THEM: Aberration

by M. D. Massey

  A Paranormal Post-Apocalyptic Action Story

  In The Scratch Sullivan Series

  Modern Digital Publishing

  Austin, Texas

  Copyright © 2016 by M.D. Massey.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

  Modern Digital Publishing

  P.O. Box 682

  Dripping Springs, Texas 78620

  THEM Book Zero: Invasion/ M.D. Massey. — 1st ed.

  Contents

  1. Chapter 1 Arrival

  2. Chapter 2 Rattled

  3. Chapter 3 Truth

  4. Chapter 4 Break

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  About The Author M.D. Massey

  MORE BOOKS BY M.D. MASSEY In The Scratch Sullivan Series

  1

  Chapter 1

  Arrival

  I waited in a small copse of trees in the dark, watching over my campfire and listening for some sign that my pursuers were nearby. I’d noticed I was being followed just a few hours after I left Rocksprings. Someone had apparently been watching me and saw their chance when I headed out toward the middle of nowhere. Whether they were collecting a bounty on my head, or if it was some personal vendetta, I didn’t care. All I knew was it was them or me, and I fully intended to make it home from this little side trip to the sticks.

  From what I’d seen the day before, they looked to be punters. Punters hated my guts, as I routinely disrupted their operations whenever the opportunity arose. They were the scum of the earth, slavers that worked the edges of the safe zone settlements, snagging lone travelers and other opportune targets. They loved snatching kids, as they were easy to transport and offered the greatest reward relative to their upkeep. Which was why I hated them, much more than they hated me.

  There were three of them tailing me, which meant they were either desperate or very foolish. Most punters avoided me unless they were traveling with numbers on their side, so I suspected that this crew was made up of amateurs. I’d done nothing to let them know I was aware of their presence, so I was fairly confident they’d make their move tonight. The decoy I’d left under my blankets wouldn’t fool them for long, but it’d work long enough to draw them into my trap.

  I heard them long before I saw them, which verified my suspicions that they weren’t very bright nor very skilled at their work. Once they entered the small circle of light that was put off by my campfire, I got a good look at them. Two males and a female, all three of indeterminate age, slight builds, and armed with a variety of hunting rifles and sidearms. Probably nothing worth scavenging but their ammo, which was a shame. But then again, every ambush can’t be all puppies and rainbows.

  I decided to go in and work them at close range, since I didn’t know what sort of undead might inhabit the local area, and I didn’t want to draw in any nasties that might interrupt my sleep later. Anyway, I’d unloaded my rifle and left it out next to my bedroll, thinking that if it was missing it might tip them off. Of course, at this point I was certain that was never an issue to begin with, but it never hurt to be careful.

  Time to take out the trash. I snuck out of my hiding place, tomahawk in one hand and Bowie knife in the other, moving as silent as death. The first punter motioned to the others that he was going to sneak up to the decoy, and drew a long, nasty looking butcher knife as he advanced. I tried to move around behind them before they discovered my ruse, but unfortunately, he moved faster than I did, reacting with an appreciable degree of shock when he plunged his knife two inches into an old rotten log.

  What many people don’t realize about stabbing attacks is that crossguards on fighting knives are there for a reason. And that reason is, to keep your hand from sliding down the handle and onto the blade when the knife hits bone, as it inevitably will when you stab a person with significant force. Back in the days of law enforcement and criminal investigations, cops would look at a suspect’s hands to see if they had the telltale cuts indicative of a slippery knife and an overzealous killer. Never mind all the DNA that would be left at a scene because you bled all over the place while you were killing someone. Bottom line is, only an amateur tries to stab someone with a kitchen knife.

  When the guy stabbed the old rotten log I’d left under my blankets, several things happened at once. One, his hand slid down onto the blade, and his palm and fingers were sliced open like a gutted fish. Two, he bled all over my blankets and started screaming bloody murder. And three, I ran up behind one of his companions and buried my tomahawk in her skull.

  Unfortunately, as she dropped like the dead weight she now was, my tomahawk got stuck in her cranium, and it was wrenched out of my grip. I quickly switched the Bowie knife from my left to my right and stuck it in the side of the second punter’s neck from behind. As I watched the tip pierce through the other side, I grabbed a handful of his greasy denim jacket, pulling with that hand as I punched forward with the other, severing the arteries in his neck as well as his windpipe. He fell to his knees in front of me with his hands clutching at his neck, so I kicked him over and leapt at the third punter, the one who’d tried to stab me in my sleep.

  In the time it took for me to take care of his friends, this asshole had somehow freed his knife, and he was now circling away from me on the other side of the fire. He’d also switched the knife to his one good hand, and appeared to know what he was about with that blade. Just my luck to get an ambidextrous assassin, I thought as I followed him around my fire.

  The guy spat at me across the glowing coals of the fire. “Chinga tu madre, pendejo. You killed my cousin and my brother. Now I gotta cut your balls off to bring them back to mi papa.” He cursed me with a thick accent, which was common in this part of the state.

  “Stupid is as stupid does, son. No one told you to bring them along on your little bounty hunting trip. Besides, if you were smart you’d have just shot me from a distance. Better odds, that way.”

  He grinned, a gold front tooth gleaming in the firelight. “I prefer mi cuchillo. I like to watch the light fade from their eyes when they die–just like I’m going to watch your eyes fade, culero.” Dentists were rare but not uncommon in the settlements. Still, you had to have some influence or wealth to afford cosmetic dental work these days. I figured he’d stolen it from a slave, which made me want to kill him even more.

  “Yeah yeah yeah. The clock is ticking, asshole. Let’s speed this up – I got a long way to go today, and I need to catch some z’s. So, are you gonna dance or sing?” At that, by the look on his face I knew he was about to lose his shit, and that’s when I knew I had him.

  Some fighters, they have to know that you’re afraid of them. They get off to it, or something. So, it can really rattle their cage when you’re not scared of them, at all. But this guy, it just pissed him off, and he came at me over the fire with a snap cut to my face that he turned into a low, quick swipe at my midsection. I didn’t even bother to block it, and just faded back with a cut to his hand as the knife passed within inches of my abdomen. He was quick, and I got lucky with a shallow cut to his upper wrist. It wouldn’t cause him to drop the knife, but it’d make him nervous that I drew first blood.

  Enraged, he advanced on me with a series of slashes and stabs. I continued to move back, deflecting the knife when it got too close and trying to cut him again on the arm or hand. Finally, his movements began to get
sloppy, and I was able to parry his arm to the inside while severing the flexor tendons on the inside of his wrist. I then checked his arm above the elbow, pinning it to his body as I sliced his arm open neatly across his biceps and triceps. I followed that cut with a deep slice across his leg, just above the knee where the tendons attach to the bone.

  As I finished that last cut, I was already moving past him, circling to his back while I watched him fold like a puppet whose strings had been cut. I pivoted and buried my knife deeply into his skull, just where it rests on top of the spinal column. He collapsed in a heap at my feet, and out of instinct I searched the dark for more threats. I heard nothing but a whippoorwill in the distance.

  Satisfied that they were alone, I hummed a few bars of Hank Williams’ Lost Highway and set about the task of removing the bodies, before they attracted predators of an entirely different nature to my campsite.

  I got to the settlement I’d been headed for a little after midday, and knew something was off the moment the town elder opened his mouth. He was a lanky, weather-worn old coot, with a pot-belly and breath that smelled like wild garlic and sulphur. As I walked into the settlement, he and two other men came out to greet me, while the women and children scurried off like mice to hide. I noticed that the men were well-fed. The women and kids? Not so much. I filed that info away for future reference.

  The apparent leader spoke up as they approached. “You must be the hunter we sent fer. Don’t look like much.” He spat out brown juice in a stream that hit the ground a few inches from my moccasins. “But, I s’pose I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

  I looked them over for a moment before answering. The two men flanking him were avoiding eye contact, and the younger one looked hella nervous. I decided to focus on the leader and see what I could discover about this job.

  “Name’s Aidan Sullivan. Folks call me Sully. And you are…?”

  He spat again and squinted. “Ain’t all they call you. Scratch is the name I was given, like you is some kinda devil or somethin’.” He cleared his throat and looked around a bit, weighing his next question as if he were weighing my soul. “You don’t hold truck with none of them foul creatures, do ya?”

  This guy was already getting on my nerves, so I had to remind myself of the women and children in the community. I’d reconned the area before walking into town, and it was about as ramshackle as they come. Nothing but a collection of mobile homes, storage sheds, and campers bordering a creek and some scrub. About as hopeless as a place can get, and considering how bad things were, that was pretty hopeless.

  I’d gotten the tip about this job from some folks I trusted out in Rocksprings and decided to make the trip to see if I could help. Said some kid walked three days to ask for help with a revenant, asking for the hunter with the scarred up face. They’d promised to pass on the request if they saw me, so here I was.

  The settlement was located way beyond the area I patrolled, so I was already going out of my way to help these folks. Considering how far I’d come to get here, I expected a bit of a warm reception, or at least some basic civility. The fact that this guy was an asshole didn’t necessarily mean I wouldn’t do the job, but if he kept up like he was I might be tempted to turn around and head back home just to spite him.

  I decided to ignore his question. “Still haven’t caught your name.”

  He scowled, then relented. “Elder Thompson. This here’s my boy, Clinton, and my son-in-law, Deke.”

  I nodded at each of the men in turn as they were introduced. “Good to meet you. I hear you have a problem with a rev’?” Rev’ was short for revenant, a particularly nasty form of the undead that was a kind of cross between a zombie and a vampire. They were what happened when a vampire tried to make another of its kind, and failed.

  Revenants craved flesh like zombies, the fresher the better, but they also retained quite a bit of intelligence and moved more like bloodsuckers. Fast, agile, and meaner than a rabid rattlesnake on bath salts. Not as durable as vamps though, so that was something, but definitely not anything that your average safe zone dweller would want to tangle with, which was likely why they’d called me out.

  He tilted his head back and nodded once. “Damned thing won’t leave us alone.”

  “For how long?” Truth be told, it didn’t really matter how long the thing had been hanging around, but I was getting hinky vibes from these people, so I was digging for more info.

  He shrugged. “A week or two. Not long.”

  I looked around the settlement. “Lost anyone?”

  He answered with another shrug. Nonchalance about death and dying was common among the more isolated settlements. In a some of the larger and more established settlements, death could be a rarity, but out in the sticks it was a common occurrence.

  I sighed. “Well, I can certainly help. But, there is the question of payment.”

  He barked a short laugh and tongued his cheek. “Yeah, I figured as much. You’ll get paid in food and wares, just like you do in those big city settlements east of here.” He smirked at me like he’d gotten one over on me. “Yeah, we know your ways, even out here. So don’t think you can go gettin’ any smart ideas, wantin’ to rut with our females as payment. Ain’t gonna’ happen.”

  The thought had never crossed my mind, but it wouldn’t do any good to say so. “Fair enough. Which way did the rev’ head, the last time anyone saw it?”

  All three men pointed at the same time. “Northwest. That a way.”

  I cocked an eyebrow. “Northwest it is then.”

  2

  Chapter 2

  Rattled

  I’d already picked up the trail while I was reconning the settlement earlier, but I wasn’t going to tell them that. I asked them which way the creature had been headed because I wanted to see if they were screwing with me. Anything could happen out here, and did. I’d seen hunters killed many times, not just by the undead, but by the folk who hired them, for no other reason than to steal their gear and ammo. And, I’d seen punters posing as settlers to hire hunters, almost always for the very same reason.

  Which was why it paid to be wary, especially when dealing with a group of settlers that I’d never worked with before. Surprisingly, they’d pointed me in the right direction; the trail I’d found headed that way. I still made a show of searching the ground for tracks as I left the outskirts of their little burg. I didn’t want them to know that I knew where I was going already, nor did I want them to think I was going to take them at their word without checking the facts.

  After I had made sure they saw me picking up the trail, I followed it for a few miles to a small cave located in a draw between two low hills. Based on what I recalled of the area, the settlement was close to what had once been Kickapoo Cavern State Park, and these parts were dotted with small caves that could serve as natural hiding spots for a rev’ or a nos’. I didn’t particularly relish the idea of following a rev’ into a dark, foreboding cave, but a job is a job so I did it just the same.

  Batteries were in short supply these days, but thankfully I still had a few hand-cranked and solar-powered flashlights that I’d stashed back before the bombs dropped. I only used them sparingly, partially for secrecy and partially for economy. Any artificial light that didn’t run on batteries was an item folk would kill you for if they knew you had one. Also, the bulbs wouldn’t last forever, even though they were LEDs, so I made every effort to use lamps and torches for light, whenever possible.

  But in this case, I didn’t have time to screw around with making a torch, and I also didn’t know how long I’d be in that cavern. So, I pulled out my flashlight and cranked it up, and cautiously entered the cave.

  It turned out to be a small cave, and frankly not much to write home about as caves go. It was also abandoned but showed signs of recent habitation. Twenty feet or so in, I found several animal corpses in various states of decomposition, as well as some older human bones and items of clothing. The carcasses that were only partially deco
mposed showed signs they’d been gnawed on with human-like teeth, which likely meant a rev’ or a deader was the culprit.

  Not that I’d never witnessed a human eating raw flesh, but it was uncommon. Most folks knew that eating uncooked game was a good way to get E. Coli and salmonella, both of which could be deadly in a post-apocalyptic world. And if you were eating wild pig, which was common in these parts, you could get trichinellosis. It wouldn’t necessarily kill you, but you’d be miserable for weeks if you contracted it.

  So definitely it was a rev’ den, albeit an abandoned one. Which in and of itself was weird, considering that they rarely gave up a hideout that was close to good hunting grounds. What with the settlement so close, I would have thought the rev’ would still be hanging around. I cranked up the flashlight again and headed toward the front of the cave to see if I could find any clues as to what chased the thing away. Sometimes a nos-type would chase away a rev’ and take over its territory. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t dealing with a vamp instead of a rev’ since that would change my tactics considerably.

  Upon closer inspection of the front of the cave, I found an area where someone had been sleeping. Revs didn’t sleep, so it must’ve meant that a human had used this cave for shelter at one time. But from what I could tell, they’d been here around the same time the rev’ had occupied the cave. I didn’t see any signs of a struggle, which meant that either the rev’ had killed them in their sleep, or they’d somehow missed each other in passing. Possibly the human had used the cave while the rev’ was out hunting, never realizing the danger they were in at the time.

  Or, perhaps they’d been inhabiting the cave at the same time? I’d never seen a rev’ and a human work symbiotically, although I’d seen vamps working with punters more often than not. In fact, that’s where a lot of the people the punters abducted went, to feed the bloodsuckers who inhabited the Corridor deadlands east of the settlements.