"I got a situation up here, Mom!" Alison yelled from the top of the stairs. Her reply came in the form of a blast of machine gun fire.

     "Get the fuck out of my house!" she heard her mother yell.

​     Alison's "situation" came in the form of a man.

     A very old, small, frail looking man.

     Alison had never seen this man before in her life.

     His white hair was totally unkempt. His eyes darted this way and that like a trapped cat's. He licked at the air above his head. His teeth were few and black and broken.

     This guy's off his meds, Alison thought.

     "Where am I?" the man whispered between dry, cracked lips.

     Alison didn't have a clue how to deal with him. 

     "Sir, really, you've got to leave. We're..."

     "I can't stand. My legs, I..."

     "Let me help you." As she drew nearer, the man recoiled at the sight of the rifle Alison held. "Oh. Oh this." Alison put it down. The old man held out his hand so that Alison could use it to help lift him to his feet. As he rose, the elderly man held his side.

     "I...I think I hurt myself," he muttered.

     "Where? Let me see."

     "My...My hip, I..." As Alison looked down, the man leaned forward to sink his gums and what few teeth he had left in his skull into Alison't neck. 

     "Ow!" Alison tried to pull away from but couldn't do it. That old man had strong jaws. He wasn't a particularly heavy person, however. In a panic caused by sudden, intense pain, Alison twisted like someone having a spasm, which she kind of was, and the old man twisted along with her. Alison bounced up against the stairway as the man wailed on Alison's head with thin, bony old person fists. Alison grabbed his torso to flip the old man over the railing. The old man's jaws finally unclamped as he slammed into the stairway on the side where the stairs were. He collapsed onto the stairs themselves. He wailed like a banshee. Then,

     Goo. Mist.

     "What's going on up there?" Abby called from the first floor after she finished another sub-machine gun volley. "Are you okay, Alison?"

     "I'm fine, I..." Alison couldn't figure out how the replacer had gotten there. As he examined the wound on her neck with her fingers, Alison explored the second floor. All three bedrooms looked fine. The bathroom at the end of the hall, however...

     Alison saw movement beyond the bathroom's slightly opened door.

     Oh no.

     "They've got ladders!" she said. "They're coming in up here, too!"   

                                                  CONTINUE