The Doomsday Sheriff: The Novella Collection (Includes Books 1 - 3) Page 23

  He worked as quickly as he could, duct taping a grenade to each end of an iasle and carefully wrapping the string around the handles. If all went well, the wormheads would follow him through the aisle and trip the grenades. He knew that a few would get by in the three seconds it would take for the explosives to detonate, but he had another treat planned for them. The next aisle that he would bring them down was lined with paint thinner, and he had opened a few of the cans and tipped them on their sides. Even now the toxic stench was beginning to permeate the air, and he knew it was only a matter of time before the wormheads smelled it.

  That was, if they had noses to smell with.

  Max made his way quietly back to Valentine and gave her the thumbs up signal. She nodded, mouthing, be careful.

  “Hey fuckers!” Max yelled and leapt into the aisle, two down from the vane wormheads staring at the mirrors.

  The four wormheads turned with a collective hiss and let out their nightmarish screams. Max turned on his heel and hauled ass toward the booby trap, praying to any god who had tuned in that day to see him through this mission, if only for the kids’ sakes.

  He turned a corner with the aliens hot on his heels. The grenades were set up five aisles down, and Max crossed the distance like he had a pack of hell hounds nipping at his heels, in truth, what pursued him was much, much worse.

  The wormheads screamed and howled, and with a quick glance back Max saw one of them leap up onto the top shelf of a display and rush to cut him off. He counted the aisles as he passed, hoping that he didn’t miscount in the chaos. If he did, he would be the one turned into mince meat by his own booby trap.

  The thought almost made him laugh.

  Three…four…five! Max leapt over the string and turned the corner down the paint thinner-soaked aisle. Three seconds later the grenades went off. The blast was mind-numbing. He pulled a zippo out of his pocket, ready to toss it behind him as he ran through the flammable aisle, when to his horror, embers began to glide down toward the wet floor.

  “Oh shiiittt!”

  Max barely cleared the aisle when the paint thinner caught, and the sudden concussion of the high flammable liquid lifted him into the air and slammed him into a display of Hallmark cards. The wormheads howled, and Max prayed that he had killed them all.

  He struggled to his feet, slipping on birthday cards and activating one with a musical message.

  “Hey, hey it’s your birthday!” the card sang, and Max stomped on it to shut it up. But he only managed to mangle it, and the song slowed down and droned on in a heavy baritone.

  Max waited with his shotgun cocked and crept around the card aisle to peer back the way he had come. The aisle with the paint thinner was a raging inferno. The screams of dying wormheads accompanied the flames in a hellish orchestra.

  Then the gunshots rang out and Spring’s scream echoed in the distance.

  “Valentine!” Max yelled and started for the back of the store.

  He didn’t encounter anymore wormheads, but the sounds of gunfire told him that Valentine had. Max just hoped the kids were with her, and that they were alright. He pushed through the big double doors and skidded to a stop. His head swiveled left and right, and there, trapped between a stack of boxed grills and the wall were Valentine and the two kids. A wormhead stalked toward them, its electric dreads pulsing with energy.

  Max started after them, but then he noticed the forklift to his left. The keys were in it, and since it was powered by propane it would have no trouble starting up. Without a second thought he hopped on and fired up the machine. The wormhead instantly turned in his direction, and Valentine emptied another clip into the thing’s back, but it didn’t even acknowledge the attack. The monster crouched down on all fours and charged after Max as he gunned the engine. Valentine pulled the kids out of the way as Max barreled in, lifting the forks off the ground as he went. The wormhead leapt into the air as the twin forks rose to four feet and Max surged forward. The beast didn’t impale himself when he landed on the front of the machine, but one of the forks was pressed against its chest. Before it could scamper over the front lift and get to Max, he slammed the forklift into the wall. The forks punched through the wormhead’s chest and continued on through the drywall. The tires spun, and Max grabbed his shotgun and unloaded three slugs into the screaming monster’s face.

  “Come on!” he yelled to Valentine, and she raced after him with the two terrified children in tow. Max stopped at the swinging doors and wasn’t surprised to see that the store was quickly going up in flames. Soon they would be cut off from the front exit, and Max considered an alternate route.

  “Let’s go through the warehouse. There’s bound to be a backdoor,” he told Valentine and lifted little Spring up into his arms. She clung to him as he turned and rushed toward the back. Valentine’s flashlight came to life a moment later and they raced through the aisles of stacked boxes. When they reached the back wall Max looked left and right, and he nearly cried out with joy when he saw the emergency exit to his left.

  “This way,” he yelled, and from deeper in the warehouse he heard the vindictive screams of at least one wormhead.

  Spring whimpered, muttering something in Mohawk, and Max tried to soothe her by holding her tighter. He turned when he reached the door and slammed into it with his right shoulder. It swung open and Max nearly tripped as he skidded out into the snowy night. The sky above was bright with the orange glow of the pyre, and Max could see thirty-foot flames licking the heavens. There was an explosion somewhere in the store, and Max ran wide of a pair of propane tanks and raced around the building with Valentine and Spring’s brother close behind.

  The truck was idling less than fifty yards away, and Max ran as fast as his legs would carry him through the heavy snow. It was nearly knee-deep in this part of the parking lot, and the going was frustratingly slow.

  Spring suddenly screamed, and Max dared a quick glance behind him just in time to see a wormhead skid around the corner of the building and surge after them. The beast was fifty yards away. Max slammed into the truck, swung open the side door and tossed Spring inside. The boy raced into the vehicle as Valentine hurried around to the passenger door.

  Max caught movement in peripheral as he opened his door. He pulled his sidearm and spun around, screaming “Get them out of here!” He got off three shots before the wormhead slammed into him. Max had moved away from the truck, knowing that if he didn’t get the thing away from Valentine and the kids, they were all doomed. He landed in the snow ten feet away and sat up, unloading the rest of his clip into the stalking wormhead’s gaping mouth. It recoiled from the gunshots, but continued on as Max’s gun clicked empty. Hands shaking, Max ejected the clip and reached for another, but it was too late, the wormhead was upon him. He stared into the dripping maw of the beast, and he thought of his beloved Piper. Guilt flooded his heart as the mouth of the wormhead blotted out the sky. He wasn’t as afraid of dying as he was sorry that he would never see Piper again, and that he would leave her alone in this nightmarish new world.

  “I’m sorry, Piper,” he said, closing his eyes.

  Nothing happened.

  Then Spring started screaming. Was he already dead? Was he right then being devoured by the wormhead while the others watched?

  Max slowly opened his eyes and saw the wormhead suspended in the air above him, mouth agape and drool dripping onto the snow. Somehow, it was floating paralyzed three feet above him. He looked past the beast at Spring, and prickles cascaded through every fiver of his body. She was leaning out the window of the truck, her hand outstretched and blood trickling from her nose, and she was screaming.

  The wormhead began to vibrate like a snare drum as Max kicked at the snow and shuffled away from it. In that moment Max thought he heard the faint pounding of a steady drumbeat, and a chanting chorus in Mohawk. Spring’s voice reached ear-piercing levels, and then suddenly the wormhead exploded like a water balloon full of black ichor. Blood and gore rained down on Max as he sa
t there in the snow, awestruck.

  Spring blinked sleepily and pulled back her trembling hand, before passing out.

  “Get it!” Valentine screamed as she pushed open the driver door from the passenger seat.

  Her startled voice tore Max out of his stupefied state, and he leapt to his feet and jumped in the driver seat. He put the truck in gear and peeled out as the Wal Mart raged behind them.

  Chapter 13

  The Cavalry

  “Holy shit!” Max blurted as he drifted onto the road like a stunt double and floored the truck.

  Adrenaline coursed through his veins, not only from the near-death experience, but also due to the impossible feat that he had just witnessed.

  “Is she alright?” Max asked Valentine, who was leaning between the seats to tend to the girl.

  “I think she’s sleeping. Little boy, are you alright?”

  Max didn’t hear a reply, and he glanced at Valentine as she returned to her seat.

  “Did you, ah, did you hear drums back there?” he asked.

  “No, what do you mean?”

  “I don’t know, I thought I heard…Val, how in the hell did she do that?”

  Valentine shook her head, at a loss for words.

  “It was like, telekinesis of something,” he mused.

  “Telekinesis isn’t real,” said Valentine as she stared at the road wide eyed and haunted.

  “Yeah, either were space worms up until a few days ago. Jesus Christ, what’s next?”

  “Maybe Jesus himself will return to earth,” said Valentine, and Max could tell that she was only half kidding. “God knows we could use him right now.”

  “Amen to that, sister.”

  Max glanced in the rearview, adjusting it so that he could see the kids in the back. Spring was still out cold, and her head rested on her brother’s lap. He stared out the window, seeming surprisingly calm.

  “Hey little dude, is your sister going to be alright?”

  He nodded. “Gramma Laughing watch over her.”

  “That was a pretty cool trick she pulled back there. Does she do stuff like that often?”

  The boy shrugged.

  “Listen buddy,” said Max. “We’re a team, the four of us. Alright? Promise me that you won’t take off again and steal my truck.”

  The kid stared out the window. At length he nodded. “Alright.”

  Max studied the brave little shit’s face. “Or any truck.”

  The kid shrugged again.

  “How far to Fort Drum,” Valentine asked.

  Max glanced around to get his bearings. He wasn’t very familiar with this part the county, but he knew how close the town they were in was to the military base. “About thirty miles. On these roads it should take us about forty-five minutes.”

  “Thank god,” said Valentine. “I hope I never see another one of those ugly bastards ever again.”

  “That makes two of us,” said Max, but he had a sneaking suspicion that he would see them again.

  They drove without incident for twenty minutes. No wormheads blocked the way, and the roads got better. They were driving through farm country now, and the open fields allowed the wind to blow the snow off the road rather than pile up along the banks. Max dared forty miles an hour and let out a sigh of relief when he saw the first sign.

  Fort Drum

  10 Miles

  “Look!” said Valentine as she pointed ahead.

  Max saw the lights a split second before she pointed them out. There were at least a dozen vehicles parked on the side of the road up ahead about a quart mile away, and Max guessed that they had caught up to the Mohawk Militia.

  He pulled up cautiously, flashing his lights a few times in the hopes that they wouldn’t shoot at him. Six men walked out onto the road and leveled rifles on Max’s truck, and he parted fifteen feet from where they stood.

  “It me, the Sheriff!”

  The men lowered their weapons and the one in the center walked up to the truck. Max recognized the man as Rory’s friend.

  “You’re name’s Chooch, right?” said Max as he got out of the truck and offered to shake the man’s hand.

  Chooch was well over six feet tall, with big round cheeks and slanted eyes, and he looked like a man you didn’t want to fuck with. The big mohawk ignored Max’s offered hand.

  “Where’s Rory?”

  “I’m sorry, but Rory is dead.”

  Chooch’s face didn’t change, and he glanced in the back of the truck. He opened the door and said something to the kids in Mohawk, and they rushed toward the caravan. Max noticed that a small bus had gone off the road, and two men in trucks were in the process of pulling it out.

  “It’s dangerous out here on the road, why not just leave the bis?” said Max.

  “It’ll be out in a minute. How did Rory die?”

  “He was shot by that asshole Pike while he was getting away with the kids. He’s a hero.”

  “Hero…” Chooch mumbled. “Did you kill Pike?”

  Max nodded. “Shoved his head in a wormhead’s mouth.”

  Chooch shook his head with satisfaction, and the hint of a grin played at the corner of his mouth. “Good.”

  “Spring! (WHatthefuckistheboysname?),” a woman cried out, and Max caught a glimpse of a plump woman rushing open-armed toward the children.

  Max breathed a sigh of relief when they dove into her arms and bore her to the ground. She kissed and hugged then and cried into their shivering bodies. Spring told the woman something, and she picked up her childred and trudged through the snow toward Max and Chooch.

  “Spring tells me that you saved them.”

  Max remembered Spring lifting the Wormhead with her mind and turning him into tiny wet bits, but he thought better of telling the woman just then.

  “Just doing my job,” he said.

  The woman hugged him. “God bless you, Sheriff. God bless you.”

  “That’s a special girl you’ve got there,” he said. “And a pretty awesome boy too.” He messed the boy’s hair.

  “I stole a truck,” said the boy, pushing down from his mother’s hip and presenting a stiff upper lip.

  “You stole a truck?” she said, sounding angry.

  “It’s a long story,” said Max with a chuckle.

  “Shit,” he heard Chooch say behind him.

  Max turned around and followed the man’s eyes, but his ears reported in first, and he heard the tell-tale cry of wormheads…dozens of them. He saw the horde a few terrified heartbeats later as they tore down the road toward the caravan.

  “It’s time to go!” Max yelled back to the men working on getting the bus out.

  Men began to yell instructions, and the two big trucks attached by chains to the bus gunned it in reverse. By the time Max got back into the truck, they were out of the ditch and peeling down the road. The caravan headed out, and Max prayed that none of them would go off the road in their terror as he took up the rear.

  His prayers went unanswered, however, and a ten second later one of the trucks spun out and started to fishtail. The SUV behind it tried to avoid a collision, but they too overcorrected and hit the ditch, sending up a plume of powder.

  “Shit!” he cursed and pumped the brake.

  “What are you doing?” Valentine cried.

  “The right thing, unfortunately.”

  Max spun the truck around with practiced accuracy and drove back to the two trucks. He hit the emergengy break and cranked the wheel, spinning 180 degrees and coming to rest in the middle of the road. Valentine swung open the doors and yelled for the men and woman to hurry. There had been four in each truck, and they piled into Max’s ride it was a clown car. Two of the men leapt into the truck bed and Max peeled out as the screaming horde of wormheads charge toward them. He got the truck up to thirty miles an hour, but the aliens were pacing him. He plowed through a snowdrift and fishtailed, but the truck was in four-wheel drive, and a little gas put the tires straight.

  A wormhead landed i
n the truck bed, and the men in the back opened fire, riddling the beast with armor piercing rounds that sent it careening backwards and over the tailgate. The other pursuing beasts leapt over their fallen brother and came on with renewed blood lust. Machine guns chattered in the back of the truck, and Max watched with satisfaction as the wormheads fell one after another to the deadly rounds. But even as one fell two more rushed forth to take its place. More than twenty wormheads pursued the caravan, and Max was quickly gaining on the escaping militia.

  “We’re not going to make it!” a woman in the back seat screamed as they passed another sign.

  Fort Drum

  5 Miles

  Warning: Military Maneuvers

  Max wanted to argue. He wanted to be optimistic, but when he glanced in the side mirror he saw not dozens of wormheads pursuing them, but hundreds. Snow and ice rose up in their wake. They were like an avalanche of gnashing teeth and clicking claws, hell bent on devouring every last man, woman, and child on earth.

  In only two days of existence, the wormheads had climbed to the top of the food chain, and the animal kingdom quivered.

  Two more wormheads reached Max’s truck, and the men in the back opened fire once more. Max had no idea how many clips they had on them, but he liked the sound of the gunfire. It reminded him that mankind hadn’t yet given up, and there was still hope.

  A scream issued from the back of the truck, and Max glanced back int time to see one of the two gunners crouched in the bed of the truck as he was tackled and torn to pieces. His partner screamed and brought his gun around, spraying wildly.

  “Get down!” Max cried as he ducked his head.

  The back window imploded and the four people crowded in the back seat gave a collective cry. The gunfire abruptly stopped and the wild shooter was ripped from the back of the truck. Max glanced back to see if everyone was already, and a man’s face stared at him blankly from the piled bodies of the terrified passengers. The man had a hole in his head, and a surprised look on his face.