by mike Evans
He was already pulling his pistol when he spun around. Harry emptied a magazine of forty-five calibers into the rear window. Harry said, “I had to have got him, I had to have hit him!”
Mindy opened her mouth to speak when a single shot rang out from the back of the truck. A silhouette came from the shot exposing the person inside and looked more like a monster than a human. Mindy ducked at the sound of the blast, covering her face with her hands and dropping her flashlight. She screamed when something wet hit her hands.
Mindy held them out in the light seeing them covered with something dark, mixed with hair and skin. She looked at her hands seeing the silver hair and knew exactly what it was. Her heart broke instantly as she looked down seeing Harry crumpled on the ground in a heap. She rolled him onto his back and saw the small hole in his forehead.
Mindy looked up when a cracking noise came from the truck. Before she could do anything the safety glass seemed to explode from the rear of the cab and a man fell to the ground landing on the side of the trucks pickup bed. He carried the gun in one hand and an axe in the other.
The Stranger ducked beneath to push himself out of the cab. Mindy saw the man, as he stood fully upright. She fumbled for Harry’s pistol aiming straight for the man carrying death in both hands as he approached her. The third of four campers opened their door and Phil screamed, “What in the hell happened, who’s out here firing off fireworks, damn it, do you know what time it is, are you drunk?”
Mindy looked behind her and then remembered she had the pistol. She pulled back the hammer aiming again. The masked stranger was approaching as quickly as he could, pumping his arms and getting drunk on the prospect of so many kills in such a short time and craved more. His wound was now an afterthought.
Mindy fired the gun once, then twice, backing up and tripping over her husband’s corpse as she did. Phil ran up, pulling her to her feet and screaming. “You don’t have any fucking bullets left, Mindy; get your ass up, what the hell is going on, what is happening?” He manhandled her, pulling her up and trying to drag her away. “We are going to die if we don’t go now!”
She looked up with tear-filled eyes. “My life is lying on the ground already dead.”
When she didn’t get up he left her, running to the only other camper on the grounds. The Stranger walked quickly across the campground doing his best not to limp from the aching pain in his side. He didn’t want to push it too hard because he knew that if he ripped the bandages and the bleeding began again there was a good chance fainting would be in his future. No bleeding and no witnesses were his two main goals. He was sure that he’d lost enough blood in multiple places that he’d have a hell of a time trying to explain things later but knew that blood samples weren’t as simple as people made them out to be.
He watched the man looking crazed, trying to get into the other camper. When he walked by Mindy she clung to his leg scratching and kicking at him. He could feel her nails going down his thigh. He grasped her hair pulling her off the ground and up to his level. When she saw the bloodied shirt on his side she punched him, almost making him lose his grip.
He tucked the pistol into his belt, wrapped his hand around her delicately thin throat, and began to squeeze the life out of her, literally. He stopped worrying about the men and could see hundreds of animals throughout his childhood staring back at him. He smiled beneath the mask, enjoying the little things and going back to his childhood in that moment of release.
He squeezed harder until his hands were on the verge of going numb. The Stranger looked deep into her eyes and the small amount of light that was shining on the whites of her eyes was enough to see the blood vessels slowly breaking, and her eyes changed from a healthy white, to a dark, deep red. He let go before the light disappeared from her eyes, he brushed the hair from her face drawing a smile in blood.
He dropped Mindy on the ground atop of Harry. When she pushed up to her feet the axe came whistling through the air with the blunt, sledgehammer backside of the axe head. The sledgehammer hit her square in the jaw instantly snapping it. She looked like she was trying to stop but her jaw was beginning to swell and was hanging loosely. When she began to fall over he flipped the axe over and brought it down one last time, burying it in her skull and splitting it down to her nose. He dropped the axe, leaving her looking like a bloodied lollipop. He walked to the last camper where the last of the surviving campers was holed up.
**
Phil sprinted across the campground to Gus’s camper not wasting the time to knock. He opened the door, jumping in and slamming it behind him. Gus, who had been halfway through a joint, looked up at him with heavy eyes. “Hey, man, what the hell are you doing; are you trying to give me a fucking heart attack?”
“Gus, you didn’t jump when I raced in here. Besides, the police always knock. They aren’t going to bum rush this piece of shit camper without probable cause.”
“Wow, man, that’s like some law and order shit there. You aren’t a lawyer are—”
“Gus, shut the fuck up, there’s some crazy motherfucker out there and he just shot Harry and choked out Mindy, pretty sure that she’s dead.”
“Shot him, how?”
“With a gun, you idiot! What do you have in here to protect us with?”
“I could get the guy totally stoned, but other than that, I got like a Swiss Army Knife, and I think I have a few steak knives. There might be a hammer under the sink. But I'm pretty sure you borrowed it and then never got it back to me.”
“We are fucked, we are so totally fucked. Do you have your cell phone charged up?”
“Sure do, it might only be a two-inch screen but it works just fine. You want to borrow it?”
“Oh, my lord, how have you lived this long? I want you to climb up on the roof and call 911, and do it now!”
Gus heaved forward trying not to giggle as he walked. Phil screamed, “What in the hell are you laughing about?”
“I can’t feel my legs, dude, like at all. If it wasn’t for seeing it happen then I totally would think I'm like floating, you know.” He looked down lifting his leg one after the other slowly and grasped Phil by the shirtsleeve. “Am I floating, Phil? Oh man…if I'm floating then maybe I'm a superhero.”
“Gus, please, all I'm asking you to do is go up top, call the police, and then tell them what is happening.”
“And what is going on, again? You caught me at my bad time of the night, I'm not lying. This is like, don’t come a knocking when this bus is letting smoke out of it.”
Phil gave up and took the phone away from Gus. “Do me a favor and keep that door from opening. That is your only job in life…to not let that door open.”
Gus nodded, gave a weak salute, and flipped the lock on the door. A minute later the small RV began to shake. Phil climbed atop of the stove and squeezed out of the small hatch opening and up top to the roof. When he brought the phone up, he realized that there was a code needed. He tried to whisper loud enough to be heard but couldn’t get Gus’s attention.
**
The Stranger walked with a hunger deep within for the camper. He put his hand on the door to pull it open, but when twisted did not budge. Matt slammed both hands on the door and the small camper rocked back and forth. He took a few steps back to examine it and saw that other than a few boards that had sloppily been put in place, it was practically unsecured in anyway. The hill that it was sitting on, and lack of being on the hitch, left it mobile. When the camper began to shake, he got behind it lifting with all his strength until it began to roll and was heading in a straight path for the small tree line below.
Phil looked over the side trying to see what the masked man was doing, when he realized what it was a sickening feeling ran through his gut. He took a guess on the phone code, one that he hoped would save his life and pressed in 420 and hit enter watching a light go red saying failure. Phil punched in 0420 and the light turned green. As he was punching in 911, the camper began to shift. Phil duck walked over to the edge peered over and saw
the biggest son of a bitch he’d ever seen before. The Stranger lifted the camper as high as he could before the wheels began to turn and roll.
Gus headed for the hole for the camper’s roof and yelled, “Dude, I think that he’s going to move us somewhere. I don’t think that this thing is going to be where it is for very much longer.”
Phil was ready to say something when he saw the scenery begin to move and realized when he looked over the side of the camper that it was them moving. “Hey, hey, Gus, do something, do something.”
Gus looked up and disappeared in the blink of an eye. When they hit a bump that sent the camper into the air and then back down again Gus flew into the back of the camper with a painful thud. Phil knelt down, seeing that the edge of a tree line was nearing. When he looked back, he saw the man standing head tilted and waving goodbye. Phil tried to grip the edge of the hole to the camper. When it crashed into a tree, his hands ripped free and the skin was torn down his hands. The momentum from their ride sent Phil flying into a tree trunk and snapped his spine. Phil sat in the woods watching the man walk slowly towards them with the moonlight peeking over his shoulder.
Phil screamed in pain and out of fear. “Gus, Gus, are you alright in there, are you okay?”
Gus moaned and Phil looked around knowing he wasn’t going to be any help. He saw the phone, now just barely glowing. He army crawled towards it, screaming with each pull of his weight through the brush and leaves, his legs numb. He couldn’t see The Stranger anymore and didn’t know what to do. When he had the phone, he punched 911 in as quickly as possible. He hit send and looked down waiting for the phone to ring; it was the longest five seconds of his life.
“911, please state your emergency.”
“Hello, is there anyone there?”
“You’ve reached 911, please state your emergency.”
The crack of branches behind Phil made him turn around. He screamed when he saw The Stranger and his white mask practically glowing in the dead of night. He moved forward until he was not more than a few feet from Phil. The Stranger bent down clutching the man who was screaming for an audience that had no interest in his pain. Matt put one hand at the bottom of his jaw and the other at the top and used his powerful arms to pry his mouth open until it snapped, and fresh blood poured over his fingers. Phil’s cries became muffled as blood filled his throat and he began to choke on it.
Gus watched as Phil’s body began to shake on the ground. When The Stranger pushed up from Phil, his head looked more like a Venus flytrap with the separation of his jaw. Gus gawked when he saw the white mask and the cross that had fresh blood drawn across it. Gus wasn’t one to put a lot of time into watching the news, but he was not so stupid that he didn’t recognize a man who had a price on his head by the FBI in numerous states. There were very few magazines that had not had the charred mask from Missouri on the front page.
The Stranger saw Gus watching him and stormed towards the entrance to the front of the camper. Gus saw this, turned around and ran for the door. He smashed into it, forgetting he’d locked it and scrambled to unlock the door on his hands and knees. Pushing out of the camper and falling flat on his face at first he pushed up to his feet walking as quickly as he could just barely keeping ahead of the masked stranger. His knee couldn't hold up to the struggle as he made his way up the hill and he crashed to the ground. When he looked behind him he saw the strange man approaching quickly holding a knife in one hand and a pistol in the other. Gus held up his hands in front of himself. “Please…please don’t shoot me, don’t shoot. I won’t say anything.”
The Stranger walked up to him putting a heel down into his face. He kicked Gus so hard that as his head whipped backwards he had a rainbow of teeth knocked free that flew out disappearing in the long unkempt grass behind him. Blood escaped his quivering lips. All he could keep saying was, “Don’t shoot me, don’t shoot me.”
The Stranger leaned over Gus and slapped him across the face with his pistol. He felt in his pockets pulling out a pair of pliers. Gus was crying like an insane man, or possibly one that knew how the end would come. When Gus wouldn’t shut up he held up a finger to his own mouth shaking his head telling him to be quiet. He wiped the blood from Gus’s face and across his mask, smearing it with some of the carnage.
Gus tried to move his face but didn’t have anything left. He stuck the knife blade between his teeth twisting it so that he could get it opened. When he did he squeezed tight with the pliers pulling his tongue from his mouth until it would not stretch any further. Gus was clawing at his arms but his efforts were being ignored.
The Stranger brought the knife up rubbing it down one side of his cheek and then up the other. The only spots clean on Gus’s cheeks were from the tears that were washing away the blood. He was trying to say stop but only mumbles were heard.
The knife came down fast and without regard for the damage that it was about to cause. The Stranger held the tongue sliding it up and down Gus’s cheek and then tucked it into Gus’s shirt pocket patting it and making sure it was snapped tight.
Gus couldn’t control himself at this point and was losing his shit. Gus knew he needed to be saved but wasn't optimistic about it and he was sure that it wasn’t going to happen. He watched, terrified as the knife blade came back up and felt it as it carved down into his jawline. Each second felt like an eternity as the pain slowly spread through his face. The man applied so much force that he could feel the blade scraping against his facial muscles. The Stranger dug it in deep, pulling the blade down long and hard, and traced it through all of his face all over his skin.
He stood back, watching and admiring as the blood covered Gus’s face. When he thought he had everything he wanted cut, he stabbed the knife down twisting it as the skin tore away from what was left on his face. Gus screamed as loud as he could as the pieces of skin were removed from his face.
When Gus didn’t think that he could take anymore was when The Stranger cut his cheeks and ears off. Gus had started to feel faint and was unsure if he could handle any anymore pain. The Stranger looked at his handiwork, admiring it for a moment. He knew that he could sit and carve this man all night long but the police were going to show up eventually. He heard the faintest of sounds coming from behind him and had no doubts that the man he’d snapped the jaw of was dead. Gus was clawing softly at the ground, on the brink of passing out. Matt knew something was going on behind him and he needed to know what. Gus was moaning and Matt took the knife pushing it slowly up through his chin, feeling warm blood start to pour down his hand. He brushed Gus’s face and pulled the knife back out letting him fall to the ground.
He walked to the edge of the tree line where he had left Phil’s remains. The noises were growing louder. He saw the faintest of glows coming from under some leaves and could hear a 911 dispatcher trying to get a response. He picked the phone up planning his next move. He knew the bloodwork would take a few days to come back and that he could get help at the hospital, and still leave in the time that he needed to escape before the results came back. The operator’s voice asked one more time, “Please, if someone is there would you respond, is there an emergency? I have dispatched a police car to your GPS location.”
He picked up the phone and smiled beneath the mask. “Not anymore.” He hit the end button and threw the phone into the woods. When he walked past Gus he picked up his head carrying it to the camper. Once there he pushed his knife through the skull’s eye socket embedding it in the camper wall. He looked around the campsite and saw the only car not hitched to a camper was Gus’s, which was missing a wheel. He knew that there was no time to waste and that he needed to disappear before it was too late.
Chapter 3
The old time alarm clock went off and Gordie brought down a weathered hand, hitting it until it was silent. He lay in bed for a moment wondering how his back was going to do today after getting an entire livestock trailer full. When he tried to push up, he could already feel his old bones grinding together. He slow
ly pushed up, sat there and slid on his watch. He waited a few minutes more before sliding out of bed to pull on his blue jean overalls. Gordie slapped his wife on the ass, waking her up. “Not this morning.”
“Not this morning, what?”
“You come back at lunch and we can talk, but I’m sleeping, and I have a headache.”
“You got a line of shit, that’s what you got; don’t worry yourself I ain’t trying to get a quickie. Christ, my back already hurts enough the way it is.”
“Well, then what do you want?”
“You don’t smell that?”
Susan let out an exhausted sigh, pushing up and sniffing. “I swear if this is your idea of funny, I’m not laughing, you old fart.”
“You think I’m kidding, this is serious, you sure that you can’t smell that, Susan?”
“Oh, for the last time, Gordon Piel, I don’t smell one single thing.”
Gordie flipped the light on, walking down the hall. He yelled, “And that’s the damn emergency, you don’t go sending out a farmer on an empty stomach. The work we do is dangerous enough the way it is, going out thinking about food and not these two hundred pound pigs is going to get me killed.”
“You’re an asshole; you know damn well how to cook your own breakfast.”
“Yeah, and you know how to get pigs up into the livestock truck but you still don’t want to do it. You know damn well if we get there late, we are going to miss sign in and lose good damn money because of it. We get there when the big money is there, then we make big money. I don’t know about you but I’ll work a lot damn quicker if you get something in my belly.”
She smiled knowing she’d get a reaction from it. “You sure you don’t want a quickie instead, Gordie? At least that’d only take three minutes and I could go back to bed.”
“Yeah, you’re just a regular comedian, Susan. Now wiggle your ass outta that bed while I go inspect the bathroom. Don’t go sneaking any of that decaf bullshit in my coffee pot either or I’ll never make it through the day.”
