FICTION BY BRIAN J. SMITH
He resides in southeastern Ohio, drinks a lot of coffee, has too many books and buys more and considers Valentine’s Day to be Second Halloween. He can be found on Bluesky under bubbywriteshorror9 and Instagram under horrorauthor9. Find his author profile on Amazon HERE
ACCORDING TO PLAN
by Brian J. Smith
The cabin sat back from an old dirt road bookended by a dense jungle of tall pines and leafy gray oaks. A thick cloud of smoke rose from its red brick chimney, drifted across the sky and stung the sharp autumn air with the rich scent of wood smoke. Moonlight iced the treetops of the forest behind the cabin and glinted off the chrome bumper of the nondescript Buick parked on the left; the wrap-around deck at the rear of the cabin faced the vast green forest like the balcony of a feared king.
Enzo knelt down behind a wall of choking weeds, his broad chest accentuated by his maroon t-shirt and brown leather jacket. Five minutes later, Nicky joined him, his mouth set in a hard line to match the stone-cold expression on his big chiseled face. Luca followed and knelt down beside of them, brandishing a double barrel shotgun with a sleek walnut stock.
“Is this the place?” Enzo Martelli asked.
“Yeah,” Luca said. “It’s gotta be. Right, Nicky?”
Nicky took two small steps back and glanced across the meadow. “It’s where Baldinger said they’d taken him.”
“Are you sure?”
“Did Baldinger lie about the shipment of sweaters that came in last week?”
Luca shook his head. “I guess not.”
“Okay,” Nicky said. “Then it’s settled.”
Nicky studied the cabin and saw the two men stationed around the front. A tall, skinny, ginger-haired man in a red t-shirt covered the left side of the cabin. The short, heavyset man in the gray t-shirt smoked a cigarette in front of the cabin door.
Nicky looked back at his dim-witted brothers and gave them the signal.
He brushed off the weeds grasping at his shoulders and neck, moved his left arm across his hip and slipped his right sleeve across his dead mother’s Life Alert bracelet he always wore on his wrist. He breathed a sigh of relief, drew a mingled cloud of wood smoke deep into his lungs and smiled inwardly. He felt positive that tonight’s plan would go down without a hitch.
It had been his idea to go around nine-thirty so they could use the cover of night to conceal their faces. After twenty minutes and seven lines of coke each, Nicky took them step-by-step through the entire plan again just to make sure.
After tonight, Ross Harrington would disappear from the face of the earth courtesy of the Martelli brothers. Harrington had enough dirt on The Family to send each one of them away for the rest of their lives. If he sang to the court, it’d all be over.
No one wanted that.
Nicky’s breath wafted across his face in thin white puffs that dissipated in the air. His anticipation of the plan’s execution excited him to the point where the hairs along the back of his neck stiffened and an icy chill trickled down his spine. All snitches had to be eliminated.
He scrambled to his feet, retrieved his shotgun and inched closer to his target.
The man in gray stepped away from the door, leaned against the old wooden railing and glanced around.
Did he see something? Nicky wondered, thinking that perhaps the men in gray and red were guards recently hired. He didn’t recognize them.
Nicky pulled the front of his sock cap further down over his forehead and stealthily crept through the tree line until he reached the meadow. He scanned the road for any impromptu traffic and shifted his gaze back to the front of the house, his heart thudding in his chest. The gray shirt took one last pull from his cigarette, plopped down onto the porch swing and blew a small plume of smoke across his face.
He doesn’t see me.
Suddenly static burst from a small radio attached to the gray shirt’s hip. “We got a breach, Agent Coleman.”
Agent! Were the gray and red shirts FBI?
The sound of the voice stopped Nicky in his tracks, and he crouched even lower than before. The voice had sounded authoritative but yet there was an underlying tone of shock. Coleman pulled a sleek black pistol from the back waistband of his jeans and grunted at the other agent, the red shirt.
Suddenly all hell broke loose. Nicky heard chaos erupting from inside the cabin. Gunshots popped and cracked, spreading tiny bursts of bright orange light across the semi-lit cabin. Agent Coleman scurried across the porch and flung open the front door. The door swung inward hard enough to slam the doorknob against the wall inside.
Nicky did his best to compose himself. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Enzo and Luca hurry out of their hiding spots and crouch beside him. He saw their brows furrow as they glanced confusedly at each other and peered into the open front door of the cabin.
“No fucking way,” Enzo said. “None of us fired a single shot.”
Nicky couldn’t believe that his easy plan now faced a dilemma. He would never have guessed that the FBI had infiltrated his Family, but apparently they had.
Agent Coleman stumbled out of the house as his gun slid from his hand and tumbled across the porch. He collided with the support beam on the left side of the house, his face now a mask of anemic white horror.
He slid down the beam and onto the porch floor. He rolled onto his hip, clutched the railing with both hands and attempted to pull himself back up. He reached down onto the surface of the porch to retrieve his gun, but stumbled and fell onto his back.
Surprised, Nicky studied the man. He saw that the agent’s shirt was speckled with sporadic bibs of blood. A large wet stain spread across the front of his jeans. The middle of his left cheek had been torn open to reveal the network of teeth, gums and muscle underneath of the skin; it looked as if someone had thrown acid in his face.
A gunshot rang out from inside of the cabin and struck Coleman, this time fatally. One bullet whizzed past Nicky’s left shoulder. Why are they all shooting each other? he wondered.
Nicky had no intention of approaching the cabin with all the chaos going on. He remained crouched on the front lawn but began to slowly scrabble backwards. This wasn’t going to be simple after all.
Suddenly all the noise stopped. Was it over? Nicky realized the agent in the red shirt was nowhere to be seen. Had he deserted?
His eyes wide with horror, Nicky scanned the cabin. Since the front door was wide open, he could see inside even in the dark of the night, because the light inside allowed him to view it. Blood was splattered across the cabin’s oak paneled walls and dribbled from the picture frames.
Luca crawled up behind him. “What the fuck is going on?”
“Looks like they started shooting each other,” Nicky said, “I don’t know why.”
Enzo slipped his hand away from his face. “Should we go inside? I don’t think anyone will stop us because—”
A loud whipping sound—like a sheet flapping on a clothesline—cut Enzo off in mid-sentence. A large black cloak had jumped down from the roof of the cabin and draped around him. The shotgun fell from his hand and tumbled across the lawn. Enzo gave a muffled cry, his body convulsing with terror and confusion.
Nicky saw the network of thin red veins streaking around the thin skeletal branches inside of the cloak and felt a cold realization wash over him. It wasn’t a just a cloak; there was a creature beneath it. He rolled away from Enzo and silently begged the universe to not have the monster notice him.
The thing carried Enzo off and flew into the night. Enzo’s last dying scream faded into a chorus of incoherent gurgles as a river of brownish-yellow liquid dribbled across the lawn, falling from the monster’s flight.
Nicky heard a soft rustling behind him and he lay flat on the grass. At first he closed his eyes in panic, but then realized he had better pay attention if he wanted to save himself. He began to get to his feet to run back to the trees when a tall, shadowy figure with a black angular face and bright orange eyes gave a loud snake-like hiss and opened its large black wings.
“Shoot it!” Nicky cried, and Luca leaped back, his face contorted with fear as he raised his shotgun. He pulled the trigger, hitting the thing with both barrels. A loud explosion roared in Nicky’s ears, echoed across the lawn and tore through the sky. The creature gave a loud banshee wail—its wings folding in half from the gunshot—and fell from the sky onto the lawn.
Nicky watched in gut-wrenching horror as a mist of thick black blood sprayed from the downed monster into the air and rained down around them. He swallowed the sharp bitter lump tickling the back of his throat and patted Luca’s left shoulder.
“Come on, goddamn it,” Nicky said.
“What!” Luca exclaimed.
Anger filled Nicky’s voice. “Look up, for fuck’s sake! Those things are everywhere above us. We don’t stand a chance if we try to run. Do you want to end up like Enzo? We need to take cover!
Luca gave a protesting grunt and cursed under his breath. But Nicky was right; they didn’t have a choice.
They ran toward the cabin but not in time. Nicky heard the whipping sound right next to his ear and suddenly Luca was gone.
“No!” Luca screamed. “Nicky! Help me, Nicky!”
Nicky watched as the dark beast raised Luca into the night sky. His heart stuttered as his lips twisted into a lopsided frown; rivers of sweat broke out across his forehead and slid down his temples. His hand tightened around the grip of his pistol until his knuckles ached and an inhuman gasp burst from his lips.
He was jolted into action. There was no saving Luca, but he would save himself at any cost. He raced into the cabin and slammed the door behind him, surprised that it would still latch. He was safe for the moment, and he refused to think further ahead than this moment.
Breathing heavily, Nicky leaned his back against the door and studied the inside of the cabin. He raised his pistol, his chest heaving with fear. He saw Baldinger in a twisted heap on the floor with Harrington lying spread-eagle next to him.
Suddenly Nicky heard movement. He slowly brought his gaze upwards…there it was, on a beam. Inside the cabin.
The Family must have been shooting at the monsters and somehow wound up hitting each other. Nicky didn’t know else this clusterfuck could have happened.
A monster was crouched on top of a nearby rafter, its body draped in a thin grayish-black blanket. It cocked its head right then left and peered down at him with bright eyes, its pointed dark-green chin and wide lipless mouth coated with blood. Its curved talons glinted like straight razors and gripped the edges of the girder, etching large scores into the wood that sent small splinters raining down onto the floor.
Nicky aimed his pistol and fired. Missed! The creature began to take flight, and Nicky emptied his gun into it. The winged beast jolted, and began a spiraling descent to the floor. It was only then that he realized he had used all of his ammo on one single beast. How many more were there outside?
His mind racing, Nicky ran to one of the dead bodies and grabbed the man’s gun out of a cold hand. Empty. Desperately he ran to grab the next body’s gun. Empty.
It wasn’t supposed to end like this, he thought. It wasn’t, it wasn’t! It was all supposed to go according to plan, the plan that he’d convinced his brothers to do and now they were dead! Both of them! They were fucking dead because of his stupid fucking little plan.
Something shuffled across the porch. A cold realization washed over him. The monsters were not flying away. They were outside…waiting for him. Somehow they knew he was in there.
Suddenly the cabin shuddered as the left front window exploded in a mass of jagged glass.
Nicky—the macho, tough guy—fell to a kneeling position and began to cry as the monster flew in his direction. Instinctively he knew it was over. He tried to brace for what was to come.
But then the creature gave a protesting shriek as its head exploded in a geyser of thick black sludge. The monster fell out of the air and slid across the floor to land in front of Nicky. Its wings unfurled and spread out across the wooden floor. Nicky continued to sob. He didn’t want to die!
And then Nicky realized that the agent in the red shirt stood inside the doorway, brandishing a twelve-gauge shotgun. He glanced at Nicky and said, “All clear.”
“How?” Nicky managed to ask over his sobs.
“Never underestimate the FBI,” red shirt said. “We infiltrated your mob. Our resources were dispatched to arrest the gangsters inside of this cabin. Obviously we encountered obstacles and we eliminated them.”
Then the FBI agent continued, “You are under arrest for the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.”
Nicky rose to his feet. “What were those things; those obstacles as you called them?”
“That’s classified.”