The Killing Floor

by David Tully

  “Virginia?” he asked. Slowly, she emerged from the darkness, staring up at him, her expression unreadable.

  “Oh my God,” said Zoey, coming forward. “The poor kid!”

  She knelt down in front of Virginia. “Is your name Virginia?” she asked kindly.

  The child looked at her and then nodded.

  “Aww, isn’t that sweet?” a voice crowed behind them. Matt and Zoey whirled around to see Stan standing in the doorway, his face smeared with blood.

  Several more faces crowded into the doorway behind him—the sheriff, Rose, and two protesters, including Tom.

  “You took the bitch and we weren’t done yet,” snarled the sheriff, eyeing Zoey.

  “Give her to us.” Stan smiled, exposing blood-streaked teeth and several spaces where teeth were gone.

  “And then we’ll cook her up all tasty-like,” Rose cooed, chomping her jaws together.

  Matt wasn’t sure why they’d decided to table their differences and all come after Zoey, and he wasn’t ready to ask them, either. He stared at them, at the sheer madness and raw bloodlust in their eyes, and then glanced at the windows—all of the dirty panes were crowded with the silhouettes of heads straining to look in.

  “Matt,” Zoey whispered, pulling Virginia close to her, “what the fuck is wrong with these people?”

  Before Matt could answer, a hand shot through the glass of a window not two feet away, the badly cut fingers grasping for them.

  Virginia screamed, and the sound galvanized Matt into action. He pushed the woman and the girl ahead of him up the stairs to the office above, and behind them, the rot-faces poured in, coming after them.

  There was an old skylight in the ceiling above the desk. Matt leapt onto the desk and threw the swivel chair through the glass, then lifted Virginia to the opening, which now allowed the wind and rain to surge into the dusty space it had been denied all these years.

  He put his hands around Zoey’s waist and helped her up next, and as he gripped the sides of the skylight and started to lift himself, Stan reached the office and wrapped himself around Matt’s legs.

  Zoey pulled and Matt pushed, and he came up through the skylight to the roof beyond, bringing the snarling Stan along for the ride—but as Stan’s head and throat emerged, Matt noticed a lethal-looking shard of jagged glass on the rim of the window frame and kicked Stan’s throat against it.

  Gurgling and grasping at the gaping hole in his throat, Stan fell back into the office below.

  As the horde of pursuers poured into the old office building beneath them, Matt scooped up Virginia, and followed by Zoey, he ran down the steeply sloping roof, slipping as a shingle came out beneath his feet, then leaping from the edge, unable to stop his momentum.

  He landed on the nearby roof of a sand container, and Zoey touched down next to him. Running along the length of the long metal container, away from the office, they came to one of the boxes that held the fracking chemicals.

  Still holding Virginia close to him, Matt jumped down to the box, and from there it was simple to get to the ground. Most of his attention was focused on getting out of the fracking site alive, but a part took time to admire how well Zoey kept up with him, never hesitating in their jumps down toward earth again.

  “You’re pretty good at this,” he shouted to Zoey, while checking to make sure that Virginia was still okay. The child looked startled but otherwise unhurt.

  “I did mountain climbing in Nepal,” she panted. “I can handle it.”

  “Zooooey!” a voice screamed behind them. They turned to see Murray coming after them, the cop’s Taser in one hand, followed by Gus and his cop-beating compatriot. “I’m not finished with you yet, you dumb bitch!” Murray continued.

  “Run,” said Matt.

  “What the hell is wrong with him?” Zoey asked, sprinting ahead and fishing in her pocket for her keys.

  “I have no clue,” Matt replied as they cleared the gates, heading for Zoey’s car. Taking Dark into account, he wasn’t quite sure that was true, but it wasn’t all lies either.

  They got to the car just as Murray and his pals cleared the gate, whooping and hollering behind them.

  Matt ran for the driver’s side but Zoey beat him, keys in her hand. “My car,” she said, sliding in.

  Matt shrugged and ran for the passenger side as Virginia climbed in the backseat, scaling the mountain of Zoey’s crap, and the car pealed out just as Murray slammed his fat palm against the rear window, hard enough to make it crack and Virginia scream.

  But the tires kicked up mud in his face and the car lurched free, taking off down the mountain.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The Subaru wasn’t so much driving down the road as it was coasting a raging rapid, fishtailing through the lethal curves and dodging enormous branches that the trees hurled down at them, as if trying to help the maddened mob and halt their progress immediately.

  “Do we go back to town?” Zoey asked Matt.

  “I don’t know,” Matt replied through clenched teeth, hands gripping the dashboard. He would really have preferred to be doing the driving.

  “I can’t go far in this,” she went on, indicating the treacherous weather. “We need to stop there. Who is she?” she went on, indicating Virginia, who huddled in the backseat.

  “I don’t know,” Matt answered, teeth still clenched.

  “What the hell is going on?” Zoey continued.

  “I don’t know,” Matt responded, eyes glued to the road, and hissing as she barely missed a tree falling in their path.

  “Well, what the hell do you—”

  Whatever Zoey was curious about, she was interrupted from relating it as Murray’s VW bus rear-ended her with a savage jolt, sending the car weaving, then righting itself by going up on a bank.

  As the car came down onto the road again, the VW slammed it from the side, and this time it left the road on the steep edge, the edge that dropped straight off the mountain.

  One rear wheel briefly left terra firma, spinning over the abyss, before the car righted itself and sailed back onto the pavement.

  Behind it, the VW came in for the kill, ready to smash it again as an open curve approached.

  There was no way to avoid it. If the VW made contact this time, it was sending them off the cliff.

  Zoey gunned the engine and Matt braced himself for the impact—and suddenly, with a roar like a wounded elephant, a massive branch broke free of an ancient oak to their right, swinging over the roof of the Subaru and blocking the VW from their sight as it crashed to the road.

  There was no way the VW could have avoided it, but the impact was hidden by a profusion of leaves filling the road as the branch came to rest.

  Zoey kept her foot on the gas as they rounded the curve and swept past the red light they’d halted at only a short time ago.

  As they passed, Matt saw the old man from the office sitting in its glow, watching them pass, untroubled by the hurricane ripping up the landscape all around him.

  They came out of the forest and into the village unexpectedly, disoriented by the blinding rain, and found themselves at the green before they knew they’d arrived back in Sundown, still going over eighty.

  Zoey braked hard, but the wet pavement gave no traction, and the car flew up onto the green, only stopping as it smashed into the base of a statue, sending a large metal figure in Revolutionary War garb crashing onto the hood, demolishing the front of the car.

  For a moment, they couldn’t move, staring at the rain falling on the windshield. Then, as one, the three of them got out of the car, staggering onto the green. Still, Matt wasn’t so disoriented that he forgot to open his bag in the backseat and take out his ax.

  “What the hell is that?” Zoey asked, eyes wide as she took in the ax.

  “Protection,” Matt said.

  Zoey let the matter drop.

  The wind roared, the rain slammed into them, and the daylight was nearly gone, but no lights were on in the windows, no people
looked at the carnage caused in the center of their town.

  The town is deserted, Matt thought.

  “Like Roanoke,” he said aloud, more to himself than to the others.

  Zoey looked at him and opened her mouth, as if about to ask what the hell that meant, when the VW came flying out of the squalling rain, nearly on top of them before they heard its screeching gears.

  And Virginia had staggered into the road, moving toward the shops and shelter in front of them, and was now directly in its path.

  Matt dove at the girl, scooping her into his arms and sending them both crashing to the sidewalk beyond as the VW barely missed them and plowed into a metal mailbox standing outside the pharmacy situated next to Rose’s diner.

  The VW impacted with such force that the mailbox folded like an accordion, squeezed between the bus and the pharmacy’s brick wall, forcing the old relic to come to perhaps its final halt.

  Murray, who had been hunched over the wheel, was thrown through the windshield and over the hood of his car, and smashed face-first into the brick wall.

  His lifeless body, face a wet smear, slid down to the ground and was still. However, the back door of the VW slid open, and out leapt Gus and his pal.

  Matt took one step toward them, ax rising to battle position, but Zoey screamed, “No!”

  Matt turned to look at her.

  “He’s my friend!” she pleaded.

  Matt was about to respond when he noticed one light still burning—in the white church across the green. He picked up Virginia, not even bothering to check if she was all right, and took off across the green.

  Zoey followed, and so did their two pursuers, cackling and shouting obscenities at them over the sound of the storm, a runaway engine blotting out all else. As they ran against the wind and rain, the light from the church seemed impossibly far away, though in daylight the green had seemed so small.

  More headlights cut across the open space, pinpointing the fleeing trio in their beams. Apparently, Murray and friends weren’t the only folks who’d decided to follow Matt back into town. One car started circling the green on the left, the other on the right—no doubt with the aim of cutting off their prey before they reached the church steps.

  A third came at them right across the green, driving diagonally across the grass. As it bore down on them, the heightened position of the lights revealed, even through the rain and gloom, that this was one hell of a monster pickup truck, its cab floating high above the earth on absurdly oversized wheels. Said wheels didn’t bother veering for Gus and the one Matt had begun to think of as “Patagonia Pete”—it simply rolled right over them, flattening their still-cackling skull faces into the churned-up grass below, and kept on coming, bearing down on Matt and Virginia, who lagged behind Zoey, already at the steps leading up to the church’s open front door.

  With a last surge of energy, Matt sprinted for the stairs and made it, clutching Virginia to his chest as he lunged up the steps. Behind him, the pickup smashed into the stairs at the exact moment that the other two cars also arrived, plowing into it from both sides and crushing in the truck’s flanks like a trash compactor.

  Zoey and Matt raced up the stairs, Matt holding Virginia, and through the front door of the church before anyone had a chance to climb out of the wreckage below, if anyone was capable of doing so.

  As Matt turned, intending to slam the church door shut, he saw more lights entering the open space at the center of Sundown…the hunt wasn’t over. He noticed an arm stretching out from one smashed window in the pickup. The arm looked torn, even broken, and managed only to wave weakly at him. The man in the car probably meant it as a threat, but he didn’t succeed. Matt slammed the door shut.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Matt turned around to take in the situation inside the church and realized that the light emanating from the building hadn’t been caused by electricity. The open space was filled with hundreds of lighted candles, up and down the middle and side aisles that flanked the plain wooden pews lining the interior. Half listening to the storm and rising screams outside (wind or townies—he couldn’t say which for sure), Matt moved past Zoey, who crouched next to Virginia, holding the shaking child close and murmuring reassurances as she stroked the child’s back.

  As Matt walked down the center aisle, he also listened to the sounds within the church, trying to figure out if they were alone in here. All he could hear was an odd creaking sound, filling the room and coming from no discernible point. He looked around, his eyes trying to pierce every shaded corner beyond the candles’ light…and saw something that made him stop short, eyes widening.

  This was a Protestant church of some denomination—Matt wasn’t exactly an expert on the various schools of Christianity, but he at least knew that Protestants were a lot simpler when it came to interior decor than Catholics, who really liked to let it rip with the decorations and set dressings. This room was pretty much bare white everywhere you looked, with large glass windows (not stained) along the sidewalls. There were only two bits of decor to catch the eye: a plain white cross near the altar. And one word painted in red, high on the wall up front: “Croatoan.”

  Matt saw a can of red paint lying on its side below the altar, most of its contents leaving a red trail down the aisle. But he didn’t see the brush.

  Squatting down, he saw red drops heading up the aisle toward him, then back the way he’d come. He turned around to follow the trail and saw a red-coated paintbrush lying on the floor, directly below the choir loft.

  Then he looked up and saw who’d dropped it.

  He also saw, in that same moment, what that creaking sound was, and where it was coming from: up there in the gloom above their heads, a body was hung by the neck, gently swaying back and forth at the end of a long rope attached to a roof beam running the length of the church.

  It was a man, wearing the black clothes and white collar of a minister. Seemed he’d painted the word, then gone up to the choir loft and taken the plunge.

  Matt looked back at Virginia and Zoey—Zoey was staring up at the hanging man, eyes wide, but Virginia’s head was still buried in Zoey’s chest. She hadn’t seen it, and Matt wanted to make sure she didn’t.

  There was a door marked “Basement” under the choir loft, and Matt motioned with his head toward it. Zoey understood, leading Virginia under the overhanging loft, away from the open space where the man’s body gently creaked back and forth at the end of its rope.

  She went into the basement and Matt followed, passing by the front door. Outside, he heard screams he knew to be human, or at least semi human, and the unmistakable sound of feet padding up the stairs, slapping on the wet pavement.

  He hurried into the basement and closed the door. Zoey had found a light switch, and he was relieved to see, in the lighted space, that the space was fully furnished, set up for church socials.

  It would have been a fine place to wait out the hurricane, except that right now it was also a corner they were boxed into, should anyone enter the church and notice the door. But they were also out of alternatives.

  And then Matt came down the stairs and silently said a prayer of thanks, because this large underground space led at one end to a hallway marked “Library.” He took this in just as he heard the church door smashing in upstairs.

  “Come on,” he said to Zoey and Virginia, and they ran down the hall to the door at the other end. A door on the side led outside, and Matt threw that open, seeing cement steps and feeling the driving rain pour in. Let the bastards think we went out there.

  The other door wasn’t locked. Nothing was locked, Matt realized, as if everyone in town had been suddenly interrupted in the middle of their workday, nobody bothering to close anything up, lock anything down, or turn on any lights…except those candles back in the church, he thought, and then he stopped thinking about that.

  The door led into the basement of an old house that had been converted into the town’s library. Even this underground area was filled with b
ooks, and a playroom for children. No doubt it had been the rectory for the minister at one time, and a connecting tunnel had been provided through the basements long ago, probably to protect any old minister from winter colds caused by trudging through the snow. Now it was saving their lives.

  Virginia’s eyes lighted with pleasure at the sight of the playroom, but Matt urged her up the stairs. “Come on, kid, we gotta keep moving,” he hoarsely whispered, pushing her toward the stairs.

  “We can play upstairs,” Zoey promised the girl, who started climbing, with one last wistful glance at the toys scattered in the dark room.

  They moved through the small rooms of the old stone house, each room packed to the low rafters with shelf after shelf of books. They stumbled over old furniture, not daring to put on a light, moving back into the maze of small rooms and winding shelves, far from the closed entrance to the basement, once Matt had moved a desk in front of it.

  Finally, they found a room on the far side of the old rectory, at a point farthest from the church next door, and barred the door with the heaviest shelf Matt and Zoey could slide in front of it.

  Then they stood still and waited for the cries of their hunters, the sound of breaking, the inevitable pounding at their door. They heard nothing. Nothing but the storm. And after a time, they even began to relax, ever so slightly.

  Zoey found some candles in the reference librarian’s desk and wanted to light one or two. Matt was reluctant, but Virginia was so quiet and still he feared the girl was going into shock, so he dragged a bookcase in front of the one window in the room, blocking it, and lighted some.

  They sat down on the floor and Matt leaned back against the wall. Without saying a word, Virginia crawled close to him, laying her head in his lap.

  Zoey sat next to him and stared at the wall.

  “That word in the church,” she finally said. “The one that poor minister wrote.”

  “Croatoan,” Matt said. “The same word they found in Roanoke.”

  “What does it mean?” Zoey asked. “What does it have to do with that place?”