Turbo Ramone

Rainsburg

The gloss black road ripping land missile sailed down the highway, forged from pure, heart-stopping adrenaline. Like the slug from a high-powered rifle, the black Dodge Viper was taking the rural country highway at about thirty miles-an-hour over the posted limit. It was a two-lane highway, centrally located in the heart of the middle of nowhere, and it had been a half hour since the Viper had even passed another vehicle. Rolling green pastures stretched gently into the horizon on the passenger side, the smell of manure and fresh hay came in through the open window. On the driver’s side, lush, tall corn stalks as far as the eye could see, broken occasionally by dense woodlands.

The motor did not purr, it screamed in rage, like a wailing rock singer, demanding the driver to accelerate faster, begging to rip through this country landscape like a force of destruction, leaving only scorched earth in its triple-digit wake. Even at these speeds, the driver had to fight against tunnel vision and an apathetic complacency from being behind the wheel for several hours past what most would have considered safe. Surrounded by fingerless leather gloves, his left hand rose to the steering wheel to join its pair, both gripping tighter. He shook the stars from his vision as he passed a sign, warning of a sharp snake turn ahead, suggesting a maximum speed of forty miles-an-hour. A rare old Four Tops song came on the radio, “Can’t help Myself”, just then, and he reached down to turn it up. The driver smiled, his eyes flickering to the cockpit-esque gauges on the dashboard before quickly darting back to the road. He was doing ninety-eight. He was the car. He was the road. He was Turbo.

“Can’t help myself.” He remarked along with the song.

The driver did not receive such a bold nickname for driving at cautious, rational speeds. Turbo Ramone was a stoic man of many despondencies, quietly bearing the load of a long weighted heart. While ordinarily outwardly a reserved and inflective man, Turbo had an uncanny capacity for action and speed that rested just below the calm surface. Though for a normal man, the speed in which he was entering the turn would have been enough to induce instant panic, this was not one of his many troubles. As the flared fenders of the black beast steered into the sharp turn in the road, Turbo offered to the road and the road alone a rare smile through his black handlebar mustache.

The huge chrome five spoke wheels squelched loudly in protest as the world flew by at rapid pace. The rear end was like a Frankenstein monster suddenly, threatening to take on a life of its own and spin out of control. The sharp turn was blind, masked by a wall of trees to his right, whizzing by so rapidly they might as well have been a single streak. The lines in the center of the road looked like a solid unbroken yellow line, curving at an impossible angle. The Viper was hugging the middle of the road, barely at that, and threatened to leave the road and tumble sideways at any moment. If another car came the opposite direction at this moment, they would both be a blazing wreck of twisted metal before either would know what had happened. Turbo, fearless, thought only in the moment, only of the road and the huge gauges and stiff seating like the cockpit of an F-16.

What happened next would have taken most people several seconds to properly catalogue and process the information properly, which would have been several seconds too late. It came to Turbo as blistering knee-jerk reaction, addressing the road in a robotic-like fashion. The road was declaring war on Turbo and his vehicle, and the big man was firing back with all guns blazing. The weapon in which the he chose to wage war with on the street wasn’t a bomb or a machine-gun but an 8.0-liter V-10 with 750 horsepower. His Viper was not a production car, nor was it even remotely street legal; it was the GTS-R, a monster of a monster.

Turbo hit the brakes and downshifted, immediately followed by a judicious application of throttle. The huge rear wheels lost traction in a plume of white smoke and the black Viper began to drift. Both hands gripping the steering wheel white-knuckle tight, Turbo counter-steered as if operating a speedboat skimming through water. There was a moment of weightlessness, or rather, weight transference. The drift waned along with the sharp corner, Turbo depressed the clutch, reached down and shifted, slamming the gas petal back down. The Viper exited the turn with maximum force, Turbo took in and processed several moments worth of information and efficiently navigated the corner. The snake turn was not through however, but neither was Turbo.

The road hogging, corner blazing, pavement pounding sidewinder bellowed with excitement as it thundered down the road leaving nothing but a cloud of tire smoke in it’s wake. Turbo was no novice driver, and he navigated not only that dangerous snake turn, but also several more after that. Twenty long minutes down the road, after it straightened to an almost boring straightaway, and the adrenaline crazed driver slowed the protesting beast to a crawl. The motor roared like a jet plane as it winded down, and Turbo pulled slightly off to the rocky shoulder. Not that it mattered. Turbo had not passed another living soul for close to an hour now.

Come to think of it, he took no note of it earlier, but he had not seen any trace of civilization in quite some time. An eerie calm seemed to blanket the world now that time had slowed back to its intended speed and the roar of the engines had died away. He opened the door after glancing in the rearview to make sure there was no traffic. With an overdue stretch of his tight, weary muscles, Turbo got out of the car and leaned against it. Now that he was standing completely still the world seemed slow and dull, oddly odd of place. Crickets chirped their rise and fall orchestra in the deserted fields. A bullfrog croaked somewhere in the distance. The hum of horseflies buzzed the air at the edge of where the field met the road. Turbo rubbed his overtaxed eyes under his dark wraparound sunglasses.

The field itself was now bathed in the orange gold of a sunlit blanket. The sun was lower on the horizon than it had been and the dying rays draped across the seas of tall grass in a magnificent way. Turbo stood for a long moment in the middle of the desolate highway, pausing to reach onto his dashboard and retrieve a crumpled pack of cigarettes. Smoke filled his nostrils as the end of the cigarette flared to life under the flame of a cheap lighter. Two left in the pack. He tossed it back onto the dust-caked dashboard and took a long drag, the end glowed red as the twilight deepened the sky above and touched the edges of the horizons. Turbo paused. Still no cars passed.

Turbo walked around to the other side of the car. Both of the windows were down, and he reached inside the passenger side and opened the glove box. Retrieving a map, he began to study it, half leaning, and half sitting on the flared duckbill fender, turned out toward the brilliant sunset. He examined the map closely for several minutes, pinpointing exactly where he should be in relation to the nearest city. He had an unerring direction sense, as good as any sailor at sea. Better.

The map was lying, Turbo knew where he was, and the map was wrong, not him. Turbo sighed and crumpled the map, stuffing it rather unceremoniously back into its dark dwelling place in his glove box. He sighed a breath of cigarette smoke and flicked the butt out into the forlorn, desolate pavement. Judging by the map, this highway did not exist, and he was about two hours into being utterly lost down some abandoned country road. Turbo sunk back into the cockpit that rode mere inches from the street. With a stubborn determination, he decided that he was not lost, his direction sense could not err, he was simply blazing a new path. Like some pioneer of old, like Christopher Columbus himself, Turbo was set out, embarking an undiscovered path…

The key was turned, his gloved finger reached out and pushed the big red button labeled “ENGINE START”. With an unmistakable flare, the engine purred back to life. The low rumble of the exhaust welcomed him back to the driver’s seat. Turbo let off the clutch slowly with one foot and applied slight pressure on the gas petal that seemed to beg for more. The lighted instrument panel frowned at him. The downside of the thrilling, pulse-pounding adrenaline machine was the all consuming hunger, the need to feed, and the dial hung defeatedly to the left, just above the big “E”. And he was two hours or more directly in the heart of the middle of nowhere.

Turbo used the gas petal reluctantly, reaching thirty MPH in a single bound and lurch of first gear. Second and third gear glided seamlessly to a smooth fifty MPH, and the man and machine continued to sail down the blacktop. It felt as though he were barely moving, the conservative speed seemed to barely tax the engine, he could almost feel the machine yawn. He up shifted to fourth and maintained the seemingly painfully slow cruising speed as another mile of stretching fields rolled away. The car was not meant for conservative speeds. Fourth gear still yielded amazing stores of reserve power, pleading to be unleashed. Fifth gear was only used on occasion. Sixth gear scared even the experienced Turbo Ramone.

The sun continued to die in the distance, drawing down toward the horizon, touching the weed and clover fields with its orange-gold light. The Viper continued to glide effortlessly down the two-lane highway, twelve minutes crawled by as an indigo twilight began to choke the edges of the open sky. The road remained flat and straight. Seven minutes later he reached over and flipped the headlights on, the deep purple of the sky had turned into darkness. He then flipped on the windshield wipers. Now that the darkness was deepening around him, the gore splattered across his windshield was more obvious. His car had gone to war with the bugs along this empty highway. The bugs had lost.

Turbo drove for several more minutes, the headlights illuminating a dome directly in front of the car before they bounced off a road sign on his right.

Rainsburg 2.

Two miles. Turbo glanced at the waning gas gauge, he hoped the gas monster would make it another two miles. He also hoped that whatever small town he was coming up on would have a filling station open past dark. He had been through many a small town in the past where the gas stations all closed early. The centerlines continued to tick away at a steady pace. Turbo shifted in the stiff bucket seat, his lower back was constricting painfully from being seated for too many long hours. He wondered just how small the town would prove to be, judging from the surrounding landscape, it would probably be a farming community. Yellow lines. Fields. Trees. Yellow lines.

Something flashed in the corner of his vision. He turned his head to look but had passed by too quickly. Something had moved out in the field across the opposite lane of traffic. Probably a coyote or something. Then suddenly, after so many lonely miles, he saw his first sign of life, a house up on a hill in the distance, barely visible in the darkness. There were no lights, and in all respects seemed vacant. As he passed the lonely house it seemed rather sad and old, probably nobody had lived there for many years, and there were no cars in sight. He drove on a little further before the Viper began to sputter, the gas petal no longer responding to the commands of his boot. He muttered under his breath. Up ahead he saw the only source of light in his entire flat panoramic view. A single red blinking traffic light hanging above the road in the distance. It was eerie in the darkness, it seemed disembodied.

The Viper continued to coast for a few seconds, Turbo's eyes were transfixed on the single focal point within view as it inched closer and closer. Finally, the car grinded to a halt a few feet in front of the blinking light and Turbo muscled the steering wheel and pulled the car off to the shoulder as momentum began to wind down. The car was now stationary, and Turbo looked up at the winking red eye hanging just in front of him. It seemed to be taunting him for running out of gas. He looked both ways down the intersection and saw nothing lit up and open for business. He did however see some more homes up ahead in the distance, though none seemed to be lit. In fact, aside from the one traffic light, there were no streetlights in sight.

Turbo turned on the overhead light and pulled the map out of the glove box again. He searched and searched for several long moments, he could not find Rainsburg anywhere on the map, and from what he could tell, the map was fairly detailed. Something moved in front of the car suddenly, and Turbo's heart began pounding furiously. With the interior light on, he could not see out into the darkness, but his reactions were always fast. One did not receive the nickname Turbo with slow reaction speed. He reached up with blinding speed and held his hand over the light. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. It happened again, a shadow darted through his headlights, moving in an illogical path. All his senses were on high alert, there was something unsettling about being stranded in the darkness. He saw the shadow pass through his headlights again.

Turbo laughed. It was only a bat, going after one of the insects that danced around his headlights. Turbo shut off the headlights and the interior light, turned the ignition off, and with a sigh opened his car door. The sides and undercarriage of the car were burning hot from an overheated exhaust. Turbo more or less had to move to the edge of the seat, and leap out. He looked up one more time as he closed the door. The winking red light was mocking him.

* * * * *

Turbo had tucked his long black duster under his arm, folded over once. It was much too warm to wear the heavy coat, but he could not ignore the utilities that it held inside. His round biceps were so large that they seemed as if they were going to bust open at the seams the white t-shirt that he wore. The sleeves were rolled up and he wore a black leather vest over the shirt, along with the black leather fingerless gloves. Inside the duster he held a harness that would have been impossible to hide under the thin leather vest. It was a custom made holster, and in it were two rather large pistols. Eight inch long chrome barrels that were somewhat heavy even for him were housed in the harness, along with several clips of extra ammunition. They were .45 caliber chrome cannons, made for accuracy and known for their incredible stopping power. They came with a legacy, of all the outlaws and frontiersmen, lawmen and renegades from tales of old. The .45 was an old gun, with a long history.

His own pistols had a history, and were over a decade old. He had to take them apart and clean them frequently. The slide of one racked too easy, the other would occationally get stuck. He just went through a long ordeal last winter replacing the recoil springs on both. It had taken some time just to track the parts down, and then to find the right size was almost a matter for a physics student. Turbo was good with guns, and good with cars, and the two beasts were now ready to fire. He only hoped that he wouldn’t have to use them.

Duster under his arm, Turbo began walking down the street. He wasn’t sure what he’d find up ahead, but he prayed for something. He passed under the traffic light and continued straight down the pavement. After a few minutes of walking, the shadows of buildings began to draw closer into his view. None looked open, but still there might be a gas station near. If there was a town for a community, there would have to be a gas station. The crickets sung their lonely tune underneath the moon as he walked, making their own time and their own melody. He reached down and slid another cigarette out from his pack. One left. He paused briefly on the side of the road to light it, and then continued. The end of the cigarette flared an orange glow in the darkness, as a large gloved hand brought it to his lips.

Another few drags of his cigarette and he found himself nearing what looked to be a junkyard of some sort. Stacks of huge tractor tires towered out front of the darkened office. Along the side was a rundown wooden privacy fence, taller than Turbo by at least a foot, and it was rimmed with barbed wire along the top. The fence was in serious disrepair, missing several wooden boards while others were crooked and leaning sideways. As Turbo began to walk near the fence, he could see patches of the junkyard through the gaps. Great shadows of lonely car husks sat inside. Turbo walked to the office, cupping his hands to the window and looked inside.

He could see that there was nobody inside, the office was empty, but a noise suddenly drew his attention from around back. He raised his head away from the glass and listened for the noise. At first only the eerie calm that blanketed this place came to his ears, the silence was so thick that he could hear his ears ring. Then, a shuffle came from behind the fence. Turbo walked around the side and looked for a gate of some kind. He called out into the darkness, hoping to find someone working late, lingering out back amongst the junk. He got no reply.

Maybe an old man owned this place, hard of hearing, the bounty hunter thought. He found a gate to the fence, much in the same shape as the rest of the building and wooden stakes that made up the fence. He found a latch and tried to open it. It was rusted stuck. Turbo was a large man, and he tried to coerce the door again, more forcefully this time. With a bit of pressure, the gate came open, with a rusty creak the hinges moaned. It looked as though the gate was not often used, perhaps there was another way through to the back, maybe through the office. Turbo stepped through the fence and called out once more.

Still, he received no answer. His eyes scanned the piles of junk rotting away in the back of this place. He saw a sad recliner with no cushion, the armrests had been ripped, exposing the stuffing underneath. There was a lamp with no shade and no bulb, an antique chest with a rusted keylock, and old pictureframe resting against a large piece of sheetmetal. Then, further in, something caught the big man’s eye. He walked through a corral, and made purposful strides inside the junkyard. His boots crunched glass and gravel beneath him.

There it was, a thing of beauty, a hidden treasure, a white lily packed away among piles of litter in the junkyard. It was a shell, an empty husk of its former glory days. It was a '47 Lincoln Continental V-12 convertible. The grille was missing, the headlights were gone, leaving only empty sockets staring back at him. There were two-by-fours leaning against it, the tires were gone. The top was ripped up, it was missing a side mirror and the windshield had been broken decades ago. The fenders were rusted, one beyond repair, and the floorboards were all but missing completely. Turbo’s eyes did not see the lonely car as it sat in the junkyard, his eyes were time travellers, gazing back to a foregone day and age, seeing the car cruising down the road in its heyday. A thing of beauty. Chromed, shining in the sunlight, a hood buffed out so clear that you could see yourself in its mirrored reflection.

Suddenly Turbo heard a shuffling noise again from deeper inside the yard. His eyes looked up past a row of similiarly broken down vehicles. Something fell far back in the darkness, causing a loud clatter. His heart thumped, his senses were on edge, Turbo shifted the weight of his black duster under his arm and took a step away from the car. This time, there was a distinct feeling that accompanied the noise, the feeling of company, a sense that something was near. Always the practical thinker, never one to give in to fear, Turbo called out again.

“Anyone here?”

The sound of his own voice was a brief respite from the silence. Now the only sound was distant night crickets. But still, no one answered him. After a few moments, he began to question his own grasp on reality, whether he had indeed heard a noise or not Whether or not he had ventured into the junkyard on a feeling that someone was back here could not be determined with surety, but he stubbornly held onto the fact that he had heard something a moment ago. Something had been disturbed in the distance, in the deepening shadows, further into the consumer graveyard. Judging by the clatter, it had sounded like something too large for a furrowing possum or other nocturnal pest to have moved, or otherwise somehow disrupt. He took another step towards the origins of the racket.

“Hello?”

As he ventured closer to an old shack or shed of some sort, constructed sloppily from sheet metal with a concrete base, weathered by the years greatly, he held onto the distinct feeling of moving shadows. He watched closely, trying to pin-point some form of activity. A shadow darted quickly, off by pile of antiquated roof shingles, and a stack of old phonebooks, directly ahead of him. Now Turbo was sure that there was something hiding in the shadows, too large to be a racoon or similar varmint, but could not tell if it was humanoid.

He asked himself why would a person have skulked back into the shadows away from him, when he had made every attempt to make his presence known and understood. He thought about his own profile for a moment and hesitated. At six foot three and over two hundred and fifty pounds, with a heavily muscled build, Turbo had never found intimidating anyone to be a complicated matter. Sometimes just the sheer prescence of someone as large as he was could be found threatening. Turbo stopped his forward momentum in mid-stride and froze in place. Perhaps that was all there was to this situation. Perhaps the owner had seen the huge, dark tanned man coming from far-off and thought him to be malevolent, running for safety amidst the shadows of the junkyard.

“Sorry if I scared you. I mean no harm, honest, I only ran outta gas a ways back and was looking for the nearest station.” Turbo tried to keep as much bass from his deep voice as possible, trying his hardest to be as non-threatening as he could. “Or directions.”

An aggressive baleful noise penetrated the shadows suddenly. A low, slow rumble, like that of a chainsaw idling, but definitively coming in a gasp of breath sounded from the darkness ahead. Again Turbo froze, but for a different reason this time. Whatever that noise was, could surely be termed intimidatory and dangerous. He realized that it seemed like the growl of a malignant wolf of some type, but not like that of any he had ever heard before. His hand slid into his long black coat as a large shadow shifted menacingly towards him.

His other hand slid up instinctively to his dark, lightweight, wraparound sunglasses. His finger felt along the edge and found a streamlined nitch, pushing it in without thought or hesitation. The world suddenly changed from darkness to a green luminescence as a nightvision feature toggled on. He could now see the amorphous green shape of a quadriped inching towards him. Of course, he cursed himself for not thinking of it earlier. A junkyard dog, probably mistreated and trained to be mean, so that it would attack any possible intruders. If that were the case, Turbo realized that he had no chance now of backing away from the animal without incident, now that he had alerted the beast and raised its ire. The most that he could hope for was that the animal was chained, and that he could escape its range.

Turbo backed away cautiously, trying to keep his movements slow and unthreatening. As he backpedeled, he gained speed. His boots ground into the gravel and broken bits of junk that lay scattered about. His attention fully focused on the threat looming before him, his backward steps were blind. He felt his calf strike against something solid and jagged. He fought against his momentum, reversing his body weight in a desperate attempt to retain his balance. He managed to retain his footing, barely, and with a great deal of effort, but he realized too late that the animal had percieved his sudden movements as a threat. With a ferocious growl, the beast lunged out from the shadows.

Turbo did not want to harm an animal, no matter how dangerous it might be, but he was instantly taken aback at the sight of the creature. The dog was not just mean, it seemed to be suffering from some sort of disease. It was lean, and pustuous boils covered one side of its face and body. The fur was spotty, and in some cases, seemed to have shed away. It was so lean and malnourished, that its ribs were showing, and Turbo spotted white on its side. Its rib was actually showing through a portion of its skin that had festered and rotted away. Froth dripped from its snarling maw, a sickly green mucus color.

Turbo had quickly changed his mind about the situation after a quick reaccessment. Whatever degenerative disease this creature was suffering from was obviously rotting it away. Someone had not bothered to consider putting the animal out of its misery. The dog, teeth bared, leaped forward agressively, the low rumble turned into a rageful bark. A flash of light illuminated the darkness, accompanied by a ringing crack. Now someone had bothered.

Turbo smelled the gunpowder fill the air as the dog fell to the earth. The bullet had passed through the dog’s open mouth and come out through the back of its jaw with a spray of red mist. His vision caught the image briefly as the gun lit up the night. He saw a puddle pooling at the animal’s cranium, the carcass spasmed twice before falling still. Turbo slid his chromed pistol back into the holster in his coat, still underneath his arm, but now exposed for access.

Obviously this place was empty, and there was no further use in sifting around, so Turbo turned to leave. He was tired from the road, and after the image of the dog crept back into his mind, he felt suddenly drained of energy. He wanted nothing more now then to find a motel of some kind and sleep the rest of the night away, the gas, and his car could wait. Rubbing his tired eyes with his gloved hand, he walked back out through the fenced area, not bothering to latch the creaking rusty gate behind him. He caught the faintest scent as he left, something overpowering and pungent, yet fleeting at the same time. Before he had considered the smell, it was gone again, forcing the bounty huinter to question whether the scent had ever existed. Probably a tire somewhere with nasty bacteria filled standing water. No doubt the smell would preclude a swarm of hungry mosquitos.

Turbo moved quickly back to the street and continued down what appeared to be a main street. The next thing that he passed was another decayed old house. With a quick glimpse of the porch and the way the wood was sunken and warped, in places showing open holes, he decided that nobody was home and probably haven’t been in some time. He kept walking, biting down a rising frustration. There had to be someone around, there was no such thing as a true “ghost town” in modern days. The whole place began to take an eerie twist, why were so many places here dormant? Had many of the residents left for some reason?

Turbo continued walking for another fifty paces, and came to the main drag of the town. There was a movie store on the left, a tackle and bait store on the right, and he noted with a laugh, a rifle store behind that. Rural towns could be very much alike, he thought. As he continued past the darkened stores, he noticed something quite odd. He voiced his concerns to himself under his breath.

“Hello. Why would the door to the movie store be left swinging open at this hour?”

His gloved hand slid quickly into the coat that he had still folded under his arm. His fingers felt the cool steel and wrapped around the handle tightly, bringing the weapon to bear subtly. He had the barrel pointed out, but still concealed under his coat as he quickstepped across the street. He fell into a tactical position outside the doorway and listened for any sign of foul play. His first thoughts were of a break-in, be it a robbery or vandalism. He waited for a twenty count and heard nothing. Then, with a practiced maneuver, he entered the small store, gun first in a squatting position. Turbo moved quickly to the next source of cover, which happened to be the checkout counter. He waited another ten count and still heard nothing unusual.

Turbo peeked up from the counter, scanning the darkness for any signs of recent activity. First his detective skills went towards examining the door, watching the handle and lock for any signs of tampering or break-in. To his surprise, he saw no signs of either, the door had simply been left open it seemed. His brain moved through the possibilities quickly, there may have still been the chance that a vandal or theif had somehow gotten ahold of a key. He quickly turned his skills towards the rest of the dark store. It was not very big, maybe thirty strides across and forty deep, at least with a quick estimation. He rose to his feet and studied the darkness. After a few seconds, his studious eyes caught a detail that seemed out of place.

Turbo walked deeper into the store, finding a familiar shaped hole in the wall. To his trained eyes, it looked suspiciously like a bullet hole. Turbo quickly worked out the trajectory, figuring out by the impact center that the bullet had not been fired from nearby. He could find no evidence of residue, and his eyes went back further. He had missed it before, but now could see that a far window had been broken, and by his guess it had been by a bullet. It could have simply been a case of vandalism, someone shooting out windows, but his senses didn’t allow that thought to settle in for long. Quickly Turbo fell back outside, and by his estimation, followed the path of the bullet to the gun store. He fell back a few more steps and looked at the front of the video store again.

“What the…?”

There were many more bullet holes, scattered across the building, and they all seemed to have been fired from a distance. From across the street, from the gun store. His eyes scanned the holes and saw that there were many different sized holes, some seemed to be from a rifle, and some from a handgun. Turbo walked back across the street cautiously. He figured that if the shooter had still been around, he could have already had several opportunities at the bounty hunter if he’d wanted them. The question here was now why had someone presumably opened fire from the gun store onto the video store? Was their selection that horrible? With long strides Turbo crossed the empty street and fell against the gun store. His eyes took in a number of details at a glance now that he was alert. The window of this store had been shot out as well, and from the few glass shards that still remained on the outside of the building, he figured the shooting had been done from the inside. Also he noticed that the door to this building had been kicked in, there was evidence on the lock and damage on the walls.

Turbo looked in through the open window. Many more details caught his eye, chief among them were the spent shell casings littering the floor. Some of the brass had slight rusting along the edges, and the carpet smelled of mildew. That told him that there had been rain here recently, and that whatever happened here was not fresh. Then his eyes peered in farther, and opened a little wider in surprise. All of the guns were missing! Turbo saw that though there seemed to be a hundred shell casings on the ground, there were no guns in sight. The mystery was deepening.

Turbo thought he heard a distant noise, and he realized when he heard it that he had heard no other noise since he had entered the main drag of the town. Quickly he moved, but he remained cautious and mindful of his surroundings. He saw that up ahead, there was a sideroad, and it led down a small gravel road and ended with a long building. A lodge, a men’s club of some sort, by the looks of it. It was dark, but Turbo saw a flash of movement from the side of the building. He could not be certain of what he saw, but it seemed to be a person running.

“Why does it always have to be like this?” He uttered as his feet began moving towards the distant shadowy building, the sound of his boots crunching gravel echoed through the stillness of the air.

* * * * *

The door swung open, illuminating a square patch inside of the building slightly, with the pale light from outside. There was wreckage in the halls, a large box, a heavy ashtray, an old style microwave. Turbo continued inside, past the debris, and farther down a long hallway. He eventually came to what looked like a greeting center, there was a crescent shaped desk in the middle of an open room. Turbo looked up to the ceiling and around the floor for any signs of recent activity. His studious eyes caught more than one detail. First was an older style wall mounted clock, the kind that they used to use in schools when he was young. It had a cage around it, like they used to use in P.E. classes, to guard from the stray basketballs and such. The clock had frozen still at 6:27, indictating that the power must have gone off suddenly. There was no way to tell from the clock if it was AM or PM. Second, he noticed a coat closet in the far corner that was filled with heavy winter coats. They were not hung up neatly, but rather scattered and thrown inside. An odd sight this late in the summer. Third, there was a sign declaring the pool to be closed. He had clues, but nothing yet to piece them together.

Turbo walked over to the reception desk and studied it. On the ground was a coffee mug, chipped off at the top. Also the computer screen was broken, and the keyboard was hanging from the desk, still plugged in, but not long enough to reach the ground. He went over to the coat closet and began sifting through the pockets in an attempt to find more clues.

Fact: Something strange is going on here. There was a firefight outside.

Fact: Something happened at 6:27, abruptly cutting off the power. The coffee mug says that it was probably AM. The building hours are clearly labeled, this place doesn’t usually open until nine AM. There were people here early, or since the power outage.

Fact: They weren’t here to use the pool.

Turbo took a guess and walked farther inside. He was unfamiliar with the layout of the building, but began working his mind tactically, through the floor plans and hallways. As he walked, he remembered the outside of the building and the layout of the windows. A quick look in one of the doorways told him that the windows had been barricaded. Some had plywood nailed up, some simply just had debris thrown in front of them, some looked to have a combination of both. Someone was trying to keep someone or something out of this building. He thought quickly, and walked through the quiet corridors towards the center of the building. He found exactly what he was looking for a few minutes later.

Tactically speaking, if he was forced to hole up inside of this building, assuming he had plenty of supplies and ammunition, he would make for the basement. The staircase greeted him as he rounded a dark corner. At the center, with no power for the lights, it was as pitch black as a cave. His hand went up to the side of his wraparound sunglasses and depressed a button. A moment later, his nightvision was engaged, bathing the decending stairs in a green glow. He didn’t know what he would find down those stairs, but his feet began going down them anyway. He wondered what drove him on, was it curiosity, bravery, or stupidity? Some sense of duty to unravel the truth? In the end he figured it was only the pursuit of gasoline, nothing more. That’s what he told himself.

Turbo walked down the rest of the stairs, there was a rectangular sign hanging overhead that proclaimed that the cafeteria lie ahead. He reached the bottom of the stairs and traveled through a long hallway before coming to the opening of the cafeteria. He immediately noticed more spent shell casings littering the ground. There were a few of the tables that were turned sideways and arranged to create a blockade. Turbo cautiously walked around them and looked on the other side. He wasn’t expecting what he saw, but it did not surprise him either. There were a dozen dead bodies, badly decomposed lying on the floor. He paused at them, death was never a plesant thing to come across unexpectedly. Around them were a heavy cache of weapons and more shell casings. There were mostly hunting rifles lying next to the bodies, bolt action 30-06’s, three or four twelve gauges, a lever action Marlin, .41 Magnum if he wasn’t mistaken. A Browning over and under shotgun, a Winchester 30-30, and more than a few revolvers lying around, mostly .38’s it looked like. The mystery of the empty gun store seemed solved. There were boxes of ammunition stacked in a corner, amidst three more skeletal remains, their lipless smiles were unnerving.

Turbo scanned the area and saw hundreds of holes scattered about the walls of the stairwell and the hallway leading up to the cafeteria. All around the cafeteria were more holes, he could recognize the patterns and distinguish the buckshots from the solid rifle bores. Most disturbing were the holes fired in patterns along the ceiling. Whoever had made a stand here, had been firing at something that moved quickly, and unless they were simply hallucinating, had crawled along the ceilings. Whatever they had been shooting at was long gone, leaving no trace except for the mutilated decomposed remains that were left in the room. The eerie green glow from his nightvision cast weird shadows, but as he looked at a few of the nearby bodies, he made another startling discovery. Not all of the skeletons had decomposed naturally, it seemed from the damage to the bones that some had been forcefully removed of their skin tissue. He saw one particular body that especially unnerved him. He couldn’t tell exactly what had happened to it, but by the looks of things, it seemed as though it had been blown up. The tragectory didn’t quite add up, it seemed as though it had been exploded from the inside out.

Turbo heard a sifting noise suddenly in the corner, no louder than a roach or a rat scuttling but made his heart skip a beat. He turned to look and saw something that he was not prepared for and wished for many years afterwards that he could expunge from his long term memory. His blood froze and he wanted to cry out, and indeed some gasp of intense disgust did excape from his lips. It was so shocking that his hands did not immediately reply to the summons he requested for his pistols to be there at the ready.

It was strangely attached to the corner, whatever it was, this creature that could only be decribed as utterly alien, composed of no natural earthly origins. If the mind could simultaneously conjure images of an octopus type pulpy frame, a crab, a spider and a brain, it would not be totally untrue to the nature of the creature. It had a palpable, bulbous center that rested in the corner of two walls and the ceiling, it was veiny and wet looking. Long crab or spider-like appendages came out from the center of the watermelon sized body and held fast to the wall. Stalks protruded from the center, what could have been eyes or some form of sensory organ. Long tentacles hung down limp and lifeless and trailed to the ground, as if vines from an exotic plant. Though the center of the body was only roughly watermelon sized, the appendages, though not fully extended and held inwards looked to have a radius of two men, arms outstretched, fingers touching. Turbo thought that he might go mad from phobia had the disgusting thing moved suddenly towards him. Whether it was dangerous or not, the mental phobia of such a creature was so overwhelming that it seemed as though he would die if it simply touched him in any manner.

Whatever this thing was, was not and could not be natural. Turbo didn’t know if he was witnessing some monstrosity of nature that had never been documented, or if this was some totally alien creature. Not that it mattered much. The initial morbid curiosity and dread that had froze him in place had worn off, his guns were now in his hands. He heard the thing make a soft sucking noise, whether it came from the pulpy body or the tentacles was impossible to distinguish. The gun barrels were both pointed towards the center of its body, there was a slight hesitation, a fear of disturbing the thing and having to see it move. His gloved fingers rested on the triggers for a brief moment, and then he pulled them until there were no more deafening booms and no more flashing muzzle blasts but simply clicks as empty chambers ran out of things to fire.

There was no hissing or screeching sound as the thing was shot, as one might have expected from such an unholy abomination. There was simply a wet sound as it fell to the ground, combined with a chitinous thunk of the long blade-like legs. When it fell to the floor, Turbo leaped a few steps back, though he told himself it was not out of fright, somewhere he knew better. Now that it lie motionless on the floor, Turbo could see a horizontal slit that was probably a mouth of some sort. Something leaked out from the opening, a paste of some sort. Turbo did not want to even think about what it may be, he simply turned and took a few steps away from the dead creature with a shudder that resonated deep in his bones.

In the dead quiet of the empty building, or rather, seemingly the entire town, a clatter began from upstairs. The noise was startling and sudden, Turbo responded with a jolt. He judged it to be coming from the front door, perhaps the reception area. It sounded as if many footsteps were shuffling into the building, he hoped that they were the sound of human strides, but the strong gait seemed to imply a singular purpose, and that purpose seemed to be him. Turbo reacted quicker than most would, wasting no time in complaining or contemplation. He went to work, simple and plain, as most would go back to work after a lunch break. He began to gather the weapons together, pushing bullets into them hastily. It seemed as though whatever these dead men had tried to keep out was now coming back. A teasing thought entered Turbo’s mind, before he had a chance to push it out forcefully. Whatever these men had tried and failed to keep out was now returning. And from the sound of it, they were coming back for Turbo.

* * * * *

Another day at the office. Turbo chuckled as he slid a final bullet into the chamber of the lever action hunting rifle and flipped the safety switch off. Some people went to work at an office, nine to five, came home and relaxed for a few hours in front of a television program. Some worked manual labor, building and constructing the things that we all use from day to day, from shopping malls to gas stations to the roads that we drive on. Turbo wished at that moment that he had one of those jobs.

Truck driver. School teacher. Mailman? Any of those would be good about now. This crap is for the birds. Plain and simple.

The commotion upstairs was getting louder, and closer. Whatever was up there was definitely coming towards him now, and from the sound of it, they knew exactly where to find him. He couldn’t judge from the sound how many there were, but it sounded like several. There had once sat in this very room more than ten people, and they failed at staving off whatever evil force was now coming at him. Combined, they had failed. Now it was just him, how could he possibly hope to succeed where a group of people had failed?

‘Cause they ain’t me.

It was a simple answer, and one that came quickly to his thoughts. .

There was more shuffling, this time closer. It seemed as though whoever was coming was now right at the threshold of the staircase. All at once, the movement stopped, and all was perfectly silent once more. Turbo’s finger was still on the trigger of the rifle, he stared curiously down the hall, resting the gun against one of the overturned tables. Why had they suddenly stopped?

“Turbo Ramone, retrieval agent.” He bellowed in a loud commanding voice. “I’m armed. Identify yourselves and come down with your hands raised where I can see them if you don’t want to be my enemy.”

Turbo waited a moment, all was silent. All activity seemed to have ceased and he received no reply. He counted the seconds, waiting a twenty count in the darkness before calling out again. He knew that there was still someone up there, he had clearly heard them come to the staircase and stop, and knew that he had not heard anyone leave.

“I know there’s someone there. Identify yourself immediately. Safety’s off and if I don’t get a reply, I’m shooting at anyone that comes down those stairs.”

Again he was replied only by an eerie silence. He wondered what was going on, why was he getting no reply? He gave them fair warning, if they persisted, he would make good on his promise and open fire on the first target that presented itself. He wished that there had been any form of light available to him at that moment. The green light from his nightvision illuminated an otherwise completely dark situation, but there were subtleties that he could not detect. Details, shadows, other clues that he was missing in the dark.

Turbo heard a noise suddenly, his eyes picked up on a distant glob of light that presented itself at the visible part of the stairs. He lowered his head to the gun, placing his cheek against the stock of the rifle, so that if he had to fire, his face would move with the movement of the gun instead of being punched in the face by the kickback. His eyes looked down the sight at the end of the barrel. He wasn’t the best shot, never would he be mistaken as a marksman, though he had plenty of pratice and experience. He was only accurate with a scope doing the work for him, and even then was no sniper. It wouldn’t have mattered if the weapon had a scope in the pitch darkness anyway. He lined the barrel sight up with the unidentified figure that was trying to sneak down the stairs. Someone was underestimating him. They should have figured that if he’d found a way down to where he was in the darkness, that he had a way to see as well.

His finger pulled the trigger and a loud crack echoed through the building, and left a trailing ring in his ears. Fifteen minutes ago, he wasn’t planning on doing any shooting, but after seeing the unholy abomination in the corner, now he wasn’t planning on taking any chances. He pulled the lever quickly, ejecting the spent brass casing and loading another round into the chamber with a loud click. He was about to fire another round at the staircase at the far end of the hallway when the figure disappeared back to the top.

Someone’s playing games with me. I know I didn’t hit anything, but at least they know I’m serious. Now they know that I’m not playing games with them.

A few minutes went by, his eyes were fixed on the staircase with an intensity, refusing even to blink. A few more minutes went by, and his eyes began to burn from their intense vigil. He finally took his finger off of the trigger and rubbed his eyes under the sunglasses. He wanted to sleep. He wanted to eat. Mostly, he wanted to get out of this town so bad. He knew that whatever was up there was waiting for him, the false silence a trap. He looked around to the various guns on the floor, accessing their strengths and weaknesses. It was a standoff here, and he knew that if whatever was up there was going to refuse and come at him, then he would eventually have to go through them. He looked behind him to the creature that still lie motionless on the floor, just to reassure himself that it was actually there and not simply a hallucination or figment of his imagination.

“Ok, you wanna play, let’s play.”

Turbo slung the rifle over his shoulder and picked up a bolt action 30-06 with a shoulderstap and swung that over his other shoulder. He then chose a shotgun that did not have the three shot choke and began to load it. After pumping a buckshot into the chamber, he stood up. Determined now to get the heck out of this place, he would go through whatever was waiting for him up there.

I’m not sure exactly why, but I feel the need to give whatever’s up there one last warning before I come up blasting. Maybe I’m hoping it isnt a monster spider octopus creature but a regular person. But then again, it’s always a monster spider octopus creature, who am I kidding?

Turbo went up the stairs, leading with the barrel of the twelve gauge shotgun. Again, he held his face flush with the stock, the shotgun would kick a lot worse than the rifle if he would have to use it. He was ready to use it too, and the butt of the stock was held firmly between his chest and shoulder, ready to absorb the blow. Turbo came up the stairs fast, sliding his back and shoulder against the wall. When he got to the top, he dropped to one knee in a tactical shooting position, and began aiming around the room with the barrel of the gun, searching out possible threats and danger.

He heard a noise across the room, his gun was aimed in the direction before he realized that he had moved it. He saw something scramble through some debris but could not focus a good shot, nor could he even identify the object as a target. It looked to be vaguely man sized, but was still possible that it was simply a wild animal that had wandered into the building by accident. That would indeed explain the failure to comply or even reply to his demands. He paused a moment to listen and react. Whatever it was seemed intent on looping around in front of him. He followed the faint audio trail that the creature gave him, keeping his eyes open for an opportunity. All was strangely quiet for a few moments.

Then, unexpectently, something leaped out of the darkness to his left. Turbo drew a startled gasp and stepped backwards. He only got a glimpse of it before he spun the shotgun to his side and fired, the decision being made in less time than it took to blink an eye. The sudden flash of light illuminated the target for a split second, furthering Turbo’s mounting concerns. The twelve-gauge opened the room with a powerful call, echoing down the many corridors. It punched the stock into Turbo’s chest and shoulder, but with the adrenaline running, he barely felt it. His hands slid the pump quickly, ejecting the spent casing and loading a new one with a loud metallic click.

Tell me I didn’t just see what I thought I saw. Tell me I didn’t just shoot what I thought I just shot. Son of a—

Turbo saw the thing now up close. It had leaped closer to him than he thought before the exploding buckshot tore through it and knocked it away. It was summarily human, but the brief glimpse that Turbo had looked into its eyes told him that it was no longer to be grouped into that classification. Vaguely human, but not fully. What was it then?

The thing moved at Turbo’s feet, and he choked down a digusted look and a revulsion that made him want to run the opposite direction. It had once been human, of that much he was certain, but what he could call it now, his mind drew a blank. It moved, scuttled back to its feet, despite a half dozen gory pellet wounds dispersed across its chest and arms, from point blank range. Turbo snarled, firing another buckshot into the thing’s face as it rose. He pumped the gun and fired another round into it as it fell backwards from the initial blast. The two gunshots briefly deafened him, and turned the building’s audio into a continual ring. Turbo took a reflexsive step back, clicking the pump back once more and aiming the weapon at the thing at his feet.

It could have been a zombie from a monster movie, but that did not quite convey the alarming alien features, nor the utter horror of the thing. It looked as if it had been human, but deteriorated drastically, like a corpse in the sun. But then, that did not quite explain the features either, because as Turbo looked upon the thing for a moment, he realized that it was not quite deteriorated, as it was transformed. Not as a corpse rotting, he realized, but as a larvae transforming, transitioning. Into what he had no idea, but quite obviously into something other than human.

Turbo kicked the body with the toe of his boot, gathering up a well of bravery simply to do that. He imagined the thing leaping back to life and grabbing his leg, springing up to bite at his face, and was ready for that possibility. In the end the corpse laid still, and he was eventually confident that it was dead. The buckshots had torn through its face and chest, leaving a gruesome sight that he would not wished upon anyone’s long term memory. It had been disgusting and revolting before he had shot it, but now it was a bloody mess, leaking out and leaving a dark expanding stain on the carpeted hallway.

Guess that’s what they were shooting at? Mutant zombie things? Great. I love mutant zombie things, even more than monster spider octopus creatures. Hot damn. We’re in business now.

Turbo’s attention was ripped away from the body on the floor by the sound of shuffling up ahead, the sound of the first thing he had heard moving again. As soon as he brought the gun to bear and searched the area, all fell unnaturally silent once more. Turbo backed up against the wall and began slowly walking around the opposite side of the pile of wreckage lying in the hallway, obscuring his view. He was ready to pull the trigger as he walked around and got a better visual angle, he was certain that something was there. Then, to his utter surprise, when he walked fully around the debris, he saw that there was nothing there. It made no sense. No sense at all until…

Something drew Turbo’s attention, whether it was training, good reflexes, luck or movement was a moot point. Turbo’s eyes shifted up and caught sight of another zombie creature attached to the ceiling like a spider, a few feet from his head. Ropes of drool fell from the creature’s mouth, its yellow eyes looked upon the bounty hunter malevolently. Moreover, Turbo gazed past the thing and saw several other things that could only be classified as sub-human crawling along the ceiling towards him. Crawling like spiders. A sudden aversion swept over the large man, there was nothing in this world that could repulse him like spiders. It took no great reflex for Turbo to draw the shotgun up and fire the remaining two shots at the closest, all the while backing away in shock.

“Get away, get away!”

Turbo backed into a metal bar, the handle to a set of double doors. He pushed in with his hip, swinging the door open with his body weight and backed inside quickly. He found himself backing inside a large banquet or convention room, with a stage at the far end of the room and long tables on either side leading up to it. He ran to the opposite side of the room and pulled out a box of buckshot shells that he had taken from downstairs. In a few seconds he had pushed five shots back into the gun and cocked the pump action, loading one into the chamber. He ducked his body behind a banquet table without thinking, years of tactical training taking over instinctually. The gun barrel was aimed towards the door, and he heard something outside applying pressure on the handle. Something was trying to come in.

Turbo waited for several moments as the sound of something struggling with the door grew louder and more frustrated. If those things outside were trying to come in, then what was stopping them? He had not placed any form of barricade in front of the door. Now that he thought about it, that would have been a good idea, but he had no time, simply wanting to create space between him and those things.

Something puts my senses on end. Those things have no reason that they can’t come in, so why the song and dance? Why play with the door like boogey men trying to scare a little kid? Something weird here that I haven’t figured out yet…

Turbo had no more time for thought. His nightvision suddenly failed, bathing the world once more in a cold blackness, engulfing him totally. Panic rose within him, as he suddenly went blind. He could no longer see anything, and squinted through the darkness to try and watch the door. He suddenly remembered something else he’d been carrying inside of his duster, and with quick desperate hands, he grabbed for it. It had been an afterthought when he put it inside his pocket, but now he was thankful that he had. He clicked the end of the long object, sending a shower of blue and white sparks into the air. A simple roadflare, blazed brightly and bathed the room in its soft glow.

Turbo could now see that the door still wasn’t open, and for whatever reason, wasn’t moving anymore. He thought of an old diversion tactic, and quickly looked around the rest of the room, with the road flare held high. He cried out as his worst suspicions proved true. They had come from behind while Turbo’s attention was focused on the door, and they were now crawling along the ceiling almost right on top of him. Also Turbo saw the shadow of something larger behind the creeping ghouls, something that made him want to gasp. Was it another of the alien things?

Tossing the flare up into the air, The bounty hunter had the shotgun up against his shoulder, and sparks flew from the muzzle in a loud explosion, even before the light hit the floor. So many forms of phobia were gripping at his stomach at that moment that something happened inside him. All conscious thought shut down, and he went into what his friends called the “Turbo zone”. There was no longer any revulsion, fear or panic, Turbo suddenly was living purely in the moment, and nothing more. More a machine than a man in this state, Turbo searched out enemies and threats, mentally cataloguing every detail. The pump action worked fast, and another blast came from the barrel of the gun. Buckshots tore the air above him, and before he could think about his actions, all five shots had fired at the creeping things above.

Here I am. Rock you like a hurricane!

“Duh duh duh…Come on suckahs!”

Turbo issued his challenge into the darkness as he swung the lever action rifle around, dropping the empty shotgun to the ground.

The buckshots could not miss at such close range, and several shadowy things had fallen from the ceiling, ripped apart and shredded by the exploding rounds. Turbo could not tell if these things still moved, and had no time to check. He knew that several other things were moving in the darkness, and without his nightvision, he knew that he was in serious trouble. They could be anywhere and everywhere, surrounding him in the darkness, and probably were. He knew that staying in one spot right now was a serious tactical error, but the cone of light that the burning road flare was now producing from the ground was the only thing that was saving him at that moment.

The flare cast flickering shadows across the room, and he pointed the gun at phantoms for a few moments, every sense wide awake and alert. Something leaped at him suddenly from ground level, before he had a chance to think about his next movement, the gun was leveled and he squeezed the trigger. The zombie like creature came at him with an incredible leaping force, but the bullet from the hunting rifle, made to bring down large game, went through its skull. The skull cracked, and whatever malaise it was suffering from, the bullet instantly cured. Turbo stepped aside and clacked the lever, a single brass round clinked to the floor. The vaguely human creature slid past him, and when its momentum died, it no longer moved at all. Turbo heard the door behind him now open. He was surrounded. Turbo Ramone, though he felt fear, was never one to back down from a challenge.

“Bring it on you ugly soambitches, you fought the law and the law won.”

Turbo aimed the gun towards where he remembered the door being, though in the darkness he could no longer make visual contact anymore. His eyes were alert though, and darting around to make sure that nothing was creeping inside the cone of light from the flare behind him. The worst tactical position you could be in, he knew, was flanked from front and rear. Something gave the creatures pause, though his heart was racing, his mind envisioning every possibility, nothing leaped out at him for a few moments. He knew that they were there, all around and just out of sight.

Turbo took out the box of shells, and carefully, with one hand still on the rifle, began reloading the shotgun. Something moved from behind, casting a shadow. He leveled the rifle with one hand and fired, and saw something go tumbling away. He dropped the shotgun again and worked the lever quickly, firing the rest of the gun's payload into the ceiling behind him. In all his excitement, Turbo fired the gun too fast to even keep a mental count of how many bullets he'd fired. It came up short before he realized it, and he clicked the trigger on empty. Without thinking, Turbo threw the rifle into the darkness and scooped the shotgun back up.

Gotta get outta here quick, make a move. But then again that’s what I’m all about. It’s right there in the name. Fear isn’t on my usual diet, but something similar is rising in the pit of my stomach.

Turbo ignored the figures skulking behind him and ran for the door. He hoped that he could outrun them. He slowed briefly when he reached the door, since it opened to the inside, he had to pause to open it. He took a deep breath and threw himself through the door, firing a blind shot through the other side of the opening. His buckshot met the face of a hungry creature, that had been waiting on the other side of the doorway for him. Turbo did not stop to admire his shot, or to make sure that the thing was dead, he began running, full speed down the hall. As Turbo ran, he heard things dropping behind him, and imagined them to be more ghouls that fell from the ceiling to pounce upon him. Turbo ran fast, in fact, Turbo ran faster than he had ever run in his entire life. For that one long sprint, he was eighteen again, in the best shape of his life. The creatures that he did not look up to see could not even fall on him before he had passed underneath them. Turbo pumped the shotgun, aimed it backwards over his shoulder, and squeezed the trigger, firing a blind shot behind him.

Turbo quickly reached the front reception area once more, and in his rush, he felt so swift, so light, like he was almost supernatural himself. He bounded high into the air, not wanting to pause to go around the desk, he would hurtle over it. That's when Turbo's flight came crashing down on him. He may have felt eighteen again for a moment, but his body reminded him that he was not, as he tried to hurtle the desk. It was bigger than he had remembered, and he was not as limber as he used to be. He was not even aware of the act of falling until he was almost down, and managed somehow to roll with it in order to lessen the impact. His hip struck the desk painfully, a shock went through him like being shot. He landed on the other side of the desk with a lot less grace than he'd have liked. The 30-06 unslung from his shoulder as he tumbled, and he took it in one hand and the shotgun in the other.

Turbo rose, a gun in each hand, to address the horde of scuffling creatures that he heard bounding towards him in the darkness. He aimed them both in a path that he imagined would bring them against the unholy creatures and pulled both triggers. Both guns were not meant to be fired with only one hand, and both weapons nearly kicked Turbo's arms out wide. He rested the shotgun on the counter of the reception desk and pulled back the bolt on the rifle, and then rammed it back into place, driving another round into the chamber. He fired and repeated the process, and then again, until the trigger was pulled and nothing came out but a soft click. Turbo grabbed a fistful of shells from the box, and then threw the box out into the darkness. He reached inside of his coat and pulled out his last road flare, igniting it instantly. As he heard the creatures recoiling and then scrambling back towards him, Turbo threw the flare at the box of shells, and then ducked swiftly behind the counter.

There were suddenly flashes of light and noise, almost like a fireworks display. Almost. Tiny pellets ripped through the desk and showered the ducking man with wood chips. The metal part of the desk was torn through with tiny holes too. Turbo felt a sting in his hamstring and glute, like the bite of a terrible mosquito. The light show continued behind him, but Turbo kept his head down and double timed towards the door. He heard the ringing of pellets bouncing all around him, off the walls and ceiling as he ran. He realized that he was limping heavily, and could not move as fast as he wanted to, and he wanted to be out of there fast. Turbo reached the front doors with a breath of relief, and threw himself against them. When they opened, his hip and his leg gave out on him, and Turbo rolled to the ground on the front porch area of the lodge. He leaned on the shotgun and, using it like a crutch, rose once more to his feet. A chuckle escaped his lips, he had escaped. Despite all odds he was once again outside.

There was a noise suddenly to his left, out in the woods that brought reality crashing back into his skull. Turbo quickly began to limp back down the gravel road away from the lodge, pushing shells into the shotgun as he went. Suddenly, surrounded on both sides by the dark ominous trees, the lodge did not seem so bad.

Two.

Three left. Turbo thought as he jingled the shotgun shells inside of his pocket. Shotgun's full, but only three left after that. Sure, I still got my handguns, but those are crap. I can't hit $#@^ with 'em, and they jam a lot. $@#!! I knew I should have put the new firing pins in 'em, just wasn't really expecting to have to rely on them. Been meaning to replace them for a long time. Was just being lazy really, guess I get what I deserve. My hip hurts bad, I really knocked it outta place on that desk. Knocked the #@$% out of it! Guess that's what I get for trying to leap around like Chuck Norris, I'm not twenty anymore. My leg burns too, I know a few of those pellets hit me, I'm scared to look.

Turbo continued down the gravel, the sound of his boots crunching echoed loudly. He was making more noise than he would’ve liked. His hand went up to his sunglasses and tapped the side, he was sorely missing his nightvision. To his surprise, the world flared to green once more, and he could see.

#@$%! Now those are acting up too! I never had a problem with 'em before. One more thing to fix. #@$%!

Every step he took shot a flame down his leg and hip, Turbo grimaced against the pain and kept walking, imagining the creatures from that building chasing after him in the still darkness. For some reason, the walk back seemed a lot longer than before. He hoped that he was imagining it. Finally Turbo reached the end of the gravel and lopped back out onto the main road that he'd started on. This time, the main street took on a sinister twist, and seemed to hold a lurking evil in every shadow, behind every door, in every window grinning out at him. He saw shadows move in his nightvision on the side of the bait shop. He didn't bother raising his shotgun, the buckshots would be ineffectual at this range anyway, but he kept his eyes trained on the spot. Now he was growing concerned. Whatever had happened to this town, it now seemed happened to the whole town. He heard another noise off to his side, this time closer. Turbo spun around with the shotgun leading, only to be surprised by a human voice.

"Ho, don't shoot! I heard gunshots, I wondered if someone else was out here, shooting at those things."

"Pool's closed." Turbo replied absently, motioning over his shoulder at the lodge. "Who are you?"

"Whole town's infested. I can't believe that your real! Like a real person I mean, it's been so long..." The stranger waved a hand in the air, and Turbo realized that he too was armed, with a hunting rifle. "I'm Glenn, come with me."

Turbo simply stared at the man, not knowing what to think. The man turned back and saw that the large stranger was not following and then regarded him again.

"Hurry up, those things will come, any minute!"

Turbo waited a moment, and then eventually nodded and motioned for the man to lead on. He was limping badly, but he moved to follow. He wasn't sure what to think, if this was yet another weird trick of some sort, he did not know what to trust anymore. Glenn seemed to recognize this and addressed the large bounty hunter.

"It's alright man, I know what you're thinkin'. Yeah I'm a real person. Damn sure ain't like them!"

"If the whole town's infested, then why the hell are you still here?"

"Trust me on this friend. You don't wanna go through them woods." Glenn spat on the ground, Turbo thought in disgust for a moment, until he smelled mint and realized that it was chewing tobacco. "Whole town's inna middle of these woods, no way through 'em."

"Are you alone?"

"Nope. Only a few survivors though. Most of the town tried to hole up at the lodge. The ones that were smart enough to hole up at all. We never heard from 'em again, figured they all died."

"Yup."

"A lot more tried to get through the woods, but none of ‘em made it. I was able to save my son, but I haven’t heard from my wife since all this started. Tom Wheaton from down the street, we’re stayin’ with him. We saw the damned thing crash, and been hidin' ever since."

"Saw what crash?"

Glenn paused to laugh. It was not a happy laugh, or even an ironic laugh, it was little more than a strained sigh. He simply motioned for Turbo to keep up as he trodded out across the street and down another side road. Turbo laughed as he saw a small little bar on the corner, and thought to himself how good a beer sounded right about now. He pondered the thought deeply as he followed the man.

"Got a gas station around here?" Turbo asked.

"Gas station ain't much good with no power." Glenn answered. "Whole town been without power for months. Got me a generator, try to spare my gas though."

“Where you holed up?”

“I was one of the only ones in town figurin’ on this thing bein’ as bad as it was. There were no defensible places in town, not really I mean. I knew about the old bomb shelter back behind Wheaton’s barn and went there. Turned out to be right.”

The pair made their way up the street to a small general store. Turbo saw a large four-wheeler parked out front of the store. On the back of the four-wheeler was a large luggage rack, and a few duffle bags strapped to it. Glenn looked back at Turbo as they made their way towards it, and explained as though he could read the bounty hunter’s thoughts.

“Came in for a few supplies. I’m the only one fit to brave comin’ into town, My son’s too young, and Wheaton’s getting’ too old. Got a bad back, two vertebres just plain messed up. Was gonna get a surgery done to fix it before all this started.”

Crap, survivors. When this all started, I wasn’t expecting that. Now they pull me in, even if I get some gas, I gotta think of a way to get them all outta here. All can’t fit in my Viper.

“So how’d you end up in this town anyway? Ain’t seen another living soul in months, ever since they took over.”

Glenn hopped on the four-wheeler, and Turbo climbed on behind him. Normally, he would have insisted on driving himself, Turbo never trusted anyone else’s driving, regardless. This time though, he conceded without an argument, and let the other man drive, it would be easier in the long run. The way he saw it, they were in enemy territory, everywhere was a hostile zone, and he was unfamiliar with the layout of the land, this man was not.

“Passin’ through. Ran outta gas.” Turbo replied as the other man started the vehicle and began to drive.

“Hold onto them bags for me, will ya?” Glenn asked while they began down the road.

Turbo held fast to the shotgun in one hand, and twisted his body, leaning his elbow on the luggage rack to keep the bags held down. They rode through the small town, and took a turn off the main road. This road was winding and narrow, and a half mile down, Glenn turned once more onto a gravel road that was easily missed. The whole ride Glenn talked, about many different things, but Turbo stayed mostly quiet. His eyes were open for danger, and he was taking a careful mental note to map their direction, and remember the lay of the land.

They drove on for some time before pulling into a gravel driveway and parking around the side of an old house. All around them was wooded, true to the man’s word, and it was hard not to imagine lurking evils therein.

“What fell?” Turbo asked when the motor was shut off.

“$#!@!” Glenn exclaimed. “You dropped one of them bags?”

“No.” Turbo replied flatly. “You said something fell. Here. Earlier.”

“Oh.” Glenn seemed relieved for a moment before a dark wave took over his face. “Yeah that.”

Glenn grabbed one of the bags, pausing to spit another glob of minty snuff as he dismounted the vehicle. Turbo took the other two bags before Glenn had a chance to ask. The other man saw that Turbo had the rest of the cargo and hesitated briefly as he realized there was nothing left for him to grab. Glenn’s head weaved in the direction he was about to head before answering the question.

“Somethin’ fell outta the sky a few months ago. One of them meteors or whatever.” Glenn began as he led the way around to the back of the house. “’Bout an hour or so before dawn I guess.”

“A meteor?”

“I guess.” Glenn shook his head. “That’s when all this started anyhow. Don’t even remember how long ago, just remember it was still cold.”

“It’s the beginning of June now.” Turbo replied flatly.

“Is it?”

“You didn’t try to get out of town in at least four months?”

Glenn shook his head and scratched the back of his neck. “Guess not. Reckoned someone would’ve come by now.”

“Who?”

“I dunno. Police. Army. Something. We’re a long way from the nearest town.”

Damn! I must really be in the middle of nowhere now! If a whole town, even such a small one, could go missing for more than four months without anyone nearby even noticing…

“Well, no police, no army.” Turbo replied slowly. “Guess you’ll just have to settle for me.”

“I guess.” Glenn replied, as if he thought Turbo was making a dry and unfunny joke. He did not realize that in his own way, the bounty hunter was being grimly serious.

Turbo followed Glenn towards the bomb shelter that was concealed in a small bit of property behind the old house a little more than a mile away from town. The house was old and lifeless, a spooky bastion of solitude down a dark gravel road. The bomb shelter was little more than a hatch in the ground from the outside, once they reached it, and both stood silent for a moment.

“Who are you anyway?” Glenn asked, suddenly intrigued, a delayed reaction to the large man’s previous statement.

“Turbo Ramone, fugitive recovery agent.”

“Fugitive recovery?” Glenn asked, preoccupied with the task at hand, yet still raising an eyebrow at the statement. “That like a bounty hunter?”

“I prefer the term fugitive recovery agent.” Turbo answered.

Glenn reached down and opened the hatch, there were a few number codes as well as a heavy wheel to open. Turbo stood over him with a bag in each hand. He had put on his heavy black duster for the ride, rather than carry it, and as Glenn opened the hatch and looked up at the man, he could’ve imagined him being an agent of death itself. The black clothes, the deep tan skin, the black hair and mustache, the leather fingerless gloves, and above all…the dark sunglasses in the middle of such a dark night.

“Why the sunglasses?” Glenn asked off-handedly as he turned around to climb down the ladder.

“Cateract.”

Glenn pushed the issue no further. Instead, he climbed down the ladder and a moment later called back up for Turbo to follow him down into the darkness. It was not complete darkness down there, Turbo could see the reflection of a faint light coming from down a hall or something behind Glenn. Holding on to both of the duffle bags with only one hand, and one was filled with heavy canned goods, the large man began decending the ladder with one arm. He briefly thought of the loaded shotgun that he had left up by the four-wheeler when he picked up the bags. He contemplated going back up for it before he closed the hatch over his head behind him.

Ahh, won’t need it anyway. As long as this thing locks down behind me, I don’t gotta worry about nothin’ getting in here. If these people have stayed here for a few months, then it must be safe. I mean, what’s the worst that can happen?

Turbo followed Glenn down a short tunnel, past a flickering candle on a table and towards a dark empty room. The silence of the place was audible, and struck Turbo as odd. Just as soon as those thoughts passed through his head, Turbo heard a frightened voice call out from the pitch black of the room off to the side.

“Dad? You’re back? Hurry in here, I need you!”

Glenn was fast to react to his son’s plight, but Turbo was faster. A strong arm suddenly held out to restrain Glenn, like a bar that came down and fastened a rider to a rollercoaster ride. Glenn was stopped cold in his advance, briefly amazed by the huge man’s size and strength, which, up until that point, he had not given much thought to one way or another. Glenn’s face scrunched up in confusion, but before he could say a single word, a huge leather fingerless glove palm covered the bottom half of his face. Turbo walked in front of the man, easing one hand off of him and bringing a finger up to his moustached lips.

“What do you need, son?” Turbo replied, one hand still covering Glenn’s mouth.

“Hurry in here, I need you!” Came the voice of a child from the darkness, this time, slightly more urgent. There was a strange quality to the sound of the voice, one that neither man could place, but Turbo had picked up on it quickly. Turbo saw the confusion in Glenn’s eyes grow, his own finger slid to the button on the side of his sunglasses. A moment later, the dark hallway was flared bright green, and the nearby candle let out a brilliant glare. Turbo moved fast, blowing out the candle and instantly masking his action by speaking again.

“I’ll be in there in a minute.”

Turbo stepped in close to Glenn, so that his face was mere inches away, and his voice came out as a barely audible whisper.

“Your boy know the sound of your voice?”

Glenn simply nodded, his blank eyes conveyed his confusion. Turbo had let his guard down briefly upon coming into this, what he thought would be a sanctuary. No amount of security ever allowed the bounty hunter to completely relax his conditioned responses, and his highly quizzical brain though. It was that detective side of his thinking that was working in overdrive, and it would’ve took too long to stop and explain everything that felt wrong about the situation to his companion. Instead of explaining, Turbo pushed Glenn behind him, and his hands slid into the holsters inside his black duster. A moment later his gloved hands gripped cold steel, forty five caliber death spitters, which gave him a degree of ease simply holding them. With conditioned responses, he flanked the left side of the door, trying to glimpse inside of the room.

Turbo saw nothing out of the ordinary, but his peripheral vision caught a glimpse of his nervous companion shifting in place. Glenn wasn’t quite sure what was happening, he was at first relieved to find another straggler in town, a fellow human, but suddenly he was not so sure. He had not even taken into consideration the man’s indimidating size, the dark sunglasses he wore, and the fact that he was armed. He had not even thought about how dangerous this stranger may be, but now it was painfully clear. Was this man about to attempt to murder his son? Glenn briefly contemplated attacking this large man, even though he was armed, in an attempt to save his son’s life.

While he was still debating the issue, he proved too slow, because before he had an opportunity to act, the large stranger ducked inside the darkened room. The bounty hunter moved with a speed that surprised Glenn, who had never before seen anyone that size move so quickly. On second thought, he couldn’t remember the last time he had seen anyone move so fast. Turbo had darted into the room with all the practiced burst of a trained military soldier, overtaking a hostile room or a hostage situation. Indeed, his movements reminded him somewhat of that very thing, only faster. The large man had forcefully interjected himself into the room like a cobra striking its prey.

A moment later Glenn saw the darkness penetrated abruptly by a strobing light, accompanied by a staccato set of cracks that sounded like twin thunderbolts. The sound vibrated his chest, deafening him instantly and he took a reflexive step back. More loud bursts tore open the silence violently, and he saw the muzzle flare of the two guns the bounty hunter was wielding in the darkness. Then, as suddenly as the torrent of gunblasts began, they ceased, and he was left once again staring into the darkness, spots in his vision where his eyes had caught the light of the gunfire. A tense moment went by where all seemed unnaturally still, except the high pitched squeal ringing in his ears.

Then the bounty hunter in all black emerged from the shadows. Glenn did not need to see his eyes through the glasses to read the grim situation, which was written across the rest of his tanned face. A mixture of a scowl and something that looked vaguely like remorse or sadness played across the large man’s face and mixed together like a tangy salad. Glenn realized as Turbo took a step forth from the room that he was exerting a herculean effort to remain calm despite whatever had just transpired behind him in that room. His hands were trembling as they held onto the empty guns. The bounty hunter glanced down, realized this, and redoubled his efforts to get himself under control. His face met Glenn’s and he simply shook his head sadly for an explanation.

“Wh…” Glenn began to say, before the large man cut him off through sheer force of presence and a swift threatening gesture.

I think I’m loosing it, feel like I’m gonna black out. The thing…the thing was still…I swear I’m gonna puke. The thing was still attached to the kid’s face. There was something moving inside his throat, I could see it moving under the skin. It was making the boy talk somehow…like a puppet. I can’t afford to loose it right now. The worst thing…worst thing about it was…he was still alive when I started pulling the triggers.

Glenn stood there angrily staring at the big man for a moment, watching as he stood perfectly motionless. A long moment of silence followed, and the ringing began to die down in Glenn’s ears. Rising emotions raged across Glenn’s face. He was just about to demand an explanation when he heard a strange noise. He realized that it was exactly what the bounty hunter was listening for, but how did he hear it, or rather, how did he know to listen for it? His blood froze as he realized that it was the sound of something tampering with the wheel on the hatch above them. It was not forceful, whatever it was, rather, it seemed to be probing.

“How many people, exactly, did you leave down here?” Turbo’s powerful voice suddenly drew his attention away from the morbid fascination of listening to whatever was out there.

“Should just be my son and old man Wheaton. Two in all.” Glenn replied distantly before coming to his senses and continuing more forcefully. “What in the hell is goin’ on?”

Turbo didn’t answer, instead, his shaky hands removed the empty clips from the handles of the two automatic pistols. It took longer than he would’ve liked, in fact, to the bounty hunter’s quick reflexes, it felt like an eternity. His hands were oddly unresponsive, as if he’d been standing in the cold for too long. As he went inside of his coat to retrieve two fully loaded magazines for his pistols, it dawned on him what was happening. He had been in stressful situations before, many times in fact. He had seen the horrors of war and should have recognized the signs long before he had. He continued to fumble with sliding the fresh clips inside the guns.

Shell shock. Battle fatigue. Post Traumatic stress disorder. Combat stress reaction. @$!%, @$!%, and more @$!%! I should’ve realized it. The most common stress reactions include slowing of the reaction time, slowness of thought, difficulty prioritising, difficulty initiating routine tasks, preoccupation with minor issues and familiar tasks, indecision and lack of concentration, loss of initiative with fatigue and exhaustion. Had to memorize the symptoms years ago. Shaking and tremors, inability to relax. Don’t tell me I overcame all that bull$#^! from Da Nang, Hue, Tet, and all that crap in Laos, not to mention My Lai, just to break down here? @%!$@ these things!

The magazines clicked loudly in the silence as they slid into place. Now as Glenn looked at the large dark skinned man, he was genuinely frightened, some terrible change had taken place in his countinence. He was now grim and efficient, whatever had shaken him in that dark room, he seemed to have a tight grip on now. His intensity was frightening.

Best way I always found to deal with this kinda $#^!, is to find something to get mad at, to shake the slowness and apathy and settle into a machine-like efficiency. I been through too much to let these things affect me now.

“Figure on five more hostiles in the area. Several more bearing down on our position.” Turbo methodically reported back to Glenn.

“What?” Glenn asked confused. He had no idea what had happened to this man, or why he was suddenly speaking coldy efficient.

“They’re up there.” Turbo growled in a monotone voice, devoid of any emotion save for a rising impatience. “They’re down here. We’re surrounded.”

“Th- They’re in here with us?”

“Yup. Stay behind me, I want only enemy units in front, a free fire zone." Turbo's head suddenly snapped towards the deepening darkness as though he caught a glimpse of something truely and indescibably horrible down the hall. His response was neither fearful or lacking, but neither was it simply coldly monotone. An angry snarl curled his lips. "Look out, targets are inbound.”

“What’re we gonna do?” Glenn literally quaked at the idea of those things coming out from the darkness ahead.

“Inflict casualties.”

* * * *

+“This is Bravo company…Hrzkk… one-nine…, taking heavy fire…Hrzkk… requesting immediate arty fire…Hrzkk… co-ordinates as follows: …”+ The voice on the other end of the radio was breaking through heavy static.

“Tune that in! Dammit, Cruize, that’s Horowitz’s company!”

“What the $@#! are they doing so far north?”

“@%$#! They were supposed to notify us if any patrols from that FB were outbound.”

“They got…” Sergeant Thomas huffed and re-worked his thought pattern quickly. “Peterson! Find that Firebase’s freq and get me whoever’s in charge ASAP!”

The man got to work immediately with the radio while the other two men of the small LRRPS group looked to their officer and waited further command. The sergeant wiped the sweat from his forehead with his arm and then looked back at the two men. His face was not the face of a happy man.

Just about an hour or so after sunrise, the temperature was already climbing, the humidity was thick and heavy, clinging about the American soldiers like a wet blanket. One of the men was Hispanic, a dark eyed man who was a crack shot with just about any rifle. He had won several shooting competitions in basic training before going on to special forces and had since won several more among the army grunts in the FBs and camps they had passed through over the past three months. The last competition he had won, he had split an aspirin in half at over eighty yards with a standard issue M16.

The sergeant’s glance passed him over and went to the second idle soldier nearby, hiding somewhat in the brush and leaning against a tree. He was the youngest member of their LRRP squad, but also the largest. He was bare-chested, his large tanned muscles were flexing and unflexing nervously. He was just as dark as Cruize, but wore body paint across his face and torso.

“Ramone, did you set up those bouncing betties along the river?” The sergeant asked.

“Yup.”

The radio drew all their attention as a high pitched squeal sounded a moment before something was dialed in. A voice broke the stillness of the jungle around them, but not a voice that they were expecting to hear at such an early hour. It was a calm, steady female voice, with an obvious Vietnamese accent.

“Good morning GI Joe. You have awakened today so very far from your homes and your families. It is another day for you in Vietnam, where dragonflies, and sniper bullets await you. Watch your step, there are landmines…”

“%@$# you Hanna. Don’t wanna listen to your bull$%@$ today…” The radioman, Peterson, scowled as he adjusted the settings.

Cruize looked up at Ramone as he checked the clip of his M16. It was more of an idle habit really, for the meticulous shooter had already checked his rifle several times for obstructions, and his clip for bullets.

“Hey Vato, I heard this one grunt back in Da Nang… He said this one night, that @%$#& came on the air, and read off some names from his platoon. She told them that their girlfriends back home had forgotten about them and moved on. The next day this guy in his platoon that she had named, he got a “Dear John” letter…”

“No way.” Ramone stated.

“Swear to God!”

“Shut the #@$% up! Sergeant, I got ‘em!” Peterson called out.

“Firebase, this is special forces recon patrol do you copy?” Sergeant Thomas said into the radio transmitter. A moment later there was a crackling reply.

“Roger that Recon.”

“You have a patrol up near us under fire and requesting artillery, they are too far north, evac these men immediately, repeat, evac these men immediately!”

Suddenly they all heard the hollow echo of artillery shells exploding in the near distance like distant rumbling thunder. They all turned their heads in that direction, as if they could see through the heavy brush and elephant grass between them. All but the large tanned kid with the war paint striping his body in striking patterns. He merely reached down to his rifle on the ground and readied himself to move. There was a moment of radio silence before the Firebase replied.

“Negative on that, Recon. Our patrol is under fire and have wounded. They report the enemy to be manageable.”

“Negative FB! We have been tracking enemy movement in the area all week. There is heavy traffic in this area, repeat heavy traffic. We are estimating an enemy battalion at least.”

“We will inform them over.”

“Dammit!” Sergeant Thomas spat. “$@#$! Team! Ready to rollout on my signal!”

The sergeant then spoke back into the radio, even as their team heard more blasts in the distance.

“FB, be advised, we are en route. Repeat, we are en route. Advise the platoon: we will be coming from the east running fire support. Tell them to disengage at earliest opportunity! Over.”

“Roger that.”

“Team! Move out!”

Immediately the four man long range recon patrol team was on the move, even before their leader had completed the order. They had been tracking enemy activity in this area for a week now, after a particularly tight spot that their squad had encountered south of Da Nang. They had received their orders to track activity near the border of Laos, and they had been on the verge on uncovering the location of a sizable enemy army. That was yesterday. Today they awoke to find a clumsy patrol walking right into a hornet’s nest.

The four man team moved quickly through the thick bush. Their trained eyes watched for booby traps and personnel mines, while their fit bodies moved like track stars through the razor sharp elephant grass. It took some getting used to, especially for the large Ramone, who regularly went without a shirt, or a simple vest most the time. But, like everything else, it got easier with practice, easier, but not necissarily less painful, though the young man seemed to take it all with a grim stoicism. All the other men had simply grown used to the large youth and his unconventional ways. Running through the jungle, he looked like an Indian tribal warrior of a lost era.

They neared the basin that they had booby trapped earlier quickly. Up ahead, the echoes of small arms fire and the stutter of automatic rifles drifted through the trees. The sergeant gave the hand signal for the squad to splinter and double time to their destinations. An explosive went off in the valley ahead, just beyond the trees, probably a grenade. Suddenly, Ramone brought his M16 up to his shoulder and rattled off three shots before any of the rest of them could react. Before any of them had even noticed the danger that the tanned young man not only had seen, but reacted to with blistering reflexes. A moment later they saw a VC slump to the ground between the trees at the edge of the clearing. The sergeant thanked God that the Indian boy with the lightning fast reflexes was on his side. The other men in the squad had even taken to calling him “Turbo” due to his quick reflexes and an incident with a venomous snake that may or may not have been greatly exaggerated.

Suddenly more gunfire erupted all around the squad before they had a chance to fan out very far from one another. There were several enemy soldiers in the treeline around the rim of the basin that had been firing on the pinned down groundpounders they had come to the rescue of, only to have them turn and begin firing upon them instead. Ramone was the first to react, finding cover behind a tree and returning fire in the general direction. Cruize rolled along the ground as the bullets began to fly around him, he came back to his knees lobbing a grenade into the trees. The sergeant was behind a large rock returning fire now as well. They were all too busy to notice that the sounds of the distant gunfire exchange had ceased.

“Sergeant!” Peterson cried suddenly from behind them.

“Dammit! Not now Peterson!”

“Sergeant! It’s the Firebase! They say they lost contact with the platoon, that they reported heavy casualties and wounded. They’re advising that they are probably KIA!”

“%@$@! We broke cover and engaged with the enemy just to find all the @#$*#s dead?” The sergeant raised his voice then for his whole squad, over the sputtering of M16’s and AK47s. “Team! Listen up! Platoon’s dead, we’re on our own! We are now in a free fire zone! Mission parameters now as follows:” He took a steadying breath before continuing, the VC were literally leaping out of the bush, attempting to close in and engage them with their bayonettes. The sergeant growled as he shot one in the face literally point blank.

“Inflict casualties!”

* * * * *

Flashes underlit Turbo’s grim face as he squeezed the triggers of his twin pistols. Glenn caught glimpses of the horrible foetid creatures that were squirming forth from the far back room into the long hallway where they stood. Just the glimpses that he received were enough of a nightmare to make his blood run cold, and freeze him with fright. In fact, after a moment of standing still in fear, Glenn fell to the floor in sheer terror, his mind was ripping in half with the madness of what he was witnessing. Turbo too, could feel the wretched madness welling inside of him, the deep phobia reaching out to try and pull him under, but he refused to give in to it. The simple sight of the creatures that had features that denied any aspect of earthly dimensions was enough to start such a phobic flight-or-fight reaction that Turbo was thrown into a rage so deep that he would have gone to any length at that moment just to make sure the creatures would die.

The things were a mixture of an octopus or squidlike creature and a spider, they somehow glided silently across the walls at head-level, though by no decernible means of locomotion save the long slender chitinous legs that prowled across the walls in the darkness. They were neither, however, being a wholly unnatural mixture of a conglomoration of things not native to nature. It was merely the closest thing that the human brain could comprehend and relate them to, though their appearance and deliberate movement was in fact, completely alien in nature. Turbo did not dwell on the issue, his mind too was fragmenting, dealing with the horrid situation the best way that it saw fit. Turbo was no longer firing upon creatures, but enemy soldiers coming through the wire in a place that simultaneously felt very far away, and as close as home at once. He continued squeezing the triggers, putting little emphasis on aim, and every attempt at throwing as much lead into the air as possible. The creatures burst like damp fruit when they were hit with the forty-five caliber ACP rounds.

The whole exchange seemed to be moving in slow motion to the two men, though in truth it was all over in four blinks of an eye. Turbo had pulled the triggers until his clips had run dry and the slides of the pistols laid open and smoking. The bittersweet scent of gunpowder filled the small enclosed area, and Turbo managed to ignore somehow the sights and disgusting sounds of the creatures as they burst from the rounds and fell in mushy heaps to the ground. Somehow he managed to ignore it all, as if he wasn’t really there, or as if watching passively a dream. It would not be until two nights later, when he tried to sleep, that those sights and sounds would return to haunt his memory, and most of all, what came next.

Out of ammunician for the pistols, Turbo saw in the eery green glow of his glasses, the sight of another one of the creatures sliding past the others that lay in the hallway in a glistening messy heap. The adrenaline was pumping from the sound of the weapons being discharged and the stress of the situation. The adrenaline rush intensified at the very sight of the creature scrambling full speed towards him with its alien gait. Turbo backed away a step, past a workbench that lay in the small room to the left. With a quick motion, Turbo ducked into the room as the thing slithered across the walls towards him, scooped up a hammer, and with a blood-chilling warcry, leaped to meet it.

* * * * *

The four man recon team had managed to cut through the enemy to the groundpounders’ last position. Sporadic gunfire was erupting along the rim of the basin, at the treeline, but they managed to dive behind cover in the ditch they had found. There, in the ditch, were the bloodied remains of green uniformed American soldiers, ten of them exactly, lying where they fell. The crater itself looked as though it had been formed by a large blast, and coincendentally, the soldiers that had taken refuge in the crater seemed to have mostly died by a grenade burst.

Ramone looked over the area, a wealth of knowledge coming to the fore of his quick brain. Not just the crater itself, but by the size and shape of the clearing around the crater, roughly circular and approximately three hundred feet across, was probably made by an American “daisy cutter” conventional fuel-air bomb. Ramone saw the fires on the edge of the treeline where the artillery strikes were made, and black smoke rose up into the air in a great plume along the northern treeline. Two dozen or more dead Vietnamese lay strewn in a open killing field between that treeline and the crater his team now hunkered down in.

Cruize propped his rifle on the edge of the crater and began squeezing off rounds into the treeline, returning fire on their enemies. The popping sounds of the small arms and the cracks of the assault rifles echoed through the clearing. Chunks of blasted dirt fell on Ramone as he ducked back to clear his jammed rifle. Stray bullets hit an arc across the rim of the crater, kicking up the earth around it. Peterson filled Ramone’s gap, setting the radio down and unstrapping his bolt action rifle that had seen little use in the past few days. The distinctive cracks of the bolt action and the clack of the lever being thrown back to eject the spent casings reminded Ramone suddenly of home, something that he had purposefully tried to push to the back of his brain while out in the bush.

“We’re sitting ducks here sarge!” Cruize yelled over the eruption of his rifle.

“On my mark, double time to that treeline to the west. We can escape through there!” The Sergeant replied.

“That’s where the minefield is!”

“That’s perfect.” Sergeant Thomas replied.

“Go!” Ramone growled, feeling the eyes of his CO on his back. “I’ll cover you.”

Ramone had cleared his rifle of the obstruction and was now in a firing position on the lip of the crater. The other three members of his team took one final glance at the determined young man, and standing over six feet tall, none of them dared dispute his decision. They spoke volumes in the last look they took at their partner, a strange mixture of sadness and pride, then on the sergeant’s bellowing order, they ducked low and ran out the other side of the crater.

Ramone was alone, and he saw the enemy now emerge from the edge of the trees, recklessly charging. They saw the Americans running the other direction and figured on catching them and closing for a hand-to-hand engagement. Ramone figured something else. He lined up the horrible sights on the M16, looking through the doughnut on one end and placing the middle of the fork on the end of the barrel on an advancing enemy’s body. He hated the sights, but the rate of fire made up for his shortcomings in the field of marksmanship. He thumbed the full-auto switch and waited for more to come out. A moment later his forefinger pulled back the trigger and a current of fire came out the end of his gun. He saw several of the VC drop in the killing field and continued to fire until his magazine was empty.

A few stray shots hit the rim of the crater as Ramone ducked back low, quickly ejecting the empty magazine and replacing it with a new one. He could hear the enemy’s hoots and calls as they came out in full from the trees now, chasing the Americans. They were getting closer by the second. Ramone rested the rifle back against his shoulder and began to fire upon them again. Several more dropped, before his gun jammed again suddenly. He had to make a quick decision, the enemy was bearing down on his position with the crazed quickness of kamikazes. He saw about twelve of them, intersperced, charging across the killing field.

“$@#!in’ M16!” Ramone cried out in frustration, throwing the weapon aside.

Ramone picked up a GI issue half-shovel that lay close at hand among the dead soldiers at his feet. With a growl of rage he leaped over the edge of the crater and charged the advancing enemies, who ran at him with fixed bayonettes, hungry to punch holes in his abdomen and spill his guts alongside the other dead soldiers at his feet.

The other three members of the LRRP team heard a startling warcry sound out from behind them with a power and intensity that would haunt their dreams for many years to come. It was a strained cry at the edge of sanity that was a mixture of rage and madness, but somehow vaguely reminescent of an indian warhowl of the old west.

Ramone beat aside a bayonette and began swinging the shovel at anything that came within range. He didn’t remember much else for the next several minutes, he was only aware of terrible screams and he was never sure if they were from him or his enemies.

* * * * *

Turbo emerged from the sticky mess like a grim specter. He still held tightly onto the hammer that was in his trembling gloved hand. He didn’t quite remember what happened, but when he turned back towards Glenn, he found the man cowering in fear behind the workbench.

“It’s dead now.” Turbo replied absently, his voice level and disquietingly calm.

Glenn hesitated but rose back to his feet and gazed up at this strange man who he’d only met maybe a half hour ago at best. Still gripping the hammer, spattered with sickly ooze and whatever the creature was made from, his grip stated that he was still ready to use the makeshift yet efficient weapon. Turbo looked back through the hallway, his gaze fixed suddenly on the hatch above the ladder.

“Sorry about your boy. He’s… lost.”

Glenn had realized that fact somewhere in the confusion, but the shock of everything prevented a total breakdown. He managed to get his breathing under control, though his ears were still ringing from the loud gun discharges that had gone off near his head mere minutes ago.

“They’re both dead then?” He managed to ask. It seemed unreal still to him, as if happening to someone else.

“Yup.”

“We’re trapped down here.”

“No. Can’t stay here.”

“Why?”

Turbo walked past Glenn into one of the bedrooms. He emerged a moment later with a pillowcase in his hand.

“They found a way in here. Guessin’ maybe if this place has a pipe system leading out, they found a way through it.” Turbo voiced, though he had guessed that minutes ago when he first felt something wrong.

“Pipe system?”

“Waste pipes. Sewage. Something like that.” Turbo then walked back past the other man again, this time he found the refridgerator in the far room, where the creatures had been massed in full. He went in cautiously, noting several things around the room, but ultimately not seeing any signs of any other things lurking in the shadows. Glenn wondered briefly how the man could see anything at all in the total blackness of the shelter, especially wearing such dark sunglasses. The light from the refridgerator briefly illuminated the room, and Turbo began tossing cans inside of the pillow case. He saw the odd look that he received from Glenn.

“Gotta made due with what we got. Makeshift weapon.”

“I guess.” Glenn replied. “So now what?”

“Now…we get outta here.”

“How? They’re still up there, right?”

“Old trick from years back…” Turbo said with a grim face, taking a bold step towards the ladder. “Run like hell and take down anything that gets in your way.”

Three

Turbo threw back the lid of the bomb shelter, prepared for anything that may be waiting for them. He was answered with the only thing that he hadn’t been totally prepared for…nothing. His brain instantly began rummaging through the posibilities as he climbed back out onto solid ground, out under the clear night sky. His hip was flaring with pain and he felt every bit of the climb back up the ladder. He stoically bore the pain without showing any signs of weakness, giving the other man the all clear and waiting for him to ascend as well. Some people would have been happy to see that nothing was waiting for them at the top, but not Turbo, he was on full alert, his philosophy was usually if it wasn’t one thing, then it’d be another.

“Nothing up there?” Glenn asked skeptically.

“Nothing. They probably went around.” Turbo gazed back down the hole. “The long way.” He added suggestively.

That sent Glenn scrambling up the ladder quickly, the last thing he would ever want at that moment was to be down there alone when those things came back. He was not as large as the stoic dark bounty hunter, but assumed that even had he been so, the prospect of facing these utterly terrible visions straight out of a nightmare would not be any less terrifying. The strong bounty hunter gave the man a hand getting up to the top when he was close enough. Gazing out into the darkness, Turbo saw movement back towards the four-wheeler.

Doing my best to stay funcional. My hands are still shaking and I feel kinda dizzy. I wonder how Glenn’s holding out, he’s probably in shock, he’s not trained for this stuff. His eyes are kind of glassy, I hope he doesn’t become a liability. I couldn’t do anything for his son except put him out of his misery, I don’t mean for him to die too. Sometimes life comes outta nowhere and makes you thankful for the things you take for granted. I think, this is one of those moments…and right now I am really thankful for the nightvision, because if it wasn’t for them things, I’d be dead, even as I move to dodge aside from the incoming hail of bullets.

The lime green shapes and outlines that Turbo saw in that direction were not mindless creatures. He had a few theories about the alien things, but those theories meant nothing at that moment. The green shapes were hiding and skulking, waiting for them to come closer. They were well hidden in the midnight darkness too, if it wasn’t for the nightvision that Turbo had, he would have noticed them too late. As it was, Glenn didn’t realize what happened in the next few seconds until it was well past and over with. In the blink of an eye, Turbo threw the lighter and younger man to the ground, covering him with his own body. The prattle of gunfire erupted from the darkness, echoing through the silent night woods, cutting through the air at about waist level, which at that point was inches from their heads thanks to Turbo’s quick reaction.

Patches of dirt kicked up next to Glenn’s face, and it was then that he realized that they were being shot at, though the true realization still was not fully kicked in yet. Turbo was amazingly quick and calm under the circumstances, and he regarded the situation as no big deal, almost as if it was a natural occurrance. Indeed, Glenn thought, maybe it was not for him. While Glenn naturally panicked, the bounty hunter’s mind was contantly thinking forward and ahead. He was on his feet again suddenly, pulling Glenn up by the back of his shirt and prodding him forward.

“Stay down and keep moving!” Turbo whispered urgently.

Turbo had only caught a glance of the figures near the four wheeler, but most of that instant that his eyes were in that direction was focused directly on the guns that they wielded. Calicos. Easily among the most sophisticated and deadly weapons in any civilization in the world. Turbo knew they were in serious trouble at once. The automatic weapons fired nine millimeter bullets and had a hundred round magazine. Even if their users couldn’t see in the dark, even if they were terrible shots, the sheer rate of fire that the guns were capable of would mow them down like two blades of grass staring down an industrial farm tractor with blades whirring.

Turbo was still tugging the back of Glenn’s shirt, running with their heads down for several meters before the bounty hunter made a quick and life-saving decision. He skimmed the hammer in his left hand as hard as he could out to his left while throwing Glenn to the right. The hammer skimmed across the ground and through some twigs, making a noise that drew the attention of the shooters. At the same time Turbo crawled on his hands and knees, prompting the other man to do the same towards the nearest set of trees. There was a brief pause of the sputtering automatic weapons. He looked over his shoulder and saw that a few of the men were now coming towards them, though they were still far off.

“OK now’s our chance, follow me!” Turbo said with a glance to the other man.

Turbo once again sprang to his feet, despite the pain that flared to his hip and hamstring. He kept his head low and made a dash for the trees. He could hear the other man keeping at his heels and was glad. Had this been a city boy, Turbo thought that he would be in real trouble right now trying to keep him alive, but a fellow country boy had a measure of common sense about these things. Indeed, Glenn asked little questions given the circumstances, but for the sake of his own life kept up with the larger bounty hunter. They made some space between them and the shooters, but they must have caught the movement in the distance, for the crackle of the semi-automatic gunfire resumed behind them.

Should’ve seen the trap a long time ago. I blame myself for being so caught up with the shock of whatever creatures are running around this town that I didn’t notice it until it was too late. Of course, If I hadn’t been so stupid! The signs were all there…

The two men reached the treeline and Turbo’s thoughts were cut abruptly. The first tree that they passed on their mad dash away from the lonely house and into the dark woods shook as they passed it. Bark exploded from it and others around it, cutting across the pair like jagged shrapnel. Dirt kicked up from the ground and trees shuddered as bullets punched through the air around them. Turbo knew that the bullets were coming close and if their pursuers thought to stop and steady their aim for even a moment, they would soon be riddled with bullets. But like most things out of his power to control, Turbo didn’t dwell on it to the point that it drove him into a more emotional state, he simply focused on the task at hand, which right now was run like hell. With quick reaction speed, Turbo swung the sack of cans at a large shadow in the darkness. Bullets continued to whiz by them as the large dark shape fell from the tree and squirmed like an octopus on dry land. Turbo kept running.

A small sapling that Turbo ran around shattered in half under a sputter of bullets. The large bounty hunter was already running out of breath after just a short sprint, he was no young man anymore and knew that he would soon be overtaken by his pursuers. He nearly tumbled down a steep downhill grade, but fighting hard, managed to keep his balance and stay on his feet. Glenn, without nightvision, was not so lucky, and was soon rolling down the hill like a child at play. Turbo thought that it may have been a lucky break for the man, for the bullets passed above him suddenly, pock-marking trees with a lead hailstorm. If it wasn’t for the sudden downward grade, Turbo thought that the bullets would’ve been right on target. Turbo’s mind began thinking again, and he called out to Glenn, who was struggling back to his feet at the bottom of the hill.

The dark bounty hunter too went into a dive, though his was intentional. He rolled down the steep hill end over end, until his brain felt drunk. Dizzy and sick, Turbo rose to his feet next to Glenn at the bottom of the hill. With a great effort he fought the cloud of dizziness and wave of nausea, and regained his bearings and center of gravity. Once the world stopped spinning enough, Turbo searched out what he had seen at the top of the hill. As his feet moved, he felt as though he was standing on the deck of a ship.

Suddenly Turbo saw what he was looking for and without saying anything out loud to give away their position, he reached out and grabbed Glenn by the back of the shirt again. He then directed them both to the thing that his quick eyes had spotted.

Moments later, the two men were attempting a treacherous climb in the dark. Wooden boards nailed to the side of a tree that were barely large enough to hold more than a toe they climbed. Glenn, being a country boy, realized it for what it was at once, and he climbed as if he had done so before, which Turbo would not have been surprised to find true. Despite the danger, Turbo urged the other man on quickly, higher into the tree, hoping that neither of them fell. Higher and higher into the dizzying heights of the treestand they climbed, despite the treacherous hand and footholds they found blindly. Turbo managed a look over his shoulder halfway up the tree and saw the glowing green forms of five men coming down the hill, silouetted against the darkness of the rest of the woods.

Glenn found the top of the makeshift ladder and climbed on top of the wooden boards that were nailed across a few thick treebranches. Turbo didn’t realize how treacherous the climb to the very top really was until he got there. The last two boards were almost horizontal across the thick branch, and instead of climbing them, he reached up to the treebranch itself, and was hanging out over a twenty foot drop a moment later as his foot slipped off the wooden board nailed to the tree.

What kinda crazy sumbitch built this deer stand? Peter Parker? I thought this was an old man that lived out here in the woods, not Evel Knieval. As soon as I think things are bad, evil mutant spider crab creatures trying to eat my face for instance, oh I’m about to fall twenty feet to my death. That’d be great, hey! Check out my brains!

The men chasing them were now at the bottom of the hill and were double-timing it towards the sounds of movement. They ran blindly in the dark, Turbo was fairly certain that despite their sophisticated firearms, they had no form of nightvision. It would have been pretty hard to miss the large man dangling twenty foot off the ground from the limb of a tree had they been able to see in the dark. Must be a sight, he chuckled. With a grunt Turbo reached down inside himself and pulled on the well of reserve energy that all people had in desperate times.

He pulled with everything he had, fighting with his strong arms against the overwhelming laws of gravity and his two hundred and sixty two pound body free-hanging out into nothing. Glenn reached out to grab hold of Turbo’s arms, the bounty hunter began to slip. Redoubling his efforts, Turbo heaved himself up with a mighty jerk of his whole body, pulling his elbows up over the rim of the deer stand with a kick into empty air. For the first time he appreciated the other man he was with. Glenn must have been in pretty good shape to have scrambled up that ledge so quickly in the darkness of night. With Glenn’s help, Turbo swung the rest of his body up onto the deer stand, and then laid motionless, heaving for air as quietly as possible. Glenn took his lead and sat flat against the tree, not making a sound either. They both knew that if the men happened to only look up, they would both be dead in a matter of seconds and a loud hail of bullets.

They both laid in total silence, afraid to move or even breathe. The group of men came closer, leading with the dangerous firearms, passing right under them in the darkness. Turbo was too cautious to chance making a noise by turning and looking down on them, but his ears were open for the danger. He heard them pass slowly under the deer stand, they seemed to pause right below them. Were they suspicious? Did they perhaps guess that the pair had climbed one of the nearby trees? It wouldn’t take too much of a detective to lead the armed men to them, if they only happened to glance at the tree and see the wooden planks nailed to it, leading higher into the tree. Time seemed to stand still for what seemed like an hour. The men passed slowly underneath them, but looped back around minutes later.

The ordeal was finally over Turbo realized, when he heard the sounds of the men going back up the hill. He waited anyway a few moments before turning to look. He had clicked his nightvision off as the men walked below, and laid on his back watching the clear canvas of stars above the whole time. He thought to himself that there may be worse ways to pass the time, even if the danger of being shot at was still there. The stars were so beautiful in the country this time of year. He had nearly forgotten what an awe-inspiring thing gazing into the star-filled sky away from city life could be.

There’s the big dipper. Hey there’s Orion. Crap what’s that one over there again? I remember it had something to do with…ahh…

Turbo sat up at the waist as silently as he could manage, and saw the figures climbing back towards the top of the hill, finally abandoning their search.

“What time is it?” Turbo whispered.

Glenn glanced at his watch. “Almost midnight. I’m tired, but really awake, you know?”

Turbo did know, he felt more or less the same way. His mind was still tired from the long hours of driving, before any of this craziness in this town even started. He didn’t think he’d be getting any real sleep for some time, and it wouldn’t be the first time by a long shot.

“Yeah. I think maybe we should just wait it out until the sun comes up. Then we’ll get some gas and get the hell outta here. I’ll siphon some out of a car if I have to.”

“What if they’re out there moving somewhere?” Glenn asked after a long moment of silence. “You know, those things. Think I’d rather face the guys with the guns.”

Turbo looked down and toggled his nightvision back on, his eyes were weary and burning from looking through them for so long. He was instantly surprised by what he saw under the tree stand. As if the other man had just been able to magically divine the future, there were a number of the creatures crawling eerily towards them from all sides. Turbo wondered about these things, they seemed to be able to sense where they were somehow. He saw a light flash in the distance above the treeline. A moment later there was a low rumble in the distance.

“Rain. In Rainsburg. Great.” Turbo stated dryly. “Time to move.”

Turbo looked over the side of the stand once more. The bloated creatures were crawling towards them like a great swarm, from every direction. For some reason they seemed to be following them, as if compelled to the duo by some irresitible force. It would only be a matter of minutes before they were crawling up the tree by the looks of things. Turbo began looking around, and Glenn, lacking the nightvision to know that they were coming from all sides, wondered at the other man’s actions.

Turbo found what he wanted on the other side of the stand. A thick rope tied around a hardy branch. He knew these were meant for lowering hunting rifles down, climbing with them could be dangerous. He figured the rope was strong enough to hold the two men, and decided to be the first to find out.

“Follow me.” Turbo said. “Look out for that tree…” He added under his breath.

Turbo grabbed hold of the rope and slid down quickly. He wore padded fingerless leather motorcycle gloves that cushioned the rope burn that he would have normally received from such a slide. The wind rushed up to greet his face as he slid down the rope, his duster flared out like a cape and a moment later, his feet were both firmly back on the ground. He saw the green shape of Glenn climb down to the rope far above him, in the corner of his vision, he could see the shapes of unholy things in the darkness moving. He found the sack of cans that he had abandoned in some bushes while he waited for Glenn to come down. The other man had no protection for his hands and had to move much more slowly.

Two of the things were now close, and Turbo began swinging the sack around him in a figure eight pattern, gaining momentum. One of them creeped forward, and Turbo greeted it with a crashing blow. He heard the cans inside of the pillowcase crack open and the bottom of the cloth was suddenly wet. With a growl, Turbo swung the sack again, and sent it into the other one. It hit with force, but felt like it had hit a squishy pile of mashed potatoes. Turbo shuddered but continued swinging, keeping the creatures at bay. Glenn was soon on the ground, and his eyes went wide when he saw the bounty hunter keeping a few of the creatures at a distance with his makeshift weapon. He needed no prompting to begin moving, and soon both men were fleeing through the dark trees. Turbo tried his best to steer them in between the monsters, but was there with a crashing blow to knock them aside when it was not an option.

“Who were the men with the guns?” Glenn asked as they began to put some distance between them and the circle of pulpy alien bodies.

Turbo alone could see that the normally sluggish creatures seemed ravenous, and were moving quickly through the trees around them.

“Dunno. Can’t risk going back to the four-wheeler. What’s in this direction?”

“Nuthin, I don’t guess.” Glenn called back in between gasps of air. “We can loop around back towards town though.”

Another rumble sounded on the horizon, and the flash of light accompanying it was closer this time. Turbo knew that rain would soon be in the forecast.

“That’ll work. Be a haul though.”

“Not too bad. Little over a mile.”

After a hard sprint for what seemed like an eternity, though it was actually much closer to five minutes, the two men slowed their run to a brisk walk. Turbo glanced back over his shoulder and saw that they had put a bit of distance between them and their pursuers, even though he caught a glimpse of movement in the trees behind them.

“They still comin’?” Glenn asked, though he tried to remain steady, his voice hinted at the nervousness of the prospect.

“Yup.”

Turbo could not be completely sure though, for most of the creatures did not leave a telling heat signature. It led him to believe many weird things about the weird things. Perhaps they were actually a plant of some kind, or some type of virus. That would make sense, as they seemed to reproduce using humans, and they seemed to live only to reproduce. It made absolutely no sense and some sense all at once.

The two men continued walking for over a half hour in the haunted nighttime woods. They slowly looped back around as they went, so that they were pointed back more or less towards town. Visability was low in the pitch blackness, for Glenn at least, he wished he had a flashlight at least. Both men jumped at every slight sound that came echoing through the trees. Soon the light patter of raindrops began to come down. It continued into a light drizzle. Both men were physically exhausted, but managed to pick up the pace. The sounds of the falling rain further masked the sounds of anything that may have been creeping around or above them.

“I think they can trace us out in the open.” Turbo said after a long silence before adding. “Somehow.”

Glenn nodded his agreement. It did seem like it anyway. As he looked up into the stars, the rain began to come down harder. It sooned turned into a downpour, and the ill safety of the bomb shelter didn’t seem that bad anymore.

Turbo pulled out a can from the sack as they walked, a soda that was cracked in the middle and leaking. He put the opening above his mouth and squeezed the sides with his large gloved hand. After a gulp, he threw the half-empty can into the woods. Glenn’s mouth was dry too after all the running. Turbo reached inside of the bag and tossed him one too. This can had not been compromised and Glenn cracked it open away from his body. Though it had no crack in it, the can had been shaken violently and sputtered as the pop top was pulled. A moment later Glenn took a drink, and got the taste of the falling rain in his mouth as well as the soda. They continued walking through the woods, the rain falling heavily on them. After a few minutes, their shoes were wet, their hair was drenched, but Turbo’s duster kept him somewhat dry.

Turbo reached in and grabbed another soda before tossing the leaky sack away into the darkness. He cracked it and guzzled a large mouthful, the caffeine was a welcome addition to his tired system. The rain was now pouring through the trees, and both men were completely soaked. Glenn raised his voice above the symphony of the rainstorm.

“Why do you think those men shot at us?”

Turbo thought about the question for a moment as a spear of lighting illuminated the sky, he already had theories that had surfaced when he first saw the men. He didn’t truly mull it over in his mind until now though. Some things began to make sense the more the thought about it, and he began to think of answers that he had previously not even thought to have questions to at first.

“Makes sense.” Turbo replied simply.

“What’s that?”

“When I first pulled into town, the traffic lights were still working. Further into town the power was all out. Someone’s trying to contain the situation here I bet. It’d explain why the creatures haven’t spread out in however many months you’ve been stuck here.”

“The military?”

“No. Those weren’t the military. Probably a private company. It does mean though that if they found a way to turn the power off, we can find a way to turn it back on.”

“At least to the gas station.” Glenn surmised.

Long minutes of silence passed before Glenn voiced his thoughts once again. “Sure you don’t think this is all a kind of military conspiracy?”

“I don’t believe in military conpiracies.” Was the simple response from the bounty hunter.

“Alien conspiracy then? Maybe with our government.”

“Don’t believe in aliens or government conspiracies.”

“What the heck you think’s goin’ on ‘round here then? This all just a bad dream I guess?”

“There’s an explaination for everything.” Turbo remarked. “Just haven’t found it yet.”

The two soaked men walked another hundred steps through the rain before Turbo looked up and saw something ahead. There was a dark lonely house on the hill, a rather large one by the looks of it, all alone out in the middle of the woods. Turbo motioned towards it and Glenn nodded. Words weren’t really a necessity for the particular situation. They would both be glad to get out of the rain and hide out from the many dangers that were stalking them in the woods.

* * * * *

The house was even larger than either of them suspected from the distance. It was much less a house than a castle. After a walk up the hill, Glenn made it to the front porch, which was a rickety construction in disrepair. The boards creaked under his shoes as he walked towards an old porch swing. Happy enough to be out of the driving rain, he sat down on the swing as another flash of lightning forked through the sky out in the distance. Turbo did not follow him however, his attention had been drawn in another direction. He walked towards the side garage and was relieved to see that it was an old style door, made before the days of automation. He had a feeling it would be, by the general look of the house itself, which simply had an air of antiquity about it. Turbo bent down and heaved the garage door open.

The garage was spacious and long, and from the looks of the house it was not the only one either. Several cars were parked inside this garage, and Turbo smiled when he saw them. An old seventy Cheverolet pickup truck greeted him like a long lost friend. Turbo wondered how long it had sat there in this garage, like a sad friend that was lost to the cruel years. Next to it was a rare gem, a ’53 Studebaker, jet black and still boasted a gleaning shine. Next to that was a forty something Packard, an equally rare car. Turbo walked between the three cars, somewhat sad to see them rotting away in an old garage.

The garage had become the graveyard of the old automobiles, the air smelled of dust and mold. What manner of things had these vehicles bore witness to, he wondered as he took a step inside and ran his hand across the fender of the Packard. Suddenly another sight caught the bounty hunter’s eye. In the corner near the truck’s back tire was a ten gallon gas can, alongside a heavy old chainsaw. There was a glint in his eyes underneath the dark sunglasses.

Glenn watched out into the darkness, still wondering what may be looking back at him. He was a little nervous that something may have been following them. Suddenly the tanned bounty hunter clad in the dark black trenchcoat came around the corner and stepped onto the creaking old porch. A smile played across his lips under the handlebar moustache. Glenn looked down and saw the chainsaw and gas can in his hands.

“Gas and a few cars in the garage. Looks like they haven’t been used in awhile, batteries may be dead.” Turbo stated. “Figure we can wait out the night here and in the morning find out.”

“By the looks of this house, I doubt they run. Looks like its been abandoned for a long time.”

“Tires were still good on two of them. Weren’t flat, still had tread. We’ll see.”

Turbo tried the doorhandle. Locked. Figured, the garage was open but the front door was locked. He wasn’t about to wait outside at the mercy of whatever might be looking for them. The gutters of the house must have been clogged, because the rain was pouring down on either side of the porch like waterfalls. There were also several leaks above the porch, and the water was beginning to puddle in the middle of the bowed deck.

“It’s locked, I tried it.” Glenn stated.

“I got a key.” Turbo returned dryly.

He took a step back and then threw his considerable weight into a kick, aimed just below the doorknob. The door splintered and he kicked again, this time harder. The door flew open under his weight, and a moment later, Glenn followed him inside. The pair walked into the house where a streak of lightning strobed light through the windows, briefly illuminating the dark interior. Glenn gasped.

“Holy crap.” The man remarked. “This looks like a damn haunted house if I ever saw one!”

Turbo looked around the large high ceiling room silently. Though he would have never thought to vocalize it so openly, he couldn’t help but agree. He suddenly felt very small next to the architecture around him. They were in a long greeting gallery of some sort, straight ahead of them was a sitting hall with a high ceiling. They continued on to this room.

There was an old style hearth on one end of the room, complete with a mantle, antique swords crossed above, and a stuffed deer head on either side. Turbo looked around, glancing at the opposite side of the room, mainly looking for any danger or lurking creatures. He saw sitting couches and chairs in the middle of the room that looked as though they had not seen use in many years. His heart jumped onto his tongue momentarily as he caught a glimpse of something huge in the corner. He breathed easier when he recognized it to be a harmless stuffed bear, though immense in size. It looked to be nearly twice his size, and Turbo was not small.

“Dang. I ain’t no brave man like you…” Glenn began. “This place is just creepy. Like something you’d see in the movies. The kind of place you’re screaming at the screen for the characters to run away.”

Never a superstitious man, Turbo merely grunted in reply. Ghosts and goblins may be scary, he thought, but there were scarier things out this night. Mainly him.

The centerpiece of the mantle, under the crossed swords and between the mounted deer heads was a large portrait of a lovely young woman. Glenn couldn’t take his eyes off the picture, as if he expected it to come to life and attack them at any moment.

Never seen anything like it in all my life. I look at the paintings on the wall, and can’t help but think of the old movies, where the eyes are really holes and someone is watching you from behind the walls. There’s an intense feeling of being watched, of not being alone that seems to be coming from everywhere at once. I tell myself its silly, but the feeling is still there. I start a fire in the fireplace, the huge fireplace, three times as big as any I’d ever seen before. Glenn is scared, though he tries to hide it, but somewhere deep inside, I don’t blame him. I tell him to wait there while I check out the rest of the house.

Turbo took off the heavy wet duster and tossed it onto a chair in the corner. It had kept most of him dry, though his boots were still wet. He left the chainsaw next to one of the large couches where Glenn was seated.

“Use that if you need to.” Turbo pointed suggestively towards the power tool.

Glenn raised his eyebrows. Something told Turbo that the weapon was not much consolation for him, but it would be effective anyway, if any of those things proved to be lurking in the massive shadows of the house. As Turbo stepped away from the flickering firelight, he saw Glenn steel himself like a child being left alone in the dark.

“I doubt even if some of those things get in here I’ll be able to get close enough to use that on them.”

Turbo looked back but did not reply. Glenn cocked an eyebrow.

“Seriously. That’d take some major balls to run up on something alive and turn a chainsaw loose on it.” Glenn stated. Turbo merely stared back at him. “Oh, you’re serious about that.”

“I’m sure if one of those things tries eating your face you’ll find the courage.” Turbo answered. He paused before leaving, folding open a hidden flap on the inside of his raincoat lying on the chair. He found an inside pocket and produced two canisters that he clipped onto his belt. Glenn watched with curiosity, he had no idea what the bounty hunter was doing, but in the end, he said nothing. Turbo then walked out of the sitting area, leaving Glenn to stare at the flickering fire.

The ancient mansion was like a labyrinth, hallways split off in several directions. Turbo tried the lights in a few of the hallways that he passed but like much of the rest of the town, this house had no power either. The feeling of not being alone persisted, even grew more nagging the more of the house that Turbo explored. There was so much room, so much empty space and so many areas of the dark house that it was simply hard to believe that it was all unused. Noises echoed through the silence and Turbo froze. Moments later he decided to continue on, concluding that simple noises were amplified in the large dwelling, and there was nothing more to it than that.

The house is just plain eerie. I pass by a few bedrooms down one long hall. The beds are all made perfectly, as if they’d never been touched. There’s something strange and unsettling about that. There’s a door at the end of the hall that’s cracked and I gently press in on it, careful not to give away my position and announce my presence too overtly. The door creaks like an old thirties horror movie, I look and see the hinges are rusted. Just another bedroom, and from what I can see its all clear. It occurs to me that this whole area is probably just a guest wing. I turn to go back the way I came and a board underneath my boot squeals like a sound effect from a bad movie. On one side of the hall there’s an actual suit of armor, like where the ghosts hide in Scooby-Doo. I keep expecting to hear Vincent Price’s disembodied voice speak to me from somewhere. Telling me to turn back or suffer some ancient curse, or face the angry ghost of so-and-so. This place can’t be for real.

Turbo turned and went down another way, and soon came upon another high ceiling room. The house was not laid out in a logical pattern, and it seemed as though hallways and rooms branched off from weird directions and angles in ways that were not expected. In one corner of the room was a large wooden door, with antique rusty medieval looking hinges. Turbo continued looking around the massive area, which looked as though a small house could fit inside this one open room. In the opposite corner was a metal spiral staircase, that wound its way up into the darkness. Behind the stairs was another hallway, and two more branching off to the left. An ancient grandfather clock stood sentry between the two halls and another portrait hung above that.

I can’t believe it. I swear its like something from an old black and white movie. Someone must have built it that way, its too perfect. I didn’t think that places like this actually existed. I could get lost in this crazy old house.

Turbo heard a noise in the darkness above. Something had moved swiftly through the shadows of the ceiling that was so far up there. He cringed and was at once alert and ready for anything. His heart pounded, filling his head with a sudden rush of blood. Turbo continued to gaze above him for the source of the noise through his green nightvision. All was quiet for a long tense moment. Then he saw it move again.

Turbo could not make out the shape at first through the amber nightvision, which tended to distort things. He clicked it off and stared into the blinding darkness for several moments before clicking it back on again. There was another noise. The bounty hunter sighed and relaxed. It was a bat flapping around at the top of the spiral staircase. A bat and only a bat. He chuckled under his breath at the comedy of seeing bats flying around the spooky old mansion. He walked across the room and looked in the hall beyond the stairs. He smiled. Up ahead was a kitchen.

Glenn stared into the crackling fire, which cast dancing shadows across the huge room. There was a squeak off in the distance that made his blood run cold. He listened intently, convinced that something was drawing closer in the darkness. Long moments went by and despite his imagination, nothing emerged from the shadows. It was just the moaning of the ancient house and nothing more it seemed. He stood up and took off his dripping wet shirt. He twisted it out like a towel, letting the water wring out of it onto the floor. Then he placed it near the fire so that it might have a chance to dry a little. He then had little else to do but watch the fire and wait for the other man to return.

Long minutes of silence passed. Glenn checked his watch under the light of the fire. It was now two in the morning. He yawned wide, it had been a long time since he had been up this late. Ever since he had moved to this town twelve years ago he had been an early riser. He fought against the tide of sleep that began to weigh his eyelids down. The couch was not so uncomfortable, especially after staying in the cramped bomb shelter for so long. Sleep began to win the fight.

Suddenly a noise startled him, and he was wide awake, his heart thumping furiously. Glenn glanced down reasurringly towards the chainsaw by his side and then began scanning the darkness. He listened intently for what seemed like an eternity. Finally another noise drew his attention to full, and he heard the floor creaking in the distance. Was something coming for him? Had the things found their way to them so quickly?

A door opened suddenly with a loud shriek. Glenn leaped to his feet, his heart thumping hard. He whirled around behind him only to see the large tan bounty hunter standing in the doorway. He had become so accustomed to seeing the man wearing the sweeping black duster, that he had forgot there was a person underneath. Turbo was still large, even without the coat, and it was more evident than ever now. Turbo wore a large tee shirt that was still tight across his barrel chest and bulging arms. Over the shirt he wore an open black leather vest. Next Glenn noticed that Turbo had stuff in his hands. With a twitch of his handlebar mostache that might have been a smile, Turbo brought up a pack of hot dogs, two forks and three bottles of beer.

“For such a rundown place, someone must have went grocery shopping not too long ago.” Turbo remarked thoughtfully.

Glenn walked over and met Turbo at the fireplace where he was offered a beer and a hotdog on the end of a fork. Turbo took the other fork and stuck a hot dog on the end of it, and then began roasting it in the crackling fire. Glenn twisted the cap off the beer bottle and then began doing the same.

“You find anything?” He asked.

“Place is like Halloween.”

Glenn nodded, that was something he could definitely agree with the bounty hunter on at the moment. He looked up at the creepy portrait above, the woman seemed to be looking down at him, watching him with her eyes. He frowned up at the painting.

“%@$# you.” Glenn said.

Turbo’s head cocked towards Glenn, and a dark eyebrow raised curiously above the sunglasses. He followed Glenn’s eyes towards the portrait and understood.

“Not you.” Glenn sighed. “Her.”

Turbo nodded absently. Glenn noticed something suddenly as he was frowning at the painting. There was a name on the bottom of the frame, a family name from the looks of it. Glenn’s eyes went wide as his eyes read the name engraved at the bottom of the ornate frame. It was a name that he had heard before. Turbo noticed the odd look on the other man and tried to size him up.

“What?” Turbo asked.

“I’ve heard that name before.” Glenn’s face had a tinge of fear to it. “Kingston.”

“So?” Turbo asked with a mouthful of hotdog. After such activity, he never thought a hotdog could taste so good. At the moment, it seemed to his tastebuds like an exquisite cuisine.

“House is been here for generations. Ever since like the eighteen hundreds. Back in the seventies there was a rumor that a buncha kids went missing up here. Lotta people blamed the Kingston family. Said they weren’t to be messed around with. Said they were devil worshippers or something.”

“Really?” Turbo replied nonchalantly.

“Urban myth or whatever, but the locals all here believe it. They’re really scared of this old house. Didn’t realize it was the house I’d heard about until I saw the name. Never heard exactly where the house was. Just that it was ‘out there’ or whatever. People say to stay away from the Kingstons.”

“People say that about me.” Turbo replied flatly, Glenn saw the firelight reflecting dangerously off the dark sunglasses. Somehow he seemed more threatening than the myths.

"People say a lot about this place and the Kingstons. Stories go way back." Glenn kept talking, as much to fill the silence of the eerie high-ceiling room than to convey a thought. "Stories about the original family and the horrors they committed to their slaves and stuff. Real $@#%ed up bunch. Wonder who the lady is?"

Turbo followed Glenn's eyes to the picture. The woman in the portrait had striking features and a chillingly haunting beauty. Something seemed wrong about the painting, even upon a casual glance, and it sent a shudder through the normally stoic bounty hunter. Her arched eyebrows seemed angry, and her eyes, even though just a painting, seemed intelligent.

"Probably just some dead &*%#." Turbo shrugged.

Turbo ate the rest of the hotdog quickly, even though it wasn’t quite cooked all the way through. He twisted open the bottlecap and took a long swig of warm beer. It tasted like fine wine.

“Woke up this mornin’ and I got myself a beer. Woke up this mornin’ and I got myself a beer.” Turbo began singing in a horribly off-tune voice. “The future’s uncertain and the end is always near. Let it roll baby, roll!”

Glenn raised an eyebrow at the bounty hunter as they both took another drink.

“The Doors?” Turbo asked. “Jim Morrelson? Before your time I guess.”

“Jim Morrison.” Glenn corrected. He could see from the bounty hunter’s reaction that it didn’t really matter to him. “No, I heard of the Doors. Yeah a little before my time, but who hasn’t heard of them? Van Halen was a little more my era.”

Turbo took the last swig of the bottle in a large gulp, letting the liquid settle in his mouth a moment before swallowing. “Van Halen’s good.” He answered with no argument.

“So I guess you were in Vietnam?” Glenn guessed, not knowing if the memories would be something the bounty hunter would not wish to talk about. He figured it was worth a try, nothing else to take their minds off what may be out there in the rain that pattered against the roof.

Turbo twisted off the cap of another beer and took a swig. He nodded grimly with a mouthful.

“Used to listen to Motown a lot.” Turbo finally said after a long moment of silence.

Turbo finished the second beer in a pair of quick gulps before falling silent suddenly. Glenn was about to ask what was wrong, but Turbo moved quickly to the other side of the room. He picked up the chainsaw on the ground and moved to leave.

“Where you going now?” Glenn called after him and followed, not wanting particularly to be left alone again.

“Heard something.” Turbo replied. “Gonna check it out.”

“I didn’t hear anything.” Glenn said a few steps behind.

Suddenly a light shined through the window, but it was not lightning. Turbo knew what it was instantly, before the information could even process in the other man’s brain. Flashlights.

“They’re coming.” He said.

Turbo ran quickly back to the room with the upwards spiraling staircase. He gazed up once to make sure nothing was about to slither down on him. He saw half a dozen bats flittering around towards the ceiling, but nothing more. He stopped in the middle of the room and listened intently.

“What…” Glenn began before the bounty hunter shushed him.

He heard something. A sound drifted to his ears in the darkness. Something was crawling around in the walls. As they listened, the sound continued downwards. Turbo stepped to the old wooden door with antique hinges. He took a bold step forward tried the handle. Locked. Turbo threw his weight forward and kicked the wooden door. Wood splintered and fell away. He kicked again and the wood shattered. He kicked again and it flew open. There was a staircase before them leading down into the darkness.

“You can’t be serious.” Glenn remarked. “I’m not going down there.”

“Fine. Stay here. Say hi to those men with guns when they come through the front door.” Turbo stated before plunging headlong down the stairs.

Glenn waited in the darkness for a few moments. Something moved far above him in the shadows. He could not see the high ceiling but an unmistakable flapping noise carried down to him. He caught a glimpse of something else moving in the darkness, something hanging from the stairs, upside down. It was a dark shadow, roughly the size of a medium sized dog, and when his eyes caught a glimpse of the shadow, and then its plodding movement, he followed down the stairs quickly.

* * * * *

“Sure they went in here?” The voice on the comm-link asked.

“Yeah. There’s a fire burning in the fireplace.” The voice from inside answered over the link.

“Secure the perimeter. Lockdown on all possible exits. Team one, go in after them.”

Four

“Why go down? What if there’s something else down here?” Glenn asked as they got to the bottom of the long staircase.

“Only way I see to go. Can’t fight off those guys with no guns. I heard something in the walls moving down. Rats or something. I think they’re sensing something, trying to get away.”

“Rats?” Glenn asked, but even as he did, he heard the noise of something scurrying in the walls.

“These alien things can sense us somehow. They’re drawn to us. When I first got here, I fought down some sickly, half-dead people. I think these things are using people to reproduce. So I think they’re slowly making they’re way here.”

I spare some of the details that my mind is working around. That I believe that these things are literally feeding off of people and then infecting them with something…evil…something gross. Then the people get sick. I remember the bodies I saw that looked as if they’d been blown up from the inside out. I wonder if I saw a body that one of these things hatched from. I think about this poor guy’s kid. I wanna puke suddenly.

At the bottom of the staircase was a surprisingly large hallway. Along the walls on either side were trophy heads, a few deer with large racks, moose, bison, an antelope and even a lion at the far end. Hanging from the ceiling were stuffed ducks. Turbo thought briefly that it was a rather uncouth display for such a seemingly rich family. They continued down the hall, passed all the stuffed staring animal eyes and through another open doorway. They stopped suddenly, hearing a noise above. The old floors were creaking, an unmistakable sign of someone walking around above them. Turbo pointed a finger up, seeing from the look on the other man’s face that he had also heard the same thing. As they listened quietly, they both heard the sound of something moving in the walls. It seemed to be coming from the next room on the left.

Turbo tried the handle. Another locked door. Hearing the sounds of movement above, he did not want to simply break through this one with an awful racket, and draw the attention of anyone that may be upstairs. He sifted through the inside pocket of his leather vest. He pulled out a small case and unzipped it quickly. A moment later he pulled out an assortment of small tools and began fiddling with the old rusty lock. Glenn raised an eyebrow.

“You always carry tools to pick a lock?”

“Yup.” Turbo remarked as if it was absolutely necessary, as if everyone should indeed have them.

A few short minutes and the work was finished, there was a soft click as he re-positioned the interior mechanism, and the door was then opened. They were now in a storage room. Dusty old pieces of furnature haunted the room with white dust blankets draped over them, book cases filled with archaic knowledge lay forgotten on dusty shelves. The sound in the walls went down. Turbo knew that the creatures were probably massing upstairs at the moment. He found what he was looking for quickly, there in the corner was a storm-shelter type door. He strode over, bent down, and heaved the heavy metal door open, not surprised when he looked upon even more stairs leading down into the darkness.

The tanned bounty hunter wasted no time, he immediately plunged down the staircase. He took the stairs two at a time, hoping to put some distance between him and whatever was coming from upstairs. He reached the bottom and saw a rather large room. Scurrying along the ground were dozens of rats. He booted one aside and it squealed as it flew through the air and smashed against the wall. It slid down the wall, leaving a red smear behind it. Turbo looked to the far end of the long rectangular room, his eyes went wide underneath the sunglasses.

There were old empty wine racks along the wall, coated with dust and cobwebs. Along the walls were piles of junk, packed almost as high as a man’s head. Behind that was a large yawning black mouth in the far end of the cellar. Turbo thought he understood now where the bats had come from. There were archaic dryrotted wooden beams nailed up, sealing the dark hole up from the rest of the house. Turbo set the heavy chainsaw on the ground and pulled the cord.

“What? Is something down here?” Glenn asked, blind to the dark of the lightless basement.

“Hang tight.”

Turbo pulled the cord again, and the old motor lurched and grumbled. He pulled again and it hissed and moaned. He pulled again, and like a great locomotive coming out of a long sleep, the chainsaw began its long roar. Doubtless the men upstairs would hear what he was about to do, but it would amaze him if they chose to follow them this far. He lifted the heavy chainsaw and began cutting away the old boards. Pieces of rotting wood fell away under the mouth of the saw, splinters were thrown in every direction and sawdust flew against his glasses. Over it all the rumble and roar of the saw itself called out through the basement like a witch’s cackling thunder. Turbo pushed and put his weight against the chainsaw blade, cutting as fast as he could and kicking aside pieces when he needed.

Whoever had put up this barricade had done so a long time ago, and quickly. There was so much wood boarded up to the entrance of the cave that Turbo began to wonder why it existed. Had the residents of the old house once had kids that they didn’t want to wander into here? He heard Glenn behind him call out something, but he kept cutting singlemindedly.

“I hear them coming down the stairs!”

Turbo drew back his leg and put a boot through the oldest beams in the very back. They splintered. He kicked again and they gave way, toppling back into the darkness. There was finally an open path, and he was eager to get through it. Perhaps there would be a way through back to the surface. It was likely that this was once a mineshaft or something, houses weren’t usually built on top of wild caves. He cut the power to the chainsaw and called back to his companion.

“Come on.”

Glenn was already on his way. While Turbo had been cutting, he had lit a match in the darkness and found an old gas lantern among the myriad assortment of junk piled up along the walls and forgotten. He ignited the bottom and adjusted the flame. Producing it up high for Turbo to see, he smiled proudly. Turbo did not return the smile, he could see just fine, but he remembered that it must be hard for the other man in the complete darkness of the basement.

“Just keep the light behind me.” Turbo said.

Glenn came running over just as the door swung open. They both saw spears of light shine down the stairs from flashlights. Glenn’s eyes went wide when he saw the cave in the light of the lantern, but faced with the men at the top of the stairs, he did not argue but followed Turbo quickly. Together, they ran down the steep downhill grade, further and further into the great mouth of the cave.

Above them, twenty men with guns were gathering, reporting through their comm-links that they had the men trapped in some sort of cave. Attracted to all the movement and life centering around the great old house, a hundred creeping tentacled horrors shambled through the woods towards it.

* * * * *

They traveled through the wide cave passage before coming, oddly enough, to another staircase. Turbo traveled quickly towards the bottom of the crude stone steps and began seeing things carved into the walls that were slightly unnerving. The stairs had descended several clicks, they were narrow and steep, worked crudely from the bare stone. He briefly wondered just how far into the heart of the Earth these stairs would descend.

Further and further. My legs are tired at this point, I’ve never seen a staircase go this long. I begin wondering if I’m stuck in an episode of The Twilight Zone. That would explain a lot, maybe this whole night has just been some sick story, made up by the writers of that show just to, what, get me back for all the bad I’ve done? I guess. Seems like the people in those shows, Tales from the Crypt and whatnot, they’re always bad people, and it seems like in some twisted way, they deserve the crazy things that happen to them at the end. Yeah, I’ve done a lot of bad in my time, but I’d like to think maybe I’ve made a difference too. All the fugitives I’ve tracked down. Every one of those is another woman that’s not raped. Another son or father that’s not killed. Another store owner that’s not robbed. But then again, whatever. If this is some kinds Twilight Zone thing, then I’m ready for it. They never had Turbo Ramone on that @#%$@ show.

Turbo sneered at a weird carving high above them, worked into the natural cave wall. It was something of a face, though badly distorted. Turbo was not sure if it was worn away by time, or if the striking features had been purposefully carved that way, or perhaps a mixture of both. It was too high up for the light of the lantern to hit, but it was massive, enough to rival the stone heads at Easter Island perhaps.

“What?” Glenn asked, noticing that something had drawn the attention of the bounty hunter in front of him.

“Nothing.” Turbo stated plainly and kept moving.

Finally, they reached the bottom of the crudely worked stairs. Maybe a hundred feet above them Turbo saw a line of several more statues worked into holes in the cave face. They all shared a similar quality in that they were all female. Ahead of them was a startlingly large grotto, a panoramic scene on all sides, the ceiling was too far above for either of them to see, simply disappearing into the darkness above. There was strange vegitation growing fifty strides out, and they could smell the salty tang of water nearby, and feel the wet mist in the air. Glenn took a few brave steps forward to look at the weird mushrooms and was startled by something. He leaped back initially but breathed a sigh of relief when he brought the globe of illumination to bear a closer inspection. It was only a cricket-like insect, though a huge blind fist-sized thing with long antennae that wiggled and probed the air.

“Hey check this out.” Glenn called back, watching the creature with morbid fascination.

Turbo was gazing back at the staircase with awe and wonder. An odd thought began to creep to the fore of his thoughts but he forcefully put it aside, for the ramifications of such a thing would be…beyond anything he’d want to purposefully contemplate upon. His eyes drew a long look at the architechture before heading over to Glenn and the strange insect. He laughed when he saw it, seated atop a hand-sized mushroom. He certainly had never before witnessed such an insect, and maybe nobody ever had. He decided to keep moving, just in case the men were crazy enough to follow them this far down.

I don’t wanna dwell on what my mind keeps nagging me about the architechture of the stone staircase. My mind is split. Theres a rational side of me that’s saying, no way, you’re beind paranoid. It’s perfectly natural too, what with all the evil brainsucking monsters out in the woods. There’s another side of me, just as logical, that knowns just enough about the way things are put together. Fences. Houses. Bridges. Interstates. I know it in my heart. The question is there, nagging my head, demanding an answer. Why would anyone build a staircase all the way to the bottom of this cave? I keep moving anyway, trying to find a way back up to the top. The voice comes back again at the back of my mind.

The stairs weren’t built from the house down here.

It’s stupid I tell myself. Shut up and keep moving, who cares? The question found a dwelling place inside my skull and keeps going around in a cyclical pattern, like the way crazy people think. Why would anyone build a staircase down here? In my heart I know the answer too. They didn’t.

The stairs weren’t built from the house down. They were built down up.

@$#^% it’s gonna be a long night.

Turbo heard something in the darkness. Perhaps he really was going crazy he briefly thought. It sounded like a woman’s voice, a woman’s soft giggle. A woman’s voice, down in a cave. They kept walking through the cave, passing a set of massive stalamites along the ground far to their right. Suddenly, after several minutes, they heard a noise again, a shuffling. Turbo’s nightvision began to flicker in and out.

“Damn!” He remarked.

Damn! What the hell is up with these things? That’s the second time tonight they’ve gone on the fritz. The darkness surrounds us, pushes in on us from all sides like a crushing wave. I hear movement out there, just beyond the reach of my vision. I ignore it at first, but after a little bit, I know I’m not going crazy. There really is something out there.

“I hear something.” Glenn whispered, reaffirming Turbo’s concerns.

“Yup.” The bounty hunter continued to plod ahead, as if whatever they heard either did not exist, or didn’t really matter.

Suddenly the globe of light from the lantern fell upon a sight that froze them both. It was the form of a woman. A striking woman barely clothed with a flattering curvaceous figure. Her long thin pale legs were completely exposed, only a very immodest loincloth protected them from seeing all that their minds could imagine. She lay against a rock, her back curved slightly around it, her amply endowed chest was pushed forward. Both men stared for a long moment, not knowing what to say or do. It took a moment for Turbo to realize that she wore a veil acrossed her face, like some Arabian belly dancer, and it masked her face totally. Long locks of red hair spilled over her shoulders like a soft river.

“Hello?” Glenn was the first to speak, Turbo was still processing information. “Are you lost?”

They received a giggle as a reply. It was an eerie sound, for it held all the connotations of youthful innocence, and yet somehow simultanously had a malevolent undertone. With a quick movement, she darted from the rock and deeper into the darkness.

“Wait!” Glenn followed quickly. Turbo sighed. He then followed Glenn.

Glenn followed the sprightly girl through a winding cavern. She moved so fast that he only caught glimpses of her and followed the trail of her laughter that echoed back to him. He didn’t stop to think why he followed, or even the fact that he had quickly outdistanced the bounty hunter. He knew only that he had to catch the scantily clad beauty.

Turbo did not follow right away, and when he moved to follow, he did not do so with every bit of his energy. It was like the tortoise and the hare, he would be able to find the man, he just was not in a hurry to do so. He looked back through the huge open grotto, back towards the staircase in the far distance. It was somewhat striking when he saw the amount of distance that they had crossed. He paused for a moment before following Glenn into the winding passageway. He saw the glitter of lights shining down the staircase from above. He knew that they were still being followed. With a curse on his lips, Turbo ducked low and entered the narrow passage.

The tunnel wound and wove like a snake through a hundred yards of earth. He quickened his pace when he could not see the other man in front of him. There was no light and his sunglasses were still acting up. He clicked them off and followed the passage by feeling along the walls. For several minutes he continued walking, still no sign of the light from Glenn’s lantern. His gloved hand slid across the cool stone wall, his fingertips exposed. His ring finger on his left hand slid acrossed a jagged rock in the dark. He knew it had broke the skin, but did not worry about it overmuch. His other arm was growing tired from carrying the heavy chainsaw. The air itself was growing cooler the further inside the cave he traveled, and he could still smell the hint of misty vapors in the air. In the distance, he heard the shrill cry of bats. His boots crunched on top of something hard like gravel.

The passage grew even narrower, and the ceiling dropped even lower. A normal sized man may have fit through upright, but the six-foot-two Turbo Ramone had to duck low. He tapped the side of his sunglasses and tried the button again. There was a wash of green static that clouded his vision. He tapped them again. Suddenly they worked, and the underground world flared with amber ambience. He was startled by what he saw suddenly, and wondered if not being able to see was more of a blessing.

Underneath his boots were millions of strange insects, some as large as his fist. The whole ground was a living moving blanket of swarming crawling things. He saw that dotted along the tunnel, they swarmed over the skeletal remains of several bats. Sure enough, he looked up and saw that the low ceiling was alive as well, with black furry creatures. He saw hundreds of tiny coal black eyes as his head almost brushed against them. Turbo bent at the waist and ducked his head lower, and continued through the tunnel quickly. He heard a noise echo through the tunnels ahead, he realized that it was the sound of Glenn’s voice carrying to his waiting ears.

Turbo cut through the passage faster, double-timing it around a few narrow curves. The heavy load in his right hand slowed his movement. He came upon the end of the tunnel and saw another open cavern. His jaw dropped at what he saw further in, and he froze for a moment, speechless at the sight before him. There was a titanic outline of a looming structure, a step pyramid that climbed high into the vast reaches of darkness above. His eyes darted around, and finally caught a glimpse of Glenn. He was being carried towards the monolith by two large figures.

“Whatever.” Turbo muttered.

His hand went dutifully to the cord of the chainsaw and pulled. With a sputter and a puff of exhaust smoke, the engine began to rumble threateningly, creating a menacing echo throughout the cavern. Turbo was usually a very analytical man, never given to bursts of emotion, but he was about to make a special exception.

“@$#% this whole town!!”

Five

“Taking fire here! $@%#$% pinned down! There’s at least one sniper in that building. Cruize, flank that sonofa@%#^$ quick!”

There was a moment of radio silence before a hissing came back from the other end, followed by the rattling of interspersed gunfire.

“Negative sir, I’ve got multiple targets engaged. I’m wailin’…Hrrztt”

The sergent was pelted with shards of rocks as a high caliber rifle round pounded the boulder he was behind. In front of him was the town that was supposed to be empty of all VC activity. In fact, thanks to the action of another squad, it was supposed to be devoid of any life whatsoever. The building that housed the sniper, directly in front of him, looked as if it could have been a Buddist temple at one time. One time before these people had been stupid enough to go to war with America and had been bombed back to the stone age for it.

“Dammit we need assistance! Ramone? Where the hell is your #$@% indian ass? Take out those snipers!”

There was another moment of tense silence as the sergent’s position was fired upon a number of times. He picked up the radio to make another transmission but was cut off suddenly.

“Affirmative.”

The whole LRRP squad had been pulled from the field a week ago and briefed alongside a dozen other such recon patrols. With the TET offensive, the tide of the war was changing, they were told. The top brass were sending in new orders, secret orders, the kind that didn’t get back home to CBS news. Top level blackout priority, the tide of war was changing, and Ramone and his squad were about to start fighting a new war. The top men were no longer content with the long range recon boys to scout out enemy locales and report back, they were interested only in numbers now. They wanted casualties, and they didn’t care how they got them. The number one order of business now was this and this only: Inflict casualties.

Ramone leaped from the tall weeds outside the monestary to the outside wall of the crumbled building itself. He had already been way ahead of his sergent, and had stealthed along the perimeter of the building, hiding in the thick brush along the backside. He steadied his rifle and then went in through an opening that was once a doorway.

He wasn’t prepared for what he came face to face with, though he didn’t freeze for even a second. He found his finger pulling the trigger before his brain had even processed the information from his eyes. There had been two men wearing traditional wide cone shaped sun hats with AK-47’s. There was a group of ten people between them, as if they were keeping guard over them. The muzzle of the M16 flashed, spitting death upon the whole group. Ramone sprayed left to right, cutting down every live body within range.

The first man with the assault rifle was blown backwards as three bullets bore through his body, his feet actually left the ground. Two more faces exploded in outbursts of gore. One of the people held a hand up, as if to ward away the death, only to have three fingers blown off while the bullet carried clean through to the neck, and then out the other side. A small body twisted end over end as it sprayed a crimson mist through the air. Ramone was reminded of a lawn sprinkler. His heart pounded, the acrid smell of gunpowder and brass filled his nostrils. The whole incident took two seconds, but seemed to last forever.

Finally, when none of the bodies were still moving, his mind processed some of the information. Two VC soldiers had been holding ten people quiet by gunpoint. Were they rebels, loyalists to the US presence? It was hard to tell now, but images flashed back to his mind that several of the people had been women, elderly, and the one that was tossed into the air had been a child. He had no time to reflect on this, he had to save his squad.

Ramone leapt over the bodies strewn across what was once a prayer floor and headed to a doorway in the back of the building that held a staircase. There were several holes in the building where whole chunks had been blown away, and warm sunlight poured in the holes to greet him. He reached the staircase quickly and was greeted by another figure whose features were masked by a sun hat. He only saw the old bolt action rifle gripped tightly in his hands. Ramone pulled the trigger, nearly point blank into the person’s gut. Blood splashed across the back wall of the stairwell and the body slumped forward. The hat rolled away, revealing the face of a young woman, perhaps in her teens. The sound of a rifle shot cracked like a bolt of lightning from the top of the stairs. He growled and plunged up them.

Ramone came to the top of the stairs and peeked his head up over a wooden railing. He saw four more women at a window, firing old style M1 rifles at his team. One of them spotted him and began calling out in Vietnamese. He fumbled with his belt, ducking his head back down the stairs faster than they could start firing at him. The bullets began whizzing over his head a moment later, like tiny stinging bees, riddling the wall and sending chunks of brick and mortar down on his green helmet. He pulled the pin on a grenade and chucked it over the railing, falling back down the stairs for cover.

A moment later there was an explosion so deafening that the young soldier thought that he had been caught up in a brief typhoon. He came up the stairs quickly with his rifle at the ready, searching through the smoke for live targets. He caught movement at the far end. One of them had been hit by shrapnel and was hanging onto her life by a thread. He pulled the trigger, felt the butt of the rifle kick against his shoulder. The body stopped moving.

“All clear.” He reported a minute later through the radio to his team.

“What the @$#%? We got some serious activity down here!” Came the reply from his sergeant almost instantly.

Ramone ran to the window and looked out. He saw maybe two dozen people running through the open kill zone towards the rest of his squad. They weren’t armed for the most part and wore only white toga type garments. Ramone wondered if they were Buddist monks or something, but never got a chance to contemplate at length. Suddenly Cruize’s voice came up over the radio.

“Come on baby light my fire!” He cried in a heavy accent.

Ramone looked down and saw a bright orange gout of flame erupt through the trees, bright enough to make his eyes hurt from gazing at it directly. The stream fell on the crowd of people, igniting a massive number of the mob. Shrill cries of terror and agony came up to his window perch. He knelt down into a firing position, bracing the M16 against his shoulder. He aimed the muzzle towards the crowd and pulled the trigger. Flaming bodies began falling as the rattle of his rifle thumped and vibrated his body, his bullets found targets through the flame wall.

Several minutes after the last of the crowd had ceased movement, the team was once again assembled. They had fanned out and searched the monestary grounds, and after some time of searching, Cruize had found an opening in what was left of the living quarters. He had sprayed a flame of napalm into a few holes he found before he found a larger one. Ramone passed by two massive statues set on either side of a stone path that led to the building. Wrapped in vines, the jungle was reaching out to claim the ancient statues. He looked up at their grim stone faces that seemed to be leering down at him. Ahead, on either side of the archway entrance stood two more. The one on the left had no head.

Ramone met up with the rest of his squad who were all assembled around a narrow portal in the floor of the living quarters.

“Could go deep.” Cruize remarked.

“You know the drill boys. Kill ‘em all.” The sergent said impassively while lighting a cigarette.

“Fire in the hole.” Ramone called out before tossing a grenade down the shaft.

There was a large rumble in the floor as the blast went off several feet underground. By his estimation, it was indeed deep. Ramone listened curiously for a moment as his ears caught a faint sound coming from the bottom of the portal. It sounded like crying. He shouldered his M16 and drew his service pistol. He racked the slide and it clicked loudly.

“@%#$ this whole place!”

* * * * *

Something skeletal leaped from the side. It was neither human nor animal. It was a hideously grotesque mockery of humanity, it’s slobbering mouth wide and lipless. The head had only clumps of hair on the very top, it was bare even of eyebrows. The eyes were wide and looked to be lidless. The skin was taut around the face and high cheekbones. It wore nothing in the way of clothing and yet was still indistinguishible as male or female. Turbo did not hesitate, not even for a second. His feet moved aside even as his arms brought the spinning growling blade around. It sang a high pitched note as it cut through the creature’s body at the shoulder. Turbo pushed the chainsaw, and the blade sank halfway through the torso of the figure, whose wide eyes died frozen in shock, even as it began to try to scream. The saw itself bucked and kicked wildly, becoming almost a creature in and of itself, letting loose a puff of exhaust smoke as it cut through the body.

As the saw cleared through to the other side and both pieces of the disembodied figure slumped in a soupy heap of blood, Turbo saw a dozen more figures running towards him from the corner of his eye. Each one bore different signs of ugliness and mutation. One had no face to speak of, as one typically recognized a face, instead two long stalks protruded from the forehead, holding on them what looked to be eyeballs. Another disturbingly gaunt figure carried a disfigured and grossly undeveloped arm. Two were massive with metal pieces screwed to their arms. Some were disturbingly hairy, others malformed in other ways. Turbo was able to quickly see and mentally capture each disgusting mutation.

He stabbed the nearest thing with the chainsaw blade, cutting a massive gaping hole and disembowling it cleanly. He then took a swipe at another’s arm, which was reaching for him. With a buck that nearly caused the blade to come back at him, the blade roared and took the arm off above the elbow. He turned and swiped another one acrossed the chest, a squirt of blood trailed the whirling blades. He twisted and lashed out, cutting a bloody swath through the figures, who came at him heedless of their own safety. The last one to fall, one of the fat creatures, punched a ham-sized fist at Turbo’s head. He brought the blade up and the hand connected with the cutting blades of doom, exploding like a juicy fruit squeezed between one’s hand. The creature roared and kept coming, as if it felt no pain. Turbo plunged the blade into the creature’s stomach and revved the engine high. A moment later the blade erupted out the thing’s back with a roar of exhaust, bits of torn entrails and bone fragments shot fifteen feet across the cave floor, leaving smear stains where they landed.

Turbo kicked the limp monster off the end of the blade and leaped over the rest of the remains that lay strewn upon the floor. He rushed towards the massive staircase that led into the pyramid monolith, where the others had dragged Glenn. He reached the staircase and began leaping up them two at a time, cutting down three more malformed abominations without pause. The torn bodies tumbled down the stairs as he ascended higher.

Above him, halfway up the titanic structure was a gaping black hole, leading inside. He saw two more creatures emerge from the hole to slow his advance. He lead the way up the last few stairs blade first, and sheared one off at the knees. The other he pushed against the wall, holding the chainsaw horizontally across the thing’s throat. The blades cast bright sparks as they cut through the thing’s neck and into the stone wall. The head toppled down the stairs behind him, leaving splotches of sticky crimson in its wake.

A third lipless skeletal creature with deep sunken eyes caught the bounty hunter from behind, reaching for his neck with ice cold clawed fingers. Turbo could not bring the chainsaw up in time. He instead used his considerible body weight and shoulder-checked the monstrosity into the stone wall. It let out a hideous moan that did not sound like it escaped from human lungs. It was the sound of air escaping a long forgotten crypt.

Turbo grabbed a long white shock of greasy hair and shoved the creature’s face into the stone. Over and over he repeated, every time the face struck the wall, a sickly wet thump sounded. Finally the body stopped moving and Turbo released his grip, letting the lifeless being drop to the floor, half a face lighter. He then thrust through the opening without a second’s hesitation.

Turbo found himself entering in what could have been a massive atrium. It was circular, perhaps fifty feet in diameter, with a curious pattern etched into the stone ground. Along the walls were bas-reliefs and carvings that looked prehistoric and some depicted hideous things that Turbo did not wish to dwell on for long. In the middle of the floor was a crackling bonfire, that cast dancing shadows high along the walls. The walls continued up for many lengths of a man, and all around the sides were planks and openings, walkways and catacombs. A horn sounded in the darkness, an evil bleating sound that precluded the thunder of footsteps gathering around him from all angles. He heard a woman’s voice giggle from above and spun to look.

High above him, seated upon a high-backed chair was another scantily clad woman, her dimensions and assets were perfect, her skin was fair and unblemished, almost as if she was chiseled from stone or torn from a painting. Her long legs were crossed, and it was the only way that her embarassingly short skirt was flattering. Her clothing looked as if it had once been a lavish and expensive gown, and upon a second’s further inspection, Turbo guessed that, oddly enough, it had once been white, and had once been most likely a wedding dress. It was odd though, that despite most of her body being exposed, her face was veiled in what looked to be an odd wedding veil with a strange mask underneath. She was flanked by two more veiled beauties, who clung to the bottom of her throne like seating arrangement.

Two large iron doors opened at his nine-o-clock and three-o-clock positions. A gathered horde of monstrosities and hideous abominations gathered at the openings. Above him on the first rung of the multi-tiered spiral he saw several more gathering, for all intents and purposes, looking like animals prepared to leap down upon him as if he were a fresh kill. A few more were coming up the stairs behind him to completely surround him. The chainsaw rumbled and vibrated angrily in his gloved hands.

“Wonderful!” The seated woman’s voice echoed through the natural ampitheater, her voice qualities were slightly accented and somehow queenly. “Let the games begin!”

There was a pause as the gathered crowds of mutants waited all around the bounty hunter as he walked down into the room. He gazed around and up at them all.

“Well?” He growled in an overpowering thunderous voice. “You gonna sit there playin’ grabass all day or you gonna come get me?”

The crowd came forward on all sides as one great tide of ugly humanity and surged forward.

“That’s the spirit!” Turbo yelled over their cries, bringing the chainsaw up and revving it high.

* * * * *

The crowd of ghastly half to fully naked humanoids came at the bounty hunter as if possesed by a singular intelligence. Turbo went on the offensive quick and visciously, swinging the chainsaw down through the middle of a strangely elognated head. Brains and blood were tossed about like a red fountain burst. He did not wait for them to come to him, he lashed out in every plausible direction, spilling blood and entrails across the floor with every turn. Instantly he dominated the crowd, cutting through them like a cyclone of violence. Above the cries and stark animal howls raged the groaning chainsaw blade as it huffed and cut an angry path of destruction.

Turbo worked a pattern around the bonfire, keeping enemies at bay through any way he could. He went into what his friends called the “Turbo” state, becoming more of a machine than a man, living only to react to his environment. When one leaped onto his back and tried to bite down through his leather vest, he threw himself violently against the back wall, while simultaneously thrusting a boot into the chest of another one in front of him. There was a bone jarring snap as a ribcage behind him fractured. He threw his head back, and felt it connect against solid bone. The teeth that were sunk into the leather fell out, along with blood, and the one that he’d kicked in front sailed into the roaring fire. It landed awkwardly, and toppled end over end, it could not get out of the pit before it had combusted.

Turbo pushed off the wall and cut through three more beastlie figures, who howled and died gruesome deaths as the chainsaw sang through their bodies like so much meat in a slaughterhouse. A larger one sprang up, and Turbo thrust the chainsaw tip into the left side of its gut, before ripping upwards. The blade cut free over the creature’s right shoulder, splitting him open and almost in half horizontally and caught another monster in the face that had crowded too closely to the action. Turbo held the saw at waist level and began spinning in circles, becoming a living whirlwind of death, a typhoon of liquid and gore. The saw bucked as it cut through flesh and muscle and internal organs, but the strong bounty hunter strained his arms to keep the machine under control. It became an extention of his own body.

He leaped through an opening between two of the creatures while cutting down another one in passing. He saw that some of the vaguely humanoid creatures that stood on the rim above the center pit were now leaping down to enter the fray as well. He ran around the side of the wall and positioned himself between the ground and a falling monster, raising the saw up high. The mutant could have only weighed a hundred pounds at best, but as it fell, the whirling blades cut it in twain at the waist, legs falling on one side of the bounty hunter, torso and head falling on the other. He thrust the chainsaw out again and again, his arms were strong, but they had their limitations. They were growing tired the more he fought, and in the heat of things, there was not a moment to rest. He now realized that the whole floor was littered with bodies and limbs, and was blood-slicked and glossy like a freshly waxed floor.

I can feel the madness slip its greasy fingers over my face, prodding through to my brain. Its like a warm embrace. I give in. I don’t care.

Even so, there seemed to be no shortage of the monsters and demons that surrounded him. There were perhaps thirty on their feet and trying to surround and push him into a corner, and yet he saw another twenty or so emerging from the far opening, even as three more trickled down from above. Turbo dodged aside and cut an arm asunder, as the sawblade came through clean, the detached portion spun through the air with a trail of blood. Turbo felt hands at his boots, grasping for purchase. His arms took on a life of their own, responding to his quick mind’s inventory and reaction speed. He plowed through a crowd of monsters as they tried to corner him, leading with the blade.

The dark-skinned giant severed another arm, and kicked the body out into the crowd before him. He swung the chainsaw in a wide arc in front of him, slicing across several torsos at once. Mutated faces scowled, hideous features glared back at him like a sea of deformed perversion Something leaped at him from the side and he brought the blade up horizontal. He pushed up and through. A moment of loud groaning from the saw preceeded a severed head slumping to the wet ground and sliding underneath another creature’s bare foot.

Surrounded by the rattle and roar of the chainsaw and the vibration in his hands Turbo slipped into a death trance. Blood spilled, insides flew and severed limbs fell. The blades cut through bones and meat, and everywhere Turbo turned was another growling, deranged victim to be slaughtered. He lost track of the time in his killing trance, the movements slowed to a crawl while the time itself flew by. He had no idea how long he spent cutting and swinging, hours or minutes. Turbo had been lost to some primal dementia, but now he forced himself clear again. The blade sputtered and jammed halfway inside one of the mutants. Turbo looked around and saw only three more freakish monstrosities still upright. He loosed his grip on the chainsaw and rose up to face them. They took a collective step backward. The doors opened at ground level again. Turbo saw several more of the creatures coming at him from both sides, this time, they were armed with crude weapons.

“Come on then, I ain’t got all day.” He barked at them.

They did come, on command of the seated woman above, who was still watching with morbid fascination. Turbo gazed up at her with a icy death glare. Another large crowd gathered and charged from both sides, and fell from above as well. He waited a moment before moving at all, waiting for them to come closer. Pulling them closer into his trap.

Turbo was already one step ahead of the mutants, pulling free the canister that had been clinking on his belt the whole time, though he’d forgotten it until now. With the other hand, he unhooked the other small contraption that’d been alongside it in his duster. With a roar, Turbo heaved himself through the thin crowd of creatures that choked off the way out, and quickly, he was coming out the way that he went in.

Turbo’s thumb depressed the safety lever on the canister and he pulled the pin. He threw it back inside the room where it landed in the middle of the thick angry crowd. He was already on step two though, and was throwing the second item inside as well.

I shut my eyes and turn away, plugging my ears as tight as I can as I try to roll down the stairs. A moment goes by, nothing. I hear the cries of the crowds of creatures inside. Then the flash-bang goes off. Roughly six or seven million candlepower accompanied by a deafening hundred and seventy decibel blast. The flash of light momentarily activates all photosensitive cells in the retina, making vision impossible for approximately five seconds. I’ve heard that people unlucky enough to be looking when one goes off, see a single frame for the five seconds, like their vision was just "paused”. The loud bang disturbs the fluid in the semicircular canals of the ear. The cillia or whatever can’t function and go haywire. They’re supposed to determine a person's sense of balance, when the boom hits, the hairs stop working, and so do a victim’s sense of balance. Effectively, instant vertigo. The second grenade I throw is worse. The first was just to keep ‘em all in place while the second one detonates.

I’m far enough away from the sound and the light to avoid retching and going blind, but the world’s audio is still suddenly put on mute. I hear nothing, only a faint and shrill ring. I know that if I could hear, I’d be hearing screaming right now, because my nose picks up the acrid garlic-like odor, even as I see the plume of white smoke roll out from the doorway. The second present went off. “Willy Pete”. Merry Christmas. White Phosphorus. When exposed to air this sumbitch causes the nastiest chemical burn you ever wanna see. It won’t stop either, even underwater. My ears are still ringing though, so I can’t hear them anyway. I charge in through the thick white smoke that the chemicals produce as an aftereffect.

Turbo charged back through the doorway. Through the thick veil of white smoke that was now choking the whole arena. He did not hear the gunfire behind him, nor did he see the figures wearing containment suits that were coming through the tunnel opening across from the base of the temple. He also did not notice the stray bullets that pinged off the staircase and top of the arched entrance, barely missing him. He came back in with all the intensity of a raging storm, and found his first victim in the white smoke, that was green hued in his nightvision. His hands felt around the figure’s face and pulled hard before twisting the opposite way, wrenching the neck and top vertibrae. He kicked another one and sent it toppling back into more bodies.

Turbo found what he was looking for in the thick smoke, though he had to climb over the mound of dismembered bodies and kick his way through the ones that were still living with the very unpleasant chemical burn. His ears still ringing from the blast, he strode through the silent room up to the bonfire. He kicked out hard at the bottom logs, causing the top ones to fall and roll. He kicked again and again, pausing briefly to batter aside one of the mutants who was yet capable of attacking him. He reached down and picked up one of the heavy logs. He whirled in a circle, building momentum. He then released the log and watched it sail up to one of the balconies above. He reached down and picked up another one, sending this one in the opposite direction. The logs along the ground rolled until they hit a body and stopped. A few reached the outer walls. Either way the bodies began to smoke and crackle a few moments later.

Another large mutant was running through the smoke at him. Turbo had been picking up another huge log. He let the monster come at him and dodged aside at the last moment. He swung the log with everything he had, planting the flaming end in the creature’s face. Momentum hit momentum like a car accident. Sparks flew with a loud crack as the log connected and the body left the ground, sailed halfway across the room and tumbled against a wall. Turbo threw the log to the next floor and was soon on the move.

Turbo’s gloved hands found purchase along the wall, through large jutting bas-reliefs. He climbed up as quickly as possible through the thick rolling smoke. He was not agile, but he managed to pull himself up with sheer brute country strength. Wherever his hands could find a hold, his strong muscles could pull upwards. He found a railing and grabbed hold, with a mighty heave, he pulled himself up and over, landing on the second floor. He looked up and saw through the haze that the women were still two floors above.

He looked around and saw another place that he could climb. He repeated the process again before he came up to the desired level. As he came over the railing, he saw Glenn over by the three women, seated on the ground. He wondered briefly why the man did not try to fight? Maybe he was not as large as the bounty hunter and certainly not trained to fight as he was, but could he not find the courage to beat up three shapely yet small women?

The outer level was circular with huge pillars around the rim. Turbo rounded the corner and stormed towards the trio. His t-shirt had been ripped in the fighting and lay in tatters and threads around him, leaving him nearly bare-chested save for the vest. His proud tanned face was dour, set and determined. He emerged from the smoke like a grim berserk warrior from a fantasy movie. The women saw him and gasped, cowered by his sheer prescence. As he neared, he discovered that the seated woman had not been totally helpless for she cried a single word in desperation.

“Thog!”

It gave the bounty hunter pause. Was she calling him some strange insult? Was she trying to command something in some foreign underground tongue? He shook his head. Little did it matter, he stepped forward again, having every intention of punching her in the face. He didn’t quite get the chance. Emerging from an alcoved room, a massive frame burst forth to tower over the bounty hunter. Over seven foot tall and probably close to five hundred pounds, the creature was more gorilla than man. It’s features were also questionably human, it seemed strikingly bestial, as if a human had bred with an animal. Turbo shook the thought from his head, it was altogether possible he supposed. A massive muscular arm connected with his chest, and he flew backwards against the wall.

Oh. Thog.

I hit the wall hard. For a minute, I forget my own name.

Something light brushed against Turbo’s face and he saw a long black thing. He looked up and almost screamed. One of the alien creatures had followed them down into the cave and was now hovering above him, crawling down the wall and reaching for him with its long black chitinous legs and a mass of feelers. Turbo rolled along the ground away from it quickly and saw several more sliding silently along the walls around the temple, descending quickly and silently. He rolled right towards the monstrous behemoth. A huge hand grabbed him around the throat and lifted him off the ground. He kicked his legs wildly, trying to find leverage.

The beast slammed him against another wall with such force that it knocked loose some dust and mortar from between the massive stone bricks. Turbo punched the creature hard, but it barely noticed. It slammed him into one of the pillars that lined the circular balcony. Turbo threw a gloved hand into the thing’s cheek. It was like punching the wall. The creature didn’t even acknowledge the blow but instead launched its own massive fist in retailiation. He tried to dodge aside, but the fist caught him square on the cheek.

I try and try and try but I can’t seem to get up. My head goes blank, I feel like I’ve been hit by the flash-bang. Or a bus. It’ll be on me fast, have to do something. Have to move. I…

The creature lifted him off his feet again and smashed him against the far wall where the spider-octopus creature still slithered. The legs and feelers came down and slid across his face. The ape-creature seemed amused, and held him for the alien. Turbo’s head was still rattled, his thoughts were confused and coming slowly, as if he was stuck underwater. The long black segmented legs stretched out, the feelers fell down around his face like streamers hanging from a doorway. He heard a disgusting wet slurping sound close to his ear. Both his hands shot out to grab the ape-man’s massive hand. He pushed and thrashed and tried to pull the fat fingers loose from around his throat.

Turbo pushed against the creature with all his might. He was a large man and had never been manhandled in this manner before. He may as well have been a child at that point arm-wrestling a pro-wrestler. He felt something wet on his ear and cheek and felt the pulpy body of the alien descend down to his head, things fell around his face. He saw the legs outstretch on all sides of him as the thing settled in for dinner. The massive fist was cutting off his oxygen. Turbo expunged the last of his breath and roared the frustrated shrill cry of a man at his wit’s end. The creature had Turbo held two feet off the ground.

Suddenly his leg shot out of its own accord and planted between the creature’s legs. The ape-man howled and slammed Turbo against the wall again with such force that it shook the whole structure. The ape-man released its grip and fell back. The alien was shaken loose from the wall by the impact. Turbo managed to reach up and grab hold of one of the legs before it tumbled down on top of him. He heaved with all his might and threw the falling alien crab thing at the ape-man. Somewhere above him the sound of something heavy crashed from the quake to the wall. It fell from a great height and smashed through the floor, causing a terrible tremor. When it hit the ground Turbo knew what it was from the sound it made when it hit bottom. It was a heavy ancient bell, the kind they use in old cathedrals.

My head is swimming, and I know I have to be hallucinating now, but I hear a bell ring somewhere below. Something stirs in my blood. Something viscious, something primal. It doesn’t fear and it doesn’t quit. Ding. Round two.

As the bell fell to the ground, the quake caused cracks to spiderweb through the ancient stone walls and pillars. Ancient dust fell like a cloud from above. Turbo rose and walked towards the ape-man, even as it slammed the alien against the wall. The watermelon sized body smeared and ran down the stone like a pickle thrown against a Burger King window. Three more of the crab things fell behind him and haunched up on their numberous legs. Turbo heard the hard chinking of their pointed legs crawling towards him along the stone floor.

The ape-man focused his attention towards Turbo again. It swung a massive fist and Turbo ducked his head outside its range. The fist slammed into the stone pillar behind the bounty hunter and the creature howled in pain. The ape-like creature was amazingly quick however, surprising even the bounty hunter with its speed. It reached out to grab the man and Turbo launched a fist into the ape-like nose of the massive mutant. Blood spurted like a fountain as the soft cartilidge broke. The enraged creature threw another series of blows, each one whizzed harmlessly through the air.

As Turbo was coming outside of one punch, he stepped to the inside quickly and jabbed the monster’s nose again. The arms bigger than his legs grabbed him and pulled him quickly into a tight bearhug. The wind was driven from Turbo’s lungs. It felt like his ribcage was about to blow apart within his torso. Below him he heard the popping of firearms discharging. He saw that the fire was now licking the walls, enveloping the temple like a lover in the wintery nights, leaping higher and higher every moment. Behind him he saw the crab-monsters inching closer, ready to strike. The sheer thought of them sent a shudder of revulsion down his spine. Turbo’s fists boxed the thing’s ears but it hardly seemed to notice.

Both of Turbo’s fists began hammering at the ape-mutant’s throat. The first two caused it to choke and cough, the corded muscles of the thing’s neck was like hitting a tree trunk. Turbo launched another fist and elbow into its nose. He followed up quickly with another strike to the neck. Then the choking ape-man felt the full strength and power of the bounty hunter as Turbo pulled the massive arms away from his body with a mighty effort. He landed on his feet, the monster stumbled back a few steps drunkenly. One of the octopus things lurched forward into a pounce. Turbo dodged aside and kicked it over the balcony, where it landed in the flames below. He looked up just in time to see the Thog monster duck its head low and charge him. Five hundred pounds came at the bounty hunter quickly, like a speeding Lincoln Town Car. Turbo dodged aside at the last second, and the ape-man put its head right through the outside wall.

Turbo walked over to the women, wasting no time. He would take Glenn away from this place and get away for good, and forever. One of the women leaped at him like a snarling animal. He caught her by her tiny arms and she thrashed violently. Her veil came away slightly. Turbo was taken aback by the sight. She was, under the veil, a mutant as well, though only her face showed the signs. Her mouth was slightly elognated like a dog’s, and the bottom half of her face was scaly and bony. Short worm-like appendages writhed from her cheeks and under her jaw. Her teeth were pointed and wicked, and she brought her head close to bite him. With lightning reflexes, Turbo snapped his head forward, catching her in the mouth with his forehead. She swooned. He came forward again, unshaken and unstoppable.

Turbo saw that several more of the spider-creatures were descending along the walls from above them, one was eating the other woman, and one was planted on top of Glenn’s prone form. He launched forward to save the man, but the seated woman rose and stood before him. Her slender hands went up and pulled the wedding veil up over her head, and she removed the mask from her face. Turbo flinched, expecting to see yet another grotesque monstrosity that would forevermore haunt his dreams. Instead, he saw the beautious young face of a lovely woman. Her light blue eyes were almost magical in quality and twinkled, freezing him in his place. He forgot all else save for those eyes.

There was something hauntingly familiar about the young woman’s appearance, though he could not place it. Her shapely lips parted to speak.

“Stop brute.” She commanded. Turbo tried to do the opposite but found all the will to do so sapped from his limbs. “What a wonderfully strong man you are. You will make a wonderful addition to my family. Indeed.”

Turbo tried to shake his sudden apathy, but found that he could not. Her twinkling eyes held him captivated, as if he were looking into a hallucinagenic prism. Her eyes caught the firelight that was blazing up from below and reflected the color and intensity back to him a hundredfold, dazzling his senses.

“You can sit beside me as my new king. Together we can rule.” She stated. “Yes, but you are beautiful. Kneel before your Queen, and rise to take your place beside me.”

Turbo’s arms and legs were shaking and wobbly, as if he hadn’t eaten in several days. His legs lost all their power, and before he knew it, he fell in a heap before the woman. His thoughts were strangely hazy. He didn’t even want to resist any longer. Her long lovely arms, her long white legs, her high cheekbones and her sparkling eyes. He wanted to fall into her, to embrace her and do as she suggested.

“Yes, my strong handsome pet. Kneel before your Queen. Love me, as they have.” She gestured out over the balcony, three floors down where several more of the mutants were overwhelming a few figures in containment suits. Many, many more of the hideous things lay dead along the ground, and were catching fire as the inferno spread.

“You are so much more inviting than the creatures that I am used to, that know me as their mother.”

Her dainty hand fell to his cheek, and where her long fingers touched his skin, he felt an electric tingle. A fire raised in his blood when she touched him, a wellspring of passion that rose to a crescendo, that could not be denied.

“Now take me, and rule beside me as king.”

He no longer wanted anything else but her, she had become an all-consuming fire in his veins, raging out of control just as the fire within this temple had become. His limbs no longer obeyed his commands, and his will drained from his body. He gazed into her eyes and was lost in a deep well, as vast as the stars were in the sky. The faint recognition grew, and he suddenly realized why she had seemed familiar to him. She was the girl in the painting, above the fireplace. It seemed like a lifetime ago, seperated from him by a vast gulf of time and space. The name Kingston played through his thoughts. He rose as she commanded, wanting nothing else in life but to obey her. Her long arms twined around his neck and her full lips parted once more.

“Now kiss me, my king.”

Turbo’s head came forward of its own accord. He wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anything in the world. He felt strangely removed from his body, as if engulfed and lost in a dream. She stood on her toes and her face reached up to his, her lips brushed against his and he could no longer resist. He fell into her arms, fell over her like a wave.

Some animal instinct took over. They kissed passionately, like drunk lovers. She opened her lusty eyes and a hot wave washed over him as he looked deeply into them. She reached up with her hand to his eyes.

“Let me see your eyes lover.”

Her hand gently pulled away his sunglasses and her lusty eyes widened in shock. Turbo’s eyes did not hold the same glaze as hers, they were wide and as blue as a cold mountain stream. They were angry eyes. They held a depth of intense simmering fire, a tremor that locked her and froze her with fear.

“You’re full of #$%@.” He growled.

His strong arms around her were suddenly no longer gentle, but rough and barbaric. They shook with rage. He hefted her up like a light package over his head and threw her over the balcony. He watched as she screamed, her voice echoing as it descended. Her body went limp as it hit the ground, and the flames that had completely engulfed the floor now reached for her. They were her only lover now, and they would greet her and hold her in their embrace.

Turbo drew back his leg and booted the creature from Glenn’s body. It too fell off the balcony into the fires below. He winced when he saw what was left of the man. One of his eyes was gone, leaving a hollow socket where the creature had ravaged and infected him with its disease. Turbo could do nothing for the man now, as sad as it was for him to admit. The only thing that he could do for the man was put him out of his misery and save him from the gestation period, where the virus would grow inside of him and take over his lifeless body, consume it, and then burst forth to create another one of the monsters. His eyes misted up, taken over by a moisture that surged like a wellspring. He put his sunglasses back on over those eyes.

“Sorry friend.” Turbo whispered, gazing down at the lifeless shell.

Turbo then tossed the body to the flames below. Something caught his attention from off to the side. He saw the large ape-monster coming to its senses. He looked around, taking inventory of the situation. He saw one of the pillars across from the thing called Thog had a massive crevasse through it’s center. He ran over quickly. Turbo braced his back against the railing and pushed with his legs against the pillar. He heaved and strained with all his might, shaking from the immense effort. The crack widened and spread. He kicked and pushed harder, closing his eyes to everything but power. The power surged forth from the reserves of anger, channeling into his thigh muscles. Turbo screamed. The pillar cracked. Then, with a loud rumble, the pillar fell. It moved in slow motion, tons of stone momentum came crashing down on the ape, and it smashed right through the wall. The whole structure shook and shuddered. Turbo took a deep breath and then leaped out of the hole that the pillar had punched through the wall.

The large bounty hunter hit the ground hard. His ankles flared with white hot pain, sending a shockwave up his spine and coursing through his entire body. His already injured hip felt like it broke. His vision balked, like a TV set showing white snow static. He shook away the pain with a great deal of effort. He looked up and saw the outside of the burning pyramid was alive and crawling with hideous black tentacled horrors. The mutants that were not burning alive would soon be swept over by a wet sticky tidal wave, to be eaten alive. He saw that when the pillar fell, it fell not only on the titanic creature, but also on top of a white containment suit. Turbo heard a voice in the darkness cry out. He stooped down to the dead body’s hand, and retrieved the submachine gun that had fallen from the corpse’s grasp.

Turbo rose and opened fire on the green figures in his nightvision. He was a terrible shot and the range was great. The sheer rate of fire that the sophisticated gun boasted made up for it. He saturated the air with a storm of bullets, and two of the men in white containment suits went down. He turned and sprayed a mutant with holes in its cheeks, and an black alien mass behind it. Both exploded with fluids. There was a tremor in the ground as some of the heated stone bricks of the step pyramid gave way and fell in on themselves. Turbo kept his head low and headed for the exit.

* * * * *

Turbo reached the cellar door and heard another one of the men in containment suits waiting at the other end. He crept carefully up the staircase and up to the half-opened door. He saw the figure, raised the rifle to his shoulder and popped off a short burst. The white suit turned red and the figure fell to the floor. He saw a curious emblem on the suit, and emblem of a wasp, or a hornet.

The bounty hunter made his way up to the ground level with no more resistance. He saw the triumphant golden morning sunlight blazing in through the windows. There was water still in places that had leaked through the old roof from the prievious night’s storm. Turbo made his way cautiously back to the room with the fireplace. He found the rest of the house empty, though he heard the sound of more people outside of the house.

He reached down to the chair in the corner of the room and picked up his trenchcoat, slowly shoving one sore arm in at a time. He then wrapped the coat around him tightly and grabbed the full ten gallon gas can that they’d left in the room. He paused to gaze up once more at the curious painting on the wall above the mantle. This time, his eyes looked upon the picture differently, with a glare. The eyes of the woman seemed to glare back at him, as if accusing him of her murder. Or perhaps, he thought, they were laughing at him, taunting him through death. Turbo calmly walked across the room and drew the trenchcoat around him as tightly as possible. He raised a single finger to the painting as a salute. Then he heaved the heavy gas canister towards the fireplace where the flames still flickered low.

There was a moment where nothing happened. Then came an explosion followed by a roiling inferno as the can erupted and backdrafted through the room. Turbo had already been on the move. He charged through an adjacent room and heaved his considerable weight against the far wall. Nearly three hundred pounds hit the wall with a running force. A second later he came crashing through the old drywall and rotted wood, smashing through the flimsy wall that separated the house from the garage.

Turbo landed with a bone-jarring impact onto the hood of the old Packard. He heard movement outside, the noise had obviously drew someone’s attention. Turbo pulled himself off of the car and limped over to the old Chevy truck. He opened the door and pulled off the column, quickly moving ignition wires together. It was taking too long, he heard movement coming towards him. He knew that they wouldn’t be able to get through the hole he’d just made, for first they’d have to travle through the blazing inferno that was quickly sweeping through the old house. He heard voices on the other side of the garage door.

The truck suddenly cranked over and let loose a black cloud of exhaust as it flared to life. Grim faced, Turbo reached down and pulled the shifter out of neutral, jamming it into first gear even as his foot stomped the accelerator. The truck lurched forward with a loud growl of the glass-packs. Turbo was thrown back in his seat as the Chevy three-fifty motor roared and went to work. The truck smashed through the garage door, sending a handful of people with guns diving and scattering to the ground. Turbo shifted again, the tires spit rocks into the air and he was soon sailing down the lonely gravel driveway. He looked back through the rearview mirror at the figures that were clambering to their feet and trying to steady their aim to shoot at the truck. A smile creeped underneath his black horseshoe moustache. His eyes fell back to the road as he shifted gears again and left the house in his rearview.

* * * * *

“That’s just crazy!” the young girl’s voice exclaimed.

The black Dodge Viper roared as it pulled up in front of the police station. The young girl, Cindy, stared blankly at the calm, emotionless mask of the tanned man’s face. His proud indian features gazed stoically ahead at the road, even though the car had come to a stop. She could not see his eyes, hidden as they were behin the dark sunglasses, and he had finished the tale as matter-of-factly as one would describe going to the bathroom. If it was all a big lie, then his poker face was perfect, and he was an excellent liar.

Something about his dark brooding features suggested otherwise, there was a sadness about the man now that she had not earlier detected. He had seemed to her like an invincible comic book hero an hour ago, but now she didn’t know what to think.

“You’re not making this crap up?”

Suddenly Turbo’s intimidating gaze switched from the road, to falling complete on the girl. He tapped the gas can at her feet as if to prove his story. His gloved hand raised and pulled off the dark sunglasses. She was instantly taken aback. His cold crystal blue eyes held a softness, a kindness that she could never had imagined from his gruff exterior. She looked into those grandfatherly blue eyes, was trapped by them for a long moment. She saw that they held within them a shimmering moisture. The large man was holding back tears. It brought tears welling to her own eyes just to witness the event, though she could not tell what motivated them, sympathy perhaps? Turbo slid the glasses back over his eyes, masking them once again. The rest of his face held no emotion, his masked eyes the only hint at anything other than grim stoicism. He shrugged and looked back to the road.

“I wish I were.” He replied in a gravelly voice.

The sound of the doors unlocking snapped Cindy out of the deep well of thoughts that the man’s story had created. She had not even noticed his hand falling to the switch at his side.

“Here’s your stop. The police will get you back to your family. Safe and sound.”

Cindy opened the door and moved to exit the vehicle slowly, still drinking deep of the story that he’d told her.

“Watch your step. The undercarriage gets red hot.” He remarked dryly.

Cindy moved to the edge of the deep seat and hopped out. The sides and underneath of the car were indeed burning hot, she could feel the heat radiating off the super-vehicle. She paused, dawdling at the open car door, looking inside at the man again.

“So you’re kinda a hero then?” She asked, mesmerised by the man.

Turbo shook his head sadly and gazed back at her.

“No. I couldn’t save anyone that night.” He pointed his half-gloved finger up at the building behind her, she turned to see what he gestured towards. “Those guys in there are heroes, and they’ll have you back to your family before you know it.”

“I’m confused. So you’re a bounty hunter then?” She asked, her pretty face scrunched up in thought.

“Yup.” His head bobbed slowly once.

“Then you know that my family’s rich. There must be a totally huge reward for saving me.”

“Yup.” The bounty hunter’s head bobbed once more.

“Aren’t you going to come in with me and wait for it? When my dad gets here he’ll surely want to repay you.”

Turbo shook his head and waved a hand at her. He then reached across and pulled close the door that she lingered upon. She took a slow step away from the car, her eyes staring at the tinted window. As she watched the window rolled down a crack, and she could see the sunglasses in the darkness of the car pointed towards her.

“Stay off drugs.” He stated flatly. “And off cults.” He added after a moment’s thought.

“So you’re a bounty hunter but you won’t collect the reward?” She bent down and asked through the cracked glass.

He shook his head.

“It was never about the money.”

Cindy watched the black car disappear down the road and wondered if she’d ever see the strange man again.