Britz-Congratulations go to ha, sole reader to make it as far as chapter 5 and still have the strength left to review, y'all could learn a lot from this sexless noun.
Disclaimer-Hell we ain't gonna beat out chapter five, do your worst.
~Chapter Eighteen~
Marco and Ben wandered out of the aisle just As Jake was shouldering out of the nursery section with a wheelbarrow piled high with compost.
"What happened to you?" Marco asked, indicating Jakes ripped and bloody clothing.
"Horny mutant bush." Grunted Jake.
"No kidding, we hit some of that ourselves." Ben nodded.
"Wha..?" Jake started when gun blasts rumbled like thunder in the air, all three spun around eyes wide with fear they simultaneously dived behind a check out counter.
minutes passed of shooting and yelling and a god awful screeching noise when it finally fell silent with a final gunshot, the boys crouched behind the counter let the silence beat away.
"Go check it out Marco." Jake said finally.
"No way, you check it out."
"Just, give it a look."
"Lets look together."
"Kay."
Slowly and carefully they peeked over the top, for a moment there was only the painfully empty shopping aisles and just as they began to rise two figures limped around a corner from Sporting Goods, Rachel and Ash both as bloody and bedraggled as Jake.
Jake and Marco hesitated for a moment then eased themselves out from behind the counter, "Hey guys." Marco said, "What the hell was that? Where's Tobias?"
"Dead." Rachel answered coldly, "Or similar."
"Where's Cassie?" Ash asked, "I thought she'd be back here by now."
"I thought she was with you." Jake replied.
"I left her in Woman's Wear." Ash said.
Rachel turned to the darkness of the S-mart main and began to call Cassie's name.
"Hey, where's Ben?" Ash asked.
"He's right he.." Marco turned and realised Ben had not risen from behind the counter, "Ben you can come out now.. Ben?"
A wavering hand made its way up and grabbed the little conveyor belt on the counter and closely behind Ben pulled himself up looking rather pale and weak. "I-I don't feel so good man."
Marco crept cautiously closer, "What's the matter with you?"
"My shoulders." Weakly Ben pawed at his shirt and pulled the collar down to expose a left shoulder riddled with black cracks. They seemed to be spreading out from two little puncture wounds in his neck.
"How'd you.. Did you let her bite you?" Marco asked.
"I thought she was just being kinky." Ben groaned, "You don't wanna know where else it hur.. Hur.." Ben's breath hitched violently and he stumbled about for a moment, eyes rolling back in his skull and with final shudder he collapsed out of sight.
"Ben!" Ash yelled and began jogging over when Ben leapt into the air... And stayed there, hanging several feet above the stand of gum and impulse items, his skin a sickly corpse yellow, his eyes flipped to sour milk white, cackling and brimming with unearthly energy.
"Dead by dawn! Dead by dawn!"
"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!" The others yelled and they turned tail and ran into the aisles with zombie Ben swooping and screeching at their heels, as they stumbled into Woman's Wear Ash turned in hope for a clear shot but Ben had disappeared into thin air.
"Oh I don't like this.." Ash said, stumbling backwards, the others were walking slowly, looking in all directions at once it seemed but Ben was nowhere to be seen.
Jake looked down the racks of clothes and spotted a sprawled figure on the floor, he jerked in surprise "Cassie!" He cried and Ben forgotten he ran to her side, kneeled down and shook her, "Cassie?"
Cassie's eyes flickered open and seemed to have trouble focusing for a moment, finally they came to rest on Jake's smiling face, "Jake?"
"That's right I'm here."
"Come closer." Jake leaned in, "Closer." He complied, Cassie breathed as if having trouble with the act, Jake blinked and waited.
Cassie arm shot out and grabbed him by the crotch, Jake squealed and she squeezed harder till veins stood out all along her forearm and then she got up and lifted him to his feet.
Her face was a mask of hate and evil, her eyes narrowed to snake slits and a forked tongue flicked in and out between her teeth, "I think we should see other people." She rasped.
".....mommy....." Jake squeaked and she nutted him, foreheads clonked together and he flew back into Rachel's arms, behind Rachel Ash stood ready with his shotgun out.
"Ahahaha, It's witch huntin' season." He said with a passable Elmer Fudd impression (is there anything the man can't do?) and fire roared from the end of his Remington, he pumped the spent chamber and fired, pumped and again, Cassie flew somersaulting backwards and collapsed face first into the ground.
"She dead?" Marco asked.
"It's a trick! Get an axe!" Jake cried.
"That's a little harsh of you isn't it?" Rachel asked.
Jake looked forlorn, "She hurt me, like I've never been hurt before."
Like a puppet being picked up by the strings Cassie rose to her feet bonelessly, staring at them with angry darting eyes. "Oh fuck this." Ash said, with a jerk Cassie jumped into the air and began screeching with laughter and swooped towards them.
The Animorphs and Ash ran for it with Cassie darting in the air behind them but just as they reached the end of the aisle Ben floated into view, "Boo!" They screamed again and started to run the other way but Cassie was screeching up the aisle like a banshee, they turned but Ben was doing the same blocking them off.
"Duck!" Yelled Ash.
"Where?" Jake asked and Rachel pulled him to the ground with the rest of them, Cassie and Ben screamed over their heads, their zombie faces contorted from gleeful rage to incredulous surprise and they collided.
'Whump!' Their limp bodies dropped onto our remaining heroes who hastily pushed them off onto the floor.
"Out cold." Rachel remarked.
"Yep." Ash replied as he picked himself up and carefully aimed from one unconscious zombie to the other and prodded them with his boot, "You two go to Sporting Goods and grab some rope." Jake and Marco got up and walked off.
Several tense minutes of watching Cassie and Ben they returned, Jake had a length of rock climbing rope over his shoulder while Marco walked beside him, his hand wrapped around the scrawny neck of Tobias who dangled with feet wheeling about in the air, his body had deflated slightly and he seemed to have all the fight of a rubber chicken left in him but he was clearly still mutated and alive.
"Tobias!" Rachel yelled, "I thought you had died!"
[No my dear, though sometimes I wish I had.] He wriggled his posterior in discomfort [A lot.] He snapped at Marco's fingers and failed to reach then just sighed.
Ash and Rachel sat the slumping Ben and Cassie leaning their backs against each other while Jake looped the rope around them and drew it tight then tied it.
[You may have defeated us but you'll die before the sun rises!] Yelled Tobias as they trussed him up and jammed him between the other two.
Rachel blew him a kiss, "We're gonna go down to the Yeerk Pool and find the cure now baby, don't fret I'll be back soon."
[Oh we are so over.]
The final four got to the front of the store and stopped beside the wheelbarrow of chemical fertilizer. "Alright first, we got the fertilizer, Marco, we got the trigger?"
"Uh, yeah right here," he tossed over the industrial cleaner, Ash gave it a once over and jammed it in his pocket.
"Now, where's an entrance to this place?"
"Well," Rachel said "Without Tobias to tell us different the closest I know of is..."
"McDonalds?" Ash repeated for the fifth or sixth time since they'd headed out from the supermarket as they finally walked into the parking lot.
"Yes, McDonalds." Marco admitted.
"I always wondered what kept them in business." Ash said, "Thought it must've been the Freemasons."
They pushed the wheelbarrow through the glass doors and into the restaurant, blood had splattered all over the floor and walls, even the ceiling but there were no bodies left behind.
"You think they took the corpses with them?" Jake asked.
"Maybe they were hanging out for take-out." Marco suggested.
"Where to?" Ash asked.
"We got to go round the back to the walk in freezer." Rachel said and they continued through the eerily abandoned kitchen to the back of the store.
"Alright, one's the fridge, and ones the freezer." Jake mulled slowly, he pulled open one of the big white industrial doors and screamed "Aiiiiiieeeeehhh!!!" (I've grown to good for Ahh it would seem.)
"Zombies?!" Marco cried.
Jake slammed the door and locked it "There's a rat the size of a small dog in there."
Rachel sighed and pulled open the other door, freezing cold air rushed out "In here." They jammed inside the freezer.
"I don't see a door." Ash said.
"You can't see it." Rachel explained, she looked quickly around, remembering the surroundings, "Put the bomb against that wall."
Ash wheeled the fertilizer against the wall, simple trigger explosion already in place. "Wall looks solid but in a concentrated area like this it'll.... Oh fuck."
"Uhh, Ash, what is it?" Marco asked.
"Yeah it's getting to be a bad time for oh fucks of any capacity." Jake reminded him.
"A fuse, trigger needs a fuse and we haven't got one, I haven't even got a lighter, anybody?" The Animorphs shook their heads no. "Oh shit, even if we had a lighter we'd need something to give a time release burn, a cigarette, matches.."
'Ding!' a light bulb went off over Marco's head, startling the other three "Wait a second." He dug about in his pocket till he found what he was looking for, out he pulled the joint and book of matches Ben had given him.
"Marco, I'm feeling stressed myself but I don't think this is the time or place." Jake said, shaking his head.
Ash grinned "Perfect!" He snatched the fatty and matches out of Marco's palm, stuck the joint in his mouth and popped alight a match, he looked at the three others watching him "Uh, remember, winners don't do drugs."
"Not even socially?" Marco asked.
"Oh well of course socially, you want to be unpopular now?" He sucked the joint alight and stuck it in the matchbook, "Now get out of here, go go!" He stuck the matchbook, burning end in the air, into the trigger and they cleared out of the freezer, slamming the door shut behind them.
Inside the joint burned slowly down, each match head bursting to life as it passed down, slowly blazing down closer and closer...
~Chapter Nineteen~
The Yeerk Pool was in chaos, still living Yeerk hosts fired on a bizarre array of mutants and zombies of every species, Human, Hork-Bajir and Taxxon living dead filled the area, in the middle of it Visser Three sluiced his way easier than most through the unnatural attackers towards one of his troop leaders firing every which way.
A zombie Hork-Bajir stumbled in front of him, the creatures eyes were sick pupil-less yellow and his skin seemed a darker shade of green, almost black and looking about ready to slide right off his bones "I'll swallow your soul! I'll swallow your soul!"
The Visser flicked out his tail and the zombies head bounced across the rocky floor, the body collapsed to the ground as if suddenly struck boneless, Visser Three stepped around it on dainty hoofs. [Oy, this is not going to plan, Commander, status report!]
"Sir the undead are attacking in nearly all sectors, breaches have been made in several and the rest are about to go." The burly Hork-Bajir controller replied, "It's impossible, they just keep coming, any casualties on our side get up and kill! Those they kill get up and kill!"
[Oy vey! Yes I get the picture.] Visser Three waved him away, another Hork-Bajir approached, [Yeah whadda you want?]
"Visser Three I am Councillor Eight, I'm here for a surprise inspection." The Councillor looked at the chaotic surroundings "I'm afraid this will have to go down in my report."
[Oy vey ismier! What else could go wrong?] The Visser exclaimed, no sooner were the words out of his... Brain... Then a thundering explosion rocked the cavern, echoing out from a nearby entrance, one of the few unminded by zombies, The Visser stumbled as the shockwaves rumbled, once they subsided and smoke drifted lazily from the site a human at the head of three all too familiar faces, tiger, gorilla and bear, marched through the smoke.
He was a rough looking character with what looked like a robotic right hand and a chin that wouldn't quit, he pumped the primitive human weapon he held and yelled above the madness. "Alright you brain stealing alien screw heads! Reach for the sky!"
His mother always told him there'd be days like this.
***To Be Continued***
Britz-Well you know that final chap is coming regardless, but you could review just to be friendly, I'll sink as low as... Please?
Disclaimer-Hell we ain't gonna beat out chapter five, do your worst.
~Chapter Eighteen~
Marco and Ben wandered out of the aisle just As Jake was shouldering out of the nursery section with a wheelbarrow piled high with compost.
"What happened to you?" Marco asked, indicating Jakes ripped and bloody clothing.
"Horny mutant bush." Grunted Jake.
"No kidding, we hit some of that ourselves." Ben nodded.
"Wha..?" Jake started when gun blasts rumbled like thunder in the air, all three spun around eyes wide with fear they simultaneously dived behind a check out counter.
minutes passed of shooting and yelling and a god awful screeching noise when it finally fell silent with a final gunshot, the boys crouched behind the counter let the silence beat away.
"Go check it out Marco." Jake said finally.
"No way, you check it out."
"Just, give it a look."
"Lets look together."
"Kay."
Slowly and carefully they peeked over the top, for a moment there was only the painfully empty shopping aisles and just as they began to rise two figures limped around a corner from Sporting Goods, Rachel and Ash both as bloody and bedraggled as Jake.
Jake and Marco hesitated for a moment then eased themselves out from behind the counter, "Hey guys." Marco said, "What the hell was that? Where's Tobias?"
"Dead." Rachel answered coldly, "Or similar."
"Where's Cassie?" Ash asked, "I thought she'd be back here by now."
"I thought she was with you." Jake replied.
"I left her in Woman's Wear." Ash said.
Rachel turned to the darkness of the S-mart main and began to call Cassie's name.
"Hey, where's Ben?" Ash asked.
"He's right he.." Marco turned and realised Ben had not risen from behind the counter, "Ben you can come out now.. Ben?"
A wavering hand made its way up and grabbed the little conveyor belt on the counter and closely behind Ben pulled himself up looking rather pale and weak. "I-I don't feel so good man."
Marco crept cautiously closer, "What's the matter with you?"
"My shoulders." Weakly Ben pawed at his shirt and pulled the collar down to expose a left shoulder riddled with black cracks. They seemed to be spreading out from two little puncture wounds in his neck.
"How'd you.. Did you let her bite you?" Marco asked.
"I thought she was just being kinky." Ben groaned, "You don't wanna know where else it hur.. Hur.." Ben's breath hitched violently and he stumbled about for a moment, eyes rolling back in his skull and with final shudder he collapsed out of sight.
"Ben!" Ash yelled and began jogging over when Ben leapt into the air... And stayed there, hanging several feet above the stand of gum and impulse items, his skin a sickly corpse yellow, his eyes flipped to sour milk white, cackling and brimming with unearthly energy.
"Dead by dawn! Dead by dawn!"
"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!" The others yelled and they turned tail and ran into the aisles with zombie Ben swooping and screeching at their heels, as they stumbled into Woman's Wear Ash turned in hope for a clear shot but Ben had disappeared into thin air.
"Oh I don't like this.." Ash said, stumbling backwards, the others were walking slowly, looking in all directions at once it seemed but Ben was nowhere to be seen.
Jake looked down the racks of clothes and spotted a sprawled figure on the floor, he jerked in surprise "Cassie!" He cried and Ben forgotten he ran to her side, kneeled down and shook her, "Cassie?"
Cassie's eyes flickered open and seemed to have trouble focusing for a moment, finally they came to rest on Jake's smiling face, "Jake?"
"That's right I'm here."
"Come closer." Jake leaned in, "Closer." He complied, Cassie breathed as if having trouble with the act, Jake blinked and waited.
Cassie arm shot out and grabbed him by the crotch, Jake squealed and she squeezed harder till veins stood out all along her forearm and then she got up and lifted him to his feet.
Her face was a mask of hate and evil, her eyes narrowed to snake slits and a forked tongue flicked in and out between her teeth, "I think we should see other people." She rasped.
".....mommy....." Jake squeaked and she nutted him, foreheads clonked together and he flew back into Rachel's arms, behind Rachel Ash stood ready with his shotgun out.
"Ahahaha, It's witch huntin' season." He said with a passable Elmer Fudd impression (is there anything the man can't do?) and fire roared from the end of his Remington, he pumped the spent chamber and fired, pumped and again, Cassie flew somersaulting backwards and collapsed face first into the ground.
"She dead?" Marco asked.
"It's a trick! Get an axe!" Jake cried.
"That's a little harsh of you isn't it?" Rachel asked.
Jake looked forlorn, "She hurt me, like I've never been hurt before."
Like a puppet being picked up by the strings Cassie rose to her feet bonelessly, staring at them with angry darting eyes. "Oh fuck this." Ash said, with a jerk Cassie jumped into the air and began screeching with laughter and swooped towards them.
The Animorphs and Ash ran for it with Cassie darting in the air behind them but just as they reached the end of the aisle Ben floated into view, "Boo!" They screamed again and started to run the other way but Cassie was screeching up the aisle like a banshee, they turned but Ben was doing the same blocking them off.
"Duck!" Yelled Ash.
"Where?" Jake asked and Rachel pulled him to the ground with the rest of them, Cassie and Ben screamed over their heads, their zombie faces contorted from gleeful rage to incredulous surprise and they collided.
'Whump!' Their limp bodies dropped onto our remaining heroes who hastily pushed them off onto the floor.
"Out cold." Rachel remarked.
"Yep." Ash replied as he picked himself up and carefully aimed from one unconscious zombie to the other and prodded them with his boot, "You two go to Sporting Goods and grab some rope." Jake and Marco got up and walked off.
Several tense minutes of watching Cassie and Ben they returned, Jake had a length of rock climbing rope over his shoulder while Marco walked beside him, his hand wrapped around the scrawny neck of Tobias who dangled with feet wheeling about in the air, his body had deflated slightly and he seemed to have all the fight of a rubber chicken left in him but he was clearly still mutated and alive.
"Tobias!" Rachel yelled, "I thought you had died!"
[No my dear, though sometimes I wish I had.] He wriggled his posterior in discomfort [A lot.] He snapped at Marco's fingers and failed to reach then just sighed.
Ash and Rachel sat the slumping Ben and Cassie leaning their backs against each other while Jake looped the rope around them and drew it tight then tied it.
[You may have defeated us but you'll die before the sun rises!] Yelled Tobias as they trussed him up and jammed him between the other two.
Rachel blew him a kiss, "We're gonna go down to the Yeerk Pool and find the cure now baby, don't fret I'll be back soon."
[Oh we are so over.]
The final four got to the front of the store and stopped beside the wheelbarrow of chemical fertilizer. "Alright first, we got the fertilizer, Marco, we got the trigger?"
"Uh, yeah right here," he tossed over the industrial cleaner, Ash gave it a once over and jammed it in his pocket.
"Now, where's an entrance to this place?"
"Well," Rachel said "Without Tobias to tell us different the closest I know of is..."
"McDonalds?" Ash repeated for the fifth or sixth time since they'd headed out from the supermarket as they finally walked into the parking lot.
"Yes, McDonalds." Marco admitted.
"I always wondered what kept them in business." Ash said, "Thought it must've been the Freemasons."
They pushed the wheelbarrow through the glass doors and into the restaurant, blood had splattered all over the floor and walls, even the ceiling but there were no bodies left behind.
"You think they took the corpses with them?" Jake asked.
"Maybe they were hanging out for take-out." Marco suggested.
"Where to?" Ash asked.
"We got to go round the back to the walk in freezer." Rachel said and they continued through the eerily abandoned kitchen to the back of the store.
"Alright, one's the fridge, and ones the freezer." Jake mulled slowly, he pulled open one of the big white industrial doors and screamed "Aiiiiiieeeeehhh!!!" (I've grown to good for Ahh it would seem.)
"Zombies?!" Marco cried.
Jake slammed the door and locked it "There's a rat the size of a small dog in there."
Rachel sighed and pulled open the other door, freezing cold air rushed out "In here." They jammed inside the freezer.
"I don't see a door." Ash said.
"You can't see it." Rachel explained, she looked quickly around, remembering the surroundings, "Put the bomb against that wall."
Ash wheeled the fertilizer against the wall, simple trigger explosion already in place. "Wall looks solid but in a concentrated area like this it'll.... Oh fuck."
"Uhh, Ash, what is it?" Marco asked.
"Yeah it's getting to be a bad time for oh fucks of any capacity." Jake reminded him.
"A fuse, trigger needs a fuse and we haven't got one, I haven't even got a lighter, anybody?" The Animorphs shook their heads no. "Oh shit, even if we had a lighter we'd need something to give a time release burn, a cigarette, matches.."
'Ding!' a light bulb went off over Marco's head, startling the other three "Wait a second." He dug about in his pocket till he found what he was looking for, out he pulled the joint and book of matches Ben had given him.
"Marco, I'm feeling stressed myself but I don't think this is the time or place." Jake said, shaking his head.
Ash grinned "Perfect!" He snatched the fatty and matches out of Marco's palm, stuck the joint in his mouth and popped alight a match, he looked at the three others watching him "Uh, remember, winners don't do drugs."
"Not even socially?" Marco asked.
"Oh well of course socially, you want to be unpopular now?" He sucked the joint alight and stuck it in the matchbook, "Now get out of here, go go!" He stuck the matchbook, burning end in the air, into the trigger and they cleared out of the freezer, slamming the door shut behind them.
Inside the joint burned slowly down, each match head bursting to life as it passed down, slowly blazing down closer and closer...
~Chapter Nineteen~
The Yeerk Pool was in chaos, still living Yeerk hosts fired on a bizarre array of mutants and zombies of every species, Human, Hork-Bajir and Taxxon living dead filled the area, in the middle of it Visser Three sluiced his way easier than most through the unnatural attackers towards one of his troop leaders firing every which way.
A zombie Hork-Bajir stumbled in front of him, the creatures eyes were sick pupil-less yellow and his skin seemed a darker shade of green, almost black and looking about ready to slide right off his bones "I'll swallow your soul! I'll swallow your soul!"
The Visser flicked out his tail and the zombies head bounced across the rocky floor, the body collapsed to the ground as if suddenly struck boneless, Visser Three stepped around it on dainty hoofs. [Oy, this is not going to plan, Commander, status report!]
"Sir the undead are attacking in nearly all sectors, breaches have been made in several and the rest are about to go." The burly Hork-Bajir controller replied, "It's impossible, they just keep coming, any casualties on our side get up and kill! Those they kill get up and kill!"
[Oy vey! Yes I get the picture.] Visser Three waved him away, another Hork-Bajir approached, [Yeah whadda you want?]
"Visser Three I am Councillor Eight, I'm here for a surprise inspection." The Councillor looked at the chaotic surroundings "I'm afraid this will have to go down in my report."
[Oy vey ismier! What else could go wrong?] The Visser exclaimed, no sooner were the words out of his... Brain... Then a thundering explosion rocked the cavern, echoing out from a nearby entrance, one of the few unminded by zombies, The Visser stumbled as the shockwaves rumbled, once they subsided and smoke drifted lazily from the site a human at the head of three all too familiar faces, tiger, gorilla and bear, marched through the smoke.
He was a rough looking character with what looked like a robotic right hand and a chin that wouldn't quit, he pumped the primitive human weapon he held and yelled above the madness. "Alright you brain stealing alien screw heads! Reach for the sky!"
His mother always told him there'd be days like this.
***To Be Continued***
Britz-Well you know that final chap is coming regardless, but you could review just to be friendly, I'll sink as low as... Please?