“Sorry, Norm. You know I thought I heard something but I was working down in the basement, it’s hard to hear the bell down there.”
The talkie cackled, “26514 do you still need assistance or am I cancelling your request?” The dispatcher’s voice was nasal, high-pitched.
“Mrs. Tabern home?”
“Yeah, she’s sleeping with the baby, come on in, I’ll wake her.”
Norm pushed a button on his talkie, “Yeah, go ahead and cancel that.”
Norm followed Charlie inside.
“Can I get you some coffee, tea maybe?”
“No thank you. If you’ll just wake your wife so we can get this over with, I’ve got a lot of work today.”
“Sure,” Charlie said. He reached for his gun and pointed it at Norm.
“Hey, Mr. Tabern, put the gun down.”
“Go on, through the door.” Charlie motioned toward the kitchen with the pistol.
“You don’t want to do this, Mr. Tabern.”
“You’re right, I don’t, but I don’t have much choice.”
“Why don’t you give me the gun and we can talk about this. If your wife’s sick we can see about getting her the proper medical care.”
“Open it,” Charlie said nodding toward the basement door.
“Mr. Tabern—”
“Open it!”
Norm tried the door. “It’s locked.”
Charlie stepped forward to try himself and Norm lunged at him, grabbing the gun and twisting it. It went off, once, twice.
Norm slumped to the floor, staring at Charlie.
Charlie pointed the gun at him, waiting for him to move. He didn’t. Charlie tucked the gun back in his waste-band and ran for the garage.
He started the car and drove off, his hands shaking on the steering wheel.
He felt Mirabel’s head. Cold. He shook her until she stirred. She rolled over and her breathing changed to a labored wheeze.
He drove out west down a stretch of highway where the old drive-in used to be. There was a checkpoint there that was only manned by two guards. If he could make it past that and on through to Modesto he could hole up in one of the hotels there and nurse Mirabel back to health.
He could see the checkpoint up ahead in the distance so he slowed the car down a little. He put Mirabel’s hood up and covered her face as best he could.
He pulled up to the checkpoint and lowered his window.
“Morning, officer,” Charlie said, passing his driver’s license out the window.
“Where you headed…Charlie Tabern?”
“Up to Modesto, visit some family.”
“Tabern…Tabern. Now why does that sound so familiar?” The officer’s radio squawked and the same nasal, high-pitched dispatcher that he heard on Norm’s talkie earlier said something in police gibberish.
The other officer rapped on the passenger window.
“Uh…she’s asleep,” Charlie said.
“We’re going to need to see some identification before we can let you through.”
“Yeah, right here.” He passed the first officer Mirabel’s I.D.
He looked at the card, then over at Mirabel.
“Sir, can you remove her hood?”
“Uh…yeah…” Charlie reached over and pulled her hood down. Her face was pale again, lips blue.
The officer on her side stepped back. “We’ve got a 6-4 here, Teddy.”
“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you step out of the vehicle,” Officer Number One said, his hand going to his weapon.
Charlie reached down for his seat belt and felt the gun there.
“Sir, step out of the vehicle, now!”
Charlie raised the gun and fired at Officer Number One, hitting him in the throat. He turned the gun to Officer Number Two, who was still trying to unholster his weapon when Charlie pulled the trigger. The bullet exploded through the passenger window but missed and the officer fired back at him. Charlie fired blindly twice more then stepped on the gas, slamming through the barricade.
He drove on for five minutes. His hands were shaking uncontrollably and his legs started to shake, too. He looked at Mirabel. She wasn’t wheezing anymore. He shook her, but she didn’t stir.
“Mirabel!”
Nothing.
He pulled the car over to the side of the road and put it in park.
“Mirabel, baby, wake up.” He shook her harder.
Nothing.
He felt for a pulse but didn’t find one.
Charlie sat back and looked at her, then down at the gun in his lap. He caught the slightest movement out of the corner of his eye and looked back at Mirabel. Her head lulled sideways so that she faced him.
He lifted the gun in his shaky hands, pointed it at her face and waited for her to come back.
Seconds ticked by like hours and Charlie watched the shake in his hands get worse. He wondered if he’d even hit her when the time came.
Then it happened. Her eyes flicked open. The whites having turned a sickly shade of yellow and the brown iris’s now a deep tarry pool.
Charlie closed his eyes, screaming as he pulled the trigger.
Click.
He opened his eyes. His hands no longer shook. Anna started crying in the back seat. He looked at Mirabel and saw her blue lips part and her bloody tongue, fat in her mouth.
He tried the gun once more.
Click.
Chad Rohrbacher has published stories in Needle Magazine, Crime Factory, Dark Valentine, and Title Goes Here among others. More of his work can be found online at www.chadrohrbacher.com He lives and writes in Greensboro, NC, with his wife and three daughters.
Camp Victory may not be quite what people are expecting, because it is not your typical summer camp. Think back to your worst moment, as a camper, from childhood—we’ve all had them. It could be the time someone turned too quickly with an oar in hand and left you lying, out cold, in the dirt. It could be that time that you almost drowned when someone dared you to swim the length of the lake. Or it could be that nasty encounter with the hornet’s nest or the patch of poison ivy that left you swollen or itchy for days. Now take that moment and make it worse, much worse ...a hundred times worse. How could you do that? The recipe is simple: take that backdrop, add a dash of backwoods humour, a hint of Bible-thumping gusto and mix it all together with a menacing grin—oh yes, and don’t let me forget the most important part, the main ingredient...zombies!
Camp Victory
By: Chad Rohrbacher
I didn’t want him to go in the first place. It was his mother’s idea. Well, her and our neighbor, Louise.
Louise has wide teeth, full cheeks, and a splattering of freckles on her cheeks. Louise was one of those women who call those nasty skin growths jutting out from their bodies “beauty marks”. Jesus Christ who came up with that? It had to be a woman as ugly as Louise.
Louise was a talker. She’d talk about her kids and her little rat dog. She’d talk about Dr. Phil and her latest medical procedure and who was fucking who in the neighborhood, but she wouldn’t say “fucking”; she was too Christian for that.
She’d talk about Jesus.
She’d talk a lot about Jesus and sprinkle in a hallelujah and amen now and then for good measure, even if you were talking about how the people across the street’s crab grass was an eyesore.
Her son, Jedidiah, was a chip off the old bitch. He was a true believer at eight years old and considered himself a martyr for his beliefs. If the rest of the neighborhood kids weren’t already kicking his ass everyday but Sundays, I would’ve paid them to.
Jedidiah was a slight kid with thick blond hair, eyebrows, and thin girlish lips. His nose was a wee bit elongated and his ears stuck out just enough to make me think of those toy monkeys you wind up. I hate monkeys. They throw shit. Once, at the Kalamak Zoo, my son, Steven, was eating a soft serve when a stupid little chimp threw a glob of steam crap and it splattered the glass in front of Steven’s face. If there weren’t glass there, Steve
n would’ve had a face full of dung. Instead, he just puked his three dollar cone all over my Nikes. They smelled like vanilla for weeks. Goddamned monkeys.
A few weeks back while Louise and my wife, Pattie Jo, gossiped over their hazelnut coffees, Jedihah tells Steven he’d better get dunked in the Pilot River before he goes to hell for not being saved.
I’ll admit it; my kid is fucking gullible. Those “my house is haunted” stories come on TV where people claim spirits open cabinets and their dogs bark at air are true as rain when it comes to my boy.
“Bullshit,” I’d say every time one of them shows come on.
“It isn’t true?” he’d ask all wide-eyed.
“Of course not, Steven,” I say. “Those people just gave their medication to their dogs.”
Steven never believed me.
When Steven started talking about “burn in hell” this, and “eternal damnation” that, I knew I was in trouble.
It wasn’t long before Pattie Jo and Louise got to talking and Steven was begging me to let him go to Jedidiah’s Bible Camp. Bible Camp! Jesus. Now don’t get me wrong, I got no problems with the man. Jesus is A-Okay with me, but I haven’t seen one good bit of anything come out of religion. I can read, and it seems to me that most people just use religion because they’re too damn lazy to figure shit out for themselves.
So my son comes down begging to go to Camp Victory or some shit and tries to persuade me by saying they do rope climbing and swing lines and capture the flag. No mention of the songs, crafts, and being dunked in water. Just like them Christians to only put in what they want people to listen to.
Three days in, Steven called me.
“Dad,” he said, “can you come get me?”
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Why do you want me to come pick you up?” I asked. I had golf set up with Denis from work.
Denis popped into my cubicle at least twice a week asking if I’d like to get a cooler full of Coors and a cart and play eighteen. First of all, I hate people coming into my cubicle. It’s so tight in there that my face is automatically in their crotch. I get a little fucking irritated when their crotch is in my face.
Denis isn’t one of those guys who actually listened to a damn thing I said anyway. Like when I said “Get the fuck out of my private space,” he went right on about his model airplanes. Got a Zero this. Painted my Sipermarine Spitfire that. Like I gave a shit. He’d show them off like kid’s photos.
With Steven gone, I ran out of excuses. No more practices or plays or trips to grandmas.
And now that it was actually happening, I was looking forward to getting out of the house. Louise and Pattie Jo have been discussing the neighbor’s pet rabbit and how it left pellets all over the house for days now. Supposedly it could be used to fill a cat pan, but the girls were skeptical.
“I just want to come home.”
“Why?”
“Dad,” he whispered, “somebody is standing right here.”
I imagined him trying to shield the phone with his hand.
“Who?”
“Will you come get me?”
“Did somebody touch you?”
“What?”
“Did somebody put their hand on you? Fondle you? Touch your goddamned wanker?”
Steven was silent for a minute. I could barely hear him breathing and I imagined him trying to decide to tell me which would lead to his father’s imprisonment or merely lie. A million images ran through my mind like some guy wanting to have a private prayer meeting with Steven. Prayer my ass. I’ve read the news.
“Nobody did that. I just want to come home.”
“You telling me the truth?”
“Are you gonna pick me up or not?”
“What about Jedidiah?”
After a beat, Steven said he’d just see me on Sunday when the camp ended. I told him I’d be there that afternoon.
***
Camp Victory was a bunch of two by four cabins with rotting Masonite siding. Most of them had two windows cut out with a screen stapled up.
A rut-filled gravel road led to a large cinderblock auditorium that guarded the dense forest behind it. It sulked like a bulldog, and the kids had to pay homage there before they could move on to their respective cabins.
I made my way to the auditorium hoping that I could just snag Steven and get the hell out of there, but Jesus was inside.
When I walked through the door, he stopped me in my tracks. He was a big stump-of-wood Jesus. You know those guys who wield chainsaws to dead trees and create bears and eagles and big snakes fighting gorillas? Some crazy fool carved out God’s only son and colored him with Krylon spray paint. Where the hell did I let Pattie Jo send my kid?
A kid crying like a horse in pain opened the door behind me, followed by some teenager with a blue camp leader T-Shirt on. The teen had shoulder length hair and draped one chubby arm over the boy’s shoulder, guiding him past me right towards an office.
The kid looked about Steven’s age. His cheeks were bright red and he had a snot bubble the size of a small chipmunk expanding then deflating with each breath. Tears watered his shirt. The thing that really caught my attention was the way he held up his arm, right hand under left wrist, blood pouring out of an oval-shaped wound that, damn if it didn’t look like somebody tried to eat his fucking forearm.
“Come on,” she said shakily while trying to sound calm. “We’re almost there. It will be all right.”
I followed them to the office, dodging the blood droplets the kid left in his wake.
Inside the office, Steven sat in a cheap metal fold-out chair. He had his hands folded in his lap and stared down at his feet.
As soon as the bleeding kid stumbled in, Steven skirted away from the door. He made it three chairs down and I swear he looked absolutely terrified: eyes huge, mouth agape, body rigid like he was struck by lightning. His eyes followed the kid in and didn’t waver from the door.
The girl steered the bleeding kid into the back room.
“Another one?” a deep voice anxiously intoned. “By Jesus’ name, what has got into these kids?”
“I don’t know, Brother Rip, but this one’s bad. He’ll need stitches for sure.”
“Who did it?”
“Brittany.”
“Wilkerson?” There was a pause then he continued, “I don’t believe Brittany could do that.”
“Brother Rip, I have to tell ya, she looked as surprised as he did.”
“We’ve got to nip this in the bud, yesiree, in the bud right now.”
About that moment, he came out of the back office and caught sight of me standing in the doorway.
He was a pear-shaped fellow with a thick walrus moustache that rested on his pink lips. He looked like one of those guys that always looked like they just got off a treadmill. He turned back toward the girl following him out.
“You didn’t tell me we had a visitor,” he hissed with an illusion of faux-politeness.
The girl looked up at the same time as Steven. Steven practically leapt to my side.
“You must be Steven’s father,” he started, holding out his hand for me. I didn’t take it.
“What the hell happened?”
Brother Rip was taken a little off guard and sheepishly looked back toward the back room from where he had just come.
When he looked back at me, he flubbered, “Sir, I would ask you to remember where we are,” and then smoothed down his thin hair that had started to float u—seemingly on its own accord—making him look like a deformed cockatiel.
Steven stood at my side.
“What kind of camp is this?”
“Some of the kids got out of hand. They started this silly biting thing and it got out of control. I can assure you, the counselors and I will be meeting with the campers at tonight’s prayer meetings to address it.”
“I just want to get Steven’s stuff.”
“We’re very sorry to see little Steven go.” Broth
er Rip smiled trying to ruffle my kid’s hair. “Jedidiah is especially disappointed.”
I met Steven’s eyes, “Let’s go get your shit.”
He grinned while Brother Rip turned another shade of red.
“Brother Rip,” a woman’s voice called from the back room.
“Yes, Sheila?”
“I could use a hand with Devon.”
Brother Rip chewed his pink lip, gave me a half smile, then pointed a thumb toward the back room. “I should go help.”
“I suppose so, she did ask for it,” I replied. Idiot.
“It was nice…er…nice meeting you. You have a blessed day.”
Steven followed me out into the lobby.
“Where’s your cabin?”
Steven led me out a side door and I followed him down another rut-filled gravel road. It was a nice day considering having to spend it at Bible camp instead of the golf course. There was a slight breeze that made the trees whisper. After about ten minutes of following the damned road, I was wheezing.
In the distance to our left there were a series of screams that blended into a single, long bleat, like sheep falling into a ditch. Steven and I both stopped and looked in the direction.
“Sounds like somebody’s having fun. They doing zip line or capture the flag or some shit?”
Steven didn’t nod. Steven didn’t smile. He simply shrugged his shoulders and started toward his cabin.
“I’m right there,” he said pointing while picking up the pace.
“Jesus, boy, slow down. They have golf carts or something? Who the hell is going to carry your damn bag down to the car?”
Steven disappeared into his cabin behind a slam of the screen door and I trudged after him.
I heard another series of wild squeals, a little closer, and told Steven to get his ass in gear. I didn’t feel like getting caught up in the middle of a couple a dozen kids and counselors playing eternal damnation tag. Steven didn’t come out.
Before I even reached the door, I was hit with an ass-rot stench emanating from inside. My stomach curdled and my eyes watered and my initial reaction was to cover my mouth with the inside of my arm.
“What in the all-loving-God is that stench?”
Chivalry Is Dead Page 12
