Bigfoot War (11 page)

Justin knew Fred was pretty much close to useless. Fred seemed sober now, but was on the verge of a breakdown.

“
They should have been here by now,” Fred mumbled to himself.

Justin didn’t ask who he meant: the monsters or their rescuers. He doubted he really wanted to know the answer.

“
Hey, Justin,” a man he thought was named Wade yelled at him from the south side of the roof. “You better come and take a gander at this.”

Justin walked over to him.

“
Look down there.” The man pointed to the trees.

Justin lifted his binoculars and saw a hulking monster half concealed by the shadows of the night.

“
Would have been impossible to see him without the night scope on my rifle. Thing’s been there like that for a couple of minutes. I think he’s checking us out. Actually, wanted to see if he was really loitering or just passing through before I told ya.”

“
You should have told me the second you saw him.”

“
Sorry.”

“
You should be. If anything happens because of that particular monster—”

“
Point taken.”

“
From now on, okay?”

“
Got it. Again, sorry.”

Justin gave him a hard glare then turned his attention back to the Bigfoot in the bushes. The monster stood at least nine feet tall. He was tempted to un-sling his rifle and put a bullet into its brain. It would be an easy shot. The creature would never know what hit it. He resisted the urge though. Unless the smaller beast was a scout, there were certainly others close by. Killing it and the crack of the rifle would reveal his position. Worse, it could stir the monsters up and have them tearing at the gym’s barricaded doors sooner than they might if he left the thing alone.

The three men who volunteered to stay outside as exterior guards at the main entrance were oblivious to the thing’s presence. They appeared to be nervously talking amongst themselves as one of them puffed on a cigarette.

They won’t know it’s there until it’s on top of them,
Justin thought.

“
Want me to take it down?” the man next to him asked.

“
No, not yet. Let’s wait for them to make the first move. When it does, feel free to fill it full of lead.”

The man smiled. “No worries there, mate.”

Justin returned to his own spot on the roof’s perimeter and resumed trying to keep an eye on his side of the gym as well as what he could of Fred’s.

He wished Powell and Brent were here. Their training and experience as real officers was sorely missed. Justin wasn’t comfortable with the whole thing of being in charge up here. Powell was a cunning and clever little man. It was hard to believe that those things could’ve caught him. Brent, Justin admitted, was likely dead and decaying somewhere on the streets like so many others.

A loud
whoop-whoop-whoop
came from the west. Justin recognized what it was at once and turned his binoculars in that direction. Hope filled his heart when he saw it. The helicopter was pouring on the speed and coming straight toward the school. There was no time to fetch Becca. He had to act now if he wanted to make sure the people in it saw them.

In a wild moment of desperation, he tossed his binoculars aside and un-slung his rifle, taking careful aim at the furthest car from the school. His rifle boomed and a bullet ruptured the car’s gas tank. The explosion lit the night as fire leapt skyward in the darkness.

If the pilot of the helicopter doesn’t notice that,
he thought,
the man is blind.

He heard a roar off in the bushes. The Bigfoot noticed it, too.

Zack

Not long before, the flight over Babble Creek proper made Zack’s stomach churn with disgust. He had looked on with disbelief as Ben flew them above the streets littered with wrecked cars, broken bodies, and out-of-control fires. Ben refused to set them down. There was no way. Zack felt the fear radiating from the man like a tangible wave of emotion and didn’t dare press him to do so without cause. The worst of their flight over the town, though, wasn’t the carnage, but the beasts that roamed through it. They were like a sick cross between an oversized ape and a man. He’d counted three dozen distinct creatures by the time they’d made their second pass over Main Street and the town’s Sheriff Department. He radioed in all they saw, but knew no one would in their right mind be able to believe it without seeing it with their own eyes. Things like this simply didn’t happen in the real world.

As they reached the end of Main Street the second time, Ben brought them to a halt, hovering above the main road while Zack awkwardly unfolded a map of the town in his lap. As he fought with the map, he heard a sharp squeak of terror from Ben’s lips.

“
What is it?” he asked. He saw Ben was looking down at the street below them. He followed his gaze. A pack of eight creatures gathered below the helicopter and were staring up at it with feral, angry eyes that glowed yellow and red in the darkness. Several of them roared their displeasure at the copter’s presence so loudly they were heard over the spinning of the blades. The sound sent shivers through Zack.

Something thudded off the side of the copter so hard, he knew it had left a dent. The sound was followed by that of two more impacts as a third shattered the window beside him. He ducked as a large rock barely missed him and bounced off the chopper’s ceiling. It thudded to the floor on top of the broken glass.

“
They’re stoning us!” Ben said. “They’re actually bloody stoning us!”

“
Get us out of here,” Zack shouted.

Ben didn’t have to be told twice. He hit the throttle as the copter lurched and sprang forward, gaining altitude as it went. Zack looked at Ben; the pilot glanced back at him. Zack knew Ben was beyond rational thought. He had to get the man to calm down before they ended up tangled in the tall trees ahead of them. “Push it harder,” he said.

Ben pulled up more, then they were in the clear, far out of reach of the creatures and the treetops.

“
Get a grip, man. They can’t get us up here. As long as we stay high enough, we’re safe. Got it?” Zack said.

It looked like the words at least partially sunk in as Ben brought the helicopter in the direction of Macon County.

“
Uh-uh,” Zack said, “not yet. We’ve got one more place to check.”

“
With all due respect,
sir
” —Ben made the word sound like an insult— “I’m taking us home.”

“
Ben . . .”

“
No,” he said. “Enough’s enough, man. I am not getting paid enough for this crap. This sure as heck wasn’t in the job description either.”

Zack drew his Glock and reached over, pressing its barrel into Ben’s side. “You can press charges for this later if you want, but right now there may be people still alive in this town that need us. We’ve got one place left to check and you’re going to fly us there or I will kill you as dead as those things in the streets would.” Zack hoped Ben couldn’t tell he was bluffing, but it had to be done. Bigger things were at stake than Ben’s sanity or even self-preservation.

“
But if you shoot me, we’ll crash.”

“
I didn’t say I’d kill you
now
, did I?”

“
No.”

“
You can only keep us up here for so long. We touch down, you go down. Got it?”

Ben grunted. “Fine, but then we’re going home.”

“
All right.” Zack nodded and holstered his pistol. “Head east and keep us up as high as you can, but not so high that we can’t get a decent look at the ground.”

They flew toward the eastern outskirts of Babble Creek toward the town’s high school. When it came into view, an explosion lit up its parking lot.

“
What the devil was that?” Ben asked.

“
Somebody that wants to get our attention pretty badly.”

“
Looks like they got somebody else’s attention, too, though.”

The woods around the school came to life with movement. A dozen, giant, hairy forms poured from the trees, closing in on what looked to be the school’s gym.

Justin

“
Justin!” Fred screamed. “They’re coming!”

He didn’t need the warning, however. Justin saw three of the sasquatches bounding toward the poor fools who’d volunteered to keep watch outside the gym. His rifle was still up and ready so he selected a target and opened fire, yelling for the others to do the same. The creatures were moving too fast for any kind of real accuracy. His shot slammed into the lead creature’s shoulder, spraying blood into the air. It loosed a whelp of pain, but kept coming without slowing. He heard the cracks of the other defenders’ rifles and the rapid fire of a Glock. A shotgun boomed. One of the defenders put a round into the lead sasquatch’s stomach. In return it raced toward him, ripped him off the ground with one hand, and gave him a head butt that caved his face in and snapped his neck. Another of the door’s guards was so frightened he tossed his weapon aside and made a run across the parking lot. The shortest of the three creatures sprinted after him, overtaking him effortlessly. The man’s scream was long and loud as its hand plunged into his back and tore out his spine, exposing it to the night air.

Justin moved closer to the roof’s edge and changed his angle of fire to get another shot at the things as the unthinkable happened. One of the sasquatches sped toward the school and jumped, throwing itself onto the wall in front of him. The building shook with the impact. The creature positioned itself like an agile mountain climber and began to scale the remaining few feet of the wall. Its red eyes burned; Justin found himself staring into them, both scared yet strangely allured. If the thing had waited a few strides more before taking its leap, the sasquatch’s whole upper torso would’ve cleared the edge and it would’ve already been on the roof with him.

Justin fired point blank. The round went clean through the monster’s skull. It released its hold and toppled to the ground with a loud thud. None of the others tried for the roof. They seemed to smell the people barricaded inside the gym and focused on getting inside instead. The man opposite him managed to kill one of the sasquatches as the monsters approached, leaving eight furious beasts tearing the gym’s doors asunder.

Justin hoped Becca was ready for them because they were coming in from both sides.

Becca

Becca heard the explosion then the barrage of rifle fire. Her reaction was fast and decisive. She ordered the women, who weren’t armed, and the children to take cover under the bleachers as she and anyone who had a weapon took up positions blocking the doors at both ends of the gym. Their forces were divided and under-armed. She and three men waited on the left side while Lauren and the other five defenders got ready on the right. No one waited for the monsters to make it inside. They all opened fire as soon as they saw hairy arms pulling the doors from their hinges.

A sasquatch squeezed its way inside just in front of her and shoved aside what was left of the makeshift barricade. Glock 40 rounds peppered its body with tiny dots of deep red, sending it into a berserker rage. One of the men with her carried a 12 gauge and pumped shot after shot into the thing’s hairy hide. It staggered and roared its seeming frustration at not being able to catch the bullets mid-air. The thing sprung forward, knocking the man to the floor with a viscous body blow. The man lay motionless with blood leaking from his nose and ears.

A quick glance across the gym told Becca that Lauren’s group wasn’t faring any better. Retreat was impossible. There were no other exits. As another of the creatures pushed its way inside, one of its large hands took a swipe at the man beside her and turned his face into a pulpy mass of bloodied meat. The last of the men who stood with her fired point blank into the monster’s stomach before he was yanked from his feet and tossed fast and high, screaming across the gym to land hard on the floor with the sound of snapping bone.

On the other side of the gym, Lauren screamed as the beasts burst open the doors and crushed one of the men in the process. His limp and broken body slid to the floor from behind the now-open doors. Darius Luker, a tough-looking redneck, leveled his 12 gauge and put a slug into the first of the creature’s face. It lumbered backwards a step and collapsed with a heavy thud. Darius’s moment of triumph was short-lived, however. The next of the beasts put a hand completely through his body. He gagged on his own blood racing up his throat as the creature’s hand ripped back out of him, carrying a fistful of meat with it. Lauren screeched and turned to flee as the others with her fell to the beasts’ fury. She managed two steps before a hand closed over her head. The thing’s hairy fingers gouged into Lauren’s eyes and pressed them back in the woman’s skull. Blood poured down her front as her body struggled and twitched against the creature’s hold in her last moments of life. The creature threw her down. All hope was lost, but Becca still refused to give up. She snatched up one of the fallen men’s Glocks. Her battle cry echoed across the gym as she fought off her own pain and ignored the blood running down the sides of her head. She charged the second creature with both guns blazing. The 9 mils spat empty shell casings to the gym floor as she moved closer. The creature stood its ground, barely made a sound, and took the bullets as if waiting for her to get closer. When she was within its reach, it grabbed her and enveloped her in a bear hug so tight, she vomited blood into its eyes as her body was crushed against its chest and she left this world behind.