Vacation

by Matthew John Costello

  How long would Dunphy be gone to the lodge, to check on the food being served, grab a plate himself?

  Something nice and meaty tonight.

  How fucking long?

  He came back to the only possibility. That knife, if it was still there. That was the chance. No other possibility at all.

  Jack started rocking his body back and forth.

  The chair would rise a bit at the front, steady, then lift up from the back. Jack had no control other than to make his body move, to get enough momentum so that the chair would tip and eventually fall to the ground.

  But how would it tip? Could it leave him pinned in a weird way, unable to move, a pointless maneuver?

  My only chance, he thought, ignoring all the mental pictures that had him trapped, an upside-down horseshoe crab, waiting for the fat cook to return, and maybe start to work on him right there.

  Back and forth, the movements so small. But he found a rhythm; he could build some momentum. The lifts of the front, then the back legs. Higher each time.

  Until he knew he was close.

  More rocking, using the scant movement all the ropes and lashings gave him.

  And then he felt it.

  The chair starting to fall over, not to the front or the back, but a strange sideways slip. All he could do was let it happen as the chair banged against the table, his head smacking hard against the edge, then slipping down to the cookery’s floor.

  He looked left. Fresh blood spatters. He realized after a moment that they were his own.

  The chair had landed on its side. Jack looked around to the right, trying to see a side wall of the building.

  Please be there, he thought.

  Straining as much as possible, he saw it. The beautiful shining silver of the blade, the dull black of the handle.

  His right leg on the floor, his weight on it.

  The foot was nearly immobilized, but there was some room for movement in the leg. Again, only inches.

  He heard voices.

  Outside.

  Dunphy back?

  But the voices moved on.

  He couldn’t have much time.

  The leg kicked. More pathetic miniscule movements.

  Kick. Kick. Kick

  Over and over. Gaining mere inches. But he kept doing it, barely aware that this was his fucked-up leg. Barely aware of anything but this need to contract, relax, using this pathetic kicking movement to move the chair inches closer to the knife, the chair that seemed to weigh a ton.

  He paid no attention to the progress he made. As though the only thing in the universe that could bring him pleasure was each small kick, giddy with ecstasy every time he came closer to the knife.

  His sole obsession: to kick, to move.

  He saw the blade near his head. That made him only kick more. He had to get past the blade, yes… get it closer to his hands.

  Taking so long. Too long. No way he’d make it.

  Fuck that idea, he thought.

  I’ll make it.

  He couldn’t get his head in position to see if he was close enough. It would be a guess, an estimate of how far he had come.

  He might have only one chance.

  He stopped.

  Was the knife close in line with his tied hands?

  Because, he thought, while my wrists are lashed tight to the chair… my fingers, my palm—they are goddamned free.

  He looked around and saw the other end of the table nearby, a foot away.

  An estimate.

  He guessed he was close to the knife.

  Now, more rocking, leaning left and right, needing to get the chair’s back to edge closer to where he thought the knife was. Then, more inaccurate kicking, using his weight, his legs.

  Fingers scratched desperately against the floor, feeling nothing.

  Again, more rocking, more crazy grasping with his fingers.

  Then, a different sensation. Metal.

  Another kick, and his right hand briefly grasped the blade, felt the sharp metal dig into the soft skin of his fingertips.

  No matter; he was close.

  One hand would have to hold the knife. By the handle or by the blade—it didn’t matter—then slowly saw the rope. Ignoring the metal if it slid past the rope and bit into his hand, his wrist.

  Another crazed grasp and his right hand locked around the knife, partly around the handle, partly around the blade.

  Now his fingers had to perform a weird fumbling, knowing that the knife could simply slip away. More guesses as he positioned it, hoping he had the knife tip resting against rope.

  His palm and fingers could make the blade go back and forth with only the smallest movements.

  His new obsession now, and he thought of nothing else but this movement.

  Once he felt the tip of the blade dip, burying itself in skin.

  If I hit a vein, this will all be for nothing.

  He slowed a bit, taking more care with his strange sawing at such a difficult angle.

  He felt the rope actually loosen.

  Loose, and that meant he could make bigger slicing movements, now almost a mad butcher himself.

  Looser still.

  His tied wrists now had some space.

  He forced himself not to rush. One wrong move here could fuck it up.

  Slowly, slowly, as that beautiful distance between the two wrists opened even more. He felt he could slide a hand out, maybe both. But he kept at it.

  The need to be absolutely sure that important.

  Then… as if they had never been tied at all… his wrists were free.

  His hands, free.

  Now, with a mad speed, he cut the band around his chest. Not bothering to sit up, he sliced the ropes at his legs and ankles.

  He was untied. Still on the floor, still in the same odd position that he had landed in.

  Then, a creak. The cookery door opening. Early evening air from outside.

  Dunphy’s voice.

  “Willy, want another hit? You want—”

  The voice stopped.

  Jack didn’t move.

  He realized…

  They think I’m gone.

  37. 6:01 P.M.

  Jack heard a clanking noise, the sound of metal. Dunphy and his helper had stopped talking.

  The sound of them grabbing blades. The clang of metal.

  Jack still held the knife that had freed him. But then he heard a sound like a lawn mower. The smoky smell of gas.

  There was no time to wait anymore.

  Jack crawled to the far end of the table, deeper into the building. There was no point in escaping with these two alive.

  He stood up, and clocked the position of the two of them. Dunphy holding some kind of gas-powered saw, something for chewing through bones, cutting up carcasses.

  The cook’s helper held a cleaver in one hand and a long curved blade in the other.

  “Just stop right there, buddy,” the cook said, “and nobody has to get fucking hurt.” Dunphy grinned, his bowling-ball face one leering smile. “After all, if we had wanted to hurt you, that would have happened hours ago, right?”

  The helper had taken a few tentative steps closer to Jack.

  Jack acted as though he didn’t notice.

  There was no point talking to these two.

  More steps from the helper.

  Now the cook began to walk away from the far wall, the saw spitting out smoke, the chained blades grunting as they cut through the air. Dunphy’s massive arms held the saw with ease.

  Obviously given it a lot of use.

  Could Jack depend on his leg?

  The two men had moved so each was at the limit of Jack’s peripheral vision.

  Jack started to lower his knife.

  Sharp enough to cut through rope, but how would it do with skin and bone?

  He was about to find out.

  Lower still.

  The cook’s smile broadened even as he moved toward Jack, the saw held at chest height, blade pointing forw
ard like the barrel of a bizarre gun.

  Then Jack moved.

  He turned to the helper. Smaller, he was probably faster. He looked scared, while the cook didn’t.

  The smaller man immediately stuck out his two blades, a classic and bad move by someone who wasn’t used to fighting with a knife.

  Jack held his blade close, maximizing his ability to send it jutting out and back.

  Sticking it out… that just wasted seconds.

  Jack took painful steps toward the man and when close enough, he did just that—jabbing his right hand with the blade out. He nailed the man’s arm holding the cleaver. The man screamed as he released it and it fell to the floor.

  From the sound of the saw, Dunphy had started moving toward Jack.

  Only seconds.

  The helper now slashed wildly from left and right with the thin blade, a mini-sword ending in a fine pointy tip.

  Jack tilted to the left, dodging one wild swing, then another dodge as it came swinging back. He held back on his second strike until that wild arc had been completed.

  And when that had happened, the man’s midsection lay wide open to an attack.

  Another jab, this one straight at the man’s guts, then a violent pull up. The whirr of the gas-powered saw right behind Jack.

  He left the blade buried.

  Saving a precious second or two.

  He spun around, the move agony now. Dunphy marched toward him like a human tank, stepping on and over his partner.

  Dunphy kept jabbing with the saw. A stupid grin still filled his face. He wasn’t scared. He was fucking enjoying this.

  Blades all over the room, but Jack was cut off from them.

  But the saw was heavy despite the strength in the cook’s meaty arms.

  “Come on, you dumb bastard!” the cook yelled. His mouth a dark hole.

  As much a Can Head as any Can Head Jack had ever faced.

  Nothing human about this monster at all.

  Close, and Jack was forced against the wall.

  But there was a table right in front of him, covered in blood, bone, skin.

  Jack did a diving roll onto the table, spinning around on the bone and flesh that had been left there. The smell of decay covering him.

  The roll worked. Dunphy spun around, marching around to the other side, his saw sputtering. The smile had vanished.

  But, Jack thought, I’m not going anywhere yet.

  He backed against another table. A massive pot sat on it. Jack glanced into it. Filled with milky water and dotted with whitish chunks on the top.

  Bones, boiled down.

  He grabbed an edge of the pot with his right hand, ignoring the burn, and pushed it forward, sending the bones and the slimy water crashing to the floor. The slimy soup hit the spot where the cook took his next step.

  He moved forward, oblivious.

  That was a mistake. Because the fat cook wobbled, and the saw flew up as he struggled for balance.

  Dunphy even looked wide-eyed at the saw as if it might angle around and bite into him.

  Jack—now close to a wall of knives and cleavers and saws.

  But he saw something on the table that looked like a gun. A butcher’s tool, with a barrel. Sitting right there.

  He picked it up just as Dunphy regained his footing.

  Jack came close to the cook now, and before the man even knew what was happening, Jack pressed the bolt gun against Dunphy’s side and pulled the trigger.

  It made a dull thudding sound. No bullet inside. But the fat barrel had shot something out.

  When Jack pulled away, he could see the smooth hole in the cook’s chest. What the hell was it—something to kill people before Dunphy started to work on them? A quick shot to the brain, and it would be all over?

  Like steer in the slaughterhouse back in the old days.

  This was a human slaughterhouse.

  But Jack needed the cook alive.

  Jack fired another, now at Dunphy’s throat. Another smooth hole opened. Blood gushed forth. The chain saw fell from his hands, and Jack had to step back to dodge it, coughing from the smoke, the chain spinning, still running.

  Dunphy fell backward. A beached whale, shooting blood out of the blow hole in his throat.

  Jack went to him, crouched down.

  “Where are they?”

  The cook shook his head. He grabbed at his throat as if he could close the hole.

  “Where the hell is my family?”

  He pressed the bolt gun against the cook’s head.

  Dunphy shook his head again.

  But he was spraying blood like a geyser. No way he could stay alive for long.

  “Tell me. Tell me, you fat fuck, or I’ll fill your head with holes.”

  The cook’s mouth opened. More blood dribbled out. There was no way he could talk, Jack could see.

  But the lips moved.

  Once, then repeating the same word, unintelligible.

  Dunphy now had two hands around his neck, attempting to stem the flow. Jack pressed the bolt gun against his head, right behind the left eye, and pulled the trigger. A dull thud.

  Dunphy’s hands fell away from his throat.

  Jack let the bolt gun fall from his hands.

  He stood up, covered in blood from the butchering tables and cook, and—

  Saw the freezer.

  Dread building in him with each step, his hand shaking when he finally reached out to unlatch, and then open the freezer.

  He knew what he saw there the night before.

  He thought of the blood that covered him. The great boiling pan of bones.

  No, he begged.

  The door popped open. The frost snaked out. That made it hard to see for a moment, but then it cleared as Jack walked in.

  His superheated body, sweaty, steaming from the fight, created more fog.

  Now he walked down the length of the freezer.

  He looked at the first body. One of the Blair kids. Then, another, a man he had never seen.

  More bodies behind him.

  None he recognized.

  The joy—immense.

  My family isn’t here.

  My family is somewhere else, alive.

  He turned and started out of the deep freeze.

  He had to get the hell out of here. Maybe no one would come looking for a while.

  Couldn’t be a place people like to come.

  It’s not dark yet. I just… I just have to get the hell out of here and find my family.

  Over and over. The same thought.

  He moved as fast as he could to the back doors of this slaughterhouse.

  38. 7:50 P.M.

  Christie walked over to her two children, sitting so quietly on the bed of this small room.

  She stood there, and then paced. Simon had fallen asleep as if some protective mechanism had kicked in during the day. And Kate, sweet Kate, had even put her arm around her younger brother.

  Her daughter hadn’t slept, but lay in the bed, near catatonic.

  The fear of the first hours had changed into this terrible expanse of waiting.

  Christie would sit. But only for a few minutes before she’d have to get up.

  A guard with a gun outside made sure they didn’t go anywhere.

  Ed Lowe had explained it like it was some glitch that had to be fixed.

  “You see, Mrs. Murphy, kids…”

  Christie loathed that this man would even talk to her kids.

  She imagined doing things to him… things that she had never imagined before.

  “You’ll see,” Lowe had said. “Your husband will come around. Sure. You and your kids can be safe. We can use your husband. And he’ll see Paterville can be a good place for you as well.”

  Christie had said nothing.

  Jack would never agree to live with these people.

  Were they any better than the Can Heads? Were they a new strain of monster that could pretend to be human?

  Lowe had food brought to them. No one
ate any.

  With darkness coming, her worry grew. Where was Jack? He’d never agree to be part of this.

  And when Ed Lowe figured that out, what would happen to them?

  She started walking back and forth again.

  * * *

  Jack sat curled in bushes, waiting for darkness. No alarms. Maybe no one had been in the kitchen yet.

  The dark took forever to come.

  Each little bit of deepening gloom arriving torturously slow.

  But while he sat there like a wounded animal, he had time to think and plan, looking at all the possibilities.

  None of them good.

  But one had to be selected.

  He looked up at the sky, the last bit of light fading.

  * * *

  Now, night fallen, Jack made his way through the brambles, ignoring scratching thorn bushes and jagged branches.

  He had expected someone to be at his car, guarding it.

  But no.

  They must have had confidence in Dunphy and how tied up Jack had been.

  He crawled down to the car. This time when he opened up the back, he’d have to kill the interior light as quickly as possible. A switch on the roof. Still, it would glow for seconds. Someone could see.

  He looked around, but in the gloom he couldn’t tell if anyone was watching.

  Nothing to do but take a breath and open the door.

  He unlocked a back door and as fast as possible he slid in and reached up to the ceiling switch. Bright light filled the Explorer’s cabin. And then it went dark.

  A moment, waiting.

  He shut the door quietly and moved to the back. He opened the rear door. Lifted the rug of the luggage area. Fiddled to get the key into the hole. Opened it. So practiced with that move by now.

  No light, so he had to feel, pulling out his other guns—a .44, a Glock. His rifle was gone. Nothing he could do about that. He filled his pockets with shells, making them bulge.

  No holster, so he stuck the .44 under the front of his belt, the Glock under his belt at the back.

  Then—one other item. One of the explosive devices. A timed C4 charge, a doorbuster. He slipped one in his back pocket.

  He shut the tailgate door and started making his way around the camp, through the woods.

  * * *

  A few times, he passed close to a guard. But he’d stop, let them move on, then continue on his way.