re-applied the gas and the van lurched nicely when I drove over the animal.
Unfortunately when I slammed on the brakes the creature behind us attempted to smash through one of the rear windows and get inside the van. Even though its body was way too large to fit through that window it was able to smash its way through the glass while its claws were ripping through the metal. From less than five feet away JJ shot his rifle directly into the creatures face, destroying one of its eyes, and tearing off a mass of bone in the back of its head.
Instead of falling off the van, dead, the creature redoubled its efforts to tear through the skin of our vehicle and get inside. JJ’s second shot hit the creature directly below its remaining eye, only this time he hit the animal’s brain. It briefly hung onto the rear of the van until I left the sidewalk, bumped over the curb, and was back onto the road. When I glanced into my rear view mirror I saw its body sliding along the pavement behind us, but its legs were still moving and attempting to kill something.
FiFi was growling steadily and with good reason. There were little monsters everywhere, but most of them appeared to be busy feeding and the rest weren’t attacking the van probably because of its size. Frankly, it didn’t matter because there were more than enough of the larger monsters to keep us terrified!
The street ahead of me was clear for several blocks so I stomped on the gas. Behind us a deep bass roar sounded and, as I glanced into the rear view mirror, I saw that the other monsters, large or small, were running in the same general direction we were going. Then I saw why, as one of the huge monsters came into view, less than two blocks behind us!
Ahead of me the intersection was jammed with cars, most of which were still idling. All of the cars had windows that were smashed in and it was obvious what had happened to the car’s occupants since there was blood splattered everywhere. Once again, I jumped the curb, only this time I clipped a light post doing so, ripping off my right side mirror.
I had slowed down tremendously so I could jump the curb without damaging the vans suspension and that saved our lives. Earlier I had seen just how fast those huge creatures actually were when we were twenty stories up, they are even faster than I had thought when seen from the ground. We were not more than five hundred feet from the intersection when the loud, deep bass sound from hell erupted from just around the corner of the building we were in front of, and then the huge creature rumpled into view, stopped and began to turn.
We weren’t moving that fast, not even twenty miles per hour, and even though I slammed the brakes on as soon as the creature came into view, by the time we stopped we were less than twenty feet from the thing. As I slipped the transmission into reverse I could see that we were in serious trouble when one lone head popped out of the creature’s body followed by several long, slender, tentacles with the pincer like claws on their ends.
The tentacles whipped in our direction as I, once again, jammed the gas pedal to the floor. It was too late because two of the tentacles pincers smashed through the top of the already weakened windshield, spraying shards of safety glass everywhere, and closed, piercing the metal roof of the van. Immediately our rearward motion ceased and the rapidly spinning tires began to shriek in protest as they sought to move our vehicle away from the monster but were unable to as the tentacles began to slowly draw the van towards the monster.
From behind me I heard Jose yell something and then, with the end of his shotgun less than a foot from the hooked claw, he fired. Briefly it appeared that his shot had been totally ineffective, except for generating a mass of small holes in the sheet metal roof of the van all around the claw. Then the van slewed sideways, impacting the short wall surrounding one of New York’s many subway entrances, as the claw tore through the roof, freeing the right side of the vehicle.
The sudden movement had hurled Jose into one of the front seats but, with a scream of rage, he jumped back up, aimed the barrel of his shotgun at the claw over my head, and fired! Deafened by the noise I felt the van begin to lurch backwards as the claw began to rip through the weakened sheet metal while I saw another claw flashing forward directly at me.
Dimly I heard Jose’s shotgun roar once again and Jose was almost thrown through the front window as the claw tore through the sheet metal freeing our vehicle and allowing the tires to finally grasp the concrete sidewalk they had been slipping on. Our van shot backwards as JJ managed to grab one of Jose’s feet before he would have disappeared through the front windshield onto the sidewalk.
I felt and heard the screech of tortured metal as the van scraped alongside the brick wall as it picked up speed. The claws were all coming towards us with their pincers open so I jerked the wheel slightly to the right, moving us away from the wall we were scraping which allowed us to gain speed faster. The claw headed towards me suddenly snapped shut missing me by inches as I felt the rear tires of the van bump over the curb, back onto the road.
As I backed down the street, towards the other huge monster sitting only a block and a half away behind us, JJ pulled a stunned Jose back into the van. Somehow, despite almost being hurled from our van, Jose had managed to keep his shotgun. Calmly he sat down and began re-loading.
I saw what I was looking for, an alleyway off to our left, which would take us away from the two huge monsters that were in front of and behind us. As I slammed on the brakes I saw the monster in front of us suddenly ram the wall of the building it was next to. By the time we were rolling forward and beginning to turn into the alleyway, snapping off a car’s open driver’s side door in the process, that monster had rammed the building for the second time.
We were barreling through the alleyway, just barely missing several garbage dumpsters, when an unbelievably deep, powerful noise, came chasing after us, shattering the glass windows facing the alleyway while raining glass everywhere! I was forced to hit the brakes because I had thrown my arms over my face in an attempt to protect my eyes from the rain of sharp glass. The sound was so powerful that the still intact safety glass windows in our vehicle all crazed, while the little girl, Jose and FiFi, her dog, appeared to be dazed by the noise.
Even partially deafened by Jose’s shotgun, with top quality hearing protection in my ears, I could feel the power of the sound being generated by that monster. It was no wonder at all when the building it was adjacent to collapsed, virtually straight down, as if an explosives expert had spent months setting up demolition charges to implode that structure. Added to the still raining glass was a sudden rush of wind and choking dust from the collapsed building. Sitting still in the alley I knew we were a target, but the thick, heavy filth in the air was impossible to see through, while the still falling tiny bits of glass would quickly make it so you would never see again.
It felt like we sat there for hours, but it wasn’t really more than five minutes before the dust had settled enough so I could see, at least as well as you could see in a heavy fog. My hearing had cleared somewhat and from the street behind us I could hear occasional screams of mortal anguish as one of the creatures discovered another human snack. As much as I wanted to, I knew that there was absolutely nothing we could do since our weapons were less than ineffective against those things. Even Jose’s shotgun, at point blank range, had only torn open the vans metal skin. It hadn’t even scratched the creature’s claw.
When I had seen the on-rushing wall of dirt approaching I had shut the engine off because I was worried about what that dust would do to the engine, especially the air filter. If that had become clogged we would have been walking, and that was a death sentence. Since the dust had settled considerably I restarted the van and put the transmission into drive.
We had moved not more than thirty feet when, directly ahead of us, the lid on one of the garbage containers banged open, and a pair of heads popped up, human heads! I hit the brakes and screamed “Get the hell in here” as I slammed opened the vans entrance door, while stopping the van directly in front of the garbage container.
Behind me, and to the right, I heard the butt
of Jose’s shotgun slam into the badly cracked window, causing it to shatter outward, after sitting down he reversed his shotgun and began searching for targets. The other guys were all doing the same thing because the weakened windows were useless for protection while preventing anyone from effectively seeing anything outside of the van. At least now they could see, and shoot.
Two filthy, disheveled, people slid out of the garbage container. The middle aged man had the remnants of a very expensive business suit on while the younger woman looked like what she had probably been, a street hooker. Maybe yesterday it would have mattered, but it certainly didn’t matter today. They were both human, and alive, that was enough!
The man charged through the door, saw the word SWAT on our clothes, and began almost insanely screaming at me! I could care less about what he was saying. He had stopped in the doorway, preventing the woman from getting aboard so we could get rolling again. Over his stupid screeching I yelled “Get your ass moving, or else, asshole!” I must admit, I think I had always wanted to say that to some of the idiots that were just that; assholes!
He moved forward into the bus slightly, just enough for the