The Last Colony

Mark grabbed Becky off the ground, telling Sean seriously. "Stay here with Chica. I'm gonna check it out." Sean rose from his seat, retorting anxiously. "Mark, I don't think we should. It sounds big." Mark gestured with his hand for Sean to calm down and slipped from the room. Creeping down the hall, he felt another tremor and staggered on his feet a bit. Quickly making his way to the window, he peeked out behind the curtain. Something didn't feel right. For a time, he didn't see anything along the road. Until he finally saw the tongue dog from last night. It was running as fast as it could down the street, looking like its tail was on fire. It kept glancing behind it like it was terrified. Mark watched it closely, his heart racing. What was scary enough to terrify these zombies? Another tremor reverberated across the ground and Mark grabbed the wall for support. The Licker dog stumbled across the pavement, its legs still rapidly kicking out in a desperate act to keep itself moving. The dog rolled over and jumped to its feet, just as a large rotting hand the size of a freightliner slammed down on the dog.

Whatever it was hit the ground so hard that it sent another tremor across the ground. Mark struggled to stay on his feet, while watching this mass of sickly leathery flesh rise off the ground on five thick trunk like limbs. Mark had never seen anything like it. As it rose up like a spider, Mark saw a huge mouth beneath it with massive teeth. From the huge mouth, a thick pink tongue that appeared to be made from multiple tongues, lowered to lick up pieces of the dog off the pavement to bring into its mouth. Mark swallowed trying to keep his breakfast down. As gross as it looked, it appeared to be feeding on other zombies. So, that was a small bit of relief to him. The creature stopped eating suddenly, its body starting to shiver for a minute. Mark couldn't take his eyes off it. What was it doing? The creature stopped shaking and along four of its thick limbs, large leathery scales flipped up to show dark holes all down its legs. The long limb that didn't open up, rose into the air and scanned the area with a single massive eye that blinked.

If this thing had been human... it sure didn't look much like one now. The eye looked in the direction of his house, causing Mark to wince in pain as his ears started ringing with a high pitch frequency. Mark dropped to a knee, groaning in pain and pressing his free hand to his ear. He was getting a massive headache. Just as suddenly as it had happened, the noise stopped. Mark rose enough to peek outside, noticing briefly the blood on his palm. His ears were bleeding. Outside the window, his eyes locked on movement coming from the holes on the creature's legs. Something was crawling out of them. His eyes strained to get a good look, despite his slightly blurred vision. When he heard a soft squeak behind him. Mark's body stiffened. Gripping Becky tighter, he very slowly looked over his shoulder. Standing very close to him was a large emaciated hairless rat! The thing was about the size of Chica. Its massive black bulging eyes looked almost alien as it stared him down with its buck teeth bared.

Mark's heart began to race. He hadn't even heard this thing come in. The rat's large floppy hairless ears flicked in curiosity. Mark's eyes drifted down to the rat's hands, causing him to clench his jaw. This rat had long human like arms with even longer fingers that extended into sharp long bloodstained talon nails. The rat's long leathery tail twitched, before it lifted it hands up and let out a menacing hiss. Mark saw it was about to strike and swung Becky. Whacking the large rat to its side, Mark quickly impaled the sharp end of Becky into its head. He couldn't tell if the thing was undead or not, but he wasn't going to risk it. After yanking Becky from the rat, he took a deep breath. He had killed it before it had made too much noise. That was a relief. Climbing to his feet, his heart sank. Four more rats were creeping around the furniture in the living room. It hadn't been alone. Mark raised Becky debating whether to fight them or run. However, as more crept in through the broken backdoor and crawled effortlessly under the string... Mark dashed for the hallway. He had to tunnel them off.