Mudcat

by John Quick

  “How much you got out there, Stan?” Rob asked.

  “Enough,” Stan replied. “Throw a match in the still, it’d probably take the whole top’a that hill off once the jars caught too.”

  “And you’re okay with giving it up for this?”

  Stan shrugged. “Ain’t like I can sell it if I’m dead, now is it?”

  Rob nodded, his mind racing. “Then the only problem is figuring out where to find our fish.”

  “Well that’s a little obvious, too, don’t you think?” Leanne asked. “It killed Elise, it attacked Jake and Carrie, and all it got off me was my dog. If it does live in the lake back there, it’s only a matter of time before it comes back here, right?”

  “Makes sense t’me,” Stan agreed. “That thing seems like it’s getting bolder as it goes along. Probably smart enough to not go after a crowd, but if we don’t let on there’s so many of us here, maybe it’ll make a try for us. We just have to be ready for it.”

  “That’s the trick, though,” Rob said. “We don’t know where it is right now, so we have no idea how long we’d have.”

  Stan grunted. “Your truck able to run in this enough to make it up the road a piece?”

  Rob shrugged. “Probably.”

  “You, me, and the kid there could probably get the still down and loaded, along with the crates I got, maybe twenty minutes, tops. Ten or fifteen if I can get my truck moving enough to get it down the hill to wherever you park at, then we transfer it over. Less than five minutes to the base of the hill and back again, so we need about a half hour to get everything in here and start getting ready.”

  “Unless it’s close by and we don’t get that half hour.”

  Stan sighed and nodded “Yeah, there’s that.”

  “Okay,” Rob said. “I’m going to grab my radio out of the truck, then get ahold of Charlene. I’ll put the guys out and about on alert to be on the watch for this thing. Maybe we can find out where it is, and figure the rest out from there.”

  “I’m lost, here,” Carrie said finally. “What the hell are we talking about doing?”

  “Frying that fucker,” Stan said, snickering a little. “We’re going to lure the fishy bastard here, then cook his ass.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Andy stared long and hard at the half-submerged patrol car most of the way down the parking lot toward the boat ramp. He drummed his fingers on his steering wheel and hoped madly that he would see some sign of life out there, something to make the knot that had formed in his gut loosen. The nearby pickup truck was cause for concern as well, even if its presence here explained why no one answered when he’d tried to call and tell Chet that his wife was dead a little while ago, but it was Steph’s patrol car that really hit him close to home. Chet and Gail were fixtures in the town, sure, and he’d enjoyed more than his fair share of meals, coffee, and conversation in their diner, but Steph was another cop, and possibly the closest thing that he had to a partner now that Rob had been bumped up to the number two slot and seemed poised to take that final step when Chief Williams finally retired before too much longer. She’d been to his house, eaten at his table, even gone shopping with his wife on occasion, and now he was looking at the car she had been so proud to drive looking like a discarded child’s toy.

  Worse, he couldn’t even make it down to where the car was to verify one way or the other whether or not she was dead. He felt sure she was. The way the back end was sticking up out of the water far enough for him to see the oil pan underneath it almost guaranteed that the driver’s compartment was completely flooded. It was possible she’d managed to get out before that happened, but something told him that she hadn’t. After all, he’d not seen any sign of her on his way out here, nor had she turned up at the station last night. Add in the fact that there was something killing and partially eating people, and things just couldn’t come out in her favor.

  He let out a shaking breath and snagged the microphone for his car’s radio off the little clip that held it in place, and keyed the button.

  “Dispatch, this is Unit Three,” he said, trying to work up the nerve to make the report on what he’d discovered.

  “Andy?” Charlene’s voice came back, only the barest hint of static crackling through the line.

  “This is Unit Two,” Rob’s voice broke in. “I’m receiving you as well. Did you find anything?”

  Andy’s mind raced as he tried to remember the ten-codes for what he was looking at, then gave up and decided that “plain-speak” was good enough under the current circumstances. Anyone listening in on a scanner would know what was being said anyway, and as small as Ashford Fork was, the news would be all over town before lunchtime. “Guys, I’m out by the boat ramp. No sign of Eddie yet, but I’ve got two vehicles here in the parking lot, neither in very good shape.”

  He took in another deep breath and closed his eyes. “One of them is Steph’s car.”

  “Any sign of her?” Rob asked.

  “No, boss,” Andy replied, eyes still closed. “But from looking at the condition of her car… dammit, Rob, I’ve got to assume the worst here.”

  There was no reply to that, only silence in the radio’s speaker. He didn’t bother checking to see if they were still there; he knew they were, and knew that they were trying to come to grips with what he’d told them. He understood the sentiment, and felt it himself.

  “What’s the other vehicle?” Charlene finally replied, her voice heavy with barely restrained emotion. Always the professional, that woman.

  “Looks like Chet Carver’s truck,” he replied, trying to draw his own inspiration from her business-like demeanor. “I can see the trailer he hauls that john boat around on still hooked to the back. No sign of him, or the boat, either.”

  After a brief pause, Rob came back on the line. “Leanne says him and Mitch Bolton went out fishing yesterday afternoon. We have to assume they were together whenever whatever happened, happened.”

  “Most likely,” Andy agreed. “I can see into the cab of the truck, and it’s definitely empty, so… yeah. More of the killer fish’s handiwork, you think?”

  When Rob answered, his voice sounded resigned. “Have to think that, it seems. Any chance you can get down there to the vehicles, check them out a little closer to see if there’s any chance…?”

  “Already thought of it,” Andy said. “And no, there’s not. Should I just go on ahead and see if I can’t track Eddie down, or what?”

  Another long pause.

  “Actually,” Rob said. “I have something else I need you to do. If you can do both at once, all the better. We’ve got a bit of a plan here, but we need to know where this thing’s at before we can start putting the pieces together for it.”

  Andy stared down at the radio, knowing what the man was about to say, but still not completely willing to believe or accept that it was real. He’d seen enough to believe that something unnatural was running around Ashford Fork, but to swallow the concept that it was a giant killer catfish stretched his credulity to the breaking point. Still, he had no other answers for it, so he was going to accept it, at least until he could prove differently.

  “You want me to try to find the catfish,” he said, before Rob had a chance to. He’d been hoping that by saying it out loud himself, it would help him believe it, but it didn’t.

  “I know how it sounds, Andy,” Rob replied. “But it’s all we’ve got right now.”

  “If it helps,” Charlene said, finally speaking up again. “Apparently calls were coming in all night about it. The thing’s been terrorizing the area around the lake, killing pets and trying to bust into houses and the like. Anywhere the roads are flooded, somebody there’s seen it.”

  It didn’t help, but he wasn’t about to come out and say that. What he did say was “Any ideas where I should look, then?”

  “We know it was around here,” Rob said. “But we’re not sure when it was around here last. When did the last call come in, Charlene?”

  Aft
er a brief pause, she replied. “Looks like about an hour and a half ago, out on Maple Road.”

  Andy considered this. Rob was at Leanne’s house, which was on Lakefront Drive. The ramp was a block from there, on Center Street, which was about a mile from Maple Road. This thing was covering decent ground for a fish.

  “I’ll head out that way, then,” he said. “I’ll holler if I see anything. Unit Three out.”

  He hung the microphone back up and turned the volume on the radio down. He never did that, but he was having a hard enough time holding onto his sanity without listening to any more talk about killer catfish. It was bad enough for him to have to entertain the possibility such a thing existed. Worse that he was being sent to look for it in the wake of reporting Steph’s likely death and being pulled away from looking for Eddie, another cop that was probably also dead considering how the last twenty-four hours had gone. At least it might stop him from having to listen to any more talk about the thing in the meantime. He put the car back in drive, eased gently into the boat ramp’s parking lot, making sure to stop before the water got too deep, then reversed and cut the wheels, backing onto the street facing in the direction of Maple Road.

  Despite his misgivings, he did as he’d been told to, driving slowly and scanning the flooded ditches on either side of the street for any sign of something that shouldn’t be there. He slowed to a near-crawl once he felt the turn for Maple was coming close, and rolled his window down a little, ignoring the rain that pattered in as he squinted into the gently floating underbrush. He finally saw something moving around as Maple came into view, so he hit the brakes and leaned a little ways out the window for a better look.

  He recoiled once he realized what it was: a German Shepard, the collar and tags on its neck indicating it was someone’s pet, trying to swim for shore. In and of itself this wouldn’t have been cause for alarm, but the fact that everything from just before the dog’s back legs was missing, was. It was incredible that the animal had survived even this long; the agony it had to be in was unimaginable.

  Andy had nearly made up his mind to get out and put the poor thing out of its misery when a quick flash of movement from near the front of the car caught his attention. He slammed his foot on the gas to try and get away from it, whatever it was. It shot past the side of his car, something cold, wet, and slimy smacking him across the face hard enough to knock his hat from his head. The car slid sideways a bit as he slammed on the brakes, the wet road eliminating any traction he might have had otherwise. He stuck his head out the window without stopping to consider how idiotic such an idea was and looked behind him.

  His mind started screaming when his eyes landed on the very thing he’d been told to watch for, but hadn’t truly believed existed. It was as they’d told him: obviously a catfish, easily six feet long from lips to tail, and with eyes that impossibly seemed to carry a very human version of annoyance in them. The thing had landed in the ditch, apparently knocked off course when he’d avoided its attack, and was using its barbs and fins to push itself back onto the roadway again. He watched, dumbfounded, as it slid back onto the asphalt and began rocking itself back and forth, trying to work up the momentum to leap at him again.

  He didn’t give it the chance. Acting on pure adrenaline, he dropped the car back into reverse and floored it, the tires throwing water in every direction before they finally caught and sent him racing backward with a screeching lurch. He fought to keep some semblance of control over the vehicle and raced at the thing that could not possibly be real.

  It saw what was happening and stopped that weird rocking, then began trying to quickly shove itself out of the way of the speeding car. That this indicated an intelligence far beyond what a simple fucking catfish should possess was nowhere near as important to Andy as the fact that he needed to put this thing out of commission, and fast!

  He managed to clip its tail as it dove into the ditch again, knocking it sideways in the water. Andy stomped down on the brake pedal again, but the car continued to skid backward, turning slightly despite his efforts to keep it straight, before finally coming to a rocking stop with one tire off the road and submerged in the ditch. He kept his foot on the brake, dropped it back into drive, and started trying to get his shotgun loose from its mount beneath the passenger dashboard, all without turning his eyes away from the thing thrashing wildly along the side of the road.

  It disappeared beneath the water’s surface, effectively hiding itself from him. He searched frantically for some sign of where it had gone to, then heard a loud, pained yipping sound and focused his gaze on the place where he’d last seen the dying dog. It was gone, only a pinkish spot drifting across the water to indicate where it had been.

  Andy stopped trying to free the shotgun and jammed a finger against his two-way radio’s volume knob, not even caring that he’d inadvertently turned it up as loud as it would go. He snatched the microphone off the dash so hard the clip snapped off and nearly bashed himself in the lips with it in his haste to get it to his mouth.

  “I’ve got the fucking thing,” he screamed, adrenaline racing through his veins and preventing him from speaking any quieter, even if he’d thought to try. “It was on Center, just turned on to Maple! Sweet Christ, the fucking thing is real!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  If there was one thing that Jake wished above anything else, it was that he’d had time to grab some clothes before racing over to Leanne’s to escape the thing attacking him and Carrie. At the very least, he wished he’d managed to grab his shoes. Leanne had scrounged up a pair of sweatpants for him, and while they were tight and clung to him like a second skin, at least they were better than nothing. If all he was doing was hanging around her place waiting for help to arrive, it wouldn’t have been so bad. Since he was about to go running around in the woods, being barefoot was definitely going to suck.

  A part of him had been secretly hoping that the catfish-thing wouldn’t even show up, and they would just give up on their crazy plan and try to make it into town where they would be safe. Once there, they could call in the army or the marines or whatever, and let them deal with it. Then the panicked call had come in over the radio that it had been spotted and was headed for the lake, and he didn’t have time to daydream any further. Rob simply lowered his handheld radio and cast a serious glance at Jake and Stan.

  “It’s time,” was all he said. It was enough.

  Carrie grabbed his arm as he stood up, and when he turned to see what she wanted, Jake saw terror raging in her eyes. It wasn’t all for herself, either; that much was evident. No, she was terrified for him, and that was something that he never thought he’d see from her in his lifetime. He’d never given it that much thought before now, but he seriously hoped they both came through this relatively unscathed, because for the first time in his life, he thought he had a pretty good idea what it meant to love someone more than he loved himself, to actually be in love. If they made it, he was going to get a job, earn some money, then buy a ring and make it official. Maybe they were a little too young for that, maybe she wouldn’t accept his proposal when he finally made it, but he was going to do it anyway.

  “You come back to me,” she said. “I didn’t go through hell with you the last couple of days to let you die on me now.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of doing different,” he said, smiling at her. “I’ve got a reason to come back, so I’m damn sure going to do it.”

  “Oh, Jesus fucking Christ,” Stan muttered. “Can you two be any more clichéd? Get your ass in gear, boy; we ain’t got a lot of fucking time here.”

  Jake wanted to be angry at the man for interrupting their moment, but Carrie actually chuckled and shook her head, which let him relax some.

  “He’s right,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean it’s not real. Don’t do anything stupid out there.”

  “No promises,” he replied, then headed to the door where Rob and Leanne were speaking softly to one another. He saw her lean up and plant a kiss on Rob�
�s lips, and turned away to give them their moment of privacy. Finally, Leanne stepped back to the sofa with Carrie, and Rob looked over to him and Stan.

  “You ready?” Rob asked.

  “Fuck no,” Stan answered for the both of them. “But that’s not gonna stop me, so let’s get to it.”

  “Yeah,” Jake agreed. “What he said.”

  Rob nodded, opened the door, took a quick look around, one hand resting lightly on his pistol, and then led the way outside.

  Once they were on the porch with the door closed behind them, Rob actually pulled the gun. Jake tensed, wondering if he’d seen some sign of that thing headed their way, then realized he just didn’t want it to get soaked once they stepped out into the flooded lawn. He tried to make himself relax, but found that much easier said than done considering there was a damned catfish preying on human beings somewhere out there, and could swim up on them at any second. Rob turned to them, nodded once, then headed down the steps as fast as he could, heading for his truck. Jake—the only one without a weapon in hand—followed, with Stan and his thirty-ought bringing up the rear.

  The trio wasted no time closing the distance between them and the truck, and when Jake opened the back door and pulled himself up into what was normally a prisoner compartment, he felt grateful for the first time in his life to be sitting there. Rob got in behind the wheel, and Stan hurried around to the passenger side and climbed into the truck faster than Jake would have expected from the old man.

  Once they were all in, Rob put the key in the ignition, took a deep breath and turned it. Jake was expecting the truck to balk when he tried starting it, but it fired right up, although the engine sounded a little choppy, and Jake thought he could hear some splashing from underneath as the belts cut their way through the water that had begun to invade the engine bay. Rob glanced over to Stan, who merely shrugged.

  “So far, so good,” the old man said.