The Guard

by Eric S. Brown

  “If those Sasquatch or whatever make a run at us in here, I don’t know that we can hold this place,” Dolan said.

  “It all comes down to how many of those things there are out there,” Lancaster agreed. “And we have no means of knowing that.”

  “Hey, Evans, you seem to know a lot about those things.” Motter looked over at him. “What do you think?”

  “I’m not an expert.” Evans shrugged. “I just know they’re Sasquatch or something close enough that you might as well call them that. I don’t know anything more than you do beyond that.”

  ****

  Tim wasn’t the sort to screw around. Most of his adult life he had been preparing for the end of the world. His house more closely resembled a fortress than a home. He had been listening to his scanner when everything in Canton went all pear-shaped and leaped into action. The scanner had been silent for hours and hours. As far as Tim could tell from the limited information he had, Canton had fallen. There was nothing at all on the web about what was happening in the small town. The powers that be must have clamped down hard on any outgoing data and phone calls from Canton. They didn’t want the world to know what he knew now… That Sasquatch were real and they weren’t peaceful giants who wanted to be left alone but rather hungry monsters that ate human flesh.

  Having secured his house, Tim sat in its living room, metal shutters drawn down over the room’s sole window. The power was out in the town but the generator he kept in the basement was running just fine. He had two weeks of fuel for it and enough supplies to last him several years. Unlike some many others, tonight he was safe or at least as safe as anyone could be in a town overrun by monsters.

  Tim sat in his recliner, an AR-15 lying in his lap, and a cold beer in his hand. The whole mess was difficult to believe. Sasquatch being real wasn’t exactly what he had planned for but everything had worked out for him just the same. Part of him felt guilty for the comforts he had while everyone else was out there dying. That was something he had never planned on. Tim had always figured that he could write everyone else off and just be happy, surviving where they couldn’t because they were too caught up in the crap of the world to care about their future. Not even his victory beer tasted as good as he had imagined it would when everything hit the fan. Maybe if Shannon were still alive things would have been different, but she had passed on last year. A sudden heart attack had taken her from him after 25 years of married life together. She had helped him build this house, stock it, and armor it up. Surviving in it without her left him lonely.

  Cursing himself for being so soft, Tim gulped down the rest of his beer and got up from his recliner to get another one. He walked into the kitchen and opened the door of the fridge. Tim knew it wasn’t really the end of the world. There couldn’t be enough Sasquatch in all of America to truly take down the powers that be. This was a localized event. In a few days tops, the Army would most likely have the area cleared out and things would start back toward being normal. He let the door slip out of his hand and close without getting another beer as he really thought things over and a crazy idea formed in his head. Prepping wasn’t his only love in life aside from his late wife. Tim was also a hunter and a veteran. The end of the world was one thing, but what was happening in the town of Canton was something else altogether. Tim came to the realization that he could make a difference, be the hero he had always so wanted to be. Heck, he had an armory better than what the sheriff department kept stored away in his basement and the skills to make use of it. Right then and there, Tim made up his mind.

  Racing down the stairs into the basement of the house, Tim got geared up for war. He looked a lot like an overloaded Rambo when he came back upstairs. There were two AR-15 on his back, hanging there by their straps, a highly illegal, fully automatic AK-47 in his hands, and pistols holstered on both his hips as well as strapped to each of his ankles beneath the legs of his pants. Two grenades dangled where they were clipped to his belt and a backpack full of extra magazines on his back under the straps of the rifles there. Night vision goggles covered his eyes beneath the rim of NASCAR logo cap.

  Tim had shut down the house’s generator while he was in the basement. There was no sense in wasting fuel if he was going out. The house would still be a safe place to run to if his plan went south but Tim knew he would be damned if he didn’t get out there and try to help those who hadn’t prepared like he and Shannon had. He told himself that she would be proud of him for what he was doing as he marched up to the front door and opened it, stepping out into the night. His Conquest Knight XV sat in the driveway waiting on him. It was the ultimate bug-out vehicle that Tim had spent the bulk of his life saving on it and was still paying off. Her black, armored frame gleamed in the moonlight. Tim smiled at the sight of her, knowing she was worth every penny he had painfully put into her. Shoving the bag of extra ammo he was carrying into her passenger seat along with his two AR-15s, Tim moved around the large Hummer-like vehicle and climbed into its driver’s seat. Her engine purred to life as he turned the key in her ignition. Tim was still smiling as he backed up and got her turned around to head down the drive toward the distant main road at the bottom of the secluded hill his house sat upon. It was time to bust some Sasquatch heads and he was ready.

  ****

  Cato floored the gas. His patrol car picked up speed as he jerked the wheel hard to the right in order to avoid an overturned minivan in the road. One of the Sasquatch chasing him leaped on top of it and gave a startled shriek as the van’s side door collapsed inward under its weight. The Sasquatch sunk into the van, catching itself painfully before plummeting all the way inside of it. The top half of its body stuck out of the top of the van as it fought to pull itself up and free of the vehicle. Cato laughed at the Sasquatch’s plight but his small moment of victory didn’t last long. There was three more of the Sasquatch still on his tail.

  The tires of his patrol car squealed as he rounded the corner of the street he was on. At the speed he was going, it was impossible to keep the car completely in the road during the turn. It bounced into the front yard of a house before its wheel came back onto the asphalt of the road. Cato had no clue where he was heading. There didn’t seem to be any place safe left to go in Canton. The power was out everywhere and the Sasquatch ruled the town. Keeping on the move was the only thing that had kept him from becoming just another late meal for the beasts. He didn’t even consider leaving the town. Cato just couldn’t bring himself to do that. He had taken an oath to protect it and was a man of his word. But he was just a man, alone, and no matter how heavily armed, he couldn’t take on all the Sasquatch by himself. Cato knew he needed a plan but hadn’t gotten a chance to even try to come up with one. The Sasquatch had been after him ever since he had left the station and the beasts were relentless. He couldn’t shake them.

  Jerking the wheel to the left, Cato turned onto Baker Street, narrowly dodging the ravaged and partially eaten body of a woman that lay in the road. He wasn’t able to miss it completely, a sickened expression on his face as the car bounced as it ran over one of the corpse’s outstretched arms and he heard the bones inside of it snapping. A Sasquatch came bounding into the path of his patrol car from seemingly out of nowhere. The patrol car rammed into the monster. Its hood folded up as Cato was thrown forward in its driver’s seat. Cato grunted as he slammed against the steering wheel. The car’s windshield shattered, sending shards of glass flying. He bounced back in his seat as the car lurched to a complete stop. The Sasquatch it had struck lay in the road in front of it, bleeding and rolling about. The impact looked to have broken its pelvic bone and shattered its left hip. Cato flung himself out of the car, grabbing up an AR-15 from the passenger seat that he slung onto his shoulder by its strap, and then reached over again to snatch a shotgun. Pumping a round into its chamber, he walked determinedly toward the wounded Sasquatch and ended the monster with a single blast that pulped the side of its skull. He barely had time to turn around as the three Sasquatch that had been chasi
ng him came into view. They were moving so fast that Cato knew he couldn’t shoot them all before they reached him. Still, he wasn’t about to go down without a fight. He pumped another round into his shotgun’s chamber and took aim at the fastest of the approaching Sasquatch. The weapon thundered as his finger squeezed its trigger tight. The Sasquatch took the blast in its chest. It wasn’t enough to stop the monster but it sure as Hades hurt it. The Sasquatch shrieked in pain and fury but kept its pace toward him. Then Cato finally caught a break.

  A black, armored vehicle came roaring up Baker Street from behind the Sasquatch. Its driver didn’t even try to slow down. The heavy, hummer-like vehicle plowed into the Sasquatch, one after another, tearing through them. It hit the first of them dead on from behind, arcing the creature’s back as it broke against its hood. The Sasquatch was flung out of its path even as it fell onto the road. The hummer grazed the second of the Sasquatch, snapping the bone of its right arm in the process and knocking it from its feet into a fence. The fence splintered and collapsed beneath the Sasquatch’s weight, one of is picketed posts sinking into the monster’s side as it went down on top of it. The impaled Sasquatch whined, clutching at the piece of fence that had pierced its ribs at an upward angle. The last of the Sasquatch, already injured from Cato’s shotgun, whirled about to meet the hummer, standing its ground. The armored vehicle and the Sasquatch met head-on. The Sasquatch managed to bring its fists down onto the Hummer’s hood, caving it inward, just before the heavy vehicle slammed into it. The Sasquatch went down and vanished underneath the armored vehicle as it drove over it. Blood squirted out from between the hummer’s wheels as it rolled over the monster. An older man leaped out of the hummer, carrying several weapons with him, and tossed something that had to be a grenade back into its cab, as he came running in Cato’s direction.

  “Fire in the hole!” the man shouted at him, throwing himself flat on the road. Cato followed his example as the grenade the man had thrown into the hummer detonated inside the vehicle, igniting its gas tank in the process. The Sasquatch pinned under it died in the flames of the explosion.

  Cato and the man scrambled to their feet. The man was staring at the wreckage with a deeply sad look on his face as it burned. Cato realized that he recognized the fellow. The man’s name was Tim. He was the crazy prepper that lived out on Charlotte Lane.

  Tim tore his eyes away from what was left of his burning hummer, dropping all but one of the guns in his hands onto the road except for what looked to be an AK-47 that he brought to bear on the only one of the three Sasquatch that was still in the fight. Its broken right arm dangled uselessly at its side as it came snarling at the old man. Tim’s AK-47 chattered away on full auto as he hosed the monster with a stream of high-powered rounds. The Sasquatch staggered backward as the bullets tore into it. Cato came running over to Tim’s side, taking aim at the monster. His shotgun bucked in his hands as he fired a blast that opened up the Sasquatch’s guts and spilled them out onto the road at its feet. The Sasquatch whimpered, dropping to its knees as Tim traded out the now empty magazine of his AK-47 for a new one and Cato finished the Sasquatch with a final shot that blew away the bulk of its lower jaw in a spray of blood and teeth.

  “That’s all of them for now,” Tim said, “but you can bet there will be more coming. We can’t stay out in the open like this.”

  “Your name’s Tim, right?” Cato asked as he worked at reloading his shotgun with rounds from the pocket of his jacket.

  The old man nodded and said, “That house over there on the right. It’s as good a place as any.”

  Tim took off running and Cato followed him. The old guy was pretty spry for someone his age. Cato actually had to work to keep up with Tim as they raced across the road toward the house. The front door was locked when they reached it. The old man didn’t bother with knocking. He just barged through it, knocking it open with his shoulder. The house was dark and Cato could barely see anything from the small amount of moonlight that entered the living room they had burst into from its windows. The old man had pulled the lowlight goggles he wore down from his forehead over his eyes.

  “It’s clear in here,” Tim told him. “No sign of those things. Let’s get upstairs. It will be safer up there than down here.”

  Tim led the way. They stopped together at the top of the stairs as Tim took up a firing position that allowed him to cover the house’s front door. Cato stood behind him, panting and trying to catch his breath.

  “We should be safe up here…until we can come up with a better plan anyway,” Tim told him.

  “Tim …” Cato started and then realized that he had no idea what to say.

  “You’re welcome, Deputy.” Tim chuckled, shaking his head. “That Conquest Knight XV I blew up to save your butt wasn’t even paid off yet, ya know?”

  “I hope it was insured.” Cato grinned, suddenly feeling like a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He wasn’t alone anymore and that was a powerful boost to his outlook on things.

  “Damn straight it was,” Tim assured him. “That car was my baby.”

  “How did you—?” Cato began to ask but Tim answered him before he could finish.

  “I’m a prepper, Deputy. I’ve been ready for the end of the world for years now,” Tim said proudly. “Just didn’t really think it would be fragging Sasquatch that I would be dealing with when it happened.”

  Cato snorted. “Yeah, me neither.”

  “So you got a plan, Deputy boy?” Tim looked up at him.

  Cato shrugged. “Stay alive until help comes?”

  “That sounds like a mighty fine one to me.” The old man laughed. “But I didn’t leave my house and blow up my Conquest just to save you. There has got to be other people out there, Deputy, and we need to find them. I was hunting for anyone left alive when I got lucky and stumbled onto you.”

  “Those things are everywhere out there.” Cato sighed. “God only knows how many of them there are.”

  “Too many,” Tim said. “That’s for fragging sure. I saw at least a dozen more of them on my way into town beyond the three we killed. Had some pretty close calls with them too but my baby didn’t let me down. I made it through them.”

  “You were really attached to that car, huh?” Cato smirked.

  “She’s all I had left when my wife passed on,” Tim admitted. “Put everything I had pretty much into getting her and keeping her in top shape but she’s gone now.”

  “We’re going to need another car,” Cato said. “Trying to make it anywhere on foot is suicide.”

  “I don’t know about all that now,” Tim argued. “Cars draw attention. On foot, we might be able to keep quiet and sneak our way through those things.”

  “Good point,” Cato conceded. “I hadn’t thought about that.”

  “Given how it looked when I found you, Deputy, I doubt you’ve had much time to think at all tonight.” Tim smiled. “My Conquest had a radio in her. Top of the line and modified too. I heard some military chatter earlier. There are National Guard troops moving into town. Our best bet is likely to find them and hook up with their unit…assuming those things haven’t got them too.”

  “You really think those things could take out a unit of National Guardsmen?” Cato asked.

  “Disbelief and surprise are powerful weapons, Deputy,” Tim told him. “Those things have both going for them. Would you have believed they were real before the things you saw out there tonight?”

  “Actually, yes,” Cato answered. “But I get what you are saying. So you got any idea how we can find these guardsmen that were coming in?”

  “Not by staying here. That’s for sure,” Tim said. “We’re going to have to get moving again now that we have had a chance to catch our breath.”

  “Back door?” Cato smirked.

  “My thought exactly,” Tim agreed. “This house has to have one. We can slip out it and hopefully not be noticed by any of those things that may be coming along the main street out there.”


  ****

  Private Stiles sat at the front window of the library leaning onto the M249 that had been set up there. Private Lewis next to him stared into the street, keeping an eye out for any of the Sasquatch creatures. They hadn’t seen any of things since they had got to town though they had sure heard the things. Every so often, a cry would pierce the night from somewhere not too far away in every direction. Stiles was still inwardly freaking out that such monsters existed. Bigfoot wasn’t supposed to be real.

  “You see that?” Lewis yelled in his ear, pointing toward an abandoned truck just up the road from where the one they rode in was parked.

  Stiles squinted into the darkness. “See what?”

  “There’s something moving out there,” Lewis told him.

  “I think your nerves are getting the best of you, buddy,” Stiles quipped.

  “No, man. Really,” Lewis assured him. “I ain’t kidding.”

  Sergeant Dickerson walked up behind their position. “Is there something I need to be concerned about, gentlemen?”

  “No, sir,” Stiles barked. “Lewis is just seeing things. There’s nothing out there.”

  “Look, dang it!” Lewis protested. “I am telling you that truck just moved. Something shook it.”

  Stiles looked out into the street again, sure that it would still be empty except for the two trucks and a few scattered corpses of the town’s unlucky residents, but it wasn’t. Something roared from behind the pickup and flipped it over onto its side.

  “Frag me!” Stiles shouted as Sasquatch came pouring into the street in front of the library from every direction. He couldn’t get an accurate count of the things but their number had to be in the dozens. The monsters came sprinting along the street toward the library as he opened fire. The M249 came to life in his hands as he squeezed its trigger and held it down. Stiles moved its barrel back and forth, hosing the approaching monsters. One of the beasts took a burst of fire to its legs that cut them out from under it. Another shrieked as his stream of fire raked over its chest, punching holes into its flesh.