"Not to mention all the repairs needed. The front door was blown to shit. The picture window is gone. The main stairwell is blasted to hell and the sliding glass patio doors in the kitchen are shot."
"Maybe we should relocate to another estate?" Norris commented. He was just putting the finishing touches on Cpl. Carey’s bandages. Getting the bullet shrapnel out of his shoulder hadn’t been easy for either of them, and Carey had gratefully accepted a large dose of morphine that quickly put him into a painless sleep.
David slept peacefully in the bed on the opposite side of the room, his broken leg enclosed in an inflatable cast and his dislocated shoulder bound in a sling. Sharon sat in a chair on one side of his bed, Samantha on the other, her face wrought with fresh grief over the loss of Jennifer, Rick and baby Tiffany. A small blanket was wrapped around her shoulders and she cradled baby Tyler in her arms.
"We’ve fought too hard and sacrificed to much to move." Susan said, her emotions suddenly swelling.
"Damn straight! It’s going to take a lot more than some housecleaning and home repairs to drive us out of this place." Mac added, hobbling toward the balcony with an unlit cigarette in his hand.
"What if more of them come?" Norris asked.
"If they were going to come, they would have come by now. What hit us last night was all there was up here on the lake."
"What about those white robed freaks? You two saw with your own eyes what they did! What if more of them come? I don’t want to end up being fed to zombies on a crucifix!"
"They hit us with their best shot last night." Mac insisted. "They were working with those superzombies. We saw a pair of them standing out on the balcony watching the crucifixions. They were fully expecting to overrun us last night. We took a good chunk out of those freaks numbers."
"The zombies ignored them until they were wounded, but once they were bleeding they tore them apart." Susan said. "I shot a pair of those robed nuts; as soon as they were hit they were zombie food."
With a snort Mac he put the unlit cigarette in his mouth and stepped onto the balcony.
"Your father would be proud of both of you." Sharon said from the opposite side of David’s bed. The toddler, Mary, was asleep in her arms and Sharon gazed down at her sons sleeping face with a sad smile. Susan walked over and knelt beside her, draping one arm across her shoulder. Sharon cradled her head in the crook of her daughter’s neck.
"He’d be proud of all of us mom. We survived. It wasn’t easy, and for a while there all seemed lost. But when the time came, we were all strong. David, myself, and you." Susan stroked her mother’s head gently.
"Me?" Sharon said, unbelieving.
"Yes, you mom. Do you think little Mary would be alive right now if it wasn’t for you? I know Dad’s death was hard for you, but when it counted most, you pulled it together and did what you had to do."
"I miss him so much." Sharon said, her body shaking with gentle sobs. "I still can’t believe he’s gone."
"We all miss him." Susan said, holding her mother tighter. "But we’re alive, and that means he didn’t die in vain…"
The day passed without event, all the daylight hours consumed with hauling, and burning dead bodies. Not content to sit up stairs and do nothing, Mac hobbled down and operated the forklift. Susan stayed inside, assisting Norris with the wounded and keeping watch on the balcony. Thankfully, no more live zombies appeared out of the forest, allowing them to work unmolested. By nightfall, the house and back deck had been cleared of bodies, but the yard was still littered with hundreds more, most of them pulverized to pieces by the tanks heavy treads.
"We’re never going to clean up that mess." Sgt. Turner muttered. The work crew was standing out on the back deck, drinking beer from a case that had been cooling in the fridge all day, and the last rays of sunlight cast the back yard in a sublime light, seeming to highlight the carnage.
"We’ll have to do a controlled burn." Cpl. Philips said.
"What do you mean?" asked Commander King.
"We need to go around and burn that back lawn in sections until the whole thing is scoured clean."
"We don’t want to catch the goddamned forest on fire." Sgt. Turner said.
"That’s why I said a controlled burn...in sections." Philips said with mock annoyance. If need be we can dig small breaker ditches around the edges. I’m sure there's some landscaping equipment to be found around here somewhere."
"And there’s plenty of fuel out in the boathouse." Matt added. They fell silent with their thoughts and their beers.
"This beer ain’t doing shit for my pain." Mac muttered and drained his can, crushed in his fist and tossed it aside before turning toward the house. "I’m going inside to see Norris and get a shot of morphine…"
The clean up crew burned the clothes they had been wearing that day and each of them took a long, hot shower, scrubbing clean. They rotated a watch of two all night, and come morning they set about implementing Cpl. Philips controlled burn plan. Starting with a 50’x50’ section of lawn nearest the back deck, they used wide bladed snow shovels to push as much of the chewed and mangled body parts and gore slicked lawn to the center then doused the whole section with gasoline and tossed a lit match. The stench was stomach churning, and any appetite anyone may have had was lost quickly. It took the better part of the day, but an hour before nightfall they lit the last patch of the controlled burn. The back lawn was a giant, blackened patch of smoking earth, but there were no more bodies to be seen. Any worry of a spark picked up by the wind and catching the house or surrounding forest on fire was put to rest as thick clouds filled the sky and a heavy summer rain began falling just as the last patch burned out.
Before they could file into the house, Norris met them at the back deck with a large plastic garbage bag.
"Ok, you all know the drill. Strip naked and put your clothes in here. We’ll burn them tomorrow. After you shower I’m going to give each of you a cholera booster shot, a penicillin shot, a tetanus booster and a shot of B-vitamin complex to boost your immune system."
"Is all that really necessary?" asked Pvt. Jimenez.
"You’ve been swimming in dead bodies, blood, guts and decay for two days, not to mention breathing the smoke from the burning corpses. Trust me, it's necessary."
"Breathing the smoke from those burning bodies can’t be healthy." Muttered Cpl. Philips.
"It may not be healthy but it won’t turn you into a zombie." Jenkins said. "Two days ago Major Farrell and I breathed a heavy dose of that shit in a tightly enclosed space. We tested negative for the infection." His story of what had become of Ron filled them all with a chilling sense of dread.
After they had stripped down in the rain Sharon and Susan stood in the kitchen just inside the shattered patio doors, handing out clean towels for the men to cover themselves. Seeing the blushed, uncomfortable look on some of their faces brought a smile to both women’s faces.
"Don’t be modest boys. You don’t have anything we haven’t seen before." Sharon chided.
"Well now that you’ve seen ours, when do we get to see yours?" Sgt. Turner joked back, smiling when he saw Sharon’s cheeks blush red.
While the clean up crew had spent the day burning body parts in the yard, Sharon and Susan had spent the day scrubbing, disinfecting and deodorizing the ground floor of the house.
"It smells good in here." Matt said, trying to kiss his wife, but she held him at arms length.
"I love you too baby, but I just got out of the shower and you're covered with gore and stink like rotting meat. See me after you clean up." Matt feigned hurt by her words, but it quickly turned to smile as he headed for the shower in the master bedroom…
Chapter 63
Saturday, June 30, 2001
Rainbow Lake, UT
8:20 AM
On the third morning after the assault, David felt well enough to leave his bed for a short walk. His left arm was in a sling and his left leg encased in an inflatable cast but his spirits were high.
Even Cpl. Carey was up and out of bed, his right shoulder heavily bandaged and the arm held in a sling. His frog face looked sour as ever, underlined with a wince of pain and a heavy dose of morphine.
That morning at sunup Matt, Susan, Jenkins, Sgt. Turner and Cmdr. King took Scotty’s dead body and Pvt. Irving’s shattered remains, both of which had been stored in the barn instead of burned with the rest of the corpses, loaded them into the boat, and went across the lake to Adam and Kelly’s old cabin. Graves were dug in the meadow next to Adam and Kelly’s, and their bodies laid to rest. All they had recovered of Pvt. Cordoba was his dog tags, and those were hung in a small memorial inside the Main House.
They had been home less than an hour when the dogs took up their wailing once again, setting everyone into a semi-panic as they scrambled for their weapons and took up their defensive positions. A low, throbbing hum filled the air, causing the windows to rattle in their panes and everyone’s eardrums to ache.
Matt took up his position at the rear second floor balcony just as the throbbing vibration reached its crescendo, but the large, black, flying craft that glided over the forest to the south and settled into a hover one hundred feet over the center of the charred back lawn caused him to forget the pain in his ears. The multi-faceted object was half the size of the barn, and for all intents and purposes looked like a black, tear shaped gem. It held its position for nearly a minute before the hum dramatically decreased in intensity and the craft slowly lowered to the ground, settling gently on three landing pods that appeared out of the underbelly. A few moments later, the hum ceased altogether. The dogs had also fallen silent, disappearing into the forest.
"It’s them." Sgt. Turner muttered beside him.
"Who?" Matt asked.
"The aliens. One of those craft attacked Ft. Douglas. Blasted the perimeter defenses all to hell."
"One also attacked Park City." Jenkins added from Matt’s opposite side. "It destroyed half of downtown before one of the Apache’s blew it out of the sky."
"I’m going to blast the fucker." Cmdr. King’s voice crackled over the radio. He and Cpl. Philips had climbed inside the tank when everybody was taking defensive positions, and even as he spoke the turret was spinning to target the main gun on the craft.
"Hold your fire!" Jenkins snapped into his radio. "If they wanted us dead they could have wiped us out with ease. No need to provoke them."
"My fingers on the trigger just looking for an excuse." King answered back, but the tank held its fire.
"What do you think they want?" Matt asked, his voice betraying the fear he felt.
"It’s definitely not Reese's Pieces." Jenkins muttered.
Several tense minutes passed before a crack appeared in the front of the craft and what appeared to be an exit ramp lowered to the ground.
'Matt.'
The whisper in Matt’s skull was accompanied by an uncomfortable tickle behind his eyes. He blinked several times and shook his head.
'Matt.'
The whisper repeated inside his head, and this time he rubbed his eyes and shook his head.
"What’s wrong?" Jenkins asked.
"I don’t know. My head feels funny."
'Matt, do not be alarmed. It’s me, Zack.'
The tickle behind his eyes became a dull throb.
"What the hell?" Matt exclaimed, wobbling with dizziness.
'Do not be alarmed; it is me, Zack. I am going to exit the craft. Do not shoot.'
It did sound like Zack. Not the thick, bubbling monster’s voice he had spoken with three days ago, but his normal, human voice.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Jenkins asked.
"It's Zack in that ship." Matt said, the throbbing and dizziness receding to a tickle before fading completely.
"What?"
"Zack is aboard the ship. He’s going to be coming out."
"How the hell do you know?" Sgt. Turner asked.
"I can hear his voice in my head." Jenkins and Sgt. Turner gave Matt a quizzical stare, but said no more. Instead they turned their eyes to the alien craft and watched as a single figure made it’s way down the exit ramp.
"That’s Zack?" David’s voice came over the radio. He was in the computer den, observing everything on the security monitors.
"I’m going down to talk to him." Matt said.
"We’ll all go down." Jenkins replied…
Everyone save Samantha and the children went downstairs and met Zack on the back patio deck. For nearly a minute nobody spoke, they just stood there, staring. They had become conditioned to rotten, shambling zombies, but Zack’s mutated form was even more grotesque than they had expected. He was naked, completely hairless and bore no visible genitalia; his groin rounded and smooth. His muscles were cut with leonine strength, rippling beneath his blotchy, greenish black skin, which glistened amphibian smooth with a thin coat of slime. His fingers were long and dexterous, tipped with black, razor sharp claws. His face was set in what could have been either a snarl or a smile, revealing needle-like, feline teeth and a thick, black tongue. His eyes were set deep in their sockets, hooded with a ridge of bone, rimmed blood red and tinted yellow. He moved with a liquid, snakelike gate that was simply too inhuman to keep the revulsion from their faces. Only Jenkins face remained passive, seemingly set in stone, while Matt, Susan, David’s eyes held sorrow and pity.