by Adam Cesare
The smoke was getting worse and the horizon line had begun to glow. At least they wouldn’t get lost on their way back to the party.
“Keep dialing, Janet,” Quinn said.
The injured girl had the pistol in one hand, phone in the other, and her chin was beginning to nod. Quinn worried she was going to slip back into unconsciousness. Janet was wearing Rust’s flannel now, her tourniquet and packing forming a hump on her shoulder. If she passed out again, they might never be able to wake her.
“There’s no service, Quinn.” Her voice mocking, frustrated. “Are you sure you paid the bill?”
“Janet. Shush. Don’t make a sound,” Rust said. “We’ll come back and get you. Just hang tight, okay.”
“I mean. If I don’t shoot you two first,” Janet said with a demented smile. “Just k—” She coughed twice; it sounded wet. “Just kidding. But if I see Frendo, I will shoot Frendo. Fucking clown deserves to die.”
Rust looked over to Quinn, a pained Should I tell her? expression on his face. This was clearly a moral quandary for him, leaving an unarmed person thinking they were armed.
Quinn shook her head. If it gave Janet a bit more comfort, thinking she had a loaded gun and could defend herself, then maybe that revenge fantasy could help keep the girl awake and alive. The answer certainly couldn’t be leaving her with a loaded handgun.
“I can’t,” Rust said, his conscience winning out over Quinn’s input.
He loaded Janet’s gun for her, then patted her hand: “Don’t make me regret this. Okay? Stay awake, stay alive.”
“I’m sorry,” Janet said, her voice soft and vulnerable, more sure of her words than she’d sounded since entering the corn.
“For what?” Rust asked.
“That I was always so mean to you . . .” She paused. “You stupid hick.”
“It’s fine.” Rust smiled, then stood. “I’m sorry, too, you spoiled asshole.” Janet smiled and licked her lips and nodded for them to go.
“Let’s do this,” Quinn said.
Rust led the way and she stayed close.
The trip back to the barn didn’t take long. And here Quinn was, thinking she’d brought the injured Janet deep into the safety of the corn, when in reality they’d only traveled maybe a few hundred yards from the barn, walking a straight line.
The two crouched at the edge of the cornfield.
Quinn looked over Rust’s shoulders at the fire that’d engulfed the barn, orange shadows dancing across his face and rifle stock. She worried that the off-white of his exposed undershirt made him too visible.
Out in the clearing, there was no sign of the clown—the shooter, as Rust had more accurately called him. But the maniac could have been anywhere. From here, they could only see the barn’s closed rear doors, the structure blocking most of the clearing and silo from view.
Not that it was easy to look away from the barn itself.
Flames were licking the sides of the building, catching and climbing to the corrugated tin roof. Knots of wood popped, sparks flying, accelerating the flames wherever the embers touched. Sections of the barn’s roof and sides would begin to collapse soon.
The smell of smoke wafting down off the barn reeked of chemicals and charred meat, made worse by the sounds coming from inside.
Cracks, screams, and the banging of fists against the closed back doors. The howl of the fire was a constant whirring under it all.
In the field opposite them, Quinn thought she could hear the snap of a bowstring. But it could have been an auditory hallucination, something her subconscious had been expecting to hear, dreading.
“He locked them in,” Rust said, pointing with the end of his rifle to the door.
She squinted against the flames and spied the metallic sheen of a chain, padlocked in the center, joining the handles of the two barn doors on the outside. Well, that explained why their classmates couldn’t escape.
“Now. We have to go now,” Quinn said, raising her own gun, not feeling confident, but focusing instead on what Rust had taught her about how to use her gun. She needed to be sure to plant herself and brace the stock before firing, he’d explained. “Be careful or the recoil will break a rib.”
They ran for the doors, heads on swivels, checking that a homicidal clown wasn’t standing in the shadows, ready to pick them off when they tried to help.
“Switch with me,” Rust said as they reached the barn doors. Even outside the building, the fire was almost unbearably hot. Quinn’s lips were immediately dry, felt ready to crack. Her eyes were watering from the heat.
Quinn and Rust swapped weapons.
Someone on the other side of the door must have seen them through a crack.
“Hey. There’s someone out there,” they said.
“HEEEEELLPP,” a voice, the gender indistinct, yelled. The word turned into a jagged, burning screech.
The doors swung outward on their hinges, then stopped short. The chain and padlock held firm, pulled taut, as the survivors inside pressed against them, panicking, looking to be saved. The entire building groaned as the doors shifted. As fists banged, ash floated down onto Quinn’s skin.
“Step back!” Rust yelled at them, but now the kids inside were all screaming, becoming a raving, jabbering hive mind. They didn’t ease up on the door—instead their words mingled and canceled each other out.
“WE’REDYINGHELPUSBURNINGDEADHE’S-STILLSHOOTING”
“Please,” Rust screamed. “I have to shoot the lock! Step back!” Rust tried again, but there seemed to be no getting through to the KSH students inside. They’d been driven insane in their fear and pain. Rust shook his head, looked over to Quinn. “You step back, at least,” he said, frustrated.
She did, not wanting to leave him alone. But not too far—she didn’t want to become a target for the clown by moving too far away from the cover of the building.
Rust knelt, putting the shotgun as close as he could to horizontal, resting the butt in the dirt, the top of the padlock wedged against the barrel.
“Everyone inside get back!” he tried one more time, then fired.
The blast sheared off a chunk of the barn doors, a rain of splinters floating down. But it was the upper part—hopefully he’d avoided killing anyone.
Rust stood, reached for the padlock, then pulled his hand back. In his eagerness to remove the chain, he’d burned himself.
He hadn’t needed to touch the chain, though. The doors strained, the top loop of the lock twisting. The chain loosened, then fell away. Smoke and teenagers fell out of the widening gap between the barn doors. Spines and necks were stepped on, tears running down soot-streaked faces. The doors pushed outward on their hinges and were pulled apart at the same time.
Quinn and Rust needed to take a few quick steps to the side, to avoid being crushed by the stampede. Twenty or thirty KSH students spilled out, found their feet, and then hopped, stumbled, or were carried into the cornfield.
None of them seemed to see Quinn and Rust. The two of them were, at most, another obstacle to avoid on the way to the safety of the corn.
A boy with black marks running down from his nostrils and patches of singed hair caught sight of them, then did a double take at their weaponry. He stopped his retreat. He was wearing a singed T-shirt that read “Cool Story, Bro” and a tattered and burned Hawaiian shirt over that. Earlier in the night, the boy was what Quinn would have described as “trying too hard.” He probably would have been thrilled if a girl had deigned to talk to him, but now he was crying dirty tears, thankful to be alive.
The boy in the Hawaiian shirt crossed to where Quinn and Rust were watching the procession of survivors and grabbed Rust by the shoulder.
“He left the front door open,” the boy managed through his sobs. “He’s killin’ em as they try to run for—”
But the boy’s words were cut short by a crossbow round to the ear, head kicked back, neck turned to rubber.
Rust closed his eyes against the spatter of blood, the dots of it
looking black in the firelight, dripping down his pale stubble.
Quinn whirled. Frendo had rounded the corner of the barn and was standing, feet planted, crossbow still raised, maybe twenty feet away.
The clown tilted his head, painted smile demonic as the flames played across his plastic mask.
Quinn didn’t think. Didn’t calculate the odds she’d hit him. Didn’t reflect on her strong anti-gun views. The petitions she’d signed. The marches and candlelight vigils she’d attended with Tessa and Jace. She didn’t even remember the frustration she’d once felt at a street fair midway, claiming the game was rigged when her BB gun couldn’t shoot the center out of a red paper star.
She merely braced the rifle, took one last look at Frendo the Clown, placed her finger on the trigger.
And squeeeeeezed.
Rust had been right, she would have broken a rib if she’d held the gun any lower. As it were, she might have done permanent damage to her hearing and was going to have a helluva bruise.
Only after the blast did the clown tilt his mask to acknowledge Quinn directly.
Oh no. She hadn’t hit him.
Quinn’s hands scrambled to switch positions. The clown hadn’t cried out, hadn’t been tossed backward by the shot—she must have missed. Her left hand searched for the lever she needed to pull back and forward to advance the next . . .
She’d started this adventure, this rescue mission, with the shotgun. This wasn’t supposed to be her gun and she hadn’t been paying much attention as Rust explained how to work the rifle.
But then she saw it.
To the right side of the clown’s second pom-pom button, there was a rose blooming against Frendo’s chest. The mark spread, then began to dribble, then pump. Like a clown’s water-gun flower.
She pulled the lever to her. The spent shell spiraled away, grazed the back of her hand. It was not hot enough to burn, but still warm, even next to the flames whooshing out from the barn.
She pushed forward, loading the weapon, and fired again.
The second shot dropped Frendo back.
“She did it,” someone—not Rust—said behind her, a straggler leaving the barn or a survivor who’d been too dazed to run for the cover of the cornfield.
Rust was at Quinn’s side, time again seeming to skip forward a few seconds. He moved slowly, working a thumb around in circles on the back of her neck as he directed the end of the rifle down to the ground with his other hand.
He’d dropped his shotgun to the dirt between them.
“It’s okay. You did good. You did good,” he said, soothing. “You did what you had to.”
Quinn couldn’t speak. Couldn’t do anything but let him point the rifle’s barrel to the dirt. Her grip was tight against the wood. If Rust had tried to pry the rifle from her hands, she wouldn’t have let it go.
“Hey, he’s dead. The new girl shot him!” someone yelled, calling some of the partygoers back to the burning barn.
Shot who?
Who did she kill?
“Who is it?” Quinn said, working the words out her dry lips. It was unclear if Rust heard. Beside them, a length of tin roofing collapsed into the barn with a clatter. Wood popped and flames whooshed.
Quinn walked forward, knowing that if the barn buckled and collapsed in the wrong direction, she’d be burned up in the resulting fireball, maybe even crushed under flaming lumber.
But she had to know.
With very little ceremony, Quinn knelt to Frendo, noting the dark half-inch hole her second shot had punched in the bridge of his nose, and pried off the mask.
Who would want to do this? Who would—
Oh. Apparently, a science teacher would.
Mr. Vern’s dead eyes stared up at her, his small mustache frothed with blood and spit.
Seventeen
“I can smell ’em burnin’,” someone said, the voice vaguely behind and above where Janet Murray lay.
Janet blinked against the darkness, dust coating her eyelashes. Had she blacked out again? She was flat on her belly. Her mouth tasted like soil and copper. She’d fallen asleep, facedown in the cornfield.
God. Her shoulder was completely numb now. Her brain felt fuzzy, dreamy.
That couldn’t be good.
She peered over at the small black gun in her hand.
It was loaded now, wasn’t it?
Redneck Rust had called it a Browning. She’d known at one point, in another life, but was that a make or a model? She furrowed her brows, scrutinized the object.
It wasn’t clear how long Quinn and Rust had been gone. Could have been minutes, could have been hours that they’d left her here. Alone.
“How many primary targets confirmed?”
The voice was still talking. The cornfield absorbed sound; her grogginess and the dull ringing in her ears made her hearing echo. She couldn’t tell how close this voice was or even how many people were speaking.
“None confirmed. But Hill is safe.” A voice, tinny and hollow, returned. There were at least two of them, but . . .
Confirmed? Targets?
They talked like cops! The cops were here!
Janet swallowed hard, trying to get enough spit down her throat that she’d be heard when she called for help.
“Not one?” a voice asked. “Not even the Murray girl? I was betting she’d be first to go. Vern hates her.”
Wait, what? Janet was the only Murray girl in town.
These weren’t cops. Who and what was she listening to? Why were they talking about her?
Somewhere, there was an electronic chirp. Janet looked at the phone in her other hand, suddenly worried it would give away her location. The phone was Quinn’s. It was on silent. She pressed the screen down into the dirt, desperately, frantically aware that, whoever was speaking, a few feet behind and above her in the field:
They. Weren’t. Cops.
“Is the new girl a primary target? Or a bonus objective, because—”
The chirp again, then static: that wasn’t a phone. It was a radio.
“The barn failed! I repeat. Barn failed. Somebody opened up the back. They’re running out. They’re moving west! Quick! Clean up! Now! Clean up!”
“Oh shit,” the voice said, groaning with exertion, sounding like he was lifting something cumbersome.
Then there were footfalls. Moving toward Janet’s hiding spot. These weren’t cops, her mind repeated again, not helping.
More shuffling steps. Buckles, equipment, and zippers clanging. Getting closer. Janet was sure they were going to trip right over her.
Janet held her breath, made herself smaller, felt like she was going to sob. She dropped the phone, freeing a hand to plaster over her mouth and nose. Holding any sound in.
The muscles in her shoulders and arms twitched as she flexed. She felt life returning to her body, which made the pain in her back flare. She couldn’t focus. She knew she wouldn’t be able to keep this position longer, her gun arm outstretched, the rest of her hugged tight in the fetal position.
Her fingers felt white, bloodless. She fought the instinct to squeeze her eyes shut as the footfalls approached.
Heavy combat boots crushed cornstalks mere inches from where Janet was hiding. She turned her eyes up to see that the boots were connected to polka-dot pant legs.
The boots jogged by. Their owner not stopping, not seeing Janet.
Shoot him.
Shoot him!
But she couldn’t, and he disappeared out of sight before she could will herself to act.
A few breaths later, there were other sounds.
Kids, screaming, crying, relieved, telling each other that the nightmare was over. That they’d be home soon. Home soon. I know you’re burned, but just hold on. You’ll live.
Janet was the only one who knew they weren’t headed toward safety.
Knew that she was the only one who could save them, could warn them.
Janet tried to move to her feet. An ache shot from the base of her wound, m
oving outward and splintering like an electric shock. From the tips of her toes to the marrow of her shoulder blade, probably chipped, soon to be infected by Redneck Rust’s dirty shirtsleeve.
She lay back down, almost falling on the gun, throwing her elbow out to catch her at the last second.
Why should she leave her hiding spot?
Yer not from around here.
That’s the first thing Janet could remember a classmate saying to her, nearly fifteen years ago. She’d ruined that boy and his OshKosh clothing. Tom Mathers. Yeah. It’d been Tom Mathers. She’d made him cry on the playground. Years later, in middle school, she’d spread a rumor that he was the reason they were being screened for lice. Because Janet Murray might not have been from around here, but she knew where she was going and she never forgot what they said to her along the way.
Janet Murray hadn’t gotten where she was in Kettle Springs by caring about other people.
Maybe that was why she liked Quinn so much so quickly. Janet saw herself in the girl. She used to live in a city, too. Once upon a time. So Tom Mathers had been right: she wasn’t from here.
Janet had been born in Cincinnati. She lived in a nice little house, had a nice little life, until Dad up and left. Her mom worked two jobs and dated desperately until she met Alec Murray while he was visiting Ohio on business. They fell in love, married in a matter of months, and then she and Janet packed and moved with him to his stupid, giant house in Kettle Springs the month before Janet started first grade.
And Janet knew from the first day, the first minute, she landed in Kettle Springs that she wasn’t going to survive her terminally basic stepdad and this terminally basic town by being nice.
But the truth was that she didn’t wind up hating her classmates as much as she wanted to. Frankly, she didn’t hate anyone. Outside of a few instances of schoolyard weirdness, especially in those first years, the kids of Kettle Springs were kind of cool. They were woke. To a point. Well, woke-er than their parents. And by the time she got to high school, if not well before that, Janet considered herself one of them. For better or worse, Kettle Springs was her home, was her town, was now where she was from, fucker.
