(no subject)

24.

The clammy hands were on both sides of Mickey’s head. The fetid smell filled his nostrils, as the things mouth moved towards his throat.

The creature stood over six feet tall and oozed what was once skin from every exposed inch of its surface. The color was a blue-green mold tint from head to toe, and it wanted to kill the boy. That was certain.

As a tremor of terror shook the child from head to foot something buzzed past his face.

With the force of a bullet something smacked the face of the ghoulish grotesque. It dropped Mickey and staggered backwards. A second golden figure zipped towards the attacker, and pierced the general area that a heart might have once been, and then came out the other side.

The vampire melted into a bubbling pile of vile goo.

Mickey reached up and wiped blue-green residue from his hair. He shivered as he threw the stuff away. Then came the warning.

“Step away,” The deep voice bellowed.

Mickey looked up and saw another vampire about to grab him. He jumped away just as a troll picked the thing up, lifted it over his head and then impaled it on a spear. The thing did the same melting act.

The fairies did seem to be making inroads against the vampires, but they were still hopelessly outnumbered. The trolls were not fairing as well. Being slow moving they were having a hard time actually getting their hands on the beasts.

The vampires were quicker, and though they were not smart, neither were they mindless.

Mickey suddenly realized his own forgotten plan. He had let it slip away in his grief at his mother’s disappearance, and his terror at being grabbed. He made the trolls invisible.

In moments the battle had turned. With no way to see their short opponents coming, the vampires couldn’t dodge their enemies.

He had decided not to turn the dragons invisible, since they might trample as many of their own side as the opposition. And the dragons were sweeping the enemy before them with consistency as it was.

The tide had turned, the vampires were now faced with the fairies, dragons and invisible trolls. Then something new entered the picture.

A giant wind mill joined the battle. With its four legs piercing vampires and its blades cutting them in half, the animated tower was a behemoth of destruction. Mickey noticed Stonedragon sitting motionless in the door of the plane. His eyes were closed and the boy knew the man was in the heat of battle.

Jeremy, who was invisible also, was able to spit acid right through the hearts of the demons. They were falling faster than could be counted.

Then another plane landed, it was an old prop plane, possibly from the World War II era.

It was followed by another and then another. These cargo planes were huge.

Each of them opened and out came dozens of vampires. How could there be so many vampires in the world?

Benjy came out of the plane and shouted, “Keep fighting, help is on the way!”

He picked up a piece of a broken spear to use as a stake and entered the fray.

The fighting went on for more than 10 minutes and Mickey was beginning to worry that help would not arrive before he wore out. He had worked with people at Thunderbase to increase how long he could maintain his enabling, but he was reaching his limit.

It was at that second that Benjy was knocked to the ground. He was not moving.

“Dad!” Mickey shouted.

 

© 2005 by C. Wayne Owens

(no subject)

25.

Maria edged toward the end of the corridor, and what should be a way out.

She was aware of a low, distant sound that was coming from the direction she was moving. It was a mechanical sound, a repetitive metal on metal connection, then stop, then repeat. It was the sound she had heard something like at factories she had visited in the past.

Her attention was brought back to what she was doing as a gangly figure passed along the connecting walkway without noticing her.

She was glad the activity seemed to be happening at the cross hallway rather than the one she was inching down. She would deal with the traffic when she got there, but right now it was good to have some time to get herself together before she had to confront anyone.

Two figures met at the end of the hall and seemed to be discussing something. She braced herself in a door way, and they did not appear to see her.

Security was not, from all outward signs, a priority concern.

The pair finished their conversation and continued their crossed paths.

Maria moved back towards that hallway.

Now she was less than ten feet from the active traffic way, and the sound was louder and more distinct.

She didn’t mean to stop, but when she reached the end of the hall, turned the corner and was confronted by the floor to ceiling glass, she was taken aback. Down below were massive machines, working tirelessly. They were producing the robots that had been in the battle before, only these were of more colossal proportions.

While the previous automatons had been a story tall, these were ten.

Bands of vampires were manning the machinery and the output was prodigious.

Stacked along the walls were scores of the mighty killing machines.

This wasn’t the inside of a flying saucer, she reckoned, this was a factory.

“It takes your breath away, doesn’t it?” Came the voice of her captor as he laid his hand on her shoulder.

She very nearly jumped out of her skin.

That start made him laugh again, and his laughter hadn’t gained any charm.

“But, you haven’t seen this!” He proclaimed in a inflection more reminiscent of a ten year old boy with a new baseball card than of a creature setting into motion the destruction of the world.

“Come on,” He directed her and the two of them walked to the other end of that corridor.

At the end of the walkway was another set of picture windows, and below them was another assembly line manned by vampires.

Below the windows was being put together, one after another, saucers like the one taken from the desert. At the end of the conveyor belt, a vampire entered and the silver disc took to the air.

“I’ll have a hundred of these by the end of the day,” He beamed, “And then, nothing your people can put up against us will stand a chance.”

“Why do you show this to me?” Maria asked.

“The joy of any toy is being able to share them with your playmates!” He said and began laughing in a way that made whatever hope had been in her heart begin to fade.

© 2005 by C. Wayne Owens

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(no subject)

26.

Before Mickey could take a step his father’s body was pulled, feet first, into the mob of vampires that still circled the plane.

While the creatures were falling at a good rate, they seemed to be being replenished at an equal or greater rate.

“Dad!” Mickey screamed at the top of his lungs.

Something resembling a laugh rippled through the vampires. It was almost a mechanical sound. Then the same voices echoed his scream, with all the humanity left out of it. Then they laughed again.

One of the dragons, Mickey couldn’t identify them yet, started to turn his flaming lung blasts in that direction.

“No,” Mickey shouted, “You might hit my dad!”

The dragon turned away, and the laughing increased.

Then, somewhere in the distance came another sound. Like a giant air conditioner engine, the whirring approached.

The battle continued and Mickey kept trying to inch toward the spot where his father disappeared a moment before, but with little success. The giant windmill was fighting to winnow out the herd, but the vampires now knew this group had a trump card and more and more joined this clump.

The sound of an electronic spark cut the air above them, and everyone, troll, fairy, vampire and all, looked up.

There was a large version of what was called, in the 1920’s or 1930’s an autogyro. It was an ancestor of the helicopter, but made for simpler travel, often with a single occupant.

Two silver reflectors were mounted on either side of the flying machine turned to face the crowd below. A speaker of some sort clicked on.

“Benjy, here is your idea, compliments of McCall and Keaton. They are being put into action around the globe as we speak,” Came the voice from above.

Light blasted from the twin circles and in less than a second the vampires were gone.

“The light generators focus on the part of the spectrum of daylight that is most deadly to those whose life is a mocking recreation of ours. This is the end of one of your experiments, Benjy, glad to be able to mobilize it for you.”

The lights clicked off and the autogyro sped away.

The ground was cluttered with lumps of goo that had once been vampires and the bodies of fallen comrades.

Mickey was searching the ground until he found that thing that was most horrible to even conceive.

A troll stood at his head, several fairies fluttered above him, and Colonel Stonedragon kneeled at his side.

Mickey ran to that spot as the Colonel reached down to touch the throat of the body that showed no signs of life.

“Dad!” Yelled Mickey as he reached the spot, but Stonedragon caught the boy’s shoulders and looked him in the eyes.

“Mickey, it is too late,” He pulled the sobbing child to him, “He is dead.”

The only sound on the empty battlefield was the relentless wailing of an 11 year old boy who had lost his father.

© 2005 by C. Wayne Owens

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