Are they still coming?"Andrea gasped in exertion as she and her husband Bill shoved the ancient chest of drawers in front of thier bedroom door trying not to tip the towering cabinet.

Bill scowled but as he turned to spit his venomous reply at her several thunderous shotgun blasts echoed across thier backyard stopping him dead.

"Oh shit! they've got guns."Bill moaned in defeat.

A figure appeared in the sliding glass door opposite thier bed weilding a large bore doublebarrel scattergun which the dark shape proceeded to swing butt first at the triple paned glass barrier.The door blew inward with an explosive crunch peppering the room beyond whith jagged shards of tinkling white projectiles. The mysterious stranger stood at the threshhold of his newly created portal.

"C'mon!I can't hold these things off for very long."The deathstalker called in a firm and intense voice.Turning on his heel thier shotgun toting messiah vanished back into the darkness. exchanging a dibelieving look Bill and Andrea Steiner scurried in pursuit of thier armed saviour.

Drake Roland holstered his big scattergun in the leather sheath he had strapped to his back after reloading it and drawing his sword.The warrior arced the blade across his body slashing into the nearest decaying atrocity loosing a flood of liquid putrecense into the dusty earth at its feet and knocking the creep to the ground.Drake stomped down onto the things head and hurried on to his mammoth black suburban leaving the shuddering corpse to scatter its brains and chips of scull into the spreading pool of its entrails asit flopped and writhed in the reeking mess.He turned to hurry the couple into his truck and fired off both barrels on his devestating blaster into an approaching mob before jumping into the vehicle himself with a satisfied grin as he watched the buckshot storm disintegrate the front ranks of the grotesque hoard and reduce those in back to a struggling heap of rotten limbs and bodies.

*

Andrea Steiner slumped into the back seat of the wheeled goliath as it raced towards the edge of town.Her mind reeled as the events of the past few miniutes replayed themselves on the back of her forhead as if in an attempt to impress upon her the reality of the situation.

She had been in the kitchen trying to work some culinary magic. Bill had come in without saying a word to her and planted himself firmly on the sofa to stare at the blank television screen and brood about his terrible day.As the nigh wore on Andrea knew just how dark his mood would get,building up like an ominous thunderhead only to unleash its pent up fury on the helpless prairie below,so shetried to think of something to apease the savage cauldron of boiling emotions lurking just beneath his soft brown eyes and fifteen hundred dollar suits.

The front door began shaking under the barrage of a series of irregular thumps echoing through the walls like the beating of a weak and dying heart.Bill stalked up to the door and flung it open sending three putrid beings sprawling into the yard.He couldn't believe his eyes.The front yard was crawling with an assortment of shambling horrors in varying states of atrophy.A beast lunged at him from the side which Bill easily dodged slamming the heavy oaken slab home on one thrashing limb severing it with a wet thunk.The disembodied hand sprang to its fingertips and shot towards bills leg,middle finger extended as if sniffing him out like a hound.With a grunt of disgust he stomped the thing flat feeling the brittle half rotted bones snapping and grinding against eachother through the thin sole of his loafer.

With a crash the picture window to Bills left shattered and another foul attacker had flopped itself through the gaping hole. It had impaled its belly on a wicked spike of glass still protruding from the sill greasing it and the underlying wall and floor with a viscous film of pus and embalming fluids.The beast hissed its rage releasing a fetid stench into the room which woke Bill from his gruesome reverie.He darted down the hall for the bedroom grabbing his wife,who had been screaming incoherently and fluttering in mad little circles of indecision,in the process and tossing her in ahead of him.Andrea hit bad,slamming into the footboard and collapsing into a pile of wounded flesh.

"Get it together you fallapart cunt!"Bill roared"I need some help getting this dresser over in front of the door."

Woodenly,Andrea clambered back to her feet feeling the panic rise back up her spine in a frenzied rush.

*

Outside of the swiftly moving suv the town was a scene right out of an old b-class horror flick.The street was nearly choked with burning wrecks and mangled half eaten corpses and more of the animated grotesqueries wove thier way in and out of the detritus conering the pavement looking for thier next tasty victim.At one corner six of the walking blasphemies were huddled over the struggling form of a small girl snapping and hissing at eachother like a pack of ravenous dogs.Even as the trio watched two monstrosities chased a companion off loosing thier places in the hideous banquet in the process.

"Oh my God!they're eating that little girl.M...Mister you've got guns we've got to do something...don't we?"andrea babbled desperately.

The deathstalker turned grimly as he slowed the truck even more,rolled down his window,and drew a compact machine pistol carefully taking aim.The gun coughed loudly in the confines of the modified suv and three shots impacted the girls head splashing the tiny package in what resembled a sledge-o-matic demonstration.

Andrea screamed."what the fuck did you do!You sick sick sick monster!how could you murder that beautiful baby!"

"Look that girl was already dead.I simply let her die with a little less pain."The deathstalker cooed trying to calm the womans hysterics."Try to imagine getting eaten alive by those things.It was the most merciful thing that could be done.I've rescued about twenty people counting us...we've holed up at the church at the edge of town.We'll be there in a few miniutes then we can figure out a plan to get everyone safely out of town."

"Twenty?Twenty!!There were over four hundred people in this town.How many more would be alive if you weren't so bloody trigger happy?"andrea spat.

"shut the bawlin."Bill growled"He couldn't have done anything for that kid and you know it!"He reached back as if to slap his now glowering wife but Drake caught his wrist.

"I will not have that in here or any where else!Is that understood?"The deathstalker stated flatly,inarguably.

"I was on your side for cryin' out loud!"Bill whined.

"There are no sides."He said frankly"we're all in this together and you will treat every one with utter civility in all circumstanses or I will shoot you on the spot and throw you out to feed those goddamned zombies!Is that clear?"Bill looked off out the window like a child getting lectured by an over bearing teacher mumbling to himself but offering no arguements.Andrea simply stared in horror thinking that surely she and her husband would be better off with the walking dead out side.

*

STAY TUNED FOR MORE IN A COUPLE OF WEEKS
SUBMITTED JULY 5TH 2001

RETURN TO FRIGHTSCAPE HOMEPAGE

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