Max was tossed around the cockpit like a ragdoll before being launched into the door like a crash test dummy.
Chapter 7
Up Shit Creek Without a Boat
“Max, wake up…Max.” Someone was slapping his face, but Max didn’t want to get up yet. He didn’t want to go to work. Piper had the day off, and there were supposed to have a picnic by the lake that afternoon.
“Sheriff!”
Max jolted awake and blinked at John with startled confusion. From his angle, the bus looked like it was upside down. Then he remembered the accident.
“Is everyone alright?” he asked as John helped him up.
“A few broken bones, but everyone’s alive. Come on.”
They crawled out of the busted windshield and staggered out onto the ice. They had gone off the road near the beach, and the lodge could be seen far down the north shore. Max turned back and listened. The howlers were coming, and they sounded pissed.
“Come on, we’ve got to go,” said John.
“Go ahead, get the others out of here.”
“Sheriff, you’re in no condition to take them on by yourself.”
“I’ll be fine. Go on, hurry up.”
John looked to have more to say, but instead he nodded and gathered the soldiers, helping a man along who was nursing his right ankle.
The sounds of the howlers were getting closer. Max sprang into action, ignoring his cuts and bruises and retrieving the flare kit from the bus. He moved around the underside and inspected the gas tank. There were no leaks, but he could remedy that easy enough. Three shots with the pistol and the gas was flowing, spreading out across the ice and along the side of the bus. He glanced up at the hill they had careened down, seeing the first of the lurching howlers coming toward him.
Max climbed up onto the bus and reloaded his semiauto, letting off a few shots when the howlers steered toward the retreating soldiers.
“Hey, you ugly sonsabitches, come and get me!”
Three howlers changed course as more began to pour down the hillside. He needed to wait until they were all near the bus before igniting the gas, but that was easier said than done. The first of the howlers reached the bus and leapt up onto the side. Max went for the legs, riddling them with bullets in hopes of slowing them down. It worked for a time, as two of the howlers dropped to the window glass and pulled themselves along with their many arms. Others rushed over them, their jaws snapping and milky eyes bulging. Max reloaded and backed toward the front of the bus. Dozens of screamers were coming for him now. Dread filled him as he fought them off with the rifle. When it clicked empty again, Max flung it back over his shoulder and pulled Stefan’s sword from its sheath, slicing three reaching tendrils in half and blasting the closest howler with the pistol.
With nowhere left to go and with nearly two dozen howlers coming at him across and through the overturned bus, he lit the flare and tossed it over his enemies’ heads before turning and leaping away. The flare hit the gas as he sailed through the air. The explosion that followed hit his back like hurricane winds from hell, sending him flying end over end onto the ice, where he skipped like a pebble on a placid lake.
Max came to a stop and panted in the snow. His nostrils burned with the smell of gas and burnt hair, his ears rang maddeningly, and his body screamed for the abuse to stop. But he couldn’t stop now. He had to get up; he had to fight. He pulled himself to his feet and found the sword five feet away in the snow. Behind him, the bus was a pyre. Howlers were scattered around the ice, writhing and twitching in their death throes as the fires consumed them. The heat was unbearable, and Max grabbed the sword and staggered back.
A burning howler leapt from the wreckage and landed three feet in front of Max. His instincts took over as the tendrils shot toward him blindly. He leapt and rolled to the side, coming up behind the monster and stabbing it through with a war cry that echoed through the mountains. A cry of pain and terror issued from inside the monstrosity as the tendrils zapped and flared. Max twisted the blade and yanked it free, watching with satisfaction as the burning howler fell to its knees and toppled over.
He turned and staggered toward the lodge, glancing back every other second to check that there was nothing after him. The fire hadn’t yet killed all the howlers, and as he hurried across the ice, three of the half-dead smoldering nightmares pursued him.
A familiar sound snapped his head back to the lodge, and he was relieved to see a black Hummer explode over the bank and peel out across the lake, heading in his direction. A Jeep Cherokee came after it, followed by two half-ton pickup trucks. Max ran toward the oncoming cars like a suicidal man on the freeway as the howlers were closing in behind him. He checked his jacket pockets for another clip as he ran, but he had spent the last of the semiauto’s bullets on top of the bus. His pistol was empty as well, which only left the sword. He glanced back; the howlers were twenty feet away and closing fast. The trucks were more than a hundred.
It was going to be close.
Max pushed himself harder, digging into the snow and pumping his arms, ready to whirl around and hack the monsters to death if they got too close. He glanced back again and let out a cry of alarm as a howler barreled into him, knocking him into the snow and sending him sliding across the ice. Max turned as he slid, bringing the sword to bear. The howler leapt again, coming down on Max with tendrils flaring and its thirty fingers twitching with the excitement of the kill.
“Die, you ugly fu—”
The Hummer slammed into the howler as it descended on Max, the tires coming within inches of his legs. The howler bounced off the roof and spun a full circle in the air before landing with a thud ten feet away. A truck slammed into it, driving it straight at the bus. Whoever was driving leapt out at the last minute and rolled on the ice as the truck careened into the pyre.
The Hummer spun a one-eighty as the other vehicles committed aggravated howler-slaughter. The passenger door opened, and John yelled to Max.
“Need a ride?”
Max sheathed his sword, limped over to the Hummer, and got in. He pulled the door closed and John spun out, heading back toward the lodge.
“I’ve got bad news,” said John, and at first Max thought he was kidding.
How could things get any worse?
“What happened?” said Max, seeing John’s somber expression.
“Everyone’s gone.”
Max looked to the lodge. “What do you mean, everyone’s gone? Where’d they go?”
“My guess is it was military, judging by the tire tracks.”
“Sonofabitch!” Max punched the dash, which didn’t help his sore shoulder. “Which way do the tracks lead?”
“West out of town.”
“Must be the National Guard. And if they went west, then they’re most likely headed to Fort Drum.”
“I was thinking the same thing. Fort Drum is what, two hours from here?”
“Two and a half,” said Max.
“Then I guess we know our next move,” said John.
Max nodded. “I should have thought of it sooner. Fort Drum is probably the most secure place in Northern New York right now. I just didn’t assume that anyone would have survived. But if the National Guard is headed there, they must have gotten word that it was secure.”
“Or they’re taking a shot in the dark.”
“Either way, that’s where we need to be.”
Chapter 8
Into the Great Wide Open
Max was ready to set out immediately, but there were many in the group who thought it wiser to stay where they were.
“Sorry, Sheriff. I know you want to join your wife, and I ain’t going to try and stop you,” said one of the hockey players from the night before. “But I’m not even from around here.” He pointed to three others. “We’re from Long Island, and we intend on heading back south in the morning. We’ve got family out there too.”
“I can respect that,” said Max. “I can’t tell any of you to come with me, but
Fort Drum is going to be our best shot at survival.”
“I’m with you, Sheriff,” said John. “They took my family too.”
“Anyone else?” said Max, eyeing the dozen or so soldiers.
“I came down here from Montreal,” said Valentine. “I’ve got no family to speak of, and none of my friends are drinkers. I’m up for an adventure.”
“Alright then. Once we find out if Fort Drum is secure, we’ll come back for you,” Max told the others.
Together with John and Valentine, Max gathered what supplies he could fit in the Hummer and the Bronco and cleaned the local gun shop of its more lethal weaponry. They brought a case of vodka with them, along with empty wine bottles and rags, though Max prayed that they wouldn’t have to use them.
If everything went smoothly, they would be in Fort Drum in three to four hours depending on road conditions and would find Piper and the rest of them living like post-apocalyptic kings.
The sun was fast setting when Max and Valentine pulled onto Main Street, with John close behind in the Hummer. The back seat of the Bronco was full of canned food, water, liquor, and guns—if Max didn’t know better, he might have thought he was going on a hot date.
“You mind listening to The Tragically Hip?” Max asked as he popped in a CD.
Valentine grinned as “Blow at High Dough” began playing. “That’s a stupid question to ask a Canadian.”
Max laughed. “Sucks what happened to Gord.”
Gord Downie, called by many Canada’s Poet, had been the lead singer for the Canadian band that had topped the charts for more than twenty years, and he’d found a cult-like following in Northern NY as well. After being diagnosed with terminal brain cancer in 2016, he died in the fall of 2017, only weeks after another of Max’s favorites, Tom Petty.
“I must have seen them a dozen times,” said Valentine, her eyes watery.
She reminded Max of his cousin Angie: tall, lithe, strong, with a Victorian face and a quiet strength. Her auburn hair was shaved on the left side, giving her an edgy look.
“Me too. Piper loved them. Used to get drunk and play their music for hours. What’s your favorite song by them?”
“Scared,” said Valentine.
Max sighed. “Me too.”
“We’re going to find your wife. I mean, if it was the military who took them, then they’re safe.”
“Piper was infected, now she’s been cured. The military is going to take a keen interest in her and the others like her. But I don’t expect them to be treated well. You saw how quickly the survivors turned on the cured back at the lodge. Now add the army in that same scenario.”
“Shit,” Valentine whispered.
“Shit is right.”
Max knew that he too would come under scrutiny if the military found out he had been infected, if even for a few minutes, and they would want to know if he still had a link to the mother worm and all her squirming children. He didn’t, but he couldn’t say the same for Piper.
“You mentioned that none of your friends were drinkers,” said Max, trying to change the subject for his own sake. “Seems strange for a survivor to say, since being drunk that night was the only thing that saved you.”
Valentine put her hands up. “You caught me, Sheriff. I’m guilty of a relapse.” She put her arms down and sighed, watching the town go by. “I had a pretty bad drinking problem in college. I dropped out, was disowned by my uptight parents. But I went into rehab, got my shit together.”
“What happened on Saturday?” said Max.
She shrugged. “I’d just broken up with my girlfriend—another reason I’m not welcome in my parents’ holy house. I played in the ice hockey tournament and boozed it up with the rest of them.” An ironic laugh escaped her suddenly. “Who would have known drinking would save my life? What about you? Celebrating the meteor shower with the rest of them?”
“No. I’d just been told I had terminal lung cancer. Didn’t go home and got drunk alone in my hunting cabin.”
“Jesus,” said Valentine. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be, it was a hoax.”
“A hoax?”
“My wife, Piper, she paid the doctor a grand to lie.” He glanced at her, thinking she would be sharing his mirth, but she was frowning.
“Your wife paid a doctor to tell you that you had cancer?”
“Yeah,” he laughed. “We play pranks on each other, it’s kind of our thing.”
Valentine shook her head. “And I thought my folks were weird.”
They drove out of Lake Placid, through the neighboring town of Saranac, and continued west. The roads had at least a foot of snow on them from the Sunday storm, and the going was slow. Max dared no more than forty miles an hour on the straight roads, staying in four-wheel drive and within the boundary of the multitude of tire tracks left behind by the National Guard’s trucks. They looked to have gone through about two hours ago, given how much snow the wind had blown into the tracks.
An hour into their journey, as they left the mountains and started across flatter land, they came across a house fire in the small town of Beaver Lake. Max stopped the truck, glancing around at the handful of houses dotting the intersection that seemed to comprise the entire hamlet. Aside from the homes, there was a diner that boasted Sunday prime rib dinner. Max’s stomach growled, and he was reminded that he hadn’t eaten all day.
“What do you make of it, Sheriff?” asked John over the walkie-talkie.
“Was probably the military. I’d guess they came through and ran into a nest. Looks like the place has been burning for a few hours.”
“You want to investigate?”
“Nah, let’s keep moving.”
“My thoughts exactly,” said John. “Over and out.”
Max got moving again. If the military had been through here, there was no one left for him to help. Besides, he was aching to get Piper back. He should have been comforted by the idea of her being in the military’s custody, but he knew that the cured wouldn’t be treated like the other survivors. They would be detained in a separate area, poked and prodded…and possibly disposed of.
He gripped the steering wheel, kneading it in his fists.
“You alright?” said Valentine. “You seem a bit tense.”
“Tense isn’t the word.”
“Your wife will be alright. The screamers or howlers or whatever the hell else is out there won’t get to her if she’s with the army.”
“It’s not the monsters I’m afraid of,” said Max.
Chapter 9
The King of the Rednecks
Max was almost to Malone, a town about sixty miles west of Lake Placid, when he noticed a quick flash of light about a mile ahead. He followed the tracks made by the army trucks and continued down the straightaway, peering at the spot he thought the light had come from.
“Sheriff here,” he said over the walkie-talkie. “I spotted a quick shine of light ahead. Looked like a flashlight or headlights.”
“Survivors?” said John.
“I’m assuming so. I doubt the screamers bother with flashlights.”
“Why didn’t they chase down the army train that came through here?”
“I don’t know,” said Max. “Maybe they’re just noticing the tracks. We’re coming on the spot now. Keep your eyes peeled. There’s a crossroads coming up. Perfect spot for an ambush.”
“Who the hell would be ambushing us—”
Lights suddenly burst to life on each side of the crossroads, and six trucks peeled into the intersection, cutting Max off. He hit the brakes, and the truck slid ten feet before coming to a stop.
“Son of a bitch,” said Max, more tired than anything.
“Who are they?” said Valentine, sitting up in her seat suddenly alert. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing good,” said Max. He grabbed his radio and clicked on the PA system. “This is Franklin County Sheriff Max Maelstrom, and you better have a good goddamned reason for stopping me.”
&nb
sp; He could make out a few human shapes in the cabs of the trucks, and there were at least two armed men in the beds of each truck, rifles aimed at the Bronco. The passenger door of a Chevy Silverado that had come from the left side of the road opened, and a skinny man with a ratty beard and a camouflage jacket got out. He wore a cowboy hat as well, and given his silhouette and the pose he struck as he lit his cigarette, he could have been the Marlboro Man—if the Marlboro Man was a pill head.
Crackhead Marlboro Man reached back in the cab and pulled out a bullhorn. It shrieked for a heartbeat before coming alive with the brazen, slightly drunken greeting. “Sheriff Maelstrom. Please step out of the vehicle with your arms up, turn around, and walk backwards toward me, if you please.”
Max glanced in the rearview, where two more sets of headlights suddenly appeared about a half a mile away.
“This just isn’t my day,” he said aloud.
“It’s nobody’s day, Sheriff. But I for one don’t intend on making it that fucking redneck’s day.” Valentine shifted uncomfortably in her seat, and Max was well aware of her fears, though he couldn’t share them.
Then again…
The Doomsday Sheriff: The Novella Collection (Includes Books 1 - 3) Page 13
