Ranger Martin and the Alien Invasion Read online

  RANGER MARTIN AND THE ALIEN INVASION

  BY

  JACK FLACCO

  RANGER MARTIN AND THE ALIEN INVASION

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are

  the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any

  resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely

  coincidental.

  All rights reserved

  Copyright © 2014 by Jack Flacco

  Cover illustration by Jack Flacco

  Cover photography by Jack Flacco

  Cover design by Jack Flacco

  ASIN: B00ONG04IA

  www.JackFlacco.com

  For Brandon

  Chapter 1

  Ranger Martin crashed on his back, knocking his worn Oklahoma City RedHawks cap to the ground. The Mossberg 500 shotgun he’d held all these months, dispatching the undead, flew from his tired grip. He shook away the confusion and clawed at the dirt, searching for his faithful firearm. He should have stayed in bed. He should have listened to that still small voice telling him to run. He should have known he’d have a bad day once in a while. Shoulda. Woulda. Coulda.

  The darkened graveyard on the outskirts of American Fork was to be the site of the zombies’ last stand. Ranger had led the throng of fly breeders from Liberty Hospital, hoping to rid the earth of the undead army for the last time. What he didn’t count on was his truck stalling in the midst of them. The plan called for luring them to Rathburn, the old gated civil war memorial cemetery in Utah, and setting ablaze the four drums of gasoline he had planted there sometime earlier. With every detail worked out, how could anything have gone wrong?

  Ten feet away to his right, fire had erupted and engulfed Ranger’s rusty ol’ pickup. The undead horde had overturned it to get to him. The metal beast that had rescued him countless occasions had breathed its last. In minutes, the flames would crawl into the gas tank and blow it to hell. But Ranger’s trouble didn’t end there. The legion of undead had formed a circle around the zombie hunter, and they inched closer to rid the world of their brothers and sisters’ slayer. With malevolent sneers pasted on their faces, they dragged closer while a determined death harvester had bent to become the first to attempt to taste of the killer’s flesh. Or so it seemed.

  The death harvester stood over the zombie killer and seethed with hunger, drool dripping from its maggot-infested mouth. It craved Ranger’s fingers for a pleasing appetizer before wanting to consume him for the main course in a private dinner for one.

  Drenched in sweat, Ranger’s mouth curled upward with an idea. He wiggled the digits of his left hand to entice the eater. Ranger didn’t have it in his bones to surrender. Not to a crowd of undead, especially not to a bloodthirsty worm sucker that didn’t take a hint that its life would soon be over. Whatever Ranger had planned, he’d better do it quickly.

  Believing the zombie butcher wouldn’t fight back; the death harvester seized Ranger’s limp hand and drew it closer to its rotting mouth. Its nostrils flared, and its tongue emerged ready to lap Ranger’s palm. Had it known what would happen next, it would have disappeared into the throng to wait its turn like the rest of them.

  Ranger’s hand turned hard and clamped the zombie’s jaw. As he squeezed, the death harvester shrieked in agony. A partial smile danced across Ranger’s face, then with his other hand, his cold blade plunged pointblank into the undead’s festering skull. Green goo squirted from the wound all over Ranger’s chest. He withdrew his knife, sheathed it, and while still clutching the death harvester, tossed the corpse next to his dying vehicle.

  From the other side of the smoldering truck, the swarm of rot suckers slowly lurched forward. After spotting their fallen brother in a puddle of turquoise slime, their jowls snapped and their lurch propelled them forward to a quick drag. They wanted Ranger dead. Not only dead, they wanted his eyes plucked from their sockets, his tongue ripped from his mouth, and his innards strung between the tombstones as a warning to anyone who dared cross their path would meet with the same gruesome death. No one will want to mess with the sons of rot ever again.

  The decaying flesh rippers dragged closer to Ranger where at that point they saw nothing that could prevent them from feasting on the zombie slayer’s life. That is, not if Ranger could help it. He leaped to his feet, snatched his baseball cap from the ground and set it on his head where it belonged. When he reached for his shotgun, one of the death mongers jumped from the mob and on to the belly of the burning truck. It screeched a strong, dominant roar. I’m in charge, it said, and soared from its perch, aiming for Ranger’s neck. Quick on the draw, Ranger crouched and blasted the passing cadaver overhead.

  The once-screaming body lay against a gravestone with no head and a trail of green muck pouring from its severed neck.

  Before Ranger could celebrate the small victory, much like the first, two more hopped on the scorching steel beast with death in their eyes. Without giving the undead killer a chance to breathe, they lunged at him. He didn’t have to think twice. Still crouching, he discharged his shiny sidearm, but this time he missed the head of the second zombie and the pellets tore through its chest. It landed flat on its side, green trailed from its body as it joined the puddle formed from the first headless body nearby. The third zombie hit Ranger head-on to a tumble, rolling both of them in the dirt. Ranger firmly held on to the shotgun as the undead chomped wildly on the barrel. It may have had a bad aim but its appetite kept it alive with hope it would soon clamp on to a chunk of Ranger.

  The crowd inched ahead. Their pale faces bore witness to their tortured souls. They lusted after the flesh of their brothers’ killer, tightening the circle, giving Ranger no way to make it out alive. At the same time, the flames engulfing the truck crept into the bowels of the dead machine and ate their way toward the gas line. The consuming fire needed one more hop, one more flash, one more spark to lay waste everything in its path, including the four drums of gasoline in the center of the fray.

  In the meantime, Ranger gnashed his teeth at the third zombie that held him by the throat, dug its nails into his neck and drew blood. The smell of Ranger’s life caused the undead to shake and twist as the frenzy took over its body. The fiendish side of the zombie propelled it back and forward to push aside the shotgun and sink its jaws into Ranger’s left shoulder. Had Ranger not worn a jacket that night, the snapper would have ripped his shoulder muscle from its resting place. Instead, the jacket saved Ranger’s life, but it didn’t prevent him from grimacing in pain from the third zombie’s penetrating teeth.

  Regaining its strength, the second zombie, which sported a hole in its chest, rose from its temporary grave and lunged at Ranger’s leg. It clamped down hard on it, not letting go, all the while the zombie hunter screamed.

  “Damn it,” Ranger jostled free the barrel of his faithful friend and pressed it to the temple of the second zombie, then let off a shot. The second zombie’s head disappeared in chunks by the side of a tombstone planted beyond Ranger’s feet.

  A bang from the truck’s undercarriage startled Ranger into pounding the third zombie’s head repeatedly until it released the undead slayer’s shoulder from its wicked jaws. He took the small explosion as his warning that a much bigger one would soon follow. Either he would put the dragger out of its misery or Ranger would die a victim of his own beloved truck’s anger. He couldn’t see himself dying because of a zombie attack, but he’d rather have his faithful truck eat him whole.

  The third zombie wobbled in a daze and fell on its knees before the undead killer. Ranger rose from the ground, slipped his shotgun into its holster and with one quick motion, plunged his ha
nds into the mouth of the third zombie. With all his might, he pulled apart his hands. The dragger’s shrieks tore through the night and into the crowd. He snapped its jaw and threw the mess on the ground where he then drove his heel into the eater’s skull, crushing it to a loud crack. Nothing would get in Ranger’s way now.

  Ranger spat on the ground marking his territory. With his back turned to his dying truck, the zombie killer held his shotgun at the ready, ready to take on anything else that would dare cross the battle line. With moments left in his life, he wondered how many of the throng he would have to kill before he’d die.

  The mob grew tighter, and as they slowly lurched forward, a roar in the distance forced them to prop their heads high in the direction of the disturbance. Even Ranger’s face grew white, not because of fright from another possible enemy, but from the headlights shining in his face.

  The pickup barreled from the top of the hill and crashed into the horde, forging a trail of body parts and sinew across a large swath of the cemetery’s overturned tombstones. Green splatter covered moonlit graves. The resilient ones that survived dragged into the shadows. The not so fortunate lay wasted on the tracks after the pickup mashed them in a flurry of assaults.

  When Ranger realized he stood in the truck’s path, his eyes burst open and he dove behind the safety of a large tombstone.

  The deafening sound of the pickup’s engine, with the wanton headlights and the nasty attitude, poured on the undead gathering until the truck swerved, rattled, and shook, skidding a one-eighty to the center of the circle beside Ranger’s flaming truck. From its cab popped Randy, a fifteen-year-old boy, brandishing a Browning 9mm Hi-Power semi-automatic pistol, firing it at will into the zombie mass as he scooted to the back of the pickup, unlatched the tailgate and hopped on its back.

  Ranger raised his head over the tombstone with surprise on his face. It couldn’t be.

  “Did you think I’d let you do this without my help?” Randy said, standing on the truck’s bed with one foot resting on a gasoline drum.

  Ranger’s face turned into a smirk, the same knowing look he would give when he knew things were about to get a whole lot nastier. “I thought you’d never show up.”

  “I changed my mind.” Randy slammed his back on the cab and placed both feet on the gas drum with the intention of rolling it from the pickup to where the four other gas drums sat.

  Sprinting to the pickup and firing his shotgun at every chewer he met along the way, Ranger had little time for pleasantries. His faithful pickup, overturned and engulfed in flames, gasped as the blaze penetrated its belly. Randy pushed harder on the drum, but it wouldn’t budge. As Ranger made his way to the pickup, a flesh monger, in a last attempt to make him a meal fit for the undead, grabbed him by the left arm. It had almost sunk its teeth into the zombie slaughterer before he stuck a knife under its jaw and into its brain. It collapsed without much of a fight.

  Once Ranger reached the pickup, he took charge. He jumped, swung his feet around and landed on the bed. Next, he stabbed the gasoline drum with his knife, nudged against Randy’s shoulder and pressed one foot against it. This time, the drum shifted, rolled from the pickup and splashed a trail of fuel to the ground. It crushed a few zombies along the way, but it managed to come to rest next to the four other gas drums in the center of the cemetery.

  Ranger then motioned for Randy to dive into the passenger seat of the cab, while he would grab the wheel. Inside, they looked at each other with satisfied smiles and nodded their approval of the mess they had made of the evil lot behind them.

  As the gap closed ahead with the undead wanting to keep the metal beast all to themselves, Ranger shifted the vehicle to drive and said, “This is gonna hurt.” He floored it. The tires squealed in the mud and smoke from the exhaust filled the air. It took off in anger, burning a trail through the crowd, cracking skulls, smashing ribs and splattering green everywhere. When Ranger glanced at his rearview mirror and saw what he and Randy had done, he bellowed with laughter, then cried a “Yahoo!” before the brake lights disappeared over the hill into the night.

  After his faithful ol’ truck breathed its last, it exploded into a fireball searing a bright column into the sky like a red-hot mushroom. Flames shot from the sides spraying their hatred on the zombie drones, setting the front line ablaze. The gut churners yelped and thrashed while the fire consumed them. Had the surviving undead had the capacity to think, they would have thought the worst was over. But one last spark shot from the dead beast and hit the trail of fuel leading to the gas drums Ranger and Randy had planted in the center of the horde.

  The ground buckled and shook. The tombstones crumbled and split. The five drums of gasoline punctured a deep crater into the earth, sucked the roaming stiffs into its destructive vortex and shredded them to bits. A firestorm burst from the hole and devoured everything it encountered. Tombs exploded. Bodies broke. Coffins cracked. None of the undead survived. From that day forward, Rathburn Civil War Memorial Cemetery was no more.

  Ranger’s handiwork.

  Chapter 2

  They ran without looking back. The alleys seemed narrower. The buildings seemed taller. They pressed forward as the next turn revealed a door. The rain clouds turned the afternoon gray.

  “Amber. Charlie. In here.” One of the three teens pushed and held the heavy side door open to Moore’s Wholesale. At least that was what the sign said overhead. His right hand looked scarred from burns, perhaps from a past fight with the undead or perhaps inflicted by someone with a mean streak.

  The creak from the door hinges bounced off the walls throughout the alley. But it wasn’t the sound of the door shifting that alerted the Things of the kids’ whereabouts. No. The door slamming after the kids disappeared through the entryway did a fine job of that.

  “They’re gonna find us, Carson.” Charlie said to the boy with the scarred hand.

  “Shut up. We’ll be lucky if we make it out alive.” Carson said, wielding the power over the group.

  No older than thirteen, blond hair, Amber kept quiet, but followed the boys not knowing if they knew where they were going.

  Once inside the building, Carson propped a chair under the door handle, then led the teens through a maze of halls. Soon after, whatever they feared had crashed through the door and scattered the chair across the corridor. A rumbling roar shook the walls and hit the teens.

  “We’re gonna die!” Amber’s eyes watered.

  “I said shut up and keep moving. They can’t catch us if we’re moving.”

  Carson, Charlie and Amber shot into Moore’s management office and locked the door. It looked like any other office with a desk, chair, lamp and a photo of an island hanging on the wall behind the desk. Amber ran straight for the desk and rummaged through the drawers one at a time in hopes of finding anything that could protect them from those Things chasing them. The kids had no idea what to call the beasts, so they called them Things.

  Charlie darted into a corner and trembled at the prospect they only had a few minutes to live before the Things crashed through the door and tore them apart.

  But Carson stood firm and studied the room, searching for another way out.

  “We’re not going to make it.” Amber muttered under her breath as she continued to toss the desk with water streaming on her cheeks. “We’re not gonna make it.”

  Her words came at an inconvenient time. From behind the door, the growls caught the teens’ attention. They raised their heads in unison as if connected by some mysterious force. In reality, it had nothing to do with knowing what stalked them behind the door, but it was their fear that drew their attention. Charlie wasn’t afraid to show his fear. He crawled on his hands and knees to slip under the desk and trembled at the thought of what might happen to them if the Things trashed the door. He couldn’t imagine what the walls, floors and ceiling of the room would look like after the Things got through with them. They should have never made noise.

  The metal office door stood solid, firepr
oof and thick. The Things would meet with an immovable object if they attempted to break it down.

  This kept Carson’s hope alive. They had a chance. They could beat them. “All right, listen up.” Carson said. “Grab the desk. Let’s move it here.” He pointed at the spot.

  “Why there? We should place it in front of the door.” Amber wiped her face of her tears.

  “The wall vent is right above where we’re going to put it.”

  Charlie popped his head from underneath the desk and spotted the vent. A quick appraisal of the escape route forced the conclusion that they had a chance.

  “C’mon, c’mon.”

  The first thump at the door shook the walls. The second almost tore it off its hinges.

  “C’mon, let’s go!”

  Another pounding rattled Amber to take hold of one end while Charlie darted from his den to grab the other. Together they dragged the furniture across the room. Without waiting for the other kids to settle the desk in position, Carson quickly hopped on its top. With both hands, he slipped his fingers in the vent’s grate. He used his whole body to first push forward, then pull back. It would have gone well, but he underestimated the stubbornness of the grate. His fingers slipped and he flew from the desk and landed butt-first on the floor.

  Charlie and Amber’s eyes met as if they were saying to each other, “I don’t like this ride. I want to get off.”

  More bashing on the door shook Carson to his feet to study the room further. Scurrying from one wall to the other, he needed help. A crowbar would have worked, but he doubted anyone in the offices would have carried one around before the change. What would they have done with it? A well-timed escape plan? Not a chance. He looked to the waste paper basket in the corner of the office for hope. Charlie spotted it, too, and rushed to ready it for a toss. Next thing Carson knew, he held the metal container in his hands and prepared himself to dish some serious damage. On top of the desk he flew. If he could loosen the screws, he could tear the grate from its stronghold.