Day of the Sasquatch

by Eric S. Brown

  His breath coming in ragged gasps and pain flaring in his chest as if his heart was giving out on him, he swung the barrel of the shotgun around at the creature. The sight of the weapon didn’t scare the creature. Maybe it didn’t know what a shotgun was or worse, maybe it simply didn’t care. Bo squeezed the trigger, unloading both of the weapon’s barrels at near point-blank range into the creature. The shotgun boomed like crashing thunder inside the living room. Blood splashed from the creature’s chest where the heavy slugs tore into it. The creature roared with pain and fury as it kept its course towards him. There was no time for Bo to reload. He spun the shotgun around in his hands, raising it over his head to swing it like a club at the approaching creature. The thing caught the shotgun in mid-swing, tearing it from his hands. Hurling the empty weapon away, the creature roared again. Warm trickles of urine ran over Bo’s thigh and legs inside his pants as his bladder released itself.

  One of the creature’s massive hands shot outward to close around his face. The pressure of its grip was unbelievable. Bo could feel the bones in his skull being pushed to their limits, on the verge of caving inward. He screamed as the creature rammed his head backward into the wall behind him. His head smashed into it. One time was all it took to knock him out completely, but the creature didn’t let him go. It smashed Bo’s head into the wall over and over again until the hair on its hand was wet with his blood. Only then did it let his corpse drop to the living room’s floor.

  Somewhere in the distance, the barking of dogs and shouting could still be heard outside. The beast roared a final time and plunged back out of Bo’s house, leaving his body where it lay.

  ****

  Ed was huffing like his lungs were about to rupture as he and Robert ran up the hill after Lyle and the dogs. Robert knew that Ed was pushing himself as hard as he could but given his day job of sitting at a desk all day and his addiction to gaming, his body just wasn’t capable of keeping the frantic pace the dogs were forcing them to move at. He prayed that Ed wouldn’t have a heart attack. Robert had to admit he was hurting too. His smoker lungs couldn’t take much more either.

  “Hold up!” Ed shouted at him from where he had fallen behind.

  Robert skidded to a halt in the trees though he didn’t turn to Ed. His eyes were fixed on the direction that the dogs and Lyle were headed in. If they lost Lyle and the dogs, Robert wasn’t sure that he and Ed could find their way back to Ashley or even town for that matter. They had run a pretty good distance into the woods and the area where they were was utterly unfamiliar to him. The moon was high in the sky above the trees, but its light was pale and the shadows were long among the trees. They all had been lucky not to have tripped over something or fallen already given how fast they were moving.

  “I can’t do this anymore,” Ed wheezed.

  “Ed…” Robert began.

  “You go on. You guys can come back for me after you find that cat of Ashley’s, okay?” Ed pleaded.

  “I’m not leaving you here,” Robert told him firmly. “You’re just not cut out for this kind of thing.”

  “And you are?” Ed laughed as he began to catch his breath.

  A gunshot rang out from somewhere below them on the mountain.

  Ed and Robert looked at each other.

  “Tell me that wasn’t what I think it was.” Ed turned towards where the noise had seemed to come from.

  “That was a gunshot alright,” Robert said, “but I don’t think it has anything to do with us. It was too far away for it to have been some weirded-out redneck to be after us for being on their property.”

  Ed started to say something else, but their conversation was brought to a sudden end as something larger than a full-grown man, gigantic, and moving even faster than they had been, went crashing through the trees to their right. Whatever it was, it passed them so quickly that Robert didn’t even catch a glimpse of it. All he could tell was that it was huge.

  “Holy…!” Ed wailed. “What the heck was that?”

  Robert looked at Ed, his heart pounding inside his chest. “How the heck would I know?”

  “It was a bear, wasn’t it?” Ed had gone pale and his eyes were bugging with pure terror.

  Shaking his head, Robert mumbled, “I don’t know. It was sure big though. That thing was breaking the bloody limbs of the trees as it went through over there. You could hear them cracking and flopping onto the ground after it.”

  “We need to get out of here, Robert,” Ed told him, sounding more serious than he ever had. “I mean, right now.”

  “We can’t,” Robert said. “Whatever that thing was, I think it’s after the dogs and Lyle.”

  Ed stared at him, knowing he was right.

  As they took off again, their legs pumping beneath them, Ed said, “Tell me again why Lyle didn’t bring a dang rifle with him?”

  Up ahead of them, the barking of the dogs seemed to stop getting farther away and grew in intensity. The barks changed to growls and then high-pitched whines of pain mixed in among them. One of the dogs had to be hurt from how things sounded.

  Robert burst into the small clearing where the dogs and Lyle were. The world had gone utterly insane, he thought, because that was the only explanation for what his eyes were seeing in front of him. A hulking, yellow-eyed monster that could only be a Sasquatch on steroids stood in the clearing. It clutched the body of one of Lyle’s dogs in its massive right hand. Its other hand swung forward at another of the dogs that was barking furiously at it and trying to bite it. The third dog lay dead on the ground. Its corpse was headless and the grass around it was soaked with the dog’s blood. Lyle was gawking at the thing killing his dogs. He had the presence of mind to have grabbed up a limb and held it like a baseball bat, poised to defend himself with it.

  “Lyle! Get the hell out of there, man!” Robert yelled at him.

  The Sasquatch used the body of the dog bashing it into the remaining dog to bat it away. The poor dog was sent flying through the air to tumble onto the ground and go rolling across it. Its barks changed to a sickening whimpering noise as the dog tried to get to its feet and couldn’t. Both of its front legs were broken. The Sasquatch moved to it with impossible speed and squashed its head beneath one of its terribly large feet. Bits of fractured bone, blood, and brain matter burst from under the Sasquatch’s foot as the dog’s skull imploded.

  At first, Robert thought the blood on the Sasquatch’s chest belonged to the dogs, but he realized that wasn’t the case at all. Someone had shot the Sasquatch there. The wound hadn’t brought the Sasquatch down though. The thing was ticked off and ready to kill anything it could get its hands on.

  Seeing that his dogs were all dead, Lyle looked torn between going after the monster that killed them with the limb he held and running for his life. The choice of what to do was taken from him as the Sasquatch roared and charged his way. Lyle didn’t even try to fight it. He dropped the limb-like stick he was holding and ran screaming away from the monster. Robert knew Lyle wasn’t going to escape the Sasquatch. And he wouldn’t have except for the fact that reality got even more blurred and crazier.

  A young woman with jet-black hair tied up above her sleek shoulders and brown eyes emerged from the trees near Lyle. Her skin was tan and she clearly wasn’t from the South. There was something exotic about her that blurred the line between beauty and toughness. Whoever she was, she looked to be in better shape than any of them. Her body was lean and toned. The girl wore a loose black shirt above ragged jeans and tennis shoes. She had a crossbow aimed at the wound in the Sasquatch’s chest. The crossbow’s string twanged loudly as the young woman pulled its trigger. The bolt flew to thud into the Sasquatch’s open wound, between the bones of its ribs, to pierce the great beast’s heart. The Sasquatch gave a pained grunt, staggering backward, as it clutched at the end of the bolt protruding from its chest before it toppled over into the grass.

  “What the frag was that thing, Lyle?” the young woman yelled. “And what on earth are you doing up he
re?”

  “Carolina!” Lyle shouted, looking so surprised he almost seemed to swoon on his feet.

  “Hey, little girl!” Ed broke into laughter. “You just saved our collective butts!”

  “Who is she?” Robert whispered, leaning towards Ed.

  Robert must have spoken louder than he intended because it was Lyle who answered him. “She’s my sister, you idiot!”

  “Uh, boys,” Carolina near yelled at them, “I wouldn’t be so sure that thing is dead. We need to get out of here!”

  “No argument here!” Ed answered her.

  The four of them sprinted down the mountain away from where the Sasquatch still lay unmoving in the grass. Carolina was the fastest of them, easily taking the lead. Lyle followed close behind her. Robert didn’t know how long they ran before they finally came to a stop but when they did, both he and Ed collapsed into heaps upon the ground. Lyle was red-faced and sucking in quick breaths as he bent over with his hands on his knees.

  “Carolina,” Lyle gasped, “what were you doing up there?”

  She whirled on him. “I could ask you the same thing, Lyle, but I already know what you idiots were up to. Sarah called me and told me. I heard the dogs crying and knew something was wrong. You’re dang lucky I picked tonight to be out hunting. Whatever gave you the idea that you could track a cat with coonhounds anyway? Who does something like that?”

  “Whoa,” Ed shouted from where he lay sprawled out in the grass. “You just killed a…a whatever that thing was and it nearly killed us and you’re going to stand there tearing into your brother?”

  “It was a Sasquatch,” Robert said, his voice calm and clear.

  “What?” Carolina asked, glaring at him. “What did you say?”

  “That thing you killed,” Robert told her. “It was a Sasquatch… A Bigfoot.”

  “Frag me.” Lyle shook his head. “I think he’s right.”

  “There’s no such thing,” Ed argued, but he sounded more as if he were trying to convince himself he hadn’t seen one than to convince the rest of them that it wasn’t real.

  “I don’t know what that thing was and I don’t care,” Carolina shrugged, “but we need to call the sheriff. He needs to know that thing is out there.”

  “Why?” Ed asked. “It’s dead, isn’t it? It sure looked that way. You put an arrow into its heart, for frag’s sake.”

  “You guys really are idiots,” Carolina snorted. “What makes you think there was only one of them?”

  Ed and Lyle gawked at her as if she’d just condemned them all to death with her words.

  “And what makes you think there isn’t just one?” Robert challenged her since the other guys were speechless.

  “I was following a set of tracks that only something like that could have left behind before I heard you guys and came running. They were pretty fresh. I don’t think the thing I killed could have made them. It looked to me like it came at y’all from up the mountain,” Caroline explained.

  Robert thought over what she said. “I’m inclined to believe you.”

  Carolina cocked her head at him, her voice dripping with sarcasm as she said, “Gee, thanks.”

  “If there are more of those things…” Lyle looked around at the trees. “We sure don’t need to be out here for any longer than we have to. Let’s get back to Ashley’s. We’ll sort things out there.”

  “You gonna reload that?” Ed gestured at Carolina’s crossbow as he and Robert got to their feet.

  Carolina answered him by beginning to turn the weapon’s crank and prepare it for another shot. When she was done, the four of them set out down the mountain towards Ashley’s house.

  Robert watched her as they walked. “How is that you’re his sister?” He stabbed a thumb in Lyle’s direction. “The two of you don’t look anything alike.”

  “She’s adopted,” Lyle snarled with an edge of bitterness to his tone.

  “Oh…” Robert said and dropped the subject. He could tell it was a sore one between Lyle and Carolina.

  “I wish I had thought to yank out my phone and take some pics of that thing,” Ed spoke up. “We could’ve all been famous, ya know? It would have been proof that Bigfoot really exists. Now they’re just going to cover it all up like they usually do.”

  Lyle broke out laughing. “What makes you think you know what they usually do and are they anyway?”

  “Come on, Lyle,” Ed said. “Do you have any idea how much stuff the government likely covers up on a day-to-day basis?”

  “This is real life, not the X-Files,” Carolina said and shut them both up.

  ****

  Charles hated working the night shift. It totally sucked. He looked up at the clock on the wall behind him where he stood at the store’s counter, wishing it was time for his smoke break. The store was pretty dead. It usually was by this time of night. Canton was a small town and even on the weekends, there wasn’t much of an “evening crowd” at a place like Mom and Pop’s. Charles shuddered as he thought just how old this store was. He couldn’t believe it was still around. He remembered his parents dragging him here to buy groceries when he was a little kid. Charles had despised it then and he hated it now just as much. His job was easy though and he got a paycheck every two weeks so he supposed he couldn’t completely knock the place no matter how quaint it was by the standards of the modern world. Tourist season was the worst. People from out of town flocked to the little store in droves because it was an oddity to them.

  There hadn’t been a customer in over an hour and Charles was bored out of his mind. Alex was at the rear of the store, mopping and straightening the aisles as he went down each one. Alex was a year younger than he was and had been hired on by Mrs. Thomas, aka Mom, just a couple of months ago. Though technically neither one of them had authority over the other, Charles had anointed himself as the shift manager and Alex’s supervisor when Mrs. Thomas asked him to train the kid.

  “Hey, Alex!” Charles shouted across the store. “I need you to come watch the frontend. I’m going to take my break.”

  “Sure thing!” Alex appeared from the end of the candy aisle with a sucker sticking out of his mouth. The kid was always so chipper. It annoyed the heck out of Charles.

  “I hope you paid for that,” Charles said with a sigh.

  “Wanna see my receipt?” Alex asked, propping the mop he was carrying against a shelf as he started to rummage through the pockets of his pants.

  “Forget it,” Charles snapped. “Just watch the front, okay?”

  Alex came around the counter to take his place as Charles grabbed his jacket and headed for the door. Charles didn’t look back at the kid as he stepped into the night air. He shivered and tugged his jacket tighter around him. Charles wondered if it was really cold or if he was just coming down with something. He stayed sick a lot. Working retail would do that to you just like being a teacher would. You came into contact with so many people that no matter what precautions you took, eventually, you picked up something that you didn’t want.

  Charles lit up a cigarette and inhaled deeply, relishing the feel of the smoke hitting his lungs. It was a bad and costly habit, but he long ago accepted being hooked for life. His grandfather had smoked, his dad smoked, his mom smoked; it was just a normal part of life for him.

  His car was the only one in the store’s parking lot. Alex, though old enough to have his license, didn’t drive. Charles wondered about that sometimes. What teenager in their right mind let their mother drive them around? He sure as Hades didn’t. Charles had worked his butt off to buy his car from his Uncle Gerald and was glad to have it. One day, he was actually going to get a date or so everybody kept telling him.

  Charles smoked the rest of his cigarette somewhere between stretching it out and hurrying. The chill was getting to him. It was a tradeoff: freeze or be stuck behind that wretched counter staring into the aisles of the customer-less store. When he was finished, Charles tossed his cigarette butt onto the pavement and smashed it out with the
heel of his shoe.

  Alex was dusting around the register when he went back inside. The kid just never stopped working. The monotony of it all didn’t seem to bother Alex in the least. Was the kid bucking for a raise? Charles doubted it. That was giving Alex too much credit in terms his ability to think ahead.

  “You have a good break?” Alex asked.

  Charles grunted. “They’re never long enough.”

  Both of them turned towards the store’s door as its glass shattered. A thing that Charles’ mind could only register as a monster walked straight through it into the store. The creature was so large and powerful, it was as if it didn’t care that the door was there at all. Shards of glass clinked onto the floor like drops of falling rain around it. Some of them got caught in the thick brown hair that covered its body. Overly long arms hung at its sides. Its head moved from side to side as it looked around and sniffed at the air. The thing’s too-human face twisted into a snarl of rage as its eye fell on the two of them at the counter. Charles nearly peed himself at the sight of it. He wanted to run, but his muscles were locked tight by the fear that set his heart to pounding like a sledgehammer inside his chest. Alex did run. The kid vaulted over the counter and sprinted away towards the rear of the store, leaving Charles standing there to face the monster alone.

  Reacting like an animal, the monster went after Alex because the kid had been the one to run. It tore down the aisle Alex was running through after him. The monster was so large that it knocked over shelves with its flexing arms as it charged at Alex. The kid had reached the rear of the store which was of course a dead end and stood there looking to his left and right, trying to decide which direction to head in next. He never got the chance to make up his mind. The monster was on him before he could start moving again. It barreled into Alex, lifting the kid from the floor as it struck him. The two of them crashed into the row of refrigerated units full of everything from soft drinks to beer. Alex screamed as the glass of their breaking doors cut into his back. His scream rose in pitch as the monster continued to shove his body into the units. The metal shelves inside them were shoved into his flesh. Blood erupted from Alex’s mouth like vomit, first shooting upwards and then drenching the floor around him and the monster.