“You want help?” the truck driver asked. “I got a shotgun in my rig.”
Shaking his head, Martin growled, “I got this.”
The bell above the diner’s door jingled as Martin went out into the parking lot. He didn’t even bother to try to scare the beast away. Trudy figured he was as scared of the thing as she was. Martin braced his rifle against his shoulder and took aim at the beast as it noticed him. The beast roared and charged forward, its long legs carrying it across the lot at a speed Trudy wouldn’t have thought possible for something as large as it was. Martin’s rifle cracked. His shot caught the beast dead-on in its chest. The beast grunted as red splattered outward from the hole the bullet tore in its flesh but kept right on coming. It was on Martin before he could get another round chambered. It slapped the rifle from his hands, breaking the weapon into splinters and twisted metal. Martin tried to scream but in a flash of the thing’s claws, his lower jaw was gone, along with a good bit of his upper throat.
Trudy screamed then. The beast heard her and its head whipped around to look into the diner through the large window she and the others were watching it through.
“God help us,” Mr. Keogh stammered, backpedaling away from the window.
“Your boss got any other weapons in here?” the trucker shouted at her as Trudy stood transfixed by Martin’s sudden death, staring at his corpse where it had collapsed onto the asphalt of the parking lot. When she didn’t answer him, he snatched up the steak knife from his plate, wielding it like a dagger.
The beast came leaping through the window. Glass shattered, exploding in all directions. Its heavy feet thudding onto the floor of the diner, the beast snarled at her. Trudy squealed and made a run for it as the trucker came at the beast from behind. He jumped onto its back, plunging the knife he held into the side of its neck. The beast reared up, flexing its arms, and flung him from its back. The trucker crashed on top of a nearby table. It broke under the impact of his weight and hit the floor with him. Before the trucker could get up, the beast kicked at him. Its foot caught the underside of his chin, shattering it, as it sent his head flying away from his body like a football being punted.
Mr. Keogh had nowhere to run, not that he could move very fast at his age anyway. He had picked up his walking stick and now stood his ground facing the beast. Trudy realized the brave old man was trying to give her the time she needed to get away. She continued her run towards the restrooms and darted into the women’s, shutting the door behind her. It was a single-occupant room with a lock on its door that she shoved into place. Through the door, she could hear Mr. Keogh’s screams and the beast’s snarls. Both ended abruptly. The only sound that remained was that of heavy breathing and Trudy knew it wasn’t Mr. Keogh that was making the noise. Her body shook with sobs as she cowered in the restroom, praying that the beast would just go away. Hope of that died as she heard its heavy footfalls crossing the diner, getting closer to the restroom with each step.
Trudy didn’t want to die. She had a lot of life ahead of her. Her eyes scanned the room for any kind of weapon she could use to defend herself with, but there wasn’t one. All she could do was wait and hope the beast decided she wasn’t worth the trouble to come after.
The beast walked through the restroom door, breaking it apart as if it wasn’t even there. Trudy’s eyes bugged as she met the thing’s yellow eyes and knew she was dead. One of its massive hands reached out to close over her face as its thick fingers sunk into the sides of her head. Her body twitched as those fingers entered her brain and then it was all over.
****
“We got calls coming in from all over town,” Gail told Nicki and Kevin.
“How many?” Kevin asked.
“Dozens,” Gail answered. “The sheriff was right about Sasquatch being real, and they’re all over this town tearing it apart as we speak.”
“We can’t just sit here and do nothing,” Nicki said with determination in her voice as she picked up the shotgun lying on her desk and started for the door leading out of the department.
“Now hold on!” Kevin yelled at her. “Going out there by yourself is just asking to get torn apart.”
“Good thing I’m not going alone then,” Nicki told him. “Grab your AR and come on.”
Kevin gaped at her with his mouth nearly hanging open. “I… I think we should wait for the sheriff to get back.”
“Get your gun and come on, deputy!” Nicki snapped. “There are people dying out there.”
Shaking his head in protest, Kevin snatched his AR and followed her out of the building. Snow was falling as they stepped into the parking lot. It was just beginning to stick to the ground. A cold wind blew over them as Nicki tossed Kevin the keys to her patrol car.
“You drive, I’ll shoot,” she said, sliding into its passenger seat and rolling down her window.
“You’re crazy, you know that?” Kevin told her as he got in and cranked up the patrol car.
“I’ve been called worse, now shut up and get us into town,” Nicki barked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Kevin said, kicking the patrol car into reverse and swinging it about so he could leave the lot. The car bounced as it rocketed onto the main road on a course that would take it along Lowah’s main street.
“Do you even have a plan?” Kevin asked without taking his eyes off the road ahead of the patrol car.
“Yeah,” Nicki assured him. “Those things are supposed to be everywhere in town, according to Gail, right? Well, you drive us by them and I’ll blow their heads off.”
Despite everything he was feeling and the adrenaline pumping through him, or maybe because of it, Kevin laughed out loud at her answer to his question.
They had barely gone any distance at all when Nicki and Kevin spotted a Sasquatch on the road ahead of them. It was coming out from the end of the main street that they were about to turn onto. The brown hair covering the Sasquatch’s body was slicked with blood that clearly wasn’t its own. It clutched a human leg in one of its hands, slinging it about in the air like a kid would a baseball bat. The Sasquatch spotted them too. With a feral snarl, it came bounding towards their patrol car. Nicki leaned out the window, taking aim at it with her AR even as the patrol car sped at the beast. She held the AR’s trigger tight, the weapon having been converted into a fully automatic one, and hosed the thing with a barrage of rounds that ripped at its chest, arms, and shoulders.
Kevin jerked the wheel hard at the last moment and swerved around the monster. It grabbed at Nicki but missed as the patrol car zipped past it. Nicki turned her head to look back at the monster. It was bleeding from where her shots had struck it but was far from being out of the fight. The Sasquatch whirled about to chase after the patrol car as Nicki shifted about in her seat to get into position to fire at it again. This time, she aimed for the Sasquatch’s face and head as she pulled the trigger. She emptied the rest of her magazine into the growling monster and watched as her shots tore out one of its eyes, mangled its nose, and punched gaping holes in the front of its throat. The Sasquatch staggered and toppled onto the road as she ducked inside the patrol car, already struggling to eject her AR’s spent magazine and replace it with a new one.
“Frag me!” Kevin shouted. “I can’t believe you actually were able to kill that thing!”
“Just keep driving!” Nicki ordered him, shouting the words though he was right next to her.
“Oh Lord…no,” Nicki heard Kevin mutter as Lowah’s main street came into view.
The town of Lowah, Alaska was a war zone. A fire raged in one of the buildings, spewing black tendrils of smoke that drifted skyward. Storefront windows were shattered. Abandoned cars blocked the road along the street. One car, apparently trying to flee the chaos, had gone up on the sidewalk only to crash into a streetlight. The pole was tilted over, leaning dangerously as sparks flew from it above the crumpled hood of the car. There were bodies scattered about everywhere, mangled, even half-eaten corpses. The few survivors ran about as brown-haired
monsters chased after them, roaring and snarling at their prey.
Kevin slammed on the patrol car’s brakes seeing that navigating Lowah’s main street was going to be impossible at any kind of real speed. Nicki’s shoulders slumped as she sat in the passenger seat next to him. She finished clicking a new magazine home into her rifle and stared at the destruction ahead of them.
“So much for that plan,” Kevin muttered under his breath. Nicki heard him anyway.
“Get your weapon and get out of the car, Kevin,” Nicki ordered him. “We need to stop this now.”
“And how are we going to do that, Nicki?” he shouted, pounding the patrol car’s steering wheel with his fists. “There are only two of us.”
“We have to try,” she said and then was out of the car, her AR held ready as she moved to take aim at a Sasquatch chasing two teenagers. The boy wore a Rush shirt, his dark hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. The girl was pale and blonde. There was a Goth edge to her appearance. Her clothes were black, jeans beneath a loose-flowing shirt and a denim jacket. They didn’t see her, but they heard the chattering of her weapon as she opened fire on the beast that was closing in behind them. Her bullets tore a line of jagged flesh along the Sasquatch’s back. It shrieked at the unexpected pain and spun around, its attention now fixated on her. The kids kept running without looking back. Nicki would have told them to run anyway.
The Sasquatch came bounding down the street at her as Nicki stood her ground. Bullets tore at the Sasquatch’s chest but still the beast came on, snarling and raging against the rounds striking it. Nicki’s AR clicked empty. Cursing, she popped its spent magazine. The beast would be on her before she could reload and she knew it. Tossing her rifle aside, Nicki drew her sidearm, holding the pistol in a two-handed grip in front of her, pointed at the approaching monster. She forced herself to keep calm enough to aim her shots properly. The pistol cracked in rapid succession as she blew out the Sasquatch’s eyes. It took her five shots to do it, some of them missing her targets to dig into the beast’s forehead and cheeks. She had succeeded in blinding the beast though. The Sasquatch stopped in its tracks, shaking its head wildly and growling. Nicki saw two more of the beasts coming her way. One leaped out of the shattered window of a store and ran towards her from her left. The other had just flipped over a jeep that had been left in the road and turned to see her as it heard the gunfire. Bearing its teeth, the Sasquatch sprinted in her direction. Nicki knew she didn’t stand a chance with only her pistol but struggled to shove a fresh magazine into it anyway.
As the faster of the two Sasquatch made it to within mere feet of where she stood, suddenly Kevin was at her side. His shotgun thundered, its blast punching into the beast’s guts. The beast’s charge came to a halt as it staggered backward, the purple, red-slicked strands of its intestines spilling out of its abdomen. Kevin quickly pumped another round into the chamber of his shotgun and fired again. It struck the Sasquatch in its already-ruptured guts. The Sasquatch was vomiting blood as it fell sideways onto the street with a loud thud.
The light snow that was falling began to really pick up in its intensity. The temp continued to drop too. There were patches of ice along the road and the sidewalks. The other beast hit one of them and its feet flew out from under it. The creature went down onto its elbows. Kevin took advantage of its plight using the opportunity to put a round into the top of its skull before the beast could spring back to its feet. The blast caved in its skull in an explosion of bone fragments and brain matter. The beast flopped fully back onto the street and laid there unmoving as a puddle of red grew around it.
Nicki panicked as she realized the two of them now had the attention of every Sasquatch along the street. She counted at least eight of the monsters coming at them. They had to make a run for it or they were dead.
“Back in the car!” Nicki screamed at Kevin as she was already running for it. The patrol car was still running. She dove into its driver’s seat, kicking it into reverse without waiting for Kevin. He was pushing himself to the limits of what his body could give as he sprinted to catch up to the car as she turned it around. Just as she finished the turn she was making, he reached its passenger door. A hair-covered hand exploded through his chest from behind him, showering Nicki and the interior of the patrol car with his blood. Kevin’s eyes were wide as he looked down at the Sasquatch’s fist sticking out of his chest. The beast ripped its hand free as Kevin’s body dropped onto the road and Nicki put her foot down on the gas. The patrol car lurched forward, taking off like a missile. The Sasquatch managed to get a swing at it before the patrol car was out of its reach. Its claws dug deep grooves in the metal of the side of the car as it sped away.
Nicki knew she wasn’t out of the woods yet. There were two of the Sasquatch coming along the road in front of her. She didn’t dare try to plow through them. The beasts were too strong and massive. More than likely, hitting them would do as much damage to her patrol car as it would to them. Nicki swerved to the right as the first of them met the car. She dodged it, the car bouncing as its right wheels went off the side of the road. The car bounced again as she corrected its path, bringing it back onto the road. The beast she had just passed roared in fury at the patrol car that was now beyond its reach. Nicki watched it in the rearview mirror. The beast must have spotted easier prey because instead of chasing after the car, it broke into a run heading in the opposite direction. God help whoever it had spotted, Nicki thought as she refocused her attention on saving her own butt. There was still one of the Sasquatch and the freedom of the open road. As her head jerked around towards the road ahead of her again, she saw the last Sasquatch already close enough to be within reach of the patrol car. It had run up beside her and kept pace with the fast-moving car as its legs pumped beneath it. Nicki nearly peed herself as she looked over into its yellow eyes. Her foot pushed down on the gas even harder, but the pedal was already floored. The Sasquatch took a swing at the door next to her. Its claws caught in the metal of the door and metal squealed and crumpled as the beast ripped it from the vehicle. Thankfully, the weight of the door threw the beast off balance as it ran and it stumbled. The door went flying as the Sasquatch toppled onto the road, rolling along it. Her patrol car sped onward, leaving the Sasquatch and Lowah’s main street behind.
****
One of the two patrol cars lay on its side from where the Sasquatch had forced it from the road. The car was on fire, having exploded from the leaking fumes of its ruptured gas tank. Larry hadn’t made it out of the car in time and was somewhere inside it burning. Aurelio’s car was turned sideways in the center of the road. He had been able to stop without being forced into a crash too but only just. Harold was yelling as he fired into the Sasquatch emerging from the trees with his AR-15. His bullets hammered into the beasts, tearing at their flesh but did nothing to halt the advancing rush of the monsters. Aurelio’s forehead was bleeding from where his seatbelt had failed to save him from smashing it against the side window of the car as it had come to a sudden and uncontrolled stop. He was fighting off waves of nausea and suspected he had a concussion. Wiping blood away dripping from above his eyes, he leveled the shotgun he clutched at one of the Sasquatch and sent the monster to Hell with a blast that reduced the bulk of its face to a splatter of red pulp. Scott had found an automatic shotgun and a pocket full of magazines for it at Lou Hyatt’s place. He laid waste to two of the beasts that came at him as the automatic shotgun’s barrel boomed with each rapidly fired shot. One of the Sasquatch coming at him lost an arm, and the other took a round to the front of its throat and went down instantly.
“We have to get out of here!” Aurelio heard himself shout and wondered how he had the presence of mind to get the words out.
“No freaking crap!” Scott shouted back at him, reloading his weapon as another Sasquatch closed in on him.
Aurelio watched as a Sasquatch endured the wounds Harold’s AR was inflicting upon it to get within reach of the deputy. It backhanded Harold, knocking his
head from his shoulders in a splash of red that splattered over it and the road. Harold’s head went bouncing into the trees beyond the side of the road.
Scott’s shotgun started thundering again. It just the two of them on the road now, alone and surrounded by God only knew how many of the Sasquatch that were continuing to pour out of the trees. Aurelio had known the Sasquatch were dangerous and out there, but he sure hadn’t expected the creatures to attack two patrol cars on the move like they had. The Sasquatch had come out of nowhere, hitting them as they drove back toward town. Aurelio could only hope that this was all of the things. If there were more of them, then the town of Lowah was truly fragged and there was nothing he could do to save it even if he somehow managed to survive the mess he was in.
Aurelio heard the sirens before he saw the patrol speeding up the road towards the scene of the battle. His heart leaped with hope as it came into sight. The car was missing its driver’s side door and Nicki was behind its wheel. The fact that she was coming from the direction of town wasn’t a good sign though.
“Run for the car!” Aurelio yelled at Scott.
Scott dropped another Sasquatch with the thunderous roar of multiple blasts being fired and then sprinted after him. Nicki swerved the car sideways, bringing its passenger side doors around right in front of them as the two of them reached it. Aurelio clawed his door opened and jumped into the car. It was moving even as Scott managed to get into its back seat. One of the Sasquatch slammed into its side right where its two side doors met. Instead of trying to get at either of them though, the beast attacked the car itself, bringing its two balled-up fists down onto of the car’s roof. The roof folded inward from the blow. Both of the doors’ windows shattered beneath the crumpling metal of the roof. Scott cried out as the shards of broken glass exploded over them. One of them pierced his left eye despite the arm he jerked up in an effort to protect his face. Blood poured from it as Scott flopped back against the seat he was in. Aurelio felt shards of the glass sinking into the skin of his cheek and neck, but none of them were lethal. Nicki gunned the gas and the car shot forward. She fought with the patrol car’s steering wheel to bring it around, facing away from the other Sasquatch charging at it. The car shot along the road like a rocket as Nicki kept the gas floored. That kind of driving was dangerous with the snow falling and the patches of ice that could be anywhere along the road in front of the car as it sped away from the monsters. The Sasquatch all gave chase but quickly fell behind, unable to match the car’s speed once it passed forty-five miles an hour.
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