Bigfoot Crank Stomp (6 page)

“I don’t know but it ain’t my main concern right now.”

“He knows our faces, man. We need to find him.”

“Well fucking duh.”

Mickey hustled out of the room. Russell slung the bag of cash over his shoulder and followed. Across from them was another open door leading outside. The wind had picked up. Branches swayed and creaked.

“Oh, Christ.” Russell stopped just outside and looked around at the night. “He’s gone, man. He’s fucking gone.”

“He can’t be that far. We can still get him.”

“We don’t have time.”

“We’re fine.”

“Should have just shot him. He played crazy to fool us. Fuck. We’re so fucked. He knows our faces. Damn it, he knows what we look like.”

“Shut up. We can probably hear him running if you quit freaking out and listen. Feel me?”

“But I can barely hear.”

“It’s getting better right?”

“Sort of.”

“And it’s quiet out. So stand still and listen as best you can.”

Russell took hard, fast breaths, trying to calm his hammering heart down. “Yeah, yeah it’s pretty quiet out.”

“Right. So relax and listen.”

Russell did as best he could. He cocked his head as a wind gust kicked up and rustled the nearby trees. An owl hooted somewhere in the distance.

Then he heard metal clinking. Fast. Like someone trying to unlock a gate in a hurry.

“Hear that?” Mickey said.

“Yeah.”

“Coming from around back.”

They headed toward the rear of the cabin, taking it slow, shotguns raised. The closer they got, the louder the noise grew.

Another roar.

Both stopped.

“I think it came from behind the house,” Russell said.

“Nah, more like the other side. Probably down the hill. Maybe a bear.”

“That don’t sound like any bear I’ve ever heard.”

“And how many bears have you heard?”

Russell shrugged and adjusted the bag’s strap digging into his neck.

“Then shut the fuck up and keep moving unless you want to end up in a nice cozy cell with a couple of wetbacks corn-holing you.”

Russell pushed himself forward. The metal noise resumed. Clink, clink, clink. Then a dragging sound.

The roar came again, reverberating off the trees.

“Mickey, it’s coming from in the house.”

“Fuck you say.”

“I’m telling you whatever made that sound is in the house.”

“I didn’t see any bear in the house. I think I would have noticed.”

“Maybe—”

“I got it right here.” The voice of the dude.

Mickey held a finger against his lips. He motioned for Russell to move to the side of the house. Russell shook his head. Mickey pointed the shotgun at him and mouthed,
Now.

Russell licked his lips and pressed his back against the side of the cabin. He inched down toward the corner, feet trampling through a bed of dead flowers. Mickey remained a few feet back and to his right.

“Just be cool,” the dude said. More metal dragging. “And don’t tear my arms off, please.”

Another roar.

Russell froze, the shotgun shaking in his hands.

“I said be cool,” the dude said. “I got it right here.” Clink, clink. “It’ll be over soon.” Drag. “We’ll finish the cook and then burn down the house with you in it.” Giggle.

Russell reached the corner of the cabin and paused. Mickey pointed at his own eyes with his right index and middle fingers and then motioned with his hand:
look around the corner
. Russell shook his head as another roar rose up. It was almost as loud as the blast from when he dropped the shotgun. Worse, actually. Shriller. Ear piercing.

Mickey motioned with the shotgun:
fucking check around the corner
.

Russell swallowed and inched forward and peeked around the corner. The dude knelt before a cellar door, fumbling with padlocks and pulling chains. Big, thick chains.

He’s going to let whatever the fuck it is out
, Russell thought as he ducked away. He turned to Mickey and waved him over.

“What’d you see?” Mickey whispered.

“There’s a cellar door. That crazy bastard is unlocking a bunch of chains keeping it closed.”

“What?”

“See for yourself. Big fucking chains. Circus-type.”

Mickey leaned and peeked and then pulled back. “What the hell—”

A roar cut him off.

“I think he’s going to let out whatever’s in the cellar,” Russell said. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

“We can’t let him go.”

“By the way it sounds, when he opens that door what’s down there is going to take care of him for us.”

Mickey nibbled on his bottom lip. “Doesn’t make any sense.”

“No shit.”

“I mean why would he want to let a pissed-off bear out?”

Russell started to say he didn’t know when he thought about the big bowl of meth. “Fuck, Mickey, the bear’s hooked.”

“What?”

“The bowl. The powder. Time to feed the need.”

“Oh, shit.” Mickey rubbed his forehead. “They got a fucking bear hooked for fun.”

Another roar.

“Think that’s why they had the TV so loud,” Russell said. “Drown it out between meals.”

Mickey shook his head. “Let’s ice this idiot before it gets free.”

He stepped around the corner. Russell straightened the bag of cash behind his back and followed.

“Back the fuck away from the door,” Mickey said.

The dude’s head shot up from the chains. “Hey man, I’m almost done here, okay?”

“What’s down there?” Russell said.

The dude turned back to the chains. “No time to talk. If it doesn’t get the product—”

Mickey fired. Buckshot ripped through the dude’s arm and shoulder and face. Most of his head disappeared in a cloud of flesh and blood. His body pitched sideways, twitching.

The thing in the cellar roared. Russell backed away but Mickey checked him with his hand. “We need to get those chains back on.”

The roar turned into something else. Painful. Desperate. Not a cry, though. No, it still had a vicious cut to it.

“Fuck that.” Russell walked past the twitching dude on his way around the house. The bowl of powder was tipped over next to him, half-soaked in blood.

“Russell, damn it, get back here.”

Russell stopped and turned around. “We’ve wasted too much time and I’m not going to be here when a junky bear breaks out of that cellar. Let the cops deal with it.”

Mickey looked down at the cellar door and the last chain holding it in place and then back to Russell. “Yeah, you right.”

The cellar door burst up. The wood cracked and split around the remaining chain. Then another hit in rapid succession. Large splinters ripped the air. One final hit and most of the door blew up and away from the hinges. Mickey shielded his face with his arm and backpedaled. Russell just watched, dumbfounded by the sudden destruction.

Then something reached up out of the darkness of the cellar. A hand. A brown furry hand. Not a paw. Not a claw. But five enormous digits. Like a gorilla’s only bigger. They wrapped around the last remaining chain. The thing roared and yanked down and the thick circus chain snapped and disappeared out of sight. The shotgun fell from Russell’s hands again. Not out of fear. This time, out of total disbelief.

“What the fuck?” Mickey said.

“Get away from there.”

“What the fuck was that?”

“A bear.”

“Wasn’t no bear.”

Russell stopped arguing when he heard sniffing. The damn thing was sniffing the air. Then his eyes darted to the bowl of dust, tipped on its side, its content on the ground and saturated with blood.

“Micky, get the fuck—”

His voice was cut-off by a roar and heavy pounding footsteps. The thing sprung out of the cellar and had Mickey in its grasp before he could fire another round. Russell could do nothing but stare.

An ape. No, it was too big to be an ape. The thing towered over Mickey. It was covered in rich brown fur, not black like a gorilla or orange like an orangutan. No, this thing was colored like a damn grizzly. But it sure as hell wasn’t a grizzly.

Fucking Bigfoot
, Russell thought.

The thing lifted Mickey in the air so he was eye level with it. Then it unleashed the loudest roar yet. Triumphant. Russell winced as it pierced his eardrums. It was soon outdone by Mickey’s screams.

Russell watched as it ripped Mickey’s arms out at the shoulder. He dropped to the ground, kicking and wailing, blood jutting in all directions as Bigfoot stood over him, arms firmly in its grasp still. Then it lifted its right foot and stomped down on his head and his screams stopped for good.

Bigfoot dropped the arms and turned and fell to its knees and scooped as much of the powder into its hands as it could and brought it to its nose and snorted and snorted until its hands were empty. It shuddered and sighed and Russell, for a moment, understood how it felt. Then it picked up another handful and repeated the process. When it was gone, it licked its fingers and palms clean.

Then it started to emit a low, wheezing sound. It took Russell a moment to realize the thing was crying. And again, Russell understood how it felt.

Red and blue lights flashed in the corner of his eyes. He turned. Several Sheriff’s cars drove up toward the cabin.

“Fuck me,” Russell said and started to reach for his shotgun.

Too loud.

Bigfoot’s head snapped toward him. The eyes, bloodshot and wild, fixed on him like a heat-seeking missile. Its leather-like face dotted here and there with blood and meth.

“Oh, shit.” He backed away from the gun.

To his right, tires crunched gravel and brakes squeaked. In front of him, Bigfoot rose and turned so that its massive frame faced Russell. But it really wasn’t massive. Russell could see that now. Still muscular but withered away, too. All that fur hanging on it like baggy clothes. The body of a junky.

It tilted its hairy head back and sniffed the air. Then it lowered its head and resumed its lock on him.

“Fuck me.”

Doors opened and shut. People spoke but Russell couldn’t make out what they said. He heard a few shotguns pump.

Across from him, Bigfoot flexed its thighs as if ready to jump. Twenty or so feet separated them and Russell didn’t doubt the thing could probably cover the distance in a single bound.

That didn’t stop him. He spun and took off, legs churning like a runaway locomotive. He avoided the berm and found a less extreme decline and managed to keep his feet at a full sprint. Branches smacked his arms and legs and cheeks. None of them slowed him down.

Behind him, he didn’t hear footsteps. Instead, Russell heard panicked yells and another roar. Then gunshots.

Russell kept running, the sound of violence echoing around him.

MANNY

Roar after roar. No screams though. If he’d heard a scream, Manny would stop watching and start toward the menacing sounds. He could only resist so long before the old reflexes kicked in and a scream would shatter that resistance to pieces. Hell, he was sweating already. Perspiration dotted his forehead. He could feel wet rings under his arms. It took a great deal of energy to do nothing.

The sniper training paid off in cases like this. Plenty of times he’d witnessed incidents he could have easily intervened in. But he’d maintained focus, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. He allowed regular ground forces or local authorities to take care of those little incidences of looting and mob violence. They did their job and he did his.

So where were the fucking cops? They should have been there by now. You’d think a 9-1-1 call about a shootout would have brought Sheriff Clemons charging up the Loop, guns blazing. He had the reputation. A real hotheaded son of a bitch. Yet Tallwood kept electing him because he supposedly didn’t take any shit.

Manny didn’t have much room to criticize since he refused to vote. Voting meant registering and registering put his name on another list in some bureaucratic office. No sir. He was on enough lists already. He didn’t like lists.

Should have gone off the grid
, he thought.
Moved away from people entirely
. Then he wouldn’t be dealing with meth-head dealers living next door and getting their asses shot up during what otherwise was a beautiful night.

Someday soon. Once he’d saved enough. Then he’d be gone. Somewhere in the higher elevations. Away from—

BOOM. A shotgun blast.

Across the valley, familiar red and blue lights rotated on top of Sheriff’s vehicles.

About time
, he thought.