Kiss My Assimilation

Chapter 14 - Tall Tales Do Come True

The chief's cruiser got there in five minutes flat. The car sat there making pinging noises from the cooling exhaust for a good ten minutes. Ten minutes well employed by the chief and his daughter to chew each other out thoroughly.

"You better explain this real quick, because my patience with you is running real thin right now Melanie Malone." Chief Malone said to Bugsy.

"She shot the mayor! I saw it all!" Deidre screamed as she was directed to the back seat of a cruiser by one of the chief's deputies.

The chief squeezed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index shutting his eyes closed. He was visibly trying to calm down before talking to his daughter again. "After L.A., I thought you would do the smart thing and fade in the background. Let people forget about you. Now this. I thought you sold that gun."

"Obviously I didn't."

"You shot the mayor Bugsy! This isn't going away."

"Technically, I also shot the mayor," Annie said, still in Bugsy's car, "and he wasn't your mayor anymore."

"You, be quiet young lady. Again with that crazy story of yours. I'll deal with you later." He refocused his attention on Bugsy. "Where is the gun?" Bugsy gave it to him. He put the revolver in his cruiser's glove box after putting it in a big plastic bag. "Where is the body?"

"We left him in his office." Bugsy said.

The chief motioned to Annie to follow them. Annie reluctantly got out of the comfortable car and sulkily followed them up the stone stairs.

As they got near the mayor's office, the stench was overpowering. The chief looked at the two girls who had stopped and said. "You made this mess, you follow me in there. I'll be damned if I'm going in there alone."

The girls made a pitiful sound and followed him inside.

"He's there." Annie pointed in the semi-darkness. The chief went to the light switch on the wall and flicked them on.

The parasite hadn't had time to eat the mayor completely. When it tried to burst out of him, it had had some difficulty. That probably saved Annie's life. The resulting carcass was horrifyingly messy as a result. Annie gagged and had to steady herself with the back of one of the office's big chairs. Bugsy covered the space between them and helped Annie by guiding her back outside.

"Jeez, what did you use? Exploding bullets?..." He saw them leaving. "Hey, I didn't say you could leave." Cried the chief.

"Relax sheriff Wyatt Earp, I'm coming back. She's at the end of her strength. You can interrogate her later. Not here for God's sake. Can't you see she's on the verge of collapse?" Bugsy said, exasperated at her father for not seeing the obvious. This poor girl was close to a nervous breakdown.

"Don't you sass me young lady. Put her in the waiting area. I'll get to her eventually." He continued examining the body and talking on the phone with the medical coroner who was also their family doctor. Dr. Jones was on his way, but the chief had felt compelled to call him on his cell phone as soon as he saw mayor Reynolds's body. The poor mayor had exploded from the inside out. A putrid smell of decay emanated from the carcass and there was a pungent substance, orange in color, inside the body. It was rapidly dissolving, as if it was being eaten away by some kind of acid. It didn't seem to affect the surrounding flesh. The chief was at his wits end. Bugsy couldn't have done it with a .38 bullet. The guy looked like he ate a grenade.

Outside, Bugsy gently lay Annie on the waiting couch. The television set opposite them was still displaying the 24 hrs news channel. "Breaking news, Los Angeles has been put under martial law. From what we gathered, a group of people started to attack shoppers walking in a busy street. The attack seemed random and didn't involve any weapons at all."

The news caster's image was replaced by what looked like a video taken from a cell phone. It jumped around and was out of focus sometimes, but it was easy to understand what was going on. The creatures had probably decided that the time for hiding was over. Several of them were attacking people and Annie could see their familiar posture when they infected a host.

The news caster obviously didn't. "We still don't know what instigated the attacks. They look random and are perpetrated by people from all kinds of background and ethnic group. Nothing about the events unraveling today in downtown Los Angeles make any sense. The police are trying to contain the violence but as you can see, some of their members were seen participating in some of the violence themselves."

"Holy mother of God." Whispered Bugsy.

"It's already starting." Annie said, sitting down. "I'm too late."

"YOU know what's happening there?"

"I've been trying to tell your father since this morning about it. He thought I was pulling his leg." Annie said combing her hair away from her face with her shaking fingers. "I need the stuff from this breath freshener to defeat those bastards."

"Wait, my dad needs to see this. DAD!" Bugsy shouted in the mayor's office.

"What now?" Came the irate answer.

"There's something you need to see."

"Now?"

"NOW!" Bugsy said forcefully.

Her father came out and his stare followed Bugsy's pointing hand. His jaw dropped several inches. "What's this?"

"My fairy tale chief Malone." Annie said between hyperventilated breath. "It's happening right now and it's going to happen all over the world if we don't do anything."

"Calm down." Bugsy said to a shaking Annie. "He'll have to believe you now."

As the chief watched the news bulletin on the television's screen, his jaw continued dropping incrementally and his eyes tried to bulge out of their sockets. "Good merciful donkey riding Jesus." He said in shock. On the screen was a scene from a horror movie. People being attacked and overrun by other people, those same people bursting at the seams and covering the poor helpless victims in orange and pink pulsating flesh. The same as in the mayor's broken body. He looked at the English girl who seemed on the verge of passing out. She caught his eyes and said: "Told you," and fainted in Bugsy's arms.

"Well, I'll be a monkey's arse." He said.

"You sure are dad." Bugsy said laughing.