“It was on the five oh six,” the farmer told them. “Over past the bottling plant, over yonder.”
Howe did his best to ignore the dirty sunburnt hand that swept across the kitchen to show the hunters the way. Motorway 506 was in precisely the opposite direction. This yokel could probably only recall the way to whatever dealer helped him pass his miserable existence in this sad stretch of forgotten land. He was probably off his face right now.
“Yeah, whatever,” he snapped back. If you were a white straight educated young male, Howe was a very pleasant man. The farmer was sadly lacking in at least a couple of those traits. “You know, moonshine can make all kinds of things seem off. Did any of this actually happen or are we just wasting our time?”
There were seven visitors crowding the tiles of the rustic kitchen. One of them stepped forward and placed a tentative hand on Howe’s shoulder. “Why don’t you let me finish up?” Niall said quietly. Howe, who was looking down his nose at the bristling local, unslung his rifle and stepped back to gaze out of the window at the wavering crops, eyebrows raised.
“So, it really was the Renham Charger?” Niall said quickly.
“Oh, aye,” the farmer replied distantly. He too stared out over the fields, anxiously, as if the creature could be digging through his potatoes that very moment. “Just like me old pa told me when I was a youngling. It was there, over on the five oh six, and poor Jack’s dead, and he won’t be the last. It’s back.”
When he looked back at Niall, there was genuine fear in his eyes. Holt and Navvy glanced at each other with excitement. The rest of the men were nudging each other and admiring the teapot on the counter with a spectacularly inaccurate depiction of a naked woman lounging across its spout.
Niall took up the laminated pouch Howe had cast away onto the table and flicked through the contents. “So, we’re talking... long, shaggy fur.... two legs... and-”
“The head of a cockerel!” the farmer interjected, lurching closer, all wild eyes and wringing hands. From his place at the window, Howe guffawed.
“And it was foraging?”
“Eating berries from Adam’s orchard!” the man proclaimed. He raised one fist, trembling all over, the looming figure of a Shakespearean actor. “Great big clawfuls! Several pounds’ worth Adam lost! Oh, and then poor Jack drove past and saw it and veered off the road down into the ditch and broke his neck. Oh, Lord, grant him peace!”
Howe whirled. “So the monster didn’t even touch him. It was eating berries?”
The farmer turned his shoulder to the leader and nodded furiously at Niall. “But it killed ‘im, all right. It looked at him and it was all scary like and made him go over the edge. His wife swore he wasn’t drunk this time. ‘Adn’t touched a drop all day.”
“Ha! There we go again!” Howe said triumphantly. “All these bloody idiots do is get pissed and vomit up ghost stories to pass the time. And where is this wife now? Can she verify all this?”
The farmer bristled again. “I said all this to yer first man. I heard it all from her meself, and you can’t see ‘er today.”
“She does exist?” Howe asked sharply.
“Yeah, she’s at her wedding,” the farmer muttered. “Her next one.”
Howe looked the man up and down, and for one terrible moment Niall thought he was going to launch himself across the counter. Instead, he sighed, slow and deep. “I rest my case. Let’s move out.”
Uncertainly, the men followed Howe into the yard. The farmer tottered forward and tapped Niall on the shoulder as he turned to close the door behind them. “Don’t forget, my son, it’s killed by moonlight!”
Niall smiled politely. “Don’t worry, mister. We know.” Swiftly, he turned and walked out into the gathering gloom.
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Yeah, it was killed by moonlight alright. At least three articles dating back as far as 1923 quoted that bit of wisdom. The beast was also said to possess the powers of invisibility, hideous strength, lightning-fast reflexes, and a sour enough breath to lay out a goodish-sized hamlet if the wind was right. Howe’s cryptohunters had done their research, and most of it was bad news.
At least there was one positive: there were at least a dozen of these things at one point, until the locals, tired of losing children at a tragically unsustainable rate, organised themselves to see them off with the pointy end of a pitchfork. Only one remained, and it hadn’t been glimpsed since 1981 until a couple of days back.
Oh, and one other tiny bit of bad news: the whole thing was evidently made up by a long sodden lineage of drunks wanting to stir up a bit of gossip, and they’d come out here for nothing.
Niall hurriedly closed the door and rushed out in search of Howe before any damage could be done, but it was too late. He was just in time to see the head flying across the field, and he was deeply grateful when he saw the swaying remains of the scarecrow in a heap of its own straw beside the boss.
The boss was screaming.
Tentatively, Niall approached. A ring of pale faces lined the first part of his path, out of range.
“It’s alright,” Niall said. “We’ll get one.”
The roar cut off abruptly. “Yeah, it’s alright,” muttered Howe. He rounded on his group, eyes burning into Niall’s. “Alright for you. It’s not your business, your fifty thousand, on the line. I’m ruined.”
That hurt. It might not be his money, but Niall had been in from the start. And despite all the failures, the cold trails and dead ends, the shouting and debt collectors and searching searching searching, he was in it ‘til the end. He still believed he was doing good. He wanted to help people.
Maybe there had been some questionable business decisions, like moving to New York for the contacts or maybe just because everything important came out of New York and then flying back to England for every potential lead because, well, all their contacts were really here. Also, the fact he’d acted on wanting to help people by setting up an agency to kill things which most likely only came to life when granny wanted some bloody peace and quiet (and possibly some whiskey in that muddy cuppa). But hey, what braver thing to do than face your worst fears? His granny had been a grand storyteller, and he’d been a pretty shitty brat.
So yeah, the fresh recruits might be in it for the complimentary in-flight blankets, but he was the genuine article, and it hurt.
Niall walked through the pain. He pulled up alongside his boss, his partner, his friend, and together they looked out over the rolling hills and the lowering dark.
“We’ll get one,” he said steadily. Something burst from a field of wheat to the east and they ducked, and even though it was only a goose, the fact they had ducked bolstered Niall’s resolve, because maybe deep down that meant there really were things out there to avoid. “We will,” he said to the glowering man beside him. “And we’ll get paid, and get the ball rolling on the other leads.” Who was going to pay them for hunting a man-eating monster was one of those details they hadn’t quite worked out yet, but it was obvious someone would. The Boston Herald had paid a pretty penny for that article about the demon under the bridge a couple of months back, and that was only a rabid fox in the end. So when they got the real deal....
Howe snorted through fearsome nostrils. “You got anything, sonny Jim?”
Niall looked squarely at the man who was letting him follow his wildest childhood dreams and who may also be a crazy delusional weirdo that was leading him down the slow, slippery spiral of ridicule, and managed a smile. “Well, we’re here right now, aren’t we? And Johnson picked out another possible witness in the next village. Let’s not jump to conclusions just yet.” He glanced down at the intel report still clutched in one bony hand. “We’ve got to go past the scene of the sighting anyway. Won’t do any harm to have a nosey while we’re there.”
And if that was the case, if the ridicule really was the danger, perhaps everything would have been okay.
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They got in the truck and pulled out of the farmyard in an oppressive silence, and through the silence, Niall wished for a monster. It didn’t have to be a maneater, not a Renham Charger, just yet. Even a chicken worrier would do to get them started. Just something to prove the threat that lurked in the quiet places of the world, something of blood and bone to solidify the gossip and warnings of centuries. Something from which they could name themselves protectors.
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Howe almost sailed straight past the little overgrown track that led to the 506. Maybe he meant to go right back to the airport and cut his losses. But Niall spoke up and the glowering eyes like coals turned towards the lane and nosed the truck through the verges. A mile on, they came to the T-junction of the main road. They passed the hulk of the bottling plant, sleeping beneath the first wink of the early stars. Three miles along from that, they turned a corner and saw the car-tracks burning off into the ditch and the glitter of glass and the flowers taped to the trees and the creature was there by the fence.
Howe braked, hard. The coals of eyes rekindled and glowed. The men in the back looked up and cried out in what might have been joy but was probably terror.
The creature was on the other side of the ramshackle planks, hunched over towards the offerings as if to sniff them. The fence was at least eight feet tall. Against the dim yellow of the rapeseed field beyond, it was a black thing, jagged with greasy tufts of fur, bulging with hellish muscle. At the screech of the brakes, it looked up, staggered backwards into the field, and raised its arms. Great bony claws like horns scraped against the foliage of the oak beneath which it stood. It eyes were invisible, pinpoints lost in the shadow of the antlers which jutted and splintered like a crown above its muzzle.
“I told you they were fucking drunk!” Howe roared. “Cockerel my arse. It’s a bloody deer.”
A sniff at the air. The point of the snout never left the direction of the road as the colossus took two tentative steps towards the trunk of the oak.
“What’s it doing?” whispered young Simmons from the acrid sweat of the rear.
“What do we do?” Navvy gasped.
“Oh God! It’s real!” hissed Holt.
It took Niall three yawning seconds to tear his eyes from the tower of flesh and look into the dim of the back. “Don’t you see, it’s taking cover. It’s-”
“It’s hiding!” Howe screeched, spinning in his seat to show the bloodshot whites of his wild eyes. Both arms, one on the wheel and one on the gear stick, quivered with uncontrollable tension. “It’s a bloody deer!” he shouted again, spittle spotting the windscreen. “It’s trying to get away. This might be our only chance. Shoot it! Shoot it!”
The five staring men in the back bounced heavily against their seats as Howe launched the truck into sudden howling motion. In an instant, the vehicle lurched sideways across the two lanes of the silent road, broadside to the ditch.
“Shoot!”
Simmons and Grey broke the rigid disbelief. As one, they left their seats on the right side and pounded across the aisle to hammer their fists at the window releases. The windows, a series of custom wide panes which ran almost continuously across the sides of the truck like sideways arrow slits, flapped noisily down into the interior. For a moment, Navvy, Royce and Holt sat there blinking stupidly at the thing beneath them as it reached out one titan claw and drew itself against the bark.
It snorted, once, the deep rumbling echo of unseen chasms beneath the known earth.
Everything stopped. The hunters stared at their quarry. Then Holt managed to get his rifle up into the open window and fire. The explosion was deafening. Navvy and Royce flung themselves sideways away from the blast, then got their own guns up in trembling fingers and fired blindly upwards out of their own hatches.
When the crack of the report had died away and the smoke had dissipated into the pink of the dusk, the tree stood alone in its depression.
“Idiots!” Howe yelled, coming out of his seat and swinging his way into the back, white knuckles pressed hard into the roof. His hunters recoiled as if the monster had teleported into the truck with them. “You bloody idiots. Did you forget all your training?” Howe’s face was beetroot red. He looked out into the motionless ditch, where the twisted remains of the doomed car still sparkled here and there in the last light, and spat aimlessly at the road. “You had a clear shot. Or you would have if you’d have shot when I actually fucking told you to! This could have been over now from the safety of your seat.”
Niall looked back into the white ovals of their employees’ faces. Five mouths opened and closed soundlessly, thoughtlessly. Finally, Holt worked up the courage to ask the question that needed to be asked, and yet everyone knew the answer already.
“What now, boss?”
The words were almost inaudible. And as Howe stepped through the men and kicked open the rear door, Niall thought he hadn’t heard.
Holt and Simmons shrank back from the softly swaying bushes beyond the road with startled cries of dismay, as if the creature would come bursting through the undergrowth like a charging bull and come lumbering up among them before anyone could take aim. They’d all gone over those dry old articles about its speed and power, those almost unreadable tracts of endless ancient words that had seemed then to be analysing some long-forgotten specimen in an unrecognisable far-off land, and which now seemed to be screaming in desperate, horrified urgency because that land was where they stood now and the thing was real real real and they’d been telling them so for a hundred years.
But the whispering weeds revealed nothing, because of course the rear of the truck pointed towards the raided orchard, on the opposite side of the road from which the creature had slunk away to God knew where.
For Howe, it would not do for God to keep His secrets. A stony, iron-hard look of nothingness had drained the passion from his face. He swung his chiselled head towards Holt and nodded once. “Where did it go? Where are we?”
Holt was the navigator and tracker for the operation, having pored over all mentions of the creature’s haunts in order to guess its likely paths through the dark. Then, it had seemed like looking through a pointlessly convoluted appendix in an old fantasy novel. Now, he concluded he could only be dreaming, but there was an odd reality to the dream because the folded Ordnance Survey map he unfurled from his backpack was cast in frightening detail. Real detail.
His finger, numb, went straight to the neat cross which marked the sight of the fatality. “There’s a small footpath beyond the ditch. A stile... must be just out of sight beneath that tree. Leads to....” He fumbled beneath the boss’ unfeeling gaze. “An old cottage, or cabin. A hunter’s lodge, perhaps. It likes to ambush out of trees. There’s a line of ‘em all the way up to the cabin.”
Howe stepped out of the truck and looked across to the ditch, and the strip of woodland beyond. Birds sung out their laments for the death of the day. The province of night was come.
But that was a good thing, wasn’t it? A bright glare was emerging from the horizon off across the hills. The cold, brutal lunar gaze, which would show them the way and banish the strength from the body of the one they sought.
Moonlight. It was a bad night to be the Renham Charger. And, unless it risked the deadly open ranges of the fields, it had only one way to run.
And run it already had.
The corners of Howe’s mouth began to twitch upwards. The potential of despair still hung like a heavy blanket on his shoulders, but something else was making its presence felt.
The relief of the chase. A glimmer of triumph. It was a night Howe had begun to suspect would never come.
He gave in to the smile as he turned and began unloading the stacks of metal crates which crowded the edges of the door. After a moment’s hesitation, his men joined him.
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They hadn’t seen the stile because it was gone. Only a vague scattering of rotting splinters beneath the oak marked its existence, as if some mighty paw had raked it apart a long time ago.
Howe, rifle in hand, kicked at the remains. “You know what this means,” he said smugly, looking at Holt.
“No, sir?” said Holt.
Howe grimaced. “And you’re the tracker. If everything goes to shit here, like it’s been doing already, there might be some personnel changes when we’re back in New York.”
Niall, who had been watching from the sorted piles of equipment by the rear of the truck, moved down the ditch, avoiding the little slivers of metal which recalled the victim Jack more than flowers ever would. He drew Howe aside down the fence. “Lay off them a bit,” he braved. “It’s not exactly shit. Sure, they missed their shot, but it’s the first fire at a live target they’ve ever done. But we’ve actually got it. It exists. And it’s still in our sights.”
Howe did not apologise. He never did. He regarded Niall steadily for a moment, mouth twitching, and then he walked back towards Holt, who looked like he’d just found out that, surprise, he was the one being hunted. But when Howe spoke again, his voice was calm and reasonable and Niall realised that on some level, at least, he’d got through.
“It means,” Howe explained, “That it’s been trying to cover its tracks for years. Decades maybe. It’s not all-powerful. It’s scared, in hiding. Maybe it’s old or sick. Whatever’s happening, this is a serious chance.”
Holt nodded enthusiastically, but Howe was already gone, stalking off towards the supplies and the waiting men. The crates had been fully unpacked, and all sorts of bottles and devices and sachets and antennae twinkled up at him in the moonlight. He examined them all gravely as the rest of the team glanced fretfully towards the trees and the unknown.
“As our experience grows,” Howe said, a touch of pride in his voice, “we’ll need less and less of this. There’s just so many stories that we don’t know what’s going to be most effective against beasts like this. But as we get closer, if we find clues as to what it actually fucking is - demon, monster, dumb animal - then we can jettison things as we go. The lighter we are when we get to it, the better the chance of a quick end.” His gaze passed over the three gunners as he said this, but he seemed to ignore their cringing faces and turned determinedly for the trees. The moon was rising, a full, bright beacon, and the shadows were wasting away before its light.
“Follow, and obey.”
Howe walked down to the fence and climbed heavily through the gap where the stile had been torn away. Niall followed. Holt, Simmons, Grey and Navvy came after, shouldering their loads.
Royce was gone.
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He didn’t stay hidden for long. Navvy had only just got his mouth open to ask the obvious when Royce broke the uneasy quiet with a shrill cry of terror. It was coming from the open windows of the truck. The door was sealed like a clam.
“You’re crazy,” he whined, invisible in the reflection of the moon. “You’re all crazy to be out there. Did you see that thing?”
Howe stepped soundlessly back towards the fence and took off his hunter’s cap. He held it in his hands a moment, almost respectful, a bystander at a funeral. “Phil,” he called to the faceless truck. “First off, you’re fired. We all saw it, and we’re going in because that’s our fucking paycheck in there. Second, if that door’s not open in ten seconds, I’m suing you for everything you’ve got when I get back. Endangerment of me and my colleagues, cutting us off like that.” He paused and listened in the dark for a response. “Okay, if it’s not open in another ten, I’m taking your ticket home as well as everything else.”
There was a sharp scraping as Royce’s gun raked its way through an opening midway down the truck. “Come any closer and I’ll do it!” he screamed, hoarse and cracked. Niall, just behind Howe, wondered vaguely through the panic what he’d sound like with the charger bearing down on him along the path. The gun rattled side to side, and the men turned and scampered for the cover of the oak and the twisted limbs beyond. “I’ll shoot you all!”
Howe sighed. It was the sigh of a man who’d just remembered he’d forgotten the tomatoes on his weekly trip to the supermarket. He stared at the waving weapon, stubborn as a statue. “With what I’ve seen of your performance tonight,” he called, “I don’t think we’ve anything to worry about. Don’t be a fool. Open up and get out of here, or you’ll be sorry.”
The gun withdrew. Grey and Navvy peeked cautiously from their foxhole in the ditch. But the door didn’t move.
Howe stepped forward, raised his rifle, and casually fired off two rounds. The two tyres facing the trail exploded in a hiss of escaping air, and the truck sagged drunkenly down on its wheels. Someone let loose an appalled cry from behind, but Royce remained voiceless in a prison of his own choosing.
“You’re not taking these men’s safety, Phil,” Howe snapped bitterly into the breeze. “So when we go and do this, you better clear out for your own. I will not be held responsible for what will happen if you’re still here when we get back.”
Navvy, Simmons and Grey gawped at the tyres in undisguised terror, mouths agape. They looked like they desperately wanted to hop in with Royce and struggle off down the road to anywhere but there at the head of the track.
“But... what about getting back?” Niall asked, an unusual edge of anger in his tone startled out of him by the sudden shock of sound in the deadly night.
Howe did not answer at first. Instead, he hopped back over the fence, rounded the vehicle, and finished off the rest of the tyres with two ear-shattering cracks of fire. The men watched, afraid to look at their comrades, for fear of what they would have to acknowledge in each others’ eyes.
“You’ve all got an idea of the figures,” Howe said, matter-of-factly, to the oak when he returned. “We can’t keep going like this. And now, at long last, a killer before us. This could be our only chance to get something going. If we have to come back here with the creature still alive, it’s only a temporary fortress. And if we miss, we’re going in again. And again. And when it’s done, God knows we won’t be needing that old banger again.” His eyes wound away into the murk beneath the boughs. “It’s the end of the road. One way or the other. For us, or for it. And it’s a short road at that.”