“Go!” he shouted to his deputy, a man he had known for just over six years.
The man’s narrow face twisted, and when he didn’t move immediately, the sheriff realized that the man was very much like Coggins—not his twin, surely, but similar enough. The man cared about him and he cared about Askergan. He was one of the good boys.
“What are you going to do?” the deputy asked as he bent down and picked up the Kevlar vest.
“Got a couple of calls to make,” the sheriff said. “I’ll join you in a minute. Now go!”
The man nodded, and then he scooped up all of the ammo and guns and piled the stash on top of the Kevlar vest still draped over his arms.
The man was like Coggins, but he wasn’t Coggins. Coggins wouldn’t have left him then.
A cracker suddenly struck the front window of the police station with such force that it bowed inward, followed by a wobbling back and forth, causing a strange acoustical pressure in the sheriff’s head. The window was large, at least six by eight feet. When another cracker struck the glass, he thought he saw the beginnings of a crack near the center of the massive pane.
Two calls; I need to make two phone calls.
The glass wouldn’t hold for much longer.
33.
“Fuck me!” Coggins shouted as the car skidded off Highway 2 and careened onto Main Street.
The gas station marking the intersection was on fire, the walls of the small shop twisting and warping as the yellow-orange flames licked up the sides. But this wasn’t what had drawn the obscenity from Coggins.
It was the crackers; they were everywhere.
Somewhere in the sea of white, Coggins spied an iconic plaid shirt—something one particular man wore every single day, even on a hot day like today. Coggins hadn’t seen the man in over four years, but a simple glimpse of the red tartan pattern and he knew the body lying face down on the tarmac by pump three was that of the proprietor, Andre Merckle.
Coggins swallowed hard.
“Drive! Keep going!” he instructed Jared, just in case the man had any reservations about stopping.
He did not.
The sun blinked below the horizon and the street lamps flicked on as they made the corner, casting an eerie blue glow on the street before them.
Coggins’ mouth dropped open.
The street was teeming with crackers, hundreds and hundreds of them, all moving in one direction, smooth and effortlessly, like an organic blanket.
Jared snarled and flicked on his headlights. The closest dozen or so crackers stopped moving and dipped either toward the lights or the rumble of the engine, and Jared floored it.
The tires spun madly as they tried to keep their traction on the crushed shards of cartilage, bone, shell, or whatever the fuck the ungodly creatures were made of.
Coggins wound down his window and leaned out, scrunching his nose at the stink that hit his face like a blanket. Eyes watering, he reached back inside the car and grabbed the rifle.
Coggins’ first shot took out three crackers; the bullet passed right through the first two before deflecting off something hard and rebounding to take out a third.
“Yee-haw, motherfucker!” he shouted into the warm night air.
He squeezed off another shot and another two crackers were reduced to milky smears.
Coggins ducked back into the car to reload, and just as he pushed another round into the chamber, his cell phone rang. The sound was so foreign that he almost dropped the rifle. Instead, he placed the gun across his lap and grabbed the phone.
‘Whitey’ flashed on the display.
“Coggins! Look out!”
Coggins turned back to the open window just in time to see a cracker flying through the air. Jared yanked the wheel to the left and the cracker missed the open window. Instead, it smashed into the rear window, blowing it inward in a shower of glass.
“Fuck!”
The cracker landed on the backseat, but was stunned by the impact, lying curled on its side, three of its six legs flailing awkwardly in the air.
Coggins leaned between the seats and flipped the rifle around, driving the butt end into the underside of the shell.
“Get it out!” Jared shrieked, trying to keep the car on the road as he continued to run over dozens of the crackers, even while the vehicle continued to pick up speed.
“Uh-oh.”
The rifle butt had driven some of the tiny teeth backward in the orifice, but it also seemed to bring the thing back to its senses. It flipped over onto its legs, then began lowering into place, the joints cracking into place.
“What do you mean uh-oh?” Jared shouted. He swerved to the right and the cracker’s shell in the backseat tilted in the opposite direction in an effort to remain planted.
It worked.
“No uh-oh, Brad, no fucking uh-oh!”
Coggins acted fast, flipping the rifle around.
“Cover your ears,” he muttered.
“What?”
A shot rang out in the car.
* * *
Smoke.
Milk.
Ringing.
Coggins plugged his nose and tried to force air through his ears, but it was no use; all he heard was ringing in his ears.
He waved a hand in front of his face, clearing the smoke from the rifle blast.
The cracker was gone, destroyed. The bullet, which had been fired at a distance of only about a foot, had completely disintegrated the cracker and had ripped through the backseat and buried it somewhere in the trunk.
Coggins blinked again, trying to catch his bearings, to recover his senses.
He flipped forward in his seat and turned to stare out the windshield. The part of Main Street that they were presently on was not as covered in crackers, with only a couple dozen of the creatures spreading out before them.
Coggins stretched his jaw, once again trying to get his hearing back. When this accomplished nothing, he put a finger to his ear and felt something wet. When he looked at his finger, the pad was covered in red.
Fuck, blew out my eardrums.
He realized that above the low rumble of the engine and the perpetual ringing in his ears, there was another sound: Jared was screaming something at him.
The deputy turned to look at the driver.
The man’s eyes were wide, as was his mouth, the latter stretched so far that the cleft on his chin completely disappeared. He was yelling so loudly that a vein in his forehead bulged and spit flew from his lips.
But Coggins couldn’t hear him.
Coggins leaned in close to the man’s mouth, close enough that he could smell the man’s whiskey breath, but it was no use; he could hear the sound that Jared was making, but it was like one obnoxious low-frequency drone, and he was unable to make out the words.
He stared at the man’s lips instead.
Where the duck is the HOCKEY?
Coggins squinted, holding up his hand and turning it in the air, trying to get Jared to repeat it.
Why is the fuck MOCKING?
It dawned on Coggins that he could still speak, and he shouted, “Slower, what the fuck are you saying? I can’t hear!”
His own words came out sounding like Portuguese, all nasal vowels that didn’t make sense.
Jared swallowed and looked back to the road. He swerved to smash another few crackers, then righted the vehicle in the center of the road.
Thankfully, the road was completely abandoned, which was not completely unusual for a Tuesday evening in Askergan County. Coggins hoped that most people had fled the town or were locked safely in their homes… the alternative being an option he didn’t want to entertain.
Andre Merckle—poor Andre and his fucking plaid shirts.
Jared turned back to him then.
Where the fuck is Frankie’s Café? he mouthed.
Coggins was confused at first, but when Jared indicated the cell phone, he understood.
Nancy! Jared mouthed. We need to pick up Nancy at Frankie’s Café!
&
nbsp; It made sense now—the sheriff had called them to pick up Nancy.
Coggins immediately turned his gaze out the windshield and began scanning the side of the road for Frankie’s Café.
“There!” he shouted, pointing out his open window. “There! There! There!”
Jared yanked the wheel to the right and aimed the headlights directly at a small, dimly lit café at the side of the road.
Please be there, Coggins thought. Don’t make us wait.
The interior of the café was dark, and there were no signs of movement.
Jared almost smashed into the café’s sign—an iconic green-and-white crest adorned with the word Frankie’s—swerving at just the last second to avoid it. He pulled right onto the sidewalk, lining up Coggins’ door with the entrance.
As Coggins continued to scan the interior of the café, Jared turned his attention to Main Street.
There were far fewer crackers now than when he had first turned onto Main Street, partly because he had turned some of them into a milk smoothie, but also because most of them were on the grass now, all heading for one specific place.
And now that place became clear.
The crackers were heading for the police station.
Jared’s heart sank. The lawn of the ACPD station, which was roughly a quarter mile in the distance, appeared to be much darker than the surrounding area. In fact, had it not been for the well-lit ACPD sign, he wouldn’t have been able to recognize it at all. As it was, the sign blinked every so often, not because of an electrical issue, but because the crackers were swarming all over it.
A hand suddenly reached across his seat and hammered on the horn. The loud beep cut through the silence, and several of the crackers still on the road stopped in mid-step. The horn rang again, and then a third time before Jared swatted Coggins’ hand away.
Jared’s own ears were ringing, especially his right, but the left was better as he had managed to bring a hand to cover it a split second before Coggins had fired the rifle. Still, it was difficult for him to echolocate the shouting that he heard now.
He turned to Coggins and saw that he was half out of the car, pulling open the rear door on his side. At first, he thought that it was Coggins who was shouting, but the sound was too high-pitched to be the deputy’s voice.
A flicker of movement inside the café, a flash of yellow from just below the window, drew his eye. A second later, a blond woman in a tight yellow dress bolted from the darkness, making amazing speed as she traversed the twenty or so feet from the bar to the door, despite wearing heels and crouching at the same time.
The woman leapt into the backseat of the vehicle, causing it sway with the impact.
Jared turned his eyes back to the road and saw that the few crackers that had stopped with the horn honks had started moving again. Except now they were coming toward them—and fast.
He slammed the car back into drive, but a shout stopped him before he jammed his foot on the gas.
“Wait!” the woman in the backseat screamed. “Wait! One more!”
Jared looked back at the café. A fat man with a camera that looked like it was straight out of the eighties blundered his way across the floor of the café at less than half the speed of the woman.
Hurry!
The first of the crackers was crossing the sidewalk now, and it would only be a few more seconds before it would be within striking distance.
“Coggins!” Jared shouted. “Coggins!”
A heavy thud from the backseat and the car dropped a few inches. Jared, eyes still fixed on the crackers that were lowering themselves into striking position, heard a door slam closed, then another.
“Go! Go, go, go!” Coggins shouted.
His words were unnecessary; Jared had already slammed on the gas and the car lurched forward, crushing the crackers just before they leapt into the air.
34.
“Put it on!” Sheriff White instructed Mrs. Drew.
The woman was looking at him with a strange expression on her face, one that twisted her lips downward, pulling her face into a deep frown.
“I won’t,” she replied, sadness in her green eyes.
Sheriff White stepped toward the woman and held the Kevlar vest out to her.
Mrs. Drew was not intimidated by his advance or his size.
“I’m not a cop,” she said firmly.
“Mrs. Drew—” Deputy Williams began, taking a break from loading the two shotguns and reloading his pistol.
Sheriff Paul White held up a hand to silence him.
“I know you are not a cop, Stacey—no one said that you were—but I need—”
The woman finally broke the sheriff’s gaze.
“Dana was the cop. He was the one who was supposed to protect us. And now he’s gone, and so is Alice. And I’m here. Alone.”
A tear ran down her cheek and she quickly wiped it away with her thumb.
The sheriff stood and stared at the woman for a moment, his jaw slack. This was the first time since he had met her at least a decade prior that he had seen this side of her. It wasn’t that she was a cold woman, per se, but she was calm, cool, collected, and direct. Always direct. But this… this seemed so out of place that for the briefest moment, Paul considered that perhaps one of the crackers had gotten to her already, caused some sort of extreme mood change.
Sheriff White glanced to his deputy, and saw his own shocked expression reflected in his face.
The sheriff cleared his throat and regained his composure.
“You are not alone, Stacey,” the sheriff said softly. “And Dana was a good cop—a great sheriff. But now I need you to help me, the new sheriff. I need your help. Askergan needs your help.”
He presented the vest to her again and she looked up at him. There was no fight left in her eyes. The woman nodded.
“I need you to put this on,” Paul continued. “And I also need you take one of these.” He held out a pistol. She looked at the gun. Even though this was the second time that she had taken the gun, the first being back in the now infested office room, he felt it pertinent to ask her if she had ever used it before. “Have you—?”
Mrs. Drew sniffed harshly and took the vest. Her thin hand shot out and grabbed the gun by the butt. In that instant, the sheriff knew the answer, but she replied anyway.
“Dana showed me; I can shoot.”
“Well you probably won’t have to use it, but—”
“I can shoot,” she repeated.
The sheriff nodded and helped affix the vest, strapping the Velcro around her back and sticking it to the front. Then she surprised him by pulling back the chamber on the pistol and checking to see if there was a round in there. There was.
Deputy Williams pumped the shotgun.
“What now, Sheriff?” he asked, his face serious.
Sheriff White stared at him for a moment, unsure of how to respond.
What now indeed.
* * *
A horn sounded upstairs, and at first the trio in the dank basement that served as both the ACPD armory and evidence room ignored it. But when it honked again, three times, long and loud, the sheriff stopped midsentence and looked up at the ceiling.
Nancy.
The thought rocked him.
Nancy and Coggins are here!
During his battle with the crackers upstairs, he had forgotten that Coggins was going to retrieve her.
“Stay here,” he instructed to Mrs. Drew, pointing a finger directly at her. Then to Deputy Williams, he said, “You take one of the shotguns, I’ll take the other. Coggins is back.”
The deputy nodded and tossed one of the Remington shotguns to Paul. The sheriff caught the weapon with one hand and then put his pistol back into its holster with his other.
“Keep that ready, Mrs. Drew, just in case,” Paul said, indicating the pistol on Mrs. Drew’s lap with his chin.
Aside from the breakdown a few minutes ago, the woman was ice cold. She had nerves of steel, it seemed, which didn’t su
rprise Paul. After all, she was Dana Drew’s wife.
The breakdown had been a blip, that was all. The woman was as confident and composed as ever. The outburst and tears had been a blip brought on by extreme stress. Mrs. Drew would be fine; she always was.
The sheriff shook his head, trying to clear it.
“Come on,” he instructed Deputy Williams.
Together, they headed toward the sound of the horn.
* * *
The glass at the front of the station was still holding, but barely. The outer pane had been smashed, with only a handful of jagged triangles clinging to the frame. The inner pane had its own collection of spider web cracks that splayed out from multiple locations. Some of these cracks were deep ravines.
It wouldn’t hold for much longer.
The sheriff and his deputy strafed cautiously along the wall opposite the still closed and locked office door, which was curiously intact. Paul listened closely as he inched his large body forward, but he couldn’t hear any sound within.
Where the fuck did they go?
The cell door was still open, the white smear in the corner affirmation that what had happened earlier—what was still happening—wasn’t some sort of collective delusion.
The horn honked again, and the sheriff’s attention was drawn again to the front windows.
“Get behind me,” he instructed to the deputy.
The cell’s footprint took up most of the hallway, making it difficult for the sheriff to turn and square up his shoulders so that he could keep the shotgun out in front of him.
Sweat dripped down his forehead and traced a line down his cheek, but he fought the urge to brush it away. Instead, his eyes scanned the reception area, moving back and forth in a sweeping motion, ready to fire off a blast if anything moved. When he saw nothing, he raised his eyes and stared through the cracked pane of glass.
There was a car out front, one headlight slicing through the darkness like a spotlight, illuminating a sliver of lawn. The other headlight was smashed, the bulb dark.
A shot rang out, and the sheriff caught a glimpse of a form leaning out of the passenger window, spraying bullets from what looked like an antique hunting rifle.
Insatiable Series Omnibus Edition (Books 1-3) Page 53
