by John Quick
Rob shook his head and turned to Jake. “Bring those here. Carefully.”
Jake walked back to the tailgate on his knees, studying the sticks of explosive on his way. They weren’t red like the stereotypical sticks of dynamite you saw on television or in comic books, but were more of a grayish brown color, with a length of deep green cannon fuse sticking out of the tops. From what he could tell, the fuse hadn’t originally been in them, but had been added later—probably by either Stan or his son. They’d cut an “x” into the plastic top, shoved the fuse in, then sealed it with electrical tape. It was without a doubt one of the most dangerous-looking things Jake had ever seen.
He handed them over to Rob, and felt a measure of relief to be rid of them. Without lighting the fuses, he didn’t think they could just go off, but he’d heard too many stories about old sticks of dynamite sweating pure nitroglycerin, and knew that stuff was not the most stable substance in the world. He didn’t know if the stories about it were myth or reality, but he was still amazed that the rough treatment they’d been given hadn’t set them off and blown all three of them into the next county.
“How safe are these?” Rob asked, echoing Jake’s own thoughts.
Stan shrugged. “I wouldn’t smoke a cigarette around ‘em or nothing, but they’re safe enough till you light that fuse.”
Rob nodded and carefully carried them up onto the porch and sat them just inside the door. Leanne gave him a strange, worried look as he did, but said nothing about having explosives in her house. Jake couldn’t say he would’ve been as calm had their positions been reversed. Still, he had to admit that they might come in handy considering what they were up against. Of course, it was crazy to think they’d need dynamite to face down a monstrous killer catfish, but then again, it was insane to think such a thing existed in the first place, so who was he to judge?
He turned back to the toolbox, dug around, and came up with several rags so sodden with old oil that they made his hands feel slick just to hold them. He held them out to Rob when the man came back to finish unloading the moonshine. “These work?”
“Perfect,” Rob said. “Bring them, grab those last two crates, and let’s get inside and figure out how we’re going to do this.”
Jake nodded and hopped off the end of the tailgate, grateful to be standing on higher ground again. It hadn’t really helped back at the site of the still, but this time there was a door they could run through to close and lock for added protection. So thinking, he grabbed the last two crates of moonshine and headed inside as quickly as he could.
He’d no sooner set them down and stood back up than he was nearly knocked over yet again by the force of Carrie running into him and wrapping her arms around him like she had no intention of ever letting him go again. He returned her embrace as best he could with how she was holding his arms at his sides, and kissed her gently on the top of her head. Her hair smelled a bit of her dried sweat, testament to her being unable to shower since they’d run into each other yesterday, but he didn’t care. All he cared about was that she was back in his arms after the hell the last half-hour had been.
“Told you I’d come back,” he said.
“And damn near died pulling in,” she replied, her voice slightly muffled against his chest. “What was that all about?”
The relief he’d begun to feel being back in her presence began to fade away as the seriousness of their situation returned to the fore of his mind. “That thing. It attacked us up on this hill.”
She went stiff, then pulled away slightly, looking up at him. “You’re kidding me.”
“I wish he was,” Rob said, closing the door and moving past them. “Damn thing’s tougher than we thought, too. If I had to guess, we have less time than we thought we did to get ready for it.”
“So what do we do?” Leanne asked. “Wait for it to show up out there, lure it to the deck, dump freaking moonshine on it, then toss a match and hope for the best?”
“Not quite,” Rob said, running a hand through his hair then wiping the moisture from the rain on his pants leg. He turned and gave Leanne a level look. “Hate to say it, but you’re probably going to lose your house as a result of this.”
She laughed, then it trailed off as she held his gaze and saw he wasn’t joking. She looked over at Stan and found the old man nodding, a slight smile on his face, as though he’d figured out exactly what Rob had in mind. Jake, on the other hand, was completely clueless.
“What the hell are you talking about?” she asked
Rob gestured to the closed front door. “It’s still raining out there for one. We attack it outside, and if the rain doesn’t wash the moonshine off, it’ll put out any flames pretty damned fast. Plus, we have to cut off any chance of escape it has. That means we need to lure it into the house.”
His gesture shifted slightly to one side and toward the floor. Jake saw with alarm he was now indicating the dynamite. “And since alcohol fires tend to go out once they’ve burned off all the alcohol, unless we get lucky and it burns long enough to actually catch the thing’s flesh on fire—unlikely, based on how it handled all the gunshots we filled it full of—we need something with a little more punch, something to put it out of commission long enough for us to burn it.”
Carrie shuddered against Jake; he could understand the sentiment. What Rob was suggesting went beyond extreme and into the realms of madness.
“You want to blow up my house?” Leanne asked, incredulous.
Rob sighed. “Not all of it, hopefully. Just part of it.”
Jake wanted to laugh, but he was too scared.
“And where exactly am I supposed to live once you’ve blown my house up?” Leanne pressed. Obviously she hadn’t found any humor in Rob’s response.
Rob sighed again. “I suppose you can stay with me until they get it repaired or rebuilt or you find something else.”
She stared at him for a long moment, then burst into laughter. Jake’s eyes flicked from her to Rob’s look of utter confusion and back again.
“You don’t mess around,” she said, wiping her eyes, still laughing a little. “Normally a guy’d ask me out on a date, we’d kiss, maybe even have sex, then he’d ask me to move in with him. After we’d been doing all the other stuff for several months or something. You? No, you just blow up my goddamn house and go for the gold on the first shot, don’t you?”
Jake had to admit, it was somewhat satisfying to see the man who’d been a pain in his ass for years looking so flustered.
“Fine,” Leanne said, taking a deep breath and holding it, trying to force the last of her chuckles down. “What’s the plan, Romeo?”
This time, Jake did manage to laugh as well, despite the terror knotting his guts.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
It was the last place he wanted to be, but as Jake stood outside on Leanne’s back porch, smoking a cigarette that he’d had to bum off her, he knew he had no one to blame for it but himself. The plan required someone to be bait for the thing, and he’d volunteered. Carrie had been shocked and even a little hurt, Leanne thought it amusing, and Stan and Rob had both tried to convince him that it wouldn’t be a good idea, that they should all be out there to help provide a more enticing target for the thing, but he’d insisted on being alone. It took some doing, but he’d finally talked them around to the idea, and thought he’d managed to earn some of Pinkston’s trust in the process.
His reasoning was simple, and based on one detail that it seemed everyone had forgotten about except for him: that thing had tried to talk to him, and it sounded like Brandon. He’d be the first to admit that it was one of the nuttier concepts in a day filled with them, but he knew what he’d heard. He still didn’t have an explanation for it, even after having most of the morning to think about it, but he was convinced that Brandon and that fish-thing were connected somehow.
If they all survived this, and there was enough left of the thing to hand over to scientists for study, maybe those guys could figure out exactly w
hat the connection was. Whether or not they’d ever fill the people of Ashford Fork in on it was another matter entirely, and the likelihood was slim, but there was always a chance, he supposed.
Jake felt the cigarette’s filter burn his lips, and tossed it into the water standing in Leanne’s back yard. Stan had been the first to mention that it seemed as though some of that water was receding for whatever reason, no longer fueled by the monster rains that had dominated the previous day, and as Jake scanned the yard, he tended to think the crazy old moonshiner might be right about that. The back yard was still flooded, there was no doubt about that, but compared to what he’d witnessed in Carrie’s back yard a few hours ago, it did seem like the levels were lower. The rain had picked back up, but had yet to even come close to the deluge that had fallen yesterday, so it was entirely possible that the worst of it was over. In another couple of days, the ground would have absorbed most of it, and the rest would have found areas where it could run off into the lake or the two rivers again, leaving nothing left for the town but to clean up and deal with the aftermath.
While it felt a little like trying to capitalize on tragedy, he was hoping that the cleanup required would give him the chance to get a decent job. They would need the help, and he needed the work. Even manual labor would be preferable to nothing.
He let out a long, slow breath, and wished that he had taken a shot or two of that moonshine to steady his nerves before they started dumping it into buckets or tucking torn strips of those oily cloths down into the jars to act as fuses. This next part had also been his idea, but now that he was on the verge of putting it into motion, he was starting to rethink it. It was too late to back out—he knew that—but that didn’t mean he was looking forward to it, either. He glanced back to the door leading into the dining area and saw Carrie standing there watching him, a concerned look on her face. She placed one hand on the glass and tried to give him a reassuring smile, but she was too obviously distraught over him being the first one in the line of danger for it to have any real effect on him.
He smiled back anyway, trying to show her that he was ready for whatever happened—probably failing in his attempt as much as she had—and then moved his gaze to the person walking up behind her. Rob materialized in the window like a ghost, his face solemn. He caught Jake’s eyes, then gave him a single, simple nod.
It was time.
Jake turned back around, took one more deep breath, and then cupped his hands around his mouth to amplify his voice before yelling as loud as he could. “Brandon! Where are you, fish-boy? I want to talk to you!”
He took his hands away and waited, his heart starting to race, his eyes sweeping over the flooded yard as far down as the lake before turning his gaze back in the direction of Carrie’s house, and Missus Granger’s and the hill beyond where he’d last seen the thing. Sweat had begun to break out on his forehead, despite the coolness of the air, surely the result of how humid the day had grown with the sun out—if not shining—combined with all the added moisture in the atmosphere from the storm.
At least that was what he told himself it was from; deep down, he knew it was the flop sweat of fear.
He glanced back to Rob and Carrie again. Rob was watching, his face impassive, waiting for the shit to hit the fan. Carrie offered him another weak smile of support. Jake sighed and turned back to the yard.
“Come on, Brandon!” he yelled again. “I know it’s you inside that ugly fucking critter! You wanted to talk this morning, well, come on and let’s get this over with!”
A few ripples formed in the water about halfway down toward the lake. Jake squinted his eyes, trying to see if there was a shadow moving around underneath it, then saw some kind of bug take flight and head out toward the lake itself. He sighed and stood up straight again. So much for luring the thing in, he supposed.
He was turning around to let the others know that the plan wasn’t working when he heard it, a slurping sound over near the side of the house, the water slapping against it and being sucked back down again. That bug hadn’t made big enough ripples to cause that. He slowly turned himself back toward the yard again, eyes flicking about near the deck wildly.
“That you, Brandon?” he asked. “I don’t know how well you can see me, old buddy, but I don’t have a gun or anything. I doubt I would win if I tried to fight you barehanded, either.”
“Neeeeevvrrrrr coooooood,” came the reply, from almost directly below him.
Jake jumped backward involuntarily, his eyes darting down to the water at the edge of the deck. He still didn’t see anything amiss, but that made no sense at all. He had heard the thing reply, he knew he had, which meant it had to be around here someplace.
“Where you at, pal?” Jake asked, not liking how his voice cracked a bit on the last word. He made a mental vow that whatever happened, this time he would not piss his pants. “You learn to throw your voice or something?”
“Unnndurrrrrrr.”
He looked down at the wooden floor of the deck, squinting to try and see between the planks. He was able to make out the glinting reflections of rippling water, confirming that the little storage area under there was as flooded as everything else was, along with a larger shadow that could just be a trick of his eyes. He squatted down to get a closer look and nearly squealed when he saw the thick lips opening and closing just beneath the deck itself.
The thing didn’t trust him, and was taking steps to protect itself. That was a new wrinkle that none of them had anticipated. They’d all assumed that those gunshots hadn’t had any effect on it, but what if they had? What if the bullets had hurt it, even if they didn’t kill it outright? Even people could sometimes sustain a considerable amount of gunfire before they succumbed to their injuries. It was entirely possible that the thing was now wounded, and would die off on its own soon enough. If that was the case, then they would have no need to put themselves at risk like this.
Then again, was that really a risk they could afford to take, considering what the thing was capable of?
“What are you doing under there, man?” he asked, forcing himself to keep a level voice and not show too much of the fear he was feeling. “I never thought you’d be one for hiding like that.”
“Huuuuuuut eeeeeee,” the thing said. The way its lips flapped when it spoke, a parody of human speech patterns, was almost enough to send Jake’s sanity spiraling away. “Trrrrrrd tooooo keeeeeeel eeeeee.”
“Yeah, well, you tried to kill us, too,” Jake said. “So you had to expect some kind of reaction to that. Speaking of, why aren’t you trying to eat me now? You sure as shit did last time.”
The thing made a thick, chuffing sound that Jake assumed was supposed to be laughter, but didn’t give him any other kind of answer.
He sighed. This wasn’t going anywhere. This thing had some kind of weird mix between animal cunning and human intelligence, which meant it was playing it safe. He’d actively lured it here, after all. It didn’t take much of either of those things to assume that there was some ulterior motive involved. It wasn’t going to fall for this. Wasn’t going to take the bait Jake’s mind pointed out, causing him to force down the hysterical giggles that threatened to overwhelm him. He was going to have to do more, somehow make this thing mad enough that it would ignore the potential danger and attack him.
“So,” he said, adopting a casual tone. “You’re a fish now. What’s that like?”
More of that chuffing noise.
“Just as well,” Jake said, shrugging. “Saves me the trouble of kicking your worthless ass out.”
The chuffing cut off suddenly, and Jake thought maybe he’d finally started to get through to the part of the thing that was still Brandon, or at least enough of him to allow semi-intelligent speech.
“Yeah,” he went on. “You were a shitty roommate anyway. Hell, in a week’s time you cost me my girlfriend, my car, and my job. After all, if you hadn’t been trying to bang some underage girl, then left me to babysit while you went for beer to
try and make her drink her panties off, none of that would’ve happened, would it?”
Silence.
“Now that I’ve had time to think about it, you were always the one holding me back. You were so determined to not grow the fuck up that you forced me to stay down in the gutter with you. That’s not being a very good friend, you know. Hell, that’s not even being a very good person. Maybe it’s best you’re a fucking fish now. Maybe you can do that better than you could anything else. Then again, I doubt it. Once a fuck-up, always a fuck-up, you know?”
He heard a new sound, a faint humming that seemed to be growing in intensity. If he didn’t know any better, he would almost swear the thing was trying to growl at him. Instead of finding it frightening, he actually found it a little funny. It was a catfish, not a dog-fish, but leave it to Brandon to not even get that part right.
Jake gave into the hilarity of the situation and barked out a laugh. “You know, I was going to say eventually I’d fillet you and fry you up for dinner, but considering that it’s you in there, I’ll have to pass. I bet you’d taste like shit. Guess I’ll just have to cut you up and use you as bait instead, unless even your new body’s no good for anything, in which case it’ll just chase all the fish I’m trying to catch off instead.”
He never even saw the thing move. One second he was crouched down laughing at it, and the next he was being flung backward across the deck, throwing up his hands to protect his face from the shards of splintered wood that were suddenly flying through the air. He looked up in time to see the thing racing toward him and scrambled quickly out of its path.
It slammed into the deck hard enough to crack more of the floor planks, then rocked itself back onto its tail like he’d seen it up on the hill. His amusement drained away fast, replaced by sheer unadulterated terror. There was no way he was going to make it back to the door in time to get away. This thing was going to kill him and eat him and then it would probably run away again, meaning that the others wouldn’t even get their chance to kill it. His death would be nothing more than another statistic when they made the final tally of this thing’s victims.