Cultists Are Not Bullet Proof

Hard-boiled Flash Fiction

They had only removed one of his eyes before he gutted the man with the commando knife.

He would miss it but it wasn’t his dominant eye.

In fact, it seemed to improve his aim. The magnum dropped its hammer on an empty chamber. A bloodied body dropped to the dirt. He was dead enough apparently.

They all wear hoods. Too bad. It would be far more satisfying for him if he could watch their heads blow apart like that comedian does to watermelons with a mallet.

The cylinder of the Colt popped outwards. He emptied its six sacrifices. Blood from skinned knuckles dripped across the rubber Pachmayr grip, he adjusted his shooting hand as he loaded in six more .357 magnum rounds.

Dusk began settling across the farmyard. He already killed six of them. There were more. The cult had gotten bigger since they purchased the old Weller farm in ‘73.

They thought they had captured a drunken trespasser but it was all an act. He wanted to get inside the house. He allowed himself to be taken. Not resisting until they tried cutting out his eyes.

He knew they used all sorts of drugs to dull the senses, so he took a handful of amphetamine pills he bought from a street dealer in the city before he rolled his truck into the driveway, hitting a parked tangerine Pinto.

Everyone on the farm wore robes, so he knew some dark ceremony had begun. They stripped off his denim trucker jacket and tied his hands in front but were negligent in searching his jeans or boots. The black commando knife was lying just under the pant leg, snug against his left calf. The Colt had been shoved down in the groin.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. This wasn’t what was promised by parents, teachers, priests and his army C.O. They told him that if he voluntarily worked hard, prayed and paid his taxes, his life would be calm and fulfilling.

But they took everything.

He hadn’t cut down Barbara’s body when he found her hanging by an extension cord. She was never a strong woman and the death of their only daughter broke her. She was gone. They are both gone now.

The first aid kit was still sitting under the front passenger seat of his Ford truck. He pulled it out and applied a compress to his empty left socket, wiping away gobs of flesh and blood with old restaurant wet wipes as he did so. Once the compress was applied he wound a bandage around his head to keep it in place. A few aspirin tablets were swallowed to help with the dull ache forming in his head.

They had to be in the barn. He already searched the farmhouse and killed all the cultists he found there, plus the one he just shot outside. Another tried hiding in a closet but he found her and pulled her out by her hair, screaming and kicking at the rotting hardwood floor.

“You took my daughter from me. My wife went insane from grief, you took everything from me, I will hunt down every one of you disgusting hippie perverts”, he screamed at the mewling, terrified pudgy visage. He squeezed the trigger and the Colt bucked. The cultist would have to go to her god without a face.

The house was in shambles. Once it was a clean, well-ordered space filled with three generations of farmers. Now it was a rotting nest of former California druggies and their New Age guru who worshipped an unclean god. The man had turned it into a charnel house.

When they first moved in, he had just come back from Vietnam. He wanted nothing more than to restart his own family farm, raise a family and prosper.

The long-time locals were ablaze with gossip, about the strange rites these new residents practiced and how they all seemed to have a hollow look to them. No one ever met their secretive leader. It was said that he had once been a gospel preacher.

For a long while, nothing much changed. He focused on his dairy farm and spent what little time he had left over with his wife and daughter.

He only began paying attention when people began disappearing. At first, it was only people who wouldn’t be missed, the town drunk, elderly hermits who had no family left.

Later, teenagers went missing. The Sheriff got involved and even got a warrant to search the old Weller property. Nothing was found. But he knew a few deputies and they told him of the strange fetish objects they saw, weird sigils painted inside the barn, barely perceptible music; they couldn’t locate its source and it gave them all terrible headaches.

It was only after Amber went missing that he knew. Two weeks later, the Sheriff’s deputies found her body by the lake, her head and heart missing. She could only be identified due to fingerprints. Barbara stopped talking after the funeral.

He knew it was them.

Once Barbara was dead, he made his decision. They would all suffer.

The barn door opened slightly, a greenish fog poured out. A kind of whistling music emanated from inside. The soft glow of sputtering candle lighting could be seen.

A wild-eyed madman stumbled out. He was older than the others by a few decades. Older than the man. The hooded robe was red, instead of white; like the others he killed. But it was in tatters, as if something tried to tear it off but did not have enough strength. The long pale white hair was greasy and plastered to a thin, angular skull. The bloodless lips drawn back in ecstasy. The hands were curled like claws and he held a kriss dagger, similar to the one that took his left eye.

“She rises. The ritual has begun…you cannot stop what is coming. Our god will grant us dominion over-” A bullet shattered teeth, ruptured tongue and made a mockery of his tender, throat tissue. It exited out of the back of his spine and buried itself in the wood of the barn. He died with a look of surprise on his face, maybe he saw something he didn’t like when he pierced the veil to the other side. He’d seen it happen in Vietnam. Saw a grunt die with a quizzical countenance when the AK rounds slammed into his chest and dropped him.

The music became louder.

He reached into the pocket of his jeans. Nine rounds, just nine rounds left, plus, the old commando dagger in his work boots.

It was all he had left. It would have to do.

The man strode forward into the fog, towards the entrance of the barn.