by Greg Dragon
“Genetically engineered, mutant experiments, perfected,” he said, looking extra relaxed from the tobacco smoke. “You a smoker?”
“No,” she said to him and he shrugged it off. “So, someone made those creatures to wipe out humanity, but to what end? What is the point of all this, and how in the hell is that even possible?”
“The speculation is that it isn’t one person that made these things but a team of scientists, hired by a government agency, or an evil genius-type to take over the world,” Debdan chimed in, his face excited as the light from the lamp illuminated his features in a strange way.
“You both watch way too many movies and read way too many graphic novels. Do you hear yourselves? Evil geniuses, genetic mutants … the next thing you’re going to tell me is that there is some flying man or woman in tights, ready to save humanity with her ice breath or whatever.” She sighed. “Oh, boys.” She feigned a laugh and looked at them, then turned it into a real one. “I love that you can joke about it though; I needed that. I haven’t laughed in days.”
Jaime didn’t seem amused by her laughter. “Have it your way, then. Don’t believe us. But how difficult is it to believe what we’re saying when you yourself were being chased by a giant man and a bunch of little red demons? Wanna talk logic, Alysia, let us start there.”
Alysia didn’t know what to say so she remained silent, and thought about the days of escape that had led up to her meeting them. Would things ever go back to normal, or was this to be her life moving forward? “Hey, sorry, Jaime, Debdan, but do either of you have a phone? I want to see if my father is okay.”
Jaime handed her his phone and pointed at the power. He had ten percent left on his battery and she understood immediately. She took the phone and punched in her father’s number, not to call but to send a text with the location of the camp and a simple “I love you, please be safe.” She knew her father well and knew that if anything, he would be trying to find her.
“You’re lucky to have people alive,” Jaime said as he pulled on the last bit of the cigarette. She made to ask him what he meant but he quickly waved her off as if he anticipated it. “Don’t ask; I don’t want to think about it. But you’re lucky. Let’s just leave it at that.”
Alysia got up and peeked outside at the campgrounds. It was still chaotic out there and the hour was growing late, but she was beginning to feel a sense of urgency. Something about the kreples breaking into the camp so easily made her feel vulnerable and despite the people, the soldiers and the guns, she wanted to run, and keep on running. She looked around at the grounds to see if there were any buildings sturdy enough to withstand a charging kreple. There was the tiny barracks where the soldiers lived, but everything else was cloth and metal pipes. She was in a tent city, made to withstand weather but not a violent creature.
She ducked back inside the tent where Debdan was laying down and Jaime was looking over a map of the city.
“Hey, do you think I can keep this gun you loaned me?” she asked them, crossing her fingers that they would say yes.
“It wasn’t a loan; you’re gonna need it,” Jaime said without looking up from the map. “Tiny girl like you, everything big and badass out there. You need to keep that to protect yourself, or us, for as long as we’re together.”
She was happy to hear it and sat down to look at its features. She could see where the safety was, a switch to change the mode of fire, and a place to attach an extension to the barrel.
“That second mode allows you to depress the trigger without it overheating,” Jaime said to her as he watched her play with the gun. “See, you can fire that thing rapidly and it will get hot, but that setting makes it shoot twice every second. You can keep up a steady rate of fire, but it’s slow. Depends on the situation.”
“Thanks for being cool, Jaime,” Alysia said and he smiled at her and nodded as he went back to his map. “What are you looking for anyway?” she asked, walking over to sit in front of him at the table.
“I’m trying to see if there is a pattern with these damn things. They came from the east, like from the Atlantic, and hit us like a wave that’s trying to swallow the entire country. Only a handful of giants, but those dinosaurs are spreading faster than you can imagine.”
Alysia thought about the ritual and her capture. She wondered what it was that they had planned for her before she managed to escape. “Can those demons infect people to turn after they die?”
“Not that I’ve seen. The zombies have intelligence; they want to kill us but it’s not for food or anything like that. At the school, Debdan and I saw them slaughtering people. They weren’t taking prisoners or biting on anyone.”
“So why are you calling them zombies? They look and act more like demons to me.”
“We call them zombies because they sorta look like ‘em. Just because they have horns and red skin doesn’t mean that they’re from hell or whatever. Tell you what, we can think of them as demon zombies. That way we’re both right. All I know is that I don’t want to turn into one of them. So if I go down, you all need to make sure to double-tap. One in my chest, and another right here.” He pointed to his forehead.
“Debdan, is he always this dramatic?” Alysia asked, and the boy rolled over and nodded his head, which prompted Jaime to give him the middle finger.
“Call me Dan,” he said to Alysia after he returned the finger to Jaime. “You can call me Dan.”
“My friends call me CeeCee,” Alysia returned and the two boys said “cool” in unison, which prompted her to smile.
Chapter Five
Dad I’m okay, I’m at a military camp on the east side of the Wharton State Forest.
James Knight got the text and quickly powered off his phone as he lifted off the ground and ramped up the speed on his hover-bike. It was both dangerous and illegal to remove the hover restraints on street vehicles, but the only police he had seen in the last few days was Tracy.
He lifted the rigged bike even higher and shot out over the rooftops of the subdivision he was riding in and set a course towards the forest. Alysia was okay; he couldn’t help but smile and sigh in relief. He had been worrying about her since the beginning and feared that his time with Tracy had jeopardized his chances of getting her back.
It was getting late, the darkness was settling in, and he knew that with it the flying creatures would come. He detached a long cutlass from the ignition panel and placed it across his lap. He had a recyclable clip primed inside of his MR2 pulse rifle, but that weapon took two hands and he didn’t intend to stop riding.
He lowered his altitude enough to where he could be obscured by the taller buildings, but when he heard the loud flapping of wings, he knew that it hadn’t worked. He took the rifle, slung it across his back, grabbed the blade in his right hand, and waited for it to come.
He didn’t have to wait long as the bat-like creature swooped down and snatched him off the bike. It had razor sharp talons, but James wore a Kevlar reinforced jacket that kept the nails from impaling him. He was airborne, being carried higher by the creature who screamed happily as it took home its prey.
James grabbed a leg, twisted and then swung the blade at the other leg, chopping it off into a bloody stump. The creature’s scream was so loud that he thought that it would cause him to let go. It jerked around and flew frantically, trying its best to drop the thing that had caused it so much pain. James would not let go; he was too high up to land safely and he didn’t want to die from falling.
“Come on, fool, take me down,” he said, and he grabbed it and kicked his legs in an attempt to make the creature put him down. It got the message and started to descend, but an even bigger creature crashed into it and grabbed James anew. Again, James swung his blade but this time he hit the creature’s body and as its bowels fell out and it emitted an ear-shattering scream, he knew he had made a mistake.
The creature flipped over and started to fall from the air. James grabbed it and pulled himself clo
ser, hoping that the beast’s body would cushion his impact. They clipped the rooftop of a bank and then bounced towards a lower rooftop where it crashed.
James rolled off the black mass of leathery wings and lay on his back, laughing. The adrenaline was kicking but he was at home in it. Action, finally, he thought, and then rolled to his feet, bringing the pulse rifle up, ready for action. Several winged creatures came at him, but he shot them down and retreated to the building entrance of the roof. His bullets shredded the first predator as it got close but he had to jump out of the way of its body as it came tumbling towards him. It ended up crashing into the door and blocking his entrance into the building.
"Great," James mumbled as he aimed at another one that was circling the rooftop, clipping its wing and causing it to fly off elsewhere. "Trapped like a crumb in a cage of hungry mice," he said, but he had his gun and it wasn't like he would be running out of ammunition anytime soon.
After about twenty minutes of this, the creatures decided to leave James alone. He was sore and tired from holding the heavy gun, and the adrenaline that had numbed the impact from his fall dissipated. He felt like every bone in his body was broken. He limped over to the door where one of the creatures lay dead and dropped near the wall.
He squeezed his eyes tight, trying in vain to will the pain away. Is this the end? he thought and looked at the sky. It was almost night and he was still outside. He forced himself up to see if there was any way to get past the corpse of the creature.
A loud noise brought him around and he saw the smashed body of a kreple near the edge of the building. Another fell and landed, looking around as if it was confused. James saw that a number of the winged creatures were picking up kreples and dropping them on the roof where he stood. He couldn't believe it; they were being used as bombs now that the flyers were afraid of him.
"You sneaky bastards," he said aloud as he brought up the pulse rifle and started to shoot at them. The flyers had intelligence and this made him worried that there were even bigger plans in the works for him. From what he could surmise, the flyers and demons were intelligent; he hadn't had enough experience with a giant to figure them out, but the kreples were like animals.
The tough skin of the kreples made it hard to bring them down with the pulse rifle. James hoped there would be a limit to how many the flyers would drop since he was getting tired and his muscles ached. When he had killed the last one, he shoved at the corpse that blocked the door and pushed himself into a gap that was wedged between it and the wall. He used the cutlass to chop off the doorknob and then pushed it in.
When he got inside, it was pitch black. He shut the door and twisted his watch, causing it to illuminate the area. The watch was standard military issue with a compass and a solar-powered light that was great for situations like this. When the light came on, he saw that there was a staircase and though it hurt for him to step down, he knew that staying on the roof was not an option.
~ * ~ * ~
Tracy woke up about a day later and it took her some time to realize where she was. Looking around, she could tell that she was in a room of sorts, but she didn’t know if it was a hospital or some sort of hotel. The one thing she did know was that it was unfamiliar, and the stinging pains in her chest were from the bullets from a few days ago.
Her vision was blurry and she felt weak from the drugs James had given her. She sat up on the bed and tried to replay everything in her mind in terms of what she had gone through. She remembered James running her up the stairs and she remembered a little bit of their conversation.
One thing that stood out vividly was her asking him to stay, even though he wanted to go and rescue his daughter. She felt embarrassed by the memory. Why did I do that, she thought. He probably thinks that I am the most selfish woman in the world right now. Then she remembered that he stayed and it made her feel a little bit better.
She hoped that Alysia was okay; she really liked the girl and she knew that to James, she was not only family but also much more. She could feel the slight stinging of her wounds through the bandages and she pulled up her shirt to see if everything was in place.
Aside from a few dry bloodstains on her bandages, everything seemed okay. She kicked her legs off the bed and forced herself to stand even though the drugs made the room shift as if she were on a boat. She steadied herself and threw open the blinds, looking out on the city which stood stark and abandoned under the high noon sun.
She knew that a few people would have stayed back even though there was an evacuation, but those people had remained quiet and stayed inside of their rooms. She got up and tried the television to see if the electricity had come on – no such luck – she then rifled through the bag of snacks James had left her.
She opened a large bag of chips and scarfed them down as if she were starving. She consumed another bag, along with some warm soda and a tall bottle of water. When she was through eating and feeling sick, she lay down and closed her eyes, trying to pull up whatever memory she could of the last few days.
Since the beginning, she had been running for a long time. First, she ran from the police station to go check in on the University area and that was where her car was wrecked by the kreple. Then she met the girl, Alysia and saved her life. There was the assault at her apartment, then the uncomfortable ride with James, which brought her to this room.
Alysia’s dad had saved her twice and she found herself thinking a little bit too much about him. It was something about the way he looked; no, it was more like the way he was that she found very attractive. When she had asked him to stay, it wasn’t so much for him to rest but more so that she could stay with him.
She had started to notice the crush when they talked about guns during the hover-bike ride. She thought she knew everything there was to know about the guns of their age, but James was a wealth of knowledge. She knew that he’d been in some branch of the military at one point but he changed the subject when she asked him. Still, it wasn’t often that she got to talk guns with anyone, considering it was such an unpopular topic during that time.
She got up and went to the bathroom to wash her face, bathe, and change clothes. When she was through, she tried to walk around more but she quickly got tired and decided it would be best for her to lie down for at least another day. She sat back on the bed and peered through the window, looking to see if she could spot some kreples or some of the sneaky demons. She went through the struggle of fighting boredom for another hour before it got too much to bear and she decided to exit the room.
When she got down to the ground floor, she heard some people talking and she crept to the glass and looked through to see who it was. There were several men and women going through the storage area, looking for food. She hadn’t realized that so many people were still in the hotel and although she wanted to make friendly, she wasn’t yet ready to trust outsiders. She watched them for a time until a sound from above the stairs brought her around. She knew that someone would be coming down to join the rest so she slipped to the back of the stairs and hid beneath them.
A little dark-haired girl and her mother came down the stairs and opened the door.
“Is there anything left?” said the mom and the replies were both hostile and loud as the desperate people all but told her where to shove her question. Tracy came out and looked through the glass again and saw that they were not only shouting at her but were not letting her anywhere near the bar while the little girl was crying.
She considered going out there and saying something to them but with her condition and the fact that she was a stranger, she knew it would not go over well and would lead to violence. There would be no benefit whatsoever for her or the mother to fight those people so she held her ground and waited.
After a time, the mother walked back to the staircase, defeated. She shut the door and Tracy stepped out of the shadows and motioned for her attention. The little girl posed to make a loud scream but her mother covered her mouth quickly and
looked back through the glass.
“Calm down, little one. I am here to help,” Tracy said as she too looked through the glass to make sure nobody else was coming. “I have some food in my room if you guys are hungry but it’s just junk. Potato chips, water, and candy.”
The little girl perked up when she said candy and the mother smiled through a face that looked drawn and emaciated. She nodded rapidly at Tracy as if she were unable to speak in that instance. “Okay, then follow me, but please be quiet and you cannot tell the others where I am or what I have,” Tracy said.
They climbed the stairs up to where Tracy’s room was. This took a bit of effort due to her injury and the tiny girl’s struggle to climb the steps. Once inside, she handed them the bag and they immediately dove in, eating like people that hadn’t eaten in days.
“When was the last time you guys had anything to eat?” Tracy asked.
“It’s been two days,” said the mother. She stared at Tracy for a time with a half-finished chip hanging out of her mouth and then looked at her daughter and motioned for her to stop eating. She stood there for a moment, looking at Tracy. “I’m so sorry, where are my manners?” she said, the chip falling down onto her lap. “Thank you so much for your help. My name is Angelica and this is Maria.”
Tracy smiled at Maria, brushed her hair gently out of her face, and then touched Angelica on her shoulder to let her know that it was okay. She was happy to have the company of people and it felt good to help others even though she knew that the smart thing to do would have been to hoard the food for as long as she could.
“You’re wounded and hurt,” Angelica said as she saw a bit of blood peeking out of Tracy shirt.
“Yes, these are bullet wounds,” said Tracy. “I’m a police officer but I didn’t get shot from doing my job. These wounds actually came from men looking to take advantage of me when I was in my apartment. They came when the monsters were everywhere and tried to rob me and my friend; that’s when they shot me.”
