The Killing Floor

by David Tully

  And then he walked into a place like this, and it was as if he’d never left the sawmill. He’d spent so much of his life there—enough that this place, as spooky as it was, felt right, unlike the quarry outside. Felt safe.

  There were shouts outside—nothing violent, just angry discussion. And there was the wind of the storm. It wasn’t supposed to hit until tonight, but you wouldn’t know it from the power of what was blowing out there. And from what little of the sky could be glimpsed through the dust-coated windowpanes, it was getting darker by the minute.

  The people were fighting. The hurricane was coming.

  Better to stay in here. Stay in the past.

  Matt moved through the cobweb-covered machinery—he reached out toward an old saw and ran his hand down it, brushing webs off the ancient rust-eaten metal. No idea why Pfefferling and his boys needed a saw in a rock quarry, but he guessed they had their reasons. Matt was just happy to see it here. Like the ax in his bag (he wished he had that with him now), it was a tie to the past, to a time when life made sense.

  Maybe it was time to stop wandering. Dark was always one step ahead, taunting him, always prancing around with that damn shit-eating grin of his, no matter how hard Matt tried to do right. Evil was getting stronger in this world by the day—just take a look at Sundown. How could he fight what was happening here?

  And what the hell was he doing here, anyway? Lured hundreds of miles north into the mountains of the Northeast, entirely on the basis of one anonymous instant message, not even sure what he was looking for, totally unsure how he would find it?

  Maybe it was time to get off the road, to stop this endless wild-goose chase he was calling a life (afterlife, he corrected himself—his real life had ended in that avalanche awhile back) and get back to doing what he…

  Matt jerked his hand off the old buzz saw so fast that he nicked his finger on one rusty old serrated tooth, but he didn’t notice. He was too busy staring at the wall in front of him. And the word scrawled high up the wall, in letters that looked like old dried blood.

  “Croatoan.”

  So maybe this wasn’t such a wild-goose chase after all.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Back in New York City, Matt’s new pal Darkhunter had told him to “ask for Croatoan,” so Matt had decided, before leaving New York, to do a little more research. Further Googling at the first Internet café was not an option, as he’d been told, in no uncertain terms, that his patronage was no longer desired at that particular establishment—“Get the fuck out of here, you limp-dicked homeless piece of shit, and if you ever come back I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you” were the proprietor’s precise words, if Matt wanted to be exact.

  So as he headed uptown toward Port Authority and the buses north, he stopped at another Internet place, praying that the world’s last surviving Internet café owners weren’t keeping in close contact and that his reputation hadn’t preceded him.

  It hadn’t, but what he’d found didn’t seem as if it could help him with Darkhunter, from any angle he could figure: the only online information Matt could get about the word Croatoan related to something that happened hundreds of years ago—specifically, the colony of Roanoke, the first English colony in America.

  It seems a small settlement was started on the island of Roanoke, down south off the coast of North Carolina, back in 1587. The visually off-putting but informative website, started by some grad student teaching assistant and his undergrad students (their smiling faces leered up at him right below a painting of Roanoke), went on to tell Matt that Roanoke was first made up of ninety-nine English settlers—and then came a baby, the first European child born in North America. When the total stood at one hundred, the ship that had delivered the ninety-nine returned to England for supplies. For one reason and another, its return to Roanoke was delayed by three years. And when it finally did arrive back at the Roanoke colony in 1590, it found the settlement deserted. The buildings still stood. There was no sign of violence. A few fires still smoked in the hearths of seemingly occupied homes. But no one was there. Crops were plentiful, game abundant, the local natives friendly. But the colony had been utterly abandoned. All one hundred inhabitants of Roanoke were gone without a trace, leaving only one thing behind.

  Matt noticed that his time was almost up and fed a few more quarters into the slot by the modem. He scrolled up and kept reading: “A single word, burned or carved in the bark of a tree, too high for any person to reach: Croatoan.”

  That got Matt’s curiosity going, but nothing he found out later told him any more. To this day, nobody knows what the word Croatoan means—just another of history’s little mysteries, something that can’t possibly be solved at this late date. So he shrugged, got up, and headed for the bus.

  And now he was here in Sundown, and here it was again: Croatoan.

  He’d been told to ask for it—but instead, it had been handed to him on a stick. And he still didn’t know what the hell to do with it.

  A thump from above startled Matt out of his reverie. He turned to his right and looked up. Spanning the length of the building on that side was an open-air office that comprised the building’s only second story, cutting into its high cathedral roof at that end.

  An ancient, dust-covered rolltop desk and wooden swivel chair (now lying on its side and shrouded by cobwebs) were the only remnants of the organization that once ran the quarry from that lofty perch. But the office wasn’t empty: the old Native American guy Matt had spotted on the rock up above the road was sitting on the desk, staring down at him, his expression unreadable.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Matt came at the office from below, moving across the open floor of the building, staring up at the old guy.

  The old guy simply stared back.

  “Is that you?” Matt asked, pointing at the word scrawled high on the wall. “Are you Croatoan?”

  The old guy kept on staring at Matt, saying nothing, his gaze never flickering up to the wall.

  Matt started to climb the stairs. “Are you the one who wrote to me?”

  The old guy still wasn’t giving with the information.

  Matt put his foot on the second step. “What do you know about Mr. Dark?”

  A shape ran out from the darkness under the stairs—a pale blur pushing past Matt. He whirled and grabbed it, realizing even as he did so that it was the girl he’d followed in here.

  “Hey!” Matt shouted in surprise. As he realized who it was, his tone softened: “Hey.”

  “Please,” Virginia whimpered. “I’m hungry.”

  Matt strained to see her face in the gathering darkness. It was turned away from him, and his heart broke at the painful thinness of the arm he was holding. He softened his grip but didn’t let go.

  He turned back to the old guy in the office. He was gone. Matt’s eyes strained to peer into the gloom of the open space above. There didn’t seem to be any way out except down these stairs, but it looked empty up there.

  He turned back to Virginia, who was standing still, no longer straining to get away, but shaking with fear.

  “I’m not gonna hurt you, Virginia,” Matt promised. He pointed back up at the office. “Are you with that guy?”

  The girl didn’t lift her eyes, keeping them trained on the ground in front of her. Matt regarded her for a moment, then turned and shouted to the darkness above: “Hey! Is this girl with you?”

  No answer, save the howling wind outside. It sounded less like a hurricane than a tornado out there now—leaves were being ripped from the trees, hurled against the dirty windows with a wet smack. The rain must have started again.

  “Do you have any food?” Virginia asked, causing Matt to turn his full attention on her again.

  As he turned back to her, he noticed the lollipop lying in the dirt under the stairs. It was now covered with maggots, which oozed over it in a squirming heap.

  Indicating the fallen sweet treat, Matt asked her, “What about your lollipop?”

  Virginia look
ed at it with revulsion and emphatically shook her head: “It’s icky.”

  Matt looked at her, judging this reaction. So far he’d found only two people in town who hadn’t turned rot-face: Zoey and this kid. And both had been found clutching Mr. Dark brand lollies. But Zoey hadn’t noticed anything odd about hers, while Virginia seemed to see only too clearly what was really being offered by Dark.

  Interesting. But as with the word Croatoan, he still had no clue what to do with this information.

  And before he could process it any further, his train of thought was interrupted by an ear-piercing scream from outside, rising above the wind, crying, “God, help me!”

  And Matt wasn’t sure, but he had a strong hunch that the voice belonged to Zoey.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Matt ran to one dirt-covered window and looked out through the streaks of filth: from here, he could see nothing but the steel containers and white boxes that housed the hydrofracking tools of the trade, immobile in the now-driving rain, while wind sent leaves flying, covering them. But between the containers on each side, as Matt watched, figures were running: human figures, but crouched and animal-like in their stance—some running toward the water, others away from it. And over the now-ceaseless roar of the driving wind, he could hear rising and falling screams.

  He wasn’t sure what was going on, but from the sound of it, things had gotten decidedly ugly out there.

  Damn it! He’d only meant to check out the lay of the land, and now he’d left Zoey alone in the middle of what could easily be turning into a bloodbath.

  He turned back to Virginia and crouched in front of her, a hand on each shoulder.

  “Listen, Virginia,” he said, in what he hoped were soothing, reassuring tones. He didn’t have too much experience with kids, and the daddy role wasn’t coming naturally. “I want you to stay right here. I have to go find a friend of mine, and then I’d like to bring her back so you can meet her. She’s really nice.”

  Virginia stared blankly at him. A scream from outside made her eyes flick toward the window, opening a bit wider, then come back to Matt.

  “Don’t you worry about that,” he said, referring to the cry. “You’ll be fine if you just stay back there”—and here he indicated the space under the stairs where she’d hid before—“and wait for me to come back. Can you do that?”

  For a seemingly interminable moment, as Matt ached to get outside and run to Zoey’s side, yet refused to leave until he was sure the child would be relatively safe, she simply stared at him. Finally, she nodded.

  It was enough for Matt, who nodded to her and got up, running for the door.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Matt came out the door of the old quarry office fast—and was nearly blown right back in. The hurricane had gained in strength in the minutes since Matt had gone inside and was blowing with a frightening intensity now, the rain picking up and beginning to bite at his face, so fast was it driven by the wind.

  Screeching figures raced through the fracking site, their cries barely audible before the wind tore them away. Matt sensed an electricity in the air that had less to do with the storm than with an emotional, human tension that had become physically palpable. He knew he had to get back to Zoey, and fast.

  He ran past the containers and boxes, rounding a corner that took him back to the quarry and the scene of the demonstration, and stopped short in shock, seeing that while he’d been distracted by Virginia and ol’ Sitting Bull back in the office, hell had come to the quarry.

  As he got closer, the sounds became more audible. The howling noise that filled the air was equal parts man and nature: the hurricane seemed to be here ahead of schedule, as the wind had increased to gale levels, bending over the trees that ringed the lake, framing a portrait of social disintegration in miniature. The protesters and frackers had fallen on each other with all pretense of law and order thrown out the window—hissing, spitting, punching, tearing, gouging. It was clearly “anything goes” at the fracking site now.

  It seemed like a sizable chunk of the town had decided to come up here after all—the cars must have been parked out in the road, but Matt never heard them over the wind and rain that had been whipping around the old quarry office.

  And the townsfolk had clearly not come up here to sit down and discuss their feelings. They were beating the crap out of Murray’s followers, and that was predictable. What was more surprising was that those who hadn’t found political opponents to tear into had simply turned on fellow residents.

  Madness had come to Sundown, just as the hurricane fully touched down. Whatever had crawled inside these people and festered, a corruption that only Matt could see, had finally taken over, erupting into a full-blown fever.

  And it wasn’t just the villagers who were now fully in the grip of the contagion—Gus and a Patagonia-clad compatriot had managed to knock a cop to the ground and were applying his Taser to his midsection, zapping him again and again.

  Frantically, Matt scanned the crowd for Zoey—and then her scream came again, borne on the wind. He turned and saw her: she was spread-eagled on the ground beside the lake, twisting her head from side to side, maniacally fighting the forces that restrained her. One arm was held down by Stan, who cackled a high-pitched giggle of glee Matt could hear even from here, unnerving in its monotonous sameness. The other arm was held down by Murray, who simply stared at her, his eyes burning with intense hatred. Straddling Zoey, his massive girth managing to keep her kicking legs trapped uselessly beneath him as he undid the buckle on his belt, was Sumo.

  Matt took off running, aiming for Sumo’s back, his hand unconsciously clutching at the handle of his grandfather’s ax…and then Matt consciously halted a moment, realizing that the ax wasn’t there, that it was still in his bag back in Zoey’s car.

  He looked left and right and spotted a two-by-four somebody had tossed aside earlier. He hoped it had been used for work, but the remnants of a dark, wet stain, rapidly being washed away by the rain, told him the truth was probably otherwise. He leaned over and grabbed it, and as he began to straighten, a potbellied gent in his midfifties, sporting a cop’s uniform and a sheriff’s star on his chest, came running at him, arms spread wide, froth foaming from his snarling mouth.

  Without thinking twice, Matt swung the two-by-four up under the sheriff’s chin, sending him sprawling on his back. “Sorry, sir,” Matt muttered, knowing that whatever was going wrong with these people, it wasn’t their fault.

  He continued his run at Sumo’s broad-target back. The man-mountain already had his pants down around his knees and was commencing a dry hump of Zoey’s leg to get something going with the family jewels—one quick, instantly regretted glance by Matt told him that even demonic possession wasn’t enough to get that equipment up and running yet, and he wasn’t going to give this guy time.

  He slammed the board into the back of Sumo’s head, swinging with both hands and sending the enormous carcass sprawling on top of Zoey. Not Matt’s intended goal, but at least it got Stan and Murray to let her go and come for him, displeased that he had interrupted their sport.

  A swift swing of the board and Stan was down, but Murray proved more formidable a foe (of fracking), coming at Matt like a tie-dyed human battering ram.

  Before Matt could get the board back into a swinging position, Murray was on him in a cloud of patchouli, and the two went down in a heap, Matt inhaling a mouthful of filthy dreadlock as Murray came down on top, his knee landing on Matt’s wrist, causing Matt to drop the two-by-four.

  Murray was snarling and biting, his hummus-scented breath filling Matt’s nostrils as Murray’s mouth came down for his nose. Matt managed to put his forearm under Murray’s jaw, keeping him at bay but not yet getting him off. Slowly but surely, the gnashing teeth lowered toward Matt’s nose.

  Just as the wet tongue emerged to prepare Murray’s snack by sliding down Matt’s nose, Murray suddenly went limp, his eyes opening wide briefly, then shutting as he rolled off Matt.

>   Zoey stood over them both, the two-by-four clutched in both hands. A quick glance behind her as Matt got up revealed Sumo rolling on the ground, his massive hairy ass exposed to the storming heavens as he screamed and clutched both hands over his groin.

  Deciding he didn’t need to know any more, Matt nodded thanks to her and simply motioned, “Let’s go.”

  She didn’t give more than a two-fingered hand signal of “Okay,” holding on to the two-by-four as she followed his lead through the maze of fighting madmen and -women, then halting as he headed for the quarry office.

  “Where are you going?” she screamed over the din. Matt glanced back at her and hesitated, distracted by a face in the crowd. In the middle of the melee behind them stood Mr. Dark, strolling through the crowd, taking in the carnage and loving every second of it.

  “I was a fool to tell you not to come here,” he said to Matt. Despite the roar of the storm, Matt could hear that voice in his head, clear as a bell. “I love this place!”

  Matt decided to ignore him, focusing on Zoey. “There’s someone we have to pick up before we go. Come on!”

  He turned and ran around the corner that led to the office. After a moment, with a glance back at the chaos taking place in the other direction, she followed him.

  A moment later, the fighting behind them ceased.

  As one, every single person on the beach turned to stare in the direction that Matt and Zoey had gone.

  And moving as one, the crowd began to follow them.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Zoey and Matt rushed into the office, leaving the door open behind them.

  “Who’s in here?” Zoey shouted, but Matt ignored her, heading for the dark space under the stairs. He couldn’t see anything in the gloom.