Fire and the Blood of Innocents

Fire and the Blood of Innocents-Part 3

My body screamed pain at me. I kept finding new injuries, ranging from scratches and developing bruises to a deep gash across my forehead. I made it out of the flood without major injuries, though I felt as though I had been in the grandfather of all drunken brawls. I pushed the pain aside and concentrated on getting bodies out of the water.

At first I thought they were schoolkids caught in the flood, but I quickly discovered that wasn't true. They were all young women, a little past elementary school age, maybe in their mid-teens. They were all ice cold and dead. I carried seven to the dry ground by the school, but there were more.

I turned and saw Sheriff Silver standing behind me. I remembered him as a short grammar school kid, eager to hang around with the big kids and grateful when my friends and I tolerated him. Now he looked every inch a sheriff: tall, broad shoulders, clean shaven, in his mid-twenties, two years younger than me.

"What did you do?" he asked.

I spotted one of the mystery animals washed up among the debris. "What did it do?" I pointed to the beast.

The sheriff pushed it onto its back with his foot. "What is it?"

The creature looked dangerous even in death, though not as dangerous as the three looked when they stalked me.

"Teeth that would make a grizzly jealous and a forehead that would make a gorilla jealous," the sheriff said. "What did you bring down on us?"

"Why do you keep blaming me?" I asked. "I just got caught in the flood. Any idea what caused it?"

"Old Evan Berry's son blew out a beaver dam. You washed out with the dam and some things that need explaining."

"I didn't kill it, whatever it is."

"What about the girls?"

I told the sheriff about the clearing where the ground had sunk, along with what I knew about the wolf-like creatures. He looked grim when I mentioned three of the animals and how they had reacted to me.

"You have a problem," he said. "A bootlegger, washed out in the same flood with ten bodies. Girls, young ones--fourteen to sixteen years old, probably buried late last year so they stayed cold most of the time. That's why I can still tell they had the blood drained out of them."

"No blood? People will talk nonsense," I said. "Vampires. If anyone around Boone's Crossing is a vampire, it's Josh Rocheforte."

"Well there you go," the sheriff said. "I'll dunk him in holy water or whatever the hell kills vampires." His face went grim. "They all have burn marks and parts of the skeletons are cut off cleaner than autopsy guys could cut them."

That added yet another mystery to a long list. Animals from a nightmare. Blood, fire and girls with missing body parts.

Josh Rocheforte had to be behind this, I thought, but why would he drag girls here to kill them?

I told the sheriff about the mystery trucks. I wouldn't normally share so much with the law, but this needed to get solved fast.

"The beast is an ape," the sheriff said. "But no ape we've ever caught. I need to find the other two critters, and that will take a man who knows those hills the way only you do. Take me where you saw them."

Josh Rocheforte strolled up as the sheriff said that. He still had the thick, wavy blond hair the girls made such a big deal over, the big sincere-looking smile and broad shoulders that didn't look like he got them by hard physical labor the way most men around Boone's Spring got broad shoulders. His waist was thin. It emphasized his shoulders but made him look like a wasp. A stinging insect. That fit him.

He turned to the sheriff. "What's going on here?"

The sheriff gestured at the dead girls. "Washed out of a grave, probably from your place."

Rocheforte's expression didn't change, but then he caught sight of the mystery animal and his face seemed to freeze. "What is that thing doing here?"

"You know what it is?" The sheriff asked.

Rocheforte didn't respond immediately, but finally said, "It's a world of hurt come to this little town."