All Hell
Authors: Allan Burd
All Hell
a horror
thriller
Allan Burd
Excerpt from The Roswell Protocols
My feet slip in the rain-slickened mud and I tumble end over end downhill past trees and boulders. It’s only by the grace of god my thick skull doesn’t crack like a walnut. Though it would serve me right. Tonight I was the textbook definition of fuck up. I had no one to blame but myself. Someone set me up. They knew just how to get to me and I blindly jumped into their trap. But I can kick myself in the ass later. Right now I need to survive.
As soon as t
he ground levels out, I roll to my feet. It takes me less than a second to regain my orientation then I continue my mad dash through these unforgiving woods. Howls reverberate behind me like Mother Nature’s sick way of ringing the dinner bell and the joke is I can’t run far enough or fast enough away to avoid being the feast. Forest’s end is still a good mile away and even in the unlikely event I make it that far, the open fields that act as a buffer between these monsters and civilization would make me as easy to catch as a fish in a bowl. I run through the first grade math in my head. Six of them against one of me equals I ain’t gonna make it out of here alive. Not without one hell of a fight that the odds of me winning range from slim to no fucking way.
For the third
time in the last ten minutes I take a mental inventory of my arsenal. I’m holding my Lupara double-barreled, sawed-off shotgun tight in my grip like a security blanket. I have eight extra shells, all custom filled with pure silver pellets, in my waist pocket. My Tomcat and Px4 Storm, fully loaded with my homemade 9mm wolf-killers, are snug to my left hip and right thigh. I’ve got seven additional magazines bouncing around in my backpack, along with the assortment of handheld weapons I bring every time I hunt. I don’t think any of it is going to be enough. Not when all of them are on me at once.
I’m a vengeful enough bastard where I’ll
take a few of them with me, but in the end I’ll go down just the same. They’re just too fast, too strong, and too vicious for me to get all of them before they get all of me. I packed light.
Too light.
I look around for an edge. Some
advantage I haven’t noticed yet that might make all the difference in the world. All I see is the same worn path through this dank, godforsaken forest that I saw on the way in. I’m vaulting a tree stump in front of me when I decide it’s time to change course. Straight ahead is nothing more than a dead man’s run, one I have no hope of surviving. I divert left, darting through the thicker, rougher terrain, in hopes it changes my luck.
I sli
de my Lupara into the sheath I sewed into my backpack then whip out the Storm and waste one round hoping to get lucky. The empty silence that follows the shot mocks my desperation. I went off foolish, cocky, and now it is going to bite me in the ass… literally. I assumed I was dealing with a rogue, one lone wolf who strayed off the reservation, one sadistic prick of a werewolf who didn’t abide by the rules and had a funny way of killing. I should have known these monsters always work in packs.
It’s just when I saw
what it did to Old Man Jones, my thinking got crooked. I let logic get run over by pure emotion… rage. It brought back memories, bad ones, and I went from smart to stupid faster than my Mustang goes from zero to ninety-five.
They howled
again, six of them, one after the other that echoed toward me like a collapsing row of dominos. I hit the brakes behind a fat oak and listen closely to the last cry trying to calculate the distance between us. It was obvious they were close, just minutes away, but I still couldn’t spy them. Didn’t matter though. I’ve had enough encounters with werewolves to know they spied me. They had my scent. They weren’t going to lose me. And they weren’t going to settle for anything less than my blood. I sprinted away as fast as my small stride, midget feet, and compact frame would allow me.
I pictured my tomb
stone. Here lies Silas Hill. Short man. Short life. But if any of the mourners knew the shit I’ve seen and the things I’ve done they’d have put my balls in a mausoleum.
A row of brambles line
up in front of me and I quickly realize where I am, the ass end of Smithfield farms. The spiked blackberry bushes in front of me are imported from Asia and produce the finest berries in the county. Smithfield’s makes a living selling them at a premium but they truly are worth it. Between those, picking pumpkins, and the hayrides, this place is one of the few, rare fond childhood memories that I have. My pa used to bring me and my brother here twice a month when we were kids. I still remember the layout pretty well. The stables are just a short distance away. Seems as good a place as any to make my last stand.
I slip
between the bushes, the prickly thorns nipping at my clothes. A sharp one rips through and gashes my left arm. I feel the liquid leak out of me and think the blood-covered blackberries will give the werewolves a delicious taste of what’s to come. The stable looms large ahead of me, like a lighthouse to a lost sailor. It looks old and rickety, as if the wind itself could blow it down, but I plan to use it as a fortress. I race to its wooden doors and toss aside the two by four it uses as a door lock. I open it a crack only to hear the snort of awakening horses. Their feet dance and clatter.
I see how nervous they are and wonder if it’s me or if they somehow sense the death I brought with me. It dawns on me that this wasn’t a good idea. It’s not like I planned for it, but whatever I was thin
king these poor horses weren’t a part of it. Though, there’s nothing I can do about it now. I’m about to slip inside when I spy another option… or more accurately smell one. If I’m going to come out on top, I need to have the element of surprise. That means I need to mask my scent. The manure pile is about five-feet high, which makes it taller than I am. There has to be at least a week’s worth of horseshit there. Only two types of people I knew valued shit this much; farmers, to fertilize their fields, and terrorist bomb makers, to fertilize their twisted ideals. I was about to be the third.
As I
approach it, the stench hit me like a punch in the nose. Nothing like a smattering of rain to keep manure fresh. At least the softness of it makes it easier to waddle into. I holster the Storm and redraw the Lupara. I take a long, deep breath. Then I keep the barrel down and my mouth closed so neither clogs as I ease my way in, making sure every lovable inch of me is covered.
I’m
in deep shit, first figuratively and now literally. I always wanted to go out in style.
Ten seconds
head-to-toe in shit and my thoughts drift to what led me here. I was welcomed home by the smell of jack and vomit. My pa was comatose on the couch, snoring like a bull with too many rings in his nose. I threw a blanket over him and tidied up around him. Then, just as I was settling in, the phone rang. It was Sheriff Martaan.
He wasn’t expecting me to pick up, but he seemed
more than okay with it. He told me we were the first call on his list. That jolted me. My pa’s as big and tough as anyone, the guy you want on your side when you’re in a situation. But he’s also a short-tempered drunk who answers to no one but the corps. He’s not first on anyone’s list unless things are really bad.
I told
Martaan I’d be right there. I didn’t need to say a word about my pa. Martaan knew us well enough to know that if I picked up, Pa was probably sleeping one off. The location he gave me wasn’t too far away. I grabbed my slicker, my gear, and went for a stroll.
I could tell the
scene was bad even before I got on top of it. Jones’s old lady was wailin’ up a storm in the arms of Larry, the local preacher, while the sheriff was shaking his head, hat in his lap, sitting on a stump off to the side. There was no one examining the body or the crime scene. We weren’t just his first call… Martaan wanted one of us to be the first to see it. As I approached it, I immediately saw why.
Jones’ body
was laid out; arms spread wide, legs tight together, like our Lord and savior Jesus Christ hung out on the cross. He was gutted side to side, his innards spilling out like a deer being prepared for market. Three parallel gashes from ear to nose marked his right cheek. I knew I was going to find identical gashes on the other cheek even before I flipped his face over to look at the other side.
I backpedaled.
Martaan called us because a monster did this. But he didn’t know it was also personal. The way the body was left and the pattern of the wounds were identical. The only difference was the monster that did it. These claw marks were ripped, jagged. The one’s that killed my brother were clean.
Martaan approached with a somber stride. He pointed to the lacerations.
“Werewolves,” he spat, “so much for our agreement.”
His
presence tempered my rage. He was afraid. Los Agros was werewolf country. They occupy the woods while we uprights occupy the valley. But they don’t bother us and we don’t bother them. It’s been an unwritten treaty that worked well for years. Tonight’s murder might change all that. I bent down and examined the wounds more closely. I couldn’t find anything that disagreed with Martaan’s conclusion. A werewolf definitely did this. The only question Martaan had was why. The more important question I had was why like this?
“Who else had access to the body?” I ask
ed Martaan with a sharper edge in my tone than what’s ordinarily there.
“No one,” replied Martaan. “
Mrs. Jones was right here when it happened. They were walking home when the beast struck out of nowhere. Killed him, just like that, one swipe across the gut. The spatter pattern confirms it. Though why he rearranged him like that and scratched his face the way he did baffles me. Larry and I heard Mrs. Jones screaming and ran out but the creature was long gone by then.”
Mrs. Jones broke free of the Preacher, came
barreling toward me. “You find it, Silas,” she screamed. “You find that horror and you put it down. You kill it. Kill it dead.” Her fist came down on my shoulder and she collapsed into me.
I’m four foot five and still people lean on me. But I understood.
I didn’t know Mr. Jones that well, but it’s a small town so I knew him well enough. He was a decent man. He never did anything great, but he never did anything terrible either. Not so far as I know. He was a good husband and a good provider. He didn’t deserve this. I held her, awkward as it was.
“You make
it suffer too,” she added, wiping her eyes, regaining her composure.
I looked her straight in the eye and
gave her a slight nod, making it a promise I planned to keep. “Did you get a good look at it?” I asked her.
“I’ll never forget it.
It stared right at me when it put him like that… like it was rejoicing in my pain. Green glowing eyes, a scar under the left one, and a missing tooth. Dark brown coat, too.”
“It’s my problem
, now,” I told her. An officer draped a white sheet over the body, bringing a weird sense of finality to the whole thing. But to me, it was just beginning. “I promise,” I added. She seemed to accept that as she allowed Preacher Larry to throw his arm around her and remove her from the scene.
The
brief exchange brought things into focus. I re-examined the body. There was no mistaking it. The marks were different but the same. I was going to track and kill the beast, not just for Mrs. Jones, but for myself. But first he was going to give me some answers. I studied the ground surrounding the body. Two wolf prints, both upright, followed by alternating patterns as it came and fled. The beast approached all wolf, went full
were
for the kill then turned back into a wolf for a quick exit. The ground was wet so the trail would be fairly easy to follow.