This year I am working on a story called Bob vs. The Alien Slug Monsters. Instead of an outline I have a basic list of plot points I want to cover between meeting Bob and sending him off to fight the king of the slugs. There is more of a cast of characters than an actual outline, so we will see how the story develops. And with that intro we continue with Bob Versus the Alien Slug Monsters…
Day 67: In the Bowl-a-Rama parking lot there was a gathering of slugs.
In the Bowl-a-Rama parking lot there was a gathering of slugs. It looked much more official and a lot less clandestine than the two slugs he saw earlier. While there were still rows and rows of stretchers in the diner parking lot, the Bowl-a-Rama side had been cleared.
‘There are gaps here too.’ He saw. A glance over showed that beyond the Diner’s parking lot there were no more stretchers.
‘So either they emptied those lots already or they didn’t bring everyone to the parking lots,’ He didn’t think the dumpsters and stretchers covered all the people in town and hoped that others were safe in their beds, no knowledge of what was happening downtown.
Bob turned his attention back to the gathering. It looked as though an array of officials was watching as five slugs positioned themselves in front of the five stretchers. Bob swallowed hard as he watched the slugs climb onto the bodies of the sleeping people.
The screams of the slugs rent the air. Bob was too far back to see the details but all five of the slugs looked misshapen. He hoped that meant the salt melted them. Watching he could see the slugs scream and writhe in pain before going still. There was a lot of movement from the slugs watching and then one of the plastic coated slugs was called forward. He pulled the dead slugs from the people and put them on disks, taking them away.
Bob watched and even though he couldn’t hear anything he thought there was some sort of discussion going on. The sound of their guttural voices didn’t carry to him. He could only hear the droning whine of their disks. Bob swallowed hard wondering what they would do.
‘I would look for who did this,’ Bob thought. He thought of the interior of the diner. There was an office he passed. It had a desk and a couch. He noticed the couch was slightly pulled out from the wall and the desk had a closed front. ‘I could hide under the desk or behind the couch if they search,’ he thought. He wondered which would be more obvious a hiding place as the slugs seemed to debate something. Their short arms waved around and their stalk eyes swung wildly. Despite his mental debate, Bob held still.
He didn’t know what their eyesight was like but with their eyes waving they might catch movement. The debate seemed to end and one of the slugs pressed buttons on his control. He moved one of the stretchers to the back of the parking lot, careful not to touch it and then when it was stopped by the street, he turned and went back for the next. Bob felt relieved that they were just pushing the people off to the side. He suspected the salt would have been used up with the slugs that were killed and the people would now be venerable again.
‘But it looks like they are cautious.’
After all five of the stretchers were moved into a line by the street, five more slugs went through the gap in the plantings to fetch five more sleeping people. ‘At least they aren’t taking the people from the diner,’ Bob thought. He hadn’t been able to coat them with salt yet and they were still vulnerable.
Bob watched as the five new stretchers were lined up and the slugs prepared to enter them. He found he was holding his breath as the slugs got into position.
Ten til Midnight 