Cindy went to the kitchen sink, shoving aside the curtains and finding only a fire extinguisher under it. She picked it up anyway, figuring it might be useful. Though Judy appeared to be paralyzed, Whit followed Cindy over and selected a knife from a kitchen drawer, holding it out for Cindy’s approval.
“There are four of them,” she said. “Use your head.”
Whit looked around, saw a frying pan and picked that up instead. Cindy thought it was a slight improvement, but didn’t have time to say as such before a voice came calling through the front door as the brass bell out on the porch began ringing maniacally – clang... clang... clang...
“Cindy! Get your sweet tits out here, bitch!” yelled David, sounding like he was half-kidding. “Come on, baby! We’ve been out here doing your job for you! Time to pay the piper.”
Cindy hesitated for only a second before walking straight over to the door and swinging it wide. She surprised David, who was standing in the doorway and soon found himself staring down the barrel of the fire extinguisher hose she held in her hand. Before he could move, she raised the hose and blasted him and the three other boys directly in the face with retardant.
“Fuuuuck!!” screamed David, staggering backwards. He grabbed onto Peter, but he was flailing around, too, so they tumbled to the ground together.
Troy was the first to sweep the stinging retardant out of his eyes and looked up at Cindy, seeing the glowing red eyes of a demon staring right back at him.
“They got you, too, huh?”
“What are you talking about?” Cindy barked, but Troy could see other words being formed by her mouth. He smiled a nasty little grin, then charged up the steps towards her.
Cindy wheeled back with the extinguisher, ready to bash him in the face, but Troy’s broken foot buckled at the last minute and his tackle went low, right under the arc of the swinging metal canister.
“Oof!” cried Cindy as Troy caught her at knee-level, driving her through the doorway and onto the wood floor. He immediately he pounced on top of her, pinning her limbs.
“Fuck you, bitch!” Troy said, giving her scrunched face a lick. “Gonna burn now!”
Cindy, now in full panic mode, twisted around looking for Whit, seeing him standing nearby, frozen in place.
“Hit him! Now!” she cried.
But Whit couldn’t move. He just stared at Troy as the boy opened his mouth and moved it towards Cindy’s face, as if planning to bite it off.
“Help me!!” Cindy screamed, still trying to lift the extinguisher, but Troy’s legs were just too heavy against her arms.
“Raaaaaaah!!”
Everyone turned as Judy suddenly appeared from out of nowhere, carrying the kitchen knife and running straight for Troy. Before he could raise an arm, she’d stabbed the blade directly into his throat.
Blood erupting from the wound and splashing down onto Cindy’s face, Troy clawed at his neck. Judy ripped the knife out of his throat and drove it back down into Troy’s upturned face, entering just under his eye. Howling in pain, the knife still protruding from his head, Troy fell off of Cindy and flopped onto his side.
Judy stared at this in horror, shocked at her own actions. She was just turning a look of triumph towards Cindy when her face went ashen and she grunted.
“Guuuh...”
Judy looked down and saw a sharp, broken wooden post from the cabin’s porch being jammed through her stomach, having been stabbed in from behind by David. As the post wriggled around inside the wound, it wound squirted even more blood onto the already blood-soaked Cindy, who scrambled to her feet and tried to free the other counselor from the jutting spear.
“Stupid bitch,” David said, moving around the impaled counselor to shove Cindy away. He then raised his foot and planted it on Judy’s posterior, giving her a sharp kick that sent Judy’s body vaulting forward, sprawling to the floor like a ragdoll with post still stabbed through her torso.
David turned his attention to Cindy and Whit, his arms covered in blood all the way to his elbows.
“You ready to make this easy?” he asked, as casually as someone might ask for directions. “I mean, you’ve seen the alternative.”
Cindy responded by reaching down and yanking the knife out of Troy’s face. She took three quick steps towards David only to have him grab and twist her arm around until she dropped the blade. As she cried out in pain, David picked her up and half-shoved, half-threw her over the coffee table and onto the sofa.
When she landed, her legs were outstretched and her shorts hiked up a little. David stared down at her long, tanned legs.
“We’ve been dancing around this all day,” he said, moving over to her.
“Whit!” Cindy screamed, furious at the other counselor’s inaction. “Do something!”
Whit stared at her in horror, still unable to move. He’d gone white as a sheet and she could tell that he’d actually urinated in his pants as the front of his shorts were wet and there seemed to be liquid dribbling down his thighs.
“Whiiiitt!” Jeffrey mocked, coming into the cabin now, followed by Peter. The linebacker picked up the knife David had wrested out of Cindy’s hand and moved over to Whit, holding it in front of him.
“Whiiiiit!!!” he said again, curling his lips in a twisted grin.
Whit started to smile back and Jeffrey immediately drove the knife into his chest, screaming the name again into his victim’s face. “Whiiiiit!!!”
As blood misted out of his lung, Whit dropped to his knees, holding the hilt of the knife as Jeffrey laughed. David glanced over, shaking his head.
“You’re such a pussy, Whiiiiit!” he said, mimicking Jeffrey’s voice.
When David looked back down at Cindy, her eyes were ablaze with anger.
“I told you, you were with us or against us,” he teased, this time softly as he leaned down and roughly grabbed the back of her shorts.
That’s when Peter’s head exploded.
Or, at least, that’s what it looked like had happened. A baseball bat had struck it perfectly at the back of the skull, causing such an instant build-up of pressure that parietal bone splintered through the scalp and the boy’s eyes popped directly out of their sockets like in a cartoon.
Peter immediately hit the ground and the bat swung again, a powerful, determined swing, but this time aimed downwards and crushed whatever was left of his skull. The holder of the bat, a fifteen year-old named Ian-something that Cindy hadn’t given much thought to over the years, walked in followed by two other kids that seemed to have raided the sports equipment locker for this very purpose.
“Hey, dickhead, what’s with the bat?” slurred Jeffrey, standing over Whit’s corpse, obviously unaware how dire his situation had just become.
Without a word, Ian swung the bat again, this time aimed at Jeffrey’s head, though it had the exact opposite effect on his head from Peter’s. Instead of blood and popped eyeballs, there was only a sick, echoing “thock!” that sent Jeffrey, stunned and concussed, to the ground. Ian nodded to his two friends who walked over, pulled out a broken ice skate and slit Jeffrey’s throat with the blade.
David stared at Ian’s eyes, but saw no sign of red there. He quickly shook his head, as if meaning to correct a simple clerical error.
“No, no – we’re on the same side, man,” David explained. “These are demons.”
Thock!
The bat smacked into the side of David’s head, sending him smashing against the window behind the sofa, shattering the pane. With a viciousness he hadn’t shown with Jeffrey or Peter, Ian bashed away at David’s torso with four or five more thwacks and then yanked the football hero’s body back off the sofa, where it crumpled onto the floor. Ian nodded to his two friends a second time and they walked over to cut David’s throat as well. Despite the savagery of Ian’s attack resulting in countless broken bones and internal damage, David was obviously still alive and gurgled blood as they did so.
“Demons, man...,” he whispered as he died.
&
nbsp; Cindy rolled over on the sofa and stared over at Ian in surprise. The boy’s blank expression hadn’t changed through the entire affair.
“You’re welcome,” he said, exiting the cabin, followed by his two friends.
Mark and Phil had watched this all from the windows of Cabin 2.
They’d seen the initial fight on the beach, of course, even the attack on Penny, who Mark immediately admitted to Phil that he’d once had a crush on. Then, they saw Faith running towards the melee, only to be grabbed back by Maia, which caused Phil to breathe easier, though he hadn’t made a move towards the door himself. Other kids had exited the cabin, taking nervous, curious steps towards the center of camp as if planning to take on the David themselves, only to scurry back when spotted.
It was when David had turned his attention towards the administrator’s cabin that Ian Hester rose from where he was watching. Ian was a semi-gothy stoner-type who had always told anyone who’d listen that he planned to go into the Navy and hopefully even the SEALs when he graduated. Ian looked around at the handful of other campers taking refuge in the darkness of Cabin 2 and sneered.
“Nobody’s going to do anything?” he said, disgusted.
He nodded to a couple of his friends and they slipped out a side door, making their way over to the sports equipment shed.
“They’re fucking dead,” another camper said, though Phil couldn’t tell who it was.
Outside, Troy led the attack into the administrator’s cabin and though everyone kind of half-cheered when they saw Ian moving stealthily up to Peter with a baseball bat, they all winced when he plowed it in to the kid’s head. Still, there was some elation. A point for their team.
“Christ,” grunted Mark, turning away. “He’s the psycho I always figured for ‘Most Likely to Columbine Our School.’ Guess I was kind of half-right. Glad now.”
Phil kept starring through the window, unable to take his eyes off the particularly grizzly train wreck unfolding before his eyes and the rest of his body went along with it.
When Ian and the others finally emerged victorious from the cabin, Phil managed to look over at Mark.
“Tomorrow morning, first light – with Faith or without her,” he said, hoarse. “Okay?”
Mark looked back at him and nodded.
“Oh, you betcha.”
At the exact moment of David’s death, Faith was taking her first step into the lake, barely troubling the water as she held her clothes and supplies up in a garbage bag over her head. She and Maia, at the last moment, had decided to swim out to the diving platform naked, bringing towels in the bags as the sun was now completely down and they wouldn’t be able to dry out in the sun anymore. This meant swimming one-handed, which was initially difficult, but Faith got the hang of it after a few seconds and was able to push ahead into the lake.
“You okay?” she called back to Maia, who seemed to be having trouble keeping up.
“I’ve got it,” Maia replied, then made a big effort to prove it by launching herself past Faith, splashing her with water as she went.
“Oh, you’re going to get it,” Faith said, accelerating.
The two continued this merry back-and-forth as they left the shore behind them, laughing and splashing all the way to the diving platform. It took a good twenty minutes to reach it, the pair having underestimated the strength of the waves at night.
Faith got there first, tossing her bag up onto the planks and climbing out of the lake, happy to have won the de facto race.
“Tada!” she cried, dancing around in a circle, wrapped in darkness.
Maia, feigning annoyance, tossed her own bag onto the platform and climbed up, taking a seat on the edge.
“At least it’s still a little warm out,” she said, pouting a bit.
“Oh, that’s what you noticed? Not the fact that I beat you?” teased Faith. “Because, if you didn’t notice, perhaps I should remind you, I did! Me. Better swimmer. Faith over Maia. Maia loses to Faith. Big time.”
“Better one-handed swimmer,” Maia corrected, feigning annoyance. “Not the same thing. You’ve won only the hollowest of victories.”
“Oh, bull,” Faith laughed, opening her bag and removing her beach towel.
The girls dried off, bumping into each other as they did, so small was the platform. It got worse when they tried to put on their clothes, Faith almost knocking Maia into the lake at one point.
“Oh, sorry!” she cried, grabbing for her friends arm again.
“Keep that up and you’ll be right back in the lake,” Maia growled, giving Faith her most threatening glare.
Instead of a chuckle or reply, she found Faith staring at her again, illuminated only by moonlight. This time, rather than wait around, Maia reached forward and pulled Faith towards her, kissing her squarely on the lips.
Maia had never considered herself a lesbian, didn’t even really know what that meant. So when she kissed Faith, she waited for when it was going to start feeling weird, but it never did. When Faith kissed her back, putting her arms around her and drawing her close, she thought she’d never felt anything more right in her life. They didn’t say a word for the next half hour or so as they continued kissing, their sense of urgency rising and falling with every breath.
By the time the moon reached its apex, they had fallen asleep, wrapped in each other’s arms as the water gently lapped against the platform.
VIII
On Wednesday morning, Father Billy awoke with the sunrise out on the forest floor. It was a beautiful summer day, sun streaming through the tree canopy, a blue, cloudless sky high above. The smells of the lush forest floor permeated his nose and made him inhale deeply, enjoying their rapturous scent.
His mind wandered back to reality and he kind of half-wondered what was going on back in the camp. One scenario that he imagined was that David and the others he’d drugged had managed to kill everybody and then overdosed and died themselves, but that didn’t seem very likely. That said, he figured they’d done at least some of the work for him. How much, well, that was still a mystery.
He was hungry, so he decided to head back to camp, but realized that he still had on one of the black Nomex suits and the gloves. His facial bandages were strewn all around him as if he’d tried to tear them off in his sleep, which he figured wasn’t too far from the truth. He felt around in his pants pockets and was relieved to discover all three of the nails in case he ran into anyone.
That’s when he turned and saw Mark and Phil standing a few feet away from him, both wearing their backpacks, obviously on their way out of the camp. They were just staring at him, both with quizzical looks on their faces and, for a moment, Father Billy wondered if they were actually there or were some kind of hallucination.
“Hey, Father Billy,” Mark said, trying to sound blasé. “What’s new?”
Father Billy considered nodding a “good morning” and letting them pass unmolested only to catch up with them a few minutes later, but then he looked down and saw that his Nomex suit and gloves were still covered in the blood of Amy, Bret, Shane and Paula. He looked back up to the boys and a long silence passed between them. But then, Father Billy started eyeing Phil peculiarly, as if noticing something odd.
“What?” asked Phil.
“Why are you all wet?” Father Billy inquired.
Phil sighed.
When Phil had woken up that morning, Cabin 2 was completely empty. For a moment, he thought he was in another dream or, perhaps, dead and now haunting the camp, which he thought would suck. But then, he had gone to a window and saw that the surviving campers, t-shirts or towels tied around their faces, were helping Cindy pick up the bodies of the dead from the night before and carry them into Cabin 4. It was a gruesome sight, lifeless limbs and grotesque, ragged wounds, but Phil saw Mark among the detail and realized that he should have been taking part.
“What’s going on?” Phil said to Mark, who was helping one of Ian’s throat-slashing accomplices heft a body into the “corpse cabin.”
It actually took Phil a moment to recognize the body as Leilani.
“Jesus...”
“Yeah,” said Mark. “There’s like, twenty-four dead bodies. It’s like Jonestown.”
“Jonestown?” asked the boy holding Leilani’s feet.
“Mass cult suicide,” Mark replied, matter-of-factly. “Seventies. It was religious lunatics there, too.”
The boy nodded, pretending he understood, as he and Mark lifted Leilani past the steps and into Cabin 4. The moment Phil walked inside behind them, the smell of death hit him like a freight train and he knew why everyone had their mouths covered. He had to fight to keep from vomiting right there amongst the dead
“Aw, Christ,” he said, turning around, only to bump into a couple more people bringing in the body of Penny Mendenhall. “Sorry.”
When the doorway was clear again, Phil quickly exited out into the yard, walking a few feet away from the cabin to try and inhale some fresh air. Before, the deaths had been offstage, up the road or in the woods. Seeing the actual bodies reminded Phil of when he’d glimpsed a motorcycle accident he’d seen on the highway late one night when being driven back from a band competition in Austin.
He’d heard dead bodies described as ‘meat,’ but to Phil’s eyes, they looked like broken robots, not anything from the butcher counter. Eyes popped out, too-long-to-really-be-human tongues lolling over bottom lips, fluids leaking out. They needed repair, not burial and then they’d be right back on their feet. This thought made Phil realize that that was how he felt about most of these kids when they were alive, too.
This feeling elated Phil and he knew why. He was one of the living, a survivor, not the perished, and it made him feel good. He took a few more deep breaths and was glad that he didn’t have to actually touch any of the bodies.
“Hey.”
He turned and saw Mark walking up to him, wiping his blood-smeared hands in the grass to clean them as he went, doing the same with limited effect to his shoes.
Sunday Billy Sunday Page 14
