Max put a soft hand against her shoulders when she began to sit up.
“It’s alright, Pipes. We’re on it.” Max assured her. “I was coming here to tell you that I had to leave to take care of it.”
“Then what are you waiting for?” She was serious, and that rarity filled Max with dread. Whatever it was that she saw coming was indeed terrible. “Get out there and burn that abomination to the ground. Free those poor people.”
“Piper, there’s something you should know. Stefan gave himself so that I could save you. He survived like I did. But they took him. Now he’s in there…he’s one of them.”
“Not Stefan…” she said, her eyes watering. “I’m sorry, Max.”
They hugged, and Piper kissed his cheek.
“Go set him free,” she whispered in his ear before kissing it as well.
Max nodded grimly, choking down his sorrow and rising to his feet. “Let’s go, Ned.”
A half hour later, armed with more Molotov cocktails than any one group of hungover hockey players should handle at a time, the defenders gathered around Max near the shoreline. They were in full garb with super soakers and bladed hockey sticks at the ready.
Max gave the go-ahead, and the group rushed out onto the ice. They skated in stealth-mode across the lake, each with a lighter at the ready. The conglomeration of human parts and brown, oozing vines didn’t move. It didn’t twitch. Instead, it pulsed and swayed like an inchworm at the end of a leaf, seeking the next foothold. A slow moan escaped the mass of deformed bodies. Blood and green ichor wet the base of the hideous tower, bleeding onto the lake and melting the ice with a hiss.
“Light ‘em up!” Max, yelled loud enough for everyone to hear.
The hockey players lit the rags on the bottles as they glided across the lake.
“Aim…” said Max, pulling back his own flaming bottle.
They came to within ten feet of the shoreline, and one of the men threw his cocktail too soon. It sailed through the air, even as Max gave the order to fire. The eager young man’s bottle hit the center of the writhing mass and exploded, and a heartbeat later, the human tower of horror exploded. The rest of the bottles exploded against the formation, which went up in flames like two-year-old dried firewood. The skaters turned from the incredible heat and skated out toward the middle of the lake. Max went with them, spurred by the great heat and instinct, but he caught a few streaks of light and fire as they flew from the now raging formation and hit the ice farther out on the lake.
“Stop!” he told the others. “To me!”
They all grouped around Max as behind them, the screamer pyramid tumbled over, setting fire to Mirror Lake Inn. In front of them, however, a sight far more terrible than the pyre slowly came to life. Whatever had been ejected from the writhing mass was black and shiny, like the carapace of a beetle, and there were thirteen of them.
“If you don’t have a gun, go get one,” said Max, and five of the defenders hurriedly skated back to the lodge on the other side of the lake.
The black shells steamed like fresh dung. They suddenly began to shake in unison, and a low mewling sound joined the sound of the raging pyre behind them. The smell of the fire was terrible, and a couple hockey players bent over and puked. The rest covered their faces with their scarves.
The shells suddenly began to crack, one after another, and Max cocked his shotgun. “I don’t plan on seeing what comes out of there.”
“Attack!” said Ned. He charged across the ice, reminding Max of the powerful forward he had once been.
The other hockey players gave a war cry that would have made Stefan proud and rushed after their leaders, digging into the uneven and notched ice and producing their weapons. There were a few cocktails left among the group, and these were lit and tossed onto the shimmering eggs. Five of the eggs caught fire, but from the other eight, black masses suddenly erupted, shooting into the air and changing shape as they spun.
What landed was something akin to the love child of Frankenstein’s monster and the Kraken. Rather than tentacles with suction cups along the bottom, these creatures had crackling electric appendages that looked like a dozen tails growing out of their backs. They stood on human legs, six of them to be exact, and three heads opened their toothless maws, gurgling and howling like the damned trapped beneath the waters of the River Styx. Six arms hung from the deformed torso of the abominations, some with no fingers, others with ten.
Max unloaded his shotgun in a rage of disgusted curses. The three heads of the closest howler exploded, but the monstrosity didn’t go down. One of the many glowing black appendages lashed out in his direction, hitting him in the chest. Max felt like he had stuck his dick in a light socket. He was thrown back through the air and landed hard twenty feet away, sliding across the ice.
He looked up at the remaining monsters and was helpless but to watch his comrades be torn apart by the newest addition to the nightmare.
Chapter 3
An Electric Personality
Max pulled himself to his feet as the defenders scrambled across the ice to get away from the electric appendages. They were more than eight feet long and lashed out like the whips of slave drivers, shocking the hockey players into submission. Those who couldn’t get away were taken up by crackling tentacles and rolled up like a fly caught in a spider’s web. They were then absorbed by the abominations, melting into the mass of flesh and bone.
A howler came for Max as he reloaded his shotgun and tried to stay on shaky feet. Luckily, he still wore his skates, for if he was left to outrun the demons, he would soon be absorbed. He unloaded three rounds into the approaching howler, which only seemed to piss it off more.
“Get down!” Ned bellowed, and Max instinctively followed the command.
Gunfire split the air as Ned riddled the howler with bullets. One of the heads lost a jaw, another took three slugs in the face that turned it to mush. From his prone position, Max emptied the shotgun into the howler’s remaining face, but still the monster wouldn’t go down.
Ned grabbed Max under the arms and yanked him up. “We need more fire!” he said.
“We can’t lead them back to the lodge,” said Max.
Five of the hockey players had fallen, and now only ten remained. Max called everyone to him as he headed out toward the middle of the lake. The men and women were shaken, and some were injured. Behind them, the howlers lurched across the ice with startling speed.
“I’ll head them off,” said Ned. “You take the others to—”
“No,” said Max. “I’m faster on the ice. I’ll do it. Get some more cocktails together and bring the team back out.”
“Good luck,” said Ned, and Max broke off from the pack and circled back toward the howlers.
The eight remaining beasts split as well, two going for Max and the other six lurching after the retreating defenders.
“Hey, you ugly bastards! You want me? Here I am!” Max skated by the six who had broken from the group, unloading his pistol into their writhing bodies.
Max caught their attention, but his celebration was short lived as dozens of electric tentacles lashed out for him like reaching fingers, zapping the ice mere feet behind him. He pumped his legs, digging into the ice and trying to stay ahead of the pack. They followed him far out on the ice, and he made a wide turn that brought him heading back toward the now raging pyre that was the Mirror Lake Inn. The defenders had made it back to the lodge, and with any luck they would soon skate back out onto the ice with Molotov cocktails in hand. But Max was getting tired. His pursuers seemed to know no pain, and they never slowed. If anything, their six legs began to work better together, and they came on faster than ever.
His only salvation would be the fire, he knew. But first he had to get there. The burning inn was at least five hundred yards away, and his pursuers were closing in. They fought each other to get ahead, milky eyes glaring at Max with a bloodlust borne in the dark recesses of space. The writhing tentacles reminded Max of Medusa’s h
ead of thrashing snakes, and like a man afraid of being turned to stone, he fled across the ice. His heart hammered in his chest, his legs burned, and he feared that a charley horse might be his doom.
Max reloaded and shot a few rounds behind him, but it just seemed to piss the howlers off even more. They howled like a pack of demonic wolves, the tortured voices of men and women coalescing into a horrific chorus.
When he was just one hundred yards from the raging fire, he saw Ned, John, and a handful of other defenders skate out onto the lake. But they wouldn’t reach him in time. The howlers were closing in, and Max needed to get to that fire. He hit the bank and staggered when his skates left the ice for the frozen ground beneath the powder. Max lurched like his pursuers toward the heat of the flames. He didn’t have to get close to feel the flames; still, he army-crawled toward the pyre. The heat was unbearable, and when he found that he could get no closer he turned around, bringing his gun to bear on the nightmare pursuing him.
The eight howlers stood at the edge of the ice, their many faces twisted in anguish and rage, their tentacles thrashing in the air like alien jazz hands. One of the howlers, however, stood still and silent, milky eyes locked on Max.
Then he saw the reflection of metal at the center of the mass—it was Stefan’s LARP armor.
“Stefan?” Max looked closer at the head in the middle of the three, and his heart sank.
Tears were already streaming down his face from the heat and the smoke, but now tears of sorrow joined them. Stefan was as good as dead, but it seemed something of his former self remained. He stared at Max with eyes of milky white, head cocked to the side like a curious dog.
One of the other howlers noticed the hockey players charging toward them, and three voices cried out as one. The others turned and, finding Max too boring, started back toward the center of the ice.
But Stefan remained.
Max couldn’t take the heat any longer, and he crawled toward shore, his back feeling as though it were on fire. His ears throbbed with the overwhelming heat. Stefan watched him, though the other heads growled angrily. Arms randomly reached for him and pounded against the hideous body. A few of the legs tried to propel them forward, but it seemed that Stefan held them back.
Max looked past the Stefan monster as fire erupted out on the lake. The defenders were engaging the other howlers, and from the screams, it wasn’t going well for team space worm.
Four arms reached for Max, but the body yanked itself back. Stefan looked at Max, his eyes now clear of the milky glaze.
“Gooo!” he croaked, grabbing a tentacle with one of his many arms and pulling it back.
Max needed no further encouragement. He pulled himself to his feet and hit the ice, making a mad dash for the defenders. Behind him, the Stefan monster was caught up in a fight with itself that would have been hilarious to watch had Max not been skating for his life.
Up ahead, one of the howlers stood over a fallen defender. Max shot it in the back five times, redirecting its attention and leading it toward Ned. The big man had exchanged his rifle for a semiauto model, and he riddled the beast with thirty rounds as Max skated past. John skated by then with a howler close on his heels and tossed a burning Molotov cocktail on the downed creature, which went up like a pile of kindling. Only three howlers remained, but two of the defenders had been killed in the fight. The remaining five that had followed Ned and John back out on the ice skated wide circles around the howlers like they had done before, keeping them confused and corralled in the middle.
The howlers suddenly stopped trying to catch their attackers, and with a collective cry of anger and anguish, they thrust their tentacles into the sky. The next moment, Max and the others found themselves inside a globe of crackling electricity that reminded him of a plasma lamp. Electricity surged through his body and he went rigid, crashing to the ice in his paralysis. He saw the others fall as well as he swam in and out of consciousness. Screams of pain and terror found his buzzing ears as the howlers made short work of the prone hockey players, wrapping them up in their tentacles and absorbing them into the writhing mass. One of the howlers stood over Max, its tentacles eagerly reaching for him. He tried to pull his gun, but his body still wasn’t working right.
“Go to hell!” he screamed in frustration, closing his eyes as the crackling electric tentacles reached for him.
A thud and a howl forced his eyes open, and he caught a glimpse of another howler driving his attacker to the ground.
Max fought to get back on his feet and pointed his gun at the two howlers. His spirits soared when he saw the quick reflection of sunlight bouncing off Stefan’s armor. The Stefan howler tore his victim apart, pointed tentacles slamming into the mass like the retractable jaws from Alien. Blood and dark ichor sprayed the ice, causing it to steam and hiss. Six arms held down Stefan’s opponent as all the tentacles stabbed into the oozing mass at once, and a great surge of electricity was unleashed right into the howler’s body. The thing exploded into a million pieces, raining down blood and bone and gore onto the ice.
The Stefan monster stood from the destroyed corpse and glanced at Max.
“Stefan?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he took off across the ice to intercept another howler who was bearing down on one of the fallen defenders. Max saw Ned take aim at the Stefan monster and charged across the lake. Ned got off a few shots before Max slammed into him, body checking him into the snow.
“What the hell are you doing?” Ned demanded as he hurried back to his feet.
“That one’s with us.”
“With us?”
“He’s my deputy. Look.”
Ned looked to the battling howlers and, realizing that Stefan was indeed holding off the other three, he rushed over to the closest downed defender.
“Get them back to the lodge!” Max told those still on their feet. “Ned, give me your gun.”
Ned tossed him the semiauto and an extra clip of ammo and took up one of the injured men. John and a few other men grabbed the others who had fallen and began slowly back toward the lodge. Stefan was holding his own, zapping the howlers with his many tentacles and leading them in a slow chase back toward the burning inn on the other side of the lake.
Max raced after them, unloading his gun in short bursts into the backs of the howlers. They screamed and whirled around, nearly taking Max’s head off with their multitude of crackling appendages. When Stefan reached the shoreline, he abruptly stopped and grabbed ahold of the howler following at his heels and launched him fifty feet through the air. The flailing howler disappeared into the fire. Two others slammed into Stefan, tentacles thrashing and zapping his bulbous body. Max fired into their backs, giving Stefan enough of a distraction to get ahold of one and then the other. With a great heave, he tossed them both into the pyre.
Only one howler remained. It shot out its many tentacles and dug them into the Stefan monster’s body. The howler pulsed the throbbed, and its tentacles began to glow.
Max emptied his gun into the beast’s many faces. The gun clicked empty as the howler pulled its tentacles from the Stefan monster and turned its attention on Max. He popped another clip in the gun and took aim.
“Welcome to Earth, motherfucker!” Max unloaded the entire clip into the heads and torso of the howler. It staggered back, its tentacles blindly electrocuting the ice and shooting webs of crackling electricity out into the air. Max got zapped again and crumbled to the ice in a twitching heap.
He looked up just in time to see the Stefan monster throw the howler into the fire.
Chapter 4
Long Live Stefan
Max woke up cradled by six arms. The smell of ozone assaulted his nostrils, and his eyes peeled open with sudden realization. He looked up into the bruised and veiny face of his deputy. The two other heads glared down at Max, but they seemed impotent to act.
The Stefan monster carried him across the lake to the lodge, where Ned, John, and a handful of other defenders now waited.
Stefan glanced down, managing some form of a smile, and set Max down on his skates.
“Stefan, can you hear me?”
He nodded his head and let out the low moan of a monster who was aware of what he was.
“Jesus, man. I’m sorry.”
“Kill…” Stefan groaned, his raspy voice a whisper.
The other two heads cried out in agony, and Stefan’s eyelids twitched. Max got the impression that Stefan was losing the battle for control over the others. One of the howler’s many hands reached out slowly, grabbed the barrel of the semiauto, and raised it to Stefan’s head. The other arms tried for the rifle, but Stefan wrapped the entire body with the tentacles.
“Stefan, I can’t…” said Max from the other end of the gun.
“Pleeease,” Stefan groaned. His eyes remained his own, and they spoke to Max, pleading for him to end his misery.
Max knew that he had to honor his deputy’s request. Stefan would do it for him if the tables were reversed. Ned came to stand beside Max with a Molotov cocktail ready to go.
“Alright, Stefan, alright,” said Max.
He put his finger on the trigger and pressed the barrel against Stefan’s forehead.
“You ready, Deputy?”
Stefan groaned and nodded, his heavy eyes blinking sleepily. “It’s…been an honor…” he said in his wet, tortured voice.
“The honor was all mine, Deputy.” Max pulled the trigger before he lost the nerve.
Ned lit the cocktail and smashed it at the howler’s feet, and Max watched through burning tears as the abomination burst into flames, taking Stefan’s spirit to the heavens.
“Come on, Sheriff,” said Ned, turning from the scene.
“Give me a minute.”
The Doomsday Sheriff: The Novella Collection (Includes Books 1 - 3) Page 11