by Nick Younker
“Sayonara, you little shits!”
He heard the breaks in the mine walls tearing through, and he started to realize that this little event was going to swallow up a significant portion of Fogstow if it kept going.
Sure enough, the land above the mine started to cave in. It looked like a giant monster was making his way through the ground in a straight line as Siders watched the land fall directly in a line toward East Jamison High School.
Well, I guess that takes care of that problem.
But then he thought about Linton Derr. What had those boys told him?
Siders wrinkled his nose and snarled under his breath as he made his way back to the river to board his houseboat.
I guess I’ll have to show him some love as well.
***
10
Linton Derr made his way back down the muddy hill with the firemen and deputies in his Bronco. They needed to get a helicopter in there for the Jeffries plateau, as well as an investigator to see what had caused the fire that had taken them out. Linton suspected arson. It raged for about an hour before the mist took care of the rest. There was little more they could do at the time, so he took a load of emergency personnel back down to the highway and the county fire inspector stayed behind to look over the remains.
Several of them had to get back to Barrelton to stay on duty. They had their entire squad out on the Jeffries plateau and now that the fire was out, it was time to be ready for other emergencies.
Linton took the muddy hill quickly, sliding through the runoffs and straddling the ruts to avoid getting hung up. Once they hit the bottom, which was basically a portion of Highway 66, they slammed down on the surface like they had just jumped the hill. Everyone in the Bronco had enjoyed the thrilling trip, but they were filing out of it and loading up on their fire engines.
Startling loud crashes were coming from just inside town, apparently from the TC. They could see the ground dropping out from under the TC in a straight line. The firemen jumped into their engines and fired them up, racing toward the scene of the disaster. The deputies followed them in their cruisers.
Dust and water sprayed from the ground as the cave-in broke through utility lines. The telephone poles were vanishing, homes sinking and disappearing. The ground was giving in. Sparks were jumping from downed power lines and the entire TC was a straight line of disaster.
The fire engines raced along the highway to get a better look at what was happening in the TC, and the line of sinkholes trekked its away across the area, quickly approaching the highway.
The fire engines stopped to see where the line of disaster was headed, and no sooner could they get a good read on it than the ground below them gave out and swallowed all four fire trucks and five deputy cruisers.
Linton pulled up directly behind them in his Bronco. He jumped out, with Stark close behind. They stood at the edge of the cave-in, seeing if they could see the brave men. He saw the engines being swallowed by the earth below them as soil quickly rose over the tops of the fire ladders. The deputy cars were underneath the trucks in the mess, already gone from sight.
Linton could hear them screaming from inside their mobile tombs, trapped and yelling for help. But there was nothing they could do.
Stark tried to crawl down what was once the edge of Highway 66 in a desperate attempt to reach them, but Linton stopped him and pulled him away from the edge.
There was no sense in Stark losing his life on a long shot at reaching those men. They were gone. The rest was just the added torture of hearing them scream as they raced toward their fate: to be buried alive, much the same as Joe Terrance and Noah Buchanon.
The edge of the cave-in was unstable and started to give away. Linton had to force Stark to move back as the ground below them started to crumble. He pulled him all the way back to the Bronco, and for the first time, they had a real chance to scope the carnage that lay ahead of them. The entire TC was gone. It had swallowed the whole area in what seemed like less than a minute.
To top that off, the town was sealed off. There was no way into Fogstow from the northeast end. Highway 66 was the only route in, and an entire section of it was missing, along with nearly all the emergency personnel in Jamison County. The only people left in the county for emergency services were Linton, Stark, Sheriff Kramer (who was still in Barrelton) and the Barrelton City Police Force.
“Listen, Stark! I need you to get on the horn with Kramer down in Barrelton. Update him on the situation and have him send immediate help into town! Do it now!” Linton shouted.
Stark could only stare at the disaster for a moment in total disbelief, then he nodded and slowly made his way back to the CB in the Bronco
Linton tried approaching the disaster line, but the ground was too unstable. He went back to the Bronco and pulled it further north up Highway 66.
Stark was on the CB with dispatch down in Barrelton, and when Kramer got on the line, he thought Stark was pulling a gag on him. Then Linton got on the radio and confirmed the mess. He requested immediate emergency services to come into Fogstow on the southwest entrance and to follow up with surrounding counties for assistance on the northeast side of what was now ground zero for his small community.
Although Linton did not know it at the time, the southwest end of Fogstow had also collapsed along with Highway 66 just before it hit the TC. The high school was gone and the town was completely sealed off from emergency personnel. The town of Fogstow was now lawless, with a bar full of hungry Creepers waiting to prowl.
Chapter 6
The Fall of Fogstow
***
1
Carrie LeBalte was startled out of her chair when the disaster line started to thunder across the highway into the TC. It sounded like they were being air bombed. She was too young to remember what it was like when Oarshire was operational. They used explosives to blast out areas for surface mining before they breached the upper line and built tunnels below. The sounds of the disaster were much like those when they were first stripping the area.
She ran outside to see what was going on. Nothing. She approached the side of the bluff that looked down on the docks, and there stood legions of desperate Creepers, looking up at her with immense pain in their eyes. They were still shrouded in their blankets.
She saw Harry Keethers walk out of the bar. He did not look quite like the rest. They all had slim, skeletal features, and they looked weak and sickly. But not Harry Keethers. He looked like he was made up of nothing more than skin, bones and ligaments. And those eyes! There was no humanity left in them.
Oh my God! His fingernails!
Carrie wanted to race back into the ’Bend. Never in her life had she seen such a terrifying view of people. They weren’t even people anymore. They looked more like monsters.
They’re drinking out of the channel!
She turned to run back toward the ’Bend, but that’s when she saw the cloud rising over the west side of town. It reminded her of those documentaries she used to watch on PBS when she was a kid, the ones about the dust bowl in Kansas, or somewhere around there.
She knew she shouldn’t leave her back turned on Harry and those things down at the Stow, so she made her way directly back into the ’Bend and quickly locked the door. It should have been safe enough, but they could break through the glass if they saw her inside. She needed to get farther back, somewhere inside the kitchen, and hide. Somewhere she could still see outside, but they wouldn’t be able to look in and see her.
* * *
Harry Keethers and his people looked at the dust cloud rising out of the west. He knew that something was going terribly wrong there, and his phone in Barrelton would be ringing off the hook. By the looks and sounds of the carnage, there would be dead bodies all over.
Carnage!
It was everything that his kind would be looking for now. They needed to feed to get rid of this pain. That indescribable feeling, like their bodies were dying. That was the only way he could think of it. The pain
of dying. It was going to be either those people or his people and in the end, it would come down to making a choice. Eat and survive, or wither away and die. Not just die, but endure one of the most excruciating deaths imaginable. That slow burn eating away at their life force.
“That’s not going to happen,” Harry said out loud as he thought about it.
We’re going to live. We’re going to feed and we’re going to live. Only the strong survive!
There were no more bodies in the channel and his people were all fading away. They had already started turning on each other and the macabre dance was playing out inside the Stow as he stood outside with others, watching the dust cloud in the west rising over the city. The day was darkening, and if there were ever a time to strike, that would be it.
Harry walked to the edge of the steps that led up to the Highland district, and on his way, he yanked blankets off people’s shoulders and threw them in the channel.
He reached the third step and turned around to address his people.
“There were about a hundred of us out here this morning when we woke up and made our way to the channel. Right about now, I would estimate there’s about half that number. Some have been dying off while others have turned on our own kind, whatever our kind may be. But one thing’s for sure! We know what we must do to survive. Some of us have had a hard time coming to terms with it. But that doesn’t make it any less true.
“It’s time we accept our nature. It’s time we come to terms with our fight and what we must do to survive. I know that some of you won’t be able to do it, and that’s just fine. But for the rest of us, we’re going up there and we are going to take this town for our own.”
Harry turned and pointed at the gigantic dust cloud that appeared over the horizon.
“You see that cloud up there? Now I can’t say for certain at this time, but I know for a fact that the Oarshire Mining Company sold off all that reclaim land dirt-cheap for a reason. It was because they wanted to get out from underneath it and make it someone else’s problem. They had already stripped our land to the skeletal roots and they wanted to be done with us.
“That cloud you see up there is the result of a greedy corporation that did not want to pay to have those mines filled in. Instead, they just left them there to rot. Their supports may have lasted a good decade or so, but eventually they would give out.
“We all saw what could happen when that sinkhole out by the bluff park caved in and now, the rest of that mine has gone under. That dust cloud you see up there, that wasn’t made from a dynamite stick. The mine has caved in and the land has been reclaimed by the Earth.
“Does anybody know what that means?”
The people in the crowd shook their heads.
“That means this town has been sealed off. That means no emergency personnel can get in, and nobody can get out.”
Their eyes started glow as the lights turned on in their heads. There was a lot of truth to what Harry just said, and to them, that only meant one thing. It was dinnertime!
He knew that he had rallied a sleeping monster.
He thought to himself, Why did I do that?
He had not wanted to in the beginning, so why now? Why not just take care of his main four and let the rest figure it out for themselves? It would have after all meant less of a body count and more security for their kind.
He tried to reason it out with himself. It was the disaster. It was nature’s way of giving them a push toward sustaining themselves. It was the river that had come upon them and forced them into this and set the conditions just right so that they would embrace it.
It was no surprise to him that his people had been charged by his speech. It was as if the lights had finally come on in their translucent eyes and had given them the will to live. The will to kill and the need to be pain-free. They were all about to become merciless killers and it was those itchy fingers that gave them their most dangerous advantage.
***
2
Harry led his people up the concrete steps to the Highland district, just as others were leaving their houses on Locust Street and Main to get a glimpse of the disaster that was taking place. They did not even see them coming.
One lady held a cat and shaded her eyes with her hands as she watched the dust cloud rise. There was no sunlight smashing through; it was just a knee-jerk reaction to a cloud of dust. She wore a sweatshirt that read Indiana Hoosiers across the front and had crimson candy stripes down both shoulders. She was about fifty pounds overweight and all alone in the world after the death of her husband at the age of 46. Her son had left home three years ago and had never come back, taking up work in Louisville before relocating to Portland, Maine for a permanent position. He called her the first two years over the holidays, but he’d forgotten this past season. She had no other family.
It was Harry himself who walked up behind her and dealt the first blow of the war that would eventually lead to the end of Fogstow.
One swipe across the lady’s back and her shoulder split open, a layer of bloody fat rolling out of it. She never even had a chance to look back at who struck her. She fell to the ground and landed on top of her cat.
The fall killed the cat, but she was still very much alive. Although she could feel the pain, she could not move her body. She was paralyzed. The Creepers had just realized the new paralyzing power of their claws, and they slowly crowded in on her and started filleting her body to pieces as she lay flat on her stomach in a whirlwind of pain that quickly dissipated as her life slipped away.
The first strike did not grab anyone’s attention. She did not make much noise. People around the Highland district were congregating with each other, trying to figure out was happening west of town.
While the lady lay there, slashed to pieces by the highly evolved, monstrous people who had turned overnight, her fellow townsfolk gossiped in a small circle about the blasts they used to hear coming from the now defunct coal mine. They wondered if they were trying to reopen the mine for some reason, but that sounded ludicrous, to say the least.
Their discussion did not last long, though, as several Creepers descended upon them and ran their razor sharp nails across faces, stomachs, ears, legs, arms and scalps. Each one only got one slash from the Creepers’ claws, and they all went down, instantly paralyzed.
The Creepers themselves hadn’t been aware of this ability, but evidently, it was part of their evolution.
In total, eleven people from the Highland district were slashed apart while they were alive. Creepers tore off pieces of flesh and slid them down their throats in an enormous frenzy.
Others walked down Locust hill to the edge of Squaw Creek and the TC only to find the gaping hole left in the ground. It was just as their leader had predicted before he had sent them up to the Highland and told them the town was theirs.
People were gathered at the edge of the sinkhole, trying to find survivors of the TC collapse. They were spread out along the disaster line and the Creepers had to take them all one at a time.
Mike Brownsman dealt the first blow. While other Creepers were slashing people along the disaster line, one took a swipe at Mike and he saw it coming. He ducked out of its way and punched it with a side swing to the temple.
The Creeper’s head came clean of its body and tumbled down the hole.
They might have had the advantage of extremely sharp nails and paralysis on their side, but one thing they didn’t have was a physically strong body to defend themselves with. Their bodies had been broken down and were extremely vulnerable to even the slightest force. Their skin had become weak and easily broken. It had become apparent to them they were not quite as powerful as they might have thought in their bold attempt to feed off the town.
Mike came to the aid of a teenage girl who had been taken down by a Creeper’s slash and he kicked its ribcage.
The Creeper’s ribs splintered inside of it and it fell over and died almost instantly.
A few others fought back alongsi
de Mike, but many had been slashed and paralyzed by the time Mike and his brave defenders got to them. The Creepers had already filleted parts of their flesh off and swallowed the chunks whole. When Mike came running, it tried to flee, but he had it boxed in at the side of the disaster line. The pain and fear in the Creeper’s eyes turned to a snarl as it leaped into the hole and grasped the vertical wall with its nails. It scuttled along the wall and disappeared into the crashed mine below it.
Before the episode was over, the Creepers had taken out 26 people and left 11 others still alive, but paralyzed. They all started scurrying off at superhuman speeds, disappearing into the mine, scaling the walls with only the nails on their fingers and toes.
As soon as Mike turned around, a claw slashed directly across his face and dropped him like an insect that had just been spray bombed. It was Harry Keethers’ hand that delivered the blow.
He squatted down to look Mike Browsman in the eyes. The teen could only stare back at the horrible monstrosity in front of him.
Mike’s posse of heroes raced to his side, and before Harry took off over the edge, he slowly jabbed Mike’s throat, running his nail from left to right. Blood poured out of Mike’s neck and Harry’s face turned into a painful visage before he disappeared into the mine.
Three men came to Mike’s side to stop the bleeding. One man kneeled beside him and held his hand across his throat tightly, which also cut off Mike’s air supply.
It was not meant to be. A second wave of Creepers came from behind and slashed all three men. The last of those who knew how to fight them, or who were at least brave enough to take swings at the menacing monsters, had been taken out.
The Creepers emerged from the mine pits and began feasting on the heroes, slicing off portions of their arms and legs first, then finishing off their stomachs and, finally, their throats.
The circumstances of their early evening feeding had differed quite rapidly from how they fed that morning, which was with disgusted and skeptical bites. Before, their guilt held them at bay, but not enough to turn away from the food. Now, they took pleasure in the pain their victims felt, almost as if they were delighted to see them experiencing the same pain as themselves.
