Storymania - Malo Criatura by Sf

Malo Criatura
Sf

Wayne was exhausted. His holster, gun in with all bullets loaded, was strapped to his waist, ready for action. His worn out cowboy hat that had seen its better days was accompanying it to the left. Wayne’s hand rested on it lightly, ready to jump up at a moment’s notice. Wayne himself was on the ground, in between the cactus and sagebrush in a somewhat open spot. His eyes were closed and yet not quite asleep. His muscles were tensed up still. He had learned a long time ago that you don’t take a moment’s rest while on a hunt. He was in the middle of a kind of sleep, though that wasn’t the right word for it. He was still awake, just not quite all the way. The sounds around him still subconsciously registered in his brain. The night was alive with crickets, birds, and the occasional coyote call in the distance.
“Wayne! Wayne, wake up!” Wayne’s eyes immediately unbolted from their closed position and his hand came down on his gun at his side. He was instantly awake, a reflex that came from long hours of being out on the range. His mind wasn’t clouded with sleep. He was ready for anything.
“Wayne!” The hushed voice said again.
“Yeah?”
“You need to get over here right now. We think they’ve come back!”
“I’m coming!” Wayne engaged the muscles of his stomach that had been toned from the horse riding and hard labors of being a bounty hunter and sat up. His head filled with faintness as it tried to adjust to the sudden change in direction. Wayne thought about what had been whispered to him. They had come back. That meant that they had the right place. Finally. No more searching. Wayne had, though he wouldn’t admit it to anyone, almost given up hope that the Elcra’s lair could ever be found.
It was two months on Tuesday that he had been asked to find the Elcra. The Mayor of the town not far from here had hired him and the two people with him to come and get rid of the Elcra. Little had been told to him about the mysterious Elcra. The town had been terrorized by them for some time. They came almost every night and took a life with them. The number of dead was up to fifteen. The Mayor had had enough. The only thing that was said to Wayne directly about the Elcra was that they were a new animal race. They were tough and no one had seen anything like them before. They needed to be stamped out.
In these two months Wayne had never actually seen an Elcra. Only flashes of movement; that’s all that anyone had ever seen of them. The Mayor had said it was better that way, because if you got within view of one you’d be as good as dead. Wayne wasn’t taking any chances.
Within a few seconds he had gotten his bearings back and now, picking up his hat and swooshing it up on his head with another reflexive movement, stood up and walked forward into the darkness.
The voice that had whispered to him belonged to Clint, the best marksman west of the Mississippi. He was sitting next to Barb, who knew more about medicine than anything else. That was why she was here. As he rustled the bushes, the two turned around and looked at him.
“Wayne, they’ve come back. It’s it. We have the right place.”
“Are you sure?””
“Yes. This is it.”
“Well then we need to be ready,” Wayne said matter of factly, “but you seem overly excited.”
“I should be. I’m finally going to find some action on this assignment.”
“You know there’s a possibility you ain’t comin’ back.”
“I’ll take the risk.” There was a silence in which the night noises surrounded them again. Then the doctor, Barb, broke the silence.
“Hear that?”
“Yeah,” both Wayne and Clint said together. Indeed, there was definitely a noise that was not among the normal nighttime noises. It was a scratchy sound, as if someone were rustling the hedges. It was coming from up ahead.
“Let’s check it out,” Clint whispered as he picked up his prized possession, a rifle with a long barrel. Wayne put his hand on his six guns and the two took the lead as they crept into the darkness beyond.
“Shhh!” Clint whispered urgently. He dropped to his belly and slid forward up the little embankment. Wayne, doing the same, looked up at Clint. He shook his head. Twenty three and not scared to fight what Wayne knew would probably be his last fight. Barb didn’t seem to mind it either. Was Wayne the only one that found it odd that they never found out anything about the Elcra? Was he the only one that was afraid to go into battle with these creatures? He was usually hired to find outlaws, not strange animals.
As Wayne approached the crest of the hill, the rustling sound became louder and louder. Soon Wayne was at the top with Clint, and as he looked down his mouth opened.
They had indeed found the Elcra’s lair. In this little valley there was a fire in the middle where the rustling had been coming from, and Elcra were all around it. In the firelight, the shapes of Elcra could be seen. They were short and hairless. They walked upright but had no clothes on. Their bodies were a dark shade of white and their heads, with what could be seen of them, had no ears or noses. Their movements were like that of a human’s, but not nearly as sophisticated. They moved in an erratic fashion, jerky and shaky. In their white hands they each held a sword like the one the three had found a while back. The blade had a green hue to it, and the moonlight glinted off the skulls etched in it. The handle was twisted in an irregular fashion, shaped like a spinal column. Each Elcra held one.
“I count twenty.” Barb’s eyes had again picked up what Wayne’s mind had just begun to comprehend.
“Do you think that’s all of them?”
“I hope so. Let’s do what we were intended to do guys. Let’s finish this.” Wayne took out his six guns and cocked them. Clint lined up his sites on one of the creatures. Barb took out her pistol.
“Those don’t look like no God Damn animals,” Clint said, and indeed they didn’t. But the three didn’t take the time to think about that. They just wanted to get this job over with.
“Malo Criatura,” Barb said. “Evil creatures.” Both men said nothing. She had said it all.
“Ready?” Wayne said, ready for the battle.
“Yeah.” The response was unanimous from both Clint and Barb.
“Let’s do this.” Clint let off the first shot. Even before the report was heard, a lone Elcra could be seen falling to the ground. All was silent for a moment. The Elcra all looked up at the hill where the three lay. Wayne started next. His fingers moved as blurs across the triggers. Bullets went everywhere. Within six seconds Wayne had fired all of his bullets in both pistols. Five Elcra fell down. Wayne ducked down again to reload. His hands moved with skill and agility.
Clint shot. Barb joined. Wayne heard a noise and Barb cried out. He looked up. Barb had a sword speared through her upper chest. Her eyes were motionless. Wayne finished and lunged back up. The Elcra were moving sporadically in a defensive pattern.
“Cover me,” Wayne whispered to Clint. Clint nodded and flipped over a few times. Wayne stood up and was off down the hill faster than Clint could get a shot off. Wayne flipped around and around. Bullets flew everywhere. Elcra flew down all around him. Wayne’s right hand gun was out. He continued running. The left one was out. He bent down in midstride. Out of his boots came a knife. He did a somersault and saw Clint running down the hill after him. Before Wayne could cry out, Clint was skewered with a sword and fell in midstride. He was dead before he hit the ground. Wayne found the remaining Elcra. His knife got the Elcra in the head. It fell.
All the gunfire ceased. Wayne was stayed on the ground, motionless. His ears still burned from the gun reports. The crackling fire was the only thing that was heard. In less than two minutes the entire valley had been emptied of Elcra and Wayne was the only one left alive. He had no memory of what just happened. He had been running on instinct. Only now did he realize his hands were shaking. He looked up. Every Elcra there was lying on the ground, dead.
Something wasn’t right. It was too easy. The Elcra were supposedly fierce and yet they had killed all of them in two minutes. Wayne got to his feet. Something inside him told him that this was not right. He walked forward to the fire where there was an Elcra laying there face up. Wayne slowly approached it. As he got closer he knelt down and looked at the face. He squinted and bent down even more. His brow furrowed.
“What the…” he murmured to himself. As he looked at the face even more, his eyes widened. He reached out a hand. Slowly and with great trepidation he touched the face. As soon as his fingers touched the Elcra’s skin he jerked back so hard that he was knocked off his feet by his own momentum. His cowboy hat fell off and his spurs jangled on the ground. He shook his head. His face, once so confident, was now imprinted with a look of fear and remorse. He stumbled to his feet, and, still shaking his head violently, sprinted away from the firelight and the corpses of the Elcra and his friends.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Hours later, when the sun had come up and the temperature rose well above the bearable level, a group of men with badges on their clothes approached the same hill that Wayne and his comrades had approached the very last night. The leader, a man with a suit on, came to the top first.
“Excellent. They’ve completed the task.”
“Where are they?” the bearded man to the left of the Mayor said.
“Two of them are down there. See? There and there. The third one must have seen it.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Look at the footprints. Plus this one is laying face up. He must have seen it.”
“No matter,” the second man to the right of the Mayor said matter of factly. “He’ll be caught.”
“It was only a matter of time before they caught on. We’ve finally put a stop to them,” the Mayor said as he walked down in the pit. He approached the Elcra that Wayne had seen hours before.
“Look at them. They used to hold so much promise. Now they’re dead.”
“It was all their fault, though,” the bearded man responded. “They didn’t stop with the experiments. They turned into monsters.”
“They thought that it was their destiny to be these changing creatures all their life. With the dark they became hideous and in the day they changed back. If we hadn’t have hired these people to kill them all we’d all be dead. But I didn’t count on them changing back once they died. I thought it was permanent.”
“No matter.” the clean shaven man said, looking down at the Elcra. “I wonder how long it will take people to realize they never attacked us; that we made it all up.”
“You better shut your mouth before someone hears you,” The mayor replied angrily. “As far as I’m concerned we did what we must to protect our town. These people’s ideas were spreading. People liked the thought of being a damn shape shifter. I put a stop to it.”
“Still, though, I-“
“No! Enough. None of this ever happened. We will find the escapee and then forget all about the Elcra and their plot. After today, this will all be a distant memory.”
The men turned and walked up the hill and away. The valley was still once again. The bodies of Clint and Barb, once so lively and skilled, lay in awkward positions on the desert floor, surrounded by bloody Elcra. The face up body that lay by the fire was as still as the rest. The fire had long since gone out and all that remained was smoldering ash and embers. The morning sun beat down on the body of the Elcra. The body was no longer white and hairless. None of them were. Now they looked quite normal. The hair had appeared back on their bodies and their skin flushed. The one that lay face up revealed the truth that had sent Wayne cowering away. Its face was a recognizable form. Wayne had seen it, and now, in the blazing sun, it was even clearer to see. A normal man’s face, mouth slightly ajar, stared up with a blank gawk. There was nothing hideous about it anymore. It was a normal human face. The body was a normal human body. All the bodies were normal humans. Clint and Barb, once surrounded by creatures that resembled monsters, now lay surrounded by naked men and women, bloodied from battle and dead in the hot summer sun.