The Guard Read online

  Something smashed into the other side of the door again and this time, the makeshift barricade crumbled. The door was pushed inward as one of the Sasquatch came plunging into the gym. The great beast had to hunch its shoulders to fit through the frame of the door. Its yellow eyes burned as Tim and the others opened fire on it. The monster was cut down by the combined fire of Henson’s AR-15, Tim’s AK-47, and Lancaster’s M-16. The other two defenders were armed with shotguns and held their fire. The Sasquatch jerked about as their bullets ripped at its body before flopping over onto what was left of the barricade. More of the monsters followed it through the doorway. Tim and the others were able to stop two more of them before the things managed to press their way completely into the gym.

  Bounding over the corpse of another Sasquatch, a big one, standing over nine feet tall, came roaring at them. Tim’s AK-47 clicked empty. He threw the weapon aside, not having another magazine for it, and drew two of his pistols as Henson and Lancaster poured fire into the thing until their own weapons were empty as well. Badly wounded, the Sasquatch stumbled. Others rushed passed it, closing in on them.

  Tim’s pistols barked as he moved to block the monsters’ path. He blew out one’s eye and put a round that shattered razor-like teeth into the mouth of another. All his bravado was in vain. He didn’t manage to fully stop any of the beasts. They overran him, one of them knocking him aside with such force that he was lifted from the floor of the gym and sent flying through the air. He came down hard on the slick tile of the floor, sliding across it. Henson, who had reloaded, took his place. Henson’s AR-15 chattered on full auto as he hosed a Sasquatch with a barrage of rounds that sent it staggering backward. Had it been the only one of the monsters rushing forward, he might have won the day. It wasn’t though. Another of the Sasquatch reached him and ripped his left arm from its shoulder joint in an explosion of red. Henson was screaming as it hit him again with a backhanded blow that crushed the side of his face, caving it inward.

  The two other men armed with shotguns were in the fight now. A shotgun thundered, blowing apart the knee of a charging Sasquatch. It rolled along the gym floor, carried on by its own momentum, leaving a trail of blood in its wake. Another shotgun blast slammed into the chest of a Sasquatch, punching into its ribs and breaking several of them. By now, there was just too many of the monsters inside the gym to hold back. One of the two men with a shotgun died horribly as a Sasquatch slashed open his throat, nearly tearing his head from his body in the process. The other man got off a final shot that opened up the guts of a Sasquatch before another of the monsters took his shotgun from his hands. It rammed the weapon into his mouth at a downward angle into his throat.

  Tim was blazing away with his pistols from where he lay on his back. He hadn’t wasted the time to get up. Every second and shot counted. Tim wanted to do as much damage to the monsters as he could before they got at the men, women, and families hiding behind the bleachers. Two of the Sasquatch came his way together.

  “Frag you!” Tim shouted at them as he plucked his last grenade from his belt and pulled its pin as the reached him. The ensuing explosion blew him and the two beasts apart, wounding several other of the Sasquatch still coming through the gym’s door as well.

  The shockwave from the blast knocked Lancaster to the floor. She was lucky that none of its shrapnel hit her and knew it. Scrambling to her feet, she took a final, sad look at the people behind the bleachers. The monsters had reached them and were tearing through them. Their screams and pained cries had replaced the cacophony of gunfire in the gym. Knowing that she couldn’t help them, Lancaster darted away, running through a door that led into one of the school’s long corridors. A Sasquatch came tearing through it after her. The slick floor caused the monster to lose its footing and it slid into a row of lockers with the loud sound of their metal being crushed by its weight and momentum.

  Lancaster ran like hell, leaving the Sasquatch that had hit the locker behind her before it could recover. She rounded a bend in the corridor and nearly got shot for her effort. Deputy Cato and Evans were there, their guns aimed at her. Thankfully, they had recognized at least that she was human before opening fire.

  “Those things are inside!” Lancaster shouted at them.

  “We figured!” Deputy Cato answered her, grabbing her by the arm to get her moving again as he and Evans turned to run back the way they had come from.

  “Tim?” Deputy Cato asked as the three of them sprinted along the corridor.

  “Dead,” Lancaster stammered. “They’re all dead.”

  “Frag,” Evans muttered.

  The three of them rounded another bend in the winding corridors of the school as Deputy Cato shouted, “In here!”

  He led them into what looked like a chemistry lab and slammed the door behind them.

  “What in the heck do we do now?” Evans asked, looking to his C.O. Lancaster for an answer.

  Before she could say anything though, Deputy Cato grinned and said, “We cook up a surprise for those bastards and then go out one of those windows over there.”

  There was plenty of ethyl alcohol and other flammable things in the lab. Deputy Cato quickly rigged an I.E.D. out of them and a box of nails, fixing it to detonate when the door was forced open as Lancaster and Evans watched.

  “Impressive,” Lancaster commented with a sincere smile on her face.

  “Not really.” Deputy Cato shrugged. “I just paid attention in class back in the day. Now let’s get out of here!”

  Deputy Cato raced over to the classroom’s largest window and smashed it out with the butt of the .30-06 rifle he was carrying. He motioned for them to go through it first. Evans went out first with Lancaster on his heels. Deputy Cato could hear the snarls of the Sasquatch approaching the other side of the lab’s door in the corridor outside it and threw himself through the window after them.

  As he landed in the grass, the lab went up. There was a loud boom and flames came jutting out of the lab’s window above him as the bomb he had rigged detonated. At least one of the Sasquatch in the lab had survived the initial blast and they could hear it wailing, shrieking in pain as it burned.

  Lancaster grabbed Deputy Cato, hauling him to his feet. “We have got to keep moving!”

  Deputy Cato didn’t argue with her. Evans was in the lead as they raced across the yard of the school into its front parking lot. There were a few scattered cars about. The young private headed straight for a jeep and slid into its driver’s seat, jerking wires loose from beneath its steering wheel.

  “Give me a just a second and I’ll have this thing running,” he told Deputy Cato and Lancaster.

  “We don’t have a second,” Lancaster snapped at him but Evans continued with his work anyway.

  The main door of the school burst open as a Sasquatch came charging out of it. Deputy Cato was ready for the monster. Jerking up his .30-06, he put a round into the great beast’s forehead that blew chunks of brain matter and bone fragments out the back side of its skull.

  Evans finished his work and the jeep’s engine roared to life. “Get in!” the young private shouted.

  Lancaster ran around to slide into the passenger seat next to him as Deputy Cato leaped into the jeep’s rear. Evans floored the gas, swinging the jeep around out of the space it had been parked in, and then the jeep shot forward, speeding out of the lot.

  The school was burning as the jeep reached the end of the parking lot and bounced onto the main road beyond it. Several Sasquatch came leaping out of the fire, their bodies burning. Others emerged from parts of the building that weren’t ablaze yet. The jeep was already too far away from the creatures to notice it; either that or their attention was completely enraptured by the hell Deputy Cato had unleashed on them with his hastily built I.E.D. Because none of them came chasing after it.

  ****

  It was a good two minutes for all-out, pedal-to-the-metal driving, before Evans slowed the jeep.

  “This is your town, Deputy,” Lancaster s
aid. “Where do we head for?”

  “Is there even anywhere left to run to?” Evans sighed. “Those things find us wherever we go.”

  “I know a place,” Deputy Cato said. “It’s out of the way, heavily armed, and built like a fragging fortress.”

  “Seriously?” Lancaster stared at him.

  “Seriously,” Deputy Cato assured her. “I am sure you two met Tim back at the gym, right?”

  “The old guy that was in charge?” Evans asked.

  “Yeah, that would have been him,” Deputy Cato said. “He was a whacko in a lot of ways but the man was also a doomsday prepper. Tim really believed the end of the world was close at hand and spent decades getting ready for it.”

  “How does that help us?” Lancaster pressed him.

  “Tim has a house not too far from where we are now,” Deputy Cato explained. “I’ve been to it before. Trust me, there’s no better place we could head for.”

  Evans brought the jeep to a stop in the middle of the road. They hadn’t seen or heard any signs of the Sasquatch in the last few minutes and he felt okay doing so. He got out of the driver’s seat and motioned for Deputy Cato to get into it.

  “You know where the place is at. I don’t,” Evans told him. “Take us there.”

  Deputy Cato climbed into the driver’s seat as Evans got into the rear of the jeep. Cato passed the private his .30-06.

  “She’s only got two rounds left in her but they’ll do you a lot more good back there than that M-16 of yours,” Cato said.

  “Thanks.” Evans grinned from ear to ear. “My rifle was down to half a magazine anyway. It would have taken some real luck to stop one of those monsters with it.”

  “I’ve only got a partial mag. too,” Lancaster admitted. “But you say this guy’s place is stocked, right?”

  “Just wait until you see it,” Deputy Cato said, laughing. “You’ll wonder why we never went out there and arrested him.”

  “Why didn’t you?” Evans asked from the rear of the jeep, honestly curious.

  “Tim was a good guy,” Deputy Cato said sadly. “I guess the sheriff just decided him having what he did was safe enough. He rarely came into town, did most of his shopping online, and never really bothered anyone. In fact, if he did come out that house of his, it was to help somebody who needed it. We weren’t close or anything but after tonight, I am going to miss the old man.”

  Deputy Cato drove them on to Tim’s house in silence. All of them keeping a sharp eye on the woods that surrounded the road. It wouldn’t be long until the sun came up and help rolled into Canton, assuming the National Guard could push through the small army of beasts that had kept the bulk of them out of it all night.

  The jeep bounced along the gravel road that led up to Tim’s house. Deputy Cato parked the vehicle as close to the house’s front door as he could. The three of them got out of it. Lancaster reached the door first and tried it.

  “It’s locked,” she told them, frowning.

  “Move out of the way,” Evans said, stepping toward the door with his .30-06.

  “Don’t,” Deputy Cato stopped the young private. “You ain’t going to be able to shoot the lock out. Not with that rifle and not with as many locks are on the other side of it.”

  “Then how do we get in?” Lancaster demanded. “There are bars over the windows and metal shutters pulled down too.”

  Deputy Cato laughed. “It’s all about knowing folks. Tim keeps an extra set of keys in the storage building around the back. That, we can get into.”

  The storage building was surprisingly already unlocked. Either Tim was slipping in his old age or he had already moved everything important in it into the house. Deputy Cato entered and took a look around for the keys they were after. He found them easily because he knew where to look. The sheriff had told him about the keys. Tim had shown them to her on one of her few visits out to check up on him after his wife had passed on. They were tucked away at the bottom of a coffee can full of nails.

  Keys in hand, Deputy Cato led them back to the front door and opened it. They went inside and secured the door behind them.

  “There’s a generator in the basement,” Deputy Cato told the two soldiers. “Evans, why don’t you head on down there and get it running?”

  “Yes, sir,” Evans barked happily and disappeared through the door that Deputy Cato had pointed at.

  “Let me show you why we’re here,” Deputy Cato said to Lancaster and led her to another room. Its door was locked but he had the key needed to open it. He swung the door inward as Evans got the generator working and the lights inside it came on. Deputy Cato heard Lancaster’s breath catch as she saw what was in the room. The room was basically an armory. Rifles, shotguns, and more hung in racks on its walls and there were crates of ammo and other supplies covering its floor.

  “Holy…” Lancaster shook her head in disbelief.

  “Yep,” Deputy Cato grinned, “and it’s all ours for the taking.”

  Evans joined them in the house’s armory as they loaded up. All of them went for weapons that had some serious power to them.

  “Frag me,” Evans muttered in awe as he picked up .600 Overkill rounds and a CZ-550 rifle to fire them. “That old guy had to be insane to have stuff like this lying around.”

  “He wasn’t crazy,” Deputy Cato corrected Evans. “He just wanted to be prepared for everything.”

  “Well, I am fragging thankful for his prepper madness right now,” Lancaster said, chambering a round in the Barrett M82 she had picked for herself. “Your sheriff should have taken all these and locked him up for life. Do you know how illegal some of the stuff in here is?”

  “That’s my job,” Deputy Cato said, laughing. “But like I said, Tim was above reproach and the sheriff let him slide. Who knows? Maybe she thought our department might need some of this one day and we sure as heck do tonight.”

  Deputy Cato had snatched up an automatic shotgun for himself and was fixing a barrel drum of ammo into place on it.

  “I’d say we’re ready for anything that comes our way now,” Evans said.

  “As we can be anyway.” Lancaster frowned. “Even with these…” she patted her Barrett M82, “it’s going to be a fight to stay alive if those things find us here.”

  “And they will,” Deputy Cato said. “Count on it. They have found me everywhere I’ve gone tonight. It’s pretty dang clear those things can see better than we do in the dark but if you ask me, I think they are tracking us by our smell.”

  “That would make sense,” Lancaster agreed. “Not to mention how smart they are. When what was left of our unit took shelter in your town’s library, they knew just how to hit us to get inside. We didn’t have a prayer of keeping them out and a lot of good people died trying.”

  “Same with the school,” Deputy Cato agreed. “This place is built like a fortress but even so, it’s not impenetrable. The doors and windows may be reinforced but the walls aren’t so much. One of those things hitting them at a full-out run might be able to come tearing through them.”

  “Same for the doors if you really think about it,” Lancaster said. “They might be reinforced themselves but the walls they are set in aren’t. Enough force behind it, one of those things could tear right them.”

  “Still… We’re a lot better off than we were,” Evans said, trying to look on the bright side of things. “We have a chance here at least…food, ammo, and power too.”

  “So who wants first watch?” Deputy Cato grinned. “We all need to try to get some food into us and some rest but someone has to take it.”

  “I will,” Evans volunteered. “Where do you want me, Deputy?”

  “As smart as those things are, I am willing to wager that when they come, they will come straight at the front door. Grab a chair and find a comfortable spot in the living room facing it.”

  “Yes, sir,” Evans snapped and headed off to do just that.

  “He’s a good kid,” Deputy Cato told Lancaster.

 
; “I think so too.” She smiled. “I don’t think I would have made it through all the crap that has happened tonight already without him.”

  “As for us, Specialist Lancaster, what say we raid the kitchen?” Deputy Cato laughed.

  “Sounds like a good plan to me,” Lancaster agreed. “I could use some coffee.”

  Deputy Cato put on some coffee as Lancaster rummaged through the fridge. The power hadn’t been out long enough for the food inside of it to have gone bad. She held up a pack of bologna at him.

  “I guess people really do eat this crap,” Lancaster said with a disgusted expression on her face.

  “Don’t knock it until you try it.” Deputy Cato smiled, reaching by her to snag a loaf of bread and a jar of mayo.

  He took the bologna from her as he set the rest down on the kitchen’s counter and set about making sandwiches for all three of them. When he was finished, Deputy Cato handed the first one to Lancaster. She accepted it reluctantly, eyeing the sandwich as if it were the work of the devil before finally taking a bite.

  “This isn’t the worst thing I have ever eaten,” she admitted.

  “I aim to please,” Deputy Cato teased her. “Just what until you see what I whip up for the next Sasquatch Apocalypse.”

  Her expression turned serious. “Sasquatch Apocalypse? Do you think this is happening in other places too?”

  “How the frag would I know?” Deputy Cato shrugged. “I’m just a deputy. You outrank me, ma’am.”

  “No. Really. I am being serious, Cato,” Lancaster said. “If this many of those things were hidden around your town, how many more of them are out there in the woods, all over the place, just waiting for something to tick them off enough to come out and start killing people?”

  “Look…” Deputy Cato sat the sandwich he had been eating down. “One problem at a time, okay? Let’s just focus on getting out of here alive and then we can worry about the rest of the country then.”

  “Okay.” Lancaster nodded though he could see she was still thinking about what was happening outside of Haywood County.