by Mark Tufo
Eva Dean stroked Jenny’s hair. “I understand. I was young once, too.”
“He was a jerk, but he didn’t deserve to die.”
“That’s true of most men.” Although she’d known a few who had deserved it. “If the sheriff isn’t back soon, I’m going to have to check on the kids. They’re my responsibility.”
Jenny grew more alert. “Mine, too.”
“So you’re good with that bow and arrow, huh?”
Jenny nodded.
“We may need it.”
- - -
Sven and Pedro ran through the woods at what might have been thirty miles an hour. Sven knew the weed was screwing with his senses, but it was comforting to at least pretend he was running so fast that there was no possible way anyone could catch them. The scant moonlight broke through the treetops once in a while, throwing the world into coruscating bands of black, gray, and silver.
Branches slapped their bodies. Rocks threatened to trip them. Sven was stoned so badly that he should be barely able to walk, but the weed had made his running steps more accurate, more acute, like he could feel not just the ground beneath his sneakers, but every indentation in the ground against every millimeter of skin on the sole of his foot, even through his sneakers. He could even feel his socks, the thread and elastic and the moist patches of sweat.
He was agile and balanced and moved with an athletic prowess that would have made him a star in high school, if, that was, he had ever bothered to participate in something as stupid as track. Hell, he never even attended gym class. He only attended the back of the gym, where the Dumpsters were.
He easily crossed through a creek, water splashing across his ankles and up to his knees, practically running on water. Pedro kept pace as best he could, sloshing through the water a good twenty feet behind him, whining and pleading for Sven to slow down.
If this had been the city, there would have been a million places to hide. Dark alleys. Garbage cans. The subway. And, of course, the safe houses of the people he knew. You got in trouble, just run to a friendly place. They’d take you in, hide you better than the Vatican. Out here, in the woods, there were no safe places.
A barbed wire fence stood up ahead. The non-drugged Sven would have hit the brakes and tried to evaluate the best option, but the highly attuned, weed-flying mind assessed the fence instantly and he saw the rock where he could plant his foot and the top of a fence post he could grab and propel himself clear over the three barbed strings.
No voice of doubt or warning spoke up and then he was at the fence, his foot on the rock, hand grabbing the rough wood of the post top, and he was over and running without missing a breath. Had he really done that? If kickass stone-groove cop-speed ever became an Olympic event, just go ahead and give him the gold medal right now.
Pedro screamed behind him. “Sven! Help!”
He should have kept running—the sheer strangeness of Benny’s attack practically compelled Sven to get as far away as possible—but he stopped and looked back. Pedro had tried to scale the fence the same way but he hadn’t made it and now the wires were wrapped around his legs and across his chest and the post sagged askew with Pedro’s weight. The kid struggled and the barbed knots dug even deeper. Blood splotched through his clothes, looking like ink in the twilight.
“Sven! Please!”
Sven took two steps toward him and stopped. “You see what those fuckers did to Gregory?”
“A little help?”
“Tore him like tissue paper.”
Pedro struggled. The highest line of wire slipped and snagged into his throat under his chin. He cried in pain and started crying. “Please, man. Help me.”
Behind Pedro somewhere, something chuckled.
“Please, dude. I hear something.”
“It sounds close,” Sven said, wondering if he was hallucinating from the high.
“Hurry.”
“Sounds closer to you than me.”
“Yeah. Hur-reeee.”
“Yeah,” Sven said as if he were about to do just that—hurry—only in the opposite direction. “Good luck, man. Hope that works out for ya.”
With that, Sven turned and ran. Better yet, he flew, sneakers flapping across the high grass, weeds swishing against his knees.
Pedro’s squeals quickly faded behind him.
- - -
The crazed gang was chasing Delphus through the woods. Delphus’s old heart beat frantically and his legs protested with the exertion, but he wasn’t some shrinking violet. If those little turnipheads wanted to kill him, they were going to have to work for it.
He had meant to head back to the main road that led out of the camp and back to his farmhouse—the shotgun was there, after all—but in the panic he’d made a wrong turn and was now running through thick tree branches and trying desperately not to trip on any roots poking out of the ground.
He heard them scurrying after him, thrashing through the branches and spitting and chuckling from minds that had gone gooey like runny eggs. What the hell had gotten into them? Was it catching? Suppose he was already infected? You couldn’t shoot a virus. Not with a gun, anyway.
And what about his land? Would they have to slash and burn to get rid of the contamination?
He burst through a wall of foliage and smacked into a thick web. For a moment, fear flooded through him and, as his hands tangled in looping threads, he imagined some giant spider that had been living out here for years, prehistoric in size with fangs like rhino horns. There were no such things as dinosaur-sized spiders, and certainly not out here in the Blue Ridge Mountains, but his mind was getting away from him. He wasn’t caught in some web: he’d run into the net that was part of the ropes course Eva Dean had constructed because it was supposed to help these city delinquents learn the value of cooperation and hard work.
He climbed the net in awkward, fumbling bursts. His body swung side to side and he almost flipped upside down. He heard the two kids cutting through the woods, almost at him. He made it to the top where a small wooden platform led to a rope bridge that was really a single rope with two more set at shoulder height to form a “V.” It was tight-rope walking with training wheels.
He leaned against a post, panting. Could he make it across that stupid rope? He felt as jittery as a teenage boy about to lose his virginity.
The kids broke through the branches. One of them flung forward into the net and was quickly tangled. The other one stopped, sniffed around, and looked up at Delphus.
“The hell you want?” Delphus said.
The kid’s eyes jittered in their sockets. He grinned with big, shining teeth. A dollop of blood slithered down his chin.
Delphus knew the answer to his question.
- - -
Pedro wet himself. He felt the warm liquid leak out and slide down his legs. It shouldn’t matter—he had bigger concerns—but he started crying anyway. He could hear his father mocking him.You stupid tontita. Look what you did. What are you, a baby? Need somebody to change your diaper?
The bushes shook and something snarled back there. Something hungry. Pedro struggled against the barbed wire but it only made the situation worse: the wires tore at his skin and dug in deeper. The one snagging his chin felt like it was gouging his throat. Warm blood soaked his chest. So many places on him hurt that he couldn’t move without making it worse and he couldn’t focus on only one place. His thigh hurt. His arms hurt. Skin dangled from his left hand in a frayed strip.
And Sven had left him here.
He could no longer see Sven in the darkness but Pedro screamed for him just the same, a hollow, desperate cry. The sound of an injured bird fallen from the flock.
How could Sven have just left him behind? How big of an asshole did you have to be? Even on the streets, there was no honor in leaving someone behind. You couldn’t trust someone who only looked out for himself. When the moment came and the cops had the pressure on, that guy would turn and dime out everybody. But out here in No Man’s Land, pride, apparently,
did not exist.
The bushes shook and Shaun stumbled into the open, though still in shadow. Pedro couldn’t turn his head completely without slicing his throat, but it was definitely Shaun. He could tell. Shaun was seventeen, had done time in a juvie facility, and legend had it he had scored with five different girls. Two of which he’d gotten pregnant. He was as close to celebrity as any of the guys around here could claim. Certainly cooler than Sven and his lamePlayboy.
“Shaun,” Pedro cried, “mi amigo. Am I glad to see you. You have to get me out of here. Something loco going down.”
Shaun grunted as if to clear his throat. He stepped into the light. He walked unevenly like he might fall over. His clothes were torn. His face was pale as paper under the moonlight and his eyes were red like somebody suffering flu fevers. Blackish fluid gathered at the corners of his mouth.
“Shaun?”
He stumbled toward Pedro and grinned. Black slop slipped down his chin. He stank like he’d fouled himself, too.
Why wasn’t he saying anything? “You don’t look right, amigo.”
A few feet from him, Shaun paused. An awful gargling, choking sound vibrated in his throat.
Pedro turned his head even more to see behind him better and the barbed wire lacerated him. Fresh blood poured down his neck and pattered on the ground. He screamed against the pain and that got Shaun moving. He was clearly messed up but maybe he could keep it together long enough to help Pedro out of these damn wires.
Then he would find Sven and beat the hell out of him. Break his skull with a log. Teach him what honor was all about.
After he changed his pants, of course.
Shaun stepped behind him. His hands rested on Pedro’s waist. “You’ll have to be careful,” Pedro said. “I’m all tangled. Just pull me free. I’ll deal with the pain.”
Shaun chuckled and snorted.
Why wasn’t he saying anything?
Shaun’s hands clamped on Pedro’s jeans and yanked. Pedro got even more tangled in the wire and some of the barbs dug deeper.
“Careful, man, you’re hurting—”
Yank yank.
“…meeeeeeeeee…”
Pedro’s words were lost in a scream from the worst pain he’d ever felt. Shaun’s hands clawed at his body, dug into his sides, ripped at his skin. He pushed against Pedro and the barbed wire shredded his skin. The strand across his throat cut his air. He screamed with all he had, which wasn’t much, and hoped he would pass out and die.
Just let it be quick, he thought.
It wasn’t.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Jenny looked at Mark’s form, which Eva Dean had covered with a sheet that was splotched in places.
What if she’d have given in to his advances? She’d have nothing to show for giving up one of her most valued assets.
She hated thinking selfishly at a time like this—after all, at least she was breathing—but it made her wonder about the nature of fate. Momma would have called her a fool, saying she should have tried to snare one of those nice young men in college, settle down and have some kids. Jenny didn’t know what she wanted, and maybe Mark had been right about that.
But was that so wrong? She was only 22, her whole life in front of her. Why did she have to make such big decisions on her future?
But Mark had no future. And there were others here far younger than she was.
“Somebody should warn the other boys,” she said to Eva Dean.
“We don’t know what’s going on.”
“Neither do the boys.”
“The sheriff told us to stay here.”
“Do you always do what men tell you to do?”
Even Dean gave a rueful smile. “Guess not.”
“Like you said. These are your kids, too.”
Eva Dean thought for a moment and sighed. “Motherhood sucks. Let’s go.”
- - -
Sheriff Hightower crept through the woods and into a clearing. All the cabins he had encountered were dark and quiet. Like everyone was staging an elaborate trick. Yeah, real funny, ha ha. These kids had reason to be jumpy if the law was around, given their backgrounds. He had a list of the campers in his desk drawer down at the station, but he hadn’t seen any need to bring it. These kids were all from the system, but this was a voluntary camp designed to prevent recidivism, an alternative to detention.
This had started as a missing-persons case, a low-priority investigation if not for the pull of Max Jenkins. But Max could make rafters shake from the courthouse to the statehouse if he was riled, and a case that didn’t have a happy ending would need a fall guy. As top law-enforcement officer in Pickett County, this problem was all his.
And now he had a mysterious, violent death to contend with. He could practically hear the news choppers beating in the air. But the best way to handle the media was to wrap up the story before the leeches actually showed up to suck the blood.
Hightower walked with his right hand on the butt of his gun, though he kept the weapon holstered. No reason to lose focus.
There was something on the ground. At first, it looked like a splotch of mud or a small puddle, but he didn’t have to get close to know it was blood. He could smell the metallic bite of it.
Something plopped on the brim of his hat. Hopefully, it was the first few drops of an unexpected late-night shower. He, of course, knew better. He might be a backwoods cop these days, but that didn’t mean he was an idiot.
No, he just had “Firewood” as his nickname because he’d almost been chopped in half by a naked fat man while he’d gawked in fear, loaded gun at his side.
He looked up and a drop spattered in his eye. He wiped his eye. Blood smeared his fingers. He removed his flashlight and played the light up into the trees. Something was up there, some dark shape.
The dark hulk swooshed down through the branches with escalating speed. Hightower ducked as a body swung down to sway back and forth above him. It was a boy, hanging upside down, his midsection gouged, his intestines dangling in gruesome streamers. Fluids slapped across the ground and the sheriff’s back.
Hightower screeched—chop chop—and scurried out from under the body. Several feet away, he gathered himself and turned to face the corpse. Then his heart started rollicking. No animal had done this. Some twisted maniac had killed this kid and then strung him up. Why? As some kind of macabre booby trap?
He went to the body. He gagged once but clenched his jaw against the spasm of his throat.Keep focus. Treat this like any other crime scene.
Oh, yeah, you mean lie down and be a piece of firewood? Dead kid hanging upside down in the trees with his gut ripped open?
He leaned toward the boy’s upside-down face.
This was one of the names on the list. This was somebody’s child. Juvenile delinquent or not, nobody deserved to go out like this.
- - -
The Billy-thing heard a voice but had no idea what any of it meant. Save for one very important thing: whatever made that noise was alive.
At one time, Billy had been the star pupil of Brownwood Elementary School, taking highest honors in the annual environmental art competition and scoring second-highest on the early-college placement tests. If not for Suzanne Witherspoon, he would have been tops, but she happened to be the girl who had it all.
Worse, he’d had a bad crush on her, and she was way out of his league. His dad was a heating and air conditioning service tech, picking him up at school in a big rusty truck laden with and pipes and spools of wire. Suzanne’s father was vice-chancellor of a university in Guilford, which made her not only high-class but on the fast track to all the school programs. She always managed to get reading club, media assistant, school council, and math team, while Billy always seemed to just miss out.
The worst had been when his father won the contract to replace the school’s air units. Billy had to change his entire routine just to avoid bumping into his father and having to openly acknowledge his existence. But Suzanne had found out, and gleefu
lly and loudly asked in class, when everyone could hear, “Billy, is that your dad out there in the dirty jumpsuit? What’s up with the Fred Flintstone hairdo?”
That was bad enough—a dad hopelessly out of style as well as being working class—but the worst part was the whole class laughing. Even leathery old Mrs. Harriman snickered, although at least she tried to hide it. Like that old bat hadn’t lifted her fashion sense from old “Murder She Wrote” re-runs.
The next day, he’d rubbed a banana peel all over Suzanne’s locker because she was allergic to bananas and proud of it. Suzanne had developed a rash, one thing led to another, and Dickie Rogers had ratted him out. That counted as “bullying” under the new disciplinary policy adopted by the local school board. That started Billy on the “loser track” so clearly marked out by the public education system, where intense surveillance led to infractions of minor rules that no one knew existed. An in-school suspension, a home visit from the Department of Social Services, and before you knew it, Dad was shaking his head in sorrow and disbelief (his Fred Flintstone hair not shifting a centimeter) while Billy was in juvie court for his first larceny hearing.
A stay at Meat Camp had been “strongly encouraged” by his court advocate in order to put something positive on his record, a sign that he was diverting from the loser path onto the rails of productive citizenry.
Meat Camp had made him productive, all right.
The Billy-thing opened its eyes.
A figure with a round-brimmed hat was moving away from him. It smelled of meat. The Billy-thing’s stomach was long gone, along with its intestines, but it still knew the command:Go. Attack. Eat.
It couldn’t have disobeyed, even if it had understood such a concept anymore.
- - -
Delphus had only his pocketknife.
The two crazed teens were scaling the rope net like a pair of monkeys juiced with angel dust. Delphus watched them tangle themselves and fall and re-climb and bat at each other in their competition to get to their victim.
