Copyright (c) 2017 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.
By
R. Peterson
Mr. and Mrs. Lopez were
out for the evening; as their son Kent had gone to make a movie with his friend
Scotty, the Lopez residence on Garlow Street in Cloverdale was empty. Good
thing it was. It was neighbors who felt the shaking just before midnight and
instantly feared an earthquake. By the time they ran into the street, many in
pajamas and nightgowns, they could tell it was no earthly upheaval, the tremors
were too confined, but something was definitely happening to the Lopez
residence. The sides of the Spanish stucco house were shaking and the cedar
shingles on the roof were breaking apart and flying into the air. Someone
called the fire department although there were no flames visible … yet. Just as
Cloverdale’s pumper truck number one rounded the corner and roared down the
street, with siren’s wailing to wake even the deepest sleepers, the windows of
the house exploded outward.
Clair Andrews, who
lived across the street, screamed. Her
husband who was just climbing into his
Ford pickup for the midnight shift at the Comanche County Lumber Mill, was
suddenly swimming in a lake of insects. “Get em off!” Ben bellowed as he
stumbled erratically across his lawn, slapping all parts of his body and apparently
blinded by the ants swarming over his face. Before Clair could scream again she
too was attacked. She made it halfway to her husband writhing on the lawn
before she fell and was also covered.
Ed Fowler who was
driving the fire truck thought the crowd of people running away from the house
had all been horribly burned until chunks of the swarming black mass of insects
covering their bodies fell away and he could see bloody and swollen skin
underneath. Crew member Ted Evans reached for his door as soon as the truck stopped
but the quick thinking fire chief avoided disaster by instantly locking all the
doors with a switch on his armrest. “Hold on Ted! Let’s take a minute to figure
out what we’re up against before we do a George Custer and find out we’re
outnumbered by the Indians,” he gasped.
Lucille Morgan, a
twenty-three year old third grade teacher who was due to be married in August,
climbed on the bumper of the truck then sprawled across the hood as thousands
of ants began to feast on her flesh. Her swollen and bloody face was pressed up
against the windshield. She opened her mouth to scream and a stream of ants
flowed from her mouth and out her nose. In an instant the soft creamy flesh beneath
her pink nightgown was turned into what looked like raw strip steaks popping
and sizzling on a hot grill.
The river of ants
pouring outward in all directions from what used to be the Lopez residence
didn’t appear to be slowing; in fact the flow of insects was increasing. Seconds
later, all the glass windows of the truck were covered by the dark moving mass
and Ted reached over in the dark and turned on the windshield wipers. The black
blanket covering the truck’s windshield became two crimson smears of twitching
legs and tiny severed heads. Still they came on. Ten insects replaced each one
that turned into a bloody mess. The truck began to rock on all eight of its
tires.
Ed thought to use his
radio to call the sheriff’s office. “Mayday! Mayday!” he bawled into the
mouthpiece. “This is pumper truck number one and we’re under attack!” Nanette
Grover who manned the 911 lines for four hours after working a swing shift as a
waitress at Spare-A-Dime laughed out loud. “Is that you Ed Fowler? I’m jealous!
You been dancing with a flirtatious bottle of Black Velvet again?”
“I mean it Nanny! We’re
in bad trouble here!”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Ants!” Ed screamed. “God
Damn! Ants!”
Nanette laughed again. “For two grown men, you and
Ted Evans are the biggest posies in town. Don’t be afraid of a few ants! Step
on them! That’s what those work boots you’re wearing are for!” She listened for
a reply and instead heard more screams and breaking glass … and then a buzzing
sound as she lost the signal. Her smile evaporated and her hands shook as she
dialed Sheriff Walker’s number.
-------2-------
Sheryl Bliss groaned
when the power went out, not because she was afraid of the dark or of being
alone; darkness had always given her a kind of electric comfort, but because Sara Rue vanished from the big screen TV
just when she was about to have sex with the Amish hitchhiker in the rest area and
Sheryl had really wanted to see the movie Gypsy
83. She and Johnny had fought over the video rental. He had wanted to watch
Gladiator but the only thing Sheryl
liked about Russell Crowe was his
last name and she had insisted on the low-budget cult film. Johnny had called
the “B” movie a piece of trash and
had left early. Sheryl despised Johnny’s friends Kent Lopez and Scotty Target
but sometimes she wished he had more of their independent focus. She found a
candle and matches in the cupboard above the sink and wandered through the
house turning off light switches so that the circuit breaker didn’t trip when
the power returned in a sudden surge.
Sheryl thought she
heard the back door creak open but laughed it off as nervous frustration. Johnny
wanted her to go all the way and have
sex with him but she wasn’t sure if he
was the one. She went to the front window and peered outside just as the
power went off all over town. At least
it’s not just this house she whispered. For
a moment there I thought I was in trouble.
-------3-------
A crash of lightning
lit up the night sky above Black Rose Cemetery just as the lights of Cloverdale
blinked off in the distance. Joanie and the other members of Cloverbone watched
in awe as Ham pulled a dead rat from her mouth by a long stringy tail opened
her mouth wide showing jagged and rotting teeth and then swallowed the rodent.
The reigning Salt Lake City Doom Queen,
at a lanky six foot six wearing a hood and flowing black robes, loomed over
Joanie and her group as the other members of Abra Cadaver closed in. “Even Goth fights have rules,” Joanie
objected. “We are short two members and the siege
isn’t scheduled until midnight.”
Ham leaped up on the
large slab of granite covering Black Rose’s grave making her appear even more
formidable and imposing. “This is no siege,”
she hissed as a skeletal digit supporting a three-inch black fingernail swept
across all eleven members of Cloverbone. “Your pathetic excuse for a coven is
not worth the effort.”
“Then why challenge us
to a fight?” Marsha (Baby Bat) blurted. “I saw the rat hanging in Joanie’s
locker and the note written with nail polish on the inside.”
“This is merely to be
an execution,” Ham said. “Since your numbers are inadequate … the rules no longer apply. Now who wants to
be first?” The silence in the cemetery was deafening; only the lustful
breathing from the Salt Lake City invaders could be heard.
At least forty members
of Abra Cadaver had now formed a circle around the terrified members of
Cloverbone. Long fingers, painted white to look skeletal, opened dark robes and
produced foot-long ice picks glistening under the constant flashes of lightning
illuminating the sky. “Crucify them in the dirt!” Ham ordered as four of her
followers grabbed a struggling Jason Lynx, dragged him onto the grass and
prepared to pin him to the ground.
“Wait!” Joanie shouted.
“We do have thirteen members!”
“Where?” Ham laughed.
“I see only a group of children waiting to be run over by a bus.”
Joanie shoved away the Battle Bats holding Jason
down and helped him to his feet. She grasped Baby Bat’s left hand and whispered
for the others to do the same forming a circle around the huge flat stone that
Ham perched on. “Hermie and Rose will be our new members,” Joanie declared.
“An
oracle spirit … and a ghost?” Ham sneered her distain as she gazed at the Ouija
board chalk-markings on the rock. “But they’re both dead!”
“We’ll
blow our own Doom Cookie crumbs –
thank you!” Joanie told her. “You should never lay siege to a rival coven
without knowing the extent of their powers!” Joanie rubbed her crystal and wagged
her own finger. “Now excuse me … but you are inside our power circle!”
With a tremendous crack and a blast of dark ethereal
energy Ham was catapulted from the top of the stone, sprawling in a twisted
heap in the withered weeds on the other side of Jim Coot’s grave. Abra Cadaver’s leader leaped to her feet fuming
and furious. “The moon will watch each of you beg for mercy before this night
is through,” she vowed. As if following her orders, the lunar orb in the sky
peered from behind dark clouds and washed across the astonished faces of
Cloverbone.
“I
didn’t know you had such Mansonetic
powers!” Baby Bat gushed her admiration.
Joanie felt the last bit of energy drain from the
crystal she was holding. “Had might be the nonterminal word,” she whispered.
“You’ll
all scream for ice-cream!” Ham promised as she produced her own ice-pick and
her coven slowly closed in. Her dark crow-like eyes gazed hungrily at the young
spoons and forks holding hands as if
they were all bugs, “… after we punch your tickets to a very toasty Hell!”
“I
hope you know what you’re doing,” Baby Bat moaned as she clutched Joanie’s
hand.
“I
only pray the spirits I called can hear me,” Joanie gasped, “and that they will
fight with us!”
All the members of Cloverbone turned and looked
inside the circle as a screeching sound came from the surface of the flat
gravestone. The triangular piece of wood Baby Bat had used as a Planchette was
once again gliding across the chalked-in Ouija
Board pattern. Joanie and Marsha both moaned as the pointer spun downward across
the white printed numbers and rested on GOOD BYE.
-------4-------
The invading army of
ants covered three blocks of splintered rubble by the time Sheriff Walker
arrived. He immediately called in every off-duty officer on the force as well
as the state police. “You’ve got to do something drastic,” Mayor Otter screamed
at him, “or these insects going to destroy the entire city?” The mayor had
dispatched her own PTA Ladies for Student Development group to supervise and
chastise the firemen and police officers, armed with wet rugs and blankets,
trying to beat the swarming ants into submission.
“I smell stove oil!”
Sheriff Walker told one of his deputies. “Where is it coming from?”
The deputy pointed to a dozen leaking canisters the
firemen were removing from the back of the overturned and ravaged fire truck.
“Drip torches,” the deputy said. “They spray oil and ignite it at the same
time. The county fire crew uses them to start a back-fire when they are trying
to control a large range-burn.”
“Have
your men each take a torch and form a circle around the ants,” Sheriff Walker
ordered. “Burning may be the only way to stop these swarming demons.”
“You’re
going to burn part of the city!” Mayor Otter was shocked when she heard the
news.
“It
looks like the only alternative,” the sheriff told her and then skillfully
played to his boss’s sense of fiscal responsibility. “There isn’t enough money
in the city budget to pay for all the sugar to keep an ant farm this size.”
-------5-------
With
no power the silence in the dark house was deafening. Sheryl curled up on the
couch and tried to read a book by candlelight. Something appeared to be tugging
on her senses as she began reading chapter three of Julia Hughes’ Everybody Lies. Constable McKay was just
pulling up to Lavender Hill Cottage when Sheryl heard the distinctive sound of
a loose board squeaking. She had lived all sixteen years of her life in this
same dwelling and knew every sound the old house made. Someone was in the house
and creeping through the kitchen! The board squeaked again … two someones!
Sheryl
dropped the novel on the floor and stood up, not sure if she should walk into
the kitchen or wait for whoever was in her house to come to her. She listened
carefully but could hear no other sound only the thumping of her own heart.
Fear is like a dripping gasoline tank … let it leak long enough and there’s a
chance that it will combust into adrenaline. Sheryl took a deep breath, picked
up the candle, pulled an iron-poker from a stand next to the fireplace and
marched toward the kitchen.
Shadows from the dining
room chairs appeared to hide as she entered the room … slipping under the large
formal table and ducking behind a china hutch. She held the candle above her
head and turned slowly in a circle … there was no one there. The laundry room
leading into the garage was empty as well. Sheryl laughed at herself and was
just turning to go back into the living room when a horrible hooded face from a
nightmare suddenly loomed before her. Large swollen lips that seemed to be made
of rubber uttered a low “Boo!” just before breath from the same lips blew out
the candle. Sheryl glimpsed a large butcher knife sweeping toward her in a
vicious downward thrust and just beyond someone holding a video camera … she
had just an instant before everything went dark.
-------6-------
Joanie watched as six
members of Cloverbone had mud, made from grave dirt, smeared over their closed
eyes before they were blindfolded. The
six sat on the grass opposite a likewise blinded member of Abra Cadaver and the
ceremony of týr began. Cloverbone had
been challenged so they went first. Each Blowfish from Abra Cadaver placed his
or her hand palm down on the grass and was forbidden to move it. The
blindfolded Cloverbone Deathbats moved sharpened forks in the air above where
the hands were placed waiting for a silent signal from Joanie who was clutching
her crystal and sending out telepathic commands when to strike. Tony Crea
missed his target by less than an inch. Jason Lynx impaled a wrist claiming
victory, and so did two other Cloverbone.
Joanie and Babybat
hissed their delight. Cloverbone had three new members and Ham slipped rings
made from silver spoon handles that matched the spoon-bowls the Blowfish wore around
their necks from her fingers and gave them to Joanie with a knowing smirk. “We
picked up three,” Bitch whispered as Babybat led the three away to be Black
lipped (sexually initiated) and to dip their tongues in tar (take coven vows.)
“But Ham can afford to lose them … we can’t!”
Ham stood up and raised
her arms in the air. Her voice hissed like a snake. “Abra Cadaver has repelled
an assault and by the rules of engagement we call for Sudden Death!”
Baby Bat gasped. Joanie
scowled as if she knew this was coming. Abra Cadaver had just called for all
members of Cloverbone, except for the reigning Doom Queen, to submit to týr in
an effort to bring the ceremony to an end quickly. There was no way she could
refuse. Joanie watched as all the other members of Cloverbone including the
three new ones captured from Ham placed their hands flat on the grass.
Ham leaped to the top
of a headstone and swayed dangerously in all directions as the 1938 Adler Damenrad ladies’ bicycle circled
soundlessly in the air high above her. Lusty, crow-eyes from Ham’s skull-like
head surveyed all thirteen targets. The crystal she held in the air above her was
magnificent glowing with a dark and sinister brilliance. Stolen from a grave in
South America rumor said … as old as the Spanish Conquistadores. The blinded
blowfish began to sweep the air above the hands with their forks. As was the
custom of Abra Cadaver before a siege, Ham began to speak loudly in tongues … when she stopped … all of her
Blowfish would strike as one.
“Ickoo bladaba …
zit em ba.
Kooloo beezabub
… to ing ka.
Gagawa zobo ..
turn da noo.
Zig ba … zig ba
… ba zig … Boo!”
With
a flash like lightning, thirteen Cadaver forks, sharpened with needle-like
points, pierced the exposed palms of all thirteen members of Cloverbone. Joanie
hung her head among the shrieks and the agony of her former coven members. “Do
I hear a challenge from your pathetic oracle demon or your impotent grave
ghost?” Ham listened for a full minute to the wind whispering in the trees drawing
out the graveyard drama, and then she laughed with great scorn. “No I think
not! Since you are now a Doom Queen without a following … I with great
reluctance, but with equal pleasure, sentence you to death!” the victorious Ham
was suddenly furious. “Crucify her!”
Joanie Otter was hardly aware of the spoon
rings being stripped from her fingers as a dozen Blowfish dragged her to an
open spot between graves. “I’m sorry!” she called to Babybat as the joyful
members of Abra Cadaver stretched out her arms and legs and prepared to nail
her to the ground with wooden mallets and razor-sharpened railroad spikes. In
the distance sirens sounded as if the entire western Montana world was under
siege.
“Hermie!
Rose! Where are you?” Marsha (Babybat) moaned as she was led away with the
others to be tar tongued into the new
coven.
-------7-------
Even
with the back fires Sheriff Walker was losing the battle with the ants. People
were frantic … running everywhere. “There are just too many!” Walker told one
of his deputies as millions of ants continued to push through the flames using
the burnt corpses of other ants as shields. “Get ready to evacuate the town!”
“It’s
the middle of the night,” Mayor Otter protested. “How will we get everyone out
of their homes?”
“Sound
every police siren and the alarm for the fire truck,” Walker ordered. “Make
sure every house is empty. Make sure we leave no one behind!”
Suddenly
every police officer, firefighter and exhausted worker battling the ants gaped
in wonder as millions of ants left the flames and began to follow a shrouded
personage walking down the center of Townsend Avenue. A glowing object shining
with the brilliance of a fallen star was held high above the dark figure’s
head.
“What the hell … or who the hell is
that?” Mayor Otter gasped.
Ten
minutes later, a deputy reported that the ants were moving out of town down
Vineyard Road toward Black Rose Cemetery still following the strange personage.
“What do we do?” The officers looked
to the sheriff for guidance. The distraught mayor had just been informed that
her daughter Joanie was missing and suddenly could care less about her civic responsibility.
“Let the ants and their leader go,”
Sheriff Walker said. “This night belongs to them!”
TO
BE CONTINUED …
