Last One Alive
Kristopher Rufty
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Last One Alive/Love Seat/Gearhart’s Wife
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2013 by Kristopher Rufty
Edited by: Jessica Jacobsen
Cover Art Copyright © 2013
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Dedication
For Angie and Vanelle
1
A scream snapped Megan’s eyes open.
Her head on the pillow, she listened, hearing nothing but the chorales of crickets and frogs outside her tent.
The fog in her head began to dispel, clearing just enough for her to comprehend very little.
Had she heard a scream?
She listened even harder but heard nothing else.
Just as she was about to chalk it off as a bad dream, squeals from outside stopped her breath.
That sounded like Allison.
Slowly, she sat up. She pressed her fists to her eyes and rubbed the sleep out. The sleeping bag dropped away from her chest, exposing her breasts to the mild, early morning mountain air. Her nipples stiffened against the chill. She felt her skin pebbling up with goose bumps.
Megan had opted to snooze in the sack the same as she did at home: in nothing but panties. Being alone in her tent, she hadn’t bothered with extra clothing. It had been warm zipped tightly in the sack, but without it, freezing. Hard to believe it was late June. During the daylight, hiking the trails, she’d yearned for a break from the heat, but now she yearned for the heat. And, that was the extent of her love-hate relationship with Mother Nature.
Feeling around, her fingers found a smooth piece of fabric. Felt like her tank-top. She held it up. It was. She quickly threw it over her head and tugged it down. It did little to warm her, but at least her breasts were covered.
Faint moaning from outside. Zero pleasure in its tenor.
What are they doing?
Megan turned around, found her carry bag, and opened it. She shuffled through the inside, retrieving a flashlight. It was a small plastic tube that ran on two AA batteries. She clicked it on to make sure it worked. It did. She quickly cut it back off.
Then she dropped down on her rump, and began to seek out her shorts.
She quickly found them under her backpack. She pulled them up her legs and over her rump, then located her new hiking shoes. She’d bought them last weekend in preparation for this four day excursion.
Her socks were poking out of the tops like pale wool flowers in a pot. She pulled the socks halfway up her shins, then slid them back down to where they bunched around her ankle. The boots still felt a little tight as she laced them, even after the six miles of hiking today. She’d expected the leather to have been broken in by now. Another day like they had today should do it.
Megan crawled to the flap at the front. She unzipped it. Poking out her head from behind the flap, she looked from left to right. All seemed to be in order—desolate and dark, but in order.
She looked up. The sky was no longer an inundating lake of oil around the island of the moon, stars floating amid the obscurity like little bubbles. Veins of purple were beginning to seep through, trumpeting the oncoming sunrise. Not much more than an hour and the sun should have taken its position for the start of another hot, sticky day.
Another day without Matt.
She quickly stopped thinking about him before he brought her even more tears. She’d cried because of him enough already. Plus she’d promised Allison she wouldn’t allow herself to miss him during their trip. But that had been almost impossible. Whenever she saw Allison and Brian lovingly snuggling up on each other, trading smooches, it reminded her of his absence, especially since he was originally supposed to have been on this trip.
Plans change when you find out they’ve been fucking someone else.
Stop thinking about it!
Megan crawled out of the tent. The chilly air covered her like a blanket soaked in ice. She stood up, stretching her back and legs. Her calves were sore and achy, her thighs tight and painful.
She hadn’t been to the mountains since last summer. And that had been with Matt, of course. Not even a full year, but judging how her legs were feeling, it could have been three. She’d also put on a little weight, not much, but she was noticeably thicker. Allison and Brian denied she’d gotten heavier. But remembering how her old hiking shorts could no longer button in the front was all the proof she really needed.
And, this was only the start of the second day. Still one more left after this one of going up and down hills, rocky ridges, and very steep inclines.
I’m toast.
At least all the strenuous activities should help her shed some pounds, and the dehydrated cuisine they were ingesting would help.
Even with the sun beginning its ascent, it was still dark around their campsite, even darker still in the areas outside their camp where the trees were thicker.
Megan clicked on the flashlight. The weak beam raked over the extinguished campfire, then raised and settled onto the other tent.
Keeping her voice down, she said “Allison? Brian?”
She stopped in front of the neighboring tent. A sly smiled arched her lips. A new idea began to manifest. Maybe she’d misunderstood the cries and moans. What if she was wrong thinking they were pain-filled? Allison and Brian could be partaking in some abusive love-making, mixing a little pain with pleasure.
Making it hurt so good?
Very possible.
But this early in the morning?
She thought so. In all likelihood they’d started fooling around while getting ready to cook breakfast—it was their turn—and it had escalated from there. A morning quickie.
Then again, what if they weren’t?
But what else could it be?
If they were being hurt…
No. No one’s hurting them.
Still…
“Guys,” she called, louder this time. “Are you doing something I shouldn’t see?” She waited, then tried again, teasingly. “Allisooooon? Briaaaaaan?”
Nothing still.
If this was some kind of prank, they were really dragging it out. She might want to check their tent, then again she might not. What would she see if she looked in? Two bare asses gaping back at her?
Megan squatted by the front flap. “Last chance to let me know you’re in there screwing around, or just screwing. I’m coming in, and I might see you in your bare necessities.” She waited a beat. “All right. You had your chance.”
Unzipping the flap with one hand, she kept the light held up by her face and aimed forward with the other.
Megan expected the musky scent of sex to draft out from the tent. It did not. Instead she was met with an odd combination of copper and beef, like the odor whenever she tore the cellophane away from a pack of raw steaks.
Opening her eyes, they continued to stretch wide until she could feel them tugging at the thin skin near her sockets. She opened her mouth to scream, but her lips could only tremble around the sharp gasps of air huffing out. Her chest bounced up and down with each pant.
Inside the tent was Brian’s torso—or what was left of it.
&nbs
p; 2
The head, arms, and legs were absent, leaving behind only ragged stumps, stems, and sinewy ligaments.
Megan loosed a scream as she stammered backwards. She landed hard on her rump, machine-gunning shrieks as she scrambled away from the tent. She managed to hold on to the flashlight, although her arm was wailing and flinging itself this way and that.
A dry crunching noise, something like a footstep, resounded from the woods. She whipped around, jabbing the flashlight in the direction of the noise. She saw nothing. Her legs felt like boiled noodles. She wanted them to cooperate with her, to stiffen so she could stand, but they remained limp and soggy.
Megan’s mind reeled over the image she’d just seen: Brian’s torso, lack of appendages and head. She knew it was Brian’s by his Game Over shirt. He’d bought it in New Orleans the same night he’d proposed to Allison.
Allison!?
Without thinking she shined the light back into the tent. She did her best to avoid seeing the grotesque remains of Brian. It was impossible though. He was spread out all over the place.
Blood had painted the tent’s interior, dripping from the ceiling in tiny red droplets. Jagged strips of flesh and sinewy chunks of meat were strewn across the blankets and sleeping bags. All of it seemed to match the devastated body of Brian.
Allison was not in there.
Relief washed over Megan. It was brief, however, when she realized she didn’t know where Allison was. If she wasn’t in the tent…
Did she do this to Brian?
That idea survived a matter of two seconds before being shot down. There was no way in hell. It wasn’t that Megan found Allison incapable of hurting someone, just not Brian, ever. They were a couple most believed God had specifically created to share their lives together. No longer just Brian or just Allison, but a partnership, combined personalities, two separate beings that had stopped existing on their own merits and began to exist for each other.
She’d often referred to them as Brianison.
So if Allison wasn’t in the tent, then where was she?
Yet another cry resounded from the woods. Female. Its pitiful tone crushed Megan. She listened, heard it again, fainter.
“Allison,” she gasped.
The whimper had come from the woods. Megan stood. Her legs wobbled under her, threatening to fold, but thankfully did not. She took a few steadying breaths, then bobbled toward the patch of trees. Allison was out there, she was certain.
Hunched over like someone holding in a pee, the flashlight pointing ahead of her stabbing washed-out light through the dark, she put a shaky finger to her lips and chewed at the tip. A nervous habit she’d had since she was little, and even now she didn’t realize she was doing it.
Megan entered the woods. She stepped around the frontline of trees. It was much darker on this side of their campsite. The trees were taller, thicker. Diffused moonlight was netted through heavy, leaf-filled branches. The flashlight landed on clots in the dirt. Something wet had splashed on the trail, coagulating the dirt into mud. She squatted down for a closer look. The ground was darker in color here, thicker in texture, but she couldn’t tell if it was because of the soil or whatever had been spilled on it. She followed a dotted trail to some heavier dabs on the brush beside her. On the leaves it was much easier to tell the darkness was actually made by the liquid itself.
And it wasn’t just any liquid…
It was blood.
A lot of it.
Her throat made a strangled whine. Her finger returned to her mouth, where she gnawed at it so hard it hurt. She quickly pulled the finger away from her teeth. She’d broken the skin.
Megan gave another quick scan of the blood spatters, then leaped to her feet.
“Allison!?” Her voice was raspy and shrill.
She walked alongside the thicket of trees. Reaching the end of this patch, she turned left.
“Alli—?” The name stopped short on her tongue. She stopped walking. Her eyes bulged at what she saw.
In front of her, Allison was on all fours, her weight shifted to one side with lacerations lining her back under the blood sousing her pajamas. It was hard to decipher the severity of her wounds, but they must have been pretty bad from how deep her shirt sank into her back.
At least she was alive.
Megan rushed to her, dropped to her knees, and slid to a halt. Ignoring the burning on her knees, she reached out to her friend. Her hands stopped just shy of actually touching Allison. She was quenched in a lot of blood. How much of it was hers and how much was Brian’s was hard to tell. She grimaced at the copious amount. It seemed Allison was drowning in it.
And, Megan was not the squeamish type. She’d seen this much blood before, even worse, while on duty in the ER, but seeing it on her friend—someone she considered her sister—put it on a different level entirely.
She was also afraid of adding even more pain to Allison by touching her. She was already in so much that she was shaking…
“Al? It’s me.”
“Muh-Megan?” she asked without looking up. Her head hung low enough to the ground that her nose was probably brushing coarse bits of dirt. Her hair was much shorter than Megan’s, especially in the back, but Allison kept her bangs shaggy. Now they were sweat-soaked and plastered across her forehead. “Is it…you?”
“It’s me, Al. It’s me.” Her throat tightened. Allison began to go blurry in her eyes from the tears suddenly flooding them.
“I woke up…heard someone at the tent. I thought it was Brian, you know…playing around or something. We’d been fighting earlier…and Brian stormed out of the tent. I went to sleep…”
“Allison…” She tried to stop her from talking, but Allison kept going as if she had a speed button on her mouth set to high.
“…so I opened the tent…and the moonlight came in, lighting up the inside, you know?” Allison groaned as she straightened her shoulders. She looked at Megan, now, as she talked. There were bruises on her face; dirt had adhered to her face in dark streaks. “I happened to look back…at Brian’s sleeping bag…and guess what I saw.”
“Al, we should get—”
“—Guess!”
Megan flinched at the sudden rise in her voice. Her friend’s eyes looked like white orbs on a face smudged in dirt, scabbing abrasions, and dried blood. “I don’t…I have no idea!”
“Brian was sleeping in the sack!” She laughed. There seemed to be no good sense left in her. “By then it was too late…He came into the tent, killed Brian…like that!” She snapped her finger, but it made no sound. “Then he punched me on the head…hard…I woke up as he was dragging me out…but I couldn’t move…it was like I was paralyzed or some shit…”
Megan winced from the pain when she bit back down on the finger she’d previously wounded with her teeth.
Allison hadn’t let up. “I tried to shout for you, to warn you, but I couldn’t…I thought you might already be dead…”
“No…I was sleeping…Goddammit, I was sleeping…I’m so sorry…”
“There’s no way you could have heard him…he moved so fast and was so quiet.” Her eyes widened even more, so much so the skin around them might split apart. “I thought he was a ghost.”
A ghost…
A chill moved through Megan so deep that she felt it in the marrow of her bones.
“He began attacking me…with this sword or something…”
“A sword?”
“No…not really a sword, but it could have been. It…a big fucking knife! So fucking big! Like the ones you see in the movies! He just kept hitting me with it, and hitting with me it. Not too hard, but hard enough.” She took several rapid breaths before continuing. “I pretended to be dead. But I don’t know if he, you know, believed it.”
“He left, so he must have.”
“I…don’t know. I don’t think he fell for it.”
“What’d he look like?”
Allison stared up as if a picture of him might be projected across
the sky. Megan could see her much clearer now. She realized the sun had risen even more and was now spreading its warm, golden shower across the woods. The temperature would begin its swift ascend over the next couple hours. “Big,” she finally answered. “He’s still out here…somewhere. I don’t know where!” Her head snapped back and forth as she searched the grounds for him.
“He’s probably at the camp…going to…” Megan didn’t complete the statement. But if she had it would have sounded like this: Probably at the camp, going after me.
She took Allison’s hands in hers. They felt sticky and cold. “We have to get you on your feet. Can you stand up?”
Allison thought about it. “Yuh-yeah…probably. If you help me.”
“I will. Do you think you can find the way back to your car?”
“I-I don’t know…Brian…he was the one with the map…”
“Can you remember?”
Megan hoped Allison could, because her own memory of how they got down here was fuzzy. This was her first time in this area, and she was out of practice. So instead of noting her surroundings, or any interesting landmarks, she’d only cussed to herself at how miserable she was—and also hating herself for falling out of shape so quickly.
It was up to Allison to get them back. Going back to the camp was out of the question. Megan would have bet all she owned that whoever had attacked Allison and killed Brian was there right now.
Might even be on his way back. Surely he’s noticed I’m not in my tent.
“Can you?” Megan snapped at Allison.
“Yuh-yeah, I should be able to. It wasn’t such a hard hike…pretty simple.”
My ass.
Allison added, “I probably can get us to the car…”
“Let’s try.”
Megan ignored her apprehension of touching her critically injured friend, and helped her get on her feet.
3
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