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AUTHOR’S NOTE: A cold storage warehouse becomes a battlefield as different factions vie for control of the planet. But seriously -- you don’t have to have seen Ed Wood’s Plan Nine from Outer Space to understand this, but some of the weapons in this story are based on the movie’s memorable special effects and unusual editing, not to mention its basic plot. The food products part of this story isn’t in the movie, but they’re all actual names of real products, and some of foreign ones are even available in this country.

This story is supposed to be funny -- or at least, amusing -- but I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. It’s supposed to make you laugh, giggle, or at least smile. If it’s not amusing, I want to know. Please. I don’t want to become The Knoxter, if you know what I mean. I don’t want the funniest thing about it to be this -- the Author’s Note. If you don’t think the Author’s Note is funny at all, then you really do know what I mean.

Plan Nine was to ignite the Apocalypse by resurrecting the dead to form a hellish army that would attack the living and conquer the earth, and it had been more than 50 years since that first horrific invasion from another world millions of light years away made its epic last stand in someone’s back yard, next to some lawn chairs.

Its fiendish perpetrators still dreamed of becoming Earth’s worst nightmare, however, but since the expeditionary force was destroyed before it could relay any kind comprehensive intelligence to its home planet, the new assault fleet had only the sketchiest knowledge of the human animal, and no knowledge at all of their target planet’s last 50 years. They were ignorant of any global Plague, and took the effects the current one visited upon the earth to be normal, everyday, business-as-usual terrestrial life. In a supreme irony of cosmic proportions, they had no idea that Earth, for all intents and purposes, had already been conquered by an army of the undead – although Plan Nine lay dormant for half a century, it had actually succeeded.

"We will not repeat the same mistakes," the Leader said in a speech on his flagship. "We had no appreciation then of the physical changes the earthmen go through after they die and return to the elements. As a direct result, almost 99% of our resurrected army was nothing but empty suits of old clothing walking around. They deserted and are now doing laundry commercials … even the shoes. … Yes, yes, it is shocking, but it’s also typical of the Earthmen’s treachery and ingratitude. Why should their clothes be any different? Earth … is an Orb of Evil, and this time we will be more selective in our methods. As you know, our scouts have been able to move among the earthmen undetected, and their reports are most encouraging. They’re predicting feeble resistance, if there’s any resistance at all."

Every chair in the plush-carpeted and mahogany-paneled boardroom was occupied in spite of the late hour and most difficult situation. "I just love the smell of old leather," one of the members had commented when they entered for the meeting earlier. When she caught Elder frowning at her, she quickly explained that she was talking about the furniture. The dirty, vermin-infested castles were a thing of the past, and had been replaced with castles of another sort. The towers were now skyscrapers, and the tortured, forbidding landscapes that once helped protect the walled strongholds had been abandoned for the more practical canyons of Wall Street. Even the titles of the leaders were jettisoned: Counts of Transylvania, Barons of Moldavia, and Princes of Darkness were now the more-generic Captains of Industry.

Elder was the CEO, and had been for centuries, though under different titles. He was trusted, respected, and admired by the members of his "company," and the idea of anyone else at the helm was unthinkable to them. When they called him Sir, it was voluntary and with sincere respect.

Over the past 50 years, he had guided them through Project Good Neighbor, which was supposed to legitimize their existence to the rest of the world before they were discovered and recognized and forced into an all-out war by a panic-stricken world. They combined resources gathered over the centuries to set up several programs, the results of which were designed to actually benefit humans. They were now purchasing blood – paying well, too -- instead of appropriating it in the dead of night. Elder and his people might still be supernatural monsters, but at least they were no longer criminals. They were funding DNA and cloning experiments to obviate fresh, living sources for the blood – results that would benefit mankind as well. Elder’s labs were also much further along in AIDS research than the best efforts of the human researchers. He himself was one of the first to see it coming after the disease started appearing in the ‘70’s, and if his labs could find a vaccine or even a feasible cure for it, it would move his clan that much closer to a peaceful co-existence with ordinary men. His people were totally immune to the dreaded virus, but it degraded human hemo – blood quality – so fighting AIDS was in their own interests as well.

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