Bigfoot War (2 page)

Tom wondered why he’d moved to this cursed place to begin with.

Still wishing a forest fire would wipe the football field off the map, he got to his feet. It was getting late and the “boys” would be waiting on him to make his nightly visit to Hank’s. The bar was dirty and poorly kept, but Hank let him buy his drinks on credit during the summer, understanding full well how teachers got paid thanks to his departed wife. Besides, the beer there wasn’t bad at all. He just hoped his piece-of-crap Ford would crank over to get him there. As he walked into the parking lot, he sensed a change coming on the air. Surely it was time for something good to happen in this sinkhole.

He got in his car and slapped the steering wheel with a grin as the engine turned over on the first try.

Becca

Becca cursed as the phone rang again. She knew it was Ms. Johnson before she answered it. She lifted the receiver to her ear. “Hello, Babble Creek Sheriff’s Department.”

“
Oh, thank God! Sheriff May. The U.F.O. has started wailing now. It’s terrible. Just this long constant blaring sound. It’s scaring my cats to death. Why poor little Sissy . . .”

Becca cut her off as politely as possible. “Ms. Johnson, we’ve been through this before,” —
a thousand times over the last two years,
Becca thought— “as long as you stay in your house, the aliens can’t get you.”

“
I know, Sheriff May,” Ms. Johnson said. “It’s just the blaring is so loud. Do you want to hear it? Let me get the phone over to the window.”

Sighing, Becca leaned back in her chair, listening to the sounds of the old woman wrestling her long outdated phone through the kitchen. Ms. Johnson was a nice enough lady if you met her at church, but unlike some of the other older folks of Babble Creek, she was always well-dressed, charming, and if anything, overly polite. She was the kind of lady who showed up on your doorstep with cookies if you were new in town, or sent you a card if you were in the hospital even if you hadn’t spoken for years. When the sun went down on the weekend, though, and she was in her big house out off Faulk’s Cove Road, she was a whole different person. Surrounded by her precious horde of feline companions, Ms. Johnson seemed on the verge of being a full blown paranoid schizophrenic. She called every weekend since Becca was elected sheriff with the same old story about lights and U.F.O.s in the woods by her house.

A trooper by nature and determined to do a good job in her new office, Becca actually drove all the way up to Ms. Johnson’s house every weekend for two months to find nothing but trees, darkness, and fireflies. Finally, she sat down with the elderly woman over cookies and tea, and had a long talk with her. Becca convinced the old woman through simple logic, assurances, and her limited knowledge of science fiction—twisted to suit her purposes, of course—that she’d be safe as long as she stayed inside her house. “You see their transporter beams can’t get to you in here,” she remembered saying. “You have to be outside, in the open, for them to get a proper lock on you.”After that, Ms. Johnson still called every weekend, but Becca never had to go up in person again. Usually a brief, friendly reminder of that talk calmed Ms. Johnson right down. For whatever reason, though, it wasn’t working tonight and this was the first time Becca could remember Ms. Johnson’s delusions included the description of the aliens howling.

The noise of the old lady wrestling with her phone cord ceased. Becca sprang forward in her chair as she heard the garbled noise over the line. It was a horn. A horn that sounded like it belonged to a large truck. She blinked in surprise and wondered what in the devil was going on up in Faulk’s Cove.

“
You hear that, Sheriff?” Ms. Johnson asked, returning to the line. “They’ve been doing that for the better part of a half hour.”

“
Ms. Johnson, thank you for calling this in. You stay in your house, okay? I am coming over there.”

“
Thank you, Sheriff May,” the old lady said, but Becca didn’t hear her. She was already hanging up the phone, ready to make her way to the door.

Tom

Tom slammed down another shot of whiskey and slapped the bar with his palm. It burnt like Hades as it ran down his throat. “Whooee!” Though he was a heavy drinker during the off season, whiskey wasn’t his drink of choice. The men around him cheered him on. Fred smiled underneath the beer-drenched, graying beard that covered his lips. Terry giggled like a teenager.

“
Hits hard, don’t it?” Fred half-shouted even though he sat directly beside Tom.

There were perhaps a dozen other people in the place. Not a large crowd. Even on a Saturday night there simply wasn’t that many real drinkers in Babble Creek that came here to do it. Sometimes, Tom wondered how Hank managed to keep the doors of this place open despite the small number of patrons and his overly generous tendencies.

“
Line him up another. It’s on me,” Fred ordered the spry-looking old man behind the bar.

Hank reached for the bottle, but Tom shook his head. “One’s enough for me. Just keep the beer coming.”

The door to the street opened, letting inside the last rays of the day’s dying sun. Tom’s mouth fell open as he spun on his stool to see Jeff Taylor standing in the doorway.

“
I don’t believe it,” he half-slurred-half-muttered as he leapt from his seat and charged Jeff. “Jeff Taylor!” he shouted. “Never thought I would see you again.”

Tom noticed the sour looks that fell across the faces of his friends and decided to ignore them. Jeff looked shocked, too, as Tom closed in on him.

“
Tom Railsback?” Jeff asked as Tom grabbed his hand and pumped it up and down.

“
Yeah, it’s me. What has it been, like, ten years, now?”

“
More,” Jeff said.

Tom turned back to Fred and Terry. “This is my old buddy, Jeff. We fought in the Gulf together.” Still doing his best to disregard the tension filling the air, Tom pressed on. “What in the heck are you doing in a little town like Babble Creek?”

Jeff’s expression was as cold as ice. “Coming home,” he said with a bitter tone in his voice. Jeff nodded at Fred and Terry as if he knew them but couldn’t recall their names.

Finally, things began to click for Tom. “You’re from here?”

“
Born in this town. First time I’ve been back since I was twelve.”

“
You still crazy?” Fred asked with a sneer.

Tom didn’t know what was going on between them, but he sensed it wasn’t good. From experience, he knew Fred was in the mood for a fight and didn’t want to see the big redneck get hurt.

“
You got a place to stay?” Tom asked hurriedly, interrupting their exchange as he put his arm over Jeff’s shoulders and led him from the bar. He could feel Fred and Terry glaring after them as they left. “Catch you boys later,” he called over his shoulder as he shoved Jeff along faster. “My buddy and I got some catching up to do.”

The night air was warm and humid. The stars were beginning to show themselves in the growing darkness above the glow of the street lights. Jeff followed Tom into the parking lot. As they walked Tom asked, “What was all that about?” He fished a cigarette from his jacket pocket. “I gather you weren’t all that popular here as a kid.”

Jeff didn’t answer.

Tom changed the subject. “Seriously, you got a place to stay?”

“
Not yet.”

“
There’s only one hotel in town, but it’s nice. This old woman runs it. Can’t remember her name.”

“
Gracie,” Jeff said.

Tom blinked in surprise. “Yeah, that’s it. How’d you know that?”

A smile crept onto Jeff’s lips. “You haven’t lived here very long, have you, Tom? Babble Creek isn’t exactly known for being a hotbed of progress and change.”

“
Guess not,” he agreed with a laugh, “but, man, am I glad to see you. You were always my good luck charm in the war. You kicked some serious butt and saved mine more times than I can remember. It’s about time something good came to this sinkhole of a town.”

Becca

Becca radioed Powell as she drove along the winding road of Faulk’s Cove to let him know where she was headed. Powell was the only one of her deputies on duty tonight. The tiny sheriff’s department of Babble Creek consisted of six employees and one of those was Cindy, the half-witted, big-chested receptionist the mayor stuck her with.

“
Powell,” she called into the radio again. “Powell, you better not be asleep again.”

The radio crackled as he responded. “No, ma’am,” he said. “I was just taking a leak. It’s pretty dead out here on Route 12.”

Becca shook her head. “Look, I am heading to Ms. Johnson’s. I think there’s actually something going on up there tonight.”

“
Want backup?” he asked, stifling a snicker. “I hear those aliens got some wicked-mean heat rays.”

“
Powell,” she said firmly.

“
Yes, ma’am,” he answered, sounding more serious. “I’ll watch over things until you get back. I’m heading back to the station now.”

Becca watched the shadows along the roadside as she drove the last few miles. Between Ms. Johnson’s space aliens and the rest of the town’s whispered stories of the infamous Babble Creek monster, sometimes she wondered if she was the only sane person in the whole town. At least the legend of the monster had some validity to it. The legends of it predated Babble Creek itself, and some years ago there was a family that had been reportedly attacked by it. Two of that family died that night. There was nothing to prove the monster’s existence in the reports she had read back when she perused the department’s files when she’d first taken office, but something about the case never sat right with her. The forensics reports were shaky at best and seemed haphazardly thrown together. The report claimed a bear was the culprit of those murders however and it fit with the damage done to the house where the attack occurred.

Becca rounded a bend in the road and slowed down.

She heard the wreck before she saw it. Her eyes followed the sound of the continuously-blaring horn to where a large white truck sat partially in the ditch at the side of the road.

She pulled her patrol car to a stop before she reached the wreck so her headlights lit up the scene. She grabbed her radio. “Powell! We got a wreck. Get George and Lisa on the way up and then get up here yourself.”

Throwing open her door, Becca jumped from her patrol car, her boots crunching on the gravel road. She’d seen wrecks like this countless times. Either the driver was speeding and lost control of the car or a deer or some other animal had darted in front of the vehicle, forcing the driver to swerve hard. The result was the same. She hurried toward the truck. The fact there was no one around waiting for help and that the truck’s horn didn’t let up on her arrival worried her.

As she approached the truck, she noticed the driver side door was gone. Not merely hanging open, but torn away and missing. The body of the driver lay on the steering wheel, his head pressing down on the horn. Something red and wet was smeared over the vehicle’s side and dripped from its cab to the gravel below, forming a small puddle. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Something wasn’t right. Wondering if she was spooked from her own musings about the Babble Creek monster, Becca drew her Glock 40 from the holster on her hip and stood watching the trees, deciding to err on the side of caution. The night was silent except for the blaring of the truck’s horn. Finally, she continued on to the vehicle. The corpse that lay collapsed on the steering column was indeed a man’s. His head was crushed to a pulp as if someone had stuck it in a vice and pressed it flat. Becca felt as if she might throw up and cursed herself for it. She was a professional. She was trained to handle things like this and had seen far worse looking and more mangled corpses in the course of her career. There was no way for the body to have sustained the damage it had from the truck crashing into the ditch.

This wasn’t an accident.

It was murder.

Becca retreated to her car to radio Powell again and make sure the deputy was on his way. Blood still ran from the body and she had the feeling that if they didn’t get things under way soon, it’d run all the way to where she stood by the open car door, and perhaps whatever did this might come back to empty her next.

Jeff

As the sun rose over the town of Babble Creek, Jeff and Tom continued to argue. Tom had accompanied him in his quest to acquire a room at Gracie’s. They’d picked up some beer in the process. Jeff guessed Tom thought they’d spend a few hours chatting, drinking, and catching up. Now it was dawn and Tom remained seated in the chair opposite him. He could see in Tom’s eyes the man clearly thought he was insane yet something held him here. Perhaps it was a sense of debt from the war or maybe it was the man’s sense of loyalty to a friend and an honest desire to help him out. Jeff didn’t care. If Tom agreed to help him, he’d take it. He could use all the help he could get. No one else was going to help him. Once the official reports said the thing that murdered his father and brother was a bear, not even the most whacko local believers in the Babble Creek monster took his side. The wild claims of a boy didn't draw their interest considering the amount of psychological trauma he'd under went that night. His tale just didn't add to them for some reason he never really fully understood even with the mutilation of his father's cattle. He wrote it off to resentment as that was not the case with the world outside of the small town. The media played up his encounter with the thing to epic levels and put Babble Creek on the national map of Sasquatch hot spots.