...continued from page 2.

It had not expected this, not in such a small place. That insolent man with his blasted shotgun had decimated Its troops by nearly a third, and the second group had had to be redirected as reinforcements through the front door. What a waste...
It had allowed this person to be consumed down to the polished bones before sending them all out again to find more victims. This time there would be no foolish mistakes, and the 2 newly formed groups were now marching towards both sides of one house as opposed to dividing up to hasten the advance by attacking multiple buildings at the same time. It forced itself to relax (if that was the right word) - they had lots of time, and it was not even midnight yet.
The next house was one of the smallest on the main street, and the two groups were easily able to fully surround it. The doors were pushed in, and slowly dark shapes streamed inside.
Suddenly a high-pitched wailing started in bursts from somewhere upstairs, and a few seconds later the creaking of an old bed could be heard, sounding as if someone was forcing themselves to get up. After a few faint clicks that probably came from a light switch and another short moment of silence and probably of dawning realization of the blackout, more creaking and the sound of urgent foot steps moved around on the upper floor. A door that was visible from the downstairs area opened, and a man ran out and around the corner towards another door which he urgently opened to make his way into the adjoining room where the baby kept crying in anxious tones.
The light of a flashlight followed him a few seconds later, also leaving the bed room and heading towards the next door. The beam briefly fell through the upstairs railings, temporarily lighting up the living room downstairs, and proceeded to rush around the corner where it stopped all of a sudden. Slowly, the beam was directed back downstairs. Something was moving down there.
The man had just picked up the baby from the crib and was trying unsuccessfully to calm it down when the woman outside let out a frightened scream that nearly made him drop the child. He ran out to join her and followed her pointing finger downstairs where a crowd had gathered of what looked like people at first glance. But what the shaking beam of light showed them had nothing to do with people any longer.
"David, what is that?", she whispered hoarsely. David kept staring at the small illuminated area in disbelief and finally answered: "I don't know, Mary, but we better get out of here. We got to at least save little Jimmy!"
She turned around to look at him with a terrible dread in her eyes, and so they stood paralyzed, while downstairs the shadows kept moving towards them.
David was the first who broke the spell and started dragging his wife backwards into their own bed room, still carrying the baby. They slammed the door shut just as the first gray shape had reached the bottom of the stairs.

Mitch had been in many brawls in his youth, and it had not taken him long to find out that he had a talent for fighting, and his father, a hardened man himself, had encouraged Mitch to take every kind of martial arts lesson that the town had to offer, and even built him a small gym in the basement.
One of the few things that Dana had insisted before marrying Mitch was that he would no longer start fights, but Mitch's body had not forgotten its training in the 8 months they had been married, and the hundreds of moves he had kept practicing for years and years came back naturally to him. He did not even have to think to select the ones that were best suitable for a physically superior opponent.
The poker moved in a blur. Its tip described a fast arc that aimed directly at the top of the head of its target, but then changed direction in a near impossible movement and bypassed the protectively raised arm and hit the man heavily in his side. A kick straight in the face followed, and suddenly Mitch found himself on the floor, his outstretched leg still in the hand of a second man who had caught it in mid-air and pulled. The first man at least gave Mitch the satisfaction of stumbling, his face a grimace of pain, but he did not fall. Who were these guys?!?
Mitch tried a quick rotation of his body with included kicks in an attempt to free himself, and he managed to pull his leg out of the other man's hand and get back on his feet. He took a quick look around, trying to judge his opponents and find possible weaknesses. He hesitated - they were actually grinning at him, even the man he had just struck with a 5 pound iron bar. It took him a moment to realize what was so strange about these grins - their teeth. Their canines were too long.
"You have got to be kidding me...", he mumbled. A little louder and breathing heavily, he asked: "Are you guys for real?"
"Very real indeed, my dear boy. And when you have all finished your futile attempts to impress us with your physical prowess, and please do not believe that we are anything but extremely pleased with what we have seen so far, we can all sit down and discuss the situation like civilized people, although we find your little antics quite amusing, I must tell you."
Mitch lowered his head a little, and most of the intruders relaxed, when all of a sudden he propelled his body at one of the shapes at lightning speed, this time holding the poker in a stabbing fashion. And he hit, right into the heart. It was no wooden stake, but maybe it would still work, and maybe he would be able to at least get rid of one of these bastards before they killed him. He did not watch the man slowly go down but instead found an opening between the strangers and managed to slip right past them and towards the back door. He nearly made it...

Mary was hysterical with fear and could not stop shaking, and the baby was still crying as well. Even David was nervously pacing the room, trying to make sense of what he had seen and straining his brain to come up with an escape plan.
They had pushed their heavy wardrobe in front of the door in the hope of being able to buy themselves a little time. But David somehow had a feeling it would not last very long...
Suddenly he stopped in mid-step. Then he pushed Jimmy into Mary's unresisting hands, turned towards the bed and started ripping off the blankets and sheets down to the mattress.
Mary watched in shocked silence for a while until she finally asked: "What are you doing?"
"If we ... throw the mattress ... out the window, we may be ... able to jump ... and save ourselves!", he replied in quick bursts while he spent all his strength lifting the heavy King sized mattress off the bed and pushing it towards the wall. He dropped it on the floor, hurriedly opened the window and looked outside. Darkness. He thought he could barely see the shapes of neighboring houses, but he could not see the ground below. Then he suddenly remembered the flashlight. He turned back towards Mary and reached out with one hand. Mary briefly shuddered and pulled back, but relaxed a little almost instantly and looked questioningly at David.
"The light!", he said with urgency in his voice. "I need to check if everything is clear outside!"
She cocked her head to one side as if he had spoken a foreign language. Then understanding dawned in her frightened eyes, and she dropped the flashlight into his hand. He half turned around again, then changed his mind and slowly approached again to hug her softly.
"We'll get through this, all of us", he whispered into her ear. He could feel her body shivering in his embrace, then she just nodded in an abrupt movement. He squeezed her one last time and turned back towards the window. Using the flashlight he was able to see the empty ground. No walking dead people around here - good!
He pushed one side of the mattress all the way to the wall and then pulled up the other end in an attempt to roll it up. The window was a good deal too small, but still he somehow managed to squeeze one rolled up end of the mattress into the opening and started pushing it through.
Bam!
A hard thump hit the door. Mary let out a brief shriek which caused Jimmy (who had just calmed down a minute ago) to start crying again.
David did not waste any time and put all his strength into one final push. He nearly fell out the window himself and gripped the side of the window just in time. A muffled thump from below seemed to indicate that the mattress had hit the ground.
Bam!
This time, it sounded as if a piece of wood had cracked.
David directed the light out the window, and everything looked good - the mattress had unrolled and was just a few feet away from the wall of the house. It was all they could do right now.
He stretched out his arms towards Mary and Jimmy and said: "You go first, I'll follow with Jimmy. Take the light with you."
Mary swallowed. Another thump hit the door behind them, breaking through the door this time and hitting the wardrobe. She hesitantly gave the baby to David, took the light and walked to the window to look down. In the narrow beam of the flashlight, not really able to see much of anything else, she thought it didn't look bad at all.
She turned around to face David once more who whispered: "I love you! Good luck!" as another thump broke the back of the wardrobe, and they could hear arms dig their way through the clothes that were hung on their wooden hangers inside.
Mary stepped onto the window sill with the flashlight directed down, held on for a moment - and jumped.
David was already at the window as she hit the mattress. The blow knocked the air out of her lungs, and for a split second the thought shot through her head about what an idiotic thing it was to jump out of a window. But she realized in surprise that she had made it in one piece and unharmed. She quickly stepped away from the house and shone the light back upstairs where David had already climbed into the window. He was no longer alone - shapes were moving behind him, and arms were reaching for him.
"David - behind you - jump!", she yelled. It was too hard to think of a good warning.
But David had sensed the danger behind him and was ready to jump.
"Light up the mattress now!", he yelled.
She wasted a precious second standing there in incomprehension, but then almost instantly followed his direction and stepped further away.
David felt a floor board creak only feet behind him and jumped. He felt something tug at his night shirt, but it slid out of the grip. It was not much, but it was enough to temporarily make him lose his balance, and he desperately tried to compensate while at the same time holding the baby in a way that would hopefully keep it safe, no matter what.
He landed heavily on the mattress, but slipped as he did so. Something snapped, and he fell over sideways, only thinking about protecting little Jimmy who was crying hysterically now.
David felt strangely elated even as he realized what had just snapped. He felt no pain, just a strange sensation of something out of shape in his right leg.
"Don't look at me, just take him", he said. His voice sounded distant to him as if it was not his own but spoken from somewhere outside of his body.
"What's the matter, David?", came her answer as she approached.
Still no pain, but it would come soon enough, he thought. "Just do as I say, woman!", he hissed at her. Then he added quietly: "Please. Take him."
Mary slowly stepped forward, took Jimmy and pressed him hard against her chest and hastily retreated a few steps.
David wondered again why the hell he wasn't feeling any pain yet. He lifted his head to tell her to start running.
The shapes seemed to grow out of the ground in the darkness. Suddenly, they were right behind Mary.
Hysterically, David screamed: "Run! Ruuuuuunnnn!!!"
Mary turned to run - and froze in mid-step as she saw what she was running towards. She change direction to move around the shadows, but more appeared ahead of her, and she had to keep dodging.
"Run, dammit, run!", he kept yelling. "Get the hell outtaaaaaaargh!"
There it was, the pain had finally caught up with him. But there was something else - something was touching his broken leg!
He tried to drag himself forward and kept looking at his wife and screamed once more: "Keep going, don't look back!"
Then it happened - something tripped Mary, and she fell hard and was immediately overrun by the shapes.
"No, noooooo", came the wails from David, hot tears running down his cheek as he himself was being pulled back, too.
Jimmy's crying in the distance was the last sound he heard.

This was it. All these years of training, and still he had not been able to protect his wife and himself. He felt useless and without power. And they had only just moved into the new house. They had made plans, and they had been good and wonderful plans...
Mitch's eyes met those of Dana. It was not difficult to see how scared she was. Hell, he was close to a panic attack himself.
The strangers had sat them both onto the couch and were holding them down in a way that made it absolutely clear that there would be no escape. Then someone had dragged in the body of the guy with the fire poker in his chest - and ripped it right out of his heart. He let out a loud gasp and broke down on his knees, breathing hard. After a few seconds, his head raised, his eyes looking for Mitch, and his mouth started to smile again. He picked up the poker and licked off his own blood. Mitch could not help himself but stare at the open wound, and he watched in horror as it slowly started to close.
The thin man, obviously the leader, briefly bent down to check on his associate and then picked up a chair and placed it on the floor facing the couch. He sat down in a stiff way as if he had swallowed a broom stick. Then he said:
"That was uncalled for, but understandable given the circumstances. Never mind. I am certain, Giles will not harbor ill feelings over this - he would have done the same thing in your situation. In fact he has done the same thing, haven't you, Giles?"
Giles in the meantime had gotten off the floor again and was now playing with the blood stained hole in his shirt. The wound had completely closed and healed again as if it had never existed. He grinned as he said in a highly exaggerated tone:
"Oh, I would NEVER do such a ghastly thing! Why, the implication, Gerard!"
"Indeed", Gerard continued. "Oh, but where are my manners? My name is Gerard, and I am something of a leader of this small part of the Hassam clan. The one with the new air circulation hole in his garment is Giles, these two are Philipp and Lewis, and Andrew and Monica are the two standing behind you. We are here because you happen to possess two different items that are of extreme interest to us."
He stiffly leaned forward in a way that looked strange and unsettling.
"I will be open and honest with you. We will take these two items, no matter what. But it is up to you to decide if you would like to obtain certain advantages in return, depending on your level of cooperation."
The one called Monica was playfully brushing through Dana's hair. Dana shuddered at the cold touch, but kept quiet. Mitch stared angrily at Monica, but Andrew grabbed the top of his head and turn it to face Gerard again with the words: "Eyes front!"
"Andrew, that will do!", ordered Gerard. "I do apologize, they do not often get the opportunity to play with their food... So, there are two options, and I advise you to choose carefully. Option one, you keep struggling and resisting and trying to dispose of us to the degree that we will no longer find you amusing, and it may lead to the two of you simply disappearing, never to be seen again. We may decide to simply keep you as food storage and let you live, or we may decide to end you, that depends on your future behavior. Option two, you agree to some level of cooperation, and you will find that our feeding off you may not only be a lot more pleasurable than you could possibly imagine, but we may also feel obliged to offer you a certain amount of power or even capabilities that others may call superhuman, for example a greatly expanded life span. In any case, we will move into the basement of your house and possibly make some minor adjustments to the layout, but we will mostly leave you in peace as long as you stay out of our way. Even the likes of us prefer the solid shelter of a proper edifice to shield us against the elements."
"And against that stupid pack of daw...", Giles started, but one quick and angry stare from Gerard's eyes silenced him. Gerard slowly raised one warning finger before he turned back towards Mitch.
It looked as if he was going to fall backwards out of his chair as he leaned back again. He raised his hands, his index finger and thumbs touching and the other fingers coiled in a fist. His index fingers rested on his chin as he continued.
"I understand this is quite an unusual proposal, and no doubt you will want to discuss this among yourselves, so we will leave you alone for tonight."
He started to get out of the chair, but briefly hesitated before he fully stretched himself.
"Before we depart, however, I am certain you will agree that we will require some security to avoid any unforeseen difficulties that might await us for our next visit." He briefly nodded at Andrew and Monica. Each of them slowly let go of the couple, but then grabbed hold of one hair each on Mitch's and Dana's head and ripped it out. Monica rolled hers around her finger and pretended to smell it while making suggestive "Mmm!" noises.
Gerard held out his hands to receive the hairs and carefully deposited them in his inside jacket pocket. Then he continued, smiling that strange smile again: "There, that should prove sufficient. We would not want anything to happen to either of you handsome specimens of human kind, but ... Oh well, I think you know what I am implying. Please, enjoy the rest of your evening like you have obviously planned to do. We shall trouble you no further tonight. But we will be back tomorrow night to receive your answer."
He bowed to them in a way that would have seemed very elegant if he had actually been curving his back - like this it looked like a twig snapping.
Then, one by one, they left into the night. Giles wiped off the poker on his shirt and very carefully put it back into its bucket by the fireplace.
They even closed the door behind them on their way out.

...continued on page 4.