Cemetery Closing

by Jeff Strand

  “So what you’re telling me is that there were important clues on the back of the treasure map, and you’re the only one here who knows what they say. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. We won’t finish killing you then. But that does make Roger redundant.”

  “No,” I said. “Henrietta can’t walk by herself. Unless one of you wants to carry her, we need Roger to help her.”

  “Why can’t you do it?” asked Jasper.

  “I have to navigate. I can’t keep us going in the right direction if I’m distracted.”

  Jasper shook his head. “No. No, no, no. I am so sick of this. I’m sick of the lying and the schemes and the ‘Oh, you can’t kill me because you need me for this!’ and the ‘Oh, you can’t kill me because you need me for that!’ over and over! I can’t take it anymore! I’m done! I’m done with all of you!”

  He slashed his machete in the air three times in a “Z” pattern, like he was Zorro combined with Jason Voorhees.

  “You hear me? Done! I’m not playing any more of your games! I can’t take any more of this! I’ll find the goddamn treasure myself if I have to crawl through every inch of this continent on my hands and knees!”

  He swung the machete a few more times, then let out a scream of rage.

  “You’re dead,” he said, pointing the machete at Henrietta. “Dead. All three of you are dead. I don’t need you. I’m done. It’s over. Fuck you.”

  He hoisted the machete over his head, then stomped his way over to Henrietta.

  Steve shot him in the gut.

  Jasper dropped the machete. He touched his stomach and then looked at his bloody finger. “What the shit?” he asked.

  “Sorry,” said Steve. “But I’m not letting you turn this whole trip into a waste of time.”

  Jasper’s face contorted with anger. He stumbled toward Steve, arms extended as if to strangle him. Then he seemed to decide that Steve was too dangerous of a foe, but he wanted to attack somebody, so he abruptly changed direction and went after me.

  He tackled me, and we both fell into the pond.

  He started punching me while screaming obscenities. The punches hurt, but weren’t landing hard enough to actually injure me. I had to admire his ability to maintain this level of energy right after being gut-shot, but I wanted him to knock it off.

  I punched him in the face. He let out a shriek that would have shattered every piece of glass for a one-mile radius, had any glass been around. I’d had a lot of encounters with a lot of homicidal maniacs, but I’d never seen anybody with quite the level of “crazy eyes” that Jasper had right now.

  I really didn’t need to beat him this fight. I just needed to get away from him. Presumably he’d bleed out on his own.

  He scooped up a handful of pond muck and tried to shove it into my mouth. “Eat it!” he screamed. “Eat it! Choke on it!”

  I quickly glanced over at the shore. Henrietta was still on the ground. Roger stood there helplessly as Steve pointed a gun to his head. Steve was not actually laughing but he did seem to be entertained by the fight that was happening in front of him.

  I tried to scoot away from Jasper but he kept pushing the slimy mud against my mouth. Wasn’t he in agony? Wasn’t getting shot in the gut supposed to be some of the worst pain you could experience?

  Jasper screamed something at me that I couldn’t understand as he continued trying to force-feed me the muck. I grabbed a handful myself and splattered it into his face. I had more success, since his mouth was open. He coughed and spat it out as I resumed my efforts to get the hell away from the gentleman who was having a complete mental breakdown.

  He grabbed my foot and yanked me back over to him. Then he slammed me down against the bottom of the pond. It wasn’t deep here, but since I was lying flat on my back it was now over my head.

  I tried to get free of him.

  Couldn’t.

  Adrenaline must have been surging through his body. No matter how much I flailed with my arms and legs, I couldn’t break his grip. And I hadn’t taken a nice deep breath before I went under.

  I began to panic.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I was not going to die in a foot and a half of pond water. I was perfectly willing to concede that I might die today, but I rejected the idea of it happening right now, under these particular circumstances. Screw that.

  I punched him in the stomach. The very same stomach that currently had a bullet lodged somewhere inside of it.

  His scream was muffled because I was underwater, which meant that instead of it being twice the volume of a standard human scream, it sounded normal.

  I managed to pull away and get my head above water. I gasped for breath.

  Jasper had his arms crossed over his belly. I’d hoped to see intestines rapidly spooling out, but thus far his internal organs seemed to be properly contained. Either way, as I stood up, I figured this had to be the end of our fight.

  He charged at me again.

  Had this son of a bitch smuggled some PCP on the trip with him? How the hell was he not in the fetal position right now?

  He moved way too fast. Tackled me again. We splashed into the water once more, and then the crazy bastard bit me on the shoulder. I mean hard, like he was trying to tear out a chunk of flesh and emulate the villagers. He didn’t actually succeed because I punched him in the ear, which hopefully burst his eardrum, and he released his grip.

  Jasper shouted at me again, but by now he was just speaking in tongues. His eyes indicated an even greater detachment from reality. If I lived through this, I honestly was going to have nightmares about this guy.

  He grabbed my arm and pulled me. I really should have been able to yank my arm away, or even pull him in the direction of my choosing, but instead he successfully dragged me through the water for about twenty feet. I would’ve found it embarrassing if I weren’t so concerned about getting killed.

  He pulled me to the perimeter of the ruins. (If he’d dragged me straight there, it would’ve been less than twenty feet, but he didn’t take the most efficient route.) I kept trying to tug my arm away but he had the grip of a cyborg.

  I was pretty sure that his intention was to bash my skull against the jagged stone until such time that I was deceased.

  Well, you know what? Two of us could play at the game of going berserk. I let out my own incoherent battle cry, and used my free arm to slam his arm against the stone.

  I couldn’t hear the bone break over the sound of my own voice, but it definitely happened.

  Jasper’s reaction was not subdued.

  He spat in my face and then, like an angry toddler, began to stomp toward the shore.

  I really didn’t want to go after him. I wanted him to bleed out from his stomach wound and leave me alone. The downside was that even if he did just keel over, we still had the Steve problem to contend with.

  Hopefully Steve would just shoot him again.

  Steve kept his gun pointed at Roger as Jasper got closer, but he looked ready to turn the weapon on his boss if the need arose. Henrietta was still on the ground, and I couldn’t tell from here how bad the blood loss was.

  Jasper walked out of the pond, still stomping. He went over to his machete, picked it up, then turned around and stormed right back into the pond. His broken arm flopped around with each step.

  I tried to find a loose piece of rock to fling at him, but couldn’t find one, so instead I scooped up a handful of pond muck and threw it at him. I missed. I mean, I really missed. Steve let out a snort of laughter.

  I grabbed some more and threw it. This time a little bit of it got on Jasper, but it did not harm him or slow him down.

  He began to slash at the air again.

  Seriously, why the hell were his intestines still contained within his torso?

  I didn’t want to be chased around the pond by a deranged coked-up (seemingly) machete-wielding madman, so I decided that I was going to have to face this threat directly. I grabbed one
more handful of the muck and then charged at him.

  For this crappy plan to succeed, all I needed to do was not get my head chopped off before I could wrench the machete out of his grip. If he chopped off my head, I’d have to call the plan an unequivocal failure, but in a scenario where I had the machete and he was empty-handed, I’d feel much better about my chances of surviving the next couple of minutes.

  Jasper swung the machete at me and missed.

  This was because he swung it when I was still a couple of feet out of range.

  He swung it again and struck me in the side. This wouldn’t have chopped me in half, but the blade might have gone in a few inches if he hadn’t struck me with the dull edge. My big advantage in this battle was that Jasper was not thinking very clearly.

  I screamed and flailed my arms around as if I’d been delivered a mortal wound, hoping he wouldn’t notice the lack of spurting blood. Jasper let out a gleeful cackle that made him sound like a wicked witch.

  I lunged forward and grabbed his broken arm. I gave it a not-so-gentle-twist.

  Jasper stopped cackling.

  I yanked the machete out of his hand, then stepped away from him.

  Surely he wouldn’t come after me.

  He came after me.

  I swung the machete, lopping off his right hand. It dropped into the pond with a gentle splash. His stump began to do what stumps do when they’re brand new.

  Jasper just stared at it. He held it up for closer inspection, not seeming to notice that blood was squirting on his face.

  “Give it back,” he told me.

  “What?”

  “My hand.”

  “I didn’t take it. It dropped into the pond.”

  “Well, help me find it!” Jasper crouched down and began to sift through the water with both his attached hand and the stump. Since his attached hand was, as you’ll recall, attached to a broken arm, he wasn’t sifting in a very efficient manner. I saw his hand floating next to him but didn’t call attention to it.

  I walked away from him.

  “Where are you going?” Jasper asked. “You have to help me find my hand!” He held up the stump. “It’s going to get infected! I need antibiotics! This is the worst day ever!” He wobbled a bit but didn’t fall over.

  “I don’t know what to do here,” I told Steve. “The fight seems to be over, so...what, are we just gonna watch him bleed out?”

  “We might as well,” said Steve.

  Jasper stood up and cupped his hand over the stump to quell the flow of blood. “I’m feeling kind of queasy,” he said.

  “It’s okay,” Steve told him. “You can go to sleep.”

  “My stomach hurts.” Jasper noticed his severed hand, made a few failed efforts to grab it, then successfully picked it up by the thumb. He tried to wipe it off on his filthy shirt.

  “Are you sure you shouldn’t just shoot him?” I asked Steve.

  “Nah.”

  “I think he’s going to try to stick his hand back on, and then he’s going to be confused when it doesn’t stay there, and it’s going to be really sad to watch.”

  Jasper toppled over. He made a halfhearted attempt to get back up, then went under the surface of the water. A moment later he floated back up, facedown.

  “I guess he’s gone now,” I said.

  “Looks like it.”

  “I’m not completely sure where everything stands,” I admitted. “You’re the one who shot him, but I assume that doesn’t mean we’re all partners now.”

  “Nope,” said Steve. He hadn’t stopped pointing his gun at Roger during our conversation. “You’re all still captives. I just couldn’t let that jackass cost us the treasure. Basically, everything is staying the same, except that Jasper is dead and Henrietta is in no shape to help with the search. Tell me about these faces. If you lie to me or withhold information, I’ll know it, and then I’ll decide you’re not useful, and then I’ll shoot you somewhere that will eventually kill you.”

  “I don’t know anything about the faces,” I said. “I never saw the back of the map.”

  “The clue said to find three frowns,” said Henrietta. “There’s more to it, but somebody has to help me tie off my leg first.”

  “Fine,” said Steve.

  I glanced over at Jasper’s body, which was floating away, and then I walked out of the pond.

  “There’s a first aid kit in the backpack,” Steve said. “It wasn’t really meant for gunshot wounds, but you should be able to patch her up a little.”

  He stepped back, keeping the gun pointed at us but giving us enough room to work. We didn’t have anything to use to dig out the bullet and wouldn’t have tried that anyway, since the inevitable result of Roger and I trying to be surgeons would be plenty of arterial spurting. But we were able to use an antiseptic wipe, and then use rope and some sticks to put together a quick tourniquet. Henrietta wasn’t going to be able to walk on her own, but she wasn’t going to bleed to death. At least not right away.

  “Thank you,” Henrietta said.

  “The clue…?” Steve prompted.

  “The key is in the intersection between the three frowns. Roger and I found two of them. I’m not going to be swimming around in the pond anymore, but Roger can show Andrew exactly what we’re looking for. You’re welcome to join them. It would make the search go faster.”

  “I don’t think I’ll be joining them,” said Steve. “Andrew? Roger? Get to work.”

  Roger and I returned to the pond. By now Jasper had floated almost to the middle. I wished I didn’t have to keep seeing his corpse, but I also didn’t want to accidentally step on it if it sank to the bottom. A lose-lose situation.

  Roger led me to one of the faces so that I knew exactly what kind of carving I was looking for. And then we continued the search.

  We searched. And searched. And searched.

  And searched.

  It would be fun to report back that there was a “Eureka!” moment where we suddenly discovered that we’d overlooked a detail that should have been obvious from the beginning. Or that the third face was hidden in a fiendishly clever way—maybe we discovered a loose piece of stone that slid away, revealing a secret compartment. Or that the ruins, seen from above, were in the pattern of a frowny face.

  Instead, no, after several hours of searching it turned out that the third face was just a lot smaller than the others, and it was four feet below the surface, and we had to shove a lot of muck out of the way to find it.

  Still, we did find it! Woo-hoo!

  But now it was getting dark. Steve was enough of a sweetheart to let Roger and I leave the pond so that we could sit on the ground and rest. I was thoroughly exhausted and could barely feel my arms and legs.

  “It’s too dangerous to walk through the forest in the dark,” said Steve. “And we all need some sleep. I wish I could trust you not to run away or try to subdue me while I’m asleep, but I can’t, so I’m afraid I’m going to have to tie you all up.”

  “Is that really necessary?” I asked. “This morning I woke up with a boa constrictor wrapped around me. I’d like to be able to defend myself.”

  “Do you swear you won’t try to escape?” Steve asked.

  “I swear.”

  “And did you understand that I was completely joking, and that I would never be so rock-stupid as to trust that I wouldn’t wake up with my own gun in my face?”

  “I understood that,” I said. “Figured it couldn’t hurt to try.”

  “It did hurt, because it offended me. I have a more negative opinion of you now.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Apology not accepted. Now shut up so I can tie you all up and go to sleep.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  This is where I’m tempted to write something like, “I still got more sleep than I do at home! Ha ha ha!” but I would be lying for comedic effect. If Helen had given birth to octuplets, and then the doctor said, “Whoa, whoa, we ain’t done yet!” and then she gave birth to another b
atch of octuplets, I’d still get better sleep at home than I did tied up on the ground next to the pond. Before Steve gave me a gentle kiss goodnight (I’m lying about the kiss for comedic effect) he sprayed me with enough insect repellent to deter Mothra, but I still kept waking up with bugs crawling all over me. By the time the sun rose, I was covered with enough bites that if you wanted to play connect the dots, you could pretty much draw anything your imagination could conjure.

  When I sat up, I saw that Jasper’s grotesquely bloated body had drifted onto the shore, and something had been eating away at him.

  Steve yawned, got up, and picked up his gun. He untied me, and then Roger. We were allowed to walk a short distance away to pee, as long as we didn’t leave his line of sight. When we returned, Henrietta had the same desperate need, so I was allowed to untie her and help her, which was not a highlight of my life.

  “Are you going to be okay?” I asked her.

  “Do you mean am I going to live, or are you asking if I’m going to thrive?”

  “Pretty much just live.”

  She nodded. “Yeah, I should be okay. I can’t feel my leg anymore, so that’s good.”

  “I don’t think it is good, actually.”

  “It gets me out of swimming in the pond again. Have fun with that.”

  Now that we’d found the three frowns, we had to calculate where invisible lines drawn from each of them would intersect. This would’ve been pretty easy if we had a drone, but alas we did not. But with me swimming around between the faces and Roger and Henrietta trying to help from the shore, we came up with what we were pretty sure was the intersection between them.

  The water was far over my head, so this was going to be a treat.

  I swam down to the bottom and dug around in the glop at the bottom until I couldn’t hold my breath any longer. The nearest ruins were ten feet away, so I was going to have to swim over to them every time I needed a rest, which would make it a challenge to keep track of the exact spot of the intersection, which we didn’t know for sure was the exact spot anyway.

  I dove down a few times, with no luck.