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  Outnumbered and grossly overpowered, Danny knew he and Bryson had to get the Hell out of there, or they would be dead too. The beasts were all over the drive now. The ones not attacking them had went after the cars. Danny watched as two of the things picked up one of the police vehicles and threw it into Claire. It landed on top of his car. It’s gas tank ruptured. Fuel poured from the patrol car in a steady stream. Lingering sparks from the impact of metal meeting metal ignited the gas fumes filling the air.

  “No!” Danny screamed as Claire and the patrol car vanished in an explosion that shook the night. He loosed an arrow at one of the two beasts responsible. It imbedded itself in the beast’s thigh, exploding before the creature could try to rip it free. The second beast was close enough to the blast and was set on fire. It ran about, howling, as flames burnt its hair and flesh. The fire raged over its entire torso.

  “Forget your damn car,” Bryson ordered Danny, whacking him in the back. “And move it!”

  Danny lit an arrow and fired it into the ground in front of the largest cluster of the beasts, using the ensuring blast as cover. Bryson led the way towards Richard’s house, ejecting a spent magazine as he ran.

  “Last one,” Bryson shouted over his shoulder at him as he shoved a fresh magazine into his Glock. Danny was panting and trying to keep up. All the craziness of the last few days was beginning to catch up to him. He pushed his tired body on, knowing that to stop meant death.

  They cleared the frame of the missing front door to find Richard’s corpse waiting just inside. His body lay atop the ruined remains of his smashed coffee table. A piece of its wood was visible where it poked upwards through his lower right side. Dried blood caked the skin of the man’s mangled face.

  Behind them, one of the beasts that had followed them slammed into the door frame. It strained against it as cracks grew in the wood until finally the wall around the doorway broke apart and the beast stumbled into the house. Bryson fired three rounds carefully aiming the shots into its throat. The beast’s roar became a choking gargle as it reeled sideways, clutching at its wounded neck.

  “Hurry the Hell up!” Bryson screamed, already moving again. The two of them ducked into Richard’s bedroom. There were guns strewn about everywhere. Richard must have rummaged through what he had on hand trying to find the proper weapon to defend himself with before the beasts had gotten into the house the first time.

  Bryson chucked his Glock, sweeping a .30-.06 up from the floor. He worked its bolt, seeing if it was loaded. Danny glanced into the living room Three more of the creatures were now inside. They sniffed at the air as if trying to figure out which direction the two of them had headed in. One of them grunted as its eyes fell on Danny standing in the bedroom.

  There was no time to light the dynamite, but Danny notched an arrow and fired. Its tip tore into the creature’s left eye. The beast reared its head back in a shriek of pain with the arrow’s shaft sticking out from its eye socket. One of the other two beasts shoved it aside and came charging at Danny. He dove backwards and into the bedroom as the monster came tearing through the doorway. Bryson met the beast with a .30-.06 round that exited the backside of its head trailing with it a spray of blood and bone fragments.

  “Watch out!” Danny shouted but it was too late. Another of the beasts just outside shattered the bedroom window plunging its arm through the broken grass. Its claw reached out and grabbed at Bryson. The monster’s hand closed on Bryson’s shoulder, yanking the sheriff backwards. Danny saw the beast’s fingers digging into Bryson. Red wetness glistened on its brown hair from where the creature’s thick fingers had dug into Bryson. The beast let out a horrific roar and heaved the sheriff outside. Bryson was gone, just like that.

  Danny crawled across the floor the creatures overran the house. He made it into the bedroom’s connecting bath and kicked the door closed. Almost instantly, a hairy arm smashed through it at the level his head would have been had he been standing. Danny said a silent prayer as he pulled the last three of his arrows from his quiver and lit them. He stared at the cluster of burning fuses as the bathroom door was ripped from its hinges. Only a moment later, the dynamite still tied about the arrows, blew. Danny’s vision suddenly went white. He felt an incredible pain as the heat from the blast burned away his skin.

  Mayor Thompson stood at the window of his office. He held the bottle in one hand and his wine glass in the other. He poured himself another drink. One of the reasons he had bought this house after he had became mayor was for the wonderful view of Sylva it offered.

  The power had went out sometime ago. The house had its own generator tucked away in the basement. His staff had gotten it operational, but he kept the lights off so he could see better what was happening in the town at the bottom of the hill.

  Sylva was burning. Numerous fires raged along his view of Main Street. He hadn’t heard from Bryson since he had sent the sheriff to deal with the crazy vet and that kid who were stirring up all the trouble. His instincts told him Bryson was dead now like so many others that he believed were dead tonight. Many people were lying down below in the streets either lifeless or dying.

  The only light in the office was the glare of the TV screen behind him. The high pitched wailing that accompanied the emergency broadcast symbol on its screen was beginning to annoy him, but he left the TV on in hopes that the news would come back on. He doubted it though. The last images that had filled the screen prior to it going off the air was of several of the Sasquatch storming the station in Asheville. The whole world had gone to Hell around him in a matter of hours.

  The earlier reports he had watched claimed it all started in Babble Creek. Something had triggered a war between the town and an unknown species of monster-like beasts that the news folks had labeled Sasquatch … and that war had spilled over into all of Western North Carolina and its surrounding areas.

  The beasts had come out of the woods like a tidal wave of destruction. Their numbers seemed impossible and defied all logic. How could that many of those things been living out there without someone knowing about it? Thompson wondered, but he supposed it didn’t matter. The beasts were real and they were everywhere. The National Guard had been called up and the army was mobilizing since no one believed the Guardsmen would be enough to handle the situation on their own.

  Thompson’s gaze moved from the town in the valley to the trees around his own property. He could see large shapes bounding through the darkness towards his residence. He walked over to his desk, sitting the bottle and its accompanying glass on top of its surface. As he slid the desk’s drawer open and his fingers closed around the butt of the pistol he kept there, he heard the front door of the house shatter. Coming from down below on the first floor, he could barely hear the screams of his staff over the roars of the beasts.

  “All good things …” he muttered aloud before he raised the barrel of the pistol and pressed it against his right temple. After whispering a simple prayer, he pulled the trigger.

  About the Author

  Eric S. Brown is the author of numerous books, including the Bigfoot War series, the A Pack of Wolves series, the Jack Bunny Bam Bam series, and the Crypto-Squad series (with Jason Brannon). Some of his stand alone titles include War of the Worlds Plus Blood Guts and Zombies, Last Stand in a Dead Land, and Season of Rot. He has done the novelizations of such films as Boggy Creek: The Legend is True and The Bloody Rage of Bigfoot. Eric also scripts the Unstoppable Origins and Storm Chasers comic book series for Unstoppable Comics. In 2014, the first book of the Bigfoot War series will be released as a feature length film from Origin Releasing. His most recent books include Kaiju Apocalypse and The Eric Brown Zombie Omnibus. You can find Eric on facebook.

  About the Cover Artist

  Ogmios is an illustrator and independent comic producer/publisher. Focused on horror, myth and comic art, he has many independent book covers and illustrations to his name. He was the cover artist and interior illustrator for The Witches’ Almanac for seven years. His gra
phic novel SPLICERS was featured in the Attleboro Sun Chronicle, weekly for multiple years. Ogmios also runs Outside The Box Comics where he produces comic titles including Summerlands Fanzine, an anthology style comic for mature readers. For more Art By Ogmios visit his website www.ArtByOgmios.com. He also can be found on facebook as Ogmios TheArtist.

  Other novels, novellas, and collections

  by Eric S Brown

  Dark Karma (collection with Jason Brannon and John Grover)

  Bad Mojo (collection with Jason Brannon & John Grover)

  Space Stations and Graveyards (collection with John Grover and Jason Brannon)

  Dying Days (collection)

  Poisoned Grave (collection with John Grover and Gail Davis)

  Madmen’s Dreams (collection)

  Cobble (with Susanne Brydenbaugh)

  Zombies: The War Stories (collection)

  Zombies II: Inhuman (collection)

  Viruses and Vamps (collection)

  Still Dead (collection)

  Season of Rot (novella collection)

  Anti-Heroes (with David Dunwoody)

  Unabridged, Unabashed, and Undead: The Best zombie stories of Eric S Brown (collection)

  War of the Worlds Plus Blood Guts and Zombies

  Bigfoot War

  Bigfoot War II: Dead in the Woods

  Bigfoot War: Outbreak

  Bigfoot War III: Food Chain

  Bigfoot War: Frontier

  Bigfoot War IV: Legion

  Bigfoot War V: Planet Sasquatch

  Planet Sasquatch: Retaliation

  Bigfoot War: Heavy Carnage (with Jeff Jake)

  Bigfoot War: Tales of the Sasquatch Apocalypse (collection)

  Bigfoot War: The Movie Edition

  Bigfoot War: The End

  Barren Earth (with Stephen North)

  Season of Death (collection)

  Kinberra Down

  How the West Went to Hell: The Collected Horror Westerns of Eric S Brown

  The Beasts and the Dead (collection)

  The Human Experiment

  Martin Kier and the Dead

  Into the Light

  Boggy Creek: The Legend is True (novelization/with Jennifer Minar Jaynes)

  The Bloody Rage of Bigfoot (novelization)

  Crypto-Squad (with Jason Brannon)

  Crypto-Squad II (with Jason Brannon)

  Crypto-Squad III: Dead Wolves (with Jason Brannon)

  Crypto-Squad IV (with Jason Brannon)

  Homeworld (with Tony Faville)

  Jack Bunny Bam Bam and the Weeper Apocalypse

  Jack Bunny Bam Bam: World Hopper

  Night of the Squirrels (collection)

  Snarlers (collection)

  After Z day

  Last Stand in a Dead Land

  Cowboys and Zombies

  The Queen

  The Queen II: Ragnarok Island

  Undead Down Under

  A Pack of Wolves

  A Pack of Wolves II: Skyfall

  A Pack of Wolves III: Demon Dead

  The A Pack of Wolves collected series hardcover

  The Dwellers of Oar Knob (collection)

  Bloop (with James Baack)

  Bloop II (with James Baack)

  Straws (with James Baack)

  The Terror of the Abominable Snowman (with James Baack)

  The Witch of Devil’s Woods (with James Baack)

  The Weaponer

  The Eric S Brown Zombie Omnibus

  Kaiju Apocalypse (with Jason Cordova)

  Murder World: Kaiju Dawn (with Jason Cordova)

  The Hand of God (with Jason Cordova/pending publication)

  World War of the Dead (also from Great Old Ones Publishing)

  Also from Great Old Ones Publishing

  When a tribe of native people in the Northwest Territories of Canada are snowed in from the world, they are forced to resort to inhuman ways of survival. When a presence is drawn to their suffering, an evil blankets over their continued existence until a misfortunate occurrence results in the spread of the terror to more populated lands. With its ensemble cast, the novel takes paths that lead to a serial killer, demonic monsters, and a police department that slowly discovers that there may be something deeper into the crimes that have transpired in their small farming town in Manitoba.

  Coming soon from Great Old Ones Publishing

  includes BASE 001

  A new Eric s. Brown story

  Coming soon from Great Old Ones Publishing

  Coming soon from Great Old Ones Publishing

  Coming soon from Great Old Ones Publishing

  Coming soon from Great Old Ones Publishing

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  Great Old Ones Publishing is a press dedicated to genre and dark fiction. We specialize within the horror, science fiction, fantasy, thriller, techno-thriller, mystery, pulp and grindhouse narrative. Our intent is to produce top quality anthologies, collections, novellas, and novels and present our artists, both author and graphic, in the best of light. Our contributors are experienced authors, rising stars, and those that are first time published. You can find us on the web at http://www.greatoldonespublishing.com.