Rise of the Mudmen

by Thompson, James FW

  “I guess,” Alex nodded.

  “Do you like her?” David asked, with a sideways glance.

  “What?” Alex said, shocked—not so much at what David said, but at how nervous the question made him feel. He was pretty sure he didn’t like Kaitlyn. He wasn’t even sure if they were still fighting. “No,” he said, brushing it off, though he felt his face getting warmer. “Of course not.”

  David smirked, as he picked up the pumpkin that Alex would hope to claim for himself. It had a flat back, and a skinny top. Lots of character. He held out his own bag, hoping that David would just hand it over.

  David, however, was looking at something over Alex’s shoulder.

  He was about to turn; then froze where he was.

  “Whatcha doin’, Alec?” a voice said from behind him.

  Alex almost dropped the bag of pumpkins. His hands grew slippery, and he felt the recent red in his face quickly wash away. He knew that voice. No! Lots of people have the same voice. He turned, hoping that he was mistaken.

  Standing on the curb, between him and the community centre, with a filthy, bloody hockey stick slung over his shoulder, was Jared Flemming.

  His face wore the same smile it did every time he had shoved Alex in the hallway at school.

  “What do you want to do, Alex?” Nicole asked, looking out the back window. “We can’t just kick him out.”

  “Why not?” Alex blurted, forgetting that he was trying to keep his voice down.

  “Because,” Nicole replied, facing him, “he would die out there.”

  “Have you heard his story?” Alex said, now straining to whisper, despite his anger. “He said he took on a whole bunch of them already after leaving a bomb shelter!” He paused. “Why did he leave the bomb shelter anyway? Who even has a bomb shelter?”

  “He said it was to find more food,” Nicole answered with a sigh.

  “But ... bomb shelters have enough food for weeks! For years! He’s so dumb!” He took Nicole’s place at the window. “He’s probably lying about it.”

  “Of course he’s lying about it!” Nicole agreed. “Now who’s being dumb?”

  Alex looked at her, resentfully.

  Nicole must have sensed how upset he was about Jared. “He’s just a liar. He lies. He always has. Makes him ... I dunno ... feel important or something. If he wants to tell us that he killed a bunch of mudmen on his own with a hockey stick, then let him. No one believes him. No one here is that stupid.”

  Alex pointed down the hall. “David and Kaitlyn and Hannah and Ryan are down there listening to him go on and on and on right now! They’re ... they’re ...”

  “Enraptured?”

  “Yeah,” Alex said, looking back to the window. “They’re enraptured with every word he says!”

  “No,” Nicole said. “They’re not. They’re not that stupid. And he’s not that charming. Or smart enough to fool anyone.”

  Alex looked at Nicole, confused. He had never heard the word ‘charming’ used to describe Jared Flemming before. “He’s not charming!”

  “Of course he is,” Nicole said. “It’s how he gets away with stuff and why everyone likes him.”

  “Nobody likes him!” Alex growled.

  “You don’t like him,” she said calmly, “I don’t like him. I’m sure ... no, I know there’s a lot of people who don’t like him. But when he’s in a crowd, like at school or whatever, he can win them over. It’s what he does.”

  Alex grew angry that Nicole could compliment his hated enemy. The trouble was: she was right. Everyone was always on Jared’s side and he could talk his way out of—or into—anything he wanted. He should have been suspended or even expelled for some of the things he had pulled at school, but instead he would just get a note to take home to his parents. He threw them away as soon as he’d get back to class—in front of everyone, for all to see—and that would be the end of it. He was charming, and Alex hated him for it.

  Soon he’ll charm everyone here, Alex thought. Then he’ll convince them to kick ME out. Or worse! He might—

  “But, like I said,” Nicole continued, “no one here is stupid enough to fall for his crap, so it won’t exactly be a problem, will it?”

  KAITLYN

  Kaitlyn and Hannah sat listening to Jared tell his story. Hannah started to doze off, and Kaitlyn was smoothing the sleepy girl’s hair into braids.

  David took in every word, apparently enraptured.

  “There was probably fifty of them—actually it was probably like a hundred of them, I didn’t really have time to count—but I had to bust through. I had to get back to my bomb shelter before those guys got back there—”

  “How would the mudmen get into the bomb shelter?” Kaitlyn asked. Though she wasn’t really paying much attention, she enjoyed poking holes in his story when she saw the opportunity.

  “Not the mudmen—which is a stupid name, by the way. They’re not all mud, and they’re not all men. There’s like kids, and girls and stuff too.” Jared sneered at her.

  “The guy with the leather jacket?” David asked.

  Though Kaitlyn had only known David for a very short period of time, she’d thought was smarter than this BS story. Evidently not.

  “Yeah,” Jared said, still staring at Kaitlyn, “the guy with the leather jacket. Psycho Steve. And his buddies. A bunch of them, too. They could break in and like, kill my family or beat them up or something. People are doing pretty mean things to other people out there.”

  Kaitlyn believed him about the other people, breaking into people’s houses, hurting others, maybe even killing them for their food or for a place to stay or just because they were bad. She mostly believed it because when Jared had said it, it sounded like he could do it himself.

  “But yeah,” Jared said, getting back to his story and his enthralled audience of one. “I had to deal with these guys all around me. The dead guys. So I looked around, and there was all kinds of stuff in the garage that I was right in front of, so I smashed out a window and busted in. Those things were right behind me, but I was safe. There was a chainsaw, and a bat, and some golf clubs, and a machete, and a rifle. I almost took the rifle, but I find they’re not super reliable all the time. They stick, and reloading them is a pain in the ass. Plus, I knew what I was looking for and it’s none of that stuff. It’s this.” He hefted the hockey stick that he hadn’t put down since they first saw him outside. “Hockey sticks are good for this kinda thing. My uncle in Toronto designs them, and one of the things they do to test ‘em is just bang them off the wall, or off the ground and stuff to see if they’ll break. But they don’t. That’s what they’re designed to do.

  “I pick it up and give it a few test swings, and I’m like ‘Yup, this’ll do.’ Then I rush back outside and just start chopping into them. Boom! Boom! Vwip! I’m taking heads off all over the place! But, like, it’s not stopping them! They’re still coming at me and moving and stuff even without heads! So I just start chopping them into a smaller pieces and then, the friggin’ pieces start coming after me! There was a hand that punched me and it didn’t even have an arm attached to it! So, I was like ‘fuck this,’ and took off after I made sure they couldn’t follow me too quick or something.”

  He paused.

  David inched forward, like a puppy being offered a treat. “When was that?”

  Jared shrugged. “I dunno ... two days ago, I guess. You lose track of time out there.”

  “What did you do after that?”

  “I just wandered around, fighting off gangs and those dead guys and stuff. I dunno.”

  “Why didn’t you go back to the bomb shelter?” Nicole asked from the doorway.

  Jared glared at her from his seat on the floor. “Because, I was supposed to get food, and I couldn’t find any. I couldn’t just go back with nothing!”

  “You looked in all the houses, and couldn’t find anything?” she asked.

  Kaitlyn grinned, glad that someone else was challenging Jared’s story. He glanced at her
. She quickly hid her smile as his cold eyes passed over her.

  “I didn’t want to break into people’s houses!”

  “But you broke into a garage?”

  He hesitated. “That was different. That was life or death!” He cut her off before she got a chance to ask more questions. “I mean, look at you guys!” He pointed at Alex, who shied back into the hallway. “Alec was out gathering fuckin’ pumpkins for you guys to eat! So I guess you got the same luck, huh?”

  “The pumpkins are for Halloween,” Hannah said sleepily.

  Jared stared at the little girl, then into each of the faces around him. “Halloween? That’s retarded. That’s seriously retarded. You guys are doing Halloween? And you’re gonna carve pumpkins like a bunch of little kids? What is wrong with you? Are you fucking stupid or something?”

  No one said anything. Pumpkins and Halloween had seemed so logical before. Now that Jared questioned it, they did the same.

  “Not really,” David said. “I mean, no. We’re not ... f-ing stupid. We weren’t all gonna carve pumpkins. They were for the girls.”

  “Right,” said Nicole, glaring at her little brother. “And it was up to the big, strong boys to get them for us. We can’t get them on our own because we’re girls and it’s scary outside.”

  David said nothing as he looked back at her.

  “Whatever,” Jared said, stretching. “Point is, you guys got no food either, so we’re all screwed anyway.”

  “No,” David said. “We’ve got some food.”

  Nicole sighed loudly and walked out of the room, nearly bowling Alex over as she went.

  “Really?” Jared asked. He looked genuinely shocked. For the briefest moment Kaitlyn noticed he looked like a normal kid. It didn’t last. He grinned “Well then, let’s eat, boys!” He slammed his hand down on David’s shoulder and hauled him to his feet.

  David winced at the pressure that Jared applied, but then he grinned.

  Looking at David’s goofy grin, Kaitlyn felt bad for him. He’s not stupid. He’s just not used to having people like him. She shook her head, not only at David, but at the memory of herself doing stupid things because she thought a boy might like her. She couldn’t help thinking about Patrick Taylor; how she had ignored her responsibility and he got hurt. She wondered if she’d ever get the chance to apologize. If he was still out there somewhere, running.

  ALEX

  Alex couldn’t get out of the way fast enough this time, or perhaps it wouldn’t have made a difference if he had moved or not. Jared slammed his shoulder into his as he passed by. “Sorry, Alec. Didn’t see ya there.” He flashed him a quick smile. “Lunch time!”

  Alex almost went after them. He was sure that Jared would rummage through all of their food and supplies, make a mess, break important things and eat half of it. He stopped himself. Maybe if they just gave him some food—even half the food, he didn’t care; it would be worth it—then Jared would leave. Go back to his so-called bomb shelter. Maybe it did exist, and he would take the food that he came looking for, and then he would leave.

  He didn’t.

  He filled up on bread, chips, and peanut butter, shovelling them in by the handful. As if he hadn’t eaten for days.

  Then, he fell asleep in the bedroom in the afternoon and slept through the rest of the day. No amount of noise disturbed him—he didn’t even stir. If he hadn’t eaten in days, he hadn’t slept in a week.

  Throughout the afternoon, most of them ignored Jared. David checked on him periodically, probably hoping he would be awake, but otherwise continued working on his new device. He had started plans for tools that would help them remove the dead-dead mudmen from the pikes without having to get too close to them. Kaitlyn and Hannah played with the board games they had found. Nicole joined them for most of a game of Monopoly, but otherwise spent the afternoon reorganizing the supplies room after Jared had made a complete mess of it.

  Alex, however, watched Jared for hours.

  At first, he made it look like he was doing other things in the room: talking to Ryan, looking for the cat, reorganizing the mats and blankets in the room, making it clear that there was room for six people to sleep there—not seven—and other equally pointless, made-up tasks. After nearly an hour, he sat in the corner with David’s book on his lap. Occasionally, he would read the same sentence, but otherwise his eyes were locked on Jared. After a short period of that, the book slipped off his lap and he didn’t even notice. He just waited.

  He wasn’t waiting to get the courage to tell Jared to leave, or for someone else to come in and do that either; he knew no one would. He thought David might even fight to keep him there if someone did say something. He wasn’t waiting for him to wake up, pack up some food and be on his way, back to his bomb shelter and waiting family, especially since he knew it was a lie.

  He was waiting for Jared to screw up. To screw up so badly that no one could question kicking him out. To do something that no amount of charm or excuses or physical strength would undo. Alex’s problem was that he couldn’t think of anything that would be so horrible that they would force someone out with the mudmen.

  “How’s the book?” Kaitlyn asked from the doorway.

  “What?” Alex hit his head off the wall behind him, surprised to hear a sound that wasn’t Jared’s breathing. He looked at Kaitlyn, then at the book on the floor. “Oh. Um ...” he flipped through its pages. “It’s fine, I guess.”

  Kaitlyn smiled at him. She giggled a bit at seeing him so clearly flustered. “I don’t think he’ll be a problem,” she whispered, nodding at Jared.

  “I’m not worried about him!” Alex lied.

  “Okay,” Kaitlyn said, “I didn’t say that you were. Just, yeah, Nicole said that you were not happy about him being here, but—”

  “Well, Nicole needs to mind her own business! And so should you!” He opened the book to a random page and pretended to read.

  Kaitlyn took a step closer to him. “I was going to say that I don’t really like him being here either.”

  “Oh,” Alex said, looking back up at her. “Good. Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome. But I’m not just being nice.” She leaned in, as if with a secret. “He makes me feel ... weird, you know?”

  Alex looked at her quizzically. She had certainly gotten his attention.

  “Like ... like he might do something?” she said, clearly unsure of what exactly she meant.

  Alex nodded, then looked back at Jared as he slept.

  “Also,” Kaitlyn said, calling his attention back to her, “you should talk to Nicole about him. You might learn something. Like, I’m not that worried about him outsmarting any of us anymore.” Again, she caught his attention. She grinned at him.

  “Why? What did she say?”

  Her grin grew wider as she leaned in closer. She kept her eyes on Jared, making sure he wasn’t really awake. “He failed,” she whispered.

  Alex’s grin quickly grew larger than hers.

  “Grade 2!” she added.

  They burst out laughing, not at all worried about waking Jared.

  “How can you even fail Grade 2?” Alex asked, exasperated and excited by the new piece of information. “Did he forget to bring stuff for Show and Tell every day?”

  “I dunno,” Kaitlyn replied, “but he did!”

  Alex relaxed as he looked at Jared. He wasn’t as threatening as he had seemed earlier; as he had seemed every day of Alex’s life up to that very moment.

  “Don’t worry,” Kaitlyn said, walking away. “We’re all on your side.”

  Alex smiled back at her and then watched her walk down the hall to play games with Hannah at the top of the stairs. My side, he thought. All on my side. None on his.

  DAY 9

  ALEX

  The next day Alex began to suspect, much to his dismay, that he’d been wrong. He thought that if he had asked the rest of the group, they would have been on Jared’s side after all.

  Jared was being helpful. Far more hel
pful than Alex had been the entire time he had been there.

  He helped ration out breakfast, helped David with the final construction of his SPLICER!, and was almost ready to help him move it downstairs. Now he was working with Nicole on something.

  He’s charming them, Alex thought as he watched Jared discuss further food runs with Nicole. Crap! He’s never gonna screw up bad enough!

  “Hey, Alec!” Jared called to him. “Come on in here! We need to talk to you.”

  Alex was already getting sick being bossed around by the same jerk who had forced him into so many embarrassing and painful situations in the past.

  “We’re making up a list of jobs,” Nicole said, as he walked into the supply room. He noticed that someone—probably stupid Jared—had set up a folding table, which they stood behind.

  “What do you mean ‘list of jobs’?” Alex asked, making the situation seem far more unreasonable than it actually was. “We don’t have jobs! Whenever something needs to get done, people just say they’ll do it, then they do it! That’s the system that we,” indicating only himself and Nicole, “have been using the whole time. It works.”

  Jared stared at him, not revealing any emotion. “Yes Alec, but—”

  “Alex.”

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “My name is Alex.”

  Jared looked back at him, then at Nicole, then back at Alex. His expression was almost comical, as if he was joking, but Alex did not find it funny. “Was I not saying ‘Alex’? I’m so sorry, Alec-suh.”

  Alex fumed, mostly because Nicole didn’t seem to notice Jared pushing his buttons.

  “Anyway, Alec-suh, yeah, we’re making a list of jobs and, you know, trying to make everything more efficient. Make better use of our time and resources. Do you understand, Alec-suh?”

  Alex stared, certain that his face was growing redder. He looked to Nicole for some kind of reaction, but she was busy with the lists and still didn’t notice what was happening.

  “For example,” Jared continued, “Nicole is in charge of things like making schedules and lists and checking that there’s enough food and stuff like that. It’s an important job, right, Nicole?”