“Alright, Sam,” Fred said. “Can you swing open the door?”
Sam pushed against it and grunted loudly as he pushed it open. A blast of bitter cold air swept into the truck.
“Alright, put your feet down here against something and unbuckle yourself.”
Sam put his feet against the dash and unbuckled.
“I’ll hold you up. Try and pull yourself out.”
Sam grabbed the side of the truck and slowly, painfully, pulled himself out.
“Do you see it?”
Sam stared at it with terrible dread. “Yeah.”
“Where is it?”
“It backed up. It looks like it’s getting ready to…”
Sam’s voice trailed off. Fred quickly grabbed the side of the truck and struggled to pull himself out. “Sam! Give me a hand! Sammy!”
Sam held out his hand and Fred took it. Slowly, his chest ablaze with pain, Fred climbed out of the truck and sat down on top of it.
“You’re hurt!” Sam cried. They both saw the blood on his shirt.
“It’s not bad,” Fred replied. He wasn’t sure, but this was no time to look it over. They had to move. Fast.
“Come on!” Fred shouted, hopping off the side into the snow. He could see the plow, sitting far back, in the middle of the road from which they had come. Its engine was revving up.
“We’re in the middle of nowhere!” Sam shouted, looking at the around at the expanse of snow around them. He quickly jumped off the side of the truck.
The growl from the diesel engine suddenly grew into a roar and the plow lurched forward.
“We have to go as far we can across the center!” Fred shouted. “Let’s go!”
“Why?” Sam cried.
“COME ON!” Fred shouted. He was already running out toward the middle of the field. Sam followed him, not knowing what else to do.
The plow sped toward them, breaking through the deep snow and throwing a huge, powdery white cloud in its wake.
“Son of a bitch, we have to keep going!” Fred shouted. They had already crossed the center of the field and he felt completely drained. His face was sweaty, despite the cold, and he clenched his side where the pain throbbed inside his chest. Sam slowly caught up to him.
“Where are we going?” Sam shouted. “The plow’s coming!”
They could see the plow approaching, having passed Vince’s overturned SUV. He could feel the weight of terror building deep in the pit of his stomach and rising quickly to his chest as he watched the plow racing toward them.
“Don’t you know where we are?”
“No!” Sam shouted and stared across the flat, open expanse of snow, as the plow on the other side made it’s way toward them.
“Come on, we gotta go!”
They could feel the ground beneath them begin to shudder, tremble with the force of the plow’s blade.
“But…” Sam started, but was terrified into silence.
The plow was coming fast and right at them. They started to run again, trying to get to the other side where the trees stood still like silent witnesses to their demise. But the trees seemed so far away and they felt so weak and tired. It felt senseless, all that running. What for? The plow was just a matter of seconds behind them. They were going to be dead soon. Unless...if only the ice would break...
At last, unable to continue any further, Fred dropped on top of the soft snow. Sam staggered a few more steps before he too collapsed onto the snow. They lay there defeated, gasping for breath like fish that had been pulled from the water and left on the shore to suffocate and die. The rumble of the plow grew louder as the plow began to cross the last stretch of snow and ice toward them. And then a loud shot rang out, like the rapport from the world’s biggest shotgun. It was the ice, cracking apart in a sudden jolt, splitting beneath the wheels of the plow. They could feel it start to crack beneath them as the frigid water of Duck Pond started to seep up through the fissures.
“Sam, come on!” Fred shouted. He had somehow forced his stubborn, tired body to get up again.
Sam looked up, saw Fred and then looked beyond him at the plow. He watched as its wheels slipped on the ice and threw back the water that seeped up around it. The plow started to sink.
“We have to go!” Fred cried.
They both trudged through the snow, the ground suddenly uneven and trembling beneath them. They kept going, tempted to look back, but not daring to. Finally, at a safe enough distance, and nearly at the other end of the pond, the boys fell down, their bodies as well as their souls drained. They looked back and watched as the plow broke through the ice completely and sunk to its roof, its growl muffled by the water. The diesel engine began to suffocate and drown as it sucked in the cold water. Fine clouds of mist rose up out of the water around it as the engine struggled to breath. After a minute or so, facing defeat as the water filled its innards, the engine finally cut off. Fred and Sam looked at each other with utter relief and lay there in the snow, freezing their asses off but not giving a shit. A few minutes later Lieutenant Carlson and Officer Murray showed up.
11
The coroner’s office had just finished taking out the bodies of the three children and the wife. The husband’s body was still missing. There was only his head, found on top of the blood soaked bed. The detectives had searched for the body for a good two hours since arriving on the scene earlier that morning, a good half hour before all the news vans had showed up. There was only the trail of blood that led to nowhere, no footprints or anything that could lend a clue as to what had happened to Mr. Hubert Wheeler’s body. No one had the slightest idea where it was or how it even could have moved after Hubert Wheeler had chain-sawed his own head off. He had to have done it himself, because there was absolutely no evidence that anyone else had been here during the time of the murders.
That was when Lieutenant William Carlson came busting through the small crowd of crime scene detectives and into the house. He left a muddy trail of slush on the floor. No one would complain. The people that had lived here were all deceased.
“Chief!” Carlson shouted.
Chief Budlick had just finished looking over the basement and met Carlson at the top of the basement stairs.
“What is it, Carlson?” Budlick demanded. “Weren’t you and Murray supposed to be taking care of some situation over on Meadow Lane?”
“I have a location on the body of Mr. Wheeler, sir.”
Budlick’s eyes lit up. “Well, out with it! Where is the thing? It’s about time.”
“It’s three miles from here, sir. The incident on Meadow Lane involved the body.”
“What do you mean? How?” Budlick barked.
“Well, sir, this may sound strange, but the body was behind the wheel of a plow truck at the time of its discovery,” Carlson said. He realized how absurd it sounded, but the next part would put it over the top.
“The body appears to have also been behind the wheel of the plow truck when it hit a woman, injuring her and then later when it ran down a man…killing him,” Carlson said. His face had turned red.
Budlick looked at Carlson as if he was a complete idiot.
“Is this a joke, Carlson?”
“No. I saw it for myself when they pulled the plow up out of the pond.”
“This is utterly ridiculous! How can you expect me to believe this bullshit?” Budlick shouted.
“I’m not sure I believe it myself, sir.”
A young man, one of the investigators, came over to Budlick. “We’ve found something kind of strange over in the dining room.”
Budlick looked at him peculiarly. “What now?”
“You might want to come and take a look,” the young man said. “I’m not exactly sure what you’d call this stuff.”
The three of them walked over to the dining room where the investigator opened a wooden box on top of the dining room table. “I found this hidden behind the cabinet over there.”
“What is this thing?” Budlick asked.
> “It’s a chest, but take a look at what’s inside.”
He pulled it open to reveal a bunch of small dolls, vials of what looked like blood, small stones and clumps of hair.
“What the hell is this shit?” Budlick began.
“Same thing I thought,” the young investigator said. “It seems the guy was into witchcraft or something.”
“Black magic, voodoo,” Carlson said.
Budlick turned to him. “You don’t believe in this kind of shit do you?”
“No, not really,” Carlson said. “But I’ve seen a lot of strange things today.”
“You think this has something to do with...what’s happened here?”
Carlson looked at him uncomfortably. “All I can tell you is that there was a plow truck out there with a headless body behind the wheel that ran down two people.”
“Where is this damn thing now?”
“What? The body? It’s presumably being transported to the morgue as standard procedure.”
“Alright, well, I wanna take a look at it,” Budlick said. “Let’s go.”
Carlson and Budlick went outside and climbed into the front seat of Budlick’s patrol car. Unbeknownst to them both, the head of Hubert Wheeler had awoken and found its way to the back seat of the car. Zipped up in a small black body bag, the purple, bloodshot eyes opened and moved in their stiff sockets, the lower jaw creaked open and the teeth, crooked and yellow, had already begun to gnaw a small hole in the side of the bag. It could smell them, their flesh. It would continue to gnaw until the hole was big enough to fit through and then it would come at them, with an appetite for moist flesh and warm blood. That is what it craved.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Sawicki is a relatively new writer that focuses on short stories in several genres, most science fiction and horror. He resides in the state of Connecticut, United States.
Visit his official website at: www.MichaelSawicki.com
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