The Thing In The Mine

Home > Other > The Thing In The Mine > Page 16
The Thing In The Mine Page 16

by J. R. Ayers


  He was right; Buddy rolled over on his stomach and, and using the shotgun as leverage, pushed up on his knees. He raised the shotgun to his shoulder just as Joe aimed the Berretta at his chest. Joe heard two clicks, one from the shotgun, the other from the pistol, and he knew they were in trouble.

  “The head!” Glen shouted. “You gotta shoot him in the head!

  “I’m out,” Joe countered. “Lori, you got any ammo?” She shook her head.

  “Major Gaston took my service weapon along with the ammo belt when he suspended me.”

  “Shit,” Joe said.

  “There’s some at the house,” Lori said. “There’s a 30.30 rifle there too.”

  Buddy was walking slowly in their direction holding the empty shotgun over his head like a club. “Where’s your car Glen?” Joe asked.

  “Over by the church. I walked over.”

  “Lori?”

  “That’s it over there, the one with the back end all caved in.”

  Buddy was within fifteen feet now. “Alright, let’s head to your house Lori,” Joe said. “Glen, try to stay close. Whatever that thing is isn’t about to give up.”

  “I told you, you gotta shoot him in the head.”

  “Tell me later, right now we have to get to that ammo.”

  They ran down Main Street, cut across Sandlewood Lane and angled through two neighbors’ yards until they came to the front of Lori and Glen’s house. Joe kept looking over his shoulder trying to gage Buddy’s location. Sure enough, he was following their every move, albeit at a much slower pace. He was a few hundred yards behind them, but it appeared that he had every intention of following them right to Lori’s doorstep.

  The three of them hurried through the front door and threw the locks. “Where’s that ammo?” Joe asked dropping the magazine from the Berretta.

  “It’s up stairs, I’ll go get it.”

  “Glen, go with her and get that rifle too,” Joe said. Then he walked to the window and looked out towards the street. Buddy Sayers was limping along on the side the road only a few yards beyond the driveway. “Hurry up with that ammunition!” Joe yelled.

  Lori followed Glen down the stairs and handed Joe a clip loaded with Winchester nine millimeter cartridges. Glen had the 30.30 deer rifle slung over his shoulder like a sentry on guard duty. “How strong is that lock?” Joe asked.

  “Strong enough, I guess,” Glen said. “Standard Schlage dead bolt I would suppose.”

  “What about the back door?”

  “Same set up?”

  “Good. But then there are the windows to worry about.”

  Glen laid a hand on Joe’s arm and said, “I’m tellin’ you Joe, we have to shoot that thing in the head. It’s the only way to stop him.” Joe shook off the hand and slammed the full clip back into the handle of the Berretta.

  “What are you saying, Glen? So, he’s a zombie now is he? This isn’t an episode of the Walking Dead, for shit’s sake.”

  “I’m not sayin’ he’s a zombie,” Glen asserted. “But I’m tellin’ you, whatever it is that’s possessing him is in his head. His brain, I mean. You gotta kill the brain, Joe.”

  Joe looked questioningly at Lori but she lowered her eyes as a blush of embarrassment colored her cheeks. Undeterred by the other’s obvious skepticism, Glen continued to state his case. “Think about it Joe; you shot Buddy in the chest, right? All your bullets hit him in the body. You said that hunter shot him in the back with an arrow, right? Can’t you see what I’m talkin’ about? Shootin’ him in the body has almost no affect on him. That’s why Charlie Waddell never came back. Lori shot him in the head. His brain, sorry to be so graphic, but his brain was pretty much Swiss cheese. That shotgun round to the head killed whatever it was that had possessed him. At least part of it. Apparently the thing can possess more than one person at a time.”

  “So you think this Charlie Waddell guy was infected with the same thing as Buddy?” Joe asked, beginning to show a little more interest.

  “Yeah I do. There was something in or around that coal mine that got to them. You call it an infection, I call it a possession. Those miners unearthed something back in that mountain. And it wasn’t anything like noxious gas or poisonous dust. They dug up a demon. Buddy Sayers is possessed by a murdering demon, and I’ll bet my life on that.”

  They heard heavy footsteps on the front porch and Joe said, “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  Buddy and his Handler stepped up on the porch and stood looking at the front door. Blood as dark and viscous as motor oil leaked down both legs and pooled on the WELCOME mat below his feet. “You know the door’s locked don’t you,” the Thing said. “Probably the back door too. But if we’re lucky, the basement might be unlocked. At any rate, we need to get our ass moving before that shit head cop starts plinking away at us again. The dumb ass might just get lucky and put one in our head.”

  Hopping off the porch, Buddy began shuffling across the grass heading for the back of the house. Although the Thing demanded he keep moving, it was becoming clear that his bullet riddled body couldn’t travel much further. “Just keep it together long enough to get the cop and his girlfriend,” the Thing said. “After that, we’ll take a long rest somewhere. Maybe even get us a new body; a younger man this time, someone who doesn’t pussy out so easily.”

  Inside the house, Joe jacked a round in the chamber of the Berretta and said, “Glen do you know how to use that rifle?”

  “Sure I do. I go huntin’ every season”

  “Okay, you and Lori watch the back door. I’ll stay in here and guard the front in case he breaks through the door or a window.”

  Lori and Glen hurried through the kitchen to the back door which was in a small laundry room and Glen checked to make sure the locks were engaged. Joe took a seat on the bottom stair step, turning his body where he could keep an eye on the double bay windows in the living room as well as the front door. While he waited to see if Buddy was going to break in the door, he called Captain Ross on his cell phone. He told him what was happening and requested back up. “Call McDowell County and see if they can send some deputies,” he said. “If there’s a State patrol somewhere close by, send them too.” Then he hung up and double checked to make sure the safety was off the Berretta.

  It didn’t surprise the Thing much to find the basement door unlocked. After all, Buddy rarely, if ever, locked his, a fact that seemed “pretty fuckin’ stupid,” to the Thing. Still, stupidity aside, finding the door unlocked was a nice stroke of luck, especially since the Thing didn’t figure Buddy had the strength to kick it in if it had been locked.

  The basement smelled and looked like any other basement—cardboard boxes, old bicycle frames, canned peaches and tomatoes and string beans, and interspersed throughout the almost total darkness, the cloying, musty odor of damp concrete, exposed earth and mildewed clothes.

  Buddy found his way to the stairs and began climbing them two at a time. A couple of the wooden planks groaned a little under his weight, but otherwise his assent was virtually silent. Though he knew the shotgun was out of ammunition, he’d brought it along just the same, if for no other reason, to use as a club should the opportunity present itself.

  The basement door opened to a small room that in earlier times had served as a storage space for firewood and coal. Its current use was apparently a place to store junk and other rarely used items.

  The Buddy-Thing crept across the linoleum floor until he came to a doorframe shrouded by a sheet of blue plastic material similar to a shower curtain. Pushing a corner of the sheet aside with the muzzle of the shotgun, he took a look around the area directly in front of him. He saw the kitchen to his right, and off to the left, a laundry room where the girl cop and some old dude with a rifle in his hands stood facing the back door.

  Oh how the Thing wished it had just two more rounds in the shotgun. But, alas, we’ll have to do it the hard way and brain them instead.

  Buddy moved swiftly across the kitchen floor an
d was a step inside the laundry room before Glen Harper saw him from the corner of his eye. Crying out in surprise, Glen swung the barrel of the hunting rifle to his left in hopes of getting off a shot before Buddy closed the distance between them. He almost made it too, but Buddy was a nano-second quicker with the shotgun and Glen fell heavily to the floor, blood pouring out of a deep gash in his right temple.

  Frozen for a moment by the unexpected ambush, Lori ducked instinctively when Buddy swung the butt of the shotgun in her direction. Her knee banged against the washing machine causing her to lose her balance for a second, and in the interim, Buddy brought the barrel of the shotgun up under her chin knocking her on her butt. The blow stunned her just enough to allow Buddy time to leap on top of her and pin her to the floor with his considerable weight. Glen moaned on the floor and stirred as if to get up, but Buddy kicked him in the face and he fell backwards unconscious.

  Lori began to struggle under Buddy’s weight, but there really wasn’t much she could do trapped as she was underneath two-hundred and fifty pounds of fat and muscle. She lifted her voice to scream and Buddy clasped a hand over her mouth bruising her lips in the process. It wasn’t much of a sound that escaped her throat, but it was just discordant enough to get Joe’s attention in the living room.

  He was instantly on his feet. “Lori!” No one answered, so he hurried through the living room toward the kitchen. When he arrived at the laundry room door, he was greeted by Buddy Sayers pointing the hunting rifle at Lori’s head. “Drop the pistol and get on in here,” the Thing said grinning. Joe made no attempt to move so the Thing fired a shot into the floor by Lori’s feet. “Drop the gun and get your ass in here or the next one goes in her skull,” Buddy snarled.

  Reluctantly, Joe tossed the Berretta in Buddy’s direction and stepped inside the room. The Buddy-Thing promptly hit him in the stomach with the butt of the rifle and he groaned in pain. “You’re the cocksucker who likes to go around shooting people, aren’t you?” he said. “Well, it’s my turn to do the shooting now. Just as soon as I fuck this little slut here, I’m gonna shoot you until your guts run out of your body. Now get down on your knees over there by the door and wait until I’m finished with little miss wanna be cop here.”

  The last thing Joe wanted to do was listen to Buddy instructions. But he felt as if he didn’t have any choice. Buddy had the drop on him and there was no doubt in his mind that the lunatic would kill Lori if he didn’t do as he was told. Slowly, deliberately, he slipped to his knees and held his hands over his head. “Excellent, the Thing said. “I kinda expected a little more fight out of you. I guess you ain’t shit without a big ole’ mean gun in your hand, are?” Joe didn’t answer and the Thing said, “Of course you’re not.”

  Using one hand while pointing the rifle at Joe with the other, Buddy hauled Lori to her feet and pushed her down on top of the washing machine. Then he lifted her dress and began clawing at panties. “No!” she shrieked. “No, please don’t do this!”

  Joe tensed and lowered his hands, his eyes going to the Berretta still lying on the floor not far from Buddy’s feet. “Don’t you dare move!” the Thing howled. “I’ll blow her brains out, I swear I will!”

  Paralyzed and conflicted, Joe stayed where he was as the Buddy-Thing worked Lori’s panties down her legs. While he was momentarily distracted, she twisted her body and raked at his face with her fingernails, at which point he slapped her hard across the face. “You’re gettin’ fucked,” he said. “Might as well relax and enjoy it. If you’re good enough, I might let you watch me shoot that dickhead trooper over there.”

  Lori cried out as Buddy pushed her face down on the lid of the washing machine and opened the zipper of his trousers. He was just about to enter her when Glen Harper hit him in the back of the head with a gallon jug of Tide liquid detergent. The blow knocked him sideways and he tripped over the barrel of the hunting rifle. A round went off, ricocheted off the linoleum floor and struck Glen in the left knee. He yelped in pain and slammed the Tide bottle into the back of Buddy’s neck with all the strength he could muster.

  At the same moment, Joe crawled across the floor, grabbed the Berretta and rolled to his left a split second before Buddy crashed to the floor in front of him. “The head, Joe!” Glen screamed, “Shoot the thing in the head! Blow its frigging brains out!”

  That’s pretty much what happened when Joe emptied the full magazine in the top of Buddy’s head. Blood, bits of brain and bone fragments sprayed against the washer/dryer combo, the walls nearby and Joe and Glen’s faces. Lori, spared the worst of the gory mess, slumped to the floor gasping for breath.

  Despite the carnage to his head, the Buddy-Thing twitched a couple of times and rolled over on his back. Joe picked up the 30.30 rifle and fired a shot between his eyes. Then he shot him three more times just to make sure.

  Deputies from McDowell County and two ambulances from Mullens arrived twenty minutes after Joe had ended the murderous reign of Buddy Sayers. While waiting for Glen to be treated for his gunshot wound, Joe took a call from Captain Ross who told him that he was on the way over and reminded him that he was still suspended, probably for a lot longer in lieu of this recent development. Lori, though pretty shook up, sat in the living room with one of the deputies and gave him a blow by blow account of Buddy’s violent rampage, emphasizing the terrifying encounter in the laundry room.

  Mayor Brinkus and Doctor Collier showed up at the house a few minutes later wanting to know all the details, but the other deputy told them to “chill out,” while the investigation was on going.

  A few minutes later a State Trooper named Miller arrived on scene, but seeing that the county guys had the shooting at the house under control, drove over to the courthouse to help investigate Major Gaston and the County deputies’ murders.

  After the deputy finished interviewing Lori, Joe took her by the hand and together they walked out to the front porch where Glen lay on a gurney. Lori wanted to say a word before the medics loaded him into an ambulance. “Thank you for saving me.”

  “Wasn’t me,” Glen said. “Joe killed the thing. I just diverted its attention, that’s all.” She leaned over and planted a kiss on his forehead.

  “Well, you’re my hero anyway,” she said. “You just get well quick. These folks are going to need their Pastor after all that’s happened in the last few days.” Glen smiled and offered a thumbs up.

  “You got it kiddo.”

  As one of the ambulances hauled Glen off to the hospital in Mullens, the other one loaded up Buddy’s body to transport him to Beckley. With most of the activity dying down, Joe and Lori found themselves alone on the porch. “My Captain will be here in a little while,” Joe said. “I’m still trying to figure out how I’m going to explain all this to him.”

  “Just tell him the truth,” Lori said.

  “And just what is the truth? Two men go crazy and murder a bunch of people. That kind of truth?” She looked out past the front yard toward the burning courthouse in the distance.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But they weren’t crazy. There was some. . .thing in them. Glen was right about that.”

  Joe moved a little closer to Lori trying to read the expression in her eyes.

  “What thing, Lori?”

  “Something evil,” she said. “Maybe we should think twice before we keep going into places where we don’t belong. Don’t you agree?”

  Joe couldn’t readily disagree, so he just squeezed her hand and said, “The main thing is it’s over now. It can’t hurt anybody ever again.”

  As she struggled to process the skepticism in his tone she thought, I hope so. For all our sakes, I sure hope so.

  Epilogue

  A nurse brought Kara Mackay an extra blanket and asked her how she was feeling. “I’m fine Kara said. But she wasn’t fine; she hadn’t slept since her husband Kevin was flown to Raleigh General hospital in Beckley and put on life support. The doctors were saying that there was very little change in his condition,
although the neurosurgeon did say that the last EEG showed a minute amount of brain wave activity. “It’s just a waiting game from here on in,” the doctor had said.

  So she waited, curled up in a chair, her head resting on the foot of the bed. She couldn’t help but worry about the possibility of a future without Kevin. What would she and the boys do? If he didn’t recover, if the worst happened and he died, how could she tell her kids that their daddy would never come home again. And if he did linger on in a virtual coma, how would she mange to pay the bills? The hospital costs alone were astronomical. Then there were the utility bills, the mortgage and car payment and. . .

  He can’t die, she told herself. He’s going to get better and he’s coming home and he’s going to be just—

  The sheet beneath her head moved slightly and she heard the monitor beside the bed beep a couple of times. Kicking off the blankets, she jumped out of the chair and leaned over the bed hoping to see some signs of life on her husband’s face. What she saw instead was something utterly evil staring at her with eyes as black as pitch. The Thing that was once her husband opened its mouth and said, “pussy.”

 

 

 


‹ Prev