“It’s about to get bumpy!” Max warned John and Valentine.
The plow slammed into the back of two trucks that had been parked end to end, and they swung open like double doors, each doing a complete 180 and crashing into the trucks behind them. Another truck had been strategically placed fifteen feet behind the weak point, and the plow, now doing fifty miles an hour, hit it so hard that it skidded back and to the right, hit the curb and was launched into the air, somersaulting like an Olympic gymnast.
Gunfire erupted from both sides, and Valentine cried out when her window exploded inward.
“Stay down!” Max screamed, ducking from the flying glass and bullets, and expecting his lights to suddenly go out at any moment.
But no bullets found him, and he floored it as he followed Rory through the blockade in the path cleared by the plow. He glanced at the side mirror and rearview, wincing when he witnessed a militia truck go off the rode riddled with bullets and ridden by a half dozen Wormheads.
Pike’s scattered, abandoning their posts and peeling out if they could get away. Those that could not were left to deal with the hungry wormheads, and the fight didn’t go well for them.
“Sound off,” said Rory, and Sheriff confirmed that he was still alive. Three drivers didn’t report in, however, and the line became silent.
Then, suddenly, a low voice came over the CB.
“Falcon…here. The kids…help.” The voice sounded weak, and Max wondered if it came from the plow driver, or one of the other trucks that had gone off the road.
“Falcon,” said Rory. “Falcon!”
The line was silent, and Max watched the mirrors. The wormheads had abandoned the faster moving caravan for Pike and his men, and it was smooth sailing ahead.
“Rory…the kids.”
“Falcon!” Rory’s truck suddenly shot left and spun a 180, before peeling out in the unplowed snow and taking off the way they had come. “Everyone stay with the plow!” he yelled over the CB.
“Fuck that,” said Max. “I’ve got your six.”
Max braked and turned left before hitting the gas. The ass end of the hummer spun around, and he started the other way after Rory. The four-wheel drive beast tore through the snow like it was nothing, clinging to the road. They raced past the caravan, heading back into the madness. Up ahead, the barricade was in disarray. Wormheads snacked on hapless rednecks and chased fleeing men to the ground. They tore truck doors off even as the vehicles rocketed past, throwing the drivers into the snowbank. Max swerved around an out of control van and watched it roll down the embankment and into the trees. A wormhead leapt over Rory’s truck and landed in the road, its maw opened and claws raking at the road as it charged, seemingly hellbent on playing chicken with the hummer. Max gladly complied, flooring the truck and steering right for the hideous beast. It leapt at the last minute, but Max clipped its legs, sending it spinning end over end like a ski jump champion.
Up ahead, Rory pulled off the road and headed for a truck that had hit the trees on the left side. A wormhead stood on top of the cab, tearing it open like a sardine can.
“John?”
“I’m on it Sheriff, hold her steady…”
Three steady shots, one after another, opened the wormheads chest and sent it careening off the side of the truck. Rory’s feet were on the ground in seconds and Max pulled up as the militiaman ran to the aid of his friend.
“Keep them off us,” said Max, and leapt out of the hummer.
He rushed to the side of the truck. Rory was checking the driver’s pulse. He glanced at Max and shook his head solemnly. Max opened the back door. There were two kids around ten years old in the back seat, a boy and a girl.
He reached for the terrified girl, and the back-passenger window suddenly imploded. A wormhead’s dripping maw came through the window, threatening to devour the boy whole.
Chapter 3
Roadside Assistance
Max grabbed the girl and pulled her out the door with one arm as he drew his sidearm with the other. The boy didn’t scream, he didn’t try to back away, he just stared wide-eyed into the circular mouth of jagged teeth as it descended toward his head. Max didn’t want to fire his pistol in the cab of the truck, but he had no choice, he wouldn’t be able to get to the boy in time.
Before he got a chance to get off a shot, however, John suddenly appeared in Max’s peripheral. He had leapt up onto the truck bed and was now bringing his machine gun barrel to bear on the wormhead’s long neck. He opened fire, riddling the wormhead’s body with lead as Max reached in and grabbed the boy’s arm and yanked him out.
Rory ushered the boy and girl into his waiting truck, and Max watched with satisfaction as the wormhead dropped out of sight on the other side of the truck. John whirled around, covering the retreat as Max rushed back to the hummer.
Bullets kicked up the snow near him, and Max dove for cover behind the hummer.
“Shooter!” he yelled to John, but too late. He watched his friend take a bullet to the upper chest and fall off the back of the truck bed.
Rory had reached his vehicle and peeled out with the kids safely inside. More gunfire erupted, but as he listened, Max heard the truck continue on through the snow and reach the road. It’s roaring engine grew distant, and Max breathed a sigh of relief.
Valentine screamed bloody murder when bullets riddled the hummer, and Max reached up and opened the back-passenger side door. She hurried out as more bullets came, and Max gave her a quick look over.
“Are you hit?” he asked.
“No,” she said, sounding shaken.
“Where did the gunfire come from?”
“Up on the road, there are two of them.”
Max nodded and positioned himself with his back to the hummer. He popped up suddenly and let off a shot as a distraction as he got a quick glimpse of the roadside. It was Pike and one of his lackeys.
“That fucking dude is really getting on my nerves,” said Max.
“Pike?”
Max nodded. “Hey, John, can you hear me?”
“Loud and clear, Sheriff.” His voice was strained, but he was alive.
“Cover me,” said Max. “I’m going to grab John and drag him back here.”
Valentine nodded, squeezing her rifle.
“You with me, soldier?” he said, watching her closely.
“I’m good, Sheriff. Go!”
Max ducked down and raced over to the back of the truck as Valentine popped up and unloaded a clip. Pike’s gunfire answered hers, and Max slid to a stop beside John in the snow on the other side of the other truck.
“Where are you hit?” he asked John.
“Near my collar bone,” he said through the pain.
“We’ve got wormheads incoming!” Valentine yelled.
Max grabbed John’s machine gun and peeked around the back of the truck. Beyond the hummer, up on the highway to the north, Pike and his man were lying in wait. To the south, a pack of three wormheads were tearing through the ditch.
“Mornin’ Sheriff!” came the jolly voice of Pike over a megaphone. “Good day to get eaten, wouldn’t you say?”
“That guy’s such an asshole,” John said tiredly.
“Come on,” said Max, heaving him up. The wormheads were a good two hundred yards away and closing fast. To make matters worse, Pike started spraying machine gun fire over the hummer and the abandoned truck. Max wasn’t in any danger of being hit where he crouched with John, but he couldn’t move either without risking sudden death.
With an angry growl he popped up and peppered the truck that bed of the distant truck that Pike was hiding behind. Valentine joined in and Pike took cover, giving Max the precious seconds he needed. He yanked John up over his shoulder and huffed it to the hummer. He was exposed for only a few seconds, but somehow Pike managed to hit him. Max felt a hot stinging pain in his right thigh and his knee buckled. He fell, pushing John to safety and flattening himself against the ground.
Valentine’s eyes wid
ened as she pulled John into the hummer, and Max turned with his machine gun in time to see the lead wormhead leap high into the air. Max cried out a string of obscenities and fired, riddling the beast with bullets as it descended form on high. Dark blood sprayed as the thick scales shattered against the force of the armor piercing rounds. The thing landed on him in a dead heap, knocking the wind out of him with its great weight. He struggled to get out from under the dead monster, but it was heavy as hell and Max was in the snow. With a growl and a heave he pushed the wormhead off him, just in time to see another one less than five feet away coming toward him. Max tugged on the machine gun, but it was stuck beneath the dead wormhead’s body. As the advancing wormhead stalked toward him with electric tentacles dancing around his head like the snakes of Medusa, a big gun barked three times.
The shotgun slugs tore into the beast’s hideous mouth, which had been opened wide in anticipation of the coming meal. It fell back, and Max scrambled to his feet, tearing his gun free and whirling around to lay some cover fire on Pike’s truck, but to his horror, he saw the big machine coming right toward them.
“Look out!” he managed to cry out.
In the next heartbeat the truck was slamming into the hummer, and the hummer in turn hit Max, sending him sailing through the air. He hit the abandoned truck hard and crumbled to the snow.
Darkness took him from the world of monsters and snow and blood and wrapped him in sweet oblivion.
Chapter 4
Human Hood Ornament
Max awoke to someone tying his hands. He fought his captor, flailing and kicking, and got a thump on the head from the stock of a riffle for his efforts. Nausea washed over him, and the world did a somersault.
“Goddamn, Sheriff, you sure do make for a good hunt,” came the voice of Pike through the dizzying blur that was Max’s world.
“Go fuck your mother,” said Max. He let out a weak chuckle. “Sorry, I mean your sister. Or are they one and the same?”
Pike bent down in front of Max and grinning, put a dirty finger in the bullet hole in Max’s leg. The sudden shock of pain ripped a cry from his lungs. In his delirium he had forgotten that he’d been shot in the leg. He ground his teeth and stared at Pike, refusing to cry out again. But Pike wiggled his grimy finger, forcing Max to gasp. Max spit in his face, and the redneck finally pulled out his finger. He wiped off his face and lit a cigarette, grinning.
“Put him on the hood,” he said to someone out of sight, and three seconds later two of Pikes cronies gathered Max up and slammed him down on the hood of a big black jacked up ford. They tied his hands to the rack on the roof and tied his feet to the thick metal grill so that he was laying against the windshield. Max glanced around for John and Valentine, and that’s when he saw John face down in the snow.
“You piece of shit!” He screamed at Pike. “Where’s Val? If you lay a hand on her, I swear to god I’ll—"
“Too late,” said Pike, coming to stand beside the passenger side. He extended his hand toward Max and forcefully shoved two fingers against Max’s nose.
Max smelled the unmistakable musk of a woman on the man’s dirty fingers, and his blood boiled.
He cursed the man with a string of vulgarities that would have made the devil blush, and Pike and his men laughed all the while. They filed into the truck and peeled out, coming dangerously close to John and driving back up onto the road. Max was jostled and slammed onto the hood when they jumped the curb. The cold wind howled in his face, instantly chilling his bones as the truck sped up to sixty miles an hour. Max had to turn his head and bury it behind his jacket collar just to breath, and his eyes filled with tears from the wind. The droplets froze to his eyelashes, casting the world in multicolored starburst.
Pike and his men had fun with Max. They got the truck up to seventy miles an hour at one point, and zig-zagged down the road, jostling him around and making him want to vomit. They drove over snowbanks when they returned to the reservation, slamming Max onto the hood and causing him to smack his head off the windshield. Max prayed that the morons didn’t accidentally roll the rig, if they did, his alien worm fighting days would be over. It would be a quick death, he guessed, unless only his legs were crushed by the impact.
He tried to focus on Piper as he shivered on the hood of the truck. His ass and legs were starting to get warm from the engine, but the rest of his body was freezing cold. Someone in the cab thought it would he hilarious to turn on the wiper fluid, which squirted up on his back while the passenger wiper slapped him in the head with a steady rhythm.
When they reached the reservation police station the driver did three donuts in the parking lot. Max panicked when the truck went up on two wheels, but it slammed back down soon after and stopped. The rednecks filed out of the truck hooting it up at Max’s expense.
Max felt like a he had been cursed by Jack Frost when they untied him and unceremoniously tossed him off the hood to land in a heap in front of the truck. He heard Valentine scream and glanced up in time to see her being dragged into the station.
Pike squatted in front of him and puffed on his cigarette, grinning. “That lady friend of yours looks like one of them lesbos.” He licked his lips, snorted, and spit on the ground. “One night with me though, and she’ll be batting for the right team.”
“I’m going to give you one chance, Pike. Let us go now, or it’s going to get real ugly for you,” said Max.
Pike glanced around at his cronies, and they laughed with him. Max’s hands were no longer bound to the truck, but they were still tied together. His legs were free, however, and he could have twisted around where he lay and kicked Pike in the face, but that would only get him a beat down, and it wasn’t smart to anger the lunatic right now, not after what he said about his intentions for Valentine.
“What’s your answer?” said Max. “You going to let us go?”
“Get a load of this asshole,” said Pike, hooking a thumb toward Max. “Get him up, bring him inside. He can watch while we take turns working over the little princess.
Max’s mind raced as the rugged looking men with scabs on their faces that screamed meth-head snatched him up roughly and pushed him toward the police station. He had no weapons, his hands were bound, and he was outnumbered four to one, with another two men inside the station with Valentine.
“I can’t wait to get a taste of that pretty little peach you been traveling with,” said the man pulling Max along by the arm. He had dirty red hair, and teeth that looked like the BEFORE picture on a dental brochure.
“You guys left John back there in the snow, and unless you go get him, you won’t be getting your taste,” said Max. The Ginger frowned, his drug addled brain taking a moment to process the insult. “Oh shit,” Max added with a laugh. “Did you mean Valentine?”
“Laugh it up, funny man,” said the ginger. “I’ll make sure to put it in her pretty ass for that one.”
Max swallowed his humor and felt worry take its place. He was trying to stall, but it wasn’t working. He racked his mind for a solution, but there just wasn’t one. These dickheads were going to have their way with Valentine, and there was nothing Max could do about it.
No, there had to be a way.
Maybe he could convince Pike that he had more valuable information, perhaps he could tell him he knew the location of a stockpile of gold, or drugs. The door to the police station was ten feet away, and Max started to panic. He looked to the road, praying that Rory would return with the cavalry and save the day.
But no roar of engines sounded in the distance, and no wormheads erupted from the rooftops.
He had to do something!
Max shifted did a stutter step, and when the ginger stepped ahead of him Max swept his legs out from under him with a powerful kick. The man went down, pulling Max along with him, but he yanked free before falling and stomped a boot down on the man’s face.
Another man gave a cry of alarm and lunged for Max from five feet away. Max’s martial arts training kicked in
and he leapt into the air, hands tied, and performed a perfect roundhouse kick that connected to the man’s face. He went down like a sack of flour and Max prepared himself for the next attack.
“Jesus jumped up Christ,” said Pike around a fresh cigarette. “You morons can’t even handle a man whose hands are tied? Get in there Bucky!”
Bucky was the only other man on his feet besides Pike, who looked on with amusement. The ginger groaned and started to get up, but Max slammed a boot into his crotch and kneed the other prone man in the face as he tried to get up. Bucky, a thick dude with a pathetic Joe Dirt beard, cracked his knuckles and came at Max with a punch that was so telegraphed that it might as well have come with a postage stamp. Max dodged to the side of the flying right fist, and as Bucky followed through with the left, Max sidestepped the blow and bucked forward, smashing his forehead into Bucky’s face. A satisfying crunch of bone met Max’s ears, and he swept the young man’s feet as the blood sprayed.
The ginger suddenly popped up and grabbed Max from behind. Stank-breath wafted over Max as the furious man squeezed him in a bearhug and he tried not to gag. Instead, he bucked his head backward, but he didn’t connect. The man he had roundhouse staggered to his feet as Max tried to backpaddle the ginger. It worked, and Max pumped his legs and forced them both back, slamming the ginger into the side of the police station. The other thug bum-rushed Max, who used the leverage to kick up and out with both legs, taking the man square in the chest and sending him ass over teakettle into the snow. Max staggered forward and slammed the ginger again, but the man had his back to the building, and shoved Max hard. He staggered forward, tripped over the man on the ground and landed hard.
Max instinctively rolled and brought himself up on his knees. A fist found his face then, jerking it to the side and sending stars dancing in his vision. Max wavered for a split second, but then his anger, fury, and frustration took over. He leapt high into the air as Bucky cocked back for another shot and connected with his steel-toed boot to Bucky’s scraggly chin. The man was taken clean off his feet and landed on his back with an “ooof!”
The Doomsday Sheriff: The Novella Collection (Includes Books 1 - 3) Page 19