Max landed and turned to lay into Pike, but as he turned, the butt of a riffle caught him in the gut, doubling him over as the breath exploded from his lungs. Pike swung the rifle in an uppercut motion, catching Max on the chin and rattling his teeth as he fell on his back.
“Don’t send women to do a man’s job, eh, you bunch of losers?” said Pike. He kicked Bucky in the ass and told the others to get up.
Max groaned and tried to get to his feet, but he might as well have been shitfaced drunk. He fell again, and that’s when the three embarrassed rednecks started lighting into him. A half a minute and thirty kicks later, Pike told the men to stop.
“Don’t be killing him yet. Come on, get him in the goddamned station.”
Bucky grabbed Max and heaved him to his feet and spit in his face. Max’s left eye was already swollen closed, and blood filled his nose and mouth. His ribs were either broken or bruised, and he could feel a molar dangling precariously in his sore mouth.
“Come on, ass-face,” said Bucky, pulling open the door to the police station.
A hand suddenly grabbed Max form inside the station and tugged him forward. To his surprise, it was Valentine. She ripped him from Bucky’s grasp and surprised the redneck further with a pistol aimed at his head.
“Rape this, asshole,” said Valentine.
Max fell into the station as the gun fired and turned in his descent just in time to see Bucky’s left eye disappear in a spray of blood. He fell back into the others as Valentine slammed the big metal door closed. She put her back to it and slapped the deadbolt home, glancing at Max.
“Sorry I took so long,” she said with a smirk.
Chapter 5
Stuck Between a Redneck and a Wormhead
Valentine untied Max’s hands and helped him up. He got to his feet shakily and glanced around. The two men that had escorted her into the police station lay on the floor inside one of the cells, and they were out cold. He glanced at Valentine with a cocked brow and she winked.
“Poor fucks never had a chance,” she said.
“I guess not.”
Max was interrupted by gunfire, and he glanced at the door. It was made of thick metal, and he doubted that they would get through that way. But the windows were just windows, and sooner or later the three remaining idiots would put two and two together.
“Watch the windows,” he told Valentine.
She tossed him a shotgun and pressed her back against the wall by the door. Max did the same. He wiped the blood out of his good eye and tried not to sneeze the blood out of his nose. It was bound to hurt like hell, and he didn’t need the distraction right now.
There were two windows at the front of the building, one to Max’s left, and the other to Valentine’s right. Gunfire barked, and the glass shattered on Max’s side. He inched over to the window, waiting for someone to peer in, but it seemed they were smarter than that. The other window exploded inward, and five heartbeats later a smoke grenade came in through Max’s window.
“Go!” he yelled to Valentine. He spun and pointed his gun out the window, letting off three shots before sprinting for the back of the building after Valentine.
Smoke filled the room as he slammed into the back wall. Valentine pulled him along and through a door leading deeper into the station. They emerged into a short hall with a door at the end, and one on each side—the men’s and women’s restrooms.
“I really hope this isn’t a closet,” said Valentine, opening the door at the end of the hall.
It was indeed a closet, and Valentine cursed as the sound of boots on broken glass and Pike’s barked orders sounded in the front of the station.
“Wait,” said Max, pointing up at the ceiling. “Look!”
“An attic door, sweet!”
Valentine wasted no time and pulled down on the string hanging from the trapdoor. A small wooden ladder dropped down and Max turned to face the hall as she hurried up into the attic. Max followed shortly after, closing the door behind him and pulling the ladder up when he reached the attic.
It was dark up there, with the only light coming from the roof vents on each end of the rectangular building. Max wondered if perhaps they could get out that way, but he realized he couldn’t. Perhaps Valentine might fit, but then the drop would be a good fifteen feet.
“Shh,” Valentine hissed, cocking the shaved side of her head toward the floor to listen.
Max stopped and listened as well, slowly turning to aim his shotgun at the trapdoor. The men were searching the bathrooms by the sound of it, and the closet door opened and closed.
“Where the hell did they go?” came the voice of the ginger.
“They ain’t in the bathrooms!” said the other man that Max had roundhouse kicked in the face only minutes before. There was a nasal tone to his voice that made Max grin.
“You should have killed those two men in the cell,” said Max. “They’re just going to wake up and join in the hunt.”
Valentine winked at him. “Wait for it,” she whispered.
Max wondered what she was hinting at, but he waited as instructed. Down below, the men were tossing things around, angrily searching for them.
“Go get Mark and Dixin out of that goddamned cell,” said Pike.
Valentine clapped her hands over her mouth and her eyes went wide. She held up a single finger, indicating for Max to wait.
“Hey, you two dipshits,” he heard one of the men say faintly. “Get the fuck up—”
The man’s words were interrupted by an explosion. Max flinched and instinctively hunched down as the ceiling twenty feet away blew up into the attic. Light flooded the attic, and Max saw Valentine snickering silently.
What did you do? Max mouthed to her.
“Put a live grenade under one of them,” she whispered, holding up the pin for Max to see.
He shook his head and tried not to laugh.
Beneath them, Pike was furious. The ginger, on the other hand, was horrified.
“Dixin!” he screamed, and Max could just imagine what he saw—a cell with blackened walls and no ceiling, with a big red splat in the middle.
There were only two men left, and Max was beginning to like the odds.
“Goddamnit!” Pike cried out below.
“You alright? Shit, you’re bleeding,” said the ginger.
“Get the fuck off me!” Pike yelled.
Just then the guttural screech of a wormhead sounded in the distance, and Max determined that it was coming from the west side of the building.
“Shhh!” Pike hissed in the station below.
Valentine glanced at Max, and he couldn’t help a wide grin.
Another scream issued to the east and south sides.
“Fuck, man, they’re all over the place!” said the Ginger.
Max wished he could see the two men frantically turning in terrified circles, but he didn’t dare risk shuffling to the opening blown out of the ceiling by the grenade. His imagination would have to do.
Another scream issued, closer now, and a heartbeat later another window imploded somewhere in the station. Gunfire erupted in the station, and Max maneuvered closer to the trapdoor. Valentine stayed close, both making sure to stay on the beams and not put pressure on the drywall ceiling between the rafters.
Max heard the ginger cry out in mortal pain, and his satisfaction grew. Pike was mumbling to himself in between incoherent shouts directed at the wormheads, who must have been closing in on the King of Rednecks.
Max couldn’t help himself. He called out to the man urgently. “Hurry Pike! Up here, in the closet, there’s a trapdoor!”
“What are you doing?” said Valentine, flummoxed by the outburst.
Max knew it was a stupid move, but he couldn’t help it. Maybe he had taken to many kicks to the head.
The trapdoor suddenly burst open and the ladder clicked down to the floor. The hungry cry of several wormheads filled the station, and the ladder began to shiver like someone was climbing up it. Pike’s te
rrified breathing gave him away, and Max waited with his gun trained on the hole. When a pistol suddenly emerged he grabbed ahold of it and ripped it out of Pike’s hand.
“If you’re coming up, you’re doing so unarmed,” said Max.
Pike cursed, and a few seconds passed. “Alright sheriff,” he said at length. “I’m coming up unarmed. You’re a man of the law, and I trust you’ll honor your pledge and take me alive.”
“You have my word,” said Max, though he knew Pike didn’t have a choice.
A wormhead screeched loud enough to peel paint, and Pike suddenly hustled up the ladder hands up, practically walking up the thing into the attic. Max handed Valentine his shotgun and grabbed ahold of Pike and pulled him up before slamming him into a rafter beam. He punched him in the face three times as Pike tried to fend off the blows.
Down in the closet, the wet, hungry hiss of a wormhead serenaded them.
Max socked the man in the balls as hard as he could and yanked his body down to the floor. He climbed on his back, pinning his arms, and held Pike’s head over the open trap door. He leaned in close to Pike’s ear as the wormhead below turned its hideous head up toward them.
“I gave you a chance to let us go.”
“Sheriff! Goddamnit man, you win! I’ll give you whatever you want, Jesus, close the trapdoor!”
Max pressed Pike’s head closer to the trap door. He could see the wormhead slowly stalking up the ladder, electrical dreads dancing in anticipation of the kill.
“I warned you that things were going to get ugly for you,” said Max, and he pushed Pike’s head down into the hole. As the same time, the wormhead surged upward, its circular mouth wide open and razor-sharp circles of teeth dripping.
Max pressed Pike’s head down into the wormhead’s greedy mouth as if it were a giant trash compactor. Pike’s screams became muffled as the alien’s mouth sucked him in up to the shoulders and ripped him from Max’s grip, tearing Pike right through the trapdoor headfirst.
Chapter 6
Sitting Ducks
Max slammed the door closed and let out a satisfied sigh. Valentine, however, didn’t look happy.
“What?” said Max.
“Sorry to crash your little vengeance party, but we’re kind of fucked right now,” she said, glancing over at the hole blown out of the ceiling by the grenade.
As if to accentuate her point, the wormheads down in the stations cried out angrily. The beast that had devoured Pike seemed hungry for desert and banged against the bottom of the trapdoor. Others could be heard converging in the cell to the right. It sounded like there were at least a half dozen of the monsters down in the station, and they sounded hungry.
“Alright, Pike’s truck it still in the parking lot,” said Max. His face felt like a balloon, and his nose was still dripping blood. His eye was swollen shut and his head pounded, but he was alive. “All we’ve got to do is get by these fuckers and get to the truck.”
“Oh, is that all?” said Valentine, rolling her eyes. “How in the hell do you suggest we do that?”
“We need a distraction.”
Valentine stared at him, waiting.
The trap door suddenly burst open and Max almost fell off his perch on the rafter. Valentine caught him as the wormhead’s electric tentacles flailed into the opening, crackling with electricity.
“It’s too big to get through,” said Max. He glanced at the hole to their left that led down into the cell. “I’ve got an idea.”
“It’s about time,” said Valentine, looking anxious.
“Alright, you go over to whole in the ceiling above the cell and taunt the wormheads, I’ll—”
“Wait, taunt the wormheads? Are you nuts?”
“I just may be, but we don’t have many options. If my plan works, they’ll all file into he cell to get to you. Meanwhile, I’ll go down and lock them in. Once they’re trapped you come down and we hightail it to the truck. Alright?”
Valentine shook her head, and she looked to be trying to think of another way. At length she sighed and nodded. “Alright, fine, lets do this.”
The wormhead was still trying to squeeze through the trapdoor that Max was going to hace to get down for there plan to work. It’s circular maw took up the entire entrance, and Max aimed his shotgun right down its gullet and squeezed the trigger. A horrified squeal issued from the beast, but it didn’t relent. The monster had thick scales, but their mouths were just as soft as any other creatures, and another two blasts from the shotgun laid the creature low, and it fell to the floor below writhing in agony.
“Alright, get to the hole and do your thing,” he instructed Valentine.
She walked along the rafters and peered out over the hole in the floor cautiously, like someone glancing over the side of a skyscraper. “Hey, you fucks, come and get me!” she screamed.
An orgy of angry screams met her challenge, and the monsters could be heard fighting each other to get into the cell. Valentine let out a cry when one of the beasts leapt up and tried to climb through, but it grabbed the edge of sheetrock and fell back down.
Max peered down into the broom closet. The wormhead that he had shot through the mouth lay dead on the floor, and he didn’t see any others in the doorway.
“Hurry up!” Valentine screamed as she fired her pistol at the creatures below.
Max swallowed his fear and descended down the ladder, thinking that at any minute a wormhead would grab his legs and pull him down to his doom. But the plan seemed to be working so far, and Max got to the bottom safely. He stepped over the dead creature and seeing the hall clear, he crept to the end of it and slowly pushed open the door.
There were at least six wormheads that he could see, and they were all fighting each other to get into the cell. Valentine continued to shoot at the beasts, who were growing angrier by the second. Max summoned his courage and rushed out into the station. There was one wormhead that hadn’t yet passed the threshold to the cell, and Max bum rushed the monster as it turned around and laid a heavy boot in its back, pushing it into the cell. He slammed the door closed and leapt back in the nick of time as the other wormheads charged toward the bars. Max back peddled away from the crackling tentacles and tripped over a chair. He went down like a drunk at an office party, and the fall reminded just how much his body already hurt.
Max scrambled to his feet and saw one of the wormheads climbing up into the attic.
“Val!” he cried as the beast disappeared.
“Here!” she yelled as she crashed through the door leading to the bathrooms and the broom closet.
Max breathed a sigh of relief and followed her to the front door. They burst out of the station like escaped convicts. A quick glance around told Max that there were no wormheads outside, and they hurried to Pike’s truck. Valentine jumped in the passenger seat as Max slid in behind the wheel. He reached for the ignition.
It was then that he realized there were no keys.
“Shit!”
Valentine snapped her head in his direction. “You’re shitting me, no keys?”
“No, must be in one of the men’s pockets. It’s alright,” he said. “I can jump it.”
Max ripped off the plastic panel beneath the steering wheel and struggled to find the right wires. His face was still covered in blood, which dripped into his good eye and made the task nearly impossible.
“Uh, Max?”
“Almost there,” he said when he located the right wires.
“They’re coming!” Valentine yelled.
Max stripped the wires and touched two of them together and the truck coughed and sputtered before roaring to life. He sat up and came face to face with a wormhead as it landed on the hood.
“Go!” Valentine cried.
Max didn’t need anymore encouragement. He put the truck into gear and peeled out, taking a sharp right onto the road and dumping the wormhead on the snowy pavement.
The truck screamed down the road. In the rearview, more than a dozen wormheads poured
out of the station and started after them, but the truck steadily pulled away.
Max let out a sigh of relief, and Valentine laughed until she cried.
Chapter 7
Funeral Pyre
Max and Valentine reached the site of the roadblock twenty minutes later. They drove through slowly, calling out to any survivors, but no one answered. There were no bodies on the road, nor were there any in the abandoned vehicles. Long streaks of blood that trailed into the woods told Max that the wormheads had dragged the dead into the forest to be eaten or saved for later—he didn’t really want to think about it.
John was surely among those who had been carried away, and it made Max want to scream, or cry, or both.
He had convinced Rory and the others to come with him to Fort Drum, and by the looks of it, dozens of the natives had been killed or captured in the scuffle with Pike. Max didn’t know if they would have been any better off staying on the reservation, but it didn’t matter, his conscience still bore the burden of their deaths.
“You alright?” Valentine asked.
Max nodded, unable to speak. He felt tired, and it was only noon. He knew that he most likely had a concussion, given the beating that he had taken from Pike’s men. Sleep beckoned, but Max fought the urge to close his eyes and just sleep.
That was about the worst thing he could do right now.
He stopped the truck beside the barricade and they got out to search the trucks. The rednecks had brought an arsenal of weapons with them. It was more than he and Valentine would need, but they still grabbed all the guns. There was a half-dozen grenades in one truck, and though Max had no idea how Pike and his men had procured the explosives, he was glad they had. They were still two hours away from Fort Drum on good roads, and a storm looked to be moving in from the west. The roads were still clear from the snowplows that had come through an hour before, but the wind had begun to pick up, and snowdrifts were already forming on the two-lane highway.
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