Chapter 5

Dad showed up that evening about an hour early from Chattanooga. Man, did he look disheveled and very much out of sorts. He came into the house, took off his jacket, and plopped down on the sofa in front of the TV. He said, “That blood you see on my shirt is not mine, so don’t worry about me. I’ll tell you about it as soon as I catch my breath.”

He turned on the TV to the news coming from Chattanooga, and chaos covered the screen. This may have been an automatic camera showing a city street. We could not be sure because there was no narration. The sound was on because we could hear screams and other noise that might have once been intended as background, but there was no reporter doing the usual reporter things.

The camera was on an automatic sweep so that we saw quite a bit of what was going on on that street, but there were no breaks for commercials, so we knew that there was some sort of screw up at the station. At his point, Dad was sound asleep as he sat on the sofa, so I switched to another Chattanooga station. Essentially, the picture was no different, except that this was a different street.

This time, there was a reporter still on duty, a woman for what that was worth, though I did admire her guts. I don’t remember her exact words, but what she had to say was that Chattanooga was under siege by an overwhelming number of monsters. From the picture, we could see that the monsters were mostly wolves, but an occasional harpy or King Kong would show up. There was no censorship of the broadcast, possibly a first in US TV history. We could see humans being caught and killed on screen. Oh, God, I have never seen anything worse.

Finally, Mom turned the TV off. “That’s enough of that horror. We have seen all we need to see. Now, we need to let Joe sleep a little bit. I’ll start supper, something that takes a while, so that he can get some rest. It’s obvious that he needs it.

Dad woke up about an hour later, and he had that classic “1,000-yard stare” about his face. He got up from the sofa and hugged every one of us with such an expression of love that we all got emotional and Mom and Sue began to cry from the effects of the love he showed. We all felt that way about each other, but we rarely showed it.

A few minutes later, Mom called us to supper. It was delicious, as usual, but it was also somber as each of us sat buried in our own thoughts. It was only after dessert that Dad was willing to talk about what had happened in Chattanooga today.

“This started out just as any other day until about 9:00 o’clock. I had just gone to the break room for a cup of coffee when I heard a tremendous crash against our office door. The door was broken open by one of those King Kong-like monsters. I ran to see what had happened, and that was when I saw it reach over and pick up Susan, our receptionist. As casually as I might bite off the end of a banana, the monster bit off Susan’s head. It paused long enough to chew on her head and then tossed her body aside.

“I had taken off my suit jacket earlier and hung it in my cubicle. The sight of what happened to Susan woke me up to the danger we were all in. From what happened, it was obvious that I was the only one to come to work with a gun, but it was back in my jacket pocket along with my extra clips. Dammit, that was foolish, but what I get for not taking you guys seriously.

“As I turned to get my gun, I saw several of the wolves come into the office and start eating the more delectable parts of Susan. As you can see, I made it to my cubicle and put on my jacket. I don’t know why, but I thought that it might provide some protection. At least, it did insure that I had my extra gun magazines with me.

“I went to my cubical doorway and shot the King Kong. It was in the process of chewing on pieces of Ed Powers, the company owner. Thank God, Ed was dead by then. After that, I only had to face the wolves, and somehow that was an emotional relief, though I don’t know why. I shot three wolves who were eating dead humans before I started looking for more monsters anywhere in our office complex.

“I was pleased to see that Helen, one of the draftsmen, had stabbed and killed a wolf with a steel divider before a second wolf had killed her. The monsters were such efficient killers that all of the other humans in the company were dead by that time, but I did shoot every wolf that I could find. They were now devoted to eating their human victims.

“I killed 13 monsters, counting the King Kong, before I went for my car. That was the second harrowing experience of the morning. Our office was on the third floor, and I decided that the elevator would be safer than the stairs. I found an open elevator door, wedged that way by another dead human, so I didn’t have to stand around waiting for an elevator to come to me. I pulled the dead person out of the way and rode the elevator down to the parking garage.

“By this time, I was beginning to act on some of my old military training. I really am embarrassed that it took me that long to wake up to reality. Anyway, I stopped the elevator door from opening until I was ready. I swapped the clip in the Ruger that Jim had loaned me, and had nine shots available. When I was ready, I opened the elevator door and looked around before I stepped out.

“It was a good thing that I did, because there was a wolf not 20 feet away, and it turned to look when the door opened. I snapped off a shot, and I was happy that my shooting skill had returned. That one shot was enough to kill the wolf. Fortunately, I could see my car from the elevator, and I took off running as fast as possible for it.

“I saw no other monsters on my way to my car, so I guess I was lucky. Thank God for remote unlocking of car doors. I had unlocked the door before I left the elevator, so I was able to open the door, jump inside, and slam the door before any other monsters showed up. Jim’s loaded shotgun was lying on the floor in the back seat, so I picked it up and propped it against the dashboard after verifying that there was a chambered shell and the safety was on.

“I needed both hands to drive at any speed while still inside the garage, so I stuck my Ruger behind my belt. I figured that I could reach it quickly from there when I needed it. Anyway, I drove as fast as I could out of the garage. I was going so fast when I came to the street that I hit a wolf at about 30-35 miles per hour (MPH). You know I have one of those shovel-nosed cars, and the wolf was scooped up and thrown completely over my car as I kept going. I’m might have killed him by scraping him with my steel license plate, but I don’t know.

“The street was clogged with cars, mostly abandoned, so I drove up onto the very broad sidewalk. By this time, only monsters were using the sidewalk, so I had a clear path out of the center of the city. I didn’t care what street I was on or which direction I was headed, I was just trying to escape the center of the business district.

“I did encounter some monsters during this part of my escape, and I shot most of them with the pistol. I did shoot one with the shotgun. It was flying, so I didn’t think that I had much chance of hitting it with the pistol. Whatever the monster was, it was not a harpy. For one thing, it was bigger, and it was black. The shotgun did an excellent job of killing it, and I was able to find my way to the highway leading home.

“The drive home wasn’t bad because I saw no monsters. Man, it was a relief to enter our driveway, but the greatest relief was to come into the house and to see all of you safely inside. Well, there is one thing for sure: this was my last day in Chattanooga for a while. There was nothing left of the company when I left.”

Dad seemed to relax at that point, as if telling his story was the last thing needed to lift the load of the day from his shoulders. We all hugged him again, and that lightened the mood of all of us.