Swamp Monster Massacre (13 page)

“Jack!”
 

Liz’s scream caused just enough of a hitch in his swing for the Bigfoot to twist out of harm’s way. The machete sliced into the grass with a resounding
thud.
 

Rooster looked over and saw Liz pointing in the trees. When he looked back at the Bigfoot, it was gone!
 

“Rooster!” Liz shouted, waving frantically for him.
 

When he got to her side, he pulled up short and swallowed back bile.
 

The mother Bigfoot, all nine feet or so of her, had pinned Jack’s arms to his sides and held him off the ground like you’d lift a plastic lawn chair. It grunted at them, and Rooster could feel the hate in its scarlet glare.
 

“Don’t come any closer!” Jack warned. His voice came out in a pained rush.
 

“Rooster, we have to do something,” Liz pleaded.
 

That’s when he saw Jack’s eyes travel downward, and knew the little guy had a plan up his sleeve.
 

Chapter Twenty-Two

Rooster turned to her and said, “Liz, I want you to look away.”

“What?”

She had to have heard him wrong.
 

“I need you to get behind me and don’t look at Jack until I tell you to.”

“But—“

“Don’t argue with me!”
 

His big hand rested on her hip and guided her behind him.
 

Her mind flew in a hundred different directions. She’d already seen people torn to pieces and watched her own sister disappear under the crushing weight of one of those animals. If she and Rooster attacked the mother skunk ape, maybe it would let Jack go and they could, at the very least, scare it off.
 

The tension in Rooster’s voice and grip told her there was no room for argument. She slipped behind his broad back, felt the heaving of his chest. The sky darkened and the smell of rain infused the air. She twitched when Jack yelled, and had to bite the palm of her hand to keep from running to his aid.
 

“Aaagggh, it hurts!” Jack wailed. The mother Bigfoot didn’t take its eyes off Rooster. It was using Jack as a warning or a threat—or, most likely, a promise.
This is what I have in store for you
. There was something almost human in its penetrating gaze. Only humans had the capacity to hate, to seek revenge, to kill for the sake of killing.
 

Rooster gave back as much as he took.

“You just hang in there,” he said flatly.
 

When he’d first spied Jack, his impulse had been to charge and let the machete do all the talking. When he saw the gun in Jack’s hand, he forced himself to hold back.
 

“I’ve got…at least…one bullet left,” Jack wheezed.
 

The Bigfoot growled, low and menacing, and a thick line of drool fell from its mouth onto Jack’s cheek.
 

“I think I…hear…more of them.”

More of them?
Rooster hoped he meant the one that got away and had retreated to the rear, sans one third of its fingers.
 

Rooster tensed when the Bigfoot opened its mouth wide, so wide it looked like it could swallow a cantaloupe whole, and slowly took in the top of Jack’s head. Teeth that were as jagged as snapped timber punctured his scalp and scraped downward. Jack’s eyes went wide and his body went rigid.
 

When Rooster took a half step forward, Jack shouted, “Don’t!”

Jack’s right arm was free enough so he could still bend at the elbow. He raised the gun up as high as he could, until it was pointing directly under his chin.
 

There was a sickening sound of crunching as the Bigfoot moved its lower jaw from side to side, gouging deep gullies into his skull. Blood flowed in racing rivulets down his face. The pain must have been excruciating.
 

“Jack, you don’t have to do that!” Rooster yelled.
 

The urge to grind that mother up into chop meat was burning his soul to ashes.
 

“I’m…dead…anyway. Be nice…to take…charge for…once.”

Rooster saw the Bigfoot flex its arms and apply more pressure to Jack’s body. It leered at Rooster while it mouthed Jack’s head like an ice pop. The fucking thing was getting off watching Rooster stand there, helpless.
 

You’ve got a surprise coming, asshole
.

Blood bubbled from the creature’s mouth, and for a second Jack looked like he was going to pass out. His eyes rolled back, and he shut his lids tight. His finger pulled on the trigger.
 

The blast was quick and true. The bullet entered just under his chin, sprouting a fountain of gore.
 

The Bigfoot jerked its head back so quickly, it brought the top of Jack’s skull right off. Jack’s brains cascaded several feet into the air. The bullet must have ricocheted off part of his skull, because it didn’t travel straight through and into the Bigfoot’s mouth. Instead, it came out the side of Jack’s head and cut a deep furrow into the damned thing’s left cheek. It dropped Jack’s body and howled in surprise, pain and anger.
 

“Get ready,” Rooster said to Liz. He was shit-sure it was going to charge them like a riled-up bull.

Instead, it balled its hands into tight firsts, bent at the waist and roared at him before charging back into the woods.
 

Shit! You’re going the wrong way
, Rooster lamented.
 

He spun around to face Liz. “I’m going to give you a choice and you have five seconds to decide. You can either come with me while I track down that son of a bitch, or you can hole up in one of the trees and wait for me. When I get back, I’ll get us to my father’s safe house.”

Liz saw Jack’s body on the ground and quickly replied, “Let’s go.”

Both Bigfoots ran recklessly, tearing down anything in their path. Following the sounds of their mad dash, and their overwhelming scent that only seemed to intensify, was easy. Rooster called up reserves of energy from every cell in his body to keep close behind. Liz was also holding her own.
 

The clouds finally burst, and rain came in driving buckets. In less time than it takes to change your underwear, the ground had transformed into a muddy mess. More than a couple of times, Rooster lost his footing and almost took a header.
 

They were close!
 

“Eeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaggggggghhhhhh!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. He wanted them to know he was on their tails, that death was just a moment away.
 

Suddenly, the heavy sounds of their escape ceased.
 

“What the hell?”

Liz ran into him. “Sound like they’re tired of running. They must be hoping we run right into them, the way Maddie and I set them up last night.”

Rooster swung the machete at a branch near his face, sending the branch spiraling to the soggy ground. “Well, I’d hate to disappoint them.”

He plunged ahead, his voice raw from screaming like a wild man.
 

Something snatched his foot and he hit the ground on his side, sliding in the mud until his head cracked into a hardwood tree.
 

The Bigfoot without its fingers rose up from a stand of downed branches and leaves. Before Rooster could get back to his feet, it was on him, latching on to his leg and squeezing hard enough to make his thigh pop. Pain only stoked the fires of his fury.
 

He swooped the machete upward, burying it into the monster’s arm. The Bigfoot flinched, and the machete, still in its arm, was pried loose from Rooster’s hand.
 

Ignoring the blade, the Bigfoot dropped to all fours and scampered until it was directly over him. Hot drool spattered his face as it huffed and growled. It was the first time Rooster had been so close, their noses just inches from one another. There was nothing remotely human about it. The beast that pinned him to the mud was no missing link, no offshoot of the simian tree. It was something altogether different, culling the darker, more savage parts of both species.
 

Rooster tried to roll out from under its incredible girth, but it stopped him cold with a solid punch to the ground, burying its hairy fist into the muck.
 

Well, fuck me sideways. Never saw my end coming this way.
 

“Go ahead, kill me,” Rooster hissed, recoiling from the rancid breath that blew over him in steady waves. “But always remember, I got your kid
and
your brothers, you big, stupid son of a bitch!”

Chapter Twenty-Three

The skunk ape’s attention was fully on Rooster. Liz checked around for the bigger, meaner mother, but it was hard to see or hear anything in the downpour. She only had one chance and no time to hesitate.
 

Pushing all of her survival instincts aside, she ran hard, vaulting atop the creature’s shoulders armed with nothing but her own two hands and her fading hopes at avenging Maddie’s death.
 

She grabbed hold of the coarse hair that matted its neck and tugged with all of her might. It pulled back and tried to butt her with the back of its head, but she was quick and shifted sideways. Rooster was still locked beneath it. She pulled harder, driving her knees into its side, hoping there was a kidney nearby that would not take kindly to the pressure.
 

“Get…off of him!” she keened.
 

It shook from side to side like a dog shuddering water from its fur. She fought to keep her purchase. When it swung its arms back to snatch her, the handle of the machete struck her in the ribs and punched every bit of air from her lungs. The impact dislodged the machete from the skunk ape’s arm and it clanged against a tree root. She gasped, loosening her fingers and flipping off the wounded creature’s back. Liz hit the ground and spots danced before her eyes. Rainwater filled her open mouth as she fought for breath. She felt she would drown in the process.
 

Liz turned to her side to force the water to run out. It also meant she had turned her back on the skunk ape. She was close to blacking out. Her diaphragm hitched uncontrollably, and it felt like an eternity since she had last felt the cool kiss of oxygen.
 

An iron claw wrapped itself around her ankle, and she was suddenly upside down and staring at the ground. Everything sounded so far away. Nothing made sense. The neurons in her brain misfired, and a growing numbness shot through her extremities.
 

She was having a hard time keeping her eyes focused, though she did see Rooster rise up from the ground, his machete pointed outward down by his waist. He resembled every childhood nightmare of the bogeyman, except this one
murdered
the monster under your bed.
 

The machete sliced through the air, and suddenly she was level with the ground. She finally felt her body relax, and her mind went blank.
 

Rooster cackled as he watched the Bigfoot toss about, staring wide-eyed at the spot where its hand used to be. Blood came out in long, stuttering streams.

He hammered the machete into its shoulder, cleaving the base of its neck. That stopped its bawling. He ran behind it, slicing where its Achilles tendons should be. It dropped to its knees, bleeding out, unable to walk. Next, he took off its other hand.
 

It whimpered on the ground, trembling from shock.
 

Rooster felt no pity.
 

He straddled its chest, made sure to look it dead in the eye, and pushed the tip of the machete deep, right below the arch of the breastbone.
 

He watched it die, waited until its eyes clouded over. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen death pluck the soul from a body. When he was sure the deed was done, he spit into its gaping mouth, plucking the machete out with a loud
squish
.
 

Only momma left.
 

Liz was still out cold, but her chest was rising steadily.
 

He couldn’t bring her with him to get the mother. It was too big, too dangerous. And like him, it had cold hatred in its heart.
 

Looking around, he found the makeshift hideout that the Bigfoot had built to ambush him. Carrying Liz away from the body, he repositioned the branches so they camouflaged her. Wiping her hair from her face, he knelt down and whispered, “I don’t know if you can hear me, but I need you to sit tight. I’m going after the last one, but I’m coming back for you. My daddy’s place isn’t far now. I don’t know how I know that, but it just feels right. Jesus, I hope you don’t get up and wander, because there’s no telling how lost you’ll get out here. Just sleep for now. I ain’t leaving this swamp without you.”

There was no way of knowing if she comprehended a single word, but he had to try.
 

The rain was relentless, and dark shadows nestled into every corner of the woods.