FULL MOON COUNTRY (FULL MOON SERIES (vol. 2)) Read online

  FULL MOON COUNTRY

  By Terry Yates

  TEXT COPYRIGHT-2013 TERRY YATES

  FOR: Mom, Dad, Tim, Ro, Taryn, Alyssa, David Moore, Cash Cooper, Mark Cooper, Wes Williams (Cover Art, etc.) Tom Lenaghen, Imelda Zamora, Rhonda Abrons, S.&Z., Scott Brinkley (Trailers) www.youtube.com/outlawdgaming, St. Sherry Coughey, Stephen King, P.G. Wodehouse, RIP Tye (Joe), and to Mrs. Coker…wherever you are.

  They say it’s mostly vanity

  That writes the plays we act

  That’s one thing that everybody knows

  There’s no such thing as sanity

  And that’s the sanest fact

  That’s the way the story goes…

  Mark Knopfler-‘One World’

  CHAPTER 1

  “Don’t any of you dumbasses know how to start a fire?” Scott Cargile asked, a big drunken smile on his face. “This fire couldn’t warm a worm’s pecker!”

  “Why don’t you build one yourself then?” Mike Mercer shot back as he walked across the camp carrying an armload of tree limbs, which he immediately dropped onto the small fire. “It’s blacker’n a coal miner’s ass out here, and every stick of wood’s startin’ to look like a snake.”

  The two men had crossed the border from Texas with their old high school pals Jackie and Jerry Don Hill to fish and to hunt black bear. There wasn’t much law to keep them from their activities. It was just expensive getting there. Gasoline had gone up to $24.38 a gallon since the back-to-back hurricanes sank half of Florida and the coasts of both Alabama and Mississippi. Every oilrig across the Gulf Coast was destroyed by either the hurricanes or the tsunami or tidal waves that came with the hurricanes. That’s why there wasn’t much law where they were. It had gone into the states to help out with the ensuing anarchism that went with the destruction of so many cities.

  The four of them had been in Mexico for two days, but hadn’t caught a fish or seen a black bear yet. What they had done mostly, was drink. They’d brought eight ice chests filled with nothing but beer, another four ice chests filled with nothing but ice, a camper full of meats, snacks, and other foods. They came in two pickup trucks with two U-Haul trailers with the undersides of all four almost touching the road from being weighed down with redneck essentials.

  “We got anymore Miller’s?” Scott asked, looking up at Mike and holding out an empty beer bottle.

  “Get up off your fat ass and get you one, Scott,” Mike shot back annoyed. “You ain’t done nothin’ but drink and fart since we got here.

  “Is there anything else in life more sweeter?” he retorted.

  “Than your farts? Shit no!” hollered Jackie Hill as he and Jerry Don emerged from the woods, both carrying firewood and both smiling.

  Scott, Mike, and the Hill brothers grew up together in Lampasas, Texas and until recently had all worked at Childress Motors in the service department until the recession hit hard and nearly closed the place down. Only Scott and Jackie missed the axe. Jackie because of seniority and Scott because he had the fortune to knock up Owen Childress’ daughter when he was seventeen and she was sixteen, and since the age of consent in Texas was seventeen, Mr. Childress had more or less offered Scott the option of marrying Lorena or spending the next year on the penal farm. Naturally, he went with the former and married Lorena, assuring himself of freedom and a decent job. That was fifteen years and four kids ago. Right now he was happy to be away from his wife who’d reached the three hundred pound mark after their youngest was born. All she did these days was sit around and watch soap operas during the day and reality shows at night, in between eating her weight in food. He couldn’t stand her. Sex was out of the question. When he got the itch, he simply called Wanda Stokes or Bev Martin, two other girls that he’d laid in high school. They were easy as teenagers and even easier as adults. Wanda had gotten knocked up around the same time that Lorena had, leaving some to speculate that her baby was also Scott’s, but Wanda had also been going out with Curtis Clark and had married him before he joined the military. Their marriage lasted two years until Curtis came home early on leave and attempted to surprise Wanda by sneaking into the house in the middle of the night only to find her in bed with Mike Yancey, the manager of the Safeway. Curtis gave them both a beating, packed his shit and left, never to be seen in Lampasas again.

  Bev Martin had been married and divorced three times by her late twenties and had a kid by each husband. She was currently divorced and on the prowl for husband number four, but in the meantime was meeting Scott every Wednesday night after work at the Motel 6 on Wellborn Road.

  Both women had been fairly decent looking in school but had, like many small town girls who never left home, smoked and drank themselves into pencil thin, hollow cheeked wraiths, whose voice boxes had been burned out from countless cartons of cigarettes. No more boobs. No more ass. Just a willingness to jump into bed with anyone who acted interested. Scott wasn’t really interested, but they’d do in a pinch.

  “Someone get me another Miller,” Scott bellowed.

  “Keep your crown on, Your Highness,” Jackie said, opening a bottle of Miller Genuine Draft and handing it down to Scott.

  “I thought we were gonna hunt and fish,” Mike Mercer said, sitting down next to the fire and opening his own Miller beer. “But we really ain’t done much of either.”

  “Well,” Mike groaned, trying to sit up, but kept falling backwards. “Somebody help me up.”

  Jerry Don reached his bear-like paw down for Scott to take. Where Jackie was of a decent size…six-feet and a trim one hundred and eighty, younger brother Jerry Don was massive. He stood six-feet-three and with his rather large belly and expansive ass, must have weighed over four hundred pounds, and always seemed to be wearing the same red flannel shirt that he never buttoned with a dirty white t-shirt underneath, and an old green John Deere cap sitting slightly askew atop his head. He generally had a cheery outgoing nature, unless drunk and riled, then woe be it to any one, or any three, that got under his skin. Scott, Jackie, and Mike knew this and were always careful not to pick on him if he’d had few.

  “Where’s my gun?” Scott asked drunkenly, rising to his feet, but quickly falling against Jerry Don, who righted him.

  “It’s too dark. You ain’t gonna go huntin’ bear now, are ya?” Jerry Don asked.

  “No, I’m gonna go fishing with my rifle!” Scott shot back, laughing. As soon as he realized to whom he had just spoken, Scott quickly looked up into Jerry Don’s face. He wasn’t smiling. Jerry Don’s beard covered most of his mouth, but Scott need only look into the man’s dark black eyes to know that he might very well be treading on razor thin ice.

  “Oh! I got that backwards, didn’t I, Jerry Don?” Scott said quickly. “I must really be drunk. I said that I was goin’ fishin’ with my rifle. God, I’m some kinda fucked up. What I meant to say was…eh…that I’m goin’ huntin’ with my rifle…and…eh…uh…you know.”

  Once again, he looked up into Jerry Don’s face. The larger man’s eyes had softened some, meaning that he was taking in Scott’s lie and possibly giving him the benefit of the doubt.

  “Did you hear that, Jerry Don?” Jackie threw in nervously, looking at his younger brother. “Scott’s so drunk that he said he was going fishing with his rifle. Ain’t that funny?”

  The three men continued to look up at Jerry Don, hoping for some sign of forgiveness.

  “Yeah, that was funny,” Jerry Don said, after what seemed like an eternity of silence. Even though it was dark, they saw the large man’s mouth turn up at the corners. A silent collective sigh seemed to pass through the camp.

  “Now that’s settled,” Scott said, breaking the sile
nce, “let’s go hunt us up some bear.”

  “I don’t know, Scott,” Mike started, “we shouldn’t oughta be shootin’ guns in the dark. We don’t want to be out here shootin’ one another.”

  “Mike’s right,” Jackie added, “it’s too damn dark.”

  “Aw…bullshit!” Scott spat. “Gimme my rifle.” The three men silently stared at him. “Come on, fellas…this is what we came here for. Huntin’ and fishin’…and right now, we’re gonna hunt.”

  With this, Scott stumbled over to his sleeping bag, bent down…and then fell over. He giggled as he rolled onto his back and sat up. His shotgun lay barely a foot away from him, so he reached over and grabbed it by the barrel, pulling it to him, and setting it across his lap. When he looked up, he saw that Mike and the Hill brothers were standing over him, arms folded.

  “What?”

  “It’s probably best that we wait till morning,” Jackie told him. “We’re all way too drunk to be shootin’ our guns in the dark…and in the woods at that.”

  “Jackie’s right,” Mike added.

  Scott studied them. The firelight flickered against their faces. Their caps shadowed their eyes, but he could tell by their turned down mouths that the men were serious.

  “Let’s wait until morning, Scott,” Jerry Don threw in. His voice was soft, but Scott knew that any attempt to argue with them would be futile now. He had always been the leader of their little pack and generally got his way, but that wasn’t going to happen tonight. They had banned together and vetoed him, and there was no use now in trying to argue or convince them that they were wrong. They had made up their minds and that was it.

  “Shit fellas…” he muttered, looking down.

  He took his rifle off of his lap and placed it on the ground next to him. Jackie, Jerry Don, and Mike unfolded their arms and were starting to disperse, when they heard the sound of a twig snap in the woods.

  “Did ya’ll hear that?” Scott asked, trying to stand up.

  “Probably just a deer,” Jackie told them, scanning the woods, his ear cocked, waiting to hear it again.

  “They got deers in Mexico, Scott?” Mike asked, as Scott made it to his feet.

  “How the shit should I know,” Scott answered, leaning on his rifle. “I ain’t Mexican.”

  The four stood together, scanning the woods, waiting for the sound to return, but were met with nothing but silence.

  “Damn, that spooked me for a second,” Jerry Don said, breaking the silence.

  “Hell, it wasn’t nothin’ but a squirrel or somethin’,” Mike told them. “Let’s get some sleep, how ‘bout…”

  Before he could finish his sentence, they heard a fallen limb snap…and then another, before the woods became silent again.

  “That weren’t no squirrel, Mike,” Scott said slowly picking up his rifle and cradling it in his arms.

  “How do you know?”

  “’Cause those weren’t twigs snapping…those were limbs. Big ones.”

  The four men unconsciously moved closer together as Scott raised his rifle to waist length.

  “Do you think it’s a bear?” Jerry Don asked, sounding not unlike the cartoon bear that always cries out “Which way did he go, George?”

  “That or a hellacious sized buck,” Scott answered.

  Another limb snapped, followed by a second one, only the second one was off to their right, probably fifty feet away from the first.

  “What the shit?” Scott whispered nervously.

  Another snap from the first one was followed quickly by two more snaps from the second.

  As if through telepathy, Jackie, Jerry Don, and Mike began to slowly back away from Scott, each moving toward their sleeping rolls, where each kept his rifle. Even though he knew that his friends were only feet away from him, Scott was nervous. Normally in a drunken state, he wouldn’t be afraid of anything, especially with a 30/30 in his hands, but at that moment, Scott Cargile was scared. He didn’t know why. He had his gun and his three best buds retrieving their guns, but whatever was moving through the woods, less than seventy-five feet from him, was giving him a bad case of nerves.

  “Hurry up, fellas,” he whispered loudly.

  The words had barely left his mouth before the others joined him. The four stood huddled together, each armed, but none brave. The woods were silent now except for the sounds of crickets, frogs, cicadas, and whatever creatures dwelled deep within it.

  “Ya’ think they’re still there?” Jackie asked Scott, scanning the dark tree line.

  “Yeah, I believe they still are.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “’Cause we’d a heard ‘em walkin’ away. No, whatever they are, they’re still there, I’m guessin’.”

  The four stood stone still, and as silent as a graveyard. The big, orange, round moon lit up the clearing and a good few feet into the woods, but they still couldn’t see the creatures.

  “Well…whatda’ think?” Jerry Don asked. “Are we gonna blast at ‘em or wait till the mornin’ and go lookin’ for ‘em?”

  “I’m for waitin’,” Mike told him.

  “All right then, we’ll…” Scott started, but before he could finish, they saw something that chilled their blood. Eyes. Yellow eyes. Fiery yellow eyes…two sets of them. They weren’t together. The eyes were about fifty feet apart from each other. It wasn’t just the fact that the yellow eyes glowed in the darkness, but the fact that they seemed to be looking down on them. Whatever they were, they were taller than any of the men.

  “What the shit?” Mike exclaimed.

  “It’s gotta be bears,” Scott said, looking from one set of eyes to the other. “Nothin’ else could be that big.”

  “What do we do?” Jackie asked.

  “I ain’t real sure. Maybe we should just shoot ‘em.”

  “I heard a wounded bear can be real mean, Scott,” Jerry Don, told him. “We shoulda read up on ‘em more before we decided to go huntin’ ‘em.”

  “Yeah, well it’s too late now, ain’t it? It’s our four guns against the two of them. I say we shoot.”

  The four stood in silence.

  “Well,” Jackie said softly. “We gonna shoot?”

  “Yeah,” Scott answered him.

  Again silence.

  “Well…is someone gonna shoot?” Scott asked.

  “How ‘bout we all shoot at the same time?” Mike suggested.

  “Good idea,” Scott came back. “Everybody ready?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be, I reckon.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Not especially, but okay.”

  Scott raised his gun to eye level. “Okay, fellas…on the count of three. One…two…three!”

  On the sound of three, the four began to shoot toward the yellow eyes. Jackie and Jerry Don shot at the one on the left, and Scott and Mike shot at the right one. The blasts from the shotguns filled the night air. The tops of the trees rustled as nesting birds flew off into the darkness, and sleeping squirrels scampered down and cowered on the other side of the tree trunks. They could hear four legged animals, both large and small, running through the woods, which seemed to come alive as the fire from the rifles lit up the clearing.

  The quartet continued to blast away at the unseen creatures until their ammo was spent.

  “Hold your fire!” Scott yelled.

  Mike and Jackie stopped firing but Jerry Don fired three more shots. The blast from the four shotguns had deafened him for the moment. Once he realized that the others were no longer firing, he stopped.

  “Did we get ‘em?’? Mike asked?”

  “How the shit should I know?” Scott threw back. “I can’t see or hear shit!”

  The four of them continued to wait.

  “I don’t see their eyes anymore,” Scott said, as he dug a finger into his ear in an attempt to get his hearing back.

  After a few moments, a cool breeze blew over the campsite. As the night mist disappeared, Scott had to reach up and grab Jerry
Don’s arm, which was still fanning the now nonexistent mist. All that was left was the smell of smoke from their fire.

  “I guess we got ‘em,” Scott told the three as they began to slowly walk toward the spot where they’d heard the first animal walking.

  They got no more than ten feet, before they heard a noise behind them. It sounded like the slow, snarling growl of an angry or perhaps rabid dog. The men froze on the spot. Although the breeze had been cool, Scott could feel ice-cold perspiration flowing from his cap down the side of his face as he turned slowly toward Jackie.

  “Please tell me there ain’t a rabid dog behind us,” Scott said nervously.

  Jackie was too nervous to even turn his head. “All right,” he whispered. “I don’t think there’s a rabid dog behind us.”

  “No?”

  “No, I think there’s two rabid dogs behind us.”

  “What?”

  Jackie had heard not one but two sets of snarls behind them.

  “I think he’s right,” Mike said aloud, also too nervous to look at the others. “I heard two of ‘em my ownself.”

  The men began to slowly turn around, eyes cast downward, guns at waist level, pointing downward toward the ground, ready to blast the dogs into Hell. But when they turned around, there were no dogs looking up at them. As a matter of fact, the animals that stood before them weren’t looking up at them at all. They were looking down at them. There were two creatures, one around seven and a half feet tall, and the other nearly a foot shorter. They stood on two legs and were covered with dark brown fur from head to foot. Long doglike ears stood straight up from the heads. The fiery yellow eyes glared at them. They could almost see anger and rage in them. Their suspicions were aided by the fact that there were fangs, at least four to five inches long, protruding down from each of their mouths, as well as another set of fangs growing up from the bottom. The sides of their mouths were peeled back into snarls. Smaller but equally menacing teeth, lined each jaw. They stood on tiptoe like a dog that’s begging for scraps would do, but unlike any dog that they had ever seen, these feet had long claws growing out from them.