Bigfoot Crank Stomp by Erik Williams

hairy bounded from behind the house. Gabe froze and Stanger ran into his back. The thing spun toward them, no more than ten feet away.
    “Jesus.” Gabe fired a round blindly and back peddled.
    The buckshot hit but he didn’t see where. The beast bellowed and closed toward them. Gabe grabbed Stanger and threw in front of him and retreated toward the car.
    Stanger fired a round of his own as the thing reached for him. It hit him square in the chest and the bellow became a cry of anguish. But it didn’t stop coming toward them.
    Gabe studied its face for a second. Apelike. Sort of. Thick brown fur. Maniac eyes. Huge body.
    Betts and Pronger stepped forward and fired. Stanger re-engaged. Gabe hung back and watched.
    The next couple of shots tore hair and flesh from its right arm and part of its leg. It stopped advancing and turned and sprinted into the woods, breathing heavy and clutching its chest.
    “Let’s go get it,” Pronger said.
    “Hell yeah,” Betts started to run toward the tree line.
    “Hold fast,” Gabe said.
    “Come on, Sheriff, it’s hurt pretty bad,” Betts said.
    “I said hold fast.”
    Betts kicked gravel. “Damn.”
    “Stop whining and secure the house. Pronger, go with him.” Gabe turned and found Stanger staring where the beast had been. “You okay?”
    Stanger blinked. His lips moved but it took a few seconds to form words. “I think so.”
    “Good.” Gabe looked around for Lyle. Nowhere to be found. “Lyle? Where the hell are you?”
    A hand shot up from behind the back end of one of the cars. “Over here, Sheriff.”
    Gabe grimaced. “It’s gone. You can get up now.”
    Lyle rose. His whole body shook. “I was just taking cover to reload.”
    “Is that a fact.” Gabe walked over to him and grabbed the barrel of the shotgun. “Pretty cold for having fired so many rounds.”
    Lyle swallowed and shrugged.
    “Go secure the back of the house.”
    “But Sheriff—”
    “Go secure the back of the house or I’ll make you go into the woods after it.”
    Lyle swallowed again and glanced at the woods where the thing had disappeared. He nodded and walked toward the back of the house.
    “Chicken shit,” Stanger muttered.
    “Let it be,” Gabe said and moved over to the tree line. “How many rounds did it take?”
    “A lot. Double ought buck, too.”
    “Got to be hurt pretty bad.”
    “You want to go after it?”
    Gabe shook his head and turned to his deputy. “If there’s one thing I learned watching scary movies, it’s you don’t go into the woods after a monster in the dark.”
    “Monster? Looked more like a gorilla.”
    “You ever seen a ten foot tall gorilla before?”
    “Why I’ve never seen any gorilla before.”
    “I’ll tell you then, they don’t get to be ten feet tall.”
    “It wasn’t a bear, Sheriff. That I’m sure of.”
    “Yeah it wasn’t a bear.”
    “Then what the hell was it?”
    “Well, if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say we just had an honest to God encounter with Bigfoot.”
    “There’s no such thing as Bigfoot.”
    “Seeing is believing and I saw Bigfoot take a bunch of rounds of double ought buck before running away into these woods here.”
    Stanger lowered his shotgun and put his free hand on his hip and spat. “So this didn’t involve drugs?”
    “I’m not sure yet.” Gabe motioned Stanger to follow. “Let’s go around back and see what’s what.”
    Around back, Lyle bent over and puked his dinner into a dead rose bush. Several feet away from him was a body with no arms, said arms nearby, and someone blown to hell by scattershot. A bunch of splintered wood, too. Busted chain.
    “Holy shit.” Stanger walked around the bodies, whistling. “This boy got his arms torn off right at the shoulder.”
    Gabe studied the scene. Guy with no arms had a shotgun on the ground near the corpse. Lot of damn shotguns out tonight. Other dude killed by a shotgun blast. Easy to put two and two together there.
    He turned to the entrance down to