Cassandra Case Files

by Steven F. Warnock

  For a sidearm the former Marine had chosen a Rock Island 1911 TAC Ultra chambered in 9mm, and he’d paired that rather classical choice with an equally classic Ka-Bar knife. Then, he’d deviated from the typical by choosing an M+M Industries M-10x as his go-to long arm. The M-10x was easily mistaken for an AK-47 since it was chambered for the same 7.62x39mm round and could even use AK magazines, but the rifle wasn’t an AK. Externally and internally, M+M Industries had come up with a rifle that combined features from the FN-FAL, the AR15, and the Galil. The result was a compact semi-auto rifle that filled that intermediate area between the 5.56/.223 and the 7.62/.308.

  “I am feeling decidedly underdressed,” Samuels sighed heavily, “but we ain’t got time for me to stop and grab my rifle, do we?”

  Mack glanced at KC who smiled and fetched one more long gun from the truck and handed it to Samuels. It was Mack’s Mossberg 590A1 Retrograde.

  “How many damn guns y’all got?”

  “Um, at least two more, but that’s it,” KC assured him.

  “Yeah, that’s not even considering the compound bow or the other knives,” Mack shrugged as he chambered the first round into the Hammer. “Time’s wasting. Let’s go!”

  THE GUNSHOTS HAD COME from Natty Moon’s old Winchester pump shotgun, fired into the air. The fur-clad old woman was shouting at the top of her lungs, too, and pounding on the doors of tiny homes and RVs alike with the butt of her shotgun.

  “Get your asses up! The end is upon us! It’s Red Dawn time, people! The Red Coats are a-comin’! The Chinks and the Rooskies are on the attack! Get up! Get up! Arm yourselves! Grab food’n’water!”

  “Natty!” Mack shouted when he saw her.

  Natty wasn’t much taller than Pilar, but what she lacked in height she’d tried to make up for in girth. She wasn’t quite a ball with arms and legs, and very little of her girth was excess fat. Natty was quite muscular to the point that most people suspected some kind of steroid or growth hormone abuse.

  “Mack! Good! You’re armed, and I see ya got that worthless Samuels with ya. Marshal, you gotta let the Mayor know we’s under attack!”

  “Yeah, we know,” Samuels griped.

  “David Bryce is dead,” Mack reported.

  Natty’s face dropped. “Aw. I liked him. Dumb as a sack of hammers, but at least he was good lookin’!”

  “Have you seen the bad guys?” Mack asked.

  Natty nodded and pointed a thumb over her shoulder toward where she’d established her homestead. “Yeah, spotted ‘em lurkin’ about couple days ago ‘fore the snow started fallin’. They came for me last night, but they apparently wasn’t ‘spectin’ my traps. Fought ‘em off and come first light, I came runnin’ thisaways to raise the alarm.”

  “Okay, Natty, I need you to stick close to us for right now. How’re you set for ammo?”

  “Well, I shot off a dozen rounds fighin’ ‘em, and I just set off another five gettin’ everybody awake. Got ‘bout fifty rounds or so left.”

  “Then, stop shooting unless it’s a bad guy, okay? Save your ammo,” Mack instructed. Then, he turned to address the gathering residents, many of whom were still in their bedclothes. “Listen up! Natty may be as crazy as we all think, but she’s right. Silver Dollar City is under attack by an unknown hostile force, and the drive is currently blocked. We’re stuck here, so what I need for all of you to do is listen and follow my orders. Clear?”

  “Who put you in charge?” demanded Scot Dodson. Officially, he was one of the town’s “artists in residence.” Unofficially, and more accurately, he was a stock boy at the General Store. He was also something of a belligerent jerk.

  “I did,” Samuels declared, stepping forward. “Listen up! You know me, and you know I don’t take shit off nobody, and I shoot straight with people. Porcia Castillo is missing, presumed dead. David Bryce is dead. Mr. MacDuff here is a United States Marine, something none of us knew, and Teddy has seen fit to let him take charge of this situation and so have I ‘cause this is way beyond me. Now, shut your pie holes, and you will goddamn comply with what you’re told to do, or I will plant my foot so far up your ass that you can lick the jam out between my toes with your mouth shut!”

  “Thanks for that disturbing image, Samuels,” Mack said. “Listen up! Those of you with motorhomes, unhook ‘em and move them over to the parking lot between the Saloon and the General Store. Those of you in trailers or non-mobile homes, dress warm, grab as much food and water as you can carry and whatever weapons and ammunition you have. We’ll be gathering in the lobby of the hotel until further plans can be made. Are we clear on that, Mrs. Elango?”

  The diminutive Indian woman nodded her head. “I’ll call Narinder now to be prepared.” She had an old flip phone out. “One minute, Mack! I don’t have reception. Does anybody else have reception?”

  “No bars,” reported Aaron LaGuardia, the town mechanic.

  “Me neither,” added Iman Greene, daughter of Julio and Kanisha Greene who ran the General Store.

  Further negatives confirmed that the local cell network was down, which meant the internet was out, too.

  “Don’t dawdle, people!” Mack roared. “We don’t know what our time frame is. Hustle! Hustle! Hustle!” He turned back to Samuels and Natty. “Samuels, you’re in charge of shepherding our flock from here.”

  “I can handle that,” Samuels assured him.

  “Natty, you stick with him and watch his back.”

  “Roger that, Marine! Hoo-wah!”

  “That’s the Army. Marines say, ‘oo-rah’.”

  The old woman just gave him a gap-toothed grin.

  “Where you going?” Samuels asked.

  “Back to collect the bodies. Steer Padma and Ole over to the Livery, and when you’re done, grab Teddy and join us. Organize a guard and put Iva in charge before you do, though.”

  Samuels nodded. “Alright.”

  “Good man,” Mack praised. “KC, let’s get back to our original task.”

  THE FOUR OF THEM LOADED the three dead tangos into the bed of Little Boy Blue first. David Bryce was then ceremoniously placed on top with a tarp between him and the creatures in the bed. Lastly, all the darts that were still sticking up from the Hermitage’s yard were collected.

  Moments later, they backed up to the rear of the Livery. What had once been a walled yard with attached corral and forge had been converted into a modern repair garage. The original stables had been converted into a multi-car storage garage, which Teddy had turned into the show floor and stock area for renting 4-Wheeler ATVs and snowmobiles. The old hayloft had been converted into a space that sold and rented out various types of athletic equipment, especially hiking and cross-country skiing supplies.

  An alley separated the Livery from the Hotel, which was where Teddy kept the big Ford F450 work truck that mounted the snowplow. He also stored supplies there maintaining the Main Street roadway and the boardwalks that served Silver Dollar City as sidewalks.

  Mack had chosen the Livery to use as an improvised morgue because the workshop area was the largest space available where they wouldn’t be packing people in to keep them safe. David Bryce’s body was removed first, placed to one side, still covered in the bedsheet taken from Porcia’s house. The three other bodies were laid out in a row on top of a tarp for examination.

  KC and Mack were already poking at the bodies when Teddy, Samuels, and Natty arrived with Padma Rosenfeld, a nurse practitioner who filled the role of town medic, Ole Ahlstrom, who was a Doctor of Biology and a cryptozoologist who’d lost his teaching job at a community college in Tacoma, Washington, because he was an outspoken cryptid hunter, and Roland Rounds, who ran the Livery for Teddy. Rounds was in charge of the overall business, but he relegated the mechanic jobs to Aaron and the rental/sales work to Martin Herman.

  “Holy shit!” he exclaimed at the sight of the dead tangos.

  “Wow!” Ole gasped.

  “What’s he doing here?” Mack sighed, pointing at Rounds.

 
“He has the keys to the front door,” Samuels said. “How did you get in?”

  “Aaron never locks the back door,” Mack replied. “He doesn’t think anybody knows, but most of us do.”

  “What are these creatures?” Ole Ahlstrom asked, squatting next to KC to examine one of the tangos.

  “I can honestly say that I don’t know,” KC sighed, “and I find that very troubling.”

  “They’s troglodytes!” Natty declared.

  Everyone stared at her.

  She shrugged. “Well, that’s what I’m callin’ ‘em.”

  “Why?” Mack asked with a bemused tone.

  “Well, there’s two reasons. One’s good. The other’s silly.”

  “Do tell.”

  “Okay, the good reason is that ‘troglodyte’ means ‘underground or cave dweller’, and I’ll swear on a stack of Bibles these suckers come up from that underground base those Men in Black built into the old mines.”

  Samuels scoffed, but at a glare from Mack did manage to look contrite.

  “Go on,” Mack urged. “What’s the silly reason?”

  Natty shrugged under her furs and produced a nylon backpack. She unzipped one of the compartments and pulled out a worn and well-used copy of the Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition Monster Manual. She solemnly opened the book near the back cover. “I know this is all made-up, but you tell me that don’t describe these critters.”

  Mack took the offered book and looked at the entry Natty pointed at. “Yeah, it’s close, but they don’t have the supernatural stink. Also, I don’t think they’re lizard men.”

  “They’re not,” Ole agreed.

  “That looks like a lot like a velociraptor,” Padma opined as she stared over Ole’s shoulder.

  “Velociraptors would have feathers, even if only primitive versions, and these creatures have hair,” Ole pointed out.

  Everyone gathered around the particular creature that Ole and KC were examining. Had it been alive and able to stand under its own power, the creature would have been almost five and a half feet tall. Its general body plan was humanoid, an erect biped, although the legs were a little short, and the arms seemed a little long.

  The head had no visible ears, and the face consisted of a short snout that ended in an almost dog-like nose. Wicked serrated teeth were revealed by the rictus snarl. The eyes were deep set in the face above the snout, shadowed by bony ridges.

  Leathery scales seemed to cover the body, but a ridge of thick white hair ran from the crown of the head, down the back to the base of the spinal column. From there a tail extended out a good three or four feet. Thick, spade-like nails grew from the creature’s fingers and toes, not quite claws but still sturdy enough to serve as natural weapons in a pinch.

  “They’re definitely not reptiles,” Mack said.

  “I will agree with you, but what is your reasoning?” Ole asked, looking up at the other man.

  “It’s snowing, and the air temp is down near freezing, which would put a reptile into torpor. These things were fast and agile.”

  “I believe they’re warm-blooded, too, but that’s based on the fact that this one has mammary glands, and I believe they can bear live young, too,” Ole said.

  “What now?” Samuels said.

  Ole pointed to the creature’s crotch. “She has a vagina. Reminds me a great deal not of the human organ but the female ape version, and as I’ve already stated, she has mammaries. They’re flat like an ape’s, not, um, well, you know.”

  “Sticking out like mine do?” KC teased.

  Ole blushed.

  “They’re running around in the snow naked?” Padma frowned in thought.

  “Not quite,” Mack admitted. “We’d already stripped them of their clothes and equipment before you guys got here, and when you see how they were kitted up, it’s gonna blow your minds.”

  Chapter Five

  Twin Lakes, Colorado

  Thursday, March 14, 2019

  “THEY DID HAVE CLOTHING, after a fashion, no pun intended,” Mack explained.

  He and Liam had piled the three creatures’ belongings on a workbench. Mack picked up what looked like a pair of boots with the toes cut off. “This was what they had on their feet, and I think that was mainly for warmth.”

  “It makes sense,” Ole mused. “I mean from a cursory examination I’d be willing to say that their epidermis is probably thicker and definitely tougher than our own. Though they’re obviously adapted to bipedal locomotion, their big toe is still more like a semi-opposable thumb, and their foot claws are more pointed than their nail-claws. I’m thinking the toe-claws are for climbing, and the finger claws are for digging.”

  “As for warmth against the cold, they all had on these ponchos,” Mack said handing out the articles of clothing in question. The simple garment was all black on one side, and the pattern on the other was a close approximation of the Overwhite Winter camouflage Liam was wearing.

  “Reminds me of a polar bear’s hide,” Ole chuckled. “See, polar bears have white fur for camouflage purposes, but their skin is black to absorb and retain more of the sun’s warmth.”

  “Or it’s a reversible camouflage pattern,” Liam proposed. “One side for out in the snow, the other for laying low in the caves Natty says they came out of.”

  “Well, a poncho is pretty much a primitive cloak, and a cloak is actually better than a coat for keeping you warm in some cases because it sort of forms a tent around your body keeping your own heat trapped inside,” Teddy said. He looked around at the others. “What? I’m a Mormon. Disaster prepping is literally a part of our religion.”

  “And this is what they were wearing on their bodies,” Mack said, handing what looked like cargo shorts and a surfer’s rash guard.

  “This is cotton,” Padma exclaimed as she examined a pair of the shorts.

  “Yeah, and this thing is some kind of synthetic,” Ole observed of the upper body covering. “It’s not wet suit material, though.”

  “No, I think it’s Type IIA Kevlar armor,” Mack reported. “If you’ll notice, all three creatures died from a headshot, but you can also see where my rounds embedded in the vest. Uh, tunic, I mean. I’m used to referring to torso armor as a ‘vest’, but that’s more of a shirt than a vest.”

  “This is beginning to make me think these cryptids are some kind of aliens,” Ole declared.

  “Space aliens? Really?” Samuels mocked. “Why would goddamn space aliens used motherfuckin’ spears, Ole? Why?”

  “Unlike a suppressed gun, these things really are silent or close enough to make no real difference,” Liam explained, “and these aren’t primitive weapons. I mean, they are, but they’re of modern material manufacturing.” He held up one of the darts and pointed to the fletching. “This is turkey feather. Take it from a guy who knows bows and arrows, this is quality fletching material, and this shaft! It’s carbon fiber That’s high end durability. Look at the head. It’s a third of the dart’s overall length, and the shape is a bodkin point. They used bodkins in Medieval times to pierce steel armor. It actually kinda reminds me of a Roman light javelin.”

  “The atlatl, the throwing stick, is made of modern composites, too,” Mack pointed out. He picked up one of the throwing sticks and pointed at a marking on the base of the handgrip. “I think this will disprove the ‘space alien’ hypothesis.”

  Ole Ahlstrom squinted at the marking. “Does that actually say ‘Made in Taiwan’?”

  “Yes, in English, no less,” Mack confirmed.

  “The shorts have a label that says, ‘Hecho en Mexico’, which is, of course, Spanish for ‘Made in Mexico’,” Pilar said. “The tunic doesn’t have any kind of label or logo, and neither does the poncho.”

  “Was this all they had on them?” Teddy asked.

  Mack shook his head. “It looked to me like they were carrying extra darts in their off-hand, but they had a harness on over the tunic. It kinda looks like the old ALICE gear the Marines and the Army used back in the 90s, but I
realized that the writing is Russian, but all it says is, basically, ‘Made in Russia’.”

  The harness consisted of a waist belt and shoulder straps that comprised the base vest. On the back of the harness was a large butt pack. Two more pouches were attached to the belt on either side of the butt pack. Another pouch was attached to the left side shoulder strap up on the chest. A dagger was sheathed in front of the left side pouch, and a metal ring was mounted on the right side.

  “What’s with this?” Rounds asked, playing with the metal ring.

  Mack demonstrated by dropping the atlatl into the ring.

  “What do these bags have in them?” Teddy asked.

  “We should search them and find out,” Mack suggested. He opened one of the smaller pouches first. “Oh, this is just adding insult to injury.”

  “What is it?” Samuels demanded.

  Mack displayed his find.

  “Is that a clip for an assault rifle?” Teddy asked.

  “Magazine,” Mack corrected absent-mindedly, “and it sure looks like it, but this appears to be a shotgun shell.” He stripped a green shell about the size of his pinky finger from the top of the magazine.

  “That’s awful skinny for a shotgun shell,” Roland Rounds observed.

  “It looks almost like a .410,” Mack muttered as he examined the shell.

  “That’s like a baby size shotgun, though, right?” Ole Ahlstrom said.

  “The .410 is a regular caliber, not a gauge, and is really small for what people think of as shotguns, but theoretically you can shoot .45 caliber rounds out of the same barrel,” Liam explained. “The .410’s become a really popular round for self defense in recent years. Smith & Wesson and Taurus both offer revolvers chambered for it, and ATI makes an AR upper for it to turn your AR15 into a shotgun. I think Saiga makes a .410 AK shotgun, too.”