The Outkast

Chapter 20

“I’ve seen the devil again. Oh, my good Lord, I’ve come in close contact with death twice tonight,” Allan wept. “It’s a monster. We’ve got to get the hell out of here and run for our lives. We can never stand out against-”

“Would you shut up and just calm down for a sec?” Brian inched nearer and slapped him twice. He pulled Allan down into the trench they had been hiding. “Hell, keep your goddamned voice down.”

Delirious to the level of getting out of hand, Allan spoke bare-toothed. “I cannot, Sheriff… I just cannot calm down. There’s death around here… everywhere, every damn corner you turn, and I just can’t…” He paused to catch his breath. “What’s the point, anyway?”

“The point is, so he doesn’t track us down, you idiot.”

“Fuck, it already knows we’re here. Killed Dwayne. Almost killed me, but I ran,” Allan said, grinning, as if he was proud, very proud of his exceptional skill of escape. Brian thought his deputy might be going crazy under the power of the moon.

Craig groaned at the news of attack, looking from Allan to Brian, and then back to Allan.

Brian whispered, “Allan, I can see why you look and sound so hysterical-”

“No, you can’t. Not until you meet it.”

“I can see why you’re losing-”

A boy’s voice interrupted Brian’s next comment. The boy was talking to someone, pleading to let him go. There was a momentary flash of light from the mouth of the cave that made shadows scamper across the woods. Then, silence engulfed the place again.

About sixty meters ahead, from the side of the cave that was further away from the entrance Brian and Craig had spotted earlier, a figure emerged from behind a grove of trees, wearing a robe that the moonlight transmitted on a range of shades from gray to blue, to anything in-between. The figure briefly trained its flashlight forward in their direction.

For that short length of time, Brian’s heart stopped. He thought they had been spotted where they crouched. “Down,” he muttered.

Swiftly, the three men kept down even further, only allowing themselves a peep around the edge of a fallen tree that lay at the lip of the entrenchment, running their surveillance from behind it.

“Christ, they’re two,” Allan said with a voice caught between a desire to scream the words and a struggle to whisper them. “The first appeared in coveralls, and this one in a robe. Perfect.”

If there was anything yet that Brian wanted to agree with in regards to Allan’s reports, it was the size of the robed killer. The dimensions were intimidating, and that description was for poverty of words. Brian strained his eyes to glimpse the face of the shape, but there wasn’t enough light to see anything more than the silhouetted form from the distance.

They watched him as he looked around, worked his flashlight one more time, and then disappeared behind the grove.

“Who the fuck is this guy?” Craig whispered. “An evil priest, or what?”

“Stop calling this thing a guy. Doing so will only create a misconception that what we’re up against ain’t that bad. It’s a monster. A destroyer. A Neanderthal man at best. That’s what the hell it is,” Allan said. “If you see how easily and brutally it murdered Dwayne…” He trailed off, glancing at Brian who was favoring him with a not-so-impressed look. He finished his story, nonetheless. “All of Dwayne’s entrails are lying on the forest floor right now.”

Craig grimaced. “Oh, shit,” he said, and turned to Brian. “Know what I’m thinking?”

“Share it.”

“I’m thinking we should have shot him right there on the spot, while he was flashing his light around.”

“Bold move,” Brian said. “But it could’ve been a miss. And it wouldn’t have been worth it to draw attention for no gain. Not an option, unless we’re really forced to adopt the way of rashness.”

The robed figure came out again, this time dragging the boy along.

“Shit, that’s Robert Smallwood,” Brian muttered, sounding as if that fact of Robert’s abduction had just been revealed to him.

Allan wheeled his head towards Craig. “Have any idea what the best way to get back to the car is?”

“No,” Brian said before Craig could give a response. “We’re not going yet. Not gonna leave the kid to be slaughtered by that lunatic. I’m thinking, thinking of what to do-of how we’re gonna move in on that bastard pretty soon.” He looked to his side. “Allan?”

“Yeah?”

“Where’s your conscience? And where’re your guns, by the way?”

Allan disregarded the last question. “If I were you, Sheriff,” he said defiantly, “I’d be thinking of saving my ass rather than having a morbid passion about conscience and studying the best way it should be used.”

“You’re damn right about that, because you’ll have to devise a way to save your ass in the office tomorrow when you give a detailed reason for your insubordination-”

“If we made it past today, Sheriff.”

Ahead, the huge figure began to tie Robert’s wrists together, but then had a change of mind. The robed man scooped the boy up instead, and ran across the murky woods.

“Where’s he going?”

“Or taking the kid?”

They stood up, craning to see him disappear into the shadows of the trees.

Then, they followed, cautiously, slowly.

A car engine roared to life.

“Shit,” Brian said. “We gotta move. He’s got the…” He stopped, looked at Allan, and asked for the second time, “Where’re your guns?”

Allan’s response astonished Brian.

Hurrying along the rustling dead leaves on the floor, Brian said, “You’ve got some explaining to do. In the meantime, go back to Craig’s car and make a call to the office. Need the emergency workers here ASAP to attend to Dwayne, and let the coroner and his men be informed while you’re at it. I want you to stay with Dwayne, to give whatever support you have left in you. And don’t you try to leave.”

Allan wanted to speak. Brian didn’t give him a chance. He didn’t believe in the crappy tale about Dwayne’s entrails being spilled all over the place.

He went in pursuit of The Outcast.