Cindy stuck out her ample bosom, and crossed her arms over it as she gave Brent a look that made him realize what she'd said about the phone lines was true. It was all too much for him to take in. Brent wished Becca was here. She'd know how to handle this mess. He'd always been the department's muscle. Dealing with people wasn't his strong suit.

"The sheriff is on her way. Don't you folks worry. Everything is going to be dealt with as fast we can do it." He fought past the crowd, with Cindy trailing after him, and went into the sheriff's office, leaving the others frazzled, confused, and angry. As soon as he got the door closed, he grabbed Cindy by the arm. "Get Becca down here now!"

Becca Becca answered her cell. It was Cindy and she filled Becca in on what was happening at the department. Brent was in the background, yelling at people.

The big man's voice was frantic. As she listened to Cindy ramble on, she made a priority list in her mind.

"Okay," she said, "tell Brent to calm down. Tell him he's capable of handling the crowd and we'll be there as soon as we can. Powell and I are heading to Harold's Market right now." The siren blared as the sheriff's car sped through the streets. "As soon as we take care of the thing at Harold's , we'll be in, okay?"

Not giving Cindy a chance to answer, she flipped her cell closed.

"We're going to take care of the thing at the store, huh?" Powell said not taking his eyes from the road. Becca noticed he gripped the steering wheel hard. "Hate to say this, but there were nine of us this morning against one of those things. Three people died and Brent got hurt. Exactly what makes you think we can handle this thing alone?"

"We have to. It's our job. The thing's on our turf now. That evens the playing field a lot."

"Don't suppose you have a plan, do you?" he asked.

"Shoot the b.a.s.t.a.r.d until he doesn't move anymore," she said curtly.

"That's not what I meant. There's only three of us officers left. We can't protect the whole town. If these creatures are . . . invading Babble Creek in force, we don't have the manpower to be everywhere at once or the firepower to stop them."

"I know." She sighed. "Let's deal with this for the moment. I'll come up with something."

Powell glanced over at her. "We need help, Becca. It's time to call in some. This mess has gotten too big."

"Look out!"

A creature like the one they'd killed ran up the road at them. The thing had to be doing forty-five miles an hour, easy. Powell swerved and avoided it. The patrol car spun out, whipping around as the beast pa.s.sed them. The creature stopped and stood in the middle of the road as if trying to decide whether it should attack them or keep going. Powell was already out of the car. The creature sprang at them as it saw him. Its huge legs quickly closed the distance to the car before Becca could open her door. A large, hairy hand burst through the pa.s.senger side window and reached for her. She threw herself sideways, ducking, as she struggled to tear her Glock free from its holster. She knew how ineffective the weapon would be, but it was the only option she had right now.

Powell's rifle cracked. The deputy had circled around behind it and got the drop on it. The fur-covered hand pulled out of the car. The monster roared as Powell fired again. The bullet smashed into the thing's chest, punching a deep hole into it. Its body flew back onto the car's roof with such force it caved in above her. She kicked with her feet, pushing herself out the open door on the driver's side as the deputy's rifle thundered again. A heavy thud came from the other side of the car. Becca flopped onto the road as Powell raced around the car to make sure she was okay. As soon as he did, he jumped in the air with joy and let out an excited whoop before he helped her up.

"I nailed the thing," he said through a smile of tobacco-stained teeth.

"You sure?," Becca said sarcastically. They walked around the car together. The creature's body lay motionless, blood leaking from a gaping hole in its forehead. Another b.l.o.o.d.y hole was dead center in its chest. "I'm impressed," she admitted.

Powell shrugged. "It was really luck."

"This one isn't as big as the one from this morning."

"Still, it's two for the good guys." He laughed.

Becca allowed herself a grin before she became all business again. "We need to get back to the station. Only G.o.d knows how many more of these things there are."

Justin "That's weird, power going off before the storm," Hank said.

Fred struck a match and lit the ancient kerosene lamp old Hank had fetched from somewhere in the bar's backroom.

Justin watched the wick catch as the lamp sputtered to life. He didn't drink like Fred did, but today he sure felt like he had earned one. To tell the truth, he needed it. Terry might not have been the best sort of friend, but no one deserved to die like that.

"Yep, sure is odd," Old Hank added. "If it was anyone but you boys I'd be closing up."

"Thanks, Hank," Justin said. "We appreciate you staying."

"What happened at the Taylor place this morning? Heard it was something to do with a bear that gone bloodthirsty or something."

"Shoot no! It weren't no bear!" Fred exclaimed before Justin could silence him.

Justin stood and grabbed Fred by the back of his neck. "We can't really talk about it. You'll have to ask Sheriff Becca if you want to know the details. Isn't that right, Fred?"

"Ow, man," Fred said, rubbing his neck as Justin let go of him.

"What I don't understand is how your dogs didn't get hurt? You'd think they would have went wild on the thing."

"Hank, please," Justin said. "Drop it, okay?"

"It's my fault," Fred said, voice beginning to slur from the booze. "I shouldn't have left you guys."

"Guess I best get Fred home, Hank. I think he's had enough."

Hank nodded his goodbye and set about locking up the bar as Justin led Fred into the street.

"What ya doin', man? I'm fine," Fred said.

"Come on, buddy. Let me drive you home. I think we've seen too many people get hurt today already." Justin shoved him into the pa.s.senger seat of his SUV. "I'm not taking no for an answer."

Brent Brent paced nervously in Becca's office. He'd sought sanctuary after he'd finally managed to get the crowd to disperse and head back home. He knew he wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but even he realized what was happening in Babble Creek was bad, real bad. He very much wanted to radio Macon County's department and call in reinforcements, but that was Becca's decision to make not his and he didn't want to overstep his bounds. She'd said they had to deal with this on their own, and if Brent was anything, he was loyal.

Cindy poked her head into the office. "Brent, Rita's on the phone. She sounds upset and asked to speak to you."

"Transfer it here." Brent plopped into Becca's chair and picked up the phone when the line lit up. He knew at once the call wasn't good news.

"Brent, there's something in the woods behind my house," was all Rita had to say before he took charge of the situation.

"I want you stay right where you are. Don't light any candles. Keep the house dark and be as quiet as you can. I'm coming." He sprinted from the office. When he pa.s.sed Cindy on the way, he said, "Tell Becca I've gone to Rita's when she gets here." Outside, he slid into his car and turned on the sirens. He peeled out and the car screeched as it shot onto the main road. He glanced at the shotgun laying on the pa.s.senger's seat beside him, and knew it was next to worthless if his hunch about what he'd be facing played out. It didn't matter. Rita was all that mattered and he would rather die before he let anything happen to her.

The radio crackled as Becca's voice filled the vehicle. "Brent, this is Sheriff May. Cindy told me what you're doing. I am sorry, but I'm ordering you to turn around right now. We need you here."

Brent left the radio where it was, ignoring her. It tore him up inside, but some things mattered more than even his job and his duty. He reached over and turned the radio completely off, pushing the gas down harder as the patrol car blazed its way through Babble Creek.

He left the siren on as he pulled into the drive beside Rita's house. He doubted it would scare off anything that lurked in the trees, but he could hope that it might anyway. Rita's door flew open and she came running onto the front porch to meet him.

Brent stepped from the car with the shotgun held tightly in his hands. "Get in the car," he shouted. An inhuman growl cut the night as a giant hairy beast came charging from the trees right toward him. Brent fired on it. Blood flew from the creature's left leg where the shot nailed its fur and flesh, but the wound did nothing to slow it down. The big man pumped another round into the shotgun's chamber as the monster drew closer. Rita screamed. He saw her on the porch darting back and forth as if she didn't know whether to make a break for the car or go back inside and lock the door. He didn't have time to tell her what to do. The hulking beast was within yards of him. He jerked up the shotgun as a desperate plan formed in his head. He waited until the thing was nearly on top of him, so close he could smell the stink of its rancid breath, then he leaped forward, shoving the shotgun's barrel straight into the monster's neck. He squeezed the trigger the moment the barrel made contact. The shotgun bucked in his hands. He ducked as the monster swung at him with a vicious backhanded swing, trying to push him away from it. The thing staggered, clutching the hole in its neck as blood poured over its matted hair and stained the fur of its chest a bright red. Its cries turned to wet, gargling noises. Still holding its neck, trying to stop the bleeding, it stumbled into the trees and out of view.

Brent turned his attention back to Rita and saw her finally make her choice. She came flying down the porch to the car. He jumped into the driver's seat and slammed the vehicle into reverse as soon as she was inside.

"What was that thing?" she asked.

"Bigfoot," was his only response as her house shrunk in the rearview mirror behind them.

Powell Becca and Powell stood over her desk, looking over a map of Babble Creek.

"This is hopeless," he said. "With the power out and the phone acting funny now, not to mention we're down to three officers a.s.suming Brent even makes it back, there's no way we can save everyone."

"I spoke with Sheriff Davies in Macon. Every officer he can spare is en route along with some help from their police department."

"That's great, but we both know with the road winding down the mountain and into town, even without the rain that may be coming, it's going to take them an hour or more to get here. As fast as these things are moving, half the population of Babble Creek will likely be dead by then if it isn't already."

"What we have to do is get everyone together," Becca said as Justin walked into the office. "Somewhere we must have a chance of holding the things back."

"Where's Fred?" Powell asked as Justin, apparently overhearing what Becca had been saying, looked at the map.

"He's sleeping off a little too much drink." Justin tapped the map with his finger. "How about the high school? It's what we use for tornadoes and the like. The gym is big enough to fit everyone and the doors are metal. We can chain them shut and put snipers on the roof."

"Sounds like a plan, unless these things can jump," Powell said. "It's better than anything I got."

"The school's fine," Becca said. "The question is, how do we get people there and fast? Not everyone is going to have a radio that runs on batteries or a backup generator. We don't have the time to go house-to-house. The risk of encountering those things is too great as well. b.u.mping into one would be bad enough, but running into a pack, that would be the end of it. We can't afford to lose anyone else."

"We're just going to have to hope people come there on their own as they realize how bad things are," Powell said, pulling his Glock from its holster and checking its clip. The weapon was near useless, but the act of doing so made him feel better anyway. It was good to know it would be there if he got desperate.

Becca looked exhausted and he knew she was.

He decided it was time for him to step up and try to take some of the stress off her shoulders. "Justin, get Fred and round up everyone you can as you go. Take them to the school and start getting it ready."

"Where are you going?" Becca asked as Powell headed for the office door.

"I've got a plan. I'll meet you guys there," he said. He didn't have to look back to know they were all staring after him.

Brent This Monday night was one for the history books, Brent thought as his patrol car reached the main road running through Babble Creek. The sasquatches were no longer bothering to keep to the shadows and folks were beginning to figure out what was going on. The streets of the town were far from quiet this evening. All h.e.l.l had broken loose. People ran everywherea"streets, sidewalks, lawnsa"it didn't matter. Many of the store windows were smashed in and shards of gla.s.s littered the sidewalks. Worse, it wasn't from looters. The sasquatches stalking the street would often grab the people in their path and fling them aside as they closed in on whatever unlucky person struck their fancy as a target. Brent saw one of the creatures close in on an elderly woman out of the corner of his eye as the patrol car flew by. She swatted at it with a folded up umbrella before it pulled her close and bit into the top of her skull while its giant hands crushed her shoulders. Old Hank's bar was on fire. The dancing orange hues of the blaze mingled with the bright starlight and the full moon above. Brent watched in disbelief as a sasquatch bounded from an alleyway straight into the middle of the road in front of him.

"Hold on!" he told Rita.

The beast left him with only a couple choices: try to swerve and risk losing control of the car or hitting it head on. Brent jerked the wheel hard to the right and felt the b.u.mp of the wheels of the car bounce up as he went onto the sidewalk. He kept the gas floored and said a prayer as the car flew past the monster. It reached for the car with an impossibly long arm and managed to rip the siren from its top with a shower of sparks before Brent was clear of it and speeding down the road. Rita incoherently yelled at him as the thing tossed the siren aside. It chased after them.

"It's coming!" she said.

Brent saw the monster gaining ground in the rearview. Worse, he knew he couldn't punch it all the way because someone might dart out in front of him thanks to the chaos in the streets.

What to do . . . what to do . . . what toa"

"Screw it," he said, slamming on the brakes and kicking the car in reverse. The patrol car lurched backwards. Almost immediately, metal met flesh and bone as him and Rita slammed into their seats from the impact. Their bodies jerked forward as one and Brent's face smashed into the steering wheel; when he sat up he spat teeth and blood. He glanced over at Rita to see that her seatbelt had spared her from injury. The sasquatch was on the asphalt clutching its right leg. The white of bone stood out from underneath its fur and the thick muscles of its leg. It howled a deep, pain-filled cry.

"I have to finish this," Brent said as he got out of the car, shotgun in hand.

"No!" she yelled as he pumped a round into the weapon's chamber and started toward the beast. "I can't lose you!"

Brent ignored her plea and hefted his shotgun as he walked toward the beast.

It saw him and tried to stand. A fresh howl cut the night as it toppled back to the ground. Brent shouldered the shotgun and fired it like a rifle. The blast nicked the monster's forehead and cut its cry short. It was dazed as Brent walked closer to it, firing round after round into it with every step he took until the shotgun was empty and he stood next to the hulking ma.s.s of muscle and hair. He dropped the useless weapon and drew his Glock 40 as the beast slapped at him with its left arm. He barely avoided the blow as he took careful aim with his Glock and put a trio of rounds into the thing's face. One round broke the monster's nose, hitting it at just the right angle. Another thudded into its cheek, ricocheting off the bone. The last one struck Brent's intended target and entered the monster's brain as it reduced its left eye to pulp. The wounded creature finally slumped over, twitching. Brent emptied the Glock into it for good measure and popped out the clip, replacing it with a fresh one as he raced back to the patrol car where Rita stood waiting, apparently having gotten out to watch the battle.

As they hopped into the car together, she hugged him close. He gently pushed her away, knowing they had to get moving before another of the things made a run at them. Brent hoped the vehicle would still run. He knew there was nothing he could do to help the other people on the streets. The clip in his Glock was his last and he regretted using so many bullets to take the beast out, but he needed to know it was going to stay down. There was at least one more of those things behind them close by, already killing people at random as it moved through the town, roaring its fury and anger to the world.

Amanda Amanda cowered in the closet of her bedroom. Her legs were pulled tight to her chest, huddled almost completely into a ball with her back pressed to the closet's rear wall. When she had gotten home from the nightmarish events at the grocery store, the line to the Sheriff Department was busy. Even when she tried dialing 9-1-1, she got the same recorded message that all lines were busy. Her nerves were a wreck, and she kept replaying the images of Lewis fetching his rifle and the large ape-like monster emerging from the store, its matted fur and musky stench mixed with the hot smell of fresh blood.

As she shakily put away her groceries in an effort to take her mind off things, she instead told herself over and over there was nothing more she could have done or even do now. As she worked, an eerie feeling of being watched crept over her. She shoved the can of spaghetti sauce into the pantry and shut its door only to see the glowing red eyes of an animal staring at her through the kitchen window. Frozen, she felt drawn to those red eyes, a.n.a.lyzed them, waited for the creature to make the first move. The power was out and the small candles she had lit as she worked cast shadows throughout the half-dark room. Outside, a car drove by. The thing beyond the window stood to its full height; fur and muscle filled the pane. She could swear the house shook as the monster sprinted out of view.

Finally mustering the courage to move, she grabbed the biggest knife she could find from one of the drawers and ran deeper into the house. She went to her bedroom, shut the door and locked it behind her, and hid in her closet. She'd been there ever since.

There was no telling how much time had pa.s.sed, but it had to be fully dark now. The noise of a vehicle turning into her drive roused her from her hiding place. Throwing open the closet, she darted to the room's window. An expensive-looking SUV sat in her driveway with its lights on. There was a knock at the front door. A wave of relief flooded her.

"Amanda?" a man's voice called. "Are you in there?" The voice was familiar, but she couldn't place it.

"Yes!" she screamed as loud as she could, stumbling through the dark hallway as quickly as she could toward the main door. She opened it to see Justin standing there with a high-powered rifle in his hand.

"You go to my church, don't you?" Amanda asked not really knowing what to say.

The man nodded.

"Yes, ma'am. My name is Justin."

"I know," she said. She noticed him blink in surprise. She guessed he hadn't expected her to know his name. When he spoke, his words stumbled one over the other.

"That's Fred in the Outback over there. Look, there's trouble, a lot of it. Sheriff May has me rounding up people to take them to the high school. Everyone's supposed to hole up there until help arrives."

Amanda's mind was overwrought with all the problems she faced. "Oh, okay," was the best she could manage as Justin took her hand in his and dragged her to the car.

Powell Babble Creek was a full-on war zone now. The mangled and broken corpses of its citizens were everywhere. The crumpled and broken forms of men, women, and children lay scattered everywhere in the streets. Powell counted five of the sasquatches from where he crouched inside the hardware store. The shouts and screams coming from the street were dying down. Most of the good ol' boys that had shown up in a couple of pickup trucks carrying rifles and shotguns were dead. They drove in like maniacs and leaped from the back of the truck and its cab, their guns blazing. The creatures came at them in force. They hadn't lasted long. For all their efforts to make a stand against the monsters, they'd only killed one and royally ticked off the others, catapulting the beasts from mere anger into outright rage. The sasquathes had closed in on them quickly and tore them to shreds. Powell didn't think he would ever forget the sight of the one redneck in his # 3 Nascar shirt that two of the things went after at the same time. The man was ripped in half like a cartoon character, torn apart down the middle. The worst of it was the way his intestines stringed from one half of his body to the other like cheese on a hot pizza.

Powell had no choice but to ditch his car in the chaos. It drew too much attention, drawing the things to the noise of its engine like flies to rotting meat just as the redneck boys' truck and guns had done.

His plan required him to stay alive, he reminded himself. Becca and everyone else needed him. In fact, his plan might be their only hope of staying alive until the Macon department boys rolled in. He couldn't help but wonder what had become of Jeff Taylor. Had the man left town before the attack started or was he lying in a ditch somewhere, dead, like so many of the other people in Babble Creek? Powell wondered about Brent, too. So far, he hadn't seen any sign of the big deputy. He hoped Brent was alive and Rita as well because he knew Brent had gone after her.

A loud conversation of grunting, animal-like voices called his attention to the street once more. The creatures seemed to be talking to each other in some sort of primitive, ape-like language. It was easy to underestimate their intelligence from their appearance. They were every inch the big, savage brutes you saw in B-grade horror flicks but only larger. Their discussion reached an abrupt end and the creatures as a pack raced away into the darkness beyond the dim glow of the fires that looked to have spread from Old Hank's bar to several other buildings in town.

Powell waited a few minutes to make sure the beasts were gone then hit the streets himself. His destination was a good mile outside of town to the west. Steeling up his courage, he broke into a jog, trying hard not to look too closely at the bodies of the dead around him as he hurried on.

Becca When Becca arrived at the high school, Justin's SUV was already waiting in a sea of scattered and poorly parked vehicles that appeared to have been abandoned in a hurry. Three men stood guard outside the main door to the gym. She knew them all. The lanky and hyper Alan, who worked in the produce section of the super Walmart; Keith, the town's most diehard motorcycle junkie who also couldn't ride one worth a c.r.a.p, but ran the town's leather shop that catered mostly to tourists; and Hank, who she was surprised to see. Hank waved at her as she approached them.

"Sorry about the bar," she said sincerely.

Hank nodded and then shrugged, "Maybe it's for the best anyway. Gives me a chance to start over." He laughed.

All three men carried Glock 40s from the department's a.r.s.enal. Hank was also armed with the ancient, double-barreled shotgun he'd kept handy underneath his bar counter for years. Keith held an AK-47 and she glared at him as he opened the door for her.

"We'll talk about getting a permit for that later," Becca said to him.

He grinned at her with yellow teeth that had never seen a dentist in their life.

"Sure thing."