Vacation

by Matthew John Costello

  Such a stupid idea, that she could shoot, could protect herself.

  No time to think.

  Jack leaped forward as fast as he could, giant steps, his free hand reaching out, grasping—

  Closing on the Can Head’s maggoty hair. Tightening, and yanking the thing back like a caught fish.

  Pulling the head close to his other hand, the gun barrel pressed right against the head. One clear blast, and the thing dropped Simon, screaming.

  Not able to tell the boy he needed to be quiet. The noise would only bring more.

  Turning, Kate being dragged away as she kicked at the thing holding her, its blood-smeared face and teeth inches away from hers.

  No other option here, and he raised his gun and fired at the thing.

  For a stunned second, the Can Head froze as if not sure what was wrong.

  There was no way to prevent the blood from dripping onto his beautiful daughter.

  But in that second of blood-spattered madness, he saw her raise her gun, turning left and right. She was ready now.

  Another Can Head leaped out of the bushes, right at Kate.

  Kate held her gun steady.

  He had trained her. Took her to the range. God, had he trained her enough?

  All Jack could do was watch as she fired.

  The thing fell at her feet.

  Jack, thinking: good girl, such a—

  Then—to Christie.

  She had fired a shot. Wounding the thing holding her. And again, with so much kicking and movement, Jack didn’t have a shot.

  But he was the last one. Christie fighting against the Can Head had slowed down its attempt to pull her away.

  Jack went to it and whipped the gun at its head just as it was about to bite down on Christie’s shoulder.

  Then again, and again.

  Then a hard smack to the elbow of the thing, a crack at just the right spot, and the arm holding Christie became useless.

  Until the creature’s head was far enough away from Christie so Jack could come behind it, close its neck in an arm lock, cutting off air.

  ’Cause the goddamn things still had to breathe.

  Christie, herself nearly choked, staggered away, immediately looking to the kids.

  She raised her gun to the Can Head. Jack held tight.

  And with Jack not even believing what he was seeing…

  She fired. Right at its skull.

  And when it fell away—

  —when it slipped down from Jack’s hold—

  —when it was quiet and there were no more gunshots, no more here at least—

  —he stood in the woods and saw his family looking at him.

  As if seeing him, really seeing him for the first time.

  He saw Simon take Christie’s hand, then Kate’s.

  My boy….

  “C’mon,” he said.

  Jack and his family started moving again.

  Racing, running now… so much that both Simon and Kate took turns tripping, rolling on the brambles.

  But so beautiful, my beautiful children, he thought. They didn’t give out even a yelp.

  No matter what stuck them, what pricked them in the thick brush, they were silent.

  It took all of his willpower to not cry.

  Then—they were there—the parking lot. A sea of cars, far removed from the gunfire, the racing guards, the panic behind them.

  Jack didn’t stop as they left the shadows and went down to that sea.

  41. The Gate

  Jack turned around and looked at the brown blanket that now covered the backseat. Someone looking could see that there was something hidden back there.

  If they got close.

  Something back there.

  The cab light had not gone on, the ceiling switch still thrown.

  Now that no one could see him, he reached down under the steering column and felt for the switch. The double-switch he had installed so long ago.

  He felt its shape. He could reach it in an instant.

  Back to the key in the ignition. A twist, and the Explorer started.

  Jack had feared they might have ripped the guts out of the SUV, but the engine sounded fine.

  He kept the headlights off, and then, aware that he could be seen, he backed up and eased the Explorer slowly around to the road that led to the center of the camp.

  Even with the windows down, he could hear the sporadic sound of distant gunfire. The alarms blaring. Good, they were still dealing with the Can Heads.

  Or perhaps what this really was: Can Heads fighting Can Heads.

  Let them fucking eat each other.

  As he came to the small rise from the lot, the road that veered near the lodge, he saw a group of people—Paterville residents and guards, those the Can Heads from outside hadn’t gotten.

  Standing in a cluster, guns ready, bunched up and looking all around, scared.

  A few looked at Jack as he drove past them.

  They had guns. They could shoot.

  But they simply watched him sail past, one lanky man’s face having a what-the-fuck look, wondering where the hell this guy could be going.

  If someone looked in the back, all they would see was the shape, the blanket.

  Would word be passed? A different kind of alarm?

  Jack picked up speed as he passed the cabin area, and started down the road past the lake and on the way to the main gate.

  He wondered if he had made a mistake.

  If he could get out this easy, had he made a fucking mistake? His plan all wrong?

  He felt like stopping. Going back. Was there time to change his mind?

  Instead, he kept driving. The plan. This was the plan, the way to get his family out.

  He pressed harder on the accelerator, passing the fifteen-mile speed limit posted along the road. Twenty, twenty-five… thirty.

  And more, until the heavy-duty wheels of the SUV began kicking up a steady stream of pebbles and dirt behind it.

  A curve, another straight section, then—if his memory was correct—one more curve.

  He noticed something. The alarms had ended.

  Was the power still out?

  Could they have fixed the power to the fence in such a short amount of time?

  Another curve, and now a clear straight run to the main gate.

  Bright lights ahead, two high beams on the turret at the side of the gate, one at road level.

  The turret lights pointed out into the woods, probably hunting for any signs of Can Heads.

  Faster. Thinking he was so close.

  The two lights on the top of the turret swung around. Almost as if it had been planned.

  The guards hadn’t been looking for stray Can Heads at all.

  The lights swung around and pointed down at the roadway, at the SUV, at Jack racing to the gate.

  A bunch of guards on the road, waiting for Jack.

  With Ed Lowe at their head.

  He didn’t brake.

  So, they see me. They’ll shoot. The Explorer can take some hits.

  But then, despite the blinding glare of the giant lights, he could see above them, the gate… so close.

  Faster—and then the group parted.

  And Jack saw the trap.

  A massive felled tree lay right across the road. The SUV slammed into it.

  And backlit, the people waiting there. Guns sticking out like pins in black pincushions, the crowd all shadows.

  They waited for him while the front of the car crumpled against the tree, tires exploding, windows shattering.

  Jack’s head hit the steering wheel. He immediately tasted blood from the gash.

  Then, as the shadows moved closer, Jack, blinking—blood in his eyes, too—he saw the struggling figure of Ed Lowe, laboring to walk, but walking.

  His camp. His place.

  Behind him, a bloodied Shana.

  Someone had found them, freed them.

  Lowe knew that there was an even worse danger to Paterville than the Can H
eads outside.

  Exposure.

  Exposure would destroy the camp.

  Jack looked at the seat next to him.

  My gun.

  He reached to the side but felt nothing.

  The crowd only steps away. Some moving ahead of Lowe now, eager, perhaps forgetting that he ran the place. Maybe Lowe had had his day.

  As they suddenly started racing toward the vehicle, Shana raised her ax. Other women were there too, rocks in their hands.

  Everyone invited.

  He heard Lowe’s voice as if coming from miles away.

  “Jack! Jack, it’s over. We got you, got your family!”

  As the crowd gathered close, Jack could only shoot one quick glance at the back.

  Lowe stuck his head through a shattered opening in the driver’s-side window, his jowly neck catching some of the cracked glass.

  “We’re going to rip you all into pieces!”

  Jack turned. His hand again reached to the seat beside him.

  The gun. Fallen to the floor?

  He popped open the glove compartment.

  A knife there. Used to be there.

  His hand closed on it.

  A jagged knife for fishing. Probably rusty.

  Jack spoke as loud as he could.

  “You’re right! It is over!”

  He jabbed the blade into Lowe’s neck and twisted it left and right before leaving it buried in Lowe’s gullet.

  But the action only seemed to embolden the others, now reaching in through the smashed windshield, the side windows, into the back.

  No way forward, no way out.

  More glass being smashed, pried away. Like opening a can. To get at what was inside.

  Jack sat there.

  He could see the clock on the dash. The digital clock. The time.

  “Now,” he whispered.

  Jesus, now…

  A rock smashed into the front window, then another, until, on all sides, the windows took hits.

  The car tilted forward, wheels flat, engine dead, the SUV now rendered completely immobile.

  Until one crazed person kept banging at a rear passenger window with a big rock broke through.

  Then, like a feeding frenzy, that small opening triggered the horde to clamber on top of the vehicle, banging, shooting, smashing. A few with flashlights, shooting light into the car to see what treasure waited for them.

  Jack leaned down, flailed around, feeling the car floor. The gun had to have fallen down here.

  Had to be there.

  Then he had it.

  He started shooting through the jagged openings in the glass as they tried to get at the door latches, some trying to crawl through impossibly small holes in the windows.

  Just Can Heads, he thought. That’s all you are.

  Shot after shot.

  And then hands reaching in from the side to grab at the blanket, and what lay beneath it.

  Jack ran out of bullets. He let the pistol fall. Ammo somewhere… but why bother?

  The Explorer was covered with Can Heads.

  All around the sides, on top, reaching into every hole. Ed Lowe, his throat gushing, still battered at Jack’s side window, the bloody spittle flying out.

  The SUV like a bit of candy dropped in the summer dirt and soon coated with ants as though it was a living thing.

  He reached down to the switch.

  Not a slow movement. Perhaps he had waited too long already. He thought he heard something inside the car, on top of the blanket.

  Jack threw the first safety switch.

  The car had enough explosives to make a crater twice the size of the vehicle.

  And blow the dozens of monsters on it to pieces.

  He threw the second, now-active switch.

  He heard a click.

  42. Five Minutes Earlier

  Christie sat up in Tom Blair’s car.

  She looked back at the kids.

  “Okay. Just stay down.”

  Nothing.

  “You hear me?” she said.

  Kate answered first, her body pressed down as close to the floor as she could. “Yes, Mom.”

  Then Simon, following his sister’s model: “Yes.”

  She turned the key, hands shaking with the thought that the car wouldn’t start, even though Jack had tested it.

  He had been so clear in his instructions; so precise in his plans.

  To watch the time. Because when it was the right time she had to pull out of the lot.

  If they were expecting them to leave, it would be the front gate. They’d look for the Explorer.

  But maybe, he had said, they’ll have their hands full.

  She had tried pleading, the kids able to hear.

  They had to stay together. They were a family.

  She had to watch her words with the kids so close… her eyes were wet, trying to hide that from them. Until she didn’t care, as she wiped at them.

  I’ll get through, he said. Somehow. Let them spot me first.

  With the camp under siege, they could get on the roads and get out.

  But if they were watching, he had to make them think that this was how they’d escape. Together.

  He had put a hand up to her cheek.

  I’ll get away.

  He gave her a kiss. He hugged the kids.

  Then another kiss.

  And words meant for her ears alone.

  If you hear something…

  He held her tight.

  You’ll know.

  She couldn’t let him go. Couldn’t let him go.

  But he pulled free.

  And then he backed away, moving to the Explorer. She did as he instructed. Getting the kids down. Then she crouched down, even though she couldn’t see him anymore, couldn’t get a look at him inside the car, pulling away.

  Only when their car was gone did she get the kids inside the station wagon, with its ordinary glass, its ordinary wheels.

  If they were escaping, they’d expect them all to be in the Explorer.

  She started the station wagon. Then pulled around to the back of the parking area, and onto the service road.

  She remembered his last instructions.

  As fast as you can…

  Despite the rutted dirt road, she pressed the accelerator to the floor.

  * * *

  Christie didn’t bother looking at what was all around her. People ran around, their fear sending them in all directions.

  At one point, someone ran madly across the road that weaved through this upper camp, and rolled right onto the front of the car, then back, over the windshield, onto the roof.

  Random Can Heads roamed around. The sound of bullets closer as people tried to spot them running through the upper camp.

  That meant—

  Might mean that the fence was still open, the electricity still down.

  She tried to see where the winding road led to—a way out? A road to the other gate?

  She drove over a huge rock.

  The jolt made Simon yell.

  “Mommeee…”

  “Sorry, baby.”

  Then she kept repeating, saying it.

  Sorry, baby, sorry, so sorry…

  She saw the road curve right, out of this upper camp, the car swerving as she took it fast.

  She heard a noise like a hammer hitting the side of the car.

  A bullet. Someone shooting.

  “Stay down. Kate, Simon, you gotta—”

  Another bullet, this one farther back.

  No, she thought. Over and over.

  No, no, no.

  Not my babies…

  The car careened crazily down the dirt road, bumping up and down, jostling left and right, feeling like it might fall apart into a jumble of pieces.

  She saw lights. A turret. A gate.

  As soon as she saw the gate, a bullet cracked the windshield, and now she could only see the whole scene through a fun-house quilt of shattered glass. But the windshield held together.
<
br />   She had to ram the gate.

  And if the electricity was back on?

  All she knew was that she had to keep her foot on the accelerator, pressed hard, hands gripping the steering wheel.

  Jack didn’t need to tell her what the gun beside her might have to be used for.

  If she had to stop.

  If they stopped her.

  Then the gate, meters away. One guard there.

  He raised his rifle to fire right at her.

  From behind, two Can Heads jumped on him, dragging him to the ground.

  She cried. Yes, she thought, yes!

  In those last seconds before the car hit the gate, before it rammed into the metal barrier with enough force to send it flying, she heard it.

  The explosion.

  Massive. A tremendous boom that she felt in her stomach. So loud, and the bowl shape of the lake and the mountains magnified the explosion into a giant peal of thunder.

  Except it wasn’t thunder.

  The car plowed through the gate.

  She thought: No.

  She begged: No.

  Metal pieces of gate and fence went flying to either side of the car. Her kids screamed nonstop behind her.

  Christie blinked repeatedly to get her damn eyes to clear, to get them to stop crying so she could see the dark road.

  I have to able to see, she thought.

  I’m out. I got the kids out.

  Safe.

  Up to me now, she told herself. That’s right. Up to me now to keep them that way.

  She turned on the headlights.

  The kids sobbed in the back.

  It wouldn’t be long before she would answer their questions and tell them what had really happened.

  For now, all she could do was drive.

  EPILOGUE

  43. Scooter’s Mill

  Christie hit the first checkpoint well before dawn. She slowed the car and pulled the gun onto her lap.

  The kids sat up in the back.

  Neither had fallen asleep, but they had stopped asking her the same question, over and over.

  Where’s Dad?

  She slowed the car. While most of the townspeople at the fence stayed back, one older man walked up to her, a lean man with a weathered face and eyes that squinted as he walked into her headlights.

  Looks okay, she thought.

  He came beside her window and signaled for her to roll it down.