As Money’s calls became more frequent, so did the ludicrous nature of the complaints. Two weeks ago he’d claimed to have seen a Sasquatch skulking through the woods. Then he upped the ante by weaving a Rod Serling yarn about a silver saucer he’d seen touch down in the hills behind his house. Last week he’d skidded to a stop in front of Nickles’ cruiser, hopped out in a drunken huff and demanded Nickles do something about the son-of-a-bitch responsible for stealing and butchering his laying hens. When Nickles asked for evidence, Money handed him a fistful of bloody chicken feathers and a severed hen’s head.
Nickles was convinced the old man was slowly going insane, his brain rotting away from all the homemade sour mash he’d strained through a ’67 Ford truck radiator and sipped out of a rusty soup can. Shit that vile would have a normal man peeling the skin off his own arms and decapitating himself if he drank enough of it, so Money butchering his own chickens during a session of the blind staggers wasn’t out of the question. Nickles had considered strangling the crazy, jake-legged bastard to end the misery, but figured the moonshine would take him soon enough.
The scene spilling out in front of Nickles this time was different. He’d received a radio call from Central Dispatch—Code 10-0—a fatality. The carnage was real, way beyond something a lonely old drunk would stage just so he could cry wolf. Hearld Money’s usual backwater bullshit paled in comparison to the mess draped over the log and dragged into the lake. Now Money was a flurry of questions—questions for which Sgt. Charlie Nickles had no answers.
Nickles pocketed the yellow tooth and completed his report, filling out the mounds of paperwork the State of Indiana required of its DNR officers whenever there was an official incident. While the rest of the world had gone digital, Nickles still did everything with ballpoints and carbon paper. Headquarters pissed-and-moaned about his defiance, but did little else, satisfied to scan all his documents into a data base while he rode herd over the growing quagmire in Vivid Valley.
He stowed the papers in his metal file box, climbed back in his boat and fired the engine. As he eased out into open water, he could still hear Money standing on the shore, his feeble frame as fat as a kitchen match, yammering about the bloody mess scattered on the fringes of his property line. Nickles gunned the outboard and sped off. His hand was in his pocket, rubbing the huge, yellow tooth like a spirit stone and praying it would reveal some answers.
Deep below the surface, a rancid, black ooze was mingling with the crystal clear waters of Vivid Valley Lake. The floor of the lake rumbled. A long forgotten tombstone teetered in the sediment and tumbled into a thick layer of festering sludge. It rose into a dense, rolling cloud, pierced by a hulking, black and green body with a ravenous maw full of sharp, yellow teeth.
CHAPTER 4
Mel ‘Kingfish’ Sharples kept low. His eyes had an icy glare, practiced in the art of subtle deception. He worked by feel—no flashlight, or lantern, or campfire—nothing to give away his position on the shore. He didn’t want to risk another run-in with Charlie Nickles and his Department of Natural Resources rule book of fish and game violations. The last thing he needed was a two-bit fish cop sticking his snout into his business. When it came to fresh turtle meat, Kingfish could give a shit less what Nickles’ endless book of laws, limits and seasons said. To Kingfish, any season was open season and the weight limit was whatever he could drag in, haul home, cook and eat. He was an aggressive hunter and a master fisherman. That’s why they called him ‘Kingfish’.
He always set his turtle lines before dawn, baiting the hooks with fresh clumps of beef liver and stringing them around the shallow coves of Vivid Valley Lake. The scent of raw meat lured the turtles off the silt bottom. The barbed hooks did the rest.
Now it was dark. He worked his way around Grant’s Cove checking each line. There were twenty-eight in all. With any luck he’d be going home with at least a dozen snappers, maybe more. He used a gentle touch on the lines as he pulled them in. A stray hit could put enough pressure on a turtle line to saw off some fingers if his grip was too tight. He knew a fingerless fisherman wasn’t worth a Tinker’s fuck to anyone
Tonight, Kingfish had help. Billy Mize was usually too far into his latest meth binge, but Kingfish had caught him during a rare moment of clarity and piled him into his pick-up truck before Billy could back out. Kingfish knew Billy was a sketchy bastard, but when it came to turtlin’, he was a master. Billy could snatch a snapper by the tail and yank him off the hook without ever breaking a sweat.
“Sumbitch. Lookit this big motherfucker here!” Billy bellered, holding up a huge snapper by the tail as it bit at the air around his legs.
Kingfish cringed. “Put a cork in it, dumbfuck. You tryin’ to get us caught?”
“Sorry, Kingfish, guess I wasn’t thinkin’.”
“You better start. One more pop from Mr. Law and I’ll be doin’ some serious time inside.”
Billy unhooked the turtle, flung it into a burlap bag and cinched the top shut. “Ain’t worth it, not over turtle meat.”
“Not over anything,” Kingfish grunted.
Billy turned back toward the water. Suddenly he was letting out a stream of high-pitched war whoops that echoed through Grant’s Cove like a fire siren.
“Damnit, Billy! Keep. It. Quiet. Can’t you get anything through that meth-mushed brain of yours? Now, shut the fuck up!”
Billy didn’t shut the fuck up.
“Mize, I gotta tell you one more time, I’m—.” Kingfish turned in time to see Billy Mize kicking along the muddy bank next to a tangled bait line. He was pointing at the lake and screeching like an owl. There was a spatter of blood on his cheek and his eyes had gone wild with terror.
Kingfish’s eyes darted between Billy’s bloody face and the dark surface of the lake. A thick fog was rolling in. He squinted, desperate to get a glimpse of something, anything in the water. “What is it, Billy? Whataya see?”
Nothing but screams.
A barbed fin broke the surface, then a pair of coal black eyes and a gaping mouth. It emerged from the fog like a torpedo and headed straight for Billy. Kingfish rubbed his muddy fists into his eyes, focused, and looked again. The creature’s head was now fully exposed. There was a half-eaten snapping turtle lodged in its jaws. The mouth was as wide as a well and lined with rows of sharp yellow teeth.
Kingfish caught a glimpse of its sinister, dead eyes just as it swallowed the turtle carcass and lunged at Billy’s thrashing feet. “Shit, Billy, get the hell up outta’ there!”
Billy was on his ass, back-peddling through the mud in a frantic struggle to get away. The thrashing failed to give his feet a solid purchase in the slippery bank, pushing him closer to the water and the charging creature. “What the hell is that thing, King?”
“I don’t know, but it sure as hell is one ugly, turtle eatin’ son-of-a-bitch. Now get your skinny ass up that bank.”
“I’m Tryin’.”
Kingfish snatched up a dead limb and headed toward Billy. Before he’d taken two steps, the thing had Billy’s foot in its jaws and was dragging him into the lake. Kingfish scrabbled down the muddy bank and skidded to a stop just as Billy’s head slapped into a rock and disappeared beneath the water. Kingfish waited—one, two, three minutes—for Billy to pop up. Nothing.
When he finally did resurface, Billy was spitting up blood and the creature was still attached. “King…you…it’s eating me. You…I…oh Jesus, I…”
The creature thrashed around like a harpooned shark. Billy let out one long burst of painful shrieks. The creature gnawed through his Carhartt jacket, ripping out bits of cloth and bloody flesh. Billy Mize was being eaten alive.
Kingfish was sweating now, sopping it off his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. He watched in terror as the thing rolled to one side, churning the water and Billy’s blood into a crimson froth. Its greasy green and black body broke the surface in a wide arc. Then it pulled Billy under again, his face frozen in horror, mouth gaping and neck gushing thick jets of
blood. Kingfish thrust the dead limb into the churning water, desperate to save Billy or kill the beast that was eating him. Billy’s hand appeared, making a wild grab for the limb. Then it slipped away and he was gone. As quickly as the attack began, it was over. The water stilled. The lake went calm. Billy and the creature were gone.
Kingfish let the bloody limb slip through his fingers and fall from his shaking hand. As it slipped into the water, the fog began to lift and he was alone in the darkness of Vivid Valley. “Holy shit.”
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Nests: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller Page 17
