War Pigs

by D V Wolfe

  I wasn’t too worried about the “swinging an axe” part of the plan. I’d killed things while I was drunk or halfway there before. When Rover’s, the hunter dive bar in Tennessee, had been attacked by a pissed off colony of vamps, I’d been trashed and gone after the bastards with the knife Turk used to cut up limes. It was the “sneaking up on the thing” part that I was nervous about. Apparently, Hidebehinds were as skittish as they were ruthless. Once they had their prey, they’d rip it apart, but if the prey turned to see them before the Hidebehind had it speared on a claw, it would hide. I was worried I’d fall in a hole, hit myself with the axe, and then the damn thing would take off. If I was honest though, I was mostly worried about screwing up and getting Noah killed. This wasn’t new. Every hunt I had the same worry. I tried to spare him whenever I could. But, I had to admit, he wasn’t just a kid out hitchhiking anymore. He was becoming a hunter and without him, I would have never been able to do this job. Just like the Rawhead had been on our very first hunt, this was a doubles match.

  “I just think it’s very convenient that to hunt this monster you have to be drunk,” Noah said. He leaned back and closed his eyes. The sun was low in the west and the woods around us were dark. I took another drink. Lately, I’d been purposely avoiding more than a shot here or there when I needed stitches or bones reset. I couldn’t blame Noah for thinking this was all an elaborate hoax so that I could get wasted on the job. I’d lost Nya a month ago, almost to the day. Joel was still missing and the trail for Sister Smile had never been colder. I’d failed so many people. It was strange though, instead of wanting to get drunk and forget it, it was making me angry and I wanted to stay awake. I wanted to plan. I wanted to run down every lead that came to Walter, the second it smacked him in his old man’s face, like stepping on a rake in the backyard.

  This new plan had quickly hit a snag. I wasn’t the only hunter around and the early hunter gets the hunt. Still, even though this hunt was pretty thin, it was what Walter had left and I’d jumped on it. I wanted them all. I needed the body count to exchange for souls, but more that, I was angry and I needed the catharsis of stabbing shapeshifters, stumping vampires, cremating vindictive spirit remains, running demons through with a sword and tonight, I really needed to pop the head off of a Hidebehind.

  The woods around us were at shift change. We could hear the day birds quieting down and the squirrels that had been chattering non-stop in a nearby poplar finally packed it in for the day. Possums, skunks, and rabbits were starting to stir up the debris on the forest floor and the stars were starting to come out when the first owl hoot of the night broke the silence between Noah and me.

  “Well, I suppose we should give the dinner bell the old ‘ringy-dingy’,” I said, my words coming out slurred. Yeah. I was definitely drunk enough to spot the thing. Now I just had to actually see it, sneak across the twenty yards of grass and trees between the truck and where Noah would be playing bait, and kill the thing before it killed him. Easy peasy, right?

  “I want to be the designated axe swinger next time,” Noah grumbled. “We should have brought a third person so you could get drunk and see the thing, they could be bait, and I could just swing away at where you told me it was standing.”

  I slid off Lucy’s tailgate and leaned back against it until I could stand up straight. “Management requests that you please kindly deposit all comment cards up your ass.”

  I squinted around at the clearing. It was dark, pitch dark. According to the sheriff and the forensics team on the scene, when the thing had grabbed Willy, the first victim, he’d been working by lantern light along with Danford and Pickett as they cleaned and put away their gear. I didn’t have a lantern. I had a penlight. I tugged Lucy’s driver side door open and pulled it out of the door pocket. Noah was holding the axe and I took it from him before handing him the light. I couldn’t stop grinning at the look of disbelief on his face.

  “This?” Noah said, holding the penlight up. “This is what I have to defend myself with?”

  I rolled my eyes. “You don’t have to defend yourself.” I put a hand to my chest and stumbled sideways on my feet. “I will be there to defend you. And your...honor. I’ll just creep up on him like that pink panther in that cartoon and whack!” I swung the axe in front of me as a demonstration. Noah jumped away and I realized too late I hadn’t had my stance as stable as I thought because the axe spun me halfway around.

  “What was that pink panther’s name?” I asked Noah. Now, this was going to bother me.

  “The Pink Panther,” Noah said.

  “Yes,” I said, “that pink panther character, what’s his name?” Was Noah hard of hearing?

  “He’s called the Pink Panther,” Noah said.

  “Now you’re screwing with me,” I said. “That’s way too obvious.”

  Noah sighed. “I’m actually feeling more comfortable about standing in a clearing, waiting for an invisible monster to turn me into a human shish kabob and pull my intestines out to make balloon animals than I am standing this close to you while you’re drunk and holding an axe.”

  “Good plan,” I said in a stage whisper. “Go to your station and pretend to be doing something with the flashlight. Make sure and turn it on though. Otherwise, I’m fighting drunk and in the dark. Hey, if you feel it behind you, turn it off and then back on again so I’ll know it’s there.” For some reason, the thought of that was hilarious and I couldn’t stifle the giggle that escaped.

  Noah walked off like he was a kid going to school or maybe a condemned man going to the gallows. Same thing really, if I remembered correctly. I moved back around Lucy, half-dragging the axe and trying to be sneaky, but banging my knee on Lucy’s fender. The pain shot up my leg and acted like a hand swiping at some of the cobwebs in my brain. I had to focus. Even if I couldn’t be sober, I had to focus, at least for the next couple of hours. At least until Noah was safe and the thing was dead. The image of Nya’s body, pinned under Ornias’ corpse, fire climbing her skin, shot across my memory, pulling the pain from my knee, into my chest. I was never going to let that happen again. Not if I could help it. And I could help it tonight. I just had to focus.

  On the other side of Lucy, I could see Noah’s flashlight beam playing across the trunks of the trees on the far side of the clearing. I gripped the axe, close to the rusted metal head and I tried to be still. The corners of my vision were a little warped and the ground was starting to dip and rise. I tried not to blink as I watched the flashlight beam. According to the coroner, it had been about ten, ten-thirty when the men had been killed. It was nine-thirty the last time I’d looked at my cell phone. I crouched down by Lucy’s front left tire and waited. I tried to breathe softly and hyper-focus my eyesight on the flashlight beam. Noah was going to be safe. I was going to fly across the ground between us the second I saw the beam flash. I wasn’t going to make a single sound. The thing would be dead before it got within a foot of Noah.

  The rest of the woods around us seemed to dampen. The sounds going softer as if someone had just tucked it in for the night, draping a heavy blanket over the whole woods, even dimming the stars above. All the hairs stood up on the back of my neck and I knew in my gut that it was here. I blinked quickly to clear my head from the whirling distortion the whiskey was trying to distract me with. Was that a flash on and off? I raised up a half-inch. No. He’d just moved the beam off of a tree trunk and then back. Then the beam turned off and the darkness was complete around me. Then back on. The thing was here.

  I stood up, my legs screamed in annoyance from sitting crouched too long. I did my best to force them to suck it up and move anyway. I cringed as a twig broke under my foot, but I couldn’t stop. I was running. Not in a straight line. My feet were carrying me diagonally and I had to make a course correction. Now it was too much to the right. I corrected again, raising the axe on my shoulder. I hoped I wasn’t making too much noise. I was doing my best to keep to the area that Noah and I had tried to clear off of anything I would trip over
or step on, but my legs weren’t cooperating that well. I made it to the edge of the trees and I saw it.

  It was tall, probably close to eleven feet. Even in my drunken state, I saw an immediate problem with our plan. I was five foot, six inches. It had long, thin arms and legs with long feet, hands, and claws. Its face was drawn and it had antlers. But it was furry. It looked like a deer had fathered wolf children and then the kids had grown up to mate with a giant praying mantis. No wonder they hid when sober people were around. Thankfully, it hadn’t noticed me behind it. It had, however, noticed Noah who was standing in the middle of the clearing, shaking, the beam of his flashlight flitting from tree to tree. If I couldn’t behead it right away, I would have to cut it down to size. I took two more steps forward and the Hidebehind paused in front of me. Now or never.

  I swung the axe so hard that I knew if I didn’t connect, I was going to end up spinning around and probably falling down. Thankfully, the Hidebehind wasn’t fast enough to get out of the path of my swing and the blade dug into one of its spindly legs. It screamed and everything around us seemed to shatter. The silence brought by the metaphysical blanket that I guessed had come with the Hidebehind, was lifted. I heard birds squawking awake in nests and a screech owl took off from a branch somewhere near my head. The Hidebehind’s screams were unearthly, almost like I could feel them in my bones and the soles of my feet. It was trying to get away, trying to drag its wounded leg, but it still had my axe embedded in it.

  I grabbed the handle and jerked the blade out. I swung again and the leg gave way. Blood sprayed everywhere. I heard Noah yelling and when I pulled back to take another swing I chanced a look at him. He was staring at me, alarmed, his eyes wide. The Hidebehind was crawling now, trying to get away into the woods. I had to move fast, which wasn’t easy. My vision was blurring from adrenaline mixed with the whiskey and I almost tripped over its remaining leg. It had gotten to its stomach. It was still screaming as it tried to crawl. I fell forward on it, my knees on its back and I raised the axe over my head. I tried to aim for the back of the Hidebehind’s neck. I missed, and the blade sunk into the side of its head, severing one of its antlers. It was still screaming. I jerked the blade out again and swung harder, aiming for its neck again. I almost hit myself in the thigh with the blade but managed to clumsily jerk my leg away just in time. The axe bit into its neck. The screams got louder. Now the axe was stuck. The Hidebehind was spasming. It jerked, knocking me off of it again. It’s long claws were flailing, digging into the dirt, trying to pull itself forward, but its coordination was a random sequence of spasms that would sometimes propel it forward and sometimes to the side. I was drunkenly stumbling after it, trying to grab the axe handle before it got too far, but I was slow because of the whiskey and it was unpredictable because of the exploratory spinal surgery I’d just given it.

  This embarrassing display went on for five or ten minutes until Noah was at my side, stomping his foot as if he was searching around on the ground for a bug to smash. He finally connected with the Hidebehind’s leg stump and it screamed again. It had stopped moving when it screamed this time and I was able to grab the axe handle. I had to two-hand it to jerk it out of the thing’s spine. I tried to put every ounce of momentum and strength I had into a downward swing, aiming at the twitching monster’s bleeding neck. The screaming was cut short as the axe landed, cutting most of the way through the remaining bone and tissue. The body went still and I had to pull the axe out and swing one more time to completely sever the head. I didn’t think it would try to come back with only an inch of fur holding its head on, but I didn’t know this monster personally. Maybe it was an overachiever. Better to be safe. When the head was detached, I kicked it towards the center of the clearing. It took three tries for me to connect with it and I almost fell down in the process, but then it sat there, blood pooling on the dirt, finally dead.

  And Noah was safe.

  I looked up at Noah. He was standing still, his flashlight on the head.

  “That was,” Noah panted, “the most bizarre fucking thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Really?” I said. “What about the necro witch and her huntsman?”

  Noah shook his head. “Doesn’t even come close.” Noah moved forward slowly until he could squat down and stare at the head. “I mean, you were hacking at something invisible and then blood was pouring out of thin air,” Noah said. “Then, at one point, you were kneeling, fucking kneeling in thin air and you were moving forward. All I could see was your axe and blood spraying everywhere, and you, looking the angriest and the drunkest I’ve ever seen you. And then, when I tried to help, I could feel something huge under my foot but I couldn’t see it. Then, you swung the axe and this severed head just popped out of thin air and rolled across the ground like a fucking bloody soccer ball and suddenly I can see this huge terrifying thing. And that scream!”

  “Yeah,” I said, resting the axe on my shoulder. “I could go the rest of my life without hearing that bullshit again.” I turned to look at the Hidebehind’s corpse. “So it doesn’t actually ‘hide behind’ trees when a sober person turns around. The damn thing is just invisible unless you’re hammered.”

  I took a step and the ground came up to meet me. I stumbled forward and tripped on the severed leg of the Hidebehind. The axe fell off my shoulder as I fell forward and the blade dug into the dirt a couple of inches from my face.

  Noah sighed above me and stepped forward, taking the handle of the axe. “And no more sharp objects for you until you’ve sobered up. Maybe never. In fact, you’re grounded.”

  I rolled over onto my back on the ground, a drunk slurring laugh spilling out of me. “In more ways than one.”

  2

  “Well, I suppose we can’t leave the corpse here,” I said when I stopped laughing. The whiskey fog was starting to lift, and with the assistance of the tree behind me, I was able to get to my feet.

  “We’re not going to have to bury it, are we?” Noah asked.

  I shook my head. “I actually want to take some of it back for Stacks. Maybe just the head.”

  “Yes!” Noah said. “And we put it under his pillow.”

  “Works for me,” I said, “but I was thinking he might be able to do some experimentation, maybe get an idea of how the Hidebehind is invisible unless you’re drunk. Maybe he can come up with something that would make it easier and...well not so ridiculous to hunt the damn things.”

  “Fine,” Noah grumbled. “As long as we can give it to him by putting it in his bed.”

  “Deal,” I said. I was still a little buzzed, but I was starting to come out of it. Noah grabbed a garbage bag out of Lucy’s toolbox for the head while I dragged the corpse into an area the logging crew had already cleared. We piled the severed leg on top of the rest of the corpse. We dumped lighter fluid on it and leaned back against Lucy to watch it burn.

  “Jesus,” Noah said, “that smells like…”

  “A burning bandaid,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Noah said, “or a furry...war crime.”

  We were quiet for a while, just watching the fire and trying not to breathe in the fumes. There was something satisfying about watching the corpse of a murdering monster burn, while Noah was standing next to me, griping about the smell. It took a surprisingly short amount of time to burn. Maybe it was just the nature of the Hidebehind. Since it was usually invisible, maybe it meant that it would disappear to nothing quickly as it burned. As the cinders were dying I stirred the ashes around with the axe and Noah opened a water bottle and spritzed it around on the ash pile.

  I kept stirring until every ember had been put out. Nya would have been proud. She had a thing about fire. I tried to ignore the ache in my gut, thinking about how she had died.

  “Can we please get the hell out of here?” Noah asked.

  I nodded. It was now a little after two in the morning. I tucked the garbage bag with the Hidebehind’s head into the toolbox, along with the axe, and we loaded up.

  “Should
we stop by and tell the sheriff that we got the Hidebehind?’ Noah asked.

  “At two in the morning?” I asked, turning to look at him. The whiskey had worn off now and I made a mental note to kiss Mattie Mae the next time I saw her, for making whiskey that didn’t come with a hangover included.

  Noah looked conflicted. “I mean, the sheriff knew about the Hidebehind. Shouldn’t we, I don’t know, let him know that he was right?”

  I shrugged. “Tell you what, we’ll swing by the cop shop and see if he’s there.”

  Shotfall was somewhere between a half-horse and a one donkey town. There was a short string of stores on the main drag and the cop shop sat right in the middle. The shops were all sleeping, but the cop shop had one eye open, keeping watch on the neighborhood from behind a single lit window. One lone cop car sat at the curb, the fluorescent light from the window, reflecting off its chipped paint.

  We pulled to the curb behind it and Noah and I leaned forward, looking for movement through the lit window.

  “What are the odds, do you think, of the sheriff being the person sitting up, burning the midnight oil?” I asked.

  “Only one way to find out,” Noah said.

  We got out of the truck just as a figure moved across the window. A few seconds later, he pushed open the front door and stood silhouetted in the frame, squinting out at us with his hand on his gun.

  “Who’s out there?” Sheriff Moody called.

  “It’s...us,” I called back.

  “Oh. Oh!” Moody said, comprehension ringing out in his voice. He looked back over his shoulder, thought better of it, and came out to join us instead of inviting us in. “Uh, how’s the…” He paused and studied us in the light pouring from the window. “What are you…”