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  Then a Sasquatch reached him. An almost-ten-foot-tall beast slapped the Barrett M82 from his hands. Aurelio staggered away from it, drawing the Desert Eagle holstered on his hip. He put a trio of rounds into the beast’s stomach. The creature’s face contorted from the pain of the wounds and clutched at its ruptured intestines. Aurelio put a round into the Sasquatch’s forehead and it died instantly, brain matter bursting out of the backside of its skull.

  There were just too many of the Sasquatch around him now and Aurelio knew he was dead. There was no escape. The monsters had him surrounded and could outrun him easily even if he managed to slip through the circle they had formed about him. Laughing at the injustice of it all, Aurelio’s hand plunged into his pocket and drew out the grenade he taken from the box at Lou Hyatt’s place. He yanked the pin as the beasts fell onto him. In the fraction of a second before the ensuing explosion blew up the night, he said a prayer for anyone still in the town, because he knew that barring a miracle, they wouldn’t live to see the dawn.

  ****

  “Do you think the sheriff is okay?” Nicki asked Scott as the two of them worked to finish rigging the last of the booby traps on the stairs leading up to the second level of Lou Hyatt’s house. The three grenades they had set up with tripwires along the stairs were only flashbangs, but they would serve to not only make them aware of any of the Sasquatch that got into the house and tried the stairs but would also disorient the monsters. With luck, maybe even frighten the things away without the two of them being forced to engage them.

  “He’s dead, Nicki,” Scott told her point blank and firmly. “He’s got to be.”

  “Aurelio is as tough as they come,” she protested weakly.

  Scott ignored what she had said and changed the subject. “There, that does it. Now we’ll have some warning if those things decide to come after us. Let’s get back to the bedroom and get some rest.”

  They had moved two weeks’ worth of Lou’s prepper rations upstairs, along with several loads of weapons and a full crate of ammo for them. In theory, they had everything they needed to wait things out and wait for help to come. Lowah might be very secluded, but it wasn’t entirely cut off from the world. Sooner or later, someone would stumble upon the mess the Sasquatch had made of the town and report it to authorities capable of dealing with the beasts. All they had to do was stay alive until then.

  Scott closed the door of the bedroom behind them as they entered it. There wasn’t much floor space with all the supplies and boxes they had dragged into it. He locked the door as Nicki took a seat on the edge of the bed and stared up at him.

  “Tell me this is all just a bad dream,” Nicki pleaded.

  “I’m sorry, Nicki, but it’s not.” Scott shrugged. “I’ll take first watch. You get some sleep.”

  “How do you expect me to sleep, Scott?” Nicki snapped at him. “The odds are very much in favor of everyone I know except you being dead.”

  “I saw some sleeping pills in that night table beside where you’re sitting. Take one if you need to,” Scott urged her.

  “It doesn’t make any sense, Scott,” Nicki said. “If those things have been out there in the mountains and the woods all this time, why have they never attacked until now?”

  “You know I don’t have an answer to that,” Scott snapped at her just as she had done at him a few moments earlier. He gritted his teeth, forcing his nerves and temper back under his control before he spoke again. Nicki was still watching him as he walked across the room and picked up a .30.06, working its bolt to make sure it was loaded and ready for action if the Sasquatch showed up. Scott wanted as many weapons ready and at hand as possible, though the one he planned to start the fight with if it happened was the AK-47 propped next to the bedroom’s door. Realizing that Nicki was still waiting on him to answer her despite how he had reacted to her question, Scott sighed.

  “Look, I really don’t know, but maybe Henderson messing with that old mine started all this. Maybe it’s some kind of holy place or something to those things. Maybe they started keeping their young there after it was shut down all those years ago. It doesn’t really matter, does it?”

  Nicki shook her head sadly. “No, I guess it doesn’t.”

  She finally laid down fully onto the bed, stretching out on it and pulling its blankets up over her. So far, the house still had power and as thus, the heat pump was working. With the bedroom closed, it was actually warm unlike the house’s downstairs where the Sasquatch had torn away the main door, and there was no repairing it with just the two of them.

  Scott was still getting used to having only one eye. His sense of depth and balance were suffering because of it. It had taken far longer than it should have for them to set the traps on the stairs. Only Nicki had kept him from accidentally setting off the flashbangs as they rigged them up for the monsters. He walked over to where a first-aid kit lay on top of a box of MREs and opened it up. Scott fished around in it until he found a bottle of pain pills and slapped a handful down his throat. His head was throbbing, and he knew it was part of the reason he had been so sharp with Nicki. She was already asleep. He would’ve been too if he had been the one on the bed. The crap they had been through had taken a toll on both of them. They were exhausted and pushed to their limits. On the upside, they had food and water. The water in the house was still working for the time being, and there was plenty of bottled water for when and if it stopped. Scott walked to look out of the bedroom’s singular window. It was still snowing outside and coming down so thickly now that he couldn’t really see anything other the snow itself and the darkness of the night. He moved back over to slump against the wall near the bedroom’s door. All they could do was wait and hope that help came to them sooner rather than later.

  From somewhere in the woods beyond the walls of the house, a roar rang out in the night. Another followed it. Scott scrambled to his feet, grabbing the AK-47 propped up next to him. He knew without a doubt that the Sasquatch had found them and were on their way into the house.

  “Nicki!” he whispered as loudly as he dared to.

  She stirred beneath the covers of the bed, her eyes batting open. One look at him told her there was trouble. Nicki sprang from the bed and moved to get her own weapon. She had picked a pump-action shotgun. It had the power to mess up the monsters at close range, and it was a weapon she was very familiar with using.

  “How many?” she whispered as she joined him at the door.

  “No idea,” Scott told her. “More than one though.”

  The two of them waited for sounds of the Sasquatch entering the house. They didn’t have to wait long. Within minutes, they could hear the heavy footfalls of the creatures downstairs as they moved about the living room.

  “Maybe they won’t try the stairs,” Nicki whispered.

  Almost as soon as she got the words out, the first of the flashbang traps went off.

  “That’s it!” Scott yelled, throwing open the bedroom’s door. “They’re coming!”

  He ran through the door with Nicki on his heels. They stopped at the banister that ran the length of the second floor, looking down at the Sasquatch. There were seven of the monsters. One of them was staggering about at the bottom of the stairs, rubbing at its eyes with its massive hands. Another of the Sasquatch shoved by the blinded one to come up the stairs. The second flashbang detonated. Scott and Nicki managed to look away before it went off. The third was at the very top of the stairs and if the beasts made it up that far, it was all likely over.

  Scott opened up on the Sasquatch on the first floor with his AK-47. The weapon chattered as he hosed the beasts with the AK-47 set on full-auto. The Sasquatch below snarled and howled at the bullets raining down on them. Nicki’s pump-action shotgun boomed as she fired into the first of the beasts on its way up the stairs. The blast slammed into the monster, causing it to lose its footing. It careened through the splintering banister and crashed onto the floor below the side of the stairs. The creature was far from dead though. It
sprang up onto its feet to return to the stairs even as the other Sasquatch continued to charge up them.

  Nicki fired again. Her second shot hit the Sasquatch coming at her directly in its forehead. The creature’s head snapped back atop its neck as the bone of its skull caved inward. It flopped onto the stairs in the path of those behind it. The Sasquatch following it paused to lift its corpse and hurled it over the edge of the stairs to clear its way. Both Nicki and Scott poured fire into the Sasquatch as it did so. Scott’s AK-47 clicked empty as Nicki pumped another round ready in her shotgun. Between them, they had taken out the Sasquatch they’d been targeting. Its bullet-riddled corpse lay on the stairs as blood leaked from its multiple wounds. The next Sasquatch on its way up merely leaped over the corpse of its dead brother. It shattered the ceiling above the stairs as the upper part of its body rammed through it during its leap. The Sasquatch still managed to land on its feet though. Unfortunately for it, the Sasquatch landed right where the last of the flashbangs was set to discharge when it was tripped. The flashbang erupted, causing the Sasquatch to twist its body in an attempt to dodge what it surely thought was an attack. It fell sideways from the stairs.

  “We can’t hold them!” Nicki warned as another of the Sasquatch took its place at the top of the stairs.

  Scott saw that she was right.

  “Fall back!” he shouted, ejecting the spent magazine of his AK and ramming a fresh one into the weapon. The closest of the Sasquatch was within mere yards of them. He leveled his AK at the creature and fired a burst at it, trying to drive it back. Rounds tore the Sasquatch’s arms as it raised them to protect its face and body. Scott was between Nicki and the beast so all she could do was watch. She didn’t dare try to take a shot at it for fear of hitting him.

  The Sasquatch roared an inhuman battle cry and lunged forward at Scott. It plowed into him like a freight train, knocking him from his feet and sending his AK-47 flying out of his hands.

  “Scott!” Nicki screamed as the beast bent over to yank him up from where he lay.

  The beast ripped Scott’s arms from his shoulders, flinging one into the wall and the other over the banister. Blood splattered over the brown hair covering its body. Scott’s armless form dropped to the floor, but the monster wasn’t done with him yet. It raised up one of its huge feet and slammed it onto Scott’s right leg, shattering the bones inside it. The Sasquatch started to do the same for his left leg as Nicki’s shotgun thundered. The Sasquatch staggered backward as the heavy slug Nicki fired blew a gaping hole in its side. Nicki pumped another round and fired again. The Sasquatch toppled over, its facial features mangled, blood pouring of its chest from where its nose had been.

  Nicki knew there was nothing she could do to help Scott. She couldn’t tell if he was still alive or not. His wounds were too great to be anything but lethal. Blood soaked the carpet beneath him where he lay and his body was twitching as if he was having some sort of convulsion. The white of bone protruded through the cloth of his red-drenched pants leg, sticking upward at a bizarre angle from where the weight of the Sasquatch had snapped it. She managed to keep herself from vomiting at the sight of it. If she didn’t get moving, she would be dead too. Whirling about, Nicki ran for the bedroom behind her. She reached it ahead of the Sasquatch and slammed the door closed. A hair-covered arm plunged through the wood of the door, sending a shower of splinters flying into the bedroom. Some of them stung her cheek, burying themselves in her flesh. Nicki jerked her head to the side. The beast’s arm had come through the door only inches from her head. She was shoving against the door with the weight of her entire body and all her strength, but the Sasquatch still flung the door open. The opening door smacked into her, knocking her sideways. Nicki rolled onto the bedroom floor, her shotgun lost in her fall, and grabbed another weapon from the ready stash that she and Scott had set up in the room. Her hands worked the bolt of the .30.06 she had snatched as the Sasquatch fully entered the room. Its yellow eyes fell upon her as she aimed the rifle’s barrel at its head. The rifle cracked, bucking in her grasp. An explosion of red blossomed and splashed outward from where the bullet pierced the Sasquatch’s forehead. The beast’s massive body fell forward, face first onto the bedroom floor.

  Already another beast had entered the bedroom behind it. The Sasquatch threw itself at her as she fought desperately to get another round ready. The thick fingers of the beast’s right hand closed on the barrel of her rifle, bending the barrel in a downward angle. The claws of its left hand slashed through the air at her as Nicki rolled out of its path. Tearing deep grooves in the wall behind where she had been braced up against it, they only narrowly missed her back.

  Another Sasquatch charged into the room, colliding with the one that was after her. The first beast was shoved deeper into the room as it tried to stay on its feet and keep its balance. The second Sasquatch roared in anger at the first for being in its way. The distraction saved Nicki’s life as she was able to get to her feet and sprint across the room away from the raging monsters. She swept up another fully loaded and ready shotgun as she went. A third Sasquatch had appeared in the bedroom’s doorway, but there was no room for it to enter. The other two massive beasts were already being forced to slouch their shoulders and were stepping clumsily upon the supplies that littered the bedroom’s floor.

  Nicki was on the far side of the room, away from its only window, but she knew that it was her only hope of escape. Risking a second-story jump was something that she might survive intact, but staying in the room with the monsters was certain death. She was going to have to fight her way past the two beasts between her and the window.

  Letting loose a wild battle cry of her own, Nicki charged the two Sasquatch, firing point-blank into one of them as she ran. The shotgun blast blew apart the beast’s knee at its joint, causing it to reel sideways and fall into a stack of boxes filled with rations and bottled water. The other Sasquatch took a swipe at her with one of its clawed hands. Nicki ducked under its swing as she continued on by it. She ran straight for the bedroom window and jumped to fling herself through it. Glass shattered against her clothes and skin and then the cold of the night hit her as she flailed about in the air as she fell.

  Nicki felt both her legs break beneath the weight of her body as she landed on the snow-covered ground. She cried out from the pain, fighting to stay conscious. Her vision blurred and the world seemed to spin in front of her eyes. Shaking her head in an attempt to clear only increased the pain she was in as the movement jarred the shattered bones inside her legs. She had managed to hold onto the shotgun though and pumped it as her vision cleared just enough for her to make out the silhouette of one of the great beasts coming at her in the moonlight. With the last of her strength, Nicki lifted her shotgun towards the monster and squeezed its trigger. The blast coming out of the shotgun’s barrel flashed in the darkness of the night and the silhouette of the monster dropped from her line of sight. Nicki didn’t have any idea if she had killed the Sasquatch or not, but at least it wasn’t coming at her anymore. She tried to roll over to start crawling away from where the Sasquatch had been when she last saw its silhouette but failed. The pain in her legs was too great.

  She could hear more of the Sasquatch moving around near her but couldn’t see them. Her vision was fading in and out as she fought to stay alive. Her shotgun slipped from the weak fingers of her hand as a Sasquatch appeared out of nowhere above her. Its fingers closed around her head and slammed it down hard into the frozen ground that she lay on. Nicki’s skull cracked open from the impact. Blood ran from her ears, nose, and the corners of her eyes as she gave a final whimper of pain.

  The snarls and howls of the Sasquatch were the last things she heard before her soul departed from the world.

  Epilogue

  Colonel Drake frowned as he saw Agent Flint entering the tent of his makeshift command center. The clean-up operation was going well, and Drake was pretty sure that his boys had gotten all of the Sasquatch in the area around Lowah. The on
ly downside was the causality rate. He’d lost over two dozen men retaking the town and over four dozen more that he had ordered into the woods to clear out the great beasts. Still, technically, the op was a success. There hadn’t been a single spotting of one of the beasts in the last five hours.

  “Good evening, Colonel,” Agent Flint greeted him, walking up to stand with him in front of the multiple monitors showing pictures of the woods and mountains outside of Lowah. “I hear that all has gone as well as could be expected given the scope of the situation at hand.”

  Drake grunted. “I don’t know how you’re going to cover this one up, Flint. A whole town was wiped out, not to mention the losses we’ve taken cleaning up the mess. Do you really believe the press is going to continue to buy your terrorist attack story?”

  “Leave that to me, Colonel,” Flint told him. “It’s what I do. You just make sure every last one of those monsters is dead.”

  “There are too many caves and places to hide in these mountains to be 100% on that unless you give us the time I’ve been asking for,” Drake grumbled. “But it is looking like we got them all.”

  Flint nodded, flashing Drake a wry grin. “You know that more time isn’t something I can give you. The powers that be want you and your men out of here already. Besides, even if you weren’t able to get them all, I would wager you’ve hurt their numbers enough to where those things won’t dare to attack another town for a very good, long while.”

  “I just hope you’re right about that,” Drake said, still frowning.

  “When have I ever been wrong before?” Agent Flint quipped.

  Drake didn’t answer.

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  Author Bio

  Eric S Brown is the author of numerous book series including the Bigfoot War series, the Kaiju Apocalypse series (with Jason Cordova), the Crypto-Squad series (with Jason Brannon), the Homeworld series (With Tony Faville and Jason Cordova), the Jack Bunny Bam series, and the A Pack of Wolves series. Some of his stand alone books include War of the Worlds plus Blood Guts and Zombies, Day of the Sasquatch, Beyond Night, World War of the Dead, Last Stand in a Dead Land, Sasquatch Lake, Kaiju Armageddon, Megalodon, Megalodon Apocalypse, Kraken, Alien Battalion, The Last Fleet, and From the Snow They Came to name only a few. His short fiction has been published hundreds of times in the small press in beyond including markets like the Onward Drake and Black Tide Rising anthologies from Baen Books, the Grantville Gazette, the SNAFU Military horror anthology series, and Walmart World magazine. He has done the novelizations for such films as Boggy Creek: The Legend is True (Studio 3 Entertainment) and The Bloody Rage of Bigfoot (Great Lake films). The first book of his Bigfoot War series was adapted into a feature film by Origin Releasing in 2014. Werewolf Massacre at Hell’s Gate was the second of his books to be adapted into film in 2015. Major Japanese publisher, Takeshobo, recently bought the reprint rights to his Kaiju Apocalypse series (with Jason Cordova) and the mass market, Japanese language version was released in late 2017. Ring of Fire Press will be releasing a collected edition of his Monster Society stories (set in the New York Times Best-selling world of Eric Flint’s 1632) later this year. In addition to his fiction, Eric also writes an award winning comic book news column entitled “Comics in a Flash.” Eric lives in North Carolina with his wife and two children where he continues to write tales of the hungry dead, blazing guns, and the things that lurk in the woods.