Chapter 61.

Tuesday, June 26, 2001 Rainbow Lake, UT 8:03 PM.

There had been four Templar's remaining in the house and he had killed them all and eaten their brains.

Zack could feel strength and vigor flush through his entire body, his wounded eye now looking like a ruptured grape rather than a whipped egg, his other flesh wounds practically healed. He could sense several more humans in the basement, and a quick mind scan revealed them to be prisoners, tortured and raped, destined for the crucifixes. But his mind was clear once again, no longer clouded by the narcotic effect of the Overlords brain, the Beast or the hunger, so he put them from his mind.

He could sense the approaching Krylok aboard the shuttlecraft, now less than one minute away. It was one of three that had been under the Overlords command, used to enforce his sector of North America. And if Zack could sense them then he knew for sure that they could sense him. They knew the Overlord was dead; he had sent out a telepathic death scream that reached every Krylok on the planet.

There were five Overlords, the title equivalent to Governor, each in charge of pacifying their own sector of the planet. This particular shuttlecraft was crewed with a pair of Krylok and four Sentinels. Zack knew they would try to hunt him down and kill him. He was a piece of Krylok bio-weaponry that was too valuable to be allowed to roam free of their control. Even worse for the Krylok was the fact he still remained loyal to earth and the human race, and would fight alongside them against the Krylok. This he knew from the Overlords memories, still imprinting sharply in his mind.

Zack returned to the Overlords corpse, tearing away the black robes to reveal the spindly, multi-armed, insectile body beneath. A leather harness was strapped to the abdomen with four more of the small Krylok energy pistols in tiny holsters. Zack plucked two of them, the small metallic objects fit uncomfortably in his hands, like children's toys.

Zack knew them to be anything but. They were hand held versions of the shuttlecrafts main particle beam cannon. Each one could fire a dozen times before needing recharging and were powered by a small nuclear cell, which in turn were recharged via the shuttlecrafts main engines.

The ship would be on him within seconds now, and with a flaring burst of speed Zack raced across the main driveway and took cover in the woods in front of the house, and not a moment too soon. The Krylok ship glided over the top of the house, a giant, black tear against the deep purple of night, throbbing with a low hum as it passed over his head.

His sixth sense flared like fingernails on a chalkboard, and he reflexively jumped backwards ten feet...the ground where he had just been standing exploded in a ball of green electricity fired from the shuttlecraft, the concussion wave hitting him while he was still in mid-jump and added a further twenty feet to his trajectory before he smashed into a tree and fell into the foliage. The shuttlecraft passed him, settling to the ground somewhere in the back yard.

Zack ran a quick bio-scan, noting minor damage from explosive shrapnel and three broken ribs from impact with the tree. His ruptured eyeball was now covered with a flap of doughy green skin that would eventually become his eyelid. His accelerated metabolism freshly charged from feeding had quickly set about healing his minor wounds, yet it would be another twenty-four hours before his eyeball was completely regenerated.

He still held one of the small Krylok pistols in his right hand, and with a deep breath he entered Mordecai Necrotura's house through the front door, determined to make his last stand there. He had been inside and knew the layout, and with the Krylok weapon he believed he could handle four Sentinels. The Krylok wouldn't leave the shuttlecraft, and would most likely fly away once the Sentinels were destroyed. Although they possessed an armored exoskeleton, they were cowardly, cunning and devious by nature, relying on their Sentinels for fighting and food gathering.

Zack hurried through the house to a heavy wooden door, reinforced with metal banding and locked with three heavy bolts. There was a small window in the center of the door, covered with a metal plate which he slid the plate aside and peered out.

The Krylok shuttlecraft had settled to the ground on the far side of the bonfire in the clearing near the lake. It sat on three heavy landing legs, one at the nose of the triangular craft and two at the rear. The wide entrance ramp lowered down from the bottom of the craft and down walked four Sentinels, two abreast. They wore full military body armor, web gear, helmets and boots and carried M-16 assault rifles with attached grenade launchers. He could feel their mental scans sweeping the area, but his mind block kept him hidden. The ships sensors would still be able to track him and the Krylok would relay the information to the Sentinels telepathically.

Knowing his element of surprise was rapidly fading Zack aimed the alien pistol through the small window and fired.

The baseball size blast of green energy hit one of the lead Sentinels right in the chest just as its feet touched the ground and the evil monster exploded from the waist up. The Sentinel standing beside it was thrown aside from the blast and the two in the rear leapt to the ground on either side of the ramp. Zack fired at the other lead Sentinel, but the shot went wide, exploding on the surface of the lake one hundred yards out.

The Sentinels had already recovered from the surprise attack and turned their M-16's on the house and returned fire. Bullets peppered into the brick and wood around Zack, two bullets actually clipping him on the left arm and hip. He took a more careful aim and fired his pistol again, destroying another Sentinel. The final two charged the house at a full run, zigzagging to throw off Zack's aim. He saw the barrel of one's grenade launcher flash, and the wall of the house thirty feet to his right exploded from the impact of the grenade.

A hail of bullets from the attacking Sentinels chewed into the heavy wooden door, two made it through struck him in the chest, a third in the throat. He was thrown onto his back from the impact, coughing as his throat filled with his own blood.

Another grenade went off just outside the doorway, bits of shrapnel flying overhead. He rolled onto his stomach, spitting out a mouthful of blood. The two chest hits were still lodged inside his lung, but it would be only minutes before his body expelled the bullets and healed the wounds. The throat shot had entered the center of what had been his Adams apple and exited the back of his neck where it met the right shoulder, luckily missing his spinal column. That surely would have paralyzed him, if only for a few hours. As it was he was fighting with a single lung until his body could heal itself. He worked his right arm, the shoulder flaring with pain from the exit wound. He was in no condition to fight the two remaining Sentinels. He needed to buy some time to allow himself to heal.

He hurried deeper into the house, finding the central stairwell and descending to the basement. To the north end of the house were the prisoner cells where his earlier hunt for food had revealed half a dozen victims who had been prepped for crucifixion. Raped, tortured and subjected to countless psychological horrors, they were little more than zombie's themselves, destined for sacrifice and praying for the merciful release of death. He'd considered feeding on them at the time, but his Humanity had won. If he survived he would free them and turn them over to Matt, Susan and the others.

Only if you survive!

Zack turned away from the north wing of the basement, heading south instead. He had chased one of the four remaining Templar's back this way and had killed the man as he was opening a secret door in one of the pantries. He entered the pantry and looked down at the white robed, hollowed skull corpse where it lay on the floor, the Beast reveling in the memory of the mans fear and screams of terror just before he'd killed him and fed on his brains. He'd paid no attention to the passage then, his mind consumed only with feeding.

But now he needed a place to hide.

It was solid cement on all sides and illuminated by small electrical lights set into the ceiling. Zack closed the secret door behind him, feeling the shockwave of a grenade explosion inside the house above.

The Sentinels would be entering the mansion upstairs any second now. Zack knew the Krylok aboard the shuttlecraft would not be able to track his life signs now that he was underground. Now if only he knew where this tunnel would take him?

He had tried reading the minds of the Templar's as he drank their brains, but had picked up only the static white noise generated by the implanted microchips. A memory of the Overlords flared, reminding Zack how much the inability to read the Templar's minds had troubled the Krylok. The Overlord had puzzled over how Mordecai Necrotura's followers could shield their minds from him so easily yet at the same time communicate telepathically with one another, and now Zack knew the answer.

Another memory of the Overlords surfaced in Zack's brain, a memory of recognition. The presence of great evil he had sensed earlier when he had first come to this estate, that had been the master of this hellhole, the leader of the New Humanity, Mordecai Necrotura. The history of the connection between Mordecai and the Krylok raced through Zack's mind, shocking him. The Overlord had not been one of the aliens to first contact Mordecai Necrotura, then Walther Jennings; both of those Krylok had been killed shortly after arriving on earth. Instead the Overlord had been involved in the pacification of the Lupen homeworld in the Star System of Sirius, but had remained in contact with the Earth scout ship via astral projection, and knew all about the young psychic Walther Jennings. His betrayal of the Krylok in the 1960's bubbled to the surface of Zack's memories, as did his betrayal less than an hour ago, the memory of his powerful psychic attack and the fight in the den upstairs. Stronger than all of those memories, was the Overlords burning hatred for Mordecai Necrotura.

A second grenade blast from upstairs, this one definitely inside the house, jarred Zack from the Overlords memories and back to the present. He felt his breathing was coming easier, and looked down to see the two mangled 5.56 M-16 bullets had been expelled from his body and fallen to the floor. He ran a hand across his wounded throat, feeling that the ragged bullet hole already knitted shut. His lung had yet to repair and re-inflate itself, but it was working on it. His right shoulder was still healing, but some of the stiffness had gone.

This concrete tunnel ran straight for over three hundred feet before ending in an iron banded heavy wooden door. A north/south passage intersected every one hundred feet with a single, powerful light set into the ceiling every fifty feet. Zack could also see several heavy wooden doors scattered along both sides of the passage. Zack hurried along, pausing at each intersection to peer down either way before continuing on. He was surprised at the vast tunnel and storage network that had been constructed. He wished he had time to explore the contents of the all the nooks and crannies.

He came to a halt before the iron banded wooden door at the end of the hallway. He grabbed the handle and twisted, expecting the door to be locked. To his delight it was not. He stepped through the door into a 20'x20' room. A narrow staircase hugged the far wall, ascending to a small trap door while several large wooden crates lined the floor to either side. Zack checked one of the crates, inside were half a dozen AK-47's. He checked another and it was full of loaded magazines for the AK's.

Zack sprinted up the stairs, crouching near the top as he reached for the trap doors latch. He had a good idea where he was going to emerge...and he was correct. The trapdoor opened up in the floor of the boathouse, less than ten feet from the spot he had watched the crucified victims lowered into the zombie horde less than twenty-four hours ago.

A plan suddenly came to him, but he knew he had to be quick. Now that he was above ground the shuttlecrafts scanners would be able to detect him. Gripping the Krylok pistol tight, he exited the boathouse through the rear door. In the yard before him, less than fifty feet away, was the Krylok shuttlecraft. Its nose was pointed away toward the house, leaving the large, multi-faceted back end jutting at him like some giant crystalline insect abdomen. There was no throbbing hum coming from the craft, which meant they had powered down the main engines. The entrance ramp was still lowered to the ground, and no sign of the Sentinels. They must still be in the house looking for him. With a rattling snarl he bolted for the shuttlecraft. He was still weak, his lung not even halfway repaired, but he would not get another chance like this.

Just as he reached the base of the entrance ramp the engines came alive with a pulse of energy and the distinct throbbing hum. They had detected his life signs. Without hesitating a second Zack charged up the ramp. He looked over his shoulder toward the house before he disappeared inside the belly of the spacecraft, and to his dismay saw one of the Sentinels emerge at a full run.

The ramp led to a large central cargo bay. Zack called upon his stolen memories and the layout of a shuttlecraft imprinted in his mind. He turns toward the cockpit in time to see a black robed Krylok standing in the open hatch pointing one of its weapons at him. Zack dove wildly to the side and heard the Krylok's blast sizzle past him, feeling the charges particles buzz in the air beside him. It exploded into the cargo bay hull, the energy dissipating harmlessly into the material. He landed badly on his healing shoulder, feeling the knitting flesh tear open anew. But he gritted his needle sharp teeth against the pain and rolled up onto his feet, shooting blindly at the Krylok. His blast missed by several feet but was close enough to force the Krylok back into the cockpit.

In the same instant Zack propelled himself with superhuman speed across the cargo hold toward the open cockpit hatch. The Krylok saw him coming and made to close it but the alien creature was clumsy with fear, whereas Zack was amped with rage. He fired from his pistol and hit the Krylok right in the face, causing its entire upper torso to explode inside the black robe as the creature was thrown back across the cockpit into the second Krylok who sat at the pilot's controls.

Zack dove to the deck and slid headfirst across the floor toward the small cockpit door. His arms, head, body and most of his legs made it in before the cramped quarters halted him, leaving his lower legs, from the knees down, protruding from the cockpit hatch.

The Krylok at the pilot controls brushed the corpse of its dead companion from its shoulders and peered at, eyes blazing. Zack raised his weapon but the Krylok was quicker, slashing out with one of its claws, putting a large gash across his gun hand and sending the weapon sprawling across the cockpit. With a sadistic hiss the creature used another clawed hand to push the cockpit hatch control. With a low pneumatic hiss the cockpit door snapped closed, driving into Zack's legs, pinning them to the wall and finally severing them at the knees.

The pain hit Zack like ice, so shocking and sudden that it took him a moment to register what had actually happened. For once the Beast was completely silent, his hunger completely gone. His stubs of legs kicked behind him, spraying gouts of dark blood across the cockpit hatch and deck. Zack tried to push himself into a sitting position, but the Krylok slashed him across the top of his head with one of its three right arms, knocking him flat onto the deck.

"Insolent whelp! Did you truly think you could escape your master's leash?" It hissed in its native Krylok tongue. It raised its hand and slashed him again, raking several long gouges in his chest. Zack slumped motionless against the deck, his eyes closed, ignoring the scorching pain from his legs, ignoring the Krylok's slashing claws, focusing all his energy inward, shielding his mind and preparing for one last, final lunge at the Krylok.

After a few more rakes with its claws the Krylok ceased its assault on Zack and extricated its insectile body from the pilot's seat, standing over Zack's motionless body.

"I hunger. Your brains shall taste sweet." Thick saliva began to drool from its snakelike head.

Zack put every last bit of physical energy remaining in his body into his attack, smashing the underside of the Krylok's jaw which shattered and folded around his hand, while simultaneously hammering his left fist into its exo-plated chest, which gave a loud, splintering crack like wet wood. The force of the double blow sent the Krylok crashing back into the pilots seat with a jarring impact. With a mewling hiss the alien fell face first onto the deck, its thick, viscous blood leaking from its destroyed jaw. Its arms scrabbled at the deck with frantic, but disconnected motion, one of its legs kicking behind it spasmodically.

Zack gripped the deck and dragged himself over to the aliens broken and bleeding body, the exertion almost enough to make him loose consciousness. But eventually, after what seemed a slow, painful eternity, he reached the still twitching creature. Zack paused to take several deep breaths, dizzy from blood loss and pain.

He lowered his mind block and scanned the Krylok. It was alive, but barely. It would be dead in less than a minute. He widened his scan, sensing the two Sentinels reached the entrance ramp and were now making their way aboard the shuttlecraft. Closing his eyes and relying on the Overlords stolen memories, Zack lifted one hand up to the cockpit console, feeling for the hatch lock switch...he found and pressed it, hearing it beep with confirmation. The cockpit hatch was now locked from the inside. The Sentinels would not be able to get inside unless they blew the hatch with grenades. But even then it might still hold. But he would deal with that problem when it arose.

Right now, he had other needs.

He gripped the Krylok's broken head in his left hand, turning its snake's visage to look at him. Both of the Krylok's eyes were open, looking at him and burning with hatred and pain. The aliens shattered jaw tried to work, giving off a sound like crunching eggshells and a fresh spray of its foul blood splashed across Zack's face. He only smiled and blinked the blood from his eyes.

'I hunger. Your brains shall taste so, sooooo sweet.' Zack said telepathically before plunging his feeding proboscis through the Krylok's left eye, right into the brain, his body exploding with ecstasy at the first slurp...

When the euphoria finally passed, Zack found himself lying on his back, looking up at the ceiling of the cockpit. There was no pain in his body, only the sooth warm afterglow of feeding.

He could hear the shuttlecrafts engines humming as well as feel the vibration in the hull.

He did a mind scan; the two Sentinels were still in the cargo hold, their minds boiling black pits of hatred.

He did a bio-scan on himself. His legs had stopped bleeding, the flaps of ragged skin below his knees knitting themselves closed. Like his eye, his legs would regenerate, but that would take a long time, perhaps several weeks, and the demands on his metabolism would be great. He would need to feed constantly, if he lived that long.

he two Sentinels in the cargo bay would never stop until he was dead. They had been linked to the two Krylok aboard the ship, and their deaths had severed the connection, filling the Sentinels mental cesspools with one final command...Vengeance. From this moment onward, their every existing moment would be consumed with killing the Hybrid, Zack. Were another Krylok to arrive they could attempt to bring the Sentinel under telepathic control, but there was no guarantee of success. The Overlords memories told him that rogue Sentinels on the Lupen Homeworld had been known to kill several Krylok attempting to bring them under control; such was their need for vengeance.

Zack pulled himself into a sitting position. Feeding on the Krylok had given him some strength, but he was far from replenished. He looked down at his legs, severed at the knees, the mottled greenish black skin seemed excessively slimy, a byproduct of his accelerated alien metabolism. The cockpit deck was covered in a puddle of dark, pungent blood, both the Krylok's and his own.

Behind him, from the cockpit hatch, came a steady, rapid fire hammering. That would be the Sentinels shooting the cockpit door. It would hold, at least until they started using grenades. He looked about the blood-smeared floor, spotting his discarded pistol just a couple of feet away. He reached out and retrieved it before pulling himself around to face the cockpit console.

The two pilot's chairs were small, like children's chairs, with a small back and no armrests, and designed for the Krylok's grasshopper like body. But like the small, awkward pistol in his hand, he would have to make due. He sat the pistol on the console and used both arms to pull himself up onto the chair, the contours and ridges of the seat poking uncomfortably into his rump.

He took several moments to scan the instrument panel, letting the Overlords knowledge and memories of their use and piloting fill his mind. It was becoming much easier to tap the stolen memories each time he did it and the electric metal buzz that had accompanied the initial transfer was almost gone as well. He placed his hands on the console; Like everything else Krylok, the controls were constructed to accommodate the Krylok's smaller hands and digits, and to make matters worse the ship was designed to take advantage of the Krylok's six arms as well as a co-pilot.

Zack would be able to fly it, but only at its most basic capabilities.

He worked the controls and the shuttlecraft slowly lifted, it's landing legs hovering three feet off the ground for several seconds before retracting back into the hull while at the same time the entrance ramp closed shut like a giant, hinged lower jaw. Giving it more power, he rose straight into the air at nearly 100 mph, his stomach tingling with the momentum as the ground disappeared outside the cockpit window.

The jackhammer pounding of gunfire against the cockpit hatch ceased, but Zack could still sense the two Sentinels back in the cargo bay, their minds foul as ever. Taking his left hand off the throttle, he quickly tapped another section of the console and one of the small monitors filled with the image of the cargo bay interior. The two Sentinels had stepped away from the cockpit hatch, to the center of the cargo bay. He knew they would begin using their grenades any moment. And once they gained access to the cockpit, he knew they would kill him...unless he could come up with some way to stop them.

An idea suddenly came to him, something he had seen in a movie. He smiled at the memory, his memory, knowing that it was so crazy it just might work. Working the controls, he pointed the nose of the shuttlecraft straight up and gave the throttle a burst of power, the G-force acceleration pressing him down into the small chair, the odd shaped backrest gouging into his flesh. Laughing aloud, he watched gravity do its work and send the Sentinels sliding down the length of the deck to crash into the aft bulkhead. He checked the instruments, noting his altitude was 10,000 feet and his speed at just over 700 mph. On the security monitor he saw the Sentinels were fighting the G's and climbing to their feet. Bracing himself, he cut the power by half, which dramatically reduced the crafts airspeed, effectively braking, and flung the two Sentinels from the aft bulkhead, down the length of the cargo bay where they smashed into the fore bulkhead to either side of the cockpit hatch at approximately 700 mph. The effect was, to say the least, devastating.

Every single bone in the Sentinels bodies shattered on impact while their withered flesh split apart like old pumpkins, splattering the bulkhead with the foul black ichor that was their blood. Zack leveled off the shuttlecraft and brought it to a complete halt, hovering 11,000 feet above the ground. On the monitor he could see what was left of the Sentinels bodies slowly peel away from the bulkhead like a blob of flat, blackened cheese lathered in its own rotten effluvium, and fall to the deck. He knew they were not dead, but their bodies were so pulverized they would never recover.

Now that the immediate danger had passed, he studied the instruments in greater detail. Via a small holographic display of earth, he was provided with the exact location of every Krylok shuttlecraft on the planet. Counting his craft, there were eleven: three more over North America, one over Mexico, one over Great Britain, one over the Middle East, two over Russia, one over China and the final one over Japan. Even as he watched the holo-display, the small red dot representing the shuttlecraft over China winked out of existence, destroyed.

There were also two-dozen small white dots that represented communication satellites in orbit which the Krylok had taken control of for their own use. Despite their advanced technology the curvature of the earth still prevented long-range communication without a means of relaying the signal, either another shuttlecraft at high altitude or better yet a network of communication satellites already in place.

The holo-display also showed the moon in orbit around the earth, with a large green blip located on the dark side. That represented the Krylok Mothership. The Overlords memories of the mishap upon arrival played itself out in Zack's minds eye again and again, and he couldn't help but laugh aloud. Such arrogant creatures the Krylok were, smug in their superior technology and mastery of planetary assault. So unprepared had they been for the misfortune that had befallen them even before the Mothership had made the warp jump from the Lupen Homeworld in the Sirius star system to Earth.

Zack shook his head in amazement, overwhelmed by the alien species, exotic worlds and adventures the Overlord had seen and the countless atrocities in which it had participated. The Krylok truly were an ancient race, a scourge upon the sentient races of the galaxy.

He had promised Matt he would return when he had answers, and now he had plenty. But he was weak, and his body had stopped all healing. And it would not continue until he gave it nourishment and fuel for which to burn. He needed to feed. He knew for long space voyages, the Krylok shuttle had special tanks that would be filled with a highly concentrated nutrient paste made from the ground up organs, bones and blood of their prey's carcasses, but this particular shuttlecrafts feed tanks were empty. There were also half a dozen cryosleep tanks used to transport fresh food, but these too were empty. He would need to find nourishment elsewhere.

At once the half dozen sacrificial victims locked in the dungeons of Mordecai's estate leapt to his mind. They were weak and tortured into submission. They would be easy prey, even in his current handicapped state. He had told himself he would give them to Matt and the others but he was wounded and in need of sustenance. And they were the only source available. He mind made up, he gathered his bearings and worked the controls, setting a course for Mordecai Necrotura's estate...

Chapter 62.

Wednesday, June 27, 2001 Rainbow Lake, UT 7:37 AM.

Morning came, and with it a sense of bittersweet victory. They had survived the siege of the dead, but at a terrible cost. For some that cost had been higher, but they all felt the heavy hand of despair, knowing that those who had died had done so in a most horrible way; torn to pieces and devoured by zombies!

The ground level floor of the house was filled with dozens of head blasted zombie's, piled atop one other, their rotten, putrid brains splattered across the walls and floor, furniture and appliances.

Once they had David, Mac and Corporal Carey settled into one of the second floor bedrooms, not an easy task considering the main stairwell was a blasted charnel house choked full with twisted and mangled bodies, Matt, Jenkins, Major Farrell, Pvt. Jimenez, Sgt. Turner, Commander King and Corporal Philips all began to drag the zombie carcasses out of the house, into the backyard, and throw them onto pallets. When a pallet was full, one of them would use the forklift to drive it across the corpse littered yard, down to the lakeshore and dump the bodies into the remnants of the pyre, to be burned the same as the zombies yesterday morning.

"I can't get the image out of my mind." Matt said as he and Jenkins tossed another dead zombie onto a pallet just outside the shattered rear patio door.

"What image is that?" Jenkins asked, turning back to the house. King and Philips were just coming out with a deadfuck between them.

"Rick." Matt said heavily. His mind was constantly filled with the image of Rick, reaching one chewed and bleeding arm up to him through the devouring horde, fingers splayed out, his eyes wide with terror yet fully aware of what was happening to him. It kept repeating over and over in his mind, whirling about like the Tasmanian devil inside his skull.

"It's tough. I've seen a hundred buddies go down to those fuckers, everyone of them screaming like babies right until the end." Jenkins said it with the nonchalance one would attribute to a discussion about the weather.

"I thought shooting Adam and Kelly was rough. They were zombies, and I was doing them a favor. But Rick...he was alive, and I did nothing to help him. I could have at least put a bullet through his head and spared him the agony."

"At least he didn't end up like Ron." Jenkins had recounted the whole ordeal to them last night. "It's behind you now, so there's no use dwelling on it. It will only distract you and that could be deadly."

"You're one cold son of a bitch Jenkins." Matt said with disgust, but they spoke no more about the matter...

"This place is going to stink to high hell." Mac said as he paced back and forth with a crutch under his left arm. His thigh still hurt but the morphine had dulled it to a minor throb. Too bad it hadn't dulled his sense of smell. The rotting deadfucks downstairs had filled the house with a heavy, musky blanket of foul stench.

"And it's going to take a month to clean and deodorize." Susan said. She had gone around to every room on the second and third floor and opened all windows and balcony doors, hoping the flow of fresh air would help clear the stench out. So far it had done nothing.

"Not to mention all the repairs needed. The front door was blown to shit. The picture window is gone. The main stairwell is blasted to hell and the sliding glass patio doors in the kitchen are shot."

"Maybe we should relocate to another estate?" Norris commented. He was just putting the finishing touches on Cpl. Carey's bandages. Getting the bullet shrapnel out of his shoulder hadn't been easy for either of them, and Carey had gratefully accepted a large dose of morphine that quickly put him into a painless sleep.

David slept peacefully in the bed on the opposite side of the room, his broken leg enclosed in an inflatable cast and his dislocated shoulder bound in a sling. Sharon sat in a chair on one side of his bed, Samantha on the other, her face wrought with fresh grief over the loss of Jennifer, Rick and baby Tiffany. A small blanket was wrapped around her shoulders and she cradled baby Tyler in her arms.

"We've fought too hard and sacrificed to much to move." Susan said, her emotions suddenly swelling.

"Damn straight! It's going to take a lot more than some housecleaning and home repairs to drive us out of this place." Mac added, hobbling toward the balcony with an unlit cigarette in his hand.

"What if more of them come?" Norris asked.

"If they were going to come, they would have come by now. What hit us last night was all there was up here on the lake."

"What about those white robed freaks? You two saw with your own eyes what they did! What if more of them come? I don't want to end up being fed to zombies on a crucifix!"

"They hit us with their best shot last night." Mac insisted. "They were working with those superzombies. We saw a pair of them standing out on the balcony watching the crucifixions. They were fully expecting to overrun us last night. We took a good chunk out of those freaks numbers."

"The zombies ignored them until they were wounded, but once they were bleeding they tore them apart." Susan said. "I shot a pair of those robed nuts; as soon as they were hit they were zombie food."

With a snort Mac he put the unlit cigarette in his mouth and stepped onto the balcony.

"Your father would be proud of both of you." Sharon said from the opposite side of David's bed. The toddler, Mary, was asleep in her arms and Sharon gazed down at her sons sleeping face with a sad smile. Susan walked over and knelt beside her, draping one arm across her shoulder. Sharon cradled her head in the crook of her daughter's neck.

"He'd be proud of all of us mom. We survived. It wasn't easy, and for a while there all seemed lost. But when the time came, we were all strong. David, myself, and you." Susan stroked her mother's head gently.