“We should take another vehicle,” said Max as he stowed away the last of the weapons in the back seat of the truck.
“I don’t know, Sheriff. You don’t look so good. You sure you can drive?” said Valentine.
“I’m fine.” He found one with the keys in it and transferred some of the weapons to the passenger seat.
Five minutes later they headed out again, Max in Pike’s big black truck, and Valentine in a white ford 2500 with a plow on the front. She said she knew how to operate the plow, and Max didn’t question her.
They headed west away from the blockade as the storm grew on the horizon. Thick clouds that looked dark and heavy slowly took over the sky, and soon thick wet snowflakes were falling from the hazy sky. It was about 34 degrees, which made for perfect snowman snow, but made for bad roads, and the progress that the plow had made earlier in the morning was soon being thwarted by mother nature.
They drove through Massena, a small rural city that had been kept alive for the last hundred years by smelting plants. Max’s grandfather had worked at one of the plants for over forty years, back when a man could earn a pension and support his family without his wife having to work.
“How you holding up, Sheriff?” It was Valentine on the CB.
Max lifted the pic off it’s mooring and clicked the button. “I’m good. How’s our six?”
“I don’t see anything,” she said.
“Good. Keep your eyes peeled—” Max trailed off when he spotted Rory’s truck in the snowbank on the right side of the road. “Shit!”
“What is it?”
“Rory’s truck. I’m going to pull up next to it. You keep a lookout while I investigate. Anything happens to me you get your ass to Fort Drum, you hear me?”
“I got it,” said Valentine.
Max parked behind the vehicle and grabbed his shotgun from the passenger seat. He got out slowly and walked along the driver side. There was no blood and no wormhead tracks, but the vehicle had been riddled with bullets when it blew past the roadblock. The driver side was full of them, as was the door. The windows were too tinted to see into, so Max prepared himself to fling the back door open. He grabbed the handle, hoping that he wouldn’t find the two native kids that Rory had escaped with dead in the backseat, and opened the door.
A gunshot startled him, and he ducked back from the open door.
“Hold your fire!” he yelled.
“You get out of here!” came the trembling voice of a young boy.
“It’s me, it’s the Sheriff,” said Max. “I’m on your side.”
“Sheriff Max?” said the boy.
“Yes,” said Max. From his vantage point he could see the hood of a jacket cocked to the right side in the front seat. “Rory? You alive?”
The young boy slowly crept toward the door, and upon seeing tat it was indeed Max, he let out a sigh.
“It’s alright, Candy,” he said to the girl behind him. “It’s really the Sheriff.”
“You two go on and get in the other truck with my friend. Her name’s Valentine.”
The young boy seemed apprehensive and looked toward the front seat. “What about Uncle Rory?”
Max moved to the front door and opened it slowly, just in case Rory was leaning against it. He saw the blood immediately. It looked like Rory had taken a slug to the left ribcage. He put a hand beneath the man’s nose and thought he felt a weak breath. Max checked his pulse, it was there, but it was weak.
“He’s alive. Go on, get in the truck and tell Val I need her.”
The boy and girl shuffled out of the truck. The girl looked terrified, and she had obviously been crying, but the boy, who Max guessed was around eleven years old, put on a stoic face. Max started lifting Rory’s coat up to inspect the bullet wound, and the man suddenly came alive and grabbed him by the throat. His grip was weak, and Max had no problem restraining him.
“Rory, it’s me, Max!”
Rory stopped struggling and breathed laboriously. “The kids…” he groaned.
“They’re safe.”
The man relaxed. His chest rattled when he breathed, and Max guessed that the bullet had pierced his lung.
“Come on, Chief. We’re getting you out of here,” said Max.
Rory shook his head. “No, Sheriff. I’m finished.”
“Don’t talk like that.” Max unbuckled Rory’s seatbelt as Valentine came to stand beside him.
Rory grabbed Max’s arm with surprising strength and stared into his eyes. “Don’t let them eat me…burn my body.”
“You’re going to be alright,” said Max, trying to keep it together.
Rory clung to him. He opened and closed his mouth like a fish out of water and blood dribbled out of his mouth. “Promise me—”
His eyes went wide, and he drew in a trembling, labored breath. He clutched Max harder, then he was gone.
Max closer Rory’s eyes with two fingers, and he felt Valentine’s hand on his shoulder. The man wore a arrowhead necklace, and Max gingerly took it off his neck and pocketed it, intending on giving it to the kids.
“He wanted me to burn his body so they wouldn’t eat him,” he told Valentine.
“You alright?” she asked.
“No. Can you grab the gas can out of the back of my truck?”
Valentine nodded, offering him a sympathetic half-smile.
Max doused Rory’s body and the front seat with gas, and proceeded to remove the truck’s gas cap and stuffing a rag inside. He glanced over at Valentine and nodded. The kids didn’t need to see their uncle going up in flames, and so she headed west once more. Max lit a flare, thinking that he should offer the man’s sprit some final words, but nothing came to him.
He tossed the flare into the front of the truck, and the gas lit with a WHOOSH.
As he drove away from the scene he turned his attention to the west and never looked back.
Chapter 8
Because Momma Said so
“How the kids holding up?” Max asked Valentine over the CB.
“They’re sleeping,” she said in a hushed voice.
“How you holding up?”
“As well as can be expected, I guess. I’ll be doing a hell of a lot better when we get to Fort Drum.”
“Same. Sheriff over and out.”
The snow storm was now in full force, and Max and Valentine had been forced to slow down to fifteen miles per hour. If they went off the road now it would be disastrous, so they kept it at a reasonable pace as the thick snow continued to pile up. The rednecks must have topped off their trucks before heading out, because both trucks had over three-quarters of gas in their tank, which would be more than enough to get them to Fort Drum.
Max guess that at this speed they would arrive at the military base shortly after nightfall. He was still tired, and his body hurt in a hundred different places. But he rolled down the window and turned off the heat to keep himself from nodding off. He would have cranked the radio, but of course there was no one spinning vinyl anymore, and whoever had owned the truck didn’t have carry any CD’s in it.
As the miles slowly drifted by, Max thought about Piper and the life they had shared together. He thought about his extended family and his old friends, wondering how many of them had survived the fateful night of the meteor shower. He still couldn’t believe what had happened, and he half expected to wake up any minute and find himself in the cabin, hung over from the whiskey bender the night before.
His mind drifted to the strange connection that he had shared with the space worms and the mother. He remembered clearly the long dark journey through space and time, the excitement that Mother had shared with the dormant eggs when the asteroid brought them into the solar system. He remembered too the hunger of the worms, the eagerness to bring more souls into the collective.
First, they had taken over the minds of the humans of the planet, then they had melded together to create the trip howlers, and now the howlers had come together to create a queen. Hell, they had proba
bly created hundreds, if not thousand or even millions of queens.
How could humanity survive such a calamity? He wondered.
Mother Laughing’s words echoed in his mind, and he wondered if any governments of the world had a plan for such a disaster. Had someone gotten off planet?
He hoped so.
Humans were a young species, but they were special. There was a lot of bad things that could be said about people, but there were many more good things in Max’s opinion. People got a bad rap. And Max knew that people often forgot how young humanity was in the grand scheme of things. People thought that technology separated humans from animals, but that was no truer for people than it was for beavers.
Humanity still hadn’t become enlightened, and they hadn’t come anywhere close to their true potential.
If not space, perhaps they could survive beneath the earth. There were enough people and governments out there with underground bunkers. Right now, the president was probably sipping on martini’s in an underground complex along with the best and the brightest, preparing to wait out the space worm invasion.
Max hoped so, and he started to wonder if such a bunker was located in Fort Drum.
“Sheriff,” we’ve got a problem.
Max jumped when Valentine’s voice came over the CB.
“Go ahead,” he said into the mic.
“The little girl. He name’s Spring. She’s…well, she’s talking in her sleep.”
“So?”
“She says she’s Mother Laughing. She wants to talk to you.”
“What?”
“I know, Sheriff. It’s weird, but I think…I don’t know, just come and see for yourself.”
“Alright, but not out here in the open. Wait until we reach the next town. Turn into the first gas station.”
“Affirmative, Valentine out.”
Ten minutes later they stopped in a small town as a Stewart’s Shoppe, and Max walked up to the truck. Valentine rolled down the window and gestured to the back seat. Max saw the boy in the passenger seat beside her and craned his neck to look in the back.
He nearly leapt out of his skin; the girl was sitting up in back passenger seat, her eyes were rolled back in her head, and she was smiling strangely.
“Hello Sheriff,” she said with the tone and inflection that he remembered Mother Laughing speaking in.
Max glanced at Valentine, but she only shrugged.
He got in the back seat with Spring, though he kept as close to the door as possible, trying not to look as skittish as he felt.
“Uh…hi?”
“Please listen carefully, Sheriff, I haven’t much time.”
“Alright, I’m all ear—”
“I am dying.”
Max stared into the milky-white eyes of the little girl, wondering if he was truly speaking to Mother Laughing. He didn’t believe in magic, or mysticism, but then again, he hadn’t believed in space worms four days ago either.
“What happened? Where are you? What happened to the caravan?”
“We are thirty miles outside of Fort Drum. There is no danger to the group.”
“But you said you were dying.”
“I am,” said Mother Laughing. “I have been fighting the demon since it entered my body, but I am losing the battle for my own mind.”
“You’ve been infected this whole time?” said Max.
“Sheriff Max, do not interrupt.”
“Sorry, go ahead.”
The little girl’s eyes fluttered, and Max glanced at Valentine, who looked like he felt—confused and intrigued.
“I have seen into the mind of the devil who gave birth to the demons. I know what happens next.”
“What happens next?” said Valentine.
Spring turned her milky gaze toward Valentine, and the woman slowly leaned back.
“The queens will change the world to resemble their home planet.”
Max and Valentine shared an apprehensive look.
“What does that mean?” said Max.
“The vegetation will change, the dirt will change, the air will change. We will not be able to survive on this planet, not on the surface, not beneath the earth. We must seek refuge in the stars. You must find a way, Sheriff Max. You must find a way to leave this world, and you must bring my grandchildren. Spring is like me. She has the gift, and she may be humanity’s only hope.”
“Mother…I’m sorry, but it’s just not possible,” said Max.
“You will find a way,” said Mother Laughing.
“I—” Max was cut off by Spring’s sudden outburst. Her eyes changed back to dark brown, and she started crying. She clung to Max, crying into his shoulder.
“What does this mean?” said Valentine. “Do you think Mother Laughing is right?”
“I don’t know,” said Max, hugging the little girl. “I don’t anything anymore.”
Chapter 9
Traffic Jam
The cry of a wormhead tore Max from his contemplation, and Spring trembled in his arms. Max let her go, but she protested, clinging to him and digging her little fingers into the folds of his jacket.
“It’s alright, Spring. But I’ve got to get back to my truck,” said Max, gently prying her off him.
“I’ll take the lead,” he said to Valentine. “Whatever you do, don’t go off the road.”
Valentine nodded, hiding her terror behind a stern grimace.
Max leapt out of the truck and rushed through the snowstorm back to his truck. The hellish cries of the wormheads began to fill the stormy night, and the sounds came from every direction. He jumped in his truck with a severe case of the heebie-jeebies and put it in gear, peeling out and driving in front of Valentine. She fell in behind him, and as Max glanced from the rearview to the road, he let out a startled cry.
A wormhead stood in the road, its dripping maw wide open, and its clawed arms spread wide. Max gunned the engine, daring thirty miles an hour on the slippery roads, and ran over the beast. The truck bounced over the corpse and swerved a little, but Max kept control. Behind him, Valentine steered wide of the tumbling nightmare.
Max let out a celebratory cry, but the victory was short lived—up ahead, more than a dozen wormheads had converged on the road and lay in wait.
He grabbed the CB, clicked the mic live, and screamed, “Take the next right!”
The road was twenty feet away, and the wormheads were forty. Max cranked the wheel to the right and drove down a sideroad. He checked the rearview and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Valentine following him onto the road and he slowed down. He knew he could handle these roads at thirty or forty miles an hour, but he didn’t know much about Valentine, and he knew less about her defensive driving skills.
“What’s going on, Sheriff?”
“Ah…” Max knew the kids could hear, and he didn’t want to startle them. “Thought I saw something up ahead, that’s all. We’ll take this road for a bit and connect back to the main road soon.”
“What did you see? Was it wormheads?”
Max inwardly cringed. Then something caught his eye and he slowed down to peer through the snowfall. Up ahead, about thirty feet down the road, three wormheads blocked the way. He cursed under his breath and brought the CB to his mouth.
“There are three of the slimy fucks up ahead,” he told Valentine. “I’m going to blow through ‘em. Whatever you do, don’t stop!”
He gunned it, and the truck surged forward as the wormheads began to charge. Max screamed a string of curses and hit the lead wormhead, slamming the creature so hard he bounced off the front and careened into the woods. The other two leapt in unison like demented ninjas, and Max lost sight of them as they sailed over the hood. They landed with a thud, one on the roof, and the other in the truck bed. Max swerved back and forth, trying to dislodge the beasts, but they hung on. The rear window burst inward, and Max glanced in the rearview. The wormhead was shoving his body through, its electric dreads crackling. Max aimed behind him with is left arm crossed
over his body as he steered with his right hand and unloaded a clip into the wormhead’s gaping maw. The ear-shattering scream filled the cabin, and the creature fell back onto the truck bed.
Before Max had a chance to breath a sigh of relief, the side window exploded and the second wormhead dropped down onto the running boards. It clung to the door with one hand and reached for Max with the other.
Max abandoned his sidearm and struggled to get ahold of his shotgun and stay on the road at the same time. Wicked claws scratched down the side of his face. It was only a grazing strike, but Max felt the blood trickle down his neck. He leaned away from the window as the creatures head filled the window, and managed to get the shotgun around to bear on the beast.
“Don’t you know it’s dangerous to hitchhike?” he screamed and shoved the barrel into the creature’s mouth. He fired, and the back of the monster’s head blew out in a spray of black ichor. The creature went tumbling into the ditch, and Max glanced at the rearview to see what had become of his other stowaway. To his horror, the wormhead leapt off the back of his truck, sailed through the air, and landed on the hood of Valentine’s truck. He watched helplessly as the creature smashed through the windshield. Valentine’s truck swerved dangerously close to the snowbank as the creature tried to get to her. She overcorrected and began to fishtail, and Max’s heart sank to his feet as the truck spun 180 degrees, slammed sideways into the snowbank and flipped into its hood.
“Fuck!”
Max slammed on the brakes and spun the truck around. He peeled out, trying to get to Valentine and the kids before the wormhead tore them to pieces. There was no sign of the wormhead, but the kids were clambering out of the truck.
He pulled up to the wreck and leapt out of his truck with his shotgun and sword in hand. Little Spring and her brother looked terrified, and Max urged them into his truck and told them to lock the doors. He swept left and right, searching for anymore wormheads, and seeing none, he rushed over to the truck.
The Doomsday Sheriff: The Novella Collection (Includes Books 1 - 3) Page 21