Short Stories and poems

Battle of the 16th Presidents

Abraham Lincoln, the Vampire Hunter, meets his Zombie Slaying counterpart.
A cross-over of the Tim Burton movie Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and the Asylum Productions film of the similar name Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies.

(An excerpt from Abraham Lincoln’s Secret Journal, wherein he tells his secret life as a vampire hunter. This is but one of his many unusual adventures.)

Henry, this following adventure I can reasonably tell you to be true, and I’ve told many a strange tale. In this tale, I came face-to-face with my own death.

It was after the Battle of Gettysburg, where so many brave young men lost their lives, some to those fiends that you and I know so much about, that I got a report from Fort Pulaski about a unit of men who got lost in a strange fog while on patrol, and were attacked by a strange hostile force that seemed to be comprised of men who wore the uniforms of both Union and Confederate, as well as the clothing of civilians. According to the sole survivor, these men, without any warning, attacked the patrol, and tore them limb from limb, and ate their flesh. The sole survivor, who was bitten by these men, managed to escape on his horse, and fled the scene, eventually making it back to the fort, ‘as if Hell itself was after him’ as the man on guard duty described him as he approached. According to the fort’s commanding officer, the survivor could still hear the screams of his fellow soldiers, even as he fell into a fever.

After receiving the report, I decided to investigate the situation myself. I went to the fort and tried to talk to the soldier, but he soon became aggressive, and tried to attack me. Luckily, I had brought my axe with me, and, sad to say, I was forced to dispatch him, by removing his head. Of course, I had tried to reason with him before this, but, unlike with the fiends we normally deal with, there was no reasoning, or even attempted reasoning. He’d become like an animal, and I was forced to defend myself. The commanding officer was not pleased by this development, not that I could blame him.

I got on a horse, and went in the direction the massacred unit had gone, to try to find out what had happened. Eventually, I rode into a hellishly thick fog, and all but lost my sense of direction. That was when I heard the sound, the sound of fighting. I tried to direct my horse closer, but the beast refused to go further. Reluctantly, I got off, tied it to a tree, and carefully walked towards the sounds.

Soon, I located the source, and was surprised to find someone, who reminded me of my reflection in the mirror, killing people with little more than a scythe. Each stroke beheaded a man, or a woman. His victims acted like the doomed soldier I’d killed in self-defense, just coming at him, with no attempt to reason or anything. Soon, they were all dead.

That was when he noticed me. “Who are you?” he asked, still holding onto his scythe. “Are you some sort of actor, who likes to portray himself as me on stage?”

“Who are you?” I asked, as I reached into my overcoat. “Are you a follower of Adam?”

“I am Abraham Lincoln,” the man said. “President of these here United States of America.”

“No,” I said, pulling out my ax. “I am Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America!”

I attacked, swinging my axe. The impostor ran, getting several trees between me and him. Still, this proved to be of little use, as I was able to take them out in one swing each, continuing to close in on him. He the popped out from behind the last tree, a Colt revolver in his hand, and fired. I got lucky; the bullet grazed my cheek – half an inch and I wouldn’t have to worry about that speech at Gettysburg.

I decided to get behind cover, and pulled out my Starr revolver, and returned fire. I managed to hit the tree he hid behind, but he too was a good shot, actually he was better, forcing me to duck more often than not. Soon, our revolvers were spent.

“Do you give up?” he asked. “We have bigger issues to deal with here than some identity crisis.”

I pulled out my flintlock pistol, and readied it. I also got out my dagger. I stepped out from behind my tree, and found him similarly armed, with a Derringer and a dirk. I decided to get as close to him as I could, so that I wouldn’t be able to miss my shot, and walked towards him. He in turn began walking towards me, as that Derringer wasn’t very accurate past a few steps.

I then took aim, and fired, and missed! He then rushed at me, his dirk ready. I parried his blade with mine, punched him in the face, leapt back, pulled out my axe, pulled on my weapon’s head, revealing the trigger, and pointed the muzzle end of my hidden gun at my foe’s face.

“Someone once told me to always have a contingency plan,” I told the impostor.

“I should of thought of one myself,” said the impostor. He then looked over my shoulder. “But I guess this will have to do.”

It was then that I heard something. I turned my head, and saw a man coming at me, in the manner of an animal, too close for me to get in a good swing with my axe. I heard something else, a gunshot, the bullet speeding past my ear, entering the head of my would-be attacker, stopping him dead cold. I looked back at the impostor, who was holding onto his smoking derringer.

“I told you that we have bigger issues than some identity crisis,” he said.

I looked back, yet again, and saw a large group of people coming towards us, all in the same manner as the others I’d seen.

“The gunfire must have attracted them,” the impostor said, as he stood next to me, and got out his scythe, which he’d hidden under his overcoat, just as I had hid my axe. He looked at me. “I hope you’re better with that axe than you are with a revolver or pistol.”

I reattached the head, and made ready to use it. “What are they?” I asked, as I looked at my new foes.

“Me and my men have been calling them zombies, based on the description my one man used when compared them to something from some dark pagan ritual,” the impostor said. “I don’t know exactly what they are, but I know this; don’t get bit, don’t get scratched, and don’t get any of their blood in your face or mouth, or you’ll become just like them. You have to remove their heads to kill them.”

“That won’t be a problem,” I said.

“These things killed my mother and father when I was just a boy,” the man said. “I’ll die before it spreads any further.”

He then began swinging, as did I, our blades flashing like lighting, from what sun there was. Then, there was something that made me pause, a little girl, maybe eight years old, coming at me.

“Swing you fool, swing!”

I found myself unable to swing at the girl. That was when the man shoved me out of her reach. The girl grabbed him, and bit him in the wrist.

I heard a gunshot, and saw the girl’s head blow apart. By luck, nothing got on me. I looked up, and saw about ten people coming towards us, two Confederates, a boy, a young woman, another woman, who looked very ill, and four men in suits, two of them injured, one was a negro, and the other reminded me of an actor I’d seen at the theater at one point or another.

“Mr. President,” the negro said. “Have you been injured?”

I was about to speak, when the other man did.

“Yes, Mr. Brown,” he said. “I’ve been bitten.”

I watched a smirk come to the actor-look-alike’s face, which was a sharp contrast to the sorrow on the others.

“Abe, it can’t be,” said the ill woman. “Who will find the cure for me, and you without you around?”

“I suppose no one will,” the man said.

“Mr. President, who is this man here?” the negro asked. “He looks a lot like you. He could pass for you.”

“I doubt that the country would like it if they found out that an impostor was leading them,” the man said. “Better I die here, and the story you will say is that some mad man ambushed me, while you were drinking, and killed me. Can you do that?”

The two wounded men, and the negro nodded, as did the rest, save the one.

“So, who’s to kill you?” the actor-look-alike asked.

“You will, Mr. Booth. I know you’re a Confederate agent, and have been plotting to kill me for some time. Now is your chance.”

At this, the actor’s face changed, especially as the others looked at him in shock, even the Confederates. “Very well,” he said, as he pulled out a derringer. “Good-bye, Mr. President.”

The man looked at me. “May we meet again, hopefully under better circumstances.”

I nodded. “I hope so.”

I stepped away, and Mr. Booth fired his pistol, muttering something in Latin, killing the man I’d fought against, and alongside of.

At that moment, the others pulled out their pistols and revolvers, and pointed them at Booth.

“What are you going to do?” Booth asked. “Kill me? He told me to do it.”

“Mr. Booth, you are a spy, and a traitor,” said Mr. Brown.

“And Pat Garrett’s a Confederate soldier, yet you have no problems working with him,” said Booth.

“I wasn’t plotting to murder the man who was working to save all of us from this outbreak,” the Confederate said.

“Well, you can’t just kill me, especially in cold blood.”

Mr. Brown frowned, and lowered his revolver. “In that case, you’ve got twenty-four hours, before we tell people that you got drunk, and killed the president. Take us a little while to get to help anyways.”

Booth gave a cruel grin, and walked away.

Mr. Brown looked at me. “What about you, Mister?”

I pointed back the way I came, through the fog. “Well, my business is in that direction. I best be going.”

Mr. Brown offered me his hand. “Good luck.”

I accepted his hand. “I appreciate it.”

The group walked off.

I looked at the body, frowned, and went back the way I came, through the fog, until I found my horse.

I then rode back to Fort Pulaski, and warned them to be on the lookout for any strangers that looked like doubles of people they knew, before I went home.

Like I said Henry, it was one of my rather stranger tales.