Max dove to the ground, pointing his shotgun under the truck. Val was in the driver seat passed out, and the wormhead looked to have gotten pinned by the roof. Its head was sticking through the windshield, and its electric tendrils were reaching for Valentine, who hung suspended upside down by her seatbelt. The creature screamed and carried on, its voice echoing through the surrounding forest. Max smashed the front passenger window and pushed his way through. He brought the shotgun to bear at the awkward angle, aiming up at the thrashing wormhead. A tendril reached Valentine and zapped her, causing her body to convulse and shudder.
“Fuck you!” Max screamed, and unloaded three slugs into the thing’s mouth, reducing its head to a mass of dripping pulp.
He couldn’t reach Valentine’s seatbelt release from his angle, but the jolt had waken her up. She opened her eyes groggily, and when she saw the destroyed alien inches from her face she let out a scream of terror.
“It’s dead!” Max yelled—in the distance, dozens of wormheads began to scream. “Can you unbuckle yourself?”
Valentine looked to him wide-eyed, seeming not to understand English.
“Val!” he screamed, shaking her.
She blinked, and reached to her right side and unlatched her seatbelt. When it released she fell to the roof of the truck and let out a cry of pain. She was injured, and Max prayed that she had no broken bones. He dragged her out of the truck window none-to-gently and pulled her to her feet.
“Are you injured?”
“No, yes, I don’t know. I don’t think anything’s broken.”
“Alright, come on, lets get back to the tr—”
Just then, Max’s truck peeled out. He turned in time to see Spring’s brother in the driver seat.
“Wait!” he cried out, running after it, but the boy didn’t stop. “Fuck! What is he thinking?”
“Uh, Max?” came Valentine’s trembling voice.
“What!” He whirled around, and that’s when he noticed a pack of wormheads tearing down the road after them.
Chapter 10
When Hell Freezes Over
“Go, go GO!” Max screamed as he pushed Valentine toward the nearest house. This part of town was sparsely populated, with houses every two hundred feet or so on each side of the road, separated by thick forests of pine, oak, and birch.
The nearest house was one-hundred feet away, but the going was slow on the snow-covered road. Max glanced back as he ran. He couldn’t yet see the space-worm spawn behind him, but he could sure as hell hear them. Like the hounds of hell, they bayed, their voices a cross between a demon and a jackal. The sound alone was enough to make Max sprout goose pimples. It grated at his already frayed nerves and fueling his heart with an overdose of adrenaline.
He skidded past the mailbox, grabbing ahold of it with his right hand and using it to change direction. There was a white ford f-150 in the driveway, and Max prayed to every god that man had ever invented that it had keys in it.
Valentine collided with him as he skidded to a stop beside the door and he slipped and fell on his ass in the snow. She grabbed the handle and finding it locked, gave it a frustrated shake.
“Fuck!” she screamed.
“Quiet,” Max hissed as he pulled himself up off his sore ass. He glanced back the way they had come. The wormheads sounded closer, but it was hard to tell just how close. The wind howled, guiding the snow in a horizontal direction that left it hard to see beyond a few dozen feet.
“Listen, I’ll hold them off. Break in the house and see if you can find the keys. Look in the kitchen on the—”
“Why don’t you just hotwire it?”
“It’s too knew. Needs to have the key fab nearby to start. Hurry up!”
Valentine nodded gravely and charged for the front door.
Max reloaded his shotgun and sidearm and cocked the big riffle. He stared down the barrel, sweeping it this way and that, expecting any minute for an angry wormhead to emerge from the snow-globe landscape. Most of the cries came from the east, the direction they had come from, but there were others sounding in the forest to the north and south as well.
He guessed he had 20 seconds before they were on him.
“Come on, Val…” he said aloud, but the wind took the sound with it and cast it into the forest to be devoured by the shadows.
He glanced at the house, and thought he saw the beam of a flashlight sweep across one of the windows.
The horrific cry of a wormhead snapped his attention to the east, and as he brought his weapon to bear as the creature materialized out of the slanting streaks of whipping snow. Like demon borne from deepest, coldest parts of hell it flew toward him, arms wide and claws gleaming it dove. Its mouth stretched two feet wide as it came down on him from on high, threatening to deepthroat Max’s head.
Max instinctively fired into the dark wet mouth before rolling to the side. He popped up ten feet away as the wormhead landed. Shaking its worm-like head like a dog who had just eaten a bee. It turned its eyeless head in Max’s direction, and a guttural sound issued from deep in its massive chest. The thing had to be seven feet tall, and had its head been extended to its full height it would have neared nine feet. Max felt like a child fighting a bear with a slingshot, but he swallowed his fear, digested it, and turned it into strength.
“Hey, Suckface! You’ve got something in your teeth!”
The beast slunk lower, its head extended and opened wide. A torrent of fowl smelling breath wafted over Max and he began to gag as he unloaded three successive slugs into the wormhead’s dripping maw.
Something crashed through the trees to his right, and Max spun in the nick of time as another wormhead lunged for him. He got off a shot, but not before the thing slammed into him. The gun went flying from Max’s hands as he was shoved into the side of the truck. He bounced off, pulled his sidearm, and fired three times as the new wormhead crouched to spring at him. Lucky for Max, the things seemed to love showing off their teeth, and the oil-black depths of their throats. He aimed high, knowing that they could be brought down with a well-placed bullet up through the skull. The monster caught the bullets with its upper pallet and swallowed the red-hot load of lead.
Max took the opportunity go get his ass on the other side of the truck and drew his sword as he spun around the front of the vehicle.
“Val! Can you speed it up you think!”
“I’m trying, they’re not in the kitchen!”
“Look in the jacket pockets in the foyer!” he yelled back.
The pistol hadn’t had the same effect s the shotgun slugs, and the new wormhead remained on its feet. If anything, Max had only pissed the hungry creature off more. It stalked him around the truck, savoring the hunt—or was the beast stalling until its brethren arrived? Max could hear the closing in, and he knew that he would be overrun in a matter of seconds.
Then he saw the grenade in the back seat of the truck.
Max smashed the window and unlocked the door as the wormhead stalked around the front, creeping like child’s nightmare through the flurry of white. Three more shots from the pistol fond their mark, but the thing had closed its mouth, and the bullets ricocheted off the thick scales and twanged into the night. Electric dreads zapped and crackled, illuminating the snow around its elongated hear like otherworldly halo. The whip-like appendages swayed above its head like seaweed in calm waters as it crept closer. Max leapt into the truck and slammed the door closed behind him. A wet chortle escaped the wormhead, and the electric dreadlocks quivered with the thrill of the hunt.
The cries of his brethren closed in, and Max watched horrified as they began to step out of the shadows. Max counted six as he grabbed the grenade and shot out the other door, leaving the stalking wormhead between the house and the truck. Behind the truck was a garage, and Max ran toward it as fast as he dared on the slippery driveway. His quick movements seemed to break the spell, and the slowly stalking wormheads suddenly erupted with hellish cries and movement.
Max pulled
his pistol and fired at the doorknob on the run. He slammed into it and stumbled into the garage when it gave way easier then he anticipated. The hood of a black civic broke his fall, and he rolled over it and hit the concrete running. A wormhead dashed into the garage, followed by three more that slammed into each other like eager young soldiers vying to be the first into a whorehouse.
Terrified but clear of plan, Max charged to the back of the garage. He had guessed there would be a backdoor, and as he drew closer and the electric dreads of his pursuers illuminated the room, he found that he had been right.
“Come and get me, you slimy, foreskin-faced fuckers!” Max unloaded his clip into the mass.
They continued to filed into the garage, slamming into the car and the far wall, and sending hung sleds, tools, rakes, shovels and hoes to the floor. The collective energy of their many crackling dreadlocks merged to create storm of snaking electricity that climbed the walls and licked the floor, sparking and hissing as it came after Max.
He pulled the pin on the grenade, tossed it onto the hood of the civic, and hauled ass out of the back door, slamming it shut on his way out. He counted to three as he ran for his life and dove a heartbeat before the back windows of the garage exploded outward.
The hideous cry of the dying wormheads filled his heart with joy.
“Max!” It was Valentine, and it was coming from the other side of the burning garage.
“I’m coming!” he cried, and ran to the left side of the garage, back toward the driveway.
“I hope to god you found the key—”
Max turned the corner and came face-to-café with a wormhead. The creature grabbed him by the arms and lifted him off his feet like a figure skater, but rather than performing a graceful spin, the creature wrapped his head in glowing dreads and sent a surge of electricity through is brain.
Chapter 11
Aftershock
“Max…Max…SHERIFF!”
Max’s eyes shot open and he leapt to his feet. He felt like he had doused himself with water and put his dick in a light socket.
“W-w-what the f-f-fuck happened?” said Max, looking back and seeing the headless wormhead on the ground.
“You got zapped is what happened. Come on!” said Valentine, pulling him toward the truck.
The heat from the garage was intense, and Max had to shield himself with his jacket as was pulled to the truck. Valentine opened the door and pushed Max into the passenger seat, before peeling around the front and hopping in behind the wheel.
“I should d-d-drive.” His teeth chattered, and his body was still spasming, and a quick glance at the vanity mirror that hung down with the visor showed him his mad scientist reflection. Max’s short cropped hair stood straight out in all direction, and dark circles marred his eyes, which were bloodshot and wide open.
And his clothes were still smoking.
“Hold on!” Valentine warned as she put the truck in drive and peeled out onto the road.
Behind them, the garage exploded, and Max assumed that the civic’s gas tank had finally blown.
“Well, th-th-that was e-e-easy,” he said with a small laugh.
Valentine offered him a look reserved for crazy people, but soon erupted into musical laughter. Her mirth proved contagious, and once Max started in he couldn’t stop.
“You look like you made out with a light socket,” she said between fitful giggles.
“Ha! I f-f-feel like I was molested by a c-c-cattle prod!”
“Dude…” She scrunched up her nose at him and shook her head. “Nasty.”
The snow finally let up ten minutes after they left the burning garage in the rearview mirror, but the damage had been done. Snowdrifts three feet high filled the northern side of the road when the trees gave way to fields on both sides, and Valentine was forced to keep it under twenty miles an hour for fear of crashing again. They were now in no man’s land, on a strip of highway that stretched long between towns. Houses were sparse, and if they went off the road out here they were as good as dead.
“Take the next left,” said Max. “We’ve got to get back on 11 and track down Spring and her crazy ass brother.”
“Let’s just hope the snow hasn’t buried their tire tracks,” said Valentine.
“I can’t believe he did that. What was he thinking?”
“He was scared, they both are.”
“Yeah, well people do stupid shit when they’re scared,” said Max. In truth, he was scared for them. He had promised Mother Laughing that he would protect the children, and now he had lost them less than an hour after making his vow.
“Maybe they’ll go right to Fort Drum. They heard us talking about it enough,” said Valentine.
“I sure as shit hope so, Val.”
Ten minutes later they pulled back onto Rt 11, and to their relief, the kids’ tire tracks were still visible on the snowy road. They followed the tracks for another fifteen minutes, and right when Max thought the kids just might have continued on west to Fort Drum, the tracks abruptly turned south.
Valentine stopped at the crossroads and looked south down the snowy road leading through farmland. The moon was out now, and most of the clouds had retreated. The wind had died as well, leaving the world as quiet as a funeral parlor and seemingly frozen in time.
“Look,” said Max, pointing back at Rt 11. “Wormheads cut them off here at the crossroads and pursued them south.”
“Son of a bitch. If anything happens to them, I’ll never forgive myself.”
“They’re tough kids,” said Valentine, putting the truck in gear and turning south down the country road. “Besides,” she added, “Mother Laughing said that Spring has a destiny to fulfill.”
“You believe that mumbo jumbo?” Max asked with an arched brow.
She shrugged. “I don’t not believe in anything anymore.”
Max knew how she felt. His world had been turned upside down and sprinkled with a hearty dose of crazy. Just four days ago he had been enjoying his perfectly normal, wonderfully boring life, and now he was slaying humanoid space worms with electric dreads.
Ten minutes later they came to another sleepy town and followed the tire prints and wormhead tracks off the road and into a Wal-Mart parking lot. To Max’s horror, they found the truck half buried in the entrance to the home & garden section—and it was surrounded by the monster’s footprints.
“Pull up and park so we’re facing away from the building, and keep it running,” Max instructed Valentine.
When they parked he riffled through the weapons on the floor in the back of the truck and came away with a semi-automatic machine gun and two extra clips. Thusly armed, Valentine followed him into the abandoned store.
Max crept into the building, passing the cash registers and sweeping his flashlight left, right, and upward. The kids had trailed in snow, and the path led to the double doors connecting to the rest of the store. They had been forced partially opened, most likely by the kids, but the wormheads that chased them hadn’t bothered going the conventional route and had smashed right through the glass.
Max cringed when his big boots crunched the glass, for the sound must have carried nearly to the other end of the store, so quiet was the gargantuan retail haven.
“I hate to split up,” said Max, “But—”
Just then a scream ripped through the absolute silence. It was a little girl’s scream, and it was coming from the back of the building.
Chapter 12
Price Check on Aisle Five
Max raced through the aisles, passing the auto, toy, and footwear sections and skidding to a stop beside woman’s lingerie. Spring’s outburst had been short, and it hadn’t been followed by the wormhead’s cry, which Max took as a good thing. He knew they were in the building, however, for he could smell them. The scent was a cross between ozone and sulfur, and it permeated the air like pollen in June.
“Hold on, I’ve got an idea,” he said, handing Valentine his machine gun and climbing the nearby stairs on
wheels used by staff to reach the highest shelves.
As the store opened up before him he looked to where he though he had heard Spring’s cry, and there, by the south wall, was the tell-tale glow of the wormheads’ electric dreads.
“I see them,” he whispered. “At least four of them, and they’re all gathered around the back isle.”
Max climbed down and took back his machine gun. He had brought a couple grenades with him, but he didn’t want to risk injuring the kids. He still didn’t know where they were.
“What’s the plan, sheriff?” Valentine asked.
“I’m going to have to create a diversion. When the slimy bastards come for me, you get back there and find the kids, then hightail your ass out of here. I’ll meet you in the parking lot, alright?”
Valentine looked like she didn’t like the plan, but she didn’t have a better idea, so at length she nodded. “Alright, you be careful, you hear?”
“Yes mother.” Max hugged her, and Valentine squeezed him hard. “You ready?”
She nodded, and Max left her side and jogged down the isles until he could see the glow of the wormheads. He knew he couldn’t outrun them for long, but he didn’t need to. All he had to do was lure them away from the children, then he could blow them into next week with the granades. The plan seemed simple enough, but the way Max’s day had been going left him more than a little apprehensive.
The sounds of the wormheads found him then. They seemed confused, and When Max peeked around the end of an aisle, he found the aliens all standing in front of a display of mirrors. To their right was a swinging double door that Max assumed led back into the store room. He backtracked, signaled to Valentine that he would be a minute, and went to find some string. It took him longer than he would have liked to set up his trap, but it dark in the abandoned superstore, and one slip up would see him dead.
The Doomsday Sheriff: The Novella Collection (Includes Books 1 - 3) Page 22
