Ramón studied the area around the school. “You say people have been dragged inside the building?”
“Yup.”
Ramón gestured to the empty neighborhoods surrounding the complex. “This place doesn’t look like a high traffic area. What were people doing out here?”
Sheriff Walters grinned knowingly. “Aw, you know, kids, teenagers, they like to come out here and park to finger-bang and smoke weed or whatever.” He pointed to the gravel parking lot across from them. “Two kids got snatched right there, right in front of my eyes as I was coming to shoo ’em away.” His eyes took on a glazed sadness, and for a moment he looked like a depressed bloodhound.
“Poor Joey and Betty Lou.” He looked at the building and ground his teeth together. “That was their names. Betty Lou was the prom queen.”
The others nodded. Duke let out another low grumble. Panocha’s nose twitched and she tilted her head, testing the air.
The sheriff hooked his hands in his belt loops, making his belly extrude even farther. “After that I passed a curfew: no one outside on the streets after dark. I am not really authorized to do that—but hell—these folks don’t know that.”
“You did the right thing, Sheriff,” Joe said, still staring at the dark doorway leading into the bowels of the school.
“Thanks,” Walters said, and meant it. “These things only seem to come out at night, so I figured, keep their food away from them and maybe they’ll go away. But so far it ain’t worked out like that. They just seem to be gettin’ pissed. Last night they trashed a bunch of people’s cars—smashed the windshields, slashed the tires to ribbons, even damaged the engine block on Chad Cheney’s old Ford pick-up, tore right through the hood to get at it. The night before they wrecked the Ponderosa Bridge on the north side—almost as if they don’t want any of us leaving town.”
While the sheriff talked, Joe studied the school. It was a series of squat cinderblock and brick structures, each of them designated with a capital letter on their crumbling yet ornate facades. The buildings were connected by overgrown concrete pathways spread out in a star-shaped pattern with the administration building in the center—like an English prison. It looked like it covered about six acres, with the gymnasium looming in the back, much taller than the other buildings, and connected to the spokes which formed D wing.
Joe moved closer to the administration building. Had he heard something moving around in there? Both dogs began to growl again, confirming his suspicions. It sounded like something slithering across the dusty floor…
Studying the layout of the complex, he realized they couldn’t blow the place even if they got permission. It was too sprawled out, too big. They didn’t have enough C4 with them to do the proper demolition job. Which meant…what did it mean? Joe furrowed his brow, his face darkening. It meant they were going to have to go in there.
He cast a glance heavenward. It was getting late. The sun would only be up for a few more hours. Not enough time. They were going to have to spend the night in Dadeville. The prospect did not fill him with joy. Now their problems were twofold: where to find a place to stay, and how to keep the chupacabras inside the school once the sun went down. He had an inkling of what to do about the latter. As to the former…
“Well, Sheriff, it looks like we ain’t leaving town either.” He shared a look with Lupita and Ramón, to see what they thought of the idea. They acquiesced with slight nods, tilting their heads imperceptibly.
“You got a motel nearby?” Joe asked.
“Oh sure,” Walters assured him, pleased as punch they’d decided to stay. “The Starlight Motel will be happy to have the business.”
He dug in his pants for a hunk of chewing tobacco and stuffed it in his mouth. Chewing noisily, he spat a long stream into the dirt at their feet and added, “The rates at the Starlight are pretty affordable too.”
“Hell, we don’t care,” Joe said. “We ain’t paying for it.”
The sheriff gaped at him. “Huh? Who is?”
“Have the mayor put it on his tab.”
“He ain’t gonna like that.”
“He like having chupacabras kill the citizenry better?”
“Not hardly.”
“Then show us the way, Sheriff. We got work to do before the sun goes down.”
The sheriff pointed nervously at the school. “You sure it’s okay to leave them in there? Shouldn’t we post a guard or somethin’?”
“As long as we get back here before dark we’ll be okay. I’ve never seen one in the daylight…yet.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Oh, they’re full of surprises,” Joe said over his shoulder as he turned to head back to the Impala with Ramón and Lupita and the grumbling dogs in tow. “Never know what they’ll do next.”
««—»»
The air was thick, hot, and heavy. Dust clouds curled through the streets of Tijuana like a London fog, and sixteen-year-old Lupita was tired and sore from her shift, hunched over a sewing machine for twelve hours.
Her walk home led her through an area of shacks patched together from boards and chicken wire and a few abandoned warehouses corroded by rust. The cracked and dusty path took her near a dry riverbed that had formed a deep ravine. Huge ditches filled with garbage such as this were known as barrancas in Mexico.
As she was nearing an open patch of waste ground between some shacks and the barranca, she froze at the sound of running footsteps. Suddenly, her way was blocked. There were three of them, thin as weasels, with leering grins and drug-glazed eyes. As they stood gloating, their lustful expressions left her in no doubt of their intentions. Her stomach dropped around her knees. Girls had been raped and left for dead in the desert on the outskirts of town for many years now. It was one of the worst unsolved cases of serial homicide in Mexico.
With a sneering laugh, the man closest to her reached out to grab one of her breasts. Lupita’s hands came up in a blur. She wrapped her fingers around his forearm, twisted and snapped; a spiral fracture, it would never heal straight. The man staggered back with a sharp cry of pain, his arm dangling limply at his side. She finished him off with a roundhouse kick to the head, sending him flying backward over the edge of the barranca.
The next one stepped forward, muttering maliciously, and he didn’t see the knife as it slid from its hiding place inside her sleeve. The long blade plunged into his chest and punctured his heart like a balloon. Lupita yanked out the blade and he fell in the dust, eyes rolled up and showing the whites. The third would-be rapist turned tail and fled, terror in his eyes; the sheep he’d been expecting to shear had suddenly turned into a vicious wolf. No one reported the stabbing to the police. When the body was found the next day, the crime was not investigated. Rough justice. Such was life in Mexico.
««—»»
Joe got them three rooms at the Starlight, a rustic motel two blocks down and across the street from the jail on Main Street. Ramón exchanged his dress clothes and expensive boots for black BDUs and steel-toed combat boots. They grabbed a quick bite to eat at the only place open near the motel, the River View Café, and then returned to the abandoned school with the sheriff in tow. Joe had a plan, but they needed to work fast; it was now only ninety minutes until sundown.
Ramón and Lupita carried Ithaca 37 shotguns, the “stakeout” version with 13-inch barrel and pistol grip stock. Joe preferred his old Winchester Model 12 riot gun. Unlike most modern pump-action shotguns, the Winchester Model 12 had no trigger disconnector. It fired each time the action closed with the trigger depressed. As fast as he could pump the action, another shot could be fired. That and its six-shot capacity made it effective for close-combat. In addition to their shotguns, each of them carried a Colt Commander chambered for .45 ACP. Joe kept his on his hip, while Ramón and Lupita favored shoulder rigs.
Joe wanted to reconnoiter the school, find any other exit points, and then block them. His plan was to see if they could bottle up the creatures for the night. Failing that, they
would at least force the chupacabras into a choke point where they could be more easily killed.
Gazing at the open front doors, Joe asked, “Sheriff, can you get someone down here to board up these doors?”
Walters’ face was pained. “Are you kiddin’ me? I can’t get anyone to pick up a corpse from the friggin’ side of the road.”
“Okay,” Joe sighed. “Take us to the nearest hardware store.”
««—»»
By the time they got back with hammers and nails and sheets of plywood, it was only 45 minutes until sunset, the sky already streaked with ribbons of pink and red.
Leaving the supplies in the sheriff’s truck (along with the sheriff), Joe and Ramón circled the building marked B, checking the windows and other doors. They were lucky; the structure had only the minimum amount of windows and exits required by the local fire code. All of the windows on the B wing were securely blocked already, doors chained and padlocked, so they moved to C wing once Lupita and the dogs joined them.
The dogs were strangely silent, a fact that worried Joe more than he let on. He wondered if the creatures had left the school in the brief time it took them to rent rooms at the motel and wolf down plates of greasy diner food. But no, it was light outside. Where could they have gone?
The C wing was also secure, and Joe began to hope that the only building they’d have to worry about was the administration building. After checking the D wing and the gymnasium and finding them adequately boarded up, they retreated to the sheriff’s truck in the parking lot.
“Dogs are awful quiet,” Ramón remarked.
Joe nodded, casual, cool, and calm. He always tried to project a sense of confidence—the inspiring leader, never showing weakness or indecision and all that crap. It was an act, but it seemed to help give the others more confidence.
Lupita watched Duke and Panocha. They panted in the muggy air, waiting patiently, milling around her feet. They seemed unconcerned, not at all like they were behaving before. She had the same doubts that assailed Joe. But how could the creatures have gotten out?
Ramón slung his shotgun over his shoulder and moved to pull a piece of plywood from the bed of the sheriff’s truck.
“Let’s get those doors on the admin building boarded up,” he said, and then stood back and waited for either Joe or Lupita to help him.
Joe handed his Winchester to Lupita, and then grabbed the other end of the plywood and walked it over to the doorway with Ramón. They were standing in front of the open doors to the admin building, when suddenly the dogs went ape-shit, barking and snarling, straining at their leashes in Lupita’s hands, forcing her to dig her heels into the gravel to keep them from pulling her off of her feet.
Joe threw a worried glance at Ramón and they both lunged forward and slammed the plywood against the door frame just as a scaly fist bashed the wood from the other side, splintering it and rocking Joe and Ramón on their feet.
“Good god almighty!” came the sheriff’s terrified voice. The dogs were barking uproariously, and Lupita shouted at them to cease. The clawed fist thundered against the wood again and the plywood flew apart, smacking Joe and Ramón aside and sending them heavily to the ground. And then the beast was streaking out of the school, heading straight for Lupita—
—but Duke was there to meet the creature, fang to fang. They collided and ripped into each other. The leash jerked from Lupita’s hand as they rolled, snapping and tearing, saliva flying. Lupita dropped the other leash and picked up Joe’s shotgun. Pumping a shell into the chamber, she shouted, “Duke, down!”
Duke disengaged, circling away to join Panocha, flanking the monster, which jumped to its feet and hissed at them, its tail raised high, ready to strike.
Joe picked himself up from the gravel and saw the crouching beast blink its eyes. He knew that wasn’t right, because chupacabras don’t have eyelids. What the hell was going on anyway? It was not dark enough for this thing to be out in the open. Just as these thoughts occurred to him, the beast spun around and charged at the sheriff—the only direction not covered by a dog or someone with a shotgun.
Lupita banged out a blast with Joe’s Winchester and struck the creature in the side, punching holes through its flanks with little effect, merely serving to slow it down as it staggered for a moment, and then continued barreling toward the corpulent lawman like a locomotive.
Sheriff Walters scrambled for his .357 Colt Python with two-tone nickel and blue-steel finish, his hand slapping the leather at his hip. He fumbled it out, raised it, and put the monster in his sights—
—the beast bowled into him.
The force of the blow sent him back against the side of the truck, denting the metal. Wickedly curved claws dug into his chest and fangs darted for his neck.
Lupita bounded over. Dodging the whipping tail, she aimed at the side of the creature’s head and squeezed off a shot. With a deafening blast, the beast was flung away. It hit the gravel and shrieked, clawing frantically at its shattered face—twitching, twitching—then it shivered and became still.
It happened so fast. No more than thirty seconds had passed from the time the plywood was placed against the doorway.
Sheriff Walters lifted his eyes and gave them a dazed look. He grew faint, then nauseous. His heart pounded in his chest, his head swam; he was going into shock. He pressed a hand to his chest, felt the warmth of his blood through the shredded fabric of his shirt.
Then Ramón and Joe were at his side, lifting him up. The sheriff cried out in pain, and they apologized, but didn’t let go. They carried him and placed him in the back of his truck. The dogs hopped up in there with him and he was glad, as he felt they would protect him. Lupita broke away, heading for the Impala, shouting, “I’ll follow you to the hospital.”
“Oh shit.” Ramón froze in the act of climbing into the cab of the sheriff’s truck. “Where is the hospital?”
Joe and Lupita looked at him blankly.
Sheriff Walters lifted his head. “The nearest hospital is thirty miles south in Delmore Beach on the Gulf Coast,” he croaked. Then he passed out.
Ramón took the wheel of the truck while Joe climbed in the back to apply direct pressure to the slashes on the lawman’s chest, preventing him from bleeding to death while they sped down the Interstate.
When they arrived in Delmore Beach, the sheriff was unconscious, but in stable condition, according to the emergency room doctor. The sheriff required a few pints of blood to top him off and thirty-two stitches in his chest, arms, and abdomen. He would have some boasting scars, but he was going to be fine. He was under sedation and sleeping now. A call had been placed to his wife and she was on her way to the hospital.
“Was this a ‘gator attack?” the young ER doctor asked.
“Yeah, sure,” Joe replied.
“Because if it is, I have to notify the Fish and Game Department.”
“Do what you gotta do, Doc,” Joe said as he scanned the waiting room for security guards or anyone who might try to stop his team when they left the premises. He knew that he and Ramón and Lupita would be long gone by the time any fool from the Fish and Game Department showed up to make them fill out forms and give statements.
After making sure the sheriff was okay, they discreetly huddled in the waiting room until another ambulance brought a load of battered, weeping teens into the ER—the victims of a three-way collision on the Interstate. Using that as a distraction, the hunters quietly slid out the door.
Leaving the sheriff’s truck in the parking lot, they piled into the Impala and headed back to Dadeville. The corpse of Fred Sorensen still greeted them on the way into town, but when they arrived back at the abandoned school, the body of the dead chupacabra was missing.
It was midnight. Joe decided to call it quits, regroup, and start fresh in the morning.
— | — | —
Chapter 2
If Charlie Leonard had been a bit more on the ball, he might have remembered that several people, including the town�
��s two deputies—well-liked boys, no more than twenty-four, hardly old enough to shave—had been attacked near the south side in the past few days.
But Charlie, a tubby man with dark hair and dull green eyes on a placid, chunky face, wasn’t thinking about the two deputies and those other folks who’d been killed earlier in the week. He was thinking about how much more pleasant it was to work at night, when it was cooler. Here it was after midnight—by thirty minutes according to his watch—and he was just about to begin his work.
Why doesn’t everybody do it like this? he mused.
He knew that’s the way they did things down in Mexico. They woke up early and worked until it got hot—then they had the good sense to go inside and rest until the sun went down. Then they went out and worked some more. They knew when to get out of the heat, the sign of a wise culture. Why couldn’t Americans figure it out?
Charlie Leonard was a native son, born and raised in Dadeville, as were his parents and their parents before them. He was a proud graduate of the Dadeville public school system, and a proud public servant. Well, proud to have a job, at least. As far as putting in any strenuous effort…that was another story.
For one thing, it was always so wretchedly hot that Charlie could never see much reason to get worked up about anything. The heat and humidity just browbeat him into lethargy. Most folks expected him to jump when they said “jump” but Charlie had been doing things at his own pace for forty-three years now—and he was damned if he was going to change, no matter how much people bitched at him.
Just like this dead fellow on the side of the road. The sheriff had been bawling and whining at Charlie for three days to go and pick up the corpse. Charlie didn’t see any reason to rush; the guy wasn’t going anywhere. After that first call from Sheriff Walters, Charlie had decided he would wait until the hammering sun went down. Then he waited until he had a six-pack of beer in his belly. Then he went to bed after deciding he’d get to it the next night.
Fury of the Chupacabras Page 9
