Bigfoot War (9 page)

“
Hold on!” he told Rita.

The beast left him with only a couple choices: try to swerve and risk losing control of the car or hitting it head on. Brent jerked the wheel hard to the right and felt the bump of the wheels of the car bounce up as he went onto the sidewalk. He kept the gas floored and said a prayer as the car flew past the monster. It reached for the car with an impossibly long arm and managed to rip the siren from its top with a shower of sparks before Brent was clear of it and speeding down the road. Rita incoherently yelled at him as the thing tossed the siren aside. It chased after them.

“
It’s coming!” she said.

Brent saw the monster gaining ground in the rearview. Worse, he knew he couldn’t punch it all the way because someone might dart out in front of him thanks to the chaos in the streets.

What to do . . . what to do . . . what to
—

“
Screw it,” he said, slamming on the brakes and kicking the car in reverse. The patrol car lurched backwards. Almost immediately, metal met flesh and bone as him and Rita slammed into their seats from the impact. Their bodies jerked forward as one and Brent’s face smashed into the steering wheel; when he sat up he spat teeth and blood. He glanced over at Rita to see that her seatbelt had spared her from injury. The sasquatch was on the asphalt clutching its right leg. The white of bone stood out from underneath its fur and the thick muscles of its leg. It howled a deep, pain-filled cry.

“
I have to finish this,” Brent said as he got out of the car, shotgun in hand.

“
No!” she yelled as he pumped a round into the weapon’s chamber and started toward the beast. “I can’t lose you!”

Brent ignored her plea and hefted his shotgun as he walked toward the beast.

It saw him and tried to stand. A fresh howl cut the night as it toppled back to the ground. Brent shouldered the shotgun and fired it like a rifle. The blast nicked the monster’s forehead and cut its cry short. It was dazed as Brent walked closer to it, firing round after round into it with every step he took until the shotgun was empty and he stood next to the hulking mass of muscle and hair. He dropped the useless weapon and drew his Glock 40 as the beast slapped at him with its left arm. He barely avoided the blow as he took careful aim with his Glock and put a trio of rounds into the thing’s face. One round broke the monster’s nose, hitting it at just the right angle. Another thudded into its cheek, ricocheting off the bone. The last one struck Brent’s intended target and entered the monster’s brain as it reduced its left eye to pulp. The wounded creature finally slumped over, twitching. Brent emptied the Glock into it for good measure and popped out the clip, replacing it with a fresh one as he raced back to the patrol car where Rita stood waiting, apparently having gotten out to watch the battle.

As they hopped into the car together, she hugged him close. He gently pushed her away, knowing they had to get moving before another of the things made a run at them. Brent hoped the vehicle would still run. He knew there was nothing he could do to help the other people on the streets. The clip in his Glock was his last and he regretted using so many bullets to take the beast out, but he needed to know it was going to stay down. There was at least one more of those things behind them close by, already killing people at random as it moved through the town, roaring its fury and anger to the world.

Amanda

Amanda cowered in the closet of her bedroom. Her legs were pulled tight to her chest, huddled almost completely into a ball with her back pressed to the closet’s rear wall. When she had gotten home from the nightmarish events at the grocery store, the line to the Sheriff Department was busy. Even when she tried dialing 9-1-1, she got the same recorded message that all lines were busy. Her nerves were a wreck, and she kept replaying the images of Lewis fetching his rifle and the large ape-like monster emerging from the store, its matted fur and musky stench mixed with the hot smell of fresh blood.

As she shakily put away her groceries in an effort to take her mind off things, she instead told herself over and over there was nothing more she could have done or even do now. As she worked, an eerie feeling of being watched crept over her. She shoved the can of spaghetti sauce into the pantry and shut its door only to see the glowing red eyes of an animal staring at her through the kitchen window. Frozen, she felt drawn to those red eyes, analyzed them, waited for the creature to make the first move. The power was out and the small candles she had lit as she worked cast shadows throughout the half-dark room. Outside, a car drove by. The thing beyond the window stood to its full height; fur and muscle filled the pane. She could swear the house shook as the monster sprinted out of view.

Finally mustering the courage to move, she grabbed the biggest knife she could find from one of the drawers and ran deeper into the house. She went to her bedroom, shut the door and locked it behind her, and hid in her closet. She’d been there ever since.

There was no telling how much time had passed, but it had to be fully dark now. The noise of a vehicle turning into her drive roused her from her hiding place. Throwing open the closet, she darted to the room’s window. An expensive-looking SUV sat in her driveway with its lights on. There was a knock at the front door. A wave of relief flooded her.

“
Amanda?” a man’s voice called. “Are you in there?” The voice was familiar, but she couldn’t place it.

“
Yes!” she screamed as loud as she could, stumbling through the dark hallway as quickly as she could toward the main door. She opened it to see Justin standing there with a high-powered rifle in his hand.

“
You go to my church, don’t you?” Amanda asked not really knowing what to say.

The man nodded.

“
Yes, ma’am. My name is Justin.”

“
I know,” she said. She noticed him blink in surprise. She guessed he hadn’t expected her to know his name. When he spoke, his words stumbled one over the other.

“
That’s Fred in the Outback over there. Look, there’s trouble, a lot of it. Sheriff May has me rounding up people to take them to the high school. Everyone’s supposed to hole up there until help arrives.”

Amanda’s mind was overwrought with all the problems she faced. “Oh, okay,” was the best she could manage as Justin took her hand in his and dragged her to the car.

Powell

Babble Creek was a full-on war zone now. The mangled and broken corpses of its citizens were everywhere. The crumpled and broken forms of men, women, and children lay scattered everywhere in the streets. Powell counted five of the sasquatches from where he crouched inside the hardware store. The shouts and screams coming from the street were dying down. Most of the good ol’ boys that had shown up in a couple of pickup trucks carrying rifles and shotguns were dead. They drove in like maniacs and leaped from the back of the truck and its cab, their guns blazing. The creatures came at them in force. They hadn’t lasted long. For all their efforts to make a stand against the monsters, they’d only killed one and royally ticked off the others, catapulting the beasts from mere anger into outright rage. The sasquathes had closed in on them quickly and tore them to shreds. Powell didn’t think he would ever forget the sight of the one redneck in his # 3 Nascar shirt that two of the things went after at the same time. The man was ripped in half like a cartoon character, torn apart down the middle. The worst of it was the way his intestines stringed from one half of his body to the other like cheese on a hot pizza.

Powell had no choice but to ditch his car in the chaos. It drew too much attention, drawing the things to the noise of its engine like flies to rotting meat just as the redneck boys’ truck and guns had done.

His plan required him to stay alive, he reminded himself. Becca and everyone else needed him. In fact, his plan might be their only hope of staying alive until the Macon department boys rolled in. He couldn’t help but wonder what had become of Jeff Taylor. Had the man left town before the attack started or was he lying in a ditch somewhere, dead, like so many of the other people in Babble Creek? Powell wondered about Brent, too. So far, he hadn’t seen any sign of the big deputy. He hoped Brent was alive and Rita as well because he knew Brent had gone after her.

A loud conversation of grunting, animal-like voices called his attention to the street once more. The creatures seemed to be talking to each other in some sort of primitive, ape-like language. It was easy to underestimate their intelligence from their appearance. They were every inch the big, savage brutes you saw in B-grade horror flicks but only larger. Their discussion reached an abrupt end and the creatures as a pack raced away into the darkness beyond the dim glow of the fires that looked to have spread from Old Hank’s bar to several other buildings in town.

Powell waited a few minutes to make sure the beasts were gone then hit the streets himself. His destination was a good mile outside of town to the west. Steeling up his courage, he broke into a jog, trying hard not to look too closely at the bodies of the dead around him as he hurried on.

Becca

When Becca arrived at the high school, Justin’s SUV was already waiting in a sea of scattered and poorly parked vehicles that appeared to have been abandoned in a hurry. Three men stood guard outside the main door to the gym. She knew them all. The lanky and hyper Alan, who worked in the produce section of the super Walmart; Keith, the town’s most diehard motorcycle junkie who also couldn’t ride one worth a crap, but ran the town’s leather shop that catered mostly to tourists; and Hank, who she was surprised to see. Hank waved at her as she approached them.

“
Sorry about the bar,” she said sincerely.

Hank nodded and then shrugged, “Maybe it’s for the best anyway. Gives me a chance to start over.” He laughed.

All three men carried Glock 40s from the department’s arsenal. Hank was also armed with the ancient, double-barreled shotgun he’d kept handy underneath his bar counter for years. Keith held an AK-47 and she glared at him as he opened the door for her.

“
We’ll talk about getting a permit for that later,” Becca said to him.

He grinned at her with yellow teeth that had never seen a dentist in their life.

“
Sure thing.”

Around fifty people were in the gym. Quite a few of them were families. She counted over a dozen children. Most of the people busied themselves setting up cots, handing out food, and talking in worried tones of shock and disbelief about the horror that had come into their town. All of these folks were counting on her to get them through tonight alive. Her heart sank as she realized just how few were actually present in the gym. It should be overflowing and she should be having a headache from trying to conjure up more room. She didn’t allow herself to give in to despair though.

She spotted Justin in the crowd. She flagged him down.

He made his way to her. “Sheriff May, any word on our backup?”

Becca shook her head. While Powell and Justin had gone off on their tasks, she’d stayed at the station and tried to expedite the arrival of the help coming from the department over in Macon. Luck failed her. The best she had been able to get in terms of info on an ETA was they were in transit and would arrive as soon as they could.

Justin must have noticed how hopeless things seemed to her because he said, “Kind of feels like the Alamo, doesn’t it?”

She didn’t know if he was joking or not. Ignoring the question, she went to the business at hand. “How are things shaping up?”

“
As well as can be expected. When you give the word, we’re ready to seal the doors. They’ll be chained and barricaded,” he said. “We both know those creatures are ultra strong, but our efforts might buy us a minute or two tops. Our main line of defense is going to be the snipers on the roof. All the high-powered rifles we have will be up there and we were able to scrounge up some night scopes for most of them. So that and the distance of the building from any real cover should give us an advantage. We just need to make sure every shot counts. In the meantime, everybody in here who knows anything about how to shoot a gun—and even some that I trust enough to give a weapon to, anyway—are armed with what you let me take from your department’s storage. That’s better than nothing.” Justin suddenly looked guilty.

“
What?”

“
I feel bad saying this but . . . well, we could station some folks outside the doors, too. They’d be cut off with no real place to retreat to if things go south, but several of the men here made me promise to ask if they could volunteer to stand watch outside.”

Becca wasn’t ignorant enough to believe she could stop them in this situation if they were determined to, and Justin’s tone told her they were ready to get out there and start a Bigfoot Holocaust. Besides, it wasn’t a bad idea in terms of the gym’s overall defense. Becca nodded. “That’s fine, but if they’re real marksmen, I want them on the roof. They could do a lot more good for everyone from up there. Make sure they realize that, Justin.”

“
So that just leaves one question, ma’am,” he said. “When do we lock up and seal this place tight? Every minute we wait is a risk.”

“
I know.” She frowned. “Let’s wait another ten minutes or so for Powell, Brent, and any other stragglers that might be coming. If they’re not here by then, go ahead and chain the doors.”