Gavin fired his pump action. The hideous spawn flew back out the window, landing in a bloody heap. As it sprayed blood in its death throes, countless more moved in. He racked another shell into place, fired again, repeated the process, dropping one foe after another.

John ripped the lid off of a footstool, he reached into it, tossed Jill a weapon. She caught the submachinegun, flicked the safety off. Firing from the hip, she dropped one of them. Then she took aim through the iron sights. In rapid succession she put bursts of hot lead into the horde of monsters. The young woman burned through the magazine and dropped the weapon, grabbing a pair of pistols to replace it.

“Where did you learn to shoot like that?” Gavin asked, wide eyed.

With a satisfied smirk she said, “My dad is a Marine general. He made sure that daddy’s little girl knew how to take care of herself.”

John bolted up the stairs, “I’ve got weapons all over the house,” he shouted to the others, “Just look around.”

Gavin noticed something behind a potted plant. He darted to it, retrieving a simple double barrel shotgun. One burst through the front door, shattering the wood. Gavin blasted it with both barrels at point blank range, the bloody body flew back out of the window.

Jill was knocked away, falling on the easy chair. Noticing something out of place, she reached over the armrest. Something had been attached to the side of the chair. From this, she pulled a brick of a handgun. The barrel was like the eye of a predator, the spiral of the rifling like some sinister vortex.

She fired, the muzzle flash and report like a lightning strike. Her assailant toppled over backward in a shower of nasty blood, shredded organs, and shattered bones. She got back up on her feet. Taking aim, she dropped three more as they approached the window.

Upstairs, John posted up at the window. He took up the rifle which sat next to it, a relic of his planet’s largest and bloodiest conflict.

The soldier worked the bolt and took aim like a machine, like he had been designed from the ground up for the task. The crack echoed off distant mountains. Fat slugs of metal punched gaping holes in our troops. The advance up the front yard ground to a halt as our war beasts took cover behind rises. He had a container full of ammunition up there. He slapped another stripper clip into place and started putting more rounds down range.

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Some of our spawn started breaking out the kitchen windows, trying to clamber inside. Jill emptied her pistols into them. She dropped the guns, grabbed a rifle off of the kitchen table. She put the full contents of the magazine into the one that broke through the backdoor. They kept coming, stepping over the fallen soldier. Jill picked up another rifle and went to town.

Gavin fought on in the living room. He slashed them with long knives and machetes. He blasted them with sawed-off shotguns. He sprayed with SMGs. He cut down swaths of them with rifles. When all else failed he punched them.

One of our creatures managed to get through the bedroom window silently. It was a smaller specimen, something sleek and sneaky. Its long fingers were tipped with razor claws. It moved slowly, each step a meticulous operation. The thing’s spindly fingers twitched in anticipation, the claws glinting.

John turned quickly, a pistol already drawn. Firing from the hip, single round to the forehead, quick and clean. Our trooper dropped to the floor. John holstered his sidearm and returned to his grim task. He squeezed off another round. One of our spawn fell to its knees; a second shot finished it off.

Jill reached for another rifle, found none. She dashed to the cupboards, opened a random drawer. The fragmentation grenade gave her enough time the retreat back into the living room.

At last, John ran out of clips. He calmly stood up, made his way to the room that held his arsenal. A long burst of automatic fire. It sounded like a drawn out belch. No mistaking it. We had seen it in news broadcasts. This was that light machinegun they had used in Vietnam, known among the troops as “The Pig.”

The vet went back at that window, firing the MG from the hip. Lines of green tracers sliced through our ranks. stray rounds kicked up puffs of dirt. Blood and shredded tissue exploded out of bullet wounds. Rows of craters were blasted into our minions, the mangled creatures falling into bloody heaps. A four-legged monster galloped forward, only to be put into the dirt.

A monster with a snake-like body slithered into the cabin. Its arms were tipped with curved claws, like scythes. Rows of tentacles sat on its stomach, lining a terrible mouth. Pincers on its head clamped shut over and over again. The tentacles lashed out, grabbing ahold of Gavin and Jill’s legs. They began to pull them in.

John stood on the balcony, taking aim down at the creatures that were swarming the cabin. He blasted the snake thing to death. Then he turned the weapon on the others, peppering the crowd with 7.62 rounds.

Dead monsters lay all around the room, all around the cabin. The front yard was the scene of a massacre. Blood soaked into the ground and ran across the floorboards. Jill and Gavin picked themselves up off the ground, took up new weapons. But there was no need.

Only the scout remained, secure in a hiding place that was far away. It watched as they moved a wooden crate. with something made of metal into the truck. The box was so heavy it took both of the men to move it, the girl watching over them. Then they got in and drove away, heading in the direction of the church.