Hawg

by Steven L. Shrewsbury

  Provides the county Sheriff’s cell number? Doug couldn’t help but smile at his own weary jest.

  “Reverend, if there was any news, you and your wife will be the first ones I call.”

  “I have to trust that all is being done to find my Micole.”

  “Go out around Miller’s Fork and look, sir. We’re canvassing the countryside for many things. If you know of any place where she’d stay, let me know.”

  “I have three sons and one daughter,” Wingler told Doug, his voice still in the thrones of serious sermon bile. “I shant lose her. If she dies, I wouldn’t want her blood on your hands.”

  The line went dead and Doug put his phone away. He stared at his hands and rinsed them off again.

  He then gladly accepted the glass of iced tea the farmer offered him, and the seat in his living room. Solow took a glass of tea himself, lit up a smoke and sat in his recliner. The scent of the smoke drove Doug wild, but he said nothing about it.

  “Thanks, Mr. Solow.”

  “Thank you for your help, Douglas. You always were a good boy.”

  Not insulted by his words over his youth, Doug looked at the pictures on the walls and said, “No problem, sir. That birthing deal was an easy task compared to my last couple days.”

  “Sure is a terrible thing, son, all this death. It was wonderful to see life again.”

  Doug grunted in agreement, then glanced at the pictures, some tiny-framed photos, all black and white, fading away from sunlight and age. Others truly were even older from their yellowed edges. These pictures were group shots of military regiments. Others appeared to be family gatherings, perhaps picnics or reunions.

  “I cannot fathom where Luella would’ve gotten to,” Doug shook his head. “That man, that thing or whatever it is, if it killed her, she can’t be far.”

  A look of distress spread over Solow’s face. “Poor lady, such a hard life she had to end in that way.” He took out a red handkerchief and rubbed his nose. Solow then flicked ashes from his cigarette and said, “I did all I could to make her comfortable, you know? I sure tried.”

  “Mr. Solow,” Doug said gently. “I hate to pry, but I want to ask you this. I don’t need to know for any official case thing, I just want to.”

  Solow sipped his tea and shrugged. “Go on.”

  “What was the connection to you and Luella Goodkind? Was she an old friend, what?”

  Solow smirked and took a drag on his smoke. “Ah, you wonder if she was an old lover of mine? Nasty of you, Douglas, but nothing so blue, young man. Luella was my half sister, made by my ol’ daddy when he strayed from the pure ways once in Baton Rouge.”

  “Oh.”

  “Since her appearance and dubious past were somewhat off putting to the locals here, she never bothered saying it and I never shared. It was our own business.”

  Doug nodded. “I see.”

  “You young people tell too much of your private business. Was at the laundromat mat once and heard tell this gal starts blabbing about having an ovary blow out. For the luvva God, Douglas, can’t anything be private any more?”

  “That’s true, sir. Thank you for telling me.”

  Solow shrugged. “Anything I can do to help you. Still, we better get to searching for her with the others, I think. My legs aren’t as young as yours no more. I need a few more minutes rest.”

  Doug took out a toothpick and replied, “Sure. I was supposed to see that biker Huxtable out here soon. I wonder where he’s got to?”

  ***

  Mr. Roberts wondered the same thing. He awoke from his sleep in the abandoned cabin and sat up with a start. Seldom one to leave himself exposed or in a weakened position, he cursed his foolishness.

  “Abandoned in the godforsaken boondocks,” said Roberts.

  Up on his feet, Roberts peered from the window of the cabin out on the waters of the quarry. The boat was gone outside and no car sat in the distance.

  “Damn peckerwood fuck,” Roberts cursed Hux. “I’ll find another connection. Fool.” He looked at the edges of the quarry and wondered how easy it would be to climb to the top of those huge bluffs and walk back to his car. “When we sailed over, it looked like an impossible task, hence the safety of this spot, aye Hux?”

  He sat on the worn couch again and contemplated his next move. His fingers drummed on his left pocket, where his wound up garrote lived. Not wanting to have to strangle the big biker, he reached down to his ankle and took out his small automatic that hid there. Finger stroking it. He replaced it on its spot, knowing he’d have to wait for Hux to return.

  “You are shit, Mr. Huxtable, but can I find another turd to polish so easily in this shitpile of a town?”

  Unsure if he should kill Hux immediately on his return or not, Roberts trembled at the memory of the creature they’d seen. Though humanoid, it looked like a monster from a fifties drive in film. Oh, better make up, Roberts noted, for the seething beast was like nothing a cheesy studio could vomit out fast. The multiple pectoral muscles and nipples, that memory made him pause. That and the metallic tusks.

  “How is that possible?” Roberts said to no one. He took a few steps and picked up a book off a pile of novels. “A book on spanking? Tender Bottoms. What a joke, but typical.” He dropped the book and paused at what passed for a kitchen area. A card table, a few dirty folding chairs and a threadbare lawn chair served as furniture there. He found no refrigerator, but two long plastic coolers sat against the wall. Upon opening one, only two beers swam in the dank water.

  He got up and went to the small toilet room. Hux said there was one flush in it. Roberts urinated and thought on how scaled down this place was for a cabin. He searched around and found no fishing paraphernalia, just extra sheets, some condoms, batteries, and lubricants.

  “Predictable,” Roberts remarked. “You are easy enough to understand, stupid rube, perhaps easy enough to control in the end.” Nostrils flaring, he said, “Mice. At least it isn’t rats.” The image of Hawg crossed his mind. The tusks, the mouth, the teeth. “Are you bringing back childhood fears of rats?” he wondered to the images in his mind. The hovel in the south side of Chicago he grew up in bled into his mind, mainly the night a rat nibbled on his back as he slept.

  His mind spun, banishing that memory and he lay back down, not wanting to sleep, but surrendering to the arms of it nonetheless.

  ***

  Micki awoke in the concrete tube. It wasn’t that she heard the choppers fade away and the cop sirens peter out, it was the sensation of tiny legs in her ear canal. Micki screamed and wrangled to bat at her ear, but the culvert prevented the motion. She could reach her ear, but forgot where she was. Micki inserted her right pinkie in her ear and reamed out her ear. Tears of joy sprang to her eyes as she lucked out, snagging and removing the insect. Alarm set in and she had to get out of the tube. Backing out as fast as she could, Micki flailed with her legs in the open air. Though her pain was so great, she fell face down into the grass of the ditch. Her thirst great, she licked up the muddy water there, anything to quench her desire.

  It took her several minutes, but she stood up by the mouth of the round opening. She was so hungry. When she stretched out, her body protested, but a rush came over Micki. This made her feel somewhat better. Micki’s thoughts ran somewhat lucid, she tried to stand straighter, but could only hunch over. Micki staggered a few steps in the ditchline and then started an agonizing crawl up the embankment to the shoulder of Route 66.

  Her mind burned and thought that if a car hit her, maybe that would bring an end to her suffering. No vehicles passed as she stumbled across the highway. She could hear cars in the distance, but they were on Interstate 55. As she wobbled, Micki fell down the other side of the ditch and stepped up onto the disused section of Route 66. The state closed these lanes to facilitate less maintenance. She plummeted and laid on this double lane set, trying to get her bearings.

  She then turned over and looked into the greenery beyond.

  Jesus looked back at
her.

  At first, she was excited, but then started to weep again, for Jesus was made of stone.

  ***

  After he pulled the fire alarm, Andrew saw Hawg march on through the plant. There was nothing he could do. He had no gun or weapon, nor would his death matter if he punched the beast.

  Andrew looked down on the floor at the file strewn about. The bloody remains of Jack Sullivan ruined forever Andrew’s dismissal papers. He stared down the way at the shift coordinator Carol Brandt. He realized she and maybe Deb Johnson were the only other people who knew about his dismissal. Andrew shook his head violently, ashamed that he thought of such a thing when so many were hurt.

  He started down the way, but soon saw the path of destruction Hawg made. The dead, the dying, the injured filled the aisle and the areas nearby. He saw Minh and stopped cold. Down on his knees, he turned his friend over. It was a waste of time, as his skull was smaller in size than usual and he was long gone.

  “Damn, damn, damn,” Andrew said and laid him down gently.

  Way off this path Andrew saw people huddled by machinery, hiding. He was tempted to tell them to get out, to run away, but he didn’t know where Hawg was. Not willing to send anyone to their deaths, he headed back toward the back door of the factory.

  Andrew paused before he hit the stitcher line area and thought about Jack Sullivan and how he died so fast. He just let it happen. Was it only because he couldn’t have stopped Hawg and would’ve died himself? Andrew understood he wouldn’t have died to save that man, who was so vindictive he’d tried to fire him over petty nonsense in the middle of a family tragedy. He couldn’t make himself sorry that he’d seen the inside of Jack’s skull.

  It took Andrew a while to get through the plant, even if he took another route to avoid the apparent bloodbath route. He felt so sorry for the fallen, for friends he had made twenty years ago when he came to work there. Through the rack he saw Lena Alsdorf, thick glasses gone, her eyes still open, face frozen forever. Wilma, on her knees in the blood, hair stuck to her tear stained face, cursing anyone who tried to stop her from covering up Lena’s body.

  Most of it made him feel numb, as if it was a crazy film, not reality.

  All that proved important was Jordan and getting back to him. These people didn’t matter, he told himself, no matter how close they all were. Blood is what mattered, family. He wished he could shut out the wails of the crying and the screams of the hysterical ones on the production floor.

  Many had fled the back of the plant and meandered in the parking lot. Several escaped in cars or were in the process of adding to such an exodus when Andrew departed. As he walked to his truck, he saw Hux, slipping down the side of the building toward the line of bikes.

  Andrew broke off his path and headed toward Hux. The biker saw him coming and said, “Easy man. I didn’t mean to…”

  “You fucker!” Andrew raged and stopped short of striking him. “What was all that? You led that thing here?”

  “I didn’t know it followed me!”

  “Yeah sure,” Andrew sneered, his hand on the throttle of Hux’s Harley.

  Hux exclaimed, “On my mother’s life, Andrew. That thing…it knew me…followed me here.”

  “How? That’s fucking silly! Could it smell you that well?”

  Confused, Hux shook his head, then looked down at his Harley. “My bike. The damned thing knows me by my bike.”

  “What?!”

  “The straight pipes, the cylinder missing at times. The fucker knows me. He wants me. I escaped him. It jumped back into Injun Creek.”

  “Well, what the fuck are you gonna do about that?”

  “I dunno man.”

  Andrew frowned. “This is the answer for you, Hux. You want me to spell it out for you? The cops can’t find it or get that thing. It wants you, it knows you and can find you, by the sound of your Harley. That means, we know how to get it into the open.”

  Hux rubbed his rump and asked. “What are you saying? Are you saying we gotta trap it or get it?”

  “I don’t know what I’m saying. This has to stop before my kids get it, or, if that doesn’t grab ya enough, you get it.”

  Hux nodded, watching as the people start to file out the back door of the plant. None seemed to be in a mad rush, though. “What do we do?”

  Andrew shook his head. “It’s nearby right? How did you get away from it?”

  “Cops and firemen out front. It jumped in the creek like I said. It ran from the guns”

  Both looked toward the creek and then each other. “You fire up your hog and its curtains for us.”

  “What do I do?”

  “Come with me. We have to figure this out.”

  ***

  Hawg ran the edges of the creek until it emptied into the Vermillion River. His body glided through the loam and toward the opposite bank. The current was weak so Hawg swam against it for several minutes. A white walking bridge stretched over the river at one point. He paused and glanced at the green grassy area near this bridge’s edge. Eyes focused, Hawg picked up a series of grave markers far off. This wasn’t where he slept before, but it almost looked familiar.

  Out of the water and trotting on all fours, Hawg passed through the park. He didn’t see anyone nearby, however across the river he saw a few old men walking. They missed him as he approached the border of the graveyard. In the park he saw smaller structures made for children. Hawg stopped to sniff a tiny barn door on a steel post. His knuckles nudged it and the door swung around, creaking. He could smell children, but none were there. He sensed old women as well. Old, dried up sows left their scent everywhere.

  Near a rusty slide, a concrete drinking fountain drew his attention, only because a pool of water gathered at its base. Down to all fours, he prepared to drink this still water until he saw his reflection. He’d seen himself before, but thought of the children who played here and his own toys back in the round barn. He was not like them. Then again, they weren’t like him, either.

  A yard high wrought iron fence was all that kept Hawg out of the graveyard. He eyed the spikes on top and showed them respect. Hawg easily conquered this obstruction by grabbing in-between the spikes and soon, he ran among the tombstones. He needed rest. As he tried to find a place to sleep, he eyed the boxy crypts, reminding him of the stall he slept in at the other graveyard. It was snug and inviting.

  Hawg wanted to go home. He had to. Soon. Responsibilities awaited him but he was too weary to return. The elusive biker caused him to feel anger, such rage that he wasn’t used to, down on the farm. He felt pain in his body. That was alien on the farm as well.

  The faces and folks Hawg slew in the factory skipped across his mind, but they didn’t stick. After all, he reasoned, they were all pigs.

  Hawg traipsed on, his legs weary, until he saw a crypt greenish with age. The pillars out front denoted a colonial style, and the word over the iron gates on the entrance drilled into his brain.

  SOLOW.

  ***

  Andrew glanced at the implements in the bed of his truck and then at Hux. They stood in the biker’s driveway, loading in more materials. “We really need to call my brother about this idea.”

  “Are the cops going to go for this scheme?” “May not hurt to have some more guns around if we

  really can get this thing trapped.”

  Hux pondered that for a moment. I want to kill Hawg, he thought, not the cops. How do I shake this asshole to get what I want done?

  “Weren’t you supposed to go get your kid?”

  Andrew swore. “Shit, your right. Still, we should contact Doug. Listen to the sirens. This town is gonna go crazy once it all hits the fan. There won’t be any more shielding the story.”

  Hux nodded with vigor. “Gimme a minute to figure all this out, all right? We aren’t even sure what we are doing just yet.”

  Andrew dropped the truck into reverse and they backed into the street. “I’ll feel better once Jordan is close to me. I need to call my wife.
”

  “You saw it up close, Andy?”

  Andrew nodded once as he drove. “I saw it kill Jack

  Sullivan right in front of me. Pig man indeed, huh?” Hux raised his eyebrows. “Jack bought the farm?

  Shame.”

  Andrew shot Hux an acidic look. “I won’t shed any

  tears, but I thought you two were tight.”

  “He’s an asshole.”

  “Not any more.”

  “What was it? What did it look like to you?” Andrew’s thumb tapped the wheel. “I can see why the

  kids thought it was a pig man, but, damn, that’s what they

  invented the word monster for. It was a guy, I’m sure of it,

  but damn, the metal horns or whatever? Christ. I wouldn’t

  begin to guess what it really is. I’m sorry I doubted Jordan,

  though.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN Setting Traps

  Nothing like this had ever happened in Miller’s Fork, of course. The witnesses to the rampage at the factory varied from older workers who told their stories with sober words to younger, eclectic employees who told stammering confessions that exaggerated the events.

  There was no one in the Mayor’s office or answering his phone to hold back a tide of inquiries. Once a few emails and calls started to make the rounds, reporters dispatched from Peoria, seventy miles away.

  Sheriff White came to town, passing Andrew and Hux as he entered the plant through the rear employee entrance. Doug didn’t want to accept the reality of the call to Ambrose Brothers. Some of his worse fears made vivid, he soldiered on. The ambulance services of Miller’s Fork and the neighboring hamlets of Odell, Fairbury and Chenoa offered up their services. It was a mess and the county coroner, Porter Loring, stood just inside the rear entrance of the plant.

  “Getting tired of seeing you, Porter,” Doug said to him as they walked down the ramp to the ruined key entry doors.

  The aged man spoke with his usual upbeat prose. “Ah, but it’s not quite mid day and life goes on. Since the plant manager is among the dead, no one wanted to make hard choices for the factory.”

  Doug blinked. “Oh?”