route to the park. Hartwell’s group could see the trees swaying in the distance and the sound of primal screams of the apes rapidly approaching them.
Cal instructed his front row, “It doesn’t matter what is approaching us! Just focus on the execution of your cuts and we will emerge victorious!”
The group cheered and raised their swords as the apes continued to swing closer to the field, the action slowing in motion to Hartwell’s gang as the apes hit the ground on the other end of the field and gave no signs of slowing down before sizing up what they were up against.
“That’s an interesting tactic,” a glib Thaddeus stated, as he had seen his share of battles and knew that blind aggression was rarely successful.
“They must be either overconfident or underprepared,” Gary replied as he stood shoulder to shoulder next to Thad.
“Let’s hope for the latter, my friend,” Thad countered.
Billingsley smiled as he and his apes came closer to their night one destiny and were just about to make contact with the front row of protectors and hunters from the other side. Hartwell was in the middle of the back line and he said to Maggie as he held her hand, “We might want to take a giant step back here, love.”
Thaddeus, Garrison and their line of sword-swinging hunters and protectors acted as the blade of the lawnmower clipping off the unsuspecting line of apes and ending the fight before they reached the second line of vampires. The victorious front line roared and raised their swords while looking back at the vampires, who could have remained home and been eating blood ice cream for their lack of participation. Only two of the people on the back line had been impacted by the shredded body parts of the apes, as Samuel and Ariel were part of some ritualistic newbie hazing they knew nothing about.
“That’s not funny!” Ariel whined as she and Samuel attempting to clear some of the apes’ blood and guts off of them.
The vampires were ruthless and unyielding by nature, but they also liked to have a good laugh at the expense of others every now and then. They also were the most fastidious creatures on the planet, which meant that the unkempt nature of their family members and the field was starting to make them feel uneasy.
“Cleanup, aisle one!” Belinda yelled as the vamps quickly transitioned from punked mode into super cleaning mode, making Samuel and Ariel sparkling clean while gathering all of the Billingsley gang’s body parts and placing them together in a secluded section of woods in the park.
Samuel smiled as he looked at the perfectly-clean Ariel from head to toe, “There, that’s better!”
They started walking together behind the rest of the family out of the park, “We have to remember to back up a few steps tomorrow night.”
He held her hand and replied, “I’m with you.”
EIGHTEEN
It was early morning and the sun had already made its presence known on the small coastal town of Beach Haven, New York. The sun took a little longer to penetrate the tall trees in the depths of the park then it would have in their adversaries‘ sun room, which meant that the apes would have less time to prepare for their night two fight - not that it mattered to Gabriel Billingsley, who had his plan set for the entire week even before the battle started. He and his witch, Brenda Vinson had schemed ahead and thought they had enough information on the enemy to anticipate their actions.
“What if they don’t do as you say?” he questioned her a few days earlier.
“Then you will be in for a very painful week,” she replied and then kept talking as to avoid his wrath. “The pattern suggests aggression at all costs. There is absolutely no historic data that would suggest they have any desire to back up, which means you will get the outcome that you desire.”
“Good, very good,” he stated as he stroked the stubbly beard on his face. He then let go of the three day-old growth and said, “Be ready for additional instructions in case things don’t go as we planned.”
“I’ll be ready,” Brenda proudly replied.
One by one the apes were reborn from their slumber, completing the painful metamorphosis from inanimate body matter into full-functioning beings. After screaming from pain, all of the apes transitioned back into their human forms and frustratingly bickered about what had happened.
“Did we lose?” Billingsley asked as if he was taken by surprise by the outcome.
“It would be the most painful victory I have ever seen,” Lowery grunted.
The person with the most combat experience spoke up, “Well, I’ve never woken up the next day in a thicket of bushes and won anything. We either lost, or won and had the best night of sleep ever," Agent Carter stated.
“Or lost and had the best night of sleep of all time,” Randy Prince said.
“Yeah, that was a loss,” Eloise Phillips stated.
“I agree with El,” Mary Brewster concurred as the two wives of Gary and Thad were becoming fast friends, being that they had come from similar backgrounds as wives of men in the middle of a vampire fight.
They started walking back toward their house and Greg Justice turned to his wife, “We spent so much money and so many years looking for the right bed and it was in front of us the whole time!”
“You idiot, are you suggesting that were sleep in bushes?” Julie Justice replied in disbelief.
Greg loved to go at it with his wife, “When was the last time you remember sleeping that well?”
She ended the conversation with the definitive answer, “When we were dead.”
Night two of the battle appeared to be a carbon copy of the night one festivities, at least on the surface. Hartwell’s group lined up on the south side of the field at Beach Haven Park and waited for the apes to swing on by.
“What are we looking at tonight, Samuel?” Hartwell asked his grandson.
“I always say, keep doing what you’re doing until somebody stops you.”
Agent Blake laughed, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”
“Let’s mow these apes down and then get another night of blissful shut-eye,” Thaddeus said trying to avoid the fact that he was about to kill his wife and her friends again.
“Love that sleep!” Gary added, as he also had some heavy thoughts going into the fight.
“Let’s make this quick. We don’t need to be around these people any longer than we have to,” Sharon said, but she was secretly wanting to talk to her mother.
Andrew limbered up by moving his arms and his swords through the hitting zones, “This talk is going to make me crazy!” Drew had never known his dad and wasn’t sure if he even wanted to broach the subject. He would always get tense and short of patience when difficult emotional equations were in front of him.
Brandon Justice had only one thing on his mind as a motivational tactic, “Don’t call me BJ” he grunted under his breath.
The apes came swinging through the trees with a little more confidence than they had heading into the unknown of a night one fight.
“I think we can win tonight!” Agent Terrence Carter grunted as the rest of his ape family snorted in agreement as they zoomed in on the huge, open field in front of them. They hit the ground closer to their foes on this night and galloped the remaining 100 yards hunched over and dragging their knuckles on the turf as the front line of sword-swinging warriors readied for the siege.
Six of the eight apes met their maker courtesy of the front line lawnmower, and then Hartwell and Daniel put a quick end to Lowery’s night by using their long, sharp nails to separate his huge ape head from his massive neck and shoulders. Billingsley wasn’t as fortunate, though, as he went right at Maggie only to be met by sharp objects penetrating his entire body from the remaining vampires; Maggie then went all old-school vampire on him by taking out some of her anxiety through sinking her teeth into his neck and draining all of the blood out of his body within seconds. She looked into his now-vacant eyes and then pushed his limp body to the ground.
Hartwell smirked as he looked proudly
at his wife, “Now it’s a battle.”
A major part of Billingsley’s master plan unfolded on day three, as his minions felt empowered to go out in the community once they woke up refreshed and renewed in the field the next morning. There were still no casualties on the Hartwell side of the ledger but they were definitely less jubilant and relaxed than the previous morning.
“Did they get past the our front line last night?” Cal asked Hartwell as they ate breakfast.
“Yeah, a few of them trickled through, but Maggie let her fangs do the talking as she drained Billingsley.”
“To Maggie!” Cal exclaimed as everyone at the table raised their glasses and toasted, “To Maggie!”
While talk around the table picked up, Cal then addressed his next question to Thaddeus, Garrison, Hartwell and Agent Blake.
“If they used the same strategy and so did we, then why did we not achieve the same result?”
Maxwell was listening and started to crunch the data as the others kept talking.
Agent Blake replied, “Could be a statistical anomaly.”
“I thought I connected with every slice,” Thaddeus stated.
“Me too,” Gary agreed.
“Was anything else different than the first night?” Hartwell asked.
“Besides the fact that they didn’t die as fast?” Daniel interjected.
“I sort of like a little competition in my battles,” Andrew said.
“Yeah, count me in on that,” the mountain of a man Aaron added.
“The boys are at