When the pink flash left, there followed wispy smoke and vapor, then a cheer and high-five from the firing squad behind them. Alice clambered back out of her hole, onto the concrete floor where snow was beginning to heap. Raising her sunglasses, she watched, keeping her eyes on the space where her enemies once stood.

Perhaps she and her firing squad had given not only greetings, but partings.

Or not, for in that spot, in place of Dracula et al., there now stood two giant mechanical shoes—sneaker-shaped bumper cars. From the hole of one, Robert and Trials poked out tentatively. From the other came Walter Whipple and the two delightful hogs who, in answer to the bell, had skillfully driven the emergency bumper cars into position. And in front of them, saviors by their twin tango of kicked-up diamond dust, were Dracula (in wolf form) and Adam!

“What coordination!” remarked Dracula. “You make a fine vampire.”

“I surprise myself,” said Adam with a bow.

“Hey, dog bones!” cried Trials from Robert’s lap. “How’s it feel knowing you fired everywhere and still missed?” Then, shortly after giving Robert the stink-eye, she climbed onto his face and head with mercifully nonextended claws! “Try again, aim here!” As she cackled, Robert, rocking and groaning, lurched into a special technique: the “get off my lawn” fist shake.

Commander Alice raised one arm saying, “How impudent. Well, if at first you don’t succeed...”

A posse of soldiers re-aimed and re-fired at the cat and her fish, but the shots all bounced away, cast aside by a sneaker launched from the sneaker gun on the giant sneaker housing Walter and his two cozy pigs.

“Shoe cars,” Walter said coolly. “Don’t leave home without ‘em. Or, rather, don’t be home without ‘em.”

“How stupid,” Alice maligned. Almost dismissively she ordered, “Charge. Apprehend them, hand-to-hand.” And the whole centurion of wolf-folk reholstered their guns before stamping forth!

The undaunted Adam rallied Dracula’s troops, leading with a smile, his left fist raised. Though they were all suffused with blizzard snows, without coats nor ceiling to guard them, the fighting spirit warmed them. “Tally-ho! Let us loose us monsters of war!”

The werewolves were closing the gap with wicked speed, mere meters away now, and Walter’s pig-friends snorted with fright, but Walter stared them down, and aimed his shoerifles. Robert again insisted that Trials get off his green, lawnlike face, and she did, bounding onto the concrete. Dracula rolled up his sleeves, for the werewolf blood raced positively hot within him. And Adam’s bandages glowed with arcane Slavonigrams and began sliding along his body, just as they had when he powered up in Giza.

And then the mummy said it: “With my left hand, I invoke the name Ram—g’augh!” A werewolf clotheslined him, knocking Adam off his feet and nearly casting his pharaotic headdress from his skull. He rose on his left palm, raised the right, and hollered, “With my right hand I—D’AOUH!” Five werewolves ran simultaneously across his chest. It was no use; the wolf army was here, the forces had already converged!

Luckily, his friends were kicking butt in the snowstorm. Dracula was flitting back and forth between mist and corporeality, darting through the crowd and picking off wolves like a fish pursuing nutritional flakes—one nip at an unsuspecting neck and they collapsed, knocked out for another fix, maybe six hours.

This time, Trials needed no illusions to evade capture; nimble and lithe, she ran between shins like a soccer ball gone haywire. Everywhere she went, a werewolf barked and fell in a simmering blaze, for she chanted, “Fire Pyre Multiplier! Fire Pyre Multiplier!”

Adam was not to be outdone. “I needs must—ouch—simplify my tactics,” he concluded, briefly suffering a knee to the face. Glowing red wrappings congregated around his arms, and the scars they exposed hummed faintly gold, and he became a beacon in the storm. He rose, and, with hands in karate-chopping shape and form, began whapping and smacking wolves from his path. He was relying on strength alone, but it was strength enhanced, equivalent to that of—if I had to guess—twenty-two humans!

Meanwhile, in their own theatre of this battle, Walter Whipple and Robert Fishman were firing sneakers left and right. The bottom of their bowling-shoe cars produced little warm jets of air, melting the earthbound snow. This allowed them to drift slowly about the concrete floor, as if each were a puck on an air hockey rink. Lucky shoe shots hit wolves in the gut, making them to buckle, but the wolves were getting wise to this and starting to slap shoes away. As they encroached, the spat-travelers broke into ice-cold sweats—and not because of the bitter snow. “Guys,” Walter moaned, the terrified pigs at either side hugging him, “I’m starting to think that shoes might not be strong enough!”

“Axe Wax M’gacks!” magic’d a saint nearby. Then she did it again. Two Viking battleaxes poofed into existence and fluttered into their hands. Then she did it two more times! Walter’s pigs got axes too.

One moment ago, that werewolf right in front of Robert had looked devious, bloodthirsty…but the glint of the axe wiped the smirk from his gullet. Now Robert stood in his seat and, with his axe raised like a golf club, said, “Time, for, reversal, to, end, all, reversals!”

But then Alice halted the action with a shout: “Make way!”

It was impressive how quickly the werewolves scattered. They ran yipping and tripping into the foggy veil of snow, many fighting to push past others, to escape most quickly; those who had been pushed to the ground, who ended up nearby when Alice approached, broke out in whimpers and involuntary twitching fits. Observers could safely conclude that Alice was a strong and excellent commander.

Daringly, she marched into Robert’s path in the middle of a heavy axe swing. She had considered reaching for a pistol, but she thought better of that. Instead she thrust forth a lighter! She clicked the fire to life and waved it in his face, and Robert shook so terrifically that he dropped his axe, which shattered on the floor. Memories of accidentally dousing himself in gasoline and bumping into a gas lantern came screaming back! “Aaaaah! Fire! Fire! You’ll burn my gills!” he shrieked.

He promptly lost control of the bumper car! It drifted quite slowly into Alice’s kneecaps, bumping against them.

Alice flicked shut the lighter. With ease and her foot, she shoved the car away. Robert spiraled helplessly into the snowdrift, toward some hungry pack of soldiers, any one of whom could easily have made his match in combat.

Walter came in gun blazing, hitting Alice’s shins with a torrent of turret-fired size-sevens. Actually, he had been doing this from a little distance for the past thirty seconds; only now did Alice devote any attention to him. With his free hand did he also raise his battleaxe very threatsomely. His haunting eyes said, “I may be too far away to axe ya now, mate, but in a minute? Two minutes? Then you’ll be sorry.” The pigs, being pigs, had eaten their axes long ago and sat contentedly at his flanks.

To make sure that every monster around could hear the message to follow, Alice tapped her moderno-future accessorial wristmmunications hyperwatch, causing a megaphone to spring forth. “NOW, MR. WHIPPLE,” she all but hollered into his face, “I COME AS A REPRESENTATIVE OF THE WORLD GOVERNMENT TO COMMANDEER OWNERSHIP OF YOUR HOUSE! ALL OF YOUR LAND IS NOW UNDER JURISDICTION OF MYSELF, ALICE LIDDELL!” And just to prove her point, she briefly produced a legal document that read “DEED - This House” with a gold ribbon attached at the bottom.

Walter gasped, “But that’s not real!”

“CORRECT,” she blared as he sluggishly, sweatily approached, “BUT IN WORLD GOVERNMENT COURTS, WORLD GOVERNMENT-PRODUCED FORGERIES ARE THE HIGHEST FORM OF EVIDENCE!”

Walter, stunned, could only breathe.

Dracula re-visibilified behind Alice and wrangled her in a chokehold. Alice, however, utilizing judo moves, bent forward at incredible speed, flinging Dracula clear off and out of bounds! He was launched into the entry hall (still standing), onto the front door (now collapsed under Dracula’s weight), and straight into a massive pile of snow.

He flung a flurry’s worth away and scrabbled upright, dumbstruck, staring through the doorway. He remained nearly unharmed, and yet he puffed as thought the wind were knocked out of him. Slowly he brought his hand toward the doorway…but not through it, as he was barred from doing so by a repulsive force. “Oh no,” he whispered. Then with infernal fury he pounded the field-like force and roared, “How dare you, Alice! Invite me, invite me in right now!”

“THESE RIDICULOUS WEAKNESSES GROW CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER,” she replied. “SORRY, I MEANT ‘MORE STUPID AND THEN AGAIN EVEN MORE STUPID.’”

From tens of meters away Dracula could see, as through a tumultuous haily veil, specks and masses of camo-clad werewolves. Then he saw a bolt of unmistakable red: one of Adam’s papyrus wrappings stretching so far through the crowds that it cut clear across Dracula’s field of vision. Were he closer, he would have seen it zip past soldiers’ heads and moons to coil around Alice’s head. Now that’s some aim and hand-eye coordination! Adam cried, “There is nothing more stupid than guile and evil!”

Walter cried, “Frankie, no!”

Alice enacted the same judo flip. Adam, gone airborne with his bungee-cord paper, slingshotted through the very same entryway and the very same formerly-standing door. He slammed into Dracula with an “oof.”

“OF COURSE I WILL NOT INVITE YOU OR YOUR PROTÉGÉ BACK INSIDE. I’LL GET TO YOU ONCE THE WEAKER SET IS DEALT WITH. OFFICER BONES, GET THE CROSS.”

A peon, muttering “gotcha, boss…grrrruff,” darted briefly past the entrance for to toss a tiny rosary at them.

“Eugh!” said Dracula as it landed in his hands. He bounced it around like it was an incredibly warm potato, then hurled it away blindly. It cracked Adam in the shin and it really smarted.

“Yeowch!” he said, proving the point above.

Not so far away, Trials had just finished deceiving a couple of werewolves: one was running right to catch her, the other running left, and just when she had seemed within each one’s grasp, she had hopped away, causing them to buffoonically crash into each other. Now she approached Alice rather casually. “Injustice from the government? That joke’s even older than the one about airline food.”

“A little late, aren’t you?” said Alice. She just happened to have a bag of salted peanuts in her pocket. These she opened and strewed about Trials.

But the cat, instead of capering about them as Alice had hoped, sat there unimpressed. “You expect me to play with these miniature trashes? You’re kitten me! This is literally airline food!”

“Think of it this way,” Alice rationalized. “This is a show, and that’s your movie food.”

“Yeah, a movie about watching you beat up old dudes.”

“Sure, but look at that,” said Alice with a gesture toward Walter.

His shoe was still hurtling in like a comet! His arms were still raised, only now they were empty, and quivering with panic! He said, “Oh no! The pigs, they’ve eaten my axe!” Indeed, the pigs were gnawing happily! “Say the axe spell, cat, the axe spell!”

Trials clicked her tongue. “Kinda mean, innit?”

“That’s kind of the point.”

Trials looked down to the peanuts, then back to Alice. Then her gaze fell to Alice’s ankle, which idled conveniently close to her fangs…

A hail of lasers from Alice’s corps peppered Trials! I mean—phew! —they merely peppered the air and ground which she had so recently occupied. She ran yowling, skittering as if on hot tin, and scrambled for cover as the lasers followed.

Alice smirked. She raised her megaphone anew and said, “THANKS, SOLDIERS.”

From far away, through a dense curtain of snow, the nearest officer screeched, “YOU’RE WELCOME, COMMANDER!”

“YOU ALL CAN COME A BIT CLOSER, YOU KNOW.”

The soldiers didn’t respond.

“WELL, WALTER WHIPPLE,” she said to the man who was still a good three feet and two minutes away, “YOU HAVE JUST AIDED THE WORLD’S MOST WANTED CRIMINAL, COUNT VLAD DRACULA.” She revealed her pistol. “FOR THIS CRIME, YOU’VE BEEN SENTENCED TO DEATH. ANY LAST WORDS?”

Being in a giant shoe undeniably had its advantages, but Walter Whipple knew it was time to hop out and stretch his quads. So he stepped onto snow, and when he stooped, it was to conquer.

“Yeah, ya slow wolf,” he roasted, readying haunches. “You’ll have to catch me first!”

In the distance, Dracula’s fists pounded against the houseforce fencing the vampires out while Adam’s red arms punched and chopped. They were barely able to hear Walter’s side of this talk; they almost did not need to.

“No, you cannot do this!” shrieked Dracula. “Alice!”

“How cruel is this fate!” blubbered Adam; each moment he came closer to tears, was filled more completely with pathos. “Beg for clemency and free yourself of senseless destruction, Walter!”

“Why don’t you hit me with your best shot?” Walter challenged. “I can outrun anything you dish out at me.” He wobbled a leg in boast. “Just watch me whip ‘em.”

“NAY, WHIPPLE, NAY!” wailed the two vampires.

But Walter was insensible to reason. He turned his back to Alice with a laugh, and Alice thumped the light gun against the back of his head. The trigger clicked and a single line, charged with ultraviolet powers, shot from the bulb. So Walter whipped his legs back and forth.