Bigfoot Hunters (Tales of the Crypto-Hunter Book 1)

by Rick Gualtieri

  Chuck rose to his feet, momentarily ignoring the fire in his gut. He quietly unsheathed his knife with his right hand while his left went to his injured stomach. What he felt there didn’t do anything to improve his mood. He was soaked in blood, although how much was his and how much was from the floor he didn’t know.

  He continued along and eventually came to the lobby. Just enough light filtered in to let him see the outline of the staircase leading to the second floor. If that fire keeps spreading, light won’t be an issue for much longer. He gave one last longing look toward the windows, then started up the stairs.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “I’m not so sure we should let her keep the gun,” Mitchell whispered to Derek as they made their way down the center of the dark street. It wasn’t a wide road, especially by city standards, but if anything decided to come running out of the shadows, they’d hopefully have enough time to react against it.

  Derek glanced back over his shoulder. Francis was walking with Kate. He held his rifle in his left hand. Derek was pretty certain he was keeping his other free in case he needed to stop her from accidentally shooting anyone. The kid’s death had almost completely unraveled her. Her eyes kept darting from one side of the street to the other, one shaky finger resting on the trigger.

  “Do you wanna try taking it away from her again?” Derek asked, remembering the panicked look in her eyes when he had first suggested she relinquish the weapon following Rob’s death. Had he tried physically removing it from her grasp, he was pretty sure one of them would have gotten shot. “Besides...” He sighed. “She has a right to defend herself. I don’t care how jumpy I am. No way would I want to be out here unarmed, knowing what we’re dealing with.”

  “Speaking of which, you know we’re all gonna need treatment when this is over, just to be safe.”

  “Don’t remind me,” Derek said. He’d been bitten by a raccoon as a child and remembered very well the painful rabies shot.

  Mitchell opened his mouth to say more, but his words were lost as a thunderous sound shook the night. It reverberated through the town for a few seconds before silence once more descended. It had been close, surely inside of the town limits. Because of the way it echoed across the quiet streets, there was no way to tell which direction it had come from, though.

  “Thunder?”

  “Sounded more like dynamite,” Derek commented. “Kate, any ideas?” When she didn’t answer, he turned back toward her. “Kate!” Her eyes finally focused on his. She gave a small shake of her head, then went back to scanning the shadows.

  He was about to ask, for probably the tenth time, if she was okay, when his eyes happened to glance over her shoulder and down the street.

  “Uh oh,” he said. “I think the fire’s spreading.”

  Sure enough, the glow from the direction of the bar seemed to be getting brighter.

  “What fire?” asked Mitchell.

  “I might have burned down the bar to kill one of those squatches.”

  “Slick. Things too boring for you otherwise?”

  Derek shrugged in response. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  The upstairs hallway was quiet. In the darkness, Chuck couldn’t locate the source of the noises he’d heard. Then he saw a dim glow from one of the rooms at the far end of the hall, its door open. He walked stealthily toward it, or as much as he could with his stomach paining him with every step.

  He passed a few more rooms, all of them shut, making a mental note to give the upstairs a clean sweep on his way out. He came to the open door – no, open was the wrong word for it. It was missing from the frame entirely, jagged splinters poked out from where it had been torn asunder.

  There was light coming from the floor over by the windows. It was just enough for Chuck to see that the room had been absolutely trashed. There were no sounds and he didn’t sense any movement, but his nose told a different story. There was a musky scent in the air. One of the creatures had definitely been here, although someone could’ve probably guessed that just by looking at the place. Entering the room, he noticed that there was a stronger, more pungent smell on top of the rest. It almost smells like... He took a step and his boot squished down into something semi-solid. Shit.

  He rolled his eyes in the dark room. It figures. A bear shits in the woods, but a squatch will shit wherever the hell it pleases. He lifted his foot out of the excrement with a faint sucking noise. Before he could continue his sweep of the room, a roaring boom sounded from outside. For a moment, the glass in one window shook. The other next to it, Chuck noted, had been shattered, along with a good chunk of the wall it was attached to.

  “What the hell?” he whispered. If he didn’t know better, he’d have sworn that was an explosion. Putting caution to the wind, he stepped to the window and looked out. The noise didn’t come again, and he couldn’t see the source from his vantage point. Had he leaned out further and looked to his left, he might have seen his teammates making their way down the street. As it was, he instead pulled back to examine the light source.

  It was a small flashlight. It appeared to have been stepped on; however, one of the LEDs was still working. It wasn’t much, but it was providing at least some light. He picked it up and used it to further survey the damage.

  The condition of the room was every bit as bad as he’d suspected. Fortunately, all he saw was the debris of smashed bedroom furniture. No bodies. That’s a good sign.

  He began making his way back to the door, careful not to step in the sasquatch-sized landmine again. Playing the beam of light across the room, he saw that the bathroom likewise appeared to have been broken into.

  He glanced at the pile of excrement on the floor and couldn’t help but grin. “Guess he couldn’t make it in time. When you gotta go, you gotta...” The joke died in his throat as he shined the light into the bathroom. Why the hell is it painted red? he briefly thought, before realizing it wasn’t.

  Chuck had seen a lot in his day, but what had been done to the body lying half in the tub was utterly inhuman. “My God,” he whispered, the flashlight slipping from his suddenly numb fingers. He staggered back and tried to fight off the urge to vomit, afraid that he might literally puke his guts up.

  So transfixed was he by the carnage before him that he didn’t hear the click as one of the doors down the hall opened.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Chuck Wayans wasn’t a religious man, but he crossed himself anyway. He just hoped whoever he was ... she was, he corrected himself – long brown hair and one ruined breast could be made out amidst the grizzly scene. He just hoped she had died quickly and that most of this had been done after the fact.

  What the hell was wrong with these things? He had never seen one do anything even remotely like this. This is more the work of a psychopath than a wild animal, he thought, backing out of the bathroom.

  Whatever’s going on here, these things need to be put down and fast. The thought caught in his head as he heard a sound, a slight creaking of the floorboards behind him. He cursed himself for letting his guard down. At the same time, though, he drew his combat knife from its sheath. He’d been caught flatfooted like a rank amateur. He didn’t give himself good odds, but hopefully he could take the ugly son of a bitch with him to Hell.

  He felt a puff of breath on the back of his neck, then a hand fell upon his shoulder. Without hesitation, he spun with a battle cry and brought the razor-sharp blade up in an arc. Where it met flesh, it sank in like butter. Chuck gave the knife a vicious twist before launching his full weight at his attacker.

  The creature went down under the assault with little more than a grunt. Chuck pressed his advantage, straddling its torso and continued to stab it, screaming obscenities all the while – until the blade finally became stuck in bone. He braced his other hand on the body to pull it out. That’s when he realized he wasn’t touching fur. It felt like ... fabric.

  It took his mind a moment to register this fact. Finally, he scr
ambled back from it in a breathless gasp. He turned, feeling around with his hands. Where was the goddamned flashlight? Then he saw its glow coming from the bathroom, where he’d dropped it. He scuttled over to it on hands and knees and picked it up from the bloody floor.

  Turning back, he played the feeble beam out toward the doorway. Two bare feet were visible in the illumination. Jeans covered the legs they were attached to.

  “Oh God, no!” Chuck scrambled back to the fallen person.

  It was too late. His first stab had been instantly fatal, having driven the point of his blade straight up into the soft spot underneath Greg’s chin. The poor kid had been dead before he’d even hit the floor.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “Holy shit!” exclaimed Derek, peering down the small side street. There was something large lying in the middle of the road. “Shine that light up here!”

  Francis flipped on a flashlight and played it out before them as he and his teammates stepped forward to investigate. The beam revealed fine brown hair covering a massive body. “Looks like somebody managed to fight back.”

  “More like something,” corrected Derek, kneeling over the corpse. “More like a lot of somethings. This squatch has been shot up to hell ... wait a second. I don’t think the bullets killed it. Too small of a caliber. Hell, it probably barely felt them.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  The men were hunched over the body, busy examining it. They didn’t notice Kate slowly stepping backwards – a look of horror spreading across her face following the realization that this was another of the things that were killing her town. How many more are out there?

  Images of her own death at the hands of these creatures began to play in her mind. Her eyes went wide as she remembered the bloody footprints she’d found earlier in the day. It had to have been one of those things, and that blood ... Gus had been missing since that morning. There had been no sign of him.

  Tears welled up in her eyes as she thought of her kindly old dog. He had gone up against a foe that he’d stood absolutely no chance against. He’d died defending her home and her sleeping father within.

  Her father! She realized that, in the nightmare of the past few hours, she had completely forgotten about him. He was home alone in the dark. What if the thing that had taken Gus had come back?

  She felt her legs quicken their pace, backing away from Derek’s team. She didn’t want to go – there was safety in their numbers – but she needed to get back to her father. He was the only one left in the world for her.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “Definitely female,” Derek said. “Big one, too.”

  “So, what did this?”

  “Something bigger.”

  “Yep,” agreed Mitchell. “Look at her head. Neck’s been snapped like a twig. I’d say a male probably took her out. Look at that indentation in her chest.”

  “Stomped on her after the fact,” Derek said. “From the size of it, I’d guess we’re dealing with at least a nine-footer.”

  “Well, it looks like he took care of some of our work for us. Maybe we should pin a medal on him.”

  Derek gave Francis a grim smile. “Don’t worry, I have plenty of metal for that big boy right here,” he said, patting his rifle. “The one we saw earlier was around that size, maybe a little bigger. Dollars to doughnuts says he’s the alpha.”

  “Where do you think it is?”

  “No idea. Last I saw, it’d taken off after that kid.”

  Francis whistled. “I sure hope he’s a fast runner.”

  “Me too,” Derek added. “He saved our bacon. I’d like to return the favor.”

  As if in response, a screaming roar split the night.

  “That wasn’t far,” Mitchell said.

  “No, it wasn’t. If we’re in luck, Harrison’s still leading it on a merry chase. Let’s get moving.” Derek turned around, “Kate, come on...” The words died in his throat. She was gone.

  “Where the hell did she go?”

  “She was right here.”

  “KATE!” Derek shouted, his voice echoing in the empty streets. “Son of a bitch!”

  “Should we go after her?”

  Derek was silent for a moment. “No. We need to kill that thing before it gets away.”

  “What if one of them finds her?” Mitchell asked.

  “She’s armed. That Remington will teach some manners to anything dumb enough to stand in front of it. No. She’s a big girl. She can take care of herself,” Derek said, then silently added, I hope.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Chuck sat up, stifling a scream, the creature’s roar still echoing from outside. He blinked and looked around, sure that it was about to gut him, but there was nothing except the darkness. Gradually, the fog in his brain cleared a little. He’d found a blanket in one of the closets and used it to cover Greg’s body. It wasn’t much, but he felt he needed to do something. The kid hadn’t deserved it. Why the hell did he sneak up behind me like that, especially with all this crap going on?

  He had no way of knowing that it was only the explosion at the Clemons’ place that had finally stirred Greg. He’d slept through all the rest in a drug-induced haze. Even then, he’d still been pretty wrecked, and though his death had certainly come as a surprise, there hadn’t been much pain. Chuck might have taken a little bit of comfort in knowing that.

  He had covered the poor kid, then said a few words of apology over his body. Afterwards, he had slumped, exhausted, against a wall to catch his breath. His stomach had hurt quite badly and was bleeding even more profusely. He’d nodded his head for just a second and had immediately plunged into a half dream/half hallucination in which the entire clan of creatures had him surrounded. The scream from outside, though, had been real, real enough for Chuck to slap himself across the face in a bid to clear his head a little. There was still a job to do.

  Pocketing the flashlight, he grabbed his knife in one hand and attempted to hold his gut closed with the other. He staggered to his feet, then shuddered in pain before slowly making his way back down the stairs.

  Eventually, he found the front door, and spent several seconds fumbling with the locks – his fingers feeling slow and heavy. He opened the door and stepped out, surveying the scene as best he could. His eyes didn’t seem to want to focus correctly. He could see well enough, though, to notice the two lumps on the ground in front of the B&B. He hobbled down the stairs as quickly as he dared and went over to them.

  Two bodies, a human and a squatch. He didn’t know what happened to the person, but the large bullet holes in the creature’s corpse told him all he needed to know.

  He was considering his next move, when he heard a sound ... footsteps. Looking up, he spied a figure across the street. It was moving quickly. Even in the moonlight, though, he could tell it was far too small and slim to be a squatch. The person was holding something; it looked like a gun.

  Rising from the sasquatch corpse, he began painfully shuffling toward the direction of the newcomer. Hot damn! Finally, a lucky break.

  He had no idea how wrong he was.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  The creature’s screams had finally broken the last of Kate’s nerve, otherwise she might have heeded reason and stayed with those reporters. No, that wasn’t right. They didn’t act like any reporters she’d ever heard of, especially with all those guns. They were more like hunters, but that was insane. Who would hunt creatures like these? If there was a Hell, then those things must surely be from its deepest depths.