by Ryan Harding
Adam thought of maggots hatching in the eyes, and the reward of a helicopter rescue couldn’t have stopped the flood from his guts, like a toilet flushing in reverse. He ran to the other side of the road as bile spewed through his fingers.
“Keep it off the road,” Patrick admonished. “Maybe it’ll dry up before he comes this way.” He sounded disappointed, like Adam did it at an inopportune time; wedding vows or something.
Go find some more Styrofoam, asshole. Don’t drop a speck of it anywhere, though, or he’ll track us.
He kept it off the road, however, believing it might screw them even before Patrick pointed it out. Once it got going, more wasn’t to be denied, and he heaved again. He felt Gin’s eyes on his back and groaned. He looked weak. Hopefully she just thought he was sensitive. Girls were okay with that sometimes. He wiped his mouth off and used his shirt to wipe his eyes. At least he had an excuse for the tears in them now. He took a deep breath to gather himself and nearly spewed again from the blood stench. When he knew he wouldn’t be sick again, he pulled his shirt up over his nose and mouth and breathed deeply before he faced Gin and Patrick again.
Patrick had a hand tented over his eyes, looking back the way they came. “Still looks clear,” he said quietly. “Let’s keep moving, though. He could cut through the woods.”
“Why aren’t we doing that?” Adam asked.
Patrick shook his head. “Too risky. If we get lost, we’ll be stuck in it overnight. We’d be lucky to spot traps in daylight, and in the dark? Not a good idea.”
Gin said, “He won’t think to look for us in the only place around here with electricity?”
Patrick shook the bottle with the napalm, sloshing it around. “Let him. When he shows up, I’ll have an eye out.”
Adam found Gin’s eyes, her back turned to the macabre scene by the road side. She stood hunched over, hands on her knees, trying to catch her breath. He was able to focus on her to the exclusion of the blurry shapes behind her. He gave her a conspiratorial shake of his head, a What the hell are we doing? gesture. He held back a fist pump when she shrugged in reply.
We’re practically telepathic now.
Adam gave Gin a very thin smile which probably looked like a grimace, but he got one in return.
Kevin would be jealous if Adam ever relayed all this to him. He claimed to have screwed five girls, but Adam suspected the likelihood of that was the exact opposite of the “no bullshit” trademark Kevin tagged on all his stories.
They have that concession stand closed up but I gots the key. I go, “Let’s ditch third period,” and Cindy’s like, “Okay, sure, but where can we go?” And I jingled the keys, and her eyes got real big and I knew she was thinking about cramming my whole ball sac in her mouth. You just know when it’s gonna happen, man. No bullshit.
Patrick glanced over at him. “All done?”
“Never better,” Adam said. His head was killing him. He needed something to drink. Agent Orange wouldn’t have to kill him if he passed out in front of Gin; he’d simply die of embarrassment.
The road curved out of sight before the turn off to the lake houses, but a good stretch was visible. His parents weren’t bravely staggering along to catch up to him. It was empty.
Adam and Gin fell into step as they walked away from the remains of Lawrence’s detruncated corpse and the heads. Patrick brought up the rear. They didn’t feel like they had to run with the lodge in sight. Nathan’s body came up on the right, severed fingers scattered in front of the stump of his neck as if his head had been a firework that exploded before it could be tossed away.
“Hope we can find water soon,” Gin said.
“Maybe in the lodge. There’s light, so why not water?”
“Light. Very sporting of those assholes who brought us here.”
“Yeah,” Adam said. “Those assholes.”
“I bet you they got the hell out of here as quick as they could.”
“Oh, yeah, you know they did. Those…assholes.”
“I just wish we knew why us.”
They hadn’t had much time to speculate. Government was the popular theory with most people not named Ed Kirshoff. Adam didn’t think it mattered much whether they were selected by a computer algorithm or some covert op snatched random people. He didn’t care if he never knew or if they kept doing it to other people. Just show the rest of them a way out of here now.
Come on, Mom and Dad. Be okay.
Adam shrugged. “Maybe it was just some secret lottery. It figures I’d win the one with no cash prize.”
She didn’t laugh. She only said, “Maybe.”
Tough crowd, Adam thought.
They held a brisk walking pace and soon the menagerie of heads greeted them at the hotel parking lot. Patrick overtook Adam and Gin. He kept an eye behind them for pursuit or survivors, but their luck held so far. He barely paid the Chicken Exit a second glance. The little pool of blood where Nathan tripped the toe-popper seemed laughable compared to what they just saw. A paper cut.
Patrick stopped suddenly at the entrance to the lodge, on red alert. Adam and Gin tensed, prepared to run back the way they came. They both saw what startled Patrick.
“Is that…?” Adam trailed off.
A man in a white shirt and bright red slacks stood at the mouth of the lodge. If he’d worn some platform shoes, he could have stepped out of a time machine from the 1970s. He seemed to do the same gradual identification of their group, then broke into an ungraceful run toward them. He waved one hand madly overhead.
“Hey!” he called.
“Could he have been left behind from before?” Adam asked.
“Before when?” Gin muttered. “The Watergate scandal?”
Patrick shook his head as they watched him stumble over. “With all these heads around, he’d have to be an idiot to run to us without knowing the score.”
He looks like an idiot anyway, Adam thought, then remembered his own original wardrobe.
His black hair was damp with sweat. It stuck to his forehead despite the white sweatband that ringed his head. He was Gin’s age, in good physical shape. Adam noticed tiny spatters of blood on his shirt, but the guy was whole and unharmed. If there were near misses, they hadn’t exhausted him. In fact, he seemed jittery, like he’d barely tapped his energy potential. He had to wonder if this guy’s presence would cost him a fighting chance—with Gin and Agent Orange. He looked away for a distraction.
One of us needs to go for a Chicken Exit, maybe two. Is anyone with me?
At the time Adam considered it a stupid idea. He’d been embarrassed for his dad; embarrassed of him. If he hadn’t wanted to stay with Gin, would he have jumped at the idea? Would they have been somewhere on the lake front by the time Agent Orange found the others in the house? Maybe Patrick was right, maybe the phones didn’t work, but it wouldn’t matter because at least they wouldn’t have been at the house when Orange showed up. They’d be alive. Together. Meanwhile, Patrick’s full-on napalm offensive would be falling apart as always destined.
“How many of you were there?” asked the stranger. Yes, he knew what was what in this place. He hadn’t been left behind, he’d been left alive. He’d managed it wearing a bright white shirt and matching headband, which shat all over Patrick’s theory about white shirts as the Kill Zone equivalent of red shirts on Star Trek.
Gin looked from the stranger to Patrick. Beautiful Gin. Hadn’t taken much for Adam to turn his back on his parents. What must they have thought when he left them behind?
“Nine,” Patrick answered, “but he’s killed two of us. We scattered.”
Adam kept his face turned from the others. He felt a stinging sensation in his sinuses. Stopping the tears this time might not be possible. Patrick had left the kill count at two, likely for Adam’s benefit. But Adam knew.
A brief interlude prefaced the continued Q&A where Patrick introduced himself, Gin, and Adam and the stranger introduced himself as Lee. Adam mustered a weak “Hi” before he turned his
back to them. His feelings began to plummet to the depths of despair. His parents were dead and he was in a war zone with Agent Orange. If he’d been depressed to the point of crying over his so-called “miserable” life in the past, what would happen when the magnitude of his loss set in?
Lee said, “I woke up in a motel in downtown Morgan, couple miles that way.”
“What was the name?” Patrick asked.
“The Morgan Manor.”
Adam knew the location from a map he’d bought off Kevin for ten bucks, a well-used supplement to the Agent Orange: Thirty Years of Terror Summer Special. Kevin had three duplicate maps but couldn’t part with such a valuable treasure for less than ten bucks (only three dollars less than the summer special itself). Adam forked over the cash, angry he couldn’t get a cheaper copy of the map and the summer special off eBay because his mother wouldn’t let him use the internet without supervision. And he dare not ask anything concerning Agent Orange, a topic that would fall under capital “O” for Occult.
When the police investigation found Adam’s stash of Agent Orange magazines, an old book by Charles Berlitz, a map of the Kill Zone, and photocopied articles, would they make a connection to his fate?
Lee’s group of eight met under similar circumstances at the crack of dawn. Patrick estimated this happened roughly eight hours before their second group. Adam wondered if that meant there would be a third group to lend new meaning to “graveyard shift.” Fifteen minutes ago he would have said it. Now…every joke seemed DOA.
“You speak English?” Lee asked Gin. Adam cringed.
“No, but keep talking and I’ll try my best to follow along.”
“Ha, sorry, there were, like, five Hispanics in our group. Only one could speak English well enough for us to understand. I thought you might be an undocumented worker—it’s racist to think all undocumenteds are from south of the border, right?”
“How you say ‘swam here last week?’”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it, sorry.”
“Let’s take this indoors,” Patrick said. He sounded as perturbed as Adam felt.
“Uh, sure, but this was a pit stop for me, man,” Lee answered. “I’m headed for the nearest military checkpoint to get my ass out of here. My band’s on tour and we could parlay this crazy shit into some major publicity—if they’re not getting chopped up in here somewhere.”
“We should compare notes first, if you don’t mind me picking your brain. Did the motel have electricity?” Patrick asked.
The question seemed odd but Adam couldn’t focus on why Patrick would ask or why it should matter. All his efforts went into keeping tears at bay. He’d bawled like a baby when his cat Piper died last year and he hadn’t shed a single tear for his parents. Did this mean he was in shock? Denial?
“Nah, there’s no power in any of these joints,” Lee said. “You know where we are, right?”
“Yes, the Chicken Exit was a helpful clue,” Gin said. “My accent too thick?”
“Oh, snap; I see what you did there.”
Adam wanted to throw up again. Were Gin and this guy flirting? It was the same light, playful tone she used with him back at the lake house.
“Wait, you said there’s no electricity here?”
“Nah, man, I was in there looking for a weapon, catching a breather. The Chicken Exit over there doesn’t work either. I’ve tried three phones and they’re all dead.”
Aside from slipping into depression, Adam felt he was slipping into irrelevance. “It had power when we woke up,” he said.
Lee glanced at him briefly as if to say, “Oh, you still here, little brah?” but Patrick and Gin didn’t even acknowledge him. The hell? He’d just lost his parents and it was like he didn’t even exist. It wasn’t like he needed coddling or anything, but she could at least treat him like he hadn’t—
Gin turned to him, eyes full of concern. “You okay?” she asked.
The validation he’d hoped for opened a trap door beneath his feet and his stomach fell through. Adam managed to show indifference with a shrug but feared such a response might not assuage Gin so he nodded and tried on his best smile. He wished for anonymity again. It wouldn’t take much prodding for him to totally lose it like last night’s supper. With Rock Star Lee on the scene, he didn’t want to give her any more reasons to question his maturity.
“Wait, you started here and came back?” Lee asked. “…Aaaaahhhh, you don’t think he thinks you’ll come back.”
“How did you get here if you didn’t see the bodies?” Patrick asked.
“Through the woods. Me and Earnes escaped after the last attack, but there’s traps all over this bitch. Earnes died on pointy stakes. Messed up way to go.”
The distance separating Adam from the others became feet, became yards. Despite the gravity of the situation and the new revelations from Lee, Adam couldn’t focus on anything but his mother and father. A reel of the Kirshoff family’s greatest moments played through his mind, stripped of the frustrations and petty animosities that often made him feel an inchoate hostility toward his parents and life in general. He was suddenly possessed of a more profound understanding of his parents and how their love for him influenced every decision. He saw his mom outside the role of an overbearing mother hen, as a woman who never had time for herself because she spent all her time educating and preparing her son, whose development was too precious to leave in the hands of others.
Thank God the others paid no attention to Adam as he wiped his damp eyes, quickly turning away as a pretext to search the road for Orange or the others. He dabbed his eyes with his shirt. His heart jumped at movement in the distance until the blurred figures came into focus.
Eliza and Annette had not only survived, they made it all the way back here. Seven of them had escaped the lake house. Agent Orange going 0 for 9 in the basement was impossible.
By now Ed and Pamela Kirshoff’s heads were on stakes.
“Fucker!” Adam shouted. He felt clarity of purpose, a new course of action that made more sense than anything anyone else had to offer.
“Adam?”
He marched back toward the lake house. Patrick wasn’t fooling anybody—none of them would make it out of this alive. They weren’t put here to take out Agent Orange or escape him or even to give him much sport. This was like throwing lambs into a coliseum with lions. He’d left his parents behind once and he couldn’t fix that, but he could turn the lake house into a bonfire and give his parents some semblance of a proper burial. They wouldn’t be trophies.
Gin jogged after him. “Where are you going?”
“He’s not putting their heads on sticks.”
“If you go back he’ll kill you.”
Adam shrugged. “So?”
The two groups approached each other at the edge of the parking lot with Eliza looking from Gin to Adam quizzically. Annette appeared a changed woman, as if she’d stared death in the face and seen the afterlife that awaited her—probably hell, given the anger twisting her face.
During the approach Annette had kept her left hand planted upon her lips, but she took away the hand and opened her mouth. “Too late,” she said almost wistfully. “Agent Orange fucked them up good.”
“Hey!” Gin snapped.
“Annette!” Eliza’s eyes nearly popped from their sockets.
This only confirmed what Adam already knew but it was like a kick to the abdomen. At least now he could feel free to hate Annette without being bothered by that whole Christian conscience thing.
“Where are you going?” Eliza asked. “He’s probably right behind us.”
“Let them go,” Annette said, with a kind of cavalier demeanor previously not in evidence today between the shrieking and hand-wringing. “They’ll buy us time. Lawrence doesn’t know shit.”
“Huh? What’s wrong with you?”
Adam hoped Gin would peel away and stick with Eliza and Annette but she kept pace with him, trying to stay a step ahead so she could look at his face as they walked. Ma
ybe she thought her appeals would get through if they made eye contact. He avoided looking at her, didn’t want her to see the tears.
“I think she’s on something, or maybe coming off something,” Gin said. “But we’ve got to go back, even if she’s there.”
Nathan and Lawrence’s bodies were ahead. Of course Lawrence “didn’t know shit” now, unless you counted what lay on the other side of death. Adam felt the first chink in the armor of his resolve. If he couldn’t see Nathan and Lawrence’s bodies without puking, what hope did he have if he saw his parents like that or worse? He’d go out of his mind.
“Leaving them didn’t change anything,” Gin said.
“I abandoned them!”
Gin jumped in front of him and put her arms around him. His forward momentum ground to a halt; he let her hold him in place.
“Don’t do this,” she whispered. “Don’t give yourself to him when we can still fight.”
Adam’s resolve short-circuited in Gin’s embrace and he semi-collapsed against her, sobbing —just the thing he hadn’t wanted her to see in the first place. What grief demanded composure could not thwart.
“Your parents wouldn’t have left the basement until you were safe. You gave them a chance by leaving.”
He sniffed. “It doesn’t feel right.”
“You did the only thing you could to live. Everything happened so fast, who had time to think?” She patted his back. “They gave you the chance to get away, so make it count. You can’t throw it away rushing off like this, no matter how much it hurts. You’re staying here with me.”
Suddenly self-conscious of separating himself and Gin from the remnants of the group and even more worried about the danger this presented, Adam reluctantly broke contact with her. As he did so, he looked away and wiped his face. “We should get back,” he mumbled.
Grabbing his hand, Gin said, “No kidding.”
The hug and hand-holding would have put him over the moon thirty minutes ago, but there was only listless depression now. Nothing mattered. He and Gin would never be a thing just as he knew his life would be forever changed for the worst if he made it out of here. His only living relative was Uncle Vince, an author strangely lacking in output. Adam’s father had joked he was the next Henry Darger, something Adam had always meant to look up.
