The Mound Builders ...continued
by demented20

The day had started so perfectly. The sun was out. The bulldozers were rolling and Bernie Wilford was a happy man. He was still sucking on a Cuban cigar and he'd already sipped a little whiskey from a flask. He checked the time on his watch and was about to hop into his brand new Packard and drive back to his office when he heard some commotion. The dozers had stopped and men moved around, but they weren't working.

"We have a problem, sir", Paul his foreman said as Bernie got closer.

"What the hell could be a problem? I want you guys to take that damn gassy mound of dirt out of the way. This is the flattest most pristine valley I've ever seen in my whole life. If you'd described this place to me I wouldn't believe it. Completely surrounded by hills and hidden for generations, untouched, unspoiled. The only thing that makes it less than perfect is that damned hill. I want it leveled. I wanted it leveled today, and I don't want to hear an excuse from you or from your workers."

"That's not a hill, sir"

"What do you mean it's not a hill?"

"Show him, Willie." The black dozer driver jumped down and led Mr. Wilford to the front of his blade. They had already removed a few feet of dirt and vegetation near one corner of the roughly rectangular mound, but once they'd gotten below that they saw that the hill was really made up huge slabs of rocks that had been stacked one atop the other like a pyramid without a top. The stones were fit together to minimize gaps and maximize stability.

"So what? Push this shit over and let's keep moving."

Paul sighed and Willie pointed to a spot at a bottom of the mound where it met the flat ground of the valley. The bones of a human arm were protruding. At first they'd thought that it was an animal bone, but when the dozer had shifted a stone they could see a hollow beneath the mound and there was a body attached those bones. Tiny wisps of hair clung to the skull and dried flesh. The skeleton was covered in dried barely recognizable garments that looked Native Indian, as they were called these days.

"We have to call the State Antiquities people. It's the law, sir."

Wilford sucked on his cigar and huffed. "Well I hope they hurry up so we can finish this. I don't need some needle dicked asshole holding up my job!"

The next day a shiny new 1955 Studebaker Speedster drove down the service road towards the Mound. The man who got out was wearing dark slacks, a starched white short sleeved shirt, a thin black tie, and a sun visor. He held several notebooks under his left arm and several pens in his right hand. He stuffed the pens into the protector in the single pocket on his spotless white shirt. The boss of the job came over to him with a big smile.

"Good morning, sir. I'm Bernie Wilford."

They shook hands. "Ethan Chase", the man replied without the good humor that Bernie displayed. "You said you had something that we needed to look at."

"Right this way", Bernie said and motioned for the foreman to show the way. He kept the smile on his face as the man from the state went to the mound. Ethan noticed that the mound was bigger from close up than it was the hills. It was more than forty feet high and at least a couple of acres in area. Some Native tribe had stacked a lot of stones to make this mound. Bernie was hoping that this find would be minor, but after an hour the look on Ethan's face said it all.

"I've never seen a North American sight like this and I've been from the Yucatan to the Arctic. I've been to several mound sights in this area, but this mound is special. The construction is one of a kind. You have something special here", Ethan was excited now as he spoke, but Bernie wasn't.

"The hell I do! This is just a pile of rocks built by some savages!"

"And you sir were once simply a gleam in your father's eye and the promise of a bad night of sex for your mother." Bernie's face turned crimson, and Ethan's didn't change as he continued. "Now today you're big and pompous. And while this mound may have started out as a pile of stones built by savages as you call them, today it's a state archeological sight."

"You've got to be shitting me!", Bernie yelled and stepped in Ethan's path.

"Sir, this equipment isn't to move an inch. I don't even want your men to pick up a rock or pull a damn weed by hand. This sight is locked down until further notice. The twenty-eight year old Ivy League grad wrote the stop work order on a form and handed Bernie a copy.

A team of state archeologists descended on the Glen and marveled at the natural beauty of the place while at the same time excavating the mound in the center of it. Every minute they found something new. To Bernie they looked like a losers convention lead by that cocky assed Ethan Chase.

After the first week Bernie had sent some guys to try and talk some sense into Mr. Chase, but that hadn't worked. To make it worse, Chase and his men were finding new things every day, tools, garments, and even jewelry. They still couldn't figure out why this mound had been built in this unique way, and they had no idea why there was hollow space beneath it. There were several bodies in the hollow though, all of the neatly laid out as if buried, all except the one who's arm had been seen initially. They didn't know how many bodies were in the space or even how big the hollowed space was because Ethan wasn't willing to let any of his eager scientists go under there until they had more equipment. They would never get the chance.

Bernie Wilford went to the state capital. He brought with him a pre-prohibition bottle of Jack Daniels, a box of cigars straight from Havana and a blank check. It wasn't hard for a man like Bernie to get a sit down with the head of the State Board of Antiquities. The man was fairly resistant to Bernie's charms and persuasions until he saw the blank check. A pat on the back, a bottle of whiskey, and a check with a few zeros was all that was needed to get his project rolling again.

Bernie gloated, but Ethan took the news hard. He'd begged with his immediate supervisor with no luck and in the end he'd gone to the capital himself to speak to the big boss, no luck. He knew what had happened, but there wasn't anything he could do about it. He knew what an important find they'd discovered and it was about to be destroyed for profit. It was almost enough to make Ethan vomit. He pushed it and pushed it, but in the end they'd threatened to fire him when he threatened to bring a lawsuit. Feeling defiantly defeated Ethan went back to the mound to gather a last bit of research with frantic around the clock work.

Bernie and some of his men came to the site while Ethan dug alone. He was doing the jobs of three or four men, but he was dedicated and in a mental zone despite the taunts from Bernie and his men. He kept on working and taking notes. He was digging near the place were the arm had been spotted initially when the ground gave way and he fell in. He slid down the rough dirt to the bottom of the hollow beneath the mound.

Bernie and his men leaned over the hole and laughed like loons. This time Ethan's face reddened. "Hey, could you throw me a rope", he yelled up to them. "Or a ladder?"

"I ain't throwing you shit! You cost me a lot of money. I'll get your punk ass in the morning. Come on boys let's go."

"Don't just leave me down here!", Ethan yelled and looked around the small area. He heard the trucks start up and drive away, then he heard that Packard's V-8 roar to life meaning that Bernie himself was gone too. Ethan was stuck in this small hole beneath hundreds of tons of rock with just a flashlight and a small digging trowel. He worked to keep from staring at the skeletal remains around him, and concentrated on freeing himself. He tried to get out for nearly two hours, but no luck. He was prepared to stay there the night with long dead roommates, but something beckoned him to explore.

He shined his light around the hollow, taking care not to linger on the dead bodies, hoping distantly that he didn't become one. He started walking towards the back of the space. He kept expecting it to stop, but he found that this hollow lead to a tunnel of sorts. He felt along the walls. It was natural stone. This must have been a natural formation that the Mound Builders enlarged. That lead his mind in new directions, but he reined it in. His heart raced in his chest as he went deeper and deeper into the darkness. It was like a moving black wall forever in front of him. The flashlight did the best it could, but the darkness was still there.

Ethan saw more bodies now. Nothing looked out of the ordinary until he realized that not one of them had a head. He stopped and searched with his light, but he didn't even see a piece of a skull and yet he could make out even the small bones of the fingers and toes over the centuries. If those tiny bones had survived then where the hell were the skulls? He contemplated going back, but he'd come this way so he kept going. Deeper and deeper he went until he came to a large room and the scene left him speechless.

Seven full skeletons were arranged in a circle around an ancient fire-pit. The soot from the last fire was still very evident. Each skeleton was wearing regal garments and many talismans. They sat around the fire, all had been sitting straight up at once point, but gravity had slumped their backs that remained intact. Their left hands rested on their left thighs while their right hands were all clutched tightly around some sort of stone. He couldn't quite get a good look at the stones, but they were different colors and shapes. This was so marvelous that Ethan didn't even know how to begin to describe the significance of this find. Scientists from all of America, hell all over the World were going to want to study this place. It might take decades or even centuries to try and figure out why the Indians had gone through all of this trouble. Ethan didn't know that he was about to find out in a matter of minutes.

He stayed in the large room looked and the circle of tribal elders for hours, studying each detail and committing it to memory. He wished that he had his notebooks, but they were still on the surface. He knew one thing for sure though. There was no way he was going to let this mound be destroyed. He was going to call the newspaper and get a photographer down here to take pictures. Once it was out in the public, the state would have to protect this place. The boys from the Smithsonian might even want to come down here. Ethan was getting tired, but he wanted to push on. He saw that the tunnel continued past this room. He had to work around the skeletons. It was as if they were trying to be in the way. He shined his light down the tunnel and didn't see anything in the darkness, so he took a step out of the room with the elders and gagged.

A God awful smell assaulted his nose. The air was so thick with the odor that it burned his eyes and made his tongue itch. He pulled his shirt over his face and pushed forward. The temperature dropped with each step until his breath showed in the flashlights beam. Ethan's heart thumped in his chest. He was in full fight or flight mode, but he forced himself to keep going. He stopped when he thought he heard a sound, like the scuffling of feet. That was impossible. He was the only person down here, unless the skeletons were walking. He laughed and kept moving down the tunnel.

He was excited, fascinated, and scared all that the same time. Scared jumped to number one when he came to a pile of bones. They were jumbled and tossed, nothing like the skeletons that he'd seen earlier. He picked up one of the dried bones, hoping that they were animals, but human pelvic bones and femurs were unique enough to be instantly known. These were human bones. Closer inspection revealed teeth marks that had gouged the bones when they had still been moist, maybe even when the person had been alive.

Ethan wondered if the people of this valley had been cannibals or maybe if some invasion of wild animals had driven these people out of this lovely valley and prompted them to build this mound. He kept going deeper. The darkness had a texture now, a feel, an emotion. Ethan's hairs stood on end and the flashlight shook in his hand. The light was jumping all around which was why Ethan dismissed the first time he thought he'd seen something. It was his mind playing tricks. Nothing could live this far underground, nothing. He kept moving, but damn it he saw it again. It was just a shadow at the edge of his visual range. He stood still and blinked his eyes. There was no way on earth. He kept moving, but he saw two this time. They had the shape of men moving unsteadily but with purpose. The smell got worse and Ethan froze. There were more of them. He could hear them. See them. Smell them. Feel them. He turned around to run and made it one stride before tripping on a half buried skull. He tumbled to the ground face first. The flashlight flew from his hand and broke when it hit the rock wall of the tunnel. Ethan was plunged into complete darkness.

He pushed up to his hands and shook his head to clear it. Those things were behind him. Their uneven gait made a terrifying scraping behind him. Ethan tried to get up, but every time he tried the moist dirt caused him to slip. His legs and arms moved in a blur of fear induced energy, but he'd moved barely ten feet. One of them touched his boot. Ethan pulled it away and finally got enough balance to run. The things sped up too. They were just as anxious to get to him as he was to get away. Ethan ran blind until realized that it wasn't really dark down here. Without the flashlight he could see a red glow coming from up ahead. It wasn't bright, but in the total darkness of this tunnel it shined like the sun itself. He didn't know the source, but humans didn't have to know everything. From the beginning of history men knew two things. Light was good and darkness was bad. Ethan ran to the light, clawing and slipping and cursing and crying, but he kept moving. The things were behind him, their overpowering odor and their cold dead hands only inches away. They brushed his shoulders and back as he ran faster than he ever had before.

The light grew until he saw the glow coming from the room with the circle of elders. Ethan ran and ran and ran, but then one of them grabbed his leg. Another grabbed his arm and another grabbed his neck. They lifted him off his feet. He kicked and screamed and tried to free himself, but their hands were already pressing into his flesh. They threw him on the ground where their dead mouths opened to reveal dead tongues and slime covered teeth that bit into Ethan's flesh. They tore open his belly, plucked out an eye and tore the skin from his arms and legs. Still conscious and feeling life slipping away, Ethan saw that red glow expand past the large room. It extended until the glow touched the things around him. He heard one of them scream an awful hateful sound as the glow burned his ragged flesh. The red light drove all the creatures away. Ethan felt the glow around him as he closed the one eyelid he still had. He could hear the song then. It was constant and powerful. A voice broke through the song and spoke to him in a language that he didn't understand. It spoke slowly and powerfully. Ethan understood the meaning if not the words. The song never stopped and images of people and places started flashing before him, smiling happy faces that were turned to ragged creatures, the creatures that had been chasing him. He saw the valley turned into a place of death. The images and the song burned themselves into Ethan's mind, causing pain equal to the wounds he'd sustained. It wouldn't go away. It wouldn't leave his mind. The song got louder and louder. He screamed with all the energy his body still had. He screamed at the pain, screamed at the overload until it all became too much.

The next morning Bernie and his men came to the worksite and found Ethan right where they'd left him. He was huddled against the chill and writhing in his fitful sleep. He fought and kicked and clawed at the dirt in his sleep. They shouted down to wake him up, but nothing worked. Finally they lowered a hook and simply started to pull him out. He didn't open his eyes until he was almost out of the hole, and when he did open his eyes, the smiles left the faces of the men around him. Madness has a look and Ethan had it. He screamed and yelled and twisted until he'd freed himself from the hoist. He landed on all fours and rolled on the ground screaming like a man whose soul was being dragged through hell. He said names that no one had ever heard and screamed words that hadn't been spoken aloud in centuries. Finally the world, the real world, rushed at him at once. His mind couldn't take it. He jumped to his feet and ran to his car. His shiny Studebaker was right where he'd parked it. Bernie's men didn't know how to react as Ethan started up his car and sped away from the valley. Most of those men would never see him again, and Bernie was glad because he became a multimillionaire when he finished the last house in Hidden Glen ten years later. He retired to Florida and died in his sleep one night fifteen years after he'd leveled the Mound. Ethan on the other hand spent fifteen years putting his mind back together. The power of the elders had given him a mission. He understood it even if he didn't understand how to complete it. He had to figure out a way to stop what Bernie had unknowingly started. If he failed there would be no hope.

Anna had listened to about half of Ethan's tale, but the events of the night caught up to her and she'd fallen asleep with Alex in her arms. Mary cried and Cindy was numb from all that had happened. Mike paced very close to the group, still unable to sit down. "How does this help us now?", he asked.

Ethan rubbed his beard and sighed before he spoke. He wished that Mrs. Bernhardt was still awake. "I think it helps us quite a lot. We know that the ancient mound builders dealt with the same problem and if they dealt with it then so can we."

Mike scoffed and threw up his hands. "They did it with some magic potions, and we don't have any of those." Mike eased Anna and Alex into a more comfortable position and guarded them all night. Eventually everyone went to sleep except Mike and Ethan. It had been a long time for Mike, but he had experience at keeping watch. Ethan had had many sleepless nights over the last twenty years so this was par for his course. Ethan smoked cigarettes while Mike looked at him smoking cigarettes. Finally Mike broke the silence.

"You in the Army before?"

"Marine, why do you ask?"

"You looked like you knew how to handle a gun back when you were taking those things down."

"I saw a little action, but fighting Japanese is nothing like this. When you shoot a man he stays down. These things are different. They don't need arms or legs or even a mouth or teeth and they'll come at you. That's why I told you head shots. That seems to work. Me and you are going to have our little parts to play if any of us are going to make it out of here alive, but we won't be staring in this little feature", Ethan said as he lit another Camel.

Mike frowned and leaned closer. "So who exactly is going to be John Wayne to our Bruce Cabot?"

Ethan pointed at Anna, who looked like an angel while she slept off her severe fatigue.

"You're full of shit!", Ethan tried not to but yelled anyway. Alex stirred and Ethan laughed.

"I bet if we'd met last week and I'd told you that there were buried walking dead trapped beneath Hidden Glen you'd have said I was full of shit then too wouldn't you?" Mike didn't reply. He didn't have to. Ethan just gave him a little smirk, and they didn't say another word to each other the rest of the night.

Anna woke up with a start and reached out for her son. He was inches from her, but the moment of panic had made her heart race. She could feel the heat off his little body and she laid her head against his back. She pulled some strands of her silky black hair from her face and closed her eyes wishing, praying that everything she'd seen yesterday had been a dream. It wasn't, and she knew it.

She opened her eyes again when she heard steps on the floor above. They weren't the lumbering shuffle of those things. She relaxed. It turned out to be the crazy man with the Studebaker. She now knew his name was Ethan Chase.

"If you're awake Mrs. Bernhardt we need to talk."

Anna yawned and stood up. "I don't have time to talk. I have to get out of here and find my friends, my students so we can get the hell out of the Glen."

Ethan sighed. "If it was that simple we would have left last night. Lots of people didn't listen to my warning and they tried to escape. That's a disaster that we'll have to deal with later."

Anna frowned, not understanding what he meant, but she decided not to argue. "If we can't get out of the Glen then at least we can bring people here."

"That's my plan exactly. We can hold those things well enough if we have numbers, but you and I need to talk. You said that you're Indian and that you grew up on a Reservation. I need to-"

Anna cut him off. "There's no time for talking", she said simply and forcefully. "My friends are out there, and I'm going out there to help them."

"But Mrs. Bernhardt, you need to remain safe."

Anna's mysterious eyes narrowed and she stepped closer. It was just as easy to tell when Anna was upset by looking at her body as it was anything else. She squeezed her hands into fists causing the muscles along her arms and shoulders to tighten. It wasn't really a flex. Her muscles didn't swell in size they became more defined. Usually her muscles looked like tightly coiled springs ready to unleash their power at a moment's notice, but now they looked like weapons.

"Mr. Chase right now it's not my safety you should be worrying about. You helped me yesterday, and I thank you for that, but we've just met. There are people out there who I've known for years, even before I moved into this neighborhood. If push came to shove who do you think I'd rather see harm come to?"

Ethan's face turned angry quickly, and Anna didn't back down. Then his features softened and he grinned. "They don't navigate as well in the daytime as they do at night. You should take this." He tried to hand her a shotgun, but she refused.

"I don't like guns."

"I thought you might say that, so I took the liberty of getting this." He pulled out a machete. "This is hand forged steel from Brazil. You should aim for cutting blows in the neck or head region. You're plenty strong enough to take a head off in one blow. Do not hesitate Mrs. Bernhardt, or they will eat you." Ethan's words hung in Anna's mind as they went to the garage.

Mike had listened to his wife's conversation with a bit of satisfaction. It was hard to get over on Anna for very long. That's one of the reasons he gone crazy about her soon after they'd met. He hadn't said a word in Anna's defense as she'd talked to Ethan because she didn't need it, but when she started towards the garage he was right at her side.

"What about Alex?", Anna asked. "I thought you were going to watch him."

Mike smiled. "Mary can babysit. I'm not staying in here while you're going out there. I'm surprised you'd even think like that. Now you drive. I'll ride shotgun." He punctuated by racking the slide and loading a 12 gauge slug into the chamber of the shotgun he'd taken from Chase's table. It was Anna's turn to grin.

The bright sun made Anna squint as she drove her hotwired Volvo out of the garage. The clanging whine of Ethan's Studebaker was right next to her. They drove slowly down the street looking left and right and all around for anything out of the ordinary. Mike held the shotgun ready while Anna's knuckles lost color as she gripped the wheel tightly. The houses looked normal at first glance, but then she'd see the doors open or windows broken or a car out of place. It was eerily quiet except for the sounds of their cars. They came to the first intersection. Ethan turned left while Anna stayed straight. "Where you going Honey?", Mike asked.

"Home." She told Ethan the same thing when he stuck his head out of his window to inquire. He continued on his way. He pulled out his megaphone and broadcast that there was a safe place and that families could come out of hiding and if they couldn't that he wanted them to hang a signal out of a window.

Anna and Mike continued towards the house slowly. Their nerves were on edge as they traveled the streets that used to be so familiar to them. As they drove, they saw their first body. A woman lay face down in the grass. Blood stained her print dress and her leg looked like it had been chewed by dogs, but Anna and Mike knew that dogs hadn't eaten that woman's leg. It was those things. Anna's skin crawled thinking about those creatures. Her mind wondered as she drove, thinking back to the creatures that had come from the depths of the earth. It was easy to tell that at once time those ghastly things had been human men and women, and while some of them looked like skeletons with barely a pound of flesh hanging on to their dry bones, others retained a semblance of the features they'd had in life. Anna had seen them the night before and try as she might to dismiss the thought, many of them looked familiar to her. She knew that they had been buried for untold centuries, but she'd have sworn that some of those faces looked like the people she'd grown up with. Their faces had looked like her father's face, her grandmother's face, her face. They looked like her tribe. She didn't want to believe it, but her eyes weren't deceiving her either.

Her attention was failing her though. She was about to run over a man running down the middle of the street. "STOP!", Mike had to yell to get Anna to slam on the brakes. The man ran into the car then circled quickly to the passenger side and tried to get in. Anna looked to her left wide eyed as the man pounded on the door frantically trying to get in. Anna pushed the button to unlock the doors and the man jumped in the backseat.

Behind him a few steps was one of those creatures, but this wasn't one of the ancient ones. This one wore a pair of Levi's and a bloodstained t-shirt. The face was ashen and dead. The eyes were set in the skull and only looked at life as food. Mike didn't wait for the thing to get too close. He opened the door, stood up over the car, aimed his shotgun and fired. The slug made the zombie's head explode like a melon. Blood and grey matter went all over the place. Anna was so freaked out that she drove away as soon as Mike closed his door.

"Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!", the man in the backseat spewed over and over again. His hands shook and his heart raced and he was so happy that he felt like kissing and hugging both Anna and Mike until Mike leveled the shotgun in the man's face and racked the slide.

"Did one of those things scratch you or bite you?", he demanded from behind the 12 gauge.

"What??? I… I don't think so", the man stammered.

"That's not good enough. Let me see your body. QUICK!" The man did as Mike ordered, showing every inch of his flesh very quickly. He didn't have a spot on him except for dried urine stains on his pants. "Sorry about that", Mike told the guy and took the gun from his face. "You never can be too sure. I'm Mike and this is my wife Anna."

"Nice to meet you both. I'm Willis. And don't worry about the shotgun thing. I'd have done the same thing. I don't know what these things are, but last night was the worst night of my life. If it hadn't been for the guy with the bullhorn I wouldn't have known what to do."

Ethan was worming his way through neighborhoods with his megaphone hoping that people were still alive to listen to him. He was working his way towards the only entrance and exit to Hidden Glen. It was a two lane road that went up the hills and through a tunnel and then to the outside world. The rest of the land around the Glen had been left mostly natural and it was as hard to climb as a short version of the Andes. Ethan drove towards that entrance/exit and actually paused at the sight. A line of cars stretched nearly quarter of a mile. Many of them still had their headlights burning. Some had the engines idling while others spewed smoke where engines had redlined and failed because the driver had died with his foot on the pedal. Doors hung open and bodies hung from those open doors and smashed windows. Blood coated the ground and death hung in the air. Ethan pulled his car as close as he could to the mass of automobiles and shut off the engine. He surveyed the scene up close, noticing the horrible wounds. People's faces had been chewed and torn and their limbs bitten to the bone and even more. People sat dead in their cars with their belly's ripped open and their organ chewed like sweet meats. None of the creatures were in sight, but Ethan knew what he had to do. He walked to the front of the line and saw what he'd thought he would.

Those creatures had set up an ambush. They'd used debris to block the only exit to the Glen just like the vision he'd had so many years ago had told him they had done. Those ancient creatures had lived on this land long before Europeans stumbled onto it. As soon as the first car had been stopped, the creatures butchered these people, feeding off them and gaining strength. They were like cows in a stockade. Soon these dead people would add to the creatures' ranks. Ethan knew what he had to do.

He walked to the front of the line of cars and said a prayer. Ethan wasn't a religious man, but this was nearly overwhelming even to him and he'd been preparing for it for twenty years. When he was finished saying the only prayer he knew, he pulled out an old single action Colt Army that had belonged to his father. He cocked back the hammer, aimed it at the head of the chewed up dead man in the front seat of the first car and fired. On to the next car. This time had to fire three shots, including one into the skull of a five year old. And so on and so on, Ethan fired. He had lots of bodies and not a lot of time.

Anna saw bodies that weren't adults too. Children were among the dead, or the undying. It pained her in a special way to see their little corpses littering the ground. Sooner or later those little bodies would stand up and start to hunt just like the adult creatures did, and Anna didn't know if she was strong enough to handle that. If it came to her life or chopping the head off of a little girl how would she react? She had no idea, but seeing their little bodies made her think of her son. Alex was safely locked in a house turned fortress, but she felt for each mother of a child who lay motionless on the ground. Of course some of those mothers were dead too.

Anna's mind was full, but the fog was gone now and she noticed something in the distance. She slowed the car and pointed. "See that in the tree there", she told Mike and Willis in the backseat. Both looked and saw three of those creatures snaking along a thick tree branch. They'd obviously climbed from the ground to the branch that started about eight feet off the ground where it met the tree. The branch was at a 20⁰ angle to the ground climbing higher at its end. Anna crept closer, wondering why those things were trying to climb a tree until she saw why.

"Oh no", she breathed and pointed higher in the tree. An entire family was near the top of this oak huddled around the top as high as they could go and still be fairly sure that the limbs would hold their weight.

"Pull up closer", Mike said urgently then jumped out with his shotgun. The creatures took no notice as Mike tried to line up. "Damn it I can't take a shot. The people are in the way!", he yelled after thirty seconds of trying, but the slug would just as likely kill a member of the family as one of those things.

The family at the top of the tree saw the people on the ground and they'd believed that they'd been saved, but those things were still getting closer. The big lowest hanging branch rose up high enough for those things to get to the upper reaches of the tree. The closer those things got to the end of the branch, the closer they came to the family. The first one was almost able to reach up to the branch above him. That would be the beginning of end of the family hiding in the tree. Mike was right below them. His finger was on the trigger but he dared not take a shot.

Anna looked, trying like her husband to find a place where the family above wasn't in danger, but there wasn't one. She realized that she'd have to make an angle. "Get ready to shoot when they hit the ground", she told her husband and sprinted towards the tree. Anna chopped her feet and leapt as high as she could. Her hands grabbed the branch and she pulled herself the rest of the way up. Mike was terrified now that his wife was on the same branch as three of those creatures. She was just as much in the way of a good shot now as the family above her. He had no idea what she was doing until she worked her body to the very back of the branch and put her back against the trunk. She put her feet against the top of the thick branch. Her knees were forced towards her chest as she balanced herself in this nook. Mike could see Anna's face, and he'd seen that look before. Her chest heaved and her face took on a look of singular focus. She pressed her lips together and her face twisted up as Anna did something she rarely was forced to do. She pushed on something with all of her might.

Muscles swelled along her legs from her hips down. Her bare soles pressed against the rough bark, the pain only adding to Anna's urgency. Her face turned a shade of red and veins throbbed to the surface of her skin from her forehead to her feet. Willis stood on in confusion and amazement as he watched the muscles of Anna's legs flex. Muscle shapes burst to the surface like a hidden world that only revealed itself when she willed it. Thick ropes of muscle tightened in Anna's thighs, and her calves were a layered mass of thick angular female muscle as she drove the balls of her feet into the tree. Anna's muscles hardened with each heartbeat. More strength poured into Anna's growing thighs as she pushed harder still. She exhaled and took a sharp breath, this one hissed out from between her tight lips as her muscles bulged. The flexing just got harder and the definition more severe. Even bent the deep striations on the heads of her quads were visible from the ground.

No one except Mike and Anna knew what she was trying to do until they heard the first crack of the wood. Anna's legs moved an inch or so and there was another crack. All of Anna's lower body flexed with renewed energy as she took another deep breath. Her glutes were rock hard concaved balls of muscle and sinew as they powered her legs, but her quads were a quivering mass of pure rock solid muscle contoured muscle as she tore a thick limb from a living oak tree. The hardwood splintered and cracked and bent under Anna's pressure. Her beautiful face was beyond recognition as she straightened her body against the will of the tree.

The cracks were coming in quick succession now as Anna's unrelenting power tore this tree apart. Her legs were getting nearly straight now, and the wood had almost completely surrendered to Anna ridiculously swollen legs. The creatures noticed that instead of getting closer to the top of the tree as they climbed to the end of this branch, they were getting further away. They turned to look at Anna but it was too late. One more deep breath and one more powerful pushed from Anna's legs sent the thick branch crashing down. It didn't even lever from a connection to the rest of the tree. Anna's final shove with her quads and calves had actually torn the entire branch from the truck leaving no connection, not even in a single fiber of wood could withstand Anna. She threw her arms up and over her head as the branch fell, grabbing hold of the trunk to keep from falling down with it. Using nothing but her arms and back, Anna pulled the rest of her body up and up until she was inverted, looking down at the fallen branch.

Mike wasted no time. He took a step forward and fired three shots at the creatures who were trying to get up after the branch had hit the ground. Willis stood in the middle of the street in libido induced shock. He'd never seen something so awesome and so sexy in all his life. When the three creatures were dead, Anna pushed herself off the tree and did a slight flip in the air to land on her feet. She nearly lost balance, but Mike was there to steady her.

"You can climb down now", Anna called up to the family between deep breaths.

Mike wrapped his arms around his wife and pressed his body to hers. He could feel the steely hardness of her body and she could feel that several inches of his body were also steely hard. "You are so amazing", he whispered in her ear. "I don't think you have any idea how sexy you are."

She turned to him with a smile. "Is this really the time?"

"It's always the time with me, you know that."

She chuckled and helped the family down from the tree. They had used that branch to climb up just like those things were doing. Willis caught the youngest boy and helped the oldest son down too. The father came down and helped his wife to the ground. "I didn't know those damned things could climb trees", he said once they were all on the ground.

"And I didn't know Alex's mother was that strong", the youngest son said.

Anna turned and looked down recognizing the boy as a classmate of her son. She gave him a motherly smile and rubbed his head. "Sometimes you have to do what you have to do."

"We need to get the car and get the hell out the Glen", the father said, but Mike stepped in to give him direction.

"The exit's blocked in. There's no way out of this valley right now unless you want to try the hills." Everyone knew that the hills were almost as treacherous as facing those creatures. "There's a safe house back that way. I'll give you the address. Take your family there and wait. When we get enough numbers we're going to try and get out together, but if we go in small groups, those things will eat us alive."

Mike went with the man to retrieve his car keys from his house. There were two creatures in there, but they were still munching on the family's dead Anatolian shepherd and didn't bother to chase the humans. Mike would have shot them, but he decided to save his shells. He had plenty more in the car, but he didn't know what next turn would bring. Willis went with the family back to Ethan's house. Anna wrote a note and signed it so Mary and Cindy would let the newcomers in. Both girls would recognize Mrs. Bernhardt's signature.

Anna and Mike were alone in the Volvo as they got closer to their home. They could smell a fire burning, but it wasn't a house. It was a car rolled up on the curb. The inside was nearly completely charred. They saw police flashers now, but the police officer was dead on the side of the street. His gun was missing and so was most of his left arm. Anna rolled past the scene slowly and turned the corner to her street and tears welled in her eyes. Mike was choked up too, but he kept it together for his wife's sake. He reached out and took her hand as they drove towards the house that they'd made their own. It was much the same as they'd left it the night before. The doors were open. Some windows were broken with dead creatures hanging out of them, but the houses around them were far worse. Anna's dead neighbors were scattered like newspapers after a tornado. Her house was on one of the routes towards the exit of the Glen and those creatures had passed by here leaving destruction, death, and sorrow in their wake.

The tears had stayed in Anna's eyes until she saw her neighbor's house. A car had driven through the front of it and caused half of the house to collapse. Smoke rose from a small fire, but the mess of the once nice tidy house caused tears to run down her cheeks. She cried for Evelyn who was at home when all the things had started last night. She'd wanted to warn her, to get her into the station wagon to save her life, but there hadn't been time. Now she was dead with her house crashed around her. Anna drove her Volvo into her driveway and pulled the wires apart to shut off the engine. Mike held Anna's hand as they walked to Evelyn's yard and stood where the dining room had been. Only the rear end of the car was visible. The rest was buried under the rubble of Evelyn's home.

"We better get what we came to get", Mike whispered in his wife's ear. She nodded and went into their house, stepping over the dead creatures. Mike kept the shotgun close and the pistol on his hips as they went deeper into their house. Anna instantly went to retrieve some shoes. She'd been worried about broken glass and nails since the night before. She actually grabbed three pairs in case she needed them. Once she'd gathered some changes of clothes for her family, she went to the closet and pulled out the luggage. She packed the clothes, but also important papers and the photo albums. In the back of their minds they knew that they were never going to be coming home again. Once Anna had packed up what she wanted from upstairs, she went downstairs and started pulling pictures out of the frames and putting them in the photo album that she'd already packed.

Mike watched without saying a word. He wouldn't have thought about the pictures, but he knew that each of those photos represented a little piece of Anna's heart. They loaded the bags into the back of the station wagon. Mike grabbed his keys, but didn't take his car. They might drive it back to Ethan's home later, but they had more houses to check. Anna drove by the houses of her students and fellow teachers while Mike directed Anna to the homes of some of his co-workers. In each case there were families who had survived together. Mike and Anna told them to get to Ethan's house. After Evelyn, Anna had needed some good news and now she had some. People had survived the night. There was no way that she and her husband could get to them all, but hopefully news would spread. Everybody in the Glen couldn't fit in Ethan's house, but they were sure Mr. Chase would have a plan for that.

They came to another house as they neared the exit to the Glen. This one belonged to the principle of the high school, Anna's boss Mr. Seltzer. The yards here were very empty. There were no bodies or burned houses or anything. Some of the doors were open and curtains waved from broken windows, but it was quiet. Anna stopped her Volvo when she saw a woman kneeling in the front yard over the body of a man. Anna saw Mr. Seltzer dead on his front yard. His wife cradled his head in her lap and hugged his dead body. Her tears held a thousand memories as she rubbed his dead face. Mike pulled out his pistol thinking that he might need to shoot, but he saw a pistol less than a foot from Mrs. Seltzer's knee.

Anna approached cautiously. "Betty?", Anna called to get the grieving woman's attention. She looked up and her sorrow made Anna's heart ache. "He's gone on now. You have to let him go, but we have to get you out of here."

"I can't just leave him", Betty Seltzer cried and held her husband's head even tighter.

"I know it was hard what you had to do…", Anna began.

"He did it himself!", Betty screamed at Anna who recoiled. "We had locked ourselves into the house when the chaos broke out. I didn't know what was going on, but somehow my husband did. When those things started coming near us, killing people and eating them, he knew. He sat with me all night, keeping me safe, but early this morning he told me that he couldn't fight it anymore. He got the gun out of the end table. I tried to stop him, but he ran away from me. He said he wanted to harm me. He wanted to feed off of me, but that he loved me too much. I chased him into the front yard. He took the gun and pointed it at his head and pulled the trigger." She broke down in sobs and Anna broke down too. She'd always known that Mr. Seltzer was a good man. Now she knew just how good.

"I saw what our neighbor did to his wife and family, and he wasn't going to do that to me."

Mike took Betty under her arm and wordlessly helped her to her feet. He looked her in the eye then down to her husband. "Your husband gave his life to save yours. Don't throw it away. Come with us."

"I… I have to get a few things from the house." Mike nodded and they walked to the front door to make sure there were no creatures around before she went in. She didn't move very quickly, but Mrs. Seltzer didn't take many things from her home. Like Mike and Anna, Betty knew that she would never come back to place. She got what she cared about and joined them in the Volvo. Anna had an idea to check out the exit to the Glen for herself.

Ethan was more than halfway through his grisly task. He methodically shot the heads of the undying with his Colt. He'd let himself become numb to faces or conditions. He had a job to do and the best thing was to get it over with. He was nearly three quarters finished when a group of men came towards him. The man out front seemed to be the ringleader. They stopped several feet away and the guy in front frowned.

"What the hell are you doin buddy?"

Ethan held the gun down by his knee as he turned to face the man. "Trying to make sure these poor dead bastards don't turn into zombies and eat us. Now if you'd leave me alone, I'll get back to it."

"I don't like your attitude."

"And I don't give a shit." Ethan raised his gun to shoot another dead body.

"What if some of these people are still alive?"

"Then I'm quickly putting them out of their misery. Once one of those creatures has bitten you or scratched you the jig is up. It's only a matter of time after that."

"You know buddy, you're crazier than fuck. I don't think a lunatic like you needs a gun."

Ethan shook his head, once more distracted from finishing off the last body in this car. "I'd like to see you take the gun from me. Besides I've got more where this came from." He took a breath to continue talking then exhaled and tried to calm himself. "Look, I'm not trying to start something. These things are our enemies. Not each other. Let me just finish what I have to do, unless you guys want to help. Then we can make it back to my house. I've armored it. It's safe there."

"Your house? Screw that! We're getting out here. I was hoping to drive out, but we'll have to walk it." They started past him, but Ethan held up his hands, including the one with the gun in it.

"No! Don't go that way. There's dozens of those things up there. Look at this line of cars. These poor assholes thought they could escape, but these creatures aren't dumb. They remember. Don't you get it? We're like lobsters in a fucking tank. They've blocked the tunnel up a head. They did the same thing to the Mound Builders. They trapped them in this Glen and wouldn't let them out. They fed on those people like they're trying to feed on us. If you go past that car right there then you're going to die as sure as I'm standing here."

The men didn't like what Ethan was saying and they crowded him. Some of the men had clubs and others had lawnmower blades while some had blades with them. "We ain't staying here and you can't stop us."

Ethan knew his temper was bad and his attempt to calm himself had failed. He saw the seven men in front of him, but not the two that were sneaking around the far side of the line of cars creeping towards him. While he was focused on the seven, knowing that he only five bullets left in his gun. The two men were almost behind him. One of them, a huge bearded man had his bare hands as weapons, but the other had a Louisville Slugger. Ethan didn't see them, but Anna did. She and Mike had parked their Volvo some ways back while the two of them plus Mrs. Seltzer went looking for Ethan. The guy with the bat was getting close. They were crouched behind a car. She was about to shout, but she didn't want Ethan to turn and fire. Instead she ran up behind the two men and snatched the bat. Both turned to her, still crouched. She kicked the big one onto his ass and dared the other one to do something while she held the bat ready.

"Thanks for the cover Mrs. Bernhardt", Ethan told her with a smile then turned to the seven in front of her. "Fuckin sneaky huh! I ought to put slugs in all of you!"

"You still ain't got enough bullets for all of us. We'll get you in a rush", they said confidently.

"Nobody's rushing anybody!", Anna yelled in her schoolteacher voice. She tossed the bat away, searching with her eyes for Mike and Betty, but not finding them. It didn't matter. The bat landed in the grass. "Let's work together so we can all make it out of here. We're all fighting for our lives whether you realize it or not."

Ethan didn't say a word. She was saying all that he wanted to say better than he ever say it. Besides these idiots were much more likely to listen to reason if it came out of pretty lips attached to a pretty face. It didn't work. The big guy worked his way to his knees and made eye contact with the ringleader who gave him the slightest of nods. Anna was looking at the guy to her right rather than the guy on his knee, but it was the big guy who stood up quickly and wrapped his arms around Anna's body locking her arms in place and lifting her completely off the ground.

"Shit!", Ethan exclaimed before all seven of the guys jumped him. There was no chance of him shooting anybody. He hadn't even cocked the hammer. They knocked him to the ground. They were working on wrestling the gun from Ethan's hand while none of them even gave a thought to the woman their friend was holding. They should have because Anna was pissed.

She snarled and set her teeth on end, as she flexed every muscle in her torso to its full rock hardness. The man felt like he was holding a swelling balloon. Anna's face turned red and a throbbing angry vein snaked across her forehead as she started pulling her arms apart. The three heads of her deltoids split and divided until they were a jumble of writhing tightening muscle fibers. Her lats spread out wide. Her body thickening and separated and grew as her she flexed. The big man grunted from the struggle, but Anna was utterly silent in her efforts. He tightened his grip and pulled her higher up to increase the pressure, but nothing worked. He was squeezing as hard as he could, but her muscles were unstoppable. The hard edges of her muscles were cutting into his much softer flesh and causing pain to match his excursion. Sweat rolled down his head and neck, but Anna's surging flexing muscles were just getting warmed up.

Her eyes narrowed as she focused now. She could feel the strength in her muscles waiting to be turned loose. The big man didn't know that Anna hadn't even really tried to get out yet. He was having a hard time holding her because she's simply swelled all her muscles until they were about to burst with power. Now she unleashed it, and he had no chance at all. She let out a low hiss of air from her lungs as she finally started to move her arms. Her deltoids which were already sliced to muscle capped perfection flexed even harder as her arms started to rise. She arched her back forcing her hard flexed pecs against his arms. Their marble hardness and unyielding power worked like battering rams against his hands and wrists while her delts and lats were surging with enough power to rip the big man's arms off at the joints. He held on despite his pain. Anna knew that she was hurting him because she could feel his body starting to fail. He wasn't getting weaker, but his arms were moving. She was forcing his joints to fail. His elbows and shoulders were being pushed to their max stretch. Then she heard a pop. She'd dislocated a finger. She flexed her pecs as hard as she could, and she heard more pops and a crack. The man yelped as she was pulling his fingers apart. One more crack of a fractured bone was more than he could take. With a burst of strength, Anna burst free forcing the man back a step or two.

Still angry, Anna kicked the man in his knee. He went to the ground. She pulled back her fist and delivered a girly looking punch across the man's jaw that sounded like a cherry bomb. The other man made a quick move to attack Anna while her back was turned, but looking at his much bigger and stronger friend rolling on the ground made him think twice.

A second later it was all over when a shogun blast echoed against the hills. All heads turned to see Mike lowering the barrel. "I wasted a shot in the air. Next one's going in someone's ass. Now back up." He'd worked his way behind the group of men after he'd stashed Mrs. Seltzer. He didn't want her anywhere near this. Ethan got off the ground mad enough to shoot, but he didn't. He tried to let his anger go away.

"Now if you guys want to try and escape go ahead. I won't try and stop you, but just know that there's some bad shit up there and nobody's made it back alive from the tunnel", Mike repeated what the others had said. They hadn't listened to a crazy man with a Colt, or a beautiful woman with a bat, but maybe they'd listen to a sane man with a Mossberg.

They didn't.

"I'm getting out of here!", the ringleader yelled. "Come on guys!" Eight of the nine men he'd come with went with him, but the big guy who'd attacked Anna stood next to her as the rest went up the hill.

"Hey man, come on let's go!"

He shook his big head. "I'm not going."

"You're what?!?"

He looked sheepishly at Anna. He couldn't get the feeling of her strong muscles out of his mind. It wasn't the first time he'd lost a fight, but it was the first time he'd ever been overpowered and lost a fight to a woman! He looked up at his friends. "You guys can go ahead. I'm going wherever she goes."

Anna actually chuckled. He wasn't the smartest guy in the world, but he sounded so sincere. His friends weren't amused. "Well screw you too! Come on guys."

Ethan watched the men go, feeling sorry for them despite his near beat down. He'd been younger and dumber once. If some crazy middle aged man had tried to warn him off he'd probably have done something similar. He couldn't worry about them anymore. He had to keep his mind on those who wanted to live. "Come on we better get out of here. Those things may start coming down."

They all started towards the bottom of the hill. Mike was on the other side of the line of cars with Ethan, but he kept an eye on his wife with the huge guy next to her. He needn't have worried.

"I'm sorry Miss for grabbing you. I didn't want to hurt you or anything. I'm Jimmy."

Anna looked up at him and gave him a smile. "Nice to meet you Jimmy", Anna began somewhat formally. She knew that Jimmy would expect it. "I'm Anna Bernhardt. Let me see your hands." She took a look and set two of his fingers while they walked.

"Mrs. Bernhardt I'm sorry if I hurt you", Jimmy said after she'd set his ring finger.

"You didn't. I'm fine. I'm a big girl I can take a squeeze."

"You ain't that big. How'd you get so strong?"

Anna laughed. "I don't know to be honest. I've always been stronger than I look. You know I could do one armed pull-ups when I was five?"

"Really?"

"Yeah and I just got stronger as I got older. My father and I used to win money when I was a teenager by having me challenge guys to arm-wrestling matches."

"Boys your own age?"

Anna chuckled thinking back on it. "No grown men. Big grown me like you." She smiled at him and patted him on the back.

"You lose any?"

"A few", Anna admitted. "But not many."

"You ever lose to any other women?"

Anna paused as she opened the door to her Volvo. "I don't think I've ever arm wrestled another woman."

Jimmy got in the back seat next to Betty. "Did you ever arm wrestle her sir?", Jimmy asked Mike.

Mike looked back from the passenger seat and answered, "Once, back when we were dating."

"How did it go?"

Mike looked over at his wife who blushed then back to Jimmy. "She 'bout tore my arm off."

Jimmy was inquisitive, but it wasn't a bother. His questions took their minds off of what was really going on especially Mrs. Seltzer. Jimmy didn't know that her husband had killed himself, but he managed to make her laugh a time or two. His mood didn't fall until he started to wonder about the fate of his friends. The others in the car told him that all they could do was hope for the best, but in the back of their minds they knew that Jimmy's friends were dead or in the process of dying.

Anna was making a slow circle around the Glen, hoping that there were at least a few more people to save. The station wagon was getting full, but she'd strap them to the roof if she had to. The sun was getting lower in the sky. The autumn days were so short, but Anna wasn't willing to give up yet. They came to a street that they hadn't traveled yet and Anna's face fell. Sitting nearly sideways in the middle of the street was a blue 1972 Camaro. There was only one guy in the Glen who had a car like that. Both Mike and Anna knew whose it was, and by the look on Betty's face so did she. Anna stopped close to the car and saw blood on the windshield and the legs of a dead man stretched across the seat.

Anna opened the door, but Mike took her arm. "Don't Honey", he said gravely. "You'll only upset yourself. We should move on."

"I have to at least look."

Mike nodded and they got out. She approached the car slowly and frowned. "That's not Eddie", Anna called out.

"What?"

"That's not Eddie. Maybe he got away?"

"Maybe", Mike allowed as he looked around. "There's a lot of blood here. You can tell that some of those damned things came through here. Mike looked inside the car. There were no keys in the ignition. He turned his attention to the man in the front seat who'd had most of his left leg chewed off. There was a look of a painful death on the man's face and sticky pools of blood near him. This guy had been dead for more than half a day. Mike took a page from Ethan's book. He wasn't going to wait for this man to rise from the dead. He pulled out his .45 and blew the back of the man's skull out, that made everybody worry less. After the shot, they heard a banging. "It's coming from the trunk", Anna whispered.

Mike saw the car keys sitting near the rear tire. He checked under the car before sticking his hand down and handing them to Anna.

The banging was pretty strong and urgent. "Here take the keys. Open it from behind the lid then jump out of the way", he told Anna. Mike got the shotgun ready. Anna reached over the lid from the backside so that there was steel between her and whatever was in the trunk. She slid the key into the lock and turned. Mike pressed his shoulder in tight to the stock and his finger tickled the trigger as the trunk lid shot open. Anna jumped back so fast she fell to her behind and Mike nearly fired until he heard, "No! No! Mr. Bernhardt, please don't shoot me!"

Mike sighed. "Damn it Eddie, get out of that trunk." He helped him out of car. The young man was dirty, stiff, but unhurt. He threw his arms around Anna as soon as she got up off the pavement.

"I knew if anybody would find me it would be you."

"Well, I'm just glad you're okay. Where's your family?"

"In my house. I was going to find help. My stepdad heard some guy on a megaphone tell them to get to the highest level in the house and barricade in. They're all in the attic, but those things are in the house. I went out to try and find help, but I ran into a sea of those things. I stopped and a man came from nowhere and jumped into the seat and threw me to the ground. He didn't get a chance to go anywhere. I had the keys in my hand. Those things killed him, and I opened the trunk. I threw the keys down hoping someone would at least come close enough to hear me." He paused and took a breath and to gather his thoughts. He took Anna by her shoulders. "We have to save my family!", he exclaimed as the urgency came back to him.

"We're going to. Get in the car. Come on Honey let's go."

Eddie's house wasn't far away. The doors were open and windows were broken like many other houses. Mike went to the door first, with his pistol in his hand. The shotgun was too long for close work like this. Anna was right behind him with the machete that Ethan had given her this morning. She didn't really know how she would use it if everything went to hell, but it felt nice to have a weapon. Eddie was behind her with a hatchet that he'd grabbed from the tool shed the night before. He had yet to use it, but he had a feeling that he would. Jimmy stayed at the door with the shotgun. He'd assured Mike that he knew how to use it. He was supposed to watch their rear and keep an eye on Mrs. Seltzer. They'd met him as an adversary, but now they were trusting him with their lives.

Each member of this group was silent as they walked into Eddie's home. The sun was nearly down so the house was mostly dark. Every change of shadows from a gust of wind brought instant adrenaline to the people in the house. They could taste the fear in the backs of their throats, but they pushed on despite it. Anna kept close to her husband, and it wasn't long before they heard thumps above them.

Mike moved up the stairs hugging the wall. He saw the legs of those creatures as his head topped the stairs. There were lots of them packed close together trying to get at the people in the attic. Mike didn't try to count them all, but he knew that he didn't have enough bullets on him to kill them all. He didn't think that would matter, but he was very very wrong.

The entrance to the attic was a pull down ladder that was closed with the pull string pulled up too. The creatures hadn't figured out a way to get to their meal, but when Mike got to the top of the stairs three of those things turned and locked their dead eyes on him. They turned and lumbered towards him.

"Oh shit." He raised his gun and took aim, but didn't fire. "Back up! Back up!", Mike told Anna who started down the stairs. Mike kept his aim and backed up slowly, but then one of the zombies lunged at him. He pulled the trigger and the creature fell short. Then another came at him. Mike fired again. The big .45 inch wide slug tore the back of this one's head out, but the body fell at Mike's feet. The next one pushed forward. Mike nearly tripped as he backed up. He pulled the trigger, but the shot went high. Five more of those creatures turned towards easier prey. Mike emptied his mag, but only two of the creatures dropped dead. More turned and moved towards him. He yelled for Anna and Eddie to hurry, but it wasn't fast enough. Mike lost his balance and the three of them tumbled down the stairs in a tangle of legs and arms and bumped heads. Anna ended up on the bottom with Eddie's heel kicking her in the chest and Mike's head bouncing off of her stomach. Her vision was blurred as the two guys scrambled to get up. Mike pulled a fresh magazine from his pocket and slammed it into his 1911, while Eddie picked up his hatchet. Mike fired shot after shot, but they just kept coming. The upstairs had to be packed tightly with them. Each shot dropped a zombie, but two more appeared to take its place. Mike wasn't usually one to panic, but he was getting pretty damned close.

Anna opened her eyes and did panic. She was frozen in place as the zombies came down the stairs, pushing forward despite her husband's best efforts. She ordered her arms to move. They didn't. She ordered her legs to move. They stayed stock still. Anna's could see nothing except waves of zombies coming down the stairs and to her they looked like certain death.

All around the Glen as night fell and hours had amassed since the creatures had been unleashed, the dead began to stir. Their first grunts of undeath announced that they were ready to walk and to feed. Some people in hiding were in rooms with bodies that they thought were dead for good, but those bodies rose up and killed. A man sat in his bedroom with the body of his dead wife on the bed. She'd been attacked by one of those creatures the night before. It had bitten her arm, but her husband had gotten her away. He'd stacked furniture in front of the door in hopes that she would get stronger. She'd gotten a serious fever that night and she'd died early that morning. He'd felt helpless. He'd covered her body with a blanket and left her on the bed while he tried to work on ideas for an escape. He'd dozed off while he sat on the floor facing the door, thinking that any danger would come at him from the front. While he slept, the sheet slowly slid down his wife's body revealing her bloodstained dress. Her once vibrant smiling eyes were locked in a hungry stare. Her jaw had twisted in death and her tongue had swollen. She looked in death little like the wife that this man had known in life. As he slept, she leaned over him, only one thought on her mind. With his neck exposed and close to her, the wife leaned down and sank her teeth into her husband. He awoke and tried to fight her off, but blood ran from his neck as fast as heart tried to pump it to his brain. He blacked out with only the pain and knowledge of certain death as company.

Across the Glen the scene was repeated. Former loved ones were killed by those who had at once time been living and now only fed on the living. Life gave them strength. It gave them energy to hunt, and it gave their dead brains the ability to think abstractly as they had once done in life. The more they ate, the more they wanted to eat, and the stronger they became.

The stairs creaked and settled under the combined weight of the creatures. They crowed and smashed each other trying to get down the stairs to their prey. Mike aimed and fired as quickly as he could, and Eddie picked off the ones he missed who made it to the bottom of the stairs, but still it wasn't enough. Anna got to her feet and back up. Mike shot a look in her direction and then over at Eddie. "Give ground", he ordered as those things continued to wade forward. Finally as they back up they saw the last creature come down the stairs. Mike went to the left and Eddie went to the right. That split the zombies into two groups. Anna had stayed mostly out of sight behind a wall until the last zombie stepped off the stairs. As soon as his back was turned, she shot towards the stairs like a sprinter coming out of the blocks. Mike saw her streak by and hoped that she would be okay. Anna figured that this was her chance. She thought that all the creatures had come down from the upstairs, but they hadn't.

Eddie's family could hear the commotion below them, but so far they had been safe. There was only one ladder that led up there. That was until they saw light from the corner of the attic and a hand reach through a hole. Then a head rose up and shoulders as a creature got hold to the joists and pulled his body into the attic. Several creatures had used the furniture in a bedroom to knock a hole in the ceiling and now they were in the attic too. The family scrambled across the loose boards and the one and a half inch wide joists trying to get away as a second then a third zombie climbed up after them. The joists were 24 inches apart and one wrong movement could cause disaster and it did. Eddie's mother lost her balance after she'd hit her knee against a nail in the wood. She rolled to her left and fell through the insulation and through the ceiling down to the master bedroom below. Her husband tried to stop her fall and he was taken down with her. Their daughter Julie, Eddie's six year old half sister was ahead of them and turned to go back, but she slipped and fell through the ceiling too. Her first thought as she fell was that at least her parents would be there when she landed, but they weren't. She fell into the bathroom with a solid wall between her and her parents.

Julie landed next to the bathtub hard, but uninjured. She got up and went to the door. She turned the knob, pulled the door open, only to slam it shut. One of the creatures was in the hall and it looked her right in the eyes as she'd opened that door. She locked the door, but it simply banged on the door. Tears steamed from Julie's little eyes, but she'd done a lot of crying recently. She worried about herself and her parents and her brother. She didn't want to die, but she didn't want them to die trying to save her either. She wished that there was something that she could do, but there was nothing. She got in the bathtub and pulled the curtain closed knowing that there was no way out. More creatures joined the task of getting in the bathroom. Her fists boomed and banged against the door and the wall. Julie knew that it was only a matter of time, and when she heard some of them enter her bedroom with was on the other wall from her parent's bedroom she knew it was over. She was so scared she couldn't even think anymore. Dust fell as the fists knocked down the wall just like they'd burst through the ceiling.

Anna held the machete in her right hand down low. She never thought that she'd ever use this thing. She'd just taken it from Ethan to avoid an argument, but now as she saw a zombie's wondering, stumbling, and banging away in this house, Anna raised the machete and struck. The creature turned towards her and got halfway around before Anna buried the blade in his skull, slicing from the top left to the bottom right. Dead blood and brains sprayed every way. She barely noticed. She pulled her blade free and swung it in a tight arc. She aimed to take this next one's head off at the neck, but her aim wasn't so good. She hit high, slightly above the jaw bone, but the sharpness of the blade coupled with her strength sliced his head off anyway. A set of untouched teeth remained attached to the body along with the lower jaw as the head rolled along the floor.

Anna had dispatched four creatures when she heard a crash in a room off to her right and the undead gurgle of a zombie about to feed. The she heard the high pitched squeal of a child. Anna ran towards the sound. She'd already killed the creature beating on the bathroom door, but she ran into a little girl's bedroom to find three more creatures. They'd already torn down part of the wall. Anna saw the child in the bathtub trying to find somewhere to run. A creature broke a wall stud to give itself more room to get in while two more were right behind him. Anna yelled and ran in with her machete high. She sliced one zombie in the head taking out a diagonal slice of skull. It dropped to the floor. The second one turned quickly, as quickly as a living man could have. It caught her by surprise. She tried to slice downward, but it was too close, so close that its ragged smell made her gag and so close that her machete was useless. The only thing that hit the creature was her elbow. It grabbed her by the blouse and pulled her towards its open mouth. Anna dropped the machete and put her hands on its chest to push it back. She knew that any bite was certain death. It tried to pull her, but it wasn't strong enough, so it turned its head and tried to bit her arm. She moved her arms and raised them above her head before bringing them down atop his arms as hard as she could. It didn't break its grip, but it tore two chunks out of her already ruined blouse. The zombie stumbled backwards holding two swaths of fabric. Anna moved to her right and the creature lunged after her. She saw a window over her shoulder and she let it lunge then moved out of the way. He kept going forward, and with a little help from her, this creature flew out of the window landing on the grass below.

Anna looked through the broken window long enough to see it fall, but another child's scream spun her around. The third zombie was almost to the little girl. Anna ran through the ruined wall to the bathroom and grabbed the zombie by his britches and pulled him back. Anna was jumped back, prepared to fend of an attack against her, but this one was fixated on the Julie. If an undead creature could have been annoyed, this one was. Instead of trying to eat Anna, it elbowed her in the head, hard. She flew back several feet, through the broken wall landing on the floor. It turned and saw her laid out on the floor. Fresh blood dripped from its mouth and that meant fresh strength. Anna hadn't known that those things could hit that hard, but she did now. It didn't matter though. She had to do something. She didn't have time to stand up. She simply pushed herself forward and grabbed the thing by the leg. She had hold of his ankle and she pulled backwards while it pulled forward. It was dragging her forward even with one leg off the ground. The little girl was so scared that she was simply against the wall trying to put as much distance between herself and the creature.

Anna could see that another few inches and it would be too late. She jerked and pulled and tugged until finally the creature slipped. She let out a sigh of relief, but it still struggled to get at the girl. Anna reached out with her other arm and grabbed its other leg. She got to her knees and pulled back. Anna's back and shoulders bristled with had flexing muscle, but she couldn't force this thing backwards.

It had just fed, and the blood of a freshly dead person was like a shot of pure energy to them. And now this thing that used to be a man wanted to feed on Julie. Children are so alive that they're like cake to the creatures. It clawed and scraped and dragged itself towards Julie despite Anna's best efforts. She squeezed her eyes shut and pulled back with everything she had. A low moan of strain escaped her curled lips. The thing was forced back nearly two feet, tearing up tiles and mortar and parts of the floor as it slid. Anna's victory was short. Her chest heaved from the effort, and no sooner he she pulled it back as far as she could, than he started moving forward again. She was too tired to pull again. The muscles of her upper back cramped as she tried to hold it back, but the creature pulled forward so hard that it tore tiles up from the floor and left pieces of its own finger tips behind as it moved inch by inch closer to the little girl.

Anna was forced down flat on her belly and pulled closer to the ruins of the wall. There was a doubled wall stud right in her path because she held the creature's legs on either side of it. Her face was going to be smashed into it, but that was far from her thoughts. She heard the girl scream as the thing touched the bottom of the tub. Anna had to do something. She shifted her grip on its ankles so her palms faced inward and then she forced her hands closer. They would have touched, but the doubled stud was right at the creature's knees. Anna hoped that the friction with the stud would at least buy her some time, so she kept on pressing her hands inward. Julie was so scared that her brain could hardly process the information, but as she looked past the creature at the woman, she felt hope.

Anna's body shook from head to toe as she pressed her hands inward, using every ounce of power and strength that her awesome body could produce. She demanded it all, and her muscles bulged. Her arms were getting massive, beyond anything she'd ever done before. Big jagged dual headed peaks rose high and higher as she squeezed her hands together. Her delts were had divided and divided against until each head was so ripped to shreds they looked like all writhing balls of super hard yarn under her skin. Her forearms were just as ripped as cables of iron hard muscle roped and snaked around each other. Anna gritted her teeth and her eyes burned with furious intent as she forced her hands together even harder. All sorts of hormones flooded her body as she pushed it past what she believed her limits were.

Her biceps weren't the only muscles working in overdrive. Her pectorals had gone nova, eclipsing even her biceps. They pressed out from her body, lifting her entire torso off the ground. Deep, deep striations fanned out across her chest under her smooth skin. Anna's face was flushed, but so were her muscles, filling with so much blood and oxygen that her biceps were actually hot to the touch and red as a beet, then there was a loud crack like the breaking of an axe handle. Then there was another louder snap, this one wet and prolonged.

Anna felt a wave of pleasure as she realized what she'd done. It was like nothing she'd ever experienced and she'd used her amazing muscles to do a lot of things. She kept pressing and she felt the strong tendons and ligaments of the creature's knee coming apart. A knee has some of the strongest most durable connective tissues in the body, and Anna was destroying one with no leverage and lying on her stomach. She could feel the flesh stretching as far as it would go, and then without warning the last ligament tore. Only the skin connected the creature's lower leg to the upper part. Anna had shattered the bones in the creature's left leg and torn all the ligaments in the right. She could move them around like they were doll parts now. The thing was still inching forward, but Anna used the destroyed legs to make a crude knot behind the doubled wall stud that had been all the help she'd needed to obliterate two legs with her bare hands.

Anna let go of the creature slowly making sure her knot would hold. It did and she stood up. Her chest heaved and she took big deep breaths. She needed to, but Anna didn't have time to rest. There were more of those things. She could hear them in the hall. She picked up the machete and stepped carefully past the creature into the bathroom. It was still trying to claw towards Julie, but now its dead eyes and deadly intent were a little less menacing. Anna raised her machete and brought it down.

Julie had covered her eyes, but when she opened them that thing wouldn't move again. She jumped into Anna's arms. "Its okay, sweety", Anna said and rubbed the back of the little girl's head trying to comfort her, but then Julie screamed again. Two more of those things had come into her old bedroom and were shuffling closer. Anna pushed the girl behind her and raised her machete. Then a fist broke through from the hallway. The banging never stopped as the creatures fought to get at their food. They were coming from the front and from the side. Anna let Julie slip to the floor and then turned towards the tub. Anna took a grip on the outside lip of the cast iron basin and powered up. Once again Anna's already pumped up physique strained to do something that it shouldn't have been able to. Her biceps rose up and her triceps flexed to their full shape. Her pecs nearly burst out of her blouse and her shoulders caps of muscles making her look like a super hero, but Anna wasn't super. Her muscles shouldn't have been that ripped, that beautiful, and that strong. But with mere seconds of effort, the bolts stripped out of the wood and one side of the tub came up in Anna's hands.

"I need you to crouch down", Anna told Julie who did just that. When the little girl was down on all fours, Anna carefully laid the tub down over her like a bullet and hopefully zombie proof shield. "I'll be back to get you", Anna assured the little girl as she let the tub down all the way. She turned just in time to slice a zombie and pirouette away from another's grasp. Anna had her hands full upstairs, but things weren't much better downstairs either.

Mike slammed another magazine into his pistol and promptly fired two shots into the heads of zombies that had forced him towards the wall of the house. On the other side of the house, Eddie was working much harder, but a hatchet never ran out of bullets and he was quickly killing undead. He hacked and smashed and bludgeoned zombies with his hatchet until sweat ran off of him in sheets and his arms both felt like they were about to fall off, but soon he stood still in the living room with dead bodies all around him. Eddie stood in the midst of the bodies and suddenly ran from the living room to the stairs. He could have helped Mike out, and part of him wanted to help Mike, but life is about choices and Eddie ran up the stairs to save his family. If Mike had known, he would have agreed with what the young man had done, but Mike didn't know. The only thing he knew was that he was running very low on bullets. He was about to shout for Jimmy to run in with that shotgun, before the words could even leave his mouth, he heard a shotgun blast.

Jimmy wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans before he pulled the trigger again. The second shot was right on target. He aimed for the head like he'd been told, but these zombies were moving much more quickly than he'd thought. He turned to his right and fired again. He racked the slide and fired again and again. He had to clear some room so he could load more shells. Jimmy fired as quickly as he could as the shadows fell over the Glen, but those damned things were coming from everywhere. He wouldn't back down though. Those people in the house were in the fight of their lives, and he was going to hold his ground no matter what.

Inside the house, Mike was up against it, literally. Hands reached out for him and their open mouths hungered for his flesh and thirsted for his living blood. The barrel of Mike's 1911 streamed smoke and he was down to his last seven rounds. He had to make them count, but it was hard to take careful aim when you're about to be eaten alive. The sharp bark of the .45 sounded again as Mike tried to save his own life.

Eddie was upstairs now, killing zombies as fast as he could swing his hatchet. Blood and brains flung all over the place as Eddie's arm swung. He called out for his family, and he heard his mother and stepfather yell. They were in the bedroom and his stepfather was doing his best to keep the creatures at bay. Eddie didn't hear his sister, so he chopped his way towards his parents. Eddie worked his way to his parents and found them near their bed surrounded by three creatures. Eddie rushed in just as one of them grabbed his mother's hand. He buried his hatchet in its skull. He killed the other two in short order. He was so relieved to see his mother and her husband that he just wanted to hug them forever, but there was no time. "I have to get you out of here", he said more to his mother, but he meant his stepdad too.

"I can't leave without Julie!", his mother yelled.

"Have you seen my English teacher?", Eddie asked.

"The young one with the long black hair?", the stepdad asked.

"Yeah that one."

"No, we haven't seen her at all."

"Then Julie's with her. Come on let's go."

"How do you know that?"

Eddie took his mother's hand and grinned. "Trust me. I know."

Anna was slicing and swinging madly, trying to fend off the creatures. Sometimes she hit heads or necks, but many times she hit arms or hands. They reached out for her, and she couldn't take aim anymore, now she simply tried to keep them from grabbing her. Creatures were even falling from the ceiling. On one wild swing, Anna's machete hit the exposed copper pipe that had at one time been in the wall. The harder steel sliced right through the softer copper and water sprayed everywhere, dousing Anna and the creatures. It was the only thing that saved Anna's life because one of the zombies touched a wire that had been damaged during the earlier melee. The shock spread from him to the rest of the zombie's standing in the pool of water. The electricity followed the pool of water. Anna backed up quickly, finally hopping over the upturned tub. She figured that this was her chance. She reached down and with another pull, Anna pulled up one side of the tub. She had pushed her body further than she ever had, but it didn't fail her. It had taken several people to put that tub in place, but Anna strained and got it high enough for Julie to crawl from beneath it.

One of the creatures was breaking free of the grip of the electricity, but Anna was about to get out of reach. She took Julie in her arms and climbed out onto the roof. It had worked once, why not again.

Eddie got to the bottom of the steps and shouted Mike's name before he waded into the group of zombies. He didn't want to catch a stray bullet. There wasn't any chance of that. Mike had already fired his last one. There were a couple more boxes of shells in the Volvo, but that wasn't doing him any good at the moment. Eddie tossed Mike the hatchet and ushered his parents towards the front door.

"Jimmy! We're coming out!"

"You should hurry. There's lots of them!", Jimmy yelled between shotgun blasts. His words had been an understatement. Those damned things were everywhere, but Mrs. Seltzer had tired to letting everyone else do all the work. She'd jumped behind the wheel of the car. It took her a couple of tries before she figured out how to hotwire the ignition, but she figured out it out. She turned on the lights and tooted the horn. Eddie and his parents rushed towards the station wagon. "Come on Mr. Bernhardt!", Jimmy yelled into the house, but didn't step foot inside. He slowly made his way towards the car shooting as he moved. Too bad those creatures didn't get scared because near missed didn't count for a damned thing.

Jimmy was near the Volvo when Mike came out of the house at a full sprint. Mrs. Seltzer was behind the wheel, and Mike nearly stopped. He'd expected to see Anna, but there were zombies behind him so he kept running. He jumped into the passenger seat and started loaded bullets into the magazines. "Where's Anna?", he demanded once he got in the car.

"I don't know!", Eddie yelled.

"I'm out!", Jimmy screamed and jumped into the car. There was another box of shotgun shells in here and he started reloading.

"We've got to go back in and get her!", Mike screamed.

"I'm ready!", Jimmy said.

"Me too!", Eddie chimed in.

"You're not going anywhere!", his mother yelled, but Eddie knew that he had to go.

Anna was on the roof moving very carefully. Julie had her arms wrapped tightly around Anna's neck, which kept her from taking a deep breath, but it did allow Anna to use both of her hands to steady herself as she moved along the roof towards the front of the house. She heard a noise behind her. Julie had heard it too. The little girl opened her eyes and screamed. Anna nearly lost control of her bladder. She looked over her shoulder to see three creatures behind her moving much more quickly on the steep pitch of the roof than she dared.

Mike, Jimmy, and Eddie were about to go back in the house even with more and more of those things closing in on them, when Betty blew the horn and shouted, "There she is! On the roof!" Mike wondered how in the world he could get to Anna before those things did, but she'd already had that figured out. She motioned for Betty to drive the car closer, and she did, almost putting the front bumper through the front door.

Anna would have liked time hang from the edge and drop like she'd done before, but there wasn't time. She could smell the thing behind her and feel its claw like hand only inches from her back. In a moment of desperation, Anna leapt off the roof. She braced herself for the pain, and it came when she landed on the roof of her Volvo. "DRIVE!!!", she yelled at the top of her lungs.

Mrs. Seltzer didn't need any motivation. She slammed the car in reverse and threw up grass and dirt as she pulled out of the yard. Tires squealed and smoke trailed as she pur the car into drive and ripped down the street as fast as she could go.

"Hold on tight, Honey!", Mike yelled.

Anna was holding Julie with one hand and the luggage rack with the other. She'd thought about putting people on the roof. She never thought it would be her on the roof of her own car, and she had to hold on tight. Betty was scared and driving like a Formula 1 racer. Those things were everywhere. The night time brought them out, the old ones and the new ones. Freshly killed people were rising up and joining the others on the undead's never ending hunt for the living. Once they were reloaded, Mike shot out of the passenger window while Jimmy fired from the drivers side rear window. They hit what they could, but those creatures kept coming.

At first Betty had tried to avoid them, but she couldn't so she just plowed them over like shuffling blades of grass. The car would shutter and jerk violently, but Betty never lost control. Mike told her where to go, and Betty was bound and determined to make it.

Ethan was waiting for them outside. People thought he was crazy, which wasn't far off, but he stood in his front yard wondering where Anna and her husband were. He hadn't seen them since that incident near the tunnel. He hoped nothing had happened because all would be lost. They'd promised to be back by sundown, and now there wasn't even a shimmer on the horizon anymore. "I wish there was some sort of mobile communications device", Ethan said to Cindy who stood next to him in the front yard.

"You mean like a mobile phone?"

"Yeah, that would be nice. A phone you could keep with you, maybe in your pocket even."

Cindy shrugged her shoulders. "Phones can be annoying. Who'd want to take one with them everywhere they went?"

"Good point", Ethan conceded. He kept an eye out for zombies, but Ethan had already shot the corpses near his house in the head before they ever turned, so this corner of the Glen was still zombie free. "There they are!", he exclaimed when he saw the headlights. "Go open the garage door and close it as soon as the car gets in." Cindy ran off, and Ethan got ready because there were zombies following that car.

"We're almost there!", Mike yelled to the people in the overloaded Volvo. They were so weary that they couldn't even be excited. When the car got closer, Ethan raised the weapon in his hands and pulled the trigger. The staccato shots of a B.A.R. were instantly recognizable and the bullets coming out of the end of it were devastating, tearing huge chunks out of the zombies chasing the car. Betty drove up the driveway pretty fast, but she slammed on the brakes in time to stop the car. Cindy closed the garage door and Ethan rushed inside. He closed the front door and locked the heavy duty commercial deadbolts and slid the steel bars across it. Everyone on the inside was secured.

Ethan's house was much more full now than it had been this morning as survivors took refuge. They were spread all over the ground floor of the house in every room. Anna, Mike, and Alex were going to try and make some space for themselves, but Ethan motioned for them to go upstairs. "I have a room for you guys", he told them. It turned out that Ethan had a bedroom and a private bathroom set up Anna and her family. She took a long hot shower for the first time in a couple of days and came out feeling, tired, sore, scared, but clean. She had on fresh clothes that she'd gotten from her house, and was still toweling her hair when she sought out Ethan.

She found him at a table cleaning a gun. She sat down opposite him. There was only one bulb shining light, but Anna was fairly certain that Ethan could have stripped and cleaned that gun with his eyes closed. He glanced up at Anna as she sat down, but he didn't let his eyes linger. With the tension mostly gone from the day's activities, and with Anna scrubbed, Ethan could see how naturally beautiful she was. She had a proud structure with the angles and curves of her body reproduced on her exotic face. Her eyes were expressive, happy, and mysterious at the same time. Looking at Anna or even being around her wouldn't give away many clues as to what she was thinking or even who she really was.

Ethan reached into a cooler and pulled out an ice cold Pabst. He slid it to Anna. She pulled the top off and downed half the bottle before setting it down. "This morning you said you wanted to talk to me."

"I do", he answered and put the gun parts down. "You said that you're Native. What tribe?"

"Shawnee."

Ethan bowed his head and muttered some words that she didn't understand. He looked up trying to suppress his emotions. "You said you know something about your people's history."

"My father taught me. You see, my mother hated the reservation. I think she hated it even more than I did because she ran off to start a new life when I was about six. I went to live with my mother's parents for a while in Kansas, but I couldn't stand it, so my father came and got me back. He didn't make a lot of money, but nobody on the reservation did back in those days." She didn't know why she was telling this to Ethan, but it felt good to tell somebody who was at least pretending to pay attention.

"Well anyway", she continued. "We saved enough money to buy a big rig. We fixed it up, and Daddy became a truck driver and I was his first mate. I learned how to double clutch and use a jake brake before I could driver a car. We were together for days on end and he would tell me the stories and sing me the songs that he'd learned as a boy. And he would show me dances when we stopped in towns and stuff."

"So you speak the language?"

"Yeah, I do. I don't get a chance to speak it often, but I still sing the songs every now and then. I can hear my father's voice in my head when I think about it. It helps keep him alive in my heart." Anna could hear her father singing now as she closed her eyes, but Ethan had a different song in his head. It was the only song he'd kept in his head for the last 20 years.

"When I was under the mound, and when those things were attacking me, those elders put a song in my head along with the images. Those images have gotten us this far, but I feel that the song is they key. Your people are the offspring of the tribes that built the mounds. I knew when I first saw you that this was fate. I knew that you, Anna, were the most important person in the Glen."

"Oh stop it!", Anna dismissed him with a wave of her hand. She turned up the bottle again.

"I'm serious. Look at you, you have it all. You have the bravery and the strength and the instincts to do what must be done in every situation. I have seen you scared, but I have never seen you give in to your fear. Many of the people downstairs are alive today because of you, including me perhaps. And now I find out that you, Anna, might be able to understand the song that the ancient elders put into my head."

Usually Anna had no problem taking compliments, but how in the world could she live up to this one. She slowly set the bottle on the table and looked Ethan in the eye. "So what's this song you're talking about?"

"Well let me tell you the words…"

"Sing it", Anna told him. "Sing it exactly like you heard them sing it."

Ethan wasn't sure about his voice, but he did as he was told, putting in every inflection and change in tone. Anna listened intently, but everything wasn't clear. It was like listening to Middle English being spoken. Some of the words in the song were the same as modern Shawnee and others weren't. The first time Ethan sang the song, Anna got about every third word, so she made him sing it for her two more times. After the last time, Ethan had found his voice and was almost in a trance. He could have sang the song over and over for hours. It was meditation, but Anna told him to stop. She had it now.

Ethan looked up and frowned. He could see heavy thoughts running though the molasses darkness of Anna's eyes. Her forehead creased as she pondered what she had heard. Finally she seemed to have it. She picked up the bottle and finished the last of the beer. "Its worse than you thought", she said after being silent for a while.

"What do you mean?"

"The song's instructions on how to kill the creatures, all of them. The Elders couldn't do it, but we're going to have to. If we want to live that is, but you're not going to like it."

"I still don't understand."

Anna reached around the table and helped herself to another brew. "We're going to have to go underground."

The hairs on the back of Ethan's neck stood up, and he reached a shaky hand into his ice bucket. "You're right", he began as he popped off another cap. "I don't like it."

...Conclusion coming soon...

comments encouraged: dem2@hotmail.com