Alien Aphrodisiac

Written for the Daily Flash Fiction Challenge with a word limit of 300.

The prompts: This story must contain the words motel, map and billboard.


Alien Aphrodisiac

The bounty hunter pulled his jeep over to the side of the crumbling mountainous road just outside the village. He knew he was close. Two small buildings still smoldered against the Andean jungle backdrop; typical of the collateral damage he had seen elsewhere. Frightened eyes peeked out from behind thatched doors. Their fear was like a billboard that pleaded, “Please, don’t hurt us anymore.”

This was a particularly nasty cluster he was after.

Inside the local watering hole, he ordered a shot of “something strong” before pulling out a ragged map and spreading it out on the bar. This was the end of the road. With no place left to go, they would have to stay and fight.

He smiled at the thought.

The “something strong” burned its way down the back of his throat as he considered his next move. Across the street was the biggest building in town, a five room motel with a small lobby in the front. As he looked at it through the bar window, he knew that was the place. They would make their stand there.

It would be their last stand.

He walked out of the bar, his stride giving no hint of the arsenal beneath the folds of his long coat. He kicked open the motel lobby door and shot the first thing that moved. All hell broke loose as modern lasers and old-fashioned shot guns bookended the spectrum of firepower unleashed by the hunter and the hunted.

Essence of ozone and burnt sulfur clung to the hunter as he emerged less than two minutes later.

There was blood, but most of it wasn’t his. In his hand was a bag of forehead horns retrieved from the recently deceased. They would bring a high price on the alien artifact black market.

Word count 299