"Oh my God...oh my God...oh my God...who do I talk to FIRST?!" she gasped, breathlessly. "The cops? The military? Or...eww...Kim?!"
Bonnie had returned to her senses to the point where she had actually STOPPED at a red light instead of just carelessly running through it. To her own surprise, she found that she truly WAS worried about Brick Flagg, and not just going through the motions; turns out, there really WAS a heart beating deep down beneath that snooty, elitist exterior of hers.
Even though the dark foggy streets were completely deserted, she still remained idle at the intersection as the light stubbornly continued to glow red, trying to go over the options in her mind...but holy crap, just what was that bad SMELL in the car that she suddenly noticed?
"Ughh, what died in here?" she shouted as she glanced around at the interior, trying to locate the source of the offending stench. "God, it smells like that disgusting worm-mouse thing that Ron keeps in his pocket!" In reality, Rufus didn't smell at all, but Bonnie still liked to pretend that he did. Just because.
It didn't matter, though. There were more important things at hand.
Minutes earlier, she had dropped in unannounced on the Flagg household, only to find it completely deserted and with the front door left wide open. Overwhelmed with a dreadful feeling that Brick had been the victim of kidnapping (or something worse), she couldn't decide on a course of action - at least not an EASY one.
"Okay...okay...I really HATE to have to go crawling to Kim - and that doofus, Ron - for anything..." she thought out loud, with an expression of disgust, "but...I don't think I have a choice...ugghhhh, but I just HATE having to get help from HER!" she shouted as she punched the horn in frustration, a deep *HONK* ringing out through the night.
"Oh, Kim, I've lost Brick, and I just don't know where to find him!" she spewed in a high-pitched voice. "I am going to look like SUCH an IDIOT-"
GROWL...*
"...HUH?"
Her heart nearly skipped a beat as her fear skyrocketed.
There was...something...in the car with her. Some kind of animal. In the backseat.
"What...was...that?" she yelped, her voice cracking in sudden terror.
She glanced in her rear-view mirror and saw two blazing red eyes staring back at her. Two blazing red eyes set in, what appeared to be, a thick, hulking mass of fur.
It snarled at her. And then the terrible smell inside the car became FAR worse.
At least now she knew where it was coming from.
"Oh...my...shit..." she whispered, her normally composed, well made-up face frozen bone-white in horror. "I'm gonna' die...and I never even got the chance to tell Kim off for dressing in primary colors during daylight hours-"
"GRAAAAAAAWWWWWRRRRRRRRR!" roared the creature.
In response, Bonnie balled her hands into tight fists, winced her eyes shut and screamed.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
In fact, she screamed SO loud, and in such HIGH decibels, that the car's windshield and the side windows shattered and blew outwards in a glittering, crystal storm.
It didn't matter if her sister was going to kill her for breaking her car's windows. Because THIS thing was probably going to kill her first...
With another roar, the creature raised its enormous, clawed paw - like that of a bear's - and took a swipe at her.
"AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!" she screamed again as she ducked down low in her seat, narrowly saving her pretty head from being lopped off by the creature as she slammed her foot on the gas, running the red light and hurtling forwards into the gloom. The thing behind her fell backwards into the seat from the force of the car's forward motion, striking its head on the rear window and breaking it as well.
"GRAWWWWWWRRRRRRR!" it roared again, in pain and rage.
"WHAT ARE YOU?!" she caterwauled as she continued to speed through the mist, glancing back and forth between the road and the monstrosity behind her. "WHAT DO YOU WANT? ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL AND EAT ME? JUST BECAUSE I'M CUTE DOESN'T MEAN THAT I'LL TASTE GOOD!"
"GRAAAAAAWWWWRRRRR!" it bellowed, even louder than before.
"I CAN'T BELIEVE HOW MUCH THIS NIGHT SUCKS!" she screamed as she ducked again, the creature taking another savage swipe at her head with its gigantic, razor-sharp claw. "I NEED A BAGEL!"
The car sped haphazardly through the night, crossing back and forth over the center line and narrowly missing parked cars and trash cans, all the while with Bonnie shrieking and the backseat beast bellowing as it continued its violent assault.
"GET SOME!" roared Mr. Steven Barkin as he took aim and fired with his old German luger.
"AAAARGGGGHHHH!" roared the undead creature as the bullet tore through its head and knocked it to the ground, now rendered silent and unmoving.
By now, there were quite a few other 'silent and unmoving' monsters' bodies littering his front yard and street, some of them even on fire after he had torched them with his flamethrower, giving off a foul, pungent stench that the man actually seemed to enjoy.
"Mmmm, I just love the smell of burning, undead bastards in the evening..." growled Barkin, now clad in military fatigues, smeared with camoflauge facepaint and armed to the teeth.
"It smells like...victory..."
All across the Middleton metro area, a slew of supernatural monsters were assaulting the populace, and Barkin's neck of the woods had been no exception. Zombies...LITERAL zombies, were attacking Barkin's home, as if it were the lonely, assailed farmhouse from "Night of the Living Dead" - not that Barkin was fazed in the slightest. From the very moment the mysterious sea of mist had descended upon the city, he knew that something was up - BIG TIME.
Not wasting a second, he had swiftly gone down to his basement arsenal to stock up and strap up, ready to take on whatever strange invasion was about to take place (not to mention, grab a handful of the fancy Cuban cigars that he had saved specifically for 'combat smoking'.)
And not a moment too soon...
Not ten minutes earlier, one after the other, a horde of grunting, wailing zombies had materialized from out of the gloom, and had begun attacking the homes in the neighborhood. Their skin a pale green, their eyes sunken in, their yellowed, rotting teeth sharp and crooked, they shambled towards Barkin with their hands outstretched and their mouths gaping open, ready to chow down on the nearest human brains they could get their hands on.
"Uggggghhhhhhh..." they wailed.
"You want a piece of me?!" roared Barkin with a smoldering cigar between his teeth, as he spun around and punched a zombie so hard, its head went sailing off into the gloom. "Open wide for a heaping helping...you MAGGOTS!" He delivered a sharp, powerful kick to the chest of another zombie that was slowly making its way up his porch steps, knocking it backwards to the ground with a loud grunt as its head disconnected from its body and then rolled down into the gutter.
"Argggghhhh..." it grunted as it tumbled away.
"Welcome to hell!" shouted Barkin, not having felt such a rush of excitement since his days in the Corps. Tucking his luger back into its holster, he pulled out his AR-15 rifle and took careful aim at the nearest zombie, placing its hideous, rotting face precisely in the center of it's sights as he began to pull back on the trigger.
"That's right, ugly...come and get it..." he whispered. "Come...and...get it..."
*SCREEEEEEECH!*
A strange noise pierced the cold night air.
"...the hell?" spat Barkin.
Tires were screeching from somewhere out in the gloom, and it sounded like they were getting closer. The zombies, distracted by the unusual noise, began to turn away from Barkin and stare into the mist towards the source of the disturbance.
A pair of headlights, swerving wildly to the left and the right, suddenly appeared in the distance, and rapidly approached Barkin's front lawn as the screeching sound grew louder and louder.
"What reckless idiot is driving that thing?" snapped Barkin, as he lowered his rifle from his eyes. "Urrrghhhhh?" croaked the zombies in interest as they all began to shuffle towards the oncoming vehicle, hopefully where they would find an easier target to chow down on than Barkin. But as the vehicle approached, one could also hear a young woman screaming...and some kind of animal roaring and making a racket.
"I repeat" snarled Barkin, "...the HELL?!"
Out of the mist burst Bonnie in her sister's (now completely trashed) yellow car, still trying to fight off the monster in her backseat as she lost control and slammed into the fire hydrant in Steven Barkin's front yard, a powerful geyser of water blasting forth and shooting into the air.
"Just great" muttered Barkin as cigar smoke wafted forth from his flaring nostrils. "Like I didn't already have ENOUGH of a mess to clean up..."
The driver's side door of the car was suddenly thrown open, and Bonnie Rockwaller, her makeup ruined and her hair a mess, dashed from the vehicle, yowling and screaming in total shrill hysterics as the monster burst forth from the backseat with a deafening, bestial roar.
"GRAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWRRRRR!"
"AHHHHH, IT'S TRYING TO KILL ME!" she screamed, frantically waving her arms around as she dashed across the lawn. "AND IT SMELLS! IT SMELLS SOOOOOO BAAAAAAAAAAAAD!"
If her eyes were any wider, they would have fallen out of their sockets.
"Ugggghhhhh!" groaned the zombies in excitement and hunger as they slowly advanced towards Bonnie, opening their gaping mouths wide and then reaching out their rotting, skeletal hands, trying to grab her and then-
"OUTTA' MY WAY!" she screamed as she plowed right through them, knocking the undead monsters over like bowling pins. "MOVE IT!"
"Rockwaller?" said Barkin in a tone of surprise, with his acrid cigar smoke trailing in vertical, silver streams from his mouth. "Heh. Fancy seeing YOU away from the day spa, or the mall...and during the Summer of all times..."
"SOMEBODY HELP ME!" she screamed. "SOMEBODY...ANYBODY! THIS IS ALL, LIKE, SO WEIRD!" She dashed up the concrete walk towards Barkin's front porch as fast as her slender legs could carry her, suddenly noticing the sticky green 'zombie slime' that had rubbed off on her hands as she had pushed them aside.
Bonnie let off a string of swear words that actually made Barkin crack a smile.
"GRAWWWWWRRRRRRR!"
"Shitbird..." spat Barkin.
He glanced over toward the remains of Bonnie's sister's car, now surrounded by deep water from the busted hydrant, where the mysterious, fur-covered creature had now risen up to full height - a good six to seven feet - thrown back it's head, and then given forth a piercing, bloodcurdling howl.
"AAAAAWWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
With it's pointed canine ears, humanoid yet animalistic body, and rows of sharp, yellowed teeth, there was no mistaking what it was; Bonnie's mystery passenger/assailant appeared to be a werewolf. And a furious one, at that.
"It just gets better and better, doesn't it?" mused Barkin with a grim smile. "Just like Jai Alai..."
Bonnie wildly bounded up the porch steps while still carrying on incessantly about the 'icky stuff' on her hands.
"THIS IS SO DISGUSTING, NASTY, SICK AND GROSS! OH GOD, WHY DO THESE HORRIBLE, STUPID THINGS ALWAYS HAPPEN TO MEEEEEEE?!-"
"COOL IT, ROCKWALLER!" shouted Barkin. "You're too loud!"
"WHA-...what?" she cried.
Bonnie briskly looked up in shock as her pouty, helpless eyes met Barkin's fiery, imposing ones. In stunned surprise, her arms dropped limply to her sides, and she forgot all about the icky stuff on her nice, clear skin. She shut her eyes and breathed a deep sigh of relief.
At last...she was safe. But of ALL the people in the world to run into tonight and act as her savior...the resident sourpuss of Middleton High himself - grouchy, scary old Mr. Barkin, who seemed to hate everything...except maybe football or any other activity where people could get hurt.
"Mr...Mr. Barkin?" she asked, meekly.
"That's right" he answered gruffly, spitting out his dead cigar and crushing it under his boot. "At your service. I guess."
"You...you live here?"
"That's right."
"Here...here in this...house?"
"Yes, in this house, Rockwaller. Where did you think I lived? At the school?
Bonnie thought of a snide, smartassed reply, but she wisely kept her mouth shut. She then noticed the intimidating, heavy duty-looking firearm that he was packing.
"Oh, thank GOD, you're ARMED with, like, guns and stuff!" she babbled as she dashed behind him and cowered. "You've just GOT to KILL that thing, Mr. Barkin!" she shouted as she pointed towards the canine beast. "That furry freak tried to take my head off!"
"Can't blame it for trying..." muttered Barkin.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"AWWWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" howled the werewolf.
"Alright, time to put the choke-chain on Rover" seethed Barkin as he grinned maniacally and lifted his AR back to his shoulder.
Bonnie watched intently, suddenly aware that if she survived the night, her sister would rip her to shreds for destroying her car (she still had eleven payments left on it.)
"Eff my life..." she mewled.
Spitting and growling, the werewolf quickly advanced towards Bonnie and Barkin, stomping heavily through the grass on its hind legs and savagely ripping apart wayward zombies that were unfortunate enough to be in its way. A long, silvery trail of drool dripped from its gaping maw as its blood-red eyes lit up in anticipation for a kill.
And a meal.
"Hope you're hungry for some kibbles and blown-to-bits" cackled Barkin as he took aim.