by JE Gurley
“They were in there long enough.”
Hays frowned. “Yeah. They must be hitting it off.”
“Should we follow him?” Nelson asked.
“Give him a nice lead.” Hays held out his hand in a stopping gesture as his partner cranked the SUV. “Wait. It’s the Alvarez woman.” He did not try to hide his dislike of Dr. Joria Alvarez.
“Do we follow her?”
Hays hesitated. The Alvarez woman had been on their radar for some time but Hardin was their primary target. His orders were specific. “No, she’s probably going shopping or something. Follow Hardin.”
They slipped into traffic four cars behind Hardin.
“I thought he was off the case,” Nelson commented as he jockeyed in position behind a city bus.
Hays smiled. “That wouldn’t stop a man like Hardin. He’s out for blood.”
“Then we had better stop him.”
Hays wasn’t as certain that stopping Hardin from killing the creature was a good idea. “Yeah, that’s what they pay us for.”
* * * *
I knew I was jeopardizing everything I had worked for, but it didn’t seem to matter as I prepared for the coming night. My partner was dead, ripped open as I watched helplessly. I might not have been able to save him, but I could have died trying. He deserved at least that much loyalty from me. The creature was on course for scores of deaths if it stuck to its new pattern. Whatever had changed its killing habits, I had to stop it.
I had returned the sniper rifle at Captain Bledsoe’s insistence, but I still had my resources. After as many years as a detective as I had put in, you knew people, knew their dirty little secrets. In the confines of the old chapel, a rifle would be too cumbersome anyway, too slow to bring to bear. Instead, I decided to meet with a gun shop owner with whom I had previous dealings and had ignored some of his less than savory shenanigans. His name was Smitty, a short, slight man with a limp and a speech impediment who made up for his shortcomings by carrying a .357 Magnum stuck in his belt. The gun was so heavy I was surprised his pants didn’t fall off. He was not pleased to see me.
“Detective Hardin,” he sneered as I walked through the door. The shop was empty.
“Smitty. Haven’t shot your balls off, I see.”
“What bringsth you here?” he snapped.
I tried not to grin at his lisp. “I need something special, Smitty.”
He waved his hand over the glass case in front of him. “It’s all right here, Detective. What can I thell you?”
I stared at him until he flinched. “I said something special, Smitty. Let’s check out your store room.”
His Adam’s apple bounced nervously up and down his thin throat as he said, “There’s nothing there but ammunition.”
I slammed my open palm down on the top of the glass showcase hard enough to sting and to make Smitty jump in surprise. “I don’t have time for games, Smitty. I need something with penetration and stopping power.”
“I got nothing like that,” he protested. “I’m legit.”
“You heard about my partner?” I asked.
He nodded. “So?”
I leaned over the counter. “So I’m in no mood for your damn games. I told you what I need. Now get it or I’ll rip off your God damned head and shit in it.”
The threat produced the desired results. His eyes went wide and he backed up against the wall cringing.
“Wait! Wait!” he yelled. “I got thomething you might like. Come on.”
I followed him into his storage room. He moved aside two cases from a stack marked ‘.38 caliber ammunition’ and pried open the case beneath. Inside, nestled in a vinyl form-fitting case, lay the biggest pistol I had ever seen. The barrel was almost two feet long. Smitty’s eyes gleamed like a hungry fat kid tearing into his Easter basket full of chocolate bunnies as he described the pistol.
“It’s an Austrian Pfeifer-Zeliska .600 Nitro Express Magnum.”
“It’s the biggest damn gun I’ve ever seen,” I replied suitably awed and more so that Smitty could say all of that without lisping.
He smiled. “Penith envy. It’s eight times as powerful as a Smith and Wesson .44 Magnum. They mix nitroglycerin with the powder to increase its power. It fires a 900 grain, .60 caliber bullet that can penetrate 10 mm steel plate at 12 yards like butter.”
I picked it up by the polished wooden handle. It was surprisingly heavy.
“Thirteen pounds,” Smitty said, reading my mind. “The weight helps reduce recoil, but it’s still like firing an elephant gun. As a matter of fact, the ammunition was developed by the British for just that type of game.”
I ran my fingers along the barrel lovingly.
“42 CrMo4 Tungsten steel. It won’t rust or scratch. It’s a single action revolver. Holds five rounds. You have to cock it each time to fire, like in the old days. The hammer is made of gold.”
I held the revolver out and aimed. I could see I would not be able to hold it level for very long. After a few seconds, my wrist began to burn. I would have to raise and fire it quickly. I turned to Smitty.
“How much?
“Theventeen thousand dollars, plus forty bucks per shell.”
I laughed. “Where did you expect to sell this thing?”
He shrugged. “Oh, I got connections.”
“I’ll take it.”
He wet his lips with his tongue and smiled. “Cash or charge?”
I stared at him. “No, I’ll take it. Just for tonight. Plus ten rounds of ammo.”
“No way in hell?” he yelled and grabbed for the gun. I pushed him back against a stack of creates and laid my arm across his throat and applied pressure to his prominent Adam’s apple. I didn’t like to use strong-arm tactics, but I needed the weapon.
“I need it for one night, Smitty. After that, you can wipe it down and sell it and I won’t bust you for having it.”
“Do I look crazy?” he groaned, his face turning red. “What if something happens to you? I’m out seventeen thousand bucks.”
“We could go downtown and discuss the legality of possessing such a weapon. Then I could borrow it from lock up for a few hours, put it back when I’m through and let the courts decide if it’s legal. Of course, you might have to spend the night locked up behind bars.”
Smitty winced. He had done a few days jail time before and had not done well. Small, nervous men usually don’t. They make easy targets. “You bastard,” he spit. “If anything happens to that gun, I swear I’ll sell my shop to pay for a hit man from Jersey.”
I laughed. “If I don’t bring it back in perfect working order, you won’t have to worry about me.”
He grabbed the pistol, put it back in the case, and tossed in a box of ammo. “There are twenty rounds in here. I’ll take the unfired ones back, if you please. I operate on a small profit margin here.”
“I promise to be as precise as I can.”
I grabbed a pair of earplugs out of an open canister and walked out with the heavy gun case under my arm feeling a little more confident about the coming night. I wasn’t sure I could hit anything with the cannon I was carrying, but I sure as hell could rupture a few eardrums.
The rain had returned with a vengeance. My Acura needed new wiper blades, something I had been putting off for a while. I drove squinting out through the rain streaked windshield and streetlight glare. Once, I thought I spotted the black SUV but if they were following, they were now keeping a low profile. In spite of the weather, I managed to reach the monastery unscathed. I searched the sky as I got out of the car, but it was so dark I couldn’t have seen the Chupacabra until it was on top of me. A thick drapery of rain clouds hid the moon. I hurried to the side door waiting to feel talons rip into my flesh the entire way. Inside, I felt a little better. I was familiar enough with the way not to stumble over everything. I risked a flashlight occasionally but did not want to grow dependent upon it.
I caught the odor of fresh blood as I entered the old chapel and wrinkled my nose. The
creature had fed recently. I shook my head sadly at the thought of one more victim I could not save. I spotted a body tossed unceremoniously against the wall of the apse like a discarded soda bottle and grew angry. She had been a pretty little thing, barely out of her teens, red hair matted with blood. Her throat was open to her chest, one naked breast shredded where a talon had cruelly ripped into her. I scanned her quickly for signs of life, expecting none and finding none. Her body was cold and stiff with rigor mortis. She had been dead since before the creature’s game with me the previous night. I picked up a piece of police tape and covered her staring eyes. It was all I could do for now. If I called in my discovery, forensics would descend on the place and I would lose my chance at killing the creature. She could wait a few hours longer. She certainly wasn’t going to get any deader.
I scanned the ceiling and the columns but saw no sign of the creature. I was searching for a likely spot to hide out and wait, when I saw that the wrecked remains of the wrought iron gate behind the altar. One of the ornamental metal spears was detached from the gate and lying on the ground. The gate hinges were hanging loose. It had taken a massive amount of strength to wrench the gate from its concrete mountings. I took a deep breath and began to descend the stairs when something caught my eye. Around the far edge of the altar, I was shocked to discover a second body, another young girl viciously mutilated, her head almost ripped from her torso, a pool of congealed blood spread around her like a crimson sheet. She, too, was cold. Two bodies? Why would the creature kill two women in one night? This was something new. I left her lying beside her companion in death and continued down the steps.
I entered a small basement room with a vaulted roof crammed full of rotten, moldy furniture, broken statuary, and dust-covered portraits – worthless detritus of an abandoned monastery. The floor was covered with cobwebs, rat droppings, dirt …, and footprints. The creature had been here, could be here even now lurking in some dark corner, waiting for me. I tried to get my apprehension under control. I gripped the Pfeifer .60 caliber tighter. It’s heavy weight felt reassuring in my hands. The basement was empty, but I discovered two entrances to crypts deeper in the subbasement, one on each side of the basement. I chose the one on the right and followed the twisting stairs past open alcoves filled with decaying coffins, bones and mummified skin poking through open holes. Some niches bore only dismembered piles of bones. Stacks of skulls stared at me as I passed by. I wondered why the Jesuits would leave bodies beneath an abandoned monastery but decided it was a more dignified end than scooping them up in cardboard boxes and moving them elsewhere.
I grew concerned by the lack of rats. Every basement had rats scurrying about. The city was full of rats. Every alley held its compliment of rodents. Yet, this basement had none. What did they know that I did not? The old adage about rats and a sinking ship gave me pause to think. I searched a maze of small rooms and catacomb-like corridors but found nothing, no sign of the creature. I was ready to retrace my steps back to the basement to try the second door, when I heard a strange noise coming from somewhere ahead of me. I continued forward as stealthily as possible, the .60 caliber held in front of me with two hands. I had the earplugs draped around my neck. I donned them in case I had to fire quickly. This limited my hearing, but I din't want to go deaf from firing such a massive cannon in an enclosed space.
I stepped into a sticky mess in the darkness and cursed silently. A foul odor rose around me, the smell of corruption and decay. I risked a quick flash of light and bit back the gore that tried to climb my gullet. I had found the rats. They had not fled, as I had feared, though doing so might have saved them from their indignant fate. Scores of rotting rat carcasses lay strewn across the floor amid a congealed morass of blood and fluids. Most were headless. Maggots crawled through the mess and wriggled beneath the skin and beetles scampered off with choice morsels between mandibles. At the edge of the pile of dead rats, I spotted two strange cylindrical objects like partially deflated balloons, somewhat oval and about two feet in length. The ends were shredded, as if ripped open from the inside. My stomach churned when I suddenly realized I was gazing upon discarded eggs, Chupacabra eggs. A third egg lay a few feet away partially hidden by a rotting wooden crate. With three discarded eggs, I assumed three offspring lurking somewhere in the dark underbelly of the church. Judging by the size of the eggs, they should be small, but I had no idea of their rate of maturation.
A second thought sent my stomach into convulsions – was there a female? Was I facing not one, but two of the adult creatures? Why had Joria not mentioned this possibility? After all, she was the expert. My jittery nerves calmed somewhat when I recalled a nature program I had seen on television about hermaphroditic lizards, male lizards able to lay eggs. Was the Chupacabra a hermaphrodite? I hoped the hell it was because I didn’t savor the idea of confronting two of the creatures in the dark confining basement. This changed things dramatically. The young would have to die as well as the adult. Four or five of the creatures loose in the city would be an impossible nightmare.
Louder this time, I heard the sound again from deeper in the room, a blanket snapping in the wind though I felt no breeze and had a sickening hunch it was no blanket. I swallowed saliva to moisten my suddenly dry throat and crept closer.
In the darkness ahead, I distinguished movement of a deeper shadow outlined against a wall. The size changed constantly, as if the creature was extending and collapsing its wings, hence the flapping sounds I had heard. I hoped it was the adult. I crept closer on hands and knees. As I neared the creature, the stench became almost overpowering – blood, dead flesh, feces, ammonia – all combining to sicken my stomach. I swallowed hard to keep my rebellious stomach under control. Only a low wall separated me from the creature now. I was less than six yards away. I feared to get closer lest it detected me. I knew instinctively that I would not get a better shot. I had to act quickly. Any delay and I could lose my shot, or worse, bring the creature down on me.
I took a deep breath, clicked on the flashlight and dropped it on the floor beside me in one swift movement. As I had hoped, the sudden bright light briefly blinded the creature. I leveled the Pfeifer .60, but hesitated when I saw that the creature was not the one I had earlier encountered. This one was much smaller, barely five feet tall and much lighter in color, one of the juveniles testing its wings. It was much larger than I had anticipated. Now I understood why there were two dead women in the apse above. The juveniles had matured quickly and had graduated from rat blood to human blood. This was why the adult creature had changed its pattern. It was nesting. But where were the other two juveniles?
When the creature before me hissed and flashed its talons, I fired. The .60 caliber jumped in my hands so badly that I almost lost my grip on it. The muzzle flash cast the room into short-lived brilliance, dispelling the shadows and creating a decidedly Dante’s Inferno hellish scene. The sound of the blast deafened me even through the earplugs, shaking dirt and plaster from the ceiling and walls that showered down on me like dry rain. As the cloud of dust cleared, I caught a glimpse of my handiwork.
My first had round struck the creature in the chest, producing a small entrance wound but splattering the wall behind the creature with ochre hued gore as it exited through a hole the size of a grapefruit. The creature screamed in pain and flailed against the wall, smearing its own blood across the stone, but still lived. I took a deep breath, held it and cocked the gun, aimed and fired again, this time at the juvenile creature’s head. Time slowed as I pulled the trigger. The flash and sound disappeared. I watched the .60 caliber slug leave the barrel of the Pfeifer, bore a hole through the dust motes frozen in the air and strike the creature just above its right eye. Half the skull exploded from its body in a reddish mist, along with chunks of brain matter and a yellowish ichor that oozed down its body and colored the wall.
I exhaled. Sound and fury returned in a clap of thunder. The clap of the shot slowly receded into the distance. Then the echoing anguished wail of a
nother of the creatures, sounding almost human, drifted down the twisting corridors. I didn’t have much time.
The creature I had shot convulsed against the wall several times and then collapsed on the floor. I stared at it trapped in the beam of my flashlight with satisfaction as it lay there in a spreading pool of its own blood. It was surely dead. No amount of powers of rejuvenation would resurrect it now. Its brain was jelly where the heavy .60 caliber slug had plowed through the skull and embedded in the wall with enough force to crack the masonry.
I would have felt more glee if this creature had been the adult. I had been lucky. I had come up on it unaware, as it had been testing its wings, preparing to leave the nest. I prayed the others were not yet capable of flight. Once free of the monastery, they might be impossible to locate. Again, I wondered why Joria had not mentioned the possibility of offspring. Had Joria or her father never encountered juveniles in their research? I looked further for the remaining two juveniles but found no trace. Was I too late?
I picked up my flashlight and retraced my steps to the basement. I debated following the other corridor, but news of my discovery had to reach Joria or the authorities as quickly as possible. It was important for them to know we now faced more than one of the creatures. As I rushed down the length of the basement, I heard a shrill cry from behind me, from the other doorway. I didn’t stop to look. I began to run, dodging obstacles that seemed to lunge into my path out of the darkness in their eagerness to trip me up. An unseen object clipped me from behind and sent me reeling. I stumbled and slid along the floor, losing the Pfeifer in the process. I heard the massive gun slide across the stone floor.
I glanced behind me and saw a pair of human legs barely visible in the shadows. As I watched, they disappeared into the darkness. A repeat of the earlier call, much closer, forced me into action. I had no time to investigate. I looked longingly at the rectangle of light before me, the door beckoning me like a church door to a repentant sinner. The clouds had cleared and the moon shone through the holes in the roof, washing the sanctuary above in a golden lambent light. Forgetting the Pfeifer and my unknown assailant, I ran.