The Doomsday Sheriff: The Novella Collection (Includes Books 1 - 3) Read online

  Doomsday Sheriff

  Day 1

  Michael James Ploof

  Table of Contents

  Doomsday Sheriff

  Day 1

  Michael James Ploof

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  The C Word

  Chapter 2

  An Apocalyptic Hangover

  Chapter 3

  Honey, I’m Home

  Chapter 4

  Stefan of the Woodland Realm

  Chapter 5

  Alan Jones

  Chapter 6

  The Hunt for Piper Voorhees

  Chapter 7

  A Cabin in the Woods

  Chapter 8

  The Girls under the Floor

  Chapter 9

  Once Bitten, Twice Doomed

  Chapter 10

  Zombie Karaoke

  Chapter 11

  Undead got Talent

  Chapter 12

  Till Undeath do us Part

  Chapter 13

  The Miracle on Ice

  Chapter 14

  Mother Magnificent

  Chapter 15

  Put It on My Tab

  Chapter 16

  R.I.P WHOR 92.7

  Chapter 17

  The Enemy of my Enemy

  Chapter 18

  Wet T-shirt Contest

  Chapter 19

  To Have and to Hold

  Chapter 20

  Hangover from Hell

  Doomsday Sheriff

  Day 2

  Chapter 1

  A New Death Dawns

  Chapter 2

  Come on Baby, Light my Fire

  Chapter 3

  An Electric Personality

  Chapter 4

  Long Live Stefan

  Chapter 5

  Doomsday General Hospital

  Chapter 6

  The Unholy Dead

  Chapter 7

  Up Shit Creek Without a Boat

  Chapter 8

  Into the Great Wide Open

  Chapter 9

  The King of the Rednecks

  Chapter 10

  A Rave New World

  Chapter 11

  All Hail the King

  Chapter 12

  B-Town

  Chapter 13

  The Mohawk Militia

  Chapter 14

  The Land Where the Partridge Drums

  Chapter 15

  Medicine Man

  Chapter 16

  The Sacrifice

  Chapter 17

  The House of a Thousand Guns

  Chapter 18

  The Queen of the Damned

  Chapter 19

  Hybrids from Hell

  Chapter 20

  A Well-Earned Reprieve

  The Doomsday Sheriff

  Day 3

  Chapter 1

  The Dawn of Terror

  Chapter 2

  The Caravan

  Chapter 3

  Roadside Assistance

  Chapter 4

  Human Hood Ornament

  Chapter 5

  Stuck Between a Redneck and a Wormhead

  Chapter 6

  Sitting Ducks

  Chapter 7

  Funeral Pyre

  Chapter 8

  Because Momma Said so

  Chapter 9

  Traffic Jam

  Chapter 10

  When Hell Freezes Over

  Chapter 11

  Aftershock

  Chapter 12

  Price Check on Aisle Five

  Chapter 13

  The Cavalry

  Chapter 14

  Patient 27

  Chapter 15

  A Hard Won Loss

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  Michael James Ploof

  Chapter 1

  The C Word

  “You’ve got cancer…”

  Max stared at Dr. Weinstein. The doctor offered him the pursed lips of sympathy.

  “What?” said Max. He had been feeling sluggish lately, for a month to be exact, but he hadn’t thought much of it. Piper had insisted that he go to the doctor, seeing as he hadn’t been in five years. Max didn’t like going to the doctor. It was like bringing your car to the shop. As soon as you drove away, there was a new problem where there hadn’t been before.

  “You’ve got cancer,” said the doctor.

  “How bad?” said Max.

  “I’m sorry, perhaps if we had caught it sooner…”

  “How bad?”

  “I’m afraid that your condition is terminal. The cancer has already spread from your lungs to your—”

  “Lung cancer? But I don’t even smoke. I’m only thirty-seven, for Christ’s sake!”

  “I know this is hard to wrap your mind around, Sheriff. Trust me, I do. But I assure you, we’ll do everything we can to make you comfortable.”

  “Comfortable? What the hell’s that mean? What’s the game plan? What’s the course of treatment?”

  “I’m sorry, Max. You are past treatments.”

  “How long?” said Max, anger and sorrow leaving his voice shaky.

  “Six months, maybe a year.”

  ***

  Five hours later, Max sat on the back deck of the Lake Placid Lodge with a shot of whiskey in one hand and the bottle in the other. His deputy, Stefan Bellows, sat adjacent his boss, squinting at the placid waters of Mirror Lake as it reflected the colors of the setting sun.

  Stefan was twenty-six, mild mannered, and always had a look about him like he was pondering existence. He was slim but strong, a good shot and a better deputy. In another life he might have been a tortured poet living in nineteenth-century France, but in this life, he was a tortured poet who happened to also be a deputy sheriff of Franklin County NY.

  “Cancer fucking sucks,” said Stefan. He had a round face with flush cheeks, and though he didn’t exactly look tough, he had a silent strength about him, and a steady gaze that rarely wavered.

  “Yup,” said Max, tossing back a shot of whiskey. “It sure does.”

  “Did you tell Piper?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “She’ll probably think you’re joking,” said Stefan.

  It was true. Max and Piper were known to play elaborate pranks on each other. But this…she would know he was serious, and she would be devastated. As much as it sucked to imagine dying within the next year, it sucked more to think about leaving Piper.

  “I wish I was joking, Stefan.”

  The deputy sighed. “So do I.”

  They finished off the bottle and staggered out of the lodge at ten o’clock. Max’s phone had gone off a few times, but he hadn’t bothered looking at it. The streets were crowded with drunken hockey players who had come for the pond hockey tournament, and who were now headed out on the ice to watch the meteor shower that had been publicized on the news for weeks. The meteor shower had been dubbed a “once-in-a-lifetime celestial event.” Max knew that Piper would be waiting for him at home, likely with a six-pack of Sam Adams and all the fixin’s for s’mores, but he didn’t have the heart to tell her, and he knew he couldn’t keep the news from her for long.

  Instead, he climbed into his white sheriff’s Bronco and closed the door, glancing back out the window at a teary-eyed Stefan.

  “If something comes up, I’ll be at camp,” said Max.

  “Sheriff…” Stefan began.

  “I know, Deputy. I know. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Max put the truck in gear and meandered through the crow
d. The realization that his life would be over by thirty-eight made Max hate the young strapping men staggering through town, most with a beautiful young woman under their arms. Did they know how good they had it?

  Did they know how fragile a thing their youth was?

  Max was only thirty-seven, but he suddenly felt like an old man.

  “Fucking cancer,” he said as he hit the sirens to part the crowd and honked when they wouldn’t move.

  “Woo-hoo!” the young people cheered as they began dancing to his panic lights.

  “Get the fuck out of the way!” Max bellowed out the window.

  A young woman flashed him her tits, her nipples pert in the cold winter air. The crowd cheered. Max sighed at what would never be and honked again, which only caused more young women to flash him.

  As he sped away, the crowd laughed and partied in his rearview. Their lives were just beginning, but Max’s was about to come to a very painful end. He tipped back the bottle. A DWI was the last of his concerns. Besides, the state boys didn’t patrol Lake Placid like they did the smaller, poorer towns. He drove out of town and took the seasonal road to his cabin high in the neighboring hills.

  The square cabin sat on forty acres that had been in Max’s family for fifty years. He had learned how to hunt here. He had first killed here. And his father had died here of a heart attack two years ago. He had dropped a ten-point buck and been dragging it the four hundred yards to the four-wheeler.

  Max had found him dead in the snow ten feet from the machine.

  The head of the deer now adorned the wall above the fireplace, upon which Max’s father’s ashes now sat as well.

  Max shut off the Bronco and staggered into the cabin, nodding at the deer head. He started a fire and tossed off his jacket. It was thirty-six degrees outside, which was pleasant for the end of January, but not quite pleasant enough. As the fire crackled, Max warmed his hands in between swigs of whiskey.

  He looked up at his father’s urn and raised the bottle. “Miss you, Pop. But I guess I’ll be joining you soon.”

  Max walked around the cabin and studied the pictures that had been hung over the decades. He grinned at the picture of him and his brothers kneeling and smiling beside their first kill. In another, the entire family was gathered around the picnic table. Max was only two in this one, and his parents looked young and happy. Gramma and grampa smiled too, donning their best ‘80s garb.

  He came full circle back to the fire and took from the mantle the most recent picture—Piper tearing a chunk out of a deer heart and making a gruesome face while Max laughed beside her. He remembered the day well, for they had only been dating for two weeks. That deer had been Piper’s first kill, and that night had been the first time they made love.

  He glanced at the bearskin rug between him and the fire. In his mind’s eye, he saw the two of them lying there naked, basking in the warmth of the fire and that in their hearts.

  Piper was what Stefan called Granola. But to Max she was the most beautiful Irish redhead on the planet.

  “I’m so sorry, Piper,” said Max as he tipped back the bottle. Finding it empty, he angrily tossed it into the fire.

  Max staggered into the adjoining kitchen and grabbed a beer from the fridge before shuffling outside to take a piss off the front deck. As he relieved himself, he looked up at the sky and gasped. The heavens were alight with thousands upon thousands of tiny shimmering lights. At first, he mistook them for snow, but even as addled as he was, he could tell that this was something altogether different.

  The beauty of the meteor shower brought him to his knees in the snow, and he cried out like a dying animal, finally releasing his pent-up anguish.

  Chapter 2

  An Apocalyptic Hangover

  Max awoke with a pounding head and sensitive eyes. His mouth tasted like Bigfoot’s ass. The sun shone through the window right on his face, and he pulled the covers up and grumbled as he rolled over.

  He tried to will himself to get up, to get a drink of water and pop a couple Aleve. Piper would be worried about him. She would want to know where he had been. Max was surprised that she hadn’t come to the cabin. She should have known that he would be here.

  Max peered around the room, searching for her. He dreaded finding her smiling at him from her favorite rocking chair. It wasn’t seeing her that he feared, but telling her that he was dying. But he found no Piper, only an empty cabin that suddenly felt like a tomb. He glanced at his father’s urn and sighed.

  After a good half hour of wallowing in his own misery, Max pulled himself up from the sofa and took a piss. He glanced at his phone as he pissed, and when he saw Piper’s six messages, he grabbed the phone with both hands, pissing all over the toilet in the process.

  9:27 P.M.—Max, where are you?

  9:45 P.M.—You’re going to miss the meteor shower.

  10:16 P.M.—Can you see it? It’s so beautiful.

  10:17 P.M.—Where are you?

  11:59 P.M.—WHERE ARE YOU? Something’s wrong. There are strange things in the sky. I’m scared. Come home soon.

  12:12 A.M.—Max, something’s wrong with me, I think I’m sick.

  Max looked at the call log; Piper had tried to call him a dozen times. But strangely, the last call had come at 12:12 A.M., right after the last text.

  Now it was 9:27 in the morning…

  He hit the dial button and hurried for the Bronco. The phone rang seven times before going to voicemail. “Shit!” said Max as he jumped in his truck and put on the sirens before peeling out. Through the old forest road he went, kicking up moss and dirt when he skidded too far off the path and screeching onto the main road like a banshee. Max gunned it, flying into town with sirens blaring and lights flashing—but there was no traffic to part.

  The strangeness of the barren streets and empty sidewalks was an afterthought to Max as he crested the hill and saw Mirror Lake spread out before him. He hung a right, speeding through the empty town. His knee bounced, and he chewed on his already nubbed fingernails. With his free hand, he called Piper again.

  No answer.

  “Where the fuck is everybody!”

  Max saw a body in the road and slammed on the brakes.

  He sat there in his idling Bronco, staring at the mutilated corpse. No investigation would be needed, for it was clear that the person was dead, given that it had no head.

  Someone suddenly darted out of the bagel shop on the right, and Max spun his head around to follow the terrified and screaming woman’s flight. A moment later, a large burly man shot out of the shop and lurched after her, playing like he was some kind of monster.

  The woman fell upon the hood of the Bronco and stared at Max, terrified. Her drunken boyfriend raced after her, his face gleeful and smeared with lipstick…or was that blood?

  Max opened the door and walked around it. “Hey now, what the hell’s going on? And where is every—”

  The man crashed into the woman, biting her cheek and tearing off a chunk before Max’s astonished eyes.

  “Hey!” He lunged at the man, but the assailant was faster than he looked, and shuffled off up the hill. Max thought to go after him, but the woman had fallen. He reached for her as she slid off the hood of the truck. “I’ve got you.”

  She fell into his arms, looking to have passed out. Inspecting her gashed cheek, Max almost puked. He could see her molars through the hole. But it wasn’t a fatal wound.

  Max stood in a crouch to look for the assailant, wondering what kind of drugs could lead to this kind of lunacy. He grabbed his radio off his shoulder.

  “Max here, you there, Gloria?”

  Nothing.

  “Gloria? I’ve got an injured girl here, and I—”

  The woman suddenly began to shake and spasm, biting her own tongue and spraying blood in the process. Max lost his hold on his radio and tried to control the victim’s seizure, but it was like trying to get between two fighting dogs. Teeth gnashed, legs kicked, hands flailed.

  “Help
’s coming, just calm down now,” Max urged, but the woman suddenly grabbed ahold of him in an iron grip and pulled his face toward hers. She chomped her teeth like a demented ventriloquist doll, coming frighteningly close to his nose.

  Max fought her off like one might a lady in the throes of violent passion, but then it became apparent that she meant him real harm, and could inflict it, so Max treated her like the threat that she was. He grabbed her throat, keeping those gnashing teeth far away, and shifted his weight to the side, pushing her off him and slamming her onto the pavement to pin her there. She kicked and screamed, snarled and sprayed blood from her mouth. Her eyes glazed over milky white.

  “What the fuck!” Max pushed himself up, but as soon as he let the woman go, she sprang after him like a cat. He already had ahold of the door handle, and he slammed her with the door as she lunged for him. The blow sent her back. But she did a reverse tumble roll and sprang to her feet with a hiss. She charged Max, and a gun suddenly fired, the bullet sent her flying into the side of the Bronco. She went down hard.

  Max drew his weapon, having heard the retort come from his left, across the street. He aimed at the man holding the gun, almost fired, but then stopped himself.

  “Stefan? What in the fucking fuck is going on here!”

  “Zombies!” Stefan yelled as he rushed across the street with his rifle in hand.

  Max didn’t have a response to that, and so he just stared as Stefan leapt over the corpse, rushed to the other side of the truck, and slid in the passenger seat. He pulled the door closed, put on his seatbelt and, panting, glanced at Max.

  “Zombies!” he said again. “Fucking zombies!” He began to laugh then, but his insane mirth quickly turned into a mewl as he bit down on his knuckle in panic. “It’s the goddamned zombie apocalypse.”

  Max took a deep breath and got in the car. He glanced at his deputy. “Stefan…”

  “Look, Sheriff. I don’t know where the hell you’ve been, but last night something floated down to Earth during that meteor shower and turned everyone into a goddamned zombie. That dude on the local radio station thinks it’s the first phase of an alien invasion.”

  Max stared at him.

  Stefan stared back, his chest heaving with his heavy breathing. He looked scared, but then again, he was a good actor. He even spent his weekends play-fighting in those outdoor role-playing games. Stefan had an elaborate elf costume as well, complete with lifelike sword and shield.