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  Alysia looked over his shoulder at the tents, and she could see a number of people who were obviously civilian, talking to one another and walking about.

  “You mean that you don’t want me in there,” she said to him, and he made to object when she started screaming loudly. “HELP! I NEED HELP! WHY WON’T YOU LET ME IN?”

  A few more soldiers ran up to see what the noise was about and after a few exchanges and a Major being summoned, Alysia was led to an area of the fence where they could power it down and allow her access. She wanted to punch the man that denied her entry but held her composure as they escorted her into the camp. The soldiers gave her a tent to sleep in and it was more than she expected. It had a bathtub full of hot water and food, along with books and electronic equipment. She took a long bath and massaged her sore feet, and then she dried herself, tried on a few of the clothes and scarfed down the foodstuffs.

  When she was finished getting situated, she lay on the inflatable mattress and tried to sleep. It was something that her body needed but her mind refused to let her have. She lay there for what felt like hours, thinking about the demons and the giant that almost took her life. When she finally closed her eyes and drifted off, she dreamed the same scene repeatedly as if she was under a curse to keep on reliving the nightmare. Gunshots and explosions forced her awake and when she finally got her bearings, she noticed there was a lot of movement going on outside.

  She rose and turned on the lamp next to the mattress and looked around for anything that could serve as a weapon. The only thing she saw that could work was a box of pots and pans. That wouldn’t do, so she pulled on a pair of jeans and slid on some canvas shoes that fit her. She snatched a ragged t-shirt from the pile of clothes to complete her ensemble and then pulled open the zipper that sealed her tent.

  It looked as if she was in the middle of a war. There were soldiers everywhere, firing this way and that, and the demons were among the tents, tearing them apart, as well as their inhabitants. Alysia couldn’t believe what she was seeing; the fence had collapsed under the body of a dead giant and the demons were pouring through, violent and enraged. The soldiers were fighting bravely and efficiently, and although the demons number seemed endless, the humans were winning.

  Alysia didn’t know what to do in that instant. She didn’t have a gun to help in the fight, and she was still exhausted and groggy. She couldn’t take her eyes off the fallen giant, wondering how it was they had managed to kill it from behind the fence.

  A pair of young men that seemed to be around her age ran up to her tent, and the first one used his handgun to shoot a demon that had slipped past the soldiers. He wasn’t dressed like a soldier but he was armed, and Alysia wondered if he was up to no good.

  “Hey, you can’t just stand out in the open like that,” he said to her as he ran up to her and turned to protect her from anything incoming. He had brown hair and broad shoulders and seemed too skinny for his frame. The other boy was heavyset with glasses, brown skin and a mass of black hair. He didn’t say anything as he looked around frantically. She saw that he was holding a gun, too.

  “Do you have a gun I can borrow?” Alysia asked as she came out to join them, looking around to make sure that a demon hadn’t gotten behind them. The second kid handed her a small revolver, and she took it and nodded at him as they all stood watching the soldiers fight against the waves of demons. “What the hell are those things?” Alysia asked, and the brown-skinned boy looked at her as if she was crazy.

  “What? You haven’t heard?” he said, and his songlike accent threw her off guard as she mentally tried to figure out where he was from.

  “No, heard what?”

  “They’re like zombies or something. When people started dying in the cities from the baby dinosaurs or whatever, the red zombies came in to finish them off. I mean, they aren’t ‘zombies’ like they want your brains or something, but they aren’t human. Some of them even have horns, like little devils or something.”

  A demon ran at them after smashing in a soldier’s face and the trio shot at it several times until it went down screaming. Alysia wasn’t sure if either of the two shots she fired had connected.

  “That’s an MA15, small caliber weapon,” the brown-skinned boy said as he looked at her. “I got it off the body of a guard during the last attack. As long as you don’t shoot it a bunch of times in succession, it will regenerate the bullets. All of these guns have that feature, not like our civilian guns. Pretty cool, right?” When he said this, the quiet, taller boy gave him an annoyed glance, then focused again on the fighting.

  “What about the giants?” Alysia asked. “The giants, the kreples—I mean, dinosaurs or whatever, and the flying bat creatures? What are they?”

  “What do you think they are? Creatures from hell, come to collect our souls and turn us into demons,” the taller boy said. It was obvious that he was joking sarcastically but Alysia wondered how far off he was from the truth. “My name’s Jaime, by the way. This here’s my frat brother, Debdan.”

  “My name is Alysia, but you can call me CeeCee. I just got here a few hours ago.”

  The boys nodded and got quiet as they concentrated on the demons, shooting at the stragglers that got near them, doing their best not to hit any of the frantic refugees running about. Some of the men and women in the camp were trained fighters, so the soldiers had help to hold off the demon rush. When the attackers quieted down and they began to tend to the wounded and dead, a loud screech pierced the air and a large kreple charged the camp. No matter how many bullets they pumped into the charging behemoth, it wouldn’t slow as it gained access to the camp and bit into a large, portly man before moving on to another.

  One by one it went around biting at them until a brave soldier shot it point blank with a shotgun.

  “Debdan, Jaime, we can’t stay here,” she said to them. “I’ve survived on my own against those things but I think I only managed because I kept on moving, sleeping on rooftops during the night and running through the woods during the day.”

  “We have guns, ammo, and shelter here,” Debdan said to her. “Why do you think you are safer out there with no resources than in here where people have your back?”

  Alysia thought he had a point, but she looked around at the chaos from their skirmish. What would happen to them if three kreples of that size were to charge their camp? What if five, six, or even twenty showed up?

  “What is the plan here, guys? Why did the military bring everyone here? Are they planning to bomb the city, or is there rescue coming for us?”

  The boys looked at one another and shook their heads at her. Nobody knew what the plan was, if there even was one.

  There was some commotion amongst the huddled refugees as a rather large, bearded man led his family through to face the soldiers, and Jaime nudged the other two to look at him. He was angry and he began cussing and yelling at the soldiers so that everyone could hear. He was upset about the raid and the soldiers, in their own dramatic way, silenced him with threats to remove him from the settlement.

  Things went on like that for a time; soldiers and civilians were angry and frustrated with what had happened. So to get out of the line of fire, the boys took Alysia to their tent where they continued their discussion on the military’s plan.

  “They’re saying that those creatures aren’t supernatural, after all,” Jaime said as he sat on the mattress and took out a cigarette. Alysia glanced at it with disdain but bit her tongue on objecting since it wasn’t really her tent.

  “Oh yeah, then what are ‘they’ saying that they are?” Alysia asked, her eyes locked on the cigarette as Jaime took a long drag and exhaled the smoke through his nose.

  “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. 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.

  5

  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 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.

  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.

  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.