Laura and Hillary ran to the end of the block and saw the barricade that Joe was talking about. The barricade was just the wreckage of a house collapsed into the street and would only slow someone or something down rather than be a true barricade.
The girls ran up to it stopping only momentarily before they scaled over the broken cement and wood.
Laura was the first to get to the top and stopped.
Hillary asked, “Why did you stop, keep going?”
Laura was motionless with her mouth open in disbelief; staring at the spot where there vehicle should have been. Finally she answered the question, “The SUV is gone!”
“What?” Hillary struggled to climb forgetting again that she could have just teleported to the top of the wreckage to look for herself.
She clasped her hands to her mouth gasping. “I bet those old people took it!” She sat down with her head hung over. “Why did I leave the keys in the ignition? Why oh why would I do something so stupid?”
“Hey,” Laura leaning down to hug her friend “don’t beat yourself up. I’m glad you came to save me.”
“What do we do now?” Hillary asked.
Laura smiled deviously. “Not that it pertains to leaving the town, but I have an idea. Stay here at the top and wait for Ken.”
***
Ken wasn’t running so much as he was making sure that all the zombie people were keeping up and staying on him.
Magnis, of course, was the thing he feared most, not that the people would catch up to him.
This being what was on his mind. It was only logical that with his luck so far that day, that when he ran into the next intersection, Magnis would be looking in his direction and immediately give chase.
Ken circled around and was very surprised there was no sign of him. He felt a rush of relief and continued to herd the zombie people as he ran to the SUV.
When he got closer he saw Hillary waving franticly. She jumped up and down at the top of a pile of junk that was blocking entry to the next street.
Hillary yelled when he got in range. “Laura has a plan! Get them closer to you and get up here!”
Ken waved back to let her know he understood.
Looking over his shoulder he could see the multiple mindless eyes and blank stares. He slowed down a little to do what Hillary asked.
It felt so weird that as the people ran they didn’t make moaning noises like he had seen in movies, they were completely quiet. He knew they weren’t alive so they wouldn’t be huffing and puffing from running. It just struck him as odd that they were so quiet. The only sounds entering his eardrums were his own lungs pushing air in and out along with the many sets of feet running.
When the rubble pile was closer he mapped out in his head how he would climb it as fast as he could.
Knowing his path he quickly started to scale the heap.
“Hurry up and get down here!” Hillary called out to Ken before she teleporting out of his sight.
Ken got to the top of the pile and saw Laura’s hair flowing wildly behind her. He knew as soon as he was off that pile she was going to annihilate it with the hopes of crushing and killing all his pursuers.
His feet left the top of the pile and without delay Laura unleashed her energy. Upon contact the pile separated and sprayed forward on all the zombies.
Laura finished expelling her energy at the same time Ken landed on the ground facing away from the girls.
She dropped down to her knees, feeling weak from expelling so much energy, just in time to avoid Magnis plowing his way through the storm of debris.
While her eyes were closed in recovery Magnis jumped over her. In a swift motion he grabbed onto Ken’s neck from behind and threw him into the wreckage before it all had a chance to settle on the ground.
Hillary screamed and Laura opened her eyes instantaneously.
Without giving thought to their actions the girls both hit Magnis with their sparks at once. Hillary pushed on him hard with hers and Laura knocked him back with telekinesis. His body rose off ground and was thrown against the side of a house.
Magnis stayed pinned up against the side of a house and struggled to move.
His body reacted in the same way as Yang’s body did when the twins had pinned him back at the cabin, by going limp for the worm to leave through his ear canal.
“Hillary, switch to the worm!”
Magnis’ body dropped lifelessly to the ground with her tethering switching to the worm.
It squealed loudly in protest at not being able to expand and multiply.
Laura smiled wickedly at it. She knew that her telekinesis would be more than enough to kill its retched life, but she wanted to make it more personal than that.
She ran over to the pile of rubble and grabbed onto a large chunk of cement. Picking up a larger slab then she could carry easily she stumbled over to where Hillary had the squealing worm held.
Laura stood next to the worm hunched over from the weight of her weapon. Its body twisted hopefully knowing what was coming.
“Laura what are you waiting for? Kill it already!”
“You deserve this many times over for all you’ve done,” she said quietly.
Gathering her strength she raised the chunk of cement up into the air. She yelled loudly as she slammed the slab against the worm.
It left the world of the living by splattering its purple body all over side of the house.
The deed being done, Laura dropped the cement and went over to Magnis who was face down on the ground. She flipped him over before pulling him up to a sitting position. His body fell into hers and she threw her arms around his neck resting her head on his non-bloody shoulder.
She didn’t want to let her emotions get control of her but she couldn’t help it and giving the circumstances no one would blame her for it either.
Hillary walked over to Laura who was hugging her husband sobbing uncontrollably. She looked around feeling a great relief that things were finally over, so she hoped.
Looking over at the rubble she could make out the arms or legs of multiple zombie people and knew that Ken was probably dead in there somewhere too. She glanced down the street and saw the spot her sister died at.
She wanted to cry but had done enough mental crying already that day.
Hillary found herself in the position of unfamiliar emotions. Ginger had always been the strong one not her. Maybe her new toughness was the result of her sister being gone combined with all she had experienced today.
Laura stopped crying abruptly and it made Hillary stand at attention as well.
“You hear that?” Laura asked.
Hillary looked terrified and it told Laura that she had indeed heard it.
The sounds they heard came from many people racing towards them. Moments later they were confirmed to be such.
They must have heard the noises from Laura blasting the rubble or perhaps it could have been from the worm’s noise. It really didn’t matter, what did matter is that there were lots of them and both girls were feeling drained and weak.
The group of them strategically positioned themselves all around the girls to make sure they couldn’t get away.
“Oh God, they are surrounding us! Can’t you do something heroic?” Hillary yelled frantically at Laura.
In a panic driven tone she yelled back, “What do you expect me to do, they already got everyone else! What can I possibly do against them?”
Both girls closed their eyes and screamed loudly as the zombie horde closed in on them.
Gunshots rang out and bodies started dropping to the ground.
The girls opened their eyes only to shield them from the headlights of a pair of cars.
Guns kept firing until all the people were down. The lights were obviously confusing them and they all just stood there until their heads got blown to pieces from bullets.
Once the gunfire had stopped Fish dropped his rifle and ran over to the girls. “Hillary! Laura!”
“Oh my God Fish!” Hillary jumped at him knocking him over and forced her lips onto his.
Three other people appeared from the lights of the vehicles, two cops and a scientific looking man.
The female officer spoke. “Fish? I thought your name was James.”
Laura was smiling big and laughed.
They caught up with each other about what had happened to them all.
They were about to get out of the town when Laura protested, saying that they couldn’t leave without the bodies of their friends.
After a bit of time they were able to excavate Ken’s body from the pile of rubble and carry Ginger’s corpse over by Magnis.
They were in mid discussion on how the seating arrangement was going to go with both the live people and dead ones when Joe’s promised explosion went off in the house next to everyone.
Unfortunately they were all between the house and the vehicles causing all of them at once to be caught up in the flames and debris followed by the large three story house collapsing into the street on top of everyone.
The dust settled and the moon glowed ever so slightly on the town. Shorewood was now completely extinguished of all human and monster life.
They were all dead. The married couple Magnis and Laura; the twins Hillary and Ginger; both the strong men Ken and Fish; Officer Daniels and Perry; and even Dr. Donaldson all shared the same resting place.
Only one of them had an uncertain fate…
Five Days Later…
A police car pulled up to another parked vehicle at the same cabin that the group had stayed at before all the chaos.
Both drivers got out of their cars.
A large man started talking first. “Thanks for coming by. I know you big city guys got your hands full with Shorewood and all. The name is Ben Stanfield. You must be Sheriff Barkley?
The officer lifted his sunglasses up over his eyes to look at the man. He thought it was strange that he was dressed in a floral shirt and shorts. He put his sunglasses back down over his eyes.
“Yes, but just Barkley is fine. I apologize for this taking a few days. As you said, we’ve been busy. What seems to be going on here?”
The man motioned for the officer to follow him to the cabin.
“Well, I’m the owner of a couple cabins out here and a bunch of younger folks had rented this one from me for three days. I was coming by to inspect the place and give them back their deposit if it was still in good shape,” Ben explained.
“Go on,” Barkley said letting him know he was listening.
“First off I have to say I was a very annoyed at because their vehicle was gone and they seemed to have cleared out. Next, I became furious when I went inside to see the place had loads of damage.”
“You begged the department to send someone out here for three days because of this?” He stopped in his tracks and raised his voice. “We’ve had our hands full trying to figure out what the heck happened to an entire town that suddenly wound up dead and you’re worried about people damaging your rental property?” The sheriff gestured angrily at Ben, “You have the deposit, what more do you want?”
“No. No, it isn’t that at all,” he looked scared and Barkley glared into his eyes curiously. “There is something inside that I think you should see.”
“Fine, lead the way then.”
They got inside and Ben opened the door with the sheriff close behind.
“Right over here into the main room. I picked up three really huge worms with a pooper scooper and brought them in here.”
Barkley walked forward slowly and took his glasses off his head while eyeing what was in the room.
From the doorway Ben explained things. “I didn’t want any animals to get at them before you could have a chance to see what they were.”
“I’ve never seen something like this so big. What do you make of them?”
“I don’t know. They are all curled up like they could be mutated caterpillars if you ask me. Not that I’m saying that is what they are, but I’ve never seen anything that gigantic before.”
Barkley turned back to Ben. “This is interesting don’t get me wrong, but still not a good excuse to detour the police department what we have going on with Shorewood.”
“These aren’t exactly what I called about. I found these on the property after I got off the phone with you. I have no idea if they were connected, but like I said didn’t want them to go unnoticed just in case.”
“So what else is there?”
“Over here in one of the rooms. Let me show you,” again Ben waved for him to follow.
Down the hallway they went into one of the far rooms.
Ben stopped in front of the room and pointed inside. “Tell me what you make of this.”
Barkley was getting annoyed over what was turning out to not be worth his time so far. That feeling completely left him as he entered the room to see huge cocoon hanging from the ceiling.
He stumbled back not expecting something like that to be the shape of a human. He swore a few times.
“I know what that looks like and we need to get someone with different expertise out here to analyze this as soon as possible. If there is any link between these two things we might have found a common denominator that could solve what occurred in Shorewood. As much as I don’t want to believe there is something unnatural going on here. I really don’t know how else to explain what I’ve already seen and this.”
Sheriff Barkley turned around and pulled his radio out. “I’ll meet you back outside for a statement. I’m going to call for backup.”
Ben nodded and left the cabin.
While Barkley was having a conversation over the radio an unnoticed sound came from the cocoon from a break splitting it down the middle all the way to the floor.
A pale blue glow pulsed through the gap lighting up the entire room.
THE END
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