Nm 8

Tonight I didn’t have a cage to fight from, but then again Big Daddy would be too tired to wake up no matter how much noise I made.

The fact was that I had found a lot of guns while searching every house I was able to beat other survivors to. But I had also used up a lot of bullets clearing those houses while doing so.

So what I was left with was the few guns that didn’t have enough ammo to make it worth carrying around with me while looting my neighbors’ houses. Tonight, for once, I was looking at a fight with all the guns I could shot, while being free to use them.

That should have made me more confident, but guns worked about as well on Nightmares as they did on the monsters from the movies.

Not because the Nightmare were following some cinematic rule, but because they just weren't entirely real.

That’s why I build the cage, because the weapons I held that appears in my Mirror’s hand weren't quite real either, that why they could hurt the Nightmares.

So I could either shoot a not quite deadly gun, while the Fetch couldn’t shoot their copy, or fight with a not at all deadly club while the duplicate did some real damage.

Only I didn’t have a safe spot for it to stand while it swung the spike club it favored.

Between the solar lawn lights and the Tiki torches we had the place pretty well lit up, which would fix there forms into something that was easier to hurt. But standing out there in the middle of the turn around would just get the Fetch surrounded and torn apart.

Which it was smart enough to know, and had enough of a desire to live not to volunteer for.

Instead it starting carrying out the accumulated gas cans from Mrs Desantoes car. At first I thought it was going to pour the stuff out around the street, but instead it just placed them in two circles.

One set around the cement island in the middle of the turn around, and the other set around the outer edges.

We still had road flares, as well as fireworks, or even lighters if need be.

Gracie had came out of the Desantoe’s garage and taken a look at our preparations. “I don’t think using metal tools on metal right now is my best choice. Fumes and sparks are a bad combination. You got anything I can shoot at things from an upper window.”

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I took her inside and waved at the collection scattered around the room. “Everything is partially loaded, with any extra ammo on the coffee table. Help yourself.”

I figured there was at least an even chance she would go out the Desantoe’s back door long before the Hounds got here. But I didn’t begrudge her an armload of guns, realistically, how many could she take?

The last thing we did to prepare was set out an old tape recorder with about ten minutes of silence on the front of the tape. It got set out in the shopping cart nearest the back of the wreaked cage. The broken remains of the cage would block our line of sight a bit, but I would still prefer that at least some of the hounds would waste some time messing with it rather then coming right at us.

I could feel the pressure of their presence nearby, but that sense had never been directional. The Nightmares had always come right down the street toward us.

They wanted to be seen. I think it was the very fact that we observed them is what they wanted to feed on, an observer in this universe seeing them as real.

As I stood there in my living room looking down the street, I suddenly heard the howls from behind the house and the sounds of large bodies hitting the boards over the back windows. They came in over the back wall that separated by back yard from the highway.

I heard the back door start to go as I turned around to begin figuring out my new game plan. Thanks for breaking in last night Devil Face, they probably would have gone right through the back door if it still only had the deadbolt to hold it shut.

Me and the Fetch looked at each other. It grabbed the real spiked club and one of the more fully loaded rifles, while I grabbed the only twelve gauge shotgun and a weird level action rifle that had seven shots of long bullets with Russian writing on them.

I headed out the front door and ran for the far side of the turn around. I nearly got to the other side before I heard my front door slam shut. Turning around I saw the Fetch pouring out one of the smaller cans of gas from the front door out to where it had set down the spike club against the cage.

Like it had needed both hands free.

One of the other cans of gas, a five gallon one that had been sitting in the circle was missing. “No…”

It nodded as me as it pulled a road flare out of it’s pants pocket. “Yeah…”

It lit up the flare and dropped it. The gas lit up as it ran up along the spill to my front door and then underneath it.

I could see my living room burst into flames through the gaps in the boards over my windows. The sounds of dozens of howling Nightmares sounded off as about everything I owned and loved, as well as supplies I had gained through hundreds of hours of looting began to burn.

Most everything I really cared about was digitized and I had backups on flash drives in three other places, but still.

A boxer with spikes growing out of it neck that was half the size of a hatchback exploded out of my front window in a shower of shattered boards and broken glass before it tumbled down my front lawn. Before it get to it’s feet I began snapping off shots of Russian bullets into it. Counting down each shot from seven.

The Fetch ran around the turn around and smaller hounds, most of them on fire, escaped through the hole the Boxers had made. Shots from the Desantoe’s second story bedroom window began hitting some of the smaller hounds in the heads.

The tape recorder began playing my homemade rendition of Super freak complete with vocalization of the music. The Boxer stared for a moment, before turning it’s head back at me.

I fired the last shot from the rifle at it, and then I switched to the shotgun.

The bird shot it was loaded with wasn’t for the hounds, all five shots went into gas cans between them and me.

Suzy had gone to sleep earlier into a bomb shelter her grandfather had build and knew better then to come out during a fire fight. Even if the fire spread, the bunker had filters on it’s air.

Gracie would be on her own, while me and the Fetch would be heading up the street to where I had stashed our rides. The tire slicers had never gone after bikes, other then the ones with lights, and a ten speed was more then fast enough to escape most of the dogs.

I could only hope that me and the Mirror could use them get to one of my other bolt holes. If worst came to worst, I didn’t have to be faster then the hounds, just the Fetch.

It wasn’t like there was a reason for me to feel bad if it died instead of me, and as far as outright killing it went, the thing had chosen to target me with the intention of taking the shape of my worst nightmare and then killing me.

It only fair that I be as callous with its life as if had tried to be with mine.