Damn, this is spooky.
Leland finally shook himself free of the feeling and swung the door open, planting one solid work boot on the half-frozen ground as he got out. He paused for a brief moment, then reached back into the truck for his hat and his shotgun, putting the first on his head and racking a shell into the chamber of the second before walking up to the door and pushing it open.
“Hello?” he called out. “It’s Sheriff Leland! Anyone in here?”
The “office” was a glorified mobile home, fifty-odd feet long and fifteen wide, so it only took him a couple minutes to survey it. Finding no one, he stepped outside again and took a long look around.
Well, if there’s no one in the office, I’ll go where I should have gone in the first place, he decided, turning and walking toward the massive machine shops.
If anyone was around, this is where he’d be. The machine shops were easily the largest buildings in the area, probably for a thousand miles or more. Without them, there wouldn’t be much work done in the fields. There was always someone working on some piece of gear or another that needed fixing yesterday.
He trudged through the slushy muck, cursing the unseasonable warmth that had brought on the latest thaw, and made his way over to the huge metal buildings. The big sliding doors were shut, so he went over to the side door and tested the handle as he leaned close and peered through the glass inset.
Not seeing anything, Leland pulled open the door and stepped inside. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the light, but it was pretty clear that the cavernous interior was empty. There weren’t even any trucks in sight, and now a definite chill was running down his spine, one that had nothing to do with the temperature.
“Barrow Sheriff’s Department!” he called, debating whether he should stop carrying his shotgun like a club and start looking at the world over its iron sights. He didn’t want to freak anyone out, but he was well on his way to becoming freaked out himself, and for his money, that was becoming a fair sight more important than some roughneck’s feelings.
Leland stepped back outside, eyes flicking to the darkening sky. He had another half hour, maybe, before the sun set. In no time, the long night would be upon them. It would put an end to the damned thaws at least. In the short term, however, he’d soon be hunting around this blasted place with a flashlight in one hand and his shotgun in the other.
And if that isn’t a recipe for an accident of epic proportions, I don’t know what is.
“Is anyone there?!” he called out again as he approached the second machine shop, whose doors were also closed. What the hell is going on here?
He hammered on the side door with his free hand, then wrenched it open. As he took a step inside, the air from within struck him, warm and filled with a cloying smell that made his stomach churn. Leland held back the urge to retch, to spill his last meal over the slush and ice and mud, and reflexively shifted his grip on the shotgun as he brought the weapon up.
It was a smell he knew.
The air inside smelled of death.
Not much blood, but he could smell the distinctive odor of recent decomposition. Leland braced his shotgun on his arm as he reached around to see if he could locate a light switch by the door. The interior of the building was dark, even more so than the falling twilight outside, and he couldn’t make out anything but a few large shadows.
“Barrow PD!” he called, eyes searching the darkness as his hand felt along the wall. “Is anyone here? Announce yourself!”
He found the switch, finally, and flipped the industrial lever up. The power snapped on audibly as the lights began to emit a low glow, bathing the building in an orange shade. He squinted, barely distinguishing forms in the shadows, people moving.
“I’m Sheriff Leland Griffin,” he said. “Is everyone all right in here?”
The lights made another snapping noise, half of them flickering out just as Leland caught a hint of motion in the corner of his eye and turned his head to the left. He screamed in shock, and then horror, as a figure descended on him suddenly and locked its jaws around his left forearm, biting down hard enough that he felt the bone crunch.
The pain was unreal, and Leland reacted automatically by trying to rip his arm free, only to realize that his attacker was holding on like a pit bull. He used the shotgun like a club, beating the man about the face and head but not wanting to resort to deadly force.
“Let go, you crazy bastard!” he yelled, still beating the man with the weapon.
With a final wrench, one that triggered a near sickening agony from his arm, Leland pulled himself loose and fell back and away from his attacker. He stared in horrified shock at his attacker as the lights snapped back to full brightness.
It was a man, or maybe it used to be — Leland didn’t know if he’d still call it human, as badly torn up as it seemed to be. Pustules had formed on the creature’s face, and the skin seemed to be flapping away from the bone in places as it bared its teeth at him and snarled.
“Jesus,” he swore, unable to quite help himself. “You look like hell, son.”
The thing, man, whatever it was standing there in front of him didn’t seem impressed with his concern, however, and it look another step in his direction. Leland shifted the shotgun so that it was pointed right at the man’s chest and shook his head.
“Don’t do it, son,” he said. “I’m not keen on blowing you away, but you ain’t taking another bite out of me.”
The big bore of the pump twelve-gauge didn’t seem to be much of a deterrent, unfortunately, as the figure continued to step closer, his proximity making Leland’s heart race. He took a deep breath, fighting back the urge to gag as the smell of rot overwhelmed him again.
“I am an officer of the law! Stop walking toward me or I will fire!” Leland practically chanted as he stepped back.
Part of him wanted nothing more than to drop the hammer on the bastard who’d just taken a chunk out of him, but he let himself sink into the rote responses he’d learned a long time ago, in what seemed like a different life. None of it mattered, though — the man kept stumbling in his direction with the clear intent to continue the attack, and when Leland felt a rail pressing into his back he pursed his lips and shook his head as his intellect tried to deny what his body was already doing.
The shotgun roared, a full load of double-aught buck slamming into the man’s chest at point-blank range. The man barely even stumbled — he certainly didn’t fly backward like in the movies — and despite his apparent lack of balance, he didn’t fall. Leland’s eyes widened as the man reached out for him, stepping right into arm’s reach, his curled fingers actually grabbing the sheriff’s shoulder and throat.
Leland lifted the barrel of the Remington, resting it on his attacker’s clavicle so that it was pointed directly at the underside of his jaw, and squeezed the trigger a second time. The resulting explosion of blood, gore, bone, and brain fragments spattered across the curved wall of the machine shop like modern art while some blew back and sprayed across the near shell-shocked sheriff’s face and chest.
This time the man went down in a slump, right at Leland’s feet. A moment passed, one heartbeat and then two, and Leland slowly came to his senses again. He looked up from the source of the wet spatter covering his face and neck only to see dozens of eyes staring back at him from faces just like the one he’d blown to bits.
The machine shop was filled with them.