Preview: Outpost 01 by Josh Benson
Chapter 1: Alone
(July 12, 1976- Johnston county N.C.)
The man cursed as the screen door swung and loudly struck the old house. The bang sailed over the field, bouncing off the treeline, and echoing back. He wretched at noise he had made. Everything is so much louder when you're alone. Glancing at his watch, he saw he had about thirty, forty minutes 'til dark. They'll be back, he thought as he grabbed the handles of the wheelbarrow, grunting as he lifted the payload.
The humid air strained him almost as much as the 'load. Just a hundred yards to the old dry well and then he could be done with his gruesome chore. If the goddam things didn't smell so strong he'd just leave them for the crows and be done. Alive they smelled like pig shit and bleach. Death only made it smell worse. He had tried burning them, that just made the odor hang in the air like a thick fog. Dumping them in the well was the only choice he had. Buring the remains would eat up time he didn't have. Why couldn't the well be at the bottom of a hill? That'd be nice, he thought and laughed. He laughed as he continued pushing until the mania broke, and with a suddenness that surprised him he broke into mournful sobbing. He dropped to one knee, crying deeply. He missed his wife and boy. They had been taken on the first night that the Things had come, and he wished that he had died with them. The late day sun peaked through the clouds and lit the spot where he knelt. Heat burned his face, and woke him from his memory. He couldn't afford emotion right now: They would come tonight, there would be time enough for crying when the killing was done.
He could smell the old well now. The air thick with the stench of the Things that hunted. Stopping to catch his breath, he pulled a rag from his pocket, wiping the sweat and tears from his face, he then tied the rag over his nose and mouth.
Glancing down at the wheelbarrow's contents, he felt a chill as he took a long look over the dismembered corpse of the Thing he'd killed the night before. As bad as they smelled, they looked ten times worse. Like something cast forth from Hell. He had seen a gorilla at the state fair in Raleigh when he was younger. That was as close as he could come to comparing the Thing's body to something he'd seem on Earth. They had small black eyes, and from what he could tell very poor eyesight. They had the body like a gorilla's, but no hair, and yellow skin like a plucked chicken. Their heads were huge, and looked almost like a flattened hog's face. Almost. Too many things about the Things were just "almost". When he was a boy his daddy had taken him to Morehead to fish on the beach, they hooked a small sand shark, and he remembered Daddy had killed it to show the boy its mouth: Row after row of razor sharp little arrowhead teeth. The Things had mouths full of sharks' teeth, hundreds of teeth like that little shark's only too much larger, all a pinkish white just like the flesh inside their mouths. Thick black hair stretched from the back of their heads down their back to the top of their long spiny rat like tails. Short fat legs for their overall size, and their feet seemed hooven. Their arms were long and powerful topped with oversized fingers nearly a foot long and a stubby thumb, like a child would draw. The fingers ended in thick black nails two inches across.
He remembered that even when the gorilla in Raleigh had moved there was noise: The crackle of the straw under its body, the creak of the floorboards, and the steady steam engine sound of it breathing. But the Things barely made any noise at all. They didn't yelp, bark, growl, howl, crow, or scream. They barely cried out when struck with a mortal wound. Just soft grunts or hisses, and easily the worst, sometimes a whimper like a hungry baby.
He stood panting next to the well, eyes closed in exhaustion and fear. Shaking his head violently, he banished the Things from his thoughts. Kneeling, he lifted the old steel lid, and a dark half moon appeared in the ground as he pushed it back on its squalling hinge. He stepped back, and swiftly lifted the 'barrow's handles, dumping the body into the Earth. Ignoring the wet thump that echoed out of the hole, he seized the lid's handle and slammed it down. He looked up at the sun, and turned back to house, walking, jogging, then out and out running. He quickly lit up the fireplace. Checked the traps he'd spent the day constructing, and climbed onto the roof carrying anything that could be used as a weapon, drawing the ladder up after himself. Settling back against the warming chimney, he waited. All he had to do was kill one or two of the Things, and they would leave him alone again. He hoped they came quick: He was hungry, and he was tired. He looked forward to the 'shine that he could drink at dawn to help him pass into sleep and to kill his dreams.
edited by Archie R Spires