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

by Michael James Ploof

  “We’ll see, Sheriff. We’ll see.”

  Chapter 14

  The Land Where the Partridge Drums

  Max, John, and Valentine were brought to the local police department, which they found to be just as heavily guarded as the jailhouse in Malone had been. But the Mohawks were much better armed than their redneck counterparts. Many of the men and women held AK-47s, and a few had grenades strapped to their belts. One man even boasted an honest-to-goodness flamethrower.

  A stinking pile of bodies burned in the field behind the station, and Max noticed the telltale tentacles of the howlers among the misshapen corpses. It looked like the Mohawks were doing just fine on their own. Indeed, a surprising number of homes and businesses were lit up around town, and the steady buzz of generators emanated from the snowy landscape. The rez had significantly more gas stations than the average American town, given there was no tax on gas on the sovereign land. Cigarettes were cheap here as well, and with the rez so close to the Canadian border, there was always a steady stream of Canucks visiting and leaving behind their money at the local casino, gas stations, and smoke shops.

  Max passed stoic-looking young men and women whose eyes gave nothing away but seemed to see everything. The Mohawks possessed a silent strength that Max admired, for he had seen the look before in people all over the world, people whose ancestors had seen great hardship.

  The lights inside the police station forced Max to squint, and he along with Valentine and John were led to the holding area in the back of the building. There, crowding a group of cells, stood over one hundred screamers.

  “Why aren’t the screamers screaming?” Max asked. It was then that he noticed the old Mohawk woman standing in front of the cells and chanting softly to the zombified people in the cells.

  “Mother Laughing speaks to their spirits. Calms them. Helps them to sleep,” said Oaks.

  “What’re they doing here?” said a younger man as he stormed into the station.

  He wore black pants and a camouflage jacket, and on his back rode a rifle with a fat barrel. Half his face was painted in camo, and a pair of night vision goggles rested on his head.

  “Relax, Rory. The sheriff says he can cure the possessed.”

  “They should not be in here with the possessed. If they start screaming again, they’ll lure the damned,” said Rory, eyeing Max dangerously.

  “You worry about the woods and the roads, I’ll worry about town,” said Oaks.

  “What’s this cure of yours, eh whitey?” Rory asked.

  “It’s Sheriff,” said Max. “And if you get me a funnel, a bottle of liquor, and a screamer, I’ll show you.”

  “Screamer?” said Oaks.

  “A possessed.” Max hooked a thumb back at the cell full of zombies. “We call them screamers, and the three-headed ones that come out of the eggs, those are howlers.”

  Rory stared blankly as Max grinned stupidly. Things got awkward, and no one spoke for at least ten seconds.

  “Sooo,” said Max. “How about those supplies?”

  Rory, whom Max had determined to be some sort of militia leader, turned to the lawman. “Get them out of here, Oaks. Let him try his cure at the Brass Horse.”

  Oaks nodded.

  With one last glare at Max, the young warrior marched out of the station and slammed the door behind him.

  “Good guy, I like him,” said Max.

  Oaks and the others ignored his affability and went to work without a word. The cell doors were opened, a screamer was led out, and Max and his friends were shown to the door. They took two trucks down the road a few miles and pulled into a bar. A literal brass horse stood by the sign promoting its namesake, and Oaks parked close to the door.

  “Come on,” said Oaks, and when John and Valentine started to get out, he stopped them. “No, just the sheriff. You wait here.”

  “I’ll be back in a jiffy,” said Max, offering John and Valentine a wink.

  “Wake me when you do,” said John, laying his head against the window and hunkering down.

  “Grab me a drink,” said Valentine.

  Max followed Oaks into the bar, and four armed men followed Max. Behind them came two more men leading the screamer, whose mouth had been stuffed with rags. Whatever effect the old woman they called Mother Laughing had on the screamers, it was beginning to wear off this one. The young Mohawk boy’s milky eyes were wide with terror, and he was beginning to muffle against his rags.

  Oaks led them to the main bar, where a funnel and a bottle of whiskey sat on the counter. “Lay the boy down here,” said Oaks, pointing at a table by the bar.

  The men complied, and the screamer’s hands and feet were tied to the table legs. Oaks handed Max the funnel. “Let’s see it, Sheriff.”

  Max took the funnel and gestured to the screamer. “Someone take out the rag and hold his head.”

  The soldiers glanced at each other, and then Oaks.

  “You do it,” he said to Max.

  He knew he wouldn’t win that argument, and like a man preparing to steal a snack out of the mouth of a lion, he readied himself. Max grabbed the screamer’s chin and quickly yanked out the rag. The boy chomped and screamed, and Max shoved the funnel in his mouth.

  “Somebody hold his damn head!” he said, wrestling to keep the funnel in and maintain control over the thrashing young man.

  Two men grabbed the boy’s head, and Max pulled the cork out with his teeth and poured the whiskey down the funnel and into the screamer’s throat. The boy thrashed and bucked and puked up most of it, but Max held firm, dumping a quarter of the bottle down the poor kid’s throat.

  He pulled back and watched, knowing that the liquor would take effect any minute. The others backed up two steps, not knowing what to expect.

  Then suddenly the boy stopped thrashing, and the milky whiteness of his eyes faded away. He hacked and gagged, and as Max expected, coughed up a space worm.

  “Fuck that thing!” said one of the men, jumping up on the bar like a cliché housewife leaping to safety at the first sight of a mouse.

  Someone else cursed in Mohawk.

  Another made the sign of the cross.

  “Get it!” a woman yelled, and Max brought down his boot on the slimy space worm as it tried to wriggle away.

  Oaks looked up at Max, glanced at the boy with a look that he could not hide, and turned glistening eyes back to Max.

  “You can do this for all of them?”

  “You and your men can, yes,” said Max.

  Oaks nodded. “You’ve done a good thing, Sheriff. Now you cure the damned.”

  “The damned?” said Max.

  Another nod—this time, his expression was grim. “The howlers.”

  Chapter 15

  Medicine Man

  “I don’t know how to cure them,” Max said for the third time.

  Oaks ignored him as he drove back to the police station. John was snoring in the back, and Valentine was pouting about the drink Max forgot to get her.

  “You learned how to cure the screamers, so learn how to cure the howlers. Maybe liquor?” said Oaks.

  “Maybe, I don’t know, man. I’ve never shared a drink with a three-headed alien hybrid electric squid. Look, I did my part, now you—”

  “You’re on my land. You don’t tell me, I tell you.”

  Max let out a slow sigh and rubbed his eyes. “Even if the same cure works for the howlers, then what? You think anyone is going to want to live like that? Spend the rest of their days as a six-legged, three-headed squid?”

  Oaks said nothing, and Max suddenly realized something.

  “Someone you know is a howler, aren’t they? Someone you love…”

  Oaks remained silent, but his eyes betrayed him. They began to glisten once more, and the stoic man sniffed and raised his chin.

  “Jesus, I’m sorry,” said Max.

  “My wife, son, daughter, all one now. I was going to put them down. Finally worked up the courage. But now…” He glanced at Max. �
��Your cure gives me hope.”

  Max decided to tread lightly, not knowing if the man was ignoring the facts, or just didn’t want to face them. “Oaks, you don’t want them to live like that.”

  “Maybe the cure will undo it all.” Oaks was grasping for straws. Max had seen it before with men on the battlefield, their legs blown off and thinking that somehow, they just needed to be put back on, unable to accept that the injury was irreversible.

  But in the end, they all saw the truth.

  Some fell into a shell of darkness and depression, while others inspired you with their strength of spirit. Hell, Max had known amputees that were happier with their lot in life than half the people he knew.

  “Mother Laughing says that their spirits still cling to this plane. If they die as…like they are, their spirits will be taken by the demons,” said Oaks.

  Max looked into the man’s eyes, realizing that he believed what he said with every ounce of his being, and there would be no changing his perception.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” said Max. “But I can’t make any promises.”

  “You were sent here to do this, Sheriff Max. Mother Laughing dreamed of you on the night of the falling stars.”

  Max gulped, not liking the idea that he was a puppet to destiny. He had never liked the idea of fate. He wasn’t a religious man either, never had been. Max’s parents hadn’t been religious, hadn’t even spoken of God. When Max grew up and began making his own decisions, he took a look at all the different religions and what they had to offer, and though he admitted it to only a few, he found them all preposterous and riddled with contradictions.

  Oaks’s family was being kept in the back of a big rig trailer, which, thankfully, was made of thick metal. Muttered sounds could be heard inside the crate, and there where dents here and there in the walls. Max wondered if the howler could have possibly damaged the walls like that. It seemed impossible, but then again, anything seemed possible in a world overrun by space worm hybrid monsters.

  “Did the old lady really dream of the sheriff?” said John from the back of the truck.

  Max had forgotten he and Valentine were back there, and Oaks seemed to have as well. The Mohawk policeman didn’t bother answering as he got out of the truck.

  “You kids need to earn your keep,” said Max. “If someone’s getting this thing drunk, it sure as shit’s not going to be me.”

  “Pussy,” said Valentine as she got out of the truck.

  Max and John shared a surprised yet hopeful look.

  “So, you got any ideas on how we get the how—er, your family drunk?” said Max.

  Oaks shrugged. “You’re the medicine man.”

  “I’m a sheriff.”

  Another shrug, this one more pronounced. “Mother Laughing says you are.”

  “Since Mother Laughing is so awesome,” said Max, “let’s get her out here to lull your family to sleep while someone walks in there and pours booze down their throats.”

  “Three mouths,” said Oaks, turning to face Max, John, and Valentine. “Gonna take three people.”

  “And why us?” said John.

  Oaks raised empty hands and offered another infuriating shrug. “We don’t know you.”

  “Makes sense,” said Max, shaking his head and rubbing his temples.

  Fifteen minutes later, Max, John, and Valentine stood before the big metal door, each with a bottle of liquor in one hand and a funnel in the other. Behind them, Mother Laughing stood bent and murmuring to herself. Max glanced back, trying again to make eye contact with the woman, but her irises were obscured by fluttering eyelids.

  She suddenly lurched toward Oaks and whispered in his ear.

  “She’s ready,” he told Max.

  “She’s ready?” said John, his funnel shaking like an excited dildo. “Well, I’m glad she’s ready. Did you hear that, guys? She’s ready for us to face the alien space worm—”

  “That’s enough, soldier!” said Max with militant authority.

  John snapped alert and looked into Max’s eyes hauntingly before nodding and staring straight ahead. “Sorry, sir.”

  “Let’s get this shit over with,” said Valentine.

  Oaks gestured to his men, and the pin was pulled out of the trailer door. Max expected the three-headed monster to immediately charge the door and attack, but as the door swung outward and light shined into the trailer, he saw the howler standing motionless near the back wall.

  “Mother Laughing will keep them calm,” said Oaks. “But not forever.”

  Max glanced at John and Valentine, and together the three crept into the trailer. If the howler suddenly came alive, they were doomed. As he drew closer, Max saw that the mother’s head was in the center of the mass of misshapen limps and carapace-like shell that held the bodies together like a macabre sculpture. The son’s head was on the right, eyes closed and presumably sleeping, while the younger daughter’s eyes were wide opened and milky white.

  “Easy does it,” Max whispered, noticing how John’s funnel shook in his hand.

  John wiped the sweat from his brow and licked his lips, gingerly stepping closer to the monster. The electric tentacles hung like lazy cobras and glowed with power. A pop and fizz of electricity gave Max a start, but he reined in his emotions.

  The mother was staring at him—he thought. For it was hard to tell what the white eyes were focusing on. When he reached the howler, he brought the funnel up to the woman’s mouth while beside him, Valentine did the same with the daughter. Max glanced over at John, who looked hesitant.

  “Come on, John, we’re almost done,” said Max.

  John nodded, and shakily placed the tip of the funnel in the sleeping head’s mouth. Together the three began pouring liquor into their funnels, and that’s when all hell broke loose.

  Chapter 16

  The Sacrifice

  Mother Laughing let out a bloodcurdling howl, and Max nearly leapt out of his skin. The eyes of the three heads opened wide, and the howler joined the old Mohawk woman in her tortured scream. One of the howler’s six arms backhanded Max with the strength of a bull, sending him colliding with the side of the shipping crate. He hit the floor and bounced back to his feet as the howler grabbed John by the throat and lifted him off the floor. The entire disgusting mass began to shudder and shake as the alcohol went to work on the worms inside. Valentine had climbed up on the mass of limbs and tentacles and had abandoned the funnel to instead shove the bottle in the mouth of the girl.

  Max lunged forward and grabbed John, yanking him back with all his might as the tentacles came to life in electric glory, shooting out and hitting Max with enough power to send him sailing backwards out of the crate. He landed on the snowy ground in a fit of convulsions, his teeth chattering as the electricity coursed through him and finally dissipated. He groggily glanced over and saw John lying in the snow, face down.

  Valentine!

  Max lifted his head just in time to see Valentine being shot out of the crate, somersaulting through the air and landing in the snow behind him. He struggled to his feet as Oaks bellowed for the three-headed howler—his family—to stop. The brave man walked into the crate as the howler thrashed and convulsed, its tentacles causing violent sparks as they slapped against the sides of the metal crate.

  “Come on, buddy,” said Max, grabbing John under the arms and pulling him away from the shipping crate.

  An unintelligible groan issued from John, but that meant he was alive at least. Valentine sat up on her own, glancing around with confusion.

  “You alright?” Max asked.

  “No,” she said, her teeth chattering.

  The three backed up to a safe distance and watched as Oaks approached his fused-together family. Mother Laughing had stopped screaming and was now being supported by two other Mohawk women.

  “Did it work?” John asked.

  “I think so, look,” said Max.

  The howler’s six eyes were no longer white and milky, but rather brown and fil
led with tears. Oaks spoke softly to his family members, caressing his wife’s face, kissing his son’s and his daughter’s cheeks.

  “Now we can travel together to the spirit world,” said Oaks, and he put a pistol in each of his wife’s mangled hands.

  “What’s he doing?” said Valentine, though she knew; they all knew.

  Mother Laughing began speaking in Mohawk, and though Max didn’t understand the words, he knew that she was praying. The women with her began to pray as well; some in English, beckoning God to take his poor children home, and others in their native tongue.

  Oaks put one gun to his wife’s head and the other to his own. She in turn placed a pistol against each of their children’s heads.

  Valentine turned away, and John held her tight, but Max had to watch. He had to bear witness to Oaks’s bravery, to his sacrifice. Now that he had his family back, he was bound and determined never to lose them again.

  Oaks kissed his wife, his son, and his daughter, before counting down from three…

  Two…

  One…

  Four shots rang out only heartbeats apart, and Oaks and his family fell to the floor dead, together at last.

  “Come on,” said Max, putting an arm around John and Valentine.

  They turned from the somber scene and came face to face with Rory and his militiamen, six of them to be exact.

  “Mother Laughing would like to speak with you…Sheriff.”

  “What about?”

  “When she asks to speak with you, you don’t ask why.”

  “Look, man. I did my part. Oaks said that if—”

  “Oaks is dead.”

  “Yeah, I noticed.”

  “This way,” said Rory, and hooked a thumb back to the police station.

  Max reluctantly followed, nodding to the other two to follow. “If she gives me another goddamned task, I’m going to start losing my sense of humor.”

  He followed Rory into the police station and found the stalls all empty. Smooshed space worms littered the cell floors, however, and Max guessed that they had been successful in curing everyone.