
Joru relaxed his body and slouched in his leather office chair. The Bulgarian was bringing him to release. “You’ll get the bodies,” he said. “One way or another.”
“You have one week to deliver,” Boul said. “Or you, your family, and your entire corporation will be consumed by the Orobu.”
“Oh God,” Joru said, just as he was about to climax. “These idle threats are growing stale.”
Boul clicked the end call button. His patience with Joru was wearing thin. Sixty thousand members of the Orobu race were depending on a steady stream of human bodies. The stress of fulfilling his people’s needs wore on him. He had been doing this far too long.
In the old days, every Orobu could fend for themselves. Groups of four or five would find a human settlement large enough to supply bodies through natural means. Some groups of Orobu were more daring, and would proactively capture, kidnap, and kill humans to satisfy their hunger.
In some of the larger cities on the planet--Damascus, Rome, Paris, London, Calcutta, Shanghai, Cairo--there were large orders of Orobu that profited heavily from the crimes of their human counterparts. The Orobu had their hands in all sorts of corruption and abuse. It wasn’t uncommon for the Orobu to get paid for assassination, mercenary work, or plain intimidation. From merchants to kings, humans of all spheres of influence would use the Orobu to further their own objectives.
Oftentimes the Orobu simply extorted the communities that they latched onto. They demanded payment from the ruling classes under threat of complete annihilation. The Orobu were not afraid to show up in the middle of the day at the town square. Throughout history, in all times and places, they were known to do just that. The peasants, farmers, and laborers of the lower classes were incredibly superstitious, and whole swaths of a country could break out into a frenzy of conspiracy and panic once the Orobu showed themselves in this fashion.
The kings and merchants and high priests paid the Orobu off to keep them in the shadows of the bogs, swamps, and forests. Over thousands of years the Orobu operated in this way, amassing a great deal of wealth and influence of their own.
; The Orobu inspired a multitude of legends. They were gods, demons, titans, daityas, trolls, giants. Human memory of the Orobu was mythic and long. In the modern age, the faint recollection of the Orobu had projected itself into the zombie mythos. Little did human know how close they were to the apocalypse.
Radoula and Boul played unique roles in Orobu society. Although most of their race lived as warriors, Radoula and Boul were among the roughly five hundred Orobu who were merchants. These Orobu merchants dealt with humans directly to facilitate the needs of their race.
Radoula and Boul were born in the high mountains of Transylvania. Their parents were part of a tribe of Orobu that entered Europe by way of the steppes of Central Asia. They tagged along with nomadic barbarians, providing assistance to the pillaging and battles along the way. The tribe of Orobu took part in the spoils by feasting on the remains of fallen soldiers. At the time, this was payment enough.
The twins were highly respected in the ranks of the Orobu. For upwards of three millennia the twins worked closely with various networks of Orobu to ensure that the needs of the race were being met. They facilitated the harvesting of human bodies, and had worked with corrupt humans in power for millennia so that the Orobu could be fed.
Their tasks had grown over the last few years. Not only were they involved with instigating human conflict and transporting bodies out of war zones, but the twins were also proactively developing strategies to bring the Orobu back into a position of true, open global dominance.
It was hard work, and it taxed the twins tremendously.
To alleviate some of the stress, Boul and Radoula would engage in regular sessions of debauch. Tonight they planned to bring ten captive humans, an even mix of males and females, into their Manhattan high rise. The humans were all models, beautiful specimens of the human race. They were specially selected by Radoula and Boul themselves, and captured by their minions.
The monitoring system buzzed. It was one of the Orobu soldiers.
