Aurelio twisted around in his seat to look back at Scott. “You okay, man?”
Scott had one hand covering the socket his left eye had been in. “Hurts like hell, but I’m not dead yet!”
Seeing that there was nothing he could do to help Scott, Aurelio looked at Nicki. “Where the hell did you come from anyway?”
“Town,” Nicki told him, her voice sad as she said the word. “Lowah’s a war zone, Sheriff. Those things are everywhere. Kevin’s dead and I barely got out of there alive.”
Aurelio ran his fingers through his hair. They came away wet with sweat and blood.
“What are we going to do, Sheriff?” Nicki asked.
“There’s not much we can do in the shape we’re in, Nicki,” he told her honestly. “Take us to Lou Hyatt’s place. We can hole up there and regroup until we can figure things out.”
“Yes, sir!” Nicki barked, keeping her eyes on the road ahead of the patrol car.
****
The sun was setting as Nicki drove the patrol car up the drive below Lou Hyatt’s house. The snow was still falling. The ground was white and the gravel of the drive was covered over in snow too. The patrol car had barely made it up the last bit of the drive. Aurelio doubted it would have if he had been the one driving and was thankful that Nicki had been at the car’s wheel. She shoved the car into park and killed its engine.
Scott had passed out along the way. The back seat of the car was wet with his blood. The deputy was still breathing though as Aurelio and Nicki got him out of the backseat and carried his weight between them up to the house. The door was torn away from the entrance and they were able to take him directly inside. The living room was a mess and the rotting bodies of Lou Hyatt and one of the Sasquatch still lay on its floor. They hurried through the living room into what looked to be a workroom beyond it. Aurelio cleared the top of the worktable with a sweep of his arm, knocking gun parts, tools, and ammo from it. He and Nicki lifted Scott onto the table and laid him there. Both of them were sweating despite the cold that was leaking into the house when they were done. The house’s power was still on, but apparently with the front door gone, the heat wasn’t turned high enough to keep up with the level of cold seeping in.
“He’s in bad shape,” Nicki said.
“It’s mostly shock,” Aurelio told her as he looked about the workroom. “We need to get the main door back in place and boarded up somehow.”
“Ha. Good luck with that. Did you see that thing? It’s solid metal. Even the two of us together aren’t going to be able to lift it,” Nicki argued. “It wasn’t enough to keep those things out before, and there’s nothing we can do to make it any stronger even if we could move it.”
“Frag it!” Aurelio shouted, losing his cool. Most of his deputies were dead, his town was under attack, and he was stuck out in the middle of nowhere with nothing he could really do about any of it.
Nicki had never seen the sheriff lose it before. It shook her to her core. She leaned against the table Scott lay on and looked down at her fellow deputy with tears in her eyes.
“Lou keeps a full-out arsenal in this house,” Aurelio said. “We need to find it and gear up.”
“Why?” Nicki stared at him. “We can’t go back into Lowah. We’d never make it out of there again.”
“We can’t stay here either, Nicki,” Aurelio said, trying to keep his tone calmer as he spoke this time. “What do you think those things are going to do when they’re done with everybody in town? They’ll come looking for us next. Count on it.”
Aurelio took his cell out of his pocket. Its screen was cracked and it wouldn’t power on. He threw the phone into the wall in a fit of unbridled rage. The phone smashed to bits, its pieces clattering onto the floor of the room.
“You wouldn’t have been able to get a signal this far out anyway,” Nicki commented. “Lou had a landline. That’s how he called into the station. We just need to find where he keeps it.”
“Right. Good thinking,” Aurelio said, though he was still shaking with anger and frustration that he was fighting to control. “You find that phone and call for help. I’ll go looking for where Lou keeps his guns.”
“And who am I supposed to call?” Nicki asked.
“Somebody, anybody!” Aurelio snapped at her and then marched out of the workroom.
Nicki watched him go as her hopes of them living to see the dawn continued to sink.
Aurelio searched through the house until he came to a locked room. The door was made of a thick, heavy wood and clearly reinforced against being breached. He was forced to go back and get Scott’s shotgun in order to blast his way into it. Once he was in it, Aurelio saw that was indeed where Lou stored his weapons. Rifles and shotgun of all sorts hung in racks on its walls and crates of ammo and explosives filled the floor space between them. Aurelio gave a low whistle as he took in the sight of it all. If he had known the extent of what Lou had up here before, now Aurelio likely would have been forced to lock him up. Quite a good number of the weapons were illegal for a civilian to own, and that wasn’t even considering the explosives. There was a small box of C4, for frag’s sake, and another that contained a dozen grenades. Aurelio started browsing through it all for something that was not only easy enough to carry on foot but had the firepower to bring down one of the monsters that were tearing apart his town with one shot. Settling on a Barrett M82 .50 caliber sniper rifle, he slung it onto his shoulder by its strap. The rifle was heavy, but he figured he could handle it. Aurelio didn’t stop there though. He replaced the pistol holstered on his hip with a much more powerful Desert Eagle. There were three additional of the rifle’s detachable box magazines containing ten rounds each. He found a backpack and shoved them into it, adding it to his back as well. Almost as an afterthought, Aurelio pocketed a grenade from the box of them and smiled. He was truly geared up for war and the monsters were going to pay for all the lives they had taken in his town.
When Aurelio returned to the workroom, Nicki was already back there too.
“I see you found what you were looking for,” she commented on his Rambo-ish appearance.
“I did.” Aurelio allowed himself a wry grin. “Were you able to find Lou’s phone and get help?”
Nicki shook her head. “Oh, I found it, but the line was dead. We’re still on our own.”
Lowah was a very secluded town. Few came and went from it and not many passed through either. It was an out-of-the-way place that didn’t offer much to those driving along the interstate outside of it. The interstate was enough distance away to make a trip into it not worth a driver’s time anyway. Aurelio found himself hoping that someone in town had gotten the word out about what was happening in Lowah. There was always a chance that someone had and that help was on the way. He couldn’t count on it though.
“It’s easy to see that you’re serious about heading back into town,” Nicki commented.
“I am,” Aurelio answered her. “It’s my town and my job to defend it.”
“You’re whacked in the head, boss,” Scott said, laughing. The deputy was awake again. He had apparently come to while Aurelio was gearing up. Nicki had bandaged Scott up. Gauze ran around his head to hold the bandage in place covering his ruined left eye.
“There’s no shortage of medical supplies here.” Nicki laughed as she saw Aurelio staring at Scott. “Heck, there’s not really a shortage of anything in this house. On top of it being built like a bunker, Lou really packed this place full of everything he thought he might need during the apocalypse.”
Scott looked at the sheriff with his remaining good eye. “I was serious, Aurelio. Going back there is only going to get you killed. Don’t be stupid about this.”
“It’s my choice to make, Scott,” Aurelio replied. “I guess that means you two aren’t coming with me then, huh?”
A moment of silence ticked by before either of them answered him.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Nicki said sadly. “I just can’t do it.”
�
��There could still be people alive in town depending on us,” Aurelio told her.
“She’s right and you know it, Aurelio,” Scott backed up Nicki. “Someone has to survive until help comes to let the world know about those monsters. This place is like a fortress, and there’s plenty of firepower here apparently from the looks of you to defend it with too.”
“I can’t believe you’re just giving up, Scott.” Aurelio was heartbroken by what seemed to him like Scott’s betrayal of not only the friendship they shared but their duty too.
“I’m not,” Scott argued. “I just know when to call it quits. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this fight is already over and those things out there in the woods won it.”
“You can take the patrol car,” Nicki told him, tossing Aurelio the keys. “If you can get it out of the drive anyway.”
Aurelio caught them, snatching them out of the air. He didn’t know what else to say, so he just his turned his back on his two deputies and headed out of the workroom.
“Sheriff…” he heard Nicki call out to him but he ignored her. They had all made up their minds as to what they were about to do and all the talking and arguing in the world wasn’t going to change that fact.
Aurelio walked out of the house into the cold air of the night. The snow was still falling. He looked up at the nearly starless sky and sighed, taking a moment to drink in the beauty around him. If he had to die, at least he was going to do it defending his home. Having committed himself to what lay ahead, he walked to the patrol car, unslung his Barrett M82 and bag of magazines, tossing them into the passenger seat. Sliding behind the wheel, he cranked it up. The car fought against the snow piling up in the drive but managed to break free of it. Slowly and carefully, he drove down the mountain towards town.
****
An hour had passed since Aurelio had said his abrupt and painful goodbyes to Scott and Nicki, if you could even call what transpired between them goodbyes. He still was struggling with the fact that neither of them had come with him. He had expected more from both of them. Aurelio had ditched the patrol car as he had gotten close to town. The sound of its engine would have only served to draw the attention of the Sasquatch anyway, and he was trying to avoid that for the time being.
Aurelio had his Barrett M82 set up and lay in the snow on his belly watching a small group of Sasquatch that were feeding on the body of a woman near the edge of town. Her car sat in the road. They had ripped her out of it before settling in for their meal. Aurelio hadn’t arrived in time to save her, but he sure as heck was going to avenge her. He zeroed in on the largest of the Sasquatch. The M82 was easy to aim. It had been designed as a sniper rifle if he remembered correctly. Aurelio took a breath as his finger stroked the rifle’s trigger. The M82 fired. It kicked against his shoulder where it was braced but was much quieter than he had thought it would be. The back of larger Sasquatch blew apart in a shower of gore that exploded into the air and then rained down over the others around it. The rest of the Sasquatch abandoned the body of the woman they were feeding on, bolting to their feet as Aurelio fired again.
His second shot struck a Sasquatch in the chest. The high-powered round punched into its ribs, blood bursting outward as it passed clean through the Sasquatch’s body. The Sasquatch toppled over without ever knowing what hit it. The shot had killed it instantly. There were three of the creatures still on the road. They were roaring and jerking their heads about, searching for where their attacker was. Aurelio let loose a third shot that vaporized the head of another Sasquatch. Its headless body staggered a few steps as if didn’t know it was dead and then collapsed. The final two Sasquatch, still unable to even spot where the shots were coming from, made a break for the trees. The creatures were so fast that Aurelio knew he had time for only one more shot. He took it but missed in his hurry not to miss his chance. The trunk of a tree near the Sasquatch erupted in a shower of splintered wood as the beast ran by it. Aurelio could see that the shrapnel from the blast the tree had taken had hit the beast. It was cradling an arm as it disappeared out of sight into the woods. Aurelio smiled. While his ammo for the Barrett held out, it was going to be an easy night. He got the rifle ready to be moved again and slung it onto his shoulder by its strap. There were six rounds still in its magazine so he didn’t change it out yet. He needed to make every round he had for the powerful rifle count as much as it could.
Moving on foot through the snow was slow going but eventually, he came upon another group of Sasquatch in the distance. They were headed out of Lowah along the road that led into the town. Aurelio was still far enough out that the creatures hadn’t seen or caught wind of him, so he quickly set up the Barrett M82 again under the cover of the brush of the hill he was on. The Sasquatch continued on up the road toward the position he had taken, totally clueless that he was there. Aurelio didn’t feel a shred of pity for the monsters as he opened fire on them. Only God knew how many people they had torn apart and eaten tonight. He squeezed off his first shot at the lead creature. The high-powered round slammed into the beast, knocking it from its feet to go sprawling onto the road. The other three Sasquatch began to scatter as he fired again. His second shot caught one of the fleeing monsters in its thigh, blowing its right leg apart. The creature fell, shrieking, its hands clutching at the stump of what was left of its leg. Aurelio finished the wounded Sasquatch with his third shot, the others already having bounded from the road into the trees. Aurelio swiveled the rifle about from side to side, searching for the remaining two Sasquatch. He couldn’t see them, but he could hear them getting closer to him. Getting to his feet, he lifted the Barrett with him. Just as he had gotten up, a Sasquatch came roaring out of the trees to his right. The beast was coming straight at him.
Out of panic, Aurelio fired twice. His first shot tore away most of the creature’s left shoulder. His second opened up its chest, flinging the beast backward. It crashed onto its back and stayed there. The snow around it turned red as the Sasquatch’s blood flowed into it. That left one Sasquatch that he knew of for sure still in the trees near him. Aurelio controlled his breathing, forcing himself to keep calm. There was no reason to be afraid, he assured himself. It would be impossible for the beast to sneak up on him because he had a fairly clear field of view in every direction given how large the monsters were. It wasn’t going to be able to hide itself as it came crashing through the woods. And he had three rounds in his magazine too. That was plenty to take out a single Sasquatch with. Two long and painful minutes ticked by before Aurelio realized the last of this group of Sasquatch wasn’t coming for him. The thing must have really been scared by the power of his rifle and truly made a run for it.
Keeping his guard up and the Barrett M82 ready in his hands now instead of slung onto his shoulder, Aurelio made his way down the small hill onto the road. From where he stood, Aurelio could see the light of the fires burning along Lowah’s main street. He had been blessed so far to catch the two groups of Sasquatch he had sent to Hell from a distance. The closer he got to town, the less likely it was going to be that he would have that kind of luck. His next encounter might very well put him into a direct engagement with the monsters. Reluctantly, Aurelio paused and traded out the magazine in his M82 for a full one. He didn’t toss the one he took out though. There were still three rounds in it, and he couldn’t afford to waste them. Stuffing the mostly spent magazine into his pack he carried on his back, he got moving again. The snow was still falling. His face felt frozen from the chill of the night’s wind. He knew he was going to have to find a place to warm up soon or risk frostbite. And the only place close was the town of Lowah itself. It had been his plan to head into town all along, but with the success he had at sniping the Sasquatch from a distance, he was questioning that plan. Why go in guns blazing if he could just wait the monsters out and send them all to Hell a few at a time? Aurelio already knew the answer to his own question. If there were people still alive in the town, it was his duty to get to them and do what he could to get t
hem out.
Aurelio took a deep breath and mustered up all the courage he had before he started walking. He entered the end of Lowah’s main street and as he did so, he and the Sasquatch rampaging about there, trashing cars, feeding on the scattered dead bodies of the town’s residents, and wandering along the street, saw each other. A great chorus of roars and snarls arose in the night as they all turned towards him. Aurelio didn’t even think about running. He stood his ground and opened up with the Barrett M82. The closest of the Sasquatch died a horrible death as a high-powered round gutted it on its feet. Another came bounding at him, only to take a round that reduced a third of its upper body to nothing more than a red mist. Aurelio jerked the barrel of the rifle around, leveling it at a Sasquatch that had picked up a small car and held it over its head to throw at him. He squeezed the rifle’s trigger and the bullet the rifle spat tore through the Sasquatch’s heart. The car it held came crashing down on top of its corpse as the creature dropped. Aurelio worked the bolt of the M82, chambering another round as the Sasquatch in the streets began to truly close in on him. His next shot blew a Sasquatch in two, separating its legs from its torso. The Sasquatch’s upper half flopped onto the asphalt, still trying to drag itself towards him with its last breath.
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