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A to Z Chupacabra- Part 3
“What are we going to do? This creature will not let me move,” Gabriel shouted.
“His name is Diablo,” Oscar inserted. “He a chupacabra. Not sure how it appeared here. I dream’t about it.”
The backdoors opened. The driver of the ambulance disappeared from the front seat and shouted at the others to close the door.
Gabriel watched the dark leather folds around Diablo’s dog-like shoulders twitch as it shifted its weight to it’s thin front legs. Diablo bared its long front canines and walked slowly toward the hospital receiving crew.
“A chupa… what. Isn’t that a… All I know,” Gabriel began. He recalled faint memories of a dog-like tale but the creature leap forward. He shouted at the chupacabra. He tried to distract the monster. It was all he could do. Outside the ambulance several nurses stood staring at the starved, leather creature. A large, male nurse approached.
“Dude, that is not a good idea,” Gabriel warned then began to swing his arms and taunt the creature. Anything to distract him. “Hey! You! Leatherface! Oscar, do something. It listens to you.”
Oscar yelled at the chupacabra and it paused. It looked back at the officer lying in the gurney then at Gabriel. It’s lip curled up revealing a long, curved, sharp tooth followed by dozens of smaller pointed teeth. Diablo crept toward Gabriel. The male nurse stepped forward and Diablo leapt from the back of the ambulance. Diablo fell into the male nurse, knocking him to the ground. The animal cleared it’s head and approached the nurse. The others in the hospital receiving crew left and hide within the doors of the hospital. They were joined by an audience of patience and panic.
The chupacabra walked slowly, measuring his victim, accessing the soft tissues and then clamped down on his neck. The nurse let out a garbled scream as the audience behind the hospital doors gasp. Diablo held the man’s neck in a vise grip till the man stopped moving then released. The chupacabra sniffed at the blood falling from the nurse’s neck then began to lick up the crimson mess. Gabriel watched from the ambulance. He then noticed the black onyx sitting in a small recess next to the door. Light from the floods above the hospital awning reflected of the stone and Gabriel could see movement within the stone. He approached the stone carefully, watching and trying to interrupt the opera playing out within it.
It was difficult to make out but as Gabriel got closer he could see a couple dancing then the light washed away the scene. The next scene displayed an animal but it was too difficult to make out the shapes. Gabriel stood above the stone, the world outside of the scenes were washing away when he was snapped back to reality.
Diablo stood a foot from him. His teeth exposed and growl angry. The chupacabra barked. The percussion filled Gabriel’s ears with pain. Gabriel looked at the stone. It’s mystery overwhelming then the beast protecting it. The last thing he remembered was reaching and then the world went black.
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The View
The pungent smell of death was everywhere. It burned your nose, not like a flame but like a punch to your brain. The view, outside the garage, was unreal. Neighbors standing in the corner of the yard staring at nothing. Body parts dangling from gnawed bones. Others following the leader beside the privacy fence in the back yard.
“We can head into my house,” Jacob offered.
“No Sharon is in there and Barbara.”
Jacob took in a deep breath in all the commotion yesterday he had forgot that his wife Barbara had been the first to fall. They were less than a foot from the exit when Michael’s wife Sharon was ripped from his arms.
“Oh god,” Jacob almost fell to his knees and stepped back into the garage.
“You are not dying in that garage by yourself,” Michael whispered. “I am not going back in there. Are you going to follow me or not?”
Jacob looked at his friend. In two days Michael’s face had aged twenty years. His blue eyes hidden within the swelling of a black eye and lack of sleep.
“What the hell you looking at? Let’s go.”
Jacob followed Michael from the garage. They leapt over to the house and followed the outside wall. At the first window Jacob stopped and looked inside. Michael continued to the next window.
She was in there. Her perfect hair screwed up. Her face long and drawn down. Her jaw slack and her arms to her side. She stood staring at nothing till she saw him in the window. Something flashed inside her and she began forward. Jacob felt Michael tug at him but Barbara was coming.
“Maybe she hadn’t been bitten,” he thought. “Maybe she wasn’t part of this. Maybe all this will go away with one more look at her.”
“Jacob!”
Michael jerked him to the side just before Barbara appeared at the window.
“Ass! She was fine,” Jacob shouted then realized what he had done. He had just alerted ten… maybe twenty infected undead to his location.
Three standing in the driveway woke up suddenly. Their eyes burst with excitement. They took one careful step then another. One of them jolted forward and both men ran toward the front of the house. They stopped mid-front yard and looked at the view ahead of them. The population of human corruption stumbling in lines forward and backward. Lives missing and replaced by a corrosive mental condition called the Darkness.
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Ahhhh! Hungry
“Ahhhh!” Michael screamed, stood against the garage wall and laid his face upon the cold stone.
“Don’t scream, man you will attract more,” Jacob replied.
“Don’t tell me what I already know!”
Jacob stood next to Michael. “Come on, please dude. If you lose it what the hell am I going to do.”
Michael sighed but stared at the back of the garage. He watched the undead remnants of a woman walk slowly past a window. The woman, no longer human, wore a white wedding dress smeared with darkness, likely blood. The sight infuriated Michael but he stood perfectly still overtly signaling to Jacob. Jacob saw the woman and noticed she stopped and stared into the window. It looked like the woman was curious. Was she wondering what was inside?
Both men stood statue-still watching as the woman rubbed a nasty hand over the thin glass window but within seconds she had covered the outside of the window in grim. A minute later she became bored and left.
Michael turned and fell to a sitting position. Tears fell and welled up for seconds upon the pronounced cheekbones of the 20 year old man. Jacob stood, silent then turned away struggling to hold back the emotion.
“We’ve been here two days!” Michael finally said. “I am hungry as hell. We can’t stay in here any longer. Jacob.” Michael wiped away the tears. “You are my best friend but if you try to stop me I will kill you.”
“What do you expect me to do, dude? Stand in your way. You are a big boy. I’m just telling you it will be much more painful out there then in here.”
“Starving to death isn’t painful?”
“I don’t know, man, I haven’t gone more than four hours without food. It feel like I’m starving now. I have very little energy to do anything. How are we going to fight what twenty of those things?”
“We have to do something.” Michael walked across the concrete floor and over to the wooden garage door.”
“I wish I could see through this damn door.”
Jacob stood behind him then banged hard on the door.
“What are you doing?”
Jacob was quiet and listened then said, “If they were close one of them would of smacked the door but it didn’t. We can try this. Just far enough to find a house with food.”
Matthew R. Stitt // The Writer’s Archive 