Free Aliens Versus Zombies by Mark Terence Chapman Page B

it was a trick of the light, or sumthin’.”
    “No, sir. We all saw it.” The rest of the quartet nodded. “More importantly, we all heard it. They were going down the street hooting and grunting and shrieking like every other damn zombie pack. No humans that have survived this long would be reckless enough to make that much noise.”
    That got Geoff’s attention. “Son, if y’all ain’t as crazy as a March hare in June, then we’ve got us a problem.”
    “That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to tell you, sir. We’ve done pretty well for ourselves the past few months. But this development has us scared. And things are about to get a whole lot scarier. If one pack starts using weapons, that means they’re capable of learning. And that means other packs can learn, too. If that happens, we’ll need a much bigger army than this.”
    “Shit, son. That ain’t good. That ain’t good at all.”

Chapter Seven
     
    Moe was a smart Zom. He still remembered how to count to ten. The rest of his pack sensed that he was smarter than they were, even if they didn’t really understand what that meant. He usually went on ahead to scout out an area, because he could somehow explain to the others what he saw, using grunts, gestures, and scratches in the dirt.
    Today, he hid behind a low garden wall watching the battle down the street. More-than-ten members of another pack attacked more-than-ten foods in a moving vehicle. The foods fought with shiny things, but so did the other pack.
    Moe had never seen a pack use shiny things to fight with before.
    He watched closely, but couldn’t really see well from that distance. He moved closer, house by house, until he had a good vantage point. He looked closely at what the other pack held in their hands. Some shiny things were long and some were short. All made the foods bleed.
    Moe had seen some of the strange foods before. They had killed a rival pack in minutes, using shiny things. And now this pack was using shiny things to kill the foods.
    Shiny things were good.
    Moe wanted to know where the other pack had gotten their shiny things. After the other pack had finished killing the foods and began dragging them back to their den, Moe followed at a distance.
    The pack disappeared inside a building. Moe knew it wouldn’t be safe to follow them. How to find some shiny things? Thinking wasn’t really something he did well; yet, sometimes a thought did occur to him—like a flash of lightning in the darkness. He pursued the trail of that thought until it came into focus, even though it made his head hurt.
    If the other pack lives here, maybe they found the shiny things nearby.
    He took off running, looking for somewhere shiny things might be found. He zigzagged from block to block until he spotted something shiny in the distance. It was merely a glass window reflecting the afternoon sun, but he didn’t know that.
    When he reached the shiny window, he peered inside. There were many shiny things inside. He entered through the open door and looked at the shiny things. Most weren’t pointy or sharp. After a while he found some that were.
    He filled his arms with letter openers, scissors, and heavy paperweights and raced out of the stationery store to take them back to the den.
    Then he’d have to figure out how to explain it all to the pack without words.
     
    * * * *
     
    Platoon Regulator BlexJasp couldn’t wait to get started. His hands had been tied until now, with the restriction on how much damage his men could do. They had been limited to only hand weapons, for fear of damaging something vital to the infrastructure.
    They still had that restriction, but at least the range of weapons at his disposal had been widened. He still couldn’t use heavy weapons that might level a building or destroy an important power linkage somewhere. They could , however, take stronger measures as far as antipersonnel weapons were concerned.
    One of BlexJasp’s favorite weapon for urban warfare was