Bigfoot War (4 page)

Powell nodded in agreement. “This isn’t good. This isn’t good at all.”

“
Why?”

“
Because this proves Taylor is still a whacko and we’re going to have to go into those trees after him before he hurts himself or even Tom.” Powell slammed the trunk closed. “Better call it in to Becca.” As Brent stomped off to their car, he added, “and grab our shotguns, too. We’re probably going to need them.”

Tom

The summer sun beat down. Tom’s clothes were drenched in sweat underneath the camo jacket Jeff had given him. Between the heat and exhaustion, he was beginning to find it hard to breathe. The M-16 he carried continued to grow heavier with each step through the forest. Jeff was pushing them on at too hard a pace. The man didn’t seem to be bothered by the heat in the slightest. He walked a few feet ahead of Tom, his eyes glued to the funky, prototype motion detector he carried. The thing was like something from
Star Trek
. Tom didn’t pretend to understand how it worked, but he took Jeff’s word for it that it did.

He wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand and worked up the courage to ask Jeff for a break.

“
Dude, are you sure this thing even comes out in the daytime?” he asked as he leaned against a thick tree trunk.

“
Depends on what it’s after, I guess,” Jeff said. “When I retired from the service, I spent a lot of time reading about creatures like this before I came home. Funny thing, most people describe the Sasquatch, Bigfoot, whatever you want to call it, as being peaceful. Some cryptozoologists claim they’re herbivores. Let me tell you, this thing that killed my father wasn’t some peaceful, giant primate. The thing was pure evil. It killed out of rage and bloodlust.”

“
Great,” Tom said, “and here we are looking for it.”

“
Someone has to put it down. All the people who go missing in these woods every year, all the mysterious and unexplained animal attacks, I believe they’re the work of this thing. People here just don’t want to admit it. Babble Creek is in denial. Like the rest of the world, the folks here can’t think outside the box long enough to realize what’s actually happening. People don’t want to accept the existence of something so unreal and dangerous living next door to them.”

Tom stared at him in silence, stumped by his words and logic.

Jeff continued. “I have to find this thing. I’m not leaving here until I do. I know the authorities are going to come after me, if for no other reason than to make sure I’m not going to stir up trouble with stories of the monster again and bring the media and thrill seekers to their little paradise like before.”

“
You have to admit, you sound kind of crazy.”

Jeff laughed. “And yet, I am the only one sane enough to see the truth of what’s happening here.” Jeff motioned for him to pick up his rifle, which was against the tree beside his leg. “We’ve rested too long already. We don’t have any more time to waste. Night will be coming soon and then it will have yet another advantage over us out here.”

Tom grunted and followed after him as the man darted off deeper into the trees.

Becca

Becca woke up at her desk. Her head lay on the paperwork spread across it. She sat up, shaking her head to clear the cobwebs of sleep. She didn’t mean to drift off. How much time had she lost?

Gab knocked at her door. She waved for him to come in.

“
More bad news, boss,” he said. “Powell and Brent found Taylor’s car at his old house. They said there was a crap load of weapons in it and they think he’s taken Tom Birchfield into the forest with him to find the monster, the one the stories say killed his family. They went after him. Guess that means he’s as crazy as Powell was worried he’d be.”

“
When it rains, it pours, huh?” Becca bit at the top of her thumb. “Anything else turn up with the wreck?”

Gab tilted his head. “We’re still calling it a ‘wreck’?”

She shrugged. “Call it unrealistic wishful thinking on my part but, yes, we are for now. I don’t think ‘murder’ quite fits. An animal attack makes the most sense. Mr. Daily is speeding along the road, he swerves to dodge something in front of him and ends up in the ditch. Then that’s where things fall apart. A bear could easily be our assailant except for the way the door was thrown off the vehicle.”

Gab shook his head. “You may have to rule out your bear theory entirely ma’am. Things were so crazy last night, I sent Warren up to the scene again just to make sure you guys didn’t miss anything. He says he found some tracks.”

“
Let me guess.” She leaned forward in her chair.

“
Yep,” he said. “Bigfoot tracks. Don’t know anything else to call them. Had to call Warren into town before he could make a cast of them though,” Gab paused. “You don’t think that Jeff guy is behind this, do you? I mean, maybe he killed Mr. Daily and set the whole thing up to prove that the Babble Creek monster is real?”

“
I doubt it. It just doesn’t fit with what we know about Jeff and his history in this town. How in the Hades do you fake paw-like hand prints on a man’s crushed skull like that? I was there. I saw the body. Tell me, Gab, honestly, do you think maybe the Babble Creek monster is real?”

“
Beginning to look that way,” he said. “It’s the only thing that explains things. Lord knows there certainly more than a few people who at least halfway believe in the thing.”

“
Crap,” Becca muttered.

“
You want me to give Justin and the boys a call?”

“
No. I’m not ready to go that far yet. The last thing we need at this point is more lunatics and rednecks running around those woods with guns.”

“
There aren’t exactly any protocols for dealing with something like this,” Gab said.

“
Let’s wait to hear from Powell. Maybe we’ll get lucky and bring Taylor in. In the meantime, hop on the phone and see if Lauren’s got the results of those tests she sent off to Asheville yet.”

“
Yes, ma’am,” Gab said and promptly disappeared from her office, leaving her alone with the stacks of paperwork.

Justin

Justin hoped the drool wasn’t obvious as he stared at Amanda’s rear end. He’d never seen a finer one. He felt kind of wrong stealing glances at her as Pastor Ensley led the congregation in prayer, but he couldn’t help himself. He was just a man. Justin prayed the Lord would understand.

Fred stood beside him in the pew with Terry. They smelled like the beer they had this morning to fight off their hangovers. Sometimes he wondered why they even bothered to come to the evening service. Justin guessed it was because he did. Ever since he inherited his dad’s used car business and was able to leave the nine-to-five grind behind, his popularity in Babble Creek had continued to grow. Most folks thought he had it made; the fact that he was the best tracker and hunter in town didn’t hurt either. He had won the annual deer hunting competition , which was a huge event for Babble Creek, for the last five years running. People looked at him with a respect he knew he didn’t deserve. Once in a while, it really bothered him. In reality, he wasn’t nearly as well off as he was made out to be by the rumor mill.

The church wasn’t crowded. It usually wasn’t on a Sunday night. Only the truly devoted or those who couldn’t make the morning service attended. He thanked God Amanda was one of them. It was a heck of a lot easier to see her here than behind the jewelry counter at the Walmart where she worked. She was his reason for coming tonight. He believed in God, but it was her that kept him coming to church.

The prayer ended and everyone took their seats. Fred’s eyes closed almost instantly. Justin promised himself he wouldn’t elbow the man unless the guy started snoring. Justin shot a glance at Terry, who shrugged helplessly. The pair of them were often more trouble than they were worth, but the three of them had been friends since grade school.

Pastor Ensley began his sermon and Justin did his best to pay attention.

Jeff

Jeff frowned. The sun was already past its zenith in the sky and they had yet to find any tracks left by the monster. Deep inside, he admitted his real hope was the monster would have found them by now. He’d hoped the thing would come after them to defend its territory. Maybe he’d even hoped it would remember him and come to finish what it started all those years ago.

“
Let’s go home, Jeff,” Tom said from where he sat on the grass. One of his shoes was off and he was inspecting the growing blisters on the sole of his foot.

At that moment, two blips suddenly appeared on Jeff’s motion detector screen. They weren’t large enough to be the creature and Jeff’s sudden hope vanished as he recognized that. “We have company coming,” he said. “Get up.”

Tom pulled himself to his feet, grimacing as two men in deputy uniforms from the Babble Creek Sheriff’s Department emerged from the trees. One was a giant in his own right, the other a more sly-looking man in his early thirties.

The shorter one was clearly in charge and smiled at them.

“
Now, gentlemen, I hope you have permits for those weapons you’re carrying.”

Jeff held his rifle like a professional killer, ready for trouble. Tom must have seen the look on his face because he moved between him and the deputies.

“
Whoa!” Tom shouted. “Nobody wants any trouble here, officers. We were about to head home.”

“
Coach Birchfield,” the deputy whose badge read
powell
said, “if you and your friend will hand over those rifles, we can all head back to town together. Hate to say it but I don’t know many people that go hunting with M-16s.”

Jeff watched in disgust as Tom tossed the big deputy his rifle then turned toward him.

“
Come on, man. Don’t make this worse than it is.”

Jeff sighed. It wasn’t supposed to end like this. Finally, he nodded in agreement, lowering his rifle. Tom went to reach down to pick up Jeff’s motion sensor from where he’d dropped it while he brought his rifle up at the deputies. Tom screamed. Something lifted him from his feet and yanked him into the mass of trees behind him too fast for even Jeff to get a clear look at what it was.

Jeff couldn’t believe he let the officers take his focus off the area around them. He didn’t hear the sensor beep and now the monster was here and it had the upper hand.

“
What the—?” Powell yelled as both he and the big man retreated a step and raised their shotguns.

Jeff felt a smile light up his face. He dropped to one knee, firing round after round into the woods where Tom had disappeared. The big deputy leapt on him, knocking the rifle from his hands.

“
Hold your fire!” Powell shouted.

The woods around them were quiet and still.

“
You idiots,” Jeff said. “He was dead the instant the thing took him. We’re going to be, too, if you don’t get it together.” He tore free of the big deputy’s hold on him and reached for his motion sensor. Jeff cursed when he saw its screen was shattered.

The two deputies were on edge and kept their weapons aimed at the trees. The short one, Powell, had discarded his weapon in favor of Tom’s M-16.

“
What exactly is out here with us, Taylor?” he demanded.

“
You bloody well know what it is!” Jeff snapped, trying to decide whether to make a run for it or stay and use the officers as bait in the hopes he could get a clear shot at the thing.

“
Do you think it’s gone?” the big deputy asked.

Tom’s headless corpse came flying at them from the trees as if in response to the question. It struck the big man, knocking him from his feet. Powell opened up on full auto, spraying the direction it came from while Jeff ducked low, swiveling his head to take in the rest of the area where they stood.

The monster would have guessed how they would react and anticipated Powell’s retribution.

Jeff saw no sign of the thing. “Stop,” he yelled. “Stop it. You’re just wasting ammo.”

Powell ceased fire, looking at Jeff as if he was completely insane.

“
It’s gone,” Jeff said, disappointed.

Brent hurled Tom’s decapitated body off of him and rolled over vomiting onto the weeds. The coach’s body was badly damaged. The ivory white of broken bone protruded through his skin in multiple places where the thing had clutched him. Blood poured from the top of his neck. Brent’s shirt was covered in it.

“
We need to move,” Jeff said. “Without my motion sensor, we’re sitting ducks out here.”

“
All right,” Powell conceded, helping Brent stand. Brent appeared rather shaken up and Jeff didn’t blame him.

“
This way.” He led them back toward the Taylor farm. “The next time someone dies, we have to make sure
it
does, too.”

By the time they reached the cars even Jeff was sweating. Powell appeared on the verge of collapse. While the man tried to catch his breath, he motioned for the other deputy to get on their patrol car’s radio.

“
It has our scent now,” Jeff said. “If it’s angry enough, it’ll come after us as long as we’re not in town.”

“
Sorry, man,” Powell said to Jeff.