by Adam Cesare
Ginger’s hair hadn’t been gelled up on purpose, hadn’t been styled that way. It was clotted and clumped together.
There was blood streaming down the girl’s face.
It was coming from a huge gash above her eye. Ginger’s nose ring had been torn from her nose, the blood clotted on her upper lip like too much makeup.
Every bad thing that could happen to a teenage girl at a party was suddenly, vividly playing in Quinn’s mind.
Ginger pushed herself up to her knees as Quinn rushed to her side. Only now could she see the panic in Ginger’s eyes.
And there, sticking from her lower back, was an arrow, bright neon feathers marking the end.
Of all the possible scenarios that had been churning through Quinn’s imagination, none of them had factored in this kind of . . . of hunting accident? Purposeful violence? What was happening?
Quinn reached for the end of the arrow to pull it out, and Ginger screamed, “No!”
“Okay, okay—” Quinn said quickly, hands up in a panicked apology.
“Whoa,” someone said beside Quinn. It was Janet. The girl was carrying two Solo cups, had been in the process of pushing one toward Quinn when she spoke, but the drink never made it.
Janet dropped both cups and screamed, cool beer hitting the dirt and dead grass, splattering up, the splash fizzing against Quinn’s cheek.
Quinn was too stunned to move. Wasn’t sure what to do. Although Ginger’s chest was rising and falling, she felt like dead weight in Quinn’s arms. The girl was slick and cold.
Quinn looked up to Janet, needing help, but Janet had her hands to her face, was screaming at the top of her lungs.
It felt like all this was happening in slow motion. The foam of beer sliding down her chin not yet settled, Ginger’s blood sticky, beginning to web her fingers together.
Janet’s scream had attracted a few onlookers, but nobody was moving to help them, not yet.
Inside the barn, less than ten yards away, Quinn could hear the music continuing, the dance floor no doubt still raging.
Quinn couldn’t bring herself to speak, to even call for help. Her jaw ached from clenching. Janet finally rushed over and put her fingers on Ginger’s neck like she was checking for a pulse. “I can’t—” she began, and then she reached into her pocket. Janet’s phone bobbled in the air for a moment and she dropped it into the beer puddle.
As Janet scrambled for the phone, Quinn heard movement behind them.
Quinn watched, her lockjaw going slack, as a clown emerged from the corn.
Frendo’s shoulders were uneven, set that way. His chest heaved like he’d been running.
There was a flash of screen light as Janet finally got hold of her phone, hands muddy, and brought it up.
“We need to go,” Quinn said, and began to pull at Ginger’s shoulders. The girl wasn’t helping. She was unconscious, somehow even colder than she’d been seconds ago.
“No, we shouldn’t move her, we . . .” Janet, confused, followed Quinn’s gaze, saw what she was seeing, and stopped arguing.
Ten feet away from them, Frendo stopped his approach and hefted something up to his waistline.
A crossbow.
Quinn watched, too stunned to move, as Frendo aimed the weapon low and fired at them.
There was a thwump sound like a broken guitar string.
The arrow moved with such speed that with one blink, a flinch, it passed between Quinn and Janet and embedded itself in the dirt, missing Ginger’s head by inches.
The shaft of the arrow vibrated, Quinn close enough to hear the tuning-fork hum.
The motion had been so quick, the idea of violence so foreign, that Quinn had just assumed the clown had missed. But then the girl in Quinn’s arms slumped forward, Ginger giving a final shudder as air left her body.
Frendo had hit his target.
The arrow had glided clean through Ginger’s head. Enough force in the bowstring to enter the base of the girl’s skull, then punch out the left eye socket and bury itself down in the dirt.
Quinn stared down at the hole in Ginger’s head, the blood running between her fingertips, eye and brain bits splattered in the grass under them.
Quinn wouldn’t have moved if Janet’s voice hadn’t resolved into a single word, repeated:
“Run!”
She understood by the second, maybe the third time.
Janet had Quinn by her armpits, ripping her to her feet.
Quinn had no choice but to be dragged out from under Ginger’s corpse.
Her Chuck Taylors barely up to the task, she stumbled, crab-crawled backward, as she watched Frendo begin to move again.
The clown let the front end of his crossbow drop into the dirt, then used his foot to hold the weapon steady, drawing back the cable until it clicked.
He was preparing to fire again.
“Fucking go!” Janet yelled into Quinn’s ear.
This time, Quinn really ran.
Behind them, Frendo took aim and fired.
Thirteen
Cole Hill watched from the edge of the barn as the killer in the clown mask took aim at Janet and fired.
No. Please no.
But the crossbow bolt went wide, missing Janet but still finding purchase in someone. Was that Pat Horner? In the chaos, Cole couldn’t tell. Next to him, standing at the door to the barn, someone had screamed to “run,” while another had yelled “active shooter” and the whole place, after a lifetime of in-school drills, went nuts.
Pat, or whoever had been hit, limped along, the bolt deep in the meat of his thigh, before finally collapsing in the space in front of the bar. The music was still thumping, full blast, but Cole could hear Pat’s pained screaming anyway. It was like nothing Cole had ever heard before—a half-swallowed shriek that hurt just to hear.
Cole looked beyond the boy and saw that the clown was reloading. Whoever was behind the mask wasn’t flustered. He worked with methodical efficiency, foot in the bow’s stirrup, what must have been powerful arms hand-drawing the string back.
Was it 100—maybe 150 pounds? How much draw weight did a hunter need when his quarry was teenagers?
“Let’s go,” Matt said, grabbing Cole by the arm. Matt was still wearing his own Frendo costume, the choice instantaneously in bad taste. Cole’s friend had untied the sleeves and had slipped his arms through at some point in the last few minutes, maybe for style, maybe to stay warm. But before Matt could direct Cole anywhere, Matt was knocked flat on his ass by a terrified Trevor Connolly. Trevor was running full speed, faster than he ever had on the football field. Trevor barely slowed after leveling Matt, was almost at the corn, was almost safe, when a bolt hit him in the back, felling him mid-stride, a dust cloud following after his limp body.
Before Cole could run to help Trevor, Ronnie was there by his side. The flash of her own costume made Cole have to work against the urge to fight her. He’d never been scared of clowns, but here, now Cole wanted to push Ronnie away as she tried to grab him.
“Come on,” Ronnie yelled. “Let’s go. Let’s go.” She spun Cole around and grasped at Matt by the fabric of his costume to pull him up.
“We need to help them,” Cole said.
Ronnie slapped him. Her palm hard on the side of his face.
“Listen to me,” she said, voice serious. “Stop fucking around. We need to survive this.”
He didn’t have time to argue, didn’t think to, because there was a familiar voice coming up behind them.
Cole turned, cheek stinging, and saw Janet. Quinn was right behind. All of them headed toward the barn doors.
Janet yelled out, again: “He’s trying to kill me!”
The clown was finished reloading—how long was that? Five, ten seconds?—and fired again.
A few feet in front of Janet, a guy—Jake Peps, not an athlete but a friendly enough guy who’d share his homework if you were in a bind—twitched and fell face-first into the raised firepit. The flames flared, then knocked into a cloud of s
moke and cinders as Jake screamed and writhed in the burning embers.
Cole instinctually started toward Jake, ready to bat out the flames with his hands if he had to. It was a small town. A small school. He’d known Jake since kindergarten. His first sleepover was at Jake’s house. Jake’s mother made them French toast sticks in the morning. Like real, homemade French toast sticks, with eggs, not from the freezer. But Cole didn’t get more than a few steps. Ronnie was still holding him by the shirtsleeve. She yanked Cole back and got up in his face. “He’s gone. Let it go. Matt!” Ronnie yelled. Matt clamped a strong hand around Cole’s arm, the couple moving him as a team.
Janet. Quinn. Where were they? He’d lost track.
They fought against the flow of traffic. Most of the partygoers were either headed for the corn or were trying to get inside the barn as a team of kids worked to get the big, wheeled doors closed.
Instead, Cole was being three-legged-raced toward the silo.
“Come on! Hurry!” Erin Werther yelled to them, about to slide the small door shut as they approached the disused corn silo. She held the door open as they rushed over the threshold, which was her mistake, as it turned out. A bolt found its way between the door and the jamb and slapped her in the side of the head, shattering Erin’s glasses, killing her before she hit the floor.
Erin’s body landed at Matt’s feet, who, seeing her like that, snapped, turned his head, and coughed, sounding ready to puke.
The door was still open, about a foot gap, as they all stood, horrified.
“What the fuck!” Ronnie yelled as Cole ran to the door and slid it shut, bracing the frame with his shoulder.
“Lock it! Lock it,” Ronnie yelled, her voice echoing around them.
“I can’t,” Cole screamed at her, pointing with his eyes to the empty latch, hands still holding the door shut, feeling vulnerable. “There’s no lock!”
One of the stoner kids had set up a Coleman lantern in there, and the lamp threw harsh shadows on the door as Ronnie and Matt moved in front of the light source.
“Maybe it fell. Look for it,” Matt offered, his voice weak, his face so pale he looked ready to pass out.
“Dipshit,” Ronnie said, pushing Matt from her shoulder and beginning to search the ground. With a frustrated expression, Ronnie crossed to Erin’s body, put one foot to the side of Erin’s head, grabbed hold of the fletching, and pulled the crossbow bolt out of her skull.
“Back up,” she said to Cole, voice dispassionate, then wedged the bolt into the latch, forming an improvised bar. They made those things out of carbon, strong but flexible, so that they could withstand tremendous pressure and not shatter. But still: crossbow bolts could bend—it could easily slip out if their attacker really wanted to open the door.
That didn’t matter. Everything was happening too fast. Was too insane. Using the bolt as a wedge solved a problem, but outside, there was another twang of a bowstring. The sound was far enough away that queasy relief filled Cole’s belly.
The killer was moving toward the barn. He was leaving the silo alone.
Cole listened as someone screeched and someone else whimpered. But there were fewer footfalls now—people had either made it to the cornfield or were taking their chances in a hiding spot.
“We can’t just stay here and do nothing,” Cole said as he fumbled to pull out his phone. Inside the silo was cool and airless and way too quiet, but it could have been worse. The silo would not have been shelter at all, if the Tillerson family were using the building. It would have been filled to capacity with dry corn, if Baypen were still open and buying the crop. One small silver lining to the shitshow that was this last year.
Cole dialed in his code and swore. “No bars. No bars. Nothing!” he screamed. “Fuck this town. What do we do now?”
“What can we do? We wait,” Ronnie said in a whisper, shushing him, a finger to her lips. “Someone had to have made it out. They’ll get to the road. The cops will be here soon.”
“But Janet . . . and Quinn . . . and everyone else. That fucking guy is still out there.”
“Maybe,” Matt said, taking his own phone and shining it into Cole’s eyes, “but right now, they’re not our problem. All we have to do now is not die.”
Fourteen
“He’s trying to kill me!” Janet screamed. “Why me?”
Quinn watched as Janet changed directions, a boost of speed to her already herky-jerky sprint. Janet burst through the stampede around her, shoving a boy so small he had to be a freshman and sending him sprawling.
Thwump!
An arrow whizzed between them, missing them both by inches. With her push, Janet had saved the boy’s life, if completely by accident.
It was not lost on Quinn that Janet might have been onto something: maybe Frendo was aiming for her. That was the second shot aimed the girl’s way.
Quinn’s chest heaved, not from distance run but from panic.
Quinn pressed her back up against the barn wall. She crouched, pulling an old tire down over herself, trying to make her body as small as possible. She stayed toward the shadows and let Frendo jog past her.
“Janet!” Quinn whisper-yelled, afraid to attract too much attention. She tried again, opening and closing her fist as she did, attempting to signal Janet with a manic sort of Morse code.
With the bulk of the partygoers either headed inside the barn or off into the fields, the clown had stopped chasing them. With one hand, the attacker tipped the bar onto its side, off its sawhorse base, and made himself a hunter’s blind out of the plywood. He then stood, long torso above the upturned table, and nocked another arrow.
Janet had made another extreme course correction, a curve that ended in a sudden U-turn. The move ultimately gave the clown a better shot, no more classmates for Janet to use as cover as she doubled back.
Quinn watched as Frendo stuck a gloved finger in one eyehole of his mask and pulled sideways, adjusting his sight, then his grip. He steadied the bow, following Janet with the end of the weapon, leading her.
Quinn didn’t think.
If she would have let rational thought enter her mind, she wouldn’t have pushed the tire off herself and dove toward Janet. If Quinn thought about it, she would not have put herself in that kind of jeopardy for a girl she barely knew.
But she did, tackling Janet, spearing her, shoulder to waist, to the dirt. The air whooshed out of Quinn’s lungs as the arrow passed over their heads, embedding itself in the tire behind them with an audible thrum, shaft vibrating.
“Why is he trying to kill me!?” Janet yelled into Quinn’s face.
“He’s trying to kill everyone!” Quinn yelled back.
And as she said it, a boy who’d been banging on the front of the barn, begging for entry, fell into view, an arrow through his neck.
How was that possible? Quinn hadn’t even heard the click-clack of a reload. Time in this situation was doing strange things. Motion stuttered forward and stopped. In her frenzy and adrenaline, Quinn was losing full seconds, maybe even minutes. From around the corner of the barn, the wounded boy watched them, his eyes pleading, blood filling his mouth, and he reached out, vainly, for their help.
Quinn watched the boy’s eyes twitch and roll, then finally still.
“We need to get to the cars,” Quinn told Janet, scooting them both back into the shadows.
“Oh God,” Janet cried.
“Janet!” Quinn yelled. “I don’t know what direction that is.” She jabbed a finger into Janet’s chest. “But we need to get to the corn. That’ll give us some cover. And you need to lead us out.”
“The cars,” Janet said. Behind Janet’s eyes, Quinn watched as the girl’s confidence fought to regain control. “Okay. Okay. I can do that.” But Janet didn’t move. In front of them, the clearing had emptied out. At their backs, inside the barn, Quinn could hear hushed cries, the kids in there wondering what was next.
She could hear them so well.
When had the music cut off? Quinn cou
ldn’t remember.
“You need to lead the way,” Quinn said, getting to her feet and then pulling Janet up with her. Staying as close as possible to each other and the cover of the barn, the two of them sidestepped to the edge of the building. They couldn’t see where Frendo had perched. “It all looks the same to me.”
“There. Straight there,” Janet said, pointing to a spot in the corn. “We run there on three. One. Two.”
But before they got two steps out of the shadows:
Fwwwtump.
This time Frendo didn’t miss.
The bastard had been waiting for them to leave cover. Even while focusing on other victims, he’d never lost track of where Janet and Quinn had hidden.
Janet spun to the ground. She’d been hit high in the shoulder.
She screamed, stumbled, but didn’t stop running. Janet reached up to grab the end of the arrow to pull it out.
Quinn stopped her.
“Don’t. You could bleed to death.”
Her father had explained this to her once. In movies and TV, they say a bullet passing through is the best thing—and it could be if you could get an ambulance quickly enough. But sometimes, especially if you were shot in North Philly, where the cops and paramedics cared slightly less, a lodged bullet could be the thing that saved your life, kept you from bleeding to death.
There was almost no wobble to the arrow’s neon feathers, which meant the arrowhead was likely embedded in Janet’s shoulder blade or collarbone, not soft tissue. Careful not to bump the impalement, Quinn put her arm around Janet, adding a steadying hand to her back as they sprinted to the corn together.
Ten more limping steps. That was all they needed.
Please.
With each step, Janet yelled out, not the shrill scream of an injured girl but the deep, bellowing growl of a large animal in a lot of pain.
Tough as Janet was—and she was tough—Quinn knew she would eventually lapse into shock. They needed to be far enough away, safe in the corn before that happened.
There was a click, some distance across the clearing behind them.
And then:
