by Peter Nealen
The inside of the trailer was fairly Spartan; it didn't look like it had been modified at all. It was well taken care of, but none of it was new. Wear showed on just about every surface. The trailer's suspension creaked as we stepped inside.
Chrystal set the shotgun on the counter as the door swung closed and sat down on a stool, gesturing to a wicker chair and another stool. I took the stool, and let Eryn take the chair. Chrystal didn't say anything at first, but just sat on the stool and fidgeted, staring at her hands as she wrung them over and over. She seemed terrified, in spite of the relief she'd displayed when I'd shown her the crucifix.
“Why is Deputy Craig so intent on keeping us away from you?” I asked first. It seemed like a slightly safer topic to start with than launching right into questions about missing people and Otherworldly spookiness.
She laughed weakly. “Eugene's been infatuated with me for years,” she said. “He's always tried to play the White Knight, here to protect me from everything and everyone. He's sweet, but he's never been anything but a friend. I think that's frustrated him a bit, but it's just the way it is. I think he hoped that as long as I'm close by, he still has a chance, but as soon as somebody from out of town started talking to me, first Blake, and now you, his dreams started crumbling. I kind of feel sorry for him, but he'll get over it.”
So, it was about what I'd suspected. I was somewhat relieved that it was as mundane as all that, instead of being tied in with cults or sorcerers, but then, it could just be Chrystal's rationalization, too. No, I'm not all that trusting an individual anymore. The powers of darkness are too subtle for someone in my line of work to be able to afford to get complacent.
“Chrystal?” Eryn ventured after a moment of silence, her voice gentle. “What was Blake doing here?”
“I don't know for sure,” she replied, looking back down at the floor, her voice quiet. “A lot of what he said didn't make a lot of sense to me. What's happened since has made even less.” She kept looking down at her hands as she started to shake. “He made it seem safe while he was here, and now he's gone, and I'm scared all the time, so scared...” She started to hyperventilate. This was not going well.
Eryn got up and moved over to her, leaning against the counter and putting her arm around the other woman's shoulders. “It's all right,” she said soothingly. “We've all been there, believe me. You're safe now. We're here, and we'll protect you.”
No sooner had she said that than there was a rap at the door. A muffled voice that sounded like Tall Bear said, “Folks, I hate to break up the meeting, but it might be time to go. Things are about to start happening out here.”
I quickly moved to one of the windows and lifted the blinds. He wasn't kidding.
A mob of wild-eyed, skinny people was slowly working its way across the campground towards us. I thought I saw a taller figure in back, but it faded behind a tree—if it had even been there—as the angry murmuring from the crowd started to rise to a roar.
Chapter 5
I almost bowled Tall Bear over as I slammed out the door, my .45 already in my hand. It didn't look like anyone in the crowd was carrying a gun, but I was almost certain that somebody in there would be packing heat. There were certainly enough pipes, chains, and baseball bats in evidence.
I didn't stop at the door, either. I kept moving toward the truck; my rifle was in there. Sure, I had the 1911, but a pistol is what you use to fight your way to the long gun that you should have had the whole time. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Tall Bear and Craig, Craig's quarrel with us apparently momentarily forgotten, rushing to the cruiser, where they must have had shotguns or patrol rifles.
Eryn was right behind me, pulling Chrystal along with her with one hand, Chrystal's shotgun in the other. I spared the girl a glance as I hauled my Winchester '86 out of the back seat, and saw why my wife had her shotgun. Chrystal was in no condition to fight. Her eyes were wide, she was still hyperventilating, and she was shaking like a leaf. She looked like she was about to puke. As rough a life as the girl had led so far, whatever had happened in the last couple of weeks had apparently been a little too much.
Eryn set her shotgun on the hood and pulled Chrystal down next to the front tire. I kept my eye on the approaching crowd. They looked mad, and more than a little crazy, like they were all hopped up on something. Which they might have been, except I've never heard of the entire population of even a meth town to all get psychotically high at once and go try to smash somebody. I searched for the tall figure I thought I'd seen in the background, but there was no sign of it. Maybe I'd imagined it.
Of course, in our line of work, it was never a good idea to dismiss anything with, “Oh, I must have imagined it.”
I could hear Eryn talking to Chrystal. “Chrystal, I need you to listen to me, and do exactly what I say. Then you'll be safe. Do you understand me?” There was no reply, but she must have nodded, because Eryn continued. “I need you to stay right here next to this tire until Jed, or I, or one of the deputies comes and gets you, all right? The tire will protect you if things start to go bad. Don't move away from it until one of us comes and gets you. You hear me?” Another pause. “It's going to be all right. We'll keep you safe.” I saw movement and heard her pick the shotgun up off the hood and check the chamber. Then she racked it. Chrystal had been carrying a shotgun without a round in the chamber. Eryn was too good with guns to pull some Hollywood stunt like racking a loaded shotgun to show she meant business.
Looking out at the crowd, I couldn't help but wonder if my wife's assessment of the situation wasn't a little overly optimistic. I'd faced bad odds before, but we had nowhere to fall back to except the trailer, and I was under no illusions that it was going to keep out a psycho mob for very long.
For some reason, they weren't advancing on us very quickly, and I suddenly thought of an old zombie movie, with the zombies slowly shambling toward their prey. But these weren't zombies, these were very real, armed people, and they were angry.
I leveled my rifle over the hood. Even at a distance, that bore looks big when you're staring down it. I was hoping it would have some deterrent effect, but none of them even missed a step. They kept drifting closer, the same angry muttering never quite becoming intelligible. Now that I could see them, it looked like they were talking to themselves. They weren't yelling at us, or speaking to each other. They were just speaking, the tones low and angry.
The two deputies now had rifles out and aimed as well, and before I could say anything, Craig spoke up. “All right, that's far enough!” he yelled, with the same bellow he'd used in the motel. “Break it up and go back to your homes! We have everything under control here!”
Boy, that last part was a lie if ever I heard one.
The crowd didn't stop. They didn't slow down. On the plus side, they didn't speed up, either. They just kind of kept sauntering closer, various blunt instruments dangling from their hands. As I got a better look, it looked like most of their eyes were kind of vacant, just staring into space. So, this wasn't a spontaneous demonstration of outrage. Something was manipulating them, somehow. I looked again for the tall thing I'd almost seen, but if it was there, it was keeping out of sight.
“Last chance!” Craig yelled. This was getting ridiculous. These people weren't going to stop. They no longer had the capability.
But I didn't want to shoot them. I've fought people before, long before I even knew the Otherworld existed. I've dropped the hammer on a few since, as a Witch Hunter. A lot of the things I've fought are malicious, predatory, downright evil. A few of the people I've had to kill have been the same. But I know, all too well, the consequences of that trigger break. As soon as that bullet goes home, that's it. That person has no more chances. No more chances for repentance, no more option for redemption. It's no small thing.
But sometimes you don't have a choice. And as an ululating wail went up from the back of the crowd, wordless, eerie, and simply mind-bendingly weird, the front rank lifted their clubs and chains
and started to jog forward. They didn't yell, they didn't scream, they just kept up that angry, unintelligible muttering.
Then there was no more time to hesitate. I put the gold bead on the closest man's chest and squeezed the trigger.
It briefly occurred to me, just as the trigger broke, that if the deputies decided that I'd jumped the gun, I could find myself in a lot of trouble when this was all over. But instead of my shot ringing out on its own, it was part of a ragged volley, as all four of us decided we were out of time at once. The other two rifles and the shotgun were almost drowned out by the .45-70's report. The big slug knocked the man flat on his back with a splash of blood, tangling up several of the people running behind him. Eryn's blast of buckshot took out the woman a few paces to his right, while the lighter barks of the two deputies ARs tore into a few people off to the left.
I was shooting as fast as I could crank the lever and switch targets, which was pretty fast. A skinny guy with scabs all over his face, dressed in baggy jeans and a filthy white wife-beater ran at us a little faster than the rest, a tire iron held high, and I shot him through the chest. He fell on his face and was trampled by the others coming after him.
I've seen mobs before. There had been an Iraqi mob we'd had to face down in Anbar once, after a kid got run over by a Hummer. They have an ant-like quality, but generally can be reasoned with, or at least enough of the people in the mob can be reasoned with to break it up.
This mob wasn't like that. It was as if they had no remaining sense of self-preservation at all, no thought in their heads except getting to us and tearing us apart or beating us to a pulp. I was pretty sure that whatever had made that wail was probably controlling them, by some means that I didn't understand, but I was pretty sure it was nothing good. Anything that takes away free will like that sure doesn't come from anywhere wholesome. I had to revise my earlier assessment about these not being zombies. They weren't, at least not in the “walking dead” sense, but in the earlier sense of “person controlled by sorcery,” they fit the definition of “zombie.” I was praying for mercy with each shot. Whether for the souls of the people I was gunning down or for my own, well...it was a bit of both.
The Winchester '86 only carries eight rounds in the tube, and while they pack a good punch, those eight rounds can go pretty quick in a fight. Eryn and I went dry at the same time. I dropped the Winchester on the hood and transitioned to my 1911, while Eryn hastily started shoving shells into her 870's loading port. The .45 ACP rounds didn't pack the punch that the bigger .45-70 rifle rounds did, but they still did plenty of damage, and whether they'd lost their sense of self-preservation or not, these were still living people, not zombies. Shoot 'em in the chest, particularly with a .45 hollow point, and they crumple.
But there were just too many of them. Eryn was back up, blasting a rough-looking young woman in a crop-top who was holding a meat cleaver over her head in the face. I quickly swapped magazines in my pistol, shoved it back in the holster, and slammed eight rounds back into the rifle's loading port as fast as I could make my fingers work. I've had a lot of practice, so it didn't take long, but by the time I was back up, the mob had almost reached the vehicles.
Now, we hadn't set the truck and the cruiser up to form a defensive line. And even if we had, I wasn't sure it would have taken them long to clamber over it and beat or hack us to death. As it was, they just had to run around the flanks and we were done.
The trailer still wasn't an option; it wouldn't last long. So I yelled at Craig and Tall Bear, in between thunderous rifle shots and shotgun blasts, “Get over here and get in the truck! If we stay here, we're dead!”
Craig hesitated. I don't know if it was worry about getting in a civilian truck and abandoning his cruiser, or if for some unknown reason he still had some kind of grudge building up related to Chrystal, but before he could say anything, Tall Bear had grabbed the drag handle on the back of his vest and was hauling him across the gap to the truck.
I kept shooting, the tooth-rattling booms of the rifle echoing across the campground and drowning out the weird muttering that hadn't changed a bit as the mob had charged. Now I wasn't sure they were even making the sound, or just mouthing along with it. “Get in!” I yelled at Eryn. “You're driving!” I didn't want to let up on the covering fire until the rest of them were in the cab.
Eryn tossed her shotgun in the cab, grabbed Chrystal off the ground, shoved her in the back of the cab, sort of on top of a couple of the go bags we kept back there, then jumped in the front, scooting along the seat to the driver's side, starting the engine with a roar before she had even stopped moving. It put her closer to the mob, but at least I could sort of whittle it down as it approached. Suppressing it wasn't happening.
Tall Bear shoved Craig in the back after Chrystal, and the two of them got kind of tangled up even as the big deputy squashed them against the door as he squeezed his own bulk inside, yelling at me, “Last man!”
I took one last shot, laying out a fat man in a mechanic's coverall, and piled in the passenger seat, yanking the door shut even as Eryn threw the truck in gear and mashed the accelerator, cranking the wheel over. My truck didn't have the shortest turning radius, but she was able to make the turn without hitting a tree or the cruiser, and got us pointed at the mob. Without pausing to give any of the closest a chance to swing a weapon at either hood or windows, she gunned the engine again, and sent us surging into the crowd.
Now, we didn't exactly have much momentum, and the mob was pretty closely packed, leading me to wonder how some of them waving around various edged weapons hadn't managed to slice each other to ribbons yet, but that F250 was a big truck, with plenty of power. I don't care how closely packed the mob is; it's still flesh and bone against three tons of steel being pushed by two hundred fifty horsepower. The truck is going to win. It won't be pretty, but it will win.
The truck shuddered as it plowed through the human barrier, bouncing over bodies that went down under the tires and batting others aside as Eryn held down the accelerator. Bones were crushed and bodies pulped, but in moments we were clear and accelerating down the road toward the town.
I watched out the window, looking for any sign of the tall, slightly hunched figure I'd thought I'd seen before, but it had vanished. Trees sped past as Eryn spun up the big diesel with a roar.
Of course, it couldn't be that easy. While it looked like most of the town had come out to try to tear us apart, we could see smoke ahead even as we got clear of the campground. It boiled toward the morning sky, thick, black, and ugly. And, just from looking at where it was rising into the air, I was pretty sure it was actually on the road that we were presently hurtling down.
I was right. There were two cars and a van mashed up on the road and burning, belching the thick smoke into the air above an angry orange blaze. The woods on either side came right up to the road, and there simply wasn't room for the truck. Eryn slowed as we approached, and finally brought us to a stop as it became evident that there was no way around or through the flaming barrier.
“Well, crap,” I said. I twisted around to look past the two deputies. The mob was already starting to follow us; the first figures were jogging around the curve that had hidden the fires from us to begin with.
If I lost this truck to a mob, I was going to get mad. I'd lost its predecessor to some kind of conjured toad-demon thing in Silverton. But the truck was stationary, it wasn't going off-road in those woods, and we couldn't afford to sit still. “Everybody out!” I yelled. “Into the woods!” I glanced at Tall Bear as I suited words to actions and piled out the door, dragging my rifle and my bandolier with me. “I sure hope you guys called for backup.”
“We did,” he said, as he followed, “but it's going to be a bit before it gets here.” He leveled his M4 at the approaching mob and ripped off about five rounds. They weren't particularly aimed, but he was just trying to suppress them, a habit that I was afraid wasn't going to do anything but waste ammo in this situation. And in fact, I was
right, as the lead runner, a machete in his hand, didn't even break stride. I aimed and dropped him with a single shot, shoving another round into the loading port as the rest ran off the side of the road behind me. Eryn wasn't shooting, as she had a hand on Chrystal's arm, steering her through the trees, but the two deputies were putting up some decent fire.
Of course, they really weren't accomplishing much. While a few of our attackers were going down, the deputies were still trying to suppress people who were no longer capable of being suppressed. I took careful, aimed shots, for the twin reasons of knowing that there was no way to scare them into leaving us alone, and with only eight rounds in the tube and a loading port instead of a magazine well, I had to make every shot count. I didn't have the firepower to spray and pray.
For some reason, our pursuers weren't speeding up as we booked it away into the woods. They kept to the same easygoing jog, although it looks a lot less easygoing when the person in question is staring vacantly at you and wielding something that would hurt a whole lot if they hit you with it. It made me suspect that whatever was controlling them either had some pretty narrow capabilities, or didn't have a lot of imagination.
It also meant that now that we weren't sitting there with our backs to the wall waiting for them, we could keep some useful distance between us and them. Unfortunately, we were going to tire eventually, and I had a feeling that they'd be forced by whatever was compelling them to this psychotic behavior to keep chasing us long after they were physically ready to drop from exhaustion.
Another burly guy with a shaved head and tattoos crawling up his neck started closing the distance, so I turned, took a moment to steady my aim, and blasted him, working the lever as the big rifle came down from recoil. He was down flat and not moving. I turned and ran after the rest, shoving another round into the loading port as I went.
The woods followed the river, which skirted the south side of Coldwell, between the town and the freeway. The trees were mostly aspens, cottonwoods, and birches, and there was a fair amount of undergrowth, but nothing so thick that it would particularly slow us down. A few deadfalls loomed up in front of us, and we had to divert around them, but most of the bushes were easily pushed through. The biggest obstacle before we got to the road was a big blowdown that went clear into the water. There must have been fifteen trees that had gotten caught up in the tangle of trunks and branches. We weren't far from the road at that point; I could see the bridge up ahead, past the gray tangle of branches. I stopped and turned as Eryn led the way to find a path around the blowdown. The mob was still after us. I could see too many glimpses of them through the trees and the brush. The deadfalls and the bushes weren't slowing them down. I brought my rifle to my shoulder, searching for the clearest target.
