Escape From Slaughter Beach

by Jack Quaid

  “What do we do?” Corey asked.

  Parker gave it half a second’s thought. “Pull over and play it cool.”

  Corey downshifted, tapped his brakes, and over the course of a quarter of a mile, brought the rig to a standstill. He shut off the engine and reached for the .45 on his hip.

  Parker looked at him. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “I’ll just shoot him in the leg or something.”

  “You’re not shooting him in the leg or something. You’re not shooting anyone in the leg.”

  “What do you want to do?” he asked. “Tell him the truth? He’s probably not going to like the sounds of that.”

  “Just be cool,” Parker said as she watched Burke climb out of the cruiser with a flashlight in one hand and his revolver in the other.

  “Step out of the truck,” Burke called out. “Nice and slow, please.”

  “What do we do?” Corey asked.

  She looked at the gun in Burke’s hand. “I think we do as we’re told.”

  Very slowly and carefully, both Parker Ames and Corey Hayes climbed down from the cabin of the truck.

  Burke put the flashlight on them. “Christine?” he said, and it was clear that he wasn’t one hundred percent sure if it was her or not.

  She gave him a light, weak wave. “Hi ya, Stacy.”

  “What’s going on here, Christine?”

  Parker stalled; her mind worked overtime to come up with some sort of bullshit to get them the hell out of the pickle they were in. “We were down at the, ah… down at the Moose Lodge, and Ricky Moore was there, and like usual, you know Ricky, he had one too many. There was no way known he could drive. We thought we would take him home. He’s asleep up there in the cabin.”

  “He’s asleep up there in the cabin?” Burke said.

  “That’s right.”

  “You’re sure?” Burke asked. “That’s the story you’re going with?”

  “Why wouldn’t we?” Corey added.

  “Because Ricky Moore is dead,” Burke said. “Someone stabbed him to death and burned the El Wray Motel down.”

  As if that wasn’t that wasn’t bad enough, a loud thump hit the side of the trailer from the inside.

  Burke’s eyes shifted to the truck. “What was that?

  “What was what?” Corey said.

  “That sound.”

  “I didn’t hear anything.”

  “Me neither,” Parker added.

  Another massive thump hit the inside of the truck.

  “I think we all heard that,” Burke said. “Who’s back there?”

  Neither Parker nor Corey said a single word.

  Burke pointed with the flashlight in his hand. “Open the door.”

  Parker shook her head. “Oh, I really don’t think you want to go and do something like that.”

  “I second that motion,” Corey added.

  Burke shifted his eyes from Parker to Corey and back again. “I’m going to need you to open that back door, Christine.”

  She shook her head. “You really, I mean really, really, don’t want to go and do that.”

  “If you don’t do it, I’ll do it.” And when Burke took a couple of steps to the rear of the truck, Parker tried to do the same to block him, but Burke didn’t like that. He swung the revolver her way. “Stay there! Hands up! Stay there!”

  Parker did as she was told and put her hands a little higher than they were. “Stacy, please, trust me. You don’t want to open up those doors.”

  “Don’t either of you move.” He inched closer to the rear of the truck while still keeping a keen eye on his suspects.

  “Stacy,” she tried to plead again.

  He wrapped his hand around the steel handle at the rear of the truck.

  “You might want to give this a second thought.”

  But he didn’t. Stacy Burke unlatched the handle and swung the trailer door to wide open. He peered forward and, at first, saw darkness. “There’s nothing—”

  Burke’s words were cut short when he heard massive thumping steps, then Hurricane Williams blasted out of the darkness, and at the very sight of him, Stacy Burke did the only thing he could do in that situation: he froze.

  Hurricane Williams jumped out of Ricky Moore’s big rig, and as he landed on the ground, he swung the machete down so hard and fast that it split Burke’s skull in two.

  “Goddamn it,” Parker yelled.

  His body slumped to the ground, and as soon as it hit the deck, Hurricane shifted his attention to Parker Ames.

  “So,” Parker said with a shrug, “no hard feelings?”

  Hurricane gripped the living hell out of his machete and was about to get started on the hacking and slashing when he looked beyond both Parker and Corey to the sheriff’s Jeep speeding out of the fog toward them.

  Parker looked over her shoulder. “Shit, it’s Joe.” And when she looked back, Hurricane had disappeared. “Probably not a bad idea,” she said to Corey. “You should do the same.”

  “What?”

  “There’s no point both of us going to jail. Get out of here. I’ll deal with Joe.”

  Corey paused a little too long, but when Parker yelled at him to run, that was just what he did. By the time Joe hit the brakes and climbed out, Corey was long gone.

  He looked at his wife, at the truck, and the body on the ground, trying to make sense of it all.

  “You’re probably wondering what the hell is going on.”

  “You could say something like that,” Joe said.

  Thirty-Six

  Even at ten o’clock, there were still teenagers out on the foggy streets of Slaughter Beach trick-or-treating, and judging by the couple of houses Norm Freeman saw TPed as he cruised down Main Street, a couple of people had chosen trick rather than treat.

  Norm pulled his old green pickup into the parking lot of the Anchor Bar and shut the engine down. His hands were shaking like mad, and it wasn’t until he pulled them off the wheel that he realized just how bad they really were. Norm cursed his fingers as he climbed out of the pickup then made his way into the bar with those hands buried deep into the pockets of his work pants.

  Poor old Norm had never caught a break in his life. He was on his third wife, who hated him as much as his first two wives, and his son was doing three to five down at Sussex for stupidity. Norm had taken to constantly wearing his Gulf Oil hat to hide his receding hairline, which was running back so fast that Norm suspected it was secretly afraid of his face.

  When he walked into the bar, he saw that Old Man Richardson had done a half-assed job at decorating the joint for Halloween. Fake cobwebs hung in the corners next to the real cobwebs, “Monster Mash” was playing on the jukebox, and a skeleton was propped up in one of the booths with a warm beer in from of him.

  When Norm walked through those double doors like he had a million times before, everyone in the bar turned to see who it was like they had a million times before. For a Tuesday night, it was a bit quiet. Because it was Halloween and all, Norm figured most people would be out with their kids, knocking on doors and collecting candy. That’s not to say that the joint was empty. Old Man Richardson’s two boys, Steve and Nathan, were sitting at the bar, just like they had for the past fifteen years. Although they were good boys, they wouldn’t be winning any spelling bees anytime soon. They spent their days working the fishing boats that sailed out of South Bethany and spent their nights sitting at the end of their father’s bar drinking beer and getting into fights.

  Richardson slapped a wet towel over his shoulder when he saw Norm walk through the doors. “How goes it, Norm?”

  Typically, Norm would mouth back some smart-ass comment just like he had for the past twenty years, but that time, all he did was grunt half a hello, pull up a stool, and take a seat at the bar.

  Old Man Richardson knew something was up before Norm’s ass even touched the stool, so he poured him a beer and placed it in front of him without so much as a word.

  “Thanks,” Nor
m grunted, and as he picked up the glass, his hand shook so hard that beer sloshed over the rim and hit the bar top long before the glass ever touched his lips. He finally got a sip in, then as his hand lowered the glass back down, it shook and spilled all over again.

  Richardson already had eyes on Norm, but after that, the two boys peeled their eyes from Butcher Ben’s Twenty-Four-Hour Monster Film Festival of Terror and placed them on Norm.

  “Something on your mind, buddy?” Richardson asked.

  “You could say that,” Norm said. “You could also say that something evil has come to our town.”

  Steve had a beer halfway to his lips and as soon as he heard those words, he hit Pause on that sip. “Say what?”

  “Yeah,” old man Richardson said. “Would you mind elaborating on that, Norm?”

  “Two hours ago, I was on my way back from Straytonville. Sam out there had a truck playing up, and he wanted me to go and have a look tonight, so he could use it bright and early in the morning. So I go and fix the truck, and I’m on the way back, heading down 36. It had been a long son-of-a-bitch day. I’d been up since sunrise because of that damn stupid stray Karen brought home last week, and since then, there hasn’t been one goddamned night where the prick hasn’t barked all night long. Anyway, I’d been up since the crack of dawn, and as I said, I was pretty keen to walk in through these doors here and have myself a couple of cold ones. But as I was driving down 36, and up ahead at Lloyd’s First & Last, I saw a kerfuffle.”

  “What kind of kerfuffle?” Steve asked.

  Nathan looked confused. “What’s a kafulle? Is it even a real word?”

  Steve just shook his head. “Of course it’s a real word.”

  “What’s it mean?”

  A bolt of anger shot through Norm. “Does it fucking matter?”

  “All right, all right,” Nathan said. “It doesn’t matter, all right?”

  Norm took a moment to calm himself down. “Down at Lloyd’s, there were flashing lights, and the deputy was there and everything,” Norm continued. “So I pull over to see what’s going on. You wouldn’t exactly call me and Lloyd long-lost buddies, but we’ve had a beer or two together, so I wanted to see if all was okay, you know?”

  “Was it?” Richardson asked.

  Norm shook his head. “No, it wasn’t okay.”

  At that point in Norm’s story, the boys all leaned in a little bit closer to hear what had happened next.

  “Telly Edmondson was there. He was the first on scene, and he told me the deputy was in the filling station, but I didn’t want to go in that was for sure. So naturally…”

  “Naturally, you went in,” Old Man Richardson said, finishing off Norm’s sentence.

  “So I went in,” Norm said with a hint of regret in his voice.

  “Was Lloyd there?” Steve asked.

  Norm took a sip of his beer. He still had the shakes, but they weren’t anywhere near as bad as when he’d first walked in the door. “What was left of him was.”

  “What do you mean?” Nathan asked with a hint of fear in his voice. “‘What was left of him’?”

  “Someone had separated his head from his body,” Norm said.

  The boys all leaned back in their chairs, and each drew a heavy breath.

  “So…” Nathan said. “So he’s dead?”

  “Yes, he’s fucking dead!” Norm snapped.

  No one said a word in the bar, and for a couple of seconds, all that could be heard were the screams of some poor victim on the television.

  Richardson raised his glass. “Lloyd was a good man.”

  “Never hurt a fly,” Steve added, and they all took a drink.

  They enjoyed that drink in memory of Lloyd, and for a few moments, not one of them said a word.

  “What kind of dog would do this to Lloyd?” Old Man Richardson said. “What kind of dog?”

  Norm made a sound. It was somewhere between a grunt and a snort, and although it was involuntary, it let the boys know that Norm knew a little more than he was letting on. They all looked his way for an answer, and he knew it.

  “Now, I’m just a guy talking here,” Norm said. “A guy who doesn’t know shit for shit about anything, all right?”

  They all nodded.

  “All right,” Old Man Richardson said. “You don’t know shit from shit, except?”

  “Except that Christine Turner’s car was found at Lloyd’s.”

  They took that in for a moment.

  “Was it now?” Old Man Richardson said. “That’s very interesting. And where was that little girl?”

  Norm didn’t say shit, and they all waited for his answer.

  “Now, again. I’m just a guy who doesn’t know shit from…”

  “Shit,” Old Man Richardson said. “We get it.”

  Norm downed a mouthful of beer. “The El Wray Motel was also burned to the ground tonight. Mary Brown, Bob Brown, Claire Brown, Ricky Moore, and Lloyd Fairweather are all dead.”

  “All of them?” Nathan asked just to double-check his hearing was all still working.

  “Every single one,” Norm said. “And Christine Turner is in custody over there at the sheriff’s station.”

  “Are you sayin’ she killed all those folks?” Nathan asked, still trying to wrap his head around it.

  “I’m not saying that,” Norm said. “Not yet anyway. But it does look mighty damn suspicious is all.” Norm finished his beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  Old Man Richardson wrapped his fingers around a glass. “Another beer, Norm?”

  Norm shook his head. “I don’t feel so hot, fellas. I’m taking myself home.” He made his way to the door, paused, and looked back at the Richardson boys. “Be safe out there tonight. There’s a bad smell in the air.”

  And with those words, he left.

  Thirty-Seven

  “There’s a bad smell in the air,” Nathan said. “What the hell did he mean by that?”

  Hardly anybody paid attention to Nathan, and that occasion was no exception.

  “Damn it, Pa,” Steve said. “Have you ever heard of anything like that happening in Slaughter Beach before?”

  The old man shook his head. “She’s always been funny, that girl.”

  “Christine Turner?” Nathan said. “I’ve never heard her be funny.”

  “Funny as in odd,” Steve said. “Not as in funny ha-ha.”

  “Oh.”

  Steve leaned over the bar and topped up his beer. “She’s not one of us; that’s for sure. She wasn’t born here.”

  “You seen those tattoos?” Old Man Richardson asked. “Running all up her arms?”

  “I’ve never seen no tattoos,” Nathan said.

  “She keeps them covered mostly,” Old Man Richardson said. “Some sort of satanic ritual shit, probably.” He poured each of the boys and himself a shot of Wild Turkey. “Those goddamned devil worshippers.” He held the glass to his lips. “Lloyd was a good man.”

  “I played pool with him every other week,” Steve said. “Terrible pool player, good guy.”

  They downed their drinks and let the silence linger between them for a couple of moments.

  “It’s that sheriff I worry about,” Old Man Richardson finally said to break the silence.

  Nathan lit a cigarette. “Joe?”

  “It’s his wife, isn’t it?” the old man continued. “What do you think he’s going to do to protect his wife? It’s my bet he’ll do whatever it takes.”

  “I’ve never liked that Boy Scout,” Steve added. “That murderous bitch is probably going to walk free. I guaran-fucking-tee it.” He lit a cigarette and locked eyes with his old man.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking, son?” Old Man Richardson said.

  A big old dirty grin crawled across Steve’s face. “I think it’s time for the Wolves of Slaughter Beach to make a return.”

  “My thoughts exactly, son.” Old Man Richardson said with a menacing-looking grin.

  Around about now
you’re probably thinking who the hell are the Wolves of Slaughter Beach and fair enough, you’d be right to think that. For those of you not up-to-date with Slaughter Beach folklore, here’s a little rundown of who they are and how they originated. Way back in 1681, when the very first settlers arrived in Slaughter Beach, there was no law to be seen or heard of on the coast of Delaware, so five families banded together and vowed to protect the good hardworking people of Slaughter Beach. Old Man Denny Richardson’s great-great-great-granddaddy was one of the founding members. There were the Cooks, the Harrises, the Perrys, the Kings, and the Richardsons. A son from each family was volunteered, and the five-man team patrolled the coastline of Slaughter Beach, resolved disputes, and dealt with any trouble that may have happened to roll into town. That was the way it had worked in Slaughter Beach all the way up until 1890, when it got its own sheriff’s department. At that point, the Wolves of Slaughter Beach were officially disbanded, because there really was no need for an unofficial law-enforcement presence when they had an official one in place. That was what the folks of Slaughter Beach had thought anyway.

  In the summer of 1929, a drifter rolled into town and put two bullets into Roland Morgan, who ran the local store, while trying to rob him of the $4.30 in his cash register. Everybody in Slaughter Beach knew who had done it, yet when it came time for the Slaughter Beach Sheriff’s Department to make an arrest, they didn’t have any eyewitnesses, they couldn’t establish a motive, and the murder weapon was never recovered. After a three-week investigation, Sheriff Porter didn’t have enough evidence for an arrest, and the drifter was cut loose and sent on his way. But there was never any doubt in the minds and hearts of those who lived and breathed Slaughter Beach. It was then, in 1929, that the Wolves of Slaughter Beach were reformed, and just like before, one son from each of the five major families worked to serve justice to those who had escaped through the loopholes of the law.

  That drifter didn’t make it out of the city limits before he was mowed down by gunfire on Cedar Beach Road, not far from where the El Wray Motel used to stand. And so for the following seventy years, the Wolves of Slaughter Beach dealt out justice whenever they thought the law had failed. They might lie dormant for years on end, only to strike when they thought it was appropriate, but as the years moved on and society grew more civil, the usefulness of the Wolves of Slaughter Beach diminished. until most of the people in town thought either they had all died out or that the whole thing had just been a myth to begin with.