“I don’t always take my family with me. They probably breath easier when I’m gone.”
Redd Church
I got a phone call the other day from a local farmer. He had a monster problem and I took on this work for the Zoo. When I wasn’t responsible for the monster, I was still an expert monster hunter.
It was winter in the NorthEast Territory. I pulled up the the farmhouse. To the right of the farmhouse was a pasture, with expansive fencing, and few dozen cows standing in a far corner. In the center of the closest field lay three dead cows. From my position I could see they were torn apart, blood spread out around them. I walked out toward the field when I heard a crash within the house behind me.
I turned. Saw the front door of the house was open. It was cold, very cold. That door should be closed. I walked to the front door. I was armed, this was not a potentially harmless monster. I had a strong suspicion and that suspicion was confirmed when I rounded a corner in the house.
Standing in front of me was an angry, pale skinned, older man. He was oblivious to my presence.
The vampire, I was supposed to catch, had drawn blood from the farmer and his wife. They were not dead, nor alive but trapped in an angry purgatory. They were cursed to walk the earth as angry, vampiric monsters. Feeding on anything they could get a hold of and destroying everything else. They were now Resurrected.
Resurrected held no weapons. They didn’t need one. They had pure rage. They clunked along on muscles that decayed and stretched. Their circular system struggled to work at all, let alone feed their muscles. Lucky for the human “them” they were brain dead and felt nothing.
I carry a radio on me and the timing could of been better.
“Church, what’s your status? Are you good?”
I heard a loud grunt. He began to move.
I responded.
“I have one, potentially more Resurrected in the house. I wish you hadn’t asked.”
“Copy, sending assistance but it will be at least 30 mins.”
“Roger,” I replied.
I heard the man growl a second time, louder. Something crashed in a different room and it confirmed my fear that the wife had gotten bitten too. I might be overwhelmed soon.
Sherrie was right. I should of at least brought her but… I had to keep my head… but that thought may have come with consequences, I feared. Not sure the consequences.
The crazed man looked in my direction. His eyes buried under a slimy, pale shade. A cancerous tumor that seemed to be activated due to the vampire venom.
The man stumbled over some furniture. I watched as he struggled to navigate the room he died in. My radio cracked again. The old man stood straight up. Marched forward and crashed against the wall I stood behind. He hit the wall with such force it broke the 2x4s within it. Shattered the drywall, which sprayed over me and knocked me to the floor.
I heard the second Resurrected creature stumbling through the other room. Am I lucky their human versions were not super tidy? Yes, I was.
I brushed off the chunks of drywall and stood. My pistol at my side I raised the barrel and fired into the Resurrected farmers bloodied head. The life drained from the human body.
I held the pistol forward and headed toward the noise. It fumbled around inside an internal room. I assumed was the second Resurrected.
I suddenly had a frightful thought, “children, lot of children!”
I cursed, any of these stray thoughts could come true. I turned a corner and walked through a hallway. The house was quiet for a moment till I heard an eruption of multiple pops. The sound of little feet rushing from one side of a room to the other. I heard the Resurrected growl and march across the floor. Several crashes and a harmonious cry of angst.
Just because they are little…,” I began to think. “They could have small, sharp knives or teeth.
From outside the door, I could tell most of the individuals, in the room were in the far left corner. I could open the door and take out the Resurrected but what else had I created. Would those little feet cause me more trouble?
“They won’t just let me shoot the Resurrected,” I was sure of that but again I could not allow the creature to live and kill others.
I had decided I would open the door and take it out when I heard another commotion. I heard another cry. This was all at once but it wasn’t a cry of pain but a scream of anger. The scream echoed through the house. It was frightening. Even without legible words I knew that the fate of anything on the receiving end of that cry.
“What did I create?”
I opened the room door. Careful not to disturb whatever chaos waited for me. I was surprised to see snow in a room with a single closed window on the other side of the room. The snow was all over the floor, the walls and ceiling. It didn’t cover everything, it was in blotches. To my right I saw the body of an unusual creature, torn in half.
It’s top half a round white ball attached to a smaller ball. The smaller ball was torn in a ragged line through its center. Thin arms siting silently dangling from the smaller ball.
A slightly larger ball with sculpted legs lay on its side. Six additional snowman creatures stood around a flailing Resurrected woman.
The Resurrected woman flailed her arms at her attackers. The little creatures all stood at knee length. They surrounded the woman and each stared at up at her with a single large eye.
I moved into the room. My pistol was set. I slowed my breathing and was ready to shoot a single bullet into Resurrected woman when the little cyclops snow creatures attacked.
The creatures had wooden, stick-like hands sharpened to a point. One would leap up and strike at the woman’s chest. Then another. They took turns piercing into the woman, only able to reach her chest.
The Resurrected woman bled. A thick, dark red but the bleeding would stop within minutes. They tried again but this time the Resurrected woman grabbed on of the little cyclops. She screamed, rage filled, and began to slam the creature into the corner of the room.
I couldn’t watch anymore so I spoke up.
“You have to hit the head,” I said.
Five eyes turned to me. They growled at me, small mouths full of teeth.
“Save your brother, I can shoot it with my gun? Hell if I know you can understand English. You got no ears. Either way, we have to kill it,” I said.
The little creatures were now conflicted, save and avenge their brothers or attack the new guy.
“Not your enemy, my friends.” I said attempting to make my position clear to the alien creatures. I held my hands up, pistol pointing at the ceiling.
The Resurrected woman tore the creature, in her hands, apart. It screamed. The scream ripped the attention to me away completely.
Those creatures small toothed jaws grew four-fold in a less then a minute. Their teeth extended and mouths agape. They lunged at the Resurrected woman and took huge meaty pieces from her vampiric body.
I will be completely transparent, I locked the bedroom door and I closed it.
One, I didn’t want to see that. I didn’t want to see what I did see.
Two, just no… five large jawed, single eyed snowmen. I had no idea what I was going to do. I had no backup, again I was reminded I left my wife at home and I had not even met the Original vampire yet.
I had backup coming, it had been twenty minutes and the Zoo was pretty good at keeping time.
I waited for twenty additional minutes when an older truck pulled up to the farm house. Sean Baker stepped from the truck runner. He held a shotgun in one hand and a bat in the other. He wore an oversized winter coat with the hood over his head.
“Sean!” I said a little too loudly.
“Redd!” He said matching my volume. “What’s up my old friend. Did you start a job without Sherrie again?”
“Ha, your funny… but yes. If I could pick anyone but Sherrie it would be you or your brother.”
“Yo, my brother is a bad ass.”
I shook Sean’s hand. He handed me the bat and we walked back into the house. I told him about the monsters and the Resurrected. We headed to the bedroom. I expected some chatter from the creatures but the room was quiet.
I opened the door and the room was empty except for the remains of the farmer’s wife and a busted window.
“Did you take care of all the Resurrected.”
“As far as I can tell,” I said. “We are going to have to track the little snowballs.”
I noticed small bare footprints leading out toward the woods near the house.
This complicated things.
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