by David Peters
She dialed then handed it back in frustration. “I don’t get it. There is someone sitting at the phone 24/7 down there. Let me call my board.”
“Hey there Gus, it’s Niccole.”
“Hello Officer Murphy, everything ok?” Gus always had a way of making her feel old, and adding just a hint of anger for never qualifying for street duty.
“Ya, just wondering if there are any phone issues, I wanted to chat with Steve over at the WSP board but it seems like it isn’t going through.”
“We’ve been having some pretty strange issues with the phones and power but I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s probably sun spots or something like that. We haven’t had any calls to the board and aside from squawks from Spokane earlier the radio has been quiet too.” Gus said calmly.
“Strange, but I’m sure you’re right. Have a good night Gus.”
“Same to you.”
Niccole closed her phone. “That is really weird. I bet it winds up being a rat that chewed through a cable, or some guy tore the line out with his backhoe.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” answered Dylan, picking up the remote to shuffle through the late night television channels.
--4--
It was a morning like every other morning when Dylan awoke to the smell of fresh coffee and bacon. There were days when he couldn’t imagine Heaven being anything but a lateral move.
He threw on his robe and slippers and headed downstairs. Niccole had just come in from her early chores and was wiping down her boots in the mud room just off the kitchen.
Dylan was filling his mug when she walked into the kitchen and greeted him with a kiss. She pulled two plates out of the cupboard and began loading them up with their morning meal. “Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“For last night of course.” She smiled.
“Ahhh, now I see,” Dylan laughed. “I think I’m the one that owes you the thanks but I’ll take it where I can get it. Looks like you were up awful early, everything ok?”
“Sort of, I guess. The phone problem was really bothering me last night, so I tried again, now I can’t reach anyone. The TV is dead too, nothing but blank screens or test patterns. I was able to hit a few news sites on the net when I could get the page to actually load, stuff is bad, and half of it doesn’t even make sense.”
Niccole told him about some of the more strange reports she came across.
“Seriously? How does a riot in Spokane expand to a city on the East Coast? You try calling Randy?”
“No, I will though.”
Randy was their nearest neighbor. He had lived about two and a half miles away in a small shack he had been calling home as far back as Dylan could remember.
“Hey Randy, this is Niccole.”
“Hey Niccole, is your satellite dish working?”
“Nope, can’t get a thing on it. I was surprised when the phone rang. Everyone else I have tried rings or goes to some computer recording.”
“I haven’t tried calling anyone, my sister is supposed to be here this afternoon from Seattle. I’ll call you if she has anything to say about what is going on.”
“Great, thanks Randy, talk to you later. Take it easy.”
“You too Niccole.”
Niccole hung up with a concerned look on her face, “I know I’m off today, but I think I should go in.” Niccole was starting to pace with concern. She had a tendency to think the worst while Dylan could look at the worst storm they had ever seen and not see anything beyond green grass.
“Hell no, with as much as we have to do around here? It’s probably nothing. When your parents get here you will be wishing it was though.”
“How do you always do that?”
“Do what?”
“Take me from thinking the end of the world is coming to being concerned about the carpet being too dirty.”
The two of them took their breakfast out to the porch and talked about anything that didn’t relate to phones not working, riots, or any thought out of the ordinary.
--5--
Dylan filled the last pothole in the gravel driveway, took his cap off and wiped his brow. He noticed smoke climbing over the far hill. It was coming from the same direction as their neighbor Randy’s house.
“Coco? Does that look like it’s coming from Randy’s place?” Dylan asked pointing towards the rising column of smoke.
“Guess it could. He’d be an absolute fool to burn anything this time of year though, entire plateau is one big match,” she said as she walked up to Dylan.
Dylan dialed but it just rang. “It’s the twenty first century, why doesn’t that man get voice mail? I swear I’m surprised he has electricity sometimes. You hear anything else from the guys at work today?”
“No, I tried to call about an hour ago, same problem. Phones are pretty messed up, I can’t even get operator assistance.”
“I don’t like this, let’s head over there and see what he is burning, fool is going to burn off our entire field if he isn’t careful.”
Dylan and Niccole drove the gravel stretch to Randy’s house in his late sixties model, Chevy truck. It was originally his father’s truck, bought shortly before Daniel was born; red with white trim, just about everything still original and Dylan wouldn’t give up the beast for anything.
The two and a half miles to Randy’s place was old gravel road with washboard turns and washed out culverts. Cresting the last hill, they could see remains of Randy’s house, burning with dark black smoke and flames reaching for the sky.
“Oh no! I see Randy’s truck, but whose car is that?” asked Niccole as she squeezed Dylan’s arm.
“Better question, how did they manage that last two miles of road but put it into the ditch in front of his house?”
A new model, black four-door Audi was buried up to its rear doors in muck that was once a cattle creak and drainage ditch. Randy’s house was completely engulfed in flames. Fire was climbing all four walls of the small shack. The asphalt shingles of the roof melted into burning rivers of tar. Dylan and Niccole stepped out of the truck.
“Dylan, I can’t get anyone to answer. 911 just rings then drops the call, how is that even possible? I thought 911 always worked.”
“Just keep trying and stay near the truck. I don’t like this at all.”
Dylan got out of the truck and slowly started to walk towards the house. Something was nagging at him and didn’t feel quite right. As a matter of fact the more that he thought about it the more it felt downright wrong. Dylan turned back to the truck and reached under the seat for his pistol. He never took a big interest in guns like some of his friends had. He didn’t hunt much since his dad died, but he understood the purpose of a gun and how to use one. After coming across a rabid and injured coyote over a decade ago, he always kept his dad’s old forty-five under the seat.
Dylan drew the slide back and loaded the chamber, then moved in a wide circle around the house. The heavy pistol in his hand gave him a feeling of control. He knew it was a false feeling but with all that had been going on he was willing to accept that.
As he walked around the far side of the house, Randy’s rear deck came into view. As he got closer to the back yard he began to hear a different noise above the raging fire. He took a few cautious steps and saw the figure of a woman kneeling over something.
“Lady, you ok? Lady?” Dylan asked with a nervous voice.
On her knees, a woman dressed in a business suit appeared to be crying? No, that wasn’t it; she seemed too animated and constantly brought her head too low. It suddenly struck Dylan that she was eating.
As Dylan closed the distance, he could see she was leaning over Randy, she had two handfuls of the man’s innards, and appeared to be having herself a feast.
Dylan brought the gun up, “Lady, that ain’t right. Hey! Lady, just stay put. Don’t get up.”
The lady froze mid chew. She turned her head to face Dylan. There were parts of Randy’s body still hanging from her bloo
dy face. Hers was not the face of a living human. Her eyes had no glow of life. They were devoid of light and in fact were nearly black. The right half of her face appeared to be torn nearly to her ear, revealing shiny white teeth along with a yellowed jaw bone. She dropped what remained of Randy’s insides and slowly stood, turning to face Dylan.
“Just stay put,” he stammered “we are trying to get some help out here.” Dylan looked the woman-thing over. She most definitely used to be a woman, but her skin tone was nearly black like her entire body was bruised. Her arms didn’t look right either, but Dylan couldn’t put his finger on how they were different. The breeze shifted for a brief second and Dylan got a smell. She smelled like death. Actually she smelled worse than death. He felt himself wretch slightly.
It sniffed the air like an animal, first towards Dylan, then towards Niccole and back again. It was almost like she couldn’t tell what the two new arrivals were and the wind was working to help her. From where he was standing he had a straight line of sight to the pile of flesh and Niccole who happened to be head down trying to get her phone to work. What used to be Randy’s sister took a few cautious steps forward. She walked softly; cat-like while ignoring Dylan but trying to get a view of Niccole. It rounded the back of the house. It could smell Niccole near the truck.
“Whatever you are, just stay put. Don’t make me do this!”
Two more steps and she had a clear view of Niccole. Sniffing the air again, she squatted down low and sprang in the direction of Niccole. The thing cleared fifteen feet in its first leap covering nearly half the distance to Niccole in a single jump.
“Niccole!” Dylan yelled as the monster began the jump onto its prey. His first two shots went wild into Randy’s burning house, but the next three caught the monster squarely in the side of the chest, sending her spinning to the ground in a pained voice devoid of anything human. Dylan had struck her spine and her legs crumpled uselessly beneath her. He slowly moved to position himself between the beast and Niccole.
Dylan closed the distance, thinking she was dead. In the very least, he could tell she wasn’t going to be walking any time soon. When he had stepped to within a few paces the lady rolled onto her back and pushed herself into a sitting position.
“What the hell? What the hell are you?”
Niccole was coming around from behind Dylan, “How is she doing that, what is wrong with her? Why isn’t she dead? Dylan?”
At this point, Dylan and the lady were locked into a world all their own. He could no longer hear the fire, or Niccole, or anything besides this monster a few yards in front of him. It looked deep into Dylan’s eyes with both an understanding and a seething anger. It wasn’t showing any pain and Dylan could plainly see the vicious hatred in its eyes. It didn’t want to kill Dylan it wanted to destroy him as a Human being. Its fingers dug into the soil as it pulled itself towards him, dragging the now useless legs behind it.
Dylan took careful aim and one last shot rang out from the gun. The bullet struck the thing on the bridge of the nose and dropping it to the ground like a stone. He kept the pistol aimed at her half expecting it to look back up again. It remained still.
Niccole walked behind Dylan and looked past him to the gruesome thing on the ground.
“What was that Dylan? Why did she come after me?”
“I don’t know. She couldn’t smell me so it was like I didn’t exist. I could see her look when she caught your scent. She was hunting you.” Dylan gave the thing a little extra room as he moved back around to the back of the house, “Let’s check on Randy.”
Dylan knelt down beside Randy. He had been cleaned out like three day old road kill. His eyes were still open, and Dylan carefully closed them. “I don’t have anything in the truck to cover him up. I’m going to check his shop. He must have something we can use.”
Niccole looked at the thing. It didn’t look too human anymore but Niccole needed to be sure. She remembered a birthday present she had helped Randy pick out for her for her twenty-fifth birthday. It was a small gold locket with his picture in it. Using a stick she carefully pulled the things shirt down far enough to reveal the locket. “This is definitely Randy’s sister.” She still couldn’t take her eyes off of the thing.
Dylan broke the spell when he returned from the shop with a large blue tarp. “Help me cover Randy.”
“I couldn’t get anyone on the phone Dylan, nothing, and no one.”
“I know Coco, one thing at a time.” He suddenly felt the energy drain out of him. “Ok, these two aren’t going anywhere; let’s see if we can find Bill in town. We need to tell him our side of the story, and have the coroner tell us what the hell was wrong with his sister.”
Dylan wasted no time turning around and tearing back down Randy’s road as fast as his old Chevy could handle.
--6--
Bill was the current sheriff for Colfax. On days like today, you could usually find him at the station verifying the air conditioning was still functioning. Not that Bill was a lazy man, it’s just that nothing ever happened that required him to be anywhere in a hurry, or possibly at all for that matter. He did his job well when it was required of him.
They hadn’t seen a single person on their drive into town. Colfax was about thirty minutes away driving like a normal person, but Dylan was going to shave ten minutes off of that time.
“What was that thing? Why did she come at me like that? It was crazy. Like watching a rabid coyote.” Dylan was still trying to sort out what happened. “I’ve known Randy my whole life, he deserved better, hell anyone deserved better than that.”
“You did everything you could, this isn’t normal. This is something different and it was out of your control.” Niccole sat next to him on the bench seat knowing he really just needed her to listen. Dylan was a peaceable man and had always believed there was a way out of an issue without having to resort to violence. Not that he was a wimp. There had been several occasions when they were younger that he had taken matters into his own hands knowing it would have some price associated with it. He had proven more than capable of taking care of things.
“I don’t even know how to explain what we saw. Bill will think we’ve collectively lost it. Was she drugged? She looked dead, and the smell, Christ, reminded me of that heifer we had that drowned in the ditch while we were in Montana.”
“She came at me so fast! I’ve never seen anything move that fast. She moved like some kind of animal. Like a giant cat or something.”
“I haven’t seen anything look that bad and be able to move at all as far as that goes.” Dylan said with a smile, doing his best to take the edge off.
Both fell silent as they continued into town. Lost in their own thoughts, wondering what was going on; both coming to the individual conclusion that they had no idea. They came at problems from two different directions. Dylan was methodical and observed the issue before going after it. Niccole would attack head on and just get down to business. Neither was wrong or right but it made for a quiet drive into town.
The road wound its way through fields of wheat and grass for roughly twenty miles before dropping down a steep grade and meeting up with the primary street through Colfax. Turning onto Main Street there didn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary. Maybe the town was a little quieter than they were used to but that wasn’t odd on its own. It was the middle of the July and most buildings in town had air conditioning to fight off the worst of the mid-day heat.
Colfax was about as normal looking as a small town could be. Main Street was nine blocks long and straight as a laser. At the far end of Main, opposite from where Dylan entered town, the road finally turned to head up out of the valley and meet with the main highway north. On that turn sat the Colfax Police Station. They could already see Bills’ cruiser parked in front of the station.
The station house was really just a giant square brick house bristling with antennae but it was a second home to Bill. He had been Sheriff for 17 years starting the year after he lost his wif
e to cancer. He made the town his new love, and held it close and dear, although he was a changed man after losing someone so close, and tended to brood at certain times of the year. Both Dylan and Niccole counted him among their friends.
They drove down Main, noting that there was not one person walking. The restaurants were closed. It didn’t occur to them that the power was out until they reached what was always a blinking, four-way stop light.
Dylan pulled into the station parking lot and could then see Bill’s cruiser was parked haphazardly across a handicap stall. Niccole looked at Dylan with raised eyebrows. Dylan shrugged his shoulders and parked a few stalls away from the cruiser. Without a word they climbed out of the truck and walked through the front doors of the station.
