Fury of the Chupacabras

by Raegan Butcher

  Joe tapped his heels into the horse’s flanks and it took off like a rocket, streaking past the mob of chupacabras fanning out from the storm cellar. A dozen creatures had peeled off and bounded after Ramón. The main group wheeled around and chased after the horse.

  Joe rode bareback, and his balls were being crushed on the horse’s backbone, but he didn’t feel a thing. He was flooded with fear and lost in a wash of adrenaline. It was amazing, the reserves of energy that could be called upon in a crisis. Joe had felt it before, during his few firefights when he was in the Army, and it always charged him up, like shooting electricity directly into his soul with a needle.

  The horse galloped down the road, puffing breath. It was as afraid of the ravening pack of predators at its heels as the two humans who sat astride it, its fear instinctive, primal, and pure.

  Singer risked a look back. The road behind them was filled with loping green bodies. They were gaining. She remembered when the creatures had chased the tour bus—it had been going fifty miles per hour. She watched as the mob closed the distance. They would overtake the horse in less than a minute at this pace.

  Gripping the horse with her legs, she whipped the bow from her shoulder, snatched an arrow from the quiver, and held it under Joe’s nose.

  “Got a light?” she yelled in his ear.

  Joe held the reins with one hand. The horse didn’t need to be told what to do. It was running for its life, and the road was straight and narrow for the first long stretch. Joe patted the pockets of his coat. He found his Zippo and whipped it out. The first flick of flame sputtered out in the wind. The road sloped gently ahead, curving naturally in a wide turn toward town. They needed to pass it, keep going, cut through a field, and then head for the school, a half-mile down the road.

  The horse instinctively went with the curve of the main road—the wrong way. Joe pulled on the reins and dug his knees into the muscular flanks, straining to move the animal back to the field. The horse jerked its head angrily, fighting the reins, but straightened at the last minute and went with Joe’s lead.

  They bounced as the horse leapt a ditch and Singer cried out as she almost fell. Her arms were clutched awkwardly around Joe’s waist. She waved the dynamite in front of his face again. “Light me up!”

  Working the lighter frantically, he scratched a flame from it on the fifth try, cursing under his breath, trying to steer the horse at the same time.

  Singer touched the fuse to the flame. It sputtered and sparked. She twisted around, drew back the string, and let it fly. The arrow shot into the front ranks of chupacabras and exploded, taking out a dozen, tossing them in the air like dolls, scattering arms, legs, and great chunks of green bodies.

  The horse redoubled its headlong flight, startled by the sound of the explosion. It pulled out ahead of the pursuing pack, legs thundering. The horse tore through the field, kicking up clods of dirt, and then burst back onto the secondary road.

  Singer jammed another arrow in front of Joe. He lit it on the third try. She twisted around, pulled back the string, and aimed at a large pine tree to the side of the road. The resulting explosion peppered the first wave of creatures with a burst of wooden shrapnel as the tree toppled down, crushing the next wave of snarling monsters and piling the others up behind its branches and splintered trunk. But a few chupacabras vaulted over it, taking to the air like fighter planes.

  The horse pulled ahead, gaining much-needed distance. It was a straight shot to the school now and Joe let the reins loose, giving the horse its headroom, leaning down like a jockey to decrease wind resistance. Singer crouched behind him, hugging him tightly.

  The horse was in a lather, foaming at the mouth, spit flecking back into Joe’s face, but its pace never slowed. The horse covered the distance, running with a boundless energy borne of the will to survive. Even the horse understood: if they stopped, they died. Joe told himself he was going to adopt the magnificent animal if they made it out of this alive. It was carrying two passengers, but it ran as if it were unencumbered, flying down the road like winged Pegasus.

  After what seemed an eternity, the school loomed in sight. Joe guided the horse with a light tug on the reins. They jumped the curb and kept going, galloping over the front lawn toward the central courtyard.

  Suddenly, the horse’s front legs disappeared as the soft earth of the lawn, undermined by tunneling, collapsed under the weight of the animal. With a whinny of surprise, the horse tumbled and plowed into the dirt, snapping both legs at the knees. Joe and Singer flew over the withers and smacked the ground headfirst.

  Shaking his head, sitting up, Joe came to his senses and heard the horse crying pitifully. It was trying to pull itself out of the hole with its broken front legs. Joe looked past the struggling animal and saw the first wave of chupacabras coming down the street. Stumbling to his feet, he drew his Colt. He scrambled to the wounded horse and placed the barrel to its forehead.

  “Tony the Wonder Horse,” he said quickly. “I hate to do this.” He squeezed the trigger and put the animal out of its misery. He found Singer sitting in the grass, cradling her arm, and gritting her teeth.

  “Come on,” he rasped.

  She shook her head. “No, I’ll never make it. Just leave me.”

  “Are you kidding me?” he raved. “You’ve got a broken arm. A few weeks in a cast and you’ll be fine!” He grabbed her under her shoulders, hands in her armpits, and hauled her to her feet. “Let’s go!”

  He dragged her toward the gymnasium.

  — | — | —

  Chapter 12

  Colgate and Johnson were sitting at the sheriff’s desk, playing gin rummy with a pack of cards they’d found in a drawer. Lupita hovered near the front door with Tennis Shoe Pete. Duke and Panocha suddenly sat up and began growling. Duke’s ears went flat against his big white head and his nostrils flared.

  “Uh oh, the Grunches is loose,” Pete whispered.

  Lupita ran to the window, and then cursed because they were boarded up. She looked at the clock on the wall.

  “They’re coming out earlier and earlier,” she hissed. Then she jolted ramrod straight, hand clasped to her mouth. “And I’ve got the detonator!” She tore the device from her pocket and held it up. “I have to get to the school!”

  “Are you nuts?” Colgate barked, rushing up to her. “You won’t make it two blocks.”

  “But I have the detonator!” she wailed. “Joe can’t do shit without this!”

  Colgate was bewildered. “Why do you have it?”

  “Never mind that,” she snapped. “How do we get over there?”

  “Who is we?” asked Colgate. “I am not going out there.”

  “I’ll go with you, Missy,” Pete volunteered.

  “What are you guys saying?” asked Johnson. Everyone ignored him.

  “Yeah, sure, Pete should go with you,” Colgate said eagerly. “He’s the perfect man for a suicide mission. He’s crazier than ten drunken Indians.”

  “Fuck you, peckerwood,” Pete growled.

  Lupita sized up Pete with a long look, weighing her options. Go out alone, or take the ancient wino? Then she sighed and slid her Colt from the shoulder holster, locked the slide back, and checked the chamber. She thumbed the slide release and worked it again to chamber a round. As she handed it to Pete she told him, “Try not to blow your balls off.”

  He took the automatic and grinned at her. “Let’s kick some Grunch ass.”

  Lupita turned and called her dogs to the holding cells in the back of the building. They walked in obediently, but whined in disappointment when she closed the door and locked them inside. She returned to the front and addressed Colgate with a tap on the shoulder. “When we’re gone, lock this door.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, I will,” he assured her. “I still say you’re making a huge mistake. We are safe here. Wait until tomorrow when you’re not running around improvising at the last minute to try this crazy scheme again.”

  “I am not waiting another n
ight in this town,” she said. “If I don’t make it back, tell Joe to take care of Duke and Panocha.”

  “What if Joe doesn’t come back either?”

  Ignoring the question, she turned and gave Pete a last critical look. Never thought I’d be taking on chupacabras with an 8o-year-old derelict. But he does have guts. If he lives, we ought to put him on the team.

  “You ready?” she asked.

  Pete grinned. “Let’s kick some Grunch ass,” he said again.

  Lupita yanked open the door and charged out. Pete dashed after her. They cleared Main Street with no problems and made it to the other side, running full tilt through the gathering darkness. They sprinted through an alley and popped out in the parking lot of the hardware store on Second Avenue. Lupita stopped and tried to get her bearings.

  “This way,” said Pete, urging her onward. “I know this town like the back of my hand.”

  It was quiet. Only the sound of the wind rustling the trees in the distance could be heard. The streets were shiny and wet.

  As they crossed to the other side of the avenue, a chupacabra screeched from somewhere behind them. Pete and Lupita froze. She looked up at the roof of the hardware store. There were a half-dozen chupacabras sitting there, staring. They hadn’t been there a moment ago.

  “Uh-oh,” Pete whispered. “This might have been a bad idea.”

  A clanking sound brought their attention to the avenue. A manhole cover near their feet eased up slowly, and then fell back again. There was a deathly silence for several seconds, and then the cover blew off, and a foul-smelling monstrosity emerged, wreathed in fetid sewer gas.

  At the same moment, the chupacabras on the roof attacked. Lupita blasted the first one that swooped in her direction, and dropped it to the pavement. Working the pump, she pivoted and blasted the mist-enshrouded head coming up from the sewer, blowing it off at the neck in a geyser of blood. The shots reverberated up and down the avenue.

  “This was definitely a bad idea!” Pete yelled, and ran back toward the jail. Keying on his movements, the group of chupacabras in the air soared off in pursuit. Pete crossed back to the other side of Second Avenue and vanished into the alley.

  “Wait!” Lupita called after him. She ducked a swooping shape and blasted it out of the sky, then took off after Pete. She dashed across the avenue, darted down the alley, and rounded the corner. She saw him just as he crossed First Street with the monsters on his heels. She assumed a firing stance, feet planted on the sidewalk, and took aim at the fiends, blasting them down, trying to keep them off the old man.

  Pete made it to the front door of the jailhouse. He pounded on the door. “Open up!”

  He was beating on it when the first chupacabra reached him. He brought up the Colt and fired, blasting the beast between the eyes, knocking it to the sidewalk. Three others dropped on him, tackling him, and slammed him against the brick wall of the jailhouse.

  “Motherfuckin’ Grunches,” Pete cursed as he went down. He grunted when his head hit the bricks, arms flailing. The creatures screeched demonically. Six sets of claws flashed, tearing his cheek open, ripping at his arms, face, and chest. He cried out as the hammering blows fell on his head, and crushed his skull, spilling out his brains on the sidewalk.

  From across the street, Lupita cursed them savagely and then instantly realized her mistake: she was making too much noise, drawing their attention away from their fresh kill. The three chupacabras turned from Pete and bounded across the street toward her with their fangs bared.

  Without thinking, she turned and dived through the broken front windows of the River View Café. She came up rolling, slamming tables aside and overturning chairs, and charged into the kitchen. Looking around wildly, she tugged the heavy door of the walk-in cooler open and dashed inside.

  The chupacabras pursuing her had reached the sidewalk in front of the café when they paused, and tilted their heads to the sky. A few miles distant, the sound of a screeching mob of chupacabras echoed through the night. The main body of creatures was stampeding somewhere on the other side of town.

  The three chupacabras on the sidewalk chattered back and forth. Two of them abruptly spread their wings and took to the air. The remaining creature stepped through the doorway of the café. Pausing to test the air with its tongue, the beast moved to the kitchen, following Lupita’s scent. It pushed through the swinging door and stopped.

  ««—»»

  Johnson couldn’t hear what was happening and it was driving him crazy. The roaring sound in his head had faded to a dull buzzing, but that was all he could hear, as if seashells had been pressed against his ears. Since the windows to the jail were nailed shut with plywood, he couldn’t see out into the street. He felt isolated and abandoned. Grabbing Colgate by the arm, he demanded information.

  “What is going on? Can you hear anything?”

  Colgate stood near the front windows, ear pressed to a crack in the plywood, listening raptly to the sounds from the street. He had a legal pad and a pen. He scribbled short sentences for Johnson to read.

  The first note read: Sounds like Lupita and Pete are in trouble.

  The second one was terser: Gunshots. Lupita yelling.

  The next one said: Pete yelling.

  And then a few seconds later, there was a thumping reverberation through the brick walls. Colgate turned from the door and made a slashing motion across his throat with his forefinger.

  Johnson clutched at his arm. “They’re dead?”

  Colgate held up the last note and pointed to the name “Pete” and tapped it with the pen.

  “What about the girl with the big boobs?” asked Johnson.

  Colgate shook his head. Then he scribbled on the pad and held it up. It said: Don’t know. Quiet outside now.

  “What do we do?”

  Colgate wrote one word on the pad: Wait. Then he stopped and cocked his head. From outside came the tinny, metallic sound of pots and pans banging together and dishes breaking.

  “Must be coming from the café,” Colgate muttered. He shared a look with Johnson, and then slowly reached out and took the axe from him.

  ««—»»

  Inside the cooler, Lupita checked her weapon and discovered she had only three shells left. She patted the pockets of her cargo pants and found two more. Her heart hammered against her ribcage when something bumped the freezer door. She braced herself, raised the Ithaca, and waited.

  Slowly, the door cracked open. Little by little it swung wide to reveal—nothing. The entryway was empty. Lupita edged forward, poking the barrel in front of her. She paused, straining to hear one sound, one piece of information, anything that might tell her the creature’s location. Just as she came to the threshold, a long tail shot from the side of the doorway, wrapped around the barrel of her shotgun like a boa constrictor, and yanked the weapon from her hands.

  The creature filled the door, arms raised, tail clutching the shotgun, legs spread wide. She had a fraction of a second before it attacked. Lupita hit the floor and dived through its legs. Caught off guard, the creature whirled, and its tail flung the shotgun away.

  Lupita jumped to her feet. The door at the far end of the cluttered kitchen was wide open, left that way by the mayor and the frightened cooks when they had abandoned the café the previous evening. Lupita dashed for it. The creature’s tail shot across the room, and snapped like a whip, missing her face by inches. She spotted a butcher knife on the counter in a pile of dried mayonnaise and snatched it up just as the creature’s tail lashed through the air again. Lupita swung out with the knife and severed the tip, sending a spray of gore and venom across the room. The chupacabra screamed and charged toward her.

  Lupita once again surprised the beast by dropping to her knees and avoiding its clawed hands. The talons whisked through the air where her face had been moments before.

  Thrusting upward, Lupita plunged the knife deep in the creature’s abdomen—but something was wrong. It felt as if she were stabbing a sponge. She yanked ou
t the blade and plunged it in again, sinking it to the hilt. The monster roared defiantly, and backhanded her with a vicious blow that sent her cashing into the cabinets.

  The chupacabra tore the blade from its midsection and jerked Lupita to her feet. It lifted her high over its head and slammed her against the counter, sending a stack of plates smashing to the floor. Scaly green hands wrapped around her throat, choking her. She pulled at the fingers, her face turning dark purple. Her other hand reached out, searching, grasping for a weapon. Her fingers closed on the handle of a sauce pan and she brought it up and smacked the side of the monster’s face with the flat of the pan.

  The creature roared and flung her the length of the kitchen. She crashed into the freezer door, and then crumpled in a senseless heap on the floor. She rolled over on her back and then climbed unsteadily to her feet. She blinked and tried to focus her eyes and shake the buzzing from her head. Her chest was torn and bleeding, the fabric of her shirt hung in shreds, but her big breasts had saved her from more serious injury, protecting her heart and lungs. One of her arms dangled uselessly.

  The beast flashed across the room, closing the distance to her with three quick strides, its fangs parted wide—

  —an axe blade thunked into the creature’s face, slicing cleanly through its open mouth, cutting through the hinges of its jaw, and cleaving off the top of its head, leaving only a blood-spurting stump of lower jaw attached to the body. Lupita glanced over the falling creature and saw Karl Colgate standing with the bloody axe. His muddy seersucker suit was soaked with gore. He extended his hand to her.

  “I told you this was a bad idea.” He pulled her to her feet. “Let’s go back to the jail, okay?”

  She swayed unsteadily on her feet. “Okay.”

  She knew when she was beaten. The stabbing pain in her chest when she inhaled meant that some of her ribs were cracked. She was pretty sure that her arm was broken. She threw the other arm around Colgate’s shoulder and limped out of the kitchen, leaning on the old man for support.