Episode 4.4: The Poltergeist

“Vonix? No.  They were always a bit outside our price range…but why do you ask?”

            

“Oh, uh no reason.  They’re just…pretty cool I guess.” Lyle looked at me with an odd expression but made no reply.  My mind briefly wandered back to Jeff, the weirdo who wanted to force me into his schemes to repopulate the world.  I smiled softly as I remembered the sound my hammer made as it shattered his arm. 

             

Lyle’s car was parked at the very back of an underground parking lot outside of the grocery store.  The lot itself looked like most other places—headless bodies thrown around everywhere, pools of blood, bags of food that had been discarded in the chaos.  All the death and destruction that was splattered on every wall and littered in every street had kind of lost its affect on me, but Lyle the baker? Lyle the family man?  He looked like he was going to barf—which got me thinking of my dad.

             

For as long as I could remember, my father was a ghost.  Not a quiet, brooding ghost that silently wanders through old hallways or shows up randomly in a Polaroid.  Dad was the kind of ghost that throws shit around and draws bloody pentagrams on your mirror while you’re sleeping.  A poltergeist.  That’s what my father was. 

             

He was tall and skinny like our new friend Lyle, but dad’s eyes didn’t look back at you.  They were like one of those two-way mirrors—you looked into them and you knew there was someone looking back at you, but you had no idea who it was.

             

It wasn’t just the abuse and pain that got to mom and me.  Bruises healed, blood could get cleaned up.  It was the Fear.  The Fear was a constant houseguest.  Each moment of each day was tainted with the knowledge that at any moment, the poltergeist could creep up behind us and sink its teeth in.

              

My mom always talked about leaving.  She came up with an escape plan and everything. 

             

“We could pack up and go stay with my sister up in Midvale,” she’d say, “She hates the bastard as much as we do.  I’d find work and you could go to school up there.  It’d work, by damn.” She said this at least once a week for five years.  Five years of dangling a vulgar hope in front of my nose and then backing off.  But one night, by damn, she made it.  She got out of that haunted house, even though it meant forgetting something that I thought was very important to her: Me.  Little Marla.  I woke up on the morning of her departure with the Fear already perched at the foot of my bed as it always was.  I went downstairs for breakfast like I always did.  But instead of walking into the kitchen to see my mom pouring me some Rice Chex (like she always did), all I saw was the poltergeist hovering over the kitchen sink, grasping a butcher knife.

            

“Your mom’s gone.” He spoke without any tinge of emotion.

              

“Where is she?” I asked.

            
“She’s just gone.” 

Gone.  

 I was eleven.  

 My chest filled with acid and I felt like I was going to dry heave.  How could she leave me? I thought bitterly.  This whole time, all those plans, and she left without me? Tears filled my eyes as I thought about the many long years that stretched out before me, the years that I had to spend alone inside a haunted house.

Episode 4.3: A Baker Named Lyle

We crept as silently as possible to the back of the store towards the bakery.  Loaves of French bread and rows of donuts waited indifferently behind their glass display cases, as if today were any other day.  Another sound pierced the air—this one more like the pots and pans were being kicked around on the floor.  There wasn’t much light coming from the windows that peeked into the kitchen, but I could see a slight, shadowy movement somewhere in the darkness. 

      

Minh had removed the Glock from her waistband and now held it rigidly, ready to blow a hole through anything slimy that we found back there.  I pressed the barrel of my shotgun up to the swinging door that led into the kitchen.  My mouth had gone dry, and I felt my heart thudding against my chest.  On my second step into the kitchen the lights flicked on, and I ducked behind the nearest counter.  Minh ducked back into the bakery.  I saw her pink and black hi-tops slide quickly out of the way.

             

“Is…is someone there?” I heard a shaky male voice ask.  My first instinct was to jump up and give the owner of the voice a big hug, but my experience with that crazy bastard back on campus made me think twice.

            

 “Yes.  There’s two of us,” I yelled back without standing up, “We’re not here to make any trouble.” The male voice gasped in relief.

            

 “Oh! Survivors! How…how wonderful.  Please, come out.  I’m not going to hurt you.” My paranoia had not quite subsided, and I poked my eyes up over the counter so I could see the owner of the voice.  He was an older guy, maybe mid 50’s.  He was beanpole tall and an unkempt mess of a comb-over clung halfheartedly to his balding head.  He was wearing an apron that was stained with blotches of dried blood. 

             

“Let me see your hands,” I yelled from my cover.  He raised them quickly, as he glanced around the kitchen.  He was unarmed, but that didn't necessarily mean he was stable.  I stood up and set my shotgun on the counter in front of me.  As soon as he saw me, he dropped his hands and let out a pitiful moan—one that hinted at both grief and excitement.

           

 “What are you doing here?” I asked as Minh entered the kitchen and stood behind the counter with me.

             

“I…I work here.  Or, I guess, I did before all of this happened.  I had just started my evening shift when I saw people’s heads buh-blowing up.  Customers, employees.  Some ran outside, but I…I wuh-was too scared.  I just waited here until the screaming stopped,” Tears started to well up in his eyes, “Muh-my wife and daughters…I duh-don’t even know if…if they’re still alive.” The man broke down the way a toddler does when he finds out he’s lost and alone in the middle of a department store.

             

“If…if only I could reach them…I…I…” His sentence was interrupted by another bout of sobbing. 

             

“Well,” I spoke as softly as I could, “Where is your family? Where do you all live?” The man regained a bit of his composure.  Rubbing the wetness from his eyes and face, he explained that he and his wife live in the Avenues, which was about seven or eight miles away.  I guess the violent arrival of extra terrestrial lifeforms had left him a bit too petrified to make the trip back to them.

            

 “So, right now they’re just as likely to be alive as anything else.  Let’s just go and find them.  I’m sure they’ve just holed up inside your house.” His face brightened a bit at this.

            

 “Duh-do you think so? Really?” I shrugged.

            

 “Only one way to find out.  We’ll go with you, right Minh?”

             

Nod, followed by a grin.  The baker introduced himself as Lyle Wallace and once we got packed, I found him to be kind of pleasant in an awkward way.  As we left the shattered remains of the front entrance to Dan’s behind us and stepped into the light of the morning sun, a hideous thought entered my mind.

             

“Lyle,” I asked, “Your wife and daughters…have they by chance been using Vonix cellphones?”

Episode 4.2: Grossery Chopping

The thing about humanity being totally blindsided by an invasion of parasitic aliens is that—for whatever reason—it makes the automatic doors in front of grocery stores not want to open for you anymore.  I learned this while I was loading a few extra shells into my gun as Minh and I approached the entrance to Dan’s.  The door didn’t open and the plexiglass shoved the barrel of my gun back at me, causing the stock to bite into my hip.  The pain was so sharp that I clutched the handle (trigger included) too hard and BANG! SHATTER! I had just blown a hole in the door.  Minh, who was standing behind me simply stared at the flurry of broken glass on the ground, demurely walked over to the not-automatic door, and pushed it open.

            

I was slightly comforted to see that the glittering spread of glass that I had created didn’t add much to the mayhem that had already arrived inside Dan’s Food and Drug.  Headless bodies clung to overturned newspaper stands and palates of bulk dog food.  They were splayed across checkout counters and stacked up against the icy doors of the frozen foods section.  I could still recognize that grocery store smell of floor cleaner and refrigerated food, but it was buried deeply inside the bitingly metallic stench of blood.  I was jolted out of my horrified trance when Minh grabbed my elbow.

            

“Shit! Minh! I coulda blown your head right off!” She just shrugged and held up a hideous fluorescent green and pink backpack.  I noticed that she was wearing one of equally offensive color. 

            

“Oh! Good idea, Minh!” I rifled through the pack to see how many little pockets I could fill, “I don’t suppose they had any backpacks that didn’t look like TRON puked all over them?”

            

Head shake.  Followed by a confused expression.

             

We filled Minh’s pack mostly with light stuff—beef jerky, fruit roll-ups, and some bags of mixed nuts.  I found a can opener and crammed as much canned meat, fruit, and vegetables as possible into my pack.  As I was doing this, two thoughts barged into my head.  First, between the two of us, we could only carry about a week and a half’s worth of food.  Second, just where in the hell were we going to go?  I stopped packing and thought about these two party crashers.  I told Minh to stop for a moment.  It didn’t make sense to pack without having some kind of destination in mind.  Where did all the other survivors end up? In an instant so quick it felt like a direct response to my question, I heard the earsplitting clatter of metal pots crashing to the floor.  It came from somewhere towards the back of the building.  I stepped in front of Minh and cocked a shell into place.

            

“Minh, I’m going to see what that was.  Do you want to stay here?”

            

Head shake.

         

“Do you want to come with me?”

           

Nod.

Episode 4.1

EPISODE 4: "SURVIVING"
STARRING: MARLA MANSLAUGHTER
SALT LAKE CITY, UT

I wish I could say that things got better after aliens arrived and blew up Fort Douglas.  But they didn’t.  I was glad to have found Minh, but she wasn’t much of a conversationalist. 

Because I’m clever. 

            

 Those were the last words I heard her speak.  After we left the ruins of Fort Douglas, she would only communicate by nodding for “yes” and shaking her head for “no.”

             

“Was that your car you were sleeping in?”

            

 Nod.

            

 “Do you know what year it is?”

            

 Nod.

            

 “Are your parents somewhere nearby”

            

 Head shake.

            

 “Are your parents still alive?”

            

 Head shake.

            

 “Do you want to come with me?”

            

 Nod.

            

I didn’t even learn her name until that afternoon when we ducked into an abandoned Jeep to hide from a flock of head-poppers.  After we reclined the seats and listened to the little snot walkers slither through the street, she reached over and grabbed my hand.  I felt a cold chain dig into my wrist and looked down to see what it was.  She was wearing one of those bracelets that look like pretty versions of hospital I.D. bands.  On the small card of metal that connected both ends of the chain, I read the name Minh Ha.  I lifted it from her wrist with my thumb and saw characters that I assumed to be her name in what looked like Japanese to my untrained American eyes.

            

 After the head-poppers had vacated the premises, I pointed to her bracelet.

             

“Is that your name?”

            

 Nod.

            

 “Minh Ha? Did I say it right?”

            

 Nod.

            

 “I’m Marla.” I shook her hand, and she smiled.

            

 She looked like she was about twelve or thirteen—that streak of orange in her shiny black hair could have only been the result of a misguided attempt at preteen rebellion.  I felt bad for the girl, but I secretly wished that my first companion in this new apocalyptic world would at least talk to me. 

            

 We wandered down Foothill Drive towards the Dan’s where I used to buy my weekly college rations of Easy Mac, Diet Coke, and chocolate-covered pretzels.  I was clinging to the idiot’s hope of running into someone who knew what the hell to do in a situation like this, which reminded me of the conversation I had with the mysterious and awesomely named Max Bodycount.  My memory of meeting him was now fuzzy and dreamlike and even though I was lugging an automatic shotgun that he gave me, I began to question whether or not the meeting ever really took place.

            

 Marla Manslaughter. 

            

 That’s what he “dubbed” me.  At the time, I guess it felt like I had some kind of destiny…like I was supposed to know what the hell to do in a situation like this.  But right now, as I wander down the automobile graveyard that was once Foothill Drive, as I sidestep broken glass and errant brain matter with a mute preteen in tow, I feel pretty damn helpless.

Meanwhile: A Conversation From Beyond

The death metal band Moloch had been making quite a name for itself. Sold out shows. Accolades from all the notable music media. Even a Grammy nomination. One thing that was different about Moloch’s rise to the top was that it was not motivated by money or status or even art. It was motivated for the express purpose to plunge the planet into a nightmare of chaos and pain.

As Boston was turning itself inside out with fire and panic, Balthazar Treason (lead vocals) sat comfortably with the other three members of Moloch within the luxurious confines of the Fifteen Beacon hotel drinking wine that was bottled before any of them were born. Balthazar reflected on that fateful meeting that the band had with Mr. Dionysius two years previous. All of the band members agreed to the terms. None of them were quite prepared to witness what they had unleashed on the world.

Their trance-like state was interrupted with a knock on their hotel room door. Marcus de Spazz (bass), a portly young man with a shaved head, stood up slowly and opened the door. The lights in the room dimmed slightly as Mr. Dionysius, slithered into the room. He was impeccably dressed, and his face was plastered with a reptilian grin. He was carrying a jet-black cell phone on a silver plate.

“Good evening, boys. Great show, great show. So great, in fact, that our Employer wishes to speak with you.” Dionysius snaked over to Balthazar and extended the plate with an exaggerated gesture of politeness. Balthazar hesitantly reached for the cell phone. He had never spoken with the Employer before, and he was slightly nervous.

“Y-yes? This is Balthazar.” He cringed ever so slightly when he heard the Employer’s voice. It reminded him of their music video for their single “Expunge” where the band had to fill their mouths with thick black Karo syrup.

“Balthazar…so good to finally speak with you. Well done in Boston. I understand we’re positively killing,” The Employer followed his statement up with a metallic, hacking laugh that made Balthazar cringe once more, “Listen. I need you and your boys to head up north, to Rhode Island. There’s a small problem that could turn into a big one if something is not done. Dionysius will have some new material ready for you. He insisted that we keep this on the down low, but since you boys are officially on the payroll, I thought I’d let you in on the plan. You’ll be summoning the Omniphage,” Balthazar thought about asking about the Omniphage, but the Employer anticipated him, “The Omniphage is a dear friend of mine. He’ll take care of this little speed bump on our world tour.”

“Yes, sir.” Was all Balthazar replied.

“Great. Take care boys. And keep up the good work.” The conversation ended, and Balthazar handed the phone back to Dionysius.

“Hey, D? What’s a…an omelet face?” A series of high pitched giggles wormed their way out of Dionysius’s mouth.

“You mean Omni-phage. Oh, that’s too funny. You’ll see soon enough. Just play the show that I book you.”

“Okay. Cool.” Balthazar took a few steps to the window and stared blankly down at the streets. Flames were consuming cars, food stands, buildings, and people. He hadn’t expected his music career to be built on the blood of innocents. Better theirs than his, he thought absently. Better theirs than his.

Episode 3.7: "Vegas, Baby"

The three of us decided that the best course of action was to get as far away from Omni-Com as possible. The plan was to head for Las Vegas, where Omni-Com’s west coast servers were located. She reasoned that if we could somehow shut down those servers, we might have a chance to keep this “virus” from spreading. I had my misgivings, but it was kind of a badass strategy.

We entered the interstate at a little after six PM. Veronica was plowing through her contact list. With every person that she reached, the conversation eventually turned to something called Protocol Epsilon. When she had finished her phone conversations, I asked her about it.

“Ira…” she sounded frustrated and exhausted, “I’ve already told you that there are things about the company that you and I can’t talk about. I’d lose my job if…”

“Excuse me, miss,” Valya interrupted, “From the look of things back there, I’d say you’ve lost your job already.” My grandma’s cool blue eyes were magnified by the huge beer bottle glasses that never left their perch on her nose. Surprisingly, Veronica laughed.

“Yes…I suppose you’re right.”

“Baba, this is Veronica. I didn’t get the chance to introduce her, because, you know, we were running from a robot that was wearing Chet.” They shook hands, and I felt the mood lighten slightly.

“Protocol Epsilon,” Veronica began, “Is an emergency procedure. I guess it’s no secret that Omni-Com has been dabbling in the field of artificial intelligence. Well, in the event that an AI becomes compromised, the company is to enact Protocol Epsilon, which raises emergency firewalls around all company networks.”

“That sounds like a good thing.” I muttered.

“Yes, it is a good thing. The problem is…” Veronica paused for what seemed like an eternity, “Nobody believes me. The company networks are…vulnerable.”

“Shit.”

“Irochka, do not use such language in front of a lady.”

“Sorry, Baba.”

“And to the lady.”

“Sorry, Veronica. Just how many subsidiary companies does Omni-Com have?” There was a brief pause as her synapses fired.

“Omni-Com has seventy-five subsidiaries in thirty-three different states.”

“Oh. That’s…that’s quite a bit. Will shutting down the servers even work?” Sweat had glued my back to the car seat and I gripped the steering wheel tighter.

“If we get there in time, yes. OMNOS isn’t exactly on its feet yet, so there’s a good bet it will need some time to upload itself. If we shut down those servers, it will be cut off. Can we stop for some food, Ira?” I was so preoccupied with thinking about Veronica’s plan that she had to repeat her last request.

“Oh, sure.” I pulled off at the next exit. We found a Popeye’s Chicken and sat down for a slightly demure meal of chicken wings and coleslaw. The cashier gave Veronica a slightly terrified look.

“Oh. The blood…” She said in a detached voice. Before we sat down, she headed to the ladies’ room to wash her hair.

“She seems nice,” Valya whispered, “how long have you known her?”

“I just met her today, baba. I don’t think she likes me much, though.”

“Don’t worry, Irochka. If this computer destroys the world, she may not have much of a choice.” My grandma. She sure had a unique way of putting things.

When Veronica arrived, we ate our food quickly. The sun was setting as we entered the interstate once more. The absurd reality of the situation sunk in as we crossed the Nevada border. A beautiful blond scientist, my grandma, and I were going to Las Vegas to shut down a rogue AI. If I wasn’t scared shitless, I’d think this was pretty damn cool.

Episode 3.6 "The Chet-Thing"

Our brief reprieve was interrupted by the chime of the Omni-Com paging system.

“Ira Holtz and Veronica Estrella, security has been dispatched to kill you slowly and painfully. Have a nice day.” We both shot up, hearts pumping.

“What…what does that mean?” I asked, not really wanting to know the answer.

“I…I don’t know, Ira. The building’s automated security is fairly limited and…” There was a sharp, metal on metal grinding sound coming from the elevator terminals. Veronica drew closer to me as the sound came closer. I was woefully unprepared for what entered the atrium.

At first, I thought it was Chet the head security guard. As it got closer, however, I realized that it wasn’t Chet at all. It was something that was wearing Chet. A swatch of congealed blood streaked from Chet’s mouth all the way down his security uniform. His arms and legs looked like socks stuffed with bricks and thick black cables coiled around his neck and plunged into various head wounds. He trudged towards us with slow, jerking steps and the grinding metal sound grew unbearably loud.

Veronica started screaming, and I may have wet my pants. The Chet-thing saw us, and it emitted a gurgling sound that pushed more clotted blood out of its gaping mouth. I was about to be killed by an honest to shit cyborg. At least it’s kind of a cool death.

The screech of tires coming from outside broke me from my near-death musings. I turned quickly to see my grandma’s boat of a station wagon fishtailing through the parking lot.

“Veronica! Look! It’s my grandma!” I squinted to see my grandma waving her hand frantically, motioning for me to get out of the way. She…she was going to drive her car right through the doors.

The Chet-thing had almost reached us when I grabbed Veronica and pulled her out of the way. We hit the deck, and I covered our heads. The shriek of shattering glass and the revving of an ancient engine filled the air. I heard the station wagon crumple as it crashed into the Chet-thing. For an instant, I was terrified that my grandma was injured in the crash, but as we stood up I saw her exiting her totaled vehicle.

“Irochka! Are you hurt? What was that thing? What’s going on, Irochka!” I helped Veronica to her feet and grabbed my grandma’s arm.

“I’ll explain later, baba. We have to get out of here right now, though.” We sidestepped the broken glass doors and mangled security grating and ran to my car. As Veronica and my grandma got in, I took one last look at Omni-Com. Whatever was growing inside of that building was a world-ender. And Veronica knows something about it. Was it safe to trust her?