by Ryan Harding
Her vocal cords at last remembered their prime directive. She shrieked. She lifted both hands to pry at his fingers. The second hook was out of reach, and given how Ed struggled to free the other, Orange would scalp her first anyway. Her eyes rolled as if pinballed by the circuits of pain lighting up all through her scalp. They found the spear still lodged in his chest. She clutched and twisted it, felt the blade slice through muscle and hopefully vital organs. It had to be near a lung, but did he even breathe? He had blood around the rim of his wound, but not consistent with the damage it should have inflicted; more like a shaving cut. She tried to wrench the harpoon free to bury it a little higher, where his heart would (should) be, but it was stuck.
The machete.
He still had it in the sheath on his belt, ignored for new and better toys. She caught hold of the grip and freed it. He let her drop. She fell hard onto her ass as if her legs were made of old springs. Terrible pain pounded up her tailbone.
Orange regarded her from what seemed like a mountaintop as she squirmed. There were tufts of hair floating to the ground, and no sooner had she noted this than blood trickled down the back of her neck. She tried to scoot back, her tailbone still tingling. He knelt down and picked up the hook again, yet always watching her. It just seemed to be there when he opened his hand, like Thor’s hammer in that movie she’d watched with Adam.
Adam.
Orange moved in quickly. She panicked and swung the blade at him wildly, but only sliced a hole in one of his pants legs. He swung the hook like someone pitching a softball underhanded. The hook disappeared under her chin. She pushed herself backward, but not far enough. The hook ripped through the soft flesh of her throat and the bottom of her mouth, the agony excruciating. She screamed again, her tongue momentarily pinned to the roof of her mouth by the point of the blade. She didn’t dare shut her mouth, though it felt like the scream would never stop anyway. Her backward momentum instantly reversed, hauled forward by her head as he tugged on the hook. Blood filled the back of her throat, pooled over her bottom lip and through the corners of her mouth.
He yanked her up and over her feet. She planted her palms on the floor to brace herself so the hook couldn’t shred any more of her mouth. It nearly arced back out of her mouth now. Her upper teeth clicked on its curve. She could only crawl helplessly along the floor, a steady spatter of blood trailing her like juices from a burst Hefty bag. She was pulled over Ed’s prone body, bleeding her way across his back. She managed not to touch him with her hands, but couldn’t help her knees pounding him.
She maintained a steady groan/scream now in an “Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh” sound. She couldn’t look up to see him now beyond the black boots. He had stepped in blood—Ed’s, undoubtedly—and left deep red prints on the floor which smeared as she pawed across them.
Suddenly the tugging stopped. A small puddle of blood formed below her face. The fire reignited as Orange wrenched the blade back through her mouth and throat. Warm wetness filled her mouth as she finally closed it. The hook clanked as he tossed it away.
She didn’t want to know why and didn’t want to look up at the face that had passed beyond life and death, a journey which had clearly driven him mad; a wrong turn from the path to salvation. She stared at the floor instead and the growing pool of hemorrhaging blood. The pain was still awful, but muted now by the shock of the trauma. She clamped her eyes shut as he crouched down.
Lord, deliver me to Your holy kingdom, far from this pain. Please watch over Adam.. He’s so young, and there’s so much he doesn’t know…so much I didn’t get to tell him. Watch over and guide him.
His hands clenched tight to either side of her head like vise grips and lifted her up until she hovered above the ground. He charged forward with her in tow, a sensation for her like flying backwards.
What is he doing with me? she wondered, but found an answer in a photograph snapped by her mind moments earlier.
The swordfish. Mounted to the wall with the saber of its face measuring nearly two feet in length.
He gripped her head like a basketball and pumped his arms back as if about to slam dunk. Pamela tried to look everywhere but his face. She fixed on some point behind him, nominated that to be her escape in a moment when no longer confined by her body. The stare transitioned from defiant to glassy in one eye an instant later as the sharp point of the mounted swordfish drove through the back of her head and spitted her other eye at the tip. She was gone before it broke away from the wall mount to send them both to the floor.
Eight
Adam ran. He followed Patrick’s shape, everything blurry from the film over his eyes, their pounding steps like gunfire from trench warfare. The stairwell looked too narrow, squeezing them in, a world seen through the wrong end of binoculars.
Gin was behind him. She would be the first in line for Agent Orange if he came for them. He should have let her ahead, but he did well enough to remember how to put one foot in front of the other when Patrick dragged him through the doorway. His movements were unsteady, like the first time he rode his bike without training wheels. His dad took them off and both his parents cheered him on.
And he’d left them behind to save his own ass. Of course it was his best option. Adam had no delusions about his formidability after his first up-close look at the infamous slayer.
Might as well try to fight a tornado.
He had been frightened before this, but however logically he understood the danger of their predicament, he didn’t believe it. Of course he was going to be okay; he and his parents, Gin, all of them. Lawrence and Nathan might have thought the same thing, but Lawrence was too out of shape and Nathan too careless. They would hide, flag down a boat patrol sooner than later, and get the hell out of here safe and sound, leaving Adam with quite a tale for Kevin.
Heads were staked everywhere, dude. And that Agent Orange thing…I saw him. He was sizing all of us for more stakes. He was wearing a bunch of shriveled ears around his neck. I’m practically a hero now because of all this, but be glad it wasn’t you. No bullshit.
And of course he’d have a lifelong bond with Gin, which he would somehow parlay into a serious (and ideally sexual) relationship.
He was far less optimistic now, though.
Thing was, he didn’t see what happened to Lawrence and Nathan. He heard it and it sounded pants-shittingly horrifying, but again, Lawrence never missed a meal and probably polished off some of the ones others had left and Nathan would stick his head down a cannon if he thought it offered a way out. They’d all seen Agent Orange, but he remained phantom-like; it was only for a couple seconds before they left him in the dust posthaste. That was the kind of advantage available to you when you didn’t take up two seats on an airplane or step on a small explosive at the Chicken Exit.
To see him right there in the basement, though, that was the difference between watching surveillance footage of a robbery on the news and actually being in the convenience store when someone barged in with a ski mask and a shotgun. Much like room 237 at the hotel, Agent Orange smashed through the barrier of phantom status in Adam’s mind to flesh, blood, and indomitable bloodlust. Wherever they hid, he’d find them. Whatever they did to him, he’d survive it. There would be an Agent Orange story with Kevin, all right, but it would probably go more like this: Yeah, I knew that kid from here who got slaughtered in Morgan. He used to spend the night all the time. They found his head on a pole. The heads of his parents, too. No bullshit.
Adam wiped his eyes. Please let them be okay. He didn’t get a good last look at them, just a shaky glimpse like a shot from Cloverfield.
Patrick’s image sharpened as he reached the top of the stairs. Adam thought they’d run for the deck where they knew it was safe, but realized they would end up at the back of the house where they could be easily intercepted. Duh. He followed Patrick to the front of the house, Gin close behind.
Patrick paused in the living room.
“He didn’t follow,” Gin said. “Do we stay?”
<
br /> Patrick shook his head. “He probably has something trapped up here like the front door. If we don’t trip it, he’ll come after us.” He looked around and pointed past Adam. “Will you grab that lamp?”
Adam followed Patrick’s finger to a small table beside the couch with a wide-based lamp. The base had the pottery appearance of something molded rather than the brass kind favored by Adam’s mom.
Mom, dad, please tell me you went out the door.
Adam folded an arm around the lamp to cradle it and lifted until the extension cord pulled taut. He ripped it out of the wall, and only then wondered if it was safe to pick up anything in this room.
Is that why Patrick asked me to get it?
No, that was silly. Patrick still held the napalm bottle, and Adam happened to be closer anyway. Besides, why would Agent Orange trap a lamp in a town with no power? Annette was the only one stupid enough to believe it could work. He wouldn’t waste supplies on such a remote chance. The front door made the most sense as a trap.
They heard a loud shout from downstairs. Adam’s heart felt crushed within a tight fist. There were still people in the basement. Maybe his parents.
He turned back to Patrick, who indicated the huge picture window above the couch. “Toss it through there. We’ll get out without having to open anything ourselves.”
Adam nodded, took a couple steps back for a running start, and launched it at the window. The lamp burst through. The surrounding panes of glass collapsed as if too tired to stay upright. It didn’t completely clear out the window, but the right side opened enough to get through without too much danger from hanging shards.
Patrick snatched up a pillow to knock out the rest of the glass. “Okay, let’s move.” He gave Gin a little push to go first. He looked pensive as she maneuvered her slim body through the gap. Adam wondered if he was thinking about the strange scene from the basement. Difficult to say without truly being able to see Agent Orange’s face, but Adam thought he’d seen longing there, with something more obsessive and deadly. Maybe he didn’t follow them because of a trap, but Adam bet there was an element of savoring involved; he could look forward to killing Gin.
Adam bounded up the couch a little recklessly, trying to escape before he heard screams from downstairs that he might recognize as his parents’. He emerged on the porch, glass fragments grinding and sprinkling. Patrick held the napalm bottle through the window to Gin, then stepped through from the couch. Gasoline was sharp in Adam’s nostrils, even outside. They probably all had it on their hands. Trying to light one of those bottles might have ended the whole thing for all of them.
He didn’t see anybody out front. Adam had the sinking elevator feeling in his stomach again. He’d hoped against hope to see his parents round the corner and join them, Agent Orange too busy chopping Annette and Eliza into a body pile to come look for them. Cruel to think, but he didn’t give a shit what happened to either one of them, especially if it meant his parents’ survival.
Gin read his face. “They could have run like Marcus and Suzanne.”
He steeled himself not to burst into tears in front of her and nodded, his lips a tight thin line. At that moment there was a very loud, feminine shriek. Adam’s body temperature dropped about twenty degrees.
He was certain it was his mom, then half a second later just as certain it wasn’t. He’d never heard anyone make a sound like that.
Patrick took back the bottle from Gin. “We can’t stay here.” He said it to all of them, but only looked at Adam.
Adam didn’t trust himself to speak and did the tight-lipped nod again. They began the run up the lake road which brought them here barely forty-five minutes ago. Adam looked back with prayers buzzing through his head, like flies trapped in a jar. They were mostly of the bargain variety, such as a vow to adopt a sexless life of servitude if he just saw his mom and dad racing to catch up. But there was no one. Just another bloodcurdling scream behind the house at an octave level close to only canine perception.
They had an abundance of tree cover along the road, but still plenty of sun to bleed through the leaves and branches. It looked like late afternoon sunlight. In another hour or two, they would have the dubious pleasure of playing hide and seek with Agent Orange in the dark.
He wondered why they didn’t follow his original suggestion of getting the hell off the road and into the woods, traps or no. There were a million places to hide in there, and they had dark clothes now thanks to him and Gin. They’d had napalm and wound up running in the opposite direction of Orange. That didn’t inspire much confidence.
He tried to focus on Gin a few steps ahead of him. Crazy as it was, half an hour ago he’d felt elated. His days were usually boring and brooding with a faceless disappointment he didn’t understand. Angst, his mom once derisively called it. Like some kind of radio signal to which he had been blissfully unaware until a couple years ago, but now beamed in loud and clear. It was waiting for him when his latest optimism proved unfounded, like going to the beach to have one of those “summer flings” he’d seen in a lot of raunchy comedies (at Kevin’s, never his own house), certain he would score because it was time, and that’s just the way things happened. It had only served to demonstrate that wherever you had to be to take that next step, he didn’t know the way.
Back at the house, though, he finally had a moment alone with Gin. They kept a steady stream of talk while staying cognizant of the potential dangers. There was silence when there had to be, and when there didn’t have to be, it was easy to keep up the conversation. They had common ground, that being a stalking ground. They were both terrified, but hopeful for some kind of rescue. They both wanted to slap Annette across the face. Best of all, Gin didn’t have a boyfriend.
Even now, Adam felt at least a twinge of accomplishment for finding out. He’d been real smooth.
Your family must be worried back home…and your boyfriend. Perhaps he almost turned it into a question with the last inflection, but he didn’t think so.
My parents would if they know I’m gone, but I don’t have a boyfriend. Use that umbrella over there to push the closet open. You don’t want to get your face blown off.
Check that—she didn’t have a boyfriend and she didn’t want him to get his face blown off.
She’d noticed his face.
It seemed like a good opportunity to mention the nonexistent Duke recruiters and his college hopes, where he could hardly be blamed if she interpreted that to mean he was eighteen, but he understood this to be the wrong move. Anything that brought age into the equation at all was to be avoided. He matured substantially in five minutes.
Then they found the darker clothes and changed. She stayed in the closet while he used the bedroom, but there was a handy mirror at the right angle to give Adam a glimpse inside. She had her back turned and he saw a leopard skin pattern from her bra. He wanted to see everything, of course, but it was still more than he’d seen in person before (his mom wouldn’t dare emerge from behind a room until she finished dressing), and he hoped the steam blowing from his ears disappeared before she knew what he’d seen.
The time with Gin was intoxicating. Not because anything came of it, but because it didn’t feel like he ruined it. He’d expected to. It made him feel like he could do anything, at least until half an hour later when he saw Agent Orange two yards away.
He couldn’t believe it when Patrick turned left at the fork in the road. Adam knew it was wise to save his breath because it wasn’t like he would mutiny (not if Gin didn’t, anyway), but his father’s reluctance to follow Patrick’s program made more sense now. It had been embarrassing to listen to Dad harp on the Chicken Exits and see everyone’s pained expressions, but what brilliant ideas had Patrick contributed? Napalm? Adam knew they had a weapon with the gas can. Adding Styrofoam to it didn’t make you the new Napoleon of military strategy. It just meant you’d bookmarked YouTube.
Gin didn’t let it pass without comment. “Why are we going back to the lodge?”
Please, God, don’t let him drop that, Adam thought.
It didn’t seem like they’d run far when they left Lawrence and Nathan behind, but it took longer to get back than Adam would have guessed. Their fear made for a good adrenaline rush. He was surprised it hadn’t helped Lawrence any to escape.
He’d hoped Agent Orange took them off the road somewhere, but of course this wasn’t a populated city where a killer had to be conscientious about covering his tracks; it was a ghost town with a booming population of ghosts. Lawrence and Nathan were left in pools of blood. Adam clamped a hand over his mouth at the sight of Lawrence’s legs far from the rest of him, puking an insistent suggestion at the back of his throat. The thick coppery odor of blood didn’t help.
Both their heads were staked on the side of the road like mile markers, the ears removed. Flies clamored from one to the other, not sure where to start. Lawrence’s cleaved-open face seemed a pretty popular destination, part of his head uneven. The stake was the only thing that held it together. The huge gap separating the imprecise halves gave the semblance of Pac-Man jaws.
