by D V Wolfe
War Pigs
D.V. Wolfe
Lightning Strike Press
Copyright © 2020 D.V. Wolfe
All rights reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Cover design by: Lightning Strike Press
Printed in the United States of America
For Jimbo and Glenn, who rode shotgun on this crazy train.
“War does not determine who is right. Only who is left.”
- Bertrand Russell
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
JOIN THE HUNT!
Other Books in the Midnight Rider Series
About The Author
Acknowledgment
1
“Man, I haven’t seen this much blood since we were working the aftermath of that nudist hike,” one of the cops said as he went by.
“Oh, yeah, when they got caught in that rock slide,” his partner said to him. Neither of them seemed to notice us.
“We’re gonna get caught,” Noah muttered to me, trying not to move his lips.
“It’ll only take a second,” I said. “Walter had next to nothing for us.” It was true. When I’d called him after we left Garnett, he was overjoyed that we’d managed to snake his supernatural pipes and he could see what was going on again. Of course, we’d spent so much time dicking around in Ohio that all the other good hunts were gone and all he had to give us was a vague notion of something happening in Kentucky. So, here we were. “I just need to get a look,” I muttered.
“The ‘look’ you’re going to get, is going to be the inside of this backwater Kentucky’s pokey if they spot us.”
I cut my eyes to Noah. “Always such a Negative Nancy.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t sleep well last night,” he grumped. “Or the night before, or the night…”
“Yeah, I get it,” I said.
“Oh shit,” Noah groaned. I looked at him and then followed his line of sight. Amongst the cops and medical examiner’s personnel milling around, I saw the round-faced sheriff standing at the back of the crowd, looking right at Noah and me.
“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” Noah said, his voice going up in pitch and volume as the sheriff started walking our way.
“Calm down,” I muttered to Noah, finding his foot with my heel.
“Ow! What are we going to say? FBI? Rubbernecking passerby? Family members? Or that we knew the...guy? Gal? Person that was disemboweled?”
“That’ll be convincing,” I said. “since we don’t know a name or what the person even looked like before the attack. I’ll let you drive the bus on that one.”
“Screw you,” Noah said, dropping his voice as the sheriff moved between two forensic scene workers carrying zip-loc baggies of what looked like entrails. “He’s almost here, what’s our excuse?”
I didn’t know. We’d left our FBI badges in the truck. We’d hit a thrift store and dressed up, hoping to blend in with the people on the scene so that we could get close enough to get a bead on what had happened. Unfortunately, the scene was about five miles outside of Shotfell, Kentucky, on the edge of the woods at a logger’s camp which was miles from the highway so “rubbernecking passerby” wasn’t really a plausible excuse.
“Can I help you?” The sheriff asked. He had his hat in his hands, worrying the brim, pausing from time to time to wipe the late-July sweat out of his eyes. He looked shell-shocked, but still wary when he saw us. Shotfell was a small town and I was guessing he knew everyone else at the party.
“I’m uh…” I looked at Noah and tried again. “We’re here because…”
The sheriff’s eyes grew wide and he quickly glanced to his left and right.
“That was fast,” he said, stepping closer and lowering his voice. “I didn’t expect them to send someone...uh, a team...so fast. Honestly, I could have sworn I heard them laughing at me when I called.” He held out a hand to us. “Sheriff Dom Moody.” I shook it and opened my mouth to make an introduction for Noah and me that hadn’t been fully planned out, but Moody didn’t wait to hear it. He dropped my hand and looked around him again. He motioned for us to follow him and I just shrugged at Noah and fell in step behind the sheriff as he wound his way back through the crime scene. We passed the splattered remains of one body that was being poked and prodded by the crime scene workers. The sheriff stopped short and I almost bumped into him. Noah crashed into me and a stretcher went by us heading for the vehicles lined up at the edge of the camp. As it went by Noah, the gurney hit a rock, jostling what was left of the body. One of the elbows fell off the edge of the cart, swinging the body’s arm out. The hand attached to the arm was missing its fingers and the bloody stump bumped Noah in the chest. Noah gave a half-strangled shriek. Moody and I both turned to look at him. Noah forced a smile for Moody.
“Stubbed my toe,” he muttered. I raised an eyebrow at him and when Moody turned back to keep walking, Noah gave me the finger.
“So, what happened here?” I ventured when we came to a stop next to a truck with a camper in the bed.
Moody’s eyes were huge and he shook his head vigorously. “I was hoping you’d be able to tell me.” He gave us a rundown of the three loggers that had been attacked and splattered all over the clearing. He sounded solid on the details until he came to who or what had killed the men. “I mean, I heard stories when I was a kid, but…”
“What kind of stories?” I asked.
Moody looked a little sheepish. “Well, my old man would tell me stories about when he was a logger. Mostly when he had a bit to drink. I never thought….” The scene workers walked by with another baggy/stretcher combo of parts and Moody shook his head and then fixed his attention on us, his eyes narrowing and color rising in his cheeks. “This shit isn’t supposed to be real, you know? It’s just drunk logger stories. Everyone has them, everyone’s heard them.”
He looked at Noah and me, waiting for us to respond. I nodded and elbowed Noah to do the same. “Drunk logger stories” was apparently a genre in Shotfell, Kentucky and we needed to roll with that.
Upon seeing our nods of understanding, Moody went on. “But to see this shit up close, I mean, it’s exactly the way Dad always said it was. How it hunts, the kind of carnage it leaves behind…”
“What do you believe did this?” I asked.
Moody stared at me. “I mean, you haven’t heard of one of these before? I mean, aren’t you with that agency? You know, the X-Files agency?”
I nodded, trying to look sincere. “Of course. I just....always find that we have the clearest picture of what we’re working with when...a witness or local law enforcement...experts...give us their ideas on what it could be as well.” I held Moody’s gaze, hoping I seemed sincere and professional and about a dozen other things I wasn’t. Whatever I was doing seemed to pass muster, because he broke eye contact and looked out at the scene.
“Well, I wasn’t no witness to this b
lood bath. Don’t get me wrong. But when I was a kid and my dad described the shit that one of these things is capable of, it was so graphic, so detailed that today feels like I’m living in one of his stories.”
“And those stories were about?” I asked, trying to get him to just spit it out.
Moody met my gaze again. “A Hidebehind.”
“A wha-” Noah started to ask behind me. Luckily, I found his foot with my heel and he silenced himself with a final hiss.
“I see,” I said, “and there have been three deaths related to this?” I asked.
Moody nodded. “Dad always said these things come out of the woods every seven years and they kill seven victims and then they disappear again for another seven years.” Moody paused as if realizing that what he was saying didn’t sound logical for a lawman. He gave himself a little shake but then turned to us, a pleading look on his face. “You do believe me, right?”
I assured him that we did in fact believe him and then Noah and I got into Lucy and moved back out towards the main road. I’d told Moody we needed to go call-in to “headquarters” and “send in a report to evaluate the situation”, but really we just needed a hidden lookout point so that we could watch and wait for the last of the crime scene, medical examiner and police vehicles to leave. We were going to have a stakeout tonight. Luckily, this also gave us time to look up what the hell a Hidebehind was.
“Well, he was a little left of center,” Noah muttered as we pulled out onto the main road and then darted across to the other side and down a dirt Jeep path that disappeared over a low ridge and ran alongside a gully.
“Then what does that make us?’ I said as I muscled Lucy around in a k-turn. With Lucy down by the gully, she was partially hidden from the main road, and the trees and approaching darkness filled in the rest of the cracks in our stakeout plan. “Grab the binoculars out of the glove box, will you?” I asked.
Noah opened the glove box, and as he usually did, knocked several things to the floor as he pulled them out. He tossed the binoculars onto the seat and then picked up the sheathed silver dagger, hex bag, and the silver chain off the floor.
“I keep meaning to ask you. What’s this?” he asked holding up the silver chain and squinting in the low light at the gold ring hanging from it.
“My ma’s wedding ring,” I said. “Just put it back.” Just looking at the damned thing felt like a gut punch. It was a constant reminder of something I’d lost and something I’d never have.
We were quiet for a minute and then Noah said, “So what the hell is a Hidebehind?”
“No idea,” I said. “Speaking of, it’s time to call the wizard.”
“You know, one day you’re going to slip up and say that to his face and then you will never live it down.”
I shrugged. “Then, I’d just have to kill him.”
“You know, I feel like you actually mean that,” Noah said. He sighed. “Does it ever strike you as weird that if we were some kind of Scooby-Doo gang, Stacks is kind of our Velma?”
“He’s got the glasses,” I said. “But Velma was a way sharper dresser than Stacks is. What does that make you and me?”
Noah shrugged. “I guess you’re, what, Fred?”
“The guy in the ascot?” I asked.
“Well, you’re definitely not Daphne.”
“Thank god for small favors,” I said, picking up the binoculars. I watched an ambulance and an SUV with Medical Examiner printed on the passenger side door pull onto the main road from the crime scene and head south.
“I guess I’m Shaggy,” Noah said. “I mean, I tend to fall into things a lot. We just need a dog. A big dog, to be my best friend.” He sort of trailed off at the end as I handed him the binoculars.
“One day your dog will come, I’m sure,” I said. “For today though, can you keep a count of how many vehicles come out of there? I counted five still at the camp when we were there.”
Noah put the binoculars to his eyes and I picked my cell phone out of the crack in the seat. I hit the three on the speed dial and waited for Stacks to pick up.
“Yeah,” Stacks said on a yawn.
“Sorry, did I catch you at bedtime?” I asked.
“Nope,” Stacks said, “just getting up.”
I rolled my eyes. “Well, I need some lore about whatever the hell a ‘Hidebehind’ is.”
Stacks snorted. “I’m sorry, did you say a ‘Hidebehind’?”
“Yeah, did I stutter?”
“Sorry, it’s just, I haven’t heard anyone seriously mention a Hidebehind, well, ever.”
“So you have heard about them?” I asked.
“Well, yeah, but I mean, no one takes them seriously.”
“I have the organ slop and shriveled meat suits of three loggers that would beg to differ,” I said.
“Shit,” Stacks’ tone had sobered up. “And you’re sure it’s an actual Hidebehind?”
“Stacks,” I said on a sigh, “if I was sure, why would I be calling you?”
“Because even if you knew what it was, you still wouldn’t know what the hell to do about it?” I could hear the smug smile in his voice. I opened my mouth to argue, but he cut me off before I could. “First off, besides the carnage, what made you think it could be a Hidebehind?”
I sighed. “The sheriff in town said his dad used to tell him stories about this thing. Something about it only coming out once every seven years, taking seven victims and then disappearing again?”
“Drunken logger stories,” Stacks said. “Yeah. That’s the lore.”
“Apparently I need to spend some more time in the ‘Drunken logger stories’ section of my local library,” I said. “How do you kill it?”
There was a pause before Stacks answered. “Well, that’s the tricky part.”
***
“Ok, I’m calling bullshit,” Noah said. “I think you’re just using it as an excuse to get sloppy drunk.”
I took a pull on the whiskey bottle and passed him the notes I’d taken from the information Stacks had given me.
“So Hidebehinds hate the smell of alcohol and love intestines. Gee, I’ve never seen the word ‘intestines’ written inside a drawing of a heart before,” Noah said.
“Shorthand, smartass,” I said. “Stacks was going off a mile a minute.” I took another long drink. Luckily, I was drinking Stitch’s Whiskey. It never gave you a hangover, unless the person you were drinking with, wished it on you. And the protection from certain kinds of supernatural bullshit that it offered to the drinker was why hunters carried cases of it around in their vehicles. God bless Mattie Mae for her distilling skills and those of her daddy before her. I let out a burp and held my hand out for Noah to give me back the notes. He was squinting at them, trying to read what I’d written up one side of the scrap of paper and down the other. He passed them back to me, shaking his head.
“So how hard are you and Stacks going to yank my chain before you admit that this is bullshit? There is no such thing as an invisible monster.”
I snorted. “Well first off, there are a lot of invisible monsters or monsters that can hide in plain sight, camouflage, walk through solid objects, imitate other animals or people…”
“Ok, ok, ok,” Noah said, holding up a hand. “Just stop. I already have enough nightmares.”
I looked at Noah, but he dropped his gaze and picked up the iron axe at his feet. “Ok, so this ‘Hidebehind’ is some kind of monster that comes out once every seven years to eat seven victims…”
“Well, not the whole victim,” I said.
“Not the point I was driving at, Bane,” Noah said. “Ok, and it will only go after sober people?”
I nodded. “Apparently so. Apparently, it likes its victims dry and unpickled.”
Noah sighed. “And you’re getting drunk because?”
“I told you, all accounts and descriptions of Hidebehinds have come from drunk loggers. You have to be intoxicated to see them, apparently. If you’re sober, they ‘hide behind’ shit
and wait until your back is turned so they can skewer you and then disembowel you,” I said.
“Lovely,” Noah said and he made a snatch for the whiskey bottle which I held out of his reach. “How about you start sobering up and I’ll get drunk enough to kill it?”
I rolled my eyes. “Noah, I have to behead the damn thing with that axe, while drunk. I love you, but you have a hard time hitting something with a shotgun spray while completely sober. If we don’t get it tonight and it knows that we’re hunting it, it’ll just move down through the woods to one of the groups of campers in the national park to the east and snack on little Bobby and Mary Sue. We’ve got one shot, and it’s tonight.”
“Fuck,” Noah muttered.
I took another drink and grinned as I was starting to feel the buzz of the alcohol in my head. “Bet you wish you were back in Pennsylvania now, huh? Maybe a Greyhound bus is looking like a limo and the little bit of ruffled feathers back home isn’t looking as dangerous as waiting sober and unarmed in the woods for a monster to sneak up and disembowel you.”
Noah closed his eyes and put his head down. “This is such a shit plan.”
“Apparently,” I said, setting down the now empty whiskey bottle and reaching for a second one, “those are the only kinds of plans I know how to conceive.” Noah slumped back down to lean against Lucy’s toolbox. We were both sitting in Lucy’s bed just for a change of scenery. We’d had to wait until the fifth car had passed us, heading back to town, before we drove back across the road. There was still crime scene tape but the bodies, well what had been left of the bodies, was gone and the scene was quiet.
We parked where Willy Dirk’s truck had been the night before when he’d been attacked. All three bodies had been in a little clearing where the loggers had been storing extra gear when they weren’t using it. The gear had been taken away because of blood and...other splatter, which I guess made it evidence. The plan was for Noah to stand in the clearing, waiting, like a sitting duck for the Hidebehind to sneak up on him, while I hid out by the truck. According to Stacks, the drunken babble that passed for lore said that the Hidebehind had an incredible sense of smell and that the smell of alcohol would immediately scare it off. I was hoping the smell of metal and oil and unleaded fumes that always emanated from Lucy, even when she was turned off, would mask my whiskey smell. When I saw the thing, the plan was for me to sneak up on it and cut its head off before it disemboweled Noah.