The APC’s gunner was whooping in excitement. Joe shook his head. The man was a fool. This was just the beginning. Of course things were easy now. The Sasquatch were still adjusting and re-learning how to deal with humans in vehicles.
Another hour passed without incident, lulling most in the convoy back into a false sense of security. Not Joe though. He knew the monsters would hit them again soon. The Sasquatch proved his instinct right too.
The next attack came as the road narrowed and passed directly between wooded banks that ran along both sides of it. One second, everything was calm. The next, the monsters were pouring out from the trees, racing down the banks at the convoy. The APC’s gunner couldn’t target both sides of the road. He swung his weapon toward the monsters approaching from the right bank. The .50 caliber roared, spitting death into their ranks. Joe saw one Sasquatch get its legs cut out from under it. The thing dropped to roll the rest of the way down the hill. Another Sasquatch took a slew of rounds to its chest that blew it apart in an explosion of blood and gore. Still another was gutted by the .50 caliber. The heavy weapon opened up the monster’s stomach. Red-slicked, purple strands of intestine poured out of its abdomen, tripping up the beast as they got wrapped around its legs and feet.
Joe was on the left side of the jeep and able to engage the monsters coming at it from that direction. He longed for his M82 Barrett but the convoy hadn’t spotted it as it left the city for him to retrieve it. Joe drew his pistols from the holsters on his hips. They were better suited to the kind of ranged combat, shooting from the jeep as it sped along than his double-barreled shotguns were. Joe turned in the passenger seat so that his body faced the incoming monsters and opened fire at them. He took careful aim with each shot he fired, not wanting to waste any ammo that he didn’t have to. His first shot splattered the forehead of a snarling Sasquatch as it bounded down the bank toward the speeding jeep. Joe fired off a second shot that blew a chunk of bloody meat away from the shoulder of another Sasquatch.
Lieutenant Wagner’s APC had already cleared the main area of the attack. Kennedy’s foot was on the gas, pressing it tight to the floor. The jeep shot along the road as Joe fired again. This time, he blew a hole in the side of a Sasquatch’s face. Teeth caved inward as the bullet entered it and shards of them sprayed out the monster’s cheek on its other side. Joe didn’t have the angle for another shot without completely turning in the passenger seat. He could see the road behind the jeep though. The two trucks were having a rough time of it. Their speed was limited by his own jeep ahead of them. Kennedy was gunning it but the road wasn’t one that was made for speed. The men in the rear of the trucks were the bulk of the expeditionary force. Their weapons blazed and boomed at the monsters trying to keep the things at bay. The truck directly behind Joe’s jeep was holding on. A man with an AK-47 hosed a group of snarling Sasquatch on full auto as the man next to him fired burst after burst from the M-16 he clutched in a white-knuckled grip. Then things really went to hell.
A hulking Sasquatch stepped into the path of the last truck. The driver tried to veer to the right and dodge it but there just wasn’t space in the narrow road to make such a maneuver. The front of the truck clipped the Sasquatch, shattering the bone in the monster’s leg. The impact caused the truck’s driver to fully lose control of the vehicle. The truck hit the bank, its forward wheel on that side pulling it up along it. The truck thudded over onto its side, flinging and spilling the men in its rear onto the road. Their screams were all Joe could hear after the truck thudded into a trunk of a tree and its forward motion was halted. The men that had survived were trying to get to their feet. One of them fired the shotgun he held at a Sasquatch that came charging at him. The beast was too fast though. It reached the man in time to clasp the barrel of the shotgun and jerk it upward. The man’s shot was fired at the darkening clouds above as the monster punched a hand through his chest. The Sasquatch’s blood-smeared, balled-up fist emerged from the man’s back in an explosion of spraying red.
Another Sasquatch closed on the man who had been firing the AK-47. The rifle was gone now. He had lost the weapon when the truck rolled over. The Sasquatch swept the man up into a bear hug, crushing his bones against its chest. The man’s legs jerked about several feet above the road and then stopped moving to hang limply below his body. The Sasquatch flung his corpse aside and moved to attack the closest of the men still in the fight. The man saw the monster coming at him and whirled around to fire his M-16 into it. The burst of fire staggered the Sasquatch but that was all it did. The beast recovered almost instantly and tore the rifle from the man’s hands. Using the rifle like a spear, it rammed the M-16 through the man. Blood burst like spraying vomit from the man’s mouth as the M-16 entered him.
The jeep Joe was riding in was clear of the battle. Kennedy was still keeping its speed higher than Joe would have liked considering that the bulk of the Sasquatch had stopped pursuing the convoy and were concentrating in the poor bastards who had been in the last truck. The other truck rumbled along the road behind their jeep as Kennedy snatched up the radio Lieutenant Wagner had given Joe.
“We’ve lost the rear truck!” Kennedy yelled over it.
“Nothing we can do about that!” Lieutenant Wagner’s voice answered him. “Just keep moving!”
The convoy kept rolling hot. Weapons at the ready and eyes on the trees, it bounced along the road that had now turned to gravel. Joe prayed that they would clear it sooner rather than later. The trees were still too close to the sides of the road to give them much time to respond to anything that came at them. His prayer was answered as the APC up ahead veered to the left, cutting back onto a main road. Kennedy jerked the jeep’s steering wheel around hard to follow it. Joe looked over his shoulder to see the remaining truck keeping pace. There were no longer any signs of the Sasquatch chasing after it. The convoy kept up its speed for a solid ten minutes on the main road before the order came from Lieutenant Wagner to slow down.
Kennedy sighed with relief and visibly relaxed in the driver’s seat.
“That was too fragging close, Joe,” Kennedy said.
Joe didn’t answer. He just looked toward the now distant trees and was thankful they were back on an interstate.
****
The rest of the day passed uneventfully in comparison to what they had just been through. The Sasquatch tried for them a few more times but in much smaller numbers and were easily dealt with. As the sun was setting, the convoy came barreling along the main street of Bakersville, the town where the National Guard Armory was located. The convoy came to stop just outside what was left of the armory’s gates. They had been torn away and lay in a crumpled mess of mangled wire. Joe could see other places in the fence from the passenger seat of the jeep that had been destroyed by Sasquatch too.
The side door of the APC opened. Lieutenant Wagner and Marcus came lunging out of it, weapons in hand.
“Everybody dismount!” Lieutenant Wagner ordered, moving toward Joe’s jeep and the truck behind it. “You guys in the truck, secure a perimeter around the convoy now!”
Joe knew that it wasn’t going to do any good for the men to take up defensive positions if there were Sasquatch nearby in any real numbers but kept his thoughts to himself. Lieutenant Wagner was just following protocol and doing what he could to keep them safe.
The men and women from the truck spread out around the vehicles. Most of them were armed with either AK-47s or M-16s. A few though had shotguns and one lady was carrying a .30-06 rifle. She had red hair and couldn’t be more than thirty at most. Her body was slim and well-toned. Freckles covered her cheeks. Joe had stopped dead in the middle of getting out of the jeep, staring at her.
“What’s the matter with you?” Kennedy asked, worried concern in his voice.
Kennedy’s question snapped Joe out of it and he jerked his head around at the driver.
“Nothing,” Joe growled. “Who is that woman?”
“Who?” Kennedy looked around. There were quite a
few women amid the soldiers and militiamen from the truck.
“The redhead.” Joe nodded in the woman’s direction.
“Oh,” Kennedy said. “That’s Karen Hall.”
Lieutenant Wagner came storming over to them at the jeep.
“What’s the hold up?” the lieutenant snapped at Joe.
“She goes with us,” Joe told the lieutenant, pointing at Karen.
“Uh … okay,” Lieutenant Wagner agreed without questioning Joe. “Karen, you’re with us!”
Karen came running over to join up with Joe, Kennedy, the lieutenant, and Marcus as they started into the base. She gave all of them an odd look but Joe could see she was too professional of a soldier to question why she had been chosen to go with them. Joe wasn’t sure he could explain that even to himself. There was just something about Karen that called to him. It would have been a great waste if she were left at the vehicles with the others if the Sasquatch showed up and the position was overrun. Joe wanted Karen where he could personally keep an eye on her.
The small group crossed the vast parking lot outside the armory’s main building. Joe took point. That was what he was there for after all. Marcus and Kennedy brought up the rear.
As they approached the building, Joe saw that its door had been smashed from its hinges. Its splinters were all over the steps in front of it though the bulk of them were just inside the doorway.
“The beasts hit this place hard,” Joe commented.
Lieutenant Wagner glared at him as if to say, I can see that, but didn’t say anything.
Night was falling quickly and the sun’s dying rays cast long shadows across the battle-torn parking lot of the armory. Joe turned to look back at it from the doorway as the others went on inside. Here and there were the scattered, skeletal remains of soldiers who had tried to defend the place. There were shell casings all over the lot too, confirming that they had put up one heck of a fight.
Joe tore his eyes away from the lot and went inside after the others. The power inside the armor was still on. The place had to have its own backup generators, Joe knew, but they should have given out long ago with no one to care for them. That meant most likely that someone was still alive in the armory somewhere. If that were the case though, whoever it was sure wasn’t rushing out to meet them like they should have been.
“I don’t like this,” Lieutenant Wagner told Joe. “That’s off here.”
Joe nodded his agreement. “Let’s get what you need and get out of here.”
“That will take some time,” Lieutenant Wagner reminded Joe.
The plan had always been to take the vehicles they needed to transport whatever ammo, food, and supplies they found back to the city from the armory too. From the looks of the lot outside, that wasn’t going to be an issue. There were plenty of transport trucks still parked out there. It was just a matter of getting them going.
The small group stopped at a counter with numerous sets of keys hanging on the wall behind it.
“Take them all, Kennedy,” Lieutenant Wagner ordered. “You’re on vehicle duty. Get as many fired up and ready as you can.”
“Yes, sir,” Kennedy answered, taking the keys from the wall and heading back the way they had come in.
“Karen, Marcus, I want you to break off to the right and left, respectively. Find what you can and radio me,” Lieutenant Wagner ordered them.
“What about us?” Joe asked.
“We’re going that way,” Lieutenant Wagner said, gesturing at the heavy set of double doors at the rear of the armory’s entrance area. Joe knew the layout of places like this enough to know that it was where the offices and comm. room would be.
The two of them headed through the doors together. Ahead of them was a long corridor with rooms that ran the length of its two sides. The lights on the corridor’s ceiling were flicking, on the verge of dying, not from a disruption in the power flowing to them but instead from just long-term use. They were wearing out. Their flickering was making Joe sick to his stomach. He honestly considered pausing long enough to shoot them out as he had no idea where their control switch was located. Joe didn’t though. He gritted his teeth and kept moving along the corridor with the lieutenant. They checked each room to make sure it was clear as they passed it until they reached a wider room that was clearly the armory’s comm. room. A lone corpse sat the chair in front of the communications system. A hole had been blown through the man’s face and worms crawled about his decaying body.
“No Sasquatch did that,” Lieutenant Wagner said, covering his mouth and nose against the smell of rot in the room.
Joe felt rage growing inside of him. He had asked the lieutenant to bring Karen along with them to keep her out of danger from the beasts if they showed up outside and by doing so had put her directly in the path of God only knew what. Some psycho that had snapped and started killing his or her own people?
A gunshot rang out from somewhere inside the armory. Joe shoved by Lieutenant Wagner, running out of the comm. room in the direction the shot had come from. His mad flight carried him to a giant storeroom. Both Karen and Marcus were there. They had apparently met up as the corridors they had taken wrapped back around into the same place. Joe’s heart skipped a beat as he saw the blood on the floor where they crouched, using a stack of crates as cover.
“Hey!” Karen yelled at him as she saw him coming. “Sniper!”
Joe drew his katana from its sheath as a rifle cracked in the distance. His senses honed in on the bullet coming at him. The blade of his sword intercepted it. Sparks flew as the bullet struck his katana. Joe heard the sniper fire another shot. Even he wasn’t fast enough to block the shot this time. Joe hurled himself sideways as the bullet whizzed through the air where he had been a fraction of a second before. He hit the floor rolling, springing back up to his feet as the sniper took a third shot at him. Karen had risen up from her cover just enough to return fire at the sniper. She was using Marcus’ AK-47, not her own rifle. The assault weapon roared away on full-auto toward the side of the room that the sniper was on while Joe dodged the bullet that had been meant for his guts. He made it the rest of the way to where Karen and Marcus were, ducking behind their cover with them.
“What the frag was that?” Karen asked him. “Did you really just block a fragging bullet with a sword?”
Joe laughed. He couldn’t help it. “Yeah, I guess I did.”
“Marcus is hit,” Karen told him, bringing his laughter to an abrupt end. “The guy’s a jerk but we can’t just let him bleed out.”
“I’m right fragging here,” Marcus wailed, looking up the two of them. “I can hear you, you know!”
“You help him,” Joe ordered Karen. “I’ll take care of the sniper.”
Joe saw Karen glaring at him but then he was moving again. He left the cover of the crates, sprinting across the storeroom. His katana was ready in his hands as the sniper started shooting again. The shots came in rapid succession now, as if he or she was no longer taking the time to aim in their desperation to stop him. Several of the shots came nowhere near Joe and those that did, he squatted away with the blade of his sword. He could see the sniper now. The man was on top of a large crate, lying there on his stomach. His rifle bucked in his hands as he squeezed its trigger, sending another round at Joe. Sidestepping the shot, Joe altered his course, running around the large crate the sniper was on instead of continuing straight at it. He came around it and grabbed the sniper by his feet, yanking him from the top of the crate. The sniper’s rifle went flying out of his grasp. The man yanked a pistol free from the holster he wore on his hip but Joe was ready for that too. He caught the man’s wrist and twisted it. Bone snapped in the man’s wrist and the pistol he had clutched in it clattered onto the floor as Joe slammed his back against the crate. The man’s eyes were wide with fear.
“Don’t make me kill you,” Joe spat at the man.
“Ease up!” the man was shouting. “I’m done. You win!”
Joe kicked the pistol f
arther away across the storeroom floor and continued to hold the man pressed up against the crate.
“Who are you?” Joe asked, the blade of his katana moving to touch the soft flesh of the man’s throat beneath his chin.
“Sergeant Roy Walker,” the man blurted out. “Please don’t kill me!”
“Why were you shooting at us, Sergeant?” Joe stared into the older man’s eyes.
“Look, just take whatever you want and get the hell out of here,” Roy told him. “I’m done. Really! I won’t give you any more trouble.”
Joe was beginning to put two and two together. “You thought we were looters?”
“Aren’t you?” Roy shrieked at him.
Joe released Roy. The old man slumped to the floor below the crate.
“I guess we are,” Joe admitted, “but not the kind you think.”
Roy looked up at him in utter confusion. “What the devil is that supposed to mean?”
“We’re from a nearby city called Cedarmark acting on the orders of Colonel Flint, the city’s ranking officer,” Joe said.
“You expect me to believe that, pal?” Roy challenged him. “There ain’t no cities left anymore. Ain’t no colonels either.”
“It doesn’t matter what you believe, old man,” Joe said coldly. “I’ve told you the truth of things.”
Karen came jogging up to them. “I got Marcus stabilized. He’ll be fine until we can get better treatment for him.”
“A woman?” Roy muttered more to himself than Joe. “I didn’t think there were any women still alive.”
Karen kicked Roy in his left hip. The point of her boot made him squeal in pain.
“That alive enough for you, old man?” she shouted.
“Who the hell are you people?” Roy wondered aloud.
Night of the Sasquatch Page 6
